Seeing Spots: Procrastination Station |
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Mehitobel Wilson: writer, reader, chronic curmudgeon.
Tomboy bombshell cowgirl; lover of funk, attracted to roadsides. Besotted with spots. Friend to sleaze. Admirer of filthy films, fleshy steaks, Hong Kong rap, new felt and pocket-knocking 8-balls; prefers 10 gallons of hat and 4 fingers of Jack. Procrastination here breeds urgency there. Urgency begets sharper fiction. The dream: hone it to a splinter, and sink it deep. So I'm here. 
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Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Bisectual Please send accident-prone, much-adored dumbass Geoff Cooper good vibes, because the dear doofus split his hand in half. He needs it to type. Of all the assholes running around right now, thinking they can write, and talking about how well they can write, Geoff's the only one who can. (Actually, he doesn't talk about how well he can write, at all. He just does it. Which puts him firmly in my good graces. But even if he jackassed around, talking about himself in 3rd person and running his mouth, I'd forgive - even encourage - it, because he's actually fucking good.) He's also one of those rare people who became a real, stolid lifelong friend on sight. He's not DEAD, for chrissake. He's just cloven at the moment. So, John Gotti died of "head and throat 'cancer.'" This less than a week after acting Gambino boss (son Peter) was indicted for racketeering, extortion, etc. Reported facts aside, I'm tempted to think that the head and throat are excellent targets, and that the Gambino family is ripe for a takeover. Meanwhile, it is appalling that the feds (allegedly) told the media of John Gotti's death before they told the family. Next up: the story that kept me awake all last week, "Land of Odds, One Mile" will be in the Chiaroscuro Webzine's July '02 issue. (Yeah, a couple weeks from now.) Yes, ONLINE, people. I haven't subbed a story to an internet venue since the FIRST issue of ChiZine, July 1999. Off, now, to brandish (and even employ) a spud wrench. Oh, happy day, Day 2 of my toilet replacement project. (Day 1 was cut short due to lack of spud wrench.) I must meanwhile ponder zombies and ducks. Thursday, June 06, 2002
Psychic Hong Kong I've been busting my ass on a (somewhat ornery) story this week; you'll hear about it if it goes well. It has to go well by tomorrow, because it's due tomorrow night. So I stayed up far too late last night, working on it, and then nabbed a smear of sleep. While a'sleepin', I had a long narrative dream. Part of this dream involved my awareness that Sam Lee was in town doing a record release party, but I didn't know where he was. The FBI guys who had been tailing me for years broke their FBI-guy code and whispered, as they passed me, the name of the hip-hop bar where Sam Lee was. I'd never heard of the joint and neither had anyone whom I questioned. I didn't actually go out looking for him, just checked phone books and asked around. Anyway, I pop over to the LMF website today and... they released a new album this week. Woohoo! I don't actually know if Sam Lee even fools around with LMF anymore, but that's beside the point. I'm all about LMF. SKINS OF YOUTH hardcovers are sold out from Necro; certain retailers will have them available. Paperbacks are still available direct from Necro or through retail outlets. Speaking of which, Shocklines is going to take all my money once I, uh, get some money. Those of you in Europe, keep an eye out all month for Arab on Radar. Tour dates are available here. By "keep an eye out" I mean "go see them play." They will make your face explode. (Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and extravagant jetsetting foreigners who will be in the US this summer, go ahead and check out that link for the Oops! The Tour mass mess, too.) Those of you who are going to the More than Music fest in Columbus, bow down before Ghost Orchids, because amongst the Orchids is the Almighty Julian Danger, ever-beloved and always rockalicious. Folks have been asking whether or not I'll attend DragonCon this year - for those of you who were about to ask, here's the answer: dunno yet. Haven't decided. I humiliated myself last year, but I also had a blast (and didn't know I'd actually been humiliated until after the fact.) It's late (nearing Art Bell time) - and our yard is dark. My lights are the only ones on in the house. This lures solidly-built flying bug beasts to crack themselves against my bedroom & office windows. The first night this happened, I thought neighborhood kids were throwing pebbles at the house. Nope. Palmetto bugs were ricocheting off the glass. Strangely, this disturbs me more than when I find them in my house. Oh, and damn you, Dee Dee, you dumb fuck. RIP and all that, but... shit, rock stars just piss me off when they die for stupid reasons. I know that's what rock stars DO, but I still wish I could have scolded them first.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
Look, Nothing's Changed Back from vacation. I can now officially announce that I HAVE NO NEWS TODAY. I just didn't like the last entry being three weeks old.
While in Lovecraft country, I got to clamber around on rocky shores. This was neat for a number of reasons: one, I am freakish about climbing. I will absentmindedly climb anything. I'm not afraid of heights; I love them, actually. But the physical feeling of climbing, of gripping the rocks, and the animal-brain fun of looking for your next foothold, is great. Reason two: I got to pretend that I was hauling my amphibious body up Innsmouth way. Gill Gal! Reason 3: somewhere in that water is a Nazi U-Boat. Came all the way into the Sound (there's something about this in the most recent Maxim, too) and got nailed with depth charges, and it's down there still. Nazi invasion, right there. There were other adventures, too, but those tales and details are reserved for fiction flavor. We all went to the Whitney to see the Biennial show; my friends' friends had an exhibit up. The artists, Forcefield, installed the piece that really got me the most, and would have even without the emotional connections that my viewing companions had to the installation. The piece, whose name I can say but probably not spell, had me standing still in a dark room full of monsters and creatures. There were creatures reminiscent of those in Star Trek, Invisible Man (original), Dr. Who, and others. There were throbbing blobs, small Kachina-like guys, and crocheted men. At times they conversed. Some moved a little bit. Some had blinky lights here and there. Some may have moved, but the "motion" may have been a trick of the eyes, as happens when you stare at an anthropomorphic shape for long enough. My companions really loved it. But I, fixated as I am on the investigation of spectator vs. object, and fascinated as I am by monsters, was just blown right the holy fuck away. The positioning of the critters forced the viewer to stand encircled, in the darkness, by them; it was as if they were staring at *us.* It was unnerving to stare back, to inspect them. The nature of "monsters" and the production of fear was very much on my mind as well. I'm not ashamed to say that I was scared to enter the installation at first. Not funny, squealy-girl scared (shit, who am I? you know better than that) but that high-adrenaline fear you get when you psych yourself out at home, alone, in the dark. Where you, a full-grown person with a good head on your shoulders, just KNOW that there IS a glutinous swampy zombie under your bed, just this once, and it's going to get you and it's going to be GROSS and it's going to HURT. And you're embarrassed because you know you're being stupid, you KNOW it, but... what if you aren't, Horatio? That's the fear I felt. I've never felt it in public before, and since I'm shy, that was no good. But the installation was fantastic, and spurred many mental churnings specific to me - and I'm still thinking about it. Two weeks later, I'm still considering things, the way I felt, and why, and why I think of those things in the first place, and so forth. THAT'S art. Y'know, if I were an End Times fanatic, I'd be losing my shit right about now. While researching Rapture stuff a year or so ago, I came across a website that held my attention for a little too long; I was fascinated at the time by their assertions that the Antichrist was rarin' to go, and by the prophecies. (Not because I bought them, but because so much thought and manipulation had gone into them.) I remembered all of this now that world attention is turned to the Middle East again; now that the word "evil" is associated with bin Laden, etc. Can't find the site, of course, and wouldn't trust it if I did find it - the prophecies might have been edited since I first saw them. Anyway, between the widely held End Times-fanatic belief that the Antichrist will come from the Middle East (cradle of civilization) and that there will be blood in the manger (Bethlehem standoff! did those guys read these sites, or what?) - and the Catholic scandal that's brought Cardinals down while priests fall like flies at the hands of alleged victims, and by their own hands... mix that stuff together, and even common natural occurrences (earthquakes, floods, Amtrak derailings) seem ominous. If I were religious and paranoid, I'd be dreading my hair. (Easier to get raptured up that way, 'cause God can get a better grip on your noggin.) I really have got to move to a city that has a good library, or a giant university, or at least a school whose library participates in a good ILL program. I get obsessive about too many subjects and just can not afford the money or the shelf space to accommodate every frenzied research-whim. Worse, I often can't afford the books I need for the research, and eventually the obsession passes - and that's bad, because if I'd gotten hold of the books right away, there could be stories. It's Spring. This means that people with whom I've lost touch are coming out of the woodwork with hellos. Happens every year, but this year, it's become a daily thing. I'm hearing from long-losts every single day. This is nuts. Really neat at times; nuts the rest of the time. AND FUCKIN' A, damn if ANOTHER one didn't just pop into my inbox. Tigger! Haven't talked to him, laid eyes on him, since 1994. Holy crap, this is just crazy. Neat, but crazy. WHO ELSE? I don't come out of the woodwork. I bury myself in it. I try to resemble woodwork and flatten my back against the wall. I am wainscoting. I am paneling. I am Wallflower. Seems I ought to go reply to these distant-past pallies. Offward I go. Saturday, April 27, 2002
Underway Wow, lots of stuff, now. Not only are four new things going to be in print by the end of May, but I just heard that another great anthology got sold and that my contract is on the way; I turned in the Mystery Story and am now half-holding my breath; I decided to quit fucking around and get a collection underway after all; and in a couple of days, I leave on a trip. I did move my site to a new host, but the move has been a little slow, so forgive me if the site is sticky for a while. Off to engage in Hell Weekend; I'm running late for my appointment with suck. Tuesday, April 23, 2002
It Begins This weekend is Holy Hell Weekend here at work - the school puts on a gigantic festival. The upcoming weekend means that the week before (ie, NOW) is just terrible and sickeningly stressful. The day itself? If it bombs, too late, right? And the worst that could happen would be that I'd come back to the office Monday and either get (1) yelled at or (2) canned. I can buck up under yelling, and would be, in many ways, very relieved not to work here anymore. Plus, I'm going on vacation next week, so I have to get all the events and crew schedules in order before I leave. Ick. I was braced for all of the above, ready for it. Not a big deal. But the cosmos has already started to behave like a particularly annoying little brother - nothing major at all, just a succession of tiny, dumb things that I'd rather not have happen. For instance, it was 95 degrees here yesterday. I drove, with my window down, past a bush with one very stickedy-outedy branch, which got inside my window a little bit. That's fine, but the branch was swaddled in silkworm baggage. Fucking GROSS. Robert's cat, Dammit, located a palmetto bug (ie, 2"-plus cockroach), and when I tried to threaten it, it flew ONTO me and ran around on my knee while I called it a motherfucker. Then my own cat bounced onto my couch, thereby flipping a lit cigarette out of the ashtray and into the cuff of my shorts, and while I tried to rescue my laptop (I succeeded) I did not save my own ass. Nice burn. Add the cigarette burn on my ass to the vast field of bruises all over my body from bouncing off the still-unfamiliar surroundings in the house, and I look like a bona-fide goddamn candidate for Saturday's episode of COPS! Plus, my website is down again. That's it - three strikes and you're out, web hosting place. Time to jump ship.
Off to find a more stable fucking web host, I suppose. Or work, I could work, too. |
Anyway, yes. Home again. While I was up roaming Lovecraft country, the DEAD BUT DREAMING antho arrived. It got passed around town here and was curled up and dogeared by the time I got back. I haven't read it yet, myself. Looks nice, though, even curly. My contribution is fine; I got a kick out of writing it and I think it stands up fine, but it was an experiment: could I just write a plain old story? And could I write it in bits, a little each day, instead of slamming it out full-blown in one sitting? Yes, I could do both. I did both. But it wasn't written with the venom that inspires most of my other stuff, so it doesn't feel to me like a story of mine, just like... a story. Personal body-of-work considerations aside, I hope it blends nicely into the book itself. It bloody well better, since the story after it is a Ramsey Campbell piece. Jeez.
