Unexpectedly, I Am Moved to Action

A psychological pseudo-protege of mine, Scrappy the Bear, just wrote a blog about competition. It bothered me for an unexpected reason, which I'll reveal in a second, after explaining how competitive I am.

Competitive I ain't. Competitive is a word I would put on a list of words that least describe me. I have no problem letting other cats have their athletic prowess, their brown-nosing teacher's pet position, their wilding fantastic lives of promiscuous sex, or whatever else they can do better than me. A lot of people can do a lot of things better than me. Do I care? Not really. If I were a species being judged by you Darwinists I'd have gone extinct eons ago through sheer politeness--although pure Darwinism might have trouble explaining how guile and good timing fits into things. I used to care how I measured up to other people, but then I realized it was more entertaining to watch them do things. I feel confident about my own talents and the cozy level of them I've attained through years of careful dramatic poses. I am uncompetitive because I like that other people can do things better than me. The world goes around because a lot of people can do a lot of things way better than I can do them. I do not want to be an athlete, nor an electrician, nor a politician, nor any of a great many things. I already know that the things I do well I do very well, better than most people and not as well as I know I can do them, and that's enough for me. I have no reason to compete.

It turns out that there is one arena in which the talent of other kids has a rankling, scratchy bletch on me. (Shite, "bletch" is considered a real word. Heh.) I am unfamiliar with this bilious rise of "damn their eyes--curse them for breathing, slack-jawed jackanapes." What ghastly turving a feeling it is. And yet not unhealthy, perhaps.... That one competitive arena I have is in writing. And by Christopher Moore's beard, Scrappy the ruddy Bear can write. She's got a lot a damn irritating habits in form and style, sometimes she loses her purpose because she's getting bogged down in being dramatic. These things happen. They can be revised away. But by damn, the girl can turn a phrase, and she writes with soul. It is singularly irritating to me that she genuinely sounds like a human being when she writes her personal essays. A somewhat whiny human being, but that's a good thing. We're all whiny, so we relate to whiny, so it makes her writing real. Sounding real, sounding genuinely there and talking, is so damn hard that I feel compelled to promote her bloggy-wog. I don't like that she done good, because she done better than I think I'm good at doing. But she done good. Y'all should read her bliggity-blig. And nag her when she doesn't update often enough. She almost never updates it.

Nag, nag, nag! Write more!

Come as you are. She needs weird friends.

More detail! More words!

I am in the middle of what will amount to the thirdish and finalish draft of my novel, tentatively titled A Book of Ferryman's Heralds. What is most interesting to me about it, aside from how there seems somehow to be those weird "character" things and "story" things and even some "plot" things is that the third draft is already as long as the second draft. That would seem logical, except that the story is halfway as far in, and this draft has taken less than half the time to write. It's a fascinating thing to contemplate. While I feel that I haven't gotten as far, since the events I wrote today aren't even to the story's technical "midpoint"--an important storytelling term I learned recently--at the same time I feel like I've gotten much further. I think these are the reasons:

1) I'm using twice as many words. That doesn't mean I'm throwing in a lot of "gasps" and adjectives, which is what it could mean. What it means is that I'm taking my time to be thorough in describing things. I did not, as I usually do, rush through and assume that my brilliant images will communicate psychically, my concepts and designs will be clear even though there's no reason they should make sense. Rather I take my sweet time with all the little pieces and use sufficient words and time to describe how they all look, smell, sound, and fit together. Every moment can last a lifetime.

2) I'm giving my characters space to contemplate and to expand on their situations. In the past, I've always assumed that my characters would take care of themselves. I tended to write quite cinematically, just describing what it would look like people did and I'd assume that readers could keep up. That would work all right in the movie version when my characters are acted out as well as they are in my mind, with all the emotional states sort of dancing across their faces. My descriptive powers are not yet where they need to be to keep up with my imagined acting skills, however. And besides, I'm writing a mythologically inclined fantasy. Putting in poetic thought process lends itself to the storytelling.

3) I'm including damn subplots. I've always left subplots out of the novel proper, assuming that the hints and vagueness with which the main characters treated the subplots would be sufficient for the story. Subplots often feel less interesting to me than main plots. But when I started to explain the actions of my main characters to myself during my world-building kick recently I realized that the subplots I needed were really good and very interesting. In exploring my subplots I've managed to discover that my novel as it is can be a good conduit for me to expostulate and explore something I really like, which is various classical story structures. If I imagine character X as the main character, my novel is a classical tragedy--if character Y is the lead it becomes a stereotypical Hero's Journey with a personal touch--and the rest. I now enjoy subplots.

Those are the main reasons. I explain the doubling in words briefly as an increase in thoroughness.

Why I'm explaining: The way I see it, care and thorough treatment are often lacking in creative endeavours. Sometimes we meet writers with a proclivity toward intentional fantasy bloat, and we should not err in their direction. However, if you find that your attempts at novels often seem to stop on page twenty-four, and you don't know how the story goes from there, you may be leaving out half of what needs to be said. I suggest relishing the moments.

And some sweet tunes.

Small-Time Fame, Fragmentation of Community, and the American Dream

In the 1950s, America went through an economic boom. That show Happy Days got it pretty close to right--ironically Happy Days was made twenty years after the Baby Boomer generation, in the seventies when everything about it was sarcastic and meant to justify discomania and to make America feel guilty about the Rolling Stones and doing drugs. In the fifties, a module of the ideal American family became created: two parents and one and a half kids. A stupid average, but that was the average. Suburbs started being built to support the average, McDonalds and the rest of the fast food industry went on a skyrocket trip, and America started to generate a particular image of "normal." You lived in a suburb with your mom and dad and your half a sibling, your dad went to work, your mom kept house, your half a sibling made do with one shoe, half a pair of pants, and a weird set of nicknames. You got a job by the time your were in high school and you started buying yourself cars and radios and records and clothes, and everything was happy days.

This model of "normal" endures in the American imagination, for some reason. A lot of people still live in suburbs, they go to Starbucks and shop at J.C. Penny's. They have a job when they're in high school and they start buying things for themselves as soon as they can. America is trying to be homogenized across the board. Whether you're in Chicago, Florida, freaking Denver, or Houston, you can still find those suburbs designed for one set of parents and their one and a half kids. These people expect that America is all suburbs. Suburbs hold a lot of America's population. One hot and steamy pile of happy to be normal.

All of this is made possible because of pop icons. Pop icons are only possible through mass media: TV and radio and internet make it so Californians and Dakotans and fucking Brits can have the same damn ideas about that Bieber kid and his ilk without ever trying very hard to discover what they actually like. Multi-national pop icons are not so because of talent but only because everyone knows them as such. They caught a marketing break. Good on to them.

Meanwhile there is a layer of fame below the international pop icon, probably six or seven steps down. This layer includes authors like Tim Powers and Diane Duane and David Brin and musicians like Coheed and Cambria and Cage the Elephant. At this level, the kids might have a fan base of several hundred thousand. These several hundred thousand are loyal as all hell, but scattered across the globe. So if you find that you're a huge fan of Coheed and Cambria, you might have a couple hundred Coheed and Cambria fans living within fifty miles of you but not many more. And you might not ever find many of them if you live in a reasonably large city. Additionally, this presents a marketing problem for Coheed and Cambria. Coheed and Cambria need to first market themselves to the masses in order to attract the few that really like them. That takes a lot of time, money, and energy. Hopefully the return on investment is worth it. In their case it seems to be.

This all makes me wonder about bipassing the attempt to draw a massive, multi-state/multi-national audience. I wonder why at least at first one might condense one's efforts. If, say, you live in Denver, as I do. The population of Denver is over six hundred thousand. That's just a bit less than the fan base of Coheed and Cambria--according to the facespace. I wonder how it would be if, rather than beginning by trying to appeal to the massive market of everyone, you tried appealing to the immediate market of your town and nearby towns. One of the things about marketing is that customers buy products from people they like. In my case, my product is my stories. If I'm going to sell my stories then they'll have to like me. I can't very easily nor quickly market myself to a massive audience. But I can more easily market myself to a local audience, an audience of six hundred thousand in Denver and more if I include the satellite states--which I will. Many of my favorite authors have quite small fan bases on the interwebs--less than ten thousand, by the study of a few moments. If I can get one in fifty people in Denver and the outlying areas to think I'm cool then I could be reckoned as successful as many of my role models.

I suppose that's a bit optimistic. Still, it makes me wonder. Conquering my hometown sounds much easier than attempting to conquer the world.

Which brings me back to my original thought: Homogenized America. See, the thing is about homogenizing anything is it makes everything the same. If everything is the same then how do you know what you like? It's all the same. So you don't know your neighbors because they're like you. Everyone wants to find what they like, but nobody can because there's just too damn much to sort through. So the pop icons become more famous because they've floated to the top so they can be found easily. Everyone knows of them, everyone likes them, so everyone feels as if they have this community because they can see that everyone likes what they like. The cycle continues as American homogenization continues.

The whole cycle makes originality very difficult. There may be a lot of people in the world who think that what you're creating is the cat's meow. Good luck finding them in the mass market. Unless--here's the clincher--you think about how big certain areas are, and, conversely, how they could still be manageable. If just the Denver and surrounding areas chunk is considered I could very possibly find a sizable amount of people interested in exactly the product I'm pushing, enough to make a scene.

This is exactly what the American Homogenization Comity--also known as the government--does not want you to figure out. What I could possibly be doing is setting out on the first steps of promoting local community. Le gasp!

'Tis a thought.

I'm not over!

Review: Swamp Thing: The Saga of the Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore

In 1983, DC decided to assign the title Swamp Thing, a then old title, to now-known-to-be-insane writer, Alan Moore. What Alan Moore produced revolutionized comics as a format for horror. My dad tells this story about the Batman movie that Tim Burton made: Batman, he says, was the first movie to "take the comic book genre seriously." Before Batman there were comic book movies. But they were told as melodramatic sob stories, that could as easily have had no superheroes in them. Batman, he says, gave a superhero doing superhero stuff.

As I understand it, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing did a similar thing for comic books. Alan Moore's Swamp Thing was the first comic book, I am told, to allow comic books to be considered in the literary genre--especially the literary genre of horror, in Swamp Thing's case. Prior to it, comics were one thing, and literature was another. Alan Moore helped with Swamp Thing to blur the lines.

Good for him.

If you like a cunningly written story that makes you think in puzzling terms, pick up this one. It's peculiar and interesting, each issue is well structured. It fails in terms of long-term impetus, I think. The largest questions about the character of Swamp Thing himself are answered reasonably quickly, it seems, so conflicts have to come to Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing himself produces little to no conflict. In that way it falls short. I liked reading this volume--the first volume in the run of anthologies of Alan Moore's retelling of Swamp Thing. It left me content, though. The ending of the anthology satisfied me, leaving no mysteries unsolved, no conflict unresolved. The world was at balance.

I view Swamp Thing as a piece of history, beautifully constructed. A museum piece, if you will, if an enjoyable one. It's a good thing to read and understand...but there's better entertainment out there. I feel bad saying that, since it is Alan Moore, and his story-telling never fails in Swamp Thing. Still, he's written more gripping things.

His intent may have been different in Swamp Thing, however. That's something to consider.

Comic Book Review: Spawn

I read volume one of the Spawn anthologies. I've been meaning to read the Spawn books ever since the movie killed my soul. I have a history with the character Spawn, going way back before I read him or saw him or anything.

The movie came out when I was thirteen, and one of my buddies became immediately obsessed with the character. I liked this kid, and I've always had a bit of a follower psychology, so I decided to be obsessed with this movie as well, even though I knew nothing about it. Somehow I found a poster or saw a preview for it after that, though, and thusly saw the look, felt the attitude, of the character Hellspawn. That masked face and impossible cape and green eyes lodged in my head, like the shading of a really good ghost story. It impacted my imaginings and my creativity, and much of my writing secretly had a few drops of an idealized Hellspawn in it, because I never saw the movie when it was released, and never knew it was a comic book.

Years passed, and Spawn lurched around the back of my head, till finally I was driven to wikipedia. I read about Spawn, and the Violator, and the world Todd McFarlane invented. The art impressed me, the stories intrigued me, and the fact that the whole thing was a comic book first totally took me by surprise. I got the movie and watched it, and it did, in fact, shatter some of my childhood dreams. Completely obnoxious.

It discouraged me. Thus I failed to speedily procure the comic book.

Several years passed. I had many adventures, and eventually found my lady love. Among her many charms is a picky love of comic books. She loves Todd McFarlane, especially, and I trust her taste, except in liking me. Spawn's been reintroduced to me as a literary pursuit to consider.

The other day, I saw volumes one, three, and four of Spawn anthologies at the library. On an impulse, I grabbed volume one and checked it out. I read it fast, and these are my impressions:

The characters are great, the world is great, the situations are provocative, the art is as pretty a comic book art as you'd want. It's a good book for the reading. It ought to have movied up something gorgeous. Stupid, careless movie mongers, mutilizing it.

I found the overall plot of the anthology irritatingly vague and diffuse, and the story from issue to issue moves more slowly than I'd like. Each issue has fewer revelations than I'd write into them, which is one reason why it ought to have movied up gorgeously. What ought to have happened is a streamlining of the story, so the important bits were emphasized, and the world was made more smelly, and the repetition was repeated less. The movie ought to have been good. I'm frustrated with the hosers who messed up Spawn the movie.

Overall, I like Spawn. I'll read the next anthology. I want more of this world. Todd McFarlane wins.

Five Act Short Story: Lesson One

In my previous blog, I explained the Five Act formula for structuring plots that William Shakespeare used for every play he ever wrote. Now I'm going to use it to outline a short story that I wrote. Thing is, though, that this short story is a story that I know well, but that I wrote badly. In outlining it, I hope I can improve it. This, being only an outline of the story, will read vaguely. Tell me how it reads to you, and if you like it.

Act I: Introduce Main Plot/Characters/Conflicts

• Main characters of this story: Trick and Moxy
• Trick: a good looking and talented boy with an overdeveloped sense of justice
• Moxy: a good looking and quiet girl who likes to think and be alive and just get along with things
• Main plot: Trick is introduced as a person who is usually kind and generous, but he has recently been controlling. That seems to Moxy to be out of character.
• Main Conflict: Trick has decided that it's his mission to rescue a boy named Hugo who gets picked on a lot. Moxy disapproves of this plan.
  

Act II: Introduce Secondary Plot/Characters/Conflicts

• Moxy likes trick, and she is suppressing it. She has a boyfriend, and she doesn't want to think of Trick that way, and he's never encouraged her to do so.
• Trick is comitted to give a speech at a club meeting tomorrow.
• Moxy's friend, Elizabeth, is introduced: she's abrasive and honest.
  

Act III: Plots Are Complicated

• Moxy refuses to talk to Trick about casual things (invitation to a party). Elizabeth calls her out on this and forces Moxy to really consider how she feels about Trick.
• Trick bails on the speech he'd comitted to give, going further against his character as Moxy understands him.
• Moxy confronts him, and becomes angry.
• Trick behaves resolutely chauvinistic.
  

Act IV: Resolution Suggested, and Described as Both Impossible and Inevitable

• Elizabeth says Trick needs to be taken down a peg.
• Seems impossible: Trick is too awesome, in the eyes of our perspective character.
• It would solve all the problems: A Trick with a lesson in humility would be a Trick restored to equilibrium.
• Maybe this would help Moxy, too.

Act V: Climax and Conclusion

• Trick gets into fight with the people who were harassing Hugo.
• And loses. Moxy genuinely fears for him.
• He realizes that he doesn't have to control everything.
• Moxy begins to actually see him for who he is.

Right. There's the story. Outlining it like this has helped me. Does it make any sense?

Next lesson: um...something good. It's a surprise!

Senza Zuggaro

When in Rome, the only souvenirs I bought for myself were seven or eight packs of gum. Whenever we left a gift shop or a supermarket, and there was a display of gum there next to the check-out counter, I'd get one. These packs of gum had no very special qualities. Some of the brands, even, were the same as in the U.S., just with labels in Italian, and often the same flavors. With a few exceptions, of course. There was a pack of Tic-Tacs I found that are black cherry flavored. Black cherry Tic-Tacs seem to exist only over there. These packs of gum have only the distinction of having been bought in Italy. Even though they are probably all made and packaged in some obscure town in the continental midwest or Belgium or something, it still makes me think of Rome when I chew a piece of the gum.

I went to Rome in May of 2010. And today has the distinction of being the day upon which I finished one of those packs of gum. I think it's the first--though it might be the second--of the packs of Italian gum that I've finished. I don't chew gum too frequently, and I'm always buying new packs of gum, and losing packs of gum in jackets I don't wear too often, packs that'll turn up a while later. As a result of this gum shuffling, I don't finish a pack of gum frequently. And as a result of one pack of gum lasting me a few months, I can sometimes keep track of time with a pack of gum.

Finishing a pack of Italian gum means that my trip to Italy ended long enough ago that I finished a pack of gum. Soon, probably, I shall open another pack of the Italian gum, thus beginning another epoch of time that will make my trip to Italy that much more distant into the past. As I see it, this means I can either become depressed that my trip to Italy is only getting further away from me, or I can see each new pack of gum as a metaphor for the incitement of a period of my life yet untouched by adventure. The former is an attractive option. After all, I shall probably be unable to go to Italy again soon. As I chew this minty gum and remember the particular shop where I bought it--and the smells and the difficulties of ordering a sandwich from a deli manned by a person who's probably inept enough at communicating in his own language to be getting on with, thank you very much--I miss my time in Italy. I miss how the sun shone more gently and the marble-paved streets hurt my feet even through my boots, how the Classical Era ruins littered the cities like dumpsters litter Denver and how the clovers are, unexpectedly, just the same as they are at home. I'm inclined to hoarde the gum away, hide it and save it, as the last of Italy that I still have with me. If I don't protect it, from wind and tempest, will it not slip away to nothing? Lost forever. Perhaps. I don't know.

Of course, if I don't chew the gum, I will never know how tasty it is. If left unchewed, the gum will be useless, lifeless. Better to go find another of the packs of gum from Italy and sample them. Better to treat them like the packs of gum they are, and enjoy them. Or, even better than that, enjoy them and share them, and, perhaps, share stories of where from they come while the gum is chewed.

I think this gum metaphor has extended from what I originally intended. How it has expanded is obscure to me, just now. I think I'll go share a pack of gum with a stranger in a tea shop, though, and see what stories I can buy with it.

An Open Letter from Lt. Oliver Twisted to the Members of Spiritus Ex Machina

In October 2023, this letter was sent to all the field agents of the Spiritus Ex Machina movement, who had been imposing themselves covertly into every layer of Western culture for the past sixteen years, especially the culture in the U.S.A., which was their primary target. Their goal was simple: to insight a paradigm shift. It was stated by The Leader—Gen. Victor Werner—that all Western Culture encouraged its entropic implosion. Gen. Werner stated, “The frictions of living today are causing the future to degrade. Only through remaking today can realness be saved.”Courage by Sly, Gen. Werner said.

Prior to the execution of what has since come to be known as The Witch Hunt—when all the undercover agents of Spiritus Ex Machina rose from their positions in all echelons of society, politics, and the commercial spheres to enact Spiritus Ex Machina agenda—Gen. Werner’s trusted lieutenant, Oliver Twisted, wrote a letter to all primary members of the Spiritus Ex Machina movement. He wrote the letter to make a final recap of policy and technology before The Witch Hunt commenced.

Friends, soldiers, my dear knights, I greet you. You are valorous men and women, brave examples of all values we dearly revere. Courage by sly. Be their Relevant Thing. Overturn the paradigm of today, save tomorrow from barbarians. The world today is clawing itself as a great panther caught in a trap with nothing to eat but its own haunches. Literacy decreases, thought contracts, as populations grow. The Blind Clone populates every crowd, and every crowd cluster to the insubstantive vagaries churned by mills of Western idealism as mosquitoes cluster to bug zappers. The Blind Clone pines for meaning, for some concrete actuality, for some relevant thing to define his thoughts, to fill his heart with warmth. Dear knights, the Blind Clone is ripe for the filling. Let us give him a guiding star. We shall be their Relevant Thing.

Courage by Sly, dear knights. You are positioned in the media, in business, in political spheres, and poised to invent a new paradigm. Western idealism would have the Blind Clone believe that happiness is found in success, that success is found in material things, and material things are provided by Western idealism. We know better: that the Blind Clone can find actualization inside himself. Be valorous, dear knights. First, those of you in the media will unveil your presence. You will awake and you will smile through your teeth at all the Blind Clones, being your pretty, Sly selves, and you will attract attention. You will write entertaining things and you will tell entertaining stories, so that all the Blind Clones wish they were you. Some will turn on all their friends right there, claiming secretly to themselves that they are self-sufficient already, and they require no advice from any of their peers. They will claim secretly that they are self-sufficient, just like those immensely entertaining pretty people they’ve been watching on television and in the movies and reading of in newspapers and on the internet and all over the place. Self-sufficient, just like you are.

Soon after the Blind Clone has fallen in love with those of you in the media, those of you in the spheres of politics and business will create crises. I am sorry, dear knights, but you will be despised. You know that you are righteous martyrs. You know that you will be held up as brigands and highwaymen for your enactment of dire policy that destroys the economic prosperity of Big Business. You will enact such policy as complete and utter prevention of outsourcing. You will encourage entrepreneurial enterprise, and commit inane amounts of money to research and development departments at the expense of production. You will enact stringent policy of quality control, of educating and caring for your employees. You will spend more on materials than on advertising. You will, through your vast wit and classical educations, and all around personability, cause an overturning of every big business. You are positioned respectably in all Big Business. You are respected, admired, appreciated. Your advice is about to cause every American monopoly to raise their prices outrageously. Within months, Big Business conglomerates will begin being forced to sell pieces of their companies. Smaller, private investors will begin reclaiming the illusion—remember this, that it is an illusion—of free enterprise. And because you are in politics as well, dear knights, we are ensured this victory. You will be despised. Your associates will hate you, because everyone will lose money. The public will hate you, because they will no longer be able to afford the lifestyle to which they have come to feel entitled. Courage by Sly. Take strength knowing, dear knights, that you are martyrs to the cause. For when the Blind Clone can no longer live how Western idealism tells him that he is entitled to live, will he not look into himself for his life and find that he is self-sufficient, just like you are?

Be valorous, dear knights, for this will be a long, arduous fight. We are staging a coup against an invisible enemy: Western idealism is an insidious beast with no body. It permeates all solidity in most of the world, and it has been slowly soaking into every worthy quality of this hard reality. It has been crawling out of decadence and greed since the invention of supposed free-thought. The Blind Clone is a statistic, and he does not wish to change that. He is comfortable. So clearly we don’t want to uproot that belief. It’s already there. We may as well use it. Let us redirect it. Through our example, what we will exemplify is: you are unique, just like everyone else. Western idealism is decadence. When corporation falls, the Blind Clone will have no decadence upon which he can rely. That void created, we will fill it with arrogance. The Blind Clone, in search of meaning, will fall on his uniqueness, according to your example, dear knights. He will say to himself that he is a rebel, different than all other persons, exactly as you are.

You are all positioned so as to maintain your inspiration on the masses. Naturally, your presence will initially be enough to incite our paradigm shift. Equally as natural, it will not be enough to carry on the impetus of our campaign. Business will become swiftly diffuse and out of our immediate control. That will not matter, since decadence no longer controls the crowd—consumerism will no longer be their definitive aspect. We will control the Blind Clone through his arrogance. The media will be our forum of control. We are clever, pretty people. We are naturally inclined to control the media. People who entertain will want us to lead them, and we will make ourselves visible, public, and beloved. We will maintain our presence in political spheres, naturally. There must continue to be some other who we can satirize. Politics will be our object of ridicule.

Dear knights, take advantage of cult followings. Encourage their existence. Encourage their obsession with you, their aspiration to be you. Then, when the General calls you to action, they will do as you say.

Fear not, brethren. All for which we have striven is nigh. Take heart: we will save the future from today’s beast.

Signed

Lt. Oliver Twisted

Shortly after this letter circulated among the members of the Spiritus Ex Machina movement, the Witch Hunt was successfully executed. Within a few months every business monopoly either dissolved from the policy enacted by Spiritus Ex Machina agents or they were on irreparable spirals toward dissolution. The government maintained its old impetus in spite of all corporate interest disappearing. Certain branches of the media—the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc—supported the government on the advice of Spiritus Ex Machina agents. In the following confusion of Big Business no longer requiring the media or being able to efficiently utilize them, Gen. Werner negotiated the absorption of all networks, printing houses, and other publication facilities, into one massive umbrella corporation run solely by himself and his entourage. The bureaucracy of the corporation obscured his authority slightly. Anyone who cared to research it learned just enough to be suspicious of his presence. The various media were carefully engineered to appear distinct, as if the messages of their various stances had not been homogenized into the Spiritus Ex Machina regime, when, in fact, the movies, books, video games, etc, produced by the media disseminated Spiritus Ex Machina policy—you are unique just like everyone else, courage by sly—in breadth.

Not long after the successful execution of the Witch Hunt, one hundred thirty-seven agents of Spiritus Ex Machina—approvimately a tenth of the movement—died in manners similarly mysterious to the ways Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Heath Ledger died. Surviving members of Spiritus Ex Machina kept in line and kept scared. Naturally, Gen. Werner has never released a statement about these deaths. Spiritus Ex Machina continues to recruit. Members of Spiritus Ex Machina still die occasionally. Cult followings rule the world. Everyone is a rebel, just like everyone else.

Courage by sly.

You are unique, just like everyone else.

Two?

I just watched The Saphead, a Buster Keaton movie made in 1919. As a Buster Keaton movie it was a little annoying, because it only had a couple stunts. It was an adaptation of a stage play called The Henrietta, and I think it didn't convert well to being a silent film. The inability to explain things through dialogue didn't help it, I think. It had a clever story, but it damn near put me to sleep.

The whole thing was worth it when, in the last two seconds, they show Buster Keaton's reaction to the news that his woman had twins. Giggles.

With Vision

I just watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I had low expectations, because it being Nicholas Cage's most recent flick. I ain't that into M. Cage recently. I was, therefore, pretty pleased to have enjoyed myself watching it. It carried on and remained entertaining, and for being the somewhat childish "magic is cool for kids and adults, too" movie that it is, it was entertaining. But all that takes care of itself. I want to write about the introduction of the protagonist...whose name eludes me... I'll call him Steve.

Steve was introduced in this movie as a ten-year-old. You knew he was the protagonist because he was in the middle of the screen most often. One of the early things which he was shown to do was to be drawing on the window of the bus on which he rode. You didn't see what he was drawing till he was done when his friend said, "You're not supposed to be doing that." Then Steve said, "Just a second...all right, now." And when he said "now," the bus went around the corner, and you saw that he'd drawn on the window a picture of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building which appeared outside the window incorporated into he drawing at that moment. It demonstrated that the kid had vision. He saw things in non-linear compounds of his sedimented experiences, his past experiences inform his present actions. I like the term visionary applied to him. He sees with memory and plans with experience.

The second thing about him which was interesting was how he asked out the leading lady, when he was ten. He passed her a note that asked, "Friend? Or girlfriend? Check one." And you knew, from how the cinematographer had blocked the scenes, that the girl chose girlfriend. He was so cunning and clever and she seemed so susceptible that you knew they were set up to get together. So it was really interesting when you saw Steve next and he was totally awkward and not confident. Character development gallore.

It Feels Weird to Know What's Going on...

I just watched Inception, Christopher Nolan's new flick. And I tell you, especially judging how off-the-wall nutso the whole premise really was, it was weird to actually feel as if I knew what was going on in a movie. It feels strange to realize that I haven't actually fully grasped any of the movies I've seen recently, short of the ones with perfectly linear plots. Even movies as feel-good and enjoyable as The Karate Kid I specifically remember moments where I'd think, "Wait one ear-lobe itching second, that ain't so! It can't be." And I'd smile and sigh, and a piece of my soul would firgive them and die, and I'd wait for the next fight sequence. There were moments like these for actions of the hero, or for glowerings of the villain. There were moments like this that demanded the suspicion of product endorsement, and others that made me suppose that no special-effects person actually has a soul. This sensation of my unbelief collapsing arose after over-simplicities in plotting, or under-simpliciies in dialogue, over vague uses of drama, and over headachey violin warbling.

"That ain't so!" I thought so much. "It can't be. There is no demand for it in the presentation of this story. It is getting in the way." Every movie, even the best of them, had me thinking these things at least a few times.

Inception left me with one un-answered question. And I can put it right here, so I will, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't ruin the movie at all: Wherefore military tech shareage, then, eh? And aside from that one unanswered question, I was, over and again, while watching this movie just smiling, and smiling, and smiling, because my, "hmm, why that particular action, cos?" thoughts which I had directed at the characters continued over and over again to be answered. I was genuinely curious, and always my curiosity was genuinely fulfilled.

At the beginning of the movie, I did have to make a conscious decision to go along with some...let us say, wild plot devices. And that makes it sound as if I went out of my way to be gullible. It wasn't that. The conscious decision that I made at the beginning was to trust these movie makers to guide me sufficiently through their wild world so that I had a good ride, and didn't get lost. Being a cynic, but a generous one, I planned to stop trusting them on the second or third abuse of my trust.

They never abused my trust. Everything there, on that screen, from those speakers, supported that story.

Inception told itself well. Highest praise I can give it.

And the fight scenes rocked. Which I really wasn't expecting.

Shyamalan the Mighty

When I heard they were making an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie my first thought was, "That's insane. It's impossible... I wonder how they'll do it." And when I heard that M. Night Shyamalan was writing and directing it I thought that seemed odd, and not in his genre, and the look of the TV show was not anyway similar to the look of his movies, and I was intrigued and I wanted to see what he'd do. I didn't know what sparks might come of bringing that franchise and that mind into friction. I heard, though, the following anecdote, and it got me twice as intrigued:

M. Night Shyamallamamama sat in a room with the Nickleodeon people, having just finished his draft of the adapted Last Airbender screenplay. It was roughly the size of a Latin dictionary, and it broke the table. So they asked him, "How the hell long a movie are you making?" Six hours, apparently. "You've got to trim the thing, M. Night Shyallamomanny." And he said, "Aw...but...aw..." and apparently looked really upset.

It was in good hands. Or caring ones, anyway. I was content with that. I'd know it was being adapted by someone who wanted to do good by the Avatar lore. What with coming off of various Marvel adaptations and feeling like the people handling many of those were probably Superman fans, and had never picked up an issue of Daredevil in their lives...after cooling off from that betrayal, it really did give me comfort knowing that M. Night Shilohmamainyofacellama was going to be at least as upset as me that adapting Avatar was impossible.

Because, of course, it was.

So far this has all been sort of history, and now I'm going to judge the movie. I find that, as usually happens, my opinion will probably annoy people. I'm going to defend this movie, and defend it with all my heart. Not because it was an especially pretty movie, not because it in any way maintained the soul of the Avatar franchise, and certainly not because it was the next big Shamanlawyermanna movie. It failed at all that.

I am going to defend this movie with all my heart because M. Night Shyamalan took on and did something impossible, and that makes him mighty. And what he did was give every single necessary fact in the Book 1: Water plotline to lay down exactly what the story of that season in the Avatar series is. Me mum, having never watched the TV series, was conversant on all things bendery after seeing the movie. Suddenly she had a topic of conversation with her sons. It was cool. That is what M. Night Shymanlamenoodle did.

People will complain. Oh, it's too short. Oh, it wasn't funny enough. Oh, they ruined bending. Oh, they ruined Sokka, and Zucko, and Kitara, and Suki, and Appa, and they mispronounced everything, and Iro was skinny, and they just didn't fucking put together a worthy representation of the Avatar legend. Yes, yes, yes. So the hell what? Guess what, kids. It was a movie! It was an adaptation of an already excellent TV series. The only reason the movie does or even ought to exist is to have badder-ass fight scenes, and to give just enough knowledge of the storyline of the legend to a layman so that he'll want to go watch the TV series. Sorry to say it, folks, but The Last Airbender movie was an hour forty-eight minute trailer for the TV series. Which would you prefer anyway: spending six hours of your life watching the TV series again except this time with funny looking actors? Or spending an hour and forty minutes of your life dragging your loser friends to see the movie, then them becoming curious enough that they start watching the TV series with you and then they become slightly less losery, and you spend six hours watching the first season of the TV series with them and have a grand old time?

Whatever, dude. I'll take my impossible adaptation and my Avatar conversant mother.

I tip my hat off to you, M. Night Shyllama.

The Stuff That Isn't on My Mind Right Now

Considering how much random bologna--pronounced "bologna"--is on my head right now, I will keep this off-topic. I am happily married to an iguana named Berthold, and he/she/it/shkruda may or may not be gender confused. I will write another blog about that when I learn how to judge the sex of iguanas. On a related note, I haven't seen Godzilla in a long time. But I'm not worried, because he's a grown monster, and if he wants to go out with his monster friends then I'm okay with it. Just so long as he's back before high tide in Antarctica.

Without going into too many details, I think that rastafarians have gotten ahold of my belly button lint recently, judging from the incredibly diverse colors that it has been recently. I think I'll start a collection, then get my sister to make a sweater out of it. I'll sell the sweater to the highest bidder, but only because I think that if they're smoking a lot of weed I can probably trick them into giving me their money for nothing. Then I can keep the sweater. Incidentally: if you're sweating, isn't it too warm to be wearing a sweater anyway? Whoever invented these things was living at the wrong latitude. He missed his niche when he didn't set up shop to sell to eskimoes. Eskimoes, meanwhile, are forced to make their jackets out of walrus. Walruses, for those of you who never knew, only grow wool for their beards. Shaving walrus beards is a hazard to continued physical not-being-punctured-by-walrus-tuskness. That's how I...no, I don't feel like sharing that story tonight.

Now another beastie that hasn't got tusks is moose. Moose have, however, got horns. That's not the most impossible aspect of them, though. Moose, just so you know, are anomolies in the space-time contimuum. You ever wondered why the plural of moose is moose? It's because there's only one moose in the whole galaxy. It's just in more than on place at the same time so it LOOKS as if there are many of it, when there aren't. Don't tell anyone about this, though, because the government is trying to keep it covered up. They will come to your house and steal all your pants if you run around sharing your knowledge of the moose conspiracy. But I'm not worried about that happening to me, because the government has heard all about me. They know I'm harmless.

Wow, this is all really weird.

Goggle Weather

Do you ever find yourself saying, "At times like these I really wish I had a pair of goggles." You know the times I'm talking about: when the weather is angling to tag you in the eyes, the rain and sleet are whirling into your face and you are forced to squint and blunder around, forever in danger of running into low obstacles, passing moose, or off of nearby cliffs. Your last thought, before dying a gruesome death on the rocks below, is always, "I really wish I had a pair of goggles. I would have been all right if I did."

This problem occurs most often in the evening. It can be argued that sunglasses serve the same eye-protecting function as a good pair of goggles might. And this is true, in the sunshine. But come night, and the horrors of whistling wind whooshing white whorling snow into your gawp rise up to howl, sunglasses only compound the problem. Perhaps you can open your eyes all the way, but to what end? Now the dark world is further darkened by darkly darkened dark glasses. At which times above chain of low obstacles, moose, and nearby cliffs is no less a danger than if they were hunting you. (For further meditations on the social problem of moose hunters see elsewhere.)

No, fair night-time excursors. We are all, in this age, ill-equipped to face with fortuity all frowsy frights, frolicking freely from first flight of day till the end of night. It may seem from this speech that my advocacy is with a retreating spirit. This is not true, nor close to true. I believe that this societal epidemic--this gross shortage of necessary accoutrement--can be repaired. We must band together, fair excursors. Call your senators. Mail letters to the school board. Begin petitions. Complain loudly and often that you do not have goggles, that you need goggles, and that you will not stop whining until you have goggles! Together we can accomplish great things. Let your voice/grasp of language communicated via writing be heard/read. We can make a difference.

Goggles are the tool we need to survive.

Knot

I was just skateboarding while listening to "Tu Pauperum Refugium", a motet for four part chorus, by Josquin Des Prez--Franco-Flemmish composer of the Renaissance, apparently, thank you wikiworld--when I was wondering why the ground was getting closer to me. Then it hit me, that I am a mass of weird contradictions.

"I Just Wanna Have Something to Do", by The Ramones, came on my mp3 player as I stood up and knocked the grit out of my scratches. I got back on my skateboard and, as much as I enjoy the works of Des Prez, I decided that the tempo of The Ramones really does fit skateboarding better.

Third submission of "Totem" and the speech

Stardate 21230.6/The Year of Our Lord 2009, September the ninth

Wednesday

Dear folks,

It was actually two days ago. On Monday. All very exciting.

This afternoon I gave an ad libbed speech on the subject of how the Dalai Lama supports the fact that civilization rests on the curiosity of writers. Giving a speech on that topic off the cuff is kind of exciting, I tell you no lie. I think I totally muffed it. I was able to speak clearly, annunciate all my words, and I managed to hit all my points and in the right order without getting lost. That was good. But it wasn't MOVING--unless it was, and I just couldn't hear it. All I know for certain is that no one laughed at the funny parts, and no one told me afterward what they thought. Now I don't know where I messed up, or if I did. I can't tell where I need improvement.

Still, it was essentially my first speechifying gig, and I actually did it. I feel like I've accomplished something today.

Sincerely,

Bouncy Mind

Random Shit Mix

Here it is, the last forty-one minutes of my birthday. I sit listening to the "Random Shit Mix" Abigail gave to me, gazing through the haze of conflicting stimulants at words made to make sense only through my intention. The uppers are fighting with the downers, and my system is exerting its perplexity-empowered self-drugging to maintain whatever fragile balance I'm meant to have. It's calming and energizing at the same time. I am in power, but I am not in any state to exert myself.

I woke this morning intending to write a judgment of the last year, or a "things I have learned", or a breathtaking tale of how I have changed in this year. The issue being I haven't changed. I maintain the same space, I have the same hair, and the same tastes. I intend the same ends, I believe in the same God. I find that comforting.

Last year, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that a year is an unthinkably long time. I remember thinking more than once over the course of this year that it has been passing with exceptional leisure. It has been taking its sweet time, and events haven't so much unfolded as grown like olive trees. It has been a slow, busy, educational and exceptional year. I also feel at this moment as if the time is over suddenly and without warning. Weird mind.

I think Buster Keaton said it best when he chose not to speak.

Good night, esteemed ideas. Take on clothing and walk like men.

Second rejection of "Totem"

Stardate 21209.8/The Year of Our Lord 2009, August the nineteenth

Wednesday

Dear anachronistic cyber spelunkers,

"Totem" was today rejected for a second time. I've wisely spent the interim not exclusively obsessing about the possibility of its fate. I have been working. It's been a busy summer.

Quote of the day: "Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction aims at truth." John L'Heureux

Sincerely

"Snaps"

The Most Dangerousest Game

Yesterday, the Vikings met for the third time. Last month, in our discussion, somebody started talking about beginning stories with dialog effectively. And, as inevitably happens when talking about what we've written, he mentioned something that he'd read that he thought was a good illustration of his point. "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, he said was the story.

A couple days later, this brilliant Viking sent me an e-mail and said, "Hey, look, I found the story I mentioned on the interwebs. What say I lead a discussion on the technique I talked about?"

I was all over that, man. It sounded like a brilliant idea. I e-mailed the link to the other Vikings and said we'd discuss it.

Yesterday at our meeting, therefore, we discussed beginning a story with dialog in lieu of how Richard Connell with "The Most Dangerous Game" seemed to have effectively used dialog to kick-off his story. And we found some interesting stuff. It was excellent educationing.

Here's the story: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/danger.html It's a good bit of fiction.

Fatima

Writing fiction and talking to people who write fiction has taught me that everyone's a sadist. Everyone likes seeing misfortune happen to other people. It's given me a kind of pessimistic view of, like, everything, but in an ironically funny way. Suffering is entertaining, apparently. Weird, but seemingly true. We take a cruel pleasure in seeing people messed with, or messing with them ourselves. Just for chuckles, we're all out to get each other.

Are we all doomed, then, to being quietly and politely evil forever? I posit not.

Sometimes, I see people with a kind of reverse sadism. Two days ago, I was at the dentist, and this fellow walked in, clearly not feeling that great. Feeling bitchy, I thought. And, upon seeing this dude, the hygenist got this huge, wicked smile on her face, and proceeded to try and cheer him up. The thing being that her methods were distinctly insidious. Through evil prodding and jabbing she probably got him in a tolerable mood inside of five minutes. They walked out of the room, and I didn't see the guy again. But I'd talked to that particular hygenist before, and she's kind of contagious.

There she was, taking a wicked pleasure in insidiously causing another human being happiness. It was kind of weird, but not really all that weird.

We aren't all evil, that's what the moral of the story is.... Or maybe we are all evil, but sometimes our evil would prefer seeing happiness rather than suffering. We greedily want our way. That's kind of evil. Maybe some people evilly just want good stuff to happen.... I'm confused, now.