Randomness for 5/24

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1) “I am merely giving you your problem” Emma Thompson’s character in STRANGER THAN FICTION would have called this webcomic “fantastically depressing.”

2) An interview with indie comics writer Shawn Granger.

3) Awesome Lovecraftian furniture.

4) Shit my kids ruined. aka “The strongest visual birth control on the market today.”

5) “I’m 16. I got a book deal when I was 15. There are authors that were published at 13 and 14 and I always find myself thinking, God, must I fail at everything I do? They were published younger than me!” I posted that excerpt because it made me LOL, but it’s unfair out of context. The writer’s point is pretty much the opposite of what that excerpt implies.

I can only defend that quote one way: LOL.

6) Sixteen items Wal Mart sells only in China. via Jay Lake. Mmmm. Unpackaged meats. Vegetarians, you might not want to click that link.

7) @BPGlobalPR: a fake British Petroleum account. Topical, funny and very dark. “The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares”

Because of yesterday’s post…

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Folks are dropping “creepy nice guy” links on me. Like this one.

It already made the rounds a couple years back, but… yeah. Another creep.

edit: The goodness doesn’t stop! This one is a link farm criticizing the “Nice Guy” phenomenon. Personally, I like the “Something Positive” comic; it’s a quick read and I’m supposed to be writing.

The dreaded “nice guy.”

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Today’s writing session was cut short by a “nice guy.”

As I’ve mentioned several times, I usually do my writing out of the apartment–fewer distractions and it helps to get my work finished if I have a set time I have to stop. There’s a Starbucks close to my house that I used to visit all the time, but it became a pain in the ass. A lot of folks with serious issues began hanging out there. Sometimes they would carry on loud conversations in that small room. Sometimes they would do wound care right there next to me. It was distracting and gross.

Today I thought I’d give it a try again. Unfortunately, someone sitting nearby decided that he and I should have a pleasant chat. He kept trying to start a conversation with me, even after I told him several times that I was sorry, but I’d come to work and didn’t want to talk. It would go like this:

“Nice computer you have there. Apple right? Is it an eye-something? A MacBook?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. I really need to work.”
“Work? You’re working, huh? I got my Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Where did you get your Masters in Computer Science?”
“I never said I had a Masters in Computer Science.”
“Oh, so insurance or bank, huh? Which bank do you work for? Wells Fargo? B of A?”
I don’t answer. Three minutes of silence.
“You get movies on that thing? What’s your favorite movie?”

For an entire hour. He managed to keep a wide-eyed and polite tone through the whole thing, almost to the end, as though he was being perfectly friendly and polite. But there was something off about the guy. I still managed to meet my small word count goal, but not my usual Sunday goal. I’m not going back there again.

Also, yesterday I received a really crazy PM on LiveJournal from a complete stranger. He was trying to enlist me in this project to do something nice for a Third Party (who shall remain nameless). If this had been a quick “So and so needs X. Would you like to help?” I would have been tempted. Instead it was 800 words of how Third Party irrationality and inability to make sensible decisions, and how Third Party wasn’t letting the stranger offer the necessary help, so stranger wanted to do it through me as a proxy.

Ugh. It was creepy as hell, and a perfect example of the “nice guy” who thinks they’re entitled to steal someone else’s agency because they know better and they’re being caring and polite about it. It didn’t have the undertones of a criminal looking for a mark, but it made my skin crawl anyway.

This morning, in the Starbucks, the creep eventually became irritated with me. “I’m trying to be nice, here!”

“No you’re not!” I answered. He looked surprised. “I’ve been asking you not to interrupt me while I work, and you’ve been interrupting me anyway. That’s the opposite of nice.”

(added: Sadly, I’m pretty sure this isn’t parody.)

As promised, pictures

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Here are the pictures from the premiere of THE DEAD FEED last Thursday night. There are no videos. It didn’t seem appropriate at the time.

So, if any other members of the cast were there aside from Kate (in blue), who played the protagonist’s older sister Beth, I didn’t see them.

Kate Szperski & friend

A few more at the Flickr set.

Every film is created three times

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The first time is when the writer writes the script.

The second time is when the cast and crew shoot the film.

The third time is when the editor assembles the final edit.

Each time the script is recreated, it’s made from a narrow range of materials. The writer has a concept and some characters in mind, plus what they know can be done on film. The cast and crew have the locations and characters in the script. The editor has the footage and sound recording.

And that’s why the movie I wrote, which I saw last night for the first time, was interesting but didn’t really work. I know there were troubles in production–trouble with sound, with actors not showing up for calls, all sorts of things. It occurs to me (much too late to do anything about it) that Terry Rossio’s advice to never write a thriller screenplay in which everything is super-tight and the plot is built scene by scene. If your script is so taut that it comes apart if some scene is changed or dropped, then it’s going to come apart in production because stuff gets changed all the time.

So, the movie isn’t successful. It’s interesting, and I think it would be interesting to people who weren’t involved in the production. Not what-an-interesting-story interesting, but this-weird-shit-is-affecting interesting, if you know what I mean. Because you can’t really follow the story: big chunks had to be dropped, including an establishing scene for a very important character. In this edit, the protagonist’s sister doesn’t turn up until the third act, and you have no idea who she is or why the protagonist is searching her house.

And there are more issues. It’s flawed but interesting and affecting.

When the film gets distribution (even if it’s only on Netflix) I’ll post the script online. Folks might be interested in seeing the changes between the script version and the final film.

And I’m really glad I’m a novelist now. It makes things so much simpler.

And I’m off!

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The family just arrived. I’m about to catch a cross-town bus to have dinner and then go to see “my” movie. Usually, I go to see “a” movie. Not tonight.

::gulp!::

Non-controversial, given the speaker

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So, much of the media is buzzing over U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s unwillingness to acknowledge what every knowledgable person knows he believes. He is a strict libertarian, and he does not believe government should be making rules for private businesses. According to a letter to the editor he wrote years ago, discrimination by the government = bad, but discrimination by private business = Nothing for the law to do about it.

Nothing surprising there, if you understand that he’s very much a libertarian. Personally, I’m not much interested in debating his position. I think it’s a terrible one that doesn’t even make much sense, but whatever. What’s interesting to me is that it’s an extremist position (for a US Senator, not a Usenet poster) and media–and hopefully voters–are giving him a second look.

Should the counter at Woolworth’s have remained segregated? Should there be a minimum wage? Can employers hire people under the age of 15 for full time work? How about under 10? Do we require that toy manufacturers test their products for lead? Can private liquor stores sell alcohol to teenagers?

Those are important questions for a man who’ll be able to filibuster bills and put holds on judicial appointments. Can “the base” get him elected? I hope not.

Attention Seattleites

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Last reminder for serious. The indie horror movie I wrote, THE DEAD FEED, has its world premiere tonight at 7pm at NW Film Forum.

And sometime in the next few days I’ll post pictures of the event.

Seven books

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1) Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry. Reader, I lol-ed. This book isn’t for everyone: it has a very dark sense of humor. It’s raunchy and obnoxious, but the author made the protagonist real enough for me that went right along with it.

Setup: Bitchy ad exec Amanda Feral finds herself transformed into a zombie and has to learn to navigate the secret world of the supernatural.

It was a lot of fun, but the big drawback was the detective plot the book is structured around. At some point I’m going to have to do a post about horror plots and detective plots, and how much better UF would be if there were more of the former and less of the latter. And the detective plot is a drawback here. These bold and forthright characters should be mixed up in a supernatural version of DYNASTY or something, not a (funny) Simon & Simon. Still, a fun book.

2) Carry On, Jeeves (A Jeeves and Bertie Novel) by PG Wodehouse. I finally gave this a try. Setup: Extraordinarily capable valet solves his rich, feckless employer’s problems.

Reading Bertie Wooster’s voice was fun, but the stories didn’t hold my interest. I laughed while I read each story, but in between stories I didn’t have any urge to keep on. These are terrific books for a different reader.

3) & 4) Yotsuba &! Vol 6 and 7 I figured, after Volume 5, that I was going to burn out on these, but it just isn’t happening. Setup: Yotsuba is a five-year-old girl with a single father in modern Japan. That’s it. Like most kids, she’s a creature of intense emotion, and each chapter chronicles her exposure to some new everyday thing: Bicycles, milk, telephones. It’s all slice of life stuff.

Volume six was fun. Volume seven made me laugh like crazy several times. If you’re looking for comics that will just make you feel good, these are them. (They’re kid-friendly, too.)

5) Changes by Jim Butcher. The Dresden Files reaches book 12. Setup: This time it’s personal!

So, the Red Court vampires–the main baddy through the last several books–have kidnapped a daughter that Harry Dresden didn’t even know he had. They’re going to sacrifice her in a huge magic ritual which will kill Harry and have other mysterious effects that can only be puzzled out in the last 80 pages to give extra context to the final act battle.

Here’s the thing: It’s a terrific adventure story. Lots of battling impossible odds. Lots of battling. Tons of it, in fact. Almost too much. This book also brings back plot points from earlier novels–stuff that happened in much earlier books starts paying off now–not that I remember those earlier novels all that well. I don’t retain information like “workmen removed asbestos from Harry’s office in book whatever,” years after I read it. Things like that slide off my memory. For a while now, I’ve had trouble placing some of the recurring characters. With this one, though, the narrative handles that pretty well. I wasn’t lost once.

Also, the heroics have a much higher price for Our Hero this time. Harry can’t skate through with minimal losses on this one–the conflicts are too big and the choices are too hard. I loved that part of it. So it’s a terrific book, but don’t start here.

6) Chasing the Dragon by Nicholas Kaufmann. A slim, punchy horror novel with an urban fantasy flavor to it. Setup: A young woman, the last in a line of dragon slayers, hunts a very old, very nasty dragon. But it’s hard to fight monsters when you’re a heroin addict.

If the protagonist could speak to ghosts or was half-vampire or something, this would be a straight-up urban fantasy. Instead, her only power is the awesome ability to turn her own life into a flaming wreck. The creature she’s chasing across the American Southwest (the setting wasn’t terribly specific, as I remember) is strong, has terrible sharp claws, can raise the dead and breathes fire. It’s a CHILL villain turned extreme, and the story of the character’s battles with it is interspersed with flashbacks describing how she ended up in this life. I’ll admit that I saw part of the ending coming, but what the hell. I enjoyed it.

7) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Setup: A woman opens a private detective company in her native Botswana.

OMG, the twee, I can’t stand it. I wanted to punch this book in its cutesy fucking mouth.

Second-to-last reminder:

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Tomorrow (Thursday) night, the indie horror film I wrote will have its world premiere at NW Film Forum at 7pm. The title is THE DEAD FEED; it’s about a group of friends who receive video feeds showing one of them being murdered… before it happens (dum dum DUM!!!)

Be there or be somewhere else.