"At least we now both have a story to tell."
I do adore waking up and immediately discovering that the world is even more angrifying than when I went to sleep. Wait, no. That's not right. I don't find things worse upon waking. I'm not that goddamn naïve. I wake up, look at CNN.com, and get a face full of humanity. Which really puts the fault on me for looking, as humanity cannot be expected not to be angrifying. Like the woman on that Time cover (by her own leave). Attachment fucking "parenting"? Yes, Virginia, humans are the only mammals too stupid to know when to wean.
Or, worse still, the crazy shit black pastors are saying to defend the role they played in getting North Carolina's Amendment 1 passed and to justify their outrage at the President. For example, have a look at this article on the aforementioned CNN: "Is the Black Church Guilty of Spiritual Hypocrisy in Same-Sex Marriage Debate?" (I fixed the capitalization in the headline). The answer is "Fuck, yeah. Are you an idiot?" But the gem in this piece is, I think, Rev. Fred Robinson's (of Charlotte, NC) assertion that "It says in the Bible that homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God. How do you explain that one away?"
Don't explain it away. Fuck 'em. If I have to be someone other than who and what they would have me believe their god made of me (or made me weak enough I might become), if it's all that sick and twisted and sadistic, why would I want to dwell in the house of that lord? Maybe the truest mark of human intellectual evolution is giving our "gods" the middle finger. More and more, I think so. Circle back to XTC and "Dear God." Tell them to fuck off, then stop believing in them.
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I've been getting a decent amount of reading done, though a lot of its been on the technical side. Spooky and I have been finishing up The Two Towers (we'd have been long since done, but it's been a crazy spring). I've read, in Chiappe and Witmer's Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs (University of California Press, 2002), Witmer's "The Debate on Avian Ancestry: Phylogeny, Function, and Fossils," Chiappe et al.'s "The Cretaceous, Short-Armed Alvarezsauridae: Mononykus and Its Kin," Novas and Pol's "Alvarezsaurid Relationships Reconsidered," and Elzanowski's "Archaeopterygidae (Upper Jurassic of Germany)." It's a very good volume, if a little dated. The study of the evolution of birds is progressing so rapidly these days that pretty much any book's bound (hahah) to be out of date by the time it's published. This is how science works.
Anyway, I've also been enjoying a couple of graphic novel adaptation of Lovecraft. I. N. J. Culbard's take on "At the Mountains of Madness" (Sterling, 2010) is wonderful, and I'm equally enamored with Volume 1 of Self Made Hero's Lovecraft Anthology (2011, 2012). Neat stuff.
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have you pre-oredered your copy of Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart? If not, please do. I think I'm going to be sending a copy to Rev. Fred Robinson in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Also, there's the ongoing Alabaster auction. Letter "F" (is for Flammarion!), so don't forget to have a look. Remember, this is a one of a kind auction.
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Friday: Spooky had a migraine, and I suffered from a lack of focus. Sirenia Digest #77 went out in the ayem, and I answered a lot of email. But not much else, writing-wise. I washed some clothes and had another go at organizing my office. Spooky was feeling better by the evening, so we had a good Kindernacht. We watched Troy Nixey's "remake" of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). Nixey's film isn't so much a remake, I'd say, as a masterful reimagining, and vast improvement upon, the original 1973 version (which, ahem, I saw when it was new). A very nice fairy tale inversion, and I highly recommend it (as does Guillermo del Toro, by the way). Right now, you can stream it from Netflix.
Saturday: I took a day off, because the weather had finally begun to warm up (now that we're halfway through May). We wanted to drive to the coast, but wound up at the Old North Burial Ground, instead. Which was nice. Spooky found the grave of an ancestor (on her mother's side). I found names for stories. A mockingbird sang to us, and then we sang to it, and then it sang back to us. Swapping songs with birds. There will be photos from the cemetery in tomorrow's entry. Also, Saturday night we saw the very fine Fringe season finalé (just one season to go!).
Sunday: Yesterday, the entire day was spent reading back over - picking back over - Alabaster: Wolves #5. I read the entire script aloud to Spooky. I'm actually about to do that thing I almost never do. A genuine rewrite. I'm gutting the script. I wasn't well when I wrote it, and it shows, and this series needs the best ending I can write. This script is not the best ending I can give it. So, now that I have it all in my head, and now that I've talked through various alternative takes, today I begin remaking it.
And, fuck, it's 12:52 p.m. Comment! Well, comment if you've read this far. And I doubt many have. I can spend an hour writing a blog entry, or thirty seconds on a tweet. I can spend five minutes reading a blog entry, or fifteen seconds reading a quip on Facebook. It's clear what most people choose. Their loss.
Grateful for Green,
Aunt Beast
Or, worse still, the crazy shit black pastors are saying to defend the role they played in getting North Carolina's Amendment 1 passed and to justify their outrage at the President. For example, have a look at this article on the aforementioned CNN: "Is the Black Church Guilty of Spiritual Hypocrisy in Same-Sex Marriage Debate?" (I fixed the capitalization in the headline). The answer is "Fuck, yeah. Are you an idiot?" But the gem in this piece is, I think, Rev. Fred Robinson's (of Charlotte, NC) assertion that "It says in the Bible that homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God. How do you explain that one away?"
Don't explain it away. Fuck 'em. If I have to be someone other than who and what they would have me believe their god made of me (or made me weak enough I might become), if it's all that sick and twisted and sadistic, why would I want to dwell in the house of that lord? Maybe the truest mark of human intellectual evolution is giving our "gods" the middle finger. More and more, I think so. Circle back to XTC and "Dear God." Tell them to fuck off, then stop believing in them.
---
I've been getting a decent amount of reading done, though a lot of its been on the technical side. Spooky and I have been finishing up The Two Towers (we'd have been long since done, but it's been a crazy spring). I've read, in Chiappe and Witmer's Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs (University of California Press, 2002), Witmer's "The Debate on Avian Ancestry: Phylogeny, Function, and Fossils," Chiappe et al.'s "The Cretaceous, Short-Armed Alvarezsauridae: Mononykus and Its Kin," Novas and Pol's "Alvarezsaurid Relationships Reconsidered," and Elzanowski's "Archaeopterygidae (Upper Jurassic of Germany)." It's a very good volume, if a little dated. The study of the evolution of birds is progressing so rapidly these days that pretty much any book's bound (hahah) to be out of date by the time it's published. This is how science works.
Anyway, I've also been enjoying a couple of graphic novel adaptation of Lovecraft. I. N. J. Culbard's take on "At the Mountains of Madness" (Sterling, 2010) is wonderful, and I'm equally enamored with Volume 1 of Self Made Hero's Lovecraft Anthology (2011, 2012). Neat stuff.
---
have you pre-oredered your copy of Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart? If not, please do. I think I'm going to be sending a copy to Rev. Fred Robinson in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Also, there's the ongoing Alabaster auction. Letter "F" (is for Flammarion!), so don't forget to have a look. Remember, this is a one of a kind auction.
---
Friday: Spooky had a migraine, and I suffered from a lack of focus. Sirenia Digest #77 went out in the ayem, and I answered a lot of email. But not much else, writing-wise. I washed some clothes and had another go at organizing my office. Spooky was feeling better by the evening, so we had a good Kindernacht. We watched Troy Nixey's "remake" of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). Nixey's film isn't so much a remake, I'd say, as a masterful reimagining, and vast improvement upon, the original 1973 version (which, ahem, I saw when it was new). A very nice fairy tale inversion, and I highly recommend it (as does Guillermo del Toro, by the way). Right now, you can stream it from Netflix.
Saturday: I took a day off, because the weather had finally begun to warm up (now that we're halfway through May). We wanted to drive to the coast, but wound up at the Old North Burial Ground, instead. Which was nice. Spooky found the grave of an ancestor (on her mother's side). I found names for stories. A mockingbird sang to us, and then we sang to it, and then it sang back to us. Swapping songs with birds. There will be photos from the cemetery in tomorrow's entry. Also, Saturday night we saw the very fine Fringe season finalé (just one season to go!).
Sunday: Yesterday, the entire day was spent reading back over - picking back over - Alabaster: Wolves #5. I read the entire script aloud to Spooky. I'm actually about to do that thing I almost never do. A genuine rewrite. I'm gutting the script. I wasn't well when I wrote it, and it shows, and this series needs the best ending I can write. This script is not the best ending I can give it. So, now that I have it all in my head, and now that I've talked through various alternative takes, today I begin remaking it.
And, fuck, it's 12:52 p.m. Comment! Well, comment if you've read this far. And I doubt many have. I can spend an hour writing a blog entry, or thirty seconds on a tweet. I can spend five minutes reading a blog entry, or fifteen seconds reading a quip on Facebook. It's clear what most people choose. Their loss.
Grateful for Green,
Aunt Beast