Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

I may or may not be slightly offline for a bit depending on my schedule during the last part of my vacation here and unfortunately, it looks like my blogging will suffer the most. Don’t worry, you’ll get by fine without me. I have faith in ya. But before I disappear for a few days, I just wanted to toss a few quick thoughts into the ether…

• Monster Squad. Nostalgia. Pure, simple, werewolf nut-kicking, fun-loving nostalgia… in a shiny DVD wrapper. I haven’t seen this movie in forever, and even though I have fond memories of it from my youthful days, I wonder what I’d think of it now. What if it doesn’t live up to the magical memories I have of it? I guess I’ll have to put the money down and find out. It’ll be a good excuse to kick back one night with extreme-buttered popcorn and chocolatey snacks.

• Cowboy abductions. From the writers of Children of Men and Iron Man, comes the script to the movie adaptation of the graphic novel, Cowboys & Aliens. What’s that? Haven’t seen even seen a trailer for Iron Man yet? Haven’t heard of Children of Men? Don’t sweat it, you’re definitely not alone. But hey, how could anyone mess up a cowboy story with aliens in it? Will they go all spaghetti Western? Will they run with a lovely dark comedy like Mars Attacks!? I don’t know. I didn’t even realize the graphic novel had finally been published back in December (and I have been keeping up with one of Platinum Studios other books, Hero By Night and still somehow missed the release of the GN). Guess I’ll need to check this book out now.

• Funtastic Four. I went in expecting a fun yet not too cerebrally-challenging flick and got my money’s worth out of the weekday matinee showing. Some cheesy bits, some corny lines here and there, but there was enough entertainment value to overcome all that. It probably won’t pull in any Oscar nods or rave reviews from the serious comic geeks, but for me, an entertaining movie is all I really need sometimes. Probably won’t make it back to the movies until the Transformers movie. Another one that looks fun. And considering my son’s eyes lit up when the trailer for it started before Shrek the Third, I don’t really think I have much of a choice with that particular movie (I was a proud geek parent when he recognized the Autobot emblem on the steering wheel at the beginning of the trailer).

• The young detective syndrome. Following more of the nostalgia trail, I’ll eventually check out the Nancy Drew movie. I remember growing up with my ink-smelling, papery friends… Nancy, those trouble-finding Hardy boys, and Encyclopedia Brown. When I was young, the library was my babysitter after school for a couple years, and those books all made my reading list (along with books on mythology, science, archeology, and psychic phenomenon). One of the nice side effects of a movie like Nancy Drew hitting theaters is the reruns of Nancy’s old TV show reappearing on TV for a little while.

I have more I’d like to ramble on about (that’s the theme of the blog after all), but I’ve glimpsed into the future where I see a very, long travel day ahead of me (and trust me, I’m not looking forward to eight hours in a car with a sunburn on my back from trying to eliminate my programmer’s tan too quickly).

I was playing around with my daily writing exercises (gotta keep those writing chops in shape) recently, and since this month I’ve been playing around with charging up my creativity, I started putting together a list of questions to push the brain cells into overload. One of the questions that really fascinated me dealt with looking backwards at your life… “If you could give one piece of advice to yourself in high school, what tip would you share?”

Coming up with advice is pretty easy in itself…

• Invest in Microsoft.
• Don’t wait so long before trying to get your writing published.
• Don’t let the doctors miss the tiny tear in your meniscus that led to the current condition of your knee.

Etc., etc., etc.

What really gets interesting with this question as a creativity drill is to think about what happens to your life if your younger self follows through on this advice. How does your life change? How does it affect the mish-mash of experiences that contribute to your personality? Who won’t you meet because of these changes? What won’t you learn because of this?

Simple actions take on a whole life of their own as they take your life for a spin down new paths. Take for instance a simple thought like, “What if I never joined the military?”

• Never would have gained the tons of confidence I earned in combat control and survival instructor training.
• Wouldn’t have a firsthand vantage point of the workings of the military… the knowledge of which opened the door to my first big writing project.
• Wouldn’t have met my wife.
• My job in computers could have developed differently and might not have put me in a position to ride out the bursting of the tech bubble.
• Wouldn’t have met the friends that put me in a position to meet and date (for a short while) a Victoria’s Secret model.
• Wouldn’t have gotten all the extra fiction writing experience from assisting my supervisor with writing performance evaluations.

And hundreds of other things also change. Some small, some big. But all of them because of that one choice. Gets kind of crazy when you think about it, but crazy’s good. Crazy gets you some fun material to work with in your writing. Crazy makes life a bit less boring.

Lessons learned from various eras of my life…

• Drama kills. On the inside. It eats away at you until you’re all chocolate Easter bunny hollow inside. And look at what drama does to people in soap operas. It kills there, too. Sure, they come back, but as soon as the drama ramps up again, they die. It’s the classic drama infinite loop. Character dies and turns out they were just lost for 5 years? Bring on the drama. Character gets reincarnated as an albino meerkat? Drama. Character dies but it turns out to be his twin brother who was actually bitten by vampires and destined to rise again as a blood-guzzling playah of the night. Yep, drama. You’ve been warned… drama kills.

• Breathing = teh good. Don’t bet someone you can hold your breath until you pass out. I’ve seen someone foolish enough to try this… and succeed. He woke up tied to a flagpole wearing nothing but shaving cream.

• Caffeine cocktails are counter-productive. We had projects that needed to get done overnight and one of my friends whipped up a concoction of No-Doz and coffee to help keep him awake. He was awake all right. Awake with hands shaking so bad, he couldn’t control his manual dexterity long enough to get his work done. Plus, every time I walked by his open dorm room door with shiny objects (which I did frequently that night for fun), he’d stop what he was doing and poke his head out into the hallway. “Ooh! What’s that?”

• Regret outlasts rejection. Sure, the rejection stings a bit worse upfront, but the pain of regret lingers for quite a while. It’s the whole, “I’d rather have tried and failed than never to have tried at all” kind of thing. I was out at a club once and there was this beautiful girl sitting by her lonesome to the side. I looked over there and got a smile from her, but never mustered the courage to go talk to her or ask her to dance (I was a shy one back in the day). So, I try to mooch a little confidence from my friend by pointing her out and asking what my chances are. “Zilch,” he said.

Because he then went over there and asked her out… and they dated for a while… and I became friends with her through him… and they got married… and about an hour or so into the reception, she’s sitting all by her lonesome because my friend’s dealing with some family drama (see above). So I go chat with her and eventually ask her if she’d like to dance. As we’re dancing, she whispers to me, “if you’d done this all those months ago, it could have been us at the altar today.” That thought… that regret stuck with me for a while since I saw her all the time (until I moved away), and thinking back, the pain of the rejection would have only lasted one night or maybe two at most.

A question about learning how others broke into writing…

I’d like to know how famous writers like William Goldman, Stephen King, and Joss Whedon got their big break. Ya know, learn by example and see how the famous writers did it.

Josh Joshington, Turnpike, NJ

There’s a saying out there when it comes to breaking in… “if you find a way in, they’ll patch it up the second you get through.”

What works for one person doesn’t always work for someone else. But failure… well, failure is pretty universal. Learning to avoid failure means learning from mistakes. I’ve always found it’s better to let other people make those mistakes, and after you’ve finished laughing at their misfortune, you can analyze their approach to determine better ways of reaching your goal. To show how this principle works, The Creative Adviser worked around the clock (okay, you got me–it actually took a couple minutes on Google) to track down someone complaining about their failed writing career for this special interview.

…

Read the rest over at PopSyndicate’s The Creative Adviser.

And here’s another walk down my “thought bucket” memory lane. Dead Messengers was an idea spawned from the phrase “don’t kill the messenger” and the fact that many story villains prove their evil disposition by killing off the person delivering bad news to them. People working in the villain’s organization have to know this and would probably be willing to part with a sizable chunk of their criminal cash to send someone else in their place to deliver bad news (Money does you little good when your dead… or does it? That’s an entirely different story.). Thus, the Dead Messengers service was born.

The service scrounges up people with suicidal tendencies but afraid to act on them because of a sense of responsibility to their families due to the suicide clauses in most insurance policies. But at “Dead Messengers”, you don’t have to worry about a thing… you give up crazy things like salary and benefits, but if you die in service, your family gets taken care of (all bills paid and comfortable living expenses). The only problem you might have to deal with is if (like the hero of our story) you find something to live for… and can’t get out of your contract.

Apparently. the time has come for studios to throw down in the fight for the expendable income rolling around in the pockets of all us sci-fi/fantasy/comic/video game geeks.

• Stan Lee. Disney. Sounds like it could be the makings of some crazy lawsuit. Oddly enough, it’s a partnership. The with the voice burned into the brains of many comic fans has set up a first look deal with Walt Disney Studios and his very own POW! Entertainment.

• Someone secured the film rights for the City of Heroes game. I remember when my wife, my friends and I first heard of this game. We came up with a crazy/fun idea for a theme-based team called, “The Scientists”. My wife wanted to play a flying, gravity manipulating character known as “Neuton”. One of my friends wanted to be “Tesla” with lightning powers. And I wanted invisibility with a character named “Schroedinger” (I also wanted to have a costume with cat ears). We later decided the team would work better as a group of villains. ^_^

• Warner Brothers snatched up the screen rights to Terry Brooks Shannara series. Almost every person I’ve played or discussed D&D (and many other role-playing games) with in the past has read books from this series.

• The WB also optioned one of those wordy screenplay thingies for a live action Thundercats movie. Hmmm, I remember Rachel McAdams mentioning she’d like to play Cheetara a couple years ago.

• Warner Brothers (again, damn they’ve been busy lately) released more details about the live action Speed Racer movie being done up by the Wachowski brothers (yeah, those Matrix guys).

• Even more Warner Brothers? Yep… along with Joel Silver. And Orson Scott Card’s Empire.

• And Spy Hunter has a director now. It’s the same gent that brought us the AvP movie. Not sure what to think about that yet.

• The King of Kong. Ahhh… Donkey Kong. It’s not just for reminiscing about the old days or Futurama What-If Machine skits anymore.

With a gazillion different things on each planet, doesn’t it seem probable a hungry world-eater would run into a major food allergy sooner-or-later?

“This is galactic correspondent, Iffy Gotcha. I’m here today chatting with an anonymous world-eater about how to break into the planet chomping industry.

“Sir, can you tell us… wait… you don’t look so well.”

“It’s the purple helmet. Gives my complexion a funky appearance.”

“It’s not that. You’re sweating. And I think your lips are turning blue.”

“Oh… that. Yeah, I got a hold of some bad terrestrial matter on a planet I had for dinner the other night. I think it might have been polluted or something cause my stomach’s been doing flip-flops ever since. And I have heartburn something fierce.”

“I’m sure some other would-be world-eaters would like to know… is that a common occurrence when devouring planets?”

“Oh yeah. Happens every few planets or so. Mostly on the civilized ones. The only thing worse is when I get those little trees stuck in-between my teeth. They don’t exactly make floss in my size, so I have to cope until they work themselves out on their own.”

“Do you have any advice for the planet devouring public?”

“Sure… don’t eat the yellow planets.”

So, the group behind National Novel Writing Month has a new insane venture that kicked off this month… Script Frenzy. The goal for this one is to write a screenplay in one month. Take a wild guess what I’m doing with my spare time this month.

And just how well is this writing endeavor proceeding? Well, I still have all my hair, and the hair turning white seems to be giving me a nice distinguished appearance. My fingers are still a far way from cramping up or blistering. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m sacrificing sleep for this (so those close to me don’t have to deal with the cranky force of devastation known as tired Jeff just yet), but I do have over a dozen Diet Coke cans stacked up on my desk.

I’m also thinking of getting a sign for my home office that says, “Office of Solitude”. ^_^

Honestly though, I’m still in the fun portion of all this. Going through the process of discovery as the flurry of words breathes life into characters and places and events. Not debating on whether some cool thought comes to mind would actually work with the story or not… you get to toss it in and let that cool thought adrenaline drive you onward toward more cool thoughts and scenes.

In a week or so, I’ll hit that wall of “this movie makes no sense and completely, utterly sucks” that I’ll need to get over. Gotta remember it’s okay for this first draft to be crappy. It’s okay for there to be some clarity issues. It’s okay to have extraneous scenes. It’s okay for characters to spit out inconsistent voices in their dialogue. Hell, it’s okay for all the characters to wind up sounding like Barney Fife during this part of the process.

Well, it’s all okay as long as I keep writing.

Well, I am a rambling blogger, so I’m just lumping together some quick thoughts from the week.

• Even though I have a teeny-tiny bit of history with BloodRayne, I never watched the movie adaptation. As I was flipping through the channels the other night, I caught it on the Sci-Fi channel, so I decided to give it a fair chance. I only made it through a few minutes, and I remember the moment when I decided to change the channel… it was when I was sitting there and thought to myself, “Wow, Kristanna has a really nice tan.”
• 2009. Universal Studios in Orlando. Harry Potter theme park. For some reason, I feel an urge to drink way too much ale in the Hogsmeade tavern.
• My mix-it-up crazy thought of the week. Dr. Seuss stories done up by Jhonen Vasquez.
• So You Think You Can… Clog? Clogs are cool. I’m totally gonna custom order a sweet pair of pimped out clogs.
• Once upon a time, there was a wondrous and insightful television show known throughout the lands as The View. Meredith provided a sense of professionalism and decorum. Joy pounced on unsuspecting guests with her predatory wit. Debbie pitched in with an overabundance of youthful energy and enthusiasm. And Star joined in with her lawyer-like analysis and cross examination of guests. It was a good mix, and I used to watch it every day I could. It seemed to cycle through a typical startup business cycle where you start out with less serious business and more fun but eventually work your way into more serious business and a lot less fun.
• The movie Music and Lyrics turned out to be as much fun as I thought it would be after seeing one of those “behind the scenes” shows on cable about it. Lots of fun… lots of laughs.

There’s a first time for everything. As I’ve learned from many (very) personal experiences is those firsts can carry a lot of clout… especially in the youthful experience-deprived mind of an adolescent. Probably the most memorable first for me was my first kiss (of the non-familial variety). It was nothing like what I’d imagined because… well, you’ll see…

At one point in my young life, I found to my complete and utter shock there was a young lady with a crush on me. I’m not sure how I made this initial discovery. Maybe it was due to her stalker-like qualities… showing up everywhere I’d be. Walking by my house every day after school even though she lived in the opposite direction. Watching me in classes we shared. Leaving stuff behind in classes I had after her, so she’d have an excuse to go back into the classroom after I was seated.

Yet, I ignored her. I was in love with the most beautiful girl in our class, and this other girl… well, she didn’t exactly turn heads. If you looked close enough, there was potential for her to develop into a gorgeous woman, but as is the folly of youth, you don’t spend much time looking ahead (and just noticing the undeveloped girl). But I did notice her eventually. It was difficult not to. Especially when she gathered up all her courage one day and asked me out on a date.

I knew deep down I didn’t really have a shot at the girl I was in love with, and I was (extremely) single at the time. Probably due to my poor boy’s wardrobe, excessive nerdiness, super-svelte figure, extreme shyness and an uncanny ability when I did speak to nervously say what I felt in the most embarrassingly wrong way. For pretty much all of my younger days, I didn’t handle social scenarios very well and wasn’t comfortable with communicating what I thought (I learned much, much later in life these were aspects of Asperger’s Syndrome). As I considered her offer, I remember thinking at some point, “Maybe I don’t handle myself with all this boy/girl stuff because I haven’t practiced it enough. I always get better at sports when I practice. Maybe it’s the same principle underneath it all.”

So, I agreed to go out on a date with her.

Dinner was rough to get through. Being shy, I usually hung out with groups of people. People that liked to talk, so it didn’t make much difference if I didn’t say much. I was an expert in conversational camouflage. But at a dinner table, one-on-one with a girl. I was completely out of my element. I was hoping she’d be a talker, and I could just sit back and be a good listener, but there’s one thing to note for all those people out there dealing with someone crushing on you–even if they already know everything about you, they still like to ask a ton of questions hoping to find out even more about you. So, I had to talk. Well, kinda talking… I spat out verbs and nouns and adjectives and sometimes they were even in some kind of order that resembled real sentences. Since I was fumbling words left-and-right, I just decided to blurt out a quick joke about it. And she laughed at the joke. That one laugh calmed me down enough we were able to have a decent conversation (she was also filled to the brim with nerdiness, so that made it easy to discuss on-the-edge topics like chemistry and geometry and literature).

After dinner, we began our walk home (it was a small town, so you could get to most places without much wear-n-tear on your sneakers), and she led us by the park where we sat down to watch the last little bit of the sun setting. She sneakily wiggled her way closer and closer to me as we continued to talk, and when I turned to say something to her one time, she was right there… whispering her response where I could barely hear it as she stared deeply into my eyes. I leaned closer to hear what she was saying, and it suddenly hit me… this is gonna be my first kiss. Growing up schooled heavily in the ways of the hopeless romantic, it was a moment I’d thought about often. In my mind, it had been built up as something special. Something magical.

And when our lips touched, something “special” happened.

My mind raced through a gazillion thoughts… Am I gonna screw this up? What if I turn out to be a bad kisser and she tells everyone? Then no other girl in town will want to kiss me and my lips will remain virginal until I go to college where I’ll screw up another kiss and find myself banned from kissing any girls on campus. Then I’ll be selling blood to scrape up enough money just to get prostitutes to kiss me.

For some reason these thoughts caused a little anxiety. My face went pale, I started sweating, and I pulled away from her with a look of horror on my face. Then I stood up and ran.

Ran to the nearest set of bushes in the park where nerves and anxiety were transformed into vomit. Large quantities of vomit. And when she came over to see if I was all right, she caught sight of me upchucking and got hit with a serious psycho-sympathetic response as she started heaving her dinner into the bushes as well. She apologized to me over and over thinking we both got food poisoning from the restaurant she chose for dinner. The apologies quickly became tears. I figured this date hadn’t turned out anywhere close to what she had planned. I think she was hoping for a magical moment as well.

I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted to let her know it was all gonna be okay, but I wasn’t really sure how. So, I did the first thing that came to mind (well, second since I wasn’t sure how well kissing works with vomit-breath). I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight. When she looked over at me, I looked into her eyes, smiled and said, “Maybe we should try this before dinner next time.”

It was enough to make her smile. And at that moment, it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. From that day forward, I found myself attracted to nice smiles. Sure, a woman with a healthy pair of legs will get noticed, but smiles always seem to keep my attention.