Ah, to once again return...

I'm still alive~ If someone is actually reading this, you probably talked to me fairly recently and already know that I am alive, but it bears repeating. One day it won't be true.

Wow, that's a fucking depressing start. Guess that's what I get for neglecting my blog for so long~

I've been writing a bit on and off. A few poems, a short story or two, mostly for the few contests we've had at the Locution forums. Still going to college, still working. Did I mention I was working? Wow, it's been that long. Recap: I got a part time job. Money is good. Working can be fun. Oh, and I went to England for the first time in 6 years in May.

Busy busy.

Anyway, I've been feeling the need to write lately, so I've decided to start updating this blog more regularly again. We'll see how long it lasts. :D

Bit too tired to churn out something new, so I think I'll post some clichéd snippets I've written the past week. Maybe if I get it out of my system, something original will turn up~

***

The lights in the sky came on a Tuesday night. I remember that bit well. On Tuesdays my daughter had soccer practice, and her muddy cleats were sitting by the door when I stepped out onto the porch.

I talk about the lights, but actually it was the humming that was first. A low sound, resonating inside my head. When it started I thought it was my damn ears again—they do strange things when the weather changes. Ringing, dizziness, that sort of thing. But my dog Sassy heard it too. Her ears pricked up and she looked all around the room.

So I opened the door and walked outside. And there they were. Pale blue, bright red, lime green. Strange dots hovering and darting around the sky above our neighborhood.

Now I know what you're thinking. I've thought it too, lots of times. But I've seen meteors before. Got up early to watch the Leonids with my parents when I was twelve. I know what meteors look like, and these weren't them. I don't live by an airbase, either. No experimental aircraft about. Not many normal aircraft either, come to think of it.

I suppose I could have imagined it. But whenever I think that, I remember how Sassy reacted. Shot straight past me to the middle of the yard, then barked at the sky until they left. I don't think she'd humor a hallucination of mine like that, do you?

***

Never use credit cards. That was an important rule. A credit card could be traced, and even if you used it only once it could betray you, become a small piece of the map that leads them to you. Always steal cash or food or clothes. Leave the plastic.

Never threaten violence, either. She didn't want to hurt anyone, of course, but even just a threat was bad. Threats got noticed. Better to slip a wallet from a banker's jacket pocket without him feeling a thing.

That was another rule. She only took from people who could afford it. Not quite Robin Hood, but even he probably kept a bit for himself on the side. He was hunted by the Sheriff, after all, living the life of a fugitive in the forest, like her.

Well, not like her. The analogy fell down there, too. She was hiding under bridges, in sewers, in alleys, not amongst the leaves. And as for the Sheriff—a shadowy government agency was also a bit different from the Robin Hood stories her mum had told her.

News

I haven't written a lot in the past two months, at least not in terms of fiction—most of my energies have gone into writing essays and journal entries for my first college class (English Composition). It's nice to get back into the habit of writing essays, and I certainly need the practice, but five paragraph essays do get wearing after a while...

I did slightly edit a story I wrote last October for a contest on the Locution Forums. The next issue of Locution is coming up (planned date of publication is August 15), and as a staff member I had to submit something. It was interesting to do, since editing is my usual obstacle to finishing a story. I can edit as I write, and I can edit before entering a forum contest, but afterwards? For some reason or another, I get stuck.

This time, however, I had a reason to persevere, and I managed a few changes that (I hope) were worthwhile. So that's progress, perhaps. ^_^

I'll also hopefully be taking an online creative writing course in the fall, which will mean I have to make the time for more creative stuffs. Huzzah~ \o/

Day 25

I saw WALL-E yesterday, and now I have an urge to dissect it. I don't usually do so, since I actually dislike it when people over-analyze movies. But hey, what the hell.

Now, first off, don't be fooled by WALL-E's cutesy exterior; this may be a kids movie, but in name only. Sure, it was silly, and geared towards kids, but there was quite a lot going on under the surface. Science fiction is well-known for it's examination of the human condition and contemporary issues, and I think that the things that the creators of WALL-E decided to touch on are an interesting commentary on the issues of today.

The first, and most obvious, is consumerism. In WALL-E, humans have deserted planet earth to escape the massive amounts of trash they've created; the mountains of garbage have literally made the planet uninhabitable. In the spectacular vistas there are advertisements galore, giant super stores, gas stations large enough for fifty cars, all of which have the Buy n Large logo. It's the ultimate Wal-Mart.

Depicting the future earth as covered in trash may seem like an exaggeration, and maybe it is. I doubt we'll ever get that far in our excess. Still, stories about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant raft of plastic and other debris that accumulates due to the area's circular rotation, are eerily reminiscent of the possible future as shown in WALL-E.

A friend of mine, after we watched the movie, mentioned that she wished it had focused more on the environment. That would have been interesting, but I think it misses the point. By focusing on consumerism and excessive waste, the creators of WALL-E looked at the real cause of the environmental mess that we're in. Why are our forests and other natural habitats disappearing? Why is toxic waste finding its way into our rivers and oceans? How on earth did there get to be a giant raft of plastic in the middle of the sea? In the end it all comes down to stuff. We deplete our resources and destroy the natural world to make stuff. We create toxins through the manufacturing of stuff. And when we get tired of our stuff, it gets thrown away as waste.

Moving from the planet earth to aboard the spaceship Axiom one finds more social commentary. Much has been made of the humans and how fat they are in the movie; they've become so dependent on machines and robots that they never leave their hover chairs. But what's more interesting, at least in my view, is what the humans on Axiom do. Their interactions are regulated to talking to one another on holographic screens, so much so that even when they're floating right next to each other they don't look at each other. They just watch their screens.

Much of our interaction in the developed world these days is through technology, be it texting on a cell phone, posting on web forums, or conversing through email or instant messaging. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; new communications technologies have opened up faster ways of doing business, ways to talk to people abroad, and ways to connect with people who have similar interests but you'd never meet in real life. What WALL-E shows us, though, is that perhaps, like most things, this could be taken to far; in the end, nothing beats face-to-face interaction, and if we were to lose that we'd be losing a lot.

I could go on—how the "meals in a cup" found on Axiom are a commentary on our fast food society of today, for example. But I'd like to skip the end of the movie. (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

There's been a lot of talk lately about "green technologies" and how they're the future. They're being touted as the answer to our prayers, as the solution to our environmental, perhaps even our economic woes. But there's something fishy about them in my mind. We're led to believe that with the right technology we'll be able to wean ourselves of fossil fuels and go on our merry, over-consuming ways.

I do believe that green technologies are the answer, but there's a catch. I don't think we'll be able to live the same lives we do today. Will we fall back into the Dark Ages? Hardly. But there's something terribly ironic in the idea that we'll fix all our problems, which stem from our consumerist culture, by buying more stuff just because it's "green."

When the humans in WALL-E returned to earth, they returned to an earth in which technology had failed it. The plan to clean up the earth using robots like WALL-E has failed, and what do these humans do? They grow plants. The radically change their lives, moving from a consumerist culture to one that grows things, and builds things. And it's this change that turns the earth green again, not a continuation of their previous lives.

It makes you wonder what we'll have to do to make our earth green again.

Day 24

Gasp! I'm back a day early! Quite surprisingly, after going to the movies with friends, I do not feel like going to bed and sleeping for a year. Success!

I've seen quite a few movies this long weekend (four, to be precise), which strikes me as awfully lazy and unproductive. But I was feeling crummy, and they were fun, so I think that makes it okay.

Anyway, I thought I'd write my thoughts about each of them, focusing on the writing. It's not really creative (I seem to say that a lot...), but it counts.

Maybe. ^_^

***

TWELVE MONKEYS (Slight spoilers towards the end.)

Time travel! What's not to love.

I love science fiction, but I particularly love time travel stories. My favorite Doctor Who episodes aren't the ones with Cybermen and Daleks (though those are pretty fun), but the ones that actually use time travel, and not just as a gimmick to have a new setting every week but as an integral part of the story. Like "Blink" by Steven Moffat—not only do the monsters send people back in time, feeding off the energy of the life they could have had, but Sally Sparrow ultimately saves herself because of a time loop.

I like to think of time travel stories as fitting into two categories: those in which time can change, and those in which it can't. (Doctor Who, as usual, is a law unto itself; apparently time in its universe is a combination. Some events are fluid, but others, like Pompeii, are fixed in time. Changing these brings utter disaster.)

Now, both scenarios offer interesting opportunities, but I think I'm a bit more fond of the "unchangeable time" scenario. A character goes back in time to change an event, only to find that he can't, or that by going back in time he caused it to happen. Or a character goes back in time knowing he cannot change the past—he must either live with being unable to change it, or, even though he knows it's futile, try to change the event and fail.

Twelve Monkeys is a wonderful mix of all of these. James, a convict, goes back in time to collect information about a virus that wiped out 5 billion people in 1996. At first he's resigned to the fact that these people are going to die; there's nothing he can do but attempt to complete his mission. But this changes (of course), and in the end he tries to stop the spread of the virus. Along the way he also begins to believe the people in the past who say he's crazy, and also comes to fear that by going back in time he sent in motion the events that led to the catastrophe.

Brilliant plot. Watching it made me want to dust off that time travel story I wrote a while back and fix it up. I might just be able to make it work...

***

Hm, that took longer than I expected! Ah well, I certainly don't have to ramble about every single movie I've seen lately.

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow I'll get back to one of the stories I'm working on. Yah, that would be good. ^_^

Day 15 (one day late)

Ooo, the halfway point! Funfunfun. ^_^

I just finished a really interesting book by Michael Pollan called The Omnivore's Dilemma. This isn't really a review of the book or a discussion, both of which can be found elsewhere (most notably here), but more of what it's made me ponder in a roundabout way.

Rough draft, as usual, and a rather rambling one at that. I expect it stretches the "creative" guideline, but I'm not picky. ;)

***

I don't often think about food. Oh, I like it all right, and sometimes my mum or dad will ask me what I'd like to eat for dinner, forcing me to contemplate it for a short while. And I suppose that when I remember events in my life, like trips abroad or Christmas's spent with family, I, like many people, inevitably think about the foods that accompanied them. But where our food actually comes from, well, that's something that doesn't usually cross my mind when chewing on a ham sandwich.

Of course, this is partly because I have a fairly good idea of our foods' origins, a better idea, I'd like to think, than some people out there. I've read the articles about the factory farms, the toxic retention ponds of full shit, the chickens forced to live so close together they eat each other, the algae blooms caused by agricultural runoff, the perils of monocultures, and the death of the small farm.

Thinking about these things while eating would put anyone off their dinner, so instead, when my thoughts do stray to my food, I comfort myself with flimsy reassurances that my mum buys organic, so it must be okay.

Reading Pollan's book, among other things, forced my to examine my ideas and conceptions about food. What I discovered made a lot of sense based on my general world-view, but there were some surprises in there, too. It's interesting to see what you learn about yourself when forced to ponder something relatively new.

I now know that I don't want to be a vegetarian, and I don't think I ever will. I had recently considered whether I should try it, and reading this book help me sort things out. For me, eating other animals is part of life, and not something of which we should be ashamed. Any moral qualms I have are not about killing innocent animals, but their quality of life, the environmental impact of how they're raised, and how they are killed. So instead of eschewing meat entirely, I've decided to make sure I know where it comes from and to eat less of it. It's a grayer position, but then not everything is black and white.

Then there's hunting—Pollan's descriptions of hunting actually made me want to try it. Which was sort of disturbing, until I realized my views on hunting hadn't suddenly morphed into that of the stereotypical sport hunter who owns more guns than seems entirely necessary. I still don't think hunting for sport is right; if you hunt an animal you should do so with the intent of eating it. But the idea that I might actually want to experience hunting once or twice, well, that's certainly new.

Finally, there's that flimsy reasoning that I don't have to think about my food because a lot of it's organic. Turns out that organic food isn't synonymous with small family farms and happy little animals. I suppose if I weren't so naive I would've figured this out sooner; organic agriculture has had to become more and more industrial to meet growing demand.

***

Okay, not sure how to end it. Since it isn't anything special, I think that'll do. Rambles don't need conclusions. ^_^

Day 2

I meant to write in a notebook that I took to the orthodontists today; I've got a new idea for a novel, and I was hoping to play around with some dialogue to help me figure out some characters. Alas, I didn't manage it, and when I got home I was horribly tired. Which was a bit depressing, since I hadn't thought about my illness affecting the challenge. I haven't had a really bad day like this in a while (just some not-so-good days), so it's a downer when I feel like I've suddenly gone a step backwards.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better now, so I think I shall ramble. It won't be a particularly creative ramble (or a long one), so it might stretch the limits of the challenge, but at this point I think anything will do.

I just finished watching a film with my parents entitled Paris, Je T’aime. It's a collection of five-minute shorts set in Paris, each about love of some form or another. The shorts ranged from a strangely hilarious one about a man who falls in love with a vampire, to a story narrated by an American woman (in rather appalling French) about how she fell in love with Paris.

It was really quite wonderful. A lot of the stories were simply "slice of life;" they showed scenes that could happen to anyone, simple moments that aren't particularly exciting or dramatic, but are somehow utterly real and authentic. I'd love to write something like that; most of my ideas for stories are science fiction or fantasy, which can't exactly be called realistic. And while science fiction has been traditionally a wonderful vessel for examining the human condition (honestly, what better way is there to get people thinking about what makes us human than writing about androids?), it doesn't tell it like it is. To be able to write about everyday events, everyday people, and to imbue that writing with meaning and poignancy, well, that seems pretty damn difficult to me.

Heh, not that examining the human condition in science fiction is any easier.