A little over a year this time…

It’s like this thing is a time capsule, which I unearth annually or so, stuff another entry in, and then bury. I’d really LIKE to post more to it… there are times when I’m just dying to write things, especially with all the stupidity going on in the world currently, but I haven’t been. Maybe now that I’ve gotten back into this, I’ll start updating again. I’m going to add this to my favorites page, and see if it gets me here more often.

Been JUST a little bit…

So, the whole blogging thing kinda went down the tubes…

Right about the beginning of August 2009, I got laid off (after taking a week’s vacation and blowing a lot of money, called Sunday to be told ‘don’t come in Monday’… thanks, guys), and the whole internet thing went by the wayside for a while. Just got a new job (MUCH better, writing SQL code all day is very cool. Call me a geek, but I love it), so hopefully I’ll get back in the swing of things.

Swatch – fantasy excerpt – part 1

He looked out over the ocean, not knowing he’d never see this view again.

Boy liked this tower, a lot more than the other ones. He’d learned early on which were the nicest ones, which had the best views, which ones Master tended not to frequent. Not that he was a bad Master, not at all, but sometimes one needed a bit of space, is all, and why not have a space that had a grand view?

Still, there was having space, and there was shirking chores, and the line between the two was a constantly moving thing, depending on the Master’s mood. Dusting off his robe, he made his way to the door.

He was proud of himself for nary having to glance at the sigils he’d put above the doorways in colored chalk, drawn when he was still new to the towers, to the Master. He could walk and not even think about getting back from Seaside, skirting the door the led to Castle Wastewood (foolish name, he thought), nary a glance at the door to Summerdown (no matter how much he’d like to pass through that one), and hardly a shudder at that door, the one with the skull over it. He rubbed his left arm in sympathy, glad again that you could only pass through a door if you had come out of it in the first place.

Wandering body and mind, he thought. Master’ll have one of his bug-eyed fits, he will.

He stopped in front of a large, oak door, handle so high he had to stand on tips to reach it. Master never did say why that’s is, Boy thought, then shook his head. He needed to concentrate soon, and better to get in the habit now then when it’s too late.

He pushed open the door… to find the Master standing on the other side, looking straight at him.

“Too late,” he said, softly.

Multi-tasking

Going to try to focus on two different things today: programming, and writing. I’ve got Thruspace open, and I’m going to try to get (at least) a page of that done, and I’m going to try to get through Chapter 2 of one of my multiple C# books done.

I’m finding that learning a programming language is a lot like writing… you have to do them both pretty regularly or they go stale on you. Programming is also a lot like writing in that fact that it’s, well, writing. Sure, I’m writing code and not stories, but it’s all the same. Kinda. It’s all coming up with ideas, and then putting them down in a language, on a medium, so that someone or something else can process them. They both stem from creativity.

They always say “Do what you love”, as far as a job goes, and I’ve always wanted to write, so maybe I’m homing in on something here. Of course, what I really like to do is think, but until someone will pay me to just sit all day and think things, I can’t do that.

If someone reading this (like Bill gates or someone) wants to pay me to think for them, I’m happy to sign over everything I think up while in employ over to you. You can have books, movies, inventions, forms of government, biomedical breakthroughs… you can have it all. If you want to focus me in on something, you just provide me with research material, and I’ll go at it. Guaranteed results!

Anyway, off to C# and Thruspace!

Swatch – The Dungeon – trying out first person

I slip the key in, and turn it. It turns easily. Some mornings it doesn’t. Some mornings, it doesn’t turn at all.

They can hear me as I make my way down the stairs, and those that can start making noise, trying to get my attention. I used to think they knew I was coming down here before I did. Now I know it. Sometimes I think they can even make me come, even if I don’t want to. I try not to think about that part. I don’t know what it would mean.

I flip on the lights at the bottom of the stairs, and they come on, brightly for a change. Figures. I don’t really want to get distracted before I can make my way to the back, but, again, this place seems to do what it wants to, regardless of what I might want. It’s always been that way.

My footsteps don’t echo as I make my way down, between the cages. There’s many of them, stretching off into the distance. There’s a cage for everything, and most of them are empty. The ones nearest to me, though, are most definitely full.

The small Chinese boy to my left just stares at me, silently. Sometimes his gaze is a smoldering anger, sometimes a mocking sneer, but this morning, it’s just blank. I let my eyes slide off him. He’s not the one I’m here for. I make my feet keep moving.

There are others, down this corridor. Some of them don’t make any noise, some of them are loud. Some of them might not even be living any more… and for some, I don’t even care.

I keep walking. I can see a dim green light from one cage, glowing liquid in a tube holding a dark shape within. I know he wants me to think about him, and I do, sometimes. It’s enough to keep him alive, the only food in this place. He knows I’ve seen the way he ends, and it thrills him. He knows how important that is, and that I won’t easily let that type of thing go. He’s right.

Others aren’t so lucky.

I pass cages with misshapen things, things that throw themselves at the bars, howling, demanding tribute, demanding thought. Sometimes I do, which is the only reason they’re still here, still alive. Things that don’t have the energy to move as I walk by, they simply quiver, gelatinous, on the floor. Some don’t move at all, slowly turning back into the dust that they came from, never to be thought of again.

I shake my head. Some days I make it to the bottom of the stairs and am overwhelmed, by the noise, the cages, the sense of creation that I get from being down here. Sometimes I’ll just stand, transfixed, for hours, and not really do anything before I pull myself back up and outside. They hate those days the most. So do I.

Not today, though. Today I steady my pace, walk past the cages, past the psychic, past the monolith, a tentacle snaking up around it. I walk past the ball of energy that makes up the human race, past the living ship. These don’t interest me today. I make my way to the back.

It smiles up at me from the table it lies on. I smile back down at it, pulling out my pen. I can sense the others quiet behind me as they see it. They know. Soon, soon it will be done.

“Soon, soon it will be done,” I write on the thing on the table. The words glow, and slowly fade from view, absorbed into it. It grows, becomes more defined. It chuckles, happy, and I am happy as well.

Soon, soon.

Redirection

Hi to everyone coming over from my other blog!

*crickets*

OK, ok, I know there’s not exactly teams of people stampeding my virtual door, but when my Dad mentioned that he had found my OTHER blog, the one I don’t post to any more, I realized that I should redirect people over to this one, so they can continue reading my stuff, if they are so inclined. I also changed over the link from my website, to make sure.

Had a talk with Kathy this morning, and went over a big insight of mine that I had… that she pointed out I had previously had about 6 months ago. So, I guess that makes it a kind of “recycled” insight. At least I’m helping the environment…

Anyway, I realized that sometimes I want to write, but not Thruspace. I desperately don’t want to let Thruspace fall through the cracks like State of Mind did, but, at the same time, I don’t want to either stifle my creativity by slogging through writing Thruspace that day just to get something done, or, worse, not write ANYTHING and get out of the habit. So… I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to write, each and every day, but it’s not going to necessarily be Thruspace.

I think I’m going to try some short stories. Come up with an idea and just blow through it quick. It’ll be nice to actually have a completed project, instead of all these half-formed things lumping around in the basement… See? that gave me a story idea. Not necessarily a FULL story, or even a short story necessarily, but kind of a “middle”.

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll make “Middles” Like Monty Python sketches… they never used to bother with beginnings, or endings, they just did the funny middle parts, and moved on to the next idea. That’s what I’ll do. If I’m not working on a short story, or a novel, I’ll do a middle of some idea that randomly hit me, and flex my writing muscles that way. No worries, or stress, just writing whatever. A Middle.

I think I’ll do one now…

*Edit* – Finished one, called The Dungeon. I like it. Kathy had a brilliant idea (as she often does). These aren’t middles, they’re swatches. Webster’s defines “swatch” thusly:

swatch (swch) n.

1. A sample strip cut from a piece of material.

2. A representative portion; a sample

I couldn’t agree more. So, swatches they are.

Weapons-grade stupidity

Sometimes I think my writing, especially in blogs, is a safety valve. I swear, if you put your ear up to my blog, you can hear the whistling of escaping steam. I wonder how many other people’s blogs are like that…

My boss is a dick. Just by the law of averages, there MUST be bosses out there who AREN’T dicks (when I was a boss, I wasn’t, and neither was my wife, so there’s two…), but so far I haven’t worked for one. What IS it with people in positions of power who feel that it’s just jim-dandy fine to let shit roll down hill onto those that work for them? Why would this EVER occur to someone as a good management technique? All it makes me want to do is turn off everything but my brain stem, and let it have at him… IT knows what to do to people like that, and it normally involves mopping, showering, and digging deep graves afterwards.

I’ve always wanted to write this book: there’s a prophesy that says that this guy is going to be the ultimate bad guy, and so all these “good” guys head out to kill him. Only problem is, this guy’s just an average Joe. Done nothing to no one, tried to live a decent life, and now all of a sudden they’re all out to get him. They fuck with him and fuck with him until finally he’s pushed to the ultimate limit, where he either let’s them kill him, or decides to stop them… and he realizes then that he CAN stop them. All those sanctimonious fucks that tried to destroy him and all he loves, he can destroy it all, burn it all to the fucking ground, and they DESERVE it. And he does. He kills them all, laughing, and burns their cities, and their “civilization”, all of it, enjoying each and every second of it.

And thus the prophesy is fulfilled.

I seriously wonder, if given the opportunity, would I burn it all to the ground? Probably not, because I’m still a nice guy, but the “good” guys keep trying, so maybe one day…

A small disclaimer (so people don’t think I’m insane… well, MORE insane)

The previous two posts are works of fiction. Part of this whole “blog” thing was to get me writing, and somehow knowing that (theoretically) other people could read this makes it more meaningful than just scribbling in a random notebook. When the fancy strikes, i start writing. Most times, it just about my day, but sometimes I just get in the mood for something and the words just flow out. THAT’S what I’m trying to foster, what’s been so hard for me the past year or two, just getting the flow to come so fast that my fingers blur on the keyboard, and I KNOW what the words are, I don’t have to think about it at all, it’s like I’m there watching it all and just have to write it down… I don’t know how else to describe it, it’s like the exact OPPOSITE of writer’s block.

I had a thought this morning on my way to work, that my problem may not necessarily be one of not ENOUGH creativity, but too MUCH creativity. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose sometimes…  I sit down in a nice, quiet place, and open myself up to be creative and OH GOD I WANT TO MODEL IN MAYA AND PLAY THE GUITAR AND DIRECT A MOVIE AND WRITE HALF A DOZEN NOVELS AND WRITE A SYMPHONY AND DO A COUPLE OF AD CAMPAIGNS AND COME UP WITH AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY AND AND AND and then there’s some random pant-hooting and muffled thuds as I flop around for a while, and then I get up and go do something decidedly NON-creative, like watch TV, just for the rest, and nothing actually gets created.

I’ve been working on the theory that I’m just too lazy, but I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m going to try working at it like riding a bucking horse… a lot of prep, a lot of resin, hang on tight, and let the horse go where it wants for now, as long as I stay on. Once I get better at riding the thing, THEN I’ll start to try to direct it. I’m hoping that, with enough time in the saddle, I’ll develop a relationship with my creativity that will allow me to control it (as much as I can, anyway) and actually get somewhere with it.

After my first good ride I promise I’ll give it an apple or some sugar cubes.

Another one of those days

I can tell it’s going to be another one of those days…

You know when you close your eyes, and you can tell if there are walls around you or if it’s open and empty, or if there’s someone in the room with you? Have you ever closed your eyes and had your other senses tell you something totally different than what your eyes tell you?

When I close my eyes, I can sense them all around me.

I thought I could kind of see them last night, driving past an old abandoned building, peeking out of the broken windows at me. It’s like they were taunting me to come and see the old place, knowing that I’d never been there before, that noone ever thinks about it any more, like they knew that if I looked inside the windows I’d see that there was nothing behind it, just empty, raw, unfinished universe. I so wanted to stop and run at them, and look. I wanted to see what I would see.

Most of the time it’s just a warehouse. One of these times it won’t be.

I know God knows about me now. It’s him who’s taunting me like this. I know he doesn’t want a friend now. He’s scared of me, but there’s nothing he can do about it, because I can think of me more than he can. I don’t pray to him, he doesn’t know me, or what I want. I keep my thoughts of me to myself, and make myself solid. He can’t do anything to me, I won’t believe in it.

Unbalanced

There are times, sometimes, when I either don’t get enough of some vital nutrient, or possibly too much, where I start to question everything. Not just why I continue to go to my dead-end job every day, but question BIG things, like reality.

How much of this is simply contrived? I know, I KNOW, that a lot of what we consider to be reality is simply everybody milling around like sheep, following the footsteps we left the day before, going about our daily business the same as we always have. There’s a sameness to it all, with just little tiny steps forward, if you can call it forward. Teeny tiny little steps that lets all the little minds adjust slowly, like playing outside when you were a kid and not noticing that it was getting darker and darker around you. All of humanity just mills about while the world just gets dimmer and things get slower.

I SO want to break out of that.

It’s funny, too, because invariably when I think these things the miasma reaches up to try desperately to pull me back down. It’s like it doesn’t want me to think about it, like it’s too hard. I get this wave of tiredness like I should just stop thinking like this, but sometimes I can fight it. My mind fills with all these images of just throwing off all these mental shackles, to shrug off this group reality and do something DIFFERENT. I don’t mean little different, either, like go to Tim Horton’s for breakfast instead of Dunkin Donuts, I mean DIFFERENT like take over the planet. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I could just stand up and say “That’s it, now it’s my way”, and somehow, like using the Voice from Dune, people would just start doing things my way. I could rule this shitty little mudball so much BETTER than the people currently doing it. It’s not just that, either. I don’t want to be President or Emperor or something, I want to change reality. I want to… I don’t know. Reinvent everything. CHANGE everything, at the atomic level. I just want to spread my mind out and take everything in, and once I have it all in my head, reality would be MINE. All I have to do is KNOW everything, not just facts, but people, animals, objects, everything, about everything, and then I could just think differently about it, and it would change.

Maybe that’s what God is. Maybe that’s what he does. Maybe God is just some guy like me who finally managed to think everything. Maybe he’s thinking me right now, thinking about him. Maybe he’s lonely, and wants a friend. Maybe he wants to lay down everything, to clear his mind.

Or, maybe, he’s jealous of me. Maybe he’s scared I’ll take over. Maybe he’s the one that makes me so tired when I think this way. Maybe, if I think of him, more than he thinks of me, I can take his place.

Maybe then I can get to be God.