MOVING DAY!!!

I'm moving my blog to Wordpress. I know, it's going to be hard to remember another URL, but look on the bright side. You're the only one who reads this anyway.

http://www.tervelandrews.wordpress.com

...We had fun, right?

WRITING EXERCISE

Everything about me felt tired. I was sure that people could tell when they made a point of looking away from me. I got dragged into a methadone clinic and twice into churches. My car was full of unread Watchtowers and Narcotics Anonymous fliers. There was room for improvement. But I couldn't help feel that everyone I met was overreacting. I'd been dumped.

ON YOUTUBE

When you want to hear, or rip, a song that you just can't see yourself running into anywhere else without paying for it, Youtube has for the past 5 or more years (that's 150 years in internet time) been the go-to guy. But the legal bandwagon started by Viacom has all the higher quality material being taken out behind the shed and shot, leaving nothing but the shitty teenage covers and camera phone live recordings. Those don't make good mp3's (which is obviously the point). So you find yourself searching for your dream track, going several pages in and coming out sticky, but unsatisfied. And then, off to the right side, in related videos, you see it. You see that thing you were looking for, that one song that makes all this work worthwhile. It's attached to a Naruto or Bleach or Inu-Yasha video, but you don't care because the song is sure to be intact and album quality. As you click the link and it starts to load, an angelic chorus rings out, but you can't hear it because you're going to hell for theft and piracy. But for the next 4 minutes...it's worth it.

Always go for the AMV (anime music video).

I'M GOING TO MISS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Anyone with any sense will, also.

"These things, they will not hold water. They are like a boat, fired at from a tower. And we are like the crew that by the grace of god alone have escaped once again with only flesh wounds. But now we have to face the sea. I will not say "brave" it, because there's nothing brave about self-preservation. We will live if we want to badly enough. If only to see the edge of the earth as we fall off into that mythology." ~Tervel Andrews

DMZ VOLUME 7



I just finished Volume 6 of Brian Wood's DMZ. And like any good junkie, I'm already looking for my next fix. Brian Wood owns me. He's even made me like vikings with his Northlanders Series (Sorry, Dandelion).

Volume 7 of DMZ, titled War Powers, won't be released until September 8, 2009. It looks like I'll have some time to do some reading (I need to catch up on Northlanders) or better yet, some writing.

*Frustrated Sigh* September.

ITS COMING!



Where the Wild Things Are is being made into a movie. When it comes to the upcoming live-action adaption of the best book of my childhood (tied with Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day) I'm overcome with a mixture of nostalgia and crippling terror over how easily "they" (whomever "they" consists of) could fuck this up. I have fond memories of this book, Flight of the Navigator, and Nick Jr.

Nick Jr. has been overshadowed by Noggin (I won't even START in on that one).

And any Flight of the Navigator remake would be a hate crime.

All my hopes (not very much, being that I'm a generational cynic) lie with the quality of this movie.

God I wish I had a purple crayon right now. (Get the reference?)

POPGUN







I first found out about the Popgun compilations when a friend during a daytrip to Barnes & Noble (yeah, I take those). A friend of mine found the last copy in the store, which I almost stabbed him over. To this day, I haven't read the first two (the third is being released March 29, 2009), but I've had the misfortune of getting tastes of volume 1 on the internet. I don't WANT to torrent it, that's stealing. But I'm slightly amoral, so...no I can't do that.

Anyway, Popgun is a series of American indie (technically) comic compilations featuring various authors and artists in the comics industry.

It seems worth reading. I think I will.

APPLE











Apple has nothing to do with Orange. The titled-by-fruit theme is just coincidental. With that in mind, Apple (and its sequel) is a Korean compilation of short manga (or the Korean equiv) stories by various artists/writers. I'm a fan of compilations like this because they showcase a lot talent that wouldn't be seen otherwise. And when dealing with regional talent, a compilation that will travel the world is a better medium.

Cool stuff. Check it out.

ORANGE









I picked up a copy of this graphic novel, Orange, a few weeks ago and forgot to post about it. This is me making amends. Orange, by "international manga superstar" Benjamin, is the story of a girl who goes up onto a roof to kill herself for various reasons and ends up meeting a guy. That's all I'm going to say. You should just read it and soak in the beautiful artwork and story.

ORANGE on Amazon

WALLIES CHALK BOARD APPLIQUE SET



Found these on Amazon. They turn your wall into chalk board for making notes, keeping a schedule, etc. It's a pretty good idea aside from the reason people started using dry erase instead of chalk: chalk is just fucking messy. That flaw aside, I have been looking for something like this. I think I'd be happy in my room, insanely scrawling notes and ideas for whatever I'm working on onto the chalky sections of my walls, scratching my face and wiping my brow, then forgetting to check a mirror before running out to get some food and wondering why everyone's looking at me like I'm crazy. I could imagine they sense my genius and it repels them, a subconscious act of self preservation.

No, but I could get a lot of work done this way. Plus, I was already planning on writing notes on my wall and painting over them once I didn't need them anymore. This is still messy, but less so. Maybe I'll pick some up.

You should, too. Yeah, you. (Aqui)

This helps. Crayola Non-toxic Dust-free Chalk (Aqui)

BEST COMMENTARY I'VE EVER GOTTEN ABOUT MY WRITING

A friend of mine said, about one of my writing exercises:

"It's just, giving the Satanists rabies was a little...precious."

Love that. It does sum it up nicely.

"DECADES AFTER PEOPLE STOPPED WONDERING ABOUT THEIR ONE HIT

the rapper would go on to be one of the most famous actors in Hollywood, while the DJ would end up spending the next twenty years touring, bitterly showing up to small club gigs and turning out an ensemble cast of illegitimate children." ~Tervel

CROOKED LITTLE VEIN (AGAIN)



Warren Ellis released a limited edition of his cult favorite prose novel, Crooked Little Vein. As of now, the only sure way to get a copy is to pry it from someone's cold, dead fingers.

I'll go get my crowbar.

WRITING EXERCISE: EXPLODED MOMENT

I always smell my drinks at parties. This was something I'd learned through repeat near-misses over the years. With this in mind, I went out to the freezing garage and took from the bag of ice, filling my cup so I could end the night of substance abuse with a beer pong cup full of Sprite. Too selfish to care about the noise I made when people were sleeping all around the house, I'd just spent the last hour or more watching Youtube videos of spoken-word poets. Now it was too quiet, not easy to adjust to hardcore silence.

I set up in what was still the guest room the last time I was here, where a girl was sleeping deeply as possible without a breathing tube being necessary and plugged in my laptop, settling down on the clean carpet. The sleeping girl's bed turned out to be a massage table, skewed diagonal, hipster-intentional style. It was one of only three pieces of furniture in the room.

Keeping quiet while typing near a sleeping person is always a challenge, so it helps if you just don't care if they wake up. I didn't. I couldn't think of anything silent to do online while high, and I didn't have my notes with me, so I browsed My Documents and chose a rough, "stream of consciousness" draft I'd thrown together the night before about a dream I never had, about a girl I'd never meet:

With no expectations, just a sense of how appropriate it was for the dead to speak on the dead, I found myself running unfamiliar streets, running through doorways that led to places miles away, and being chased by my dead grandfather, head of a lion on his shoulders like it used to be when I had this recurring nightmare as a child. The difference was that he'd never been a prophet before, trying to force me to accept his foresight as universal law. Fuck that. That's what physics is for. Yet, out of deference to his memory and the clips of insight you always carry in dreams, I sat down "Indian style" on the floor. It was dirty, or maybe just dirt.

HIPSTERS

There are tribes made up of strings of genres, separated by commas, and willing to fight tooth and nailgun for their beliefs.

With true love based on trust funds, armies of exclusionist revolutionaries launch molotov cocktails made of PBR cans, hoping to keep the mainstream at bay.

All this war is chronicled on the blogs. See for yourself.

WRITING EXERCISE (CONT'D)

A chinese restaurant owner puts the 23rd consecutive angry call on hold and goes to check, once again, if there are bugs in his kitchen. There aren't. He always gets an A on his health inspections, and his bleach, so concentrated that it's illegal outside the virology industry, is only sold on the black market. So what the fuck are people talking about when they say they found termites in their fortune cookies, causing words to be eaten away, changing the messages from fortunes to threats? At this point he would be willing to personally deliver to anyone calling him to place an order, even to the black neighborhoods.

This is not related to the other events. This is just shitty luck. But across town,...zombies.

WRITING EXERCISE

Strings of beads break apart and fall down stone steps in Japan, while a vision quest leads a teenager to certain death in California, while a cross is inverted to signal the start of mass in New England, while an a life-long and career psychic in Reykjavik lights a candle and covers it with a lacquered skull, and asks it about what it means that she’s stopped dreaming. Even on the dangerous amounts of LSD she’s downed with her ice water, all she can hear is nothing. And this is the first time she’s feared the future.

A vision quest leads a teenager to certain death in California, while a cross is inverted to signal the start of mass in New England, while a candle flickers dully through the eyes of a skull in Iceland, while a family of Shinto shrine keepers ascend to the highest mountainside in their region of Japan to divine the annual lunar forecasting, using the beads, strung on the hair of a goddess, and passed down through countless generations. As the eldest male rubs the beads in his hand, this god-hair twine snaps with a chalky sound and the beads that make their lives worth living are taken by gravity to the edge of the high stone stairway. And the fall.

A cross is inverted to signal the start of mass in New England, while a candle flickers dully through the eyes of a skull in Iceland, while strings of beads breaks apart and fall down stone steps in Japan, while a young Native American boy with no clue what to do with his life, and dreams that extend beyond the reservation, sets out on a vision quest, hoping to get signs and advice from his gods and ancestors. He does everything right, entering his trance and wandering into the desert, beyond the recent tracks of man, but nothing expected happens. He doesn’t see his future, his gods, his past, or the edge of the cliff he’s walking toward. All he sees is black.

A candle flickers dully through the eyes of a skull in Iceland, while strings of beads break apart and fall down stone steps in Japan, while a vision quest leads a teenager to certain death in California, while a Satanic church prepares to start their Saturday mass, inverting a cross in the function room of the Catholic church they’re renting for the night as a sign of respect for their beliefs. They follow one another in prayer, then take communion of fresh goat blood, not knowing that they’ve all just been infected with rabies. They pop hallucinogenic mushrooms, partly to disrespect the premises, but mostly to prove they’re more fun than the stuck-up Satanists across town. And as they take effect, the congregation doesn’t feel any of the usual sensations associated with mushroom use. All they feel is an overwhelming urge to help people, because something bad is going to happen.

All these things are related, and thus can not be mentioned without one another. Seriously. Try to mention just one event. You can’t. You took a deep breath and it all poured into your head as one. All these things are related, and thus can not be mentioned without one another.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST









Holy shit. I could be upset because now that this movie has been done, and done so well, I will never be able to write my own midnight music odyssey book. But I also just discovered what true love was. Loving a movie was much simpler in the days of VHS, with the VCR's huge tape slot. You can only imagine what it's like to have your dick smashed in a DVD player while you're trying to show your affection to a movie the only way you know how. Firefighters laugh at me. Paramedics laugh at me. Cops ignore my calls. But I just can't help it. I found my movie soulmate.

Check out (by which I mean BUY) Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist in both book and movie form. And buy the goddamn soundtrack.

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/nickandnorah/site/

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist on Amazon

Nick and Norah Soundtrack on Amazon MP3 (because, who buys cd's anymore?)

CHARACTER MONOLOGUE: JIRO NOZUKA (IED TOKYO)

(Translated from Japanese)
"Your happiness is important to you? Your peace and complacency? I don't care. It's over. Until you wake up, you will not have a moment of peace. Not a moment of quiet. Not one single week will go by when something bad does not happen to get people's attention, to alert the world to just how you're all fucking us up. We are a bad batch. You made us this way. And in order for things to change, we have to go. You will not do things the same way with our younger siblings. You will not make them whores of commerce and fads. You will not treat them like shit for not being perfect. Human beings are flawed. Honor means nothing. And even in a country with a low birth rate, there are still millions of us. This is round one. How long it goes on is up to you." ~ Jiro (IED Tokyo)

CHARACTER MONOLOGUE: HANA NOZUKA (IED TOKYO)

"It all starts out on the right track, so to speak. You do all the right things You have all the skill and imagination and passion to keep moving forward. You genuinely care, because even at an age when you really shouldn't have any idea what you want out of life, you find yourself in enough dreams and daydreams to know there's nothing else you'd rather be doing. The fantasy worlds you create seem more real, more reliable than anything in the real world that you always have to crash back to. The world that hurts. After a while you're pushed back into that world so often that you start to see the positive things, or rather, thing. Imagine it as a tether, holding you in place so you don't fall to your death. Or maybe a bungee cord, because no matter how far you go out into the adventure, you always get pulled back into safety. Then one day, for no apparant reason, the tether breaks. And it turns out that instead of being spirited away to the other world, you find yourself stuck in the real world. Not on the shore, but landlocked and cripple, with no forseeable way out. Maybe I should have started the water anaology sooner. No, but the tether breaks and you start seeing all these frayed threads and you observe them and trace them back, because it's not like you have anything else to do, and you realize that there were more tethers, all connected to the same line. And they all broke, too, right. But it's so tough now that you can't even figure out whether they broke on the fantasy side or the real world side. And you see them all unraveling. And you feel it happening to you. And you can't do anything, because you never learned...tether repair, or whatever. You never expected to need it. The tether wasn't supposed to just BREAK like that. *sigh* That's what it was like when my brother died." ~ Hana (IED Tokyo)