Meanwhile... Back in my Brain...

As if further proof were needed

Wed, 14 May 2008 04:36:17 GMT

As if we needed any more proof that the Republican party in the United States has completely gone off the deep end and into territory that would terrify even Cloverfield, the RNC today unveiled their official "convention wear" for the 2008 RNC convention. It includes red and white Zubaz.

Yes. Zubaz.

here's a picture of a small child dressed in what appears to be an American flag cut up into overalls, flanked by two men wearing the official pants. Those red and white things are Zubaz. Yeah. They look like pajama bottoms. Generally, you don't find these beautiful items outside of your more fashion-conscious trailer parks

I invite your thoughts. What, exactly, is the RNC thinking?

The State of the Underpope

Wed, 14 May 2008 03:21:07 GMT

Quick physical rundown:

Weight loss progress: Back on track, and down 18.2 pounds. This week I earned the Cloverfield DVD. Once I lose another 12.4 pounds, I'll own the entire Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy on DVD, and I'll have to start deciding on new rewards. Clothing-wise I'm at that awkward stage where the Levi's I prefer is not manufactured in my waist/inseam combination. So, no matter how I tighten my belt, all my pants still hang off my ass.

Lungs: My lungs have been shockingly well behaved for the past couple of months. I have not had any flareups, and I've been needing my rescue inhaler once or twice per week. My doctor tells me that I'm the perfect example of the patient who's sort of at the maximum that can be done to treat chronic asthma. If my current regimen weren't cutting it, he told me, then the only choice would be to go on daily Prednisone, and nobody wants that.

Hm, that's it for now.

The irony!

Tue, 13 May 2008 17:37:26 GMT

I've had several people tell me today that I look very sharp. Pity that it's because I'm dressed for a funeral. :(

New stories on my website

Sat, 10 May 2008 07:19:27 GMT

I’ve just added a couple of new stories to my website, so please share and enjoy.

First is "writing down some", a story I wrote when I worked at a local newspaper, hating every minute of it, delivering newspapers to the racks and repairing racks whenever they broke down. It really wasn’t that bad a job, but for a first job out of college, it was kind of a disappointment.

Second is a novella called "LTM", which I wrote in 1996. Ah, the mid-90’s. Clinton was President, apocalyptic fervor was rising to new heights with the inevitable breakdown of civilization coming with Y2K, and The X-Files taught a nation to fear the government’s involvement with aliens and black helicopters. Good times. This story is, I admit, cheesy, dated, and in some ways more autobiographical than it probably should be, but I had a blast writing it and plenty of people have enjoyed it. I hope you do too.

Of course I still have "Fookin’ Britches", "Four Ways of Counting Blackbirds", "In the Living Room, a Painting", and "Little Fluffy Wiggletoes" online as well. So feel free to read those if you haven’t already.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Sat, 10 May 2008 04:51:15 GMT

Here's a story about a 13 year old boy from Texas who stole his dad's credit card and went on a wild spending spree which ended with him and his friend playing Halo on an XBox in a hotel room with two escorts.

My favorite part of this story is the last line: "Ralph's ambition is to one day become a politician." Let's see: stealing a credit card, deficit spending, playing games, and hanging with hookers. I'd say he's off to a real good start.

More on Platypus Girl!

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:59:13 GMT

I swear, it's entirely a coincidence that I came up with Platypus Girl on the same day that researchers had mapped the platypus genome and found it just as odd as you'd expect it to be.

Thanks to jenipurr and satyrlovesong for the heads up.

Aw, hell.

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:10:51 GMT

The name Platypus Girl has already been used. I knew it was too cool to be original.

On the other hand, it's not like there's a trademark on the name. And the concept is entirely different. Hmm.

Real Life Zombie

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:03:20 GMT

I am, of course, talking about the Clinton campaign. It’s dead but it won’t stop moving around, grasping desperately at votes and delegates like a zombie lunging after brains.

There are plenty of things that bug me about the Clinton campaign, from the unscrupulous way they’re trying to reseat the delegates from states that were told directly that their primary votes wouldn’t count to her castigation of Barack Obama as an "elitist". And it’s kind of sad, too, because there was a time when I wouldn’t have minded Clinton as president. I miss the days of the first Clinton presidency, that eight year long nightmare of prosperity and peace which Bush brought an end to. There was a time when I thought Hillary Clinton would have done as well as her husband as President. Now she’s coming across to me as desperate and sort of creepy. And while tenacity and determination are good qualities for a President to have, that’s not what Clinton’s displaying.

But what I think saddens me the most about the Clinton campaign is the good will that she’s losing, especially among the Democrats and the Obama supporters who would have once been happy with Clinton as President. With her snipes and jabs, she’s squandering that good will, calling Obama an elitist — a term I’m not convinced is actually an insult — and continuing to press on about Reverend Wright, an issue that many voters in many polls have indicated just doesn’t matter to them. And while politics is never a clean game, the filth isn’t supposed to drip from a campaign like bits of flesh and grave dirt from a shambling zombie. She’s alienated many Obama supporters, plenty of whom are convinced at this point that she wouldn’t be any better a President than McCain, who has all but promised more of the sort of nonsense the Bush administration has brought us.

I suppose it’s possible that Clinton might make a comeback. After all, we’ve already seen McCain’s campaign shuffle back into life after it was declared DOA just a year ago. Clinton’s challenge, then, if she beats Obama to the nomination, will be convincing the public, including all of the alienated Democrats she’s created, that she’s not actually a Republican.

I don’t hold out much hope.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

The Irony

Mon, 05 May 2008 20:54:06 GMT

People protesting the Olympics being hosted in Beijing this year:

Hm. Funny thing about that...

While I don't personally have a political issue with Beijing hosting the Olympics -- the Olympics are supposed to transcend politics, after all -- I'm glad that the issue has drawn attention to China and to the ways that the government there treats its citizens and its environment.

Tolkien would have loved it

Sat, 03 May 2008 01:47:09 GMT

Just because I can, I set up a wiki on my website for my personal use, to keep track of all the various critters and characters and stories and things that I create. Why, you may ask, am I putting so much effort into uniting all of my different stories, written and not-yet-written, into a single monolithic narrative framework? Because I can. And because it's fun to figure out ways in which Saul, emperor of the Second Dannian Empire in the world known as Midian, might be very, very distantly related to Fred MacMahoney of The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster.

I bet Tolkien would have loved having a wiki of his own to keep track of everything going on in Middle Earth. Hm, or probably not.

Whee fun

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:49:14 GMT

During one of my breaks today, I made this little picture:

People who have read any of my stories (particularly "Who Remembers Molly" and "The Winds of Patwin County") will appreciate this, I hope. For the rest of you... maybe not so much.

That's Christina Hendricks, by the way. I've always thought that when they film The Winds of Patwin County, she should play the role of Molly. She looks perfect for the part, in my opinion.

In other news work has been the ass kicker of me these past couple of weeks. But PHP is my bitch now, and so is JavaScript. Even though I hate JavaScript with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

Robotic Minions

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:45:33 GMT

The German engineering company Festo has created some lovely robot minions that I’m sure every person with dreams of becoming an evil overlord will want to purchase and implement right away..

First, robotic jellyfish. These guys can communicate with each other, seek out energy stations to recharge themselves when their energy supply is low, and more. Watch them in action:

There’s also this critter, which is sort of the aerial version of the robotic jellyfish. It’s surprisingly graceful to watch as it flies through the air:

Says Festa, "Using a peristaltic movement to drive a balloon was previously unknown in the history of aviation. The AirJelly is the first indoor flying object to use such a peristaltic propulsion system. The jellyfish glides gently through the air thanks to this new drive concept based on the reaction thrust principle." In other words, it really IS a flying jellyfish. A robotic flying jellyfish. A BIG robotic flying jellyfish. Coming to get you. And there’s something vaguely Matrix-ish, if not outright Lovecraftian, about these guys.

Every up and coming dark overlord needs to have these robot jellyfish, both aquatic and aerial, in their minion army.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

D'oh!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:58:33 GMT

I totally forgot to wish jenfullmoon a happy birthday yesterday. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY jenfullmoon!!

Alan Moore reading Rorsach’s Journal

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:23:22 GMT

Here’s a nifty video of Alan Moore reading an excerpt from Rorschach’s journal in The Watchmen. This is great timing for me, since I just started re-reading The Watchmen the other day, after not having read it for several years (it was my present to myself for having weighed in at less than 260 pounds at my last Weight Watchers meeting; when I hit 255, I get the Cloverfield DVD). So listening to Moore read Rorscharch’s journal, with his gritty voice really brings alive this deeply troubled character.

Of course, Rorschach is an all-American hero and prides himself on that. I’m not entirely sure he’d speak with a British accent like Moore does. Still, it’s pretty awesome.

In other comic book news I highly recommend to you Fables, if you haven’t already started reading it. It’s my personal favorite treatment of the "fairy tale characters stuck in the modern world" trope, and it’s worth a read. The writing is quite good.

And I’ve also decided to try to write up "Night of the Frozen Elf" as a comic book script, and then pass it off to a friend of mine who’s expressed some interest in doing the artwork. Huzzah!

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Apocalyptic Nostalgia

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:33:02 GMT

I guess our country hasn’t had a good panic for awhile, so it’s good to see the impeccable Wall Street Journal stepping up to the plate with "Load Up the Pantry", the ROI column from Brett Arrends.

These kinds of stories always make me feel nostalgic. It seems like only yesterday that we were all going to starve to death because all the bees in the world were vanishing, and the price of honey and everything else was going to skyrocket. And it wasn’t long before that, surely, that we were all going to die from HN51, the apocalyptic avian flu which was going to mutate and become airborne ANY DAY NOW!

Of course, I grew up in the 80s, when the world trembled because the US and the Soviet Union were going to engage in nuclear Armageddon ANY DAY NOW. I remember books like War Day by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka, one of a veritable river of post-nuclear holocaust stories. And the movies, of course, like Testament and Threads, and, of course, the immortal The Day After. Red Dawn was also born from this ultimate fear as well. I missed the great Communist invasion scares of the fifties, though, which I truly regret. By the time I came of age, people weren’t building fallout shelters anymore; we all knew that a nuclear war would kill just about everyone and everything on the planet.

There was also the early part of the current millennium, of course. Just after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, I seem to recall everyone being afraid of more imminent terrorist strikes. And who can forget the trippy white powder scare? Heck, a flight I was taking from Seattle to Sacramento was delayed several hours because someone found a little white powder in the galley (turned out to be non-dairy powdered creamer, if I remember correctly). That was a pretty good one, I think, because it got the Post Office sending out notices to everyone on how to properly treat their mail, just in case it had anthrax residue in it, and spurred an explosion in the antibiotics market. Never mind that there were what, a dozen incidents of anthrax attacks? Less? More?

But the imminent apocalypse I really look back on with fond memories is the Y2K scare. That was back in the heady days of the mid- to late-90s, of course, when all the computers in the world were going to reset to 1/1/00 instead of 1/1/2000, thus triggering disasters at all levels: nuclear missiles would go flying out of their silos in the Midwest, cores from nuclear power plants were going to melt straight through to the middle of the earth, and electronic devices everywhere, from automobiles to your toaster oven, were going to fail and possibly explode. Every electronic device carried a "Y2K Compliant" sticker. Heck, I even bought an electric toothbrush that was "Y2K Compliant". Who knows what would have happened if I had bought one that wasn’t? It might have grabbed on to my teeth and yanked them out by the roots.

To be fair, there were thousands of computer programmers and experts who pored over millions of lines of archaic code fixing the Y2K error wherever they found them, and these women and men very likely prevented some might horrific errors from happening. But nuclear missile launches? Exploding toasters? Airplanes falling out of the sky? Not to mention people stockpiling rations because the nation’s infrastructure was going to collapse (freeways and highways not being any more Y2K-compliant than the long-haul trucks that drove on them). I think Y2K just appealed to a lot of people simply because of its resemblance to a relatively common horror movie scenario, that of the old friend who turns out to be a madman. We depend on computers so much, wouldn’t it be exciting to see what would happen if they turned on us? In terms of apocalyptic potential, nothing could beat Y2K.

At the time, I was also interested in conspiracy theories (as in, reading them for entertainment value, not believe in them), and I found a number that involved Y2K and the government planning on establishing martial law. According to one theory that made the rounds, Wal*Mart had been coopted by the US government to deliver signs that read "This area under Martial Law". My favorite of these theories involved George Bush (Sr., not Jr.) using his "New World Order" speech of the early 90s as justification to having the UN disarm every citizen of the US in preparation for an invasion either by the UN or the aliens.

That’s why I think that Y2K was the best apocalypse we’ve ever seen, and while I salute the Wall Street Journal for their efforts to revive that same sense of widespread panic, I don’t think they’re going to come close. And while I pray for the resolution of the food related violence in impoverished nations and I hope that the ethanol industry comes to a screeching halt sooner rather than later, I will take any stories about ordinary Americans starving to death in the streets with a grain of salt.

While there’s still grains of salt available for us, of course.

Personally, I’ve still got my money on a zombie apocalypse. If you were smart, you would too.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Advice from some pros

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:47:17 GMT

Today, Neil Gaiman shares the best advice he ever received from a writer. Advice I may end up using myself.

Graphic Novels

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:16:23 GMT

In addition to my other writing projects, which I can barely keep track of as it is, I also have an itch to write a graphic novel. I enjoy graphic novels and comic books, even though my library of such isn’t all that large. I have the entire Sandman series, of course, every trade paperback of Fables which has been published to date, and a few others. I’m not a huge fan of superhero comics. I have exactly one Superman comic, the Dark Knight series from the 80s, and a few others. I do like supernatural stuff, and mythical stuff, so if I ever created a graphic novel, it would be more along those lines.

The idea of creating a graphic novel sounds neat. I think the format restrictions would be an interesting challenge to work with. On the other hand, two difficulties present themselves:

I have no idea what to write about; and,
I can’t draw worth a damn.

Neither challenge is insurmountable, of course. Artwork-wise, I’d have to find someone who’d be willing to draw and whose art could fit with my own vision. I mean, I can draw, to the point where the people I draw are noticeably people and not just stick figures,

As for what to write… Well, nothing suggests itself immediately, so I’ll just throw a bunch of ideas at my brain and see what sticks, if anything. My zombie elf story might be an interesting little project to translate for a first project. Hm.

We’ll see what happens. It’s not like I’m going to have time to work on something anytime soon.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Not a Mystery To Me

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:43:16 GMT

National Geographic News is reporting that a mysterious "swarm" of earthquakes has struck the Oregon border. According to the news story, more than six hundred of these little quakes have struck a region about 30 miles across, about 190 miles off the coast of Oregon. Theories abound about the cause these quakes; there could be a volcano in the area, geologists say, or some unusual tectonic activity in the middle of the Juan de Fuco plate. A group of scientists are headed out on a three day cruise this weekend to examine the area and see if they can figure out what’s going on.

For someone as well-versed in Lovecraftian lore as I am, there’s no mystery here at all. This is obviously R’yleh getting ready to rise up from the depths, so that Cthulhu and the rest of the Ancient Old Ones can reclaim their dominion over Earth from humanity.

Or possibly Godzilla. Maybe Cloverfield.

It just seems unlikely to me that a tectonic plate, which is by definition rigid in the interior, could be experiencing tectonic or volcanic activity. The only possible explanation is that some horrific event involving giant monsters is about to be unleashed upon the world. The scientists and the government probably already know this; the "scientific expedition" is more likely a sacrificial one.

Hey, you got your conspiracy theories, I got mine.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

A question for the women

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:35:31 GMT

This is a research question for a new story that I’m working on. So please indulge me, if I’m not being too offensive.

When you notice another woman, particularly a woman who might be a romantic rival or someone who might somehow threaten your steady relationship with your partner of choice, what physical traits about her do you notice? What about her would make you say, “What on earth does he see in her?”

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Ooh!

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:13:58 GMT

Just saw 30 Days of Night. Now THAT's what vampires should be like.

Vocalization

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:43:03 GMT

In other news, I’ve signed up with Skype. My handle there is, naturally, Underpope.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

Recently arrived in the mail

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:32:05 GMT

(Click for a larger image)

On the left, Don’t Turn the Lights On: A Fictional Take on Urban Legends(available at Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher, Stone Garden Press. And my short story, “Who Remembers Molly”, is on page 41. Proceeds from the sale of this book benefit the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. You should feel guilty if you don’t buy it, because then all the animals in the sanctuary will go homeless.

And on the right, Issue #33 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It doesn’t look like this particular issue is available for purchase yet. However, I can tell with with utter confidence that my short story, “A Most Heinous Man”, is on page 26. Complete with an illustration by Lewis Morley, who also happens to have been the art director for the Matrix trilogy and the upcoming JLA movie.

I just like to look at them.

UPDATE: I just came across a review of the book. Each story got a paragraph. Of mine, the reviewer said, “This story is excellent.”

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.

TERRORIST BRAIN HACKERS!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:22:34 GMT

Here's my entry for Bruce Schneier's Third Annual Movie Plot Threat Contest. I don't expect I'll win or even come up as a semifinalist, but I was way too amused by my own cleverness not to share it with you.

COULD YOU BE A TERRORIST AND NOT EVEN KNOW IT?

It's been shown that HACKERS can induce EPILEPSY just by putting WORDS and IMAGES on a web page! Countless Americans have been hospitalized already because of these terrorist hackers!

WHAT ELSE CAN THEY DO TO YOUR MIND? Could they make you have a seizure? Could they cause BRAIN TUMORS? Could they even CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK AND ACT?

Protect your brain from TERRORIST BRAIN HACKERS who use the INTERNET to CONTROL YOUR MIND! Buy the new Norman Anti Brain Hack Suite for only $49.95 to prevent harmful words or images from appearing on your screen. Windows XP required.

DO IT NOW BEFORE YOU KILL EVERYONE YOU LOVE!

I hope you're scared now. And I'm not kidding about the hackers inducing seizures in epileptics, but I am certainly exaggerating the threat. But when has that ever stopped anyone in the advertising biz?

Now Hiring (Sort Of) At Daikaijuzine

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:18:58 GMT

Over here at Daikaijuzine we're looking for a new poetry editor and a new flash fiction editor. The pay is pathetic (as in, non-existent), but at least you get the joy of ruining the dreams of would-be published writers, and nothing can compare to that.

If you're interested, drop me a line at editor at daikaijuzine dot com.

You should read this book

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:54:45 GMT

</p>

I’m just taking a brief break from work to recommend to you all, in the strongest possible terms, that you read Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey. It’s a fine little example of the superhero genre in novel form, with some brilliantly funny writing and some nicely poignant moments. While not the most "important" work of fiction out there, it’s definitely enjoyable, and well worth your time and attention.

Okay, now back to work for me.

Originally published at Meanwhile... Back in my Brain.... You can comment here or there.