Bleeding Fiction

Faerie tales are full of helpful creatures. Leprechauns make shoes, kobolds show miners the way to deposits of ore, wichtlein warn of mine collapses, pixies threst corn, brownies clean, the fenoderee will shepard a flock of animals and a killmoulis can run a grain mill.

Most of that shit wouldn't do me any good. What would be useful would be some sort of creature that would pop up and give me a massage when my back is sore. That'd be worth a bowl of milk on my doorstep, I tell you. Faeries for the god-damned post-modern age.

For the record, my answer to question 2 is properly "goosie night" and my answer to question 10 is actually "a flake class." Those, however, were not options, so I went with the thing I was next most likely to say.

Yesterday I got an email from Eugene, announcing his annual birthday barbecue. In North Jersey my friends and I have a barbecue season; every few weeks we get together for a barbecue. We've had as few as two to as many as six over the course of a season. It's a good time, sitting with good, old friends on a relaxing afternoon outside, enjoying good grilled food and some drinks... Maybe playing a little football, which might involve accidentally knocking Adi to the ground... I think of the start of the season as Eugene's birthday barbecue. Getting Eugene's email, I had one of those homesick moments that happen whenever I miss something important to me. It's what happens when you move far away from the friends you love.

Around the time I got the email, though, I also found the website Overheard in New York. It's impossible, in New York, not to touch on other people's lives. You ignore each other with blithe abandon as you walk down the street, but things are cramped enough that parts of people, snippets of their conversation, drift into your personal plane of reality and help make up your world. If New York is a microcosm for the world (and it just might be), then New York, and through New York this website, is a reminder that distant things might not be so far away. I read a lot of the site's archive yesterday, and I laughed a lot at what's up there, and when I stopped, I stopped with a sigh and thought "it's good to be home."

Claim: The Peter, Paul & Mary tune "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is a coded song about marijuana.

Status: False.

WHAT?!

Also: You Will Never Defeat My Thousand Cuts Style

I should probably confess to the world that I own an X-Box. I got it not long after I got out here to Seattle, in response to a promise I made a while back to The Ogre�. "You need to get an X-Box and X-Box Live," he said to me, "so we can still play video games together when one or the both of us go off to school." Or words to that effect, anyway.

For the past seven months or so, as a three hour time difference and our schedules allow, I've met The Ogre� in cyberspace, where he's proceeded to shoot down my plane, kick me into submission or blow me up with a rocket launcher. I've whiled away the idle half-hour on my own by flipping out and killing people. Mostly my X-Box has gathered dust.

Over the past week, though, my game-playing habits were somewhat dramatically changed by the arrival into my possession of two wonderful games. The first of these is not just super. It is also, as the name will tell you, deluxe. Plus it involves monkeys. These monkeys will not, sadly, steal for me. What they will do, however, is roll around inside translucent spheres atop strange and mis-shapen floating platforms while collecting bananas and attempting to reach the confetti-spewing goal under a strict time limit. The game isn't, strictly speaking, psychedelic, but it skirts the borders thereof with simian abandon.

I also got an exceedingly fun game that has a little something to do with Mythic China. Fox spirits, Horse Demons, dozens of martial arts styles, ancient masters and characters with names like Furious Ming and Radient Jen Zi. Yeah. Folks who've been paying attention to my inchoate ramblings over the last few years will note that I've got a small interest in things pertaining to the style of fiction loosely classed as wuxia. While this game doesn't really and truly capture the feel or spirit of the "genre" (example: no running across the tops of trees), it's cool enough that it's sort of put me in the mood again.

That was an intentionally loaded statement, set there to cunningly draw in your attention whilst I elaborate: I re-read the first two chapters of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms on Thursday night and re-read the first four chapters of the Outlaws of the Marsh, read the prologue of the Deer and the Cauldron and re-read portions of my own initial edits on Fire and Jade today.

Cunning readers will note that I haven't mentioned my first novel in nearly four months, when I said that I hadn't touched it since May. That means that it's almost a year since I actually did any work on the second draft. Which is sort of pathetic. It's not like I haven't been doing other good and productive work in that time, but still...

My trouble right now is that I don't have the time. Or at least I don't have the time consistently. I mean, this past week I managed to play about fifteen hours worth of video games and read four hundred pages worth of fiction, as well as take in a movie on Friday and go out to dinner on Saturday. This coming week, however, I won't have time to do even half of one of those things.

So I could work on Fire and Jade, but it would come in scattered fits and stops, a dozen pages one day and then nothing for two weeks. Since the whole point of the second draft (and for this very, very scattered novel in particular) is seeing the whole picture, turning the parts into something that works together, I just don't think that's going to fly.

I could really use, say, a month off. I'll get one of those in August. The trick is going to be keeping my enthusiasm high until then.

I discussed, a while back, the possibility of my sending a query to Marvel Comics, and at the end of that discussion the possibility became a reality. I followed the instructions and detailed both my writing experience and why I want to write for Marvel.

I got a response today. It's a form-letter that says "hey, sure, send us some stuff to look at." I assume it's a standard sort of letter they send to everyone who sends them a query, which makes the process of sending the initial query sort of pointless, but whatever. The letter asks me to send a sample to the Submissions Department but that I should "please... not send stories using [Marvel's] characters."

Which puts me in a conundrum. They don't want to see work with one of their properties, but it's close to an inviolate law of nature that Marvel doesn't publish creator-owned books and they've only maybe thrice in their history put out books that don't take place in some variant of the Marvel Universe. This is a pain, because most of the ideas I've been kicking around are ideas for Marvel and deal with Marvel characters and places and concepts. The comic ideas that don't are either specific to something else (DC) wouldn't fit into the Marvel Universe and are therefore pretty much right out.

At the same time, all they asked for was a sample of my original writing, not a proposal. That means that they're concerned about my ability to string words together, to produce snappy dialogue, to understand the mechanics of sequential art. They're not concerned about the larger picture of the book; the overall story, the other characters who might appear, the direction of the thing. In that sense, I can toss almost any characters at all into a ten-page script excerpt and it sort of won't matter. But if that's the case, why keep me from using a Marvel character?

So, I'm a little at a loss for what to do. I'm going to send them something, but I don't know what. I can't send them something of theirs and it seems silly to send them something of mine. So, please discuss. Make a recommendation. Give me advice.

(By the way, I assume that I should be sending them a script and not, say, a short story or some other prose. It wouldn't be unheard of for a short story to be the "script" for a comic, but a short story doesn't demonstrate the understanding of sequential story-telling that I mentioned above. Of course, I could be wrong about that - maybe they want to see prose. I just don't know. Aaargh!)

I'm not long on the commentary for this one. I'll simply say that even though not all of my DVD demands are met, many of my demands are met before I can even concieve of them. Observe:

Pete & Pete

Clarissa

As I've said before, and as anyone who's known me for a while can probably attest to, my parents are just fucking insane. Today I received further proof.

I checked my mail and found an envelope from my parents. Inside said envelope was a note and a newspaper clipping. The note read "don't go mountain climbing." The newspaper clipping was titled "American climber dies on Mt. Everest."

My parents usually have some logic underlying their insanity, no matter how twisted it might be, so I figured I'd read the article to see if I could find it. And there it was, plain as day, the first word in paragraph two: "Seattle." The dead American climber was from Seattle.

In a way I suppose it's flattering, and not just for the concern. I mean to say that my parents clearly think I lead a tremendously interesting life; the sort of life that would prompt me to head off to the highest peak in the world (or some other mountain, I guess) and climb it over, say, the course of a weekend. I laugh, but that's the sort of crazy I can appreciate.

I saw the picture below earlier today and it had me floored with a long fit of laughter. A very long fit of laughter.

For no discernable reason whatsoever my neighbor's wireless signal started interfering with my own yesterday. I hadn't changed any of my settings, so I can only assume it was something on their end. (Please note that I use the word "neighbor" loosely here. It could be the person in the apartment next door, but this is wireless in Seattle so it could equally be a person two floors down or in the next building over or across the road and up the street. That's why I didn't knock on the door to see what was up.) I fiddled with my settings for a while to try to get it back to normal - I changed the channel my stuff was working on a few different times, I changed my WEP Key, I reset the modem and router, etc.

Nothing came of it, so I called tech support. First I tried Comcast, my fun ISP. They were sympathetic and kept me on the phone for about forty five minutes, but ultimately had nothing useful to say at all. Then I called Dell, whereupon I spoke to a fellow who identified himself as "Sean." He was friendly and earnest. He's also Indian, as is Dell's entire help desk, and his name is no more Sean than mine is Jasamita. I know why this happens, but I still think it's silly and, more, doesn't ultimately help anything.

Anyway, after an hour and a half on the phone with Sean he gave up on me and transferred me to his manager, who I spoke to for another two hours or so. The people at Dell are very friendly, but not always the most helpful sorts. For example, this is the end result of my time: My internet works again, seemingly stably, though God only knows if that will last. However, I now seem to be running it from a different bit of software than previously (from the card software instead of the router software, I think). I also had to disable my WEP, because it apparently interferes with my ability to connect to my router (funny. It never did before...). I have a firewall now, but the only thing it seems to stop is port scans from my router.

All of which means that I've effectively insulated my computer from myself. I used to know how my network dealie worked, more or less. I knew which program was running it, at the very least, and I knew the different ways I could muck with it (and put it back) in order to get something done. Right now, I've got no clue at all what makes the thing tick. I find this very annoying.

SWEET HEAVENLY FUCK YES!

"ERIN MCKEOWN and NETTWERK are proud to announce the release of MS MCKEOWN's fourth studio album, WE WILL BECOME LIKE BIRDS. the album will be available in stores in NORTH AMERICA on the 28th of JUNE."

June 28th. How many days away is that? 42. Of course!

Maybe I should take the summer off to follow Erin around on tour...

I was trying to remember something just now. Not a fact or a bit of knowledge; I was trying to remember a snippet of conversation, a comparison between two things that I'd heard someone make a little earlier today.

I couldn't remember.

And I thought, "well, no big deal. Let me just Google for it."

On the one hand I'm horrified that my memory is so feeble, that I've let the tiredness and lack of sleep over the past few days build up and hit me as hard as it has.

On the other hand, the idea of a search engine that has the contents of your brain archived and call them up by relevance and key word is just cool. Hardly a unique idea, I expect, but very cool.

I'm posting about it here so that I'll, you know, still remember it tomorrow.

Bekah hit me with this one, though I'm pretty sure she only did it 'cause I teased her so much about making me an afterthought.

I like this particular quiz because it uses the word "film" a lot and that's a word with a lot of baggage. Nevertheless, it's a short questionairre, so I'll try to keep from being cheeky.

1. The last film I bought:

It's been quite a few months, so my memory isn't at 100%, but I think it was Saved!. That reminds me, though, that I really need to get around to buying The Incredibles sometime soon...

2. The last film I watched:

Unleashed. It was pretty fun, both on its own merits and also because I really never, ever expected to see a mix of Snatch and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in the theater.

3. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:

Limiting this to just five is hard. Anyway, in no particular order:

The Last Unicorn (Also: The Last Unicorn. So cool!)

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Mallrats

Swingers

4. Finally, tag five people to do this meme (let's hope they don't skim this one!):

Marc

The Bard

Jon

Gus

Brian

Captain Caveman

"O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy."

I just checked the news and it turns out that, for once, the news is good.

I'm not stupid enough to think this really means anything. There's still the Senate to worry about, and an asshole with a veto stamp after that, but this thing that just happened, this is good and I don't want to hear about any of the rest of it.

I'm crying about this. I mean, there are actual tears tracking down my cheek right now.

"Congratulations" isn't really the right thing to say to me here - I mean, I didn't do anything, there's nothing to congratulate me on - but say something nice to me right now, please, because I'm really fucking happy about this, and I want people to be happy with me.

In my class on Japanese Conflict we've been reading accounts of union protest movements. One of these unions was with a company that, in order to preserve anonymity, the author referred to as "Unikon." Now, I figure most people here can sort of figure what that brought to mind.

So, yeah, throughout class discussion the past week I'm sitting there thinking to myself "don't say Unicron, don't say Unicron, don't say Unicron..."

I'm happy to report that I was successful.

Deep in my heart of hearts I have long known that no matter how bizarre and fucked up Reality TV gets here in the US, the Japanese will undoubtedly find a way to top it. I now have my proof that this is true.

I would summarize, but you really do have to read this to understand the full impact.

Note for Lukas: Remind you of anything in particular?