Category: writing

thanksgiving

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What am I thankful for?

My dogs. My cats.

My family.

My job, unsteady as it is right now with Carney’s cuts looming.

A world on the brink that hasn’t quite made it there yet.

I can still write.

I am not banned.

I may be in the future.

Fuck ’em. I’d want nothing more than to be censored.

Call me A Clockwork Orange.

Madmenny and a malenky bit of the old in and out, right, me droogs?

Fuck it. Banned books for all.

I am thankful there’s still outrage over that.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1476 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!, Terry Brooks
Comics: Youngblood 9, Youngblood Strikefile 7, Brigade v2 13, Badrock And Company 3
Music: We Love Life, Pulp (do we?)

damn it

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You know when you want to do a good job at something, like, the idea’s good, but the execution just ain’t there?

That’s me and these last couple of scenes.

I was killing it, and then…

I wasn’t.

Fuck.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1185 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: When Charlie McButton Lost Power, Suzanne Collins
Comics: Brigade v2 6, Team Youngblood 4, Troll 1, Bloodstrike 7
Music: Wasted... Again, Black Flag

sometimes it’s tough

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It can be very difficult to get in the head of someone who thinks so much differently than yourself.

Sometimes, it’s worse when it’s someone with whom you should identify, but who you’ve written as having one particular characteristic that’s utterly opposite to your own.

Like, say, a highly liberal man who finds sex disgusting.

Versus, say, me, also quite liberal, but lacks many boundaries. There are no off-limit topics to me.

I have boundaries, but I refuse to censor my life; I may not like the horrors (and perceived horrors which aren’t actually horrors) of the modern world, but I’ll not ignore their reality.

It’s hard for those of us who have spent a lifetime being comfortable wallowing in the dirt to relate to Howard Hughes.

Fear of dirt is as great a fear as any, and if what we all suspect is coming (Trump’s apocalypse) actually comes, well, then, we all better get a lot more used to it.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1460 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Born For This, Chris Guillebeau (I want to like the guy, but there's something just... missing in his style.  It's 'non-conformist', but in the most vanilla manner possible, at least in presentation, which makes even his good ideas a bland read.  Plus, it gets a bit repetitive; how many examples can you give without concrete directions or concepts that go beyond the barest of bones, borderlining platitude?  Ugh, some colour, some fire, man.  I wonder if he regrets using Thiel and Musk as examples, the way I would hope Tony Robbins regrets using just about everyone he's used, particularly Donald Trump.)
Comics: Bloodstrike 5-6, Brigade v2 5, Team Youngblood 3
Music: Washing Machine, Sonic Youth

in the weeds now

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I mean, I’m working harder than ever, and tomorrow’s a holiday, so we can sit and think about what we’ve done, which admittedly, is a weird reason for a holiday, and I’m not sure it’s tangible help to native communities, but here we are.

It’s probably better to ask them than me, but I suspect the answer is that we’re not doing enough to reconcile the sins of past with creating a better future for the indigenous.

In any case, not to make light, but I’ve spent the last fifty minutes trying to have a character explain why he’s still considered liberal if he’s opposed to butt stuff.

It’s a hygiene thing, not a commentary on homosexuality.

(The character, not me. You get your freak on, boys and girls. As long as it’s consensual and doesn’t involve children, animals or those not capable of making that decision, then you get on getting on, however you wanna do it.)

Anyway, life’s weird and horrible things that require solemnity often overlap with the absurd.

I think we’d die if we had to take it all so seriously (which ironically, sums out how we got to our current edge-of-Armageddon political apocalypse). We all got too sensitive, hunkered down, doubled down, doubled down again and instead of letting shit go a little and talking it out, we’re about to have a civil war a hundred kilometres or so to the south of us.

Lighten up, jerks. Drop the militants, and get back to using your words.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1249 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Born For This, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Brigade v2 0, 3, Team Youngblood 1, Bloodstrike 4
Music: Warped Tour 2001 Compilation, Various (but mostly Anti-Flag and Flogging Molly)

huh that’s funny

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I hit an exact number in my target today.

Go figure.

Bad Neighbours is finally evolving into something I can respect.

Another couple of rounds, and maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll be suitable for consumption.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1300 words

Read: Memories Of The Future, Vol. 1, Wil Wheaton (not your best work, Wil)
Comics: Youngblood Strikefile 2-3, Youngblood Yearbook 1, Bloodstrike 3
Music: Warped Tour, North Tonawanda, New York, Sublime (I prefer South Tonawanda)

polarization

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I think the whole thing I’m trying to do with this Bad Neighbours thing is to really explore how absurd the political dichotomy is, and how destructive.

I’m not exploring a third option, and the crazier the right gets, there becomes an increasing need to draw that hard line and say, no.

No more.

No further.

Enough.

And then push back the other way until sanity is restored. The problem is, the rhetoric on that side, so willingly and completely divorced from any kind of reality or genuity, is almost impossible to engage on a conversational level. You can’t argue the points, because they don’t care to listen, and won’t respond in good faith.

There is no argument that will stop this anymore. We need to convince ourselves to take action, whatever action we can, procedural, legal, etc., in order to slow this monster down enough to make it to elections, which at this point, is a question of whether they’ll even happen or whether these fascists will try to find an excuse to suspend them or rig them, because they know in any even remotely just system, they’ll get blown from the water, and then, they’re all fucked.

Basically, every obstruction that can be made, every inch fought for; give up nothing without extreme cost. Make them feel it. Wear them down; they’ve shown a great deal of incompetency.

They will make exploitable mistakes.

Use the bureaucracy against them, especially since you can no longer trust the Supreme Court, and every block at a lower level just gets pushed up to the shadow docket. Plus, even when the court rules against them, they just ignore it and do it anyway.

So, block, obstruct, don’t make it easy. Make them work for every inch, make every yard a Herculean effort.

It’s the only way.

Push back, push back, push back.

And when it’s all said and done, and the extremists have fallen by the wayside, then maybe we can get back to ending the dichotomy.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1313 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Sylvie And Bruno Concluded, Lewis Carroll (god, this is shit)
Comics: Lara Croft And The Frozen Omen 4-5, Tomb Raider v3 1-2
Music: War On Errorism, NOFX (legit one of the best punk albums ever written)

sunshine and puppies

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And beer. The local Barks ‘n’ Brew, always for a good cause, and a good time.

Beats yardwork, which is all I did this morning, after editing. I could use the break.

Every day seems more than a marathon. It’s a car chase, a manic Daniel Radcliffe running around with guns taped to his hands, a sprint with obstacles that goes the full half-circuit.

I’m way too out of shape for it.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1347 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: SNAFU, Ed Helms
Comics: Tomb Raider v2 2-5
Music: Walk Among Us, The Misfits

three down

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That’s it. The villain has been shanked, the prison’s a riot, the mayor’s fled the country.

All of this will make sense.

None of it will make sense, because it is about nonsense.

Our current nonsense.

LET THEM EAT LAW.

(Sorry, don’t know why I went all Dredd there for a minute – speaking of which, who saw the Karl Urban version? Fuckin’ terrific! I love Lena Headey! Something tells me she’s one of these people who plays an incredible villain, but is an absolute sweetheart in real life. Or so I hope. I honestly hope everyone is sweet in real life.)

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1408 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Time Machine, H.G. Wells (better than I remember, but I'm still icked by the classism)
Comics: Tomb Raider 43-45, Tomb Raider: Arabian Nights 1
Music: Extras: A Collection Of Rarities, The Jam

a few last notes

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And then tomorrow, I’m done with the third draft, until the fourth draft.

And the fifth, sixth, seventh… The Mungk had thirteen total.

Hopefully, this ain’t that.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 260 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Comics: Tomb Raider 39-42
Music: Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple (is she brilliant or what?)

i mean, like, it’s getting there

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I’ve got one scene left to revise in my third draft, and despite all my great notes with their wonderful additions and new directions and ideas and such, I’m not sure they all fit, or could fit, without monster rewrites and possible storyline changes, at this point.

Still, it’s a good start, and I will endeavour in the new round to go through all those notes and take whatever will really work, will add to the story and make it better than it is, and put it in.

That’s going to be a major task, I’m sure, and I’m starting to worry my end of year deadline isn’t going to be one I can reach.

I finished The Mungk on time last year; it was a novella.

This is much more ambitious and has taken up considerably more time and effort.

I imagine the next will be that again.

A book a year; maybe I’ll have all my work done before I’m eighty. Or even ninety. Ninety-one, perhaps.

I’ll retire on my ninety-first birthday. How’s that?

And then I’ll fucking die.

If I make it there first.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 2869 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Captain Paul, Alexandre Dumas
Comics: Tomb Raider: Sphere Of Influence 1, Tomb Raider: Takeover 1, Tomb Raider 37-38
Music: Exposure - The Best Of Gary Numan, Gary Numan (Gary who?)