Don Pizarro's Manual of the Seven Wudan Tiger Shaolin Monkey Kung-Fu Style o' Death
I’m having a harder time with having to let him go yesterday than I thought I would. It still feels like I took picture the other day.
Goodbye, Duma. I wouldn’t trade the last four months with you for anything. You’ll always be our Little Buddy, our Chonky Boy, our Absolute Unit, and our Sweetums.
[Edited to add: background for anyone who didn’t know]
Short and sweet, because I’m not in the mood to get bogged down sticking to a structure right now.
IRONS IN THE FIRE. One of the irons in the fire I mentioned last week was this: I was offered an interview for the graduate program I applied to. Yes, I’m finally taking advantage of a dayjob benefit. Look, I even wore a jacket and commandeered a conference room for it!
It’s been a long time coming–maybe too long–but I decided to shoot my shot anyway. Truthfully, I don’t know what I’m more scared of: not getting in or actually getting in.
I’m still waiting on the other iron in the fire I mentioned; I don’t want to mention it yet for fear of jinxing it.
NEW HOTNESS. I couldn’t really afford to upgrade my old Google Pixel, but with the deals going on right now for the Pixel 4, I couldn’t really afford not to. So I went for it!
My old man critique centers mostly around a lack of headphone jack and the removal of a fingerprint scanner. In the end, though, so what? I’ve got Bluetooth headphones and all things considered, it still does everything I need my smartphone to do in 2019. I even went back to the XL size phone because of my nostalgia for my old Nexus 6. That might’ve been a mistake, but I’ll deal.
FEEDING MY EARS. I’ve listened to this episode of the Ezra Klein Show podcast, “Neoliberalism and its discontents.” It’s so dense (or, I’m so dense?), that I couldn’t absorb it after one listen.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Harvey Pekar worked as a file clerk at the Cleveland VA in the same job, all through his AMERICAN SPLENDOR run.
Maybe it's a Cleveland thing… yeah, we dream of making money off our art. Until that happens, though… hang on, got a phone call. https://t.co/NZpIG1003l
— Don Pizarro (@DonP) October 23, 2019
Catch you all next week!
I know this should be entry number 40something by now. What can I tell ya, it’s got a “4” in it at least.
You know how it is when you’re away from your blog for a while. You spend too much time thinking about how to make your next post something with a bang in it. But I have to give myself permission to just ramble if I feel like it. It is my fucking space after all.
It’s been a trying couple of months for me emotionally and as usual, I didn’t notice just how hard I get hit until the fog started to lift. You know, the fog of, “Wow, not only have you not made much writing progress for the past few weeks, you really haven’t felt much like making progress at all at… life in general.”
I could rehash it all but if you skip the #GhostHunters tweets on my feed, you can pretty much figure it out: sick feline family members, absent friends, new medication, etc. On top of that, I’ve got a couple of non-writing career-related irons in the fire–I feel like I’ve already jinxed them by saying even that much.
DAYJOB. As I write this, 2019’s Viable Paradise is happening right now. Also I have friends talking about World Fantasy Con next week. It’s a little bittersweet because if the irons I have in the fire right now pan out, I don’t know when I’ll be at an SFFH event or con again in the near future. So, I’ll either make some potentially career-altering moves in a positive direction at the (further) expense of my writing and involvement in the writing community or… well, maybe see you at Boskone or 4th Street Fantasy next year!
Yeah, as worst case scenarios go, I’m doing pretty well, I’d say.
WRITING PROGRESS. The longest Writing Chain I’ve had for the past couple of months hasn’t gone past 3 days at the best of times. I’m cutting myself some slack, though.
FEEDING MY EYES. I haven’t been doing much of that either until the past couple of weeks. Since then, I’ve added to my overlong reading queue:
FEEDING MY EARS. Aside from the audiobook for John Waters’ MR. KNOW-IT-ALL: THE TARNISHED WISDOM OF A FILTH ELDER, I’m burning through the usual spate of podcasts on my commute to and from the dayjob. The thing that’s stuck out lately is Marc Maron’s WTF podcast interview with Rachel Maddow (which I think will expire after a bit if you’re not a subscriber). At about 1:09:10, they start talking about their experiences with depression and I’ll be damned if a lot of my internal self-talk sounds like what they say goes through their minds sometimes. Things like…
Anytime I’ve ever felt joy, I’ve been misled.
or,
Remember that nice thing I once said to you? I didn’t mean that. I was trying to be apologetic.
I swear, from now on I’m going to hear all my negative self talk in Maron’s and Maddow’s voices.
IN THE WILD. Happy Halloween, folks!
B for effort, B- for execution. It met my barest expectations, namely watching Marc Maron play a version of himself as he did on his IFC show and on GLOW. And while the Maron snark shown in the trailer might’ve been my primary draw, SWORD OF TRUST teases me with the unspoken parts of his character Mel’s story. Of course, his story wasn’t the film’s story.
Writers Lynn Shelton (also the director) and Mike O’Brien compensate for what was lacking in Mel’s story by fleshing out almost every other character. Not completely, but enough for the story’s purposes. And I think the improvisational aspect of the film elevated the them above what could’ve been an utter trainwreck of southern stereotypes. SWORD OF TRUST’s biggest positive, I think, is how it (thankfully) baited and switched on anyone looking for a lazy, self-congratulatory endorsement of those stereotypes. Don’t bother seeing it if you’re expecting to just laugh at “dumb Southerners.”
This new chapter of my life starts with a soundtrack — where I’ve been, where I’m headed, and with whom.
I love these newer tunes that make me reminisce…
I think I’m in the Ruff Endz, now
I seen her throwin’ up H-Town
You was livin’ off of Dru Hill
Wasn’t Ready For The World but baby, who is?
Know you prettier than all the El Debarges
Never worry ’bout the Total of the charges
–“Anywhere” by Anderson .Paak (feat. Snoop Dogg and The Last Artful, Dodgr)
Thank god I have the urge to consistently blog at certain times of the year, like Good Friday for instance. Otherwise, I would never know how to come back from long hiatuses.
To be honest, life hasn’t been great for me over the past several months. Keeping up with a Weeknotes habit has been the absolute least of my concerns. I do plan on going back to them eventually, but right after some changes that I’ve put in motion start to crystalize. Basically, I just needed to empty out my head and replace it with things that make me happy… or at least happier in the long run.
Maybe I’ll develop the stones to talk about it in a little more depth. Suffice it to say that the two videos below pretty much spell out what’s happened to me over the past 5 or so months.
Here’s the before picture…
And here’s the after…
It really is amazing what you can do with the support of people who care about you, and the proper therapeutic interventions!
Happy Good Friday from the land of my ancestors!
Prior to the reenacted crucifixions, dozens of barefoot penitents beat their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and wood. Some had their backs with razors cut to keep them bloody.
Sterilized nails are used in the rituals, and after they are lowered from the crosses, the devotees are checked by medical workers to make sure they are no complications from their injuries.
Painter Ruben Enaje, 59, was nailed to the cross for the 33rd time as part of giving thanks after surviving a fall from a building.
I wondered if I’d be able to keep this up for 52 straight weeks–or whether I even should. I’ve been in personal recovery mode this past week, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to report. If there’s one thing I’ve been trying to do, at least in the writing area of my life, is to shoot for no Zero Days. That much I accomplished at least. So it’s going to be short this week. Welcome to season 1, episode 3!
WRITING PROGRESS. No zero days, at least…
FEEDING MY HEAD. Just a random sampling of podcasts and Netflix offerings. At long last I got to see that AVENGERS: INFINITY WARS was everything (good and bad) that everyone said it was. I’ve paused the LONG DISTANCE and SERIAL podcasts but only for a bit, but I did scan through some of the other ones I listen to. Maybe I’ll list those one of these days.
IN THE WILD. Perfect metaphor of recent life events, thanks to the current snowpocalypse. The mailbox second from the right is mine.
I haven’t been well this week. You could say I’ve had quite the workout. So, there hasn’t been a lot of progress. That’s the other side of the accountability coin, isn’t it? Not just to list successes, but to talk about when things didn’t get done. Welcome to season 1, episode 2!
WRITING PROGRESS
FEEDING MY HEAD. I listened to the next couple of episodes of Season three of the SERIAL podcast. The third episode in particular, “Misdemeanor, Meet Mr. Lawsuit”, hit close to home. My old home that is, where I grew up. On a related note, I do have some parallel reading queued up.
I’ve been migrating my podcasts from one app to Google Podcasts because I’m becoming rapidly spoiled by the relatively seamless syncing between devices. I stumbled onto the LONG DISTANCE podcast, and now this is #2 on my queue right after SERIAL. The trailer alone should tell you why this is up my alley.
I haven’t checked this out yet, but did you know there’s a digital archive of HEAVY METAL?
THERE’S A STORY IN HERE SOMEWHERE. Appropos of William Gibson being named by SFWA as the 35th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master…
It’s almost like decades of cypberpunk literature, film, and role-playing games should’ve prepared us for all this!
IN THE WILD. As baggage has been on my mind lately, literally and figuratively…
