Brendan Peveril . net

So, I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of an environmentalist. Close friends of mine have been known to rail against the environmentalism on philosophical, etc. bases. “What’s the environment done for me? I’m not part of it any more, I’m human.” (easily dispelled, but not worth fighting with a friend) “Climate change happens, extinction happens, any idiot can see that. We’re not doing anything to the planet that it doesn’t do to itself.” (That’s not a completely accurate quote, but the gist is maintained) These arguments are all missing an important point though.

Heinlein (You know me, gots to bring in the scifi refs, my peeps!) once said, “We need to have as many baskets for our eggs as possible. Even if we don’t manage to ruin this planet ourselves [bmp- pay attention to that one], natural disasters or changes–or even changes in our star–could make it impossible to live on this planet.” (I can’t find a non print ref for that, I’ll add it if I find it) Of course, you’ll read this and say, “Shut up and write! Heinlein’s not an expert on any of the things concerned here.” Fair enough, but I’ve been thinking about it. Stepping beyond what happens when the humpback whale is extinct (which would make me very very sad), or when the rainforest is gone, what happens when this ball of dirt, snot and spit is just plain old too toxic to support life? We die, is what.

Think about it. The 20th century saw some fantastic advances in disease control, nearly eliminating infectious disease as something that people in the developed world need to worry about. Nature’s bounced back, though. Excepting the curse of the mummy, were a lot of people worrying about mould forty years ago? What about magic diseases that made herds of cattle’s brains explode? Hell, we weren’t even worried about dead birds ten years ago, and now two things I might catch from them leap to mind, and I’m not an expert on this at all.

If anybody needs me I’ll be hiding under the bed, not answering the phone or the door, wearing a tinfoil hat until the impending apocalypse strikes. I guess that makes me a filthy hippy.
Here are some links from del.icio.us:

U.N. reports on climate change.

World leaders respond to said report:

• Hamerica
• Canadia

Irreprable damage to the biosphere, the thing that biological organisms, like human bodies, live in.

The general decay of society. Remember, we’re all on the verge of eating and raping each other. Also remember, that I’m bigger and stronger than something like 98% of you, so I’ll be well fed and well… whatever the right verb is… when it comes to it.

I snatched some bird flu links from Warren:

• Nigeria
• Japan

When the world’s done, nobody will be able to say I didn’t try to stop it. BECAUSE YOU’LL ALL BE DEAD!

Oops, looks like I left this as private. Sorry

Another piece tonight. I am writing things that pertain to actual projects, it’s just that my fragments recently have amounted to more than a little turn of phrase that I like here and there, and I want to share.

Most detective stories involve a murder and finding the murderer. This one doesn’t. You can’t fool all the people all the time, but sometimes you can make the right people turn a blind eye, like the time I killed my wife. She’d been cheating on me, so I tracked down her boyfriend and surprised her, alone, at his place. Never cheat on a private dick, just doesn’t make sense. I didn’t go there to kill her, or even him. I’m not a goddamned monster.

I jimmied the lock and sat on his sofa for a while, watching the news. She came out of the bedroom in her underwear.

“Hey, baby, what are you doing here?” She didn’t even look to see who it was, she was completely off guard. So off guard, in fact, that she wasn’t ready for the ensuing fight at all. No “This isn’t what you think,” “He means nothing to me,” “I think that things are over between us.” She just leapt to the offensive.

Things were over between us, I was ready for that. Hell, it’s what I was planning to tell her. Things had been so sour between us for so long that I wasn’t even angry that she’d gone looking for it somewhere else. I wasn’t ready for the personal attacks, though. Things I wouldn’t want my mother to hear, didn’t even want to hear myself. We’d been married for six years, what can I say? She knew how to push my buttons. I got mad.

I hit her once, the only time I’d ever hit her, her head snapped back, she dropped like a leaf in September. If the hadn’t hit her head on the counter, that would have been that, simple assault in a case like this is easy to ignore.

I had to call in a few favours though. As an ex-cop I had a list of debts to call in, but the murder used them up. I was lucky, really. Her boyfriend was about my size and looked generally like me. My wife had a type. Some more luck made him a prime suspect in a drug ring, a rape, and he was known to express his anger violently. My buddies were willing to overlook what little evidence pointed toward me and so was the D.A. Nobody owes me anything any more, but I guess it was worth it.

That’s how I got away with murder.

Who is this guy? I’m leaning toward the protagonist/narrator of a genre bending detective novel.

Also, if you’re interested, the title of this post is an allusion to some merch a buddy is selling.

The way I do this writing thing largely boils down to writing pieces until I have enough bits that almost fit together that I can see a story in them. Then I pull my hair out, grind my teeth and chew my nails through the rest of the story.

Here’s the bit I wrote last night:

I pushed back the sleep, rubbed my eyes and silenced the alarm clock. I reached out to touch the cold side of the bed. I was still alone.

The coffee was bitter this morning, I grimaced at it while my bare ass warmed the cold plastic chair. It’s cheesy as all shit to say that her being there would have made none of that matter, but it’s true. I’d barely have noticed bad coffee and cold chairs if I was talking to her, if it was a normal day. The radio chatter predicted sunshine, but the damp air and sullen clouds said otherwise. I had the day off today. If she were here we’d sit in and drink coffee ’til lunch.

I checked the phone, my email, everything. I knew I wouldn’t hear from her, just like I knew she wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have slipped in last night, when I woke up.

It might have been easier if I had left instead. She’d gathered up her stuff weeks ago, but I was still finding things she’d forgotten, or, worse, my own shit that reminded me of her. It hurts to remember, but you can’t forget, so you just try to find that numb place in between with bad coffee and cold chairs. It’s not a great place, but there are worse places to be.

Little bit of advice, so you can learn from my experience: No matter how much she looks like your wife, no matter how drunk you both are, don’t bang your wife’s sister.

So what is that? The advent of some sub-hero? A private detective’s morning? Who knows? I sure as shit don’t.

What am I doing with my life?

It always feels great when you put the finishing touches on something, even something so small it’s practically insignifigant. If it doesn’t get published, I’ll post it here later.

On to other things, I’m making good headway on the Not as Much Fun project, so if you’re a manga-type artist, and you’d like to work with an ‘exciting’ new ‘writer,’ you should be all like emailing the crap out of me. Gone is still going, of course, so if you’re some other type of artist, hell, even if you’re a manga artist, email me already. I’d like to see a fairly comprehensive portfolio, but if you haven’t got one don’t let that stop you.

That’s sort of directed at a particular person, who may or may not know who they are, and may or may not read this. Whatever.