Circadian

Yesterday, we went hunting for ideas for costumes for Halloween. It’s the best holiday of the year, as it’s also our wedding anniversary. M wanted a Red Riding Hood costume, which we found many of, but most were very cheap and very one-size-fits-nobody, honestly. Went back to an earlier idea of going all out ’80’s, to the point that we’re going to see “That ’80’s Band” up in Lafayette on the night of the 30th, and intend to drag everyone we know along with us.

Anyway, we were out and about yesterday, driving a great deal. And I swear to you, I was behind the slowest people on the planet yesterday. People who didn’t know the speed limit. People who were hopelessly lost. People who were unaware that the accelerator is the peddle on the right. And, at the same time, was also interacting with people who thought that 75 MPH was a reasonable speed for a parking lot. Honestly, I know there are lots of great deals out there folks, but death ain’t worth that kind of trouble.

Halloween is the one time of year that everyone feels totally comfortable wandering through stores that sell fishnet stockings and frilly panties. I swear, when the season ends, they’ll take the kids costumes and the animatronic zombies out, wheel back in the dildos and crotchless, edible panties and turn the Halloween stores back into adult bookstores.

M found almost everything she needs for her Madonna-inspired look. Some of it brand new, at stores that sell things to teenagers. Man I love it when the stuff from my generation comes back, but the sheer amount of neon out there right now, well, it’s a little bright for an old guy like me. I’m going back and forth between straight-up metal rock dude and ’80’s vintage vampire (picture Lost Boys). They’re really the same costume with one requiring fake teeth and maybe, if you’re hard core, some contact lenses, while the other demands a guitar and maybe, if you’re hard core, a drug addiction.

I’m trying to remember now, just what it was that made me think of it in the first place, but I spent a chunk of my evening watching, by way of YouTube, the 1977 classic animated film, Wizards.

I was introduce to the movie as a boy, ironically enough, by my now-fundamentalist brother. He had seen it somewhere and procured a copy for to play on the first VCR that we ever owned. He would be terribly embarrassed to be reminded of that, today, I’m sure.

It really isn’t all that great a movie, but I enjoyed it even in this late showing. The things that I definitely remembered from my first time seeing it, all those years ago, were the fairy princess with the just-barely-there outfit, and the two wizards referenced in the title. And the positively twisted wizard duel that serves as the climax of the movie. I think it would make a fantastic property for a remake. Oh, sure, it’s a little ham-fisted with the allegories and nobody in this day and age would be quite so profligate with the nazi imagery in anything short of a period piece, but it would still rock if it could be done with more competent artists and some computers.

Immersed myself in Woodstock today. Watched the two hour long documentary on looking back at Woodstock after 40 years (while tripping on Benadryl), and then listened to classic rock all afternoon.

The really wonderful things that happened there – the Hog Farm feeding everyone, Abbie Hoffman taking charge and making sure that the medical center was running well, the Bad Trip tent where people were taken care of while they were in a bad space and then put in charge of helping others in the same state – make me wish I could have been there. And yet, I’m not entirely sure I would have been, had I even been alive at the time. Had my parents not been 34 and 39 at the time, I could have been conceived there, but not really attended.

I do also wish that we could ever experience something similar today. And yet, it was so spontaneous that if you try (*cough*Woodstock 1999*cough*) today, you’d just get people taking advantage of everyone instead of being cool to one another.

As Wavy Gravy said – “This must be heaven” – and we’ll never see the like on earth again.

I realized, as I went to write this entry, that I will never, ever let any of you see what I have to write, before it’s ready to be read. I will definitely not be posting the snippets of ideas that I have, nor will I be posting even chapters or short stories before they’re utterly and completely perfect.

So, I’m going to call today a wash, but in general will still try to post every day.

I am such a sucker for a story set in a rich world.

Examples for me of such stories include Neuromancer, the seminal cyberpunk novel, The Fifth Element, another near-future world full of dazzling detail, and The Black Company series of novels – fantasy, of a sort, but not epic or heroic for the most part.

The thing I love most about these stories is that the creator drops you right into the deep end, from the word go, and lets you try to figure things out on your own. They’re stories that bombard you with unfamiliar takes on familiar tropes and slowly, over time, instruct you on the necessary bones of the world in which they take place.

And so, when Gabe and Tycho started publishing more of the Automata stories at Penny Arcade, I was in love. I’d already written to them about how much I liked the Automata idea snippet they’d posted a while back, and I realize it’s because I am absolutely dying to know how we get to their world of robots and automata rights struggles in the 1920’s – what fork was taken in what road that deviated us from the world of prohibition to this interesting new situation?

I think that, when I sit down to write some stories, I’m going to try to do the same thing. Set up some premises, start something in the middle, and let it grow in both directions.

After reading a recent post on The Whatever, I realized that there’s nothing standing between me actually writing something that could be published and that actual publication but myself. So I’ve refreshed my blog once more, and look forward to taking time every day to write a little something. I’m torn between the "write for an hour" camp and the "write four pages" camp. I’m not sure I’d even know how to gauge four pages when I’m writing on a blog, but what the heck. So, look for some content here. Look for it to be either snippets of my writing, or writing about what I’ve written but am too embarrassed to post.