Fuckin' Amazing.

Almeria 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo.




This was borrowed from Thinking Fluidly. It's an incredible piece of work.

IGNITION CITY IS OUT!

On Procrastination, Ideas, and Rumors...

There's a bed bug infestation in the Strange One's apartment building. They were going to spray last week, but we had them put it off till this week. Now, it's 11:30pm and we have to pull all the furniture out from the walls, empty all clothing and linens from the apartment and be sure to clear off the counters. He's exhausted and we got a late start tonight overall. Partially of a plot I had concocted earlier, going out for sushi, and tackling some book stores. Not the best course of action. Albiet, a fun one for us both.

At dinner a rather odd statement was tossed my way. "I think I need to update my facebook."

My response is the usual, "Oh?"

To which he says, "Yes, there is a rumor going around that you and I may be a relationship."

Rumor or not, it was a fact that both of us had been dancing around and over-thinking and confusing ourselves because we tend to be rather good at that regardless of the situation. Needless to say, this is happening on a night in which my idea for a collective community of comic writers and artists took hold and had a sense of clarity. Enough to which I could write my proposal for work. I'm a bit proud of it.

"It is our goal to bring together the fibers that create the independent comic industry in order to weave the tapestry for a community that is dedicated to the fans and patrons of our growing industry. For too long we've grabbed at loose ends and whored ourselves to the machines that at times reward mediocrity and nurture the regurgatated ideas that form the classics of our industry. It is our goal at the Comic Collective to raise the standard as well as give once ignored or unheard voices a forum in which to showcase their arts in all forms. We hope to bring awareness to publishers, patrons, and old fans alike in our own personal journeys towards the creation of the tales that live in our minds. We seek to not just push the envelope, but draw out a new line.

Welcome to our sandbox."

My mission statement, of sorts. Here's to dreams becoming realities.

A Letter to my father...

This isn't edited. This isn't something that will be found anywhere but my blog and it's most likely not anything that will be seen on this site again. I don't know if my family reads my writings here, I don't know how many people who I know who actually read my writings here. But I need to write it. I need to write it in order to wake up tomorrow morning as something new.

Now if my older brother would get me a drink.

I used to write these letters to a father that didn't exist for a character that didn't exist anywhere except for in my mind. She was a daddies girl, never having known her mother. All my life I craved to be the center of my fathers universe. All my life I wanted nothing more than to make him proud and to accept me. To tell me to follow my dreams because I had a gift.

Instead I got my father.

This letter is for all the women, all the girls. Every female being that has daddy issues.

Dear Mark,

I can't call you Daddy anymore. Let alone Father. You are neither of those things to me. And you never can be. You made a choice when you left us. I don't ever want to hear that it was a choice you didn't want to make, you can never tell me that it was forced upon you. As I have made the same decision. When you choose to leave a life that you helped to create behind, you can't look back. You never look back. You have to hope that life will forgive you and seek for you in time, on their own volition. Not because it is what you want. Not because you could no longer live with it.

I don't know if you ever realized that or cared to realize that my first memory. The very first, is the day you left. Before then is only snippets, and those snippets consists of hearing the fights between you and my mother on the other side of the wall. They'd keep me awake at night. I'd curl into the fetal position under my bed and cry myself to sleep. I was so scared that you'd leave. And you did.

You walked out the front door, breaking my little pink doll's bed in two when you stepped on it. You couldn't move it out of your way. You just stepped on it. I wish my heart broke as cleanly as that stupid doll's bed. I wish my mothers heart broke that cleanly, or my brothers. You didn't think about that though. You never thought about us. Of course, if you were to tell the story, you thought about us every step of the way.

I'm more like you than you ever thought. And I didn't think about my son when I walked out of his life when he was five months old. I was too self-absorbed and only thought about myself. I know you did the same, you wanted the pain to go away. What pain though?

I can't call you and tell you how much I hate you, how angry I've been for twenty two years that it was me who took care of my younger borther when you left us so fucking poor that we learned new and amazing ways of making canned tuna. I've never told you how pissed I am that it's taken me most of my life this far to learn that someone can love me. That love isn't sex and that every man isn't going to throw me away.

Do you know this pain, Mark? Did you?

Did you ever care t realize that my fucked up ideas of home come from not knowing where I would live because you always told me as a child that everything was temporary until you'd come after me? Until I could come live with you? Did you?

I began smoking because everytime I got caught smoking at school, you'd come back into my life. Sure, it was just to yell at me. But you'd be there.

That was until I realized that the only times you'd come around were when I was in trouble. And if I wasn't getting into trouble, the way you talked to me, the way you questioned me, made me feel guilty. Nothing I did was good enough. My grades could always be higher, I could've gotten more promotions at work. And hell, I'd never make it as a writer.

Fuck you, Mark.

Did you ever read my writing?

Did you ever ask anyone what type of literary voice your child had?

And not just me, have you ever listened to your sons music? Read his lyrics?

Do you even know what our favorite colours are? What our dreams are?

No.

You don't.

You never did.

You loved the story of where I waited in the car while you went garage sailing, the day you met Marsha. How I stayed in the car because I was being an angsty teenager who wanted to sleep all day. What teenager isn't angsty? And what teenager doesn't sleep all day? Nevermind that was the last time I came to visit you of my own choice. After that visit I realized just how self-absorbed you were. That your kids had to fit into your world or you had no space for us at all.

We were always a part of your inner-competition. Your kids had to be more successfull that your friends kids. We couldn't be anything other than who we are. And we've never tried to be anything else. My daughter is too liberal, she's silly and naive. My son is useless. Do you know how many times I heard those words out of your fucking mouth?

Do you?

Your son is brilliantly intelligent. He has one of the most compassionate and giving hearts I've ever come across in my life. He is a fountain of talents that has to be nutured because he is delicate. He aims for approval and support. He never wanted to be anything more than himself. You pushed him into areas that he had no interest in and cursed him when he failed at it. The military? That was worst thing he ever could've done! And you pushed.

Me? You followed me to the ends of the States and beyond, you would try to buy my approval and used me when it was convient. You used me to come home with the one card you knew you could play. My grandfather. And now he's gone. You have no more cards to play. Instead you try to bring me back with emails of lies trying to validate the decisions that you made only to yourself as I chase after men who are just. Like. You.

Fuck you, Mark.

For the first time in my life, I am estastically happy, I'm on the road to having my dreams come true. I am on the verge of being successful according to my terms. I'm living in a place I can call home and I'm falling for a man who is more like my mother than anyone I've ever met. I don't care if he stays or leaves. And for once, I'm not scared. Force once I don't give two shits about your approval. And yet...

All I want to do is call you and say, "Daddy, look at me. I love you."

Fuck you, Mark.

Your daughter,

The Nunabutt.

Neil Gaiman Linkage

http://infinitecanvas.appjet.net/view?name=The%20Day%20the%20Saucers%20Came

Check it.

Couple Random Things...

I think I have an art for procrastinating. Maybe it's something that we all have. Then again, I should not be procrastinating. I have a long review of the Lucifer grahpic novel series to write, I need to go comic book shopping and manga shopping for the Triumvrate. Hell, I should toss a couple nostalgic video games in there. But alas! I am here. Waiting for a response to an email I sent out about maybe meeting with an artist who seems promising.

I should be doing so many other things...

The tangent for today is Grey Region Comics in Toronto, Ontario. (www.greyregion.com) I love them! I went into the shop yesterday for the first time trying to build a relationship with one shop so I don't have to walk all over downtown Toronto in order to make my writers happy. Or me for that matter. I found Grey Region. The owner is incredibly friendly and helpful regardless of the fact that he was babysitting his two children. Great selection, incredibly helpful.

My insomnia is also back and I need to stop procrastinating.

I had a dream last night that The Strange One asked me to learn how to run an SLA Industries game. Well, it wasn't a full dream and it was more like an interruption at 10 am this morning when I napped. I wonder how rue it is, I will have to ask him.

Oh, and it is he that I blame for keeping me up. He made my mind all blurry and I wrote a vast array of one track mindedness down. That looks to me like a bunch of insanity, until I realized I completely failed to dot any i's and cross any t's. Once that was done it all made sense.

Okay, on with the day. I swear.

Things I have to do.

- Grey Matter Comics.
- Write "Tales of an Expat Version 2." for Thinking Fluidly.
- Review the Lucifer graphic novel series after reading the last volume.
- Advertise for the Triumverate.

I should probably speak to the Gray Goddess as well. And take a new picture. She needs one.

I feel like I'm forgetting something.

TRUTH! ...as told by Warren Ellis

This is brilliant! I've been reading Freakangels which is an awesome series. But in the middle of one of his interludes we are given this:

How It Works

I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 2 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That’s how it works.

-Warren Ellis

Is there more truth than that about writing?