Brendan Peveril . net

How tricking people works…

Filed under: cautionary tale, crazy guy, A thought — Brendan @ 11:04 pm

Man, if you’re going to make a fake alien video, you’ve got to make it embarrassing. Make it look like something no one would fake. Like, maybe it’s a video of your hideous mongoloid child looking kind of sad because only two other kids showed up at her birthday party (been there, it really is sad) and an alien knocks on the door, but he says he has the wrong house when he sees how lame the party is.

Or, maybe it’s a video of two ugly scabby people having sex, the cameraman making inappropriately aroused sounds. Then, what’s that? Bigfoot is looking through the window and jerkin it? That’s crazy! Then release it, but only release it with the alien part, and just a glimpse of saggy lesion covered ass, so people will be all like, what’s up with that? Then when they make you show them the whole thing, they’ll be astonished by what they’ve seen and won’t notice that bigfoot has a zipper down his back.

Also, bigfoot should not join in. I can’t stress that enough. Just saying that is making me gag.

Last thing, it bears mentioning that he suspected that someone was spying on his daughters, and it took him 5 years to get around to examining the tape closely. FAIL. His teenage daughters are probably old and fat and have three kids each by now. People age differently in Nebraska, don’t ask me how. They could star in my bigfoot sex tape.

I realize that this is old news, but my baby brother has gotten his site going again, and it made me feel shame. He’s not technically the baby, but I think it’s funny to call someone who is bigger than I am and could probably smash my drunk ass like a worm a baby. Also, I paid money to host this thing, what am I doing not posting for three months?

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Working…

Filed under: cautionary tale, writing, the future, crazy guy, disorganized mess — Brendan @ 12:18 am

Let’s see, I’m tired as all get out, so I’ll bullet point this:

Hallowed: Slowly nearing completion.

A Deeper Shade of Gone: I’ve got some artists lined up, and I’m considering hiring someone to stab Shamus if he doesn’t show me some more pages soon. I’ve even started a couple of new scripts, so there should be lots of content soon (in theory).

The Martyr: Tentative title of an upcoming collaboration with an associate from my past. It will probably be a while, but I’ll leak a page here and there. Expect a comic consisting almost entirely of people screaming at each other and getting kicked in the face.

Novel: As yet un-named, and kind of unfocused; you’ll hear more in the future!

So very tired.

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oops, damn

Filed under: cautionary tale, comics, writing — Brendan @ 10:36 pm

I forgot to mention something. Another comic project has taken another step toward happening.

To quote the artist:

are you still keen on that comic? I think I have the time starting like now

to which I responded:

Umm, yeah, I’m all about the comic thing.

… I post things I said in emails in my blog.

Anyway, some details. The comic will be called Really Good Advice. It will be an advice column, done in comic format. For now, it’s mostly just things that pop into my head that I am interested in giving you advice on. If you have a burning question, you should email me, unless it’s burning in your “private places” in which case you should go to a doctor (that’s some really good advice right there). I will mix actual questions I can answer in with the fake ones I made up and wish people would ask me. I will not tell you which is which.

I don’t have a URL right now, or anything to give you. Just get excited, okay?

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What the…

Filed under: site shit..., cautionary tale, comics, writing, pieces, news — Brendan @ 7:52 pm

I have a place where I can type things and imagine that many people will read it. Of course, I can also look at the site stats and see that… nobody reads it. It’s like I’m writing this in a diary hidden under my pillow, really. Following are bits of news related mostly to this site.

—

Here’s something cool. Neil Gaiman’s story How To Talk To Girls At Parties is available both as text and audio here. Gold if you’re too cheap/poor to buy the book it’s in right now, like me.

—

Work rolls on with A Deeper Shade of Gone and Hallowed. Shamus is working away at that first page, but apparently he’s having a few problems. I’ll post it as I get it. Hallowed is still in script form, but I’m getting closer and closer to the point that I’m ready to start aggressively seeking and artist so I can get a treatment out. Any artists who stumble across this should get in touch with me if they’re interested in taking a look. There will be much blasphemy.

—

I’m looking at a new short story too. It’s a solid idea, it straddles genres, it’s staying in my head; all of the good things. Now, one way to learn to write good stories is to read good stories, but there’s a problem with that for a beginning writer. To sell a story, Hell, just to get someone to read a story, even if they get it for free, you need to hook them with a killer beginning. I can read good stories by other writers until my eyes bleed, but most of them will be by writers already established as good. Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Theodore Sturgeon, they just don’t need as strong a hook as I do. I’ll read the whole story no matter how weak the beginning is, because I know it’s good. If I find a story by an unknown, though, I’ll not bother to finish it if the beginning is weak, because chances are that the whole thing is.

I’ve got a killer story, with a compelling narrative, a delicious twist, and a startling twist on the twist (which I hesitate to call a meta-twist, it’s more like a re-twist), but no fucking hook.

Anyway, I’m dangerously close to turning this into a lecture on literary theory, and nobody enjoys that. I’m out.

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Fast Breaking News

Filed under: humour, cautionary tale, sci-fi, Internet — Brendan @ 9:55 pm

I was going to hold out until I had the story I mentioned earlier all typed out, but I had to to share this. Apparently, if Russians encounter alien life, they will eat it. All ethical discussion of whether or not alien intelligence is a viable food source or not aside, that shit’s fucked.

Turns out it’s not an alien, it’s a guitar fish, but still, that’s awesome.

This is all courtesy of Mr. Gaiman

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My new best friend

Filed under: cautionary tale, crazy guy, Internet — Brendan @ 9:32 pm

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.

BEHOLD!

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:

On the same page where they complain that Wikipedia criticizes their “”faith-based” approach towards fact verification that ignores standard research methods” they cleverly point out that, “only 10% of Americans accept evolution as it is taught in public school,(Citation Needed)”

“Already Conservapedia has become one of the largest user-controlled free encyclopedias on the internet.” yet, they’re the smallest one I can think of by more than a factor of ten. An encyclopedia has to be a group effort, probably why there are so few. I guess Conservatives are lazy. Where are your beards, you filthy conformists? I can’t tell the difference between the boys and the girls!

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!

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Last day off

Filed under: site shit..., cautionary tale, sci-fi, writing, the future, crazy guy — Brendan @ 12:24 pm

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.

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More pieces.

Filed under: cautionary tale, writing, only dreaming, crazy guy, pieces — Brendan @ 9:58 pm

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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If you see the end of the world, yet you do nothing, is it your fault?

Filed under: essays, cautionary tale, the future, crazy guy — Brendan @ 11:39 pm

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:

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:

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

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Pieces

Filed under: cautionary tale, writing, crazy guy — Brendan @ 7:13 pm

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?

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August 24, 2008

How tricking people works…

July 17, 2007

Working…

June 3, 2007

oops, damn

April 15, 2007

What the…

March 11, 2007

Fast Breaking News

February 26, 2007

My new best friend

February 12, 2007

Last day off

February 10, 2007

More pieces.

February 6, 2007

If you see the end of the world, yet you do nothing, is it your fault?

February 4, 2007

Pieces

Artists

Brendan elsewhere on the web

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