"Other hands than it should pass through..."
An odd day yesterday. After breakfast, I sat down and did my journal entry. I emailed my editor at Penguin, and I emailed Andrew Migliore about the Lovecraft Film Festival. And then, suddenly, I felt as though I was coming down with the flu. Within half an hour, I was aching and could hardly sit up, much less think clearly enough to write and/or edit. Which was all rather terrifying, given what is left to be done on The Red Tree , and given it has to be back in NYC by the end of the work day on Monday. And that I immediately have to get Sirenia Digest #39 written and out to subscribers. No time for the flu. Or anything else virulent. So, I loaded up on elderberry and used zinc swabs in my nasal passages, then went to bed, hoping desperately to stave off whatever might be happening.
Spooky read to me from Let the Right One In. I dozed. And by late in the day, just before dark, I felt quite a bit better. I began to suspect it was only exhaustion, the way I've been pushing myself the last week, the stress, the insomnia. I sat up and tried to clear my head by doing some Tarot work (mostly with the Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess). But I dozed again, and Spooky woke me just before dinner. I felt much, much better. We had a proper Kindernacht, which has been so neglected of late. Hot dogs for dinner, then two movies. The first, a Spanish film directed by Isidro Ortiz, Eskalofrío (2008; English title, Shiver). A murderous feral child story, that had a great deal of potential, hints of Angela Carter, and was almost a pretty good movie. But it kept stooping to horror-film clichés, including a dumb, tacked-on final scene to remind you it really was a scary movie. Still, worth watching. However, our second film was the direct-to-DVD farce Species III. Now, I hated Species, and I loathed Species II, and I only watched the third film out of a dim, misguided curiosity. It was even worse than the first two. If you can't make alien sex sexy, especially when you have Giger designs to work from, you should just pack it, forget about film making, and get a job flipping burgers or something. Lots of nudity. Lots of very mediocre alien effects. Actresses who delivered their lines with all the conviction of porn stars. Now, I have to watch Species IV, just to see how much worse it can get.
Anyway, I feel pretty much okay today, which leads me back to the exhaustion theory.
After the movies, there was about an hour of WoW. And there was one good moment, when the head of our rp guild ejected someone seconds after he or she or it had joined. Some bozo who asked in guild chat, in which we are only permitted to speak ic, "So what the !@#!*@ does rp mean? lol" Now, this is an rp guild, on an rp server. Our guild master then asked this person, named "whydoilive," why hesheit had signed onto an rp server, before bothering to understand rp. "My buddies told me to come." To which our guild master replied, "Wrong button," and immediately ejected whydoilive from the guild. Very satisfying, that. And, while we're at it, I begin to suspect that "lol" is becoming a new punctuation mark. Increasingly, I see it ending chat messages, whether the line calls for "laughs out loud" or not. In place of a period or exclamation point, there's "lol." I almost begin to believe it's some defense mechanism for an irony-obsessed generation incapable and afraid of taking anything serious. "My cat died lol" "onoes! i left teh baby in teh car like 7 hrs ago lol" Yeah, whatever.
Oh, and I finally bothered to pick up "Professional Master" in skinning.
Speaking on language abuse, tyransitiuon is now an official, full-fledged neologism. Congratulations to stsisyphus for defining it:
tyransitiuon: (noun) An object which steadfastly refuses to be dislodged, moved, or otherwise displaced from its established geographical, geological, or astronomical location, and in fact manipulates events and causality in communal non-consensual time-space as to actively prevent removal or disturbance. Certain esoteric sects and psuedo-scientists place considerable importance upon these rare objects, occasionally manifesting in hysterical and apocalyptic cults. Creation of a tyransitiuon on the subatomic level has been posited as one of the possible applications of supercollider technology.
Okay. Gotta get back to The Red Tree, as the clock is ticking. But, I will remind you to please have a look at the eBay auctions, if you have not yet done so.
Spooky read to me from Let the Right One In. I dozed. And by late in the day, just before dark, I felt quite a bit better. I began to suspect it was only exhaustion, the way I've been pushing myself the last week, the stress, the insomnia. I sat up and tried to clear my head by doing some Tarot work (mostly with the Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess). But I dozed again, and Spooky woke me just before dinner. I felt much, much better. We had a proper Kindernacht, which has been so neglected of late. Hot dogs for dinner, then two movies. The first, a Spanish film directed by Isidro Ortiz, Eskalofrío (2008; English title, Shiver). A murderous feral child story, that had a great deal of potential, hints of Angela Carter, and was almost a pretty good movie. But it kept stooping to horror-film clichés, including a dumb, tacked-on final scene to remind you it really was a scary movie. Still, worth watching. However, our second film was the direct-to-DVD farce Species III. Now, I hated Species, and I loathed Species II, and I only watched the third film out of a dim, misguided curiosity. It was even worse than the first two. If you can't make alien sex sexy, especially when you have Giger designs to work from, you should just pack it, forget about film making, and get a job flipping burgers or something. Lots of nudity. Lots of very mediocre alien effects. Actresses who delivered their lines with all the conviction of porn stars. Now, I have to watch Species IV, just to see how much worse it can get.
Anyway, I feel pretty much okay today, which leads me back to the exhaustion theory.
After the movies, there was about an hour of WoW. And there was one good moment, when the head of our rp guild ejected someone seconds after he or she or it had joined. Some bozo who asked in guild chat, in which we are only permitted to speak ic, "So what the !@#!*@ does rp mean? lol" Now, this is an rp guild, on an rp server. Our guild master then asked this person, named "whydoilive," why hesheit had signed onto an rp server, before bothering to understand rp. "My buddies told me to come." To which our guild master replied, "Wrong button," and immediately ejected whydoilive from the guild. Very satisfying, that. And, while we're at it, I begin to suspect that "lol" is becoming a new punctuation mark. Increasingly, I see it ending chat messages, whether the line calls for "laughs out loud" or not. In place of a period or exclamation point, there's "lol." I almost begin to believe it's some defense mechanism for an irony-obsessed generation incapable and afraid of taking anything serious. "My cat died lol" "onoes! i left teh baby in teh car like 7 hrs ago lol" Yeah, whatever.
Oh, and I finally bothered to pick up "Professional Master" in skinning.
Speaking on language abuse, tyransitiuon is now an official, full-fledged neologism. Congratulations to stsisyphus for defining it:
tyransitiuon: (noun) An object which steadfastly refuses to be dislodged, moved, or otherwise displaced from its established geographical, geological, or astronomical location, and in fact manipulates events and causality in communal non-consensual time-space as to actively prevent removal or disturbance. Certain esoteric sects and psuedo-scientists place considerable importance upon these rare objects, occasionally manifesting in hysterical and apocalyptic cults. Creation of a tyransitiuon on the subatomic level has been posited as one of the possible applications of supercollider technology.
Okay. Gotta get back to The Red Tree, as the clock is ticking. But, I will remind you to please have a look at the eBay auctions, if you have not yet done so.