Cherri Bomb

A group whose average age is 15. Wouldn’t normally appeal to me in the tiniest bit, but I dunno, I’m glad to see a bunch of young teenagers doing some rock. I’ll be curious, as they get older, what they turn into.

PREVIOUSLY…

The reason I typically fall behind on blog posts is simply that a lot of interesting stuff happens, all of it bloggable, and I become too busy to blog any of it. Then, having fallen behind, I feel the need to recap before posting anything new. Unfortunately, then the pile of stuff to recap becomes so large, I never get to it.

So let’s see:

In the space of the last two weeks, I have emptied an apartment, loaded a U-Haul truck, made an astonishingly gorgeous drive with my family across the country from Minnesota, to Washington. I have fallen in love with a small town in Montana (St. Regis) and then fallen harder in love with the southern Seattle area I now find myself in. I take active and conscious pleasure of how much I love the weather, the temperature, the people, and above all the foliage. It is gorgeous out here.

I have, somewhere in all of this, pinched a nerve in my right shoulder. It hurts a great deal to sit up at a computer, or in a car. I don’t have any idea what to do with something like that. 

I have also stopped using Facebook and Twitter almost entirely.

This just happens sometimes. It’s a very odd thing I don’t understand about myself. I went offline for two weeks, and when the internet was restored, I found myself with an actual aversion to using Facebook or twitter, or even reading the web-comics I was previously reading. I get tense at the mere idea of it. I haven’t opened any of them. Twitter, I have posted to periodically, but haven’t been reading or interacting (and am thus using Twitter wrongly).

Maybe it’ll change. I don’t know why it happens. The last time something like this occurred, my second son was born and I became completely unwilling to visit forums or read web-comics which I had been visiting previously. I haven’t touched them since, not really.

My wife’s family, which lives in this area, is active and very social, something that takes getting used to. I have socialized more in this past week than I have in months. It’s nice, though, but exhausting. We have gone mushroom hunting (they are seasoned pros. I was not.) I found a morel and was over the moon pleased with myself. 

I have begun running again. All of my relation-in-laws (I made that phrase up just there) are runners out here, of a much higher level than I am. So I’m running and trying to build up my endurance and ability again. 

There is a magnificent park just down the street from me, huge glorious forests and paths, and also massive playgrounds. In thirty seconds’ time, I am taking the kids there.

I have also not touched or thought about writing in two or three weeks now. The result is that far from feeling crippled and dreading it all, unable to touch any of it, I am slowly re-approaching writing on my terms, at my own speed. It feels so good to think of writing happily once again, instead of feeling like it’s a series of heavy boxes chained to me (to go all Dickens on you).

There is a very yummy Orange Spice black tea sold out here. I have some. 

And that’s it. Now I’m going to put on a jacket and take the boys to the park to run and terrorize other people’s children.

 

The Ridiculous Writing Location Post

Sometimes when I read depressing bits of publishing news, or am just tired and overwhelmed by existing as a social creature…sometimes when I’m frazzled from the kids, the world, bills, and a having a hard time writing…what I like to think about is my Ridiculous Writing Locations.

I kind of think everyone has these: the ridiculous writing location is the probably unrealistic place you’d like to go to write a novel. Neil Gaiman once mentioned — somewhere or another — that he liked the idea of riding a tramp ship across the ocean and writing a book on it (at least, I think that was him). I like that idea too, although I dunno if I’d want it to be a tramp ship. Maybe just a nice sailing vessel.

That’s one of my two ridiculous locations, incidentally.

My main location, though, is the one I think about every time I watch Survivorman, something I’m re-watching right now. I love the idea of going out into the woods and either existing deep in the woods in a pre-built cabin, or else constructing my own (an idea that appeals to me no end). Maybe go out there alone for a year and do nothing but survive, exist…and write. Complete simplicity, and nothing but me, the world, and the work.

My other ridiculous location is on a ship, out at sea. A sailing vessel, perhaps. One where I could work and be useful. Where I visualize myself alone in the woods, here I like to imagine being with my family (although my wife is uncomfortable enough by deep water, I seriously doubt this’d happen). Go sailing for six months or a year. Where to? I don’t actually know. This varies depending on the day. Right now, I’d love to putter down the coast of Africa. By myself? Unsafe, you say? Well probably. But then, this is a ridiculous idea to begin with. I have no money, no really ability — or intention — to shoot off from my family for a year and do this stuff. But still. Everyone has their odd fantasy.

What about you? What’s your ideal it’ll-never-happen-but-I-think-about-it location to go and write? 

(Possibly, not everyone has ones similar to mine, because not everyone really wants to be completely alone like that. That’s normal enough. I like being around people and value what social contact I have, but do take a great deal of peace and calm from being entirely alone. Especially if I’m outdoors. Thanks to reading Quiet by Susan Cain, I’ve discovered this is quite a common trait of an introvert like me.)

In Which I Eat My Own Cynicism

I didn’t used to be a terribly cynical person. In fact, I was a cheesily optimistic person, growing up. Somewhere along the way, that shifted. I blame the internet, which is supported by cynicism, porn, and cat photos.

A while ago, I bought a blu-ray player box for out in the living room. We wanted to move the Playstation 3 into the bedroom (can’t play violent video games around the small ones, we found out; it’s been AGES since I played Skyrim, and they are still pretending to shoot fire out of their hands at imaginary dragons in the sky) (that’s not why I stopped, that’s harmless and cute. I stopped because my older son imitated Batman and punched someone. Sigh.) Anyway, we put a blu-ray box out there. I liked it because it’d not only play things on discs, but had Netflix built in, and Napster, which we were using.

Well, then Napster turned into Rhapsody, and an update appeared and the feature simply…went away. We weren’t subscribed anymore, but I was still grumpy. Essentially, the features — and value — of the box had gone down. It’d be like if someone came ’round and said “we don’t do these cars with rear windows anymore, this’ll have to come out.” You’d be put out, is what I’m saying.

The cynicism, though, said “See? This is the sort of stuff that happens. It shouldn’t, but it does. They reach in and remove stuff from your device.” I was very grumpy.

Then, today, a new update appeared. I downloaded it, went back to reading my book. The box restarted.

On the screen, suddenly there was a YouTube feature. And a Hulu Plus feature. And two other features I can’t remember. The YouTube app is smooth and fast and sharp, fills the whole TV screen. I can watch Alan Moore videos, I can watch documentaries, I can watch lectures, I can watch QI episodes, all beautifully on my TV. It’s fantastic.

They’ve added to the box. It does a great deal more than it did when I bought it. The boxes that had youtube features and other stuff cost more, and I opted not to get them…and got the features anyway.

So. I guess that teaches me to be so cynical about stuff.

I have definitely learned my lesson and will never be a grumpy bastard about anything ever again for real honest.

Sincerely,

Fingers Crossed Behind His Back For No Particular Reason.

UPDATE: My god, it’s even better than I thought! I clicked on another button they added called Launchpad accidentally (and was sad to discover it wasn’t Launchpad McQuack) and it is a video app which gives me access to Fora.TV, TED, NASA, PBS, Make Magazine, and a wealth of other videos besides. Using it, I just watched Susan Cain’s TED talk on introversion.

Fora.TV and TED were honestly the main reasons I briefly paid for huluplus. And I’ve got ‘em for free. I am a happy, happy monkey.

Ghost Love Score

This is a wee little post to say that if you go over to Something Wicked magazine, they’ve put up my story Ghost Love Score for free. You can read it here.

And when you’re done — and I do advise you to read the story first — you can hop over HERE and read an interview with me about the story.

In that interview is a link to a music video, and I do hope you watch it. I’ve been carefully not mentioning that, one of my favorite videos and songs, for ages now, so that I could mention it first in that interview. Go watch it!

And at the bottom of the interview is a link to my web-site, which is…here. So if you followed that link, and wound up here, to read a post suggesting you head over there…I’m sorry, this has all gotten very circular, hasn’t it?

Looks like we’re stuck in a loop, like the Enterprise being destroyed over and over again by the Bozeman in that one episode of The Next Generation. How is it I can remember the second starship’s name, but I can’t recall the episode’s title? It’s that sort of brain, I guess. I’d upgrade for a better one, but it’s been too long since the initial activation.

Well I’ve wandered off blithering down a verbal corridor here, haven’t I? Best just to stop right–

Alan Moore, online

This afternoon, I was giddy to discover a nearly forty minute long video of nothing but Alan Moore, reading a chapter from the book he’s been working on for years, JERUSALEM. I haven’t watched it yet, as of this posting. I am saving it up for when the kids are asleep and I can put headphones on and really pay attention. Still, finding it left me wanting to talk about Alan Moore, and the internet. It’s very interesting.

Alan Moore’s pretty much an utter luddite. That word is kind of inaccurate to use in this context, because when I think luddite, I think of someone who hates technology, and he doesn’t particularly hate technology. He just cheerfully acknowledges that while the rest of the world gets on with it, the fanciest piece of technology he has is a fax machine and a pretty old Mac which he writes on.

No official web-site, no twitter account, no facebook page, no internet connection. Nada. Zilch. He is “dark,” when it comes to the internet.

Except…he isn’t. Here’s the interesting bit:

Despite not having an internet connection, he has a tremendous internet presence. All one has to do is go onto youtube and type in his name, you will be rewarded with a great wealth of videos from all throughout the years. Here’s him in December, talking about a speech he just gave at “Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People” . Here’s him on the Culture Show, talking about Austin Osman Spare.

What’s more, here’s Moment of Moore on twitter, who post interesting Alan Moore bits and bobs pretty frequently.

Here’s a quite large interview with him, published only last week.

Now the point I’m making here with what is frankly a smidge of the amount of Alan Moore stuff on the internet is…despite not having an active internet presence, he has a HUGE internet presence anyway. It’s one of the interesting things about the internet, a place where Samuel Pepys — a man who has been dead for hundreds of years — has a very active and busy and real twitter account, in its own way. Alan Moore doesn’t NEED to be on the internet to have a busy, and very current internet presence.

I find that fascinating. I also occasionally envy it, to be honest. I am far too compulsive on the internet, and it gobbles up too much of my time and my attention span for my own good. I like the idea of not really being on it, and yet continuing to be on it despite my lack of contribution to the matter.

I think it’s terribly interesting that you don’t have to be involved to have a web presence. Such is the world we live in, for good or bad. (Mostly, I think, for good.)

An Arrest of Attention

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005)

Quoting this here, to hang on to it. This is something I definitely struggle with, finding silence in the chaos. Not just the chaos of kids and family life, but the Internet. Facebook-twitter-YouTube-cracked.com-Amen. Putting all away an working is tremendously tough. The alternative, though is putting it all away practically permanently, since I’ve definitely found it’s all or nothing for me. These days, it doesn’t seem easily doable to be both a recluse AND a low-level author.

That’s all rather more jabber than I intended. I just wanted to put up that quote. & so to bed.