Demon's Dreaming

Superheroes and Supervillians and their DnD alignments

2011-11-27T23:54:00.000-06:00

Superman: Lawful Good
Batman: Lawful Good
Spiderman: Neutral Good
Captain America: Probably Lawful Good, but maybe Neutral
Punisher: Lawful Neutral
Daredevil: Lawful Good, duh
Wonder Woman: Lawful Good
Wolverine: Chaotic Good (but often pretty close to Neutral)
Professor X: Neutral Good
Cyclops: Lawful Good
The Hulk: Chaotic Neutral

Doctor Doom: Lawful Evil
Joker: oh boy is he ever Chaotic Evil
Green Goblin: Chaotic Evil
Galactus: True Neutral
Thanos: Neutral Evil
Bullseye: Chaotic Evil
Lex Luthor: Lawful Evil
Magneto: Lawful Neutral
Sabretooth: Chaotic Evil
Venom: Chaotic Neutral
Carnage: Chaotic Evil
Doomsday: Neutral Evil
Darkseid: Lawful Evil

Dead Billy (part 4)

2011-11-17T23:16:00.001-06:00

‘Guys? It’s me, Billy. The door’s locked, guys. Guys, can you unlock the door? The door’s locked. We never lock the door.’

Gavin and Sean were looking right at each other. Neither of them was blinking. Gavin raised a finger to his lips. Sean nodded weakly.

‘Hey, guys, you’re there, right? It’s me, Billy. I heard you talking. You’re in the living room, right? Just unlock the door, guys.’

Slowly, shaking, Gavin turned around and started walking, quietly, not turning back to look at Sean.

‘Why didn’t you take the knife out, guys? It hurts so bad. Please open the door and take it out.’

Gavin walked right past the door and over to the microwave. He took out his Hot Pocket. He stood there at the counter, facing the cabinets, eating his Hot Pocket.

‘Guys, please open the door and take out the knife.’

Gavin dropped his Hot Pocket, turned around and ran. He ran through the kitchen, out the door and down the street. He didn’t turn around or look back. He just kept running.

Dead Billy (part 3)

2011-11-13T23:31:00.001-06:00

Gavin found Sean in the kitchen, staring out through blinds held open between two fingers, the room lit only by streetlights. The cupboards were paint-flecked and scratched, the counters dirty, the sink full of dishes and silverware that were starting to smell rank. There was a butcher’s block in the middle of the floor a little above belt-height, upon it only a large carving knife. Gavin closed the basement door behind him and locked it with the old skeleton that was still perched in the lock. He took the key out and put it on the little nail nearby, then walked over to turn on the lights.

‘No, don’t! They’ll know we’re here!’

‘Who’ll know we’re here?’

‘The people outside!’

‘What people?’ Gavin walked over to one of the windows and peered out. The street was lit by the dim amber of the streetlights and the passing reds and whites of the cars that occasionally drove through the neighborhood. Most of the other house lights on the street were out, it being long past most normal peoples’ bedtimes, but there was an occasional window light here or there, mostly on the second floors, if the house had a second floor. Not that there were any silhouettes in them or anything. Gavin checked the cars that were parked along the street, but they all looked empty, and absolutely none had their lights on. ‘There are no people. And even if there are, so what? We turn the lights on, what’s that matter to them?’

Sean gave Gavin a look like Gavin had just grown an extra head. ‘I told you. They’ll know were here!’

‘Well they won’t need fucking lights to know that, Sean! We fucking live here!’

‘They’ll know we’re up to something!’

‘Up to something? In our own place? Why would they care? We’re always up to something in our own place. So are they. And we’ve never been bothered yet.’

Sean didn’t say anything, just went back to staring out the window. Gavin sighed. He took his finger off the light switch, walked over to the stove and used it to light a cigarette. A real one. Sean took another hit on his meth pipe. Gavin took drags in silence, trying not to shake or stare at the basement door.

After a couple more hits, Sean said, ‘We got to get rid of the body.’

A quick sharp drag from Gavin. ‘How?’

Sean hesitated. ‘I think I saw some show once? Where they filled this big plastic tub with some chemical, and then put the body in it. That shit dissolved everything, skin, hair, bone. Then they just poured it down the toilet. It worked great!’

Gavin grimaced. He didn’t like the look of their toilet already. He would never be able to stomach using it if they poured Billy down it. ‘What was the chemical?’

‘Uh, I don’t know.’

‘Well, what was the show?’

‘I can’t remember,’ whispered Sean in defeat.

‘Probably just a television show anyways.’

Sean took another hit.

‘Okay,’ he said, shaking anew, ‘why don’t we chop him up and feed the parts into the furnace?’

Gavin shook his head. ‘We don’t have that kind of furnace. There’s no opening for you to shovel things in.’

‘Fuck.’ Sean set down his pipe and picked up the carving knife. Gavin slid over to the far wall. ‘We are going to have to chop him up,’ said Sean, holding out the knife.

‘Well, don’t use that. Use a meat cleaver, or a saw. With plastic underneath.’

‘After that, we drag him out to the car, right? In bags? Then drive him to the dump and through the parts in there.’

Gavin shook his head again. ‘We can’t risk anyone finding the parts. They’ll know we did it. There can’t be a body.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Sean. He set the knife back down, put his head in his hands and started sobbing.

Gavin reached over the butcher’s block and scooped up the pipe. ‘You’ve had enough of this tonight. I’m going to bed.’ He walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway towards his room.

In the morning, Sean woke up to sounds coming from below. He jumped into his pants and ran down to investigate. The door was unlocked again. Downstairs, the television was on. It was Saturday, and cartoons were playing. Sean was on the couch, still wrapped in his blanket, eating a bowl of Count Chocula.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘He looks better,’ said Sean, motioning towards the body. ‘I mean, he doesn’t look worse.’

Gavin looked at Billy. His face was white like a silent film star’s. His eyes were made of glass, and his mouth was tilted open like he was about to start drooling. He almost seemed like he had been stuffed and posed. The hunting knife was still jutting out of his stomach. It hadn’t settled or anything.

‘We should really pull that thing out,’ said Gavin. He didn’t.

‘He hasn’t even started smelling,’ chipped in Sean. ‘Maybe he’ll just stay like that.’

‘He just hasn’t started decomposing yet. Wait a couple days, and everyone on this street will know that something in here is dead.’

‘So we have a couple of days.’

Gavin looked over at the coffee table. There was a pipe there, loaded with weed. From the look of his eyes Sean had taken a few tokes. Gavin walked over, picked it up, and took one himself. ‘Yeah, we have a couple days.’ He looked around. ‘C’mon man, we have a TV upstairs. Let’s get out of here. This place is giving me bad vibes.’

When they were back upstairs, Gavin locked the door again, and hung the skeleton key back on the nail. He made himself a bowl of Captain Crunch as Sean watched cartoons. When, he was finished, he put on his brown bomber jacket and combat boots, filled up his pockets with product, and told Sean he was going out. He rode the El Train for a couple of hours, just going from one stop to the end, then getting off and taking another line to somewhere else. Eventually he ended up at the Quad of the campus. Saturday was college day, at least for him. He hung out around the periphery, in the shadows, waiting, and when one of the students came up to him, they would shake hands, and Gavin would pass them a small plastic bag, and they would pass him a ten or a twenty. He was all out, around five o’clock, he took the El back downtown to a bar he liked, had a beer and watched nothing on TV, watched some of the cougars hit on the young professionals. None came near him though. He respected that, the sense of a mark they had. They knew he was the kind of trouble they didn’t want. Not that he minded. Gavin’s taste in strange ran a lot younger. There was this one girl he had been thinking about a lot lately, late at night before bed, this little street urchin girl he had seen in a squatter’s nest near the bombed out industrial district. Short, pale, skinny, with purple hair and wide eyes. Didn’t say a word. She was maybe sixteen, if that.

Gavin only dealt pot. He got it from this old hippie, the kind who had gotten into the drug trade long ago and who was lowdown enough and professional enough and dealt with harmless enough product that no one had bothered to get rid of him when the organization above him got shaken up, which was rare as it was. Pot wasn’t like Coke or Horse or Meth. No one really got into shooting matches about it. That’s why Gavin kept to it, and not Meth and Coke like Sean. Though Sean spent more time using than dealing.

Billy though. Billy had been different. Billy had been hardcore into psychedelics, acid, shrooms, peyote, prescription antipsychotics. That and the occasional hit of heroin, they were almost like a religion for him. He was always listening to Timothy Leary tapes, videos of Ram Dass, whoever that was. Oh, and reading books by Anton LeVey, Alistair Crowley. Black magic, black metal, and opiate and psychedelic drugs. That was Billy, in a nutshell. Intense motherfucker. He was always staring at you, making eye contact and not blinking, like he could hold that eye contact, he could convince you of anything, because whatever he was talking about was something he had to convince you of. And now he was just staring at the floor, at nothing at all. Because he had gotten it into his head to perform an actual black magic ritual and stick a hunting knife in his chest. ‘Dumb motherfucker,’ Gavin whispered to himself. ‘Stupid, stupid, needy dumb crazy motherfucker.’ He finished his beer, paid his tab and left.

He got back to the house a little after sundown. Sean was still watching television. What had been cartoons was now an edited-for-television movie. They used to have cable, but after the three of them kept forgetting to pay the bill it had gotten cut off. Gavin went to his room, took the wad of twenties and tens out, put them in a rubber band and hid them in his sock drawer, in one of his socks. He went out to the kitchen, took a Hot Pocket out of the freezer and put it in the microwave.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Sean. He was smoking a massive blunt.

‘Yeah?’ said Gavin, leaning against the archway between hallway and living room. ‘What about?’

‘About Billy,’ said Sean, with a look like, ‘what else would I be thinking about?’

‘Yes, but, what about Billy have you been thinking?’

‘So, this magic book, that Billy used? He got it from Damien, right? In fact, he maybe stole it, right?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, Damien might be angry at Billy. And we don’t want him angry at us, do we?’

‘No...’

‘Right. So we should give him the book back. Tell him we had nothing to do with it, honest, it was all Billy. He’ll be really angry probably, because the book is probably really expensive, right? So then we tell him that Billy is dead…’

Gavin caught on. ‘And ask him if he knows anything about what to do with a body like Billy’s…’

‘Yeah. I mean, either he knows some occult shit for dealing with this kind of thing, or, you know, he deals heroin. He probably knows people who know how to deal with bodies, make them disappear.’

Gavin ran his fingers down his jaw. ‘It’s risky. He might decide to blame us anyways. Throw us in with Billy.’

Sean shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t. He would have to kill us, yeah? But why would he want to do that? That’s two more bodies to deal with, which become his deal not ours. And he needs someone who knows Billy’s clientele. And that’s us. He helps us with Billy, we can move into Billy’s territory, and Damien will know we’re loyal, because he has dirt on us.’

‘If he had dirt on us, why doesn’t he just go over to the police?’

Sean shook his head again. ‘Heroin dealers are never gonna mix it up with pigs, especially when a body’s involved.’

Gavin nodded his head. ‘Yeah, yeah, that might work…’

The basement door shook.

Gavin looked at the basement door. Then he looked at Sean. Sean was looking at him. The basement door shook again. The knob was turning back and forth.

Neither of them moved.

‘Guys?’ called out Billy weakly. ‘Guys? Are you there? The door’s locked. Are you there? Guys?’

The microwave dinged. Gavin’s Hot Pocket was done.

The Corner of Your Eye

2011-11-10T00:14:00.000-06:00

part 1 here

II.

One Friday, Evelyn came in to work the closing shift at the occult shop. She went over to the check-out counter, off to the left side from the entrance, and smiled in hello to Morganna, who was hunched over the counter, her chin upon her folded hands. Morganna's name was really Mariellen. She had straight black dyed hair, and wore black lipstick and matching corset, skirt, and knee-high leather boots. Evelyn's hair was curly strawberry-blond, as it had always been, and fell halfway down her back. She wore a knee-length skirt covered in several folds of glittered cellophane, hiking boots, and her bomber jacket. She had a carrying case strapped across her chest. Morganna matched the décor of the shop much better than Evelyn did.

“Don't look now,” said Morganna in reply, as Evelyn set the carrying case down upon the counter, “But there is a thin, pale young gentleman in the store.”

“A thin, pale young gentleman?” replied Evelyn, with the proper note of irony.

“Yes, a thin, pale young gentleman.”

“I didn't know they still made gentlemen. Much less young ones.”

“I know. I thought the model was obsolete too. Yet, one stands in this very shop, right this moment, looking at the antique book case.”

“The antique book case?” Evelyn had an airy way of speaking which could make even the most sarcastic of expressions sound wide-eyed with wonder, but this was not a sarcastic statement. The antique books were set in the far back corner, encased in locked glass. They were more for show than for sale. Nobody ever bought any.

But now there was a man at the bookcase. He was tall, as Morganna said, maybe six foot, or an inch or two more. Evelyn couldn't affirm his thinness, as all she could really see over the other bookcase, (the one with all the normal magic books) was the back of his head, but she was confused why Morganna would refer to him as “young.” Every hair on his head was at least as silvery as mercury, and some of it had crossed over into an almost shining white.

Morganna slapped her on the wrist. “Shh! Don't stare! Can't be being rude now, can we?”

“You said he was young.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, he's one of those Steve Martin types.”

“Ohhh, yeaaah. Yeah, I think that Isaac Newton was like that too.”

“What's Newton got to do with anything? Hey, I got to go now, all right? Watch the aristocrat. Don't scare him off. Maybe he will actually buy something from there.”

“Always has to be a first time.” Evelyn slid past Morganna to take her place behind the counter. “Going out tonight?”

“Yep.”

“Say hi to Derek for me.”

“You've never met Derek.”

“Doesn't mean I can't be polite.” Evelyn smiled her smile.

“Toodles, freak,” said Morganna good-naturedly. She had put her coat on and was walking towards the door. Evelyn wiggled her fingers in reply. One thing that Evelyn had found about Goths is that, after a certain age, their personality had absolutely no relation to the character of their dress.

For several minutes after the doorbell dinged Morganna's departure, nothing much happened. Evelyn took her books and notebooks out of her case, set them in a neat pile, selected a particular of each, arrayed the notebook off to one side, leaving only one side facing up, and placed the book before her. She began to read, taking notes casually about details she found particularly interesting.

After a reading only a few paragraphs, Evelyn suddenly felt a gentle, calming presence in the room—a kind of warmth without heat. She looked up.

She noticed, without any surprise, that a faerie had just entered the store, passing through the outer door. It was about a foot and a half tall, at least if it ever stood, and was a bright, orangish pink. It had thin arms and legs and a plump potbelly. Smoky tendrils trailed out of the back of its head as a poor imitation of hair. Its mouth stretched all the way across its head, and its eyes were the size of teacups. It drifted fleetingly through the air, unburdened by any physical law, and when it noticed her noticing it, it made a beeline for her.

Evelyn knew this faerie, as she knew many of the faeries that frequented the occult shop's section of town, and as most faeries did not bother with names, or if they did were too reticent to tell anybody, she had taken to calling this one Minnie. There was no particular reason for this name. Maybe she had been watching cartoons the night before their first meeting, or was thinking of a nickname based on “minute”. As it was, she had long ago exhausted simpler, more descriptive names for such faeries, like Smiler, or Happy, or even more off-the-wall things like Whiz-Bang. Human names always felt wrong, so she was now reduced to naming new friends, as they came along, from cartoon characters and nonsense words: whatever popped into her head.

Minnie was the kind of faerie that Evelyn had taken to calling a Moody. She had found no real precedent for them in mythology or folklore, although sometimes their characteristics were hinted at in the descriptions of other more standard faeries, and they seemed to be described in a variety of ways by different occult authors, although none of these descriptions matched her own experience of such beings. These faeries flew around living things and in some way drew out or emphasized certain emotions lying within them. If you have ever gone from happy to sad or from considerate to carefree without really any reason one way or another, perhaps it was because a passing Moody took an interest on you. If you have ever noticed how small crowds out in the street can begin to take on a singular mood, perhaps becoming self-serious, or suddenly talkative and outgoing, it is likely that a wandering Moody had decided to follow along. Some Moodies would alternate the emotions they pulled out of people, while others would stick to the same one at all times. Some pulled very general emotions, like happiness or sadness; some pulled very specific emotions, like a mild, non-belligerent annoyance, or a bittersweet sense of longing for some long-past memory. Minnie always pulled for a kind of light-hearted giddiness. (Giddy had been taken as a name while Evelyn was still in high school.)

Winnie the Moody flew about Evelyn's head three times, then came to a rest hovering, like a cloud, at her upper left. Hello, thought the Moody at her. There was no real sound to the greeting, nor words, really. But the sentiment was so clearly felt that Evelyn could not help but translate it into words in her own head, the way one might translate a foreign language, except in this case, she was not translating from one language to another, but into language itself. (After having done this for so many years, the college courses she had taken in Latin and Hebrew and Greek had come quite easy. In fact, the book at which she was now reading was a second-hand textbook in Sanskrit. She had an original text copy of the Upanishads at home, waiting to be read, when the time came.)

Hello, thought Evelyn in return, and shoved it out as pure sentiment. She smiled wide and unhinged, as the first wave went over her, like she had taken shot of whiskey a few moments ago. She let out a high-pitched giggle.

The man, who for at least the last quarter-hour had been staring intently through the glass of the antique book section, turned briefly to look in her direction. A clean, pale face, thin and angular, though not severe in any way—and indeed young, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, though hard to tell which—looked at her, slightly confused, or maybe just interested.

“Sorry, sorry,” said Evelyn, briefly flashing back to her childhood. And her milky-white skin burst out in a rosy blush.

The thin, pale gentleman smiled with a gentle understanding, and turned around.

Careless... taunted the faerie.

Oh, don't be so bright, returned Evelyn. You mess me up.

Oh, I am so truly sorry. Truly.

Insolent. Most of them were insolent, but in a cute way. Yes, well, let that be a lesson to you.

Oh, yes, I have learned. Minnie coasted backwards, like a swimmer doing a scissor kick, but without moving. What is he doing here?

He is a customer, said Evelyn. They look at things.

He is odd, said the Moody.

Odd? How so?

Minne did a loop. I do not know. That is what is odd.

Why don't you go over and try to cheer him up?

I do not want to. Usually, the sentiments Evelyn translated in her head had a bit of tone to them, some sense of meaning beyond just the words, but also a sense of how the words might be said. But there was none that she could find in this sentiment. It was a flat feeling of negative desire, nothing more or less. An oddly blank sentiment, especially for a Moody. Evelyn turned to look at Minnie, to see if there was some expression to add to the phrase.

“Excuse me.”

Evelyn jerked back around. The pale thin gentleman was walking around the rows of bookshelves and comings towards her. Only staring off into space, she thought.

She understood, now, why Morganna had seen fit to describe the customer as a gentleman. Everything about the man looked expensive.

First off, he was carrying a cane, though he seemed to walk without a limp. It was old, yet polished, and made of some kind of wood that was stained almost black. His suit was as black as raven's feathers, just about as shiny, the cut of it quite arresting. Elegant and sleek, yet lacking in the formal, business-like attitude common for modern suits. It was more like a suit from the late nineteenth century, something you might see someone wearing in a portrait painting: a more expensive version of what they wore every day. The suit jacket, for example, was actually a jacket, not some outer formal layer. It was meant to keep him warm, and it was evident why the man had no need to wear an additional coat on top of it.

And indeed, he was tall, and thin, and pale, with silvery hair come much to early. And with those angular yet somewhat softened features, there was something of the elf to him, though more an elf from Tolkien, then one of the things that she was actually familiar with. Something feminine almost as well. He was very beautiful.

“What is your policy in regards to the locked books?” he asked.

“Locked books?” she echoed, momentarily confused. Minnie suddenly darted off to the left, into the center of the store, and with several aerial loops along the way. Evelyn couldn't help but follow the fast movement with her eyes.

The man noticed. “Excuse me, is something wrong?” He looked about, expectantly. “Is there a fly in the room? A bee? I'd hate to be stung.”

“Uh.” Evelyn closed and eyes and forced herself to focus. “Sorry. The books. What about our policy was it you wanted to know?”

“Well, I was wondering to what extent I was able to look at them. Is it possible to take them out and peruse them? May I see more than one at a time? Could I sit down and read one for a bit, or do I have to be supervised very closely? That sort of thing.”

He had gone with the flow of conversation, but she could tell from his eyes that he was still wondering what she had been looking at. Just keep plowing ahead, and eventually he will forget about it.

“Well, uh, the truth is, we don't really have too much of a policy on the locked books.” She smiled. “The truth is, they're mostly just for show. Nobody buys any.”

“Oh,” replied the man, looking crestfallen. “Then they're not for sale?”

“Oh no! They're for sale. It's just that nobody buys them! I mean, they can, but...” and here she leaned forward conspiratorially, “the truth is, we have them mostly so we come off like a real magic shop, like, 'Oh! We have real magic books! We must be a real magic store! Fake magic stores don't have real magic books!' Nobody wants to buy their energy crystals and Gaia figurines at a fake magic store, right?”

“Obviously not,” replied the man with a smirk. “Where's the fun in that?”

“Right, right!” She laughed, not without a little relief. “But yeah, the books are for sale. I mean, if they weren't for sale, what would be the point, right? ...I think there's a binder around here, somewhere, with all the big ticket items listed. Let me check.”

Behind the counter was a small bookshelf stuffed with a variety of old binders and half-filled journals. She began flipping through them, hoping one would catch her eye.

“Hmm, well, while you're doing that,” said the man, “would it be possible for me to take some of the books out of the case? I really would like to examine them closer.”

“Oh, right!” she reached down behind the counter, where a ring of keys hung upon a small, discreet nail. “Follow me!”

They walked over to the case. “So, which books were you interested in looking at?”

The man looked thoughtful, and tapped his chin lightly with a long finger. “I suppose I will start with this one first,” and he pointed to a old, leather-bound volume, thick, about six inches tall, and with the lettering on the binding faded almost to the point of invisibility.

He removed it from its placed with a fanciful tap upon the top of the spine, knocking it out into a waiting palm. The book fell open as it came to settle there, and with his free, tapping hand, he began to skim through it, back and forth, as if the entire contents of the tome could be absorbed by random sampling.

After fifteen or so seconds of this, he seemed to give up and tipped the pages over to arrive at the book's front.

“What an odd little volume,” he said after a moment.

“I'm sorry?”

“It appears to be The Book of Umberto de Fiorenze, an Italian magician of the late fifteenth century. Obscure fellow, not well known. You won't find him with Google. But a prolific note-taker. This edition seemed to have been published in the early 1800s by some anonymous publisher in England. Probably didn't want to admit to publishing such volumes. Probably riddled with errors too.” He snapped the book shut, then placed it sideways upon a low shelf. “Still, better than not having a copy at all.” He bent down and continued looking.

This continued for a good quarter hour, the pale young man taking out a book, paging through it, listing off some obscure details about their relevance, rarity, veracity. Some he put back on the shelf, some he added to his pile. Once he was through, there was a precarious stack of books on the floor about a foot and a half high.

“These I will get, then.”

Evelyn nodded, then shifted the glass and locked the case shut. She picked up the stack of books, which was quite heavy, and carried them over to the counter.

“Just let me look of the prices of these first. Oh, shoot. I forgot to find the binder!”

“That's quite all right. Take your time.” The pale thin gentleman stood calmly at the counter, drumming his fingers lightly along the the glass.

Finally she found the binder with the big ticket items and began looking up all the books in his pile.

“Uh, mister...”

“Frost.”

Evelyn looked up from the ledger. “Really, Frost?”

The pale thin gentleman smiled slightly. “Yes, really. Frost. Jonathan Frost, in fact.”

“Jonathan Frost? Oh, that's so cool! Wow! You must love your name!”

“It is quite evocative, I must admit. And may I ask, what it is you are called by, my dear?”

“Oh, ah. Evelyn. That's not my last name though. It's my first. My last is Sharp. So, uh, Evelyn Sharp!”

“Sharp?” he said, raising his brow. “I don't find you so at all.”

“Oh! Ha ha!”

“Forgive me. You must get that kind of comment all the time.”

“No, no! I mean, people make jokes about my last name all the time, but not that way. It's usually like, 'oh please don't cut me,' or something lame like that.”

“Only playing off of the adjective to go straight to the topic of knives, not referencing the emotional disposition.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think that's what I mean. I...”

Since she had begun her conversation with the pale thin gentleman, she had not been keeping track of Minnie. In fact, thoughts for Minnie and her whereabouts had completely flown out of her mind. In the back of her mind somewhere, she must have decided that Minnie had gotten bored with the store, deciding its atmosphere wasn't appropriately conducive to light-heartedness or giddiness, and had shot off to find some new people to animate. So Evelyn was taken completely by surprise when Minnie shot out of nowhere and circled three times about Jonathan Frost's head. All Evelyn could do for the moment was stare.

Minnie stopped dead in the air, over Jonathan Frosts left shoulder, grabbed the sides of her non-mouth with both hands and stuck out her non-tongue, making a disgusted masque, her normally pinkish hue turning a sudden bright green. Then she shot out through the front window at Looney Tune speed, leaving a little puff of nonexistent vapor behind her.

Evelyn, stunned by this completely uncharacteristic display from the faery, could not help but follow the course of its flight with her eyes.

“I'm sorry?”

“Huh?”

“Is it something I said?” Jonathan Frost wore an expression of such confusion he almost seemed to be in pain.

“Uh, uh...” She had to do something to recover from this. Think Evelyn, think.

“Well, it's just, uh, these books? They seem to be really expensive? I mean, this first one on top? The Catalaunian Grimoire? It's listed in here as being 456 dollars. Just scanning down the list, the rest of the books aren't that far different. I mean, some or them are even more. Are you sure you want to spend this kind of money?”

The pale thin gentleman Jonathan Frost stared at her calmly, coolly. “I can quite assure you I can pay whatever the price of these books may be. Money is, quite fortunately, not something I need to consider.”

“Oh,” squeaked Evelyn. “Oh.” She nodded, more to herself than to him. “Well, uh, I'll just add all these up then.”

“Do take your time.”

For the next several minutes, Evelyn added up the price of the magic books, punching each one into the cash register. She did not look up, but just as she could see faeries she could feel the pale thin gentleman's eyes staring at her, dark with suspicion. When she added up the final price of the books, it was more money than she made in a year. Evelyn was pretty sure the owner, Miss Faith, had deliberately priced the books out of what other people would be willing to pay for them, so no one would, and she wouldn't have to look for more of them to fill up the case.

But still, they were for sale.

Jonathan Frost paid for his books using a Debit Card from Bank of America. His purchase was approved almost immediately.

“Well, there's your books, and, there's your receipt,” said Alison. She had packed the books all up into two large plastic shopping bags, with the store logo printed on the front in black against an absinthe-green background. She placed the receipt all folded up into one of the bags, turned their handles towards the pale thin gentleman and smiled as warmly as possible.

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes flickering back and forth between her and the bags.

“So, it that all then?” she said, with utmost chipperness.

“Yes,” said Jonathan Frost, his eyes scanning slowly across the store. “I don't think that today I will be requiring any trinkets.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He only stared at her in response. A long, unfathomable stare, betraying hidden depths at work churning and colliding end over end, but on the surface as calm, as inviting as could be. Underneath that stare, Evelyn could only stare back in response, weakly, like an animal at mercy.

“May I ask you a question?” he asked softly. It was almost a whisper.

“Shoot.”

“Just now, before you started talking about book prices, it was as if you...saw something.”

“Yes?”

“What did you see?”

The man standing in front of her, this well-dressed gentleman, had just spent over 20 thousand dollars on books, books that claimed to contain magic. There they were, sitting in front of her, dressed in the colors of the Green Fairy.

“A spirit encircled your head three times and shot out through the window.”

A weight, one that Evelyn had not even been aware off, evaporated off her shoulders and flew up towards the heavens.

The pale thin gentleman rocked back slightly on the balls of his feet, as if taken aback, but possessed of enough will to withhold it. “You can see spirits.” It was almost a whisper.

“Not...the dead,” said Alison, shifting her eyes down towards the counter. “But, spirits of the air, and the earth, of objects and emotions.”

“Faeries.”

“Faeries, yeah.” she looped her hair behind her ear. “That's how I think of them, actually. But it feels strange to say the word out loud, you know?”

“Yes, yes I think I do.” His eyes scanned up towards the ceiling. “Can you always see faeries, or does it come and go?”

“It seems like I always can. I mean, I see them all the time. I even talk to some of them. In my head.”

Jonathan Frost's eyes went a little wide at this. He looked about the shop-room. “Are there, are there any faeries in here now?”

Alison shook her head. “You scared off the only one here. They don't actually come inside buildings all that much. It's why your emotions often seem...brighter somehow, out of doors. Faeries are more likely to be influencing you.”

“That's...that's quite astonishing.”

“Well, yes. Most people are pretty surprised to hear that faeries exist, but...”

“I mean that you can see them.”

At this, Evelyn could not help but look, for a moment, totally lost.

“I do know that they exist,” assured the pale thin gentleman.

“You-you do?”

Jonathan Frost nodded, almost sagely. “I am quite aware of the existence of faeries, it is only that I have never been able to see them. My studies, unfortunately, have not been that advanced.”

“They aren't? ...What studies?”

Jonathan Frost nodded his head forward in a motion of enclosing counsel. “I too, am a magician.”

“You are?” Evelyn almost certainly looked as shocked as she was feeling.

Jonathan Frost motioned towards the books wrapped in absinthe paper. “I do not buy these books for their value as curiosity, Miss Sharp, but for their utility.”

“You can do magic?”

This exhortation must have been slightly louder than was normal for polite conversation, for Jonathan Frost casually reclined his head and cast a careful scanning glance across the length of the shop, searching, one could only surmise for any other residence who may have overheard.

Evelyn felt her face flush.

“Yes,” returned Jonathan Frost calmly, his rounds complete. “I can do magic. Can't you?”

“What? No! I mean, no. Why would I be able to do magic?”

“Why, however else would you be able to see faeries? Such a feat seems, from my reading, at least, to be one of great training.”

“No, I-I didn't train for it at all! It's just, always been there. Since I was a kid. For as long as I can remember.”

A truly inscrutable look passed across Jonathan Frost's face then, a look that seemed to combine awe with disappointment. “So you are an adept.”

“An adept?”

“Yes,” said Jonathan Frost slowly, “it is a term used among those to in the study of magic for those are are naturally, well, adept at some aspect or another of the arts.”

“Oh.”

“...And I take it, from your lack of familiarity with the word, that, despite working within the walls of a magic shop, you are not well-acquainted with the study of magic?”

She had been, of course, in a way. She had studied witchcraft, divination, folklore, ritual magic. She even knew what an adept was supposed to be, when she had time to think about it. But that was all academic study. The way Jonathan Frost used the word study, it meant something much, much more.

“I...no.”

“Despite your tremendous gift?”

Jonathan Frost sounded exceedingly disappointed.

“I...should I have?”

Jonathan Frost shrugged, regaining his composure. “It is not a question for what you should, or shouldn't do, Miss Sharp. You may do as you will. It is just that it seems to be to be such an awful waste, to have such a ability, such adeptness, and to do nothing to build upon it. After all...” The absinthe bags moved. They moved of their own accord, or so it seemed, and slid off the counter. On their downward trajectory the bags uprighted themselves, turning in the air at such an angle that without any annoyance they found their handles within Jonathan Frost's waiting hands. “...the world is so much larger than all this.” The ashplant cane, which had, until moments before, been grasped in Jonathan Frost's hand, hovered momentarily upon the ground, then, as if thrown, rose up into the crook of his arm.

With a slight smile over his shoulder, his cane parallel to the floor, Jonathan Frost walked gracefully out of the shop. Pausing to open, the door, he tipped his head gently, with a wry smile. “Miss Sharp,” he said with courtesy, and was gone.

Later that night, after closing the shop, having had not too many more customers and none as significant, hungry, shivering, lying in bed in her pajamas, staring up at the bar of moonlight falling across her ceiling, occasionally eclipsed by the passing light of a car's headlights, she was still thinking about Jonathan Frost, what he had said and how he made the bags move. They had moved without him touching them. She was as sure of it as she sure of Minnie. All her life surrounded by wonder, she had felt so privileged, so special. But he had made the bags move. She felt lazy, sloppy. She had been wasting her life, spinning her wheels. She could have done something with herself, achieved something, lived a life, out there. But what was she now? No one. What had she done? Nothing. She was a shop girl. An entry-level no one with nothing to show for it. And somewhere out there magic was being done. She had just been sitting here content, with her faeries, her voices in her head. She suddenly felt very alone. Alone and useless in a dark room, with nothing and no one, while there was the whole world out there, lying on the peripheral, out of the corner of her eye. Now it was all she could see.

A small sprite shot in through the window and zipped across the room. A little person with wings. The sprite flew up to hover beside her face, smiling gleefully at her. “Go away,” she croaked, and turned her head. Evelyn could feel the faerie frowning, could feel its confusion, its wounded pride. Nevertheless, it turned around and zipped out the window. It would be several more hours before Evelyn got to sleep.

The Corner of Your Eye

2011-11-06T18:07:00.000-06:00

Evelyn's earliest memory was as a babe lying down in her crib: not an event, so much as an image that moved—like a hologram viewed at different angles. An absurdly early memory.

She is looking up, lying flat upon her back, her legs and arms up in the air twitching about, balled up, her view framed by the bars of her crib. Around the bars sit tiny beings, as tall as her open palm, their bodies seemingly made of solid light, with wings growing out of their backs, made out of the glints upon a lens aimed at the sun. Around them dance little pinpoints of light—the kind you might spot out of the corner of your eye—traveling around them in patterns unplottable. Behind them, farther from view, sit larger creatures upon the bookshelves and the dresser, the size of the teddy bears she is not yet old enough to be gifted with, translucent yet opaque, in colors brown, white, and blue, with textures rough, smooth and prickly, in shapes angular, globular, and spiky. Creatures made from wood, cloud and color. The prickly blue one has eyes, which stare down a long nose at her with wild joy. The other two do not have eyes, merely empty sockets carved into slits or round hollows. And before them all, standing at the base of the crib, is a figure that almost isn't there, yet is, with features as defined as any human's, but longer in the nose, chin and ears, and looking down upon her with a smile as loving as any of her mother's, yet tinged with a sense of triumph completely alien to the mundane world.

They had been there, before that, she knew, perhaps had been there to greet her when she entered the world—perhaps they were there to greet everyone as they entered the world—but that early flash was the first she remembered of the spirits. Of the faeries.

Later memories were more distinct.

There they are up upon the kitchen table doing somersaults. She laughs in her highchair as her mom tries to feed her baby food. She grabs it with her hands and throws it playfully about, making her mother mad, and the winged ones dart up around them and make silly faces, stretching out their translucent, silent mouths as if they are made of rubber.

She is outside in the backyard on a pleasant summer day. The grass is a vibrant green, and several of the brown ones are crawling out of the ground, down from the depths of the earth. Their heads rise in points, as if covered in caps, which are balanced on the other end by pointed chins that give the impression of thick, well-groomed beards. Their bodies are suggestive of little men covered in layers of clothes, their feet of pointed boots, and their arms and legs bear no signs of anatomy. They look as made of petrified wood. They jump up or roll out of the ground, run and jump and somersault about, then go back within the ground as easily as they came up. Tiny little winged ones, halfway between insects and humans, fly about the flowers growing among the grass. They sit themselves upon the flowers and pause, and the flowers glow with something that is not light. They do not touch the flowers growing in her mother's prim flower patch, and those ones never seem to have the same vibrancy that the wild ones do. She stands up drunkenly and toddles over towards the nearest set-upon flower; it is the first time she has walked. Her mother is somewhere else, just out of view, perhaps having gone inside for an iced tea. She sits herself down before the flower, and just as she does, the thing upon it takes up into the air, leaving her alone before the yellow petals. One of the brown ones from below walks over to her, and looks at her through the slitted caverns that are his almost-eyes. His almost-mouth parts in a circle of concentration, or perhaps confusion. She looks back and smiles. He reaches down and plucks the flower from the ground. She reaches out and takes it politely, though she does not yet know what politeness is. She reaches out and rubs the cap-like point upon his head. Though he had just passed through the earth with more ease than she has walked, it is as hard and cool as stone. He reminds her of something she had seen once, in the garden of her mother's friend.

“Gnome,” she says.

“Gnome,” replies the little creature, in a voice like far-off echoes in a cave, and he smiles.

As she grew older, she learned words to use for the spirits that she saw, fitting whatever captured them closest, and would try to describe them to the people around her.

“Look, there are some pixies!” she cries, seeing the insect-people flying from flower to flower. In the sunlight they are translucent, and disappear completely as they fly nearer the sun.

“That's nice, dear,” says her mother. She does not look up from her magazine.

“Ooh, do you see, over by the forest edge? There are some dryads!”

She is in the park with some other children playing. The spirits moving through the forest are tall and thin and various dark shades of brown. She thinks they look human-like but she knows that that is just a trick her mind is playing on her. She is very proud of the word she has just found for them, and wants to share it.

“You're weird,” says one of the other children.

“Yeah, Evey,” says another, “You can't make up stuff that we can't all see.”

“Let's play tag!”

As they run off, Evelyn stands there silently, not knowing whether she is allowed to follow, her eyes pulling towards the forest's edge.

By the time she started going to school, she had decided to keep the spirits to herself. She did not mention them to anyone she met at school, nor to her parents, who assumed that she had passed out of the stage where kids make up imaginary friends. But they were still there. They did not enter the school house too often, nor the playground and fields outside where the children went for recess, but occasionally she would see one flitting about in class, perhaps in the shape of an oriental dragon, or as an insect, and it would fly about, occasionally settling around some student, where it would place lucky pencils in the wrong spot or tickle a child just above the ear. Sometimes it would do such things to the teacher, too, like moving items on the desk when no one else was at an angle to see. Evelyn would try not to laugh.

But even if children could not see the things that Evelyn saw, they were observant in their own way, and a girl who giggles at things that aren't there is noticeable even when she tries to hide it. They avoided her, drew together in circles whenever she passed by. Quick, cutting glances darted her way as she went by, and soon she realized that even when in crowds she was alone. She was ostracized. Without her doing anything intentional, she found herself written out of all the social pacts young children make. She was weird.

No matter. After all, she did not lack for friends or playmates, and so did not concern herself much with the other-world of School, but focused on the sprites and gnomes and dryads, the beings that would notice her. She left her house to go on walks in nearby parks and forests, where they played games like Hide-and-Seek and Tag with her. She was content with this.

Now, being a child in middle school without any friends is a hard trick to pull off, and invariably invites problems. Her parents and teachers became weary of her lack of interaction with other children, for no one thinks it healthy for young children to speak with nobody of their own age. And Evelyn quickly learned that she would have to do something to adjust to these concerns, because the last thing she wanted to deal with was being sent to counseling or therapy, where people would constantly be asking her for reasons, reasons she could not give.

Luckily, the world had a way of sorting out such difficulties. As grades passed by, other children joined her in ostracizism. There is never just one child in a grade without friends, and who would be perfectly happy to be friends with anyone, even if anyone is someone who always seems to be looking at and reacting to things that are not there. And so, often at the urging and direction of whatever spirits seemed to be around at the time, she soon began making conversation with, and at lunch sitting next to children who, for whatever reasons, being fat or ugly or poor, or too smart or shy or nervous, were unloved by their fellows. And so, since it was Evelyn, covering her tracks, who initiated these friendships, it was Evelyn who became the leader of her very own clique: a clique of outsiders.

By the end of middle school she had settled into a place for herself. She had a loose cadre of friends, made up of an odd mixture of bookish nerds and aggressive would-be bullies. To augment her interests, she joined the school chorus and band (she played the flute). After school she went for long walks where she met with her real friends and had conversations without words. Then she would go home to her mother and father, where she would respectfully retire after dinner to her room to do her homework. She was responsible, friendly, and seemed completely ordinary, at least as ordinary as any kid in middle school.

In high school, her interests expanded. A girl aware, wherever she looks, of the spirits of the world that are moving about her cannot help but have some dawning interest in what is written about such things, and so, in her own time, she took to studying the Occult.

She read up on tarot and other forms of divination. She read books on folklore, magic, and witchcraft. She had little use for fantasy, or games, but a great appetite for actual information on spells and past beliefs. She wanted the real thing, to find anything that fit with her own experiences—though this meant wading through much dreck and obvious lies. So though she studied the various religious affiliations associated with magic—the Wiccans, the Ritual Magicians, the Theosophical Society, various New Age sects—she joined none of them. The goth kids in school, who included some former friends that, over the years, she had drifted away from, would ask her questions about such things from time to time, seeing her as a source of knowledge that nobody else had or was interested in collecting about topics that they, too, found interesting, but that like most people had not the wherewithal to autodidactically engage in depth, and she would gamefully engage such queries.

Now, Evelyn was not a goth kid herself. As her own personal style developed, she took to wearing longs skirts and dresses, with stockings in a variety of colors, styles and patterns. Sometimes she wore sneakers, sometimes ballarina slippers, sometimes combat boots. Sometimes she wore t-shirts with her skirts, sometimes dress shirts. At the beginning of her junior year, she acquired, as a hand-me-down from family friends, an old bomber jacket, which she took to wearing incessantly until senior year, when she began alternating it with a leather jacket which she had asked for for Christmas. And instead of the Industrial Rock favored by such kids, she listened mostly to old folk songs and ballads, although she did like Led Zeppelin. She put down her flute and learned to play guitar. She would go down to glens and fords along the edges of town, and sit down and play, and sing soft, wistful songs for all the beings nearby to hear. By the time she was done, she had invariably gathered an invisible audience.

At college, she took up study in ancient languages, folklore, comparative literature, and music—which as she saw it, was as necessary as any other language. She took classes on ancient mythologies, mystery religions, superstitions, women's studies courses that concentrated on such matters. She studied Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. After a first year in the dorms, where she had a roommate she barely talked to, she moved into a small studio flat, which she inhabited alone, just her and whatever spirits decided to visit. Once she was at college, she found, there was freedom, and she no longer had to keep up the appearance of reveling in the company of other people. She conversed easily with students and professors in class, and when she started working at a bookstore, she was nice and amiable with her co-workers. But she did not go to parties, or join any clubs, or go to bars. She did not seek out others.

She graduated with a double major in linguistics and comparative literature, with a minor in music. She had no interest in continuing on her studies, nor was she interested in moving home, or going anywhere else in particular, so she filled out the hours she was not working at the bookstore with time as a clerk at an occult shop. On weekends, she would sit in the back and do Tarot readings, which was a fairly easy way to earn some extra pocket money.

And so she came to make a life for herself that way. Living alone in a little apartment, learning lackadaisically about myth and magic, and with her free time, going out to the edge of town, past the farm fields, to the smattering of woods, to meet and play with the fairies.

Dead Billy (cont.)

2011-11-06T14:05:00.001-06:00

‘Aw man,’ said Gavin. ‘Aw man. Look at all the blood.’

Sean didn’t say anything. He was sitting on the ratty yellow couch on the far side of the basement, shadowed under a naked swinging lightbulb, lighting up a hit of meth.

It was Billy who had done it, actually. Not Gavin or Sean. He had done all of it. It was Billy who had come home with the big spellbook looking thing (‘It’s a grimoire,’ he had said,), something extra he had pilfered from his mushroom-and-heroin dealer Damien. It was Billy who had spent hours deciphering the Latin of the spell, checking it a Latin textbook and an online dictionary, and who had bought all the supplies that they would need. The candles, the pigs blood, the cows heart, the eye of newt, the massive wooden cross, the lighter fluid and the matches, the brazier, and of course the hunting knife. It was Billy who painted the pentagram in pig’s blood on the ground. It was Billy who had lit the candles, and invoked the words intoning them aloud in a deep, sullen voice. Gavin and Sean just kept the chant from the sides of the pentagram, as Billy lit the cross on fire over the brazier, then poured the eye of newt over the embers, then threw in the cow’s heart. And it was Billy who, at the apex of the spell, as Sean and Gavin’s voices grew higher and louder and as the cow’s heart blackened and the embers were finally snuffed out, plunged the knife into his chest. A final offering, it was meant to be.

‘Don’t you think that’s risky, dude?’ Sean had said.

‘No no, man it will be all right,’ replied Billy. ‘It’s just like, a down payment, you know? After the spell is done, we three will be like gods. I’ll be fine! I’ll be better than fine! Don’t you want unlimited power?’ Billy might have been tripping at the time.

Now, the room was starting to smell sickly sweet. The smells from the blood and the body were overwhelming the smoke from Sean’s meth pipe. Sean was shivering.

‘Oh shit, man, what are we going to do?’ Gavin was kind of leaning against a support pole over by the stairway, if leaning was something that could be agitated and intense.

Sean kept shivering. ‘Aw man. Aw man, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.’ There was a faded orange blanket thrown on the couch. Cradling his meth pipe in one hand, he wrapped himself in the blanket with the other, got up, and walked past Gavin and up the stairs without saying another word.

‘Sean?’ called out Gavin. ‘Sean? We got to do something, man.’ Gavin followed Sean up the stairs. ‘We can’t just leave him here. We can’t just leave him like that.’

The door to the basement slammed shut. A light turned on underneath it. The lightbulb was still on, but after awhile it stopped swinging.

Billy didn’t move.

Dead Billy

2011-11-06T12:41:00.001-06:00

Billy was dead. Very dead.

There was a twelve inch serrated hunting knife sticking out of his chest, the blade plunged 6 inches into the gut, just below the apex of the ribs. It looked kind of weird, the rest of the blade and that big handle, all wrapped in black leather except for the silvery hilt, just sticking out. It seemed so out of place, like, ‘Hey, where is the rest of that thing?’ There was blood too. Blood dribbling out from the wound and pooling on the floor, smeared along the ground from the pentagram painted on the floor to the wall where Billy had slid over to die. So he at least could be sitting up, you know. And that he was. His back against the concrete wall of the basement, the blacks of his Cannibal Corpse t-shirt and jeans all soaked in red, his legs sprawled out and his arms hanging limp, but palms up, as if asking for alms. His face pale, mouth hanging open, eyes staring wide at some unknown point on the floor, head cocked to one side, the will to hold it to aloft having long since fled. And everything about him was very very still.

Magic on Venn-La

2011-03-06T12:57:00.000-06:00

There are many different magical disciplines on Venn-La.

telekinesis. controlling objects with one's mind. allows for flight.
scrying. seeing the future or present, or past. several different methods developed to tap into this, including merely concentrating upon the mind's eye, but also using methods such as mirrors or pools or entrails of beasts.
mind control. usually used for the taming of wild beasts. use on other kuls is outlawed in most lands.
energy control. like telekinesis, only with energy not matter. lncludes manipulating fire, light, lightening, but also controlling temperature or creating illusions.
spirit walking. making one's spirit leave one's body and go waking and traveling elsewhere, then returning with what information one has gained.
teleportation. moving your body from one place to another, traveling in the corridors between reality.
healing powers. The manipulation of energy at a deeper level to heal and alter the body. can also be used in the cultivationg of plants or animals, imbuing them with more spirit or order.
transmogrification. turning one substance into another. water to wine, lead to gold.
necromancy. controlling the dead or spirits of the once living. often illegal, and widely viewed as evil.
wizardry. simply shaping or altering reality in total with one's own will. creating something from nothing. Very rare, often outlawed. such a being, if suffiently powerful, can become like a god.

Many of these abilities can be used in a variety of creative ways to perform many technological functions.

Venn-La

2011-03-05T15:31:00.001-06:00

On the planet Venn-La, the dominant species, a race of intelligent beings who call themselves kuls, have long ago learned how to use magic. After an initial stage of tool developement they began to move more and more to a dependance on the mystic arts.

They build buildings by shaping the earth, create weapons by molding the rare materials. Feed themselves by creating cauldrons of plenty, or bewitching creatures from the seas, or gardens by controlling the flowering of plants. They light their houses with orbs of energy floating in the air. They cook in furnaces lit with magic fires. They communicate across vat distances by water pools, and in hulls with flying spells cast upon them. They teleport from city to city. They have built cities in the air, on mountains upturned and made to float by ancient spells. They keep cities that float upon the seas.

Their are two types of Kuls, those with magic, and those without. The magical ones all have green skin, and are called mors. Those without magic are orange skinned and called wors. Kuls of both skin types can breed with one another, and have children of different colors. Wors have children who are mors, and mors have children you are wors. Only about one tenth of kuls are mors, and they tend to be women (there are two sexes on Venn-La). Those born wors train to be great fighters, or fine artisnas, creating the simple tools that will aid the Mors in doing the magic that runs society.

Save for later

2011-01-18T23:27:00.002-06:00

The sounds of battle were cleaning up outside, but Torquesville was not there to hear them. Or if he was, he was willfully ignoring them. Instead he was focused upon the dirtflecked, unpolished lookingglass set before him, its edges rough yet straight upon his washstand. He was eying his reflection within, mysteriously, as if expecting sudden moves, though none were made. The face within rotated back and forth like a cobra, moving from one near profile to the other, the eyes locked in place, forever staring outwards. He noticed, as if for the first time, though also he was certain the thought had crept about before, that he could not quite place the age of the face behind the glass. It was much too set, too defined to be within the third decade of life, or even into the early years of the fourth. Yet the comparative lack of wrinkles meant he could not have been older than five and thirty. No face should have appeared quite so lived in, and yet so unmarked. And to top it off, the subtle, practiced motions of the face, the dart of the eyes, the slow raising of brow, the set of the mouth, betrayed the easy practice of a soul that had been living for over a century. It was a face that was perfectly unnatural. And it was his.

"How weird," he thought. "Men should no longer be living."

Outside, there could be heard the sound of a man falling to ground nearby the tent, and being set upon and torn open by long blades, screaming in wet horror. The dying sounds caught hold of Torquesville and pulled his soul back across whatever oceans it had crossed. The fae were making sport of another town, and he had business out-and-about.

DnD: An Introduction

2011-01-10T16:16:00.005-06:00

Once upon a time, a new race of creatures was born from out of the earth, a race known as man. This race walked upright, and had thoughts, and stared back in on itself in contemplation, and contemplated that contemplation.
And when this bright light was lit, it threw flickers of light out into the shadows, and saw echoes of itself there, spirits walking in the dark. Spirits of the earth and water and sky. And the spirits, who had always been there, stared back at man, contemplating its contemplation. Then the spirits came and walked with man, and took man's form, or some form of man.
The spirits of the earth took the form of dwarves. The spirits of the air took the form of elves. The spirits that walked between them became gnomes. But there was darkness and chaos in the spirits of the world as well, and some took the form of goblins and drow, and other things besides.
Other spirits took other forms, and others remained spirits, but the ones who walked with man took to the mundane world lived and bred and died.
And so it has been, for countless generations.

DnD: quick shots

2011-01-10T14:18:00.000-06:00

There are large markets to the west of the Merchants Quarters, where most of the city will mingle and exchange goods.
The dwarf and halfling settlements within the city walls reside along southern bend of the river Gar, just north of the second set of docks in that region. Both the dwarves and halfings are heavily involved in the shipping economy of the city, though dwarves are more involved as stevedores and bookkeeping and halfings are more involved as sailors.
A series of canals is dug up from the river below where the dwarves reside, to allow more ships to dock in the city.
Dwarftown, as it is called, is made up primarily or small, squat houses, all tightly joined at the sides in thin, narrow streets. The houses have no more than two stories and are connected below by subterranean tunnels that also lead out into other parts of the city. The entrances are scattered throughout the entirety of the city, coming up to entrances peppering the city streets, where they are guarded by dwarven guards. A price of one silver piece is required for their use, and in this way the guards earn their keep. For elves and half-elves, it's one gold piece.
Halfsburg is built in a crazyquilt of styles, stealing architectural ideas from all the other areas, but smaller, as if the halfings are trying to tell everybody else that anything they can do, halflings can do as well. Just smaller.
The human section of town is north of the dwarves and to the east of the main market, and closely resembles the streets of ancient Rome, with large public buildings built over narrow or wider streets, store fronts and artisan shops opening up onto the ground floor, with living quarters rising to fearsomely high levels, five, sometimes seven or eight, into the air. The human section of town, which already resides on a slight rise in the land, is easily the tallest section of the city.
The tallest building in the entire city is a single white tower (though other towers exist, especially in Merchants Quarters) that rises above the human's section of town. There are no doors and windows opon the lower levels, though several windows can be seen on the top five, where lights can be seen in the night. It is whispered that a magician of great power lives there.
The elves' district lies to the north of the humans' district (neither district has anything like an official name). It is built of a number of towers, houses on stilts, or just generally tall, thin buildings, the elves in town trying to create structures that mirror the tree dwellings that they have been used to in past centuries. The streets are more like mazes that roads, and often require one to travel upwards along staircases and ladders. Bridges of wood and rope connected the raised dwellings along the upper levels. It's almost impossible to travel through the elves district in any mode other than by foot.
Between the elves and human district there is a kind of no race's land, not as run down as the Thieves District, that includes races of all sorts. The buildings here, like Halfburg, come in all architectural varieties, but normally sized (well, except for halfling dwellings). The East Gate is in this section, and is run by an order of Paladins devoted to Safe Passage. "Safe passage to you" is their offical greeting, and this phrase resides above the Gate in both Common and Elvish. An official donation, meant to fund people's safe passage, is required, but is only five coppers.
Another halfing dwelling is to the west of the elves district, along the bend of the Gar. It is called Shantytown. Lying on marshland, it is made of a number of houses on small raised stilts, connected by small paddling boats and boardwalks. It is closely connected economically to the isle of Gibbob to the east.
On the northern side of the bend in the Gar is farmland, farmed entirely by human's, that serves as a source of produce that can be protected should the city ever be put to siege. The North Gate lives along here, and is run by an order of monks known as the Kites. No toll is required, but donations to the upkeep of the Gatehouse are accepted. There is also an order of clerics who meet in this region around a large standing stone every thirdday.
The days of the week are Oneday, Twoday, Thirdday, Fourthday, Fiveday, Sixday, Seventhday or suchlike. Some races vary on which days are numbers and which are numerals and which are orders. The elves use only orders (firstday, secondday, etc.).

DnD: The Naysayers

2011-01-06T22:54:00.000-06:00

Nobody really knows precisely how long the Naysayers have been around. They probably can trace their origins back any of a dozen among several hundred minor thief gangs that have sprung up and faded away within Leoden, but it is known that they came to control the Thieves Gate around twenty summers past. Previous to that summer the Thieves Gate had been run by a gang referred to as the Joykills. However, on Midsummer's Night, the windows and spaces under doors and the cracks between stones and boards were all seen to shoot out a bright sickly green light. The light lasted for several hours, and nobody dared approach the building. Nothing could be heard within. The next morning, nothing, not a single living person could be found within the Thieves Gate.
The Naysayers moved in before anyone else was willing to, and have been there ever since.
The leader of the Naysayers is a human named Thome d'Arg. Thome is tall, and rail thin, with a severe scar running over his eye and down past his lips. (People debate whether the eye is real or not; it looks real enough but most people are not willing to ask.) His hair is a dark, coal black, and he is always seen playing with a long, slim, expertly made dagger.
How many Naysayers there actually are in the city is hard to say, but those who care for such things estimate that there can be no more than twenty or thirty.

The Greatest Album Of All Time.

2011-01-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

I spent like around eighty minutes writing this to post elsewhere, so figured I would post it here, just for a sense of completeness:

Have the day off, since I'm working Saturday, so have been sitting around doing nothing, surfing the internet listening to the Beatles. Listened to all of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper straight through, among other stuff.
I can definitely see the appeal of Revolver as a choice for best Beatles album, especially if one prefers earlier Beatles. It's definitely the best record the Beatles had produced up until that point. Sure, none of the songs are bad, but none of the Beatles songs are really ever bad (well, maybe some of the later avant garde stuff). It's that all of the songs are really, really good (except Dr. Robert), and some are among the finest works of recording art ever produced. Taxman. Eleanor Rigby. For No One. Tomorrow Never Knows.
But I still think Sgt. Pepper is just ultimately a better work of Art. I already mentioned its sense of continuity, which Revolver lacks. Perhaps it's just that I am resistant to proclaiming Revolver the best, just because I feel it's so interchangeable with their earlier stuff. Really, it was! Revolver was released in the U.S. with track on it from Rubber Soul. Sgt. Pepper was the first record that was significant and defined enough that the songs on it could not be split up and repackaged on their way across the Atlantic. Sonically, it was just too different, the real inauguration of "later Beatles." I feel that the greatest record off all time should have been more clearly recognized as such in it's own time, as Sgt. Pepper was.
Which of course is part of the problem, I think. Sgt. Pepper was so immediately hailed as a work of genius, the beginning of Albums as Artistic Works that people don't want to think that it really could be the best of all time. That reputation is stifling, somehow, but of what I don't know.
For my part, Sgt. Pepper was both the first Beatles record and first CD I ever got (and for Christmas, natch). So I am probably just as biased as anyone else, since Pepper has certain nostalgic underpinnings for me. But a part of me suspects that, though nostalgia may have some impact, my early acquaintance with the album may also have shielded me from the backlash, allowed me to be free to see it on its own merits, and not in terms of whether it really is the "Best" or not.
People talk about the weird production on the songs, but I don't really understand where that comes from. Most of the sonic experimentation seems pretty effective and often unnoticeable, like how they raised Paul's voice on When I'm Sixty Four. The standard arrangement of most of the songs on the album is still the rock music staples of guitars, bass (this is truly an excellent bass guitar album), drums and piano. Some songs include, say, harpsichord, or eastern instruments, or string backings, but all of that stuff started appearing much, much earlier—the strings as early as Help!, the eastern instruments and harpsichords or whatever are on Rubber Soul. And really, there isn't a single song on Sgt. Pepper that is as sonically experimental as Tomorrow Never Knows. The only really significant change on this one is that they brought in a full orchestra for a couple of songs, but I don't really see how that can be that much of a knock on the album, given that the main orchestral song is A Day in the Life, which no one has anything bad to say about.
I think what really sets Sgt. Pepper apart is not the production—although it is quite complex, and many of the recording and arrangement techniques that popped as gimmicks on the earlier records (like the sitar) are now merely parts in a larger canvas—but the incredible depth of the songs. Earlier albums, even Revolver had a surplus of songs that just amount to "silly love songs." Though to Revolver this is too a much lesser extent, there are still songs like, Here, There, and Everywhere, Got To Get you Into My Life, or I Want To Tell You.
Sgt. Pepper, on the hand, while it often touches upon love themes, gives most of it's songs over more esoteric considerations. Probably the two songs closest to being straight love songs are When I'm Sixty Four and Lovely Rita. But When I'm Sixty Four is as much about aging and mortality and the fear of loneliness as anything, and Lovely Rita is almost an anti-love song: you can see edges of darker impulses creeping into the lyrics. On top of that, there is a certain level of craft, of actual poetry in the lyrics, like John and Paul's songwriting had advanced several levels between albums. Can anyone name a couplet as evocative as "What do you see when you turn out the light?/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine"? on Revolver? Or how about "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away"? Probably the least lyrically complex song on the album is Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite, which a piece of found art (all the lyrics are adapted from an old poster John bought) who's ambiguity and mood are like a kind of musical Rorschach Test. This is a very, very sharply focused set of songs, and they all work flawlessly together.
When I listen to Revolver, I feel like I am listening to the work of excellent, excellent pop songwriters, better songwriters than have ever worked on Tin Pan Alley or for Motown. When I listen to Sgt. Pepper, I feel like I am listening to songs with just as high a level of songcraft, but with the literary heft that, say, a Dylan brings to his work, and with the musical arrangements to match that complexity.

DnD: The Docks and the Thieves District

2011-01-02T13:10:00.000-06:00

To the west of the River Gar is the River Gish, a thin tributary of the Gar that curls through the western wall and snakes through the streets of Leoden before finally joining the Gar along the southern curve of the wall. For a distance of nearly two miles the two rivers run closely along at a distance of between three fourths and one half miles before finally joining. The entirety of the land between these two rivers is filled with docks and warehouses, where goods coming down the two tributaries or coming up from the Midearth Sea are loaded and unloaded, either to be sent off to other lands or packed onto caravans to trade among the forests and countryside. The Merchants Quarters lie across the river from the docks, connected by four massive, curving bridges. It is here that the merchants are most often seen outside the bounds of their compounds, surrounded by heavily armed guards, directing the unloading and accounting of their goods and wares.
On the other side of the Gish is the Thieves District, which goes all the way to the western wall. The entrance along this side of the wall, called the Thieves Gate, is rarely used, and fallen greatly into disrepair. For who would want to announce to their presence in Leoden by passing through the Thieves Gate? The rest of the city has little reason to see to the Gate's upkeep; the entirety of the thieves district is cut off form the rest of the city by the path of the River Gish. If the Thieves Gate were to be breached by some traveling Horde, the city would merely burn the bridges between along the River Gish and defend themselves from there, as they do along the River Gar's southern bend.
In addition, the Gatehouse of the Thieves Gate is controlled and operated by a loose collective of humans, goblins, and halfelves called the Naysayers, considered a guild by some, but a gang by others, who charge a fee 10 copper pieces (or one silver, but who has that?) for entry through the gate. It seems impossible that the Naysayers could actually turn a profit merely by running the gate, and most assume that the Naysayers collect protection money from various residents of the Thieves District, however, no one outside the District has shown any interest in either proving or punishing this activity.
In truth, the Thieves District is not populated solely by thieves. In fact, some of the best thieves in the city make a point of never setting foot in the Thieves District: after all, what is there to steal? The Thieves District is merely the poorest section of the city, a cloistered ghetto to which the poorest of all the races are forced to reside, and where there is much need, there is much crime. Anyone who goes out after dark in the Thieves District is either very brave, or very stupid.
The Thieves District is also the most heavily integrated area of the entire city. Unlike the City's eastern side, with its enclaves of Halfings, Dwarves, Humans, and Elves, nearly every street in the Thieves District contains a plethora of races. Any who make their way there have no thoughts of where they reside, only if they will have a place to reside. The only two races with any nominal enclaves in the Thieves District are the Lemurians (kobolds) who count several blocks to themselves along the District's southern edge, and goblins, who reside along the northern edge, near the wall. This is not to say that Lemurians and goblins are limited only to these two regions, of course, merely that these are the only regions where they predominate. Neither race is trusted enough by the other races to have yet established themselves among legitimate society, and while the Lemurians have made inroads among the other races in terms of appearing "not all bad," the fierce enmity between the goblins and the dwarves ensures the former's perpetual isolation.

Dnd: One Merchant Among Many

2011-01-02T10:19:00.000-06:00

One such merchant is Aergon Og'Hir. Aergon, a human, is taller and lighter-haired the native stock of the region, as he has some ancestry that traces quite recently to the far Northwestern Lands. There is also a certain archness to his features, which leads many who meet him to assume he may have some elf-blood in him, though if he does, it has had no effect on his towering height. Aergon Og'Hir is nearly seven feet all.
Aergon Og'Hir's residence is one of the largest compounds in the Merchants Quarters. It sits upon the river's edge, it's outer wall forming a sheer extension from the walled banks below. Within this bank is a small cave, leading into an underground docking bay, in which Og'Hir is able to receive small, unmasted ships, although for what purpose is not commonly known. Within the walls, there is a large, opulent pleasure garden, containing hanging vines and exotic trees with wooden walkways passing across their branches. The central house is a large, stone mansion that rises five stories high from the center of the compound, though it is connected by intricate trellises to small guest houses that grow out of the outer walls, one on each side. The walls are also supported on each corner by tall, thin towers, which are lit from within by watchgaurds at all hours of the night.
Og'Hir seems to have no special product that he focuses on trading. He is known to possess several ships that dock around Leoden, and these ships bring in exotic goods from all around the world. However, it is a common rumor around the city that Og'Hir himself has an interest in rare magical artifacts, and may even be willing to pay for such items no questions asked.

DnD: The Merchants Quarters

2011-01-01T19:27:00.000-06:00

Along a span of the river Gar that runs almost straight north-south there lies, on the eastern side, the section of Leoden known as the Merchants Quarters. It is believed by some, though there is no documentation to prove it, that the Merchants Quarters is the oldest section of town, though some insist The Docks, positioned on the opposite bank, hold this title. The Merchants Quarters do not, strictly speaking, count only merchants as their residents. The Merchants Quarters is merely the richest part of town, where all the wealthiest inhabitants live. This includes, of course, merchants, but also a couple of magicians, some of the elite members of certain guilds, as well as the temples of various magical disciplines.
Every estate or mansion within the Merchants Quarters also requires a large supports staff. As there is no official law jurisdiction within Leoden, any of great wealth must look to their own resources for their protection. Thus, the Merchants Quarters is home to numerous large compounds, some with walled gardens, some built from nothing but stone, some with access only achievable by way of drawbridge or ladder. Each of these compounds (except for the temples) employs numerous guards and servants, to protect and provide for the needs of the merchants of live within. Whenever the merchants (and others) leave their abodes, they often travel in litters, surrounded by large processions to announce their passage—and act as a buffer against undesirables. However, it is surmised that some merchants actually will leave in the disguise of their own servants, either as members of their own retinue (who knows who's actually within that litter, anyway?) or as individuals out on errands, so as to travel about the city unmolested.

DnD Setup

2011-01-01T18:51:00.002-06:00

Originally from elsewhere:

The freeport city of Leoden lies several leagues north of the Midearth Sea. The river Gar passes through it, running from the Northeast to the Southwest, passing under the high city walls that are built in a great circle and reach about 20 feet into the air. In the nearby northwest bend of the river there is a small island, populated by river-dwelling halflings, who make a business in trade. This island is called Gibbob, after an unfortunate accident involving the island's legendary founder, Gib. There are also nearby tribes of elves living it small patches of forest, where elves live high up in great tree forts.
Leoden has absolutely no, repeat no, civil authority. The city exists as an uneasy truce among those who live there and visit. Crime is rampant, the only thing keeping it in check the possibility of reprisal (since everyone invariably has a long list of allies, some of whom based on agreements and oaths from several generations past) or the spontaneous eruption of mob justice (no one likes someone who runs around attacking others, so most of the locals make it a point of pride to hunt down anyone who does). So Leoden is basically an anarchic city-state, more or less.
In terms of population in Leoden, there are probably more humans than anything else, constantly fleeing from the loose, petty kingdoms nearby. Elves and halflings are in constant competition for second place. Dwarves, owing to the farther distance of the mountains to the west (the Elps), are a distant fourth place. Gnomes, a rarer race who tend to live solitary lives upon the forest floor, are in an even more distant fifth, and are limited in number to the occasional few one might see wandering about as laborers and assistants to various other users of magic (gnomes are the most inherently magical of races, with not a one of them incapable of at least some acts of prestidigitation). That it is for the most part, although one might see from time to time some of the savage goblin folk passing through (usually not without a fight from the dwarves, who are their eternal enemies), and there is a small and growing community of the Lemurians (kobolds) who it is said come originally from a large island called Atlantis, located somewhere in the middle of the Midearth sea. The savage dogmen called gnolls are never allowed within the walls of the city, though they can be heard howling at night from the borders. Never has one of the race of darkelves, also called the trow or drow, been seen at the gates, though the elves insist that if one of them should ever arrive from the far north or northeast, that they not be allowed within.

The men that live in the area of Leoden are short, porcelain-pale, and dark haired, with frames that vary evenly between stocky and wirey. These men are able in artificing and industry—though in no way are they comparable to elves and dwarves—and if anything are superior at husbandry. In magic, they lack the ease of gnomes, but show a tenacity that often results in superior skill. The men have one strange cultural quirk that completely mystifies the other races, and that is their concept of gods. To the other races, there are of course spirits that reside within all things, that one can communicate and interact with. So there is the spirit of a river, of a stone, and so on. But men maintain that certain spirits are not spirits at all, but beings from shadowy realms beyond, beings should be worshiped, and given sacrifice, and prayed to for guidance and boons. The men call such beings gods, and feel awe before their mystery.
To the North, men are much the same, except taller. It is not widely known on Leoden to what gods these men pray, but on the great peninsula of Brutaine there is a great kingdom, ruled by a royal house of great Magicians and Warriors, known as the Danaans.
The men to the far Northwest are of even taller stature, and have a complexion softer and less harsh, with hair that varies from red to gold to light brown. Positioned among the Fjords, butting against the great glaciers, in the fortress known in whispers all throughout the lands above the Midearth Sea as Asgard. In this harsh fortress, the lands of the Northwest are ruled by the ancient Magician known only as Votan. At present Votan's royal family, known as the Aesir, is at war with another royal family, known as the Vanir, among whom it is rumored has taken to breeding with local elves.

Deep Thought

2010-12-22T00:35:00.000-06:00

Three of the four original Ramones are dead.

All four of the original Sex Pistols are alive*.

Whenever I remember that, it always strikes me as weird.

*Sid Vicious replaced Glenn Matlock, who co-wrote the majority of the songs on Never Mind the Bollocks.

27 years old

2010-12-12T10:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was talking to some friends about John Lennon and we came around to talking about how young the Beatles actually were, and I realized that Lennon was 27 years old when he wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus." Now I am listening to "I Am the Walrus," and I am realizing that the man I am listening to singing on this recording, that I have been listening to for years and years and years, is my age.

Sigh. I've wasted my life.

Luminous Beings Are We, Not This Crude Matter

2010-11-29T23:34:00.000-06:00

So, Irvin Kershner has just died.

It's so odd. Last night, I had just watched Empire again. I had watched it too see what my normal DVD would look like on a blue-ray player, since I had watched it earlier on my normal DVD player through my new LCD television, which I had bought after watching Star Wars and Empire on my old television and DVD player. I had actually been pushed to buy the LCD TV and blue-ray player because of the way Empire had looked, and watching it last night, on a forty-inch screen, in so much detail I felt like I was watching it for the first time, I spent the whole time analyzing all my favorite bits to it, like the now-famous "I love you"/"I know" exchange (due almost entirely to Kershner), reveling in the old school special effects, the performance of the actors, and I realized, after I had basically spent a thousand dollars so that I could watch this movie in higher quality, that it was probably my favorite movie. So it's incredibly weird to read the next day that the man I saw at the time as most responsible for making it so had died literally within hours of that.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Kirshner. And thank you.

PAYPAL IS THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD

2010-08-30T21:03:00.000-05:00

Because I don't mind doing a favor for John Cole.

Fragment for later

2010-08-27T23:08:00.003-05:00

"Greetings to the last soul to speak to my father while living."

Jack looked up. Floating out from the forest was a bowl of thorny horns, a stag's crown, growing out from a head almost human. The face was furry, and ancient in a way beyond age, bearded and chiseled, everything a dark nutmeg in the pale moonlight, crossed by shadowbranches. The face was bound to a body, the bulk of a bull in the mold of a man, massive and mighty. The apparition passed from the forest, walking with a cadence of one entranced, but the beastman's eyes were as lucid as lakeripples.

"He has rejoined us now, and is once more beyond us all." The voice was whistle of wind through wood, breath across jugs. Deep and warm and rich and soft.

This makes no sense, thought Jack. He stared at the creature before him, rising up above like an ocean wave headed to shore, and felt a creeping sense of the familiar, and of the unreal.

"Do I know you, sir?" asked Jack of the creature.

"We have not met, though we know of each other. You have been told of me, by journeymen across the sea. I am the Horned One. The Second One. The Good One."

"I see," said Jack. Suddenly he wished he had a weapon. The party was close, but now oh so far away. "Well then—hail, sir. Well met."

Mnemopolis

2010-05-23T00:54:00.000-05:00

I have no idea who, if anybody, still reads or has ever read this blog, but I figure it is a good move to point out that I have started a new blog. It is called Mnemopolis, and it will be nothing but fiction, and one specific piece of fiction at that, told over a series of posts going up every Friday. I will probably post here from time to time, too, if the mood moves me, but for the most part this is it. I don't really have anything substantial to say on the internet that I don't say in the comments on Cogitamus, (whether it's on-topic or not) so why bother retyping anything over here? The rest of the time I should just be writing fiction.

I like the idea of posting Mnemopolis on a blog too. Of any of my various projects, it's the one that seems most suited. Besides, the world needs more fiction. There are plenty of essays, and memoirs out there, but fiction, I think we are starved for. It's become so precious that we don't know that we aren't getting enough of it, because we get so much other writing—for free. So, if people are going to give navel-gazing away on the internet, then by gum, someone needs to start giving away stories.

I aim to start a movement.

The absence of art is the death of the soul

2010-04-26T02:12:00.000-05:00

I have just gone through one of my longest fallow periods, both in terms of writing and in terms of this blog, and I have to say that I think not writing is legitimately dangerous for me. Forget art, forget prestige, or notoriety, forget trying to ever make this my profession. Going without writing actually makes me feel physically ill. I think the accumulated anxiety that comes from feeling either that I am not moving forward with my life, or that I am not simply creating something is causing actual physiological harm. So I need to get back in the swing of things, working on things, not because of some larger life-goal purpose, not because it will get me where I want to go, (such a destination has been seeming more and more distant lately, but that might in large part be the anxiety talking) but because I need to be doing it just to feel good about myself right now. Otherwise, I start feeling bad, and then I don't want to write, and then I don't write, and then I feel worse, and then I go a month without posting or completing a story and I just feel awful, awful, awful, all the time. And that needs to stop.

So, what have I done in the meantime?

Well, I have been cleaning my apartment. Deep cleaning. Like, selecting a four foot square section or and just getting all the dust and junk out of there and organizing everything and putting things away. I have done most of the apartment now, like that, basically everything except the bathroom (which is thus now a real mess) but of course there has been some decay in earlier parts that needs to be addressed, and I still have tons of papers and mail and manuscript pages just shoved in boxes and shoved up against my bed (which I didn't clean under, at least not all the way). But in all the apartment it much cleaner and friendlier and spacious to reside in, and I am starting to learn some good habits in terms of picking up after myself. It has been much more pleasant to live around here after starting that project (which I have been tending to on days when I can blast my music and leave my door open and let the spring air in).

Also, I have made a resolution to start eating less meat. Not for any political reasons, just health. I always feel out of sorts in my own skin, and my youthful metabolism is bound to slow down. Plus I have just been feeling sort of undone, in some way. So, I have been eating more grains, more salads. Hopefully, eventually, I can cut out other unhealthy types of food, but I am taking this in a gradual manner. My weakness is strong. (So much of my time out here in Iowa has felt like this very gradual, three steps forwards, two steps back kind of building myself back together into some kind of complete person that I have never been before but might have been in some better version of the world. Moving more and more towards the vegetarian side of omnivorism seems like a part of that. I have always, in my heart of hearts, admired vegetarianism, while disdaining it, since it has seemed like something that existed outside of the bound of my own willpower. But it would be nice to move towards it, even if I am only able to decrease the distance by half each time.) I have also been trying to eat more fish instead of mammal, but fish is expensive and so that hasn't been going so well.

In terms of music listening, one neat thing is that I bought a new speaker system. With a subwoofer. My first subwoofer! It's great. I love bass. That's what I was referring to when I was talking about blasting my music: just turning on my new stereo system after hooking it up to my computer, finding a comfortable volume and just luxuriating in the crystal clarity of the sound while doing something else. Black Sabbath never sounded better.

In terms of new stuff, I have been listening to a lot of Amanda Palmer, both solo and past and present projects. The Dresden Dolls. Evelyn Evelyn. I have both the DD albums (still need to get the EP) and the EE disc, but Who Killed Amanda Palmer? is still (I hope) in the mail. Often I just find a playlist on Youtube and put that on, since almost all her solo stuff has a video made for it, and a lot of her live performances have their own unique charm. I am sad that she has replaced the Pogues as my music act of the moment, and I don't feel like I was quite done with them, but that's life. I like her voice. I like her piano playing. In fact, I think she had become my personal favorite piano player. She is not as esoteric as Tori Amos. There is more of an interests in "riffs" or what the piano equivalent would be, but there is still a lot of improvisation. She plays piano a lot like Hendrix plays guitar (although I wouldn't go so far as to say she is the greatest ever, like I insist Hendrix is, but their approach has certain similarities. The products of committed lovers of their instrument who just love doing whatever they can with it. It's not dissimilar from how I like to play drums). Also, she's engaged to Neil Gaiman, who I have always felt an odd connection to, ever since he turned my name into my favorite Sandman character, so there's that. There is a theatricality to her approach to things, and she certainly has a love of the dramatic, but, like the Decemberists, its the kind of theatricality that is adopted so as to seek a deeper emotional level. Through the veil of drama, something more powerful than the immediate and raw can be viewed. Though it is veiled, it is still present, and the exactitude of the dimmed meaning is often stronger than the truths that others try to arrive at through authenticity. Whatever that is.

Healthcare

2010-03-22T01:06:00.000-05:00

FUCK YEAH!

USA! USA!

update

2010-03-12T19:12:00.000-06:00

Man, been dark for a while now.

Not feeling as depressed as during the last blog. I have been under the weather for a while though. Been coughing for a consistent week now; my throat has just been killing me. And I just haven't felt like doing any kind of creative thinking, really, while feeling this down in the dumps. Usually I do these types of post as a way to flex the writing muscles, get a little limbered up to get back in the swing of things. I miss writing, It feels weird to think/type/write that after, you know, not writing, since really if a person wants to write they should just write, right? And yet, no! For some reason there is this strange quixotic urge, or anti-urge, that holds me back from doing it in times of distress or stress or hardship or fatigue. Some mix of fear and discomfort, as if the act of writing was just something I wasn't fit to engage in, and thus I had to abstain.

All Hope Is Gone

2010-03-05T14:42:00.001-06:00

In the last week or so, I have basically lost all hope for this country. It seems to me that Bush sent us on a path to absolute economic, environmental and political dissolution, and because of the psychosis of our country's right wing, the economic power of our corporate class (who are invested in turning us into a plutocracy), the media's either willing or ignorant complicity in the efforts of such people to derail us, and the various obstructionist hurdles in our (supposedly) democratic system of government, make it impossible for Obama to right our course. And things will just get worse, and the right will regain power, because our people are too stupid to realize that it's the republicans that are still responsible for things not improving, and then we will get, I don't know, Speaker Boehner, and that way just lies the Apocalypse.

Summit

2010-02-25T13:31:00.000-06:00

I think the best thing about this health care summit it that it forces the news media to start talking about the actual substance of the bill, and the wide-spread popularity of the of many of its provisions. Hopefully, once people realize how much they support it, it will be easier for the Democrats to finally pass it.

Running up that hill

2010-02-22T22:09:00.000-06:00

So lately I have been trying to study up on Latin, as I have felt, in the midst of this my wilderness, starving artist years, that I needed to do something to keep up my image as a scholarly, didactic fellow. To these ends, I have been reading aloud from Caesar's the Gallic War, in Latin, and revisiting my Wheelock. I have found, however, that, after my time spent with Caesar, much of my knowledge of Latin is returning, albeit half-formed, and I don't have any great desire to slog through the lesson plans all over again. Yes, I could learn the vocabulary, but learning the vocabulary is what I am least interested in at the moment, if only because the English translation of anything I will be reading for the foreseeable future will be in the opposing page. No, I just want to relearn the grammar, and do it without having to read all the text of the sections I have already read.

So today, I read allowed each of the first three declensions, in each gender, over fourteen times each. I figure, if I can slowly commit the entirety of the declensions to memory, that will make the going much easier. Besides, as the writing has progressed further, I have found greater and greater enjoyment in acts of seemingly frivolous repetition, or trial and error, like whistling. It thinks its just the opportunity to engage my brain in activities that have no greater meaning, of any sort. It's relaxing, in a strange way.

the Wake

2010-02-22T10:44:00.000-06:00

I woke up this morning with the first sentence of Finnegans Wake running over and over again through my head.

It was part of some understanding I was having about the rhythm of sentences, and how important it is, and necessary for good writing. It made me want to rewrite everything that I had ever written, but then I realized that wasn't really necessary. My best writing already tends to have a sense of rhythm.

I think.

Book I

2010-02-21T00:41:00.000-06:00

Well, not too much new writing, these last few days. However, I did do a substantial edit on book I of SK, which took a fair amount of time tonight. It was quite taxing, with lots of ping-ponging around to make sure I had all the continuity right and stuff. But it's basically done, and, baring any missed continuity efforts, I think it is done. It actually works quite well as a stand-alone story. It had motifs and an ending the references the beginning and everything. Also, themes. and an emotional arc. I am quite proud of it. It is probably, even on it's own, the best piece of writing I have completed yet. There are parts that are poetic, and parts that are mostly dialogue, and parts that are just purely engrossing action sequences. I still kind of find chapter one scary.

So yeah, feeling better about my abilities.

I am not going to post this one on scribd at the moment, but if anyone wants to read it, (cough mom cough) send me an email or leave a comment. At the least, if would be nice to have someone who can spot any of those continuity errors I missed.

dead weather

2010-02-19T13:49:00.000-06:00

Not any writing lately. I hit one of those bleak periods, where everything seems hard, the future is rearing up to scowl at me, and I am seriously doubting my abilities, or if I even have any, after reading or hearing something somewhere. So basically, the emotional weather converged on a storm.

But, not that bad a storm. I feel like I am weathering it. I think that, having gotten hit like this so many times before, I am starting to build up a defense to the feelings, and am able to just, ignore them, or rationalize them, or something. Put them in context. but I'm not there, all the way, yet.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T15:09:00.001-06:00

I don't have anything special to say about this day that I didn't say one year ago. So I am just going to link to that post and say, "read this!"

2974

2010-02-13T21:51:00.000-06:00

That's how many words I wrote today, in one story, which basically means that book I of SK is done, except for the edits. I have reached the end. I was thinking that I was going to stop before I reached the dream sequence, and think it over, but then I just pressed on ahead and wrote it, off the top of my head, no planning, figuring the momentum would serve better. And I think it did. It had the quality I had wanted, where the images slowly over took and I didn't actually know which ones represented which event, but somehow the whole arc of the dream made it's own kind of musical sense. I expect I will not need to be making very many changes to it.

I felt good. I just sat down and basically just started putting one word in front of the other, until it was done. It had all been there, somehow, I had just had to actually write it. Well, that and do some research on the folklore concerning trees, but mostly, just write the thing. And now the first draft is done, and I can begin editing in earnest.

Well, not right now. I think I am going to rest on my triumph for a while.

Arthur Gets Lost

2010-02-13T14:07:00.002-06:00

Screw it. Here's the story I was talking about in the last post, after the jump. Remember, it's five years old. If you read it, tell me what you think of it in comments.
Arthur Gets Lost

Report: Nothing to report

2010-02-13T13:32:00.005-06:00

No writing yesterday. Just didn't feel like it, for a web of reasons too tied up to really get into. Some vague dissatisfaction haunts me, I think.

I was planning on posting a short story I had written long ago, just to put some more of my work up on the internet. I was amazed to see that it had last been modified in 2005. God, have I really been chipping away at this for that long? I read through it though, to check for spelling mistakes and such, and found that I really didn't like the story anymore. It seemed cloy somehow, like it thought to much of itself, or was trying to hard to impress. I feel it didn't really represent something that I wanted to present in anyway, even as an artifact. I made me wonder how much of the rest of my stories I don't feel proud. How much crap is floating around on my hard drives?

On the other hand, it was nice to have some sign that I am improving. After all, if it was as good as I was when I was 22, they last five years would have been kind of a waste, right?

But it is kind of frustrating that I don't have anything recent to post, which I would really like to, but everything, and I mean everything, is still in a state of flux, and just not fit to print, so to speak. I'm still world-building the world the stories are all set in, and the stories keep shifting under my feet. Then there's the sections that need to be expanded, because it turns out the way I wrote it before isn't complete, or doesn't fit the beat.

interupted

2010-02-11T12:42:00.000-06:00

Closing shifts are the worst thing in the world in terms of writing. Usually, when I write, I write in burst of two to three hours, then either cool off and go back at it, or call it a day. I can write well into the night if I am on a roll. So theoretically, having two or three hours should be plenty of time to get in a writing shift.

But on closing shift days, I just can't do it. I have done it a couple of times in the past, and just when I am in the middle of something I have had to get ready to go. And when I get back to what I was working on, I can't remember where I was going. In fact, after that, it takes even longer to get back into the the swing of things, because, since I like what I was working on, I have to wait to "remember" what I wanted to come next in order to proceed. It's like how getting woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle actually leaves you feeling more tired than completing it, even if you actually get less sleep. So, I am so afraid to write, even though I want to write, that I basically just have to take a mulligan on the whole day. It sucks.

I kind of can't wait to go to work so I can get back and start writing.

On language, sort of

2010-02-09T18:09:00.000-06:00

One thing I have noticed, as I continue working at writing, and refining my writing, is that my mind is starting to use words not by what they mean in modern, idiomatic speech, but by what they mean in terms of the roots of the words themselves. Their actual meaning, in a sense.

I just realized this as I was organizing my bookmarks, placing similar links next to similar links, and I thought about how I wanted to cluster together the bloggers who are "journalists." But I wasn't meaning the bloggers who, say, work for a newspaper, like Ezra Klein, or who report of the news online, like TPM, or even those unaffiliated individuals who nevertheless take it upon themselves who to relay or comment upon the news of the day, like say, Donkeylicious (Hi, Neil!). I mean those who, somewhat like me, although with more of a sense of discipline and order, are engaged in maintaining a journal. For the "-ist" implies one who engages in a particular activity or in the pursuit of a specific object. Thus, a "journalist" is one who keeps a journal, or one who journals. And "journalism" is the act, or art, of journal-keeping, or of journal-writing. I was thinking of people like Lance Mannion or Aylssa Rosenberg. People who use blogs as a method of relating or recording their thoughts, and through the wonders of the internet, presenting those thoughts with a public.

Of course, I still never bother to edit these bloody dispatches, so it's still possible that these things are full of error and nonsense, and don't come across the the workings of some clear and rarified mind. In fact, most of the stuff here is just bullshit I feel like getting out of my system so I don't have to deal with it bouncing around my head anymore, with phenomenon of the public dispensation being an almost beside the point. More of a viking funeral than voyage, this place, so I don't really worry about the quality of the construction, or the finish on the wood. It's really more an attempt to shove off.

Yeah. That all held to together. Yeah.

Ah, the economy

2010-02-09T17:22:00.000-06:00

They canceled my shift at work today. I got woke up by a phone call this morning, saw it was something-thirty, assumed that I had overslept and missed work, found the phone, was freaked out to find out it was work, but I had missed the called. I called back so that I could apologize profusely and ask them what they wanted me to do. As the phone rang, I double-checked the clock and noticed that it was actually seven-thirty, and I wasn't supposed to come until nine-thirty. Spent the next several rings in a kind of fugue state of panic and confusion. Remember, I had woken up literally seconds beforehand.

Then they told me my shift was canceled, and I was so relieved I wasn't in trouble I thanked them.

Then I slept for another five hours. I had actually gone to bed only like two hours before that. I had spent the last four days off, and didn't want to have to wake up and go to work. Today is five days in a row.

I close tomorrow, so I am pretty sure they won't be canceling on me again. But really, retail just slows to a crawl in winter, you know?

Fever breaking

2010-02-09T01:51:00.000-06:00

Over three thousand words today. Over 1800 of them were me just writing out character backstory, but in a way that I may or may not use as part of the body of the text at some point in the future, and over 1300 was new words for the actual body of the text which, I think in subtle ways, changes the tone of the story, but in a necessary way. It makes it less ambiguous, and removes any sense of purposely withheld drama (which I always find is more cliched and irritating than page-turning). Also requires future edits to the rest of the text to accommodate the earlier dispensation of certain pieces of information, as well as the change in tone. One of the things I realized, after reviewing the text, that the story isn't really about withholding everything from the reader, it is about relating the world that Ermys sees in front of him, but with a bare minimum of commentary coming from him, since he is not a very commentative guy. Thus, lots of details can be left out, because the aren't how Emrys would experience the world, and many can be left back in, because they are. I kind of want to go on, because I feel like the world is very present in my mind right now, but I eyes hurt from staring at the screen, and I am exhausted, so I am cashing in my creative chips for the night. I've been writing for something like three, maybe four hours now.

Earlier in the night, I had not really written anything all day, and I was feeling restless, and unhappy, and I knew what the next thing I had to write was. So I just thought, well, then write it. Stop making yourself feel bad. And I did. Now I feel pretty good. I got through a really bad spell, and am back in the game. a whole bunch of edits and ideas are piling themselves up in me right now, and I can't wait.

Realize you want to do something, then do it, and feel better. Huh. Funny how that works.

Why haven't I thought of that before?

It's funny that Hollywood is so removed from the real world that they have no idea what makes a person sympathetic

2010-02-08T01:06:00.000-06:00

This A.V. CluB list reminded me of this really amusing conversation I had with Anne once, as she was watching Sex in the City. I asked her what she enjoyed about the show, and what she thought about it, until eventually she stated that all four of the main characters are really terrible people.

Me: Do the writers know that?

Anne: I can't tell.

This whole post is really just an excuse to make use of the digital camera I bought

2010-02-06T13:36:00.000-06:00

I altered my drum set two days ago. Here's a closer look:

I moved the second snare drum over to the side of the high-hat, then placed my crash cymbal besides my thin crash cymbal. This allows for easier access for the to the crash, since before I had placed it above and between the second mounted tom and the ride cymbal. Now it is much easier to alternate between the two, so I can create a sense of color in the cymbal crashes. the second snare drum also allows such alternation between the color of the instruments, as well as making it easier to move between the high-hat and snare drums.

Oh, yeah, and I stuck my conga over by the floor tom. Still trying to find a way to work that thing more easily into the kit.

And now for something much less depressing

2010-02-02T00:18:00.000-06:00

Anyways, writing.

Not much on that front today either. Well, OK, not totally true. I resolved some issues of plot that needed to be resolved long ago, and also did some crucial editing. I am on track to return to the story, and make it itself. But then, my word count from probably like, less than 50. But a crucial set of fifty words! Lots of note-taking behind it, and reading and research. Oh, and pacing. Lots of pacing. I also went shopping and did the dishes, and that always feels like accomplishment.

One thing in general I feel is that the writing is slowly but surely becoming easier and more ingrained in my habits and desires. I really am, over a long period now, becoming more and more comfortable and effortless in the laying down of words and the organizing of ideas and the creation of plot. I consider my writing and am more cavalier in discarding or rearranging my ideas. I still have a ways to go, but it is coming. I even almost like editing now! That's a big thing for me!

2010-02-01T23:33:00.001-06:00

I'm just counting down the minutes now.

Some years it hits harder than others. This year it's riding in on a wave of dread, or something like anticipation.

Nine years ago, some time right about now, as I type, my sister Anne and I were getting in the Zeiger's car to drive to some hospital around Chicago. Colleen and Dave and Laura were there. I remember that Laura apologized for coming along, but neither Anne nor I would have none of that. I remember sleeping along the way, then waking up when we were almost there. We walked through a long stream of hospital corridors, going from one section to another. I don't remember feeling anything. It was just like, we were doing what we were doing. Then we got in an elevator, and went up. It all seemed so labyrinthine.

And the elevator doors opened, and they were all right there. Mom and his brothers and their families, and she cried "Oh, kids, he's dead!"

And Anne screamed "No!" and started crying, and I sat down in the chair that was right next to the elevator, where I stared off into space. Someone tried to take me along to see the body, practically carrying me, and all I said was "No, no," and I don't know that there was anything specific thing I was rejecting to: that I was going to see the corpse, that he was gone, that this could actually be some kind of reality, because nothing about what was going on seemed real. And then, I got one brief look at the body and turned around screaming. It was dark in the room and the was a sheet over him and his face wasn't moving, nor his chest, and you could already tell that whatever had been there that was actually him was gone and what was there on that table or that bed was just what remained. There was no point in seeing it, because he wasn't there. And he would never be there again.

After that, It's all more feeling than event. I remember that I was sitting most of the time in a chair on the opposite side of the elevator room from the elevator. I remember that Laura was crying, and I remember, in some weird way, feeling grateful for that. I remember either Danny or Rick worrying about how "Stan," their father, would take it (this would be the third of his five children he would have to watch go into the ground). I remember that he used his given name, as if the moment had stripped away the importance of honorifics. I remember driving back, home, saying I would go to the model UN the next day. I couldn't tell why, really, then or now. Part of it was the weird fear of grades and odd belief that such things would not be considered when calculating grades. Another was that dad had said expressed remorse over dinner, on the night before he left for the procedure, that he would not get to go to it, it being one of those things parents attended, and I wanted there to be an actual thing for him to miss, like he thought there would be. Another, is that I didn't want to go back the next day and see the body, and I just needed something to get the fucking lance out of brain, just to try to get away with it, though I really couldn't. When I go home, I screamed and collapsed on my bookshelf and slid to the ground. Eventually I was so exhausted from the emotional tension, that I actually slept for about three hours.

Then I woke up and went to UN. I told everybody I knew that my father had died. John Rudolph hugged me, and that was the most anybody was ever able to do to comfort me.

After that, I hung out with my friends from Drama, and they were determined to cheer me up. We made plans to go out at night. I went home, and Greg P from Dad's work was cooking Spaghetti sauce, with meatballs, and as I entered he shook my hand. There were a lot more people there, from all over the place, and I was happy to see all of them. But I went straight upstairs and took off the red tie I had been wearing, which was one of Dad's, and tied it about the baseball-bat-shaped tied rack that dad had made me when I was a kid, and started crying again.

I went out with the guys that night. We went to a mall that had a used records store, and I bought my first Butthold Surfers album, Independent Worm Saloon. I got to ride with Alex in his Corvette on the way home, and we listened to it and laughed, it was so weird. And then I went home.

I sometimes wonder about who I would be if that hadn't happened. I am pretty sure I never would have picked drumming back up, because that was very definitely a some kind of unexplainable response. I think I would have eventually started writing though, since I already had the stories bouncing around inside me. I think I would have been more stable, settled, by this point, not still an entry level lifer trying to turn into a person, but somebody with some sense of stability. But maybe not. I've always been fucked up. Maybe I would have been fucked up with Dad too.

It's been nine years. I turn twenty seven in five months. My father has been gone for over a third of my life. Most of the people I know don't know him.

Tomorrow will also be Groundhog Day, and St. Brigit's Day, and James Joyces' and Sir Charles' birthdays. Its the halfway point between the Solstice and the Equinox. Hell of a Day to Die. Still doesn't make sense.

The Pogues

2010-02-01T21:20:00.000-06:00

Holy living Fuck do I love the sound of the tin whistle. It's like a bag pipe, but pretty and mournful instead of blaring and mournful. I want one. If anyone is wondering what obscure gift to get me for a birthday or Christmas that would convince me you love me, well, there you go.

Maybe scratch some of that last post

2010-01-31T23:45:00.000-06:00

You know, I just read an earlier version of the first page and a half of that story, and it actually reads allright. In a different voice, but actually a pretty successful voice. Loping, descriptive passages, use of free indirect discourse for the main character's internal thoughts, and sparsely annotated passages of dialogue. It's all the changes I started making that fucked it up.

It's always a good thing to keep previous drafts lying around.

Most of writing isn't actually writing

2010-01-31T19:34:00.000-06:00

Man, nearly a week went by, huh? I can't believe how I squander time.

I haven't got much writing done in this time either. I started writing a new story completely unrelated to anything else, and just to have something to work on, to, you know, write, that isn't so tied down to some large complex world system. Sort of a palate cleanser, if you will.

By way of comparison, I spend most of today researching the area surrounding the story that I thought I had "finished." Turns out I didn't. I printed it out, and realized that I would have to go through it, sentence by sentence, the words feel so jarring to me now. I had also, during the week, done some editing one of the other three or so interrelated text files I have up all the time on my desktop, and had finally stumbled upon something closer to what I want to be the voice of the piece. I have toyed with the idea of leaving this story as is, in a different voice, so to speak, but I find that this voice is not just different, but also inferior, and based upon certain approached to syntax that are really just unclear and needlessly messy. I tried to be poetic, and all I got was unclear.

So, it needs a new draft, into which I can then start making the necessary insertions that are necessitated by plot.

But, in order to do that, I figured I needed to make sure all the thing are correct in terms of time and place and culture. Hence all the researching today. It had been so long since I had done such things, I couldn't remember what I had based certain aspects of the story on, or if there were changes I had to make to make sure the story was historically accurate, or if there certain details that could be added to make the story more vivid, or just to make the way I went about writing it feel more lived in.

And this meant spending much of the day freaked out that certain assumptions I had based the story on were erroneous, and wondering how much of the story would have to be changed, or if the entire internal arc would have to be dumped. It looks, at this point, that that is not the case. Basically, I needed to be sure that the place I set this story in was the farthest area to the west along a border, or at least the farthest area of it's own size. (This does seem to be the case.) As this area is in France, I spent most of the day bopping around the French version of Wikipedia, as run through Google Translate, checking on all the major towns in the surrounding area, marking them on Google Maps, and taking notes on which ones existed when, and for what reasons. This was useful for more than purposes paranoid, as it a lot of the information I accumulated can be added in in ways that are useful and colorful more than destructive. Still it was a rather unpleasant experience.

By the by, the patron Saint of the region is Martin of Tours, whose feast day is November 11.

No progress

2010-01-25T23:39:00.000-06:00

No more writing tonight. Started drinking around seven or eight. I think a part was actually freaked out about the idea of making so much progress so quickly on a story. Given I am used to short bursts of creativity interspersed by long bouts of procrastination, but this latest round of writing is almost too much. Five thousand words in four days?! When was the last time that happened? It just not done!

one voice, two voice

2010-01-25T19:43:00.000-06:00

One thing I found out today is that different mediums are useful for different types of storytelling. I find it easier to write dialogue/conversations, if I write freehand, and easier to write descriptive passages on a computer.

With dialogue, for some reason when writing out the words longhand, maybe it's the motor-act of writing out all the words, but it is almost like the characters are conjured up, speaking to one another and not paying attention to me, and I am just transcribing what they are saying. I add in very little description, usually just whether a response happens to be nonverbal or not, and whether or not any time passes. I got through two scenes of dialogue, totaling six handwritten pages, in a little under an hour. When I try to type dialogue, I spend so much time second guessing them that what comes out doesn't really sound like how I think they should sound. Right now I am debating going back and rewriting several dialogue passages, just because I didn't write them out freehand originally. But maybe they don't need it, and it's just me.

On the otherhand, with descriptions, what I am writing is so dependant on the exact word choice, and the arrangement of words and sentences, that I am editing, cut and pasting, and rewriting so much that if I tried to do it freehand, I would just have a large pile of crossed out lines that I could never go back and decipher, and if I just kept starting over to make clear what I wanted, I would just have pages and pages devoted to getting one simple paragraph on paper. It is much easier to just erase everything I don't need as I go.

Two thousand, two hundred, and fifty words today

2010-01-25T17:08:00.000-06:00

So far, at least. I got to the end of the main story I have been working on, though I would not say that I have complete the first draft, there is still a scene or two that I need to add into the main text, some large revisions, and then I need to do a really comprehensive edit to make sure the the references to the past add up to a concrete idea of what has actually happened. But still, I have gotten straight through to the end, and completed the main, "present day" action of the story. And that feels really, really good. This definitely gets easier the more you do.

P.S. Remember to call your Democratic Representative and urge them to PASS THE DAMN BILL, and to call your Senator and tell them that you support using reconciliation to fix all the problems that the House has with it.

Over two thousand words today

2010-01-23T00:39:00.000-06:00

It looks like having a laptop is helping my productivity.

The body of an American

2010-01-21T14:31:00.000-06:00

This song has been helping get through this weeks doldrums. For some reason, it just soothes me.

In other news, I am finally learning how to whistle. At twenty-six, I know! So early of me! I just figured out how to do the Bogart on Bacall today. Two days ago I had gotten the "call the dog/children back in" down. Hopefully I'll be on melodies by some time next week.

Both whistling and the song are things I became interested in through the Wire, by the way. Funny that I haven't actually finished the last season yet, though I suppose that's in part because I don't want it to end.

Massachusetts

2010-01-20T00:53:00.000-06:00

I hate this country.

...And I feel bad again.

2010-01-18T23:26:00.000-06:00

So, it's back to drinking.

...And now I feel fine.

2010-01-18T14:36:00.000-06:00

Well, I did start drinking. And stopped reading about politics. Still, I think I am having one of my bi-polar days.

No Dreams, No Future

2010-01-18T12:22:00.000-06:00

It's Martin Luther King Day today. I have it off thanks to a schedule shift. I should be writing, or reading a book. Instead I stare the my laptop while sitting on my bed and click over and over through websites that aren't going to update so often on Martin Luther King Day because this fucking election on Massachusetts has me completely on edge.

The Democrats, man, the fucking Democrats. They fuck everything up.

Croakley was up by fifteen goddamn points. Fifteen points! And she pissed in all away in a stream of entitlement and lazy campaigning. And now some asshole Republican that no one can decide if he is a rightwing fruitcake or a "moderate republican" but who will definitely uphold a filibuster against, healthcare which, because the fucking Democrats wanted to be so nice to the Republicans who have given nothing but bad faith from the start, still hasn't fucking passed!

This should have been done by now! They should have been on to other things! But now, it looks like the healthcare might fall apart because the Democrats managed to fuck up and lose Ted Kennedy's seat!

I hate this. I hate Coakley, who can't run a fucking campaign. I hate the party apparatchiks who can't run a fucking party, and turn everything into a party machine putting these useless empty suit types up that nobody likes or is inspired by. I hate the fact this this band of cretins and losers is the only thing holding this country back from the Republican Death Cult that will surely destroy us. I hate the liberals out there, the influential ones and their followers, who don't see this, and in some act of holier than thou pique and display of false integrity and independence spend all their time shitting on the Obama Administration (about the only bastion of sane, responsible leadership and organization in the entire party), thus destroying his base of support, not just among themselves, but among independents as well, making situations like this special election fuckup possible. I hate independents, for not seeing how they are being manipulated by dishonest hacks into doing things that will hurt the country, thinking some kind of protest vote will somehow make things better instead of making it harder to get done the things that they want done and are angry are not getting done.

And of course most of all I hate the Republicans. Every last registered one of them. They have destroyed my country with their stupidity, hate, lies, and greed. They are all, every last motherfucking one of them, unAmerican, as unAmerican as they think I am, because everything they do, every action they take, every political cause they champion, hurts us. Hurts me, hurts them (unless they are rich, and those ones need to be fucking shot), hurts all the other Americans, and hurts everybody else in the world. I have nothing for them but contempt. Pure, leaden contempt, and I long for the day when they are gone and destroyed and their every value and ideal is has been crushed and cast aside by the wheels of history.

Today is not a Christian day for me. It is not a loving one. Some days, I am just so fucking tired of you people. You are just so goddamn stupid.

Old stuff

2010-01-11T23:52:00.000-06:00

Well, the last few hours have been rather happy. Frustrated with the writing I have been working on, unsure of what content to include and unsure of the fineness of my sentences, I went back and read some old writings, just to remind myself of the continuity of the world I am working in, and found them to be...quite good! Not even "not bad," but quite good! In fact, one piece in particular that I was expecting to be clumsy and hamfisted, I found, minus a few easily corrected missteps and spelling errors, to actually be about as well-written as I could have hoped or wanted. It did everything I had been hoping for it to do, and that is something rare to say about your own writing, so don't think I am just trying to blow smoke up my own ass. I was legitimately surprised at how good it was.

Reading those old bits makes me feel quite positive about my abilities right now. It's always nice to get a bit of a pick me up.

Nag

2010-01-03T02:10:00.000-06:00

I have been surfing the internet tonight, and at some point I read something that made me feel kind of down. But I can't remember what it was now. So I can't decide whether to feel kind of down right now or not. On the one hand, I had some reason to feel down, so that probably means I should be down. But what's the point of being miserable if you don't know why you are miserable?

It's confusing.

The Aughts are over

2010-01-01T23:26:00.000-06:00

So what the fuck do people even do on New Year's Day, anyways?

I mean, besides get over nasty colds. I can't breath through my nose, you know.

more deep thoughts, in quick succession

2009-12-13T22:00:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I find it hard to write when my apartment is dirty. My apartment has been dirty recently, hence, little/no writing. Also, the general state of the country has me bummed. This fucking healthcare bill, man. It's like waiting to exhale, or something. This should have been done it August, and now it fucking December! Senators man. I hate them!

Anyways, I started cleaning up my apartment, lately. It's a several day affair. Even did some loads of laundry tonight, and you know I only do that once a blue moon. I read some more recently. That's good. I find it hard to be interested in writing when I haven't read recently. The whole enterprise seems beside the point somehow. Obsolete.

deep thought

2009-12-13T21:56:00.000-06:00

Considering how much I enjoy doing it when I do it, I really don't understand why I don't write more often.

Identity

2009-10-28T04:15:00.000-05:00

Have you ever just stared into a mirror, and looked at yourself? An almost sublime sense of selfhood emerges. A realization that you are really you, bound to this body, and to no one else. It is both incredibly limiting, and incredibly freeing, at the same time. Truly, truly sublime. I couldn't help but smile as I did it. I seemed so... unfamiliar... as I looked at myself. Yet who could I be, but the person staring back?

...

Consciousness, the existence of such, has, I think, always been the main source of my inspiration. I am just truly fascinated by what it is, what it means. Everything I have been trying to unwrap has boiled down to this very specific question. What does it mean to experience the world subjectively?

...

I have been thinking about Father, off and on, lately. He always comes back, it seems in waves, ebbing and flowing. More intense and more intense, then less so. Well, lately, Raymond Frederick Raven has played heavily upon my mind. I have been thinking about the normal person, how their conception of a distant parent differs so drastically from mine. How they see their absentee parent as at fault in some way. That is not the case for me. It is strange. I feel that I am constantly inundated with people whose stories of parental disconnect are so much worse than mine, yet so much better. Everyone is still alive. Sometimes, it feels exceedingly, fatalistically cruel, that I should unabashedly love my father so much, and yet be denied him. Everyone else seems so unaware how lucky they are, yet I can't help but feel that, given their blindness, that it is I who should be grateful, for I knew, Before, just how lucky I was, to have both of them. And though I feel sometimes, a resentment , born of my own stagnation, I know, KNOW, that without them, specifically, I would have been dead long ago.

Thank you.

bleh

2009-10-26T00:09:00.000-05:00

Really too tired to write today. Between last post and this I worked sixteen and a half hours within a twenty-seven hour period, and though I have been off work for over six hours now, I am still exhausted. And I need to be up at nine tomorrow.

However, I did come to a realization about a major plot point that had been staring me in the face for a long time, and, I now that I have realized it, a whole bunch of other stuff has opened up. This means changes, but it also means excellant opportunities, and a chance to tighten up the major thematic elements, by laying out the cards sooner as to what it's about, which means I have more time to play around with them, instead of just letting them twist in the wind as I pile up incident after incident. This is one of those times where you change your mind about some prior choice you made, then only belatedly realize you had it right the first time. Funny how many of those you run into. Sigh. It's too bad, the change comes way, way farther down the line in the writing process. I really want to start working on it now, but I wouldn't know where to start, and I am surrendering more and more to just letting the story work itself out on the page(other than advance planning such as this, of course). If I tried to start it now, I wouldn't know where to start.

Also, Mad Men was super awesome tonight.

Faster, stronger

2009-10-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

I have written for the last three days. I wrote about 800 words on Thursday, around 700 last night, and just these last 45 minutes I wrote about 450. I am not worried too much about word count, just that I am doing it, but the numbers are a nice way of thinking about progress. One thing I have found, is that as I write more frequently, the entire process becomes less precious. It is easier to dismiss what I have written as junk, and start over. So usually at any stopping point I reach I have practically on my second draft, because I have done so much editing. In fact, After finishing last nights work, I realized that a significant amount of it was not really necessary, and depending on how the rest goes, I might throw out everything from that session. And I didn't feel bad about it! It was just that I had to write it that way, in order to find the way that I actually wanted to write it. It wasn't a finished process, but getting my ideas out like that was a critical step along the way.

I think writing, and probably a lot of other artistic activities (like, say, drawing) is a lot like exercising. Doing it is hard, but it gets comes easier the more you do it, and the less you do, the more it goes back to being hard again. So just doing it often enough will help you work up to doing it longer, and vice versa. Really just doing it is making it easier for me to just sit down and write.

Anyways, here's the bit that I plan on junking, since it probably won't see the light of day anywhere else. Dig those long sentences.

Last night, he had not been out participating in the festivities of Samhain. Though he could hardly have stopped the men from joining, many of them being followers of the old gods themselves, and the others, though Christians, were not above a bit of fun and lechery, he knew that Varus, being not only a Christian, but a Roman Christian, was not amenable to the Celt's somewhat looser interpretation of scripture, (as if always seemed to find room for the old gods and their holy days) and thus he thought it wise to, as the chief negotiator involved in the dispute at hand, to maintain the proper decorum desired by his host. Thus, as his men, including his brother, were out drinking whiskey and wine and bedding the local women, Emrys sat the ready in his small apartment, by the light of a single candle, in his full Centurion uniform, waiting, on the off chance he might be called for.

Last night he had been alone in his room. He was dressed in his full military garb, with his sword at his side, and was sitting upon the only chair in the room, it's back placed against the wall by the doorway. He was sitting perfectly still, his legs side by side, his hands placed gently upon his legs, and his back as straight as a post. He had pushed the table to the other end of the small room, upon which sat a candle, the room's only source of light. Outside he could hear the distance sounds of revelry: whooping, shouting, laughter, and other that, further away, but cutting through the din, the clear melody and rhythm of pipes and drums. He wondered if the people outside could hear them.

Work

2009-10-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

I wrote for about 40, 45, 50 minutes today. And at least a half an hour of that time was spent writing precisely this:

The bridge was truly a most curious thing. In its way, it was more curious than the bodies and the wreckage. The Mount lay several thousand feet out to sea, where it rose out of the clear shallow water so quickly, it was as if some young gods or giants had piled up the earth while at play during some long-ago age. And then, just to make their sandcastle complete, they had added the Bridge. A single strip of raised earth running from the Mount to the far, sandy shore, just wide enough to support a traffic of carts (except at high tide, when it was all but underwater). Though the land bridge widened somewhat as it approached the Mount, suggesting that it was not, after all, the carefully planned work of tidy human hands, the convenience of placement and the precision of its height (rising just so above the water) were enough to imbue the bridge with a kind of mystical presence, as if some unseen, knowing force, perhaps gods, perhaps something greater, had seen fit to set such a thing deliberately upon the world.

Writing is hard.

Damned if you do...

2009-10-21T01:11:00.000-05:00

So, I did some editing on an old story after writing that last post, just to be doing something. I am moving more and more towards the opinion that editing actually is writing, that it is so essential to the writing process, that good writing is so intrinsically connected to doing it, and doing it, and doing it, that it cannot really be separated from writing as a distinct act; it is as central to writing as the production of wholly new sentences.

So, I wrote today. Yay, me.

Except, by the time I got to where I left off, I was doubting almost the entirety of the procedure I had put forward. I realized that a good chunk, about 25%, of the story was unnecessary and besides the point, and maybe as much as 35%. Of course, what I had written after that was contingent on information that had been passed on before it, so If I was to excise that those sessions, I would have to completely re-write what had come after it. Then I realized, that the main thing that I liked about the story was those opening paragraphs (the 10% that I only maybe had to excise), that I had written the story basically as an excuse for that part, and that what came after, I wasn't sure I was interested in. I had just come up with that as a way to maybe bring the first part to some sort of conclusion or point. And I don't feel like the latter part is strong enough on it's own to bother shaping up, not unless I restart the whole thing form the beginning, and if that's the case then I simply have no idea what changes would have to be made to make it a self-contained, interesting story. So now I don't know what to do with the bloody thing, and until I come to some sort of decision, about what parts are worth keeping, I am either going to have to put it back on the backburner, or just abandon it as a failed experiment. Which is really too bad, because I really like my main character, and would kind of like to see her story get told. But I can't really justify to myself going through the bother of telling a story if I can't make it interesting. It's the creative equivalent of hearing nails on a blackboard, for hours on end.

Ugh. This is so degrading.

Where is my mind

2009-10-20T19:19:00.000-05:00

Yes, so, no writing the last two days. Was working, and it was very tiring.

I've been thinking about my relationship to stimulants and depressants, namely caffeine and alcohol. I like both, but I have been, lately (as in within the last week) been cutting back on both, not out of any moral or self-improvement urge, but because, I think they might hamper my writing. I can't concentrate after a drink, and I can't fight through the cacaphony of voice when I have caffeine in me. (And now that I am cutting back, I can really tell when I have caffeine in me.) I need that calmness, that tranquility of untired reflection, in order to bring my mind to bear on writing. That's why I think in the past it has been easier to write in in the morning, at least morning when I'm not zonked out of my mind; I have no stimulants in my system. I have been sleeping. The most productive bout of writing I ever had was five days where I woke up at 5 and wrote until 11. I wrote an over 10,000 novella.

On the other hand, I feel that is still a place for such things in my creative process. Though caffeine is a poor aid to dramatic thinking, it's quite helpful when brainstorming ideas for things. And drinking has, for whatever reason, always worked to strip away my layers of anxieties, as opposed to many people for whom it seems to let them out; the times when I feel something like a religious experience, or perhaps just bouts of zealous humanism, have usually occurred while my mind races around after having a few. And both those states of mind have a marked influence on the things I think about writing, and the things I want to write about, even if they move me away from the disciplined state I need to actually write.

Still, best to decrease their usage.

Things I have learned about setting up your drum kit

2009-10-17T23:39:00.001-05:00

1. Don't Frankenstein your kit. Drums kits are tuned to themselves; you start using parts of other kits, the drums will make ringing sounds in odd places. Adding a new brand of drum is like detuning one string on a guitar. It throws everything out of whack. Likewise, use one brand of cymbals. That one cymbal from a different brand will stick out like a sore thumb every time you hit it. However, allowances can be made for hardware, since it doesn't really effect tone, so you can use Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedals with your Pearl bass drum.

2. Get a Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedal. They're sweet.

3. Make sure your legs are directly aligned with your foot pedals, so that your foot and leg bones are along the same axis. Don't sit bowlegged. If you do, you spend too much energy and time moving your thoughts down from your brain to your foot, navigating the twists of your body, and thus lose on not just speed and power, but finesse as well. This means you also are going to want to angle your hi-hat/double-bass pedals out from the bass drum slightly. Don't make your pedals parallel. Accommodate the natural triangle of your legs positions comfortably at rest and place your pedal(s) where your other foot happens to be. Speed, power, and finesse are just as important for your hi-hat foot as for your bass drum foot.

4. Keep the floor tom positioned low and flat. If you angle it, you lose the force from your stroke, and bounce strokes become almost impossible to keep up. The mounted toms, it's alright to angle, since you will be playing them at an angle, (unless you're really tall) but try to keep them as close to the angles of your sticks as you can.

5. Don't mount anything on top of your hi-hat, like cowbells or tambourines. The extra wight throws off the clasping mechanism, and whatever novel little sound you get out of it isn't worth the loss of finesse on what is probably your most-used instrument. Doohickeys, if desired, can be mounted from clasping mechanisms attached to cymbal stands and other drum hardware, just nothing where pressure and weight are essential to function.

6. If you're short-sighted enough to have become a left-handed player at a right-handed kit, the easiest way to use your ride cymbal is not by placing it behind the floor tom, as right-handers do, but in front of it, so that you can play it cross-armed, the way right-handers play their hi-hat. This is a lot easier than trying to reach diagonally across the floor tom whenever you want to play ride. you don't have to twist your back or extend your arm or anything. Of course, it does make it almost impossible to play the ride with your right hand, so it's harder to do super-fast sixteenth-note patterns on it. There's always learning to drum ambidextrously!

The Magician in the Grove

2009-10-17T16:33:00.000-05:00

So, I just signed up onto Scribd, after editing that story I had mentioned writing in the last post. If you feel like reading it, tell me what you think in comments. Thanks!

The Magician in the Grove

Works in Progress, or, In Search of Lost Time

2009-10-17T03:19:00.001-05:00

A couple years ago I had an idea for a story, set around Christmastime. I thought the idea was clever, but, for some reason or another, didn't write it. Either it came to me in an off-season, and I just didn't feel like thinking about Christmas, much as nobody likes hearing Christmas songs before, oh, Thanksgiving, or it came to me during Christmastime and I just didn't feel like writing it because I am lazy.

Then, every year around Christmastime I would remember the story again, and think, oh yeah, I should write that. But then Christmas would come and go, and I wouldn't write it, and I would forget about it until next year.

Well, last year, I finally started working on it around Christmastime, with the intention of finishing it, and then coming up with some way to present it to friends and family. Heck, maybe even post it on this blog! I was writing it out, and liking it, nailing a lot of the little elements that had come to me over seasons past.

Then I came what might have been, might be, the climax, and I got stuck. I had a whole bunch of paths to choose to get to the ending I wanted and wasn't sure which was the right one. So I sat on it, trying to figure that out. Then the Holiday came and went, and I didn't complete the story. It's still sitting, uncompleted, on my hard drive somewhere.

Now, it's late October. The Christmas lights are showing up in the stores. The candy will be here soon too, just as soon as the Halloween merchandise goes clearance. And so this story has reentered my mind, and I realize that I have been "working" on this story for almost a year, that if I finished it this year, it will be over a year in the making, and several years in development.

I have another story, that I celebrated knocking out the rough draft of on this blog, somewhat around the same time. I have never done another draft of it. I have several drafts of the beginning of a novel, maybe thirty pages of one, that I have spent two years working on. At this rate, I will finish it in my fifties. Recently I tried to write some essays recently for this blog, one a piece of criticism, one on politics (maybe philosophy), Just to write something. They are both a couple paragraphs in, saved onto blogger, abandoned after I lost track of where they were going, or didn't feel like spending the time and effort figuring out how to cut the path.

My relationship to writing is like having this large sack of pus growing on the inside of my skull. I go too long without doing it, and it swells up and the pressure on my brain hurts all over. Then I sit down to write, and it's like pounding a nail into my skull. Some of the pus leaks out, and the pain goes away enough to be bearable, and I think "Whew! Well, that's go for now!" And I stop writing and go about my day. But pretty soon the hole heals up, and that bag starts to re-inflate and I start walking around screaming at myself again.

I would like for the bag of pus inside my skull to go away. But the only way for that to happen is if I really commit to writing, and really get some things written, things I feel I have polished enough to show off a bit. And the only way I can do that is if I actually commit myself to writing, all the time, every day, and not just in my head while pacing, but while sitting and typing (or writing longhand in a notebook, either one, I don't mind). And I keep putting off doing that, thinking "Tomorrow!" or telling myself that work has me tired. And time keeps slipping by, and that sac pressing into my brain doesn't just pound harder, it grows, too, creeping slowly around the concavity of my skull.

I grow afraid, as time slips by, that even if I do ever get up off the ground, it will be so late all I manage to do is crash into those trees in the distance.

Whew! I feel better!

Right, Irony

2009-09-12T17:49:00.000-05:00

Uh, ok. To review:

The art of narrative is based exclusively upon ironic juxtapositions. The four types of irony, verbal, situational, dramatic, and cosmic, (and sometimes historical) are combined and arranged into a kind of ironic superstructure, which is the story within a work of narrative art. Such structures of irony underline both Comedy and Tragedy. If a work is not a Comedy or Tragedy, it is a History, which will use historical irony in place of some of the other forms.

Stories can be considered in terms of their ironic density and ironic height. Ironic Density is simply the frequency of the occurrence of ironic moments.

Ironic height is the degree which a particular irony shocks the audiences expectations. The greater height, the more power it to the work. The funnier the comedy, the sadder the tragedy, the greater sense of importance to the here and now granted to a history.

Note: all ironies, of whatever height, must ultimately make sense on some level. If the irony is not, ultimately, logical, it is not an irony, but an absurdity. Absurdities, are not ultimately interesting to the audience, although they can be used effectively as set-ups to irony. The way in which an irony ultimately makes sense could be called the ironic return. It is the way in which an irony subtly makes some broader point about the world. Any comment a work has to make, pertaining to politics, religion, culture, whatever, should be tied up in an ironic return. Otherwise the point is simply polemic, and times spent upon it dilutes the ironic density of the narrative.

The denser the ironies in a story, the better. The higher the ironies, the better. Multiply the density of the ironies (d, let's say) by the highest irony (h, let's say) and you get the "objective" quality of a narrative (N, let's say). So: d x h = N, or dh=N.

However, works of narrative art are not merely stories, but also the format in which the stories are relayed. Multiply objective quality of a narrative by the degree to which it's form accentuates it's ironies (F, let's say), and you get the "objective quality" of a a work of narrative art (A, let's say). So, NF=A.

Of course, irony is largely dependent on context both to be recognized and to be appreciated at a certain height. As context changes from person to person and culture to culture, the value of N, and thus A, fill fluctuate from person to person. Which account why have such a hard time agreeing upon which works of art are superior to which. However, within a defined time or place, the rough values of such should be calculable, so that you can say that, at least, Shakespeare is superior to Michael Bay. Or Shakespeare is superior to Marlow, or Tarantino is superior to Bay, if you want a more a focused time and place, and an identical artistic medium, for the purpose of your comparison.

But make no mistake, the value of a work of narrative art can be judged, and, though inaccurately, measured, by studying it as a structure of ironies.

The Stuff Stories Are Made Of, Part 1

2009-07-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

When I decided to be an English major, one of the things I remember being disappointed by was when I learned that literary criticism didn't really concern itself with matters of what was good and bad. It was concerned with meaning. There would not really be an attempt to reason with what stories—novels or short stories—were good or bad. That was just subjective. And in the one and only creative writing class I took, we were told, when critiquing each others stories, not to suggest plot points to each other. Just tips on writing. There was one quite good reason for this, which is that if you told someone what should happen in a story, it stopped being their story, and started being your story. But on the other hand, often what was wrong with the stories was that the stories were just bad stories. Uninteresting. I didn't care what happened to the characters. By saying that the we couldn't critique the events in the story, the class was effectively saying, there are no bad stories, just badly told stories.

But I think there are such things as bad stories, and good stories, separate from the how they're conveyed to their audience. You can have a well made movie or a well written book, and they can still have good moments, well-cut action sequences or beautifully florid passages of description, but they still won't add up to much and most people won't enjoy seeing them or reading them.

So what makes for a good story? What elements make for stories that people want to read/watch? There are elements that people say they read things for, or go to movies, that are not related to form. Good characters. Lots of people talk about how important characters are. Or suspense. People read to see what happens next. Or conflict. Conflict is really important. Most plots center around some central conflict. People read on to see the conflict resolved. Mystery. Maybe there isn't some tension are work in the story any more—the killer has already killed, or something—but people want to know what actually happened. They want the unknown revealed. Little moments. Some stories ain't even all that great, but there are some moments in it that are really good. Little moments of quiet sadness, or uproarious comedy, or touching kindness, or shocking cruelty. Many comedies are comprised of really pointless plots that are just excuses to string along a series of funny bits on (Monty Python and the Holy Grail jumps to mind as a masterpiece of this format). And of course, in the big stories, they want some commentary, or insight, on the human condition, or life and the universe or something. In order for a story to be great, it usually needs to knock us around a bit and leave us thinking big thoughts.

But what makes these things interesting and meaningful. What makes for good characters? What makes something suspenseful? What makes us want to see a conflict concluded, or find out what we didn't know? What makes those little moments special? What makes comedy funny and tragedy cathartic. What makes a story great?

So this is what I thought about.

And the answer, I decided, is irony.

Now, when I say irony, I mean it in the broadest sense of the word. I don't mean it the way people mean it when they talk about people being ironic, or how they meant it when, after 9/11, everyone was talking about the Death of Irony. Usually when people use it in that sense they just mean either verbal irony, or base sarcasm, or something in between. And this misuse has lead to a lot of blather about how no one really knows what irony really means.

That's nonsense. Irony is a very simple concept; all it is the going against of expectations. And what stories need to be interesting is irony. In fact, I think you could say that stories are built out of ironies. Big ironies and little ironies.

Why irony? Well, any good story has to fulfill two somewhat contradictory things. They need to 1) justify why the story is unique enough to be told and 2) be relatable to the rest of human experience.

No one wants to hear a story where nothing interesting happens, like the last time you went grocery shopping. Nor do they want to hear a long string of pointlessly absurd events that have no relation or meaning to each other. Now, you could create art out of such situations. You could write a good poem about going to the supermarket, and the average episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus is basically an series of absurd and unrelated events. But that doesn't mean your poem about going to the supermarket is a good story, and no episode of Flying Circus has anything like a continuous plot (with the possible exception of the one about Scott of the Antarctic, but I think that one just has one really long sketch in it).

An ironic situation manages to fulfill both qualities. In fact, irony is inherent in the fulfillment of both qualities. Any ironic situation is more unique than most situations, since it goes against what is expected—that is, what usually happens. And of course, an implicit aspect of any ironic situation is that, though it goes against expectations, it's rooted in some logic, some sense that what doesn't seem to make sense actually does. Thus it's relatable. If the situation doesn't make sense, then it's just absurd, and absurdity isn't really interesting or relatable. (Although absurdities can be used quite well as a set up for ironies. They heighten the relevant factors by stripping out other, complicating factors, that would undermine the situation. Beckett and Python do this a lot.)

So in any ironic situation there is a kind of return. Let's call it the Ironic Return. The Return is the way in which the ironic moment offers some insight into the world, and thus makes some comment upon it.

More later.

The Urge

2009-07-24T19:49:00.001-05:00

Did lots of cleaning today. Put away much of the stuff littering my "living room" floor, organized and re -shelved all the books on my bookcase, dusted a whole bunch of stuff, finally moved that old television sitting in the middle of the floor up onto my dresser (I got it back in June), though I haven't plugged it in yet. I still need to buy a longer tv cord to stretch across the room.

I have been thinking about this Yglesias post from earlier in the day. The part that really got me was this bit:

Before I owned an air card, half of my train or bus trips to and from New York would inevitably result in me starting a novel of some sort. Not because I want to write a novel, but just because it seemed inconceivable to sit for that long with a laptop in my bad [sic] without writing something. Before there were blogs, I was always writing in a journal and apparently my grandfather did the same thing for decades. Consequently, I find it to be a great privilege to have a job where I can just write all the time, about all kinds of stuff, more-or-less at random. For me writing-as-such has always been a necessary activity, and trying to find constructive venues in which to do it a bit problematic. The blog solves the problem.

One of the problems, I have realized, with writing, and this is partially linked to the to epiphany that I mentioned in the last post that I haven't gotten to writing yet, is that i don't really give a shit about writing. It's not something I like doing. What I like is coming up with stories. Making up characters and thinking of things to happen to them. If I could tell those stories in comics or movies to theatre, I would be just as happy to do that. But I can't draw that well, since I wasn't taught to hold a pencil correctly with the left hand which means everything smears. i don't a millions of dollars lying around to hire actors and cameramen and CGI artists. I don't have a theatre troupe lying around. Plus, I am antisocial and, due to reading polomic interviews from Dave Sim and Jeff Smith and Alan Moore and Frank Miller and all the guys from Image, I have a fierce desire to work with my own creations and own my own creations. Writing was just something I fell in with, the easiest means to an end. And of course, like any of those other forms, there is actually an element of craft to the medium that had to be mastered, and so I went about trying to master it, and failing at it, since I don't really care, in some way, about that. Somewhere along the way, probably when I decided to major in English, I forgot that, and consequently disappeared up my own ass. This made it hard to write things I liked, since it was hard to write stories I liked, since it is hard to do anything that makes any kind of sense when in a state of phyiscal impossibility.

I am not saying that I need to forsake good writing. Good writing in inseparable from good storytelling, so I do need to be a good writing in order to tell stories well, and to tell good stories. But not all aspects of good writing are , or things that can be considered good writing, are things that necesarily need to be in good storytelling, and I don't need to concern myself with doing such things. What I need to concentrate on, is making the stories good, knowing what makes them good, and putting that in there. If I can start doing that, maybe I can actually start enjoying this whole writing thing.

2009-07-15T15:07:00.000-05:00

As the nigh-endless absence (in blog-terms) from posting on this blogs, connotes, my late last attempt at getting energized about writing failed. Eventually it just ground to a halt. I just couldn't figure out who to write somehow, and I couldn't figure out why. So, I tried going in reverse; I went back to basics and just concentrated on reading, reading stuff I enjoyed. I felt like I had gotten so blocked up with pretensions and hopes and impatience that nothing could get out, and I just had to do something to detox my system, stop worrying about whether or not what i was doing was amounting to something or was important to some grand scheme and just take it easy, man.

And I think it has been helping. I don't know if I am done with it, but it has been nice to stop worrying about the future for a bit. I visited home to renew my driver's license, and while there I picked up all the paperback Redwall books I had, and I have been reading those. Just getting back in touch with some of the stories that originally made me be so interested in stories in the first place.

In fact, I have been giving some special attention to considering the topic of storytelling itself, and what makes for a good story. I have a theory on that, which I will outline in a later post. One of the problems I was having with writing is that I didn't feel like my stories meant anything, at least the ones I was working on. There were things happening, and characters having thoughts, but they didn't seem to matter to me, which made it impossible for me to really care to work on them. They didn't seem to have a purpose. They didn't seem necessary. Hopefully, going forward, if my theory is correct, it will make it easier to come up with stories that I actually want to complete, since they will have a purpose for existing. Another problem I was having is that I was trying to write about the things that I didn't really understand, places and situations I haven't been to or visited, or spent any time trying to visualize. This lead to a huge loss of confidence, since it's really hard to write a story about, say, a cop working in Chicago or landed gentry during the Regency when I don't acutally know anything about those places or people? Sure I have vague I ideas for stories, but without any sense of place of habits, trying to flesh those stories out into words is just impossible. In retrospect, trying to writes those stories is pretty dumb. Better to put work on something I know like, small-town Illinois (which I actually find insanely boring) or, ironically, cosmopolitan Rome. (I have some more research to do there, but its coming along. I really need to get to work on brushing up my Latin.)

Also, I have been fooling around on the guitar some more. The one I am using is a POS, and the second string just does not like to play, but it's enough to start learning. I finally learned by what the sequence of notes are. There are sharp/flat notes between all the normal notes except BC and EF, which I remember by thinking of the phrase "neolithic coitus". Or at least one that approximates it.

July 3rd

2009-07-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday, Tom Cruise!

Update: Ooh, look, a present!

Deadline FAIL

2009-05-03T00:26:00.000-05:00

After that last post, I did some more writing last night. Then I did some more writing as soon as I woke up, and some more in this late evening. Now, I am a little burnt out at banging my head away at it. The opposite of feeling rusty (though no more productive). It's four pages long now, but I broke through my barrier. However, it is Saturday night, and I am not finished. Sigh. I guess I am going past deadline.

Luckily, the next story lined up in my mental queue consists of exactly one scene, and I know how how it begins and ends and who are the characters are. If I can just finish this first one after getting home from work tomorrow, then work on the next one a bit everyday, I should be easily back on schedule by next Saturday.

I also spent a lot of time today watching the latest episode of Dollhouse, and then reading various threads about it online. Holy Shit, that show is sweet. [Obligatory line about it being too bad that it will get canceled.]

Procrastination makes the heart wilt

2009-05-02T00:18:00.000-05:00

Ah, another two days wasted, and my deadline fast approaching. I have been trying for the last couple minutes to work on the story, but it is just not working. I don't know where to take the story from where it is at right now, and it is bother the hell out of me, not knowing what should happen next. Also, I have become incredibly self-conscious about the act of writing, which is just making it impossible to get anywhere in it. Sentences are just not flowing out, and when I try to force them I don't feel right about them. Ugh. It's an ugly business.

I think the problem is that I had kind of reached, without noticing it, the limits of the previous combustion of words, and now I am on to trying to game out what comes after that. I am having to make actual plot decisions, and before I was just setting up the, uh, setting, so to speak.

Now I am feeling ornery and stifled. This will learn me to put off the necessary. I am creating bad vibes solely out of my own impetus. Still, that's a good thing. I need to start working on creating some system of self-discipline, or else I will never get anywhere, with this or in any other context.

What condition is my condition in?

2009-04-29T00:23:00.000-05:00

No real writing was done today, or last night after getting off from work. At the moment I have a bit of a mental block about the idea of doing it, which typing this is meant somewhat to address. Also, I have just been reading about this Specter switch thing, which just comes completely out of left field to me and seems weirder and weirder the more I think about it. Also, listening to that Decembrist album, which I was able to exchange for a playable copy. The last song is quite good, though no "The Rake's Song."

Another source of blockage was an occurrence of what could be called "The Crossroads Dilemma," which is when presented with two things that both need to be done, I don't know which one to do, can't make up my mind and end up doing neither. Engorging on blog posts on Specter was probably a mechanism of that. Besides writing, the other path was doing my state taxes. Finally I broke down and did the taxes, just now. It took about 15 minutes. Everything had already been filled out; I just had to do the master copy. Now everything is signed, sealed and ready to be driven to the post office tomorrow. (I really need to stop procrastinating.)

...Today, when walking out of work, I had a strange feeling. I had felt rather all right at work that day, in control and, in a way, unconcerned with my mental state. And as I was walking, out the automatic doors and into the mundane air, I felt as if some switch was switching in my head, and something vaguely, for a split instant, a bit like euphoria, but more like normalcy, slipping through. And then the switch stuck, not fully completing its process. And I walked on, across the parking lot, feeling this odd phantom of gears in my head. It was, I suspected, the depression lifting, the way one of the patients described it in Against Depression (which I never finished). A singular moment when the depression lifted, before the gears stuck.

I think I was what jammed those gears in place. I think a part of me was frightened of the idea of being without it, like, well, it sounds crude to say it, but almost like a battered lover. I was going "No darling, come back, I didn't mean it, I would never leave you. I couldn't live without you. I don't know what I would do without you. Please, hit me again. I want you to."

That sounds gross, but really, this is quite a bit was it was like, I think. My apologies.

I don't feel like I have gone all the way back, though. I am still standing in the doorway. The gears haven't turned back around; they are still jammed in place. The Switch was thrown. It has not been thrown back; it is only that its process has been halted.

I don't know what will happen next. Maybe some vile shit will happen and I will go right back. Maybe I will hold in this pattern a while. Maybe I will pull out the brace, and things will just...change. I don't know.

There is a part in Against Depression where the patient whose depression lifted, like that, talks about how the depression is not her. That it is something else, but not who she is. I always thought that interesting, because of the stance such a statement implies on what is "You." What is the nature of consciousness. I mean, if you aren't the chemicals in your brain, what are you? Are you more you when unaided by chemicals, when on anti-depressants, when drunk, when sober, with raging with hormones or castrated? It seems that each of those is you, or a different shade of you, to me, but I am not that certain. But what defines you? If you strip away all those influences, the external, the innately biological, the pumping of blood and collections of neurons, would there still even be a you (are we more or equal to the sum of you physical parts? Is there a metaphysical level to reality?).

I think part of my reticence is, I have been depressed so long, I have been this unhappy, nervous, anxious, angry person for so long, I have been wearing this weight, this Albatross, for so long, that I don't know what I would be without it. I don't know how it would feel. I don't know if it would feel like me, if I would even be me. Is there anything to me, other then my depression? If I escaped i's temple, would I dash out into endless green fields, or find myself facing a trek through a barren Wasteland? "No Excuses." Would the sun outside of the cave be too bright?

I need to keep doing this...

Go with the flow

2009-04-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

The story I am working on is kind of odd, because I don't know where it goes, quite. There is a faint flicker of an idea of an ending, but I don't know if I will use it. I am just writing the story, kind of one sentence in front of the next, trying to keep it along some pathway. A while back I wrote 800 words in a mad, late-night rush, but felt that I hadn't communicated all I wanted, hadn't set the mood as I wanted and pointed where the story was supposed to go. So I started over and have written about halfway through those words at much greater length and detail, and have written over 1100 words about those first four hundred or so words. Hmm, you know, it actually seems way more lopsided in terms of expansion than those numbers suggest. Single sentences have become paragraphs, or short scenes. Hopefully, writing it like this will give me a better idea of where it is going. I just write something, keeping the work in mind, (I have a deadline) and writing the next words whenever they come to me, whenever they do. I don't overthink it, or worry too much about whether I should be sitting there thinking, or taking a break. I just kind of feel my way through it. The real question, is just having the right sentence to put next, and writing that one down. Its a different approach for me, but I enjoy the exercise of it.

Laying Down the Gauntlet

2009-04-27T10:52:00.000-05:00

I did a bit of writing last night, and it went a little better than previous recent efforts. Part of the problem I have, I think, it that I just didn't have a solid idea of what the story was that I was working on.

I have decided to commit once and for all, to a project which I have been thinking of, recently, which is that I should write one short story a week. Between Sunday and Saturday, I need to start and finish the rough draft of a story, or a chapter of some larger work. At the same time, I need to do a final edit on a different story, an set it up so it is presentable to other people.

I think I can do this, because I am always thinking up new ideas for stories, but I just never commit to writing them, or I push them off to the future, pledgint to start working on them at some later date. But my disinterest in political news is growing, and this seems like a excellent way to fill up my day.

Besides, in the past, The lack of another analytical approach to writing has allowed me to skirt by on actual output. By making some kind of formal declaration of my intentions in a public forum (to extent this blog is public) I hope to hold my feet to the fire. the the overhanging threat of analysis will force me to act, making have to be writing throughout the day, every day, because, if I am not, then I am sucking at life. There really is no other option.

So a short story a week it is. I figure, if I can keep that pace up, within, say, a year, I should enough actual writing under my belt, enough experience, to have the confidence to apply for a creative writing program again. Or do something else, I don't know. The main problem I have is just my performance anxiety and the preciousness with which I cling to every aspect of this activity, and I just have to jump into it uncaring, just revel in the act of doing it, like I did with drums, if I ever want to get better. This self-analytical tendency can be stifling, so I need to turn it into something constructive.

Mass produced junk

2009-04-26T19:17:00.001-05:00

The last track on that Decembrists CD won't play. Straight out of the case, into the computer, it skips like a drug dealer's ten-year-old Metallica album. What the shit is that?

Throwback, Part 2; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sweetness

2009-04-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

OK. One thing I notice right off the bat it that it is less harsh. The carbonation doesn't seem to stick in throat as much. Sometimes I liked that.

There something in the taste of it, the tang as it hits the back of the throat and vibrates along the teeth, that brings me back instantly to the cobbled together memories of working with my dad on some outdoors project, then sitting down on the front stoop to share a Pepsi while taking a break. It reminds me of the sweetness of those Pepsi's. How recently did they replace sugar with corn syrup? I mean, I'm thinking back to ages, maybe 7 to 13, so 12 to 18 years ago? I haven't really had Pepsi since then. I remember Pepsi, in general, being very harsh, but in this collective memory*, it isn't.

Past the tang, it tastes about the same, but that difference in sweetener really alters the mixture, so in a sense it's all different. There is no harshness to the drink at all, although it does make my teeth buzz a little bit. It kind of makes me want to brush my teeth. Yet, somehow, the yet of my mouth doesn't feel all puckered up, all stained with chemicals, the way it does usually.

All in all it was more like I was drinking a carbonated beverage, and less like drinking a mixture of flavorful chemicals.

It was much easier to drink the whole can. It was done in minutes. Much smoother. Much more a continuous whole.

*This was kind of a ritual for us.

Throwback, Part 1; or, I can haz sugar?

2009-04-26T17:55:00.001-05:00

So, Pepsi has released some new products called Pepsi Throwback, where they use sugar instead of corn syrup as the sweetener, just like back in ye olden tymes. It just came out today, and I bought some of the Mountain Dew version. It's chilling in the fridge as I type, and it will be tried shortly. I am kind of curious to see if the taste is noticeably different.

Also bought the Decembrists The Hazards of Love after listening to "The Rake's Song" over and over again after listening to it at Cogitamus. I just had to possess it. About halfway through it now, most of it is very...relaxing. Not like "The Rake's Song" at all, but still quite good. I think it made my headache go away.

Kristof is awesome sometimes.

2009-04-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

Regardless of what I said here, this sounds really good.

Red Stripe

2009-04-26T00:22:00.000-05:00

I have become quite the beer connoisseur of late, and having tried it before, and not really remembering it, I bought a six-pack of red stripe, a quite expensive import from Jamaica.

Ech. What a horrible excuse for an import. I might as well have been drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. If that's the finest beer Jamaica has to offer no wonder everyone there is a stoner.

Stuck Here Again

2009-04-26T00:13:00.000-05:00

After all this time not writing the writing is hard again. Which means I must get back to writing to make it easy again. Three days off and I write next to nothing. It's hard and annoying and now I have a slope to climb up all over again. It's very Sisyphean.

But I cleaned! I moved around all the junk, and swept, and then washed the floors. The place smelled like Ammonia all day. Before everything was covered in dust. Now everything is not covered in dust, which is much better. Tomorrow I need to get down to organizing things. The books are all out of order.

Oh. I need to finish my state taxes and send those in. They need the be postmarked by Thusday, and they are about half-done, I think, so no real worries, but I must spend some time working on them after work tomorrow, or I might start panicking about them.

I took all the tape off my drums. I didn't know drums are supposed to sound that good. I didn't know that that was what my ride cymbal really sounded like! It's beautiful.

The Banana Republic of America

2009-04-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't really been writing about politics lately, though I have been keeping abreast of it. And it's for a simple reason, I think, which is the torture debate, and my general sense that the people on my side just don't get whats going on.

It's not that I think torture is right, or that things like waterboarding and walling aren't torture. They are. It's not that I think that the last President's men and women are war criminals. They are. And in an ideal world they would stand trial for war crimes. But I don't think that Obama is wrong in wanting to "look forward."

Yes, it's intellectually incoherent. Not upholding the rule of law will have a deleterious effect on our system of justice. And however important Obama's agenda is to me and others, the impediments that prosecutions might place in front of it are no reason not to do the right thing.

It's just that I think that prosecutions might bee even more dangerous than not having them, because of the response that I forsee coming from them.

I remember reading an article years ago that made the basic argument that what happened to Clinton was payback for Nixon. Nixon is the only modern president, really the only president, period, who is unequivocally placed in the historical record as a criminal. And he was a Republican. There is just no correspnding stain to the Democrat's honor to equal what Nixon says about the Republican party, and impeaching Clinton was about trying to even that score. And though it didn't really work, the Republicans were obviously willing to that far, to get that dirty, in the name of settling a score that existed in their own heads.

So, what would happen if Obama tried the last administration for war crimes? What would that do? That has never happened before. Take a moment to think about how big a deal it would be to try a president for crimes. It's never happened before, and we have had some presidents who have done some bad things. Andrew Jackson was pretty much solely responsible for the Trail of Tears, and he's on the fucking twenty. To do so would be unprecedented, in a way, and the Republicans sense of agrievement would know no bounds.

And so there is no doubt in my mind that if Obama brought prosecutions against Bush, Cheney, or any of their underlings—just, righteous prsecutions—that the next Republican president wouldn't turn right around and start trying to find any excuse to bring charges up against Obama and various members of his adminstration. Holder. Clinton. Biden. Dawn Johnsen. Any joke of a reason they can find, they will take. I mean, can you imagine what Sarah Palin, that vindictive freak, would do, if she was our next president, and Obama had brougth charges against Bush officials? And given the precarious state of the economy, and the madness infesting the entire Republican party, that situation isn't as unimaginable as it should be.

And when the whole Banana Republic meme started up, I felt like, "I'm right." Some people think this is an absurd argument, after the Clinton impeachment, after the last eight years. And it is. But it isn't funny. Implicit in that line of (faulty) reasoning is a threat. "You want to play like that, ok, we'll play like that." It doesn't matter whether Obama is turning us into a Banana Republic or not, just that it gives them the excuse to start turning us into a Banana Republic. An excuse is all they need to become completely fascistic.

So while I think the prosecutiongs for the Bush administration is the "right thing to do," I don't know that I think Obama should do it, at least not any time soon. Because if the Democrats lose power in either branch of government anytime soon, America as we know it will quickly cease to exist. We will start to torture again. There will be endless surveillance of citizens and political opponents. People will start disppearing.

Given this argument only makes sense if you think the Republicans are evil. So if you don't think the major polical party that is arguing in favor of war crimes is evil, by all means continue pushing for investigations.

I value the rule of law. I think we should live in a system that is ruled by the law. But when one of the two major political parties doesn't actually beleive in the rule of law, I am not sure we can acutally have it. Writing that makes me feel ill.

God, I hate them so fucking much.

So maybe Obama is doing the right thing. Maybe he can has a plan. I don't know. And I don't know if following an ideal, in a particular case, is the right thing to do if following that ideal will lead to other's destroying it once and for all. I don't know if insisting on the ideal, no matter how noble, is the right thing to do with it will lead to the death of innocents. I don't know.

ugh 2

2009-04-18T00:38:00.000-05:00

So, another week of work, another week of not writing. My apartment still isn't clean, though I got a bit of it done. The living room, at least, has lots of floor space, and the sink is mostly empty. I did get my federal taxes sent out, so that's good. The state taxes are still sitting around, but I have until the 30th for those, so no worries just yet.

I think this confirms to me that writing really is reliant on momentum. After I let it atrophy for a bit, it just went away, and didn't come back. Even if I don't write much, with this coming week of work I need to just write something everyday, no matter how short or pithy, just to keep the mental faculty working. Knowing that it needs a certain level of practice (and not just knowing it intellectually, but instinctively) is very helpful moving forward. I just need to get the momentum moving again.

Also, I have been reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson recently. For some reason reading fiction seems to crowd out the part of my brain that wants to write. It's like I can read, and I can write, but I can't do both, at least I can't feel a zest for doing both. It's very odd, and a predicament I need to find my way around.

In slightly better news, earlier this week, right before leaving for work the vague outline of the entire first book of SK came to me in a weird jump and I wrote the whole page or so down in a notebook. Which it a major step forwards because it gives me, if not the entirety of my story, the areas that I have to color within, which is very edifying.

ugh

2009-04-10T11:17:00.000-05:00

Work seems to suck all the life out of me. I just have had no energy, after getting home form work, or waiting to go to work, to do any writing this week. Yesterday, my day off, I just say around all day, read, felt sorry for myself (for a variety of reasons), and read some more. I have been sleeping past noon lately. I think that's part of it. You just can't feel good and motivated when your circadian rhythms are that thrown off. Last night I read in bed until about three, then set my alarm for 10. I have been up a little over an hour now. Been cleaning my apartment, slowly, taking breaks. Everything is covered in a coarse layer of dust. It's very disgusting. No wonder I have been feeling depressed. It's been like renting the place out from someone who died last summer. Getting this place into a hospitable realm is probably the first step.

My taxes aren't done yet either, but they are getting there. The federal basically just needs to be filled out all officially, and the state? well the state is way more complex, and I am just trying to figure out what all the deductions and everything are.

update

2009-04-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and, feeling the need to do writing, as a cross between a duty and a necessity, I sat down and wrote the second half of a story I started several months ago. I just pulled up the document file and finished it off. I drank coffee while working on it. Then I had breakfast in the mid afternoon.

It's not done, by any means. There is a rather longish speech that takes up the center of the piece needs to be drastically reedited, just completely rewritten. I think the phrasing is not nearly precise enough, and it doesn't truly fit the character's personality. It should be a bit more rehearsed, and thus more literary. He has given speeches like this before; he has had practice. Right now, it's just kind of a grab bag of information. I was just trying to get down the facts he would say, so that they would be concrete and not floating around in my brain. Now they need to be beaten into shape.

Still, I feel that happy sense of accomplishment. I am particularly proud of the two epilogues to the story's main event, which I think do quite a nice job of commenting on the the main action without being explicit about it, and actually being quite casual in presentation and seemingly beside the point.

Overall, I feel like this forcing myself to write, and to write in my own voice, is doing me quite a bit of good. It's becoming part of my arsenal of activities, and I think I am slowly improving at expressing myself in words at will (slowly), giving myself an easier facility at controlling my meaning with language, because I am getting in touch with the process of engaging that speech faculty. There are still bumps along the way, and I am sure if I went back and read this stuff I would notice all kinds of mistakes and grammatical errors, but there's writing and there's editing and right now I am concentrating on the more essential of the two. It's a process. I need to build the foundation before I start worrying about the decorations.

Futurism, Part 5: Technology

2009-04-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

The problem with forecasting in where technology where go is that you just never know where the scientific breakthrough of the future will be, or how they will change the game. Marx's theory of history, it seems to me, has been completely demolished because he could not account for the effects that electricity would have upon society, the creation of computer technology. Gibson managed to include a whole lot of possible future tech in Neuromancer, and even guessed correctly that computers would get smaller, but completely missed the boat on the concept with cell phones (whose existence would create a number of plot holes in the opening sequence). And it's possible, depending on what scientific breakthroughs come, on them radically restructuring society.

What are some areas of scientific interest? Well, the three areas of actual scientific concern are biology, chemistry, and physics, three fields that overlap in various ways. These result in various technological fields, like medicine, telecommunications, information technology, agriculture, robotics (nanotechnology?), genetics, energy production.... Biology and chemistry seem to be mostly applicable to medicine, genetic and agriculture. But physics branches out into a number of fields and possibilities.

Hmm. What are some fields of interest at the moment? Well, there is much investigation into the workings of the mind. Drugs for regulating behavior. There is robotics, our increasingly refined attempts at creating self-sufficient machines. Transportation.

It seems to me, as I outlined earlier, that communication and information devices seem to be centralizing with the help of the internet. We will probably see continuedcross-over between devices until the major difference between phones, laptops and televisions are what purpose they are mainly meant for (idle observance, active continuous physical engagement, audio engagement and casual physical engagement). Probably by midcentury we will see all such devices be completely interchangable in terms of ability, in possession of massive amounts of storage space (laptops with numerous terabytes) , capable of nearly instantaneous response to all commands, and with crystal-clear image quality (streaming video on your laptop with have the detail of shrunken-down 70mm film). Oh, broadband will be free and everywhere.

So take that as a given. Now, honestly, I can't see what unexpected advancements we could come up with in this area. Perhaps new forms of interface. gloves that allow you to manipulate screens. Holographic projections, both as screens and as interfaces (fake keyboards, volume knobs. Goggles/glasses that allow you access to information akin like you are a terminator or something. Tiny earpieces. Beyond that, you are talking implants: man/machine interfaces.

Medicine. Well, you have stem cell research. Gene therapy, for genetic diseases, birth defects, reversing cellular deterioration (slowing/halting aging). Organ cloning (including skin; better for burn victims). Cures for cancer. Better, safer vaccines? Genetic treatments seems to be where it will really be at, although keeping up with viruses will probably be an endless struggle.

Robotics. Man, there could be some freaky shit done with robots. But robots have always seemed like a kind of dead end to me. I mean, either we build robots that can perform a variety of complicated tasks, basically androids, or we don't bother, and just have machines that do things. I just wonder if there is any actually need for android robots. Why have one when you can get a human to do it? What's the economic incentive?

Energy production. Seems like it's the things lying around, right now. Solor panels, wind panels, and so on. Maybe a bit of nuclear power. It's just a question of getting the engineering down so the tools are more effective. Or we actually come up with cold fusion, or some completely different source of power.

Of course there's things like man/machine interface, AI, teleportation, time travel: things that are in science, fiction, but might not actually be possible (well, a lot of those other things might not be possible either).

I suppose you could base a science fiction story set in such a projected future world around the next scientific breakthrough that comes out of nowhere. Use that Clerk Maxwell line to Queen Victoria about how someday you will be able to tax it as the epitaph.

Futurism, Part 4: Economics

2009-04-04T21:25:00.000-05:00

Here's an idea.

Assume we have widespread, nigh-universal unionization, and companies are still run by executives. But executives still have a tendency to fuck up. So what happens if a company goes under? Or, what happens if a company violently violates the terms of it's labor contracts?

Suppose a bill is passed where in this case, the government takes control of the company, wipes out the shareholders, and takes the company into receivership. It becomes an adjunct of the government. At this point, the government gives the union the option of buying back the company at some fair price (actual price of assets, cost of wiping out shareholders, I don't know) with the offering of a loan to facilitate the transaction. If the union declines, the company simply continues on nationalized, and then the government either runs the business, breaks it up and sells parts or sells it whole as it sees fit. This creates a heavy impetus for the union to buy back the company.

If the union agrees to buy it back, the corporation is reorganized as a cooperative. Instead of a board made up of chief shareholders or whatever, they are elected by the unions to termed periods (probably without term limits) . The CEO, or president, or what have you is either selected by the board as an employee or is also an elected official. This figure makes all other hiring decisions on down. Or the board does. I don't know quite how they do it up there.

Within this system, every employee down to mail clerk is assigned a certain share or number of shares of the company, which is the degree to which their position grants them ownership of the company. The employees own the company, and the are sole owners. After this point, compensation will probably differ from cooperative to cooperative, but likely each employee with be assigned a base salary adjustable in terms of the relative worth of their work (some jobs are more important than others), or seniority, or other concerns, then a "bonus," which is their share of profits, determined by the percentage their shares constitute within the company. Shares may be added with seniority or importance of position, but they are not allowed to be traded for capital. Different companies will probably come to their own decision about how much of profits will go into bonuses, or advertising or expansion, or if they will even bother with a base salary or just pay everyone from some percentage of income. Different companies and union cultures will dictate different things.

The existence of these cooperatives will lead to the encouragement for the creation of outside cooperatives, where workers or even people creating a start-up, albeit people loyal to socialist principles, will make their new ventures nascent cooperatives. Government loans in starting up new ventures will be more generous to such institutions.

Also, after the next financial crisis, or whichever one comes after Single Payer, we'll just nationalize all the major financial institutions, and run them like cooperatives, as an effective part of the national government. Thus will credit flow without need for a profit margin. It will be like the postal service.

Now, how to account for and continue innovation? One, we will boost funding for public universities, making them capable of shouldering a larger portion of the innovation pool. Systems will be set up to make sure that individuals are rewarded for their contributions to various fields, though with the government, instead of corporations, controlling the patents, it will be easier for useful drugs to inexpensively aid those in need. There will also be a large variety of grants offered to private individuals to encourage the pursuit of possibly idiosyncratic topics not directly covered by the larger university systems.

There will be a full time welfare unemployment wage, set at what is determined as subsistence level. That is, you can eat and afford somewhere to sleep on it, but not much more, so you should probably get a job if you want to live comfortably. And of course to do so would be frowned upon, though many burgeoning artists begin their careers is such a state, arting all day in hovels with the bare essential devices of their trades.

You will still have to get car insurance in order to buy a car, and you will still have to pay for it out of pocket. It's your toy.

By the way, this will all occur in the U.S., where power will, obviously, reside more and more with the Federal government, though decentralized across it's various webs of agencies. Europe will stay quite decentralized, akin to America under the Articles of Confederation. The various countries will either stay much as they are now or undergo widespread nationalization and hence rationing. Or maybe that's just in the eastern bloc. I don't really know the nature of Europe well enough to really think where they will go. A part of we suspects many of them will stay in the social democracies they have now, seeing no need to change, while ironically America will have become more socialistic, while still being more individualistic (personally I don't see these values as in conflict in any way). While Europe focuses on something like redistribution, the system America arrives at will be based on making sure individuals received just compensation for the actual value of their work. America might even have a flat tax, at least for the range of incomes possible within government or cooperative work, based on such reasoning (or it might be better to say, because the system is accurate). Collectivism vs. individual equality. Or something.

The American Cooperative Act will be passed sometime in the last quarter of the twenty-first century.

What do you mean "we," white man?

2009-04-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

So I saw this link to a discussion of the political decline of the white male and, truth be told, I felt a little bit of a twinge of loss, then felt guilty about it. I guess no one wants to feel that they are losing something, even if it's something they don't really think they should have. Or maybe I just have issues.

Anyways, I clicked on the link, and read this. After some talk about all the people in power who are either not white or not male, it states:

Missing from their powerful ranks is the benevolent, yet stern retrosexual white guy prototype, someone at home in a country club locker room, but with enough self-confidence to get out and ask for directions in the ‘hood. He enjoys nigiri sushi, but he’s still comfortable with his own chest hair. By day, he feels his way through an Eastern bazaar like Simon LeBon, and by night he takes a nightcap with the ladies like a randy Bruce Campbell.

But I am not that guy. I have never been in a country club, nor it's locker room, nor would I have felt comfortable there. I am not some manly, upperclass badass. When people talk about white men, it seems like they are always talking about some other person, someone I don't know and don't even see. Some phantom.

It seems like it is always the case that when people start talking about white men, they immediately think of someone completely different. I am getting tired of being lumped in with people I have nothing in common with.

But then, maybe I shouldn't take it too hard. Maybe, next time someone talks about the downfall of the white male, I should just think, "Good. Fuck that asshole."

Futurism, Part 3

2009-04-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

Where was I? So, I was rambling on and on about societal changes, and which way I thought they would go, specifically, the question of whether what seem from the modern perspective to be categorical cases of wrongdoing could be, through future changes in societal assumptions, be considered acceptable, or part of a new civil rights struggle. I kind of want to sidestep that question at the moment and focus on some other issues. I think that any possibility of such changes would have to be predicated on long-term societal shifts. there would probably be, in the near future, some kind of Golden Age, or calm period, where the basic reforms in civil rights and sexual equality are codified before any such issues become the topic of actual societal interest (as opposed to sources of prurient sensationalism).

God, I feel like I am disappearing up my own asshole. It this really the way I talk?

...Anyways, I think I lot of other events unrelated fields will happen before society might reach the point of legalizing pedophilia, so it's probably best to figure out what else might be going on in the meantime. That might determine whether or not we actually get at a point where such things are considered. (Although perhaps it should be assumed that during this cooling-off period there are clandestine pedophile and polygamous subcultures growing up in secret? Maybe that's your point of contention in a story set in the "good" future: that there is no final frontier. Also, I forgot about nudists.) I think we can pin about 2050 to the beginning of such a period, probably at the latest, and such a period will last at least until around 2100, and probably beyond that.

So, let's turn back to economics. I see two planes to this issue; there's national economics and there's global economics. On the global front, I think you are going to see a gradual rise in the standard of living as the local cultures adopt technological and organizational concepts first developed by the West. This will go on onto these countries reach some type of internal equilibrium and are able to start feeding back into the system (contributing scientists, art, academic institutions, technological breakthrough, etc.).

On the local front, like I said earlier, I think that there will come increased unionization, which will lead to higher wages, and in turn a higher level of civic engagement. Health Care will become socialized. These things seem certain, on some level, to me.

But the question is, what comes next?

More Futurism

2009-04-04T02:31:00.000-05:00

So one thing i have been thinking about is how no science fiction stories imagine a pleasant future. Well, I have really been giving that much thought, since the reason for that is obvious—pleasant futures don't really lend themselves well to conflict—as to what such a pleasant future might entail. What would be a conceivable future world that we could look forward to living in? That wouldn't just be a sci-fi setting, but that could be an accurate projection of the future, to some degree? Assuming the world will actually get better, which I kind of do, and that there is an actual direction to history, what kind of future society are we looking at? What would be a conceivable endpoint, or at least goal, in terms of a future society.

I don't mean far future either. One of my feelings is that any possible future that could be arrived at, that is, any society, would have encoded in it mechanism to ensure scientific and artistic advancement. We will not get an End of History scenario, where we settle down to one, stable, form of society, and then we never budge from that, ever again. (It's funny, how when you think about it, how conservative Marx's vision really is.) However, it seems to me that there is a certain trajectory in terms of terms of economic and societal reforms, that something like the the "Liberal Agenda" will come about in the end, it's just that the Liberal Agenda keeps mutating, so it's hard to keep track of what it actually might be. Of course, any possible future, in order to be realistic along these lines, would need to be believably based upon a foreseeable trajectory from the present (otherwise you are dealing in Fantasy).

I mean, let's start out with some simple things shall we? I assume that eventually we are just going to have to have some kind single payer healthcare. Medical cost will just be so expensive, that some attempt will be made to eliminate the cost, and cutting out the profit margin seems a good way to do that. And of course, there will be increased, nearly universal unionization, leading to higher wages for all (at least in America). This, in turn, will cut into the profit margin. (God, I wish I knew more about economics.) Kind of hard to figure out what the step it after that.

Then there is social issues. The problem I have is that I feel like you can always fail to take something into account. Part of me thinks that We have almost reached the endpoint in terms of civil rights causes. Just where is there to go from here? But I bet the Romans thought the same thing, right. But if there is still some social just causes unturned, which ones? Who is there really left out there being oppressed? What additional dimensions of human experience have not been noticed? There's race, gender, religion, and sexual proclivities, right? Race, or nationalism, will probably be a continuing source of discord until everyone is brown, but I think in many countries it will soon fade to non-importance in day to day interaction. The President of the United States is a black guy. Talking about post-racialism is bullshit, but that doesn't mean our conception of our relationship with the concept of race isn't going to go under an overhaul over the next 4-8 years. Religion, who fucking cares. sexual proclivities? I just doubt that furies are going to be the next GLBT. Fetishes in general be become kind of humdrum and not important. Lot of taboos and peoples' interest in caring about or stigmatizing certain taboos will just go away. Once gay relationships are normalized, that shit will open like floodgates, and no one will care about fetishes, whether we're talking Furries or S&M. It will be like caring about a person's favorite ice cream flavor (mine is vanilla, natch). By 2050, no one gives a fuck what you do in bed. Probably the only sexual habits I see keeping a stigmatization are things like pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. Basically anything that could be read as an imposition onasnother conciousness that is unable to give valid consent. Though I wonder how long such things could hold on, especially if concepts such as gender start to fall apart and sex comes to be less loaded with meaning or value. Bestiality will always be a somewhat nasty violation of animals, but polgamy? Just a way to ratify polyamorous relationships, the way we are now ratifying same-sex ones. Pedophilia is a bit more fucked up, but, the ancient Greeks did it, right? Could we concievably return to a state so sexually lax that it became acceptable. Is NAMBLA the next gay rights movement? Allen Ginsburg seemed to think so. On the other hand, that might actually be a moral aberration that has actually been corrected for by Western Individual Liberty, not something harmless that has been supressed by intolerant mores. Still, if Socrates fucked Plato... (did he? could people confirm that, or am I just imagining that shit from stuff I read and heard? Man the Greeks sure were odd.)

More later.

Blah

2009-04-04T02:08:00.000-05:00

Yeah, well work took a lot out of me this week. Everyday I got home and didn't feel like thinking or creating or anything. I just sat around and zoned out, drank a whiskey or a beer, or both, or several of both. Wednesday night I had a borderline psychotic episode after being in a freezer for over half an hour. I still wasn't really over the bad vibes from that for the rest of the next day, and then I sleep schedule got extra special messed up. Which, in general, I sleep schedule has been of late. maybe I need to get on a schedule. A set time to go to bed and wake up might be me some good.

Today I tuned my drums for the first time in ages. I even put the heads back on the bottom of the toms. They sound much better now. The resonances are in tune with one another, each tom tightened 360 degrees past finger tight. I left the back off the bass drum, since I keep having to take pieces off the back to use on the front back the front tighteners get jammed. I wonder why that keeps happening. Perhaps I have to loosen the drumheads peicemeal, instead of completel detuning one before the next? Actually, all my top drum heads are getting hard to turn. I wonder if I can order some more down at the local music shop. Maybe tomorrow I will go down to the music shop, then go sit in the library and read books. It is unfortunate that there are no big comfy chairs at the library.

I also need to buy garbage bag tags.

Another thing I did today. I cooked fish. I got out the broiler, which I have never used before, and mixed lemon salt in olive oil and slathered in on the fish, then cooked it at 315 for about 14 minutes. I also made about a pound of mash potatoes, which I will be eating all week. I put so much butter and pepper into those bad boys that you don't even need gravy or bean juice with them, they are so delicious on their own.

I have been making a lot of sandwiches lately. They are surprisingly easy to make, tasty, and filling. Now I know why mom was always pushing them. I get Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, which is just the most flavorful stuff you could imagine, just incredibly hearty. You feel like are are really eating a loave. I use organic lettuce. I need to start buying freshly sliced meat, though. The recent On-Sale packaged stuff I bought is terrible.

...There is now gay marriage in the state I live in. That is just so fucking weird to me.

Commas

2009-03-30T01:49:00.001-05:00

If you are writing a sentence with a lot of commas, a lot of defendant clauses, a lot of lists, maybe a lot just a lot or steps or sections, and for whatever reason you do not feel it useful to cross over into using semi-colons as a part of sentence construction, I would hang back on the use of commas, because the using of commas to divide up each, particular, phrase, is just headache-inducing, and brevity and clarity would be greatly enhanced by fluency.

bits

2009-03-29T19:26:00.001-05:00

Been doing lots of random writing today. Working on bits and parts of stories, mostly in outline form, trying to summarize and rework old legends. Has been slow going, as I haven't wanted to put steps down unless they fit, so lots of pacing about and circling around and typing when the spirit moves me. Also much reading of the sources and sublimating that information.

Also been doing laundry and reading The Left Hand of Darkness. It's much better than I remember it. Not really slow like I felt it was before. I think maybe I was just still miffed about the Doctorow kerfluffle, and the rhetorical device she begins with (the narrator explains why they are writing the story), still a pet peeve of mine, is less obnoxious then I remember it being. It's funny, the book is most often sighted for it's treatment of gender, but the wintry setting and alien and pangalactic cultures seem to play a much larger role in my impression of the book than the biology of the "aliens." Also, Le Guin really does seem to have a thing for making her characters not white. Not bad, of course, but quite uncommon.

Living Robot

2009-03-29T13:03:00.001-05:00

Apropos this post, this is fucking awesome.

Seek and ye shall find.