You were all just gone.
The first two weeks I just sat and waited for an explanation.
I tried to make sense of why the power grid didn't fail.
Of why the phones all still worked (though no one answered).
Of who thought to take all the animals too.
(Good thing–I wouldn't have been able to feed them all.)

Then for the next week I fancied that the entire world had
secretly been devoutly religious and I was the only atheist.
The rapture had happened. And if I had known Richard Dawkins'
number, I would have called to see if he was doing what I was doing:
eating yogurt from the fridge before the expry date passed.

Then the worst of it was gone, and I spent several months
finally reading all the books, and watching all the movies
I had never had a chance to read or watch before.
I went to the drugstore and stole cheap reading glasses
and played Burgess Meredith on the steps of the library
over and over again, thinking the joke would stop being
funny. It never did.

I kept myself busy. For a solid week I provided chalk outlines
for where I thought the people would have fallen, had they fallen.
It seemed like a charitable thing to do. A graffiti art project
for an audience of one.

I went and lived in abandoned houses and pretended I
belonged there. I tried to go through people's CD libraries
and divine what they must have been like, before they left.

It's going to be fine. I've stopped incessantly checking my voicemail,
to see if anyone called. I've stopped going online to see if
anyone had come on. I am still blogging, though. It sounds
mad, but it really does make sense. If it weren't for that,
how would I remember all the adventures I've had as the
last man on earth.

The last man on earth.

There's not even any vampires here to harass me and be
harassed in return. I'd even take the pasty-faced monks.
I'd accept you, Anthony Zerbe. It's okay, come out and
try and kill me. It's all good.

Nothing.

I'll be moving south before it gets cold. Just in case the grid
does go. Just in case. Maybe there's somebody else
in some other city, thinking these same things. Maybe everyone
has been shunted into their own world and everyone wound up alone.

It's strange, you know. I'm not feeling lonely, really. I'm
just honesty curious as to where you all went. Or if you went
anywhere at all.

If I could talk to someone and find out what
happened, then that would be all right.

And that someone would be free to go.

Let the extra 400mg of you I ingest
Bring reinforcements to your troops
Doing battle against the hordes of fatigue
Seeking to usurp myself and my productivity.

If I should succumb to sleep
If I should descend and then not awaken once more
Let me find myself across the espresso river
Let me have paid the boatman in beans
Let me find unrest at last
In a paradise filled with Red Bull trees
And fountains of Surge and Josta
And all those other drinks that have gone before us.

Let us make little cream and foam hearts
On the surface of eternity.

And then
Let us drink.

Good idea, let's see if anything comes of it.

It actually tickles my memory in regards to a short story I wrote back when I was still writing nothing but crap.

As opposed to now, where I have flashes of things that are at least readable.

It was called "Subterranean," and it was my attempt, at the time, to ape a bit of Lovecraft. It concerned a guy whose younger brother was stolen by creatures that lived beneath the surface of the earth, and his attempt to rescue the kid.

It makes my flesh crawl just to think about the story–not because I had somehow distilled HPL's ability to mindgrope you at that early age, but because it was rubbish. I find all of that early shit to be abhorrent and it shows my trust for you, my three readers, that I even bring it up now. About the only thing that I look back and find novel at all was the nature of the creatures themselves.

I then later appropriated that, I realize now, for another Lovecraftian idea I had that was also shelved.

It's a bit twisty, otherwise I would post it here. And worth using elsewhere. So.

If I can ever get time, I'll post some sketches I've been doing for two new short projects. But the real world is kicking my arse these days. Send coffee and lots of it. Thanks.

For example, out of this entire story about Wal-Mart and their supposed Legion of Infodoom HQ or whatever, here's the bit that leaps out at me:

The prefix tera comes from the Greek word for monster, and a terabyte is a trillion bytes, the basic unit of computer storage.

I had no idea that's where "tera" came from. Did you? You probably did, didn't you? Anyway, there's a lot going on in my head right now.

First up, two ideas for books showed up. One while I was in Manhattan and it won't leave me alone. The second is something I wrote on a lark years back that somebody mentioned offhandedly that it could become a book unto itself.

Then, I'm working on two new things that will hopefully see fruition in a bit. One next week, mayhap. We'll see.

And the site looks like shit. It's one of those things that when I come here and I start looking around and what I need to do, my brain just shuts right the hell off. Maybe once I get the contest engine up at Needcoffee I can come back here and start cleaning up. I'm starting to hate what this looks like. So who knows what's coming?

I just know I need to sleep a lot less. Getting old really fucking sucks.

Found via Neatorama.

And more here.

I know exactly what to use this for. And funny that the guy's name is Martin.

Thanks to ScottC for the headsup.

In Spain one can find a linear city all along the coast built for tourism, a section of land that becomes the most crowded region in Europe, but just for a short time. It’s a city for only three months in summer, when thousands of people come looking for the sea and the sun. The rest of the year it becomes a ghost city, a city without any a function, with no people and no services.

Found via We Make Money Not Art.

Found via Gridskipper.

Found via Boing Boing.

And somebody's already caught it and asked WTF is up with this to which I must reply: patience. Patience.

I have to sneak up on sleep when I do sleep. I have to dislocate my hip wrestling with it.

Odds and ends. I'm re-reading Imajica. I hardly ever re-read books, simply because I have a pretty solid memory of the books that are worth re-reading and I just go back and access that as necessary.

However, I've picked the Barker back up because of the new one-volume edition with appendix and new illos (I'm such a sucker when it comes to bonus features) and also because I feel the need t0 plunge into something epic. Probably because I'm preparing my brain for the coming of Martin's fourth volume. Probably because Barker and Martin are the only two folks who have really just hit me with an epic that felt…well, epic.

King's Dark Tower series somehow doesn't fit because it seems far too personal an endeavor, and is the rock upon which King built his church. All roads lead to the Tower in King's work, and that just isn't the same. Not in my head, anyway. Tolkien was nice, yes, but it always felt like the really impressive thing that you walked into and looked around a bit, then left–you know, like St. Patrick's Cathedral.

So yes, I want to wade up to my eyeballs in a book and have it slap me around. Hence, Imajica.

Even more odds. The links for Mystics and Desolation over on my right are now Amazon links. Amazon owns Booksurge now, the Amazon prices are corrected and every one you buy helps my sales ranking.

Finally, there's a new LiveJournal, as well as three more Something Odds.

Oh, and I want to say something about writing rules. Not writing rules, mind you, but rules for writing. But not now. Later. This is just a reminder to myself. For now, I'm going to try this sleep bullshit again.