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Hands down, it would be the pale gent in the icon, better known as Dream of the Endless or The Sandman. GNeil has blogged about trying to get a Sandman movie done, but it seems to be stuck in a Goetic circle in the basement of a mansion belonging to some British Aleistair Crowley wannabe pre-production limbo.

I'd also like to see a live-action version of Yami no Matsuei, but that seems unlikely due to the relative size of the fandom and the fact that the manga has been hiatused for several years due to the creator's illness (though there's supposed to be a new side-story coming out next week, which could be a sign of things to come...)

I managed to get the lousy paperwork done this afternoon, after pulling in a busy six-hour shift. My nerves are a bit frayed from all that, and from some LJ-related difficulties that I'm really not comfortable discussing.

Notes from last night: My dad and I nipped up to Methuen again. He was trying to buy up some of the marked-down silk Christmas greenery to use in Christmas baskets next year, to help a buddy of his who has a small farm stand/garden center in Woburn, just whistling distance from where my dad works. I wanted to see if the Border's at the Loop Mall still had David Guinn's "The Autobiography of Santa Claus", since I tried getting it at the Barnes & Noble downtown, to no luck. Well, Border's didn't have it either, but they had the two volumes of the "Sandman Comics" that I was missing, namely "A Season of Mists" and "A Game of You", so I snatched those up. Merry Christmas to me!

And I had a lovely RP chat with crowdog66, in which we successfully ported Sieges into DegSep, and in which Lucien, the Merv's former secretary/love slave/personal dartboard, had an at-times fearful but mostly touching conversation with the One and the Opposite...

::Jacking into the MxO::

Wow, another fandom besides the three I've been rotating among!

Title: Twins in the Shadows
Day/Theme: September 26: Loneliness and desire
Series: The Sandman
Character/Pairing: Desire, Despair
Rating: PG-13

Note: Contains a non-blatant self-insert. Please don't hold it against me: the Endless go with everything.

( Twins in the Shadows )

And thus am feeling *much* better, now that I got three weeks' worth of emotional crud off my shoulders. Only catch is, I won't be seeing my therapist again for another four weeks, since she's on vacation, and then there's schedule conflicts the third week. I can manage in the meantime.

I know I've said I should stay away from Larry's Comics, but I nipped in to see if they had "Dead Boy Detectives", Jill Thompson's new manga-style "Sandman: Seasons of Mists" spin-off, which came out yesterday. Lo and behold, I walked in and practically put my hand on it. So, I got that and the August issue of "Hellblazer" (One extreme to the other: from kawaii to hellishly dark). They still had the Chibi!Death plushie, which was begging me with her big blue eyes to take her home... so I shook down my wallet and found the money for her. I'm letting my mother "confiscate" her for a few days, till Monday after the dental work, as a little incentive to .. I guess "keep my mouth shut" doesn't apply when you're trying to silence your whining over some dental work. That and the DVD of "Constantine" coming out Tuesday are my incentives/rewards for *not* grumbling. (I must sound like I'm disciplining/rewarding a child, but hey, I consider myself to be only a semi-adult, so I sometimes have to use parenting tactics when I'm dealing with myself.)

Some books had to be dropped off at the Tewksbury Library, so I hung around there a little while on the way home. They were giving away some used books, or "Beach Books" as they call them, thus I picked up a few: Brian Aldiss's "Helliconia Spring" (I like his short-story style, so I'm curious to see how he writes novels), Piers Anthony's "Killobyte" (a clever-looking novel dealing with VR games and diabetes... I've heard talk that Piers Anthony has a touch of Asperger's Syndrome, which makes me all the more curious to read his work), and the strategy guide/walk-through of a 1993 computer game, "King's Quest", which reads more like a novel than a strategy guide: makes me wanna find the software for the game, since I'm curious about computer games lately.

Just been hanging up birch branches over our porch light against any unwelcome faerie visitors (Or at least I *think* that's why we put them up: it's an old English tradition on the eve of St. John's Day), as well as listening to Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" music (I have *got* to find the complete recording of that...). And I added a new tradition: Reading "The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream", as collected in the third book of the trade paperbacks, "The Sandman: Dream Country". I think I even heard of an English Lit teacher using the comic in a unit study... and with good reason: Neil sure knows how to blend history and myth together.

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgot."

-- Dream, speaking in "The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream"

...So I'm looking for a window now.

I'm typing this at the library here in town: I've just been enquiring about getting a volunteer position helping out with the summer reading program for the kids department... No such luck: The children's librarian told me very politely that they take volunteers "only for large events like our Teddy Bears' Picnic", and that they have all the help they need for the smaller projects. Translation: We're trying to keep out the pedophiles, even if that means shutting out perfectly harmless decent people.( Rant cut for language. Don't click on this unless you know me very well.... )

So, my next step is to go to the Town Hall and see if they have any postings for job openings at the library. After I do a little shopping therapy downtown: I'm getting one of my birthday presents for myself, namely that set of "Sandman" figurines I saw at Larry's Comics a couple weeks back.

Edited at 9.34 p.m. to add: I forgot to add my "[ranting]" tags in the right places. Sorry about that, folks!

I've got another appointment with the nurse practitioner at Lahey Clinic coming up in two weeks, so since I had a free day, I thought I'd make a dry run on the Lahey Clinic/Burlington Mall bus route today. The way my brain works, I often have to make a dry run with some things so that I get an idea of what I'm dealing with. It makes it easier, since it'll familiarize me with the territory and I won't be getting baffled along the way....

I also discovered there's a comic book/sci-fi stuff store in Lowell, so I decided to figure out a bus route there... only to find out that the bus I was told would go down the street it's on, didn't go past the place. So, I ended up walking there, since it turned out to be within walking distance of the downtown area -- I just have to manuever crossing the streets, with an antiquated cross walk light one one corner, that doesn't look like it works; and another, much newer one that yaps at you when you press the button. I know it's for the visually impaired, but it still scared the bejeebers out of me when I pressed the button and the thing said something like "It Is UnSafe To Cross. Please Wait", and then started ticking at me like a bomb on a timer!

But the trip was well worth the bus and traffic light shenanigans: I found the last two "Sandman" compilations, which I snapped up. I almost got "Death: The High Cost of Living" and the latest issue of "Hellblazer", but I was a leetle bit short on cash. Next time! ... I see myself nipping in there at least once a month from this point onwards.

That wierd headache/leg-cramp/tailbone-ache combo nearly floored me at work today, but I managed to ge through my shift. Fortunately, I mostly did overstocking, or "unshopping", as my dad calls it (I like my dad's term for it better!)... but even *that* had pitfalls, since the store was crowded and people kept bumping into me/my carriage with their carriages, including "the Kamikaze Kid", as I was calling this 12 year old hellion who seemed to think it was "kool" try hitting me with his "kart" after he almost baffed me accidently the first time. Two more near-misses, kiddo, and I start to wonder if you have a death wish against me...

((Now wracking my brains for the funny line in Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens", involving "shopping trolleys", which would make a great transition...))

My latest order from Amazon.com showed up in the mail (along with a *huge* pile of letters and packages for my mom, so the mailbox was pretty crammed...): Last week, I'd ordered Max Allen Collins's "On the Road to Perdition: Detour", as well as "The Sandman 8: World's End". I just finished reading "World's End", and I'm about to re-read it (I was going into Sandman withdrawal...).

Also went to the library with my folks: I renewed The Damned Book, since I'm still re-reading it ::Kicks Marie-Suzette -- Sorry!!! -- Sophie Neveu's derriere:: I also found the latest mini-volume in the "Princess Diaries" series "The Princess Present". I used to like this series, but since Mia and Michael hitched up, it's been nothing but wall-to-wall snoogie-oogie crap. Teen snoogie-oogie crap. Which is the worst kind. I keep hoping it gets better... But I'm tempted to write a kind of "elsewhere" fanfiction crossover featuring the Royal Family I created for the "PHUTURE" campaign for the "A.I." RPG. I wonder how Mia would react to getting ogled by a guy who's shorter than her... and who also ogles her boyfriend. Half of the de Meroveque clan is nothing if not frank about their sexuality.... I also managed to get my hands on a copy of Neil Gaiman's "The Wolves in the Walls", which my friend Mark has read and reccommended. Sure, it's a kid book, but Neil wrote it! (I couldn't find his "The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Fish", but I'll look in Lowell tomorrow)

And oh yes... website work tomorrow: someone sent me a fanfic for posting on the AIFFOA, but I'll have to read it on the CyberCafe comps since my word processor is gagging on their file. Plus, I have to remove a couple dead links... ::sighs:: A webmaster's work is never done...

LAST FRIDAY -- Went to First Friday devotions at St. Joseph's in Lowell. I also found a minute to print out a few emails and to nip into the Barnes & Noble to buy Carl Olson and Sandra Meisel's "The Da Vinci Hoax", a book written from a Catholic POV that unravels the snarled-up history and mythology in the infamous "Da Vinci Code" novel, as well as exploding the anti-Catholic canards that fill the book.

TODAY -- Not very eventful, except that I went to work and my dad has gone down to Hershey, PA for the antique car show... He's going for just the one day, he'll be driving back tomorrow afternoon. Part of me wishes I was going, but I gotta work and pay off the money I owe myself for the sci-fi convention....

( New LJ icon )