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Yes, you've seen (variations of / upon) this post before, once last night, once this morning, and now here, at morning's end; third time's a charm especially when a.) I find that I do, indeed, like writing these throughout the morning and b.) to arrive all the way back to how I started this experiment last week so I can kick myself in the ass.

One of those days, already.

Recovery from a rough night with NuHerbie (hence this morning's shittier-than-usual Attendance Card; I've been awake since 0300) continues. Went out of CGM range at around 0100, then stayed out of range, but NH was still pumping insulin – doing it so well in fact that when I finally made the decision to get up and figure WTF, I was, according to fingerprick and my blood, a teetering 56: nothing that 15g of carbs via gel and a handful of caramel popcorn (ok that was probably stupid but fuck me I was hungry) couldn't assuage and send me surging to 264 by breakfast, crashing back to 56 post-run, and now, after correcting via similar methods to the early morning, 241, 225, 202, 196...)

The definition of insanity being / welcome to day-to-day T1D.

Thinking: once MainFictionThing is done, I need to abandon all ideas from before my grandfather died and write from a zero point; a deepening conflict between the writer that started this FictionThing and the writer that's (allegedly) finishing it – though I am taking one final hail mary to see if that does the trick. Whether or not I get there is another matter: everything we create is, after all, a reflection of our past, present, and future – for better or for worse / consciously or un–.

The day / one of those days(?) awaits.

corpsicle

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Fantastic read via Polygon on how Issa López and crew made the show’s already-legendary ice-rink thawing corpsicle. Found this bit, on the influences behind it, of particular interest:

Among the influences they ultimately pulled in: 

  • “A shrunken head where the skin has started to pull back and reveal this mouth that’s been dislocated or disjointed” (a work by Phil Hale, a López suggestion)
  • Berlinde De Bruyckere, a Belgian artist who sculpts “really violent sections that you have cutaways through, and you can see this kind of skin draped and stretched, and you’re not quite sure whether it’s part of a body you’re looking at” 
  • Ringu — specifically “a reveal where they open a cupboard” (if you know, you know) 
  • The eternal anguish of Francis Bacon (the painter, not the lord chancellor of Britain)
  • A photograph of a baroque underwater dance to lend the whole thing a “sense of movement,” as if this pile of bodies was merely paused in panic."
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Eyelash-freezer of a run this morning (morning run for the weekends: makes things a little easier married-schedule-wise (and gives my upper half a couple of days off; might do the same mid-week, will see) but makes things a little harder "oh shit it's cold"-wise) in untrammeled cemetery snow powder: pleasant to look at and conceptually pleasant, but reality is, as ever, possessed of other ideas. Four miles.

Similarly struggling with even the newsletter this morning: words aren't coming and I'm beginning to think that my attempts at a third workblock have, no matter how much I've enjoyed adding it in the afternoon – and being able to add it in the afternoon – left me with only fumes to work with the next day. Won't deny that the breakthrough the other afternoon was nice – haven't felt it, the creative equivalent of an orgasm, in longer than I care to admit – but it's useless unless I'm able to think clearly enough to expand and build on it the next day. Better, I think, to find something else to fill those postprandial/post-run hours and let the pieces and fragments stew in the afternoon miasma of IDK.

Also struggling with newsletter formatting and rendering: seriously, WTF Buttondown? Something's amiss…

ECHO (2024)

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Favorite Marvel series since WANDAVISION: fantastic performances all around, especially from Alaqua Cox and D'Onofrio whose father/daughter dynamic proved particularly affecting. Wears its TV-MA proudly, especially in the first few episodes (the DD fight was solid), but waters things down (Skateland being its last great action moment) by the end of its brisk five-episode run. Ending elicited a solid cheer, but given its earlier penchant for gritty, weighty action, I'd hoped for something to rival the DD/Fisk throwdown at the end of Netflix's first (and still best series of Marvel TV) season of DAREDEVIL: there was room for it – emotionally (even more so than DD, TBH) and run-time wise (36 minutes for the final episode seemed a bit too brisk), certainly. Wouldn't have diluted the power of the denouement. That being said, hope we get more: Alaqua Cox's Maya is, by far, my favorite addition to the Marvel pantheon in the D+ era.

echo still: maya kicks ass