Hey! So, as it turns out...the Atkins (at least in its extremely hard-ass induction phase), because it creates "benign ketosis", can also give you hypoglycemia. Which I found out yesterday, when I sudden went: Gee, why am I so exhausted, shaky, sweaty, light-headed and vaguely nauseous? I was feeling so GOOD! Well, that's why. Have therefore switched over to the South Beach Diet instead, whose induction phase seems positively luxuriant by comparison. Already know this was a good idea, and thus shall it continue.

Meanwhile, I also have to sadly report that this is my second month in a row without anything resembling a period. Not normal. "I have to ask," said Dr Gora, when I told him (he's being creepily reasonable these days, BTW, like he figured out I was 'bout to leave his controllingly opaque ass for a [Indian] girl {ie, the intern down the hall}), "do you think you could be pregnant?" "It'd be a genuine medical miracle," I replied, for reasons that should probably seem obvious if you think about them real hard. So he took blood for hormonal testing, scheduled a check-up and a pap smear, and will be scheduling an ultrasound. My first thoughts go to early-onset menopause, but that's probably because I have no idea when my Mom or grandmother would have gone through menopause, if they hadn't both had their uteruses et al removed in their thirties. Ovarian/uterine cancer trots so happily through my immediate family that I was once convinced if I didn't have a baby by 25, it was game over...and wow, was I wrong there! But perhaps my chances of doing it twice, already pretty slim, are finally drawing to an official close.

From the department of Things Not About My Fucking Body, OTOH: As of this morning, my list of Books Read in 2009 passed #100 (The Jigsaw Man, by Gord Rollo). I'm celebrating by trying to sketch out my latest idea before Saturday, in preparation for a potential death-march towards that aforementioned crazy deadline. This is spurred by the fact that Gary Frank told me he does NaNoWriMo every year whether he has to or not, because no matter how awful the draft he comes up with may be, it's another thing to throw on the pile of stuff he could revise and sell later on. So here's the plan, if all goes well: Spend September coming up with Draft Zero and October coming up with Draft One. If I consider Draft One submittable, I'll take advantage of NightShade Books' current cattle-call for "Romero-esque zombie novels that don't suck"; their definition of "Romero-esque" turns out to just be "not voodoo", which I can certainly do, and I think I've come up with a really neat-o twist on both monsters and monster-slayers. We'll see, obviously...but more than ever (particularly after networking with my peeps at FoF), I'm absolutely determined to apply what I've learned from structuring screenplays to producing something which moves fast and reads well.

One way or the other, this is the truth: I know it can be done, and I know I can do it. Again, no (valid) excuses.

More links—

Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man #3—Arkham After Midnight, Chapter One: Mark of the Mad Hatter.



Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man #3—Arkham After Midnight, Chapter Two: Riddle Me Deadly.



Coming soon, in Chapter Three: Curse of the Clay-Face!

Further selected (fan-)vids here, meanwhile, beginning with Flummery’s “Handlebars”, which manages to make me appreciate David Tennant’s Doctor Who from both his charmingly eccentric and freakin’ scary sides (http://www.imeem.com/flummery/video/qrsaWFB9/flummery_dw_handlebars_tv_video/). For those who like vampires, meanwhile—or vampire-hunting, more to the point—here’s all three Blade movies in one long session of slice, dice, slash and burn (
http://www.imeem.com/people/OKXFT2/video/2NhVSJQ6/balistik_exterminating_son_movies_video/). And this one, frankly, may destroy you—it’s Troy from the POV of somebody who thinks war is anything but cool (http://www.imeem.com/charmax/video/B6f69zic/charmax_troyno_bravery_vidding_movies_video/).

The great part about this last link is that if you click on “profile” in the banner above, it’ll hook you up with all the rest of Charmax’s vids. I’m particularly fond of the one she did for Lea Pool’s movie Lost and Delirious, to the Cliks’ cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River”; not only is it far sexier and far less gruellingly emo, but it rightly focuses on how cool and love-deserving Piper Perabo’s baby-butch character is (even to the point of allowing her a far better ending than the film did). For those who are less interested in slash, there’s a wonderful Deadwood female character exploration built around the song “Bloody Motherfucking Asshole” by Martha Wainright, and the best John Winchester vid I’ve ever seen (“Deus Ibi Est”).

Yeah: First off, that. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I finally decided to get back on the Atkins Diet horse, so today makes it three days thus far without bread, potatoes, pasta, fruit or sweets. And sure, I've fallen down here and there--once per day, usually--but things are already pretty different in terms of anxiety, gut-discomfort and mood. My brain seems to have unwrapped itself from a couple of layers of cotton wool, and I'm getting good ideas, making okay time on some of them, etc.

Now, a (very) brief run-down of what's happened since we last talked--

Friday: Went out to a double birthday for Steve's friends Peter and Chris. Many of Peter's wife Alma's Albanian relatives were there, drinks were drunk, a good time was had (though the seedy feeling I had the next morning after certainly contributed to my trying-Atkins-again call). Got the chance to talk with "normal people" about various subjects, most interestingly what they thought of the new Canadian-made, U.S.-bought series Flashpoint. There'd been an article in the paper the day before to the effect of "gee this looks good and it's nice to see Toronto used as itself, but although they've got good characters/actors, the plots seem a bit cliche--don't we have to do better?"; however, everyone at the party really liked it, and they weren't being paid to think about it one way or the other. This may well be why Flashpoint's already been approved for a Season Two. Personally, I remember exactly the same smack being talked about Without a Trace and Cold Squad the year(s) they started, and thus believe it may yet turn out to be one of those slow-burn success stories--the kind of show where you turn around five, six or ten years later and blurt: "Shit, is (JAG, NCIS, Wanted, The Ghost Whisperer, etc.) still on the air?" Which doesn't sound very flattering, I guess...but I'm watchin' nevertheless, faithfully, every Thursday at 10 PM.

Saturday: Missed our screening for Music & Movement at the Geneva Centre, due to idiocy (we literally stopped short in the middle of the street as I glanced at my watch and yelled: "SHIT!"...but then again, I sort of do recall saying to Steve several times in the preceding week that I expected him to run Cal up there, and he obviously forgot every Goddamn time). Then off to the Festival of Fear, where a wonderful time was had with all the usual (lonesome_crow, marcy_italiano, gsguitar, strange, gordrollo, jack_yoniga, kelpqueen, Richard Gavin, his daughter and wife, amongst others) and unusual (glamberson, Gary Frank) suspects, plus many other people who I apologize in advance for not name-checking or recalling. I bought some DVDs and am working my way through them, talked shop about novel-writing with those who've written novels, scouted out some prospects, was energized by chatting about stuff I love with fellow enthusiasts. A great evening, only made more so by the fact that I didn't drink or break my diet.

On my way back, meanwhile, I walked through the tail-end of that day's Buskerfest, and stumbled by complete accident across what we'd vaguely loitered around trying to find earlier that day (before being defeated by smoke and mugginess): A performance by the breakdance duo Pulp, featuring Gavin Tran and Robert Moraine (of Ikea commercials and So You Think You Can Dance? Season 4 fame). Tran is tiny, quick and athletic, while Moraine (tall, eel-thin, multiply double-jointed) is a genuine freak of nature. Buzzed, I picked up some stuff at Dominion and went home.

Sunday: Strike One--Steve didn't tell me Mom wanted to keep our usual workout appointment. Strike Two--she wanted us at her place for lunch, so a friend could see Cal, but we got caught in a massive downpour and trapped inside a bus shelter. Got to her place, utterly soaked, to discover she'd made gluten-free French Toast and expected me to eat it. I did. On the way home, we (non-accidentally) caught Pulp again, which Steve loved and Cal sort of enjoyed (eventually). Later that night, we watched The Condemned, a rip-off of Battle Royale starring Stone Cold Steve Austin which was actually really smart, twisty and vicious; I don't think I've seen quite so many unrepeantant assholes in one place since Die Hard. Then on to...

Monday: ...which was mainly about running Cal around, preparing for today's Surrey Place IBI assessment and Friday's meeting with his school principal, next week's entry into JK, etc. But I did manage to work out, making me two for four. I also got good news concerning two poems I wrote on Friday ("Tantalus, Reaching Upwards" and "Minotaur"), which ChiZine's interested in, and another project I've been invited to contribute to, which I'll discuss once they say I can. Then Canadian Idol and bed, but not before I got an amazing idea for a challenge which involves producing an entire novel before a certain very close, very tight deadline. More on that later too, maybe.

Tuesday: And so we end up in there here 'n' now. Surrey Place went "well", but I have a strong feeling Cal won't be considered autistic enough to qualify--they've been told to screen for kids who are at the upper end of the spectrum, and while he's many things, he ain't that. ("Maybe we should have lied--told them he has tantrums all the time, bangs his head," Mom suggested. "Well, he was right in the room with us," I said. "I think they might've caught on.") Which means, I suppose, that we're going to be paying for truncated IBI and stumping for JK to hammer at prompting him socially for quite some time to come. Ah well. Now's as good a time as any to absorb that information (ie, while I'm feeling better).

...more later, perhaps. Ta, all.;)

Two great vids by astolat, accessible through her entry here (http://astolat.livejournal.com/179526.html#cutid1). “Mandara” is an attempt to use Lynch’s “beautiful disaster”’s incredible design sense to retell the actual story of Dune, while “Black Black Heart”--co-created with melymbrosia--uses images from the Christopher Eccleston (as Vindice)/Eddie Izzard (as Lussurioso) version of The Revenger’s Tragedy, which I really do have to see, especially now. Traces their relationship, mainly, but also manages to hook in most of the narrative’s other elements as well...

First song by Vas. Second, of course, by David Usher (Canadian!).

Blanket thanks to everyone who left comments here yesterday. I’ll think hard about the therapy option, though I’m really not sure drugs are the right way to go for me—I took a brief course of antidepressants some years ago, after a bad break-up, and was taken aback by the way that they completely turned off my capacity to enjoy things like writing and/or sex. Yes, it was probably good to get “stable”, but I suddenly couldn’t express myself at all (or was so comfortably numb, maybe, that I didn’t see the point of doing so). And given that being able to tell stories is pretty much the only thing in this life that’s fully mine…um, no. We’ll find another way.

Anyhow. Woke up this morning feeling like I’d been thrown down and kicked, that I’d been grinding my teeth so hard in my sleep that I’d scraped my lower left-hand back gum raw, etc. Got Cal off to Daycare nonetheless. He seems in good spirits. None of these physical ailments is exactly surprising, since I spent much of last night in the grip of violent diarrhea and shoulder-spasms—but I did enjoy finally catching up with David Ayer’s Street Kings while waiting to get tired enough to go to sleep, which almost made up for the whole thing.

Adapted from a legendary James Ellroy screenplay—The Night Watchman, which I actually bought and read, back in the day—this is far less L.A. Confidential than Blood on the Moon (first book in an early Ellroy trilogy, later made into a crude but fascinatingly venal film called Cop, which stars James Woods), and suffers more than a bit by comparison with stuff like The Shield (which would probably admit to yoinking a lot of Ellroy’s philosophy/moves/storytelling devices, yet always gets a lot longer than two hours to develop the greyer areas of the equation). Keanu Reeves. looking well-travelled, is used to good effect as the main character, LAPD Detective Tom Ludlow, a torpedo who exists to subvert due process. He’s pretty much Bud White updated—good at only two things (finding and killing those he considers bad guys, with emphasis on the latter part), joylessly working his addiction like a nine-to-five, a department-sanctioned hitman whose boss/mentor/Daddy figure Captain Wander (Forrest Whittaker) calls him “the tip of the spear”.

In Tom’s world—a very To Live and Die in L.A. fever-dream of sunglasses, dust, somnambulist nightscapes, Infernal sunrises and –sets—all relationships are strictly functional. His “girlfriend” is the local EMT who fixes him up whenever he gets shot (ER visits as foreplay), while everybody else in his unit mainly exists to clean up after Hero Cop Tom, and resents it. A bleak glamor does seem to attend him, eventually leading a fresh young Detective (Chris Evans) assigned to investigate the “robbery-in-progress” execution of Tom’s ex-partner to well and truly Dark Side himself, but the details of his grind are both mundane and awful; Tom wakes each day with a gun already in hand, pukes in the toilet, then reloads and grabs a bunch of airplane vodka bottles at the corner store, which he chugs on the way to the massacre du jour. The two key phrases in his vocabulary are “exigent circumstances” and “first on the scene”, and you hear them a lot during the film’s first half-hour—which does eventually pay off, albeit a little further down the line.

So: The ex-partner, a reborn former racist disgusted by Tom’s profiling-heavy methodology, has been snitching Tom out to IA Captain Briggs (Hugh Laurie, doing one half of Ed Exley from White Jazz, while Whittaker does the other); Tom starts stalking him, witnesses/is complicit in his murder, gets reassigned to taking police brutality complaints and mounts his own after-hours campaign to avenge the guy who supposedly wanted him bounced in the first place. It’s typically perverse “logic” on Tom’s part, and though figuring out what’s really going on isn’t exactly a brain-teaser—it probably only takes Tom a while to crack it because he’s A) unused to thinking beyond his next bullet and B) so fucking drunk all the time—the “fun” lies in watching things spin out (of control, heading downwards, like an express elevator to Hell). Final verdict: For all that people roundly shat on this one in the theatres (surprise, surprise), it’s a nasty little joyride full of bad procedure, smack-talking, macho theatrics and neo-noir snap which probably plays far more efficiently shrunk down to TV size anyways; there’s a reason we haven’t really seen this sort of thing much onscreen since HBO took off, buddies. But there ya go.

“Whatever happened to just locking up the bad guys?” “We’re all bad, Tom.” Word!

So...I guess I should probably mention that I'm going to be "at" the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear (for one panel). It's the "Literary Horror Round-table", and it's at 5:00 PM on Saturday the 23rd in Room #713B. I'll bring along copies of everything I've currently got to bring along. See you there, maybe.

Meanwhile, if I sound a bit depressed, it's frankly because I am. Though I'm finally, officially over the last of the seeg, I still haven't been able to write much of anything except bits and pieces of poetry (which I don't think I'll be posting here anymore, for professional reasons), while August is A) almost over and B) filling up fast. I've also just learned that Cal does have yeast, so we'll have to further restrict his diet in ways which control Candida--this necessitates adding a whole lot of various new bullshit to an already-difficult routine, plus having to soon go up to back o' beyond to spend money we don't have on supplements and drugs. On the one hand, the IBI does seem to be helping somewhat, but on the other, it's exacerbating the same behaviors we're trying to modify to a virtual fever-pitch; Jesus God, if I ever meet the people who composed the Little Einsteins theme, I'm going to punch them right in the face. And whatever: I'm fat, anhedonic and tired, boo fucking hoo, poor me. Much as I know the immediacy of what I'm feeling right now is most probably hormonal, it's pretty exhausting nonetheless.

What it all boils down to is that (not-so-)suddenly, I find myself permanently trapped in a jobless, anticreative, time-eating role as chief enabler and handler to a child whose future, personal charm aside, often seems rather grim. Mom tells me not to project, and I nod, smiling politely; I constantly strive to be less selfish, less self-obsessed. To let go of the fact that I don't get to shower most of the time, that my whole life is about an endless roundelay of quotidian chores done half-assedly at best, that I can't concentrate enough to enjoy things which might distract me from the rest of this crap. That I never see friends, that I know damn well I'm really boring to be with, and that if I tell people what I'm actually thinking, they'll (quite rightly) avoid me.

And: It makes me want to get on a treadmill and run 'til I puke. It makes me want to drink. It makes me want to walk out the door one afternoon while Cal's sleeping, and never come back. Etcetera.

Not that I'm going to do any of the above, obviously...

So. Feel free to ignore; I both expect nobody to actually care about this boil I seem periodically driven to lance here in semi-public, and genuinely believe nobody should care. Like I said to Steve the other night, I really have no excuse--Hell, Cal'll be Autistic the rest of his life, no matter how I choose to deal with it (or not). In the final analysis, no one has any control over anything I do but me. Everything else is just equally boring bullshit.

Recently, ChiZine Publications released a collection of stories by the intensely talented Bob Boyczuk, another of my Canuck horror scene pals. And while I'm sad to admit that I haven't actually read most of its contents, I will say that it contains both "Tabula Rasa" and "Gaytown", Bob's contributions to Queer Fear and Queer Fear II, which I can talk about: Each is a spooky, memorable, deceptively "simple" piece, built around scenarios which are truly original and genuinely scary. Bob has a real gift for inhabiting, rather than adopting, the outsider perspective; his work is about people--people like you, like me--the sort of people you wouldn't necessarily want to be, yet may well end up fearing you already are. And apparently, copies of the book's 100-strong limited first run are still available to order from Horror Mall, here (https://www.horror-mall.com/HORROR-STORY-AND-OTHER-HORROR-STORIES-by-Robert-Boyczuk-p-18262.html), for the low, low price of $50.00 a piece. So if you're looking for an Unbirthday present that'll astound others with your appreciation for the (hopefully) soon-to-no-longer-be esoteric, die-hard fans of good writing and creepy creepness, then shop no further...

In the department of considerably less welcome news, I found out that because I got a settlement package, the Ontario government has decided they're not going to honor my UI claim until November. Which is ridiculous on a million different levels--if I had to actually live off that settlement, I'd be out on the street by now. But there you go.

After yesterday's big snorefest (briefly interrupted by a trip 'round Yonge/Dundas way, where I picked up a couple of new paperbacks and tried unsuccessfully to track down the DVD copy of The Stand miniseries I know I saw in HMV just last week), today was a frenzy of activity: Chores, agincourtgirl coming over to babysit Cal, my Mom's SummerWorks play, a drive-by at green_trilobite's birthday, dinner with Mom, Mad Men. The play in question was The Red Devil, about an Albanian family trying to make it to Canada with the help of fake Italian passports; we went with Steve's friend Peter and his wife Alma (herself Albanian), plus several of Alma's relatives. The Albanian community has been very supportive in general, and Mom was amazed to discover quite a few repeat viewers in today's audience, including one woman who'd seen it three times over its entire week-long run.

For my part, I'm just glad it's over, since she's been badgering me about it for what seems like a month--if I never have that damn conversation about did Steve call Peter? Did Peter get the tickets? You know it's the last show, right? You know it's going to be hard to buy tickets at the door if Steve doesn't call Peter and Peter doesn't order the tickets online, right? again, I'll die a happy woman. And yes, it was good, she was good, holy shit...but I was metal-mouthed and exhausted from the antibiotics, and apparently didn't ever produce the right sort of effusive praise/support that she must have wanted. We also had to play the "are you mad? You seem mad" "no, you seem mad" game, which is never particularly useful or amusing.

In other news, I finally got a call from TPAS, the Toronto Partnership for Autism Services. These are the people through which you arrange legitimate IBI sessions (people Lisanne, our IBI therapist, used to work for), and though I'd been telling people I thought I was on their waiting list, I had no real proof of that assumption. Well, turns out, I've been on the waiting list since October 2004, and my wait is finally over; this means that we're almost throug the usual year lag between registry and services, too, which means Cal (once assessed) will go to the head of the line. Eeeexcellent.

Finally, one of Mom's PAL acquaintances asked permission to take pictures of Cal and do a little essay on him, which she posted at flickr.com. I hesitate to link to it, for obvious reasons, but I will say that the pictures are beautiful and her sentiments seem heartfelt. It's a bit odd to read other people's comments, though; you want to take them aside and assure them that though, yes, he's certainly a very cute guy with a very sweet soul, he's not necessarily this silent, mopey little "angel" muddling along in a stew of "interior turmoil"--I've lived with him long enough to know he's also chock-full of mischief, liveliness, humor and the usual rough-and-tumble contrariness that all four-year-old boys seem to have. He just expresses it in startlingly different ways.

Okay, anyhow. It's late, my own interior turmoil is getting to me, and I'm still not really up to writing more than this. Tomorrow I'm going to do some hard thinking about my next project(s), but tonight, I just want to sleep.

Hi, all. Perhaps you’ve wondered just what the Hell was going on with me, so here’s the low-down: By Friday, I was still feeling pretty crappy—sweats, hacking cough, phlegm, insomnia. Spurred by my Mom, I ended up going to the doctor, and he prescribed some antibiotics; “Three weeks is enough,” he said. I concur. Started them that night, and while I do feel better overall, I’m having side effects involving my bowels, my back, and am generally exhausted. Which is why I’ve spent much of today and yesterday watching TV off and on, while re-reading The Stand…perhaps not the best choice considering how I feel, but it’s somehow cheering me up nonetheless.

So that’s why this entry’s going to be yet another cornucopia of links. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel up to some genuine concentrated thought, and maybe not. I guess we’ll see.

Okay. First off, a crazy “1920s” pastiche culled from various silent films: Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man, which sensibly rifles The Man Who Laughs for its Joker. In two parts.





(I think GO! AND BE DECENT! is, for the moment, my favorite injunction of all time.;))

Next, some more TDK-related fanfiction (in lieu of any of my own)—“See You in the Funny Papers”, more Joker/Scarecrow, here (http://mercuriazs.livejournal.com/124250.html). Sequel, “Bedbugs and Boomboxes”, here (http://mercuriazs.livejournal.com/125041.html). (Aaaah, Heath and Cillian; what a pretty, albeit somewhat morbid, picture you make together!)

And just because I’m enjoying being able to embed shit in my LJ, I leave you with this. Sleep tight, kiddies! Don’t let Captain Trips or the Walkin Dude bite!

Really wonderful interview by Queenie Tirone--with flattering yet no longer entirely accurate picture--now up at FearZone, here: (http://www.fearzone.com/blog/gemma-files).

And...now I have pinkeye, again. In the other eye! Jesus Christ on a fucking cross!

(I also have hideous stuff going on with my digestive system, but that--unfortunately--is not so new/different. As people who frequent this place already know.)

Exhausted. Just SO tired. Tired of waking up tired. Sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I'm going back to bed.

A fine use of Voltaire's "When You're Evil", here:



And yes, believe it or not, I'm eventually going to do a "real" post. But I'm still sick, still tired, and this cheers me up.

Went to see The Dark Knight again, and still hangin’ at knivesandlint. So—

First off the top, some Joker/Batman (though Batman is barely participating): "Showtunes" by bathshua, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/170237.html#cutid1). It's table-whappin' good!

On the het side, meanwhile, some wonderful takes on this oldest of ‘ships, as transplanted to the Nolanverse: “And Lifts the Latch” by randombattlecry, Joker/Harley Quinn, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/58997.html). Sequel: “And Wears the Crown” (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/77472.html). Threequel: “And Takes the Fall” (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4410788/3/). Plus: “Forty-Seven” by jeannette, more Harley/Joker, here (http://community.livejournal.com/rapacityinblue/13531.html#cutid1).

Another—creepily apt—version of Mistah J’s multiple=choice past: “Call Sign” by arjuna74, the Joker gen(esis), here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/122596.html?thread=915172).

Straight-up (ha!) gen to cleanse the palate: “Glorious Feeling” by teithiwr, Batman and Joker, here (http://teithiwr.livejournal.com/51480.html). Also: “Paint a Rainbow”, Joker POV, here (http://teithiwr.livejournal.com/50826.html). Plus the view from street-level: “Perspective” by talksick42, OOCs plus Joker gen, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/152749.html#cutid1). Sequel: (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/157547.html#cutid1). And an unlucky journalist trips across Batman's identity without quite knowing it in "The Rot Runs Deep" by chaiteelatte, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/166722.html#cutid1).

And now for something (not completely) different—villain slash: “You Had Me At Hello” by mercuriazs, Joker/Scarecrow, here (http://mercuriazs.livejournal.com/124044.html), and “Toxic” by bathshua, Joker/Two-Face, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/147359.html#cutid1).

Plus, finally, more of my favorite series thus far: “Cottage Industry” by lisechen and floweringjudas, the latest Joker and Catwoman gen, here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/133293.html#cutid1).

Redacted 'cause I just placed it with Not One of Us. Thanks for the comments!;)

Apparently, the "worst of the sickness" has not, in fact, passed me over; today I'm horking up chunks every five seconds, my voice is unrecognizable, and I missed a Goddamn appointment with Cal's speech and language social worker because (get this) I was ferrying Cal to Daycare at the time. Choice. Yet another thing to not tell Mom about.

Anyhow. Last night was Part One of the So You Think You Can Dance finale--mainly good, though the Tyce D'Orio girl-on-girl routine blew hugely. Perhaps giving him this was some sort of reaction to Wade Robson's great though shat-on, Yin-heavy "foxes" routine of last year; what's odd, however, is that I recall Tyce choreographing an equally flat routine for Donyelle and Heidi the year before that, so...But seriously, folks: When you have two capable, athletic dancers who happen to be male, you give them the Russian dance-off--but when you have two capable, athletic dancers who happen to be female, you make them pirouette, pose, jetee around the stage while carrying parasols, and dress like princesses? With no real narrative whatsoever attached? ("Okay, just remember--it's very, very important that you catch that trolley.") Man, fuck off. What I wouldn't have given to see what Sonya would have done for Katee and Courtney; that would have rocked the house. As it is, it's like they're trying to stack things in Joshua's favor, which I don't suppose I completely mind...it's just disappointing, and very obvious. Not qualities you particularly want, at the end of one of the best seasons ever.

Okay. God, I'm tired. Going to eat some breakfast, then see if I can write a bit.

Well. Not as bad as I have been, but not exactly good, either. As occasionally happens, Steve apparently looked over at me asleep and thought oh, she must really NEED it, so didn’t see fit to wake me in time to get Cal up and out of here. Which is why Cal’s still at home and I won’t able to get any sort of respite today—by the time Steve was already out the door and I was halfway organized, there was just no Goddamn point in going over to Daycare at all. This is, I suppose, sweet of him, but it’s the sort of BS “thoughtfulness” I could well do without.

So here I am, sweating myself to death in this oven of an apartment, with an affectionate yet whacky little boy running wild, constantly making up to his own reflection and blundering around like a bug in a jar. I have a bunch of odds-n-sods errands to run, and I’d like—love!—to get at least a little work done before I have to go to BodyCombat tonight. Head’s still stuffy, the cough’s still here (with all its attendant glories), but I do feel more awake than I have in about a week. Pinkeye still fairly rancid. Listening to my (two!) Joker mixes, and plotting strategy. This is the state of the me.

Over Simcoe Day, Steve, Cal and I went up to the Barringers’, which meant I was able to go out into their garage and repossess a bunch of my older treatments and half-screenplays. As ever, I rediscovered at least one I had completely forgotten about—Pandaemonium, written sometime around the beginning of my Ryerson tour of duty (1986?), which conflates my love of Angel Heart and Hellblazer comics with my love of Full Metal Jacket—as well as the skeleton of Lost Face, and…hmmm. Going by stuff I’ve found on the ‘Net, both these projects are actually fairly salvagable; maybe not as “real” horror, but certainly as the type of lurid cartoon craziness which does really well for Loonie Dreadfuls, and might do really well for serialized nu-Pulp of any sort.

I wonder what it was which made me abandon them, in the first place…probably some misplaced idea that I was made for bigger and “better” things. But they’re just lying there, all ready and willing to be picked back up—free content, lines just waiting to be colored in; once I’m done with that, all I’d need would be a good delivery system. And yeah, I guess I might have a little trouble with branding, or re-branding…but then again, so Goddamn few people know me at all, for anything, I’m not all that sure it matters.

Final diagnosis: Now that the Montage piece is filed and the worst of my sickness is past, I just (as ever) need to “be up, and DOING.” And that’s the facts, Jack.

“Breaking Point”, by polskipiwo—Joker/Gordon—here (http://community.livejournal.com/knivesandlint/127958.html?#cutid1).

“Rapaciously”, by salmon_pink—Bruce/Joker—here (http://salmon-pink.livejournal.com/59260.html).

“Chaos Theory”, aliana_ikassa—Batman/Joker, sequel to “Hercules is Fallen”—here (http://aliana-iskassa.livejournal.com/36865.html). Plus: "Masochism", also ostensibly Joker/Batman, though from Joker's POV and with Batman, uh...absent, here (http://aliana-iskassa.livejournal.com/36283.html#cutid1).

N.B.: Why, no—apparently, there is no slash fic involving Nolan’s Joker which isn’t (at least a little) non-con. Why do you ask?;)

At last! The epic is done like dinner!

LITTLE RED ANTS ON A HILL, Part Three of Three
By Gemma Files
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma
Pairing: Charlie Prince/Ben Wade
Rating: Pre-slash, PG-13
Summary: Charlie helps Ben pull the long con, with some fallout.

( Read more... )

I went into the bathroom, and there was a bird in there. Granted, as I've said, our window-screen fell to pieces some time back, and we've had it open almost constantly, letting in lots of flies...but this was a full-bore bird, and better yet, it was some sort of domesticated canary which must have gotten out of its cage/apartment. With no idea who it might belong to, all we could do was try to get hold of it and move it back outside, which took twenty minutes--I finally had to squirt it with a sprayer, then drive it into a cranny behind some file-boxes and grab it from above. It smelled musky.

Now I'm wondering if I should clean everything, or what. And whether or not we should get rid of all the crap we have on top of various bookshelves, since it provides such an excellent series of perches...