I’ll admit, I was depressed since the week before Christmas. But I actually had a rather pleasant holiday this year. New Years is still in progress as I’m posting this from the library, under a time constraint because the library is going to close early for the holiday and my dad doesn’t like to spend a lot of time in libraries.
One of my mother’s gifts to me was a book of different prompts. This book, or journal, is really somewhat along the lines of the “Wreck This Book” variety, for it is creativity provoking. Some of the prompts are questionable, for they tell you to do crazy things, such as: “Use these pages as an umbrella in the rain, then write about your experience in the rain, yes, the pages will still be wet.”
There’s another one that says, “Get this page caught in a zipper.” Another one: “Smear some food, like peanut butter or chocolate, on this page and let it bake in the sun for four hours.” And another one says: “Run a tire, like a bicycle tire, over this page. Leave tire marks on this page.”
I thought this was not “Wreck This Journal”. It’s Piccadilly’s journal called “Rip it! Write it! Draw it! (192 pages of fun & creative tasks to complete)”. It does not say anywhere on the cover to ruin pages or the spine, or rub some red vegetables or strawberries to see if those foods turn white pages red. (Yes, that is one of the prompts in this book.)
My WTC best friend Tiffany gave me more loose leaf tea and a Doctor Who tag with “I (two hearts) DW” on it, which she got from Comic Con in New York. My boyfriend Anthony got me two things on my list, a new sparkly bubble umbrella (well, not sparkly, but the handle is partially transparent/ translucent) and a blue shirt with Captain America’s shield on it. And Kerensa… her Christmas present to me gave me the giggles, for it was probably the most expensive gift I’ve ever received this year other than my Kindle Fire, and I’d really rather not share on this post what she gave me because it’s crossing a more personal boundary.
I’m actually more scared to use the gift she gave me than just sharing it on the internet. But she did say, “You better use it because it will help you so much, so there.” So I guess I can’t exchange it or resell it at Spencer’s or any online store for that kind of thing. Guess I’ll have to find some way to use it.
She really should have gotten me a gift card to AC Moore or Barnes and Noble. This is embarrassing.
But I fully understand that my friends are chill and they’re all trying to help me relax. Tea is very relaxing, and to be honest in the last two or three weeks, I’ve been drinking 2-3 cups of that stuff a day just so I could relax, stay hydrated, or more importantly, stay warm. It is almost impossible to stay warm towards the end of December right now, for temperatures have already hit the average lows for January and February, two years ago. For all I know, 2018 is going to bring a cold, gray, bucket of suck a week early, and it has.
It is about 10 or 12 degrees outside at night as I’m writing this. Factor in the wind chill, and it is practically impossible to function without a heater in your house, unless you want hypothermia or pneumonia. I’m thinking that before February, the temperatures are going to dip in the negatives, below zero, and there will maybe be a blizzard.
I don’t like this. I really want to go to Hawaii. I’d even visit my uncle Gary in Florida right now.
But getting back to the subject of the title of this post, it’s nearly the end of the year, and I’m almost at the halfway mark to my 30s, and for some reason, I’ve gotten into reading Doctor Strange graphic novels.
They are cool. I liked the first two I’ve read. The third one, however, the first half of it was pretty good, but as soon as I started reading the “nightmare” part, I had to put that one down or at least skim through it. I also skimmed a little of Mr. Misery. The book I had to put down and send it immediately back to the library was Blood in the Aether.
The reason: too much gruesome graphics, too much nudity, too much vomiting and defecating… This was borderline Deadpool stuff that I did not expect in a character like Stephen Strange, who is an Avenger, by the way.
So why did they have to put a half naked woman with horns on her head, and then put Strange inside an evil beast’s digestive system, in this comic? Just talking about it twists my stomach in braids.
Some of it was good, though. I liked some of the artwork in the first two books, and I really liked the storyline. I especially loved the scenes in ‘the bar with no doors’, the bar that literally has no doors, in which Stephen walks through the wall to get a drink with his magic buddies, and never pays the bill.
Ha, like Mordo says, “The bill comes due.”
So I really don’t get how some Avengers comics can be really scary or gross with the graphics. Why do they have to be so… mature? Then again, I don’t want the characters to be “immature”, I do love really good stories, like Captain America: Civil War. Maybe that’s why I like the movies better than the comics.
Anthony’s also getting me into watching the DC game Arkham City. I did like Asylum a little, and he says the Arkham City game is maybe the best superhero game ever made. And yeah, Batman is cool.
That said, I’ve come up with some interesting ideas for Stephanie Strange’s story. I know it’s more of a fan fiction than anything, but maybe if I do get published, someone will give it a chance.
I’m thinking what I should do is publish my memoir first. I’ve already written about 23 essays about my experiences from being a second generation nerd, the daughter of two people who saw the original Star Wars in theatres in 1977, all the way up to now. It’s done. I can write no more on it. It’s ready.
The book of essays is called Save Gallifrey, which I named in part as a nod to the movie Free Enterprise and also as a tribute to my favorite Time Lord, the Doctor. It also includes an essay at the conclusion of the book, which does a little storytelling and sends a message to all people with my disability and others who have physical or mental disabilities, from my three stories in my blog series (located on the sidebar), Conversations with Mr. Midnight.
I guess it’s good timing that I’m pitching this because Peter has already left the show, and now we have a woman playing his part. (I’m still not happy about this. What are children going to think? You do know that bullying in schools will go out of control with young children and teens harping on other kids, telling them, “Doctor Who is gay, so you’re gay.” I don’t think the LGBT community likes this at all.)
But with my personal story, this is my last hope of getting my name out there. I need someone to help me tell my story. I’m hoping that the next agents I query in the upcoming new year will say, this is incredible and groundbreaking, and your story needs to get out there.
If I don’t do this, I don’t know how much hope I’ll have left.
-Lady in the Blue Box
I’m sorry this post is so long.
The Lady in the Blue Box 