A letter fromme the hearte

HUGE MUFFIN.

No, I'm not calling you that, I went to Molly Stone's to get some oatmeal - of which they are out - and instead found muffins - of which they are bountiful.

These muffins are not the normal kind of muffin that is pleasant to get along with. These muffins are lopsided, unsymmetrical, and utterly breathtaking. The body of this particular muffin is similar to the others - a small, almost infantile body is dwarfed by the king's crown of muffin top. It spreads over the rest of the world, towering over the small body both in heigth and width. I'm almost afraid to eat it out of respect for the muffin and its creator, but that is until I take a bite, and soon throw that theory away and awash myself in the mysteries that is the muffin lore.

Muffin lore is a wonderful thing. I, like you, have never been a big fan of blueberries (blubios, in the vernacular), but within the mysticism that is this muffin, some new and glorious truth has been written for me, and the deliciousness is the king's bounty, the pirate's treasure, the baker's contribution to the world.

I stated before that the muffins are not the pleasant kind, this fact remains true. It takes a strong force of will to interact healthily with this muffin. One must understand that the muffin cannot be consumed all at once - as some of the waifs and rastabouts do with their tomfoolery and canoodling - this muffin must be savoured, and can only be understood by a true Muffinologist, and while I certainly am on that path, I would hardly consider my own knowledge of muffins and muffin lore to be anything more than average.

And yet, average when it comes to muffin lore is an interesting thing. So many people who I encounter in a day, whether it be in work or in play, do not carry with them neither the knowledge or the physical sticky presence that is a muffin. Perhaps I know more than I like to claim - but I will remain modest until I can prove to myself that my muffin lore truly is muffinologist worthy.

With that, I consume.

This May Continue On a Blog Made for Stories

This was my attempt at just writing something for the sake of writing. I made a New Year's Resolution (2 years ago) that I would just start writing. Maybe doing something every day, even if it's not that great.

Rosa opened her eyes. It was a long time before she could think of anything else to do – it was dark. It was the kind of darkness that deepens when you open your eyes, the kind that shifts and changes and you see shapes in its wake. A thought floats through her head:

How did you get here?

Now that’s a funny thing to think, she thought, I must have started standing up, and now I’m lying. As simple as that. Other things are simple too, like moving. Here, I’ll show you.

This was more difficult than originally planned, her entire body seemed to be frozen, and her body was not listening.

I order you to move, she thought, stubbornly, to her hands, you’ve never disobeyed me before, so move!

However, even with that great force of will, her body remained stubbornly idle, a rock on this pavement.

And that’s another thing, why is this so cold and hard? I do not remember ever sleeping on something as uncomfortable. I doubt I would have done this to myself on purpose. Unless I was in the woods and I forgot my bedroll, perhaps I’m in the woods?

She pauses for a moment to listen for the sounds that are so familiar to her. She listens for the quiet rustling of the trees overhead, listens for the sounds of the insects, for the animals that would be interested in an immobile young woman, listens for the telltale jingle of the garish caravan she traveled with for so many years. Nothing. That is to say, nothing familiar, there’s plenty to listen to, once her ears are tuned. What seemed like a faint noise in her ears that at first she mistook for her own head is now unmistakably turning out to be rushing water behind rock. She also confirmed the fact that she did not have a bedroll.

How did you get here?

How should I know? I just went to bed not too long ago – I am still perfectly exhausted. And here I am, in this foul smelling cold, dank place. I can’t move! Do you think I wanted something like this? And now I’m talking to myself. I’m just like those madmen who traded with the caravan.

The thought came again, this time stronger, but Rosa, if anything, had an incredible ignorance towards things she did not want to believe. She did not want to think of being somewhere completely unknown, not knowing where she was or what she was doing lying on the ground. She had seen plenty in her life, but never had she been genuinely confused. In her frustration, she let out a growl.

And the best I can do is growl! This better not be one of those stupid horror stories that the girls in the village tell me about. I certainly don’t believe in werewolves, and even if I did, one certainly did not bite me! I would have remembered that! And what is that tapping noise?

In her anger and frustration, Rosa was tapping her hand ferociously on the floor. Now that her hand had her undivided attention, it suddenly stopped, as if cornered by stage fright. Quietly reserving her judgment for later, she turned all hostile thoughts away from the now still appendage. It started tapping again with the retreat of the mental spotlight.

Rosa gave a small sigh. It was a perfectly absurd situation: no memory of the how she came to be there, lying on the ground, a voice in her head, and now an itch right on the tip of her nose.

This is absurd!

With that, she moved her hands, pushed herself into a sitting position, stood up, and scratched her nose vigorously. And to prove to her self that it is all in her head:

“That was easy. And so was that! Never a doubt in my mind.”

Furrowing her brows, she concentrates on her right palm and pushes the energy out, as she did so many times traveling. This is a harder endeavour than she planned, as if what comes so easy to her is stunted behind a thick wall, but soon enough, as she was taught and it was willed to be, a tiny flame of blue green light flickers to life and wraps around her hand, and what should give off the light of a torch only shines like a candle, once again giving her pause.

Speaking aloud helps, “If this is a room, and I’m inside it, there must be a door.”

The High School Musicale

Today it begins.

I can't believe I actually agreed to Stage Manage this. Today is the day that I get to meet 45 kids and try to keep them under control. The meeting yesterday made me think that the director wants me to not be only a Techincal Guru, but the disciplinarian of these children. This is another step in the chain of weirdness that has been this production company.

The joy in my life is that I'll be doing it with someone I care about so deeply. It's going to be fun carpooling back and forth and getting to know more and more about the person - sometimes it feels so wonderful just thinking about the future I think I'm going to burst. And I'm going to make the best out of the show though, it's the San Francisco premiere, I'm going to get paid for my work, and I have a great future ahead of me.

But, like all theatre that I get caught up in, I don't really want to do it. If only I did just that for a living. I say that to myself every single day. Then again, I don't really live in a place that has theatre that can fully support someone. (Why doesn't he just go to a bigger theatre town, you cry?)

I love it here, and as I've said to many people now, this has become my home. It has been a place of so much joy and fun and success. Yes, success. I've been fairly successful in my acting career, and it's not really slowing down - I hope it never does. Chicago is probably in my future, I have a spot in my heart for that place, but Los Angeles has been my goal forever, and I'm going to have to try.

Went and saw Superbad last night. All in all, a good movie, and I'm glad that I saw it on the big screen. It has certain wonderful moments that harken (hearken?) back to my times trying to find alcohol when underage, and how much I take that for granted now. And the horniness, oh my yes, I remember that well. To be honest, that still hasn't gone away, but I am a lot more confident in myself, and therefore able to have a lot more chances to make that horniness go away.

To sum it up: I am incredibly glad that I am done with high school and would never go back there in a million years. Unless, of course, it was in another life - and then I'd just go through it and be grateful it's over with again. Same goes for college - but as always I have been toying with the idea of graduate school.

Been trying to plow through Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. It's a fucking brilliant book. I always am happy to find out people with similar tastes in the macabre that I am.

City of Villains Profile - A Work in Progress

"Damn pigs!”

Dr. Malcolm Ray shot a few more times in the air to scare them back to the farmhouse across the way. The heat of the weapon radiated in his hand, and with the part of his brain that is not infused with pure hatred for his four legged companions, making a mental note to recalibrate the radiation, he slid it back into the compartment on the outside of the wall, shooting it off to the rooms beneath.

“My vocabulary always runs short when pigs are involved,” he says to himself, turning towards the wires that are now contorted and twisted and covered in pig slop.

“Oh, the glamorous life we lead.”

His breath swirling, visible in the cold night air, the doctor glances up at the monitor to see if power has returned. There is a small flicker, and he held his breath. The green light faded to blue, and flashed the circular symbol for The Vetruvian Project - currently stalled from the cold and the pigs.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Malcolm shivered in his coat and turned up his collar as he walked back towards the electronic door signaling the entrance to the compound.

“Welcome to the Compound, Dr. Ray,” a soothing female voice was the reply as he glanced towards the retinal monitors.

Compound, he thought, passing through the doorway and slowly descending the stairs, How lovely. It’s quainter than that thought…where is everyone else? Oh right! I had to lead up the genetics, and now I’m stuck here at the satellite Compound. I’m surprised I didn’t find a bearskin rug when I was flown here. Although, I’m not against boarskin…

He pondered that comforting thought for a few seconds, disemboweling the pigs, eating the good and hanging the bad over the worktables as a trophy. What brought him out of his reverie was the simple fact at how freezing it still was in the room – the cold has seeped into the very walls. Turning to the monitor, he glanced at the internal temperature – 10 degrees colder than outside.

“That’s strange.”

“Not really. Think about it,” came a voice behind him.

Whipping around with all the strength and agility of a man who has just been surprised and utilizing the full extent of the weekend self defense retreat his company sent him on, he was promptly hit with a sub zero temperature and knocked off balance by the sheer numbness and betrayal of his body.

“Your time here is at an end, good Doctor. I’m here to take you back to the Zig, and if you play nice, you may get to do it sleeping peacefully,” says the intruder, his blue and black suit humming slightly with an otherworldly aura.

Of course, Frozen was always at my heels, why should I think that this company would save me otherwise?

“What, no typical banter? Isn’t this where you can’t believe that I’ve found you? It was so pitifully easy, and the time for black and white, good and evil is over. I could kill you so easily right now, but why stop the bounty?”

“I see you have been working on your aim, Frozen. Especially when you pick on an old man who has no defense. Good work, I applaud the team of heroes who sent you.”

“They couldn’t do the hard work – you’ve had lethal force in the past, Doctor, and I’m not about to let you off --!”

The sound of his voice died out, as the familiar tinkle of breaking glass came from the corner. Both pairs of eyes stared as what resembled more a beast than a man came into the light.

“Frozen, you don’t know what you’ve done. That’s the project, the unstable project! How could you have done this? You have frozen the chamber enough for him to escape…and also have given me a brilliant distraction,” the doctor says with triumph as he pulls the radiation weapon from underneath the console, “Limited teleportation, just for this occasion. Good bye, Frozen.”

The gun goes off, and the next seconds are a blur. Frozen hits a button on his suit, and an ear splitting ring goes off, Malcolm immediately knows that he has signaled for backup, but he doesn’t care any more, the radiation has hit his enemy in the chest, and is slowly pushing him to the floor.

The beast watches as the familiar figure shoots and shoots the one encased until there is a sudden silence from the suit, followed by a deafening crack as it opens – and then the whole of the world seems to be cold, numb pain – worse than anything he ever felt inside the liquid container, so much that it brings water to his eyes. The familiar man is lying on the ground – the chopped memories of him surge to his mind – reading to him every night, keeping him healthy when he was sick, and torturing him with tests every day like clockwork. He does not know anything else in the world, his father and creator lying motionless at his feet; he picks up the weapon though the haze of pain and fires at the cold body across from him.

“Please,” moans the voice as it is pummeled with the weapon, “I’ll do anything…”

The beast has never used his voice before, and as he opens his mouth to reply, a strange thought surfaces: My first words will be his last.

“No!” he screams, and fires again and again, feeling the pain from the cold wash over him with every pulse of the weapon.

He glances down at his father to see simply a look of terror, not at him, he is perfection, but at the weapon in his hands, and he barely has time to look back up when a flash of green light grows and erupts, engulfing them all.

**

It is night when the heroes come to aid Frozen, but the compound is destroyed. Two bodies are found, and the snow and the countless pigs that have shown up to feast have since obliterated any tracks that may have come from the site.

And a mile away, the beast looks upon the wreckage that was once his home, a place of comfort and pain. The only place he knew. The Vetruvian Project.