Poetry...meh, I'm not much for poetry, but every once in a while something jumps into my head and I go ahead and write it down. Here are a couple of examples.
I think, he verbalized to a stark and empty windowless room, that I should want to come up with something new under the sun.
The only accoutrements in the spartan space he occupied were the desk as which he was seated, the chair on which he was seated, and an empty wastebasket, constructed on wire, which sat empty on the floor next to his feet. The walls, ceiling, and floor were white, as was the tall stack of papers that stood imposingly on his desk. In imperceptible crack in the ceiling let in the faintest hint of sunlight, the whiteness of the room served to amplify this meager offering from the outside world into enough brightness to fully illuminate everything.
Every thought that sprung seemingly from nowhere into his mind he would eventually track down, like a hunter in the snowy woods, to the den of its origin. The helpless pups he slayed without mercy, then left on the trail of another scent. This pattern continued endlessly, with the predictability of the four seasons.
And he died, his headstone a stack of blank white sheets. Above his desk, a mote hung in a sliver of sun-ray, it's motion imperceptible yet surely it did move, if only one was patient enough to observe.
The kind of people who would kick puppies and cheat charities and snort veritable mountains of cocaine, that's who.
Here at Quill Studios, we are up to our eyeballs with ideas for pop-up books. Well, maybe not eyeballs...but certainly our regrettable tramp stamps. At any rate: ideas? We got 'em. The know how, not so much. Of course, we do book bindings, but we're not magicians or sorcerers or necromancing foul-mouthed gangsters.
You know who knows how though? Robert Saduba, that's who, smart guy. Didn't think I had an answer, did you? If you'd like more sources for creative pop-up book fun times, click here.
My man Rob has got all kinds of crazy pop-up designs, from crabs to castles to the Millennium Falcon. That's right, you can make your own Star Wars pop-up book. How cool would it be to get a cease and desist order signed by George Lucas?
Quill Studios has a Tumblr! This is, of course, very exciting news, and should lead to amazing new e-opportunites (or as our marketing guy calls them: "eepportunities". The extra 'e' is for 'extreme'. Our marketing guy is kind of lame*.).
So why a Tumblr? That is one hell of a good question! Tumblr seems like a bit of a cross between a full-on blog and a Twitter account...sort of like a blog for people without much to say. I guess my reason can be best articulated by reading the following sentence aloud with your shoulders shrugged: You've got to get yourself out there in as many media as you can, I suppose.
*Not Michelle Malkin. I would never do something like that to you guys.
This guy explains Tumblr more thoroughly and diplomatically that I could ever hope to:
Let me be frank regarding my loyalties: Twitter people are my people.
I've said it before: Twitter fuels revolutions, Facebook lets you pretend to be a farmer. There's just something about Twitter - I guess it's the freedom of the platform, the immediacy of the content - that feels right to me. I'm not much of a talker; maybe that's part of it.
Yes, I have a facebook account, and it's a great way to keep up with
friends, but it is by and large a time-wasting whirlpool of vapidness, a
hub of digital navel gazing. I view Twitter totally differently: its'
necessary brevity and ticker-tape speed doesn't really suit mopey
self-reflection. I can just dip in and out as I feel the urge. It allows for a real frank exchange of ideas
without all the superfluous social niceties that really do little more than drive me to distraction. Did I mention that I'm a borderline Aspie?
I have been told my comments on Facebook tend to be a bit "spicy".
What brought me to the subject of twitter, however, was something less than political: fiction (Or, I don't know, maybe that's one of the most political things there is). The idea to write a work of fiction on Twitter first came to me probably about six months ago. And, the thing is, this would be just me making up things about myself - otherwise known as "normal Twitter" - no; I would tell a story from a character's point of view, having him relate his story through the medium of Twitter. Turns out I wasn't the first with this idea.
I have started a rough outline and composed a few rough tweets. I even set up a twitter account for the work, the ID and password for which I promptly forgot. Before I set up another one, I think I'll get a little deeper into he planning stage.
According to my recent observations, people just have no idea in hell about what the deal is with crosswalks. Here are a few pointers to help everyone out.
For Drivers:
1) If you see a pedestrian standing on the curb waiting to use the crosswalk, slow down or stop to enable them to use it. Especially if the weather is less than ideal. You're in a climate controlled vehicle, they have snow down their shoes - you can wait for a few seconds.
2) Avoiding eye contact or otherwise feigning distraction doesn't excuse you from stopping for pedestrians. They're still there. If you're really so distracted that you can't see people in the crosswalk, you really ought to pull over and get things straightened out.
For Pedestrians:
1) Don't milk it. Just don't. That's a total dick move, and it makes it all the more tempting for drivers to speed through crosswalks leaving all your fellow pedestrians unable to cross the next time.
2) If you want to cross, look like it. Don't stand on the corner gazing off into space. That's what hookers do.
At first blush, everything about Lana Del Rey screams "fake". A wannabe posuer. Psuedo-hipster Astroturf.
So of course right away I want to not like her. After her performance
on SNL last night - which I'll get to in a moment - I performed a
cursory web search that yielded the following results.
the fact she's the daughter of an internet millionaire
in spite of the fact that her dad was a millionaire, claims to
have lived in a trailer home and was barely able to afford Cocoa Puffs,
which is I guess a weird way of saying you're having trouble making ends
meet?
the fact that she admits that her stage name "came from a series of managers and lawyers over the last 5 years..." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana_Del_Rey )
her first album has mysteriously vanished (a la Alanis Morissette)
and of course rumors of plastic surgery
First off, I cannot confirm the fact that her dad is indeed an
incredibly wealthy man; judging from his website, he kind of seems like a
guy who just did alright for himself in the shady field of domain name
speculation and designing crappy-looking websites seemingly modeled off
of his own crappy-looking website.
And she does seem to have quite a bit of representation and management
for a girl who used to live IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!! but
whatever. I certainly don't see any smoking gun indicating her daddy
bought all this for her. To the contrary, it seems like she had a wild
streak and her dad sort of disowned her for a bit. That would explain
how she could live in a trailer park yet still have a penchant for
top-dollar breakfast foodstuffs, right?
The disappearing of her first album is pretty weird, but Alanis
Morissette did the same damn thing. Now that I think of it, many of the
issues people have with Lana have previously been mentioned in reference to
Alanis. OMG - if you rearrange the letters in 'Alanis', you get 'is
Lana'...they're the same damn person, I bet! I mean, who has heard from
Ms. Morissette lately, hmmm?
As far as the plastic surgery goes, I just don't see it
(disallowing, for the moment, the very real possibility that she is in
fact Alanis - then she'd need to have had the surgery). Her lips don't
look that different to me; they just appear to be painted differently. I
will wager that she wears a wig, though.
Now, back to SNL.
Having not heard of her before last night, I was not subject to
any buzz expectations, however I, like Juliette Lewis, was a little
underwhelmed by her performance of 'Video Games'. In an apparently
since deleted tweet, she was heard to remark:
“Wow watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12 yearold
in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform
#signofourtimes.”
But Juliette is a
Scientologist who supports Ron Paul for President and seems to post her
every damn thought on the interwebs, so I take that with a grain of
salt. Plus she is a chicken shit and retracted it the next day. Have the courage of your convictions, girl! (Loved you in 'Natural Born Killers & 'Shit Grils Say', BTW) Let's move on.
Her
next song (also, of course, her last, as you would know if you stayed
in on Saturday nights like me often enough that you could basically be
the show runner for SNL if you had to) was the one that got me. And not
just her singing, or the lyrics; no, was I really enjoyed was the
musical sensibilities of Blue Jeans.
OK, I'll admit I have no idea WTF the deal is with her voice. Maybe she was just nervous. But no one can accuse her of lip-synching like Ashlee Simpson, amirite?
Now, of course, the lyrics are hardly original. Hell, I'm sure
you could probably pick every line in the chorus from another song. And
the whole song reminds me a little of 'Wicked Game'. But I don't care.
I just don't effing care. Her key changes are interesting and exquisite. And she writes her own material, which is a huge plus in my book.
Here's a better version, just because I love you guys:
Oh my God. That's the stuff - right when the music grinds to a halt after she says "end of time". Love it!
