WWdN: In Exile

pirates are absolute divine beings

Oh noes! Teh religious persecutions!!1

Student punished for spaghetti beliefs

A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate. But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion. Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear 'full pirate regalia' as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.

I think this is the first time in the history of the internets that linking an article doesn't really do it justice, so take a moment and enjoy the pictures and serious tone of TFA, which dryly ends with this: "The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his
religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits."

a movie script ending

I've never been especially good at managing my time, but over the last year or so, I've nearly gotten a handle on balancing my various writing deadlines, personal writing projects, Netscape and WWdN stuff, poker, and the all-important time with my family.

I've had maybe six auditions in the last six months or so, and that's actually been just fine with me; I've been so focused on writing and raising teenagers, auditions just don't have the investment:return ratio that they once had for me. So now that I'm on a massive deadline (manga is due in just over 48 hours) I of course get a huge audition this afternoon, lose all of tomorrow afternoon to an InDigital shoot, and feel like all my careful planning and scheduling to maximize creativity while minimizing panic has gone entirely out into a black hole somewhere.

While I struggle to fix some dialog that I used to like but really, really hate now, as well as  flesh out a scene that was originally a few panels but apparently wants to be two pages, please enjoy this week's Geek in Review: Five Ways to Make iTunes (more) Awesome:

Some people whistle while they work; I listen to music. Depending on where I'm working, I'll listen to iTunes or Amarok, and occasionally even put on the radio to remember why I stopped listening to the radio in the first place.

Even though Amarok blows iTunes away in many departments, I like iTunes, and believe it's a great bit of software, especially for users like my parents: it's easy to use, hard to break (unless you're really trying to fuck something up) and it looks pretty, especially since they integrated Cover Flow. I think iTunes can be better, though, and since I'm not a programmer (though I once played a Nanite creator on TV) I puzzled out some idealistic ways that I think iTunes could be dialed up a little bit closer to Awesome.

I kept a couple of criteria in mind as I made this list: I think the average iTunes user doesn't want to mess around with AppleScript or do anything which involves the command line. I think they enjoy many of the "set it and forget it" features iTunes incorporates (like scheduling podcast downloads, auto-updating iPods when you connect them, etc.,) and enjoy that (most of the time,) iTunes "just works."

(You can Digg or vote for it at Netscape, if you're into that sort of thing.)

All panic aside, this continues to be a tremendously exhilarating process, just in that "I've jumped from an airplane and I haven't found out if the parachute will open, yet" way.

A scheduling note for tonight's weekly WWdN games at PokerStars

For those of you who play in the WWdN Tuesday night Poker games: I'll be in the regular game at 8:30 Eastern, but I'll have to miss the 2nd chance so I can entertain a friend of mine who's visiting from out of town. There will be a special Wednesday night HORSE game to take its place.

Details for tonight:

What: WWdN: Weekly NLHE Tourney
Where: PokerStars.
When: Every Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern
Password: monkey
Buy-in: $10 +1

Also, the current version of the PokerStars Software is doing a wonky thing with wine, and I can't type in long titles for my tourneys. The player who busts me will still get naming rights, but it will be in the lobby.

dirty vegas, circa 2001

When you're running bad in Vegas, you have to take whatever victories you can get, no matter how small.

Like a free slot pull in a skanky downtown casino, for example.

the house is mine

This weekend, Anne and I cleaned out our garage again, but this time instead of just moving things around and re-organizing them, we opened up boxes and actually got rid of as much stuff as we could. She kept saying, "I don't want our kids to have to do this when we die, because we held on to a bunch of crap."

Of course, by "we" she actually meant "me," because I have accumulated so much material bullshit over my 34 years, I can go into my garage once a year or so, and throw out 1/2 the stuff that's in there. I know this violates several basic mathematical laws, but it is backed up by several years' worth of trials.

Whenever I do this, I feel a rush of freedom and serenity as I find and jettison things that were once very important to me, but are now simply "more bullshit I don't need." This time, however, I also paused to remember why the stuff I was keeping deserved to be kept: my grey fleece jacket from TNG, my original printing of Hacker Crackdown and box after box of comics, scripts and call sheets from nearly every movie I've worked on, hundreds of photographs I took when I lived in Nice filming Mr. Stitch, and a three big Rubbermaid tubs filled with bits of Star Trek memorabilia that would be collector's items to Trekkies, but are heirlooms for me.

It wasn't all good: some rats chewed up and destroyed a lot of things which had sentimental value to Anne (causing my devotion to not poisoning those little motherfuckers to undergo a serious reevaluation) and when we were finished, it still felt like we needed to get rid of half the stuff that's in there.

However, once the surviving stuff was stored and stacked, we both felt better about it than we did when we started. It was like we did a little springtime pruning, ensuring that though we still have too much stuff, our stuff doesn't own us.

Except for my vast collection of classic SF books. That stuff totally owns me.

Err, pwns. Yeah. That's it.

in which i finally make the big announcement

I've struggled with an appropriately dramatic way to make this announcement, and have come to the conclusion that the best way to do it is in the following style:

I'm writing a story for the second volume of Star Trek: The Manga.

Pretty cool, huh?

If you're unfamiliar with the first volume of Star Trek: The Manga, TokyoPop and Memory Alpha have all sorts of exciting details for you, some of which look like this:

Like that television classic, these new journeys venture into the terrain of social politics, personal reflection...and bare-knuckled brawls between the dashing Captain Kirk and the galaxy’s most cunning alien species. Vulcan science officer Spock's unflappable logic, Doctor “Bones” McCoy’s flare for drama, chief engineer Scott's perpetual struggle to keep the warp engines online, and the never before told origin story of one of the Star Trek universe’s most popular adversaries, all come at you in a fresh, new style.

This came my way about a month ago, when Luis Reyes, the editor in charge of the project, wrote to me that he'd heard I was into this sort of thing, and that I "may be interested in contributing."¹

Initially, I was terrified at the prospect of creating and writing this story, but this voice in my head kept saying, "Dude, this would be so cool! Come on, man, let's do this!" Ultimately, I decided that if I'm going to truly call myself a Writer, and if I'm truly going to write that novel someday, I've got to tackle fiction sooner or later . . . and what better way to test myself than with characters and a universe that I already know?

Of course, as soon as I got to seriously working on it (and had Kirk say"Captain's Log . . ." for the first time) I realized that even though I have a bit of a safety net with this project, the very fact that I am writing an original series Star Trek story means that the safety net is actually built out of barbed wire. And there are alligators crawling around on it, and monkeys with BB blowguns are constantly shooting at me while I walk across the high wire from "I have an idea" to "Okay, it's done!" Thanks to the tireless efforts of my friend Andrew, I haven't had to worry too much about falling off the wire (and I owe Andrew a huge debt of gratitude, because at one point I was ready to leap off the wire, and he talked me into staying on it. In fact it's not a stretch at all to say that this project wouldn't exist without Andrew's participation, and since I know he won't accept the credit he deserves, I'll just give it here) and throughout this entire process, what hasn't killed me has definitely made me stronger, so to speak.

Those of you who've read The Dilbert Future -- especially the last chapter -- may be interested in this next set of non-coincidental apparent coincidences:

• I've recently spent a lot of time reading and rereading some of the classic graphic novels of the last decade. A couple of them, Absolute Sandman and Absolute Dark Knight, have scripts in them, which I read long before this opportunity came my way. In fact, I studied them, because I thought, "Hey, I may write one of these someday in the mysterious future."
• My son Ryan conceived and wrote out a graphic novel of his own a few months ago, and for Christmas I gave him the Will Eisner books on Comics and Graphic Novels to use as a reference -- he was kind enough to loan them to me when I accepted the job.
• Around the same time I started writing my TNG Reviews for TV Squad (which are on hiatus until I hit my Manga deadline on Friday,) I found a complete set of TOS DVDs for the stupidly low price of like 79 dollars (that's a dollar an episode, dude. If that wasn't a sign that I was supposed to buy them, I'll have to retroactively come up with a better reason to justify the purchase. Retrocausality FTW!)

Yes, yes, I know that looking back at the last six months or so, it's easy to look at isolated events and pick out a pattern that fits the results, (and that's probably exactly what I'm doing,) but even if that's the case, it sure was lucky that those individual events lined up the way they did, isn't it?

I can't reveal anything about my story, though I wish I could tell you the title, which I love, and the artist, who I also love, and one of the other authors in the collection who may or may not out him or her or itself in the comments on this post . . . but I can tell you a little bit about the process:

This hasn't been easy. In fact, there have been a few days when I've been so plagued by insecurity, I've wondered if I'm up to the task, and questioned the sanity of stepping out of my comfort zone and accepting the challenge. Mostly, though, it's been exhilarating and terrifying all at once. It's like a roller coaster in my mind, man.

As I worked on it today, I realized that I had to throw out one of my favorite scenes, because it didn't serve the larger narrative, and it wasn't worth the hours of rewrites to force the narrative to accommodate it. A few times, I've found myself very pleased with some clever bit of dialog or stage direction, only to realize that the authenticity of the story and the characters was lost as a result, and I've been forced to wipe it all out. Strangely enough, it feels good to do both of these things, because I understand that this is a something real Writers have to face with some degree of regularity, and each time I do something real Writers do with regularity, I take one more step toward feeling like I've earned the right to be counted among them.

TokyoPop hasn't written an official press release about this project, yet, so this may actually be the first tube on the Internets that talks about it², which is kind of cool. There is a release date, but since they haven't made that information public, I'll just say that it's in the Mysterious Future.

Yeah, so . . . that's what I've been doing. Pretty neat-o³ huh?

¹As we've worked together, I've learned that Luis is all about the understatement.
²Don't worry, I have permission to talk about it.
³Sorry. Sorry. I've been looking for an excuse to say "pretty neat-o" for weeks, and this is the first non-sarcastic opportunity which has presented itself.

stupid meta

I did not accomplish any of the meaningful blog writing I meant wanted to accomplish this week.

Between the Big Project That I Really Need to Just Discuss in Exciting Detail and some real life responsibilities, well, I just don't have any energy left.

I recently made the comparison of creativity to a well, and a reader corrected that comparison with one of his own. Creativity, he said, it more like a muscle; the more you work it, the stronger it gets and the longer it can be used before you're too tired to use it. I think that makes a lot of sense, and I wish I'd come up with it myself.

So to continue with that comparison, I'm tired. I've been using the creative muscles so much, they're sore and tired. I'd like to run and climb and swim and all that stuff, but pretty much all the energy I have at this moment needs to stay focused on The Long Walk, because if I fall down, I'm going to get shot.

Legion was awesome today, and in a cruel twist of fate, I'd really like to write all about the various jokes we made, the outrageously talented guest stars I got to work with, and how fucking awesome the show is . . . but it would reveal way too much that Warner Brothers wants to keep secret (and spoil the show for the audience, which sucks) so I'll just have to file those notes away and use them when this episode airs. And no, I can't even say the title, because that would give too much away.

For those of you who have stuck around and checked in this week, thanks for reading and interacting just a bit; it's been nice to have this blog as a "cool down" place to just goof off and blow off steam when I get a break from the Long Walk. I appreciate that WWdN doesn't seem to have douchebags like the one who felt compelled to freak out at John Kovalic for, you know, being human and having limits.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone. I'll be cleaning out my garage.

Legion of Ackbar

I'm working on Legion of Superheroes today, so I'm going over my script to prepare my best Cosmic Boy and giggled when I read this:

THE SECURITY CHIEF - His eyes go wide as he [redacted to keep Warner Brothers happy] spins around and warns.

SECURITY CHIEF
It's a trap!

Behold, the power of Fark.

new rule

Bill Maher's New Rule:

Liberals must stop saying President Bush hasn't asked Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror:

On the contrary, he's asked us to sacrifice something enormous: our civil rights.

Now, when I heard George Bush was reading my emails, I probably had the same reaction you did: George Bush can read?! Yes, he can. And this administration has read your phone records, credit card statements, mail, Internet logs. I can't tell if they're fighting a war on terror or producing the next season of "Cheaters." I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope they'll open it and see what it says.

So when it comes to sacrifice, don't kid yourself. You have given up a lot. You've given up faith in your government's honesty, the goodwill of people overseas, and six-tenths of the Bill of Rights.

Here's what you've sacrificed: search and seizure, warrants, self-incrimination, trial by jury, cruel and unusual punishment. Here's what you have left: handguns, religion, and they can't make you quarter a British soldier. If Prince Harry invades the Inland Empire, he has to bring a tent.

You know, in previous wars on the home front made a very different kind of sacrifice. During World War II, we endured rationing, paid higher taxes, bought war bonds, and in the interest of national unity, people even pretended Bob Hope was funny. Right, like you laughed at him.

Okay, women, donated their silk undergarments so they could be sewn into parachutes. Can you imagine nowadays a Britney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan going without underwear? Bad example.

But, look, George Bush has never been too bright about understanding "fereigners." But he does know Americans. He asked this generation to sacrifice the things he knew we would not miss: our privacy and our morality. He let us keep the money. But he made a cynical bet that we wouldn't much care if we became a "Big Brother" country that has now tortured a lot of random people.

And yet no one asks the tough questions like, "Is torture necessary?" "Who will watch the watchers?" "And when does Jack Bauer go to the bathroom?" I mean, it's been five years. Is he wearing one of those astronaut diapers?

In conclusion, after 9/11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden could run but he couldn't hide. But, then he ran and hid. So, Bush went to Plan B: pissing on the Constitution and torturing random people.

Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Well, do you feel good about America now? I'll give you my answer, and to get it out of me, you don't even have to hold my head underwater and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. No, I don't feel very good about that.

They say evil happens when good men do nothing. Well, the Democrats prove it also happens when mediocre people do nothing.

(via Bill in Portland Maine @ Kos)

Directive B10.81

So remember when I was bashing my head against the wall, trying to get the second act problem resolved?

I was literally angry with rage, surfing under a big wave of responsibility, until I got a lesson in not changing history from mister "I'm-my-own-grandpa." I realized that you can't give up hope just because it's hopeless. You gotta hope even more, and cover your ears and go like la la la la.

It was so simple, I made the Big Brain leaving Earth for no raisin!

Problem solved, happy Wil. To celebrate, I'll go build my own lunar lander! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ah, forget the whole thing. Instead, I have to go and buy a single piece of fruit with a coupon and then return it, making people wait behind me while I complain.

All glory to the hypnotoad!

(apologies to the Bad Astronomy Blog, which inspired me to wrap this "Hey, I'm not as stupid as I thought I was!" post in a bit of Futurama.)