To Say Goodbye is to Die a Little

The power of money becomes very difficult to control. Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of wars, the incessant pressure of taxation- all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both private and public morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can't have quality with mass production. You don't want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn't sell its goods next year unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average American housewife can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.

...

We don't have mobs and crime syndicates and goon squads because we have crooked politicians and their stooges in the City Hall and legislatures. Crime isn't a disease, it's a symptom. Cops are like the doctor who gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack. We're a big rough rich wild people and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization. We'll have it with us a long time. Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

I read The Long Goodbye today. It was much longer than The Big Sleep, and also slower. The result was a book of meaty characters, a good hit of drama as well as suspense, and the best fucking plot twist ever. I could even say that The Long Goodbye is the best novel I have ever read. I may regret that after class tomorrow, but I may not. Chandler is an absolutely fantastic writer, and it's quite clear to me why others emulated him, and why his name is the one most commonly cast on the boilerplate of hardboiled detective fiction.
The quotes above are from Harlan Potter in chapter 32, and Philip Marlowe in Chapter 48, respectively. Chandler's view on the world is quite cynical, and that's probably why I like it. And to drive the whole thing home, after two novels of his bluntness, his demeanor, and his outlook, I can say with fair confidence that Philip Marlowe is a character I empathize with in a very significant way.
Hell of a book.

Life is a process, and sometimes you just got to drop all the old shit like a bad dream and start kicking ass

So, I've been writing. I'm working slowly, but I have the direction of the story at least somewhat down. I've written maybe three pages (the fault of both no time and writing late at night), but in that time I've started to sketch out Lars. He's not in his final form yet, but his trademark phrase has come out, and I've started to hint at his past. Sky just showed up...though you wouldn't know it in the story (tee hee). And I really want to write this...that's the difference. This will be good, and I'm going to enjoy writing this. Finally. It's taken so fucking long.
My last entry was kind of a hint at this, so I titled it with a quote I plan on using in the story. I guess it's one way to take notes...I had started to write, and was on Blogger to announce it, and came up with the idea...so I just wrote it in the title box. It's kind of exemplary of Sky and Lars' relationship, being that Lars has a degree of self-doubt regarding why he does what he does, and Sky...doesn't. So I'm building Sky to be very blunt, like me, and Lars to have little idea of where the fuck his life is going...like me. This will be very interesting. The title of this post is the justification Lars gives to Sky as to why he decided to uproot and start the job which begins the plot. So, another note I wanted. Both of these quotes will come up in the next few pages.

If you can't trust you, I won't either.

I've finally had enough of a creative boilover, I'm going to start writing a story. Watch this space.

The internet has all the secrets

I saw the brightest minds of my generation destroyed by Google

Bruce Sterling is a fucking brilliant author, no doubt.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

As part of my winter break, I managed to read a book. Yes, one. If it weren't for a stubborn case of sinusitis I'd probably do more, but this one's a doozy anyway. Clocking in at nearly 900 pages, Anathem continues Stephenson's tradition of writing long books. This one, I can say, is worth it.
The conceit of the novel is that, in the world it takes place in, academics are cloistered in maths, which are essentially monasteries, except for academics instead of religion. The story follows Erasmas, a brother in one of these 'maths'.
The plot in the book is engrossing, and the world is well-built, if not a little bit disturbing. A lot of parallels are drawn regarding the way academia is treated in our world, and though it is clearly nothing as extreme as the case presented in the book, it does make you ask some questions as to what Stephenson is trying to say with this.
One thing to say is that Stephenson takes setting his book in an academic cloister seriously, and there's a lot of math, a lot of philosophy, and a fair amount of quantum physics. It makes the book harder to read, yes, but if you're willing to learn along, or have a decent academic background of any sort (I'm neither a physics nor a math major, but was able to keep up with most of the abstract concepts), it will greatly improve your ability to appreciate the book. I don't think you need to be extraordinarily educated to understand things the way Stephenson presents them, but you do need to be patient enough to understand the discussions the characters have on the subjects, possibly rereading them if need be (I did do this a few times, for this and a reason outlined below).
The one thing I find a little irksome in the book was Stephenson's vocabulary, notably the words he made up. For the most part, they add to the experience, and play in heavily towards the end of the book. So, it may have been worth the effort on Stephenson's part. There are 'dictionary' entries spread throughout the text as well as a glossary in the back, though some of these are still confusing. I went through most of the book with only some feeling as to what both 'Deolater' and 'Ita' meant, and both of these terms were fairly important.
All in all, the book was quite good, and kept me hooked for the two days I spent reading it. It is worth noting that reading a 900 page book in two days is not something I normally do, but for Stephenson, I'll put in the effort. After coming out deeply satisfied with this read, it may just be worth it to try the Baroque Cycle again. Maybe.

What I Want From A Roleplaying Game

What I want, in as few words as possible, is a compelling story.

It may be that I'm in the wrong genre entirely. What I want right now is not something that is best described in hit points or skill levels or stat blocks...but rather something best described by characters, by what they do, what they wear, how they sound, how they look, and how they react to the events of the world going on around them. I like concepts of grandiose power games, conspiracies to take over the world, unseen powers not for this earth. But they're for the story. Players of RPGs seem fixated on what they can do, what actions they can take. Instead of the 'what', how about the 'why' or the 'how'.

So maybe a roleplaying game is a foil for my own laziness. Maybe all I want to do is create a compelling story, and maybe I want a bunch of people to help me.

So this could be collaborative fiction. Or it could be that I should just write something. And it could be that I need to look more critically at what elements I tout in my games, because those are going to be elements I want to integrate into my stories.

So I want danger, and I certainly seem to like the Cyberpunk genre. Character depth is key, as is an interesting plot with a decent (though not overbearing) amount of backlog. But I always get stuck on realism, which is kind of contradictory in many genres of science fiction, cyberpunk included.

So let's wind it back. The thing that makes cyberpunk and dystopian literature interesting is their connection with the real world. So let's, for the time being, stay in the real world.

Let's work through some scenarios, based on fanciful (though not ridiculous) thought. A man, generally left-wing in his opinions, owns a gun. He owns a gun for two reasons: first, he enjoys shooting from a hobbyist perspective, and pistol shooting is both inexpensive (relatively) and challenging. Second, he has, from his own opinions on the world, a dim view of the government.

This man is a tinkerer. He has an engineering background, and enjoys tinkering with stuff. Building stuff. Modding stuff. He lives in the midwest (let's say Wisconsin) and has recently put the down payment on a fairly large estate, about 4 to 5 acres. It isn't arable land, and due to the composition of the rural route he lives on (farmers) the land is relatively cheap. Still, he now has a large mortgage.

This man is fairly cyberactive, and keeps two computers; a desktop for movie editing (his prized possession is a camcorder, at least after his 1966 Ford Falcon) and other home things, and a small Sony laptop to go to and from job, and also everywhere else. He owns three cars, but they're worth about 7500 dollars in total. He is a tinkerer. His 1981 Toyota Starlet sits dead in his garage, halfway through a conversion to run on natural gas. He knows how to finish the car, but is at a personal roadblock, having suffered minor burns and a crushed ego after an attempt to install a methane off-gas valve onto his septic tank resulted in a small explosion.

Back to the computers. The man, for the same reason he has the gun, uses Tor for his browsing. He is the only one in his county who does so. Unfortunately, when two high schoolers hold their school's computer network hostage for an unspoken ransom, the police go to the door of the one guy who they can't packet-sniff. When they ask to search his house he calmly asks for a warrant. The police ask again. He refuses, asserting his fourth amendment rights. The police say something about the Patriot Act and terrorists, and the man does not care. They enter his house. He shoots them both, killing them. Now, in reality, since they did not have a warrant, this would be termed as a self-defense killing. Police or not, you aren't allowed to enter a man's home without a warrant. So, two armed men broke into his house. Hmm. In reality, it wouldn't go down so easily. Even without the current imperial presidency, failure to produce a warrant is not likely to be considered justifiable cause for shooting police officers.
Now, the man loves taking home video. He vidblogs, and uses it to record things he does to his cars. Let's say he saw the cop car, and set up his camera on his stairway to videotape the conversation. Let's say the police officers drew weapons before he drew his, and shoved him to the ground upon trying to enter the house.


Let's say that was uploaded to Youtube.


Hmmm. I may have a novel.

On writing

The most important thing I've read recently about writing is that any writer practices by writing. Not writing anything in particular, just writing. I've never felt particularly great about this. I write, and write a fair amount, but am generally more likely to brush off writing that I do as 'blogging', or being self-indulgent journal entries, or whatever else. In reality, especially as I wrestle with story ideas in my head, I need to get off my 'literary' high horse and just write more. At some point, more ideas need to go on paper (disk, memory, whatever) and out of my head. Especially as I'm realizing the potential of my ideas. I'm also realizing the potential of my other ideas, even ones I'd canned as being too simplistic or contrived. My goal is to tell a story. If I think I'm going to come up with something that has absolutely 100% never been done before, I'm kidding myself.

They do say 'write what you know'. That's why I'm excited about this story idea. It's things I truly know, combined with the best things out of my 'too good to be made up' file. I need to figure out the mood for the story...though logically, I need to figure out what the plot is first. Half of it will write itself...based on both my own recollection and the reactions of characters in the other half. All in all, it should be very interesting.

Another interesting thing I read said that you can never trust close family members or friends for editorial criticism. That's very true, as I've realized my friends seem to gush over anything I've written, regardless of how shitty it is. I think I'd make an exception for my father though, who has been my editor for school papers since I was 9, and who can accurately and brutally critique writing without making me hate it (though I will forever loathe the term gobbledy-gook because of him).

More on this

Once you have gamed the system, and done all of the necessary quests to get your magic boots and your divine steed. Once you’ve reached the top level and have nowhere to go. Once you become bored enough to just stop playing, they may begin to realize that the point of RPGs wasn’t just to kill things and take their stuff, it was the storytelling and the friends that they made that mattered. No MMO has ever held the possibilities of those little paper books. Until an MMO does, which will probably occur in my lifetime, abandoning the market and making the games harder to play is probably in everyone’s worst interests. That hasn’t stopped them though. I mentioned to a friend that 4e reminded me of Second Edition, and he commented back that it reminded him of Chanmail. I don’t think we need D&D to be a tactical wargame, but it is.

-Ross Winn

I like Ross Winn. His column on RPGNet is interesting, and he wrote material for Cyberpunk 2020, which makes him awesome. He seems to share my opinion on 4e. I play roleplaying games to tell stories, and to build characters. If I wanted to kill monsters, I have several computer games to choose from.
Speaking of telling stories, I'm considering starting to write one. It'll probably be long, possibly even novel-length, but I'm not sure. My plan is to set the story in Dubai, mostly because of the city's rich and interesting social dynamic, as well as it being the perfect place to set a modern-day cyberpunk story. I'm still brainstorming on details, but this is the first time fiction writing has excited me in a long time.

So, here's my idea

I base writing on my life. It's how I do it. Right now, I sometimes wish my life was simple. Not necessarily simple in execution, but straightforward in goal, rather than having conflicting physical, emotional and interpersonal desires turning my whole existence into a scheduling nightmare. No, just one simple goal I can work on at a time. So here comes the caricature:

Lance is a college student, plagued by academic pressure and a failing relationship with his old high school girlfriend. His perspective on life is mutilated forever when he falls into an alternate dimension, dealing with drug-dealing panda bears and a large knitting-oriented crime syndicate to fulfill his ultimate quest: pick up a bag of Cheetos.

Yeah, I'm crazy. But what do you think?

Analysis

Okay, looking at the previous post with more sleep and more sanity, I have decided to analyze the writing a bit, in order to see exactly how I wrote that. If you've been reading this blog at all and seen my other writing, you'll know this one was different.
1. Nobody in this story is based on a real person, at all. The name Trey I used because it was monosyllabic, which fitted the meter I was looking for. No hard feelings, Trey.
2. Yeah, so I dropped a few punk-y bits, like the fact that it was set in Version City. That was for me more than the reader, and reinforced the meaning of the Alley, and the meaning of the events that transpired.
3. With the writing of 2, I figured out the theme. The theme of the story is internal control versus external chaos. The conclusion is clear, stating that you cannot find internal control unless you can remove yourself from the chaos around you.
4. Yes, there is a bit of an event chain that's inspired from something that happened to me (inspired by, it did not happen in anything that has the foggiest resemblance to the story), but it serves the purpose of showing that the struggle for centrism and self-understanding are clouded by both internal and external chaos.

So there you go. Apparently, I'm still trying to be centered, as that struggle is what came out in these words last night.

If you think I'm missing something, or would like to add a bit to this, feel free to comment.

New Fiction

I wrote this all tonight. So, do I need a shrink?

I headed to the alley that night. The alley was a place for night, where the harsh lamplight bounced off the angular maze of loading docks, warehouse walls, and concrete obstructions of less distinct purpose. It was a quiet place in the city, hard to get to for most. I don’t know why it was any easier for me, but it gave me a little spot of Version City, the place that everyone claimed but no one owned. I headed out, alone but the buzz of fluorescent streetlights, and the echo of gunshots and sirens in the far distance. When I’m alone, my mind works right, and when I’m right, I can write.

Words flowed from my hand like blood, my pen a needle drawing the mental anguish from my tired veins. It was like this more often than not these days. Gone were the times when a daily journal entry was about an interesting car on the road, or that one time when I actually saw a bird. All I managed to write about was her.

So she was one chick who I met at this guy’s bash earlier in the year, and we kind of hit it off, I kind of came inside her, and now I kind of think I’m in love. But if it were as easy as that, then the pain wouldn’t need to be drawn via pen, now would it? I had no idea who she was, other than a friend of a friend at the time, but about four days after that whole affair, she disappears. But tomorrow it gets interesting, because tomorrow, by friend of a friend’s word, she returns.

It had been about three weeks, and thinking about the whole affair had made my stomach restless and sleep hard to come by. This was the fourteenth night in these three weeks where I had wandered out to my alley to pour out my thoughts, sharpen my knife, and return home a little more at peace than before, only to have the next day fuck it up again. Stuck in a dead-end job in this dead-end city, my day-to-day had blurred into one big hallucinogenic streak, where nothing really began, nor did it end. There were hits, moments of clarity in the alley, brief and blissful inebriation at weekend bashes, and then that one moment, the bit of love that refused to leave, staining my mind just as filthy as I had left the couch that night. So that’s what mental clarity is: when you see all the little stains left on your psyche.

I returned to my excuse for an apartment at about four, falling into about six hours of fretful Friday night sleep. Awaking was difficult, though the absence of hangover made it at least bearable to drag myself into the shower. I was going to head down to the place around four, see what was up, and most likely thrash around later, either in the bad way or in the good way. I had too little patience with my own memory to make a bet on which would more likely happen. Had at least a few hours to wait around, though. That was never good on my part. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, as they say…and an idle mind makes for a good self-destructive time, at the very least. I tried scrawling a bit of legibility into a notebook, but the results were embarrassing. After a few hours of staring at the ceiling, and trying to think of something other than who I was about to see, I left early, hoping to take enough detours to not seem entirely pathetic.

It didn’t entirely work. I think it was around two, way earlier than any bash that was supposed to go on. I knocked softly, and the door was answered by my bro, Trey. He was not in his right mind, exactly. He stumbled back to the couch, grinning stupidly and tripping over dust mites on his way there. It was quietly revolting, and I wanted to turn face right then, forget what people looked like with a little day light smacked onto their faces. But then I saw her. It was her, no doubt, but it was not her. She had sunken onto a skeleton frame, retracted into a shadow of what I thought a person was. As the midday light appraised her every angle, it was clear what I had not seen. Ugliness is inherent, but in desperate times, one will forget it. I muttered to myself, thinking about what I was on that night, what had disappeared in the moonlight and bourbon haze. She looked up, and sneered.

“Fuck you.” I gave Trey a sympathetic look, and headed out the door. As I hit the outdoors, the nausea hit me just as hard. I got back to my feet, and looked around the dirty sidestreet. Trey’s motorcycle was left unlocked by his front door. I shrugged, found the key inside the door, and headed back. He was too plastered to notice anyway. I mounted the bike, starting it up with a turn and a rub. The engine moan made me smile, and I headed out to an open street. As I got further from the city, the wind woke me up fully, made me feel alive. The road led out through the tall grass, and I sped down as fast as I could. I was leaving Version City. I had to do something for my self now. No time like the present.

It was interesting. Not sure where it came from, nor where it goes. But hey. Why not, right?