Random Writing Thought

I'm currently writing a story with the working title "The Month of Two Suns." I can't help but think that "The Day of Two Suns" sounds much more dramatic, not to mention much more like a good fantasy story. A month is just too much time. It's hard to remain excited/scared about anything for a whole month, even if you're living in a fantasy world that has no TVs or Internet. The first few days you might run around and bump into things, but sooner or later, you have to eat something.

"Month" is, naturally, the amount of time the two suns appear in the story (which is to say, the sun and a comet), but I can't help but want to change it to "Day". If I see anything titled "Month" in a journal, I might just skip it, thinking it's just too long to bother with. I don't have the imagination at the moment to follow a whole month's itinerary, even if it's stuffed full of swashbuckling action and rip-roaring adventure (what exactly is the origin of that expression?). And the story isn't about the whole month anyway, just the end of it.

Do you think this hard about the titles for things? I know it really doesn't matter, since it's just a working title anyway. So, what did YOU spend your free time today doing?

Here's Looking At You, Google.

Just for fun, I decided to run a line from the poem "Over the Misty Mountains Cold" by Tolkien in Google to see what it came up with. I didn't use any Boolean functions (no 'ands' or quotes). The line was "The heart is bold that looks on gold." Google arbitrarily decided that the word "looks" is not relevant to my search and told me so at the bottom of my page. Instead, it filled up my page with ads for things like heart-shaped gold trinkets. Despite the fact that I included the line word for word, Tolkien only appeared on page 4 of the search results. Smartest search engine? Sure. My conspiracy theory is severely disappointed.
I was originally going to make this my Facebook status, but then I realized that would make me the biggest nerd ever.

The Kings Cross Bogan rolls 20s

I played in the worldwide D&D Day game today. Near the end of the game, I decided to stop trying to play a character and just go a bit crazy. The first thing I did was, when I used an ability called Sword Dance or something, I said that my character shined her (yes, I got stuck playing the girl) sunrod into a globe of glass while she danced with her sword, all Saturday Night Fever. Later, I quoted the Kings Cross Bogan by saying, "I will call on my fully sick boys!" and I rolled a 17 to hit with my daily attack. Next, I used an ability called Booming Blade, and went "chk-chk BOOM" as I used it, and rolled a 20. Critical hit on the chk-chk BOOM? Very appropriate.

Sometims, I blog about nothing at all.

To Be A Hero

Maybe there's something to be said about all of us based on what heroes we most look up to. Some people see their mom or their soccer coach as their hero, for bravely driving a minivan and cooking pancakes or selflessly encouraging good self esteem and sportsmanship.

And some of us aim for something a bit more epic.

Pests

I walked down to the dumpsters to throw away some recyclables I had been gathering in my apartment. As I went to throw them away, I saw a whitish-blond cat climb out of one of the dumpsters and into the parking lot a level above where I was standing. A few weeks ago, I was throwing away a couple of pizza boxes when a cat jumped out of the dumpster and just about startled the life away from me. This led me to an interesting thought: what is a pest? What difference is there between vermin and a pet? I have always loved cats, those furry, purry creatures that make me smile just by rubbing against my leg or climbing into my lap. But what role does a cat have? They don't guard a house and they don't drag children out of fires (with maybe the odd exception). They're just assigned the role of companion, a role they're not particularly suited for. They're just a change in fate from climbing around in garbage. It's entirely a matter of subjective perception.

Take rats. Some people keep rats as pets; for most people, rats are vermin, annoying at best and dangerous at worst. It's all subjective. We choose arbitrarily to call one thing a dear pet and another a pest. Heck, some people keep poisonous snakes and tigers as pets.

But what does this thought lead to? Sadly, I have the feeling this question also applies to us. One person's pest is another person's loved one. Do we ever treat people as they are, or are we always dependent on our subjective views, the entirely arbitrary responses we have to people based on the tiny part of their lives that we observe? With a different first impression, could an obnoxious jerk have been a hilarious scamp? Could arrogant have been self-assured? How much of what we think we know about people is based on our own wishful thinking or skewed perception?

Well, it's a thought.

... it deepens like a coastal shelf

It shames me, as the writer of a pseudo-cyberpunk blog, that I bought my computer five years ago and haven't upgraded it physically since. It suits my purpose, though. Although I'm a video gamer, it's been more of a pursuit than a study recently, and there really aren't any new games that I desperately want to play that my computer can't handle--at least, none that aren't also available for my Playstation 3, which cranks out amazing graphics onto my brand-new 40" LCD widescreen HD television, rather than the piddly 17" Dell monitor that my computer is attached to. That was a long sentence saying, "My computer sucks, but my PS3 doesn't." But my computer is fine for what I use it for, and I don't play enough modern video games to warrant buying a new one.

That being said, I can't help but being rather disturbed by my computer's gradual descent into decrepitude. When I first got it, it started up, from power-on to finished loading all the system tray crap, in less than forty seconds (because I timed it). Today, I didn't have the heart to measure it, but I turned it on and ate breakfast, and it was still loading when I got back. It used to be doing the 100 meter in under twelve seconds: nothing astonishing, but respectable. Now, it moves like an old person getting up to take a crap in the middle of the night. If I wanted to wax poetical, I'd say it has qualities akin to something primordial, even pre-Cambrian, just dragging its lumpy, slimy bulk out of some quagmire the world forgot, rearing its misshapen head, and deciding maybe it's best not to come out onto dry land after all.

I can think of three possible reasons for this gradual descent into senility: the build-up of dust, the accrual of pointless applications and bad registry entries, and the slow grinding away of all the moving parts of any machine into fine powder. I feel like I'm watching a loved one slowly slip away to a wasting disease: it still greets me with a smile and tries to play those games we used to love for me, but every day I see it grow a little slower, and the old games come a little harder.

I actually got a bit misty-eyed writing that. I love you, too, computer. I love you, too.

High School seemed like such a blur...

Today I was watching Smallville and just reflecting on the way high school kind of flashed by for me. I never had a lot of friends and I certainly never even came close to dating. I never raised much hell and the gutsiest thing I ever did was stay in the school all night for a math competition. Now, I'm starting to think that even though I got the grades, I wish I would have spent less time on my studies and more on just being young. Those days, when everyone lives with their parents and sees each other every day, when it feels like friendships will last forever and everything matters, will never be here again. I don't know if I'll ever have as tight friendships as I did in high school, and they could have been a lot tighter. High school is the great equalizer: not everyone goes to college, and there, everyone is divided by subject. In high school, someone of every sort is there, the jocks with the nerds, the preppies with the losers. And I could have been a lot more part of it. Instead, I worried about what colleges I could get into and how many scholarships I would get. I was more concerned with scores (and video games) than with just being a kid and hanging out with my buddies.

And I think that was a huge mistake. So the lesson is that sometimes I should take my eye off of the goal and just enjoy what I have now. Because those stories about inedible cafeteria food and the Homecoming dance are indelible.

Even if the story is that there was no story.

Yatta!

So I had not one but two separate nightmares last night that I did very poorly in that second class I told you about. In the first nightmare, the class was being taught by some awful woman in a classroom completely unlike any I have been in. She told me that I had never turned in my paper, and I said that I had it on the website, but I couldn't for the life of me find the website again, so the remainder of the dream was about simultaneously trying to find the paper on a hard drive or find it on the website. In real life, I handed it in physically, so I don't know where that idea came from. Maybe from the fact that I hate it when my students hand in a paper online rather than handing it to me! Anyway, the second dream was me trying to convince my teacher that I had the paper in, because she was about to give me a C- because I hadn't found the paper, and meanwhile the next class was coming in and she was trying to shunt me off. In the third dream, I was a pirate coming in to port and trying to find the inn where I would be staying for the night.

But this morning, I checked my grade, and guess what? All your English classes are belong to me! I am the Duke of English, A Number One!

Now it's time to get down and boogie.

The problem with not wanting to get up in the morning is that I have all these weird dreams. But really, why wake up? So I can hang around playing video games and watching movies? I need a new hobby.

Thoughts on a modern boy's education

Now, I don't say this to brag. I say this because I'm scared, and it's one of the most uncomfortable things about being me.

Up to this semester, I had taken five classes as a graduate student: Topics in Creative Writing (Fiction), Folklore Seminar (Supernatural), Poetry Writing, Practicum in Teaching English, and Topics in Creative Writing (Nonfiction). I got an A in each class. Now, I have another A in Topics in a Poetry Writing Workshop (it's written "Poetry Writting" on my unofficial transcript; sometimes I feel like I go to a Mickey Mouse college). I only have one more grade to get, and that was in my hardest course this semester. Most of the time, I wouldn't worry so much about getting an A. That's life; every now and then, I don't do as well as I would have liked. And this semester, it wouldn't be because I wasn't good enough, it would be because I frankly didn't try as hard as I should have.

On the other hand, it's a matter of pride now. Once I have a streak like that going, I'd feel like a failure if I didn't keep it up. I can't stand being anything but the best. I don't say this gladly; I recognize it as a personal weakness, but as far as weaknesses go, it's a much better one than mediocrity or apathy. In fact, I feel a bit sick to my stomach thinking about it. For the time being, I'm glad my last grade hasn't been posted. Once it is, I won't have to worry about grades again until the end of the summer. Yay!

Of course, that presupposes that I won't start worrying in advance...

Nicole Kidman!

I had a dream Nicole Kidman was dead. I think it was some kind of accidental overdose. I guess in my mind Heath Ledger and Nicole Kidman are connected. Well, they've both been in Batman movies and they're both Australian, so there IS a connection....

That being said, it's been almost ten years since Moulin Rouge. I know Nicole was still looking foxy in The Golden Compass, but that was more of a "my best friend's hot mom" kind of look, rather than a "that cute girl I'd pass notes to during class" look. I really need to update my mental list of hot women. I think Sharon Stone is still on there.

Help me, Keira Knightley. You're my only hope.

By "help" I mean "stop making Pirates of the Carribean movies" and "do something interesting with your life."

Dream on....

I happened across an old write-up I had done of one of my dreams. I often think back to this dream, struck by its strangeness and generally striking creativity and story. I keep meaning to write a story based on it, but then I put it off (as I do so many things). Whenever I think of it, I think of it as a dream I had recently. But today I checked the date of the actual dream, and it was more than three years ago. Has it really been so long?

Sometimes I have the feeling the world ended for me in 1999. I still see things that came out in the 90's and think, "That was only a few years ago!" New Year's Eve 1999-2000 was perhaps the high point of my life. It wasn't anything that happened to me: I was at a party my parents went to full of people I didn't know. But there was a feeling that the world was going to be fresh and new, and the entire world was celebrating just being here and having something to celebrate together. It was before 9/11, and I sincerely thought that if the world could move past all of that hate and pettiness for a day, as we did on December 31, we could do so forever, and have a better world. It was a naive feeling, but a beautiful feeling, too, and one that I miss so much that sometimes I just want to cry. In those days, the Internet felt fresh and beautiful, like a meadow after it rains, a meadow with a creek and moss.

Because those are the most beautiful.

Inconsequential Moment

Today, as I was walking home from my class, a girl ran by me and dropped a pen on the side of the road. She didn't just kick a pen that was already on the ground; she dropped it from her pocket. I saw her drop it. By the time it occurred to me to pick it up and run to her, say, "Excuse me, but I think you dropped your pen," she was already at the door of the building she was running to. But I should have done it anyway.
Maybe I didn't want her to be late; she was already running. Maybe I wasn't sure it was her pen. But two seconds wouldn't have mattered, and I saw the pen drop from her pocket.
The truth is, for those few seconds, I was lazy. For those few seconds, I failed to do good.

The unavoidable blog question, and others

One does have to wonder what they mean when they say things like "bloggers responded by... " and "the blog community...". Exactly who makes up these nebulous organizations? Who decides who is a worthy blogger, a fellow of note and repute, while the rest are more or less empty windbags? I ask you.

On a lighter note, the new Conan trade paperback by Dark Horse is coming out. It's well worth checking out, because this comic series actually takes the original work by Robert E. Howard and turns it into comics, rather than trying to tell new Conan stories. Of course, Howard only wrote one Conan novel, and many short stories that were hit or miss, but his writing is much better than that of any other Conan writer. Why? Because Howard told a story that was important to him with characters that he believed in; everyone else, to some degree, is just "doing Conan." And whether you know something about Conan or he's just a big muscly guy in a loincloth to you, it's never going to be the same as the complex, powerful individual Howard visualized and brought to life.

Writing continues to progress with difficulty. I think I have far too many projects open at once. It's time to wrap up a short story for my occult story collection and focus on the four other major projects I have right now: my thesis for grad school, my fantasy novel, my cyberpunk novel, and a new project. Why a new project, when all of that is already weighing on me? Because I'm constantly on the lookout for something new and exciting that gets my imagination going at critical mass and makes me feel like I'm creating a world that's really and deeply meaningful.

Maybe I'll talk more about how I intend to do that in a later blog.

Take care, my ugly ducklings.

Solution

I worked out a solution to the current real estate problem. All they need to do is start selling houses with a Star Trek theme. That way, all those countless hordes of geeks living in their parents' basements, garages, attics, etc. will finally venture into the light of the burning day-star to perhaps boldly go where no man has gone before... or, in their case, farther from home than they have ever been.

I'm only poking fun at geeks because I don't think one could ever chase me down, and even if he could, he'd probably be too winded to do much more than swear at me in Klingon.

I just watched Trekkies today. I've seen the second one, but this is the first time I watched the first one. To be honest, I found the second one a lot less terrifying, perhaps because it was more international. There are some genuinely bizarre people out there. Then again, I'm inclined to say that as long as they're not hurting anyone, let them have their fun.