a murder of silhouette crows

I need some zen in my life

2009-07-09T10:48:35Z

I've started using my tumblr more and more recently, so if you have a tumblr, y'all should go find me. I'm phantomwise over there.

I am currently drawing a map of my fictional city, which is proving to be interesting. The damn thing is about 3.5 by 3 feet big and the scale is all off the walls, of course, but drawing in the streets is very zen in a way. Like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Nothing much else to report, other than that Ryan Ross is still one of my favorites, even though he has the intelligence of a flobberworm. I can't even amass the energy to be upset with him right now, mostly I'm just laughing incredulously and facepalming, because he's a fucking moron.

Pictures!

2009-07-08T17:21:50Z

Clearing out my computer, I found some pictures I took of the neighborhood last winter. They're fairly attractive, I thought, so I figured I'd post some of them.

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So long and goodnight to the way we used to be

2009-07-07T09:03:43Z

I've been a little thrown out of the loop about this whole Panic business. A part of me isn't surprised at all -- I kind of had a hunch that if Panic ever broke, it'd be Ryan who'd do it -- and a part of me is shocked. I think it's the timing that surprises me the most.

A lot of people are extremely sad about this, and a lot of people think this is the funniest thing to ever happen in fandom. I guess I should have expected that reaction as well, but that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed. Sure, they're parting on amiable terms, but that doesn't mean I can't be sad about it. One of my favorite bands have gone from one state of being to another, they won't be together anymore, and I'm supposed to take this philosophically five minutes after the confirmation got through? I think not. Not with all this history I've got with these fellas.

Ryan Ross is pretty much the reason I got into Panic in the first place, these guys have stuck with me for three years, and a lot of my novel as it stands today wouldn't be there, were it not for Panic that was, the combination of Ryan's lyrics and Brendon's voice. The Jesters wouldn't be the same. Sure, Panic at the Disco will still go on, and Jon and Ryan will make something of their own, but they won't be ONE BAND, the way I always loved them, and that saddens me. It's a divorce, plain and simple, no matter how amicable.

I'd say I was overinvested, but then I saw bexless post this, and I'm just going to quote her at you guys.

I have seen the word 'overinvested' get thrown around, which doesn't even make sense to me. We're FANS, it's our JOB to be overinvested. 'Overinvested' saves TV shows from being axed. It gets things brought out on DVD. It petitions studios and calls TPTB on their bullshit. In bandom especially, if nobody was overinvested there'd be no screaming at gigs, no following bands from show to show to show, nobody to buy merch, no songs would ever appear on 'these songs make me happy/sad/come back from the dead' playlists. There would BE no playlists, no fanfic, no fanart, no fandom. Overinvested is our natural state of being. I am STILL upset over Slash and Axl's divorce, ffs. It's not stupid to be sad, it's completely natural.

I'll buck up in time. Right now, I'm going to be sad, and say goodbye to a band as I knew it.

Sweet home Ullatti does not have the same ring to it as Alabama.

2009-07-03T12:03:49Z

Okay, so. I feel like I write very little by way of journals lately, but I think it's mostly because I manage to get most of my odd thoughts out by way of Twitter and AIM. Anyway.

The past couple of days have been kind of horrible, but now I'm finally on the move. I ordered tickets yesterday, so I'll spend 16 hours on a train back home -- relatedly, fuck, dudes, I need to move north, the train ride alone is KILLING me -- and tomorrow my daddy will pick me up from the train station. I got ahold of Sandman for the journey (I was considering saving up the Buffy season 8 comics I got as well, but uh, not so much luck. Now I remember why I loved this show so much), and I've been running errands like crazy today.

It's much to warm for an unfit fatty like yours truly, kids. Slowly melting away. Did however get sushi for lunch, even though I overdid it with the wasabi. On the upside, my head is now remarkably clean.

I also managed to actually print my ticket, glory, glory, hallelujah. I managed to buy a printable ticket rather than one you collect at the train station, because I'm a moron, and I don't have a printer. Karin down at the train station was a darling and a half, though, and she let me print it from my email on her computer. Lovely girl.

I feel like I've been running around doing a million things for a month, but truth is, I was probably only out there for two hours. Still, though. Am dead.

Since I won't be around much for the next day or so (oh ho, like anyone would notice at this point), have meme:

1. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.
2. Go to Google Images and search for that word.
3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results.
4. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.

Thinking out loud

2009-06-27T11:55:12Z

There is a Remus/Sirius love and nostalgia fest going on in the comments of this post, and I've been reading some and thinking a lot.

Harry Potter wasn't my first fandom by any stretch of the imagination, but Remus/Sirius was my very first slash pairing. Prior to my shift into HP, I'd been frequenting fandoms where the canon was too delicious to resist, and where slash was either a non-issue (such as in Buffy, because Spike was the only one I cared about in a ficcy sense, and Buffy had that area covered) or it was just mind-boggling (Inuyasha, because I've never really been jiggy with the incest pairings and the second biggest slash pairing was Inuyasha/Sesshoumarou, brothers). It never got into my head that I could pair the girls, possibly because I as a general rule find the male characters in any narrative more interesting than the female, sad though it may sound.

Anyway, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were hilarious to me. When I found that pairing I laughed for five minutes straight, because it was just that ridiculous to me. And then I started reading and one thing lead to another. It was the first time I fell in love with a pairing that wasn't canon-compliant as such. As much as we might hope and as much evidence we might find, I sincerely doubt JKR is going to roll up and say, "oh, by the way, you know that werewolf who was too nice to say no and that stonking prat of a friend of his, Black? Yeah, they were shagging each other senseless."

The interesting thing to me with this pairing is that it marked what could possibly be called my downward spiral. I started out with only canon het pairings, veered off to non-canon slash pairings (dirty canon-twisting fiend that I am) and then managed to tumble all the way down to RPS (stalker!).

But never mind. Reading these old fics and drabbles and shit I keep wondering if I've somehow matured since then or deteriorated. Because while I love the pairing dearly still, most of the OMGSOAMAZING fics do nothing for me. And this is a little bit of a problem for HP fandom in my experience. I like angst, and I like a little poetry to my prose, but this pairing is utterly ridiculous. Never have I ever stumbled over so many "his sounds garbled with something etheral, fleeting, deep like moss and gasps like rain, leaves" and "nudge of a smile to meet a smile, inky kiss of crossword-puzzle clues" and it's beautiful, of course it is, but it isn't what I read fanfic for, personally.

I don't need for fic to be a melting pot of metaphors and symbolism and color and pretty words. I feel the same way after reading those fics as I do after eating too much candy -- there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I have an unusually low threshold for both sugar and floral prose.

What pulled me into Sirius/Remus in the first place, to use this pairing as an example, is the fact that, yes, their story is tragic, but more than anything, their backstory is amazing. I love the Marauders. LOVE them. I love it when they're BOYS and running wild through Hogwarts, I love their stupid pranks, I love them being prats and I love it when Sirius is a raving lunatic. I love that they knew how to laugh and have fun and be morons for seven years before the war and Harry, and I love that they had this mischief to shape them all into the people they would become.

For me, however, the biggest drawback of Sirius/Remus and in fact the entire HP fandom, and the reason why I never stayed for longer than a couple of months, was the fact that it's awful static. I love AUs. I love cracky ideas, I love a certain amount of lunacy and utter randomness (which is why I still love the Shoebox Project), and -- surprising no one, I'm sure -- I love sex. With Sirius and Remus and the Marauders in general, if you wanted cracky, you had to amuse yourself with four sixteen year olds making asses of themselves in the common room in Gryffindor tower and torturing Snape, because the moment they graduated from school you entered Adultville and there almost everyone was busy choking on the angst.

I was a nomad for the first year and a half of my fandom career. I settled into various fandoms for what felt like FOREVER to me, read the fic, got updated on the wank, got bored, moved on, always one foot out the door and the bags packed. Oh, and speaking of wank, guess which was the one I managed to catch once in like every fandom? Oh, yes. In the war of warnings, no resolutions are ever made, only restless truce. But that's neither here nor there. What it all really culminated in was bandom.

Now, bandom's been interesting for me. I've stuck around for almost two years at this point. TWO YEARS. That's about a year and a half longer than I've ever stuck around anywhere else, and I wish I could say it's because this fandom is the best I've ever been in or that you guys are amazing -- you ARE and this fandom certainly is less wanky than you'd expect and I love all of you and it dearly -- but the truth of it is, I just got a big old boner for ficcing about real people.

The canon constantly shifts, the universe is OURS (and the real world doesn't have many limitations), so we can do what we want with it, we confine ourselves to a timeline, but not to a set canon, and ultimately, this is alive in so many ways that HP or SGA could NEVER be. In this fandom, crack and AUs and lunacy are commonplace, both the canon and the real people in question are fantastically malleable, and sure, there is angst, but not to the point where I feel I have to dig my own grave already, because there is no point to life, my soul is a black hole, I'll never be happy again, etc. (I have, at times, a very negative and problematic reaction to angst. It's an issue.)

Not to mention that it's a lot easier to get with the fucking here. It turns out people in their 20s and early 30s are a lot easier to handle than boys in their teens and dudes in their forties. Or at least, for me they are. Suspension of disbelief, all that noise. Also, I don't have to worry about Voldemort OR Don't Ask Don't Tell, so yay for me and my fandom, I say.

In short, I love Remus/Sirius and I loved being in HP, but I wouldn't give up my big, cuddly, malleable, pretty boy fandom for nothing, no matter how emo or srs bsns it gets.

Overreacting? Possibly. Still angry though.

2009-06-20T00:16:41Z

I was trawling fandom_secrets, as you do, and I stumbled upon this.

I actually surprised myself with how utterly, utterly fucking pissed I got reading this secret. The first part, sure, I can get that. I know a whole bunch of people who'd agree that chubby, grody Gerard was totally munchable. The second part, however, is kind of making my brain boil.

This? Is not okay. Not even as a joke. It just isn't. What this man went through to get clean -- that is enough to earn him brownie points for the rest of his natural life. Getting and more importantly staying clean, even if it's "only" five years since he got sober, is the most amazing thing this dude will ever do.

He almost killed himself, for fuck's sake. Does this mean nothing to some people? I don't know about you, but I prefer my musicians (and artists in general) alive, thank you very much, and if their music isn't to your taste, then listen to something else. Listen to Bullets again, do whatever, just don't get out there and tell him that he should start drinking again, because the music was better. I mean, if nothing else, it's not like Gerard is alone in writing the songs for their albums -- the band does have four other members putting their shit in there.

This isn't the first time I've heard about shit like this. There's a story about a Swedish musician -- inspired by Bob Dylan and about as adored nationally -- who was an alcoholic for a long, long time, with the slurry singing and weird-ass lyrics you'd expect. He got clean, found Jesus, and wrote a new album. The diehards were, unsurprisingly, not as happy about this as you might think, so when he walked out on stage that first night, the idiots by the fence held up signs and shouted up at him, "START BOOZING AGAIN, MAN."

Just. No. No. There is nothing okay with that.

You can tell I've been reading a lot of MCR fic lately by all the extra motherfuckers.

2009-06-19T12:54:45Z

Panic fandom has been kind of dreary lately. I don't mean that in the boring way, exactly, but there's been consternation and a lot of srs bsns crap all over the place, and that has made me... not exactly tired of them, but maybe a little Panicked out. So I've been going back to my roots in bandom, if you will, and mostly the reason why I've stuck around for so long (and definitely the reason I have the friends I do), namely My Chemical Romance.

I've noticed, though, that since the hiatus there has been an awful lack in all things MyChem-y. Frank still gets screentime, but that's because he got down with his Mario self in LeATHERMOUTH, and also because he is FRANK. The rest of them, though? I MISS them, you know? Mikey and Bob and Ray and, dear Jesus God, GERARD.

And thus, I give you random-ass picspam from my Photobucket MCR folder:

STILL MAKES ME LAUGH

BOB. I need to watch him beat the shit out of the camera on LOTMS again. And maybe watch that interview they did where he talks about how they used to do jumping jacks, but decided it was too much trouble. BAAAWWWWB.

Fucking Mikey.

Mikey, what in the world did you say to the poor man?

All I can think when I see this picture is STOP. HAMMER TIME. God forgive me.

Divalicious.

He manages to look like he loves the shit out of every single motherfucker in the audience... but they just shot his dog. And slept with his wife.

Likely, he smells like ass right here. I still want to lick his neck.

God save the queens.

I miss this campy motherfucker tons.

Can't have a picspam without the alien fingerspread.

Look at this adorable son of a bitch, right here.

I feel like I should apologize for the Gerard overload, but dear god, look at him.

Is anybody really complaining?

Every stageshow deserves them sparkles.

Shut your fucking face, GeeWay, UGH. I have such a THING for men in sloppy buttondowns with just one too many buttons open.

Hey, look who I found, nestled in with all the Gerards! (I was about to make a joke about being nestled in Gerard, but is it just me or have the Frank/Gerard jokes gotten a little skeevy lately? Babies, man.)

Oh, well. You're welcome.

Another nestler. Bryar, you need to shut your adorable face.

I am physically incapable -- PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE I SAY -- of posting an MCR picspam without including this picture. GERRRAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRD. ♥

Also this one. He's my favorite, does it show?

Also this one. ♥_________♥

True story, the picture before this is entitled "The Way Brothers". This one? "Meet the sisters Way".

Every time I see this picture I remember that one picspam. "The only picture in the world that would make more sense if you photoshopped a cock in."

I love his bony little wrists. And his hair tucked behind his ear. And his face. And his EVERYTHING.

The COLORS, man. I still can't get over it.

Mikey needs to shut his face also. He's too hot for me, I can't handle it.

I had this one as my desktop for weeks. Bee was so proud of me.

Remember this? Remember when you saw this for the first time? Remember how you COOED? Don't lie to me, babies, you know you did.

Tilty fucking hips. I want to live in his jeans. Not for porny purposes, necessarily.

Why so woeful, Ray Toro? I promise, bb, the bus will still be there when you get back to it. Hopefully.

Frank has resigned himself to his faith: being swallowed alive by the upholstery.

This picture still makes me laugh like a motherfucking loon. FRANK'S FACE. AHAHAHAHAHA. Also Mikey. You KNOW Gerard just said something spectacularly weird, about like gorillas or sushi or Belgium, and Mikey just looks so FOND.

I'm one of these people who find Mikey hotter post-Lasik than pre (I can see his EYES now, have you seen what utterly gorgeous eyes he has? Check it out, I'll wait) but! This picture? Om nom.

Cupcakeface. Looking about 14 years old.

Frank gifs are always either hilarious or hot. I can't decide which one to go for here.

Needs moah cowbell. This episode was mottsy as all hell, but damn, this gif is cute.

Gerard went out and bought a PUPPY. For the shoot. Because everyone was cranky. GERARD WAY HOW I LOVE YOU.

Oh, Frank. Oh, Gerard's pointy finger of "Waaaaaaiiiit for iittttt!"

Frank is a pretty princess. Although honestly, he mostly looks like a dad whose daughter is playing dress-up and felt that daddy should be a pretty princess too. (Also? Fucking Mikey. Fucking Bee and her fucking brainwashing. WHY SO HOT MIKEYWAY?)

There are just some pictures that will never stop being funny. This? Is one of them. *dies*

Ray Toro, I am seriously doubting your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Ninja!Bob. I bet he has his own theme song. I bet Toro recorded it.

You may bask in his presence, but he will not touch you.

Ahahahaha, oh, GERARD. I had almost forgotten how hilarious you used to be.

Case in point.

Remember how we all used to sit around and stare at our screens, wondering, "How are these people even REAL?" Good times.

I FOUND A TORO! Hi, Ray. I missed you, Ray. Even though you look possessed.

My Chemical Romance dance club.

The orange fauxhawk. Oh, Frank. Look at his pale little unmarked hands and wrists!

At times, I can't fucking believe I'm in a fandom where this sort of thing happens on a fiarly regular basis.

I LOVE this gif. LOVE IT. Mikey is judging you. SO HARD. And all he has to do is raise an eyebrow. That, my friends, is what I call economy of expression.

Which is also why even a small Wentzian face like this is so hilarious. MIKEY. SHUT YOUR FACE.

♥________♥

There are moments when you just have to give it up for lost and just admit your love.

Silly Toro. I love how he has to bend in fucking half to rest his head on Frank's shoulder. Frank is a hobbit.

Strike a little pose, do a little twirl, sing a little song. Fierce, Iero.

I'm one of those people who had a huge boner for the Black Parade uniforms. This medal, guys!

But then again, truth be told, I have a pretty huge boner for Mikey in general, so.

Not to mention the rest of these motherfuckers.

You're welcome.

Giant fucking weirdo, ahoy!

Favorite

Interview

Of all

Fucking

Time

Did you hear that? That was the sound of my ovaries exploding.

BARE ARMS. You love me and my Gerard-loving ways.

HOSHIT CHORD CHANGE. D:

La! I am Eliza Bennett.

It's... a Gerard thing. You had to be there.

This. This. There are so many, many things that are hilarious with this gif. First of all, Gerard having the gall to mock RAY for being flaily while he talks, no really. And then Mikey's truly hilarious little eyebrow twitch and smile of "SERIOUSLY?" and Gerard's subsequent grin. And also Ray's flailing. He really has been hanging around Gerard for WAAAY too long.

:D? :D?

I think the best thing about it is how hilariously BAD Bob is at this. Oh, Bobert. ♥

This is another one of those awesomely weird moments. How did this happen? Where in the world does a mariachi band and My Chemical Romance have the chance to bump into each other? Who asked for the photo, the mariachis or MyChem? So many questions, so little time.

But even that is nothing compared to this one. Two years later and I STILL haven't come up with an explanation that makes sense, aside from "Frank being weird."

Frank's little feet! Gerard's faily little thumb!

No picspam is truly complete without a nod to Mafia Mario here.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Gerard's faily dance moves!

I'm sorry, let's take a break here and LAUGH FOREVER.

I literally JUST got that he was playing Wii right here. *facepalm*

What in the WORLD are you even doing, man?

Bonus!Brian!

Memeing

2009-06-07T16:39:04Z

The Rules
1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks—and, believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming. Nothing is exactly as it seems.

Kissed any one of your LiveJournal friends? — no
Been arrested? — no
Kissed someone you didn't like? — yes
Slept in until 5 PM? — yes
Fallen asleep at work/school? — yes
Held a snake? — yes
Ran a red light? — no
Been suspended from school? — no
Experienced love at first sight? — no
Totaled your car in an accident? — no
Been fired from a job? — no
Fired somebody? — no
Sung karaoke? — yes
Pointed a gun at someone? — no
Did something you told yourself you wouldn't? — yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? — yes
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — yes
Kissed in the rain? — no
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — yes
Saw someone die? — no
Played Spin-the-Bottle? — no
Smoked a cigar? — yes
Sat on a rooftop? — yes
Smuggled something into another country? — no
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? — no
Broken a bone? — no
Skipped school? — yes
Eaten a bug? — yes
Sleepwalked? — yes
Walked on a moonlit beach? — no
Ridden a motorcycle? — no
Dumped someone? — no
Forgotten your anniversary? — yes
Lied to avoid a ticket? — yes
Ridden in a helicopter? — no
Shaved your head? — no
Blacked out from drinking? — yes
Played a prank on someone? — yes
Hit a home run? — no
Felt like killing someone? — yes
Cross-dressed? — no
Been falling-down drunk? — yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? — no
Eaten snake? — no
Marched/Protested? — yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? — no
Puked on an amusement ride? — no
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — yes
Been in a band? — yes
Knitted? — yes
Been on TV? — yes
Shot a gun? — yes
Skinny-dipped? — yes
Given someone stitches? — no
Eaten a whole habanero pepper? — yes
Ridden a surfboard? — no
Drunk straight from a liquor bottle? —yes
Had surgery? — yes
Streaked? — no
Been taken by ambulance to a hospital? — no
Tripped on mushrooms? — no
Passed out when NOT drinking? — no
Peed on a bush? — yes
Donated Blood? — yes
Grabbed an electric fence? — no
Eaten alligator meat? -- no
Eaten cheesecake? — yes
Eaten your kids' Halloween candy? — no
Killed an animal when not hunting? — yes
Peed your pants in public? — yes
Snuck into a movie without paying? - no
Written graffiti? — yes
Still love someone you shouldn't? — no
Think about the future? — yes
Been in handcuffs? — no
Believe in love? — yes
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? — no

Don't talk to me today, world.

2009-06-05T17:47:58Z

I am actually too angry to have much to say right now, and I'm giving myself a rage headache. So, I'm going to c&p the important points.

From rhombal:

Summary: two talk show hosts on Sacramento's KRXQ 98.5 FM radio station went into a half-hour long diatribe against transgender children. They called them "idiots" and "freaks", advocated violence against them, and said things like "allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals". GLAAD's post about it is here; they have a link to the audio of the show, but I haven't listened to it because reading the recounts of it were enough for me. I don't think I could handle listening to the actual show.

GLAAD pushed for an apology and got "I’m sorry that you might find it funny — or I’m sorry that you might not find it funny that some people laugh when Arnie — who does not have a child — talks about throwing a shoe at his non-existent son. You know what? Some people do laugh and they know we’re not serious, that Arnie’s not serious and we don’t advocate for it." (from here) Excuse me? "I'm sorry that you might not find it funny"? What the hell is that?

Snapple, Sonic, and Chipotle have pulled advertising from the station, but there are still a bunch of advertisers who haven't done anything.

Some other links here and what to do about this fuckery, this irresponsible, nauseating intolerance here.

I need to go lie down now or I'm going to throw up.

listening to "Radar Love - Golden Earirng" on Blip

2009-05-23T11:29:01Z

God, I love this song

Love my family, despite everything

2009-05-22T08:59:45Z

So, yesterday, while I was in the middle of writing and talking to Steph and being bored, my sister unexpectedly calls and tells me she's in town, and she's dropping by with both her kids (Joel and Carl, 2 and 5 years old). I went \o/ OMG I NEED TO CLEAN MY APT, so I rushed around doing what I could for fifteen minutes, which means clearing the table and taking out the trash.

And it was lovely. I love my sister and I adore her kids, and Carl and Joel loves my big echoey apartment. They ran from room to room going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHHH and Joel tried to drink out of the ashtray I still keep on the balcony. My grossed out face, let me show you it.

We went grocery shopping and my sister paid for the lot, so while I was waffling around making noises at flour bags and cans of beans and fruit my sister was all, "Jesus Christ, I'm paying, take the lot!" Four bags of groceries, if I'd had a roomie, I'd have been in BIG trouble, because the shared pantry is completely filled. I bought a 5kg sack of flour, it was GLORIOUS. And yet, I still forgot to buy tomatoes. Balls.

Anyway, I got a hamburger out of the deal as well, and Joel had much fun with the couches at McD's. "Couch! Jumpin' onna couch! *face plastered against the window* Caaaaaaaaaar!!" God, I'm so CHARMED by these kids. ♥____________♥

Anyway, while I'm trying to write on the Dreaded Sequel -- I have figured out the plot for the first half or so! I'm so HAPPY -- y'all can distract me with this meme:

Comment with a request to see absolutely anything on my computer. My desktop, my documents, my bookmarks, my inbox, secret stash of pornography, latest works in progress... whatever you're curious about, and I will respond with a screenshot.

Annnnnnd GO.

I dream the weirdest things.

2009-05-19T10:03:33Z

I just had the strangest, most marvelous dream, and beg forgiveness, but I have to tell you about it, before I forget it.

Like most of my dreams, it started with a murder.

I don't know who the girl was, or why they decided to kill her, but they did. They had left her in the middle of the forest, not in a clearing, but at the end of a dirt road, a turning place, just beside a cut forest or whatever it is you call it. The oddest thing, she was in a bathtub, an old, dirty bathtub with feet, standing a little to the side, her head lolling against the edge, and her arms hanging over the sides. It was mostly filled with water and blood and dirt and flies, and she was pretty clearly stone dead.

There was something in the beginning I don't quite remember about... not HOW she died, but the events surrounding her death. It had something to do with her father, or maybe it was my father. I don't remember, but he was a police officer taken from a British summer murder, complete with the plaid, felt hat and walrus mustache. At the end of this dirt road clearing, there was kind of a ditch, like a straight fall down two or three meters, but if you went up to it, you could see that if you jumped and hit the right spot, there was also sort of a well that you could dive into.

Why I'm telling you this is about the people who tried to save her, because that well was where they came from. I think there had been some sort of a battle, and I'm not sure who the bad guys were, but the good guys, trying to save her? Looked something like this:

The symbols, not the tiles.

For some reason or other, the girl I was/was following at the time, had to go back into town with the cops. I think maybe she was there because they wanted to know if she knew this girl, and didn't dare to move bathtub girl because her body wouldn't survive the move. Anyway, I went back into town and into this café/club thing I apparently hung out a lot in, where a bunch of people were already sitting around, shooting the shit.

It was a big, empty, cavernous room, unlit, nothing but blue and green shadows, except for an open door at the other end, spilling orange light over the scene. There was a counter, and a table with a couple of chairs, and between the counter and the table was yet another bathtub. In it was yet another girl, though not dead, her half naked legs hanging over the edge as she submerged herself in the shallow water, one stocking sliding down her leg, the other staying up by way of frayed garter belt. She was a bleached blonde wearing green and orange, typical hipster scene queen outfit, and she looked exactly like Avril Lavigne.

I came in with the news. The girl in the woods, who I apparently knew, was dead. No one in the room cared, overly much. They were too drunk or stoned or high in general to care. The only one I got a sad reaction out of was the girl sitting on the counter, pink hair in pigtails, who burst into drunken, drug-addled tears.

The only other reaction I got was a brunette, stumbling towards me, obviously off her face, who asked me if that meant the murdered girl wouldn't be able to party with us anymore. She was wearing an old, crumpled buttondown, obviously meant for a much bigger man than her. She also bore an eerie resemblance to Kristen Stewart. Which, of course, means I thought she was completely gorgeous, because she is.

I got pissed off at this girl and told her off. "Partying is the only fucking thing you do," I said. "You didn't give a shit about her, except if she'd help you get drunk, or if you could fuck her." At which point we both looked down at Avril in the bathtub, legs spread a little, completely soaked, still submerged.

"I'm not fucking unfeeling," Kristen told me, and that's when the camera switched around, so I was following Kristen, instead of the first girl. For some reason, Kristen thought it'd be a splendid idea to drive out into the forest, to the cut area, and see the body for herself. She was drunk, I'm blaming that.

She sat down by the end of the tub where the murdered girl's head was sticking up, and just looked at her for a while. Then she started to comb her fingers through the victim's hair. It was all sticky, and greasy with blood, like it was soaked with gelatin and it hadn't dried, and she got her hands all bloody, picking twigs and grass out of her hair.

"I can't believe you're dead and I'm fixing your hair," she told the murder victim, but continued with her ministrations.

That was about when dawn broke, morning came, and the cops showed up. A couple of rumbled men in rumpled suits pulled up in a SUV type car, and with them, some lab techs in overalls with weird equipment in a pickup truck. They didn't do anything about Kristen fixing the victim's hair, but the rumpled men sat down and started picking skull fragments and bone and flesh out of the tub, because apparently the victim had been in there for so long, her entire body had turned spongy. Her face started caving in as Kristen was sitting there. The cops asked her if she had known the victim long, even as they were scooping up pieces of body out of the gelatinous water.

The two lab techs were at their car in their ugly orange uniforms and hardhats, and they were talking about racing, or something. "The one who gets first to the body," or something along those lines. Kristen got up, and slowly walked away.

I think she knew the cops would disapprove of her running away, as much as she wanted to, because she did not want to talk to the cops. So she went to the other end of the little turning place just beside the cut forest, where some tractor or other had pushed the sand and dirt up into a little mound. On the other side of said mound was above mentioned ditch, and just beneath the mound was above mentioned well. Kristen heard the lab techs slam their doors, and started running.

She took a flying leap into the well, but she didn't harm herself, even going headfirst, instead she floated gently to the bottom and landed on her feet in the vestibule of what looked like a temple. Ahead was an open space that looked like a room, and behind her was sunlight streaming in from a green garden.

In the vestibule sat a woman in a puffy, blue silk dress, and she looked miserable with herself. She was lamenting that whoever had killed the girl in the tub had taken her down there and tortured her to get answers, and she hadn't held out.

Flash back to a day or so earlier, when the battle had been held by the Mahjong tile symbols, remember those?

Right. As it turns out, the tile symbols only looked like symbols in Kristen's world, but once they got down the well, they could turn into people. The woman in the blue dress was the W on the end there, and as the flashback progressed I could see the E symbol, who was apparently pretty reckless, if N's opinion was anything to go by, dive down and engage the baddies in battle.

As Kristen -- who was now morphing into me, and shall henceforth be me for simplicity's sake, even though she/I still looked like Kristen Stewart -- watched, the other tile symbols came back, and this time they had brought friends. There were now two sets of letters, and they were looking around the room for clues. One of the Ss was a blonde woman dressed in green, and she was looking after the W, who was still looking miserable. The other S, a black haired girl in a brown dress, looked into the temple room, along with a black clad N, who was obviously the leader, and a female Indian E in a turban. This was not the same reckless E that had saved the blue W -- he was a tall skinny man, with a reddish beard -- but both Es were wearing long cream coats with fancy brocade, and maroon trousers.

This was when they finally started paying attention to me, and for some reason or the other, they decided to take me into their world, because they had apparently decided I was harmless. We walked out the door into a lovely garden, with white butterflies flying around all over the place. The temple we had been in that was the portal to the utterly depressing cut forest area where the girl had been found murdered, was inside this grassy knoll, and as we walked up the side, I could see water and a truly HUGE tree. The whole place looked like a Chinese palace, complete with gardens and ponds, and they took me around to the house. We had to walk over a gigantic koi pond, where the tree was standing in the middle, surrounded by some sort of step like structures in violet and pink.

They told me that the tree was a miracle, and it was the center of their religion, and I remember very clearly saying, "oh, religion," in the most disparaging tone I could muster. They talked about magic and miracles and all sorts of things and I didn't believe a word of it, but N, who was my guide, just smiled enigmatically at me.

They took me into the house, which didn't look a lick like a Chinese palace on the inside. Instead, it looked like... a dollhouse blown up to scale, a Tim Burton structure where the walls and furniture all seemed to be at odd angles. There were nails sticking out of the wall, just before you entered the living room, but they were so big they weren't even sharp anymore.

N told me I was to stay there for a little while, and then all the tile symbols abruptly disappeared as I started to check out the house. The first thing I stumbled over, aside from weird furniture, and plastic looking plates and food, was a boy. Now this boy was the type of kid you'd see in a movie and immediately peg as the bully, the Dudley Dursley type kid. Tall and large and not exactly fat, but solid. Tiny little piggy eyes. He was chasing after this other boy -- short, skinny with a shock of dark brown curly hair, think Ryan Ross' mini-me in the That Green Gentleman video -- trying to make him eat what looked like a gigantic strip of fat with only a little ham on the end.

I chased after them myself, and ended up in a weird doll-like kitchen, where everything was that same blend of garish colors you can only find in plastic cutlery for kids. Bright yellow and red and blue, all plastic, even as the walls were brown and it looked like we were in a sauna. Or Ryan Ross' music room. That was when the girl showed up, this tiny, tiiiiny little creature, no more than five or six, who shouted at the boys in a voice that wobbled dangerously to stop being so stupid and chasing each other. She had that sort of thin, platinum blonde hair that only girls at that age get naturally, and it reached her almost down to her dirty knees.

One way or the other, we ended up investigating the rest of the house together, the boys still being boys, but nobody was actively trying to force feed the other fat, so I figured no harm, no foul. We came into a bedroom that looked fairly odd -- a long room with four beds, two small ones for children, one long one for an adult, and one truly tiny one, which I could only surmise was for the girl. The tiny one was pushed together with the grownup bed, and I assumed it was for story reading purposes.

"I think you're supposed to sleep there," I told the girl, and she looked up at me with huge watery eyes, and took my hand.

"Will you sleep there too?" she asked in a tiny sort of voice, and what could I do but say yes?

We spent some time in this house, and I never saw the outside. I didn't reflect much on it, because I was busy taking care of the children, cooking and cleaning and making sure they took their baths and brushed their teeth and read to them at night. The house, as houses are wont to do in dreams, changed around me, and became different, more like another house I've dreamed about before.

But then came the night when we were all in bed, and I was reading a poem to the kids. I think it was Jabberwocky, because it featured a monster and a lot of roaring and sound effects on my part. After I finished it, I went about the usual business of tucking them in and turning the light down so it wouldn't be dark, but dark enough for all of us to sleep. I wasn't tired, however. Something made me want to go up and inspect the house.

"Linn!" I heard the girl call for me as I reached the hallway. "Aren't you going to sleep?"

For a fleeting moment I had a thought of wrenching the door open and escaping, but when she called for me, I couldn't leave. "Of course, baby," I called back. "Go to sleep, I'm just going to turn out the lights, okay? I'll be there in a moment."

The lights were on at the end of the house, so I went there to turn them off, sighing a little to myself. I came into the living room, kind of, where a long table was standing and not much else, the walls covered in bookcases and shelves. The kitchen was at this point just a nook, but a rather large nook, and I looked at the wallpaper and thought, "you know, if there had just been a door there, it would have been EXACTLY like Mom's kitchen back home."

I blinked and then. There was a door.

I literally stumbled backwards. It wasn't exactly like in Mom's kitchen, the door was too skinny and the wood was all wrong, but it made me think. I turned around to the door behind me that I was just about to go through, and shut my eyes tightly, tightly, thinking about the kitchen back home, and when I turned back... the kitchen had turned into my mother's kitchen.

It wasn't, however, the only thing that had turned into my parents' house, the living room I had walked through earlier had almost turned into the living/dining room area as well, but it was a mess. All the toys that had been in the kids' playroom were dumped onto the floor and the room itself turned into how it had looked when my sister had lived there some ten years ago, wallpaper and all. Even as I sighed and started shoveling the toys back into the room, I thought, "shit, my sister is going to be so pissed about all these toys.

Then I blinked again and the toys were in the room. Not all of them, but the ones I had been thinking about moving. "Aha," thought I. "Idea."

What happened is really difficult to explain. My heart was beating loudly in my chest, adrenaline rushing because it actually worked. I stared at the toys -- an old, gray plush cat that I've had since I was six -- and thought about them in the room, and then I closed my eyes tightly and clapped my hands. When I looked again, the toys were gone, in the room and I was laughing in disbelief. I kept doing it with all the toys, because apparently I could only magically move so many at the same time, and the room started looking more and more like it does at my parents' place. I didn't bother with the stuffed toys and Barbie dolls in the shelves, but I noticed that where windows would be in my parents' house, were instead shelves, but... it was like they were windows at the same time. It was really weird.

I kept moving toys, but I noticed it got more and more difficult, mostly because I was exhausted and could barely open my eyes after shutting them so tightly every time I moved something. Finally the room was mostly clean and I went into the playroom thinking that I maybe should clean up in there as well, since magic is a lot easier than manual labor. That was when I noticed the ceiling was dripping.

I looked up, and noticed that something was soaking through the ceiling from above, and I knew it was the bathtub. For a split second I thought it was the kids forgetting to shut off the faucet, but then I thought, "oh, no, I've seen this in cop shows, I bet there's a dead body up there, in the tub, just waiting for me to find it." It would certainly explain the unease and bad feeling I'd had and what had gotten me out of bed after tucking the kids in in the first place.

So I walked toward the stairs, but on the way I heard a noise from the room adjacent to the playroom. Carefully I opened the door, and the room was almost completely dark, except for the light coming in from the window, displaying the koi pond and the tree outside. Inside was a man on a ladder, doing something to the ceiling (putting up a lamp, maybe?) and while the image was terrifying -- man! in black! inside my house that was empty aside from me and the kids all of an hour ago! -- all I thought was, "oh, it's my father, better not disturb him," and closed the door. His back was to the door, I don't think he ever saw me.

Instead I walked up the stairs, and I thought, "oh, so it's not JUST like my parents' house, it's like grandma's as well." That would explain the horrible wood paneled walls and the seventies bedspreads and colors.

The bathroom wasn't difficult to find, even though I had never been on the top floor before, despite knowing there was a bathroom up there that the kids used. It was easy enough to find -- look for the door with the lock on it, that's how you find most modern bathrooms -- but when I walked in, the room was empty as can be, the bathtub, while not pristine, was empty save for a yellow rubber duck. The wash basin, however, was filled with water, and at the bottom of it...

...a pair of these.

And then I woke up.

Yes, I wrote a love poem, sue me.

2009-05-15T22:23:01Z

I wrote the oddest little poem the other day, and I'm going to blame momebie for it, because of that heartbreaking story she tumblred. It's not at all like I usually write them (i.e. long with a tendency towards cynicism), and the rhythm is kind of off, and really it could be better, but, you know. I got a little fond of it, so here, for your amusement, poetry:

let’s be brief now
let’s be quick
how much truth is in a whisper
how much faith in a breath
love me for what I will always be
love me for what I’m only just now
tear me apart and piece me together
I am only here but briefly
as you are only here for now

love me wildly
love me soft
love me like tomorrow will never come
love me like we'll never run out of tomorrows

I will find everything in you
and you will find anything in me
love is what we are and what we breathe
for just this moment
just for now

love me tender
hold me dear
and all sorts of other songs
love me for a moment
and love me for a year
and love me for as long as it goes

I’ll look into you
and you’ll look into me
and together we’ll be something big
together we’ll be everything in a heartbeat
together we’ll fill entire worlds

so love me for a moment
love me for now
love me like you've never loved a soul
care not for my body
care not for my mind
it's this heart that belongs to none but you

I feel like I can breathe more easily than I've done in weeks.

2009-05-11T18:22:21Z

I'm kind of bored now, and hungry, and have paint all over, but I'm painting shit! With oils even, which just makes the whole thing interesting. I love working with oils, you know? The colors and the textures and the blend of it, and the way you can get a different texture with a different brush or just shorter or longer strokes. Also, something about the fact that you can work on an oil painting for forever and a day is kind of soothing. I can go back to that thing and add even more lemon yellow and white and dabs of vermilion to the sky to get that pearly hue of right before sunset. This is why I love painting ocean views. I can spend forever on trying to get the color of the ocean right, blues, greens, yellow, a dash of red, a little white, some yellow ochre... a dab of charcoal to mix with the blues to get that blurry line of the horizon.

God, I love art sometimes.

In other news, I have some weird looking discoloration of the skin on my thigh. It looks like bruises, but it isn't, and I have no idea what to make of it. On advice from Steph and my mother, I have called the clinic and have an appointment for Thursday to check it out. Better be safe than sorry, I suppose.

Therapy went well today, and despite a slow start, I still felt like I got somewhere. I actually think that the marathon poetry writing sessions I've been doing have helped. I get to put all my fears and insecurities and dreams and hopes onto paper and can ramble until I've sorted them out in my head. That's the way I do things, mostly, I talk until I have a solution. It's kind of zen, in a way, to actually SAY all those things, the things I've been too afraid to say out loud for fear of disappointing people. So, yes. I feel pretty good. And we talked a lot about the issues I have with relating to people my own age and my sneaky social phobias, which I felt I needed.

I've spoken to my sister and my mother lately, which is nice, because I finally feel like I'm being honest with them. It feels a lot like I've gotten past a hurdle, especially with Mom. I think she finally sees that a lot of my reactions are the same as hers, I just relate to them in a different way, and I'm finally getting that Mom might be sad, but I can tell her these things. It's still difficult to talk about, but. I actually think my breakdown the weekend before last and the resulting poetry binge has been good for me. I feel like my head is clearer, which works for me.

I'm feeling kind of creative again, finally, but I'm still avoiding The Sequel like the plague. I keep blaming Sirius, but I'm fucking stuck, and just looking at the thing makes me a little cranky. Which is a shame, because my head is full of Jesters right now, and I want to write about them. Writing about Shea kind of makes me happy, because despite everything he's such a positive person, and he may be a douchebag, but there is this sort of childish glee in everything that he does that is just so wonderful to write. All the Jesters are like that, kind of, they're like kittens, curious and wide-eyed and full of mischief. Even exploring the angstiest of emotions becomes interesting, because they're just as into it as I am.

Anyway, I'm going to get me something to eat now. How are you all doing?

Writing meme!

2009-05-10T13:59:02Z

Okay! I have had it waiting for this. Guys, we need a meme.

Allow me to explain: I hope you all have read Texts From Last Night, and if you haven't, get thee hence and do so now. So here's the idea.

Choose one of these texts or text convos and write the scene that led up to it. As long or as short as inspiration strikes you, any character, any pairing, slash, het, gen, genderswap, college aus, regular old touring douchery, it doesn't matter, just write it! Gabe being a dick? TAI doing weird shit on their tourbus? Jersey douchebaggery courtesy of MCR? A Panic boy managing to stick his dick where it didn't belong? Angst or total crack or porn or total hungover mortification? Write it!

Pimp at will, tell your friends, come and play!

I have to go sit on my balcony and look at the greenery for a while.

2009-05-08T17:32:17Z

So! An impromptu movie review.

I've now seen Let The Right One In the movie, and, well. I have opinions. The first of them is that the book is so ridiculously much better that it's frankly embarrassing.

Don't get me wrong, I see why people love this movie. But the reasons why a lot of people would like this movie, are the same reasons I really don't. It's a very Swedish movie is the thing, understated, quiet, awkward. This is why I spent the first hour wanting to die, and the next hour wondering where all the fun of the book had gone. It is a very pretty movie, the visuals are beautiful, but everything that I loved about the book is gone.

The book isn't very action-y at all, but the movie actually manages to be even less so. Even the murders manage to be exercises in cinematic realism. There is no inventive cutting, the dialogue is stilted and quiet and the silences speak volumes just like it would be in real life and the realism of the piece is so depressing the only reason I finished the damn thing was because I'd read the book and I knew it gets better. While the book is all about the slow build -- what's going on? what was that? can it be? -- the movie is more about a slow putter that eventually comes to a slightly faster putter.

I loved the book. I adored the book. But there are about four billion storylines in it that just can't fit in a movie, and it just so happens that the Eli/Oskar storyline was the one I found the slowest. The movie isn't BAD as such, it's just not my kind of movie. I don't like them slow or understated or quiet, and if they're going to be quiet, at least give me some background music so I have something to occupy my mind with. Anything, Jesus.

I'm going to give them this: it is very pretty. This guy gets the reality of the environment with a camera in a way that few people do. However. This is what winter looks like, and if you've seen the damn thing every year of your existence, all it ends up doing (for me) is creating this oppressive sort of loneliness and despair and depression that is, well. Depressing. I have seen it before. In six months I will see it again and it'll be just as dreadful as every other year, no matter how the ice sparkles in the sunlight or how pretty the sky is the scant hours the sun deigns to rise above the horizon.

This is one of those, "wow, the trailer was so much better than the movie" type deals, and now that I've seen it, I don't ever have to touch it again. And people wonder why I dislike Swedish film.

Doobie, doobie doo

2009-05-08T09:24:37Z

I haven't done a random update in a while that wasn't me bitching and moaning about the state of my mind, so.

Looking forward to BBB, but I've gotten stuck on my mix for the moment -- I stress myself out, overthink shit, and now I can't look at the damn thing for a while. Will get it done by the end of the month at least. Steph is very useful for this purpose, because she doesn't mind petting my (metaphorical) hair while I vibrate and babble gibberish.

I'm working on being able to lean on people as well. To trust that they'll be able to hold me up when I'm feeling shitty, and are strong enough to not get pulled down with me. And believe me when I say that this is something I need to learn, because if there is anything my mother managed to bang into my thick skull it's that a woman needs to be self-sufficient. My mother doesn't like trusting people either, and neither does my sister or any other female on my mother's side of the family. Stand tall, etc. Sometimes that is admittedly not a fantastic way of living, but it works.

Anyway! Talked to my cousin Rebecca yesterday, and she sounded really happy to be talking to me, which I thought was endearing and a little surprising. Knowing full well that there is a chance she might read this, I might as well say that Becks has a really bad self-esteem and she spent a lot of her teenage years going, "Everybody hates me, nobody understands me, I hate everybody else, I hate the world, fuck you, world," on an endless loop. I am glad to see that she's growing out of it and that she has realized she does have some talents.

She had issues with her old classes way up until high school before she got real friends, and I honestly don't think it was so much that people actively disliked her, they just didn't GET her. Which I can relate to, because I got the same kind of crap when I was a kid, and when they didn't do that, I was relatively ignored, but I'm really too much of a ditz to even notice, and therein lies the difference. I'm pretty sure I was bullied in junior high, only I never really noticed until ninth grade when I was getting out anyway. Becca is a bit more sensitive in this respect. Junior high kids are bitches, but she took it personal, which is sad.

But anyway, two paragraphs of that later, I can say that I talked to her yesterday and read her blog just now, and she just makes me so proud. She's kind of like the little sister I never had -- we treat each other like crap sometimes, and we hate each other's guts other times, and we can't get along for more than an hour at a time, just like me and my ACTUAL sister, only with less age difference -- and I'm very invested in her and her little sisters. It's a thing.

In other news, I am, quite as usual, bored out of my skull, but I've been shopping (NEW SHOES) and reading (Mansfield Park, ugh) and playing Mahjong and since yesterday I've kept Dylan Moran's stand-up DVD's on a loop in the background. Speaking of, I need to download those, and then I need to force Bee to watch them, because her cultural education has been sorely lacking, through no fault of her own.

But! I have things to do, stuff to get bored with, I can't sit here and make chitchat all day, may be coming back with drabble meme news, we'll see, we'll see.

Things in general

2009-05-07T08:40:16Z

First things first, Aly and I wrote another, well, I'm hesitant to call it fic, but at 3000 words, what else is it? For the female Fight Club 'verse, anyway. Can be found here.

This comm is where we are going to be posting all the snippets and discussions about this verse, so if you're interested you should follow it. I kind of feel like I should tell you right now, though, that these aren't actually finished, polished fics. This is mostly Aly and me emailing each other back and forth, and really the only beta process they go through is me trying to catch all the weird word choices and misspellings and grammar fail as I post them. It's rough, is what I'm trying to say. And maybe it'll be finished, polished fic out of it some day, but today is not that day.

From, well. My flist really: "This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
3. The Belgariad by David Eddings
3. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
4. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
5. Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi
6. Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones
7. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
8. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
12. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
13. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
14. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
15. Glasblåsarns Barn by Maria Gripe

Some days you just can't deal with caps, you know?

2009-05-05T21:43:02Z

I have written, no lie, about 3,5k of poetry the last two days or so. Cathartic for sure, but of course very unpolished, very stream of consciousness. I ended up with a poem that was almost 5 full A4 pages long, and sure, it might have been overkill, but it felt kind of good to write. Weird to read through, though.

Anyway! Wanted to post a snippet of one of said poems. It's not the whole thing, but just about a third. Feel free to tell me what you think, I haven't written poetry in forever, so I might be a bit rusty. This isn't the best thing I've ever written -- far from it -- but I liked the imagery, myself.

i had a dream last night about an asylum
in the dream, there was a girl
a warden
who walked down a green corridor
with brown floors
and yellow flowers in a blue window at the end
the door to the bathroom was yellowish white
with a standard issue hospital wheelchair outside

the first thing i saw, and she saw as she walked in was a bathtub
it was white, and old, and filled to the brim with bloody water
the only thing sticking up was a hand, pale and blue
and a head
the hair was probably blonde at some point
but she was dead
i knew she was dead
and she had no eyes or eyelids
just holes where life supposedly had been
she had been pretty before death
she was pretty after too
even with blood crusted on her face

there was another girl there
brunette
gorgeous and naked, curled up on a ledge between the basin and the tub
murderer and a model

she had cut out her own eyes, cut out the girl’s eyes
insane, of course
she didn’t want to see
didn’t want to look at her body or at anything else
beauty was distasteful and wrong

the other girl had died
shock, maybe, probably

this is the second time i’ve dreamed of girls cutting out their own eyes
last time the girl was a dancer
last time i got to see it
last time that girl went to bed and woke up screaming
pain and darkness

i dreamed of a road beside a lake, curling around the water
i dreamed of stones, and a burgundypurple sunset
and i dreamed of murder, of an unsolved case

the dreams i remember are always like this
about blood
or death
or blood and death
or pain unimaginable
or loneliness
or genocide
or apocalypses

i don’t much care to know what this says about me

grumpgrumpgrump

2009-05-02T19:42:41Z

First things first:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALYBEAR!
You are one of my very, very best friends and I love you more than is entirely reasonable. I hope you have a fantastic day, bb. ILU.

I have yet to answer comments on the meme I posted yesterday, will do so when I no longer feel like biting people's heads off. Sorry, guys, I'm still kind of cranky and tired and achy. I blame this ridiculous heat. Ugh, spring. Sometimes we are not friends.

In the mean time:

Pick a musical artist whose discography you know fairly well. Using ONLY THEIR SONG TITLES, cleverly try to answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title. It's harder than you think.

Pick your artist: Tom Waits

Are you male or female: Gun Street Girl

Describe yourself: Just Another Sucker on the Vine

How do you feel about yourself: Woe

Describe where you currently live: Town With No Cheer

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: I'll Take New York

Your favorite form of transportation: Train Song

Your best friend is: Diamonds & Gold

Your favorite color is: Blue Valentine

What's the weather like: All the World Is Green

Favorite time of the day: Silent Night

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: We're All Mad Here

What is life to you: Invitation to the Blues

What is the best advice you have to give: Shake It

If you could change your name, what would it be: Georgia Lee

Your favorite food is: Chocolate Jesus

Thought for the day: Make It Rain

How I would like to die: A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun

My soul's present condition: Way Down In the Hole and/or Lonely depending on the time of day.

The faults I can bear: Jitterbug Boy

My motto: Everything Goes To Hell Anyway

O_o

2009-05-01T13:33:11Z

First of all: swine flu creates zombies. Wait, WHAT? They are not serious. They can't be serious. I feel like I'm an extra in the first 20 minutes of 28 Days Later, guys.

Anyway, onto less boggling and disconcerting things.

Comment on this entry, and I will:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

I have nothing of use to say

2009-05-01T09:41:40Z

So, yes, I got myself a DW account. I am phantomwise over here? there? whichever works. We'll see what happens with this, if I can figure out reading lists and feeds and shit. This entry is really kind of pointless, and also? I need a custom CSS, because the selection of styles is tragic, people. No really.

Movie meme

2009-04-29T20:36:49Z

I haven't done this in, wow, forever, so.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb, and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. No Googling/using IMDb search functions.

1. Repo! The Genetic Opera ~~Paint your ass like Rembrandt! Ha! You like that?~~ parcae
2. Big Fish ~~You're like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined -- just as charming, and just as fake.~~ blienky27 and zinfic
3. Velvet Goldmine ~~Now, just because someone sees, you know, two naked people asleep in bed together, it doesn't necessarily prove sex was involved. It does, however, make for a very strong case.~~ arielchan
4. Death Proof ~~Set crush, nigga, please, you were his set wife.~~ perspexsea
5. My eyes are twitching. You people make my eyes twitch.
6. Kill Bill The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is: I collect your fucking head. Just like this fucker here. Now, if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say, now's the fucking time! snarkyrainbow
7. Yellow Submarine ~~It must've been one of them Unidentified Flying Cupcakes. Or a figment of me imagination.~~ rhombal
8. Pride and Prejudice From the first moment I met you, your arrogance and conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others made me realize that you were the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry. snarkyrainbow
9. Watchmen ~~What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're looking at it!~~ perspexsea
10. Hairspray ~~Sorry, little darlin'. Hope I didn't dent your 'do.~~ arielchan

Things what have been good

2009-04-28T12:38:29Z

Yesterday I had a meeting with my contact person at the employment agency and he was kind of marvelous and lovely in every way, so I went away feeling pretty good about that and not anxious at all. Weather was wonderful -- not very sunny, mind, but about 20 or so degrees and I went out in a hoodie and no jacket -- and I read Crime and Punishment all the way down. No one told me that was actually a decent book.

On the way out I started humming -- the way you do -- and it wasn't I'd gotten through the first verse that I realized I was singing Folkin' Around, and then I mentally shrugged and thought what the hell, and started singing for real. I walked past two guys and an old man, and all of them decided to give me a spontaneous applause, which was nice.

I had therapy at 1pm, so I went shopping in the interim. I bought a shirt and four new books, ALL on sale, thank you very much. But now I am the proud owner of a new Stephanie Plum book, one Palahniuk and To Kill A Mockingbird. I also went and bought anti-histamines and while my chest still feels a little heavy -- fucking asthma -- I'm not sneezy and my eyes aren't itching. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Therapy went well. Talked about Sara, and I think I needed to, even if it was getting off track a bit. I really did love her, you know, and now I. Don't. And I'm angry and resentful and disappointed and a bit heartbroken, and I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, but I dislike high negative emotions and my head and heart and gut feels a mess.

I'm just saying, if this is what it's like to break up a platonic relationship, I'm not sure I want to date anyone ever.

Anyway! Took a picture today from my balcony again (I know, I'm sorry, I always forget my camera when I go out) and spring really rolled in this weekend while I was decked out in bed. No wonder I felt like shit, but it is really pretty.

Today, I was feeling lazy, contemplating to go to the social insurance office but being anxious and stupid about it and watching Hairspray videos of my favorite songs (Zac Efron, stop being charming right this minute!), and my doorbell rang. Bzuh? I thought and went to open the door. My mail man stands there, saying, "I have a letter for you, but it's huge, so I'll bring it up for you later."

This was said "letter":

My kitchen table is for scale. Seriously. And then I saw the tag on the side that says, "Eriksson, Ängsvägen 3" and thought, "ah. Mother."

Of course, I was NOT fucking prepared for what was in that package and seriously, I am pretty overcome with emotion because I might start crying, okay, this is. It's. PARENTS, augh, kill me, why don't you.

Mom sent a letter along with it: Your father took this picture and then we had a print made from it. I was thinking that it might remind you of where you're from.

MOOOOOOOOM. MY MOM IS THE BEST MOM AND MY DAD IS THE BEST DAD. JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY. ;___________; I SAT AND MADE FISHFACES AND CLUTCHING MY FACE AND HEART AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS. I'M STILL FLAILY. ;_______________________________;

Memery stolen from blienky27

2009-04-26T21:31:45Z

And just for fun, because I always wanted to do one of these back before I got iTunes and then when I DID get iTunes, none were floating around, so.

Music meme!

How many songs total: 2,544
How many hours or days of music: 6.4 days
Most recently played: Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off (Live in Chicago) by Panic at the Disco.
Most played: The Weight (The Band cover) by Panic at the Disco
Most recently added: Rains On Me by Tom Waits

Sort by song title:
First Song: A Change is Gonna Come by Brendon Urie
Last Song: 9 Crimes by Damien Rice

Sort by time (minus podfic, quotes, and podcasts):
Shortest Song: Flip Sting from Kill Bill 00:03
Longest Song: Sleep Don't Weep by Damien Rice 21:55

Sort by album:
First album: A Band In Hope by The Matches
Last album: Last FULL album is 9 by Damien Rice

First song that comes up on Shuffle: Never Learn by The Matches

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 22
Life - 36
Love - 90
Hate – 6
You - 284
Sex – 17