gestapo! they wear boots in the shape of the moon, they've got special hats on & all the special spikes & epaulets. blue veils & hooded trench coats. the dream police! secret officers of doodles & scribbles. fresh as the smell of grass bleeding. so what about them! i don't mind them; they have a captain & he plays the organ, wears a half-mask & holds a rose bleeding crude oil from its thorns in his teeth. the pedals of the organ are made out of skulls! he comes from a mom & pop & mom family. he has a special way of drinking his coffee! he had a special way of drinking his coffee. he was executed by an electrical golem just a few hours ago. a golem from a flesh dimension! i think about. also: i can tell you about all the other positions on the tree besides "hanged." i can do it but i won't. a warlock has his secrets!
Current Mood:so much stronger. Current Music:crown me king- one too many
the alchemical wedding. doom patrol volume five (5): magic bus by grant morrison & brian bolland.
hey, does doom patrol get the attention it deserves? unlike the invisibles, which, i'm sorry, is a little too masturbatory to count in the end run, the doom patrol comics have a consistent narrative. in other words, there is something rubber to stretch. the exploration of the negative man is, for instance, an important work that figures in the past of the character & impacts the future. part of the fun of the serial medium is that you don't own the characters-- they own you. a lot of the craziness is pure fun, & a lot is pure drama, but the character piece on rebis is far & away the most stand out.
Current Mood:singing electronic bloops. Current Music:crown me king- the robots marching up the square, conquering
gonna growl like a serpent. i know my diary has switched from a record of the sublime to the banal. it isn't a hurt, a wound, but the flip-side. instead of needing a redoubt from the world, a safe to crack, a stone table to set out the dark rainbows of my thoughts & put them aside to cope with a jagged bit of world? i've gone right ahead in the opposite direction. i've got a magic ring & a halo; i live in gotham & walk the dizzy streets with arms wide out, all eight of them. i don't need to store away the hurt to remind myself who i am because i'm better at being what i am. & quality is better than identity any day of the week. & pathos? well. if you ever thought i had pathos you weren't paying attention, really. but what am i to bleed over now? other than these two holes in me. & i've got the prettiest jewel to put into those absences. in all the chambers of my heart.
Current Mood:knit from dark wool. Current Music:crown me king- have you seen 2001?
curios & object d'art. the cabinet of wonders: book one (1) of the kronos chronicles by marie rutkoski.
i am happy to report that i enjoyed this very much. it was a concern! what if it was awful, what would i say to marie? as luck, or really skill, metis, would have it, the question is dodged. i happened to find the book quite lovely. i say that with very little bias, too. so, enough ado & all that rot. to the meat & the drink. cut to the chase. license to kill.
cabinet... is a ya book set in hapsburg prague. you know i don't like prague, so that was a hurdle! i do like fantasy yarns, & this is a pleasant one. petra kronos is a competent young girl with scoundrel friends who gets in & out of trouble. i won't dither on with a plot summary or any such nonsense. suffice to say: smart girl +1. mechanical spider +1. gypsies +1. so on, so forth. the relationship between petra & her tin spider, astrophil, is a little bit shades of pullman, but not in any way other than they were sipping from the same well, if you follow.
the big selling points for me were a variety of details. most i won't go into, since i plan on biting her style & cribbing them for my own use. we share an interest in invisible fingers, which i call ectoplasmic fingers. a marble with a wasp in it. names for things. john dee! the redheaded queen in a dress made of eyes & ears (a real painting)! & there are selling details-- the sick horses really impressed me. motives outside the scope of the narrative! there is a broader tale at work. that always pleases me.
a quick note: a reviewer for the book said there was "no coherent system of magic." okay, listen you dried up prune of the worst sort of gamer. systems of magic is one of the great millstones of a rule system. as soon as you make magic a reliable, codified, practical schema, you loose the wonder. magic should be incoherent. what are you, a wizard, who can tell it like it is? eff you.
Current Mood:high marks! Current Music:crown me king- the sword is the shape of the relation of blue to sapphires
it's a holiday, come on, come on! still as rattling as lazarus; i'm not dead but i think i remember hearing something about being dead? same thing but with the sickness. the filamented mollusks from my gut have spread into my lungs, spun cotton-candy coccoons, silky threads dripping with slime. i crawled to the gym the other day, though, & found it to be a fine pursuit for a gentleman of my stature. my intention is to go again this evening, & also to lure the lovely beloved with me. come along to the gymnasium, wife! last night i played some of the coda to resident evil four (4), in which the deus ex machina events of the story are explained by the femme fatale's actions. i also played the tmnt game for the wii, which is alright. i also also drank some beers, & found it endlessly amusing to keep making donatello run off the cliff & die. so i did that for a while till jenny yelled at me to just finish the level. the turtles are really, really brilliant. just in general; playing the game makes me think of the enormous affection i have for them, & for tmnt & other strangeness. i like to imagine that the turtles, usagi yojimbo, & cerebus all share the same world.
Current Mood:dodo familiar. Current Music:crown me king- fifty-cent swords
“I just saw a really bad ass T Shirt. It had the batman logo all I saw coming out was batman. Apparently the batman logo the new one from like the Dark Nights and instead of being the batman logo is instead a bat it's self proper. We'll not actually bat a picture of a bat stretch out to have it's stand making the batman logo. It was pretty sweet actually I saw the guy and I was like I haven't seen that before but ___ to that shirt that's pretty awesome”
i am not nearly as interested in the batman as a psychological phenomenon as i am in the batman as a supernatural phenom. no. it isn't about how crazy he is. okay, it sort of is. but putting on the costume; that is something different. he isn't a vigilante in body armor. bruce wayne is a shaman; bruce wayne is a cheval for the batman. once the mask & the cape go on, he becomes something greater than a man. yes, there is years of intense training, talent, gadgets, money. all of that is a foundation for the singular act of will & destruction of ego. a man puts on a costume & suddenly he becomes the peer of demigods like the kryptonian. i don't want people to think batman is a man in a costume-- this is why the fake batmen in the dark knight bother me. gotham city doesn't think batman is a man in a costume. they think he is at the most human a vampire; but just as likely he is something unknowable, like the mothman. batman is an urban legend, batman is something else than a man. so don't quibble with me about his mommy & daddy. he is the batman. his father is darkness & his mother is fear.
i guess something must have clicked, because i sure have been thinking about the batman lately. i've said for a while now that i want batman to be the mothman. i want criminals to receive phone calls from inhuman voices, phone calls that persist even when they yank the cord from the wall. i want the batman to be a demon, a monster, something inconceivable. i want batman to be watching on the batcomputer. waiting. i want batman to be free of toys & widgets, empowered instead by monstrosity. machines & devices are things that exist behind the curtain. i want jim freaking gordon to be unsure if he's a man or...what exactly.
Current Mood:i'm....batman. Current Music:crown me king- duun dun duh dun!
i'm always the last monster standing. beat resident evil four (4) tonight. oh, i sure had my grudges with it at the beginning, but as i suspected, i just needed to learn the game's logic (like, running in a circle will befuddle all enemies, always) & come to terms with it. by the end i was a stone cold killer. go on! i'll shoot out your knees, then shoot you in the back of the head. execution style for you, filthy european monsters! because that is the plot of the game: kill the dirty, infected, horrific spanish people. sometimes, if you blow off their heads, tentacles come out, & the tentacles are holding knives. aw! like my head.
hold on, wait a minute, emergency. i lost my wedding ring. fuck. i knew i'd left it in the apartment before going to the gym, but now i can't find it! i had to look for it for like an hour, tearing the apartment apart from head to toe. jenny helped me look & even bit her tongue to keep from i-told-you-so-ing me about taking my ring off all the time. it had just snuck into the black fibers of the carpet to sulk & hide. fucking talisman! okay. now i'm going to have this cocktail, cool off, & go back to video game zen. i've been staring at the abyss too long, or it was staring into me.
so i beat the game, & i got all the bottlecaps at the shooting range. the wii remote? is freaking built for this kind of thing. being able to point & shoot is just a luxury? worth having. screw your heads! screw your kneecaps! die, die die! also i killed all the monsters. because i don't care how big & ugly you are, guy? you are just a cave troll. & you might have tentacles & claws but you have eyes too, & i can stab them, & also i bought this rocket launcher. thanks, awesome, totally sweet merchant! i wish the merchant with the blue fires had a backstory, i wish he was sneaking around helping me like ada.
oh & as to the ladies. well, okay? we've got the president's daughter, whom i rescued & escorted around. she's no yorda from ico, but then, yorda is something special. note to self: run "yorda" by jenny as a name for a daughter. she isn't helpless-- she isn't a trained murderer like leon, but she has a sequence where she holds her own. still-- damsel. & there is a spy lady? she's all femme fatale, but i don't know, i give a little allowance for genre tropes. she certainly is capable. otherwise the only ladies are a girl on the telephone that i flirt with (what up, japan?) & the messed up village ladies that i assassinate. there isn't a sacrifice of women to provide emotional energy; rather, comrades in arms die. sorry dudes! you were helpful!
Current Mood:doctor (dr) salvator Current Music:crown me king feat. blue fire merchant- welcome, stranger
all i've been talking about is media because all i've been doing is digesting media. i've been sick! still sick, like, what am i, dying of leperousy? i drink orange juice, airborn, soup, tea. i don't even care. nothing seems to be working, i'm still a cough bunny. this is the pits. so i sit on the couch or in front of the computer, with nothing to go on but what comes in through the windows in my face. i need some old fashioned fun. i am feeling better, more or less. i had a few drinks last night, but under this punishing heat, who can blame me? & i am, hell, high water, or otherwise, going to the gym this evening. on the plus side, i've developed my resident evil skills. i am death. i'm not quite the grim spectre of harvest i became playing metal gear but you wouldn't want to meet me in a dark alley, if you happened to have knife-tentacles for a head. that is all i'm saying. otherwise i try to stay in the clutches of miss jenny. often she doesn't wear any clothes at all! so i can't say this dog days heat wave doesn't have any upsides.
Current Mood:& here we go. Current Music:crown me king feat. mister j & paul simon- still crazy after all these years
identity horror. throne of bones by brian mcnaughton.
came recommended to me by the faceless "they," & i really should know better. winner of the world fantasy award, whatever that is. since when do i listen to awards (besides the slipstream-- not that any slipstream novels are easy to get...)? it was summed up, both in a blurb i read & the back cover text, as being like what if tolkien wrote the sympathetic story of mordor. um? no it isn't. okay, i'm over-stating my dislike. it was okay. but it isn't like that at all. there are a few stories that are lovecraft meets tolkien. see, i mention this-- "a few stories." first off, it is a short story anthology! i don't really like short stories-- howard, lovecraft, borges aside.
anyhow, it is sort of hit or miss. i wonder if mister mcnaughton feels like he's being depraved, or realizes what window dressing that is? oh, casual discussion of rape! just rings hollow. though to be fair, points off for poor treatment of women & "lesser races," sir, & no resorting to "well, it is the turn of the century!" since this was written in the nineties (1990s). rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, okay, okay. spoooooky. really the works are all identity horror. the ghouls (he loves ghouls) eat people, take their memories, & then forget they are ghouls. think they are the people! then the same thing happens in reverse! are you a dream or are you the dreamer? so on, so forth. sometimes there is some interesting play? othertimes, not so much. there is a semi-coherent universe behind it; i like sort of reverse engineering the world out of the tales.
Current Mood:still fucking coughing. Current Music:crown me king feat. doc holiday- i have two guns, huckleberry
some little troll of a guy came in here for a hilarious exchange. "do you have any indian books?" he asked me, after browsing our comic book section. what kind of books do you mean, sir? i asked him. "you know what i mean." i really don't. do you mean aboriginal americans or indians as in, the sub-continent? (my mind wandered, thinking of doggerland, as it has lately) "no. not indians like that." not like which? do you mean like, india? like indian authors or books about india? i usually assume when people dismiss options that they mean the first one-- people are dumb & rarely listen to everything you say. "no. i mean...porno."
?! i'd never heard anything like that. i turned to the former prince of pornographers, kingtycoon but he hadn't heard the euphemism either. jenny put forward the most plausible theory. she guessed that he meant the kama sutra, & thus just sort of extended that umbrella. i don't feel so bad about not being able to help that guy, since he was a creep (his feet make those sticky sounds like he's walked on the floor of pre-guliani jerk-off booths) but i guess that is what he meant. weird, though. now if only i can remember it & incorporate it into my own personal slang-- i'll just have to come up with pretenses for mentioning pornography. i added sociological images to my blog roll today, & generaljinjur & i have been talking about gender & video games a lot lately, so i'll come up with something.
in another note about doctor (dr) horrible..., i am pretty sure that the yogurt they are eating is from "yogo monster." which makes me feel like a horrible yuppie. that is the yogurt with all the cultures in it that agenesis made us eat with the rice-juju-bees. they opened a new branch up in park slope & maggie convinced me to go there, & it was...okay. dammit! & in other news, better news, marie sent me a review copy of her book cabinet of wonders just as i'm about to finish throne of bones. effing sweet.
Current Mood:stop. the pain. Current Music:crown me king feat. neil patrick harris- evil inside of us is on the rise
convert or be converted! is it just me, or do these wizards of the coast articles on converting your character bug anyone else? i mean, they don't make me angry, but they kind of exhasperate me. "how to convert your character" could mean a variety of things, but it shouldn't be a list of no-brainer arguments. "favored soul is kind of like a cleric, so just play a cleric!" or "war wizard is pretty wizardy-- just play a wizard!" now, okay, maybe some fourteen (14) year olds out there are just waiting for "official" word so they can print up this article & present it to their dms? but come on, really? really? if you want to actually make a helpful conversion article, just put a little elbow grease into it! "if you want to play a favored soul, well, the new cleric works pretty well, except for that whole getting wings. you can take a martial proficiency as a feat-- that works for the first part. as to the wings & all that, well, below we have an encounter, daily, & utility power that replicate it." how about that? how about you give a little blurb like "for the war wizard, we suggest dungeon masters let their player swap impliment proficiencies for weapon proficiencies." just a little bit of colouring outside the lines? because otherwise, all you are saying is "please refer to the book you already own, thanks for the page load." you know? no help at all. this is the sixth (6th) installment & they are all just treading water.
Current Mood:go blackguard! Current Music:crown me king- evil players handbook
i took an alternate photo for jenny's photo-a-day for three hundred sixty-five (365) days thing. i think it is the superior choice! yours is the superior intellect, mordicai. it is, i heard about it, now whip up a sciencey shakespeare quote & have at you! lay on, macspock! oh, grim, bad, horrible, horrible. hey, speaking of horrible, just like everyone else you know, i am quite smitten with the new doctor (dr) horrible's sing-along blog. which comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone at all, not even the cheap seats or the peanut gallery. earlier today, caroline took me out to dinner at miracle. i'm almost better. stupid lingering cold. post-script (ps): inside of jenny there is a duck. & inside that duck there is a golden egg. & inside that golden egg there is a black hole. & if you are strong enough to resist the event horizon, & tiny enough to walk across the black hole's surface, you will find a pennant, & on the pennant are the words to a magic spell.
Current Mood:horriblonium. Current Music:crown me king feat. neil patrick harris- master plan
okay, first off. i got a bugbite on my fucking trapezium carpal, & it is itching like bloody crazy. like a ferret down the queen's knickers! i keep putting iced beverages against it to soothe the agony of it, but no luck. which brings up the point-- i'm very much an example of the adage of boys who will tough guy whenever they get really hurt, but paper cut or common cold? curl up & whimper. or in this case, mosquito bite. maybe i have west nile (again).
in other news, i'm slowly getting better at resident evil four (4). everyone wanted to tell me that i should "tough it out" & learn the game logic, & i suppose it is true. i just hate games where i have to die all the time to learn anything. it isn't that crazy past the point i was stuck at. i ended up cheating? & looking online for what i was supposed to do. it turns out, i was just supposed to survive for an invisible unit of time. i kept trial & erroring things, like "what if i push this bookcase in front of the door?" or "what if i use the grenade on a baghead?" to no effect. after that, it was smoother sailing; it was just that big clusterbomb of evil zombie spainyards that was hassling me.
i drink coffee in the shower. i drink it through a straw. i wonder about shower habits sometimes, you know? you hear tidbits from people-- "oh, i killed my ipod listening to it in the shower" & "those empty beer bottles in my shampoo rack? you mean you have never had a cold brew in the shower?" which as to the latter, yes. yes i have. i didn't dither around on the internet this morning so that i could shave in the shower. my (cheap) shaving mirror won't reliably stick to the wall, & i am sick of hearing it clatter to the floor of the tub in the middle of the night, so i have been shaving by holding it in my hand. it works fine. i also use a loofah!
this morning i kind of went overboard at the deli. i wanted to make sure i had plenty of vitamin c for the long haul, so i got a couple, & i got a bagel with cream cheese & tomato because i'm slowly working on bringing tomatoes into my diet, & while i was at it i was like, "lets go for it, team mordicai!" & got an iced coffee too. this is a true story about the time i went to the deli on the day of july (the month of julius ceasar) seventeenth (17th) in the two-thousand & eighth year of the common era (2008 ce, because that is how i roll, ya heard).
oh, & this post about white wolf getting namechecked for the werewolf/vampire rivalry concept made me think about underworld. right, they had that lawsuit? & i never found out what happened with that-- white wolf went silent, which probably means they settled out of court, right? still, i like that movie alright; beckinsale all dropping off buildings & being hot & shooting dudes & whatever. it has some moments. it isn't any good, but it is watchable. it does really bother me that it is clearly based on a terrible, terrible vampire: the masquerade game. the "abomination" campaign, which all awful gamers play through. i never did, point of pride! i try to give some credit for the asleep/asleep/awake trinity of elders, which i thought was very clever, & that the invictus book made really interesting. also, that guy kevin grevioux? he's the big, muscled, black lycan guy with the super deep voice? there is a great moment in the dvd extras where he's in his furry vest costume & he's all (in his ridiculously deep voice) "well, i have my masters in microbiology..." & you realize he's one of the script writers & you're like "aw. it is your goofy campaign!"
Current Mood:nagus random Current Music:crown me king- hello again mister samsa!
not well yet but better. keeping it tight & battened down, these hatches. it is a trick i learned from captain nobody! yesterday was a bit rough around the edges only because of the gross inside of me, the cough & the dribble. yuck, right? all flesh is grass. but i made it through the day, & even stayed late, & went to the bank, & was minimally useful in my life. okay. not the worst, not too shabby. it was all leading up to danielle's birthday party part one (1)! two (2) part birthdays are an invention i had, & why not spread the meme? spread it. like the borg. crap. the borg. i really wish ...the next generation had gone with roddenberry's q is the fickle god, borg are the relentless devil passion play.
danielle's birthday part one (1) was being held at asian pub, or thirty-five (35) cooper as i guess the are officially called now. me & scribble discovered that place, & it has stayed pretty fondly in my heart! by "in my heart," you shouldn't actually think about my heart, which is a cathedral to make h.r. giger stop furiously masturbating & gouge out his eyes. asian pub! where i managed to avoid drinking anything, since i'm all the king of sick. i ate a lot, though; jenny & i split some gyoza, & then i had a cauldron full of soup. a big old iron kettle filled with asian vegetables, & noodles, & tofu, & dumplings. i supped from it, & lifted it up & drank the broth from it. i am an old hand at the witch's pot! then we snuck out, left early. sick!
Current Mood:all kinds of goodies, badies. Current Music:crown me king- identity horror
b.r.p.d.: killing ground by mike mignola, john arcudi, & guy davis.
first off, guy davis is a hella good illustrator. i first became aware of him from his work on vampire: the masquerade, & i really like it. as to this book, i can't really give you a fair opinion. as it is really a "volume" & not a book. it makes little sense, really: some of the characters come across & even if you don't know their prehistory you can figure out what is going on (okay, johann is in a giant bodybuilder body, getting hedonistic, got it) but others (who is this old egyptian lady? just a really, really old egyptian lady?) don't make sense. the plot is confusing, though the ghost interrogation scene helps make sense of it (i like that device, though waiting too long is a bit risky...i think rather than delaying, interspersing would...well, then it might just be more confusing...okay). the end isn't...really an end, but a "to be continued!" shot, which again, is fine, but if you are looking for a self-contained story, this isn't it. it is volume eight (8) of the story, though, so it really can't be blamed.
Current Mood:smoking mirror man. Current Music:crown me king- i took her maidenhead & she took my godhead
filled with germs (with faces) i'm still sick, so nothing new to report, captain. home life is nice; i do that stupid thing where i stare at jenny till she smiles & blushes, but mostly i'm on the couch. television is awful: nothing is on that bears even watching slightly. i'm trying to make due with the table scraps of scare tactics & the mole but jenny isn't having it, & who can blame her? the video game she brought home from the library for me to play is resident evil iv (4) which is a pain in the ass; who knows where you are supposed to go? & like all horror games, it relies on the fact that it sucks at camera angles to force suspense. frustrating. once i understand the game logic (what things are significant & not, what enemies i can avoid & which i must fight, that sort of thing) it might be fun? the gun controls are well considered, but the knife controls are a pain in the ass to use, as is the kick; i'm not quite sure how i'm supposed to be fighting other than with the shooting. mostly i've just been reading, which i can't complain about. & dreaming nyQuil dreams, tossing & turning & tearing up the covers. i'm a a gladiator who owns a leopard, i'm a ghoul who is supping in the graveyard, i'm talking to a million skulls around me filled with false fire, i'm drowning i'm drowning. i'm not even that sick, which is why i keep expecting it to just curl up & blow away. i'm better than i was monday; hopefully this trend will continue, & fast!
Current Mood:cough, cough. Current Music:crown me king- chandelier city sword
okay, i'm starting to get sick of these elric books. he isn't the "doomed prince" anymore so much as the "moody prince." yawn. like a parody of himself by book four (4). this is a short story collection, or three novellas if you want to look at it that way, & they have the added downside of punking elric. listen, don't put dudes like corum (who...has the hand & eye of vecna?) in the book to make fun of poor elric. sort of a bummer. only one more to go, & i think i can say i've had my fill. he's no conan!
like a velvet glove cast in iron by daniel clowes.
kingtycoon loves this book. just kept nagging on me to read it, & since i don't try to stay locked in the cage of my disdain for indie comics, i gave it a try. i will say this: it was loads better than ghost world. i'm still just so tired of the "oh my god, the world is filthy & confusing!" tropes of so many indie comics. this had some pretty good moments? i don't want to act like i hated it. it was just-- as i predicted-- interspersed with cut scenes of men with sweaty brows masturbating & all that bothersome noise. yeah, dudes, we get it, life is gross, heads up, i had this realization a million years ago. the strong suit of this comic is the surrealist mythology & dream logic, the downside of it is everything else, & frankly, it read like something ivan stang could have scribbled. another yawn, but i'm trying not to be too dismissive. it is punctuated with moments of value, but for the rest of it you just have to sort of roll your eyes.
teen titans: titans of tomorrow by sean mckeever, randy green, ale garza, jamal igle, & eddy barrows.
i think i might have had this talked up to me, because it was another letdown. after plenty of bullshit about poor dead bart (sorry-- if you guys want to point a finger at why bart died, it shouldn't be at his impulsiveness or the rogues-- dc editorial, i'm talking to you!) we get into part two of the "evil future titans" arc. tim drake batman uses a gun! kon-el has been cloned! white martian manhunter! old luthor! i'm not really impressed. the plot is slapdash, the starro business makes everyone a less credible threat, i'm sick of "& now we fight!" moments, that sort of thing. just didn't work for me. really i think the kiss of death is the fact that the future titans are too nineties (which is the point-- i get that) & they don't have a mythic feel. i don't buy them as the future of capes, dystopia or no. some good blue beetle moments & one good robin moment, though. (wrong cover shown)
Current Mood:mordicai is a hater. Current Music:crown me king- like a velvet fish cast in mail, never clinking
the begining of a beautiful friendship, louis! danielle lost her camera at the witch prison! afterparty, leading to jenny digging around in the trash outside looking for it, frenzies of searching, tears, a mess. the end result was the possibility that someone had just grabbed the camera, thinking it was theirs, & when seeing none of the photos matching what they took, would go "hey! who lost a camera?" which is what did happen, & it was ms. champagne to the rescue. this little homily i mention as the bridge to howcome sara is the friend from the play that i have managed to stay in touch with. plus, she lives in the slope, so that always is a perk. having friends who live close enough for you to walk home is a delicious perk. this is the story of our day out!
well, first, sunday. there was talk in the morning about getting together, sara & me, but no sir, that wasn't coming together. nor was brunch, or anything similar. i spent sunday fetching things for my wife. fetch me coffee! fetch me a bagel! fetch me some spirits! is what she would have said, if i hadn't anticipated all of her requests before she made them. then, you know, a little laying together, a little gym, some morning flowers, some night blossoming flowers, a firefly, a jeweled beetle. a spider, some curds & whey. it was a nice little morning & eventually she split for kira's & i headed to carrol garden's to meet with sara.
for bastille day! carrol garden's does the thing to the nines: the close of blocks of traffic & put sand down in the streets for bocce courts, they had a twenties ('20s) era big band stand going on with flappers dancing, all that jazz. i met sara & some of her friends under a tent & had a few glasses of champagne. ah! there was a couple dancing-- a gentleman in a red shirt & a woman in a flower print flapper dress-- they didn't match, but were dirty dancing, & i very much hoped they weren't together. a little bit delayed by the music & the seersucking, sara & i departed for the movie theater.
to see hellboy ii! it turns out sara & i have very overlapping tastes: wayne barlowe, comics, eighties ('80s) fantasy flicks, the whole pop cultural shores of geek pleasure. i quite enjoyed the movie! basicly, evil legolas is a pretty admirable villain, with reasonable motives, which always helps this sort of movie. all of the character's had face time, the visuals were as stunning as you'd expect from del toro, & the actors brought their game. the only failing on the film's part was the delay on firing chekov's gun. there are certain moments set up from the begining of the film? you know what i'm talking about. the better way to have used them would be for the characters to immediately break genre trope & use them. you know? i'm talking in circles. like "oh, in that story hellboy heard when he was a little boy, he heard detail x, & asked about it, so we the audience would pay attention to it." right? then later, when circumstance z occurs to set up for detail x, don't bandy around about it. have hellboy interupt the bad guy's big monologue. see, that is funny. learn some whedon tricks! don't, you know, wait for the dawning moment of realization. i'm just griping though-- i really liked it!
afterwards, we went over to her apartment, which was nice. she's got a railroad thing. i like seeing people's apartments, & also, before i forget, we had a nice moment of hating on the pulsing, glowing mac light. & a then we bonded over furniture, & how jenny picking out a desk that will keep the hateful hal 9000 (nine thousand) eye of the macbook hidden is proof of eternal love. we also drank a bunch of...pim's cups? pim number one (no. 1) & gingerale & iced tea, or lemonade, or with cucumbers, or any of the thousand of varietions. we did this sitting at her kitchen table listening to edith piaf & gypsy dance music, messing with the speed on the record table. then i walked home & she was mindblown that it only took a few minutes. dude, we live in the same neighborhood!
Current Mood:oh, hey, rush! Current Music:crown me king- hungarian tunes on the slow
miscellanious. i like the idea of password "keychains." it makes me thing about the levels of privacy & freedom individuals & groups require. like, you need a one for identity; something for signifying you are who you are, like for comments or whatever. then a personal one; email, blogs. then a fiscal one, & possibly a governmental one? i'm not sure how much involvement the government should have with your purchases. i haven't made up my mind about that.
there is a spot on the corner of my block? that has been just death to the food industry. it used to be a curry shop, then since has gone through various mediterranean & turkish incarnations. the current restaurant there called like, corner burgers, & i tried it out. i'm going to rule out any complaints as to speed or confusion-- they just opened, & sure, they were slow, & disorganized, but that is par for the course. the food was good but very fried. the fried pickles are a good french fry substitute (especially if you are berthed right next to the chip shop, as they are). we'll see how often we hit them up.
here is a thing, is "pretty" strictly a visual descriptor? because "hot" doesn't have to be. pretty seems to be desexualized. i don't know, we were just talking about it as jenny draped her legs all over me. the sprawl! which is all we've been up to: a whole lot of nothing. i lobbied for us going to see hellboy ii tonight but she's not feeling it. so instead, lots of just hanging out, watching television, playing video games. chilling out. vegetable, fungus, kali yuga, here we come. slouching towards armageddon.
Current Mood:wrong is right. Current Music:crown me king- the foul folk
the first wii game i have defeated! so, this game is a load of fun. i had played it when we took the nypl wii so jenny could aquaint herself with the system, & i knew i wanted to play it when we got ours. the game is pretty standard mario fare: you jump on enemies, smash them whatever. what makes ...galaxy awesome is the brain-scrambling gravity games. you fly through space, & land on planets. some of them have gravity that pulls you towards the center, little prince style, some of them are platforms for you to fall off of, some of them are gravity puzzles; all kinds of craziness. it is hard to explain how fun it is, but it is easy to demonstrate it; if you play for even a little while, you'll get the hang of it. the wii remote & nunchuck work really intuitively, but then, that is the charm of the whole system. oh! mario turns into a bumble bee! & a boo ghost! & you know, fire & ice powers, & invincible. & a spring, but that one sucks. plus, there is like, a function for a second player to do, but we never tried that out. anyhow, i beat it with 87 stars, which is only okay; there are 120 total? something like that, i'm guessing.
Current Mood:fun! Current Music:crown me king- crown em king
sly twenty-eight. do i feel like writing about last night? i suppose i could. yesterday was jenny's hatching day, so we pulled out all the speckled fragments of her egg shell & marveled at them. i'd gotten her a skeleton key dress, useful to any adventuresome spirit. locks & bars won't stand in her way; she's a slip & a shadow. i also got her a cameo broach in negative, haunted by the dark shadow of artemis on the hunt. & a book of architecture, for the better planning of her inner world. i love that girl, that is all. david & maggie were threatening to bail & take a sick day, but i told them they better not, if they didn't want to become persona non grata. i spent the day at kit marlowe & co. on my lonesome, heard the nightingale whistles of miss nemoren, & then the bedraggled maggie & david showed up at close & off we went to carla's.
carla's big plan was for everyone to make a special cocktail called "the jenny," & bring enough for everyone to drink. jenny made mine out of this stuff? somehow it showed up in our apartment after the wedding. basically just kool-aid for alcohol-- a ton of sugar, a little flavor packet, dump the booze in, freeze it, drink it. carla's was a little more well done...just a smidge. a hollowed out watermelon filled with liquids of the intoxicating variety. kira's "jenny" was a sort of bitter's based concoction, & she had made nino's entry, too, which was an ice cream & bourbon float. robert's drink was some crazy psychopathic drink-- cucumber & jalapeno. it uh, had a little bite to it. a lot of bite. if it had been strained, & was a shot, it might have been a winner. danielle's drink was a "hot mess hot jenny," but by the time it came out, i was a little too drunk to appreciate it. it was fruity! & joe brought shandies. david's drink was...shit, see, drinking makes tasting harder. triple sec? maggie's had a secret ingredient: coffee berries.
long story short, kira's drink won, & she got some kind of ice machine? or like a popsicle maker? there were cupcakes & brownies, then more presents; jenny got a vintage picture of the montauk club, & a thing. a thing! a mini refrigerator that you plug into your computer's usb port. no joke! david gave us her a wii game where sonic fights mario. presents for jenny have the perk of helping out this guy right here, sometimes. oh, & she got some soaps & stuff from her bachelorette party, that she finally picked up. & i just realized that i forgot again to pick up my twin peaks dvds. there was a moment when i mentioned my intentions to pick them up & jenny was like "you gave them to them!" & i was like "um, the fuck no i didn't." but she thought we were talking about the old vhs tapes. anyhow. i think there is some marvel comics history book that was intended for my birthday, but i didn't bring it up since it was jenny's birthday. no shadows were cast! so the night turned into everyone putting librarian temporary tattoos on, me putting one on kira's cleavage (after like, two fuck-ups) & general debauchery & rock band. fuck, we stayed there late; i think i fell asleep on carla's bed at like, three in the morning, & we left at like, four? i'm going to say four. i was pretty out of it. then, morning relief sex. help me, endorphins!
Current Mood:escaped lunatics! Current Music:crown me king- power loader battle
happier. last night was better. jenny came home late, but that gave me enough kick in the pants to stop complaining in my diary about not going to the gym & get back on the horse. the muscle horse! & then over to pizza plus for dinner & mentioning the pizza plus lady's honorable mention over at blognigger. back past the bermuda triangle & home. not that we did anything much. watched that i survived a japanese game show, which is pretty drawn out & only kind of okay (most extreme elimination challange gives the same story in less time) but made me obsess trying to remember what "majide!" meant. which i figured out eventually. some video games, some crinkle, some crackle. more attention than last night: good. & then bed. i think in the middle of the night i woke up & tried to seduce her without luck. sleepy. in the morning, i woke up, got ready, was running late, but still gave her her presents: jenny birthday! then to the store. everyone called out sick or drunk, so i've been by myself today. well, the sick people better get their shit in gear for pro drinking tonight.
Current Mood:blah blah blah. Current Music:crown me king- six over par is a "beast"
more of the laze! i wish i meant laser, but i'm actually sending out the language-pattern of "lazy." that vibration of telepathic sloth! i was going to go to the gym, but jenny had been in this super fun mood all day, & i decided to stay at home & capitalize on it. a plan which...failed! instead of hanging out, she worked on a project while i alternatingly read & played video games. she was putting all of our wedding photos together into a photo book, like my lulu nanowrimo, only this one is published by some cats called blurb. so that took up the bulk of her attention for the night, which is a bummer. i had picked up fruit, so we munched on that & then watched some more crappy celebreality. the schedule of our lives is still kind of off-kilter from the play, but i think it is slowly moving back into its proper orbit. tonight she works late, so with any luck i'll stir up the depths of my motivation & crawl over to the gym finally so i can stop talking about it. blah blah blech. me & my tricorn hat & my tricorn hate & my civil war blue & greys. what the fuck ever!
Current Mood:maybe i do mean laser! zap! Current Music:crown me king- angels on a matchstick
theodore & franklin sapien! (i invented them just now; also helloboy) b.p.r.d.: hollow earth & other stories by mike mignola, christopher golden, tom sniegoski, ryan sook, curtis arnold, brian mcdonald, derek thompson, & matt smith.
here is the thing about hellboy-- anybody who has talked to me about hellboy has probably heard this speech before-- hellboy (& thus hellboy) is a fantastic idea. i mean, golly. the nazi's summon the beast of the apocalypse, with the help of rasputin (the antichrist) except the american's stop them & raise the devil-monster on apple pie & bullets. how great is that? so solid. & his friend is an amphibian & a firestarter? okay, lets roll! usa, usa. mignola's art? gasp out loud great! look at those lines, curls & curves. look at that combination! move over chocolate & peanut butter, here comes hellboy! except...in execution, it is always pretty mediocre. panel layout, carry through, scope & impact...all just falls short. in fact, i usually bring up the hellboy movie at this point & point to it as a perfect example of what i mean. beautiful, right? del toro makes those colours drip on screen. well cast-- perlman is awesome, his relationship with selma blair has unexpected chemistry, & doug jones just makes everything better. but...it really is only an okay movie. a good movie to turn your brain off during. you know?
anyhow, in my experience, short stories are the best medium for hellboy. there isn't enough time to get let down, maybe? or maybe mignola underestimates how much people will "get" the central conceit. maybe in a short story the buy in takes over-- the reader groks, immediately, the monster paranormal buster. you know? any way you slice it, the shorter hellboy arcs stick better. b.r.p.d. capitalizes on that. there isn't any hellboy-- we're all abe sapien the fishman, roger the golem, johann the psychic entity, a little lobster & a little liz. i liked it a lot; is abe just the guy who will shoot a fool? that is pretty great. the stories in here are all worth a spin. & the "bonus features" in the back? normally i don't care about that sort of thing, but these concept sketches are fun & interesting, & i'm going to wikipedia stanislav szukalski in a second because of them. my point is, after all that complaining i did, that this works to the strength of the hellboy franchise, & i'm pleased about that.
Current Mood:punch it up! Current Music:crown me king- hyperborean kids
land of the mosquito women! the scar by china miéville.
first i should say: this is probably my favorite of the bas-lag books. i really liked iron council in the end arithmetic, & while i had some problems with perdido street station, it was at the very least interesting. this book was engaging, interesting, the whole nine (9) yards. i will say one very condemning thing about it, & be done with that: the main character is pretty unlikeable. i'd heard that from some people recommending the book to me, & it turns out to be...true! which reminds me of perdido street station a little, in that perdido... had two main characters for half the book, then midway through he sacrificed the interesting (female) character to add pathos to the dull (male) character. the main character of the scar splits the difference: uninteresting (female) character. still, the side characters, antagonists, all that rot? really gets you hook, line, & sinker. uther doul? that guy is a hilarious mess. the brucolac? & his moonship? how great is that. tanner sack? bravest guy in all the books, mister lets remake myself. fennec? fucker, what a great piece of a shit. great.
the plot keeps you moving. lofty, grand schemes, but with a perfect sense of scale. it can be hard, especially in fiction this fabulous, to lend a sense of importance & difficulty. how important is a train town utopia in the scheme of bas-lag? or some bad dreams & a few eaten brains? in the scar, you get a sense of just what is at stake, with each of the clarifications. settings? man, from armada to the remnants of the malarial queendom, the settings are vivid & pleasing. i guess i liked this book a lot, huh? another thing i will say: what the eff is up with londoners? with the brits in particular. new crobuzon is dripping with that cctv-big-brother paranoia of the british dystopians. it makes it tough: like, you have to give gotham something to make batman care about it, guy. i guess that falls into the category of "what the fuck, protagonist?" mentioned above.
Current Mood:should have been "leviathan." Current Music:crown me king- context high
this slow trail of slime. i haven't been to the gym in forever, & i'm starting to get messed up in the head about it. i've been such a wreck-- hungover, stressed out, foot hurt-- that going doesn't make sense. i am purposefully trying to avoid my inclinations, to over-work myself deeper into hurt. so last night was a nice little restful alcove. i went shopping & jenny cooked a roast, which we ate while watching some celebreality television & popping a bottle of white wine. after that, she played on the wii while i read. nothing too dramatic, but rather restful, which is kind of needed with all the whirlwinds going on or just coming to a close. i woke up with a string of numbers in my head (7202365...) & i've just been having these dreams, bodies buried, dug up again, moved, put six feet under, exhumed, over & over. not nightmares, but the dream of work. digging.
Current Mood:nothing on the razor. Current Music:crown me king- sundae blood
feel like i've got fingers instead of guts, wriggling around against the sad egg-casing liner of my body from the inside. operation: the titanic, rats from a sinking ship. operation: grow the fuck up peter pan. operation: at least get hook's pirate ship. operation: operation operation. operation: you grabbed the bones in my body with tweezers & i started trembling & shaking. stupid rejection reaction, syndrome of pulled back teeth like a donkey skull. that turns over a card from last night's dream, all burying rotting bodies, digging them up again. maybe i'll enlist david in operation: turncoat, operation: fire in the sky, operation: get the hell out of dodge. i'm turning this office into my own personal battle fortress. you see what i did there? fortress? office? i can fall back on my scraps of paper for help! "boo" says one! "aum" another! those are today's mantras! hungry dead! boo! aum!
Current Mood:aum! boo! Current Music:crown me king- yomi's tongues
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mordicai's journal
doom patrol volume five (5): magic bus by grant morrison & brian bolland.
the cabinet of wonders: book one (1) of the kronos chronicles by marie rutkoski.
beat resident evil four (4) tonight. oh, i sure had my grudges with it at the beginning, but as i suspected, i just needed to learn the game's logic (like, running in a circle will befuddle all enemies, always) & come to terms with it. by the end i was a stone cold killer. go on! i'll shoot out your knees, then shoot you in the back of the head. execution style for you, filthy european monsters! because that is the plot of the game: kill the dirty, infected, horrific spanish people. sometimes, if you blow off their heads, tentacles come out, & the tentacles are holding knives. aw! like my head.
throne of bones by brian mcnaughton.
b.r.p.d.: killing ground by mike mignola, john arcudi, & guy davis.
the vanishing tower by michael moorcock.
like a velvet glove cast in iron by daniel clowes.
teen titans: titans of tomorrow by sean mckeever, randy green, ale garza, jamal igle, & eddy barrows.
mario galaxy
b.p.r.d.: hollow earth & other stories by mike mignola, christopher golden, tom sniegoski, ryan sook, curtis arnold, brian mcdonald, derek thompson, & matt smith.
the scar by china miéville.