I'm also sick...Just so you know...

I’m Late! I’m Late!

I’ve been meaning to post a…um….meaningful blog here for awhile, but those pesky constraints of the space-time continuum (You know, no time travel, no 36 hour days, things of that sort) have made blogging a bit more difficult as of late. The spirit was willing, the flesh was willing, but reality was weak. It’s hard to get used to the structural integrity flaws of our reality, and sometimes it really fucking chafes, but I’m dealing with it. Sort of. I mean…I don’t try to talk to my hallucinations anymore. I just look the otherway, and sing songs to myself while they implore me to save the Monkey God Kifu and his Rod of Greasing Justice (Not Greasy, but Greasing, as in it’s function is to grease OTHER things…don’t ask) and such. Not THIS boy, firmly rooted in his comfortable, yet flimsy reality. I don’t need the distractions. Why? Glad you asked. I wrote a song about it…like to here it? Here it go…

Mr, Miyagi would be proud, and then he’d give me one of those classic cars, then I’d run his old ass over for making me paint his fence…

I’ve been the painting fool this week, doing a number on our forlorn and forgotten stairwell, to adorn it in the most glorious of colors: mustard yellow. It looks much better than it sounds though, and it shines with a warm, sunset glow, that reminds me that no matter how much I try to deny it, the Monkey God Kifu awaits his champion and…

AH DAMMIT! STUPID MONKEY GOD!

Anyway…the wall looks nice. I painted it…it glows. Still gotta paint the baseboards white, and try not to splatter paint in my eyes…again…

After the stairwell, I’ll take my +2 Brush of Painting (NERD ALERT!) to the Foyer, and then the dining room. Have to finish it all by Friday. Why? Well, because the illustrious Daimushi has returned to the good old US of A for a week, and we’re hosting a mega party on Saturday. But since we’ve um…invited a whole bunch of hungry, dirty people to our house, we (read everybody else) thought it would be a good idea to expand the shindig to both floors.

But aren’t you remodeling upstairs right now, Benticore? Isn’t it filled with the paraphernalia of DIY home remodeling? Why yes, gentle reader. Yes it is. So I gotta get on the good foot, so to speak, and get all the stuff done. A man’s work aint never done…But Wait! There’s More!

Me and my Evil Twin have decided that you should read it…

So I’v given the first 1/3 of Lion and Spear to my loving, darling wife to read. Ahem. I don’t know what else to say. I usually don’t like other people reading my work when its unfinished, especially as unfinished as it is right now, but she asked me, and then I, in a moment of terrifying clarity, asked her to read it for me, knowing that a) it’s a rough-rough draft with lots of things (characters, plot, title, language, little stuff like that) still up in the air. So she’s reading it right now and I’m trying, trying, Trying not to bug her about it with thousands of questions about what she thinks. And THAT is hard. I’m a meddler. I meddle. I wasn’t able to cook properly until I leaned to control my meddlesome ways enough to let something sit in whatever oily substance it might be cooking in without poking and prodding it like a dinosaur egg. I’ve burned water because I kept watching the pot…that damn water never boiled but it sure did burn up! But I digress.

So she’s got my fledgling novel in her strong, womanly hands and I’m both exhilarated and scared shitless. I desperately want the novel to be good, the idea to resonate in others as much as it does in me, and that the writing not hold the ideas and the images back. But I’m a long ways away. That’s fine with me; writing is a long process and the people who think it’s easy are either crazy or have never really done it before. But I also have a tendency to belittle my own efforts. Hence the Evil Twin. When it comes to my own works, I’m probably my own worst critic. I can be harsh. Cruel and merciless even. Sometimes Kifu hides his face in shame when I get started on how much SUCK I can incorporate into a single paragraph. I’m normally not like that at all. But my evil twin, my darkside, boy, that motherfucker is an ASSHOLE! But just to me! Everybody else cant really tell us apart.

But Raquita can. She hates the Evil twin as much as I do and she calls him on his shit, every time, without fail. So I’ve had to bottle the twin. So…not only do I not get to pepper my wife with questions at 500 QPM (Questions per minute) but I ALSO have to keep my snarky, self-depreciating comments to myself. Now THAT is a hard task. Hard, but I’ll not shirk from it. The bottom line is this; the novel, it aint great right now, but its very rough, and it needs polish and help. I think it can be good. It might even be better than good. But I can’t give up now. And I won’t The Crystal Kingdom of Ghorivaan needs me. Take THAT evil twin!

*High-fives Kifu, the Monkey God*

*Cries in corner*

Welcome to the Inner Circle…

Let me let you in on a little secret; I love conspiracy theories. Love em. The stranger the better. JFK killed by a penguin assassin on loan to the CIA because of Kennedy’s Anti-Penguin rhetoric? Great! Aliens landing on the moon to set up alien fast food franchises serving human burgers? Awesome! I loved the Illuminatus! Trilogy and highly recommend the book to anybody who has the intestinal fortitude to wade through it. But I digress.

A good friend of mine recently started working for Starbucks and he noticed, during his training, some mention of their logo, as a siren. He asked what the origin of the logo was and nobody could rightly tell him, so he asked our resident sleuth Gikinmaro to take up the case, and take it up he did. Gikinmaro eventually found a post that goes in depth into explaining all interesting and, frankly, creepy images and ideas that are found not only in the Starbucks Logo, but in the Name itself. IF you’ve got like 10 minutes, I HIGHLY HIGHLY suggest you read this before you order that half calf mocha latte.

That’s it for now. I’ve got to prepare for this party tonight so I’ve got lots of work to do. Take care of yourselves and each other and don’t forget to spay and neuter your pets.

Benticore

Out