Here’s Where I Am! (rambling)

I am in a church library.

It is 2:43 AM.

I have just finished talking to a friend about cities and stuff. Before that, I tried to digest another friend’s writing, but I found myself unable to comprehend. Two and a half hours ago, I’d just gotten home from work. Work. Fucking work. I hate it there, having to constantly sort peoples’ mail. I don’t care about the mail that gets sent to “FUCK YOU!” (yes, it happens), or the mail that gets sent to a guy whose last name is Porn (I am not kidding), or scientology mail or any of it. I don’t like the fact that I’ve got to sort your wedding invitations because you’re too stupid to use font that people can read. Fuck you and your cursive, you stupid dick, mail has to be printed! And what’s so hard about addresses?! You cannot send a letter to “John Smith/Colorado.” There are a billion John Smiths in Colorado! People don’t seem to understand that it’s “Name, Address, City/State/Zip” in that order and ONLY that order.  If you have an apartment, it’s best to put the apartment at the end of the address line, after the word “Apt.” It’s really fucking simple.

But you get morons who say they’re writing to Barack Obama and leave off the fucking address. They might not know it, but we’re not allowed to assume it’s the President. Hell, they might even have the name “Barack Obama, President of the United States” on the address, and we’re still not allowed to send it because there’s a rule that says “even if you know what it is, you have to type what’s written, and reject it if the pertinent information isn’t there!” At work, they’re bitching about efficiency, and, well, it goes like this…

1. You get hired.
2. You get trained on the letters system, then the magazines system. Then you are sent to key mail on your own.
3. You later get trained on a sort of all-purpose, modern system.
4. You get trained on packages.
5. You get trained on Change of Address forms.

So everyone on the floor can do letters and flats (magazines, newspapers) when they start. So someone got the bright idea to stick the all-purpose computers and the magazine computers in the same cubicles, and leave the letters systems either bonded with all-purpose or all by themselves. This means that me, who has all but the Change of Address forms training, has to sort magazines when the new guys could be sorting them. This means that less people are sorting the all-purpose stuff, which is where most of our volume comes from. This means that they’re keeping people at work longer than they have to (because if we could focus on the all-purpose stuff, we’d drop the volume down quicker), and ULTIMATELY, it means they’re spending more money to get the same amount of mail sorted.

…and the thing about the Post Office is, they spent more money than they made last year. If they’d do things like this, they’d save money. That said, I like the job. Hell, I’ve only had one better job, and the retail jobs can’t even come close. As it is, I get to put TV shows on my PSP and listen to them while I mindlessly sort mail. My major problem comes from the fact that the higher-ups seem upset about how efficient or fast we are, and how they want us to be the number 1 sorting facility in the nation, but then they decide to arrange the computers poorly, and then add screensavers that ask “are you being as efficient as possible?” to all of the monitors. I’m frustrated by the fact that they want our names when we make suggestions, because in spite of the “No FEAR” act that congress passed, most of us are temporary workers, and rocking the boat is a good way to make sure you don’t get rehired when your contract finishes.

So, basically, I like my job, but don’t like the decisions some of the higher-ups have made because they aren’t in the Post Office’s best interest.

The biggest problem that I have is that the job isn’t stimulating enough. As it is, all I do is read words, and type what I see. Occasionally, I’ll have to choose a name from a list of names, but that’s really as challenging as it gets. I find the job mentally sapping. I know students, waiters, and, hell, a soldier in Iraq, who all write for fun. They’re able to unwind after a good day’s work by writing something out. Me? I come home from work feeling like I’ve just had my intelligence dialed down to Eleven. From well over 100.

It’s 3:05 AM. I took a break… found out a friend is watching Fringe. I listened to it on my PSP at work tonight. It was pretty cool, but I hate the characterization. I really feel the guys at Bad Robot have great ideas, but don’t really understand how people work. It’s kind of disappointing. I want to write, but all I’ve really done is complain about my job. Let’s complain about something else… hurm… Oh, I know!  My parents are building an apartment for me!

(I’m going to complain about this.)

Church people are angry at me living in the church that they’re only in when I’m not around, and I keep the place really clean and tidy. They just don’t feel it’s right for God and me to be roomies, I guess. Thus, my parents are going to build an apartment on top of our one-story house, where the garage is. The problems are so many, I don’t know where to begin. They can’t afford it, for one thing, because their laser engraver business hasn’t taken off. Doing this will put them around $30,000 in debt, and my 53-year-old dad’s got heart problems that might make it difficult for him to build this thing before December, especially since he works full time running a multi-million-dollar lab. This is going to put a lot of stress on them. The apartment itself is awkwardly small, but somehow it manages to cram a bed, a couch, a small restroom, and a kitchen all in. Yes. There is a kitchen sink too.

Anyways, there are going to be two entryways. One is via an outside door. Cool! I might even get a doorbell, they say! The other, however, is via the living room, where the children play. Where. The. Children. Play. A new set of stairs will encourage them to play on it, next to the door that’s next to my bed, meaning that though I’ll want to sleep until 1 in the afternoon, when I need to get ready for work, I won’t get to, because they’ll be loud. My parents like to keep the thermostat up at 82 degrees most of the time, and I’m the kind of guy who prefers a cool 70. There won’t be a lock on the door, which means that my family can come in any time they’d like. If they do knock, it’ll be the kind of quick knock that says “hey, I’m coming in,” rather than “I’m here, please get the door!” My little siblings will do this all the time, because the apartment will be NEW, thus it will be interesting.

…and I will be trying to sleep. Of course, my parents hate the fact that I write and everything, and it’ll be harder to hide that fact when all they gotta do is walk up a flight of stairs, knock on the door, and burst in to tell me that I really should think about how eating prepared food isn’t healthy (despite the fact that’s usually all they ever buy) or how mercury is really unhealthy. Constant interruptions are going to be guaranteed. This will make it harder to relax, because my apartment won’t really even be mine. Any time grandparents come up for a visit, I’ll be booted out (likely back to the church library) where I can sleep until they’re gone. My stuff will be freely available to be messed with (last time I lived at home, my mom went through my room until she found my MP3 player, which she then took and demolished, along with my other electronics. Rock and Roll and Wolverine comics are bad, you see). Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they burst in on occasion to prod around my room, find a suspicious looking World War II biography under my bed, and declare that god lead them to find it and that it’s evil. Last time that happened, I wound up being pretty depressed and stopped checking out books from the library because they’d try to force me to get rid of all of them. I didn’t start reading regularly again for over a year.

So, basically, it’ll be hard to hide perfectly normal things from them, like the fact that I play Left 4 Dead or read Terry Pratchett or listen to Three Days Grace or write my own stories, and I’ll be interrupted all the time.

The worst thing, though?

They say that God told them to make this thing, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the church people are mad and everything to do with the fact that they might need a place for people to stay when the Apocalypse comes. No joke.

It’s 3:27 AM now. I was really bored when I started this, because my brain’s barely operable and I’ve got nothing I feel like doing, but I can’t sleep. Except now, I think maybe I can. Goodnight, world. I hope you have a better life than I’ve got so far. For my part, I’m going to go look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cosplay.

Why You’ll Never Write A Successful Manga

So, you’ve finally done it. After hours, days, or maybe even a couple weeks, you’ve managed to create the masterpiece that will supplant Dragon Ball as the world’s greatest manga! The premise is ingenious, you know. After all, your intelligent, manga-loving friends would tell you if something was wrong, right? Of course they would! They’re experts!

The main character, Sasuke Ryu (let’s face it, putting last names first is stupid), is a ninja with a dragon inside of him, trying to unlock its power so that he can do… well, you’ll think of something. His girlfriend, the attractive, shy, but somehow stubbornly controlling type has a strong interest in Sasuke that she tries to hide. Couple that with a mysterious stranger, and you’ll have written a manga so popular that God commits suicide because he knows he’ll never be as great as you. Of course, your art might not be the best, but that’s okay, because your friends (especially those great artists on DeviantArt) tell you that you’ve got the talent to succeed!

You know what might help you get past the final push and succeed? One tidbit of advice, that’s what! It’s very important that you pay attention to every word. Ready? Here it is:

No matter what you try, you can never be a dragon.

Think that doesn’t have anything to do with you being more awesome than God? It does, and I’ll get to that in a bit, but let me take a slightly different tone, for a moment. Some people, you included, have no business attempting to write a manga. I’m not talking about writing to get famous or plagiarizing from other works–both very common mistakes of new writers–I’m talking about not understanding who you’re writing to.

I’m talking about how your not-being-Japanese precludes you from writing a successful manga. “Wait,” you might say, “Americans have written successful manga! Just look at Usagi Yojimbo and Dirty Pair!” Aside from the fact that both series were created by Japanese people and that the former is actually considered an American comic book, neither of these books are particularly successful, especially in terms of name recognition. You see, even people who don’t know much about comics, Japanese or otherwise, are more likely to recognize Dragon Ball and Gundam than they are Dirty Pair. That’s the kind of success we’re talking about.

Of course, it’s far easier to define that kind of triumph as “something you’ll never have.”

You aren’t Japanese. If I was delivering this article at a Convention, there would be a shocked hush right about now. After all, if you dress like you’re Japanese, spout “genuine” phrases like “Watashi wa Desu,” eat pocky, and can understand Japanese (because the only real way to watch anime is unsubbed!), you pretty much are Japanese, right? I mean, aside from the physical features and where you were born, in your heart and soul, you know you understand so much about being Japanese that you actually are, right?

Wrong! You’re a moron.

See, this is where we get back to the dragon point: no amount of surgery or psychological adjustment will transform you into a dragon. You were born human, so even if you act like a dragon, you’re going to act like how you perceive a dragon would act, not how a dragon actually acts. Likewise, no matter how much you might know about being Japanese, the fact is that you aren’t. You’ve been raised elsewhere, most likely in the West, and now you’re hardwired to operate with a western mentality. I don’t care that you take your shoes off when you enter homes or that you don’t touch people because Japanese culture apparently doesn’t like touching. No matter how much you want to be Japanese, you aren’t, and nothing you do can change that.

The highest-selling, most popular manga out there are always written by Japanese people, writing for a Japanese audience. The cultural divide that separates the Japanese from the non-Japanese is vast and uncrossable. There are three important rules in writing: be concise, be intelligible, and know your audience, and rule number three is the reason you’ll never write a succesful manga. Deep down inside, you don’t truly know your audience. Ultimately, any attempt to hybridize Western and Japanese culture is going to fail miserably, especially when compared to your goal of reaching those fourteen or fifteen million volumes of Dragon Ball.

So please, give up while you’re ahead. You’ll never write the next “Bleach.” Maybe I’m just a softie who hates seeing people fall flat on their faces, or maybe I just want to rid the world of socially awkward otakus with delusions of grandeur, I dunno. What I do know is that you’ll never get anywhere if you try to write a successful manga, because the only successes in the manga industry are one thing you aren’t: Japanese. No amount of motivation, talent, and skill is going to overcome that, although psychic powers that give you an innate understanding of culture might. You’re better off learning to write an American or European comic book, and even then, don’t try to be successful; try to be good.

(An article I wrote for the ICS, back in the day)

So, you’ve finally done it. After hours, days, or maybe even a couple weeks, you’ve managed to create the masterpiece that will supplant Dragon Ball as the world’s greatest manga! The premise is ingenious, you know. After all, your intelligent, manga-loving friends would tell you if something was wrong, right? Of course they would! They’re experts!

The main character, Sasuke Ryu (let’s face it, putting last names first is stupid), is a ninja with a dragon inside of him, trying to unlock its power so that he can do… well, you’ll think of something. His girlfriend, the attractive, shy, but somehow stubbornly controlling type has a strong interest in Sasuke that she tries to hide. Couple that with an enigmatic, silent stranger, and you’ll have written a manga so popular that God himself commits suicide because he knows he’ll never be as great as you. Of course, your art might not be the best, but that’s okay, because your friends (especially those great artists on DeviantArt) tell you that you’ve got the talent to succeed!

You know what might help you get past the final push and succeed? One tidbit of advice, that’s what! It’s very important that you pay attention to every word. Ready? Here it is:

No matter what you try, you can never be a dragon.

Think that doesn’t have anything to do with you being more awesome than God? It does, and I’ll get to that in a bit, but let me take a slightly different tone, for a moment. Some people, you included, have no business attempting to write a manga. I’m not talking about writing to get famous or plagiarizing from other works–both very common mistakes of new writers–I’m talking about not understanding who you’re writing to.

I’m talking about how your not-being-Japanese precludes you from writing a successful manga. “Wait,” you might say, “Americans have written successful manga! Just look at Usagi Yojimbo and Dirty Pair!” Aside from the fact that both series were created by Japanese people and that the former is actually considered an American comic book, neither of these books are particularly successful, especially in terms of name recognition. You see, even people who don’t know much about comics, Japanese or otherwise, are more likely to recognize Dragon Ball or Naruto than they are Dirty Pair. That’s the kind of success we’re talking about.

Of course, it’s far easier to define that kind of triumph as “something you’ll never have.”

You aren’t Japanese. If I was delivering this article at a Convention, there would be a shocked hush right about now. After all, if you dress like you’re Japanese, spout “genuine” phrases like “Watashi wa Desu,” eat pocky, and can understand Japanese (because the only real way to watch anime is unsubbed!), you pretty much are Japanese, right? I mean, aside from the physical features and where you were born, in your heart and soul, you know you understand so much about being Japanese that you actually are, right?

Wrong! You’re a moron.

See, this is where we get back to the dragon point: no amount of surgery or psychological adjustment will transform you into a dragon. You were born human, so even if you act like a dragon, you’re going to act like how you perceive a dragon would act, not how a dragon actually acts. Likewise, no matter how much you might know about being Japanese, the fact is that you aren’t. You’ve been raised elsewhere, most likely in the West, and now you’re hardwired to operate with a western mentality. I don’t care that you take your shoes off when you enter homes or that you don’t touch people because Japanese culture apparently doesn’t like touching or anything like that. No matter how much you want to be Japanese, you aren’t, and nothing you do can change that.

The highest-selling, most popular manga out there are always written by Japanese people, writing for a Japanese audience. The cultural divide that separates the Japanese from the non-Japanese is vast and uncrossable. In writing, there are three important rules that must be followed: be concise, be intelligible, and know your audience, and rule number three is the reason you’ll never write a succesful manga. Deep down inside, you don’t truly know your audience. Ultimately, any attempt to hybridize Western and Japanese culture is going to fail miserably, especially when compared to your goal of reaching those fourteen or fifteen million volumes of Dragon Ball.

So please, give up while you’re ahead. You’ll never write the next “Bleach.” Maybe I’m just a softie who hates seeing people fall flat on their faces, or maybe I just want to rid the world of socially awkward otakus with delusions of grandeur, I dunno. What I do know is that you’ll never get anywhere if you try to write a successful manga, because the only successes in the manga industry are one thing you aren’t: Japanese. No amount of motivation, talent, and skill is going to overcome that, although psychic powers that give you an innate understanding of culture might. You’re better off learning to write an American or European comic book, and even then, don’t try to be successful; try to be good.

An Experience So Harrowing, It’s Bloggable

I killed a spider today.

It was a big, wicked thing, unnatural and sinister in its movements. There is nothing that terrifies me; sure, some things make me queasy, and I can’t stand the sight or sound of vomiting, because then my obsessive-compulsiveness kicks in and I have to join the fun, but there is nothing on the face of God’s green Earth that terrifies me. Spiders, however, take me beyond terror. They awaken a primal, xenophobic instinct that screams “THIS SHOULD NOT BE!!!!” and forces me into fight or flight mode. My heart races, my pupils dilate, and when all is said and done, either the spider or myself is dead. Or, I’ve run away screaming like a pussy. So far, my track record is impressive, and I remain alive.

This spider was no different than any other spider I had seen, except for its size. Other than that, it was just as much a blight upon human existence as any other spider. It was huge; somewhere between the size of my palm and a CD (in other words, between 4 and 6 inches). I had just opened the door to the church–the big emergency exit at the back of the building–when this thing came skittering in, within inches of my bare feet, and into the darkened library where I usually sleep at nights. My first instinct was to run, but I knew that, eventually, I’d have to return to the room later.

To sleep.

Where the spider would get me.

So, with great reluctance, I scampered tip-toe over to the hallway light (and past the suddenly ominous library doorway), flicked on the light, and with great trepidation, stared into the darkness of the library. I was on tip-toe, with my legs spread far apart as to present two small targets rather than one big set of legs. I leaned forward, peering cautiously inward.  The hallway now a afforded me a slightly better look into the room. I poked my head in, checking first the light switch and then the ceiling. I didn’t reach my hand in because, had I done so, the spider (which might have been sitting on the light switch, waiting for the kill) could have been there and bitten me. I also checked the ceiling, to make sure it couldn’t ambush me from there.

Click!

Flourescent lights flickered on. The spider froze. Next to my shoe. My SHOE. For a moment, both of us stood at the ready, tensely staring at each other, I with my two natural god-given human eyes, and it with its demonic hundreds. Visions of my father telling stories of his childhood neighbor, a widow who had been murdered by a far lesser creature/abomination/spider than this laying in wait in her shoe. I moved. It tried to flee, but the panicked human moved far faster, haven been granted superhuman strength by his panic. I snatched at the shoe it had so treachorously tried to invade, and bashed it on the head, screaming “DIE, YOU FUZZY ABOMINATION!” in my mind. I lifted the shoe cautiously, and like some slasher-film monster, it rose from the carpet.  I hit it again. It wouldn’t die. It couldn’t die!

Then I panicked to a level I hadn’t panicked to before, and began smashing the thing repeatedly, raining a hell of size-thirteen death on the beast. It tried to flee, trailing yellow-red spider blood, but finally, I prevailed, and the spider was no more. Then, I picked it up in a dustpan, and threw it in the trash.

Long story short, my shoe is covered in this pus-like spider blood, and I’ll be inspecting them for the next few weeks to insure that no spiders have plotted revenge. I’ll likely be avoiding the emergency door for some time, if not permanently.

Fuck you Dad. If you’d never told us that story, I never would have been so afraid of spiders.

A Softer World

Because I feel like it, here’s a good webcomic that you should be reading. It’s brilliant, and the only instance that I find myself accepting photgraphs in comic form. Read it. Now.

One of my favorite strips.

I’m Working on…

“V is the story of a normal girl whose ghost brother grants her super powers and sends her off to battle evil, bizarre menaces in the name of shits, giggles, and responsibility.”

(it might need a new name)

Meanwhile, In The Future…

So, I was without internet for a while, which is bound to happen, I guess. I’ve seen Ponyo and Inglourious Basterds, both of which were competent movies that I can’t tell whether I liked or not. Other than that, I’ve played some video games, worked, worked, and worked some more at the post office, and really nothing else. Then, tonight, while I was listening to Malcolm in the Middle on my PSP, and sorting a bunch of mail for a bunch of activist groups and insurance companies, I suddenly had an Idea. As soon as I got home from work, I found myself too tired to write, and immediately went to bed. Then I woke up at 3:30 A.M. and wrote four pages of issue #2 of V, the superheroine comic I’m working on. These pages revolved around the aforementioned Idea.

I also expressed to John Amor my worry that in my writing, I would either disrespect my artists or find them disrespecting me, and asked him for advice on how to balance it. Right now, I feel about as insecure as a corndog at a five-star restaraunt. My pages have very detailed descriptions at times, and I’m worried about constricting artists, but at the same time, I’m concerned that the artist I hire might not see the page the way I do and try changing it (I’ve had a really bad experience in the past where an artist told me that he was changing the ethnicity of a character to that of a Jamaican king who lived on a yacht) to an extreme degree. I want to know how I can work to create an environment of mutual respect.

Of course, he, like everyone else I tried talking to this evening, was busy, so I didn’t really get an answer, but at least he had a good excuse. He’s working on Tres Komikeros, an awesome podcast that I really need to start listening to again now that my MP3 player is back from the shop.

Times like these I wish I had someone I could talk to about my writing, but, hey, when it’s 5 A.M. and the only guy awake is working on his podcast, it’s pretty hard to expect miracles. G’night, world. I’ll see you in the future.

A Moron Is You!

At some point, we’ve all come across this kind of post on a forum. It goes something like this:

“Just because YOU don’t like something doesn’t give you a right to insult it! Grow up!”

It sounds smart, at first. Hell, to you, it might even be an epiphany… but you can also see the flaw, right? See, the problem with this kind of post is that someone doesn’t like something that someone else said, so they’re insulting them for it. The problem is, the thing the other person said is something they didn’t like about something else. So the person making the above statement is, in fact, doing exactly what they’re bitching at the other person not to do. In this world where people think that the opinion is almighty, where there apparently are no absolute truths, and where everyone’s got a right to do as they believe, “logic” like this is common.

It ain’t logic, folks. Not everyone can have a valid point of view. Think of it like this:

Guy #1: “Everyone’s point of view is valid. We need to respect each others’ opinions.”
Guy #2: “Well, I believe that’s wrong.”

Oh shit.

What just happened?

By #1’s logic, #2 is right, except that #2’s logic contradict’s #1. Any logic that can be defeated so easily (especially by itself) is foolishness, and should be thrown out. I had an argument a few months ago with someone along similar lines. We were discussing Transmetropolitan. I, of course, was enthusiastically recommending the book to everyone who hadn’t read it, and he, on the other hand, believed it was ultimately flawed. Why? Because, as he said, “There is no Truth.” He assented that there were facts, but insisted that it all boiled down to point of view. Refusing to be swayed by my previous logic, he challenged me to do better. I asked him if what he was saying meant there were no absolutes. Before he could reply, people started making that knowing sound that people do when they see someone about to be pwned by srs logic!

“Yes,” he said. “There are no absolutes.”

“You’re absolutely positive?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“But that’s an absolute statement.”

Confused, he left the chat.

Here’s the deal. There are absolutes. There are facts. There are Truths. Some people are right, and some people are wrong. Few people, if any, are right or wrong about everything, and only an idiot or someone who isn’t paying attention could allow themselves to be taken in by this nonsense. Someone who doesn’t believe in absolutes has a right to his opinion, but it doesn’t make him any less WRONG. Someone who disagrees with anyone on anything has a right to their opinion, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone. If you feel like telling them they shouldn’t knock other peoples’ opinions, understand that you’re being hypocritical. You can’t tell someone to believe something that you yourself don’t, not if you’re honest. If you believe that people have a right to their beliefs, then you have no right telling someone that they haven’t got a right to express their beliefs–even if their beliefs are that not everybody has a right to their beliefs. Doing so throws what you have to say out the window and makes your words utterly pointless.

If someone sincerely likes child pornography, I don’t mind beating the shit out of them. When what they believe takes advantage of an innocent little kid, they’ve crossed the line. I’ve been that kid. I’ve been there. No kid should have to take that shit, and no matter what anyone says, no matter how wise or intelligent they may be, some things are wrong, and some things are right, and fuck you if you insist on anything different.

Am I rambling? Probably. It’s 3 AM. Good night, world.

I Can See The Future From Here

I’m restarting my blog.

Why? Because my posts weren’t great, the content wasn’t necessarily worth anyone’s while, and ultimately, nothing I said was terribly interesting. Now, I am going to try again, mostly because I am a persistent bastard.