Here's Where I Put the Things I Put Here
Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Pseudonym" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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10:21 pm
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I See You Shiver
I've got a date this Friday. It's weird, I met her the same way I met the girl in the entry a few months back; a dating website, that a good friend of mine recommended I join. I don't think I admitted that at the time, the idea still sits poorly with me, but her sentiment held that it's a place where I can meet girls that I'd like and not feel bad about attempting to hit on them, as is my usual failing, because it always just feels impolite. Anyway, the last date I mentioned went no further than just that one, and then about a month later I had a similar one-shot. Now, on Friday, there's another.
This one is different. We've got a lot of things in common. She seems really cool; she can play the guitar, is an avid gamer, and is also bisexual for an added incidental bonus. It seems like this could really go somewhere. In response, I'm intermittantly terrified.
Partly it's the intensity. We've been messaging and texting virtually non-stop ever since we started communicating just a few days ago, and that's a level of engagement I'm not sure I can keep up, even if I am enjoying it. We're flirting too, which, god, is not something I can remember the last time I properly did. It's been explicitly said that unless things go quite badly on Friday and one of us decides to change our mind, the evening will end rather well indeed.
Which is scary. This could actually be another relationship. With this woman I don't really know. God, that is so not my speed; I don't think I can remember ever getting to the stage of being in a relationship with someone I didn't know for at least a year first. But, that is really not the good way to do things. And it's not like I'm not looking forward to Friday. But I suppose I just wanted to take a second to note that amidst the excitement are feelings of slight but persistant terror, both at the details and also at the mere fact that yes, I suppose I really am moving on.
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08:59 pm
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Creativity Sunday - Character Sketch - A Lady Who Enjoys Sex
She loved sex. For the fun of it, sure, but more for its sheer honesty. In sex, good sex at least, people let go; say what they wanted, what the really liked, rather than filtering themselves through the layers of acceptability that were so prevelant in everyday life. If someone absolutely wanted to do something to you, they'd do it, or at least say it, and all the polite banalities were ignored. No one has a discrete or courtious O-face, and no one ever grasped another person close at the brink of passion and cried desperately "I enjoy this shade of wallpaper!", or "your mother is a classy lady!"
That, then, was her measure of good sex. Sensations and endorphins, certainly, but the thrilling moments were when she had looked into someone's eyes and known absolutely that they needed her to touch them here, or take them there. When she had known them in both the intimate and the biblical sense. Such a thing was sometimes rare, but worth the wait.
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In other news, today is ANZAC day. Having a day off mid-week is disconcerting. Vive la freedom, in any case.
Tags: creativity sunday
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10:17 pm
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Pitch Session
I came up with an idea for a bad movie while I was lying in bed trying not to have sex with the person next to me. It would be a generic sort of family comedy; basically, there would be a man doing well for himself, with a good relationship, satisfying job, and a nice place on the beach. One day while his girlfriend's over there's a knock on the door, and he answers it to find a young blonde girl standing there, looking expectantly at him. Confused, he asks what she's there for, and she says that she's his daughter. He (and his girlfriend) are shocked, and she goes on to ask him to recall the night years ago when he was walking along the beach and heard singing, singing so entrancing he had to follow it to its source. There he came across a beautiful mermaid lying on the sand, with whom he helplessly had sex. He is, understandably, even more stunned, saying that that was a dream. She replies brightly, "nope!" and goes inside.
From there things diverged into two seperate concepts. In one, the more standard bad family movie, it's about this man coming to terms with suddenly having a daughter, with his life turned upside-down and whatnot, and also with her learning what it's like to be living in a people world. In this one, when he asks her about how, well, everything, and what that means, she identifies herself as a half-mermaid, and to demonstrate, proceeds to stick her head in a large fishtank and keep it there quite calmly for a few minutes. While she's doing this someone else walks in, a friend of his or something, and after they notice this other guy staring incredulously at this girl happily drowning herself she pulls her head out self-consciously. Perhaps when she does so a fish flops out of her mouth and back into the tank. Hilarious. Also, at one point the main guy would d come back downstairs and find her sleeping in the fish tank, as she found it more comfortable than the bed.
In the latter concept, it was less family, and more edgy art-house. This time the girl is there not just because her mother died (which might be the case in the former too, but more glossed over), but she's there specifically for revenge, real, old-school wrath of nature revenge against the man that killed her mother, and she's there to enlist the help of her father to get it. The killer, the captain of a small fishing vessel, doesn't know anything about this, having not realised he'd run her over with his boat (or possibly some other method of killing someone accidentally that you might well not notice in the middle of the ocean). The girl is unreasoning and mercurial, she doesn't understand things, and doesn't particularly care to. It's also not clear if any of it is really true - she puts her head in the fish tank in this one as well to prove she can hold her breath for ages, but this time the guy pulls her head out after 30 seconds or so because he's can't risk a little girl drowning herself just to prove a point.
I failed, in the end. I explained these concepts to the person next to me first, and they got a few laughs. Maybe I should try to write up some sort of treatment for them, although I will need to find out exactly what a treatment is first. If nothing else, it will be good to get into the habit of doing things again.
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09:21 pm
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Creativity Sunday - Book Titles for the Future
Everything Eats Everything Else - a Beginner's Guide to Xenobiology
This Book Is Made Of Kindling And Toilet Paper - a Practical Guide for the Post-apocalyptic World
All Arseholes And Elbows - Love and Trans-species Intimacy in the 31st Century
Grey Goo And You (Are Also Grey Goo) - Your Introduction to the Glorious Whole
Space Is Huge And So Is The Trans-dimensional Horror Sizing Up Your Orifices - a What-to-do and What-Not-To-Do Book for the Intergalactic Jet-set
If We Wanted To Kill You, An Unstoppable Asteroid Would Already Have Been Dispatched To Your Planet - a Contemporary Approach to Diplomacy
Current Mood:  present
Tags: creativity sunday
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06:02 pm
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Forward Thinking
I've got a date tomorrow. I realised today that I've been absently counting down the hours to it for the past three days. It's been awhile since I did that.
I spent about two years in a state of perpetual anticipation, quietly counting down the days starting from up to 70 down until the next meeting. Somehow counting it out made it seem more palatable, each day that passed was another one that could be ticked off the long tally, so even when there was so long to go I could still take comfort in the fact that there was always movement towards the goal. After all that, I realised about a week after it all wrapped up, for the first time in 2 years I had nothing I was looking forward to anymore. Everything was backwards, back when there was this or that, or otherwise simply "well, that's another day down, another day I won't get back, and one fewer day for me to be young and full of opportunity". I dealt with it as I general deal with that sort of thing, by promising myself I'd push harder to take advantage of things; do more, be better, making some headway, then quietly slipping back off. So I turned 27, trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to move forward.
In 25 hours I have a pretty-much blind date with a seemingly lovely girl named Lauren. I'm looking forward to it. Somehow, that's something of an odd feeling now.
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09:33 pm
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Moving On
Perhaps it is time to stop posting here. Most of the people I interacted with directly appear to have already done so, and the strong archive function of LJ isn't necessarily good enough to keep me around when the community is mostly dust and echoes. For now though another month has passed, and this is valuable enough as a diary at least for me to want to check in and acknowledge that.
My birthday has been and gone - I am still full from the cake and home made icecream my family provided. A few days before that was the first anniversary of the Big Christchurch earthquake, whose aftershocks are still ongoing and the damage of which is still a long way from being fully repaired.
I went up and did another comedy set on Monday, the actual day of my birthday. Surprisingly enough, it was another of the comedian's 27th birthday that very same day, a fact that we both enjoyed. The set went very well. Not fantastically, I didn't get a standing ovation or anything, nor was I likely to have been the best comedian of the night, but one of my jokes did get a round of applause, and for the rest of the set I did at least manage to nail being engaging, personal and intimate without descending into being bitter and angry as I did last time. I suppose that is a tribute both to the amount of work I put in, and to the amount of time that has passed.
I recorded a draft for a podcast, although I'm not sure if I have the energy to finish it up given all the editing work that that would require. Perhaps I'll focus more on straight-up comedy, for now. Otherwise I was also mini-published at work in the newly re-launched staff newsletter, with an interview titled "A Chat With Pat", which the editor of our serious journalism magazine called "very cute". Hopefully I can work the 'gormless interviewer' angle successfully in future issues, to the point that, well, I'm not sure. Being locally known at work might be a good start, I suppose.
I should write more, but I don't seem to be doing so. The fire appears to have gone out for the moment. I'm focussing more on women, to be honest, on the possibility of women, even if none have yet come to fruition. Perhaps they will, and perhaps I will find someone else that will drive me to be more creative again. Until then, hopefully comedy will suffice.
I'm going to see Elbow live in about a month. It's nice to have something to look forward to again. Hopefully I'll be able to find someone to go with too, as everyone I have talked to so far has absolutely no idea who they are, and my description of them as "that band who did that song you've probably heard from like, trailers and stuff, even if you don't know what it's called" hasn't exactly been selling it so far.
Current Mood: full
Current Music: Grounds for Divorce - by Elbow
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06:25 pm
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Feel Good Hit of the Summer
There was an article in one of my magazines from work today that was startlingly pro-cocaine. It was procaine. I wasn't even aware that was an option. It made the point that in New Zealand at least, cocaine was so expensive and difficult to get that no one could manage to get enough of it to really binge to the point of damaging themselves - it was just something of a party favour amongst the wealthy which made them feel super cool and fantastic, and the only downside was that it made, in one user's words, "somewhat assholes into full-blown assholes" - because everyone spent the whole time being utterly confident. I must admit, it's rare that a magazine article makes me think "huh. Maybe I need to do cocaine."
Honestly I'd never really thought in depth about cocaine before. I'd always just considered it something that happened naturally as people became rich and wallowed in excess, like a sort of celebrity snow or rock-and-roll dandruff. Its downsides were always just extensions of the lifestyle the brought it about - mania, paranoia, increasing desperation and significantly increased risk of dying whilst wielding an M16. But apparently, no. If you were an asshole, you'll be more of an asshole. Otherwise you'll just feel pretty good, and likely be considerably poorer after the purchase (given that apparently in NZ the price is several hundred dollars a gram).
I'm not likely to do cocaine. I'm not likely to do anything much. Even if offered a line to snort from a public toilet for free (the article did touch on the disconnect inherent in how even with this as the standard setting, cocaine is considered a glamorous drug), I can say I would be highly unlikely to do anything but mumble an apology, hastily escape, then go home and watch Celebrity Squares. But still, I suppose at least it's an interesting thing to know.
Current Mood: decent
Current Music: Lonely Boy - by the Black Keys
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03:30 pm
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Raw
Monday last week I went up on the Raw comedy night and did stand up comedy. My opener, which fairly well set the theme, was "Well, it's been a while since I've done this. About 2 years, actually. I spent those 2 years in a relationship, so you know, I didn't desperately need the approval of strangers. Now that relationship's over though, so here we are."
It went okay. I didn't kill, and I didn't die. My sister, the only person I knew that I'd permitted to come for my first time back, told me afterwards that I needed to slow it down and be a bit more confident with it, but also that for the intense parts I actually had a surprising amount of venom and real anger, which was currently just off-putting.
I signed up again immediately to be on again when it starts up again in February, so I have until then to find a way to make it "funny ha-ha" rather than "funny oh-my". I will at least keep doing it though. I rather desperately need to become good at something.
Current Mood: achievement unlocked
Current Music: Pumped Up Kicks - by Foster the People
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09:09 pm
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Creativity Sunday - Machine of Death
The upside of being officially turned down in my Machine of Death submissions is that I finally have something creative worth posting here. For those of who who don't know what the Machine of Death book compilations are, there's an overview here, but the gist of it is a collection of short stories all set in a world where there is a machine that can predict exactly how a person will die, and with 100% accuracy, but only dispenses its predictions in the form of a short phrase that is often at best easily misinterpreted, and at worst willfully obtuse. It's a fun setting! I wrote two short stories for it, and given that I not only took a fair bit of time on them, but passed them around to a few people for review and revision they're probably the best work I've done in some time. I've you've ever liked anything I've written you might want to give them a read, because to my mind (and to the mind of at least 3 other people, not counting those editing the book though obviously), they're fairly good. The first is quite brief, just over 1,000 words; but the second is more conventional short story length at 3,000. The first is also rather more upbeat, although that's arguable depending on your point of view. Sorry for the bits of odd formatting, they're coming out of old text documents and I can't be bothered going through and deleting any more of the odd gaps. Anyway, here they are, titled, as required by the editors, with the death prediction that forms the main theme of the story:
( Quietly but for Corinne )
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( Earthquake )
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With those rejected and out of the way, and with Rose and I now freshly broken up (it occurs to me that a few people who might read this won't already know that happened. Well, yes, it did, basically geography got the better of us as we realised we wouldn't be able to see each other for the next year), it occurred to me yesterday that I now have nothing left that I'm looking forward to. Better get working on that, I suppose.
Current Mood: done
Current Music: Hunting for Witches - Bloc Party
Tags: creativity sunday
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02:41 pm
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It Turns Out I Am Not A Dragon
I'm listening to the album "Mean Everything To Nothing" by Manchester Orchestra a lot at the moment. You could do worse than having this as a soundtrack while reading this entry, if you could go for that sort of thing.
Listening to this album makes me think of the time I listened to it last in Glasgow, face down on the floor, crying, wallowing in frustrated hope, as she lay asleep on the couch next to me. I lay like that until the album was finished, then finally managed to convince myself that this theatrical emotion was worse than pointless; it was a relapse of the worst thing I'd done, and therefore not to be repeated if I was to keep thinking of myself as a good person. I picked myself off, shook her awake to provide the password to unlock her laptop, then went upstairs to watch TV while she slipped effortlessly back to sleep.
It reminds me of the airport in Paris, as we stood in line to check in for my flight back home, then realised that we were out of time and she had to leave - right now - in order to make her own flight. We always seem to part with unanticipated haste; there's always more time right up until we discover that there isn't. She hadn't cried last night - even when I thought she had been, and told her it was okay, she hadn't been - but she cried then. We hugged and kissed wetly, and then she left. I watched her go, turned back to face the front, and dug out my headphones to listen to the album again.
It reminds me of two days ago, just after I'd finally forced myself to bring up with her all the things that needed to be said, having written them down at least a week earlier then finding myself going wildly off-script in the conversation, but in amongst all the interjected apologies the main point was there - I was offering her a flight out for Christmas, as it was now or never, and if it wasn't now then it was never. She cried and my voice was choked the whole way through, until just after I'd promised that I would always see her again regardless my friend came to pick me up for the rugby match and we said goodbye again hurriedly. The next day we spoke only briefly in the morning; she was around only because she'd promised to be around then, and having had a bad week of keeping such promises she refused to miss the appointment even though she had nothing to say and no energy to talk about nothing. She'd received a bill for far too much that morning, meaning there was yet more for her to deal with on the tightrope she was walking, and whatever solution there was or resolution that needed to be found she couldn't handle it right then. So I left for the food show I was working at that day, and on the way in the car I listened to that album; with the volume up and singing as loudly as I could without risking having red eyes for my time behind the show stand.
I'm reading Catch-22 again also. We're out of short visits now, to be together any further one of us would need to abandon the majority of their life to go to the other, and to do that we would need to be in love. But we've only been physically together and able to date for about 3 months, to know if it would work long term we would need to spend more time together first. There's a catch there, the very best kind there is.
But, Yossarian lives. Yossarian always lives. We haven't the heart to kill him yet.
Current Mood: None, or other
Current Music: Mean Everything to Nothing - by Manchester Orchestra
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