Category: reading

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)

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

yellow birds

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My sister-in-law wrote a book. She’s been in the game longer than I have, and thus, has much better connections, and so, it was only a little surprising to see the quality turnout at her book launch tonight.

It was fun, good to see people I haven’t seen in a while, surprising to see people I have never seen show up in abundance.

The power of networking, I suppose, of actually talking to people in the flesh.

Me, I’m more of a one-on-one kind of person, and I’d rather be alone than not.

Still, it was nice to see that people will still come out to support people, even when they’re only loosely connected.

My dream is of a world that supports art for the sake of art, and that it doesn’t need to be commercialized or branded; it can just be.

That was a nice reminder that this can still happen.

Target: 500 words
Written: 196 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith
Comics: East Of West 32-35
Music: The Vanilla Tapes, The Clash

stuff from before

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I’ve been reading a lot of stuff I’ve read before. And listening to stuff I’ve heard before.

Some of it is like a warm hug, a familiar reminder, a keyhole into a presence I once had, discovering the music all over again.

Some is it is tedious and hasn’t aged well.

Once again, I find myself thinking of a way back – to a feeling I used to have, or a way forward from a feeling I didn’t want.

Nostalgia doesn’t suit us; it can be revealing. I’m yet to be certain that’s a bad thing, or a good one.

All I know is we want what we can’t have, we want what we used to have, and we want everything else instead.

Target: 200 words
Written: 783 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (starts well, turns into generic mystical bullshit)
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 5-8
Music: Yer Favourites, Tragically Hip (gave me my #VeryCanadianMoment as I slid around in the snow on the way to my free health care with Bobcaygeon and Nautical Disaster blasting over the speakers.  If I'd been apologizing to someone with a hockey bag and a two-four in the back, I'd have broken the Canadian stereotype meter permanently.  Before you ask, I was already wearing a toque).