Of the Shadows of the World

I got a drunk dial from a fan today; she stumbled upon this blog and liked what she saw. If you're sober and you found your way back here, and somehow STILL liked what you saw, you get a shoutout; Greetings fine lady! You absolutely made my day.

Moving on.

It's a quiet night, haven't had one of those in a long time. I finally got to finish American Gods, and I take back most of what I said about it. It took its sweetass time coming together and I gotta say it came together quite beautifully. I knew my faith in Neil Gaiman shouldn't have wavered, but we're all human after all. Falter we do, and falter I did. Forgive me, oh Gaiman. In all your Gaimaness, you've outgaimaned yourself. *Curtsies and scuttles out of royal court*

Bit of an afterthought, I think the main reason why it took so long to hit home with me was because I already believed in most of what he was trying to say throughout the book. It wasn't that it was betrayed by its premise, it was the fact that it took him 90% of the book trying to build an argument for everybody else, then in the last 80 pages came the long drawn-out breath of AHA! Only it wasn't an "AHA!" for me, more of a "Heh, I see what you did there." I kind of envy all the shitheads that Neil Gaiman converted through this book, or even the ones who weren't all that confused that he gave something to think about; building seeds of doubt on the expanse between what is and what isn't, sprouting several could be's out of the cracks. You lucky fuckers, you got an epic on your hands. Here's to hoping his arguments aren't wasted on you. I wish I'd read this book 4 or 5 years back, when I was a shithead myself. That would have been nice. 

Having missed out on the full-effect of this book, what really got to me were the acknowledgements at the end. It was a little something he mentioned while thanking all the people involved. I'll get to that in a bit, let me copy part of it here before I fangirl.

"It’s been a long book, and a long journey, and I owe many people a great deal.

Mrs. Hawley lent me her Florida house to write in, and all I had to do in return was scare away the vultures. She lent me her Irish house to finish it in and cautioned me not to scare away the ghosts. My thanks to her and Mr. Hawley for all their kindness and generosity. Jonathan and Jane lent me their house and hammock to write in, and all I had to do was fish the occasional peculiar Floridian beastie out of the lizard pool. 

I’m very grateful to them all. Dan Johnson, M.D., gave me medical information whenever I needed it, pointed out stray and unintentional anglicisms (everybody else did this as well), answered the oddest questions, and, on one July day, even flew me around northern Wisconsin in a tiny plane. In addition to keeping my life going by proxy while I wrote this book, my assistant, the fabulous Lorraine Garland, became very blasé about finding out the population of small American towns for me; I’m still not sure quite how she did it. (She’s part of a band called The Flash Girls; buy their new record, Play Each Morning, Wild Queen, and make her happy.) Terry Pratchett helped unlock a knotty plot point for me on the train to Gothenburg."

And here it is, "In addition to keeping my life going by proxy while I wrote this book...", that's what got to me. 

Perhaps it wouldn't resonate with you the same way it did with me, but that's what being a writer is all about. Hemingway said it; "You just sit at a typewriter and bleed." Now, it's gonna get a little cliche starting here so bear with me. 

How did writing start out? What was the first person thinking about when he sat down and wrote the first manuscript known to man? What made neanderthals get the urge to scribble on the cave walls? It wasn't all ego, it wasn't all a matter of record. (The first cave man wouldn't have known he'd die or multiply until he got there, probably by accident.) The way I see it, it was awe. Perhaps the only way writers are different from the rest of the people is the way they're always outsiders; they're always very conscious of their nature as vessels, and they're always struggling to document every aspect of the human condition. They struggle against word limitations, against abstract sensations that don't quite have semantic vehicles to transfer that exact experience to another human being. In a lot of ways, a writer is a child trapped in an adult's body, pointing at things and tugging at his companions' sleeves so they could see it too.

He's not the first or last person to get there, a lot of writers mastered delivering ideas, others mastered delivering ideas and feelings, other make money by expertly sending the reader on an emotional rollercoaster (Looking at you, Stephen King. You big cheat.) Few, though, got past those, and into that place where great, honest writing comes out. Borrowing a term from American Gods, I guess the only way you could describe it is this: They slipped into the backstage. And we all know what happens to mortals when they slip backstage.

And a lot of authors went mad in that process; they went mad trying to contain the human condition using various combinations of 26 petty letters on lacking, 2 dimensional paper sheets. The process is exhausting, frustrating and in a lot of ways excruciating, but the worst part about it to writers - and I mean real writers, not commercial writers or professional word smiths - is that the process is also needy. It pulls at you, it takes a lot out of you, and it consumes you. It makes you vulnerable, it stretches your confines threadbare and it makes you very conscious of what you're failing to pin down. It demands to be carried out, even if it takes you out with it. Pages and years are spent, and you still feel mute, because some things just can't be put down. Not with the tools we have at our expense anyway. 

And god, the pang of it.

What he said is a direct symptom of that. Which brings me to my next point; I now know exactly what I like about Gaiman, in all his lacking present ways, it's that he tries. And he sometimes touches upon great truths - visceral, intellectual, subliminal, emotional or what have you - that weren't communicated before. And for all intents and purposes, he doesn't completely miss. He doesn't deliver the whole picture, and in his groping for words he may not have chosen the right ones, but I get some sense of the image, a fading impression, a threshold outline, albeit out of focus or distorted, and it hits home. 

There were a couple of other parts in the acknowledgement section that got to me. I found myself thinking about his next book. Not about it per se, but rather about how Terry won't be there to pick up the phone if he hits a stubborn knot in the plot. At the expense of sounding like an obsessed creep, their friendship was fragile, co-dependent, and the combination of both their minds tuned them in to frequencies that the rest of us mortals can't hope to listen in on, not even with dog ears sown on. This by no way implies that any of them is less of a writer than the other one, but when they came together they produced lightening bolts. It will never be the same, will it? 

It hurt to register that Terry is gone. In a lot of ways, pathetic as it may seem to you, it still hurts. I hadn't registered it till then, and it took that line to make it real.

The acknowledgement also got me daydreaming around the part he mentioned his friend let him lease out the house to write in. We don't have that kind of culture in here; the culture of taking care of an author along on his way down inspiration lane. It was heartwarming, reading about how a community came together to help him write this book. 

Excuse my fangirling, I assure you I'm sane. Although you may have caught a glimpse of the hopeless romantic inside of me that I keep chained away in a dungeon, down in the shadows and depths of myself, away from prying eyes. 

The acknowledgement section was another long, drawn-out sigh of relief in its own way. I guess I didn't leave empty-handed after all, even if a little unconventionally. 

She's The Giggle At A Funeral

I've been very stressed out lately, it's showing up hilariously all over my self. I had a nightmare today that involved a Voodoo-cursed remote control that summoned Samara - that creepy Ring chick - from any and all TVs, which ended up in a high speed chase through hospitals and houses and ended up with me dreaming about a 70-year-old dad who's snarly and grumpy all the time and keeps sneaking chocolate from us.

Oh, and according to Grandma, not only did I take after my dad in talking in my sleep, I can hold entire conversations. As a matter of fact, I had a 20-minute conversation with dad this morning, who was apparently very bored...in my sleep...that I have absolutely no memory of. 



Sleeping doesn't come that easily either, because as dog tired as I am, I'm too stressed out to fall asleep, so before I eventually fell asleep I had a two-hour long semi-sober day-dreaming trip of retro robots and space. I'm not even kidding. It was glorious.

In my delirium, I've been having several revelations, like for instance how Jesus was vital to Christianity in the sense that he branded it. Before he came along, Christianity was made up of broken text that describes a guy over centuries, practically impossible for the common man to envision without pitching in some elements of his own to seal the deal, and a downright pain in the ass for most theologians to get the hang of the man up stairs without the occasional blasphemous typo. So it was vital for the brand's survival that it becomes embodied; given personality that people could relate to, and a body with a pair of arms and legs so people don't freak the fuck out, which would in turn lead to association, then brand linkage, then brand transformation. That's where integrated marketing communications came in, with all the sermons and PR with the townspeople. Once the vision was unified, branding was complete. I've been studying too hard.



I deleted/deactivated most social interaction platforms because of a privacy breech. People that have made no effort to talk to me all year are sharing my contact information without my permission to ask me shit about finals. Unknown numbers, so many of them, unapologetically started talking to me; no hellos, no explanations as to how the hell they got my number, just inquiries. I'm not sure what kind of reaction they're expecting, but I had the choice of aggression, avoidance or plain fucking them over...or creating mutually beneficial relationships.

Funny thing is, my PR material led me to that last consideration of harnessing that power to create contacts. I had a strategy and everything, I will turn the creeps into puppies, hell, I studied how...but I couldn't get myself to. 

According to the latest statistic, exactly how many people have their heads up their asses these days? I'm curious. And how the hell do you react to a blatant, mass invasion of privacy without the use of a sledgehammer? Still haven't figured that out, but they've driven me into hiding. Which is ironic, since I can't round up a team to save my life but finals swoosh in and suddenly I'm feeling the love. People are creepy, don't make sense, and I don't like them. 

Oh and I legit-dreaded my hair in the middle of the night. That's not going away any time soon. Might have to shave it off.

And the holy grail goes to the blubbering fit that came over me two days ago when it dawned on me that I'm graduating in a year and not only do I NOT have the least idea what I wanna do with my life, I'm also not that good at, well, anything. I summoned dad from the highest mountains, and he donned his eye patch and descended to Midgard to counsel Rory Odinson. What did it was the fact that what most of my previous courses did, as opposed to teaching me anything - god knows Egyptian education merely skims the index - is show me what I'm not good at. Previous courses were a filter to all the things I don't want to do/can't work at when I graduate. 

Dad was entertained; here I was, his 22-year-old only daughter, panicking about graduation. It happened you guys. His reassuring argument consisted of two main parts. The first being; I'm actually good at what I do, I just can't see it. And the second being, wait for it, "You think anybody knows what they wanna do with their lives during college? That comes later. This is a rite of passage; you got about 5 more years of wandering and fucking up, and hopefully having fun while you're at it, until you get the least sense of who you are. Buckle up, kid!" And then he laughed, shook his head, got up, got dressed and went to work, his cape swooshing behind him, getting stuck on the door in his wake.



If all of that wasn't an indication of how bumpy it is on the inside of my head right now, Grandma has taken it upon herself to feed me even more than she already does since I threw up twice this week, I got about 5 bruises that I can't account for and probably acquired by running into knobs and counters in panicky folder runs, and now that I'm writing this blogpost to a Coldplay song remix, my regression to my high school self is complete.

Oh boy.

Game of Thrones: The Musical

Muggle Mike

After I watched True Detective, I was under the impression that Matthew Mcconaughey was a real person with some self-honed vision that he picked up along the way and started to show up in his acting, turning him from your average Ken doll to a rain man in the making. I came to idolize him on the side after his career peaked, as a shag-worthy opponent. Fooled by the script like a pleb, we all fall for it sometimes. Then I heard he gave a graduation speech in Houston university and I went on a YouTube pillage for every speech he ever gave, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever truth this man accumulated along the way, and here I modify my conclusion: He is a master bullshitter.

I don't respect him any less for it, he really had me going. Not a lot of people caught that Pokemon. Real tip of the hat for him, but I was still disappointed. To elaborate on what I mean by all that, that's a bit of a long story; completely unrelated but slightly parallel in a very abstract context. Meaning: It's a woman thing you wouldn't really get it. I kid, I kid. 

Over the years, I've come to see that people have different realities, because they have different life experiences and that leads them to different truths. Pit them against each other and one might sound truer than the other, but in the bigger scale of things they're just as true, because truth is relative. It wouldn't make much sense to you in writing if you haven't reached that point of your life, and although I can make the argument, that's one bite out of life's cookie that I wouldn't give away cheap. Work for it, or take it and forget it a couple of days later, what do I care?

Even Hooch had a vision.

My point is, not a lot of people work for their own truths, and settle on a bunch of half-assed delusions that they struggle to make themselves believe, let alone sell to whichever members of their community that they picked out and befriended to maintain suspended disbelief. It's sad to see them, it's sad to see so many of them, but that's just how it is. How it should be, is different. Instead of a bunch of delusional people who don't believe their own lies, you'd get a bunch of people who really believe in their own lies, because their lives have made them true. That's where all the different realities come in, the ones that people fight for in job interviews, fight over during family dinners, and fight to go to bed every night.

It doesn't matter how much you don't see eye-to-eye with them, because their entire lives have come together to make them arrive at that truth, just as your entire life came together to make you arrive at another truth that completely annuls theirs. That's what a lot of people don't get about life, and living in general. There are no truths. There are many truths. Both sentences are true. Isn't it a marvelous planet we're stuck on?

But I digress. Why I was drawn to Matthew Mcconaughey after watching True Detective was a shootout of this argument; I thought he was one of those people who had some kind of vision. They're really hard to find these days, even harder to find in the realms of men, so you can imagine why I would be led to believe the fighting pits of Hollywood may have attracted a couple of lost lunatics that saw blue trees instead of green. They exist by the way, one of them is Shekhar Kapur, check out his Ted Talk. Great visionary. Others exist in more obscure realms of scientific journals, somewhere on the outskirts of politics, and most in various detention camps and loony bins around the world. Not all of them are great conversationalist, but they're saying something, one thing, throughout their life's work. They have this one truth that they're trying really hard to communicate to the world, and unfailingly they all come back to the cave to people who can't believe they're more than their own shadows.

I bounced back pretty quick though, for although Matthew Mcconaughey didn't turn out to have any great vision, he remains damn easy on the eyes. And to start my day off on the right side of the bed, I'm watching Magic Mike over my morning coffee. As I'm sure so many of you would rationalize it to themselves, I'm a straight girl, and I'm telling you, I'm only watching this for the stripping. And I ain't ashamed, get over yourselves.

Guess I'm back to blogging frequently again. Thanks for unclogging that toilet, Matthew. 

Scrapbooking

Grandma's been staying over for a while, and she has this thing she does when she wakes up every morning that just plain baffles me. She gets up, makes herself a mug of tea, and sits in complete darkness for an hour or so until some oven ping goes off at the back of her head and she decides to get up, open the shutters and go about her day. She doesn't doze off, she doesn't try to start conversations (now we know where I got that from), she just kind of sits there...in complete peace. No Buddhist mantras or Hinduist chants help her get there.

Being me, I've developed the habit of joining her on that morning routine, or at least trying to. I sit there and I watch her for a while, then I try to get to that place she's in, fail, and unfailingly jump into one my glowing portals. What is it about old age that makes you fall asleep so fast, bounce back so easily and become a levitating guru? I join her anyway, because wherever she goes off every morning backfires some relaxing vibes my way. It must be nice over there. So hard to get a damn ticket tho.

 We watch cartoon after so it's great.

We've been doing all kinds of stuff together, giving her a tour around my world. She doesn't like it very much. She likes most of the content but finds the people two-dimensional; like they've been splinched in two and lost track of the rest of themselves. I also introduced her to Nicki Minaj because I was bored and it was elders react: level purge. My god, I thought, grandma's hitler. Such a nice Hitler tho, nicest one I ever met. 

Finally caught up on Louie. I love that show. I relate to Louie in more ways than I should relate to a 47-year-old single dad who lives in Manhattan. It would take all day to list why I see eye to eye with Louie, but perhaps the most defining factor is being the only disillusioned human being within a fifty mile radius at all times, and leveraging your blood pressure levels against your sanity. This season is lightweight compared to the old seasons though, but I guess they're going somewhere with that. Try as I might, I can't see Louie giving in to ratings.

I miss board games. A lot of human interaction went into this, a lot more than human conversation as it prevails today. I wonder where people buy them these days; I've been out of the loop since I was yay high. Dad and I used to have chess games that lasted for days at a time. He always beat me at Battleship though.

It's finals week and I need to get some sleep. Rory, out.

Age of Ultron

Earlier this month, Pride and Prejudice came on TV, and I watched it and marveled at how, at one point of my life, I remotely related to it or held it in any kind of regard. Jane Austen was one of my earliest favourite authors; I grew up reading her books at an age when most children would have been gobbling down comic books. My copy of Pride and Prejudice in particular was dog-eared, I'd read it and re-read it, I'd fawned over the conversations and shuddered at the turn of events, even though I knew them by heart. On my 16th birthday, Aunt Nadia bought me "Jane Austen's Guide to Dating", and I'd treasured it as it softened the blow to the oh-so-excruciating phase of puberty. Watching it now, the parts that had once stirred my affection were ridiculous, and the characters that I once liked or cared about were dancing monkeys in an exaggerated farce. It's been so long ago, it's been 'a different person' ago. How much can one person change? It was as if I'd slipped into a different skin suit, that person long forgotten, someone I ran into down the grocery aisle unawares and promptly evaded by made-up excuses of imaginary appointments. 

I spent most of today reading Frank Miller's Man Without Fear and Born Again, both Daredevil comics, and later Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The doctor was right, time IS wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Tying in with the last revelation, I suppose we're all meant to go through so many different variations of ourselves before our time is up. Most of us just get laggy and stick to one version longer than they're meant to. But what do I know?

American Gods was disappointing. But perhaps, judging its premise of the shifting nature of faith from blood sacrifices to old Norse, Hinduist, Egyptian and Scandinavian gods to devotion to new gods of internet and highways and TV, investing time and energy in the new gods in place of ceremonies and rituals, the shift from giving to the unknown and mysterious to yielding to known and familiar, from the glorious to the boring, from the synaptic to the synoptic, all of that set against the backdrop of the spiritual desert that the American culture has become, with a protagonist that is ultimately incapable of relating to the world around him, disappointing is a medal of honor. Perhaps it was betrayed by its own premise, having old gods walk the modern world is bound to let you down; how could you portray mortal sacrifice and eternal glory in the back lot of a 7/11 on the outskirts of Nebraska, when the scuffle of blades has been replaced with tinkering of cutlery and the biggest moral question to pontificate is whether it's right to ask out your best buddy's ex? 

Perhaps it was meant to be disappointing, to drive the point home, or perhaps I'm just biased. I'm too much of a Neil Gaiman fan, despite his shortcomings as a fantasy author, that I can very well see, he still holds my loyalty. I had this conversation with a friend once, about why it is I like Neil Gaiman in his mediocrity, lack of voice and hopeful strides that fall short of being literature, why I like him despite seeing all of that. I haven't found the answer yet, but the guy has soul. I gave American Gods more time than I would have given most novels to climax, but it just didn't cut it for me. This is the closest I've come to disillusionment since the last time, a couple of years back, when I started seeing the world for what it really was and sprouted a couple of grey hairs in willful protest.

One thing that came out of me reading that dreadful (Read: intentionally dreadful to make a point, making it amazing on scale that is not directly felt by sensory notion but rather in abstract context retrospectively where the dreadful adjective was the original intended outcome and oh my god who am I kidding this book ate a portion of my life that I desperately want back) is that I remember what I liked about the classics. What I saw in Pride and Prejudice many years ago, and somehow lost sight of along the way, what gives the classics the edge that they have in the hearts of so many that are not blind to the heaps of racism, sexism, social injustice, cliches, redundancies, histrionics and overall exaggeration these books hold, that were rampant at the time and were blissfully wiped out by time and questionable progress, is one thing and one thing only; their intensity. 

When it comes down to it, the main reason why many level-headed, intelligent, modern people still relate to the completely non-relatable ballet of shittiness that make up 87% of your average classic novel is that whatever that ballet of shittiness was addressing, it was addressing it with sheer fervor...that was also wiped out by time and questionable progress. It is the mark of our time, the plague of our millennial parade; we don't care. More often than not, the winning side is determined, not by their actions, but by their in-actions, and by the admirable way by which they didn't give a shit. My god, it's thought, they don't give a shit, they're immune to mortal weapons. My god, it's said, he's still pining over her, he's such a creep, did you see that post? I heard he tried to call her. TWICE!

It's hunger. Hunger that drives us to bad literature written about a worse time with flawed characters that violate every right we spent years trying to get back and every freedom people died to regain because the characters cared, sometimes comically, about anything. They cried with sheer agony, they laughed in ecstasy, the killed over indignation, they sacrificed themselves after long speeches, proclamations and declarations of love or cannibalistic remorse. They died for causes, for ideals and for mere impulses. They had the capacity for a wider range of human emotion, most of which spectrum is now either frowned upon or unheard of in the natural life span of a modern man. People run back to classics for the same reasons children run to dragon lore. 

Which brings me to the next order of business; Daredevil. Why the hell do I like it so much? The guy embodies almost every concept I hate, yet I find myself drawn to the tortured Matt Murdoch. Point in question; vigilantism. I'm against it. Not only can you not save people from themselves or stop the high order of organized crime that is the judicial system, but as the saying goes; you cut an altruist and an egotist bleeds. Next point in question; emotional creatures. They repel me, on a very primal level. Matt Murdoch is an emotional wreck of a vigilante, a highly volatile egotist and pathetically reactive grown man given to bouts of whining fit of an overgrown 10-year-old. Why is he my favourite superhero? 

Watching the Daredevil show did what my friends failed to do over a year and a half of constant ranting, half-assed threats and forced exposure; it successfully got me into comic books. Not only that, it got me into comic books for the sole reason of finding out more about Matt Murdoch. Of course, after the Marvel universe got a hold of me, it led me by the hand down a glittering corridor of bling and diamonds to about a dozen other fandoms that I'm now part of, the n00b that I am, but one doesn't expect less of Stan Lee's multi-billion dollar industry of bear traps. 

The question of why I like Daredevil has been on my mind for a couple of days, itching away at the back of my head like a freaking shackled Cujo. My better senses tell me knowing why will open the flood gates to cognitive dissonance, since the guy is not only the intrinsic opposite of everything I believe checks out, but is - to put it simply - fucked up in the head with cuckoo birds chirping out of his nostrils twice a day. Not looking forward to that revelation, no sir. 

Tumbling out of the ether and onto material ground, it's final projects week so I'm stressed out threadbare, with projects to hand in that shook digits off my life counter and witnessed the revival of dying arts of war against enemies of olden ways who wear their hairs in flowing strands that seemingly leak their IQ points with every whip, back and forth. Following that, there looms the horror of finals week, where junior hobbits explore and push the horizons of bullshit to get past the balls and hoops of the paper-shuffling Saurons and emerge on the other end even dumber than they came in. 

All things considered, summer ripens with promises of an internship, a martial arts training and a beach retreat with good friends. Disclaimer: Don't jinx it, you fuckers. 

Noise

So many changes. All the fucking time. I'm exhausted.

Hope

Of Much Needed A'Tuin-ing

Sometimes, during those late hours of the night, you get some moments of clarity. True ones, that aren't obstructed by desires or sidetracked by rationalizations. You let yourself daydream, breaking free of the reigns of reality and morality, what you can and can't be, and you just see, detachedly, what you're all about.

You're not necessarily any less lost, but you're not panicking about it. Time stops, silence sets in like a medium of its own, and you really see; all that you want, all that you need, and all that you fear. Reality loosens its grasp, and you see beyond yourself. All that's important to you is obvious. All that you need presents itself. And you're not in distress.

Perhaps, instead of looking back onto things that were, peeking in on them as they're undressing, or looking on to things that will never be, getting attacked by liquor bottles from unfriendly hobos, you could look in on a time that never was and never will be.

A time with more dragons and space and mathematical extrapolations. A world of flowing coffee rivers and gremlins and music. One where gravity isn't so certain and time isn't so constraining. One where you could visit long forgotten tunnels, saunter into forbidden forests, and hack into your old inventory to arm your avatars with shields and great swords and charms, instead of intentionally casting them as helpless, unarmed and scared intruders.

One where winds blow by and through, obliterating you in scale. Rounding up into a deafening storm worthy of the wrath of Norse gods, shooting down from the skies to spite you, and in all its arrogance, instead, it soothes you.

RIP Terry Pratchett

Goodbye, you wonderful wonderful alien. You came from a better world, this one has never deserved you, and now the mothership has come back for you. You cannot die, for in your words: “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” And yours shall not, not for me.

Kurt Vonnegut & Joseph Heller War Experience: Battle of the Bulge, Bombing Raids, VE Day (1995)

The Empty Jar Club Reconvened

"Actually, I don't feel like an empty jar as much really, more like a jar full of something it shouldn't be full of. Like grabbing a nutella jar, emptying it and filling it with salt."

"I think I broke my jar."

"Weh. No one mends a broken jar though since they're dispensable. They just replace them."

"Yeah. That, they do."

Lady Boner

Chicken Nubbins

Pardon me for the hiatus, my dear nonexistent readers. I briefly lost my voice and recently found it; it was in the dryer. I mean, who am I kidding? Everything you ever lose will be in the dryer. That is, if it's not in the couch. Because gremlins speak binary. 

How come there aren't any morning shows about fluff? Buzzfeed me not, but humour me here; you'd wake up in the morning to "Hey! Here's what you missed: No people died over stupid shit that could have been easily avoided if a certain person in power didn't have a stick up his ass and this bird learned the harmonica!" Wouldn't that be nice? The closest we ever got to that revolutionary idea was the Teletubbies, and that was pure unadulterated horror. I mean, oversized alien babies with TV screens on their tummies and a giggling sun baby in a field overcome with bunnies. Are you shitting me? I've lost count of how many times that show reduced me to a blubbering pile of pink flesh as a kid, little did I know it would have the same effect on me for entirely different reasons years later.

Good morning, sunshine!

Oh yeah, I turned 22, so there's that. It was no big deal, other than the fact that I'm actually an adult now. 21 doesn't count as an adult, you see, because it's still special. You can't be an adult and be special, nothing is special about adulthood. Adulthood is perhaps identified by its utter lack of special-dom, or any -dom. Or any drum roll-type sound. Or any prefix to call your own, really. You've been dethroned, little princess; you no longer rule a kingdom of hearts. You're not a special little snowflake, and you never really were. Surprise surprise! The world isn't grey, it's brown, the colour of shit. Well, healthy shit, mind you. Be thankful for that. You'll have to worry about your health from now on, no more taking the stairs for a quick workout or going for coffee because it's yummy; you take the elevator so you don't miss work, and you shove coffee down your stupid little mouth to stay up long enough to do aforementioned work, then shut up. 

Also, there's work. It's called work now. Not that it wasn't called work before, it just takes on a whole different meaning when you have to do it to afford rent at the end of the month as opposed to taking the job for the experience and pondering about the opportunity it offers to your oblivious human condition, of which you probably spent 30% of your time worrying about where the hell your life is going. Well guess what? Your human condition has been cured, you hit the jackpot and the lucky number was 22. That's the thing about 22. The special dates are over, the 1's and the 5's and the 16's and the 21's have gone byebye. They put on their little glittery red shoes and took a long hippidy-hoppidy walk down a long timey-wimey yellow brick road, off to see the wonderful wizard of Oz who DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST, GROW UP!

Now that THAT'S out of my system, I can get on with this blog entry. I found out about this great dessert called babas. Babas is basically a cake that's saturated with a syrup of your choice. It can also be made with hard liquor, usually rum. (Click me for yummies!)

(Disclaimer: In case the above paragraph has incurred any worries about my state of mental health by suggesting I might have taken up baking or now hold any interest whatsoever in the gateway to hell that is the kitchen, you are quite mistaken. I'm still a hazard in the kitchen and have no intention of changing that. I also firmly believe the apron was developed by Snow White's witch out of the original failed prototype of the magically compressing belt-vice, in order to kill women and remain the most beautiful of them all. Mind your lore, sheesh. Don't you ever read?)

You see, I'd never had that babas dessert before, and the only reason I tried was because I'd run out of my go-to chocolate favourite. And to the partially-starved millenial me, raiding the fridge at 5 o'clock in the morning, that was the closest thing to a spiritual experience I got since Emma Watson answered my muggle-post with a signed headshot 10 years ago.

Fucking wow, I can credibly use "10 years ago" now.

Anyway, back to the point. So there I was, going for the shittiest-looking dessert in the leftover gâteaux soirées stash from last night's dinner to seal the deal and silence my alimentary bagpipe when the dessert turned into cake and the cake turned into something wonderful. There's a lesson for you here somewhere about the great things that wait for you outside of your comfort zone that I shamelessly pondered over the next 2 minutes, so grab it while you can. You get the metaphor, I'll get the cake. I mean, I knew cake could never disappoint me, every woman at the turn of her first decade knows that by now, but this one actually went the extra mile! Gosh golly, I thought, this one's a real keeper.

And with this, my dear non-existent readers, I leave you to get on with my day. Don't you ever change, I love just the way you are. 

That is to say, non-existent. 

...And a happy new year!

Hear Her Rawr

I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek

And if I make him happy he will stay.

Whovian Anniversary

"Today, the 23rd of November 2014, marks the one year anniversary of the first local whovian gathering ever. 

We started out small, just a couple of people who like Doctor Who and were kind of hoping we'd find a bunch of people to talk to them about it. And here we are! Months later, and the community still grows.

We're proud of what we've created; this community has not only entertained people, but it has helped them. It brought out the good in people. Better yet, it brought out the good in good people, and that made for something pretty damn special.

We never thought so many people would come together. We never even knew so many Egyptians watched Doctor Who. Surprisingly, we ended up even rekindling old friendships and realizing that we KNEW people who watched Doctor Who all along, but never spoke about it to one another.

And unsurprisingly, it turns out all of us whovians have other things in common. Our fascination with seemingly juvenile tales of a Timelord isn't the only thing we share.

When this started out a little less than a year ago, we set out to have a Whovian group that may or may not evolve into something bigger. Now, we're sure it can be a lot bigger. And if the first Egyptian Comic Con happens thanks to you guys, we wouldn't be surprised.

This is a hidden message from the two who started it, a little Easter egg shall we say, and we won't tell you who we are because we are no longer two people. We are many.

We will tell you this though, you have inspired us to be better people, you have cheered us up when we were down in the dumps, and you have given us hope in mankind when we were hoping for an alien invasion."

I Am A Brave Hobbit.

Wish I Was Here

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes 

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 

And seeing that it was a soft October night, 

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time 

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 

Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 

There will be time, there will be time 

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 

There will be time to murder and create, 

And time for all the works and days of hands 

That lift and drop a question on your plate; 

Time for you and time for me, 

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 

And for a hundred visions and revisions, 

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Daughter - A Poem By Nicole Blackman

One day I’ll give birth to a tiny baby girl
and when she’s born she’ll scream and I’ll make sure
she never stops.

I will kiss her before I lay her down
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive.

I’ll tell her about the power of water
the seduction of paper
the promise of gasoline
and the hope of blood.

I’ll teach her to shave her eyebrows and
mark her skin.

I’ll teach her that her body is
her greatest work of art.

I’ll tell her to light things on fire
and keep them burning.

I’ll teach her that the fire will not consume her,
that she must take it and use it.

I’ll tell her to be tri-sexual, to try anything
to sleep with, fight with, pray with anyone,
just as long as she feels something.

I’ll help her do her best work when it rains.
I’ll tell her to reinvent herself every 28 days.
I’ll teach her to develop all her selves,
the courageous ones,
the smart ones,
the dreaming ones
the fast ones.

I’ll teach her that she has an army inside her
that can save her life.

I’ll tell her to say Fuck like other people say The
and when people are shocked
to ask them why they so fear a small quartet
of letters.

I’ll make sure she always carries a pen
so she can take down the evidence.
If she has no paper, I’ll teach her to
write everything down on her tongue
write it on her thighs.

I’ll help her to see that she will not find God
or salvation in a dark brick building
built by dead men.

I’ll explain to her that it’s better to regret the things
she has done than the things she hasn't.

I’ll teach her to write her manifestos
on cocktail napkins.
I’ll say she should make men lick her enterprise.

I’ll teach her to talk hard.
I’ll tell her that her skin is the
most beautiful dress she will ever wear.

I’ll tell her that people must earn the right
to use her nickname,
that forced intimacy is an ugly thing.

I’ll make her understand that she is worth more
with her clothes on.

I’ll tell her that when the words finally flow too fast
and she has no use for a pen
that she must quit her job
run out of the house in her bathrobe,
leaving the door open.
I’ll teach her to follow the words.

I’ll tell her to stand up
and head for the door
after she makes love.
When he asks her to
stay she’ll say
she’s got to
go.

They will try to make her stay,
comfort her, let her sleep, bathe her in a television blue glow.
I will cut her hair, tell her to light the house on fire,
kill the kittens
when nothing is there
nothing will keep her
and she is not to be kept.

I’ll say that everything she has done seen spoken
has brought her to the here this now.
This is no time for tenderness,
no time to stand, waiting for them to find her.
There are nations within her skin.
Queendoms come without keys you can carry.

I’ll tell her that when she first bleeds
when she is a woman,
to go up to the roof at midnight,
reach her hands up to the sky and scream.

I’ll teach her to be whole, to be holy,
to be so much that she doesn't even
need me anymore.
I’ll tell her to go quickly and never come back.
I will make her stronger than me.

I’ll say to her never forget what they did to you
and never let them know you remember.

Never forget what they did to you
and never let them know you remember.

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

Chapter 30

Yossarian no longer gave a damn where his bombs fell, although he did not go as far as Dunbar, who dropped his bombs hundreds of yards past the village and would face a court-martial if it could ever be shown he had done it deliberately. Without a word even to Yossarian, Dunbar had washed his hands of the mission. The fall in the hospital had either shown him the light or scrambled his brains; it was impossible to say which.

Dunbar seldom laughed any more and seemed to be wasting away. He snarled belligerently at superior officers, even at Major Danby, and was crude and surly and profane even in front of the chaplain, who was afraid of Dunbar now and seemed to be wasting away also. The chaplain’s pilgrimage to Wintergreen had proved abortive; another shrine was empty. Wintergreen was too busy to see the chaplain himself. A brash assistant brought the chaplain a stolen Zippo cigarette lighter as a gift and informed him condescendingly that Wintergreen was too deeply involved with wartime activities to concern himself with matters so trivial as the number of missions men had to fly. The chaplain worried about Dunbar and brooded more over Yossarian now that Orr was gone. To the chaplain, who lived by himself in a spacious tent whose pointy top sealed him in gloomy solitude each night like the cap of a tomb, it seemed incredible that Yossarian really preferred living alone and wanted no roommates.  

As a lead bombardier again, Yossarian had McWatt for a pilot, and that was one consolation, although he was still so utterly undefended. There was no way to fight back. He could not even see McWatt and the co-pilot from his post in the nose. All he could ever see was Aarfy, with whose fustian, moon-faced ineptitude he had finally lost all patience, and there were minutes of agonizing fury and frustration in the sky when he hungered to be demoted again to a wing plane with a loaded machine gun in the compartment instead of the precision bombsight that he really had no need for, a powerful, heavy fifty-caliber machine gun he could seize vengefully in both hands and turn loose savagely against all the demons tyrannizing him: at the smoky black puffs of the flak itself; at the German antiaircraft gunners below whom he could not even see and could not possibly harm with his machine gun even if he ever did take the time to open fire, at Havermeyer and Appleby in the lead plane for their fearless straight and level bomb run on the second mission to Bologna where the flak from two hundred and twenty-four cannons had knocked out one of Orr’s engines for the very last time and sent him down ditching into the sea between Genoa and La Spezia just before the brief thunderstorm broke.  

Actually, there was not much he could do with that powerful machine gun except load it and test-fire a few rounds. It was no more use to him than the bombsight. He could really cut loose with it against attacking German fighters, but there were no German fighters any more, and he could not even swing it all the way around into the helpless faces of pilots like Huple and Dobbs and order them back down carefully to the ground, as he had once ordered Kid Sampson back down, which is exactly what he did want to do to Dobbs and Huple on the hideous first mission to Avignon the moment he realized the fantastic pickle he was in, the moment he found himself aloft in a wing plane with Dobbs and Huple in a flight headed by Havermeyer and Appleby. Dobbs and Huple? Huple and Dobbs? Who were they? What preposterous madness to float in thin air two miles high on an inch or two of metal, sustained from death by the meager skill and intelligence of two vapid strangers, a beardless kid named Huple and a nervous nut like Dobbs, who really did go nuts right there in the plane, running amuck over the target without leaving his copilot’s seat and grabbing the controls from Huple to plunge them all down into that chilling dive that tore Yossarian’s headset loose and brought them right back inside the dense flak from which they had almost escaped. The next thing he knew, another stranger, a radio-gunner named Snowden, was dying in back. It was impossible to be positive that Dobbs had killed him, for when Yossarian plugged his headset back in, Dobbs was already on the intercom pleading for someone to go up front and help the bombardier. And almost immediately Snowden broke in, whimpering, ‘Help me. Please help me. I’m cold. I’m cold.’ And Yossarian crawled slowly out of the nose and up on top of the bomb bay and wriggled back into the rear section of the plane—passing the first-aid kit on the way that he had to return for—to treat Snowden for the wrong wound, the yawning, raw, melon-shaped hole as big as a football in the outside of his thigh, the unsevered, blood-soaked muscle fibers inside pulsating weirdly like blind things with lives of their own, the oval, naked wound that was almost a foot long and made Yossarian moan in shock and sympathy the instant he spied it and nearly made him vomit. And the small, slight tail-gunner was lying on the floor beside Snowden in a dead faint, his face as white as a handkerchief, so that Yossarian sprang forward with revulsion to help him first.  

Yes, in the long run, he was much safer flying with McWatt, and he was not even safe with McWatt, who loved flying too much and went buzzing boldly inches off the ground with Yossarian in the nose on the way back from the training flight to break in the new bombardier in the whole replacement crew Colonel Cathcart had obtained after Orr was lost. The practice bomb range was on the other side of Pianosa, and, flying back, McWatt edged the belly of the lazing, slow-cruising plane just over the crest of mountains in the middle and then, instead of maintaining altitude, jolted both engines open all the way, lurched up on one side and, to Yossarian’s astonishment, began following the falling land down as fast as the plane would go, wagging his wings gaily and skimming with a massive, grinding, hammering roar over each rocky rise and dip of the rolling terrain like a dizzy gull over wild brown waves. Yossarian was petrified. The new bombardier beside him sat demurely with a bewitched grin and kept whistling ‘Whee!’ and Yossarian wanted to reach out and crush his idiotic face with one hand as he flinched and flung himself away from the boulders and hillocks and lashing branches of trees that loomed up above him out in front and rushed past just underneath in a sinking, streaking blur. No one had a right to take such frightful risks with his life.  

‘Go up, go up, go up!’ he shouted frantically at McWatt, hating him venomously, but McWatt was singing buoyantly over the intercom and probably couldn’t hear. Yossarian, blazing with rage and almost sobbing for revenge, hurled himself down into the crawlway and fought his way through against the dragging weight of gravity and inertia until he arrived at the main section and pulled himself up to the flight deck, to stand trembling behind McWatt in the pilot’s seat. He looked desperately about for a gun, a gray-black.45 automatic that he could cock and ram right up against the base of McWatt’s skull. There was no gun. There was no hunting knife either, and no other weapon with which he could bludgeon or stab, and Yossarian grasped and jerked the collar of McWatt’s coveralls in tightening fists and shouted to him to go up, go up. The land was still swimming by underneath and flashing by overhead on both sides. McWatt looked back at Yossarian and laughed joyfully as though Yossarian were sharing his fun. Yossarian slid both hands around McWatt’s bare throat and squeezed. McWatt turned stiff: ‘Go up,’ Yossarian ordered unmistakably through his teeth in a low, menacing voice. ‘Or I’ll kill you.’ Rigid with caution, McWatt cut the motors back and climbed gradually. Yossarian’s hands weakened on McWatt’s neck and slid down off his shoulders to dangle inertly. He was not angry any more. He was ashamed. When McWatt turned, he was sorry the hands were his and wished there were someplace where he could bury them. They felt dead.    McWatt gazed at him deeply. There was no friendliness in his stare. ‘Boy,’ he said coldly, ‘you sure must be in pretty bad shape. You ought to go home.’  

‘They won’t let me.’ Yossarian answered with averted eyes, and crept away. Yossarian stepped down from the flight deck and seated himself on the floor, hanging his head with guilt and remorse. He was covered with sweat.

McWatt set course directly back toward the field. Yossarian wondered whether McWatt would now go to the operations tent to see Piltchard and Wren and request that Yossarian never be assigned to his plane again, just as Yossarian had gone surreptitiously to speak to them about Dobbs and Huple and Orr and, unsuccessfully, about Aarfy. He had never seen McWatt look displeased before, had never seen him in any but the most lighthearted mood, and he wondered whether he had just lost another friend.  

But McWatt winked at him reassuringly as he climbed down from the plane and joshed hospitably with the credulous new pilot and bombardier during the jeep ride back to the squadron, although he did not address a word to Yossarian until all four had returned their parachutes and separated and the two of them were walking side by side toward their own row of tents. Then McWatt’s sparsely freckled tan Scotch-Irish face broke suddenly into a smile and he dug his knuckles playfully into Yossarian’s ribs, as though throwing a punch. ‘You louse,’ he laughed. ‘Were you really going to kill me up there?’
Yossarian grinned penitently and shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘I didn’t realize you got it so bad. Boy! Why don’t you talk to somebody about it?’  
‘I talk to everybody about it. What the hell’s the matter with you? Don’t you ever hear me?’  
‘I guess I never really believed you.’  
‘Aren’t you ever afraid?’  
‘Maybe I ought to be.’  
‘Not even on the missions?’  
‘I guess I just don’t have brains enough.’ McWatt laughed sheepishly.  
‘There are so many ways for me to get killed,’ Yossarian commented, ‘and you had to find one more.’
McWatt smiled again. ‘Say, I bet it must really scare you when I buzz your tent, huh?’    
‘It scares me to death. I’ve told you that.’  
‘I thought it was just the noise you were complaining about.’ McWatt made a resigned shrug. ‘Oh, well, what the hell,’ he sang. ‘I guess I’ll just have to give it up.’

But McWatt was incorrigible, and, while he never buzzed Yossarian’s tent again, he never missed an opportunity to buzz the beach and roar like a fierce and low-flying thunderbolt over the raft in the water and the secluded hollow in the sand where Yossarian lay feeling up Nurse Duckett or playing hearts, poker or pinochle with Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe. Yossarian met Nurse Duckett almost every afternoon that both were free and came with her to the beach on the other side of the narrow swell of shoulder-high dunes separating them from the area in which the other officers and enlisted men went swimming nude. Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe would come there, too. McWatt would occasionally join them, and often Aarfy, who always arrived pudgily in full uniform and never removed any of his clothing but his shoes and his hat; Aarfy never went swimming. The other men wore swimming trunks in deference to Nurse Duckett, and in deference also to Nurse Cramer, who accompanied Nurse Duckett and Yossarian to the beach every time and sat haughtily by herself ten yards away. No one but Aarfy ever made reference to the naked men sun-bathing in full view farther down the beach or jumping and diving from the enormous white-washed raft that bobbed on empty oil drums out beyond the silt sand. Nurse Cramer sat by herself because she was angry with Yossarian and disappointed in Nurse Duckett.  

Nurse Sue Ann Duckett despised Aarfy, and that was another one of the numerous fetching traits about Nurse Duckett that Yossarian enjoyed. He enjoyed Nurse Sue Ann Duckett’s long white legs and supple, callipygous ass; he often neglected to remember that she was quite slim and fragile from the waist up and hurt her unintentionally in moments of passion when he hugged her too roughly. He loved her manner of sleepy acquiescence when they lay on the beach at dusk. He drew solace and sedation from her nearness. He had a craving to touch her always, to remain always in physical communication. He liked to encircle her ankle loosely with his fingers as he played cards with Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe, to lightly and lovingly caress the downy skin of her fair, smooth thigh with the backs of his nails or, dreamily, sensuously, almost unconsciously, slide his proprietary, respectful hand up the shell-like ridge of her spine beneath the elastic strap of the top of the two-piece bathing suit she always wore to contain and cover her tiny, long-nippled breasts. He loved Nurse Duckett’s serene, flattered response, the sense of attachment to him she displayed proudly. Hungry Joe had a craving to feel Nurse Duckett up, too, and was restrained more than once by Yossarian’s forbidding glower. Nurse Duckett flirted with Hungry Joe just to keep him in heat, and her round light-brown eyes glimmered with mischief every time Yossarian rapped her sharply with his elbow or fist to make her stop.  

The men played cards on a towel, undershirt, or blanket, and Nurse Duckett mixed the extra deck of cards, sitting with her back resting against a sand dune. When she was not shuffling the extra deck of cards, she sat squinting into a tiny pocket mirror, brushing mascara on her curling reddish eyelashes in a birdbrained effort to make them longer permanently. Occasionally she was able to stack the cards or spoil the deck in a way they did not discover until they were well into the game, and she laughed and glowed with blissful gratification when they all hurled their cards down disgustedly and began punching her sharply on the arms or legs as they called her filthy names and warned her to stop fooling around. She would prattle nonsensically when they were striving hardest to think, and a pink flush of elation crept into her cheeks when they gave her more sharp raps on the arms and legs with their fists and told her to shut up. Nurse Duckett reveled in such attention and ducked her short chestnut bangs with joy when Yossarian and the others focused upon her. It gave her a peculiar feeling of warm and expectant well-being to know that so many naked boys and men were idling close by on the other side of the sand dunes. She had only to stretch her neck or rise on some pretext to see twenty or forty undressed males lounging or playing ball in the sunlight. Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian’s lust; but she was willing to take his word for it.  

Evenings when Yossarian felt horny he brought Nurse Duckett to the beach with two blankets and enjoyed making love to her with most of their clothes on more than he sometimes enjoyed making love to all the vigorous bare amoral girls in Rome. Frequently they went to the beach at night and did not make love, but just lay shivering between the blankets against each other to ward off the brisk, damp chill. The ink-black nights were turning cold, the stars frosty and fewer. The raft swayed in the ghostly trail of moonlight and seemed to be sailing away. A marked hint of cold weather penetrated the air. Other men were just starting to build stoves and came to Yossarian’s tent during the day to marvel at Orr’s workmanship. It thrilled Nurse Duckett rapturously that Yossarian could not keep his hands off her when they were together, although she would not let him slip them inside her bathing shorts during the day when anyone was near enough to see, not even when the only witness was Nurse Cramer, who sat on the other side of her sand dune with her reproving nose in the air and pretended not to see anything.  

Nurse Cramer had stopped speaking to Nurse Duckett, her best friend, because of her liaison with Yossarian, but still went everywhere with Nurse Duckett since Nurse Duckett was her best friend. She did not approve of Yossarian or his friends. When they stood up and went swimming with Nurse Duckett, Nurse Cramer stood up and went swimming, too, maintaining the same ten-yard distance between them, and maintaining her silence, snubbing them even in the water. When they laughed and splashed, she laughed and splashed; when they dived, she dived; when they swam to the sand bar and rested, Nurse Cramer swam to the sand bar and rested. When they came out, she came out, dried her shoulders with her own towel and seated herself aloofly in her own spot, her back rigid and a ring of reflected sunlight burnishing her light-blond hair like a halo. Nurse Cramer was prepared to begin talking to Nurse Duckett again if she repented and apologized. Nurse Duckett preferred things the way they were. For a long time she had wanted to give Nurse Cramer a rap to make her shut up. Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him. She loved to watch him taking short naps with his face down and his arm thrown across her, or staring bleakly at the endless tame, quiet waves breaking like pet puppy dogs against the shore, scampering lightly up the sand a foot or two and then trotting away. She was calm in his silences. She knew she did not bore him, and she buffed or painted her fingernails studiously while he dozed or brooded and the desultory warm afternoon breeze vibrated delicately on the surface of the beach. She loved to look at his wide, long, sinewy back with its bronzed, unblemished skin. She loved to bring him to flame instantly by taking his whole ear in her mouth suddenly and running her hand down his front all the way. She loved to make him burn and suffer till dark, then satisfy him. Then kiss him adoringly because she had brought him such bliss.  

Yossarian was never lonely with Nurse Duckett, who really did know how to keep her mouth shut and was just capricious enough. He was haunted and tormented by the vast, boundless ocean. He wondered mournfully, as Nurse Duckett buffed her nails, about all the people who had died under water. There were surely more than a million already. Where were they? What insects had eaten their flesh? He imagined the awful impotence of breathing in helplessly quarts and quarts of water. Yossarian followed the small fishing boats and military launches plying back and forth far out and found them unreal; it did not seem true that there were full-sized men aboard, going somewhere every time. He looked toward stony Elba, and his eyes automatically searched overhead for the fluffy, white, turnip-shaped cloud in which Clevinger had vanished. He peered at the vaporous Italian skyline and thought of Orr. Clevinger and Orr. Where had they gone? Yossarian had once stood on a jetty at dawn and watched a tufted round log that was drifting toward him on the tide turn unexpectedly into the bloated face of a drowned man; it was the first dead person he had ever seen. He thirsted for life and reached out ravenously to grasp and hold Nurse Duckett’s flesh. He studied every floating object fearfully for some gruesome sign of Clevinger and Orr, prepared for any morbid shock but the shock McWatt gave him one day with the plane that came blasting suddenly into sight out of the distant stillness and hurtled mercilessly along the shore line with a great growling, clattering roar over the bobbing raft on which blond, pale Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaped clownishly up to touch it at the exact moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt’s senses dropped the speeding plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away.  

Even people who were not there remembered vividly exactly what happened next. There was the briefest, softest tsst! filtering audibly through the shattering, overwhelming howl of the plane’s engines, and then there were just Kid Sampson’s two pale, skinny legs, still joined by strings somehow at the bloody truncated hips, standing stock-still on the raft for what seemed a full minute or two before they toppled over backward into the water finally with a faint, echoing splash and turned completely upside down so that only the grotesque toes and the plaster-white soles of Kid Sampson’s feet remained in view.  

On the beach, all hell broke loose. Nurse Cramer materialized out of thin air suddenly and was weeping hysterically against Yossarian’s chest while Yossarian hugged her shoulders and soothed her. His other arm bolstered Nurse Duckett, who was trembling and sobbing against him, too, her long, angular face dead white. Everyone at the beach was screaming and running, and the men sounded like women. They scampered for their things in panic, stooping hurriedly and looking askance at each gentle, knee-high wave bubbling in as though some ugly, red, grisly organ like a liver or a lung might come washing right up against them. Those in the water were struggling to get out, forgetting in their haste to swim, wailing, walking, held back in their flight by the viscous, clinging sea as though by a biting wind.  

Kid Sampson had rained all over. Those who spied drops of him on their limbs or torsos drew back with terror and revulsion, as though trying to shrink away from their own odious skins. Everybody ran in a sluggish stampede, shooting tortured, horrified glances back, filling the deep, shadowy, rustling woods with their frail gasps and cries. Yossarian drove both stumbling, faltering women before him frantically, shoving them and prodding them to make them hurry, and raced back with a curse to help when Hungry Joe tripped on the blanket or the camera case he was carrying and fell forward on his face in the mud of the stream.    Back at the squadron everyone already knew. Men in uniform were screaming and running there too, or standing motionless in one spot, rooted in awe, like Sergeant Knight and Doc Daneeka as they gravely craned their heads upward and watched the guilty, banking, forlorn airplane with McWatt circle and circle slowly and climb.  

‘Who is it?’ Yossarian shouted anxiously at Doc Daneeka as he ran up, breathless and limp, his somber eyes burning with a misty, hectic anguish. ‘Who’s in the plane?’  
‘McWatt,’ said Sergeant Knight. ‘He’s got the two new pilots with him on a training flight. Doc Daneeka’s up there, too.’  
‘I’m right here,’ contended Doc Daneeka, in a strange and troubled voice, darting an anxious look at Sergeant Knight.  
‘Why doesn’t he come down?’ Yossarian exclaimed in despair. ‘Why does he keep going up?’
‘He’s probably afraid to come down,’ Sergeant Knight answered, without moving his solemn gaze from McWatt’s solitary climbing airplane. ‘He knows what kind of trouble he’s in.’

And McWatt kept climbing higher and higher, nosing his droning airplane upward evenly in a slow, oval spiral that carried him far out over the water as he headed south and far in over the russet foothills when he had circled the landing field again and was flying north. He was soon up over five thousand feet. His engines were soft as whispers. A white parachute popped open suddenly in a surprising puff. A second parachute popped open a few minutes later and coasted down, like the first, directly in toward the clearing of the landing strip. There was no motion on the ground. The plane continued south for thirty seconds more, following the same pattern, familiar and predictable now, and McWatt lifted a wing and banked gracefully around into his turn.  
‘Two more to go,’ said Sergeant Knight. ‘McWatt and Doc Daneeka.’  
‘I’m right here, Sergeant Knight,’ Doc Daneeka told him plaintively. ‘I’m not in the plane.’  
‘Why don’t they jump?’ Sergeant Knight asked, pleading aloud to himself. ‘Why don’t they jump?’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ grieved Doc Daneeka, biting his lip. ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’

But Yossarian understood suddenly why McWatt wouldn’t jump, and went running uncontrollably down the whole length of the squadron after McWatt’s plane, waving his arms and shouting up at him imploringly to come down, McWatt, come down; but no one seemed to hear, certainly not McWatt, and a great, choking moan tore from Yossarian’s throat as McWatt turned again, dipped his wings once in salute, decided oh, well, what the hell, and flew into a mountain.  

Colonel Cathcart was so upset by the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt that he raised the missions to sixty-five.