2025-W42 EOW Report

Anti-Goal Cycling

• The only thing I worked on the entire week was prj:LOOSE. It is convalescing into something tangible enough. It’s a story with a lot of moving parts and I can’t imagine this being less than 5000 words. There are several intersecting MECHs and metafictional parts here. Layers of narratives. I don’t know if I can finish it before the end of the month at this point. Maybe the three stories before end of year is not doable. I don’t know. I was reviewing the “Ten Rules” from earlier this year. Maybe I need to just do two throwaway stories that come in at under 4k. I don’t think my “throwaways” will ever be truly flippant throwaways anyway.
• Hopping between Burke’s Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre on notes… and started Forgers and Critics by Grafton this morning. With Burke, there’s only a few sections I’d like to reread and take notes on as the first third of the book is mostly historiography. With Darnton, I might reread the whole book just because it’s entertaining.

Four Thousand Weeks

• Got my flu and covid shots yesterday and this is overshadowing everything. I am slightly feverish and slept for ten hours. Woke up at seven and for some reason I couldn’t remember Chris Pratt’s name, and got hung up on the four Chrises. I was like, Evans, Hemsworth, Pine… who is the fourth one? Why can’t I recall his name? I picture him in Jurassic World, Parks and Rec, Guardians… and nothing floats up. Then in this fugue state where I fall back asleep and have dreams about this, I start going through the alphabet. I’m like Cooper, Pike, Schumer, Cornell, Pike, Rock… what the fuck is going on? Why can’t my vaccine-addled brain figure out what his name is? At one point, I think it’s Chris Smith. It’s gotta be. Even though another part of my brain is saying, no it’s not. That’s Peacemaker’s name. And then I’m like, it’s Chris Pike. Chris Pine and Chris Pike. This makes sense. I don’t think I’ve felt this way since I was a child when I would get these horrible fevers and my brain just stopped working and everything felt heavy and clouded and confusing. Another part of me was like… I can figure this out. I can figure this out. I’ve done this on those long car rides to concerts when wife and I are just sitting silently and I can’t remember a celebrity name for some reason. I got there eventually. But not this morning. I ended up looking it up. Pratt. It was lowkey terrifying. It was like someone went into my brain and surgically removed just that one name from all the other Chrises I know. Pratt. Just gone. I can picture him, I can hear him, I can rattle off all the films and shows he’s been in. Zero Dark Thirty. Lego Movie. Super Mario Bros. Can even name his wives Anna Faris and Schwarzeneggar’s daughter. But NOT HIS LAST NAME. Yeah. Low key terrifying.
• Really busy week. Beta Band on Sunday night. Really good show at the Commodore. Thanksgiving on Monday. Think everything went well. Eldest had his girlfriend over. Middle one had two friends over. Stereolab on Friday night at The Vogue. Saturday night was TTRPG at the Glausers in which drama happened that I think I might be guilty of.

Story Introspection

• TBH, with everything that was happening this week, I can’t say I consumed a lot of stories. I finished Gass’s Pedersen Kid I guess. That was a tough story to finish. Wrapped up Ryan North’s Krypto miniseries. I think I’ll be even more careful with these “on a whim” pulls. It was very… I dunno. It wasn’t great. It was heartwarming at times, it had some highs, but mostly it didn’t really had… I dunno what I’m looking for. I’m being very forgiving with Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl and I know what I’m getting into with that (it’s fun, it’s fluffy, it’s like Archie but with capes)… but I don’t know what I was expecting with Krypto and it didn’t work out for me. It was very much, on a whim. With Sophie Campbell, I looked up reviews of her TMNT run and was told it’s very domestic and it’s about friends just hanging out and I knew that going in and I got that with Supergirl and I’m happy with it. Expectations I guess?
• Starting my Kyle Rayner compendium, finally. It’s been so busy and it just sits there next to my bed. I enjoy the nineties art style so much. And yes, the story is also great. Evil Hal is the best Hal.
• So I let my DCUI account expire. I don’t find reading comics on my phone all that pleasurable anymore. The screen is too small and I don’t want to stare at more screens. But also I bought TMNT collection on Kobo and regret it already so much. The Kobo is just badly designed as an app. So now I have all the TMNT comics but no good way to truly enjoy them. I really should’ve just waited to buy them in print, but at the same time… do I really want all those books in physical format. Kinda just want to read them in print and then be done with them. But that’s also needlessly expensive. Maybe I just need to accept that comics are ephemeral and evanescent and I read them then give them away. It’s expensive yes. But do I really need to keep the ones I don’t love?

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