Category: reading

so yesterday was weird, eh?

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I’m not religious by any means, but I do believe in a realistic spirituality.

There’s more in heaven and earth and all that. Of all of the religions I’ve studied, Taoism seems the most logical and least formal, as well as the most in line with my beliefs.

Buddhism is, as well, but there are formalities and sexism and dogma with that, which are all things I try and stay away from.

Meditation is something I do; not a formal belief system that requires me to behave a certain way.

Ursula Leguin inspired me to study more into the Tao; that last contained notes I made on the opening passage.

I thought I might share them over time. People can bite back, discuss, suggest, casually realign my thought process by pointing out where I’m mistaken, what I’ve missed, or perspectives I haven’t discovered yet.

Personally, I love that.

Perspective and presence are what it’s all about, really.

All that is good – empathy, compassion, the enjoyment of life – stems from such things.

And who knows what’s beyond it?

Target: 1500 words
Written: 817 words, comic: The Stuff 5

Read: The Broom Of The System, David Foster Wallace
Comics: Fables 141-143, Fairest 27
Music: Veni, Vidi, Vicious, The Hives (FUCK.  YEAH.)

you still have to write stuff

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And read.

And write.

And submit.

And follow up.

And debate whether it’s worth putting up stories on literary sites for critique when idiot admins are only going to fail to recognize that the misogynist is the BAD GUY. Seriously, I’ve two other stories I’d like to put up on Wattpad, one about a woman who gets revenge on a guy who kills a girl for rejecting him and another about a man who rants on how terrible his wife is, only to realize his neglect, infidelity and emotional abuse has caused her to commit suicide.

These are not ambiguous stories, in terms of who the bad guy is.

But I’m afraid, since Get Back Again was pulled, because whoever complained and whoever was responsible for reviewing the claim saw the story and missed the fucking point.

THE BAD GUY IS THE POV.

HE’S THE FUCKING BAD GUY.

It’s not a manifesto; it’s a bad dude who’s perspective is that he’s a good guy.

We’re all the heroes of our own stories, isn’t that the platitude?

Apparently, no one told them.

If it’s not a werewolf or vampire bad boy romance, they don’t care.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 3687 words, comic: The Stuff #3

Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Comics: Fables 130-131, Fairest 16, The Unwritten 50
Music: 2+2=5, Radiohead

i pull a card every day

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It’s a wishful thinking thing, like a horoscope, but more personal.

Today was supposed to be a good day.

And it had its moments.

But mostly, I wanted to fall asleep. To do the few things I needed to do (read, write, sex, etc.) and go the fuck to sleep.

I did edit. And I read, a little. Not as much as I’d like. If I want to do any better at it, I’ll have to do it before bed.

Which I hate.

I’m already exhausted. Why rush it? Of course, if I don’t do it, it establishes precedent. Starts a habit. You know how in your mind, once you do something, even once, it becomes possible to do it again and again? The whole four minute mile thing, and sadly, acts of evil. Do it once and you know you’re capable of it.

Do it again, and well…

Let’s just say Donald has practice. This doesn’t happen overnight. His soul is as warped as a soul can possibly be.

But let’s not think about him. I have a couple more issues of Fables I’d like to read…

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2017 words, comic: The Stuff

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (fascinating stuff - never know I could be so into cryptology, outside of Digital Fortress)
Comics: Fables 110-113
Music: August 27, 1991, Aladin, Bremen, Nirvana

for a writer, i don’t write good

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Or rather, I think I write well, okay at best, but I rarely know what I want to say. I read other books with these incredible telling details or unbelievable insights into the human condition and I think, why not me?

What am I saying that’s not been said before?

I suppose there’s something to be said on saying something that has been said in a different way, and different voices reaching different people in different ways, but yeah.

I always wanted to be original. Unique. At the vanguard of something new.

But I don’t know what. It’s the essence of constrained – having something inside of you building like a new big bang, but being so essentially weak of spirit as to be unable to unleash it into the void.

And that’s what out there – void.

No one reads my shit because I don’t promote my shit. I’m Holden Caulfield, if he lived now and on social media. If he thought he hated phonies before, man, wait until he gets a load of Instagram and Twitter.

He’d be dead before the day was out.

I was eased into it, and despite knowing these are the tools I require to be successful in today’s age, I am increasingly convinced that social media needs to be phased out of my life, and out of existence entirely, if we are to survive.

Otherwise, none of us may last the day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1476 words, comic: The Stuff #1

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier
Comics: Fables 103-106
Music: August 17, 1990, Palladium, Hollywood, Nirvana

well how about that

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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

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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?)

reminders

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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

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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

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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

youngblood

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I mean, Jesus Christ, Rob. Reboot after retool after dramatic change, like you’re trying to stuff the entirety of fifty to seventy years of X-Men/Avengers tales into a 22 page comic. You can’t go three fucking issues without rebooting the fucking team. Your most interesting characters were killed off, or disappeared, or rendered useless. There are so many goddamn loose threads and things and people that show up like we’re supposed to know them and then just vanish.

Add to that the fact that nearly every character you created is a straight rip-off of a Marvel or DC character and well, fuck, man. No wonder people deride your work. MacFarlane and Jim Lee did better art; everyone does better writing. It’s pretty clear that your ego got in the way of your progression; sometimes, success too early kills the instinct for growth.

Evolution is better than talent; a work ethic and a willingness to adapt will always beat natural skill.

I mean, I don’t know Rob. He might be a perfectly nice guy, but goddamn. This universe is a mess, and Brigade and Bloodstrike aren’t any better.

Consistency. Uniquity. Time to learn who people are – these are the ties that bind, the things that draw us to characters, not cheap knockoffs, splashy art and disjointed storytelling that reads like me trying to write my first novel, discarding and changing, abandoning, getting sick of an idea that’s not working and starting over with the same idea, with a twist, but instead of letting it evolve into something consistent for the world to see when it’s ready, you just do it all over and over again. No wonder people can’t seem to stick, and so many of these series or story arcs get rebooted after one to two issues.

You need to go back to basics, ditch the knockoffs and focus on the things that actually worked (which wasn’t much). Of course, yet another reboot is an interest killer, so maybe not. Maybe just put this fucker to bed, and admit, after thirty-plus years?

This shit ain’t gonna work out.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1413 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v4 8-9, Brigade v4 1, Bloodstrike 26
Music: With The Beatles, The Beatles