An early-morning rumination following a dream of a bookstore:
What is the writerly muse, if not a collection of interests, curiosities, subconscious desires, obsessions, and memories that has become a individualized figure, an entity to be visualized and invoked at will? What does “I have lost my muse” mean but “I have no obsessions”?
The illustrator who designed “Olive, the Other Reindeer,” J.otto Seibold, has a new book out, “Alice in (pop-up) Wonderland.” And a Flash website, too.
(Via Neatorama.)
Reading the Otherland series* by Tad Williams, I wandered across the legend of the Wulgaru:
He chanted the most powerful incantations he knew, and tapped the figure with his woomera. The sun sank, dusk changed to dark and, daring the evil spirits of the night, Djarapa chanted and tapped without stopping on through the night and the dim light of dawn, on through the morning song of birds and the growing daylight, on and on as the sunlight dappled the ground under the trees; and all the time the Wulgaru lay motionless, unresponsive to the chanting, staring upwards with its stony eyes.
After Djarapa abandons his creation, it begins to follow him. Tad Williams puts it forth as a metaphor for machines, how they sem lifeless, but comes to possess the world one lives in, almost as a monster or spirit.
*I’m almost done with Book Two, River of Blue Fire. I still haven’t decided whether it’s a fantasy or science fiction series. At first I thought it was a fantasy, but the fantasy worlds turned out to be VR. Now I’m starting to suspect a few fantasy elements here and there…as with the rest of Tad Williams’s work, the series is one novel, split into smaller books, so you don’t really get a climactic ending from one book to the next. I also haven’t decided whether it’s good or not, because there are so many plotlines, and he switches back and forth between them so often, that’s it’s hard to get a feel for what’s going on at times.
Testing…
Democracy.
If we’re trying to make the world safe for democracy, wouldn’t it be better to infiltrate the black market than declare war? I kept thinking about it today: sneak cells of philanthropists, teachers, jounalists, and black marketeers into a country. That way, fundamentalists can scream about how godless the US is, but what everybody’s really thinking is that we make good blue jeans and can fix computers like nobody’s business. We don’t want enemies; we want free markets, because selling stuff is what we do best.*
*I’ve also been thinking about setting up categories for my blog. This entry would go under “Hare-brained Ideas.” That way, you could click on the link and POW! as many hare-brained ideas as you could ever desire.
TV.
Okay, here’s the deal. Any show I’ve watched at least three full episodes of is bolded:
24
7th Heaven
Adam-12
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
Angel
Arrested Development
Battlestar Galactica [1 and 2]
Baywatch
Beverly Hills 90210
Bonanza
Boy Meets World
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Chappelle’s Show
Charlie’s Angels
Charmed
Cheers
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Coupling
Cowboy Bebop
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Danny Phantom
Dawson’s Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadwood
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Desperate Housewives
Doctor Who (not lately)
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Family Guy
Farscape
Father Ted
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Frasier
Friends
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan’s Island
Gilmore Girls
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Grey’s Anatomy
Gunsmoke
Hannah Montana
Happy Days
Hogan’s Heroes
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
House
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Inuyasha
Invader Zim
Invasion
JAG
Jackass
Joey
Little House on the Prairie
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
M*A*S*H
MacGyver
Malcolm in the Middle
Married… With Children
Melrose Place
Miami Vice
Mission: Impossible
Monk
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
NCIS
Nip/Tuck
Numb3rs
One Tree Hill
Oz
Perry Mason
Pokemon
Power Rangers
Prison Break
Rescue Me
Roseanne
Roswell
Saved by the Bell
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Smallville
So Weird
South Park
Spongebob Squarepants
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG-1
Superman
Supernatural
Surface
Taxi
Teen Titans
That 70’s Show
That’s So Raven
The 4400
The Addams Family
The Andy Griffith Show
The A-Team
The Avengers
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Brady Bunch
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show
The Dead Zone
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Honeymooners
The Jetsons
The Love Boat
The Munsters
The O.C.
The Office
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Twilight Zone
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wonder Years
The X-Files
Third Watch
Three’s Company
Twin Peaks
Veronica Mars
Whose Line is it Anyway?
Will and Grace
Wings
…I was feeling pretty good there until I got into the ’80’s shows.
(Via ***Dave)
Ah…
It’a slack-off, fried-chicken, read-a-novel, play-some-sudoku nite. Shhh….don’t spoil the illusion by saying the word “tomorrow” yet…
Rewards and Punishments.
So, about a month ago, I had a good idea for a novel. At least, it was the kind of thing that I thought would be a good idea fora novel. So I wrote it. Finished it this afternoon. Don’t like the ending,* couple of big places that could stand some additional scenes. But I’m done!
Synopsis, brief teaser, or what have you of Alien Blue:
Bill Trout, the owner of the Caveman Brewery in Haley, New Mexico, tells a stranger the story of how the alien came to town and why he’s in the back room of the bar waiting to die. What he doesn’t know is that the young woman is already involved…
Hey. It’s my first real synopsis 🙂
It has to go on the back burner for a while; I have a murder mystery game (about a luau) to work on, and a house to purchase…anyway, as a reward, I ate most of a very dark dark chocolate bar, and I have made myself thoroughly sick. Some reward, eh?
*It’s not a bad ending. I just didn’t write it well, because I was in a hurry to get done with it.
Fawlty Towers.
The hotel that inspired the British TV comedy is getting renovated.
“The character of Basil Fawlty was inspired by a former manager at the hotel; he gave John Cleese and the Monty Python team a frosty welcome when they booked in 1971. The ferocious host berated them for not holding their knives and forks correctly and threw one of their briefcases over a wall believing it could be a time bomb.”
I wonder what happened to the guy…
The Art of Forgetting.
Ever say a word over and over until it didn’t make sense anymore? I was doing just that today with a character name when I suddenly wondered what exactly happens to your brain when you do that. Do you unhook synapses or something? Do you make it so all references to that word only relate back to itself, instead of to what the word means? I wonder whether you could force yourself to erase a memory that way, or at least how frequently you remember it. Hm…
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