overpowered by funk

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I’m having a hard time with my playlist for Bad Neighbours.

Some songs suggested themselves immediately, as they often do, but my editing and writing has been snippets here and there, and not set to music as it usually is, so the opportunity for those happy accidents, where a song comes on while in the middle of a scene and matches it so well it can’t not be used.

(See Run, Alice, Mungk).

Anyway, I’ve got one more scene to go before I start the final draft, and goshdarnit, I’m going to get some goddamn music in these ears.

For reals.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 399 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 57-58, Jack Of Fables 7-8
Music: 101 Punk & New Wave Anthems - CD3, Various

supermooned

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Good god, it’s bright as hell in here. Supermoon and a fresh snowfall means weird dreams and little sleep.

Great. Just great.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2641 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 55-56, Jack Of Fables 5-6
Music: 101 Punk & New Wave Anthems - CD2, Various

maybe i did good?

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It still seems like this has a long way to go, but I’m determined that the next draft is the last before manuscript.

Everyone needs a bandaid ripped off eventually.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1381 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 53-54, Jack Of Fables 3-4
Music: 101 Punk & New Wave Anthems - CD1, Various

anyone out there

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Anyone ever do all the prep work, then write a first draft then realize partway through that there’s an absolutely crucial transition that needs to happen, (or an idea that makes for a way cooler scene comes to you), and you realize you haven’t planned for it at all?

But then, you’re so inspired by the idea that you hamfist it in there anyway, and then, several drafts later, when the rest of the book is almost manuscript ready, you realize that while the idea is still cool, the whole fucking thing was done all haphazard and now you’ve got a first draft scene in the middle of your nearly finished manuscript?

It’s like those cars that have pristine bodies and interiors, but for whatever reason, needed a new door and couldn’t find one the same colour, so they bought one that fit, but was all rusted and shitty-looking and didn’t match, and when they drive around, the thing is a freakin’ eyesore?

Yeah. One of those.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1894 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Jack Of Fables 1-2, Fables 52, 1001 Nights Of Snowfall 1
Music: 1000 Hours, Green Day

alone time

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There’s rumours we’re going back to the office full-time, and I think with all the changes I’ve endured, and how much time that’s cost me (and killed me, as far as getting shit done), I think it’s going to kill me.

Something will have to give, and I’m afraid it will be me and my sanity.

I don’t want to switch jobs again.

Unless it’s full time author.

Fuckin’ hell, Carney. You’re a real piece of shit, you know. First all the globalist bullshit, now this.

I’ll still never vote Con, but damn son. I was already on the fence on the Liberal Party the last few elections and only voted that way to avoid garbage like Scheer and Poilievre.

But if you have another one, I’m going hard left. NDP or Green, the whole fucking way.

Enough half-measures, done from fear of the right. It’s time to dump the centre, if the centre won’t listen either.

And it’s your fault, Carney, for being an unnecessary dick.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1105 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 44-47
Music: 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, Green Day

we are all going to die

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I mean, probably. Well, definitely. The question is really when and how.

Is it when Trump starts the end of the world? Is it a pandemic exploding through us because morons think vaccinations are somehow worse than the disease they’re designed to protect against?

Is it climate change?

When I write, I’ve often dreamed of it as being read still hundreds of years hence (I imagine that’s true of many artists). At this point though, hurtling toward climate collapse at least, I’d be happy if we still had books at all in twenty years. Or if anyone was around to read them.

Maybe someday, aliens will settle our barren, self-destroyed plant, and find those written and using supercomputers we haven’t dreamed of, translate them and think, Jesus, what a bunch of fucking assholes.

And then they blew it all up.

Damn, dirty apes.

(A story, as told by a fatalist, using cultural references aliens probably won’t get, because I don’t think we ever beamed Charlton Heston to space. We are the monkeys, man! The monkeys are us!)

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1071 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 40-43
Music: 06.27.01 Peel Session, The Strokes

snowin’

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And blowin’. Ninety km/hr winds.

My glasses froze to my face and gave me a wicked headache.

Damn, sun. Rude.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 586 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 36-39
Music: May 13, 1990 Lincoln, Nirvana

final stretch

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I’m aiming for a Christmas deadline (preferably before, because Christmas and Christmas Eve are fucking no gos for any amount of editing), but man, how many different way can one describe a mangled dog corpse?

It feels like one’s too many.

Doesn’t it?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1585 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe (Raven and Conqueror Worm are still great, but man, I wanted the rest to be so much better)
Comics: Fables 32-35
Music: January 20, 1990 - Tacoma, USA, Nirvana

and then dinner

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Quite a weekend. Chili, the most basic kind (well, one step above, a return to roots, sort of, though neither of those recipes are my mother’s, which is the base for all my major chilis).

Breadsticks.

Green bean casserole.

Weird combo, but hey, gotta eat something, am I right?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 456 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe
Comics: Fables 28-31
Music: The Big Bang, The Best Of The MC5, MC5