Falling asleep each night, hopes were held and flying high of not waking up. She imagined she could never be corporally convinced enough to fight off the fairies of fatal disease if they ever came knocking; the effort of drawing a meagre breath was heartbreaking, even though it sustained the illusion of a stable existence.

In an attempt to clear the blocked nose she would get from crying lying down, she fantasised that the last sputter of a choking survival instinct would gently become the slight upward curve of a lip or the smile of relief she hoped she would someday come to know.

A pretender to living, she envied the dying.

Pearls Before Swine - 14th July 2008

My happy place of late has been a small town in Italy where I work in a homely restaurant for a minimum wage that pays for the simple things.

Q: Where do they go when they die?

A: Onto a pile in an unburied graveyard.

Q: Do they take our secrets with them?

A: Yes. In a little locked box of waves.

Q: How do they die?

A: Amputation. Sometimes their synapses spark before reaching the length of their bodies.

Q: What’s it like there?

A: Dangling appendages lain amidst knots of wire. It’s very quiet.

I submitted this. It is based on a true story.

the above image was made using http://crappygraphs.com/

I’ve heard that you don’t get paid for doing that. As to why you should is this whole other rant.

There’s a perpetually closed wooden framed window by my desk. The frame divides into three parts like the pretentious big picture painted on three canvases.

The upper third angles just enough to fit the plain white cement of the ceiling outside.

The middle is a mess of branches, leaves, crows and skies.

The lower canvas is my most and least favourite. Between me and the half-wall of half-hope that demarcates this space, is the base of a tree rooted on a paved courtyard. Half of it is clothed with thoughtlessly draped greenery.

At a whole glance, you can never tell it rains. It’s the rippling puddles on the street peeking in from under the gate that gives it away. It’s the occasional vertical disruption of my view that gives it away – like a hint of static on an oil painting. And sometimes, it’s the dark shade of a wet bark.

Monochrome and salty,
just as everything seems.

When I see them all running like that, with their things bouncing around in their shorts, I always picture them naked, even if I don’t want to. All I see are pork swords.

See it’s like this. As far as RomCom’s go, they just don’t make them like they used to way back when. Writing went downhill and the formula became stupid jokes, sop and in the really horrible cases, slapstick. I don’t know if Juno fits the genre, but it kinda makes up for all those shitty years of movie making.

Oh, and she inexplicably mails me a cactus every Valentine’s Day. And I’m like, “Thanks a heap, coyote ugly. This cactus-gram stings even worse than your abandonment.”

The cast is flawless (Yay, Arrested Development peeps are TAKING OVER THE WORLD!) and yeah it’s an easy pick because it’s an Oscar nom, but please – sometimes those things are hairy smelly ass; they just about managed to not suck this year.

Juno: I’m pregnant.

Leah: What? Honest to blog? Maybe it’s a food baby, did you have a big lunch?

Juno: This is not a food baby all right? I’ve taken like three pregnancy tests, and I’m forshizz up the spout.

Leah: How did you even generate enough pee for three pregnancy tests?

Juno: I dont know, I drank like six tons of Sunny D! I’m telling you I’m pregnant and you’re acting shockingly cavalier.

Leah: Is this for real?

Juno: Yes.

Leah: Phuket Thailand!

So yeah, Juno is totally boss, and to top it off, the soundtrack is madness. There’s a lot of Kimya Dawson on it who apparently, is an anti-folk singer-songwriter. Anti-folk seems to be this recursive meta-mocking genre, or whatever – you learn something new every day. Point being, it’s really good. Not just the anti-folk singer-songwriter chick, but the whole album; mostly rehashed and delectably sewn.

I might finally get an iPod. I need to hunt down some lunch.

I have ailments, aside from the usual neck sprain and headache that arises from sitting at an odd angle staring at a tiny computer screen only a few feet away.

I am paranoid that I will seize while brushing my teeth, or doing something else mundane.

When you can’t go through even one episode without seeing a lumbar puncture or someone being intubated, it does things to you.