You know you’re talking to the right people when you say: “Well, Holden isn’t Yossarian.” as part of a normal conversation.

APK: Wanna see a pic of an earthworm bigger than your hand?

Marianne: NO THANK YOU!

APK: Ok. Thought I’d ask.

Marianne: GLARE

APK: What? I asked! I didn’t just post a link!

Marianne: Uh-huh.

APK: I coulda! And you woulda clicked it!

Marianne: True.

APK: But I did NOT! Because I am a GOOD PERSON! …ok that was a stretch. I am an OK person MOSTLY.

Marianne: I do think you are a good person. You are not always a NICE person though.

(Do YOU want to see the pic? Click here.)

I would like some Skittles. Please to be making with the rainbow of tasting. Thank you.

Skittles! Now!

So I started reading it. I didn’t get very far. I dunno maybe it just annoyed me and won’t you. But while it is obviously bizzaro fiction and that entire subgenre gets away with a lot of things – this one just didn’t work for me.

All right, drop me in a world where Bruce Campbell’s followers cut off their right hand. And try to destroy everything else. Sure. And out Shatner at a con about him. Sure. But things like a character who smokes, and every time you see her she is dragging, literally, half a cig in a single drag, every time? It gets odd and old.

Add to it the idea of a fiction bomb that erases a work of fiction from reality so that it never existed? Well strange but all right I guess?

Here’s where it lost me. There’re four theatres showing constant Shatner stuff at this convention. We’re told each one has like three levels of seating, each theatre seating 2k people. Each one is soundproofed. EXCEPT! The screens are free hanging, and behind them is open, joined space that isn’t soundproofed of divided. So that someone can stand there and see the back of each screen all at the same time.

Wait, what? Sound doesn’t really work like that. If you can hear all the movies in the back, those screens aren’t thick enough to stop sound, for seriously. Especially not if you can see what is projected on them (reversed, ‘natch) from behind. And that might seem like a minor point to you but it is an underlying issue of odd laziness on the part of this book that annoyed the crap out of me.

If you want me to buy into twenty impossible things before lunch then the non-impossible can’t also be impossible simply for the sake of it makes your life easier. Sorry, Charlie.

Also, frankly, writing the main Shatner full … of ellipses … so that he … has a form of bad … dialect in the book grew old fast. Yes, we know Shatner pauses when he acts. Everyone reading the book does. It doesn’t work on paper the way you think it does, not for long stretches.

So I stopped. Because my frustration level was growing at a constant rate. The end.

Part of me loves to panic. I hate it, consciously, but part of me must adore it. I try to keep drama-free and live a positive life. I really do. But sometimes things go wrong and that cold fear grips me and…

It spirals my brain and I can’t think straight and all I want to do is curl up and hide and my mood goes to crap and I can’t process and it’s hell. But even then I know things will work out, one way or the other. The dangerous part, for me, at least, is the feeling that if I don’t give in to the panic then the good outcome won’t follow.

You know what I mean? That feeling that if you don’t give in and let the fear wash over you, if you don’t give the devil his due – you’ll pay for it, somehow. Good things come on the back of bad things so you have to let the bad things conquer you for a time or else.

This is, of course, utter bullshit.

It’s an excuse to wallow. It’s a great way to let yourself lose a night and sink down and give in and scream a lot. It doesn’t help anything, it doesn’t ensure anything, it has exactly one purpose: an excuse.

An excuse to revert and spin around and freak out! Woo hoo! Because on some level, I enjoy it. Most of us do, I think. The feeling, that rush of panic, can be comforting in a strange way. At least, we can chant, we know how to deal with the bad times.

Which says a lot. How badly do we deal with the good times that we have to seek out and embrace the crappy ones to feel safe? I’m on a road toward fixing it – naming it, seeing it for what it is and trying to beat it down and live my life for what it is – not for what I think it should be because of some twisted idea of “deserve.”

Not easy, some days. But I don’t beat myself up over that, that gets you nowhere good either, I just recognize it and try again the next time. And the next time, if I fail again, I will pick myself up and try again the next time. Each time I learn a little more and, hopefully, become a tiny fraction of a better person.

Still, a lot of us are wired for that whole odd “bad things will happen because we deserve them on some level” bullshit. Fucked up.

So we decided to go live with the first four chapters of Stays Crunchy in Milk, because why not? Chapter One is here. Enjoy.

Well, this is kinda fucked up but kind of what happens. When you sell rights to things they don’t always come back. And sometimes that can bite you. It’s life and it isn’t pretty and I’m not saying this is just desserts or anything (though Whedon hated the film and I don’t like the show and love the film) it’s just … life in the food chain.

(via The Hollywood Reporter) A new incarnation of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” could be coming to the big screen.

“Buffy” creator Joss Whedon isn’t involved and it’s not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.

While Whedon is the person most associated with “Buffy,” Kuzui and her Kuzui Enterprises have held onto the rights since the beginning, when she discovered the “Buffy” script from then-unknown Whedon. She developed the script while her husband put together the financing to make the 1992 movie, which was released by Fox.

Kuzui later teamed with Gail Berman, then president of Sandollar Television, bringing back Whedon to make the TV series, which was produced by Fox TV and launched on the WB in 1997. Kuzui and Sandollar received executive producer credits on “Buffy” and its spinoff, “Angel.”

The new “Buffy” film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching “Star Trek.”

……

The parties are meeting with writers and hearing takes, and later will look for a home for the project. The producers do not rule out Whedon’s involvement but have not yet reached out to him.Speaking from Tokyo, Fran Kuzui said the company is constantly approached not only about sequels but theater, video games and foreign remakes for “Buffy.” When Vertigo’s Lee contacted them, they were intrigued.

——————

So a new slayer, keeping the property moving, making it, well: “The goal would be to make a darker, event-sized movie that would, of course, have franchise potential.” and what’s wrong with that? That Whedon isn’t involved? Well, all right but he might be, and if he isn’t these are folks who have had a hand in it since the start and want it to succeed. So who knows. But I wonder how many fans will disown it before they even see it just because of this ad refuse to give it a chance? I also wonder if maybe I’ll like this version.

But chances are high they will ask Whedon along to the party and this is a kerfluffle over nothing. Let’s be honest.

When I decided to write Stays Crunchy in Milk one of the big things that drew me to the story was the idea of getting to write a road novel. I’ve always had a love of road stories, really. Something about putting some folk out on an adventure, a traveling journey, that just makes me smile.

I can write about, say, Boston and tell you everything I want to about the city. I can talk about what it looks like what it feels like and so on down the endless paths of possibilities there. But if I use a few characters and instead of telling you what I think, reflect what they feel and think through the city – show their experience colliding with that the city is and has and get that reflection together … you can get an incredibly complex view. A view not only of the city itself but also of each one of those involved characters. I love that.

The whole thing serves so many different masters and creates such an interesting and big picture it can be addictive to me, both as a reader and writer. So when I sat down to write a novel I realized I wanted to take these characters on a journey, make them move away from comfort zones and explore into places they’d never even heard of. It let me find my own feelings on a lot of things and it taught me more and more about each character as I went.

I mean look I can sit here and say “Well Character X will jump if a spider walks into a room” but there’s no way to run every permutation beforehand. Nor, I think, should you. Because the next time they jump they could learn something from it. People do that, after all. So every experience adds to the last and every time you have something utterly new you have to work out about that character. They should be the sum of their lives, after all, and challenging that, taking them somewhere new for a constant stretch, will help keep them growing.

And with three characters to reflect through, every big event was a chance for exploring the effects of those changes. Both in them and in me. I know how I felt about some ideas and concepts before I wrote the book and I know that having to process those same concepts through three different headspaces and untangle those knots often opened things up for me in ways I might not have seen beforehand.

So yeah. Road novels. Travel stories. Got a favorite?

A really good one, with clips from just about everything.

So I finally saw the new Star Trek movie last night. Overall I liked it. It was a good film. I enjoyed myself, had a nice time, would see it again – all the things that make for a good movie. There were times it felt very Trek and times it felt like something new and that isn’t bad, either.

Still I have some specific type thoughts, both good and bad, so I’ll put them under a cut. A cut that will act as a Spoiler Warning zone.

One last chance to turn away. Just sayin’

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