Sometimes when I go through my old notebooks, I find things.

Things I don't remember writing. I wrote this poem, once, apparently. 

The root of the problem

when squared

becomes the problem.

Malcontentment

when squared

becomes a ghost.

Further:

Ghost, squared,

becomes also the root

of demon, which

is really only

malice, when malice

is squared.

The three dimensional square

(which is called a cube)

is sometimes called the world.

The shortest distance

between two points

is a human

with the training wheels off.

The training wheels

in this diagram

are called time

and also death.

A human needs time

and also death

like the three dimensional square

(which is called a cube)

needs the points

to become the triangle

it always dreamed of.

Bits and Pieces of Funny

The entire Harry Potter series is a lot funnier if you decide that the entire conflict is centered around Voldemort's nose.

"I got your nose! I got your nose!"

"No, you didn't. It's right here on my... My nose! All right, fine, Dumbledore. You win. Give me my nose back."

"I lied, I don't have it. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!" -skips off-

"Well, then, who took it?"

"Silence, Wormtail! I have no nose and it preoccupies me. Where is it? It isn't there. Maybe if I close one eye and - no, still not there! POTTER HAS MY NOSE! I KNOW HE DOES! We must get Potter's nose!"

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More After The Jump.
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When I Lost My Mind Working The Night Shift

From Canyon-Era English Major:

-------------------------------------

I work the night shift.

I request it, actually. Charlie shift, 11pm to 7am. Graveyard, some people call it. The name fits, it works. Not so much because it’s dead as because it’s… cool. Still, balmy in a way that has nothing to do with weather. It’s an attitude, something born of the knowledge that while everyone around you is prancing through the Land of Nod with the cast of The Tick and Fran Drescher, you are awake and you are… bored.

Yes. Night shift is boring. Night shift is boring like Leonard Cohen singing a capella with no backing would be boring, boring like an infomercial about how to make a fortune in the stock market is boring. It’s a kind of tedium few have experienced. I have cable tv, a dvd player, books, issues of Time magazine dating all the way back to the Reagan era and a job to do, but still, the specter of being trapped in a tiny office in the dead of night – eight hours worth of dead, in fact – it’s just boring. Even if you have four seasons of ER, even if you have a shelf full of books completely worth reading, even if you are scrapbooking your entire life story.

There will be that moment of squirreliness at three in the morning where you stop and look around, left to right with your eyes only, squinting at empty space, at the walls and the mini-fridge and the coffee pot and you think, quite calmly, “Who are you people and why do you all bear a vague resemblance to Fran Drescher?” And you’re afraid, but quite matter-of-fact about it, because you know you’re alone, and the moment will pass, and by 7am when your relief shows up you will have something resembling sanity, if not something resembling good breath. The state of a night shift worker’s mouth at 7am, even if they have gum, even if they don’t smoke, is just shocking. It’s horrifying.

Somehow, in that convoluted, completely fucked-up circadian nightmare that is three in the morning, something clicked in my brain and I became… domestic.

Well, not domestic but I began to share a few too many traits with upper-middleclass housefraus for my own quasi-butch self-image.

I swept. I gathered up the crumbs, the dust bunnies, and the renegade coffee beans, and forcibly ejected them from my office. A few nights later, the act of sweeping no longer able to satisfy my reckless cleaning lust, I tracked down the night janitor and had him bring me a wet mop. I scrubbed that old linoleum until it was all the same uniform color of old linoleum.

The unthinkable happened next: my boss noticed. And complimented my clean floors.

Oh, no.

It was on, my friends. It was on like Donkey Kong, like Jedi versus Sith, like me, my roommate, and only one Voyager Class Optimus Prime left on the shelf.

El Kato, Domestic Dyke.

And now I am in love with an inanimate object: The Swiffer Duster. That thing is… amazing. It is a Dust Magnet. I prowl the office like a lion on the hunt, seeking the dust with a vengeance I didn’t know existed inside of me. The first time I did the whole office, it took five of the fluffy “refill” things. I have never felt so validated as I did glaring in triumph at the wastepaper basket full of fluffy things and dust.

El Kato, Dust Bandit. I would call myself Dust Buster, but it’s not only taken, but is the name of an alternate mode of dust removal, which is unacceptable. The Swiffer Duster and I are together until the end of time.
All that cleaning takes up at least an hour of my time if I’m in full-mania; next I devote at least four hours to scouring episodes of ER for Maggie Doyle (played by Jorja Fox) and trying not to hate Kerry Weaver for her fugly 90s wardrobe and generally willful social ineptitude. I don’t understand why they make her so awful for so long.

Okay, so I do understand, but that doesn’t make me like it. I sympathize with her in her solo moments, when she’s practically orgasming over paperwork. I look at her administrative mania and feel myself twitch in janitorial sympathy. If only she had a Swiffer, I think to myself, holding my Swiffer close to my chest. A Swiffer instead of Mark Greene. That’s all she needs.

Personally I don’t think the show would have suffered much without Mark Greene. But then, I’m a dyke and bald men look like dicks. And he’s just whiny. Even when it’s all going his way, he whines. He has horrible time management skills, his wife was totally hot and he lost her due to that fact that he has horrible time management skills, and as far as I can tell he never really learns to prioritize.

I mean, just imagine ER with Kerry Weaver carrying around, like, a Swiffer with some wire-rimmed glasses on. Making diagnosis’ out of the side of her mouth, arguing back and forth about patient care, having discussions in the lounge.

“Oh, this paperwork is such a nightmare. It’s so amazing of you to take it all on, Kerry, and still find time to be such an amazing doctor.”

“Why, yes, Doctor Greene, it did take me a long time to color code and alphabetize all of your work, but anything to make this hospital – YOU THERE, CAROL HATHAWAY! YOU ARE WASTING MONEY! I DON’T KNOW HOW THIS TIME BUT YOU ARE! – run more efficiently. Now, if you please, I need to forge your signature on a few things, if you have the time.”

“I always have time for such a fabulous doctor and alphabetizer such as yourself, Kerry. In fact, why not join me for dinner?”

“Well, thank you, Mark, but you’ll be staying in my locker when I leave here today.”

“And what a well-organized locker it is, too.”

Old Stuff: AKA Not Being Lazy, I Swear

So, the next few blog posts you see are going to be old things that I wrote in the way backs. I'm putting them here so I don't lose them forever, because I like them.

For instance:
A conversation between a nurse and myself once I'm old enough to get into one of those places. I'm going to be such a naughty old lady.




"We all got dysentery, and we kept losing oxen every time we forded rivers..."

"That sounds a lot like Oregon Trail."

"What? We didn't go to Oregon. We went to India. For spices and silks. And the Indians tried to kill us with Tomahawks."

"The Indians did."

"Yes. For their spices, and silks. But then they taught us how to plant corn, and we had Thanksgiving. But the Indians were not invited, because we killed them with smallpox infected blankets. You're not an Indian, are you?"

"What? No."

"Good, because this blanket is infected with smallpox."

"Miss Putnam, do you want your jello or not?"

"Well, what flavor is it?"

"Lemon."

"...I hate this place. This is worse than when I was teaching the natives how to plant corn."

"I thought the Indians taught you how to plant corn."

"...in Nova Scotia. I was part of an exchange program, and they didn't know how to plant corn, so I showed 'em. But one look at their stupid Canuck faces and I thought, 'Damn, better simplify this bitch.' Hole, corn, fish, dirt. I don't know if it worked because it's always winter in Canada."

"Is it now?"

"Young lady, you shouldn't question your elders. Especially not ones who risked their lives in the war so you could have your -"

"What war is that?"

"The War of 1812. Wow, that was a long war."

"... Miss Putnam, Edna needs her powerchair back now."

"Medicaid gave me this scooter. I need it to beat the rest of these old farts to the cafeteria. They always take the best pudding flavors, and all that's left is tapioca. I can't eat tapioca, ever since Luke told me about how once when he was in Canada, he had to cut open his tauntaun and the inside looked just like tapioca pudding."

"Luke... Skywalker?"

"Yes, you've heard of him? Nice boy. A bit faggy, though. I hate fags."

"Aren't you a lesbian?"

"What does that have to do with... are you asking me to dinner? We can go out. You, me, and Medicaid. You can pay, because Medicaid is a stingy bitch. Ever since I had to weasle my scooter out of her. You'd think losing a leg in the war would qualify..."

"Miss Putnam, you have two legs."

"This one's a prosthetic. Good, isn't it? A nice young man by the name of Spock gave it to me. He was a bit stiff, but very nice. I lost track of him after he had that captain's baby and didn't come back after maternity leave. But, by then, I had already moved on to the next gym, because I had to catch 'em all!"

Greetings from Lab Machine 100

I'm in the SuperLab here on campus, with a few minutes until I have to migrate over to the MHRA to go to class, so naturally I decided that I was going to use the time to tell the internet about my life.

My legs are sore.

That's my life.

Okay, so there's more to it than that. My legs are sore from running. Maybe running a bit too much. I had planned to run 10 miles with The Videostore Employee Who Doesn't Watch Movies on Tuesday, and totally forgot when I suggested the route that part of the Greenway is closed for repaving. So we had to detour on the fly, and of course wound up overrunning. By almost two miles.

The funny thing is, before marathon training started, I would have considered 12 miles a "long run" for the week. But my idea of distance is so skewed that it felt like a normal weekly run, except that it was in the pouring rain and my hips hurt a bit from ice skating the day before.

I won't really know until I hit the pavement this afternoon, but I'm thinking I might shave a mile or so off of today's run, and then stay in my pajamas until at least 3pm tomorrow - my archaeology professor is going out of town, and she's letting us watch the video on Egypt from our houses instead of making us come to campus and watch it together. Because she loves us and wants us to be happy.

So I'm going to keep in the true spirit of Sacred Ass-Sitting Day, and sit. On my ass.

This Saturday is my first 20 mile run ever. I'm excited. And in my excitement, I need to remember to go to the running store and buy a couple of gels of whatever brand tickles my fancy. I'm considering getting one with caffeine for the end of the run, just so I know how my body responds to caffeinated gels.

McDad and The One With No Feelings have volunteered to go with me to Richmond - even though they're not in marathon form - and pace me to finishing. I know I can definitely finish under 4 hours. That's really my only goal. It's two goals but also one. Anyways. It makes me feel a lot better, knowing that I won't be running alone (and therefore be super nervous and run way too fast from the start and then DNF).

The only mantra now is: DNFing is not an option.

Today I'm turning in Like Water For An Octopus, which is a short story I wrote that I'm actually titling The Drinking And The Dry, because Like Water For An Octopus is a joke that's not even really all that funny, but it stuck and now I can't stop calling it that.

I'm a little nervous about turning it in because it's an experiment on several fronts and I don't know how I really want the feedback to turn out. I tried to write a more 'readable' story. People in class are getting burned out and if they don't want to put in the time, I didn't want to give them a story that would make them. There's deeper readings and themes there, but they can just skim if they want to. I'm not responsible for the expansion of their reading comprehension skills. They're in college.

It was surprisingly easy to get The Little Monster to do The Rolex Sweep. Michael Jackson may not be able to dance like you, Skepta, but a 22 month old can.

Everyday I'm shufflin'

Do-do-do-do-DO-do-do....

Okay, now that that's done, I can babble about other, more arguably important things. "Like what?" you ask. Well, really, there's nothing more important than the fact that every single day I am shufflin', shufflin' and it's getting really tiring.

I bit the bullet and decided to self-publish Three Adjectives today. My argument with myself went a bit like this:

Me: "'Self-publishing' is usually just code for 'awful book no respectable house wanted to publish,' and everyone knows it."

Also Me: "Yeah, but Three Adjectives isn't really the direction you want your career to go in, so you'd never show it to a publishing house, anyways. You might as well let it get out there."

Me: "You never know. I might come back to it."

Also Me: "Be honest. You lost your editorial steam on that novel practically before you finished the first draft."

Me: "I don't wanna say that..."

Also Me: "It was always supposed to be light and fun. Easy. There's no shame in admitting that you accomplished your goals. Let people read it if they want to read it."

Me: "Oh-kay. Fine."

So I'm self-publishing Three Adjectives Or Less. If by some miracle it turns out that people like it a lot, I own the rights and even the ISBN to it, so I can always pull it off my own imprint and sell it to someone else. I think that's what finally sold me on the idea - if you read the fine print, self-publishing is kind of temporary. John Dies At The End was originally self-published; I own one of the original copies of it.

No, I'm not saying 3Adj is at all comparable to the brilliance that is John Dies At The End. It's an awkward novel about an awkward person who may or may not have a lot of me in her. 3Adj was kind of a glut of a novel. I try really hard to keep obvious references to my own life and my own opinions out of my work, but I thought, for once, I would just write, and let everything slide. So Remy talks about The Elephant Show, and my grammatical pet peeves, and comfort foods, and she's afraid of cows.

Because cows are scary. Duh.

I'm not gonna make a big deal about this. I'm not gonna tell anyone, and I'm not gonna pimp out the book on various internet forums and all that annoying, self-published stuff that happens. But if someone is looking for lesbian fiction on Amazon.com, they might find it, and hopefully they'll buy it and read it.

Until then, and probably also after then, everyday I'm shufflin'...

A Haiku In Honor Of My First Big Group Bike Ride

I came (in spandex)

I saw people (in spandex)

I conquered my fear

(of spandex)

Bones About It

One of my favorite product review blogs, The Impulsive Buy, is accepting submissions for another staff writer, and I want that gig. So I decided to write a product review, just to show them my writing style. They asked that I include pictures, so I decided to do that, too.

This is what happened.

----------------------------------

I'm petsitting this weekend, and this dog, while very sweet, is made of crazy. She's so high energy she vibrates. She doesn't have an ounce of fat on her body. She's the living embodiment of a Powerplate Platform. She may be endorsed by Madonna.

Others tell me that she calms down and acts like a normal dog sometimes, but she almost never does around me. I walk in the door and she starts bouncing from me, to the wall, to me, to the other wall... she bashes into furniture and sometimes gets so excited she pees on the floor. I've been around dogs my whole life and watched many episodes of 'It's Me Or The Dog,' so I ignore her and walk through to the kitchen, settle myself around the house, and avoid eye contact.

It doesn't work.

And since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results... this time I came armed with a very special technique happened upon by The Librarian. I call it, 'Give her something to eat besides my face.'

I brought these:


They came in a three pack for $7.98 at Walmart, and I spent a few minutes standing in the pet toy aisle, eying them suspiciously. Would three be enough? I'm petsitting all weekend, after all, and even though these were the largest white rawhides offered (any color rawhide + white carpet = disaster of biblical proportions) they didn't seem all that large to me. How much peace could $7.98 bring me?

Anything was better than no peace at all, though. After all, there's a really great Chinese takeout place near their house, the best I've located so far, and I want to be able to eat my Broccoli with Garlic Sauce on previously mentioned white carpet without stress.

Here's a comparison photo of one of the bones with the face it would hopefully be replacing:

(Serious face because it's serious business.)

As you can see, they're fairly close to a foot long. They're light and feel dryer to me than a lot of the rawhide products I've handled in the past. The label makes it very clear that they're not for human consumption, so I can't speak to their taste. I can speak to the fact that they Tamed The Savage Beast.

For, you know, a little while.

I'm not a dog. I don't understand the appeal of dry, untanned animal hide, but then, I've also never had the impulse to roll around in rotting dead animals, which I'm given to understand is a favorite past time of members of the Canid family. But I tossed the first bone onto the floor and for the next four hours, the Beast's entire attention span was focused on something that was not me.

Within the first twenty minutes, she had gotten one of the ends completely off. I think I was right about these being somehow drier that regular rawhide, because when she got it separated, she left a trail of crumbly little rawhide bits on the carpet. The rest of the bone put up a good long fight before it succumbed to the Beast's Big Sharp Pointy Teeth. It took a while.

Sometimes the Beast tried new techniques, including one that involved letting gravity do some of the work and just opening and closing her jaws.

I really do love this dog.

And this Chinese food.


The Dragon Wok on Skeet Club in High Point, for you locals. Same shopping center as Feeney's Frozen Yogurt.

Item: Exer-hides Rawhide Bones
Price: $7.98 plus tax
Size: 16.2 ounces (for 3 bones)
Purchased at: WalMart
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Taming the savage beast. My delicious dinner.
Cons: Eventual defeat. Little bits on the carpet. Gross if you think about it too much. Extra gross if you Google it.

Sometimes I worry about faces.

6 days. 177 miles. 983 minutes. Not bad, but yea gods, I want to run again.

I went to the store last night just to hang out, and it wasn't as hangdog as I thought it would be. I only experienced two bouts of "WAIT TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!!!" Honestly I think the biking is staving off the crazy for the moment. Next week I might be ready to kill someone, but so far my body is so focused on the new, exciting burn of biking that it hasn't seemed to notice it isn't being taken out for its runs.

So, here's the full skinny on my ankle:
I have what the Orthodoc calls a "stress reaction" in the place where my heel and talus bones connect. As far as Google can tell, "stress reaction" is just a fancy, I-went-to-medical-school way of saying "If you don't stop right the fuck now and let it chill out, it's going to be a stress fracture."

So I'm actually very proud of myself for listening to the pain and stopping when I did. It may have saved Richmond for me. As it is, I can't run or do any other impact sports for 2 weeks. I have some prescription anti-inflammatories (not straight up painkillers, thankfully, because I don't wanna be doped up for 2 weeks) and an ankle brace.

I'm allowed to bike as long as I stop if it hurts. Unfortunately, biking is just about the only thing that doesn't hurt - I limp outside in the morning and sigh in relief the minute both feet touch the pedals. It's gonna be a long 2 weeks, but I'm gonna do what the Orthodoc says, because I've got the time and I'm trying to be a smarter runner.

In other news, I just finished my last exam and am now officially on vacation. I've decided that I'm going to write and polish up a short story this summer. I tried to think about the plot this morning during my ride, and instead I wrote this:

R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
Cthulhu's world!

R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
R'lyeh-yeh-yeh
Cthulhu's world!

Cthulhu loves destruction!
And chaos too!
That's Cthulhu's world!

Bonfires and Tang Bangers

I'm writing something awful for a class, and I don't like it, so in retaliation I'm posting this. Which is the same story, with the same characters, the way I want to tell it and not the way I have to tell it for the parameters of the assignment.

I've had this kicking around in my brain for a while, and one day I'll get my shit together and finish it. It's a short story called The Last Resort, and it's based on my days working at the Grand Canyon. Only I changed the setting so I could have dolphins and pooka shell necklaces.

-------------------------------------------

The sunset over the ocean from a western beach on Straussenberg Island was quite possibly the most amazing thing Hannah Haskell had ever seen. It was almost the end of her first day as a Sandy Shoals employee, and she was sitting in the sand with her knees up to her chest, wiggling her bare toes deep into the sand and watching the sun sink out of view.

She heard voices approaching from behind, two of them. She recognized the unapologetically sardonic tones and knew without turning they were her new roommates, the two intimidatingly well-sculpted, tanned young women that looked like they had stepped off one of the brochures Hannah was being trained to hand to customers. Beach Bodied, the employee handbook called it, and it was the reason Hannah had spent her first ten minutes as a Sandy Shoals employee standing uncomfortably still in a bikini top and a pair of shorts, while a balding man in a pair of swim trunks pinched her in various places with calipers. Other companies had drug tests. Sandy Shoals Beaches and Resort had the Beach Body test.

“Hey. New roomie.”

“Hannah,” she corrected, determined not to turn away from the sunset.

Footstep squeaked in the sand. The blond one who had introduced herself that morning, Kat, entered her vision. “Hannah,” she agreed absently, scratching at a set of abs so perfect they may as well have been airbrushed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m watching the sun set,” Hannah replied, rolling her eyes over to regard the girl fully. Tiny, no more than five foot three, she nonetheless had a lean, gamine appeal in her bikini top and loose men’s board shorts that Hannah’s four years at a liberal arts college had no trouble identifying. The rainbow pooka shell necklace around her neck was also a big clue.

Kat turned her head to squint at the horizon. “Huh.” She turned back, running a hand through her short, sun-bleached hair. “Well, we’re gonna go get drunk. You coming?”

Hannah tipped her head back to look at her other roommate, who had what looked like a water cooler jug propped on her shoulder. The tall woman glowered at her, the expression particularly effective given the amount of hardware that had taken up residence on her face since the last time Hannah had seen her. “Holy shit,” she blurted before she could censor herself.

The woman flashed her a toothy, pleased look that Hannah supposed was meant to be a smile. “Hiya, Peaches,” she greeted.

“Hi,” Hannah replied sheepishly. “Sorry. I just… you didn’t have those this morning, did you?”

“Have what?” She lifted a hand up to her face, patting gently, a horrified expression filling her eyes. “Oh my God! What the hell is this? My face!”

“Your face!” Kat exclaimed, a hand flying to her mouth – Hannah had no trouble seeing the laughing smile peeking through her fingers, and tried to muster a glare before laughing ruefully. “So, what’ll it be? You coming?”

Hannah looked over at the brilliant colors of the sky, and Kat sighed. “If it helps you make up your mind, I promise it’s going to set again tomorrow. Yvonne won’t have vodka again tomorrow.” The other woman shook her half-full jug to punctuate the statement. Kat held out a hand, squinting at her measuringly.

Hannah allowed herself to be pulled to her feet and brushed the sand off the back of her obnoxiously tight capris. “I thought employees couldn’t buy alcohol.”

Yvonne looked briefly scandalized, shifting the jug from one muscular shoulder to the other. “Alcohol? This is my specially filtered water!”

Kat chuckled and scratched her scalp, gesturing towards a well-hidden path in the tangled jungle-like wilderness that separated the resort proper from the employee housing. “Yeah, filtered through potatoes, at high heat.”

“It sounds very healthy,” Hannah deadpanned, hoping she was following the banter the way she thought she was as she picked her way along the path behind the more sure-footed employees.

“Oh, it is,” Yvonne replied, the ripple of laughter in her tone loosening Hannah’s nerves slightly. “Important for my mental health, especially.”

It was almost completely dark, and Hannah was starting to get nervous about being left behind, when she caught sight of the orange glow they were trooping towards. She smiled disbelievingly at the sight that greeted her when she stepped into the clearing.

“Don’t get too excited,” Yvonne threw over her shoulder. “It’s not like anyone here is what’d you’d call a winner.” She shoved her way past a couple of wildly groping swimsuit models – Hannah was beginning to wonder if she would ever get used to everyone looking like Greek statuary – and over to the water cooler stand. She dropped the jug down with practiced ease, not spilling a drop.

“How was your first day?” Kat asked, shoving an empty pitcher in her hands and fighting open a battered plastic container of Tang. “Don't judge me,” she snapped. “I couldn't get anyone to steal me enough orange juice from the kitchen. Get that judge-y look off your face or go drink it raw with Yvonne.”

Hannah glanced over at her other roommate, who was standing with her head tipped back and her eyes closed, a paper cone held gently in her fingertips, apparently oblivious to her surroundings. She sighed and held the pitcher steady. “Doesn't seem that different than college. Bonfires and tang bangers.”

Kat grinned and licked her fingers clean of orange powder. “You're learning.”

Blame it on the Goose

I know I'm supposed to find The Warblers' classic, perfect unity and shiny smiles an annoying contrast to the grittier, rock and roll, modern New Directions, but goddamn I love the way they sound. Put anything in multi-part harmony – GOOD multi-part harmony – and I'll like it.

I totally love Glee, by the way. Even if I really can't see any of them as high school students. Even if in real life, Lea Michele is a diva jerkface who is mean to little girls. Even if I think it's wrong that they've outsold The Beatles. Glee is like a drug. They tried to make me go to rehab and I said no, no, no.

I'm just a sucker for good covers, big voices, and people who believe in making the epic out of the normal. Because, you know, life isn't really like art. It's not a novel and it wouldn't even make a decent indie flick. I mean, we admire realism in those things, but even realism isn't real. When you make something seem real, when you really study something to the point of being able to translate it into a creative form, you're making it so much more beautiful, so much more epic than it was before.

Writing about love is easy. The words and forms and conventions have been growing and shaping and evolving for centuries, in our language alone. But the emotion, the psychological and physiological and intellectual and emotional forces at work, is so utterly complex that nothing on paper or film or in music will communicate it. The tired cliché is that Eskimos have over a hundred words for 'snow,' and yet we only have the one word, 'love.' Love of a child is the same as the love of a partner is the same as the love of a television show.

I was saying today that I've decided my life is an allegory, and I just haven't figured out exactly what I'm supposed to represent yet. In reality, everything is too complex for allegory. We guess, and we fumble, and we try to break a thing, an emotion, down to its most basic elements because that's what our art tells us to do. Life imitates art. Does it? For a while, art imitated life, and then art got self-conscious about doing that, so it decided that it was just Art, for itself, for the sake of Art.

But that failed because Oscar Wilde always had a moral to the story, didn't he?

If Brittany and Santana don't get their shit together, then I don't know what the moral of the story is.

I'm drawing clowns and writing dialogue.

Strange things happen with my stories sometimes.

A satirical dark comedy about straightforward ghost hunters turns into a serious dark story with comedic undertones that grapples with complex issues of nonlinear time and multiple universe theories. A bit character who sells rootwork supplies to one of the central characters becomes a romantic entanglement and a major plot mover. A character who was supposed to be a straightforward, normal college kid with a normal life becomes a former foster kid whose adoptive parents died and whose father is in jail for kidnapping her when she was eight.

I mean, it's not remotely the same story it started out being. These are not the same people.

To illustrate this, here's a conversation between Eliot Haskell and Mahomet Veilleux:

"Who's Ellie?"

"Angel-maker what was, cher."

"Angel... maker?"

"Jah. The old one. Come before yours."

"You mean Walker?"

"Jah. Angel-maker, you gots to call her, you want them to understand who you talking about."

"Them? What are you talking about? I'm just a driver, dude."

"Neh. You en't listening. Angel-maker pick you. You with her."

"So what does that make me?"

"Make you my angel, mon cher."

"See, I knew you were just trying to get into my pants."

Two months ago, Eliot and Mahomet - whose name used to be Jimmy - would never have even thought about having this conversation. There was no such woman as Ellie, and none of this angel-maker shit. I mean, Jimmy used to be from Flagstaff.

I sometimes think being a fiction writer is like having a very focused form of schizophrenia.

Orphan Snippets

Found an old notebook with snips from a story I don't remember enough to pick up again. I think they're kinda funny and I want to use the notebook for something else, so here they are.

"A lot of the people on Earth didn't take care of their bodies, even though they knew how. This made little sense because, so far as they knew, they only had the one body. Ninety-two at least had the satisfaction of knowing that she would be removed from the soft tissue pretending to be a human brain and resume her normal existence. She still took care of the body. She doubted she would be able to requisition another one."

"Ninety-two's species communicated by twitching their phylla and emitting bursts of ultraviolet light. Humans did not have phylla or emit ultraviolet light.

There was no word for Ninety-two's species. The name of her species was one twitch and two long bursts. It would therefore have been hard to explain their current failure to communicate to Pedro."

"'Do you ever think about having kids?' Pedro asked, his face sticking to the hollow between Ninety-two's breasts.

Ninety-two, human brain running with all kinds of interesting chemicals, almost told him about the forty-seven offspring registered under her collective's name, but at the last second remembered he was talking about tiny, pink humans she would be required to incubate in her abdomen.

'No,' she said."