Sheep-shank : rope :: Tesseract : space-time

Let's tie a sheep-shank in Time. Yesterday was January 11th. All those other months since the last post are the outside loop that doesn't actually matter to the length anymore. Therefore, let's have no undue fussin'.

You'd think after all that time there'd be stuff to report. Unfortunately this is somehow not the case. If you don't believe me, I'll run through the list of projects and show you what's what.

• An Orange For William is chief on my mind, since we just met about it yesterday. You know how usually after you write something and then let it sit for a week or two or twenty, when you pick it up again it seems pretty terrible? The complete OPPOSITE just happened here, and Orange has never looked more promising. We read through it in its entirety, did some (fairly minor) revisions and are in the process of rewriting 2 chapters. Alex is on the lookout for a publishing agent because in all seriousness, this could go places, but not if we self-publish. If only they made publishing agents with seriously fucked up senses of humor.
  


• Don't Drink The Bleach is stuck. Maybe indefinitely, I don't know. For an unexplained reason I've had a number of people contact me only recently telling me they're super-excited about it, and that devotion from people who didn't even work on it, coupled with the fact that it's a finished film, resparked my personal desire to get it out there. Don't give up hope yet, we haven't forgotten about Bleach. Still, a poke and a prod in the form of an email or a comment telling us we suck at delivering our promises can't hurt our motivation. I've heard that death-threats are doubly effective.
  


• Catchpenny Phoenix is being written. Or at least, that's what I hear. I have it on good authority that it is. So, that about covers it.
  


• Unpublishable Productions hasn't been spoken about out loud in months. Honestly, that's the least of our concerns right now. So who knows.
  

Check back in another 7 months to find that nothing has really changed!

Wait! I mean check back soon to find some totally interesting new stuff written here. Probably not movie/book related, but still, totally interesting. Interesting and fu-u-un.

Keep ooon truckin'!

A Orange For William is our chief project at the moment. Catchpenny Phoenix is being written, and Bleach is fluttering about like a chicken, unable to fly away because of the big ol' injunction that was slapped on it (for the time being).

I'm drawing up a webcomic for Unpublishables to make sure there's an abundance of new content. It's not very attractive, because I'm not very artistic. Still, two of my favorite webcomics are Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, so I'm hoping that having a good storyline with good jokes will make up for the stick figures. They're surprisingly emotive little bastards. Amazing what you can do with mouths and eyebrows.

Part 1 of 3 of AO4W is written, and is in editing as we speak. Part 2 is coming along nicely. Our goal was to have the entire first draft finished by next Wednesday, but it doesn't look like that'll happen, so if we can get part 2 done by then that would be great. Part 3 is the shortest part anyway. It will be done SOON.

We're making sure of that. Last night Ian, Alex and I (as a trio we make up Unpublishable) very nearly died. The accident was narrowly avoided, so no one/anything was injured/damaged, but it left a damn cool set of skid marks on I-95 and put things into perspective. What if we'd died and left all these ideas unfinished? It was like that moment when Stephen King decided to finish the Dark Tower series after getting run over by a truck, only a) we were not on crack and b) we were not run over by a truck. Regardless, we're redoubling efforts on Orange.

Resolutions are as follows

Wow. Somebody stole my December. If you find it, let me know, will you?

Anyway. Here's what 2008 means to me (and, therefore, means to you):

• An Orange For William is well underway. The plan is to have it done before classes resume. Should be available for sale not too much later. Though, now that you mention it, how is that happening? (see below)


• Unpublishable Publications: We're not just doing film anymore, so we're gone Unpublishable. Since no one in their right minds would actually publish AO4W, we're doing it ourselves. It'll also be a place to publish whatever other whims we have in the future. Like, picture books. Or audio books. Video books?


• Catchpenny Phoenix: The mighty 2010 movie has finally been named, and has been outlined. A script is in progress, and fundraising is in progress. I'll let you know how you can donate as soon as we develop a way to do it.


• Don't Drink The Bleach is still stuck in post-production. Waiting, waiting on festivals...and there's that second round of applications to do as the festivals we missed doing last year open up again...

So, there's our 2008. Any questions?

We definitely don't use the prefix "giganto-" enough

Semester ends in a week and I can't force myself to buckle down and get these last few assignments DONE. Good lord, it's ridiculous.

Orange is coming along. It's slow going, because I've just got all this shit I have to wade through, but soon enough I'll be sending my stuff along to Alex so we can get this show on the road.

Inspiration strikes: I've started hanging around with someone from Agents, someone who dresses like a 19th century middle-class gentleman, top hat and all. His real-life actions brought to mind an amazing scene for Lord Thaddeus Stillwater. It'll be great.

Dec. 22 approaches; I grow mildly apprehensive as Alex grows calmer. Are we, perhaps, inversely proportional?

While velociraptors were a disappointment, I was recently informed that there existed a relative of the little guys who stood 12 feet tall known as Gigantoraptor. That made my day like you wouldn't believe.

I've fallen into the trap again of perpetuating the geek stereotype on myself. Yes, it's probably the category I fit into best, but I definitely can't be considered a full-blown geek. I tried joining the video game club here, but I was intimidated by the superior geekiness of everyone there. I think that's a good enough indicator that I may be able to interact somewhat normally with society. That is, assuming I can stop sitting people down and making them listen to the "All Your Base" meme, and speaking in LOLcats. At least I managed to shake the smart kid attitude, for the most part.

Does Occam's Razor apply to religion? It kind of makes sense that it would, in an idealistic kind of way. That'd be really nice.

Cruisin' Mos Espa in my Delorean

I WANT TO LEARN THE LYRICS TO "FETT'S VETTE" IN THEIR ENTIRETY LIKE I HAVE WANTED LITTLE ELSE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

I'm a devious degenerate
Defender of the devil
Shut down all the trash compactors
On the detention level

I love how I keep expecting my homework to do itself. One of these days, maybe.

And now for something...

My roommate and I have very different sleep schedules (he's almost always in bed by 12, it's nearly 1:30 and I still have a good deal of work to do). Normally it's fine, because I'm quiet as I do my thing- went out and bought headphones and everything. Only right now I'm having a sneezing fit, and they are becoming increasingly explosive. I may have to evacuate my room, lest he kill me when I finally fall asleep.

Ever notice how sometimes every song ever seems to apply to you? I'm not generally real fussy about lyrics, but sometimes it gets eerie. Is there some psych term for twisting things around so it seems like it applies perfectly when it's actually all in your head? Probably.

I learned recently that velociraptors were only 2 feet tall. You have no idea how bummed out I was. Also: as cool as it is that dinosaurs may have evolved into birds, I've come to the realization that feathered dinosaurs look mad stupid, yo. I want Jurassic Park, dammit.

Orange for William is not moving along...my bad. Once I finish once and for all with Bohr, E. Coli strain 0157:H7, and Terry Eagleton, I really want to get back to it. I revisited the introduction this evening and loved it so much that I was ready to jump back into writing mode, if there wasn't 35% of my grade hanging over my head. Gross. Anyway, soon, hopefully. MARMALADE!

Happy birthday to Bill Nye the Science Guy! Woohoo!

I'm going for my masters in Velociraptorology

As nice as Physics is, it's a tough subject to be passionate about. I wouldn't really say that I am. Some people say you won't really be happy in life unless you do something you truly love, something that really speaks to you (thought: if that's the case, why do so many artists/writers commit suicide?). Unfortunately for me, that's not likely to happen, since the only thing I could find myself getting THAT excited about are velociraptors.

If, in the next 2 years, they were to discover a way to clone dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park (topic for discussion: Crichton or Spielberg? I choose the latter), I would instantly swap to a double-major in animal science and archeology. Don;t even tell me that wouldn't be the coolest thing in the world, raising and studying velociraptors. C'mon.

Even writing, which I consider to be one of my more passionate interests, pales in comparison to the awesome that is the raptor. My second passion is science fiction, and while it obviously ties in with the subject matter, it could still not trump a true blue velociraptor.

But I just admitted that I do have things I am passionate about, and while they don't measure up to velociraptors (nothing, perhaps not even True Love, can do that), they could be better than something like physics. While this is certainly true, and I would love to write science fiction above all else, English classes suck; I'm pretty sure that upwards of 80% of all the material they give you is bullshit. It's kind of like majoring in Art (not art history, just art): if you can do it, you can, and if you can't, you're screwed anyway. You can take classes on how to construct and organize a novel or something, but the majority of what you need kind of has to be there from the start. The moral of this story: no way in hell would I ever major in English, despite what I may have written in the yearbook.

So if anything, I would pull an Asimov: get all the science training (only in physics instead of chemistry), then screw it all and go write scifi instead. I think, subconsciously, that's what I've been planning to for a while. Whether I'll have the balls not to actually embrace the scientific community when the time comes is something else entirely.

In the meantime, I'm just going to hope that they discover how to clone dinosaurs. It'd make everything a whole lot easier.