Where You Are Not Is Where You Would Like To Be

Things here are stressful, so I am overdosing on fashion today as a uniporn chaser to soothe my mental ills--ya' feel me?

For Girls Who Have Considered Quitting When The Wonderland Seems Too Far Away

"Wonderland" by Knight and Storey.

"Filmed by Nick Knight and with a soundtrack of Professor Helen Storey intoning scientific formulae as fitting backdrop, this filmic finale to the 'Wonderland' project documents the aquatic aerobics of Helen's collection in the last stage of its life. With the clothes literally peeling from her body as the remarkable biodegradable polymers react against their submerged state, watch as model Alice Dellal twists and turns through her underwater ballet and Helen's creations ultimately surrender to their watery grave."

Heart-crushingly, eye-wrenchingly, true-bloodedly beautiful.

My Own Private Plagiarizer [Updated]

Last weekend, I got an email from someone I don't know. It directed me to a blog: "140.6 Miles: An Ironman Training Journal," which is written by a 27-year-old female in New York who refers to herself as Dying Water Buffalo and appears to be named Courtney Greene. Specifically, the email pointed me to a post entitled: "She is a girl."

The email read: "I came across your 'She is a Girl' essay and realized that another blogger that I read had borrowed heavily from you, to the point of plagiarism. This is unfortunately the second time that I have seen her lift whole phrases and passages from another writer on the internet so wanted to alert you to this." It continued: "Just wanted to let you know - aside from the plagiarism I find it a bit disturbing that she's 'stolen' such a personal story and that so many people have left comments praising her for her 'honesty' and writing skills when it's really yours!"

"She Is a Girl" is the title of a short story--a highly autobiographical work of fiction--that I wrote, as I recall, in late 2004. It was published in Maisonneuve in the spring of 2005. While Maisonneuve made only the first paragraph of the story available online, I published the story in full on this blog in June of last year, so people could read it and, I hoped, enjoy it.

The post I was directed to in the email was published on September 26 of last year. Apparently, Courtney took my story and changed some of the words in it. As if fiction writing is simply a game of Mad Libs.

Here's my opening paragraph:

"She is a girl. Prior to her birth, her grandmother, in hopes of a boy, knits clothes for her, only in blue. On the day of her delivery, her parents are relieved; a boy, they feel, without saying, could prove more than they can handle. The girl is so pretty, riding along the sidewalk in an old fashioned pram the mother has found at a garage sale. People stop them, complimenting the mother on the girl’s fine features and graceful comportment, despite the blue outfits she wears, day in and day out. She has pink cheeks, soft skin, and a winningly toothless smile. She lets her mother cut her soft curls in the backyard without event. She is the apple of her father’s eye, her round face unfurling in a wide smile, as he gestures with his finger under the curve of her neat chin. She is adored. She is beloved. She is a girl. In her way, she understands how it is."

Here's her opening paragraph:

"She is a girl. Prior to her birth, her parents, in hopes of a boy, pick out only a boy's name, Christopher John. On the day of her delivery, her parents are disappointed and scramble to think of a girl's name. They settle for one they don't hate, keeping CJ for initials, which will be her nickname. The girl becomes so pretty, full of energy, bouncing along on the sidewalk holding her mother's hand. People stop them, complimenting the mother on the girl's fine features and big green eyes, despite the blue outfits she wears, day in and day out. She has fat pink cheeks and a winningly toothless smile. She is the apple of her father's eye, her round face unfurling in a wide smile, as they pass a football in the backyard. She is adored. She is beloved. She is a girl. In her own way, she understands how it is."

Obviously, the issue of plagiarism is a moot point; it's clear. Increasingly, this sort of thing has been happening to me over the last few years. The whole thing makes me feel a combination of depressed, angry, and nihilistic. Especially in this case.

Among her post's 47 comments: "You are a beautiful woman and this post is amazing." "i appreciate your putting your thoughts out there, for the public, like this, it is a portrait into your innermost thoughts and is at the same time both celebratory and sad." "You have an amazing way with words. I felt like I was reading a beautiful novel."

I'm a writer. That's the story of my life. Because I can't really do anything else right, my writing is like the little gravestone I figure I'll leave behind. And this? I don't know what else to say. Except it sucks. And so does Courtney.

(Updated: Another victim of her plagiarism is a blogger known as J. who wrote a post about his experiences running an Ironman race that was apparently plagiarized by Courtney. His original post is here, a comment in which someone points out to J. that he has been apparently plagiarized by Courtney is here, and J.'s response to having been apparently plagiarized by Courtney is here. To be clear: J. was the apparent victim of Courtney's apparent plagiarism and not the plagiarizer. And if she removes the post (edited to add: which she did), as she did in the other case when she was confronted about it, the post is cached here.)

My Infinite Potential

@ellielumpesse re: "I'm Just Sayin'" Because I'm... insensitive?

Ooops

Yesterday I fell down and hurt myself. Today posting will be frequent but with less commentary. And tomorrow will be business as usual.

Deformer

Yesterday, I posted that I was in the running to be a Defamer editor. Today I am not. Tragic! It's like on "America's Next Top Model," when Tyra shows the last photo, and it's not you--it's the other girl. Now I'll have to give a speech to the camera about how I'm going to pursue my dreams, as I fight back the tears. Anyway, that's that.

Oh, FUCK

Last week, a couple things happened that I didn't blog about, and then that and some other things made blogging difficult this week, and then while I still can't talk about one of them, tonight I realized, well, I could talk about the other at least, and at this point in the story, I'm sure I've gone on so long that you've lost interest. Anyway, I got an email, oh, a week or so, I suppose, maybe more than that, from Mark Graham, who is a nice man and the managing editor of Defamer. Which is like the blackly opaque cinematic eye of the giant, blogosphere-eating robot that is Gawker Media. So, Mark wanted to know if I was interested in being in the running to become an addition to the Defamer team, or however you want to put it, you know, a Defamer editor. And I was, like, um, yeah. Because that's how I roll. Slutty. After all, I am not nor have I always been, uh, "just" a sex writer. I write about culture. (At least that's what I tell myself sometimes.) And once upon a time, thanks to David Poland, I was a movie critic, and for a while I was, like, a movie critic pundit on a FX TV show hosted by Chris Gore. And I guess you could look at my, er, "interest" in pornography as also being about movies. Whatever. Anyhoo, so I didn't blog about it, because, I don't know, maybe I figured I wasn't supposed to, but then it occurred to me no one told me not to, and then I started writing this. Actually, I started writing this because I saw this, which is some kind of Gawker internal memo in which somebody tells everybody to stop swearing so much on all the Gawker sites, from what I gather. And a part of me was like, Oh, shit. Because I'm already worried that everyone just thinks I'm a big pervert and can't bring anything to the table but a bunch of well-worn bukkakes tales. (I mean, you know, you never know.) As part of the auditioning process, I had to make a demo blog, with three demo posts, and two out of three of them were about sex. I wasn't sure if that was the right thing to do or not, but then I thought about how Santino got all freaked out on "Project Runway" and lost in the finals because he lost himself, and then I was, like, fuck it. I yam what I yam. Now they're deciding if they're going to give me a test run as a guest blogger on the site--or not. So far, the only contender I know of is a soap opera writer. So, hey! You never know. Either way, not writing about things that are happening is never good for me. To be clear, this isn't the other thing that I blogged about obtusely last week, the thing that I said had made me so happy that I cried. I'd really, really like to write for Defamer, but, you know, I'm not gonna cry about it. Not yet, anyway. That other thing is something else. Something that is pretty great. Something that has kind of freaked me out a bit. These last three years were God's great kick in the teeth to me, and it hasn't been easy. But things like these make me want to take back the ball and throw it really hard at the back of somebody's head, like, I told you, motherfucker. If that makes sense, great. If not, I can't explain it.

Heat

It's so hot where I am that I can hardly stand it. I sit here in my wifebeater and wait, even though the AC's been on all day, even though the outside makes this look like a dream, knowing that we're all in it, sweaty and drowsy, waiting for it, for something to break.

And I'd Like to Thank the Internet

And I'd like to thank the internet, and the Academy, and all the people who made this possible, and, and, and... When I was sitting around last night, certainly not googling myself, I was stunned to see someone had made me a Wikipedia page. The most amusing part was that it was already obscene-ish. The person who posted it wrote, sarcastically: "(why don't you piss all over this and delete it, since it's about a blog writer, it's obviously can't be notable, can it? fags)," which I found to be highly amusing. I can't mess with entry, since it's about me, but if someone wanted to fix it with more facts from my bio (upper left corner here), some proper links (ie this blog, this, or this), and some correct grammar, I would not be mad at you. Either way, it made me laugh to see it. And thank you to the guy who did it.

Gawkakke

At 1:01 AM, Gawker night editor Ryan Tate ran a post entitled: "The Internet: Worst Overshare Anywhere Ever." The entry features a photo of Sex and the Ivy author and Harvard junior Lena Chen, who, at all of 20, has achieved a fair amount of virtual notoriety for writing explicitly about her sex life online. The photo was taken from Chen's Tumblr, The Ch!cktionary, which Chen created as an alternative to SATI after an ex-boyfriend spread naked photos of her across the Web.

The original photo is here. In it, Chen has an unidentified male's money shot on her face. As part of his Gawker post, Tate ran the photo. Apparently, Fleshbot isn't the only Gawker Media site in the business of posting graphic sexual photos in pursuit of revenue-generating traffic. Tate concluded Chen's post "advanced the art of narcissistic self exposure."

I don't quite get how reposting a photo declared an overshare on a high-profile blog doesn't square the original overshare by exactly how many Gawker eyeballs will ogle Chen's photo. So far, commenters have deemed it boring, gross, and lacking in self-respect.

In response, Chen wrote a spirited defense of what she'd done: "Quit Gawking: It's Just Sex." Yesterday, I interviewed Chen for a story I'm writing on "Sex and the City: The Movie" for Salon. Chen was thoughtful, articulate, and unlike another woman I interviewed yesterday, pretty unconflicted about who she is and what she's done. And she's 20. I mean, she's not even old enough to drink. Legally, at least.

Anyway, it made me sad to see her called out on the rug like that on Gawker. Frankly, I was surprised the post was still up this morning. I guess I thought Denton would have pulled it. But I guess he didn't. I also interviewed the legendary Susie Bright yesterday. I grew up in the Bay Area, and Susie was the original sexpert. At some point, many, many years ago, I went to a book signing of hers and had her sign my left breast. I didn't post a photo of it to the internet, but that was in the days before blogs. During our interview, Bright referred to something that she called "slut-baiting," and while I wasn't sure exactly what she meant when she said it, what Gawker did with Chen is sure it.

The fact of the matter is that writing about sex isn't easy. Chen is a human being. And while I won't be posting photos of myself with a pop shot on my face anytime soon, you gotta respect the girls who have the balls to do it. Why? Because you don't.

Cowgirl Is Tired

I spent the whole day working on a "Sex and the City: The Movie" story for Salon, and now I am done and tired.

Also, I think I have a girl crush on Slut Machine.

The End.

Oh, Happy Darling

Well, I wrote the first twenty pages of my novel. The one I restarted the other day. This is very different from all the rest. (Oh, aren't they all?) It's got Xerxes Xavier, now a Jr., and he keeps moving, so I keep following. He's pretty endearing. He started on the top of the Hollywood Hills, found a place to live at the base of Kagel Canyon, took a road trip out to the Mojave Desert. Sometimes, I have to run to keep up with him.

There's also a little girl. And a porn star. And a Happy Darling who doesn't remember who she is. Go figure! And a lot of waitresses. And a black woman named Chanterelle. And a landlord named Jesus. And where all these people came from, I don't know.

Writing is lonely except when you're in love with your main character.

In Case You Were Unclear On My Political Leanings

Gangbang

I'm going to be reviewing Chuck Palahniuk's new novel, Snuff, for Radar Online, and I'm really looking forward to it. I've been interested in the book since word of it broke--oh, I don't know when, a year or so ago, maybe. For those of you who are not aware, it takes place on the set of a World's Biggest Gangbang movie of which an adult actress named Cassie Wright is the porn star looking to set a sexual world record. Apparently, and I can't imagine this is a spoiler given the title, she dies in the end. In any case, the publicist at Doubleday, the publisher, sent it to me in the mail yesterday, and I eagerly await it. I'm interested in Snuff because I was on the set of a World's Biggest Gangbang movie years ago. To be exact, it was "The World's Biggest Gang Bang III: The Houston 620." I'd moved to LA and started writing about the porn industry only about a year or so before, and this was the first time I'd experienced an event that I would refer to in my write up of it for Detour magazine as an "apocalyptic fuck." (That article also included the line: "The hole's name is Houston.") To say the experience was impactful would be a catastrophic understatement. In addition to writing about it, I was also covering it for a Playboy TV show that I was on at the time. Highlights of that experience included me saying to camera: "It smells like a sperm bank in here." Classy it wasn't. We, the crew and I, that is, were nervous going into it, but I'll never forget when we rounded the corner to the giant soundstage where it was taking place, and the line of men waiting to get inside snaked through the parking lot, and my jaw fell open, literally. We spent the next eleven hours in there, and I don't know that I emerged from that building the same. There were the ringers at the beginning. There was the Lazy Susan upon which Houston lay while the men descended upon her. There was the dorky Asian guy in glasses and a T-shirt and nothing else who freaked out because he wasn't getting his turn. There were the two middle-aged guys who looked like they were somebody's dad who double-teamed Houston and high-fived each other over her body. There was the plain and simple, undeniable fact that when Houston emerged for more after a break midway through, she had clearly been crying, but she did the rest of the guys anyway. There was the way the digital counter on the wall climbed higher and higher, even though there was no way there were 600 guys in there, although the number of men she had sex with that day was nothing to sneeze at. There was how it changed at a certain point, and it was like being in the jungle only the people were the animals. There was the guy with the Frankenpenis from the botched penile enlargement surgery. There was the moment I opened the bathroom door, hoping, I suppose, to get away from it all for a minute, and there was a guy in there filming two girls on the toilet. Today I would have to say that I can't say that I've been the same since. Only, that was a long time ago. And in the scope of everything that happened in terms of me and Porn Valley, that was only the beginning, really. So, I'm very interested to see how Palahniuk represents it. And find out what got Doubleday behind a gangbang snuff porn movie and compelled them to give its dead porn star her own Myspace page to promote it.

Grand Theft Aftermath

A few of the responses to yesterday's post, "Grand Theft Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" via email and Boing Boing comments.

I am not amused. This blasé contrarian response just looks like yet another shallow "cooler than thou" post-feminist attitude. -- Madprime

First, he seems to assume that the feelings of johns represent the feelings of men in general. Maybe they do, but I'm gonna need a hell of a lot of evidence before I believe it. -- Raya

Are you referring to Susannah Breslin as a guy? She might not take too kindly to that. -- Antinous

Susannah Breslin sounds like an ass. -- Jccalhoun

Reverse Cowgirl has been staring into the abyss too long. -- Noen

Grand Theft Auto IV doesn't bother me, but Susannah Breslin moronic perspective is offensive. -- Silas

I've liked Susannah Breslin in the past, but the sneers at "polysyllabic" language are just fucking stupid. -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I think it is worth noting that I am 29, and have played all versions of this game, starting at age 18. I do not kill people. I do not rape, mug, shoot, stab, discriminate, abuse, use, or any other negative toward my fellow humans. Oh, and I've also looked at porn. So, it would seem that the argument that this game makes you develop an antisocial personality is mistaken. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of mental illness could have told you that. -- Rangzen

As a 25 year old educated male feminist working for the police I find the amount of hysteria that these games raise amongst people absolutely ridiculous... It isn't that the game is about killing prostitutes or visiting stripclubs that makes it appealing, it's that those things are possible along with a plethora of other things including: becoming a vigilante, putting out fires, driving ambulance, driving taxi, repossessing vehicles, watching tv, surfing Rockstars own parody of the internet, flying a helicopter, jumping 2 buses on a motorcylce while tossing molotov cocktails at a hummer, play darts, play pool, go bowling, get drunk, rough up criminals, eat a hamburger, buy a nice suit, take a girlfriend out on the boardwalk, watch a really really lame cabaret and comedy club... the list goes on and on. Killing is an integeral game mechanic and sleeping with prostitutes is just window dressing, don't construe the IGN video as some sort of overarching example of the game.-- Grimmway

Dear Susannah,

There's nothing more dull than an ill-thought out, anti-feminist rant from someone whose professional life is devoted to satisfying their need for affirmation and exhibitionism/portraying themselves as licentious, fucked up, beautiful, porn obsessed, fragile, depressive and yet, somehow, deeply intelligent.

Maybe, if you got over your aching need to be liked by men, you could start liking women more. Hell, maybe you could even start liking yourself.

Yours hopefully,
A.

Sleepless

New today. Two letters. A letter from a john. That is, a jane. "I Was A Girl Who Had Gone To A Prostitute." A letter from a working girl. "I Feel More Alive." As for me? I can't sleep. In other news, I hear some chick who used to write for Jane is doing a story on male prostitutes, the kind who have sex with women, I believe, for New York. I'm probably not supposed to repeat that, but it's not like I give a fuck.

Stressed out of my brain about the heavily parental role we play when we look after our charges, many of whom are very sick and die, bullying from registrars you can't fight, the sexual tensions rife amongst lonely doctors stuck temporarily hours from home, I found myself sleeping with a teddy bear every night for the first time since I was eight. -- "I Was A Girl Who Had Gone To A Prostitute"

At the end of the day, my cunt belongs to me and I'm the one who gets to enjoy it. After I'm done, I lie in bed naked and count the cash. It's crazy and surreal and beautiful. -- "I Feel More Alive"

A night terror, also known as pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia sleep disorder characterized by extreme terror and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness. The subject wakes abruptly from slow-wave sleep, with waking usually accompanied by gasping, moaning, or screaming. It is often impossible to fully awaken the person, and after the episode the subject normally settles back to sleep without waking. -- Wikipedia

Swing

I spent the whole last week or so working on something, and now I'm about done with it, and now I'm beat. I am not sleeping well, working myself up into some kind of state, ready to c-r-a-s-h. This morning, I had a dream that included a motorized fuck-dog and a field of trees that ate people. I woke up in a kind of fever state. Over the last six weeks, this blog and the letters blogs have gotten more attention than anything else I've done in the last three years combined, with the mentions in Time, Newsweek, the LA Times, interest from the New York Post, and mentions on various high-profile blogs. Yesterday, someone sent me some interview questions about prostitution, which I suppose I will answer. Sometimes, I wonder about the difference between porn stars and prostitutes. Because of some random law, porn is legal, but prostitution is not. They share common themes: fucking, performing, sex for money, fame, stilettos, hot chicks, dudes with issues, people trying to get it on while everybody watches. The context is what's different. That prostitution breaks the law while porn does not means the former gets beat up while the latter gets glorified--or is it the other way around? The end result is porn is America's punchline, and prostitutes are the new black. It's hard to know what to make of it. Either way, people who fuck for a living bear the consequences of a cosmic misunderstanding. I need to get back to working on my novel, which I relegated to the sidelines while I focused on this other project. Remember, we're trading in peonies here, not daisies. Sometimes I think I'm crazy. Sometimes I don't. These days, I've begun to suspect it really doesn't matter either way.

I wasn't sure whether this, too, was for effect, another mock punch, another flourish for the ever-present camera in T. T. Boy's head, or whether his father's violence was the inheritance that he did receive. Then again, maybe it was just the loud clamorings of a young man alone, trying to beat back the tundra silence of an apartment where the table was always set for a family of four, and no one was coming home. -- "Waiting for Wood," Stiffed, Susan Faludi

Happy Thanksgiving from the Reverse Cowgirl

Don't they look like fun? To think he called her fuckbird. Poor Lucia. "Whatever spark or gift I possess has been transmitted to Lucia," her father wrote of her, "and it has kindled a fire in her brain." (via & via)

The Sex Writer's Resume

The other day, I was looking over my resume. There, I had dutifully logged every article, every TV appearance, every media mention. I created it so if one day someone wanted to know if I ever did anything, they could look at it and conclude that, well, at least I did 14 pages of something. In any case, here are a few highlights from my glorious, decade-long career as a sex writer. At some point, I heard about a new sex doll. A male sex doll. I called up the male sex doll's manufacturer and asked them to send me one. So I could write about it. One day, the UPS man showed up with a big box. In it, there were two male sex dolls. I decided to go on a date with the male sex doll. I got one of my friends to photograph it. Me and my male sex doll went to Fred 62. We sat at an outside table. Somewhere there is a photo of me feeding it French fries. This date did not have a happy ending. On another occasion, I covered "The World's Biggest Gang Bang III." That was probably not a good day for my mental health, but one makes the choices one makes in one's life. My duties were myriad, but not as demanding as the star of the movie's. The article I wrote about my experiences there included the phrase "apocalyptic fuck"; described its star thusly, "The hole's name is Houston"; and was the piece in which I coined the phrase: "Super Bowl-sized circle jerk." I also covered the story for a Playboy TV show. Later, the executive producer said he thought it was hilarious when I stated to-camera: "It smells like a sperm bank in here." On yet another occasion, and for that same TV show, I did a story about a midget porn star named Bridget Powers. The segment featured me dressed as Dorothy from Oz and Bridget stage-wrestling over a three-foot double-headed dildo. It probably bears mentioning I am six-two. The movie Bridget was starring in that day was called "Midget in a Suitcase." Bridget's costar was named Dick Nasty. At the beginning of the scene, Bridget got zipped into a suitcase. At the end of the day, Bridget cried. Ultimately, I concluded that being on the set of a midget porn movie was completely fucking depressing. These days, I never dream about any of this. I'm not sure why. Not long ago, I dreamed about Jim Powers. I shook my finger at him. He put me in a headlock. In the dream, that was a compliment.

10

1. My focus this week is on pitching a story. A very big, massive piece about a porn story. Journalism. Investigative reporting. Perhaps you have heard of it. This would enable me to write a definitive piece on the adult movie industry 10 years after I set foot in it for the first time. Having a career writing about porn is tantamount to having a career in sticking your head into a toilet and flushing vigorously, every day, day in and day out, forever. I used to enjoy the pitching process. The way a junkie likes junk. Today, not so much. I just want to write it.

2. This week, I sent somebody I know an email. I told this person a story about something that had happened to me. Here's what I wrote. "As you know, I was on the set of 'American Bukkake 13.' It was February 2001. Every bukkake movie features three scenes. I was present for the last scene, the one where the girl has a cone around her neck like a funnel. The other scenes they shot on different days. In any case, a few weeks ago, I decided I would go and watch the video. I never had. For whatever reason, that scene has come to represent my entire porn experience. I guess this is/was a way of confronting my demons, self-testing, putting my head back into the mouth of the lion to see what would happen, or something along those lines. So, I jump through a bunch of pain in the ass hoops to watch it online--VOD--and pay some ridiculous sum to do so. As soon as the movie starts, I see why the feds chose it. The girl in the first scene is clearly playing it up to appear to be about eight or so years old. She's got pigtails, and the scene has her in the middle of a big bed, holding a stuffed animal, or something like that. So, I watch that. Then I watch the next one, which is this crazed black chick taking it with her head hung over the end of a bench in a faux locker room. Then the final scene starts, and...the VOD craps out. For the next couple days, I become quite depressed as this seems to have stirred up old shit or whatever. At this point, I decide I'm never writing about porn again or some crap like that. By the following week, I've changed my tune. I decide I'm going to watch this movie because the whole thing is bothering me. I go to my friend's house as she's got a PC that's more compatible to the VOD system and watch it. At this point, I've kind of gotten over it. It's sort of weird, knowing I was there, right there...looking over Jim's shoulder. During the summer of 2005, when I was completely out of my mind, I decided I would never write about porn again (catching a theme here?), and then I checked my email, and some guy had emailed me at 1AM, saying he'd seen me in one of the bukkake movies, as I was stepping in and then stepping out of frame, and at that point (I wrote about this on my blog not long ago) I realized on some level I'm always going to be stepping in and out of this mess that is porno. Anyway, so, part of what I was doing was trying to figure out if this, "American Bukkake 13," is the video I'm in. I sit and watch the scene and think when I was in Porn Valley in a situation like that, I pretty much dissociated. So, I think part of what I was doing was seeing, you know, if I could see it for what it was. And, I could do that, at a distance, both literally and figuratively. So, the movie ends. And then there's this still at the end. Probably it's a photo that the on set photographer, a [redacted] named [redacted], shot. The photograph is of a woman's chest. You can't see her face. And she's wearing a T-shirt that reads, get this, 'GOT CUM?' across her tits. It's like she thinks this is all some kind of a fucking joke or something. I look at this photo, and I recognize instantly this is me. Was me. I was there for a Playboy TV shoot. I guess that was my idea of a costume. Now, I can barely stand to look at the mess of it."

3. Where I live, it's hot. So, so, so hot. So hot you cannot even believe how hot it is. The giant newspaper headline this morning read: "YEP, IT'S HOT. REALLY HOT." Really? Because I hadn't noticed. The AC in my bedroom does not work so good and is very loud. Last night, I dragged my mattress out into the living room and slept there. It was like camping out. Instead of stars, there was a ceiling fan. When I first came to this state, I didn't have anywhere to live. I lived at my friend's house. I slept in her son's bed. It was shaped like a racing car. When you turned off the lights, the ceiling was illuminated. It was covered with glow in the dark stickers in the shape of a million stars.

4. I sent Chris Bishop an email outlining the Untitled Internet Project.

5. At some point, I will make the next two double panels for "My, My American Bukkake...Never Ends." The first set of panels are black and white. I think in the second set of panels, I will introduce color. One color. Red. Yesterday, while cruising the Internet, I saw a black and white stenciled graffiti with a violent splash of red on it that spilled out onto the sidewalk underneath it like blood. Today, I can't find it.

6. I haven't worked on HAPPY (again) since I (re)started it. The main character is a man. The novel is noir. I'd say it's influenced by City of Glass, which I have read many, many times. My father was a writer. That was the story of his life. He wrote on a typewriter. When he made a mistake, he would rip the paper from the machine. Later, you would find him sitting in the study, surrounded by balled up papers. Like snow. Adrift in it. It's hard for me to write. Under this avalanche.

7. Recently, I've been doing a lot of research. OPTF. AOS. "Hold back the edges of your gowns, ladies, we are going through hell."--WCW

8. In 2005, I lost my mind. In 2006, I had brain damage. These days, I'm feeling better, thank you. As Hoogerbrugge says: "FUCK DEATH."

9. Are you reading me like I'm reading you? (I don't know what to do.)

10. From "The First Stranger" by Kristine Ong Muslim via Riley Dog.

"You are beautiful creatures," he went on,
"only limited. But I can help you with your vision,
make you see things beyond your visible range."

And he did. It only hurt when he grazed
the optic nerves. He said that pain was all right,
that it could not exist in the memory,
that it was just there for the moment.

He told me to open my eyes, and all I saw
was darkness. "You blinded me,"
I said. "No," he said, chuckled.
"Look closely. There are certain colors
interspersed with the black."

Filmy, mottled swatches shifted
across the blackness.
All the colors were unfamiliar,
unnatural yet they looked as if
they had always existed.

And, oh, how the darkness sang.