Yesterday I finished reading Pilgrim by Timothy Findley. Interesting book -- I'm not sure what else to say about it. I could summarize it, but I believe I've done that previously, and in any case the linked review does that well enough. It is odd and rare, though, that the main character's ultimate triumph -- especially in a book in which psychiatry plays so significant a role -- is not that he is "cured" of his affliction (if we call it an affliction -- there is, naturally, given his institutionalization, the suggestion that perhaps Pilgrim was not truly an immortal), but that his final suicide attempt is, well, final and successful. Make of that what you will.

This evening I finished writing yet another short story that -- save the acquaintances who ask to see it and the editors who reject it -- no one will ever read. It is approximately 2,280 words and is titled "The Lion That Wore Glasses". It is rather strange.

All for now. Ja ne, minna-san.

There's still more to be said about my latest exploits in NYC, but I'm still not quite up to discussing the particulars -- so for the time being I'm simply going to paste from an e-mail I wrote that gets the message across (though it's fairly similar to what I wrote in the previous entry):

So right now I'm trying to hash out my options and my next move -- I want to be somewhere where I could be happy, or something resembling it. I'm not happy here, but also I don't think I could be in a place where everyone talks fast to try to confuse you so they can swindle you out of your money or your place in line or whatever. I want to be someplace where people don't scowl at you when you smile and say, "Hello," as you pass -- someplace where people are moving slowly enough that you can actually pause to do that without being bowled over by the person sprinting along the sidewalk at your back. Someplace where the politicians don't strike me as obviously being gangsters. (But maybe that's just their accents.) Someplace where the concept of "speed dating" seems as ludicrous to everyone else as it does to me. I held the door open at Port Authority for the person behind me and was stuck standing there while fourteen people pushed through without a second glance in my direction.

I did finally get my hands on a copy of the Cutie Honey live action film -- the 2-disc Collector's Edition, no less! -- so the trip wasn't a total drag. Eriko Sato is bloody hot, dontchaknow. (more...)

So here's that other fiction piece I mentioned -- a dialogue of sorts that has been more/less repeated multiple times in the course of my life. People say they'll come back, that we'll remain in contact, but no one ever does. Why would they? I am not welcome or pleasant company. Anyway, enjoy...

Incapability and Inevitability
(perhaps to spawn The Catacombs?)

"I would tell you that I love you," he snorted, "if I were capable of the emotion."

"What are you saying? You are capable of anything that you believe you are capable of," she told him.

"Then I do not believe that I am capable of 'love.'" (more...)

Hi everyone! Hope you had a good and relaxing and productive 4th of July weekend. Mine wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped (alas!), but, as I noted previously, I did get this blog nice 'n' tweaked and the Scary-Crayon blog online (finally!), so that's something. Naturally, I often feel like a writer or an editor or a graphic artist or, heaven forbid, a blogger, when working on my various 'net projects, but this past weekend I actually felt like a webmaster again. 'Twas nice. Oh, and in case you didn't see it (it was mentioned in the SC blog!), I put up a July 4th Foodstuffs article last night. If you've got comments about it, voice 'em over there. 🙂

Anyway, to make up for the more/less technical posts of the past few days, here's something I stumbled across in my old folders over the weekend and am quite frankly a little embarrassed to share (but not entirely so; otherwise I wouldn't do it) -- a short tribute of sorts that I wrote for a crush of mine way back in summer 2001. I have, naturally, removed the woman's name from the piece (though the few readers who've known me for a while will probably remember with ease, given the way I gushed about her back then), and the central portion of the piece, which actually contained a legitimate dictionary definition of her name (copied from The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus; in the original document, the reprinted text, which I added, constituted the final "listing" under the definition), has been considerably shortened so as not to give the name away. And regarding the entry categories -- it's not fiction, per se, but since I don't have a prose category I went ahead and ticked it. And I definitely think it's worthy of being called art; at the very least, it gives you a glimpse of the Wes in his more romantic days. And... oh hell, just read it. (more...)

So apparently, as of May 10, Flesh & Blood is closed to submissions until September. D'oh! Need to find somewhere else to send this story in the meantime -- I'm thinking Cemetery Dance could work. We'll see.

Speaking of writing, I was browsing my old directories and came across some old stories I wrote in school, one of which more/less signifies the beginning of a lesbian relationship between two teenage girls. (Nothing really happens, but there's subtle flirtation and at the end of the story the two girls ditch school together to go eat ice cream.) I was just thinking yesterday that maybe Ellen DeGeneres should've kept her mouth shut about the supposed sexual abuse from her father, given the various arguments that homosexuals are "created" through such traumatic childhood experiences as, surprise!, sexual abuse, and that this constitutes proof that same-sex attraction is unnatural and caused by icky things. But oddly enough, in this story, I wrote sexual abuse into the background of one of the girls. I don't know why I did that. Weird. (more...)