We were dead before the Ship even sank…

We are all going to die, and sooner than you think.

The biggest problem facing everyone (and yes, that includes more than just Americans) is that we don’t know or care about how to get along. The oceans are rising as high as the prices, the opposite poles of every viewpoint are growing larger by the second (as opposed to the polar ice caps, if what media tells me is true), and no one can really see outside their own sphere of influence to think about the bigger picture.

Yes, that includes any president, senator, monarch, dictator, celebrity, or parent. All any of them care about is the perpetuation of their power through flashy gimicks or misdirection, like the illusionists they are. The media, the most powerful institution in the entire world through shear outreach, doesn’t care about anything but money. Sure, that hobbles them, and keeps them from abusing their power, but it also stops them from thinking about the future. Thinking about what they COULD do to improve life, instead of what they SHOULD do to make money.

That’s the problem. No one has your best interests at heart, except for you, and you have no voice. It’s just a puppet show to make you feel better about the fact that you have less than no power. You are just a number, and you could die and be replaced at any time.

Term limits, no lame duck period, impeachment of government officials who aren’t doing what they promised, salary caps on government positions, better lobbyist control (or making them illegal to begin with), forcing a balanced budget, campaign contributions divided amongst all possible candidates, etc. etc. etc.

All of these things would be baby steps away from the edge of the cliff we find ourselves standing at. Forget separation of church and state, that is not a threat. Where is separation of corporation and state?

The Signs of Death and Dying

This is the last of the last. I wanted to take this time to let you know that I’m going to leave the book online here until the middle of next month, and then take it down. So if you haven’t read it, or you have been putting it off, best do it quick.

An Afterword by the Author

In the Hands of an Angry God

For starters, if you’re reading this and you haven’t skipped to the end like some kind of cheater, I would like to thank you for reading the book. It’s not easy to get through such a difficult piece, but I’d like to try and placate you with the fact that it wasn’t easy to write either.

I’ve always been fascinated with suicide. Not necessarily in a crazy, sick, perverted way; more in a curious, imaginative, and interested way. But that’s not one hundred percent true. I’ve never really cared for suicide anywhere near as much as I’ve been interested in the idea of why people do it.

I have been a teenager, I’ve had my bouts of loneliness and confusion, I have even wondered if life might be better for me if I was dead. Obviously, there is no possible way for life to be better for anyone if they were dead, but I don’t think anyone ever accused teenagers of being rational.

With all of that aside, I had an idea. Or rather, I had a couple of different ideas over a period of time that gravitated towards each other, characters that sought shelter together from the blizzard of my imagination; tragic characters that would not have happy ends.

First, there was the writer who wanted to be important and famous and dead, but wasn’t enough of the first two for the third to be an option. He sprang to life almost fully formed from my head, like a Greek god.

Second, I had an intrusive thought of my own, the image of myself hanging from the tree in my front yard. It was terrifying for a second, and completely unprovoked by any external stimuli. I knew it would never happen, and I was nowhere near as terrified of it as Scarlett. But my brain, perhaps in a way to deal with the unwanted imagery, started to speculate. What would it be life if someone couldn’t help but visualize their death? How would they deal? Would they end up succumbing to their own madness, because of the obsession? (Of Course, it’s a tragedy.)

The third character that came along carried a torch. He was the unifying factor, the person that would bring together the other two, and any other characters that wanted to have their story told. He was a depressed psychiatrist. He wanted to help people, but he couldn’t even help himself. After he came along, the premise started to form. A psychiatrist with an awful life, who wants to die, loses himself in his work of trying to save other people who want to die.

Fourth was the conflict. I knew it would not be a happy story full of rainbows and kittens; instead it would be tragic and full of death and missed opportunities. Out of the conflict, Ken was born. He was the wild card, the driving force, and he was tied to the climax. His character came directly out of the scene of his death, and I worked backwards from there.

Now I had something going for myself, I had four characters with a premise and a climax, but the story needed more. I needed to make the climax as tense as possible, so the gun became a revolver and the group therapy session needed two more members. Mariza stepped up to the plate. She was originally named Mariza Blades, after some woman whose name was in the database I worked on at my job. In fact, her character came out of the name I chose. Ms. Blades would be a cutter. Later, my inner voice of reason yelled at me for the ridiculousness of the name, but the character had already joined the troupe. So I changed the name to a less silly sounding one, and moved on.

Then, a name reappeared in my brain. Johnnie G. Honaker, deceased. Another name I had picked up while working a temp job, he was a faceless name on a file that I was sorting. There was poetry to his name; the flow of it captured my attention. It was tragic in my mind, the notation on the file that he was deceased, and it helped burn his name in my brain. He begged to be written about. His name sounded old, and possibly because of the fact that the deceased label was next to his name, I imagined him as an old, dying man. But why would an old dying man be in a support group for suicidal people, I asked myself. Then it hit me, he wanted to die, instead of fighting the cancer.

I had my cast list. I had my premise. I had my climax, and I had my ending. Originally, they were all going to die, but when I discussed the story idea with a friend, he urged me to leave one of them alive. To let one of them learn a lesson from the experience. One of them needed to be redeemed. I went through the characters in my head, and Johnnie seemed the most obvious and still interesting choice. How tragic to survive when everyone else died, when you have six weeks to live.

I named my characters, and then renamed them. I gave them jobs, motivations, histories. I let them grow in my mind, and I waited. When the time came, I started writing, and that’s when things got complicated.

You see, I spent so much time fleshing these characters out, and making them interesting (I hope you think so too) and trying my best to make them Human that I fell in love with them. I began to enjoy watching the little stage plays the characters created in my imagination, and I kept writing. I knew that the more I wrote the closer I brought them to their respective ends, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to finish it; I had to see how they got to the place where they wanted to die. I was fascinated.

Unfortunately for them, I stuck to the plan. Instead of trying to fashion a completely new climax and ending, I kept them on the track to ruin. I’m an angry god, and I didn’t even know it. I started to watch in horror as the characters made all the wrong decisions, and did all the wrong things. Then, the time came for the first axe to fall. I would be a liar if I said it was easy and a double liar if I said I didn’t miss Ken as soon as he was gone.

After Ken died, my arm grew stronger and my resolve was absolute. The axe was easier to use, but a funny thing happened. The sense of loss grew with each body. I felt like I was losing friends I’d known for years. But I wasn’t losing them, I was killing them. I had no one to blame but me.

I had intended to have thirty chapters, but I found I only needed twenty-eight. I would write a single chapter for each of their deaths, and one for the survivors. But that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t done yet, and with the help of my Father, I was able to come up with the Epilogue. I needed to have better closure, and I figured the readers did too, and I wanted to give it to you. Because, if you have muscled through the pain and misery, the blood and guts, the sadness and tragedy, then you deserve to have at least a good moment of somber reflection. You deserve it because you are the reader, and I love you for doing just that. I owe you for the time you spent with my characters.

Maybe I’m not such an angry god after all.

National Write a Novel Month

So, Here November is again.

Except this time I’m ready. Wit is sharpened, keyboard is greased, (also I may need to get a new keyboard, I think this one is broken) and the story is outlined.

Now, can I just keep myself writing at least 2,000 words a day, for 30 day?

That is the question at hand.

By the way, the working title of the novel is “The Signs of Death and Dying.”

So, this is going to be a fun one.

I can tell your excited, because the internet told me so.

Three Teas

It’s a story. Read it here.

Crossing the Rubicon

The Advanced Film class of 2009, University of North Texas premiere was this past weekend.

One of the movies, Bloom was written by me. Well, the original script was. It was originally titled Crossing the Rubicon. It was based off of a short story that I wrote of the same title. Here is that.

Enjoy.

Phineas

Here is written the continuing tales of Edwin P. Jones, an exceptional young man. The story is as follows…

---

The acrid taste of rusted metal and cheap cigarettes always hung around when he was finished with a job. He splashed water in his face, and then set to work cleaning and oiling his guns. The sign outside his shop stated:

Edwin Phineas Jones

Hired Hand

Will do any Job!

Most people assumed that any job meant something like desperation, but Edwin would truly try his hand at any job that came his way. He thought back to his childhood and the lemonade stands that he and his brother, Thomas Llano Jones, would run every summer. He missed the days when the jobs he got only required a little elbow grease, some know-how, and the need for money.

Edwin did not think of himself as a mercenary, in fact, he hated the term. While he would do any job, he was not crass about it, and greed did not become him. He was merely following the path that was set out for him. All the way up, down, and sideways his family tree the Edwin P. Jones were men of duty, thriftfulness, and the desire for adventure.

Edwin loved the smell of oiled leather, and the cool touch of the tempered steel revolvers in his hands. The guns had been passed down from father to son as long as anyone could remember. Edwin often wondered if the guns had always existed, in some form. Perhaps, he would think to himself, the metal once belonged to a great warrior’s sword. Before that, perhaps it was a spear, or a shield. Edwin felt that the metal that comprised the guns had an ageless quality to it. Some nights he would stare at his guns as they hung in his room, within arms reach, and watch the fire reflect off the tempered metal.

Jackson, his dog, snoozed lazily near the front door of his office. IT was the only way that the dog acted as anything like a guard dog. He didn’t bark, licked anyone who would permit him, and was a generally good-natured dog. His habit of sleeping in front of the door was as good as a bell that hung above the door. If Jackson was moving about the room, then someone had entered Edwin’s office.

Edwin took a swig of whiskey to clear up the terrible taste that was plaguing him. It did little to help, but that little was a blessed amount. He took no love in killing.

It was all perfectly legal. Edwin always worked above the table, paid his taxes, and would not kill if filled with emotion. But it was very much a chore. This was one of the primary reasons he had a license. The Government tested him regularly to make sure he was not enjoying the killing. Murder was legal, as long as it was dispassionate. “The Glory in one another’s death is forthwith outlawed as Anti-Social, and therefore against the wishes of The State,” section 885, article 7 of the New Constitution. Edwin always assumed that the line that was drawn between murder and anti-social murder was because, well, as the Great Senator Himner said, “We could always use more room.”

Edwin was a licensed Jack-of-all-Trades, so he could always be hired for a killing cheaper than any Master, and he could be hired to do other things as well. Quite often he found himself disposing of someone, and then putting in some new shelves, or possibly yard-work. Most of the time it was yard-work. “Everyone hates to do the menial things in life, but they love to see the results,” Edwin’s father used to say. Edwin thought about the number of killings that he’d undertaken in the past month alone, and figured he could probably test for Master in Murders, Mayhem, and Mischief and pass with flying colors. Still, Edwin could not permit himself to even attempt the test. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing his Jack-of-all-Trades status, and spend the rest of his life murdering. The thought of it made his stomach lurch.

Jackson licked the back of his left hand and Edwin sat alert. He didn’t change his posture, but his body was primed and ready to explode into action. A delicate smell wafted his way and Edwin held his breath. There were only two possiblities: Either there was a beautiful broad behind him, waiting anxiously for him to turn around, so she could offer him a job that would ultimately end in the two of them nakedly wrapped around each other in a passionate embrace; or it was an assassin’s cunning attempt to fool him.

Edwin hoped for the latter, he just wasn’t at a time in his life where he felt ready to be trapped in a constantly questioning relationship full of innuendo and witty banter. Assassins on the other hand, he was always ready for, because he had to be.

“Mr. Edwin P. Jones?” a female voice asked him.
“Present,” Edwin responded, cursing his luck.
“Not for long,” the voice said.

Edwin dove behind his desk just as twenty blades of infinite cutting flew through the air. They missed him terribly, with the well-calculated but un-improvisational aim of a robot. Edwin smiled, loaded his revolvers, and set to work. there was nothing in the law about enjoying the destruction of a mindless killing machine.

When the smoke cleared, Edwin heard the radio voicebox of the Assassijin crackle, “Thomas to Edwin, Thomas to Edwin, This will not be the last you’ll see of me!” Edwin took this cue to dive into the bomb proof shelter underneath his desk, carrying Jackson with him. The detonation leveled the city block, but the shelter was well protected. Edwin climbed out of the oubliette and patted Jackson on the head.

“Siblings,” Edwin scoffed to himself, “They think that just because you taught them everything they know, that you’ve taught them everything you know.” Edwin sifted through the rubble of his old office, and found the keys he was looking for. He walked over to the impenetrable door frame that was the only thing still standing for as far as he could see, and put the key into the lock. He opened the door and stepped into his cross-town office, bringing Jackson and his guns with him. He sniffed the air, and sighed. He never really liked this office as much even though everything was laid out exactly the same, down to the tiniest detail, like the papers that were strewn about his desk.

“At least it hadn’t been a woman,” Edwin said. “I just don’t have the time.” Edwin sat down, lit up a smoke, and started to clean his guns. Again.

Auralelia

Auralelia doesn’t like it when people call her by her given name.
Auralelia Jolie Jones.
Instead, she prefers to go by Aura-Jo, or maybe just Aura, if she knows you really well.

Auralelia doesn’t really like her brothers, because they never let her play in their reindeer games.
She’s just as tough as they are, tougher even, but she’s a girl.
And girls just can’t be trusted to play fair.

Not that Auralelia can even understand how Ed and Tom are playing fair.
Tom is constantly trying to sneak attack Ed, and Ed is always avoiding it like he saw it was coming.

Auralelia kind of likes Ed, because he will give her the time of day.
Which is nice, Auralelia thinks, because he is the oldest.
Tom, on the other hand, is a complete douche. Aura-Jo is not quite sure what that word means, but she heard Tom call Ed that once, and she knew it was a bad word. She also knew that Tom was just calling Ed what Tom was afraid he was. Aura-Jo was pretty sure that Tom was going to grow up and join the H.F.A.

Aura heard her father, Edwin P. Jones, talk about the H.F.A. once, after all of the kids were supposed to be in bed. She’d never really heard her father say such mean words before, and she hoped she’d never have to hear them again. But the H.F.A. sounded really cool.

Years later, after Tom had lost his left eye while trying to blow Ed to smithereens and was disgraced and removed from the family tree, Aura quietly visited with her brother in the hospital. Tom was delirious, but he was so filled with rage that all Aura had to do was point him in the right direction.
The H.F.A. had never had a better convert. Of course, the only reason Aura wanted Tom in the H.F.A. was because his conversion finally awarded her the last point she needed to earn her second to last merit badge.

Finally, I can cross off “Bring Someone to the Dark Side,” and really get to work on my last one, Aura thought.
Once I get “Kill Eldest Sibling,” I can rule the Honorable Fraternity of Assassins with an iron fist.

Aura had lost her right hand in a terrible smelting accident some years before. Ed was unable to save her after another one of Tom’s plans went awry.
She never forgot or forgave him.

Comin’ At You From Every (L’)Engle

Tesseracts.

That’s how they move through the day. Well, all the days. It’s like an oblique angle to reality.
Seems like they fold space, but in reality, they just move in more directions than we do.

That was the first problem.

The second problem was that they only really existed on our plane one cross-section at a time.
Imagine the difficulty of diplomatic relations when you can only talk to someone’s belly button.

By the time we developed a means to talk to them, they had already decided we didn’t deserve to exist.
Imagine our surprise.

So, being the industrious Genus that we are, we rather rapidly adapted our means of communication into the thing that we have always been best at making, a weapon. This is probably the reason they meant to destroy us.

Imagine their surprise.

That pretty much ended the Tesseract Wars. Of course, we can never really be sure that we wiped them out. Maybe we just burned our plane at the edges, singeing it off from the rest of the Mesoverse.

That’s where you come in. We’re heading out, and we need you to be our flag bearer. They need to know who they’re messing with. They need to be scared.

And that’s where the Mesoversian Compiler comes in. Some people think that it will destroy everything, squishing the Mesoverse together like we intend to, but we really don’t care.

No one wipes out Humanity. No one except us.

How to Disappear Completely

First of all, I’ll give twenty points to anyone who can name the band.

Now that the competition is under way, I’m going to distract you with words.

Fish.

Okay, so it was only one word.

Apparently, Fish is my go-to word. It’s what my mind thought of when I was trying to be random.
Is it even possible to have a go-to random word/number/phrase?

Yes. Fish/37/That’s the Bees Knees.

There is your answer for that.

Time is a funny concept.
Lots of rules.
Lots of suppositions.
Lots of lots.
Lots.
L.O.T.S.
Long Orange Time Stretchers.

Long Orange Time Stretchers is the tale of a boy. Not just any boy. He’s the boy who is also orange. He is also the boy who is also orange and also able to stretch time. Also he’s long. He’s been a boy a long time, and orange a long time, and able to stretch time for a long time. He is called upon by the Short-Timers to save the day. They have very little time. Time is of the essence to them. Time is an essence to them. It’s like a fart in the wind. This boy, well, he is there to make the time/fart last. Keep their sun/planet/life/emotions/history from exploding/exploding/ending/gaying/exploding. Unfortunately, there is a gang of Medium Purple Time Eaters who are on his tail. They have eaten all of the other Orange Time Stretchers. Or so they think. In all reality, their king, the Lord of the MePTEas is actually a LOTS. And he’s the boy’s father.
The boy saves the day, finds his father, learns his purpose in life, and eventually gets to marry the girl/live a good life/learn his destiny/save all creation.

End Credits.

I just got shivers.

A Blind Pilot flies into the sea

Let me drop a little knowledge on you.

This band is awesome. Blind Pilot

They are a sweet blend of mellow harmonies, acoustic instrumentation, and pure aural sex.

That’s right, Aural sex. That is sex of the hearing for those of you who are unaware of all the wonderful words in the English language. Not Anal, not Oral. Aural. Learn it, Live it, Love it.

I will give you a few minutes to go ahead and check them out. Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you get back.

---

Now that you’re mind has been blown, subdued, or otherwise lulled into submission by Portland’s finest, let me lay a few more things out there for you.

First, I am going to prep you with the knowledge that I will tell you the 25 most important movies that should belong in anyone’s collection. This is coming soon, and you should prepare yourself for it. But for now, I am going to warm you up to something, and that little something is a film called Away We Go.

This is the fifth movie by director Sam Mendes. You may know him from such astounding films as American Beauty, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1999, which is saying something considering the movies that came out that year.

Fight Club
Office Space
The Matrix
The Sixth Sense
The Man on the Moon
8mm
Being John Malkovich
Eyes Wide Shut
The Green Mile
The Iron Giant
Magnolia
October Sky
Payback
Run Lola Run
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Virgin Suicides

And those are just the decent to Amazing ones. There were quite a few other movies released that year.
But I digress.

The film Away We Go is the fifth film that Sam Mendes has decided to grace the viewing public with. The man is a genius, and has not disappointed. While I can not give my seal of approval on Revolutionary Road, because I happened to be in a coma during the time the film was in theaters, I feel pretty good about this director. The man knows his shit. His shit is good. He is awesome.

And how can you pass up a chance to watch John Krasinski flail about on the Silver screen. Well, aside from the travesty that was and will always be remembered as License to Wed.

There, I said it.

But, if you just can’t get enough of Mr. Krasinski on the little screen every week on the office, or maybe you actually trust my opinion on a thing or two, you should see this movie.

And for the rest of you who don’t fall into either of the two previous categories, check out this trailer.
Away We Go

Now that you have returned I’m afraid that I have nothing more to say about that.