Khaotica 2008

It's that time of year again, isn't it?

All the running and shopping and baking and decorating and singing and crafting and wrapping and I don't know about you, but I am fucking exhausted already and it's only the first week of December. The real, true, DefCon-5 spirit of conspicious consumption hasn't even started yet. I halfway expect that by the 20th, the convergence of easy credit, bad decisions, and the failure of the banking sector will collapse into a singularity of debt so great that come the new year everyone's credit rating will suffer an etch-a-sketch reboot as the entire industry shits itself to death.

I sound bitter, but I'm not. The only way my credit score could get any lower would be if I handed it a shovel and told it to start digging its own grave, so really I have nothing left to lose from a complete economic collapse.

But I imagine the rest of you are stressed out about this, and it's no wonder, since we've only just finished an election that started two goddamned years ago. I think it's safe to speak for most people when I say that we are now officially tired of looking at The Big Picture and really want nothing more than to sink into the couch and watch mind-rotting Reality TV shows until the Superbowl, whose crass media orgy will force us out of our blinkered solipsism as we realize "What the hell is this garbage, and why am I letting it play with my brain?"

But we can't do that, because it's Christmas. That time of year when we have to be cheerful and merry and generous and AAAAIIIIIEEEE CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

If I have to "Smile! Show that Christmas Spirit!" one more time, I swear I'm going to start strangling people with their own appliqued sweaters. And I know I'm not the only one.

And so today -- because today is a Friday, and therefore Sacred to Eris, as well as the 5th, which is the holy Erisian number -- I shall give to you this season's Khaotica assignment. I have learned well my lesson from last year, which was "Thou Shall Not Needlessly Complicate an Erisian Holiday", and so for this year I'm just giving one assignment for the entire Khaotic season, then standing back and seeing what folks do with it.

Just to be safe, I will repost last year's Khaotica Klauses because I don't expect everyone to follow a back-link:

After you perform your assignment, I want you to report back and tell me the following:

1. What you did.
   
2. How people reacted.
   
3. How that made you feel.
   

Simple, no? Now here's what you DON'T DO:

1. DON'T do anything illegal, or encourage anyone to do so.
   
2. DON'T mock people's beliefs.
   
3. DON'T be a jackass. Making a fool of yourself is fine; making fools of other people is not.

Are we clear? Fabulous.

Khaotica 2008: Slack Subversively

We're all tired, but everyone is rush, rush, rushing because that's what we do at Christmas. Forced exertion which benefits no one? False emotions? Eating, driving, buying irresponsibly? There could be no surer Sign of Greyface than to take something which is supposed to be joyful and beloved and turning into a mirthless chore to be endured.

Your assignment -- which I shall be calling a Khaotica Karol because it amuses me -- will be to find some way to slack off, yet in a manner that both encourages others to do the same and also manages to stay within the spirit of the season.

Obviously, this will be easy if you're a bachelor, and much harder if you have a full family, but remember: Eris fucks with us all equally. Those who have busy families will find their Subversive Slacking all the sweeter for its rareness.

Some examples to get you started:

• If you live with a young girl, give her a new infant doll and tell her it's Baby Jesus, and that he's just been born and needs to sleep. So does Mary, in fact, so it's her job to keep everything quiet so that Mother Of and Son Of God can get some rest. Shhhhh. (Normally, I'd say that giving a dolly like to a Jewish girl would only up the Discordian factor, but the fights that would ensue from this will definitely harsh thy slackness.)
• Make up a story about Nelson, the Narcoleptic Reindeer. Act it out. Kids can be amazingly quiet if they think they're fooling adults by pretending to sleep. Bonus points if they actually manage to fall asleep, but even quiet giggling is a win.
  
• Buy Christmas-themed (or flavored) alcohol. Get drunk in the spirit of the holidays. Or, to steal from Lewis Black: NyQuil comes in two colors, red and green. It's the only thing on the planet that tastes like... red and green! And red and green are what? Christmas colors! That's right, NyQuil makes a dandy eggnog. Oh yeah, my friends bitched through the whole party, "This tastes like shit!" But at the end of it, we had a fun sleepover.

I look forward to seeing what people do with this. Or even if they do it. For all I know, I may be the only person entertained by all this.

A Plath of Destruction

Sylvia Plath took her own life on the morning of February 11, 1963. Leaving out bread and milk, she completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with "wet towels and cloths." She then placed her head in the oven while the gas was turned on.

...or did she?

No! At the moment of her death, she was secretly rescued by a secret organization of time-travelers. Her body was revived with 41st century science, and a simulacrum -- exact in every detail -- was substituted in her place.

Upon waking, Plath was told that she had been selected to join the August Principia of Chronal Transmigration, a scholarly and monastic order dedicated to the preservation and repair of the timestream. Having been given a new lease on life, she would begin a career of of study, cataloging and filing reports. With the medical advancements of the 4th millennium, she could easily expect to live for several hundred years.

Free from her troubles for the first time, and facing an eternity of bureaucratic servitude, Neonate Plath promptly said "Fuck this noise" and stole a Chronal Calibrator. Not knowing how to operate it properly, it sent her hurtling across time and space.

Lost in time, but free from society's grasp, the normally reserved Sylvia Plath became the ravenous libertine that lurked beneath her repressed exterior. Armed with fantastic devices and an exhaustive knowledge of history, she has become an agent of chaos, cutting a swath of debauchery across the 4th dimension as she fights and fucks through time and space.

A poet no longer, she is....


Sylvia Plath: Warlord of the Steppes
She was surveying the horizon while while sitting on the naked, saddled body of Genghis Khan doing a horsie impression. "No cheek from you, Ghengy, or it's off to be gelded!" she laughed, merrily tugging on the rough hemp rope that was tied around his scrotum.


Sylvia Plath: Sacker of Rome
"Jesus Christ, you bore me, Julie," she snarled, tossing a plate of figs at the former Caesar. He tried to dodge, but the wires ties to his pierced nipples were firmly attached to anchors sunk deep into the marble. "At least your girlfriend here will entertain me," she said, turning to French kiss Cleopatra.


Sylvia Plath: Agent of Biting Social Commentary
"Where's my money, BITCH?" she roared, still high on Everclear and Crystal Meth, as she pimpslapped Archduke Ferdinand backwards into his carriage. "I swear to God, you little weasel, if you don't pay off your bets I'm going to have a filthy little Serb shoot you in the neck."


Stay tuned for more exciting titles in the Sylvia Plath: Libertine series!

WNW: That New Star Trek trailer

There's something strangely familiar about this trailer that I can't quite put my finger on.

Tonight's CSI

I predicted this 6 months ago.

And return.

Oh, crap, I have a blog. o_O

Just to set the record straight, I have NOT spent the entire week sulking. I pretty much expended all of my sulkage over the weekend, and since then I've been busy with various projects. Some of you may not believe me, but that's really none of my concern.

Stuff that has been consuming my time:

1) Octane. Yes, Octane. After I'd cooled down, I was able to see how some people might feel it had an abrupt ending, so I've been thinking about how to address that. The advice I've gotten about it seems to boil down to "Throw in more stuff at the beginning of the last chapter so that the audience knows the narrator has tried everything he can think of instead of having what appears to be a colossal leap of logic."

Yeah, I could do that. But being 100% honest with you... I don't want to. Which means that if I did write it, there would be no passion to it. It would stink of "Here, you bastards, this is what you want, fine, I hope you choke on it." Maybe later, after I've gotten distance from it, I'd be willing to revisit certain parts of it, but not now.

Then there's the ending. Sigh. I know people aren't happy about it, but that's how the story first came to me, you know? "Bloodthirsty car takes Communion, is Cured." It's derived from John 4:13-14 :

¹³ Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

I thought this was a great ending, not because I wanted to push a particular religious agenda but because it seemed both theologically/philosophically sound and because no one would ever see it coming. And I succeeded on that last part, at the least.

But I've been talking to horror aficionados, and apparently they want the narrator to suffer more, to go through hell first. Part of that is addressed above, with my reluctance to pad the story; the other part is how the ending is perceived as too pat and easy.

Really, at this point there's only one compromise I'd be willing to make: the narrator attempts to feed the Eucharist to the car; car perceives this as a poisoning attempt, attacks narrator; narrator is eaten by car, but by virtue of having also taken communion before this, is currently in a State of Grace; therefore narrator doesn't die, but his spirit drives out the demon/curse/whatever in the Yellow Peril; narrator finds happiness as immortal, indestructible car for the church, who only needs to take Communion every so often instead of going to the gas station/mechanic.

If this is something people want, I'd be happy to do that as an alternate ending. Let me know by comment or e-mail, and if I get a half-dozen or more requests, I'll write it for you.


2) 30 Days of Fiction. Yeah, that's kind of fallen by the wayside. I was delayed by the election, and then I wanted to enjoy my weekend, and then I got mad...

So here's what I intend to do. Clearly, November is looking like a bit of a bust, but I really don't want to admit defeat on this (NaNoMo writers, you know what I mean by this) so instead I offer a compromise: Before the year is out, you'll have had a month's worth of fiction.

I can't promise this. I may in fact fail utterly at it. But I'm trying, dammit.


3). Commissions. Yes, there's at least one person out there who has hired me to write private stories for them, and frankly, my finances are in such a crappy state (as are a lot of people's, I suspect) that when it comes to either writing for free, on my blog, or writing something that will give me actual money... well, that's a no-brainer right there. I've promised my patron that one of these stories will be ready by Thanksgiving, so that clearly takes priority.


At any rate, if you're a regular reader, I thank you for putting up with my prima donna attitude and sticking around. Hopefully I will get my act together sooner, and I pray that 2009 will be more productive and successful that 2008.

Furious

OK, it's been 2 days since I ended Octane, and so far I've received one -- ONE -- comment about it, and that one was undecided as to if it was good or bad.

I am astounded that a story that everyone seemed to love until the end was posted has generated so little commentary.

When I have gotten an opinion out of people -- usually by tackling them and saying "Give me your opinion on this, or else" -- they seem to say the same things:

1. Uh, what happened?
2. Kind of abrupt.
   
3. Hate the last lines.
   

So, fine. I'm going to address these concerns.


What happened?
The car ate the Eucharistic bread and wine, which, according to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, is the transubstantiated flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Since the Yellow Peril thirsted for the blood of the innocent, it stands to reason that the divine blood of the Son of God would really fix that problem.


Is the car permanently cured or does it need to go back periodically?
I deliberately left that up to the viewer, mainly because I didn't want to lie down at the intersection of Faith and Story Demands. If I said that the car was permanently cured, that leaves all the horror aficionados going "Well, that's awful convenient." If I say that the car needed constant tending, then I am suggesting that a curse is stronger than God, which is something that really makes me uncomfortable, and I'm certainly not the only one who feels that way.

If you want the curse permanently removed, it is.

If you want it a constant labor, it is. Perhaps the narrator sells it to the priest, and the church gets a really efficient vehicle for the next 20+ years.

This isn't rocket science, people. I don't have to spell everything out for you.


It seems abrupt.
Really? It seems to me like it's a desperate race against time as the narrator, at his wit's end, tries to do an end-run around the curse before he loses control and someone else dies.

Some people have said that the ending is a bit too cute, or tidy, or needs foreshadowing. Fine. These are valid points. Now just kindly tell me what you suggest I do to fix it? Simply flailing your arms and saying "Ugh, foreshadow more" helps me not one whit. A suggestion like, "Maybe he hears a sermon on the radio" is better.


The ending is happy. There are no happy endings in ghost stories.
I direct your attention to the first paragraph of chapter 1, and say "Your expectations are not my problem, as I clearly noted from the beginning that this was an unconventional tale."


The explanatory paragraph at the end is unneeded.
I'll pass that along to all my Jewish, Hindu, Pagan, and Atheist friends. We don't all come from the same religious and cultural background, and I wanted my readers to understand the ending.


The ending is too preachy.
Really, at this point, all I have to say is "Fuck your hypocritical double standard." If you can accept a magically haunted car that eats people and uses blood for fuel, then you can damn well accept that Roman Catholicism has it right. (Full disclosure: I'm not Catholic.) I think it's ridiculous to claim that curses are all right in horror but religion isn't. Case in point: The Exorcist, one of the scariest fucking movies of all time and one that takes religion completely seriously.




Now, with that out of my system, I will be more than happy to address whatever valid points or criticisms you wish to make. Please show your work.

Yet more blatant anti-Khazadism masquerading as policy analysis

Someone emailed me this link, and as fan of Tolkien I found it hilarious. Don't fret over the URL; there are no real politics mentioned in this article.

A snippet:

Leon H. Wolf:

An anniversary has recently passed. On October 25, 3018 Third Age, Elrond Half-elven, son of Eärendil of the line of Thingol, bearer of Vilya the great Ring of Power, made a critical decision for his people.

Rather than allow the last remaining outposts of the Elves at Imladris and Lothlórien continue without disruption from the outside world, he chose to invest the Elves in a grand global fight to rob Sauron of his power permanently, in the process destroying the Rings of Power of his own and Galadriel's. At the Council of Elrond, a Fellowship was constructed, representing Elves, Men, Wizards, Dwarves, and Halflings, all united by a supposed common cause.

But where are the Elves now? All gone West. Was this great act of foreign policy by Elrond a self-destructive act? Would Elves not have been better off allowing Sauron to remain, acting as a counterweight to the Men, and preventing Men from being an undisputed hyperpower in Middle-earth?

AcademicElephant:

What Elrond failed to recognize is that coalitions are fluid and should be assembled not simply for the sake of having a grand coalition, but to address the issue at hand. Really, what of substance did the dwarves contribute besides the disastrous and greedy foray to Moria that re-woke the Balrog? And what good was gained by having two men, not to mention four Haflings? Cut both of those in half and you eliminate the dead weight and have a leaner, more agile force that can get the job done efficiently and get the heck out of there.

Moe Lane:

Here we go: blatant anti-Khazadism masquerading as policy analysis, yet again.

Khazad-dum is Dwarvish. Khazad-dum has always been Dwarvish. The Orcish invasion of our ancestral homeland - and note that the speaker does not mention the proven and notorious links between the Orcish "race" and that of the Elves - was an unjustified and illegal action that was replied to by the nations of the West with nothing more than empty condemnations from the Council of the Wise. Of course, what they also do not mention is that the mere presence of the Balrog itself can be directly attributed to Elvish incompetence after the First Age: if there had been a proper post-war cleanup, that monster never would gotten away in the first place.

Be sure to check out the comment by Sam Gamgee at the bottom.