decent into lunacy

End Of Days by *chrike on deviantART




Light's last breath by *YagaK on deviantART


Inspiration strikes in different ways. Back in January, I ate up the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Green. All 7 books of that amusing space opera. When I finished, I was taken by a strong urge to write. I’ve had a story playing through my head for a while and every year when NaNoWriMo comes around I toy with the idea of just going for it. Of course, I realize that any month could be NaNoWriMo so I don’t have to wait for November to roll around to start. Although, for me, NaNoWriMo would turn more into NaNoWriYr.

So, reading a good story sets the mood for writing. But then I have to start writing or at least planning things out. For that, I’ve put together a series of playlists in iTunes for different emotions. Fast, angry, loud songs for the action and tension sections; soft, slower stuff for the sadder more emotional parts. Uplifting songs for the happy parts, etc.

Reading for motivation, music for writing and it seems deviantART for writer’s block. Looking through the three images I posted above, they each have a different tone, a different story.

Kat and I were looking through them the other day and we talked about what story we each saw in them. And like images in a cloud, we each saw something complete different.

For the first image, I see the tale of two people caught in the eye of a storm. For a brief moment, they sit together staring out over the sky line, thinking about all they’ve been through and what will come. The sun is rising and its beauty is amplified by the pollution in the sky. Soon the action will start and once again they’ll have to fend off whatever evil is lurking out there.

The second image is a wonderful story of a girl and her um, thing. A dragon perhaps. A furry dragon. But it doesn’t breathe fire, but water. It was the first time the girl was flying and it was exhilarating. Every moment spent with her friend has been the happiest day of her life and she never wants it to end.

The third image is the ending of a story, or maybe the beginning to another one. The people thrust together in this tale have accomplished their task and now must part. They each much go their separate ways, taking what they’ve learned in their adventures and use it to move forward. Will they reunite or will that be the end. It’s like that song says, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

The fun part of that exercise was hearing what Kat saw. For the first image she saw the destruction of the city, a giant blue-white explosion off in the distance as the two people held each other close, the only witnesses the devastation.

What do you see?

Imagine buying an incomplete book. It starts off with a couple of pages written and once a week new pages get added. Or maybe once a month, but then you’ll get a few more pages to make up for the time between updates. I find it a strange concept to grasp as I can’t imagine reading Howl’s Moving Castle, Artemis Fowl or any of the books that I love on a weekly basis.

And what a hard sell it would be for a bookstore.

Customer 1: “This book is blank.”
Employee: “Hmmm, let’s see. Ah… the author just started writing it, look there are some pages now.”
Customer 1, clearly confused looks down at the pages, flipping through the just written text until reaching more blank pages: “What about these pages?”
Employee: “Oh, they haven’t been written yet.”
Customer 1: “What?”
Employee: “The author is still working on the book. When he gets a few pages just the way he likes, he releases those pages to everyone.”
Customer 1: “And… they just appear in this book?”
Employee: “Yup. Oh look, he’s written a few more pages. Today is your lucky day. Usually they update once a week but with this being a new book he’s going to update it frequently for a little while.”
Customer 1: “But… I want to read the whole book.”
Employee, now a little confused: “Um… but the author hasn’t written the whole book yet.”
Customer 1: “When will he finish it!”
Employee: “That’s up to the author. It could end up as a short novella or a three part epic novel. So it might be a few months to a few years.”
Customer 1: “Years?!”
Employee: “Yea, I’ve got a few books at home that have been going on for years now.”
Customer 1: “Where are all the books that are already written?”
Employee: “Uh… over there.”
Customer 1: “Thank you” as the customer puts down the book and walks off.

The worst part are all the mini-cliffhangers that go on each week. Things in a normal book that would be resolved with just a turn of the page would get strung along for weeks. I guess I’m indoctrinated to this type of schedule with TV more so than with reading. Watching a bunch of shows each week sounds perfectly normal; reading a bunch of books each week doesn’t.

And that’s where I find myself. There are a series of stories that I am reading that are precisely on this week-to-week schedule. (And one is on a monthly schedule. ;_;) For manga, there is One Piece, Naruto, Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist. If we’re talking about fanfic, there’s Team 8 or Nightmares of Futures Past.

There’s only so much a person can take, eagerly waiting for the next update.

As I sit here clicking through an endless precession of images on deviantART, I am reminded of my time down at the radio station. Where I would spend hours going through all the new music sent in by various labels, wading through the mediocrity just to find a tiny sliver of something outstanding. And the odds were against you for finding anything good.

But when I found that one good album, or likewise with deviantART, that one beautiful image, it was like discovering buried treasure and all the wonderment and excitement that goes along with it.

It’s like running through a field that you’ve been through many times before only to discover something new. Something that was always there, but somehow it escaped your notice. A piece of metal shines and you brush it aside only to reveal something more, something big. Sweeping aside more dirt you discover a handle. You tug on it and it opens easily revealing an opening in the ground and a metallic ladder descending down. A sense of wonder and excitement fills you as you stare down into the darkness. There’s an adventure waiting to happen and without a thought otherwise you plunge in. It’s something like that.

Well, maybe. I got a little carried away there. It turned into something else, a little Alice in Wonderland meets cyberpunk. Or, at least, that’s where it would have gone if I had continued.

Re-reading that paragraph, it feels like a choose your own adventure book. If you remember those things. I don’t even know if someone is still chugging away at them. Those books were always written as you do this, you find this, and it was always some crazy adventure where one wrong turn five choices back sets you on the path of defeat. I remember furiously flipping through the book back to the page where I made my misstep, anxious to choose the right path this time but only to discover I didn’t go back far enough. Curse you choose your own adventure books, curse you!!

I’m sure I had a point somewhere but that’s how things go. One thought leads to another and another then the next thing you know you’ve woken up in a tub of ice in some shady bathroom only to have a very enlightening conversation with your kidney. If you’d like to talk to your left kidney, click here. If you want the right one, click here.

Right, back to deviantART. I’ll end the post with one of the more beautiful pieces Kat found on the site.


Impossible LOV3 ver.3 by *Bluefley on deviantART

That's like over a year. o.O And man has this interface changes. I'm afraid to click anywhere for fear of doing something unfortunate.

*click* "You have just destroy the internet. Good job."

Just my luck.

I'm wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a light long-sleeved sweater, my jacket is draped across my legs, a heater is pointed right at me roaring at full speed and I'm still cold. Where am I? Work, where else. Where the air leaves the vent at a constant 62 degrees and the motto is, a happy worker is a frost-biten worker. Frosty would be right at home. Penguins are drinking coffee in that back and I just believe someone died from exposure. They were wearing short-sleeves. Fools.


One of these days, people will come into work and the air conditioner will be so beat to shit, they'll spend hours trying to figure out what it originally was. And there I'll be, in a nice Hawaiian T-shirt and shorts, looking just as confused as everyone else.

It will be announced today that Thanksgiving will be renamed Prechristmas thereby officially allowing stores to begin decorating for Christmas as soon as Halloween ends.

Today's horoscope: Good fortune will come to you when you stumble upon a Genie. Unfortunately, in order to get your wishes, he'll want you to rub something other than his lamp.

Just when you thought Hollywood couldn't make a good movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/

This article caught my attention, Isaac Hayes Quits 'South Park', and it's got some great quotes.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

By itself, I can understand where Hayes is coming from. Maybe he felt South Park went a little too far. Especially after the protesting against the Danish cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. At this point in the article, I could have sympthatized with Isaac. And then Trey Parker drops this line.

Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."





N. Korea army threatens pre-emptive attack. I admit that I haven't been following this bickering between North Korea and the United States over these last few years. But this AP article is great. Here are some choice excerpts:

North Korea has the right to launch a pre-emptive attack against U.S.-backed South Korean forces because the two Koreas are technically still at war, the communist state's official media said on Tuesday.

"The KPA side is of the view that a pre-emptive attack is not (the) monopoly of the U.S. and the DPRK, too, has the right to pre-empt an attack as the most effective and positive act for self-defense in the light of the hard reality that the DPRK and the U.S. sides are still technically at war," the spokesman was cited as saying.

A preemptive attack for self-defense. That sounds familiar. Isn't that a reason the United States went into Iraq in the first place? Using the United States as an example of how to act, I think North Korea can justifiably attack South Korea. After all, they have been labeled evil by the United States.

Update: It seems that Issac Hayes story might not have been true. o.O Does that mean the AP made a mistake?

I just spent the last hour or two watching anything and everything that popped up on the most popular videos with Kat. What a fascinating study on the human race this would make.

The popular channel contained embarrasing videos of two girls lip syncing to bad songs, ninja training camp (now that was amazing), funny commercials, a 30 second clip of a woman in a swimsuit dancing (the only reason it's popular is because her boobs jiggle. o.O), and other random stuff. I had the chance to listen to India's national anthem and to see a motorcyclist dance to the Black Eyed Peas, "My Humps" video.

What did you do today?

I haven't posted in a while so I'm going to make a couple of quick posts.

Do people in the city of Philadelpha have a death wish or something? I can't tell you how many times in the last week I could have LEGALLY run over a pedestrian or bicyclist. By legally, I of course mean when I have the green light and am going through the intersection and have to step on by brakes to avoid a collision. I love bicyclist but if you expect me to follow traffic rules (read: NOT HIT YOU WITH MY CAR!), you better follow them to. I'm young and I'm quick enough to avoid such accidents. I'm not the one these people should be worrying about.


And here's a notice about self checkout lines. If you have more than 20 or so items, USE THE OTHER LANES. It's quicker for you and me because the people that work at the store can actually DO IT FASTER! There's usually a bagger and someone who scans the item. That's 2 people versus you. But now for some crazy reason, you've decided to do it all yourself. WHY!?

The self checkout lines should be thought of as the express lanes. You don't take a full shopping cart through it. Lest you'll be knows as "That Asshole Who Couldn't Wait in the Other Lines" by the growing number of people holding a couple of items behind you. Quick Hint: If you can't carry it with two hands or in a hand cart, maybe you're in the wrong lane.

I knew you well.

AT&T's CEO Ed Whitacre is once again crowing about his company's plans to extort money from Google and other Web sites who want to be able to reach AT&T customers. "The content providers should be paying for the use of the network," he told the Financial Times, and added that they shouldn't "expect a free ride."

And where are websites going to get money to pay the telecoms? From the people who visit those website, maybe?

As he mentions in the article, we pay AT&T for Internet access. Then we pay websites in order to access them, because they are now incurring an additional cost just to deliver content. Whether we pay them directly, or through the influx of ads this is going to cause. And why are they pushing for this? To make more money, silly.


LiveJournal: Thank you for posting. That will be 25 cents please.

Today on my way to work I saw someone with the "Try Jesus" bumper sticker. And I thought, "Yeah, I've tried him. But the Easter Bunny tastes better."

I should write more. I find it to be very therapeutic, a type of release I need to function properly. Otherwise me go crazy!! Or slightly more deranged then normal.


Ever since I was young (read: 12, 13) I've always wanted to make video games. It was a kid's dream come true. (Well, any kid that loved video games.) But I was young and didn't know jack about jack.

That's probably around the time I started learning to write BASIC on the Commodore 64 my parents had. My code was crap back then, but it's hard to program in a vacuum. Back in those days, I didn't know anyone who coded and the Internet was far from becoming the mecca of information it is today. What I really needed was a bunch of people who wanted to program too.


I still feel that way. Although as I grew up I realized that making video games wasn't exactly college curriculum. So, I found another subject that held as much mystery and enchantment as making video games, computer engineering. Oh, to be able to build whatever I wanted whenever. Think MacGuyer for the new millennium. I have yet to realize that dream yet.


Somewhere along the line, I got lazy. Maybe it's not so much that I'm lazy. Humor me if you will. Maybe part of the problem is in my younger days, when I was wildly idealistic, I tried to do things that required more knowledge than I had. Repeat that enough times and I start to think that I can't do these things. Repeat that even longer and it becomes, why even try.


So, how fucked up is this. There might be an opportunity for me to help make a video game. It certainly doesn't require any skills that I don't have. I can program, I've worked with Flash before; all I need to do is get better at this. So why am I not jumping at this chance. Simply put, the fear of falling again.

I'll keep this short, but I wanted to capture it somewhere to help retain what I remember. I was involved in a road rage incident today in Philadelphia (between 15th-16th and Vine). I did two things to piss someone off - someone with the license plate number, FTS-8962 (might be 8926, I should have written it down immediately):

First, I slowed down to let someone get in front of me in the turning lane at 16th and Vine. Mr. FTS-8962 did not like this and honked his horn.

Second, I decided to take the turn slower than I normally would. This extended my turn by an extra two to three seconds.

There is only one turning lane onto Vine from 16th street. But Vine Street at this point has two lanes going East. Right after 15th street, Vine gets another two lanes added to it, turning it into four lanes going East. It gets a little dangerous here when people from the new lanes cut across two lanes of traffic in order to make the left turn on 14th.


At this point, this guy decided to "scare" me. He gets into the left lane, speeds around my car (I remember hearing his engines rev up quickly), and then turns his vehicle into my lane trying to force me over or slow down or something.


At this point, things are a little hazy but I was able to get out of the "his" lane and moved right into the lane. I'm pretty sure he was honking his horn a bit at this point, maybe because I didn't move out of the lane fast enough. Things happened pretty quick at this point so it's hard to remember.


The lane I just got into was moving but the lane he forced himself into wasn't. Someone from the right lane was trying to get into the left lane to turn onto 14th and was blocking two lanes of traffic. Now that traffic is blocked behind me, I get back into my original lane and head to the light on 14th.


At this point, he gets out of his current lane and stops right beside me. He rolls down his window, spits on my car and says, and I quote, "Fucking Jew." After that we were cursing at each other until he drove away. The exchange lasted maybe 5 seconds.


I must admit, it all was a little frightening. I've had other drivers pissed at me. But in each of those instances, horns were honked, sign language was used, and that's it. We vent our anger and move on. I've never had anyone so enraged at me to try to run their car into mine. That's a whole new level of anger there. That's scary. Really scary.


I didn't know what to do or if there was anything that I could do. I figured it wouldn't hurt to call 911. I told them what happened, gave them the license plate number of the car and that's about it. Not that I except anything to happen, but it would be nice. I mean, what else can you do beside hope I never see that person or car again.

Maybe it's the case that I expected too much. But when I left work early to catch an early showing on HP:GOF, I was psyched. Reviews were good, I enjoyed the book, the movie has to be good. Wrong. Daniel Radcliffe taking a dump for a good two hours might have been more enjoyable.

Wait. That's taking it a bit too far. The movie wasn't that bad. There were some enjoyable parts. But there was something definitely lacking. Take the killing of that tall, handsome dude. It goes from one scene of Harry crying over the corpse to the next with them laughing and joking.

Hermione: "Promise you'll write this summer."
Ron: "Yeah whatever."
Harry: *snicker* "Yeah, I'll write. Once a week."
Cedric: "GOD DAMN! I'M STILL DEAD BACK HERE."

You know, I'd love to feel sad for some dude they just introduce at the beginning of the movie, gave him a couple of scenes and then decide to kill. But I can't. As quick as he dies they move on. Passed by as fast as they can. There are other things that irked me in the movie. I just wondering if anyone else thought it was lacking a little something.

"I started having an affair with a younger, supersexy coworker (editor comments: yea, riiiiiight.) about two months ago.

I was very nervous and had tremendous anxiety about going to bed with her.
Sure enough, the first time we tried I could not perform. I felt worthless and could
not believe that I blew an opportunity to be with a woman so incredibly beautiful.

I decided to get some Vjaagra online http://www.aloraplud.com and give it a try.

The next time we were together things were wonderfully different. My cock was hard enough
to cut through diamonds..." I even used it to smash rocks and small appliances...


I think we just found something harder than diamonds, and what luck, it's everywhere! Of course, I have no need nor desire to cut through diamonds or poke holes into the wall. If I were a woman, I'd be scared.


*scene: It's dinner time and the roast needs to be cut, but alas, there are no knives.*
Woman: "What ever will we do!?"
Man: "I'll cut it." *pops a pill, whips it out and starts cutting the roast*
Woman: "Thank you Vjaagra!"

Announcer: Another happy customer!

The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to
install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands]
and the mainland" of America, a position he held until
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native
Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the
governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.


Eat me.

Read this...


Saw this...

A south Georgia mayor said Friday he will continue flying a Mexican flag at city hall for the six immigrant farmworkers slain in robberies — despite complaints from residents.

Seven people called WTIF radio station Thursday, saying the gesture was inappropriate and that the Mexican and U.S. flags should not fly together.


And my reply is this...

t(-_-t) Go fuck yourself! That is all.

Be ERECT in less than 15 mins

PRlCE: $ 2 / use

---

But I want it noooooooow!

What kind of quality control do you think they have? Is there someone that sits there with a stopwatch and times how long it takes? How can you be assured that the tester didn't think of something inappropriate...

Tester:: *pops pill* *thinks of nothing* *thinks of nothing* *think of Jessica Alba... and a poodle* DAMN IT!