Dobes Zone

       As most of you probably know, I ended up getting covid, as have the other members of my household. The three of us are doing well but we were laid up for about a week forcing ourselves to take things as easy as possible. In that time, I tried to mostly occupy myself with drawing, reading, and watching films. As it happens, I'd just acquired both the Day of the Triffids DVD as well as the novel it was based on. My copy of Day of the Triffids, with a beautiful dust jacket cover by Gary Viskupik       When I was a child, I was absolutely terrified by and obsessed with Day of the Triffids. My family had it on VHS and I think I was about at the age where I liked to scare myself with movies. I had a highly active imagination and it didn't take a lot to scare me- just a good concept was enough and my brain would connect the dots. The movie of course, to an adult, is a pretty tame affair, but the concept of it all is still compelling. The book illu...

Pen Tree Cat Seven Tuna Tuesday What exactly counts as an intrusive thought? Connell remembered seeing an online argument years ago about the phrasing but couldn’t recall who’d won. There was someone insisting that intrusive thoughts strictly involved thoughts that were violent, upsetting, and unbidden. Drive your car off a bridge, drop the baby on his head, dice your finger like a carrot on the cutting board. Others suggested that this also included random annoying ideas, absurd notions. Shitposts, jokes. Well, that’s just having thoughts isn’t it? A lot of thought comes unprompted, unconscious. The phrase stuck in Connell’s head, intrusive thought or not, was definitely unasked for and not caused by any stimuli in his environment. In the 8 th grade during a science lesson, Connell’s teacher had provided the class with a memory exercise. They were learning about the brain, the different lobes and the areas that controlled bodily functions like appetite, breathing, fear. Thin...