Author: admin

truth telling

Posted on by admin

I mean, I know we all think we know the truth, but the reality is that the truth is what it is and we are not always aware of all of the aspects of it. Multiple things can be true at any given time.

I have not lived an exemplary life. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated (my family and all my friends banned me from playing Monopoly) and probably worse, if I’m honest about it.

I am still not entirely honest with myself and the people around me, because I feel rejection. I have issues with insecurity and depression.

None of these things means I’m a horrible person by necessity, but neither do they make me an exemplary one.

Truth and perspective are the two things I chase most in my life, and as I get older and open myself up to that more, instead of living in safely comfortable fictions and denial, I find the truest thing I know is that truth and perspective are often not in accordance, but more of one inevitably creates more of the other.

Enough perspective and truth is revealed; how could it not be?

Truth knocks us out of our fictions, our blind spots; it provides perspective where none may have existed.

More truth. More perspectives. These are the only things that matter.

There is truth. There is perspective.

These things are not mutually exclusive. But one perspective, held without truth…

Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 791 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 5-8
Music: Working Class Hero, Green Day (by way of John Lennon)

well how about that

Posted on by admin

I’m still writing about feces and doormats.

Steinbeck wrote about the Great Depression. Fitzgerald about the vapidity of the rich.

Shakespeare wrote of love and loss and tragedy, of empire and family.

And I’m writing about feces on a doormat.

Perhaps I’m not really cut out for this whole literary genius thing. I’m the Meatballs of the Great Canadian Novel. This generation’s A Clockwork Orange is actually a rendition of Porky’s, by way of American Pie.

Porky’s did bring us Kim Cattrall, however, and that’s a fucking gift.

Screw Sarah Jessica Parker. I never liked her anyway.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2321 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay (and now I'm crying, damn it)
Comics: Fables 1-4 (finally, something good)
Music: Workbook, Bob Mould

icons i won’t be

Posted on by admin

I used to want to be William Gibson or George Orwell or J.R.R. Tolkien. Even in my modern days, I idolize Doris Lessing, Andrzej Sapkowski and Thomas Wolfe.

I doubt any of them ever had to write a scene where a fat boor took a messy dump on someone’s front stoop.

Perhaps I should set my sights lower.

Like, MAD magazine or National Lampoon lower.

I’d love to be e.e. cummings or Gord Downie. I’d love to write with the sensitivity of Alan Moore or the abstraction of Kelly Sue Deconnick. Kafka, Chekhov, Palahniuk.

And I’m writing about a fat guy’s feces.

Maybe someday, I could reach even Second City.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1488 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v7 #1 (oh dear god, another reboot, with a storytelling style that's no better than it was in the first Youngblood miniseries.  Give up, man.  This shit ain't working.)
Music: Woody Guthrie Essentials, Woody Guthrie (how apropos is Lindbergh?)

westworld

Posted on by admin

See, these are reboots that I can get behind, because the movie was whatever. The series though…

The problem is, we don’t need to need to reboot everything. Where’s our new ideas?

Where’s the innovation?

No wonder fascism is on the march.

Everything old is new again, and we’ve apparently run out of ideas.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1392 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Bloodstrike Brutalists 23-24, 0, Bloodstrike Battle Blood 1
Music: Wolves In Wolves' Clothing, NOFX

reminders

Posted on by admin

This book is reminding me of why I love the Hip, and Gord Downie in particular, and why my heroes went from being rebels who gave everyone the finger, to nice people who weren’t afraid of hard truths and dark places.

Loudmouth boors be damned.

Give me a soft-spoken purveyor of real things, dark and light, any day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1407 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v6 4-7
Music: Without You I'm Nothing, Placebo

it’s nice to be reminded

Posted on by admin

Of just how bad you are at art.

How on another plane artists like Gord Downie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen are.

How other people understand that.

How you’re a fucking peon and a boor, a shitpile no-talent with no future and no gravitas.

But hey, I wrote a book about the monster under the bed, and a guy getting humped by a dog, so there’s that.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 687 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Bloodstrike v2 2, Youngblood v6 1-3
Music: Without A Sound, Dinosaur Jr.

the never ending story

Posted on by admin

I do not understand what is happening with this book. I usually read for about an hour or so a day, which moves me usually about fifty to a hundred pages, depending on the depth of the text, font size, readability, how much dialogue the writer is prone to use, etc.

But this book, The Never-Ending Present, is weirdly entirely out of character. I read for an hour, to move maybe four to five percent on the Kindle. It shouldn’t take more than a week max; it’s now been five days and I’m only barely a quarter of the way through.

Not that I care that much, because it’s about the journey and not the target, but I’m definitely not hitting that reading target I set at the beginning of the year. A stretch goal for me was ninety books; I think of the minimum as a book a week. Basically, four to seven days on average per novel.

I may have to amend that if I’m going to read like this from now on.

Still, I’m enjoying it; anything Gord Downie is my spirit animal.

I just don’t understand why the slow pace, despite the effort.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2345 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v5 76-78, Bloodstrike v2 1
Music: Within A Mile From Home, Flogging Molly

nailed it, bro

Posted on by admin

I think I’m doing a good job of editing. Previous edits kind of suck, but my new notes are hitting the right notes, there’s less tangents and things are speeding off to the side or getting half-assed, with this better plan in place.

Hopefully, that means I can still hit my target of Christmas. I’ll guarantee there’s at least one to two more drafts in it, but they should be mostly minor tweaks, technically, picky shit about punctuation and grammar, and not the kind of hours long rewrites (and holy shit, what a plot hole moments) that some of these other drafts have required.

Pray for me.

I might actually do this.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1649 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay (starting to feel like the never ending book)
Comics: Bloodstrike 31-33, Youngblood v5 75
Music: [With_Teeth], Nine Inch Nails