Wow, four weeks straight behind this desk, with maybe two or three days off in total. I haven’t been this productive in years. I’m kind of afraid to venture out of the house, though. That would be a funny thing to film for the local news, wouldn’t it? I’d be like that guy they have to winch out of his apartment with a crane: “LOCAL MORLOCK DRAGGED FROM HOME.” I’m sure I’d just get out the door, stumble around like a drunk and fall down in the street, which wouldn’t be very smart, or newsworthy—or maybe it would? “LOCAL MORLOCK RUN OVER BY BUS.”
There’s more stuff coming, too, which doesn’t bode well for seeing sunlight in October. I may just have to set up a bucket on a pulley with a long rope and dump candy on kids’ heads when they ring the doorbell on the 31st. I don’t have any idea of what’s happening in the Real World other than some asshole shooting up a school in Colorado, my government passing some kind of fascist bill in an effort to make people forget about Iraq, and that it’s week two of football season.
My beautiful bride is caught in this vortex of pain with me; between the two of us, we’ve averaged about eight hours of sleep collectively each night and gone through untold amounts of vodka to make it through crunch time. Mmmmm, delicious vodka. I now have empirical evidence which proves that I can sketch and code just as well at 1 AM with a vodka tonic than I can at 9 AM with a mug of coffee.
In happier news, I got a Big Fat Check on Thursday, which means we can afford the mortgage and they won’t repossess our kitchen appliances. Unfortunately, I have lots of other things that need attending as well, so I’m estimating a balance of about $3.42 left in my account on Monday when I’m done paying the Man. Rock and roll. We have a saying here at the Lockardugan Design Collective: “If I Could Just Get Paid.” This prefaces or follows pretty much anything else we say these days. e.g.:
“We wouldn’t have to hide in the basement from the bill collectors, if I could just get paid.”
“I’d go to the doctor and get this itch cleared up, if I could just get paid.”
“I could rationalize buying that extra bottle of wine so that we could drink ourselves into a stupor, if I could just get paid.”
“I’d win the War On Terror, if I could just get paid.”
“I could have kept Anna Nicole Smith’s kid alive, if I could just get paid.”
Seriously, our letter carrier, a nice, middle-aged woman who greets us with a smile but insists on putting the mail in the box even when we’re out standing on the front lawn in our underwear, is getting scared of the bloodshot freaks who scrabble at the box when she turns up the front walk. She’s probably seen Morlocks before, but I think we give her that spooky shop-teacher vibe—you know the one, who was really friendly but always smelled funny, looked weird and talked to his tools? Lord only knows what she tells the folks back at the Post Office about the shut-in cat people with the unmowed lawn.
Well, at least our house doesn’t smell like litterbox.