The Screw

Search Terms

2012-02-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

That awkward moment when some traffic comes to your blog from the search terms "screw my wife" and "the best screw of all time".

Sigh.

Maybe I should consider a name change? Yay or nay?

Mahalo.

The AMAZING Spider-Man

2012-02-12T01:36:00.000-08:00

So I just had my second film nerdgasm of the week. Hopefully those of you keeping track of the upcoming superhero films are aware of the new Spiderman adaptation, The Amazing Spider-Man directed by the aptly named Marc Webb. If you are not then you must immediately check out the trailer.

Webb is a fairly unknown director, but you'd recognize his name if you've seen (500) Days of Summer or the video clip to Green Day's "Waiting".

Now, when I first heard tell of a new Spiderman film being made, I was skeptical. Skeptical because we had had three mediocre films prior to this in an attempt at a reboot of the franchise. Now, director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) did a pretty good job with the first film - the origin story, of course - and Tobey Maguire did a fairly good job as nerd Peter Parker. Strangely, this does not equate to a great Spiderman.

The second film was sub-par and the third was an insult - especially to those legion of us who couldn't wait to see Venom finally on screen.

Because of all of this and more I was wary of the (gritty) rebooting of a franchise that was barely a decade old. Of course, it didn't help that there were rumours that Twilight star Robert Pattinson would be taking over Maguire's role as Peter Parker.

With the new trailer, however, there is hope. The Social Network's Andrew Garfield is playing the titular character, with Emma Stone playing his first love - not redhead Mary-Jane but blonde Gwen Stacy. That's right, folks, they're sticking to the comics!

The film seems to be taking its source material very seriously, and I couldn't be happier. And yes, they are making the web-slinging a result of the Parker-made web shooters - not from glands on his wrists! Hurray! Accuracy!

Finally, I am looking forward to Spiderman again!

Mahalo.

Robert Kirkman vs. Tony Moore Over Walking Dead

2012-02-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

So here it is, the newest insanity to come out of the film news press; artist Tony Moore is suing former collaborator and childhood friend Robert Kirkman over proceeds and royalties for The Walking Dead. Moore is claiming that he was "swindled" by Kirkman into signing over his interest in The Walking Dead TV series and now isn't receiving any royalties.

Let's ignore the fact that Moore didn't believe that the TV series would take off and so willingly put forward the contract he is now in to give Kirkman the rights to the show and its proceeds. Moore also stopped drawing, inking and grey-toning the comic book series after issue SIX, being replaced by artist Charlie Adlard (who continues to do the series). Sure, Moore continues to do the covers and is owed for this work, but he has not been "swindled" out of anything.

Kirkman told the Hollywood Reporter:

The lawsuit is ridiculous, we each had legal representation seven years ago and now he is violating the same contract he initiated and approved and he wants to misrepresent the fees he was paid and continues to be paid for the work he was hired to do. Tony regularly receives payment for the work he did as penciler, inker and for gray tones on the first six issues of The Walking Dead comic series and he receives royalties for the TV show, to assert otherwise is simply incorrect.

Kirkman is also, let's not forget, the creator of the series - as all the inside comic-book credits point out - and Moore as responsible for "penciler, inker, gray tones".

So, the story seems to be that the creator of the franchise was approached about making a TV show out of his comic book. The artist and collaborator didn't believe in the project and put forward the contract within which they are currently bound - in which he does receive royalties from the TV show. The show then becomes a sensation and the creator is shot forward into fame and fortune and the artist feels he was swindled.

I'm sorry, but that is simply ridiculous. I cannot believe someone with Moore's talent and reputation would have the gall to put forward such a lawsuit and damage himself and Kirkman with the claims he is making. Face it, Moore, you signed away your rights - with legal council present for both you and Kirkman, on a contract you agreed on - and now that it's popular, you want your piece of the pie. Grow up.

Mahalo.

OK GO - New Undisputed Masters of the Video Clip

2012-02-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

It's likely that a lot of you have not heard of the band OK GO. What is likely, however, is that you have seen their video clips. No, really. Trust me, you have seen this video clip for their song "Here it Goes Again". I'll give you a hint, it has treadmills in it.

If you haven't seen that one, odds are you've probably seen this one for the song "This too Shall Pass" with the Rube Goldberg machine. Or maybe you've even seen their version of the Muppet Show theme!

If you haven't seen any of those, it's still possible that you've seen this clip, for their new song "Needing/Getting".

And really, if you haven't seen any of those, where have you been the past few years? Clearly not on YouTube.

The beauty of OK GO's video clips is clear and I want to go so far as to say that they are the new masters of the video clip art-form, surpassing the previous masters Green Day - who kind of dropped the ball with "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Don't get me wrong, I love the band, but that clip was not very good.

OK GO have taken the video clip back to its origins as a piece of video art. There is nary a sign of the band playing their songs because we as an audience know that they have to lipsync anyway, so why bother? They have created performance pieces with their videos that eclipse most others, doing something newer instead of story clips or overly post-modern jobs.

I congratulate this band on not only some incredibly catchy and awesome tunes, but for their constant construction of intricate and fantastic video clips. Now, okay, go! Watch!

Mahalo.

You Sunk Battleship

2012-02-11T21:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you guys have seen this, but I think you should. Not because it looks good, but because it looks so damn stupid.

That is the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of the game Battleship by Hasbro. No, I'm not kidding and I wish I was. Surprisingly, no, it isn't directed by Michael Bay, but by Peter Berg - director of the unfortunately unimpressive film Hancock.

Is this really happening? And if so, why? I think Battleship is as unfilmable a game as you can get besides Monopoly, and even that has (substantiated) rumours of a film adaptation by Ridley freaking Scott. Yes, the guy who gave us Gladiator.

Looking at the trailer for Battleship, it frightens me that there are such talents as Alexander Skarsgård, Liam Neeson and Peter MacNicol. Liam Neeson doesn't need an IMDB link, you all know who he is! I mean, I know actors have to do some films for fun, but really? The Battleship movie? Come on. It just looks like a poor man's Transformers - and even those films weren't very good!

Mahalo.

The Avengers Coming at us with A Vengeance!

2012-02-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

It's very likely that anyone out there remotely interested in superheroes, nerd culture or film will have seen the latest trailer for the upcoming Joss Whedon production of The Avengers.

Seriously, does this movie not look fantastic? Robert Downey Jr. is beyond dreamy.

Though I was incredibly disappointed to hear that Edward Norton was being replaced by Mark Ruffalo for the role of Bruce Banner some time ago, I have to say that Ruffalo really looks like he is going to step up to the plate. I think that he'll be able to pull off the same awkward and brooding scientist that Norton produced and that original actor Eric Bana failed to do.

Mahalo.

Background for D&D Character

2012-02-08T17:41:00.000-08:00

The Diary of Teera von Bloodmoon

Well that’s it, my life is over. Against mybetter council – and my desires – Humphrey’s mission to go to the FurthestContinents has been approved. Of course, that means dutiful wife must attend him – across the world, awayfrom everything! And I can’t bring my gowns! He assures me everything will befine, that nothing could happen to one of her majesty’s finest ships! I do sodislike boats.

(illegible,water-damaged entries)

I hate boats, I hate boats, I hate boats, IHATE BOATS!

Well, I was sick over the side once more.The mean laughed at me. Again. I also believe they are making crude eyes at me.Leering. Always leering, wanting. I stay in my cabin mostly. Away from theruffians. The swordmaster, Phinnius, he’s the leeriest.

10/

Humphrey arranged for us to have acandlelit dinner on the bough this evening. It’s the first patch of calm waterwe’ve had since our first week. We’ve been out here for 10 weeks!

Humphrey says we’re about a quarter of theway there!

Wretchedness!

(pagesremoved)

14/

The worst finally happened! It’s been dayssince it happened and I’m only now able to write it down – my hands havefinally ceased their trembling.

It was as if he couldn’t steer the shipanymore. It just started careening off to the side, like we’d hit a whirlpool.

“Make it stop!” I remember screaming,begging. “Bring us around!”

“I can’t!” he shouted. “It’s like she’ssteering herself!”

It was then that the island came into viewout of the mist. A tall, desert thing. A mountain lay off in the distance,around the other side, smoke firing up into the sky from all around it.

We crashed into it, the rocks jarring,splintering, us to a stop and sending most of the crew overboard and down ontothe beach.

The natives were on them so quickly,murdering them, blood was everywhere.

It was like they were waiting for us.

They started hunting us. Humphrey stoodbetween a group of them and I long enough for Phinnius to help me escape. Ifear the worst for Humphrey. Dearest, dearest man.

I’m holed up in a cave near some fruittrees with Phinnius. There was a village with some abandoned buildings not faroff, but we knew better than to stay there.

He tells me to be quiet most of the time.I’m happy to oblige.

(sketchesof the island trees, mostly of the fruit, the bats.)

15/

Phinnius went scouting today, to find morecrew from the ship. He found the ship burned. He found the bodies gone. Therewas evidence of fires and cooked meat. Some of them still had their boots on,in the ash pits.

16/

It’s been two weeks since Phinnius foundthe wreckage. He managed to salvage some pole arms and he’s been teaching me touse them. Just in case. I’m weak and can barely swing it, but I practice forhours when he goes scouting for food.

17/

I KILLED ONE!

One came upon our camp and I murderedhim!

It was exhilarating!

Phinnius made wine from fruit. Phinnius israther handsome.

(pagecovered in blood. Entries long faded away)

20/

We went scouting together. He thought Ishould know where the food comes from. Just in case. Him and his “just incases”…

Yes, we found their camp.

They had heads on pikes. One of them Irecognized.

Humphrey’s.

Well, I recognized the necklace, tie, hat andrings that were on or around the rotting head. Poor Humphrey.

(pagescovered in dirt or torn or covered in sketches)

21/

My god, I had forgotten about this journal!

Phinnius is dead. The cannibals raided ourcamp and caught him.

I killed a few but I had to retreat.

I could hear his screams in the night fromtheir camp as they ate him alive.

Poor Phinnius.

I’ve lost two men now to these inhumanbastards – brutes! Wretches! Devils!

That was 6 months ago, now.

I’m supremely good with my pole arm now. Phinniuswould be proud.

Hubert might not be.

Humphrey, sorry.

Gods it’s been too long. What another lifeI lived.

I fashioned a tree home. If a cannibalstrays by here, I murder him.

Or her.

It does not matter what they are.

They are monsters.

(entriesstop here. It is obvious that this last entry is at least a year old.)

TV Killed the Movie Star

2012-02-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

At least, for the time being.

It is unlikely that it has gone completely unnoticed how much amazing television has been cropping up within the last ten years. I mean, there's always been good TV, don't get me wrong, but it seems that with increasing budgets for TV - especially HBO productions - TV has only been getting better and better.

There was a time not too long ago that being called a "television actor" was a derogatory term amongst actors. Everyone wanted to make it big on the Silver Screen, be a movie star, beloved the world over on that giant screen with those plush seats. Sure, there was a time when being a film star was disregarded by theatre actors, but that changed. And so, too, I think the time of the Television Actor as a second class citizen.

Shows like Six Feet Under seemed to mark a new trend that being in a television series was not a bad thing at all, compared to their film star counterparts. This time saw the rise of a shows that seemed more like a collection of films, a series of moments that could be more deeply explored due to their increased time frame. The medium allowed for more character development, longer and deeper plot lines and more exploration of the world these characters exist in.

It isn't hard for me to name, off the top of my head, shows that fall into this category of A Series of Films, shows like Dexter, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Castle, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, shows that you feel you must own on DVD to watch and rewatch. These shows become an obsession, something to be spoken about, speculated about. And that's not even mentioning series that have finished like Lost and Detroit 1-8-7. And, yes, Firefly, of course.

Even shows that are just starting like Boss, Luck, Homeland and, in a more pulpy sense, Spartacus and American Horror Story are taking over the airwaves and capturing us with film-like episodes.

This doesn't even speak to the quality of actor who are now taking part in these. It seemed to start in the late 90s with first Michael J. Fox and then Charlie Sheen being the leads in Spin City but then big actors becoming "TV actors" was still a fall from grace in a sense. What I truly believe was the turning point was twofold: Tim Roth on Lie to Me and shortly after Jeff Goldblum on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. With these two big-name actors moving to television, it was clear that was a revolution. And people noticed. Even Laurence Fishburne joined the cast of CSI.

Then it started becoming obvious the talent that lay in these television actors - Michael C. Hall (from both Six Feet Under and Dexter), Michael Pitt (Boardwalk Empire), Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Nathan Fillion (Castle) and that's only naming a few.

I haven't even mentioned the household names like Steve Buschemi in Boardwalk Empire, Kelsey Grammar in Boss, Sean Bean in Game of Thrones and John Hannah in Spartacus.

It seems like the prejudice towards being a television actor is over and people are starting to realize that it's not a fate worse than dearth. In fact, it seems to be better than being a film actor seeing as how poor the quality of films have been lately. This truly is the Golden Age of Television.

Mahalo.

A Quick Note on Video Game Music

2012-01-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

In "Unsung Heroes" - and once more in this post - I noted some excellent soundtracks and how fun it is to listen to them even outside of the gaming atmosphere.

I just want to take the time to note two more soundtracks that are totally worth noticing and giving a listen to. And they're both from Rockstar Games.

The first is the slightly eerie and intriguing soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, a zombies and cowboys epic. The music is the right mix of western and zombie movie and worth giving a listen - especially since the soundtrack is a huge part of both of those cinematic genres.

The second is L.A. Noire, a visually stunning and fun game set in 1947. So, as you can imagine, the music is jazzy-noir and very of the time. Noir, too, is a genre wherein the music is a radically important part of the cinema, so this faithful soundtrack is definitely worth it for lovers of jazz, noir and video-gaming.

Mahalo.

Xbox "720" Rumours

2012-01-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Huffington Post, IGN, Kotaku and a few other gaming sources, some rumours about the next generation Xbox - the "720" (not what it will be called, but it is what people have dubbed it for the moment) - are starting to be solidified.

There are a couple that are intriguing, but the most argued over seems to be the release date. The most recent guess, according to the aforementioned sites, seems to be in the late quarter of 2013. Sure this is a year after Nintendo releases it's new Wii U later this year, but that's no biggie.
This means we have a full year to enjoy our current games before, basically, we never play them again and use only things for the new console - which is, unfortunately, really seems to be how all this ends up working.

Another intriguing development, according to a Kotaku insider, is that the new console will come equipped with a Blu-Ray player and the "Kinect 2", a new version of the motion-detector gaming add-on for Xbox 360. It's said that it will have an on-board processor that "would enable a new Kinect to more effectively detect users' motions". So, you know, be better at doing what it's supposed to do. Good news. Not that the original Kinect is bad, mind new, but it is limited.

Numbers and letters concerning the new consoles power are also being thrown around, some saying that the "720" will be 6 times more powerful than the 360, with Kotaku's source saying that that's "the right ballpark and that Microsoft is estimating they might even get to 8x the Xbox 360". 8 times the power. The thing is already pretty damn powerful, I can only imagine what's coming next! And, knowing Xboxes (Xboxs? Xboxi?) as I do, the size of the power supply that comes with it with need its own liquid cooling system.

It is also said that the processor is being based off the Radeon HD 6670, which is currently released, which asks the question of whether the graphics on the machine will be out of date before it even hits the market. I have to trust the team at Microsoft that they know what they're doing, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Here's hoping they address that issue instead and be more like, you know, every other home electronic device currently on the market and won't need an external power supply at all. I have to tip my hat to Sony on this one in making an amazingly powerful and advanced gaming machine - with arguably better graphics than the 360 - that does not require an external power supply have the size of the console itself. Kudos.

By far the biggest development, however, has to be the fact that a purportedly reputable source from within Microsoft has said that they are working on software (or maybe its hardware, it's unclear) that will prevent the console from playing used games. This would kill business like Game Stop and reduce revenue from your local game stores like Game, JB Hi-Fi and EB. They are "unsure how they will implement the system" but Luke Plunkett of Kotaku seems to find that he understands the movement towards this kind of technology.

"In fact, if it ends up being correct, it makes total sense. Why? Over the past year we’ve seen developers, publishers and then even platform holders like Sony embrace the idea of the “online pass”, a concept designed to either prevent game trade-ins or get more money out of those skipping new purchases," he writes.

"It’s a movement that, as time goes on, will only pick up steam. And now that nearly all major publishers are on-board with the idea in one form or another, the next logical step is to embed the practice in gaming hardware."

While he's right, it would severely limit your ability to lend your games to friends and family or any of the behaviours that gamers have so embraced in our culture.

Wired's Chris Kohler says it's possible that the games will be a hybrid of the disk, which will contain the content and likely a unique access code, and downloadable, one-user-only games like for phones and tablets.

No one knows for certain that any of this is spot on but, as the speculation of commenters is being slowly confirmed in one way or another by their contacts in the industry, I am certain that what is true is that when the "720" does come out, it will be an entirely new gaming experience to what we are used to now.

Mahalo.

Newt Gingrich: A Lizard in a Suit

2012-01-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

I know this is straying from my usual light entertainment talk, but this is just blood-angering. According to a recent Huffington Post article, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich compared gay marriage to paganism. Here is the quote:

"It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization."

Yeah, what? This coming from a guy with "three marriages and repeated infidelity under his belt"? To quote his favourite book -

"Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4)

Okay, so adultery is bad. Thanks bible. Wait, it's one of the TEN COMMANDMENTS. Okay. So, Newt is obviously a very trustworthy commentator on marriage.

There's always this gem from the Old Testament:

"If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die, the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away the evil from Israel." (Deuteronomy, Chapter 22:22)

But, okay, maybe he didn't sleep with a married woman - though I am sure that the reverse applies (if a married man sleeps with a woman) - and maybe he doesn't take stock in the Old Testament books, which would be weird, but then there mustn't be anything on marriage in the New Testament other than the above quote from Hebrews, right? Oh, wait,

"And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”(Matthew 19:19).

So, that's pretty clear, whoever divorces a wife - who hasn't committed adultery - is committing adultery themselves.

So, so far, Newt is a pretty bad source for how marriage should be.

I'm not going to do a whole piece on gay marriage in the Bible, because this website - Christian Gays - has done a study for it already, examining different quotes from a whole range of books. If you like, there is also this article from the Huffington Post covering what the Bible actually says about gay marriage.

I'm not religious and would consider myself secular - a Jewish Humanist, really - but even I know that Jesus' message seems to be "love everyone and don't be a dick". Also, who's business is it who you marry, as long as you love each other? It's no one's business but your own, that's who. It's no one's business but your own what you do in the bedroom, either. You can share it if you want, though. Most of us are up for the stories.

And those of you who aren't and are offended by such things? Don't be a jerk and start raining damnation and hell on people - even (especially?) if you think you're "saving" them (ProTip: Most people will become more averse to it this way. No one ever found religion by having a friend yell at them for telling a sexy story) - just say, "I'm sorry, I'm not comfortable with this conversation topic" and either walk away or your friends will be understanding.

Mahalo.

New Look!

2012-01-24T16:18:00.000-08:00

...like you even noticed.

I kid! I kid 'coz I love! Of course you noticed the brand spankin' new, shiny look to my blog!

I figured it was time for a change. Hopefully for the better. If'n you like, you can let me know what you think of it. Or not, whatever, your choice.

Really, I just wanted this blog to stop looking so much like a "blog" and more like a "website". Well, we'll see. Time will tell. Cliché, etc.

Wow, an exciting first post on the new look - keep going, man, you'll be holding people off with THIS kinda content!

Mahalo.

Another Note on Video Game Music

2012-01-23T18:43:00.000-08:00

I know I mentioned it briefly in "Unsung Heroes" but I think it deserves further elaboration on just how amazing the Halo soundtrack really is.

With an amazingly written orchestral theme, drumming and the use of Gregorian chanting, Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori have created, throughout the suite of games, a fantastic atmosphere and just truly stunning music using real instruments and synthesized sounds.

Also, probably unintentionally as it's meant for an adventuring, game-based atmosphere, the music is exceptional to work to. Seriously, give it a try.

Mahalo.

Borderlands 2? Yes F#$%ing Please!

2012-01-23T16:27:00.000-08:00

When I play a video game, there are certain experiences that I look for. I want to be greeted with something visually enticing, preferably something new and, in its own way, beautiful. There needs to be a decent storyline, or at the very least, if its a mission-based game, the concepts behind each mission needs to be decent. Clever characters, well-written dialogue and encapsulating atmosphere need to abound. Borderlands was the perfect offering on that alter of pretty high expectations. It exceeded every single one of my expectations for both first person shooters and role-playing games.

The original Borderlands "trailers" were short films featuring one of our little robot friends from the original Borderlands, the Claptrap. He is acting as a director and host for little informative videos on the making of Borderlands. Here are two of them. Not really kid-appropriate, but highly entertaining and very much in the feel of the original.

So, when I tell you I'm excited about Borderlands 2, you know this is serious.

Besides the official world premiere teaser, there is some leaked gameplay footage from what appears to be the E3 official premiere announcement. The game promises to bring back the vicious insanity of the enemies, the same comic-like cel-shading graphic style and the same dark variety of violent humour. Though, the enemies - and NPCs (non-player characters) - are apparently going to be smarter, with the ability to flank and work as a team. The Psychos, Gearbox vice president Steve Gibson says, will still have the same attitude, "Wow that's a gun! I want my face in front of it."

The links provided have all the information I could find that is currently available about the upcoming title, which is rumoured to be released in September this year.

Oh, and if you are so inclined, the game can be pre-ordered from the official website. You're welcome.

Mahalo.

Half-Life News and Blues

2012-01-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

Odds are, if you are a fan of well-scripted, story-driven games, first person shooters or really have a love for Valve games (who doesn't? Seriously), you have played Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodic releases, titled of course Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two. Also likely is that you, like everyone else who has played these games, wants to see the series come to a conclusion in the long-anticipated Episode Three, which was announced way back in 2006, supposedly to finish "a trilogy...that will conclude by Christmas of 2007."

Well Valve Boss, Gabe Newell, has recently teased that we should be seeing an Episode Three sometimes pretty soon. Well, we certainly hope so, after it turns out that the Valve employee with the Half-Life 3 t-shirt was only trolling, with comments being made by Cheft from Valve that, "there has been no directive from Gabe [Newell] to leak anything. That is all false."

Let's hope Episode Three comes out soon, because we've all been away from the Half-Life world for too long! No release date has been set, though. Alas.

Mahalo.

The Muppets Do It Again!

2012-01-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the pleasure of watching the new Muppets flick, co-written, co-executive produced and starring Jason Segel. First, let me say, I never thought that at my age that a Muppets movie would be able to make a tear roll down my cheek. I was sorely mistaken in thinking that.

The movie centres around Gary (Segel) and new Muppet Walter (voiced by Peter Linz). Gary wants to take his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) to LA for their anniversary and they invite Walter with them to go and see the old Muppet Studios. When they find it in disrepair and an evil oil magnate, Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), buying up the plot to tear it down, they decide to seek out Kermit and bring the gang back together for one last show to try and raise money to keep the plot. Hilarity, insanity and self-referential humour ensues!

Segel was seemingly born to play this role. With his enormous smile, happy eyes and a permanent look of childlike wonder on his face, it's amazing how well he seeped into the Muppet universe. Adams, too, was astounding her role, being a beautiful, Smalltown, America kind of girl and performing some wonderful songs alone and with the occasional Muppet.

As is the custom with Muppet films, celebrity cameos abound! Alan Arkin, Whoopi Goldberg, Neil Patrick Harris and Bill Cobbs to name a few. I won't spoil them all for you!

If you ever loved the Muppets as a kid or now, you will very much enjoy this trip down nostalgia lane, with its fresh new take on the Muppets and some wonderful songs composed by Bret McKenzie of New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords. And if you need any further convincing as to seeing this movie, it's purely for the AMAZING casting choice for Walter's human counterpart and these three words: Chris Cooper rapping.

A solid 8 out of 10 for being able to keep The Muppets for both children and adults, keeping it in tune with the original, brilliant Muppet releases.

Mahalo.

Next Step, Skynet

2012-01-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

I just found out about this and although in ten years this technology will be likely obsolete and smoother, better-working and sturdier version will take its place, I still think this is absolutely amazing.

28-year old Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm in a motorcycle accident in 2004. She now has the world's first mind-controlled bionic arm. It's a bit of a bulky thing and it's a little jerky, but the amazing pure science fiction wonder of it completely overshadows any negatives related to it. This is, in short, a medical and scientific miraculous leap forward.

I can only imagine that in a few years time we will be seeing far better version of this technology - check out the video of her using the arm here! - likely inspired by either movie prostheses like Luke's arm in Star Wars or any of the body enhancements from sci-fi games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

This, along with things like this man's bionic eye, are really bringing us into the science-fiction-like 21st century we were promised.

Mahalo.

The Unsung Heroes

2012-01-22T19:56:00.001-08:00

After listening to them on repeat for the past few days of work, I think it needs to be said that - and a shout out given to - the unsung heroes of the gaming industry are its music composers, without whom the atmosphere, tension and emotion would not be felt in the games we love so much.

I have been listening to the Starcraft 2, Bioshock, Oblivion and Red Dead Redemption soundtracks as I trawl away at my job and I have to say, it makes working feel more epic. It also adds some serious atmosphere.

You don't realize, while you're in a game, how important the music is - not like when you're in a movie. Sure, we can all whistle the Tetris or Mario Bros theme song, but how many of you can do that for the theme of your favourite modern game? Okay, anything outside of Halo. I thought so.

It's amazing how much the screeching violin makes Bioshock such a terrifying game. You just feel naturally pumped or on a mission when you hear the twangy slide acoustic guitar, ripping electric solos and chugging drums of the Starcraft 2 soundtrack. The peace you feel at the wonderfully composed, classic-sounding Oblivion score. How motivated or soothed or pushed to action do you feel when you hear the Western-styled mostly-acoustic music of Red Dead Redemption? For me, extremely.

If you want some music to relax, work, work out, write, read or do anything to, I highly recommend any of your favourite game soundtracks. You will not be disappointed.

Mahalo.

Looking forward to 2012? I am.

2012-01-19T19:31:00.001-08:00

Hey all!
In a departure from my more recent (and very sparse) posts, I want to take a minute, as a gamer, to tell you why 2012 makes me excited to be such.

With the exciting year that was 2011 that saw the release of Dead Island, Skyrim, Dead Space 2, Dragon Age 2, Portal 2, L.A. Noire, Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Gears of War 3, Rage, Batman: Arkham City and Halo: Combat Evolved 10th Anniversary Edition, among many, many others, it's hard to see how 2012 will beat that. Well, here are some of my - and the world's! - most anticipated titles.

1) Diablo III:
Need I say any more? Gamers across the globe are looking forward to this tremendous release. Though the release date has been repeatedly, a recent article has shown that that is no longer because of the South Korean Game Ratings Board, but now because Blizzard are still fiddling with the core systems. The various trailers being released make it look as if this game will be an epic return to the world of the first two Diablo titles and I, for one, am desperately looking forward to it. Especially because, hey, let's face it, when has a Blizzard game ever - really - been sub-par?

2) Bioshock: Infinite:
After the sleeper hit, perfectly crafted Bioshock release in 2007, I was hooked. The game's atmosphere and writing were unmatched in most games I had played up until that point - with the notable exclusions being Half-Life 2 (2004) and Portal (2007) - and it created a first person shooter with a seriously intense and well-crafted storyline, which is hard to come by.
Though the sequel, Bioshock 2 (2010), was somewhat less amazing than its predecessor, it was still an en-RAPTURE-ing game (god I am sorry for that).
Now, the third installment in the series - which is neither a direct sequel or prequel, but merely set in the same sort of world - is being released this year. Bioshock: Infinite features similar gameplay concepts in a world seemingly as well crafted and equally as horrifying. With trailers and gameplay footage abounding, this game has shown us that 2K is back with something far more enticing and exciting than Bioshock 2 and one which I am incredibly looking forward to.

3) Halo 4:
I know, I'm full of franchises today, aren't I? Halo, for me, is one of the most important games of my teenage years - barring, of course, Starcraft and Diablo II. I don't know what it is about the game, but it's like my Star Wars. I find every aspect of the world and its characters fun and interesting. I've read the novels, the comics, watched the fan films, seen the short animated films, kept up with a lot of the extra promotional stuff, I have the soundtracks and I've even learned to play the main theme on guitar. What I'm saying is, I like this game. I like the world. It's also the only four-players-on-one-console game that Xbox really has at the moment, and it's killer and the blurb for the new one really says it all.
It's a game franchise that means a lot to me even though I know the story is somewhat lame and cliched. I don't care. I want this game.

These along with films like The Devil Inside, Red Tails, The Grey, Man on a Ledge, Safe House, The Raven, The Cabin in the Woods, The Avenger, Rock of Ages, Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dark Knight Rises, Frankenweenie, The Hobbit, World War Z, Django Unchained and, despite being in 3D, The Great Gatsby, this is going to be a pretty good year.

Mahalo.

Shifting Expectations

2012-01-19T15:34:00.001-08:00

for Edgar Allen Poe, on his birthday, and to __Nevermore__.

Nothing in time does make us,

Ever conceive of vast expansive darkness,

Violence,

Exceeding naïve human expectations; for

Remorse does grab us

More and more, as time ticks

Over, further from us, towards the grave,

Relegating our lives to the annals of an

Ever shifting history.

Honk for Peace: A Poem from South Carolina

2011-12-24T13:41:00.001-08:00

for my dad

driving on the highway
shooting down the 208
(i was going to home depot
needed some screws
and a hammer
to hang some shelving units)
(for the wife)
when i saw some people -
not far up ahead -
holding some signs up
to the drivers
the first one that came into
view
said "HONK TO BRING PEACE TO AFGHANISTAN"
so i honked
and as i honked
the second came into view
and said
"AND STOP AIDE TO ISRAEL"
and i swore at myself - SHIT! -
that my horn had sounded out
and rung for the bigots.

i got back home and told the family about it.
they didn't laugh.

Stories from Nothing: Boating

2011-12-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

catalyst: while on the ferry with L, we noticed the boat would make a beeline for other boats and then turn away at the last moment.

the tale:
Ramming speed gentlemen! Keep forward, that's it! Stay on target, stay on target! Oh, no, we're missing them! Go back, back I say! Who's navigating? Is it Jonesy? It's Jonesy isn't it. That man is the worst navigator I have ever seen. Pull him off at once. Tell him that, that, that Scotty's in charge now! He knows how to navigate!
That's it, there's our next target boys! Keep full speed ahead, they're right in our sites! The boat is made of glass, gentlemen, this should be a piece of cake and then it's back to your wives for...well, a piece of cake I suppose! Indeed!
Okay we've got them, we've got them men. Just saying, if we don't survive this, you have been the best bunch of men I have ever had the honour to serve with and I love each and every one of you.
"I love you too, sir."
Thank you Jonesy. But you're still an awful navigator.
Right, we're perfectly on target, all is smooth and well and...no! No, wait! Go back! Is Jonesy back on navigation.
"I am, sir."
But where the bloody hell is Scotty, I thought he'd taken over?
"I'm in the bathroom, captain. Apologies."
God damnit.
Right, so we've missed them. Let's go home lads. Let's go home.

Story from Nothing: Prison Letters

2011-12-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

The catalyst from this one is obvious.

She, we'll call her Mindy, is walking along. A uni student, she's head home after a long day. She's just gotten her first letter from her man, we'll call him Joe, in a long time. He's in prison on some trumped up charges. You know the type. This one says that he never got her last letter so that's why he hasn't written in some time. They've been moving him around a lot. Why she had to write him again after a month without reply.

Maybe she's running home and a strong wind blows. She trips on a tree root. All of her papers are scattered around the sidewalk. Her letter from Joe flies up, caught in the wind, but she doesn't see it. Too busy picking up all of her other papers. She gathers them all, except Joe's letter, the one thing she wants. Was going to write back to him when she got home. She was so excited to see his carefully crafted hand-writing. The praise. Still enamored with the fact that he uses the lower case "i" when referring to himself. She's glad things are going better with his dad now. Joe should be up for parole soon. Maybe they'll finally get to hug.

After she gets home, she searches her bag for the letter. It's not there. She tears apart her room looking for it. She realises, then, what must have happened. It must still be in the street. She runs, runs faster than she ever has before. It's dark, now. Late evening. She finds the place roundabout where she fell down and starts looking. Looking and looking but she can't find it. She's on the grass, too near to the road. A possum jumps out from the tree's branches and spooks her. She falls over and hits her head. Someone finds her an hour late and takes her to hospital. As it pulls away, the letter flutters down from the branches to the ground.

Weeks go by, Joe doesn't hear from Mindy. This is unusual for her. Very unlike her. He's in a new prison and he's scared. Doesn't know what to do. Afraid and angry that his woman has left him, he's in the yard and takes a pot shot at the wrong person. Pile up. A shanking. Joe has to be taken to hospital. He only has half of his blood left.

Mindy, it turns out, ended up in a coma. The man who found her stays by her side. He feels some kind of obligation to her. His name is Rob. He's a software engineer who just moved out of his girlfriend's house. His ex-girlfriend he supposes now.

Just down the hall, Joe has been brought into the emergency room because of his severe wounds. The prison hospital couldn't handle it and he needed to be rushed out here.

Though it seems longer, Mindy wakes up after four days. She sees Rob sitting by her bed and they strike up a conversation. The feelings are instant. She has some memory loss but her doctor says that is normal. When she's asked why she was out on the road, she says she doesn't remember. She knows she was looking for something but she can't remember what. Deep within the recesses of her mind, she's forgotten everything about Joe.

Joe stabilizes and he is sent back to prison. Months go by. Joe tries to write Mindy but his letters are returned unopened. One has a note attached saying "right name, but wrong girl". Convinced that things are over between the two of them. Joe takes one last look at his favourite picture of Mindy and hangs himself in his cell.

His ashes were scattered by a friend at Mindy's old address.

Mindy and Rob move in together. She kept getting letters from someone she didn't know in prison but when she sent one with a note saying it was the wrong person, they stopped. Mindy and Rob got married after a year and a half.

They're buried together.

Talk About Stories from Nothing!

2011-12-01T03:34:00.001-08:00

I found this letter on the street and I thought it was too interesting not to publish in some way!

Dear [Woman's Name], 11/9

Hey beautiful, hope your [sic] feeling better. I've been moving around alot lately so I think they lost the last letter you sent because I didn't know you were sick. Unfortunately i'm [sic] not there to take care of you, so make you do what you can to get better.

I really appreciate the pictures. Every-time [sic] I look at them I feel as if God dropped an angel in my hands. It's amazing how your face radiates in the pictures. You have the perfect combination of sensual lips, spellbounding [sic] eyes & slightly puffy cheeks that enclose the most beautiful dimples. I love all the pictures, but the one that really catches my eye is the full body shot where you're wearing what looks like a purple & black flower dress type thing. I like the way the dress accentuates your petite frame & shows just enough cleavage to tease & around imagination.

On another note, how have school & work been going? My culinary class has been going well. When we cook it's fun but when we don't it gets boring. Have you gon [sic] out lately? Oh yea [sic], in the letter I sent you before the short one I asked you a few questions & i'm [sic] interested in hearing the answers. Remember I didn't get your last letter because the prison lost it when they were moving me around.

One more thing before I let you go. I got around to writing my dad & he's been writing back. It's awkward but i'll [sic] get over it. Well hope you feel better & hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Anthony

Stories from Nothing 2

2011-11-27T00:52:00.000-08:00

The catalyst: "So I got home at 3:30am, stumbled into my house and run over my cat."

The story:

I don't know why I was driving in my house. The plasterboard walls crumbled and fell around me. A long furry tail stuck out from under the front, right wheel. The chandelier swung back and forth on the ceiling. An arm stuck out from underneath the wheel, too. Which was odd, because I'd run over my cat. Turns out dad was sitting in the living room watching late night TV. I guess that's what you get. Now his favourite chair was broken, too.
Why was I home so late? Because I was out before, that's why. Stop asking so many questions.
I got to bed and fell asleep. A rock undisturbed.

Stories From Nothing

2011-11-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

I've decided, since I haven't posted in a while (sorry, by the way) that I am going to set myself a deadline for posting and each week I will have to post at least one what I am deeming, a "Story from Nothing".

This is where - with my mushy, crazy writer's brain - I extrapolate a plausible (or, hell, even an unlikely) story from a seemingly minute detail or event in my or my friend's lives.

This week's is brought to you courtesy of J.J., where she "[f]inally got [her] suitcase after 2 days...only for it to be delivered at 11pm last night by a creepy looking man in a suit. A suit. What kind of courier wears a suit? [She] half expected him to look at [her] with a scary grin before devouring [her] soul. Think slenderman meets the Gentleman from Buffy."

So, I extrapolated an (incredibly unlikely story) from this tiny event:

The Courier

Maybe he was going to a dinner where he was proposing to his wife-to-be but his boss yelled at him because he wanted to take off a minute or so early to swing by the ring place and pick it up before the dinner was supposed to start but his boss didn't let him and so he had to put on his suit in the car and drive super fast to get the suitcase to you so he could get to the ring store and pick it up before his dinner with his wife-to-be was completely ruined. And what if he didn't make it, huh? What if dinner was ruined? No one thinks about poor courier man!

Then he's hit by a truck just after he delivers your suitcase.

He's whistling. He's happy. Nothing can kill his feeling. Sure, he had to make an extra delivery and now he has to rush, but hell, he's gonna marry the love of his love. Sandra, he thinks to himself, God I love you. He goes around the side of his car to open the door but drops his keys. He bends down to pick them up when he hears the loud honking. Turns his head in time to see headlights. A truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel. Wham. G'night, Johnny.

Meanwhile, Sandra sits alone in the restaurant. She cries, wonders what she's done wrong. What could she have done to drive Johnny away? No, it's not her, she realises, it's him. He's a pig! She leaves the restaurant, but not before calling and leaving the most hate-filled message on his answering machine.

Little did she know, though, that the ringing phone was in Johnny's fingers, an unsent text saying he might be a little bit late. He pulls the phone to his ear to hear her voice for the last time, and it's an angry tirade. "I hate you!" she yells, rain starting to fall on them both. The same moon beams light down on them. "You're a bastard! I fucked Roger anyway!"
A tear streaks down Johnny's face. This is the last thing he ever hears. Sandra hangs up before she can hear his last breath.

The next day she gets the phone call. Johnny's been killed. Sandra's head is in a spin. A spiral of self-hatred and resentment destroys her life and she turns to alcohol. No one will speak to her - she has driven them all away.

Decades later, in her studio apartment above an old Chinese restaurant, she quietly dies from a heart attack in her sleep. No one finds her for days. When they do, it's because the chefs downstairs are complaining of the smell and a stain on the ceiling coming from her room.

They're not even buried together.

One Buck Zombie Horde

2011-10-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Do you like zombie stories?

If you read this blog, or know me at all, you must!

Check them out and the new anthology One Buck Zombies from indie mag One Buck Horror and chow down on the brains of some awesome prizes and short stories!

The shambling corpses of the undead call to you, to devour you, will you answer their bloody call?

Dreams of Late

2011-09-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

Taken from my journal.

I am in the army. I get a phone call - or somesuch - Lucy is dead. Unknown cause. My heart sinks, the Titanic got nothing on me. Stomach knotted. I am crying for half this dream, if not more. I go into the Sergeant's office to arrange the funeral, find the right photo to have etched on her grace but I cannot find THE RIGHT ONE.

"That one's fine," says my companion of a posed shot, black and white, of her and I like movie stars, but it looks nothing like us.

"No it's not!" I cry. "That's not what she looked like!"

She appears - an apparition, a ghost - and tells me, "It's okay, I have no hard feelings about it all." She smiled.

I am crying, angry.

"But I do! I do! It's not okay! There's so much we didn't do, I didn't say! I never got to live with you, make you my wife! I love you!"

The world shakes and I'm awake.

----

After being in a giant sandbox I am going down a giant escalator. I am with 2 Mexican friends. 2 Japanese guys slander them, "spicks!" I tell them to back off, "cunts!" They throw the place into lockdown - they are the sons of the owner of this place - my friends escape. I manage to pry open the glass doors and escape - Dave helps to an old warehouse. I am being pursued by FIVE murderous Tilda Swintons, one who kills and the others who laugh. I am in a workshop and I call Nick Jordan out to help - give him a mallet and I have a sledgehammer. We are backed up against the wall when the group enters and I demand to know what's going on. Nobody knows.

Awake.

Pierce Malloy UPDATE

2011-09-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!
Got a link so you can download PIERCE MALLOY: PARANORMAL DETECTIVE! Just click on this here link and download away!
It's a pulp piece written for a deliberately incredibly pulpy magazine! Within that folder is also the first piece I wrote for that mag THE TALL TALES OF CAPTAIN HORATIO SILVERTHORN!
Enjoy!

NOTE: All spelling and grammar mistakes are the fault of the editor, and not yours truly, some of which were deliberate to give the mag a more pulpy air.

Pierce Malloy

2011-09-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't written in some time, friends! Just letting you all know that I got a new story published - Pierce Malloy: Paranormal Detective - in the same pulp mag as Horatio Silverthorn! Yay!
I am currently working a link allowing you to download the story from here, so stay tuned!

Zey gezunt.

Rotten Streets - Poem

2011-08-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

A most foul smell erupted

from the streets,

sifting through the cracks

and the crevices

of the city's world -

valleys of blacktop, cragged

with unfathomable holes,

the stench setting into everything,

a blanket, a warm wind,

no man nor woman

escaped that night

as the night air

breezed

with malodorous curses.

Continuing the Story of Adrienne and Edgar...

2011-08-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

It seemed to Adrienne that, since Edgar was dead, that the world ought to stop. She was confused that the world was still going, everything normal, like nothing had ever happened at all. Nobody cared that Adrienne's world had been turned completely upside down, that she didn't know, now, what to do with herself. She no longer had to get up at quarter to seven when Edgar got up with a groan to pee; would no longer hear the laboured trickle and splash of his stream against the porcelain and the shuddering flush of the toilet, the shuffle of his feet in his slippers as he passed through the bedroom and out towards the kitchen to read the morning paper. She wouldn't have to get up, eyes still filled with sleep, and follow him into the kitchen and start cooking breakfast.

Wouldn't ask, "Did you sleep well?"

And wouldn't receive a nonchalant grunt and, "You?"

"Same as always."

"The world's gone crazy," he said every day, looking over the pages of the paper, enraged by one thing or another in the world. "What happened to people?"

And Adrienne would nod assent.

Now, she would wake up, alone, in her bed that would lack the warm spot where Edgar had lain, still primly neat beside her. She simply didn't know what she was going to do with herself.

Edgar and Adrienne Part 1

2011-08-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

After sixty-eight years on the planet, Edgar Wolfson died of heart complications while pruning roses in his back garden. His wife found him, doubled over, disappearing into himself, and he was not breathing. She called the ambulance but, of course, it was too late. They pronounced him dead at approximately 3:42 p.m. and drove him to the local hospital to be dealt with appropriately, and then they went out for tea.

Adrienne Wolfson sat in the ambulance with her husband's body all the way to the hospital, crying. She continued to cry as a doctor and a hospital psychologist tried to console her, and then handed her a card for, "a very good mortician" that the psychologist knew, whose office was not too far away. She nodded a thank you, and left feeling cold and uncertain, empty.

Although she didn't really remember it, she must have walked to the mortician because when she came back to herself fully, she was sitting in his office, discussing what type of casket Edgar would have "liked".

"I don't know," Adrienne said. "A box?"

"Of course," the mortician, Alan Blakely, said. He seemed to tower over her even as he sat. A strong smell of formaldehyde wafted off of his clothing. Perhaps it was the light, or perhaps it was the result of so many years underground due to his craft, but Alan Blakely seemed unusually pale; a trait, for some reason or other, she found quite discomforting.

"What I meant to say," Alan went on, "is whether he had thought about a colour, a type of wood, the lining, that sort of thing."

"Oh," Adrienne said. "No, I don't believe he had."

Alan smiled, as if he had been expecting this answer. "Of course," he produced a small file from a drawer under his desk. "I'll leave you with this catalogue, then, and you can have a look through it and decide on the kind of thing that..." he paused.

"Edgar," Adrienne said.

"Yes," Alan continued, "that Edgar might have liked."

Adrienne nodded and left the darkly decorated office out into the sunlight. She realised that she had not driven to the hospital, having been riding in the back of the ambulance, and so she decided it might be best to walk home; she couldn't bare to be on the bus or the train, they just seemed like metal caskets now, all looking like the image on the cover of the brochure that Alan Blakely had given her.

The brochure's title was SENDING OFF THE DEPARTED and had an image of a mahogany casket with gold trimming on it. A placid and smiling woman was airbrushed above the casket, showing that she was content with the casket she had chosen for her father or lover or son. She questioned, with those eyes, "will you make the right choice?"

And Adrienne did not have an answer.

As she walked in the dying daylight, the sun retreating past the horizon of buildings, colouring the world orange and purple, through all the noise and hustle and bustle of the city streets, not a single person was aware that Edgar was dead. Not a single person was aware that she was grieving. And, perhaps worst of all, not a single person she stopped on the street to tell would care. Not really care.

She stopped in at her usual bakery and picked up a large loaf of white bread - Edgar's favourite.

"How's Edgar?" the baker asked, handing her the loaf of bread in a plastic bag.

"Fine," Adrienne said. "He's just fine."

And she left without answering another question, which she's sure he'd asked, but did not hear.

It did not take her long to get home, but by the time she did night had fallen and the streetlamps began to flicker on in large pools.

NOTE: Not finished. more to come later.

Deadside

2011-08-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

So, I've finally gotten out there and decided to audition for a TV show. It's a mildly complex and curious process because it's part of an open casting audition, so there's lots of new media/line use with me posting photos and a (very) rough showreel.

If any of you are at all interested in helping me out with this, please log onto the Deadside community site and find my profile and give it (and maybe even some of the pictures) a like - it'll help me get noticed!

Who knows, it could happen!

Traildust PART TWENTY

2011-07-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

As the man rode away, his mind arace with the thoughts of a job undone, it began to rain with the fury of the end of the world. Torrents of water fell from the opened sky, muddying the sand and giving the wind a biting chill. The way ahead was blurred out from reality, woold pulled over the man's eyes as he trotted back to Galveston through the storm. A heavy thundering and a ligthing bolt struck a nearby tree, sending it up in flames. The man stopped for a moment and watched as the tree burned and slowly died, the fire consumed by the rain from the storm that bore it. From the bough of it the man could see a man hanging, blowing in the wind, his body charred now, wet and useless.
The man rode over to the tree, smoking and steaming now from the dead fire, and looked up at the hanging man. His face was bloated and strange, unearthly in the storm's haze, part burned off by the fire. It struck the man that he had not noticed this corpse before as he rode in and wondered from whence this man had come. He looked around and saw now horse meandering across the desert openness by itself, though to say so was foolishness as the man could hardly see ten feet in front of him now for the rain.
Droplets hung fast and soon fell from the brim of his hat, mingling with the water and endless sands of the desert. Looking up at the hanged man once more, the man moved forward and took out his bowie knife. Supporting himself from the trunk of the tree and hanging onto the hanged man's bough, the man set about cutting him down. It did not take long, though longer than normal for the wet rope, and the hanged man fell to the ground with a sucking, wet thud. The man climbed down from the lightning-struck tree and stood over the corpse. He got on his knees and dug feverishly in the wet sand like a mad man.
Grime stuck to his nails, coarse sand scraping at the layers of his skin. Water pooled in the hole and around him. He could feel the wind's chill in his bones and his skin was like brittle ice. For hours he dug, there, on his hands on knees until he had himself a large enough hole for a body. None too deep to be sure as a result of the poor conditions and lack of tools, but still a grave. Taking the hanged man by under his armpits, the man dragged the body into the grave and covered him over again with the muddy sand. He stood, then, and stared at the new grave, the final resting place of this hanged man without a name. Sand stuck to his hands, his kness, his clothes. His breathing was heavy and his eyes deranged. His heart beat heavily in his chest.
"We all die sometime," the man said and as he did he realized he said it not only for the hanged man but for himself and the American and the Mexicans he'd killed and the rabbi and the preacher and all the other people in this world he continued about with no semblence of meaning in their lives other than the loss of it all.
Reaching up, the man snapped off a large enough branch from the hanged man's bough and stuck it at the head of the grave. He hoped someone would come along and mayhaps see it and dig it up and bury the man in a proper place with a proper grave and stone, even without his proper name.
After standing there for some minutes in the soaking rain under the tree, the man remounted his horse and left again for the horizon and on towards Galveston.
The rain did not let up for the days, weeks, it took the man to traverse the open plains again, back the way he'd come. Going back was slower than leaving because now he was in no hurry. Time faded in and out and the man barely noticed. The world barely noticed at all. When finally he reached the city limits, or what he knew to be the city limits, there was nothing at all beyond them. Piles of wood and nails and bodies lay across the way where Galveston had been, empty and flat where one a town had thrived and stood tall. Wiped clean was the slate of this place, free to start again anew, better.
The man smiled and let out a gruff, low chuckle. He did not bother to look around for signs of his employer or anyone he knew, in his mind he knew the sea and wind had taken them all from this place and the earth was cleaner without them. So, with nothing else to do, he got back on his horse and, this time, moved north.

Traildust PART NINETEEN

2011-07-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

"He's gone," the guard said to Bennet.
"What in the hell do you mean he's gone?" Bennet got up from his cover and peered over the top of the wall. He could only just make out a small figure becoming nothing but a shadow in the distance. "What in god's name?"
"I don't know," the guard said. "He just up and left when you told 'em you knowed his brother."
"You did know him, right?" Lester said. "That wasn't just a bunch of lies?"
"It weren't," Bennet sat down, his eyes wandered off into nothing. "I knew him. Good fella, lively."
"Jesus," Lester had a look over the top of the wall, too. He could scarcely believe it. "I thought we were in for one hell of a gun fight."
"You and me both," Bennet said. "It don't make no sense. He followed me all the way across the open desert, fired on me and missed and finally catches up with me here and then just up and heads out the first minute he hears I knew his brother. Somethin's wrong."
"I do not know, Bennet," Lester said. "Maybe you just up and got lucky."
"Nah," Bennet said. "I ain't that lucky."

The man turned around and stared at the city behind him. He considered the fact that he was returning to his employer with the job half done. Weighing his rifle in his hands, he figured he'd let fate handle it.
"Fate led you and my brother together," the man said, hoisting his rifle up to his chin. "Then fate will make sure you don't die with this bullet."
Looking down the barrel of the gun, he knew he'd be lucky if he hit anything at all. The wind was heavy from the east so he adjusted himself and aimed for the small parapet. For all he knew, he was speaking to the American. Breathing slowly and evenly, he counted to three and fired, the crack of the shot echoing into nothing.

The guard's head exploded in a red mist before they heard the shot.
"Jesus Christ!" Bennet yelled. "Get the hell down!"
The guard's dead body slumped over and fell to the dirt road below, blood staining the cream-coloured sand. Bennet leaned over the top with Lester and fired off a few rounds into the ether and hid again.
After a moment Bennet picked himself up and peered over the top to see the man approaching slowly on his horse. Bennet took aim with his rifle and was about to fire when he heard the man speak.
"Did I kill ye?" the man said. "The forger?"
"Ye did not," Bennet said. "You killed the guard. The man you spoke with before."
"I see," the man paused for what seemed some time. "Well, fate has led it for me not to kill you."
"It has?"
"Indeed. If it wanted you dead, I'd have killed you just now and you wouldn't have known my brother."
"I could kill you right now," Bennet said. His teeth were clenched tight and his jaw hurt. "I got you right in my sights and you know I'm a pretty crack shot."
"I don't doubt it," the man said. "And if it were to be so you would have done it already without listening to my damn voice."
Bennet said nothing.
"I'll take your silence as agreement and I'll be on my way."
"Aye," Bennet said. "And stay gone this time, for if ye come back I might not hesitate to take that shot."
"I don't doubt it."
And then the man was gone, again, riding off towards the horizon. Bennet let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and slumped over against the wall, some of the guards blood dripping down the opposite wall in a river pattern, stretching across the world like spindly fingers.
Bennet did not speak for the rest of that day and instead went with Lester and Kuruk to the tavern and drank and ate his fill before going straight to bed after the other decided that whores were on their menu. His dreams were black and empty, plagued with thoughts of where he should go now that he was not being chased, and what he should do now that he was free.

Traildust PART EIGHTEEN

2011-07-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

Nothing moved in that eternal silence of the moment. No birds cawed, coyotes didn't cry, the wind had stopped blowing for what seemed longer than possible. The sand was still for the first time in days. The man weighed his options against his opponents, to which he was severely out-gunned. He had two pistols, a Winchester repeater and the old Civil War pistol he'd taken from the Mexican, which was probably no good.
"How many of you are there?" he shouted.
"More'n you," came the guard's voice. "And definitely more guns."
"Indeed."
He considered, for a moment, why he was even doing this. Surely, he had been paid, that much was true. Or was to be paid once the job was done, but surely he could return to his employer with news of the American's death, along with the in-actuality dead Mexicans, and he would be paid. His employer would be none the wiser, right? Why should he risk his skin on a man he could pretend was dead and would likely not commit forgery again?
He reached over from his cover and fired once at the compound. A barrage of bullets whizzed past, thudding into the rock and peppering the sand. Surely, he would run out of bullets before them and would never make it in a siege of any kind. Truly, his options were poor.
"Is there anything I can give you," the man said. "That will let me take the American and leave with my life?"
A pause. Well, at least they were considering it.
"Most likely not," the guard called back. "He's explained hisself and I'm satisfied with it."
"I have gold," the man shouted. "And other valuables."
"No gold in the world would make me give up this man."
"Why do you protect him so?" the man asked. "Is he a brother of yours?"
"Other than bein' a white American, we ain't brothers," the guard said. "But he has explained his post to me and the reason you pursue him so is firvolous and bastardly."
"Is it?"
"It is."
"Care," the man said, shifting his position slightly, "to explain that to me."
"You want this man on a charge a forgin' American monnies, correct?"
"Correct."
"Did you consider," the guard said, never taking his eyes from out of his rifle-sights, "the reasons for his doing so?"
The man had to admit that he had not and he said as much.
"Aren't you some kinda law?" the guard asked.
"In a way, of a sorts," the man said. "I have been paid to kill this man. I generally ask no questions."
"Well, it may benefit you to do so," the guard said. "For this man was forgin' monnies under duress, as payment to Mexican gangs for not bein' killed. Though he did run into these gangs desertin' the USS Maine, there is still some to be considered in all this."
The man, for a time, did not speak. He weighed this; the man he pursued so diligently had made falsified funds to be spend in American towns, that much was true. He had deserted the USS Maine.
"He would not have fallen into the forgin' trade," the man said. "Without first deserting the army."
"I suppose," the guard shifted. His legs grew tired. "But men have done worse when scared."
The man said nothing.
"You there still?" The guard asked.
"I lost a brother on that boat," the man said. "Younger. Died in the explosion."
Back behind the walls, the guard turned to Bennet and they exchanged a troubled glance. Bennet spoke up first.
"What was his name?" he said. "I mighta known him."
"Jacob," the man said from behind his rock. "Jacob Digby Noonan."
"Aye," Bennet said. "I knew him. Kinda shortish, quick sense a humour."
"That's him."
"He was in front a me in line just before I lost my guts."
The man was silent.
"I offered him to come, but he said he felt like serving in this mission was his destiny," Bennet paused, sighed. "Said that it was something he was meant to do."
"Sounds like him."
And without a word, the man got back on his horse and road back the way he'd come.

Traildust PART SEVENTEEN

2011-07-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

After sleep left them with dust in their eyes and a hunger for the leftover coyote meat, the three men set off for the last leg of the trip up and over the rocky hills and to the town beyond. Bennet had had enough of horses and dust and sleeping under the stars, he missed a mattress and a roof and a fire without the wind to his back. He wanted back inside, at the very least, an adobe house.
In no time at all they reached the base of the rocky hills.
"It ain't gonna be easy gettin' them horses over the hills," Bennet said, looking back at the horses they'd taken from the dead Sioux. "Them bastards look a sight stubbourn if'n you ask me."
"I find it hard to argue with that," Lester tugged on the horses' reins. "As they are already deciding they don't want to traverse this particular path."
"We'll make them," Bennet said. "Whether they like it or not."
"It is best," Kuruk said, "with stubbourn horses to treat them with kindness. Then they will do what you wish. Otherwise, they will be nothing but a hindrance."
"Kindess?" Bennet turned to the Apache. "How?"
Kuruk leaned over and took the reins from Lester and tugged on them lightly, shaking them front side to side. He began whispering to them and then clicked with his tongue, pulling out an apple from his saddlebag.
"He had apples all this time?" Bennet asked.
"Must have been saving them for the horses, knowin' we'd have some trouble." Lester said.
"I'd have killed a man for a goddamn apple I was so hungry."
"It's best you didn't, though, it would appear."
Slowly and with hesitation the horses began to follow them riders up the steep and rocky slopes and over the hills. Small sections of rock broke off beneath them and hit the ground, but they continued on at a good pace. Bennet looked behind him to check on the horses and his eyes strayed to the horizon. Just there, barely able to be made out, was a figure, a small black rider heading forward in the heat-wave haze.
"Seems someone's comin' up," Bennet said. "Best we get off these hills soon as possible."
"Can you make them out?" Lester said.
"No, not at this distance," Bennet pushed his horse forward. "But I would not hesitate to say that it would be my pursuer finally caught up with me."
"Well, shit."
"Indeed."
They pushed the horses hard over the hills, their shoes cracking and snapping on the hard rocks, one horse throwing a shoe and blood trailed after it for its poor, soft foot. It whinnied and cried and pulled back on the reins but Kuruk coaxed it down over the rocks and finally onto the soft sand, though hot, was better than the rocks.
"Now, I think we should run," Lester said. "Because, from what you tell me, I don't want to meet this pursuer of yours."
Bennet nodded and they kicked the horses as fast as they would go, speeding towards the horizon and town and safety.

Behind them, the man made and ascended the rocky hills, bearing down on them like a bullet. He had been riding all night and his horse was slowing, but he kept kicking it to go faster.
"Tick tock," he said aloud. "Tick tock."

Finally, the three riders made it to the town and after quick words exchanged with the gate men, they were let inside and the gates closed.
"Round up your guns!" Lester cried. "A man comes here with blackness and murder in his heart!"
"And a mighty good ability to kill folks." Bennet said.
The guards, solemn, nodded and headed for their weapons and manned the small walls that surrounded the town. Some men, too, came with their weapons while others hid in their homes with the women and children.
"There," Bennet said, pointing not too far off. "Here he comes."
The man came up to the town and slowed and stopped when he saw its gates closed.
"I would like to enter," he said, his words withering in the silent air, nothing to echo from. "Open your gates."
"I'm afraid that ain't likely to happen," a guard said. "For it seems that you got killin' in mind."
"I do," the mn said. "But only for one man. An American. Travelling with two others I think."
The guard looked from Bennet to the man.
"I reckon he might be here," the guard said. "What you be wantin' him for."
"Crimes against these here United States."
"Crimes?" the guard asked. "What crimes?"
"Money forgery and conspiring with anti-state Mexican gangs."
Bennet cringed. The man was good. He knew everything.
"Well," the guard said. "Even if that be true, this man is still entitled to a fair trial, ain't he?"
"My employer don't see it that way."
The guard wiped his nose on his sleeves and then the sweat from his brow. "Then you'll have to come and get him."
"And that I will."
The sun was high and hot and the world stood still. No one moved.

Roller Derby: Pulp Friction

2011-07-13T17:51:00.001-07:00

On Saturday July 9th I witnessed an event more awesome than I thought it could be. A sport, funnily enough. I finally understand why people get excited about sport. What I am talking about, of course, is roller derby. Currently, the majority of the leagues are women only, with men taking part as referees or commentators. There are male leagues, but not that many.
The whole thing took place in Homebush at the Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre, and I was surprised at the size of the crowd. I hadn't expected something, that was more or less still an underground event, to have such a turn out.
Rockabilly bands bracketed each bout, starting us off and playing during the breaks. It definitely set the mood for a jumping, jiving time. Clearly, costumes are a huge part of this whole even - and so is a strange, choreographed dancing introductory sequence. Each player has an amusing-come-badass nickname, some of my favourites being Haterade, Feral Streep, Tail-her Swift and Womb Raider.
The first mini bout was the Western Sydney Boutlaws versus the Beauty School Knockouts. From this first game, I could see that the game could be brutal. Elbows shoved into guts, knockdowns, fast roller-skating and everything short of punching and kicking took place on the track. And this bout was slower than a normal bout. This was the Boutlaws' first big bout and the Knockouts were a seasoned team. I didn't know this and backed the Boutlaws because they had the prettiest girls - this was my first roller derby after all, how was I to know?
I should've gone with my instinct during the player show-off period when I saw the Knockouts had far better skaters, but I didn't and the Boutlaws lost 28 to 60-something.
The way I chose sides in the second, main bout - The D'viants versus the Unicorns - wasn't much better - basing it on the quality of the team photograph, the names of the players and the general vibe of the team. The Unicorns were undefeated, the commentators proclaiming so regularly, so naturlly I chose the D'viants. They had the Whip It, underdog kind of feel about the, with a more blaring energy and a less stupid theme. Even though the D'viants lost 128-132, I am so glad I picked that team to back. They played a roaring game with real passion and heart. They totally deserved to win and could have, if the Unicorns hadn't scored a 29 point jam just near the end, causing them to soar forward and win.
I don't care, the D'viants rock and I'll be going back on August 6 to show them my support when they go against the Boutlaws in the mini bout.
If you wanna check out the rules to derby, have a look on Facebook for the Sydney Roller Derby League or Roller Derby Rule of the Day - they have all the information you need!
This is Smack Kerouac - or possibly Hunter S. Tommy-gun - signing off.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'll just come right out and say it - I loved the Harry Potter books. Straight up. No denying. Loved them. I'd even go so far as to say that, without them, I wouldn't be nearly as avid a reader as I am now. I read the first one when I was ten in fifth grade and kept going from there. I was not always impressed by the films, most notably The Prisoner of Azkaban, but still, this franchise has been a part of my life for thirteen years. So, to say that watching the final film - the eighth all up - was an emotional experience would be something of an understatement.

The film opens with a montage-esque sequence of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) finding Dumbledore's (Michael Gambon) wand from his grave, which is a scene from the end of Deathly Hallows Part One. It continues on showing Snape (Alan Rickman) presiding over a very depressing-looking Hogwarts and basically the misery in the aftermath of the last two films. If you thought, like me, that Part One was a little slow, given that it was mostly aimless searching with a sense of absolute bleakness, then Part Two makes up for that with an enormity of action - given that it is mostly based on the part of the book entitled "The Battle for Hogwarts". So, yeah, lots of wizards fighting.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) face their greatest battle yet with Harry even admitting at one point, "When did any of our plans actually work?" going on to say that they just "show up" and then everything goes wrong.
Despite being priorly impressed with these three as actors/friends in the previous films, I have to say that this film was their best performance yet, all of them portraying emotions that dug deep and made you feel them - tears, anger, love and all the rest.

Fiennes was just as creepy as ever as Voldemort, going for broke in all his cackling glory, owning the screen whenever he was there. A special mention, though, should go to Matthew Lewis, who played the bumbling boy-turned-man Neville Longbottom, who really brought it to this movie comedically and dramatically. Some would even go so far as to say he's the real hero of the franchise and, more especially, this film - but no judgments here.

All in all a fantastic time was had watching the final installment of a franchise that has affected so many, and I'm not afraid to say I even got teary a couple of times during the action. A great film and a fantastic final chapter. Be ye fairly warned, though, many beloved characters meet their deaths in this film. Ye have been warned. 8.5/10

Traildust PART SIXTEEN

2011-07-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

The smell reached him long before he saw the bodies. A familiar smell, sickly sweet and awful, like bad eggs and old meat. He rounded the rocks and saw the creeks and stretches of blood spreading out from the butchered bodies of the dead Apaches. The man jumped down from his horse and checked the bodies. Scalped.
"Who scalps the scalpers?" the man said, scratching his growing beard.
He leaned down close to the ones behind the rocks, saw their blood-licked axes and clubs and the pummeled look of their faces.
"Good fight."
Getting up, he turned his attention to the north-east, back where the hoof-prints came from. He walked his horse up that way and saw the body of the dead Apache, shot and trampled, lying there in the sand, eyeless from vultures. A dark red bullet hole stared up at the man from the Apache's neck nape. He looked from the body to the rocks and back again.
"Good shot."
This one had not been scalped, just left alone. The man leaned in near him and checked his pockets. A couple of coins and a necklace of ears, a small bag of shot and bullets. Looking around some, the man saw the pistol over a ways.
"Must've been the only lucky sonofabitch with a pistol," he said, picking it up. "Coz none a your countrymen shot any bullets at them there rocks."
The dead Apache didn't say anything. The man leaned down again to the body and took out his knife, ran it deep along the hairline and ripped back the scalp.
"Waste not, want not," the man pocketed the scalp. "You'll fetch maybe a dollar, I reckon."
He looked up at the sun, halfway across its daily journey from day to night. It blared down, hot and unforgiving. The man licked his chapped lips, climbed on his horse and road out. Looking from the tracks leading north east to the rocky hills, he pondered on which way the American went. He sat there for some time, considering, and then headed towards the hills. It wasn't likely he had changed course now, where had he to go but straight?
It was not far until a town, just over the hills and then some, and then he'd kill the American and he could go home.

Bennet was hungry. They had eaten their last food that night and now they had nothing, and it was still some time before the next town.
"Jesus," Lester said to no one in particular. "I wish we had some a that corn bread left."
"Yeah," Bennet replied. "But we don't."
"We could hunt something?"
"Hunt what?"
"Anything!" Lester waved his arms in the air, desperation on his face. "Hell, I'd eat a coyote if I could catch one here and now."
Bennet chuckled. He turned to Kuruk, "You up for some huntin'?"
Kuruk nodded. "I'm hungry."
The three men dismounted and tied their horses to a nearby shrub. Bennet took his rifle and the other two men took their guns.
"Alright, shoot what you see, but only things with enough meat to make somethin' worthwhile," Bennet loaded his rifle. "And preferably somethin' all three of us can eat."
The two others nodded and they set about finding some rocks to hide behind. And then they waited. They waited until the sun had past the summit of the sky and the wind began to cool and shadows stretched out from odd things and leer out into the world. Coyotes began to call and the vultures circles grew sparser as they flew off to roost.
"Ah, fuck it," Bennet drew his rifle up high and cracked off an echoing shot into the sky. A large black mass fell from the sky to the earth and thudded up a great cloud of sand.
"Did you just kill a vulture?" Lester asked, looking away from his gun.
"I'm fuckin' hungry and I ain't seein' anythin' else!"
Bennet did not move.
"Well?" Lester said. "Ain't you gonna go and get it?"
"Just wait."
The rest of the vultures had flown off and away and the coyotes were silent for some time. Finally, one came out from its hiding place in the ether of the desert and sniffed around the dead vulture. Bennet eased the sights over it and fired again, the cloud of smoke climbing high into the deepening blue of the night sky. He got up from his spot behind the rocks and sauntered to where the coyote died. It was still twitching, for the shot had not killed it.
Bennet sighed, took out his knife, and slit the thing's throat. He then picked it up and took it over to a fire that Lester and Kuruk had built and began to skin and clean it.
Soon they were full with meat and ready for a long night's sleep.
"Good hunting, Bennet," Lester said, pulling his hat down over his face. "There's hope for you yet."
"Haw, haw, haw, you sonofabitch," Bennet kicked Lester lightly in the leg and he chuckled. "When we get to town I might sell you instead of them horses."
"He won't sell," Kuruk said. "Too skinny."
And the men laughed until sleep took them from it all.

Traildust PART FIFTEEN

2011-07-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

As the moon rose high over them, blacking out the mountains on the horizon and splattering the sky with stars that lit the sand, Bennet and his companions set up camp. They did not speak much, only heating up their food and then going to sleep. It seemed like forever ago to Bennet since he had had a good meal at a table, a roof over his head, reading a book by the firelight. He hadn't really read a book in the year since Vera died, although now he wished he had. He had taken more to drinking after work and his poker games and falling asleep, only going out from his room to check on the money-press before passing out into the next day. All was strange to him, now, being out in the open desert with a wanderer and an Apache for company. If Vera could see him now.
And then, he slept.
His sleep was mostly dreamless. The one dream he remembered was walking home from the bar and sitting in front of the fire, reading a book, and this made him smile an unseen grin in his sleep. Somewhere in the night, a coyote found a small animal and tore it to pieces on the plain, leaving nothing of it more than a red stain and some fur.
In the morning, the three rose and packed their things, saddled their horses and rode on.
"Did you sleep alright?" Lester asked.
"Fine as ever," Bennet spat on the ground. "And yerself?"
"Fine. Kuruk?"
The Apache nodded solemnly.
Lester leaned in close to Bennet, "He ain't much of a morning person."
"That makes two of us."
Lester leaned back and laughed and Bennet stared out towards the purple-orange of the rising sun, a faint smile on his lips for a reason he couldn't recall.
It didn't take long for the fine sand to start being cratered with rocks and spiked shrubs. A thundering could be heard not too far off. Kuruk raised his hand sharply and they stayed their horses, silent. The Apache searched the horizon and saw, not too far to the north-east, a group of riders kicking up dust and heading for them.
"What is it?" Lester asked.
"Riders," Kuruk said. "Indians."
"What kind?"
"I do not know."
"We'd best hide us somewheres," Bennet said. "Because I don't intend to find out what kind a injuns they are by just standin' here like a target."
"I can not disagree with you."
They turned their horses away from the riders and kicked them at speed, heading for the big rock. Not too far off was a large boulder atop a tower of rocks which would do for cover and anyhow it was the only place around to hide, the rocky hills still being some miles off. When they reached the rocks they lashed their horses to it and steadied them, taking out and prepping their rifles and pistols, hiding the niches of the stony structure.
And then they waited, the only sound echoing from anywhere was the thunder of the riders on their horses. It wasn't too long before they heard the war cries, too. Savage wails into the sky.
"Sioux," Kuruk said. "I think. Killers."
Lester hammered back both of his pistols, let out a small curse and said a quiet prayer. Bennet leaned over into a small gap in the rock and poked through his rifle barrel. He could see them clearly, now. There were maybe a dozen of them, riding hard, painted faces and bodies, blood dried to their hands and mouth and horses. Scalps bounced at their hips, hanging from buffalo-tail belts. Most were shirtless but some had on scraps that were once the fine linens of rich men or the dusted vests of workers. Necklaces of teeth and ears hung around their necks. Though he couldn't see their eyes, he knew there would be fire in them. He stared down the sight for some time until he had his breathing right and he fired off a shot, the crack echoing into the desert nothingness. For a moment, he thought he'd missed, but then the lead Sioux's shoulder lurched back and he fell from his horse, trampled under the hooves of the many at his back. One of the riders turned back and headed away from the battle as fast as he could.
"You get one?" Lester asked.
"I did," Bennet began reloading. "But there's more. One's headin' back, likely for more."
"How far is that?"
Bennet figured for a moment.
"About three hundred yards," he said finally. "Give or take."
"Jesus. Hell of a shot."
"Yes I am."
Bennet lined up the sights again and fired off into the crowd. Another's head snapped back sickeningly and flung him from his horse, red mist lingering for a moment before disappearing. But the riders were much closer, now - within one hundred yards.
"Best you start shootin'," Bennet said. "Lest they come upon us only two down."
"Agreed."
Lester turned around the edge of the rocks and fired off all twelve of his chambers. He hit six men, some twice and them falling over, but others riding despite their injuries, their fiery eyes clearly visible now in the full day's light.
Kuruk leaned over the rocks and took aim slowly, more carefully like Bennet, but the Sioux were only fifty yards away and he had to let the shot off sooner, striking a horse in the eye and taking it down. It fell atop its rider and slowed some others, but they were still six in number when they finally came around the rocks and swung viciously with axes and clubs at the three huddled men. Shooting close range with a rifle was useless, Bennet knew, so he took out his six-shooter and fired wildly at the men in front of him, blood raining on him from some unseen dying thing nearby him. The remaining injuns lept down from their horses and ran at the men, swinging at them and the men had to return blows. It was only five versus three now and Kuruk was handling two men easily, knocking back and dodging blows. Two more landed at Bennet who dispatched one with a shot to the gut and took to the other with his fists.
The Sioux swung wildly with his axe, slamming it, thudding, into the sand and rocks. Soon he had Bennet pinned and was smashing at his face with the butt of the axe, catching Bennet's nose and unleashing a torrent of blood over them both. Bennet's right hand struggled outward, looking for something to use as a weapon, while his left kept the warrior at bay, fending off attacks. His hand found a rock and he brough it up, swinging in a wide arc, catching the injun in the temple and spraying his blood on the rocks. The body slumped to the ground and Bennet pulled away from him. He saw that the injun wasn't dead but only stunned, his eyed blank and rolling about his head, jerking about with failed movements. Bennet brough the rock down again and the man was still.
A struggle for a fallen pistol led Lester to shoot the man atop him in the shoulder and chest, having taken a severe beating around his face and large cuts on his chest. Kuruk had also been cut on the chest and back, but had killed his two attackers with a violent fury and went about scalping them.
"What are you going to do with those?" Bennet asked, spitting blood onto the rocks and wiping some from his nose onto his sleeve.
"Sell them," Kuruk said. "Fifty cents per scalp."
"People pay top dollar for injun scalps," Lester sat up against the rocks. "Mostly so's they know that the roaming bands is at least part dead."
Bennet nodded as he took this on and they all searched the bodies for valuables.
"Come on," Bennet said after a time. "Let's get out of here."
"We should lash the horses we can round up," Lester said. "They'd sell too at market where we're going."
Bennet agreed and they set about chasing down and roping the horses into a chain. Once they had, they moved off again towards the town over the rocky hills.

Traildust PART FOURTEEN

2011-07-06T17:52:00.000-07:00

After resupplying in a nearby town, Bennet and his two companions moved out again into the desert, setting their sites on a grouping of rocky hills not further than a two days' ride. It had occured to Bennet that he did not know where he was going, but was merely going for the sake of travelling away, it seemed, from everything to his back. The man who had waylaid him had, for certain, been the catalyst that had driven him on this journey out into the desert and all the nothing that lay within it, but Bennet felt that this journey had been coming for sometime, since there was little that was tying him down to the small town he'd left with Jake all those days ago. He had his shop, to be sure, and some friendly acquaintances, but the shop could be taken over by another and he could always meet more people. Since Vera and his daughter's death, he supposed, the open road and stretching himself as far and wide as he could had always been what called to his soul.
"Where you headed, anyhow?" Lester asked. Bennet shook from his reverie and turned to the tall, thin man.
"Nowheres in particular," Bennet said. "Somewhere else."
Lester nodded for a time and then spoke. "Why's that?"
"Sometimes a man's just gotta move away from where he's at," he paused a moment. "When there ain't nothin' holdin' him there anymore."
"I s'pose I can see the truth in that, though it would also behoove a man to try and build something back up from whence he comes."
"Where I'm comin' from ain't where I come from."
Lester turned to examine this man to whom he'd become atttached; medium height, solidly built and with piercing eyes that rarely shook from the horizon.
"Where is it, then, that you come from?" Lester said.
"Oh, now, ain't that a question," Bennet spat into the sand. "I met my wife, god rest her, in Blackwater, up someways north, and moved to Galston not six months or so later. We eloped, see."
Lester nodded.
"But I come to Blackwater from my daddy's farm which was some ways West, that is to say, a small town in the middle a nowhere with fewer prospects than what I found myself in."
"It don't seem," Lester ventured, "like your prospects is much increased."
Bennet turned from the horizon and studied Lester closely.
"No," he said finally. "As of late, they do not."
"And this man," Lester pushed on, "who is pursuing you with the most murderous of intentions - you do not know him nor know what he wants?"
"I do not."
"That all seems mighty peculiar to me."
During all this, Kuruk the Apache said nothing, merely riding in silence towards the rocks on the horizon as the two white men spoke of things past.
"It is peculiar to me, also," Bennet said. "It is also peculiar that you are askin' so many questions."
"It is his way," Kuruk's voice was like a roar in the night, unexpected and powerful. "He asks questions and he talks."
At this, Lester let out a bellowing laugh. "The man speaks the truth! I do, indeed, speak much and ask many questions! Pardon me if it has offended you, but I am merely trying to get to know a man who has brought upon our company the possibility of a deadly pursuer."
"You ride with that possibility every day, riding with an Apache as you do," Bennet nodded at Kuruk. "There are those who take not as kindly to them as we do."
Kuruk grunted.
"Double the reason why," Lester continued, "that I wish to establish why we should bring more risk upon us."
Bennet sighed and, after a moment, spoke. "You know that I am a deserter of the USS Maine."
"I do."
"On my way home I encountered a gang of Mexicans who would not let me pass, saying they would kill me and some how fetch a good price for my hide and possessions."
Lester said nothing.
"So, I made a deal for my life. I said that I was a blacksmith and that I could make them fake money. I could press coins and hammer out moulds for printing bills, too. And this I did for some time until I decided I had paid my debt to them for letting me live."
"This did not end well?" Night had begun to fall and a wind kicked up sand around them. A coyote cried.
"It did not. They killed my wife and daughter in front of me, violating my young daughter until she died for her injuries. I continued to provide them with fake money because I had nothing left to lose. So, this man pursuing me, is likely doing so because of that."
Lester sat silently on his horse for many moments. Kuruk turned and looked Bennet up and down, his eyes pitying the man, nothing needing to be said.
"Well, then," Lester said. "The road calls to you."
"It does."
And then men rode off silently into the night, coyotes crying after them.

Traildust PART THIRTEEN

2011-07-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Though he was happy simply to have a horse, the man could not say that he liked this horse. It was stubborn and untrained, nothing like his old horse. He missed his old horse. He had never - not once - fantacized about shooting his old horse. This horse refused to go at the quick speeds of the old horse, sticking mostly to a slow run when it could muster itself.
"At this rate," the man said to himself, "I'll never catch up."
He pulled out his Bowie knife and stuck it in the horse's flank while yelling at it to speed up. It merely whinnied and bucked, kicking the man to the sand and roiling in its agony.
"Stupid sonofabitch!" the man yelled at the horse and pulled out his pistol and shot it in the head. A burst of red and it fell to the sand, still as a log. For a while, the man just stood there and stared at the beast. He looked around him and saw nothing.
"Well," he put his pistol away. "Shit."
He took up the important pieces from his saddle bags - his money and food and water - and started walking east. Someone would be along sooner or later, he figured, and would be kind and stupid enough to offer him help. Looking up at the sky, he revelled in the fact that it seemed to boundless and large. Everything seemed to him boundless and large on this Earth. When you stared up at the sky by day it was blue as far as forever, and by night it was black as pitch with more stars than grains of sand on the Earth. The desert itself, too, was boundless with more grains of sand than could be counted, doubling the immensity of the night by proxy. Sand that seemed to dig around into your very blood if you stayed out here long enough like the man had. Bright, lazy sand that stretched out and over the world, across the horizon and off the edge of the world and then kept going some more. He smiled at the soft, wheezing sound his feet made as they plodded along in the sand, the warmth of it all causing him to sweat.
The oceans, too, were boundless - vast and crushing. He had once been on a ship, bound for distant shores with adventure in mind, but it was not to be and they had been waylaid and he had had to kill his way out, stealing a life boat with the blood of many men sloshing around in the bottom. When on the sea it appeared, like the desert, to spill over the edge of the world and crush everything below it with its might.
Back on land, the mountains and the plains all were part of the endless vastness of everything. Each area seeming in turn to be endless while in them but small and conquerable from afar.
A soft clopping from behind him drew his mind away from thoughts off the world and a man approached him atop a horse.
"Lo there," the traveller yelled. "You lost?"
"Not so much lost," the man said, "as horseless."
"Was that yours I saw back a ways, dead in the sand?"
"It was. Died on me of exhaustion and stupidity."
"Looked to me like it'd been shot in the forehead," the traveller stared down, putting his hand on his horse's neck. "You shoot your horse?"
The man eyed the traveller, judging him. "If'n I did, what business would it be a yours?"
"Well," the traveller said, "I reckon that it would be it was your own fault your horseless and I might leave you to your plight here in the open sands."
"Would you now?"
"I reckon I would."
The man inched his hand towards his holster but the traveller had his piece already out by his thigh.
"I don't reckon that's too bright a plan, boy," the traveller said. "And for it I'll take your money."
"My money?" the man shifted his weight onto his left foot.
"Yes sir," the traveller raised his pistol, cocking it. "Or you shall surely die by my bullet."
"Well," the man bent his knee. "It doesn't look like I have a choice, do I?"
"You do not."
No one ever expects for a man to jump left instead of right. It helped that the traveller had his gun low behind the horse's head and had to raise it to try and aim at the man. By that time, though, it was over. The man had out his pistol and had levelled with the traveller's body and fired. A whump and a grunt and the traveller fell from his horse. The man walked forward but the traveller let off a cracking shot that almost hit the man in the toes and he jumped backwards, firing again at the felled man, hitting him in the arm.
"Jesus lord above!" the traveller cried, cluthing his injured arm.
The man walked forward and stood over the traveller. "This is how it was meant to be. There was never an escape for you."
"Fuck you, mister," the traveller yelled. "I hope this desert eats you alive!"
"It already has." And the man shot the traveller in the face.
While the blood seeped into the sand and the world, the man took the traveller's possessions as his own and climbed upon the horse, riding after the American.

Traildust PART TWELVE

2011-07-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

Bennet approached the fire with a trepidatious caution. He could see two men sitting by the fire, eating or talking, giving him mostly no notice. The night was cold and he wanted to be near the warmth.
"That's far enough," a voice carried over from the fire. "Talk before I shoot ye dead and leave ye to the buzzards."
"I am cold and alone," Bennet stopped moving and stood there hugging himself. "My horse died on me and I am being pursued by a man with a powerful need to shoot me for which I cannot account."
Silence floated over them for some time. Desert wind blew sand into Bennet's boots and he shivered.
"Well come on by the fire then," the voice said. "No sense in ye freezing thirty feet out from warmth when it sounds like you got a story to tell."
Bennet surged forward and braced himself by the fire, warming his cold extremities.
"Thank ye," he said. "It was gettin' harder to walk."
"Desert nights will do that to ye."
The man who had spoken with Bennet was a tall, slim man with a lanky beard and a pock-marked face. He wore a worn hat low over his eyes, his hands working over a piece of wood with a knife, whittling some small figure or another. On the other side of the fire sat what looked to Bennet to be an Apache, but he admitted to himself that he could not rightly tell all injunes from each other. For all he knew, the man could have been a Mohawk or a Sioux. He wore his hair long and tied at the back with a strip of buffalo leather, his head bent low eating from a small bowl of beans and meat. A rich man's waistcoat bound his chest, a fob-chain linking the two sides together and he had on buffalo leather chaps over faded green trousers, store-bought at one time or another. A sheath on either hip held large Bowie knives and two gun-holsters sat behind them.
"Your injun a quick-draw?" Bennet asked.
"He ain't my injun," the man said. "He's my friend. Calls himself Kuruk."
"It means Bear," Kuruk did not look up from his meal. "My father was Bodaway. Firemaker."
"Right. And I'm Lester Simms," Lester eased his hat up from over his eyes. "Now, how's about you tell us that story about why you're so alone and running?"
"I suppose you got the right to ask."
Lester nodded. Bennet sighed and began his story, telling the two men about the USS Maine, about the Mexicans, about the counterfeit money, the death of his family and finally about the man with the gun. When his tale was done, he sat in silence as the men absorbed the tale. Kuruk had stopped eating, eyes focused on this new man with strange tales of death. The fire danced orange across their faces and the sand, sending sparks like stars up to meet their brothers and sisters in the sky. Finally, Lester spoke.
"You was gonna be stationed on the USS Maine?"
"I was."
"And you deserted?"
"I did."
Lester considered this a moment. "Not too brave."
"It was smart."
Lester laughed. "That it was. Better to be a coward for a day and continue living than a hero for the same day and die."
"Some might consider it better to be a hero forever than a coward til you die," Bennet said. He shifted, cooler sand moving up as the warm sand blew away. "But I figure I like your position better."
"Figured you might."
Lester paused a moment.
"And this man," he asked. "With the gun. You don't know who he is?"
"No, sir."
"No thoughts on who he might be?"
"Well," Bennet considered this a moment. "At first, I thought he might be some kind of lawman, but in general lawmen don't open fire on ye without tellin' ye first that they's there. Some kind of honour in the way they do things."
Lester nodded.
"But this man," Bennet continued, "baited a trap with the bodies of dead men and opened fire on us unsuspectin'. Could be Pinkertons if it ain't the Marshalls, but I ain't sure. Could be a mercenary a some kind, though I could not figure who would have hired him and why for to come after me."
"Perhaps a man not too keen on your money business?" Lester offered.
"Or a man wanting to take it over," Kuruk offered from his place further from the fire.
"Thems is all options worth thinkin' over," Bennet said. "But until I find out, they's only unfounded figurins."
"You should face him," the Apache said. "Like a man."
Bennet turned and looked at the brooding native. "How could I face down a man I could not see?"
"Now you are ahead of him," Kuruk said. "You can wait. Face him down when he comes this way."
"This man is a better shot than I am. He will see me from many miles off and take me down before I have a chance to sight my weapon."
Kuruk grunted, annoyed. "You are just a coward."
"We just got done establishing he is," Lester laughed. "Now come on, let's get some sleep and hope this man don't happen upon us in the night."

As it happened, the man did not find them that night. They awoke to a new day, the sun beating down as uncovered and unholy hot as ever, sitting shining and powerful in the endless blue that stretched over the desert and to the end of the earth. Vultures circled on the horizon back the way Bennet had come. They had found the Mexicans and would eat well for days. It was then that Bennet thought of Jake, who was also likely having his eyes plucked and flesh picked by carrion birds of all colours and sizes, leaving him to be more dust on the endless mesa.
"Come on," Lester said. "You can ride double with Kuruk until we find some traders or a town and get ye a new horse."
Kuruk nodded at Bennet and patted the edge of saddle behind him, helping Bennet up.
"Hold on tight," Kuruk said. "We ride fast."
Bennet wrapped his arms around the musuclar Apache, his skin smooth and sun-worn. The Apache let out a whistle and the horses were off, bounding through the sand, racing time itself. But behind them, coming up closer, creeping like death, was the man with the gun.

Traildust PART ELEVEN

2011-06-27T18:33:00.000-07:00

Under searing sun and over sandy dunes, Bennet rode his horse like a man edging to eternity and off the edge of the world, and finally, with it's lungs burned and collapsed from blood and sand and air, it died, toppling over, flinging Bennet and dying with a hideous croak. It panted and wheezed, blood oozing from its nostrils and over its tongue, which hung loosely from its mouth, its dark eyes glaring up at the demon sun in a silent curse.
"God damnit," Bennet said, rubbing his back and standing. He moved over and patted the horse and its heavy ribs, admiring the poor, exhausted beast. "You done good."
He looked behind him and to the sides, examining each horizon to make sure he was alone. Pale and endless desert stretched out and away from him, pock-marked with desert shrubs and cacti, polished white animal skulls glowing in the dusk light. Night was coming soon and it would be cold. From his reckoning, Bennet was still many miles out from any civilized town and he knew roaming bands of injuns and white men were scattered about this place, pillaging for gold or women or scalps.
"Shit."
Not having anything else to do, Bennet walked. He walked the way he was going when his horse had died. He did not, though he had thought of doing so, carve some flesh from the dead beast to make sure he had food. It did not feel right. The jerky and left-over tortillas in his rucksack would have to do, and he still had a full canteen of water and a quart of whiskey. As far as things went, it could be worse. He thought about the scores and unimaginable numbers of other men, of whatever creeds and colours, who had travelled this place by foot or on horse whose names had been lost to history and the world and its people. Lost not because they did not matter, or were of no consequence, but because that is the way of things - you are born and exist, you make a way in this world - everychanging and volatile - and then you are taken from it, if you are lucky it is sudden and quick, with a bullet or during sleep, or if fate is crueler, which she usually is, you are taken in pain and crying in the night for a mother or lover long gone.
It was in this moment that Bennet though on his own family since past. Vera had been one of the most beautiful ladies in Blackwater, where they had both grown up, and was often being called on by one gentlemen or another, of all ages, since she was twelve. Her mother did nothing to discourage it because a marriage to a good man was mostly all a lady in those parts at that time could hope for and no one did much to alter that fate. Odd exceptions cropped up, it is certain, "But that is for other people's children," Vera's mother had said, "not for my kin."
Of course, Vera did not want to marry Walter Stark, a growing oil baron whose wealth increased with his girth, growing also in senility, proposing to Vera at the age of fifty-nine when she was merely fourteen. Nor did she accept the proposal from Alastair MacReady who ran a troupe of actors all over the souther states and was also a wealthy man with lofty ambitions for the newly introduced "moving pictures" when she was sixteen.
"You wait and see," he said to her one day over iced tea, "Muybridge fellow was on to something! And I hear Edison is perfecting an American version - a better version! - called the Kinetoscope - you just wait, missy!"
No, Vera wanted a man who was much like her, quiet and enjoyed reading and did not feel bound totally by the world as it was. That was when Bennet sauntered into her sheltered life. He was a boy looking for work on a farm from the other side of the state and Vera's parents gave him a job as a stable hand. Bennet was twenty-four and has ridden across the state on a horse that was older than he was. To Vera, he seemed like something out of an old wives' tale and within a few months, they were married secretly and to avoid her parents' wrath, they fled the town to settle in Galston, Bennet taking up the business of blacksmithing and Vera giving birth to their daughter, Mina.
With humour, Vera noted the success of MacReady's prediction on motion pictures some years later, but at also having backed the wrong man. A Frenchman had invented and patented something called the cinematographe that was much more popular and regarded than Edison's kinetoscope. Soon enough, though, it seemed that America was going to war with the Cubans and the Spanish and Bennet took it upon himeself to serve his country.
"Don't go, Bennet," Vera said. "Stay. We need you here."
"I have to go," he said, putting his boots on. "Business ain't too good and they're payin' somethin' good to get on a boat in a uniform and look menacin' at Cubans."
He smiled and kissed her forehead. "I'll be back 'fore you know it."
"You better, mister man," she said and kissed him. "I ain't gonna wait forever - I'm still a pretty lady!"
"Prettiest in town."
"Shush you! Go on, git. I expect some letters from my brave soldier man!"
"I'll write," Bennet walked out the front door. "You better write back."
Vera only smiled and waved her own little wave and Bennet marched off to return a coward nigh half a year later. When he fell in with Sanguar in his gang of thugs, Bennet held his promise and made them as much dinero as they wanted, more, but after a year he grew weary of the trips out into the desert and demanded he be set free from his obligations.
"It don't bring me in nothin'," he said. "And these trips is killin' my business and ruinin' my family. I'm tired a comin' out here and givin' you money I ain't allowed to spend!"
"Careful, cabron," Sanguar said. "We let you live. That is an expensive thing, si?"
"I need to be free, so I can be with my wife, my child!"
"Muchos problemas, eh hermano?" Sanguar laughed, a gruff sound like a train crashing. "La familia también caro."
"What?"
Sanguar laughed again and turned on his horse and left. Bennet did not return to the Mexicans for the next payment and when he returned from work the next day, he found Sanguar in his home, knives to the throats of his wife and child.
"Vera!" Bennet charged forward and stopped. "Sanguar, what do you want?"
"My money," he said. "As promised."
"Bennet..." Vera could hardly speak for the fear.
"Let them go," Bennet said, though his voice betrayed his own apprehensions. "Or I swear to god above I will kill you."
Sanguar smiled his black smile, rotten teeth glaring in the setting sun. The knife moved too quickly for Bennet to even see it and Vera clutched at her throat, blood exploding out in fountains and covering Bennet's face and front in red. Though he wanted to speak, for words to express his agony, his throat would not let him and he could only emit a cracked cry. His eyes glistened with tears and he dropped to his knees. A broken man. Two of Sanguar's men, among them Xavo, came and grabbed Bennet by the arms.
"And now," Sanguar said, "you find out the price of family and disloyalty."
Though you could not tell you how long he was held there in actuality, it felt like centuries, like men were born and crumbled to dust before Sanguar left his home. He sat there, bound and impotent and furious, as Sanguar violated his only daughter, tender and young, as she screamed for her father and mother, tears streaming down her angelic face. Bennet slumped over in a coma of emptiness and loss after Sanguar finally killed the poor girl.
"Nex time," Sanguar said as he left, wiping the blade he had used for the killings on Bennet's jacket, " I want double money."
Bennet said nothing. He lay there for hours after they had left, staring into the greying eyes of his wife and child, too young for death and too kind and innocent for a death like this.
All this and more Bennet pondered as he walked the desert alone, in the cold as night darkened the world. Ahead of him he saw and fire and hoped he was walking towards kinder men.

Apocalypse List

2011-06-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about this last night when I couldn't sleep. Say it's the apocalypse, or some other kind of earth-shattering event, and you have the chance to get on one of the people-arks and get saved with a small percentage of humanity. What would you save? Think about it - you can only bring so much luggage, so let's say you can take 10 books, 10 movies/TV shows, 10 CDs and 5 other personal items along with clothes.
What would you bring?
NOTE: Films that are trilogies count as only one because they come in the same pack. Book series only count as one if they CURRENTLY come in a one book option. These items must come from YOUR SHELF AS IT IS NOW. These are in no particular order.

Books:
1. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
2. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
3. Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
4. World War Z - Max Brooks
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
6. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
7. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
8. Night, Dawn and Day - Elie Wiesel
9. American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
10. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

DVDs:
1. Gross Point Blank
2. Apocalypse Now
3. Buried
4. Snatch
5. True Grit (Coen Bros version)
6. Indiana Jones Trilogy
7. Star Wars Original Trilogy
8. Back to the Future Trilogy
9. Firefly
10. Reservoir Dogs

CDs:
1. The Shape of Punk to Come - The Refused
2. International Superhits - Green Day
3. The Empire Strikes First - Bad Religion
4. Billy Talent - Billy Talent
5. Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan
6. The Living End - The Living End
7. Zoot Suit Riot - The Cherry Poppin' Daddies
8. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
9. Everything Goes Numb - Streetlight Manifesto
10. Decomposer - The Matches

Personal Items:
1. Camera and charger
2. Laptop and charger
3. Photo albums
4. A large notebook and a pen
5. A trypic of paintings done by Sam Henning hanging on my wall.

What would you save?

P.S. : These items may change as my collection grows or my tastes change.

Traildust PART TEN

2011-06-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

Though he had gotten quite a head-start on him, the man was not worried about the American who had escaped after the gunfight. His escape had been amusing and impressive, something the man could rarely say about anyway on the wrong end of his pistols. The town he'd come from had fired at him but relented when the man had killed two of the guards. When he came into town the mayor addressed him with fear and anger.
"What do you want, you godless sonofabitch?" he shook a pistol at the man.
"A horse," the man said. "I got my saddle here but I need a new horse. Mine got shot."
"What makes you think we'd sell you a horse?" the mayor cocked the hammer on his pistol. "What makes you think I won't just shoot you down right now for what you done to my daughter?"
"Because you'da done it already," the man took his coin bag from his pocket. "And my coin is still good here. 'Sides, you don't know who's man I am."
The man smiled and it was so unnerving that the mayor holstered his piece and yelled for a horse to be brought to the man, for which the man parted with more gold than he preferred but he knew better than to argue under the circtumstances.
He had moved on now to another town within a day's ride. Before leaving the old town, though, he'd stuck around to watch the buzzards fly in and start picking apart the bodies of the dead men that lay strewn in the desert sand. The sun had already started to make them stink. Their eyes were grey and lifeless, arms stretched out towards weapons they could never reach.
The man pondered for a moment on where the soul might go after death, and if the final breath of a man was the soul escaping. He chuckled at this, musing on how many last breaths had gone unheard. A man was to be judged by the quality and character of his final words. That was what his father had always taught him and, if that were true, then many men he'd killed were of no consequence in the universe at all. Most spouted the same unoriginal blatherings of frightened dying men, cursing the man or his family or his soul. There were but a few that stuck to mind.
A man in a bar who had looked at him in a manor not to his liking had whispered in his ear before passing, "Shame I should die under this roof, surrounded by stinking, drunk men and not under the stars with my wife".
The man had liked that very much. Most injuns he'd killed had uttered something in their native, foreign tongue and most blacks merely prayed to the mercy of god. But, again, there had been exceptions. From what he could tell, white men and Mexicans cursed their killer's soul, black men prayed to god above for mercy and pity and injuns spoke in their unknowable tongue, probably speaking words to mother earth and the spirits and the animals. He hadn't yet killed a Chinaman, but looked forward to it.
Buzzards and creatures of carrion eat the eyes of the dead first, for they are soft and easy to get at. The dead men lay with eyes like black holes, bleeding, staring with no sight into the burning sun and sand while huge birds clawed at their chest and thrust their pointed beaks into their flesh. The man liked watching buzzards eat. It all seemed so natural to him.
It didn't take long to reach another town. One had popped up just under a day's ride away, as the sun lay high in the cloudless blue, and he had stopped in for some rest and food. He did not feel like drink or whores, he needed his mind clear for tracking the American. To clear his mind and think about where he would go, if he were a frightened man with a gunman on his tail, he took a walk around the small town on its dusty clay roads. Not long into his stroll he came upon a Jew wearing the typical long coat and hat of men of that religion. Two men were next to him, walking, and he heard one of the men say the word rabbi which he knew was the Jewish priest.
"You," the man said, "Jew."
The three men stopped and looked at him. Fear was already in their eyes.
"What do you do?"
"Me?" the man in the centre, with the coat and hat, gestured to himself. The man nodded. "I am a rabbi to these men and other Jews in the town, and to some people in towns around the area."
"That's like a priest, ain't it?"
The rabbi nodded. "It is, but for people of the Jewish faith."
"The Jewish faith."
The rabbi nodded again. The two men flanking him eyed each other, not knowing what to do.
"Correct me if my figuring is wrong, rabbi," the man approached the three Jews. They stood their ground. "But the Jews are not believers in Christ, are they?"
"No," the rabbi said, "we are not. We believe, for certain, that he was likely a real man, flesh and blood like the rest of us, but was not the moshiach, the messiah."
"How can you believe that?"
The rabbi shrugged. "It is in our faith, much like Christ is the foundation of yours. There were tennants for the moshiach to match, and Jesus did not match them."
"He did not live up to your Jewish expectations of the messiah?" The man placed his hand on his pistol.
"That is a matter for the Jews of the day," the rabbi eyed the pistol. "But no, he is not a messiah to us. We wait for ours, still, to come."
The man conisdered this a moment. "You are still expecting a messiah to come for you?"
The rabbi nodded. "That, too, is a tennant of our faith."
"Well hallelujah, for I have come."
The man drew his pistol and fired at the three Jews, striking each three of them in the heart. The two men flanking the rabbi fell down dead, but the rabbi still lived, clutching his breat. Many scared bystanders stood silently and watched. The rabbi's lips were moving and the man leaned down to listen to him speak.
"Your last words?" the man said.
"It is of no consequence that you kill me, for you only harm yourself. I am a man of god like any of your priests, and he shall look after me. You have felled to faithful men with me, and for this you will be punished."
"I've heard all this before, rabbi," the man put the gun to the rabbi's chin. "Anything else?"
"Though a bullet has felled me, the sun is still beautiful and the world is still here. I am nothing more than someone who existed and lived on a planet not entirely our own. You, too, are of no consequence at all."
And then, the rabbi died. The man stayed there for a moment, leaning over the still-warm body, and pondered the words. Before standing he whispered, "I've never killed a Jew before. Thank you, rabbi."
He stood, then, and walked away to his cabin where no one bothered him until he road out the next morning, in search of the American who had run away.

Traildust PART NINE

2011-06-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

Sweat poured into Bennet's eyes as the sun burned down over them. Rifle cracks echoed over the landscape, small tufts of sand exploding upwards with each missed bullet, each avoided death. On the other side of the dead fire was Xavo, swearing loudly to himself and to the sky in his native tongue, reloading shot after shot. Most of his bullets went wide or high, but Bennet didn't judge. His shots weren't hitting home either. A seething buzz past his ear and was gone - a shot meant for the head.
"Holy Mary, mother of god," Bennet said to himself. "I ain't never asked for nothin' afore, but if you will let me survive this here gunfight, I'll try and be a better Catholic," a sandy explosion by his other ear, "ah, to hell with it."
He reached over the top of the sandbank and fired all six shots from his six-shooter. Then, silence. No shots, nothing. A voice came sailing to them on the wind.
"How about we put down our guns?" it said. "I done waylaid your friends, sure, but I'm sure we can come to some kind of arrangement."
Xavo and Bennet exchanged a glance.
"I'm thinkin', friend," Bennet said, "that you have us figured for fools."
"Not at all, but for smart men who want to live."
"That we do. I'd like to continue living for many years ahead, if it is possible and within the realm of things likely."
A pause. "It can be arranged for you to live."
"Basta!" Xavo said and jumped up from his hiding spot. "Morirás por su fechorías a mis amigos!"
He fired his two loaded pistols at the voice, loud cracks bursting the air around them like glass. When he was done, clouds of smoke hung low over the open desert, clinging to everything like cotton. The wind cleared it amidst a stunned silence and when it did a final crack sounded and Xavo dropped to the sand, a red hole in his forehead.
"Jesus Christ!" Bennet dug himself deeper into his sandy dugout.
"Your friend has broken our accord," the voice carried on. "And now you must die."
"He didn't speak for the both of us!" Bennet yelled back. His heart thudded against his ribs, a beast trying to escape his bonds.
"I'm afraid he did."
Rifle cracks. Thuds and sany eruptions. Bennet looked around for a way to flee. His horse was not five paces away. He knew he could make it to the horse, and figured if he rode by cluthing to the side of the horse, using it as a shield, that he ought to be able to escape. He crawled through the sand on his belly like a snake, bullets whizzing overhead, until he reached his and Xavo's horses. But before jumping up and out, he thought for a moment. He turned, digging himself into the sand, and took aim with his rifle and checked the magazine. Two shots left.
"Better make 'em count," he said aloud to himself and stared down the site.
He could see his enemy's horse, standing by the way where the shots were coming from, digging its hooves idly into the sand. Looking down the barrel of the gun, Bennet remembered the shooting advice he'd first gotten from his father.
"Breathe in," he's said, "and squeeze the trigger back tight halfway through your breath out."
Bennet breathed in slowly and fired as he breathed out. The shot went far wide and went off into the distance, probably to land in some cactus or rock.
"Come on, damnit," he said to himself. "Shoot that damn horse or yer a dead man!"
He breathed in slowly and as he breathed out - crack! In the distance, the horse went down, its limbs flailing around until it crashed to the sand in a cloud.
Now was his chance.
Out loud, he counted to three before jumping up and thrusting forward. He landed in between his and Xavo's horse and climbed up against the side of his own horse. Grabbing the reigns of Xavo's horse, he smacked the horses into motion and they whinnied and sped off into the desert. A rifle crack felled Xavo's horse. The horse fell in an explosion of sand and blood. By the time the man realised that Bennet was on the other horse, he was too far out of range. A Winchester repeater can only shoot so far, and five hundred feet is out of that distance. Not to mention while moving.
Bennet urged the horse on, looking over his shoulder for a bullet that would turn his life to darkness.

The man crept from his dugout and went over to the camp where he'd lain his trap. There was a new body now, the man he'd just shot. He looked in the distance at the dust trail of the escaping man but did not care. Bending low, he examined the dead Mexican's face.
"You must be Xavo," the man said and spat on Xavo's face. "No mas, no mas."
By Xavo's hands, the man saw that he had two pistols with blade attachements to the barrel. He took these up and smiled.
"Well, I'll be," he said and pocketed them both. Collecting the money and gold teeth from the dead around him, he turend around and took his saddle and bags from his dead horse. He made for the town from which he'd come. Whether they liked it or not, they were selling him a new horse and by morning he would be riding after the American who'd escaped. Soon, the vultures would come and the only evidence of the fight would be bones, blood and stories.

Traildust PART EIGHT

2011-06-17T17:42:00.000-07:00

Though the sandstorm had faded away into the night, the man remained in the town. He was close enough to his destination that he could afford some moments to himself and he had not seen the riders he was looking for enter the area yet. He had paid a man to tell him once the Mexicans had showed up. For now, he remained in the town. He had arrived last night, during the storm, flashing his gold and pistols. Food and beer and whiskey had been brought to him a plenty by whores of his choosing, lined up by the mayor of the town.
"Pretty, ain't she?" he said, gesturing to a short, buxome woman with dark hair and frightened eyes.
The man grunted. "Who is she?"
"My daughter."
"I'll take her," the man pulled the girl close to him. She squealed, afraid. "And them ones, too."
He pointed to two women who could easily have been twins, no older than the sixteen of the mayor's daughter.
"Of course, sir," the man ushered the two women into a storage room. They re-emerged with food and wine and were escorted to the man's house. The man stood in the middle of the town square and pushed his lips onto those of the small daughter of the mayor. She tried to resist but his arms were strong, his hands wandering over her thighs and buttocks. People in the square looked away, left. The man smirks and dragged the girl with him to the house with the other women. Her screams echoed out into the world, uncaring, as he violated her over and over again.
In the morning, he pulled on his britches and stepped out into the glaring sunlight of the day. The storm had passed, leaving everything covered in a thick layer of sand. A messenger came to him.
"Sir," he said, panting out of breath, "sir, the men you was lookin' for, I think they just come in from the south!"
"You sure?" the man pulled on his duster and hat.
"Well, I reckon it. Three Mexicans, one with a red bandana around his hat."
The man flipped the messenger a coin. "Buy yourself a whore."
Tipping his hat, the boy left. The man saddled his horse and packed up his belongings and rode swiftly from the town, ignoring the smiling mayor spitting pleasantries, smirking. It was not until the man was out of sight, hidden from his prey, that the mayor would find his daughter. Blood covered the walls and floor. Her once pretty face was cut from the skull and stuck to the wall in a macabre grimace, the eyes staring out at a world they no longer knew. In blood, on the walls, was written "thanks be to the lord". The girl's gut had been cut open, the sheets soaked with thick redness. The other two whores were found bound and gagged in the closet, nary a cut on them. It is said that the mayor's wife's cries could be heard for miles and days, cracking the air like lightning. But the man who killed her daughter heard nothing of it.

Bennet and Xavo were riding side by side when Xavo finally spoke, the first words since they'd left town.
"There, up ahead," he said. He leant over and rubbed his leg. "I can see Sanguar's hat."
Bennet, too, could see the unmistakeable red bandana wrapped around an old brown hat, sitting on the Mexican's head, while he sat in the sand contemplating gold and murder.
"Finally," Bennet said. "It was damn far out this time."
Xavo nodded. It was only when they were within a stone's throw that they saw the blood. Like a map of veins spread across the sand, it had sunk in dark and thick. The Mexicans sat in upright positions against saddlesm. Their horses were gutted, sitting around them, strips of meat removed.
The two riders steadied their horses, who whined at the sight of the dead animals. Bennet shushed and petted his, cooing it to being still. Once it was, he climbed down and explorded the site.
"Madre des dios," Xavo had climbed from his horse, too, and walked beside Bennet. "What has happened?"
"Can't rightly say," Bennt leaned down to look at Sanguar's face. A knife stuck out, a note pinned against his forehead. Bennet took the note off and read it. "But it appears that someone is not so keen on our fake money business."
"Que?"
Bennet passed Xavo the note, who read it, mumbling each word aloud in the manner of men reading their second language.
"Puta madre," he said, throwing the note down. "Who is this who tries to stop us?"
Bennet got up, looked around. "Don't know, doesn't say."
Beyond the town nearby a ways and some shrubbery over the lip of a small valley, there was nowhere for an ambusher to hide.
"But it seems to me like we should leave."
Bennet had barely spoken the words when small explosions in the sand caught his eyes.
Thuk, thuk, thuk.
The rifle cracks came to his ears a split second later and he dropped to the ground.
"Too late," he said to himself. "Looks like we have to shoot our way out."
Xavo cocked his two pistols, raised them close to his chest. "Si, and maybe only one of us will leave."
"Or neither of us."
And the two men returned fire in the direction of the gun-cracks, hoping to hit anything.

Traildust PART SEVEN

2011-06-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

A heavy sandstorm began to blow in from the south and Bennet had to wrap a torn piece of cloth across his nose and mouth to breath. The Mexican popped up his coat collar and fashioned them together with a string sewn there for the purpose. The world was blurred and hazy, the horses whined and bucked, wanting to turn their eyes away from the sand and the wind.
"We oughta stop somewhere," Bennet said, his voice loud to call over the howling winds. "The horses ain't gonna make it and we're gonna get lost out here! I'm certain there's a town not far from here to the north-west."
"No stopping, cabron," Xavo said. "We're already tarde, we need to meet the others."
"Where the hell are they? We never been out this far for a meet before. The hell's goin' on?"
"Cállate y ven, we're almost there."
As if on message by god, Xavo's horse bucked him off in a fit of pain and fear and kicked its way north as fast as its tired legs would take it, its hind legs stamping on Xavo's left leg as it fled from its master.
"Puta madre!" The Mexican got up to try and follow the beast, but tripped over into the sand. He let out a murderous cry, swearing revenge on the animal and the world of beasts and men. Thick blood pooled out from his leg and soaked into the yellow sand, balling in chunks and sticky rivers. "Help me, hijo de puta!"
Bennet climbed down off his horse and stood over the Mexican. "I think it's time you told me just what in the hell is goin' on, Xavo."
He pulled his six-shooter from his thigh holster and let it hang there in his hand. The Mexican looked from it to the eyes of the man holding it and back again. He swallowed and scratched at his dark and patchy beard. His eyes darted back and forth, a trapped animal backed into a corner.
"Pinche cabron," he said. "There's nothing going on, si? Sanguar just wants to have a talk with you, hablar, es todo."
"Talk about what?"
"Business, cabron, negocio, dinero."
"What in the hell's changed from normal?" Bennet cocked the hammer back on the pistol but didn't raise it from its languid position by his side. Xavo jerked his eyes to the pistol. Slowly, he looked back up at Bennet. His eyes were serious, unmoving, dark with anger.
"It's getting harder to move the fake money," Xavo pushed himself into a sitting position with his palms. "The townspeople and their intendetes are hiring mercenarios, los Pinkertons, to drive us out of town. They're starting not to take the pesos, we need to make more American dolares. Green money, cabron. They killed three of our hermanos so far!" The Mexican stopped and eyed Bennet carefully. "Sanguar figured that since you are un herrero, you could make some pistolas y fusiles. Guns, cabron. Sanguar wants guns."
Bennet looked down at the man. His eyes narrowed. "I don't make guns."
"Eres un herrero! You can make guns!" Xavo lifted his arms in the air, fists balled, shaking them at him.
"I can make guns, but I won't make guns."
"Por que, cabron?"
"'Coz that's gonna come back to me, and killin' folks ain't what I'm for. I'll make you some green back, American dolares. I'll do that. I said I'd do that, I owes you that much. But I draw the line at pistolas. No pistols, no rifles, nada. You ain't gonna come up here and just up and kill Americans 'coz they ain't liable to take the fake money I made for ye. That's a problem you gon' have to sort out yerself."
Xavo was silent for a moment that stretched for the creation and destruction of whole worlds. Finally, he cracked open his voice like an earthquake from under the sea. "Sanguar no sera feliz."
Bennet thumbed the hammer forward and holstered his gun. "Then let him be un-feliz." He reached down and helped the Mexican up onto his own horse and began leading it by the reigns in the direction of town.
"No, I figure we lay low until the sandstorm blows off, then we go talk to your man Sanguar."
Xavo nodded a curt nod and they continued off into the blankness of the desert storm. Once at the gates of the small town, whose name was printed on no sign visible in the storm, Bennet spoke with the mayor who met them at the gate at the behest of the men with guns who manned the entrance to the town. He explained that they were trapped out in the desert on their travels and that his companion had been hurt when his horse had gone mad from the sand and fled, kicking him to the ground. They mayor nodded and took them to a small, empty cottage next to the jail and brought them some food, strips of dried burro and chili, and water. He also sent for a doctor to examine Xavo's leg, who wrapped it in bandages and told him not to put pressure on it.
"The bone is likely broken," the doctor said, putting his tools in his back. "It will set, but you will have a limp. It won't be too bad if you don't walk on it for a short while."
Xavo swore at the man in his native tongue, cursing his family and his sex and his dog. "What am I suppoed to do, eh? Just sit around or ride?"
The doctor looked at him and sighed. He went out for a moment and returned, brushing sand from his hair, and gave Xavo a shot wooden cane.
"This will help lift the pressure from your leg while you walk. If you're careful and vigilent, you won't require one for the rest of your miserable days." And with that, the doctor was gone.
They slept the night in the town, the storm not letting up until the following morning. The mayor gave Xavo a new horse in exchange for his rifle. Grumbling, Xavo mounted the new horse and spurred it onwards, Bennet following. It wasn't until their way out of town that they found Xavo's horse dead curled in on itself like a cold and frightened child, its lungs filled with sand.

Traildust PART SIX

2011-06-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

The head made a wet slap and a dull thud as the man dropped it on the table. The hessian sack he had packed it in had turned a dark brown with dried blood, the rest of it caked in desert dust. Smoke curled up from the cigarette of the man sitting in front of him. It was his desk the head had been set down upon. A plaque on the wall named him as Jack Crawley, Officer of the Law, Commended for Brave Services to the People of Galveston, Texas. He reached forward and opened the sack from the top and pulled it down over the severed head. Dead eyes stared out from the preacher's face, contorted in a frozen look of everlasting horror.
"Jesus," Jack said. "He's an ugly fucker, ain't he?"
"No prettier nor uglier than your average nigger." The man spat onto the ground.
Jack coughed up a laugh. He unsheathed a knife from his waist and stuck it into the man's mouth. A small cut and a cold tooth tumbled into his grimy palm. Jack handed the tooth up to the man.
"This'll part of your payment, as well as the coin," Jack turned to unlock a safe behind him. He withdrew a small coffer of gold coins and passed them across the table. "Thanks for the good work, son."
"Thanks fer the money." The man put the coins in a pouch hanging from his belt.
"I got another job for ye, if you're interested?"
The man raised his chin at the man. "Go on."
Jack smiled. "There's a bunch of Mexicans sneaking counterfeit monies into the cities of the United States."
"What kind?"
"Mostly pesos and the like, but folks on the border still take 'em as payment. Word is, though, that they're starting to ship in fake American bills, too. That don't sit to right with me."
The man nodded.
"I'd like ye to kindly go on down Mexico way and convince 'em to just go ahead and stop."
The man nodded, again.
"I'm supposing I can count on you?"
The man spat. "Usually do."
Jack smiled, shook the man's hand and gestured for him to leave. The man left.
"Jimmy!" Jack called. A small man with a weasel-like demeanour and a large bald patch came in.
"Yeah, Mr. Crawley, sir?"
Jack threw the preacher's head at Jimmy, who caught it despite himself.
"Put that on a stake out in the courtyard and tell the Smythes and the Collinses that they can come see the head of the man responsible for defiling their daughters."
Jimmy turned to leave.
"Tell 'em also, Jimmy, that their pay is due."
"Of course, Mr. Crawley." And Jimmy slinked out of the room.
Outside, the man unhitched his horse, took out a small compass and then close it. He squinted at the horizon towards Mexico and kicked his horse. Hoof clops and dust lay behind the man and covered the world.

Bennet awoke earlier than Jake and packed up the campsite. He ate some leftover meat and beans for breakfast, the tortillas and fillings cold but still moist enough from being covered away from the desert sun.
The sounds of a horse made him turn around and a rider was approaching them at speed. He stopped and reared his horse just at the edge of the camp.
"Gringo," the man said.
"Hello, Xavo," Bennet said. "How are ye?"
"Who the fuck is that?" Xavo gestured with a strange pistol, a blade jutting out from beneath the barrel.
"Jake. He sort of invited hisself along."
"Hey," Xavo jumped down and kicked Jake's boot. Jake woke with a start, snorting. "What you doin' out here, gringo?"
"What's it to you, amiga?"
"Hoo, got some balls on you cabron. I got some balls, too." Xavo took the pistol and thrust the blade down into Jake's forehead and fired. The pistol ball shot out the back of his skull with bits of brain and a splattering of blood. A river of patterns, like veins of old copper, shot along the sand, staining the desert. Jake walked among the ghosts.
"God damnit!" Bennet yelled. "Now why'd you go and do that for?"
"I don't like being sassed, hermano. Vamos, vamos. No quiero llegar tarde."
Bennet took a look at Jake and sighed. Xavo went for the dead man's boots.
"I wouldn't be doin' that if I was you."
"Por que?"
"Wearin' a dead man's boots is invitin' a world a pain you ain't needin' or wantin'. Mala suerte."
Xavo eyed the boots and Bennet alternatively. He left the boots and climbed on his horse. Bennet did the same and they clicked their horses forward into the sun of the day, the white dust looking like an endless mirage created by mistake by some meddlesome god.

Traildust PART FIVE

2011-06-03T18:55:00.001-07:00

The sun was beginning to set and the winds were blowing in cold from the East. Coyotes barked and howled at the dustcloud-covered moon. Specks of fires burned on the horizon, but riders couldn't be seen for miles. The two riders stopped. Bennet looked off into the distance and then behind him and scratched his nose.
"We ought make camp here for tonight," he said, dismounting. "We'll continue on tomorrow."
"How far you goin', Bennet?" Jake said, climbing off his horse and lashing it to a nearby cactus.
"Far 'nuff. 'Bout another day's ride. If'n we're lucky it'll be a little less."
"What was it you said you had to do out there?"
"Didn't," Bennet tied his horse to a leafless shrub. "You don't gotta come along."
"I don't mind."
Bennet sat in the sand and carved himself a hole in the sand. The top was warm but just two handfuls down and it was cold. He pulled down his rucksack, dug into it and pull out some beans, sun-dried burro meat and some tortillas and put them down next to him. After a few tries he stoked up a fire and got it going so that the gods could see them clean and clear. Putting the food on a flat rock he pushed it towards the fire and smelled the food as it cooked.
"Is that all you got to eat?" Jake asked, moving closer to the fire. "Just that Mexican stuff?"
"Yeah, what of it?"
"Just don't seem good enough is all. I always keep m'self goin' with whiskey and American-style chilli. Maybe some cornbread if'n I got it."
"Well, guess each to his own."
Jake pulled some cornbread and whiskey out of his saddlebag and started eating.
"You already had whiskey," Bennet said.
"I did."
"Then why'd you take some a mine?"
"'Coz I asked and you gave."
Jake laughed at his own cleverness and Bennet ignored him, turning the strips of meat over to cook them evenly. Silence passed between the men, filled only by the sounds of a desert night. The specks on the horizon surrounded them on all sides. Fires lit by men like them, travelling, covered in desert dust and sweating in the sun, freezing under the moonlit night.
Smoke spiralled off of burnt edges and the food was ready. Bennet wrapped some beans and meat in a tortilla and ate, washing down every other mouthful with whiskey. When he was done he took some cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit one up, leaning it into the fire and pulling it in for a drag. Spirals of tobacco smoke lingered in the air like dust devils, mixing and mingling with the ember-laden fire smoke.
"Pass me one a them?"
"Y'got yer own."
Laughing, Jake reached into his vest pocket and pulled out some short cigars.
"Wouldja look at that?"
Putting the cigar in his mouth, he leaned his face in towards the fire to light it up. Smirking, he sat back up. The smell of burnt hair lingered. Bennet nodded at the man's beard and Jake shrieked as he patted the singed and glowing ends. Bennet growled a low laugh.

When Jake had finally fallen asleep, Bennet stared up into the sky. Star stretched across it like a blanket, small pockets of light in the never-ending darkness. He put his fingers into a gun and aimed up at the stars, one by one.
"Bang," he said.
He did this for a while until he felt weary and the world turned dark with sleep. He dreamt of nothing but walking to the market and buying bread. Eating cereal from his favourite bowl. Gold falling from over-stuffed coffers.

On Dreams

2011-06-02T23:46:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article written by a friend of mine about his adulation, joy and love for the Duke Nukem franchise and the finally-being-released-after-a-14-year-delay Duke Nukem Forever. He talks about the hope, the knowing, the faith that Forever was always going to come, no matter how many delays or how much mud the name was dragged through.
Even after 3D Realms - the Apogee company responsible for Duke - closed down, he held fast and it was picked up by Borderlands' Gearbox. And now, after all these years - more than half his life - the game is being released and he has joyfully played the demo after all that waiting.

Despite having never really talked about it before, that is exactly - exactly - how I felt about Starcraft 2.

Starcraft was one of those games that defined my childhood. Besides some fairly unknown games like Gizmos and Gadgets, Treasure Mountain, Operation: Neptune and some more known games like the Worms franchise, Fury 3 and Myst, Starcraft was the game I played with my brother every week; the game I had LAN parties, inviting a dozen friends over to play; the game I loved but (if I'm to be honest) was never very good at. But I didn't care. It was so much fun.
This was, of course, back when a game's story mattered a lot. Sure, the graphics may be a little dated now, but still amazing for its time, but damn was that story engaging with characters I loved. I still remember how I felt when Sarah Kerrigan got merged with the Zerg. I to this day regret the death of Fenix and his subsequent rebirthed Dragoon form. I still identify with James "Jim" Raynor. And, at the end of Starcraft's amazing expansion pack Brood War, I knew that Starcraft 2 was coming. I knew it. I felt it.

I liked to dream that it was coming just around the corner, and we'd finally meet the Xel'naga, the ancient race in the Starcraft universe. I finished Brood War in 1998. And then I waited and I waited.

There was no word that there would ever be a Starcraft 2, but I knew. There had to be. They wouldn't leave the story like that, begging to be finished, begging to be continued, heard, seen. Internet and PC Magazine rumours abounded about this game. "It's coming!" They cried. "Just you wait!"
There was fan-made art and all sorts of things to keep our hopes up that the game was coming. It became a joke amongst my family and friends. The game was coming, we knew, but it also wasn't. It gave us something to look forward to. Something to want.

Then there was Blizzard's biggest game delay mess-up. If you know Blizzard, you know I'm talking about Starcraft: Ghost. The game was going to be a third-person shooter-style game, sort of like a Splinter Cell in the Starcraft universe. We would finally see the inside of the battleships, see the Zerg up close, see what every character really looked like and how they lived. It would have been like what World of Warcraft did to the Warcraft universe - you can see it, experience it, be in it.

Delay after delay after delay. The came never came. There were press releases and exhibitions, "It's coming," they said. "It is. We promise."
And it didn't.
Then, disaster struck. Blizzard changed development companies over some dispute or another and all of the work that had been done - pretty much the entire game mind you - was deleted, erased and made as if to start over. They never did. The game development never recovered and Ghost was dust in the wind.

A light, though, a light came through. It happened in May, 2007. We got it. Released at E3 and then on the word-spreading web, we got the first teaser for Starcraft 2. It was simple. A man - a criminal - being unleashed from his chains and bolted tight into the overwhelmingly large suit of marine armour.
"Hell," he said, a smirk and a cigar. "It's about time."

Yes. Yes it was.

From then on, art and gameplay trailers came and finally, on the 27th of July, 2010, we got it. We were given Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. And we loved it. Sure, there were problems - lots of them. No LAN capabilities, only online play, regioned multiplayer, but hot damn, we had something. The story continued and it was glorious.

To be released in 3, 40-hour gameplay installments, starting with our future selves, the Terrans, the game promised to be an epic of immense proportions. In between missions you got to explore the battlecruiser on which Jim Rayner took residence. You saw the models, moving and speaking, of these characters, not just small talking faces in a war-room or short cut-scenes - these were people, damnit!

It finally came. And now, we wait on part 2. And part 3.

Traildust PART FOUR

2011-05-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

"What kinda business you gotta do so far outta town?" Jake said. He removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
"Personal business," Bennet's eyes remained on the horizon, looking out for oncoming riders. He turned to Jake. "We're almost there."
Jake nodded. A small circle of buzzards floated along on the desert updrafts someways ahead of them.
"Buzzards," Jake said. "Can't mean nothin' too good."
Bennet nodded. He clicked his tongue and his horse moved on a little faster. Jake did the same to keep pace.
The world was orange in the sunlight shining off the glimmering sands, the white bones of long-dead animals sticking out like fingers from beneath the world to grab nearby sinners, the ghosts of dead men walking aimlessly forever thirsty and never drinking. Bennet thought on some of these men, some of whom he'd known in a time before this one, and rode on.
When the buzzards were in clear sight, they saw what it was they had been circling over. Some had landed and were picking at the fleshy faces of the dead, favouring the eyes first over the other parts. The eyeless sockets stared out into the world. Gaping mouths shouted in a wordless horror that was now unspoken.
"Injuns," Jake said. "Them men been scalped."
"Maybe," Bennet got off his horse and looked around. Neither side of the horizon revealed the shapeless and disappearing forms of riders, men who hunted on other men. "Could be scalp traders."
"Scalp traders?"
"A business alive and well."
"Jesus."
"Ain't got nothin' to do with it. Come on."
Bennet began sifting through the bodies, looking for coins or identification.
"What're you doin'?" Jake got off his horse. It whinnied and shied away from the dead men and horses, the smell of carrion floating upwards in the heat. "Have some respect."
"These folks're dead. Ain't no need no more."
Jake looked at Bennet, disbelief in his kind hazel eyes, as Bennet relieved a man of a bag of coins strapped around his waste under his pantaloons. He jangled it, the coins clanking against one another, and pocketed it.
The search yielded little else. The names of these men and woman and children would remain unknown to the world forever, infinity continuing without their names ever being spoken again, or their faces cherished and cared for. In a few days, the animals, the sun and the sand will have taken care of all physical signs that these folks ever existed and the world will continue as if they hadn't. They, too, will join the ranks of ghosts wandering the desert, forever looking for drink to quench and undying thirst.
"Come on," Bennet said, climbing atop his horse. "Now we're gonna be late."
Jake said nothing as he mounted the horse and got it moving. Bennet didn't take his eyes off the coming horizon.

Traildust PART THREE

2011-05-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

The sun raked across the sky, a molten bird soaring through angelic blue, a tiny strip of which found the corner of un-curtained window in Bennet's bedroom and shone into his sleeping eyes. When he opened them, his first words for the new day were, "God fuckin' damnitall." And then he rose. His breath tasted like a dead hog and his mind was clouded by last night's drink and troubled dreams of Indians and bears and tomohawks buried in skulls. And gold.
Bennet knew that starting a day with a curse was bad luck and, sitting down at his table for a breakfast of bread and sun-dried burro meat, he asked the Lord to watch out for him and to forgive his earlier cursings.
Most days Bennet would leave his house and go to work, clanging out horse-shoes or gun repairs or any other such things the townsfolk saw to needing that day, but today he would work his second job. He stood from his meal and went out to the workshop and took from under the covered money-printers four bags of Mexican currency he'd seen to making over the last month. Coins, paper-money, even some falsified gold Spanish dubloons as was used some years back and was still accepted as payment for most things to be bought. Gold is still gold, no matter what emblem, country or name is stamped on its tempered face.
He'd met the smugglers some years back, when times were tougher and laws even easier than now. He had been a fellow who defected from the USS Maine during the Spanish-American on hearing of brutalities committed by the Cubans on American soldiers just before it all went up in the smoke and flames of his best friends' bodies and their guns and dreams and thoughts of their families. Just before casting off for Key West, Florida, Bennet had snuck out the back of the line like a coward Judas and bargained his way through a band of Mexicans he encountered on his retreat before he could reach home with promises of wealth.
"My blacksmithin' skills is considerable," he said. "Muchos dinero. Oro, si?"
Bearded, bloody and soot-blackened men had looked at him. His Spanish not as considerable as his skills with metal and hammer, but he knew enough to bargain for his life. The men conferred among themselves.
"Muchos dinero?" they said, their eyes unsure but glinting with opporunistic greed. "We no kill you, you make us dinero?"
"Si," Bennet said. "I need gold, oro, papel y la tinta. Tengo máquinas. Puedo hacer las máquinas."
The men smiled, the black holes of missing teeth mirrored in all of them, gold teeth gleeed from others. One of the men, Sanguar, put a hand to his mouth and with ample effort, tore out a gold tooth.
"Oro." he said, and laughed. The others laughed too.
Holding the gold tooth glistening red with blood and the fires of the burning fortress behind him, Bennet tried to laugh. And then he was whisked up onto Sanguar's horse and ridden off away from the battlefield to begin work on the money presses.

Bennet thought on these things as he loaded the bags of blood-gold and paper onto his pack-mule and saddled his horse. No time for the past, he thought. No time at all. Barely enough for now, and he climbed up onto his horse, his rifle sitting across his lap, pinned against the horn of his saddle, and clicked his tongue. The horse moved with a snort and dragged the pack-mule behind it with a long hemp rope. It was a day's ride out to the meeting point and he always went alone.
He popped the stopper on his whiskey and drank deep, the sun burning into his skin and sweat traced dirt trenches across his skin from under the brim of his hat. As he rode his saw a bleached white cow's carcass sitting in the sand, the last remnants of its leathery hide being picked away by a buzzard and Bennet spat.
"Hey, Bennet," a voice called out from behind him, the sound of clomping hoof-pounds in the sand sped up.
Bennet turned and saw Jake catching up to him on his black thoroughbred, "Aw, shit." he said and took another sip of the whiskey.
"Goin' fer a ride today?" Jake pulled up next to him. "Mind if I join ye?"
"I got some buisness outta town. Might be a whiles."
"I don't mind. Ain't got nothin' else to do."
"Suit yourself."
"Figure I will," Jake said. "Pass us some a that there whiskey."
Bennet passed the bottle over and they rode out in silence.

The Lords of Television

2011-05-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

There's been a trend of late that's been bothering me more and more. In the past, it was only natural for television programs to be cancelled due to a lack of ratings. Shows were watched by families or single viewers and that was it, that's all you had. Sure, with VHS coming in you could record it, but you could never rely on the quality and if you wanted to keep it you needed a library as large as your home - besides the fact that the VHS machine never seemed to be hooked up onto the right channel.

But, in this modern day, we can pause live television, TIVO our favourite shows and even, using the miraculous curse known as Pay TV, even press a single button and record an entire series, just in case you aren't there to watch it live.
In an age like this, it no longer makes sense to cancel shows due to poor ratings - odds are, with the prevalence of recording devices and Pay TV, most people aren't watching any shows live anymore. Sure, there are family nights watching certain shows and that kind of thing, we all enjoy it, but that doesn't deaden the fact that we mostly record our shows and watch them later.
With this, ratings should play far less of a role and quality should be the only consideration.

Recently, two shows were cancelled without any reason other than ratings. The tremendous show - created by Juno writer Diablo Cody and starring classy Australian actress Toni Collette - The United States of Tara was cancelled due to lack of ratings in its third season.
Admittedly, it was a lot more lucky than the best new crime drama on television in recent years starring ex-Sopranos star Michael Imperioli and created by Jason Richman, the show Detroit 1-8-7 was cancelled last week after it's magnificent first season. Due to ratings.

TV lovers will be aware that this happens all the time, most notably the followers of classic show Firefly, cancelled for the same reasons, as well as Huff - though, admittedly, Huff's writing went WAY downhill in season 2.

I don't know, I guess I'm just saying that ratings don't matter nearly as much as they used to and do more damage to good shows than anything else. Kind of like how useless the preliminary opinion polls of US Presidential candidates is, but that's another story.
Give them another shot on Pay TV and the will flower, damnit.

Good news everyone!

2011-05-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

Hey hey hey all!
You may notice a slight layout change on the right side of the page! If you haven't it's because you don't visit often enough and I miss you. Please come more often.
The change is you can now follow me via your email! My updates will be sent directly to the email address of your choosing! Exciting, right? I know.
Also, you lucky devils, at the bottom of the website (allllllllllll the way down) is a little message from me! Just a way to keep in touch.
Keep an eye out, I may change it to something amusing every now and then but for now, it's just how to keep in touch with yours truly!
All the best everyone!

Traildust PART TWO

2011-05-23T23:35:00.001-07:00

It had been many a year since Bennet Holden had spent a day sober. Since the death of his wife and child, which he still blamed himself for, he'd spent his time at the bottom of a bottle of ale and with his money in chips at the card table.
"Ante up, Holden," Oscar said from across the table. "Let's git this hand started."
Bennet looked down at his chips and then at his cards.
"Aw, hell," he said. "I fold. You guys done cheated me."
He threw down his cards and finished off his whiskey, signalling for another from the barkeep.
"We ain't cheated you and you know it," Oscar said, taking away Bennet's cards. "Yer just lousy at cards."
"If'n y'ain't cheatin' me, how come I always walk outta here with a hole burnin' in my waistcoat?"
"Coz yer bad at cards!" Jake said, pawing the pot of chips closer to himself. He laid down a hand of four aces. "Y'always was."
"I'm supposin' so."
"P'raps y'oughta quit." said the third man from across the table that Bennet didn't recognize. His beard was long and grey, his face a Grand Canyon of deep scars and wrinkles, his skin baked in the sun like everybody else's. His had was pulled down over his eyes. The barkeep came and delivered Bennet's second drink. Coins exchanged hands.
"Why'd he wanna do a thing like that?" Oscar said, laughing from somewhere deep in his gut filled with rocks and bourbon. "Be like givin' up a woman's cunny and I can't see no sense in that neither!"
The men all laughed with a wolf-like gruffness. Bennet merely smiled and downed the drink in front of him.
"I think I might be takin' my leave tonight, boys."
"Now why's that?" Jake said. "We're just gettin' started." He cracked a smile.
"I'm leavin' coz I'd like to leave here with some a my pay still in my pocket!"
As he turned to leave, some of the whores from upstairs came over to the table wearing their négligées.
"Now boys," said the redhead known as Charlene. She put her palms down on the card table, revealing her voluptuous breasts to the players. "I heard you a talkin' 'bout cunny."
She leaned back and propped her leg up onto the table's surface. Chips, cards and ale glasses jumped.
"Perhaps you'd like to stop talkin' and get your hands around some." And she smiled a bright, toothy smile at the boys, making their only option acquiescence to her suggestions.
"'Fraid not tonight, ladies," Bennet said moving away, stumbling a little from the liquor. "Perhaps another night."
The cooed and pouted at him to stay but he kindly declined and made it out the doors.

Once at home, he sat in his favourite chair and stoked a fresh fire. He put the remainder of his pay in a small safe he hid behind his bed's headboard then went into his workshop. On his way into the home he'd passed his business's sign, "Bennet's Blacksmiths" and smiled. He still liked passng that sign. Now in the workshop, he checked on his machinery.
The coin press and paper-money press were still there, untouched, undisturbed.
"Good," he said, patting the cavas covering of the machines. "Good."
There was a shipment to go out tomorrow and he had to ride out to Presidio with it. It was going to be a long day and he figured he might as well try and get some sleep, try to sober up before the sun shines through his curtains and burns his eyes and makes him curse the lord.

Traildust PART ONE

2011-05-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

The preacher spat hellfire like he enjoyed it.
"And the wicked will burn in the flames of hell because it is God's will!" he shouted, shaking his leather-bound holy book at those gathered in the tent. "And ye who denounces the word of the Lord shall be stricken down with diseases and misfortune."
"T'ain't like there ain't a whole lot to go round out here," said a man near the front. Some of the parishoners laughed.
"You dare make light of the wrath of God?!"
The man shuffled in his seat and was silent.
"He ain't makin' light a nothin', preacher," the man from the back said. "He's merely sayin' what'n we're all thinkin'. Ain't exactly like we ain't already sufferin' out here, what use is it tellin' us god's gonna do worse'n the desert sun and the sand and the injuns?"
There was a mottled murmur of agreement.
"And who are you, son, to question God's will?" the preacher had stepped out from behind the pulpit and stood beside it, his finger pointed accusedly at the man.
"Me?" the man said, lighting up a small, Mexican cigar. "Former man a God's lost his faith some. Also a man tired a bein' told we ain't good fer nothin' by folks like you."
"How can a man of God, a man of the cloth, lost his faith in times like these?"
"Well preacher, it's likely 'coz a what life is like and seein' god do nothin' for it."
The tent was silent, now. Where usually the buzz of religious observence created a tense electricity in the air, now there was a dead silence. Cicadas rung out with the buzzing of flies. A dog yelped at something nearby. A faint metal click rung out in the silence.
"Also," the man said, stubbing out his cigarette to the angried chagrin of the preacher and the faithful, "I never said I was a man a the cloth, just a man a god."
The man drew his Colt pistol and leveled it with the preacher.
"A weapon in a house of God?!" The preacher tried poorly to hide his fear behind indignation, bravery. "How dare you!"
"'Coz a man takes a job whatever comes along," he clicked back the hammer on the revolver. "And 'fraid today, preacher, you're the job."
The gunshot exploded in the silence and blood spurted from the preacher's neck, baptizing the faithful in the front row. Screams pierced the world and split its seams as knives tore down the canvas of the tent and christians fled into the nearing darkness away from this man who fires guns in churches. Didn't matter that this was merely a tent church, one that packs up and travels for those who don't have a church, it's still a house of god.
The man not yet named walked forward and knelt beside the preacher, alone in his pool of blood as it sank into and stained the wooden flooring of the stage.
"Who...who are you?" the preacher mananged hoarsely.
"A man meanin' to get paid," the man said and leaned in close to the preacher's face, drawing out his hunting knife. "And this ain't no kinda times to not get paid."
The man stuck the knife deep into the preacher's neck and, just before the preacher's eyes went grey and glassy with death, the man said, "I'm also a mind takes objection to preachers fuckin' little girls who ain't even got hair on their nethers yet."
The preacher's dying eyes looked up in fear and horror into the man's calm, blues.
"G-god...f-forgive me," and the preacher was gone from this world, limping into the next to settle his score with the maker he devoted himself to.
It didn't take too long for the man to take off the preacher's head and put it in the small burlap sack he had hitched to his belt.
He walked out of the tent, gazed into the last slivers of the sunset's oranges, and then mounted his horse and road off down the dirt road out of town.

Late Night Poems

2011-05-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

She flees like fleeting
shadows in the westward wind
and I lose sight of her and
scream, "return to me
lost ship of magnificent beauty!
Where have you gone and
left me here?"
but get naught but howls in
answer.

The moon was low and
large in the night sky,
yellow like the skins of
dead men
ready for the fights in the
world beyond,
in shadow and absence
of light.

The chilly air breaks down
to the bone
and I protrate on the
bus stop bench,
a mourner in church,
breath misting on the air.

After drinks on the house,
down the hatch and away,
I walk home in the cold and
the harvest moon is
gone.
Only the impassive, silver glow
of a three-quarter moon
high in the sky behind
stringy clouds
lights my way back to bed
and sleep.

A Special Report

2011-05-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

"In a move that has religious fanatics reeling, the CDC has announced it has made, for the moment, small breakthroughs in the research on the plague known as Spontaneous Resurrection and Violent Frenzy Syndrome (SRVF), otherwise known as Lazarus Syndrome, that struck the globe within the last month.

The pathogen, still undetermined to be natural or man-made, swept the globe in a panic, causing governments to close borders as a result of unconfirmed information concerning its spreadability. As yet, the cause and spread of Lazarus Syndrome is unknown, but the CDC is confident it can quarantine and eradicate the disease.

'As yet, there is no hurdle the human race cannot overcome,' said CDC CEO Brendon Forbes.

'We will overcome this like we have smallpox, polio and the bubonic plague.'

Others, however, are not so sure.

'This is a punishment sent from God,' Reverend Jebediah Meekes stated at a rally last Thursday.

'We are all subject to his wrath. We cannot fight the Lord's will!'

Even other, non-religious people take objections to the CDC's confidence.

'We have no idea what causes this or how it spreads,' says a pathologist and epidemiologist who prefers to remain anonymous.

'We shouldn't be so gung ho. Our hubris is astounding at this point. We know nothing of this disease, its source or anything of the kind. All we know is what it does to us - and it's already done that to a third of the global population, 200 million of whom were in the United States alone!'

'We are in the middle of an extinction event.'

Others have taken the news as cause to celebrate, with spontaneous parties taking place in the streets across the globe - mostly on college campuses. Most prominent are signs sporting slogans such as "Earth is for the Living" and "The Dead Should Stay Dead".

As yet, there has been no word on when a possible cure or preventative will become available, nor what to do should you or a loved one become infected. For the time being, destroying the brain is still the only option."

- News Daily, September 22, 2012.

The Thrilling Conclusion - Dreadfully Ever After

2011-05-19T01:17:00.001-07:00

"Dreadfully Ever After" is the final book in the trilogy of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The original book - heretoafter referred to as PPZ - was credited to co-authors Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, who can be said to have pioneered the genre within Quirk Classics, which followed up with "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" and "Android Karenena".

This novel - DEA - was written by the same man who wrote the PPZ prequel, "Dawn of the Dreadfuls" (DD), and I daresay it is the best of the lot. The author, Steve Hockensmith, captured the language and the feel of a Victorian-era novel, as well as that of a pulpy adventure/zombie novel. The language is amusing an the characters well drawn.

I find this is the best of the three because, while PPZ was amusing, it was simply a retelling of the original PP, but with zombies - and that was great. DD was a prequel, so naturally had to set up certain things to take place in PPZ with love interests you sort of knew wouldn't go anywhere. DEA, however, was a wholly new creation and was by far the most fun, with exciting new characters - and heartbreaking characters deaths - and genuinely felt like a Victorian adventure novel that just happened to have the Bennets in it - which I appreciated the most.

The book was thrilling, hilarious and smart and I highly recommend it to anyone.

The Girl Who Smelled Too Good

2011-05-14T00:03:00.001-07:00

There's a place where I worked
where we sat at computers and wrote things
down
that other people had said and not said and said
again

working in this place where I worked
was a girl
not just a girl, but A Girl, you see
with chestnut hair
a smooth face
pretty eyes and a smile
but the remarkable part
about this girl
was that every time
she walked into the room
her smell
her perfume
her scent would permeate
and distract
and I couldn't work until she had
gone.

Flowers and velvet and vanilla biscuits
chocolate and roses;
a very intense smell.
I still miss it,
from time to time
as I sit and I work and smell
nothing.

Marble Carving Art

2011-05-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

An artform you see pretty rarely these days. I just met this cool artist in the store today and had a look at his work at his website. His name's Alexander Seton and I am thoroughly impressed with his work. He is heading up to Brisbane with his newest exhibition soon!
If you like Ricky Swallow - and you should! - then you'll like this guy!

Well...huh

2011-05-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

I know this might seem like a callous thing to you, but I assure you it isn't. I just read this article at the Ninemsn news website about a 92 year old woman who was killed her in retirement home bedroom after a car crashed through the wall and crushed her.
Now, again, not to sound callous, but at that age, I cannot help but feel that that is totally not the way she thought she would go.
Very unexpected and very odd. My condolences go out to the family.

Stay Aware

2011-05-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

As you all know, there is a plague that is affecting our modern lives that could very well spell the end of life as we know it. Our medical advances are useless, our psychosis will get the better of us and governments will fall to their knees in the face of this disaster - this onslaught of apcalyptic proportions. But, fear not, in the face of this unerring threat is a research society dedicated to the truth, to protection, to knowledge and to YOUR survival!
I am of course talking about zombies. And, more specifically, the Zombie Research Society, a union of people from around the globe in all kinds of professions working night and day to protect you from the rampaging hordes of the undead.
Become a member now, and join the fight!
Remember - May is Zombie Awareness Month, so buy your grey ribbon today!

Inspired by Kerouac's "Old Angel Midnight"

2011-05-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been reading Jack Kerouac's long-form poem-book "Old Angel Midnight" which is one long poem, written as a sort of study in language, thought and image. He would sit and meditate for hours and write down every sound he heard, thought he had and image he formed in his mind, leading to some very interesting things, and a ton of gibberish words. All in all I'm very much enjoying this 67 page word extravaganza, and I decided to test out the technique myself, to see if it helped my thought processes. The following was written in an evening out at a bar with friends.

1/ noise in bars music stools scrape and beer stains on linoleum counter top - stains stains swells the reigns that feigns interest - dubba dubba dubba psst psst nothing you can see is unseen and the traffic outside drowns in the whoop-whoop noise of everything - the beer is bitter, tastes burnt and watered like a rained-out wedding while the stained glass lets in poor light from streetlight fights - red and white and blue tiles line the world in this bouncing cats fever mood cogs are turning but nothing's spinning - I wish I could hear ya - is it worth it? Yaba dabba dabba! cats meow and orange swells invade inside in vain veins fathom trains mocking running moving grooving

2/ moit an' potaytoes slurp up into dry gullets and no one sees the grinning on the floor

3/ dreams that haunt haunt forever. what does it mean for our world to be ethereal, flourescent? It means just that hiyo doo-wap bazoo floor fam varoo frond! Ou es que c'est la femme avec les jambes qui montent aux ciel? forever in my mind is--

4/ "it's been a long time mate, bloody hell," he screams and he drinks and he stinks and tinks his glass and links his arms with others and cries out to the world--

5/ jummp all over the world, like what Chad (Hancock) said.
be life free life buzee scree scree
teaming life!
travelling in a car that takes us everywhar and far across the endless tar, har har!
slurp slurp
goes the
drink;
I try to exist when nothing is real and is like a melted ice-cream rink in a bubbling blocked sink.

6/ it's never east to extend, nature; I want to live, I want to see the whole of everything. it bothers me that I die and miss the rest of eternity - a time I exist for so little of - EONS MISSED in darkness and unknowing and not knowing that I don't know and the crows peck out my eyes until I am nothing left but a broken headstone in a barren field, untended and forgotten until the bombs burn it all or the sun explodes and nothing of anything is left and I laugh - I would rather laugh than cry so I figure try - try to learn it all if you can - life in the pursuit of knowledge and love and laughter

7/ rings on the countertop block it all as Max walks in, "my brother from another mother, how are you?" "fine, fine" I say, "and yourself?" I say "had a long week at work, let me get a beer and I'll tell you" he says

8/ dreams and monarchs, fish and sharksm DRIVE! where are we going? 23 and tomorrow it's 30 - where are we? whowhatwhen? why? are you there? can you see? playing in god's sick little JAMBOREE. the liquor washes down my throat and I burn and feel like crying, dying meaningless and foolish!
stoolish, hellish, into the wellwish, crash sash shhka! dubba dubba cha ka cha! sssseee tchup! dock dock dock dock dock, pop goes the weasel! dark times in dark minds swine pine bovine crimes! foo-fo-fadaline

Hell is Other People

2011-05-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know (and shame on you for it) I am in an internet, comedy webseries called "Hell is Other People", written and directed by Luke Sheehan who is also directed the video clip for "I Wish it Were Different Too", on of my songs. And if you haven't heard it, again, for shame.
If you want to check out the webseries, go here and enjoy! (It's the Compound Fiasco YouTube page, which is the production company for HiOP.)

Also, look out for me and the other cast members in blooper reels and Vlogs to come out soon!

Word and Vowel and Sense and Sound

2011-04-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Activating artificial artifacts
akin angry armadillos
arobically alighting
and assimilating.

Enraged entities ensconsed
entirely endothermic!
Enflamed, engulfed,
enlightened!

Incredible interests ignite
illucidated idiotic idioms
intrinsically.

Overworked, overfed, overstimulated,
overestimated old organists
outliving outlandish, otherworldly
omnivores.

Unfortunately, underprivilaged underdogs
utilize unforgiving ulcers;
ulterior understandings undone.

Your young yearly yachtsman
yabber, yack, yield
yesternight's yellow, yawning
yardstick.

Limitless Ltd

2011-04-29T16:47:00.000-07:00

"Limitless" was pretty much going to be the drug movie of the new age; the "Requiem for a Dream" of the 21st Century. It didn't really turn out that way. While it may have prompted me to read the book, it delivered some other, stranger messages. One of them seeming to be "drugs are great" and "if you do enough of them, you'll be president someday" which I find a little odd. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The film is about Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), a writer who is creatively-blocked, unkempt and just got dumped. He is glowering in the worthlessness of himself when he runs into his ex-wife's brother (Johnny Whitworth) and is given a mystery drug that bestows upon him more or less superhuman abilities. Of course, from here, things can only go up. Nevermind that the brother was, at a time, a derelict drug-dealer who should never be trusted.

Bradley Cooper was, as he always is, excellent in this role. He broke out of his normal role to play someone with a lot more depth and emotion, while also remaining a stylish and charming son of a bitch.

About halfway through the film, though, I couldn't help but ask: wait, wasn't Robert de Niro supposed to be in this movie? And he is. For very little of it. It kind of looks like they just got him in because it was a big name that would draw crowds, but he was still great in the role of tycoon Carl van Loon.

Sure, bad things do happen to Eddie even after he's taken the super-drug - most of the bad things caused by it - but I didn't feel there was any kind of evolution. He was a failure, he took drugs and became awesome. Period. I'll leave it up to you whether this fits the mould of a redemption or evolution story, but I don't think it does - and to its detriment. Usually, I'm all for subverting a genre and changing things up, but this just didn't seem to gel with me. Still, watching Bradley Cooper act for 2 hours up against de Niro was definitely worth the money and the cinematography and music were both excellent. 7.5/10

Simply Pass By

2011-04-26T23:28:00.000-07:00

"You need a beer," she said, sitting in her chair and smiling. A limp cigarette dangles from her lips that curled smoke into the nighttime air. "You do."
"I do," I said, looking across the table at the froty drinks in front of everyone else at the table. "I'll be right back."
I stood up and made my way through the bustling and drunk crowd to the bar. The queues stood three people deep, so I waited. A man to my left pushed past and slammed into the bar in front of me. Annoyed that he had cut in, I didn't say anything because he was clearly drunker and much bigger than I.
"Sorry mate," he said turning around, his eyes glassy from drink. "I cut in front a ya there."
"S'alright," I said.
The barkeep made his way to the big man and asked what he wanted. Big Man turned to me and said, "What are ya drinkin'?"
Taken aback I merely said, "A pint of Resches."
"Pint a Resches," he told the barkeep, "two Colds and a New."
"Thanks," I said.
He winked. It was then I noticed he was toting a very large bucket of feta cheese.
"What's the Feta for?" I asked.
"The Premium Collection." He said it with such definity.
I nodded and said "ah" and smiled, though I'd no idea what "The Premium Collection" was. The pint arrived on the countertop and the Big Man passed it back to me.
"What do I owe you?" I said, awkwardly reaching for my wallet.
He merely winked, put on a "don't worry about it" smile and waved his hand at me.
"Thanks," I said, stunned, and walked back to the table.
I sat down next to her again and said, "Someone just bought me a drink."

Some time into the night I bit the bullet from the pressure and got up to piss.
"Mind my seat," I said and threw my hat onto the chair. "And don't drink my beer."
"It's probably rufied," she said. "Date-rape: the joy of a night on the town."
"Shut up," was all I mustered as I sauntered like a drunk to the toilet. Once inside, I moved to the urinal and before I could unzip, the only other man in there yelled at me in a Cockney voice, "Louv ya haircut!"
"Cheers," I said.
"You in a band?"
I decided to have fun. Make something up.
"Yeah," I said in my best Irish voice.
"It a gay boy band?"
"Nah. Punk band."
"English punk or Irish punk?"
I stopped for a moment and then pressed out, "English punk."
Another man came into the bathroom then and stood, pissing, next to me. They clearly knew each other as they razzed one another with noogies and insults.
"I'll bite your face, cunt," said the newcomer.
"That should be yer next song," the Cockney said to me. He rocked over to me and stood right behind me and sang to no tune in particular,

I'll bite yer face, cunt,
I'll bite yer face, cunt,
I'll bite yer face, cunt,
even though I'm pleased ta see ya!

I had to admit, it'd make a good "oi oi oi" punk song. He laughed like a lunatic and made for the door. Newcomer turned to me and said, "He's a bloody champion."
"He's fucking insane," I said back.
But Cockney had heard me and yelled back into the now kind of crowded bathroom, "I ain't fuckin' crazy, ya long-haired hippie!"
And we all laughed.

I got back to the table and watched time simply pass by in the pints.

Walking Home

2011-04-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

The peaceful silence of night,
abound in round turn arounds and
bugs in flight.

The ba-humbug men crawl from shadows and
honk their noiseless horns and
cry into the wind,
"We are the sky!"

No one listens because no one cares,
as long as they're home in bed by 9 with
food in their bellies - apples and pear.

I yell at you
I cry at you
I shout and scream and decry to you -
come forth and spare us your
unsacred lust
and make all the just unsuffer.

A lone wolf cries and we are all gone.

Thor: A Hard Look At

2011-04-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Everyone shoule be pretty much aware by now of the newest comic-book-superhero-to-film-superhero film "Thor" that is currently gracing our cinemas. The film is the newest link in the chain that wukk eventually culminate in the superhero extravaganza "The Avengers", to be directed by Joss Whedon.

First, let me say how surprised I was to find out that this was directed by directing giant Kenneth Branagh - yes, the one and same who did "Frankenstein" with Robert de Niro. The film is so far out of his style it's in another world - which, I suppose, suits the fact that these characters are not from Earth. By the way, that's not a spoiler. Promise.

Second of all, I want to express how impressed I was by Australian "Home and Away" star Chris Hemsworth. Despite his humble beginnings on an Australia after-school soap that's been running for so long, he's come to Hollywood poised and ready. The first time I saw him, which was not on "Home and Away" but as George Kirk in the 2009 J.J. Abrams "Star Trek", I was immediately impressed. The fact that his role in that film last only about 12 minutes shows just how grabbing he was. The emotions were palpable.
Unfortunately, the emotional range for a character like Thor is a little less diverse. He is a prince from an alien world whom visited Earth and whom the Vikings worshipped as gods. So, he's arrogant and boastful, but his comedic timing when exiled too Earth sans-superpowers, is priceless. Also, it helps that he developed himself into some worthy eye-candy for all the gay and female movie viewers - hot damn did I feel inadequate.

The film is supported by the ever beautiful Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings, who play his science-nerd friends once on Earth, and the always enjoyable to watch Anthony Hopkins as his father Odin. Stellan Skarsgård was fun in his father-like role to Portman and Dennings, and newcomer Tom Hiddleston was impressive and believable as Thor's mischievous brother Loki.

Story-wise, it was a typical evolution/redemption story with some elegant action scenes thrown in for kicks. Admittedly the story seems lifted right from the comic book - and I knew that this hero would be the hardest to adapt to film because he was so, well, brazen. The dialogue is, at times, a little trite and couples itself with the wafer-thin storyline, but it does end in a way that I felt it should end - you'll see what I mean when you see it; and for the love of god stay after the credits!

Of course, while most of you are aware of my dislike of 3D as a medium, it can be done well. This film didn't need to be in 3D, but it wasn't too intrusive. The beautiful, sweeping landscape shots of Asgard are worth donning the 3D glasses, but anything on Earth - which is the majority of the film - isn't helped along at all by this new, hyped medium.

This film is an enjoyable, light movie and I do think is as good an adaptation of the comic as we're bound to get. 7/10

P.I. Story: Part 2

2011-04-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

This was why I wished I was still a cop - backup. Now that I'm a freelancer, you don't get to call in any backup that doesn't take all the credit for your bust. I hiosted my friend off the ground.
"Turn around," which he did, mumbling obsenities at me as he did. "And shut up. You can talk when we get to the station."
"I thought you weren't a cop?" He said, yelping as I tightened some hand restraints on him.
"I ain't, but that don't mean I don't still got friends," I pulled him along towards my car. "Now, come on."

The rain didn't make driving easy. It felt like it had been raining since the dawn of time and it weren't likely to stop soon. Traffic backed up along all the main roads downtown and we were stuck in gridlock.
"Shit," I took out a cigarette and lit it up.
"You mind?" he said from the back. "I'm asthmatic."
"Boo-fuckin'-hoo." I looked him in the eyes via the rearview and blew smoke and smiled. He grumbled something and let out a weak cough.
"So," I said, staring at the tail-lights of cars in front of me, "wanna start talkin' now?"
"About what?" he said. He was looking out the window at the barges sailing into port.
"How's about why you ran from me if you're so damn innocent?"
"I never said I was innocent," he shifted to look at me through the rearview. "I just said this weren't none of your business."
"So you did," I blew more smoke, this time out the corner of my mouth in his direction. "And why's that?"
"Coz it's between me, the lady and the boss," and then he stopped, shutting his mouth. He'd said something he weren't supposed to.
"Who's the boss?"
Silence.
"What lady?"
He twitched.
"Coz a dame's who put me on this case a yours."
"Yeah?" he said. "Well, looks like she's workin' all the angles, don't it?"

P.I. Story

2011-04-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

On days like this, I missed being a cop.
Thunk! Thunk!
Two more, that means the bastard only had one left in the chamber. It made me wonder how far those bullets would travel before they hit something - or something poor unsuspecting sucker - or just lost momentum and fell to the ground. Travelling through the wooden boxes like they did probably slowed them down some, but I ain't no scientist. Just a man used to be a cop.
"You'd be better off just turnin' yourself around and runnin' home to momma, pig," he shouted from somewhere behind the boxes. "This business don't concern you."
It never did and they always insisted on telling me so.
"I ain't a cop no more," was all I said. "I'm a private eye."
Thunk!
Got him.
I pulled myself over the boxes and went forward at a flat out run. Jesus, I must've gained some weight because that weren't as easy as it used to be. My shoes made a dull thudding as they hit the concrete. As I got to the boxes where he was hiding, I jumped over them.
Or, I tried to.
My foot caught on the edge of one of them and I trip and went head over ass, summersaulting until I stopped in a heap nearby. I got my gun up and pointed in the direction I thought he was in. I got lucky. He sat there, fumbling shells, trying to reload his gun while he stared at me, barely trying not to laugh. Or cry.
"Alright, dirtbag," I liked saying that, "it's time to go downtown."

Paranormal Activity

2011-03-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I know I'm a little slow on the uptake as this movie came out some time ago, but still, bear with me.
First of all, I want to say that this movie was fantastic. It was very well put together, simple and effective - the simplicity is what made it scary. Kind of in the same way "Buried" was. The effects were simple and I couldn't figure them out, which was a nice, fresh perspective on the horror/haunting genre.
Sure, most people would say "oh, it's just "The Blair Witch Project" but set now" and to them I say, fuck you and shut up. ANY movie that uses first person camera as part of the film is going to be seen as Blair-Witch-esque because, no matter your thoughts on that film, it started off a style of genre (known as the "found footage" genre) that wasn't really used before - outside of the 1980, not-too-well-received, Italian movie "Cannibal Holocaust" which was the first recorded instance of a "found footage" film. Also, I think "Paranormal Activity" did it better. The characters weren't as annoying.

Now, on the characters, this is important. Fuck. Me. The boyfriend is a dumbass in this film. I know, I know, if he wasn't, the climax wouldn't be the same and, hell, the whole film would probably be really different and less exciting. But damn.
Ok, I mean, obviously he doesn't know he's in a horror film, but after the first few experiences of the title's events, you'd think he'd be a little more aware or at least say, "ok, some shit is going down, let me call a professional" or "maybe I shouldn't piss it off". But now. He decides to take the "hey, this should be fun - let's piss it off and call it names" route.
That's not a spoiler, that's just the whole movie.

Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, who play characters by those names, are excellent and it really is great to see some talent in a small budget, enjoyable horror flick like this. They are understated and believable.

Go and see it!

Note: this post doesn't have anything to do with "Paranormal Activity 2" or the apparently upcoming 3rd installment, seeing as they both return in those films - or, at least, Katie is slated for the 3rd so far. You'll see why this seems dumb and counter-intuitive to the first, and kind of ruins the whole experience of it.

On Bad Days

2011-03-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

They say bad things come in threes. I really hope that that's true.
It started with my alarm.
I don't know if any of you have ever done this, but apparently what I did was I woke up briefly - a moment in time of which I have no memory - and turned off my alarm. And then I fell back asleep. I mean, I've fallen asleep post-alarm before. You know, turned it off and then lain back and woken up another fifteen minutes or so later and been angry at myself. But this time I just woke up. A lot later. An hour.
Alarm set for 8:10. Woke up at 8:53.
Okay, things could be worse.
I rush upstairs and go for a shower, cursing myself the whole way. There were lots of swear words. I then ran downstairs to dress and run out of the house. When I got to my work clothes and bag, I found that my drink bottle had spilled juice all over the bag and clothes. So, swearing a lot more, I found a new set of work clothes and put all of my stuff into my other bag.
Okay, kind of shitty, but again, it could be worse.
So I throw on my new clothes, grab my bag and run out of the house, trying to get to the bus that would get me to work - at best - half an hour late. I turn up my wrist to have a look at my watch to see when the bus will arrive, and wouldn't you know it - the fucking thing is dead. Dead battery.

Now, I know, things can be worse, but it's all a matter of perspective. Seriously? Three things like that? Come on.

Buried...

2011-03-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

...is probably the scariest, most stressful movie I have ever seen. It was also cinematically brilliant. For those of you unaware, Buried is a film where Paul Conroy (played extremely well by Ryan Reynolds) wakes up to find himself bound in a coffin and buried alive. With him is a cell phone, his lighter and a flask of liquid, among other things. He has 90 minutes before he is left to die and must figure a way out.

Now, this sound like it's just a lame horror movie which ends in a Kill Bill-esque "punching through the coffin and crawling up and out of the ground", but you'd be wrong. The movie is an intricate exploration of loneliness, the American society and mortality.

The film is brilliantly shot never leaving the confines of the coffin - ever. All shots take place within the coffin and because of this, you feel like you're in there with Conroy. The lighting is only whatever the cell phone or lighter provides and the film is mostly quite silent, bar Conroy's talking on the phone and the occasional piece of dramatic music.

While I admire the excellent execution of the film and performance by Reynolds, and also the film-maker's ability to keep the audience interested for 90 minutes while never leaving the coffin or the single actor, I do not recommend it for the faint of heart. If you are claustrophobic or have a fear of being buried alive, this film is probably your worst nightmare and even had me - generally unaffected by films - shaking for a while afterwords, haunted.

Make no mistake, this is not a life-affirming movie, but is a great study of what it means to be alive.

Walking on the Rocks

2010-12-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, do me a favour? Spread this to as many people as you can! This video is awesomely hilarious and features my friend Laurence's band, super FLORENCE jam! Enjoy!

More Random Stuff

2010-12-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

Story beginning

“And that’s all you have to do.” He said as he blew a plume of blue smoke towards me from across the small, wooden table.

“What do you mean ‘that’s all’, that’s a hell of a lot to do, what you’re asking.” I said, shaking my head slowly, looking through the contents of the manila folder in front of me.

“It’s either do that, or lose your chance entirely. If you decide not to do this, there are no second chances, that’s that, you will never see us or our opportunity again. You decide.”

“Can I sleep on it?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Murphy, the time for decision-making is now.”

The Apartment Song
I just wrote this out of nowhere...i don't even know what to do with it....

i love the way when you
look at me in a way that way
i think it's so cute
makes me think you think
i'm with you all the time

don't you wish that all the things
we never had could come true
and i never wanna say i'm sorry
i never wanna say i love you

all the things i don't want to
do with you involve
shopping for apartments and
going grocery shopping

i know that that sounds kind of mean
but what it is i guess i mean is
we might not always be together
but i think that that's okay

when you think about it though
what are the odds we'll stay together?
what do you think we will get married?
what do you think that we'll have kids?

i hate to be the guy that
bursts the bubble that you live in
but the world is not like that
not every relationship is meant to last

no matter how much we say
i love you or that we'll stay together forever
it doesn't really make sense when you
think about it

how many did you say it to
before you were with me?
and how many did i say it to
before i was with you?

these are just the things we say
the motions that we make
because we're tired of soul searching
and just wanna make it work

as much as i wish i am wrong
i know that when i sing this song
you are gonna think about it
and know that i'm not lying

so when you walk away
on the day that is comes
please don't say that i didn't warn you
please don't hate my guts

it's just the way the world works
the way the world works
i don't like it, you don't like it
but i guess that that's too bad.

Possibly One of the Best Stories I've Ever Read

2010-12-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

bash.org strikes again...

Dude I had a fucking crazy night last night
yeah?
So you know how Jason is basically a crazy redneck?
well we were sitting around drinking when he just pipes up "let's go hunting guys!"
we're in the middle of the city, right, but we're sort of drunk, so me, Mike and Aaron go for it
We head out to the park, drinking from the camelback of course, and see these fucking geese; Just hundreds of fucking geese sleeping by the river.
we're just kind of stumbling around laughing, but Jason takes a fence post, UPROOTS the motherfucker, and just Braveheart charges this field of geese
the geese start going apeshit as he's swinging like mad, just honking like crazy tearing up the river
the three of us don't know what to do, but three generations of inbreeding sure as hell did. The fucker cracks one of the geese over the head, and it's just frozen, sort of stunned
without a second of hesitation, Jason grabs his dull ass pocket knife and just pounces on the goose, stabbing wildly, and let me tell you.. there's a fuckton of blood in a goose
this thing is hemorrhaging blood, completely covering him, but he keeps stabbing it
wtf dude? that's fucking nuts
just listen, it gets worse
We are completely dumbfounded, we don't know what the fuck just happened, but we're pretty sure it's extremely illegal
we decide to wrap up the goose in Aaron's jacket and take it back to the apartments
so we walk like 3 miles back, and take it to the field by the power station
Jason's not done though, he takes his dull blade and SKINS THE MOTHERFUCKING GOOSE
takes out the entrails, the whole nine yards, takes for fucking ever
at this time Mike is turning pale, he's looking up all the laws we'd broken, and he kept yelling about some security guard watching us
I told him to stop being paranoid, but he wouldn't let up
so he grabs the goose and just fucking chucks it, as hard as he can over towards the freeway
needless to say we were pissed, but we weren't about to spend all night looking for that shit
So we snuck home, drunk, hungry and defeated
Now that's a fucking adventure
yeah, I know, but just imagine this episode of cops:
four college age guys, drunk, walk out of a darkened field in the middle of a city at 3 A.M. after spending several hours working on something, and one of them is COVERED in blood, holding a dull, bloody knife, claiming to have just hunted, skinned, and then completely thrown away an entire goose
you can't right better shit than that
I don't think we should ever hang out with Jason ever again
Agreed

Tell Me Off For a Dollar, and Other Human Tragicomedies.

2010-12-06T04:59:00.000-08:00

tell me off for a dollar

the sign said

tell me off for a dollar
fuck you

tell me off for a dollar
you'
re a useless
good-for-nothing
cock-sucking
FUCK
tell me off for a dollar
no one will ever love you
and your hair is stupid

tell me off for a dollar
you should have been aborted

tell me off for a dollar
you'
re stealing all my fucking dollars...
...and I HATE you for it!

tell me off for a dollar
tell ME off for a dollar?
fuck you.
thanks.

dropping money into the box
looking at the sign
and taking aim with words that wound
a non-existent pride
it is i who is despicable
it is i who is useless
worthless
good-for-nothing

so...
...tell me off for a dollar?

A Dream and an Insentive

2010-12-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

I had a freaky ass dream last night...

I dreamt I was in some huge hotel in Canada, and it just so happens that some evil alien leader named Krull had decided to take up base in this very place to start his invasion of Earth. The hotel was half destroyed, and people were running everywhere. I made it out with some friends from Canada and my backpack and we made it to an old, 2 story pub like place, via the subway underground. On the way I called Yvonne (my old Montreal babysitter from when I was little) to see if I could stay with her and she said "no" and I said "well, then I have to go and find somewhere to go" and she asked "why?" and I said "because Krull is attacking!" and kept running. Once in the pub we sat down to have a drink and go over some plans. I said I'd be safe once I got to Yael's house in New York because the USA had those little trucks with the missile silo boxes on the back and we'd be safe there - since, apparently, Canada's army isn't that good in my dream. Then I heard some weird vibrating and went to my phone...

...and woke up to my phone reminding me to pick up my passport. I hadn't even set my alarm, but luckily got woken up at the right time by me phone.

Classic Music

I wrote an article for one of the uni newspapers very much to this effect.
Seriously guys, let's get this under control.
Don't forget to read the roll-over text (text that appear when you put your mouse cursor over the image).

Old Comic Ideas

2010-12-06T04:57:00.001-08:00

Automaton Noir
The beginning of a Film Noir Detective story with a robot detective - Rob is not the robot detective, I haven't introduced the robot yet:

Rob is seen hiding behind some crates. It is raining. A harsh streetlight shines on him. A bullet blows a corner off a crate near him.

“Come on, Rob, you’e done this before.”

2 more bullets hit the crates.

“…and that’s six.”

Rob leans over the top and fires several times. A bullet goes through a crate and hits the perp. Rob goes to stand over him – his body lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Ahh…shit.”

Rob is in the Chief’s office.

“That’s the seventh one in a month, Rob, what the hell is going on with you? We can’t get any goddamn information on these fucking creeps’ boss if you keep shooting them!”

“You think I don’t know that? Maybe if they stopped pulling guns on me, I’d stop shooting them!”

2 panels identical. One shows the two sitting in silence. The second has them with a bit more of a smile. The next panel has them laughing.

“Shit, Rob…go home…get some rest. I know you don’t need to see the shrink for pulling your weapon, but don’t go acting all macho, okay?”

“Chief, do I ever?”

Rob is at home and dials the phone. It rings out onto the answering machine, “Hi, you’ve reached William Lydell, I’m obviously not home, so leave a message after the beep.” BEEP!

“Hey Will, it’s your brother, remember me? It’s been like a month since we’ve spoken properly. I’ve called a bunch a times. You must be working on something really big this time, huh? Ah well, gimme a call.”

Rob hangs up. Slouches into the couch, turns on TV. Falls asleep.

Next day. Lighting shining in through the blinds in the window onto Rob’s face.

Automaton Noir Update
I've decided to swap the names of the brothers. Because I want to call the robot RoBert or something like that, RoboRT. So, would it be weird to have the two main characters with the same name? The brother could have named it after his brother for something. Cop is Rob and robot is Robo or something. Hmm...
The idea is kind of from Penny Arcade

Ben and I Talk Zombies

2010-12-06T04:56:00.001-08:00

Ben and I exchange ideas on my new Zombie graphic novel:

[08:23] jordan. : hola
[08:56] Ben : Oioioi
[09:15] jordan. : que pasa?
[09:15] Ben : nufin just chillaxen
[09:15] Ben : gonna go watch return of the jedi
[09:15] Ben : at 8 lol
[09:16] jordan. : hahaha niiice
[09:16] jordan. : i've got an idea for a zombie story
[09:17] jordan. : zombies.....in the wild west
[09:17] jordan. : it's never been done!
[09:18] Ben : ....
[09:18] Ben : I don't mean to crash your hopes
[09:18] Ben : but it KINDA has
[09:21] jordan. : where?
[09:21] Ben : ever play the game Darkwatch?
[09:21] Ben : your a vampire
[09:21] Ben : in the old west
[09:21] jordan. : nope
[09:21] Ben : but you kill zombies
[09:21] jordan. : ...that sounds dumb - forget vampires - gunslingers vs. zombies@
[09:22] jordan. : it'll be amazing!
[09:22] jordan. : BUT
[09:22] jordan. : it's an alt. history
[09:22] jordan. : it's not 1850 something
[09:22] jordan. : it's like 1948
[09:22] jordan. : and the world is zombie infested
[09:22] jordan. : and america has resorted back to wild west towns
[09:22] jordan. : new york and washington were most populated, so went down first
[09:23] jordan. : WW2 (or 1?) got interrupted by zombies, and now people must simply survive
[09:23] Ben : hahaha yeah that sounds pretty sick
[09:24] jordan. : and it's cooler because they'd be gunslingers with magnums...but also have like ww1 and 2 era rifles
[09:24] jordan. : no one bothered with plane development, so they don't have that
[09:25] jordan. : and boats are just rickety iron things not been used in ages - except for small boat colonies who have survived by raiding small towns for supplies
[09:25] Ben : oh dude
[09:25] Ben : make them the civil war boats!
[09:25] Ben : where they werelike
[09:25] Ben : lets just put a whole bunch of iron on them!
[09:26] Ben : since they didn't have to go on oceans
[09:26] Ben : just rivers
[09:26] Ben : being the civil war and all
[09:26] Ben : just look up ironclads on wikipedia
[09:26] Ben : and you'll see how sick they look
[09:30] jordan. : yeah i know ironclads! good idea!
[09:30] jordan. : i was also debating what it would be like if i did one where zombies attacked during the civil war...
[09:30] Ben : yeah man
[09:30] Ben : whether they would stop or not
[09:30] jordan. : yeah, and also, would the humans survive with those weapons?
[09:30] Ben : also if your doing it as if history kidna stopped in the late 1800s,
[09:31] Ben : you can have all sorts of political ideologies in the individual cities
[09:31] Ben : You know what I'm thinking?
[09:31] jordan. : yeah
[09:31] Ben : SOCIALIST COWBOYS!
[09:31] Ben : workers of the fucking world unite
[09:31] jordan. : HAHA hells yeah
[09:31] Ben : although it would be hard to have kinda because you can't REALLY have socialism without industrialization
[09:31] Ben : I mean
[09:31] Ben : supposedly
[09:31] Ben : but Russia and China did it ok
[09:31] Ben : so thats a load of bull lol
[09:31] jordan. : haha
[09:32] jordan. : well, we could have them live in like a small socialized place
[09:32] jordan. : where they grwo fruit
[09:32] jordan. : and take turns for zombie watch
[09:32] Ben : hahaha yeah man that'd work
[09:32] Ben : and they colud have like
[09:32] Ben : a small smelter
[09:32] Ben : where they smelt weapons
[09:32] Ben : AND ARMOUR
[09:32] Ben : make sure there is zombie armour
[09:33] jordan. : hahahaha yes, a blacksmith!
[09:33] jordan. : well, it's obvious that the best defense against zombies, if we wanna factor in movement allowed, is kevlar or a leather motorcycle suit
[09:34] Ben : lol yeah your probs right
[09:34] Ben : so wait is this a graphic novel you wanan do?
[09:34] Ben : cause if you want like an interesting sort of historical parallel...
[09:34] Ben : the reason the West was "wild" was that it was just SO far from the easy
[09:34] Ben : *east
[09:35] Ben : so you could do this GN or whatever
[09:35] jordan. : it's a GN yeah
[09:35] Ben : in like the "second closing" of the West
[09:35] Ben : the first closing
[09:35] Ben : was in like late 1880s or 90s
[09:35] Ben : when they FINALLY finished the railroad
[09:35] Ben : that meant that like
[09:35] Ben : wild west is over
[09:35] Ben : cause the easterners can send troops and garrisons very quickly
[09:35] Ben : they also won the wars with the indians
[09:35] jordan. : yeah
[09:35] Ben : ect ect
[09:35] Ben : so in your thing
[09:35] Ben : you could have like
[09:35] Ben : the high tech peopl
[09:35] Ben : from the East
[09:36] Ben : FINALLY about to re-close the west
[09:36] Ben : whenever your thing takes place
[09:36] Ben : just an idea
[09:36] Ben : conflict could stem from that
[09:36] jordan. : hmm
[09:37] Ben : but yeah you could do lots of fun stuff
[09:37] Ben : with that setting
[09:37] Ben : guerilla warfare fighting native americans
[09:38] Ben : cause I woul assume the white man and the red man would join forces to fight the zombies
[09:38] Ben : so the navajo would still be round and kicking
[09:38] jordan. : exactly
[09:38] Ben : and socialists
[09:38] Ben : OH
[09:38] Ben : and plantation owners lol
[09:38] Ben : that can use zombies as hired hands
[09:38] jordan. : BAHAHA
[09:38] Ben : hatian plantation style
[09:39] jordan. : how would they do that? zombies have no innate abilities, they run on primal urges to eat
[09:39] Ben : I dunno they could get them to do menial tasks in Day of the Dead
[09:40] Ben : which I consider cannon
[09:40] Ben : for zombiism lol
[09:41] jordan. : i'm of the canon that zombies can't really do anything other than eat...like in Dawn of the Dead and the Max Brooks books
[09:41] Ben : fair enough
[09:41] Ben : but again
[09:41] Ben : thats a really good idea man (Y)
[09:41] Ben : very cool setting
[09:42] jordan. : thanks i'm super happy with t
[09:42] jordan. : *it
[09:43] Ben : just
[09:43] Ben : don't make it too steampunk lol
[09:43] Ben : please
[09:43] Ben : steam powered cars are fuckign retarded
[09:43] jordan. : hahahaha i wasn't planning on it
[09:43] jordan. : though steampunk is cool, i am not gonna do that
[09:44] jordan. : whatever tech they had in that day in our reality is what they have now, with only minor advancements in weapons
[09:44] Ben : yeah that sounds pretty solid
[09:44] Ben : ALSO
[09:44] Ben : YOU SHOLUD HAVE A MOBSTER TOWN
[09:44] Ben : WITH TOMMY GUNS lol
[09:44] Ben : I love organized crime
[09:46] jordan. : hahahahaha
[09:46] jordan. : mobsters wouldn't just be in that one town, they're the other fear of the people besides zombis
[09:47] jordan. : and their favoured method of whacking someone is to leave them in a cage with a zombie
[09:47] Ben : naiiice
[09:47] Ben : thats pretty ballin lol
[09:47] Ben : it would be cool though you could have like all these factions interconnected
[09:48] Ben : Plantation owners buying off the mob
[09:48] Ben : Socialists main resistance against them
[09:48] Ben : natives are the wild card
[09:48] Ben : ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE
[09:48] jordan. : haha yeah
[09:48] jordan. : would there BE plantation owners though?
[09:48] Ben : man I wish I could draw well enough for a GN
[09:48] jordan. : me too
[09:49] jordan. : i'm just a writer haha, i can do concept shit
[09:49] jordan. : but i;m thinking, if zombies attacked in WW1 or something, this could all happen, but it seems unlikely there'd still be huge plantation owners
[09:49] jordan. : unless time stopped during the civil war
[09:50] Ben : well I mean, there would be something of a throwback
[09:50] Ben : given the downfall of civilization
[09:50] Ben : so the west is getting their food SOMEHOW
[09:50] Ben : I would have like some keen farmers take advantage of the chaos
[09:50] Ben : to aquire smaller farms
[09:50] Ben : ergo therefore visa vi
[09:50] Ben : plantations
[09:50] jordan. : fair enough
[09:50] jordan. : makes sense to me
[09:51] Ben : it also depends what state your setting it in
[09:51] Ben : if your going like Arizona or New Mexico
[09:51] Ben : in the southwest
[09:51] Ben : than it'll be different than like
[09:51] Ben : if you set it in the former confederacy lol
[09:51] Ben : Arkansas or something
[09:52] jordan. : hmm
[09:52] jordan. : intriguing
[09:52] Ben : yeah man
[09:52] Ben : keep me posted on what you do with it
[09:53] Ben : I'm very interested
[09:53] jordan. : thanks man
[09:54] jordan. : read this website http://tvtropes.org it gives me ideas
[10:20] jordan. : whaddaya think?
[10:20] Ben : sorry
[10:20] Ben : GOTTA GO
[10:20] Ben : (also its pretty cool)
[10:20] Ben : peace
[10:20] jordan. : s'cool man, i'll ttyl!! i shall keep you posted
[10:20] jordan. : peace

Poems

2010-12-06T04:55:00.001-08:00

Guilty hands build my world.
I'm not what you imagine and I never will be.
Though you softly dream of me,
it isn't really me that is there - I'm somewhere far off in a place you can't imagine in a place you don't know
exists
my best laid plans are mazed networks for you
barbed wire fences you can't scale
and your ideas are
invisible to me
because they don't exist
they you and me that is a fairytaledream is no more and you did it so you can't
cry.

How Many Times
I've watched you walk away so many
times
why isn't it easier now?
i've even seen you walk towards me and it's
still hard
because when i look at you i think
of everything we had
i see your eyes
those same eyes
nothing ever really changed and you know it
just admit it
that car
the same car
i'm tired of seeing it drive off down the street as i
walk through my front door
i just wanna stay with you for a whole night again
i just...

Ben and I go a Little Nuts Designing Games

2010-12-06T04:50:00.000-08:00

[12:37] jordan. : i think we need to sit down and design a game
[12:37] jordan. : like dead space...zombies AND sci0fi
[12:38] jordan. : *sci-fi
[12:38] Ben: hahaha yeah man me too
[12:38] Ben: I wanna make the game where instead of getting attacked by aliens Earth is just being the dick imperialist
[12:38] Ben: so your playing the bad guy
[12:38] jordan. : niiice
[12:39] Ben: and the aliens would be quiet and benevolent at first
[12:39] Ben: but as the game progressed
[12:39] Ben: and they got pushed harder and harder
[12:39] Ben: they would get baddasser and badasser
[12:39] Ben: and it turns out the war humans thought would be easy
[12:39] Ben : is now really god damned hard
[12:39] Ben : THERN
[12:39] Ben : *THEN
[12:39] Ben : BAM
[12:39] Ben : earth all along
[12:40] jordan. : HAHAHA
[12:40] jordan. : go classic film on their ass!
[12:40] Ben : and then the villagers sacrifice the protagonist
[12:41] jordan. : while it turns out that their food supply was protagonists like him all along
[12:42] Ben : which would be the case except the protagonist was only a figment of the ANTAGONISTS imagination
[12:43] jordan. : hahaha
[12:43] Meebo Message: Could not IM buddy
[12:44] jordan. : and then it turns out the antagonist was really the protagonist..and...something about a father...and the statue of liberty...and being The One...whatever, we'll smooth it out in brainstorm
[12:44] Ben : hahahaha WHAT A TWIST
[12:44] Ben : we should make a game thats just twists
[12:44] Ben : there will be no plotline
[12:44] jordan. : hahahahaha that sounds fun
[12:44] Ben : just right when you think there is a plot
[12:44] Ben : it twists
[12:44] Ben : to something else entirely
[12:45] jordan. : and you can never follow what happens
[12:45] jordan. : and the end is that it's all in some mental patient's mind...in a cell similar to that of Marius in the cutscenes in Diablo 2
[12:46] Ben : Hahahaha except that the mental patient is actually already in hell
[12:46] Ben : also I don't catch the reference never played diablo
[12:47] jordan. : haha yes! in hell!
[12:47] jordan. : ahh...get on that
[12:47] jordan. : diablo 2 is like one of the best games ever
[12:47] jordan. : the storyteller is a weak old man in a mental hospital cell in the dark ages
[12:47] jordan. : very cool
[12:48] Ben : naiiice
[12:48] Ben : thats pretty god damned sick
[12:48] jordan. : yeah
[12:48] Ben : The opening cutscene will be like:
[12:48] Ben : Trapped in interrogation cell
[12:48] Ben : fight your way out
[12:49] jordan. : NICE
[12:49] Ben : looks like your a spec ops being held by terrorists
[12:49] Ben : you fight your way out
[12:49] jordan. : turns out you're a rogue accountant who wants to know the truth
[12:49] Ben : and it turns out that they weren't terrorists they were the remnants of the army
[12:49] jordan. : ahh
[12:49] Ben : cause when you leave the zombie apocolypse has happened
[12:49] Ben : and right when things are looking bad with the zombies
[12:49] Ben : BOOM
[12:49] Ben : RAPTURE
[12:49] jordan. : LOL
[12:49] Ben : fight your way through the rapture, it was all a training program
[12:50] Ben : in a matrix-esque pod
[12:50] Ben : in the robotic future
[12:50] Ben : you quickly get drafted into a clan of ninjas
[12:50] Ben : NO!
[12:50] Ben : MOTORCYCLE NINJAS
[12:50] jordan. : who are fighting Moto-Pirates
[12:50] jordan. : and it turns out YOU'RE on the wrong side and must escape to help the pirates
[12:50] Ben : oh no no no
[12:50] Ben : great minds think alike
[12:51] Ben : I was thinking that it would turn out that the whole robo-ninja war was all the ramblings of a pirate
[12:51] jordan. : hahahaha
[12:51] Ben : BOOM
[12:51] Ben : your on the high seas
[12:51] jordan. : as a pirate
[12:51] Ben : on a mission:
[12:51] jordan. : who is marooned
[12:51] Ben : to plunder atlantic
[12:51] Meebo Message: Could not IM buddy
[12:51] jordan. : and sent through time by a sorcerer
[12:51] Ben : *atlantis
[12:52] Ben : A VOODOO SORCEROR
[12:52] jordan. : YES!
[12:52] Ben : so that way were not crossing time periods lol
[12:52] Ben : or wait
[12:52] Ben : should it be a maori sorceror?
[12:52] jordan. : hahaha he got stranded on New Zealand and then sent through time...
[12:52] jordan. : love it
[12:52] Ben : gamers would just be like
[12:53] Ben : "what the fuck?"
[12:53] jordan. : haha YES
[12:53] jordan. : but also AWESOME coz we'd cross SO many genres, EVERYONE would be pleased
[12:53] jordan. : and at one point...turns out you're escaping from a book to a world where you must solve puzzles without a gun to help with a dying island (WOO MYST REFERENCE!)
[12:54] Ben : AWESOME LOL
[12:54] jordan. : haha!
[12:55] Ben : oh man I had this other idea for a game
[12:55] Ben : regardless of the twists lol
[12:55] jordan. : yeah?
[12:55] Ben : where it was like a WWI game
[12:55] Ben : instead of WWII
[12:55] Ben : (its inspired by this teen fiction series I read when I was like 14 lol)
[12:55] Ben : but instead of hte usual fighters
[12:55] jordan. : is this gonna be like that alt hist game you told me of yesterday?
[12:56] Ben : its like the Ancient Greeks, fighting the Ancient Aztecs, fighting the Japanese
[12:56] Ben : TRENCH WARFARE style
[12:56] jordan. : wtf?! AWESOME haha
[12:56] Ben : but the Gods come into play
[12:56] Ben : so like Athena can fight Quetzalcoatl
[12:56] jordan. : wow...during WWI?
[12:56] Ben : yeah
[12:56] Ben : also the tech is like souped up right
[12:56] Ben : well differently for each faction
[12:56] Ben : the Ancient Greeks have a modern "Phalanx"
[12:57] Ben : where they're holding big bulletproof shields
[12:57] Ben : and instead of stabbing spears have close range shotguns
[12:57] Ben : that they can shoot over the shields
[12:57] Ben : aewsomely
[12:57] jordan. : NICE
[12:57] jordan. : FPS or Strategy game? and do you get to play all 3 'races'?
[12:57] Ben : FPS
[12:57] Ben : and yes
[12:57] jordan. : yesssss
[12:57] Ben : but they would all play differently
[12:57] jordan. : 3 different mission campaigns haha
[12:57] Ben : the Aztecs would have lower tech
[12:58] Ben : but they would have crazy stealth skills
[12:58] Ben : They would have like
[12:58] Ben : night missions to go behind enemy lines
[12:58] Ben : take out the leadership
[12:58] Ben : and WEAR THEIR SKIN
[12:58] Ben : (aztecs did this)_
[12:58] Ben : skin people and then wear it
[12:58] Ben : then they fuck shit up behind enemy lines
[12:58] jordan. : hahaha niiice
[12:58] Ben : dude we gotta write videogames
[12:58] Ben : were a treasure trove of ideas
[12:58] Ben : were huge gamers
[12:59] Ben : we both write
[12:59] Ben : we both know lots of stuff
[12:59] Ben : lets get the wheels in motion lol
[12:59] Ben : *snaps fingers*
[12:59] jordan. : totally *snaps fingers* our brains work at 75rpm at least...we can DO THIS
[13:00] Ben : we could go into a board meeting
[13:00] Ben : and be like "Don't like that idea for a game?
[13:00] Ben : GOOD
[13:00] Ben : we have 19 others"
[13:00] jordan. : hahahaha[13:01] Ben : lets get in contact with Ubisoft Montreal!
[13:01] Ben : they made prince of persia
[13:01] Ben : lol I can see that phone call going very well
[13:01] Ben : "So how much experience do you have in the industry?
[13:01] Ben : "Well we game a lot"

Unfinished Story (that's now a script)

2010-12-06T04:49:00.002-08:00

“You’re late.” Harvey said as he got down onto his knees.

“How the fuck would you know? Now shut up.” Derek said, cocking the hammer of the gun and aiming it at Harvey.

“Don’t I get any last words?” Harvey asked with a strange calm.

“If you’re not careful, those will be them.” Derek said smiling with malice.

They stood like that for some time, Harvey on his knees and Derek standing in front of him, his weight on his forward right foot, his right arm raised aiming the Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, his eyes on the wall clock just over his left shoulder.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Harvey asked, cocking his head with curiosity.

“Shut up!” Derek spat as he eyed the clock and uncocked the gun aimed at Harvey’s forehead. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and sat down on a nearby stool, pulling it towards him with his foot.

“Anything the matter?” Harvey asked, seemingly concerned.

“Nothin’s wrong, I just gotta wait is all.” Derek said, crossing one leg over the other in an attempt to look nonchalant, but betraying his sense of nervousness by tapping his foot and darting his eyes between Harvey and the clock every few seconds.

“You seem nervous,” Harvey said, “Can offer you something to eat or drink? A cigarette?” Derek glared at him from his seat with heated contempt, “No fucking food, no fucking drink…but I’ll take one of them cigs.”

“Front pocket.” Harvey said. Derek leaned forward and ripped off the front pocket of Harvey’s shirt, taking with it the new pack of cigarettes. Derek tore these open and withdrew a cigarette and put it to his mouth, “Light?” he said gruffly.

“Left pocket.” Harvey said and Derek searched Harvey’s pockets for the lighter, but came up with matches. Derek lit the cigarette and the end glowed red, the smell of the burning phosphorous filling the small room as the swirl of tobacco smoke floated towards the ceiling. They sat there for some time in silence, Derek with his cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, ash falling like snow onto his worn black jeans, right leg crossed over the left and tapping at air; Harvey on his knees, his hands behind his head, not a bead of sweat marking his face.

“So,” Harvey said after some time, “can I ask what it is you’re waiting for? You have ample time to kill me and leave, probably taking most of my valuable with me – I live alone so there’s no chance of someone stopping you from upstairs.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I ain’t waitin’ ‘coz I wanna. I’m waitin’ ‘coz them’s the terms of the deal.” Derek scratched his three day beard absently, his broken nails making a grating sound in the penetrating silence. Harvey eyed Derek. He wasn’t a tall man – five foot ten at most – he had short, greasy, messy hair which looked untamable and his eyes were a deep brown. He was probably handsome at a time, but what seemed like a lifetime of unhappiness had taken all the life out of his face leaving it a mass of wrinkles covered lightly with a harsh beard. Harvey thought he saw a distinct sadness in his eyes, as they looked constantly moist with tears – like Tom Cruise’s – but that could have been because of the cigarette smoke or how nervous he was. Derek noticed Harvey eying him and as he did, Harvey smiled. Derek began sizing up Harvey, a dark skinned, middle aged man who had aged seemingly well but was maybe a kilo or two overweight. His black hair was cropped short and he had dark eyes, hidden behind and magnified by his rimless wire glasses which sat lightly on his face. He had what Derek thought was a kind face, but quickly shook his head of the thought. Derek looked down at the gun in his hand. It was a heavy, steel gun with a six bullet wheel, a .357. The gun he had been given for the job. It was such a big gun which could apparently blow a man’s whole head off. It seemed unnecessary to Derek, but he didn’t think twice about it when he took it, when the man had called over the phone told him to look in his bedroom where he found polaroids of his wife and daughter duct taped and lying on a stone floor.

“What exactly are we waiting for?” Harvey said, waking Derek from his thoughts.

“If you gotta know, three a.m. We gotta wait for three a.m.” Derek said, annoyed.

“Three a.m.? But why? You have me now.”

“That’s just what the guy said is all,” Derek said, now angry with himself for having revealed information about the man on the phone, “and he said to get you and wait until three a.m. to kill you, no earlier and no later, or he’d know.” Derek shrugged, “Make’s no difference to me, either way you end up on the floor pooled in blood and I get paid.” Derek felt his cheeks flush as he was thought too much about things. Talking too much. The man had left a polaroid of Harvey, too.

“Kill him at three a.m. and you get your family back, and ten thousand dollars,” he had said, “no earlier or later than three a.m., I will know. Don’t test me.” And then he hung up.

“If we’re going to be waiting here for another two hours,” Harvey said, once more waking Derek from his thoughts, “May I take my hands down from behind my head? I imagine they’ll get quite cramped and painful and I’d at least like to be mildly comfortable for the last two hours of my life. It shouldn’t make any difference to you.” Derek eyed Harvey for a moment and the things which were near him. He was in the centre of the small room, with nothing of worth within arm’s reach for a weapon, “Sure. Why not?” Derek said finally and Harvey lowered his hands, rubbing his wrists and forearms.

“So, if I may ask, why exactly have you been sent to kill me?” Harvey asked.

“I think the real fuckin’ question,” Derek snapped back, “is why the fuck were you expectin’ me to?”

“A good question. I wasn’t. Not tonight, really. But for some time.” Was Harvey’s cryptic response.

“So why the fuck were you expectin’ this to happen, then?” Derek could feel his palms sweating as he asked this.

“I answered one of your questions, now it’s your turn. Why have you been sent to kill me?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said, his voice flat, “just some fella wants you dead, an’ he’s payin’ me to do it. S’nothin’ personal ‘tween me an’ you.”

“I’d say there’s nothing more personal than this.” This comment made Derek shift uneasily on his stool, “Do you know who sent you?”

“Nope, an’ that suits me fine.” Derek fiddled with the gun, switching the safety on and off.

“You haven’t done this before.” Harvey said, causing Derek to tense.

“’Course I have! Don’t you fuckin’ challenge me! Shut the fuck up!” Derek jumped to his feet, taking aim at the focal point of Harvey’s glasses, his hand shaking.

“No, you haven’t, but that’s okay,” Harvey continued, “no need to feel bad about it. Not many people can do a job like this. There must be something more than just the money pushing you into a job like this.” The sound of his wife trying to push words through duct tape exploded into Derek’s mind.

“I got my reasons. Why was you waitin’ for this to happen?”

“Because I’ve done some things which may have made me some enemies.”

“You in the army or something?”

“No.”

“Air force?”

“No.”

“Navy?”

“No. I’m an accountant.” Derek began to laugh a deep laugh which wheezed from years of smoking, “I guess that’s the new army, isn’t it?” He said and continued to laugh. Harvey just smiled. Derek sighed after his laugh and was hit with a vision of his daughter strapped down and he sobered up quickly.

Old Crap Again

2010-12-06T04:49:00.001-08:00

On Dreams...
Dreams are seriously fucked. They've been so odd lately.
Kissing some girl I know in a blizzard of falling snow.
Dreaming of a very sexual, non-existent sister, "Why is it exactly we don't fuck?" she said. I don't recognize her either.
What the fuck?
There have been so many weird dreams...

Songs for Life
"I never knew that it was over when I met you" - Over When I Met You, The Camels
"Take me away, I'm gonna hurt somebody...how could she say, she wanted more, you, better" - Take Me Away, Plain White T's
"When you gonna work out that I'm all you ever needed...I'm never gonna find another woman that I want" - All You Ever Needed, The Camels
"Summertime is when I look into your eyes" - Summertime, The Camels
"Romance...does it happen when you slow dance? is it in your head or is it in your pants? Romance!" - Romance, The Camels
"All the times we've had..." - Times We've Had, The Camels
"I've become so numb...I don't know what you're expecting of me" - Numb, Linkin Park
"This may sound a little fucked, don't wanna fall in love!" - Don't Wanna Fall in Love, Green Day
"Nothing perfect can remain forever" - Nothing Perfect Remains, Jordan King-Lacroix
"Smiles and her laughter, she's the only thing that I've been waiting for." - Emily, From First to Last
"If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end" - Swing Life Away, Rise Against
"The best way to get over someone, is to get under someone else" - No Mercy for Swine, The Cherry Poppin' Daddies
"Now you're nothing but a picture and 1000 Memories" - 1000 Memories, Bad Religion
"So you're feeling unimportant, 'coz you've got nothing to say" - Slumber, Bad Religion
"I'm just a loser with no self-esteem"- Self Esteem, The Offspring
"15 years getting loaded, 15 years 'til his liver exploded" - Bob, NOFX
"Deep inside your soul there's a hole you don't wanna see...even though I try I can't get my head around you" - (Can't Get My) Head Around You, The Offspring
"Baby I got you on my mind...you'll never know, how much I need you by my side." - (Baby I Got You) On My Mind, Powderfinger
"There's a place for us sitting here waiting for the sun, and it calls me back into the safe arms that I know" - Waiting for the Sun, Powderfinger
"Who's next?" - Who's Next?, Tom Lehrer

Second (I think) LJ Poem (ed. it was like the 5th)
big night last night,
(you know)
heavy falling waters
endoftheworld rain down noisy crash
on a bus i can'
t get on for the sake of the
payment
i wondered why i was bothering to
see
you
a twisted turning confession
in the recesses of my mind confirming i was
blind to the things that lay inside
we talked
and wined
and ate
and played
and ended u
p
on
the couch
with my hand behind your neck and your
hair over
my hand
i leaned you in close to me and you sure didn'
t pull back
our lips almost met but they didn'
t and that'
s almost what made the (non)kiss better
a tease of the lips and almost touch of the tongue
the look in your eyes and the
shine in mine
forehead to forehead we lay bizarre
encircled by inappropriateness
i remember you when you were young
and you remember me the same
i would watch you when your parents were away
and now you'
ve grown into a beautiful young woman
and it sure feels strange to know and see and be on the couch
lying down with you and almost kiss you in a way that...

i'
m going home,
walk me through the rain?
and you do.

Interesting Old Blog Entry

2010-12-06T04:44:00.002-08:00

Insomniac Thoughts from Last Night (29/3/2009)
I sit in the dark of my room, the dull flow of my desk lamp of the page as it hums its florescent hum. I look out over the darkened cityscape of the city I'm now forced to call home. Not that I'm sad about it - the ensuing months will be filled with joy, I'm sure - but it wasn't home. I think of Marcho and how I'll likely miss his 21st - unless I can think of a clever way out of class and to earn enough cash to get home. The darkened McGill campus stretches out before me and the streetlights glow like four-pointed stars against the glass of my sealed window - safe from the negative degree temperatures outside.

Hilton
GARDEN INN

A giant red sign says, towering over the other buildings. The trees are still leafless, lifeless, brown stems connected to the earth waiting to blossom in the coming spring - a spring that ever seems to want to come. I find it strange to think that I have so little time left in this room of mine - apartment 301 - in this house; a house once full of strangers and now full of friends; family. A cheesy and cliched sentiment, for sure, but truthful nonetheless. I miss home but not in the way I thought. I miss the people, the knowing, the security, not the land - just the familiar. My stomach sinks a little and I cough. A strange and educational trip this has been. And here I am, pen scratching recycled paper at 3:30am because my brain won't sleep and I keep coughing.
Scratch scratch scratch goes the metal nib against the page and marks are made, like magic, stained with ink. But the words aren't magic - just the ramblings of a brain over-excited and unable to comprehend how life brought it here. This fortune! I want nothing more than to sleep. Maybe I just needed to get all this out and I should do this sort of thing more often.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

- C.S. Lewis

Stuff from Old Blog

2010-12-06T04:44:00.001-08:00

Draft: Friends

I wrote this poem by closing my eyes and just writing because my chest and head hurt and I needed to vent:

i don'
t know how it happened
it just did
some things happen that
way
you know?
one minute we'
re in the doorway and then
bam
in the next room
door closed
don'
t know how it
happened
still don'
t
just happened
some things happen
that
way
you know?

what are we doing
what are we doing
ewhat are we doigng
awhat dre we doign
euhgiueu we...it doesn'
t matter!

panting i looked over
and
smiled
and i just couldn'
t stop and now i still
can'
t i just couldn'
t believe it
you know?
just one of those things
just happened.
heart pumping
beating
heat from everywhere
just one of those things
that happened
you know?
friends

friends friends fierends
fiends friends fiend sifend firend
fired firedn friend fire red fired
friend friend friend firnen dmf
]frined friends?

rolling across through the
doorway
and into the next room
light
soft
sweet
kisses
"nice", she said
jacket falls off
clothes gone
bed
"stay there and stay warm
i'
ll be right back?"
into the bathroom
i wrap myself in her blanket
and she gets back and she'
s smiling and she is so pretty
and then she comes over and we

just one of those things that happened
you know?
friends.

she came to my bed later that
night
just to cuddle
and we slept
it was nice
been a long time
you know?
just to hold and to kiss
and to smell and to...yeah
is it weird that i get
jealous?

Twist: My Brother Is Gay...

my mum: justin (my bro) went clubbing with [insert ex-girlfriend's name here], apparantly she's bi now
me: oh, she's been bi forever
mum: oh, and i wanted to give you some news. well, that would've made an interesting threesome
me: oh...oh mum...oh...gross...geez

Old Blog Entries Again

2010-12-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

One Minute Romances

In the light of the past few days - which have been a downward spiral in my otherwise jovial mood so far (it's gotta happen SOME time) - I have realized some strange things about my life here at the moment. (ed. names have been changed)

First, to last night. Brian had his cousin, Katherine, and her friend, Lena, over to stay for a day or two. Last night, Brian, Lena, Katherine, Linda, Bob, Rizzo and Synthia and myself decide to head out on the town for some drinks. I didn't really want to go out because I was in one of those moods where I knew I wouldn't make good company, but finally I obliged because I couldn't concentrate on my readings anyway, and I might as well be out having fun, rather than inside not reading and being sad. So, off to Gert's (the local pub on campus) for some drinks. Brian, Rizzo and Synthia head off first and the rest of us hang at home for about 45 mins finishing our pre-drinks before we head off. By this point, Katherine is very keen on me coming out with them. We eventually leave and go to hang at Gert's. The night progresses well, and Katherine and I are playing footsies under the table and eyeing each other like mad - woo for me. But wait, there's more. Last call is heard and we decide to leave for another bar - now, initially, I don't want to go back out, because I'd had a disagreement with Linda and I was already in a bad mood, but after some talking (and a significant amount of pulling on Katherine's part of my shirt) I decide to head out - leaving Bob on our couch, asleep. We hit The Mad Hatter's and we drink some more - Katherine and I continuing our coy game, but this time a little more overt to one another. Eventually, Linda, Lena, Katherine and I head up stairs to play on the stripper pole, and they eventually leave, leaving Katherine and I together. We hook up. She says she quite likes me and wants to...well, you get the idea. We decide to stay out a little and then we'll go home and meet in my room - cool. We stay out, and there is some touching - whatever. We get home, and we arrange to meet in a certain place so no one finds out - but BAM! in comes cock-block best friend and your loveable narrator is alone for the night. Aided a little by Bob, whose earlier comments on Katherine convinced her to reconsider hooking up with Brian's friends. So, me not happy.

Today, I'm better-ish and I head to class as normal, do everything as normal. After my last class, which Babs is in, as we leave I ask her, "What're you up to now?" and she replies with, "I guess I have to talk with you."
"I know what that means," I say and smile.
She cringes, "Yeah...I'm sorry. We had a big spark, and it was fun and I like you very much, you know that...but I have someone back home and...I just can't do this...shot thing right now...we will still have a spark on stage, and maybe something will happen later, we'll see...but we can still be friends, yes?"
"Yeah, don't worry...it's ok." I'm still smiling, "Well, see ya later."
"Ok, bye then." And I leave.
I got preemptively dumped. Haha.
One minute romances - I can't stop having them!

Philosophy of Life

"You should be as alive as you can until you're totally dead." - Dylan Moran, "Like Totally"

Two Stories (Old Blog)

2010-12-06T04:33:00.000-08:00

I wrote the beginnings of a story, I don't know where it's going, let me know what you think: (13/4/2009)

I killed a man yesterday. I’d never done that before. I haven’t washed his blood of my hands – seems disrespectful, you know? I mean, this is the last part of him and all I can do with it is wash it down the sink, mix it with the great oceans and then he’s gone…no, I couldn’t do that, imagine if it was me. They say the dead follow you around always after they die, watching you, because everything you do, the person you’ve become, they’ve helped shape, you know? You can’t always see them, sometimes you do, in those moments when you feel goose bumps in a warm room or when the dark seems darker, but they’re always there. I read that in a book somewhere…it was fiction, but I like to think that that’s true so that way I never feel too alone. Is that sad? I don’t know. Probably. When they found me with him, I was just sitting there next to him, cross-legged, my hands cupped holding a small pool of his blood, staring at it like it couldn’t be real. The detectives testified that I had a, “grey and distant look in my eyes”. I guess that’s accurate. Though I’d say it was more red – all I could see was that blood. They also say that if you can make your executioner laugh, maybe he won’t kill you – I’ve heard that in two places now. I don’t know if it’s true. I was the executioner, he didn’t try to make me laugh, he just cried…so, I don’t know. Wish I knew, then maybe he wouldn’t be dead. Or maybe he still would – depends on what you believe I suppose.

New Story (28/4/2009)
Started a new story, let me know what you think:

It was four a.m. and Henry sat at the kitchen table, “Get some sleep!” the others had said as they climbed the creaky staircase up to bed, “Yeah, yeah.” Henry had said, waving his hand over his shoulder. That was at one a.m. He had tried to sleep. Really. He had gone up to bed and lain still, and tossed and turned. He had even masturbated to try and get himself to sleep, but this hadn’t worked either, so he had gone back down to the kitchen and sat at the table. The room was dimly lit; all the lights bar a small fluorescent light above the microwave were off – some of the room being lit by the light from the adjacent room and the street lights shining in from the kitchen windows. He sat in one of the wooden chairs that surrounded the table that sat off centre in the room. He sat there for some time in the dank light before he got up to get his half-finished bag of chips from the cupboard, borrowed some salsa from one of the others and poured himself a glass of milk. He sipped on the milk and smiled.

“Milk in a bag?!” He had said, looking over at Jerry, who looked equally flabbergasted, “Milk in a bag?!” Jerry repeated, accentuating “bag”, pronouncing it as if it were spelled “bayg”. They smiled a broad smile and grabbed a four liter bag to suffice their milk needs and added it to the shopping cart along with the large box of Pop-Tarts, “Those’ll go well together.” Jerry said and Henry nodded.

Henry fingered the cigarette he had removed from a packet on the table, pushing the tobacco cylinder across the table idly as he ate his chips. He eyed a pack of matched and placed the two things next to each other. There it was – a pastime. Henry was a vehement non-smoker but he was seriously contemplating smoking this cigarette. He laughed at himself slowly and out loud, remembering all the times ha had yelled with derision at friends and strangers who had lit up near him, how he had coughed loudly passing smokers in public – being one of those non-smokers people hated – but now he didn’t care about all that.

“George, you’re stinking up the place!” He said as George came in from outside.

“Come on, man,” George said, “I like to smoke. Leave me alone. I can quit when I want, you’ve seen it. I just enjoy it too much.”

“Whatever man, it’s your body, your funeral, not mine.”

“Let me get that for you, m’lady.” Henry said as he leaned over, pulling out his lighted and lit Sally’s cigarette.

“Oh, thank you, do you smoke?” she asked as she offered Henry a cigarette from her pack.

“No,” he said, “I just like lighting other people’s cigs.”

Flash went the match as Henry lit up his cigar on a New Year’s Eve…

Snap. Inhale. Bubble goes the bong…

Henry toked from the joint…

He pushed the cigarette across the surface of the table and smiled, striking a match and watching the flame burn out the wooden body, inhaling the strong, potent, yet strangely sweet smell of the phosphorous match tip. He blew out the match and watched the blue-grey smoke dance in twisters above the match and dissipate in the dark air.

The smoke rose into the night sky as the love-letter he had written to her burned on the terrace like he had burned his essays at the end of high school – this letter meant no more than them now, but the gesture meant a lot to him.

(Here it goes blank from lack of ideas, but here's the ending...)

ENDING:

As Henry sat in the kitchen he looked out the window to see the sun rising, creating yellows, oranges, blues and pinks on the light cloud cover just hovering over the horizon. As the others came slowly downstairs for breakfast or early exams, they smiled and big him good morning, “Get any sleep, Hank?” they’d ask.

“Yeah, actually,” he lied, “all night.” He was comfortable with lying now – with contradictions and hypocrisy – because he lived it each day. He didn’t mind as long as it didn’t hurt anybody and he smiled at George as he joined him outside for a cigarette.

Notes and Poems and Rants: Old Blog

2010-12-06T04:22:00.002-08:00

I wish i remember who this was about now. (ed. 6/12/2010)

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Haven't found the time or topic to. I've been having dreams about her again. It's weird to do so at this time, with everything that's been going on. But I'm always happy in those dreams, and so is she. It's good to see her happy. It's always pretty intimate, but in a sweet way, never in a "rough'n'fuck" way. In my Judaism and the Occult classes we're learning about Talmudic dream interpretation. One of them is, "If you are fornicating with a woman, whom you in turn love, then it is a good omen." In this case, I would say that 'love' could be quantifiably rendered into the friendship area, especially as the dream interpretation texts were written so long ago, and so archaically. And I could sure as hell use the good omen, especially after all the bad omen teeth falling out dreams I've had this year.

I hate the people I dream of

i hate the people i dream
of
it spins me round like food
for thought
time for your dime
hitched in vegas and up and
gone.

"does this all look familiar
to you?"

i guess it must but it doesn'
t
wish that it would look like yesterday'
s today'
s tomorrow
but it always looks like last year'
s next week in a way that
fakes the times we always
cherished.

doesn'
t it always seem like that to
you?
it could just be me but
i
don'
t
think so for once.

The Cast of Dreams

It is sometimes odd who it is who appears in your dreams. More often than not they're friends of yours, whether or not you've spoken to them or thought of them lately or not. Sometimes they're people you know in the dream, but when you wake up you realize you don't recognize them as a real life person at all. Sometimes they're people from TV shows - for example, I've been watching a lot of Scrubs lately (the whole series) and so the cast of Scrubs are commonplace people in my dreams - and we're often on adventures or running from things. Last night it was the Janitor and someone else...I don't remember. The night before it was Cox and the whole gang. Weird, but fun. But what is weirdest is when you have a sex dream about someone you know. This is weirdest when you haven't thought of, spoken to or dreamed of that person in forever. But it's still weird when it's someone you've spoken to lately, when you haven't had a dream about them - especially a sex dream about them - in a long time or ever. This happened to me last night, about a close friend, and it feels weird. And it doesn't necessarily mean I want to jump that person next time I see them, but I have been thinking a lot about relationships (again, thanks to Scrubs) and I wonder. I miss being in a relationship and I wonder what it would be like with certain people. I don't know. Sometimes the mind just messes with you for shits and giggles.

And a tear is shed as the world ends around us, but we still laugh...

Okay, so...it all started on my birthday.
We had a party, there was yelling, a table was broken, there was beer, there was a band, the neighbours complained. The downstairs one, no one else. The complaint was only of the slamming balcony door and "the loudest chair on earth, it's constant". Okay. We then heard that we had an imaginary party on Sunday when no one was home and it had "10 men and lots of beer". This is just blatantly false. We then inadvertantly had a party a week on the heels of the last. Ashlee invited people - lots - to our house. We didn't make noise, but there was a complaint. No reason is mentioned, "the people under you are two brothers who work!" So then there are no disturbances. The Aussies (Max and Joel) are staying over. Everything is fine. Last night, their last night, we get home from a party in town. We've had a couple of beers, but are not drunk. I go to get ready for bed and Max begins making a frozen pizza in the oven. I brush my teeth, change, get ready to get into bed while Max is doing this. Max begins watching something on his laptop while his food cooks. All of a sudden he smells smoke and gets up to check the food. Smoke is rising from the oven out through the stove top coils. He turns off the oven and opens it. Smoke billows out. The fire alarm is tripped. The apartment one, and then the whole building one. The building is evacuated. Five firetrucks show up. Firemen come up to see us. They see it's a false alarm and are not mad. The alarm continues until the smoke clears. We have a laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation. This morning, a call is had from Matt's mum. The landlady has called her, with slanderous and false claims. We are now being threatened with eviction because, "we have been harbouring 10 people in our apartment constantly. We have lots of loud parties. We get drunk and pass out on drugs and let the pizza burn, causing a fire and evacuation". Ben and Matt are in the shit and I'm leaving soon. This sucks.

Rhyming Exercise

down in the sewer
i could swear that you were
around and around on a skewer
with fewer and fewer do-gooder evil-doers.

it's plain and simple
pop the pimple
move to the avenue Darlrymple
spit out those smiling dimples
can't you see the ice trample frimple?

exercise, sterilize, cauterize,
sacrifice, artifice, simplify,
words like birds
flock in and mock
me like some downed ceder tree
get out get out
flee flee
you turn me about
so that i can't see.

Notes

So many perspectives now, like kaleidoscope coloured glass - turning me about in rainbowelectricalstorms. Yes she is, no she isn't (worth it?), she's done this before, she's amazing - it's a tough situation. Gimme a cigarette.
Soft kisses, hidden cuddles, lustful uncertainty.

Dedicated to Shosh and her broken words

2010-12-06T04:22:00.001-08:00

"give me what you'
ve got!"

you cry
battling on the hilltops of a mind tumultuous and
crazy
under clouds of foolishness
brandishing a sword of unjust truths
passing yourself as a fool leading the sane
and who is it exactly that you think
you'
re fooling?
when they told you that you weren'
t paying for it did you think they
were serious?
because i'
m sure they never meant to give you that impression
so drink the quality of your benevolent sins
and sup on the trajectory of your lives (going in a direction
your education never intended)
and if all of this leaves room for more
then desert on the substance of your character
for that is all you will have left
when this is ended and you are stuffed full of yourself and of
the things you want
need
don'
t
then you will see

and as the hordes of the underdevoloped, undeserved, undermined and untrained
climb the hilltop on which you dine and wait
you will be overrun
and the only thing which will be the test of who youyourself are
is how long you can hold out before they overwhelm you into themselves

"cheque please,
let'
s get out of here."

Old Entries, Old Blog: Craziness 3

2010-12-06T04:21:00.002-08:00

Nananananananananana
i remember i was in some room...with all these people i didn't know..and then in a kitchenette with David and Curtis and Curtis says "it's like i know you already" and then i woke up and fell asleep into a different dream where i was in this gang of people and one of us died and so we were all sad (it was me, elena, tina, dom and somebody else) and we met some other gang and they were tauting us
about our friend's death so we ended up fighting them and i killed one with a gun...and then that gang followed me through all these maze-like halls because now they were as sad as me over a death of their friend and i remember telling this story to my parents in the dream
and then i had a sex dream about a friend

my mind is playing tricks on me

We Always Make Excuses for the Ones We Care About
This is just something we do, I think, to other people to make ourselves look more...sane...in what we do with our friends and relationships. I mean, why do we defend someone who hurts us so much?
After you told me what he was like...I can understand why you were so overwhelmed when you went from him to me...how emotional talks turned him off or bothered him...and how I am all too open to have them...and how he admitted love the way he did...and then the way I did...and no romance...to me - Mr French Speaking, poetry writing, guitar playing, love-doer. I can understand being overwhelmed now. Now I have some more information.
I can see why you were afraid of it all...of 'me'. I'm so set on these things...they mean a lot to me...and it's not even something you're comfortable with...yet...I guess. I know romantic love. I embrace it, I suppose sometimes too/more readily than I ought to, but that's me.
I'm just as confused as you ABOUT love, though...
This is just how it can feel for me sometimes;- That I seem like a good idea at the time...but that I'm so easy to fall out of love with. I fall and I fall hard...I'm broken and I know it. Fun fact. I'm sure that's now how you see it, and wish I didn't even think of that - and believe me, it's not an attack on you.

And I just hurt my foot and feel nauseas.

You were so used to being the one that cared more that maybe now it just seemed too easy...I don't know. Just a front you were used to putting up or something? I don't have answers. I don't even have good questions.
I do care a lot about you, and never you forget it, and I'm still around because I care. I want to help. I want to be there. That's who I am.
Listening to you defend him, though, just made me realize - is that what I was like defending you to my friends? And they looked at me judgingly, saying things like I shouldn't bother. We defend because we know both sides to the story. We know the person we are defending. So the people we tell it to only get our side, mostly the bad things, and they are trying to defend US. We feel like they are attacking the person we are defending, but they are merely running off of things we have said and are trying to defend us. We don't want to listen to these objective opinions because, in a sense, they're not. I imagine, these days, what it's like on two sides of an argument.
Like, if someone tells me that they're significant other ignores them too much, is pushing them away, we naturally stick up for our friend. But what's the other side? Does the significant other go to their friend and say, "they won't leave me time to myself?" and THEIR friends will stick up for THEM. Two sides to every story.
The things that go wrong shape us more than the things that go right. Even though that pain is a sucky part of life, it's something we need to deal with. We all wish we could start again but we shouldn't because then we'd be someone else with a different life, and you might end up missing your old life. Things happen the way they do because we make choices, not always the right ones, but they're made because that's what we think we should do at the time. We may be wrong, but then we learn. We learn.
The hardest thing to do is to let go. I know that. You know that. But the time will come when we all do. That is the OTHER part of life, the one we tend to forget and are not able to see as easily - things DO get better, we DO get over things - with strength from all sources.

I know this was a pointless rant, but I guess it helps to vent the brain sometimes. And it's strange how quickly it turned into a philosophical rant...looking for answers, RE: excuses...and there I go again - excuses for us all.

"Cut the protesting, forget the excuses, we need information, get up off the floor"

Old Entries, Old Blog: Craziness 2

2010-12-06T04:21:00.001-08:00

Gender Contradictions Which Amuse Me
Cooking is seen as a "womanly duty" yet many master chefs are men - and their manliness is not questioned.
When a woman cooks it's a "duty" - when a man cooks it's "romantic" - why?
Singing is seen as a feminine thing to do for a boy - but yet men admire male singers in bands.
Being in the army is seen as something for manly men - yet most of the women in the army could probably kick their asses.
Men say that women are "weak" - but my bet is on them cracking instantly if they had to do half the things a working mother has to do in a day.
Seeing crying as a sign of weakness, men will hold it back and inside - whereas women will let it out and get over it faster, which is healthier.

Gender stereotypes are stupid.

"I'm a very difficult person...but I take comfort in knowing God made me that way." - Beethoven.

I dare you to move,
I dare you to say,
What I want you to say,
though I know that you won't.

Because you're afraid,
Well so am I,
But so what if I,
am as scared as you.

"Ok...I want you guys to dance like...like...like creepy old people who like it really rough." - Maarika.

"I'll just walk on down to the pacific and from there on, improvise." - Barton Fink.

Walking along the blacktop,
a hot wind on the air,
no one can hear the voices,
lingering loud and clear.

Oui, je doit sortir d'ici aussi vite possible.

ha. haha. hahaha. hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

please take me home...i don't want to sleep alone...

i don't know...all i feel like doing is crying today.

my head is filled with so much...i just don't know how to sort through all the JUNK.

i feel this way and that about this person and that...i'm just so fucking tired...

breaking glass on the
porcelain
or breaking porcelain
on the pavement
watching
pieces
as they
drift away
softly dreaming of
days
passed
and wishing for

oh does it matter?
i watched it happen
was in it as it happened
and nothing can
change that
nothing can change
me
and as i sit here
in this
chair
in this
room
i just want to
scream
and
shout
and
run to the rooftops
and yell
"why me?
why today?
why ever?
why this time
world
place?
let me be!
leave me alone!
make it better!"

and it doesn'
t.