Woke up with migraine, heart still in my stomach from all the News which clearly points to a genocide in the making, largely cheered on by major global powers and their news outlets.
Opened tab on my browser and Microsoft Edge front page—which aggregates news from across the web—is carouseling through the following headlines:
- Man DIYs concrete pathway that looks like old cobblestone.
- Why mortgage rates are still heading down despite rising bond yields
- It's Pumpkin Season in Miami!
- Hybrid Workers Spend an Average $51 a day when they go into office
- Gen Z buys a $200 plot of land in the middle of a desert: a grounding human experience
- How soon can I refinance my mortgage?
- I Went to a Dinner Party Full of Strangers. It taught me that the secret to avoiding loneliness isn't...
- So What's the most attractive accent according to Americans?
What fresh dystopia is this?
#journal
Between all the News and divorce stuff, I am finding it difficult to avoid depression. Days are a slog and progress on TSG pages are agonizingly slow. I did however manage to pump these out:
Decolonize Your Mind: A1 & B1
Was planning on writing my newsletter today, but could not find the time, energy, or peace of mind to do so.
#journal
Been a few days on this double-page spread from the next THE SOLAR GRID, and the end is still not very close in sight.
I like where it's headed, but I can probably spend the next couple of weeks fussing over the details that can go in the background. I think instead I'll cast it aside for now move on with the remainder of the chapter and come back to it when all other pages are at the very least roughed out. I tend to leave a lot of drawing for the inking stage anyway.
#work #TheSolarGrid #comix
After having had a second bike stolen in Houston—from inside my building of residence no less—I have decided to acquire a foldable commuter bike for my transportation needs, something I can carry up the stairs with relative ease and tuck away in one of the corners of my abode.
It's an adequately minimalist thing; single speed and breaks by pedaling backwards. No wires, no fuss. Considerably lightweight at 26 lbs (11.8 kg) and surprisingly comfy to ride. This is the Judd folding bike from Retrospec. I'm thinking of maybe replacing the straight handlebar with Dutch-style one for added riding comfort, knowing that it would no longer fold as well with the handlebar attached. But I think I may be able to live with that.
#journal
Still raining profusely. This throws a dent in my morning walk routine which doubles as my daily grocery run, and thus I am without food this morning.
Will have to resort to having stuff delivered, something I've been successful at avoiding for a time now. It's okay to make exceptions every now and again though.
Rain is my kryptonite. In fact, all weather conditions aside from temperate blue skies are my kryptonite. What can I say; I'm a spoiled child of the Mediterranean.
#journal
Comp copy of THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK arrived, and what a sight to behold it is. Obligatory glamor shots of the thing below, along with a look at the impressive table of contents and the opening page of my story, CRISPR Than You.
I quite like how they're categorized by theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jared's sub-intro for each section. A truly masterfully put-together collection that—at over 1100 pages—will take me quite a while to get through and most likely fuel years of inspiration in the process. Very humbling to be a part of.
#work #reads
It's been raining nonstop since sunrise.
Sunrise in this case being a misnomer because there has been no sight of sun at all, which depresses me to no end and catapults me to the deep ends of low-energy fatigue.
Will have to cook something nice and curl up with a book later.
#journal
Wrapped up thumbs on THE SOLAR GRID, Ch. 8 (#9) and started on pencils. Feels good. The 198th newsletter was sent out a few days ago, considering taking a different direction with the thing come #200. Perhaps something more column-like.
#journal #work
Bicycle thieves are the scum of the Earth.
#journal
“There’s no question that cyberpunk had a shockingly brief existence as a cohesive entity. Born out of science fiction’s new wave, literary postmodernism, and a perfect storm of external factors (Reaganism, cheap transistors, networked computing, and MTV), the genre cohered as a tangible, fungible thing in the early 1980s, most famously exemplified by the aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and the themes of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The term cyberpunk itself, as coined by Bruce Bethke, came into being in 1983. The neologism captured the zeitgeist: the potential of, and simultaneous disillusionment with, techno-capitalism on steroids.”
From Jared Shurin's excellent introduction to THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK in which I have a story called CRISPR Than You.
“Cyberpunk was born of the punk ethos. A genre that, in many ways, existed against a mainstream cultural and literary tradition, rather than for anything definable or substantive in its own right. This is, at least, an argument posited by those who believe the genre peaked—and died—with Bruce Sterling’s superb anthology Mirrorshades (1986). Accepted as the definitive presentation of cyberpunk, Sterling had pressed a Heisenbergian self-destruct button. Once it was a defined quality, cyberpunk could no longer continue in that form.
“Although this is a romantic theory (and cyberpunk is a romantic pursuit, despite—or perhaps because of—the leather and chrome), it is not one to which I personally subscribe. While collecting for this volume, I found that the engine of the genre was still spinning away, producing inventive and disruptive interpretations of the core cyberpunk themes through to the start of the next decade.”
I love Jared's intro a great deal. Read more at CrimeReads.
#reads