Oh yeah, this thing ... again ...

Where the hell have I been these months gone? Well, first there was a lot of more nothing going on, and then some cool things happened.

EMPLOYMENT
I got a job. I'm back in retail, but it's cool retail, and I'm a manager, so it's a good gig. Can't wait to abuse my employee discount as soon as possible. Having income again is AMAZING, which leads me to ...

MUSIC
Wow, a bunch of cool stuff came out while I was unemployed. I stopped by Waiting Room yesterday, and got away with a pile of new, or new to me, cool music, and all for a song (pun intended). I decided I haven't been listening to nearly enough disgustingly heavy metal recently, so I'm doing something about that. The new Patton Oswalt album isn't music, but it is awesome, although I haven't listened all the way through, so I won't comment fully, even while what I have heard is awesome. Now, I just need to wait for my next check, so I can check out this Floor boxset I got a look at. Eight discs? $40? Thundering? Yes, please!

COMICS
No New 52 for me yet, but only because Action #1 sold out. Also sold out is the first issue of the all-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book, but I picked up on what was going on in the second issue pretty easily, so no worries. It's a total reboot of the continuity, which is interesting, and makes me a little uneasy, but there sure was a hell of a lot of stuff I never got to read, so a clean slate is okay by me, I guess. In other news, I continue to forget to ask God-Emperor of Funnybooks to order me Shadoweyes in Love. I could go on Amazon and do it myself, no problem, but I want to order it through the shop because I feel terrible that I've been away so long.

VIDEO GAMES
Is it November yet? Seriously. Where the hell is my copy of Saint's Row: The Third? I need it. It comes out three days after my birthday, and I'm at least half-serious when I say I might be taking a bit of time off in the interest of firing hookers into skyscrapers.

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
Black Crusade is out, but Amazon won't let me buy it yet. :( Sure, I could pay $60, plus shipping, on the Fantasy Flight Games webstore, but fuck that noise when I can get it for $37.77 with free shipping on Amazon. Don't get me started on how cool, and totally silly, the collector's edition is.

You Come and Go

As most of you know, I've been following professional wrestling for a little while now. I've also explained that the reason I started following in the first place was because of a new wrestler to the WWE, named Kharma. She's also wrestled as Awesome Kong and Amazing Kong, while friends and family call her Kia Stevens, and her wikipedia page does a pretty good job of summarizing her career, but that's not so much what I want to talk about.

Awesome Kong at TNA Wrestling with her Manager, Raisha Saeed

On the surface, sure, when I saw pictures of Awesome Kong, in relation to a dispute with radio "personality" Bubba the Love Sponge, my initial reaction was something along the lines of, "Whoa, who is this vicious vision?" I tend to make no secret of my preferences regarding women, and had to admit she was a sexy beast. I read about her work with All Japan Pro Wrestling and other promotions, and got the impression that she was actually kind of a big deal. I think she was at TNA at the time, but I was still in denial in terms of pro wrestling fandom, and I also knew a little something about how often women's wrestling gets buried in most American promotions. Let's face it, also, most of the so-called wrestling on display in women's divisions tends to amount to little more than Rock'em-Sock'em Barbies. Anyway, I figured this would be the first and last time I would see or hear much of anything about her.

That changed when she signed with WWE last December, and took the name Kharma. I actually surprised myself with how excited I was, and over a period of weeks I watched her blaze a path of unchallenged dominance through the Divas division. Finally, this was a female wrestler who demonstrated actual physical prowess, who had presence and a kickin' rad theme song, and who seemed set, in my vivid and delusional imagination, to turn the tide of bullshit women's wrestling toward a brighter tomorrow. That's a whole lot of hope, and I fully grasped the unlikelihood of my hopeful prediction coming to pass.

Even so, I remained cautiously optimistic that it wouldn't all be over in a matter of weeks at the indecisive and often bafflingly ignorant hands of Vince McMahon. As much as I was interested in possibly seeing more powerful ladies throwing each other around, I knew there were deeper concerns at stake. Kharma stood to become a symbol, not only to female wrestlers, but to wrestling fans of both sexes. I knew by then that the work she'd done as Awesome Kong, and before that when she was Amazing, was exemplary in terms of both skills and psychology. Sure she had size on her side in most match-ups, but there's more to wrestling than being huge (Vince McMahon, take note!). She sold the "story" of every match at a level where she was just a whole lot of fun to watch, even while she never said a word. She and her opponents made each other look awesome, and I wanted to see that brought to the long-languishing Divas division.

Alas and alack, it was not to be, well, not yet. Last week on Raw, Kharma sauntered in to break up an 8-woman tag match. She climbed into the ring, fuming and glaring like always, only to drop to her knees and cry. After two cuts in and out of commercial, with Kharma still sobbing amid the dumbfounded Divas, the action shifted on the second cut back from commercial to a match between Kofi Kingston and another buried mid-carder. All week since, fans and reporters have been abuzz about the rumor of Kharma's pregnancy, citing an overheard comment that she would be out for at least nine months. Well, last night this was proved true when Kharma spoke to the audience at Raw about her pending absence.

I'm sad that she's going away, but wish her the best, and can't wait for her return. Hopefully her parting shot at the Bellas bears not only the fruit of their destruction at her hands, but also points the way to that brighter tomorrow I mentioned. Despite their swagger, the Bellas are terrified like the rest of the Divas (it can be assumed from their reactions at her entrance last week, although some formidable opponents like Beth Phoenix and former TNA rival Gail Kim have yet to face her in the ring) at the thought of confrontation with Kharma. If WWE Creative can spin this into a shonen-manga-style training arc, with the Divas stepping up their game in preparation for the monster's return, we might have something really cool in the meantime and certainly in a year. It's about time Diva matches became something more than a signal to a bathroom break.

Oh yeah, this thing...

So it's been just shy of a month since last I posted here. Let's see, what's happened in the intervening time?

Well, I still haven't finished revising my novel. The hardest part of writing is getting started, psyching yourself up, and then just slamming words into the screen so fast you don't even realize what you're doing until you're suddenly looking at thousands of words. After that, you just keep doing it. That can be hard too, but it's those first few thousand that are the real hurdle. Once you've got that set down, you should have notes to work from, and it should be cake till the end.

Revisions are a different story, in more ways than one. When I started to get halfway serious about finishing a novel, I set the goal of one thousand words a day, just like the pros. I did pretty well for a little while, and got a lot of writing done. The book is nearly finished. That's when I hit the wall.

There are still a few scenes that need to be completely rewritten, for various reasons owing mostly to the fact that they were written before some changes were made to the overall narrative. Once I get these scenes done, I can assemble the full doc, slap it up on Google, and let the critique begin, assuming people have time to sift through my 200-odd pages of guff. What I have right now is far from perfect, and I know there's a lot of revision to go.

I think the problem is that I stopped for too long when I thought I was finished the first time. This is part of the problem of working on something for so long that it mutates into something else over time, and with sitting on a project for so long that it's all done in my head and I don't remember what's written and not.

Either way, this weekend is DairyCon! I have an un-opened Generations Scourge that I found at a Missouri Wal*Mart this past weekend, and I've been debating whether to just open him because he's cool or to use him as the basis of a trade with some dealer in the north. I really hate to turn into one of those people I so revile, but I honestly haven't made up my mind about him, and I know he and his wave-mates have been difficult to find. My grail at the moment is Wheeljack, but who knows what else I might find?

He's not dead. He's up there fixing the sun.

I finally got around to watching All Star Superman. I've had the blu-ray combo pack since sometime right around when it was released. I loved the comics, I love Grant Morrison (gee, really? derp.), and I love animation, especially when it's about superheroes, so it was kind of a no-brainer purchase, even given my financial plight.

PREMISE AND PLOT

The story is complex without being incomprehensible. Almost from the word go, it becomes obvious that this is a Superman who lives in a heroically exaggerated Silver Age (or somewhat early Bronze Age, though that's a slippery one) universe (anyway, it's a mix of pre- and post-Crisis sensibilities any way you slice it), wherein anything and everything is possible, science is magic (lowercase m, not the uppercase variety that gives Kal such trouble), and larger than life hardly begins to describe the super-heroics on display.

The short version is that Superman gets a sort of super-cancer from tremendous over-exposure to yellow sunlight, when he rescues the first manned mission to the sun. With time running out, he must do all he can to get his affairs in order before his inevitable death. There are some vague parallels to the 12 Labors of Hercules, which might actually be more precise than I realize at the moment, given how long it's been since I read about the original 12. Suffice to say, this is a great big, huge story that would have been impossible to fit in the time span of this animated movie. I'm glad they didn't try to cram too much in, and they hit a good number of the high notes, even while some exceptionally cool scenes from the comics were lost in the adaptation.

PRODUCTION

The animation is strong. While the characters resemble something more like Peter Chung than Frank Quitely's original designs, the animators can hardly be faulted in not capturing Quitely's unique, and not entirely animation-friendly, style. Little touches in facial expressions and the way the characters move really set this above the standard, which has so far been par for the course in DC's growing library of animation titles. One key example is the way in which, much like in Frank Quitely's designs, Clark Kent is differentiated from Superman in both posture and gait, as well as things like Kent's clumsiness. It really becomes a little easier to fool oneself into believing that the two are separate people.

The voice work is superb, but that's expected in any DC animation. Ed Asner is perfect for Perry White. Christina Hendricks does a good job with Lois Lane, although I'm unfamiliar with any previous voice work she may have done. All I really know her for is jaw-dropping necklines and the bubbly goodness they just barely contain, but I digress.

The soundtrack is similarly well executed. While I couldn't hum any particular melody from the score, I never once thought that any music was inappropriate or that a cue seemed to be out of sync with the action.

LOST IN ADAPTATION


In adapting any work, there are necessary sacrifices, whether for time, clarity, or in the interest of a clean and focused narrative that marries both concerns to a satisfying end. That said, I was really disappointed with some of the scenes left out of this one. Anyone who has read the comics could probably tell you about the touching scene in which Superman comforts a would-be suicide jumper on the precipice of a skyscraper. Similarly, although it was an entire issue rather than a single page, the alternate supermen from various times and dimensions are not at all included. Of course, that story was a lot of fun for total nerd-out comic geeks, it would be a strange diversion for anyone not steeped in the kind of comic book sensibilities that really enhance this sort of Silver Age homage. I say that without any intention of pretension, although the sentiment is probably inevitable. They also left out the whole story with the Bizarros, but I know I'm in the minority that missed it.

FINAL THOUGHTS


I'm really impressed with the animated films DC have been putting out since Superman-Doomsday. I didn't particularly like that one specifically, but I like what's followed. This is exactly what should have been going on for some time now. There's already a whole universe of cool stories to adapt, so why bother trying to re-invent the wheel like so many comic-based movies have been. Give a bit of background for people who've never heard of the Green Lantern Corps, sure (although they seem to be a vanishing lot, and it's not just because of the impending movie), but let's also leave lots of room for something cool like New Frontier. This format works much better for self-contained stories like that one and All Star Superman than it would for something intrinsically connected with an ongoing title, but there's lots of those to pick from, or to adapt from at any rate.

TECHNO-RAGE!

I am a little annoyed at this blu-ray version, though. Let me say first that the fault does not lie with the disc itself. Now, I'll explain. I only bought the blu-ray because it has extra features that the DVD doesn't, like: a commentary with Bruce Timm and Grant Morrison, at least two features on Grant Morrison talking about the book and about Superman in general, bonus cartoons, a preview of the Green Lantern animated anthology Emerald Knights, and some other stuff. Luckily, my copy also came with a DVD, although it's nothing but the movie and a menu for spoken and sub-titled languages.

Now, my only means of playing blu-rays is the PS3 connected to the big TV out in the living room (with composite cables, blech. I bought some component ones, I swear, I just can't find them now, damn it). When I tried to play the disc, the system told me that I needed to update the firmware. What the hell kind of ridiculous technological witchcraft is this? I can't watch movies on my movie player without an internet connection to tell the machine how to do it's job first? Is there anything I can do without one anymore? The only connection I have when I'm in my apartment is the one I can sometimes sneak into, which the PS3 doesn't even recognize. This same thing happened when I bought StarCraft II.

I understand that many people have an internet connection available to them at all times, but there are also many who do not. I understand that updates are sometimes necessary for a machine's firmware, but what the hell does this disc do that an off-the-shelf PS3 can't handle, is my (RHETORICAL) question. The increasing pervasiveness of internet dependencies for non-internet-centric devices, or things that shouldn't (that's shouldn't, not can't) need one in order to carry out their basic purpose. The PS3 is a sophisticated blu-ray player, but at the end of the day, that's what it is: a blu-ray player, a machine that reads a disc with a blue laser, and puts pictures and sound in my TV. The only time I should need to go out to the internet from my PS3 is to download something entirely new, not to teach the thing how to do it's fucking job.

I like the way that X-Box 360 titles that need to update the firmware always seem to come packaged with the update right on the disc. Similarly, don't lots of PC titles come with the latest version of Direct X? What a novel concept: data on a disc. With all the space on a blu-ray, is there really not enough left over to include a patch to make sure my device can play what's on the rest of the disc?

Am I blowing this whole thing out of proportion? Perhaps, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I am stating my objection to this sort of thing, and I feel that my outrage is perfectly reasonable, although exaggerated for effect. I'm also not interested in hearing a lot of 'derp derp caveman want make box do thing, but box no do thing for caveman, so caveman bang rocks and yell, and no understand how new shiny box work'. What I'm saying is not that it's stupid that I would ever need an update, but that it's retarded that I would need to update for this sort of thing in this way and that I can only do so in this way. Put the shit on the disc. End of story.

Meh

I had a job interview today at an organic grocery store. It was actually the first place I applied to, immediately after leaving work on the day I got laid off. That was December, so I was surprised to get their call yesterday.

I wouldn't mind working at the place, and I think the interview went all right, but to be honest the thing that most excited me was seeing a familiar face on the way back to the office where the interview would take place. One of the guys I met in my group interview at the book store last week got a job at this place instead. The field has narrowed, and I remain cautiously optimistic, since the book store is where I would prefer to work.

After my interview, I drove to my parents' house, and got to talk with Philosopher King. He was just in for lunch between clients, but it's always nice when we get to talk.

My initial purpose was to file my taxes, as the forms had just been sitting in their manila folder since I filled them in last week. It turns out I actually made a tiny error on one of them, which the electronic version pointed out to me, but it was an error that means I'm actually getting an additional 8 dollars, so I'm good. In checking for my routing and account numbers, I also discovered that I'm getting close to my bank card points goal.

Patton Oswalt stand-up is a great soundtrack to just about anything.

Now I'm sitting here listening to the audio book of Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland, which is that rare audio book that's actually better than the printed one. Michael Stipe reads the R.E.M. lyrics, the version people with money would buy in a store or order online actually includes a PDF of the comic section. Once I become one of the self-funded once more, I might actually grab a physical copy to go with the book. Yeah, you could say I've enjoyed it. Though, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm a spaceship or a wasteland. Maybe something like a crashed spaceship in the middle of a wasteland.

Last night, I fell asleep watching the first episode of Kindred: The Embraced. It's not that it's a boring show, although it was less cool than I want it to be, but more that my circadian rhythms have been crazy anymore. I just feel like immersing myself in vampire stuff would be helpful in working on my novels. I actually watched The Lost Boys the other day, for the first time. I know, I probably would have liked it more if I'd been the same age as Corey Feldman's character when I saw it, but it was better and worse than I'd expected.

I think I've become distracted and diverted now to the point that I'm just going to leave this as is for now.

Ohshitohshitohshit!

Fantasy Flight Games has announced a fourth installment in their Warhammer 40K RPG series: BLACK CRUSADE!

Click for article

Holy shit! We've been talking about playing Chaos in one form or another since Dark Heresy, and now we can finally do it with full mechanical support for both human and Space Marine heretics! I know Valkyrie is excited and so am I!

So far not much has been revealed, given that we've got an announcement and a brief introduction to the nature of Chaos to go on, but I am definitely waiting with baited breath for what's to come. I think it's a safe bet that we'll see a second book with expanded rules for the followers of each god, along with a host of sweet vehicles and equipment. With the release of Deathwatch: Rites of Battle, we've got official mechanical support for Dreadnoughts, so it would be a shame to have to wait to field one tainted by the whispering Warp.

Hopefully we can see something like a total "bad guys" game come from this, where more xeno races become available to players as well. Yeah, there's the Ork Freebooter and Kroot Mercenary in Rogue Trader: Into the Storm, but I'm talking about support for a revival of something like GorkaMorka, where everybody can be a unique Ork character, or a Kroot, or Tau, or something other than human for once. With Dark Heresy: The Book of Judgement on the horizon, we're looking at a new way to approach the gang warfare of Necromunda, so the possibility is there.

I really want to run something other than 40k, although I have a strange drive to be the one running it, and all these cool new releases I've been reading about aren't helping. Another cool one is Only War, a supplement for Dark Heresy to take the Guardsmen career path much more literally. That's just the Dark Heresy stuff, too! Hats off to Fantasy Flight for really fleshing out these lines into full-on games unto themselves. I just wish they wouldn't tell us so far in advance when all this cool stuff is coming out.

Stuff and Nonsense

My first novel is almost a crappy first draft now. I'm over 50,000 words in, and there're only a few scenes left to write. After that, it's time for a round of revisions to tie it all together, since the scenes are written as separate documents, and the book used to be two stories before. I'm facing down the end of, at least the end of the first stage of, something I've been working on for a very long time. I can't wait to be finished with even this much.

Facing down the revision process, I know now that it's going to be a lot more work than I had originally anticipated when I began this craziness so many years ago. Of course, the story and cast and entire concept have changed in that time, and I think, for the most part, that it's something I could see on a shelf in a book store at this point. Well, it might be, once it's actually readable.

It's been really great to have so much support from Valkyrie through the whole creative process. Of course, she's been there since the very beginning of the idea, when the main characters were just modern analogues to our Dungeons and Dragons characters and their families. Looking at the world we've created in that time, it's all changed so much.

Mostly I can't wait to get the thing polished enough that the scenes read like part of a contiguous narrative, so we can finally let some other people read it for a change. So far, we've talked about it, and people seem interested, and not just in that smile-and-nod-cause-we're-friends kind of way, so I'm honestly interested to see what people think.

Once book one is out for review and revision notes, we can work on filling out and tightening up book two, and then book three. I've set the expectation that I won't send out a single query until all three are finished and ready for submission to a publisher, so reaching that point is something I'm really excited for.

The more I've been thinking about what we're working on, the more I'm beginning to think that this could actually go somewhere, might even speak to someone, and I might even find some measure of success. I don't have any major delusions about making it as a writer, but there's nothing wrong with a little hope.

I got to have a couple of nice, long conversations with my dad this weekend. Mostly we talked about writing, which is something we're both not only interested in but that occupies a lot of our time and thoughts. I don't get to talk to my dad all that much anymore (which is a whole other thing), so it was really good to have the full car ride up and back from Chicago to just talk.

The rest of the weekend was okay, too. My grandfather's funeral was standing room only. Everyone was sad, of course, but the warmth and love that everyone showed for the man was really inspiring. I think this is the most positive emotion, or emotion, period, I've seen from some of my relatives. We had dinner at a Polish buffet after, which was pretty good, but they were out of sausage at the point I was on my second go. Valkyrie tried sauerkraut, and may have found something new to eat. I told her I was proud of her for even trying.

I really need to get my taxes filed. The forms are all filled in, so I just need to make the time to refill them electronically. The only purchase I have planned for the money coming my way is a new sticker for my license plate, since I don't have much hope of actually finding the one I bought the first time. No matter what, I need to have my own vehicle again. Valkyrie has offered to let me have the car while she's at work, as long as I come to pick her up in the morning, but it would be so nice to just have my own wheels again. I really want to hang out with people more, but I hate to be a burden with asking for rides and having people take me home late at night when they really just want to sleep.

Being a burden in general is something I really want to stop. I really haven't been keeping up with looking for work, although I'm waiting on a callback from a screening interview, so that's something. I guess having got lucky so many times in the past, and then just recently getting hit hard with the reality hammer, it's been hard to stay motivated. Of course I want to find a job and have an income and not feel like a load, but the whole thing just depresses me, along with the ads for jobs I just nearly qualify for, but I know there's someone more qualified, so I don't even try. Sure it's a defeatist attitude, but more and more I just don't feel competitive and motivated enough to work in the field I thought I wanted to. I don't know if it's just my last job poisoning my perceptions of the business at large or if I really just don't want to do it anymore, of if I was really as interested as I thought I was to begin with.

I really just don't know anymore. I have the important things and people in my life to support me, but I really wish I could get back to being more than something that needs that support to keep from falling over.

In other news, Valkyrie and I seem to be preparing to be old people. We're breakfast regulars at a restaurant, we walk the mall sometimes, and we've been complaining about those damn kids since we were their age. I guess the sooner we accept the inevitable, the easier the transition when it comes.

We March for Macragge!

AND WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR!

Telemelia hooked me up with the Ultramarines movie, by way of some friendly space pirates. I just finished watching it through, and I'd have to say I enjoyed it. I was thinking about picking up the special edition DVD when I have money again (assuming, of course, that Games Workshop deigns to produce more than four copies of it outside of a locked vault miles below the surface of the Earth), but it's going to depend on the quality and breadth of the extras.

The movie itself is nothing really to complain about. It's a generic enough tale, starring some Ultramarines (who are blank-slate enough to serve as a nice gateway Chapter for the uninitiated to 40K) on a sort of mission to help out on a planet where some Imperial Fists are guarding a shrine. Our heroes are some fresh-faced recruits, or as fresh as any Ultramarine's face really can be, who've never faced real combat in their armor before. What is it about the 41st millennium that makes everybody so lumpy? The Apothecary is a gruff badass, so that's cool. I wish there'd been a tech marine, but I always wish there'd been a tech marine. There's really not a lot else to say about these guys. Proteus is impetuous, but he's a newb, so it's expected. Heipax (think I'm spelling that right) is his foil, I guess, being more favored by the Captain.

It's really no spoiler to say that as they find their way across the planet, they find that something seriously bad has gone down, and it smells like something that rhymes with Gray-oss. It turns out the Black Legion are here, and they've left all kinds of cool desecratory goodies strewn about to dress up the otherwise fairly drab, brown backgrounds. These include things like whole Imperial Fists marines crucified on rock faces, encircled by runes of darkness. It's the little things, really, that make an okay thing good.

Anyway, the Ultramarines fight some Black Legionaires and someone has a bad fall, but it's the cool kind like Gandalf and the Balrog, and, shit, the stairs outside the shrine even look like the ones in Moria. In the shrine, they meet John Hurt as a Chaplain of the Imperial Fists, which is awesome because John Hurt is a treasure who also read the big screed about the Imperium over the opening titles. The Fists have a special book, and the Ultras help them get it off-world.

I'm going to end my summary there because it's annoying as hell when reviews are just a pile of summary. Anyway, there's lots of bolter fire, chainsword ripping, demons of the Warp, and some heroic moments. There's a twist and a big climactic battle, and a nice coda piece. All in all, it was generic enough that you could show it to someone who knows nothing beyond, "Bro, those are some hella-big shoulder pads. Is he gonna, like, body-check that demon?" and they'd get on fine.

From a technical perspective, it's got an interesting look. On the one hand, it just looks like a video game cinematic from 1998, but so did Beowulf, and oh, no, that's right Beowulf was kind of stupid. No, it looks nice enough. I was reminded at points of articulated and automated versions of the table top miniatures, which was cool, if possibly unintentional. I think the game-opening cinematics for Dawn of War and Dawn of War II are still cooler, but it's not like they were working with a huge budget here. It's much easier to make something cool that lasts for a few minutes, as opposed to a feature length film. I didn't have any big problems with the way anything looked; it was just a little underwhelming at points. I got major Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within vibes from some of the mashed potato faces for whatever reason.

The sound design was totally spot-on, and really, it's an under-valued thing in smaller productions I think. Lending a tactile reality to what we see on screen goes a long way to selling something like this.

While I hope we might see something more interesting next time around, if there is a next time, I would have to say this is a good place to start from for further Games Workshop animation ventures. The Ultramarines are about as generic as you can get with space marines, so they were a good choice for an introductory feature. Here's hoping for Space Wolves and Orks, or Dark Angels and Dark Eldar in the next go-round.

OTHER CRAP I DID WHILE TRYING TO WRITE THIS REVIEW

+ Talking to Valkyrie at work on AIM, and trading Deviant Art craziness

+ Getting totally sucked into Deviant Art, and finding myself morbidly fascinated with some of the artists we found. There was one guy who, I swear, could have made a killing in the early Image-fuelled boom of the early nineties. It's like he missed it by such a small margin. Well, I guess he'd have to actually finish a drawing for once, but that's small potatoes, right?

Unemployment sucks

LIFE

I haven't written here in a long time. I really only started this account so I could comment on Telemelia's posts anyway, but I guess it's somewhere to spill my brains every now and again, so I may as well take advantage.

I have been unemployed since I got laid off on December 12th. One month prior to that, on my birthday, I was asked to scale back to part time hours. I thought, at first, that I might be able to return to my previous employer, but now I've come to find that the store is closing in a few months.

So far things haven't been horrible by any means, but I'm starting to get tired of this unemployment thing. I check online postings for graphic design jobs and the kind of customer service positions I think I could remain somewhat sane in, but most of them seem to be far away or else above my credentials. A few, I admit, are just things I really don't see myself doing, whether or not I qualify. I've submitted some applications around town, too, of course, and even had an interview, but it's all come to naught. Every other Tuesday, I sit here and certify on the unemployment website, and every time I feel a little further away from where I want to be.

BOOKS

In my newly revived free time I've been reading a lot. Usually I just read internet forums. When I could reasonably afford them, I used to read lots of comic books. It occurred to me that I really don't do a lot of book reading. Sure, I've got lots of books, but I usually pick up a short story collection or a Warhammer novel, or something, and I'll read it for a little while, but I almost inevitably lose interest or get distracted and either end up starting something else, or just going back to the internet forums and wikipedia. Lately, I'm trying to read more books. I'm not going after Chaucer or Proust or anything fancy, but it is nice sometimes to sit and read an actual book in my hands.

Patton Oswalt's Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland

The last book I read was Patton Oswalt's Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland. I started and finished in a single sitting. It's not a huge book by any means, but it does feel good to really plow through something like that (The last books I got through that quickly were the novelization of the live action G.I. Joe movie and a book-only prequel to the movie, though they were entertaining for totally different reasons).

I love Patton Oswalt's stand-up, so I figured I would like his book, and was actually surprised to see it for the first time with no prior knowledge that he'd even written it. It's not that surprising, though, because he's also a really talented writer. The English major really shows in the way he constructs sentences and throws around vocabulary, but not in a way that comes off as annoying, pretentious, or pedantic. The book is basically a collection of funny essays about things he has experienced or just thought about.

Unlike a lot of books by comedians, I was pleased to see that this was not just a prose transcription of Patton's act. What the fuck do I need a book for when I can listen to an album and get inflection and silly voices with my funny words? No, this is all original stuff. If anything, it's a nice companion piece to his stand-up because it peels away some layers and informs where he's been from a similar, but different angle than the anecdotes in his act. I would totally recommend it to anyone who likes, or has been curious about, Patton Oswalt, or anyone who likes reading intelligent comedy with an honest perspective. There's just something about Patton Oswalt that just makes sense to me. I feel like he gets it. If that doesn't make any sense, I understand, given that I haven't qualified what it is that Patton gets. Either way, it's a good book from a good comedian.

David Wong's John Dies at the End

I originally read John Dies at the End on the internet, back when that's how it was available, and we liked it that way by gum. When I saw that it was coming out in a physical form, I thought, Nah, I've already read it for free. Why the fuck would I pay for it now? I hate re-reading stuff anyway. David Wong is a fuckin' sellout. What happened to your free online book, man? Hack the planet! It's kind of retarded how many of my thought-trains end in Hack the planet, but I guess that's what happens when you watch Hackers so many times that you lose count of how many times you've seen it.

Anyway, I think I was talking about John Dies at the End. So, yeah, I read it a while ago online, and now I have a paperback copy many years later because I felt like re-reading it (WHAT?), and I have also come to realize in the intervening time that it's nice to throw money at people who make things you like, even if you'd rather get things for free (That said, I'm not deleting my music library or anything. It's a statement, not an ideology). It's been long enough since the first time I read the book that I only kind of had a shadowy memory of what went on in it. I have not been disappointed with the re-reading. Usually I refuse to re-read a book or re-watch certain movies because my brain feels the need to pre-empt everything with a reminder that it remembers seeing this before and that I'm wasting my time. That said, JDatE is a book worth re-reading because it's also different to hold it in your hands than to read on a monitor.

Jesus, this is really disorganized. I don't even know what the fuck I'm driving at at this point. "Write like you talk," my ass. Whatever, if you're reading this, you know who I am, and this should come as no surprise.

John Dies at the End is the story of Dave, the narrator, Dave's friend John, and a dog named Molly. Dave is pretty much a dude. He has some nerdy hobbies, but he's mostly a relatable-y blank slate. I keep picturing him as the lead from Undeclared (Jay Baruchel) for some reason. John is a crazy dude who exemplifies what I think I hoped I could be after high school. I don't know who he looks like, but he has wild hair and a beard in my mind. Dave and John get into all kinds of weird supernatural situations, sometimes brought on by their association with Molly. I guess it's something like Ghostbusters, Phantasm, Shaun of the Dead, and Grant Morrison's Invisibles all got hammered, stayed up listening to Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, and popped out a weird-ass composite baby that liked fart jokes and delightfully awful puns. I'm reminded vaguely of what I've seen and heard from Telemelia about Marble Hornets, although I've never really checked it out myself. I guess having practically ground-floored the origins of S********n (censored for the sake of Telemelia's sleep schedule) kind of deflates the appeal a bit, but I'll probably check into it sometime.

Anyway, I think I've lost any real semblance of a coherent review at this point, so I leave it at, "John Dies at the End is a totally awesome book that you should read if you are into any of the things I have mentioned in describing it".

Clive Barker's Imajica

Prior to JDatE, I read Clive Barker's Imajica, but that book was like 800 pages, so I'll spare you the full review. It was good, but not great. Just about everyone had a dumb or boring name, but the world was generally more interesting than the what people were doing, so I guess it balanced out?

Anyway, I've got to go wake Valkyrie from the sleep of Winters or something. Come to think of it, I'm not sure anyone will even know I've put this here. Whatever.