awakeMonsieur Insomnia made another appearance last night, and both Seroquel and Sonata were required to make him go away. Yes, insomnia is definitely male. I was up until after five a.m. I signed into WoW and got the "Fishing Diplomat" achievement, because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, or the Dark Iron Dwarves, or some crazy-ass Sin'dorei warlock on a talbuck rushing the gates of Stormwind City at dawn fucking thirty.
Got an interesting email from my agent, but now she's at lunch. Might be something good. I'll know later in the day.
Also, does anyone out there (this is a long shot if ever there was one, asking this question) have contact information on the estate of Zdzisław Beksiński? I'm hoping to be able to use one of his paintings for the cover of Two Worlds and In Between (the "best of" collection), but I have a feeling it's going to be a pain tracking down the contact.
Has anyone else ever noticed that on Azeroth the moon rises in the north and sets in the south? Or maybe it's the other way round. I should ponder out the planetary physics involved.
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No writing yesterday, and no work to speak of. I was delirious from a lack of sleep and the Ambien that hadn't yet worn off. I'm waiting on Vince's illustration so I can finish up with Sirenia Digest #58 and get it to subscribers before we head to the HPLFF.
Instead of work, I needed a new bag (haha), a new shoulder bag for the trip, because I've been carrying around the same Hello Kitty backpack since about 1995. So, we went to Thayer Street, and, for reasons known only to...well, no one and nothing...we went to Urban Outfitters. It's like fucking Target for hipsters. Off-the-shelf punk. It actually made my skin crawl. And shit's crazy expensive. We left and went a few doors down to the army/navy surplus place, and got a couple of Israeli paratrooper bags (that look like they're made to last forever) for half the price one of those ugly Urban Outfitter bags would have cost.
Thayer Street is a sad sight to behold. Sadder for Spooky than for me. She remembers the heyday of Thayer Street. By my first visit, in 2000, the corporate invasion had already begun. We walk down the street, and she points to a Great Cuts and says, "That was a really cool record store called In Your Ear." It seems like every corporate nightmare we pass used to be something cool and funky. Vintage clothing stores, bookstores, record stores that have made way for Starbucks and Johnny Rockets and City Sports and fuck knows what else. Twenty years ago it had a vibe. Now it hardly has a pulse. College students these days, I fear, want exactly what they left behind, and what they want is bland and cookie cutter. Anyway...a few cool places have survived, tucked into the nooks and crannies, like the hardier creatures that manage to endure the introduction of wave after wave of invasive species. But it depresses Spooky, and she tries not to look.
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Last night we found an odd little gem of a movie on Netflix, Billy O'Brien's Isolation (2005). It's an amazingly effective horror film, that makes great use of mood and lighting, sound and space, to create almost unbearable suspense. Excellent creature effects, good action, good cinematography, all in a low-budget Irish monster movie. This is the sort of film that the "SyFy" could be making, if they could be bothered to give half a shit. Really, I was impressed. I wanted to bathe for hours afterwards. There were one or two sour notes (including an unnecessary and cliché "epilogue"), but, all in all, Isolation is very much worth your time. Think Alien and The Thing, but in rural Ireland.
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I will have no— I repeat NO —internet access while in Portland. This is a good thing. I just don't want people disappointed that I'm not tweeting every time I go to the toilet or whatever. We're not taking the laptops, and I have no iPhone, and our cellphones are too old to manage The Future. So, my last contact with the web until after the festival will be tomorrow, most likely.
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Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.
That's all for now. The mothmen and the platypus concur.