WorK in pRogreSs....

Been creating a new detective, an uncanny character for my 'children's poetry' pieces, for kiddy magazines...

Also tried to use daylight to digitalize them. Doesn't work either. Am getting increasingly frustrated with trying to get things from paper to pixels...

 It's about a cloud thief she out-witts, the research where spring hides and why it comes to look for us and then what happened with the dragon that fled the zoo... There's also one about a cave boy, first poet...

 

We went pass a bookstore (no such thing) and found a very cool gun encyclopedia with nice educational photos and cool short stories - a perfect gift for the General indeed. There's some stuff in there he knows that not even I have ever heard before... But the important bit is we bought two fresh mountain-climbing booklets and I am alreday jumpy with anticipation. I miss mountaneering. I miss all summer sports!! AND I WANT MY DOG DAMNIT!

one Edko

The measuring unit for retarded stares: one Edko....

After two days of fighting and weeping, Piček's face has finally eased up. I can always tell when he's troubled and if I spend the entire day tryingt to cheer him up to no veil, well, then, fuck it. I have a right to feel bad, too.

The sex we had was pretty scary, tho. That was the worst orgasm I've ever had and by worst I mean so intense I thought I was going to have a fit. I really dislike those kind of orgasms, I like my small, controlled, clitoral ones, not the vast, general, tripple-stimulation, black-out-like ones... I know I had one like that before years back when a guy gave me good oral sex, but I didn't like it. Yesterday I was on top and it felt so good to sway in friction and then suddenly there was no feeling at all and then, a few seconds afterwards, it hit me like a truck from behind: everything in me spasemed; I gasped, yelped, shreeked and tears burst from my eyes - and this lasted MINUTES. Seriously, I can't even think of what it must have looked like to flail around and roll like an aligator in mid-kill.. Somewhere in the middle, in the panic, where I had to grab onto my sanity with all fours, I genuinely needed to struggle not to either pass out or vomit from hyperventilation or have a heart attack. Supposedly people think the more intense the orgasm, the better the sex, but no. Uh-uh. I like sex for sex, not just as a work-up for a climax. Small orgams keeps lots of the... "physical emotion" in. This one just stressed me freakless. 

            Course the General thinks it was pretty funny. He tried to make me come this morning as well, but no, thank you. I'm fine with just really good sex. I don't have to feel like someone's split my head open and ripped my brain out and then smacked it against the tiles for good measure.But it's good to know he feels good about himself again.

>o<

Sometimes I thank my dreams for being very enterraining :D Like they knew I can't be bothered to go to the movies and they play weird interactive scenarios in my head instead. Needles to say, I can't get enough fo them :D

Some people, though. Yesterday, as parents are visiting Barania - a region of Croacia - and we're all dogsitting, we went to the park, along the river, to a hanging brigde a few miles of a neat hike. Except for the part where we are all so fat any lazy we anearly died, it was lovely. But there was a small incident regarding a disturbed woman, which picked on us (it is very popular lately to make a fuss about large dogs) because Tara, our Rottweiler, barked at her mut, how our dog doesn'tbelong in society and so on and so forth. I was ready to retaliate, but Dromedar tried reasoning with her, which only led for the woman to wait for us half a mile on, and continue accusing us of seing us very often and how our dogs are dangerous. It mattered little that our dogs are young and playful and how she's never met us in her life, as this was the first time we ever walked there. But no matter. She followed a little while further, yelling  how she knows people and will report us. We decided to ignore her as not to make things worse and moved at our own pace, the dogs enjoying the scenery and being curious about ducks. Of course 2o or so minutes later, we are whistled at by two intervention-unit police officers, which inform us they've been called no less than three times about how some lady was attacked by the rabid Rottweiler. The General tried calling me, but my phone was on silent, to make sis's boyfriend gain some distance, in case some daft old cop on a bad day would bug him about his prolonged stay in this country, but the two cops were young and, although unpleasant looking, they began to take our statement. As it turns out, no, our dogs were never off a leash, no, they are not rabid and not dangerous and no, we do not walk around every day intimidating innocent doggie-walkers like we were some attention-hungry junkies. Tara being Tara laid down and allowed herself to be petted on her tummy and as the cop tickled her snout to see what she'll do, she even raised her leg as to say 'yeah, right there, a little further down, oh, that's the spot.' Obvioustly they saw we did nothing wrong and dogs, albeit not trained yet, were delightful. They took our names, but when they got to sis's boyfriend, his name sounded foreign and they didn't even bother. Ultimately, one of the cops produced a cell-phone with a picture of HIS Rottweiler and we all parted buddies. I am sorry I didn't take the womans name. She stood a few hundret meters away, observing. I hope they mentioned that the next time she alarms the police with false accusations, there will be fines to pay. But really: some people.

It made me have a dog very much. My very own beast, something very nasty called Nefarion or something and I'm thinking a Jack Russel terrier. The General doesn't want to hear about it, of course, but ven though it makes me very sad, I can never tell if he says stuff like 'no and that's the end of it' because he's being a macho arsehole telling m what to do in my won flat like I'm some fucking infant he's schooling or because he's already made arranements and wants to surprice me with a puppy in a bow...

I have musclefieber :s I hate that, but what can you do. I'm getting old. My own father believes I'm 36 already. Arse :P

Went to the dermathologist finally today, expecting, dunno what, something dramatic (I prepared the whole history in two page detail, too. Hey, I take my House very seriously! :P), but the cocky 'hottest babe on the ward' doctor took one look and asked one question and diagnosed me with Psoriasis Inversa, which is the most boring of them all. I didn't even get any lotions for it, since I managed to deminish my symptoms completely by now. Some lepper I am.. :s At least Piček has the one where your fingernails get all pricky bubbly, like tiny filigree and it makes his beautiful fingernails look even more impressive. Mine is completely boring. And I have such a thing for constant illnesses. Ah, well. Maybe if I invest more into being a nervous wreck, my skin will fall off and I'll have to go out only at night and wear lots of powder like a Kabuki ghoul. :P

Vermeer's inspiration for the story below:

The girl with a milk pitcher (he had a thing for girls in his household..) but those are some seriously insane blues!

»The Slave Pens« (Extract from the space pirates adventures)

I bought a farm! It's almost like an island, as there are two rivers marking the area, though it’ll be a while before it gets the fame of Mesopotamia, but no, seriously, I bought a farm.

            I’m a big believer in chance, so when it all pointed to it being a good idea, I wasn’t going to wait until I’m proven otherwise. Besides, I wanted an excuse to hang around Fidi’s new workplace since she got her own cottage and gained the benefit of a resident witch in some behind-God’s-behind landscape. For a witch that’s sort of a mark of adulthood. Kind of like having you first book published for a ‘Pagan. Although the nasty little shit continues to look thirteen, nobody can argue she’s probably older than an average planet by now. (Side effect of being an avid time traveler. Things add up.) – and as I’ve gotten the opportunity to learn more about her new home world, I’ve been wanting for an excuse to linger there more lengthily. Not many places left which would include trees in their terraforming ambitions, yet alone worlds where forests would be older than settlers as well. Not to mention those sex temples are a bomb! Anyway, I sold Gennonsuke’s silt – to him, in fact – and for the money I got, I bought him a farm. I enjoy giving his tax attorney a headache. The drug money from drugs, stolen, then sold back to the drug dealer and used to buy him a fresh breeding ground. That was before he could get angry at me for finally admitting it was me who stole his precious star feldspar. The man is so lovely when he’s gullible and he’s audaciously gullible – Sepp noticed right away the fish in the tank where I’ve hidden the silt look like banshees.

            Anyhoo. Zoom back forty-five solar systems to the left, the moon, Fidi’d moon, is called Dharowansa. As far as stellar charters concur, it is the only moon know to date to have its own – moon. Dharowansa actually means Moon’s Moon, although I’ve forgotten in whose language in particular. It isn’t supposed to be possible, but that’s universe for you: constant supply of anomalies. The pivotal planet, Marnassa, is a gas giant and it isn’t habitable, but it is beneficial for the Moon’s surface as far as temperature and debris goes and the moon² is a little more than a glorified rock that hasn’t decided on its allegiances yet. The Good Jupiter’s gravity will probably, eventually, mess with its route and adopt it, but for now, as it matters, it belongs to Dharowansa. Because, although quite bright, this inhabitable moon’s atmosphere is always cloudy, the breathable air is constant and while nobody can see the little moon, everyone knows it’s there.

            Another excellent thing is that it’s quite close to Aurora. Horses continues to be my favorite planet, but by now everyone’s accepted Aurora as our Yeah-4ooo home, which is that much more easy to do because we are space pirates and every time some insane politician’s regime goes and fucks everything up, we can just skip out of Dodge and return when crazy solar winds blow over. Cole is still stationed there, though. Last I heard he passed on a promotion and switched from Human Trafficking Dept. back to legitimate bounty hunting, pursuing slaves. The thing with slavery being reinstated last year was a particularly interesting turning point and it doesn’t matter HOW better off the system’s economy is for it. The General’s considered assassinating key members of parliament who enforced it, but he’s since just murdered one. Best I can say, what with the sadist missing, is that some of us are doing more for those people now that they are forced to allow us, than anyone’s ever done for them when they were free. Gennonsuke alone has more than 18oo of them on his grounds, working in the paper mill, and some of them are daily fed and neatly clad for the first time in their existence. Cole continues to bring more in and General is bulling ministers into enforcing the strictest rules against inhumane abuse of the chattels by the so-called remaining free folk. You can’t not try to make the world a better place by turning one blind eye to the fact some people are just waiting for the green lights to start treating everyone else like punching bags.

            So this is what my farm will become. My Slave Pens. An extension of Gennonsuke’s factory vicinity. (“If you can’t beat the system from without, go within and around until you’ve hanged someone with it.”) Although no decree exactly prohibits the evacuation of slaves from Aurora, Gennonsuke has behave like a model entrepreneur and sign strict contracts that ensure the legislators he will not in fact try to simply smuggle them out and set them free like one would condemned lab rats. Not that it wasn’t our first intention. Ironically, however, as humane and moral that would be, it would not help them. It’s one of the rare things Cole had to agree with General on. These people were perfectly free since they settled on Aurora, but they continuously failed to rise up to its standards. Somewhat because they were lazy but mostly because they were bullied, they dripped, from one generation to the next, fourth one coming up very soon, lost and pointless. I am not trying to make excused for the ridiculous slavery law, but I worked as a mail-maid in those districts and they were a nightmare. You couldn’t even get them to accept vaccines and some of the plagues had resurfaced that hadn’t even been catalogued for the last 8oo years. I had to see from the creepy politicians’ perspective and agree with Cole, that as scary as this new law might be, it just may offer them an excellent new start. Then we went and bought every single one we could get our hands on and stuffed them all into Gennonsuke’s latest factory.

            The farm, my farm, is over 4o hectares, almost a 1oo acres of plowable land, with two rivers which periodically flood and wash away everything and four already standing buildings that we tore down and rebuild entirely. Fidi’s cottage is 34 kilometers westward through a forest, as a spaceship flies, which is how I found the place in the first place. We went leisure-flying around, looking about, hunting a bit (with cameras), checking the turf and just nosing as witches should, when a cool picnic spot presented itself and when we asked whose the abandoned real-estate was, we were informed it was for sale.

            Because Gennonsuke’s factory has reached its full current capacity some time ago and he wasn’t able to keep up with the expansion works – meaning the government would sit on his shoulder every chance they could, so he wasn’t taking chances pushing tin – I told him to lend me 4oo of his own while he airs the halls a bit. He gave me 2oo (he was still pissed at me. Stealing that feldspar two years ago put him out f his drug dealing business in his home world and profusely out of favor with the local cartels he supplied. If you ask me, it was just as well. He needed to stretch his legs a little. Universe is such a pretty place to stay in one mess for too long.) Mostly it was folk that was ailing or less useful in the mill in some way. (One of the plagues that commonly afflicted the slums of Aurora City was a parasite that ate the lungs and many people had a lot of problems breathing. He sent me those because doctors agreed Dharowansa’s air was fresher and would do them good. First spa time for any of them, also.)  

            Despite the fact that it will be a while before this place reaches the ranks of paradise, you have to start somewhere. I’m already past the basics, past the features of a Roman plantation. Not quite middle USA in the early thirties yet, though. We’re still building fast on.

  Easiest to accommodate are men. But I didn’t get only men and I wouldn’t have them if someone offered – I am not the sort to take the easy way around. First two thirds were male, only half were single and because all newly proclaimed slaves were given a vaccination of a sedative, supposedly to last a lifetime (considering the value of government I’d say that meant some 1o, 15 years), they were less inclined to just strike out again and burn the whole place down. These people were primitive and ugly before, now they’re just humiliated and trapped. There were ghetto gangs that spend their days making one another’s lives miserable: shooting, pillaging, burning each-other’s things and beating their women; their children never stood a chance. Now, chemically docile, they were harnessed into lower middle class minus the right to speak and although still resentful, they didn’t vandalize every spoon and shoe they got, which qualified for an improvement. Government applauded itself.

            Slave to my need to play an architect – pun tasteless, I realize - the first thing we built was the three main slave pens. We resided in tents until we managed. The one civil engineer we required to double-check my statics calculations was happy to help, since General kidnapped him and threatened to carve out his kidneys if he tries to charge us. The biggest building – that is to say, the longest, barracks-shaped – was for the multitude of single men. It was stationed on the far west of the kidney-shaped estate. In the middle of the bricked-in area was a communal room with a small bar and on each side of it were bathrooms, but mainly, split two ways, were the bunk-bed aisles that accommodated a 1oo sleepers each. I was still pining for more people, so we made it more spacious than really necessary.

            The second pen was similar in shape, long, but smaller and with more mirrors – that was the building for the single women. Not all of the beds there were bunks and some had partitions between them. A lot of women I got were elderly ladies, which coughed a lot. The third one, wider, was for families. There were 2o apartments, tiny but comfy, for couples with pre-adolescent children. For infants, there was a day care unit in a building we split four ways – into kindergarten, supervisor’s office, personnel supplies storage and infirmary. Another building was for preparation and serving of food. At the gate, there was a sort of a check-point mini-armory and cots for on-call militia watch, and stables (Dharowansa’s rural regions were still heavy on horse traffic.) All this was sort of bunched up between the main gate and the main house, which would probably be mine, but I only arranged that to be for the ground floor – a nice airy apartment with a neat kitchen and three guest rooms, where we could stay if we came to visit over a summer break. Upper floor and attic were small rooms for maids and cooks – elder single women who truly didn’t enjoy sleeping in communal dorms on bunk-beds or showering in the hammam. These also took care of the clothes and the windows and employed kids to do the dishes and toilets and helped me maintain a garden. I suck at gardening, but I always wanted to have one, so we planted a load of flowers behind the main house and I’m hoping somebody will think of watering them from time to time. There’s a cool pond with trout and a small cemetery at the far end of the first complex area. One river cuts it in half and cuts off a small hill from the second area, where there’s a little cottage for (originally the overseer) Gennonsuke. He agrees it’s far nicer than the big house and besides – he can hardly chance running into the General, so that’s where he’s decided to call home when on Dharowansa. Only other structure there – and the only in the third area also, are the sheds and shelters in case of bad weather, or where some of the workers may sleep if they choose, and tool storage.

            Of course I haven’t said anything about what we grow, yet.

            Well. Considering this is me, and considering I only really stretch my mind in one direction, purchasing this farm wouldn’t even cross my mind if I didn’t know only one natural pigment production site exists in all mapped universe until now. Somewhere, nobody really cares where and I’ve only heard of it once, there’s a small insignificant farm with some sentimental owner with a hand-painted paper fetish. They grow bushes that produce mulberries which, upon proper treatment, make a really good and lasting pigment. I only know this, because as a curiosity, General and I went to buy some and I was mesmerized by their merchandise. By the looks on their faces, we were one of very few. Our next move was to procure the seeds for each of the bushes, as they were genetically altered (it began as an old man’s experiment and then became a regional wonder and quite a posh to indulge in, if one was a quilt letterer, but since, of course, nobody ever used ink to write anymore, their business never took off.) and could only be stolen. There were 12 different trees and just for good measure, we cleared out their research studio and took all the hybrids as well. I’m not sure if they’ve ever found out who robbed them, but that doesn’t worry me. Even if there was some son or some dying man’s vendetta, militia was trained by The General and they have shoot-on-sight orders for anyone who comes asking about my patents. We also have pigs.

            In love with pigment since the first time I pushed my fingers into the sleek powder in a market in Africa and got a bright bluish rash, I never got the chance to really collect it. It’s been a while since the era of Johannes Vermeer, so after Earth was lost, so went all its earthly treasures. Even though natural things that produced color, even saffron to a degree, still existed here and there, nobody bothered to color things with things that made your hands dirty. Aurora was an excellent place to resurrect certain crafts and as we already had a vast paper mill up and going, natural pigment was only.. natural. Carmine and Lapis lazuli were relics. Now we had freaky berry things.

            Four different reds – depending on the ripeness of the picked fruit; two blues, two greens, one orange, yellow, brown and two blacks (which became two different grays) were complimented by (experimental, fickle) another violet, green, ochre and pink. I was badly lacking fluorescent pink and turquoise, which can be very interesting colors in the dusty gritty backside of places like once-was-India and Mali. There will have to be room for my own research lab sometime in the future and I’ve notified the General to be on the look-out for some chromatic chemists, should he happen to be bored.

            And so, this is how I now have a little pigment mulberries farm. Work starts early, with a big brass bell toll and the slaves pour out of the pens like ants from a ruckused anthill, use bathrooms, gravitate towards the refectory and then hit the fields. They are either planting the seeds, tending to the soil, applying fertilizers, removing parasites or simply building. Berries are very neatly divided by the color of their results and they require different teams. Most of the trick is soil treatment, as it was observed early on by dendrologists, that different types of soil make for different colors of the blossoms on same plants. When harvest time comes, by the time we’re done with all the tricky little details, it will be time to sow again. Not sure what we’ll use to rotate the patches, but probably lawn and goats on it and then we’ll produce a shitload of butter. Hm. I can’t see why not. I think I’ll go find some cows.

            So then around early afternoon (time runs differently here, but let’s say around 3) there’s lunch and an hour’s rest and then more work until 7, when there’s big dinner. Afterwards lights out is at 1o, but people have to be in beds by midnight. There’s no alcohol anywhere and they can’t really run, the slaves, even though unlike some plantations, I don’t make them wear collars or build busty electrical fences. They all have GPSs in their spines,  and the inspections need to count them all every few weeks or so. They are always set in groups of ten and if someone is missing, that group’s register number doesn’t light up to green. It’s the same for a group that’s made of groups – if there’s not a hundred people in it, group’s faulty. If a group doesn’t pass inspection and if it’s suspected one has run away, they are taken from the incompetent owner and put to a far more heavy duty environment. It doesn’t make any difference, of course. People are natural born rule-breakers and some of the best characters in history were runaway slaves. I’m just hoping they keep it together long enough for Aurora economy to change and for whatever Spartacus emerges, times will be ready. I’ll hold their coats while they force laws to change back to humane again, but until then, a have a farm called Slave Pens and am making ink to be able to write it all down, neatly.

The other day, in the bathroom, obviously, I had one of those profound thoughts that people quote you for for the rest of your life. The kind you could write an entire book around, just so that it would get extracted and exploited again - the kind that makes you seem like you've just comprehended the meaning of universe. Not that I wrote it down or had less interesting things to do, before it fled me again. Now the grand quote is gone for good and all that remains in knowing there once was one, but fuck me sideways if I know what it was. And I move on.

Noblegarden was magnificent. Not just the Warcraft one, either. It was SO cute, the way the whole family came (plus or minus some ungrateful fucking inbred kids with table manners of elephant shit). Mum and dad worked overtime again, to prepare the most delicious food and I painted a truckload of eggies and the dogs helped :P There was a basket of chocolate goodies that I distributed all over the estate and the woods and then sketched a multiple of treasure maps and everyone, kid or adult, no matter how aloof initially, then ran around, looking for the Easter booty. Neighbours must have thought we were on shrooms, the way (estate is amphitheater shaped, so you can easily see where everyone is) we were running up and down, left and right and all around, poking vineyard poles and nutbushes. 

In between those two events, an interesting incident occured. For all my snarly take on the infants, it turns out I do have a maternal instinct after all. Who knew! I was listening to my music, going through town yesterday, and with the corner of my eye saw a small kid, maybe a year and a half old, fall off a small two-stair platform on the side of the promenade. There was no premeditation to it - the next thing i knew I was on my knees, stretched out to the end of my balance and my hand was opened just softly enough to catch the toddler's face before it hit the pavement. I even remember buffering the impact, so his nose took least and my knuckles the most damage. The way that whole maneuver was executed, shocked me. A ninja couldn't have done it better. And I don't even like kids. 

Goes to show you never can tell :P

Re-watching Tigerland (the most watched movie before I joined the army), I've fallen passionately for Bozz all over again, but then I saw one of the Criminal Minds and it reminded me of a stalker I used to have. I never found out who it was, probably someone from the family or someone pulling a tasteless prank, but a stalker none the less. They'd send me obscene letters, describing in detail how cute I am on baby pictures, how lovely I looked when accompanying gran to the graveyard, how bullets work on the body and so on and so forth. Not that bluffing didn't ruin the whole spooky intent (Me cute on baby pictures?! Are you fucking blind?) or that I wasn't flattered, but you can't really out-freak the really freaky. If anything, I scared the perv away. Ah, well.It was the thought that mattered.

Other than that... Not much. Am bored, so am gonna go sexually molest Piček, who finally has a whole day off and is sleeping like a small kitten amidst 5 pillows and three douvets. No way I can resist kissing him 57 times.! Am learning about pigment meanwhile, too, some very basic stuff. Very interesting. The whole synthetic/natural conflict is uncanny. Painting easter eggs has left my hands very telltale :D