Write or Die by Dr Wicked

Write or Die by Dr Wicked:

It sounds rather extreme, and maybe it is. A tool for those of us (I'm looking at Me, Self...) that can spend an entire day crafting and re crafting a single paragraph in the futile search for perfection. Or perhaps there's a hidden fear that the finished work won't be any good, so we're loathe to get the damn thing done. Or end up with a million word opus.

Anyhow, this nifty little program (free online, ten bucks for the desktop edition) is designed to help you keep putting words on the page. If you get distracted, or agonize over a word for too long, the screen turns red and an alarm sounds, in normal mode. I believe in Kamikaze, your words start unwriting themselves. I'm too chicken to try it, even for random words just filling a page.

Since I signed up for NaNoRiMo again this year, I need something to shut up the inner editor. My goal for writing is 1500 words in a day. I suspect a third of them will be readable, but I need to get into the habit. For those people without evil inner editors or the attention span of a chipmunk, this bit of software is pretty useless.

For people like me, it might just be the bit of a push that they need to get them moving. I'm going to try it for a month. If it does the trick, I'll thank the creator by purchasing the software.

Here goes nuthin...

I found the picture of the two Jack Sparrows!!

OMG I found it!!!

Remember that story I told about watching two Jack Sparrows get into a fist fight? I FOUND THE PHOTOS. Well, not of the fist fight, but the moments before. I can't make this stuff up.

Hope this makes your day, they certainly made mine.

Porn Star Kareoke - How did I not know about this???

How do you make a tacky thing awesome?

Multiplication. It works for anything, really. One garden gnome, tacky. An army of creepy, smiling plaster constructs staring vapidly at the neighbors from your front yard = kind of awesome.

A single cheap stuffed animal carnival prize jammed into the corner of a teen girl's bedroom is just kind of sad. However, sewing a hundred of these little things onto a suit and roller skating down Main Street, USA sounds pretty amazing. (Disclaimer: I have not done this. Yet. I don't have the carnival prizes. If anyone wants to hook me up with them, I WILL do this. And take pictures. And post them here.)

Another great thing I didn't know about until recently was the customization of My Little Ponies. You might remember these smiling little rubber horse shaped toys with nylon hair and a graphic on their butt - I had a collection myself when I was a kid. Until I discovered Breyer horses, but that's another story. (Yes, I was a little girl obsessed with horses. Imagine that.)

Dragons, The Borg, oh heck - pretty much any pop icon you can imagine. Who knew this was a thing? Aren't you glad you read this now? (Proof that one, anything can be elevated to an art form if the creator is good enough at it, and two - you can make a living doing anything.)

But that's not what I wanted to talk about (remember, I warned you about those tangents...).

What I wanted to talk about is potentially the most amazing marriage of tacky that has ever been conceived. Porn stars doing karaoke. I shit you not. Personally, I feel like this is the true spirit of Los Angeles wrapped up, packaged, and presented with a cheap satin and lace neon pink bow. And I'm excited. I must see this before I die, so be aware, LA friends - I'm going to beg to go to this.

Porn stars sing at Sardos.

I think this will be an experience on par with watching the two Jack Sparrows duke it out on the Walk of Fame. I think I'm starting to miss LA.

Buying with intent, and the excitement of it all.

I purchased a comforter cover.  A brand new, custom printed comforter cover from DENY designs.  It came yesterday, and I've been excited about it for a solid 24 hours now.

Which led to a bit of navel gazing: why on Earth is this blanket cover such a thrill?

It finally hit me.

Every other bit of furnishing that I've ever owned has been one of these:

Free. (Either discards from relations, friends moving, or clever curbside rescue.  I sleep on Chevy Chase's old mattress - but that's another story for another time.)

Thrift/yardsale.

Semi disposable.  You know the stuff.  Plastic, cardboard, pressboard, usually found in big box discount stores, ubiquitous denizens of college dorm rooms; purchased with the understanding that once one graduates, that stuff will be replaced.  Um.  Some of my plastic drawers date to the college years.

If it weren't for the cat, much of my furniture would be inflatable.  It's cheap, fuss resistant, and incredibly portable.

With the life I've led, that last bit used to be incredibly important - between travelling a great deal and moving about once a year, there's a lot to be said for not being tied down to a lot of nice furniture.

This summer marked the first one in over a decade that wasn't spent frantically shoving things into boxes, which in turn were crammed into my twelve year old hatchback to be carted to the next location.  Not moving is a thrill in itself, and we celebrated.  But it also marked a subtle, if deep change in our lives.

Roots.  For the first time, we started thinking about chairs that didn't double as rubbermaid bins with fabric draped over them.  But the thought of building a 'proper' home space, with decor, and thought, and (eek) money put into it, was more than a little off putting.

Our old comforter died.  It was fairly horrid to begin with - some nasty synthetic fabric that pilled almost immediately, sewn together with what appeared to be fishing line, a pattern that would have felt at home in a 1970's log cabin, lumpily filled with some polyester spin that did absolutely nothing but remind one of how cold the room actually was, and think about getting a new blanket the second that time and money have met.

We didn't actually know that it was sewn together with clear, stiff, nylon 'thread', until it started unraveling.  The cat helped.  So in addition to the pilling, fading, and other attributes, the blanket now sported lots of little pokey bits that had a supernatural power in regard to finding sensitive flesh.

The new comforter itself was a sort of impulse - we found it on clearance after a mark down, and it came with two pillows! So I gulped and paid for it.

It changed the whole bed - suddenly, we felt like our little sleeping alcove had been transported to some luxury B&B.  So I highly recommend not waiting as long as we did on a new blanket.

However, it didn't come with a cover - that proper comforters even needed one came as a bit of a surprise.

So, began the quest for a cover to protect the new investment.  This would be the second non essential purchase related to building a home that I've ever made, and I was determined to do it right.  For weeks, I scoured every place I could find.  These things were either horrible, or insanely expensive.

Seduced by thread count, frazzled by reviews, I came upon the Deny site randomly after weeks of searching. They had some nice looking designs, not too expensive...then I saw it.

Custom design - you send them an image, they put it on the item of your choice!  If I was going to do this 'making a home' thing, I'll do it exactly how I want, and see exactly what I want to see.  Honestly, if I'm paying anything above a thrift store price, I just can't settle.

So I gulped, paid, and waited.

The results are even cooler than anything I'd imagined:

For the first time in my entire life,  I'm turning a living space into a home.  I'm decorating!  Oh yes, there will be more of this in the coming year.

New Tumblr page, and stuff

It's been a busy time, and as usual, I inflict most of it upon myself. Firstly, I got myself one of those new fangled tumblr things.http://digitalis-vitae.tumblr.com/

 Don't worry, this blog will stay right here. Even better, it will be focused more on the writer end of the artistic process. (That's what I'm currently designating my Rorschach pattern of wank - it sounds much more impressive that way, doesn't it?)

 Tumblr is prettier for hosting photos, so all of my discussions about photography, photo postings, and visual epherma will happen there from now on, leaving this space free to talk about making word strings that evoke emotions. I'm trying to be organized about this stuff for once.

 There's also a new Facebook group, Authors Helping Authors. It's dedicated to educating writers about scams, and helping the victims of writing scams - hence the moniker of 'Authors' rather than 'writers'.

 Um, what else. Theater has been busy, and most of the 'net news has been dedicated to Occupy Wall Street. It's unfortunate that major news groups are now just corporate holdings, so all of the coverage has been from citizens like you and me

. I am planning to explore the scene. Just like Spider, only with hair. This protest is probably the biggest civilian political action that we'll see in the states in our lifetime. It's something that I'm not surprised to see, though I am shocked that it took this long.

 We've been legislated into a controlled state, our rights stripped from us one strand at a time for years, but creature comforts have kept the masses distracted for a long time. It's finally gotten bad enough that the public is pissed. The normal channels (voting, town hall) are so mired in kickbacks and bribery that they're no longer effective.

 The public is tired of being treated like chattel - of having their homes, employment, and opportunities to make a life siphoned away, that they will no longer be distracted by shiny toys, shiny celebrities, shiny lies disguised as political rhetoric. Catchphrases and double speak that ultimately mean only that a politician is jumping from one pocket to the next.


 I'm not usually political on this blog. But I'm inspired. And angry. Inspired by the thousands of people making noise. Angry that so many people still swallow the lines they've been fed. Wake up, Tea Party. You are not part of a grass roots organization. Never were. It's a scheme funded by some of the biggest corporate players - the Koch brothers. They sent corporate shills into town centers to gain support for a 'movement' with catchphrases that mean nothing, and the goal is to dump even more money into BILLIONAIRES' pockets.


 They hold up teachers, fire fighters, bus drivers as the enemy, for making a living wage with health benefits. Guess what? Teachers generally get paid crap. I can't count how many times I've heard 'well, city worker x makes $100,000 a year, I wish I was rich like that'. Wake up, dumb ass. That bus driver makes a salary like that on a base pay rate of $14.00 an hour, by working 100 hours a week.

It's a distraction. A shiny statement to take attention off the CEO who gets a five million dollar bonus for running a company into the ground. That's the scum you need to pay attention to - not the guy who never sees his wife and children, overworked at a menial job.

 Please, please.

 Wake the fuck up.

First Paragraph Review - The Smoke in Death's Eye

I must be mad.  Or have indulged in some bad fish, because I'm at it again.




That's right gang - the first paragraph reviews are back.  For a little while, at least.  I don't think they'll ever be a regular feature again, but if you or someone you know wants to send me one (this time including screenplays!), I'll do it.  Probably not right away, but I'll do it.




Anyhow.  The format will stay the same.  First, the page as I received it (forgiveness for copy/paste directly into email).  Then, the page with commentary.




Without further ado:

The lights, a mixture of yellow and neon blue, splash evil shadows against the walls. I liked that. I lived in those shadows, the hum of the Smoke, a never ending presence.

My target leaned against a scarlet red spinner as he scanned the traffic in the air waiting for his clients. A pusher of the worst kind, he sold 24 hour addiction to the net, the matrix, whatever the mutual illusion we call cyberspace really is, but I watched him because he possessed knowledge I needed. I had to be careful though; he hacked the local cams with his built-in wetware.

Despite the poor lighting I could see him clearly. My TacScreen feed streamed to me by my built-in A.I., Artificial Neurological Analyser, ANA for short, to a chip resting against the back of my retinas. The TacScreen, glowing pale green created the effect of being projected in front of my vision showed he was much bigger than me, at least 6 foot tall, but sickly looking somehow. He wore retro style jeans and a fake denim jacket cut off at the arms with no t-shirt showing off the body art on his torso of a skull and cross bones which glowed fluorescent green in the dark. He wore jump boots fashionably unfastened with his jeans tucked at the front of his boots. His name was Demetrez of mixed race. His dyed blond hair, cut in a Mohican and long at the back, sat atop his face framing pale grey eyes which I assume he was not born with.

And now, the commentary.

The lights, a mixture of yellow and neon blue, splash evil shadows against the walls. I liked that. I lived in those shadows, the hum of the Smoke, a never ending presence.

(Ok, the first sentence bothers me for a specific reason that most people might not catch.  Additive color theory. Yellow light plus blue light equals white light.  Light splashes light, not shadows.  So not only are there no projected shadows, the colors chosen would combine to create pure, white light.  Many people are only familiar with subtractive (pigment based) color theory, so even a sharp editor might miss this one.

I have mixed feelings about the jump from present in the first sentence to past in the next two.  The last sentence feels like it has extra words and unneeded commas.)

My target leaned against a scarlet red spinner as he scanned the traffic in the air waiting for his clients.

(Things I like: the casual use of target, and the offhand comment about the traffic being 'in the air' are great for indicating early and well that we're in science fiction, and our protag may not be the nicest guy.  I stumbled on 'scarlet red'.  Does scarlet come in any other color?)

 A pusher of the worst kind, he sold 24 hour addiction to the net, the matrix, whatever the mutual illusion we call cyberspace really is, but I watched him because he possessed knowledge I needed. I had to be careful though; he hacked the local cams with his built-in wetware.




(Story wise, this works for me so far.  We've got bits of awkwardness with the sentence structure.  My other confusion is 'selling addiction'.  How would selling an addiction, rather than the drug, work?  Were this a hard science or present day/real world story, it would bother me more.  Maybe this universe has a drug that mimics addiction for some reason?  But why?  Or maybe the wording is just off.  Were I paying to read this, I'd need to know very soon.)

Despite the poor lighting I could see him clearly. My TacScreen feed streamed to me by my built-in A.I., Artificial Neurological Analyser, ANA for short, to a chip resting against the back of my retinas. The TacScreen, glowing pale green created the effect of being projected in front of my vision showed he was much bigger than me, at least 6 foot tall, but sickly looking somehow.

(LOVE this.  I've seen way too many lousy stories with the 'even though it was dark, I could see' bit.  The why immediately follows the statement, which is great.  There's more stumbling over the name - the Artificial Intelligence Artificial comes off as a little silly, as if the writer weren't sure of the term.  I'm not sure why a visual aide of this type would need to have it's own consciousness, which is AI.  I'd recommend dropping the AI portion of the description, unless this neural net functions as the wise cracking sidekick projecting snarky comments directly to the protag's brain.  More awkward comma placement - this will need a good edit, but shows a lot of promise.)

 He wore retro style jeans and a fake denim jacket cut off at the arms with no t-shirt showing off the body art on his torso of a skull and cross bones which glowed fluorescent green in the dark. 

(Eeek. Run on sentence, for one.  The second thought is info-dump.  A small one, but how important is this list, and what part is significant to the protagonist?  If this outfit is normal, how much would he notice?  I do like the glowing tattoo.)

He wore jump boots fashionably unfastened with his jeans tucked at the front of his boots. His name was Demetrez of mixed race.

(His name was 'of mixed race'?  Somehow, I think this is more awkwardness.  We've also been told he's wearing jeans twice - not needed.  Personally, I think the second mention works better, and the first should be dumped.  As always, these parenthesis are just my opinion.)

 His dyed blond hair, cut in a Mohican and long at the back, sat atop his face framing pale grey eyes which I assume he was not born with.

(I'm guessing that this is a spelling hiccup, unless there's a new hairstyle.  The Native American tribe that the haircut is named after is Mohawk.  Completely different.  It could sprout on top of his head, but the 'atop his face' makes me think of one wicked unibrow.  This whole bit could use rewriting.  I like the mention of the eye thing, though I'd want an explanation fairly soon.)







Thank you,  Jorge Salgado - Reyes, for offering your first page, and I hope this is helpful to you.

FreakOutNation » Imagine if Tea Partiers Were Treated like This: Wall Street Protesters Maced, Arrested, Tased

FreakOutNation » Imagine if Tea Partiers Were Treated like This: Wall Street Protesters Maced, Arrested, Tased:

'via Blog this'

The macing, arrest, and tazing of peaceful protesters. A lot of them.

What's going on?