So, I’m still listening to Natalie Merchant‘s Motherland, because it’s ripped into the all-my-songs-in-one playlist which G-D is mixing for me. And this song comes up…
…And I remember reading a review of Motherland which described the opening track, This House Is On Fire as “prophetic”, because it’s lyrics eerily foreshadowed 9/11 (it apparently was inspired by the 2000 WTO riots).
…I remember this because the song that comes up is called Build A Levee.
Over here Warren Ellis posted a link to Alan Moore’s Killing Joke script, which is just one of many wonderful old Alan Moore works online. There’s Moore’s parody of Miller’s Daredevil, the song Old Gangsters Never Die (with the lyrics in an 8-page comic), an old rant about Stan Lee, and a few pages of the WATCHMEN script, written in Moore’s trademark rambly stream-of-conscious style, with Dave Gibbons’ highlights of the bit he needs to actually draw.
[link from Fanboy Rampage]
Apparently, the less you say, the less you have to say.
My brother expressed this using a metaphor from Civilization, which I’m not sure I can convey, but I’ll try:
So, what’s new?
Well, nothing much. I moved in with my girlfriend. And got a job. And we had 3 cats. Then I got fired, got hired, moved, moved again, fired again, we broke up, I got a new girlfriend, gave away the cats, moved, and broke up with the new girlfriend.
So basically, what you did in the past 10 years was move out? Hah! Did you know that in that time, the Babylonians have discovered the Wheel? and the Chinese built the great library of Alexandria! The Romans have invented Communism! The Russians have got nuclear power!
OK. It probably worked better when it wasn’t loaded with my own agenda.
* * *
In other news, my washing got splattered with bat shit over the weekend. I have probably given up writing a post about why Battlestar Galactica and Veronica Mars rock, or how I divine my unconscious hang-ups by the twitches they cause in my heart. The Prophet Commission has been giving me a reason to turn on the internet, which is a good thing since I decided two weeks ago I am depressed. Somehow, I found that realization reassuring.
It rained yesterday, hurray. Last week I washed my car, bought new clothes, went on a company trip to Jerusalem. And, oh, Arr. Happy belated Talk Like A Pirate day.
Suzie flies back to Switzerland tonight.
I only saw her once, in the two months she was here.
A door might close. Others could open. I think there are possibilities, know there are no promises. I am 37, and spend most of my time with my eight-year old inner child (this quiz says my mental age is 16. I blame lack of spouse and fondness for chocolate desserts on that result). I know I’m never going to give him the life he didn’t dare wish for. But gods, time is running out already.
The Babylonians have discovered the Wheel.
I stumbled across a passle of scriptwriter’s blogs recently (because, obviously they link one to another, just like web-tech geeks and roleplayers and comics pontificators), and had a lot of fun reading them. This is probably in part because I like writer-porn (you know, writing about writing, Writer’s Digest and all that crap), in part because they talk about stuff I find interesting (Veronica Mars keeps getting mentioned), and in part because they, umm, write.
John Rogers was my entry point, coming through from Warren Ellis’ blog (John Rogers wrote and directed the unreleased, unoptioned Global Frequency pilot, available now on BitTorrent). His blog is oddly enough the first place I encountered the useful habit of posting an article index.
From Rogers, I found Josh Friedman, who doesn’t post a lot, but whose entire blog is worth reading for pleasure. You’re stereotypes of the neurotic Jewish screenwriter will not only be confirmed many times over, but also used as springboards for some very funny stuff. No, I have no idea what that means. Oh look, here’s one bit I’m going to quote, but go read all the rest:
Now out of both loyalty to the sacred bond between studio and screenwriter and also a serious desire to keep getting hired in this town, I will not give away any of the plot details of SNAKES ON A PLANE. But know this. As the great Sam Jackson would say: There are motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.
—Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane
Now, Friedman is caviar, i.e, rarely posting, and more into the funny anecdote than the writer porn. For the hard stuff, I’ve found Alex Epstein’s nicely-titled Complications Ensue. He’s written a book about screenwriting, so screenwriter porn galore (technical discussion, to those whose eyes glaze over at the mention of scritps and outlines). Here’s a handy index post). I’ve also got The Artful Writer, who writes good writing-porn, with stuff about pitches (there seems to be round of stuff about pitches) and the like, and Dead Things on Sticks, which has opinions and such. Here’s a post from there excerpting the funny bit from a NYT article about a script that is doing the rounds called The Cell, which is a sitcom about four wacky terrorists that get seduced by the joys of American life; The Dead Things on Sticks guy explains that although it’s unproducable, it’s such a memorable idea that it works by getting the writers other work.
Kathryn Klar (linguist, from Berkeley) and Terry Jones (anthropologist, from Cal Poly St Louis Obispo) produced an intriguing piece of research that shows that the canoe of the Chumash (South California) may have originated in Polynesia.
Renee notes that its “political incorrectness” slowed this article in getting to print. Grrr. Silly anthropologists (ok, that was just ghost baiting).
Speaking of baiting, here’s a photo of a satanic tomato that Neil Gaiman found in his garden. I shudder to contemplate the fate of the human race if we ever succeed in giving tomatoes super-powers(*). 