EleCivil

The Pirate Guys (inventors of TLAP Day) wrote a book called "Pirattitude". It's great. I reccomend it to anyone interested in living an alternative (read: pirate) lifestyle.

Titles don't work when you make as little sense as this. As an arachnophobic agoraphobe, my two biggest fears in the world are spiders and humans, but not necessarily in that order. If I had to choose between being locked in a room full of spiders or a room full of people, though, I'd probably take the spiders. After all, not only is it more socially acceptable to kill spiders rather than people, but it's also a lot easier. I suppose it would be possible to kill a person with nothing but my shoe or a rolled-up newspaper, but it would take a lot longer, and the other people in the room would probably stop me before I got even halfway there. Which brings me to my job. My company has people working all kinds of places in all kinds of states, ranging from lumber yards in Virginia to skyscrapers full of lawyers in Michigan. After trying out a few different kinds of sites (a convent, a warehouse, a parking lot, an apartment building, etc.) I finally settled on a small trucking company. No people - completely deserted - but tons of spiders. I could deal with that - I just always brought along a copy of Steven King's book "The Tommyknockers". Whenever a spider came close, I'd introduce them to the mainstream horror genre with a mighty King Swing ™. Splattering spiders, I might add, it the best possible use for a copy of "The Tommyknockers" - beats the hell out of reading it. I just found out that my small, independent trucking company is being bought out by FedEx National. This means a lot more money for the owners, more work and less money for the drivers, and an end to my "Tons of spiders, but at least there's no people" compromise. Now, there's going to be spiders AND people. Which is almost as bad as working next to Spiderman. Sure, he's good at stopping runaway trains, but come on - a spider, AND a man? Screw you, Stan Lee. It's like you were specifically trying to get to me. --- The above was just an experiment to see what would happen if I typed for ten minutes without hitting backspace. Only two more days until TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY. The greatest holiday in the history of holidays. I've got my pirate suit ready to go. Just the other day, my friend's little sister came over, because she wanted to play with my cat. She asked me "Why do you have so many skulls in your room?", referring to all the Jolly Roger flags that I've got hanging. I replied, "I'm a pirate." She gave me this awestruck look and said "Really? You were born a pirate?" I nodded. "Aye. I was flying the black flag way before Johnny Depp made it cool." Then, I switched to a gravely pirate accent and added "I also download music without the consent of the recording industry and completely disregard end-user license agreements, m'lass." She didn't get that part, so I gave her a stick of gum. Arrrrr. "We have no nation but the sea, no creed but that we will live free! We'll loot and burn all that we can that's run by a dishonest man. Their end is near, and there is no denying...when they see the black flag flying!" -"Black Flag Flying" by David Rovics

Heh - it's the exact opposite with me. My keyboard says "enter", but I always refer to it as "return", since I was raised on typewriters.

If you want to keep a character bible (which I highly recommend), do it now - it's a lot easier to start one when you're three chapters in than it is when you're ten chapters in, and have already dropped ten chapters' worth of subtle references to appearances, quirks, etc. One of the worst things is when you're far along in a story and all of a sudden think "Wait - did I give this one a last name, yet? What about eye color, did I mention that? It wasn't important then, but now..." and have to pick through all your chapters looking for any passing reference that you might have made. I like to keep a Word document open with all the characters, their appearances, likes/dislikes, relationship to other characters, even page/chapter references to important scenes - that way, I can make updates to it as I go. Helps so much when it comes to continuity.

The graphic is from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (a PS2 game). It's a "prinny" - an undead exploding penguin/demon, known mostly for ending each sentence with the term "dood!".

Heist A friend of mine lives in his car, in a parking lot that's about five minutes from my place. Well, a couple days ago, his car was stolen. Which means that, when it comes down to it, his house was stolen. So he's been living here for the last day or two, claiming the floor in my room. Well, yesterday, we found out the location of his car. It turns out his parents had stolen it, using some spare keys that he had given them years earlier. It was parked in front of his mom's house a couple of cities to the south. Apparently, they stole the car in order to take away his options for independent living and force him to live with his dad. Now, if he was younger, I would probably side with his parents...but he's twenty. He has a job, and could be living in an apartment if he wanted to, but he just prefers his car. Since he's a legal adult, that's his choice to make. So, my roommate and I found ourselves driving him a couple hours south, under cover of darkness, to steal back his car. This made me think about my uncle. My uncle only gave me two pieces of advice: Never play cards with a man whose name ends in "y", and never take an intellectual along on a heist. I questioned both of these at the time, asking what was so bad about smart guys and guys with "-y" names. The first, he said, was because guys with a "y" at the end of their name are more likely to go by epithets like "Slick" or "Big" or the like, and that the last thing you want to find out when you're down five hundred bucks is that you've been slappin' jacks with "Smooth Jimmy Two-Shakes" or "Little Willy One-Thumb". That made sense. The intellectual business was a bit confusing to me. After all, I asked, isn't it better to have a smart guy with you to think of a way out of a jam? "Absolutely not," He said. "When you're doing something as stupid as robbing a bank, the last thing you need is someone smart around to let you know how stupid it is." I always kind of doubted his authority on that matter, though. He wasn't in trouble for robbing a bank; he was in trouble for having about two thousand parking tickets and for ramming his '93 Taurus through a lot barricade when the attendant refused to let him out without paying. He was no big-shot criminal, just a motorist with a penchant for parallel parking four feet from the curb and a reckless disregard for handicap-only signs. I never had the guts to tell him that much, of course. So I looked around the car - no one with a "-y" name, no "big" or "slick" nicknames. So far, so good. Then, I realized - out of this group, I was "the intellectual one". I was the only one in the car who hadn't dropped out of college, the only one who read books and had a philosophy on life that didn?t revolve around pot and Doritos. Yes, if asked to pick an "intellectual one" out of our group, most people would point at me. And that was no good at all. So, I thought, how do I remove any hint of intellectualism from myself in order to make this mission a success? It hit me: The Three Stooges. I pulled over at the next grocery store and purchased a pie tin and a bottle of generic canned whipped cream. I handed these to my currently car-less friend. ?What are these for?? ?Obviously,? I said, ?If we get spotted, we?ll have to distract them while you get your car back. And nothing?s more distracting than a face full of dairy and aluminum.? ?Dude, I?m not going to hit my mom with a pie. This is the dumbest idea ever.? Mission accomplished. "Tonight, these streets belong to us, and we've been doing this for years, but soon that will be different. Tonight, we'll liberate them. Tonight, we'll liberate ourselves!" -"Parking Lot Punks Rule" by the Gainsville Liberation Orchestra

Putting a Title Here Might Look Good A friend of mine describes personal blogging as, elegantly enough, "the text equivalent of peeing on the internet itself". This, of course, made me want to give it a try. This post is basically here for me to get more familiar with the system and see what happens when I play around with the settings. Images work like this: Aye...that was easy enough. Looks like it's just bbcode. Anyway, I'll be back to post something more interesting later. Well, I can't guarantee it'll be interesting...but it'll be longer.

I already don't support Walmart...but now the AFA's going to take credit for it? This sucks.

Actually, I agree - it's not a good comparison. It comes up a lot because of the author's often-publicized dislike of the Narnia series - he's written essays and done interviews where he's called the Narnia books "racist", "misogynistic", and "life-hating". They share a lot of elements - talking animals, parallel worlds, girls hiding in wardrobes, themes about growing up and making moral choices...but they're completely different.

I love these books. They aren't the typical "I-wish-I-was-Tolkien" fantasy books. I've heard it compared to Narnia a lot (specifically as "Narnia for atheists"), but it strays from the more traditional fantasy/fairy-tale elements that Narnia had. I hope they do a good job with the movie. I heard rumors that they were going to cut out references to god/religion to make it more marketable in the US (since it doesn't exactly portray religion in a less-than-evil light). This is encouraging, though, because About a Boy was a really good book-to-movie adaptation.

Very cool. I'll second James's comment about the white space between paragraphs/speakers, but other than that, I love it. You got me interested in all these characters in a rather short time, which is awesome. Coincidentally, I just got done reading a book where one of the female characters had a sexual attraction to Jesus/crucifiction fetish. Anyway, once again, this is great.

Music's definitely an inspiration for me. I got the nerve to write L&L after spending hours every day walking through the woods, listening to the same album on repeat over and over again (Defiance Ohio - "Share What Ya Got"). I've got a 23-song playlist that I listen to while writing Laika that follows the mood and even certain events of the story pretty well. I actually put this together after plotting out the story, but hearing it always gets me in a writing mood. I'll post it if anybody's interested. The story I've got planned next, once Laika's done, was inspired by walking around while listening to Rosa's album "I Mississippi You". Perfect walking around music.

The following was posted on the website for the band "Bomb the Music Industry": So, yeah. As of now, the hotline has 12 days left to get the money together to remain in business. http://www.save1800suicide.org/

This is really good! If you decide to post more, I'll definitely follow it.

I've only shouted "Hip hip hooray" ONCE. Never again, after all those weirded-out looks from everybody else on that elevator. Though, now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't the shouting that had them weirded out... Nah. Heheh, good poem. Love the title, too.

Yep. That other project's done, by the way. I went to ten hour long indie/twee-pop/cuddlecore/punk show the other day. One of the performers jumped off of the stage, ran into the crowd and hugged me. He had us all take our shoes off and throw them into a "shoe liberation pile" (exposing my mismatched socks), then layed down to start a random cuddle-pile in the middle of the dance floor. I juggled between sets for tips - I kept enough to buy an "I Love to Read" button from one of the Distro booths. After all of that, I'm really in the mood to write more of Laika, so expect the next chapter pretty soon.

Steven King, giving advise about how to end a book? His last book didn't even have an ending! And, come on - this is the guy who put a page-long "You shouldn't read the end of this book, because it'll disappoint you" disclaimer before the last chapter of The Dark Tower. Heheh...don't mind me. I love Steven King books, but can't stand the way he ends them. Back on topic, though, I hope she doesn't kill off Harry.

Oh man, I was so glad to see this! I've been waiting for more DC for...well, since the last one. Awesome, TR!

Very cool story. I liked it a lot.

Dude, thank you. I really appreciate the effort you put into this site and this forum. I'm so glad you decided to keep the forums open. If there's anything I can do to help out, let me know - this site means a lot to me, and I'll do whatever it takes to keep it going strong. Thanks again.

Back on Labor Day? Cool. I love these forums. ...When's Labor Day, again? September? Man, I need to buy a calendar.

I don't speak Latin, but I knew a librarian with an "In Libris Libertas" tattoo. She told me it translated to "In books, freedom" or "There is freedom in books", depending on how strictly you wanted to translate.

Hi, Ubik - glad to have you here. New chapter's been sent. There's probably going to be a bit of a delay for the next one, though - I'm writing the next chapter of Comicality's "Lost in Shadow" round robin project (http://comicality.gayauthors.org/gfd/lost.html), so I'll be busy with that for a while.

Haha, awesome. Poor fish, though. Wonder if he saw it coming. "Oh, don't tell me he's pumping iron on webcam again. Hey, he's getting kind of close to the tank. Man, I hope he doesn't...no, no way would he-" *crash* "Ah, air! My only weakness!"

This is dedicated to everything I wrote in middle school. [This Title Has More Words Than It Deserves And None Of Them Relate To The Content] Things sound more profound When formatted in haiku: Behold, pretension! Bastardized Latin Will give it authority: Ego, praetension! Something self-loathing To be edgy and moving: Curse my pretensions! Add in a swear word For the sake of offending: Fuck, I?m pretentious! Re-align the text To make it more intriguing: ........................And more.................................pretentious. But don?t follow rules, Break the established pattern: I?m much too pretentious to follow the standard form of haiku! How do you like that, tradition?