The fun of resurrection

Higher Ground is a story I wrote in 2002. Some people liked it, I finished it, re-read it and pretty much didn't care for it. (Major plot holes, last minute 'wait, there is no villain! Shove one in!' stuff, the usual fun of doing a draft of a novel without, say, plotting more than a couple of chapters ahead.) However, as much as I disliked the end result, I did have a soft spot for the core concept of it:

Why do characters who end up in Fantasy World stay?

Not everyone would want to, or should, but I thought it would be focus on a character whose only goal is to get back home because of mundane issues like the new car getting towed, work, rent and so forth. As such I am entirely re-doing the novel from scratch and altering a lot of character roles. Or shall, in time; I'm doing up notes at present so things are more solidified in my head when I start out.

Life In The Big City

I’m a long, long way from home
And anyone that I know;
Said nothing held me there
Oh, if only that was so.

I know I said I’d never leave
But it was just too hard to believe
I know you’ll think that I lied
But my love I swear I tried.

I’ve been walking down lonely roads
Just going with the flow
I sometimes wish you were here with me
But it was too long ago.

I wouldn’t know you if we met anymore
I burned my bridges and I closed my doors
This is truly what I do believe
Though sometimes I still grieve.

Having sex with strangers
That I will never know
They keep saying “Do you love me?”
And I keep wanting to say no.

I know I said I’d never leave
But it was just too hard to believe
I know you’ll think that I lied
But my love I swear I tried.

Some days I think of you still
And wonder how I fell so low
Sometimes I wish I could see you
But there’s nothing I’d want to show.

I wouldn’t know you if we met anymore
I burned my bridges and I closed my doors
This is truly what I do believe
Though sometimes I still grieve.

I sometimes think we’ll meet again
And our eyes shall catch and glow
Or we might pass by as strangers do
And maybe just say hello.

I know I said I’d never leave
But it was just too hard to believe
I know you’ll think that I lied
But I swear I tried, I swear I tried.

Maybe we could just say hello.
Maybe we could say hello.

Sometimes I dream the world is good

Sometimes I dream the world is good
And I know I know that you do too
A place where everything turns out okay
And love can always be true

And it’s a world I’ve never lived in
And I know I know it’s one I want to see
And I don’t know what I’d give up
For such a world to be

And I’m thinking too maybe you don’t know
And I wonder I wonder if anyone does
Or if we just keep on going around
But I sure hope not because

I have seen this world that never was
I wonder I wonder and hope you have too
And I hope you’ll come along with me
And somehow make it true

A world’s out there waiting to begin
And I wonder I do what it will be
I know you must too I see it in your eyes
‘Cuz together maybe we can
And together maybe we will

The Daffodils, or, It's raning and my allergies are acting up.

By: William Wordsworth, after finding his wife in bed wth STC and learning his poems about childhood stemmed from abuse at the hands of his mother.


I meandered pretty as a cloud
Singing while high o'er home and hills,
Drugs ran out and I heard the sound
A host of falling coloured pills
Beside the lake, I let out a sneeze
And they danced away on the breeze

No longer happy and not fine
Thinking of semen as the milky way
I saw my home and a light shone
I saw where Sam had been today
Ten thousand sins seen at a glance
Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.

I screamed in fucking agony; they
Just pointed and waved with glee
A poet could not but be gay,
I loved my wife's company
I gazed -- all glazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
Remembering mother strange moods
That make black unpon the inward eye
And make me want to say things rude
I remember the axe, and pleasure fills
My heart, dancing with blue pills.

Spare Change

Spare some change?
begs a hand thrust
out of tattered rags.

Most of us
have no change to spare;

Most of us
never change at all.

Rain

The day after
my cat died
Mummy told me
"The rain
Is God
Crying with you."
I asked what God
Up in Heaven
Could ever have
To cry about.

That night, my bum sore
from the spanking, I wondered
If God hated people
Living in deserts
Because
It never rained in them.

This year's poem

He is born: presents!
He returns: Chocolate eggs!
He dies: naught at all.

facebook status updates: part IV

I want to post about a fake trip and, when the burglars arrive, give them a happy grin. "I was just looking for friends! Didn't you see that I'm looking for friendship in my status?"

You are now infected with sentient lice. They will eventually try to establish communication... unless, of course, you've been trying to exterminate them. In that case, they'll be very unhappy with you.

"I don’t get this whole destiny thing. Aren’t you already doing whatever it is you’re going to do?”

“There are many forms of currency in this world,” Ril said softly. “You and I both know that the only one that matters is secrets. ”

Mind you, most things mentioining Anne Coulter sear themselves into the brain much like cthulhu would. - Moi.

Silence, Del had found, was the most cunning of traps. People felt compelled to fill it.

From a current WIP: And sometimes, if you say you'll pay anything, the price is everything.

You begin to urinate shredded White House documents for the next 10 hours, and the page they form tells you who will really kill you tomorrow.

How to tell your kids there is no Santa: "We're not getting you any gifts this year because Santa will bring them."
And come christmas morning: "Well, it seems the recession hit St. Nick hard, too. But we still got you each a satsuma!"

Signs you are writing a very screwed-up story: It includes references to zombie fetish films. In this case, one made for zombies by zombies and involving humans eating zombies.

For the past week, you have been getting text messages on your phone, dated noon tomorrow.
"Sorry," from a blocked ID, and nothing else.
The messages are coming less frequently now.

this is a fun story line out of context: "Ant farms aren't vampires, least not any one I've ever seen."

What ISN'T the world's second-oldest profession?

Telemarketer for scotiabank: "Hello, I am looking for Josh MacLeod."
Me: "No, you're not. Because he's getting sick of these calls and will switch banks if they continue."
*click*

Weirdest line written thus far this week in WIP:
"What is decency, if not stigmata?"

This is the postscript of a letter I sent to my grandmother 5 years ago.
PS - I just discovered that spiritual councillors who speak to the dying are paid by the hour. It created an interesting mental image of “die slower, I need to pay my rent!”

The grass won't be greener on the other side after you apply the lighter fluid.

Vampires who sparkle in sunlight should convert to Islam so they can hide behind the burka. Discuss.

"You killed God," the Devil said, and She looked disappointed. "I had a round of golf booked with Him this weekend; now what am I going to do?"

"Would someone care to explain," the Detective said slowly, "why anyone thought the king's horses could put an *egg* back together again? Look at what their hooves have done to the shell!"

This was turning out to be a bad day for the Detective. No less than four calls in the last hour from people claiming they had lost an hour of the day, and demanding someone catch the thief who stole it.
Only two of them had been joking.

"No," the Detective said, his voice cold and quiet and breaking through the shouting of victims and suspects and the killer.
"What?" The killer said. "No? No to what?"
"I am not telling the mayor the butler did it." The Detective raised his gun. "We need a better killer than that."

"Commissioner, you asked me to solve the case of reality." The Detective paused. "The solution is 42."
"That is amusing," the Commissioner said, his voice devoid of a smile. "You're fired."
"But .... I wasn't joking. It really is 42. Why won't anyone listen to me?"

"Of course I arrested the suspect," the Detective said to Internal Affairs.
"For someone to be a suspect, you have to charge them with with a crime. Not march into their office and arrest them!"
"I knew he was guilty of something; he's a senator."

There is one conspiracy so great is can bring down the moon, so brilliant it burns even the worthy as it makes them pure, and so terrible that darkness quells from it and sorrow seems, at times, its mate. This conspiracy is called love.

Things that would be fun: answering the phone as though you were a help desk.

"Yes, your honour, I was drunk when I was pulled over," The Detective said. "Drunk on clues."

"Oh yeah?" she said. "So I'm like that, am I? Well, how many horsemen of the apocalypse have *you* slept with, mister?"

The Detective laughed unkindly. "I hate to disappoint you, but this is not a locked room mystery: I placed a cat in the room four hours before the disappearance of Ms. Dunway in this same room so it is now a schrodinger's cat room, and neither locked nor unlocked."

The Detective has been fired for many reasons, over the course of his career. Concerned pet owners over his use of Schrodinger's Cat was, however, a new one.

Freewrite on the subject of losing things

He couldn’t love her. No one had to tell him that, in the White City. But that was the deal, the oldest bargain in all the worlds that were: you bring them back, you leave a soul behind. And you could take nothing there save what was within you.

Most people don’t have extra souls. He didn’t. And she came back, from the White City to the world, from death into life, as if it was a matter of bureaucracy as much as will, destiny as much as chance. He smiled — he could fake that, at least — and she laughed, and kissed him, and talked.

When she left, two months later, only she was surprised. He wasn’t surprised by anything anymore. he let her go, despite her pleading for him to change, trying to move him with words, and love, and human things. He just waited, watched her go, and made himself a sandwich.

They never talked about his lost soul, not then or ever.

Insanity, thy name is WIP....

There is a terrible book in my WIP called "Deep Ones and R'lyeh", which is a cthulhu-inspired version of Green Eggs and Ham. Characters quote from it.

I think this means I need help.

(But, on the plus side, I did resist the urge to write up said book idea entirely. Which is probably for the best.)

"Huh." Clay flipped the page. "I do not like deep waters and Dagon?"
"It is not a mistype," Uniq said. "Would you like them there or there," is not one either, since that is a picture of Carcosa. I believe the good doctor used Disneyland as a reference point for drawing it."