Caitlín R. Kiernan

7.5 hours of sleep last night, but, somehow, I feel less awake than I did yesterday after only five hours. Go figure.

Want to see humanity at its most illiterate and hateful, it's most degraded? Just read the comments to trailers at IMDb, or the comments on any news website. And that leads me to not forget a quote, something that Spooky overheard in general chat on Rift: "I want to know where you get one of those keyboards that doesn't toggle caps." How far away can we be from the "lol" key? I think what makes me the special kind of nauseous is when I see someone whom I know to be educated, bright, articulate, and well socialized write something like "lol i didnt mean 2 say that XD" – it's enough to make me think about using the tines of a nice sharp fork on my tender parts. And, just in case you're not among the legions of the tainted, that combination of X and D – XD – near as I can tell, it's meant to be someone laughing and scrunching up his/her face in the process. But sideways.

Er...um...actual stuff that matters.

Well, yesterday. I wrote 1,261 words yesterday on the as yet unnamed Mars story. I like where it's going. It's going where I want it to, though it promises to take longer to get there than I'd like. I shall offer up a quote:

Why, we’re better off than them leftbacks, them shite-rat also-rans, ain’t we just? Shì and she dy jarroo, lay your glimmers down if we’re wrong on that.

Also, there was a phone call – and hour, hour and a half, I don't know, regarding that cool thing I can't tell you about. It was a Very Good Phone Call. I love working with people who not only "get it," but help me "get it" better, and who worry about what I want to do at least as much as they're worrying about the bottom line.

Work was long and wearying, but oddly satisfying yesterday.

readingthedark arrived about eight p.m. Spooky and I were sitting on the stoop, watching the waxing sliver of moon rise as the sun set, when he pulled up. There was Italian take out for dinner (actually, I had a salad), and then many hours of conversation. Last night I declared I would recall the topics. This afternoon, I think that might have been a brash statement, but they included: books (the good, the bad, and the ugly), writing, painting, Placebo, Death Cab for Cutie, massive drug use and the hilarity that sometimes ensues, Mark Z. Danielewski, William Gibson, Wicca and Crowley and William S. Burroughs, open-source sims, coding, Insilico and Second Life, MESH vs. prims, trustafarians, psychiatry, John Carpenter, Goat Girl Press, Harlan Ellison, hurricanes, hipster douchebags, the economics of publishing, and...honestly, fuck, I don't know. More stuff than this. You can talk about a lot in eight hours, when all you do is talk. Oh, and he deserves a "thank you" for helping me get Spooky's new (it's actual her old) desk up the winding, perilous stairs and into her office.

Oh, and Spooky came home from the thrift store yesterday with a really fine summer sweater for me. I loves it, I do.

My eye is upon you, Katia.

It's Been Worse,
Aunt Beast