Much Ado About Nothing

0 comments on "Smudged"

Flipping back through my Twitter times. To further some thoughts that maybe should have been left where they lay.

Like this robots tweet, that makes me think of that scene in iRobot where the robot is flipping through the air as it attacks and it’s fast and frightening.

I appreciate that they’re not risking the lives of real stunt people.

I think that’s a good thing.

Original seasons of Roseanne were really everyday life in the United States. Like, it was the first time they showed what life was really like on TV versus the romanticized versions of previous family-focused shows.

Before it jumped the shark, the show was a slice of real life. From the good to the bad.

And that story arc where Dan’s salesman dad comes to visit and impregnates Crystal before ducking out… ooh. I didn’t realize how much it had stuck to me until I re-watched episodes as an adult and the reaction was visceral, man.

It popped in my head: “She’s a single mom struggling everyday to do right by her son. She came from abusive relationships and has always done the best she can. Of all the people he had to talk up, why did he have to screw around with Crystal? Like Dan said, ‘You’ve known her since she was a little girl.’ So at the very least, he should have had the humanity to leave. her. alone.”

Yeah. The show used to be honest and real in those first few seasons. I haven’t seen the new series, but OG Roseanne was family life in the late 80s.

Did anybody else watch The Tribe?

Zoot was a total asshole.

They’re like cute little fairy creatures.

Dancing and bobbing to the music of nature. Drifting closer to the human encampment. Curious voices and tittering carried by the wind.

I have a sudden interest in reading the old Popeye comics.

I don’t want to buy them. I just want to take a little look.

Faizel 02 at Amazon
0 comments on "What is this even #weedthoughts"

I write more when I smoke weed. Is that a terrible thing to say? But it’s not like I’m going to mess up anyone’s life if I toke up. I’m not a doctor. I don’t drive at the moment. I’m not handling anyone’s money.

I’m a very nervous person. I don’t quite know how I got this way, but here I am. Broken before I even started; that one colored pencil that draws a few vibrant lines of color, then the tip falls out. Eventually you get tired of always having to resharpen something.

Left to my own devices, I would sit somewhere and read.

It’s only necessity that gets me washing dishes and wiping down counters. It’s only the people around me that keep me from winding down and just stopping somewhere. A silent, motionless humanoid shape, gradually losing all definition as it is caught in the spell of time.

So I smoke some weed.

It focuses my mind on the here-and-now. My brain chemistry has always been a bit different (that’s the problem you know, my brain chemistry. Ups, downs, and the short in-betweens). One Sudafed knocked me out for 12 hours once. I hallucinated for hours on a sleeping pill. Coffee calms me down. Music pours itself into my skull, reshaping my mood with its passage. And weed breaks me out of my obsessive compulsions.

If I start reading a book, I am driven to finish it. No sleep. No food. No rest.

I learned to read fast as a survival technique. It’s how I can read something like Dune in three hours and finish the whole series in a weekend.

As a kid, I would get weird notions caught in my head. I remember being abducted by aliens, the light shining everywhere, the gladness of never having to go back–It must have been a vivid dream for a child to have, because for years in my preteens and early teens, I was waiting for them to come back like they promised. I got a notion in my head that aliens had taken me up, and I believed it. Quietly in my head, child-me was sure someone was going to come and take me away.

My teenage years were hard. The giving up of childhood things and the entry into the real world. I took things especially hard.

I’m pragmatic. I’m agnostic to most religions–I don’t believe but I don’t disbelieve either; anything is possible in the afterlife. I love beautiful things, but I don’t have many beautiful things in my life. I’m prickly. I’m perky. I’m weird. I’ve got wacky brain chemistry.

Smoking weed helps me focus my thoughts. It breaks my obsessive thinking. It lets me write coherent prose.

And it’s legal in my state for recreational use.

*

BTW, I got these waterbrushes from Amazon, and I’m trying my hand at watercolors.

It is not going as well as I was hoping. But maybe someday I’ll be good.

Faizel 02 at Amazon
0 comments on "Batman V Superman — the most unfair fight possible"

(There may be spoilers, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the movie, though I haven’t been able to avoid the super dark and depressing trailers.)

The Kid was talking about “Batman Vs. Superman” and said “I wish it was a fight to the death.” To which I responded with “Huh? In what universe would that ever be a fair fight?”

Seriously, unless Superman was cocky enough to say “I’m going to beat you to death with my bare hands,” which Batman could respond by bringing out the kryptonite when Superman got close, there really wouldn’t be much of a fight between them. Real talk, Superman could stay well out of range and use his laser vision to fry Batman alive–that fancy armor wouldn’t last very long with laser vision focused on it, bringing the internal temperature to even just a quarter the heat of the sun. Or Superman could just grab a rock and chuck it real hard.

Anyway, it’s kind of a relief to know that “Batman Vs. Superman” isn’t actually Batman versus Superman. Not that I’m very interested in the movie in question–it seems a bit too dark and downery for my tastes. I mean, they’ve taken all the lighthearted joy of Superman and thrown it out the window. That’s kind of a bummer–but I’m sure I’ll probably end up seeing it once it’s out on DVD or on TV.

Hopefully they don’t include as many wtf-scenes as they left in “Man of Steel” (seriously Jonathan Kent, you were terrible and your death was absolutely meaningless. All you taught your son was how to be a douche and destroy a company’s very expensive truck just because the truck’s driver was a jerk). Though really, I’m not that hopeful. I don’t even think there’s going to be much in the way of good fanfic to fix the situation, since there’s no Jor-El/Zod to save things. (Unless someone writes about the resurrected Zod remembering parts and pieces of his previous life, including the relationship he once had with Jor-El. That could be an interesting and angsty fic.)

So yeah, DC is setting up for their Justice League movie, which means throwing as many characters together as possible and hoping that some of them stick.

And instead of the most unequal fight in history, we get Superman teaming up with Batman and Wonder Woman to take on Lex Luthor and Zod (and possibly Doomsday). Oh, and we also get another Batman origin story, as though we haven’t seen Thomas and Martha Wayne gunned down enough times in our lives. Sigh.

I can’t wait for Suicide Squad.

(Though, I will be honest: If Batman Vs Superman ends up being the “Dawn of the Justice Lords” movie, I will totally be all about it, because I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie where Superman lobotomizes evil President Luthor and there’s an exploration of how dark that world got. Then there could be a crossover with the non-dark/depressing Justice League. Btw, Justice League the Animated Series did a great job with the Flash crossing over into the Justice Lords universe and pointing out that the death of alterna-Flash was no excuse for the Justice League to completely lose their shit. And it was kind of painful to see how affected Batman was by the death of the Flash–and it was cool that he was the only one to maintain his morals while the rest of the Justice League didn’t hesitate to use their powers on the normal humans. He’d tasted loss before, while those “gods” got a little hurt and decided to oppress everyone because why not?)

Powerpuff Trinity by foureyedesign

Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
0 comments on "This nightmare won’t leave me alone"

I had a dream, and even knowing that it was a dream and not real, I’m still upset. It was one of those nightmares that clings to your brain even when you’re awake and leaves you side-eying the people involved.

In my dream, there was some kind of big storm that raged all night. The next morning I went outside with the Kid to check on the damage, and we found the big tree in our yard split into pieces, branches collapsing to the ground even as we watched. It looked like cinders flying up into the air. I even said, “This looks like Hell.”

And that’s when I heard the raucous noise coming from my neighbor’s house across the street. I looked and saw that they had some kind of bonfire lit and it looked like they were cavorting around it, hooting and howling, with loud music playing in the background.

My real neighbors have done the same thing in real life. They’ve gotten frighteningly loud, with children shrieking and running around and a man singing in Spanish. In my dream, I slapped the Kid on the shoulder and said, “Let’s get inside. We don’t want the tree to fall on us. Come on.”

We went back around the house to the backdoor and the Kid went inside ahead of me. I stopped to call for the dog. He didn’t come.

I went and got the remote for his collar and hit the button that makes it beep at him. I was standing in the doorway when I saw him looking at me from the short hill leading to the garage.

“What are you doing? Come here!”

And then I saw there was someone behind him. Someone that let go of him, and my dog came running toward me and past me into the house, panting and terrified. The man came running at me. I slammed the door, managing to tell the Kid, “Call the police. Call the police!”

The man tried to get in as I held the door shut. I braced my feet against the wall to hold the door closed. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t scream.

He was tall and thin, his arms and his hands saying he was white. His face was painted with white makeup and sweeping black lines, making him look like a demon skull. His eyes blazed with madness. I could feel the door bulging where he pushed against it, ready to swing open and let him in.

My neighbors are Hispanic. This man was white. I knew that he’d killed them, probably while we were outside. And now he was going to kill us.

Holding the door with desperate strength, I craned my neck to look at the Kid, who was standing close to the couch, not even holding the phone yet. “Get Grandpa!” I managed to rasp out through my tight throat.

And he turned his head toward his grandpa’s room and called out, not even yelling, “Grandpa, someone’s here.”

And I looked at him in disbelief. And I woke up.

Even knowing that it was a dream, I’m still boggling. “Grandpa, someone’s here”? Really?!

It makes me think that we need to go over a survival plan. Because either I don’t trust him to pull his own weight in an emergency, or my subconscious brain is telling me that something bad is coming and we all need to be on the same page. Either way, if I’m holding the door against a frightening madman with murder in his eyes, I want someone that’s able to call the police as needed or at least get the help of another adult.

Because that was pathetic.