| Welcome to Working Title. This is a public journal, but old posts (and the rare new post) are friends-only. Information about me can be found on my user page. New LiveJournal friends are welcome: feel free to friend me, but please do leave a note (here or otherwise) and introduce yourself if you would like to be friended in return. | |
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| As I post more of these boys, it's getting harder for new readers to catch up on what's come before. So for everyone's ease, I finally offer: 
Ghost and Aaron: A Sims 3 Story
Introduction and Master ListAaron (with freckles and dyed black hair) is brash and rude, but behind his bravado is certain vulnerability. Ghost (with white hair and pale eyes) is inward-turned, expressing himself through the arts—but his passivity hides depth. They are cousins who, for most of their lives, were only casual acquaintances. Two years ago, Aaron moved in with Ghost and his mother, and the boys quickly became close friends. But one day, after they had moved into a filthy suburban home in Sunset Valley, Aaron kissed Ghost—changing their relationship forever, and beginning their chronicled story. From their first spontaneous kiss onward, Ghost and Aaron's story has been almost entirely autonomous. I set up premises, and they provide plot—and the boys have a strange magic that makes it all possible. I post lightly annotated, image-heavy chronicles of their daily lives, supplemented with text-only, non-chronological storybits that fill in gaps in their daily developments and backstory. Storybits in particular may contain explicit sexual content, so consider yourself warned. The list below contains every post where Aaron and Ghost appear, from cameos to major developments. The numbering system is completely meaningless (but keeps things in order); storybits are often non-chronological and tangentially related, but add significant depth. I have no posting schedule—updates come when they come. Comments and discussion are always welcome. Enjoy! Master List — The time when... 001 They first appear.
002 Aaron kisses Ghost.
003 Aaron sets fire to the TV.
004 Their romantic relationship gets going.
005 Ghost quits his job.
006 They finally have sex.
Bonus House tour.
007 They cameo during their honeymoon period.
008 The repoman comes.
Bonus Family photos and Storybit 01: Aaron on the doorstep.
009 Ghost says "I love you."
Bonus Storybit 02: Ghost dreams of death.
010 Ghost's dreams get worse.
Bonus Storybit 03: Aaron says "I love you."
011 Storybit 04: The second round, while Ghost should be sleeping.
012 They have a surprising amount of sex.
Bonus Storybit 05: Aaron picks Ghost up from work.
013 Ghost started to come to terms with Aaron's thievery.
Bonus Storybit 06: Aaron questions Ghost's sexual history.
014 They cameo at the Silverman-Moore wedding.
015 Storybit 07: Aaron bottoms for the first time.
016 They visit Mouse.
Bonus Storybit 08: The night with Nathan.
017 Everything's going well, so Aaron's parents show up.
Bonus Storybit 09: The rings.
018 Things do not happen in France.
019 Aaron's parents visit.
Bonus Storybit 10: What does not happen after Aaron's parents leave.
020 Previous update outtakes.
021 They spend a couple irresponsible days. You can also browse my tags for Sims 3 and Sims 3: Ghost and Aaron for some supplemental discussion and photo logs of my other Sims. All my Sims photos are gathered in galleries on my Flickr. | |
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| Title: Wormwood Author: Poppy Z. Brite Published: New York: Dell Publishing, 1994 (1986-1992) Rating: 3 of 5 Page Count: 225 Total Page Count: 113,555 Text Number: 328 Read Because: fan of the author, purchased used from Powell'sReview: Twelve stories of artists cursed with dangerous talents and intimacies shared even after death and further tales of Lost Souls's Steve and Ghost. In an otherwise useless introduction, Dan Simmons writes that Brite's "work may be described—perhaps even by her—as 'splatterpunk,' but it is not" (xxiv). Brite's (early) fiction is as lush as it is repulsive, often entrenched in the humid South, at its best taking the guts and gore of what might be splatterpunk to a level which is resonant and haunting. Wormwood has glimpses of that, but it's a particularly hit and miss collection. "Angels" and "How to Get Ahead in New York" are indulgent, canonical Lost Souls fanfiction and among the best of the collection; "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" is the only selection which truly stands out, and it is remarkable— Wormwood's boldest and most vibrant, it's a unique take on zombies (and I say this as someone with no interest in them) with an intense sense of place. The rest of the collection is passable but immemorable. Stories too often feel like slaves to an idea or, worse, to a twist ending; those concepts can be ingenious, but the stories don't exceed them and the effect is limiting and exploitative. This isn't the best of Brite's early work, and it isn't as accessible or reliably good as Brite's long fiction; casual readers needn't seek it out. But as a fan and a collector it wasn't a waste of my time, and "Calcutta" alone makes the volume worthwhile. Review posted here on Amazon.com. | |
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| I am where memes go to die. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) cerulean_chains tagged me for this over on Tumblr about a week ago, and I wrote my answers then but never posted them. I'm supposed to provide more questions and tag people to answer them, but I have the energy for neither—so I'll just leave these here because who doesn't like to share their opinion. 1. A past time period with the best fashion sense?I find a number of historical fashions fascinating and appealing, but don't have true favorites among them. Victorian is a good go-to I guess, pretty and fancy stuff all around. The only real favoritism I can rouse is for breeches (why did they ever go out of style), and I idealize eras in which men's fashion was almost as froofy and ornate as women's. 2. Science fiction or fantasy?Since discovering the distinction between high fantasy (which I hate) and the rest of fantasy: fantasy. It's a genre I left unexplored before making that distinction (I really hate high fantasy), it's full of delicious subgenres, and it tends to be the one most likely to interact with my favorite tropes and literary predecessors. 3. Contemporary straight plays or classics?For reading: classics. For viewing: either, with a slight preference towards classics. Shakespeare is my big bias; putting him aside, I only have passing familiarity with the art form, and am only willing to put so much of my time/effort/money into it, so the tried and true of classics tend to be the better bet—but my bias towards them is far from absolute, and it's fair to say that the plays my family sees at OSF are a 50/50 split between the two. 4. Favorite score?I can't answer this as anything but Cats (Original Broadway Cast Recording). It goes beyond favorite to something more: it defines who I am; it is essential to my being. 5. Cassettes or CDs?They still make cassettes? 6. Favorite musical instrument?Piano. I played it all through childhood and adolescence, and have been missing it something awful these last few months. My big birthday gift this year may be a weighted keyboard, which is a compromise between quality/playability and size (I have an inherited piano whenever I have space for it, but it's not feasible here), and as a bonus I'll be able to play with headphones for those crazy hours of the night and while I recover from shitty, rusty piano player back to halfway competent piano player. 7. Did you jump in water puddles as a child?Not to my knowledge. Caveat: my memory is pretty awful. But I've loathed standing water for most of my life, so instinct says no. Furthermore, it rains here about nine months of the year; water puddles are not particularly novel things, and there're better ways to get wet. 8. Favorite type of shoe?Oversized bulky square-toed black Oxford. Thus this. I ended up buying these and they're 90% perfect. I wear the hell out of them. 9. Favorite guilty pleasure?Dance Central, I guess. I have little guilt about any of my pleasures, however embarrassing—I believe in embracing one's dorkiness and lack of dignity. (A good thing, too.) But Dance Central is pretty well unforgivable. I know I look like a fool. I know the vast majority of the music is awful. This is currently my favorite routine. But it burns calories—yeah, sure, pretend that's it: I just love it. 10. Favorite spoken language?Elizabethan/Jacobean English; Shakespearean English. I admire a lot of foreign languages, and modern English is my darling, but my love and aptitude for Shakespeare's strange tongue is unrivaled. I'm actually pretty shite at learning language, but this comes to me as naturally as mine own, and I've learned not to take that for granted. Also fascinating where "spoken language" is concerned: Shakespeare in the original pronunciation . 11. Do you feel ‘in-touch’ with pop culture? Why or why not?No. It's not something I keep up with, and that doesn't bother me—it's energy I don't want to expend, and given my personal taste nor would it be worth it. There's songs and celebrities I've never heard of or only know because of internet memes, and I like it that way. I'm cool being clueless about things which are essentially a waste of time, and will willingly waste my time on non-popular culture which does interest me. | |
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| I've been watching a ridiculous amount of Supernatural lately. Stop! Hold your fangirling! I do not actually like it that much. I've been going through a rough time—a few solid months now of back pain and comorbid depression; mindless distraction is about all I'm good for, and Supernatural is plentiful and precisely mindless. I nearly gave up during the first season (as I liveblogged at the time: "Yup, women in Supernatural are like Bond girls: all the appearances of power and autonomy and competence, except that they're all traditionally attractive (and white) and replaceable/interchangeable. It's as much chick of the week as it is monster of the week. Super classy guys, nice going."), but stuck with it because I liked the aesthetic (so much better in the first few seasons, when it's a Sleepy Hollow ever-autumn of midwestern forest and desaturated color) and it eventually developed a plot. I started season six yesterday, and I'm still here mostly because it's there: with a few exceptions the plot works for me, but I've yet to develop an emotional attachment to almost anything. The "almost" is Castiel, who is perfect. Misha Collins is a superb actor; he pulls off the possession/multiple character aspect with a skill that the rest of the cast should envy, and brings enough depth and humor to his character that I actually give a damn. I don't give a damn about much else—the stakes should be huge, and the characters claim to suffer so much; eventually it even pulls away from women in refrigerators, a small blessing. But so help me, even when bad things are happening directly to the boys themselves do not pass go do not collect $200, it all reeks of manpain. Look, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes either, but you have family, biological and otherwise, to love you (so please put away the goddamn brotherly angst) and at least be thankful you're impervious to actual death or bodily harm—unlike the hundreds and thousand of civilians who suffer in the course of the show. It's not bad, a few specific episodes (5.9 "The Real Ghostbusters" goddamn) aside; it's perfectly watchable, an increasingly strong balance of episodic and overarching; I've yet to find either Sam or Dean attractive but that's okay because Cas and I will get married soon and have awkward angel babies. But then some new films went up on Netflix instant, some of which were on my physical disc queue, so I took a break and watched them. Did you know it's possible to tell compelling stories about female characters? To cast and costume women not as a decorated, sexualized Other, but rather as a diverse group of unique individuals? ( Supernatural does subtle, natural makeup and grooming on men, but women must look made up, with visual makeup atop their traditionally attractive appearance—it's not just about being appealing, but about the cultural demand on women to make themselves appealing.) To have multiple women in a scene, having conversations among themselves, perhaps with no men present? Maybe even to explore the same aspects, like objectification and gender roles, which make Supernatural so innocuous but so troubling? See, I had forgotten. I watched St. Trinian's—a group of students save a wacky private school for strange, erstwhile unschoolable girls. It's not meters deep but it's just what I expected, and delightful as such: colorful, silly, with some fantastic character design (amid plenty that's just okay) and an encouraging, if not entirely unproblematic, assumption that women can dress, speak, and do just about anything they want with any possible motivation. Who would have thought! I watched Sleeping Beauty, which stars Emily Browning and is a fascinating inverse companion to Sucker Punch: Sucker Punch tries to have its cake and eat it too, exploring the issues of women's objectification and sexual exploitation while objectifying and sexually exploiting its cast, yet nonetheless creating a somehow fantastic exploration of sexual violence and dissociation ( well discussed here). Sleeping Beauty is more about the desperate search for dissociation, prompted not by distinct sexual trauma but rather by an insidious prolonged culture of female objectification; it's explicitly sexual, but cold, almost sterile, and only once remotely titillating and there in the strangest way. It's almost too oblique and perhaps too cold to be completely successful, but it captivated me. I watched Sister My Sister, a dramatization of the Papin murder case which is good but on the whole a poor cousin to Heavenly Creatures ( read my nattering about that film here): same basis in true crime, where an unusually intimate relationship leads to murder, but Sister My Sister is less vibrant and more absurd in its mundanity, and so less memorable despite offering an compelling glimpse into class and family relationships. But it grabbed me in the opening credits, because nearly every name is female: producers, director, writer, and every actor (there are two male voiceovers, but no men seen in the entire production). Supernatural's credits are a predictable but depressing inverse. I recommend all three films, by the way. It's not that Supernatural is a horrible awful no-good egregious example of misogyny in media. It's that it's dead-center normal. It's that I would really like to watch something which is accessible and consumable enough for my addled brain, but has strong female characters or queer relationships or just about anything non-heteronormative and empowered which actually made me feel okay about being a living breathing human being, and my options for such range between limited and nonexistent: this run of good films is as miserable as it is refreshing, because I know too well that they're the exception to the general rule—a rule so general, so pervasive, that even when I see and know that it's being followed I may forget that it could ever be broken. | |
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| Devon was here for the weekend; my cat is almost entirely a different creature when he's gone. He interrupts her schedule and, more importantly, steals my attention. When he's here, she's standoffish and non-cuddly and fixated on food with even more than the usual infuriating passion. When he leaves, she turns back the cat that curls up in my lap with her paws over one arm, head tilted up to stare at me until my other hand gives her scritches.
Devon is good with and likes but doesn't particularly want any animals—which breaks my heart a bit because I tend to be the LET US GET THREE OF EACH PERHAPS SIMULTANEOUSLY sort (although a new puppy demands so much energy that all new animal cravings are currently on hold, let me tell you). In the days before August, I tried to explain my desire for a cat to him as other people's desire for a child, those who try and try hard for a child, those who define an aspect of their future identity with "parent." (Of course, I don't want offspring and neither does he, but I figured he could follow the analogy.) I wanted a cat with that same from-the-gut longing; it was something essential that I had to do, something that would help create and complete me as a person, and without a cat there was a physical feeling of a void just beneath my ribs. It was an absence that I could always feel. It wasn't a passing desire—and those are fine, I live and breathe by them—but rather a necessity.
My cat's a brat, guys, and we're way past the honeymoon phase, and I'm currently stretched thin enough to break and just putting up with her annoying character quirks has been a pain in the ass lately—none of it is a miracle, the one thing that made everything else all better, happily ever after, the end. But that void, that hole I felt in the middle of me, is filled now. It doesn't bother me any more. She sits there. | |
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| Beautiful changeable spring weather, today. Took a walk while waiting on an install—I left to gray skies (rich as velvet, the perfect backdrop for all the verdant spring gardens) cut through with swathes of yellow sun that reflected off the pages of my book (Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, a month or two too early but still impeccable). I had planned to walk the height of the peninsula, but found myself walking the width towards downtown St. Johns instead, and the fewest drops of rain began to fall from the sky. I figured I might as well stop for a coffee and some reading time; as soon as I found a seat with drink in hand it began to pour outside, a slate blue sheet of it, soaking and solid. I read a chapter and left to pale gray skies and the beginning of sun, not a drop of rain but the street corners still flooded, listening to Vocaloid on my headphones. I came back to Odi in the kennel, wagging his tail; he whined and I ignored him and went upstairs, because that's what training is. On my flist were two ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1) damnportlanders posts, one bitching about bad bicyclists and one searching for people in samurai armor. There is no city like this one, and few places that I would rather live. Odi is settling in well, by the way! The first day was exhausting, but now that the OMG EVERY SINGLE THING SHINY NEW has passed things are settling into a more manageable routine. He's still a puppy, mind—goodness but he is such a puppy. The mind of a young dog amazes me. They don't yet know how to filter things: this effects me, this I can ignore. His first ringing phone, his first bicyclist, his first cat were all overwhelming, so direct and relevant in his dog brain. Jamie—my family's dog—doesn't seem to notice these things at all, anymore, televisions and passing cars; Odin's only just starting to filter them. His energy is halfway boundless. His intelligence is impressive—watching him go from constant hand-biting to reacting to "no" to, now more often than not, opening his mouth and lifting it towards a tempting hand or pant-leg and then turning it away so deliberately that you can almost hear his interior monologue of "wanna but not suppos' to." We can tell when he's getting tired not because he settles down but because he gets more rambunctious and less obedient. He's taking to crate training with aplomb, has only had two accidents, both caught mid-stream and occurring in his first few days here. and has pretty much picked up on "good," "no," and variations of "get it" and "bring it." His favorite game, other than chew the rawhide until has been reconstituted with dog slobber, is to carry a toy back and forth between Dee and me when we're at either ends of the downstairs hallway. I haven't been doing horribly well, lately—my back just won't get better, and I guess I should stop expecting it will, but that's .. sort of soul-destroying, in the way these things are. I think it's fair to say I've been depressed, leaning towards the major depression side instead of the dysthymia side, complete with fucked up sleep and eating patterns and a shameful inability to do difficult things like clean my room or shower. It's a blessing that Odi is Dee's dog—not that I haven't been interacting with him, not that I don't try to be at least a little useful (mostly by playing with him, so she isn't quite so constantly interrupted and consumed by the dog), but that I can sometimes go upstairs and it can be just me and my cat, quiet and alone. But while a dog is no miracle—while there aren't miracles—I think there are fewer things in the world which are so full of pure joy and energy as a 4-month-old puppy. | |
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| So. 
Meet Odin (Odi for short).Dee adopted a 4-month-old Lab/Border Collie puppy today. Adopting a puppy has been a long-time idle desire, and became a whirlwind plan of action while I was in Corvallis; she met Odi yesterday, and put a 24-hour hold on him; today I came in on the train and we went to the shelter immediately after and now, behold: dog. Odi has the body of a leggy black Lab—he actually looks a lot like Jamie—including all-black fur; his muzzle is narrower and longer than a Lab and he has Border Collie half-floppy ears. He's missing one eye, and no we don't know how or why: he came to our local shelter without it, and there's no record of how it was lost in his file. It's all closed up and healed, and he seems to notice it not at all, so we don't imagine it'll do him any harm. Here is his original adoption page, not that it gives much more information! Dee's meet Odi post is here. He's been here about five hours, which tells you not very much about a 4-month-old puppy except that puppies are energetic. He's teething like a beast and we have to do a lot of [body part and/or clothing] for toy substitutions, but he's smart. He's already picked up on "no" as a command word, and sometimes even obeys it; he's figured out that he's not allowed upstairs or on the couch (one or both are privileges he may earn in the future, but he'll be downstairs-only and crate trained for now). This mix purportedly gets the smarts of the Collie and the desire to please of a Lab, so I think he'll do pretty darn well. But really, who cares! I know what we're here for, and what we're here for is puppy pictures. These are half-blurry snapshots because 1) I'm tired and 2) it's a puppy, but there ya go. ( +2 )
 AAAH YOU GUYS WE HAVE A DOG (August, in case you were curious, is very glad I'm home and very put out by this beast in her home, although she has already been downstairs and, however, unenthused she is so far, she's not particularly scared, bless her. She's grown so comfortable here; she knows this is her home, even if there are strangers or big black dogs. It's also worth noting she lived peaceably with a dog at her previous home; I expect she'll coexist fine with Odi once everyone has calmed down. Which ... may be a while.) | |
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| In Corvallis, housesitting while my father is in Calfornia, meeting my mother at the tail end of a long stay in Texas. They'll be down there a few days, visiting friends; it's just Jamie and me in the meantime, hangin'.
Devon and I went round one in mission: tame the back pain last night. "Is it any better?" "Yes, actually." "It'll be worse tomorrow." And it was, starting when I woke at the end of my first sleep cycle at 3a, and I slept like shite on account. This battle with my back has been one of the toughest yet—in part just because the pain's been bad, in part because it's been going on for weeks now, in part because it's been one factor in many: exhaustion, maybe some depression, triggering (but good!) media, people I know with mental health and substance abuse issues, people I know with chronic pain issues, all of them filling my head to one whirling blur of problematic thoughts. But they are primarily thoughts; the only thing which is concrete is the pain—and even that is half as often phantom pain, a pain I can't feel directly but still know to be there because it effects me or just because I know. Writing about it seems insincere—like I'm appropriating other people's much more pressing issues, or dwelling on passing problems, or just making up problems entirely. Ten years in on this—my back problems started when I was abroad in England at sixteen; it terrifies me, in a way, that it's been so long—and I still don't believe it's real. On some level, I still think I'm faking it for attention or just because I enjoy being miserable. If I don't have rights to it, I certainly don't have rights to all the other thoughts, that blur. Before this trip I'd reached a point somewhere between resigned and angry, where I wasn't even trying to treat it anymore, I wasn't trying to do anything but watch TV and not think, but I was also taking these long walks despite a 80 degree heatwave, trying to pour all the agitation into blisters and sweat, trying to get so tired that I could actually sleep.
I don't know.
Today Jamie and I went for a walk. 60 degree weather, overcast and windy. Jamie's coming up on ten herself and often it's hard to tell, but man did all the uphills tire her. She's sleeping well, now. We went up a hilly residential street and into the Timberland forest, a walk I've made hundreds of times. I found sacred art in the woods, feathers tied a vine on a tree with bows of red fabric. They added a new road and residential development up that way about a year ago, and I hadn't been up there since, but to my surprise so much of the wilds are still intact—the field is gone, but the path beside it remains, and you can still walk in nature instead of beside a road. The wind was noisy through the tips of the pines; outside the forest, wild iris dotted the path. I felt grateful to be there. I ... haven't felt that in a while.
I really don't know. On one hand I'm full of thoughts about what it means to have a decade of chronic illness behind me (and a lifetime more to come!), and how I consider myself an alcoholic who's just never had a drink, and how ironic is that what keeps me from drinking is primarily that I'm too mentally ill to obtain alcohol har har har, and what it means to think about suicide, and if it changes things to admit that I think about suicide, and ... and. And yet I come here to a boyfriend that loves me beyond reason, and there is wind in the trees. I don't know how the two balance out, right now. | |
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| Cat story the first.
At evil o'clock (usually between 6 and 8 a.m.) the cat wakes me by scratching at my closet door. The closet is where the food lives; she eats "breakfast" at 11a. If I yell at and/or ignore her and go back to sleep, she'll do it again, every hour or so. She'll only do it if I'm sleeping. She does it because I'm sleeping.
If I get up, she'll run under the bed. I can't bribe her with a piece of food—I must actually put an entire serving in her bowl. And then I pick her up before she can eat it and lock her in the bathroom until 11a.
This morning, she did the scratching thing and I did the yelling thing and then she ... seemed to let me go back to bed. But then I would hear a random, weird and muffled, scratching noise, but I couldn't see the cat. It was less annoying but much stranger than usual, so I finally got up. I couldn't find her anywhere—in the closet, under the bed.
The cat had gotten herself stuck in a mostly-zipped up suitcase in my closet.
I rolled the suitcase out of my room and into the bathroom and then I let her out so that she could spend the next few hours not annoying me.
Cat story the second.
When I was in San Francisco, Dee went up to see the Mariners for their opening game. We were going to ask our neighbor to catsit, so she was out of town; instead, Devon drove up for a few days. (It gets better: This week, my father is driving down to California to meet my mother, who is coming back northward after a few months spent with my grandparents in Texas. While he's in California, I'm heading to Corvallis to housesit and watch Jamie the dog.) Just after he came home, we had the following IM conversation.
Devon: I didn't know when you were feeding August, so I just fed her every twelve hours. You know 11:00 am and 11:00 pm. I don't know how much she liked waiting that long for foods in the morning.
Me: yep that's exactly when I've been feeding her actually
so that "waiting"
was not waiting
it was her normal time
Devon: Sweet.
Me: NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL | |
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| This is my life: In the midst of some of the worst back pain I've experienced, my hotpad kicks the bucket. This is my darling, beloved wet-heat hotpad of which I have written odes because it is that good—or it was, because what probably killed it is the fact that I've been using it for hours every day on full heat, not because it wasn't performing to spec but because my back has come to require industrial-strength heat. And today, it won't go more than four degrees above room temperature. (Which is mid 70s through mid 80s, what the fuck, but still.) I imagine wet-heat hotpads aren't a Fred Meyer sort of thing, and so Devon and I will buy a new one online and if we do it will only be here in a few days, but. This is the icing on the shit cake, such as it were. I had about one spoon left and I used it up being mildly anxious about what I'll do about the pain now, but at this point I can barely care. Honestly it's laughable. I needed my hotpad a lot so I used my hotpad a lot so now I can't use my hotpad at all now that I ... still need it a lot. Universe you so hilarious, yes you are. (This beautiful beast lasted me seven years, however, and I've been pushing it harder and harder with each one, so don't take this as any kind of negative recommendation. It's an awesome pad and I loved mine and do recommend them. It just turns out they aren't indestructible, and this is a super awesome bad time to figure that out.) | |
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| Made the train trip home from San Francisco yesterday, the best overnight trip I've had. They turned off the bright overheads at night (they don't always; yes, it's cruel), my seatmate barely look up her side least of all encroached on mine, and everyone learned an ingenious trick from the woman across the isle: put your feet up on the fold-down tray, do it do it do it. It exhibits no grace or manners, and you can't stretch your legs out all the way, but who cares because it's the only thing on the damn train that creates an acute angle at the hips and so takes pressure off the lower back. I actually got a few hours of sleep, I only took one pill, and I was not in incredible pain. When in San Francisco I almost feel like I could live there. Express is a fantastic roommate, because we know each other so well and because he works out of the home, and I will drink up all the downtime you give me. The most basic acts of housekeeping seem like miracles to him—he'd do well with a roommate, I think, if it were someone he knew well or a lover: someone to dirty enough dishes to warrant using the dishwasher, and make the occasional miraculous dinner. It makes me feel like some sort of domestic goddess just to make a quiche, so. The city is visually fascinating, although I haven't fallen in love with its social culture. The weather is tolerable—fantastic, for California. There was even a thunderstorm when I was there. And then we come up over the mountains and down the other side, the evergreens start to fade into deciduous and it begins to rain, and the world outside is the Willamette Valley and I'm like: yanno what, never mind. There are actually a few places in the world that I would love to live, but they all look like this (verdant yellow green against wet black-brown with the spring) and they all have this heart-gripping sense of home. If I dare try to do something foolish when walking in the door after I've been away—like, say, check my email—August will climb all over me with an awkwardness that's unusual for her and stare at or bite any hand which is not occupied by petting. My best bet is just to lie down so there are no distractions and she can throw herself against me, a black puff made solid by desperation and purr. This time I ended up with her sprawled across my chest and belly (let's face it, she's not a small cat) while I lay on my back, nose nuzzled between my breasts but her tummy up in a dignity-less feat of flexibility, and we touched each other all over until we had been painted in love (and I in cat hair). I was going to tell a funny cat story here but, you know, I think I'll save it. What matters is that I love her. I love her so much that it feels as though my heart may burst. And I came home to this on the whiteboard: 
Best roommate? Best roommate. | |
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| In those late-night conversations I have with Express, I find myself ending every third rambling soliloquy with "and then I realize that everything I say is incredibly depressing." This bout of back pain has been weighing on my thoughts, but it's more general than that. It's a ubiquitous slew of small details. Amy ( cerulean_chains) finally convinced me to watch (the Vienna 2005 production of) Elizabeth the musical on the basis of these characters and relationships are totally up my alley. And they are, but it's something I've had to watch in pieces—in part because I'm in flighty "play video games for three solid hours, concentrate on anything else for thirty scarce minutes" mode, in part because... ( Discussion of suicidal ideation. )Express looks at the rest of his life half in anticipation and half in fear: he has this great checklist of Life Goals but rails against the idea of longterm commitment. I think it'll work out for the best. He'll angst about choices forever, but his decisions will be good ones. He'll do pretty awesome things. When I dropped out of college I stopped having goals. For a while, that was because I was unwell and recovering from being unwell. These days I rarely have to notice that I'm still sick—I'm safe, secure, and surrounded by love, I have no responsibilities and few stresses, etc. Life is good. But goals are my trade off. I'm well on a day to day basis because I only function on a day to day basis; looking beyond that could bring all the worst things crashing back, but more than that it just seems impossible. I feel like I couldn't, even if I tried. I'm premenstrual, in one of those rare cycles where being emotional feels rewarding. Cathartic, maybe; indulgent. Almost relaxing. Today none of this is a bad thing, but it's still a realization of ... something. I have this pain and it isn't going away: this back pain, this depression. Even when I feel like I've forgotten about it, it defines who I am. I know that that's a bad thing, but it doesn't always feel like it. Sometimes it feels like just being me. Sometimes what it means to be me hits me out of the blue, and I notice again that every third thing I say is pretty darn depressing. | |
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| Last night while trying to sleep I composed a lengthy Tumblr post in my head, one which should more properly be a number of posts because, well, it's Tumblr—go tl;dr and go home. Yet writing an LJ post, lengthy or otherwise, seems difficult these days. I know in large part it's just that my daily distractions are focused around content that ends up on my Tumblr, namely Let Me Tell You About My Video Games. It's also that I think my back has reached a new level of suck ... probably since the start of this month? Time is fuzzy. It's that sort of stealth/background pain that I think I don't actually know I feel, which makes all of this sound like the worst sort of bitching: behold, the suffering I experience because I can't tell I'm suffering! But it ruins my mood and my patience and tries do to the same to my brain; I don't know how there can be pain I don't recognize (freakishly high tolerances? loss of feeling in my back? skewed expectations? yes to all of these things), but it's no better for that, I still get almost all of negative repercussions of pain with even more limited ability to treat it. I was worried about this before the trip, and stuffed myself full of naproxen sodium on the train, and could tell the exact moment that the pills wore off. I hate medication; the only reason I'll take this one is because it treats cause as much as symptom, relaxing muscles instead of just dulling pain. I used to be able to get away with just one happy pill every other month, as a sort of system reset. Because I never take meds, that little blue pill was so effective. Now I can feel it as the effects wear off and behold, it all comes back. In case you were wondering, reading back through my back pain tag is one of the more depressing things I do to myself. There's two things about my back problems which are soul-sucking: the permanence and the progression, in short: it will continue to get worse for the rest of your life. Every now and then it does this, it climbs a little higher, gets a little worse, hurts a little more more often, until it finds a plateau further up the mountain which seems nice and has a good view, and decides to rest there for a while. The climb hurts in an active sense because pain one isn't used to is always the hardest to stomach, and adjusting to the new plateau is effortful: deciding how much of the pain I can tolerate, and figuring out what tools and pills may hold it at that point. And, atop that, knowing that not only am I settling for "how much pain can I tolerate," but that the cycle will continue and I will learn to tolerate more and more, forever—that's almost as hard. It may be as much of what destroys me as the pain itself. Which is to say, as I think I had a point under all that: This isn't a climb and plateau in my usual sense because it's almost all been stealth pain, but I think the cycle is repeating once more. I don't like it. I don't like it in a way I have no words for but hyperbole. I'm in an awesome place with an awesome person, and I'm distracted by ... this. This little view into "maybe this isn't just a bad week, hell it's been a lot longer than a week, maybe this is the future." This reminder that that tend to be exactly how it works and guess what, self! there's shit all you can do about it. I'm also a bit restless and grumpy on account of pain doing that to a person, but there's something more, insidious and miserable, my little whisper into a void about something bigger than this moment. I don't want this, I really don't want this, and I know that in a universal sense all of this is so small and I just don't care. I don't want this anymore. And let's be honest, writing about that doesn't make anyone happy. | |
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| That moment when you strip the bed and start laundry and almost put a book in the wash. So I'm heading back to San Francisco this weekend, to spend about ten days with Express. I've been having some sleep issues coupled with another spike in back pain (the sort of which I don't really notice until I mention offhand to the boy that "oh, I've been in excruciating pain lately"—and you think stealth pain would be a blessing, but it just means all of the fatigue with none of the ability to treat it and a bonus feeling of utter disconnect with your own body), so I'm going into this with a mantra of "I can't hear you, I can't hear you." It's not that I won't love being there, it's that I'm afraid I'll exhaust myself just by preparing to be there and then I'll be done with the visit the minute I arrive. So I'm not doing an incredibly intelligent advance packing job, or thinking about it overmuch, but I figure I'll try not to forget underwear and this is Express: I know him, I don't need to fuss about any of this. And it'll be a good visit. I was down in Corvallis a week ago, and came back to a cat who for a full 24 hours would not leave me: the only time I was not obligated to hold her is when we were both lying in bed. She hasn't quite caught on yet to the fact that I'm leaving again, but she's starting to figure it out (just wait until I pull the suitcases from the closet). It is ... good to be loved. When I first moved up here, it was on a weird "I don't know if I'm visiting or moving!" basis, and while we'd talked about a cat—a cat has been my lifelong dream; of course we did—it wasn't until I actually started signing paperwork a the shelter that it hit home that I had a ... sister/daughter/dependent. I still manage to spend weeks away, in Corvallis, taking the train down to San Francisco; Dee is an angel who doesn't mind feeding a rabid food-beast (and a half: there's Kuzco, too) and otherwise sharing a cat. But I'm tethered, now—not just to a place, although I love it here (but I've lived in and loved so many places over the last few years—those are less permanent), but to a person, a floofy little cat person who climbs on and over my shoulders until I let her bury herself into my lap. Last time I was headed to San Francisco I wrote a near identical post—hmm. Oh, except then August had just started to sit in my lap—and now I have a semi-permanent fuzzy black lap tumor, guys, you don't even understand. I fell head over heels for this cat in the first moment, but we have become kin now in a way that's easy to take for granted, the way that mostly sounds like "hey August no one cares shut up" and really means "I love you move than anything in the entire world." The minutiae of a depressive's daily life are pretty boring, even when half her wishes are fulfilled (cat! friendship! city!). I consume too much media and think about food a lot and have problems sleeping and snuggle with my cat: it ain't fascinating stuff. And when I'm in San Francisco I'll consume more media and think about food and have problems sleeping and snuggle with my friend, who is hugely unlike a cat but I guess that's a good thing. Still it's a bit of a revelation, each time: that in the midst of being me, my life can still be this—not always, which is fine: it would exhaust me; but sometimes it's pretty wonderful. | |
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| Title: The Remedy Author: Michelle Lovric Published: New York: Regan, 2005 Rating: 2 of 5 Page Count: 136 of 440 Total Page Count: 113,330 Text Number: 327 Read Because: personal enjoyment, purchased from Powell's $1 shelf Review: A historical romance-cum-drama set in the underbellies of 1780s London and Venice. I could finish reading this—it's overlong but not poorly paced on the whole, and the prose is often laborious and strangely stilted, but far from unreadable—but I don't want to. There's little to intrigue, here, despite the richness of the historical setting: what opens well with the story of a young recalcitrant nun devolves into an insipid romance, and while there's a hint of conspiracy in the background details, Lovric does her best to overshadow them with the awkward coupling of two unlikable people. In the most mundane and offputting sense, there's a shadow of the grotesque across the book: blatant fat-shaming, greasy and petty characters, and only the thinnest sort of passion at its heart. My appetite is for fantasy of manners-style historical drama, richer and more intriguing, finding depth in the darkest corners; The Remedy manages none of that, and so it's not to my taste—and, frankly, I can find nothing else to redeem it. It would be a waste of my time to finish reading it, and I don't recommend it. Review posted here on Amazon.com. | |
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| So I'm watching this show called City Hunter. It's on Netflix instant right now. (I wrote most of this a week ago, before my wrist issues became too bad to type. Now I'm almost done with the show and much of this post is out of date, but who really cares, right?) In 1983, a group of South Korean covert military agents infiltrated North Korea. Concerned of the political ramifications of this action, the South Korean government murdered their own agents in order to hide what had happened—but one survived. He kidnaps and raises his comrade's son, and 28 years later that child, Lee Yoon Sung, returns to Korean and infiltrates the presidential palace the Blue House in order to fulfill his adoptive father's demand for revenge against the South Korean government. But as Lee Yoon Sung creates a home for himself and meets Blue House security agent Kim Na Na, he discovers that his father's goals may not be his own. Grimdark revenge drama? No, silly, that's just the first episode and a half—it turns out our hero is opposed to lethal force, and also has hidden desires to be a normal guy with a girlfriend and a mom and other nice things (including a whole lot of money: completely normal is overrated.) Run-on will-they-or-won't-they (of course they will) romantic comedy? Yes but no: the stars are far too crossed for that, and our hero does have a lot on his plate, so the will/won't feels justified. Soap opera? When discussing the plot (and then she was hanging from a balcony! and he reached down and grabbed her! and his wound reopened! and—) it sounds like one, but for all that it's convincing: these feel like the actual reactions of real people (some villains exempt) to extraordinary circumstances, not just drama for drama's sake, although there is plenty of that. As such, the first few episodes are chock full of mood whiplash as the tone bounces across the scattering of genres. When episodes are an hour long, that's a significant drawback: it take almost two hours just to get past the prologue, and the show is never in a hurry, meandering along, dropping cliffhanger endings like confetti, dead set on drawing you through a solid twenty hour run-time. And then somewhere around episode five it becomes awesome. It doesn't really get awesome; it doesn't grow a beard in any recognizable sense. It's a gradual thing, a progression from "this character dynamic is pretty trite" to "man could this romantic triangle quadrangle geometry get any more complex" to "I could maybe ship them under certain circumstances" to "PERFECT YES GO ON NOW KISS." But it's not just about kissing. I ship Lee Yoon Sung and Kim Na Na—and it takes a lot for me to care about a will/won't het romance, because they're beyond played out and and often problematically heteronormative. But I don't only ship them romantically: I'm invested in their relationship. Their playful rivalry. The fact that they make pretty good best friends. Their unwillingness to be attracted to one another. Their attraction to one another. Their attempts to weigh a romantic relationship against their shared past and troubled present. Their abilities and inabilities to own their own feelings. The interaction between them is dynamic and complex. All the interactions are. Protagonist Lee Yoon Sung is being hunted by Prosecutor Kim Young Joo, but the two share a grudging respect for one another that strengthens more than defeats their rivalry. (Yeah, it has as much potential for subtext as you think it does.)  Lee Yoon Sung's relationship with his adoptive father grows increasingly strained and antagonistic, which only serves to show the strength of the love between them. Lee Yoon Sung smiles while fighting enemies he detests, and grows emotionally conflicted when defeating them. Ship ALL the things, yes please. AND NOW KISS! or don't. That thing you're doing now? that's good too. ( And it's ridiculous: more silly show blather, +4 screenshots. )It's silly and the cliffhangers grow frankly cruel, and I am was at episode 16. Now I have one half of the last episode left. I've wanted to watch a live action Asian drama for a while, but I was worried—after trying and dropping K-drama Boys Over Flowers—that I liked them in concept but not execution. In theory, I love a whole other world, stylized and compelling (the way crack is compelling), which consumes you. In practice, a twenty hour marathon show like this a different beast from most media I've been exposed to. It's akin to Masterpiece Theatre (I also just watched Downton Abbey season one), but those shows love their delicacy—period clothing and fancy manners and clever little scripts—whereas Asian drama says, "Why delicacy when we can have extremely tight pants?" It's exaggerated, bigger than life, but can be paced at a crawl. But the delicacy is still there. It's delicacy in the way that the Ciel/Sebastian relationship in Kuroshitsuji drips with the stuff—and what it drips off of is a Victorian lace-swaddled eyepatch-wearing discomfortingly mature shota ordering around butterknife-wielding demon butler. It's delicacy in the way that Code Geass is a complex political and character drama (indeed, the protagonist/prosecutor relationship is keenly reminiscent of the Lelouch/Suzaku relationship) and also produced more memes than you can shake a stick at on account of its being batshit awesome crazy. It's fantastic and surprisingly subtle character interactions, coached within run-on drama and cliffhangers and the protagonist just wore a gold lamé vest while breaking into an enemy business, I kid you not. What I'm saying is that it took me a while to adjust to the style—and it helps that City Hunter is pretty slick ( Boys Over Flowers: not so much)—but now that I have: oh man, guys, this show. It's like watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon all over again. Half the things I have to say about this show make it seem like you should run far, far away, and maybe you should. But me, well, I'm ever so glad to be watching it. | |
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| My mother has been making Spinach Ricotta Pie for as long as I can remember, and when I started doing some cooking here in Portland I asked her for the recipe. Since then, it's become my go-to dish (I even cooked it when I was visiting Express in San Francisco, and took it on the train on the trips there and back), and I've been meaning to write it up to share here. This dish is similar to quiche, but the ricotta (rather than egg) base makes it unique, firmer and less like custard, with no eggy taste. It's fantastic warm and cold at any time of day, keeps well in the fridge and freezes well if sliced into servings. The recipe has been modified to increase the amount of veggies and cheese, and you really can't have too much of either. I also like to play around with alternate veggie/cheese combinations, and this version of the recipe reflects that. (Spinach) Ricotta Quiche/Pie
Family recipe, adapted from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook
1 pie crust
1 tablespoon butter
1 small onion, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
16 oz. vegetable filling*
16 oz. ricotta cheese
3 eggs
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup cheese, grated*
1/4 cup cheese for topping, grated
Preheat oven to 375.
Saute onion and green pepper in butter over medium heat for 7 minutes, until onion is translucent. Add seasonings and vegetable filling, and cook until ingredients are combined and excess moisture has evaporated.
In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients except topping cheese, and mix well. Stir in vegetable mixture. Spoon into prepared pie crust, and top with remaining cheese.
Bake on lowest oven shelf for 50 to 55 minutes, until crust and cheese topping are golden brown and filling is firm to the touch. Cool at least ten minutes before serving; serve warm, cool, or reheated. Freezes well.
Notes: I usually double this recipe, as frozen pie crusts come in pairs and quiche keeps well. Use whatever vegetable/cheese pairing strikes your fancy: spinach and Swiss are my staples, but I also love broccoli cheddar and have had good luck with mushroom Swiss. Spinach can be frozen (squeeze out as much water as you can) or freshly wilted, broccoli should be trimmed and lightly steamed, mushrooms should be sauteed—the vegetables won't cook too much more in the oven, so have them pretty close to how you want them to be. You may want to modify spices to match: garlic is an awesome addition, spinach is fantastic with some mustard or basil, broccoli loves extra cayenne, etc. The nutmeg, however, should stay: it's classic to quiches, and makes the dish. Do or don't omit the green pepper—I find that if diced small, it disappears into the dish. Parmesan makes a fantastic topping cheese. | |
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