Month: November 2012

Lucifer Tailypo.

From Nolan, via Stephen King:

Nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door, Nolan[1] said. You approach the door in the old, deserted house, and you hear something scratching at it. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. “A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible,” the audience thinks, “but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall.”

Every time I see this picture of Lucy–

lucy-100feettall

–yeah, that one. 🙂 Every time I see that picture of her, in my mind, I imagine a gleeful scratchy voice, specifically Isme’s voice from The Emperor’s New Groove, cackling out “–and behind the door was a bug A HUNDRED FEET TALL!”

That’s a clever girl, Lucifer. You’ll upgrade to a thousand feet any day now.

Also, I figured out what I really wanted her middle name to be yesterday, when we were bringing her back from the vet’s. It’s Tailypo.

So she is Lucifer Tailypo, and she is settling in beautifully.
—
[1] William F. Nolan, at the 1979 World Fantasy Convention.

Black and white and read all over.

I noticed a certain common colouration in the books I had to hand:

Covers of /Lies and Ugliness/, /Bedlam/, /The Weird/, and /Breed/.

I’m cheating a bit with this picture, since both the hardback cover and the dustjacket of Breed are shown. (I took the dustjacket off because something about the paper just feels subtly repellant–some weird combination of sooty and greasy.)  On the flipside, I’m not including The Rivals of Frankenstein, which continues the black-white-red theme, so it all balances if anyone’s keeping score, which I sort of doubt.

Am mildly amused by this, especially since the other books I am reading, or have just finished, or have just started, have a black-and-white thing going for the covers.  (Apparently the subtraction of red takes you from horror to crime, who knew?  Although Bedlam is an exception to that.)

Not feeling well today; I’m hoping it’s just after-effects of the flu shot, since those should clear up more quickly than anything I might have actually caught.  Managed to get a little cleaning done, though, and get out of the house to pick up groceries and return library books.  (Mildly annoyed that one of the books I have on hold has been in transit for just over a week, now, and is still not at the local branch.  It’s a Lovecraft collection, so I suspect I could find the contents on Gutenberg, but I find I really prefer physical copies of anthologies and collections.  Screens and ereaders work best for single works, for me–novels or novellas or standalone short stories, any length is fine, just not several short stories.

Probably turning in early tonight; the nap after the vet’s was nice, but I’m still wiped.

Keeping moving.

It’s… wow.  I didn’t realize it had been nearly a month.  I remember this time last year, when I was writing just about daily, and…  Well.  It’s not something I’m going to fix by not writing, I guess.

I’m adjusting to not being on meds for depression, after five years.  I seem to be better, and I am very very glad about that.  I’m not okay; there have been bad days.  But they haven’t been as severe as they were before I had to start seeing my therapist and go onto meds.  I know that depression can sometimes mellow as you age[1], and I’ve learnt better coping strategies, and I suppose it’s possible that now I can manage without medication.  I don’t know yet.

One of the more common side-effects[2] of the meds I was on was what I’m going to loosely characterize as fuzzy-brain–absentmindedness, forgetfulness, confusion, some lack of interest or initiative.  That quality was more or less present in my life for the last five years.  But between five years on assorted medication and my untreated depression before that, I’m not entirely clear on how integral that quality is to me.  So after consideration (and medical consultation), I’m trying life without psych meds and hopefully I can get a baseline on how I think and how my brain works when I am not either medicated or severely depressed.

I would like to be able to manage depression without medication; not because life without medication is better or purer or any other such bootstrapped nonsense, not because my life when I needed medication was less worthwhile.  But life without medication is marginally more secure–I never need to worry about being on vacation and losing my meds, about not being able to pay for them, about losing them in a house fire, I never need to worry even theoretically about a bad batch (although I never did worry about that, but you take my point).

…well, hey.  Managed to articulate something about my life at the moment, and to get something written as well.  I will call that a double win, I guess.

—

[1] Presuming, of course, it lets you age.  (Pardon, a touch of habromania.)

[2] There are no side-effects; there are only effects you would prefer not to dwell on.