Happy Holidays

Off to Chicago tomorrow. Ready to endure the security delays, the crowded flight, the throngs of family all broken into bite-sized pieces over numerous homes, the endless food, the off-putting sensation of being in a foreign bed, the subtle differences of American culture between Chicago and Seattle, the complete lack of moisture in the air, the rituals, the usual faces, the red and green and the ornaments and lights, the crispness of Midwest air, the hints that snow comes over the northern skies, the gray lick on the streets were the salt trucks left their stains, the threadbare trees which look like upraised bony fingers, the quiet broken by the tinny voices from my mom's favorite AM radio hosts, bulky sweaters, darkness at 2 p.m.

Tonight, we pack. Tomorrow, we begin our own tradition of going away. We shall miss our cats. We shall miss our bed. But this is the time for family, and our antisocial ways begin to ebb. Perhaps it is the primal fear of the seasonal darkness, and we must retreat to greater numbers, numbers rich with people we know. Well-decorated caves, with garland and other greenery. My grandmother will be there, presiding in her 88th year, and that's probably the best gift of them all. She's still with us, and we have another holiday together.

Family Ties with Holiday Ribbon

Finally got through to my grandma, who sounded 'old,' where the spirit starts to take on the weight of a body that's growing too worn out from natural use. There's a deepness in her voice, a bit of exhaustion that lingers to a finality. My mom had relayed to me that when my grandma had her recent spell, she seemed to be giving up the fight. Now, she's back home and comfortable with my mom and step-dad. The medication is keeping her upright and devoid of suffering, but there's little life in her voice. It could be because she's just tired, but the tone makes me want to be there even faster. It's a futile and selfish desire to want to help her. She has all the help she needs, and I want to be there to soothe my guilt for not being there the rest of the time.

But my grandma is getting a slew of visitors. It's almost as if my mom's house has become the Vatican, with my grandma being a cooler, more with-it pontiff. So, she's not lonely. And in a few days, my wife and I will be in Chicago, probably hovering around her too much.

I also suspect that there is a strange low-level tension at my mom's house with a daughter trying to come to terms with a dying mother, and a grandmother who sits and rests in her apartment, thinking about what was and what's beyond that personal veil of twilight when she finally bids adieu to us all. There's things to be said and not said, pleasantries that mask deeper questions about love and mortality. My wife gently reminded me that I should say what I need to so there's no regrets when her passing comes. Words fail me now, and I dread I'll turn into a crying idiot around her. I know I'll tell her I love her, but I don't know what else. Maybe this isn't something to be rehearsed. Just go and be there for mom and grandma (and my step-dad, who I imagine is negotiating this from his own island, understanding the weight of loss after losing his father not that long ago). It's Christmas, and the whole family will be together.

78

A very happy 78 months to my lovely wife. I love you and am happy we have been together for six-and-a-half years. And I know you love me since I'm going to subject you to bitter Chicago cold in a few days when we travel east to see my family for the holidays. Every month I'm amazed how much you love me as well all the kindness and support you give me, even when I'm not looking. You are my love, my center. I hope we are always together and always in love.

First, the good news...

Grandma doing much better. Might even be back home by Saturday. She's feeling better and has new meds to keep her pain-free.

And now, the bad news.

Got a note yesterday from my former therapist (who I might see again starting next February). She had her baby in October, but there were complications at birth, and her daughter was taken off the respirator four days later. If there is anything positive about the death of an infant, it's that the heart of her baby was given to a two-month-old in Minnesota. It's a bittersweet victory at best and news that gave all of us pause at Chateau Du Ryan. I'm going to try to get in touch with my therapist soon, since she's seeing clients again. I don't know what to say beyond "I'm sorry." My wife and I don't want children, but we can fathom the loss when a desired life that's been growing inside an expectant mother comes into the world, only to fade and be extinguished within days.

Education

Last night, we got that call that my grandma was back in the hospital again due to health problems. Apparently, her heart medication wasn't working, and she collapsed. Since she lives with my mom and step-dad, they called the ambulance immediately and my 88-year-old grandma is under medical care. In a perfect world, she'd have open-heart surgery, but at her age, it'd kill her. The best thing we can hope for is the application of a stent, which prolongs the inevitable. The worst news was my grandma, who has been feeling more depressed the more she loses her sight from macular degeneration, seemed to be on the verge of just giving in and calling it a life during the latest emergency.

She's in Chicago. I'm in Seattle. My wife and I were told to hold off from making an emergency flight out and wait until we fly out for the holidays in a week. I pray she'll be around, and be able to take visitors. Maybe she'll be back at my mom's home by then. It's at times like this when I can't help but feel a little guilt, wondering if I had been a good grandson to her. And then I feel a wave of shame. This isn't about me, it's about her as she gets closer to the end of her life. To know your days are numbered must be a revelation to itself. We humans know we shall die one day, but for the elderly, it becomes a numbers game. A question of when.

With my grandma more and more ill, with her body failing, with her spirits on the decline, I can't imagine what she's thinking. I won't be callous and ask her, but I hope that she shares this one last piece of wisdom with me. She'd be the first to admit that she's not a philosopher. She grew up during the Depression, worked in a factory, lost her husband nearly 50 years ago to a heart attack, lost a baby before then, and went on to keep a house and raise two children more or less alone. She's a strong woman who believed in hard work, family, the Catholic Church, polka, bingo, and handmade Polish cuisine. I imagine my world of high-speed technology, apoco literature, superheroes, and vague spirituality would be alien to her, still I know she loves me and I hope she can share what she's learned through the hard times with me. Before she goes, I hope she's strong enough for one last lesson for her distant grandson. I hope for that cinematic moment of her in a bed and me at her side, imparting me with something that will help me remember her as well as guide me. It probably won't happen. Deep down, I know she knows I love her and am grateful for everything she gave me and mom after my dad walked out on us. Maybe all I want is to hold her small, wrinkled hand one last time, and have her tell me not to worry, that's she's a tough ol' pollock, that it'll all work out.

And maybe that's the lesson right there.

So, I guess I get off with a warning

Very odd dream last night, filled with violence and fear. I'm at some weather-beaten dock, something out of a Bogart or Cagney film. All brown and windswept, yet lined in a flowing chrome. I'm in a lower part of this elaborate two-tier structure and men are coming down the ladder. I stand there ready, using a silenced pistol on them. At least 3 or 4 fall dead and I'm terrified that I have killed people. A man I don't know comes up to me (why I don't shoot him, I don't know). I'm panicking now, knowing I'm going to go to jail for murder. The man, dressed in blue and with cold, sharp eyes, coos in my ear that it's all perfectly reasonable what I did. Around me, it's dark and the water is the color of ink and somehow I know the police are close. I don't know if the dead men are the police or if they were anonymous rivals. I try to escape, but I can't find the ladder.

I wake up and realize I should lay off the pixel violence a la Battlefront 2 for a while. Played something like 8,000 hours of it this weekend. Hrm, wonder if that could warp some synapses.

Update: Come to think of it, I went to sleep angry and anxious about this stupid thing happening at work. So, there's that.

Meanwhile...

Took a week off after getting to 55k for NaNoWriMo. Turns out, writing all that text in under 25 days didn't all that healthy for you. I mean, physically, I'm great. Emotionally, I was a scrambled egg, with pressure valves rupturing throughout my yellow submarine*. Subjected my wife and cats to embarrassing fits of low self-esteem and gibbering panic about being unoriginal and "not good enough." Sucks. Been through this crap for too long, and about four months ago I thought I got a handle on it. Last week was one of those weeks where all the stars were aligned against me, if you believe that sort of thing. So, I kept away from the laptop and chained myself to the Xbox and my new DS, where I danced with pixels for hours.

About three days ago, I started back to writing, feeling the urge to create, or maybe just stave off some guilt for being a slacker-gamer again. Sat down and fleshed out the first issue of a graphic novel I'd love to do one day. Completely in the other direction of the text-novel in nearly every way. Different structure, the details are largely fleeting (more like notes to the artist-to-be-named), sparse dialogue. Everything has to count, given the smaller space involved. Feels a lot like storyboarding than writing. I'm not writing it with the idea of panel by panel, but more of a narrative. I know when I go to submit the scripts, it'll have to be better formatted, revised to each house's style. As of now, the only major publisher that has submission guidelines online is Dark Horse, which is a mixed blessing. They make it easy to submit scripts, but I'm not sure if they will go for the subject matter. Vertigo feels like a better fit, but I can't get a read on how they pick up new writers. Oh well. Writing the graphic novel is one of those fun challenges, a la thousand-piece puzzle on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

All things considered, the stress is easing off. Mario Kart DS, Battlefront 2, a loving wife, and a little time all work wonders. Nothing more therapeutic than virtually manning an AT-AT and blowing everything in your path to hell. Very Godzilla. Should be getting back to the novel in a couple weeks. For now, enjoying my DIY superhero adventures.



*Obligatory John Lennon reference for the occasion. If I could choose one modern-era English artist to bring back from the dead for sage commentary, it would be a tough call between Douglas Adams and Lennon.

NaNoWriMo: Day 30

Word count; 2,089
Words written for the month: 55,143

NaNoWriMo complete and then some. And I have a draft of the novel, crude but the last major scene has been written. I sit back and try to soak it all in. Tomorrow, the writers class means for a party to brag or whimper about this 30-day affair with the keyboard. I shall attend with the glow that I went in unsure but I emerged more triumphant than I could have imagined.

I did it. I did the damn thing. I did these two challenges, and my novel is more of reality in one month than it has been in more than a year. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm what I need to be. So many ideas generated, so much momentum, so many times when I could have quit but I didn't. I am a writer, and this month I proved it.

To everyone who dropped by, thank you for your kind words of support. To my wife, I love you more than you can know. You are a blessing.

The end.

Song of the evening: "Paperback Writer," by the Beatles.

NaNoWriMo Day 29

Word count: 1,612
Word total: 53,055.

Just a couple more scenes and I'm going to call it a draft. My lovely wife tells me to be proud of finishing (both NaNoWriMo and novel), no matter how raw it is. So, seeing that she's always right, I'll just stop resisting and do it. Also had another horrible panic attack, akin to the ones I used to have up until a couple months ago, where I would mentally flay myself in fits of comparison and other routines of negativity. Not fun for anyone involved, and I forgot how much it drained me. Back up for 1,600 words in this nightly workout. Would like to get up to 2,000 tomorrow, to close out the month with 55k. Hey, I like big, round numbers.

Song of the evening: "Milkdrunk" by Halou. Laying off the Radiohead for a while when I speed write like this. Thom Yorke and the boys can lay you too low if you let them.

NaNoWriMo Day 28

Word count: 1,122
Word total: 51.423.

About two or three scenes left to go. Took it easy tonight after the first Monday back at work. Had some inner demons attacks this morning, starting back late last night. A lot of insecurity issues that I held off for the past four weeks came leaping back, tackling me, a la Hobbes to my defenseless Calvin. Mostly better now, thanks to my lovely wife and a friend of mine in Idaho. Going to relax. I'm sure I'll break 55,000 before Dec. 1. I can live with that.

Broke down and played a bit of Battlefront 2. Die, ewok, die.

Song of the evening: "Buddha of Compassion," by Galactic Agents.

NaNoWriMo Day 27

Word total: 50,301.

27 days. 21 of me at the keyboard. One head cold. One national holiday. One dentist appointment. 6 bowls of General Tso. A couple dozen Diet Pepsi or C2 cans or bottles. Countless replays of Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief."

I did it. I got to 50,000. I'm not done with the novel, but I beat NaNoWriMo. I can do 50k in 30 days if I want. I can do anything. I am a writer, and that's the bravest thing I've ever written.

I didn't know if I could do it. My wife and I thought I'd meltdown in more places. I lost my way as far as scenes went, but I wrote 50,000 words. They all need work, but I can push myself to believe in a vision to create another 50,000 words. I can make it the rest of the way. I can finish the novel, this beautiful mutant before me.

Right now, I'm strung out with emotion. I rarely accomplish what I set out to do. I never had much ambition. I always put things off, having the darker voices in my head scare me away. Now, I can always say I wrote 50,000 words in under a month. I'll probably flinch at the prose when I read it all in a couple weeks after I get done with the novel, but tonight I feel pride radiating out of my as if my chest was the sun.

There is a messy beauty to this, a type of slippery magic when I write, as if I'm chasing my imagination while running from the inner demons who are a ruthless team of assassins sent to topple to my fragile pillars of hope and wonder. We're all running on some psychic ice, and tonight I had the best traction, finding the balance to move beyond the demons and into where I want to go, the place where I want to be. It is an amazing feeling, as if you could challenge gods and kings and become sunlight at your merest thought.

Tonight, I'm alive.

Song of the evening: "You Only Live Twice," the Bjork remake. Found it online and downloaded it. it's an orphan from a now-nixed project to have modern music stars remake Bond songs. It never came to be, but Bjork's version of the Nancy Sinatra classic remains in perfect carbonite preservation on the Internet.

Tonight, of all nights, the last pair of lines seem to have their own radiant symbolism. I know it's corny, and I know the dream about love, but, as I said, it fits well right about now.

"This dream is for you, so pay the price/Make one dream come true, you only live twice."

NaNoWriMo Day 26

Word count Friday: 1,170.
Word count today: 3,107.
Words remaining: 3,690.

Tomorrow, I reach 50,000 or fucking die trying.

Nothing remains but pain then victory.

Song of the evening: "There There," by Radiohead.

NaNoWriMo Day 24

Word count: 2,016.
Words remaining: 7,967.

Too...much...turkey.

Song of the evening: "When I Eat Vegetables, I Think of You," by The Ramones.

That time of year

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in America, where people gather to eat, watch football, and generally have a dress rehearsal for the family get-togethers at Christmas. Typically, my lovely wife and I try to take this time to hide away from the rest of the world for a nice, quiet meal by ourselves and our cats. We like to think that we are doing this as a last-chance togetherness moment before the insanity of Christmas, but we are just introverts who dread the Little House/Big Number syndrome, where you are stuffed in a house with a zillion members of family and not enough chairs or breathing space. After about three hours, you don't feel sociable anymore. You feel greasy and light-headed. You want to leave, but you can't because, well, you came with your folks and they have the keys and hey why can't you just grin and bear it.

Because our families are in different parts of the U.S., my wife and I are stuck with the task of traveling, an ordeal growing more hideous every year, especially since yours truly is on a government watch list. Since before wife and I were married (and doing that luscious living-in-sin thing), we would switch of Christmas and Thanksgiving, jetting to one family or the other, rotating the destination every year. Last year, wife and I caught a break. We had a Thanksgiving to ourselves and we spent it cooling down and reconnecting. We love our families, but we enjoy our quiet time together, away from work and the social dance that is being with family.

So, tomorrow, we are having Thanksgiving, but we are having family over, a cousin who is alone up in Seattle after transferring in to a new job. Of course we'll take her in. It's family, and eventually Thanksgiving is about family, whether it's 2 or 20 around the table. After all, you gonna eat all that Turkey by yourself?

Things I'm thankful for, in no order.
*My wife and cats
*I have a home, job with benefits, health
*Friends, family
*Respectable amount of sanity
*Outlets to maintain said sanity
*The ability to start every morning being a little bit better than where I was yesterday.

So, to you and yours, Happy Thanksgiving.

NaNoWriMo Day 22

Word count: 2,608
Words remaining: 9,983

Broke 40,000 with a massive effort in less than two hours. Tomorrow night is class, so I might get a few hundred words at work if I can spare it. I should be at 50,000 by Monday.

In other news, I'm about over my cold. Bad news: My wife seems to have acquired it. Not enough Lush in the world to make up for it. So, I made dinner and got her to rest on the couch. She took left her office early today to do some work at home, then go brain dead watching Dr. Phil and Oprah. Just goes to show, if you ever wondered who their audiences were...it's women gooned on DayQuil.

Another mystery revealed.

Song of the evening: "The Ratio of Freckles to Stars," by Halou. Good music to experience with a head cold. Seriously. If you have a cold, pick up the "Wholeness" EP.

NaNoWriMo Day 21

Word count: 2,101
Words remaining: 12,591.

Rayelle tonight, with the fight scene to end all fight scenes, novelwise. Not sure if I'll keep the whole sequence, but I have a good idea of what I want. It's one of those times when you can't wait to show it to someone. Not saying it'll win awards, but it's one of those kinetic writing experiences when you know you brought some serious juice to the proceedings.

Song of the evening: "Super Bon Bon," by Soul Coughing.

NaNoWriMo Day 20

Word count: 1,807
Words remaining: 14,692.
Tissues used: The square root of infinity.

Still getting over the cold. Feeling better today. Rest, some writing, "Viva Blackpool" on DVR, and many thanks to that divine power that kept my wife out of a car accident when she was on I-90 this morning.

All in all, a good day to be alive.

Song of the evening: "Face to Face," by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

NaNoWriMo Day 19

Word count: 1,773.
Words remaining: 16,499.

I thought it would be a bit cooler to switch to a countdown motif than a count-up one.

I also figured if I averaged 1,661 words a day until the end of the month, I'd hit 50,000. Again, it's about the scenes, not the words. Tonight, Rayelle again and a lot of ground covered. It's still raw, and I feel I have to refine the voice more, make it stripped and primal for Rayelle since that's her word. Patrick is more eloquent. Rayelle is feral. Both sides should reflect that.

Song of the evening: "Straight to Hell," by The Clash.

Our favorite dwarf, Sneezy

Have cold. No writing done yesterday. Friday night, just resting and getting an early bed. Perhaps I'll be writing later tonight. Wife went to see Harry Potter with friends and pronounced it very good. Voldemort is back and apparently very creepy. "He has no nose," my wife said, which led to the Monty Python-related joke: "My evil wizard overlord has no nose." "How does he smell?" "Awful!" Being congested, I can relate.

In other more important news, today is the 77th month anniversary of my wife and I getting married. I love you so much and I hope we will be together forever, even if I'm covered in tissues and my blood type is Nyquil.

This morning we got awful news about my wife's aunt, who recently underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. Complications to say the least. She's now developmental disabled, and no one knows what to do.

Song of the morning: "Growing Up," by Peter Gabriel.

NaNoWriMo Day 17

Word count: 1,723.
Word total: 31,746.

Skipped the meet-up/class tonight. Not feeling well. Throat feels raw and my left sinus was irritated, too. Now, here in the evening, the throat is the worst of it. Just this dryness that lingers despite the juice or water I drink. Bought a fair share of meds to make the recent maladies more tolerable. Left work early after a prolonged woozy spell and I might stay home tomorrow, which might be taken by my co-workers as a sign of the apocalypse.

Writing tonight was long and difficult, but fruitful. It's Rayelle all over the place, and I missed writing her. Patrick was interesting, especially his meta-issues, but Rayelle is writing constant action sequences. Very fun, albeit she ends up seeing a lot of near-death action. After a while, she stops being human and becomes a post-apoco action figure. Mad Maxine.

I broke out a few scenes, just randomly beginning and ending them to make some milestones about where I want things to go. Too tired to do full scenes. Should make things easy when feel better. I have a hollow framework. Soon, fill in the details.

Song of the evening: "Falling," by Hana.

NaNoWriMo Day 16

Word count: 3,012.
Word total: 30,023.

3,012, and I topped 30,000.

I believe that, yes, I am indeed the man.

Song of the evening: "Theme from Shaft" by Issac Hayes. Just because, baby. Oooh, yeah.

NaNoWriMo Day 15

Word count: 1,817
Word total: 27,011

Okay, so a little thin on the numbers, but I'm within striking range of 30,000 for Thursday at the latest.

Wrote Patrick's last scene, as well as scene for the novel's middle. I'm not done with him, but I like where I'm at with him. I still need his arrival at the train platform and his scene where he figures out how to double-cross his rival. I've been worried that I won't have it all done. I won't, and by that I'm not admitting failure as much as copping to the realism that i won't have a coherent, all-scenes-included novel. I'll have more things I need to do, but I'll have a framework. Sometimes, I wonder if that's cheating. If I have to wonder, maybe it is.

I'll decide tomorrow if I should go onto Rayelle when Patrick needs work. Maybe with a break from Patrick more ideas will come for him. Let's hope.

Song of the evening: "Get Down Moses," by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.

NaNoWriMo Day 14

Word count: 2,235
Word total: 25,194

If I can get a couple more end scenes with Patrick wrapped up (about three off the top of my head), I'll call it good for now. If I can get to them by Wednesday, I'll be excited. I can move on to Rayelle, who will be easier to write for.

Thursday, I have class. Friday, it's the dentist and then Harry Potter. Not a lot of time to write, but I will be in a better, sleeker frame of mind.

Song of the evening: "Angel," by Massive Attack.

NaNoWriMo Day 13

Word count today: 2,160
Word total: 22,959.

I'm getting lost, and not in the good way. I'm just writing scenes to get to point a to point b, trying to fight off the temptation to scrap it all. I'm getting discouraged, thinking that nothing good will come it, that all of this is the amateurish ramblings of a wannabe writer. Even the prospect of resurrection-through-revision isn't that comforting anymore.

So, I'll call it quits for now, giving myself some rest so I can top 25,000 tomorrow. Was hoping to do it this weekend, but I don't want to embarrass myself with the bad prose vital to achieve victory.

Song of the evening: "I Might Be Wrong," by Radiohead. How fitting.

NaNoWriMo Day 12

Word count from Thursday: Class, but I wrote some I'm not ready to count yet. I will when I use them for a Rayelle scene, which is when I intend to put them into the total.

Word count from Friday: 2,105.

Word count from today: 2,109.

Let's go to the NaNoWriMo Big Jerry Lewis Marathon-style Boards and see what we got.

*drum roll*

Word total: 20,799!

*confetti comes from the ceiling, followed by an avalanche of balloons with "20,000" printed on them.

20,000! Woot! 20,000. Overwrought Krusty-the-Clown hysterics as I weep before the audience.

Now, if I can only get to the closing sequence where Patrick foils his antagonist by, say, Tuesday, everything will be most excellent.

Song of the evening: "True Love Waits (live)," by Radiohead.

Class tonight

So a NaNoWriMo update either late tonight (not likely) or a double helping on Friday night. Will be hard to write Friday night, knowing I have a Netflix copy of "MST3K: Hercules vs The Moon Men" and "Aeon Flux" on the coffee table.

There's only so much a man can withstand before succumbing to temptation.

Song of the evening: "3 a.m." by Dub Pistols.

NaNoWriMo: Day 9

Word total: 16,765
Word count for today: 2,105.

Lacing together a few scenes, filling in the gaps where I leap off one scene and create another to start writing something fresh. After about an hour into a scene, I get a little petulant, which makes my mind wander when I write, so I jump into something new which doubles how fast I write.

Class tomorrow. Bringing my laptop. I type twice as fast with a laptop, and just a little faster with Radiohead in my head. I worry about introducing caffeine into the equation because I just might move so fast I break the sound barrier. Or my fingers. Sound barrier, cool. Fingers, not so cool.

A belated song of the evening: "Sacrifice," by Lisa Gerrard.

Between the know and don't know

A rare mid-afternoon post.

In a turbulence where the novel feels as if it's falling apart, yet tightening up. I can see the answer just out of reach, and I'm writing as fast as I can toward it. I'm about...there...where things will feel a lot cleaner and connect faster. It's almost as if I know what I'm writing before I do it, but I don't know what it is until I do it. Perhaps the unconscious is coming out to play. Out of the blue yesterday, I mumbled something about the relation between two characters that I never thought before, but I'm mulling it over, seeing how the Moebius strip of the novel's characters are becoming intertwined in an cascade of fate-twisting.

Good news at the office. My boss asked me if I wanted to do a mini-review of the forthcoming Complete Aeon Flux Animated Collection on DVD, which took me about .00006 seconds to decide that, hell yes I'll do it. Haven't seen Peter Chung's experiment in cartoony cyberkinetic martial arts dystopian jazz in a long time, and am looking forward to seeing my favorite amoral, nearly-nude assassin who died in nearly episode. She was a proto-Kenny McCormick, who died one week only to reappear the next. Badder than Buffy, nuder than Wonder Woman, Aeon was the dark side of the who Girls Rock phenom in the 90s, back when MTV (which aired the episodes at the time) could be applauded for taking risks as they found themselves growing bored with the media they helped create: music videos.

Just a side note related to the novel, the series "villain" (depending on how you watched the series) Trevor Goodchild was a partial inspiration for Rayelle's antagonist, except this Trevor is a more feral version, Frank Luntz with the 28 Days Later virus. Aeon's Trevor was a futuristic Bond baddie, or (eerily) a young Montgomery Burns with his own Aldous Huxley totalitarian play set. Elegant, cold as chrome, genius with an ego problem. The only match for the nimble and cruel Aeon.

The DVDs are, no surprise, out to cash in on the upcoming live-action Aeon Flux flick opening Dec. 2 in America, which looks flat-out laughable, especially when you see award-winning Charlize Theron in her quasi-Trinity body sock. Aeon belongs in her over-the-top upside fang hairstyle and leather g-string combat holster. The only women who could be Aeon are in Cirque du Soleil, which is ideal. Aeon rarely spoke, except to inflict "The Prisoner"-style mindfucks on her prey. Aeon was a lethal ballet artiste, and that's all you need. But yet, instead of dropping $55 million on a live-action version, give $10 million to Chung to make an animated version faithful to its core. At a lower price, the studio will make up the money in first-run and DVD sales. Oh well, no one listens to me.

NaNoWriMo Day 8

Word count for the day: 2,238.
Word total: 14,660

Not too thrilled about tonight. Patrick is running the risk of having two Sermon on the Mount moments, when he should have one. His antagonist has a long-winded speech about his plan. He's monologuing a bit, and when I looked up to see what I wrote, I expected him to have a monocle and a Persian kitty.

Screw it. Off to watch "House."

Song of the evening: "Dollars and Cents," by Radiohead.

NaNoWriMo Day Seven

Word count: 12,422 (2,301 today in about two hours). Wrote a lot of Patrick and his antagonist. Working to a great sequence of events that will close out his story. If I can knock it out before the week ends, I can move on to Rayelle. She has about 7-8 scenes I need to draft up to consider her story finished. It's a strange crossroads I'm at. I can see the novel coming together, but then I see more holes. I see it when I write as part of NaNoWriMo. It's all spiraling out of control and coming together at once. Oh, I wonder how long it'll take me to rewrite this disfigured mutant.

Caught "Boondocks" over the weekend on Adult Swim. The art style is like ghetto anime, which has it's own disorienting slickness, like a cultural blender on frappe. The voices for Huey and Riley are all wrong. Have no idea how the series will turn out this early into the run, but I have an inkling it'll be like how the Dilbert series went: Faithful at its core, a cult hit at best.

Song of the evening: "King of the Mountain," by Kate Bush.

NaNoWriMo Day 6

Word total: 10,121.

*blows in a little kazoo to find pitch*

Happy 10,000 to me.
Happy 10,000 to me.
Happy 10,000 to meeeeeee.
Happy 10,000 to me!

Patrick scene again, where our hero/hostage gets some things revealed to him after being lightly electrocuted. It's a bit too slow, but it's a first draft. I need to pick up the pace. I want to knock out a couple more scenes with Patrick before I move back to Rayelle. Tomorrow would be a good time to check in on the scenes I need to write before NaNoWriMo ends.

Also, I'm getting more than 2,000 words a day. I feel like I'm cheating myself somehow (of course it can't be guilt from my wife catching me on the Internet when I'm supposed to be writing. Nosiree, bob). I should write more. If I can push to a scene every couple days, or at least 2,500 words so I can cover more ground. At least I won't be behind when I have class on Thursday and I more or less stop writing.

Song of the evening: "Svefn-g-englar" by Sigur Ros. Can't pronounce it, but I love the universal ethereal dreaminess of it. Reminds me of when my uncle would take me flying in his small plane the color of a bumblebee. We would lift off from the runway during a moody Chicago spring and go into a thick belt of clouds. No visibility as the windows are wrapped in an ivory blanket for miles around. You are adrift, unaware of what's out there, yet you are ensconced in tranquility as your hands command the machine through bloated whiteness. You have snuck into heaven, just for a while.

NaNoWriMo Day 5

Word count: 8,046. Today was a struggle, but I skipped ahead a little bit and had a bit of a monologue throwdown with Patrick's antagonist. Now, that was fun. Feels good to crack 8,000 in five days. Never have written so much, so fast. Good news, only need to write 2,003 words to get back on track, although it's not about the word count, but finishing the novel. Still, I need to have firm goals for myself. Now that I have the pacing down, I need to focus on knocking out scenes.

Had a panic at one point when I thought I lost about 600 words from some back Word-fu. All resolved well. The wing of the airplane was not on fire.

In other news, I'm feeling a lot of tension in my jaw. I'm probably grinding my teeth out of stress. I just do so well with deadlines. *sigh*

Today, my lovely wife and I bought our cats some toys and the most bad-ass pooper scooper in the world. Stainless steel, rubber grip. It's like if Craftsman made de-pooping tools. It's a sad thing to admit I look forward to the next time I clean the cat box. Anyway, we are treating November as the cats' Christmas (Catistmas? Hanukkat? Katwanza? Felinestivus?). Spoiled little fur-shedders are got a bunch of toys and will get a mondo cat tree to play with on Thanksgiving Day. Seriously, it's massive. It's the Ewok Village 4000. It's Lothlorien. If it was an apartment in Seattle, the rent would go for an easy $900. Lucky little nuzzling fluffheads.

Song of the evening: "Tape Loop," by Morcheeba.

NaNoWriMo Day 4

Word total: 5,607. Getting better. Have the tension moving up now. A couple good character moments, and a slightly cheesy dream sequence. Oh well. Say it with me, it's a rough draft. Making up a bit for not writing a lot because of yesterday. Learned as an universal truth today that I cannot write at work.

Song of the Evening: "Just Like Honey," by The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Gray

Gray in body and mind. Exhausted after class last night and under siege from the thick, wet wool of clouds that are wrapping themselves in long, invading tentacles all over Seattle this afternoon. It's a day to just go home and burrow oneself in flannel sheets and take up extreme slumber. But the 20-foot-tall writing mistress dressed in leather and metal coming through the fog and reminding me I owe about 1,666 words today and about 4,900 this weekend. What's pleasantly shocking is when I walk away from the keyboard after a writing session with the fact I wrote about 7-8 pages. Granted, it's all rough, but it's down. No one said the first draft has to sing. It just needs to be a map of where I want the final draft to go. Last night, we worked on dismissing the critic, who sits to await the chance to march on literary ambitions the same way Godzilla strolled through Tokyo. I'm already there, which shocked the hell out of me, considering how much the inner critic was so present with me up until a couple months ago when my therapist and I deduced the source of the critic. And like that, the nagging and shrillness evaporated. Now, it's a voice to push and write and honor a commitment to something that, damn it, I've been meaning to do for so long.

So, the lesson is, if you need to have voices in your head, make them work for you. Not against you.

NaNoWriMo Day 3

Word total on hold. It's class tonight, which means I dunno. We might write in class, which could count toward the total if you wanted to be all picky about it. If I was using my brain this morning, I would have brought my laptop with me and kept a faster, more accurate count of my word-fu compared to writing it down on a legal pad and estimating the count. I know I'd cheat and round up to make myself feel better. The fact is, just two days into it, I'm feeling superhuman when I write. I'm banging out more than 1,600 words in under two hours. Mathematically speaking, I could drop 10,000 words in a day. Then again, I fool myself into thinking I could put away a marathon in three hours based on my 30 minutes at the gym.

But this subconscious humming I get from my fingers these days is nothing short of divine. Ideas are branching from each other, crossing and bypassing into other chapters. New minor character, new themes. Problems emerge and resolve. It's liberating to just write away with the freedom that a first draft brings. I'm racing on, keeping away the notions of tying it all together for now. Believe it or not, I think I gagged and shoved the inner editor down into the basement.

Much Coolness

Especially for fans of my departed yet beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can now order every episode ever made here.

Song of the Day: "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" by U2, which I just noticed could morph into a meta-anthem for Rayelle. Yowsa. The fates at work with serendipitous fingers.

NaNoWriMo Day 2

Word total: 3,334.

Not bad for being woken up by a kitten at 3:30 a.m., going to the gym, having deadlines at work, and the rest of real life.

Snuck into the tail end of a bath with wife as a nice, relaxing end to the day. Woot.

Song of the night: "Jesus Walks," by Kanye West.

NaNoWriMo Day 1

Word count: 1,674.

My lovely wife has promised me that if I finish the novel this November as part of National Novel Writing Month, she'll buy me a copy of Battlefront 2 for Xbox.

Tonight, a Patrick scene about 2/3rds into the story. It's okay. Not a lot of tension yet, but a lot of atmosphere and character.

Just FYI, to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, you need to average 1,666 words a day.

So far, so good.

Song of the Evening: "This Must Be The Place," Talking Heads.

Jigsaw

So, my novel immersion class has the following homework: "Take four days off," which means, rest up, chum, because on Nov. 1 is the start of your 50,000 word struggle. Around Chateau Ryan, we're celebrating four days off by having my mom in town. So, it's perfect. No writing gets done. I'm following the homework to the letter.

Yet that ol' Catholic guilt re-emerges. Shouldn't be away from the keyboard too long, boyo. And like most guilt, there's a kernel of truth in there. Instead I'm taming that voice with the ugly but revealing assemblage of taking all the scenes of the novel and piecing them together into a whole unit. The result, an ugly quilt done by a schizophrenic artisan who appears to be easily depressed and distracted. The good news: it's more than 200 pages, tipping 55,000+ words. Even better news: I found a list of scenes I wrote earlier in the year, a crude schematic of the vital moments in the novel. All I have to do is take the two versions of the novel I have strung together (one based on my files at work, the other from files at home), reconcile them both into one master file, and then check it against the vital scenes. Then, write whatever's missing.

But looking over the cut-n-paste monster on the slab, I realize I'm more than halfway done. I don't think (read: I pray to every deity in the spiritual phone book) that I won't need another 50,000 words to get it done. As long as I actually get my butt in the chair and write without distraction, finishing the novel in November should be possible. Celebrations of the pizza variety are expected when the big day arrives.

Of course, when it's done, it'll be as ugly as sin, and it'll be a manuscript only an author can love. I'm leaning toward following the advice laid down by John Waters: "Never show anyone your first draft. Show them your third draft and say it's your first."

Bonus Movie Review

"Doom" - It sucks, but in a fun man-explosion, stop-thinking way. What, you were expecting Mamet? It's a movie about a video game, for cryin' out loud.

It's not easy being...


Hi. Changed the template. Got bored with the old one, and after seeing my wife's new blog, I got bored with mine. Besides, I've been meaning to alter my blog a bit lately. Maybe it'll get me to write more.

I get itchy for change, as my wife can attest. I discard clothes, games, CDs, assorted clutter with frantic energy, usually in random patches to make the cats nervous. I'm not one for having a lot of "stuff," even though I have bookcases that take up a long wall and a game closet that looks like someone stuffed all my inner child desires in a cubby and pulled the door closed before it all spilled out.

Still, I'm fond of the green. Winter's coming to Planet Seattle, and no matter the time of year, Seattle is still green. It's a nurturing crutch when the sky is colored steel for now through March, and when the sun does peek out, it's this drained pale husk of a luminous body. The green means a forest, where the primal things lie, the wild lands where artists drop their veil of civility and touch the archetypes for inspiration.

National Novel Writing Month is coming in a mere 11 days. I'm taking part in spirit, using the 50,000 words/30 days marathon to finish the novel. I'm in a novel immersion class at Seattle's Hugo House now, getting the bearing I need for such an adventure. I'll try to post more information about the progress as I go.

One more thing, my nightstand has been occupied by a very small, but very clever tome called "Art of Fear," which attempts to reassure budding artists about the tremble they feel when they step into the primal dark forest. A lot of wisdom lacing those pages. Check it out.

76

A few words of celebration for my wife and I. Today, it's 76 months as husband and wife. A couple days ago, I was buzzing around the house, frustrated about some idiocy at my job. My wife, without moving from the couch, where she rested bundled in cats and comforter, broke down what I should, calmed me down, and give me a whole new way to look at the problem. All done without a sweat. All done out of love and kindness.

And then as I stand there in the living room, as she explains the crux of what I'm going through with the swoosh of a Zen master, I see one of the many reasons why I married her. She's incredibly kind and level. She doesn't rescue me, but grants me a wisdom that I flail around to find when I'm upset. She's there for me. In all the world, there's no one I'd rather have in my corner than her. She knows me, from skin to soul. She loves me in a way I never thought I would know, and every day I'm struck in some small way of that. I'm sorry, my dear, I try to be more in awe but my big, dumb guy brain can't compete large portions of such wonder. We're too wired for explosions and big screen TVs and garish-colored cars driving in a circle. Oh, and boobs.

Every month, on the 19th, I try to let her know how much I love her, that I'm grateful we are together. In reality, it should be an daily thing, but I'm afraid I'll run out of words to express how I feel, that I'll run into a rut and the words and sentiment will grow stale, brittle, tepid. Love should never be bland.

Happy 76 months, my love. I hope you understand how I feel even words fail me.

As for why she married me? I exude heat, open sauce jars, and eat her pizza crusts. I'm apparently "teh hawt" and funny, too, but that's not supposed to be made public.

Bathed in a blue glow, this radiant goddess formed

My wife has a blog. Go there, damnit.

Mission Unclear: Awaiting Update

So, yes, I've been busy. And you?

The fact of the matter is, for about two weeks now I've been digging myself out burning hot metal as the structure my novel seems to corrode and melt around me. I've been distracted, trying to write and finding nothing but text slip through my fingers. Try painting with Jello sometimes. You'll get something on canvas, but it'll smear and roll off to the floor. I'm lacking the focus I need to get going on this damn thing, and I get swallowed once in a while by terrible notions of vapidity or obsolescence.

The game of Russian Roulette you play when writing speculative fiction is that the world seems to evolve and spin faster, overtaking you with a hot-rod acceleration, leaving you in the dust as your imagined future comes to pass. So you sit down and rewrite, trying to get ahead just a little more. You try not to fall down the rabbit hole of endless Web surfing, holing up in digital corner bars instead of the painful extraction known as wordsmiting. You just find out that there is not enough time to write. You can't carve you enough time, when if fact you can. If you really wanted to do it. If you were serious. If you had a well-thought-out idea. If you can tear yourself away from "Morrowind."

It's times like when I'm not kind to myself, when I can't stop comparing myself to other writers, when I struggle to get through the day and now beat my coworkers with my keyboard. Good Lord, can't you people see I'm busy and I don't want to overhear your conversations. I mean, Christ, I have an iPod turned up to 11 and I can still fucking hear you people mumbling to yourselves. Shut the Christ up. Thank you.

But this, all this is transference. I'm angry at myself, unable to turn lead into gold as I sit, thinking I knew what my novel was about. Imagine the words being stuck, jammed at some junction between fingertip and keyboard, a virtual swelling of content and creation just under the skin of the fingers, where the fingerprint swirls in snowflake-unique radials. I wonder if I have a voice as unique as these prints, and is it out of me or still buried under the flaming metal wreckage of a half-constructed novel with wings attached. Icarus as a writer.

It's been about two weeks and I haven't been able to churn anything clever out, and I fear it has to do with the recent dissolution of a writing group I've been a part of. I think I used them (over the summer, as well as the previous year when they were in my writing class at the University of Washington) as a sort of lead dog measure, tracking along side, challenged by the ebb and flow of everyone else's juice turned into pages. I dug the reaction from the writing group, ranging from baffled to supportive. Without them, I'm confused, without bearings. I was writing to conquer them, and not for myself. It's a shameless way to create text, but it got the job done.

So, I'm here now, wondering when I'm really going to build momentum. I can't leave this job because, well, I need to it pay bills. I need to find focus. I need to get my writing shit together. I need to believe and make those sacrifices. I start a novel immersion class on Thursday. I hope that'll get my heading North, into the great musty beyond, where my novel lies, ready to be sculpted again, from flaming wreck into flawless entity.

To my wife

Happy 75 months together. You make me feel complete, and I hope we will always be together.

I love you. Happy anniversary.

Reconsidering the day job

In the midst of finishing the first draft of my dystopian novel by November (oh, let's say Thanksgiving. Hey, it'll be done before the new Zelda comes out).

The problem with writing a near-future dystopian novel is that the real world always finds a way to one-up you.

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners
Cosmetics firm targets UK market ·
Lack of regulation puts users at risk

Ian Cobain and Adam Luck
Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Guardian

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

It's funny, in a feral capitalism sort of way, that the prime alarm is raised over the consumers and not, you know, the fact that the bodies of prisoners are being turned into eyeliner. Then again, I've never understood supply and demand, or the beauty industry.

There's more, but I'd advise you to hold off eating first.

'Nuff said.

74

To my love, 74 months married today.

I'm grateful I found you, and I hope I can always make you smile and laugh and understand how special you are.

Tiny fires

I lost count after 200, but I figure it had to be at least 300. All ages here, whole families. They kept coming. As darkness fell, tiny flickers of flame started to appear. The humor and the novelty earlier in the evening has worn into a solemn silence. The car horns, mostly in support with thumbs-up appearing in passing windows, do the speaking. People on the corners tonight, here in suburban Seattle, and across the nation. Signs held up for peace, for answers, for a woman encamped in Crawford, Texas, looking to speak with a president who prefers clearing brush to talking to a mother who lost a son in his war.

This vigil is for that woman, Cindy Sheehan. I don't believe actions like this, with candles and handmade signs, here and across the nation will do little stop an unjust war or even get a president to talk to a mother of a slain soldier. The people came to light a candle and stand in some sign of support. Perhaps they are like me, figuring that if Cindy Sheehan could sit in a ditch in the hot Texas sun, then maybe the least we can do is stand on a street corner in a cooling midsummer evening, with a orange full moon rising above the treeline to keep us company.

And if these people here tonight are like me, they came out because there is a redemptive feeling to stand up in a noble effort at speaking out for peace and justice, even if you might not see the result right away. Again, you think of Sheehan losing her son, and you coming out and getting nibbled on by mosquitoes isn't that big of a sacrifice. Here, in the growing night, there is a silent communion of hope, and suddenly you feel better than you did in quite a while. A lot of the bitterness and futility drummed in by right-wing mouthpieces and inane news blips on CNN just slips away. You aren't alone in thinking this war is insane. Strangers smile and nod newcomers, letting them in to the line to wave at cars. Veterans of past wars stoop to help children light their candles. All the same goal. We believe in another way.

They hope, as I. The silence is awe inspiring, a polar opposite to the screaming and berating and spinning and obfuscating on right-wing media programs. No one does that here tonight. There are merely candles, that iconography that goes back to early religion all the way up to the symbol for Amnesty International. A candle in the night, a challenge to futility and despair. It is hope, and damn I haven't felt this good in a while.

Headline of the day

Satan becomes unrestricted free agent

It's about a hockey player, not...you know...the horns-and-pitchfork dude.

Okay, back to work while thinking about my novel and trying to kick my caffeine habit. Day Three and all is going well.

P.S. If case you ever wondered what the Cletus-the-Slack-Jawed-Yokel version of Alan Moore's scattershot piece of genius "V for Vendetta" would look like, it's this.

Check out the preview. It's so bad the colors are trying to escape.

Human Remains

Hello. Sorry I've been away for about five weeks, but the truth is, I've been waylaid by reality. I had a lot of writing to get done for the novel, and one of the first things anyone should know about writing a novel is that, on a good day, it's the equivalent of having half your blood removed and then getting beaten severely. I'm getting beaten a good 90 minutes a night, but pages are being produced. About 12 pages a week, 7 of which are salvageable.

Also, about three weeks ago, my 88-year-old grandmother suffered a heart attack. It was touch and go for a while, with me eyeing what to pack if my mom called to give me that dreaded signal: "You better come out here." Here meaning Chicago. Me on a red-eye flight from Seattle, cresting on the night sky, hoping I make it through in time to be there and do anything for my grandmother.

She's fine now, or best as can be expected. She has my mom and step-dad looking after her. She's been to the doctor, gotten some top-shelf meds, and is resting comfortably. But there's almost nothing else that can be done for her. Due to age and a mastectomy done in the Dark Ages of the procedure, surgery is out of the question. We have learned that the next attack would do her in. So, she sits and rests and copes with the specter of death coming just a little closer. Most of her friends are gone now. She is mentally clear but legally blind. I know she tries to mask being afraid. I know she is scared of the crippling pain of another attack, perhaps punctuating her last moments in this world. It's been a hard three weeks to swallow that she won't be around much longer. You make every phone call count. You pry your mom with deeper answers about how grandma really is doing, trying to decipher if the message is: "You better come out here."

Until then, I sit. My wife comforts me. We pet the cats. I write in the office. The routine becomes secure. Life goes on, until further notice.

During the hiatus, I also lost my writing conference virginity at PNWA, which had me dressed in non-black, non-denim for four days, a period long enough to have me seeing spiders on the ceiling and babies heads turning around. I don't do dressing up. I don't like buttons on shirts. Jeans. Pullover. Dark socks. Shoes or boots. Wearing khakis and a dressy shirt, I'm very out of my element walking the halls of an airport conference center, running into agents and editors, fellow writers, and panicking volunteers. Ended up sitting down for drinks with a Very Big New York Agent who was keen about the novel after I gave probably the best pitch I'll ever make. He wants 50 pages from me, plus a synopsis. Recognition. Excitement. I'm not in a place where I can give him the first 50, but he's game enough to let me hang back and send it in a couple months later. Very Big New York Agent was upfront and honest: "You only have one shot at this. If you need time, take it."

After the conference, after the networking and classes and the drinks that kept coming by writing comrades, after indirectly insulting a music biographer, after pitching with Zen Jedi skill, after believing I could write a best-seller, the Tuesday Morning Blues kicked in after the conference, and coupled with news about grandma, I surfed into anger and insecurity, and that's been lasting a good three weeks. I had been pushing myself to write, to get past the first-draft loathing, to create and soar and not let myself get in the way of the writing process (to deeply mangle what William Gibson once said about how he writes). I had been dredging up new feelings of loss, current vibrations of jealousy, old feelings of hatred to my father. The acid-tipped monkeys were back in the house, and taking up residence in my new cobalt-blue-hued office. I wasn't fun to be around, and it's only this morning, after folding myself in half at the gym repeatedly, that I'm emerging out of the funk.

So, I'm writing more when I can. Keeping myself from the distractions, whether online or the bookshelf, is the hardest task. Once I put fingers to keys, I'm soaring. The new Nine Inch Nails is far better than I expected, good fuel for Patrick's growing darkness. I'm mainly working on him now, going deeper into his conflicts. What Rayelle has to suffer through external pressures, Patrick does on the inside. I think I'm liking working on him if only because we haven't seen a lot of each other lately.

Today's Word: Appeal

You wanted the last chance, she whispered in my ear. How much would you give for a little more? How much would you sacrifice to spare your own life? Threaten a man with his life, and you'll see what life he wants to protect.

Celebrity Neural Colonialism, or Audrey Tautou owns my brain

This is a bit weird.

When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.

In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."

The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project.

The findings do not mean that a particular person or object is recognized and remembered by only one brain cell, Fried said. "There is not only one cell that codes for Jennifer Aniston. That would be impossible," Fried said.

Nor do they mean that a given brain cell will react to only one person or object, he said, because the study participants were tested with only a relatively limited number of pictures. In fact, some cells were found to respond to more than one person, or to a person and an object.

What the study does suggest, Fried and colleagues say in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, is that the brain appears to use relatively few cells to record something it sees. That's in contrast to the idea that it uses a huge network of brain cells instead.

Further down...

The researchers tested eight people with epilepsy who'd had electrodes placed in their brains so that doctors could track down the origins of their seizures. The electrodes monitored the activity of a small fraction of cells in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe.

The researchers kept track of which cells became activated as the participants looked at images of people, landmarks and objects on a laptop computer. One participant had a brain cell that reacted to different pictures of Aniston, for example, but was not strongly stimulated by other famous or non-famous faces.

Heck, I could have told you that the brain's gonna remember Halle Berry in her Catwoman outfit. I mean, sheesh.

Today's Word: Know

He grabbed on to it, that one immutable piece of knowledge, the thing that would remain real and true. His brain was fading, dripping away as the drugs kicked in, and he needed something to remain his true North.

This whole shtick, being hard on myself for not being original, for thinking that everything's been done before...it's getting old. I'm tired of projecting my novel into everything that pop culture is tossing up these days, from Riverbend to Land of the Dead. Tired of this paralysis, this numbness that I have to rub out of some psychic skin to get the blood flowing again. It's bad enough to have an acidic demon monkey poke me and say what I'm writing could be better. At least I've trained that monkey to give me visions of how a draft could get polished. This projection shit is getting wearying, as if obsessing over if people will think of my novel as a cheap knock-off is some healthy alchemy that'll make the end-product better. No, wrong way. Worked out a decent first draft of a scene for Chapter 3 last week. And while I'm not trying to worry about audience thinks, I felt a little more confident when the scene passed the Tuesday Night Writing Group's sniff test. It's a crutch, I know, but crutches can help you walk on your own. You need to know when to wean yourself off of them.

Speaking of weaning, it's time again for another sabbatical from poli-blogs and their comment boards, locations that are all fists and no ears. Tired of textual yelling. I've got more important things to do with my time. As great as poli-blogs are for ready-mades, the snark and caustics are getting to me again. I'll stick with Cursor for now, as well as a few guilty pleasures: IGN, slashdot, This Modern World (a comment-free poli-blog), Morford. I'm reading for the articles, I suppose you could say. I'm cutting myself off of the peanut gallery. Too many fists, not enough listening.

Note: I've been writing this entry in fits and spurts all day. Sometimes very angry, sometimes snarky. There's a lot of problems I have with the general sniping that goes on at blogs and message boards. Too much noise, not enough signal.

That said, I found this at ThisModernWorld.com. It's in regard to Sen. Durbin's recent mea culpa about earlier comments over Gitmo, torture, and the growing stain on America's soul. The last line, however, stands on its own, a veritable Swiss Army Knife of wisdom to be used in so many locales.

And you can't allow yourself the luxury of being afraid of your own words.

Stepping Out for Six Years

Hi.

A brief note. Sunday is going to be the six-year anniversary for my wife and I. It's going to be a whirlwind weekend of painting the dining room, live theater, and plenty of surprises. It's also going to be a nice quiet time for both of us, so won't be updating this weekend. I'm going to be celebrating how lucky I am, and how much we have shared in the past six years. Every once in a while, when I'm not wrapped up in the in pea-soup fog of novel-fu, I get struck how remarkable and beautiful she is, kind and loving and supportive and, yes, sexy. I can't remember what my life was like without her, and I'm not too eager to venture back into that jungle. I prefer now, especially when she randomly touches me and says how much she loves me. For the longest time, I held affection like that at arm's length, suspicious of its true intentions after getting my developing brain blended by an abusive father. Sometimes I get haunted by back then, and I wish I was a bit more aware of what she offers at times. Again, it's that jungle you shouldn't venture into. It gets you lost with darkness and inhuman shadows and sounds. Just be here now. Love what you have when it wholeheartedly loves you in return.

And I do. Happy anniversary, my dear.

Periscope Up

Been working on the novel as well as putting my new office together. Sorry I haven't checked in, but writing and painting and building Ikea furniture puts the blog down a bit on the pecking order. The office, coated in a pale sky blue, is now this cavernous womb of creativity. "Great things will happen in there," my loving wife tells me as we wearily fall asleep Sunday night after a weekend of domicile makeover. I love her, and I believe her when I finally get past all the acidic demon monkeys who like to plant lies in my head.

That said, the new writing group I'm in, starring my cohorts from the year-long writing program, has some members who are willing and able to shake the tables with some well-cooked prose. While I try not to make this a competition, I'm moved to write harder and sharper, trying to get my offerings as worthy as I think theirs are. We have one member in our group who has her manuscript done while starting on her second book. Meanwhile, there's another author who, like me, is a member of Club Dystopia and the scenes we brought Tuesday were similar in a couple parts. I laughed "I know this because Tyler knows this" sitting next to him, flipping pages of our stories between my fingers. We intersect on a few things, content wise, even if we rocket into different tangents. Sometimes I wonder if we pollute each other. Well, there's always the rewrite.

And in an unrelated note, I found this article about CNN anchor Nancy Grace's complete meltdown after the Michael Jackson verdict was announced. While I have little patience for pundits, this bit caught my eye. It's something that screams ready-made if you look at it the right way. It's also a slap at the technotopian dreamers who think that the Web will erase ignorance forever.

So it is that we find ourselves in an age when people flip to a favored television channel, or buy a specific publication, or click on a particular URL, for one reason -- because they know that when they go there, inconvenient information will not intrude, and they will find their dearest beliefs, their strongest prejudices and their deepest fears reinforced rather than challenged.

The phenomenon doesn't have a name yet -- to our knowledge, anyway -- but it's the opposite of the ancient Greek agora or the New England town hall to which people flock to disagree with one another and to hash out differences.

I think "Logic of Positive Fallacy" is too long. Needs to combine sex and violence and the glitz of 21st century media warfare.

Foxllatio, anyone?

Today's Word: Laser

A gun, another application of science turned into a weapon. Found in the DVD players and printers. Light as energy, directed and blasted across infinity.

Being Green, it ain't easy

It's Friday, and the end to a week that feels like it's been going on for four months. In the past few days, I've had to deal with some of the worst nightmares I've ever had, which is a complete electromagentic pulse to my needed slumber subroutines. I'm just wiped out, finding it hard to write or get a coherent thought together. I've been off emotionally, too, getting far too upset over things. Small things, random things.

And it doesn't speak well of me, in that celestial report card kinda way, when I simmered in that slow soul burn for 24 hours after learning one of my former classmates is a finalist for the PNWA writing contest. We both write in the same genre, although we have wildly different styles and stories. It felt as if some ghostly indicator pegging him as the one to be published over me, if I ever get the nod at all. And then there is the author in class who finished her draft of her novel, and I sit there congratulating her as well while sinking down in self loathing, yelling at myself why I haven't finished my novel yet. I try and be as supportive and as gracious as possible to my comrades, but the lesser angels of my nature have been buying drinks lately, and it's not pretty.

I know, the ideas of not being finished or a finalist equaling "inferior" is all an invention of the acidic demon monkeys who roam my mind, spraypainting nasty murals just behind my optic nerve. I suppose it's just the dark island of this week, a lowlight that I hope I can put behind me soon. Writers don't win all the time. Writers move at different speed. Just keep your eyes ahead and pay no attention to the vile mirages on the side of the road.

The good news is, I am getting new office furniture soon. If I can swing it, I'm gonna get this sweet desk that looks like something Q built, complete with sleek lines and hidden compartments. And then there's a graduation party for a dear friend who is getting her master's degree this weekend.

As the kids say, w00t!

Whoa

Chinese gamer sentenced to life, from the BBC

Qiu Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out he had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan (£473).

The sword, which Mr Qiu had lent to Mr Zhu, was won in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3.

Attempts to take the dispute to the police failed because there is currently no law in China to protect virtual property.

Buying and selling gaming artefacts such as imaginary weapons is a booming business on the web.

The internet games section of Ebay saw more than $9m (£5m) in trades in 2003.

While China has no laws to deal with the theft of virtual property, South Korea has a section of its police force that investigates in-game crime.

And while it's sad that something as trivial as a fake sword led to murder, it's just mind-blowing that South Korea has a virtual theft division.

You say you want a Revolution...

Nintendo's hiding something. They usually do. The gaming titan likes to keep secrets, usually until whatever they have working on is done and ready to be shipped. They held back the design of their N64 controller out of fear Sony would copy aspects of it (and depending who you talk to, they did). Nintendo held back on bits of information on the last Mario platform title, fearing some studio would develop a knock-off and get it out before Nintendo shipped Super Mario Sunshine. Following the gaming industry in my spare time, I've learned Nintendo bluffs and conceals with a Jedi mastery.

And it continues with their upcoming console, titled "Revolution." Very little was mentioned about the console at May E3 event, a Mecca for gamers who come every spring to kneel down and pray at the altar of electronic distraction. Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo's rivals, showed off their new consoles, albeit mostly laced with pre-rendered game footage and puffery about things in the future (read: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or the fact there are no games done for the consoles, and you won't be able to play anything right now. Just buy it, monkeys). Nintendo skipped most the next-gen circus, which broke a lot of gamers' hearts, instead opting to talk about handheld gaming, hundreds of free wi-fi spots for the Nintendo DS users in America, and footage from the upcoming Zelda title.

What Nintendo didn't show in great detail was Revolution, although we did see what it might look like. As for the nom de plume, it's also maddeningly vague. Revolution has been attributed to Nintendo's jump to online gaming, as well as the company's announcement that it'll make hundreds of games from its archive available for download (read: a game version of Apple's Music Store). There's been murmurs that the true revolutionary aspect of the system will be the controller, which has yet to be unveiled (maybe we'll know at Spaceworld in September, or not). The fact is, unless you work in the inner sanctum on Nintendo, no one knows what's going on, but it's still a fun parlor game to play.

Re-reading coverage of E3, the gaming critics who attended the shin-dig came away making confused noises. Yes, the next-gen games did look pretty, but nothing really wowed them. The PS3 and Xbox 360 were spiffy but there wasn't anything playable to them. It was all a demo. Will Wright's non-console title "Spore" picked up Game of the Show kudos because it was so different. Everything else? Seen it. Played it. Bought the action figure. And therein lies the problem.

Escalating gaming budgets are pushing titles into the tens of millions in cost, making only the sure bets for upcoming games something with a number after its title. In other words, sequels just for Hollywood anymore. Add to that the rapid development time between sequels. Jax and Daxter 3 looks a lot like J&D2 because of the short time between the titles meant a polish job instead of innovation. Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow looks like the first Splinter Cell, and both feel like the new Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory because it's more or less the same damn engine dynamic with a prettier paint job. The only thing that separates Mario Party 5 from MP6 is the latter's inclusion of a microphone. And if the sequel tsunami doesn't overwhelm you, then there's the knock-offs. Dead to Rights channeling Max Payne. True Crime is running in Grand Theft Auto's shadow. Gran Turismo and Forza are splitting hairs on being the top racing sim. Pick any FPS and you are killing aliens, monsters or terrorists. Unless its WWII, then it's all Nazis, all the time.

It's all going to lead somewhere. Titles with similar looks and feels, being priced at a more wallet-gouging $60 for next-gen. Gamers are going to have to fork out hundreds (Xbox 360 and PS3 are guesstimated to run anywhere from $375-$470) for new consoles and at least the console price in games to justify the purchase. Yes, the graphics are going to be pretty next-gen, but that'll take you so far if everything looks and plays the same. I have this instinct that if the next-gen is still mired in the FPS/sports/Japan RPG/thug ghetto, then a lot of gamers are going to be unhappy. Early 80s unhappy. I don't believe there's going to be a crash, but stagnation that'll wipe out the few remaining small studios. Only so many developers can exist who can spend millions for supertitles like Madden or GTA or Halo. Innovation will get scrapped for a sure payday with a sequel. Quirk is shelved, charm is downsized into a new explosion effect. Kiss a new Rez or Beyond Good and Evil goodbye.

So, here's what I hope Nintendo has up its sleeve.

When the Revolution ships in 2006, it'll come with (packed in the box, since Rev looks like it'll lack a hard drive) instructions for a Nintendo development kit. Gamers can hook up to a virtual workstation to build games through 8-, 16- or 32-bit engines that will be saturated with development tools and tips to create simple, smart titles that can be as limited as a FPS or open-ended like a puzzle title. Valve does this. The makers of the Half-Life franchise allow folks to get engines to create new environments for games. Granted, the challenge will be to develop a user interface that wouldn't rely on a keyboard, but a console controller mention of input, akin to the way to build maps in the Timesplitters series on the console and share them with fellow gamers.

Or, wait a minute.

If the Revolution does have a USB port, why can't gamers simply use a flash device as Nintendo looks to be doing for memory, to take the engine to their computer and develop that way, armed with the speed of a keyboard and mouse to design a game. The drawback here is the creation of a ROM emulator to test the work. Otherwise, it's download, go to PC, build, compile, walk back to Rev, test game, go back to PC, and so on.

But back to the garge gaming experiment. There's a real chance for community building here. Gamers who make and compile a game can upload to a special server at Nintendo, other gamers volunteer to do peer review through testing. Feedback is given. The game is either discarded or revamped or moved on to general playability. These titles will be free for download, with Nintendo playing gatekeeper to make sure there's no outright piracy or spread of homebrewed malware.

Or imagine a "Gamer Idol" with players and Nintendo evaluating games, broken up into genre and bit level. The top winner gets a cash prize plus a shot at a job at Nintendo. This would be (and I'm sorry in advance) a true revolution, with a console asking players to invent and share games. And it would be a blessed step up from not only the inane microtransaction model pimped by Xbox 360, but signal the end of dominance of the Madden/Halo/GTA clone wars out there. What would you rather play, another generic FPS that cost $60 or a game you and your buddy made? Think it can't work? Read up about Richard Garriott, who created the Ultima empire by tinkering around with an Apple II. The history of gaming is filled with one-man armies who experimented around until they struck gold.

If Nintendo is smart, they'd include something like this down the pipe. It's an ideal seed project to look for new ideas in gaming, even new programmers to give the industry a shot in the arm. I remember an interview with a game designer years ago where he says he gives his students engines for 8-bit games because if you can make a fun low-graphic game, then you have the imagination suited for a larger arena that's unburdened by graphic limitations. There's acres of ideas waiting to be cultivated out there. Instead of waiting for yet another sequel, why not bring to life the idea in your head? Why not create something that could alter the way people see games? You might be the next Will Wright. Or Shigeru Miyamoto. There's no reason anymore why people can't cobble together a fun little title. Sony tried homebrew gaming with the PS1, but failed due to costs, but that and the technological requirement for making simple games is rapidly decreasing. It's simple interface and easy access that are the next walls that need to come down.

And then, you just might see a Revolution happen.

Today's Word: Speck

That tiny piece of biomass on the scientist's clothes as he was packed up out of the country. The jack-booted soldiers would take all his papers and belongings as he fled, so he rubbed the material on his coat, a substance later known as penicillin.

He's Not Dead. He's Resting.

Incredibly busy at work, wrestling with a Windows XP machine that seems to be designed to not allow me to do my job whatsoever. It's an amazing machine and software, a binary system that actively resists your efforts to do something with the equal force you put into it to achieve a goal. All of which causes you to get more infuriated as you trod along, something I think the computer senses through some bleeding-edge biometrics. Given a long enough timeline with XP, I'm sure all this frustration is as bad for my health as, say, smoking a stick of butter. I'm growing convinced it's trying to kill me through stress or confusion. One upshot for Bill Gates is: If you die while using XP, you'll never need to upgrade, which would save Microsoft a lot of time and money. I think Microsoft should promote this: Microsoft Stalemate for Windows. Start something, but never quite finish it.

The next step is for Microsoft to start opening funeral homes to cash in on this strategy.

Also busy (but non-lethally-so) with writing at home. Tonight is the first post-class writing group. I need something to bring something to the table, or I get a hand chopped off.

Did I mention this is a very serious writing group?

Today's word: Generation

I had the dream about her. She was fine, happy, healthy. She was a filmmaker, making documentaries about her daughter, her community. I was watching her from the street corner as she set up her digital camera, an auteur for our age.

What's in a name

Tuesday night, Agent X said something which I kinda already knew about, but realize it was good to keep in the forebrain for a while.

Authors don't have all that much control on the title of the book. Sometimes, the kobolds in marketing will re-title a newbie novelist's first tome to make it more sexy or safe. Take, for example, how "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was re-titled "Sorcerer's Stone" for the states because of concerns about readers being turned off by philosophy, poor dears. It extends into movies, too. "Evil Dead" was once titled "Book of the Dead," but was changed to ED because director Sam Raimi was warned that moviegoers might not come see a movie about a book. My favorite example is the one when William Gibson submitted his debut novel with the title "Jacking In," which was ix-nayed because the title sounded too much like male masturbation. The title became "Neuromancer" and the rest is history.

Which got me thinking, okay...let's say some marketing goon says "Babylon By Twilight" is too esoteric and I don't have the kung-fu to fight back, despite it being perfect. The best way to fight back is to keep submitting titles that are so bad that they have to stick with the original.

And, lo, "Rough Trade" was born. It's perfect. A title that a publisher won't touch, due to RT being associated with violence and male prostitution, which the novel has one but not the other. A provocative title is one thing, but a controversial one is another.

I'm still working on this, hoping to come up with at least two-dozen little minefields to make a publisher think, "you know, the original wasn't a bad idea. Let's go with that."

A dumb, private wish.

Dear Nintendo,

When you put out your new console next year, everyone knows you are going to have free downloadable titles from the old-school Nintendo library (with other second- and third-party games possible).

You and I know I'm going to buy your damn console, being the Nintendobsessed manchild I am, with disposable income and a wife who can kick my ass at Super Smash Bros.

So, since you know you will get my money, I'm asking for a little something in exchange. Please, please, please buy the rights to Elite. Revamp it for next-gen, online and everything. You want to rival GTA without the hookers and blood? This is your title. Multiple galaxies, humans and A.I. vying for cash and fame. Players can choose to be a bounty hunter, pirate, trader, cop, or dreaded Thargoid. Have a massive alien war approaching, with players picking sides. Let players form trading alliances, or go it alone in a cruel universe, visions of "Blake's 7" or "Firefly" playing in their heads. You have a sure-winner here, a diamond way to announce your online presence with authority.

A lot of gamers you are appealing to with all the retro titles you are making available remember Elite, since NES and Elite came out about the same time. Heck, it even was a title you had way back on the NES. When I found a playable version of it at the Museum of Science and Industry's "Game On" exhibit, I nearly wept. The memories of running illegal goods under the nose of the cops, the witchspace battles with Thargoids, the hazard jumps into anarchy worlds, tricking our my ship every cannon available. Those puny humans who want to use Xbox 360 to microtrade decals and rims don't remember their elders. Real-time space combat and commerce trading, that's where it's at. Come on, bring back Elite. In Widescreen. In HDTV. Show them how it's done.

Oh, and buy the rights to Rez, too.

Thanks.

Well, that coulda gone better

Last night was the final class for the pop fiction writing program. Anticlimactic, although I don't know what would have made a good climax. An agent in the room announcing that someone is getting a book contract. Eat live worms and walk through fire, Fear Factor-style, to winnow out competitors. Last one standing gets an on-the-spot advance and two-book deal. With movie options, bitches!

But sadly no, although I would have eaten the worms.

The first half of the last class was an infomercial for Pop Fiction Writing 2 (Thematic Boogaloo), where the teacher and two of her students came in to play carnie, seeking out marks to go this way to the great Egress. I've mentioned before that I'm not going on to the second level because I'm classed out. I'm going out into the wild to write the novel, to finish the damn thing, breaking only to haunt the new Tuesday night critique group only minutes from my house. I wish the ones going on to the next step some luck, but I wasn't sold on the next safari. Too much sounding like a retread of what this adventure was all about. So, I stand at the pier and wave bon voyage to the ones going on.

The second half, oy.

Agent X came to class. She's high-spirited, passionate, and possessed with that brick-fist gumption you would want in an agent fighting for you at the Publisher Thunderdome.

But that lasted about 30 minutes, when the floor was open to questions. She dodged one about how many clients she had, only nailed down by one of our thriller writers hitting back with a follow-up. She danced around what genre she represents, saying she represents "popular" fiction. Which means, what, exactly?

Then came her feedback on the query letters we sent. She read about eight of ours, and we learned at least four of us sent in samples (no feedback on that, will have to wait). Through my periscope, I remained quietly angry as she spent 10 minutes talking about each query only to take all of 60 seconds on mine. A couple minor blips on her radar, but nothing else. The rest of the class I spent reading between the lines of other query letters to gain tips, the same way Russians would dissect Pravda to really see what was going on. If a party official wasn't mentioned in the news, odds are he was dead. For me, that's how I learned. Watch what other people weren't doing. It was constructive criticism jazz, the notes you don't hear.

I know, I know. Wait a couple days and e-mail her. Ask her more questions. She was kind enough to read our stuff, kind enough to brave the metal bottleneck as known as the 520 floating bridge, happy to take questions. So, that's something. Usually, writers would have to fly out to New York on a red-eye Jet Blue ticket to meet with their agent. Last night? Cookies on our turf.

Any input I get I should value, but I can't help but feel a little ignored and downtrodden from waitingwaitingwaiting and getting trace elements of feedback. I woke up this morning with a depression hangover, which was better than last night's irrelevant. With the program behind me, I felt a little robbed, unfinished, unchallenged, empty. Looking back, I get that Sex Pistols vibe: "How does it feel to be cheated?" I know my teachers meant well, but I don't feel any sort of completion, or even a notion that I'm on my way. I'll have to churn this a little longer, because maybe I had too much expectation from the class all year and Agent X's arrival, and there's nothing they can do about that.

But no matter what verdict I rend from the writing program, I got something out of last night. Something clear and forthright when the agent last night said that "dystopia" was not a word.

And there was my moment of Zen. Thanks, but I'd rather not have you represent me.

Writing news

As mentioned in a couple posts past, we have an agent coming to class to talk about agent-y things. Our writing teacher asked us to send the agent a pre-emptive strike of our sample query letters, as written up weeks ago for a confidence building exercise...a way to help get out into words what we were working on so we could sell our babies with convinction. The agent had agreed to read them, giving us feedback on what agents are looking for. Stuff we eat up in class with fresh pens, clean pads of paper, and fevered intent to get all the arcana we can use.

Well, this morning, I got a reply from the agent.

Here it is (name omitted).

Dear John,

   I find your story line intriguing, but as you know, with fiction, it is all in the telling.  If you would like to, please send me an overview (synopsis) and a representative sampling of the work via e-mail. (Please do not send more than 100 pages of the manuscript, however, and try to break it in a logical place.  I will take a quick look before Tuesday's class.

   Thanks for your query, and feel free to e-mail with any questions.

Just sent the first chapter, synopsis, and a nice, low-on-the-slobbery-buggery thank-you note to Agent X (as she'll be known from now on). Trying to keep calm. It's not a contract. It's not a door open to fame and fortune. It's just an agent who is doing a favor.

But still...there's an agent who wants to read me. Even if I get rejected, it's a wonderful starlight feeling in my heart today. I'm lighter than helium. I'm made of sunshine and I feel as if I can leap tall buildings in a single bound. My life, the one I want, grew a little more real today.

Holy crap.

Big writing news. Coming soon.

Today's Word: Wisp

A flutter of fabric, the fragment of the suicide bomber's shirt. A soft, drifting snowstorm of clothing and hair and flesh, all the size of dandelion feathers.

Deep, calming breaths

Okay, turned in my resume for Nintendo. I know, I know. Said I'd wait until Tuesday, until after the Memorial Day holiday, but my ever-wise wife made rightly concerned sounds about the job opening up May 17, which is a million years ago in terms of volume of applicants. We don't know how many people applied. We also don't know when Nintendo is going to slam down the gates, stopping any new entries from coming in. So...

Drafted up a cover letter and resume, sent only the resume today through Nintendo's nifty resume vacuum, which sucks since I cobbled together a quite righteous cover letter last night...fueled by alternating moments of self-aggrandizing bullshit, raw fear, and a hell-yeah attitude. Oh well, it's practice.

And by the way, if any of you out there applied for the job I did using my blog as a resource, just keep in mind that if you get the job, you owe me some free games. Just sayin'. Right thing to do and all.

So, anyway, sent in the resume. Now, just relaxing. Or I would if my writing dominatrix hadn't sent an e-mail last night asking the class to send in query letters to a local agent (who is coming to speak for the last class). Back I go into my hard drive to find and correct the query letter homework the dominatrix gave back to me weeks ago. It's a thrill to get professional feedback, but it's a sudden lurch up to the edge of the cliff. No more fun and games now. I'm pitching the novel, and it's something I wasn't ready to do until July and the PNWA conference.

Luckily, work today is very light, so I'm working on writing assignments in between my normal office stuff. It looks like I'm typing away at a computer either way. Covert keyboard-fu, away!

Game On

Imagine me hyper-caffeinated and angry as all hell, and you'll get this Gamer Manifesto for the Next Generation.

I don't agree with all of it, but more than once I found myself nodding in agreement.

Today's Word: Speed

It's a bit ironic that One Word entry 747 is speed, when you get the obvious link between transoceanic aircraft and acceleration. But what I think about these days is the talk about better video game consoles and speed. Eye candy, but no story telling.

Meh. Not one of my better efforts up there. Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

Anyway, some news and two updates. Updates first.

First, I'm working on summing up the second half of the novel these days, along with some more key scenes. Next week is the last class for the program, and I have to say I'm in a lot better shape than I was at the start. I don't think I'm going to go on to the second level, if only because I wince at dropping $2,000 at the deal and I fear I'm entering that cocoon where you only write in class and not on your own.

Second, S (who I mentioned a few posts ago) is doing a lot better, although she had a big debt she has to deal with thanks to her CAT scan. The leading theory for her pain is latent injuries from a car accident a few months ago. She's now seeing a chiropractor, who assured S that her visits will be billed to the auto insurance of the fool who hit her. Even after a couple short appointments, S is feeling less pain and getting better acquainted with a good night's sleep.

And now, the news.

Nintendo of America (which is headquarters a few miles away from yours truly) is seeking a staff writer for a publication. People who have read my ramblings know that a few years ago, I applied to be a copy editor at NoA, and even got in for an interview. I didn't get the job, but I'm not disheartened enough to miss this opportunity. I'm mapping out time for the novel and time for a kick-ass resume and cover letter. Hopefully, I'll have both done by Tuesday. I'll send it in after the Memorial Day holiday and then distract myself with the novel so I don't go mad waiting for my mobile to ring.

And not that I'm pre-emptively sucking up or anything, but I'm groovin' on what Nintendo has in store for next-gen consoles. To me, Sony and Microsoft are too much eye candy/not enough innovation. It's all thug games, movie tie-ins, EA sports, shooters, or RPGs. And while that makes money (and is sometimes fun), it gives gamers who are beyond the golden 16-24 demographic a limited sandbox to play in. While Nintendo has its own sandbox problem with Mario-Zelda-Metroid, there's a funky-cool "What the hell" vibe with the Big N. Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, Electroplanton. Quirky is cool, and I'm growing to love it a lot more than zapping pixels. I have to admire Nintendo for not rushing to mimic Sony or Microsoft in the thug/shooter/"mature" department.

There is one problem I have with the job: It's a position I've seen crop up a few times in the past 18 months, making me wonder if there's something wrong with it. Something to keep an eye on.

When Navel Gazing Gazes Upon Its Own Navel

Or something ridiculous like that.

Great. Now, the blogs have become high school, with cliques and cool kids and everything.

There's one thing to be said for blogrolling or having Blogs of Note on the rail of your site, but this whole "People" magazine approach to the blogsophere (or blogtopia or whatever) makes me feel as if the Heathers are running the show.

One thing that does strike me about reading the A-list is most of the bodies up there come from either a) a strong, well-trafficked poli-blog, b) previous prominence in the sci-fi/fantasy world (Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton) or c) a mish-mash of people who blog about other blogs or have had a career in the public eye before blogging (James Wolcott, Andrew Sullivan).

I think I'd like it better if there were different categories (personal, political, arts, sports, tech) instead of an e-celebrity model. What I see here is the akin to looking at a table at a school reunion. You recognize the names, but have little recall of who they are.