Well, good news for my brother.  An agency got Nick an audition for the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight) this Saturday.  He received his scene and last night I rehearsed it with him.  Wish him luck.

 

He and Sachiko are down in Eureka now.  I’m debating on whether to go up there tomorrow night (that is to say, today, Friday night), meet them, party with the Eureka crowd, and then drive up with Nick to his audition (lessening any possibilities of car trouble or other hazards keeping him from getting to Batmania).

 

Earlier this week, Nick took a big screen and a projector from work, we had some folks over, and bundled in coats and blankets, we enjoyed the relatively warmer night by setting up our own outdoor theater in the backyard.  We watched Serenity, wind jostling the screen, us facing the forest, with the occasional yip of a coyote in the background.  It was pretty sweet and I think we’re going to make a tradition of this in the coming spring.

 

SO COME ON DOWN TO THE DOETSCH BROTHERS’ OUTDOOR THEATER.

 

I’m trying to write a treatment/proposal for a graphic novel (I’m figuring out the logistics of a haunted Tommy-Gun)…but I’m tired and I think I’ll try and sleep.

 

Oh . . . yeah, I found out the surprise ending to Lost . . . the island is really a booger in Howard Hughes’ nose.  There!  I ruined it for all you fans.  HA!

It’s alive…it’s alive!!!

 

Apparently my knee (wounded in a grievous sledding accident months ago) is finally started knitting itself back together.  I’ve been able to go out running the last two nights in a row…with nary a wet crunch or a scream of agony. 

Running feels good…

 

…no…

 

…running (after all this time) feels horrible…

 

…but then it feels good.

 

Monday’s open mic reading at Twilight Tales went well.  I had a lot of visitors, including Wil and Val and Kristi and Jason and Todd and more besides.  I’m really loving the live reading.  I think I done durn good too . . . as the author in charge of Twilight Tales, Tina Jens, asked to see a copy of the story (“Blood, Snow, and Sparrows”).  I think it’s just about ready to submit somewhere.

 

The Monday before last’s Twilight Tales featured their annual “Red Light Night” which featured love stories, tales of an amorous nature, erotica, erotic horror…and all points between and up and down.  There were some strange stories told…and some disturbing ones.  Between stories, the MCs took and read pages from a romantic encounter/sex book for couples (each page opening to reveal a different game or scenario or scene for a couple to enact).  It got a lot of laughs from the audience, myself included . . . until the fateful moment . . . when . . . they . . . revealed . . . the . . . cover . . .

 

. . .

 

. . . (I get tax write-offs for using ellipses…in case you’re wondering)

 

I recognized that book cover.  I’d seen that book cover.  I’d seen that book cover on my parents book shelf.  AHHHH!!!  Suddenly every page/game/scenario took on visualizations of the most horrific nature.  I mean…on one hand I’m thinking, “Way to go Mom and Dad.”  On the other . . .

 

 . . . I don’t want to talk about it.

 

In news that I won’t shut away as a repressed memory, the UIS library wants me to come down to Springfield and get photographed so that I might be the “celebrity” on a new set of READ posters.  They want to start a tradition of honoring the Outstanding Thesis winners this way.  I get to be the first.  I’m quite tickled.

 

Now I know they’ll want to take their own photos and design their own posters and such…but I’ve already come up with a prototype:

 

Hey Kids!

Joshua says:

“Read a book…

…OR I’LL GNAW ON YOUR IMMORTAL SOULS!”

 

What do you think, America?  Be honest.

 

And as a final bit of business, I’ve gotten some unfortunate complaints about using Hypno-Toad as my spokesperson, messenger, and well . . . mass manipulator of my audience.  I care what you folks think and I’ve retired Hypno-Toad (actually his remains have been ground up, samples of it strategically placed in several packaging plants, for the next peanut butter recall scare).  The frightening, controlling presence of Hypno-Toad has been replaced with a more congenial personality, one that families across this great nation have all come to trust implicitly.  None other than movie star Wilford Brimley, that wholesome presence, that star of such movies as Cocoon, The Thing, The Firm – not to mention Quaker Oatmeal and those Liberty Medical commercials.

 

Mr. Brimley, do you have anything you’d like to say to the nice people?

A whole week of being sick.

 

Ugh.

 

Freaking waste of time.

 

It was punctuated with some pretty strange fever dreams.  I can’t go into all of them, for lack of time and lack of memory, but let’s touch on one, one that was brief and one that I remember so well that a person could probably recreate if for me, with flash animation . . .

 

. . . my dream was a music video, all music and fast moving camera view.  It was a video for a techno style number, the kind with a manic bass, synthesized music, and flashing various late-night city scenes.  It was also the sort of techno track that involves just one word, repeated in various ways, in a rough, gravely, cool voice.  That word was “La Bodega.”

 

“La Bodega . . . La-La Bodega . . . Laaaaa Bodeeeega  . . . La Bodega . . .”

 

And as the beat picks up, we see the source of the voice, at least in this video:  Will Ferrell’s disembodied head.  So Will’s Ferrell’s head is floating through the cityscape, saying, “La Bodega” with stranger and stranger facial expressions (he’s really hamming it up).

 

And then I wake up.  Only I have no idea what the word “La Bodega” means or where it came from, so I look it up online . . . apparently is means “wine cellar” or some such.  Does anyone know of a techno or dance track that repeats “la bodega,” one that I might have heard (or has my diseased imagination made this from whole-cloth)?

 

Saturday, still sick, I went to a Catholic Charismatic Convention with my Grandma and cousins.  It wasn’t something I had looked forward to, but I found myself unable to say no to my Grandma (especially after she went all the way down to my awards ceremony for my Thesis…though I suspect part of the reason she wanted me to go, in the first place, was at the horror of hearing what my thesis was about…voodoo and fallen angels…tI was a little relieved that I wasn’t scheduled for an exorcism).  It was a . . . strange day.  I hadn’t been to church in years (“wayward” would be the pseudo-polite/pseudo-passive-aggressive term my former fellows might use) and I went through meetings, testimonies, confession, mass, the Eucharist, and the whole shebang in one day.  There were persuasive speakers.  There were some of the elements that I still find asinine . . . and there was a strange, diametrically opposed sensation of emotions: the irritation at being dragged there – and genuinely feeling touched that I have family members that worry about my spiritual being (even when I disagree).  There’s more to write on this…but I have to digest it.

 

That weekend, I also got to play some old, childhood video games with Steve, thanks to an emulator that converts my childhood past…into something that will actually play on a modern computer.  I also got to eat some lovely meals prepared by Heidi (who is a great nurse and is probably the only reason I survived my travels, while sick, that weekend).

 

A recent internet conversation with Wil, went something like this:

Wil : . . . and then writers came up.  I made a comment . . . then immediately retracted it in my head.

Me:  About?

Wil:  About how anyone who would call themselves a writer is clearly a fuck-head and something else derogatory.

Me:  Ah.

Wil:  Then i thought of you.

Me:  I usually go by “Writer.”

Wil:  You aren’t as flaky as, oh, say, anyone I’ve ever met who claims to be a writer.

Me: “Fuck-head” doesn’t fit on the business card.

Wil:  Ha-ha!
 

Not so long ago, my wonderful pet serpent, Lenore, was an oft featured part of this journal.  I used to even keep a death count on all the rodents that met their doom in her belly.  It’s been awhile since I’ve updated.  Lenore is now 2 years and 8 months old and is about 59 inches (maybe 6 feet) in length.  I’ve lost count of the dead rodents…but here are some pics I just took, to keep you busy.

Click here if you want to SOLVE A PUZZLE AND ENTER A REALM OF SURREAL MADNESS (and who doesn’t?).

What am I forgetting…oh yes…

 

OBEY HYPNO-TOAD!!! 

 

Hypno-Toad commands you to go to Twilight Tales, this Monday (the 5^th) at the Red Lion Pub at 7:30 PM, where there will be open Mic and where Joshua will read a story.  You will do this.  You must do this.  Obey Hypno-Toad.  There is no argument, there is no dissent, there is no resistance.  There is only Hypno-Toad.

 OBEY HYPNO-TOAD!!!

I woke up, today, with sheets soaked with sweat and a second fever broken.  But it wasn’t the first time I woke up.  The NyQuil I drank last night had the power to put me to sleep . . . but not keep me there and I woke up at hour, half hour, and quarter hour intervals, each time my mind rattling, thinking I was late for getting to somewhere.  I recall waking up at around 7:38 am and thinking, with horror, that it was in the pm and that I was late getting ready for an appointment.

 

I drifted in and out all day and I think it helped, because I felt a bit better when it was time to drive into Chicago.  I met Nick, a composer, about series of films that his company needs writers for.  I’m very excited about it, more than I could actually physically express.

 

But now, I’m getting some chills, some very unnatural chills (for me especially) that two blankets and three lap dogs laying protectively on top of me while watching Witness for the Prosecution (a great flick and it’s interesting to watch old movies sometimes, to see what film makers did with dialogue when they didn’t have special affects and steady cams to fall back on) can’t quite ward off . . . so I think I’ve got fever number three coming on.  I think I’ll let myself be chilled for a bit, before I go to sleep, I think if I try too hard to keep warm I’ll only make the fever angry . . . and it’s a two headed fever, wearing a crooked top hat on each head and with nasty claws and the types of top hats that produce, when lifted, tiny, replica’s of the monster each, that squeal and cackle in voices like shark teeth on chalkboard and my God, what is hiding under their teeny-tiny top hats?

 

That is an example of my mind at work.  That’s why I don’t do hallucinogens.  NyQuil is nasty enough and I expect another night of green delirium.

 

Night.

 

May all your eye movements be rapid.

I had hoped to post, tonight, with the wild adventures of last night.  To fill you in on just what goes on at an erotica workshop.  To give you all the decadent details.  But alas, it wasn’t meant to be.  It turned out we were celebrating my Mom’s birthday a day early and, even if I wanted to skip out on that, there just isn’t a good way to say it . . . Hallmark just doesn’t make that card . . .

 

 

 

Happy Wishes on Your Special Day

Sorry I Could Not Make It

But I Was At an Erotica Workshop

 

What goes on at such an event will have to remain in a dirty little corner of our minds (though I suspect some of our corners are larger than others’).

 

As for today/tonight.  I’m laid up and sick.  My fever broke sometime this morning, but I still feel like I’ve been beaten all over with doweling rods.

 

I’ve promised to write a heavy metal song, for a friend’s band.  This has me excited to no end.

 

I’d type more . . . but my molecules hurt.

 

Night.

 

May all your eye movements be rapid.

Busy week.  Snow and driving and snow and driving.  Northern Illinois to Central IL to Southern IL to Central IL to Northern IL (that last bit done in heavy snow).

 

But, I did have the meeting I set out to have in Springfield with the chair of English at UIS.  I didn’t have to sell myself much.  He wants me in the program.  He wants to expand the writing program (maybe with the boost of excitement with my Outstanding Thesis Award with a work of fiction) and they need more creative writing teachers.  He wants me to be a full time lecturer/teacher (particularly in poetry and drama writing).  This all sounds great (mostly because it sounds like I’d be mostly skipping the tedious comp classes that I’d be doomed to teaching on entry level to any of the other schools I’m looking at . . . and right to the gooey, creative core).  The problem is budget.  They’re not giving him the money to hire me full time.  I may have partime work available to me should I want it . . . but given my debt, that might not be feasible (to move down there).  I’m exploring this.

 

Tomorrow, I’m heading to TWILIGHT TALES in Chicago.  This week’s activity is a workshop in writing erotica.  I don’t know that I plan to write any erotica . . . but I don’t want to die wondering what goes on at an erotica workshop, and I have the power to do something about it.

 

Anything else before I slumber . . .

 

. . .

 

. . . oh . . . yeah . . .

 

 

OBEY HYPNO-TOAD!!!

Attention fellow singles.  You really need to stop using Valentine’s Day as an excuse to be melancholy.  It’s getting ridiculous.  People put too much pressure on this day.  When you’re with someone, you put too much pressure on making it “perfect.”  And when you’re alone you put too much pressure on it making you miserable.  It’s just a day.  I can think of the top five romantic events in my life, and NOT one of them happened on V-Day and most of them were not planned in any way.

 

Relax.

 

I mean . . . you don’t see people without trees in their yard moping around on Arbor Day and bitter towards all their friends who do have trees:

 

 

Dear Diary,

 

It’s that time of the year again.  I fucking hate this holiday.  HATE IT!  It’s just a corporate-cookie-cutter-greeting-card-bullshit reminder that I am alone—that my yard is empty.

 

I try to be cheerful around my friends, the ones who have trees; I really do, but it’s so hard.  They look so fucking happy, I want to vomit . . . and not just vomit, acid . . . and not just stomach acid . . . like industrial acid . . . I want to vomit highly corrosive, industrial acid all over their faces.  I hate, HATE being this bitter towards my friends but I constantly find myself wishing a swarm of Emerald Ash Borers would come out of the sky and chew their trees to pulp.

 

So I went over to Brittany’s today.  Yeah, I guess I’m just masochistic like that.  She showed me her tree in the back yard.  She’s so proud of it.  Then, she gave me an Arbor Day card, but . . . you know, it was just one of those little impersonal cards that you give to all your loser friends, the ones who don’t have trees

 

So Brittany’s all happy with her tree and I just make an excuse about feeling sick and I duck out early because I’m feeling like a goddamn third wheel.  Plus . . . I’m looking at her tree and I’m having secret thoughts . . . unnatural thoughts . . . like “Oh-God-I-want-to-dig-that-up-by-the-roots-take-it-home-and-plant-it-deep-in-my-yard” kind of thoughts.  I know you shouldn’t covet you friend’s tree, but it was such a fine willow!

 

And I think, “Why can’t I have that in my life?”  And year after year and another A-Day goes by and I’m just reminded of all my past mistakes, all the trees I’ve lost.  It’s always the same old story, “the new sewer pipes disrupted the root system,” or some bullshit like that.  And I think, “What, I’m I not good enough?”  And it’s the same old song and dance, “It’s not you . . . it’s Dutch Elm Disease.”

 

Well fuck that!

 

I guess . . . I guess I’m just scared, you know?  I’m afraid.  I mean, here I am, pushing thirty and I don’t have a single sapling in my yard.  And I’m terrified that I’m just going to whither away into one of those old people you see feeding their cats and looking out at a barren lawn.  I’m going to die without any shade in my yard.

 

Now, I don’t want to give the wrong impression.  It’s not like I never get any contact with trees.  I mean, I get some.  Sometimes, on the weekend, I go to the park and there’s a few regulars I visit.  But what future is there in that?  Who hasn’t sat under those trees?  What neighborhood dog hasn’t pissed all over them?  I don’t know, I guess it just makes me feel dirty.

 

So yeah . . . I left Brittany’s; I got home; I locked myself in my room; and I’ve spent the whole day, alone, drinking tequila and listening to the Monty Python “Lumberjack” song and the George of the Jungle theme, just balling my eyes out.

 

Why do I do this to myself!?!?

 

And it just gets harder and harder every year.  Now, you can’t escape it.  What, with email and MySpace, I have every fuckwit in the galaxy sending me dozens of insipid, sparkly little Arbor Day greetings.  I just want to grab those bastards by the throat and tell them that the only—THE ONLY—happiness, the only shred of joy I’m eking out of this day is the knowledge that by filling up my journal, I’m killing another tree.  And I swear to God, I swear to the holy, fucking heavens that if one more person smiles like a tool and says, “Happy Arbor Day!” I will slash my wrists and ask them if they see sap flowing out.

 

I don’t fucking need this!  I don’t need this stupid-ass holiday.  And I don’t need trees.

 

Fuck Arbor Day!

 

Fuck trees!!!

 

never green and ever alone,

 

 

—Shadeless in Chicago

 

PS – Diary, sometimes I think you’re the only one who really gets me.

Bradbury says that a writer should write every day, that when you stop, the real world tries to kill you.

 

I understood that before . . . but these days it’s getting more acute, there are more little razor-fanged real world avatars buzzing in, more and more, and if I go lax for a second, they start gnawing.  And the fangs get sharper.  Financially, things are getting scary again.  Unless I can manipulate some of my debts, they stand at about $1,500 a month.  That’s just for loan debt, no luxuries attached.  Yikes…  If you stop, the real world tires to kill you.

 

So I best keep busy . . .

 

A couple of Mondays ago, I was the featured reader at TWILIGHT TALES.  It was fun.  People, friends and strangers, really seemed to like my work.  I love doing live readings and I am apparently good at it, as it’s now my number 1 compliment.  People that liked to read something I wrote, liked it better when I read it.  People that struggled with it a little understood it better.  I have an offer to use a friend’s sound equipment and make some audio CDs of my stuff (maybe do some podcasts).

 

I’m now seriously considering starting a little audio/fiction/performance/radio company.  It’s basically what Orson Wells started with – and that sexy dragon, Technology has gone all Ouroboros and looped back on itself, sucking on its own tail, and with the advent of the MP3 file and podcasts, there is an audience for audio fiction again.  I’ll need to gather more voice actors . . . but more on that later.

 

Matty J. and I sat down to some overpriced coffee to discuss working together on another movie, to write something strange and dark and out there and I think that’s down my twisted alley.  And by the bye, contact him if you need any wedding video needs.  Over the summer he filmed a flick called Ruin.  Nick acted in it and I gave a little help on the script.

 

I met, through another acquaintance, a composer who came to my reading and gave me his card.  Last night, Nick and I went to the premiere of a short indi film he composed the music for and I talked a little more about helping write a series of films he and his group are looking to do.

 

I’ve had the recent fortune with talking to not one, but several artists interested in drawing stuff for me, either based on something I wrote, or for my would-be website.  The wonderful Sabra has drawn the following pictures for me.  I like them a lot.  I like the negative effect of white charcoal on black paper.  Below are the pics with a little sampling of some of the text behind them:

 

This one’s titled “Soul” and depicts the dark muse, Crow,  summoned in my epic poem, Souls Unsure.  He’s a very chatty muse and says some of the following . . .

 

No form.  No shape.

I am protean,

vague, variable, voracious,

a shifting blotch of black ink

spilled over bleached bone.

I am the hungry sky,

the shadow of the sun,

the appetite of the immortals,

the black-hole appetite

that swallows light.

I am gallows humor,

sardonic, dark,

and dripping with gore.

I am a murder of crows

waiting for a murder of you,

and until then, I perch

in the back of your head,

where I hungrily eye your eyes,

from the other side,

whiling away the time

by plucking shiny coins

from the dead water of the mind.

 

This one is “Black Pearl” and comes partially from Book II of my epic and partially from recent events in Sabra’s life.  In Book II, Crow takes us into a hospital and tells us what he sees (Syth, mentioned below, is a fallen angel wandering in the hospital) . . .

 

Beep-beep

In the middle bed,

a police officer who played hero.

Beep-beep

Used to play the game as a boy,

Cops ‘n robbers in the street.

Beep-beep

When shot, he’d just yell, “Do-over.”

Life begins anew.

Beep-beep

When boys grow up, they still play.

Boys just love their dangerous toys.

Beep-beep

But what do you yell,

when a drug bust goes bad?

Beep-beep

What do you yell?

“Do-over,” whispers the cop bleeding out,

eyes turning to stained glass.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

 

Drip-drop

Two would-be dealers playing criminal.

One on the left – One on the right.

Drip-drop

Green-Masks shake their heads sad.

Under the green masks, they’re glad.

Drip-drop

Deploy standard issue priest.

“Final confession boys?”

Drip-drop

“Fuck you,” says Mr. Left,

“God can go spit.”

Drip-drop

“I pray forgiveness,” whispers Mr. Right,

“Will I sleep in Heaven tonight?”

Drip-drop

Priest promises Father’s forgiveness.

But bullet-holes don’t forgive.

Drip-drop

Drip-drop goes I.V. Saline.

Drip-drop goes blood off cross.

Drip

Drop

 

Three crosses hex

the dead-star abyss of Syth’s eyes.

But don’t go looking there.

That’s a whole ‘nother story, too long to tell here.

Let’s just say that I was there, and I

ate an unrepentant thief’s eyes.

 

And this drawing, “See the Tree,” is based off a concept I want to use in my website . . .

 

There is a black tree

It grows in my head

And every black branch bares a raven

And every raven tells a different tale

And ravens eat memories and meat

In their enterrpise of plundered corspes

And ghosts swim in their plumes

And in every feather is a haunting rhyme

If I have but the courage to pluck the quill

 

 

And, by the way, check out Sabra’s blog for information on hiring her to do drawings for you.  Support an artist.  Maybe get a unique gift for someone you know.

 

In traveling news . . . I’ll be in central and southern IL this weekend and coming week.  I’ll be in Eureka late Saturday (maybe Sunday), Nashville (IL) after that, and Springfield after that . . .

 

 

Tonight, Monday night, is I’ll be reading a story at the open mic for Twilight Tales (http://twilighttales.com/schedule/) over tat the Red Lion Pub, in Chicago, at 2446 North Lincoln Avenue, and begin at 7:30pm.

For anyone interested.

Bigger post needed…but I’m exhausted…

…later…

…sleeping now…

…almost…

…it’s a little chill…

…one half of my mouth is smiling…

…the other half curled down…

…there is much to be done…

…I hope ellipses don’t cause cancer…

I’ll join in this fiasco.  So reply to this and I shall . . .

1. Tell you why I friended you.

2. Associate you with a song/movie.

3. Tell a random fact about you.

4. Tell my first memory of you.

5. Associate you with an animal/fruit.

6. Ask something I’ve always wanted to know about you.