Genius, Power, Magic

Reflections 01: The Woman is a Virus

2011-10-07T04:38:00.004-04:00

How does this read to you? It's the first episode of a web series I'd really like to see made. Feel free to be brutal. I really want to do this, and if the letters suck, the show will suck, so I need to know what to change.

REFLECTION - EPISODE 01: THE WOMAN IS A VIRUS

FADE IN

INT. COMPUTER LAB / WORKSHOP

Camera explores the detritus of the shop. WILLIAM GIBSON DECKER is working hard on something technical. Parts are strewn all about the bench.

DECKER (VOICE-OVER)

I don't really understand people.

A doorbell sounds in the background. Decker doesn't react.

DECKER (VOICE-OVER)

Too messy, too unpredictable. With people,

you put in data - time, effort, direction - and

you have no clue how they're going to react.

The doorbell sounds again, ringing three or four times, impatiently. Decker continues to work.

DECKER (VOICE-OVER)

Take this jerk. I tell everyone I know not to

bother me in my workshop. "Don't bug me

in my workshop," I tell them. There's a sign

on the door. It says, "Go away, we don't

fucking want any."

Doorbell sounds again, twice.

DECKER (VOICE-OVER RISING TO DIALOG)

Seems like a simple command. But with people, you

lock yourself away with your work and some asshole

won't stop RINGING THE FUCKING DOOR-

BELL!

Silence. Decker listens. For a moment, there is nothing. He returns to his work.

WOMAN'S VOICE (THROUGH DOOR)

William?

Decker winces.

DECKER

Women. Women are worse than people. At

least with some guy you can be reasonably sure

he won't start crying at you or telling you, you

don't listen. One day, you're having a nice chat,

and then BLAM! out of nowhere, here come the

wet-works and a fourteen-hundred dollar

peripheral flying at your head.

Decker gets up from his bench and opens the door. Standing on his stoop is an attractive girl in last-night's waitress uniform. This is MARLENE "MARLI" BARA. She's been crying.

MARLI

He's gone.

DECKER

Uh... Who's gone? Wait. Marli? What are you

doing here? Go away; I'm working.

Marli pushes her way past Decker, into his lab. She dislikes this room.

MARLI

Christian, my boyfriend, is missing. He was

supposed to pick me up from work last night,

and he never showed up. I took a taxi home.

He isn't returning my texts or answering his

phone.

As she speaks, Marli fiddles with some piece(s) of tech from Decker's shelves.

DECKER

Maybe he's drunk.

MARLI

No. He's missing, I know it. We have to

go to the police.

Decker takes something out of Marli's hands and puts it down, then leads her to the door.

DECKER

That's a good idea. Why don't you go to the

police and let them deal with it. Why are you

even here?

MARLI

I can't go alone. You had that thing that one

time. You know how to talk to the police.

DECKER

That thing. You mean when your boyfriend

and his minions broke in here and stole

thousands of dollars worth of computer equip-

ment? And the police couldn't make a case

because of half of what they took was my

surveillance gear?

MARLI

He doesn't have minions.

DECKER

Sure he does. Four of them. Rich, privileged

frat-boys. You know them. You gave them an

alibi. I lost everything.

MARLI

I wasn't the only one. And they didn't take

your stuff. We were all at the Crash House

playing beer pong - celebrating Brett's pro-

motion. Come on, that was forever ago, I

really need your help.

Marli collapses in Decker's arms. He holds her, unhappy; but he melts a little.

DECKER (VOICE-OVER)

She came here because she knows I can't

say no to her. It doesn't matter if she screws

me over a hundred times, I have to go with

her. She needs my help. She needs me. How

can I turn that down. Dammit.

Decker holds her at arms length and looks at her a moment; but then puts on his jacket. Then turns to his workbench and retrieves a bulky smart-phone and starts to put it in his breast pocket.

MARLI

Is that an iPhone?

DECKER

(Laughs) You know, there's more computing power

in your average smart-phone than was on

the early shuttle missions. This? This little

baby could tell you how to build a ship that

would take you to Mars. Then you could

use it to fly the thing. You'd be dead from

radiation exposure before you got half-way;

but it would get you there.

As he speaks, Decker places a metal and plastic device around the back of his neck. It has two wires which he plugs into jacks hidden beneath his hair.

MARLI (KIND OF DISGUSTED)

What are you doing?

DECKER

I installed a few highly sensitive electrodes in my

head that let me interface remotely with my

mobile. This picks up the signal from those

electrodes and then connects with the glasses

and the phone.

He puts on the glasses - somewhat bulky, mirrored shades.

MARLI

You are not wearing those in public.

DECKER

Hell I'm not. These are my lifeline. They

figured out a way to use contact lenses; but

they can't do a full color spectrum yet; and I

don't have the equipment to make them re-

ceive the carrier signal.

What? Okay, here. Put them on. Don't

worry, they're not going to do anything. Hang

on. It's not easy to do this without looking.

DISPLAY (IN THE GLASSES, MARLI'S VIEW): Facebook comes up in a simplified Smart-Phone App window.

"Marli@Augnet.org" types itself into the email

window then "*********" in the password.

Marli's page pops up.

MARLI

Hey! It's my Facebook page. Wait.

What are you doing?

DISPLAY (NOW OVERLAID ON SCENE):

Marli's Status Update: I've been a real shit

to Decker, and I really should start treating

him better.

MARLI

How are you doing that?

DECKER

Your password sucks. Get a better one.

Here. This is what they're really for.

Decker wipes the Facebook window away.

DISPLAY: DECKERSPHERE (Laid out like any generic search engine).

Search: William G. Decker. Go. Results:

[List of Results]

DECKER

Anytime I meet someone, if they have any

kind of internet presence, I'll know about

it.

MARLI (FIDGITING WITH GLASSES)

Okay, that's kind of cool; but do they have

to look so stupid?

Decker flips her the finger and takes the glasses from her. Camera wipe to black as he does so (as though we're seeing scene through the lenses).

INT. MARLI'S CAR, DRIVING.

As they drive, the Display shows a GPS Map.

MARLI

Did you say you put wires in your brain?

DECKER

That's putting it pretty simply; but yeah -

basically.

MARLI

But why?

DECKER

An experiment. The tech is based on work

done at Brown University, with quadriplegics.

I improved on the basic design. It's how I

run the computer without taking it out of my

pocket.

Marli looks worriedly at Decker, then turns the car into the police station parking lot.

MARLI

You are weird. We're here.

The duo exit the car and walk into the Police Station.

INT. POLICE STATION

Alone and bored, POLICE OFFICER FREEMAN sits at a desk reading a magazine. He puts the magazine down and sits up when Decker and Marli enter.

FREEMAN

How can I help you today? Wait, you're William

Decker, right?

DECKER

Yeah. And you are (reading badge) Officer

Freeman?

DISPLAY: As he says it, SAPD Freeman appears in the search bar. Results:

* Local law enforcement officer receives state's

highest honor.

*Decorated Officer charged in beating.

*Police Brutality Down Home. Ken Freeman:

"Actions appropriate to circumstance."

*Local police support neighborhood baseball.

*Record Abroad "Sexy Model Adrenne Freeman

likes Harry Potter."

DECKER

And this is Marlene Bara. She's here to file

a missing person's report.

Freeman perks up.

FREEMAN

That sounds serious. Sit down, then. Tell

me about who's missing.

FADE OUT.

My Most Ambition Campaign Project To Date

2011-05-15T03:00:00.004-04:00

In the shadow of the Palace of Cleito, in the City built by a God to honor her beauty, we found ourselves enamoured of our own excess and subserviant to hubris. And then came war.

And soaked in blood, the Children of Poseidon raised up the blade in dire sacrifice, prepared to plunge us all into unending darkness for their own selfish designs.

In desperation, we allied ourselves with the princes of air and shadow, and rent the fabric of creation to steal for ourselves the immortality of the Gods; setting us forever in opposition to our former Lords and Masters.

There was a terrible price. -- The Prophecy of the Oracle of Evaemonis (7th Thargelion in the 42nd year of the reign of Cleito)

I am likely exceeding my grasp as a Storyteller and Game Master with this project; but it is something I have wanted to do (and have touched on briefly) since I began gaming again in the late 20th Century.

The intent is for the game to span no less than ten-thousand years, from the fall of Atlantis until the fall (or salvation) of man. The Campaign will center around a group of immortal heroes who have set themselves in opposition to the Gods - visitors to our World who seek to control and guide mankind.

In raising themselves above their fellow man, however, how are the heroes any different than those they seek to defy? And what are the far-reaching consequences of their actions.

Music uploaded via Creative Commons (and Jamendo.com):
The Conqueror by Conspiracy from the Album The Adventurer
Lord, Have Mercy performed by Dr. Emiliyan Stankov from the album Tebe Poem

7th-Day Stranger (One)

2011-04-26T00:02:00.005-04:00

Ross is running a GURPS campaign set in a near future (2015) North America torn apart by civil war and suddenly invaded by Hell. For those who know what I'm talking about: It's the Earth of Obsidian, before it became [or "as it becomes"] the world of Obsidian.

Our characters are all members of a special unit of the U.M.F. (United Military Federation), a sort of corporate mercenary firm whose authority and jurisdiction crosses borders in the newly segregated North America.

I'm playing Mahdi "Captain Hadji" Qahira, a former Republican Guard turned military liaison turned mercenary for hire and now a Squad Commander (though I share rank with Edison). Mahdi is skinny and ugly; a devout (if progressive) Muslim who takes his duty to the U.M.F. only slightly less seriously than he takes his faith. He curses in Arabic, used to try to pass as Mexican by calling everyone gringo, and retains a great deal of the chauvinism (if not the bigotry) of his religion. Maddog is J.T. "the Iceman" Ickowski, a ginger gamer-turned soldier who volunteered eagerly for the burgeoning cybernetic augmentation program being tested by the U.M.F. He's a monster with an automatic rifle and really quite hideous with all the tech sticking out of his skull. Josh is running Professor Wesley Edison, an Egyptologist recruited by the U.M.F. intelligentsia who has since learned to handle a gun and obey orders. Edison's specialty might be in funerary rights, but I'm uncertain because the first session was a little combat-heavy and - though he killed 100% more baddies than Mahdi - he didn't really get his chance to shine.

Prologue
In a massive fire-fight between the New California Republic, the United State of Texas, and the UMF, combat was suddenly halted by an apocalyptic manifestation - the sudden appearance of the Visage of Death, astride a massive horse-like monstrosity. Being the only three whose stories corroborated the appearance of the demonic spectre, we were pulled from regular duty rotation with our combat battalion and put on "Freak Show Watch," with no real mandate other than what someone once called "investigation and containment - or eradication, if necessary - of the supernatural."

Part One
Transported into the Unclaimed Territories lying between the N.C.R., Nova America (? - don't have map with me), and the U.S.T. Captain Hadji, Ickowski and the Professor (along with a possible 4th background-npc if Mark doesn't play the biker, Bill) were flown by helicopter to a drop-site somewhere in the ruin of Las Vegas. Our mission objectives were to 1) meet with our contacts (a biker gang that sent word for help), 2) discover the source of Vegas's power, as it was -up until recently, without electricity, and 3)recon the city and its environs.

We arrived to a smoke signal, marking our drop-point and saw the bikers as soon as the chopper dusted off. Almost immediately, we (and by we, I mean the bikers; I'm sorry to admit there were a few rounds of indecision mostly due to my inability to commit to any one course of action) were beset by a third party in a modified paddy-wagon (Mad-Max style), who opened fire on the bikers. In the ensuing fire-fight, 5 members of the Nomad Police were gunned down, along with a pair of bikers.

Bodies were loaded into the paddy wagon for looting, the surviving cop was treated and put in a rear seat, and we followed the bikers to their hideout, a pool-hall and garage a little ways from the drop-site. Along the drive, we saw a run-down city given over to hedonism and depravity (I'm somewhat disturbed that we didn't stop to do anything about some of the stuff we saw, but I was driving, so I only have myself to blame until that truck tried to run us off the road), as well as a strange obsidian pyramid jutting out of the pond in front of the Belagio, giving off sporadic rays of light and possibly powering the strip.

Mahdi crashed the paddy wagon into the front of the pool-hall, but the building was still intact. We stabilized the cop and entered the building to speak to the bikers, Bill and Ed(?) - the last two surviving members of this chapter of the Hell's Angels. Mahdi went out to get the cop and bring him in, once things seemed on the up-and-up; but as soon as he left...

A voice called down from upstairs, Bill and Ed relaxed immediately upon hearing their names, and adjourned upstairs, presumably to find the owner of the (feminine) voice. Mahdi was called back inside and the typical PC-paranoia found all of us spread out, with easy access to the door when they came back down with the "woman."

She was irrefutably beautiful, wearing what can only be described as an Italian fashion-designer's best interpretation of a biker's old-lady's outfit, cut low and slinky. I think she was a red-head? And much hotter than this second-life image I've posted. Mahdi recognized her immediately for what she was(n't), an American whore of some kind.

She turned out to be quite adept at mind-control, though a few lucky rolls and some massive firepower from J.T. put an end to her sorcerous ways. During the fracas, Mahdi radioed back to H.Q. not to send a chopper for them under any circumstances, he didn't know what was going on, but the situation was out of control; and that he recommended quarantining the entire Unclaimed Territories and to carpet-bomb Vegas.

As he was transmitting, he cleared the area of her influence and almost couldn't remember why he was saying what he was saying, he added absently, "why did this all seem so important just a second ago..." Right after that, J.T. did his fireworks thing and "Oh, right," Mahdi said and then clarified his recommendation that the area be quarantined, but to hold bombers on stand-by until further updates can be transmitted. He and his team would make it out of Vegas on their own if possible, but he reiterated that no pick-up was to be attempted.

This probably still seems like over-kill; but you don't realize how fucked we were against that mind-control shit if we hadn't lucked into some good dice rolls, and J.T. hadn't managed to break control long enough to perforate her with his assault rifle. She had, during conversation, expressed great interest in accompanying us back to UMF and meeting with our superiors.

As soon as she died, the surviving biker, Bill, broke down crying, but stopped fighting. Mahdi brought in the cop while the Professor and J.T. helped Bill and investigated the corpse of the woman - which didn't seem human, so much as "put together according to a third-person accounting of what a human would look like on the inside." J.T. failed the first Fright Check of the campaign and developed a new Mental Quirk.

When questioned, the cop couldn't remember why it was important to attack the Angels, only that "she ordered us to." He couldn't divulge anything further (including whether or not "she" was the same she we'd just liberated Bill from), and the session ended there.

Oh yeah, J.T. and the Professor are a little drunk due to the mind-control shtick, and the Prof probably has a helluva hang-over to look forward to in the morning. XP was doled out and fun was had by all, I believe. I'm looking forward to exploring this world some more, next time.

I have no doubt Captain Hadji (and all the rest) are doomed, though I hope they survive to see things through to the end (the beginning?). I also have no clue who I would play as a back-up character. I'm thinking some kind of military "ghost" character, a stealth specialist / augmented human sent in to investigate the disposition of the Alpha Team.

The Races of Hunter's Moon 1: T'sharg

2011-04-09T03:27:00.007-04:00

[Images Pending]

Third Tel gripped the reigns of his mount. The loose scarves that marked him as an emissary of White Bone blew around him in the strong easterly wind.

“What's wrong with the horses,” the boy asked. He yanked hard on the reigns of his Moenian steed, larger than his companion's mount; though not as large as the brown behemoths of the Orucan. The beast whuffed and stomped its hooves on the dirt road beneath them.

His Pajens companion crossed himself with the local ward of evil and spit. “This is the Silva,” the round, little man said, reigning in his round, little horse. “There are elves in these woods.”

Everything that was jovial and pleasant in Third Tel went out of him. He wondered if he would ever feel safe again. Elves! Alchemer Darrow had said nothing about elves. “Futui,” he cursed. “You lie.” Even as he said the words, though, his eyes darted around and through the surrounding trees. The Pajens at least believed what he said was true.

“No,” the elder man, Kentir said, sneering. “They don't come to the road. Not when there's decent folk about; but they leave sign.” He pointed across Tel's still unruly mount at one of the low and twisted trees. Marks were carved into the bark – a chaotic, looping kind of scripted pictograph that Tel had no hope of reading.

“What does it say,” he asked.

Kentir shrugged and spurred his horse onward. “Who knows,” he said. “Probably just 'stay the fuut out.”

Tel laughed, despite himself. He didn't have to spur the Moenian on. It followed the smaller horse on its own.

“Have you ever seen one?”

“What, an elf?” Kentir snorted. “Likely the last thing you'll ever see. 'Les your soul gets stuck and you get to watch him eat you.”

Tel went white. He'd heard rumors that elves ate the flesh of men; but...

Kentir watched him, then burst out laughing. “I am sorry. Sore sorry, indeed. Them elves eat flesh, sure; but mostly rodents and birds and the like.” He reached across and pat the messenger on his shoulder. “I've never heard tell of anyone eaten by elves.”

It was little comfort to Tel, who had heard of whole tribes slaughtered for trespassing into elvish lands. One life, the saying went, for every twig trampled under foot. It was all rumor and conjecture, of course. No human, whether from White Bone or the Pajens or any of the lesser kingdoms had ever seen an elf and lived.

And ahead, the path curved and exited the woods, into the Ractus plains. Tel let himself breath a sigh of relief. Then a terrible thought occurred to him.

“There's another route back, yes?” He looked behind them in time to see the luminescent eyes of the Rashaim bearing silently down upon them. “I wouldn't-”

His sentence was cut off by a terrified sort of howling whimper that escaped unbidden from his throat. He was not a practised rider; he fell from his horse.

Kentir hadn't even noticed. He heard the vibratto cry of the foul beast and shouted, “ride,” whipping his horse to a gallop. Even if he had noticed Tel's horse unburdened beside him, he wouldn't be coming back without a contingent of rangers from Ager. This was the end. Tel's life was over.

The Rashaim towered over him as it approached. Rows of violet eyes traced from its tentacled head, up it's neck and over it's muscular shoulders, bordered on either side in thick, brown fur. Within those bizarre tentacles, Tel could hear the clicking of razor-sharp teeth. Something in that noise cast a spell over the young messenger.

“Alright, you hairy cania,” he growled, drawing his suddenly very small and light dagger. “Come get me!” He dropped low into the fire stance – the last resort of a cornered rat, his master had said. Aanai masters do not teach the fire stance, because the Aanai believe that you accept death with grace and a peaceful heart.

This was not the Moenian way. The White Bone did not rise from the sands of Solitu by rolling over and accepting defeat.

The rashaim paced around Tel, black claws raking the ground. It moved with feline grace, despite it's mammoth size – easily dwarfing the boy's runaway steed. Tel steeled himself for death, locking eyes with the wild monster. Dying with a weapon in your hand was the best way to die in Moenia, even if all he managed was a scratch in the thick hide of -

Casiu's Heart! Slime dripped from its open maw, coating the writhing tentacles. In response, tears stained Tel's cheeks.

“Come at me,” he shouted. Dropping lower into the water stance. Fuut this stupid beast. He gritted his teeth. It's going to try to bite, get those slimy things around his head or neck. Flow like the river. Drop prone, everything breathes. Be like the beasts. Go for the throat. He actually growled.

There was no other sound in the Silva, but the Easterly in the leaves. Tel felt cold, calm. He was young, but he'd led a good life. Now he would die a warrior. No one got to die that way anymore. Not really. Not in the city. This was a good death. He breathed a soft chuckle which triggered the Rashaim's charge.

He knew before he even began to move that it wasn't going to work. Somehow, the monster anticipated his plan; was catching him low as he fell to the ground. His dagger was going right into the rashaim's tooth-filled hole.

And then it rocked hard to the right, stumbled past him and fell to the ground.

Three tiny people-things in green and brown stood on the road, clutching the vines they'd used to throw themselves against the beast. Their strange, curved blades stuck out of a trio of eyes high on the rashaim's back. Violet puss and blood mixed together and ran into it's thick fur.
Wide eyed, Tel snapped back to the -

Oh gods.

They were inhuman. Or perhaps too human. Miniature, no taller than a man's leg (if even that), thin but strong, with chorded muscle and wild energy; but the horrible part was the mouth, that feral smile. Jagged canine teeth under keen hunter's eyes. Their oversized ears twitched and turned on their own, aimed at him and at the beast – which was stirring again behind him.

“Isilwanendasonke,” one of the elves said in a growling tone. Oh gods. They talk. What did it say?

The trio of mythical beasts were circling around him, each clutching a second of those sinister, curved blades – no more than a knife, really; but menacing swords in their tiny predator's hands. For one terrifying moment, Tel was sure the Pajens hadn't been telling the truth about the elven diet; but then he heard the snarling of the rashaim and realized he was standing in between two of the most feared predators in Panton.

He didn't know what to do; but the elf had spoken to him. It wasn't much, but he clutched his knife and turned to join their advance.

The elves of Panton (the name men give to the World), called T'sharg in their own tongue, fell to earth in the great falling cities of the Necron. They are short, with tightly packed short-endurance sprinting muscles. Their big, somewhat pointed ears, twist unconsciously in the direction of prey while large eyes (which have lost quite a bit of color vision in exchange for better night vision) quietly observe every nuance of their surroundings. The mouth of an elf is wide and smiling, with predator's teeth meant for ripping and tearing raw meat. Elves and men cannot interbreed, but children of T'Sharg and Dokkoren, though sterile, are known by the Dokkoren to exist. Such abominations are put to death by the fiercely xenocentric elves.

T'sharg are ambush predators, with a somewhat Celtic society that reveres the Treants, and tolerates men because of their ties with the Ancient Guardians.

The elven diet can be disconcerting to some, particularly the more "civilized" tribes of White Bone. In particular, they prefer freshly killed rodents, eaten raw, though they are fond of larger prey (even - it is rumored - humans and, if they can bring one down, the Aanai). In truth, the T'sharg avoid these races for fear of interfering with what they call Umbusophefumula, the natural patterns of this world. More specifically, they fear that they might cause new Treants to die before they can be born; though this explaination makes no sense to all but the oldest of the Aanai.

On Language.

Called White Bone by most of its inhabitants and men of surrounding tribes, Moenia is perhaps the first city of men. Though still firmly in the stone age, White Bone rose up out of the sands of the Solitu desert when the desert tribes came together for the first time in peace under the shadow of the Falling Cities. Most of the alien words used here are Moenian, because it is told from Tel's vantage and Tel is a Moenian Emissary.

The intent is to provide players with the names of places and things in the language of their Character. Aanai, for instance, do not call the world Panton, but Ulagam. T'sharg use the word Umbuso. There are also a handful of phrases players can use to represent their character's ancestry or language, colloquialisms, simple "yes" and "no," things like that.

A common T'shargi (of the T'sharg) saying is "Isilwanendasonke." Which means roughly, "we all have to die," or "every beast dies," and is used as a sort of "what do you got to lose?" or "go for it," phrase among the Hidden Tribes.

Of the races presented here in the story: Tel is human, of course, as is Kentir, though they are from different parts of the world. Moenians are desert dwellers who have given up the nomadic life and built White Bone around trade and irrigation, though they have a violent history, and that violence seethes beneath the surface. Pajens are nomadic slavers, who try to match what they see as the oppulence and luxury of Moenia on the backs of their lessers. T'sharg are detailed above, diminutive, forest-dwelling, ambush-predator hippies. Kind of like Pini's Wolfriders but with bigger teeth.

Additionally, there are Aanai, ancient and mammoth wizard-monks from the Mountains to the East; which they share with the Iothun, the fearsome yeti-like Giants. Below the Mountains dwell the Dokkoren, Penton's answer to the dwarf.

Tel is not actually the first human to survive an encounter with the T'sharg, and both humans and elves are PC races, though T'sharg can expect to be shunned and feared or even attacked in the lands of men. Elves dwell deep in the "uncanny valley." They look wrong, to most men; and rightly so. Combined with their appetites and fearsome reputation, T'sharg are less liked than even the Giants or the Orucan.

Grand Designs

2011-04-09T03:09:00.004-04:00

So I've got this blog, right? It sits here, out in cyberspace; declaring to the world all sorts of things I'm not entirely comfortable with. And I'm not referring to the content, but to what's not in it.

When I first started this thing, I had such grand designs. I always have such grand designs. That, maybe, is my problem. I get an idea in my head, and it's so big – so wonderful – I have to work on it, I have to make it happen. Almost always to the exclusion of all the big, wonderful ideas that have come before it; but I do work on these things. A lot. It's sort of my hobby; creating shit.

So I have - in my hard drive, written (and drawn) on reams of paper, and floating around my mess of a room on napkins and cardboard and filling who knows how many cds – a veritable copper mine of art, fiction, and gaming material. All of it's “unfinished,” but it's also what you would call, works in progress.

I'd like to start making some of that progress. And because I'm always trying to work an angle, I'd also like to begin putting that work here, where it might generate page impressions and maybe bring my AdSense revenue up over a hundred dollars so I can make a little dough.

So I'm changing the direction of this blog. Or, rather, I'm refining it. I'm turning it into my gaming blog; where I intend to publish every campaign world, every NPC, every game note for – well, not every, but – a great many of my ongoing gaming projects. For the four of you who read my blog, let me know if one of these interests you more than the others, and I'll work more on that game until one of the others (or, Cthulhu eat my soul – something new) captures my imagination.

Here's a not-so-short list of the material I feel belongs here:

167 Subscribers (World of Darkness horror on YouTube).

Balefire (The Zombie Apocalypse in the World of Darkness - from another angle).

Clone (A series of Star Wars d6 Adventures concerning a squad of Troopers declared MIA toward the end of the Clone Wars – not sure if this can be translated into SAGA, but willing to try).

Coruscant Rising (A Closer look at Imperial City for any System and Game Notes for a Star Wars d6 Campaign that explores the Rebellion in the shadow of the Emperor himself [perhaps with SAGA Edition Conversions as well).

Council of Wyrms (Mutants & Masterminds. Dragons in the Modern Age).

Eternal Sun (a D&D4e Campaign Setting & a Campaign in which that setting is overrun with a terrible plague of Undead).

First Year (Mutants & Masterminds in the foremost School of Witchcraft & Wizardry).

Gamma World: Los Augustine (Setting and Adventures on the Last Coast)

Hunter's Moon (Gurps Paleolithic Fantasy).

Man's Reach (Lovecraft in Spaaaaaace! - and Gurps).

Quantum Jack (Originally d20 Modern, but probably better suited for World of Darkness. I may post both. Your name is Jack Logan. You've been ripped out of your reality and brought to this one by an evil mastermind who happens to be named Jack Logan. As it turns out, Jack Logan is kind of a dick in most of the multiverse; and now you're all here and it's up to you to stop them, er, yourself).

Tales of Adventure (a D&D4e Campaign based on conversions of some of the top 30 adventure modules of all time (of all time!).

Urge (Originally written for D&D4e but easily [and logically] converted to Star Wars SAGA, Urge follows a war-torn tribe of Sandpeople as they try to rebuild and survive their pilgrimage across the Dune Sea).

Where Liberty Dwells (Gurps Spies and Soldiers in American Revolution).

World's End (Just what happens to all those missing ships and planes and civilizations? My take on the Bermuda Triangle – Gurps, but I think something similar has been done in one of their splatbooks. I'll have to look).

In addition to all this mess, I'll also be blogging about gaming, discussing (even if only one-sided) the pros and cons of different systems, and writing short pieces about the continuing adventures of the Saint Augustine Flaming Dragons of Death, as well as the odd bit of raw fiction (when I get a wild hair up my ass). Also, some of (a lot of?) this material will be cross-posted to Obsidian Portal; but I'm unsure about advertising there, and I am a greedy bastard, so we'll see.

And if you're one of the illustrious and want me to run one of these that I haven't, let me know and I'll get on that.

Ouchr

2011-03-24T21:49:00.003-04:00

This pain in my head right now is the most powerful thing I've ever experienced. It's like a fucking kidney stone in my mouth. If you've never experienced a kidney stone, they say it's the closest a man will ever come to the pain of child birth. Now imagine delivering a 9-pound baby through a hole in your fucking tooth.

It hurts like a sonufabitch.

Now imagine you've been in labor for eight hours - trying to push that little shit out of your mouth. I felt the first twinges of pain around ten. I took a 500mg Ibuprofen and put another in my pocket, just in case.

Then the pain flared up - and I'm talking wrath of god shit here - around noon and I took the second. Neither really helped; or else, god help me because I don't want to know what it would have felt like without them.

I managed to keep my wits about me. I didn't tell anyone to "fuck off" who needed it. I didn't punch anyone who really wanted punching.

There were a lot of people who really wanted me to punch them in their bitch faces today.

I got off work and came home, where I took a pill for nerve pain. I don't know what it was. It just says "nerve pain" on the side of the bottle, in hand-written letters, with "3xDay" and "No Alcohol" written below that.

Motherfucker, it didn't work. At all.

Since then, I've added another 1000mg of Ibuprofen and I just took my very last Oxycontin.

If I die of pain killer overdose it was most certainly not suicide. My life sucks the shit right now, but I know I can do better. Son of a bitch, I'm trying.

Still no improvement. I'm waiting for the Oxy to kick in, but it's taking so long...

I tried salt. Sea salt and black pepper, ground and mixed and applied to the site, often helps relieve tooth pain. I tried chewing gum. I tried Listerine (usually helps). I ran around the block to get my heart rate up. That helped a little. I did push-ups when the pain came back. I even tried stuffing some over-the-counter temporary filling repair stuffed into the offending hole. It just wouldn't stay put. Then there's the half-tube of Sever-Pain Orajel.

The only thing that helps so far is resting my head on a soft blanket in a sort of lazy "child's pose" from yoga, with my mouth open, drooling on the carpet. I don't know how important the drooling part is. Once I get up, though, it only lasts about a minute. Then I have to go back to the floor.

Okay, I'm back. Maybe it will stick this time. If I don't die from this, I promise: I'll go looking for a dentist who'll let me pay-over-time in the morning. That can be step two of my "make Dave a better person" list instead of whatever it is (down after "get medical & dental insurance").

On a slightly brighter note, I'm about 15-16,000 words into the book. I don't know exactly, because I'm writing it long-hand and then transferring it to the PC. I was meant to be writing now; but I'm preoccupied.

I just don't want to hurt.

Gamma World: Los Augustine

2011-02-18T14:04:00.003-05:00

The oldest continual settlement in the whole of Gamma Terra, the small town of Los Augustine sits on the East coast of Old Floridia, where its people make their living as fishermen and brewers of fine alcohol.

The village proper - surrounded by a high wall of cochina, stone and the ancient husks of pre-oops automobiles - sits in the center of an overgrown ruin of an old-world city, which itself once sat atop the ruin of an even older town, founded by the conquerors from the Ancient Worlde who devastated the inhabitants and took the land. Even they weren't the first to settle there, however, they took the land from-

Well, you get the idea. Los Augustine stands atop ages of history - mostly in the form of husked-out old buildings, an ancient aqueduct and flooded subterranean tunnels, which now serve as the town's sewer works.

The village (as it stands today) was built in the aftermath of the Spaniel-American War, when the Spaniels were driven south, and the former American settlers took over the land. The new wall was erected and refugees from the war were joined by immigrants from Jack's Beach and other, less hospitable areas to the north.

GOVERNMENT
Los Augustine is ruled over by a democratically elected Mayor-For-Life. The current "Lord Mayor" is Juan Marco Polo DeLeon, descendent of the DeLeon family of pizza makers who built Los Augustine and Saint Marco - the mythic ancient who built everything that stood on the land before the Spaniel invasion.

He lives and hold court in the Castle of his ancestor, the only keep in the history of Gamma Terra that has never fallen to an invading force (when the Spaniels first occupied the area, the castle is the only thing they couldn't conquor. The inhabitants, however, moved away after the first time they spied one of their neighbors licking himself out on the front lawn).

The Lord Mayor is assisted and advised by a council of business owners, guild-masters, and busybodies. Though the council has no true law-making power, per se, each councilman is eligible for election should the Lord Mayor be killed. Such an obvious invitation to foul play keeps the Lord Mayor honest, and amenable to the council's input.

The local constibulary consists entirely of militiamen from the Fisher's Guild, who share the responsibilities of town security and order on a rotating basis, with each militiaman serving one week in seven as a town guard or constable. The only permanent position is that of Chief Constable, appointed by the Lord Mayor and currently held by a one-armed Badder named Gatorbait.

Guilds
There are three guilds represented on the council. An unofficial fourth guild exists, technically, but calls itself "the Thieves' Guild," and is made up of 13-year old Bucky Crisp and his two friends Sammy and Slughorn. For obvious reasons, the Thieves' Guild remains unacknowledged by the council (and, for the most part, by Los Augustine as a whole).

The three official guilds are the Farmer's Guild, which helps member farms with staffing and security, runs the Farmer's Market on Hump Days - and sets the prices on all food items sold in Los Augustine; the Fisher's Guild, which maintains the Marina and the Lion's Fishing Pier, and helps its members maintain their boats and equipment, while running the Fish Market and the militia; and the Sewermonger's Guild, which maintains all public works (including the care and feeding of the Gigabunny), keeps the sewers from backing up, and sponsors occasional expeditions into the tunnels and ruins below the town. Almost all Alpha-Positives and other adventuring sorts end up with a charter from or membership in the Sewermonger's Guild.

The Town
Los Augustine is open to visitation and welcoming of new citizens wishing to settle in the area, but it also a very isolated community. With the exception of the occasional trade between the Cathedral Bassilica and Menarl Island, the village is almost completely independent from outside trade. Every so often, a wandering merchant or a traveling show will appear on the old highway, but that's about all the import/export Los Augustine does.

The Cathedral
One temple of worship still stands in Los Augustine, held over from the World Before. The Cathedral Bassilica of the Unconquerable Sun, was subverted from its original purpose to sun-worship shortly after the roof was stolen by the Bermuda Roc in Five Monkey Fist-Bump.

The Ordo Bassilica, or "the Dudes of the Temple," are an order of surfing monks who maintain the cathedral, conduct services (which often consist of surf reports, beach fashion tips, and Tales of Awesome in the Light of the Sun), and brew the Bassilica Mead so loved in the two local taverns (with the exception of Craek, Bassilica is the favored alcoholic beverage in Los Augustine).

The surfing monks are the only villagers who regularly travel unmolested across the intracoastal to Menarl Island. They go there to surf, and they often bring mead to buy passage.

Commerce
Two shops vie for the right to sell wares produced in Los Augustine. The Wooden Indian Store and Willmart sell almost everything produced in the small town. The exceptions to this are Metal Tony's - the metalsmith and electrician (Metal Tony designed and monitors the Gigabunny Hutch), and the various goods and services available in the Spaniel Quarter.

The only gunsmith in town, Lucky Dan, operates out of his home, but he don't like visitors.

What Is It?

2011-01-01T14:01:00.001-05:00

GeoTagged, [N29.89810, E81.30031]

What the hell is this bright ball of Fire in the sky? Oh shit, we're all gonna die!

What?

Oh. Sun? Right. That's supposed to be there.

It's the first day of the new year. If the nutcases are to be believed, it's the last full year we're ever going to experience. Here's a hint: it's not. The Mayans or the Aztecs or whatever hadn't even worked out that dead virgins aren't the currency of the Universe. They sure as hell didn't know jack-shit about it's end (or our end in it).

But what if they were right? I don't want this to turn into one of those what if you only had a year to live things; but what if you only had a year to live? What if humanity only had a year to live?

This is the more important question, to me, because it begins to encroach into the realm of morality and accountability. Since I gave up my illusions about afterlife and the notion of judgement on a grand, divine cosmic scale, I've spent a lot of time thinking about morality, about meaning and purpose.

If I only had a year. If we only had a year (and you can extrapolate this out to 70 or a hundred, later), what would I want to do? What would I consider important? If there is nothing after that year, how should I conduct myself?

A great many of the Christians I talk at (I don't think they hear me), would have me believe that the only thing to do in this scenario is whatever the fuck I want. Pillage, rape, murder (they don't actually say "pillage," but how awesome would it be if they did?).

But the truth is this: my life has no meaning or purpose beyond what I give it. My morality comes into play only in what meaning and purpose I choose to ascribe to life (Curly's "one thing" from the movie City Slickers).

The only thing I can come up with, the only purpose I can fathom, is to make the lives of those around me as pleasant and enjoyable and HOLY-FUCKSHIT-AWESOME as I possibly can. There is no way to live on after this life, except in the memories of our fellow humans, and in the stories we tell and that are told about us.

I feel that I have been somewhat remiss in these duties, of late.

My friends and family might tell a story of me to their children after I'm gone. Perhaps stories of my own will outlive my all too short life. What will they say about me? What impact will I make on the next generation? The one after that? If any, it can only be a small one. There's already been a Santa Claus, I don't think my life story could reach such epic exaggeration and lasting influence.

So I (we) really can't rely on doing right by others in order to live on through them. Not overtly, at any rate. The only reason to be, then, that I can see, is to experience as much of life as possible. To do everything that there is to do and to share it with as many people as I can.

I don't murder or rape or even pillage. Not because there's some all-seeing sky daddy out there who's going to spank me, but because I recognize in those around me, in you, that same predicament. What right have I to take your stuff, your life? No more right than you have to mine.

It may be only our mutual agreement that this is a bad thing that keeps us from each other's throats, but so long as we can agree to it, we can share in the only thing there is to live for.

One another. The shared accumulation of fourteen billion lifetimes all crammed into the last year of humanity.

I guess it's a good thing we've got more than just a year left.

iBlogger

2010-12-31T05:35:00.002-05:00

So, I'm sitting here in front of a blank screen (I write with a very basic text program called Q10) trying to drum up something to write about.

I couldn't think of anything. I was given an iPhone for Christmas, though, and I wondered if I could update my blog with an "app." It never occurred to me to stop and question whether I wanted to do so, I just wondered if I could.

I can. But I still don't know what to say.

I could write about writing, but the truth is, I haven't done very much of that lately. I could write about New Year's Resolutions, but I don't have any, and it's a little too much like the oft repetitive (and dull) self-help shut I used to spew out on the page every month or so (without ever actually doing anything), so I don't want to do that. I could (and probably should) write about gaming, but I haven't sat at a gaming table in months.

Now I'm wondering if having such ready access to my blog in the same device that also features a camera and gps locator is such a good idea.

This is just a ramble, I guess. I hope you'll forgive me for wasting your time. I think the best course of action here would be not to write; but since I'm not going to give that up, I suppose the next best alternative is to "stay the course."

I've a dozen or so story ideas I want to share, as well as the NANOWRIMO stuff I never finished. I have more thoughts on the process, and now that I've started with this, I've a burning desire to get back to it.

I think that, what you can expect in the weeks to come her is new short fiction, the long overdue continuation (and hopefully conclusion) of Reptile, and possibly an essay or two.

Plus (and let's be honest here) I've got a new iPhone and it's like the shiny new toy you just can't put down, so there'll likely be a few photos and "on the go" updates that will have been (once hindsight becomes a factor) better suited to 140 characters or less.

That's it. First bit should be up Saturday, unless I find somewhere to be after work tonight and find myself the subject of embarrassment at someone's New Year celebration.

The Green Dragon

2010-12-20T04:18:00.003-05:00

This is a response to the video "Religious Right on Dangers of Environmentalism" posted by RightWingWatch.org. As Right Wing Watch is a watchdog channel, and not proponents of the message (and because this response was too long for my YouTube channel), I decided to post it here. It is mostly and embrace of what it is "they" think an environmentalist is. There are moments when I kind of lost my composure. Moments when I switched gears without warning (mostly following the track of the video). At some points I stopped calling for action and went on the offensive, as though the idiots in the video would deign to read my words. I left it all in here. It seemed the best way to provoke dialog was to go ahead and voice my opinions and feelings - even if they're wrong.

You can search far and wide.
You can drink the whole town dry.

But you'll never find a beer so brown,
as the one we drink in our home town.

You can drink your fancy ales.
You can drink 'em by the flagon.

But the only brew for the brave and true
comes from the Green Dragon. - J.R.R. Tolkien

I believe there is a dire need for radical environmentalism. Now I'm not talking about a turn to violence, at least not overtly. I believe that there is a call for some sort of guerrilla information campaign. A Shock & Awe distribution of truth and solution that could blanket the developed world and start opening some eyes. To this end, in the interest of sparking conversation and debate, I present the following points:

Targeting The Children.

It seems to me that the first priority of any "Green Dragon" MUST be to target the children. Those who are blinded by ignorance and religious indoctrination against worldly stewardship (that's right, I said it) are going to prove least likely to bend to the winds of truth.

Children however, are malleable, open, willing to learn. They can - and want to - be taught the truth. And it is not the world that environmentalists are trying to protect. The world will endure, regardless of whether or not it remains hospitable for human life. It is these very children, and the children to come that (now) we are fighting tooth and nail to save from these blind, greedy, ignorant fascists.

The Needs of the Many

The needs of the Earth, of Nature (more specifically, the needs of our ecosystem) must come before the needs of her inhabitants. It sounds contradictory, anti-human, or even sinister, but without a balance in Nature, Nature will turn on us. Nature will either lash out and destroy us all, or simply stop feeding us.

The poor, the hungry, the uneducated, even the self-deluding asshats who are fighting to yoke Nature like a dog and force it under heel, are all going to die.

We're going to die slow, miserable, agonizing deaths.

The environment must come first. This is not to say that we should ignore the needs of our fellow men. Far from it. I think any environmentalist in his right mind must understand that we have to form a part of that balance in Nature. All of us. But while the needs of every single human must be met, and met today; there are some desires that can and will be put on hold until we have come to terms with our planet.

Those who stand under the shadow of the Green Dragon, who take up arms in its name, must not fall prey to the deceptions of the undereducated, the deluded, and the outright deranged. We must look at the Universe with an open, reasoned mind, and we must ask questions of that Universe and seek answers within the methodologies of rationality. We, as a species, have found within Nature the means to destroy her. We can find - whether within Nature or within ourselves - the means to rescue her from that destruction.

And we must be radical in our actions, our speech, our steps toward confronting the lies and disinformation spread about the sustainability of our grotesquely overindulgent lifestyles. It is time to stop listening respectfully to the bullshit these people are trying to foist onto us - onto our own children and start calling them on it.

You cannot speak of "human prosperity" or "human freedom" without addressing humanity. And I'll be completely fucking honest here. I don't give a rat's ass if you get to keep your wealth and comfort in the face of this. So long as one person in the world doesn't have enough to eat; so long as one human being has to sleep on the ground or eat dirt, just to have something in her stomach, the Green Dragon doesn't give two shits about your comfort.

Until every human being can be said to be within reach of prosperity, until every human being can be said to be free, your "human prosperity," your "human freedom" is meaningless. It is a lie - a disease of the foulest sort that, yes, I am out to fucking eradicate.

So long as you or your organization or your corporation or your group or team or club or fucking religion stands against a future in which our children can walk in the same light and breath the same air and enjoy the same world that we take for granted, then yes, I am your enemy; and my goals include an end to your doctrines.

A Spritual Battle

This is more than a political battle. More than a matter of mere education. The enemies of the Green Dragon have personalized their enmity for the well-being and safety of their fellow man by calling it their spiritual right, the divinely inspired gifts of their god. We can have no choice but to stand against these lies, to dissect and dissolve them in the public forum - whenever and wherever we can.

Make no mistake. These enemies of humanity view this as a spiritual battle - a mandate from heaven that no one will save this planet from destruction, not so long as it involves making them change even a light bulb.

These mother fuckers hold in their deranged little hearts, the notion that their god will come one day and wipe away the world. For two-thousand years, they have believed it would happen tomorrow; and so long as they and their children are allowed to continue in this delusion, they cannot help but see the fight to protect our habitat as - not just frivolous - but evil. Evil that flies in the face of all that they have deemed good in the eyes of their imaginary god.

The Religion of Environmental Science

The heart of science is its ability to adapt to new information. So long as we can look at the Universe and learn from it, our knowledge will change, and Science - which is nothing more than the process by which we add to that knowledge - will always be the key to understanding the best methods of saving ourselves from extinction.

Science is the exploration of Truth. If we can be said to have any religion, than it must be the search for Truth. But our understanding of that Truth must be malleable, must be open to the possibility that there is more to understand than what is already known. This is Science. And we must embrace it.

No longer can we stand effectively against these nutjobs who want nothing less than for their way of life to go on undeterred - regardless of the cost to their fellow man or the detrimental impact that way of life is having on their own habitat. We must undertake to understand the science behind the grandstanding of politicians and celebrity. We must know the answers to challenges put before us by these, frankly, evil people.

But picketing and shouting slogans will not suffice. No longer can we rely on the regurgitated catch phrases of a few popular scientists. A deeper understanding of the science behind the pop culture must be understood. We must embrace the scientific study of our environment, in order to protect our niche within it.

The Poor

I am so fucking through with the poor. I'm through worrying about the poor. Fuck the poor. It's about 200, maybe 2,000 years past time we stopped letting these people live in squalor. It's past time we stuck out a hand and started picking these fuckers up and putting them on the path. There are buildings in the world that are nearly a half-mile tall. One, at least, that exceeds that height. It cost 1.5 Billion dollars to erect that one building alone. Starbucks made $700 Million dollars a year selling bad coffee to people who prefer their milkshakes warm. There are shoes that cost more money than some people make in a year.

Meanwhile, there are people who throw away edible food. People who own clothes they never wear, computers they never use, televisions they never watch, fucking refrigerators that sit in unused rooms and never have food put in them. There are men and women who eat the equivalent of four or more meals at one sitting.

When the fuck are we going to stop being such assholes?

There are people in America who call themselves poor and yet have roofs over their heads and food in their mouths. People who have access to the internet, who watch cable TV and are really more wealthy than the Pharaohs of Egypt; than the Kings of Babylon.

You're goddamn right I hate the poor. I'm so fucking sick of poverty it makes my teeth hurt. That's not an exaggeration, I'm in dire need of dental work. But environmentalists like me don't want to eradicate the people. We want to do away with the poverty. There's just no fucking reason for one person in the world to go hungry today if anyone in the world can be said to have compassion.

That Not-Quite Overt Call to Arms I Mentioned Earlier

I think that what you have to open your eyes and ears and hearts to is this: You have no right to the wealth you possess. You have no right to live a life of excess and waste while others die of exposure and malnutrition. No matter how hard you think you worked for it, but especially if you're a preacher, an athlete or some other kind of entertainer. As of right now, you only possess that wealth because we allow you to.

Only because we have not come to take it.

But if you don't start showing some compassion, you are in for a rude awakening. Someone will come to my aid, and we will steal you away in the dead of night and drop your ass overseas in the goddamn center of life-sucks and we will liquidate your fortune and start ending poverty our way.

There is no god granting you leave to ignore the suffering of others. Nothing has been entrusted to you that wasn't taken by force from someone else. It's high time you fucking gave something back.

And it's high time you took your head out of your ass and stopped trying to destroy the only planet that can support our species.

Heroes

2010-09-10T06:58:00.003-04:00

I've been writing this story (it's taking a while). It's a hero's journey tale, which ought to have been a simple affair to put on paper. Alas, had I only taken the Hero's Journey myself.

Well, maybe I did, a little. Maybe I'm still on the Hero's Journey. Maybe this is the part where the hero - filled with despair - succumbs to the temptations of the world and grows fat and lazy, spending all of his time looking at the amazing lives of other people on the internet and wishing he was doing more.

No, wait. That's not in the Hero's Journey, exactly, is it?

But it got me thinking. Actually, I was thinking about who inspired the protagonist of the story I'm not writing right now, because I'm writing this. And that got me thinking about who my heroes are, have been. It's a crazy, stupid, incredibly long list, but here are a few in no particular order:

Luke Skywalker

Other kids wanted to be Firemen or Astronauts or even Jedi. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I figured it out later, but that's always kind of lurked in the background, even today.

Stephen King

Say whatever the hell you want (you book snob) about the so-called "pedestrian" nature of Stephen King's work. The man can spin a tale. I can't think of one King story I've read that let me down. Silver Bullet, maybe (I read the script). Stephen King's On Writing was the book that made me think I could be a writer, after a smattering of praise from a 11th-grade English teacher. I wish now I'd abandoned everything else right then (maybe not drama) and only written until there were no words left in me. I wish I could do that now.

Richard Harris

Richard Harris was a drunk and a scalawag who quite possibly funded the IRA; but he was in a movie called "Triumph of a Man Called Horse," which was the first movie I saw that made me think I wanted to be an actor.

You may not know that I wanted to be an actor. I gave up on that dream. Fuck I don't like admitting that.

Richard Harris led an amazing life too. He told the best stories, he drank a lot, he went were he wanted to go, said what he wanted to say, and did whatever the hell he wanted to do. I always wanted to have balls like that. Sometimes I think Peter O'Toole is the man who was my hero here. Holy crap I'd loved to have gone drinking with those two. No. Richard Harris was Arthur, and John Mills, and so much more.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan made me want to go to space even more than Luke Skywalker did, almost as much as Neil deGrasse Tyson does. More than that, Sagan makes me want to keep learning. keep studying. Be smarter. Better. More.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Tyson seems to have picked up where Sagan, regrettably, left off - he practically studied at the man's feet. He is so infectious when he talks about science, about his own field of astrophysics, specifically. I can't help but wanting to know more. I hope for two things for Mr. Tyson. First, that he doesn't have to face any of the negativity from other scientists that Sagan is rumored to have had to face. Second, that he has the time and inclination to take the reigns of some modern incarnation of Cosmos.

Kurt Vonnegut

I came to Vonnegut kind of late in the game. I already knew I wanted to write, I already knew I wanted to speak my mind (though I haven't quite learned that trick yet). But Vonnegut gave voice to the wretched little demon under my talent and tried to kick me in the butt and make me do something. I love reading Vonnegut. Even the stuff I already read. Even when I disagree with the man, I fucking loved him.

Mel Brooks

I've always kind of secretly wished I was just half as funny as Mel Brooks.

Paul Varjak

I wanted to BE Paul Varjak because he was a) a writer, almost living the life he wanted to live - writing; and b) he was a kept man. I've wanted to be a kept man since I was a teenage boy. It's a dream, leave me alone.

I almost wanted to be Paul Varjak as much as I wanted to be "Fred." I wanted to be Fred because he got the girl. And what a girl (Audrey Hepburn in this case), crazy, psychotic, drunken (man-hating) fool with great legs and a smile that'd melt you. Wait a minute. I might've actually done that part. I hope it ended better for Fred, I mean Paul.

Charlie Chaplain

I didn't really see any Charlie Chaplain films until I was in high school, during my senior year. My Drama teacher showed us a few of them and then we improved our way through a couple of ideas brought up by the films. Watching the old silent movies, though - for the first time - in 1990, was like seeing something completely new. Actors in movies we watch now, don't do the things Chaplain did. The don't do them the way Chaplain did. I don't know if one is necessarily better than the other (if you discount the differences of medium); but Chaplain got me fired up.

Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell said once that he just wanted to act. He didn't care what the movie was, didn't care how bad it seemed or anything like that. He just wanted to act, man. True or not (I never bothered to look into its veracity), I've been impressed by that sentiment ever since. Plus, the man was Ash AND he was Elvis in Bubba Hotep. He can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

Daniel Day Lewis

If Richard Harris made me want to act, Daniel Day Lewis made me want to act well. He also instilled in me this incredible fear (which I never quite got over), that I would never be good enough.

It was Lewis's earlier stuff that effected me most, though lately, I've viewed his work with this sinking sensation in the back of my soul telling me I should be on stage, or at least in front of a camera (there's that fear again, though).

Christopher Hitchens

Hitch is a writer who doesn't back down when his subject is likely to offend. He's a different kind of writer than I am, but he's an inspiration no matter what. He's also the man who presented about half the arguments that allowed me to let go of my belief in god(s).

There's more. More Heroes. More reasons why. But I can't for the life of me think of why I'm writing this. Who are your heroes? I left some out (because there are no videos of them); but who are the people that make you who you are, or make you want to be better.

Who inspires you to be more than you were yesterday? This is kind of important to think about every once in a while. Like realizing when you're happy.

Good Dream or Best Dream

2010-09-04T10:28:00.005-04:00

I had one of those awesome dreams that makes you (me) reach for one of the dozen or more spiral notebooks strewn around my room and try to get it all down before nothing remains but a faint smile and ephemera.

I have this recurring dream about fighting vampires around this tiny old Gothic church in the middle of some city. When I say fighting vampires, I mean there are about 30 of us against what can only be described as the vampire apocalypse. Think: "every zombie movie you've ever seen" except that the zombies are smart, can turn into wolves (or bats), have psychic powers and are so much faster than you or I will ever be. It almost always sucks. Ha ha. No.

The dream (I can't adequately explain why it's not a nightmare - well, tonight I can) usually consists of anticipation. Me and the other survivors trying to scrounge weapons, secure the children, board up windows and prep ourselves for the death we all know we can only postpone a few minutes. Maybe a few hours. I often wake just as the horde of vampires come into view, striding out of the night and filling the streets like only a horde of evil bent on your utter destruction and damnation can.

This time, I was helping the preacher, I think his name was Jon. We were filling water balloons with holy water (he was blessing them as we went) and some chick said, "can I help? I don't want to just stand around."

It was Summer Glau. If you don't know who that is, I'm sorry. Father Jon (that was it for sure) and a bunch of others and I got over being star-struck, trying to figure out why she was in Chicago. I never knew the church was in Chicago before.

I think it gave us all a kind of hope - her being there. Our families weren't there, our friends and neighbors, but here was someone we almost knew. Here was someone alive. "We can do this," I said.

Later, I was trying to show her how to fire a crossbow and she said, "dude, I was a fucking terminator."

I laughed. "Okay."

We went through all the motions we usually go through. I think I've dreamt one variation of this dream or another at least a dozen times. But I felt like a schoolboy. I was arming children with sharpened stakes and locking them in a church basement and smiling at this chick who (at least in my dream) was as smart and strong and - you get the idea. Stupid.

So someone shouts, "they're here!"

We all run up to the giant, Tolkienesque doors (I can't think of any other way to describe the church's doors - like something off a church in Arda). And we're standing there. And I look over at Summer and she gives me this smirk, like she does onscreen. Kind of a cocky, "don't be stupid, we got this all day" thing. And then the horde comes into sight and the fighting starts and I lose track of her and I wake up trying to fight my way through the horde to find where the fuck she went.

Part of me wanted to save the movie star - the idea of her gave us all so much hope, part of me just wanted to be the hero, part of me wanted to be in love (I realized for the briefest moment that I was dreaming when I told myself what a dumb idea that was - falling in love with a made-up construct of my own subconscious), and part of me wanted to get laid - I might've been fully back in the dream by then, but I did fleetingly hope it would happen before I woke up. I didn't get to her.

I woke up.

There's a school of thought among the Lucid Dreamer / Out of Body Experience people that teaches Dreams are real. When you dream, your consciousness slips the bonds of this world and sojourns (however briefly) in another actual physical reality. It seems ephemeral and disconnected only because it isn't your reality. You shouldn't be able to be there. Sometimes you interact with other dreamers, sometimes with total strangers - natives of those other worlds. Often you see these as people you know just because your subconscious (sic) knows to trust them (or not to) and assigns them these appearances in your mind so that you'll associate with them more readily. I don't buy it, but hearing the theory in its entirety lends a gravity to most dreams. There are some fucked-up other realities out there. Even worse if they are really just inner realities.

I felt a distinct sense of loss when I realized I was awake. Like I blew it. Usually when I wake up from this thing, I feel bad because I know they were going to die, but I feel good that I helped give them hope. I stretched their dream-lives a few moments longer than I might have.

But I couldn't save the girl this time; and she was new. Different. Whoever she was, I hope she made it. Anyway. I wrote it all down and decided to share. Now that it's done, I still have no idea why I don't think it was a nightmare.

It had all the elements: danger, fear, sacrifice, dark and scary imagery, that disjointed feeling you get when you know something bad is about to happen. Like I said, 30 some-odd people are about to die.

But even when I wake up with my heart pounding, sweating and - sometimes - wishing I could get back to sleep and back to the fight just to die with those good people still out there fighting, somewhere in the universe, it's not a nightmare. I don't know why.

I wish I knew better how to interpret dreams (other than, "man Dave, you're fucking crazy"). Or maybe I could actually practice Lucid Dreaming so that one night, when I dream it again, I can actually fight. Make a difference. Kill a shit-ton of vampires and save the girl. Save the Day. Save the whole damn world.

Even if it isn't mine.

Maybe it isn't a nightmare because it gives me hope. I can do better. Just let me back in there.

Epic Game Night: Rain of Squids & Burning City

2010-08-24T05:24:00.003-04:00

The guys have been harping on me for a while to run an Epic-Level Campaign. I guess I should've been a little more limiting in character creation options.

ISHATHAR is a Githyanki Warlock who was stripped of his power & position among his own kind and stranded on Oryld. A number of unsavory deals with a number of unsavory devils (and demons) later and he's a powerful Warlock bound for hell - regardless of how good his intentions. ISHATHAR's first encounter with civilization on Oryld was in the city of Fallcrest, where he built a home and participates (from behind the scenes) in local politics and the defense of the city.

SHAL-MOK is a Genesi Cleric of Bahamut native to the Elemental Chaos. He's spent most of his life traversing the planar boundaries, exploring the multi-verse. SHAL-MOK came to Fallcrest with ISHATHAR, whom he met and adventured with in the Outer Planes.

THEODOCIOUS is a Minotaur Fighter (we have a long and somewhat bizarre justification for the naming of Minotaurs, and THEODOCIOUS is a perfectly acceptable name for one) whose Clan turned from the worship of Baphomet in favor of Meuheuhah (Unaligned deity and something of a gaming mascot) and was wiped out by the Baphomet-worshiping Clans. THEODOCIOUS escaped the slaughter and spent the remainder of his leveling-up hunting down and destroying demons. THEODOCIOUS and ISHATHAR hooked up in the Abyss shortly before they met SHAL-MOK.

In Fallcrest, things are pretty much as described in the DMG. ISHATHAR participated in some of the Heroic Tier Nentir Vale adventures but most of the party's XP came from destroying demons in the Abyss. Major differences include the presence of the Yellow Sons (Scions of the King in Yellow) - a cult which has taken over the recently abandoned Wizard's Tower.

ISHATHAR suspects the Yellow Sons of being behind recent political changes - the legalization of Slavery (humans can own non-human slaves or human slaves with a permit, non-humans can own non-human slaves with another permit), the legalization of Necromancy, and (just days ago) an ordinance was passed allowing the use of slaves in Necromantic Ritual.

This is about where the first session picked up.

The heroes were discussing how to address the obviously evil political turn, when the earth shook and the sky opened up and it started raining horrible squid-like abominations. The heroes had to fight off the Bep'Nar Squidmites (home-brew monsters), protect the locals, and try not to let the city get destroyed.

One of the Squidmite's (and all of these creatures from the Deeper Darkness - I need a better name for that, but the heroes haven't done any research yet, so I've a little time) powers is Insanity. I've created my own rules for Insanity, based primarily on 4e diseases. I'll detail it later.

After a series of encounters in the city, the heroes made their way out of the Knight's Gate to investigate the sounds of further battle. They rescued a party of lower-level heroes before the Yuugulugnor (another home-brew creature - basically a Hydra with different descriptors. Also a horribly indescribable monstrosity.

When the Yuugulugnor appeared, all time stopped. A White Minotaur appeared on the horizon, flanked by a human male in brilliant plate armor and a woman in simple, brown robes. This was the only conversation I could reasonably script before play began, so it's the one I can include here:

"These are your champions?" the man asked. "I don't like it."

The woman replied, "it is as I have foreseen. All will hang on these three. These three and one other. But that one I cannot see clearly, I only know that they will know this trio and -"

"What?" the minotaur huffed.

"I can say no more," she replied, looking at (d3) SHAL-MOK. "We are not as secluded as first imagined."

The minotur sized up THEODOCIOUS, checking his gear and looking at his teeth and basically inspecting him like one might inspect a prize-winning horse. He clappped THEODOCIOUS hard on the shoulder, shouting, "I like it!"

The human male was looking at the beast in the distance. "Is this it, then? Is this the Sleeper in the Darkness?"

"No," she said, "that one lies still yet. They have not yet awoken its fell slumber. The Yellow Sign holds fast."

The Minotaur spit.

"How much time," the man asked.

"I know not," she said, "only that the Universe will be torn asunder, Madness will bleed across the world and the Sleeper in the Darkness will rise again and bring doom to Gods and Men."

"Unless," the minotaur said.

"Unless these three save the day?" the man asked?

"I only know that they will try. I cannot see beyond that. I fear the future this foretells."

"You think they'll fail?"

"I cannot see beyond it..." she said, trailing off.

"Fuck off," the minotaur said, "you see that big bitch over there?" They all looked at the Yuugulugnor. "I bet the whole of Long Hall and the Feasting Horns that my boys here will lay that fucker down."

"I'm no fan of gambling," the man said, sizing the heroes up, "and I'll not wager on the fate of creation."

"Coward."

"As goes the battle, so goes the war then," the woman said sadly.

The minotaur laid his hand on THEODOCIOUS's shoulder and said, "fight well boy. No pressure." He turned to the man and said, "do it."

Pelor raised his hand and motioned. The sun began to continue it's track across the sky. The trio was gone and the monster was charging. The heroes all received MEUHEUHAH'S STORM BLESSING (if an enemy forces movement on the character, at the end of that movement the character can shift 1 as a free action. As an encounter power, the character can fly 9 squares).

The heroes defeated the Yuugulugnor and that was the end of that session.

* * *

Tonight's session started with SHAL-MOK preserving the body of the Yuugulugnor and transporting it to his Temple for later study. They then started focusing on saving the city. I have no explanation for these priorities; it just played out that way.

This was an extended series of Skill Challenges - putting out fires, killing any leftover Squidmites, rescuing the wounded and stopping looters. They ended up saving the day (though 30-40% of the city was in ruins and the Lord Warden was killed).

SHAL-MOK raised the Lord Warden (almost completely derailing my campaign, btw) and that helped set the ball rolling on the restructuring of the government (over half the Town Council was killed) and rebuilding the town and looking after displaced residents. That left the gaping hole in the sky (actually the Far Realm "colliding" with the Material Plane), and the Yellow Sons for the heroes to deal with (ISHATHAR really hates those guys).

Luckily enough, the closest library just happened to be in the Yellow Scion's tower (which used to be the Mage Guild before the war). SHAL-MOK and THEODOCIOUS both possessed Hats of Disguise, and so dressed as Sons in Yellow and bluffed their way into the Tower. ISHATHAR decided to try the Diplomatic route afterward.

SHAL-MOK and THEODOCIOUS easily made their way into the Tower, which was much bigger on the inside than outside. They discovered a central room on the ground floor with a bizarre crystalline structure surrounded by four iron and stone thrones. SHAL-MOK thought the thrones reminded him of Spelljamming Helms. They also discovered a ton of maps, for different worlds and different planes. I can post the tower maps once they've finished exploring them.

With further exploration they found a hallway that seemed to go on forever, A stairwell that goes up and down just as far, and what appeared to be Denomolus's desk (Denomolus is the leader of the Yellow Sons).

Meanwhile (jumping back and forth between the two parts of the split-up party), ISHATHAR "diplomacied" his way inside and the players pretty quickly realized he wasn't in the same tower. The Githyanki was shown the Library where he decided to get on with his research (the other two were in disguise, he figured they'd approach him); but after a couple hours, he came to the conclusion that all the relevant information had been removed from this library.

The heroes left their respective towers (because it was time to call it a night).

The Writing Fairy

2010-07-11T15:10:00.004-04:00

(This is old as dirt, and is here as much for me than anyone else. I don't know who to credit for the writing. Love it.)

Here’s a fun question to ponder. What do The Stand, The Hobbit and A Christmas Carol all have in common? The answer is simple. Too simple. Irritatingly simple.

A few years ago I decided to write a novel. I had characters all outlined and plot points galore. I had my settings down pat and a nice storyline that would illuminate the main character’s journey into a self-activated person, hopefully sending a touch of inspiration my reader’s way when they turned the last page of my novel. I had a large amount of notes in an even larger amount of notebooks. I was a writer. Right? Wrong. I wasn’t a writer yet because I was still enchanted by the Writing Fairy.

You know what the Writing Fairy looks like. She is that magical creature that will take the dialogue running through your head and place it onto the page. She is the person that will fill in those little blanks that don’t seem worth worrying about while you’re in the brainstorming stage. She is the mythical beast that will take all of your imagination and creativity and turn them into a book for you. The Writing Fairy sits on your shoulder every time you pace up and down your room thinking up great new ideas for where your characters are heading and convinces you that you are on your way to being an established author. The Writing Fairy’s touch is the only thing you are waiting for before you begin to actually sit down and pound out the pages of your manuscript. Yes, as soon as the Writing Fairy says that it is time, you will begin to write in earnest. I have news for you. The Writing Fairy is none other than you because you are the only person who can do these things for you. And the moment you are waiting for? I have some news concerning that, too. That moment either comes right here right now, or it never comes at all.

Am I saying that brainstorming about characters and muddling over speeches is a waste of time? I most certainly am not. What I’m saying is that you reach a certain point where your outline doesn’t need to be refined any more, where it’s time to put it onto the page and nail it down in a more concrete sense. The Writing Fairy will make you hesitate to do this, promising you that thinking really hard is writing. She’ll tell you that you aren’t ready to put anything down on the page yet, or you’re not ready to go on with the next scene because everything just doesn’t seem right. Don’t believe her, she’s deceiving you. I’d like to say that she is flat out lying, but she’s not.

Things aren’t going to seem right when they first start to appear on the page. This is what seems so contradictory about the writing process. Your dreams and aspirations seem to shrink down once you actually put them into writing. Being creative seems harder and harder as more and more words get put down. Don’t worry though; your dreams are big enough. Acknowledging that your finished piece is not going to live up to the sparkling gem you have inside your head is something that every artist goes through…it could be the reason why so many of us seem a little bit crazy. Pick any piece of art. Now, as great as that finished product seems to you, there is not a single book, painting, opera, movie, whatever, that came out exactly the way its creator intended it. That is a very large part of the creative process: surrendering to its limitations. And accepting this fact goes a long way towards chaining down that Writing Fairy and actually producing some work. Don’t listen to her siren song. Don’t think that it should feel one hundred percent right the first time. It won’t. That’s what the rewriting process is all about. Believe me writing is truly in the rewriting. Even Kerouac rewrote his stuff. However, in order to start the rewriting process you need a hard first draft to pick over and toy with. You need something concrete to look at and see which scenes fit and which don’t. You’ll find that a lot of your brainstorming gets thrown out the window. This isn’t a stifling of your creativity, is channeling your creativity into your selection process. And it doesn’t matter how horrible and off the mark your first draft seems to be turning out, you’ll polish all of that out later. But you need that first draft to really start things off, and it will never get finished if you continue to believe the Writing Fairy’s misleading comments.

Take another look at the opening question of this article again. Any closer to an answer?

I have more bad news about the Writing Fairy. Simply sitting down in front of your keyboard and starting your novel cannot vanquish her forever. She’ll be back. She always comes back. Here and there she offers a much-needed break and a much-needed step back from your work to rethink things. More often than not, though, she’ll pop up as you write more and more detailed character sketches, or get sucked into researching something for hours and hours and days and days. She is very good at convincing you that more outside work is needed and that you don’t need to sit down at your keyboard quite yet. She must be stopped. When you really hit a roadblock, you’ll know. If you just need to sort some things out that does not qualify a three-week break from your manuscript. That’s the Writing Fairy singing her sweet song. You need to do more then just sit down and start in order to silence the Writing Fairy. You need a schedule. “But how can you turn your writing on and off like that? How can you force yourself to write if you aren’t feeling it?” I imagine that some of this is flowing through your head right now. The answer is that you can. It’s that easy. I’m not saying that you’re going to sit down and write Nobel Prize winning page after Nobel Prize winning page. But you must keep writing. Keep fleshing out your story and your scenes. Keep plowing through with your writing when you say your going to even though it doesn’t seem to be very good. You’re not going to submit it as it is anyway. The ending of my novel changed about three hundred times in the course of writing it. What’s more, I never would have reached the ending if I had continued to go over and over my first twenty pages wanting them to be perfect. It’s really silly when you think about it. You don’t have an entire book yet, how can you make sure the opening is perfect if you don’t know where it’s supposed to lead the reader? You don’t really know your characters yet, how can you expect them to be just right? Believe me, it is better to write it horribly wrong and then fix it than to never write it in the first place. Keep plugging away, keep going, keep heading towards that ending that doesn’t seem to fit and that you don’t really even like. Carve a few hours out of each day and just type away at the keyboard. You can always make a scene longer. You can always take out some dialogue. You can always change a character or a point of view. You can really do anything you want to, which is why it’s easy to get bogged down in the beginning. Keep in mind that while you can always change it, you have to write it first.

Now, do you want to know the Writing Fairy’s major-super-bonus-end-all-be-all secret? Here it is. Keep it quiet. Put it in the bag somewhere next to the cat or under your hat if you prefer. Here is my secret. You are a writer. Right now. With only what you have in your head as it is. You don’t need anything else. You are a writer. You just need to keep writing. Don’t let the Writing Fairy tell you that you aren’t. That you need something more, that you’re pretending to be something you’re not. Hemmingway wasn’t Hemmingway when he started. He was just a guy names Ernest who sat down at his typewriter. Believe me. You are a writer. You are a writer. You are a writer. And no, you don’t have to repeat that while clicking your heels three times. You don’t have to do anything but write. And that’s the Writing Fairy’s horrible little secret. I stumbled upon the moment I stopped waiting for her to show me a sign that the time was right to actually start typing and just went ahead and did it. Now is the right time; now or never.

So let’s go back to the question at the beginning of this article. Any ideas on what those three books have in common? They’re all in English? Okay, I’ll add Les Miserables to the list. They’re all from the last few centuries? Okay, let’s throw The Iliad on there. Give up? What those books have in common, what every book you read has in common, is that it was written. Simple isn’t it? I told you it was. That is the only difference between what is in your head and any book you have ever picked up. All the books you see every day were actually written. Someone sat down and wrote them out. That it. That’s the secret. That’s what the Writing Fairy is hiding from you. You’re ready to write your book. You just have to sit down and do it. I said that the secret was simple…I also called it horrifyingly so at the beginning of this article. Why is it horrifying? Because, as I’ve mentioned, the Writing Fairy is you. She makes it seem like she’s someone else. Someone or something you’re waiting for before you begin. But that someone or something doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is the fears she creates inside of your head. And that means that the person telling you to wait is you. The person holding you back is you. The person hesitating to write is you. And the only person who can make you ignore all of this and just start writing…you guessed it…is you. So come on, stop reading this, open up a new document, start clicking away at those keys, don’t be afraid, just trust me on this one…you’re a writer.
EAVB_FFDRGIEWJY

New Art Thursday: Everybody Draw Muhammad.

2010-05-20T04:43:00.003-04:00

I wanted to talk about this.

First of all, I think he turned out looking more like a 2nd Edition Gnome than the Prophet of Islam. Secondly - I have no idea if the translations of "just a man" are accurate - I used Google Translate and checked 'em against any other I could find. I left some languages out just because I don't have font support on my laptop. The top bit in yellow says, "there is no god and Muhammad was just a man." I don't think I'm happy with that part.

Now I want to say something about why I drew this image, and about my problems with the whole "Everybody Draw Muhammad" thing.

I joined up because I stumbled upon the "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" poster and searched around a bit for the story. Then the news outlets picked it up and I went ahead and joined the Facebook group (well, one of them, anyway).

I thought long and hard about what I was going to draw (which is ironic, since I just drew him sitting there). At first I was going to draw Muhammad in some parody of an iconic American image like American Gothic (with Aisha) or one of Warhol's or Rockwell's works. Then I changed my mind and I was going to draw something about the hero of a major world religion having had sexual relations with a six year old.

I opted out of that one, because it turned me off drawing. I was going to make some kind of political statement, but let's be honest, I'm about as political as a rubber fish. I was going to copy the "Hope" or "Change" Obama Image - but decided that could be construed the wrong way, and probably was going to get done to death anyway.

I ended up just drawing him, since that seems to be what gets people in a fuss anyway; shit, Parker & Stone only drew a bear costume and said it was him.

"Fuck it," I said and looked around the Facebook pages and I was kind of disgusted.

I know that all I'm looking at is Anonymous (even though it's not), but there were so many lines crossed today. I'm not sure I'm happy about more than one of them. But I'm especially disturbed by the presence of Anonymous in the same social network as my family and friends.

Yeah, yeah, sure. I bet quite a few of my family and friends are Anonymous (and if you don't know what I mean by that - I'm referring to the message and image boards, and any forum really, that allows contribution without identification. Usually these places are filled with the most disgusting and vile filth that you have to wade through to get to the gold you're looking for, be it comedy or porn or what-have-you).

But I didn't understand the necessity of drawing Muhammad fucking a pig (or a goat or a sheep or a horse or a missile[wtf?]). I didn't think it was necessary to harp on the whole pedophile thing. They know he was a pedophile, they like him that way. It's fucked up, but all you really had to do was draw the prophet. If you're going to get your fatwa just by drawing the man eating an ice cream cone.

Holy Shit! I should have drawn Muhammad eating a damn ice cream cone!!!

Damnit!

aRGHHH

Okay, I'm done. I just thought too many people took a look at "oh here, we're sticking it to the Muslims," and shouted for joy because they thought it was open season to say (draw) anything they wanted to draw of Islam's icon (I'm loving that word today for some reason). It just rubs me the wrong way.

I guess, if you look at it right, I'm being hypocritical. They see any depiction of their prophet as blasphemous and evil, which is what I did. Drawing the man in compromising positions is meant to draw out "even more anger than angry enough to kill you." Which I don't get.

Do you suppose this was a contest to see who could actually get killed over it?

I just wanted to protest the response to South Park (and other cartoonists), and maybe strike a blow for free speech. I knew it was going to piss some people off, but I didn't want to do any more than that.

I think all religions end up being an overall force for evil and wickedness in the world, but that doesn't mean we have to treat those who believe in them now like trash. Nobody really deserves any respect, but maybe we ought to give everyone a little anyway.

I'm not sorry for my participation in the event. It was challenging and kind of fun (and yeah, a little bit "fuckyou" to the man (I'm looking at you Comedy Central, you fucking cowards); but I doubt I would do it again. It was too hard wading through all the filth to find the good ones.

New Art Thursday: Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality Chapter One

2010-05-13T15:45:00.005-04:00

This isn't a drawing. Which is kind of the point of New Art Thursday, but I really wanted to do this, so here it is.

HARRY POTTER & THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY
Chapter One: A Day of Very Low Probability

Written by Less Wrong. Harry Potter et al, belongs to J.K. Rowling. The Methods of Rationality belong to no one.

Let me know what you think. Not just about the story, but about my voice, tips for recording, any of it. I'm curious.

Free Fiction Friday: The General's Assassin

2010-05-09T11:26:00.003-04:00

“I don't care about your thrice-damned vow!” I believe the crying elf's name was Malin. “Pick up the sword,” he said. The tip of his rapier quivered against the old man's throat, threatening to draw blood.

Daskegandé didn't move toward the thin elven long-blade on the ground beside him. “I'll not fight you,” he said, “not over this or anything else.”

Malin scowled and flicked his wrist. His blade nicked the priest's jaw, drawing blood and adding a fresh scar to his already battle-worn face. The human didn't flinch. “Fight me,” Malin screamed.

“I will not do it.” The old man's voice was as calm and centered as when I'd known him all those years ago in Kairlown. Word had spread - no more than a stupid rumor, really - that the General had returned from the grave a broken and weakened man. I hadn't believed it. Superstition. The end of a legend being made out of the deeds of my late commander, but here he stood. Even with that poor elf's blade at his throat, there was strength in his voice. Power.

Malin was a dead man and didn't even know it. “I will kill you,” he said, but his voice cracked. He'd come to the temple looking for the Butcher of Kairlown, a monster - a mass murderer or a tyrant. Daskegandé had done naught but good in the years since he came here.

He carries the weight of the past on those broad shoulders - it bears him down. But in the time I've been here, watching him, I have seen him smile easier than he ever did in Laerian's company. He does the temple's work with the same passion and conviction he once used to command armies. The other priests look to him for direction - they follow him the same way the Luxlucitus did.

If not for his loyalty to Laerian, he might've made himself King at Three Cities, and I suspect he could rule here if not for his loyalty to Pelor.

Malin's movement snaps me back into the moment. The elf is fast. Luckily enough, I'm ready. My dagger pierces his hand and sends that fancy rapier of his to the ground before he can run it through the General's neck. The tainted black metal, I know, is already loosing its poison into his blood.

The elf screams out and everyone but the General jumps when I stretch myself out through the edges of the Feywild and teleport behind him. My blades are thirsty for blood.

“Leave him be, Callien,” the General says, still calm - even after this bastard made a play for his life. “You master did not send you to kill this refugee.”

Malin weeps at our feet, clutching his arm. Rather than heal him, himself, Daskegandé (ever the skillful diplomat) calls his brothers to tend the wounds. The look on the elf's face says that this is not over between them, but just beneath that, I can read the relief at not having to refuse the General's aid. Daskegandé is right though; this is none of my affair.

“How long have you known I was here,” I ask.

“I first noticed something was amiss a tenday ago,” my old commander ushers me toward the Morning Grotto. “I didn't know it was you until three days ago, when I smelled that perfumed jasmine you insist on oiling your hair with.”

“When you took tea with that portly dragon-man from the Village?”

“Yes.”

“I moved too close. I thought the teas would mask my scent.” I smiled, but his expression was grave.

“Callien,” he said once we were out of earshot from the Brothers tending his would-be assassin, “why are you here?” It wasn't really a question.

“There is a whispered rumor that the Old Woman did not die below the Western Wall at Narvellan, but was seen leaving the battlefield wearing the colors of the Three Cities.” I leaned against a Morningberry Tree, trying to appear casual and not at all like I was keeping my hands near the two daggers I wore under my arms. I once watched General Daskegandé kill a man in a barfight with no more than his fists. I do not shake, though, and that is a credit to my training. “No one believes it,” I said, “more of a jest than a threat. But you don't know how paranoid Laerian has become.

“Since he took the Boy-King's Throne, he jumps at every peep from the Blacknives. At first, he laughed too. The thought of the Weeping Cyclops crying so hard he'd lost his armor and lost his way. But then the whispering started. He murmured about your missing body. It grew worse and then worse still until he sent me to find and kill you.

“He's convinced you're building an army to take his crown.”

“That's ridiculous,” Mohan said. Talking to him like this, not stalking him, he was the General again. My friend. He said, “even when I carried the sword in Laerian's service, I never had designs on Thrones or Crowns. Those were his ambitions.”

“I remember,” I said. “Laerian however, frets on his throne, figiting at every threat he imagines and he remembers that you were a leader of men. A damn fine one, at that.”

Mohan shook his head, but I said, “The Shadow Cloaks followed you, not him. The regular army looked to you, not him. The Solis keeps Laerian's Order now, but back then, you went were he led you and so Luxlucitus did too. They appeared to be his men because you were.”

I didn't finish. He didn't want to know that the Blacknives were already looking for a replacement for the Blood King. And he might have followed me if I led him back to Narvellan. He'd be miserable, but damn his eye, he'd feel responsible.

“And what now,” he said, his shoulders stiffening. “Are you Laerian's man?” He wanted to know if I was going to kill him.

“No,” I said. “I told the king you were dead and this was a fool's errand. I'll return to Three Cities in a month or so and tell him again.

“I don't know what led you from Luxlucitus to... to this; but even if you're a viable threat to Laerian, you're no danger to him.”

The cleric finally smiled. “You're welcome to remain at the temple if you like, spend your month doing good in the name of the Sun Father.”

“I think I'm looking for something more along the lines of free-flowing wine and a bevy of loose women.”

Now he laughed. It made me feel good. I don't know if I ever heard him do that before. “Stay,” he said, “you can bed down in one of the mission suites. There's a good-sized village called Yllian, just over the southern hill. It's a trade route, and there's a nice tavern, and more than a few farmer's daughters looking for a charismatic Eladrin to sweep them off their feet.”

I've never been one to turn down the needs of a lonely farmer's daughter, so I took him up on his offer. I spent my days doing Pelor's work - tending crops and helping to build a shelter for the poor - all alongside the man I once knew as the most ruthless military mind alive. At nights I made myself known to the people of Yllian. It was a good ten-day. It took me that long to convince the cleric to join me for a drink.

We rode for town just after Prayers at Dusk.

“Something's wrong,” he said, just before we crested the big hill. At the base of the hill, where Merigan's Farm should have been, there was only a blasted smudge and the last embers of the fire that had left it.

Mohan's steed broke into a full gallop. I spurred my own horse to follow, but there was no need to rush. The buildings were gone, the family all dead.

The big priest was off his mount before it stopped. He strode toward the first of the charred corpses. By the size of it, I'd guess it was the heavyset woman - Merigan's wife. I never learned her name. She made a very good Morningberry tea.

He knelt beside her remains, but he was looking around us - at the ground. “What do you make of it,” he asked. It was my General speaking now, not the priest I'd come here to drink with; made my hackles stand up and take notice. I pushed it down and looked around.

“Kobolds,” I guessed. “There's none dead but the humans, but if I had to bet on it, I'd say these were kobold tracks. That or huge biting lizards, and biting lizards don't set fires.”

“They live in low caves to the south of here,” Mohan said, standing and dusting the soot off his hands. Somehow, his white robe was still clean. “They're left alone, because they do no harm. I guess they forgot that.”

He produced a small pouch from beneath his robes and set about a bit of priestly magic. A rabbit appeared from the low brush at the edge of the farm and made its way slowly toward us. Mohan spoke to it, and clapped his hands. The rabbit darted off in the direction of the Temple.

“I've sent for priests to look after the bodies,” he said. “I must go to the caves and have words with the Kobold Chief. It's none of your concern, so I'll understand if you wish to continue on to the Prideful Notion.”

“My General,” I said with a mock flourish, “it would be my honor to ride with you once again into battle.”

His countenance darkened. “I do not go to fight,” he said. “Kurrtikshek and I have spoken before. I'll speak to him now and get to the bottom of this.”

I said, “because Kobolds are so well known for their even tempers and not at all excitable natures.”

“Go or stay,” he said. “I've work to do.” And he did. He mounted his horse and set off for the South without so much as a bye-your-leave.

“Mohan,” I said, following after him. Following after him again. “It seems the height of folly to approach a kobold warren without thought as to how you're going to kill them, or at least get out alive.”

“It's very simple,” he said, “we approach from the north-east. Kobolds, for all their growling and teeth gnashing, fear men. I'll announce us to the guards and have them lead us into the warren to speak to Kurrtikshek. As we go along, we watch for traps and ambushes. If things go sour, we leave. I'm here to ask questions and be answered, not slaughter kobolds.”

Maybe the old rumors did have a ring of truth to them. “You're either very sure of yourself,” I said, “or you've become addle-brained.”

“I am sure of Pelor,” he said. It did not reassure me, though as it turned out, I had nothing to fear from kobolds.

After an hour's hard ride, we came to the base of the southern hills, and a clearing in the wood. Hidden behind loose rock and a large, fallen tree, was the entrance to the kobolds' caves. I might not have seen it if not for the dead beast lying in the shadow of the tree.

“Someone's come before us,” I said.

Mohan dismounted and strode toward the corpse. “So it would seem.” He situated his holy symbols - I hadn't known he wore so many beneath his voluminous robes - and turned toward me. “The kobolds will not be so open to talk, I fear. And we may find worse than these in the caves.”

I drew my knives. “I am ready.” It felt quite uncomfortable to walk into those caves. Striding, really, not sneaking. Mohan led the way, his Faith shining forth and lighting the way for us as we ventured into the dark.

I have never been in the twisting warrens of the kobolds before, and I was quite amazed at the intricacy of their winding tunnels. They went on forever, and down into the earth. Traps lay about aplenty, as well, though most of these were sprung or disabled. Everywhere we went, we found dead kobolds and their pets.

“We're following some sort of adventuring party,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I suppose that means the kobold threat is over and we can return to the Prideful Notion and have a drink.” There was something going on here that made me nervous. I said as much to my companion in a low whisper.

“I am no less unnerved than you are,” Mohan said, his own voice dropping low to match my own. “But something compels me to go on. I have to believe it is my Faith.”

I nodded. I may not have the faith of my old compatriot, but I learned a long time ago to trust his instincts. When he started further down into the tunnels, I followed.

“Stop.” The voice was like thunder and ice. I cannot explain it any better. It came up at us from out of the cavernous darkness ahead, followed by the shimmering form of - words fail me. A giant of a man, made of thunder... and ice. With wings of the same, and armed in gold and fire.

It did not land as it descended toward us, for it had no legs - it's body trailing off into the aether. “My Lord commands,” it said, “heed this warning, Mohan Daskegandé.”

Mohan knelt before the creature, and so I did also. “I listen and obey, mighty one,” he said. He was trembling.

The magnificence of the being before us was enough to blind me, and when it spoke, it did so with words I should not have been able to comprehend. The Supernal words of creation itself. They twisted in my mind and made meaning out of chaos.

“You stand at another crossroads,” it said, “and you must make a choice.”

“What am I to do?” Mohan asked the question and I could hear his voice quavering. He was as afraid of this wonder as I, and that multiplied my own fear.

The angel - for what else could it be - moved closer, the light of it filling me with the warmth of the First Light. “You may return,” he said, “leave these caverns and go back to the gardens and duties at the Temple of Weeping Dusk. Live your life as you have these past years.

“Or you may continue down these tunnels. Within the next chamber, you will find the perpetrators of this slaughter. They are wounded and regrouping, considering retreat. Without a healer, they will die. One of their number, Nerik, is the child of those slaughtered corpses that directed you here. He seeks justice, while his companions are here for his sake, and for any valuables collected by the kobolds over the years."

"There is no choice," Mohan said, and started to walk past the angel.

It looked like the holy creature was about to smile. "This is good, Mohan Daskegandé. And I charge you thus. Travel the world of men and beasts. Look after those who would look into the lost places and shed the light of knowledge and understanding in the darkness."

The angel sheathed its fiery sword and dissipated. Even the magical light of Mohan's holy symbol could not fight the darkness left in its passing.

After our eyes adjusted, we went forward. Nerik and his men were surprised and distrustful of us at first, but warmed quickly when they realized Mohan brought the healing light of Pelor with him.

The General watched over the adventurers as we marched into the Chief's cave. I did my best to help, and we were really outmatched by the demonic forces Kurrtikshek had summoned against us. Without Mohan's aid, we would have perished to a man.

When it was done, we sat outside under the red and gold rays of morning. We were exhausted and battered. Beaten but alive. The kobolds had over-extended their reach by calling on the forces of the Abyss, and lost their leadership to the chaotic demons they sought to employ in their bid for more power. Now both threats were exterminated.

Mohan performed the funeral rites for the kobolds, and the banishing rituals to ensure the demons did not return from whatever hell we sent them to. And that was where we parted ways.

I still had duties in Three Cities. The king needed to be told that General Daskegandé was really dead, and then the Blacknives needed to find a way to oust the king.

I bid my old general, and friend, farewell, and watched as he and Nerik's band rode out toward Haesenflay. I may see him again, I do not know. But I've no interest in adventuring or noble causes. My work is for the shadows, not the Light.

I'd travel with the General again - after the Blacknives changed our mandate to seeking out a suitable replacement for the Blood King, and killing all other usurpers - but that is another tale.

New Art Thursday: Clones

2010-05-09T11:10:00.006-04:00

These are the three player characters (and their Jedi companion) from my d6 Star Wars game. I'll need to add color to bring all the separate pieces together, I think - I made the image so that it could be broken apart for use on my Obsidian Portal campaign wiki. In a few days, you'll probably be able to see the finished product(s) there.

Ninety Days 04-07: Ketchup

2010-05-09T11:08:00.004-04:00

I got my ass handed to me by a tiny little pissant kidney stone. It stopped my posting for a few days. I'm better now. Here's the catch-up video. There's really no transcript necessary. I wasn't quite feeling up to recording myself. You love it.

This post makes reference to New Art Thursday (and Clones), as well as Free Fiction Friday (and The General's Assassin). So I've linked to them from here.

Ninety Days Intermission: Who kicked me in the nuts!?!

2010-05-07T08:34:00.004-04:00

I got sidelined by a slight case of being unable to do anything other than whine about my kidney stones.

I had New Art Thursday just about ready to go, and only need a rewrite on Today's free fiction. Will knock out both of them (and the accompanying video) tonight after work - provided I'm feeling up to it. This is not an easy thing to deal with.

Mittwoch 01 - Was ich nicht weiß

2010-05-05T10:53:00.007-04:00

Es tut mir leid, mein Deutsche ist shlecht.

Video Transcript:

Guten Morgen, YouTube.

Mein Name ist David, und dieses ist deutscher Mittwoch.

Ich verstehe ein bisschen Deutsch, aber Ich kann nicht es sehr güd sprechen.

Ich möchte lernen besser, und Ich werde meine Fortschritte hier zu teilen.

Mittwochs.

Ich bin Lernen mit Michel Thomas Basic German und Rosetta Stone; aber Ich auch komme aus Frankfurt am Main. Ich sprach Deutsch als Junge.

Das ist alles.

Ich weiß es nicht mehr.

Wenn du kannst mich mit meinem deutschen Hilfe, bitte tun.

Auf Wiedersehen. Bis nächste Woche.

Gerne fünften Mai! Trinken Sie viel "Cervesa"!

Ninety Days 02 (eDave - Internet Marketing for Flakes)

2010-05-04T12:56:00.004-04:00

I sure hope this video is better. I feel like I did a better job. No Valium or whatever the hell I seemed to be on yesterday. Unfortunately, this video only serves as a kind of placeholder. I haven't got much to say about this topic yet, because I haven't done anything about it, yet. I hope I managed to make it at least somewhat enjoyable, anyway. Later.

Video Transcript:

Dave here, hi.

First of all: Sorry, to anybody who forced themselves to sit through that first video. If I had any idea that I was gonna be that boring, I would've strangled myself with the umbilical chord.

But since I didn't, I want to talk to you about "how to start internet marketing if you're a flake."

Originally, I was going to title this video "how to start internet marketing if you're partner's a flake," because I was supposed to pick up some appraisals on Tuesday, so that I could post the video about dealing with those today. Only today is Tuesday. All day yesterday, I thought my partner flaked on me, and I'm a moron.

Oh well. So now what?

I-I originally thought I was going to make these videos all elaborate, with picture-in-picture and all kinds of funny little things, up here, down here; and I decided that I can't do that, because that's time consuming.

And, I have a whole lot of stuff to do every day right now, so I don't have time to spend three hours - four hours making a video for YouTube.

What I'm doing today, eDave, is about me going into the jewelry business. Uh...

I'm picking up some appraisals today, so I can't tell you anything about what I'm doing with those, but - basically - what we're doing is, in order to come up with the capital to finance this operation, we are using eBay.

We're selling our products first, through the auction, on eBay to try to generate the revenue (reduntant much?). Now, I don't know jack-squat about eBay, but I have friends with some experience, and they're going to coach me through it, I hope (or at least give me some advice).

I have to get a credit card, because I don't have one (go figure). Anyone out there want to send me one, I could use one. I need to max one out for my movie anyway.

Anyway.

My goal this week is to get a credit card, if that's what I need to get a PayPal account. Get a PayPal account, get my appraisals, get some pictures. Post some stuff and sell it - make some money for the website.

That's about it. This is just an introduction to what I'm trying to do, and uh...

In order to go along with the title of the video though -

[damnit.]

Internet Marketing for the Complete Flake
Step 1: Make a goal. Write it down. What are you going to do?

Now that you know your big, over-all arching goal (No. I don't know what "over-all arching goal" means) - for instance, me? I'm going to create an eBusiness; but I'm a flake. I forget to do things. I drop the ball. I stop doing things. I get destract-

Hey, what the hell is that? It's a comic book.

No. Do the business, do the job, get it done. If you get distracted, be hard on yourself. Kick your own ass, make yourself do the work. That's pretty much it.

I think that's it (Thanks for watching).

Now I've got a lot of writing, reading, eating, studying, drawing, practicing, and exercising to do. So, that's it. See ya' later. Bye.

One more thing. Any of you actual internet marketing guys who got sucked into watching this video; if you want to give me some advice, I'd appreciate it. Leave your comments below. Thanks.

Ninety Days 01 (Intro)

2010-05-03T05:51:00.004-04:00

This video is horrible. Horrible quality, horrible pacing, horrible plot, and just bad direction overall. I'm so sorry. I will try to do better (I promise). Transcript at the end of this post.

Schedule of Video/Blog Posts:

Monday: Thoughts & Things / My Guitar Can't Weep
Tuesday: eDave (internet commerce)
Wednesday: Mittwoch (meine deutsche Sprache Fortschritt)
Thursday: New Art Thursday / How to get a job in comics.
Friday: Free Fiction Friday / Novel Writing for Lazy Bums
Saturday: X Paper Cranes / Motorcycle Madness!
Sunday: Movie Updates

Video Transcript:

Hi everybody. Dave [here].
As I get closer and closer to 40 - I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there - I'm realizing that I'm on the wrong path.
Everything in my life points to a total disatisfaction with where I am, and for the last ten years or so, all I've done is whine about it, and wallow in it.
Yesterday, I was cleaning my bathroom, and it was overdue. I mean, it was disgusting, and something in me broke, and I went to clean the bathroom.
I-I was in there for awhile, scrubbing away. All of the sudden, I wasn't thinking about what I was scrubbing, I wasn't thinking about what I had to do next, I wasn't thinking about my life, I wasn't thinking about the girl, I wasn't thinking about anything. I wasn't thinking about the quivering mess. I just was. Am.
I came out of it with this... I don't know what the word is (epiphany?). I came out of it with this certainty that I'm not doing right by myself. I'm wasting my life. So I decided that in the course of the next 90 days, I'm going to take a handful of goals, and I'm going to accomplish them.
And I'm going to videotape that, because, 1) I need to be accountable to somebody, and I have friends (and I trust them), but having the screen and the camera there, in between us, makes it easier for me to step up to this. 2) I'm going to do a lot - a lot - in three months, and maybe when I'm done, someone will want to know how I did it. This is a record.
So, so what I'm going to do.
In the ten years or more that I've been goalsetting, I've been sitting on my ass, in my filth, pretending that I was going to do something more - and not doing it. I made elaborate plans, and I never did - I didn't follow through with hardly anything.
So I took all took all of those goals, all of these plans, all of these pages and pages and pages of notes and I condensed it down to just 10 things.
Ten things that I'm going to accomplish in the next 90 days.

The first is, I'm going to lose 30 pounds.
I'm going to learn to play the guitar... better (I'm not that good).
I'm going to start a web business.
Ich werde deutscher Spreche lernen.
I'm going to build a portfolio, and I'm going to get a job penciling comics.
And I'm going to write a novel.
I'm going to fold 1,000 paper cranes. Because.
I'm going to buy a motorcycle.
I'm going to create a good movie with my friends.
And I'm going to go raw vegan. I was much healthier, and I felt better when I was raw, when I was vegan.

I'm going to post again tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that - for 90 days. And after that, I don't know what I'm going to do.
There's a link to my blog, below. And on that blog, you'll find a transcript of this video, and a schedule of when I'm going to post about which of these goals.
That way, if you're interested at all, you can follow me.
I think that's it.
Thanks for watching.
Music: Julandrew "Crazy As" via Jamendo.com (viva Creative Commons)
the Game.

New Art Thursday: Tesseract

2010-04-30T05:14:00.009-04:00

(A geometric figure I don't completely understand).

This is only my 5th or 6th serious attempt (that blonde chick, myself, that scene girl at that Starbucks that one time, me again, that dancer girl, that actress... yeah 6th) to draw a "real" person; and it's the first time I tried to draw someone who exists in my world without resorting to recreating an existing image of her.

I should have stuck to what I know. As an image I'm happy with a lot of things about this drawing. I still don't know squat about detailed highlighting, but my use of color feels stronger (is it?). I am fucking in love with that pant's leg. I completed this image (start to finish, including rough's, pencils, inks & color) in under 6 hours - so I'm getting quicker.

It fails to do the thing it was meant to though. If it wasn't already Friday, I'd have scrapped the whole thing and started over from scratch.

Looks like I've got some learning to do.

It feels to me like when a bad (no - not "bad" - a not quite as good as you're used to) artist takes over a comic title you love to read. If you were reading this comic book and saw her here, you would probably know who she was - there are enough "cheats" thrown in to give that away; new readers are never going to know how much better she looked when [insert favorite artist here] was drawing her, though. I just wish I was better.

Maybe she was right. Maybe it just wasn't my day, and I'm being too hard on myself. Hope so.

60 Paper Cranes

2010-04-25T13:21:00.004-04:00

This week is a bust.

So is this post. I have no inspiration.

I set out to write this long, boring diatribe about how disappointed I was in my handling of the time given me these past few days (decades). Then I remembered that I've done that already, so I'm not going to subject you to that bullshit again.

Monday was my 37th birthday. Aside from a nice dinner with the family and a few drinks with friends, however, it just seemed like Monday.

I got the pull-up bar I wanted for my legs & back routine. Pokémon: SoulSilver for my DS. A bag of Gummy Bears, I'm ashamed to say I ate (Gummy Bears contain Gelatin, which is pretty much just powdered bone slime). I got twenty bucks.

It's more than I deserved, and I'm really happy to have the people in my life that I do.

I found out that there really is a way for me to attain the previously unattainable goal of owning a motorcycle by year's end. I am completely blown away that - after writing the goal down (with no knowledge of how it might happen), a pathway opened up. I don't want to get all new-agey and weird, but that's fucking amazing. Even if it doesn't work out.

I didn't write anything this week.

That's not true. I wrote the notes of a story I thought I wanted to write about young Jesus. But it's been done, and - pretty much - after Last Temptation, you don't need another Jesus story. I also wrote about 10,000 words of what amounts to choose-your-own-adventure fanfic, set in the Firefly universe. Now that I'm not caught up in the whirlwind of "the technology makes it possible so it must be amazing," it feels pretty stupid.

I doubt I made anyone's life better this week. I was superfluous.

Like Donald Kaufman, I'm learning that "you are what you love, not what loves you." That's pretty great. I wish I'd learned it thirty years ago. I have love in me again. I'm so amazed by the possibility of that, I just don't know how to react to it.

It's got me rudderless, though - blowing about every which way. I find myself sitting in the dark flickering light of the screen, late at night, wondering what direction my life will take now. Where am I supposed to go? Do? Sometimes wondering what direction my life should have taken. But the past is just the ripples of now.

I want more. I guess that about sums it up.

New Art Thursday: Densjak Tribeslayer

2010-04-23T00:06:00.004-04:00

Meet Densjak Tribeslayer, Goblin Wizard, and his familiar companion Bristlepig.

Densjak was something of a magical prodigy, who slew his own wizardly master to take his place as chief shaman and wondermaker of his tribe. But he was an experimenter, forever tampering with the very essence of magic; and his experiments eventually led to the death of his tribe.

All of them. In retaliation, the God of the Goblins marked him (his grey color) and shackled him with the boar - his familiar (a faithful and loyal companion to the end, but the eyes of Maglubiyet no less). He no longer has anything to do with goblinkind (because they attack him on sight, trying to rip out his throat in honor to Maglubiyet), so now he must truck with humans and their ilk - no matter how he despises them.

Densjak was a character concept I came up with some time ago, but never got to play. I wrote a short tale about his "fall;" it never went anywhere. He became an NPC, but with 4th Edition, I'd sure like to give him a shot in the PC ring.

38 Paper Cranes

2010-04-18T09:00:00.004-04:00

First of all, this post was due Saturday. I botched it. Second, There should be 88 paper cranes by now; there are 38. I am falling dangerously close to behind.

My week has been - not bizarre, but - unusual. Three specific things are effecting me quite profoundly.

Firstly, I'm becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I don't believe in an afterlife. This puts me in the rather unenviable position (that we may all find ourselves in) of reflecting on the worth of my existence. Am I living? Am I grateful to be some of the mud that got to sit up? How can I show that, or change it if I have to? Am I wasting my time here?

B. I haven't written poetry in eight years, and I'm dubious as to the quality of that verse; I still tend to think of poets as kind of silly.

There's this girl I know...

This is how all the trouble starts, but nothing will come of this. Not because I don't like her or think of her that way - not because she's this unattainable illusion (a common problem) - not because she's out of my league.

I don't even think we're playing the same game. But she's really pretty. She's just got that face and eyes like [what's her name] and the best smile, and hair the color of chestnut something or other. And she's smart. Funny. Every time she opens her mouth something amazing (or at least mildly interesting) happens.

She does these sickeningly sweet, cute little things - the kind of stuff you'd roll your eyes at if you saw it in a movie or if someone else did it. But when a girl you like does it.

Melts you a little.

She reminds me what it's like to be in love.

I don't think I'm in love. My heart hurts a little and I don't not think about her, and the sun and moon and stars (which were just so slightly out of whack) have come around again and lined up in her absence, and all I hear on the radio is love song after love song after - and I didn't realize they were all so good. But it's not love.

I won't go into all the reasons why it won't be (one or two may even be legitimate). It's just nice to feel that again. Feel alive again.

And I sure could use a new friend right about now.

Three. I'm focusing (pretty well) on these goals. On this idea that I can make my life better.

I haven't written another page of the book, but I was telling someone about the concept and it got me pretty F'n pumped again. I really believe in this story. It's something I think I can do (and do well); I just haven't yet. It's not writer's block. It's what Kevin Smith calls "writer's Laze." And I've got it in spades.

I have been working out, and I've got the sore muscles to prove it. I didn't do cardio Saturday, because my back was sore [blah, blah, blah], which made me feel lousy. All there was today was stretching, but I managed to get right back up and do it. I'm optimistic about tomorrow. I haven't been eating right because I'm broke, but that too will change soon.

I'm still working at the fucking grocery store. It's still sucking a little of my soul out of me every time I walk through the doors, but I managed to at least get the ball rolled half-way up the hill so we can get this whole e-business thing going. I'm going to pick up my first appraisals today before work, and then I'll get them scanned in and (hopefully) up on eBay before the week's out. Our intention is to use proceeds from these auctions to finance the site.

I asked for an iPhone for my birthday. I'm not going to get it; but my folks are at least (possibly) going to look at the insurance on my old phone to see about my upgrade. I've done exactly jack and squat about a motorcycle or a home. This angers me a little, so I'm going to stop writing about it. Maybe working on financing a new venture is working on those. I think it's a cop-out, though it also covers the "working on financial goals" bit. Damn it.

So there you have it. I'm going to die. I remember what it was like to be in love. I'm working (in a half-assed, slip-shod way) on attaining my one-year goals. Also, I'm 50 cranes behind on my folding quota. I'm writing though (if maybe the wrong things). And I'm drawing. I'm working on gaming, but it doesn't swallow my life. I don't even seem to give a damn that I'm weeks behind in all "my" shows.

I'm pretty grateful to be some of the mud that got to sit up (Vonnegut, by the way - not mine). I'm struggling with an idea I heard recently that went something like "if you're not making someone else's life better, you're just wasting your time," but in a good way. I mean, I'd like to enrich someone's life. All the time. But maybe a little rest isn't exactly a waste of time (finite though it may be). We should enjoy our lives. We only get a little time to do so. I just have to remember - I don't know how to say this. I don't know how many times I can write "time" in the same paragraph.

I spend too much time (sigh) enjoying myself, maybe. I don't know how to write this, but this post is already cyclopean* in scope anyway. I've got some paper folding and other stuff to do.

The wind blows her scent across my path
Even days after I last laid eyes on her.
I am not in love

Every time she opens that cute little mouth
She is smarter, funnier, better.
I am not in love

I see echoed in her laugh, her eyes, the shape of her neck
Every girl or woman I've ever fallen for.
I am not in love.

I haven't written poetry in eight years.
I haven't felt the warm smile of another
Stamped so indelibly on my heart.
I haven't been in love.

I am not in love.

*I am so freakin' excited to have been able to use

that word in a sentence I just want to do my

Unspeakable Dance. In fact, I'm going to.

Free Fiction Friday: Mohan's Tale (Part One)

2010-04-16T14:54:00.003-04:00

The Fire and the Western Wall

We sat in the flickering light of the fire for an eternity before someone broke the silence. Grolnar hunkered against the tall rock, sharpening his axe, occasionally muttering something in Dwarven under his breath. Morek and I were too exhausted from the battle to do more than stare at the fire. Raevon gnawed on a boar's leg, stoking the flames up around the beast as he chewed. No one knew where Anali got off to, but then, when did we ever? Zannamerlynne reclined in her tent, some distance away – her old books and ancient scrolls illuminated by wizard's light.

It was the cleric who broke the silence. That strange heretical priest we'd picked up in Haesenflay; he said, “It's nice to sit beside a fire after these long nights with goblins at our heels. I am sorry they had to die, but I must admit a certain gratitude for the respite,” he looked up at a moon the color of blood and rust. “I don't think it will last.”

Raevon spit.

“You may be right, priest,” I said, absently stoking the embers in front of me. “We're near the edge of Merridan's map. If he's right about the Goblins, I think there will be a lot more killing before we're through. You may even have to pick up a cudgel yourself.”

The old man sighed. The lines on his face deepened. His scars seemed to turn white in the dancing firelight. When he looked up at me, his eye – the bad one, the white one – it turned and fixed me. I think I lost a year off my life then.

“Can I tell you how I came to be in the service of Pelor?” He looked so tired then. We knew he was twice as old as any of us – well, maybe not twice as old as Grolnar and Raevon – but he was past his prime. Again I found myself wondering how he'd talked us into letting him come along. Sure he'd proven himself since. Even with that damn vow of his, he stood up in a fight. We were all still living, and that was proof enough of his worth, but -

“Do I have a choice,” I asked, half in jest.

“Of course,” he said, removing his heavy cloak. The bronze and iron clasp – one of the many holy symbols he kept about his person – he placed gingerly atop the folded cloth. Even in his age, the man was huge. A Mountain. “I would not seek to bore you, but you asked me about my Divine visitations. This was one of them.”

“Let him talk,” the Dwarf said, laying his axe down for the first time since the battle was quit.

“I want to hear this too,” Anali said from somewhere in the shadows to the south. I searched for a moment before spotting her in a low tree branch, reclining against the trunk. The Cleric did not wait for the rest of us to consent.

I am... No. I was General Daskehgandé, of the Army Luxlucitus. Don't make that face. I led the Shadow-Cloaks against the Wyrm Frostclaw. I was there at the sacking of Narvellan. When the Solis Battalion and Laerian charged the White Gates and took the Crown, I stood under the Western Wall against the King's First Legion.

Raevon was smirking. He didn't believe the cleric any more than I did. “The Army of Light was evil,” he said. “They threw down the Boy King and Laerian took the throne before anyone knew what had happened.”

Anali piped in, “Narvellan is a disgusting, evil place,” she said. “And King Laerian is the most despicable tyrant in a hundred leagues.” She was hooked already. Poor little thing was too gullible; Halflings love to hear about the fall of Narvellan.

Let me tell you two things about the Sack of Narvellan. First, the Boy King was untested, unschooled, and unprepared for an attack upon his Crown so soon after his father's death. But the bards would have you believe that Luxlucitus stood against the boy alone. They wanted villains, and villains don't fight armies. But I stood with my troops under the Western Wall that day.

Three-hundred and forty-seven men died there. Two-hundred and seventeen of them were mine. Most of them no older than you lot. Some of them were only boys – you've seen how the militias recruit. Luxlucitus was no better.

And I won't excuse their actions. We knew knew Laerian before we followed him into the first battlefield at Kairlown. Hell, he was my friend. I stood beside him when he first took command of the Luxlucitus. He made me a general. He was our leader, and the few remaining Shadowcloaks flocked to his banner when he put on that crown; but I did not lead them against a child.

Laerian's Solis did that. I wasn't in the throne room, but I know the story. Laerian slit the boys throat with a boot knife and then watched him bleed out on his mother's favorite Fey-weave rug. Then he took the woman to bed and declared himself the new monarch at sunrise.

I was gone by then, but here's the second thing you need to know about the Sack of Narvellan. The bards were right. Orvan should have been king. He was a good man, even at that tender age. Laerian was the villain. The valiant Army of Light sent by the gods to liberate Narvellan and bring peace to the Three Cities was an army of conquerors. And we brought neither peace nor anything good to that Kingdom.

When it was over and done. Maybe even while Laerian was slaughtering the child, I put my sword in the ground and sat on a low rock in the shadow of the West Wall. My armor was caked in blood. My joints hurt, and I wept.

Two of the King's bowmen had fallen from the ramparts and lay entangled in a mass of corpses in some sort of mock orgy. I didn't even know them for the King's men, their body's were so entwined with my own soldiers. I had to pull up their tunics to distinguish the color. Even then I had to look at their faces to be sure.

This was a graveyard now. A haunted place, riddled with death. Already, the black spots in the sky heralded the carrion feeders. It was no different than any other corpse-field I'd seen a dozen times before. But I was gripped in a Melancholy.

My father had wanted me to be a teamster. I knew I could never make a living as he had though. Killing is the only thing I was ever good at.

I said I wept. I wept after every battle. My men called me “the Old Woman” when they thought I was out of earshot, and then eventually to my face. It didn't matter. Until that battle, I'd never led them astray. I'd have died myself for each and every one of them, and they knew it. They were my men.

But I didn't weep for them. I wept for this curse. For all the rage and anger and adrenaline and fear and hurt welled up inside me. For this inability to do anything else well. It sickened me. Not the killing, but the necessity for it. And the pointlessness of it all. Luxlucitus marched against Narvellan under the pretense that the Boy King would rule with iron and flame – no better than his father. And so we replaced the could-be despot with Laerian the tyrannical. Two-hundred and seventeen of my men died for a cause that was a lie. A hundred and thirty more trying to stop us.

Sitting on my rock, staring at the fallen all around me, my head began to ache. I saw the light of the setting sun flare up and become brilliant, blinding. I could not shield my eye against it.

And then, he was there. The Servant of Pelor. Quicksilver and Fire, on wings of golden light. It strained my eyes to look at him. Yes, “eyes.” I haven't seen out of my right eye since the battle of Hewn, when I caught Old Trauggar Axehand's legendary blade in the face; but I swear it to you. Both my eyes strained to be able to see him.

He lit on the battlefield before me, slinging his radiant greatblade onto his back, between his wings.

He told me I was at a crossroads. Continue as I had. Become Warlord for the newly crowned King Laerian and see many more battles – much victory and blood. Riches beyond my imagining and glory, fame and infamy to pile on top of it.

Or, by the grace of the Shining One, I could walk away.

“Lay down your weapon and never again take it up,” he said.

My protests seemed to fall on deaf ears. What would I do? How would I turn away from Laerian – My friend? Why would I turn away from the promise of wealth and glory?

When he finally spoke, I knew the answer before the Angel of the Lord gave it voice. “Laerian is not a good man.”

Again I protested. Neither was I. Who was I to call myself Laerian's better? How could I be any different?

“Lay down your weapon and never again take it up.”

In the end, I stripped off my armor and wrapped one of the bowman's cloaks around my leathers. All the while, the Angel hovering behind me, watching. Before I left, I turned back and looked at him one last time.

He bid me make my way to the Temple of the Weeping Dusk. They would have me, he said.

“Mohan,” I said when he finished, “Daskehgandé died at the battle of Narvellan. Everyone knows that.”

“Yes,” the Cleric's voice as somber, “and his body lies in the great tomb beneath Orvan's Castle. His Armor and Great Blade hang in a place of honor in the King's War Room. I've heard all this.”

“Then how can you expect us to believe -”

Anali was standing just inside the fire's light, her dagger drawn. “Laerian couldn't very well tell anyone his second in command had abandoned him,” she said. Her dark eyes never left the cleric's haggard face.

“What?” I asked her, “you don't believe him?”

Anali sheathed her dagger, but the darkness never left her gaze. Neither did Mohan. “Yes.”
The others were silent for the first time since we'd all come together. No one else spoke up. The air had grown heavy.

“My parents died in Laerian's purge of the Three Cities,” Anali said. “We were all marched out the King's Way toward the Vales. I was only a babe. Someone picked me up and stuffed me into a linen cart when they fell.” She was in the cleric's face before I even realized I might need my sword. I had no idea the Halfling could move so fast.

“You did that,” she spit, but his hollow, blue eye just stared back at her. I didn't see that she'd drawn her dagger again until she put it away. I had no idea that she'd cut him until after we'd pushed the goblins back at Kaerfalevel, when I was trying to stop his bleeding from the spear in his shoulder, and I saw the wound.

“You saved my life, human,” she said, “and then you saved it again. And again tonight against the goblins. But I will never forget what you did to me. What you did to my people. Everyone knows Laerian would have fallen before sunrise if the Shadowcloaks and their gods-damned weeping cyclops hadn't been there to throw down the First Legion. Corian might have become King, or Haris – maybe the Queen herself would've taken the throne – though I doubt it. Not with her dead child's ghost haunting the throne room.

“But if it wasn't for you Laerian would be dead and gone and the Halflings of Narvellan would still be in Narvellan where they belong. My parents would still be there.”

Raevon must have seen the dagger. He was standing near them, his spear at the ready - I have no idea what he thought he was going to do with it, but it gave the rest of us pause. We just sat there in silence.

“I won't fight you, Anali,” Mohan said, finally. “And you're not wrong. I have a great many crimes to answer for, and I intend to answer them. If you think my death serves that purpose, then finish your cut, and go with the blessing of the Sun Father.”

She put her knife away then. “I don't have any idea why Pelor would choose a mongrel butcher like you,” she said, “but even I'm not dumb enough to put an end to what gods begin.”

She turned to me then, “but I'm done with this. I'll finish what we started, whether we find the ruin or not – I'm done once we're back to Haesenflay. I won't ask you to be rid of him before we go up against what is sure to be a vicious enemy – he's a good healer – but I won't travel with him after this. And I won't travel with you if you'll have him. Even for one battle.”

And she was right. No matter who came back from those next few days in the dungeons below Kaerfalevel, it was over that night. Our company was broken before we even entered the ruin. I'm amazed anyone lived.

That was all Mohan's doing. I could blame him for breaking us up, but he saved us. He even kept Anali alive through to the end.

She left – just like she said she would. She wouldn't travel with the Butcher of Kairlown. But there was sadness in her when she went. She owed that man more than just her life. We all did. And we all knew it; there is a dark evil below Kaerfalevel.

So we few survivors, split the treasure and went our separate ways. True to his word, Mohan took none of it. Only those things that were clearly meant to be his. The Holy Symbol we found below the Stone Arch – the scrolls of Mayaheine he gave to the local temple, what little silver Zanna put in his coin purse to carry him on his way.

And like that he was gone. They all were.

It's not how I thought it would end.

New Art Thursdays: Mohan, Cleric of Pelor

2010-04-15T14:47:00.004-04:00

Meet Mohan, wandering cleric - heretical servant of Pelor - the Sun God. Mohan is a pacifist adventurer. That may be the wrong word. He does not oppose violence, he simply abstains from it. He sees his purpose in protecting those who would venture into the dark places of the world, and to retrieve what relics of the faith he can find, to return them to the church.

He travels the free kingdoms seeking out adventurers and mercenary bands that may need a healer or a priest, in return asking only for what share of the spoils the gods make clear are due him - and those provisions the band wishes to purchase that he may serve them better.

Mohan is older than most human adventurers - closing on 60 (he has a long and somewhat dismal past), but there's no system for that in 4e, so I just assumed his faith in Pelor, and his unswerving dedication to his vows give him vigor unknown to other men his age.

This is the character I'd like to play in the next 4e D&D game we put together (or any D&D game, really).

One thing I've found that I like about 4th edition - it not only makes this possible, but he even manages to be a useful, contributing member of the party. Who might not get squushed.

More Mohan tomorrow.

I don't like this.

2010-04-14T15:14:00.001-04:00

In the months since I stopped working out (because, you know - that was a good idea) I've gained 23 lbs. back and I feel just as bad as I did 40 lbs heavier.

I wanted to start exercising again for all the usual reasons; but when I took the before photos ('cause, you know - that's what you do), I was sickened. I do not have this mental image of myself looking like this. I don't know what it really is, but not this. Anyway.

This is all the "before" information from Monday:

Weight: 143 lbs.
Height: 5' 8"
Neck: 16"
Chest: 45"
Waist: 46"
L. Thigh: 27"
R. Thigh: 27"
L. Bicep: 15-1/4"
R. Bicep: 15-3/8"

If you really want to subject yourself to the horror of the before photos, they're here. (I'd wait until I have something to compare them to. They're pretty bad).

Man-Up

2010-04-12T14:09:00.003-04:00

I've been remiss in my manly duties of late.

I often carry cash in my pocket, but it is seldom that I can afford to spend it. I've usually looked out for myself, rather than those around me, be they women, friends or strangers. I can cook eggs, which is something; but I don't eat them, so there's that. I have all but given up on the television, but I don't really make things any more.

I want to make a bookshelf (and I want to put a secret door in it), but I've never made a rock wall or a table or tuition money. I've never rebuilt an engine or a watch. I've never had a fortune that needed rebuilding either.

There's no one looking for my kind of expertise. I've squandered my know-how, and so it will not survive my passing. So I am no longer immortal.

But I can speak to dogs, and there is kung-fu living deep inside me somewhere. I know how to sneak a look at cleavage, and I don't really care if I get busted every once in awhile. I can be good at my job - though I often am not. I go to work but have no avocation, I rarely pay more than lip service to my hobby, and I have no real career. I'm very good getting a new job if I don't like this one. Too good, I think.

I have learned to look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, I made you. Suitcase, watch, posture. I infer.

A man owns up. This is why Mark McGwire is not a man. And neither am I. I hate this. I often fail to grasp my mistakes and I seldom lay claim to who I am and what I was when I do not like them. Too often I assume no one has noticed my mistakes and I let them pass.

I love the human body. The revelation of nakedness. The sight of the pale breast, the physics of the human skeleton, the alternating current of flesh. I am thrilled by the snatch, the wrist, the sight of a bare shoulder. I like the crease of a bent knee. I often feel that thrum that only a man can feel - but I seldom act on it.

I seldom do the dishes, though I look out for children. They stand behind me. And I do know how to bust balls.

I have had liquor enough in my life that I no longer need sound breathless, clueless, or obtuse when I order a drink. I don't need to think. I order Scotch or something on tap.

Never the Sauvignon Blanc.

I shy from the coming of age, though it should free me. I shied away from the upper hand and I fear now I won't know when to step aside.

Maybe I never will, but I figure I could knock someone, somehwere on their ass if I had to.

I often rely on rationalizations or explanations, winnowing winnowing winnowing until the truth is humbly categorized, intellectualized, written off with an explanation. I am lost in the great sweeping maw of humanity. It's what makes me a liberal - but not a very good one.

I do get the door without thinking. And I have stopped traffic when I needed to.

I question belief and while I don't embrace ambiguity, I accept it. I revisit my beliefs frequently. This is why I am a conservative - though not a very good one.

I don't know much about tools, though I know all too well how to lose an afternoon drinking, playing Grand Theft Auto, driving around aimlessly or shooting pool. God I miss pool.

I could lose a month too.

I don't listen very well, which means I don't argue very well. I spit opinion, and I hate that.

I love being alone, actually. I sleep.

I no longer stand watch though. I have not interrupted trouble in some time. I am no longer a state policeman or a poet, when I should be both of them.

I do loving driving alone, however.

I had style a decade ago. Now I feel contrived, with no set rules.

I understand the basic mechanics of the planet, but I cannot look up at the sun with squinted eye and tell you the time of day. I can no longer readily discern north, where to find food or where fish run. I understand electricity better than most, but the internal combustion engine is a mystery to me. The mechanics of flight make sense, but a pitcher's ERA is like Greek to me.

I don't know everything, but I too often try. I feel threatened by what other men know.

I can tell you I was wrong. I did wrong, and that I planned to. But I avoid the conversation at all cost. I apologize too readily, just to put an end to bickering.

I do not wither at the thought of dancing, but I avoid it.

I watch. Standing on a street corner watching stuff. Considering. But someone had to teach me this - to be quiet, to cipher, to watch. To be like a zoo animal, captive and free. But too often, I think you know what I'm thinking, or who you think I am, or what I may do next.

This is personalized, but nonetheless plagiarized blatantly from Esquire Magazine's "What is a Man."

10 Paper Cranes: Goalsetting

2010-04-10T18:18:00.006-04:00

An old Japanese legend tells us that someone who folds 1,000 origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane (one of the holy creatures). 1,000 cranes are hung in your home for luck and prosperity, they are given to newlyweds for 1,000 years of happiness. Here's my Thousand Paper Cranes - a physical manifestation of the time-limit I've placed on my short-term goals.

Thousand Paper Cranes updates Saturday. These first couple of posts are probably going to be a rehash of posts I've made in the past. I've known for years what I want out of life, I just haven't always known why I wanted or how I planned to go about getting.

Here are three sets of unreasonable goals, why I want to attain them and something I'm doing today to get them started.

Write A Novel. I know I can do this because I've done it once, because it's the reason I'm here. Writing and telling stories is what I'm all about, and when I finish this goal this year, I'll be more fulfilled, more engaged in my chosen life-plan, happier, and probably more interesting - more dedicated to writing, to being published, to becoming a professional novelist. Just going to write 2,000 words before bed.
Be fit, get back down to a 32" waist. I'm treating these two goals as one, because I want to be fit and healthy and sexy all at once. If I get my waist down (and my muscles up), I think I can be. I'm totally committed to being in the best physical shape that I can possibly attain, and I know I can do it because I know how far I've come already. I have the tools and the desire to stop being the fat guy - physically and in my head. I am about to knock your fucking socks off by how goddamn fit I'm going to end up this year. Going to clean my room so that I have room to work out.
Quit my job, make a living selling jewelry for Mom. Here's another two that tie together. I know mom has the stock that will sell and is worth enough, and I know I only want to make 20K a year doing this so I know it is possible. I have the determination because I'm so excited right now about not working in this or any other bullshit monkey job. I just cannot stand another week of this shit, let alone a year, so I am totally and irrevocably set on this course. I will quit my job and find an alternate source of income (Mom's jewelry, writing, gaming, drawing, the internet - whatever). I am just going to make it happen. Period. Going to call mom and get her to put together what I need once I get the ball rolling, going to get my paypal straight and sign up with eBay.
iPhone. iPhone is my word for smart-phone, because it's the touch-screen multi-purpose smart-phone I know; and I bloody hell want one. I am so sick of not having such a cool device. My life could benefit from the versatility and it would just be so fucking awesome to finally have something like this that I set out to own. It would help considerably to cut the tether I've attached myself to. I just... I could keep up with my internets, keep notes for writing, take pictures - three things I most want to do next to drawing, and I could get an iPad for that. Due for an upgrade. Gonna find out (when I call mom) what I'll have to pay once I get one.
Motorcycle. I want a motorcycle because I want a fucking motorcycle. Probably the least expensive bike I can find - used or one of those knock-off scooters from Solano, maybe. It'll mean getting my motorcycle endorsement when I get my new license, but so what? I want one because I'm sick to death of having to ride my bike everywhere, of begging for a ride or THROWING MY FUCKING MONEY AWAY ON TAXIS, and I really don't need a car yet. I want a motorcycle because they're cool. They're fun. I just want one, okay? Gonna look around online to see what I'm gonna have to pay.
A House. In St. Augustine. This is the most unreasonable goal I've had. I want to own a house in St. Augustine, Florida because it will give me the - what? The appearance of having a solid foundation from which to do all the crazy shit I want to do. Write for a living, draw comics, sell stuff online - all the crazy stuff no one I know seems to think will sustain me - all while traveling the world and just being the general goof-off I'm supposed to be. It'd make people more likely to accept my lifestyle if they know I own my own home. Plus - I'm so tired of feeling like a transient. Gonna start shopping online and probably look at low-income housing and whatnot.
1-Year Financial Goals: Within the next year, I expect to be making $2,000 a month, be paying into a retirement plan of some sort, and have complete medical/dental insurance coverage (including optical). I'm so sick of worrying about whether my next paycheck is going to cover the rent, or whether or not I can buy something to eat because I've got to pay the electric bill, and sad as it seems - $2,000 a month is more than twice what I'm making now and that would be plenty. I'd be so fucking happy making 2K a month I'd shit. It would let me set money aside for retirement, for large purchases and I could afford (finally) full medical coverage, which means I could get my teeth fixed, get new glasses and contacts, and maybe go to a damn doctor every now and again. I'd be so fucking happy I just can't express how much I want this. I have to have this. It's mostly taken care of in the above goals; but I also need to find out what an IRA is, and look at my other options for investment. My current job offers insurance, but since my plan is to be out of there before the end of the year, I need to shop around.

These are the Nine (there are three in the 1-Year finances) most important 1-Year or less goals I've got on my lists. Here are the rest if you're interested:

Write another novel, go vegan again, be on time, Smart Car, speak fluent German, Drawing Studio, Painting Studio, Go to a movie a week (movie-night), speak fluent French, Play the guitar, Start Painting again, Publish a web comic, New Drawing Table, speak fluent Japanese, Write the homeward bound novel, iPad, find love, An Aptera, Finish and Publish Rotworld comic, add some new friends to my life, Ink a comic, get my teeth fixed, go to a Tony Robbins seminar, Pencil a comic, A Car, A Porsche, Travel around the world, A Home in Nevada, become a NYT Bestselling author, A Home in Germany, be clean, Vacation in Egypt, get published, keep my room clean, read 2-dozen books a year, be nicer to people, live in the now, be more fun, workout every day, no more sodas, fold 1,000 paper cranes, swim more, visit Nepal, visit Australia, Live in New Zealand, visit the Louvre, Speak fluent Kiswahili, be someone's hero, Secret Door Bookshelf, New computer desk, new computer, 3D Printer, Sword collection, garden, electric guitar & amp, New laptop, $5,000 a month, give at least $1,000 a year to charity, $100,000 a year, set aside $1,000 a month for all children, nephews and nieces for college, $1,000,000, Never want for money, $10,000,000, Never retire but never need to keep working.

Free Fiction Friday: A Long Time Coming

2010-04-09T15:14:00.003-04:00

This was originally part 1 of a longer story; but ended up being the inspiration for Rotworld. I posted it on a writer's site that has since collapsed, but I don't know if I've made it more widely available. I think I spent too many words telling you about it instead of showing you, and I'm not sure about the ending, but what do you want?

The road out of Montgomery is just like every road; Reggie's bike handles it easily enough. Like all the other roads, all the other cities, all the other people, all dead.

He brushes his dusty hand along his windswept hairline. It's only been three months, but his locs are already starting to come together. He doesn't even bother using the hair pick now, just twists his hair at night and brushes it back with his hands in the morning.

Even just sitting on his motorbike, a Chinese 250cc Touring cycle that belonged to his brother, he appears dejected, beaten. All of the hope has gone out of Reginald Romero. If it wasn't for the Geeks he'd just go back home.

He can't bring himself to use the “Z-word.” It's too fantastic. Too fucking scary. Instead, he calls them “Geeks.” It comes from an old horror comic he used to read back in Maryland, sitting on his best friend's front porch. Deadworld, or something. Seemed appropriate.

They weren't zombies, anyway. Not really. Oh, they looked like zombies; and it took a lot to bring down a Geek. A hell of a lot. A good solid blow to the skull could do it; but you usually had to follow that up with another – to really fuck up the brain matter. Bullets through the brain worked too, if they hit right and splattered out the other side. And just beating the snot out of them worked too, if you were brutal enough. No still-living severed hands crawling across the floor, no headless monsters. At least that was something.

Geeks were hungry; and they ate anything that moved. They were stupid and mindless and if they saw food they attacked it. Which pretty much meant they attacked anything that wasn't a Geek.

The third night after it happened, Reggie cried himself to sleep in the abandoned house he'd sheltered in. He'd been out scavenging for food in a Safeway in Silver Spring; and he'd had to fight off a couple of Geeks that surprised him in the parking lot. One of the ugly bastards bit him.

He'd stuck a pistol in his mouth a dozen times or more that night. He was suffering from hot flashes, vomiting, and the worst pain he'd ever imagined stretching from his gut all the way up to his shoulder, where the Geek's teeth had ripped out a chunk of flesh.

He knew he was done. He was going to wake up a mindless zomb-

But he didn't. And dwelling on it wasn't going to get him anywhere. For whatever reason, Reggie had taken the hit and pulled through. The sickness stayed with him for weeks. Before it was over, the pain had spread to every muscle and nerve in his body. He'd lost a couple dozen pounds and any desire to stay in D.C.

He made a tour of surplus stores and pawn shops, stocking up on anything he could load onto his brother's motorcycle. He took the bike because it got such great gas mileage, and he had a long way to go. He planned on taking the highway south along the coast, then follow the southern border to California.

He spent a couple days in every town and truck stop and bullshit little tourist trap he came across – restocking ammo and supplies; and looking for another survivor. Any other survivor. How the hell could he be the only one left? He'd been so desperate, that he was taking longer and longer to search through each town. Now he was just sick.

Every five or ten minutes, his thoughts came back to it. He was alone. There was no one left in the world; and if there was – they were probably in Africa or China or some shit. Even if there were a whole bunch of people, he was going to die here alone. Probably at the hands of a god-damned Geek.

H already knew he couldn't off himself. Even when he'd thought he was going to end up a brainless, half-starved walking corpse.

“Fuck it,” he said to the world, “fuck you all!”

He held his head up, gave the throttle a little twist and stretched his legs out on the highway pegs. With no working radio (it'd been damaged during the fight of his life at some bullshit tourist trap called “South of the Border”), he started singing back the loneliness.

“I was born by the river in a little tent

and just like the river I've been running ever since.

It's been a long, a long time coming

but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”

It was an old Sam Cooke song his mom used to sing to herself. All of the sudden, it just popped into his head.

“It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die

'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky.

It's been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.”

He stops the bike and pulls off the road. He stands the Fujian Sanli on its kickstand and leans against the seat. He wears a pair of Metal Storm 9mm caseless FBI guns slung low on his hips like six-shooters. He picked them up at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. The same place he'd found the two 10mm Glocks he kept in a double holster in the small of his back. The Metal Storm guns were amazing. He can put three bullets into a Geek's skull before the recoil even kicks up; and each clip holds 24 bullets. They were a pain in the ass to restock; but worth it once he'd learned how.

On the left side of his gas tank, a shotgun was mounted in a long holster, like in the old west. Right next to it is a katana he'd taken from a military base in D.C. Across the backseat – along with his bedroll, was a Remington 7400 deer rifle. In a make-shift sling by the saddlebags hung a hunting bow and 27 arrows.

He'd taken them so that he wouldn't be wasting bullets on food.

This was before he realized that there were Geek animals; and before his ego let him accept that he was a lousy shot. He was getting better though. He'd managed to kill a couple of squirrels and a rabbit; and just outside of Savannah, Georgia, he shot a deer. It ran off, but he'd hit it.

Reggie had a knife stuck in each one of the hiking boots he'd picked up after his Ponies got trashed in a fight. An 8-foot hose was coiled up and tied to the bike opposite the hunting bow. In a gas tank bag, he's got a Bowie knife supposedly carried by David Bowie himself. He picked that up at the Smithsonian, along with his sunglasses (which once belonged to Ray Charles), a great big, blue diamond (in the saddlebags), and the ivory armband he wars under his leather jacket (a 16th century piece from Nigeria).

Even before he'd picked them up, he knew he wasn't very good with any of the weapons. Now though – four states from home – he figured he must not be as bad as he'd thought; and he was definitely the luckiest motherfucker ever.

He'd tangled with so many Geeks now, he couldn't remember them all. And he was standing while they were all brain-dead. He took a deep drink from his canteen.

But it was just dumb luck. Dumb luck and whatever tiny bit of skill he'd managed to develop in the last few months. In Maryland, his Mom had taken him to church every Sunday of his life. He'd always believed in God and Heaven and Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Only... None of that mattered when you were face to face with a fucking Geek.

He was holding one of the Glocks now. Checking the clip, flipping the safety, cocking and releasing, cocking and releasing. It brought him comfort. No rapture, not trumpets. If this wasn't the end of the world, then why wasn't it in the Bible? If it was, how the hell was he the only one left standing?

Did God forget about him? No. That was stupid. And there was no way he was the only one righteous enough to stay out of hell. He sure as hell wasn't the only motherfucker who didn't believe enough in Jesus.

Well. He might be the only one now.

He laughed. It was pitiful though; and he put it away with a scowl, slamming the clip back in place.

This was his God now. His Savior.

No. To hell with that. He was his own savior now. He was a fighter, a survivor. In the last

months, he'd done things he'd never thought possible after living his life relying on god. Please give me this, please give me that, oh god please don't let Deschelle be pregnant, please please please. Now he struggled every day just to keep breathing. He crapped in the woods and hunted and killed his own dinner (when he was lucky enough to hit with his bow).

Now he prayed to himself, “C'mon Reggie, don't miss.”

“Oh shit, Reggie, kill this motherfucker, fast.”

“Keep your eyes peeled, Reggie. It's getting late.”

It saddened him that there was no god. Just another casualty of June 16th. God was either dead or he was a Geek. Running around heaven biting the heads off all the angels.

Now he laughed hard. It was still nervous, but it came easier. He smiled and mounted his bike again.

“It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die

'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky.

It's been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.”

“I go to the movie and I go downtown

somebody keep telling me don't hang around.

It's been a long, a long time coming.”

Reggie's voice was strong and clear, even over the rumble of his Chinese motorcycle. It didn't seem to fit, coming out of this dirty road-warrior, armed to the teeth and carrying his life in his saddle bags; but Reggie had been a good singer. His Mom had wanted him to try out for American Idol when they came through. No chance of that now. He kept singing though. The song gave him courage. Filled him with strength.

“But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”

“Then I go to my brother

And I say brother help me please

But he winds up knocking me

Back down on my knees,”

“Ohhhhhhh...”

Reggie's brother is dead now too – the only one of his family (that he knew about) who turned into a Geek. Reggie had to beat his older brother's head in with the baseball bat Ron gave him on his 14th birthday. All the rest just got the rot and died. Reggie rubbed at his shoulder.

Underneath his leather and the layers of shirts, the skin of his right shoulder was scarred and misshapen.

When it got infected, he'd thought he was going to end up with the rot. Like the lepers in the jokes and the old movies (and nothing like real leprosy) – people just fell apart. Reggie's own girl, Deschelle died of the rot on the 16th, along with everyone else. They went to bed and everything was fine; maybe she had a little headache or a stomach virus, but that was it.

When he woke up she was dead. And she looked like she'd been that way for weeks. The skin on her face was -

No. Bad thoughts. Reggie wasn't ready to deal with that. He pushed it down and sang instead.

“There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”

Reggie camped in the woods near the roads. Geeks were too stupid to drive; and if Reggie was smart enough to drive on stolen gas, maybe others were too. Maybe he'd wake up to the sound of a passing car. Plus, Geeks didn't much seem to be bothering with roads. They went were the food went, so there was always a chance that he'd run into trouble; but Reggie felt reasonably safe by the roadside.

When he camped, he slept in the sleeping bag he kept strapped to the back seat of his bike. And from one of his saddle bags, he withdrew a couple dozen bells and a spool of twine. He strung this around him in about a 20-foot radius, so that touching the string rattled the bells and (hopefully) woke him up to defend himself.

He hadn't put this to the test yet, but his sleep was light these days, nervous. And he was certain that even the slightest tinkle would snap him to attention. He spent a half-hour or so setting it up every night, and taking it down again in the morning.

After another week of traveling and searching, Reggie found himself in Mobile. He'd found an iPod with a full charge in Greenville; but it was all Country & Western, so he packed it away, just in case he'd find some power and a computer to put some real tunes on it.

In a pawn shop in Mobile, stocking up on ammunition and looking for a CD player and some CDs; he found a big, black cowboy hat made of leather with a white-gold buckle for a hat band. He couldn't help himself, so he snagged it, pushing it down over his locs. It was tight; but he figured that was perfect. Maybe it'd stay on his head while he rode. He went ahead and took a Rolex out of the jewelry case, as well. Why not?

Mobile was almost completely free of Geeks; and he found a generator that ran on gas in one of the nicer hotels. He spent two weeks there, before heading west on 1-10.

In Mississippi, Reggie found himself off the interstate and driving through the wilderness one morning on 110 Crop Unit Road; when he found a dirt road leading back into the woods.

“This is where you get lynched boy,” he said to himself in his worst southern accent. But his curiosity had him by the scruff and he turned onto the unpaved trail.

It wound back about a quarter-mile and ended in some kind of idyllic, Mississippi swamp-house. Everything Reggie had ever thought about the South, about Mississippi, about Rednecks. It was all written right there in the dirty, single-story house with the run-down porch screens, the auto parts in the front yard. Empty dog pens lined the left edge of the yard. Reggie expected they weren't really empty; but that he just couldn't see the carnage from here. He didn't want to see it; but he dismounted and walked closer.

“Holy shit!” Reggie screamed, kicking his legs straight out behind him and falling flat on the ground as the echoing retort of a large caliber rifle sounded from somewhere near the house. He scrambled for his pistols, and shouted louder, “Holy Shit!”

He was almost sure he could hear the reloading and cocking of the rifle in the distance.

“Hey,” Reggie screamed again, “Hey! Holy Shit! Are you fucking human?”

Silence from the house. For a half a moment, Reggie was sure he'd imagined it all.

“Who 'dat 'dere?” The accent was thick and cumbersome, almost comical. “Ya'll cain't fool me, ya' dirty zombies!” The rifle fired again, but over Reggie's head. He could see the man now, leaning out from behind a shed in the backyard. He was clutching the rifle. “Ya won't take me alive!”

Just great, Reggie thought, gripping the pistols tightly. “Zombies don't talk, man!” The word felt dirty in his mouth. It actually made his stomach turn when he said it. He thought of the Louisville Slugger slamming into Ron's -

Son of a Bitch. “Look, dammit – I'm not a fucking Zombie!”

More silence from the house, then Reggie added, “can I please stand up and not get shot?”

The redneck came walking around the house with his rifle held half-way at the ready. He was shirtless, in a pair of over-alls. A caricature of the South. “Well, come on 'den. Les' get a look 'atcha.”

Reggie picked himself up out of the dirt and holstered his pistols. His hat had come off and he replaced it on top of his head. He brushed himself off and then looked up at the approaching man. The redneck had a sly grin on his face that wasn't easy to read.

“Don't dat jes' beat all,” he said, “months and months without a human soul in sight; zombies in town tryin' ta eatcher brains; and now I gots me a negger cowboay come a callin'.”

Reggie didn't react to the racial slur, but neither did his hands stray more than 6 or 8 inches from his holstered guns. “I can't believe you're alive,” he said.

“Yeah,” the redneck drawled. His rifle was relaxed now. He seemed to be looking Reggie over, sizing him up. “Well, you come a long way then, boy?”

Reggie squinted against the morning sun, “D.C.”

“Yankee negger,” the redneck half-asked. “Guess beggers cain't be choosers,” he stuck out his right hand, “M' name's Cleve.”

Reggie shook his head and took Cleve's hand, “I'm Reggie.”

Cleve turned away and indicated the house. “Reckon yer' hungry. I gots a couple a' chickens ain't turned. Doan' wanna eat 'em; but I gots eggs. Slaughtered the pig last Tuesdee. Got goat milk and some beer. Beer ain't real cold; but's Busch, so it's good.”

Reggie chuckled. “Thanks a lot, man.”

Cleve started toward the house. “I swear to God. If my daddy knew I's about to have a negger over for breakfast...”

“Yeah,” Reggie replied, “ain't that a bitch?”

Reggie and Cleve ate breakfast together, recounting their stories since the world turned to shit and everybody died. Afterward, they wandered out back to a little stream where Cleve had a couple dozen bottles of beer tied together in the water, along with a handful of Tupperware bowls and jars of something Reggie couldn't recognize.

Cleve fetched up two bottles and handed one off to Reggie.

“Here's to yer, Reggie,” Cleve toasted.

“And to you, Cleve.” Reggie touched the neck of his bottle to Cleve's then took a big swig. He almost spit it again when Cleve finished up with “Happy Halloween.”

The two men spent Halloween reclining beside Cleve's fireplace. At first, Reggie was uncomfortable just sitting in silence; but he glanced across the room at the redneck who was staring off into space, scratching his chin in thought. If my daddy knew... he'd said. Reggie smiled, then went back to watching the fire. He didn't want to be staring at the man. He was just grateful he wasn't alone.

The next morning, he gave Cleve the iPod and showed him how to use it. Cleve tried to turn it down; but Reggie told him it was a gift, in return for his hospitality. Adding that he didn't like country music anyway.

They ate another big breakfast, then Cleve suggested they should walk into town and “hunt up” some supplies.

Reggie stayed with Cleve for a little more than a month. He tried to convince the redneck to come along with him. Offered to teach him to ride a motorcycle, filled him with tales of life on the road – the possibility of other survivors. Cleve would have none of it. This was his home, had been his family's home for generations.

In the end, Reggie decided it was enough just knowing that there was someone else. Even if it was a backwards redneck in a Mississippi swamp. They shook hands, and Reggie rode on out of Mississippi. He found himself singing an old Roy Rogers cowboy song, “Happy Trails.”

New Art Thursday: Ambush! (Unfinished)

2010-04-09T14:50:00.003-04:00

Ambush! It's a scene from the Rotworld script I've been working on for about a week (split up over the past year or two). Unfinished Ink over scanned pencils. It is entirely probable that this pic will be WAY too dark. We'll see.

Free Fiction Friday: Chaucer

2010-04-02T15:34:00.005-04:00

I wanted to post the completed "Beastlands of Pluto," but that damn image is taking 8,000 years to complete. Here's "Chaucer" instead - ported from MySpace (via LiveJournal) for those who haven't read it and want to. It needs a rewrite.

"That monkey gives me the creeps."

Chuck stood by the night desk, eating cheese puffs from the vending machine down the hall.

Dave was too engrossed in his game to look up from his PSP, a small handheld video game. "Aw man, leave Chaucer alone," he said, furiously mashing buttons, "he's just smart, that's all."

Chuck continued watching Chaucer, the pride and joy of the Eastlake Primate Research Facility. The middle-aged chimpanzee was reclining in a corner of his cage, nursing his Strawberry-Banana juice bottle, a treat he received once a week as a reward for a job well done. What unnerved Chuck about the Chimp wasn't his smarts, though.

Chuck and Dave worked the midnight-to-eight shift at the EPRF and from the first moment he walked in tonight, that damn ape hadn't taken its eyes off him. Even now, the thing was staring at him. Watching him.

"I can't take it any more; I'm going out for a smoke. You coming?"

Dave didn't reply for a moment, he just kept working his PSP, his arms raising and lowering in frantic movements to influence whatever was on the screen. Suddenly, he cursed and stood up, turning off the game.

"Yeah, let's smoke."

* * *

Chaucer was born in captivity. A part of the EPRF's selective breeding program, he was the only offspring of Gertie and Gonzo - the facility's stars in the late nineties. Aside from good breeding, he was also the beneficiary
of some of the program's best chemistry, receiving daily doses of what EPRF hoped to patent as "smart drugs" - substances that were designed to strengthen and quicken the mind.

Chaucer had learned to sign quicker than a bright human child; and by the time he was six, he was starting to read English (demonstrating unbelievable comprehension).

As soon as Chuck and Dave were out the door, Chaucer replaced the cap on his juice bottle and set it aside. He launched at the cage door, sliding his arm through the wire and reaching for the latch. The day shift workers all
thought very highly of Chaucer; and often left his cage unlocked because he was so well behaved.

That was all about to change.

He caught the latch and opened it, swinging down to the floor with ease. He bounded over to the desk and opened the top right drawer. There were two sets of keys. One was Chuck's; the other set opened any and every door in the
Facility. Chaucer had played with that set quite a few times in the past; but tonight he wanted Chuck's keys.

Standing in the chair, looking down at the open drawer, he fretted for just a moment, unsure which one was the right set. He spied a small golden monkey chained to one of the key rings. Those keys were for the facility - Chaucer remembered sitting under the stairwell in the West Hall for hours, just admiring the little golden chimp. He snatched the other set and looped them around one of his toes.

He picked up the PSP and stared at it a bit, turning it over in his hands. He couldn't decide what about this little black box kept Dave's attention and got him so riled up. He licked it and decided that was no good.

He laid it down in front of him and stared at it, his face inches away from the reflective screen. He knew he had to make it stop working; but he didn't want to break it. Chaucer genuinely liked Dave. He didn't want to ruin his friend's favorite little useless box.

He turned it over and around, studying the shape and the contours. The headache was coming back, but he just pushed it aside. What should he do? He tried prying open the panels on the back, finally getting the little one on
the side to open up. A small, blue card popped out; and he decided this would do it. He took the card and closed the panel before placing the PSP back where Dave left it.

Not much time left. He leapt over the desk and hurried into the ladies' toilet room. He put the keys and card into the sanitary napkin dispenser; pushing them far back so they wouldn't be seen at a glance; then went into one
of the stalls and sat on the toilet.

He peed, farted, and tried like hell to make. Outside, in the office, the door opened. Here they come.

"Oh crap," he heard Dave say through the door, "where the hell is Chaucer?"

Chuck said something the chimp couldn't understand, and then both humans started calling his name.

Finally, he squeezed some out; he hooted loudly, calling out to them. They came running into the bathroom and pushed open the stall door. Chaucer smiled up at them with a big, toothy grin.

Dave visibly relaxed, "Chaucer, you little turd. You're in the wrong bathroom." He chuckled and unrolled a bit of toilet paper, handing it to the monkey.

"I don't think this is very funny, Dave." This comment only gave Dave another chuckle.

Chaucer had won. He smiled again and held out his paw for more of Dave's soft, butt paper. When he was finished, Dave led him back to his cage. Chaucer turned and sat and stared hard at the human.

Tiny eruptions of pain flared through the chimp's brain. The headache took a stranglehold on the base of his skull, and the blood vessels in his right eye began to swell and redden. In his mind, one thought repeated over and over and over, so loud he might scream it if he kept it up: No lock, no lock, no lock, no lock, no lock.

He could feel the limits of his mind - the fog of distance between him and Dave. The thoughts fading away and dying as they left his own mind and dissipated into the air. Gripping the sides of the cage and baring his teeth
against the pain, he forced himself through, straining and reaching until he touched the alien mind of the human. No lock, no lock, no lock, no lock.

Dave went through the motions of locking Chaucer's cage; but he missed the latch by about three inches. Exhausted, the chimp leaned back against his bedding and opened his juice. He drank three or four deep gulps, and laid the bottle on its side by the cage door. He lay his head down and slept for an hour or so.

He slept through Dave's tirade about the missing memory card; and his subsequent decision to go to the lounge and watch TV.

"That monkey's got hell to pay, when he wakes up," he said impotently as he left the office.

Chuck sat and stared at the disturbing ape for a while, then made a decision; he got up and went to the lounge himself.

* * *

Dave was watching some sci-fi show about little brown aliens. Chuck stood in the doorway for a minute thinking of the best way to couch his question. Finally, he exhaled and took a step into the lounge.

"Dave, I want to head out for a bit - you know, get away, clear my head-"

"Have sex with your girlfriend," Dave said. "Yeah man, knock yourself out; just be sure you're back before Jonas comes in. I'm not getting fired over your midnight bootie calls."

Chuck shrugged, "All right, man. I'll be back by five."

"Four-thirty."

"Five. Jonas doesn't come in until six; and it won't take us longer than an hour to clean up."

"Fine. See you later. I'm taking a nap, so wake me when you get back."

Chuck agreed; and went back to the office. He hung his lab coat up and opened the drawer for his keys.

"Son of a-" he said, looking up at the sleeping chimp. Oh, that monkey was really starting to get on his nerves. He went back to the lounge; but Dave was already out cold. Chuck sighed and returned to the office.

One or two of the other chimps were looking at him; but not the way Chaucer did. That one always seemed to know something.

He could never tell what it was thinking; but Chuck was sure it had something to do with escaping to the jungle. He was also certain that there was no ape-rule about not killing humans if they cage you up and feed you experimental drugs since before you were born.

"You stupid monkey," he said, slouching into the chair, and picked up the phone. He hung it back up and went into the Ladies' Room. He looked just about everywhere for the hidden keys (and probably the memory card); but
didn't see them.

He searched the office, the hall, the Men's Room. He even went down to Chaucer's favorite hiding spot, under the stairs in the West Hall. There was a half-full bottle of Strawberry-Banana Snapple stuffed under the bottom step;
but tonight's bottle was still in the monkey's cage. He thought about throwing the stuff away, just to spite Chaucer; but only shrugged. I'm not a monkey, he thought and went to the lounge to watch Dave's stupid sci-fi show.

Chaucer was already dreaming. He was standing in the Ladies' Room and Chuck was looking at him with his hands on his hips. That usually meant that Chuck was not happy.

"I'm not a monkey," he told Chaucer, then stormed out into a field of daisies. Chaucer followed him out and sat next to him. The human knelt down and started combing Chaucer's hair for fleas and ticks, picking them out and
crushing them between his teeth.

"I'm not a monkey," he said again, "there's juice under the bottom step of the stairs in the West Hall."

"I know," Chaucer said, though he'd forgotten about hiding it away there last week. He brushed the human's hands away and stood upright. In Chaucer's dreams, he stood upright and spoke English. He stared at the sun; but the sun
turned black. The nightmare was starting again.

Like a flash, he whirled on Chuck, baring his teeth, "Run you fool! Warn Dave! They're coming!"

He snapped awake and grabbed the empty bottle, raising it like a weapon. Glancing about, he saw that the lights were still on. He relaxed a bit and sat down, still holding the empty bottle. He'd been sure Chuck would try to
wake him up to find his keys.

Maybe he was wrong about Dave too. Maybe things were going to be fine after all. He didn't feel very good about that though. He scratched his chin and sat back, staring at the light. At least his headache was gone.

* * *

Whatever Dave was watching was absolutely the stupidest thing Chuck had ever been subjected to. He thought about warning Dave that his brain was going to explode out the back of his head if he didn't stop watching stupid crap on television.

He flipped through the channels for a couple of revolutions; but there wasn't anything on except reruns of Sports Center. The only thing Chuck thought was dumber than reruns of Sports Center was that garbage Dave had been watching. He got up and went back into the office. Chaucer was awake.

"Hey monkey," Chuck said from across the room, "what'd you do with my keys?"

Chaucer only looked at him, his eyes crinkled up in what could either be confusion or bemusement. Or maybe he's just a monkey, Chuck thought, and you're giving him emotions that aren't there. In his mind's ear, he heard a guttural version of his own voice say, not a monkey.

"Creepy monkey." He sat down to do a crossword.

He was about halfway through it; and making good headway when the lights went out.

"What now?" It took a minute for the generators to kick in; and Chuck sat still in the dark waiting for the red emergency lights. The monkeys who were awake were getting a little anxious.

When the emergency lighting came on, Chuck started to tell the apes to settle down, but stopped short when he saw Chaucer's empty cage. He looked around for the missing chimp; but the light was too dim. He went to the emergency locker and got out the tranquilizer gun.

From his perch, high up on Gazelle's cage in the corner, Chaucer watched with grim satisfaction. This was good. He had one of his paws stuck through the wire of the cage roof; and Gazelle had her face pressed against it, holding his thumb and little finger with either hand. When Chuck took the tranquilizer into the hall, Chaucer indicated to Gazelle that he needed to go.

She resisted and he focused his gaze on her and pressed into her mind. Ape minds were easier get through. They felt simpler; and less alien than a human mind. Chaucer did not understand how he felt about this. He liked that
he could touch the other apes this way - there minds were comfortable, and they reminded him of some far away home place. A the same time, the simplicity saddened him.

Sometimes, he wondered what would happen if he stopped taking his medication and started feeding them to the others. Would he become as simple as they? Would he forget all he had learned? These fears stopped him from
trying it out on Gazelle - his favorite. She was nice and soft, but still strong. She did not understand things though; and he pitied her.
Now he coaxed her to sleep, gently stroking her mind with his own. She
made an expression that pulled on another part of him - not his mind or his
groin; but something deeper that he did not understand. She let go of his
hand and lay down.

With his empty bottle in hand, Chaucer crept across the cage tops and leapt down onto the desk. Chuck had left the blue locker open; and, sparing a quick glance at the hall door, Chaucer rushed over too it and found the stun baton. He had seen Jonas use the stun baton on Maximillian, when the old ape had gotten upset at something and went berserk. Maximillian was gone now. Chaucer was not sure, but he thought that maybe the older chimp was dead.

He considered that maybe the stun baton wouldn't work on humans; but then he thought that was probably dumb. He smiled, hearing Chuck's voice in his head, "stupid monkey."

He put the bottle under the desk and took the stun baton into Ladies' Room. He tested it by holding it away from him and pulling the trigger. He was terrified by the crackling snap that it made, remembering vividly what it had done to Maximillian; but he held onto it and braced himself for what was next. He climbed up onto the commode he'd used before.

They hadn't noticed it wasn't flushed. He sat down again and tried to make, realizing he should have eaten more dinner. He squeezed out a little bit, then managed to get the butt paper himself and wiped. He reached into the water and pulled out a handful of the mess he'd made.

Looking at it made him snarl. Somewhere along the line, he'd developed a human's disgust of such things. He held it close to his nose and sniffed it anyway. The smell made him wince and shake his head away; but he held onto
it. Then the commotion began.

The outside door slammed open; and Chaucer could hear a pack of humans making all sorts of noises as they rushed in. He was standing up on the toilet seat, a stun baton in one hand, feces and toilet paper in the other. He was breathing hard and fast, bobbing up and down. In his chest, his heart was pounding.

"Free the animals!" he heard one of the strange humans shout; and the other apes were now agitated and crying out, rattling their cages and jumping around. Chaucer could hear the humans opening those cages and letting fellow
apes out.

"Where are the workers," another human asked, "fan out." The bathroom door opened and Chaucer heard footsteps. This was it. His fast, heavy breathing stopped as he reared back with his muck covered hand.

"What is that smell," one of the humans said as he opened the stall door. Chaucer hurled the mess in his hand right at the human's face, then leapt forward onto the startled man, who fell back with a thud. He stuck him in the chest with the stun baton.

The pain that shot into his legs was even worse than the headaches he got when he tried to pressure human minds. He cried out and leapt off the dazed, slime covered human. He bolted into a different stall and bounced on his legs for a moment to try them out. He was still okay. Don't touch the humans when you stick them.

"What the hell's going on - Larry!" Another human had come into the bathroom and was rushing over to the unconscious Larry. When he got close enough, the smell and the mess on Larry's face made him recoil. Some of it was lying in the man's mouth; and a string of used toilet paper covered his nose.

Chaucer heard this new human begin to vomit and knew this was his chance. He leapt over the top of the stall and landed hard on the human's shoulders, carrying him to the ground, spraying his sickness everywhere as he went down. He leapt off the man and started to stick him with the gun when he noticed the new human was unconscious too. He knelt down into the man's face and saw where he'd hit his head against the floor. He knelt down close to the vomit covered face, nose wrinkled in disgust.

The man was still breathing; but Chaucer didn't think he was going to be any trouble. He stuck the other man with the stunner again though, and started out into the office.

He pulled the heavy door open just in time to see a human female who was coming in. Looking back over her shoulder, she didn't see him. Chaucer jammed the stun baton into her stomach and pulled the trigger. She lurched
back and doubled over; but didn't pass out. Confused, Chaucer hit her with it again. This time, nothing happened. He bared his fangs at her and howled with rage.

The pain behind his eyes was immense - it drove into his skull like a hammer and pierced every nerve in his body. The woman screamed weakly, and her eyes rolled back into her head. She went down. Chaucer dropped the stun baton and leapt over her onto the desk. There were still three humans in the office; two females and a man in a red coat. He was the one that was going to kill Dave.

Chaucer bellowed again, and stood up to his full height, banging his chest, banging the desk. He leapt at the human in red and brought both fists down hard on his shoulders. Part of the man broke and he cried out. He was reaching for something in his jacket, and it clattered across the floor.

Both of the other humans were screaming, "oh my god, oh my god!" And when the hall door opened, neither of them saw Chuck and Dave until it was too late. Chuck shot one of the girls with the tranquilizer gun; and Dave
wrestled the other one to the ground.

Chaucer walked over to the thing on the floor. It was black and shiny - like Dave's little box; but clunky and heavy. Not smooth. This was the thing he was afraid of in his nightmare. This was how the human in the red coat
killed Dave. He sniffed it, tasted it, and carried it over to the unconscious human.

It had a trigger like the stun baton, and Chaucer thought he could use it. Dave would be safe forever if this other human was dead. He held it over his head and howled at the human; but as he did so, the thing jerked in his
hand. A loud, obnoxious report sounded through the room; and Chaucer heard Chuck scream, "Jesus!"

The pain in Chaucer's hand made him throw the weapon across the room. Crying out, he retreated into his still open cage. He sucked at his hand and then just sat there, looking at the aftermath of so much commotion.

Chuck walked over and picked up the pistol. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling and shook his head.

"What just happened?" Dave asked. He was still pinning the last girl against the floor. She spit in his face.

"We're liberating these poor creatures from your cruelty and oppression!"

Chuck walked over to them and pointed the weapon at her, staring through the revolver's sights.

"Looks to me like you're lying on the floor with your ass kicked." He chuckled, then stifled his laughter, then just let it go. He was howling. "You got your asses kicked by a monkey you were trying to set free!"

He picked up the phone and called 9-1-1. When he was sure the cops were coming, he and Dave locked the two girls in the Ladies' Room with their unconscious companions. They didn't want to move the guy in the red coat; but he was lying against the door; so they carefully inched him over into the middle of the floor.

He put the pistol on the desk; and they quickly rounded up the other apes. When they were done, Chuck stood in front of Chaucer's open cage. The ape still sitting there, staring at him.

"Well, creepoid," Chuck laughed, "you did a good job here." Chaucer climbed out of the cage and into Chuck's unsuspecting arms. He patted the human on the back as he hugged him. Chuck was smiling.

Dave walked over and pet the ape's head. "I can't believe you did all this, Chaucer." He shook his head and looked around the room, "uh, thanks."

Chaucer looked at Dave; but his grin turned to bare fangs and a roar of anger.

Behind Dave, the injured man had the revolver. He said, "sons of bitches," and fired.

Chaucer was already scrambling out of Chuck's arms, his powerful legs knocking the man against the cages. He threw Dave to the ground just in time to intercept the redcoat's bullet.

It caught him in chest, just below the collar bone, and whirled him in the air like a puppet. He let out a pained yelp and hit the floor with a thud.

"Motherfucker," Dave screamed, lunging for the pistol. Holding the gun with one hand, he punched the man with the other, and then brought his fist down against his neck. The activist's collarbone was already broken when Chaucer hit him; and Dave was sickened when his fist went in a little too far. The man screamed and let go of the gun. Dave stood up and kicked him in the groin. He spit on the man and turned around.

Chaucer was lying on his back, weakly pawing at Chuck, who was already by his side.

The ape whimpered a little. Chuck put his hand on the side of Chaucer's face and looked him in the eye, "You're going to be okay."

The monkey's right eye seemed to get redder, blood vessels filled and strained to burst. Chaucer cringed at something and Chuck let go of him and sat back hard.

"Oh my god," he said. His hands were up at his temple, rubbing back and forth as he stared at the once again very creepy monkey.

Dave was kneeling down with the first aid kit, "what?"

"He," Chuck was stammering, "He just... No. He couldn't..."

Dave put pressure on the bullet wound and Chaucer cried out, teeth bared, his immense grip wrapped around Dave's arm. The human winced at the pain and leaned in.

"It's okay, buddy. You're going to be all right, but we have to stop the bleeding." Chaucer held onto Dave's wrist. His teeth gritted in agony.

The slightest trickle of blood escaped his left nostril, and Dave's world changed forever. In his mind's eye, he could see Chaucer sitting up, blood pouring out of his wound in impossible gallons, the ape looked up at him, "Stop the bleeding?"

Dave went pale and stared at the ape, whose grip slackened on his arm. He was shaking when he too, called on God. He was crying.

"Th-that's right, Chaucer," he said, "just hang on." He looked up at Chuck, who was just as dumbfounded.

"What did he say?"

Dave motioned Chuck over to help, "he said he understands. Oh my god, Chuck, what do we do?"

* * *

They started bandaging Chaucer's wound. While they worked, Chuck realized that Chaucer had hidden his keys in the tampon dispenser in the Ladies' Room, with Dave's memory card. At some point, either Dave or Chuck (neither could recall which) asked the ape how he did all this. In response, Chaucer showed them his nightmare.

It was a field of daisies. Dave was sitting at the desk playing with his PSP; and Chuck was driving away in his car. Suddenly, the sun was blocked out and the man in the red coat came up with a gun and shot Dave. The first
bullet shattered through the PSP and pierced his heart. The second exploded out the back of his skull. He lay on the floor bleeding and dead and the vision stopped.

* * *

When the police arrived, the two workers did their best to explain the situation. They avoided telling anyone just how Chaucer had helped; only saying that he'd injured a couple of the activists when they got violent.

Chaucer was taken to the animal hospital and patched up nicely. He was tested to see how his behavior had changed after attacking humans so viciously; but found to be in perfect mental health (and smarter than ever).

Noting how difficult it was for the little chimp to use his telepathic ability, Chuck and Dave decided not to tell anyone. If the scientists haven't figured it out yet, then maybe Chaucer didn't want them too.
They spent most of their nights after that hanging out with him; watching Dave's crappy sci-fi or teaching him how to play with the PSP. They even took him on field trips every once in a while - to late night restaurants (which wouldn't let them in) and all night arcades. Chaucer's favorite trips were to the city part.

Roughly a week after the hero ape returned to EPRF, his mental abilities stopped advancing. He was already the smartest primate any of the staff had ever encountered, so this was not considered a failure, or even a set-back. They continued giving him his dose; it just stopped increasing his faculties.

The scientists and workers on the day shift, however, were becoming more and more disturbed by the calm nature that seemed to be spreading among all the primates. More than one would regularly complain about the way they all
just seemed to sit there and stare.

New Art Thursday: Beastlands of Pluto

2010-04-02T15:28:00.004-04:00

I think it's going to have "Beastlands of Pluto" across the top (and maybe "a Six-Gun Davey Grant Adventure," with "An Electroverse Tale" at the bottom. It'll also be in color. Hopefully a little easier to make out the details.

Dysfunctional

2010-03-30T04:26:00.003-04:00

Before you read this: Please don't judge me... I'm just sharing my story because people asked...

Wow... okay, I wasn't sure if I was ever going to tell anyone about this, but it's late and I'm sleep deprived so I guess I'll just write it now and regret it in the morning :/

First of all - just for some background: My mom died right when I was born (she was actually really, really hot - but this isn't about her. I guess that's fucked up to say, but whatever). I actually grew up with my dad's family, because my dad has all sorts of emotional issues and he bailed before I was born. So you can see, my childhood was really kind of messed up.

Anyway, growing up I feel like there was a lot of distance between me and my sister. When I was about 17 or 18, I first noticed that my sister was a hottie.

I don't want to go into too many details about it, but basically what happened is that I accidentally found a video she made of herself. I knew she didn't make it for me - but I thought she was so fucking beautiful that I watched it twice (probably would have watched it a hell of a lot more, except that like right around the time I found the video, all this crazy shit went down and I had to leave home (my dad's family who I was staying with got in bad trouble with the law. I never talk about it).

So... I was totally lusting after my sister at that point. She was also having bad trouble with the law. She was actually in custody when I left home.

My friend and I went to go pick her up. When I saw her that day, after seeing the video, I have to be honest, I just wanted to fuck her brains out. Looking back on it now, it's pretty messed up - but I think she had feelings for me too. She actually kissed me right after we came to get her... and it wasn't a sisterly kiss, you know? I mean, it wasn't like ridiculously sexual or anything, but it definitely wasn't sisterly.

After we left, we all went to crash with sister's friends. On the trip there, my friend sort of implied that he wanted to get with my sister, and I got a little jealous. He's a good-looking guy, and even though she was my sister - I just felt like he was competition. Not much else happened between us for a while except some maybe-sexy hugging.

Pretty much everyone in my life at that point was wanted by the government, so we all moved around a lot. I'm not saying that I'm proud of it or anything, but it was kind of an awesome time.

My friend and my sister never hooked up (I don't think) - but I thought there was some serious sexual tension going on between them. It was around that time that I got really badly hurt in an accident. It was fucked up. I almost died. But when I was in recovery, my sister came to see me, and out of the clear blue sky she started giving me this awesome, slow, passionate kiss on the lips.

Sadly (although, I guess for the best) nothing ever came of it. We spent some time apart... and I started to get really religious, so I tried not to think of her that way. It was actually going well for a long time - like I was totally over her. But I have to say, like a year or so after all that stuff went down, we were out sailing (not like a date or anthing romantic like that), and she was wearing like the hottest bikini I've ever fucking seen and it brought back all the old feelings. Sigh.

A little while later she actually wound up with my friend from before (the sexual tension guy). I can't say I was surprised.

But even after she was shacking up with my friend, there was one time we were at a party... my friend was inside and my sister and I were outside alone. It was a really intimate moment, I think something might have happened, except that I killed the mood when I told her that Darth Vader was our father and I had to go face him.

2010-03-27T13:31:00.008-04:00

So, I'm "playing" this new game. It's called Evoke; and it isn't easy (click the title to go to the site). This blog post, or (more accurately) the actions it describes, will earn me one point in a Massive Multi-Player Online Game where players attempt to literally make the world a better place by taking actions in the real world to create lasting changes that effect everyone.

Top players (those that submit an Evokation - a written or video presentation detailing a project you intend to undertake to change the world) are eligible for Online Mentorships with social innovators and business leaders, travel scholarships to the first EVOKE summit in D.C., seed investment to start developing your first social venture, and other EVOKE rewards.

Like I said, though, it isn't easy.

I've had to stop playing other great games, like DDO, Vampire Wars, pretty much all those I took the time to put over there. <---

This post then, is two-fold. I want to tell you about Evoke (go to UrgentEvoke.com to take a look and (hopefully) sign up, maybe we can team up on something Huge. The second thing I want to tell you about is my intention for the Project Two - Food Security.

I'm supposed to "increase food security for at least one person in [my] community." How the hell do you do that?

I really don't know. Here's what I've come up with so far.

The Blue Planet Cooperative

This is a tiny little organic produce shop, juice bar and deli. It costs $25.00 annually to become a member, but members get a 20% discount on all purchases. The last time I was in there, I learned that you can gain an additional discount by volunteering one (I think it was one) day a week to work there (counter, cleaning, stocking, whatever).

I'm including this because - well - it's local produce so I'm supporting local growers, which helps keep them fed, reduces the drain on the overall resources because the food I'm eating doesn't have to be shipped from god-knows-where (which doesn't help feed someone in my community, but go screw, it helped me make up my mind).

My intent is to bike down there and join up, see if / when I can help out (for more $aving$). That's part one.

The Lincolnville Community Garden

Did you know we had our own community garden? Me either. Also, I don't know anything about gardening. Well, I know a little. I had a garden in my backyard at Dad's house in Farmersville. I thought I'd start out as a volunteer member, cleaning up, weeding, etc. When next-year's Box Memberships come up, I can sign up to do some actual growing - eat some and donate the rest to, I don't know, does the St Francis Shelter take food donations like that?

Or maybe... I guess I could offer to make the Box Membership donation in the name of the St Francis Shelter and anyone from the shelter could go there and work the land. That may be a little too "it's a wonderful life."

I could volunteer at the local "wherever there is a soup kitchen," and might even do some good - but Food Security is about the long-haul, not just one or two (or even a few) meals. If anyone else has an idea how I could expand on this, I'm all ears.

How can I - What can I set up to help someone - some people - feed themselves? How the hell do you teach a man to fish?

Where are my Building Blocks?

2010-03-24T12:27:00.003-04:00

I want to change the world.

I want to change the world because ~~I don't like the world I live in.~~ I think the world can be changed; it should be changed. And I've read a lot about changing yourself first, doing little things to do great things, and all of that - but I've never done it. I live in a small (for the U.S.) 12' x 24' space and I watch Lost and play video games and write role-playing game scenarios that I may never run (I'm a pen-and-paper gamer).

So I'm looking at this list of 33 innovation tips / rules for design / hints for making the world better. And I'm trying to pick one to start with. One to focus on.

It is very difficult for me to choose one of these Secrets of Social Innovation as my favorite. Coming at the list "cold," it isn't a very easy group of concepts to get my head around. My brain wants them all to line up in a nice row and look pretty; but they don't. Coming from different authors, from different notions of what has to be done, from different perspectives - at least they're grouped nicely.

But I'm over analyzing this thing; I'll take each one at face value.

The most obvious choices, based on my background and experience, would be Think Creatively, Think and Act Like a Child, Think and Act BIG, and Make it Inexpensive.

Think Creatively is the one that draws the most on my soul. As an artist, I feel like it's my lot in life to stand here on this blank canvas and use whatever I can find lying around to create some new thing. I've never applied that to anything other than comic book art and role-playing games before. It feels like a challenge.

The Agent of Change standing behind me, goading me to prove myself. Do something, anything, other than drawing pictures no one will see and writing games no one will play. Get up go out and create something. And I hit my first roadblock.

What can I create? What can I do? How the hell am I going to change anything?

I have an idea forming in my rotten little mind. I know it's brilliant. I know it has the potential to be amazing. I know I can reach a million people who might otherwise never give this a second glance. I think I can do it fairly cheap, I think I can do it right, I even think it's something I can follow through on and maintain well into my golden years if necessary. I just don't know the details of what it is. I don't even know if I'm even the guy who should be doing it. Screw it. Think and Act BIG, right?

It's my ball, I'll run with it. I might be over-stepping the original scope of this post; but eff that. It's time to let the Glorious Monster off his chain. Time to do some damage!

You want me to think creatively? Think and Act Big, unfettered and unhindered like the mind of a Child? You got it.

A Pretty Swell Guy

2010-03-24T02:39:00.009-04:00

(Excerpted & edited from an archives 2009 4chan thread)
Warning! What has been seen, cannot be unseen!

Has anyone ever taken an serious look at the Tarrasque's picture? He's not roaring; he's smiling. The little guys? They're not RUNNING AWAY from him, they're running alongside him! Note how they're not flailing their arms around and screaming. They're laughing and gesturing for Tarry to come and follow! They're all jolly good friends!

Poor guy's so misunderstood; but next Tarrasquemas, he'll return. Friend to all children - he emerges from his workshop in the middle of the earth and walks through town handing out gifts to the good little girls and boys. If you were good all year, you can run out into the street and play with the Tarrasque, riding his giant carapaced back or running alongside his powerful, earth-shaking feet.

We don't talk about what happens to the bad little girls and boys. :(

Dashing through the snow!
On his carapace we will sway!
Through the streets we go!
Laughing all the way!

Thunderous is his stride!
Colossal is his size!
What fun it is to ride atop
The Tarasque's oh so massive thighs!

Oh!

Jingle Bells (stomp), Jingle Bells (Stomp), Jingle All the Way!
Oh what fun it is to play with Tarrasques all the day, Hey!
Jingle Bells (stomp), Jingle Bells (Stomp), Jingle All the Way!
Oh what fun it is to play with Tarrasques all the day!

Tarrasquemas comes but once in a lifetime, but we celebrate it every Ninth of September with the giving of gifts and indulging in the mass consumption of all things edible. Eating so much you pass out. And don't forget to leave cookies of chocolate and horse meat outside your door for sweet Tarry as he tromps through the countryside handing out gifts of joy and love.

From the Book of Mooks, Chapter 23

"23:33 And when they were come to the place which is called Faerun, there they struck him down to -30HP, and there they made a wish for his destruction.
23:34 Then said the Tarrasque, "Ao, forgive them, for they not not what they do. And they parted his carapace, and cast lots for his horns and loot.
23:35 And the NPCs stood beholding. And the adventurers also with them derided them saying, "He ate others, let him save himself, if he be Tarrasque, the Epic Level Solo."

To celebrate Tarrasquemas, bring cakes and sausages and alcohol in all forms to your gaming session. Before you eat, think about how important it is to be nice to your fellows, even if they - or indeed you - appear to be a monstrous engine of destruction bent on consuming everything in sight. Eat cake and eat sausage and drink your fill and have fun. A Great Day for All!

Jolly Tarrasquemas to one and all!

The dwarf elders spun stories to the young hairy-chinned children of a day when the ground rumbles, announcing the return of the Tarrasque. The boys and girls who had behaved for their parents and were kind to all others could leave the caves to the surface, where they would receive gifts from the magnificent beast.

How can you look at this image and not understand how kind and loving the Tarrasque actually is?

"Happy hey, Happy hey

The Tarrasque is on his way!

Hear the children, hear them cheer,

'Tarrasque day's drawing near!'"

"You better watch out

you better not cry

better not pout

I'm telling you why

The Tarrasque is coming to town.

He's takin' a rest

not wakin' up twice;

hopin' the adventurers are all nice

The Tarrasque is coming to town.

He sees you when you're sleeping

you know when he's awake

He's sorry if he thinks your food

So try not to smell like cake!

O! You better watch out

You better not cry

better not pout

I'm telling you why

The Tarrasque is coming to town.

Every monster down in Fallcrest loved Tarrasquemas a lot.

But the munchkin who lived north of Fallcrest did not.

It could be because he was min-maxed too much.

It could be because he was greedy and such.

But the most likely reason he was so mean, they say

Was that he would rollplay, not roleplay, all day.

But whatever the reason, his stats or his play,

He stood there above town before Tarrasquemas Day.

For below he could see, every monster beneath,

Was happy now making an elven-gut wreath.

"Now they're arranging encounters," he snarled with a sneer.

"Tomorrow's Tarrasquemas, it's practically here!"

And he sneered with his munchkin dice nervously rolling,

"I must find a way to stop Tarrasquemas from coming!"

"For tomorrow, you see, every goblin and orc,

"They'll exchange all their presents, the'll eat their long pork.

"Then they'll be happy and content, then they'll happily sing,

"It'll make me feel hapy when rage is my thing."

So he hitched up his sleigh to his warhorses heavy,

Which he'd min-maxed to go faster than a '54 Chevy.

With bags of holding and portable holes,

He raced down to town laden down with 10-foot poles.

With his sword he did lay waste to monsters left and right,

And thought he would slaughter all day and all night.

Racing past guards wearing seven-league boots.

To race back up home with his treasure and loots.

When to his dismay, he heard a terrible roar,

Scarier than anything he'd heard e're before.

And down through the streets raced a monster Colossal,

Twas the Tarrasque! That lovely old fossil!

The munchkin, he screamed and turned quite white

And pissed in his trousers, from terrified fright.

Seeing himself in that massive black eye,

He was quite certain that he soon would die.

But the Tarrasquemas spirit extends to one and all,

To good and to evil, to chaos and law.

And so he was led to a table, I think

And given a glass of fine dwarven ale to drink.

A lovely roast sausage inside of a roll

was placed in his hand by a kobold so droll.

And as he stood there, aghast and bemused.

The monsters stood round him and chuckled, amused.

And the munchkin with his munchkin feet ice cold in the snow,

stood INT-checking and INT-checking, how could it be so?

It came without feats, it came without stats?

It came without swords, or crossbows or bats?

And he INT-checked and Int-checked 'till his dice were worn.

Then the munchkin thought of something he hadn't before.

What if Tarrasquemas, he though, doesn't have just a CR?

What if Tarrasquemas needs just a little bit more?

And then the littlist kobold of all

Stood there before him, with his scarf oh so small.

He said, "silly human, you don't comprehend,

"Today is Tarrasquemas, all conflict must end!"

"For tomorrow we'll go back to the things that we do,

"You'll try to kill us and we'll try to kill you.

"But until then, why don't we be nice to each other.

"For one day, let PCs and mobs be like brothers!"

Then the munchkin looked 'round at the monsters so sweet,

And thought to himself, "That's a lot of XP."

He drew his sword then and he started to charge.

But was promptly crushed under a foot oh-so large.

Today is Tarrasquemas, the day for good cheer,

But if you're an asshole, you're dead now, y'hear?

Because Grampy Tarry's patrolling the streets.

So if you're not nice, you'll wind up dead meats.

So drink up your ale and your eggnog so tasty,

And share with your friends some pudding that's hasty.

Give away presents for 1d4 days,

and let you're GM know that he's doing okay.

Let's run with the Tarrasque as he bounds through the town,

And when the day's over, we'll see him burrow down.

To the center of the earth where he'll sleep all the day,

Dreaming of next year, the next Tarrasquemas Day.

I believe in the Tarrasque. Though we celebrate but once - and remember only once a year, Every Day can be Tarrasquemas - if you just keep the Tarrasque in your heart. It's change we can believe in.

God, I want to make this canon in my D&D games - THAT'S IT, from now on, the Tarrasque is a pretty swell guy.

"A ring of sustenance lacks the enchantment to sate the Epic Hunger of the Tarrasque. It takes a hearty Tarrasquemas Dinner with plenty of nog for that!"

"The Terrasque saved my kitten once, when it was stuck up in a tree! I mean, sure - yeah, it was smushed kitten paste, but he tried, dammit! He tried!"

"You people remind me of a mother and her hideous, unholy spawn of Iblies that she parades around as her offspring and calls "cute.""

End?

Tasty and Unfinished

2010-03-07T04:25:00.003-05:00

I'm working on some She-Hulk artwork (because why the hell not?), but the first one is maybe half-done; here's a couple pieces from my practically defunct MySpace account.

First up is an Elven Archer I drew (and created for D&D, but never played) with butterfly thing. With the exception of the butterfly wings (I wish I'd given them some detail), I was pretty happy with this one. I gave her some fucking massive Elf Quest ears (which look a little odd on an adult-sized elf hunny), but you love it.

This second one was actually a sketch for an D&D character I played; he was a devotee of Asmodeus and trying like the dickens to become the evil mastermind of the city he lived in. He wore a mask and skulked about at night to hide his evil from the city as a whole. Before I got to draw this image, he was killed off by another PC (who managed to kill off all the other PCs too, the evil bastard). I drew, scanned and colored this about a year ago (a week or two after that elf up there); and just found it in a dusty corner of my hard drive.

I hope it's new to you. Or, at least, you're one of the gamers who was there when Mark dropped the "fuck 'em I'm evil" bomb, and I whacked ya' with a little gaming nostalgia.

Anyway. Savage She-Hulk on her way. Also, I feel kind of bad about not delivering on the Danger Mouse art. I'll give it a shot.

Of Nightmares and Dreams

2010-03-04T11:17:00.015-05:00

Wherein the Dave discusses roleplaying, music, and the idea that it might be a good time to start writing again.

I was inspired by this image (at right) - wich is from some deviant's* idea of what the TARDIS might look like within its own microverse (the outside of what's inside the Police Box) - to begin work on a World of Darkness Campaign combining elements of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with Doctor Who.

The basic idea (barring any spoilers) is that the Player Characters - in the course of investigating (or running from) some weird shit - discover an abandoned TARDIS. As to what's going on within the TARDIS, why the PCs can get into it, and what unfathomable terrors lurk beyond Time and Space? I'll leave that to your imagination.

The Campaign is tentatively going to be called "the Horror from Out of Time."

*You can look at ~Clone-Artist's deviantART gallery here.

I was born in 1973. I was pretty stoked to learn that Queen's debut album came out that same year (as did Aerosmith's and a few others I don't care much about).

Just for the hell of it, and because I wanna, here are my top 5 albums from the year I was born.

Queen - Queen :: Now, I didn't listen to Queen in 1973. I have no idea if I listened to Any music in 1973; but I didn't discover Queen until the 80's (and organized sports) when I started hearing songs like "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" - you know, the songs everyone knows. With the advent of the internet, however (and the awesomery that is in no way actually "piracy." I've become a huge fan of Queen. "Keep Yourself Alive" might be everyone's favorite from this album; but I also really like "Great King Rat" and "Night Comes Down."
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd :: This list is mostly a nostalgia/ anecdotal list or else Dark Side of the Moon would be first. I didn't discover Pink Floyd until my brother, Chris introduced me to the Wall; and I didn't find out about Dark Side of the Moon until I heard about the whole Dark Side of the Rainbow thing; and that was awesome. "Breathe, Money, Us and Them," there are way to many good songs on this album for it not to be number one; but I just - for some ungodly reason - don't listen to it as often as I listen to Queen.
Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper :: I don't think of myself as having belonged to any high-school click; but - as much as I regret it - I probably fell somewhere between Metalhead and Redneck. Though I'm not a fan now - that's not true, I just don't listen to it any more - Billion Dollar Babies is the album on this list that I've listened to most. "Billion Dollar Babies, No More Mister Nice Guy, Sick Things, Mary Ann." God! Now I have to download this album again. Pirate Bay, here I come. brb.
Back. Pat Garret & Billy the Kid - Bob Dylan :: My Mom & Dad had an extensive record collection. Highway 61 Revisited was among those albums and I listened to Pat Garret & Billy the Kid because I figured my Dad liked it. At first it was kind of a let down (aside from "Knockin' of Heaven's Door," of course), but then I saw the movie. I really liked it (It was one of the first Westerns I actually paid attention to - I was not a fan of the genre). James Coburn is awesome.
Aerosmith - Aerosmith :: I found out about Aerosmith in the late 80's with Permanent Vacation and Pump. I found out how old they were one afternoon when I got into the car with mom and put Pump into the tape deck. Mom said, "is that Aerosmith?" And I was completely blown away by two things: 1. How cool my mother was for liking a band that was actually cool, 2. How little I knew about any music after 1968 (thanks to my parent's totally awesome Classic Music collection).

On the writing front - I haven't been. That's disappointing. Brain Squids. I'm working in a dead-end job that harbors only the slightest fractions of joy just so that I can a) have the time to write, and b) so that I'll have some motivation to do so. Most of the writers whose blogs and Twitter accounts I follow have given up things like Television and Video Games. I've already moved these things in my life to the back-burner - and the majority of my gaming time is spent at my brother's house anyway; I hardly ever watch television now.

If only I could curtail my internetting. By the way, I've been catching up on Chuck; Kristen Kruek is cute as a button. She's no Jamie Eason; but I guess there's a reason she was "the Girl Next Store" in Smallville.

My plan is to pick up my novel tomorrow morning. Also look for something here in the next couple days - probably an Electroverse Update, though I'll be porting all of my previously published short fiction to this blog as I shut down all the things (MySpace, LiveJournal, etc) I no longer pay attention to.

2010-02-05T11:50:00.001-05:00

From the New York Times (here)

THE Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.

So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.

Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.

In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.

What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.

Along the way, teachers should spend time each day having sustained conversations with small groups of children. Such conversations give children a chance to support their views with evidence, change their minds and use questions as a way to learn more.

During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.

A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at the corners of the day.

The reforms suggested by the administration on Monday have the potential to help liberate our schools. But they can only do so much. Our success depends on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing, computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration — a curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.

Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the teaching program at Williams College.

Game Night: Star Wars Campaign 1

2010-01-28T16:56:00.006-05:00

PROLOGUE

To its citizens, Coronet City is "the Jewel of Corellia" - a bustling metropolis of beautiful archetecture and breathtaking local scenery. To the Clone Troopers of Digamma Company, however, it may as well be a prison.

Trained from birth to do one thing, these elite soldiers follow their orders, parading before the locals and giving demonstrations to school children and politicians, serving as police escort at high-profile political functions; but they are languishing in their duty.

Cut off from the front lines of a dozen wars on twice as many worlds, troop moral is at a low. These young men were bred to fight wars; and instead, they march around their compound serving as eye candy for a planetary government that was originally against the Military Creation Act.

* * *

As dawn rises over the eastern towers of Coronet City, the metal slats of Digamma Company's Trooper barracks slide open. Forty-two asymetrical lines of beautiful orange light pour into the long room and illuminate the crisp white sheets in a symphony of fire.

It makes CE-1201 sick every morning. The scowl on his face seems an involuntary reflex to breathing now. Like the other 144 men in the room, CE-1201 gave the fog of sleep a quick shake-off and got out of bed.

As he folded and stowed his sheets, CE-1201 reflected on the day's schedule.

0530 Chow
0600 Dress Inspection
0700 Parade Detail in South Coronet
0900 Cantharus School Detail
1000 Cantharus District Parade Detail
1200 Chow
1230 Recrea-

The Low Whine of the P.A. kicked in and the Captain's voice spoke the most exciting words CE-1201 or any of the other troopers had heard in months.

"Attention all Troopers," CE-1143 actually sounded happy, "all daily functions are suspended until further notice. Prepare for Armed Dress Inspection on the flight deck. Squads Alpha, San, and Omicron to form at the head of the formation. We will be greeting a pair of Jedi who will select two squads to accompany them to the planet Onderon. The Jedi's shuttlecraft will arrive at 0700. All troops to be mustered-up on the flight deck by 0630. That is all."

There was no cheering in the barracks; but a number of troopers already had their gear laid out on their racks; and lift in spirits was palpable.

With the exception of the Captain, none of the troopers of Digamma Company had met a Jedi; though they were reputed to be great warriors. Word from the front-lines almost always included tales of bravery and honor involving one Jedi Master or another.

By 0650, when the Jedi's shuttle touched down on the tarmac in front of the assembled troopers, each clone was excited enough to be elated, hoping his Squad would be the one chosen; and anxious to get a look at the heroic Generals who would lead them into battle.

You can imagine the dissapointment, then, when CE-1201 and his comrades saw instead, some kind of pop-heiress and her little pet bunny.

* * *

Of course, he was not a "bunny" at all. The Kushiban Jedi Master Wyliss disembarked from the shuttlecraft and looked over the assembled troops. That metallic distaste rose up in his mouth again as he considered (and not for the first time), the long-term costs of this ridiculous war.

Wars, he corrected himself. And here he was with his former Apprentice about to take a couple squads of Clone Troopers to maybe start another one. His whiskers twitched in anger; and he closed his eyes. Finding his center and stretching out his feelings to "inspect" the troops.

"They certainly look impressive," his companion said, surveying the white-armored commandos and clicking her teeth in that odd way she had a habit of doing.

Wyliss opened his eyes, surpressing his other senses and looking up at the Cathar. Her robes were something less than traditional, taking a cue, it seemed from the Secura school of dress. "Impressive," he asked. "These men, no more than children really, have been bred for one purpose - the destruction of an enemy." He walked down the gangplank.

"The bright white of their armor, the gleam of their weaponry. It makes them the same. A unit rather than individuals. Their breeding reflects this. They are meant to kill, or die; and nothing else." Something flickered in the Force. A sensation of - Master Wyliss could not get his mind around it. "Though the Will of the Force seldom follows the plans and wishes of bureaucrats and politicians," he added.

"Master?" Faule Frsai asked the Kushiban; but he was already approaching the Captain.

"Greetings, General," the Captain said without looking down and the dark, furry Jedi. "Digamma company is assembled as ordered and awaiting your inspection."

Wyliss took a cursory glance around the flight deck. "I don't think that will be necessary," he said. He walked through the ranks of Troopers, followed by the Captain and Faule. The Cathar could sense the Master's feelings as they snaked out through the formation and so stretched out her own senses.

The Living Force presents itself differently to each being which perceives it. To one, it may appear as beats of light against the dark backdrop of the galaxy as a whole, to another, tendrils of energy snaking through the universe and binding all things. Master Wyliss has commented that the Force to him is like high-grain fields of his youth, where each being, each rock, building, tree, Jedi is a single stalk flowing in, and interacting with, the whole of creation.

Faule Frsai sees the Force as music. An almost unheard symphony of life and consequences swirling around her. The sense of it fills her with a deep calm - though this may be as much an aspect of her training as of the Force itself. When she opens herself to it, and that familiar calm flows into her, she first becomes aware of Master Wyliss, and the Quintolium strumming that is his own sense of the galaxy.

At the front of this formation is Alpha Squad; and as soon as she can feel them in the Force, she knows it is these men who will accompany her to Onderon, along with the Captain, though there is something Dark and forboding in that sensation. Before she can explore it further, however, her calm is interrupted by the bellowing of a Kashyyyk Clarion.

Her senses whirl about her, trying to focus on the sound and its source.

"What is it?" she asks, unthinking. Opening her eyes and searching with her physical senses as well.

Master Wyliss's voice is calm. He is smiling. "That," he says, "is an enigma. A creature of harmony, bred for discord." He makes a sharp turn, his eyes still closed as he passes through the close ranks of the Trooper's formation. He stops before one trooper and opens them.

"What is your name, Clone?"

"Lieutenant, General sir," the Trooper responds, "CE-1146."

"Ah," Master Wyliss turns back to the Captain. "I'll be taking this trooper and his squad with me into space. General Frsai, have you chosen your squad?"

"Alpha Squad," the Cathar says, looking at the Captain and searching again for that odd bit of discord she'd felt earlier.

She cannot find it, and the two squads board the shuttle after a brief change of command ceremony given for the benefit of the Corellians who have gathered nearby.

PART ONE

The heavy transport that carries Alpha and Rho squads, along with their Jedi leaders is an old beast of a starship; and it lurches slightly when it drops out of hyperspace in the Onderon system. In her quarters, Faule Frsai sat meditating - emptying her mind and herself in an ancient practice meant to perpare her better for the days ahead.

In the ship's Recreation Hall, trooper CE-1146 and the sniper from Alpha Squad were cleaning their weapons, and sharing a conversation with CE-1201, Alpha Squad's Demolitions Tech. The majority of the troopers were in the galley on the starboard side of the ship, sharing a meal with the small, grey Jedi Master.

When that side of the ship exploded, sending troopers and debri flying down the length of the ship and tearing into the starboard engines, Master Wyliss was lost along with seven of the 12 troopers.

Faule Frsai felt her former mentor's spirit pass into the Force almost before she felt the ship rock and lurch. The ship went momentarily black, and she could hear the roar of their atmosphere as it escaped into space. What seemed like a millenia later, the roar quieted down.

Faule escaped her quarters and saw that the Starboard side of the ship had been sealed off.

He's the Greatest!

2009-12-31T07:48:00.006-05:00

He's Fantastic! Wherever there is Danger he'll be there...
He's the Ace!
He's Amazing! He's the Strongest; he's the quickest, he's the Best!!!

Inspired by this deviation; I've been on kind of a Danger Mouse kick since Christmas. After watching Series (season) One and half of Two, I had to see what I could do with it.

Up next, Penfold! Colonel K! Agent 57! Baron Silas Greenback! Stilletto! Nero! The Mark III! Count Duckula! and J.J. Quark.

'Danger Mouse' is a registered trademark of Cosgrove Hall Productions Ltd.. The 'Danger Mouse' logo is copyright Cosgrove Hall Productions Ltd. no copyright infringement is intended.

An atypical ride home

2009-12-28T01:27:00.006-05:00

Bear with me here.

I'm a little worried for my sanity. There was a good three or four minutes on the bike ride home when I was Davik Ryn, former Jedi turned Swoop messenger - slash - data-smuggler (think Johnny Mnemonic with a broken lightsaber and "Lobot" deck stuck in his head) piloting my restored Bespin Motors JR-4 Heavy Swoop on an high-value mission - and on the run from the empire. The shadows and debris on the sidewalk, the plasteel jungle of Coruscant - buildings, speeders, aircars and other speederbikes. I was weaving in and out of traffic, down alleys and through air vents.

I was even making "vwoom - verrrr -clik- vvvvvvvvmmmmmmmmmm" sounds as I flicked intangible switches and dials on my swoop - er, bike - handlebars.

Luckily enough, I'd stopped all that by the time the Empire actually caught up to me.

Huh? Wait a minute.

Luckily enough, I'd stopped all that by the time the cop flagged me down and had me pull over for a talk. Poor pudgy bastard was waiting for me (I don't actually think he was a bastard, but I'm not smart enough to say pudgy -something else- that sounds right in my voice).

Can you imagine that? Uh, Officer Whatever'isnamewas? We need you to drive out to the island and wait next to your car for some guy who bikes by there every night at about 11:30 - 12.

That would've been my last day as a cop. Whatever'isnamewas was a better cop than me. He'll probably still be a cop tomorrow. Though I need to bring up something funny.

After I took off from work, I realized how cold it was for a bike-ride up A1A, so I pulled over and put my jeans on over my work slacks - extra armor, you know. That's actually how I got into Swoop-jockey-mode. As I was pulling up my second pair of pants, I laughed a little to myself and actually said out loud "I'm sorry officer, I do have ID; but I'm gonna' have to drop my trousers to get it."

Officer Whats'isnamewas smirked when I said it to him, and answered, "no, that's alright." He ran my license over the radio with my name and birth date and let me go. I got stopped because - a couple nights ago, some poor schmuck got creamed on his bike up on the north side of town. He told me I needed to have lights, because of a city ordinance. I could be fined up to $100.00; but not tonight. My ID came back clean and he let me go.

All in all, a pretty dull encounter; but funny to me, considering how I'd been playing smuggler on the run just eight minutes before. And for half a second as I rounded that corner, he was an imperial stormtrooper standing beside his armored transport ready to blast me to dust with his blaster rifle.

Gonna watch the new Star Trek, then go to bed. Night.

Gaslight & Brass

2009-12-17T11:22:00.008-05:00

Look out that window and tell me what you see. No, don't be shy about it.

London? Yes, but what else?

A Jäger? Really? Point it out to me. This close to the Palace...

Amazing, truly; but slightly off topic I think. What else?

A dirigible. More. People? Feh, what else? Mecha? The Lightning Rail? The Steam Engines? The infamous Towers of London?

Can I tell you what I see? No, don't flinch. I'm not going to hurt you.

Marvels. Miracles. We live in an age of Wonder, friend. An age of Triumph. The empire stretches across a full third of the known world. The Queen has laid claim to the Moon itself; and I am not alone in believing it possible to actually travel there. We have dragged the savage world around us, kicking and screaming into the modern era; and we have given them - even the Jägerkin - Utopia.

I awake each day and I am honestly and perpetually astonished at the marvels of the 19th century. We are gods of the Earth, my friend. And we will be gods of the Moon, if the Queen's Education Pope is to be believed. What?

Yes, I know about the Aether quandry and I've read McCrarey's - what was it called? "The dispersion of Solar Heat in the Outer [whatever]." I think it's poppycock.

They told Galileo he would never measure the speed of light. They praised Newton for his physics, but laughed him out of Cambridge when he claimed to be able to transmute base metals. Da Vinci almost never flew because of the skeptics. Can you imagine a world where that never happened?

Because I can; and it's horrid. We overcome. Science, I mean. Men of Knowledge, of Wisdom and Reason. Men with the SPARK. We overcome. Even if McCrarey is right about the - what did he call it? Radio-what? Ah, Radiation. Well, fitting. We'll overcome it. We always do.

We live in the Age of Science! The Age of Reason. As I've said, the Age of Wonder.

Do you know what they call it in the pubs and common houses? Shall I tell you? You must already know.

When they're being polite and a little less blasphemous, they call it the Age of Iron. Euler's Eyes. Iron! Half of what's useful isn't even made of iron any more. What?

Oh, well. When they're well into their sauce and their tongues are good and loose, the call it the Age of Absinthe. Feh.

They think the SPARK has gone out of us. They imagine - in their depraved commoner imaginings - that we no longer create of our own talent. They say the Empire is doomed because the Science has gone wrong.

And I'm so afraid that they're right.

Already there is open talk of dissent in the American Colonies, perhaps stirred on by this remarkable Tchaka fellow in Africa, I don't know. Maybe it's been brewing for a long time.

Rumor alone of the Queen's mighty intellect was once enough to cow even the most fervent anti-royal assassins. I haven't had to bring one of you poor bastards up here for nearly fifty years.

No, don't start blubbering now. You've done so well. Stiff upper and all that. It's distasteful to me too, you know. Not to mention untidy and unseemly. But the law is.

Here. I hope the noose isn't too tight. It's got to have enough slack in it so that your head doesn't come loose when you hit bottom.

I'm sorry.

Listen. I deplore this; but an example must be made.

How's this? I promise you, on my honor and the Queen, after two days, I'll find some excuse to bring in your body. I'll put it in the ground. I'll even have a preacher speak for you if you're a religious man, no?

Oh well, a priest perhaps. I nice eulogy about the forgiveness of time and the persistency of energy or some such. I'm better at understanding things, really, than talking about them. If you've family, at least they'll get to see you buried properly. Not in one of the Queen's mass graves.

Ah well. I've other duties to attend, my friend. I hate to treat the advent of your end in so ignominious a manner; but I'm afraid I must depart.

Be grateful we're not in Paris with King Louis's deplorable Glass Cages. This will be quick at least, if you show yourself out the window.

Please do. I know the Beastmen Her Majesty employs for the job enjoy cleaning up after those who can't or won't and instead starve themselves up here in the Tower waiting for rescue that never comes; but they smell horrible for weeks afterward. And if you don't end this quickly, I cannot collect your body to bury it.

So you see? It will be better for all if you just get on with it.

Ah, the doom bell. That'll be our Jäger, I suspect.

I must be off. Two in one day...

Goodbye, friend. It really was an ingenious plan. I am quite beside myself with amazement. I suppose it's just lucky for the Queen that not all of us must rely on the Absinthe to see through to the heart of things, yes?

Oh. You've already gone. That's good, at least. Maybe there's a next life, like the Celestials say. We'll have a drink down the pub in a few years. My treat.

It started out as a Star Wars story. It wasn't that I particularly really wanted to run Star Wars - I like it, really - but my main draw to Star Wars gaming is that I don't have to create the setting.

Now don't get me wrong. I love creating campaign worlds. I love it too much. I'll put together a game based on some new setting or gimmick; and that will be it. The story will fall flat because once the newness wears thin (pretty quick sometimes, because I find it hard to articulate certain things "in-game") the story is just another "Go there, fetch this, bring it back and defeat the villain with it" deal.

So I started putting together a Star Wars story because (like a number of my players), I was tired of not finishing anything. My D&D game isn't one that can be finished. It's just adventure. A sandbox. So I wanted something with meat. I put it together and I was ready to go.

And then we didn't game. We haven't played in - more than a month. Months? I miss it.

But I didn't want to give up on this story. I didn't want to start working on something else. So I started flailing around a bit for my gaming fix.

And then I discovered Girl Genius. It's sweet as hell (won a Hugo); and got me interested in Steampunk. In Victorian England. In Jägermonsters and Brass Mechs and Dirigibles. Then I remembered the Steampunk Star Wars, which was awesome. And then I remembered why I was using Star Wars in the first place. So I wouldn't let the story get bogged down in my love of set design.

Only now I had a story. A pretty awesome story I think; and I very intentionally tried to steer away from focusing on Jedi things because Star Wars is (or was before the Prequels) about so much more than the Jedi. So I started working out the setting. 19th Century London with Steam-tech and Clockwerks thrown in, a rabid Protestant church and a Vatican City given over to Science.

A world where men of Intellect may have "the Spark" - that special something that spurs genius and allows for the fantastic in the Age of Science. Science so advanced, it may well be magic. A world where, sometimes that Spark falls flat, and can be spurred by the Green Demon, Absinthe (a very similar, but very different concoction than our own history gives us). A world of Science and Sorcery and grand adventure in the tradition of the old Pulp Fictions.

It's pretty much an Operatic, Swashbuckling adventure of Good vs. Evil set against the backdrop of a corrupt Empire bent on the subjugation of all life amidst a ragtag band of rebels fighting for independence. So... Star Wars. In the 1840's.

Hope someone wants to play.

No image used with permission. I pretty much just yoinked 'em.

My Last Twilight Post

2009-12-09T13:32:00.005-05:00

(Until the Breaking Dawn movie comes out)

To paraphrase, I know this is the Optimus Prime of young adult relationship-abuse vampire romance stories; and I know nothing I do or say will stop it. Or convince you that it's trash. That there are better stories out there. Better characters. Better writers. Better young adult relationship-abuse vampire romance stories. But here's my top 10 (or so) reasons why Twilight sucks, for those of you just going on instinct, and who didn't torture yourself with the actual reading.

SPOILER ALERT. There, you've been warned.

10. Vampires don't sparkle. No. That's too easy.

9. Every rule Meyer (and every better, more esteemed author who came before her) set up for vampires is broken by the end of the series.

8. Bella has no goals and no future. Her life revolves around Edward.

7. It's predictable and childish. Also, Edward is HOT, we get it.

6. Zero. Character. Development. I guess perfect characters don't really need that much development though, so - okay; I'll let that slide.

5. Flawless main characters (clumsy isn't a flaw if it's endearing and there's always someone there to catch you) result in too little actual conflict. There were actually a couple of interesting characters (Jasper and Alice, anyone?) who were ignored to focus on Mary Sue (look it up) and her perfect boyfriend.

4. If Bella is so "plain," why do so many guys fall for her within the first two chapters?

3. Bella can't do anything without Edward; and when he leaves she attempts suicide. If she leaves, he will. That's a co-dependent relationship, and it's not healthy.

2. Bella teaches women to let the men handle everything, which is pretty much a huge step backward for women everywhere, who have fought for equality.

1. "T.Pain would totally win Bella's heart and beat up Edward because he's on a boat."

And falling in love with a baby is just fucking creepy.

A lot of people are saying, "at least it's got kids reading." But it's no excuse. It's got kids reading sappy pap that has no business on my bookshelf. Here's a short list of books that are better than Stephanie Meyer's:

Not Eragon.

There you go. Go out and get you one of those amazing stories and have a blast. What? Okay, okay. For those of you looking for something along the same lines as Twilight but written by someone who wasn't a halfwit (as in "no one who reads my blog so why am I adding this link anyway?"), Amazon suggests Five books better than Twilight.

Of things that I've read and can actually recommend, the Narnia series are actually great books. If you haven't read Harry Potter, do it. Much better than Twilight. Stephen King's Dark Tower series is remarkable, there are even a few Vampires here and there. Snow Crash, Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Wheel of Time, Three Musketeers, Redwall, Dune, Neverwhere, the Scarlet Pimernel, The Color of Magic, The Last Unicorn, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Good Omens, American Gods, hell, even the True Blood books, Anne Rice, damn man, Dracula, any other book who's main message isn't that a regular girl cannot protect herself without her supernatural stalker hanging around - that perfect relationships contain no anger or disagreement, and that it's perfectly okay to feel so utterly attached to someone that you accept it as your fault when they hurt you utterly and irreversibly, A Game of Thrones. Like I said, not Eregon.

Les Miserables is a very hard book to read but is really quite good and one that I think a Twilight fan would really get into once Cosette shows up and starts batting her eyelashes.

Anyway. I'm done complaining about this abortion of Literature and her all to serious dalliance with pop. I'm actually very sorry that I read these books; and that's saying a lot. I read a book once in the 80's that was about giant green space bunnies who crashed their ship in the grand canyon ten-thousand years ago and it wasn't that bad. My only consolation is that I pirated the e-books instead of shelling out my all-to-limited funds for this trash.

I'm done ranting. There are probably a hundred other (maybe better?) books I could have added, and I feel like I'm just wasting bandwidth here now that I've reread this; but I wrote it and now you've read it.

So you want to be a writer?

2009-11-14T06:21:00.003-05:00

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-Chales Bukowski

Discursion

2009-11-03T18:46:00.004-05:00

I wanted to take a moment to discuss my writing process (and to find another way to put off the actual writing). It can be very difficult for me; but it makes no sense to me why it should be so.

Today, for instance: I decided some time yesterday that today should be devoted to

Writing (Catching up on my Nano book, blogging some-any-thing, scripting more Rotworld)
Laundry (I really have an awful lot of it and need to do more. Right now)
Drawing (Been working on the Rotworld storyboards, character designs for a web comic about the horrors of working at the W/D, and TQU - which you probably don't know about yet, but I don't want to spoil [spoilers coming soon]).

So, I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and I turned on some music (I started with Regina Spektor, but gradually moved over to Amanda Fucking Palmer. That album just finished and I haven't put anything else on my recently re-formatted PC. Maybe some Cash? Anyway...

Filled with dread, I took a seat before the cluttered, cramped, dirty drinking glass-infested space that is my writing desk. I logged onto Facebook, because - well, you've got to tell people you're writing, don't you? Then a quick Twitter and a couple more stumbles. Check out my RSS feeds.

Why am I putting this off? I asked the mess on my desk. The answer, of course, was fear. Fear that I'm not good enough, fear that I'll never finish by the "deadline," fear that I don't really like writing after all, and it's just something I say to people to make being a directionless bum sound more palatable.

Eventually, I found the keyboard and my fingers made there way into the story and Gan began seriously to flow. And it was good. It was fun. Writing a story for me... I know what story I want to tell, and it usually comes out, at least, similar to that; but I never really know what's going on until it happens. But still...

I went to Taco Bell for some Bean Burritos (no cheese, sub guacamole). I came back and sat down filled up with run-for-the-border goodness (which, of course is nothing like actual goodness); and...

I couldn't do it. I didn't want to. I didn't think I'd be able to. I didn't know how to start or where to begin. Picking up where I left off seemed like a horrible idea. I just completely fail as a writer and there's no fucking reason for me to keep doing this. There's no real creativity and imagination in me anyway. Fuck it.

So I diddled around on the internet some more, wrote a few comments on Facebook. Looked at some friends' MySpace changes. Finally, I looked at someone else's Nanowrimo stats and she (and her buddies) were writing. Getting it done. I tried again. I just put my fingers on the home rows and started fucking typing.

And it was great. The story moves itself along nicely, the characters seem to know what they want, even if I don't. The thing doesn't quite have a mind of its own yet; but it wants to go somewhere. It wants to be told.

Something new happened today. I wrote something that made me cry. Maybe I'm turning into an old woman. I don't know. I've only known these characters for a week - well, I've known one of them for over a decade; but not like this. I didn't know this about her, and - well, that was new.

I ran out of laundry detergent. My sister was going to the grocery store in a little bit, so I asked to go along. I decided to take a little nap until then, then write when I got back. We ended up going to Dragon Cafe with friends. It was nice. I always forget how much I like Edamame until you put Edamame in front of me and I start eating it.

And we came home and here I am again. Paralyzed. It seems that whenever I'm not writing, I cannot do it, I'm going to suck at it, no one's ever going to read it and if they do they're going to hate it so much they're going to come over to my house and take a dump on my front lawn. And then somehow -

when that miracle happens -

-when I start writing and I find the story and I begin to understand it again... Nothing else matters. It doesn't have to be written and I don't need to write it; but I get to - and it's fucking fun.

I'm a writer, a storyteller, because, on those rare, wonderful occasions when I'm writing, telling a story - I'm home. I'm doing what I was put here to do. And fuck you if you don't read it, or if you don't like it. And who the hell takes a crap on someone's front lawn anyway? What the fuck's wrong with you?

Now the trick is to start writing. . . . . .C'mon!

Reptile - Part 5 (Tripping the Light)

2009-10-02T08:22:00.004-04:00

I met a woman once who thought that I was her soul mate. She knew within the first fifteen minutes of meeting me that I was - for certain - the love of her life. I hope she was wrong.

She was beautiful, wearing a bikini when we met - body that wouldn't quit. Long, straight brown hair, tanned and toned with crazy-bright blue eyes. Really, her only physical flaw was a noticeable but faint cesarean scar. So yeah, she was a mom. I don't really hold that against her. I can handle dating a mom.

But she was older than me by a bit - which was kind of new. She also a smoker; and I swore I would never date a smoker. She wasn't dumb, but she also wasn't a very good conversationalist. I could get good stuff out of her; but it was always tied in the middle of paparazzi fodder, MTV, which stars eating what, dating, ditching, dancing with which. If she had more imagination than your average vapid cheerleader, she kept it pretty well hidden.

I'm probably being too hard on her because I was still too screwed up over the Reptile to entertain the slightest notion. She was kind of fun. Her kid was pretty neat sometimes too. She painted with her fingers. Yeah, like fingerpaint. But with actual beauty and these weird, wild colors, and abstract... I don't know what. Some part of her was like this bizarre, younger Maude Lebowski. We didn't date long; but she encouraged my own art. Outside of Texas, hers were the only canvases I ever painted on myself. She probably threw away the drawings I left her. We drew sketches of each other. I did a charcoal portrait of the kid. Whether she actually believed we were destined to be together or she was just one of those insta-cling codependent types, I guess I'll never know; but she started talking life and...

more kids, and...

apartments or houses, and...

I got pretty freaked out pretty quick. Like the once great Richie Tozer, I took a powder. It's not a regret; but I definitely don't know whether it was a mistake. The lonely bachelor in me right now wants me to remind you what a smokin' hottie she was.

The Demon was a smokin' hottie too, though. She called herself artistic. I don't want to belittle craft-people; but she bought plaster statues and busts and painted them copper and added patina to make them look old. It was pretty good for what it was, but... not art.

Her talents lay in something else. That reptile coiled up underneath her skin. The way she used it, manipulated it - the way she used & manipulated those of us around her - that was her real talent. And we - no.

That's me trying to justify myself by identifying with others. I was hopelessly caught in its grip.

That first trip to Reno - when we were still just becoming friends, though - that was fun. We parked near Virginia Street, and hopped between a few of the Casinos. Circus Circus is the only name I remember. We watched an acrobatic show, some small bears. We had dinner in the buffet and played a few games. On the casino floor we played...

I think it was nickel slots; and enjoyed the freely flowing liquor that comes along with gambling in Nevada. On the trip back we stopped in Fernley (it lies about 20 miles out of Fallon, where we lived - on the road from Reno. We spent about an hour in one of the truck stops there (it's nicer than it sounds - they're like little Casino/ Restaurant/ Gas Stations), playing with one of those stuffed animal crane-machines. I honestly can't remember if we won anything; but we were out late.

When we got back to Fallon, and I dropped her off - I made the first bitch-move. Not the first one I've ever made; but the first one that really counted. She invited me in. We slept.

"I'm not interested in you," she said. "We're not going to sleep together." Nonetheless, I stayed the night. We even slept in the same bed. I assumed she was being coy. I made a move. I got shut down. Hard. With what I know now - I should've been more aggressive. It's what she was really looking for. Thanks Mom & Dad - I'm not that guy.

If I were, we would've hooked up that night and that would've been it. I might've been just some dude, and things would have turned out a lot better. I wouldn't have this story to tell.

Instead, we slept. She wore these stupid, pink footie pajamas. Later, I would enjoy holding her when she wore those - almost as much as I enjoyed peeling her out of them; but she was the first adult I ever met who wore them and they were pretty dumb. On "my side" of her bed, now with a pillow between us, I slept like a baby.

And in the morning I awoke to the sound of screaming.