Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

Above: I am teaching my cat the names of her toys. She is an attentive pupil, though her verbal participation is, frankly, lacking. Hey everybody! Here's some pictures of stuff. Swans live here. They are big. Daniel took this hilarious picture: This portrait is located in the big-box UK craft store by our house. We were confused, but...delighted. Pictures from a walk along the back road to downtown: This frog is enjoying the "finest weed in the Shire," no doubt.   Aaaand we have a very impressive art-wall now!  Sorry for the lack of pictures of Daniel! He is such a camera hog. 

There's no real "reason" for me to blog today, because I have a million things I'm working on and also I'm mentally exhausted by the past few days, but maybe no reason is the best reason! So, let's see what my brainmouth poops out: How do people feel about Modafinil? I am currently treating my assortment of weird sleep problems (including being tired every day from about 1pm to 6pm no matter how many/few hours I sleep) by POWERING THROUGH like the hardcore lady I can occasionally be. I'm still tired, but I pretend like I'm a three year old and just run around every time I'm sleepy. It works alright. The last two days were extremely productive! But today I am really, really tired. Too bad! More running! Hm. I've tried a cocktail of vitamins to help both with my quality of sleep and quality of wakefulness, buuuut my results are pretty non-conclusive. Or maybe my results ARE conclusive, in that they conclude that the vitamins didn't do poo. ...

Writing friends: I've been waiting a long time to write this blog post. I don't have to tell you how much I love Twitter--everybody has heard me yak about its merits--but let me tell you about this dream I have: a dream in which all of my writer friends and mentors are on Twitter, and we form a witty community that is always open to each other and loving to those who follow us. The comics and illustrating community already has this DOWN. They are tight-knit and funny but also extremely thoughtful about, and critical of, the state of their art as a whole. Those I most admire are both honest and warm.* Since the field of (web)comics is new (comparatively), they have the advantage of naturally incorporating things like Twitter into their work and personal lives. We literary writers hail from an older art and therefore we are sometimes slower to adapt and grow. Twitter is not just about posting pictures of your dinner (although, let's be real, if you're eating somethi...

There are days when I am low and I ask myself "What Would Dana Scully/Ellen Ripley/Sts. Joan or Francis Do?" and the question is enough to give me buoyancy, enough to make me meet the frightening things head-on and feel damn good doing it. There are other days when all the desperate prayers I can muster are not enough to get my fists up; days when, despite my knowledge that I am not weak and I have nothing to fear, I feel weak, I feel afraid. And I hate these days. I don't know what to do with them. I am a tired Greek metaphor--Atlas, Sisyphus--with nothing so concrete as a rock to point at and say "hey, the futility of pushing this stupid boulder is why I feel so crappy." Sigh. What Would Scully Do. What Would Scully Do. What Would Scully Do. If I say it enough times, I'll figure it out.

Update: this information on Cardinal Peter Turkson's support of a terrifying bill in Uganda was inexplicably absent when I was reading about him a few days ago. I had heard he was a moderate and thought a Black pope would be a nice change, but this information breaks my heart. Anti-Gay and essentially pro-murder? I don't even understand how this is allowed. I guess I'll never understand how people can hate so strongly. Seems like the approaching conclave is being set up to be as disappointing as the last one. I don't know why I ever expect anything to change. Fingers crossed, maybe, maybe, maybe they'll elect someone who acts out of courage instead of fear. You guys have all heard about Pope Benedict XVI stepping down this month, right? I got an alert on Twitter this morning via the BBC, and I was like WHAAAAA. I understand this kind of nerdery gets fringier by the day, but I can't help myself. I was born and raised Catholic (cradle Catholic, if you wi...

So, hey guys! This is our house and neighborhood and stuff! Heeeeere's our cute little 'hood. Dining room table! With breakfast!  This is our living room/dining room. (You can see the corner of the table over there.) We keep blankets on the couch, because our apartment is buttsa cold. Flannery claimed the little purple towel as a bed, so we put it on the windowsill. It's her new favorite hangout, that windowsill. More living/dining room. The art-wall is the wall to the right if you're sitting on the couch. Daniel is a good model. He's holding the inflatable moose head, who many of you know as John the Baptist. We haven't put him up yet, but he currently chills in the living room. Kitchen. So grown-up looking. (keyword: "looking") Floor bed in our little attic bedroom, complete with sleepy, happy cat. (She adjusted super quick to her new home, because she's a professional cat.) My OFFICE. SO PROFESSIONAL. ...

I'm trying really hard to work today, but either I can only tap into the good stuff after 4pm (my most productive times this week have been 4pm-7pm and 8pm-1am, but I figured that was a jet lag issue), or I'm having an off day. We'll see. The day is still young and all. Spent most of this late morning/early afternoon listening to Bruce Springsteen and Josh Ritter. So even though it hasn't been a productive day, per say, it definitely hasn't been a bad day. Work's going alright, all things considered. Writing feels kind of like doing magic or something: it's not necessarily difficult in intellectual terms, but it's really physically exhausting. Want to know what my favorite thing has been in the last few days? I mean, aside from getting a surprising amount of work done. Yeah, I finally saw the X-Files episode on which  this Gravity Falls is based. Why aren't more people swooning about this on the internet? Seriously, the GF episode is a pe...