left turn: it amazes me how much faith people have in me.

I don't feel like I'm living up to it sometimes, like my moments of malaise or sadness, my times that I get caught up with a new girl I'm seeing or that I freak out when I'm zero-point broke somehow lets people down.

Joyce is always going on about how she feels I don't have anything bad in me. Isn't a lack of goodness equal to some form of bad? I don't think there's such a thing as a karmic zero.

I also need to start working on Counting Down and One Tear...old projects that need attention, or I'll forget about 'em.

I was reading JMS' (the guy who created and wrote almost all of Babylon 5 singlehandedly) musings on what's good TV these days, and comparing what he's liking to what he's written over the last five years or so... I like his form sometimes (strong storytelling, great characters), but other times he's formulaic and his language is affected. I can appreciate pulling in a voice like Joe Orton's for the everyday man, but he shuffles a fixed set of vocal styles like cards, and not that well.

Then again, he writes where the opportunity to do something new exists (or try a new medium), and I respect that. Hell, I've done the same. I wrote zine-style music journalism...then I did the real thing...moved to true journalistic form (covering politics and film the same week)...all the while testing the waters of short stories, and moving on to comics now...

I also love that the man's got soul. That's what matters most to me at the end of the day, heart, understanding, whatever you call it. That's what makes me devour a book/film/TV show. Soul is the reason that I can't stay away from Dancer in the Dark, no matter how much it crushes me; that damn film's got more soul than a thousand Hollywood flicks put together. Pure Greek tragedy to a striving, excited score with characters that not only breathe, but bleed.

Can I do work like that?

is this why I went to school? so I could dream shit up all day? I wonder about that, if my writing will help the world in any way, or if I should just be in the Peace Corps? (no way, I'd never get past the psych profile...)

or is it that I needed to learn to focus what I'm dreaming...to make it all form a vision that people can understand and relish? comics and a hot dog, relish, hold the ketchup and introspection, please.

right turn: I think Dan's got the cutest goddamn cat in the world.