It looks like I’ll be doing another reading at THE SCHIZOCLUB in Chicago on the 16th of December (8pm-11pm). Though this time I’ll be bringing some writer chums along with me. Should be fun. Feel free to drop in. The club also now has a FORUM to discuss this and that.

My Shakespeare paper is concluded. That leaves a final short story and a final essay to complete before I can get back to working on my epic poem full time. And full time it must be as I need a draft done by January. Which means that, mid December, my entries will likely be half crazed posts saying things like, “WORDZZZZ……HARD…..” And other similarly profound thoughts.

But I should go to sleep. The afore mentioned story has a lot of ambitious kinks to work out of itself…and, as I’ve decided to rework a set of Poe stories, I feel obligated to do well, lest my Edgar Allan Poe action figure come alive, leap out of its packaging and drown me in my cold coffee.

That’s my bit of practical advice for today: appease the dolls.

I got up early this morning!

Just kidding…I’m still up. Another Shakespeare paper, another sleepless night. I titled this one “THE FOOL: The Irreverent-Wisdom Card of the Archetype Tarot Deck.” I’ll have to see how the grades turn out…

So let’s play catch-up…before my brain crashes…

Had a somewhat spontaneous trip, with the extended family, to visit a long lost relative in Colorado. My cousins and my Grandma picked me up on Tuesday night, in a giant van. So I had a 20+ hour trip with them in a van and it was………………….MADNESS!!!

I was worried about my grandma opening up certain religious bits of conversation…while this didn’t happen (at least not with me singled out) I discovered the fact that the woman, whom we all love greatly, is insane. She’s scared of drizzling rain, night time, two lane roads, and any slight change in her environment (“The air feels cool from the vent…why’d it change!”). She made panicked if we did not drive five under the limit.

Then came the blizzard in Kansas. All hell breaks loose. Now there was a situation that was genuinely worrisome which only encouraged my Grandmothers general pessimistic paranoia. I think we counted some 40 cars and jackknifed trucks in the ditches. Then we took a slight wrong turn down a treacherous road and the accusations flew like…well…snow.

And I found that though my cousins all have pretty voices when we pray the road rosary…afterwards, the voices turn shrill and their complaints become petty, copious, and grating. Travel, with large groups, means delays…and here I was with a group of people going insane over twenty minute delays on a 20 hour trip. Ahhhhhhhh!!!!

The whole trip, Nick used NyQuill to sleep and I scoffed at that. But then the snow argument reached its height and I found myself chugging NyQuill to escape family members in the same vehicle as I.

Before loosing consciousness I told Nick that I forgave him for talking me into going on the trip. We both giggled, secretly, while the stress wars ensued around us.

But the trip wasn’t all bad, there were laughs between the groans and it eventually ended. I spent a few days in a very nice house of my very well off…second cousin?

Thanksgiving was pleasantly sedate. We played Risk. We ate. We became immobile. We played cards.

Friday morning I woke from the most terrifying nightmare I’ve ever suffered. I woke clutching my scapular.

That day we went out and saw a waterfall and climbed some rocks. I played with my little cousins. I played with the older ones. Steve and I fell asleep listening to audio fiction by Poe and King.

My Grandma played in the titanic Scrabble grudgematch between her and Andy (the cousin we were visiting…apparently this Scabble rivalry has been building for years…as both of them are unbeatable). The rest of the family even gambled on the outcome. I bet on Grandma…and doubled my dollar investment (“I don’t want to put any pressure on you Grandma…BUT I NEED THIS!!!”)

Then there was the drive home and it went quicker and without incident.

I got my fill of programmed, Right Wing Catholic dogma for one year (including the fact that gay marriages and abortions are part of a Communist plot to weaken our country). These conversations always leave me outside, and in the middle somewhere…no matter which side is speaking to me. One side has no problem killing anything in the womb…and the other side has no problem killing everything outside the womb. And they both claim the moral high ground. And where does that leave me?

But, besides that, I had a good time. I get along with my cousins. I’m the one (along with Steve) who gets the laughs going and that’s a position I like to fill.

But now I’m back and I made my New Years resolutions early…to beat the holiday rush…

Oh…and I need new shoes…

Drunk (for the more than once time this week). Nick went home. I’ve taken over his room (so I can meet Dee and Amy in the morning and…so I can pick up a piece of mail that Nick needs for the Colorado trip come Wednesday). Am I typing correctly? Can’t tell. Fingers in some state south of numb…north of incoherrent. But…I digress…so I’ve taken over for Nick in the room. Apparently…I’ve taken over his drinkikng…no….drinking game duties too. As Duce and Cole (two frat brothers) keyed there way into his (now mine) room. They wanted to play drinking games….one Doetsch was gone…but another dotche would do (did I just spell my own last name wrong?). So I filled in. I wasn’t sleeping anyway…I was trying to sleep early to meet up with Dee and Amy come morning.

So the drinking games went. There were laughs and arguments over rules (while drunk) of a card game called Horse Racing that were funnier than any skit I could concoct. But…the alcohol took it’s toll. Cole left while Duce was treating me to a story about how a girl came between him and a best friend. Then Duce started puking (he removed a big wad of chew before puking) – signaling an end to his drinking. I went to the bathroom to get him some toilet paper to clean up with…and found Cole, passed out on the bathroom floor. Quick check….he was on his side and still breathing (all systems go)…so I left.

I’m very drunk…but not puking/not passing out. So I guess I win right???

Oh well…I’ve got about four or five hours till Dee gets here so I’ll try to sleep.

Over all…a fun night. I’m proud of my independence…but tongiht I got the best of both worlds as I got to drink with the frat brothers I never had…

…Hangover…this is Josh…requesting premission to land…

Heading to Eureka. Should be there by 9:30. If anyone needs to reach me, my cell doesn’t always work in Eureka (call Nick’s room at 309-467-6809 if you can’t get through to the cell).

Due to coincidences and phone mess-ups I was not able to meet with a long lost Springfield friend on Thursday and am now convinced that the gods don’t want us to party together (as I type, I shake my fist to the sky…well…no…I’m shaking my fist at the ceiling…but after that is the sky…well…no…after that is drywall and pipes and then the sky…well…no…after that is carpet and another apartment…and after that is another ceiling, more drywall and pipes and shingles and then…then there is the sky…and why am I shaking my fist again?).

Oh well…I did run into another long lost Springfield chum. And there was more rum…deedle-dee dum.

And speaking of deedless and dees, I’m seeing another long lost friend, Dee, come Monday!!! Amy and her and I will be romping around the Eureka campus all day. Oh…it feels like we’re getting the band back together!!!

PLUG ALERT!!!

A friend and fellow Eureka alum, Mike Urnikis, is putting the finishing touches on his latest movie, an inde pick called BLACK DAYS (check out the website…it’s very good). My brother Nick and I helped out with this movie last winter (giving up a substantial portion of our winter breaks). I gotta give credit to Mike for pulling it off.

Here’s the poster for the movie:

Go to the website and click cast to find Nick and a pic of him as the character of Lewis.

Mike used to be the movie guy on campus. While at Eureka he made three short films and I got to help and be in two of them. He used to have images and such up on his website…but alas, I can no longer find them. However, I do have a few from one movie, When Death Comes Calling, where I got to play a contract killer…

My plan was to post last night. But I ran into a long lost Springfield chum…and through him – pitchers of beer, a bottle of rum, and a vodka tonic. When I got back, my face was numb…and typing was an impossibility.

My second plan was to make a post tonight…but I reorganized my music via my computer – catalogued sound bytes, dead voices, and melodious nostalgia. And now it’s early morning.

My third plan is to post something more substantial tomorrow…

You’ll find many horrors and dreads and all manner of species of fear free floating in the waters of Poe’s work…but maybe the most accurate, timely, and timeless horror Poe pens is that of the procrastinator – as he does in his story, “The Imp of the Perverse”:

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, — of the definite with the indefinite — of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, — we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer — note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies — it disappears — we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!

It seems to me that people who have an overactive loathing of wrinkly clothing, in essence, have a deeper seated fear of the third dimension. People with an overactive loathing of wrinkly skin, have a fear of the fifth.

As I type, Lenore is devouring a group of mice. I’ll give the official mouse count later (horrifying!). I am two steps short of heading out the door and up to Eureka (be on campus around 11). I will be there for the weekend.

Oh….but my shoulder is all messed up. I don’t know why…just woke up in pain. The mice are yelling at me, saying I shouldn’t complain.

You’re right guys…could always be worse.

Yesterday I was exhausted (but I said I’d explain why). Wednesday night, I and others (including Daina, Dave, Adrian, and Steve) went to go see Neil Gaiman (my favorite living author) do a signing and some reading in Chicago.

I went, even though I had a draft of the prologue to my epic poem thesis (I was turning it in as a short story) due in my short fiction class on Thursday. Well, the lines were long for the signing and we left Chicago at about midnight. Rather than drive all the way back to Springfield, I thought it better to do the writing and then the driving – so I took Dave and Adrian to Naperville.

At their condo I madly typed on my laptop to finish the prologue (starting at about 3am). I’ve been planning and working on this thesis (outlines and free writing and research) for quite some time…and this was not the ideal situation I had envisioned I’d be in as I started this monstrous project. Oh well.

I had a passable draft at about 6:30 am and left the condo quietly and drove to Springfield (a little delirious but surprisingly awake). I was not so awake when I got to Springfield at 10 or so. I napped for an hour and a half, went straight to work and then straight to the afore mentioned short fiction class to turn in and read whatever it was I’d written…

…and they really liked it. I was surprised…surprised that I liked it as well. I don’t know, some mix of desperation, caffeine madness, and maybe inspiration at meeting a hero…and that’s what I got. Desperation finishes a lot of stories.

So thanks for letting me stay, Dave and Adrian. Hey…if this epic thing ever goes anywhere, you can say it all started in your dinning room.

I did get sleep last night.