Track #3: VAST - Thrown Away

VAST are pretty cool, you should listen to them a lot. Seriously.

Hey, you, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Who wants to be famous?!

I have a checklist you need to complete if you want to be a presenter on any "hip/cool" new magazine show:

• Do you conform to the populist image of the day?
• Do you have a quirky personality?
• Do you have an irritating/grating accent?
• Do you have no shame?
• Are you prepared to sell your soul to the celebrity obsessed society that the rest of the world has become?
• Do you wish to perform acts of verbal fellatio upon those who should not be famous themselves?
• Are you easily sculpted by those who believe they know better than you?
  

If so...

Welcome to the 21st century. Enjoy your stay.

Track #2: Queens of the Stone Age - In My Head

I prefer the Desert Sessions version. What can I say?

Buried in the sky, where the ocean ends.

This is all true.

One thing I've learned. You can know anything. It's all there. You just have to find it.

"We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest."
-- The Film Maker, Signal To Noise

I know you love your fist, you can punch me one time if you really want...

People... people...

I think I have problems with certain people.

Wait, that was a bit too diplomatic, I know I have problems with certain people... people who take themselves too seriously, who don't see the funny side in things, who consistently take the piss with their words and their actions... it's beyond a joke.

I hate writers who use big words just to use big words. It's not clever, it's silly, you're alienating an audience because you want to show off. I think we should be able to convey feeling without scientific specifics. Because when we go straight for the factual, aren't we removing something we should be doing every day? We should be conveying meaning, not with specifics but with some kind of elusive fervour, full with the knowledge that we know what we mean and you should have a journey along with us to discover it.

I hate writers who take themselves too seriously. Who have a bloated self importance about them... I think it's unnecessary. We're all in this together. You think you're better than me? You go around declaring this fact? It's kind of unsavoury.

Don't get the wrong idea, to my knowledge, people aren't going around saying "I'm better than Charlie, 'cause he's shit!" or anything like that (though you could be, and therefore proving my point), but I think we all know the people who do this. The people who think they're better than the rest.

So bloody what?

We're all in this together now, aren't we?

Round the hanging tree, swaying in the breeze...

I think you're a fucking idiot.

Not you, but you.

And everyone else thinks it too.

Track #2: Nine Inch Nails - Non-Entity

There will be others that aren't so Nine Inch Nails later. But for now...

I Escape Every Now And Then

Anyone else loving the fact that the CAPTCHAs on blogger sound like real, awesome words? Literary bastardry that when translated reveals whole new worlds of wonder in the grammatical world we live in?! IMSLOWT! SHIGFER! SHUGGOTH! CTHULHU! Does anyone see where these things are taking us?! They want us to say forbidden words capable of resurrecting dark gods and old beings from beyond the veil of reality!

CAPTCHAS WANT TO KILL THE WORLD.

Track #1: Nine Inch Nails - Love Is Not Enough

This is track one of your weeks soundtrack. More to follow.

I got my arms a-flip-flop-flip!

Where does my blog fit in the "blogosphere"?

Well... just between yours and yours, I think. The only people who would read this blog are people who know me. I'm not famous (not yet anyways, and I don't have any real intentions of being famous right now) so it's not like people who don't know me are going to know me, or search for me, so I'm just here for my friends. I'm not here for strangers. This isn't the place for it. On the group blog I'm part of (blog-o-tronik), maybe, because that's where a number of people blog, and so their friends might read my blogs, and my friends might read theirs. That's the gamble.

I'm not here to be read by strangers. I don't write to be read by strangers. If you're a stranger, and you're reading this blog, well, all the power to you, don't be a stranger! Comment! Let me know who you are! Let's be friends. I'm putting myself out there, return the favour, let's all get along nice like.

I'm not here to blow your minds (though maybe I'll try...), I'm here to talk. Rant. Complain.

Thing is... I deleted my blog last year. Blogs distract me. I spend too much time on them. I post too much (as you might have noticed). That's the reason I deleted my blog. I might delete this blog. I might have to, they're too distracting. Twitter... I don't like already. I enjoy Twittering on there, obviously (Follow me!), but there comes a point where I'm just... talking. And I don't know why.

I guess blogging is about self/impulse control.

I don't have any. So that's why it's not a good idea for me to do it.

Problems have solutions, you know.

I have finished that script I was twittering about earlier in the week. I think I've settled on a name, third time being the charm and all that. Originally, it didn't have a title, then the first part was called "Echo", then I figured out a name for it all could be "The Backwards Assassin" and now I've settled on "Echo Chambers". It might make sense if you ever see it (meaning, if I ever post it up).

I think I'm happy with it. It's fast, violent, and bloody. Just right, no?

Anyways, as to warrant some interest, here's Page One:

Panel One:

A foetus floats in the womb. A spark of life. Potential. We open the book with life. I think you can probably guess how the book will end. Or maybe I’m messing with your head?

Narrator 1): When he died, he saw two lives flash before his eyes.

Panel Two:

The previous image of the womb seems to split into two, now running side by side with each other, like film stock flickering and splitting in the centre, the white of the page is visible underneath. Something is happening. Something that is not good.

Narrator 1): This was slightly disconcerting for him.

Narrator 2): (As you can imagine.)

Panel Three:

The eyes of both foetus’ open. We’re closer to them now, the foetus’ looking away from each other, not focusing on anything.

Narrator 1): They were both his.

Narrator 2): (That was the weird thing.)

Panel Four:

Two sets of eyes latch onto the reader. They’re exactly the same, and the eyes… are eerily full of clarity.

Narrator 1): To his recollection, he’d only lived one life.

Narrator 2): So if you asked him if it was interesting viewing…

Panel Five:

We segue into the present. James Larsen is bloodied and bleeding, his eyes are both red, blood vessels burst (if we can have the eyes of the foetus’ seemingly meld into this one image, awesome), creating an unearthly appearance to this battered man. His lip is torn, his face a mess of knife slashes and internal fluids. He’s been beaten so close to death that he looks fragile. A few days beard growth covers his face. The overwhelming feeling right now? Doom. Blood should be everywhere. Claustrophobia should set in.

Voice 1): (off-panel) THIS’LL BE LIKE KILLING MYSELF. SORRY, JAMES.

Narrator 1): …He’d have to say yes.

Beside You In Time.

We are already gone. Our lives are an eye blink in the universal view of the universe, the multiverse, the bulk, the bleed, all the things that separate our realities from one another. We’re dust in the wind, already, after living what we think are long and fulfilled lives, but when people look back, will we matter? Of course not. We are not the great, we are not the few, we are the many, we are the masses (some cultured, some uncultured), and when has the many meant anything? The direction of the world is dictated by a few voices, not the shouts and screams of the rest of the world. We’re lost in a sea of noise, but the thing is, we are the noise, and we just don’t want to admit it.

We could be special.

We won’t be.

The universe hates us. It reaches down through the sky and pushes us into the dirt, into the mud, and we let it. We should attain for higher things, we should want to be gods, rulers of our own little piece of land.

We stalled in our ascension. And it was all going so well too.

We split the atom. We cloned a living being. We shot into the waiting embrace of the stars and then… and then…

…We stopped.

But why should we? Why did we?

We should make new life forms. We should search for life in the dead oceans of Mars and we shouldn’t stop till we find evidence of our brothers and sister lying in the dust. We should shoot sleeper-ships into the stars and travel for thousands of years until we reach that first star on the left… why are we stopping with just imagination? Imagination and creativity and the desire to do something enormous are what made us who we are.

We have the dreams. We’re learning every day. So we should never stop. Imagine. Create. Imagine. Create.

Never stopping. Never faltering. Never fading.

We shouldn’t be dust. We should be gods.

Oh, we will never die.

I thought I would share with you something that one of my friends has blogged. The following is something that I find quite inspiring actually, and was really impressed with when I first read it. From Ramon Villalobos' blog "Such Is Life", presenting "SUBMIT", a statement of intent that is just plain brilliant, not only in application to it's original context, but for an artistic standpoint on so many levels:

The following is my artistic statement for a sculpture class. My "art" will all fit this general theme. I am going to share it with you.

SUBMIT.

From birth, people in modern society are taught to believe that individuality is the ultimate goal of self growth. To be special. To be unique. To be loved.

Ironic that, considering the social equation that is supposed to produce a product of idiosyncratic behaviors is the same that creates the rampant conformity that spreads through civilization like the poisonous venom coursing through the veins of a snakebite victim.

But why is that so bad? If this contradiction should be resolved, why not eliminate the indiviuality that is throwing the balance of things asunder?

Submit.

Submit the the current sociopolitical landscape.

Submit to the bitter reality that there is no control, people are just groups of atomic firestorms going through the motions set into effect by the big bang.

Submit to beautifully uniformed chaos.

Submit to the vacuum of truly original human thought and submit to the concept of a universal subconscious that controls us all.

No one is special. No one is unique. No one is loved.

There is no real meaning of art. There is no real meaning of god.

There is no Jesus Christ. No Ward Cleaver. No Superman.

Submit.

Everything is going to be okay. Nothing could be any other way.

Submit.

Submit.

SUBMIT.

Happiness In Slavery

I might stand corrected.

I love horror films, I think we've established that from the rant I posted last December, but really... I just want them to work. I want us to stop cannibalising old plots and films, I want us to move forward, and do something brilliant.

I want horror to be special again.

But I might stand corrected with a few of my points from the previous blog (Help Me. I Am In Hell) due to the fact that I've seen parts of the new Friday the 13th. And the thing is... it doesn't look bad. It looks... awful... but that's because in this day and age we can't take masked serial killers seriously.

I mean honestly, in Saw, Jigsaw, our villain/anti-hero, wears a pig mask and has a clown puppet called Billy. Those aren't scary (well they were in the first film, the scene with Cary Ewes in the parking garage and Jigsaw crawling out of the back seat... guh, and when the director does that irritating quick IN-YOUR-FACE cut/cut/cut shoot style...), they're funny. If you turn off the sound (ignoring the sultry tones of Tobin Bell) you've got this clown puppet yapping away. Horrifying-- Not.But we don't have masked serial killers walking the streets. No urban myths and legends really have those kind of terrifying figures (Obviously ignoring the Hook Man legend, but even then, he doesn't wear a mask, he wears a hook. Go figure) that instill fear.

Anonymity should be scary.

Films like When A Stranger Calls are scary because we don't know who the hell is doing what, and by the end of the film, we still don't. He's, like Michael Myers before him in Halloween, a "Shape", ethereal, ghostly, but when he strikes... he strikes hard and vicious. To be honest, the sequences without actually seeing the "Prank Caller" in When A Stranger Calls are the scariest. When we actually see him, he's a human being, and he's just there. Real. It looses something. Faceless serial killers are the best, in that we don't know who they are, or why they're doing what they're doing. Why is Jason killing? Because he nearly drowned and, oh, because of one the funniest quotes of the film: "Kill for mother!" Thank you Pamela Voorhees. And thank you, shades of Psycho (another film that brilliant in it's anonymity, and not diluted by the eventual reveal of "Mother" Bates)!

I don't like knowing why the killer is killing. Certain films work like that, "discovery horror", as I've just decided to call it, where-in the story is moved forward by a mystery, but others, not so much. I'm going out on a limb and declaring the remake of House Of Wax as "discovery horror", as we eventually discover the history of the Wax Town, the twins, etc, but what really matters is how fucking horrifying a lot of the murders are. How happy was I when Paris Hilton got skewered by a phallic symbol? Tres. One of the weaker murders, sure, but some of the events in that film were really bloody scary. The guy at the piano, his mate finding him, prodding his cheek and then-- oh, if you've seen the film, you know what I'm talking about. God. And Elisha Cuthbert's fingers!! Shit. That was a scary-ish film!

So Friday the 13th. I was a bit fanboy-ish outraged at the idea of Jason running. But now, thinking about it, so what? So what if he runs? That doesn't matter, does it? I mean, I may prefer my slow moving serial killers, Michael Myers, aka The Shape, the classic Voorhees... but fast moving can be scary too, in different ways. Freddy Kruger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame jumps around like a freaking ADD afflicted twelve year old, and he's terrifying, the "ugly clown", that glove, the close ups on his massacred face... scary as. The zombies in the remake of Dawn of the Dead and in 28 Days Later (one of the greatest British films ever made) too, are scary in a different way. They will get you. And there's no fun in that. I like zombies that loiter about and then won't stop till they eventually find you, moving in herds, never stopping, slowly but surely catching up with you. In Dawn of the Dead, they just... ran... and it was disappointing. Where was the suspense? Where was the horror?

But Jason Voorhees runs in Friday the 13th. And I don't know, really, I don't mind. I've not seen the entire film, I want to, sure, but I've not got round to it. As long as he doesn't, I don't know, dance about, I think I can be ok with it. So whilst I'm not a big fan of nu-horror, shallow and dilute as it is, I think I can abide it.

(Cross-posted here)

I can feel their eyes are watching, in case I lose myself again.

This is one of my all time favourite songs of all time.

That is all.

The Effect Of Cocaine Is A Feeling That May Be Described As A Great Amount Of Excitement And Joy.

The script is shaping up to clock in at 22 pages, which just works beautifully. It's also becoming very surreal and very violent.

Moe 1): THEN LET’S KILL THE BOY.

Moe 2): WITH KNIVES.

Help Me. I Am In Hell.

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

Horror is being stolen from us! Seriously! Look at the genre, and look in the direction it’s going. Vampires?

Bloody Twilight.

Yeah, you see where I’m going with this? Wait, Saw, you say? It’s pantomime. It’s a form of pornography. What was the last good horror film you saw? For me, I recently purchased The Hamiltons, and whilst it was good, it was a form of teen-horror, and I just don’t think that’s a viable form for the genre.

I rented out Hatchet, the tagline reading: “It's not a remake, it's not a sequel, and it's not based on a Japanese one. Old school American horror.” Firstly, it was crap. Recycling old plots and cliches into something that was derivative and almost like the bastard child of Friday the 13th and CRAP. Secondly, since when has making awesomely terrifying horror films become a spiteful game between America and Japan? Asian extreme cinema is some of the most horrifying stuff put to film! Audition (Ôdishon)? Ju-On? Ringu? We’re siphoning ideas from some talented creators, and I just wish we had the know-how to do something amazing. Call backs to “old school American horror” are all well and good, but what are these call backs? Remakes of The Hills Have Eyes? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? They tried to revitalise the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises (together, Freddy Vs Jason, remember?) but that didn’t do what they wanted it to do, so look what we’ve got to look forward to now. A remake of Friday the 13th. And if you've seen the trailer, you'll know that Jason runs. He runs! Serial killers don’t run. They teleport. They shimmy through reality and end up in front of you no matter how fast you run or how far you fall over ahead of them. That is horror. Making these horrors viable, giving them the ability to run? Ruins horror for me.

Zombies don’t run fast. 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead were good watches, but give me the original Romero over Snyder Dawn any day. Oh, and the new Nightmare on Elm Street. With Billy Bob Thornton over the legend of horror that is Robert Englund (phwoar, check out that sexy IMDB)? Hell, I’ll watch the remake, but withour Mister Englund? I'll be sorely disappointed. If I'm not, I'll share that fact with all of you in 2010...

Vampires used to be dirty little bastards, Near Dark for instance (a vampire film quite well known for not even mentioning vampires), or The Lost Boys as an example. Why do we have Twilight? And why is it popular? Because it's a pandering piece of crap targeted at the susceptible market of "tweener" girls, who claim to buck the trends but therefore support another one. Oh, so individual, oh, such liars. The first horror film I ever saw? It has to be a toss up between Nosferatu (I was small. It haunted me) or The House on Haunted Hill (I’m not sure which, but they are the ones that stuck to my brain like a scab refusing to fall off). First time I saw House I was scarred (SCARRED!) by the scene with the basement, the blind/deaf/mute housekeeper and the tapping on the wall... Think about it, I was 6 or 7, and my dad puts that on. Thanks, terror. Vincent Price is for the win, all right, but this is the stuff that put me on the path I’m on now with Psychotronik. I love the classics. I hate seeing potential wasted.

Right, so I should probably say, I’m not the kind of person who knows intimate details about Bill Gaines or Ed Wood, and I’m sure they’re all swell folk, they did their jobs well (though, Plan 9… eh…) and we owe b-movie horror and horror-in-comics to them in some way or another (Bill Gaines ran EC Comics, after all, and we all know how that ended up… well, I say all of us, I mean those of us in “the know”) but we need to be the people pioneering the genre. Not Psychotronik, not just us, but I’m talking about all of you, all of you who want to write horror stories, don’t look back at what’s come before, look forward. Don’t go for the cheap scare, the exposed bone, the torn flesh, go for the scare, the terror. That’s why America is jealous, I think, of Asian cinema. Because they’re scared. And they can’t recreate it. They don’t have the right frame of mind for it. Remakes of Asian cinema are rubbish, I think we can all agree. The Grudge? I remember having a running joke with my friends about that ghost-in-the-bag. Think about it from a sideways perspective, stop thinking “this should be scary” and just watch. It’s pretty friggin’ hilarious. Anyways, before I go off track once again, we need to pioneer the genre. We can’t just let it stagnate, and we can’t patronise the viewer. Twilight… crap, I don’t want to see it because vampires sparkle. Vampires. Do. Not. Sparkle. But I kind of do want to see it, because this is how the genre evolves. “Old school American horror” should be good. It should take what made the genre so aggressively pioneering and keep it modern, reinvent itself. I’m sick of traps designed to kill, to punish, to teach. I’m sick of blood spraying into someone’s face unnecessarily; where's the foreplay? And talking of foreplay, I'm sick of blatant, overt sexual horror. It's for pre-pubescent kids who want to have a cute little bit of masturbation whilst seeing red. Hostel is gore porn. Saw is gore porn. We need more than pornography for this genre to survive. We need pioneers. So get to it.

(Originally posted here, "Help Me. I Am In Hell" 21/12/08)

Get Your Body Beat- Let Your Blood Flow!

I'm making good progress on this. I'm adapting from prose and tearing it apart as I go. A lot of stuff is unnecessary, "show-don't-tell" and all, but there's still a lot of information that has to be conveyed. I'm not going to share the scene preceding this exchange until I'm finished, but this is a taste of what the hell is going down right now:

Larry 1): ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS WALK INTO A GUN SHOP.

Larry 2): AND WE’D ALL BE SCREWED.

Moe 3): THEN WE’RE LUCKY YOU WENT COMPLETELY OVERKILL ON HIS ASS AND TORE OUT HIS SPINE.

Larry 4): WHAT CAN I SAY? I’M AN OVERACHIEVER.

Moe 5): LET’S JUST GO MURDER THE BOY.

Rape It, Snake It, Don't Let Go!

Tonight's musical score is provided by a number of artists. I'll give you a run down of three, but I'm sure more will occur to me later (Akira Yamaoka, Deftones, Reuben spring to mind immediately).

Playing right now are Combichrist and their album "What The Fuck Is Wrong With You People?", which I described, when offering it to someone, as "angry, industrial, vulgar, heavy and horrifying." It's brilliant. I got into industrial big time about two years ago, firstly through Angelspit (the second of tonight's major contributors) and through them to this band, which is a complete mess of samples, heavy beats and industrial metal.

(Pick: In The Pit)

Angelspit is one of my all time favourite bands. I have all their releases, the debut EP Nurse Grenade and the two albums, Krankhaus and Blood Death Ivory. They never let me down. Thing is, I'm tired of all the stuff I hear on the radio. Nothing does it for me like these bands. I want something that's not populist, for once. That doesn't mean that once/if these bands begin to get major radio airplay I'll stop listening, but I just want something I enjoy, and I don't want to pollute my mind with... pop music.

(Pick: Skinny Little Bitch)

Old reliable and permanent staple of my listenings, Nine Inch Nails play pretty consistently throughout the night, and I'm wandering back into With Teeth territory, though you can't go wrong with Ghosts I-IV ("a soundtrack to daydreams") when you want to lean back and just get some writing done.

(Pick: Home off With Teeth, and from Ghosts III, 24)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Follow!

I treat Craig like shit with my scripts. It’s a harsh world, I think he likes being abused, so that’s why these scripts are just so bloody abusive.This script is part of a larger script (involving monkey-robots and sea monsters) that was designed to show off Craig's talents. I have some pages somewhere, if I find them I'll share. Oh, by the way, this is a complete joke, you do know that right? This isn't meant to be a sequence that is taken seriously.

Page One:

Panel one:

A planet. Orbiting a red giant Sun. Just within site, maybe inside it’s own panel within the main panel, is a rocket launching, just reaching escape velocity out of the atmosphere of the planet. The rocket should be ornate looking. Holy.

Panel two:

The rocket is far away now, but still within view.

Panel three:

The planet begins to shake. Maybe debris begins to slowly lift off the surface, arching out into space slowly.

Panel four:

The rocket pushes onward. Toward points unknown.

Panel five:

The entire planet breaks apart and a tidal wave of energy, debris, and whatever flies forward. Meanwhile, on the front of the rocket, a spark of energy belches out from the antenna at the front of the ship, and a pool of white light forms, a portal…

Panel six:

The rocket passes through the swirling white void, and it closes up completely, debris shooting past it.

Page Two:

Panel one:

A man is smoking on what looks to be the top of a mountain, stars visible all around him. Maybe we only see from his torso upwards. He’s just sitting. He’s actually in space. On a meteorite. Dressed as the gay police man from The Village People. He’s listening to his MP3 player. (Arrow points to headphones ((Reuben – Racecar Is Racecar Backwards – Track 03 – Let’s Stop Hanging Out)). I’ve wanted to do this in TLC, but there was never really an opportunity. If you think it could work, then awesome, if not, Nevermind.)

Panel two:

The rocket ZOOMS into frame, the front of the craft appearing from the suddenly pooling white portal that is vanished into earlier. The man is shocked, surprised, he flails about somewhat, arms in the air, trying to move out the way.

Panel three:

We pull back, and we see that he’s on a meteor. He’s looking in the direction of the rocket that’s shot past him.

Panel four:

We spin around, showing he’s upside down on the meteor.

Page Three:

Row one (all very close snippets, bit obscured by the small panels, but we get a picture of what’s going on) has six panels.

Panel one:

Hand behind back, over shoulder.

Panel two:

Rifle butt. (we don’t see how massive this gun is yet)

Panel three:

Ammo loaded.

Panel four:

Sight checked

Panel five:

Finger licked.

Panel six:

Finger ran over barrel.

Row two (one panel)

Panel seven:

He aims the weapon. This gun is fucking massive. The barrel is long. Could either be Kirby looking, or sleak and fucking killer.

Row three (one panel):

Panel eight:

The gun ERUPTS, but as we’re in space, the only way we can convey how fucking IMMENSE this weapon is by the massive shell that is thrown into space as it fires out, and the way the recoil sends the gun upwards, and nearly knocking the hat off the shooter. Maybe his hat’s on a string and it flies back but is caught around his neck.

Page Four:

Panel one:

The bullet, the size of your fist, building velocity as it shoots toward the rocket, is spinning and speeding toward the rocket. We see the planets around, in the distance, but in the distance, where the rocket is heading, is Earth.

Panel two:

The bullet tears through the rocket, is simply tears into it, and the metal of the ship spirals together at the force of the impact.

Panel three:

The Village Person smiles as he watches through his sight.

Panel four:

He swings his weapon on his back. The weapon could be twice the size of him, depending on how you’ve decided to draw it.

Panel five:

He stands up.

Panel six:

He presses a button on his wrist and begins to fade out, his body vanishing in a spiral of light.

Caption: Wanker.

(Bonus, sketches! Not by me. Duh.)

I Woke Up Today To Find Myself In The Other Place

Oh, this isn't the script I was talking about, this is something I wanted to share because I'm happy with it. This is a script for an untitled project I'm hammering away at, one that was coming quite easily until the repeated laptop-shut-downs-of-a-few-weeks-ago. As you can see, this isn't straight forward prose, it's not a film script, it is in fact a comic book script. There is reason for this. Roy said he'd do the pencils but he's got a kid and wanted something cleaner. "Something cleaner". I'll have to think on that. Anyways, here it is:

Page One

((Two long panels take up this entire page.))

Panel One:

Caption 1): “Legend as it.” Have you ever started a story so? “Legend has it that…”

Caption 2): These are not truths. These are myths. Like they say, “legends”.

Tight shot on Gawain’s face, blood dribbling from his nose, stubble surrounding his jawline, he’s sweating, tired, but he’s determined, angry, and ready to fight.

Gawain 1): Come on then you bastard!

Gawain 2): Come on!

Panel Two:

Caption 1): I start this story differently:

Caption 2): “Truth, as I have learnt it to be, has it that…”

Caption 3): …This is not a myth. This is not a legend. This is the truth of a world that you are not made to comprehend.

Bors, bigger, larger set, sword in hand, grins, his hair cut close to his skull, and a scar running three inches from his forehead up, an old battle wound, healed badly. He’s not unattractive, rugged more like, and he has a beard that starts as a moustache above his lip, down to his chin, and then up as sideburns to his ears. He doesn’t stop smiling throughout this entire sequence. He’s also young, though you couldn’t tell from the way he acts, and the way he looks.

Bors 1): You fight with your head, that’s good, boy.

Bors 2): Your sword arm is strong, little runt of a thing like you, wouldn’t think you could lift it higher than your knee!

Bors 3): But you still fight like a little girly girl.

Page Two:

Panel One:

Gawain lunges low for Bors, hoping to rise up beneath Bors’ centre of gravity, and gain the advantage from being smaller set.

Panel Two:

Bors brings up his knee, slamming it into Gawain’s chest.

Gawain 1): uuuhtt

Panel Three:

Bors then throws Gawain behind him, rolling with the momentum of Gawain himself.

Panel Four:

Gawain hits the cold stone floor hard, dust rising up as he collides.

Gawain 1): hhfff

Panel Five:

He looks up, and sees a sword levelled at his jugular.

Gawain 1): uhh.

Panel Six:

Over Gawain’s shoulder, we see Bors lower his weapon, and put out his left hand for Gawain to pull himself up with. Bors still grins.

Page Three:

Panel One:

Gawain smiles, and pulls himself up.

Gawain 1): Thought you asked me if I wanted to do some light sparring.

Panel Two:

Bors pouts, and points to himself apologetically.

Bors 1): Kid, there’s no such thing as ‘light sparring’.

Bors 2): You have war, and you have sparring.

Bors 3): You ain’t dead, so I guess we sparred.

Panel Three:

Gawain sheathes his sword, in pain. Bors does the same.

Gawain 1): You’re fucking insane.

Panel Four:

Bors laughs.

Bors 1): HA!

Bors 2): BullSHIT! I’m honest!

Page Four:

Panel One:

Bors points to the scar running down his forehead.

Bors 1): Kid, you don’t want to ugly up your face ‘cause you ran into something unprepared.

Bors 2): I’m teaching you how to survive, not how to fight.

Panel Two:

Bors’ face suddenly turns serious.

Bors 1): But I wasn’t kidding.

Bors 2):You need to grow up.

Bors 3): In war, any shite goes. Your mother is a whore. Your dad is a queer. And your sisters?

Panel Three:

Gawain’s lip twists up, uncomfortable with where this going.

Gawain 1): I don’t have any sisters.

Panel Four:

Bors slams his finger into Gawain’s chest.

Bors 1): Your sisters were in your enemy’s bedroom last night being fucked twelve ways to Eden and by God they loved it.

Panel Five:

Bors shrugs.

Bors 1): Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

Bors 2): Horrendous shite is thrown around and you need to take it in your stride.

Bors 3): Rules of fucking engagement, isn’t it?

Page Five:

Panel One:

Bors nudges Gawain in the ribs, and his grin returns.

Bors 1): Now, let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving, and the banquet will be starting soon downstairs.

Bors 2): Go wash up, and meet me downstairs.

Panel Two:

Bors lowers himself somewhat, and punches Gawain in the arm.

Bors 1): And don’t worry!

Bors 2): I won’t tell anyone how easy it was to get under your skin!

Bors 3): HAHAHA

Panel Three:

Gawain places his hands in his pockets, and leaves Bors as he continues to laugh, his laughter echoing out in the background, behind Gawain himself.

Bors 1): HAHAHAhaha

Gawain1): Under my skin.

Gawain 2): Right.

Panel Four:

Gawain continues to walk forward, into shadow, an uncomfortable look upon his face.

Gawain 1): …Like that would happen…

Everything's Blue In This World

Did I mention I was a published comic book writer?

See the animal in his cage that you built , are you sure what side you're on?

It’s that first moment, that lingering second of breathlessness that’s followed by silence… alone, the only friend you can count on being yourself, the only safety net your own instincts… it’s then that you know you’re in the right place, at the exact right time. You should be feeling lost, adrift in a sea of doubt, but you don’t; for that lingering second, the one where you try to breathe but find yourself unwilling… you know what you’re doing is well and truly right. It’s all anticipation after that. If you hesitate, you fail. The first slither of hesitation is infectious, reaches down into your gut and makes you feel like you can’t do this… but if you just accept that what comes next is only natural… that you can do this, that the laws of gravity, the laws of physics, the laws of common sense, that all these laws don’t apply. So you’ve accepted, you’ve felt the anticipation, and you take the first step--

And you fly. You soar above the world and your hands pierce the clouds and you arch up toward the place where up is no longer up and space is a hairsbreadth from your nose, and you move forward till the moon is like the sea and you keep moving… because without hesitation, anything is possible.

If only that were true.

Less Concerned About Fitting Into The World... Your World That Is.

This is important.

Eight years old, but very important:

Grant Morrison's "The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth" is an article/essay that I printed off and had pinned to my wall for a few years (before the grand de-postering of the bedroom. I never did recover from that. Boo)

An excerpt:

Several cloned sheep, a few embryo harvests and a sequenced human genome into the new century and the class geeks are beginning to look like the only reliable guides to this overlit, super-accelerated Matrix simulation we are all learning to live in.

I admit, yes, it's about, in part, comic books, but it's really about how underground culture isn't underground anymore. Everything is mainstream. What was the popular saying... "if you think it, there's porn of it somewhere on the internet"? So yes. We are the mainstream. All our ideas are making the world what it is, and that's not going to change.

None Of Them Can Stop Us Now.

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it. You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?"
--Neil Gaiman on Ideas

She shines in a world full of ugliness, she matters when everything is meaningless.

One of my favourite authors is Neil Gaiman. You can see because I post quotes from him every now and then on this blog that has been running, what, two days? I'll continue to do so. He's amazing with words and I enjoy reading his works (Sandman, obviously, is a stand out favourite, as well as Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders and Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions) to such a degree that his work influences my own. I don't like it, because it always feels like I'm some kind of pale reflection of him, because let's be honest, I'll never reach the pinnacle he has reached with his talent, but I try, I persevere... anyways, this essay Neil Gaiman's "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" is something we should all read. I love it. It makes sense more so than anything you'll ever get taught, and it means something.

An excerpt:

In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: 'From the Idea-of-the-Month Club,' I'd say, or 'From a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis,' 'From a dusty old book full of ideas in my basement,' or even 'From Pete Atkins.' (The last is slightly esoteric, and may need a little explanation. Pete Atkins is a screenwriter and novelist friend of mine, and we decided a while ago that when asked, I would say that I got them from him, and he'd say he got them from me. It seemed to make sense at the time.)

I want something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live...

"Relax. These are the quiet times, where you get to think, to take the world in, and to decide who you want to be. And these times will never come again. They're as crucial to your life as the experience of being partnered that you want. Use these days. And, I tell you - just when you think you've about got things sorted out in your head..."
--Warren Ellis on relationships ending

I Made A Copy.

My words don't do my ideas justice.

I have ideas, we all do, and we all have a story we have to tell, but we can't get out. It's our Moby Dick, and we're Ahab, pushing and pushing for that story to be captured but ultimately dying in the final moments of victory. We need that story to be unattainable, else we wouldn't have the drive to move forward.

Is that true?

Maybe.

I have a story in my head. have done for a year or so now, and I just can't get it out. I have it mapped, in my head, but putting pen to pencil or finger to keyboard would dilute it. I wish I could distill it, from my mind, into a chalice of some sort, have it be perfect and untouched by my inability to deliver upon it. A story that's told badly is like some aborted foetus, and I don't that. Some miscarried half thing. Boo to that. Boo. I want perfection.

So that's why I don't write my idea. I need time. And maybe I need to be prepared to die for it.

To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.

"Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill."
--Neil Gaiman

Hey, like my tats? Full sleeved, black and white!

"Truthfully, the job security in this business is uncertain, the hours are long, long and lonely, the audience is increasingly small, fickle and dissatisfied, like 3 of the 7 Dwarves. Respect is nonexistent, success fleeting; you’d be better off in a boy band, where at least you’d get laid before they made you obsolete."
--Grant Morrison on comics.

God Made Me A Cannibal To Fix Problems Like You.

There's a reason for me to be posting here. Is it because I'm a writer for the Psychotronik Comics group? Maybe. Is it because I've found my way by weird coincidence onto this blog and am staking my claim whilst I still can? No. Thing is, I don't need an excuse. The world made me do this. I am not a man in control of his actions. Neither are you. I'm writing because the world made me, and my mind will rationalise my decisions later, because that is what it always does. To everyone. Forever.

The reason I write is because I thought I enjoyed it. I thought I was good at it. And that I could always get better. I like reading, I like learning, I like experimenting with different styles and all the stuff that is inherent to being "a writer". But apparently, the world made me do it. Here's the thing, there's a school of thought that says that the world affects us like we're puppets. That my typing this was preordained not by my thoughts, but because the world willed it, and me, like the puppet I am, am following through with that decree. This school of thought is called "Epiphenomenalism". It's a very hard word to remember on the fly, and I do hope I finally spelt it right after all my fretting.

So here's the thing, free will doesn't exist. We're slave to something bigger than all of us, the world. And think about this: We treat the world like shit. We use up resources like they're going out of fashion, we choke the air with fumes, we reproduce like vermin and spread ourselves across the continents, just looking for a hole to call our own so we can repeat the process all over again. If you were the world, what would you be forcing us to do? Sit back and be happy, continuing this ragged cycle of abuse that we inflict upon the world? Yes. Because you know why? We're killing ourselves. The world is giving us cancer because it's not making us do anything at all. The world inflicts disasters upon us and we're so inept that we can't even react to them. Then again, that's probably not entirely our doing, because, honestly, look at soon-to-be-former President Bush, and tell me that guy doesn't hate the world.

We're being turned into killers, not my television, videogames, gang culture and extreme porn, but by the actions we've inflicted upon the world. We're like puppets on a string. Now, I guess you could bring up the fact that the world made us treat it like a ten dollar hooker, but all evidence points to the world being a benevolent host, else why would it put up with us? Why doesn't it just open up, swallow us whole to fuel the core of the Earth and go about waiting for the evolutionary cycle to start again? Because it cares. Earth is a Mother. And no Mother truly wants to eat it's children whole, does it? (If you disagree with that statement right there you're right at home at this blog but you should keep away from me... cheers.) So we're killing the world, and in turn, the world is killing us slowly because it knows that most of us will go quietly in our sleep. How kind.

Doesn't that sound like a horror story to you?

(Originally published here, "Why The World Hates You (And Me. But Me Less)" 6/12/08)

There's a God in us all and he's so fucked up.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

And it's all coming down right now.

I am in love with Nine Inch Nails. Have been forever, won't stop for ages. Here are some hyperlinks.



This is an exercise in showing off. Woo.

(image taken from , from the Photo Blog)

Breathe in... slowly.

There is no future. There is only now. Because I may have started writing this about five minutes ago but when I post it it won't be the future it'll be now anyways. I'm always in the now. You can be in the past, you can come out of the moment but that doesn't mean you're in the future it just means you're lurking, meandering in what's come before. There is only now. Never then, only... this moment.

Down on your knees you'll get left behind... this is the beginning.

This is a necessity.