Oh man.

Opening night tomorrow.

The tension, it...vibrates. Right through your skin. It's not enough to bounce your knee, you have to bounce your everything, waiting to go on stage.

I could live with being a starving artist, if it's always as fun as this.

Baby it's Cold Outside

GHS-30938 was the worst planet in the solar system.

In the galaxy.

In the universe.

At least other planets had the good grace to be so terrifying, so gaseous, so poisonous, and generally so Goddamned uninhabitable that not even the most desperate spacers would attempt to settle them. Planet Meteo, bombarded daily by chunks of rock which, thanks to the atmosphere's unique characteristics, turned into planetwide cluster bombs. Planet Dust, so named because the wind storms made even the inanimate probes choke and die. Planet Siphonia, which leached energy out of engines and blood out of people. All of them horrible, all of them unsettled.

GHS-30938, which was so loathed no one bothered to name it, was the worst planet in the multiverse precisely because some desperate colony ship put down upon its just-barely-livable surface. Perhaps the stay was supposed to be temporary; MacIntyre could only hope so, because what kind of ancestors would land on a planet that was half ice cube, half lava intentionally?

GHS-30938 orbited a star so closely that its Day Side nearly boiled, and always stayed that way. Tidally locked. Its Night Side was, in a way, better for habitation--provided you didn't mind living frozen in perpetual darkness. Not figuratively frozen, unable to move--literally frozen, as in constantly buried in ice.

McIntyre kicked an outcropping of ice, briefly illuminated in his path by the spotlights behind him, and reflected on this. It snapped against his boot, spiraled off into the distance.

That meant he was getting closer. Only about ten below, here; try that shit farther from the equator, you'd break every toe in your foot, the ice solid as rock.

I live on the worst planet ever, he thought, and now I'm going to die on it.

Looking up, seeing the dim, alien light on the horizon, he was given small comfort: at least he wouldn't die cold.

Things I Love

Cursing.

The sheepish grin you see when someone forgets she's cursing in public.

Pornography.

The first, painful bite of too-hot gyoza squirting soy sauce against your teeth and making you wince at how goddamned good it tastes.

Lazy strokes of a fingertip along a girl's bare back.

Kisses at the throat, occasional bites, a fistful of hair.

Post-workout glow.

Post-sex glow.

Glow.

Driving 85 in a 55 blaring Reel Big Fish and poorly, but honestly, singing along.

The blissful realization that you finally get your monologue, feel what your character's saying. It's the difference between reading a poem somebody handed you and performing one you wrote yourself.

Cats. Cats are nice.

This week, dear hypothetical readers: tell me what you love.

Your Daily BRAAAAAAIIIINS

Rehearsals are heating up. I feel like the living dead this week.

Got an interview with a web publishing company; let's all be optimistic.

For tonight I'm going to sleep before I crack open somebody's skull and feast on the goo inside.

In Which I Make You Do My Job

It's friday again, dear readers, and though I tend to drop a day or two each week I'm striving for consistency. With that in mind, let's play a game:

Describe yourself to me. What you're doing, what you look like, and what you're thinking about right...

wait for it

Now.

There's something surreal and delightful about watching a forty-five year old costar order two glasses of wine (because it's last call, obviously!) and eventually start saying "fuck."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says, faltering.

"No, no," I grin. "I love hearing adults swear."

I try hard to imagine the thought process of my brother once I start inflicting Politics upon them like some vile disease.

Is he--the Obama thing again? God, I already voted for him at the Primary, what more does he want? Oh, great, Iraq. Yeah, I want to hear about that some more. I wonder if we have any beer. He's for raising taxes? What kind of--yeah, Budweiser! Wait, what's for dinner. Kennedy? Can't eat Kennedy, why is he still talking about this, wait, shit, I have to say something or he'll know I wasn't paying attention...

"Yeah."

I know, brother. I know.

Funereal

It's weird, watching everybody cry over somebody you didn't really know.

Objectively you know you're supposed to feel bad, and maybe you do; but forty minutes into the reflection on this person's life you find yourself surreptitiously checking delegate counts on your cell phone.

Until you see the reason you came, til you see the grieving one. Til you hug her and feel her shudder as she says your name--and says nothing else, because all the gratitude and sadness she can express is in that solitary word.

RIP, ma'am. I didn't really know you, but a lifetime's worth of people clearly did.

To Drink

I love that moment when you look into your half-empty glass and realize you're slightly drunk. The warm-and-fuzzies in your head, drawing out a half-smile that turns into a full one another sip later; the heated flush on your face coupled with the almost erotic rush of taste as you finish your glass; the tunes that spring unbidden into your head and force you to think, then hum, then sing:

Can anybody fi-ind meeeeee...
Somebody to lo-oooo-ooove.

No, you're not Freddy Mercury, but after two rum punches you can probably sing just as well as him!

Muscles burn, bones grind, and voice roars with exertion.

I swing my weapon; stab, rend, and swing again, the bodies of my enemies scattered in a morbid and growing pile. I look to and fro, the length of plastic and metal trembling in my hands; there is no end to them, I see, and yet I growl and keep fighting.

I look to the area already cleared, moan to see reinforcements there already, presence growing by the moment. Across the street another warrior chuckles, sympathetic.

"You ever get the feeling we're fighting a futile battle?" I ask.

"Every damn day," she laughs.

You may talk of glory, but I tell you: shoveling snow is hell.

Apathy suffocates.
Depression chokes.
Ennui looms.
Inspiration hides.

Damned inspiration. I like Ze's take on the concept.

YOUR daily image

So, lady and gentleman (from what I can tell, approximately two people read any given entry on my blog), I'm gonna trick things up for you this week, partially because I'm sick as a dog (throat feels like I got intimate with a cactus), mostly because I think it'd be fun.

You ever play that game "And Then"?

You know, where somebody starts off a story, finishes their paragraph with "and then," and you get to say what happens next?

Let's do that, via comments!

Starting with:
Jeff wished he could be more cheerful about the end of the world. If he only had ten minutes to live, it seemed to make sense to make them happy. He'd tried whistling a zippy tune, only to break into aching sobs; tried getting laid one last time, only to realize he couldn't pick up a girl that quickly; tried getting drunk, but the bar'd been cleaned out already.

And then...