Category: personal

alone in a room

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I’d like to spend most of my days that way. An empty room with nothing but me and a good book, a laptop for writing, maybe a corkboard for plotting and visualization. Access to a beautiful woman for companionship. The ability to leave whenever, but the ability to get lost entirely in whatever I’m doing, without interruption.

The ability to be fully and completely present within my little empty box, with the option to go outside on occasion and visit the good parts of the world, and leave the shitbags behind.

Target: 500 words
Written: 127 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 33-36
Music: Vitalogy, Pearl Jam (still an all-time favourite - every word floods back like total recall)

cigarillo #1

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I think I’ve earned it – a first draft complete, writing up my notes for the second run? That’s not a small thing; completion is an elusive, moving target in art, particularly when you’re one of those nervous, depressed artists like myself. It’s very easy to scrap the lot and go back to scratch.

I’m saving the Gran Corona for the publication date, but I believe in the art of the small reward. Plus, The Mungk is a novella, a tiny project, and therefore, its rewards should be appropriately sized.

I don’t smoke as a matter of course – I quit cigarettes years ago, but I love the smell of a good cigar, so a cigarillo every couple of months probably isn’t going to hurt me.

My liver or my heart will give out far before my lungs, after all.

Clean livin’, y’all.

To the next one.

Target: 500 words
Written: 256 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 29-32
Music: Virus 100, L7, Vision Valley, The Vines

one hundred

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A hundred days into this year and we’ve already had multiple collapses, blood issues and a totality.

Sometimes, I’d like there to be a totality inside me, either to end it all or to burn away all the shit. Blind it with a shining aura, a brilliance unendurable except with the darkest glasses.

But the world keeps turning, a disturbing number of people think a man who thought it was intelligent to stare directly at an eclipse is a genius and hate seems to creep further into our lives each and every day.

We need another revolution. Another love-in.

Where’s our John and Yoko? Our sexual revolution appears to revolve around people making sex tapes, where wearing bikinis on your social media is a viable career path.

Where’s our screaming punk? Where’s our Kurt Cobain, hitting the nerves of a generation so raw that it changes entire cultures?

Where’s logic? Where’s freedom? Where are hearts and connection and compassion and a basic understanding of kindness?

Where’s the less ineffectual left? Where’s the sober right?

Where the fuck is everybody?

Social media is madness. Our world is mad.

This has been your daily agonized howl into the void, unable to stand anymore.

Target: 500 words
Written: 191 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 21-24
Music: Villains, The Verve Pipe

eclipsed

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There’s a phenomenon I haven’t seen since I was a child, and never in the full totality as we’re getting today. I hope it remains unclouded as it has been the last couple of days.

Unfortunately, as with most things in my life, circumstance and poor planning and dedication on my part will likely render it a disappointment, and I, like so many others, will find myself holding the bag of my own responsibility.

Depression in full swing; universe, grant me superpowers.

I’d rather be a hero.

Target: 500 words
Written: 309 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 17-20
Music: Victrola, Veruca Salt, View From A Backstage Pass, the Who

seeding

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I’m seeding herbs today, and it makes me think that maybe I’m seeding stories, little poems and things to grow my writing career.

However, like seeding, one needs the right fuel and the right ground, the soil, the nutrients, in order to sow the ground with something fertile enough to allow things to grow.

And I’m not a green thumb.

But I think that’s how I need to start thinking of my writing career. Create fertile ground. Find the right nutrients, the right level of sunlight, water as needed.

Pay close attention if the leaves are wilting.

Pray for little babies to push the soil.

Target: 500 words
Written: 818 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 9-12
Music: Vespertine Live, Bjork

some music

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Some music just moves you. I just finished writing and while James Brown and Night Train was cool, I definitely funked out more to Modest Mouse and Steam Engenius, because SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

My tastes range, and it’s fine. I don’t mind following up Minor Threat with Rihanna or Dean Martin with Henry Rollins. There’s nothing wrong with an Eminem and Beatles mix, or Pink Floyd and NOFX.

It’s all about being open, and enjoying the moment. Falling into it and letting it happen, letting it be what it is and letting go of whatever else is happening.

Music is the most powerful presence creator; there’s a reason we love it in all its forms. It speaks to something primal within us that just wants to live. Here, now, forever in the groove, connecting and commiserating with our fellow humanity, free from all the rest of the world’s shit.

Target: 500 words
Written: 209 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 5-8
Music: Vespertine, Bjork

censored?

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Well, this is a first. I wish I could say it was unexpected, but I knew Get Back Again straddled a line I wasn’t sure I hadn’t crossed.

I mean, it’s a story told from the perspective of a right winger who has been murdered by his liberal girlfriend. I mean, I thought it was clear that the right winger was the bad guy, but I knew that to tell it properly, I would have to hew more tightly to the man’s anger and prejudice than I would normally be comfortable with. I actually made notes to myself during the revision hoping that it would be taken as it was meant, and not become some kind of right wing manifesto.

Wattpad’s a pretty liberal place, which is part of the reason I like it, even though most of the literature posted there isn’t exactly my jam. I mostly followed Cory Doctorow there. If he thought it had value, it must not have been terrible, because you know… Doctorow. He doesn’t suffer tech companies lightly.

Of course, left-leaning places such as Wattpad also mean the kind of people whose outrage tends to not think before it blasts nuclear waste out into the atmosphere.

(And don’t get me wrong, the right is pregnant to bursting with outrage, only they don’t realize that they’re not actually pregnant, just morbidly obese with self-inflicted unhealth).

It appears that’s happened to me.

Either that or Get Back Again wasn’t as clear as I hoped (and I know it was opaque).

So, yeah. I’m anti-censorship for any reason. It’s one thing to know something is immoral and not want to read it; it’s another thing to say to everyone else that reading it is bad. Things can be learned even from things you vehemently disagree with.

If they allow it back, I guess we’ll have to put a disclaimer on it. Trigger warning and a brief explanation: hey, the racist, homophobic misogynist threatening violence against women and minorities?

He’s a baddie.

Duh.

Target: 500 words
Written: 203 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 1-4
Music: Very Proud Of Ya, AFI

no longer cool

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It appears I’m not cool anymore. I mean, I was never really cool, but at least, I knew where the edges were, where the hip things were happening, even if I didn’t give a shit about them.

Now, I don’t care, more interested in exploring the expansive stuff of whatever scene I missed out on by virtue of era, location or the fact that I wasn’t cool enough to be invited in.

Or didn’t care enough to join.

Trends, fashion, these sorts of things never interested me. While a million morons rushed out to buy Stanley cups, all I could think is it’s not THE Stanley Cup, so who gives a shit?

Trends come and go so fast now online that the only way to stay on the bleeding edge of popularity is to spend all one’s time online, which is boring.

Plus, who cares? Spending time and money on shit that no one will give a fuck about tomorrow is just a good way to create clutter and miss out on time one could have spent actually enjoying one’s life.

It’s nothing more than a hyperspeed version of keeping up with the Joneses.

Fuck the Joneses. Who the fuck are they to set the standard?

Who are they to tell you what’s interesting or important in your life?

That’s the great thing about a real scene, real art, real cool – it remains that way no matter the age because it speaks to something fundamental inside us.

Cool is timeless; iconic is not just every random little thing; it’s the truly epic, the truly transcendent and emblematic. It’s crossing the bridge in Selma, it’s the Gettysburg Address. It’s the Velvet Underground. It’s Freddie Mercury at Live Aid. It’s Marilyn Monroe. It’s Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It’s Gretzky kicking his foot out as he lifts the Cup.

It’s real fucking Stanley, not some bullshit fad.

Stop using it for every little thing. It ain’t iconic if it’s old news tomorrow. Iconic is a state of being that speaks for itself, not a label for something you’ve been told is cool.

Target: 500 words
Written: 509 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 20-23
Music: The Very Best Of The Smiths, The Stones Roses, The Who and Violent Femmes, by The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The Who and Violent Femmes (in which these are all separate albums by their respective bands and technically, the Who one is called My Generation: The Very Best Of The Who).

targets

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I should explain about the targets thing. I’m very much a proponent of starting small and building to bigger, in order to increase tolerance and get oneself used to increasingly hard and more intensive levels of work (like exercise – if you don’t exercise every day, trying to run a marathon right off the hop isn’t going to work; you won’t be able to crack out two hundred push-ups right off the bat. Maybe start with 5, or a minute on a treadmill).

As you get used to it, and at the lower levels, it doesn’t take long, you gain stamina, and your ability to do more gets easier. Brain work is no different.

However, I know a lot of days it looks like I’m not meeting what are fairly meager targets, but there’s a running total that I’ve more than doubled, so in the interest of reminding myself this is a marathon, not a sprint, if I’m over the total target to start, the goal becomes: do one thing. Doesn’t matter how much it is, whether it’s a hundred words or a thousand, just to ensure you remain in the habit of doing something daily.

As the targets grow, that buffer will likely disappear and I’ll get more done, but having ingrained the habit and built up tolerance, that should be less of an issue.

So yeah, I don’t meet the daily target a lot of the time, but I’m blowing the total target out of the water, and that’s the one that matters.

Target: 500 words
Written: 222 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 16-19
Music: The Very Best Of Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead

easter sunday

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And so, He is Risen.

And by he, I mean the turkey I’m about to bake (that’s right, motherfuckers. Turkey on Easter – you don’t own me).

Also, I’m not entirely certain of the turkey’s gender. If I’ve misgendered you, gentle gobbler, I apologize.

Of course, we’re still searching for the giblets. I’m not sure why these turkeys we get seem to hide the giblets, but mostly, I just like saying the world giblets. It always feels like should involve the word tickling.

Tickling Giblets – the quintessential tier 3 Nineties alternative band.

Or, the start of a very enjoyable evening.

You know, whatever works.

Target: 500 words
Written: 226 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 13-15, Rat Queens: Swamp Romp 1
Music: The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen: More Songs To Learn & Sing, by (holy shit) Echo & The Bunnymen