Phoning It In

I can’t think in here. They’re watching Saw VI over dinner, and I’m just wondering how a series has had as many theatrical releases as Star Wars, and I have completely lost track of it. Prioritizing what I bring into my awareness, or just dropping out? I’m not sure, and don’t think I’ll figure it out here.

As such, an assortment of links and fractions of thoughts vomited into this box for your viewing consumption.

• From October 28: I’m watching this with other people in the room, and am trying to not howl in terror. At the same time, I wish I knew how to make something like this myself.
• From Panegyric, Guy Debord’s memoir, translation by James Brooks: “The world of war at least presents the advantage of not leaving room for the silly chatter of optimism.” So, if the life we live in this world is actually one of low-level civil war, does the presence of an optimism indicate a lack of recognition? Or is this civil war so ingrained in us that it is as invisible as the air we breathe [when it's not full of garbage]?
• Pretty much read all of Gibson’s Virtual Light today. Straight-up class conflict. Makes me want to move into an abandoned place with a bunch of people, and transform it into an amazing place that can sustain our living. Wait a minute….
• With some friends and neighbors, I’ve started an erotic writing group. Our first meeting was last week, and the next one will be at the start of December. I hope to write something else for a steampunk-themed erotica site, and maybe make some money. But probably not. Hey, that’s ok. Really. I don’t mind taking pills and selling my blood. At least until my veins collapse. Look for those stories on the main site at some point between now and the End of Civilization.
• Also on the writing front: Five plus pages of real-ass script written for a comic. To be released in weekly chunks on the web and then printed, prolly through some soulless POD service, as story arcs wrap up. Looking to start as soon as I can strong-arm this artist friend into sketching and inking and coloring.
• Looking at bike wheels. Gaudy will most likely win.
• Note to self: Need to figure out how to cyberpunk-ify my house. First step: generating my own electricity using free and cheap materials. Need to do this right after I finish installing my stove pipe in a way that doesn’t burn the house down. Or melt the vinyl siding. Unless that made the house look more cyberpunk.

And to end this post, a quote I stumbled upon, one on which I shall muse while I wait another two and a half hours for the final blood draw of the evening. This comes from NYC-born and -raised journalist Jimmy Breslin:

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

This reminds me of a question: what if Warren Ellis had gone into journalism rather than comics? What sort of world would that be?