Officially done with Instagram for good, which I first joined 12 years ago, severing the last of my ties with social media. Facebook was the first to go a few years back, followed by Tumblr, and then Twitter.
My online presence will now henceforth be limited entirely to ganzeer.com, the Restricted Frequency newsletter, Restricted Academy forum, and this here blog: ganzeer.today.
This may or may not be the start of a transitional decade to my later recluse years.
Terrible migraine this morning, and much on the docket:
1) Photograph the entirety of PROJECT OLDBOOK. 2) Ink TSG page. 3) Work on two book covers.
Will also need to bake a fresh batch of granola this morning because I'm out. Pretty big project fell through the other day, which clears up a good chunk of the remainder of the year. Good for getting on with TSG, but less than ideal on the financial end of things. May have to finally part with some original TSG pages, something I've managed to avoid thus far. All of them, over 300 to date, still in my possession.
Passed out almost immediately after child was picked up by his mother yesterday, leaving much laundry, dishes, and other messes to deal with this Monday. Not an ideal way to start the work week. Managed to ink a page of TSG nonetheless. On the second-to-last chapter as we speak. In that so-close-yet-so-far stage of finally completing the book.
Went to see Garland's CIVIL WAR not once, but twice. It is very, very good. Some of its flaws are rather noticeable the second time around, but it is still very good, very powerful. Manages to suggest a great deal despite a rather simple, straightforward plot. Something I oughtta learn to do myself sometime.
Gray stormy morning, squirrels huddled on my windowsill. 10:10 AM feels like 7:00. Generic lo-fi beats from a Spotify playlist called Focus Flow make up this morning's soundtrack. Half-inked TSG pages on my drawing table, hot Americano on my side-table, Columbian dark roast.
Today's docket: 1) Put next week's pipeline up on the pegboard. 2) Ink 1-2 TSG pages. 3) Update Garage.Ganzeer. 4) Draft newsletter.
Also some domestic stuff: – Laundry – Dishes – Cook dinner – Pickup child from daycare – Plan activities with him for the weekend ahead—which can be a bit of a challenge.
Finished PROJECT OLDBOOK and went out to unwind with a friend afterwards, only to lose my wallet.
Not my week, is it?
Pushing newsletter to next week.
Edit: Boy am I one lucky bastard. I was this close to filing a police report for stolen wallet (and all the contents within including state ID, social security card, multiple credit cards, and more), but decided to first check with last night's establishment a second time. Nothing in their lost and found drawer, but lo and behold I found the damn wallet myself waiting for me under the table I was sat at. The weight of a thousand worlds lifted off my shoulders, and I am suddenly far less depressed than I was when I awoke this morning.
It seems that at least once a year, Houston is struck by a freak weather incident that completely disrupts its power grid. Last couple of years we got “winter freezes” that lasted between 1-3 days each, and just a few days ago it was a tornado and accompanying storm, which only really lasted an hour at most. Was out with my kid when it happened (only received an alert on my phone just when winds were starting to pick up) and managed to shelter at a restaurant. Damage around my neck of the woods hasn't been too bad, but my street has been without power for several days now, which has turned my home into a far from habitable hellbox. Flashes from the opening heatwave scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's MINISTRY OF THE FUTURE strobed in my mind's eye in my first night of overheated delirium, house walls practically incandescent despite all the doors and windows I had wide open throughout the night (windows that were sealed shut until I had the landlord practically break them open upon signing the lease), which invited swarms of mosquitos I attempted to battle off my child's perspiring flesh. Power is still absent, and I have since sought refuge elsewhere.
It really wouldn't be all that bad if temperatures within the house matched temperatures outside. The problem arises from it rising to 10+ degrees hotter in the summer, 10 degrees cooler in winter. A basic failure of architecture, of habitat-construction. We'd be much better off living in caves at this point. But this is the nature of the vast majority real estate development in capitalist America: boxes built out of chip-wood, marketed as luxury dwellings because of all the amenities: central air, washer/dryer, open kitchen, microwave/dishwasher, and all the things that mean fuck all when the power is down.
It's hard not to foresee what the “end of civilization” will look like with each one of these freak weather events. And this one wasn't even that bad, a mere one-hour storm. How will the system withstand a storm that lasts multiple days on end? Throw in a new global pandemic that strains the healthcare system, an overstretched military apparatus, along with political upheaval, and you have a darn good recipe for complete collapse.
34 pages left on PROJECT OLDBOOK, after which I'm sure I'll come out the other end completely transformed. Can already feel my brain getting rewired.
“It is to Cubism that the next serious innovators are bound to return.” – John Berger, THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO
I feel this, in a sense, is very spot on. Not so much Cubism's aesthetic, as much as its intent.
Should've taken yesterday off. The image-conception part of my brain is on the verge of depletion. Could use a getaway, need to recharge, but too much to do.
Recent batch of Mythomatic orders fulfilled, groceries picked up, and coffee ingested. Time to work.
Whenever I see this kind of headline pop up, I always imagine how the US might react if China were conducting military drills with, say, Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico.
Couldn't get to sleep before 3am last night and was wide awake by 6:30am for no reason other than hatred from the gods of slumber or some shit.
I have a deep disdain for police procedurals, they all strike me as nothing more than blatant cop propaganda. But, for reasons entirely inexplicable, an idea for a procedural graphic novella set in the world of THE SOLAR GRID came to me in my hours of insomnia. Attractive to me only because it would be something that flipped the genre on its head and was instead about many other sociopolitical stuff, all while dismantling the notion of policing altogether. Policing as we know it anyway.
Gotta remember to jot notes down later.
More Mythomatic orders to fulfill today. There's been a clear uptick in international orders. In particular from the UK, France, and Mexico.
Have done fuck all for next newsletter. Was hoping to get some of that in today, but am too much of a zombie to muster any straight thoughts. Will have to get to it tomorrow, cutting it extra close.
