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?