I have this "ultimate playlist" for when we don't really want to get out of bed (I don't enjoy music indoors otherwise; only times I play it is when walking at pace or in the car). I'm not the type to really be in bed either unless the occasion calls for it, so sometimes after sex or if the General still wants to snore gently and has grabbed me and refuses to let me go, I linger, loiter and let my phone do the fiddling.

Jimmy Hendrix: All Along the Watchtower

Tom Waits: Waltzing Matilda

Simon & Garfunkel: The Boxer

Bob Dylan: One more Cup of Coffee

Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker

... and I notice that listening to lower tones soothes me much sooner than higher when my head feels like I'm being politely beaten by a hammer. Tom Waits in his absurd baritone sooner than squeaky Bob Dylan. Mental note to add something by Nick Cave and see where that takes my discomfort. 

Oh, my brain

I cannot tell you how my brain rewarded me for the shitty pain I endured and almost completely braved yesterday: I dreamt tonight of being in a petting zoo of baby animals. I kid you the fuck not. I was in some group which left me behind to go see or visit something else and inside the building near where the bus parked, was a sort of a shop/veterinary center and just as you walked in there were cages ob baby animals and a small enclosed area where you could let them out and play with them. All the animals were super cuddly, super friendly among each-other and really quite demanding your attention. There was a baby owl that loved to be tickled and it had one of those lazy rotating heads and one huge eye always closed like a timer egg. There was a dormouse with a belly full of food, stretching on its back for me to tickle it, fuzzy warm chubby belly. Huge black eyes and thin pink ears and a coat so soft like silk. There were bunnies and kittens, puppy dachshunds and baby otters. Everything there for me to cuddle and pet. Just me, just sitting on the jigsaw mats, playing with warm fuzzy creatures. 

    Ah, brain. I love you, too. 

Fuck that hurt

And it still hurts. It's an injury now. But, as I always tell people who are suffering and I have a need to mansplain pain: it should hurt less and less each day. 

Truly funny part is that my eyesight is messed up. It's rather funny. Assuming this is a consequence of  A LOT of anti-pain injection into the face and the eye muscles have gotten some via the bone marrow. Or something. Either way, can't focus and the rest of the face is, just, like, ye, nobody cares. Can't sleep though, yet, and am hungry. But took a little water and it felt like I was stabbed. 

I should probably convince the General the only way to combat this sort of torment is to take me to a bookstore. Warm blankie padding didn't quite work, gentle sex didn't quite work, he bought me a yummy bagel, but can't eat. So, books ... never faced a pain that couldn't be quenched by books.

Should I be concerned that the dentist who agreed to help me asked me to come at 8 in the morning although his working hours are officially starting at noon?

I mean, I DID write him a very detailed letter about how I feel.

Is it normal they ask you to come so far removed from every other client, just in case you try to break the chair and escape through a wall, or is it the expected screaming?

What is the legal amount of anti-anxiety medication available over the counter these days, I wonder?*

*Good thing I'm so anti-drug and I advocate for feeling everything at the same time all the time. My hands are already shaking, but ... I am still here. It's also kind of helping my prose. I'm reaching Lovecraftian depths of horror and despair in the scene I'm writing this week.

I had a really ugly and shitty dream right now during a nap.

Alright, alright, I'm going to see a dentist. Yeesh.

Wreening the Witcher (Watching the show while reading the book at the same time. I mean, not SAME same time, just, these days.) Not an ideal headspace for the "Endgame" chapter, the most depressing and destructive of all short stories in Goose, and the closest to catharsis as the book gets, but it is not far off. I don't yet have the message for it, just the meat of the story. I suppose it is best to abandon Kay's cynical optimistic attitude for the thoroughly defeated episode, especially since if she was the only idealist left, her demise would be too obvious. Perhaps that is what the story needs. The thorough defeat of optimism and light. Will be a little harder to catch a proper note for the epilogue afterward. There are four corners of the story, each still needs the dialogue, but the structure is set: the dinner party which the Goose and Kay go to, just before she figures out the riddle script; the event where Goose deals with people who try to hurt a kid of one of his writers' and Kay sends him walking home though starless; the birth of his first oneiros son which goes terribly wrong, and finally, Goose's mental breakdown in which he finally transforms into the nightmare he's been all along and Kay agrees to have sex with him while he tears her to pieces. The trick is to make it really, really dark. As dark as the scene in the beginning in the garden. Exactly as dark. It's supposed to demonstrate that the worst nightmare he can lock her in is the stage in which Kay operates the best and prove to him that when the time comes for him to lose it completely and sink to the bottom, she will be there waiting.  

Motherfucking tooth broke

I have spent MONTHS singing praise on how well the tooth is holding up and how much I respect it and how dear it is to me and how I would rather suffer the pain than go to the dentist, risking the whole thing falling to bits if disturbed. I've managed to photograph it, stuffing the phone into my beak from various vantages, and assessed that the burning pain - as opposed to the hot heavy pain that makes it seem like it's too large for the face and is pulsating - comes either from where the filling merges into the adjacent tooth and the rot has crept underneath between them, or a small black dot on the side of one. I had the whole battle plan ready.

And this morning the tip of the crown - one out of four tips sticking out of the black filling -just breaks off and falls into the sink. I was so shocked I just stared at it a little, wondering what this could possibly mean. It didn't HURT any worse than already. I mean, it hurts. I really need to see a dentist. But why would the fucking thing just fall off? 

Looking back now, all of this began when I bit down on a shell, a walnut shell it was, I think, a bit of it in a biscuit. I remember it hurt and that's probably when both teeth - the big black molar and the small white premolar underneath it cracked. The small white one seems to be calming down. I think. Dunno. I'll deal with it some other time. The big black one, well, it looks like combined with the pressure I put into it, the rot and decay and whatever else is going on in there ... Just decided to let me know ignoring it may not be the best strategy at this point.

Not that I can, really. The edge of the filling left behind is threatening to cut the tongue. Soups and pudding for me, it seems. No blowjobs until at least Thursday. 

How much do you wanna bet the whole thing will be a disaster? That as soon as he tried to fix something, the whole tooth will fall apart and will need to be pulled and the two adjacent will need so much repair I'll go bankrupt just patching up the shards? 

Good thing I watched 1917. Half of my brain is rolling its proverbial eye, giving me the 'no please, tell me about the drama you're going through while watching a WWI movie riddled with rotting corpses' ...

How to watch 1917 if you are, like me, not able to watch stabbings, strangulation or burning alive?

There are huge pros and cons to having a brain like mine. A brain like mine will read that there are 500 confirmed people infected and 17 dead, so that is about, give or take data blanks, 5% mortality rate for this latest plague we're having. SARS was 10 and MERS was about 30. Already my brain is going through the odds of this being the one that finally fucks us. Because everything else is survivable with a good strategy, except viruses. Viruses get you.

A brain like mine is able to seamlessly piece together a narrative no matter which direction I patch it in - I can read/watch/listen from start to finish, bits here bits there, ending first, opening first, 'safe' bits in between ... It is absolutely no difference if I sit in a theatre and get it all in one fell swoop or if I take a year to watch fragments. 

A brain like mine is also no longer able to watch the realistic portrayal of grievous bodily harm or death that isn't, strictly speaking, by a car crash or a gunshot or drowning or fistfight or even someone doing someone in with a hatchet or a cleaver. Getting impaled by things, like construction material flying during an automobile collision, I hate it, but I don't care, really. I mean, I really care in the Real-world, I never drive behind a truck carrying construction material or wood logs. 

But hanging, slow stabbing, strangulation and being killed by fire, especially in water (oil spills, in case you blinked here for a second), and to a degree being crushed slowly .... No matter how good a film is, I simply cannot watch that. I will skip the whole epic film because of a minute or not even that of having to experience it. Obviously, we are talking about realistic films, not Kill Bill.

So? How do I watch? 

It IS an interesting process, I'll admit. And 1917, that is a behemoth of cinematic mastery. I haven't seen a movie that well done since Blade Runner 2049. This probably isn't a coincidence, taking into account both were directed by talented people who are well versed in the business and were able to afford the best cinematographer working today. And both movies latch onto the lead role of a bland young man with a dejected attitude and sad droopy big eyes, washed out from all the shits not given. The fact that 1917 also has that -one shot- thing going for it and it is one of the better portrayals of the shitshows that wars are, all those rotting nameless dead left behind, means little. It's an A+ movie. I just gotsta find a way to see it, leaving bits out which would further damage my fickle brain. 

People buy cunt-scented candles from celebrities and there's a new deadly virus. So ... same old, same old.

While a lady donated 1 million dollars she got by selling her nudes for the cause - I think something to do with Australia being on fire, we've narrowly avoided WW3, again. And I was thinking, watching the Americans get involved with conflict regions is ... basically watching a big guy, who comes upon two people, random strangers, fighting in the street. And this big guy gets involved by arming them both - but one with a gun and the other with the ammo and then he offers to sell the missing halves or a hefty price. Which people, being people, pay. So when someone gets dead on account of being a retard, which predictably humans are, calling it greed, pride, honor, grudge, tradition, culture or public relations or whatever, the big guy then goes to their surviving family and offers to sell them food and iPhones. 

          I struggle every day to match the amoung of admirable people to the amount of .... yeah. It's not working.

Warcraft 8.3

I was thinking, with everything that's been going on in Warcraft lately ... the SIZE of that damn game. I, who have been playing it since, well, 1.2, and for all intents and purposes know every last bit of it, even I have no sense of the scale of the thing anymore. It is so impossibly massive with such impossibly detailed lore and fleshed out characters, it takes someone literally a decade and more to comprehend it. I was thinking this, because while trying to repair Azeroth's wounds, I was sent to revisit some of the old, not just patches of land, but dimensions and illusions. Dreams, undergrounds, echoes and parallel timelines. That is ON TOP of a massive map spanning well over three worlds. To me, they all make sense, because I was there when those things were either ripped into existence or toppled out of it and I know the names of those who destroyed and saved it. Fuck it, I've watched Anduin grow up and I almost came last week, when he sucker-punched that faggoty self-righteous thundercunt Wrathion in the dumb face. I still have the likeness of Hellscream as my phone locked-screen and believe deeply in my Horde. I read the books. I watch Nobbel's YouTube channel on specific individuals and their histories. Heck, just the other day I negotiated an alliance with the Vulperae for the dubious Baine. We have clever little foxes in our ranks now! And the allies can ride giant bees! All the while the world is literally crumbling to pieces under our feet. How awesome is that?

Pumpkin Pie is back! He had a jolly good time and I am super happy he did, but man do I miss him when he's away.

One of the funniest moments he reported was one of the other men announcing, surprised, he is quite curious about the total lack of wives bothering and texting and calling - until they informed him the valley has no signal. Oh, the blessed shock and amazement on the poor man's face. He's never been so happy. 

Fucking men and their idiotically simple pathways to bliss :D Roast and beer and complete lack of signal. 

Fuck, I'm lonely without him. All problems seem so direct and personal. I almost started doing the dishes.

Home alone for three days, while the boys play bushcrafting. (I am not allowed to come because a) I would probably kick fully into my trailblazing mode and wander off and b) it's boys alone time. Let'em have it. I bought G a thick wool army blankie. 

Three days is a looong time, however. I am starting to run out of porn. Of course, all the movies I want to see and books I want to read and online lessons I wanna go through, those just seem to continue getting pushed further and further aside. Patch 8.3 landed in Warcraft, I really needed to make a Vulpera character and solve the problems of those poor bastards - suddenly a tidal wave of new ones. In Warcraft every time you solve some dire disaster and stand firm on the lid, behind you the entirety of a city is collapsing. I've re-read the Garrosh-Anduin parts of War Crimes. I miss that psychotic Orc moron so much. He would love what the world has become since he tried to fix it. The kid sucker-punches Wrathion in the cut scene. Oh how that faggoty dragon spawn had it coming.

Agreed to a small interview, only because I really like the journalist. Also went uphill to say hi to my parents but they both seem to be having a flu and were in bed, where I didn't want to bother them. I got the fire going in their heating furnace and played with the dogs a bit, then went home. Almost spent what little money I have left on PayPal on the paint from Jackson's Art Supplies finally, but arrrrgh, again, the shipping was one buck over budget. It's just divine providence. The two paints from Rembrandt which I got have totally riled me up. I need those paints like they were heroin. They're like some freaking beauty in a tin tube. 5ml of pure poetry.

Fecking toothache is messing with my mojo :/

Hm. The amount of crying I've done last night might have damaged my eyes a little. Normally a good bawler has a beneficial effect, particularly when I am working with pigment, but so far it feels more akin to when you get sunblock in and the damn things just refuse to focus for the rest of the day. I've tried washing them out and already wasted half a bottle of drops trying to salinate and hydrate them properly. No luck so far. Am tired as fuck as well. The toothache is becoming interesting. Explaining to G burnt through the rest of my energy. Somehow telling a lover that you feel indescribable, profound and overwhelming sadness FOR NO REASON is not good enough. You have to spend three hours translating emotions to someone who then hammers the last nail in their coffin by asking if there is anything they can do to prevent it. No, for the love of fuck, it has nothing to do with you. Stop making it about YOU. 

     But then he went and did that washing dishes thing and that really undid the ugly spell. It seemed to be too late for the eyes, though. I couldn't really sleep much, but they did have a chance to rest, so it's not resting them. Reading is not an option - I just can't see. One's not strong enough and one's just a mess. I am fully aware of their size and weight in my skull. I wasn't going to draw, but I was going to write. Just saying, being able to adjust the luminosity of my screen is the best thing ever.

What a weird occurrence - I am out of town for a few days and at some point I just became super sad and depressed and kind of overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and passage of time (it happens like twice a year or so, often completely unwarranted and without heads up, although it has to do with accumulation of negative thoughts and encounters (I did walk past the oncology clinic yesterday, so ...), so when talking reason or just pep talk didn't have any consolatory effect, the General stopped talking, picked up the phone, crossed the house, set the phone down in the kitchen and started doing dishes. No conversation, just a video of him doing dishes. I could see all my mugs and coffee and cats and him and could hear the dog and that was it. Suddenly of all the wonders of the world, that was the most comforting and home-like recreation of a soothing embrace he could possibly send me via skype. The brain really is the weirdest thing. I once half-drowned and passed out and they couldn't revive me until the village doctor's wife brought a plum pie to the people helping me. I woke up like *that*. Priorities, you know? :D

Continued lessons on Nini's prompts

I might have been a bit rude today. It wouldn't bug at me, but yesterday I cried because someone was dismissive, flippant and rude to me in a store. And today a woman called about a photo of mine and I asked her to contact me via an email, so that the correspondence remains on 'paper'. She asked if I can drop by their store and I repeated, that I prefer to have these things negotiated by an email, especially since the shot was already used in a book by another publisher. (I have a similar one I was going to offer, but they never wrote back.)

Okay.

I am not saying I was rude rude. Or that I was wrong. But I was flippant and dismissive.

Here are my reasons. First off, I get defensive when people ask something of me but would not agree to my terms - such as please, not over the phone, I prefer things written down. Second, don't talk to me like you're doing me a favor. You're not. I doubt they were willing to buy the photo, they just wanted an OK to use it for their promotionals. *Mental note to check a little if they just stole the damn thing in the end, like it usually happens.

    Third, I have a toothache and am freakishly tired from wrapping up this week's orders. 

    Fourth, it's my off month. Don't talk to me on my off month. Yes, YES, I understand people can't know that and she at least made an effort to look up my number - where the fuck did she get my number?! - but because she got me while I was busy, my brain didn't switch to customer service mode as it should. 

     Or maybe it was the whole 'come to our store so we can discuss it'... Are you joking? If you think I'm weird and defensive on a phone, how the heck do you think I would be in person? At least when corresponding via email, the General approves of the wording before I hit send. 

Attempting bullet (messy) journaling. Noooot there yet,lots of gaps still, but, getting slowly.