It’s been cricket chirps here for awhile now. Initially my goal was to post here once a week starting in 2010. I have since rectified that to once a month, and this month, I’m cheating, by grasping blindly at the "five things that make you happy" meme that’s been going around.

Truthfully, I had to think about this one for awhile. It’s not that I’m an unhappy person per se, I’m more-or-less content and secure most of the time. But what makes me happy? Actually, noticeably happy?

Here’s what I came up with. Read more »

I have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera on stage three times now. The first time I was seven, and so deeply in love with Colm Wilkinson, and so totally bored whenever he wasn’t onstage that the whole evening is mostly a loud, chandelier swinging, cape swirling blur in my memory. The second time, I was twenty-two, in university, suicidally depressed, and cried most of the way through the show. The third time was about a month-and-a-half ago, at the age of 24, in London, and so in love with my boyfriend that he could have taken me to see the Sound of Music and I would have smiled all the way through the show.

(Note to my boyfriend if he reads this: please do not take me to see the Sound of Music)

I did a minor in Drama in university, which included several performance courses, and I can tell you that nothing makes you lose appreciation for Broadway musical-style acting than actually learning to act.

Still, anything Phantom (including this is automatically granted a warm and cozy little nook in my otherwise desolate heart. Age and education have just given me the ability to criticize it (along with all my other loved ones) with greater sophistication, and enthusiasm.

I wanted to adore the Phantom in London, I really did. It was Phantom! In London! Where it all began! Sorta! Then I remembered that I’m pretty sure Phantom was a fluke, and the Canadian cast was a giant fluke, and I actually dislike nearly everything else of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s that I’ve ever heard, and that he picked the original London cast.

If you couldn’t tell by my opening paragraphs, I often find acting in Broadway musicals to be, at best, cartoony and annoying, and at worst, unforgivably awful, but one thing that really struck me when I saw the Joel Schumacher film in 2004, and then the stage production in 2007, is that Phantom is particularly vulnerable to what I like to call the Jim Henson School of Acting.

Bulging eyes and flailing arms aside, based on the delivery of both the Phantom and Christine in the London production, I can only assume the script was given to them typed as follows:

DAMN You, youlittle PRYING PANDORa!

I don’t recall if Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine were also guilty of emoting via Kermit flail, mainly because I was seven. What I remember well, however, are their voices, and while I would rate the 2007 stage production as a solid “Meh”, there were aspects of the singing in the London production that actively annoyed me.

My biggest issue was with Christine. I feel that, in a production of Phantom, when you find yourself vastly preferring Carlotta’s voice, and are even starting to secretly hope that she’ll actually deck the little show-off, something is wrong. I sang for many years, and while I wouldn’t call myself an expert, to my inexpert ears, it sounded like the role was a touch out of her range. The only song low enough for her was “Past the Point of No Return”, during which her voice was magnificent, but all the famous emo-ballads sounded breathy, weak, and ultimately disappointing. The Phantom, on the other hand, sounded like the lead singer of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, occasionally punctuating his lines with a hoarse seal bark, likely for dramatic effect, but making him sound like he was trying to cough up a chicken bone. I will, however, fully cop to being biased, since I am of the unwavering belief that Colm Wilkinson’s voice is the Second Coming of Christ.

For all my gripes, the production was hardly bad. The cast certainly seemed to be into their roles, which, while not preventing me from complaining entirely, makes me at least feel a teensy bit bad about it. The production had hands-down the best Carlotta and Raoul I’ve ever seen. The set was beautiful, of course, and I noted with pleasure that someone, at some point, decided to finally replace that vaguely neon-ish torn curtain from the beginning, which had long ago stopped saying, “Phantom“, and now merely said, “80s”. Her Majesty’s Theatre is beautiful, and suits the production, and the fancy programs sold there were the only thing in London I didn’t have to get a bank loan to afford, which made me happy because now I have both a souvenir from London, and a fancy program from every time I’ve seen Phantom.

Hey, it’s Phantom, and like the self-published fanfic novels, the nonsensical foreign movies, the poor lip synching, the questionable casting choices, and the insipid melodrama, I still loved and will continue to love the London production until the day my stupid offspring finally toss my old and withered corpse to the wolves.

I’ll just continue to question why.

COMING UP ON THE GRIPE NETWORK: Phantom 2: Electric Bugaloo.

Once, a poor farmer lived in a tiny house with his wife and their thirteen children. They were crowded, uncomfortable, constantly fighting, and the house was filthy. Miserable, the man went to visit the wisest person in the village.

“Oh Wise Man,” he said, “what am I to do? My wife and I are always fighting, my children are unhappy, and our house is a ruin.”

The wise man stroked his beard and thought, then said to the man, “Take all the animals you own, and bring them into the house with you to live.”

The man was surprised by this advice, but nevertheless, returned to his tiny house, and dutifully brought in every animal he owned. Every horse and cow, every sheep, chicken, pig, dog, and cat. From being simply uncomfortable, the family’s living conditions now became totally unbearable. It was no longer possible to even move in the house, or to sit, or lie down. The family slept standing up, or would have, had the animals not whinnied, mooed, baaed, clucked, snorted, barked, and meowed all night, making slumber impossible. Worst of all, even by the standards of the farmer’s time, the house became a cesspool of uninhabitable filth, rendering his entire family social pariahs, solely on account of the smell, never mind how they would have been treated had anyone actually been able to get close enough to talk to them, and discover what a bunch of chronically angry, miserable twats they had all become.

After three days, the farmer wrapped himself in one of their more soiled blankets, held his nose, and wriggled between the legs of a bull who had comfortably settled himself by the front door, and had thoroughly claimed the area.

Editor’s Note: The blanket didn’t make it.

Once he was out, the farmer ran to find the wise man, and cried out, “What have you done?! My family and I are more miserable then ever before. We cannot sleep, we are filthy and fighting all the time!”

The wise man stroke his beard, and thought a bit longer than he had before. Then he said to the farmer, “Return to your house, and put all the animals back into the fields.”

The farmer stormed away, still furious, but upon his return, did as the wise man said, and put all the animals back in the fields.

Three days after that, he returned to the home of the wise man, this time smiling, with his hair and clothes clean and bright.

“Without the animals,” he said to the wise man, “there is now lots of room to move in the house, and we stretch out to sleep each night. Without all the animals, the house is so clean. My family and I are so happy and peaceful. Thank you so much, I would give anything to be as wise as you.”

And the wise man smiled, nodded, stroked his beard, then laying a finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

So anyway, I went to London. Not London, Ontario, the good one. And I went with the Chap, tee hee. It was my first trip overseas, my first real holiday with a boy, titter titter, and my first time having airline food that wasn’t the cooked innards of a seagull that was sucked into the turbines during the previous flight, scraped out, slathered on a day old, and drowned in mayo.

England, I suspect, is a lovely country as long as you are not trying to enter it, leave it, or accomplish anything significant in it. As for London. As for London.

I was not prepared for the sheer volume of everything. People, cars, buses, bikes. Toronto is but a quaint and charming little village on the lake by comparison. How I could wander it’s clean and quiet streets for hours, the silence broken only by the gentle putt-putt of a passing horseless carriage. I really could never move to the big city, I am a country girl at heart. But I wouldn’t trade the week away for the world, even so.

Here are some things I liked about England:

Ice cream - English ice cream is superior. I don’t mean just to Canadian ice cream, I mean in general. To all cuisine, to our country, our citizens, and our culture as a whole. If I won the lottery, I would blow all the winnings importing English ice cream, and then mounting a campaign to make it prime minister. Then buy myself a seat on the senate with what was left over.

All Other Food - A couple of friends, I won’t name names, you know who you are, you twits, warned me that England did not contain anything that could comfortably fit the definition of food. For one of them, his favourite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I know that I can immediately dismiss his every thought and opinion without consideration or analysis, but for the other, Facebook’s Movie Quiz once incontrovertibly proved that we were soul mates. Soul mates! Will this man dare to make a liar of Facebook?! I clearly need to re-evaluate my social circle. The point I am inefficiently trying to make is that I very much enjoyed the food in England. Hooray for meat and vegetables marinated in fat! What’s not to like? Besides, speaking again to those who would claim there’s nothing resembling food in Britain, I ask you this: what the hell do you think all those sheep and horses are for? Ah ha! Checkmate.

Public Transport - I am sold a thousand times over on London’s transportation system. The TTC is a nest of blind worms in a rainstorm losing their sense of direction and burrowing deeper into the earth and drowning their idiotic selves, compared to the shining glory of London’s Underground.

Theatre - What’s that? Accessible rush tickets? To shows that people actually want to see? Easily found, legitimate places to get cheap tickets? People actually seem to give a rat’s ass about theatre? London, please don’t ever leave me. Oh wait.

Shakespeare’s Globe - I admit, I went with some trepidation. As You Like It is not Shakespeare’s best, in my humble and inexpert opinion, and I have seen a lot of Shakespeare performances that could have bored corpses to death, but this was fantastic. The performance was lively, interactive, and engaging, and the Globe is phenomenally beautiful, and the experience is really not like typical theatre. For five pounds, it’s cheaper than seeing a movie on either side of the Atlantic, and way more entertaining.

Coke - Damn you, London! I had been gradually kicking the habit, and then on the first day there, to keep myself awake, I took a single tiny sip, and spent the rest of the trip in a perpetual state of, GIMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Squirrels at St. James’ Park - They were smaller and much more adorable than our stupid black squirrels, and they came and took food from your fingers, if you offered it. Granted, I didn’t offer them any, I have a thing about squirrels coming near me since one once crawled down my shirt, unprovoked, but I could have happily spent all afternoon watching them stand on their little hind legs and be handed peanuts by passersby.

And let’s tick off all the obvious ones - Westminster Abbey, St. James’ Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Bath, Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, the countryside, Big Ben, the British Museum, Victoria Albert museum, the tower of London, Covent Garden, and Harrod’s (purely as spectacle, not as somewhere to actually spend money…Jesus no.)

Now, the things in England that I was not so crazy about:

The English - Experiencing English people left me feeling warmly disposed toward the entitled lawyer-type I saw yelling at an ESL trainee at Tim Horton’s the other day after she gave him one too many shots of cream in his coffee. Nearly every service person we dealt with in Britain, with the exception of our tour guide, and a waiter in a restaurant in Covent Garden, were as helpful as talking to wooden boards with nails driven through them, sharp ends pointing towards the customer, with personalities to match. The concierge at our hotel seemed to have only the vaguest idea of what side of the Atlantic he was actually standing on. Pubs with huge menus posted multiple times around their entrance were staffed by grouchy twats who snarled like rabid dogs when we asked them if we could order food. Of course they always stop serving food at 12:30 in the afternoon, how could we not know that, besides by the fact that they have huge menus everywhere, and none of them make mention of it? I know tourists are annoying, but come on.

Hotel service is also a touch different than in Canada. Fawlty Towers is not an inaccurate representation. Highlights included: questionable towels and bedclothes, our little door sign constantly being swiped, the dining room staff barely stopping short of snatching half-eaten pieces of toast and cups of tea poised halfway to your mouth on the stroke of 10 AM, and staff constantly knocking on our door when the Do Not Disturb sign was up. At some point, we also spilled water on the carpet in the room, and let the staff know, in case there was some way they could dry it up. They didn’t, fine, but they didn’t have to also keep closing the windows that we left open to help dry the carpet a bit, thereby leaving the carpet to smell more and more of mildew each day. I guess they were worried we were letting the heat out. Except that there was none. The shower also sounded like the mating call of a bull elephant a few decades past his prime, but I can’t really fault the hotel for that, specifically. It hit a solid Ab. Made it difficult to sing while showering, I kept going out of tune.

This is being really nitpicky, but the hotel also had two computers in the lobby that connected to the Internet, and the keyboard attached to them could have been most effectively typed on using boxing gloves.

Traffic and population density - See head notes, around the part where I actually started making my point.

Phantom of the Opera - Relative to a) other performances  of other things that I went to in London and b) other performances of Phantom that I’ve been to in Toronto, London Phantom sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still Phantom, so I still love it unreasonably, but the balance between the love of Phantom, and the self-hatred for loving it has been knocked a bit askew. But more on this another time.

Prices - You have to mentally double the price of everything to get the price in Canadian dollars. ‘Nuff said.

Overall, England is a very nice place to visit, but by the time I got back, I could have gone off and done filthy things to the CN tower (I mean aside from the filthy things people do to it already). And I had the energy too as well, with the time difference.

I have lots of pictures of things that you could find a million professional pictures of with a quick search in Google images. So just look at those, and picture my clownish mug grinning out at you.

Pleasant dreams.

So, I have never broken a bone in my life. Now, that largely comes from being a sedentary slug most of my life, and the rest comes from being a hypersensitive priss for the rest of it, but there’s also the fact that I have the luck of the Devil when it comes to injuries, or potential injury-causing situations. The two sports I’ve ever loved, skiing and horseback riding, are generally ones that come with a fair share of bumped heads and broken bones if practiced over a long enough period. “Given enough time, the survival rate of anyone is eventually reduced to zero.” Throw in a couple of years of martial arts, and Olympic-level ability to walk into things, and it becomes mildly surprising that I haven’t worn a cast at least a couple of times by now, but like I said, luck of the Devil. When I was riding, I was pitched into walls, over fences, dragged, rolled on, and even kicked in the head. And I was a good rider! Skiing, I went face-on into a pole, and a snowboarder once just ran me over, both of us going top speed (I responded in the spirit of the holiday season, and kindly gifted him the tip of a ski pole in his occipital lobe). Clearly, Beezlebub’s been keen on keeping me whole and healthy so that I may continue my wholesale corruption of small offices and bored Tim Hortons employees, and to make more writers cry.

Until last week, that is. I knew helping that old lady across the street would come back to bite me in the ass.

I rolled out of bed on Thursday to find myself face to face with what I swiftly concluded to be none other than arachnida araneae gigantica holycrapolus.

Be it known, I would have murdered Charlotte. And eaten Wilbur, but that really doesn’t have much to do with the fact that there was a spider the size of a German Shepherd in my apartment. I could have braided the hair on its legs, but I opted to kill it instead. So I chased it with a a shoe (my katana being in the shop), but, and I say this knowing that this is no great accomplishment for the spider, and a major point of shame for me, this thing could have beaten me in a foot race. It ran off and somehow crammed itself under my bed. I slathered my face in war paint, jammed a bone through my nose, and crouched behind my armchair, poised to strike with my Easy Spirit Ankle Boot of Righteousness.

My psychological tactics worked, and the spider, lured into a false sense of security, marched out from under my bed. It was then that I struck with all the predatory grace of a baby marmoset, bringing down the Righteousness with a mighty battle cry.

I’ll tell you something, the snap of one’s own finger bones will snap your morning into focus sharper and quicker than a dozen Ice Capps (I have thoroughly tested this theory. Paper currently awaiting peer review at Better Sponge and Vacuum).

In short, I spent four hours at emergency, eventually threatening to slap the doctor with my good hand if he squeezed the joint on my bad one one more time “just to check”.

I spent a day sporting a cumbersome splint, and am now reduced to Scotch tape and typing with eight-and-a-half fingers, forbidden the piano, and putting my rats through home security boot camp. Enough is enough, by God they’re old enough to start earning back that $10.99 I paid for them. Each! And they won’t even protect me from a lousy giant and possibly venomous spider.

Which reminds me, the worst part of all this? THE SPIDER GOT AWAY.

So here’s me, feeling I really should post something here, since every other writing-related blog I ever read says that you must maintain a blog or no one will ever love you. Still, I resist writing about "writing" issues, or the publishing industry, since, frankly, I know when I’m talking out of my ass, plus, I should probably produce something considered worthy of public consumption by a neutral third party before I presume to inform others about "my process". So I’ll write instead about stupid things I see on the train.

I question the priorities of a magazine that advertises itself with a picture of a sneering rapper holding a chain with a pendant of his name made entirely of diamonds, and the words "Content that matters" next to him.

Well, that covers the train. Now I’ll talk about perfume.

So! Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is pretty awesome. I was never a fan of perfume until a close friend of mine gave me a few "Imps Ears" out of her collection. Since then, I’ve compiled a ridiculous list of scents I want to try, and have been chomping at the bit to just buy them all. I’ve been trying to behave, and only buy new sets of imps when I’ve used up old ones. To date, I’ve completely used up no imps, and bought three sets. Yeah, bite me.

Back when I was a suburban teenager witch (you know the type), of course, I read a lot about "auras", the energy field that supposedly clings to us like, well, a bad smell. So that kind of made my analogy for me, except think of a good smell. Anyway, that’s the appeal of perfume. The repressed pagan teenager in me gets to take a few dizzying gasps of breath before being buried underneath another episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!

Today, I swiped a new scent called "Delirium" across my wrists. This one was formulated based on the character Delirium from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics. I haven’t read the whole series yet, but from what little bits I remember of Delirium, this works pretty well. Three fairly straightforward notes: apple, lemon, and rose. While that sounds like the make-up of an overpriced dish liquid, the result on my skin is actually nice and complex, and doesn’t smell like being beaten to death with baskets of potpourri either. I was kind of concerned about an apple note, because I was bracing myself for that too…mellow is the only word I can think of…apple scent that you find in scented candles, and makes me think of jamming my head in the produce display at Metro. The apple note, however, is actually a bit tart, separate from the lemon note, making for a mellow, but slightly sour base. I like it. Reminds me of me.

The rose scent is a touch powdery, but not so much that I smell like a grandmother’s living room. It just doesn’t have that fresh-from-the-florist rose scent that some other BPAL scents manage. Overall, I’m surprised by how much I like this perfume. When I was compiling my wishlist of scents, by the time I got to the B’s, I was making decisions based on the perfumes having combinations of notes that weren’t already repeated ad nauseum in the scents I had chosen so far, so Delirium was a curiosity, an experiment. A good experiment.

Supposedly, in the case of true perfume oils like the BPAL perfumes, a perfume will smell different depending on whose wearing it. You know, depending on skin chemistry, diet, medication, hormones, how many copies of How to Win Friends and Influence People you own, and other stuff. I’ve never been able to verify this fact for myself, but I dream of meeting up with a group of other BPAL addicts, all of us wearing the same scent, and just wandering in circles, sniffing each other like bipedal evolutions of those spoiled, yappy little mutts rich girls carry in their purses next to their cellphones.

All I carry is a rat and a tin can with a string attached.

My friend Skyla put this on her blog today, which was inspired originally by this blog entry of another writer. Seeing as I’m both strongly in favour of stunt-riding and bandwagons, as well as inflicting my taste unsolicited and unwanted upon others, here are some of my favourite "rock chicks".

1. Emilie Autumn

2. Amanda Palmer

3. Priscilla Hernandez

Honourable mentions go to Jill Tracy and Tori Amos, I just couldn’t find any decent videos of songs of theirs on Youtube.

I received notice yesterday morning that my story, “The Marigold Path”, has been accepted into the Dia de los Muertos anthology, forthcoming from Elektrik Milk Bath Press.

I would be leaping off the walls and making pinball machine noises, but I feel surprisingly low-key. Perhaps it will sink in later.

Either way, I still demand fireworks, a feast, jugglers, a parade, and a pony.

Any takers? No?

How about a My Little Pony?

I never get what I want.

A “congratulations”?

I’ll take it!

My blogging about writing is, as you can see, carried out with the same determination, persistence, and general work ethic as my actual writing. Still, I’ve received a new rejection letter for “Stage 28″. Give me a moment while I perform my celebratory avant-garde tap dance to Chopin’s Funeral March (full stage production coming soon in the National Ballet’s “Future Dance/Young Artists” showcase).

I don’t blog much because I really can’t think of anything to put here that doesn’t make me feel slightly ill. Writing about the writing process? No, thank you. Movie and music reviews? Tried, and disliked. A dark, though recent past, reference to which shall be forbidden henceforward. Sounding off on pop culture, politics, publishing, current events, or famous genitalia? My opinions are generally not revolutionary, so I see no need in writing a 1000-word essay which can be boiled down to enthusiastically chirping, “I agree with everyone!”

Personal anecdotes? Ah, shudder!

Perhaps I could start an advice column.

Still, I’ve become, well, “active” might be stretching it, but “sentient” on Twitter. You can find me here. Maybe I’ll install that widget thing that lets you see my updates without the burden of that extra mouse-click. Expected project completion: July 2010. I’ve settled over the past few days into mostly commenting about books I’ve read.

Til then, if I think of anything interesting enough to blog about, I’ll let you know.

In short, see you in May.

25 things, to align me with Shayne and Ian.

1. My middle name is Lian. My dad deliberately spelled it like that to make me speshul, like him.

2. My birthday is April 16, same as Charlie Chaplin’s. And we were both left-handed, and comedic geniuses, and have almost the same facial hair. Yep, left-handed, that guy.

3. I first cut my hair when I was fourteen. Prior to that, I used to sit on it by accident.

4. I play piano pretty well, but despite what my friends and family kindly say, I’m not at all musically talented, just determined. Wish I could have mustered up the same determination for my homework in high school, or university, or elementary school, for that matter, but I guess I can’t change the past.

5. My favourite movie, book, and musical is Phantom of the Opera. Hell, Phantom’s even my favourite food, and that doesn’t even make any sense.

6. Second favourite musical is Les Miserables. I consider it one of the few truly intelligent musicals I’ve ever seen, where the lyrics didn’t make me cringe.

7. On a whole, though, I don’t pay much attention to lyrics in songs, which is how I manage to listen to some of the music I do (Tori Amos, anyone?). I listen mostly to the music itself, and how the instruments fit together.

8. When people meet me, they tend to assume I’m a hardcore Christian. I’ve never been able to figure out why.

9. I adore reading books and articles on etiquette. I don’t practice it myself, give me a side of disrespected elders with my abused waitress (please), but I find it interesting nonetheless. If I was ever to go back and do a Masters in English (not going to happen), my thesis would be, “The Treatment of Social Etiquette in Novels of the Late British Empire.”

10. I did do a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, minoring in Music History and Drama. Except for meeting Shayne, and maybe three classes out of dozens, I regret bothering with university, or at least I regret going straight out of high school.

11. I’m one of those annoying twerps who idealizes the past, and daydreams of living in another century (in my case, the Victorian era). I know in theory that it would be hell on Earth compared to the life I’m able to live in the here-and-now, but what can I say. I really like corsets and elaborate hats.

12. I did take a creative writing course in university (for which I wrote the first part of “Stage 28″), and in terms of getting useful feedback on my work, it was pretty much useless. I couldn’t tell if the professor thought I was a genius, totally hopeless, or was just plain making fun of me most of the time.

13. I was once kicked in the head by a horse.

14. I am related to nearly everyone who is or has ever lived in, or descended from Nova Scotia. I have discovered that I am related to one of my former music students, and a 1930s actress to whom I’m told I bear a strong resemblance.

15. I am a huge know-it-all. I tend to spew stupid advice and opinions without solicitation. I don’t mean to be a pain, I just compulsively want to help.

16. I cannot resist men with long hair, nice noses, and glasses.

17. I am a goth at heart, but too lazy and cheap to dress the style on anything but special occasions.

18. On that note, I have been clinically dead twice. 2 GOTH 4 U.

19. A squirrel once crawled down my shirt at the park.

20. I used to limit my own TV time when I was a kid, my parents were very impressed.

21. I learned to sing by reading the libretto at the back of the book, The Complete Phantom of the Opera, and singing all of Christine’s parts, trying to imitate the voice of Rebecca Caine.

22. I had a sweet little mutt named Frisky for fifteen years. Now I have a pair of pet rats named Astaroth and Lord Humplebottom.

23. My favourite TV show ever is Fawlty Towers.

24. My favourite music is instrumental classical. I’m picky about opera.

25. I did ballet for eleven years, and I was pretty good. Stick that in your face and smoke it.

I was worried for a bit that I wasn’t going to remember how to log in.

You know, I start these things with the best of intentions. I made a vague resolution back in November to update this blog about once a week. I believe that lasted for about a week.

I’ll be a fine novelist one day.

In pertinent news, “Stage 28″ received a new rejection letter last week, and lies in wait in a new court. On the lighter side, I finished (well, pending proper editing) the facelift of an old story of mine, “The Conductor”.

It’s very strange to go back and read things I wrote five years ago. I approached writing differently then, and the Conductor is different in delivery from any of my more recent pieces. I wrote both it and another story, “Share”, in two separate all-nighters within a few weeks of each other (I think, it’s all a little blurry). They weren’t assignments for school, I just decided to be flippant about my sleep for the sake of getting it all down on paper. I wish I could still do that and function.

I like “the Conductor”. I will have to find it a good home.