DANGERPANTS!

"I gazed up at the starry sky, and it seemed as alien to me as I do to myself."

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:43:21 -0400

“I gazed up at the starry sky, and it seemed as alien to me as I do to myself.”

- Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless

Good morning, LOC. (at National Audio-Visual Conservation Center...

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:33:24 -0400

Good morning, LOC. (at National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Library of Congress)

Off on yet another week of travel for work. Ugh. #VA_bound (at...

Sun, 19 May 2013 07:36:13 -0400

Off on yet another week of travel for work. Ugh.
#VA_bound (at George Eastman House)

Sleep tight, kids.

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:09:28 -0400

Sleep tight, kids.

Marcus woke to find himself flat on the filthy cement floor, his...

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:24:03 -0400

Marcus woke to find himself flat on the filthy cement floor, his head in a pool of warm blood that he somehow knew was not his own.

A quick inventory told him all he needed to know: Legs? Broken. Eyes? Not yet adjusted to the darkness. Arms? Exhausted, but likely able to lift himself. Ears? Full of blood, but working well enough to hear the skritching noises in the blackness; the rats would be coming soon.

I should have figured it out far sooner, Marcus thought as he tried hauling his limp frame through the sticky gore. It smelled of copper and sugar. Laughing grimly at his own naiveté, he recalled a lyric from an old Nick Cave song:

You’re one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan,
designed and directed
by his red right hand

- - -

GPOYW - Nitrate inspection edition

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:29:00 -0400

GPOYW - Nitrate inspection edition

Good morning, little nerdlings. Here is a Housemartins music for...

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:56:56 -0400

Good morning, little nerdlings. Here is a Housemartins music for your earholes.

What's the last book you read that you liked?

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:03:00 -0400

Ugh. Thanks for pointing out that my leisure reading habit as of late has been, well, non-existent. All day long my job is CINEMA! and when I have free time to read articles and books they are CINEMA! and goddammit I need an escape.

So let me turn the question around on you, friend, and ask you what should I read next?

^{[Though I will admit that the last piece of fiction that I actually enjoyed was China Miéville’s Railsea, which I finished back in January.]}

What kind of soundtrack would you use to power yourself through finishing up a research proposal, due tonight?

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:44:00 -0400

Play the Chemical Brothers album “Dig Your Own Hole”. Loudly and repeatedly until your work is finished.

Do you have a favorite book? And, because that's a loaded question, maybe you just limit it to a favorite author or genre? Which book/author was it that inspired you to start writing in the first place?

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:20:00 -0400

Yikes. That’s one of those questions along the lines of “what’s your favorite food?”

Nonetheless, when I was a wee lad, I was particularly fond of P.G. Wodehouse and also Douglas Adams, and I think those two gentlemen are largely responsible for shaping my writing “style” as a teen and young adult, before I actually discovered and shaped and honed my own voice. And that’s the real trick of writing, isn’t it?

How much do you love me?

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:20:00 -0400

Until the margarita pitcher is empty.

*hic*.

Yep.

I AM IN A HOTEL

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:07:10 -0400

So, at commercial breaks during the Rangers game, I will answer the first few (i.e. one or two or maybe three) things that show up in my askbox.

This never ends well.

down the rabbit hole

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:49:51 -0400

Writing good fiction requires good research.

Sometimes that research leads you to places you’d least expect.

And sometimes those places lead to still other places. Darker places. Hidden places. Places where you get lost and wander and begin to wonder what is real and what isn’t and no this can’t possibly be true because that would change everything you thought was real and these are only secondary sources and you think it’s likely all hearsay and folklore and you feel better for a little while.

But it nags at you. You need to know more. You want the truth.

So you spend days and weeks using all of your skills and pulling all of your strings and calling in all of your favors to seek out the primary sources and while individually they are mundane and nonsensical you start seeing patterns and once you dig deeper and put the pieces together you…

Well, you panic. You lose your tenuous grip on sanity and start wondering who else knows what you now know and your days are spent in thick clouds of paranoia and fear and hopelessness.

But in the end, you’ll find a way to rationalize. To pretend it’s not real. To make a story out of it like you wanted to do in the first place.

You’ll tell your story and pass it off as “fiction” and people will read it and enjoy it but from that point on the rest of your life will be a lie. You’ll smile during the day but every night you will toss and turn and stare at the moonlit ceiling of your bedroom and wonder when they will come for you.

Testing 1.. 2.. 1.. 2..

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:42:02 -0400

Testing 1.. 2.. 1.. 2..

Totally not winning at life. #saturdayfail (at Casa Delgrosso)

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:54:12 -0400

Totally not winning at life.
#saturdayfail (at Casa Delgrosso)

Batman and Robin in a 1943 Columbia Pictures serial.

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:37:48 -0400

Batman and Robin in a 1943 Columbia Pictures serial.

"Of all the super heroes, the strangest one by far, doesn’t have a special power, or drive a fancy..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:37:22 -0400

“

Of all the super heroes,
the strangest one by far,
doesn’t have a special power,
or drive a fancy car.

Next to Superman and Batman,
I guess he must seem tame.
But to me his is quite special,
and Stain Boy is his name.

He can’t fly around tall buildings,
or outrun a speeding train,
the only talent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Sometimes I know it bothers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one ability,
his dry cleaning bill’s sky-high.

”

- Tim Burton, Stain Boy

"What y’all thought y’all wasn’t gon’ see me? I’m the Osirus of this..."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:05:58 -0400

“What y’all thought y’all wasn’t gon’ see me?
I’m the Osirus of this shit
Wu-Tang is here forever, motherfucker
It’s like this ninety-seven
Aight my niggaz and my niggarettes
Let’s do it like this
I’ma rub your ass in the moonshine
Let’s take it back to seventy-nine”

- Margaret Atwood

Tumblr seems to have done that random unfollow thing again.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:41:59 -0400

So if I’ve unfollowed you in the past couple of weeks or so, it wasn’t intentional. Drop me a note and I’ll refollow. Sorry!

New fake band name and autobiography title. (at Casa Delgrosso)

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:07:00 -0400

New fake band name and autobiography title. (at Casa Delgrosso)