Bleeding Fiction

Comments weren't working quite right for a while, which kept me from blogging. I mean, what's the point of entries without the possibility of feedback? Anyway, that's mostly fixed now. Please comment freely. I'm working on hooking TypeKey up to the blog, so my commenters can become Trusted and get their posts fast-tracked, but until then everyone will have their comments subject to delay, pending my Authentication. Not that big a deal, really.

I'm still working on changing the layout of the new blog - particularly into adding all of the old links and things. If anyone has any templates to share, I'm open to recommendations. Also, I'm still trying to get all of the old blog's entries uploaded. Hopefully, that won't be too much longer.

Actual content will follow presently.

Thanks to Bettina, my wonderful blog host, I've been looking at some MovableType styles to use for the blog instead of this crappy one. I've narrowed it down to three, but I'm in an indecisive mood today and just can't coose between them. So, in grand intarweb fashion, I'm polling my readers. What do you think, folks? Do I go with:

Option 1

Option 2

or

Option 3

Vote now, or forever rest in peace.

On the old blog, the outdated one, the blog that is, let's call it passe, I mentioned Snakes On A Plane. It's a movie, opens on Friday, stars Samuel L. Jackson. If you don't know about this movie, you don't spend enough time on the intarweb.

Anyway, here's Jackson's appearance on the Daily Show, to talk about this movie. The man's enthusiasm, his pure love for what he's done? It's infectious.

It's hard to talk about the wonder of a thing that meets your every expectation. It's harder still when youre expectations were all for awesomeness. Snakes On a Plane hits every bit - every ridiculous stereotype, every dumb cliche. This isn't art house cinema here. It's a B-movie that's become sublime. I don't think I've ever clapped, just out and out applauded, so much in watching a movie.

I won't tell you any more about. I don't need to; you already know. It's like this: It's the 1980's. Someone gives you a camera, Samuel L. Jackson, an airplane full of colorful characters and a bunch of snakes. What would you put in the movie you would make? How would you kill the characters? What would Sam say? How do you stop the snakes?

You've written this movie already in your mind; you've seen it a thousand times in your dreams or your laughing talks with friends. Only now, someone's taken it out of your head and put it up on screen. Complete with power guitar. It's worth a thousand times the price of admission.

I won't say that a lot has changed for me in the past few months, since last I was regularly posting. But two weeks ago I joined the ranks of the semi-employed. Somewhere along the way, someone said they were giving me an internship. But my title is "Graduate Student Assistant" and they pay me a somewhat respectable wage (which, sadly, does not include tuition). So let's just call it a part time job and leave it at that. I work, by the way, in the International Students & Scholars section of the University of Washington's Office of International Exchange.

What a fucking mouthful.

It's pretty awesome job, all the way around, at least from my geeky perspective. I'm learning half an alphabet's worth of visa regulations, I'm helping to create sustained systems for the office's operations and I'm going to do some low-key student/scholar advising soon. It's being "in the trenches," as it were, for one of my possible jobs post-graduation, and I'm loving it. Add onto that fun the fact that I'm largely free to set my own schedule and that the folk I work with are just friendly as hell, and it's a very rosy picture indeed.

Two weeks ago, my iPod broke. I charged it up and listened to three or four songs before it froze. It didn't play music or respond to any of my button-pushing. Then it's battery died. I charged it up again once or twice, but the iPod gave me the same reaction each time, and no amount of fiddling with the settings could force it to do something different. "Suck," said I, since I like having an iPod.

But I remembered that the thing is still under warranty, so away I went today to get my Pod replaced. In the past two years technology has advanced far beyond my old Pod; other, newer machines laughed at the thing as I walked into the Apple Store's air-conditioned white plastic nirvana. The girl at the help desk held my Pod as if it were a soiled diaper and threw me a look of pity. Then she brought out a new Pod - 60 gigs; larger, full-color screen; plays videos; hip black face; a device in all ways superior to the sad machine I'd walked in with. And she gave it to me for free, no questions asked. Behold the power of my warranty.

When the girl asked if I wanted to buy a two-year warranty for my new Pod, for $59.99, I jumped at the chance. My old protection had just worked out wonderfully, after all, and the new warranty was $20 less than the last one. The way I see it, it's like buying the new Pod I'd have to buy in two years now, only at a cost of $60 instead of $300. Not a bad deal.

Now I'm no fan of planned obsolescence. I'd rather a thing work right for years than have to be replaced. But when the replacement is such a functional step up, I'm inclined to be magnanimous. Now if only my computer'd had the disk space on to store all of my old music...

When I restarted this blog, I had the option of keeping the Fables site, too, but I decided not to. We won't be seeing the Fables back up on the intarweb anytime soon.

Which doesn't mean I'm done with them. I've been working on them (slowly, slowly) over the course of the summer, and I'm now pretty much a good idea and seven chapters away from a functionally complete second draft. Once that's done (another three months, the way things are going), I figure I'll start sending it around to agents. I hadn't originally ever planned on doing that - the odds of getting something you've posted online published are poor, to say the least - but I'm really proud of the work I did on the Fables, so I think it's worth at least a try. I'm nore comfortable making that try if they're not sitting up online for all to read for free. I hope that makes sense.

It also should not go without saying, by the way, that I really appreciate (and am deeply flattered) that you even remember the Fables after all this time, much less still want to point people over to them and encourage them to be fans. That's really, really awesome. Thanks.