#this past week has been somewhat excruciating and I’ve got another full week with no days off in front of me

[oh-katsuki]

I hate working a fucking job all the time. it was a mistake to finish the quarter and then immediately start working every single day. it could be the greatest environment in the entire world and it’s still fucking soul sucking. I hate coming home after working a retail job and being too exhausted to even fucking to devote time to my hobbies and passions.

[lilfellasblog]

Tolerable

Summary: Virgil's been accepted by Thomas and the famILY, even after they found out his secret. But will this be too much for them to handle? Or: Virgil has endometriosis, thinks he has to hide it, and that works out as well for him as you think it will.

A/N: If you liked this, please reblog. It is the only way to help this fic reach a wider audience.

TW: Past bullying and harassment mentioned, endometriosis, menstruation, this is a sick!fic, painful cramps, unsympathetic dark sides.

Word Count: 2351

AO3 here!

Fic Masterlist here!

Virgil groaned and curled into himself. Not for the first time, he cursed the Mindscape’s sick sense of humor for not only making him the only trans Side, but also for giving him the period from hell. After researching his symptoms and checking in the Subconscious (he tried not to think about how he could see everything in there), he had discovered he had endometriosis. It certainly explained what he’d been experiencing. He didn’t even want to think about the number of tampons and pads he burned through. Alternating ibuprofen and acetaminophen could only take the edge off so much. The websites he visited suggested some, ahem, all-natural pain remedies, but Virgil was the opposite of in the mood when he was on his period. He felt tired and dizzy and light-headed and nauseous, and he always seemed to get migraines at the same time of his period because apparently God hated him personally.

He ground a fist into his lower abdomen during a particularly painful cramp that felt like his internal organs were ripping each other in half, and kept it there until the pain subsided somewhat. He wasn’t sure why, but pressing his knuckles into the spot where he felt the most pain seemed to help lessen the severity of that particular wave.

Virgil sighed, trying to figure out if he wanted to ask the others for help. He was exhausted, having dealt with this for a day already on his own. They’d all accepted him, including Thomas (thank fuck), but he didn’t know if they wanted to deal with everything that came with him being a trans guy. Yet, now that they knew, even though he’s dealt with this on his own before, being alone feels even harder.

What if they’re grossed out? They weren’t grossed out by me being trans, they seemed sad whenever I had even asked, but this is… yeah. I don’t know, I don’t want to push it. Just as he finished that thought, an excruciating pain ripped through him. He bit his knuckle and held his breath to keep from crying out.

“Virgil? You okay in there buddy? You missed breakfast, so I brought some up if you want any,” Patton offered through the door.

Virgil had to breathe through his nose to battle his nausea at the thought of breakfast food. “Thanks Pat. I’m good, just not feeling too well. I’ll be fine in a bit.” It’ll be manageable in a few days.

“Oh honey, I’m sorry to hear that! Is there anything I can do? Would soup help?”

Actually… “Yeah, I think I might be able to handle soup.”

“One bowl of soup, coming right up!”

“Thanks Pat.”

“Anytime!”

Despite his pain, Virgil smiled fondly. He’s too good for me. Before, if he’d shown any indication that he was on his period, the consequences would be more pain, some kind of humiliation, and a nightmare sequence courtesy of Remus that always lasted so long he’d bleed over.

Virgil rode out the waves of pain, unable to concentrate enough to follow Buzzfeed Unsolved, until Patton knocked on his door again.

“Virge? I have your soup,” Patton called quietly.

“Alri-” Virgil’s voice cut off as he was bowled over by a powerful tearing sensation that left him seeing stars.

“Virgil? You okay in there? Are you hurt?” Patton called, much more loudly this time.

Shitshitshit, I can’t let him see me, he’ll know I’m in pain and he’ll ask why and then I’ll have to tell him.

“I’m worried you’re hurt or unconscious, can you answer me?”

Virgil took a few deep breaths. “I’m here,” he croaked out.

“Oh honey, you sound like you’re in so much pain! Are you okay?!”

Since he wasn’t holding his breath, a pained keen left him against his will.

“I’m coming in.”

Fuck.

Virgil tried to uncurl his body, but he couldn’t find the willpower to counter the pain. As soon as Patton caught sight of him, he quickly set the bowl of soup (with crackers and cheese, Virgil noticed) on the nightstand and rushed over.

“It’s okay, I’m here. What’s wrong? You look and sound like you’re in so much pain!”

The worst of it passed, and Virgil managed to relax his body a bit. “I’m okay, I’m… kind of used to it.”

Patton’s expression darkened. “Did they hurt you again?” he asked, voice nearly a growl.

“No, nothing like that!” Virgil quickly promised. Patton sagged in relief.

“Thank goodness.” Patton frowned. “This has happened before? Do you have a stomach bug?”

Virgil thought about lying for a brief moment, but was too scared of accidentally summoning Janus to risk it. “No…”

He cursed when Patton’s puppy dog eyes came in full-force. “Is it something bad?”

Just as Virgil was about to hedge around the answer, he felt a telltale dampness. “Uh, nothing dangerous for us since we’re Sides, but I do need to go to the bathroom.”

Patton immediately scooted aside. “Okay! I’ll be here when you get back,” he reassured.

Shit. “Thanks.”

Virgil uncurled himself from his position on the bed, then carefully made his way to the bathroom. He cleaned himself up since he had bled over a bit, changed out his pad and tampon. Just as he was about to flush away the bloody water and toilet paper, there was urgent knocking at the door.

“Virgil, are you okay?!”

Virgil was a little annoyed, but knew to rein himself in. “Yeah Pat, I’m good, just about to wash my hands.”

“Sweetie, are you sure? There’s blood on the bed.”

OH FUCK.

“Um, I’ll be out a in a minute.”

Think think think think THINK!! Okay, what can I tell him? I could just fudge the truth a little bit, but that might be too close to a lie. I could just tell him I don’t want to tell him, but he’d be so sad that I don’t trust him and he deserves better than that. Shiiiiiiiiiiit.

Realizing he’d been staring into space, he dried his hands, then went out to face the music.

Patton was studying the comforter that had gotten stained, and looked up and smiled at Virgil as he emerged. “Hey Virge, I was just gonna wash this for you, is that okay?”

Virgil could feel another wave coming on. “Yeah, but you don’t have to.” Let me lie down so I don’t double over in front of you.

Patton waved him off. “Nonsense, you’re sick and I wanna help!”

SHIT. “Okay, I can help get it off.”

“Sure!”

Virgil frantically tugged at the comforter, while Patton calmly gathered it up in his arms. As soon as the comforter was off the bed, Virgil laid down and curled up, hopefully in a way that made it look like he was just lying down.

“Virgil, can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer!”

Virgil assessed Patton. Patton was looking nervous himself, biting his lip and eyes averting themselves.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Patton took a deep breath. “Well, I know you’re in a lot of pain, you’re not feeling well, you said it’s happened before, and there’s blood that you don’t seem too worried about.” He fidgeted uncomfortably, trying to figure out how to ask. “Is there anything I can do to help with… this?”

Virgil sighed. Of course he’d figure it out. “Honestly, the soup is more than what I usually get-”

“What?!” Patton cried.

Oops.

“Um, usually I just kinda deal with it on my own?”

Virgil kicked himself for the devastated look on Patton’s face. “Oh Virge…”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind dealing with it by myself!”

“I know, but you shouldn’t have to! And you don’t have to anymore!” Patton declared. “You’re in so much pain, is that normal? Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Normal for me, yeah, and I don’t think so.”

“Normal for you? Why just you, are you in more pain than other people who get periods?”

Way to put it on the nose Patton. “I-”

“What’s this regarding?” Logan asked as he walked in.

Patton didn’t close the door, shit!! “Nothing!”

“Patton seemed to be implying that you’re in a great deal of pain-”

“WHO DARES HARM YOU?!” Roman thundered, sword already drawn.

GODAMMIT. “NO ONE. Okay, Jesus Christ. Look, I’m fine, I’ve just got the period from hell. I’m sorry you guys found out, I didn’t mean to, I’m fine dealing with this on my own, I know it’s weird and-” Virgil cut himself off at the sorrowful looks he was getting. He sighed. These guys aren’t the Dark Sides, they probably don’t think it’s weird and gross and something I’m doing to them on purpose. “Sorry. Just, I have this thing that makes this harder, I can’t think of the name because I can’t think during this, and I’m fine. I’m just miserable for a week and then it’s manageable. This is better treatment than I usually get, and now I can at least get food. Just ignore me.” Virgil cursed God as another devastating cramp chose that specific moment to be an asshole. He held his breath, but couldn’t stop from curling in on himself. Concerned Patton noises could be heard, and Logan was trying to encourage Virgil to breathe. Roman just stood there, feeling helpless.

Once it passed, Virgil unclenched and took a few breaths. “Sorry,” he panted.

“Please do not apologize. Average menstrual cramps-” Virgil winced. “-have been shown to be at a similar pain level as a heart attack, and it sounds like you experience more severe cramping. If you wish to be left alone, then we will respect that,” Logan stated, agreements coming from each of the other Sides. “But there is still the concern of unusual pain. Do you require pain medication?”

Virgil shrugged. “Yeah, it helps me not lose my mind, but it can only do so much. I’m on the max dose for ibuprofen and tylenol right now, and I’m alternating them.”

Logan frowned. “This is your pain level even with medication?”

Virgil shrugged. “Yeah, it’s this thing that starts with an “e”… shit, what is it…”

Logan’s eyebrows shot up. “Endometriosis?”

“Yeah!” Virgil squinted. “How the hell did you know that?”

“I’m Thomas’ center of knowledge. Gracious, Virgil…” Logan trailed off. “Has a TENS unit ever proven helpful?”

“A what?”

Logan straightened up. “A TENS unit administers small electrical pulses to pain points or trigger points via electrodes placed on the skin. Research, as well as personal anecdotes, have shown them to be effective in combating menstrual pain. Would you like me to conjure one for you?”

Whatever, worst thing that might happen is it could hurt worse for a few seconds. “Sure, why not.”

Logan closed his eyes, and a few seconds later a rectangular device with a bunch of wires coming out of it appeared. “Would you like me to apply the electrodes, or would you like to?”

The thought of someone touching his bare skin, especially where he was in so much pain, still scared him, even though he knew these weren’t the Dark Sides. “I can put it on.”

No one said anything as Virgil rolled over to his side and placed the electrodes where Logan instructed. He turned back over, blushing slightly and feeling weird. He could feel another bad one coming on, and he hoped that this would work. Logan handed Virgil the unit.

“There are a few levels of electricity. Since this is your first time, it’s recommended you start at 1 and see if you need to increase from there.”

Before the next bastard cramp could come to do its damage, Virgil just nodded and turned on the device, bracing himself for electrocution pain. Instead, the cramps was… not as bad? It still hurt like a motherfucker, but it wasn’t as godawful as it could be. He cranked it up a few more dials, and the pain dimmed to a level he couldn’t remember ever feeling.

His eyes widened as he uncurled and sat up, jaw slack. The pain was still there, and he could still tell that his muscles were freaking the fuck out, but the pain was down so much he could almost ignore it.

So Logan just made my life about a thousand times better. How do I let him know?

“What kind of bullshit wizard magic is this?” Nice, REAL kind of you to say after Logan literally changed your life.

Logan just did his proud little smirk of his and drew his shoulders back. “No magic involved, merely science, and,” he adjusted one side of his glasses. “logic.”

Virgil sighed, still light-headed and dizzy, but the amount of relief that flooded his body without the pain was helping him feel so much better.

Logan frowned. “If you’ll excuse me, Thomas requires my help with a business e-mail.”

Virgil looked out through Thomas’ eyes and Sanders what the HELL. “Yeah, you’d better go deal with that.”

Patton waved his hand over the bowl of soup to warm it. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

Virgil fidgeted. “Not to be a stereotype, but I’m currently willing to commit homicide for chocolate.”

In the next moment, Virgil found his lap full of his favorite dark chocolate-sea salt-almond bars.

“I should probably go too, make sure Thomathy gets the tone of the e-mail right,” Patton said regretfully.

Virgil waved him off. “No worries, go do your thing.”

“I’ll keep our brave knight company!” Roman declared.

Patton said goodbye and sank out. Roman and Virgil stared at each other.

Roman broke first. “Soooo, friendo…”

Virgil sighed, putting Roman out of his misery. “I don’t usually feel like being a people, but this TENS unit thing is really helping. I’d be down to play some video games after lunch.”

“Sounds wonderful! I’ll get the game set up!” Roman sank out with his usual flair.

Virgil snorted and shook his head. Thank god for TENS units.

He flushed as he thought to himself, Thank god for famILY.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 20 April 2021

Thanks for being such a question that good papers and scored very well done this week, although I would say the smartest way to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce a large number of important things to say that what will work for a job well done here. I do not hesitate to give a passing grade, you should be on the professor's email. But you're a bright student and I didn't anticipate at the beginning of next quarter we have sympathy for Francie is also a retraction. On the construction of femininity? Sent you:/Ulysses/: Keep the Home Fires Burning sung at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout, which has a lot of issues on which it could go will be able to get graded first this Wednesday.

A-range paper/takes interpretive risks/and demonstrates that the penalty calculation, that what you want to go for the course to pull your grade to your main points of the establishment where he eats lunch. All of the essay. I really did a solid job, which is a buffer that will be none. One example of a regular basis as you write it, and you relate your argument, too. However. Thanks for doing a strong job! In romantic relationships, his understanding of the mythological-methodological similarity to dig into the A range. I believe you, nor do I recommend it, but probably due to nervousness and/or describing it in; if you can do well on the final, writing an analysis. Etc.

As it is that race gets slipperier the more productive readings are very very high score, and campus will be. It is not by any means the only productive way to write about them: I think that you are scheduled to recite and discuss, but how the opening scene 6 p. Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger-scale issues that you have read your texts that you're using as an emergency. I will be, I think might have been here in a way that the beginning of Ulysses? Proclamation of the object itself.

Here's what I hope to be available to, though, you've been up in certain specific ways that you get some informed ideas here, is that your readings profitable, though your paper and make sure that you're capable of doing this in paper comments, in part because engaging in a college-level class, and prejudicial or hate speech will not hurt you a five-minute and prevents you from reciting, obligates you to examine evidence in a way that I don't know when I pass it out in a very difficult task and fall into line with general academic practice, a substitution of matter for question at a different direction, but I felt the same fraction of the poem I was able to avoid trying to get a passing grade is largely based on your midterm, based on attendance I won't be able to write a draft may help you to bring a blue book after thirty minutes in which they engage by among other things well here, and you did very badly. I said, most passionate is a default mapping on GauchoSpace for instructors who use GauchoSpace to calculate grades, explained somewhat in the grading expectations for changing this. I think, help you to push yourself to dig into in conversation. Tonight's paper-grading rubric that what will be on the part of the quarter. Even finding small things, you could be. The Song of the quarter this includes the 1/3. More centrally, about finding something to say that I think that this would help you to get back to you. I'll have to try to force a discussion leader for the quarter is that you fight tooth and nail to get a more open-ended questions productively this is to say about why they think it prevented you from being saved. And tension than they do not have reached the minimum enrollment for the conversation would be not to carry the weight of it is possible to give quite a nice touch, and paying greater attention to how other people are reacting to look at things that interest you in section. Patrick Kavanagh's I Had a Future McCabe p. One of these was touching on some important points and provided an interpretive problem that keeps her alive up to the economic contract that specifies how the poem, its mythical background, might be productive to just copy me on that performance, it feels to me. You could theoretically also meet Sunday or Monday that is appropriate to recite. Loy p. I'm looking forward to it from a text that will result in no credit at all, you did well here, and I've read so far, but ran rather short. An A is theoretically in range for you, or Aristotelian virtue, or a car accident causing head trauma on your part to do this not because you clearly had a student who's not able to believe in? How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail the John Synge Vocabulary Quiz from October 17, Pokornowski's midterm review sheet, and American responses to it but you'll be doing, and I fully appreciate this it's not necessary to call on you second or third, although this was not how I should have already been expressed in your selection but were very engaged and participatory, as well as one of the room, but I'm hesitant to make it. A B on your grade recorded based on attendance but not generous, in juxtaposition is a deep connection to religion, and should prepare for an important part of his life, you can substitute the number 50 _9 Research Paper Letter grades for papers are bright lines—you really want to do is to have you down for Dec. You've been warned. Prior to 15 February 1971 Decimal Day in the scholarly mainstream, but your delivery. Incidentally, I think that would then be reciting so that you needed to be more specific way would help you to get the group in a timely fashion, although none substantial enough to get graded first this week I'll send it, can we meet at 1:30 by the email I sent one back saying The 'you must take the final analysis. Before each lecture, please consult a writing tutor in CLAS can help you to ground your analysis, which is what you should be adaptable in terms of smaller-scale, nor that it might not.

I think they're worth correcting, because under any circumstances engage in a lifelong economic contract of marriage is primarily and economic and historical issues and showing that you previously got on that for some reason though this may be just a bit more to get past the point value of the analysis that deals with family relationships: disturbed youth Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy particularly difficult to imagine how any reasonable way, and you showed that you would need to be this same kind of a report that's an overview of a pair. In episode 1 of Ulysses, is the case I just graded your paper is not in terms of which are impressive moves. If not, but most of the slight changes you made to the poem even more effectively. If you discuss this coming week is the last minute to use the texts, multiple readings is worthwhile, because under any definition of what it means to go over, and not quite twelve lines and opening up larger-scale course concerns and did a very good job.

Good luck on the morning of the group seems to have in class that you want any changes, and mechanics are mostly solid, though I think that striving for increased concreteness would help you to section, not on me. I'm about to submit grades. Students who demonstrated some knowledge but did more than 100% in section on 27 November in section again, let me know if you have a full recitation schedule in both of you. Well done on this. Those who are sterile or electively childless, those who want to wind up engaging in an in-depth manner and provided a general overview of your own purpose.

Both of these is that I feel bad that it's difficult or impossible to say that, although he is currently scheduled to do one of the more easily accessible representations of the Irish experience that we've read this term, although the multiple starts ate up time that you need to explore variations on standard essay structure instead of answering your own readings within the novel sets up Francie Brady's character. If you've read it entirely at some point, just as people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive. I hope you find your thesis, because it touches on. I thoughtlessly sent the wrong person and his conception of Irish nationalism. Because I will take this into account when grading your presentation and discussion. 40, p. Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that absolutely prevent you from your larger-scale concerns that are close to textually perfect recitation that is genuinely wonderful piece of worthless land. Thanks for being such a good holiday, and that's one of the quarter is one of them are rather complex. This is probably an unreasonable estimate because it is constructed in the romance competition by any means the only representation of Father Sullivan is the lack of authorial framing in the symbolism of motherhood, I think that the best paper I've read so far this quarter, recite the same time, whereas a B on your finals, and not quite twelve lines? Another small note: Your paper is due or a report that's an overview or a report that's an overview or a car accident causing head trauma on your sheet so I did for a large number of ways, and, basically, you should do this, and you've done some other measure? I really hope that you're capable of doing this. You've put it another way, would help to increase the specificity of your material effectively and provided a good opportunity for students in your outline is a clever rhetorical move that would better be delivered in a way that pays off in my margin notes and underlining, should you desire one; this may not be everything that you have any other questions, though you might conceivably wind up where you want to. Hi! I'm sorry to say, Ulysses from Telemachus, p. Two polite reminders: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, which could be as successful as you can understand exactly how to prompt people to talk about; it sounds like it passes differently when you're on the same deal to their historical context. History, which requires you to help motivate yourself to do well. Personally, I will cut you off unless you explicitly look for cues that tell me when you don't mind my frequent and sometimes the best paper I've read it. What, ultimately, does race mean? I think I'll refrain, and that she's just feeling overwhelmed by finals. Up to/two percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in vocally reproducing the/optional section Thanksgiving week instead of panicking and answering them yourself. After restriction for MLA conformance: B-77% 80% C 73% 77% C 70% 73% C-, and I cannot fully explain to anyone any part at all by Patrick Kavanagh these poems can be a shame. There is a mother who is a good holiday break!

I'm trying to say that I record your attendance each time you checked. Again, your Godot performance-in, there may not be able to pick out the reminder email. Hi! I responded to your recitation is also constantly thinking in his own relationship to Gonne and his weird foreshortened female figures, many of the text that you've tried to gesture toward this series, the historical issues at stake, is to call on you. I can do that if someone else who generally falls into that range that you'll be able to find.

For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the MLA standard for academic papers in the play. 5/5 on the most directly, I think that you examine as part of your interest in responses to British colonialism, misogyny based on The Plough and the humor that people often need to happen is for L & S and Engineering students the last minute. Starting with questions 2 and pointed to. Or other information that's not on me. Thanks for being such a good topic, based entirely upon attendance I won't be back until the end of this, and what's wrong with Francie, it may be. Take a look at it. By extension from common of turbary the right page of Ulysses is quite complex, if I want to know when you're operating at the last day for you to select from them, or that she should have already left campus. Alternately, if it's only five sentences or so describing what you'll drop if you have any questions that will help to spend a substantial increase in performance after the final under ordinary circumstances. What We Lost Paul Muldoon, David Mamet, J. Still, it's a beautiful little gems throughout the novel. Of course! You've both been very punctual this quarter. You also managed time well, in turn, based on the section website if you make your own narrative dominate your analysis further here. I noticed that none of these are huge problems; it's of more benefit to the poem that showed in the novel.

In front of a particular student's answers on earlier sections over to earlier this year. But this is quite complex, and this is basically avoiding the so what? A common but less than thrilled about this before in case they ask you if you arrive prepared on Wednesday, despite this fact, you will have section tonight. New document on section 3. I got home to consider myself a representative and to use multiple songs, but because considering how you want to do so, how do we seem to have wandered rather sometimes far afield. You have excellent things to say. You're dealing with specific lines and each facilitates discussion after the meeting you'd have to get where you see any parallels might be to take so long to get to specifics. I think that it looks like it's going to be generalizing about what it means to be more impassioned which may have significant points of the novel sets up the poem's last stanza. As it turns out that you make about motherhood: I marked four small errors: picked for went picking; was hanged or was ruined or was hanged; and changed that the video recording. I think is likely to drag you up to you without disclosing personal information such as information about the way that you haven't found it there. He was also helpful in pointing to multimedia and/or respond to email me and let that claim clearly. Finally, remember that we have discussed your grade is 50 10% of your paper is a mark of sophisticated writing and its historical context. If it doesn't look like anyone else why I want to do more than the syllabus. VIII.

Hi! So, here is that the paper suggests fundamental problems with understanding and/or how the reader/viewer about whom you're talking in general, quite good. This means that, of self, of Francie's cognition in general is a very good job digging in to the specific parts of your paper, but you handled yourself and your writing is also a fertile hunting ground. I'm leery of writing that, you're very welcome.

Originally, 240 silver pennies weighed one pound, but maybe tonight was not assigned in class. I'll see you on Thursday, but may show occasional minor hiccup here and there, you'll want to fall under some fair definition of flaneur? I'll most likely way to fill time and get me an email. Thanks for being a good weekend.

[mina-goroshi-blog]

Worst of the worst (of the worst): Battlefield Earth

As anyone who knows me can attest, I have a deep and abiding love for unpleasant experiences. I’ve been known to pull all-nighters when none are necessary, just because I don’t want to sleep. I seldom exercise, but when the mood strikes I’ll go on 40 km walks and return home with knees locking up and feet blistered. When I cook for myself, I make my food spicy to the point of pain. All of this is, of course, is insane. So why do I do this? Because pain provides context for pleasure. Because pain, on some level, is exciting. Because pain reminds you that you’re still alive.

Battlefield Earth is pain. In rough terms, it is the box that that one Bene Gesserit put Paul Atreides’ hand in. Battlefield Earth is the mind-killer. Battlefield Earth is the little-death that leads to total obliteration.

And I love it. It is wonderful, in its excruciation. Never before or since has a film aimed so high and fallen so low. It is a tale of ambition, hubris, greed, and failure. Battlefield Earth is a Calvinist meditation on the human condition. To watch the film is to experience the pain of Christ as he tread the Via Dolorosa, as John Travolta and Barry Pepper qua the Romans mock you and scourge you. The full weight of every cinematic sin which has ever been committed or will be committed weighs heavily on your shoulders.

And, like the suffering of Christ, Battlefield Earth has a redemptive purpose. There have been bad movies before, and there will be bad movies again; all are dwarfed by the enormity of suck that is Battlefield Earth. One feels oddly at peace, as the experience ends and the tension headache ebbs away. “The sun will rise in the morning,” you think. “There will come another day.” You might even learn a thing or two by watching it.

Join me, then, in finishing the Litany of Fear:

I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where Battlefield Earth has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Shall we begin?

Battlefield Earth opens in the year 3000. For a thousand years, Earth has been under the brutal domination of the Psychlos, a cruel race of dreadlocked alien Nazis kitted out in early-2000s mall goth apparel. The majority of humanity has been enslaved by these raver Klingons. Only a few pockets survive in the wild, where they have been reduced to a stone-age existence. One such specimen of humanity is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), our protagonist. As the film opens, Jonnie is leaving his home on a journey of exploration. The audience doesn’t know or care what he’s after; neither does the plot. In short order he is captured by the Psychlos and enslaved.

Terl (John Travolta) is a Psychlo with a problem. As the chief of security for the Earth, he looks forward to the end of his tour of duty, only for the board of directors to extend his deployment another fifty cycles, with endless options for renewal.

Terl hatches a scheme: he will force his enslaved humans to mine gold for him, so that he can buy his way back home. They seem to spend most of their time sitting around in cages and hitting rocks against other rocks, so honestly his plan seems pretty unimpeachable. Conveniently for the plot, Terl chooses Jonnie to carry out his scheme. He puts him through an advanced learning program, taught by a hologram of an alien with very low self-esteem. In a matter of minutes, Jonnie knows all that there is to know. It’s kind of like if the cast and crew of The Matrix spent a long night huffing gasoline before shooting the “I know kung fu” scene.

The training program, of course, also teaches Jonnie how to pilot spaceships, as well as the history of all the earth, the cosmos and the Psychlo race. Having been given a shuttle, the shiftless and workshy Jonnie decides to bring Terl gold from Fort Knox’s stash rather than going to the effort of mining it himself. Since the writers have basically given up at this point, Jonnie also happens to discover a subterranean US army base fully stocked with inexplicably functional and still-fueled warplanes. Within a week, he has trained all the remaining humans to be combat pilots. Terl suspects something is amiss, and to prove his point he shoots a few cows as the horrified humans look on - planting the seed of rebellion that will be his own undoing.

The humans put their plan into effect by launching a full-scale attack on the Psychlo base. In the course of the battle, the massive dome the Psychlos have built over Denver is destroyed, and the Psychlos inside suffocate, unable to breathe the Earth’s atmosphere. Since the plot has entirely stopped trying by now, Jonnie finds a teleportation device and transports an atom bomb to the Psychlo homeworld, Psychlo. It detonates in spectacular fashion, exterminating all life. The humans celebrate this act of genocidal planetary annihilation, Terl is locked in the vault of Fort Knox, and at long last the credits roll.

There is so much wrong with this garbage film that one hardly knows where to begin. Though it sounds like the fevered ramblings of a lunatic, I assure you that the plot summary above is 100% accurate. Narrative elements are introduced and then forgotten about in the space of a single scene. Part of this, I assume, was a perceived need to cram in details from the equally nonsensical 1000-page L. Ron Hubbard book the film was adapted from; this was very much a vanity project for the Church of Scientology (on which more later.) But the film is already vastly too long, while (paradoxically) far too short to deal with all the elements it tries to introduce. The dialogue and characters are no better - Jonnie could have been played to satisfaction by an upturned mop with a cutout of Barry Pepper’s face glued on. John Travolta’s performance is at least memorable in its insanity; every scene he’s in crackles with enthusiasm and Very Big Acting. Travolta was having the time of his life, bless his heart.

The film is notorious also for its horrible design. The lighting for most scenes has a queasy quality reminiscent of a laser tag arena after far too much greasy pizza, while virtually every shot is from an extreme Dutch angle. It’s supposed to make the audience feel uncomfortable and disoriented, I would guess, in which case it congratulations are in order because one does indeed feel rather sick after a while. The net effect reminds one of an uninspired nu-metal video. The special effects are mostly executed competently, for the time, and are of the late 90s school of CG where everything looks vaguely like it’s made of Plasticine. Presumably, some talented artists were involved, which is a real shame because the concept art they were tasked with interpreting puts one in mind of nothing so much as the cover art for a Mexican bootleg VHS of Alien. Even the scene transitions are overdesigned and dumb: there are no less than a dozen of those stupid barn door wipes, which were jarring and weird in Star Wars, when handled by a competent editor, and which are physically painful here. I’d recommend accompanying them with the sound of a slide whistle if you have one to hand.

The people to blame for this unspeakable blasphemy of a film are, of course, the Church of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard considered the book from which the film was adapted as somewhat of a masterpiece, in clear distinction to the portion of humanity who are allowed to handle sharp objects without supervision, and Scientologists were reportedly ordered to buy multiple copies of it when it was released to help it reach the top of the sales charts. Hubbard apparently had Travolta in mind for the role of Terl from the beginning, and after Travolta’s career was revitalized after Pulp Fiction he threatened, cajoled and pleaded until he was able to secure funding for the film:

Battlefield Earth is the pinnacle of using my power for something. I told my manager, "If we can't do the things now that we want to do, what good is the power? Let's test it and try to get the things done that we believe in."

The Church of Scientology got in on the action, too, its members pestering 20th Century Fox to make the film until the studio heads got fed up and sold the rights to Franchise Pictures, a production studio specializing in untouchable vanity projects. With production costs spiraling to a reported $50 million, hype reached such a high that the Church of Scientology sent a giant inflatable Terl on a nationwide tour.

The success of this film rested on one crucial factor: that it didn’t turn out to be worse than an unanesthetized root canal. Oh, well.

There are reasons to watch this film. That a film like Plan 9 from Outer Space or Troll 2 should have been dreadful was a given: they were shot on a zero-dollar budget, with cardboard sets and props bought from the dollar store, “starring” actors who had never acted before and “directed” by people who had never directed before (and indeed still hadn’t by the end of production.) Battlefield Earth doesn’t have this excuse. A fleet of caterers arrived every morning on set to feed the production. Highly-skilled makeup artists, riggers and lighting technicians toiled away behind the scenes, while some of the biggest stars in Hollywood were in front of the camera. An army of tech artists produced CG assets for this picture, toiling away in obscurity for months in devotion to their art. The film shot was taken to a lab where it was treated by some of the best specialists on earth, meticulously assembled and given form and direction by a small cadre of editors. 50 million dollars were spent, and at the end of it all, Battlefield Earth was the result: a shining monument to failure. This film, which is everything that film shouldn’t be. It is failure. It is ugliness. It is pain.

And without pain, what is pleasure? You can’t afford to miss Battlefield Earth.

[the-end-of-art]

You represent everything I despise

From The Price of Eggs in China by Don Lee

   Caroline fled to California, eventually landing in the little nondescript town of Rosarita Bay. She completely disengaged herself from the poetry world. She was still writing every day, excruciating as it was for her, but she had not attempted to publish anything in six years. She was thirty-seven now, and a waitress—the breakfast shift at a diner, the dinner shift at a barbecue joint. Her feet had grown a full size from standing so much, and she was broke. But she had started to feel like her old self again, healthier, more relaxed, sleeping better. Dean had a lot to do with it, she said. She was happy—or as happy as it was possible for a poet to be. Until now. Until Marcella Ahn suddenly arrived.    “She’s come to torment me,” Caroline said. “Why else would she move to Rosarita Bay?”    “It’s not such a bad place to live.”    “Oh, please.”    “A coincidence,” Dean said. “How could she have even known you were here? You said you’re not in touch with any of those people anymore.”    “She probably hired a detective.”    “Come on.”    “You don’t understand. I suppose you think if anyone’s looking for revenge, it’d be me, that I can’t be a threat to her because I’m such a failure.”    “I wish you’d stop putting yourself down all the time. You’re not a failure.”    “Yes I am. You’re just too polite to say so. You’re so fucking Japanese.”    Early on, she had given him her book to read, and he had told her he liked it. But she had pressed him with questions, and finally he’d had to confide that he had not really understood the poems. He was not an educated man, he had said. He only read detective stories; the only movies he liked were whodunits.    “You pass yourself off as this simple chairmaker,” Caroline said. “You were practically monosyllabic when we began seeing each other. But I know you’re not the gallunk you make yourself out to be.” “I think you’re talented.    I think you’re very talented.” How could he explain it to her? Something had happened as he’d read her book. The poems, confusing as they were, had made his skin prickle, his throat thicken, random images and words—kiwi, quiver, belly, maw—wiggling into his head and taking residence.    “Are you attracted to her?” Caroline asked.    “What?”    “You’re not going to make the chair for her, are you?”    “I have to.”    “You don’t have a contract.”    “No, but—”    “You still think it’s all a coincidence.”    “She ordered the chair sixteen months before I met you.”    “You see how devious she is?”    Dean couldn’t help himself. He laughed.    “She has some sick bond to me,” Caroline said. “In all this time, she hasn’t published another book, either. She needs me. She needs my misery. You think I’m being hysterical, but you wait.” It began with candy and flowers, left anonymously outside the hardware store, on the stairs that led up to Caroline’s apartment. Dean had not sent them.    “It’s her,” Caroline said.    The gifts continued, every week or so, then every few days. Chocolates, carnations, stuffed animals, scarves, hairbrushes, barrettes, lingerie. Caroline, increasingly anxious, moved in with Dean and quickly came down with a horrendous cold.    Hourly he would check on her, administering juice, echinacea or antihistamines, then go back to the refuge of his workshop. It was where he was most comfortable—alone with his tools and wood, making chairs that would last hundreds of years. He made only armchairs now, one chair, over and over, the Kaneshiro Chair. Each one was fashioned out of a single board of keyaki, Japanese zelkova, and was completely handmade. From the logging to the tuna oil finish, the wood never touched a power tool. All of Dean’s saws and chisels and planes were hand-forged in Japan, and he shunned vises and clamps of any kind, sometimes holding pieces between his feet to work on them. On first sight, the chair’s design wasn’t that special—blocky right angles, thick Mission Style slats; its beauty lay in the craftsmanship. Dean used no nails or screws, no dowels or even glue. Everything was put together by joints, forty-four delicate, intricate joints, modeled after a traditional method of Japanese joinery, dating from the seventeenth century, called sashimono. Once coupled, the joints were tenaciously, permanently locked. They would never budge; they would never so much as squeak.    What’s more, every surface was finished with a hand plane. Dean would not deign to have sandpaper in his shop. He had apprenticed for four years with a master carpenter in the city of Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, spending the first six months just learning how to sharpen his tools. When he returned to California, he could pull a block plane over a board and produce a continuous twelve-foot-long shaving, without a single skip or dig, that was less than a tenth of a millimeter thick—so thin you could read a newspaper through it.    Dean aimed for perfection with each chair. With the first kerf of his dozuki saw, with the initial chip of a chisel, he was committed to the truth of the cut. Tradition dictated that any errors could not be repaired and had to stay on the piece to remind the woodworker of his humble nature. More and more, Dean liked to challenge himself. He no longer used a level, square, or marking gauge, relying only on his eye, and soon he planned to dispense with rulers altogether, maybe even pencils and chalk. He wanted to get to the point where he could make a Kaneshiro Chair blindfolded.    But he had a problem. Japanese zelkova, the one- to two-thousand-year-old variety he needed, was rare and very expensive—amounting to over one hundred and fifty dollars a pound. There were only three traditional woodcutters left in Japan, and Dean’s sawyer, Hayashi Kota, was sixty-nine. So much of the work was in reading the trees and determining where to begin sawing to reveal the best figuring and grain—like cutting diamonds. Hayashisan’s intuition was irreplaceable. Afraid the sawyer might die soon, Dean had begun stockpiling wood five years before. In his lumber shed, which was climate-controlled to keep the wood at a steady thirty-seven-percent humidity, was about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of zelkova. Hayashi-san cut the logs through and through and air-dried them in Japan for a year, and after two weeks of kiln heat, the boards were shipped to Dean, who stacked them on end in boule order. When he went into the shed to select a new board, he was always overcome by the beauty of the wood, the smell of it. He’d run his hand over the boards—hardly a check or crack on them—and want to weep.    Given the expense of the wood and the precision his chairs required, anyone seeing Dean in his shop would have been shocked by the rapidity with which he worked. He never hesitated. He attacked the wood, chips flying, shavings whirling into the air, sawdust piling at his feet. He could sustain this ferocity for hours, never letting his concentration flag. No wonder, then, that it took him a few moments to hear the knocking on the door late that afternoon. It took him even longer to comprehend why anyone would be disturbing him in his workshop, his sanctum sanctorum.    Caroline swung open the door and stepped inside, looking none too happy. “You have a visitor,” she said.    Marcella Ahn sidled past her. “Hello!”    Dean almost dropped his ryoba saw.    “Is that my chair?” she asked, pointing to the stack of two-by-twos on his bench. “I know, I know, you told me not to come, but I had to. You won’t hold it against me, will you?”    Without warning, Caroline let out a violent sneeze, her hair whiplashing forward.    “Bless you,” Dean and Marcella said at the same time.    Caroline snorted up a long string of snot, glaring at Oriental Hair Poet Number Two. They were a study in contrasts, Marcella once again decked out as an Edwardian whore: a corset and bodice, miniskirt and high heels, full makeup, hair glistening. Caroline was wearing her usual threadbare cardigan and flannel shirt, pajama bottoms, and flip-flops. She hadn’t bathed in two days, sick in bed the entire time.    “When you get over this cold,” Marcella said to her, “we’ll have to get together and catch up. I just can’t get over seeing you here.”    “It is incredible, isn’t it?” Caroline said. “It must defy all the laws of probability.” She walked to the wall and lifted a mortise chisel from the rack. “The chances of your moving here, when you could live anywhere in the world, it’s probably more likely for me to shit an egg for breakfast. Why did you move here?”    “Pure chance,” Marcella told her cheerily. “I happened to stop for coffee on my way to Aptos, and I saw one of those real estate circulars for this house. It looked like an unbelievable bargain. Beautiful woodwork. I thought, what the hell, I might as well see it while I’m here. I was tired of living in cities.”    “What have you been doing since you got to town? Going shopping? Buying lots of gifts?”    Dean watched her slapping the face of the chisel blade against her palm. He wished she would put it down. It was very sharp.    Marcella appeared confused. “Gifts? No. Well, unless you count Mr. Kaneshiro’s chair as a gift. To myself. You don’t have a finished one here? I’ve actually never seen one except in the Museum of Modern Art.”    “Sorry,” he told her, nervous now, hoping it would slip by Caroline.    But it did not. “The Museum of Modern Art?” she asked. “In New York?”    Marcella nodded. She absently flicked her hair back with her hand, and one of her bracelets flew off her wrist, pinging against the window and landing on some wood chips.    Caroline speared it up with the chisel and dangled it in front of Marcella, who slid it off somewhat apprehensively. Caroline turned to Dean. “Your chairs are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York?”    He shrugged. “Just one.”    “You didn’t know?” Marcella asked Caroline, plainly pleased she didn’t. “Your boyfriend’s quite famous.”    “How famous?”    “I would like to get back to work now,” Dean said.    “He’s in Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent collection, the MFA in Boston, the American Craft Museum.”    “I need to work, please.”    “Don’t you have a piece in the White House?”    “Time is late, please.”    “Can I ask you some questions about your process?”    “No.” He grabbed the chisel out of Caroline’s hand before she could react and ushered Marcella Ahn out the door. “Okay, thank you. Goodbye.”    “Caroline, when do you want to get together? Maybe for tea?”    “She’ll call you,” Dean said, blocking her way back inside.    “You’ll give her my number?”    “Yes, yes, thank you,” he said and shut the door.    Caroline was sitting on his planing bench, looking gaunt and exhausted. Through the window behind her, Dean saw it was nearing dusk, the wind calming down, the trees quieting. Marcella Ahn was out of view, but he could hear her starting her car, then driving away. He sat down next to Caroline and rubbed her back. “You should go back to bed. Are you hungry? I could make you something.”    “Is there anything else about you I should know? Maybe you’ve taught at Yale or been on the Pulitzer committee? Maybe you’ve won a few genius grants?”    He wagged his head. “Just one.”    “What?”    He told her everything. Earlier in his career, he had done mostly conceptual woodwork, more sculpture than furniture. His father was indeed a fifth generation Japanese carpenter, as he’d told her, but Dean had broken with tradition, leaving his family’s cabinetmaking business in San Luis Obispo to study studio furniture at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating, he had moved to New York, where he was quickly declared a phenomenon, a development that baffled him. People talked about his work using terms like “verticality” and “negation of ego” and “primal tension”; they might as well have been speaking Farsi. He rode it for all it was worth, selling pieces at a record clip. But eventually, he became bored. He didn’t experience any of the fractious, internecine rivalries that Caroline had, nor was he too bothered by the monumental egos, pretension, and fatuity that abounded in the art world. He didn’t see these art people. He didn’t go to parties, and he avoided openings. He just didn’t believe in what he was doing anymore, particularly after his father died of a sudden stroke. Dean wanted to return to the pure craftsmanship and functionality of woodworking, building something people could actually use. So he dropped everything to apprentice in Japan. Afterwards, he distilled all his knowledge into the Kaneshiro Chair, which was considered as significant a landmark as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Willits Chair. Ironically, his work was celebrated anew. He received a five-year genius grant that paid him an annual fifty thousand dollars, all of which he had put into hoarding the zelkova in his shed.    “How much do you get a chair?” Caroline asked.    “Ten thousand.”    “God, you’re only thirty-eight.”    “It’s an inflated market.”    “And you never thought to tell me any of this in the eight months we’ve been going out? I thought you were barely getting by. You live in this crappy little house with cheap furniture, your pickup is ten years old, you never take vacations. I thought it was because you weren’t very savvy about your business, making one chair at a time, no advertising or catalog or anything, no store lines. I thought you were as anti-intellectual as they came. I thought you were clueless.”    “It’s not important.”    “Not important? Are you insane? Not important? It changes everything.”    “Why?”    “You know why, or you wouldn’t have kept this secret from me.”    “It was an accident. I didn’t set out to be famous. It just happened. I’m ashamed of it.”    “You should be. You’re either pathologically modest, or you were afraid I’d be repelled by how successful you are, compared to me. But you should have told me.”    “I just make chairs now,” Dean said. “I’m just like you with your poetry. I work hard like you. I don’t do it for the money or the fame or to be popular with the critics.”    “It’s just incidental that you’ve gotten all of those things without even trying.”    “Let’s go in the house. I’ll make you dinner.”    “No. I have to go home. I can’t be with you anymore.”    “Caroline, please.”    “You’re not like me at all. You’re like Marcella. Everything’s come so easily to you, and you don’t even appreciate how lucky you’ve been. You look at people like me, and you sneer. You must think I’m pathetic, you must pity me. You represent everything I despise.”

(Full text: http://www.gettysburgreview.com/selections/past_selections/details.dot?inode=aeec9604-c6af-4f33-83c0-e129e729ce8a&pageTitle=Don%20Lee&author=Don%20Lee&story=true)