Month: June 2021

Humanity is fragile. Metahumans get a bad shake of it. If you believe the newsfeeds then Orks and Trolls die early. Dwarves are, well, dwarves, and Elves might get to live forever. Truth be told, I’ve never seen an old elf, so maybe there is a thread of anecdotal truth to that one. Truth also be told, I have a fascination for elves that stops short of fetichism because of how prominently they are displayed in the fashion and beauty world. In other words, its not a fetish because the media says it is okay to salivate over hot elves.

But I digress. Humanity is fragile. We tend to fight against that fragility with the help of science and technology. We fill ourselves with treatments, ointments, biotech, cyberware, even magic as a way to make us healthy and extend our lives past the point we ought to be living. This desire to prolong ourselves feeds the business model of places like Executive Body Enhancements. EBE makes its money putting high dollar, high grade cyber and bio technology into people. It’s all there on the net. They pitch themselves as a lifestyle company and do a hell of a job of it. No less than 5 AA rated corps are presently bidding to buy them out. Of course, EBE says it isn’t selling, but everything in the 6th world is for sale.

Day 3 of not writing this 10 minute bloganovella. I’m experiencing wicked back pain, and I suppose that is my excuse. It is only that though, an excuse. I am at that point where I am not excited about moving forward in the narrative and I need to change something to make something happen in order to jump start my joy for the story. I like the character and he’s building steadily, but I’m not quite where I need to be with it in order to make this a fun write and read.

Of course, that is all up to me. I’m absolutely a non-believer of some external writers block. That stuff is in your head. It lives in my head on occasion, but I can beat it. My demon is consistency. I’m Snowpiercer, The Engine Eternal, but if I stop I don’t know that I can start for a really long time. To continue movie quotes, I wind up in the Sunken Place.

Okay. well… on to…

Some Thoughts:

1. Here’s how I define my birth family: My kids are with my birth mom and I remain convinced she is straight up indoctrinating them to hate me and feel like they should never be in my life. It be like that. Some family exists in antithesis to the idea of family and she is that family.

I gotta get back to the Bloganovella. Don’t have the mind for it at present, so I am just going to reflect on the day, the week, the writing, etc.

I’ll start at the end. The new novel is going better because I created a few characters to fill in the blanks. Seriously. That’s all it took. Story begins and ends with people. Story is what happens to people. I knew this going in, but I was so caught up in the research that it didn’t register until it was nearly too late. With that revelation, the story is back on track.

I’m also thinking about the world of Shadowrun and specifically NYC in that world. We haven’t done a good job with the Big Apple, so I am deep in thought about how to reverse the field on that one. I am extremely interested in making that happen. So, life has become about love and stories and stories about what you love. I love New York, so I need to give it that loving treatment.

This is kick back week. I want to spend at least an hour a day playing Minecraft and listening to my audiobook. I want to chill and relax and enjoy. I want to feel like the time I spend is spent enjoying life both when I’m with my partner and when I am alone. Audiobooks and crafting together brings me joy. In terms of the day, I played way more than an hour. I only have 5 hrs left in my book and I expect to finish it this week.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m learning to ignore negativity. I feel like the house goes through cycles of judgement and negativity from the young for reasons I cannot explain. No reason for the hate but it walks hand in hand with the judgement. They want to judge all the things they see and hear–especially when it comes to sports and anime. I suppose those are the things that make them enjoy sports and anime. Not me though. Not me at all.

I’m doing this from my phone. It’s one of the rare occasions when I’ve gotten to bed and realized I need to blog. I suppose there is a legitimate reason for it. I didn’t write today. No bloganovella, as you can see, and no novel work. I took a day to recharge. I probably need two or three but that isn’t happening.

instead I focused on grading work and listening to my audiobook and hanging with the family… mostly I did the latter. It was a good Sunday for it and I find it time well spent. Tomorrow I’ll be back to the grind of writing and exploring story and developing the characters to breathe life into the scenario. It is ultimately about the characters, and I have avoided really diving into the ones of this new novel as I script out the facts of what is real and project that forward into fiction. Still, I should’ve started with the people. I have a few but not enough. Heck the last three chapters had no people with names… it’ll be several more rewrites before this one is able to breathe.

I am still looking forward to going back to fantasy after this. I have a story to tell there as well but I am not quite ready to tell it.

Some Thoughts:

1. Giants may be about to get a lot better. I’ve been reading articles about different aspects of the offense and it is clear that they intend to use new WR Toney in the stick routes. This means that Engram can do what he does best—stretch the field. It dynamically changes how the offense works. I’m hopeful that they’ll get it right.

I climbed out of the bush and looked back across the East River. The only evidence of my swift passage was a ripple in the water that, if I looked at it long enough, took on a vaguely humanoid shape. I signed a quick thank you to the form as it retreated back across the water. The next thing I did was to carefully remove the bags, making sure to get as little water on my suit as possible. The place along the river where I landed doubled as a park of sorts; mostly a lookout where people ran too using a dirt path underlaid with concrete in case weather conditions made the dirt unmanageable. All city parks were like that. They had a very natural look on the surface, but that look was crafted and curated and lined with enough artificial material that the park’s corporate owners could attest to park safety in case of lawsuit. Manhattan was like that in general.

I’d landed north of the Manhattan Bridge in an area sometimes referred to as the Pit. The area was slowly being torn down and rebuilt–gentrified in the same way old Harlem was transformed into Newtown and the people who look like me were pushed to the outer boroughs. I started up the steep road towards civilization, making sure I looked the part as I went. The Pit was a reconstruction area, but the parts that already were rebuilt represented the latest in technology and surveillance corporate scrip could buy. I’d be noticed sooner than later, and I needed to make sure I blended right in.

It took me ten minutes to slide into the flow of foot traffic on the east side. The streets felt like canyons due to the number of skyrakers packed closely together and jutting high into the morning sky. It was a wonder the city hadn’t collapsed on itself. It was an Island, after all, and what I knew of the underground suggested that most of the earth beneath the city was hollowed out up to nearly half a mile down.

Nobody paid me any notice, which was good. Time was running short for me to get to the appointment early. I wanted to case the place before I did.

I want to start by saying I’ve long been a fan of the Fast and Furious series. I came by it early on and loved the early interplay between Brian and Dom. I felt they worked hard to keep the memory of the actor and the character alive throughout. Vin Diesel believes in that kind of thing. Heck, he named his real daughter Pauline after Paul Walker. Is Diesel a good dude? I don’t know. Does he make good films? No. Does he make fun films. Usually. Is this one of them? Kind of, at least for a little while.

Fast 9 suffers from the bigger and better syndrome that impacts all blockbuster sequels. You can’t go small again… at least in theory. The promise and premise of 9 was a trip back to the roots of the franchise and we do get all of that raw early F1-esque storytelling through a series of extended flashbacks that introduce Dom’s brother, played by John Cena. Here is where we start to run into serious problems. For whatever reason, Cena is hard to take seriously as a tough guy. Maybe its the way he moves, or his comedic film history or the wrestling past. I don’t know what it is about the actor, but he’s not the guy who makes anyone say, yeah, he’s a tough guy bad ass. To quote a line directed at him in Trainwreck, “You not about that life.”

I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe anything. My willing suspension of disbelief, key to any film enjoyment and key to staying locked into the story, vanished in the first 10 minutes. I mean entirely gone gone gone. Want a car that goes the distance in under 10? F9 is where to find it. Want a plot that falls apart in under 10? Same place.

All that being said, there is a great deal of fan service throughout, most of which seems to have been boiled up from the deepest fantasies of writer and director Justin Lin, whose character Han, was in his first film A Better Tomorrow, and continues through this film, defying death.

Go watch it on the big screen if you are in the market for big senseless action scenes that defy logic. Or, wait for the Bond movie. At least that will have those scenes in a ‘making sense’ variety.

I blame Dorothy.

No, I’m being serious here. I saw the Wizard of Oz. Everyone did in some version. It is where we get our concept of what tornadoes look like if we haven’t had the misfortune of seeing them in real life. When Jack conjures mana and calls upon the spirits of the rivers and the ocean to aid him he does so based on his mental representation of how that drek looks. To Jack it looks like the Wizard of Oz. Guess who I am in that scenario?

In a matter of seconds I was whipping across the East River like the ice cream sloshing around in the middle of a frothy cone of dark water. It was small enough that it slipped the notice of anyone who was directly paying attention. He cast a low fog over the water to further aid the illusion of invisibility. Inside the swirling water tornado (there’s an actual name for such things, isn’t there?) I was desperate to cling on to something but painfully aware that there was nothing to cling onto. So I wrapped my arms tightly around myself and tried very hard not to scream.

Being an off the books detective is not an easy life.

I landed in a bush. In reality I landed on a bed of pressed leaves and padding disguised to look like a bush just below the highway that runs along the edge of the FDR drive.

Did you know it has been 10 seasons since the Giants won the Super bowl? I’m reminded of this because they are reminding me. They are releasing merch and planning a 10 yr anniversary celebration on Oct. 17th when they host the Rams. Why? I guess because a generation of fans have no clue that the giants were a winning team. To be honest, none of my kids remember it. None of them were all that into pro football (or any football for more than half of them) when it went down. I was. I still am. I still think it is really sad that they need to remind all of us that they won once upon a time.

Ten years. Have they even seen the playoffs in the last decade? There was that wildcard back in 16′ half the distance, temporally, from the big win. Maybe they hope to cast a new light on the team and new hope that we can win right now… or at least get to the playoffs. But can we (they)?

The short answer is yes. The division is junk and they were an Eagles surrender away from making it as is. I expect all four squads to be better, but I fully expect Dallas to struggle in the run as a result of the coaching style, and that was their strength. The improved secondary for the G-men should allow our line to get back there enough to at least split with the Cowboys, and the strength of schedule favors our style of play more than theirs. I can be surprised still. The Washington Football Team (whose perspective list of names includes bombs such as, Anchors, Archers, Beacons, Griffins, Redwolves, Razorbacks, Swifts, Wayfarers, and 32FC) is a hot mess of potential. They found a solid QB and they have a rising defense, but honestly, I think the poor media coverage is where they sink or swim. Either they band together against the coming hate (those names tho…32FC? WTF-C!) or they collapse beneath it. Lets not forget the culture of the team and office has already been in question and nobody is really talking about all the crap that needs to be cleaned up from the top down. As for the Eagles? No. They suck. Full stop.

All of that being said, I’m saying we have a chance to do more than just celebrate that time we won… back before the world moved on and our poor play let it.

Some Thoughts:

1. This website is not free. I’m reminded of that each time that massive Site5 bill rolls out…

When you hear ‘Shaman’ do you think of an old school medicine man with feathers in his long black hair and caramel skin. Do you imagine him in a loincloith or maybe a tophat? You’re definitely a racist. Jack is caucasian and would probably be mistaken for a bum on a good day, a corpse on any other. He’s a pale fellow and his skin has a sickly sheen that reminds me of someone who drowned a long time ago and was left in the water after. He’s skinny though–not bloated at all. He was in fact wearing a top hat. Some things from the very old days don’t go away. Jack was shirtless today, his chest a grafitti board of tattoos, each of which had some special meaning to him. He was wearing what I refer to as hobo pants. They were brown from lack of washing and had at least six pockets all overflowing with what looked like junk. I knew from experience that these were fetishes; infused trinkets he used in order to summon his spirits and spells.

Jack greeted me with a friendly, “Hoi, chummer. Come to ride the tide?”

I nodded in response, my expression tight with anticipation. We were standing in what used to be a shoreside park on the edge of the river facing Manhattan Isle. There were a few homeless people poking their heads out of the boxes and tents that turned this park into a makeshift village. It was early enough that having a visitor, especially one in a suit, was unusual. Jack had worked this spot for a long time, so as soon as they saw me talking to him they went back about their business–whatever that was.

“Just the one this time, neh?”

“Yeah, but I need it clean, so ka?” I gestured towards my suit.

He made a tsk tsk sound and dug in one of his many pockets. He pulled out two clear garbage bags and unraveled them. Then he handed them to me. I stepped into the first and cinched it around my waist. I stuck my head through the second but hesitated before I pulled the second over my body. “Same account?”

“Always, omae.”

I typed in a code into my commlink. That number transferred funds to a private account. I always fantasized that Jack’s account fed the dozen or so people that lived in this tiny park come makeshift community. For all I knew he could be stashing the money away for a rainy day or even a quick getaway to parts unknown. Heck, he could have a woman or a kid somewhere he was feeding nuyen to. I’d always wanted to ask, but there are lines you don’t cross when you need the person on the other side of them.

He seemed to know the transaction went through and nodded in appreciation. He said, “On to it then.” He squatted down cross-legged as I finished cinching the top bag around myself. It wouldn’t keep me completely dry during the coming experience, but it was better than nothing.

“Here goes nothing.” I said, and we went.

I’ll get back to the Bloganovella tomorrow. I’ve been thinking a lot about the new story I’m working on; how I’m outlining a chapter a day in the way I did with the last one and expecting to go back through the thing again and again–also as I did with the last one. I believe this process works for me. It is hard, because I don’t quite know what I want this story to be. I wrote a very pretty 1000 wd opening scene and now I have the weight of that to carry forward throughout this thing. Only, I only had that one full scene and the rest is glimpses like the space of a blink only when I close my eyes I see the world of this story and I love what I see.

I’m trying to move towards writing more and more in this fashion. I am trying to give more of myself to the words and the worlds and to create as much as I can and see what sticks. As part of the writing time I started a folder of short stories that included the place keeper for a short version of this novel and I don’t really even know what that would look like. I am excited by that. I am hoping to see my aspirations made material.

Some Thoughts:

1. So, here we are on a monday and at the start of this new week I feel refreshed and happy and as if the world around me doesn’t hate me so much right now.
2. Knock on wood, right?