Nicities first

Where were you when you met Cthulu?

I was in Back Bay station trying to not kill the Amtrack driver that was blowing a ridiculously loud horn in a very cramped narrow platform. There, bundled up like some tragic hobo (my fashion sense never does get any better btw) I read against the column about Cthulu and the wonders of the Necronomicon. {Lovecraft is great once you get past the stylized 80 year old writing.}

It seemed like such a pleasant idea that day when I was sure my hearing was gone once the train took off to think of Cthulu waiting at the end of the tunnel to eat the stupid engine car.

I wonder where these guys were when they first discovered the Great Old Ones?

Getting there

I've always like research. Though the topics tend to bounce from things like epic poems to WW1 planes and aeronautic technology (how more people didn't die is a plain miracle IMO), from kendo to gardening.

The more I work and the more effort and time I put into my writing I've started taking it much more seriously. Its still a hobby but now that Warcraft is indefinitely on hold it is my primary one. (The gym and hiking aren't hobbies, they are tools that keep me sane.) So I've been researching.

More than the AW forums I've been reading agent, editor and writer blogs. Other than the obvious leaning towards LiveJournal by nearly the entire community I've been stunned by the sheer amount of words people manage to write. The average daily seems to be around 5K.

More than anything I'm stunned by the sheer amount of output. I thought getting 7-10K a week was fast paced. Admittedly getting 35K is just all kinds of daunting. Now some of them don't have other jobs and have to write as it is their only way to feed themselves and whatever minions they have (we writers always have minions - all of mine are asleep at the moment).

I think in this respect I'm lucky. My day job gives me the security of never having to explain the concept of missing meals to my ducklings and at the same time gives me the opportunity to write. If I can get 30K a month then I foresee all kinds of wordy shenanigans. Now to get cracking, time is awastin'!

Pick your Posion

Now there are a lot of "Cons" in the world. There is ComicCon, DragonCon, ReaderCon, ect. If you know what any of them are then you are a geek. (Better yet you already know that and accept it as part of your DNA.)

But did you ever wonder how geeky you were? Well there's this charty thing that can help! Observe:

Click to read and pick where you belong.

While this is an excellent graph-thing it is missing some categories like those who listen to Alestorm or people who actually build their own airship goggles (not that I've thought about it, nope not me).

So, where do you rank?

(FYI It's a great confidence boost to at least be higher than a furry!)

(Chart by Lore Sjöberg)

Who do you believe in?

(*Be forwarned I'm procrastinating writing the final moments of a very tough scene and I don't feel like getting emotional before work - after work while waiting for rugby is a completely different story. So presenting the rambles!)

Perhaps it's just the circle of friends I have but occasionally the topic of superheroes comes up. This of course covers comics and everything else under the sun. So I present:

The Evolution of My Heroes.

Around the time I was 12 I saw 2 movies that definitely started out my Hero worship. Before then I really liked the Batman tv show and read some Spidey and Batman comics but I also read the Children's Encyclopedia cover to cover so I think at first I liked the words more than the men they were about. Then came The Crow and Wyatt Earp. In 1994 my world twisted a bit. I liked each for different reasons but in the end they don't let evil (and that is what both were fighting) go unanswered even if their methods could be considered morally questionable. When people called one of these a 'murderer' I, in my 12 year old glory would get royally mad and list of people on his side who had been off'd. For good or bad the very gray area they sit in on the chart of morality is interesting to me.

When the superhero movies first started to come back most people (some in my circle included) were enamored with Spiderman. Don't get me wrong, web slinging through NYC would be pretty freaking sweet but he lacks the Grrrness I like in my Superheroes. Enter the next Gen (or the Old Guard I guess since everything is kind of circular) Wolverine and Himura Kenshin.

Wolverine is just all kinds of awesome. Case closed.

Kenshin, especially in the manga is very much aware of what he is and what he has done. Reading it is like watching a great white shark domesticate itself. He's learning how to live with people and how to live with Kenshin. Very tragic stuff at the core but in the end still some of the coolest stuff I had read/watched by my late teens and early 20's. (You get a sense of this from the Samurai X movies but that is really the before picture and manga is the aftermath.)

So that leaves just the late 20's. Who do I root for now? Well, Iron Man for one. I read a good chunk of the comics in Jr. High and loved them. The movies? Awesome and anyone who can blow shit up with a flick of a wrist gets major bonus points on the Hero chart. I really can't wait to see how they work out the cluster^%$# that is the Avengers. (Sorry, I have issues with Captain America.) Tony Stark is morally tortured character with anger issues. I'm really interested to see if they touch on what him so interesting to me in Iron Man 2 (shiny suit aside, ooo shiny.)

My other hero is Karsa Orlong. 99.9% of the world have never heard of him but his all kinds of "In you face" awesome. He's a character in the Malazan Books of the Fallen and he is right now smashing his way through that world in a fury that would make even the Hulk jealous. Is he a hero in the sense of the others stated and anyone your mind can bring up? No. He's a hero like Beowulf is a hero. The kind of hero who's an ass but who also rips off your arm and beats you death with it. (That's Beowulf not Karsa, well not yet anways.) They take the world and make what they want, unapologetically. They are the very opposite of passive. In theory, on the page that's pretty freakin cool and yeah I cheer for Karsa and Beowulf every time they show up.

(FYI I still don't think Wyatt Earp was a murderer. I'm just sayin.)

Old Lady Alert!

Yes, I am an old lady.

/bow

/waves Sluggity at the kids in my yard with old lady menace

As a self professed luddite (seriously if Facebook didn't have Mahjong and Bejeweled on it I'd never log on) I tend to see things like wicked old word processors (the type that actually make sounds when you write, fabulous!) and think "OMG that's the greatest thing ever!" I remember as a kid I had a type writer (probably is still at the lake house actually) and I would write whatever my little mind could think of and if I actually managed to find a spelling error I'd pull the paper out, use an eraser and then try desperately to fit the paper back in to re-type. While this process made stories look like the machine was drunk at the time of publication I think still worked out.

See, that's nostalgia. That's something that if you tell to an 8 year old they'll squint at you and explain about the existence of Microsoft Word.

Now there are a bunch of virtual books out (the Kindle, the Reader, the Nook for instance). This might just be another example of my love for that old type writer but I don't care how many books you can upload onto one of those things, I'll stick with books. The pages, the weight of them, the presence they have all add to the reading experience.

People say "but its such a pain to carry the heavy things". Yeah cause your Danielle Steele book is so much heavier than my Steven Erikson epics that if I do clock someone with them that person is going down.

"But you can have so many."

On a good day I can actually read. Lately I haven't even done that but when I do its always one book at a time. True I do read linguistic texts together with fiction, short stories around the same time as novels but still there's only 1 open at a time. What do I need to carry around 100 for?

Maybe its the greenies who want to save trees. I like trees, I saved 2 last week.

Between libraries, apps, downloads and such the rest of the world is welcome to it. Me, I'm sticking with the books. Besides, when I fall asleep what do I want to hug a mini computer or a tome? Going with the cool cover of vicious man eating dogs.

Playing on Youtube

Well, my love for Youtube is never ending. One of the best things about it (besides watching awesome things like the snake eating rabbit) is the basically free music I can bookmark whenever I want. Music has been a focus for the past week mostly because I just got a great new mp3 player the Sansa View (a Sandisk thing).

Point #1: I hate I-pods. The device itself is fine (I call my little Nano Sqwiggles), the interface isn't hard for a luddite like me to use and the portability is great! But I-Tunes can go die in a fire. Anything that steals music that I had before I installed the program faces the wrath of me and that I'm told that is unpleasant.

(Now keep in mind that on my trip to Europe in high school I lugged around a cassette player and like 10 tapes along with my books, notebooks and other crap that is forever to be found in my backpacks both then and now.

It seems like I'm always behind the times when it comes to music technology. My first year at Northeastern I spent trying to find the best way to carry a taped up CD player around with out my giant history book of doom smashing it little itty bitty pieces.)

Point #2: Laziness. Yes, I am lazy. I don't like doing things over and over. I-pod needs recharging every freakin' day. The S-View? every week. Plus it's 4x the capacity and well, it looks cool.

It turns out I don't have enough music in my possesion to fill this little thing up so I goof around on Youtube and Grooveshark to listen and see if anything good and new catches my fancy. Suidakra I'm looking at you! New music is always fun but sometimes the classics can be even better.

Music that I've had since I was 18, that made its way from a tape, to a burnt CD is now on the S-View. Call me a geek but I really love my Final Fantasy Mix.

/Presses Play