Cereal Hoarding: Discuss.

Can you tell I’m writing a book again?

This sort of thing seems to happen when novels are in progress as I feel like I want to keep on writing, yet don’t want to stare at the page and wait for my fingers to transcribe the movie in my head, so I jump over to something else, like e-mail, or the ol’ blog…

The fiance for whatever reason, went to bed at the amazingly late hour of 7-8 pm, and so I’ve been tinkering away, doing research, looking for new words to define a group (And finally settling on the French “Cortege” which also has associations with a funeral procession. Trust me, it’ll all make sense…) and of course, adding more dialogue n’ such to the novel (Now entertaining a debate to give in and just make it a two parter, so I can tell a 600 page story instead of worry about cramming it into 300-450 pages), but before that, we went shopping!

For breakfast cereal.

The brand in question is Post’s Selects: Great Grains Whole Grain Cereal, which contains raisins, dates & pecans and is supposedly “Inspired by the taste of home-baked raisin nut bread.” I know the minutae of the box copy because it is sitting beside me for reference.

Anyway’s, the fiance has taken a new–and in my opinion–wholly obessive attitude towards this cereal as it is one of the few breakfast cereals she enjoys and at some point a few months ago, for reasons still unknown, it was taken off the shelves, with the only explanation being some kind of product recall. Lo and behold, it eventually returned, but now is completely sealed in plastic, making me suspect that perhaps another round of poisonings occurred somewhere and this is the cereal equivalent of “If you find the seal broken, please bring it to the attention of your retailer.”

However its return, while wildly welcomed by her, was by no means a regular occurrence and in the ensuing time, more “droughts” of this cereal have occurred. This has kicked in the stockpiling/hoarding instinct in her somethin’ powerful and even though she had three boxes of the stuff lying around, she was unwilling to open them, and today, upon finding a grocery store that had more stock, picked up another four boxes and briefly, seriously contemplated simply cleaning out their remaining stock and asking the manager if they had anymore in the back.

Rationality prevailed (Well, not really, it was more like the promise of looking in other stores and pointing out that she’d be denying other Post Select Grains fans their fair share) and decided to leave it at that, but now every time I open the kitchen cupboard, I now find SEVEN FUCKING BOXES OF THE SAME DAMN CEREAL STARING ME IN THE FACE.

I’m thinking that Post needs to do a new advertising campaign borne of the desperation these “cereal embargoes” have created in their customer base. Something along the lines of people mumbling in the streets and weeping in pitiful heaps in dingy corners of alleys until a Post truck shows up the people hurriedly collect it and then it gets trafficked on the streets while the customers look around with darting eyes before saying “Come on, man, you promised! I need it…”

Once they get their cereal, they retreat to their squalid one room apartments and eat it while Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays in the background and they sit at their kitchen table drooling and slackjacwed while the cereal high takes them. Commercial fades to black with “Great Grains: You don’t want it, you need it.”

Y’know ten years ago, if someone had told me, “One day you’re going to get engaged to cereal junkie” I would have said “Yeah, right…”

Good thing I didn’t make any promises to eat, crow or any other grossly inappropriate objects.

What I’d Like To See In A Comedy Sketch

Camera starts on some woman that seems to be manning a booth, going through some forms, minding her own business, just doing her job.

A man enters the frame looking completely forlorn.

Cut to reverse angle, you can see just how broken and pathetic he looks staring with wild hope at the woman in the booth.

Reverse angle again, she’s still preoccupied with her forms, but finally notices him and looks wary.

“Yes?” She asks.

Reverse angle. “I can’t take it anymore,” he says. “I admit it. I stole all that money from the company. And I lied when I told my wife I’d never strayed. And when my kid was four years old and bent down to pick up a toy, I kicked him and laughed then blamed it on the dog. And the ring with the emerald on it when Grandma died that everyone assumed some janitor at the funeral home had stolen? It was me. And I was the one that farted in the movie theater and said my kid did it. I’m sorrrrrrrrrrry!!!!!”

Reverse angle. The woman blinks in total confusion. “Why are you telling me this?!? What do you want me to do about it?!?”

On the man, close up. His lips tremble as his eyes widen and he bursts into tears.

Cut to long shot showing the woman is manning a booth with a big sign that says in small letters “Coupon” and in massive letters “Redemption.”

Meanwhile the man throws himself at her desk, weeping and pounding his fist on it.

Today’s Movie Of Peachy-Keenness

Donnie Darko.

I finally got around to watching it a little while, the Director’s cut DVD, not the original, and I was completely taken in. Brilliant movie. And Donnie’s confrontation with Patrick Swayze’s self-help guru character was legendary. It’s one of those moments I think many of use wish we could have taken in our lives with “Look through the mirror and love yourself” being deflected by “If you don’t want to get beat up, take some defense classes and fight back! Jesus…”

That scene alone made me love the movie completely, but it also feel handedly into my “Damn, I wish I’d written that…” category.

You Can’t Handle The Fame

I bought the tickets (At $8 a pop, which weren’t even tickets but just a receipt with the a “ticket purchase” printed on it) from a fancy-schmancy comic book shop yesterday for the screening of a trailer/selected scenes preview of Mirrormask in preparation for the false idolatry that marks the coming of Neil Gaiman to South East Asia.

From what I gather, there will be a huge buzz of Neil disciples–myself included–who all want to bask in his greatness and hope against hope that his eyes will happen to pass in our direction, or that he might even answer a question, thus leaving us in a state of orgiastic bliss from which we may potentially never recover from. My fiance has been rolling her eyes with each new daily pronouncement from me that “Neil-O is soooooooooo coooooool…” and looks like she’s going to drop a phone book on me when I discuss my strategies for attempting to hang out with Neil-O, all of which are very worthy of inclusion as lyricas in Sting’s famous Every Breath You Take song. At one point she flatly asked “When your books finally come out, how would you react if someone did this stuff to you?”

The normal, knee-jerk, rational reaction was to reply, “Get freaked out, ’cause the guy’s a psycho bo-… Oh.”

Followed by a few seconds of hasty thinking and the reply, “But this is DIFFERENT.”

“How?”

“Neil-O is famous and talented, it’s okay to worship him. I’m just me, it would be stupid for anyone to do that with me.”

The inevitable reply being “And you don’t think Neil feels the same way?”

The initial line of reasoning that popped into my head was “No, of course not, ’cause he’s Neil. I’m me, it’s different,” but that’s essentially a pointless and circular argument. But it led me to realize that one of the more unnatural human social phenomena that separates us from animals is fame (When was the last time you saw a bunch of pandas standing around in awe of the male panda that was able to successfully mate?) and the very bizarreness of fame is that, by and large, most human beings are not psychologically prepared to handle it, and it tends to damage them.

I’m thinking in particular of the apparent vast difference in the way Neil-O handles his fame and the local stars and celebrities handles theirs.

On the one hand, you have Neil-O, who by all accounts started as a young, hopeful British Geek that just wanted to be a writer and eventually broke into comics, never thinking for one second that this road would make him one of the most celebrated fiction authors of the decade with a level of fame that is global and an audience that is intensely loyal to him and his body of work.

On the other, you have local models, actors/actresses and MTV VJs who achieve a level of recognizability within a small, trend concscious segment of the population, who enjoy a few years of being a Name & Face before the built in shelf-life–and ruthless evolution to the Next Big Thing–finally tosses them aside.

Now here’s where the comparison gets darn odd…

Neil-O is now–particularly in literary and geek/comic circles–a global phenomenon. The fact that he writes novels pretty much guarantees his immortality as there will always be libraries with his name and work contained there-in. This is fame on a legendary level, and yet he comes off as being a very grounded sort of guy that finds all the recognition and adoration to be “nice” but amusing, and seems generally more interested in doing “really neat things” rather than focusing on the celebrity aspects of his fame. The man is still a friendly, affable geek. It’s just that lots n’ lots n’ lots of people know about it, love it and think he’s a genius even if he doesn’t.

The local Glitterati on the other hand, have been known to throw hissyfits worthy of a Hollywood A-List actor with whining, petulance, and, when they don’t get their way, the infamous rejoinder, “Do you know who I am?!?” as their final seal on the argument.

Why such massively divergent forms of behavior? Is it because Neil is a writer and writers are just generally more reasonable people while people who appear in front of cameras have damaged egos looking for revenge? Is it because Neil’s fame doesn’t rest with his looks but rather his brain and so he has nothing to prove while the local thespians/VJs/Models know their life-span is measured by the pimples on their faces and are thus more anxiety prone? Is it because the more fame you have, the more you get innured to it and so Neil is simply bored with fame while the locals still find it a shiny new toy to revel in?

Or is it simply because by and large, fame is a psychological condition most human beings simply cannot deal with reasonably and Neil falls into the “There are exceptions of course” category?

If and when my books finally come out, my only real ambition is “Please let me make a living out of this.” As long as there’s enough from novel writing to survive on that I don’t have to have a full time job while being a published novelist, I will be happy. Secondary goals are things that would be considered the usual, like walking into a bookstore one day and being able to see my name on the bookshelf is a deeply gratifying, old childhood dream. And of course doing a tour, doing a book signing and talk… That would be a neat experience, just to see what it’s like to sit on the other end of the table. I’d give a crap talk, and my handwriting is illegible, but oh well…

But the fame is not something I’m particularly interested in, because I like walking down the street being able to do my own thing, I like being able to do all the things other people do without attracting more than normal attention, and I’m anti-social anyway, so I like not attending parties, staying home, writing, watching DVDs, playing games, hanging out with my fiance and playing with the cats. And as long as I’m able to do all these things, AND write novels, I really wouldn’t want my life to change very drastically from that. My goal in life is simple. I just want to do fun, interesting things with fun interesting people, my definition of fun being quiet, geeky, writerly, conversational, movie-ish, gamer things. Being a Name and a Face is entirely too much of a drag for the simple reason that maintaining it means always being out in public circulating, and frankly, I’d rather just stay home.

So of course for me, knowing how unextraorindary I am, and how my life is in fact, downright, deliciously boring and uninteresting, I would be just a teensy bit aghast if the books did well (Which would be cool) and people suddenly thought I was the Cat’s Pajamas (Which is not cool and is in fact bizarre beyond the point of articulation). Why anyone would look at me and think “He’s sooooo coooool” would be beyond me, since I didn’t do anything more exotic than sit in front of this computer and think “Hm, that would make an interesting story,” and then try and finish it.

Of course, the rational part of my brain remembers what my fiance said and whispers “And don’tcha’ suppose Neil-O has the same attitude?” While the worshipper in me thinks “NO! Absolutely not! He’s Neil-O! He’s better than us! He’s superior to human beings! We must lie prostrate and worship the mighty Neil-O! Neil is beyond me because he is famous and I am not!”

Man, being a fan boy and a rational human being at the same time is hard…

Whoohoo For Rag-Tag Fleets

Man, I live in a damn cave…

While friends who had the good sense to remain in North America get a weekly dose of pop culture goodness (Though from what I’ve been hearing of late, this may no longer be such a good thing. Oh, for a quick injection of a Hercules cartoon with Newton, that stupid centaur…) I, having more or less quite happily sunk into the Artistic Hermit phase of my life, no longer watch MTV Asia (I’m too old for it), local television (I’m too foreign for it) or cable television (I’m not commercial enough for it) and only occasionally step out to watch movies (I’m mostly too jaded for it). The vast majority of my time is spent A) sitting here staring at this monitor for either writer-ly, job-ly, or game-ly reasons, B) plugged into a video game console occasionally wiping the drool from my mouth as its Matrix-like qualities suck me in. AGAIN… C) watching DVDs as I have come to love this format more than life itself.

However, thanks to a certain friend who is entirely too intelligent and entertaining for his own good (Godfrey, you know who you are…) I was alerted to an old, guilty childhood pleasure that was getting stuffed into the “Reimagination machine” and was on the way towards getting spit back out soon.

That was, of course, the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Man, I am hooked.

I’d heard people previously lambast the thing before it had even come out, and I have to admit, even I had my doubts initially. I loved the vipers from the original but the whole “By your command” thing–and, as the years wore on the increasing curiosity as to why a mechanized organism would require THREE freakin’ crew members for a fighter–and more importantly that kid Boxy and his stupid android dog, made me wonder if this new version was such a good idea.

God bless Ronald Moore, for he made me so happy to be wrong.

It took a while, but lo, only a couple of months ago, the DVD of the original Scif-Fi Channel mini-series FINALLY made it to these shores, and I snapped the damn thing up and consumed it greedily, despite the fact that I had already watched a region 4 DVD somewhat earlier thanks to the generosity of an Australian geek.

Galactica has all the usual ingredients of “neat” science fiction television, ie, cool fighters, cooler space battles between fighters and a lot of technology that seems peachy-keen. But on top of that is the much more interesting premise of “The war is over. We lost,” which is a pretty rare thing for SF television to tackle.

The original premise of the 1978 series (Which I forced myself to sit through for comparison’s sake. Thanks Eugene. Urrrrgh…) was a riff straight outta’ Eric Von Danikin’s Chariots of the Gods (A whacky, non-fiction book that posits that ancient Earth civilizations have been influenced by visitations from space) that played on the idea that “There are those who say that life here, began out there…”

Meaning that humanity is actually a visitor to Earth, and that we’re originally from another planet (Called “Kobol”) and that Kobol, the seed world, sent out colonies amongst the stars. The majority of the 13 tribes of humans, 12 of them in fact, settled in a 12 world star system and happily stayed there. the 13th tribe went way, way off and found Earth.

Galactica in 1978 was the disco version of the holocaust that occurred with the 12 colonies. At war with a Reptilian race turned mechanized warriors called “Cylons” they had fought their robot foes for a thousand years and were on the verge of finally negotiating for peace. This turned out to be a huge sham thanks to the traiterous human Baltar, and instead the 12 colonies were annihilated in one fell swoop. The survivors banded together in a fleet, protected by the last surviving Battlestar, Galactica, a massive capital ship that did double-duty as aircraft carrier and destroyer, and though pursued by the Cylons, they decided that there was nothing for it but to try and find the remaining 13th colony, Earth. And so the series began.

It only lasted a season, and probably for good reason. The initial very dark and intriguing genocidal storyline of the series premiere quickly devolved into “This week, the Cowboy Western episode” and “This week, the Touched By An Angel” episode, and quickly lost its way.

The new one, however, aside from receiving a fresh injection of science fiction cool with updated special effects, sticks to one simple idea, “Let’s take it seriously, this is damn dark stuff here…”

And so with the new series you really feel the pressure. These people are running for their lives and know it. They worry about food, they worry about water, they worry about leadership and government, but most of all, they worry about the Cylons–who in this iteration are the creation of humanity that rebelled–and outclass them in just about every military manner, right down to the fact that the humans are forced to abandon high-end computer networking technology since the Cylons can infiltrate and destabilize human systems in short order, which is how they ended up nuking the 12 colonies to hell.

It kicks ass. I’m digging it in a big way and am eagerly awaiting the DVD collection of season 1.

And The Guilty Pleasure Of The Week Is…

Lego Star Wars.

I wish I were making that up, but God help me, I’m taking this game out for a spin and enjoying it tremendously. Despite the fact that it was designed for children, and that all the characters and settings are made out of Lego, this somehow manages to feel more Star War-sy than the vast majority of “serious” Star Wars games I’ve played, and even edges out the new trilogy the games are based on. There’s something deliciously fun about taking a Lego Obi Wan and whacking away at a Lego Darth Maul until he breaks into his component blocks. I shouldn’t be enjoying this…

But I am…

I Suck At Titles

Since I was a wee lad and first scrawled out my stories with a pencil or pen on paper, I’ve always had the most horrific time coming up with a name for the damn thing. Most people who are familiar with the way I write will note that invariably, the titles of a story or novel in progress usually fall into the spectrum of bland to downright horrific.

For example, in the case of my first short story involving Jen, a girl who can see ghosts and eventually became endearing enough to me to give her her own book, I just couldn’t come up with anything to describe her first outting in writing and simply gave the story the title of “Ghost Girl” and was just too confounded to come up with anything even after it was done. In another short story involving her and a serial killer, the story went on for the longest time with the oh-so-witty title “Serial Killer” until, finally it settled on “Suffer The Little Children” and I can’t even remember who suggested that, ’cause it sure wasn’t me.

I think a good deal of this problem rests in the fact that I am one of the worst living poets of the 21st century. There’s a reason I decided to tackle short stories and novels, kids, and that primary reason is, I can’t do anything small. Poems escape me. I look at the stanzas and wonder how the hell anyone managed to get a point across in so little space. And as far as I’m concerned, a title is the ultimate poem; how do you summarize in a few words, the essence of something that took you thousands upon thousands of words to explain anyway?

To give you an example of just how lousy a poet I am, I will immortalize on the internet, a famous poem from my university days that will haunt me till the day I die. College cronies can read this and transport themselves back to those glory days of yesteryear when I would skip classes and spend an inordinate amount of time socializing in the Arts Lounge as this is an obvious byproduct of my “higher education”…

*Ahem*…

Carpet is a lot like grass,
It’s green and you can sit on it.

Thank you, thank you. Oh stop it, please. You’ve been a great crowd, I’m here ’till Wednesday…

Of course the reason I’m saying all this now is because I’m wallowing through the third novel–and loving and hating the experience simultaneously, but that’s all normal–and of course, I haven’t the faintest clue what I’m going to call it.

Maybe I should hold a contest or something, with the ultimate prize being a new horrendous poem composed by yours truly…

The Bad News And… Other Bad News

Things have been motion over here, and none of it particularly good, though none of it particularly tragic either. This would explain the massive absence while I try–and continue to try–to make heads of tails of it.

First, the animated feature that I was originally signed on to develop is dead. From what I gather, the main investor simply lost interest (He’s apparently quite vulnerable to distraction) and just decided to move onto something else. That left all th pre-production work, the concept designs, the script rewrites, the acquisition of studios suddenly and quite startlingly dead in the water. Upsetting? You betcha’. I was really looking forward to going through the whole process and watching this thing come to life, but alas, it looks like things that are too good to be true really are too good to be true.

Which Brings Us To The Job Thing

As in, I am looking for one again.

Having been blissfully out of the networking loop for the last few years, my contacts aren’t what they once were when it comes to knowing people and asking around for jobs, which means that eventually tracking down a writing based job will be a little tricky. Fortunately, the fiance is at the moment gainfully employed with an advertising agency, but if we’re serious about saving up some pocket money and getting out of here (Which we are) then my also having a regular income would help immeasurably with that particular nest egg.

While I still have my regular gig with the video game magazine here in Singapore, there’s no definite promise there of a full time thing, and so I’d better look to other venues. This will not be easy, but on well… Life ain’t always that way, obviously.

But, There’s A New Book In The Offing

Yup, that’s right. All this drama has at the very least prompted the beginning of a third novel, this one completely unrelated to the other two and quite a bit sillier. I’m only about three chapters into it so far, but my basic rule for this novel is KEEP THE DAMN THING SHORT. Word from my agent about my previous novels has been almost universal; the editor reads it, the editor enjoys it, the editor gasps at the enormous size of the thing and decides that in a sequel friendly, franchise oriented literary climate, books like this from a total unknown are a bit much to take a risk on.

So now, with an artificial goal of “No more than 450 pages at the maximum” as my golden rule, I will try not to create a paper mammoth with more wood pulp in it than the British Columbian forest. Hopefully I can get it down to a somewhat more reasonable 350-ish range, and if I can swing that, then the editors will have no excuse to not like the book and A) resignedly publish the damn thing, or B) Come up with new excuses like i) “You suck.” or ii) “It’s too short.”

I’m betting on the latter.

But anyways, the book itself is a bit of a departure from the previous two novels which had a heavy Sturm Und Drang quotient and plenty of tragedy and drama. I thought I’d keep this one a little lighter (Okay, comparatively speaking for me…) and just do something I’d never seen before that I was always curious about. I’m already three chapters in and having the mighty struggle with myself to Keep It Short. It’s kind of weird to write about a character that doesn’t have a built in trauma from the get-go (Since my other two characters, Jen and Thomas, both easily qualified as “Damaged Goods”) but on the other hand it’s nice to have a character that doesn’t have baggage that must be handled from chapter to chapter.

Anyway’s we’ll see how it goes. I’m still having fun with it, and hopefully I can have it finished either by the end of the year or shortly after the beginning of the next.

But Take Heart! Neil-O Is Coming!

Yup, it took a few years but the impossible has finally happened and Neil Gaiman, otherwise known as “Neil-O” (His secret name which only I may use) will be swinging down to Singapore in the month of July. I’m still debating whether or not I should go since I know I’m going to devolve into a blubbering pool of fanboy-ish goo. The Fiance has already decided she won’t since she figures that as a longtime fan of his work, the greatest thing she can do for him is not harrass him, considering that everyone else will be. I can see her point, as most of the locals here, who normally scorn anything remotely creative will be sucking up to ol’ Neil-O big time, suddenly claiming to be very creative because… well, because he’s famous and the locals don’t like to feel left out.

On the other hand, I’d be super curious to take a look at Mirrormask since I’ve been hearing so much about it, and I’d really love to at least watch one of my key inspirations in becoming a writer sit there and talk about… being a writer. He is the Yoda to my whiny farm boy, but his grammar is better, and he’s not computer generated or a muppet and he’s got an English accent and everything, so he must be smart!

Speaking Of Yoda…

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith absolutely SUCKED. I think the slow erosion of my faith in George Lucas, intially started by niggling doubts when watching The Lord of the Rings grew progressively more vocal with the other new Star Wars films and finally turned into full scale “I can’t like this anymore” when my hopes were completely dashed with Ep III.

I know a few people who loved the movie. But for me, it just doesn’t work anymore. The only good things I had to say about it were, “Nice effects and light saber duels.” Everything else, the writing, pacing, editing, dialogue, acting, framing… It all fell apart. And even when people who like the movie agree with me to all of these accusations they still love it, which means that I’ve somehow fallen out of that place where I can love something simply for being Star Wars, and have gotten too critical for my own good, maybe. But when all the things I like about story-telling are not done, or not done well, I can’t find that switch to be non-critical and still be able to walk out of the theater going “That was a MASTER PIECE!”

This has also had the unfortunate effect of making me doubt the opinions of people I used to trust in creative matters, because it means our ideas of what constitutes “Good” simply diverge too widely. If I think an amazing actress like Natalie Portman is being shockingly bad with lines like “You’re breaking my heart!” and someone else finds that to be Oscar worthy, then when they tell me a piece of dialogue should go a particular way, I tend to remember where their taste lies and shy away from that advice. Conversely, when they tell me they like a particular piece of dialogue or a plot point, I remember their idea of “good” is lines like “You were the chosen one!” or their idea of convincing plot is “Some guy converts from good to bad in the s
pan of three minutes” and that makes me reassess my own writing to see where it went wrong.

Basically my new rule for writing is, “If I know Star Wars Episode III made you cry, I will do the opposite of whatever you think.”

Video Games That ROCK

Devil May Cry 3

God of War

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

Those are all recent titles I’ve played through and I heartily reccommend them to anyone that likes brainless action games, or, in the case of Nocturne, a Japanese style apocalyptic role playing game difficult enough to make your hands bleed…