Story Impact

I've seen the new version of War of the Worlds. I've greatly enjoyed the works of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise as of late (I have a Minority Report poster hanging on the wall in front of me). What I saw will stay with me for quite a while.

War of the Worlds was a high caliber, excellent film. Note that I didn't say movie. A movie is a motion picture you can watch for fun and has a great deal of replay value. A film is a motion picture you watch for artistic reasons and can sometimes be a good candidate for a single viewing only. On the IMDB, I rated War of the Worlds as a 9/10, a high score. I gave Schindler's List a similar rating. I don't think I'll have any real need to see either movie again. One viewing is enough. It's still really good, check it out.

In other news, the theater had a display set up for the new superhero movie Sky High. I cringe every time I see anything related to this movie. The display I saw today had several characters pictured with the character's name above them. I saw the name listed above Kurt Russel's character and got extremely pissed.

It said THE COMMANDER.

I couldn't help but be mad. For the one of you who might not know, I've made up stories my whole life. Many of them, even to this day, involve one central character (who I also named this very web log after). This character is THE COMMANDER. I'm just mildly frustrated and it's not the first time. I felt slightly less perturbed when I first heard the name of the villain in the movie Black Mask.

I'm not too worried. Commander is a military rank, as well as a title given to one who gives official orders. That's why my character still has this as his name. Besides, I'm fairly sure Sky High is going to bomb at the box office.

Rename Raibaru!

Here's a bit of a gag contest. I don't know if there's a prize involved, but I'll appreciate any input on this subject.

In Ashes of War, one of the two main characters is a war hero known as Raibaru. If you know much about Japanese syllables, you might have already guessed that this character is just Rival pronounced in Japanese style. I'm sick of this name, but I can't think of another.

I have a few rules for name suggestions. 1. All suggestions should have a Asian element to the name, just because I've got to make it fit with everything else in the story. 2. All suggestions should fit with the character's role and personality. For example, Raibaru is the rival of the other main character, Rakkan.

Here's a description of Raibaru as a character. Thank you for your support.

RAIBARU--hero of Uyoku and possible successor to the role of Overmaster. He is bound by a code of honor, making him keen and logical in battle. Once, he was a student of history and spirituality. Eventually, many people will look to him as a guide to freedom and salvation.

Downward Bound, part 2

So I played the latest game show again--Mutual of Omaha's Wild Goose Chase. I decided, let's cut the crap and go see the people I really need to talk to, the people who pay the checks.

Round One: Find the correct office. Ugh. I started by asking the Cashier's Office. That's how you quickly get into an adventure called "the runaround." They wanted to send me back to Upward Bound to look for the check (NO!), but they made two mistakes. First, they mentioned that the checks come from Payroll. Second, I got them to tell me where Payroll was. Also, Payroll was the right office for me to go to.

Round Two: Find out where the check went. This was the easiest thing of all. The ladies in Payroll looked at a couple of sheets, asked if I'd worked for the Biology Department and said, "It went there."

Round Three: Find the actual check. The Payroll office made no less than four phone calls for me today. Two of them to the Biology secretary who is currently on vacation (that's going to come back to haunt me, I just know it). In the end, the check had been on the secretary's desk, but I know not to fool with a secretary's desk; it's a quick cure to breathing. The Biology secretary ended up calling the office and telling them to make sure I got the check.

Bonus Round: Find out where the next check will go. While waiting for some of the previously mentioned phone calls to be returned, I asked where the next check will go. I was informed it would also go to Biology (never found out exactly why this was happening in the first place), but, after another call, that destination has supposedly been shifted to the Upward Bound office. We'll see how screwed up this will get soon enough.

In the end, I got my check, dropped it off at the bank, and went about my day. Finally found the last DVD of Wolf's Rain, so that's one more anime series I have completed my collection of.

Downward Bound, Part 1

Upward Bound was hoping that the checks would come in June 24. They've been transitioning from one fiscal year to the next and can't transfer any money out until the books are up to date completely.

So went to see if, by some miracle, the checks came through. Another teacher for the program had come in before me for the same reason. They didn't have one for her, so they didn't have one for me. But wait--there might be checks in this drawer.

The checks were there. The other teacher got her's and the student worker started looking for mine. Unfortunately, my name was not on the list of those who checks had been sent for. The student worker made some calls and tried to track down my check. Since my usual job for the University is through the Biology department, it may have been sent there. So I went.

At the Biology office I found... an empty office. However, I knew where the checks were usually kept in case someone needed to come get their check. After a few minutes of searching in solitude, I found nothing, not even another person's check. Returning to the Upward Bound office, I informed the student worker of the situation. She tried to give me an idea of when the administrators would be in the office again.

Now, Upward Bound may be a zoo, but when they have stuff, they have stuff together. This mess isn't their fault. Someone is accounting made a stupid mistake, a mistake that, come Monday, they'll wish they hadn't made since they'll be getting a visit from an imposing, scary guy who looks a lot like me.

I understand a lot of the current situation, I just need to sort out what's happening next. Because, once I find my check, I get to look forward to doing this again in two weeks.

Vampire Gunfighters

Sounds screwed up doesn't it?

Well, that's the basic idea of the story I've been calling "The Gunfight" for lack of a better title. At last, I've finally finished editing it again. Now, I can send it to a few friends and have them poke holes in it, or just read it. I'm sure there are still flaws in it, but I think I'm a lot closer to wrapping this thing up than I was before.

It took me a couple of days of actual work editing this story for the simple reason that I had to pick through a lot of flaws that were in it. The major flaws were parts of the main character, Andra Raven. She's got a freaky pistol and an even freakier left arm. Since she's a dhampir, I felt that she should have something in her left arm like the most well known dhampir, Vampire Hunter D.

I won't say much more than that about the story itself. In general, I think I should say that this is part of a larger "idea" I call Blood Tithe.

Blood Tithe is a very simple concept I thought of a little more than 18 months ago. I noticed that every book, comic book, movie, TV show, and video game dealing with vampires always treated them differently. Sometimes they like crosses, sometimes not. Sometimes they like garlic, sometimes not. Sometimes daylight is fatal, sometimes not. I thought about which one should be right and realized that it was impossible to figure that out.

So why can't they all be right? So the world of Blood Tithe works on a few premises, one of which being that any type of vampire can appear. I have a story that runs through some of the event of this world, but the more I think of it, this world is better as a setting that can be played with rather than a setting for a specific story. That's not saying I won't ever write about Andra
Raven again; that just means I'll build the world more than anything else.

Instead of the next thing I write in Blood Tithe being about government sponsored vampire hunters (the main story I thought of that takes place in this world), I'm going to write the history of Andra Raven's pistol and it's role in the early history of this world.

Creative Spring

Well, I've been trying to get my brain running on some ideas again. First of all is getting the edits done on "The Gunfight." I've got a list of things to put it, and now, I might just get them done.

The other thing I've been thinking about is a little thing I call Ashes of War. This is one of those projects I've had burning in my head for a long time now. I've found a few people interested in it. I even found one friend of mine that is an ideal reader of this story.

Ashes of War is ambitious to say the least. Not only is it an epic, but the way I have it planned, it's two epics. One that's a war, the other that's an oppressive dictatorship. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of detail, but I'm keeping it vague for a reason. I don't want to give anything away about it, but this is something that I've had a lot of thought about.

In the highlight of CrossGen, I thought about making this as an ongoing comic series that I might pitch to them. If you know about CrossGen, you know it's a good thing that I didn't. Next, my thought was to develop it as a semi-fantasy epic 15 issue comic series. I plotted out the sequence of events and characters, some of which came about only because I planned out a lot of the parts.

As with many things I write about, Ashes of War went on the back burner for a while. When it came back, I had decided to focus on my abilities as a prose writer rather than a script (comics) writer. Because of that, those 15 issues became 15 chapters; the comic series was reimagined as a novel.

My next thought is to start building up interest with this story. I'd like to start showing off some of my ideas here and seeing what those of you reading this might think. Over time, I'll add comments onto this post concerning various aspects of Ashes of War.

Switching Rides

More often than not, I think of my life as a roller coaster. Things go up, they go down, they sometimes spin around. Things stay interesting to some degree. I love to finish by saying, "at least it's not boring."

I've finished most of my obligations to Upward Bound. Things went on a big dip then a big jump toward the end. Wednesday was hell for the simple reasons of por test results and ACT review becoming more unruly than any class has ever been for me.

Final presentations were quite good considering they were given by half-interested high school students. The final ACT review session saw turnabout for the students in that they had to sit through and extra half hour for the math version (which meant I got to wait a half hour also), followed by another session of testing over science. Also, they had to take both tests official ACT style--no talking, spaces between students, no getting up, no going to the bathroom, no anything.

The end result was that things were essentially fair. It's not like they weren't warned in advance multiple times.

Now, I think I'm going to shift over to summer mode. Which means a degree of normalcy back in my schedule along with lots of underlying chaos.

Over the next few weeks, I'll probably make three 100 mile+ trips. First is to actually give my Dad his Father's Day present on Sunday. The next week, as I learned today, features the wedding of an old friend of mine from high school. Finally is the ever-burning Blow Shi--I mean Independence Day.

We'll see where things go from here.

Comic Book Superhero Movies--Good and Bad

Since Batman Begins has just opened, I feel compelled to speak on the subject of the comic book superhero movies. Actually I wanted an excuse to say something:

Oh... My... God...!

Go see Batman Begins. It's the first time Batman has ever been made into a movie. Really. Just watch the movie; you'll believe why I say that. It's that good. I only found two minor, almost invisible things that I didn't like about the movie. Great acting, story, direction, mood--everything. Go see Batman Begins. It's the movie to beat this summer, maybe this year. It's that good.

Conversely, I should also vent my frustration over another comic book superhero movie, the dreaded X-Men 3. I'm a huge X-Men fan, but I was dreading this movie.

Now, I want to organize a massive boycott of the waste of film. For as much as Batman Begins and X-Men 2 got those characters right, X-Men 3 will get them wrong. Now, I shall spoiler-warn my ranting.


S P O I L E R S


A H E A D


OK, now that I've got that out of the way, being an X-Men fan, I've noticed that all the key X-Men tales over the years have included 3 elements that are the essence of character in X-Men. Those elements, in order of appearance in comics, are:

1. Cyclops
2. Jean Grey-Summers/Phoenix
3. Wolverine

You get the whole team dynamic and the great X-Men love triangle in that tiny little package. Cyclops and Jean getting married changed absolutely nothing in how these characters interact (It took Hack Morrison's New X-Crap to screw that up).

So what do I have against X-Men 3? Well, they're bringing Jean back as Phoenix, which is good. The problem is how they're doing it. Cyclops will find her, they'll interact for a minute or two, then she accidentally disintegrates him. Check Aint-It-Cool News and they'll tell you the same thing, since that's where I read it.

A lot of people don't care for Cyclops. He's my favorite X-Man. He's essential to the team since he was the first, the trendsetter. He's more devoted to the dream than Xavier. He's the true leader of the X-Men since all the others turn to him when he's around. He brings out the best character elements in the other characters in the story. This is especially true of Wolverine. Remember the scenes they had together in the first movie? That was their interaction exactly. Nor was their interaction in the second movie inaccurate; when Jean died in the comics the first time, they could actually admit that they respected each other.

In conclusion, my advice. Don't see X-Men 3 when it comes out. Do see Batman Begins as soon as possible.

Epic Battle! Time--1; Len--0

My main opponent right now is time. I'm always fighting against it in some way, shape, or form. I try to write and plan for the future and time compacts everything to the point where something gets trimmed. Writing gets trimmed, thesis gets trimmed, reading gets trimmed--everything gets trimmed.

I'd say my schedule is about to open up, but I'd really be lying. I'm just going to trade one thing (teaching for Upward Bound) for another (sorting out where I'll be living by the end of summer and, maybe, thesis).

From that, it won't surprise anyone that I haven't edited "The Gunfight" yet. I have the edits planned to some degree, meaning that I know what I need to do to fix the story in basic terms.

Honestly, I know what I'm fighting. I can call it time, and I'd be right, but there is another name for it. I'm fighting myself. My financial woes are all due to the fact that I'm really taking care of myself. I pay my bills (or at least my share of them). The money in my account is money I have earned through working. This might seem like nothing for a lot of people, but it's something for me. I'm a person who, usually, is at least partially dependent upon someone else to pay for what I do. This is something I'm proud of and I don't really want to go back to money from my parents.

There are many things in life that we all settle on. We settle for the fact that newspapers cost 50 cents. We settle on the fact that politicians lie to us and kiss our butts. We settle that most people are cynical and we should be cynical too. We settle that the sun will come up tomorrow. We settle that copying anime/manga style is something American artists just shouldn't do. We accept things every day just so we can survive.

I've settled on the fact that I can get a job completely through my own efforts (Upward Bound was the first real case of this for me). I've settled that I hang out with a lot of guys, so I don't really even talk to girls that often. I've settled that I can get depressed and I just need to get through it.

I've settled that I should figure out what's important to me and follow that.

For some odd reason, I've had a thick layer of mental armor ever since I got over the first relationship where I had a girlfriend. I've just told myself not to worry and to just go forward after that. Usually, it works to a degree where I am able to push through and get things done.

The thing is, you can only do the same thing for so long. I've been going to school for 20+ years and, at the end of last semester, I was sick of it. My summers usually have a degree of empty monotony, so I get sick of those really fast. I'm sick of the same things. I want to get started with my life--and I feel like I don't know where that really starts.

Right now, the person who seems to be the most inspirational to me is writer Greg Rucka. He had a lot of jobs before he decided that he had a manuscript for a novel that he'd written that he could get published. He edited it and it eventually got published. Since Keeper, he's written several novels, as well as broken into a little creative format know as comic books. Dammit, that's what I want to do. I want to get some things published, get some awards for them (Greg Rucka won an award for Keeper), and start writing a few comic books as well. Also, and this is notable, his writing is his job. That's what I want.

I'm not necessarily the same kind of writer as Greg Rucka. In fact, I know I'm not, but that doesn't change the fact that I'd love to follow his lead. I want to do what he's done, I just don't have the greatest idea of where I have to start.

Wow. I guess I know a little of what I want. Now, I just have to do it.

Good, Bad, and the Eye of the Beholder

It's our perceptions that control how we see things. Early today, I felt like today was just a long anticipation period for tomorrow (see previous post for my thoughts on that). However, I called up my sister late in the afternoon and that changed.

Both of us have currently been running through the thought of "How do I get a good job with my degree?" or "What is it that I'm supposed to be doing?" It's a common thing for both of us to one degree or another. What was cool about talking to April today was the fact that, in my opinion, I think we managed to cheer each other up--we pointed out for each other what we could do to make things work out for us, at least for the time being.

After that, I managed to plan out what I needed to do with my class on Monday and when I should write up my test. The only flaw with the plan I came up with is that it bites into my time in the Geoscience lab working on my thesis, but that's something I can work on all summer long. I've decided to stop rushing it.

As far as "The Gunfight" goes, I'm about to take care of those edits, so a new draft should be along shortly.

Spiralling Chaos and Clarity

I'm a third of the way through my commitments to Upward Bound. I'm not complaining and cheering one way or another on that. My experience with the program has not been the smoothest of experiences. Chaos. That's what that program is. I know it works out well enough for the students, but not for me. I'm having to lecture for two hour stints and that stinks. "I've had teachers who don't just stand at the front of the class and talk; they do things to make it interesting." That's almost a direct quote that came to me today--Saturday!--from one of my students (who usually sleeps through 85% of class).

It's sucked the life out of me this week. I've felt weak, tired, and exhausted all due to this program. If it's not the apathy of the students pulling me down, it's the lack of aid in doing ACT prep. I'm supposed to give one-hour seminars on types of questions students might see a total of three times in their life. And I'm supposed to do this without hardly any help at all. As it stands right now, I don't think I like working with Upward Bound.

I gave my class an assignment today to help them get ready for their projects that they'll present on the last day of class. They'll be making a list of 2 or 3 systems of the human body and listing at least 3 functions for each system. I think this might be something that turns things around for the class. I hope so.

In other news, on multiple occasions this week, I've had some interesting discussions with different people about faith and spirituality. I've also had to find some way to anchor my mind and fight through this current string of stress I'm walking on. I can't really explain it, but I feel like my faith is stronger right now, stronger than it's been in a while. For that, I'm glad because I could use some faith: faith in myself, faith in people, faith in life.

My big goal for the immediate future is to edit a short story tenatively called "The Gunfight." It involves a gunfight between two characters that aren't really human. I'll just say it, they're at least partially vampires. It's a good little tale, I just need to freshen it up a bit.

Until next time....