Ouch.

Punitiveshoes.com

Like I say, Ouch.

In other news: I've updated Leftover Parfait for the first time in fucking forever. I haven't got around to it for a while because I was focused on the more saleable, less sectionable side of my work, but I've been such a busy little wannabee lately that I thought I'd treat myself to some disposable fun. I think I may use the premise of this new piece for something, someday, but it isn't really strong enough to carry a whole story by itself.

Trees.

Had a good day today. Crawled home from Nocturna at around 7am (fun night, cute little Spanish Gothlings, and a pretty good set to boot) and fell into bed for a few hours. It was really sunny today so I took advantage of the fine weather to go for a walk in the woods with Lurid. We played catch.

Walking in the woods makes me happy.

earthbounddog.com

In case of alien abduction these dog tags may save
your life. The crucial data an alien will need to get
you back to Earth is die stamped into these dog tags.

And all for only $12.99!

Meanwhile, in Romania, they're gearing up for entry into the EU by getting rid of the vampires:

Haunted by "strigoi" - the undead - villagers on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains exhume a corpse from the graveyard and drive a stake through its heart to banish the evil spirit. They burn the remains of the heart, mix the ashes with water from the local well and drink it, to complete the macabre ritual.

1804? No, 2004. This February just gone, to be exact. Jeeze Louise.

Okayer...

Frisky little darling of a day today: Punted out a new short fic in the afternoon, then topped things off by entering for the Van Zorn prize. (the deadline's the 10th, BTW, so if you haven't entered yet you should get your skates on. They accept emails with a Word.doc attachment, so you've still got time. Go on, I know you freaks can come up with summat.)

So I'm jolly pleased with myself and am inspired to keep up the pace. I should have the D&D-style thing punted out by midweek; I reluctantly abandoned my original idea as being too grim for that particular market and am polishing off a rather lighter piece to send instead.

The fly in the ointment is that my entry for the Van Zorn prize has already been rejected (or rather pointedly ignored until I went away) by no less than two webzines. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The other fly in the ointment is that I was planning on sending it to Interzone, and now I'll have to work like a demon to get something as good together in time for my self-imposed Sending Something To A Magazine That Pays More Than £20 A Pop deadline of this coming Friday. Fortunately I have something on the hard drive that fits the bill; unfortunately I wrote it when I was 24. Everything that I wrote around that time is either a) a not-very-thinly veiled attack on exploitative work practices in the UK, or b) incoherent due to sleep dep. The latter can be fun, the former less so.

Either way, it's going to take work.

Okay...

So I've done the working, with the help of the spooks, a map of Barcelona, a marker pen, and a plakky bottle of water from the fountain in town. Just going to let that stew now. I've done all I can, I think.

On to the next thing. I need more spook help for this, but it's for them as much as me.

Guys, you keep on at me to do this book of drawings and stuff. You keep dropping all these images in my head. Which is all well and good but in case you hadn't noticed, my drawing is really sucky at the moment. And being me, I get stressed out by the suckiness and that makes my drawing suck even more, which makes me more sucky, etc.

Deliver me from the Suck Loop. I'll work hard, I'll persist, I'll stick with it, but right now there is no IT to stick with. I need you guys to get me started, please. Inspire me, point me to a really good How To Draw site, or anything that'll help me address my particular set of problems.

Meanwhile, here's someone who can really create: Kurt Wenner, master street painter.

The Silent Healing CD

"The CD contains over 34,000 different bio-energetic and Homoeopathic resonance patterns, which have been sampled and stored on the CD. When played on a Hi Fi or other CD player it releases the bio-energetic and Homoeopathic type patterns to harmonise imbalances. Every imbalance in the body has a complementary energetic pattern that will bring it back to optimum health, the body knows best and responds through resonance and accepts the patterns it needs..."

Uh, yeah.

There's also the usual bunch of testimonials from people who sound like they've been eating paint since childhood, extolling the virtues of the Silent Healing CD.

The website neglects to point out that that same effect ould be acheived with a fucking blank CD and a random selection of gullible whackjobs.

Things are hotting up around here.

(Nah, not the weather.)

Last night I had one of the oddest nights in years. Went to be early, slept really erratically, and had loads of peculiar dreams. (I wrote them down, of course, but I'm not going to blog them until I work out what the hell my head was on about.) Woke up many times with sleep paralysis, something I'm accustomed to but still find irksome. The sleep paralysis was associated with difficulty in breathing and a very loud buzzing in my ears, like a giant insect.

Woke up feeling all drifty and weird. This better be something magick happening. If it's not magick it's probably 'flu, and I hate 'flu.

Oh, and today's the day I do that spell to get L.A. the Spanish grant. All good vibes appreciated.

RVTargets.com
Online Magical Library
Sacred-texts.com

Just added these to the ever-expanding beast that is my sidebar.

Into the Dead Zone

Lena gives us a tour of Chernobyl. Haunting.

Update on the nutbar side of my life.

Still keeping up with the RPK. Results variable, but graaaadually improving.

Developed a visualization to help with the thought intrusions (you know, the brain gangrene thing). Not sure whether to blog that or not tho'.

Decided to start working a bit harder on my RV. I'll be using the guess-the-tarot-card game from Liber 9. Obviously I've doen this sort of thing before but TBH I've never really stuck with it for long, nor have I kept very detailed records.

Oh, FFS...

Be more uptight. Maybe you'll implode. That'd be funny.

I'm hot.

I'm hot and I want an ice-cream.

It's all sunny out and the little studenty people are sprawling on the lawns. And on Sunday, it was snowing.

It's not hugely hot -- most of my ice-cream hankerings were generated by walking uphill -- but I confidently predict MAJOR heat soon. I reckon we'll be properly baking in a couple of weeks, and in a month I'll be splashing happily around in the Med.

This is bizzarre.

So, awhile ago this guy commented on my Lj and friended me, right? Which is nice, you know, friends are good. I visited his Lj and there were no entries. Well, he must be new, I shrugged. But the thing is... I've just gone back and he still has no entries. None.

So it looks as if this guy signed up with Lj just to comment on one of my fics. And to join Lj, you need a code which you must either purchace or beg from a friend who's already got an accont. It's not like just anyone can sgn up, you have to make a bit of an effort.

Which is flattering but... Dammit, I hate the idea of being important enough to make any kind of an effort. My only defence in this wicked world is the complete indifference of the vast majority of people.

(PS: talking of indifference, I've updated the green book.)

Why?

Why must you do this? WHY must you be such an INCREDIBLE bunch of FUCKBUBBLES? I'm coasting along, right as rain, happy as a sandboy, thinking nice calm thoughts, ready to wrap the whole world in the Joy of the Divine, and you! You come along with your stupid ideas and your smug, deluded self-aggrandisment and you TRASH MY MOOD to the point where I must ABANDON THE PATH OF LIGHT and go all EVIIIILLLLL. Again.

I pop open my blog so I can get at the sidebar links, and what should be advertised in the banner across the top of the page but this?

Apparently the author of the website, one Jhershierra, is going to show us the path to Immortality. Which is nice.
Of course, she was born with her gifts, which include astral travel and lucid dreaming. (Funny, coz everyone I know who claims to be able to do that shit had to work their arses off. Not saying it couldn't happen, just saying "hmmmm.")

She has also, and I quote, "been visited by Jesus, Immortals,Ascended Massters, Extraterrestrials, and other Spiritual Beings since childhood." Nice of old J.C. to drop by, eh? Not to mention those Ascended Massters. (According to the website, these include St. Germain and, uh, a "dark-skinned Indian woman." So spiritual, these dark-skinned folk, donchaknow.)

Of course there's a bit of a catch. In order to find out how we too can be immortal, we've got to buy her book and, location permitting, attend her classes. But it's a sweet deal -- these Ascended types pop up all the time to tell her what great classes she's giving and how super she is.

How come I never thought of doing this? Why am I boshing away with the green book when I could just invent invent a big pile of crap and imagine myself a nice friendly Ascended Master to shill for me? I'm so in the wrong job.

Shout out for magickal aid.

Okay. So after due consultation with Lurid Archive, I'm going to be doing a medium-sized working to get him the 5-year postdoc he's got his eye on. It's not just the best chance we have of staying in Spain, it's also the best chance Lurid has of getting a good solid job. (As opposed to more of this year here, year there stuff, which quite frankly we could both do without.)

I'm going into town tomorrow to do some stuff, so I'll probably go and score some agua from this fountain that if you drink it you're supposed to not leave Barca, which I will use in the ritual. (Also there's this thing where you light a candle in the Cathederal to similar effect.) Ritual will most likely take place on the 5th, when the proposal has to be in.

Any good vibes would be appreciated.

Also, if spooky perverts ML and RML are reading this: guys, help me out here. I promise to update your blog more if you would please please please help LA to get this grant. I'll update and I'll draw your weird little pictures and write your book and everything.

Wow.

It's snowing out. Big and small flakes, fast and slow, coming and going in waves. White petals drifting past the deep green conifers. The sky is yellow-grey, lit by the occasional lightning flash. The distant mountains are hidden by cloud; the woods are a mystery. An afternoon to dream on, all right.

Blah.

Which is odd, you know, because I had a pretty good night last night. Went out with L.A. and one of his work buddies, who's a cool guy. Went to Gracia and had Lebanese food, then flicks. (Monster.)

Turns out there's this 5-year postdoc going here in Spain, which L.A. is going to apply for. Man, I'd really love that. Well, I'd love to be anywhere for a whole five years, but being able to stay in Barca would be awesome. Might actually be able to get some teaching quals., and hence a job.

Which brings us to the thing that's really bothering me, as it always bothers me: the writing. Seeing my story up there made me feel grand for about 2 seconds. Then I actually re-read the horrid little abortion and wondered if maybe I shouldn't just chuck it all in and learn to love hosing down public toilets for a living.

I don't know. I mean, I write, I submit, and I get... not very much, frankly. I know this was always going to be hard. I know about the grinding persistance required. I know about Phillip K. Dick papering his study with rejection letters and blah blah blah. But I've been trying, really trying for the past 3 years. And I've been trying in a half-arsed way for far longer-- half my life, if anyone's counting. I submitted my first story when I was 15. Paper my study? Hell, if I was the kind of person who hoarded rejection letters, I could BUILD a flaming study.

The thought of quitting fucking slaughters me. When I think about giving up writing, I feel like I'm contemplating the amputation of all my limbs with a blunt breadknife. I feel sick, dizzy, breathless. It literally, physically, hurts just to contemplate the idea. But on another level, this is a huge drain on my time and resources. I'm pouring hour after hour into something which brings hardly any money into my household, while my partener is forced to support us both. Is this the way a responsible adult would behave? Sure, I'm still trying hard to find work, but maybe if I wasn't spending so much time at the wordprocessor I could try a little bit harder. Maybe I'd already have a job by now.

I need to write. Fall-back positions and sidelines and all that aside, I need writing to be my career. I need this, all right, but do I have to have to have it? More to the point, do I deserve to have it? Or am I just one of those no-talent losers that real writers bitch about, the nobodies who keep on banging their heads against a brick wall of rejection and never seem to get a clue?

Toiiz

Forgot to tell you guys-- one of my stories is up. Thanks to all the lovely people at Bloodlust-UK :)

I want to get abducted by aliens again, again.

And by "again" I do not mean "I have previously been abducted by aliens and wish to repeat the experience," but "I have previously wished to be abducted by aliens, and now find myself experiencing a resurgence of that desire." And by again, I mean that I wrote a post exactly like this one a few months back.

Aliens, ghosts, moving stuff by the power of my mind-- anything really. I'm easy. I want ET to phone. Or Mothman. I just want something to happen. I don't want to do any more donkeywork in my magickal life. I want a sudden, dramatic paradigm shift, with loads of smoke and a blue filter and flashy lights. And I want to be played by some hot chick.

Stuff has been happening since last Spring, of course, but it's too slow. You know what it's like? Puberty, that's what. Weird changes, mood swings, tons of diarys, odd stuff popping into my head that I can't really talk about without a sense of acute embarrassment-- puberty. My wisdom teeth have even started growing again. Stupid magick.

At night I dream of coastlines: mostly rocky shores and stormy seas. The significance is not lost on me. Interfaces, places between places-- I've had a foot in two worlds for so long, I think I'm getting groinstrain.

Hunting.

Still don't have a job, by the way. I'm still trying; emailing, writing, phoning, pounding the streets. No dice. I can't even get a cleaning job. Why can't I get a fucking cleaning job?

I'm trying not to get too frantic about this, but to be honest it's really kind of getting to me. I've never had anything other than menial, casual, minimum-wage type jobs and now I'll also have a big chunk of unemployment glaring out from my CV, which doesn't look good.

Then there's the writing, which frankly isn't going well. I mean, I'm writing tons and submitting like mad, but all I'm getting is rejection, rejection, rejection, punctuating the deadly silence of those editors who don't even bother to write back. I know this was always going to take time, but I'd hoped to be selling stuff more regularly by now.

I'm becoming increasingly afraid that sweeping streets and mopping floors is all I'll ever have. I don't know how I'd cope with that.



(Of course, if a certain pair of spooky perverts would help me out here, none of this would be an issue...)