Eeeeeeeeeeeevil…

Man, this just says it all…

My Word Account Tally

I just checked and realized that of the 100, 000 words I’m allowed to “spend,” I’ve already used up 21, 000+. Bah, only 79,000 left.

Must.

Be.

Stingier…

Oh, That 80′s Fever…

In the name of the new novel, it was time for me to get in touch with my childhood and make sure I had my facts straight about which music groups were in existence at the time, and whether they wore clothes like this, or that. It’s one of the weirder aspects of writing a story when you find that you want to plunder your childhood realize that while the imagery is there, the proper chronology and historical perspective isn’t. Like at first I wanted to have some kind of reference to The Cure and possibly a mention of Lovesong only to realize that it wouldn’t be written until 1989, and this particular bit of plot takes place in the year 1983, though that means I still get to mention Lovecats or something. It also means Duran Duran is still in full swing, so maybe I can find a way to stick that in there as well.

The internet is truly frightening in moments like this when I realize that in one afternoon I’ve waded hip deep into subjects like the English countryside, ley lines, crop circles and fairy rings (I settled on fairy rings) and I never had to once go to a filing cabinet and consult the Dewey Decimal system. Having this amount of knowledge just a few keystrokes away is something we all take for granted now, but I’m still amazed at how quickly I came to rely on the ‘net once it exploded. It used to be just hanging out on forums and BBSes, but once the “web” aspect really got going and people had a few years to put… well, whatever they wanted on it, the Internet really became the first and fastest way to find out just about anything about anything.

I think anyone that had a childhood in the 70′s is more or less trapped in the same transitional period I am; old enough to remember the analog era when TVs had dials and knowledge was at the library, but still young enough to have had exposure to the new digital information structure in school. It’s a clean line of demarcation between the previous generation and the new ones that will always take unlimited knowledge and instant access for granted. And it’ll probably warp more than a few minds as the years pass. I mean, the way internet access is getting more and more portable, pretty soon you won’t have ANY excuse not to know something, since it’ll be a Google away and you can get at least passing familiarity with just about any subject on Earth.

My mind boggles at the thought of it.

Damn. I’m old.

Retroactive Pride

It’s a teensy bit dated, but nevertheless, I feel compelled to pimp the Fiance with a recent interview with her that appeared here.

You will note that trying to stalk her on the Internet not only yields far more substantial Googles than what you get with me (Then again, anything is more substantial than “I played Forza Motorsport a lot and liked it”), but in multiple languages even. I think the Spanish like her, but I can’t say for sure…

Sometimes Ya Gets Lucky

So not just ten minutes ago, I’m sitting around cranking away at the new novel, and thinking about a script that I have to crank out by Saturday morning when I get a call from one of the editors over at my game magazine gig, “GameAxis.”

The conversation goes something like this:

Him: Hey, you heard Neil Gaiman is coming to town?

Me: Oh, is he? Yeah, I think I might have been vaguely informed of that, but I don’t really pay attention to these things…

Him: Oh, not a big fan, huh?

Me: I’m aware of his work.

Him: Too bad. We need to send someone down to his press conference and since you’re our designated Uber Geek, I thought you might be knowledgeable enough to be our point man, but if you don’t know him that well, the-

Me: ME! MEMEMEME! OOOH! OOOOHMEMEME! NEIL! NEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I AM NOT WORTHY TO CLEAN THE SCUM OFF HIS SHOES BUT I WORSHIP AT THE HOUSE OF NEIL NONETHELESS!!!

Him: So… you wanna’ cover it?

Me: [ After five seconds of realizing "MORE NEIL-O!"] YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!

Him: Great! I’ll make the call, it’s 10 o’ clock, July 4th at the British Council. Most of the guys there will only know he’s a famous writer, so you gotta’ ask the geek questions. That okay?

Me: …

Him: Hello? You there?

Me:…

Him: Hallo?

Me: NEEEEEEEEEEEEIL-OOOOOOOOO!!!! NEIL-ONEIL-ONEIL-O OHMYGOD, I GET TO TALK TO N-N-N-N-NEIL…OOOOOOO!!!

Him: I’m guessing that’s a “I’m looking forward to this…”

Wow, what’ll I wear? Well, something black of course, because Neil likes black, and I’d better borrow the fiance’s i-pod, ’cause Neil-O likes those, ooh, ooh, and maybe I’ll wear my black Sandman T-shirt! Yeah, that’s it, that’s not fanboy-ish at all, and find my sunglasses, maybe dig out a leather jacket, pick up a British accent, find out what hotel he stays in, kidnap the designated housekeeper for his floor and steal his towels and soap…

Real Commercials For Real People

In a more sensible world, I think television, and commercials in particular, would finally come to understand that while making people feel bad and insecure about themselves may generate a market of fear, appealing to that sense of alienation and bringing people together to pick on the people that have marginalized might actually get them more sales, since it’s coming from the “We actually understand you” angle.

So the commercials that I’d want to see start off like “typical” commercials in that you see the usual assortment of Beautiful People in Beautiful Settings doing Beautiful Things that the vast majority of people who watch television will only ever see on television.

One commercial might start with a housewarming of a beautiful woman and her friends:

Beautiful Friends: What a fabulous apartment!

Beautiful Woman: Thank you, I love it’s, gorgeous and so not like a split level home that I used to live in as a child but would never admit to now because middle class living is so embarrassing!

Beautiful Friends: (Laughter) How much did it cost?

Beautiful Woman: I don’t know! I’m the mistress of a high ranking executive, he paid for everything! I don’t lift a finger except to have sex with him and rag on his frigid wife!

(Everyone laughs at her cleverness)

Or, in an Expensive Restaurant where the appetizers cost more than the average weekly salary:

Beautiful Man: I love coming to this restaurant!

Beautiful Woman: I thought you said this was your first time?

Beautiful Man: It is, but you have to say you come here regularly or else you’ll look like you’re out of touch and anyone worthwhile will shun you!

Beautiful Woman: Oh! I love coming to this restaurant too!

(They both laugh at their belonging-ness)

Beautiful Man: What do you think of the food?

Beautiful Woman: It’s terrible, and the servings are too small, but I love it! It’s going to be really fun throwing it up again in fifteen minutes to make sure I stay 18% underweight!

Beautiful Man: Well, I hope you use some mouthwash afterwards, or I won’t enjoy sleeping you and then getting a fake phone call to leave you after it’s done, brag about you to friends and then sleep with another desperate but beautiful twig girl with no sense of self-esteem in the same evening!

(They both laugh at their cleverness)

At this point, The Real People invade.

In the Bauhaus apartment portly and stick thin nerds and geeks break in with unhealthy snack foods, posters of Kurt Cobain and video game consoles. Fat girls with chocolate tackle the beautiful women and start stuffing M & Ms in their mouth while Clive Barker and Frank Miller enthusiasts raid the bookshelves taking out copies of Cosmo and The Fountainhead and replacing them with The Dark Knight Returns and The Great And Secret Show.

Meanwhile, in the expensive restaurant:

Jane’s Addiction (Been Caught Stealing, naturally…) thunders through the speakers as a horde normal to slightly overweight normal people storm in with a barbecue range, tossing hot dogs everywhere, breaking out salsa and nachos and starting up drinking games where they have to take a shot every time they see fake breasts. Two of the contestants pass out within the first three minutes. A few of the kinder liberators pass some booze and snacks to the waiters and welcome them back to the real world while the Beautiful People scream about how much their shoes cost and try to keep them from harm’s way.

At this point, a voice over kicks in that points out, “Why let 1% of the people tell the other 99% they suck? Remember, there are more of us then there are of them.”

Commercial ends with two geeks screaming at each other “SEGA!” and “CHALLENGE EVERYTHING!”

ACK.

So I wrote back to my agent and told him “By the way, I’m working on a new book,” and told him about the basic story with the caveat “And this time I’m going to try to make it short.”

I figured that an acceptable “short” would be 450+ pages since in my past two novels, I have missed that mark by miles and miles. I blame this entirely on the characters who never do what I tell them and always go off having adventures of their own which I try to keep up with (Something that, unsurprisingly, is happening with Novel #3 which has the Oh-So-Sucky title Bloodwood at the moment). My agent, who has been tirelessly representing me the last few years (My theory is his professional pride is wounded that it’s taking so long to get these things sold and so for him it’s turned into something of a personal crusade) has written back telling me that even that’s a bit optimistic and what would probably be a much “healthier” size is 400 or less. Or, 100, 000 words.

This nearly put me into cardiac arrest.

Some of my short stories have run 30,000+ words.

A quick opening of the file at the current novel (Now sitting at Chapter 4 and pushing 60 pages) shows it to weigh in at just a few words shy of 18,000.

Now the math and mortal terror come in…

So if we do some quick arithmatic and say that 100, 000 – 18, 000 = 82, 000…

This means I should run around the room right now screaming with the kind of agony comparative to having one’s hair set on fire while the Barry Manilow CD in the background skips repeatedly.

EIGHTY TWO THOUSAND FREAKIN’ WORDS LEFT?!?! THAT’S IT?!?!

In my head, someone Scottish is already screaming, “I’m givin’ it all she’s got, but it’s noo good, Captain! Th’ engines… they canna’ take th’ strain!”

It’s an incredibly intimidating number to me at the moment because it’s one of those things that I always felt, for me, anyway, that it simply could NOT be done. I’m probably going to have to meditate on this (Translation: Panic, weep and hug a doll like a little girl) and seriously contemplate pushing the book to two parts, or else drastically revise just how many plot points I was meaning to hit (Or more accurately, how many plot points the characters were starting to pursue once they’d found them).

I suppose now I could also start dragging in the ruthless editor skills I picked up writing scripts for television where you were fixed to exactly a one hour or half hour episode and could NOT under any circumstances, exceed that. You MADE it fit, and there simply was no alternative, except dismissal.

But holy crap, that’s not a lot of room to manuever…

I at this rate, I’ll have the novel finished in no freakin’ time at all and then spend months cutting it down…

Bleah. The cold fear of thinking I had a thousand feet before I hit the cliff and now see the precipice only a hundred feet away just hit me.

Megasushi

This game is making my forehead bleed.

The full name is Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, and it’s probably one of the more difficult RPGs I’ve come across in the last five years. The name, which is difficult enough to keep in my head, has more or less become reduced to “Megasushi” thanks to the fiance.

It starts at a place that most RPGs never want to go; with the complete and total destruction of the world. In its place, a small inverted (As in the liveable surface is on the INSIDE of the sphere) “proto-world” made up of fragments of Tokyo has arisen, populated by demons and the lost souls of those who died in the apocalypse. This world, known as “The Conception” is the place where those with ambitions to remake the world, ally themselves with demons and collect enough of a substance (which comes from human souls) called “Magatsuhi” to summon up a god. Whoever gets sufficient quantities of Magatsuhi first to appease the god can then have their particular ideology granted to them by that god, and thus the world will be remade in their vision.

So essentially, the story is “The world is over and now you, yes YOU, will determine whether the next world will be better, worse, or similar to the one that came before it.”

Pretty heady stuff for an RPG, but I’m grokking it in a big way. When I’m not tearing my fingernails out over how damn hard this game can be. The one thing I really like so far is that all the monsters/demons you come across have all been researched and are all based on folklore/myth from around the world. So far I’ve encountered–in no particular order–the four horsemen, the three sisters of Fate, members of the fairy entourage from Queen Mab to Oberon, and… wait for it… GHOSTRIDER! Whoo!

The other neat part is that this story doesn’t start off with a brave warrior, his friends and the usual foray into magical lands. The hero (Named by you) is a seemingly ordinary Japanese student in modern day Tokyo with a couple of friends, neither of whom end up in your party blessed with magical powers. Instead, they become almost rivals since their world views are pretty far apart and they’d kind of like you to side with them (Which of course is entirely up to you). No, the members of your party are the demons themselves that you encounter. I’ve already got Ghostrider and Queen Mab in my party, and there are many other deities and supernatural creatures (If you’re thinking “Gee, this is just like some kind of Jungian Pokemon! Gotta’ Catch All The Archetypes!” you wouldn’t be that far off) available for recruitment, and recruitment runs the gamut from outright bribing them with gifts to answering ethical questions to determine whether you and the demon share the same ideology.

All this wild n’ whacky gameplay however, his complemented by some very challenging fighting and leveling. The bosses in the game are hard. Some of the puzzles and mini-games are excruciatingly hard, and it’s advisable to spend some time “grinding” (ie, the gamer tendency to find a nice place with good experience point creatures and just mindlessly bash them to level up) and recruiting higher powered demons as you progress if you want even a shred of hope to stay competitive. Usually when I play RPGs these days, it’s smooth sailing except for possibly one or two bosses along the way. This game, almost every boss has given me some kind of trouble, since the combat system, for all its simplicity, will punish you pretty badly for not giving your next move some thought. When you exploit a demon’s weakness (Say it’s a fire based demon and you hit it with an ice-spell) the game rewards you by giving you an extra turn or two by taking it away from the victim. Unfortunately the same holds true for you, and so if you’ve got a demon weak to electricity and the enemy zaps ‘em with lightning, that next turn you were going to use to heal your party is suddenly gone and the demon lets loose with some apocalyptic spell that finishes you off.

This is the first time in a loooooong time, that an RPG is really making me earn every victory. I’m not used to it, but I’m digging it.

Random Epiphany

I only just realized that the 19th century’s “Gay 90′s” had a resurgence in the 20th, only not the way our predecessors might have imagined…

When Did I Become An Outsider In My Own Kingdom!?!

I ask this question, because it’s a thought that’s been burbling in my head ever since I set foot in the comic book store to purchase tickets for the impending arrival of Neil-O (All hail, our wise and learn-ed master, give us this day our daily tale, and deliver us from boredom…) and was once again struck by how I so-did-not-fit-in.

This is probably another one of those old-man “Why when I was your age…” diatribes, but heck, I’m over 30, I think I’m entitled somewhat…

Why, when I was your age, comic book stores were an altogether different beast than what I encounter in Singapore, circa 2005. As a wee lad thirsting for adventure, excitement and other things that backwards speaking frog Jedi masters crave not, my earliest experiences with a full-on Comic Book Store (Not to be confused with a drug store or convenience store, where I initially picked up my monthlies) was the Nerd Capital of the city, Warp One comic books.

Okay, not strictly true, first it was Starbase 12, then eventually that closed down for reasons I can no longer recall, or maybe it just morphed into Warp One.

This store, like so many run by passion, nerdiness and a distinct lack of style, was jam packed with books, comics, toys and a plethora of other geekitude all piled willy nilly on the shelves. Stepping into Warp One was like stepping into the nightmarish environment of a kid’s bedroom if said kid could afford anything he wanted but STILL refused to clean up. The walls were lined with posters, the shelves racked with comics, the floor an embarrassing carpet style that has been perenially burned into the collective memory of any child of the suburban 70′s-80′s as “Rumpus Room” and the clientele? My God, do you even need to ask? It fell into two extremes, the obessive, morose thin, dressed all in black prententious pseudo-intellectuals that lacked the predatory instincts to fully exploit their appeal with Goth chicks, and the amiable fat kids who developed a cheerful, obsessive personality as a defense mechanism against a society that tolerated them, but only just.

Into this Oasis of geekdom, the misfists of highschool and university would pour, entertaining endless debates about who would in win a fight of Federation ships versus an Imperial/Rebel Fleet, what would happen if Superman ever had sex with Lois Lane, and why the hell the Smurfs weren’t used by modern communist countries as the par exemplar that their collective efforts should aspire to.

It was, in short, an embarrasing collection of pop culture regalia inhabited by equally embarrassing social outcasts who came here to find solace and commonality that the Real World refused to offer.

Now here I am, in a Singapore comic book store, and despite the fact that this should be a harbor of safety in a cold and unforgiving sea, I feel even more isolated and out of place, because I Don’t Rate This Joint.

It’s a strange thing, to walk into a comic store and find young urban professionals, in suits and other uniforms of office, perusing the goods, while you walk in dressed like a typical geek in some kind of t-shirt and comfy pants, sans proper footwear and realize that the place has been taken over by the yuppies. It’s even more disturbing when you talk to the cashier, who is not some very fat, or very thin male with glasses and an almost hostile pride in their knowledge of comic minutae, but is instead a small, cute as a button Chinese girl that looks like she’d be just as much at home hosting a Cotillion, and ask her about a comic–or in this case, tickets to see Neil-O–and have that person blink in total and complete incomprehension before saying “Um… Let me call for that.”

But most disheartening of all, the true sign that you are in a foreign land, is the fact that the comic book store feels like a Real Goddamn Store. With classy shelves, display cases, things meticulously arranged, not a piece of used furniture anywhere, no table with nerds screaming at each other over a brilliant tactical move in the modeled landscape that is their Warhammer playing field, and the entire ambience of the place dripping with cultured, expensive, stylish, hip urban taste.

My basic question being, “When the hell did comics get taken out of the hands of people that know and love them and handed over lock and key to The Enemy? These are the people that scorned us and hated us and now they’re driving us out of our refuge too?!?”

Or perhaps it’s just old nerd elitism unable to accept the idea that what made us once outcasts has finally been accepted by society and we’re not that uncool anymore…

My One (And Hopefully Only) Comment About Paris Hilton

As the “old” internet adage wisely goes, “Don’t feed the trolls.” I’m not going to do much to contribute to the Paris bandwagon as it already has tons of momentum going for it, ad nauseum, but I will say that not too long ago, I finally got around to watching the commercial Paris did for some hamburger franchise who’s name totally escapes me.

The commercial involves Paris–first in a fur coat and bikini, then only the bikini–washing a car with lurid close ups, slick lighting and a cover of a classic song “I Love Paris” (Done by the likes of Cole, Fitzgerald and Sinatra) with a ripping guitar accompaniment. Mostly it shows off the benefits of wealth on anatomy and occasionally shows Paris biting into said Anonymous Burger.

The first thing that struck me when I saw this was “My God, Verhoeven and Miller were right.”

This commercial plays exactly like the kind of joke commercial that would have appeared in the first two Robocop movies, except that, horrifyingly enough, it’s genuine. I find it profoundly disturbing to think that something that was thought of as ludicrous excess worthy of satire in the 80′s has now become actual marketing staple in the “zeroes” (Or “00′s” for you consistency nuts out there). What does it say about civilization when something that was initially a bad joke has become standard advertising?

So This Is Being Old

Well, okay, maybe not “old” old since many people would scream at me for trying to stretch that point, but oldER.

It’s a trip and a half to actually stop on quieter moments some days and look back at what a childhood and teenage life have wrought, then wonder if it was all worth it. In my case, that answer is an unequivocal yes. Money/employment woes at the moment and not yet having a book published put aside, everything else is pretty much what I had hoped/dreamed for, or in some cases (like my fiance) grossly exceeded.

But it’s a humbling experience to take stock. I still remember being in university and seeing all my friends (Who I now never see, thanks to me being on the other side of the hemisphere) and hearing the banter, arguing, debating, wry commentary and slick ass jokes flying fast and furious in my home away from home, the fabled HUB Mall Arts Lounge, congretation point of geniuses, lunatics and other assorted People Of Character. One thing that struck me immediately was the vast, almost nauseating wealth of potential that I saw in these people. Whether it was kind, quiet guy with a heart of gold and a gift for mathematics I could never possibly understand, or a student of history so frighteningly and hilariously intelligent he was like a non-stop satire, only Chinese and prone viciously articulate social observation, or a belligerent bastard who was entirely too smart for his own good but seemed to deliberately take an opposing viewpoint just to start something, you could see in each one of these (And many other people) that there were places they could go.

Whether they should or did is another thing. But for the most part, I think it worked out amazingly well. Leave a reasonably talented and intelligent human being to their own devices, and it follows that–barring unforeseen catastrophe–they will eventually start realizing their gifts. It’s scary to think that the people who used to make me cross my eyes and think “Damn, that’s twisted…” are now the same people who are having some measure of influence on the world as the slow transition of generations begins. It’s gratifying, but at the same time frightening to think that these people who you personally know, are the ones helping to move the world along now, rather than faceless names in the lofty heavens above in charge of Politics, Art, Science, etc…

This is probably just me revealing more emotional immaturity, but it is only recently, watching these people I grew up take these kinds of positions, that I am finally able to view the mechanisms of society as human beings rather than Agency From Beyond. I mean, as a teenager, only discovering the world and attempting to connect with it, it’s one thing to read the papers and see reviews or political policy that’s enacted by “grown ups” you’ve never met, are likely never to meet, and, by virtue of the fact that they are adult, are “Other” to you and occupy some collective organism that is simply In Charge and steering the direction of culture and country. It’s quite another thing to see a name on the internet, or see a name on a credit in a television and show and think “My God, I know that person,” and suddenly the All-Seeing, All-Knowing organism is actually someone you once spent a birthday with taking turns throwing up into the toilet bowl.

I’m proud of my friends and the things they’ve done. I always had the suspicion that things would go this way, but it’s still vaguely frightening to see it come to life. Myself, I just wanna’ tell stories. It’s a simple wish, but it’s mine and I get one step closer every day to being able to do it for a living, but in the meantime, I still get to do it. I just hope sometimes that one day my friends will see in me the Promise Fulfilled that I’m seeing in them.