So I probably won't be posting too much in the following days, weeks, months, whatever.. I've got some decisions to make. I've been looking at these graduate programs and even the program overviews are confusing and intimidating the hell out of me. See, I'm the kind of person who likes to fully comprehend a thing before I take it on, and I don't know what it means to defend a dissertation or understand what half of these requirements would entail -- and even though these things wouldn't take place for at least another three or four years, that length of time itself strikes me as utterly unfathomable.

Also, I'm seriously considering the fact that I'll never get to do the things I want to do most in my life, so should I just give up on those and aim for a career I could handle and maybe enjoy to a point but would never really love? Or should I just go ahead and exit stage left now, because why suffer through a life in which I'd be perpetually just going through the motions? Nothing really seems worth it anymore. Hell, it never did.

Anyway, before I disappear for however long and possibly longer, here's a survey/quiz thing that Mickey posted and that I said I'd answer. Here goes: (more...)

Today, I woke up to a nosebleed. I opened my eyes, rolled over in bed, raised a tissue to my nose and blew -- I knew as soon as I felt the tissue's sudden soddenness -- and pulled it away to see a bright crimson splash on the white paper. And the blood kept coming.

Now, where other people immediately plug their noses and tilt their heads back, my solution involves blowing my nose tirelessly and continuously until, finally, I blow out a few fat black blood clots -- and the nosebleed ceases. So I spent the next twenty minutes doing that. My nose drips bloods no more, though two small wastebaskets are filled with tissues and napkins red (now maroon) with the sticky stuff. Perhaps later I'll feel weak.

I've also been sleeping with my light on this week -- because when I am ill my mind seems to conjure fantastically strange images in the dark. Not terrifying things, but unsettling things, or things that strike me as being weird in an unenjoyable way -- strange and complex games involving the alignment of the pattern on the sheets and that if I cannot get the wrinkles to match the design just so I will not be able to free myself from the bed, or things requiring me to trace my surroundings with my fingertips in order to find a door to push through and escape from my sickbed. All having to do with escape and games -- all having to do with confinement -- all having to do with sight. All more or less doomed to fail because they must be played in the dark.

Ja ne.

Seriously, why do I bother? I feel so frustrated right now. And I'm sick. 🙁

Tell me something good, hmm?

Okay, apparently I've never paid much attention to these things before -- did everyone else know that these awards are based on sales??? I just watched them present an award for the bestselling male artist in some category, as if that isn't its own reward! Seriously, fuck that -- they should give an award to the artists who didn't sell shit, so then maybe those guys could get a little exposure and recognition too. Fucking popularity contest.

Oh, and who knows more about blood, sweat, and tears than the Osbournes? Probably some starving old musician playing NYC's subway terminals who's devoted his life to his craft and never came close to achieving the fame your husband garnered from biting the heads off of live bats on stage. Fuck you too, Sharon.

(By the way, for those of you experiencing a bit of deja vu, I did just post this mini-rant on Scary-Crayon's blog, so you're not going crazy. Nor am I going crazy, 'cause it was intentional. And if you haven't been over there lately, you might want to check this latest piece -- especially if you're a comics fan!)

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.