Idiot Samurai (graphic novel script)
this is the first draft, far from complete, of an attempt at a graphic novel. i know almost nothing about real samurai or being a warrior, so that'll need some research. but the novel is not about samurai. why samurai matter at all will be clear early on. anyway, this is an experiment and i'm enjoying it.
a prison cell: one of those classic views, from above, at an angle so we see him sitting on his cot, head in his hands, shadows of the bars striping the room. a black-and-white view of a man on death row, sitting up in the darkness of the night.
It was his shoes that did it. Hideous things, ugly just for the sake of being ugly. Bad enough they would be manufactured and sold; worse that anyone would purchase and wear them.
from behind, a close-up of his hand holding his head, fingers digging into his close-shorn scalp
"Lost" finale
“How was it?”
That question will be asked millions of times for at least the next 24 hours, and the answer, for me, takes two different routes. Both of which can be summarized by one word, the word I find myself infused with as I think back on the show and its conclusion: Sweet.
As in, lovely. Kind. Refreshing. Perhaps even blessed — even if it was a tv show that contained almost as much advertising as show content. Sweet.
The question “How was it?” depends in general on another question: “What were you hoping for?” In many cases, “What did you expect?” might be another question that comes to mind, but for fans of “Lost”, much of the pleasure was in expecting to be surprised in the most twisted ways, therefore making “expected” something better left behind. “What were you hoping for?” is the more relevant question, and one that is, I think, easily answered for most fans: To have the characters together, alive and happy. We wanted Charlie to survive and be with Claire, Sayid to be with Shannon, Sun and Jin, Desmond and Penny, Sawyer and Juliet — Jack and Kate. We wanted Locke to be whole and Hugo to be cool, dude. We wanted a goddamn happy ending, and that’s what we got.
But it had to make sense. It couldn’t be Bobby Ewing waking from his dream or an autistic boy looking in a snowglobe. The happy ending had to be authentic; it had to make sense in the universe “Lost” inhabited. The island story had to be resolved, not tossed aside for the happy ending, and it was. Jack died to save the island, and Hugo and Ben remained behind to protect it and to find a new way to get Desmond home. The jet with Kate, Sawyer and the others flying over Jack as he died was their inadvertent farewell.
But even as the ending had to make sense, it had to avoid being complete. The story’s ending had to be happy, it had to make sense (no cheating) and it had to be Lost-like. We know there are important things we have not been told. We think they are going to heaven — but are they? The world where Hugo, Sawyer, Kate and the others survive and where they return to their lives: it doesn’t disappear. Even as the characters gather at the end, we know there is more than what we see. The bright light envelops them and hides from us the next stage of their journey — and we exit on the island, as Jack dies and the others continue forward. At the same time we have the happy ending and the sad, all of them together and only a few who survive.
“What were you hoping for?” I think most fans got what they were hoping for, an ending that touched their hearts and, at the same time, left a few mysteries still lurking. There will be no sequel, no spinoff (the Ben Linus Show!) but there is a certain incompleteness that feels exactly right. “Lost” is done, but the finish combined both sweetness and mystery in a way that, I hope, will leave fans, not satisfied, but complete. As a huge story arc, it was masterful writing, and to me, they got the ending right. “How was it?”
Great. Wonderfully crafted. Sweet.
"Un Lun Dun" by China Mieville - a bit of good luck
Sometimes you just get lucky.
I went to the library recently to pick up a hold that had been sent to the wrong library. I got a bunch of cds, as I usually do, then I looked through the graphic novels to see if there was anything worthwhile. At the Belmont Library, my “home” library, that section is near the science fiction section, and for a change, I decided to have a quick look there as well.
And as I said, sometimes you just get lucky.
“Un Lun Dun” by China Mieville, is not at the same level as Philip Pullman’s trilogy “His Dark Materials” — nothing is — but, like Pullman, Mieville creates an alternate version of our world that is impossible, completely believable and one the reader longs to visit as soon as possible. There are no daemons in UnLondon, but there is just about everything else.
Including a villain so evil, it’s immediately recognized, both from normal life and every James Bond movie ever made. It is that evil.
This book is for “young adults” — library-speak for teenagers. But like any great YA novel, it has layers for adults to enjoy and appreciate. Mieville is a great punster, not with mere words but entire concepts. He takes “normal” London life and twists it inside-out, creating not merely the great “abcity” of UnLondon (as well as Parisn’t and other unversions of our “real” world) but people, places and, for want of a better word, things that mirror our world — but that mirror itself is twisted and possibly inverted. It’s a strange and almost, but not quite, complete unfamiliar world beyond the Odd.
Broken umbrellas become unbrellas, able to serve the will of Brokkenbroll, the Unbrellessimo. The Pons Absconditus is in no particular place but is always available to terminate wherever it is needed. The sun is the UnSun, a dim ring of a star from whose center our sun was taken. And so on. Mieville is clearly having so much fun discovering all the twists possible in such a world, and that gives the novel a freshness and energy too often missing when a novel is the result of too much work. One of the great things about “Un Lun Dun” is that it makes no attempt to be like anything else. Mieville has a huge imagination, and while the ending is a bit awkward (and prolonged), that takes nothing away from how much damn fun the book is to read.
I need more of this luck.
%id
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
2 REK for Kriste
I love Robert Earl Keen, Jr. He writes great songs and performs the hell out of them. I saw him once, and two different times idiots jumped the stage. The roadies took care of them and Keen just ignored them and kept on singing. He's got a ton of great music, but I picked these two for Kriste to listen to.
This first song is pretty straightforward: it was co-written by Uncle Shel Silverstein. A sweet ballad
The second is a variant of the old folk song tradition of talking blues. Keen describes setting up for a show in a very different hall and comments on his own views about music.
This is Keen doing a digital story without pictures. But his lyrics paint pictures that make very clear what the setting is.
2006 nano pre
June 1980
The pain in his legs is gone. His body is numb, beyond sensation; his mind has followed, for the same reason: too much, too much. On his knees for hours, imploring God for mercy, digging deep into himself for proof of the faith that would save his baby's life, kneeling and praying and begging God to spare his child — O Father, as You spared Abraham's child — knowing God had not spared His own Son, knowing God might take his child as well. His daughter, sweet and beautiful, Rachel Marie, so beautiful and dying from the moment she emerged into the fallen world. Born frail, born so ill and helpless, but not hopeless — Do not lose hope, brother, keep faith in God and He will grant his miraculous mercy — but God appears to have a more difficult test of faith in mind for him.
Melissa, the wife chosen for him by Brother Ezekial, given to him to bear his children and be his partner in the great work of salvation, Melissa sits in the straight-back wooden chair, the baby in a light blanket on her lap. Melissa, weak herself from almost two days of labor, weak from bleeding that still has not stopped, weak from sitting in the chair with her baby in her lap, one hand lifted in supplication and the other resting on her daughter's tiny, fragile chest; lightly on the chest, the breath coming so difficult. Melissa, her face closed and locked: in prayer, in shock, in grief? He can not tell, no longer looks at her. She sits only inches from him, their dying daughter in her lap, asking God for a miracle — he can only believe she was asking God what he had been asking for — their daughter and an abyss of fear and grief between them.
But fear is wrong. Fear speaks only of faithlessness, of human pride, of a lack of trust in God's mercy, God's will. Your Father loves you, brother, and His will for you, for your daughter, is not for us to question but to give worship and thanks. Thanks. For hours, with his knees screaming in pain, his leg muscles cramping, quivering, his back wanting to collapse on the floor (and weep and weep, he refused to acknowledge how much pain he felt in body in mind, simply kneel and pray and believe); for hours, desperate to find the core stone of faith he knew must be there. If he could find that faith, that tiny bit of belief that confirmed all he had been learning the past four years with the Family, God would hear his prayers and grant him his miracle. If he could find that faith.
209
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
210
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.