In a way, this sort of restrained, minimal diet is what I went through at the beginning of the month, both figuratively and literally. You know, I’ve always thought those plants were scary, but after learning that, the mystique is just gone…!
I was absolutely, entirely spent. I could handle listening to “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” about once a day, all the way through, and that was enough music for me. I could maybe read a few chapters of a book (I’ve been going through Borges’ short stories (Giovanni translations) for a while now), and that was enough reading for me. Anything else… hard to stomach. Like too many hands on a piano.
During that first weekend of the month, I was cleaning the house with my family. My parents usually know better than to let me pick the house cleaning music, as I have been banned from just about every speaker in the house: the guitar amplifier; the car aux; the living room TV; my phone speaker… I can’t even ring the doorbell anymore. And I’m only allowed to knock, quote, “with no rhythm”.
But! It was a beautiful Saturday morning, I was in the mood, and so I caught them off-guard. While my dad was looking in the direction I had just pointed my finger to, I went the opposite way and put on “Flash Gordon’s Ape” – to which my mom stopped loudly banging pots and pans in the kitchen to snipe at me, saying “That’s why the neighbors hate us!”. I told her to keep hitting the pans because it was sounding nice with the music.
Hate us? I’ve always figured that if the neighbours disliked us, if anything, it’d be because of my black smoke machine, or the vacuum cleaner loudener – I’m willing to admit the Glock was a bad idea too – but I guess this kind of music really is too much for most people. It’s like 55 years old… Well, what can you do? So I put on Marisa Monte instead, and got back to mopping and stomping the floor really hard.
That’s how I finally got back into other music, a whole week into the month.
At my job, man, pretty much everything exploded. I had a good thing going with my “barely work and slack off as much as you can” attitude, but then everyone decided to do the same thing, so I felt a bit disrespected and kept trying to one-up them. On Monday, I worked an entire shift with my eyes closed – my coworkers then worked with no monitors. By Wednesday, everyone was facing away from the computer and just typing on air – I did the entire shift outside, stationary, looking in through a window. I even tried my hand at getting maternity leave at one point, but let’s just say it didn’t work out and move on now. Go on. Move on. Read the next part.
By the end of the second week, everyone except me had gotten off for the month due to “hidden chickenpox”. I also wanted an easy way out, but I had already used that excuse before – and so I did the next best thing and went out in the street to try and get hit by a car.
As soon as I saw the first car approach, I ran into the street. Unfortunately, the driver must have thought I was trying to do an insurance scam or something… I’m saying this because he gently braked, got out of his car and then shot me. With a gun. I thought that was the end of it, but then he started punching and kicking me too. He even managed to get a bodyslam in, but the light turned green and he had to get back to his car. I hadn’t realized that the light was red when I got there.
And since my job is all computer work, I still had to clock in anyway – from home. Damn.
All this black smoke is making me feel sick…
We have some short and sweet zona.plankton news this month…!
Memórias da Lua Cheia • listen
This is my friend Hasp’s latest record. It translates into English as “Full Moon Memories”. We’ve tripled our efforts since his debut album – I really gave it my all, to mix and develop these songs to their fullest potential… “Interlúdio (Memórias)” was produced by yours truly after Hasp sent me the ambient sample loop featured in the song. I ended up photographing the album cover too (special thank you to our friend G. for lending his place). This is a project that I’m going to have a lot of fond memories over… and obviously, endless thanks to Hasp for trusting me with all these parts. I’m excited for what will come next.
We’ve done artwork with lyrics for all the tracks – you can check all of these out on the book reader already; the link itself is on the downloads page.
It will be coming out in a few hours, at midnight (BRT), November 1st, 2025. Please check it out!
Ah, I can’t sleep… It’s 2:48AM. It seems later than it actually is. My cat Juliet is sleeping at the edge of the bed. She’s so cute… I hate that. I hate when things are cute. Why aren’t you normal?
I’m leaving for work in about 2 hours. My laptop’s ukagaka is staring at me with a weird intensity. What is it?! Before I head off to the battlefield, all I wanna say is…
How were you this past month?
It’s about damn time I changed my life around: eating hardtack; skipping sleep every other day; becoming sumo strong… The last one is a lie (so far). I’ve spent so many countless late nights alone, talking to my bedroom window and commiserating… “I’m surrounded by walls too, you know. Emotional ones”. Lately, I just sit next to it and write random stuff in silence.
I feel like all of my concentrated efforts in the past few years have, unbeknownst to me, rolled into this invisible katamari ball… It took me the longest time to notice it chugging alongside me, but thankfully, I was chipper enough to grab onto it in my sleep. I’m not sure when, exactly – maybe I had dreamt about it beforehand – but all I know is I woke up feeling it one day, and this is the ride I’m going to go on now. And ride along I did, damn it, when, for the entirety of October’s last weekend, I got embarrassingly drunk and just sank in bed. One last rest… for the good memories.
I’ve started to work on The Project (which I glossed over in chipy’s interview), as I’m going to call it until it’s out, with the appropriate intensity very recently – “within the past 40 days” recently – and I’m in the midst of it all. It’s like the greatest rollercoaster ever made, but you get stabbed a few times while on it, people break bottles over your head and your parents keep telling you how disappointed they are. I’ve been worried about getting all of it done before my deadline. “No time for slacking off”, I say. That’s a thing I say now that I can’t be slacking off, you know? Nonetheless, I can’t remember the last time I loved doing something this much. I can feel how alive I am. And how hungry… in the metaphorical sense, this time.
On a similar note, I’ve also been getting my ass kicked by a comic. Honestly, I never realized how lackluster my drawing abilities were until I began actually PP’ing (Planning & Paneling) this one. It’s been a good test and figuring it out is incredibly rewarding, but it truly shocked me. I feel like a dunderhead. It’s in a sort of different style than my usual thing. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying, hehe (〃＞＿＜;〃) It’ll be out pretty soon, and I hope it comes out good.
I don’t want to abuse your goodwill, but I would greatly appreciate it if you just believed in me for these last few months of the year. What that entails, I’m not sure, and you don’t even have to tell me you’re doing it – somehow, I’ll know.
This was the most intensive month of my life. I recently read back a few of the posts from earlier this year and this line from January’s post made me laugh:
…which I definitely do. But I also want to see how much more I can take… as far as sheer effort goes, October takes the cake (so far). If finishing projects is at all analogous with giving birth like stupid people say it is, then I’m a big bitch right now… with a litter of puppies. I think that’s called a dam. Hey, it’s only two more months and then you’ll get rid of me.
Happy Halloween – I’ll see you soon, and I hope you have the most beautiful November! Thank you very much!!
P.S. Everyone, please wish a happy birthday to my friend Pablo. It was on the 27th, but it counts!
Signed, with love,
noo.dll__〆(￣ー￣ )
see ya!
