A friend recently said that the more tired I am, the smarter I am. I must be a freaking genius right now, as I’ve been up for 32 hours. I just have the energy and time for a sum up…

-In movie news, the new version of BLACK DAYS (directed by my good friend Michael Urnikis) is showing at the Gene Siskel Film Center tomorrow. Mike is very excited about this newly edited and mastered version, and stoked that two execs from Miramax are going to see it. Afterwards we party.

-In other movie news, Nick, Rich, Brittany, and I will be extras, on Monday, for a new Vince Vaughn movie. We get to (along with many others) play Cubs fans at Wrigley Stadium (and getting paid to sit in the stands).

-My religious grandmother pulled me aside to express her concerns about the “dark stuff” I write about and that she’s worried I’m delving into “the occult.” I tried to explain that I write fiction. I couldn’t get through. I tried to explain bleak settings make themes like hope all the more precious. I couldn’t get through. She said she thinks I’m very talented from the little of my stuff she has read and that I could use my “gift” to really touch people. I tried to explain that, this was the plan. I couldn’t get through. 😦

-The money is in for my new stage sword. Nick and I await our Rapiers so that we can practice again and hopefully not loose the training that we got a few weeks ago. We did get a VHS tape of the Unarmed and Sword fighting scenes we performed.

-I have till Thursday to write the expanded synopsis and first chapter (having advanced to the second round) for a novel contest I entered a while back. I get past this round and I get a thousand bucks and a chance to write the whole thing. I could use the money and the credentials…so I think I’ll just go ahead and win this fucker.

-Finally…Josh is out of money and out of time. Limited resources and stuff to do come Summer’s end. Just a warning…I might not be available all that often, so if I can’t make an event or another, it’s nothing personal 😉

Well…early to bed, early to rise. No…don’t go to bed the night before and, if the thoughts quite down in your head, early to bed tonight, and early to rise in the morning (and marveling over how bright everything is).

Quick announcement deal:

BLACK DAYS is having another showing at the Gene Siskel theater in Chicago. It’s this Saturday in the morning. There will be some folks from Disney/Miramax there to check it out and afterwords, a cast/crew/friends party. It looks like I can get as many people in, as want to go, so long as I and they show up early (between 10-10:30am). So…if anyone has any interest, let me know asap.

My life is rated NC-17.
What is your life rated?

I went to see Batman Begins last night. Very good!

I started running again today. Now I’m juggling a mess of things that I’m very behind on from being sick last week (I’m pretty much better now…except for a cough that got violent enough to let me know that my rib injury during stage combat class did not, in fact, heal…maybe I should get that checked out).

In the hectic haze of it all I still find dark delight in the knowledge that I am a key demographic for a particular…flavor of laundry detergent. CHEER: DARK FORMULA (sounds like a movie title) – designed to keep your blacks blacker and your darks darker. Finally, the laundry detergent made for me!

I’d love to have a similar lable on my books in the future: Joshua Alan Doetsch fiction – designed to make dark darker…

My laundry is going now. I’ve never been excited about my laundry…but just knowing that my cloths are swirling in that black ichor, getting blacker, churning and cleansing darkly…

WORD OF THE DAY

ichor n : a thin watery or blood-tinged discharge also : an ethereal fluid taking the place of blood in the veins of the ancient Greek gods

“It is over,” proclaimed the square jawed hero to the now rescued damsel, as he stood over the twisted corpse of the vampire fiend, stake sticking from its bleeding chest; but as the black ichor bled from the wound and pored and pored and pooled, as it dribble towards the hero and the damsel with preternatural patience, as it seeped with dread purpose, as it flowed with malevolent intelligence, as it reached up with dark tendrils, the hero realized, with a gasp, that there would be no happily-ever-after.

Ok…so tonight I’m emptying out my digital secretary (my little audio recorder that, lately, has allowed me to get writing done even if I can’t stop to get a pen and paper). There are bits and pieces of ideas…some belong to larger projects…others are free floating random thoughts, looking for a project to attach themselves to. Here’s one of the later…

Scene: Two friends, a female and a male, are walking through a park when they see someone eating a banana.

Female (with a mischievous grin): That’s how I learned to give oral sex!
Male (looking confused, maybe worried): . . . . . . . . . how did you learn to eat a banana?

They let IT out today. That is all…

I was just about to go to bed when a story that’s been kind of unfinished and in pieces for years now came into my head and I realized the form it needs to be in (or lack of form really). It’s about greed and delusions and Key West and ghost tours and get-rich-schemes and absinthe and hallucinations. It purposefully breaks a few literary and grammar rules and will (whenever I get around to finishing it…maybe in the Fall) be sort of stream of conscious…sort of not. It does start with these two sentences:

There was no moon the night we dug up Avery Mortom. And beers were a buck-fifty a bottle.

I’m ready to be done with this cold or bug or whatever. It’s kept me zonked out for a week. Today, in the car, I sang along to my music, despite my throat not being ready. I sang along until I tasted acid and it felt good, even in the acid burn. I mean, a whole week of not being able to sing, by myself, in my car…on top of feeling shitty. Despite the burn, I think my sickness will be gone when I wake up next…save, perhaps, a little mucus love note from an infection that moved on. Sometimes it’s healthy to ignore your body’s imagined limitations.

Living healthy can kill ya sometimes…

Ugh!

Still getting over this bug.

Throat feels a little less hellish. I sound a little less like the creature from the Black Lagoon (if he smoked since childhood and habitually chased razor blades with shot glasses of battery acid)…my apologies to anyone who’s tried having a phone conversation with me this week.

On the good news – I lost four pounds today…of mucus.

I’m giving my body one more day before I jump to extreme measures…I’ve gotta finish unpacking, gotta start writing.

Today, I saw a very large deer wander through my backyard. Yesterday, a very large snapping turtle scuttled out of the woods and into the yard, craning its neck like ET. That’s why I like where I live (at least, for the few months that I’m not at school or elsewhere) in the northwest burbs. I can watch prodigiously large mammals and reptiles in the yard. Twenty minutes away, and I’m in commercially congested burbs (Sears Tower in distant view on a clear day). Forty minutes away, and I’m in the city proper. Twenty-Five minutes another way, and I’m at Six Flags. Fifteen minutes, yet another way, and I’m at the only quaking bog in Illinois, with its floating islands of sphagnum moss, dark-acidic water, and carnivorous plants (the idea that a plant up and decided to eat animals just sounds deliciously wicked to me).

That’s where I like to go to run. It’s also where I keep one of my muses (I like to write different sorts of stories with different sorts of voices…and thus I have a very highly fickle fidelity towards my muses). Her hair falls in mossy tendrils – her tongue leaves syrupy-sweet bayou rhythms, equal parts blues and reptile croons – her breath breeds ghost stories of mummified bog bodies – her eyes are pools of darkly reflective water, the color of strong tea, darker than amber.

Oh man…

You know when you go through an extended period of punishing your body – busy and little sleep – and then you get through the ordeal (hopefully smiling) and then, it’s as though your immune system’s foreman blows the whistle and says, “OK gang, closing time!”

Yeah…

I’m feverish and everything hurts (more so than the usual combat class pains).

But I’m happy.

I’m wearing my nifty T-Shirt all the classmates had made. We chose the slogan that our teacher used the most: POWER OF THE PELVIS. Yeah…it really gets used in every aspect of the fights (especially sword fighting…I’m too sick and tired to list off the phallic jokes here…so insert your own…oh…there was a joke right there…yeah…). The pelvis, as it turns out, gets used in arenas other than combat as well…so why not unlock its power? 😉

In really fun and happy news, my good friend Mike has a second showing of his indi film BLACK DAYS, which my brother, sister, and I worked on. It’s showing in Chicago, at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Saturday June 25th, at 11:45 am. I need to make my guest reservations. Mike has re-mastered the movie since it’s original showing and, AND, two execs from LA are coming out to view the film.

On a related topic, I now have a listing on the INTERNET MOVIE DATA-BASE.

That’s it for now. I have miles of writing to do (and unpacking to do before that)…but I’m in no shape tonight. Rest…

Power of the pelvis!!!

Nick Cave… dark and creepy. You’re a bi-polar
genius, with equal passion for the most
degrading aspects of humanity, as well as the
beauty & wonder of God and Heaven.

Which fucked-up genius composer are you?
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