I have a month. Ok, I have less than a month. It's July now, so I have about three weeks to come up with some shit to hurl out of my mouth in San Diego. I guess it's too late to pull a Matthew Goode and tell them how special having a kid is, therefore I'm not under any obligation to meet their expectations.

I did get a room on the Queen Mary, though. I didn't say this, mostly because I forgot. (Don't ask how you forget something like that.) Originally, I didn't say anything cuz I didn't want to drive anyone into a jealous frenzy. More recently, I didn't say anything about it cuz I didn't remember I had done it, until I was looking through my email, and found the receipt. Good thing, too, cuz I had just "realized" I "didn't have a hotel booked," and it being so late, we were on our way to having to drive into town from Parts Unknown every day, which I don't really wanna do, you know, with Seb.

There's a lot of stuff I don't want to do with a toddler. (Disneyland should be one of them, but it hella isn't.) I never liked kids, prior to about two years ago, so at one point, there wasn't shit all I wanted to do with a toddler. But then I got the wrong idea, watching Oliver be amazing all the time and tote this fucking kid everywhere, and I ended up under the impression that you can do anything with a baby, and it's cool. Lies. It's totally not. I was physically there, and I don't even know how he kept Seb cool on the tourbus. I mean, I know I played him Lordi a lot, and let him draw on me with food markers, but he screamed a lot, and if Oliver wasn't the world's best baby wrangler, I probably would have noticed it more than I did, and wanted to slit my wrists.

But I take this kid a lot of places, now (and by a lot, I mean the two places I go when I leave the house: Borders, and the grocery store), and it's not as easy as it looked. Or he gets harder as he gets bigger. I'm not sure yet. But the lengthy point I'm making (or not really making, but getting to) is that, even with Oliver there, I don't really want to start all my mornings that weekend by squashing Seb in a rental car, and making him take some ass long drive. If we're staying downtown, Oliver doesn't even have to come with me every day, if he doesn't feel like it, and I can go, and they can get up whenever they want, and go do their own thing until whenever. They were there the whole time, last year. Not like I expect anybody to be stuck there for days on end, two years running.

That's the first time I've ever considered myself "stuck" at ComicCon. Huh.

Anyway, I'm done the first series of paintings I said I was working on, about two months ago. The school portraits. They're up in the store, for ridiculous amounts of money that somebody may or may not pay me. Fuck, they will. If these things aren't gone by ComicCon (which they probably will be), I'll take them with me. And come home rich. All the sketches are done for the second set. I said I'd put sketches up, too, right? Yeah? I think so. So, they'll be up pretty soon.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what the legality of exploding fireworks on this street is. There was no legality to setting off fireworks on the apartment roof, but it was a fucking roof, so all you had to do was set them off and run away, and nobody would know it was you. Or everybody would, but nobody would care. Worst case scneario, I'll see if Oliver wants to make a trek out to the desert, and we'll set 'em off there. Or, that might be best case scenario. It might be cool. We could bring Addie. She could do some kind of naked spirit dance.

You know what I hate? Local jazz bands. I'm not talking about LA-area jazz bands, or California jazz bands, I'm talking about anything that bills as "local jazz." Or any place that tells you it's gonna have "live jazz" on Friday night, but can't tell you the name of the band, cuz it doesn't have one. All they're telling you is, that's the place to avoid on a Friday. Cuz it's gonna be awful, and you're gonna have to listen to elevator crap.

Don't tell me there are a lot of great undiscovered artists out there. Yeah, there are. Sure. But they sure as fuck aren't undiscovered local jazz musicians.

I narrowly avoided a troupe of them, when I wrangled Seb all the way out to Borders with me, the other day. It was late on a Thursday, and these old dudes with saxophones were just getting there as we were hightailing it the hell out. If I was a shitty local musician, I'd hate to play Borders gigs. I'm sure they coulda brought these guys in through their back door, but they didn't. They all came in like a parade through the front, with everybody kinda glaring at them for interrupting the out-flow. If I didn't hate Local Jazz Bands so much, I woulda been embarassed for them.

All in all, I shouldn't have gone to Borders that day, cuz there was a pair of old ladies there who pissed me off, too. Seb was minding his own business, taking all the stuffed animals off the stuffed animal thing, and I was minding my own business reading books that're way too old for this kid, out loud. Not like fifteen years too old. Like six, maybe. Eight, tops. (Mysterious Benedict Society, for the record.) And these two old ladies come in, and they're looking at the Tinkerbell shit (that's not just me subbing in "shit" for "stuff." Tinkerbell shit is made of excrement.), and talking about what to get the one's granddaughter, who likes fairy stuff.

Fine. Little girls like fairy stuff. I get that. So I'm not really listening, until the shorter one starts talking about how she made some prints for the girl's room, and how she hopes the kid's mom won't be wary of them "because of the type of book [she] got it from." So at that point, I'm intrigued, and I start pretending I've figured out that Seb doesn't give a fuck about my story, and started reading to myself. These people keep talking, and I gather she got the prints she made out of some Brian Froud faefolk book, and the kid's mom is the kind of nut who thinks Brian Froud is in some way related to the occult.

So that's stupid, right? I was gonna have a good laugh about it, and go on my merry fucking way, but they wouldn't shut up. The taller one says, "See, I agree, I'm not so sure about all this magic stuff. Like those Harry Potter books, I don't go in for that." And the short one says, "Well yes, he is a warlock. He's supposed to be a good warlock, but it's kind of hard to distinguish between good and bad."

Pause. Soak that in. If you've read Harry Potter, you know why that's retarded, and I don't have to tell you, and you can skip my Paragraph of Wrath. Otherwise (or if you like me chewing out old ladies on the internet), keep reading.

CUNTRAG. First of all, wizard. Not warlock. They use the word "warlock" a couple times in the books, but that's not what wizards are commonly referred to. They're wizards. Hogwarts is a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Merriam Webster, who's generally pretty helpful when I wanna school people, says a warlock is "a man practicing the black arts." But a wizard? "A wise man." Or "one skilled in magic."

So we've already got a problem. But she makes it even more fucking obvious she's never read the books and shouldn't be running her mouth about how "harmful" they are, by saying it's "hard to tell the difference" between a good practitioner of magic, and a bad one. Dunno about you, but I'd say the books make it pretty fucking clear. So clear that there's an entire set of stereotypically "bad" kids, whose parents are all involved in the dark stuff. If you'd read the books, you'd know: there's never any question of whether or not Harry is the good to Voldemort's evil. The whole point is that they're polar opposites. And when Voldemort's bad? He's very fucking bad. Ladies, it's not hard to tell the difference.

Then the short one reached way into the depths of her ass soul, and pulled out the stupidest thing I've ever heard, to justify her fucking Brian Froud book. She said, and I quote, "And I think it's all right, because it's just fairies, and all they do is go around being helpful."

Wait.

Keep waiting.

...Um, we're not done waiting yet, cuz I still can't process how fucking stupid that is.

Let's try this, kids. What's my favorite fairytale? If you guessed anything in the books, you're wrong. If you guessed Janet & Tamlin, you're right. And what's that about? A dude who was kidnapped by the fairy queen and put under a spell to force him to stay with her for eternity, whether he wanted to or not. Fairies are not helpful. If they are, it's not without a price. Fairies live under the hills, and coerce your men to dance with them, and dance until your mortal lover dies. So yeah. Fairies? Great. Decent English school kid? Evil.

A word of warning to you all: Read before ye speak, and if thou cannot read, thy lips be seal-ed must.

Oh fuck my life, it's almost ComicCon time. Somebody told me, this morning, that they're completely sold out already. Am I making this up, or did that not happen last year? I mean, it probably did, but like at this point. It wasn't sold out by June last year, was it? I don't know, the more I say that, the more I think I'm making it up.

Sadly, I can't say I'm making up my name on the "special guest" list. I don't know what the fuck that even means, considering I'm there every year. I'm not gonna know for awhile, either. They still don't have a whole program scedule up. As per usual. You know, I don't understand convention coordinating. Or the lack thereof. Like, what exactly is their coordinator's job? To sit on his ass and not actually coordinate anything for as long as possible? To make sure the convention centre doesn't suddenly hate his guts, line up the dates, and then sit there thumbing his asshole until two weeks before the dates he decided on? Cuz I'm pretty sure that's his job, and if it is, I'm gonna take it. I'd be great at that.

I'm hoping it means I'm gonna hang out with Charles Vess way more than I should be allowed to. He used to be one of those people I'd seen twenty times, and never said a word to, cuz I knew he was way better than I am. Then I spoke to him kind of a lot, when I was working on Stardust, and after that, I dropped back off into intimidation land. I figure he thinks I'm stuck up.

If I'm not busy in October, I think I'm gonna hit up the Alternative Press Expo. I've only been one other time, but it's kinda interesting. Did I mention that I wanna go to SteamCon? Probably not. I wanna go to SteamCon. Wait, maybe I did. Didn't I say I wanted to go, but I thought I couldn't, cuz I was gonna look like a tourist? I don't know what the fuck I said. Moving on.

I want to make sure I do some summery shit this year. Last year, I went up north, and then I sat on my ass. Not so this year. I'm in LA. I oughta be at the fucking beach with everybody else and their mom. I ought to be kidnapping Seb and going to Disneyland. Going camping. Going camping at Disneyland. I'm not that serious about the camping part, but I am pretty serious about the Disneyland part. I'll haveta ask Oliver. I haven't been in a cool hotel for a century and a day, so I'd be happy if we could find a time to really go, and stay, and go nuts from trying to wrangle Seb in all the lines.

You know, I don't hate baby wrangling half as much as I thought I did. I guess it's toddler wrangling more than baby wrangling, anymore. Little person wrangling, not to be confused with midget wrangling, which is way cooler. I kinda like following him around the house when Oliver's busy. I kinda like smiling and nodding when he tells me shit, and I have no fucking clue what he's trying to say. Seb. Not Oliver. I'm kinda enjoying this.

I like weird plurals. I want to invent some for the Fables. What are a congregation of fables, anyway? A mystery of fables? A darkening of fables? An invisibility of fables? Give me ideas, slash tell me how stupid I am.

While you're at it, I have a way less interesting topic to bitch about. Bravo pisses me off. Like, the cable network, not the word. Word reminds of Phantom of the Opera. Anyway, the homework I forgot to assign you was to look up benevolent sexism. You know what that is? (No, because I didn't tell you to look it up.) Sexism is being shit to women (or dudes, or whatever). Benevolent sexism is being nice to them, condescendingly. You know, when you're like, "Hey doll, don't worry your pretty head over this," and you mean it, yeah, but it's condescending, cuz you're still implying you, the dude, are the only person who can handle their shit.

Bravo is the fucking forerunner in benevolent homophobia. (I hate the word "homophobia," anyway, cuz it's so inaccurate. Another rant for another time.) Half their lineup since '04 or '05 has been fucking condescending programming about the "gay" lifestyle, where every dude's a fucking obnoxious twink, or some metro douchebag, in the name of promoting gay rights by showcasing gay culture on TV. "Showcasing" is right. Taking the showiest, most pretentious fucks they can find, and telling you how special and cultured they are, because they suck dick.

Word to the wise. I've worn the same two pairs of jeans for three years. Right now, I don't own a clean t-shirt. I cut my own hair half the time, and I'm shit at it, so I wear a lot of hats. Shitty hats. I smell cuz I haven't taken a shower today, and I've been in Rachel's yard (Whining, but out there), and you know what's hilarious? Farting. I don't know what the hell music people dance to, and you know what? Neither do any of the gay guys I know.

It's "homophobic," or more accurately, "anti-gay," to say fucking your own gender makes you markedly different from those who don't. It's benevolent to say, "Yeah, but you're different in the way that you have great hair and you're super fun at parties and you sparkle all the time and shit rainbows." Bravo and that attitude are as homophobic as BET is racist. And that's about as racist as the day is long.

The worst fucking example is this bitch on Millionaire Matchmaker. She lives in LA. I live in LA. I see her, she's getting something thrown at her for that "viva la gay" bullshit. Watch the thousandth rerun of the season finale. Watch it. I dare you not to cringe. If she made a big fucking deal about setting up an interracial couple, you'd hear about it. How is it awesome that she's doing it with a gay couple?

Haha, "doing it with a gay couple." Anyway. Food for thought. Next time you want to compliment "the gay lifestyle," whatever the fuck that is, take a gander at whether or not you're actually complimenting it. Take an even closer gander at whether or not it deserves to be complimented, and you'll probably find that it doesn't. Not cuz there's anything wrong with it, not cuz we're fucked up perverts, but because it's no more special than a straight man fucking his straight wife.

Well, kids, I'm painting again. I don't remember exactly when it was, anymore, but it was actually a pretty cool thing, when I coughed some canvases up on the site and sold them, so I'm doing it again. There's gonna be an updated series of cub portraits, in kinda...I guess school portrait style, even though they don't go to school, and then I'm working on another series called In the Dark, and the best way I can describe what that is, is to say it's depictions of the thing that scares each kiddo the most. That's a fuck of a lot of pictures, so I'm not gonna kid myself and say I expect to sell all those canvases fast, so I think I'll see about doing a limited print run, too, and I don't know. We'll see. I'm not even done yet, so I don't have to decide. I might start scanning the sketches at some point, here.

I'll probably do that anyway, cuz I want to show Jean before I get it all finished. He's always been better than I am, at drawing my own characters, and his stuff was kind of the first thing that inspired me to do outside pieces. Like, sure, I'd always had books full of random Fables stuff that didn't have anything to do with anything, but I only started doing really nice, finished pieces after we'd been in production for a year or more, and I'd had a look at the originals for his covers. Seriously amazing. I've said it before, and I can say it a thousand more times, and still owe him a couple, but for as much as I'm ok with the new covers, Jean's made Fables, and I'm never gonna fucking not miss working with that guy.

Anyway, Rachel's still gonna leave my room for me, but third and fourth parties willing, I'm going to stay with Oliver. And the cats. And the monster. And Connor. Which, for all its shortcomings, is better than living anywhere near Stacey. Seriously. I'm gonna have a party all by myself, the first night I don't have to live in the same house as her. I don't know why she and Rachel are friends. I'm guessing it's only because they've known one another a long time, and they're both military brats, and they went into business together. But bitch is annoying. Rachel's a glutton for punishment, being friends with both of us. Anyway.

How did I start and end that paragraph with "anyway"? God, I suck at writing.

I'm still gonna be down there a lot, because the neighborhood around Glass Circle House is still one of the weirder neighborhoods I've been in, in California. I don't know about anybody else, but it's been my experience that all the weird neighborhoods are back east. And so are all the weird houses, with the exception of a couple places in San Francisco, and stuff like Winchester House, which doesn't really count, because it's so weird that you're talking about Freak weird, and not Normal weird, anymore. Most of the Normal weird houses, you know, the ones people built with normal intentions, but they came out funny anyway, are on the east coast. You expect them in older places, not your run of the mill neighborhoods, like these couple sets of blocks in Irvine. I'll take some pictures. You'll see.

It's really great. I've always wanted to live somewhere like that, and I'd almost put up with Stacey's bullcrap, were it not for Oliver. I'd rather be with him, in the most boring fucking house on the planet, than have dame Winchester's house all to myself. There. I said it. And that's a weird thing for me to say, cuz I don't know if I've ever preferred another human being over living in a fucked up awesome house. I can always travel to weird houses, without missing that much. I miss a lot, when I gotta travel to Oliver.

In a roundabout way, that reminds me that The Script has been okay'ed. The project, and the story, were already greenlit, so I didn't exactly have to worry about that, when I got called up to write for it. Now they're looking for a director. I told them I wasn't doing it, but I don't know. That could change. It's gonna be, you know, sometime next year before they'd be filming, even if they get somebody right away. I don't know what I'm gonna be doing then. I don't know what Oliver's gonna be doing then. And fuck me, but I want his input, or at least to know what he's got on his plate around then, if I'm gonna be getting into directing something I can't shoot in the garage. But you know, I'll probably ask, and he won't have any fucking clue what he's doing "sometime next year," so.

I bet he doesn't even know what he's doing "sometime this afternoon." Not ok. I need to find my teleporter and get Addie over here, so I can call her Placentia for a second year in a row.

I've been helping Rachel do up a rental contract for Stacey. Turns out they're not actually buying the house together, legally speaking. Rachel is buying it, and "renting" to Stacey, for almost half of her payments every month. Then I'm paying her the gap between what Stacey's paying, and half, if and when I start living there. And if I don't, Rachel's paying it. But anyway, they have to have a contract in case they get into some kinda argument later, about how Stacey paid for half the house, but Rachel's the only person who owns it. Like a house pre-nup. It basically says Stacey's rent is fixed, and she's paying half the utilities, and she can't be kicked out unless she's causing "quantifiable damage" to either the house or the other people who live there, and her contract doesn't expire until such time as she signs for another house, or another apartment.

Yeah, it says stuff like "until such time as." I was proud of myself. Again, I don't know how most people write their private rental contracts, so idk how legal it is, technically, but if the kinda contracts Judge Judy is willing to honor are any indication...Yeah. Whatever I write and she signs is totally legally binding.

I don't have a contract, cuz we don't know when or for how long I'm gonna be living there...and Rachel trusts me more than she trusts her best friend. Which is pretty fucked up, all things considered, but there it is.

She went to sign for the real house contract on Friday, and I went down with her, but I didn't stay to watch her do paperwork. I went and looked at Playmobil, at one of the malls. Playmobil kinda pisses me off. They have these fairytale sets, but they call them stupid shit. Like, Hansel & Gretal is called "Lost Boy & Girl." Snow is called "Magical Queen," which not only sounds just as Made In Taiwan as "Lost Boy & Girl," but doesn't even make sense. Yeah, there's a magical queen in that story. But is she the part anybody remembers right off the bat? No. I don't even think the queen is in the set. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) It's like Snow in the glass coffin, and the prince, and a couple midgets. No magical queen. Unless they're calling Snow the Magical Queen, and then I really don't fucking know.

Now, ok, I'd kinda understand these Made In Taiwan names, if the names of the fairytales were copyrighted. Newsflash: they're not. They're public domain. We've talked about this...I don't know how many times. Playmobile: Tune into my blog. Learn you some valuable info about not making your toys look retarded.

So that kinda pissed me off.

I'm actually in Irvine again today, with Rachel again, who thinks I'm gonna be some kinda help figuring out rooms in the house. I told her I really don't want to do this again. I already moved one set of people from an apartment, to a house they didn't have enough stuff for, and it was crap. We never did fill every room in Pasadena with fucking furniture. Now Rachel wants to do the same fucking thing, and I don't know where she thinks she's getting all this fucking money, so I told her she could have the stuff in my house, if she wants. I didn't really expect her to agree, but she said ok. That house is bigger than the Glass Circle house, plus she and Stacey both have a bunch of shit in storage, so I think she's set. I picked out my room, she dragged me to look at curtains. Not in the gay friend way, like Stacey would have. Rachel knows I don't give a shit about curtains. (Except that time I made them. Don't talk about that.) This was in the babysitting a toddler way, where I sat my ass down on the floor and whined, when she was taking too long.

Now we're at Barnes & Noble. Don't know what the fuck she's doing. I don't even know where the fuck she went. But I have my laptop, so I don't care, either. She's probably in the business books. I think she has every fucking small business book known to man, at home. This isn't the B&N that carries alien texts, so I don't know what she thinks she's gonna find. I gotta say, though, that I have buttloads of respect for her trying to open a shop right now, when everybody else is shutting the fuck down. Do I expect it to go very well? Nah. But is it awesome of her? Yeah.

Rachel has these knives that are completely fucking awful. They're duller than dirt. As in, literally, you could stick your food in the ground, and it would come out more cut than if you took these knives to it. Stacey never cuts stuff. She always makes Rachel do it, cuz she thinks she has to saw so hard with these things that she's gonna end up sawing through her finger. They finally got new, sharp ones, like a week ago, and I said now I can't cut stuff, cuz I'll probably get too excited and end up sawing my whole arm off.

Stacey didn't get it, Rachel rolled her eyes, and last night, I finally had food that needed cutting. And guess what? Cut myself. Not on purpose, but still. The awesome knife that was supposed to stop people from hurting themselves slipped and sliced my thumb open. Rad. I mean seriously flayed my thumb. Fucked it up hard. I didn't shriek or anything, but I kinda thought about it. I had to tape it shut and hit up the ER. I haven't been there in...Well, I was gonna say it was a really long time since I last went, but I guess it wasn't, cuz I was there when my wrist got fractured. In New York, though. It's true that I haven't been to the hospital in LA since I can't remember.

It took forever, too. I didn't know this, but for future reference, cutting your thumb open is not a life threatening condition, and won't move you to the front of the line. [/sarcasm] I always figure hospitals are like anywhere else, and they're way busier on Fridays and Saturdays, but I was thinking about it during my thousand year wait, and I'm not so sure that's true, anymore. It kinda seems like it would be, because you figure people get drunk and do stupid shit more often on the weekends, but no. It was a fucking Tuesday night, and busier than hell. There were kids puking, and old people dying, and more kids having asthma attacks, and I kid you not, a hooker who got the shit beat out of her. It was the whole nine yards. And me with my gorey thumb.

I had my fair share of time to think, though, while I was waiting to get stitched back up. (I probably coulda done it at home in way less time, even if I had to give it two or three tries.) And here's what I thought: It's time to just fucking admit my house and I are done professionally. I'm not gonna go so far as to sell it again, because I put a lot into it, and I may want it one day (And it has a perfectly good darkroom and chunk of studio space in it, so why the fuck would I sell that? I need it.), but I'll openly admit that I won't be living there any time soon. I'm not thinking about it, I'm not freaking out about it, I'm not worrying about if that's stupid or not. I don't live there, it's studio space, that's all.

I feel better now.

So, I don't really have to tell you I'm worrying about what to do with my dad's stuff anymore, either. I'm just gonna auction it all off. I'm gonna put it on ebay, and whatever isn't gone in a couple months winds up at Goodwill. Or a month. I give myself four weeks from whenever I do my first listings. Multiple, short auctions, and don't keep anything more than a month. Ok.

I always have this idea that I can't do shit, because I'm stuck between two places. I keep thinking about staying with Rachel as temporary, and it probably is, but thinking about it like that isn't doing me any favors. For right now, it's where I live. I don't mind it as much as I did when I first got here, either. I'm happier than I was, and she doesn't look over my shoulder as much as she used to, so it's fine. I can stay here as long as I need to. Not just because it's the only place I can live without trying to shoot myself. Because fuck it, I actually kinda like it.

I feel like I should also say, ComicCon 4-days are already sold out. I didn't know until Jean emailed me about it. He wanted to know if I had enough guest passes, cuz I guess he had an extra one. I do need it, cuz the two I had are reserved for Oliver and Rachel, and I'd rather be able to take Addie, if she's around. And not just so I can watch her hit on sweaty nerds.

More later, when we get around to Ye Olde Annual Pre-ComicCon post. I'm thinking about hitting up SteamCon, too, but we'll see. I'm not one of those steampunk guys, I just think those steampunk guys are interesting. I'd probably get kicked out on my ass for playing tourist. So yeah. Further ComicCon update and something about the weird thing in the neighborhood Rachel wants to move to, later.

My life is so fucking weird. First thing I do, every time I wake up, is wonder how the fuck it can be so weird, with me still alive. You'd really think I'd be dead by now. Either from, you know, various things I've gotten up to (literally and figuratively), or from the sheer shock of how bizarre everything is. I always get to these junctures, maybe like every six months or so, where yeah, I can look back and see the sequence of events that technically got me to where I am, but I still don't understand it. For all the logic in whatever train of thought my life's been on for those six months, I always look at them and think it's gotta be just barely by the grace of God that I got to wherever the fuck I am. Or just barely without it, in most cases. Most of the time, I don't get how I ended up in some totally shitty place, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Man, if I'd had thirty seconds of divine intervention, I wouldn't be here."

This time, it's the thirty seconds of divine intervention that put me where I am. And that makes this edition of "How the fuck did this happen?" even weirder, because that's almost never how it goes. I don't remember the last time I didn't understand how I got something good. It's always something fucked up, when I don't know why I deserve it. But I think I'm pretty happy right now. Not just like floating along, doing ok. I want to say this with some serious trepidation, but yeah. I want to say I'm happy.

I was looking at the dedication in The Good Prince today, and thinking how ironic it is. Well, I don't know that it's really "ironic," but it's interesting. It's interesting how you can do stuff, and it's cool, but you don't realize what it's gonna mean to you later on. And on top of that, I was looking at my blog, and I forgot the extra dedication I wrote in here, but here it is: Thanks to Oliver, there's a bucketload of symbolism in this book that I couldn't have imagined when I first wrote it. Some things are more sentimental in hindsight. This entry doesn't make any sense. Don't you love it when I'm cryptic? I try not to do it very often. I try to, you know, keep what you love hidden away in my lair, and never let you see it. But I felt benevolent today. I blame the sentimentality.

I definitely don't blame Passover starting tonight. Even my awesome seder plate isn't soothing my breadless pain. This morning, I was like, "Man, I really could use a pizza," and then I remembered. Pizza is of the devil, until the 16th. Fuck this significant religious holiday I'm willingly observing.

Once the pizza craving subsides, I'll feel shitty for saying that.

Anyway, benevolent. Happy. Other mysterious shit. As if I don't have enough other shit going on, I started another story. You know, like...on top of the two stories I've ever written that were stories, and not Movies or Comics. A thing with no pictures, where you have to use real language to describe whatever the fuck you're talking about, where generally, writing like an asshole isn't acceptable. (Something I fail at.) I remember, like a year ago, saying I was never gonna write a book. Ever. I said it was impossible. I said I didn't have that kind of attention span, and I'd get fucking bored, and I'd write it like Tolkien, because I'm like a nazi for specifics, so no one would ever read it. (Because, you know, nobody ever read that Tolkien crap...) I'm kinda reversing that decision. Not totally reversing it. I still think I'd be crap at writing a novel, so I'm not even gonna bother trying to stretch my ideas that far, but there's a couple things I want to do that I can't work into the Fables continuity, no matter how hard I try, so I have to find something else to do with them.

See, that's what I've been doing. Any time I think of something, I try and figure out how it relates to The Books, and then I work it in there. And it's not like that even happens very often, where I think of something and it's not immediately obvious that it's a part of the story. Sometimes, yeah, but not all the time. Lately, it's happening more than it used to. I think it's a side effect from isolating myself for so long. I didn't have anything to do besides think up unuseable crap ideas. Don't get me wrong, most of this stuff is still total crap that I wouldn't even bother turning into a "story," but I have...maybe one or two things that I really wanna put down somewhere, so. We'll see.

Back to what I said needed a separate entry for, a couple of entries ago. I saw Amy at the funeral. Amy Gallagher, the girl from this post. Which means....

( Courtesy cut time. )

Anyway, I'm about done with the first draft of this script for my buddy. What did I say about it before? I'll do the shocking and unexpected and actually bother to scroll back in my blog and see.

...

Ok. I didn't say fuck all about it. Probably why I've been getting a lot of emails, huh? God I hate emails. Anyway. Yes, it's a horror film. No, it's not a horror film. No, there's no gore. Yes, I'm capable of not putting any gore in a movie. I've done it before, unless you weren't paying attention. No, I haven't decided how much I want to say about it, so let's fly by the seats of our pants and see what we get.

It's a ghost story. I don't think of ghost stories as horror stories, really, but a lot of people do, hence yes AND no. I don't think they scare people in the same way. Horror stories are very visceral, ghost stories are psychological. Primarily. So this is a ghost story, and the loosest description I can possibly give you is that, right after World War II, an English lady and her two kids move into a big, bad house, and find themselves terrorized.

I had maybe one person ask me if I was going to try to get my friends cast, too, but truth is I don't know if there are parts for them. The parts are all older than my friends. I don't know. We'll see. They might have to screentest for me and prove they can do what I want. But we don't know who's directing, yet, so I'm not gonna say that. I don't know if I'll be doing it. That answers another question. I don't know what I'll be doing at all, if anything, after the script's done. I can tell you Rachel's love of momento mori was taken into consideration when I wrote it. That's about all.

Speaking of Rachel, I think it was decided that I'm looking at houses in Irvine and Long Beach on Monday. Also speaking of Rachel,

Uh, so. This has been a really weird week. I guess I appreciate all the supportive stuff I've gotten since Friday before last, and I oughta say that first, before I say this: In another way, I don't appreciate it, because the more times I hear how sorry somebody is, the more I have to think about how sorry I really am. For a lot of stuff. But I guess I'll get into that at some point later.

I had people say they bet my dad dying would change stuff with me and my mom. Like, people assumed she'd feel bad for hating me and apologize, or act different, or something like that. I kept saying I doubted it (to myself, cuz fuck if I replied to any emails all week), and you know who was right? I was. And I'm kinda sorry about that, too. I don't really want to be friends with my mom, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't have hurt if she changed her mind and wanted to be friends with me. Lord fucking knows that's never gonna happen.

Lucky for me, I didn't really see her the day they had the viewing, at all. I got to PA probably an hour and a half before it was about to start, and I had barely enough time to get into my hotel, change clothes, and get over to the funeral home. Funeral homes are weird. That's a cliche as fuck thing to say, but I've actually never been to anybody's funeral, except my own dad's, which is fucked up in its own way, but that's beside whatever point I wanted to make. It's just strange. Like, they make it up to look like a house, but then you go around a corner, and there's a chapel in what oughta to be a den. And there's a weird facsimile of a dining room, but there aren't any chairs. There's just a table, and a buffet over by the other wall. You know, I never got that about funerals, either - what's the deal with buffets when people die? I understand bringing meals and stuff to the family, cuz who can be bothered to fucking cook when their relatives die, but why do you need to eat at the funeral? Is it too awkward if you don't give people something to do with their hands?

This wasn't the funeral, anyway. I keep saying that, but it was the viewing. Told you, I don't know anything about this stuff.

I went in to see my dad once. That was all. I don't want to talk about it, either. I don't know. I didn't feel like I was looking at a person. It felt kinda like looking at a sculpture, like it was supposed to look like my dad, but wasn't really my dad...ever. I can't describe it. Mom, though, they couldn't get her to leave. She just sat on a chair in that room all fucking night. Wasn't crying, but she didn't look much like a person anymore, either. I don't know.

That was how I avoided her. I stayed out in the foyer and said hi to people who mostly didn't remember who I was, or never me in the first place. (Thanks, Mom.) The whole time, I wasn't like trying not to think about Dad, but I kept noticing that all I was thinking about was the upstairs of the funeral home. Like, what the fuck is up there? It's not where the mortician is. That was at the back. But there were stairs, and the building used to be a residence, so...Is it empty up there, or what? And that kept freaking me the fuck out, thinking about all this empty space, like above where all the bodies go in and out.

I only saw one person I knew pretty well, and that was a trip that probably needs its own entry. More on that later.

Monday was worse. I saw more of my mom. She stood next to me. Held my hand for awhile. She's probably pretending she didn't, now. So it was harder, in that way, but in the way that I didn't have to look at the unnatural statue of my father was easier.

Tuesday was a lot worse. Mom called me on Monday night, shook up, but saying we had to start moving stuff out of the house the second I could come over. Ok, I guess that's not a "but," so much as an "and." If she hadn't been so shook up, she wouldn't have needed to get dad's stuff out so fast. I wanted to say that, too. She probably shoulda given it more time and given more thought to what she wanted to keep, but I don't know. Who am I to say what to do with stuff like that?

Their house looks freakishly empty now. I always thought it was weird looking when I'd have to go back and visit after I moved out, cuz my stuff wasn't there, and my room was an office, but that shit's nothing compared to what it looks like now. My mom doesn't own half as much stuff as I thought she did. Pretty much every piece of crap in that house belonged to my dad. Pretty much every piece of it is in the house in Pasadena now, cuz I thought it was too much of a waste to chuck it in the dumpster.

That's what I did over the weekend - piled a bunch of crap that's not mine into my house I don't fucking live in. Cleaned for mom all week, put about 80% of my dad's stuff in a moving truck, and when I flew back home, I met the movers at the house, and stacked everything up in the living room. Chances are? That means I'm never gonna deal with it.

Not until Rachel makes me, anyway. She has this idea that I can actually use some of it, since I never did (totally) finish furnishing the stupid house, and mom sent a couple bookshelves back with me, for who the fuck knows what reason, cuz she can always buy more fucking books, but whatever. Point is, I have more stuff now. Deal with it later. When I have to. Not now, when dealing with it is optional.

Although, she's probably gonna make me sooner than later, cuz she keeps trying to come up with all these tasks and errands for me. Apparently, it was ok for me to sit in my room and work all day when my dad was alive, but now it's not considered working, it's considered dwelling, or something. But who the fuck knows. I haven't been in there for too many hours at a time yet, so who the fuck knows what it could turn into.

I feel more weirded out than sad. I don't think I'm a bad person, either. Dad defended me when my mom was a fucking bitch, but never to the point where she took a hint and stopped. And he would email me every couple weeks, almost, most of the last couple years, but I don't think he ever knew what to say to me, cuz if I'd write back, he'd only reply about half the time. So I don't know. We were close before Mom started hating me, but recently? I didn't fucking know the guy. I was sad once, yeah. Back when they stopped liking me. But I got over it, and I'm not gonna be sad again. What's the point mourning the loss of some relationship I didn't even have?

But it's fucking strange because, since I never saw him anyway, I don't know how to process him not being there. You know? There's nothing that's gonna really remind me that he's gone. So I'll forget. I guarantee you, I'll kinda forget he's not just going about his own fucking business on the other side of the country, and then I'll consciously think about him, and remember, "Oh yeah, he's not there anymore." I don't know how to describe it without seeming like a fuck again, but you know. Maybe I am.

So. Coraline's out now, huh? I wasn't paying attention, and I wasn't keeping track of the release date to begin with, so this only kinda hit me after you people started emailing me about it. Since I don't ever keep track of what's going in my life (still Rachel's job), I only ever know what's going on when the email subjects change. That's the only reason I remembered to say something about the non-signing I did for the last book. It was emails about that, now it's emails about Coraline. So hey. Coraline. ( Cut for the spoiler-sensitive wusses. Those of you who haven't read Sandman, gtfo too. )

I'm about 120% serious when I say I'm never gonna involve myself in a kids movie again. Or, I guess, a movie the studio thinks is a kids movie. That was kinda the problem we ran into, when I was doing the screenplay. I saw it for what it was, and they didn't want it to be that way, and I think that probably rubbed me too far the wrong way, and that's where the issues that led to the Replacement started. I'm not super proud of that or anything. But hey, now I know. No more "kids movies."

( Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you. )

Minus my partner in crime (go ahead and guess who I'm talking about, I don't know if you'll be right, even though I did say something about it once. Maybe. I don't remember. What? I don't read this shit back to myself.), I'm trying to get a foothold on some studio space. When I came up with this, like, a year ago, I didn't think it was gonna be that complicated. Troma always finds someplace to film. I've been in my fair share of weird, off-lot buildings, filming shit. I figured you just kinda went out and did it. Now I'm learning.

There are actually way more options than I thought there were, and it's pissing me off. I figured what I'd do is scope out the area, find some empty building that's for sale, buy it, go from there. I thought I found somewhere, but then the real estate people started telling me I had the option of leasing it. So I had to go home and think about that. And while I was trying to figure out whether buying or leasing was a better idea, when I don't know how long I'm gonna use this thing for, or how much the fuck I'm gonna like it, I had another idea. What if I went even farther out of LA, found some land, and hired one of those steel building companies (with the awesome commercials with the fat redneck) to make me something sparkly and new? Eh? Not a bad plan?

I don't know. That's about the biggest commitment you can get into - putting something permanent on land you bought. But if I buy somebody else's building, I might hate it. I might think it's right, until I go and actually try to film there, and it gets all fucked up. If I lease a place out of paranoia that it's gonna turn on me, I could end up loving it, and they could jack the prices on me.

I'll keep thinking about it, probably for so long that the building I'm kinda ok with gets sold to somebody else, and I have to fight them to the death for it, only to find out that (just like I supposed), I hate that fucking building, and I'd rather have built my own anyway.

And this was all sparked by the fact that I finally finished editing this crap heap of a script I started re-writing months ago. True fact about not living in my own apartment - I feel awkward anywhere but my room, so instead of watching TV, I sit at the desk and stare at the wall until I have to get some fucking work done before I need to kill myself to end the boredom. I don't even like trying to leave the apartment to do something, cuz if Rachel's home, she'll want to know where I'm going. It's not that big a deal anymore, I don't really care, it's just awkward. I don't like to say "nothing," because she'll think I'm up to something, but "nothing" is usually the answer. I'm that interesting. You wouldn't even believe how interesting I am.

So, I guess the plan (scary as it is to have a plan) is to settle on a building and consider myself in pre-production again. Maybe I'll go out on a limb, not hire anybody I already know. See how well that works. It could either be great, or a disaster. I'm betting on the latter.

Speaking of which (don't ask me what which. Probably "pre-production," but it could easily have been "disaster"), I didn't say what happened with Hostel. Long story short, I got into too many arguments with the producers, they got into some kind of argument about who the fuck knows what with the distributors, and the release got pushed back to next month. I'm pretty sure you already know that, too. The trailers have been on TV. Actually, that's kinda funny, cuz I saw theatrical trailers for it back in August, and then there were TV trailers starting around Halloween, and then it stopped, and now they're playing again. It's probably giving people the impression that this is one of Those movies that's never really gonna come out. But it'll come the fuck out. It'll come out if I have to stand in front of your local theatre with a storyboard flipbook and narrate the fucking thing. I'll make Lenora stand next to me and look hot, so people pay attention.

You're also probably wondering what the fuck I was doing when War & Pieces came out, and why I didn't do a signing for it. That was November. My hand was in a cast. I didn't fucking feel like it.

But if you're pissed at me, I come bearing good news. I have a date for The Dark Ages. August 9. Providing I'm not dead...book tour forthcoming. I probably won't have any useful information about that until we get up close and personal with ComicCon time, though. They never plan these book tours very far in advance. Notice I'm saying "tour," and not "signing." I talked to some people, and they thought it would be not totally ill-advised, if I went to more than one place, for the 12th volume of a book that's surpassed Sandman in issue number. So get ready, nerds. Major cities.

Edit: Pre-order this shit on Amazon.

I hate this fucking time of the night. I'm always up, and I'm always on the computer, but I never want to be, because it's always a night when whoever the fuck I'm staying with is trying to sleep, and I'm loud on the computer. Rhys is up until all hours of the night, all the time, but when I lived with him, I would only ever wake up between two and three if it was a night where he had to "do" something in the morning. And I'd get up, knock some stuff over, get on the computer, forget my volume was turned up to the maximum, and turn on something on Newgrounds and blast him awake.

Speaking of Newgrounds, I don't talk about it enough. (Now that I'm thinking about it, that's probably because I don't know what the fuck you could say about Newgrounds.) Watch Naruto Super Dub. Then watch Blush Your Teeth. Don't reverse that, cuz if you watch Blush Your Teeth first, your brain won't process the next thing you show it.

I've been here for three weeks, and Rachel is annoying me about as much as a person can. I can't decide if I have a really young mom, or a really obnoxious wife I'm not attracted to. Whatever she is, it's annoying. She and her friend are doing a photoshoot for their clothing line today. All they have up on their site right now are pictures of the clothes and a couple shitty (aka unprofessional) shots of themselves wearing stuff, but now they have a handful of their friends modeling, and they have somebody to take pictures, and they're going to somebody else's house and doing all this. Punchline is that I have to come. And I'm not the friend taking pictures. I don't know what the fuck I am there for, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say Rachel was gonna force me into being her dude-type model. I don't know what she could guilt me with right now, to make me do it, but I bet she tries.

Maybe I'd do it begrudgingly (you know, this hypothetical thing nobody even asked me to do), if she didn't fucking snub me and have somebody else take her pictures. Supposedly, they planned to do this like two months ago, and she didn't know where I was gonna be at the time, or if she could count on me to be there. The fuck. If she woulda asked me to do it, that's an obligation, and I would have come and met it. And if she would have wanted me doing it, well, she's known where I was for at least a month, which is more than enough fucking notice to tell the girl who is taking the pictures that I was gonna be home. They're paying this chick, too, and they wouldn't have had to fucking pay me. So I'm kinda mad, and I kinda hope these pictures are more shit than they could be, cuz I'm kinda fourteen.

I get Rachel telling me I "have to" do things that involve interacting with other humans, when I've spent most of my time here not taking fucking showers, and sleeping until dinner. I get that. That's...fine. It pisses me off, but it's fine, and if I won't do it, I probably deserve her yelling at me, so whatever. I understand that. And I get (this is going out on a really reasonable limb. Don't expect me to go there again) that if I'm gonna live in somebody else's apartment, there's an extent to which I gotta do what they ask me to do. You know, like take a shower and not put my clothes on the floor on purpose. And eat.

I don't mind her telling me cigarettes aren't food. I don't mind her telling me not to turn the place into a fucking pigsty, cuz it's not my apartment. I don't even mind this shit with telling me to find another doctor (which I still don't have any plan to do). But I mind being asked to be a tagalong for something I could have had a real part in. I woulda fucking liked doing that, too. She showed me a picture of the chick's house we're going to. It's awesome. I like fucking architecture. I don't mind taking modeling pictures. I've done portfolios for girls before. I like taking pictures with Rachel. I might not even be so pissed off with her if she would come out and say she'd rather have this other girl do it. I don't remember her name, but maybe she's amazing at photographing clothes. I don't take pictures of clothes all day, so maybe she knows something I don't. Cool. Whatever. Just tell me, and don't bullshit me that a month isn't far enough in advance to tell someone they don't have a dayjob. And don't bullshit me that you don't know I'd come running if you gave me a project.

Alright fellas and gals, I moved again. Did I say that already? I don't know, but I'm living in a residence hotel in San Francisco. It's sweet, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the store. You know, the store on the site that sells shit I wrote and sometimes real shit I drew. Real real shit, like paper I put graphite all over, and painted on, and wiped my nose on, if you're lucky. "Originals," they're probably called. And I'm here to tell you that a few are about to spring up for your purchasing unpleasure, sometime on Friday.

When I left Pasadena and went to vent my spleen in New York, I didn't take that much with me. I took Bill Pullman's advice and packed only what I needed to survive, but eventually, I went back, and gathered up some more stuff, including a bunch of paintings I had been halfassedly working on before everything went to shit over the summer. I halfassedly kept working on them while I was in New York, and now I'm sitting here, with virtually no space whatsoever, thinking to myself that making more stuff was probably not the smartest idea I ever had, when I didn't have a permanent living space, and I really need to get rid of some of it.

I'm too lazy to describe them all to you, but there are going to be four pieces up on Friday. When on Friday, idk. Depends on whenever Rachel begrudgingly does the coding for me. She's kinda mad at me, but I'll write about that later. Basically, everything she does for me lately is begrudging. Whatever. Get over it, whore. Anyway. Four of them are Fables-related. Three of them are war-related, and they're actually a set. They'll be simultaneously available as a set and individually. That means if you want 'em all, you better watch the site all weekend (you know, assuming anybody's that invested in my shit, which they're totally not) and be the first person to click that BUY ALL button, cuz if somebody comes along and snags the second piece before you do that, you'll be stuck buying the first one and the third one individually, or nothing at all.

Did that make sense? No, it probably didn't, and if you're confused and you ask nicely, I might try to explain. Or you can just wait and try to figure it out yourself, when the sales go live.

The fourth, non-war-related one, is cubs on Halloween. You know you want that.

The fifth, non-Fables-related one, has my blood in it. You know you don't want that.

True story. I'm not kidding. Awhile back, I accidentally bled on a page layout I was doing...I think three issues ago, give or take. I wiped it off, but obviously some of it dried into the paper, and I couldn't use that layout for anything, after that. But it reminded me of the myth that the KISS comic book has red ink mixed with the blood of the members of the band. And I thought to myself, fucking misguidedly, "Hey, that's probably not true, but wouldn't it be cool if somebody (not KISS. You know, somebody legitimately awesome, like me.) did that?"

Next time I was painting something with some red in it? I gave it a shot. It's not...the best. It didn't work out exactly how I wanted it to, so the color's not that great, but in theory, it's spectacular. Rachel has the doctors' notes to prove I'm not disease-ridden, but we sealed that one in plastic anyway, in case any of you freaks aren't too off put to want to buy it off me. I seriously hope one of you's not, cuz come on. That's cool.

So that's the heads up. More about Frisco, the new ex-boyfriend, Rachel hating on me, etc, in a day or two.

That's the main news for the week. The other news, the side news, is that James Jean has broken up with me and Fables, and I might have done myself a disservice and sent him a nastier email than I should have. Heat of the moment and stuff. So if you hear that we're getting a new cover artist from some place other than my blog or ProcessRecess, go on. Fret. It's true.

I get that he wants the personal time to do his own pieces. He's got a lot on his plate, and I get that basically doing commissions (and that's what it is, doing covers for Fables. Yeah, it's straight-up employment by Vertigo, but it's commission work. I'm telling him what I want, on a painting-by-painting basis, and he's doing it.) all the damn day might get into soul-crushing territory, after this fucking long, but come on. I'm not kidding when I say he broke up with me and the books. That's what it's like. We had a symbiotic, if I'm using the right word (I'm not, am I?) relationship, and I don't know where we're gonna go from here.

I also get that I can't, but knowing Vertigo's finding me another cover artist makes me want to reconsider not doing the interior art anymore. The art's 100% different now. That sounds unfair. I'd be pissed, if it was a book I read. But hey, if "personal work" is a goddamn good enough excuse for my buddy Jean, it's a good enough excuse for me, and I'm gonna keep standing here with my guns. I guess.

Friends, Romans, and countrymen: I lied. I said, back in the day, that I would post the whole piece I was reading for the Fables panel, before the con. Well, I didn't. And I'm not gonna apologize, but I am gonna post it, because hey. I promised. So here you go. Have at it:

( Three Roses )

There're some spots in there that I kinda hate. For instance, what the fuck? Who starts a sentence with "but," three times in a row, and doesn't fucking notice after four rewrites? Me. That's who. That's the best thing about comics. You never notice if my narrative is sketchy as hell, because you never see it. I could start every sentence with "but," and you'd all be tricked into thinking I wrote like I knew what I was talking about. I don't. That's why I never write prose. You'd all find out I suck at writing.

A couple days ago, somebody on ONTD posted a bunch of ComicCon portraits. Bastards didn't post mine, so here you go:

Expect another update tonight or tomorrow. I'm running on empty in the sleep department, again, and I still need to act gayer than I am, and go buy a manpurse, before all the stores close tonight. What? It's that pressing. Don't tell me you've never had a pressing need for a manpurse.

(OOC: "Three Roses" by Garth Nix)

Once upon a time, Rhys and I came to ComicCon, separately. Shock/horror, I know. Unheard of, except it isn't, because we hadn't met one another, yet. His father died that year, and he saved me from going in the same direction through, I oughta note, no fault of my own. Not really, anyway. But that's not the point. The point, aside from very big brains, is that we came to ComicCon pretty separately, this year, too. This time, it's my dad who's picking up the tab.

Before you flip a gasket, he's probably not dying, but he's definitely at Johns Hopkins, waiting for a viable heart to transplant, which is great, because it means he's gonna be there forever, and my mom's gonna expect me to go out there when we're done with this hoopla in San Diego, and to tell you the truth, I probably won't. My dad's ok, don't get me wrong. Mom's the harpy. Dad's a good guy, and he usually stands up for me when she's off on a bitch rollercoaster. If I got to talk to him without her in the room, like if she'd hand him the phone and stop hovering the fuck over his shoulder (an impossible dream), he'd tell me not to come. Last thing he wants, while he's laid the fuck up for who knows how long, is for me and my mom to start gettig into it again. I mean, if your options are death or surgery-possibly-followed-by-death, I don't think you really want your wife and your kid bitching one another out over your death/possible death bed.

And that's the thing about me and my mom - if he was dying, we'd still be doing it. I wouldn't try to. I'm not that kind of asshole, but she is, and she totally fucking would. None of my friends have met her, but sweet fucking crap, that's exactly what she'd do. Because she probably thinks my fagonometry (Trigonometry, with more buttsex.) busted up his old heart, no lie. I'm not exaggerating. She'd say something like that, and it would be so fucking stupid that I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut. He'd die and we wouldn't even notice until a week later.

So did being a bitch to Rhys put my dad in the hospital? Probably not, but hey, I like irrational thoughts. We're gonna go with yes. Question is, what do I want to do about that? This is kind of a delayed universal reaction in the penance department, anyway. I haven't been a serious bitch for a couple weeks, now, I've just been holed up in ye olde editing roome, slapping my movie together. If my dad's gonna die, mending my ways won't fix it. Leaving with Rhys, back in the day, didn't drag his dad back from the grave.

If I sound callous, it's because I'm kinda apathetic. What's the appropriate response, guys? It's been almost ten years since I decided I didn't like the people who popped me out. Yeah, my dad sticks up for me, but not that hard. If he ever tried that hard, my mom woulda shut her fucking cake hole, by now. He doesn't try to call me any more than I try to call him, which is never. So do I care if this guy dies? No. Do I think I'm a shit person for not caring? Yeah.

My apathy's the problem with a lot of things, right now. I could shut up, and I'd be happy with the stuff I have, and Rhys and I would be good, and I could carry on with my life, but my Caring Meter is at such an all time low that shutting up would take way more energy than I'd like to spend. You know, I get why Rhys is mad at me. I get that it's shitty, when I work all day and then go see Oliver and play with his kid like he's mine. Or like they're both mine. That's more frank than I usually am in here, but that's fucking true. It's not a grass-is-always-greener thing. I don't wish Oliver loved me. I don't even want him to. That's stupid. I'm just happy with him and Seb, and I'm gonna eat up their time for as long as they'll have me.

If Rhys hates me, or comes close to it, I'm not gonna piss and moan about that, cuz I don't have any room to. Once upon another time, he didn't have any room to piss and moan when I got pretty up close and personal with the idea of not liking him, either. And anyway, I'm apathetic, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna work out. I'm not gonna get into why, but it will, eventually, come hell or whatever.

Vertigo panel is today. I was supposed to be getting food with those guys, this morning, and I blew them off. What's this food stuff? I don't even eat food. I process pure rage and live off of that. Anyway. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, my dad's is the hospital, guess I'll go eat worms play shitty fetch with the baby.