Month: February 2015

And what does it mean when you dream of Astro Boy? I’m asking for a friend, of course — a friend that happens to look very like me, and had strange dreams in which people were congratulating him for creating Astro Boy, even though that obviously wasn’t the case.

My favorite part of the dream was that I kept telling people, no no, that’s not me, I didn’t come up with that guy, but everyone just thought I was being overly modest. What is this world of overly complimentary people, and how do I get there? My ego would thank me.

There’s a song from a quasi-Britpop band of my youth that I always remember the refrain of, every year on the day: “Stay out of my way/On Valentines Day,” it went, oh so jauntily. I can’t remember why such a warning was being made — perhaps there was comedic disaster around the corner? — but for me, the overwrought romance or bust nature of the day has always seemed a little overwhelming, and a little desperate.

To confess that almost feels dangerous, as if I’m saying that I have no time for romance, when the opposite is the case. And yet, I don’t like thus holiday and never have. If that makes me a Love Curmudgeon, then so be it.

I’m not sure whether it speaks to my state of mind or to some particular pop prowess of Taylor Swift, but “Shake It Off” has been in my head fairly continuously this week, in a way that has ended up being more pleasant and catchy — and maybe a little bit inspirational, or at least motivational — than annoying. It helps, I suspect, that I’m not really singing the entire song in my head all the time, but essentially just the horn riff from the verse, over and over again (Yes, not even the drums, which are astonishingly catchy; did people write think pieces about the drums in this song when it came out? They should have). It’s become a musical mantra in my head, a reminder to keep moving, keep active and work through all the deadlines and everything that have to be tackled. I’m just not sure how it ended up in there, is all.

It finally happened; I just outright missed a day here. I realized late at night, and had this moment of Maybe I should write something now that was quickly replaced by It’s 11 o’clock at night and you’re nowhere near a computer, let it go. It had to happen, especially considering the nature of this week, which has seen my early mornings filled with stuff: dentist appointments, preparations for visiting folk, watching things on the Internet under an NDA that are time-sensitive, writing about Spider-Man movies, and so on. All of which is to say, this week has been a surprisingly rough one, when it comes to starting the day off right.

That might explain the fact that, this morning, I woke up thinking Is it Saturday? Please let it be Saturday? with no small level of desperation. Each week this year has increasingly felt that way, getting to a point where it feels more exhausting to just get to Friday in one piece. I’m waiting for the turnaround.

postcardsfromspace:

I worry about floating staircases collapsing.

It’s like both of these are written by my subconsciousness. I also worry that, whenever I’m standing somewhere high level, a gust of wind will come out of nowhere and carry me out into the sky before I plummet to my doom.