Alphablogging (Part One)

So, a few people asked me what my thoughts were after watching the first of the Alpha videos.

And my answer to them all was the same.

"Preaching to the converted."

Which surprised me, a little, because the setup  I had heard for the Alpha video was that they were hosted by an agnostic who'd found God, who set out to disprove the existence of the divine, and instead ended up embracing it. And that, I thought, was something I could get my head arounde. That was an argument I'd love to hear.

And maybe that's still where we're going. There's still 9 weeks, 9 videos, to work our way through. Perhaps that still on the horizon.

But, from a purely marketing perspective, bad start.

It's like the way we're told to write essays when we're in high school.

Tell us what you're going to tell us. Then tell us. Then tell us what you told us.

As an introductory video, its job should have been to tell us what we were going to be told for the next nine weeks. If it was going to ask serious questions, then those questions should have come up. If it was going to tackle difficult issues, then those issues should have come up. But for the most part, they didn't.

Instead, the video host made some jokes, got some laughs, and said the sort of things that are only really going to ring true to people who are already on his side.

I suppose maybe I'm being a little unfair.

Complicated questions were asked. But over-simplistic answers were given. Which doesn't bode well for the rest of the program.

If we were going to be dabbling in complicated answers, I'd hope that there would be a hint of that in the first video. Instead, what we got were answers that, well, preached to the converted.

Or, I suppose, to the almost converted.

To those that were looking for easy answers.

When the man on the video (I don't know his name, and while a variety of names came up on my Google searches for Alpha Courses, I'm not sure who's who, and I'd hate to misrepresent anyone) talked about the emptiness we feel inside, or the desire to find something more in life, I started to think, "Hey, maybe i could acutally get into this."

Because I think we all feel that.

We're all familiar with that emptiness, that certainty that there must be something more to life than just what we know.

But the answer to that emptiness, it seems, is Jesus. And, more specifically, a personal relationship with God, though Jesus.

That's the only thing that can fill that void. The only thing that can make us complete.

But...

And this isn't something new.

This is something that's been niggling at the back of my head for years.

Something that's bugged me for years.

We're all created with this void. Because this void arises out of a desire for a relationship with the God that created us. And the only way to fill it is with a personal relationship, with him, thorugh Jesus.

So then...

Why?

Isn't it a little bit perverse?

Isn't it a little perverse to create something that is lacking something, then demand that it seek you out for what it lacks, and then act as if you're loving and merciful for giving it what it lacks? For being willing to fill the absence that you created?

How is that merciful?

How is that loving?

Dear God, let this emptiness, this void, be worth more than just an excuse to seek you out. Do not let me think that you made me, and then tortured me, all so that I would feel compelled to find you.

If that's what it's all about, if all you want is to be loved, if all you want is to be worshipped, then just make us loving, just make us worshipful. Get rid of the whole joke that is free will.

If all you want is love and worship, then why did you put in me the desire for so much more?

But...

Already, my opinions are coloured by what I read tonight, about the Alpha Program. Already I'm reminded that, too often, churches are like politicians, where after awhile, they stop caring about their congregation, and focus only on their sustainability. Their ability to pay the bills. Their job.

The alpha program has been ridiculously successfuly. I've only seen one video, and I think I already know why.

Because it preaches to the converted.

And, more importantly, it preaches to those who want to be converted.

Those who are desperate for an answer.

Those who want to fill the void in the hearts, at any cost. Those who are willing to cling to any truth. Those who are willing to find any meaning they can.

It preaches to the converted, and to those who are desperate for conversion.

This is the sort of rant that would likely have someone accusing me of not approaching the program with an open mind. But if they did make such an accusation, I don't think they could be any more wrong.

I do have an open mind.

I'm open to anything.

But I have conditions. I have logical conditions, scientific conditions, and yes, even spiritual conditions.

As the narrator in my current novel has said, on more than one occasion, yes, I want to believe.

But I'm still waiting for you to give me something worth beliving in.

Alphablogging (Prologue)

I've been fighting against the desire to do this for most of the day, until I finally had to throw in the towel and accept that, if I have to fight this long against a desire, then the desire must be there for a reason, and so maybe I should just succumb to it.

I was invited this weekend to attend the "Alpha Course" which is a sort-of introduction to Christianity program. The invitation came at, sort of, the perfect time for it, while I'm working on a book where issues of faith and spirituality play a very, very large role, which led me to actually consider going to something that I, normally, would have just dismissed and avoided. Because, I figured, at the very least, maybe it could give me a bit more to chew on, thematically, for this book.

And, admitedly, beyond that, there was also the fact that, yes, like a lot of people, I'm searching for some grander truth, some greater meaning behind our existences here on this planet. A lot of that search, I think, is going to end up finding itself into this current book -- a lot of it already has -- and already I'm feeling like part of the point of this book is for it function as a sounding board for all the question about life I have, as well as a sounding board for a handful of the answers.

Bottom line is this: Questions of faith have been in my head a lot lately, and when the invitation came to attend something that might lead to me ask further question, or look at those questions from a different perspective, I found myself actually inclined to attend.

Which I did, last night.

The Alpha Program, in a nutshell, is a ten-week course, where one night a week the participants gather, eat a meal, watch a video on Christianity, and then discuss the questions, issues, and answers that arose from that video. All in the interest of getting closer to the heart of, for lack of a better workd, the truth.

And it wasn't really until today that I even thought about blogging my own response to it.

But...

I'm going to have to get used to sharing my opinion, if I'm going to actually continue on with this thing. Even if maybe that opinion isn't shared by any one else, even if maybe that opinion isn't welcome. Because if I'm going to go there and just sit in a corner, and keep those questions to myself, then I'm not doing anyone any good by being there.

So, in the interest of opening myself up, in the interest of improving  my ability to share what I'm *really* thinking, and *really* feeling, I'm going to blog my reactions to the Alpha Program. I won't be blogging immediately afterwards -- it might take a day or two or three before I sit down and get out my thoughts, but that's likely because I need to chew on the ideas that came up on that particular night before commenting on them.

And, wow, there's only been one night so far, but I already feel like I've been chewing for weeks.

I already feel like I have so much to comment on.

Part of this desire to comment, I'm sure, is coming as a direct result of doing a little online research on the Alpha Program. And the fact that some of the information available is good, and some of it, well, isn't. And even though reading up on the program is maybe a bit like flipping to end of a book even before you've begun it, I just can't help myself. I'm not very good at opening myself up, blindly, to outside influences. I like to know what I'm getting myself into.

And, in spite of the fact that I kind of feel like I know where things are going, and how we're going to get there, I'm going to try not to let that colour my perspective of anything. I'm going to try to take each moment of the Alpha Program (assuming I see it through to the end) as its own, individual moment, coloured only by what has come before, and not coloured by what I'm anticipating.

As much as I can.

I'm only human.

But this entry has gone on long enough, and I still have to comment on the opening "Alpha" evening. So what's say you join me over in the next post?

700 words. Meh.

Half the manifesto is complete.

Well, maybe only a third. I dunno. This book seems to have a tendency to spiral out of my control whenever it seems fit. This seems like an area where it might.

Bottom line, only 700 words tonight before I threw in the towel. Which isn't bad, actually, because after getting home at 9:00 p.m., and making my lengthy school-violence-rant on the blog, I really didn't think I'd have much left in me.

But I had a little.

Surprisingly.

So I went and spent it.

And it didn't feel too bad. It didn't feel too far off from where it was when I was improv-writing it behind the wheel of the car driving into town a few days ago.

Which is nice.

Most of the time, I never feel like I can get close to that moment of initial inspiration. Most of the time, whenever I have to revisit something I already thought out, plotted out, scripted out, it comes out feeling weaker, watered down.

This...not so much.

That feels good.

But now it's 11:15, and I'm burn out, and I have so much more to say, but I don't have the energy for it, so I hope it stays right on the surface. I hope I can find it quickly tomorrow night, I hope I can slide easily right back into the moment agian. And I think, if I can get at it tomorrow, I might be able to.

In other book related news, I've been thinking about a new title for it for the last couple of hours, one I stumbled upon completely accidently, even though it should have been a no-brainer because I already started writing a short story with the same title a number of years ago, a short story with no hope of ever going anywhere.

It's also a no-brainer because it follows the same naming scheme I used for the last novel -- "Waiting for a Miracle" -- which borrowed (or, if you'd prefer, stole) it's title from a piece of modern music.

The title I'm now considering for the current book?

"Absence of Faith."

Which isn't exactly stolen from the title of a song, but rather from a line in a song -- in this case, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails.

It's a nice phrase, one that's been stuck in my head pretty much since I first heard it. And it sums up a lot of the themes of the book quite nicely. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to homage the source material, like I did for "Waiting for a Miracle," by quoting it, as I'm already leaning towards two book-opening quotes that aren't "Closer."

One of the quotes is from a Nine Inch Nails song, so I suppose that could be an acknowledgement, but...

Just a thought. And those handful of you who visit this blog, feel free to toss in your comments on the title (even though, of course, you don't know a heck of a lot about the book at this point). It's far from written in stone at this point, and I'd gladly welcome any other perspective at the moment.

I may not officially slap a title on this thing until after I type the words "THE END" but there's no reason not to start planning right now.

And then comes the finger-pointing...

And so violence has once again erupted in a school, this time in a Montreal college, and already, just a day after the fact, fingers are already pointing. Blame is being placed. Goates are being scaped.

The media is, of course, all over it, quoting postings that the shooter -- now identified as Kimveer Gill -- made to a blog located at VampireFreaks.com. Of course, the blog is apparently no longer available at the site, and what information we're getting is, of course, filtered. Filtered by a media eager to point fingers, lay blame, scape goats.

I understand why these web pages disappear so quickly after an incident like this. It's like an albatross around the neck of a web site. It's publicity of the worst kind. Who wants their web site to be associated with a violent shooting spree? That can't be good for business.

But at the same time, there's important historic documentation to be gleaned from these sites, documentation beyond what the police require in their investigations, beyond what the media requires to tell their skewed, tabloidized version of events. It's the communication of a real person, who felt something, and communicated those feelings, whether those feelings were pain or rage or sadness or emptiness. And while we've seen, and some of us have suffered, as a result of what those feelings were, now very few of us will ever have the chance to actually see them, because Kimveer Gill is dead now, denying us the chance to ever ask, "Why?"

I'd probably let this event slide except for one thing: School violence is very much at the front of my mind right now, because it plays a relatively important part of the new book I'm working on. It's something I've had complicated feelings about ever since what happened at Columbine in 1999. And, while I certainly don't think I'll be able to get every single thought or feeling I have on the topic out onto paper in the writing of this novel, I'll certainlly be hitting a lot of it.

So it's in my head.

And then this happens.

So it's in my head some more.

And it's driving me nuts, because we've been missing the point for years. Every time this happens, we sit on the brink of something revalatory, we're on the edge of understanding something that's broken in our culture, but we throw it away. Because, while we're asking the right question -- which is "Why?" -- we don't really care about the answer.

We don't really want to know the truth.

We don't really want to know about what's broken in us.

Not just in people like Kimveer Gill or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- because, of course, there is something undeniably broken in people like that -- but also in the rest of us, those of us who helped shape those people, who helped break those people.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, all we want is to sleep better.

We want simple answers to complicated questions.

When we ask, "Why?" we want someone to tell us:

It was because of violent video games; or

It was because of industrial music; or

It was because of violent images on film.

Already the media -- the last place we should be turning for answers, the last place we should be turning for truth -- is handing us the easy answers on a silver platter.

Gill enjoyed playing the video game "Postal." He enjoyed playing the video game "Super Columbine Massacre." His favourite movie was "Natural Born Killers."

These are easy answers, that bring us no closer to the truth, because no one really gives a damn about it. The media wants nothing more than a soundbite, because the truth will likely take awhile to get to, and they know this story will be old news within a week. As for the rest of us, we just want to be comforted. We just want to be told there's nothing to worry. We just want something simple we can point our finger at so we can sleep better at night, knowing that we did our jobs. Knowing that we've made the world a better place by laying blame on something, anything.

Whatever was convenient.

Whatever was available.

- - -

On this topic, and something I stumbled upon while doing a quick batch of research, Slate has a really fantastic look at Columbine, five years after the fact. Much of the stuff they cover was news to me, and shows that, at least in some circles, the media actually gives a damn about trying to get to the facts, and not just the soundbites that'll get the ratings. Check it out.

Experimentationalism

I've started a new blog over at blogger beta. Don't imagine I'll be doing a whole lot over there, but anyone interested in checking out my mucking about with the new blogger features can visit toddsullivan.blogspot.com.

Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are that the address is still available.

EDIT: It might help if I got the address right.

Another taste

It’s like I said, I want to believe in something. It’s just that there’s nothing out there to believe in. Nothing that pulls all the madness together and wraps it up in a nice little package, with an attractive little red bow. Nothing that tells me how God can love a healthy child born in to a middle-class suburban family, a child born with cancer, and a child born into a war-ravaged country, all equally. How can a God allows the routine slaughter of innocents claim to love his creations with all his heart?

When a parent tries that game, he goes to jail.

When a father explains that the reason he killed his son is because he loved him, he goes to the electric chair, or he goes for psychiatric evaluation.

God is a mass murderer.

God is a psychopath.

But no one can hold him to it, because even if he exists, you can’t track him down. You can’t drag him into court or drop him onto a sofa in a psychiatrist’s office.

If God exists, and if he’s nuts, well, he’s still in charge of it all.

There’s a madman at the wheel.

When you come to that conclusion, as it’s the only conclusion you can really come to, I assure you that it’s a whole lot easier, and a whole lot safer, to just believe in nothing at all.

Which is to say, simply stop believing.

God goes into the closet, along with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming, and Happily-Ever-Afters.

But when you grow up with faith – and not just faith in God, but faith in all that stuff – every time you lose a little bit of it, you get left a little emptier inside. It leaves a hollow little hole in your heart, or in your soul, where dust and cobwebs collect.

And as the years go on, you keep losing more and more. And the hole just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

There is no Santa Claus, the hole gets bigger.

There is no Easter Bunny, the hole gets bigger.

There are no good guys or bad guys, just different ideologies, the hole gets bigger.

God doesn’t love you any more or any less than anything else in the world, including children with cancer, and flattened cats on the side of the road, and dead 14-year olds in high school cafeterias, and the AIDS virus, and hepatitis, and algae, and sub-atomic particles.

The hole gets bigger.

Pretty soon, you start to feel like all that’s left inside is that hole, and you wonder if anything will ever start to fill the hole back in again, or if your life is just going to be spent listing piece after piece of yourself.

I’m smart enough to know that I’m not old enough to be sure. But I’ll tell you this: It’s not looking good.

It’s not hard to imagine some future version of myself, aged and bitter, and sad and lonely, with my insides so hollowed out that I can’t feel anything at all anymore. There’s no joy or sadness, no love or hatred, just blank indifference to any and everything around me.

Dead on the inside, just waiting for the outside to catch up.

Just waiting for the body to figure out what the heart already knows.

That there’s nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing worth believing in, nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth dying for, nothing worth living for.

That we were the ones in charge, that we were the ones behind the wheel, that we were the ones given an empty canvas, and what we painted onto it was brutal and red and violent and angry and perverse. That we are the masters of our own destinies, and as those masters, we have damned ourselves to hell.

And that hell is this: Life in the 21^st century.

So yeah, it’s fair to say that I wished I could believe in something. Take my word for it, believing in nothing at all is no goddamn fun.

The blog's been kind of vacant lately, so I thought I'd make up for it with another chunk of the novel, taken this time from the portion that I wrote tonight.

Still working on it, technically, in the background, while writing this blog post, but I don't think I've got much of it left in me for tonight.

Current word count: 27,712.

300 more words to break the 28,000 mark and maintain my nightly average of 2,000 words.

I should be able to do that.

NIce surprise -- I thought I was further away than that.

I'm trying to get past the second-act jitters. The feeling that, having put out about 1/3 of the novel's total, it's only a matter of time until things turn sour. It's been going too well, too smoothly, too effectively. It can't keep going like this.

These feelings persist in spite of the fact that I have a pretty good idea of how it's ending (with one of two climaxes in mind -- one being more of an anti-climax, in some ways) as well as a pretty good idea of what's going to happen between then and there.

If I can get through this chapter, I'll be fine.

This chapter had so much stuff in it, so much important stuff -- the pressing on of the love-story angle, the revelation of the cult-leader, and -- the part I'm most concerned about now -- the cult leader's first chance at sharing his manifesto.

His well-oiled spiritual fantasies.

I'm not going to get to that tonight, thank God. I won't let myself. Because I need a clear head for it, and I need to start my evening's writing binge with it. I need to be on the ball, firing on all cylinders, and right now I'm not.

I wrote a good chunk of the manifesto in the car the other day. I wish I'd had a recorder with me, as some of it was pretty good, and I know with my luck it'll never be that good again. Or, if it is, it'll somehow not actually feel that good. It'll feel like a bad photocopy of the original idea, and I'll always kick myself for not capturing the first, pure moment of the idea's creation.

C'est la vie, I guess.

Sayla vee.

Back to work now. 300 words to go for tonight, if I can get out 300 words before it's manifesto time.

Cheerio.

Just a taste...

We immortalize the flesh and blood in granite and stone, and then we lose the most important parts of them; our memories. The only part of them that lives on after they die. And most of us don’t even notice that we’re doing it. The memories just slip away without anyone fighting to keep them, without anyone giving a damn or trying to keep them alive.

Too busy with work and school and looking for someone to slam your genitals against. Too busy shuffling through life, day and in and day out, in spite of every single day being exactly the same as the one before.

I notice. I notice how much every day is so maddeningly the same as the one before, because there’s no distinction in my days anymore. It’s all just one thing. One long cycle of moments that are the same, over and over and over again, endlessly repeating, until death finally visits us, and it becomes our turn to be immortalized and forgotten.

Just a little taste of the current novel, taken -- out of context, of course -- from the third chapter. I stumbled upon it while backtracking and trying to confirm some dialogue tonight, and I just liked this bit so much I had to post it.

Which is not to say I'm patting myself on the back.

Oh, who am I kidding, yes I am.

It's ON again.

After vacation for just slightly more than a week, the book is rolling again. Well, rolling is maybe a but presumptious...at this point.

But another 2,000 words were added last night. And another 2,000 tonight would bring the total to 22,000, and (I suspect) a close to Chapter Four, the second of what will be (I suspect) three "High School Violence" chapters.

I'm rather looking forward to Chapter Five, for a number of reasons. First, it's the official first appearance of the enigmatic cult leader, who will, more or less, act as a sort-of antagonist (please note the wishy-washiness of the term -- most of the stuff I write doesn't really have antagonists or protagonists, just, you know, people).

Second, it will continue the eventually-dysfunctional love story that started in Chapter Three.

Third, it wlil give me a break from the school violence back story. A break I need to increase tension, to give me the opportunity to figure out some of the dramatic stuff that's still a little loose in my head, and break that will just give me a much needed break from writing about something so horrible.

Getting back to the book was a relief after the break. The longer I stay away from a project, the harder it is to get back into it again, the harder it is to pick up the threads, and find where I was going with them. I'm stunned, looking back on it, that I was able to pick up and continue, and eventually finish, "Waiting for a Miracle" after letting the book collect dust for more than six months.

But the 2,000 words last night came out almost painlessly, which was nice. There were a few moments of staring at the screen, thinking, "What do I want to say here?" which did cause a few fleeting moments of concern. But for the most part, I found the threads I had dropped and, more importantly, rediscovered my narrator's voice.

Which I'm starting to quite like.

He's really drifting into stream-of-consciousness style stuff right now, his mind all over the place after going five days without sleep. And, another new developmen that'll be fun to play with in Chapter Five -- paranoia and hallucinations.

Jeremy's roller coaster ride is far from over.

In fact, it's just about to get interesting.

A book update, but not.

So the novel's been suffering.

Well, not suffering so much, as taking a sort of temporary vacation. For the last week.

I can tell myself that it was the best thing, I can tell myself that, as I was about to enter some parts of the story that hadn't quite gotten fleshed out in my head, taking this break from it -- a break that would allow me to better understand where I was going with these parts -- was exactly what the book needed.

I can tell myself all sorts of stuff, but the truth is, the book has been on vacation because of this:

Yes, last Friday I acquired an XBox 360. And it has pretty much devoured every free moment of consciousness I've had since then.

I feel guilty neglecting the book. I sometimes think I can feel the book looking at, glaring at me, silently demanding my attention. And I try to apologize, I try to tell the book that I still love it, but that maybe we were getting to serious too quickly, that maybe we need some space, and that no, this isn't just another way of saying that we should break up, because I really do care about the book, and the want the best for our relationship together. But then the book usually goes on a drinking binge and then I'll find it locked in the bathroom at 3:00 a.m. sobbing so loudly I can't sleep, and by then there's no apology good enough.

The bottom line is this: A brief vacation from the book, even if not taken for the best of reasons, likely came at a good point anyway, if I can get back into it again. The plan was to do 2000 words tonight after work, but unfortunately, it's Friday, and some coerced me into have a few after work drinks, and now any chance of writing before tomorrow is pretty much shot.

Instead...hello multiplayer Uno on the 360.

This is a test

This is me testing the new Windows Live Writer, the blog-posting utility from our friends at Microsoft. If it works, then you'll see this msg. If not, then you went.

The sleeping insomniac, mass murder, and methamphetamines

I've decided to tell myself that the reason I'm so tired these days because I'm spending so much time living inside the head of an insomniac who, at last count, hadn't slept in five and a half days.

I, on the other hand, have been sleeping every night, and waking up freaking exhausted in spite of it.

The biggest problem with first-person narratives, particularly whe you're writing about broken or self-destructive or exhausted characters, is that you tend to dwell inside of their heads, vicariously experiencing what they're experiencing. I really should learn my lesson and get back to writing third-person narratives some day.

I took a break from the book last night, partly beacuse I figured I deserved it, and partly because I'm juggling three plot threads, and slowly figuring out how to work them into the book.

The school violence sub-plot just seems to want to go on and on, and it's starting to look like it'll stretch into three chapters instead of just two, and maybe four if I want to spend any time with the aftermath. Which should be fine. I think I even sort of connect the personalities of the shooters with the personalities of our "cult leader" in their attempts at seizing a sort-of power because they feel powerless in their own lives. Still, this ever expanding sub-plot is throwing me for a bit of a loop, as it's becoming much bigger than I had anticipated.

The second sub-plot, recently stumbled upon thanks to a conversation with a friend, involves methamphetamines and their use by this cult of people trying to stay awake. I know nothing at all about this drug, and am definitely going to have to do some research I'm going to discuss it, if even in a brief way. But it was the mention that was made to me that some people on meth go for four or five days without sleep that made the use of the drug in the book seem almost too perfect. Sometimes coffee and red bull isn't enough.

What's bugging me a bit about the meth side-plot is that I'm not entirely sure how to weave it into the rest of the narrative, except as a trivial side-bit regarding the lengths to which these people are willing to go to in order to stay awake, and, in theor, receive enlightment. Which, come to think of it, is maybe all it needs to be. Something that can spark the narrator's own desire to reacquaint himself with the divine after seeing how desperate these people are for *any* sort of meaning.

Or maybe something that can push him further away from it.

More thought required here.

The third current problem is the realization that, for the most part, nothing of any interest happens in this current chapter, barring the flash-black, school-shooting material. But driving into work today, I happened upon a way to spin the chapter that makes it's nothingness work -- the narrator's feeling that this is his life. This is what his life is like -- boring, meaningless, insignificant. Day in, day out, half-asleep, half conscious, half alive.

If I can pound out 2,000 words tonight, I should be able to cross the 20,000 word threshold, putting at almost half of a NaNo novel. Looking back, I can barely tell where these 20,000 words have come from. If the next 20,000 come this easy, this book should be cake.

Except for the whole being exhausted all the time thing.

25 and 33, and other things.

On August 12, I turned 33 years. Also on August 12, IBM 5150 PC -- generally considered to be the first personal computer -- turned 25 years old.

I'm trying to remember if I knew this, but near as I can, tell it comes as a surprise that I would share a birthday with the personal computer. Eerie.

That little piece of trivia is about the only good thing to come out of my birthday this year. Which, for the most part, is fine by me. Birthdays have sort of lost their shine over the last few years. I can remember, seven years ago or so, while I was still at the Tribune, sneaking around after hours so I could scribble my birthday in everyone's daytimer, just to make sure no one would forget. I couldn't be bothered to do that anymore. Too much work. And for what? So what if their daytimer screams a reminder at them about my birthday, most people would either ignore it or offer a half-hearted, unfelt birthday wish. I'd rather they just not say anything at all.

Had to renew my licence on my birthday as well. Renewed for five years, at a not-so-economic $75. Which I guess is okay for five years, but having to drop that much at once, while I was on vacation, stung a little.

It also stun to realize that the next time I renew my licence, I'll be 38 years old, staring down the barrel of 40.

Holy fuck, let's not talk about that.

I've been in a horrible funk lately, and I kind of hope that the whole "vacant-birthday-getting-old-almost-40" thing is the cause of it. Because if it is, it should be passing soon, and it couldn't pass soon enough for me. Why it hasn't passed already, actually, with progress on the new novel going so well, I can't figure out. Usually I'm at my emotional lowest when I'm *not* working on a project. Usually having a short story or a novel on the burner is enought o keep me uplifted. Not so this time.

I do feel pretty good when I'm actually working on the book. For the few hours each night that I'm staring at the screen and pumping out the words, everything else goes away, and I am energized and enthused. But then when it's done and I shut the document down, I look around and I think, "What am I doing this for?" And not the book, but everything else. Everything that feels like it's just killing time, everything that feels like it's not building towards a legacy I can be proud of, everything that makes me think that, unless I can fix it, bring meaning to it, make it worth something, then I'm just wasting perfectly good oxygen here.

I don't want to say that I'm a wreck, because I'm not. I'll live. I always do. Until I don't. But I'm definitely off, and in a funk, and in need of something to reinvigorate my interest in the world around me, something to convince me that I'm doing something good by being here. Or, better yet, in need of something to emerge on the horizon that can help me throw off everything around me that's dragging me down, so that I can embrace the things that really matter to me more than anything else in the world.

Book Update:

The current word count on the Insomnia novel is just over 14,000 words, with 4,000 words dumped in the last two evenings. I should be able to drop another 2,000 tonight without even breaking a sweat.

I want to say that this is the easiest, most comfortable novel that I've ever worked on, but I'm afraid I might jinx the work. But I can't deny that everything is coming together brilliantly. I stumbled upon a new subplot a few nights back, and figured out last night -- while working on the third chapter -- exactly how to introduce two of the book's subplots, including the always important "romantic" one.

I think I figured out how to get around the days-as-chapters problem as well (by simply throwing it out the window, and accepting that some chapters will end up titiled things like "Saturday Morning" and "Saturday Evening" -- as is the case with chapters three and four).

The school-shooting back story is coming along nicely as well, after my initial concern over it. I ended up having to go back and throw out just about everything I had already done on it and start it over from scratch, but this time it's actually working, and working so well that the back-story became long enough to split into two chapters.

Which should also make for some good drama, as I get to drop the back story right at a cliffhanger.

And then, of course, introduce a chapter with no references to the shooting right afterwards.

It's fun to leave people on the edges of their seats.

It's a shame that this isn't a NaNo novel, in a way, because I'm sure I could have torn through the 50,000 in a month easily. At the same time, I'm glad I jumped on it when I did. I think part of what caused last year's novel to fall apart was that I sat on it, even while I was burning to work on it, just so that I'd have something to do for NaNo. By the time November came along, I was no longer quite as passionate about it as I had been four to six weeks earlier. I had over-thought it. It was boring.

So even though I'll likely not be novel-writing this november, it is at least a worthy sacrifice, if I can end up with a worth-while novel completed at an entirely different time of year.

Non-NaNo writing

Well, it's official. I'm working on a new novel.

I cracked the 10,000 word mark on the "Insomnia" book last night so I guess, even after the bumpy start, and my general unwillingness to follow through on the commitment necessary in crafting a 50-100,000 word project, this currently untitled novel is my current, full-ish-time project.

It's actually gone intensely well the last few days. I probably did 3 or 4,000 words last night, easily more than twice my regular daily output during NaNo. Which means I'm probably going to take a break tonight, because I really don't want to burn out on this book so early on.

I'm beginning to get a little concerned about my structural plans, how that will effect length, and how that will effect the whole narrative.

Breaking each chapter into each individual day seemed like a really smart way to break up a story that wasn't going to have any sort of normal breaking points (because he's not sleeping, and so his whole experience just turns into one, nightmarishly long day). But I'm beginning to detect a few problems with the chapter=day approach.

First, In order to cover enough territory to make certain plot points believable, I'm going to have to cram a lot of stuff into each day, which will make for some awfully long chapters.

If I don't go that route, I'm not sure ten days is enough to pull it all off, but I can't push his insomnia too far past the generally accepted record (which is, in fact, ten days) with risking disbelief in the part of the reader.

I might be panicking over nothing at all. It might all just work out smoothly and naturally. Here's hoping it will.

ADDENDUM: I was going to mention what this noveling during the non-November months was going to do for my National Novel Writing output this year, because I fear I won't be doing it. This current book will either still be in progress, and I won't want to put it on hold for 30 days just to work on something completely unrelated, or else it'll be done and I'll be too creatively burned out to start on something new so soon afterwards.

So, if either of those things happen, I was thinking of using national novel writing month as an excuse to start editing my last finished novel (the one started during the 2004 NaNo). Treat it as national novel-editing month. Because it does need the editing work if anything's ever going to happen with it, and I really would like to see something happen with it.

Which seems to make this the appropriate time to send subtle hints to my lovely and talented volunteer-editor to try to get her editing work done by November first, so I can start looking at pages to rewrite, rework, or just throw the heck out.

Hint, hint.

Spaz attack

Blogger had a small spaz-out last night, refusing to post my entry and, instead, posting it a half-dozen times this morning. The over-posting has been cleaned up, but for anyone who stopped by and wondered why I was ranting about the same thing six different times, there's your explanation.

How the heck do you spell "spaz" anyway?

Insert title here

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged an mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as thought their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All fact would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

- Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions

I put a few hours of work into the new novel tonight, cleaning up some of what was bugging me about the second chapter. There's still something kind of itchy about it, but I think I like it better now, because I seem to be managing to spread out the details of the school shooting a bit more effectively. Which isn't entirely because I want to spread it out, but because that's the style I'm trying to use for this book -- lots of short, almost jarring, pieces. Now we're here. Now we're somewhere else. Now we're somewhere else. Jumping from the events of the present, to recollection, to the realm of pure fantasy, every page or so.

I'm having fun with it. Well, as much fun as can be had dwelling in the head of someone who hasn't slept in four days.

Finished Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions earlier tonight -- one of the books I picked up in Kamloops during my first week's vacation this year. I enjoyed it tremendously, and was profoundly struck by the chunk of the book I quoted at the top. I actually read that chunk last night, and have been burning with a desire to post it ever since I read it.

It's an interesting idea he poses -- and an idea he used in the actual writing of Champions, which is, I think, one of the greatest satires of American (and, thus, North American) culture I've ever read. Published in 1973, and still just as relevant. I haven't read a lot of Vonnegut, but from what I have, that seems to be the case.

Reading Vonnegut -- or any good satirist, for that matter -- leaves me wanting to dig out last year's aborted NaNo novel and take another stab at it. I wish I knew why it was that the book unravelled on me. If it was because I was trying to satirize something too big for my talent, or if it was simply because I was rushing through it to meet my daily word count. I still think the idea -- and the satire within that idea -- has merit, and I'd love to give it another shot. Maybe when I'm done with this new one.

On the topic of the NaNo, I'm a little concerned about this year. It's still a few months away, but I'm burning out the only current novel idea I have right now, and at the rate I'm writing, I'll be lucky to be done with this one by the time November rolls around. I'd hate to miss a NaNo after three years, but I'd hate more to try to put this book on the sidelines in order to pursue something else for just a month.

Started writing this week's column in my head tonight before jumping on the novel. I should have typed the words up at the time, because when I try to remember them on Wednesday, they won't be quite as good as they were tonight.

That's the way it always goes.

I need a notepad and a pen. And then I need the willingness to actually use them.

Working on the new novel again tonight. Already seeming like I'm not going to get much of it done, as I'm already avoiding it by writing here instead. But I needed to stop and complain about stupid little things. Like the fact that it's only the second chapter and I already can't quite remember how long the protagonist has been awake for.

I need to keep notes. How freaking difficult is it to just jot down the day and time that he last slept, and then refer to that anytime I need to know? Not difficult at all. So why haven't I? Outside of my often being a gigantic retard, I'm really not sure.

It's a little detail, to be sure, and one easily fixed in later drafts. But I hate having to clean up stuff like that in later drafts, because it's so bloody easy to just get right the first time through if you're paying attention. And it's not that I'm not. Or not entirely. It's just that my mind wanders, and I end up focused on other things, digressing into a commentary on how the future turned out to be a world of sedation, and isn't it wonderfully ironic that in this sedated world, our protagonist would be an insomniac?

Yeah, wonderfully ironic, except we can't remember anymore how long he's been awake for, because, Todd, you haven't figured out how to use a notepad yet.

I think I'm also avoiding this chapter because it's the back-story chapter. Well, not THE backstory chapter. The way I write, I never know when backstory is going to suddenly rear it's ugly head. But this is the big one. The spiritual moment that did the exact opposite thing from most spiritual moments -- the moment that convinced our hero that God doesn't exist. And the moment that everything else in the book is going to end up connected to. This is the Columbine chapter. This is when our protagonist tells the story of the day his high school was the site of horrible, random, meaningless violence -- when a pair of students blew away a half-dozen other students, just because they could.

I so fucking don't want to mess this up.

It needs to hit the reader hard when it happens. It needs to explain how this character gave up on God. And it needs to do all of this while treating the topic of high-school violence with respect. I don't want this to be a bullshit exploitational thing. My thoughts and opinions on high school violence are complicated at best (but really, when aren't they?) and I need to get as much of that across on paper as human possible.

I should just stop worrying about it and go and do it. I tend to be mostly successful when I take that approach. But I'm a bit out of it myself right now, from not having a fantastic sleep last night, and I half think I might be better off saving it until my brain is working better.

I'm even stressing about what would make the best background music for trying to write this chunk.

Again, I should stop worrying, and just load something up and write it.

Instead, I distract myself here.

Writing about how I'm distracting myself.

How meta.

In novel-related successes, I did name the pseudo-love-interest character (and, even before then, figured out the love-interest subplot for this novel, so that's yet another success) and have already established the line that introduces her. Or at least her name.

"Her name was Summer, but she looked more like late-autumn."

Super-cheese? Probably, but at least for the moment, it's working for me. Because it's coming from the main character, and not a third-person narrator. And if it's super-cheese, at least it helps depict his sudden, love-at-first-sight reaction to her.

Now if only I had a name for my main character.

What's a good name for a 20-something insomniac?

I need something quick, because there's no way I'm going through half a novel without naming my narrator again.

Dear "StumbleUpon" plug-un for Firefox...

...sometimes I love you.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Random 10

It’s not Friday for most of the world, but today does mark the end of my work week, and I’m jonesing to blog, and I’m sitting here listening to music anyway, so I figured it might be a good opportunity to dust off the ol’ Friday Random 10. Arguably Friday or not.

PS: As per the “Tell me something about you that I don’t know” question from two entries ago; yes, I am singing along with every single one of these. Take that.

1. Marianne Faithfull – Incarceration of a Flower Child – I’ve only listened to this song a handful of times, but I just can’t get over it. Written by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in 1969, it wasn’t recorded until 1999, and even then it was performed by Marianne Faithfull (with Waters on the bass). It’s pure, classic Waters, and in many ways, seems lyrically stronger than much of what Floyd was doing in that era. As much as I would love to imagine what it would have sounded like as performed by a 1960s-era Pink Floyd, the Marianne Faithfull version is so wonderful haunting that I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.


2. Brazil – Mr. Helpmann – A quick radio interview from Terry Gilliam’s Film “Brazil.” – funny, funny stuff, but it might be a little confusing if you’ve never seen the movie. Which, by the way, if you haven’t you should. No really. Like, right now. Go rent it or buy it or steal it from someone you don’t much like. Because, seriously, it’s that good.


3. Phil Collins – That’s Just The Way It Is – I was super-into Phil Collins in the mid-to-late 80s, but something about the transition into the 90s seemed to diminish either his musical power, or my taste for his music. I still have a soft spot for his tunes from that era, but anything he’s done since then just doesn’t sit well for me. This is from the “But Seriously” album, which marked the end of my fascination with him – some good stuff on here, but some of it is already stale-dating.


4. Alabama 3 – Ain’t Gonna Go – From Alabama 3’s first album. Is there anything from these guys that isn’t just completely, undeniably, 100%, multi-flavoured awesome?


5. Eagles – Wasted Time – Probably the most optimistic lost-love song ever written. An all time favourite of mine, and one I always queue up whenever I’m feeling particularly blue.


6. INXS – Laying Down the Law – Looking at the tracks listed above and below this song, I can only assume this is from the “Lost Boys” soundtrack. Which is a movie I’m really not fond of, and which I only downloaded for one song. Come on, random 10, things were going so well – I didn’t need to be reminded of how much crap is on my hard drive.


7. Eagles – James Dean – More stuff that I only have because I’m an insane collector. Don’t think I’ve heard this song before, but this one I’ll actually listen to, because, for the most part, the Eagles are pretty cool. [EDIT: Okay, I think I probably have heard this before – probably in the background, on a radio, somewhere. Either that or it’s one of those songs that just has that sound to it – like something you’ve heard before, even if you haven’t.]


8. Alanis Morissette – Baba – I think one of these days I’m going to do an “almost random 10” list because I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a song pop up that I’m not terribly familiar with (like, say, this one) which is immediately preceded or followed by something I’m much, much more familiar with (like, say, Morissette’s “Thank U” – as is the case here).


9. Sinead O’Connor – Waiting for a Van – Things started so well. How did they so quickly digress into bunches of stuff I don’t really know? I guess have 10 CDs of rare Sinead O’Connor stuff doesn’t help.


10. Pink Floyd – Vera – From “The Wall” (though this is an extended take on it, yanked from the movie). I really need to see this film, and I really need to sit down and listen to this album again. I think I sort of overdosed on it in my teens, which, as overdoses often do, led me to run screaming away. But it remains an epic, musical achievement, probably the most famous and most successful rock opera of all time, and Pink Floyd has long been a personal favorite.


11. Peter Gabriel – Ngankarrparni (Sky Blue) [Reprise] – Damn, that’s a lotta brackets. Just guessing from the surrounding tracks, but this looks like it might be from Gabriel’s “Rabbit-Proof Fence” soundtrack. Additionally, it sounds (and is titled) like it was take on his “Sky Blue” song, from the album “Up.” Which, by the way, was awesome. [EDIT: This is sort of interesting to listen to. I’ve never seen “Rabbit-Proof Fence” (where I think this version is from) but it’s definitely an early take on “Sky Blue” without any lyrics. Just the music and the chorus of voices going, “Oh oh-oh-oh ooooooh.”]


12. JB’s Blues – From the “I Heart Huckabees” Soundtrack. Damn that’s a good movie. Damn that’s a good soundtrack. And yes, I’m going to 15. At least.


13. Warren Zevon – I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead – The song right under this is  “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which I’d rather listen to right now. So I think I will.


14. Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 – Wow, two songs in one night from “The Wall” – it must be a sign! And they’re not even the over-rated ones! W00t!


15. Beck – Hotwax – I really need to start listening to some earlier Beck. I mean, I don’t really have an excuse for not. I’ve got all his stuff on my hard drive.


16. Tatu – All The Things She Said – And on this note, we’ll bring this to a close. This song is currently on my short-list of songs to use in the intro / intermission set for the play “Closer.” Assuming I ever get around to directing that thing.

Good night! Stay safe!

Editors -- who needs 'em.

Daniel Schorr on blogging:

"What we have here is a medium in which there is no publisher, no editor, no anything. It's just you and a little machine and you can make history. I find that scary. Nobody should get into print or on the air without some kind of editor. I have an institutional belief that nobody can be above having a good editor."

From Romenesko (via A Capital Idea)

I was actually thinking about this recently, noticing how many web sites and blogs (this one included) have, among other things, horribly written headlines. Headline writing, I really think, is an artform, a skill that not everyone possesses. Somewhere in between are the people that -- like me -- have difficulty crafting a good a headline, but can spot a bad from a mile away. Then there are the people who think that puns are the highest form of humour, and litter their headlines with them.

I won't take that topic any further -- any regular reader of my column should know what I think about puns.

The point is this: bad headlines are the least of your worries if you're writing without an editor handy.

The average blogger probably doesn't know the first thing about plagarism. The average blogger probably doesn't know the first think about libel. And, while the average blogger is probably safe from this sort of thing most of the time, we all get our panties in a bunch now and then, and get off on a rant that we might regret after a few days. Unfortunately, regret is rarely enough once the damage is done.

And it's probably fair to bet that if a blogger doesn't have an editor on staff, he doesn't have a lawyer on staff either.

It's surprising that there haven't been more lawsuits -- or, if there have been a flood of lawsuits already, it's surprising that they haven't been more wildly publicized. Is it that Internet writers have, so far, just gotten lucky? Is it that most libelous weblogs aren't actually read by enough people for the lebelled party to ever find out about it? Did lawyers around the world suddenly decide that there was just far too much litigation already tying up the courts?

Either way, I agree with Mr. Schorr's comment, that there is no one that can't be helped by a good editor.

Time Killing FTW.

I swiped this little Q&A meme from over here (can't remember for the life of me how I even ended up at that site, random clicking seems to be the most logical answer). Here we go.

1. Grab the book nearest you, turn to page 18 and find line 4. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut - "stadtische Ordnung hineingesat; da ruhmie mir der"

2. Stretch out your left arm as far as you can. What can you touch? My laser printer, and in it an aborted print job of my last completed novel -- aborted because, after starting the print job, I realized I didn't have anywhere near enough paper to print the whole thing.

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV? No cable in the house. The television show I watched (on my PC) was the final episode of the current season of the Sopranos.

4. Without looking, guess what time it is. 3:15-ish

5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time? 3:19

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? Aimee Mann, Stupid Thing, from the "Whatever" album, which is currently playing on my computer's MP3 player.

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing? Sometime around noon, I think, to check the mail and see if I had a delivery notification card -- I'm desperately waiting for a repaired DVD player to get back to me.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at? My blogger log in screen, and then Wordpad, which I pasted the survey into so I could delete the previous surveyor's ansewrs.

9. What are you wearing? Black dress shirt from yesterday and lazy-day pants. Doing dishes and housecleaning today, and haven't climbed into the shower yet.

10. Did you dream last night? Probably. Don't remember it though.

11. When did you last laugh? The last time I actually recall was while playing 1980s-era arcade games on the gamecube with my roommate last night, but I'm sure I chuckled at something earlier today.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in? Paint. Mostly white, but one wall is sort of covered with green swooshes and splats. One of the walls has someshelving, with a bunch of my more expensive books on it.

13. Seen anything weird lately? I saw a pair of shoes -- just a pair of shoes -- in the parking lot outside Canadian Tire a few weeks ago. Made me think that someone had been shot with a disintegrator ray.

14. What do you think of this quiz? It's delaying the next load of dishes, so it's not all bad.

15. What is the last film you saw? Moulin Rouge, in the company of friends.

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? A brand spanking new computer with at least a 40" wide screen monitor, I'd pay off my house, pay off my remaining debt, and buy a new car.

17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know. I secretly like to sing. Really, really loudly. But usually only after a couple of drinks, and when I'm alone.

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Let's get rid of this whole stupid poverty thing. It's really rather unneccesary.

19. Do you like to dance? I'm pretty lacking in rythmn, so for the most part, no, but when the music slows, and the lights dim, I can't think of any reason I *wouldn't* want to have my arm around someone special on the dance floor.

20. George Bush: makes me grateful I'm a Canadian.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl. What do you call her? I can't even name my fictional characters without weeks of stress.

22. Imagine your first child is a boy. What do you call him? See last answer.

23. Would you ever consider living abroad? Sure.

24. What would you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gate? "I don't want to fixate on the negative, so I'll start off by saying that you did a pretty good job. But if you want to discuss ways that you could have improved your performance, come and talk to me in my office later."

25. 3 people who must also do this quiz in their blog: I don't know if three people with blogs routinely visit this spot, so I'll just point the finger of evil at Elise, who has been known to drop by on occasion.

Tonight on a very special Stick Figure Drama Update

Stick Figure Drama special features are finally available, after months of my intending to get around to doing this. I know the weekly strips are in pretty dire need of an update, and that's coming soon, but c'mon, this stuff's even better. It's rare material! It includes the 2004 Cariboo Advisor Photo Album advertisement, the 2005 Cariboo Advisor Photo Album advertisement (which, finally, attaches a name to every stick figure drama character), and the 2005 Christmas advertisement (which some people feared would offend christians, so you know it's gotta be good).

It also includes the first ever appearance of the original version of Stick Figure Drama #70, which was yanked from publication at the last minute because of it's controversial nature.

Enjoy!

An update, because things have been pretty dry around these parts.

My lord, this heat.

I can't see straight. I can barely think. The only thing I'm actually capable of doing is sweating, and I'm pretty sure that's automatic.

I'm sure there are hotter places in the world, and I know that leads people to suggest that I should quit my damn complaining. I'm just glad I'm not in those hotter places right now. I don't think I'm built for this weather. Though, I suppose I'm still trying to figure out exactly what my body's built for, besides being a temporary storage container for liquor.

Against my better judgment, I started picking away at a new novel the other night. Slowly. And I mean fucking sloooooowly. It's looking about 1600 words every four or five days, instead of the 1600 words every day that I'm used to for national novel writing month.

I think I'm afraid about the sort of commitment a novel requires. I think I'm afraid of losing the next 30 to 60 days of my life to this thing, because once it gets rolling, it really gets rolling, and there's no tearing yourself out of it. I'm gettin ga pretty good sense of what the book's about, though, just from leaving it in the back of head to simmer for a few months. Which is something I need to remember to do when I have an idea for a story or a novel. When the first flash of inspiration hits me, it's never well-enough formed for me to actually sit down and work on it then. It seems like it is, but I only need to get about a page and half into it before I start noticing that there are big gaping holes where all the important points should be. And then I'll back off for awhile.

But those gaping holes have been closing off pretty quickly. The core story -- which I think I've mentioned her before -- involves a character suffering from insomnia, who bumps into a group of people who intentionally going through sleep-deprivation in an attempt to stumble upon some sort of spiritual enlightenment.

With a set-up like that, obviously it's a story that's going to play with notions of faith and spirituality and the inevitable questions of, "Why are we here?"

A tragic high-school shooting will likely also play a role, if I continue down this path as planned.

After last year's NaNo "The Small Town Pornographer's Blues," which was sort of a deviation from the norm for me, I feel like I'm back in familiar territory with this one. A character who is broken and hopeless. A quest for meaning. And a writer's endless struggle to revisit familiar territory without repeating himself.

And, completely unrelated to this, and completely unrelated to just about anything, I've had Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes" stuck in my head off and on for the last few weeks. I don't know why. And I don't know how to get rid of it either.

AMAROK

I got back on Saturday from a very brief vacation to Kamloops. As is my nature on road trips lately, I brought along my mp3 player and my whacky FM tuner thing, that broadcasts the signals from an audio device to an FM station, for ease of listening. The tuner kind of sucks, because the music is always filled with more static than I'd like, and the bass is weak, and blah blah blah, but it's also better than nothing.

I had a collection of Mike Oldfield stuff loaded up on my MP3 player, and on the trip home, I happened to cue up the "Amarok" album -- which isn't realy an "album" in the traditional sense. It's pretty much just a 60-minute track. But it's a 60-minute track of some of the most amazing music you will *ever* hear.

My research into Mike Oldfield in general, and this album specifically, indicates that this was something he put together as a "fuck you" to his label of the time -- Virgin Recores. It was a contractual obligation album. It was something he did to get the hell away from where he was working.

But, even as a "fuck you" album, Amarok is, at times, one of the most amazingly jubliant pieces of music I've ever experienced. Every single time I hear it -- and there have been many times -- there are points where I get chills, points where tears well up in my eyes at the beauty of it, at the joy of it. "Fuck you" albums shouldn't be this much fun.

But this one is.

If you don't know this work, and odds are you don't, you're missing out. And if you don't know Mike Oldfield at all, you're robbing yourself of the gift of one of the finest musicians of the late-20th and early-21st centuries.

I was going to write something about MySpace...

...but then I decided to save it for a column.

Instead I'm going to ramble about music.

Badgerbadgerbadger.

I'm posting this, in spite of it being years old by now, because it's just the sort of thing that never actually gets old. And because I haven't made an appropriate gesture in honour of the death of Petey, our beloved invisible karaoke-singing badger.

Badger badger badger.

Sniff.

Insomnia 'til you're dead...

I'm sure there are, but at the moment I can't think of a worse affliction than Fatal familial insomnia.

I stumbled upon the rare, inherited disorder -- which, essentially, is a total, irreversable, and incurable form of insomnia, that you get to suffer from until you go insane and die -- while searching for information on the far more vanilla form of insomnia, because I'm considering a story or novel involving the topic, and was curious, specifically, about the world record for sleep deprivation (in the area of 10 to 12 days, for straight insomnia, which may or may not be long enough for what I have in mind for this story -- it'd probably only end up being 7-10 chapters, as I'd intend each chapter as one day of insomnia, until the spell finally broke, but then again, it's fiction, so I can push it longer if necessary).

But I digress. Back to this creepy, tragic way of dying.

Back to the Wiki entry on the disease:

The age of onset is variable, ranging from 30 to 60, with an average of 50. Death usually occurs between 7 to 36 months from onset. The presentation of the disease varies considerably from person to person, even among patients from within the same family.

Let's stop and think about that for a second.

Death usually occurs 7 to 36 MONTHS from onset. That's 7 to 36 MONTHS without sleep. That's 7 to 36 MONTHS of slowly losing your mind, becoming increasingly anxious, phobic, and paranoid.

If it wasn't for the fact that I already have a fairly good idea of where I want to go with this insomnia book -- and, unfortunately, it involves the character eventually falling asleep -- I would incredibly pumped about writing about this disorder. It's just so...terrifying.

I only hope I can sleep tonight, with this particular thing on my mind.

At last, stickage

I've been a little lazy with the stick figure drama updates as of late, likely because for the most part I've shifted from doing them on the weekend, to doing them on Monday. At the end of a Sunday work shift, I'm still energetic enough when I get home to upload the new strip. At the end of a Monday work shift, I just want to lay down and die.

So the last three weeks of stick is now updated under the stickage navigator. That includes this week technically-published-but-you-still-might-not-have-seen-it-yet strip.

[Spoilers follow -- go read the stupid strip first, it'll only take you a second]

Speaking of that strip, here's a bit of trivia: the last two panels were actually drastically rewritten at the last minute, to include an Abba karaoke reference instead of a bizarre and obscure They Might Be Giants musical reference (I planed to refer to Petey as a "Wicked little critter" -- which, actually, I still want to do at some other point in the future).

This rewriting also allowed me to get them into the Dart for next week, instead of having them stand around for yet *another* week before beginning the road trip, which I think is a good thing. I'd like to get them to Lefty before, say, the end of the year.

In rewriting, though, I found that Tracy had pretty much zero to say with the new didalogue, which is pretty much the only reason that she shouts out, "Shotgun!"

Also, the paramedic has a black eye for reasons of continuity. And he doesn't say anything because he's all pissy about it.

ALSO...the more I think about it, the more that filler strip #99.5 is bugging me. I don't think it's terribly clear what is supposed to be going on in the strip (Weird Bob stumbling onto Petey's invisible little corpse), nor am I even entirely sure that I still want that to be what was going on in that panel. Really, when you get right down to it, it could be just bout anything.

I think, long term, one of two things will happen with that strip. I'll either A) try to pretend it never happened, and scrub its existence from my mind; or B) Retcon the bejeezus out of it, and make it mean something entirely different. Dunno what quite yet.

Anyway, enough stick figure creator ramblings. Tune in next week for exciting road-trip humour.

Digital ghosts

My computer has taken, lately, to randomly and spontaneously rebooting itself. It's a minor annoyance, because it means sitting around for a few minutes waiting for it start back up again, but only minor, because it only happens once every few days. I'm inclined to think that something'e overheating, but not sure exactly what it is.

It takes a few minuts to boot up because I have a lot of applications that load at startup -- instant messengers, video utilities, anti-virus apps, firewalls, things like that. Some of them are hangers-ons from previous days, applications I know longer use but haven't gotten around to removing yet. Others are loaded almost out of nostalgia -- in spite of my awareness that I no longer use it, it seems strange to not have it running anymore.

ICQ is one of those programs.

ICQ was the first major internet instant messaging application, and thus has been around longer than all the others, even though over the years many of the others -- like MSN Messenger -- have become far more popular.

There was a time once where 99% of my contacts were on ICQ, and I only had MSN installed for or two people who refused to use anything else. Fine, I'd think, I can have two chat apps installed without too much of a hassle.

A few months back, the last person I actually talked to in ICQ finally switched to MSN, and now my ICQ loads up every time my computer starts for no reason at all.

While I was waiting for my computer to reboot today, staring at all the programs starting during the boot-up process, I thought about removing ICQ. It's not really do much except taking up hard drive space and valuable system resources.

But then I thought about birthdays.

One of the neat features of ICQ (and maybe MSN has this too -- I'm not sure) is that, when someone on your contact list is approaching a birthday, you'll get a reminder. A crppy little snippet of "happy birthday" will play over your speakers, and a little icon flashing in your system tray will tell you that someone on your list is about to celebrate a birthday. And it gives you three days warning to go, "Oh, crap, I almost forgot it was their birthday!" and run out and buy them something nice.

And then I got to thinking about all these people on my ICQ contact list -- some of whom have been on there for close to ten years, and many of whom haven't been online in ICQ in five -- and how, in a way, it's a tiny little ghostly fragment of who they are. Their name is there. Their email address is there. Their birthday is there. And, if they haven't moved or changed occupations, their addresses and places of employment are there.

And whether they've been online or not, all that information still exists.

The idea manages to be simultaneously creepy and comforting. Creepy, because it's like someone is spying into your life -- or what your life was the last time you updated your ICQ profile. And comforting because, in a way, it's an acknowledgement that this person existed. They could wander into the forest and disappear without a trace, and yet this tiny little chunk of information that my computer has access to proves that they did, in fact, exist once. They were real. They were my friends. They had birthdays and addresses and home and work contact numbers.

It's a uniquely 21st century way of validating your existence.

So ICQ remains on my hard drive, and will for the foreseeable future (meaning, likely, until my next hard drive reformat). Because I like the birthday reminders. And because I like having access to these strange, digital ghosts of those who have come and gone, but who still remain embedded in my memory.

Stabbing yourself in the face doesn't give you cancer either...

From an anonymous comment under my blog entry on trying to quit smoking on a particuarly nasty production day, which can be found here.

Smoking causes cancer.
Body Modification doesn't.

I'm left to assume that this is not only a comment on the blog entry, but a comment on a column I recently wrote on body modification, in which I said some less than flattering things about the practice. In the column I chose to connect more common forms of body modification, like piercing, with some of the more non-traditional, like chopping off your toes to varying lengths, or intentionally getting shot. And then implied that there was something a little bit nuts about all of it.

Which, you know, I still sort of agree with. In spite of the fact that, yes, body modification doesn't cause cancer. Because in and of itself, that's really not a terribly good reason to do something. There's plenty of things that don't cause cancer that you still shouldn't do. Running razor blades up and down your arms doesn't give you cancer. Shooting heroin doesn't give you cancer. Eating things like rocks or soil doesn't give you cancer. And these are all things that people do, for a variety of reasons. And yes, it's usually because they're messed up in some way.

As for my smoking, it's not without its messed up reasons, which are best described by author, humourist, and all-around smart-guy, Kurt Vonnegut.

"The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."

There's a reason that I'm drawn back to smoking at times of great stress or great depression. It's because it allows me to feel like I'm actually participating in the act of ending my life. Just in a way that actually takes awhile to accomplish. And one in which, if I ever got my act together, and ever felt positive and successful enough for a lengthy enough period of time, I could still probably shake before it had done any sort real long term damage.

So there you have it, Mr. Anonymous: You might have been a little uncomfortable with my attempts to point fingers at your pathology, but aren't we a little bit more even now that I've poked a finger at my own?

I have things to say on the topic of success.

And the topic of failure. And the topics of dreams and reality and age and jobs and careers and love and death.

But I don't have it in me to discuss it now.

I had a weird moment the other day, though, when I flashed back to memories of my first apartment -- a crappy, studio-style place, divided with walls that didn't quite reach to the ceiling, that was located in an industral area of town (near Scout Island, in fact) and was, most likely, not even a legal place to live.

And I found myself thinking of that place, and of where I live now -- how I lived then with two roommates, making my share of the rent about $100 a month, and how I'm now carrying an $800 mortgage, though that's recently been aided with the arrival of a renter.

And it was one of those funny moments where I had to admit that, for the most part, I've been mostly successful in my life. Which is funny, because so much of the time I feel like a massive failure.

Meta-fiction at its finest

So, because I’m a retard, I impulse bought Douglas Coupland’s “JPod” yesterday, while picking a few groceries at Save-On. I used the excuse that it was proudly boasting a 30% OFF sticker, which would knock a little more than 10 bucks off the cover price, making the first edition hardcover almost affordable.

Of course, I already had one new book to read, and two others – purchased even earlier – already on the go. Not to mention a collection of short stories purchased sometime last year that I still have yet to get through.

So, knowing that I was hard at work to ensure that I had a ton of books I’d never get around to reading, I focused my energies on finishing the last third of Peter Straub’s “In the Night Room” tonight. And I was glad I did.

Glad I had bought it too – I almost didn’t considering my last attempt at a Straub novel (Mr. X) left me less than thrilled. I had missed his next novel – “Lost Boy, Lost Girl” – and when I saw “In the Night Room” on the shelf, I struggled with whether to buy it. I’ve always been a big fan of Straub, his “Shadowland” among my favourite books of all time, but it was difficult to shake the bad taste that “Mr. X” had left in my mouth.

More than anything else, “In the Night Room” is a writer’s novel. Granted, I’m sure the twists and turns of the story would be entertaining to anyone who gave the book a chance, someone familiar with the processes – and sacrifices – of writing will get oh so much more out of it.

At the heart of it, the novel is a reminder to writers to respect the lives of the fictional characters they create and breathe life into, because in its own way, that process of writing is creation, of a sort. And those things that you breathed life into, didn’t live until the moment you breathed life into them.

I was reminded of a character I had written in a novel a few years ago – a novel I never got around to finishing – who I intended to kill at the end of the novel, only because she needed to die in order to teach the protagonist a lesson. And I couldn’t help but wonder, if I was writing that novel right now, if maybe I would give that creation a bit more respect, and let her have the life that she had fought so hard to have, instead of yanking it away as nothing more than a plot device.

“In the Night Room” also looks at the respect writers must give to the real world, which they mine day and night for material to use in their fiction. It’s a reminder that their source material, however fictionalized it may become, must be treated fairly as well. Simply slapping the label of “fiction” on something does not absolve you from bastardizing and poisoning the original, real-world source of that work.

It’s interesting to see a writer that in tune with the creative process, asking questions of that creative process, and that willing to strip it bare – and, in many ways, criticize himself. I’m now quite eager to get my hands on the Straub novel I managed to miss.

Speaking of love stories

I wrote half a page of…something…the other night. It’s still too early, and I still have too loose a grasp on it, to know exactly what it’ll be. It’s the story I think I mentioned here before, about insomnia, and a group of people who force insomnia on themselves in an attempt to reach enlightenment. I had started the story a few weeks back, but didn’t like the feel of the first few lines, so I spiked it. When I started it again just a few nights back, it was after finding a new narrative voice, and I think it’s a voice that works better. It’s broken, fragmented, like I’m sure his mind would be having not slept in days. If possible, I want to fragment it more and more as the story progresses, so his narrative is all over the place, talking about today, then suddenly two years ago, then suddenly yesterday, and suddenly today again. All over the place. Bordering on psychotic.

But what’s bugging me about the story right now is that I don’t see a really obvious love story angle for it. And having said in the past that all great stories are, ultimately, love stories, I really feel that unless I find that love story hook for this one, it’s never going to be everything that it could be. I do have a notion for a love story element, but it’s messy and dysfunctional, and I’m not sure that I want to go in that direction. Everything else around this character is going to be messy and dysfunctional. If there’s going to be a love story, it should be his one stability.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn...

Watched Moulin Rouge tonight with a group of friends – a funny movie to watch the night after seeing Closer, as the two movies are sort of polar opposites of one another. Both love stories to some degree, but one focused on the idealistic, romantic side of love, the other focused on the darker, seedier, and more selfish side.

Strangely, I love both stories.

Those of you more closely acquainted with my bitter and jaded side might it odd to think that I’d enjoy a movie like Moulin Rouge, but I’ve said before that I think all good stories are ultimately love stories on some level. You can have all the explosions and car chases and zombies and aching existentialist drama that you want, if you haven’t got a love story in there somewhere, it’s simply never going to be a *great* story.

And bear in mind that when I say that all great stories are love stories, I’m not saying that all love stories should have happy endings. Sometimes love ends tragically. Sometimes it ends painfully. Sometimes it ends angrily. Sometimes it ends with violence. Sometimes it ends quietly.

Those are all things that we can relate to, and in relating to them, relate to those characters.

Though Moulin Rouge ends in tragedy, the love story it depicts is the kind we’re all used to seeing in films and books – the fairy-tale love story of a true love, that knows no bounds, that will live until the end of time. Which, unfortunately, is a fairy-tale 99% of the time. Which is why its so appealing when we see it up on the screen, and are given the chance to dream about it for two hours.

I wrote a column a few years ago about research that had been done that indicated that women who grew up reading fairy-tales about this sort of true love were more prone to end up in abusive relationships. Which is sort of sad, if you think about those women waiting for their ugly, violent, horrible husbands to finally turn into the Prince Charming they believe, in their hearts, that they can be.

But they won’t be. Because most love stories turn out like they do in Closer. With pain and betrayal and lies and tears. Which is, for an entirely opposing reason, why people can relate to a story like that. Because they’ve lived it, or something similar, at least once in their lives. They recognize the words and the intentions and actions, because they’ve been there themselves.

The one issue I have with Closer is that, when you strip all that ugliness away, there’s very little warmth left at the heart of it, which is too bad, because no matter how terribly a love story might turn out, it was always – at one point – a love story. The sort of love that feels almost like a fairy-tale, that you hope might last forever, but in your heart you know will fade. That’s always where it starts, before things turn sour, but there’s so little of that in Closer. I think maybe if there was more of it, the play would ring even more profoundly true, but then you’ve only got so much time to tell your story too.

But in Moulin Rouge, once you strip away the glitz and the spectacle and the over-the-top fairy tale, what your left with is a very simple message, and a powerful and important one. One that we can all take to heart, and think about every once and awhile.

The great thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.

Not matter where your love goes, no matter what the future holds for it, its enough that it existed in the first place.

That’s something that Dan, Larry, Alice and Anna could have spent some time thinking about.

Getting Closer

I just finished watching the film "Closer" -- directed by Mike Nichols, and written by Patrick Marber -- after watching, a few weeks ago, the Prince George production of "Closer" -- written by Patrick Marber -- at the Central Interior Zone Drama festival, after reading, some weeks earlier, the play "Closer" and the proposing that play to direct for next season, and having that proposal rejected.

My association with this story has been complicated to say the least.

I've made it a policy to avoid seeing productions of things I have an interest in directing. I believe very strongly in bringing a unique vision to a play, a vision that came directly from me, untainted by outside influences. I've always felt that was what art was about. Bringing something to life that had never lived in quite that way before. There is no more extraordinary a feeling than that.

Seeing "Closer" at festival this year was a tough decision, even after my directing proposal had been rejected, because the rejection didn't change the fact that I still wanted to direct it. But I went. And surprisingly, I found my reaction wasn't so much of the "wow, that's really cool, I'll definitely have to do that!" variety, and more of the, "Huh, I wouldn't have done it quite that way," type.

So, coming away from seeing the play, and feeling like my artistic vision had not been compromised, I decided to watch the film. Because, having already seen the play, I decided to take a different approach to this one.

Instead of locking myself away from other takes on something I want to do, I want to drown myself in it. I want to enrich my understanding of the material. And where the play made me think of things I wouldn't do, the movie made me think...not so much of things I *would* do, but it made me look at certain scenes, certain moments, certain characters, differently.

And ultimately, it's just left me wanting to direct the play that much more.

The film, as a film, stumbles a little. A lot of the dialogue -- which, for the most part, is verbatim from the play -- seems a little awkward on screen. And a few powerful, beautiful moments (like Alice's decision to give all her love to Dan because he cuts the crusts of his sandwiches) are thrown away, which is unfortunate. The film shifts the time, and direction, of another pivotal moment, though I'm still undecided if it's an improvement or a detriment. And they tossed out the final scene, which was definitely a loss.

Regardless of the changes, though, the heart of the story remains the same: that people are cruel animals. That they will destroy anything and anyone in their path seeking their own happines. Thank God the moral of the story is that damnation ultimately awaits them at the end of that path.

Verdict

Quitting during the production of a two-section, 52-page paper appears to be both good and bad. Half the time I'm too busy to think about smoking, which is good. The other half is so filled with stress that I can't think of anything *but* smoking...

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Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network because I am teh kewlz0rz.

Smoke quitting attempt #147

I'm back on the patch today. Didn't wake up feeling completely alive and refreshed, but at least I didn't feel completely beaten up from lack of sleep. Hopefully that's enough to get me through the day.

Time will tell, though, whether it's a good idea to try and quit smoking during the production of a two-section, 52-page newspaper.

Though, I suppose, as some have mentioned in the past, "Is there a good time to quit smoking?" No, probably not.

Dear nasty, evil, card-game-teaching person...

I've spent the better part of this evening playing Euchre at Yahoo Games. Just because I've become obsessed with understanding this terrible game, and improving my ability to strategize.

I hope you're happy.

Nicotine, addiction and depression

Yesterday I was reading through an amazing archive of mental health fact sheets that mysteriously found its way onto my desk a number of years ago, and which I have carefully preserved since then (because you never know when you'll need to look up the 2002 stastics for schizophrenia in Canada) when I stumbled upon the smoking-related fact sheet (having to do specifically with addiction issues).

I was surprised to learn that incidences of depression are significantly higher in people who smoke than in people who don't smoke.

This came as a surprise, at least partly, because whenever I try to quit smoking, it tends to be depressive feelings of one kind or another that get me craving a cigarette again (depressive feelings which are ultimately made worse by the smoking itself, because then I feel like a failure, and I beat myself up for being a failure, which makes me smoke more, etc., etc.)

It's been a few years since the first time I tried to quit, when I managed three months of success before falling off the wagon again, and I can't remember whether I felt any more or less inclined to depression from not smoking. But it's something I'll be trying to take notice of this time around, if I can manage to keep myself butted out for longer than two days at a time.

Night of the living nicotine addiction

Having experienced two different (though eerily similar) zombie dreams in the past few months, I'm inclined to think that the two are related and, in fact, I suspect they're about quitting smoking.

If I had to guess, the zombies would represent my cigarette habit (an inescapable force that's intent on taking my life). In both dreams, my primary concern was whether I had enough ammo to properly defend myself against them. That seems like a pretty obvious representation of fears that I won't be able to kick the habit.

I don't recall ever having something this close to a recurring dream before, so I really am inclined to think these symbols meaningful, and not just random, unconscious brain firings...

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Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network because I am teh kewlz0rz.

Nausea...

I seem to be having one of those "my job makes me physically ill" days. Either that or I have stomach cancer. I almost kinda hope it's the cancer. I think that'd be easier to deal with.

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Sent via BlackBerry on the Bell Mobility network because I am teh kewlz0rz.

This is gonna be hard

One of the biggest things recommended to people who are trying to quit smoking is to modify their activities to avoid triggering moments -- or to find an alternative for those triggering moments. Like if you smoke after meals, replace the smoking with something else -- like going for a walk, or shooting heroin.

Having dabbled with quitting on more than one occasion, I know I've got four primary triggers.

1. Eating
2. Drinking (as in booze, not just liquid in general)
3. Driving
4. Computering

The eating's easy enough to handle if I eat in small bursts -- the post-food cigarette cravings seem to come more powerfully after a big production of a meal. The drinking craving is a little bit tougher to deal with, but if I can keep myself from having a few drinks with another smoker for the next few weeks, that'll help enormously. The driving one is hardly an issue anymore -- because it was one of my strongest triggers, it was actually one of the earliest I dealt with in previous quitting attempts.

But the computering one. That one's going to be tough.

At work, I'm fine. Because there's work to do. There's stuff to keep me busy. There's things to focus on. And besides, I couldn't actually smoke at my computer at work, even if I wanted to.

But at home...

At home, I'm used to sitting at my computer, with a butt smouldering in the ashtray. And don't even get me started on how closely connected smoking and writing at this machine are.

I've known before, and know this time too, that it's dealing with *that* association that's going to be the most difficult.

By tomorrow morning, I'll have gone 24 hours with only a half-cigarette consumed. And the most important thing is this: I'll be sleeping with a patch on. That'll mean two things. First, I won't wake up tomorrow craving a cigarette. I'll wake up feeling fine and dandy, with all my nicotine levels exactly where they should be.

Also, if past performance is any indicator, it means I'll probably have some seriously messed up dreams tonight.

Why 'The Sopranos' still works for me

If there's one thing you can be sure of with a television program, it's this: When you get to the end of the season, there will be a cliffhanger waiting for you. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a drama or a comedy, the final episode of a season is sure to leave audiences on the edge of the seat wondering about...something.

Since the season-ending cliff-hanger was first popularized in the 1980s, thanks to the "Who Shot JR" storyline of "Dallas," its become a cliche. You can't sit down to watch the final episode of a show without wondering what sort of mystery is going to be awaiting you at the end of the hour (or half-hour, as the case may be).

It's like M. Night Shyamalan was made programming director of every network in North America.

And it is because of this cliche of cliffhangers that "The Sopranos" still works for me.

Some argue that the show peaked at the close of the second season, and while the first two seasons were certainly high points, and while I'd agree that it has, occasionally, drifted since then, thanks to a solid creative team, it has yet to jump the shark. And the fact that tonight's episode -- the last until January 2007 -- contained no cliff-hanging moments just proves that.

The thing about cliff-hangers, and why they worked twenty years ago, is that it creates tension. It creates a mystery. It creates suspense. Because you don't know what's going to happen.

Today, with every show under the sun trying to come up with the weirdest show-stopper of a cliff-hanger, the suspense is gone. You can feel it coming from a mile away. You can sit back and relax, knowing that something bizarre and shocking is going to happen, and the answers won't present themselves for another year, and when that happens, you're not surprised, because you saw it coming.

Maybe you didn't see exactly *what* was coming. But you saw that something was.

This season of "The Sopranos" spun that cliche 180 degrees. WHile tonight's episode pushed the tension with certain subplots, and made everyone think that things were going to spill over into some frantic, violent cliff-hanger, nothing happened.

And in doing nothing, they succeeded in doing the one thing that other television shows only dream of doing -- surprising the audience.

To my knowledge (and because I'm far from in the know, this is subject to change) there are only 8 episodes of the Sopranos left before the program leaves the airwaves forever. And for breaking new ground in dozens of ways, not limited to but including season-ending episodes without a cliff-hanger in sight, it will be missed.

It's the weekend, so that means it's time for STICK

Stick Figure Drama #102 has been added to the archive. This strip officially sets in motion the next major story arc, as well as hinting at something dark in Weird Bob's past. What will it turn out to be? Only time, as they say, will tell.

Okay, this is weird...

So I logged into my cafepress account tonight, because I vaguely recalled that they printed books, and I wanted to check their prices. While I was there, I noticed that my account had a $0.51 credit, which seemed odd, because I wasn't sure why they would give me money just for having an account. So I poked around a bit, looking for transaction histories, and lo-and-behold, someone actually bought a "Really Bitter and Jaded Man" bumper sticker.

Someone in California, apparently. Someone who would have no idea what Stick Figure Drama was. They just went and...bought a bumper sticker. Because...I don't know. I can't even imagine why they would. Because they thought it was funny? I don't know. Maybe.

It's too much for me to get my head around.

Somewhere in California is a car sporting a bumper sticker with a stick-figure depiction of me in a cape with a beer-mug logo on my chest. That's just...I can't even describe how weird that is. Cool, but...weird.

If you want to check out the two products avaialble at the Stick Figure Drama Cafepress site, you can visit my storefront here. If you want to check out the crappy products I came up with for "Some Things You Need To Know Before The World Ends: A Final Evening With The Illuminati" -- a play I directed to years ago -- you can find that storefront here.