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donnerpartyofone · 5 years

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21 Questions

Tagged by @getoutofmyhouse who had oddly similar answers to mine

Nickname: only the one I use here, that I gave myself--Claire Donner, which has to do with my famous love of cannibalism. Claire is my real first name, though.

Zodiac: I am so very cuspy. I was born at about a quarter to midnight on April 20, so I tend to relate to, and feel insulted by, the suppositions about Aries and Taurus equally. I’m one of those jerks who will tell you astrology is a bunch of hoo ha...and then drone on with my Many Esoteric Ideas about it, so I’ll just stop myself right here.

Height: 5’ nuthin is what I prefer to say...because saying I’m 5 and 3/4′ sounds a little like saying I’m 10 and a half years old.

Amount of sleep: It’s all fucked up. Until I got into my 30s I could, and would prefer to, sleep endlessly. Now I go to bed around 10 (depression), get up around 5 or 6 (being old), and for extra fun, I’ve developed this insomnia that often keeps me up from about 2am-5am. I try make the most of it by getting up, getting high, watching a movie or two, writing...basically just having a secret private day by myself. I’d really rather go back to just sleeping constantly though.

Last movie I saw: I saw GRETA in theaters tonight, which was ok. I guess I thought any Neil Jordan film would be headier than this, but watching Isabel Huppert just running around acting like an absolute maniac is a rare treat! My last video experience was RAW, which I put on to bother my husband right when we got home from the theater. (I think he liked it more than I originally did, to my surprise)

Last thing I googled: The correct spelling of Sylvia Likens’ last name. I’m obsessed with this type of crime where a group of people (usually a family and/or some of their friends and neighbors) fall into some kind of shared hysteria where they protractedly torture to death an acquaintance for no particular reason. Some times there’s an element of mystery as to why the victim didn’t leave while they were still able to, which suggests to me that the murdered person was just as much a victim of the groupthink as the perpetrators. Other example victims include Suzanne Capper, Vera Jo Reigle, and I think to some degree Sophie Lionnet, James Bulger, and Junko Furuta. (Also a crime they briefly discuss in the book Lords of Chaos, where several people murder a friend in their trailer, but I can’t remember it specifically enough to look up the names--the other last thing i tried to google) I keep thinking there should be a psychiatric and/or legal term for this kind of crime, but I’ve never heard one, so let me know if you got one!

Favorite musician: I have trouble with questions that involve ranking anything, so I’ll just say that right now I’m listening to a lot of old White Zombie. I didn’t know anything about their origins as an East Village noise band, and I’m fascinated by the stories about how apocalyptically miserable it was to be in that group. I’m increasingly obsessed with people who work their asses off doing something they barely even enjoy, for what must be borderline spiritual reasons.

Song stuck in my head: Nothing right this second, for which I am very grateful. There’s something awful in my brain that causes me to wake up with some maddening, babyish tune stuck in my head more often than not. It is most frequently the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme. This is literally killing me.

Other blogs: @anhed-nia, which started as a dumping ground for long posts about mental illness, and turned into almost only movie writing. at some point there was just so much movie shit that i started to feel awkward about posting anything personal there again. i also got @getoffyrass which is a group blog, and a repository for images that make great drawing references. everyone is encouraged to post their drawings, too, although it is seldom used. i still like having it around, for when i have time to draw. my “real” drawing blog is @neveratendermoment but i don’t draw often enough anymore...

Do I get asks: i used to get tons! i really enjoy them, even the trolls to some degree. i must have seemed like more of a regular tumblr geek girl back in the day. also tumblr has just changed a lot since then. my blog was definitely a casualty of Best Stuff First, i think my follower count stopped dead forever right when that happened, and now that practically every single fucking thing on this entire site is either fandom shit or *discourse*, i really have nothing to offer tumblr anymore, anyway.

Blogs following: 1,057.

Lucky numbers: 2! Also 5.

What I’m wearing: black wool long john pants from Chrome, and a white v neck teeshirt with the words BLACK MAYONNAISE on it in black Rocky Horror font. i live near the notoriously toxic Gowanus Canal, and “black mayonnaise” is the actual term used to describe what’s on the bottom of it, by the scientists who are trying to figure out what to do with it.

Dream trip: i am really excited by travel, it’s hard to pick. i’m hopefully making a dream trip soon though: my father’s mysterious finno-swedish family is from the åland islands, and my husband and i will be planning part of our honeymoon there, whenever that happens.

Dream Job: i think about this a lot, because the older i get, the more i object to the entire concept of having to work to live. i’m into the whole universal basic income thing. i’m at this point where i can barely stand to think about capitalism in any way--like i think about how the need for money is so mortally serious that there’s a lot of physical stuff in the world that only exists because someone was scared of starving, tons of useless products and packaging and factory byproducts and all kinds of fucking straight up garbage that was only invented due to the lethality of poorness. i would rather be left totally alone forever if possible. however, if i HAD to do something and i COULD do anything, it would probably be film criticism. this fantasy takes place in a world where people care so much about what i have to say that i can make a career, not only out of movie writing, but out of only writing about the specific movies i want to write about, referring to nothing other than my personal reactions.

Favorite food: i wish the answer weren’t just “cheese”, but it probably is. also mushrooms. anything cinnamon. i’m a pretty adventurous eater though. the most important thing for me is a variety of flavors and textures.

Languages: english. i took several years of italian in junior high-high school, and did nothing with it. i taught myself to read french pretty fluently, but i would fold right up if someone tried to speak to me. i learned a bunch of swedish on duolingo, shoulda kept it up. i’ll get back to it! i really regret never learning spanish though, so i’m easily torn on what to do with my time.

Play any instruments: clarinet in junior high/high school, also alto sax which i did not enjoy at all, a little guitar. i bought a used electric bass last year that i have really been enjoying, but i feel a lot of guilt around not playing enough. so much of it is just strength training. that’s probably what i like about it, though. also i got a lot of electronic music software and midi controllers and stuff...and then i realized that it could take me months to sort through the thousands of samples i have to program this stuff, and i only got so far into it before i started to get discouraged. i need to get back to it, it’s ridiculous to let that stuff lie around. this is a rare example of me wishing i knew someone local to play with, who could speed me along on how everything works.

Favorite songs: another one of these impossible questions! anybody who is even reading this can probably guess the answers from the handful of music posts i reblog over and over and over. the other night i got all hyperactive and forced my husband to drop everything and listen to “buffalo stance” by nene cherry, which i never ever get sick of. real top contenders for favorite song might be “Stand By the Jamms” by the klf, and this recording, which has gotten me through many difficult hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8k1HsF3EvY

https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/sunray-sonic-boom-music-for-the-dreamachine-cd/STRAWB.003CD.html

Random fact: i’m sure i’m missing out on something really funny and cool, but for now it’s just the well-known fact that i read palms.

Describe yourself as aesthetic thing: man, how do i answer this without being totally pretentious? maybe nobody can! i’m coming up with something really hard to describe but it will be worth it. the other day i watched this insane, completely unnecessary movie about lorca and salvador dali (played by robert pattinson) as gay lovers. there’s a scene in it where lorca does that “pick a hand” thing to dali, and dali picks an empty hand. of course, they’re both poor students who couldn’t be buying any gifts, so they do this obnoxious pantomime where dali pretends lorca actually gave him something--but then it turns out that lorca really DOES have something. he opens his other hand and gives dali...SOMETHING. i don’t know what! they make such a big deal out of it, but what the hell? you see it for a second in this closeup, but it’s shot from like, behind and slightly underneath, and it is just unrecognizable. it’s sort of an orange blob? it’s probably meant to be a sculpture. but, i love the idea of doing the “pick a hand” thing to somebody, and the other person is just like...hey wait a minute, what the fuck even IS this??

it reminded me of one of the most amazing things anyone ever did at my school, bard college. this genius art student who I WISH I COULD NAME TO CREDIT HER did her senior project as this like...made up product. i saw them at the senior show, hanging off a spinner rack, like you’d see next to the register in the drug store. they were called Toilet Buddies. they were these plastic, brightly colored objects that looked like toys, but they didn’t have a familiar earthly shape, and because of the title, it was IMPOSSIBLE to imagine what to do with them. so, she gets the lipstick cam from the film department, and shoots this video of herself sneaking some Toilet Buddies into Walmart. then she takes them to the register and BUYS THEM--the baffled cashier looks for them for a while, and eventually just rings them up as a general grocery or something. then in part 2, the artist TAKES THEM BACK TO THE STORE WITH THE RECEIPT AND GETS A REFUND.

so anyway, i see myself as like a fake product--something that looks just familiar enough to exit, and that appears to have a designated purpose, but it’s just kind of cheap and foreign and it becomes nightmarish to try to imagine what to do with it.

I don’t know if anyone i know will want to do this, but i tag @negativepleasure @moviesludge @former-contender @dimestoreman @thefuzzydave @darkarfs @theoddsideofme @blueruins ...um, i don’t really know who would enjoy this. the ultimate would be @garbagenacht

#long post

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ftagn · 6 years

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@goddammit-bio yes i do.

I don’t know if you accept short story posts but I wrote this around 6 months ago and I thought this would be the most appropriate blog to tell about it. Let me know what you think, if you want to post it to your blog, ect. The paragraph structure is a bit screwed up because Tumblr doesn’t like paragraphs for some reason.

The Madman’s Tale

By Biohazard (@goddammit-bio)

I stared through the bars at the man in the cell adjacent to mine. He wore a dirty white shirt and filth-encrusted jeans, with no shoes to speak of. Dried mud dangled from his bedraggled hair and stained his arms and face. He was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, rocking back and forth, muttering to himself in unintelligible whispers. He looked like he had been unearthed from a swamp, and for a moment, I thought I saw a small brown frog leap from a fold in his pants. I listened as hard as I could over the soft drone of the air conditioner in the next room, but was unable to discern the sound of his voice from the background noise.He was either tremendously frightened or tremendously excited, judging from the way he sat, rocking, touching his fingertips to his cheeks and occasionally wheezing in exasperation.As I watched, he initially seemed to be licking the dirt from his fingers, but after several more minutes, I could see that he was just wetting them, so as to fashion the stains decorating his body into a makeshift ink. Failing this, he angrily chewed the tip of his finger, and drew on the dirty concrete floor in thin red smears. From the way he hunched over his work, I could not see what he was writing, and finally decided to confront him about it.“So what’s your story?” I asked, “You look like they pulled you out of a swamp.“He did not answer or respond in any way, so absorbed in his chewing and licking and drawing and occasional wheezing that I was unsure if he had heard me."Hey!” I spoke, this time a bit louder, “What are you doing over there?"Again, no response, unless one were to count him chewing open the tip of another finger. Being covered in filth with open wounds, I was sure he was going to get an infection of some sort within the next few hours, but that thought was irrelevant to my situation, and he clearly did not care in the slightest. I thought that making some conversation, even with the mentally unwell, would at least be more entertaining than picking blackened soot from my nose and under my nails. Evidently, I had been incorrect, and resigned to recline on the bench I was to use in lieu of a proper bed (a bench that was about two feet too short to accommodate my stature), and pass the time in unconsciousness.I had been dozing for what felt like an hour when I noted a suspicious silence in the room. There was no longer a whispering or giggling to be heard, and I thought that my roommate might be asleep. I turned my head and opened an eye to check, only to see the maniac sitting cross-legged at the edge of his cell, up against the bars, staring at me. I awoke fully with a start and stared back at him a moment. In silence, we locked eyes for seconds that ticked away like minutes. Finally, he spoke."You look like they pulled you out of an ashcan.” He mocked me. “Did you get caught in a fire?”“Eh.” I grunted in a tone that was neither affirmative nor negative. In reality, I had, in fact, been caught in a fire. More precisely, about twenty feet from a house fire, with a jerrycan by my side and a box of matches in my pocket. I had been so hypnotized by the leaping, roaring flames, that I had neglected my escape, and was swiftly arrested.“Have you seen the yellow sign?” He asked me.I looked at him a moment more, staring into his large, interrogative eyes. “Yellow sign?” I paused, “You mean…Like a yellow street sign?”“Not at all.” He replied, “Not simply a yellow sign, but The Yellow Sign!”“What do you mean ‘The Yellow Sign?’"He turned half away and pointed to where he had been sitting before, and the browning smear on the floor there. "That! The Yellow Sign! Have you seen it before?"I stood up and walked to the side of my cell, being sure to keep the lunatic at arm’s length, and peered at his floor. Indeed, among the clumps of dried mud and dusty shoe grit, he had drawn a symbol. It was three curved, almost spiraled, lines radiating outwards from a central dot in a loosely triangular fashion. At a glance, they seemed to be question marks, though they all were of different sizes and curvatures."No.” I told him, “What does it mean?"He responded to this slight intrigue with the tenacity of a scholar explaining his life’s study. "It is the mark of the king! The yellow king!” He stood, enraptured. “All who carry the sign in their hearts and minds shall be blessed and find themselves in the servitude of glory when he comes!"Bored still, and unable to resume my slumber, I entertained his psychosis. "When who comes?”“The king!” He repeated, more rancorous now. “The king in yellow! Usurped of his Carcosan throne by the gods worshiped by man today! Rightful heir to the universe and all those who dwell within it!” He paused quieting, “Royalty incarnate, a god among kings.” He paused again, this time continuing, perhaps to himself, in a whisper, “And they - we - will not stop until we have rebuilt Carcosa on the foundation of ruined minds…!”“I’d say you’re just about there, then.” I teased. “No, I have not seen The Yellow Sign, and I’ve never heard of this king in yellow or of whatever Carcosa is.”“Where.”“What?”“Carcosa. Carcosa is - was - a where. Not a what."I sat back on my bench. "And where, pray tell, is - was - Carcosa?"He turned away with the energy of a television preacher and raised his hands to the dimly lit ceiling. I expected vehemency on-par with that comparison, but he spoke softly, calmly, explaining from the beginning."Long…Long ago…Perhaps on Earth or perhaps somewhere else or…even in another dimension beyond man or else, there was a city: the city of Carcosa. A city grander than Paris or Rome or any that has ever existed before or since. It shone gold in the light of two suns as they set across the lake of Hali, adjoining the provinces of Hyades, Aldebaran, and Hastur. Each province was lorded over by a member of the royal family, Cassilda of Aldebaran, Camilla of Hyades, and Hastur of his self-named province. Together, these three parts made up the great city of Carcosa."He stopped, putting his arms down and staring down at the floor, at his handiwork, at the fly crawling across it, sampling it. I was about to interject when he continued. "Then…They were murdered.” He said, dejectedly, “Cassilda and Camilla, taken from their homes and slain."He turned on his heel and stormed to the bars separating us. "Assassinated! Murdered! Killed by your God!” He slammed his hands on the bars, then gripped and rattled them with all the strength he could muster. “The king was exiled! Banished from the kingdom that he graced all of existence with! You and your God!” He accused, pointing. “The one you worship! Murdered by the idol of millions across the world! The king never forgave your prophet…Or those who idolize such regicide! Never will!"He stared at me, breathing heavily, as I stared bat at him. I adjusted my position on the bench. "Go on.” I said.He stared a moment more, then turned away with a huff, pulling a dangling bit of mud from his hair. “There was a festival.” He continued, “To celebrate the new ruler of Carcosa. A masquerade, so splendid that nobody could recognize anybody else. The upper eschalon of Carcosa mingled with the lowest of the slum dwellers.”“A city grander than Paris or Rome had slums?” I interrupted.He wheeled around again. “Slums only by comparison, what you or I may yet call lavish beyond our wildest dreams! Such was the glory of Carcosa! Such was the glory of the king in yellow!” He continued, “The masquerade lasted days, years by our standard, for the immortal beings of that place. The people reveled, having forgotten their king in all forms but a parody of his final days in Carcosa, a play orchestrated by none other than…” He leered at me. “Your God…By the end, all the party-goers had been identified by one another, and normal life had all but resumed. All had unmasked but one, garbed in the tattered yellow rags like those of royal burial vestments, and a pallid white mask to complete the masquerade, made to look just like the face of the exiled king. He had been the star of the great, accursed play that mocked Hastur so…"He paused again, and took on an air of more talking to himself, rather than explaining to me."You, sir, should unmask.” He said in a higher-pitched, effeminate voice. “Indeed?” He responded in kind, in a masculine tone. “Indeed it’s time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.” Again, the feminine voice. Here, he stopped again, standing dramatically in contrapposto, then with a flourish of his arms, drawing aside an invisible hood, proclaimed in a calm, masculine voice. “I wear no mask.” His gestures changed to those of shock and of fear, hunching over and bringing his scabbed knuckles to his chin and turning aside to an invisible companion. “No mask?” He said again in the female voice, “No mask!"He turned back to me, himself once again, and continued. "The exiled king, once more upon the streets of glorious Carcosa, had returned to wreak his vengeance upon the denizens that had denounced him. Hastur raised his arms to the sky, where stars are but blackened pinpricks upon the endless dome, illuminated in amber by Carcosa’s twin suns, and the city was awash with a glimmering, blinding light, the Yellow Sign being inscribed in the clouds above the Carcosa. When sight had returned to the people, the stranger had gone, leaving only tatters of yellow fabric."He rested a moment from his story, pacing restlessly around his cell, wandering, wondering how he should word the next part of the fable. I will admit, I had been drawn into the banal, supernatural story, and enjoyed watching his mania from the safety of my steel cage."The city declined quickly after that day. Madness washed over the city like a plague, claiming the hearts and minds of Carcosa with every passing day. Those who had seen the play during the festival fell into obsessions, manias, psychoses, depressions, delusions, fits of all natures…And rightly so, as they all had seen the play, had all mocked the king that had brought them to the brink of Nirvana. Riots erupted across the city, suicides became a daily, almost mundane, predictable, occurrence. Those still in control of their faculties cried out for forgiveness. Sacrifices were made, songs were sang by the greatest performers in all of Hyades, but still, the plague continued, the prayers unanswered, the songs unheard. The streets that were not clotted with blood were shrouded with mists that seemed to take on a life of their own, gorging itself on the chaos that now flooded the city. The Yellow Sign was everywhere, scribed in blood, sewn onto clothes, decorating jewelry, cast aside in the gutters, worthless. Your God, always a coward, living in the shadows, fled, leaving the denizens to fend for themselves.” Here he became sullen, yet righteous, as if just having murdered a man to save another. “They all died. Died or fled or disappeared into the mists or the Lake of Hali or into the abysses of oblivion. Carcosa stood abandoned. Still stands today, in another time, another place."He became silent again, staring at the symbol on the floor, arms to his side, like a hanged man. I continued to watch him, wondering if perhaps he had lapsed into a catatonia. "Is that the end?” I asked, “What is the Yellow Sign today? What does it mean?"He did not look up or answer, just stared at the floor. Quietly, he recited, "Songs that the Hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the king, must die unheard in…dim Carcosa.” He looked up at me, his story ended. “He is coming.” He said, “Hastur the Unspeakable is coming for us. For me. For you…And your God.” He strode to the cell wall and gripped the bars again. “Upon this land of ruined minds, he shall rebuild his great kingdom. A city grander than Paris or Rome or even lost Carcosa.” He stared, then grinned with a wheeze. “It can’t be stopped! It’s going to be biblical!” He laughed aloud, with frightening intent, and finally he reiterated a question that I had expected, that I hoped I was prepared to answer.“I ask you again…Have you seen the Yellow Sign?”

#submission #long post

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