10 Crappy Songs

I’ll probably regret this, but I’ve stumbled across an interesting idea on another blog (Over at Slacktivist where I frequent for the biting criticism of the Left Behind series of novels) that I’m too bored not to try.

It’s called the Friday 10. Here’s how it works.

You load up your music library. You hit the random button. And then you post the first ten songs that appear.

I’ll probably regret this because I have a weird habit of downloading MP3 files, just to see what they’re like, ridiculous things, pop-culturey things, and then I never delete them. I’m currently sporting 9165 songs, and I’m sure that there’s a whole lot in there that are, not only not good, but probably embarrassing as well.

Though I suppose that’s why this exercise is interesting.

Without further ado, here are this week’s Friday 10 (which may also be the last week, if I completely forget about this notion by next week, which is pretty goddamn likely)…

1. The Beatles – I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song before…see what relentless downloading can do?


2. The Bangles – Manic Monday – Gotta love 80s chick bands. This actually a live version, from somewhere, after a post-new-millennium reunion of the band. The song is the best thing ever, but I have a major love for their version of “Hazy Shade of Winter” – I have a perverse fascination with cover songs…


3. Antarctica (JC Denton’s Lair) – Deus Ex: Invisible War Official Soundtrack – I like game music, because it allows me to relive the experience of playing that game. Granted, the experience of playing Deus Ex: Invisible War is not something I really want to relive, but some of the music is not half bad (and, while on the topic, all of the music from the original game is fantastic) though this song is not among those…


4. Tangerine Dream – All of a Dither – Someone I knew in high school originally got me interested in Tangerine Dream. This song doesn’t ring much of a bell to me, but some of their stuff can instantly transport me back to the late 80s with just a few notes.


5. Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic Version) – Nothing much to say here, except that this song is brilliant, wonderful, fantastic, and ridiculously sad. Can’t go wrong with something like.


6. Mike Oldfield – Runaway Son – I’m a massive fan of Oldfield’s work (and am incredibly enthused about the upcoming, new, two-disc album) but this song doesn’t do a damn thing for me. Why do I have it? Because it’s Mike Oldfield, and I’m one of those psychotic types who can’t sleep unless he has *everything* from certain artists, good or bad. Yeah, kill me now.


7. Depeche Mode – My Secret Garden – Well, the theme of this week’s Friday 10 seems to be bands I enjoy playing songs I’m not even remotely familiar with. Depeche Mode’s stuff can drop me back into the late 80s and early 90s with just a few notes, when it’s the right song, but this isn’t the right song. I don’t know this song at all. It doesn’t seem to be a bad song, mind you, just, you know, unfamiliar.


8. Tomoyasu Hotei and Ray Cooper – A Drug Score 3 – From the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Soundtrack – can’t go wrong with that. Dr. Thompson, you are still missed…


9. Marilyn Manson – Rock Is – I think I’ve got this song from a soundtrack of some kind, but I can’t place what the soundtrack is at the moment. Nonetheless, it’s one of the few songs from Mr. (Ms.?) Manson that I enjoy. Wait, I’m thinking now that this might be from the Matrix Soundtrack. Is that possible? Whatever…no one cares…


10. Eurythmics – Sex Crime (1984) – Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is from the mid-80s film version of George Orwell’s 1984, correct? I can’t remember. If it is, then I’m reminded of how much I’d love to see that film again…I haven’t seen it since, well, 1984, and that’s more than 20 years. And if this song isn’t from that film, then I’ve just made an internal, memory-based, non-sequitor. And I think that’s unhealthy.

And so that brings us to the end of this week’s Friday 10. Thankfully nothing overly embarrassing cropped up, which means I might actually try to do this next week. Not only that, it actually forced me to sit here and listen all the way through a bunch of songs, songs that are taking up space on my hard drive, that I normally would have just skipped through. Which is kind of cool. Because some of these songs are pretty good.

I suppose the point of this Friday 10 thing is also to illustrate the (potentially) diverse nature of the blogger’s music collection. I don’t have the foggiest idea how diverse this selection of music is, but that’s not up to me to decide, is it.

See you next Friday.

PS: This post was written in MS Word using Blogger’s spiffy plugin.

PPS: I’m trying editing the blog in MS Word, but I’m not sure if it’ll just post another entry. If it does, I’m deleting the old one.

PPPS: It actually updated the original blog post, instead of dumping a brand new one on the blog. OMFGWTFBBQ, I think I’m in love with blogging from MS Word…

And apparently...

...It works. Though I need to remember to leave a few extra graf breaks, to put some distance between the bottom of the entry and the silly "Sent via Blackberry" message...

Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network

Test

Q. How can you tell I'm bored?

A. I'm farting around, trying to ge moblogging set up on my Blackberry.
Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network

Fini (or In Case You Missed It)

In case you missed the reference in my last column (which appeared on the street today) it is, at long last, finished -- I finally got to type the words "The End" on the last page of the novel I started last November during national novel writing month.

I actually finished it last week. I'm not sure why I didn't make any mention of it here, after counting down the last few thousand words so religiously. I think, maybe, I found myself so relieved to finally be finished, to finally have a novel finished after so many attempts of starting and not quite getting through, that I just kind of purged all thought of it from my mind from the moment it was done. It took me three days to remember to send the last few pages to the friend that had been reading along, ever step of the way, since November, and usually I'd send him something as soon as it was complete.

In a way, I was dreading it being over as well. In the same way that, when reading a really, really good book you can find yourself dreading the end, because you'll have to close the book on the events and the characters and the people you've come to know and love over time, so it is when writing a book. I really grew to care about these characters, and even like most of them (some of them tried very hard to be unlikeable, but in the end, I think even they found a few shreds of decency). So walking away from them was hard.

Not that I won't be visiting them at some point in the future -- the book may be done, but it's a mess. It needs a rewrite *badly*. But I need to put it away for awhile. I need to let the characters and the ideas and the themes drift out of my head, so that when I go back to do the rewrite, I can approach it with a completely new set of eyes. So I can be a bit more objective, so I can more easily yank out the parts that don't work, and discover the things that really, really do.

Until then, I have a one act play called "Dinner and Drinks" in the works (three stories, about three different stages of relationships). I'm about halfway through one of the stories, and I'm already convinced that it would be almost impossible to put on the stage here in Williams Lake without offending more than half of the people who came to see it. Which, while not something I'm always against, isn't really the point of the story. Unfortunately, some of the subject matter in the play has proven difficult to talk about without being...well, vulgar.

Still, if all goes well, the play should be complete by the first of November, and the start of National Novel Writing Month, and my third crack at it. Two weeks ago I was terrified, because I realized that I'd been spending so much time finishing last year's novel that I didn't have any ideas for a new one. No old ideas rattling around in my head waiting to come out either.

A title came to me one night, while lying in bed, my brain refusing to drift off to sleep. Even though, at the time, there was no story attached to it, the title was too good not to use -- "The Smalltown Pornographer's Blues". I decided the next day that it would be a fun challenge to go into a book with nothing but the title, and just sort of let the story tell itself, however it saw fit. Within the next few days, I'd figured out the ending, as well as the first two chapters, so I'm pretty confident that this will actually be doable.

And even if it wasn't...well, the title would *still* be too good not to try.

I've avoided blogging the novels in the past, though I did stumble past a few people who were posting their entire book, as they wrote it, to their blog, and it struck me as interesting idea. I probably won't go quite that far (I'm a little nervous about copyright infringement, after getting burned a number of years back by a newspaper that shall remain nameless) but I might post occasional novel excerpts here, so if you're interested in the saga of my pornographer and his blues, you'd do best to visit periodically during the month of November.

In my last bit of writing news, I'm considering getting into small-town political discussions in my column by writing a review of campaign signage. I've seen two signs so far that have made me think of two things that are very different than what they intended, and I thought it could be a pretty funny approach.

Though I'll probably wait until a week or two before the election itself, just to make sure that everyone who's going to get a sign up *gets* their sign up. Though I have found a spot that seems to have a sign from just about every current candidate under the sun. I should finally figure out how my stupid digital camera works and snap some photos of it...

I am...

You're Great Expectations!

by Charles Dickens

Coming from humble beginnings, you have become pretty stuck-up in your
later years. While hard work and dedication were the path you first walked on, a sudden
fork brought you glory and fortune. Unfortunately, you have changed even more than your
bottom line. You really should turn back to your old friends and at least respect your
old life. Look out for haughty hotties.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

And I've never even read the silly thing...

Weird and wonderful

Every year, for the past few years, I've found myself thinking, "Oh my god, this is the weirdest year of my entire life!"

I kept waiting for those sorts of epiphanies to pass, thinking that I would eventually reach a year that actually wasn't terribly weird. And then other day something occurred to me.

It occurred to me that there was nothing weird about having the weirdest year of my life. Becuase that's what life was all about.

Every new experience leads us to a knew realization about something. And as much as I once thought that new experiences would eventually run out, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that, in fact, they won't. There are new things around every corner, waiting for us to discover them, waiting for us to rejoice in them. And in a way, every year will always be weirder than the last, simply because with each passing year we expect the next to make more sense based on the wisdom we've accumulated the previous year, and in each year before that.

But it never does. It never will.

And as I realized that, I realized also that I couldn't think of anything more wonderful. The notion of life always remaining fresh and new and interesting, instead of becoming sad and bleak and familiar, was one of the most refreshingly optimistic ideas I could concieve of.

At 32 years old, I still don't know what it's all about. I still don't know what tomorrow will bring, or next week, or next month, or, God help me, next year.

And I can't think of anything more wonderful than that.

Novelizingismesque

The book is sitting at 90,000 words.

That's 5,000 tonight, plus 5,000 after my blog post of last night. 10,000 words in two days. I'm absolutely stunned at the amount of output I've had. But not entirely surprised, either. I think I suspected this would happen, once I got the ball rolling. So much of the story was there, and I was so goddamn close to the end, that once it started to roll, there'd be no stopping it.

One chapter and epilogue left, plus a little bit to do to the middle to get it done.

Final chapter is on the agenda for tomorrow or Monday. I don't know if I'll be able to get it done in a single sitting, like I've done for the last two chapters, but it will more than likely be another situation of starting and simply not being able to stop until it's done.

Still, I don't like making promises to myself. So we'll just see what happens.

90,000 words. Seems pretty likely at this point that it'll break the 100,000 word mark, and will probably even drift to 105,000 by the time I tack on the epilogue and fill out the middle.

105,000 words. Goddamn it's been a long time.

What a ride.

Novelizingism

In spite of the fact that I seem to be ending up with more and more in front of me, scheduling-wise, I've still been managing to pick away at the novel. Another two pages tonight, another two pages earlier in the week, another couple last weekend...etc...

Current word count sits at about 80,000 words, which means that since the NaNoWriMo cutoff in November I've dumped an additional 30,000 words into it.

By my estimation, there's somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 still to go before I can type the words "The End".

If I pick at it a bit more regularly (as in 2-3 pages every day or two) I think I can be out of this draft within two or three weeks.

It's an idea I find unbelievably exciting. I've been chatting with a friend who's read this unfinished draft about the direction things are going, and in the course of the discussions, more and more ideas just kind of spill out. I sumbled onto the last two ideas I needed to know earlier in the week, which means every conceivable thread that that the novel has conjured will end up wrapped up -- and wrapped up neatly! -- by the time the book closes.

Those moments, the moments when everything just kind of clicks in your head and you can see how beautifully everything can tie up in the climax of the story, are some of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced. And it's something that you can only experience when tackling something with the scope of a novel. You can get a smaller sense of it in a short story, or a novella, but in order to feel the real victory of tying up multiple plot threads, you need to have a story with a whole bunch of threads to begin with. Something with a bunch of meat on its bones.

It's been a long time since I had a project like that.

My previous kick at the NaNo can doesn't really count. In spite of the fact that I managed to get across the 50,000 word mark, I never did get around to finshing that one, and -- for moment -- don't think I ever will, because I *don't* know how to wrap up the plot threads in that one. I have some notions about things that have to happen in order to create a satisfying ending, but I don't have the foggiest idea how to get there.

I don't mind, though. Who can complain about a story that didn't pan out when they're working on one that is panning out, and panning out wonderful.

Oh joy, oh bliss.

Oh sweet, sweet euphoria.

Clarity

There seems, to me, to be a certain amount of clarity that comes from losing hope.

The thing about hope, at least for me, is that it forces a focus. It demands that you stare at it, that you never take your eyes off it, that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, that thing is always on your mind. Front, back, middle; conscious, unconscious, preconscious. It's always there, it's always with you, and it's always draining a certain amount of your energy, whether you're aware of it or not.

But when you lose hope, however dreadful a concept that might be, that all-encompassing kind if passion goes with it. And all of a sudden, you lose focus on this one little thing and you find that you can look at your life, your whole life, for the first time in maybe months, maybe years.

And in spite of the fact that a desperate and passionate hope in something wonderful is now gone and dead, there's still something wonderful to come out of the process. Because you are reintroduced to yourself, and to parts of yourself that you had forgotten about. Wonderful parts. Beautiful parts. Parts that are crying out for attention, and have been crying out for attention for months and maybe years, but you haven't heard them, because of your single-minded passion towards that one hope. Because, for that time, there was nothing else in your life.

And when that one thing is gone, and you have nothing else to hold you up, nothing else to inspire you to reach for the clouds, and the heavens, and the stars beyond, it is such a wonderful surprise to find that, upon falling back to the earth again, that there are arms waiting to catch you. Your own arms. Arms that hold you tightly because they know, better than anyone, just how you're feeling right then. You're trapped in an embrace that is softer and more comforting than anything you could imagine, because the embrace comes from you, from someone who knows exactly what you need, and is more than willing to give it.

And then you hear the voice, your own voice, whispering in your ear:

"We've missed you," the voice says.

"It's good to see you again."

This is a test

This is a test.

Testing my bizarre new MS Word plug-in for Blogger. How weird and unnatural this seems, to be blogging from Word. Assuming it doesn’t turn out to messy and bizarre, I might actually get in the habit of doing it this way.

Novelizing

I decided last week that, the correct way to prioritize my current projects (one play, one novel) was to focus, initially, on the play, because I knew that if I really worked at it, I could have the first draft done in one to two weeks. Then I could just set it aside for awhile to rest before editing, and turn my attention to the unfinished novel that I've been mucking with, off and on, since last November, when I started it during National Novel Writing Month. That, I figured, might take me as much as a month to finish the first draft of.

Seemed like the most logical way to go -- get the quick and easy one out of the way first, before turning my attention to the one that will likely take more time and energy out of me.

So why the heck am I working on the stupid novel today, instead of the play?

The answer, really, is simple. Because it was the novel that I was inspired to work on today. It was the words of the novel that were dancing just behind my forehead, waiting for the chance to be spilled out onto the page. And that's the only thing that matters when it comes to this kind of thing -- what is it that you're inspired to do? It doesn't matter what you *want* to do, or what you *think* you should do. It's where the inspiration lies.

This is why I should always have two different projects going at any one time, so I can always turn to the one that I'm inspired to work on when the other gets a little stagnant for a few days. Because if you've only got one, and it goes stagnant, you end up stuck with nothing to work on, and then it's hard to get working on *anything* again once the stagnation passes.

About 7 pages done today too. Decent output. I think I could even squeeze out another 3 or 4, and bring this current chapter to a close.

And all I can think is, "Nice."

"Nice..."

More stickage

Following up yesterday's massive Stick Figure Drama update, I've decided to upload the latest strip (completed less than 30 minutes ago), so it'll be appearing here even before it sees print in the newspaper.

It features the first part of what I'm sure will be an exciting showdown between two competing arch-villains.

Enjoy.

OMGWTFBBQ! Stickage to the extrmez0rz!!11!!

I made a massive stick figure drama update today, uploading episodes 46 through 65, bringing the links on the right-hand side as up to date as humanly possible as of this moment in time.

I've also split the stick figure drama links into "Season One" and "Season Two" as there is a fairly distinct split between them. Everything from Stick Figure Drama #31 through to the current issue (and beyond) is part of a single, ever evolving storyline. While everything that occurs before #31 is sort of the kind of mess that a cartoonist might create while trying to figure out exactly how to be a cartoonist, publishing those experimental abominations at the same time.

Stick Figure Drama fans, rejoice! And enjoy!

The persistence of loss.

My trip to Nanaimo in July placed me on a ferry for the first time in more years than I can remember, and placed me there just days after another ferry lost control and beached itself on a marina (or some such thing).

I took the book I had brought with me for the trip up to the top, outside deck, sat down, lit a cigarette, and started to read while I waited for the boat to depart.

When it did, I found myself unable to keep from thinking about the ferry that had gone out of control the few days prior. I also found myself thinking, with pretty much equal interest, about accidently driving into another ferry halfway through our journey, about our boat springing a leak and filling with water, and whether or not there would be anything good to eat at the cafeteria.

Barring the thoughts about food, I realized that one of the curses of adulthood is just how negative we become. I can recall riding the ferry dozens of times as a child, without a worry, without a care in the world. There was no chance that it would sink, no chance that it would cross the path of another boat, and certainly no chance that terrorists would come aboard and blow us all up. Because my parents were nearby, and nothing bad could ever happen to me.

Of course bad things happen to children all the time, and often those bad things happen *because* the parents are nearby, and not in spite of it. But kids don't know these things when they're kids. Thank god.

Years ago, in the middle of some ridiculous debate with my then-wife, she accused me of being naive. I agreed that I was and, in fact, was proud to be. I also hoped to be able to stay that way for as long as possible.

I'm far less naive now, which I think is unavoidable. I'm also a whole lot more bitter and a whole lot more jaded. Which is as disappointing as it is inevitable.

In spite of the comfort it gives (or maybe even because of the comfort it gives me) I feel a little bit more disappointed in myself, in the world around me, in life in general with each step I take towards a bleaker outlook on life. I know I'm not alone, because people keep telling me things like, "That's how the world works," and, "Get used to it, it doesn't get any better."

The reason for that disappointment is that I really and honestly believe that one of the greatest things we lose in our adulthood, thanks to the anger and disappointment we feel, is our ability to believe in things. In our ability to hope for something good. In our ability to close our eyes and feel, in our hearts, the possibility that we might somehow, some way have a happy ending.

We shroud ourselves in depression and disaffection, sometimes because it's what we've been taught how to do, sometimes because it's all we know how to do, sometimes because just so sick and fucking tired of being disappointed.

And I am. I am so sick and fucking tired of being disappointed. The problem is, it's also so fucking hard to have hope.

It's a bit like the story of the boy who cried wolf, but instead of crying wolf he tells you to cheer up, that your life is lovely, that your future holds wonderful things, and then he punches you in the face and runs away laughing.

After awhile you get tired of being punched in the face and just kick the kid in the stomach as soon as you see him.

One of the things that greatly appealed to me about the play I'm directing this season was the tone that it ended on. One of optimism. One of hope.

It's not an obvious, in your face, "they lived happily ever after" kind of ending. Instead, it's more of an allusion. An allusion that, somehow, things might be okay, if we just believe a little bit. In ourselves. In each other.

It's an idea that warms my heart just enough to remind me that there is still a little bit of hope tucked away inside this bitter and jaded shell, and that makes me kind of happy. It reminds me that there's still a little bit of my young naivety hanging on, and that means that it's not hopeless. That there is still a chance for me to believe again. In something, or someone, or just the idea that tomorrow might be better today.

That's something worth believing in, I think, if even only a little bit.

And something worth reminding people to believe in.

Tales of the potential kitty.

One of the coolest ideas I've stumbled upon in the last few years is the idea of Schrodinger's Cat.

Here's how Wikipedia explains it:

A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas. The experiment is set up so that there is a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (mixture) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/dead cat" or an "undecayed nucleus/living cat."

The question is: when does the system stop existing as a mixture of states and become one or the other? The purpose of the experiment is to illustrate that quantum mechanics is incomplete without some rules to describe when the wavefunction collapses and the cat becomes dead or remains alive instead of a mixture of both.

In a nutshell: Put a cat inside of a sealed box, that can not be tampered with from the outside. Inside the box with the cat is a device that, after one hour, has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat. After the hour is up, the cat is either alive or dead, but according to certain rules quantum physics, until the cat is actually observed in one state or the other, it is, in fact, in both states simultaneously.

Which I think we can all agree is kind of ridiculous.

The point of Schrodinger's cat was to criticize certain points of quantum mechanics. Certain points which are, I can assure you, quite over my head. But I think Schrodinger's Cat beautifully illustrates a part of day to day life as well.

Potentiality.

Every moment that is in front of you has potential. Until you seize the moment, make a choice, and take action, nothing is decided.

I can lay in bed for an hour wondering what to have for breakfast. And for that hour, every breakfast possibility is equally likely to come to reality. But the moment I grab the bowl and pour the cornflakes, the potentiality is gone and one particular course of action becomes fact, and then history.

Or, wait, here's a better analogy

It's like a game of russian roulette. One bullet in one chamber of a revolver. You spin the chamber, and put the gun to your head. In a sense, until you pull that trigger and find out for sure -- until you are actually able to observe the state of the chamber somehow -- it is simultaneously in both states at once. Kind of. In a sense.

Wait, forget that russian roulette thing. That's just gross.

But I think maybe you're getting the point by now anyway. So let's just drop the analogies.

As long as you're waiting to do something, as long as you're thinking about doing something, the potential exists for that thing to go in any of 1000 different directions. Once you do it, the potential is gone, and the cat is either alive or dead, no two ways about it.

That's the thing about life. Sometimes you make those choices, and everything just works out spectacularly, and you ask yourself how you could put that decision off for so goddamn long.

Other times, you wish you could have just held on to the potentiality, either because things didn't go the way you wanted, or were more complicated than you thought, or you just plain fucked up the choice somehow.

There's something sadly good about potentiality. There's something sadly good about just sitting within a situation where you have equal chances of success or failure.

I've long believed that publication, or exhibition, is a vital part of any creative process.

The creating itself occurs in a rather solitary place, and in rather a solitary piece of mind. But there is implied, I think, with any artistic endeavor, the hope that you might one day able to share it with others.

And I've often felt as if creating something with no intention of ever sharing it is a bit like masturbation. Sure, it's fun and all while it's happening, but when you get to the end of it, it's really kind of silly and pointless.

So what do you do when you start writing something that you know you could never publish, never exhibit, never share with the rest of the world. Because it's too close to you. Because it dips into biographical stuff that you can't deal with yourself, so you tuck it as far back in your mind and soul as is humanly possible. You can't share that kind of thing with people. They look at you funny afterwards.

But how can you *not* write it, when writing can be such a cathartic experience? Getting those things out in a private way, when it's just you and the page, allows you to deal with those things in a way, albeit a small one. But even small ways are better than no ways at all, and too often I feel like I have no way of dealing with the things that are bubbling and gurgling in my psyche.

The problem, I guess, stems from the rare possibility that this thing I write, which I could never show to another human being, might turn out to be really, really good.

What then?

Even if I was a perfect altruist, the knowledge that I had created something might shake people, or move them, or make them think about something or realize something, and that I was actively keep it away from them...that would be wrong. That would be perversely wrong.

Of course, I'm not a perfect altruist, so it would be my ego that got in the way. The ego that would want people to go, "Wow, he wrote that? That's fricking brilliant! Not only that, imagine the balls on him if he's got the nerve to actually publish / display that work! It's so intimate!"

I doubt I'll have to worry about it. Things that are this close to me rarely turn out that good. They are what they are, and that is a cathartic exercise, a way to vent my spleen onto the page and get rid of at least a few of the cancers that eat away at my soul.

In the future...

...we will all be made up of 75% cheese, by volume.

Resurrection

I opened up my still unfinished National Novel Writing month novel last week and actually wrote a few pages in it. And then I did the same thing tonight -- a few more pages of progress actually complete.

Those of you who know me know that this is almost unheard of. And those of you who don't know me, well, now you know that fact too.

It's not so much that I'm not a creative person. I think I'm a highly creative person. The problem is that I get far more excited about the "thinking about being creative" phase than the "actually sitting down and being creative" phase. By the time it comes to actually sitting down, I'm either distracted by liquor or video games. Or both, sometimes.

I know that creating a habit of sitting down and writing a little bit every day just involves, you know, doing it often enough to create a habit. But even knowing it has rarely ever allowed me to pull it off. I try for awhile, then something else gets in the way for a day or two, and then it's bloody hard to get back into it again, so I just let whatever project it was alone for a few months, before guilt finally brings me back.

I enjoy the creating when I create, but I still can't motivate myself to do it.

I'm waiting for an epiphany. A moment of sudden, shocking realization about my own mortality, and how fragile my own life is. With that realization, I think, should come the ability to do all the things I've always wanted to do. Create with complete abandon, knowing I need to get these ideas out now, before I die; quit smoking, because smoking isn't doing anything except shortening my life span; quit drinking so goddamn much, because what's the point of being alive if you're only ever going to see this wonderful, beautiful world through eyes clouded with liquor?

No epiphany as of yet. Clearly. Maybe there will never be one, and I'll simply continue down this path until the day I meet my end and go on to whatever strange and surreal things exist beyond this world.

But if that's the case, I fear that regardless of all the nice things that people might say at my funeral -- because you have no choice but to say nice things at funerals; it's some kind of bylaw -- what they'll all really be thinking is, "He had so much potential. He could have done so much.

"What a sad, sad disappointment his life turned out to be."

Filler

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skankysluts.

In immediate retrospect, I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this...

"I love you," I said.

"I know," she replied. "I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. You tell me that every day. We have this same stupid conversation every day. And every day I say that I love you too."

"But then you say that it's 'only as a friend.'"

"Does that make my love any less valid?"

"No, I suppose not. But it does mean that we won't be having sex any time soon."

"Yes, it does."

"Oh, come on, who're you kidding? You want me."

"Me?"

"Desperately."

"I don't doubt that you think that."

"Oh, please..."

"Or that you think that I think that. Or whatever."

"It's true, you do."

"I don't," she said. "I really don't. I wish I did. If only to make you happier, if only to make your life a little bit better, I wish I did."

"You feel it."

"I don't."

"You should. I do."

"No you don't."

"I do."

"Not really."

"What do you mean?

"You're a guy. You...you want to fuck something, that's just what guys do. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But it's leading you astray. You're confused by our friendship, our closeness, that has nothing to do with sex."

"And fuck you too," I said.

"Pardon me?"

"Okay, so maybe you love me as a friend, fine, whatever. And maybe you don't want to have sex with me, fine, whatever. Those are your feelings, and they belong to you. But don't sit there and try to tell me what I feel. Don't tell me I'm confused. Don't tell me I'm misunderstanding our friendship just because I'm a guy who wants to fuck anything with a pulse. Don't diminish what I'm feeling just because you're uncomfortable with it."

"Wow..." she said.

"What?"

"Where'd that come from?"

"Frustration, I guess," I said. "Frustration at having this same conversation with you every day and not getting anywhere, getting the same goddamn answers from you every goddamn time."

"Fair enough," she said. "Do you think this conversation would go any differently if you actually talked to me instead of playing this scene out in your head?"

"If I thought it would, do you really think I'd still be sitting here alone, talking to myself?"

"No, I suppose not."

Stop staring

I'm having a staring contest with this blog. I really, really want to win, but I'm no longer completely confident that I will.

When I decided a few weeks back that I was going to write more frequently, and write about anything -- fiction, short plays, stream of consciousness ramblings, whatever -- I thought this would be a good way to get a long stagnating blog on track, and also get me writing a bit more often. Neither seemed like bad things.

As is the case with most ideas, it went quite well for the first few days, and then kind of fell apart after about a week.

But the birthing process, even when it's only an idea you're birthing, is not necessarily an easy one. I haven't given up on this blog, and I haven't given up on the notion of writing something every day.

But I ran into a stumbling block.

I have an idea for a short play. I actually have an idea for 3 short plays that are all loosely tied together. The series would be called "Dinner and Drinks. At the moment, though, there's one I'm kind of burning to write. It doesn't have a title yet, because titles are usually the last things to come to me, but the first line of the play is, "Can I get you another drink?" and the last line is, "Why won't you treat me like the dirty slut I am!"

The thing is, I'm not quite there...not quite ready to write it. Which is annoying because I was intending it to be the next entry in this blog. Which is why the next entry has shown up until now.

So I guess I'm giving up the staring contest. I guess I'll back down and write something else instead of this short play. I'll let the blog win this round, because it doesn't matter who wins and who loses if the art suffers, right?

"Sarah, I don't think we should see each other any more."

She jumped when I said that, like she didn't know I had just been standing there for 10 minutes trying to figure out exactly how to approach the issue. But I had, and she knew I had.

It was going to be a difficult issue, one that I knew could break her heart, leave her scarred for life, if I didn't approach it just the right way. It had happened to me before with women. If you didn't know exactly how to break this sort of news to them, anything could happen.

"Oh, Dave," she said, looking up from the paperwork on her desk she'd pretended to occupy herself with. "I didn't see you there. How long have you been...uh...standing there?"

"I know it's hard for you to accept," I continued.

"What is. What did you say a minute ago? I didn't hear you."

"Don't make this any more difficult than it needs to be."

"Don't make what any more difficult?"

"I don't think we should see each other anymore."

And then it happened, like it always happened. A stunned silence. The truth, when finally dropped on her lap like a living, breathing bomb had knocked the speech right out of her. Left her dazed and confused and dumbfounded.

"Dave," she said, when she was finally able to compose herself, "we haven't been seeing each other."

"I know, and that's my fault. It's work partly, I suppose, I've been super busy lately with, you know, all my work stuff. But even when I do have time on my hands, I just don't think to pick up the phone. You're just not on my mind quite the way you used to be. Maybe we've just grown apart. I don't know how these things happen, or why..."

"No," she said, continuing her denials, "what I mean is that we're not actually seeing each other. We're not dating. I don't even particularly like you, to be honest."

"And I don't like myself very much right now either, Sarah. I know I'm being selfish. I know I'm looking out for me here, and not thinking about what you must be going through, but sometimes you have to live for yourself. Sometimes you have to do what's right for you and not for everyone else around you. And this is what I need to do. For me, Sarah. For me."

There was a crazed look in her eyes. It looked a bit like terror, and I'm sure she was only thinking of how bleak and grey the coming days and weeks would be, threatened by the thought of spending her evenings alone in her bed. But she didn't show it anywhere but in her eyes, I'll give her credit for that.

"Uh, okay Dave," she said in a voice that was rock steady, showing none of the turmoil of emotion that must be bubbling underneath it is. "If you...uh...think that's what's best. Then. Okay."

"I'm glad you understand," I said. I reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it quickly away. I suppose any contact at this point would be torture for her at this point, knowing it would be the last time we made contact. "I'd like it if we could still be friends."

"Yeah, I'm not sure that would work out."

"But we have so many memories of good times together. I'd hate for us to lose that."

"Well, maybe they're just better off left as memories."

"Do you want to come back to my place after work tonight? One more romp in the sack for old times sake?"

"Uh, no. How about, if I ever see you again I'm calling security. Deal?"

God, why did they always say things like that? It totally ruins the moment.

"There plenty of loneliness in the world. I don't know why we have to seek it out and horde it up..."

On some level, nearly every piece of fiction I've ever written has been about love and / or loneliness.

This is not because I believe that all great works of fiction require a love story in them somewhere to appease a certain type of audience, or to help illustrate the protagonist's growth. It's because I believe that all great works of fiction are ultimately love stories.

I often feel that I have hundreds or thousands of tiny fragments of stories or ideas that are jumbled up in my head, waiting to gel into something greater or grander eventually. More often than not the little pieces never gel and instead fade away and are forgotten as days and months and years pass by. And it's a loss, because many of those fragments were pretty darn good on their own.

So I have begun making the effort to post a fragment of some kind on this blog each day. It's an excuse to write, which is good, and it's an excuse to get a fragment out of my head that very likely would have just vanished, and that's also good.

And because I believe that most stories are essentially love stories, you're going to see a lot of these fragments dealing the subject of love. Or loneliness. Because I'm pretty sure that the two things are wrapped together so tightly that you might never be able to tell one from the other.

In a sense, even this post is a fragment, as it gives me the chance to finally release an idea from my mind -- the notion that love and loneliness are tied together. It also gives me the opportunity to say that the reason I think all great stories are essentially love stories is because, deep down, I am a romantic at heart who likes to believe in happy endings.

It's just unfortunate that I am also a cynic who, while liking the idea of happy endings, doesn't think that they happen anywhere near often enough.

I'm not sure why it is that loneliness and loss and desperation seem to be in the cards for so many of us, whether that's simply a part of the human experience, or whether it's supposed to teach us some grand lesson about how the universe is cruel and we are all, ultimately, alone. I'm also not sure why I have learned to allow myself to feel content in this state of loneliness and loss and desperation I tend to find myself in, but it's here that I am the most comfortable, and here that I always seem to find myself returning to, even when alternative options present themselves.

It's a danger to become comfortable in anything, I suppose.

These pieces that will appear here in the days and weeks and, should I be so lucky, months to come are fictions. They will take on a variety of forms -- letters, stories, rants, monologues, short plays, anything that comes to mind really -- and will, for the most part, be about love and loneliness. And, like most good fictions, there will always be a hint of biographicaly fact in them.

The trick, for me, is not letting on to which is the truth, and which is the fiction.

You are cordially invited to dance through my dreams

Psychologists tell us that dreaming is an important part of the sleep process. That unless we receive the right amount of "rem" sleep, that we are tired and irritable and not at all at our bests the next day. And that in order to receive that correct amount of "rem" sleep we must dream each night. And not just once! Sometimes two, three, maybe even four times.

With all this dreaming going on, with all this access to fantasy, you'd think I'd be having the time of my life while visiting neverland, but no such luck. My dreams are clearly so ridiculously ordinary that I can't even be bothered to remember them when I wake up in the morning.

So I'm inviting you, oh dearest one, to come and visit me in my dreams.

We can do anything you like. I'm not fussy. We can take a walk on the beach at sunset, or have a picnic in a park, but because it's a dream we're not limited to those sorts of silly, ordinary, day-to-day activities. We could just as easily brunch with Jesus or Einstein, watch the sun rise from Mars, or go swimming in a lake of lager.

And if you'd prefer doing something on the naughty side...well, I might pretend to be shocked at first, but deep down, I will have always known that it's what you wanted, and I'll be open and receptive to anything you suggest, even if it involves leather and/or rubber. Particularly leather.

I know it's not quite as good as the real thing, but I'm willing to accept this second-best substitute and can only hope that you're willing to do the same. An RSVP is, of course, appreciated, but not necessary. Feel free to drop by dreams uninvited any time. I'm sure we can find ways to entertain ourselves.

It ain't love, but it ain't bad.

He sits on his porch and watches the sun set with a glass in his hand, and two bottles to his left. It isn't a rum and coke every night, but it's what was in the house tonight, and it's working its magic well enough on him.

He watches the sun slither into the horizon every night, but not because he finds it a particularly attractive or inspirational sight. Only because it signals the end of yet another day.

If you asked him, he wouldn't tell you this. He's not even really aware of the fact anymore, he's felt this way for so long. And it isn't that his days are that awful -- he doesn't have the best job in the world, but he's content with it most days; he has his health; his parents are getting old but they're both still around, and they call him once a month to see how things are -- but only that they've been somehow sapped of meaning.

Not that he knows this either, really. They've been sapped of meaning for so long he can't remember what it was like before.

Sometimes the sunset is particularly spectacular, and he finds something inside of him stirring to life. Whether it's the part of him that, for just a few moments, remembers what it was like before everything turned grey, or the part of him that in the raging heart of the burning sky is inspired to make tomorrow a better day, makes little difference, because the feeling never lasts long. He pours himself another drink and the feeling drifts away, along with all the other feelings -- good and bad.

He's never thought that he might have a drinking problem, because he never really drinks a lot. He'll have a few glasses and watch the sun set, and once the sky is dark he'll leave the porch and watch television for an hour or two before bed. And yet, this ritual on the porch, those few drinks while the sun sets, is the most important part of his day.

Because it's the only thing he really has to hold on to. A ritual that, in its regularity, gives some sense of meaning to his life.

The liquor doesn't love him. It doesn't care if he lives or dies. It doesn't want to make him happy or hold his hand or kiss him on the forehead or take him to the most beautiful places in the world.

But it does help keep him warm. Which is a far cry better than everything else in his life.

"I should go," she said, looking at her watch.

Outside the sky was alight with an agry sunset. The clouds were on fire, bright vibrant, but only minutes from disappearing in the night sky.

"You won't," I said. "You're having too much fun."

"I have to work in the morning," she said, but the smile she hinted at told me that I was right.

"I do too."

"And you're not leaving?"

"I'm having too much fun," I said. "You're having too much fun. We're both having too much fun. We're having too much fun together. Why go someplace less fun to do something less fun?"

"I'm gonna regret it in the morning. So will you, I'm sure."

"I'm sure I will," I said, lifting my glass in a toast. "Regret when the time comes, but never before." I drank it quick -- a touch more than a mouthful -- and caught the waitress' eye. She smiled and nodded.

"Shouldn't we have learned our lesson by now? Why do we do this to ourselves? I'll be a mess tomorrow."

"And will it matter the next day that you were a mess the day before? Will it really make any difference three days, four days, a week later, if you're a little hung over tomorrow?"

"I'll be more than just a little hung over..."

"A month from now, will it matter if you're more than just a little hung over tomorrow? No. It won't. Whatever we do now, it doesn't really matter six hours from now. Sex hours from now will be six hours from now, and there will be dozens, hundreds of other things that will define that moment in time. It won't be this moment right here."

"So why bother with this if it's not going to matter six hours from now?"

"Because," I said, as the waitress set our drinks in front of us, "for right now, this is the most important thing in the world."

She takes her drink casually, without a thought. "That sounds awfully nice, but if you strip away all the pretty words all you're really saying is that you're here because you have nothing better to do."

"Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't we always be doing the best thing that we could think of doing? Why should you feel lessened because I have nothing better to do, because spending time with you is the best thing I could possibly think of doing."

A hint of a smile showed again, but it only toyed at the corner of her lips. "Yes, you're right, that's nice. But how much of it is really that? And how much is it just not wanting to be alone?"

I thought about that. I wanted to tell her that it was all about who we spent time with, and not just spending time with whoever was handy. But I couldn't because I wasn't completely sure that was the truth.

"I don't mind being alone," I said. "Most times people are a hindrance. They're dumb and they're boring and they laugh at bad jokes, not because they're funny, but because they hear the sound of their laughter and are reminded that they're alive. Most times I'm better off without people. So most of the time I'm at home, in a house, with walls a and surfaces and structures, and there's no warmth, there's no blood surging through any of it. I can laugh at as many jokes as I want to, but not even the sound of my own laughter can really remind me that I'm alive. At times like that, it's not that I think I'd be better off dead. It's that I think it wouldn't make any difference if I was."

My words settled over the table, and we sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us nursing our drinks to give ourselves something to do in that midly awkward moment.

And then I said, "It's not so much that I mind being alone. It's just that I wish it wasn't so goddamn lonely."

"I'll drink to that," she said, and we did.

Dear Ms. Mother-of-the-woman-of-my-dreams

Good day, ma'am. You don't know me, but the reason that I am writing to you is that I am madly in love with your daughter and would like to ask for her hand in marriage.

I know this might seem a little old fashioned, but I pride myself on being both a romantic and chivilrous gentleman, as comfortable with tradition as I am with the 21st century.

I also know that your daughter is, in fact, still married, which might make this request seem a little odd. But believe me when I tell you have given this an enormous amount of thought, and I have decided to ask for your daughter's other hand.

In many ways I feel that this approach, as untraditional as it might be, will suit me better. The traditional hand of marriage, defined as the hand adorned with the ring, is the left, and while I have no actual bias against lefties, I haven't always gotten along smashingly with them. Also, I myself am right-handed, and might find an easier time if I were to receive your daughter's right hand in marriage.

Not to say that I wouldn't love your daughter's left hand just as much if it were available to me! Please don't think that. I would love every part of your daughter equally, left hand or right; eye, ear or nose. Even that weird lumpy kind of thing that she has on the side of her neck. What is that, anyway? No, nevermind, this isn't the place to ask.

In closing, I want to assure you that I adore your daughter with all my heart, that she is, in fact, the woman of my dreams, and will love and cherish her until the day I die, should you find yourself willing to grant me the honour of her hand, either one, in marriage.


Regards,
He-who-adores-your-female-offspring.


PS: Should it turn out that neither hand is available, I'd be willing to negotiate the possibility of marrying one of her feet.

this post brought to you by the letter "s"

Did you know that on a Google search for the letter "s" the first site listed is for McDonald's?

Why, God, why?

addendum

Christ, I need to get more content in here. I recent check of my pageloads indicates that most people find this blog while searching for either "gouranga" or "skankysluts". Of which this blog contains little.

Sorry, folks.

disclaimer

That whole succinct thing...doesn't apply to me so much, I guess. While I'm perfectly capable of short and to-the-point entries (though some past entries might attempt to prove otherwise) I'm not so capable of the all-important "frequent update". The reason for this probably has something to do with a combination of my involvement with theatre, World of Warcraft, and occasional soul-chilling depressions.

The saddest thing is that there's nothing sadder than a blog post that attempts to justify the absence of blog posts.

Sad.

succinct

I like blogs that have short entries. Particularly if they post frequently.

Returned. Perhaps not so triumphantly

It's weird coming back to a place you've left dormant for weeks. Lights have burnt out, there's dust covering most of the surfaces you touch, cobwebs stretch outin the corners and in doorways.

The place remains familiar, of course, but it's you that seems alien there, uncomfortable, like the dwelling has moved on with its life without you.

That's sort of how I feel coming back here. And I'm only here now because I knew if I didn't do it soon, I'd never come back at all.

My recent attempt to push myself into writing regularly again -- by trying to write an episodic fictional blog -- has fallen apart, mostly because I had the germ of an idea whout an actual plot and, as you might be surprised to know, plot is awfully important to fiction.

Instead I sat down in front of my unfinished NaNoWriMo novel two nights ago and pushed out 1200 words on it. Another 800 words were added last night. At long last I'm making some progress on one of my new year's resolutions.

It still feels a little awkward, like I've kind of forgotten what the book is really *about*. I know the pertinent plot details for the next chapter or two, but the stuff that's going on under the surface -- or supposed to be, at any rate -- is a little grey to me. It's coming back in bits and pieces, but the next few days of writing will be a little tougher.

But I do intend to do it for the next few days. And the days after that too. If I can push my way through this week, I think, I can get the momentum rolling again and see it through to the end.

The intention is to write 5 days a week, generating somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 words. I'll likely skip the days I do my column and my cartoon (as those will be my creative outputs for those days) but try to do two 1,000-word bursts on my days off.

Speaking of the cartoon, I know I'm a few weeks behind in posting updates, but c'mon, this blog is a few weeks behind in just about everything.

And, of course, a new King Covers section is dearly needed, even though I'm sure no one gives a shit about the covers, or my opinion on them.

Signing off...hope to be back before another three weeks slither by.

after

And so it settles on me now, grimly final. What we do as writers, before our typewriters and our keyboards and our notepads, is something that can only be done alone. It's a form of communication that is more like masturbation than anything else. We scream, silently, hoping that someone is listening, that someone is taking note of the words, of the rage and the disgust and the disgrace.

But you never know. How can you know?

At the end of the day, they're just words on a page. Words that break down into sounds and into letters and into nothing but grunts and groans.

And how is this different from the desires we had a hundred years ago? A thousand? That we might grunt, and be noticed, and be heard, and change the tribe somehow.

But the tribe never changes. Evolution is a farce. We fool ourselves in thinking that this about improvement or evolution. We are worse for our history -- a species that is devouring itself out of a hunger for progress.

I joke sometimes that I would like to be alive a hundred years from now, two hundred, to be in a position to watch our inevitable destruction, but I don't want that. I couldn't stand that. Better I leave this world still beliving that we might somehow turn things around, in spite of it all, in spite of those with a fanastic appetitite for everything that is good and pure in the world.

Because it isn't so much that I don't believe that things can get better. It's that I don't believe we, as a species, have the strength to pull it off.

And that, my friends, is infinitely worse.

Thank the lord for tact and silence

Remember that money problem? The one I wanted to rant about, which I didn't, because there were others involved who might take offense?

Glad I bit my tongue, because everthing has apparently worked out in the end, which makes me a very, very, very happy blogger.

Goddamn my conscience

There's something I want to write about. Something I *need* to RANT about. And I can't do it, because it involves somebody else, a very personal situation, and money.

Even if that person remained nameless, the nature of the situation leaves them easily identified to anyone with half a brain.

So I will refrain from ranting about it. Will refrain from writing about it in general. And instead, I'll have to sit and stew on it, let it burn in my mind and knot my guts.

Because I hate money. Or, at least, the strain and stresses that money brings. Are financial reasons the first or second most common inspiration for suicide? God knows, they must be one or the other in a society bred by capitalism.

I have a dream one day of leave civilization, and finding an abandoned plot of land somewhere, if not undiscovered then at least somewhere that people have forgotten about, and start a farm. Go luddite. Drop the computers and the cell phones and the iPods and all the trappings of technology that only fill voids and add nothing of any actual substance to our lives. I'll bring a manual typwriter with me and pound out ranting manifestos. But I won't send bombs to anyone -- that, I promise. That's rude.

It'll be a commune to, and anyone who wants to come and help work the farm is welcome to. And when the work is done we'll hold hands and sing songs around the campfire, and we'll try to remake society out of a better mould, and we'll probably even almost succeed until someone gets a better idea into their heads, and a little feud starts, which eventually breaks into an all-out war that will leave my poor communal farm littered with broken bodies and soaked in the pints of blood spilled in the needless conflict.

Maybe the commune isn't such a great idea after all.

It's about a sock.

It starts with a sock, but it doesn't end there. Over the next few days it involves the mob, the police, a frozen lake, ice cream, and a hole to another dimension inside of someone's dryer.

The blog I'm talking about doesn't have a name...well, I suppose it does, but it's not a very good one, so I won't mention it...but you can find it here.

I'm not only mentioning it because it's written by a friend of mine. It's also really, really funny.

Oscar Picks 2005

Pull up a chair, bring a nice hot cup of cocoa, and settle in for a bit of reading – as promised in my column, it’s time for my third annual Super-Crappy Oscar picks.

The rules are simple. Choices are made, whenever possible, based on everything except having seen the film. And as this year has been an even dryer one that last when it comes to my watching movies, there shouldn’t be any difficulty with that.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: The Incredibles, Shark Tale, Shrek 2.

And the winner is: Everything I’ve heard seems to indicate that Shrek can do no wrong, which is why I’m going to pick The Incredibles.

ART DIRECTION: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Phantom of the Opera, A Very Long Engagement.

And the winner is: You can’t go wrong with a lavishly adapted musical directed by the guy who gave Batman and Robin codpieces. I’m picking Phantom of the Opera.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Aviator, House of Flying Daggers, The Passion of the Christ, The Phantom of the Opera, A Very Long Engagement.

And the winner is: Why isn’t Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on this list? Based on the trailers, I’d been completely certain that it would be. Nonetheless, I’m torn between The Passion and Phantom on this, but lean towards Phantom of the Opera as I think the academy voters will avoid crazy, obsessive, nut-job directors.

COSTUME DESIGN: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Ray, Troy.

And the winner is: You usually can’t go wrong with period pieces. Unfortunately, there’s four of them in that list. So I’ll give it to Troy, because I imagine had a lot more costumes to design than any other film, what with all those armies and stuff.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Born into Brothels, The Story of the Weeeping Camel, Super Size Me, Tupac: Resurrrection, Twist of Faith.

And the winner is: I love the Documentary category, because you’re sure to have heard of almost none of the films. And if there is a film in the list that you’ve heard of, it’s sure to win. So, of course, my prediction goes with Super Size Me.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT: Autism is a World, The Children of Leningradsky, Hardwood, Mighty Times: The Children’s March, Sister Rose’s Passion.

And the winner is: I haven’t heard a thing about any of them, so I’ll pick Autism is a World, because it’s a topic that probably made people cry when they watched the film.

FILM EDITING: The Aviator, Collateral, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray.

And the winner is: This award seems, more often than not, to attach itself to the Best Director and Best Picture categories, so I’ll give this one to The Aviator.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: As It Is In Heaven, The Chorus, Downfall, The Sea Inside, Yesterday.

And the winner is: Why are there never any foreign language titles in the foreign language film category? Whatever the reason, I think it would be really funny if The Sea Inside won, but I can’t tell you why. That’s my pick.

MAKEUP: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Passion of the Christ, The Sea Inside

And the winner is: Much as I hate to admit it, if the 90-minute gorefest that was The Passion of the Christ doesn’t take the award, there’s something wrong with the world.

MUSIC (SCORE): Finding Neverland, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events, The Passion of the Christ, The Village

And the winner is: I would side with Danny Elfman as a composer any and every time he is nominated. Unfortunately he wasn’t nominated this year, so I’ll pick The Passion of the Christ instead, because it’s a little different from traditional film scores and might get noticed for that very reason.

MUSIC (SONG): Accidentally In Love (Shrek 2), Al Otro Lado Del Rio (The Motorcycle Diaries), Believe (The Polar Express), Learn to be Lonely (The Phantom of the Opera), Look To Your Path (The Chorus).

And the winner is: I actually hate this category. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. “Songs” used in films tend to steal too much of the spotlight from the real talents – those composers who write the film’s score – and are only used to get a song on the radio in order to help promote the film. Having said that, you can’t go wrong with picking a song from a musical, so I’ll give it to Learn to be Lonely from the Phantom of the Opera.

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED): Birthday Boy, Gopher Broke, Guard Dog, Lorenzo, Ryan.

And the winner is: Gopher Broke…hee hee…go for broke…hee hee…it’s funny because it’s a play on words!

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION): Everything In This Country Must, Little Terrorist, 7:35 in the Morning, Two Cars, One Night, Wasp

And the winner is: Haven’t seen or heard of any of them, but I like the title Little Terrorist, so there’s my pick. Everything In This Country Must might’ve had a chance if they’d just bothered to finish their goddamn sentence. Must what? End? Improve? Go for pizza?

SOUND EDITING: The Incredibles, The Polar Express, Spider-Man 2

And the winner is: I can never figure out the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, but I’ll give this one to The Incredibles, because it was animated and so every sound in the film was kind of made up from scratch.

SOUND MIXING: The Aviator, The Incredibles, The Polar Express, Ray, Spider-Man 2

And the winner is: Ray. Why not? The film needs another award beyond Jamie Foxx’s, and this seems like as good an award as any.

VISUAL EFFECTS: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I, Robot, Spiderman 2.

And the winner is: I shudder at the realization, but I’m gonna have to give the award to I, Robot. Damn you, Will Smith, you win this round!

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY): Before Sunset, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries

And the winner is: Million Dollar Baby – this is the big creative nod it will get when it doesn’t win Best Picture.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY): The Aviator, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hotel Rwanda, The Incredibles, Vera Drake.

And the winner is: How about a little love for Charlie Kaufman? Let’s give this one to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And that, my friends, is that. If you’ve read past Oscar picks, you know this might be a bit brief compared to them, but I put it off for too long and needed to do it all in one she-bang. I’ll be watching the web site Sunday night to see how close my inane predictions come to the truth.

Slippery slope

I didn't write as much as I intended too last night. The Wild Turkey vanished quickly and I had to leave the house in search of alternative liquor, which brought me to my former in-laws' house, where drinks were consumed until 4:00 a.m. at which point I staggered home, letting the dog lead me in the correct direction.

Smoked my guts out last night too, which is unfortunate as I'd gone 10 days without one. Back on the wagon today though, and left my remaining cigarettes at my in-laws' just so that temptation wouldn't be too nearby.

As for the eulogizing of Hunter S., in retrospect it seems to me that the best way to honour his memory is to do the sorts of things that he would do, and I don't mean drink and eat mescaline and make a mess of your body. I mean kick at the system, scream at the powers-that-be, and just generally be a nuisance to those in places of power, demanding accountability from them, and demanding better from the world we live in.

Hunter was a brutally vicious watchdog, and while we might not all have the opportunity to scream and shout as loudly as he did, we all do still have a voice of some kind with which we can make noise. And make noise we must, and for always, because complacenty and indifference is the road to ruin and damnation.

Say hello to hollywood

I had a chat on the way home with a coworker (not, for the record, the same that helped me consume the wild turkey -- she was drinking official, company, home-brew wine) about films, and about the upcoming oscars. It was an interesting converation because I hadn't previously known she'd had much of an interest in film and filmmaking, but based on the way she was dropping the names of directors and composers left my speechless.

I have to compile my annual oscar prediction list by Friday so we can compare notes.

She dropped Danny Elfman's name, and I was reminded of the fantastic rock band he fronted from, I think, the late-70s to the mid-90s called Oingo Boingo. I'm not good with music classification, so I'll call the kind of work they produced "Neuveau-Jazz-Punk" because it sounds cool to me right now.

It's 7:00, and I wanna rock...

Thanks, in part, to the efforts of a coworker, I'm now 2/3 of the way through a bottle of Wild Turkey, consumed in part to eulogize the loss of Hunter Thompson this past weekend.

My finger is bleeding from an overpicked hangnail.

As of press time, I'm not quite drunk enough, and can only hope that the remaining 1/3 of the bottle tips me over into the realm that I so desperately want to visit.

I am boycotting World of Warcraft tonight and, instead, will be listening to loud rock and roll and trying my guts out to blog four or five times in the hours between now and when I run out of liquor, because I can think of no better way of eulogizing Mr. Thompson than by simply getting gooned and slinging some goddamn words around.

Goodnight, Doctor.

It's over. He's gone.

Hunter S. Thompson shot himself sunday night at the age of 67, forever ending the era of journalism that he had helped usher in decades before, leaving us with content on televisions and in newspapers that has as much in common with journalism as it does with pudding.

My eye caught the headline in Yahoo's top news list, on the side of their home page, and I felt the shock go through my, from the top of my head down to the base of my spine. I was dizzy. i was nautious. The world spun wildly around me. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

The doctor is gone.

If I was a better writer, I'd try to use a gonzo style to say something profound, but I'm not that better writer. I'm a hack who writes often enough to maintain a certain level of quality, but not often enough to actually improve. I can string together a sentence, but most of the time I can't make it sing.

And all I can do right now, all I can say, is that I'm sad and I'm hurt and I'm angry and I wish to fuck I had a drink right now.

Goodnight, Doctor. Farewell and Godspeed.

And stay weird, wherever you are.

Stickage '05

Keen-eyed readers will notice there has actually been an update to this page -- Stick Figure Drama links have finally been updated to include #28 to #37, which is the most recently published strip.

To all those who thought you would never see another drop of content at this site, nya nya nya.

Blogshares

Has anyone checked out this Blogshares thing?

Near as I can tell, it's a kind-of online game that involves the buying and selling of shares in blogs -- like people do on the stock market with companies. Blogs are valued based in part on the number of links going out, the number of links coming back, and at least to a small degree who much buying and selling has been going on lately.

Or maybe that's a bigger degree than I would have guessed, as it seems the last week of a friend buying and selling shares in Caught in the Blog has driven the price from $0.29 to $17.00.

If you'd like to see it for yourself, there's a handy graph located right here. If you want to buy some shares in the ol' Caught in the Blog, now would be the time to do it, before their value goes up any further.

The funniest thing I have seen in *months*

Spamusement.com

Hello, World of Warcraft.

Hello Todd, you sexy, sexy bitch.

Oh, now, hey...come on. Why do you have to go and say things like that?

Because I love you, baby. I want you. I need you. And I know you need me to.

Look, I know we've had kind of a serious thing going on here lately, but I think maybe it's time we started seeing other people, you know?

Who are you kidding. You know you want me, need me, can't live without me.

It just seems like you've maybe become a bit too big an influence in my life. And I'm beginning to think you're using me.

Moi? Whatever might I be using you for?

Well, money, I guess, more than anything else. I mean, you're not exactly cheap.

And I'm not easy either, baby, but I'm worth it. Worth every penny. Because I love you long time, I love you like-

Okay, stop with the sexual innuendo. That's getting creepy. You're a video game for God's sake.

I'm not just a video game and you know it.

That's what concerns me. You're more like crack cocaine.

But a beautiful, sexy, well-designed, and-oh-so-fun to be around kind of crack cocaine. And if you were pregnant while you played me, your baby probably wouldn't come out all malformed.

Probably?

Well, I mean, I don't know what you're doing when you're not with me.

What are you implying?

Nothing, baby, nothing. I know it's only the best for you -- I know that's why you're with me. And you should know that's why I'm with you too. Because I only have eyes for you.

And the other 60,000 people who are currently playing the game.

They don't do it for me like you do.

Oh, you are such a liar.

You don't believe me? C'mon...come visit me tonight. I'll help you get your Warlock to level 25.

I don't know...

I know you want to.

Sure, I mean, of course I do, but...

It's the right thing to do, baby. You know it in your heart. We were meant for each other. Now love me -- love me all night!

This is the creepiest conversation I've ever had.

You know you want it. Level 25...

Okay, you win. I'll see you in a few.

Don't keep me waiting, lover-boy.

Mr. McDonald?

Aren't you done with this whole "question and answer" gimmick yet?

Unfortunately for you, it appears that I am not.

Fine. What do you want?

Tough year, huh?

What, 2005?

No, I mean the last 365 days.

Ooooh, that.

With that whole "Supersize Me" movie...

That guy was just hungry for media attention.

You're saying his claims were wrong?

I'm saying he could have made a documentary about a eating nothing but rocks for 30 days and what would have proven? That you shouldn't eat rocks every day for a month.

You should eat rocks in moderation?

Okay, the rock thing is a bad example, but you get my point. You're not supposed to eat a Big Mac every day for a month. You're not supposed to eat a Big Mac every day for the rest of your life, either.

So you think he may have blown things a little out of proportion?

I don't want to talk about him or his stupid movie anymore.

And now a former McDonald's CEO has died of colon.

A tragedy, surely.

With just a hint of irony, don't you think?

I'm not sure I follow you.

Well, diets high in fat are believed to predispose people to colon cancer.

Uh-huh.

And McDonald's food, as a general rule, tends to be...

I would advise you not to go any further with that question or that implication or whatever else you might want to call it. You, sir, are bordering on defamatory speech.

I was simply pointing out something I thought was an interesting irony, or coincidence, or...

I have our lawyers on speed dial.

You'd do that, wouldn't you?

In a hearbeat.

I thought that Ronald McDonald in any language meant, "Fun."

Yeah, well, around here it means "Shut your mouth or I'll sue your ass off."

I'm just gonna go now. Thanks for your time.

Ms. Aniston?

Call me Jennifer.

Jennifer, then. How's everything going?

Well enough, I suppose.

You're going through a bit of a difficult time, I imagine.

Kind of, yeah.

With the whole separation thing.

Uh-huh.

It's gotta hurt a bit, I would imagine.

Is there something I can help you with, or...?

I hear you moved in with your hairstylist.

That's right.

Have you been sleeping with your hairstylist?

For God's sake, no.

But you moved in with him.

Right.

You don't think that's weird?

No.

Not even a little? I mean, my wife and I separated a few years ago, and I didn't move in with my hairstylist.

Have you looked in the mirror lately?

What are you implying.

That you don't have a hairstylist.

You're dodging my question.

Why do you care who I move in with or not?

Well, I've got a spare room here. You could always come stay with me.

Thanks, but no.

Rent is super cheap.

Really, no.

Your loss...

I'm sure it is.

Does it bother you that everyone is curious about these details of your private life -- your breakup, who you're moving in with, who you might currently be sleeping with?

It's kind of troubling sometimes, sure, but you have to be prepared for that sort of thing in Hollywood. I mean, you have thousands of people watching your every move when things are going well, it's to be expected that even more will put you under the microscope when things turn to shit.

Do you think they hold you to a higher standard because you're celebrities? That, because you somehow managed to escape suburbia and boring 9-to-5 jobs, they think you should be better than this, that you should be impervious things like the end of a marriage?

I think it's the opposite of that, actually. I think that because people expect our lives are so wonderful, that when something terrible like this happens to us, they're secretly thrilled. And they scrutinize each passing moment because they know we're suffering just as much as maybe they have in the past, and they're happy about it.

That's fucked up.

Kind of, yeah. After all, we're all human. We all feel the same joys and the same heartaches. There's no reason to be particularly excited at my heartbreak over anyone else's.

That's a beautiful thing to say. Are you sure you don't want to come and rent one of my spare rooms?

Really, thanks, but I've already moved my stuff into my hairdresser's place.

Remember me if things don't work.

Coming out from the cold

Hi blog.

...

What's happening?

I'm not talking to you.

What's the matter?

Don't play innocent with me. You know what's the matter.

Okay, so I haven't been here in awhile. I've been...neglectful.

There's more to it than that, and you know it.

What are you talking about?

I've seen you with that "World of Warcraft" hussy. I know *why* you've been neglectful.

Now, hey, come one...

You've *replaced* me!

It's not like that!

...


Look, okay, maybe WoW has taken some of my attention from you...

All of it.

...okay, all of it. But it wasn't my fault. A friend of mine bought it for me, and if I'd known I was going to take to it like a crack addict, I never would have installed it. And now that I have, it's too late. I fear my soul may be lost.

Exactly my point.

But you forget something too.

Oh, and what's that?

This sort of thing, it's never permanent. It's a temporary fling. It's only because it's so new, and so pretty. And because it has an amazing online gameplay experience. But all that will fade eventually.

And then?

And then I'll come back to my one true love.

Cheese?

No, you stupid blog, you.

You're just saying that to soften me up.

Is it working?

Well...maybe a little.

Good.

So, does this mean you're back to the blogosphere?

It might, but I'm not making any promises.

You already made promises -- you said in your column that one of your new year's resolutions was to update your blog *at least* once a week.

How the hell did you read my column?

That's my little secret. Doesn't change the fact that you made the promise. And publicly too.

I should learn to stop doing that.

Yes, you should. Does that mean you're back to the blogosphere?

It means...see you next week, I guess.

Better than nothing.

Hey, blog?

Yeah?

It's good talking to you again.

It's good to be talked to again too.

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston: Separation

Who. The fuck. Cares.

Voices

I heard voices in my head last. They kept me awake.

It pissed me off, because I was exausted after getting very little sleep on both Saturday and Sunday night (which, I confess, were for somewhat self-inflicted reasons) I was really, really looking forward to having a good night's sleep.

It was weird, because it wasn't like a dream. It was nothing that I was participating in. I was more of an observer. And in some ways, it was as if I was an accidental eavesdropper, as the events just sort of played out inside my skull.

There was a murder investigation. A husband, dead. Someone was trying to pin it on his wife, who was pregnant and hormonal had psychic power and in a burst of careless anger, fried her husband's brain as efficiently as if she'd dropped it into a microwave.

Unsurprisngly, there was a lot of discussion going on, about the murder particularly, but about human rights issues as well. Certain groups were wondering why they didn't as a general rule, lock up psychics behind shielded walls when the became pregnant, to prevent them from lashing out at their husbands.

Of course, others argued that you couldn't lock someone up like that -- particularly a pregnant woman -- even if you were doing it to help prevent someone's death.

I just shouted at them all to shut up, but I don't think they heard me. I suspect that means that they don't exist, which I think is a good thing, because it means I don't have a bunch of little tiny people living inside of my brain.

On the downside, it might mean that I'm insane.

Happy DOOM Day

As much as I feel like I've overdone the blog posting today, I just can't let this slip by without a mention.

Today is the 11th birthday of the release of the Shareware version of DOOM.

I can not let this slip by because DOOM -- and particularly the shareware release -- is the game that turned me into a PC gamer and, in doing so, changed the course of my life forever.

Before DOOM - couldn't imagine playing computer games. After DOOM - couldn't imagine not playing video games.

I actually downloaded the DOOM shareware to show off my superior computer knowledge to a friend of mine. He'd just bought a copy of Wolfenstein 3D for his brother for Christmas and, while I'd never so much as touched Doom, I did know that it was developed by the same people who made Wolfenstein, and was supposed to be leaps and bounds more impressive.

So I downloaded the game, just to show him what a *real* computer game looked like.

And then I started playing it.

And in twenty seconds I was hooked, life changed forever.

Stupid Doom.

Thank you to everyone at id Software, past and present, who have brought titles like Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, and, of course, Doom3 into our lives. We're probably not a whole lot better for it, but I know we're a whole lot happier.

Year of the Stick

I'm currently working on a collection of Stick Figure Drama that will run from strip #1 to strip #28. These are being designed and printed so that I have something untraditional to hand out to friends and family members for Christmas.

However, I'm planning to overprint by a few copies that I'll use to test the market for selling a collection of this type.

So here's the deal. "Year of the Stick" will run somewhere between 64 and 72 pages (I don't have exact numbers right now, as it's still being designed) and covers the strips mentioned above -- #1 to #28; "Sometimes Love Dies" to "Sometimes Love Dies: Redux" (which hasn't been posted here yet). Plus, each strip will have an accompany commentary, including descriptions of that week's inspriation, trivia about the strip, or just drunk ramblings from yours truly.

I'm printing 50 copies, and as of this writing I'm not sure how many will be for sale -- probably between 10 and 15, which will make this a very, very, very limited edition. Price is only $9.99 -- not bad for a 60-ish-page limited edition comic strip collection. Y'all try to go buy a Far Side book for that much...

If you want to buy one, it's currently on a first-come, first-serve basis. Drop me an email at todd@caughtinthenet.org if you're interested. Heck, I'm feeling generous -- if you buy one of these intial copies, I'll even sign the thing for ya.

And if you miss out, don't panic. As I said, this is a market test, and if there seems to be enough interest, I'll go back for a second printing. Maybe a third and fourth as well, but something tells me it isn't quite going to come to that.

C*nt.

I just finished today's post-NaNo work on my still unfinished novel. And what I want to know is this: Why doesn't the MS Word dictionary recognize the word "cunt"?

Ugly word? Sure. Nasty word? No doubt about it.

But it's a word. Like it or not.

Stupid Microsoft...

Gouranga

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

Ah...yeah. Thanks so much for the email, neateye. Whoever you are.

KING COVERS: Roadwork (1981)

It took me years before I finally read Roadwork. It's a shame, because it's a hell of a good book.

I think most of the reason it took so long is that when I first started reading King, it was because wrote horror, and horror was about monsters and vampires and things that go bump in the night, and those things were cool, because if you liked those things you seemed dark and edgy, and that was also cool.

Roadwork was about a guy going through a bit of a midlife crisis while the city tries to tear down his house. Which wasn't very dark and edgy and was, in fact, kind of boring and middle-aged.

I finally read it a couple years ago when going through the Bachman Books again (mostly as an excuse to reread Rage, which remains one of my all time favourite King novels) and I was incredibly affected by the story of Roadwork. As the story of a man who is desperate to hang on to the things he cares most about, and willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that, there's something for all of us to relate to, even as we watch him drive headlong to a conclusion that we know will not be a good one.



The original US release -- a paperback, as 4 out of 5 of the Bachman Books were -- has a preety standard, "No name author on the shelf of an airport bookstore" kind of look to it. Guy with gun in the background, house in foreground, impression of standoff given by the imagery. Does its job well enough, but nothing that screams brilliance.



The later US release went for a slightly more understated look, with a creepy, deathly road sign -- an effective image. It loses something for me, though, by attempting to be *too* creepy with all that green fog kinda stuff. Green fog isn't creepy. It's lame.



These covers, both from Sweden, were where I suspect the notion for the creepy, deathly road sign were stolen from. And, in my opinion, this is where they're far more effective. Simple, very eye-catching with the roadsign yellow against the stark black. I pick the version on the left as the top Roadwork cover design -- it edges out the other design from Sweden by having a better font choice.



This UK design borrows mildly from the initial Signet layout -- guy with gun, signs of a showdown, etc. The guy looks like he's wearing a trenchcoat though, which makes the character seem a bit too private dectective like for my tastes.



I only wish I could see a larger version of this cover from Japan, as it's doing something very, very right. The basic design -- with the photo, at the top, taking up only about a third of the whole cover, then just blackness below it, is a definite winner. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out what's going on in the photo. It looks, to my eye, like a road construction crew which, while appropriate, doesn't quite cut it. Which is unfortunate because once again, the Japanese designers have shown a very, very good eye.



And so we go from good to bad, with this cover from Spain, which is apparently about a guy who wants to guard his favourite strip of highway from...something. And is he wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform in that picture? Spain followed this cover up with...



...this one, which appears to imply that the fellow in the California Highway Patrol outfit is now road pizza. It's a better cover than the last one, certainly, but still missing something.



And now we go from bad to worse. I don't even know what to say about this cover from Belgium. Is that a...zombie?

I just...ah, I can't take anymore. Let's get this over with.



On the left we have a cover from Bulgaria which, near as I can tell, has nothing to do with the novel in question and appears to have had its design inspired by the cover of The Stand. On the right a cover from Italy which prompts me to simply say: "Just because it has the word ROAD in the title does not mean you have to show cars on the cover."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I've got to say about that.

Yummy.

I feel simultaneously hungry, yet marked for death.

Second most embarassing moment in the history of Caught in the 'Net

Well, it's probably not, actually, but it's got to be in the top five, easily, and is, at the very least, a really excellent example of stupendously bad timing.

Because who should roll through town on the weekend following my column on Caught in the 'Net's most embarassing moment but the person who had a very integral role in that most embarassing moment -- the wife who I split up with less than a week after writing a Valentine's Day column professing my undying love for her.

She was staying with her parents and I had been invited over to visit, so I decided to pop by, without making any mental connection with the column I had written last week. Until, a little later in the evening, I noticed her pick up and start to flip through a copy of last week's Tribune Weekend. At which point I could only think: Oh...God...

We all had a good laugh, and I even managed to convince her that I wasn't obsessively writing about her every week. Yet, in another strange example of synchronicity, this week's Stick Figure Drama is also about the end of a marriage. Must be something about the holiday season that lifts my spirits and make sme think of happy families. And by "happy" I really mean "tragic and disfunctional".

That particular strip will be up later in the week. For now, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the side links to Stick Figure Drama cartoons were updated a few nights back, so you can catch up on a little light reading while you wait for the new edition.

Lastly, coming later tonight or, more likely, tomorrow, a new edition of King Covers, featuring a lesser known title with plenty of really, really crappy covers to choose from.