I don’t have much to say tonight, I’m a little burnt out by writing other things, including a project I’d given up on but I’m rekindling as an Intarwub! exclusive. More on that later.
I did finally get a new cable for my real camera (and by “real” I mean “shitty and borderline useless, but at least it doesn’t also make phone calls”), so there are some higher resolution boring pictures on Flickr (over on the right there, kids).
THAT IS ALL.
Not since I discovered Freerepublic.com have I been so amazed that someone is willing to put so much more effort into to making sure that I can hear their opinion than they do in forming it.
Have you ever noticed that when liberals have a problem with something being too conservative, they work to fix it, and make it (in their opinions) better, while conservatives say, “Fuck you, libs, we’re going to make our own Wikipedia, that allows quotes from the bible and xenophobic rhetoric to count as evidence!”
Let me share some of the highlights that I turned up in the few minutes before my eyes started leaking blood:
To be fair, they’re only a few months old. I’m very interested in seeing how this pans out. In the mean time, though, if I’m ever looking for bible quotes that can be used as evidence that the homos are super-bad, Conservapedia will be my first stop!
So, I keep talking about the new fiction project. Here’s what it is:
A news blog, set in a post-apocalyptic-oid future, documenting the crumbling of society. Creative types of any medium will write stories, stage pictures and shoot video of what’s going on in this theoretical age of economic standstill, societal decay and environmental collapse.
Rather than setting up a relatively simple fictional world where one sits down, figures out what the main focus of the story is, and patches together the external details (the ones not central to the story that make it seem believable), we have several people, trying to think out as much of what’s going on in the world as possible. Then, within that world, we find the stories ourselves.
I’m not sure if that’s as coherant as I wanted it to be, whatever.
If you’re interested in this, and you’d like to contribute to any stage of it (the planning, or the actual implimentation), let us know. We’re open to anybody’s ideas, and any area or level of expertise would be appreciated.
So, one of my oldest friends wrote a story and tricked someone (or bribed with all of the finery a grad student’s income can afford (bjs are free!)) into publishing it. I am hell of jealous.
You can read about it here. The publisher’s site doesn’t really seem to work in the usual sense (read: at all).
So the DVR recently recorded my favourite episode of the X-Files ever and I realized that the guy in it, the guy I knew I’d seen elsewhere and had a lot to do with it being my favourite episode, was Bruce-motherfucking-Campbell. I’ve gone years, I’ve seen the episode a few times, and it didn’t click. I’m a moron.
Now, realize that I’m bareing a part of my soul here; I’m aware that there are some episodes of the X-Files widely regarded as better, but don’t beat up on me. I came to it late.
It’s why I’ve been quiet for the past few days. My gang of writers, creators and degenerates and I have been kicking around ideas about a massive collaboration project that will be such a goddamned mess that everybody will have to love it. It’s knd of a scifi-journalism thing. It’s awesome. I’ll post some more details later, when I’m less exhausted. I’ve put off the planning for tonight, though, so I can get down to the best part, the writing.
Dig it.
So, I took a couple of days off for my birthday (yesterday), and I haven’t gotten as much done as I’d hoped. I’m not sweating it, though, as I’ve come up with some massively awesome ideas about fiction, specifically an exciting (to me, anyway) new way to go about the whole storytelling thing. I’ve got some potential collaborators in mind, so some people who read this should expect an email about it soon.
Some of you have noticed that the whole comment thing doesn’t really seem to be working. I don’t know what’s up with that. It will probably start working again at some point, we’ll see. The web-nymph is all over that shit. For now just email me if you want to say something.
Also, since the comments are boned I haven’t been able to add this to the comment to my doom and gloom end of the world post. Jeremy sent it to me, and it ties in with the whole social decay thing going on in New Orleans.
I had to use tinyURL, because the actual URL seems to be the only thing consistently making wordpress lose its shit…
That’s it for now, my head is buzzing with mad fictions.
So, Invader Zim. I know some people who have told me that it’s great, it should never have been cancelled, etc. I’ve seen a few episodes, I liked them well enough, so I got a copy of the first disc so I could see all of them. I’m disappointed. I wanted to like it, I like Vasquez’s other work, I like humourous tales of alien invasion, I like all of the parts of it. I don’t like it, though.
Oh well.
Here’s another piece I wrote a while ago. I paired it with a project that doesn’t amount to much more than a title, Dirty Flowers. I think it will be a comic, a scifi piece about cybernetic implants, a kind of post/pre cyberpunk thing.
The bit in question has nothing to do with implants, though.
No matter what happens, we’re locked in our skins, alone from the rest of the world. Nothing can really touch us in that one place that we all need to be, and long to be, touched. So much of our time is spent countering this horrible solitude with creature comfort, and aquaintances, and sensations, but none of it breaks that immutable wall of consciousness. We’re all so goddamned alone that it makes me want to…
I still can’t decide what she wants to do. That’s not the ending, though.
Can we be alone together for a little while?
That’s the first ending I wrote. But I don’t like it half as well as the second one I wrote.
When I press my ear to the wall, I want to hear you breathing on the other side?
Even if I don’t use that piece of it, I’m sure that the project as a whole will make me rich. Well, maybe not rich, but famous. Okay, not famous either. I don’t know what it will do.
Also, now that I’ve re-read it, it has everything to do with implants.
This is actually continuing that last piece I posted. I didn’t like leaving him where he was, it left too much unsaid about the character, I felt. He’s not such a bad guy, now that I’ve had time to think about it. The following comes right after “But I guess it was worth it.”
I don’t want all of this to sound like I didn’t love Lily. I did, and I still do. I always will. Sometimes I still wake up and think I have sand in my hair. I reach for her, but we didn’t sleep on the beach last night. Sometimes I think we’re in the mountains, in the cabin, the fresh snow on the porch, just waiting for our bare feet to melt perfect footprints into it. But that’s all gone now, it’s all gone. I’m just confused.
Anyway, that’s how I got away with murder.
Polly’s death was another thing, though, it ruined me. Maybe I was already gone, just looking for a way to show everyone, but she was the nail in the coffin. Polly was one of a kind, she reached inside of me and squeezed. I’d never felt that way before, and I don’t think I can feel it again.
She was like a golden eagle with a broken wing; so exciting and powerful, she made you feel invincible, but she was so fragile and so damaged. She was a mediocre actress and a terrible artist. Her world was intoxicating and enticing, broaching on the seductive darkness I’d railed against for years as a cop. Darkness was what I needed, though, or what I wanted. We rampaged through those mad nights, full of coke, booze and sex, spiraling together toward some end, either nirvana or death, maybe both.
The ringing phone ended the spiral, though. I was wired, up for two days. Charlie told me, on the other end, that Polly’s old ‘vette was hit by a bus. Not her fault, not even with the damned pharmacy in her bloodstream and the open wine bottle on the passenger seat. The bus driver had been arguing with a passenger and he’d hit a patch of ice. My balance was so fragile that just a random thing like that could knock me down.
I made it there running before the ambulance did, but not before she died. I hauled her out of the wreck and held her one last time. My broken baby bird. When the paramedics finally showed up they had to pry me off of her, screaming and wailing. They finally sedated me and Charlie took me home.
I’m a mess, really. Ruined.
More realistic? Maybe. Less completely reprehensible? I’d like to think so.
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