The Aspie Diaries

I Say It Again, I Have A New Blog

2010-01-25T21:14:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd give you guys a link to the new blog if it hasen't kicked in yet. It's called Solve Et Coagula and it's at www.psychicrefugee.wordpress.com.

Hope this helps.

The New Blog Is Up

2009-12-27T16:21:00.001-05:00

Hey everybody, I thought I'd tell you I have the new blog set up. I'm calling it SOLVE ET COAGULA and I hope it will be the start of a renewal in my blogging and hopefully allow me to re-evaluate my life.

Here's the link, hope you enjoy.

Could this be the end of The Aspie Diaries?

2009-12-18T15:35:00.000-05:00

Very probably.

I am very tempted to just go on about how shitty I feel at the moment, and despite the fact it's almost Christmas I'm not feeling alot of that cheer. I have been working on my final exam, the one for the Jesus class and it has largely been driving me nuts. Or more likely not getting enough time to write it has been driving me nuts. Much worse is that my sleep patterns are off, my schedule is a mess and I'm not blogging as much as I should.
Which brings me to what I was thinking about doing for awhile, starting a new blog. I'm not the same person I was when I started writing this thing, and to be honest most of this blog feels like dead weight to me. Maybe a new refreshing blog is just what I need right now.
So for the next few days I'll be getting this stupid paper done and coming up with a new blog to replace "the Aspie Diaries." I'll still keep this blog up and officially my last post will be an announcement that the new blog is up and running. I hope that this new blog will help me rediscover my passion for internet journalism.

Fun with Alternate History

2009-12-05T15:22:00.001-05:00

I joined the Alternate History Discussion Group yesterday and so far I've put forth two alternate time lines. One, Hermetic studies remain a legitimate field of study that is not just limited to New Agers and Fringe people. The Second, Howard Philips Lovecraft assassinates President Calvin Coolidge. These are both for my amusement. The Hermetic one is more thought out, as I wanted to write a novel that would basically be something like William Gibson if William Gibson had worked under Numerology and Kabbalah. I call it Hermetpunk, or maybe Occultpunk. I prefer Hermetpunk.
I seem to be getting more and more into science fiction again. Ever since I started reading Philip K. Dick I thought, I should read some more science fiction. I feel like I'm getting back to my roots again. I'm also coming up with sort of science fiction stories, which I may go into at some point. Probably not though.
Also, update on the alternate history. The Lovecraft assassinating Calvin Coolidge turned into Lovecraft attempting to assassinate Coolidge and failing horribly. So far all it's done is eliminate the Cthulhu Mythos from the time line, and probably keep Coolidge from making any more public appearances for awhile. Which he didn't do much of anyways.
That's it for now. Bye.

The Aspie Diaries 2: Return of the Aspie Diaries

2009-12-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody, I'm back. Let's hope I can get back in the swing of things.

So, new news. Exam season is but a few days away. I have two take homes (both in RS), and one regular (my English Lit class). I feel very good about myself concerning these and feel that I can take at least one day off after that. Once the weekend is done I'm going to have to sit down and get to work on my Kabbalah take-home. I have to write three papers all of which should be three pages. I won't go into that anymore on this though. Mom, if your reading this and we haven't talked we will.
This was an alright term as Religious Studies go. Both were fields that I was interested in and I enjoyed the teachers. The English class was so so. It was necessary for an English major, but a bit dull. It was kind of like my trip to Italy, were we basically had to rush everywhere so we could see all the spots. Survey of British Literature Part 1 was like that. I sense Survey of British Literature 2 will be like that as well. At least we'll be getting into the Romantics and Modernism in that one. Medieval Literature was kind of interesting, and I think that may be my favorite part of the class, except for maybe John Donne and most stuff dealing with Courtly Love. I read a bit about Courtly Love, or some form of it, in an R.U. Sirius book on Counterculture before I even knew who R.U. Sirius was. I found the aesthetic kind of cool. Seems kind of artificial in the course material, especially stuff about Philip Sydney. But I'm rambling on in English major talk so I'll stop. Maybe I'll go into it again at some point.
As some of you may notice, I have grown a beard. I have officially decided to let my hair grow out again and this time I'm doing my beard as well. I'm going to try this look out for awhile while I'm at University. I may need to loose it to get a job, or maybe I can try the starving artist thing for awhile and see where that gets me.
Spiritually I'm no farther then I thought I'd started out at, or maybe I'm not. I've officially read all the gospels, in some cases twice and plan on going over them again. I also feel that I have a much better foot on Kaballah, particularly Jewish Kabbalah. I also know that most Jewish Kabbalists are probably damn pissed off at Gentiles such as myself and Pico della Mirandola and Eliphas Levi messing around with it. I also know they probably aren't going to do anything because A) It's been going on since the Reinsurance and B) the Jewish people basically want to be left alone and will return the favor, especially if there Hasidim. (This is what my Professor said and he's Jewish and a Jewish Studies Professor so he would know). I still wouldn't go as far to call myself a Kabbalist of any stripe, and I may not be. I still plan on doing a lot of reading on Kabbalah.
Finally, Alan Moore has an independent zine. Yes, that's right, Alan "Greatest-Comic-Book-Writer-Alive-Today-Who-Is-Also-A-Wizard" Moore is running an independent zine. It's called Dodgem Logic and they gave me a free CD, which they will give to you as well. I can't make a link on this page, but if you go to www.dodgemlogic.com, you can see all the stuff Alan Moore and his friends are up to. You have to buy a copy of the magazine though, which I will probably do at some point. I don't think it's the kind of thing I'd ask my parents to buy for me for Christmas. Besides, it's only...okay I'm not sure. But I'll probably buy an issue after Christmas, or try too. My job options aren't looking pretty good at this point.
Well, that's basically part of what's happening. I'll update you on some other things as time goes buy.

Lady Gaga: Is She a Zeitgeist or Something? What's the Deal?

2009-11-12T19:55:00.000-05:00

I want Lady GaGa to find religion. Not because I fear for her soul in anyway, I just want her to join some wacky religion like Thelema or something so that her aesthetic can get a bit more organic.

Since she came out of God knows where Lady GaGa has been a peripheral interest of mine. I don't go after any tabloid stuff to see what she's up to, but if there's an article about what she's doing at the moment readily available to me I'll check it out. I'm haven't really heard much of her music and I'm not really sure if that's the point. Her music videos and whole persona is what I find really interesting. It takes a certain, I'm not going to say balls, it takes a certain guts to do the kind of crazy shit she does and make money of it. I am also going to go out and say that Lady GaGa is a sort of poster girl for a lot of what is wrong with our society. She is the embodiment of a plastic disposable sexuality that I see as largely empty. The difference with most other pop stars is that she seems to be aware of this and is taking pop to it's logical conclusion. She's is also Madonna's true spiritual offspring. Since nobody is really going to be shocked by overt sexual and religious imagery being juxtaposed anymore, Lady GaGa is basically free to do whatever crazy shit she feels like.
But again, I seriously think Lady GaGa should find religion at somepoint. Preferably something with incredibly vague and complex symbols. Let's all cross are fingers. If we wish hard enough, she may become an Alchemist.

The Ideal Apartement

2009-11-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

The Neighborhood should be inexpensive, but safe. I like the idea of living in a building with a lot of other artists but this seems to much like an idea that Hollywood has sold me. Either way it shouldn't be to gentrified.
I'd like to live in an urban area, and I'd like to have windows to look over the street so I could watch people go by.
I should be within walking distance to the following. A grocery store, my place of work, an independently owned cafe, one or more bookstores (preferably one that deals with new releases and one that is used), one movie rental place that specializes in independent releases and has a good foreign films selection.
The apartment does not need to be large.
The apartment should not be dirty. It should not have rats or cockroaches.
The apartment should have a lot of room for books.
The apartment should have the following rooms. A bedroom. A bathroom. A living room. A kitchen/dinning room. It may also have a room totally devoted to books and my writing, but this is not completely necessary.
I will have begun to develop a music system that isn't totally dependent on Itunes. I will have a vinyl system and a collection of vinyl.
I will have a cat.
I will leave as small a carbon footprint as possible. This may be hard, as I'm running a minifridge, an Ipod dock, a lamp and a fan at the moment.
I'll have various foreign artifacts, such as African masks, Persian rugs, Tibetan Murals, statues of Buddhas and certain Hindu gods, a few Celtic and Mennonite artifacts to celebrate my heritage, and posters of artists I like, i.e. posters for concerts, the odd psychedelic thing...alright that's about it. I'll probably buy some from artists I like. Don't expect much high art though.
I don't know if I'll develop much of a movie collection. I've thought about it, but mostly I just like to rent movies. If I want a movie, I'll rent it. If the library has it I'll get it from them. I do have a DVD player that is pretty portable. I like using that, so I'll rent movies (see 3)
I'll probably have a phone.
I'd have really good cooking skills. I know that this isn't dependent on an apartment, but my kitchen would have a good supply of food and I'd make really good meals.
I don't know what it would be I'd do. I'm not sure I can write as a career, because my writing mentor has talked me out of it. I'm going to have to look around in the job market for awhile until I can find something that fits.
I'm still thinking about the ex patriot thing. Odds are this will be somewhere in Canada. The vast majority of my friends are in Canada, so I'll be staying here in all likelihood.

Blog Vacation

2009-10-23T14:46:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging recently. To be honest I don't really see much of a reason to. I'm not saying I'm abandoning my blog, but I'm not going to be writing for a while. I don't know how long exactly but blogging is not something that is taking up much of my time these days. I might start in the new year, but otherwise I don't feel I have anything to say on my blog.

End of the World Scenarios

2009-10-09T16:16:00.000-04:00

I finished the first draft of my essay last night. I think I can do better on it, but I'm taking a break and will get back to it tonight. Anyways, I'm back home for Thanksgiving and look forward to much turkey and stuffing. In other news SCIENCE WILL DESTROY US ALL!
Yeah, you heard me. Science is going to destroy us all. Look what I found on Stumbleupon. Yeah, that's right. The top five ways science can kill us all, and recreating the Big Bang is not even the top one. A lot of this has to do with something called the Large Hadron Collider, which is supposed to bang together dangerous particles or something. I'm not really up on all the sciency details. Apparently scientists have made this thing somewhere in Switzerland and plan on turning it on in mid-November this year. First off, after reading all this I am now going to say that I am afraid for my life and the life of my loved ones if this thing goes off and recreates the Big Bang or opens a wormhole to the future or something like that.
And that's not even the scariest thing. Number One way science will kill us all is nanotechnology, which in the wrong hands can create an army of desructo-bots that will devour all organic matter in there path. What really scares me is that my campus is working on a place that will build nanobots. This makes me feel uncomfortable, by which it means it scares me shitless. I am seriously considering making a sign and marching in front of were the building is being made and starting a protest on the grounds that this building could lead to the destruction of all life on earth.
Well, I need to get some cold water and calm down. Figure out a way to calm down. I can't link to the wikipedia article on the Large Hadron Collider. Look it up on wikipedia.

Feeling Slightly Overlooked

2009-10-08T18:09:00.000-04:00

Hey folks, it looks like I'm three-for-three on RPG posts. I've posted three times and tried to start part two of the game three times and so far I've gotten nowhere. I can never get everyone in the same comfy lounge at the same time. I'm starting to wonder if this game was meant to be.
Well, aside from the whole RPG thing I am also in the process of putting the finishing touches on my Kabbalah paper. I'm just going to write up a final paragraph that will put rational philosophy and mysticism in the Jewish context up against the future development of human society or something like that. Shouldn't be to hard.
Still wish I could get this game running. I know in my heart it is a freaking awesome game, and it would be if I got everyone to get here on the same day.

I need Role-Play

2009-10-05T18:27:00.000-04:00

Well, no Weimar Mage today. Two of the guys can't make it and now I'm listening to everyone talking about how cool and epic 10-Mage is. I am banging my head on a wall thinking why didn't I play because it's awesome.

What with running a role-playing game that I hope to be totally epic, and hearing about a role-playing game that is totally epic I am beginning to realize something. I need to play a character. Because of this I am thinking about getting involved in the local Vampire LARP, as it is the only LARP going and the only game I can see myself in being involved in. I'm thinking about playing a Thelemite who becomes a vampire. I'm working up what else to do with him. Now I'm going to go.
This is Role-Play Update. Goodbye.

Where To Find Supernaturals

2009-10-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

I was going to post Wednesday night, when I had my Autism speech. I forgot though, so I'm blogging now. It's raining outside and I'm a good walks away from my residence. I am in fact at Cafe 1842. I haven't ordered anything yet and I'm trying to decide what my next move should be.

Anyways, Wednesday was when I made my talk about being autistic and how that affects communication. My mom kept me in check so I wouldn't bore anyone, and I made alot of jokes. I can't really say if this whole thing was an education for me. Except that one of the people who asked questions brought up a bunch of stuff about how wireless internet is making the world autistic. Since I'm on a wireless connection at the moment I'm wondering if I should be worried.
School is alright. We're getting to paper writting season, and I've got two pages worth of a Kabbalah paper and I think I can work out the standard number. It should also cover pretty much everything I have learned that's important. So none of my Professor's funny jokes. I should also figure out what I should be doing for my English paper. I probably should read Morte D'Arthur when I get back to residence. Once I figure out how to do that.
Being at Cafe 1842 is a bit depressing, because this was were the Changeling LARP once was and I really liked the idea of getting into it. This is the exact place I'd see a Changeling LARP as taking place. It's just how I see the Changelings in the game. There are certain strata of society I see the various WoD templates as inhabiting. Changelings I see as being almost always in coffeeshops, or on Skid Row, or squatters. Not sure what I see the rest of the templates as. Mages can be anywhere, but I usually see them as having at least religious or spiritual background. Vampires I see in power positions, or in skeevy techno disco hangouts. Werewolves I don't have an actual picture, but I always thought there was something similar to Twin Peaks in the nature of the set up so they'd largely be in small towns. But I suppose there would be Werewolves in major cities. Hunters, like Mages, can be everywhere and far more scattered. Hunters are basically everywhere. Prometheans, as per game rules, are nomadic.
I'm working for my ultimate campaign setting for World of Darkness. It's a project for me to create a city, a really large city, where I can set various WoD games, mainly based on the three concepts I have that I'd like to work on (Psychedelic Mage, Beat Generation Changeling and Hunter: The Wire). I'll have to come up with a regular city though, like who's the Mayor? where is it? What are the major neighborhoods?(I see Psychedelic Mage and Beat Generation Changeling as being in the same basic area, sort of a cheap bohemian neighborhood). I already know that most of the city was designed by a Mage who worked it for reasons no one really knows at that his old house is now were the Consilium meets up. His name is Guillarme Archimboldi by the way.
That's all for today. I'm going to go buy a hot chocolate.

Elephant Engine High Dive Revival

2009-09-26T15:21:00.001-04:00

My love affair with poetry is largely due to Mongo at Indeefeed:Performance Poetry. There's a link to it on my blog. If you don't go there, go there. It is the main reason I'm becoming a poet and while it's not where my interest in poetry began, it's where my interest in poetry was fixed.

The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival is a tour of some of the more regular spoken word poets that I discovered from listening to Indeefeed. This is something I would love to see. It's been a really long time since I've seen live poetry performed, and never by these people in person. I also admit that most of this is because of Andrea Gibson. I don't know if she's on the official tour, but she is my favorite living poet. Give me a second to see if she's on the tour...
...alright, couldn't figure it out. I'm pretty sure she is though. That's not really the issue anyways, since the tour doesn't go to Canada. Damn it. How come all the poets I know and love are either dead or American or both. (Leonard Cohen doesn't count, because he's doesn't have the same place in my mind as someone like Andrea Gibson, i.e. I can see myself sit down with Andrea Gibson and talk. I don't think I could do that with Leonard Cohen no matter how cool he is).
How come I feel more interested in American writers and not with Canadian writers. There are very few Canadian writers I'm interested in. Cohen is the only one that I can think off. I might have worked Robertson Davies in there once, but I was frustrated by "What's Bread in the Bone." The majority of my favorite writers are Americans, though this is due to the fact I'm a fan of the Beats. The rest are from England, and also special notices from Russia and Chile. Is this bad for me or is National Literature going to be dead because of the internet? There's really not a lot to be proud of about being a Canadian. I'm proud of the health care system, because it helped me fix my back without bankrupting my family. This is something I am thankful for, though with all the town hall meetings in America it's something I don't think I'm being as vocal with. I'd write something about it, but the entire fact that a bunch of rednecks believe that a government that cares about your health is evil, while having an army full of gun wielding murderers to slaughter innocents is God's will and thus should be actively supported. This is such an alien idea to me that I am filled with a rage that feels like a cubist painting, all crooked and out of sink and that my body is distorting into a way that is not normally scene by human eyes.
Anyways, before I got onto that tangent about rednecks and being Canadian I was talking about poets and poetry. I was talking about my identity of being a poet. I don't know if I'll be remembered as a poet, or even if my poetry is that good. Either way I like this kind of poetry and I liked at least one of the poets involved. If any of you guys are reading this, if you could run this through Waterloo at some point that would be wonderful.

Game One of Weimar Mage

2009-09-22T12:29:00.000-04:00

Alright I better make this quick. I've got Kabbalah class in awhile. It's a good thing I'm blogging from the Kabbalah room. Well, it's not much of a Kabbalah room, but I suppose real Kabbalists wouldn't have specific rooms. I probably shouldn't even be in the real Kabbalah room because I had bacon for lunch. My professor would probably be cool with that, but I can't help feeling the eyes of hundreds of old dead Jewish guys looking at me in a funny and not-nice way.

Anyways, Weimar Mage was last night and all in all it went over very well. It was a bit slow and nothing really important happened story-wise. I do feel that I have everything in game set up for fun stuff to go down. All the characters are in Berlin now and know off each other, and one even has a position in the Consilium.
Woaps, my prof just showed up. Got to run.

Chair

2009-09-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

So yesterday my parents got me a chair. I now have a chair to sit in and read while I'm at University. It will help me sleep. That is all.

First Weekend

2009-09-19T00:27:00.001-04:00

Strangely, this is not were I am located at this moment. I am in fact back in my hometown, sitting in my favorite coffee shop and seeing if any of my hometown friends are going to pass through. There's a guy who kind of looks like Michael Court, only younger, but he doesn't seem to recognize me.
So yeah, I'm home for the weekend. I even got some movies to watch from Generation X in Waterloo. Three of them, two of which I watched last night. Those movies were Aguirre: the Wrath of God and The Films of Kenneth Anger: Vol 1. They were both alright, and I think I liked Aguirre better, probably because it had an actual plot, where as the Anger films were basically surrealist shorts with not dialogue and music in the background. I still have one more movie to watch, but I can't remember the title.
My dad also got the new Wolverine movie, which I wasn't as impressed with. It really seemed like an excuse to get Wolverine to beat stuff up, and something of a contrived one at that. Bits of it were good, but the over all production felt lacking. Also, I didn't appreciate what they did with Deadpool, because even though I don't read many comics, and those I do are generally from DC's Vertigo line, I am familiar with Deadpool. Anyone who plans on having fun with all the little yellow boxes that their thoughts are in is awesome. Still, to work in all the fourth-wall breaking computer-meme spouting looniness that this would involve would take away from the actual movie, which as I said was Wolverine beating shit up. And again, that would just be too loony for normal people. Imagine taking a perfectly traditional action movie and then throwing in a random guy to make genre-savvy postmodern comments about how mindlessly violent everything is before engaging in said mindless violence and you've got what this would look like. This would screw up with the unwashed masses enjoyment of the mindless violence. Nerds and Postmodernists would love it, but the guys who usually go to the action movies would just be confused.
Alright, besides movies I'm also starting Weimar Mage on Monday. I've got four people, a Fascist, a Communist, a Russian Monarchist and a default Zionist, and I'm pretty sure that half of them will be killed once the Nazis get in power in 1933, at worst. I'm going to try and come up with an idea for Game 1. Something to get the characters together for a limited time so they can be a group.
I have to go now because I'm in conversation with a friend.

I think New Testament is a cool guy. He heals sick people and dosen't afraid of anything.

2009-09-15T11:15:00.001-04:00

Hello readers. And a special shout out to that Missionary from West Africa who commented on my 56 pencil post awhile back. Good to know I'm being read in places like West Africa.

I am now in class sessions and today is by busiest day. Two classes, both religious studies. I'm going to try and get this post done by around 11, because at 12:30 I'm going to go to my Kabbalah class (yeah Kabbalah). I do feel a little guilty going straight for the Kabbalah when I haven't even taken the Judaism course, and I'm worried I might tick of my Jewish Professor. Though he probably can expect this what with the whole Madonna thing. Don't know what he'll think when I bring up the fact I'm coming at this because of the Hermetic aspect of it. Also, I have a night class about Jesus. The Professor is a cool guy and it should be fun.
Weimar Mage has yet to start. I have one yes, and lots of maybes. I also need to look into a way to keep the timeline basically similar without being a jerk about this. The problem is quite literally the Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act. The time line must remain more or less the same. Thankfully, there's a book that can help me with this so I don't come up with things like "Hitler is being protected by really powerful shit from hell," to often. Though I did tell them that Stalin is going to be a Mage in all likelihood and he'll probably be a kick-ass powerful Moros with lots of bodyguards and traps and things. I may even make him a character at some point. Anyways, I think I got a few tricks up my sleeve.
Well anyways, I'll try to keep up with all my posts. See you guys around.

Untitled

2009-09-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

I'm getting a bit bored with all this Frosh Week nonsense and would like the real meat and potatoes of University to start. I've got all the books and things. I guess what I'm really feeling is, well something like isolation but also that I'm not being fulfilled intellectually or spiritually. I wish that there were other writers I could talk with. Unfortunately I don't know where to find such people. I could ask people passing by if they are writers, but I don't think that it would be particularly efficient.
So far I haven't written anything but blog posts at University. This makes me feel a bit sad and I feel I should try and get some writing done while I'm here.

Day Two: Lots of Foot Work

2009-09-08T10:36:00.000-04:00

That thing on my shirt says "23 was born in 718." I have no idea what it means. I think it was just a non-sequiter someone put on a t-shirt. Maybe someone can shed some light on it's meaning. The artistic side of my mind says that this will only lead down a rabbit hole of ancient conspiracies akin to a Robert Anton Wilson novel.
Well, it isn't even lunch and I've had a busy day. I scavenged the yard for abandoned items from the Penny Event and came up with a candle (that I can't use but will probably give to my mother. It apparently smells like Angel Food Cake), an old gas lantern and a dirty old water cooler. So now I have a water cooler in my room. I think it will be largely for show however.
I also got most of my books for my classes, except for a book on Kabbalah they didn't have. I'll have to go back for that. I also went to the library were I got quite a bit of poetry and some short fiction of Philip K. Dick. I also checked the OPD to see if I had an appointment and I did have something of an appointment approaching regarding exams.
I believe I am largely done for the day; I can't think of anything else that could occupy my attention that is pressing. I'll probably just get some reading done and wait till Lunch. I would like to get most of the two novels I'm reading now done, though I don't know if I'll need to worry about my school reading getting in the way of my pleasure reading.

Pencils and Pie

2009-09-07T16:02:00.000-04:00

A better title may be "I'm In!", but my little sister Scout wanted me to write especially about Pencils and Pie. Unfortunately I have nothing as yet to say about pencils or pie. I just choose this title to draw her attention.
Moving in did go very well. My room is very nice and cozy and I expect to enjoy it very much. So far I haven't really been able to get all the stuff I want to get done done. The Dana Porter Library is not open, but I was able to run into my friends from Watsfic. The Changeling LARP fell apart, but good news, there is a Mage LARP being held this very weekend. I'm going to have to see if I have time to go and I'll also need to run up a character for that. I'm either going with Thyrsus Warrior-Poet or Obrimos Ezekial Talbot-from-the-last-Hunter-Game-redone-as-Mage. Or I'll make up a character.
That's it so far. Further updates will be forth coming.

Going Back To University

2009-09-05T00:34:00.000-04:00

Today is for all intensive purposes my last day as an unemployed cafe dweller. This is largely because I will be going to University on Monday and the coffee shop is closed on Sundays. This isn't to say I don't have a job, because I picked up a position as a dishwasher at my residence. So yeah, I have a job now. I may even have it for Fall and Winter Semesters. I only have to work one day and I'll be making more then if my parents just gave me money.
I have a bunch of things to do in my first week. For one thing I still need to pick up my books for my classes, so I'll have to check them. I also should check in with the OPD, see what they have for me. I also have a meeting with the Pysch office, which should be very fruitful. In other news I also plan on taking advantage of Dana Porter the first day and getting a few new bits of reading material. Also, if I am going to start getting that RPG going. I have what I hope will be a very good short quest set up so I can get to know the characters, but at the moment I want to set up there Awakening and get to know what kind of characters I'm dealing with. I'm curious to see what they'll come up with as characters, for all I know this is the first time they've been in a historical game. I don't know if that's true, but I'm interested in what kind of characters they'd be. I wish I could have come up with more ideas for character ideas. I still might bring up "Thyrsus Jazz Musician."

56 Pencils

2009-09-02T14:46:00.000-04:00

I don't think I made this wide knowledge on my blog, but I love pencils. I would consider a big box full of fresh unsharpend pencils a great present and logically presume that whoever game me such a gift cared deeply for me and if not a blood relative was probably coming on to me. This is something that my sisters make fun of me for, saying I have a thousand pencils. Well today, because I had nothing else to do I decided to look through my pencil case and figure out how many pencils I have anyways. And the answer is that there are currently 56 pencils in my pencil case. The question has been answered. I also have two pencils hiding somewhere and 48 let to be sharpened pencils. That would make a hundred and six pencils. By then however, most of the pencils featured in the above picture will be to small for usage.
Also, if anyone has any environmentally friendly ideas for what I can do with my discarded pencils that would be excellent.

Self Portraits

2009-08-29T13:55:00.000-04:00

These are pictures I took on my computer camera. I liked them, and thought I'd put then up on my blog. I didn't think they'd get a chance to see the light of day any other way.

The Songbook of Naos Ben-David

2009-08-29T13:52:00.000-04:00

My friend Kron's Internet is down, which makes me feel somewhat lonely. I've enjoyed many fine conversations with him over the MSN this summer, and my favorite coffee shop feels lonely and a bit overwhelming, to the point where I am know listening to Charlie Parker on my Ipod as you can see. I was trying to get the picture of Charlie Parker in, but my Ipod screen is too shiny.
Good news though, I've written a poem. Or it may be a song, it could be both, but it's mostly a song. I call it "Evangelism Blues," and it's part of a project I'm calling The Songbook of Naos Ben-David. Yes, I know I'm starting a new project. I'm always coming up with new projects. Short Story Anthologies, Poetry Anthologies, Series of Novels, Borges-inspired Encyclopedias, but this one I'm going to do. I actually plan on having a Songbook of Naos Ben-David published. I've already got it set in my mind, I always saw Naos as a sort of singer-songwriter and I figured that I might as well write the songs that he sings. Sure, this first one isn't going to be Naos' Blowing in the Wind, but I figured it was as good a place to start with as any. I'm going to write eleven or twelve more for the first album. Maybe I could also learn how to play guitar so I could write the notes. Or maybe that would just distract me. I could have someone else make the notes.
I also discovered a new website called Poets.org. I'd link to it, but my computer has been all bitchy since I downloaded Firefox. Just go to www.poets.org, it's got all kinds of great poets and poetry and articles and things. I'll probubly set up a link to it somewhere on my blog. It's a great website.

More on Weimar, Novels this Time

2009-08-28T12:40:00.000-04:00

I want to update you people on the events of my life, but so far nothing much has happened. I have a good idea of what I have in store for the various poor PCs into the world of Weimar Berlin, all the important people in the Consiliuum are set up, all I need to know is get all there information down. I think that if I do everything right, then I can get to 1933 by the end off Winter Term. By then I'm seriously hoping that the characters are smart enough to run, but I'm sure I can drop enough hints that running would be a good idea. Still, I plan on having all kinds of fun, and the environment is just messed-up that we can have various PCs of unethical leanings. I'd like them to take the moral high ground on some issues, if only because I like being around moral people. At least they won't be the most unethical people in this game, I should keep that in mind. Heck, I don't even need to make-up characters that are worse then them, one of the NPCs is Adolf Hitler.
Still not writing much. I've got a kind of Burrougheseque story involving Naos, Helen and a Nationalism Disease which I may or may not write, but I don't know if I like writing stories about Naos and Helen in the Desert. I honestly think I'm not ready to write the story of Naos and Helen. I see it as more of something like Doctor Zhivago meets Masked and Anonymous if it was written by Philip K. Dick. As such I see it as being pretty urbane. I should also read Doctor Zhivago if I'm going to make that connection.
I am not really reading anything at the moment. I am trying to get into Knut Hamsun's Hunger, but so far I haven't gotten into it. I'm also trying to read Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End. Haven't gotten into that either. I think I should make a list of books I should read. I'd like to read more Philip K. Dick, and when I get back to University I'm probably going to pick up a book of his short fiction. I also want to read some of the various books I have on me that I have yet to read. I still mean to read Paul Bowles, so I should probably get started on either The Delicate Prey and Other Stories and The Sheltering Sky. I'm going to have to make a reading list at some point. I do plan on reading some Christopher Isherwood when I get to University for the campaign though.
Anyways, waiting to get to University. Not sure how many days it is from now. Going to try and read some Gary Snyder.

Return to Weimar and Poetry

2009-08-24T12:58:00.000-04:00

13 more days and I will return to University. I'm very excited, I can't wait. I wish I was there already. There is only so much of hanging out in the same cafe and messing around that a guy can take and I believe I have reached my limit. Alright, I'll miss my friends and my cafe. But I'll have friends waiting for me back at Waterloo, as well as a start to the Weimar Mage game. My vacation from that is over and I think I have found a stress free way of developing the entire consiliuum. Tarot Cards.

The Mage: the Awakening sourebook, Keys to the Supernal Tarot, give advise on how to create a character through randomly drawing Tarot cards. I think this could be a really good idea, as it saves me the time to come up with a concept to start with. I can just draw five cards from a Tarot deck, and I happen to own a Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and then work out the character from what I've got. It's a brilliantly simply way to develop this and I don't have to worry about getting my hair in a bunch. I'm also thinking about using Tarot cards to develop plot, and giving all the PCs and in-character reading, I can use the images in that for further plot devices with the character. Also, I figure that if I'm going to do a Mage game right, which is part of the reason I'm running this, I'm going to need some ancient magical, religious or philosophical background to draw symbolism from. Tarot is already built into the game. I was going to work in Kabbalah, but the rules for replacing that as the Magical system seem a bit complcated and I want to work through what the Sephirot actually mean.

I'm also reading, or trying to read, quite alot of poetry. I'm looking into Arthur Rimbaud again, and he's quite a fine poet. I don't speak his native language, but I'm reading the Wyatt Mason translation and I think that's pretty good. I'm a bit worried about reading poets in translation, because I worry that I'm not actually reading the poet, but the translator. Strangelly, I don't have this problem when I read Bolano or Dostoyevsky. Poetry is different. Poetry is about the words. Still, I like Bolano's language, even if I'm not reading Bolano in his native language. The words are still good and I like how they feel. Maybe I'm reading Rimbaud after all.

I'm also reading the poetry of Ezra Pound, because Ezra Pound is supposed to be a very important poet. For some reason I'm starting with the Cantos, which is supposed to be a major piece of 20th century poetry and Pound's greatest written work, which he wrote for most of his life. I'm not sure what I think of Pound, but the entire world of poetry is still very new to me. The only poet I can say I really like is Allen Ginsberg, and I sometimes wonder if I have simply decided to like him. I also like Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot. I guess I like more poets then I think. I guess that because of all this, I'm trying to become a poet. Once University starts, I plan on writing a good deal of poetry and read as much poetry as I can.

The idea of becoming a poet probubly came from listening to Indeefeed: Performance Poetry. As such, I'm inspired by slam poetry and I think most of the poetry I write now comes from a slam aesthetic. I feel poetry, at least modern poetry, is meant to be an oral tradition. I'm thinking of doing a thing on youtube, where I would read my poetry for videos. So far the only think I can think of for putting up are my poems "Anarchy Baby" and my only published short story, which I think I might go over. I didn't edit it the first time, and I think that I could do better with it. I have an account set up, but I need to figure out where I can get a camera to film the readings and then put them on the youtube. Thankfully, I have a cousin who's in the computer world and he will be with me on my floor. When I have something up I'll probubly put it up on my blog.

Well, I'm talking with a friend. I better go.

Cherry Pie

2009-08-22T12:33:00.000-04:00

I just ate 1/3rd of a cherry pie. Awhile ago we got a cherry pie, because a friend of mine and I are having a Twin Peaks marathon before I go back to University. I thought I could take a third of cherry pie. I think I may have been wrong.

The Magic Naturalist Manifesto: A Novel

2009-08-15T14:14:00.001-04:00

Greetings True Believers. I thought I'd talk more on Magic Naturalism, since I didn't say all I wanted to say about it in my last post.

As many regular readers may be aware, Magic Naturalism is a highly ambiguous art movement I have been fiddling together in my spare time using various loose bits of Remodernism, Surrealism and Alchemy, and most likely inspired by the Visceral Realists in Bolano's novel The Savage Detectives and the Beat Generation. I first used the term Magic Naturalist as part of the introduction of myself for my first published short story, and I didn't have any idea what a Magic Naturalist was, except a cool sounding name.

Since then I have been toying with writing the Magic Naturalist Manifesto. Through the inspiration of the only other Magic Naturalist in existence, I am going to write it as a piece of fiction. I have a bit of the first bit written, but at the moment I'd like to concentrate on short fiction. I'm also wondering if Magic Naturalism is more of an aesthetic then an actual movement. I think if Magic Naturalism was an aesthetic, then it would be something like a Bolano novel. The Magic wouldn't be visible, but if you read into it you can notice it. Or maybe the Magic Naturalist aesthetic is similar to Bolano's work, but with more noticeable acts of the supernatural. That would probably be just because I like the supernatural.

Still, I think that Magic Naturalism is a bit experimental. I want to experiment with forms. I want to see what happens if you rework the methods of alchemy to a piece of fiction. That is the basis of Magic Naturalist experimentation. I'm also come up with a method I'm calling "Tarot Stories," which is basically taking a Tarot deck, asking it a question like "Who killed the character in my short story," and then using the Tarot to figure out how that happened. I enjoyed it, though I don't know how much I should rely on this method. I think I may use it a bit for The Magic Naturalist Manifesto, but I think Philip K. Dick did something similar with the I Ching in The Man in the High Castle. It's probably where I got the idea actually.

Which brings me to what this post was about. Well, not really but I lost my train of thought. If I'm writing The Magic Naturalist Manifesto as a work of fiction, with a fictional plot and fictional characters, then does Magic Naturalism exist? The more I work over Magic Naturalism, the more it becomes something withing my fictional universe. I think it can be both though, but on the other hand I'm very afraid of becoming famous. I don't want people to know who I am. I don't think I want to be famous. Maybe I'll get a pseudonym like Archimboldi, maybe I'll just disappear into Europe or Asia or somewhere and never be heard from again.

God, I'm to distracted. To be continued...

Solve Et Coagula: The Magic Naturalist Magazine

2009-08-14T14:54:00.001-04:00

Today the spectre of Nazism is not as powerful as it was yesterday. I believe that this is because I am now writing it out in a form that can help restore my sanity. I am currently working on a piece of short fiction that I believe will help me deal with the existential stresses of National Socialism. This short story will hopefully express the issues I have, while at the same time tear a hole of complete absurdity into the entire idea of Nazis. I think that's what Mel Brooks did with "The Producers."

Speaking of writing, I have been thinking about my idea of the perfect literary magazine. This would be one that I would help publish and it would be linked to the idea of Magic Naturalism. It probably would be THE Magic Naturalist magazine, "Solve Et Coagula." I came up with this idea last night. It would be a single magazine that would have an issue every three months or so, usually with a theme of some sort that would give a loose theme. The theme wouldn't be to important however, and some issues may not even have a theme. It would also have more or less the same group of artists, all of whom would be in contact with each other, thus we would have a highly regional magazine made up mostly of the Magic Naturalists. Each issue would feature what those particular Magic Naturalists were doing and show examples of Magic Naturalist stories, paintings, poems and articles. It would also have transcripts of discussions made by various members of the Magazines, in retelling form or through copying down MSN chats. There would also be a special "Guest Feature," in each issue where we would get someone who is not from the Magic Naturalist group proper who would act as a guest. If this was a perfect world I'd probably see if I could get Alan Moore to be a "Guest Feature," because I have officially declared him a Grandfather of Magic Naturalism.

I basically got the idea from the Hermann Hesse book I'm reading. It's called "The Glass Bead Game," or "Magister Ludi," but I'm calling it "The Glass Bead Game," because that's the proper name. It's about the life of a guy called Joseph Knecht, and takes place in an unspecified future were the Intelligentsia has evolved into various monastic orders and the highest form of which is a bunch of people who play the Glass Bead Game, which is some kind of multi-disciplinary game that is very complex and only really smart, educated people can play. I was really struck by the idea of the Intelligentsia Monks, because they seem to be doing this right, and not in a way that I'm doing. They're unconcerned with fame or money or any of that stuff. This made me question my own goals, am I writing because of fame and money? I certainly want to get paid for my writing, but I'm not so sure about fame. I don't want fame, yet I would like people to read my work. Is having people read my work the same as being famous? Mind you, I don't want a, say Michael Jackson level of fame, where they wont shut up about me. I don't want paparazzi following me around. But does the paparazzi follow writers around? Are they're really any famous writers anymore? I feel out of touch with the common man, if they're is such a thing? Is the common man the people who watch Entertainment Tonight to see if John and Kate have broke up yet and which one has custody over the plus 8? Do people follow Salman Rushdie around, or that guy who wrote American Psycho? I don't even think I know any famous writers of today. Well, I know Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon, know of them I mean, but they aren't followed by paparazzi. They both have to lie low, or Salman Rushdie does. I think Thomas Pynchon may have CIA connections, but that's just baseless hypothesizing.

I don't think we live in a world were writers are famous, they're just well known. I also think that if I really wanted too, I could probably disappear from Gossip Columnist Radar. But anyways, to tie everything back together, I wanted to make this magazine, which we will call Solve Et Coagula for now, as a way around this. It would be more a way for various artists with similar interests to communicate, and show they're work to each other. "See, this is what I did. Love what you did there. See that guy, man I loved his photography, we should have him in the Zine sometime." That sort of thing. I think it would be a good idea. It could be worked around the whole fame and money thing, and we could all just concentrate on the Art.

The Sinister Spectre of the Third Reich

2009-08-13T00:13:00.000-04:00

It may be that in the past few months the Nazis have been more present in my internal life. I've been reading a lot of books that involve the Nazis in some way or another and it's been starting to eat into me. For one thing I stimmed for about a half hour because it's getting on my nerves so much. I think that a good part of this is the role-playing game, but over the last few months, starting from Winter I have been reading alot of books about the Nazis. For instance I've been reading "The Man in the High Castle," by Philip K. Dick recently, which is an alternate history novel where the Nazis won WWII. I've also finished up reading a book on Berlin in the 1920s, and watched the film "Cabaret" awhile back, both of these ending on the same bum note (The Nazis take over).

I've been trying to work the whole idea of what the Nazis are and why we're so repullsed by them, at least I was until I was completely unerved last night. Maybe I still am, but I really don't want to think about it right now. It's just at this moment I have been looking into this sort of thing for to long and I need a break. This is all just bothering me alot and I feel I need to excersize the Nazi demons around me.

MOVITS!

2009-08-06T19:12:00.000-04:00

For those of you who ever wondered what Swedish Swing-Rap would be like...

Now you know. Your welcome.

On Role-Playing Games and Family Vacations

2009-08-04T15:52:00.002-04:00

I didn't think I'd be posting in awhile, but this blog has been part of my life for so long that I can't see myself not posting. Yes, most of the time I post about nothing, but nothing really happens in my life. Especially around summer.

I don't know if the Changeling LARP is happening, which is a shame. I sent an email to the people there and have had no reply. Once University starts again I'll ask my contact if things are still going on. If it seems likely to continue I'll join, if not then I'll have to wait for another.

It's raining outside at the moment. Thunder and everything. I just thought I'd mention that, because I like it when there is rain and thunder. It's cool and I like the way thunder sounds. It means I'm stuck here at my local coffee house but that's alright.

Anyways, and I should have started with this, but I have done something recently. I have been to my Aunt and Uncle's Cottage in the Muskokas. I suppose it was fun most of the time, but I was also stressed because of all the stuff I had to deal with. There was to many people for me to deal with on a regular basis, about nine besides myself and hardly much in the way for me to really be on my own without bugs eating at me. I did finish Salinger's "Nine Stories," while I was there. I don't think I actually got it though. My friend who suggested it said it is about human interaction and sudden twists, but I didn't really get it. It was probubly my autism, so for the most part it was just a bunch of neurotypicals doing neurotypical things. I also finished Bolano's "2666," but that was before I even left. I don't think I understood that either, but not in the way I didn't understand Nine Stories.

I remember someone once compared Bolano's work to "Highway 61 Revisted," the Bob Dylan song. That made sense, and in many ways Bolano's writing is like Bob Dylan's writing during that period. It's beautifully written and dense and really dosen't make that much sense while still remaining spellbindingly brilliant. Besides that "2666" and "Highway 61" are both similar in various respects. Both revolve around a series of locations, the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa in "2666," Highway 61 in the Bob Dylan song. The location stays the same in both song and book, but various interconnected stories are told within them. I don't know what it is in the Bob Dylan song that connects all these stories besides Highway 61, but in Bolano's novel it is the murder of various women and the reclusive author Benno von Archimboldi. I don't know the meaning for either song or book, but it is something I am curious about both.

Anyways, the role-playing game I hope to run in the fall is becoming something of an obsession, most specifically desighing the supernatural political situation in Weimar Berlin. It was hard enough since I came up with just having Mages, but now I'm working on setting up a vampiric court. The way it went was that the game was going to become rather political and involve a lot of turmoil and it felt a shame to leave vampires out of it. As such I've got a list of the various roles withing a vampire court and am going to come up with roles for each. This is hard since I don't really have much of the political structure of the Mage Consiliuum set up. I have an idea on the Hierarch, his Provost, the Consilor for the Mysterium and a few other important people but not much else. I'm going to have to come up with everyone else during the time it takes to set up the game.

I'm not going to start the game immediatly when I get to University. First of all, I only have two people, and I want to see who else is interested. After that I'd like to talk with them a bit about their characters. I want to get a handle of what kind of PCs I'll be dealing with. I think this is a better idea then last time, since I can see how to work them into the story, which is more or less about the rise of the Nazis, though at first it's going to be rather political with various bits of the fun hedonistic side of Weimar Berlin. I'd like to work more of this into the game, but I'd like to know who is going to play and what kind of characters they are so I can put together the story. I'd like to put all the issues together, for instance one character is looking for his long lost sister, another is trying to stop the Holocaust. Does lost sister have something to do with the Holocaust? Maybe, we'll have to see. Also, it would help the players to look up things on the time period to add any biographical details. One of the characters is a veteran of the Polish-Soviet War for instance, and to run his Awakening I'm going to start with his participation in the Battle of Warsaw.

I don't really know if my obsession with this is a problem or not. I enjoy coming up with this game. I enjoy the research aspect and I enjoy coming up with ways to mess with the heads of the PCs. For instance, I'm learning about the New York Mafia now. One of the characters is a gangster, I think from New York but I can't remember, and as such I want to read up on Gangsters to make things more historically accurate though I fully admit that I'm using Wikipedia as my main source. If anyone knows the situation of the New York Mafia around 1922 - 1923, I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'm going to have fun role-playing all the Mafia Wiseguys during that character's Awakening and the New York Storyline I'm working on.

Movie Review: Masked and Anonymous

2009-07-28T20:42:00.000-04:00

I'm almost sure this movie is good. If it is good, it's because it hangs in that place were it exists in it's own world. Also, this movie can be best described as someone trying to make a movie out of a Bob Dylan song, not any praticular Bob Dylan song, but whatever this movie is about Bob Dylan has something important to do with it. This is due to the fact Bob Dylan co-wrote and acts in the film.
The basic plot of the film is that Bob Dylan, AKA Jack Fate, AKA Bob Dylan has been released from prison to do a benefit concert, a shaddy benefit concert, but still he's out of prison. Fate lives in what looks like something that is kind of the United States, but has a feel like a South American Bananna Republic. After that all the characters talk they way you'd expect characters to talk in a movie co-wrote by Bob Dylan (it's great), a pretty good soundtrack featuring Bob Dylan songs is played (it's great), encounter various characters bouncing off each other (it's alright), and a bunch of scenes involving political and philsophical discourse.

In all this, I like this movie. This is probubly because I'm a Bob Dylan fan, and despite the fact this is a very minor movie I feel compelled to it because this is more or less the kind of feel I want for the Naos and Helen novel. It's the same basic world, has the same feel and also Bob Dylan is in it. This must be what William Gibson felt after seeing Blade Runner. Because of this alone I'd put Masked and Anonymous up there with The Big Lebowski as one of my favorite movies. (Interesting note, both Jeff Bridges and John Goodman appear in this movie).

To end off I'm putting up this youtube video which has Bob Dylan and his back-up band singing "Cold Irons Bound," another reason to see this movie.

Starving in the Belley of a Whale, a Tom Waits song (featuring Banjo Monkey)

2009-07-22T11:53:00.000-04:00

Canadian Literature and It's Relationship To Me

2009-07-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this at the public library in my hometown and you should expect more posts from here in recent days. I'm hanging out here to save money as whenever I'm at Revel I tend to buy stuff, usually food and I've already bought a book and an ice cream with the large amount of government money I came in with recently. I can also get more writing done here I imagine. I'll tell you how it goes.
Anyways, Today I'd like to talk about Canadian Literature. It's something that I'm really comfortable with, as I don't really see myself as being involved in Canadian Literature. I'm not familiar with Canadian Literature and have very little knowledge of it other then what I've heard. I read very little Canadian writers. Most of the people I read are either American or British, and among by favorite authors are a Russian and a Chilean. Also, I don't really know if I want to be considered involved in Canadian Literature because I don't feel that Canadian Literature is really taken seriously. Maybe it's because most great Canadian writers haven't been dead long enough, but I just never saw myself as a real Canadian. I just sort of live here. I don't even know if I'll spend most of my life in Canada. The idea of living in another country is seeming more and more appealing, since I feel dangerously close to America sometimes. I'm growing more and more distrustful of America and the capitalism I believe it represents. I'm becoming more and more worried about what I hear of economics, which I'm seeing more and more as a lie, a giant con, that the entire world is being brought into.
Anyways, back to Canadian Literature, I'm wondering right now if I am going to end up in that category because I'm a born Canadian. I don't even know that much about my native literature, except it has something to do about survival. I don't think much of my writing has anything to do with survival. I don't even know if that was just Margaret Atwood shooting off about Canadian Literature. Anyways, because of my ambiguous relationship with my national literature, I plan on doing readings of the following writers in the near future.

Robertson Davies (I really liked The Rebel Angels. I found What's Breed in the Bone pretty long-winded and boring though. I figure I have to finish the trilogy off at some point though. I'm hoping it will be better then the last one)
Timothy Findley (A friend suggested his book Pilgrim)
Mordecai Richler (No reason, he's just Canadian and I like his name or something)
Leonard Cohen (I figure I should add a poet and Leonard Cohen is someone I feel I should read more off)

And that's it. After that I feel I have read them I will think I will have a better handle on Canadian Literature. I may also read some Margaret Atwood, though my last English teacher said she came off as an angsty white girl in her novels. Other then that I don't know what else I should do about this. Probubly forget the whole thing.

The Brothers Carrotmazov

2009-07-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

For some reason I was thinking of Veggie Tales. For those of you who aren't Christian, Veggie Tales is basically one of those cartoons made for Christians to help express the intricacies of the faith to the little kiddies in ways that are more interesting then reading the Bible, which can be something of a boring read, or even worse reading Aquinas or some. Instead, you get little funny cartoons about vegitables that very from Biblical Retellings, to retellings of the classics with a Christian message.

I was thinking about how they'd redo classics like this. The ones that came to mind are "The Grapes of Wrath,"(done with actual grapes), and "Madame Bovarry,"(renamed Madame Blueberry). These are both books I have yet to read, but I figure I am going to get around to them at somepoint. Still, stuff like Madame Blueberry is different from Madame Bovary. Instead of the Madame Bovary character having a series of affairs, she goes on a shopping spree. This is because the show is supposed to be for kids. It also occured to me, why aren't they doing works by Christian writers? I mean, Flaubert and Steinbeck are Christians, at least I'm pretty sure they are, but why aren't they doing classics by writers who were open about their faith, say Dostoyevsky.

Which brings me to the brunt of todays post, what if Veggie Tales did an episode based on a Dostoyevsky novel.

Now, this can get pretty dark, because the two novels by Dostoyevsky I have read are Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Crime and Punishment is about a guy who kills a pawn broker in cold blood, and the rest of the novel is basically him being sick, guilty and the reader and him trying to put all this in persepctive. And plot of the Brothers Karamazov is basically driven by sex, lies and murder. Despite this, both novels have what I see as fundamentally a Christian meaning, and both speak much of redemption. Would the folks down at Big Ideas, the guys who make Veggie Tales, be open to a retelling of a Dostoyevsky novel and if so, how would they do it.

The one I'm thinking is The Brothers Karamazov, if only because it is the hardest to actually put into terms of a children's show since the major event of the novel revolves around patricide (alleged patricide in some cases but still). As in Madame Blueberry, they would have to find something that won't shoke the kids and more importantly the parents. What this could possibly be. Which also reminds me that what lead up to the patricide was the fact that the father was trying to seduce a woman that one of the brothers was interested in and who he had left for his wife. This would also be hard to work in. Actually, Dostoyevsky is probubly not a good example for this because of all that is going on in the book. Fyodor's writing is just to complex to make into a Veggie Tales episode.

But the point is, I have this image of the cast of Veggie Tales as characters in a darker and edgier episode based on Dostoyevsky. It's not exactly a bad thing either, since it is still in the same basic format but we're doing the kind of things that I'm experiencing now as a Christian. The nature of faith, the seeming cruelty of the universe. Why is it that they only make Christian cartoons for kids and when they do it can be so optomistic? Maybe I should develop something like Veggie Tales for people my age who are more open to the idea of questioning the nature of there faith. I'll have to make a follow up to this at somepoint.

Friday Youtube Videos (Eastern European Special)

2009-07-10T17:23:00.000-04:00

Since the reason I got this new format was to make watching the new wide screen Youtube videos I thought I'd do a special on Youtube videos.

First is the newest sensation, a Ukrainian polka band covering Katy Perry's "Hot'n'Cold." It's like listening to Katy Perry but without feeling embarrassed for listening to Katy Perry. Because it's polka.

Yeah, polka.

Alright, and after that I want to show you a band I discovred called Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird. They're Jewish folk band and they are awesome. I don't know if it's just me, but Yiddish is a beautiful sounding language.

So How Is Your Summer Going, Dylan?

2009-07-09T17:06:00.000-04:00

I really hate summer.

There are many reasons for me hating summer. The one that most easily comes to mind is that it is hot and I do not do well with heat. At all. And the problem with this can largely be tied to my feet. They are very sensitive and generally need socks. I tried wearing one of those new rubber clog shoes that my mom picked up and my feet were achy and sweaty. Also, because I hate footie socks with every fiber of my being, I can only wear normal socks and because of the all-powerful laws of fashion I cannot wear shorts and longs socks. It's annoying.

Another thing I hate about summer is that I have nothing to do. This is especially important this summer because I have nothing to keep me occupied except my erratic reading and writing patterns. However, I do feel I have written more then I have written more and some good stuff too. I'm back at Naos and Helen, since I'm now working at them through the medium of the short story. This gives me the chance to explore them in short bursts which my attention span and patience allow. I'm working on two Naos and Helen stories more or less simultaneously now, but one of them is pretty psychological and is getting hard for me to write, since I want the characters to act naturally as compared to the world they live in which is bat shit insane.

On the subject on my ability to write things I am having doubts about my capability in the means of poetry. This I blame on Stephen Fry. I've been trying to read his book The Ode Less Travelled, to get an understanding of how metre works and I don't think I'm that good at metre. I try to write stuff in metre and I'm thrown off. Then I try to write free verse, but I can't get that either and then I feel guilty because I don't read a lot of poetry and when I do I can barely understand it, though recently I did read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock a couple times and I think I got that, although I picked up at some point it was about prostitutes and impotence so that may have helped me. Still, I appreciate T.S. Eliot's poetry and I like his style.

In other news, I sent my short story "Godot is Dead," out to The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. I'm not sure if they'll take it. I think the story is pretty out there, but I don't know if it is the kind of out there that Bizarro fiction demands. Also, it's a Jack Monsairty story, so it has a "wizard," though I think of Jack more as an occultist, and that might turn them off. I have only sent it out recently and I have yet to here back. I don't know exactly how long I should be waiting, the next issue will be published in October so I imagine before or around I get to University.

Looking into Various Fields of Interest

2009-07-04T13:24:00.001-04:00

We went to Toronto yesterday, my family and I. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, and since I'm into the places where Christianity and Judaism meet I figured it would be a fun trip. After that the family split up into two groups, the girls going to see taxidermey animals and my dad and I looking at the antiquities of the Far East. I liked the Buddhas and the big pictures they had of various Chinese religious figures. Oh, and the rubbings of signs on Synagoges, Mosques and Christian Churches found in China. Yeah, they have Jews and Muslims and Christians there, and I'm talking before the Jesuits.

Then we went to Ikea and I began to feel sad because I don't have my own place. I know I'm 19, and very few 19 year-olds have there own place, but damn it I want to have my own apartement. It didn't help that we found a very nice walk in room that Mom said she could see me living in. So I began to feel nervous about my independence, which I'm also feeling a bit off about because I have had some recent confusion with my bi-monthly twenty dollars. Thankfully I got some of the coffee drop-off which can last me through the rest of the day. This lead to all kinds of frustration about how I'm not as independent as I'd like to be.

Also, finally I am beginning to read more on Aspergers Syndrome. I'm currently reading "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome," by Tony Atwood. Now I have to go because I'm talking to a friend.

Returning to the Mage Game

2009-06-29T14:17:00.000-04:00

As many of you know I tried to run a game of Mage the Awakening awhile back with disatrerous results. More recently however, I am working on a new, more organized coherent idea for a game of Mage the Awakening. As my first run into the world of running World of Darkness games, I am getting very ambitious as I am going to be setting it preferabbly over a period of 22 years and it is going to start in the year 1923. This is going to give me my own chance to interpret the world of Mage the Awakening, mostly by writing about the early history of the Free Council after it joined up with the Atlantean Orders. (Before the counterculture-technology and magic are compatable Mages joined up with the Mages who trace there origin back to Atlantis). It also gives me a chance to have adventures with all sorts of fun stuff like Modernism, Alistair Crowley and Occult Nazis, the last two of which are unavoidable when writing a Mage game in this relative time period in my opinion. I'm also changing from usual World of Darkness format in that the game will not take wholley in a single city. I am in fact planning on setting it across most of Europe, especially in Paris and Weimar Berlin, with various possible detours in America, Spain and the Soviet Union. I've got a pretty good idea for the general direction, and I'm working in various little sub-plots and things that will happen, since I'm working with the idea that the characters are going to Forrest Gump their way thorugh history, getting into drunken boxing matches with Hemingway, inspiring Einstein's theory of relativity, having Crowley look over your shoulder every once in awhile for the Pentacle, stuff like that.
However, I am thinking about setting the story in a single city to start with and at the moment I'm torn between Paris and Weimar Berlin. Paris is, well Paris, but I think in the long run Weimar Berlin will be a better choice. Paris in the 1920s appeals to me mostly because I'm a writer and Paris in the 1920s to me is all about James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway and stuff like that. Weimar Berlin however, along with being artistic, has the advantage of being a veritable powder-keg politically. In between the Cabarets and sex you have facsists and communists fighting each other in the streets, and what's more it would . I think it would appeal more to the players since I feel I can do more in Berlin then just the Lost Generation. The characters could easily play that angle, but they could also do, say the science angle since Albert Einstein was also alive at this time. They could also play the political angle, and join up with the various political aspects. They could also go into the occult thing since I'm boning up on the occult roots of Nazism, but I doubt that any of the players will do that. I'm the guy most likely to play an occultist. I do hope that most of the characters were in World War One though, because I'd like most of the characters to be similar in some respect.

Again, I'm going to play a lot with the Mage order of the Free Council, which in game is still a recent development. So far I'm thinking that they are currently the most powerful order in Berlin, mostly because they fit well with Weimar Berlin. I believe that Paris is going to be a Silver Ladder city, but the Free Council is also very popular there. I've also decided that Alistair Crowley is going to be (at least nominally) a member of the Free Council as I have decided that in game terms he is an actual Mage, in fact a fairly powerful Mage but I don't think he's going to be that involved in Mage politics as he is more concerned with Thelema. I still don't know exactly what to do with the Free Council, except that I want to explore it as an order.

Sorry for dropping so much lingo for you.

Concerning Michael Court

2009-06-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

Sending my short fiction to my friend Michael is one of my favorite things, largelly because he always gives great reviews. I think I could easily count him among one of my few fans outside my family. I just sent him "Godot is Dead," and he went on about how much he loved it. It may just be because he always sends emails in huge font, but he did ask me "Are you SURE you're not copying these stories from someone else and making an absolute fool of me? It's not just that they are so intelligent, it's that they are so grown-up and witty." I can also back this up because whenever he talks about my stories he's practically as enthusiastic as me, probubly more because he's more openly emotional then I am.

Michael, as I call him, is an old guy I meet at the local coffee shop readings we used to have. He was writing poetry at the time, like most people who went and we would usually talk about things after at a bar. Once Seymour and I even managed to talk him into coming over to my place and we talked about writing and stuff. It was alot of fun, since I see Michael as a very important person in my life, an older wiser writer who has more experience in such things as poetry and the great writers and things that would involve wisdom. He's really a drastically different personality from mine, which is probubly a good thing because he is more upbeat then me and I can be a pretty dark and depressing person sometimes. Look at the last post to see what I mean, I found that funny and that was about an assassination attempt. A really lame ass assassination attempt, but still.

I can't really describe Michael's work that well. I've read a bit of a short story he wrote about a boy who was lost in the Amazon and alot of his poetry, which reminds me of Rumi, short and sparse and with a beauty of it's own that I don't appreciate as much as I should. We do have something of a minor compotition to see who will be the first one to publish a full length novel, so we'll probubly look over it at somepoint. I'd like to read over his novel since it sounds pretty interesting.

If All Obama's potential assassins are this stupid, then he's going to be okay

2009-06-22T14:42:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine once showed me this sight called Fundees Say The Darnedest Things, which basically makes fun of all the crazy stuff Fundamentalists Say, such as the world is really 6000 years old and atheists worship Satan. Well, I'm looking through there sister sight Conspiracy Theorists Say the Darnedest Things, when I came across this attempt at Barack Obama's life. If you like dark humour then this is for you, but I must warn you there are some racist comments that I don't share. I found the overall presentation hilariously incompetent.

ok we have 6 days until my Presidential Assasination.
Yes, I have decided I will assasinate Barack Obama. It's really nothing personal about the man. He speaks well, has a loving although controlling wife and two cute daughters. But I know it's for the country's own good that I do this. And I'm not racist either, my family is a little, but isn't all Italian and european families? I mean how many times have you heard the word nigger in the comforts of your home? I have a lot, and it really bothered me and I would confront them about it. No, it's not because I'm racist that I will kill Barack, it's because I can no longer allow the Jewish parasites to bully their way into making the American people submit to their evil ways. How many of you Obama supporters are now disappointed after some of his arm-twisted Jewish appointee decisions??? Make's you think he's not really in charge(which he isn't). No it's the same old, same old filthy muther-fucking kikes who are
poisoning America, who have murdered thousands of innocent lives on 9-11-01, and
are thinking that they are going to get away with it again.
Barack, I view more as a sacrificial lamb, but the sacrifice MUST take place. He had good intentions, but like the Steve Taylor song goes, "a politician next door, swore, he'd set the Washington arena on fire, thinks he'll gladiate them, but they're gonna make him a liar."
So, I'm stuck here in Mississippi, and I'll need bus fare or some way of getting to Washington. I don't own a gun, so maybe someone can give me one. And I'll need a leak in the secret service to get a close up shot, somewhere close to the podium, since I've never fired a gun, so I need to get an easy shot off. Wattdysay fellas? Any help?
You all know we can't live with the jewscum anylonger, dont cha? You got a better solution? I'm all ears.
Stevie
(Note: This man was reported by an admin and arrested by the
secret service)

Alright, for those of you who missed this I am now going to go over what he did wrong.

Said he was going to kill the President of the United States on the Internet
SAID HE WAS GOING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE INTERNET!
Said he wasn't racist then began to berate the Jews
Asked the nice racists hillbillies on the Internet for support. He asked for a gun, an opening in to shoot Obama from (which I presume he would get from the people who are trying to make sure this doesn't happen) and BUS FAIR! I mean, the gun and the opening was ballsy, but freakin' bus fair!
Used his name and gave a basic address (Stevie, Mississippi)
Gave a time frame of this (6 days)
Presumed the Fed were stupid.

I thought I'd just post this for my readers because the FBI shouldn't be the only people laughing at this guy.

Games and Stories

2009-06-19T15:45:00.000-04:00

Last night I finished watching Season 1 of the Wire. I didn't bring that up, that I was watching the Wire. It's a police/crime drama from HBO that is pretty good. After watching it I want to set a Hunter: The Vigil game in Baltimore, but at the moment I am working on two different World of Darkness Games, one is a Mage: The Awakening Game that is to be set between the first two world wars and a Chanegling: The Lost game to be played here in my hometown. A friend of mine wants to see how these roleplaying games work, and I thought I'd do WoD. Changeling just came from the fact I'm setting it in my hometown, which I see as either having Changelings or Werewolves, and I'm going with Changeling. It's also appropriate because Changeling usually has that crazy aspect, and most of my friends are a bit crazy.

I'm also working on a short story called "Leviathan." I'm not going to get to much into it, but I wrote the first bit last night. I ended up getting a sort of spiritual high from writing it, and I hope to try doing more of it later tonight when everyone else is asleep. It may also be a good idea to do it while I'm on that high. When I'm done I think I'm going to send it to The New Quarterly. I doubt that my last story "The Summet of the Minotaurs," will be published since it is actually a part of my first novel.

Also, I'm thinking more and more about getting involved in somekind of Spoken Word thing. I've been liseaning to quite alot of Spoken Word poetry and I'm getting the point where I'm thinking, I can do that. Also, the few times that I've gotten involved in poetry. The problem is I'm not really that into the idea of getting up on stage and performing. It may be a passing fad or something.

Crack Squirrels! (a poem by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz)

2009-06-18T10:54:00.000-04:00

Trip Involving My Spine, Used Books and a Thrift Store

2009-06-16T20:17:00.000-04:00

It's been a very busy day, far more busy then I'm used to. The first thing is that I was waken up around 6:30 AM because I had to go to the hospital. As some of you may know, I have a metal rod in my back and my posture isn't that good due to a curvature in my spine and my poor muscle tone. There is all kinds of history that I won't go into, but a lot of people were noting how I tend to lean when I walk. So my parents and I drove down to the big hospital place out of town and saw a doctor. I got an x-ray and the doctor talked with me and my parents and I'll probably go back in a year or two because I do have a curvy spine and if it progresses I'll need to have another operation. It's nothing to worry about however, because it doesn't appear that any curvature is happening.
After that we went to a place called Attic Books, which is a used bookstore that I wanted to look into. I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. I picked up the following books...

Minor Characters, by Joyce Johnson (a memoir of one of Kerouac's ex-girlfriends)
The Delicate Prey and Other Stories, by Paul Bowles
Billy Budd and Other Stories, by Herman Melville
Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Luis Fernando Verissimo (a murder mystery involving Jorge Luis Borges, Kabbalah, John Dee and a the hypothetical monkey on a type writer. It's by a Portuguese guy I've never heard of who also is a cartoonist and plays the saxophone)

I also saw a notice on a poetry slam, which is in the city of London were I was. No use hiding it anymore. Here's a link, mostly for me but I figured you guys might want to see it. I've been curious about going to one of these poetry slam things.

After that my parents dragged me to a mall so they could pick up a wind chime and get me clothes. Strangely, going to the wind chime place was good for getting clothes, because it was a typical hippie new age type store and I ended up having a conversation with a rather nice lady who worked at the place, which started because one of the disc things in there Wiccan section was upside down, so it looked like a Satanic pentagram as compared to a Wiccan pentagram. I fixed this and explained it to the lady. The key is that the Wiccan Pentagram is one point up, and the Satanic pentagram is two points up. We talked about stuff which eventually lent to how my parents were going to get some clothes and she suggested this nice thrift store place that I forgot the name off. We went there and picked up some new clothes. I liked it a lot, even if I couldn't get the rather cool trench coat. It was made by a group called London Fog, so I'm looking into that. Plus, my mom says that if I shop at Thrift Stores now then she won't be coming with me because she hates thrift stores. Said that it looks frumpy. We also got birthday presents for various relations, which I won't go into because they are probably reading this.

Roberto Bolano and Me

2009-06-11T14:24:00.000-04:00

My relationship with Roberto Bolano and his work is like a Roberto Bolano novel. I have read the works of Roberto Bolano, I have gotten down on my knees in awe of the man's work and in some example of cosmic irony I will never see him. It's not like in Bolano's work, where he is hiding out in the Sonara Desert, he simply died before I could meet him face to face.

I've been thinking of this because I've been reading 2666, which is Roberto Bolano's last novel in every sense of the word. It was the last novel he ever wrote and it is the culmination of years of writing novels. I can see connections with The Savage Detectives, since both have plot elements of searching for a writer that has disapeared. This is also key to my relationship to Bolano and his writing, because somehow you loose the writer, or never find the writer.

This is all part of somekind of underlining fatalism that runs through Bolano's work, but despite this I can't help but feel somekind of optimism that runs through his work. I wondered earlier if Bolano believed in God, and if so what he thought of God. That might help me understand his writing more.

I'm trying to emmulate Bolano's writing at the moment. He has a certain way of writing that I am picking up in his translations. For one thing he almost never uses dialouge. I'm trying that in a short story, but I don't want to get to into it because then I'll sound too much like Bolano. This is also part of another story where I, or my fictional avatar, goes on a mission to find Roberto Bolano, or a fictional avatar of Roberto Bolano, in the Sonora Desert or something. I don't know if I'll write this, because it sounds to much like a Bolano story, or if I'll just write it as a piece of Gonzo literary criticism.

Maybe Bolano still is alive, maybe he is hiding out in the Sonora Desert, or maybe he has left warnings about something that lurkes in the Sonora Desert, something sinister. Maybe it is ourselves.

Aspergers Review

2009-06-09T16:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Mom and I went to see some psychologists about an assessment I did awhile back. The assessment was basically something along the lines of checking to see how my Aspergers diagnosis was going and what I should do to concentrate on work. Well, I still have Aspergers Syndrome, but it also turns out that I have some, but not all, the symptoms of Attention Defecate Disorder. The psychologists also said that I should look over books and Internet articles about Aspergers Syndrome and ADHD, since it could help.

They also brought up that it may be a good idea for me to go on meds, just to help my low attention span. This could help me concentrate more, give me the ability to take notes and even help my writing. So far, I'm indifferent to all of this. The pros have already been stated, but the cons are that I'd be taking meds. My dad thinks it would be better to avoid the whole thing and try and concentrate on my own, but I've never really been that good on that because I'm distracted easily. Heck, I've been fiddling around on the computer while I was making this post.

The psychologists also gave me an assessment about my intelligence. I can't really remember most of it since I was a bit drowsy, but I am apparently have higher then average book smarts, but most of that is obscure knowledge. God, I wish I had a better memory of what they were talking about. I do remember that they said that I find "regular" society boring, which is true, and that I'm only good at things that interest me, which is also true. I also came off as particularly eccentric and socially unskilled by leafing through some books and at one point bringing up possible studies in Numerology.

It's Dostoyevsky!

2009-06-07T16:16:00.001-04:00

Take a good look at this picture and then watch this.

There are two possible conclusions, One, that's a good actor. Two, that Dostoyevsky is immortal.

Well, it can't get no worse

2009-06-06T13:49:00.000-04:00

Saw Pippin last night. You know, that musical that is so big with teenagers. It's got dancing and spectacle, existential angst. I have to say that I enjoyed it for what it was, but normally I wouldn't see something like this. I'm honestly not that big on big spectacle things. Also, the end freaked me out a bit. I won't give it out, but I almost got into a shouting match with one of the characters. My parents, who are probubly reading this now, would be surprised by this but I was feeling a bit threatened. Since the play broke the fourth wall so many times I feel I am justified in this a bit.

Also, while I was waiting for my cousin to get back I ended up impailing my left hand with a pencil, largelly by accsident. My mom says it's a miracle that I was able to go so long wih so many pencils without this happening. I wouldn't say it was traumatic, but it happened very fast and my hand still hurts.

It's Getting Better All The Time

2009-06-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

So I'm walking around my local bookstore, don't intend on buying anything just browsing as I usually do when what should appear but a copy of Roberto Bolano's 2666. The last great novel of his career, his alleged magnum opus. I check to see how much it is, since the last time I saw a copy of this book it was $37.00. This copy however is only $7.99. I knew I had to buy it. It took me awhile and a quick phone call to my dad, but I know own my very own hardcover copy of 2666. I am taking this as a good omen for my interview.

Getting Better

2009-06-04T14:51:00.000-04:00

Things are looking better for me more and more. I got up at a desent time yesterday (9:3o AM), but not today because I was lazy, but the good news is I found the secret. It's to put my alarm clock at a distance from myself. Along with that I am going to have an interview for a job soon. I'm not going to go into any detail, but I am looking forward to it. If things get any better, I'll be having short stories published in major magazines, having my name reached out to all corners of the literary world.

I've been thinking about the movement I've been working on, and the idea that I'd start a movement is scaring me. A friend of mine is discussing founding a magazine with me about this, and I'm starting to realize I don't want to run a magazine. I don't have the neccisary skills to run a magazine. I don't even want to run a magazine. It will cut into my writing time. The idea is filling me with dread and fear in the long hours of the night, when I have sudden fears of non-existance. I'm going to bring this up to my friend, that I don't want to get involved in this.

To be honest, the whole Magic Naturalism thing was just one of my dellusions of starting a new Beat Generation, which all in all is one of the last things I would want. I don't have the social skills of a Ginsberg, or the abbility to run of and hide in my alchoholism of a Kerouac. The best I could do is pull a Burroughs and leave the country for a good long time and wait until it all blows over. That would probubly be my best move, all things considered. But with the Internet would that even matter? Would they just track me down using, I don't know twitter or something? Can they even track me down with twitter if I'm not on it? You know what I'm saying, can I be tracked down using the internet? If I do it right probubly not. I'll have to do it right then, and not tell you, because Time Magazine will be reading this then.

Oh, who am I kidding. It will probubly be Macleans.

I Thought This Would Be Longer

2009-06-02T21:55:00.000-04:00

I've had a pretty eventful few days, filled with equal parts activity and ennui. The activity is largelly involved with me going out for a weekend with some relatives to their cottage and watching the film Apocalypse Now. The ennui is my lack of a job and thus my day-to-day activities are not exactly ordered.

The trip to Muskoka I won't go into, just to say that it was an alright trip, I editted a short story I was working on and it was very relaxing. I'll also have some pictures up as soon as my relatives send it to me.

I had been having a strange desire to see Apocalypse Now for awhile. I saw a bit of it, but I never saw the whole movie. Sunday I managed to sit down and watch the entire film. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen and I will put it on the top ten list of the best movies I have ever seen. I'll have to make that list for the blog some day, it would give me something to do.

Speaking of things to do, I am bored most of the time. I am getting up later and later, and there is little reason for me to get up at all. I am barelly reading or writing, and I spend my nights in misery because I can't get to sleep and I have no one to talk too. I am working out a way to get up earlier, for what good it will do me. I'll tell you all about it later.

Excerpts from an MSN conversation

2009-05-27T18:02:00.000-04:00

David says:
Hey Taz
N says:
hey Dylan!
N says:
long time no talk!
David says:
Yeah, how are you?
N says:
I'm okay
David says:
Well, I'm doing alright myself
David says:
Still no job, but I'm half-way through the Brothers Karamazov
David says:
And I'm trying to work on the 1920s Mage game
N says:
neato
I've also gotten my GURPS Psionics game off the ground
David says:
nice
David says:
So how is the job search in Dubai?
N says:
fruitless
David says:
I'm not doing that good on my end either
N says:
sigh
David says:
I did do some final edits on a short story I wrote recently
David says:
You want me to email you a copy?
N says:
sure!
David says:
Sending it now
N says:
neat
David says:
Did you get it?
N says:
checking...
N says:
got it!
David says:
Yeah
David says:
You can read that whenever you want
David says:
Be sure to email me after
David says:
I'd like your opinion
David says:
Hey, did my advise give you any help on your game?
N says:
a bit!
David says:
How did it help?
N says:
It helped me absorb the lesson that fringe groups tend to occur in large quantities and be filled with assorted craziness
N says:
no offence
N says:
I had this issue where I treat everything as a monolithic entity
N says:
"Big Business" etc. etc.
David says:
I was hoping to be more use then that
N says:
I suppose you were, but I've come to the conclusion that I might have to cut down on my already way too layered plot
N says:
my friends aren't exactly the kind who'll get all the symbolism
David says:
Ah
David says:
I'd love that
David says:
If I could manage it, I'd create a game layered with symbolism
David says:
I might do that with the Mage game, but it will probubly try to do it subtlelly
N says:
alright
David says:
If the players get the symbolism I'll give them extra experience points
N says:
right now, I've already got lots of government conspiracy groups like MKULTRA and Majestic in the picture
N says:
lots of Aztec and Gnostic bits

David says:
So, on the subject of 1920s Mage, your playing a Polish Jewish Mage who is trying to prevent the Apocalypse
N says:
yes!
David says:
Your character's career is a grocer
N says:
I have not been paying nearly enough attention to that, actually
N says:
yup
David says:
What exactly is your character's belief system
N says:
a family business
N says:
not very religious; sticks with it just for the community aspect
David says:
Alright, I'm probubly going to mix in some traditional Jewish elements to his Awakening
David says:
Two parents, single child, right?
N says:
okay
yeah, that'll work
David says:
Alright
David says:
How exactly is your character going to work this through by the way?
David says:
I'm going to be taking him across the world
David says:
Most of Europe, New York, may even send you to Egypt or Tibet or something
N says:
I'm not sure what you mean by 'how is he going to work this through'
David says:
The grocer thing
David says:
If you like he can have a brother or something like that
N says:
He's probably going to be a Warlock, and at his awakening, he might abandon his grocery store for a pilgrimage
David says:
Alright
N says:
I like the warlock bit because that allows some Kfitzat Haderech jewish symbology methinks
N says:
In Torah study and Jewish folklore, kefitzat haderech is the ability to jump instantaneously from one place to another or travel with unnatural speed. The term is originally found in Midrashim to explain anomalies of travel in the Hebrew Bible. In East European Jewish folktales, especially those associated with the Hasidic movement, kefitzat haderech was utilized by various revered holy men.
David says:
Thanks
N says:
essentially, Torah teleportation
David says:
Thanks
David says:
This could be handy
N says:
if you liked that, there's also a Islamic reference
N says:
something called "Tay Al Ard"
N says:
which literally translates to "the folding of space"
N says:
sounds like science fiction
N says:
I love it
David says:
This is pretty cool
David says:
I'll have to remember it
David says:
Already there
David says:
I'm giving a character in my mythos this abbility
David says:
It woudl be really handy for him
N says:
alright
N says:
also, I am having a devil of a time actually downloading your story from the email
David says:
Sorry
David says:
I'll send you another email that has it in the format
David says:
So what is your character's personality going to be like?
N says:
I'm wondering about that actually
David says:
YOu may have to wait for my short story
N says:
I want to play something different (editors note, my friend usually plays violent characters. Last time we were in a game his character shot a cop in the face in the first session)
N says:
(okay)
David says:
Sure
N says:
perhaps a pacifist
David says:
Great
N says:
less killing people, more psychic-assisted diplomacy and scrying and teleportation and stuff
David says:
So what order are you going to join?
N says:
I'm thinking the Guardians of the Veil (The Guardians of the Veil are an order of Mage spies, think CIA only with magic)
N says:
its the group that our characters are the most antagonistic with, by principle
N says:
and I think I can make a character who'll be attracted to that
David says:
Alright
David says:
Sounds like a good idea
David says:
Now I need to figure out how I'm going to put the game together
N says:
=)
N says:
good luck
David says:
I have an endgame in mind, I just need to figure out how exactly I'm going to get there
David says:
Since I want to put the game in 1923 or something like that and end towards the end of 1945
N says:
okay
David says:
So the characters will age 22 years in that time
David says:
Sort of seperate it into various chapters by year
David says:
Then stop, give the characters a certain number of experience points and see what happens next year, say 1927
N says:
sure
N says:
makes sense
David says:
You have any idea what I should do with the first one?
David says:
I'm thinking that I'll start in Paris
N says:
I am clueless ;_;
David says:
Probubly for the best
David says:
I'm actually thinking of overlapping this with my mythos
David says:
So you'll meet a few characters from my own writing
N says:
ok
N says:
neat
David says:
I don't know how they'll work exactly
David says:
But you'll meet a couple in the first chapter
N says:
ok!
David says:
I think I got an idea of what to do first
N says:
don't spill!
N says:
that'll spoil D:
David says:
Don't worry
David says:
I wont
David says:
I like this idea to much
N says:
ok
David says:
I just wish I knew what other characters I was dealing with
David says:
Then I could make it more rounded
N says:
heh
N says:
I bet that another PC will be some neo-nazi silver ladder mage
N says:
*nazi
N says:
and we'll have such good times together.
David says:
I'll have to reject that
N says:
good
David says:
The character can be anti-semetic, but he won't be a member of the National Socialist Party
N says:
alright
David says:
It would be to annoying
N says:
and we'd probably be at each other's throats
David says:
Unless we had another character who could act as peacemaker
N says:
except I suppose being the pacifist makes ME the peacemaker
David says:
Yeah
David says:
Still, wish I had a better idea of what the other players would be
N says:
mhmm

David says:
What would you think about starting the game in Paris
David says:
So I can basically start the game off in a "You Were There" sort of vein
N says:
ok
N says:
sure
David says:
So do you have any reason your character would be at the apartement of one Gertrude Stein
David says:
here's a link
David says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein
N says:
not really :/
N says:
you'll have to provide me one
David says:
I'll give you contact with someone who can help you with your mission with the Holocaust
David says:
Don't worry, I know just the guy
N says:
ok
David says:
Well, I think I got a handle on your character
David says:
Just wish I could get a handle on everyone elses
David says:
That woudl really help me get this game going
N says:
ok
N says:
who else are playing?
David says:
Don't know yet
David says:
I asked Shaun to email me about anyone who would be interested
N says:
ok
David says:
I think that this is how I'm going to run games
David says:
I start out with a basic idea "Let's have a Mage Game set in the 1920s!"
David says:
Then everyone makes a charatcer
David says:
Then I work on a plot around that
David says:
I think this is a good stategy
N says:
heh
N says:
okay
David says:
Hey, can I use a bit of our conversation here for a blog post?
N says:
sure
David says:
thanks

Insominia Maximus

2009-05-23T14:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I broke my record of sleep deprevation. I didn't get to sleep until 6 in the morning. This bothers me, largelly because when I get like this I become worried that I'm doing something wrong, and I can't wake anyone up and tell them. The only people I can think of are suicide helplines and gay helplines, none of which I know off, of for that matter would be appropriate.

The only good thing about my routine is that I'm at my favorite cafe. I've barely been up an hour and I've already moved in over here. The problem is now I'm worried about my physical apperance. I think I do look a bit tired, and my teeth aren't that good. A few days ago they were in pain, but I flossed and it went away. Maybe I should floss when I get home. But I shouldn't bore you with how my body is doing. That's probubly rude for all I know.

My novella progress seems to have stalled, which annoys me. On the plus side I'm getting good reviews of a short story I wrote largelly to amuse myself. Michael (or Rowan as I may have called him, but I will be calling him Michael from now on) also gave me alot of useful advise, for instance that I'm writing for an audience that lives in the future and that I should think of them. I think my Dad may have brought this up, but for some reason when Michael said it there was more of an effect on me. Maybe it's because Michael is a writer, or reads more then my Dad and has more authority in this sort of thing. That is probubly it, but I've been thinking about what exactly this audience thing is. For a long time I thought I'd just write for myself, but since I want to be published I'm going to nead to know who exactly my demographic is. I don't think I ever used the word demographic before. I'm going to ask Nora what she things my demographic is...

(waiting)

...she says my demographic would be around 20-30 year old University education caucasians (mostly males) who are in a creative field, like writing or television. She also sees my writing as a bit like Quentin Tarantino, possibly as someone who would do a film version of one of my novels. She did say thats he could be wrong about that, but if she's right my audience will be made up largelly of hipster film geeks. Despite the fact I have no idea of what hipster culture actually is except the decadent inheritors of the counter-culture with bad haircuts, fashion senses I don't understand and something I largelly see myself as an outsider to, I feel largelly alright with this.

I also think that I may have an autistic audience as well, and by autistic I also mean parents of people with autism as well. Since I have Aspergers Syndrome, I will have all kinds of parents thinking, wow this guy has Aspergers Syndrome, maybe little Billy has a future. That makes me feel a bit happy, because then I could help all my Autistic Brethren. I could be like, I don't know, that guy who wrote a book about his minority that brought national identity to them. Angus Wilson or something like that.

Ballad of the Skeletons

2009-05-22T17:46:00.001-04:00

King Shot In Production

2009-05-22T14:02:00.000-04:00

It's coming. It's finally coming. Jodorowsky has come down from the Mountain after meditating for God knows how long, slayed the demon king of that mountain, had the camera found in the demon's belly blessed by a team of half-naked Hindu guys and is know in the production phase of King Shot.

I seriously believe that is how Jodorowsky prepares for a movie. Because he is that cool.

So for those of you who don't remember when I informed you of this monumentous event. King Shot is a "mystic spagetti western," featuring a casino in the middle of the desert, Marilyn Manson as a 300 year old pope, a giant skeleton, a beetle for a narrator and David Lynch producing. None of this really shocks me, except for the David Lynch producing bit which is freaking awesome. For my grandparents, who might find this shocking, or even blasphemous, I suppose it kind of is but I'm familiar with this guy and Jodorowsky has been wanting to work with Manson for awhile, and I'm going for Jodorowsky anyways. Manson is just sort of there.

So the question is, when is this movie going to be released and how am I going to be able to see it as soon as humanly possible. My guess is that it's going to be at Cannes, but I highly doubt that I'll be able to make it for Cannes this year. My closest idea is that the Princess Cinema will be playing this. They sure as heck aren't showing it in my neck of the woods. I'll be writing back as soon as I figure out where it's being shown.

The Big Season 5 Lost Post

2009-05-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

Today was a day of Job Searching. I don't know how good I did, but I dropped of six resumes, mostly at restaurants and bookstores. I don't have much hope for the bookstores, but I can dream can't I? Anyways, I have a good feeling about a couple of the restaurants, a couple new ones and I think one may be hiring. I also checked City Hall, but they don't except unsolicited resumes. Probably not a good idea for a summer job. I also tried to find the downtown office of a local newspaper, but that doesn't exist anymore.
Well, besides that it has come to my attention that I have a new follower. So far the only follower I've had is Aspie Mom, but it appears that I have I have someone called "The Hostile Witness," who is a LOST fan. I think either she is an Aspie, her son is, or they both are and she only just learned about it recently. How she found my blog I have no idea, but I figured that I'd give a great big Namaste and get about my Lost post.
So, for those of you who don't know the basic story of what happened last week and for the past while, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid were sent to 1977 while they were trying to get back to the island. Sun, Ben and Lapedis are in good old 2007, as well as Locke but we'll get to Locke latter. Faraday thought that it would be a pretty good idea to prevent the entire series timeline by setting of a hydrogen bomb where the hatch is going to be before the Dharma folks open an energy pocket, leading to the creation of the hatch, leading to the system where you have a guy pushing a button every 108 minutes because if they don't SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN, leading to Desmond being in the hatch, leading to Desmond not pushing the button, leading to Oceanic Flight 815 crashing on The Island. With me so far?
Well, the bad thing is that Faraday is killed by his mother, who is one of the Others, which is unfortunate because I like Faraday. I named a character for a role-playing game after him (and a line from a Tom Waits song, but either way). With Faraday having bit the dust in a very Greek Tragedy format, Jack thinks it's a good idea to go on with his plan despite it involves setting of a HYDROGEN BOMB to CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY, which are bad ideas put together and makes me nervous. Anyways, Jack is able to get an hydrogen bomb from the Others, who picked one up when the American Military dropped by the Island to drop one, yeah this Island has got everything hasn't it? And what happens, everyone decides that they'll go along with it. Kate and Sawyer complain a bit, and Sawyer beats the shit out of Jack but in the end they're going to set it off. And the last scene is Juliette banging at the hydrogen bomb with a rock until it goes off taking the next thirty years of history.
Now, back to our group in 2007. Ben, Sun and Lapidis are still in the present, but it seems everyone else on the plane belongs to a bunch of people who know about the island and have a code question "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Along with this, it appears that Locke has pulled a Jesus and come back from the dead, which Ben says is something the island has not done and "scares the hell out of me." Mind you, Ben had killed Locke, so there's that factor to look in on. So Locke gets it into his head that he wants to bring all the Other's over to Jacob's place and he's going to go and have a nice big talk, only he's not going to talk to Jacob, he's going to KILL JACOB! Well, actually he's not going to kill Jacob, he's going to have Ben kill Jacob. And in the end it works, but the thing is, it isn't really Locke, because the "What lies in the Shadow of the Statue" People have LOCKE'S BODY! So Locke didn't really kill Jacob.
Oh yeah, by the way, we know what Jacob looks like now, and technically so do Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Hurley and Locke before hand. He is also apparently a Flannery Conner fan, but knowing how many literary references there are in this show it's probably safe to presume that Jacob is ridiculously well read. Also, there is somebody else, who well will call Anti-Jacob, or Not Locke because that is the guy who was doing a very convincing Locke impression. Anti-Jacob and Jacob meet in the first bit of the show and have a nice friendly conversation about how Anti-Jacob would really like to kill Jacob one of these days, and how Jacob has gone and brought an old ship, presumably the Black Rock, to the Island. Also, the statue is off Tawaret, who is a really not nice Egyptian Goddess.
So, In Conclusion...

Jack went and rewrote history so now Oceanic Flight 815 did not crash on the island.
Locke is not Island Jesus, it was just Anti-Jacob.

My theory.

Jacob is God
Desmond, whom as Faraday explained the rules of time do not apply too, is going to be really pissed at Jack if he remembers this, because for all we know Penny hasn't even been born.
The show has not jumped the shark, because that is what I thought with the whole Oceanic 6 thing and that turned out pretty well.
Richard was on that boat.
And finally, I still think that the end of the show is going to end with a talk between Jack and his father and/or Jacob made up mostly of non-sequiters. I am fine with them not answering all the questions, in fact I'd really rather they left a few unanswered ones for the fans to figure out.

Job Search Update

2009-05-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a day of job searching, or at least dropping of resumes at various resturaunts. I think the main reasons I'm looking into resturaunts is that it was what my parents suggested. I'm a sucker for doing what my parents say. This is probubly a positive or negative trait depending on who you are. On the one hand, I could be living under my parents wings to much, but on the other end they do have good advise most of the time. Like "When your in a social situation, watch people and do what they do," or "Get out of my room, it's 2:30 in the morning."

Rowan, who is one of my older friends, gave me alot of ideas when we ran into each other. He's saying that since I'm so good at using words I should find a job with a newspaper or at City Hall or something like that. He also suggested that I hook up with one of those stores in town that sells bracelets and stuff and busk, which sounded cool but I think I'll try something else since I don't think it can get me to the kind of money I'd like. The paper ideas sound like a good idea. Rowan also said that I'm a really good wordsmith, which is nice because I was worrying about that.

Today, I am hanging out at Revel, not that I have anything I can buy food with or anyone to meet, but because this is the only place my laptop gets internet and I'm guying Itunes music. I'm trying to decide whether I should get a Tom Waits album or an Andrea Gibson album. On the one hand, I have alot of Tom Waits albums and nothing by Andrea Gibson, but on the other I really like this album, by Dad has it on vinyl and I like liseaning to it. But again, this album is available on vinyl, and I may be getting tired of it as it is. Also, I don't have alot of spoken word stuff, just two albums by Burroughs and an album of Kerouac that also features his bad singing. I could have bought both, but I also bought a Billy Childish album, since I have had my eye on that for a long time. I still don't know which one to choose, so I'm going to leave this blog and get back to that problem. See you folks latter.

Death and Ego

2009-05-13T11:44:00.000-04:00

Still haven't gotten a job, but that can all be blamed on the fact I haven't gotten up to do it. My writing has slowed down, which is also due to my own laziness. I seem to be better at writing down ideas then stories. I'm also coming down with a stuffy nose, which hasen't stopped me from dropping by my favorite cafe and drinking a nice warm cup of hot chocolate.

Well, besides the stuffy nose there isn't that much I can talk about. I went to the funeral of a friend's relative, but I'm not going to go into that because it's not really my business and it certainly isn't yours (unless you are said friends, in which case you know what I'm talking about). And while I was there I began thinking about death. Death is something I think about, specifically my death, late at night. The fact that one day I won't exist anymore is a bit bothersome and scary. I'm very used to having at least some awareness about what is going on in the world around me and the fact that one day this will all just stop scares me. Also, there is the fact that I'll miss my own funeral, and generally I like things that are about me. Since funerals are all about the dead person, I'd be missing out on one of the few times that it is all about me. That ticks me off, because I'm a very egocentric person.

Which brings me up to other bit of internal life news. I'm realizing that I can be a pretty self-absourbed person sometimes. I mean, I'm not an egocentric jerk all the time, I think. The problem in all this is at somepoint in my life, after I have reached the first milestone of living on my own I want to have a girlfriend, maybe even a wife. If I am to do this I'm going to have to become less egocentric, as I'm going to have to live with another human being for a longtime. Maybe I'm getting to far ahead in my development. Ah, maybe I should just stop talking about all this before I give to much away to the trolls.

Well, all I can say for now is that things are looking up. I am feeling better emotionally and my nose is feeling better as well, maybe because I took some Reactin earlier, but other then that I don't know.

Performance Poetry and Me

2009-05-08T15:24:00.000-04:00

I just wrote what, aside from "Anarchy Baby," may be my first poem in the performance poetry tradition, which when all is said and done may be the one form of poetry that I have the most experience with. I got my real interest in poetry from liseaning to Indeefeed: Performance Poetry, which I have linked to my blog. As such, I've been thinking that I may try and become a performance poet. I'm still going to write poetry, but I am also thinking that if I can find any, I might try my hand at the poetry slam. (Is it just me or is my writing starting to have a more distinct flow?)

It may not be that I'll be good at slams, but it may just be that this is where I have learned how poetry works, and the reason I though hey I should get involved in poetry because this is cool. And I am starting to get the style, and it is remaining my own. At least, Nora, who heard the poem, called "LEADS Employment Services," said that she liked it, because she likes my writing, so I figure that it sounds like me. It always makes me feel good to write a poem, because I usually write poetry in one go, but I think it over in my head and decide that this is what the poem is going to be about. Sometimes I go back and edit, but not often, maybe because I don't write much poetry. I think I'll write more later, I even have two ideas I'd like to get started on. Nora suggested a project that we can work on, which could lead to my first publication in an actual book. How great would that be? I'm even thinking of recording some of my poetry and sending it over to Indeefeed: Performance Poetry. I've been toying with that idea for awhile, and with this boost of confidence from Nora, I think I may be able to do it. I'll have to check with a friend who I know has recording equipment. I hope I can get on Indeefeed, because that would be one of the high points of my life so far, and when I'm on my death bed I could probubly consider it one of the top ten points of my life, but since I'm only nineteen I'd have to wait awhile to be sure. It would certainly be up there with my first kiss and the time "Cattle Man's Folly," was first published.

So finally, I'd like to bring up the fact that as soon as I'm done publishing this, I am going to send a link to this to Mongo, the guy who runs Indeefeed, so he can read this. I just checked his website and noticed that he hasn't had any comments on the blog for awhile. I know how it feels when people don't comment on your blog for a long time, and I want him to know that things are alright and that he is doing important things. So Mongo, when your reading this, thank you for all you have done. I hope to be on your podcast someday. Keep up the good work.

Beau Sia is from the FUTURE!

2009-05-08T12:36:00.001-04:00

Twitter

2009-05-05T14:38:00.000-04:00

Blogging has a new form, and that form is twitter. From my understanding, twitter is like a normal blog except a shorter format and more famous people. I just discovered Neil Gaiman is on the twitter. Some people have even become twitter addicts, i.e. people who cannot help tweeting, a tweet being a post on twitter, or someone who is on the tweeter. I don't know, because I'm not getting involved in this. I prefer the long ranting format that blogs allow. I was hoping to go longer, but I don't think that this is all I can manage at the moment. Well, at least it's longer then a twitter post.

Writing yer blaa-blaas out

2009-05-02T18:10:00.000-04:00

I went to the cafe today, mainly since I may or may not be getting involved in Roger's exhibition. I sat there fiddling away on my laptop and didn't really get anything done, except look up stuff on how to write a murder mystery and an interesting story that could turn into a murder mystery at a later time. I never really got to talking about how I might get involved in this exhibition, since Roger suggested that I could do some poetry because of how he was impressed with my Manifesto. In the end we didn't talk that much. Roger's a pretty quite guy, and I don't think I can do a reading at his show anyways. I don't have anything prepared and I can't think of anything appropriate to read.

In the department of writing, my novella seems to be coming along. I'm going to have to edit it up on a different computer then my laptop though, because I simply don't have the ability to properly edit it on my laptop because the mouse won't let me cut and past on the word processor. Along with this, I also want to get started on another short story, and while I'm editing my novella I can write something shorter. I don't have an idea. I'm toying with writing a Jack Monsairty story, but I see the Monsairty stories as primarily mysteries. Maybe I should try writing something about Jack that isn't a mystery, just a straight up story. I can't have him detecting all the time.

I also talked to Rowan, and he suggested I just write little sketches of characters. I've written two I think are alright based on characters for WoD games I've toyed with making. He suggested I write about actual people, and I may do that at some point soon. At the moment I just feel a bit inadequate. Maybe it's because I woke up so late and I have been rained on. Anyways, I'm going to type this up therapeutically to see if I can't get something out of this.

As I spoke of last post, I want to write metaphysical mysteries. These will be most prevalent in two novels I have planned, which will both be mysteries of a sort, but before that I'd like to get a handle on the mystery-genre. I want to try my hand at writing a mystery or to before I get onto those novels. But now that I think about it, I don't really want to write a mystery at all. The mystery format tends alot towards plot, and I want to concentrate just on the character. The mystery seems to be a hollow puzzle (was it Ms. Scarlett in the Library with a pipe wrench?) where as the questions I want to ask are more metaphysical (Is Modernist Jesus real or is he just a prank of Gertrude Stein and a secret cabal of critics?). But also, the Big Novel is a murder mystery, but it's also a bit straight forward as the reader knows what happened before we even get to it. I might not even introduce the novel until page 150, where as in a traditional murder mystery you have the murder in the first 50 pages, and not know who the killer was unless it's Colombo or something. I'm also worried I might start relying to much on the mystery plot structure and I don't want to be seen as a mystery writer, I want to be scene as a writer of Great Literature who just so happens to write the odd mystery, but in a Borges-Eco sort of way.

Ah, this isn't helping. I'm going to shut this off and leave you here.

Manifesto and Mystery

2009-05-01T15:32:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I meant to talk about my first real attempt to start an art movement. I think that I may have gotten somewhere at Waterloo, but I'm starting to think that my hometown can be a much better place to start because I know more writers and artists here.

Basically, I'm working on a Manifesto, a Magic Naturalist Manifesto. I don't want to get to involved just yet, but I already talked to two friends. Let's call them Roger and Rowan. Roger is a painter I've known for awhile and when I showed him what I have done for the Manifesto he was very impressed. We then ran into Rowan, who's a retired actor and a sort of elder statesmen of the local poets, at least in my opinion. He didn't like the idea of a Manifesto as such, so I doubt he'll sign it. I appreciate that, since in the Beat Generation of my life, Rowan fills a posistion somewhat akin to William S. Burroughs, except without the drugs and the homo-sadism, which is a good thing.

I'm not going to get to much into Magic Naturalism, except that it is my first attempt at a form of Remodernist Literature. In the end it will probubly only apply to myself, but Roger is pretty interested in it and I think I may have set something off. I've been interested in writing a Manifesto ever since I read the Remodernist one, and if I ever get this into a legitimate movement with people in it besides me and Roger, I may try setting up a magazine. I may just end up editting a major magazine as "The Magic Naturalist Issue," which according to a podcast I liseaned to on starting your own poetry movement should have four really good poets or writers, which can (and will) include me, as well as commentary. The commentary may just be my copy of the Magic Naturalist Manifesto. But again, this is only being made as a pattern that I can follow. Remodernism, while a great idea, lakes the neccesary structure that I find neccesary, not that Magic Naturalism is structured, it's just a list of ideas about writing and art and things like that.

I am thinking about writing in the mystery genre, at least as a format, but I'm not sure I want to write murder mysteries. I have a few ideas for murder mysteries, but I'd like to try something more like Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday," which isn't really a murder mystery, no one is murdered, but I would like to do something that is pretty heavy on the metaphysics. To do this I realize I need to read a lot of mysteries. I'm going to try and read as much Chesterton as I can. So far I've only read seven Chesterton stories, one book "The Club of Queer Trades," which was amusing and a Father Brown story called "The Resurrection of Father Brown." I think that Chesterton's prose can be a bit...Edwardian let's say, so I may just try reading other things. I still have two Rex Stout novels I need to read, and I do enjoy Rex Stout's writing style.

Andrea Gibson

2009-04-30T22:32:00.000-04:00

If you aren't moved by this woman, dig a hole because you are already dead.

2005 Words!

2009-04-27T15:38:00.001-04:00

Well, my writing slump has been kicked in the ass. I have written 2005 words today for a novella that I plan on writing for the Malahat Review Novella Contest. For the next month or so this project will take most of my time. I plan on getting around 2000 words a day, and if I do this I'll have the first draft done in 10 days. I could probably do better then that because I have a bit of it written already, I just need to get it all in. Maybe tomorrow I'll drop by Revel and email what I have done already to me and edit on my home computer.

The Malahat Review is a Canadian magazine, and they offer annual writing contests for novellas or long poems. Since I don't think I'm that good of a poet as of yet, I'm going to send them a novella. If I finish this, it will be my longest work of fiction, coming between 10,000 to 20,000 words. I'll be hooking up a little progress counter on my blog. And on this post I will make a link to the Malahat Review Novella Contest Website for any of my readers, and I know a couple of you are writers, who would be interested in this.

And since I know a lot of writers, if any of you want to send me anything on writing contests that would be great. Here's the link for the contest, and I hope that people read into this.

Update on University and Spiritual Journey

2009-04-23T17:44:00.000-04:00

My Exam is finished. I am officially a free man. I even got my Ginsberg essay back. I got an 85, which I feel a bit disappointed about because that was a damn fine essay.

As many of you may know, I have been looking into the Western Mystery Tradition as I like to call it, which has lead me to develop an interest in the Kabbalah, or Qabbalah, or Cabala. However you spell it, I have recently been in contact with the guys who run the Chasing Hermes podcast. One of them, Jason, has dropped by and said hello. I emailed him earlier, because I had the Naos dream. His theory is that Naos represents a higher order of my being and thus might be more interesting then stuff that one usually sees in lucid dreams. He also made the comment that he would really like read what the "Kabbalistic" literature I come up with, but warned me that I should avoid getting to preachy. I agree with him frankly, because preachy writers can be annoying, unless it's Robert A. Heinlein because then I can giggle about all the polyamory. He he, Heinlein you dirty old bastard. Anyways, I don't think that will be to much of a problem. I already have plans for religiously themed novels, and I hope they can turn out something like Dostoevsky's work. He writes what is basically religious-themed works, but it's still pretty cool.
Amyways, I'm looking into the Western Mystery Tradition very seriously now. I'm reading a book on Kabbalah by a guy called Gareth Knight. He seems to be alright, but I'm still a student of this and have yet to put it into practice. What I have got is that meditation is very important and that the Western Mystery Tradition emphasises living in this current world, as compared to the Eastern Mystery Tradition, which doesn't care so much for this world. I know a guy who can teach me meditation, but he comes from the Eastern school. It may be the same thing basically. I also had a lecture David Lynch made about how meditation has helped him with his movie that seemed interesting. I hope to apply these very soon. Now that I don't have an exam to worry about I probably will. I will also be looking into lucid dreaming and astral projection, since it seems like fun and might give me a few ideas for stories or poems.

Naos Dream

2009-04-20T23:10:00.001-04:00

I forgot about this for awhile, but I feel I need to bring this up. Last night I dreamed I meet Naos, but my life was different. My family all lived in the same room, and slept in the same bed but not because we were poor but because everyone did it. I also had a Tarot deck based on Hindu Mythology and a Rama action figure. Then I meet Naos. I rescused him from a riot, because he was tied up to something. I think he was being sold as a slave. I ended bringing Naos back to my room and we talked about Tarot. I can't remember much else.

This is the first time I meet Naos in a dream. This is interesting, since I was liseaning to a podcast on astral projection, and dreams are the first step. I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could meet Naos and Helen and other fictional characters in my dreams or in Astral Planes. I wonder if I'll dream about Naos again? This could prove very interesting. Can I meet the characters I make in my dreams? If any nice friendly astral travellers are reading this I would appreciate advice on this.

I miss University

2009-04-20T21:57:00.000-04:00

I miss University. I know that I was lonely, stressed and the room smelt funny but I had freedom. Living with your parents tends to lessen the affect of freedom, since know I have to think about how my decisions affect my family. Also, my allowance is down to $20.00 every two weeks. I accsidently brought this up, and my dad stared at me funny so I may not even get the 20 anymore. I need to get a job, which I don't feel that good with. I have very poor work experience. The only thing going for me is that I'm a student, and I need a job.

Anyways, back to University...I really have nothing else to say. I just miss the relative freedom of University. As well as the regularlly scheduled meals. I'm still getting the basic three squares at home, but at University it ran on a clock. Every night at 5 I had dinner and I knew what I was eating, except on Wednesday when I had to eat at 5:30 and even then I had a vague idea of what it was.

I got all this way because I was just at Univesity getting all my stuff out of there. I know am out of University. I just have to get my exam done and that's it. I'm gone for 4 months. I'm a bit sad about that.

Concerning Billy Childish

2009-04-19T15:56:00.000-04:00

I have never been this interested in an artist my father has not perviously heard off. This musical artist is one Billy Childish, who I discovered in my reaserch into Remodernism. He's one of the guys who wrote the Stuckist Manifestos, and has painted, written novels and poems, and plays really good garage rock style music. The next album I buy off of Itunes if going to be a Billy Childish album, and if I get two I'm throwing "Frank's Wild Years" in there. It's a Tom Waits album, probubly my favorite Tom Waits album. My dad has it on vinyl.

Anyways, to fix my Billy Chilldish fix I searched Youtube for videos of him in concert. In responce I have put up these two videos of Billy Childish, live in concert. He's British.

Mostly About Kabbalah

2009-04-18T15:17:00.003-04:00

Something appears to be up with this computer. I think I am approching the time when I need to change my virus protection. Who's idea was it for computers to have viruses anyways?

Most of my time since I got the letter about Remodernism has been concerned with writing outlines for my English exam. I am going to have to answer three out of the six questions I have been given and I am writing outlines to give me an idea of what happened. So far I've planned out most of them or have an idea of what I'm going to do with half of them. After that I will be looking for a summer job, so I have money to go to Revel and buy books. My parents have me on 20 dollars every two weeks, which is a bit less then what I used to have. 20 dollars per week. Apparently Allen Ginsberg had 15 dollars a month when he was at University. He also was obsessed with Neal Cassady, who wasn't interested in Allen in that way though apparently they did have sex. I feel like a kindred spirit to Ginsberg in many ways, and I'm hoping to learn from his mistakes so I don't make them. It's very easy for me to fall head over heals in love with someone, it has happened before. So far I haven't been overwhelmingly obsessed with someone.
I'm starting to wonder how much of my life I should put down in my fiction. For awhile I thought this may be a bad idea, but I think that it would be a nice place to start. I don't want to be one of those writers who just rewrites his own life into fiction. I think I can do that, but most of my story ideas are leaning towards historical-occult fiction with various esoteric Judeo-Christian overtones. I'm thinking about looking into this sort of thing, I've been toying with studying Kabbalah for a long time now, ever since I read Promethea, and will be doing it in the fall since I am defenetly taking the Kaballah course. I'm probubly one of the few people who didn't get into Kabbalah through Madonna these days. To be honest, if your going to get into Kabbalah then it would probubly best to get into it from a comic book written by a British man who hasen't shaved since the Thatcher administration, studies the Western esoteric tradition and once saw a fictional character he invented in a bar then a pop singer from the 80s with a coffee table book about sex or something like that. Or you should at least learn it from an old Jewish guy. Also, selling Kabbalah water for $2000 dollars is probubly the stupidist thing I've heard off since, well bottled water. Water should be free and should not have anything to do with ancient mystic paths unless it is a metaphor for something, like rebirth or something.

Basically, what I know about Kabbalah is that it is supposed to be an "operating program for the human soul." Besides the Promethea comic book, most of what I know is from a podcast on the know defunct, Out There. Out There is a pretty good podcast if you want an introduction into the world of occultism, conspiracy theories, fringe science and weird stuff like that. Some of the episodes freaked me out, such as the one about 9/11 truth and another on 2012, but others such as Kabbalah and the episode on James Shelby Downard that proved to be very interesting. It's really something of a crap shoot on the affect, but either way alot of the stuff I hear on this will probubly worm it's way into my writing. I'd like to do a conspiracy novel based on the writings of James Shelby Downard at some point, but were talking about Kabbalah. Basically, it's very complex, has a cool tree thing and will give it's practitioner the gift of Prophecy, which is something that sounds pretty cool. If memory serves, then to practice Kaballah one must get involved with making humanity better while studying alot of ancient texts, specifically the Bible but you can use it on anyting according to the person who read it. I imagine that the Orthodox Jews would say, no you can only use the Bible, but I imagine that you could use the Bible as a sort of basic text and everything else can be a sort of spring off of that. It works too, because apparently people who study English Literature do much better if they're familiar with the Bible, because it's the basis of Western Literature. I can connect the Bible to all of the books I'm reading now for instance. The Brothers Karamazov, easy. Dostotevsky's work is fundamentally Christian. What's Bred In The Bone, deals a lot with Christianity's affect on the main character at the moment, and it also has an angel (The Lesser Zadkiel) and a daimon who's name I forget, who are working on said character's biography. Also, I wrote an essay recently about Allen Ginsberg that compared him to an ancient Hebrew Prophet, only with more homoeroticism. Not sure how Jews would take to most of this, but I'm sure they can admit that Christians are really just unclean slightly-pagan Jews, mainly since most Christians aren't going to kill the Jews for saying that and because it is basically true. I'm comfortable with being a bad pseudo-Jew myself, I may even work on becoming more Jewish one day.

Well, that is all for my musings today. I'm going to talk with a friend of mine now.

I Am Remodernist

2009-04-15T15:08:00.000-04:00

Better make this quick, since there is going to be an outage at 2:00 AM in California. As many of my readers may know I am looking into the art movement Remodernism, which is in protest against conceptual art and spritually bankrupt postmodernism. As I am a writer, and most Remodernists are painters this causes some problems, but thankfully Remodernist is a do-it-yourself movement. I imagine that if I am writing something then it should have a plot and get an emotional reaction and have something interesting to say about humanity and the world it inhabits.
Anyways, awhile ago I wrote an email to the folks down at Stuckism International, which is the head-quarters of the first Remodernist movement. They're British. Anyways, They gave me a reply today about getting involved in their movement. This just has contacts I should make, with some guys called Jesse Todd Dockery and Bill Lewis, who I will contact as soon as I can. They're involved in Remodernist literature or at least interested in it. I'll be sending them emails as soon as I can. I might even send them copies of my work, or at least tell them if they're interested I'll send over a few short stories or poems. I really hope that this could liberate my voice as a writer, because if I am to be a truelly great writer then I'll need my own voice, something that people will read and say "Oh, they're is Dylan C.G. Thomas. This is a Dylan C.G. Thomas book." I want my last name to be an adjective. Also, it is about time Postmodernism was taken down and we put up another major theory for a few decades. Remodernism seems as good a movement as any. Also, one of it's major proponents, Billy Childish, has a few novels and poems out. I'll have to get them and see if there any good.
In other news I am slowly getting my outlines for my English exam statred. I have finished one, and worked a bit on two today although I only got any meaningful detail done on one, mostly because I would like to write that one so I can complain about David Antin, who I think is a smug bastard who dosen't know what it really means to be a real wordsmith. If Remodernist painting is against conceptual art, then Remodernist literature is against David Antin, and John Cage to, because that whole "Writing Through the Cantos," thing I had to attempt to read was just a trick and one I am not amused by. So Ezra Pound is odviously seen through his art. So what? Art should have ego in it and if your so obsessed with the elimination of the ego then don't get involved in art.

Well, that's about it. Have a nice day.

What Happened After Easter

2009-04-13T10:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I was in a bad mood when I mad that last picture. I'm going to need to blog like crazy to get it out of sight. It shouldn't be to hard either since I've got stuff to talk about. I saw West Side Story, which was alright. It wasn't that impressive and I was with a friend of mine who has been a professional actor so I did get to here everything that the people did wrong with it and now I have an image of what West Side Story would have looked like if my friend was directing or doing something and that is way more impressive then the one that I watched. Kind of looks like "Do the Right Thing," only without as many black people and swing and latin music instead of Public Enemy.

Also Easter turned out to be pretty good. I ate most of my weight in chocolate it seems and since I go to a pretty laid-back Church we watched "Chocolat" which was a pretty cool movie. I was really ticked off at the priest for not showing any backbone until the end and I may have called him a whore of the state in my mind, I hope I called him a whore of the state in my mind as laid back of a Church as I go to I don't think that would have gone over well. I also ended up watching "The Secret Life of Bees," with my family which was a very good feel good movie. I don't know how far Dakota Fanning's career can go after this because she's starting to loose that cute kid vibe. I'm not a movie expert, so I probably shouldn't go into to much detail on her future career. I also tried to watch a Russian movie called "Andrei Rublev," about an icon painter in Medieval Russia but I feel asleep because it was in Russian and black and white and I was to tired to deal with what appeared to be deep philosophical undertext, so I'll have to rent it another time. That's all I really feel like blogging about at the moment, so I hope this keeps you all informed.

What's So Good About Good Friday?

2009-04-10T13:36:00.000-04:00

I'm honestly thinking that at some point I may stop being a Christian and it will largelly have to do with Easter. There is something horribly masochistic about a religion that commemorates the death of it's founder and GOD with his execution, says it is all for the best and then goes and calls the day after he was killed Good Friday. This is ugly, fatalistic and pretty messed up when you look at it.

I'm honestly doubting if I was ever really Christian. Thank God I live in this time period because I'd be killed if I brought this up anywere else, or at least ostriszed from society which may not be totally bad. But I don't think I'm a Christian, just because I can't wrap my head around this whole Crusifixtion thing. How can we celebrate what is essenstially the state and church sponsered murder of an innocent man as the redemption of mankind and still accept the concept of original sin, least aways create the concept of original sin.

So, I'm still looking for a new religion. In the end I may end up with syncretism. I just would like something to believe in that isn't a human personality or have a long history of lies and confusion. I hope this doesn't make me vulnerable to brainwashing cults.

Elaboration on Short Rant

2009-04-08T15:29:00.000-04:00

So as you may have read from yesterdays post, I'm worried I don't have enough experience to be a good writer at the moment. This is a problem as the themes that I plan on writing involve revolution, God and our relationship with God and various other Metaphysical concerns. I'm cool with it now, but I think I should go over it.

To deal with this I'm going to try writing short stories from my own experience. I'm going to write things about my friends and family and the life that goes on here. I'm still going to write my more fantastic material, but at the moment I'm going to try writing at least three people stories involving my home town. I think I got two of them, but I think they can easily evolve into science fiction mysteries, sort of like "Fringe," which I watched last night. God that's a great show. Maybe I could write four or five over the summer. That would be awesome, and maybe the two short stories about Naos and Helen and one with Jack Monsairty.

I'm just talking to a friend of mine, we'll call him George Ripley. He's a science guy and he was telling me that I'm ahead of my time because I'm autistic and don't drink coffee or alcohol or take drugs. As such he says I'm evolutional ahead of my time or something like that. I don't think I understand what he said or even if it's true, but it makes me feel a bit better about my place in the literary canon.

Short Rant

2009-04-07T19:21:00.000-04:00

My ultimate goal is to become an Artist. This will mainly involve writing, but I plan on seeing if I can work drawings in as well. At the moment I've put my novel on hold, and I'm thinking about writing short stories about my friends at home. So far I'm at a creative slump. I don't think University was helpful in unleashing my writing, so far it seems to have suppressed most of it and here I go again whining about how I haven't written as much as I feel I potentially can and now that I'm home I can't help but complain and complain about how I haven't reached my full potential as a writer. I'm 19 God-damn it, I need to live more then that. I want to be a writer so bad, I need to go out there and live I need to experience things. I need to know how to live, to find experience and take that back with me.

So, other then that things are going well for Dylan. I'm doing well and await my final English Exam. I'm also reading The Brothers Karamazov and a Kinky Friedmen novel. Boy are my readings varied.

Going Home

2009-04-03T13:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going home today. I'm going to come back two more times for school, maybe more for the Changeling LARP. They've finally called me about it, and I hope I can get in on it.

Well, what can I say about my first term. It had it's ups and downs, but I'm a bit worried about were it is going. Mom is talking about it like it's work, which I don't think University should be. I think University should be more fun, because I'm learning all kinds of new things. I'm not even sure that I should think much about work after reading Pieper. I think I'm going to keep my copy of "Leisure, the Basis of Culture," since I think it has some good points. My religion books and the Plato Dialouges I'm going to give to the Campus Used Bookstore. I'm also keeping all the English books I got. Which would be "The Green Man," by Kingsley Amis, "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes," by Angus Wilson, "The Rebel Angels," by Robertson Davies, "Maus, Vol 1" by Art Spiegelmen, and "The In-between World of Vikram Lall," by M.G. Vassanji, because my mother would like that one. One thing I can say about University, by the time I'm out of here I'll have a much more varied library.

Now of course, there is the issue of finding a job. I'm not going to completely bang that idea, because I don't have much experience with jobs and as such can't be called to make any large judgements on them, and it would give me something to do and money. I don't really have much drive to be a working man however. I want to be a writer and that is all. I'm also starting to wonder if being a career writer is a goal. That isn't to say that I don't want a career as a writer, but I also don't want to have a career as anything else. It's a bit confusing, I know. I've been reading alot of Remodernist Manifestos recently. Remodernism is a theory of art that is against conceptual art because of it's spiritual bankruptcy. I've been studying this and am trying to figure out if this applies to my work, or how I can become a Remodernist. I've never been involved in an actual art movement before, and I think Remodernism has some good ideas. The problem is it seems to be mostly made up of painters, so if anyone is going to figure out what Remodernist Literature looks like it's going to have to be me.

Play It Again Sam

2009-03-30T23:48:00.000-04:00

It's late and I'm not really sure what I'm going to be telling you guys about. I'm very confident about the Ginsberg essay, I have six days till first term is over, oh and apparently I have to take an English Proficiency Exam on...the 7th of April, which is...next tuesday. After that it's home and in all likelyhood a job of somekind. I'll have moved out of my dorm, back into my room and will be getting short stories written. This will be a summer of short stories, since I'm going to give Last Dance Revolution a rest until such a time as I can write it, probubly when I find a woman who returns my romantic interests.

Well, that honestly seems to be it. Other then that my toe started bleeding after a long walk. I have a bandaid on it now though, so it's alright. I'm a bit unnerved by this. Oh, and I may be making a speech on my life as a person of Autism in September. Maybe someone could film it and I could put it up here on my blog. I'd have youtube videos...of me.

That's all, good night everybody.

Seven Days Till Summer

2009-03-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

If there were any great legendary bloggers I'm sure that they would blog on a regular basis. Of course, if they were great bloggers, then they would simply great and only blog once a year but it would be such good writing nobody would care. But since blogging is more of a diary format for exhibitionists then it would probubly be more of writing close to every day, or at least banging out something on a regular basis.

Well, I suppose I can use the excuse that I have been busy not doing any school work. I am however, very close to finishing the Ginsberg essay. I have six pages out of the minimal ten, and I think I could easily get to that. Maybe even nine pages if I think of what else should go in here. At the moment I doubt if I'm writing mainly about poetic speaker, but I'm sure it could be read that way.

Also, my favorite home cafe has undergone changes. I wish I had before or after pictures to show you guys, but I never bothered to do that. I checked with the lady who owns this place, whom I will call Nora Dalloway, and she said it's alright if I show you how it looks from the back...

And here's how it looks from the front, with the owner Nora Dalloway.

Nora is the person with the blurry arms. Well, a friend just walked in, so I'm checking out.

I Found the Centre of Changeling Activity in Waterloo

2009-03-23T15:00:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone. Special shout out to Shelia who disapeared for a long time and is back now. I thought she had gone, good thing I kept the link. Notice how I stole your idea for stealing pictures Shelia.

Well, I should be doing a tone of reading, but instead I'm back at Cafe 1842, which apparently is also the place were the Waterloo Changeling the Lost LAARP meets. What do you know? I've been meaning to get in on that, and I've been working through various characters. I've settled on a version of the Changeling character I had in a latter game, since he would work better here. I did some editing, and he's turned out to be something of a Dean Moriarty type character with some turn over from reading "The Savage Detectives," by Roberto Bolano, and I changed his surname from "Ryder" to "Faraday." So I'll be playing a Changeling car thief and poet with Amnesia, Nightmares and a lost girlfriend named Lucinda who he is desperatly searching for. He's probubly going to join the Spirng Court and write the occasional poem on other members. There's a bit about some Gorilla Warfare that took place before I came in that I'd like to write about, because that sounds fun. I might put it up for you guys.

So, while I've been sitting here I've been working out a plan for the week ahead, since I need to get alot done. As of yet it is incomplete, since I need to figure out how many pages of "The Inbetween World of Vikram Lall" to read per day. I'll have to check back at home. But today I'll have to do the following (at least).

Read "The Squatter" for English
Read the last bit of an essay in "Leisure."
Write a response on how affective I found the Essay Workshop
Work on my Ginsberg Essay

I'd say also read 25-50 pages of Vikram Lall too. So far it's alright I guess. To be honest these bildugsroman type books can be a bit annoying, since I'm reading about the guys childhood. Something about it reminds me of "Midnight's Children," only it's in Kenya and there's nothing involving various a thousand and one magic children. Both the main characters are Indians though, it's just that Vassanji's book is in Kenya. The British Empire would take Indians to India to work on railroads and put something between them and the native's spears. Or something like that. Anyways, I wouldn't call this one of the best novels I've read so far. I preferred Robertson Davies, maybe because I could feel more of an emotional connection with Davies and his mind set. Shame I can't meet him because he's dead.

Constantine's Sword Continued: The World and The Holocaust

2009-03-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

We're discussing Maus in English, so I thought that this would be a good time to continue my thoughts about Constantine's Sword, this time dealing a bit with anti-semetism as I will be speaking about the Holocaust. For readers who are not familiar with the previous post, I am setting up a link to the first post here. I don't know if that post has much to do with this, but I figured it's related to the same topics, and I might as well add it.

So, the Holocaust and the Nazis have been popping up pretty often in my English course, which is why I'm writing this. This is a response to a question raised by my professor. I thought it would be a good idea to do this as a blog post. Maus is pretty directly about the Holocaust, since it's the memoirs of the author's father and his father's survival in Auschwitz, but imagery of World War Two and the Holocaust has been popping up in lots of places in our readings. We've seen it in the first three poems, which were there to deal with World War One, but we've seen reference to the Holocaust and the Nazis in Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath, Robertson Davies and probably a few others I've forgotten. Ironically, I also read Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature of the Americas around this time, which while being a Spanish novel or anthology can apply to this. The question that my professor raised is, why does everything seem to lead back to the Holocaust?

I've been trying to understand this myself. It's not like people kill other people, heck this is probably going on right now. But why does this particular thing have so much affect on us. You could slap on a picture of a swastika to something and automatically that thing is tainted.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have any good idea why this is. In the absence of any rational exclamation, I will go on to non rational. My guess is that the Nazis made a giant psychic wound that we have no understanding of how they did it. They may not even have conciously known that they were doing it, except for a select few but those were all shot or activly trying to do this. Because of this hole in the fabric of the universe, our conciousness is trying to process all this information. Since the Nazis were at the right time and place in history to pull this off, they have been able to do this, and we are dealing with their psychic refugee. I really don't think something like this is out of the question. Some of the Nazis, especially Himmler were into weird magick-with-a-k stuff like this. I'm not saying this is there actual plan, but maybe I'm wrong about this more, and the fact I can apply something as heighnous as a gouging out the collective unconcious of mankind is just something that comes from this. Maybe that was what the Holocaust was, and since it got more press then other mass genocides it was given more precident.

Once, as a child, I had a fantasy world I would play in and fight various fictional enemies in. One of these were alien Nazis from another demension. I didn't really understand what the Nazis were for, at least not in the big picture. I knew that they were evil, and that was all that matters. This dosen't have to do with anything in this, but I thought it would be important to bring up. It may be important to note that they were also the opposite of my good-semi elvish species the Draan. I have recently decided that once I get around to creating the Draan language, Hebrew will be a major influence.

I'm Still Alive Everyone

2009-03-14T21:16:00.000-04:00

I'm running against my own body and sleep deprevasion. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I have to write six more pages in my Ginsberg essay that I don't know if I can write. I know what I'm writing about, I just can't get my thoughts in order. God, I'm so tired. That's what I've been for the past few days. Tired, I feel almost Beat in the Beat Generation sense. I even had a religious experience that I'll write about sometime soon I hope. I have to run by what I've written on Monday to four other English students and I have a test on Aristotle in philosophy. Aristotle god damn, he's the scientist! Plato will have been the Platonic form of cake compared to Aristotle. All this talk about rational thought is making me sick. I don't even believe that rational thought exists.

I'm so tired of all of this. I don't know how I'll get through the end of the year. I feel like I could collapse at anytime from mental exhaustion. I feel like I'm going through my days in a daze. I'm so frustrated that I can't finish what should be such a simple essay for me. It's Allen Ginsberg god damn it. I read Howl before I even came to University. He's my favorite poet. I should have had this finished days ago, but I'm not and it dosn't look like it's going to be finished tonight.

I finished Maus, which was good. I'm supposed to have that read for Monday. At least I've got something done, I also picked up a book on Howl and dropped off a resume for a job for summer. Were, my mom and I, are thinking that this summer I'm going to forgoe any classes. The job is as a dishwasher and shouldn't be to frustrating. The place seems to be a good environment. Small, quirky. I could write a few short stories about it, even a novel. I'll read some Lawrence and Davies and Pound.

Who Reviews the Watchmen Review?

2009-03-07T22:31:00.000-05:00

So, I just came back from the new Watchmen flick. I probubly should have seen this coming, another cheap rehash of an Alan Moore book.

Nah, I'm just kidding. The Watchmen movie is Awesome.

Well, I probubly should wait till the Awesomeness factor wears off so I can give an accurate review, but I'm a blogger so what does that matter. Most of these things have spelling mistakes anyway. Not only was it true to the spirit of Watchmen as is possible for the movie, it was also freaking awesome. The actors were good, and I especially liked the guy who played Rorschach. He did a very good job, and despite the fact Rorschach is a bit of a right-wing looney who spent way to much time looking into the abyss he is my favorite character.

Also, I want to make special refrence to the series of tableaus at the beginning of the movie. It did a really good job of mixing scenes from the Watchmen universe and the affect it hade on history. Scenes included Dr. Manhattan meeting with JFK, a shot of JFK being shot that pans out to the Comedian hiding behind a fence (not in the book, but possible), Andy Warhol showing his latest work "Nite Owl II" with Capote, and a reworking of that picture of the sailor kissing the nurse after WWII, only it's Silhouette who's doing the kissing and she's a woman. That must have caused some scuffle in the alternate history press. Best use of "The Times They Are A Changing," in a movie.

So, Watchmen. Good movie. Not the usual superhero movie, so parents don't take your kids. The characters are fetishists, sociopathic or largelly removed from the majority of the human race to the extent that they (he) is naked for most of the movie and moves of to Mars and builds a giant floating glass thing with his mind. Also, there is sex which is also a bit kinky considering that before hand the participants were in latex costumes. So, Watchmen good movie but it ain't Spiderman. It's much, much better in my opinion.

Hipsters and the Death of Cool

2009-03-07T14:17:00.005-05:00

I'm back home. Thought I'd blog, since I haven't blogged since the thing on Constantine's Sword. I've got nothing else to say about that movie for now, but I figure I should get back to it at somepoint.

I read an article on the Adbusters website. It's about hipsters, who are apparently the closest thing my generation has to a counter-culture. Problem is, they are completely devoid of any of the aspects that pervious generations hade. There are no sparkling dynamos, no mad men dreaming of spiritual fulfillment, it's more of long partying, modern decadence and "alternative fashion." The article left me with feelings of apocalyptic dread, which usually happens after I read Adbusters.

Of course, now I must ask the question. Am I a hipster? I don't think I'm a hipster, but I'm living in a time when hipster has appropriated the term of cool. To be honest, I think the idea of cool is dead. Nothing is cool anymore, because everything is trying to be cool. Which brings me to the fact that apparently, advertisers are reading my blog to determine if I am cool, and remarket what they find. This is troublesome. I do not want my apperance to become that of coolness.

Thankfully, I have decided that I am going to do the reverse of coolness. I am going to get something that look's like a Monk's robe and walk around in that. If they're is anything that isn't cool, it's a monk. No offence to monks though, but you guys really don't match up to what is generally considered cool. Therefore you should take that as a compliment. Therefore, I am going to be a coolness aestetic. I will see if I can talk my mom into getting me a large monk's robe, which I will walk around in. Mind you, it won't be an actual monk's robe, just one that will look kind of like a monk's robe. I'm pretty sure wearing an actual Monk's robe consitutes pretending to be a priest. Are monk's priests? Well, I'm going to probubly end up wearing monkish robes.

Constantine's Sword: Thoughts

2009-03-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

I kind of wonder what this movie has to say about my faith. I don't talk about my faith a lot, or my relationship with God. I admit we don't talk much, I don't know if that is a bad thing. The last time I can remember writing to God was when I wrote a poem about the fears I had about not being a good writer. I think that is a perfectly acceptable thing to ask God. You don't see many great Satanic novelists.

Anyways, I'm woolgathering. I just watched a movie called Constantine's Sword, which is largely about the history of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, but also talked a lot about the life of James Carroll, who wrote the book on which this movie was based and is also the main character if you have those in documentaries, and Evangelism in America. The Evangelism ties nicely into the Anti-Semitism, because it talked a lot about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ movie and a MegaChurch in Colorado Springs that was Evangelising to the Air Force. There was a scene where a pastor that acted kind of like some pop musician did some prayer service for a bunch of kids that had very militaristic overtones. This made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Anyways, I've been thinking about my identity as a Christian. As much as I don't like to show it, I'm a Christian more then anything, but I feel at odds with mainstream Chirtianity. As far as I'm concerned, Chirstianity sold out to The Man and I feel a great deal of contempt for that, especially after watching this movie. The treatment of the Jews alone by the Church, and the fact that most Christian leaders have done little or nothing to apologize makes me want to tear the first cross from whatever wall or necklace it's on, and stamp it into the dust.

Anyway, know I bring up my issue. How does this movie affect me? I'm pretty sure that it does affect me, even though I could concievably hide behind my Mennonite sect. Odds are, while Mennonites are largelly free of starting any wars (at least none that I know off), they did stand by for wars and a couple may have been anti-semites. But to be honest, while I am a Christian, I don't think of myself as a pracitsing Mennonite.

Ah, I'm tired. It's late. I'm going to bed. I'll write more tomorrow.

The Importance of Finding A Waterloo Cafe

2009-02-28T15:55:00.000-05:00

I've decided that today will be a day where I finally look into finding a cafe to frequent in Waterloo. The criteria for finding a cafe in Waterloo is simple, that it should provide cheaper services then Revel back home. I think that the one I am at curently, Cafe 1842, may be a good provider of this.

I don't really know why finding a cafe is important to me. I think it is part of my image as a writer, that I should hang out in cafes. I don't know if this is all writers, or just a certain kind of writer, but I feel that I am the kind of writer who should hang out in cafes. As such, there is a certain level of involvement in finding a cafe that one should frequent. I think Hemingway wrote a bit about that in "A Moveable Feast". I need to read that sometime.

The use of cafes is psychological though. I fear that it may have something to do with subliminal aspects of how a writer should act. I'm still consuming, I have bought a small hot chocolate, since my mother says that if I go into a cafe then I should buy something gull darn it. Well, I bought a hot chocolate, so that factor is taken care off. Still, is it a bad thing that I am consuming in the name that I look like a writer when I don't write enough? What is writing enough? Three pages of prose? One poem a day? I wrote a poem recently and while I'm here I'm going to type it up and send it around, see what everyone thinks. I'll probubly even manage something while I'm here. And mom, dad if your reading, don't worry. I do plan on doing stuff for English. I'm going to do a write up for Rebel Angels, and an outline for the Ginsberg essay.

Rethinking Mage Campaign (i.e. doing it in general)

2009-02-27T23:38:00.001-05:00

I'm starting my Mage campaign and I'm starting to wonder if I should fold it know before it gets any worse. I don't know if I can fully run the game I want to run with the people I have available to me. I feel that if I were to properly do this, I would need to spend much longer thinking up what will happen in what building, what I want to use to represent what is going on and what it all means. I'm looking at running this game as a work of Art.

I can't do that with the people I'm using.

I honestly don't think that I'm on the same page with these guys. They don't act the way I think a Mage should act. Maybe I'm being to controlling, but the feel of the campaign is completely off. One of the guys is middle management and he's going to be staying middle management. I mean, what kind of sick bastard would continue to be middle management after having what amounted to a religious experience? I'm probubly going to fold in the entire idea of this campaign, wait until I can find someone who actually think the way I believe a mage should think, and then do this game. Screw middle-management types. No real supernatural being of any kind would work in middle management.

On My Growing Interest in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

2009-02-21T17:13:00.000-05:00

Reading Week has come to a close. By tomorrow I will be back in the arms of my Alma Matre. Things are quickly coming to a head, as I have an essay to write and a philosophy test in the near future. I've decided that I am not a philosopher, or at least that the Ancient Greeks are not my area of expertise. I find most of Plato's writing to be dull and that they carry on for more then is necessary. When I read The Republic, I get bored and loose track of the conversation and when I read the summary I disagree with various points. This will probably be the last philosophy course I take.

It's time to take my major soon. I'm not really sure what it is I should choose. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a mix of English Literature and Religious Studies, but I've been thinking about looking into Medieval Studies. Specifically the bits right before or after the Renaissance. I don't know if I could take that more, but I think I'm more concerned with God then Man. Also, I'm getting a growing interest in the subject of the Middle Ages from all the books I'm reading. Stuff like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Rebel Angels, which deals a lot with Medieval Scholarship. I'd like to look deeply into the literature of this period, maybe even make it part of my thesis. Since I'm also interested in magic, as in the occult-hermetic practises, I'm probubly going to be looking in to see stuff about alchemy and kabbalah. Alchemy and Kabbalah are also appearing to be growing interests of mine, and I hope can learn something of them while I'm at University.

On Reading Howl for Carl Solomon

2009-02-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Howl again. I'm only starting to realize what a great poem this is. I've read it so much this year I'm beginning to see what a huge poem it is. I've just finished reading it again, and it was like passing through somewhere I've been before and seeing things I didn't notice before and it's like "Oh, I don't remember you." Mind you, Howl is generally about madness and a soulless materialist society that leaves no room for dreamers such as Ginsberg so it's not exactly a friendly reunion, but the sheer immensity of Ginsberg's vision is intimidating.

The subject of my essay is going to be poetic speaker in Allen Ginsberg's poetry. This is interesting because the poetic speaker is, at least on the literary level, Allen Ginsberg. This appears to be something very common with the Beats, especially Kerouac. I just realized that I told you all about this. Oh well, that's about all that's happened in my life, at least dealing with my essay.

CONTINUATION

I just realized that I have more to talk about. While reading Howl again I realized, along with how immense Howl is, how little time we spent looking at it in class. I mean, it basically a class and a half and I didn't really wholley agree with my professor's interpretation, which was that Howl was something to do with the oppression of youth. Well, it is, but that's not how I would put it. Yes, this deals with the oppression of the young by the old, but there is also the aspect of a spiritual void. I need to check if Howl was written after Ginsberg's Blake vision, because Allen Ginsberg's status as a modern prophet is something I'd like to explore.

Reading the Hump Week Time It Is

2009-02-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

I thought I had all my homework, then my Mom reminded me I have a major English essay that I should start on. So, at somepoint I'm going to settle down and bang out an outline. I'm really hoping I can do something on the poetic speaker in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, since the poems of Ginsberg are a) an interest of mine and b) come from a very personal place in Ginsberg so it would be interesting to examine the nature of the poetic speaker in Howl and America, which are the Ginsberg poems that I read in this class, and also before this class. If I had the chance, I'd write a comparison with poetic speaker and narrator in Kerouac and Burroughs as well. I'm thinking that personal experience is a very important factor in the works of the Beats. This is pretty odvious with Kerouac and Ginsberg, as they're work is based on their lives. This is also applicable to Burroughs, but for the most part Burroughs uses more symbolic aspects then Kerouac and Ginsberg. Burroughs also wrote about personal experiences in some things in Interzone, like the time he cut of his little finger to impress a guy but in the story it was a girl.

Other then the fact I should have completed much more work then I have at the moment, things are going pretty well. I'm sleeping int till 11, I'm hanging out at my favorite cafe and it looks like poetry nights are starting up again here sometime. Things are pretty good. I'm also working on a short story, that I have a really good feeling about. I've looked into various publishing houses and plan on sending out Godot is Dead to somewhere soon. I'm also thinking about sending out my poetry to the New Quarterly. Things are looking well.

I'm also starting to wonder if Kerouac didn't have something when he was going on about spontaneous writing. Now, I'm not going to start applying this to my novels, but I think that maybe writing stream-of-conciousness poetry may be something to try out. I'll look into applying stream of conciousness poetry in my work and show you the results. As a beginning writer I should be experimenting with as many methods as possible.

Naos is a Jewitch!

2009-02-15T22:16:00.000-05:00

You find the craziest things on Wikipedia. For instance, while fiddling around there I found out about jewitchery. It's Neo-paganism...for Jews! I know I havn't told you this, but I just want to say I love Jews. I love their religion, I love the sound of Hebrew, I love the fact that a Jew is similtaniously is a religious practise and an ethnicity which as a Mennonite I can relate too. If I had the balls, I'd become a Jews. Unfortunatly, I have tasted the sweet, sweet taste of bacon and I do not think I can give that up. But still, I have decided that Naos is going to be Jewish, hence the last name Ben-David.

Off course, Naos is not a conventional Jews. For one thing, he is also heavily tattooed so he can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Also, for awhile I decided that his mother was not a practising Jew, but a sort of neopagan. However, with the discovery of Jewitchery, I can reconcile Naos' Jewish identity with his pagan upbringing. Thank you Wikipedia for your help.

English Mid-Term

2009-02-13T09:21:00.000-05:00

I'm tired. I want to go home. I want to sleep in a descent bed and not think about University for a week. It turns out I won't have to worry about it for a weekend however, and even then I still have to read the Republic. But the Republic is nothing I worry about, it's my English mid-term. I'm holding on to the end of the perverbial stick and all I want to do is to go to sleep for a few hours without the damn Ipod going of at 7:50 every day.

So in other news, I'm back to Aspie Diaries. I like that name better then Notes from the Bunker. This blog is going to be Aspie Diaries for years and years. When I have written the first four novels, then this will still be The Aspie Diaries.

And that's basically it. Aspie Diaries again, and tired and want to go home.

600!

2009-02-10T19:16:00.002-05:00

Well, it's finally here. Post 600. It's been little over four years since I started this blog and my how far I've come. Here I am in University, a published short story that has meet with high praise (though only through people I know), and already I have a small circle of friends. Yep, things are looking good for Dylan.
Other then that, things are getting pretty heated. I have two tests this week, one in Religious Studies and one in English. The date of a Religious Studies test is as of yet unanoced because that's how my current RS teacher roles, but I'm pretty sure that today is the next test. After that I have a free week which will be spent mostly with reading Plato's "The Republic," which will be followed by a test on Tuesday about what we learned. I'm hoping to do much better on this test then the last Philosophy test I took. I got a 9.5 out of 21 on that one. Not pretty good, but I've been screwing around and winter isn't my good season. Mind you, I could just have been screwing around and overplaying this whole winter thing.
Other then that things are looking good. I have alot of confidence in the next tests. I'm feeling much more confident now that I've got a note taker in most classes. I have yet to get that done in Religious Studies mind you, but I think we're really close on that. Besides, Philosophy is the one I'm really worried about. It looks to be my hardest class this term, mostly because I'm not as interested in it as say Religions of the East, or 20th century English Literature 1945-present. I'm glad that I took the Philosophy and Religions of the East course mind you, because at the moment I'm seeing a few comparisons between Buddhism and Plato's The Republics, especially Plato's Metaphor of the Cave. I don't know if I'll take any more philosophy classes after this. Maybe the one on Existentalism and the one on Philosophy in literature, but other then that I'm going to stick with good old Religious Studies and Literature.

And to finish, please note the completely legitimate waking hour of 7:16 PM.

2, or Night Blogging Shouldn't Become to Much of A Problem

2009-02-06T00:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of postage recently, but I've been lazy. Anonymous, I read your comment and was touched. I hope your protests against the Chrurch of Scientology are going well.

Well, Thursdays as always are busy for me. Religious Studies, Philosophy, WoD and Social Activism. I'm really starting to loose interest in the WoD game. Mages are really annoying when you arn't playing one or another supernatural creature, especially when your character is your standard garden variety occultists, in which case they think your really pathetic. I wish we could go up against something like vampires, or werewolves for a change.

Also, I'm starting to think Hunter is my least favorite version of WoD rules. There's just something about being on the bottom end of the supernatural pecking order that dosn't help my enjoyment of fantasy. For awhile I've been thinking about setting up a Mage game, just because I've seen how the other people in my RPG group play Mage, and it just seems so, I don't know, not how I would do Mage. I think there is really room for really cool and weird stuff in Mage: The Awakening, like turn it into an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie. The thing is, I'm probubly going to be the only person that would get all the weird stuff. Consider the following...

NPC1: Welcome to the Consilium.
PC: Why is there a camel?
NPC1: Pardon?
PC: A camel, you have a camel beside reception.
NPC1: Yes. Yes, we do.
PC: Why is there a camel?
NPC1: (blank stare) Why shouldn't there be a camel? Are you feeling alright?
NPC2: It's alright, they've just awakened. They don't realize the Universe basically runs on symbolism.
NPC1: Oh, God. That's right. Takes me back to when I thought seeing a naked woman with a snake in each hand was impressive. My, how far we've
come.

So, yeah that would basically be my Mage campaign. Mind you, I'd work in a whole bunch of stuff about the Eternal Battle in the Supernal Realm and fighting the Seers of the Throne and stuff like that, but I'd do it in as esoteric a way as possible, because something in Mage: The Awakening tells me that that is the way Mage is supposed to be played.

In the University Department, I have a week to finish an essay on Arranged Marriage among Hindus in Canada. I've done little in the way of research, but I do have two sources, one of which is what appears to be a book bent on describing South-Asian Arranged Marriage in as complete a detail as humanly possible. I'm hoping my Mom and I can look over this tomorrow when I go home. By then I should have a thesis and the first paragraph done. It would also be nice if I could get the final paragraph done so I have some idea of where it will be going.

One of these days I also plan on sitting down and watching "El Topo" again. I can't remember when was the last time I saw it exactly, but I figure I should watch it again sometime. Probubly over Reading Week. It would be a personal thing, as this movie only really appeals to me. My sister Delila has some strange bias against Surrealism for some reason, she prefers Futurism which I find boring, mechanical and full of Facists. Surrealism has the potential to be more fun, even if Andre Breton was a bit of a dick.

Sorry, mix up, 3...

2009-01-30T03:41:00.000-05:00

It's late, I know but I'm not in a good state. I feel overwhelned. Winter is always a bad time for me, I break apart easily. I'm skipping class tomorrow because I can't stand leaving this place. I can't stand the place I'm in right now. Sometimes I feel like this very building is working against me. I've socialized more then I ever have in my life and it's wearing me down. I'm falling behind in my schoolwork. This blog is all I'm writing and it's hardly what I would consider good literature.

I need to sleep now. If I can I'll write back tomorrow.

2...

2009-01-27T18:58:00.001-05:00

I promissed myself that I'd get to 600 posts by the end of this month and by golly I plan on keeping that promise.

Education is kicking in and I'm not sure that I've got myself in proper gear. I just took a test in Philosophy and I'm pretty sure I didn't do that good. While it is still my first year I'm not going to decide that University isn't right for me just yet. Since a staight job isn't what I'm looking for I don't think dropping out of University will be my best chance, at least not yet when my body of work is around three short stories, four or five poems and the half-written first draft of a novel. Once I get my novel done and read as much as I can from the magnificent collection that is the Dana Porter Library, then I'll consider dropping out. Since there is quite a collection at Dana Porter and the speed of progress is going at the speed of human right's progress in China then I'm probubly going to graduate around that time.

In my extra corricular activities, I am working on developing what I am referring to as "The Salon." Basically me and two other people I mentioned, who I am also not going to name because I don't have there consent, will be meeting together to start a Salon. What this is, I do not yet now, but it connects to my Beat Generation Fantasies in some way. What will be a new look at art and the world is what I'm hoping for, or failing that at least getting as many artistic minds together as possible. Were were all going to meet is up for grabs at the moment.

I've been considering writing an Art Manifesto for sometime. This is a problem for me because,

I haven't yet worked out my theory of Art
Once I write "rules" for my Art then I am at risk of becoming stale.

The idea of becoming an "experimental" writer is a bit interesting, but I'm probubly not an experimental writer. I may experiment with genre and narrative form, but I doubt that makes me an experimental writer. I am going to play with narrative (multiple narrators, fictional biography, combining novel and TV serial styles), but these have already been done. I'm also not sure I want to be a Postmodernist, because as I have written before, Postmodernism needs to be replaced with something before it grows stale, if it hasn't already.

Recently I watched a documentary about Alan Moore, one of my favorite living writers. In it, he mentioned the Alchemical maxim or doctrine of SOLVE ET COAGULA, which means to take apart and then put back together. Alan Moore linked SOLVE, the taking apart of, with Deconstructionism and Postmodernism, and replied that COAGULA, putting it back together and said that he believes people should be doing that more. This could be the replacement to Postmodernism, this Coagula. I should try this, but the problem is I'm not really sure that I know where all the pieces have gone, or what I should build in the place of what's been Deconstructed. Maybe I should deconstruct my own literature and then put it back together again.

3...

2009-01-24T12:54:00.003-05:00

Thursday was my WoD game, which as some of you may know I'm trying to play as a pacifistic character as possible. So far it's pretty good, though admittedly most of the time my character, Ezekiel Talbot, has been in the hospital for being mauled by a walking corpse. (He isn't saying zombie because he's an occultist and as far as he's concerned, zombies are poor possessed people from Haiti who are relatively harmless). So far the only real damage he has done to anything is himself because he failed a resolve check when entering the area of Death, and thus had to try killing himself in some kind of way. Since he doesn't carry any weapons it was pretty easy. After my character tried to crash the car the other characters decided to keep an eye on me. I'm thinking about giving my character advances in Psychology and making him the back-up exorcist for the group's Priest character.

On another note, I have returned to my hometown for what is basically a day. It's nice to be home, because my favorite cafe is home as well as a decent bed and shower. I actually feel clean after taking a shower at home, where at Conrad Grebel my skin just feels funny. And a tempurpedic mattress beats the old hard thing back at Waterloo any day of the week, especially Fridays and Saturdays when I actually use it.

But this weekend is not just about fun and games, I have much work to complete. For instance I've got a test in Philosophy on Tuesday. I need to look over everything I learned to prepare. This may be a bit difficult, as I haven't really paid as much attention in Philosophy, and it's hard to take notes because the teacher goes really fast. I haven't got note takers yet, but once I get all the forms filled out I'll have one.

Notes are really hard for me to take in class because when I finish them, the teacher has long gone on from that and I'm still on something that was said long ago and I've missed something really important. My way of interpreting information is like a quine line and when teachers try to give me information and I write down I can't do it. The information trips up on itself and I need to just listen. That's why note takers are so important to my education. Mom says that one day I'm going to need to stop using note takers, but I don't know if that will be possible.

I missed Barack's speech

2009-01-21T13:33:00.001-05:00

Yeah, what would be one of the most important events in my external life and I missed it. I had class as it turns out. I do plan on seeing if I can't catch it on the CNN website. Thank God for the Internet.

For the most part I spent yesterday in a state of exhaustion. Since I've been getting up at 7:50 each morning I have been and getting to bed at past midnight. Yesterday I was basically exhausted. I'm not sure how I got thorugh the day. I went to bed ata round ten or nine I think, after watching Miller's Crossing. I have to return that to Generation X today, and will probubly do so after Community Supper. Miller's Crossing was a very good movie, bye the way. I recommend it to everyone. Whatever the Coen Brother's Early period is, then that is one of the crowning jewels of it, though the best film of that time would probubly have to be Barton Fink.

The desire to organize my time still remains a precident for me, but I am also unwilling to sit down and actually do it. It would be invaluble to me, I know, but I still won't do it. I want to be able to do my actual writing, and if I were to organize myself I would have a better chance of doing that, but still I'm doing nothing.

First Day of Tango Lessons (belated)

2009-01-19T21:48:00.001-05:00

Sunday was free Tango and Swing Lessons. As many of my frequent readers may know, I took some Tango lessons back in my High School days and I was hoping to get back in the swing of it. Seems that my old Tango teacher and the new one have drastically different styles of teaching. I'm not sure which one I prefer, because with Max you just jumped right in, where as here we don't even get to use our hands. I have to press my chest up against my partner, which is a little frustrating but probably how the dance works. I'm still a bit frustrated because I don't really have it set.

On another good note I made a new friend. She was my dance partner for bits of the independent dance. We ended up hanging out most of the night. She's pretty cool, from Toronto and has a very jubilant nature that rubbed off on me. As usual, I will not name her derectly, but I think I gave her the address to my blog. If not, I'll email it to her.

Also, in more recent news, it's Obama's Inaguration. I have no idea when it is. It could be going on right now. I hope that I can see it, if not for only the historical factors involved.

The Big Winter Semester House Meeting Hoohow

2009-01-14T15:05:00.002-05:00

I really like the idea of posting pictures with my blog. I'm not sure why but it makes it look more interesting, though I admit that I'm just taking pictures of myself using my camera right now. This may in fact be one of the major pictures as I would like the picture in question to have something to do with the topic and the topic I blog the most about is myself.

So, tomorrow is the big get together at the WPIRG, which is the local youth activism organization on campus. This will take place almost immediatly after my WoD game, so I have a very busy day tomorrow. I'm not praticularly worried however, since Friday all I'll be doing is handing in an essay I'm very close to finishing. Well, essay isn't the proper word since it's only supposed to be three to four pages long. I have vague recollections about a time when an essay was that long, but that should be impossible, because everyone knows essays have six to ten pages and footnoting. Oh, those dark savage days with no footnoting, when man had to rely solely on MLA to write his essays.

Well, other then the essay things are pretty good. My only real problem is that I'm not talking to the Dons this week and I'm not sure that they got the message. Why am I not talking to the dons you ask? Well I'll tell you. It was the big house meeting at the beginning to the semester when everyone gets together to hear the rules. I find this annoying because I already know the rules and I had to put jeans on (One of the many advantages of having a single room). It is apparently a tradition of the dons to pull a Weird Al and rewrite the words to a major song that everyone will recognize and relate it to the duties of being a don. This semester was Kate Perry's "I kissed a girl (and I liked it)." (Spit). Since I was already ticked off, and Kate Perry (spit) has total irrelevance to me at best I am not talking to any of the dons until Monday. If anyone from my residence is reading this, and I know some of you are, please tell the dons about this new development. I am sorry, but I'm sticking to my principles, no matter how much they make me look like a snobbish University Arts Major who reads Artaud and Apollinaire and attends weird perfomance art things.