Dear internet,

How are you?

I am fine.

I've been offline/offed for a while, but I'm slowly materializing again.

Sincerely yours,

Kafka

P.S. Check out this super pretentious HTMLGiant essay on me:

http://htmlgiant.com/random/kafka-t.....riendly-ghost/

I am not a friendly ghost. I don't even.

I have emerged from the swamps of academia with a shiny new degree and the whole summer ahead of me.

So, you know, I'm back on the internet.

Hi.

Like i do sometimes, I sort of fell off the interwebs for a few weeks. And I come back and I have like a gazillion journals and submissions to look at. And a lot of them are about Billy Mays.

I nuked the journals. So sorry if I missed anything earth-shaking in your life. I'm going to try to poke around through the art submissions, so don't be surprised if you get comments on rather old stuff.

I've been in a doodling mood, so I may upload some toothy or clanky things in the near future.

Lurve,
K.

Do you remember No Exit, the dystopian pulp serial I haven't updated in a year?

Well, I updated it. You can find Chapter 8 over in the gallery, along with more information about the reasons behind the hiatus and the sudden update.

I've been thinking about the good old characters of No Exit recently. I put a lot of thought into them, and it seems a shame to let them languish. I may try out my rusty doodling skills on a few of them.

I just completed my second full day of gainful summer employment. My feet hurt.

Last night I gave a miniature, drunken, angry rant about how I don't know what to do with my life. (Boohoohoo, I don't know what sort of grad school I should apply to, boohoo.) Last night I then proceeded to dream the following.

I was the leader of a gang of werewolves in rural Oregon. I had to fight bitterly to reach that position in the hierarchy. Snapsnapgrrrrr, ect. We hired ourselves out to farmers, herding sheep and goats and guarding illegal marijuana crops.

I think that's a pretty solid life plan right there.

I'm starting to fiddle with character illustrations again. As in illustrations of characters from the stories I wrote or am writing. Right now I'm on a superhero kick.

Also, why is Crispin Glover so incredibly insane? If you like rats, ladies in lingerie, and Hitler, you may like this music video in which he covers the song "Ben". Can you tell he directed it as well?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTKNahASSDI

Right-o. I finally remembered to edit the file of the experimental short prose piece "This Week In Science!" into a .txt so that it will show up within the FA browser. Hurrah.

So if you are one of those people who is a little too lazy to click on the "download this file" button, now you can go look at it.

But! It has nothing to do with furries. Unless you count semi-mechanical Soviet harpies.

Last night I went to a party at a co-op with a bunch of hippies. I wore a spotted dress and danced my ass off in a pitch-dark room.

Then things got strange.

I intended to go home at around 1 in the morning, but somehow I ended up wandering into another party across the street. Someone put a trench helmet on my head and I entered a state of drunk-vana, where all traces of social anxiety vanished and everything seemed beautiful and amusing.

Maybe it was just the helmet.

People kept tap-tap-tapping on it all throughout the night.

Which brings me to the following series of questions. Do you like military uniform/accessories? Do you own some? If so, do you know of any good quality, relatively inexpensive places to purchase them? Because I think I may finally have to take the plunge and move beyond my gas mask collection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mSE-Iy_tFY

Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Rotten. This makes me sad.

Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it!
I want to DE-STROY!

Thanks for the memories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8szRgIcYlY

Dear friends, readers, watchers, and former associates,

I'm sorry. Over the past year or so I dropped off the face of the interweb earth.

Various factors came together to cause my vanishing act. My academic workload picked up like whoa. Given that there's a good chance I'm going to attempt to make a living out of writing/teaching/academia, this was something I had to devote a lot of attention to. I also put down roots in my city. I engaged in activities. I met people I actually liked and wanted to be friends with. Basically, I had to become much more engaged in my physical reality than I had been in the past.

I am still writing a lot and doodling from time to time. Most of my written work right now is within the mainstream-to-slipstream range, with an eye towards actually publishable short fiction.

So why am I telling you this? Why should you care?

I've missed this community. I've missed the beautiful art and interesting people. So I'm inching back.

I probably won't be posting much of my own work, but I'd like to start commenting on yours again. I'll be around.

Fun Facts!

I turn 21 in a few months.

I'm still a filthy pervert.

I'm drinking gin.

So I've been wanting to get one of these for a long time.

http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Civil.....586&sr=8-2

I ordered a cheap one off of eBay, only to have the seller drop off the face of the earth without ever having sent me what I ordered. Very frustrating.

I eventually buckled down and decided to just buy it from Amazon.com. Because Amazon.com has never failed, me right?

I finally got my package yesterday. After ripping through the cardboard with glee, I discovered... that they had sent me the wrong model. I ordered the civilian model, and they sent me the M15.

http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-M15-M.....586&sr=8-3

Since I wanted this thing for aesthetic reasons (wall art, costumes) as opposed to actually warding of a bioterrorism attack, this is a big problem. I attempted to call them and complain, but a chipy little answering machine informed me that they weren't open until Monday. So I have to wait. And seethe in frustration.

The universe does not want me to have this gas mask.

Very, very busy. I'll probably be checking and responding to FA only on the weekends now. I don't have any actual content to post, so I'm just going to throw up a couple of vain snapshots to be obnoxious. ENJOY.

Also, character meme? I'm extremely lame.

1. What is your character's name?
Kafka. When asked for her full name, she responds with "Kafka Kafka Kafka".

2. What is your character's name in another language?
Her name is Czech, borrowed from a favorite author. It technically means "jackdaw".

3. How old is she/he?
Mid-twenties? She doesn't really keep track, and the regenerative properties of shape-shifting make her age oddly.

4. What is your character's race/species?
Technically just a freakish human mutant. Colloquially known as a werehyena or a bouda.

5. Do they have a crush?
Sometimes.

6. Do they have many friends?
Kafka has a certain monstrous charm and sometimes collects useful people while she's traveling. She's very migratory and doesn't have many permanent companions, however.

7. What planet is your character from?
Post-apocalyptic Earth. More of a "this is what people in the 50s thought would happen" post-apocalypse than a realistic one.

8. Does your character like to eat?
Of course.

9. What's her/his favorite food?
Bone marrow.

10. What's her/his favorite drink?
Bathtub-brewed rotgut.

11. Is your character annoying?
She has a tendency to start fights with little provocation. So, yes.

13. Is your character loved?
Possibly? This is a weird question.

14. Is your character hated?
By certain individuals, I'm sure.

15. Is she/he emo/goth?
Oh god no.

16. Is she/he straight, bisexual, or gay?
On a Kinsey Scale of 1-6, where 0 is exclusively heterosexual and 6 is exclusively homosexual, she would be a 1.

17. Is she/he a virgin?
Not so much.

18. Name 3 hobbies
Scavenging, traveling, fighting for fun and profit.

19. Is your character normal?
She's a little unusual, even by post-apocalyptic dystopia standards.

20. Is your character attractive?
If you like oogly hyenagrrl monsters with mohawks, yes. If not, no.

21. How does your character handle emotions?
Not well. Kafka has very poor impulse control.

22. Does your character have other forms?
Depending on her mood and the lunar cycle, she might look like a human, a freakish hyenagirl, a bipedal spotted hyena, or a slightly oversized quadruped spotted hyena.

23. Does your character overreact?
She's generally cautious in a survivalist sort of way.

24. Is your character a criminal?
It varies from town to town. Kafka generally takes on odd jobs based on their relative risks and rewards as opposed to their overall morality. So in one town she might be known as "the mutant girl who drove off the irradiated zombies" and in other town she might be known as "the mutant girl who staged a bloody coup".

25. Does your character go to school?
No, but she's managed become literate over the years and takes her efforts at self-education very seriously. She is very fond of books.

26. What's her/his IQ?
Kafka is above average intelligence, but often acts like a moron.

27. Does your character have a disease/curse?
She's got some funny genes and a tendency to turn into a spotted hyena around the full moon. She'd get somewhat offended if you referred to her condition as a "disease", however, and snootily claim to be better than you in the Darwinian scheme of things.

28. Is your character dead?
She's not dead yet! (Hahaha, Monty Python!) [is shot]

29. Does your character have a family?
Kafka grew up a parentless little street punk. She may have some half-siblings running around somewhere.

30. Has he/she encountered any tragic times in life?
Kafka's dealt with some tough situations, but they aren't particularly tragic relative to the state of the world she lives in.

31. What's the best time in your character's life?
Kafka is very happy when she gets included in caravans and gets to ride in an awesome truck/tank as opposed to walking across the wastes like a sad, sad loner.

32. If you could name 1 friend, which would you relate to your character?
What does that even mean? And is really so hard to type out the word "one"?

33. Is your character single?
Yes.

34. Has she/he developed any relationships?
Sometimes.

35. Does she/he have an element?
HYENA

36. Do you role-play your character?
Occasionally.

37. Do you write about your character?
Very rarely.

38. Does your character have a bad temper at times?
Har har yes.

39. Does your character get depressed?
Don't we all?

40. What's your characters favorite animal?
Dogs. Kafka usually has a dog of some sort wandering about with her. She always names her dogs, rather uncreatively, Dog.

41. Does your character have any fears?
Small enclosed spaces and giant insects. She's also very wary of babies.

42. Does your character have any weaknesses?
She has a strange allergy to silver.

43. Does your character look up to anyone?
Various people.

44. Does your character like music?
Oh yes. She'll thrashdance her little heart out.

45. What's your character's favorite type of music?
She likes to slooshy a little Ludwig Van.

46. Is she/he impatient?
She's big on instant gratification.

47. What's something funny about your character?
She had a really horrible hyena laugh. It's like, EEEHAWHEEHOOHEE.

48. Name 5 nicknames
Kevka, K, Spots McCoy, Our Lady of the Iron Jaw, oh shit its a hyena get in the car

49. Does your character curse?
Fuck yes.

50. This test is over, what does your character have to say?
"We're going down the road, towards tiny cities made of ashes. Gonna get dressed up in plastic, gonna shake hands with the masses."

I go back to the Northwest tomorrow. Then I have to furnish my first apartment as cheaply as I possibly can. Then I start my sophomore year of college. Exciting, but agonizing. I probably won't be on the interwebs that much for the next week or so.

In other news, I went to Forever 21 yesterday and bought a pair of shiny vinyl pumps with heels sharp enough to do serious damage. I love when fetish clothing crosses over into the mainstream and sells for under $20 dollars at trashy knock-off stores. Because if you go to an actual fetish/sex shop the clothing and accessories are so expensive that the prices make you want to gouge your eyes out. Possibly with the spiked heel you'd been coveting.

Question. Cinder blocks + surplus army stretcher = couch/bench? Discuss.

{Listening: "North American Scum" - LCD Soundsystem}
{Reading: Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse}
{Watching: Willard}

[Working On]

No Exit: Chapter 8
various non-furry short stories
visions

So. Yesterday I'd just about completed the 8th chapter of No Exit, saved it as a text file, and started another file containing of few short lines that popped into my head for chapter 9. Then I accidentally saved the file containing the two lines of chapter 9 over the nearly-finished file of chapter 8. Thus deleting chapter 8 from existence. Fuck.

I really don't feel like rewriting the whole thing. Does anyone know of a way that I could find and restore this file? If not, you all may have to wait for a bit while I slog through a rewrite of chapter 8.

I was stupid. I'm sorry.

But, look! I drew a vulture!

[ / end distraction ]

Many thanks to everyone who commented on No Exit recently. You helped kick me out of a rut. Now I'm working on the story again.

I recently watched David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Immediately after watching it, I felt kind of "eh". I love Twin Peaks, I found Eraserhead to be absorbing in a highly unpleasant way, but Blue Velvet didn't really get to me that much. Or so I thought. In reality, the film just took a long time to come on. It sort of seeped into my unconscious and then slowly came back to me. Since watching Blue Velvet, images, scenes and lines from the movie keep floating up into my head. I even downloaded Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" to listen to again and again and again.

In dreams I walk with you.

I found a coat today that made me very, very happy. I'll have to show it to you all.

I go back to the Northwest in two weeks. I am jumping out of my skin in extreme eagerness for this event.

I set up my electrical and internet services for my new place today. It made me feel very adult. I'm starting to look for apartment furnishings. Ikea looks promising, and I love that so many of their cheap things come in the color option of LIME GREEN.

And my roommate and I have agreed that at least one door of our place has to be decorated with pin-ups from vintage fetish magazines.

In other news, I'm sort of quitting smoking. Except for special occasions. I'm not sure what will qualify as a "special occasion" yet.

[ Working On ]

No Exit: Chapter 8
No Exit: A Brief History of the World (Generic science-defying post-apocalyptic dystopia, yes plz.)

Encyclopedia Dramatica ruined things for her.

So I went on Encyclopedia Dramatica last night in an attempt to finally understand the stupid sandwich meme. Which it explained to me, quite nicely. But then I got caught up in wiki quicksand and found myself sinking into the morass of ED's series of articles on FA and various drama-whoring artists.

So, have you ever enjoyed an artist's work, and then found out something along the lines of, "Hay I herd you liek to torture and kill small animals," and then couldn't really stand to look at their stuff any more?

Neither did I. Until, of course, last night.

Color me creeped out.

Anyway, in case you're wondering who is snarling in my current icon, it's Yelena Rossini, the filthy assistant from Warren Ellis' comic Transmetropolitan. I bear a startling resemblance to her when my hair gets grown out and shaggy.

[ Working On ]

completely non-furry short fiction in order to expand my "Hey, maybe I'll actually try to get this published" portfolio

So unproductive lately. Just working and sleeping and doodling and playing OMFG Fallout.

Q: Kafka, as a rabid fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, how could you have never played Fallout?

A: Because I never realized that I could steal it off the internet.

Despite the horribly outdated graphics, I can see why this consistently ranks as one of the top games of all time. I love how highly customizable and free form it is. Fallout Kafka is a wily little diplomat who, when empty threats and flirtation fails, sics her dog, thug, and ranger on her enemies or blasts them away with her Magnum. Good times.

Though I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed that my NPC party members, Tycho, who is described when using the "look" command as wearing a trenchcoat and a gas mask (retroactive Ghost reference, anyone?) does not have a character model which reflects that at all. Oh well. Nothing's perfect.

In other words, I'm bored as fuck and really eager to head back to school in a few weeks. I miss the Northwest and literary analysis and comforting clouds of pot smoke wafting over the quad.

[ Working On ]

aimless doodling

Hmm. I took a horribly elaborate Facebook application (PersonalDNA) personality test tonight. Funnily enough, it said that my personality is somewhat more masculine than feminine.

Not, of course, that I consider such a test to be super-accurate, but I guess the results are not so surprising. While I'm physically female and mentally self-identify as such, I've always considered myself to be a somewhat "masculine" female in personality in the sense that I'm rational, introverted, aggressive, dominant, ect.

I suppose it makes sense, then, that I prefer girly boys.

And that I identify with spotted hyenas and their topsy-turvy gender roles.

Gender concept is a funny thing. Any other thoughts on it?

[ Working On ]

No Exit: Chapter 8

Installment number 7 of No Exit is up if you're interested.

(I'm very fond of comments, even one-word, nonsensical comments. Just something to let me know that someone out there is reading this thing.)

I've started reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after waiting in a long line full of unsettling people last night in order to get a copy. Thus far I've been underwhelmed. J.K. Rowling is a lovely storyteller, but sometimes the quality of her prose can really grate on my nerves.

Also, I'm kinda sorta back on FurryMUCK again in an attempt to stave of boredom.

[ Working On ]

No Exit: Chapter 8

My computer cord melted, which left me unable to charge my computer, which separated me from my beloved interwebs for a while. But now I'm BACK. I'm sure you're super excited.

I was a little overwhelmed by the gazillion submissions sitting in my inbox, so I sort of just waved my hands around in a panic and did a desperate "select all, mark as read" maneuver. So, sorry if I don't comment on old submissions I missed.

My summer's been slow, but interesting. I work about 30 hours of a week in a kitchen, and then bum around New England on my days off visiting distant friends. I even spent an afternoon running around Massachusetts with  Somnambulist-Vulpine.

I also just got my application approved for a place to live when I go back to school in the fall. It's a pretty sweet two-bedroom thing that I'll be sharing with a good friend of mine and decorating with unusual thingies.

Vaguely working on No Exit, but not that hard.

Now that it's summer I actually get the chance to sleep in tune with my strange circadian rhythms. As a result, my dreams have been vivid and epic and I've been able to recall much more of them.

In a recent dream I had, I began to wake up and tried to avoid doing so. In an attempt to keep myself within the reality of the dream, I reached out to a character in my dream and began to touch them, as if reassuring myself of their existence. It's interesting how people tend to define reality through tactile stimulation. "Pinch me, I must be dreaming."

When I made this gesture, I was suddenly, acutely aware of the texture of things beneath my fingertips. In this case, the soft, smooth texture of a thin latex mask and the fuzzy contours of a felt fedora.

Later, when I thought about the dream, I realized that I don't usually notice the texture of things while dreaming. My dreams are intensely visual and emotional, but not particularly tactile. I started to analyze my sensory experience within my dreams. I don't appear to have much of a sense of touch except within the context of sexual dreams. I taste things in dreams, but I don't smell them. I only hear things that communicate something, or are part of the larger "plot" of the dream. Speech, screams, an appropriate musical soundtrack. No ambient noise that's not related to setting the mood of the landscape. I have a very strong "sixth sense" within my dreams, a sort of gut feeling. I pick up vibes from people and landscapes, I read thoughts, I have a sense of what's going to happen before it happens. Which makes sense, of course, since I'm just rattling around in my own head. Out of curiosity, do any of you have a similar sensory experience? What senses do you use the most in your dreams?

I also experience of lot of beautiful mash-ups in my mental landscapes. A childhood home transformed into a Great Gatsby style mansion. A junkyard beach. A college campus built around hobbit architecture. Cities emerging from concrete oceans and rivers of neverending highways.

What do you dream about? What are your dreams like? Tell me about them. Dreams are the golden road to the unconscious.

In other news, I finally got a job. I'm learning to be a line cook. It's going to be awesome.

Oh wow. I'm gone for a couple of weeks and I come back to, like, 136 new journals and things. You guys produce a lot of stuff come summertime, don't you? I'm going to attempt to try to look at everything, but I may not be up to snuff on my commenting.

I've got internet again and I should be around for the rest of the summer. I'll be a minimum wage slave this summer, though, so I won't just be sitting at my computer all day. I'm also working on a large-ish "real" (aka "completely unrelated to anthropomorphic animals" ) writing project, so I won't be putting up tons of stuff here. Just more than usual.

Anyway, new No Exit up in the gallery. Chapter 6! In which we take a quick tour through the various human neighborhoods of the city and get a whole lotta exposition. I'm so sick of defining the characters' environment. Next, on to actual plot!

[ Working On ]

a portrait of Jennie Bomb
vague No Exit storythings
making money

I'm now officially 1/4 of the way done with college.

Now I'll spend the next couple of weeks scrambling across state lines in a desperate hunt for lucrative summer employment. I'd prefer to work in a bookstore or movie rental place
(I'm _made_ to be a surly clerk), but it's more likely that I'll end up waitressing and then slowly kill my soul with false cheer.

Damn you, real world. Damn youuuu.

Luckily I have useful video media to instruct me in how to be a good employee. You know, if I want to sell cars in the 50s.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2jtHcbnDDos

[ Working On ]

No Exit: Chapter 6

Djarum Blacks + a hot pot full of yerba mate + turning off my WiFi = focus?

The end is near. I'll get around to commenting on / responding to stuff eventually.

[ Working On ]

exaaaams

If any of you guys have read The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, you should know that the movie version is coming out in the near future. They've created this interesting little promotional program that appears to be a daemon generator.

In the books, a "daemon" is a sort of externalized part of the soul that takes animal form. Sort of like an Id familiar. The daemon shape-changes while a child is young, and then settles into a permanent form that reflects his/her personality when the child goes through puberty.

The program asks you a series of questions and then gives you a daemon You can then either have the daemon or allow your friends to answer questions about your personality so that it shape-changes for 12 days before settling into a final form. I've already sent this around to my offline friends, and I'm curious to how people only exposed to my online persona view my personality. So here you go.

http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?23988

Feel free to use this thing yourself. It's just begging to be an FurAffinity meme.