Caitlín R. Kiernan

Oh my bloody fucking fuck. I am so fucking over this aging thing. I did something stupid to my hip...my FREAKING fucking hip...yesterday. Probably when I was trying to clean and reorganize part of my office, rearranging bookshelves in the vain attempt to turn that House on Ash Tree Lane trick and create larger spaces within smaller spaces. It didn't work, but I feel like, during my sleep, someone took a sledgehammer to my left hip. Wanna wake up really goddamn fast? Forget fucking coffee. Trying motherfucking hip pain. Tiger balm and two Doan's tablets—yes, motherfucking Doan's tablets—have dulled the pain enough that I'll be able to sit up and write. But FUCK THIS SHIT (to quote Frank Black). This winter, I'm joining a gym and getting this meatbag into some semblance of working order. Last night (not suspecting the hip pain was headed my way), Spooky and I were discussing how we both need to lose some weight. Using Hubero as a standard of weight measurement, it was decided I need to lose 1 Hubero. That's one whole FAT cat I'm carrying around, all day and every day. Again (second verse, same as the first), FUCK THAT SHIT.

Oh, and please. No commiseration, or I feel your pain, or whatever. No stories that go something like: "Well, when I was only fifteen years old I was riding my bicycle and a pit bull grabbed my ankle and dragged me and the bike—by the ankle, mind you—twelve blocks, up hill both ways, before it was shot in the head by a kindly spaceman who called an ambulance that hitched my ankle to its back fender and dragged me twelve miles, up hill both ways, over a dirt road that was mostly potholes, all the way to the hospital—which was closed! Now, you wanna talk hip pain? That's hip pain!" None of those stories. In fact, I want a T-shirt that reads, simply, "Do Not Commiserate."

But at least the Hip Agony does help me not feel so bad that I'm spending the Last Warmest Day of 2011 in Rhode Island (going up to about 85˚F) trying to fix the timeline, instead of "chillaxing" (hold on while I choke myself for using that odious "word," even sarcastically) at the beach, swimming, losing a cat.

Anyway...

Yesterday was mostly me discovering that things were worse than I suspected. That failed time-travel experiment? Well, feel free to blame me for the Eighties. That's right. Blame me for the entire decade. But...Frank the Goat's on it, and there may yet be hope. You may wake up tomorrow and have no idea whatsoever that the Eighties ever occurred, because they won't have. Unless we fail, me and Frank (that's me and Frank the Goat, not me and Frank Black—and I mean Frank Black from Blue Velvet, not Frank Black, née Black Francis, from the Pixies, or the ultra-cool-and-spooky Frank Black from Millennium, and certainly not Frank the Interdimensional Demon Bunny), and that's always a possibility. One must never underestimate the likelihood of failure. John DeLorean, he underestimated his ability to fail...and look how that turned out. And of course I'm right. I'm me.

Next week's shoot for the book trailer for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir races towards us (five days to go), and...frankly (black), I'm terrified. Will we be ready? I'm gonna roll a 1d4 and hold my breath.

Um...and...what?

Last night, Spooky and I saw last week's episode of Fringe, "One October Night," and..wow. Olivia and Fauxlivia. That was pretty much a slash episode (albeit, without the hot Fauxlivia-on-Olivia sex). And we watched another episode from Season Four of Mad Men. Oh, and something that I can't (or, rather, won't) show you until tomorrow.

And then I looked through the marvelous Dark Horse hardback collection of Bernie Wrightson stuff from the pages of Creepy and Eerie (thank you, Steven Lubold!), then read another story from the Halloween anthology, "Three Doors" by Norman Partridge. The story itself is so-so, but it's narrative technique has moments of sheer brilliance. To whit:

"Doesn't matter to me how you explain it.
I'm not here to draw you a diagram.
I'm just here to tell you a story."

The voice of the narrator (ergo, the author), is a grand "fuck you" to all the morons who want their hands held during story time. In fact, those lines echo rather remarkably Quinn's attitude towards her imagined readers in Blood Oranges: "You can believe this or not. Whatever"

But now, now I must go fix the timeline, so you who are old enough can stop remembering "designer stubble", Guns N' Roses, and the return of shoulder pads.

Accidentally Retro,
Aunt Beast (in pain we trust)

Yesterday, I did 1,520 words. Right now, there's so little other than the writing. These entries seem little more than a grotesquely ornate frame to fit around a daily word count. Then again, maybe that's not so inappropriate. For years now, my life has seemed little more than a grotesquely elaborate frame to fit around the daily word counts.

I considered, this morning, taking part in the 50bookchallenge thing. You know, read fifty books in a year. I suppose it's a noble sentiment. But I read so wretchedly slow (one eye, eye strain from writing, etc.), and I also have a feeling that something like this, if I really got hooked on it (which I probably wouldn't), I'd only be reading the books to meet that goal of having read fifty books in a year, not because I needed to read or wanted to read the books in question. So, no. Not for me. But it was a curious sort of thought to entertain for however many minutes were required to eat my breakfast ramen.

I had to resort to the Ambien last night, this morning. I was still wide awake at almost 5 a.m. (CaST).

But I think my greatest challenge at the moment is exercise, the fact that I'm getting so frightfully little of it. I left the house yesterday for the first time since Tuesday. I wake up and wobble straight into my office, spend maybe two hours futzing about online, maybe a little Wikipedia, my e-mail, the blog, and then the writing starts, which carries me on to six p.m. or seven p.m., and by then the last thing I want to do is frelling exercise. It's been about two weeks since I last had a decent walk, my major source of exercise. I've even slacked off on the hand weights. And at -2, simply refusing to exercise is not an option. Spooky's no better about this than I am, but at least she has to leave the house a few times a day to run errands. It's an occupational hazard, I do suspect, this not exercising thing. Once, I was an active beast.

I just heard that Rachel has decided to leave the The Crüxshadows at the conclusion of the current tour, which makes me quite sad. But we do what we must. On a brighter note, Spooky tells me that VNV Nation are playing the Masquerade very soon, so maybe I'll sneak out and finally see them live. Tonight, Harry and the Potters are playing the Masquerade and we both wanted to go, but likely won't. Same reason I likely won't exercise. I do the work, the writing, and then there's no energy for or interest in anything else.

Last night, we made the mistake of watching Greg McLean's Wolf Creek (2005). I think I'm with Ebert on this one. He gave it zero out of five stars. I think it deserves even less than that. It is an artless, witless sort of thing, which I would pity, but I'm not feeling so charitable. One must wonder at what point a virtual snuff film becomes all but indistinguishable from the real thing, and if when that point is reached we have something which is in anyway different in its intended function than a "real" snuff film.

I'm usually pretty good at avoiding crappy, life-sucking films, but here I've had two in as many nights. I blame Netflix, and the fact that it seems Pans Labyrinth will never be released in Atlanta. At least we get Luc Besson's Arthur and the Minimoys on the 12th.

And that's all I have for now, though I would be very, very grateful if you'd order a copy of Daughter of Hounds, or snag one from your local pusher. Whichever way works for me. Thanks.