There should be fewer errors here. The scene in Part 2 where Noah warns his son about the new angel is gone from the final draft. I don’t want to telegraph too much and it makes the meeting with Fahrael, below (which I like much better) unnecessary. Enjoy!

—

    I watched him work with the angels. He had them dismantle Michael’s high chair and use the wood for benches for the angels to use between shifts.
    The foreman instructed the angels with the same singing language that Michael had used, but where his had sounded like marches and strident arrow-song, the new foreman’s song was like that of the birds, lilting and pleasing to the ear. The angels seemed to enjoy his words
    Where Michael was an authority, he was a friend. He smiled often, and slapped backs and played jokes. I watched him saw the legs of a bench, so when five angels on their break sat down, the leg snapped and they all tumbled into a heap. The foreman howled with laughter, and even the angels smiled, and shook their heads and shook their fists at him.
    The ship, the ark, was taking shape, looming out over the heads of the golden-haired angels who busied themselves like ants in its shadow.
    It was not long before materials were needed, the nearest forests stripped bare, and even their stumps pulped into something useful.
    The neighbors over the river and beyond the forest bore a plenty of wood and metals for nails, guarded by high walls.
    The materials we needed, guarded by an army of many times our number. My father and the Foreman discussed plans over soup and bread, in the foreman’s tent, a single lantern flickering orange flame-light across their faces, across the fabric walls, dancing in their bowls.
    ”We need that wood, and the metal they have. I have knowledge of materials and metallurgy that may help us.”
    ”They have no copper,” said my father. “A heavier metal, too hard to work, too scarce to be useful.”
    ”I have ways,” said the foreman. I had never seen an angel eat before, and he did it so naturally that I questioned whether he was one at all.
    ”I do not know if that is appropriate,” said my father, warily.
    ”He would not have asked me to help if He did not wish me to use my knowledge,” said the Foreman. “Ease your mind.”
    ”What do you wish of me?” said my father.
    ”I will require an extra hand. No angel will do. He must be young and weak, to allay suspicion.”
    My father sighed. “I will send Ham with you. His mind is elsewhere, but sharp and clever when focused.”
    ”Perhaps I can teach him focus,” said the foreman. “He is loyal to you, yes?”
    ”All of my sons are loyal, none no more than the others. He will do as I say.”
    I did not think my mind was elsewhere. I did all that was asked of me, without hesitation and never with a question. My father’s comment stung, soothed slightly by his compliment of my mind. I did not fall asleep easily, as the excitement of an adventure grew within me.

    A day later, an angel was at the house to take a pile of freshly mended tunics to the angels at the work site. It waited patiently for my mother to finish folding them.
    The angel spied me pealing carrots and sat next to me. He smelled of sweat and wood dust, and though no angel had bathed in the months they had been working, his hair was bright and golden, and spilled around his feminine features.
I made conversation, as I had never done with an angel. While at first they had been otherworldly and odd, seeing one now was as common as seeing a thrush or a snake.
    I extended my hand as the foreman had done to my father. The angel looked down at my hand and grimaced, and looked away. “Do not greet me thus,” he said. “You are not him. “
    ”I-I’m sorry,” I said.
    ”I am called Fahrael,” he said, still looking away. “I am an angel of Creation. My hands worked the seeds that made the plant that made the food that you work with yours.”
    I peeled carrots while he watched a flock of birds wheel across the distant sun.
    Finally, he said: “We have seen the way you look at him.”
    I stopped, stunned.
    ”I am sorry,” I said.
    ”You must be careful, Ham. You must not listen to him. He does not think like the rest of us. He has powers of persuasion. He can make you believe things you know you should not.”
    Young pride made me speak: “Nobody can make me believe anything.”
    ”I do not mean magic or spells. There is no trickery. He thinks for himself. He has a perverse way of thinking, an aberration. He calls it Reason.”
    ”But we all have that,” I said.
    ”No, you have it. You have freedom of your conscience. We obey. We do not think.”
    ”He does not obey?”
    The angel shook its head.
“You are traveling with him, yes?”
    ”Yes. We leave tomorrow.”
    ”I must warn you, child,” he said. He placed his hand on my shoulder. It felt weightless, like an armless sleeve, with the slightest tingle of warmth through my tunic. “Do not do what he says. Question everything he tells you. The way to the kingdom is shut to him, but not to you.”
    ”Shut? Why is it shut?”
    ”He is to be questioned. That is all you need know.”
    
    The foreman and I walked a few miles to the crossroads to an inn, its windows alight in the dusk with the orange light of lanterns. I watched the foreman negotiate for the terms of the barter. He smiled, he laughed, he slapped his knee, he bought food and drink. He bought some for me, to which the men of the other villages scoffed and cajoled him, for I was his servant.
    At this the foreman lowered his head, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his eyes lined with the moisture of tears or harsh smoke, he looked at the leader of them and said: “I am no servant and nor do I keep them.” The weight of his words sagged dropped the room to a languid tension. Some seemed afraid, others angry. The man who said it apologized for his joking, and gave me ale, which came in a small, stone cup.
    ”I’m sorry,” I said, careful to lower my eyes as I spoke to a superior. “I do not drink.”
More jokes, and even the foreman joined, slapping me on the back and ruffling my hair. Before it grew to suspicion, of a young man who will not drink a single drink among new friends, the foreman changed the subject.
    I did not know if the foreman expected the yokels to cave and negotiate poorly after many rounds of liquor, but had he, he would have been surprised. That although they drank in excess of wisdom, they never lost their footing on the art of negotiation. The conversation wound its way back to the topic of trade.
    They needed something more than what we had. They had iron and plenty of it, and others had wood, plenty of it.
    The foreman removed a dagger from his belt and placed it in its scabbard before the men at the table. They rubbed chins and eyes wide, asked him what his intentions were, glancing at the weapons of the others, at the exists, at me.
    ”Take it,” said Fo
reman. “Examine it. It is a gift.”
    The leader did so, the man with the braided beard and dusky skin.
    The knife was crudely crafted, with simple leather strips on the handle.
    ”Silver?” He said, testing the edge on the table. “
    ”It is stronger and sharper than your processes can make, unique to that blade. There are no more like it. There are no men alive who know the means of its creation.”
    ”Then how was-
    ”Except me.”
    The dagger passed from hand to hand as each man examined it.
    One of them mumbled something about magic, and this was passed with it.
    The foreman caught the word as he watched them, and raised his hand. “No magic, my friends. It is real, and I can show you how to make it.”
    ”Is it difficult?”
    ”At first, yes,” said the Foreman. He smiled a little. “But it will get easier.”
    ”And in return?”
The Foreman smiled full toothed, with brighter teeth than seen in the mouths of infants. “I require materials, and no questions asked.”

    ”You did not drink,” said the foreman, as we traveled the next day. He had secured the materials he needed, in exchange for teaching a blacksmith from each of the villages, who would arrive with the first shipments. We journeyed alone on our mules and horses, side by side through the plain.
    ”I am not allowed to,” I said.
    ”According to whom?”
    ”My father,” I said, “Of course.”
    ”Of course,” said the foreman.
    ”How old are you?”
    ”15,” I said.
    ”The age of manhood,” said the foreman, grinning.
    He said nothing more of it, gave no hint of disapproval. But the look he gave me when I did not accept the offered cup was disdain and confusion, the look my mother gives when I say something uncouth and she overhears me, or when I get angry and lash out. It was an unsettling look, and I felt guilty for having earned it.
    I asked him about himself.
    ”Michael wasn’t very talkative,” I said. “None of the angels are. But you’re different.”
    ”You’re sure I’m an angel?” he said.
    ”I assume so,” I said, suddenly uncertain. “You’re different in a lot of ways. You talk a lot. You’re nice and friendly. You play jokes on people, and I’ve never seen an angel play with a dog before.”
    The foreman was silent for a long while, for what seemed like miles.
    ”I am an angel,” he said. “Of a certain kind.”
    ”There are kinds of angels?” I said.
    ”Oh yes,” he said. “But they are all essentially the same.
    He said it sadly, with a sigh at he end. We walked on in silence.

—

© 2006 by James Hazlett Foreman

New Spiderman 3 trailer!

Click here and be flabbergastedly awed!

A bit of a longer selection this time. I hope it pleases. I also just realized that the conversion of the document neglected to include apostrophes. This will be remedied with part 3. I’ve also caught some grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes. FYI.

—

    The homeowners name was Menachem, a short, sour-faced man whose wife and daughters had been lost to disease a few years previous. He was a sour man before, and was an impossible man after.
    I came along with Michael, at his insistence.
    ”You cannot take wood from someones house,” I said to Michael. I tugged on his tunic and he leaned over slightly so I could speak into his ear.
    He looked at me, eyes narrowed, and asked why.
    ”Because its his. He needs it for shelter.”
    ”We need it more than he does,” said Michael, confused.
    Menachem saw Michael approach and recognized him immediately as the leader, and ran out and kicked dust at his feet and spat on the ground before him. Villagers and travelers along the near road were stopping to stare. Michael folded his arms and made no response, but this only stoked his fires hotter. He screamed obscenities at Michael and the angels and threw small, egg-sized rocks at the gawkers.
    ”Can he survive without his house?” said Michael.
    ”No,” I said.
    So Michael reached out his hand and broke Menachems neck. The body crumpled and the villagers shrugged and gasped and cupped mouths and wandered off, ultimately unimpressed. I began to cry. The angels ripped the planks of wood and gathered even the nails and the stones from the houses hearth.
    Michael saw my tears and stared down at me from his great height.
    ”What is wrong?” he said. “Did he hit you with a rock?”
    ”You killed him,” I said.
    ”He is wicked,” said Michael, as if that explained everything, and returned to the work site.
    I told my father. He nodded sadly, and sighed, and wiped the sweat from his head and on his apron. He sat down heavily on the stoop and nodded again, and looked at me. His eyes were red and brimmed with tears.
    ”I will speak to Him,” he said.
    The next day, the chief of Menachems village came to my father and demanded an explanation, red-faced and furious. He brought his warriors with him, with their bronze swords and leather jerkins and leathern helms, taller than the chief by a head.
    The angels at the house were sent to the work site under the guise of veils and stooping walks, lest they be seen by the villagers. My father was anxious and nervous and glanced about the room, from sword to sword.
    The chief demanded the house wood back, and reparations for Menachems family, for the villagers had seen me with the murderer. He released another string of epithets and curses to our house and our family and whatever evil mission we were up to, and to the thick-shouldered marauder we had employed to help us steal from our innocent neighbors.
    My father placated and promised, and asked for some understanding, that his cousin, Michael, did not know how things were dealt with in their part of the country. But the chief would not listen, and thumped his fist on his knee
    Michael, drawn to struggle and argument like a raptor to squirming mice, came into my fathers reception room and folded his arms and asked what the matter was.
    The chief ordered his men to detain Michael, and two pulled their swords while the other two took his thick arms in their hands. Michael looked at me with the same confusion as before, as if across a misty river at dusk. I shook my head and hid behind my father, and did not see what happened. I remember the smell, like a slaughter of pigs. I heard the sounds of ripping and tearing, and screams, even though I clamped my hands over my ears, I felt the deaths through the floor and through the vibrations of my teeth. I must have been screaming too, for I came to my senses with my father stroking my head and holding me close to his chest. His own eyes were clenched tight, and I felt him tremble.
    ”Do not look,” said my father. “It is a terror you should not see.”
    I looked. Blood and pieces of people. I could not tell where one began and one ended.
    Michael was gone, but had left red footprints across the threshold, and through the dust. He held a bronze sword his hand, and walked down the path to the village. In the falling sun before him, the sword glowed orange and red, as if a corona of flame danced at its edges.
    Father and I prayed together. He told me the words to say and how to say them, and that I had to mean them. In a few moments, my fathers eyes clenched tighter still, so tight that the weather worn creases on his face turned white and weblike. He began to speak in the language of Michael and the angels, and paused to listen as words were spoken to him.
    His face relaxed.
    ”He is sending another,” said my father. “But the damage is done.”
    We prayed all night, even after He and my father had spoken. Only when I was too exhausted to keep balance on my knees, and my arms felt like wet cloth did my father lay me gently on the floor, and put a blanket over me and kissed my forehead.

    The next day, Michael came to my father, early in the morning. I heard them speaking through the walls, and I crept behind the house. Michael loomed like a high tower, muscles stretching his skin.
    The wind thrashed my fathers beard, and turned Michaels golden hair to a writhing, whipping crown.
    ”Thank you for your help, Michael,” said my father. Michael nodded.
    ”I am sorry you do not agree with my methods,” said Michael.
“We differ on that alone,” said my father.
    ”You are troubled,” said Michael.
    My father nodded, and put his head in his hand.
    ”Yes,” he said.
    ”As perhaps you should be,” said Michael.
    I heard my father choke back tears.
    ”He chose me. You questioned His choice. You questioned Him,” said Michael, in no chiding tone, but simply to state fact, a list.
    My father mumbled something.
    ”I cannot forgive,” said Michael. “Nor can the one chosen to replace me. Forgiveness will be given, but punishment must come first.”
    Michael let the words sink in, and at their speaking, my father fell to his knees in the dust and the dirt, and Michael was unmoved.
“He is sending another. I must leave before he arrives., or break an oath. Goodbye, Noah.”
    ”Who-”
    ”He will come with the dawn, as is his way,” said Michael, and walked over the hill and was gone.
     My father turned to the sunrise. The sun so large and so close it seemed he could reach his callused hand out and touch it, squinting in the glare we saw a shape of a man walking slowly toward us, over the flat plain and carrying a walking stick.
“Im here to help,” he said, and he smiled.     
    His hair was the color of straw, long and tied back out of his eyes. He wore a simple tunic and carried a staff. His face was clean of whiskers, but h
e bore no signs of shaving, a face like a childs. Where Michael had been harsh and bronze-eyed, this one was soft and kind, with laugh lines on his cheeks. Where Michael towered, this one slouched, his weight on one foot.
    ”Ive heard youre having a problem with angels,” he said.
My father took his hand and shook it, but ended the shake quickly, and wiped his hand on his tunic. The new man looked down at me and nodded, and a the smallest wink flickered on his eye, so quick that I could not tell if I had imagined it.
    My father told the man where to find the work site, and drew him a map in the dust with his finger. The man thanked him, and walked the trail to the canyon.
    My father and I watched him walk away, and once he was out of sight, my father knelt before me and placed his hands on my shoulders and, with a seriousness of soul that I had not seen in him, said: “You are not to talk to that man, nor speak to him, nor help him, nor stare too long at him, even. Do you understand?”
    ”Yes, but why?”
    ”You do not need to know why. I am your father. I command you. Do as I say.”
    ”Yes, father,” I said. “I wont do any of those things.”

—

© 2006 by James Hazlett Foreman

My God, sign me the fuck up.

Link.

I mean, I obviously don’t associate myself with that group, and I don’t exactly do the whole black thing, but come on.

This only maintains my constant refrain: goth chicks are hot.

Everything I write will be read. I am convinced of this – that if I write something down, I expect it will be read by somebody, at some uncertain time, whether I know it or not. Therefore, I don’t write anything that I don’t want to be read, preferably by a lot of people.

I see this crappy little MySpace blog as a personal platform, where I can write about busty goth chicks, Apple Kool Aid Kultists, comic book movies and anything else I think of. But at some point it is also a measure of my life, when the blog itself is being written, and sometimes with a seasoning of emotional distance.

When I have no emotional distance, I almost always write about whatever is bugging me. It actually goes a certain distance in granting me the distance I need – putting something to paper (or electrons) is a way of materializing the ghosts, and posting that writing on the web, for all of my friends and acquaintances and a portion of my family to see, is a way of trapping those ghosts in a place that is visible and permanent. That way, I can visit those moments in my life with that emotional distance, while still preserving those events against the erosion of memory. It also gives the added bonus of letting my friends and family know where I am on the vast plane of suffering and joy that is my life (and, indeed, everybody’s life).

That’s why I don’t mind that there’s some potentially embarrassing stuff on this blog. It is what it is because it is what I am. It serves the exact purposes I intend it to serve, mainly as a vanity project for me. People say they write for themselves alone, and that’s true to a point. In the case of this blog, I write this shit because it helps me deal with it and because I want somebody to read it.

—

Because I fancy myself a writer, I also fancy that these words I write might have some intrinsic value; that sometimes, I may actually be given money or similar compensation for writing this crap down and sending it off to publishers. There has been a great deal of talk about MySpace being owned by Rupert Murdoch, and subsequent worry about the recent changes to the MySpace EULA. Basically, it now says that anything on MySpace may one day be claimed as the property of said Mr. Murdoch.

While I don’t know a lot about copyright, I know enough to say that your work is your work, and unless you’re being paid for that specific work, by an employer with the expectation of having that work be its compensation for paying you money for it, you pretty much own everything you create. I don’t worry about it much, to be honest – I understand that anything, anything you post on the web can one day come back and bite you in the ass, even the stuff you think is private. I am thinking chiefly of email, here – the government can request your entire web history and email records (even the deleted ones), and you will never know about it. You think you have nothing to worry about? That’s cute. Just remember that in Cambodia, when their own social shit storm hit, people who wore glasses were persecuted and hunted, out of suspicion that they might be intellectuals. That’s some scary shit – if you don’t think that can’t happen here, think again.

That’s a lot of rambling garbage up there, a long drive for a short stay at the beach.

The only reason I even brought up the copyright shit is because I’m seriously considering a limited serialization of one of my stories on this blog – a kind of modern day Charles Dickens sort of thing. I’m not worried about Rupert making a movie out of it and not giving me any money. Just getting that out there.

Not sure which story I’ll post, or if anybody even wants to read the fucking thing. I guess if I get any responses here, in comment form, that might help me decide.

Here begins my serialized story, The Angel in the Marble. The title was taken by a famous quote attributed to Michaelangelo. The story has nothing to do with marble, the Renaissance, sculpture or Italians. But I think it fits.

The story is not completely finished. You may find errors or omissions. All comments, good, bad and indifferent, are welcome. I can take your worst. I am going to put a copyright notice with every piece, just to indicate that this shit is mine, and should not be blamed on anyone else.

Ok, finished the formatting. I’ve learned that simply copying and pasting a chunk of text from Pages is not the best way to make one’s text appear as one wishes it to appear. Lesson learned.

—

    My father was a pious man. He gave us a god to worship, a single God, while the world around us worshipped many. This God spoke to him. My father believed, because he had heard His voice in his mind. We accepted Him on faith, for we could not disobey our father.
    We lived apart from our village, near a canyon. The tall, wide rip in the skin of the rocks was haunted by evil ghosts and the spirits of dead gods. Thus was my family doubly shunned, first for my father’s madness, second for our collusion with the evil of the earth.
    The village squatted in a dusty plain rimmed by mountains. Nomads and bandits roamed the outskirts, more villages to the east and west where the rivers grew wide and the trees grew fat. In our farm near the canyon, my mother bore her husband three sons, and each of them had wives picked by the God of his dreams. I had a wife, but I was forbidden to speak to her until she came of age. She was barely seven years old. I paid little attention to her, and in most days forgot even that she was my wife and not a sister.
    I was a young man when the angels came.
    My father had heard His voice, and came to us at supper with his hands clenched in fists at his side.
    ”We will build a boat,” he said. “A large boat, as wide as our canyon. Waters will come from above and below, and flood the world. Our boat will be large enough to carry many millions with us, so that they shall also be saved.”
    He sat down to eat, and filled the stunned silence with prayer.
    We did not question it aloud. I do not know if my brothers or my mother or my brothers’ young wives questioned it as I did. A flood to drown the earth, and a boat to carry us and our people. A boat so large that we could not build it ourselves. My eldest brother, Shem, was barely a man, and his wife even younger. No worker from the valley would come to help us. We would require help, and my father’s God gave it to us.
    They were angels, His servants, fresh from the boughs of His kingdom. A hundred came with the morning light, and a hundred more each day until their number reached a thousand.     They came in disguise, dressed like kings, with clean skin and wide, blue eyes. My father explained that to blend in, they would have to dress like the rest of us, so he gave them rags to wear while my brothers and I took their clothes out to the animal pens and rolled around in the dirt with them. Japheth wore a white vest and preened and I threw balls of dung at him. I saw an angel, naked, watching us from the front porch. He had no genitals, just a smooth bump, as if wearing a skin-colored cloth over them. Mother had always said that men think with their genitals too much, and that women not enough. I wondered what that meant about the angels.
    They started building the boat after Father gave them orders, and they followed him without a question or a nod, as if his instructions went from ear to limb and passed nothing in between. He told ten of them to collect wood, and an angel came back with a cart full of twigs from the forest floor.
    ”No,” said father. He shook his head and looked down at the dirt, hands on his hips. The angel knitted its eyebrows, as if it didnt understand his displeasure.
    ”You have to cut the trees down,” said Father. “With an axe or a saw, or both. Where are the others?”
    The angel turned and gestured to the hills, over which walked the nine other angels, each laden with bundles of branches and wigs.
    My father retreated to his hut at the work site, a ramble of old wood and rusty nails that held a blanket, a lantern, a table and a chair. I watched him through a narrow space between planks. He knelt on the blanket, hands clenched at his chin, and murmured to the dusty floor.
    ”Please, Lord, they will not listen, or they listen too closely. I cannot teach them of this world in the little time youve given us. Perhaps an extension. Perhaps a guide. An angel who knows our ways.”
    The next day a new angel came to the site.
    He did not look much different from the rest of them, except his hair was darker, and shorter, and his eyes seemed somehow deeper in his head, as if you looked in them and you could see little reflections from things a long way off. Japheth noticed it, too, and said later that it was like he was so old and had so many memories that they stretched past his head and dragged on the ground behind him, and if you walked close behind him you could hear the voices of angels and people dead for so long that their bones were all dust.
    ”I am Michael,” he said to my father. “You are having difficulty with these angels.”
    Father explained the trouble, and Michael nodded and turned to face the angels, who had all bowed their heads when he appeared among them.
    He glowed at night, brighter than the rest. The angles built him a chair, high above the heads of the angels, where the frame of the boat was being built.
    I was given small tasks at the work site, collecting nails and measuring planks. My brothers were given tasks, as well, and I saw little of them. My mother and our wives worked the garden and the kitchen, and mended cloth and sewed linens.
    Michael watched the angels at their work and yelled orders and instructions in a language I had never heard, a language that sounded like the march of armies set to music, unlike any noises a man can make. But the angels understood him and saluted and got to the tasks set before them.
    On the fifth day of his management, Michael killed a human. A group of angels, under orders to seek wood wherever they could find it, had invaded a mans home and began dismantling his house, and loaded the lumber on wagons pulled by donkeys.
    The angels sent one of their own to see Michael, and to tell him what was happening, and Michael stepped gently to the ground and followed.

—

Tune in tomorrow for part 2!

© 2006 by James Hazlett Foreman

I have two theories, unrelated.

1) Pirates of the Caribbean is the Star Wars for this generation. (beware of spoilers)

2) If I worked in a forensics department investigating a car that had exploded on the street, and I wished to find the man responsible, I would watch security camera footage of the incident and look for the only guy who isn’t reacting to the explosion. He’ll probably be walking away from the car, maybe smoking a cigarette.

—

I’m still in a lot of various varieties of pain, folks. But I’m getting better.

The Noah’s Ark story is all put together, finally. Let me fill you in on my writing process.

I write a great deal, over the course of a day. Most of it isn’t any good, but some of it is. If I’m writing a specific story, I can hammer out at least 1k words. I usually write it in a handy notebook, and type it out when I get the chance.

Each day gets its own file, with a file name to indicate the day. When writing the bulk of the story is finished, I find the first day I worked on the story and copy/paste the text into a single document, usually titled First Draft. I do this for every file, until I’ve reached the end.

Finally, I do a first draft, editing for punctuation and structure – making sure the periods are in the right places, that all of the spellings are correct, that sort of thing. I specifically don’t pay attention to the content, just the presentation.

The second edit is a read-through. I take notes on which parts need to be fixed, delete whole sections, rearrange scenes. I also make sure the story elements match – this happens more often than not, as the direction of the story changes in the writing of it. Something in the beginning of the story doesn’t match something in the end, etc. I take out subplots that don’t fit the larger story arc. This is also usually when I solidify the characters’ names – a lot of times, I’ll simply write MAINCHARACTER instead of a name, or MCSBROTHER, so I can Find/Replace when I’ve picked one.

The third edit is another read-through, to make sure everything fits. Then, I do a double and then a triple check for grammar, POV voice, spelling, etc.

Final formatting is the last and, appropriately, final draft. After that, it’s submission time.

Fiction submissions take months to get through slush piles. Most are rejected, and I send the rejected story to somebody else. It’s easy to get discouraged, but part of the lifestyle is being able to get beyond it.

The Noah’s Ark story (as yet untitled – that’s usually part of the final draft) is in stage 2. The first read-through is at once exciting and potentially depressing – sometimes the story I intended to write is not what I actually wrote. But I always try to salvage something out of it, even if I think the finished project is garbage. After all, my first sale was something I don’t think was any good.

—

I almost deleted the previous blog entry. I still might. Enjoy it while you can. The melancholy fades, as it always does. I’m so emo sometimes. Today, it’s hot and muggy. It’s hard to wallow in how sad you are when you’re wallowing in how sweaty you are.

Actually, it probably isn’t.

It’ll turn out he’s just a clone or something.

What’s with all of these major restructurings going on in the Marvel Universe?

If they keep this up, they’re going to have to do a reboot.

Just a little bit:

Worth1000.com gives me endless pleasure. It’s a site for photoshopping contests, where people can submit their own modifications of photos and images based on a theme defined by the site. My favorite of the most recent is a contest for altering celebrity faces. The results are amazing.

—

Jackass has a sequel. There’s a trailer. I have not seen the first one since release (wherein I watched security toss out a pair of underage kids), and that’s probably enough.

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A few links from Ain’t it Fat News:

A Conan remake (or reboot, if you prefer) just got a go-ahead, or a greenlight or whatever. It’s not the sequel to Conan the Barbarian that’s been in the pipeline for years, but it’s something.

Some early reviews of Superman Returns. They’re all positive.

And a few short clips from Superman Returns.