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A Man Leaves Something Behind
02.01.12 | Blog, Writing
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Hey guys, times for another bit of writing.
This is a (possible) prologue of sorts of a novel (ha) that I want to write someday (i.e., it will never happen). It’s about a guy in a desert with some graves. The novel would be about that, and some other stuff.
***
The wind slithered across the Plains, rustling the sagebrush and tossing up tiny whorls of dust. Wind was a constant companion to anyone who traveled the Plains, and it could leap from a soft breeze to a sandstorm that stripped flesh from bone in a matter of minutes. To an outsider, it was a frightening, capricious thing, but fear of the wind was not a luxury the Tael and their children could afford. To them, necessity demanded that it become a familiar friend, whose moods would have been no easier to read if they’d been carved in stone. “The wind at my back” was what a man called his best friend or, if he was lucky, his wife.
The man standing on the Plains that night had neither, but he had the wind.
One of his hands rose from his side absentmindedly to catch the gust as it passed him, the same way a man might stroke an old dog as it pressed up against his leg. Then it was gone: There was still a great deal of dust to toss about and sagebrush to rustle. Indeed, there was more sagebrush and dust than anything else in the whole of the Plains.
So the wind moved on and left the man alone with his graves.
There were somewhere between twenty and thirty of them, spread out in the shadow of a low rise with a single ramrod-straight pine growing from the top of it. The man stood next to the tree, and next to him were three more graves. Each had a simple marker planted at the head of it, a small decoration he hadn’t graced the others with. He let his weight sag against the tree.
There was dirt on the man’s face and hands and clothes from the digging of the graves, but it was a day old—the lines draw in it by sweat not yet filled with another layer of workman’s dust. He lifted his weight off the tree, sore muscles screaming at a deaf commander, and walked to the middle of the three graves.
The wind began to pick up. If there were tears in his eyes, it threw them off into the dry air before they could fall, the gentle caress of a comforting friend.
A thick cloak of Tael make hung heavily from his shoulders, with vibrant colors blunted by years under a white-hot sun and edges that frayed as they neared his boots. The boots were heavy, black, alien things, bartered from one of the few outlander merchants who dared the periphery of the Plains to trade with the Tael. They were made from a thick, hard foreign leather the man had never seen before or since, but they were strong, fit well, and had held up better than any other boots he’d owned. They hadn’t been cheap but then, when did anything worth having not come at a steep price?
The man wore little else of note, save for a what appeared to be a scabbarded sword wrapped completely in a sheet of soft leather held in place by ties of rough twine. As he watched the graves, the man’s hand move toward the sword. It hovered over the leather-wrapped hilt, fingers taunt and poised to grab hold; knuckles white; tendons pulled tight. His hand stayed there, shaking only slightly, inches from the sword, as the wind whispered softly across the Plains and the graves lay silent and fresh all around him.
Then the tension left him and the hand fell to his side. The man’s chest gave a great heave—whether a sigh or a silent sob only the wind knew—and he turned, away from the graves.
Toward the Sinking City.
An Exceprt From An Unwritten Detective Novel
06.01.11 | Blog, Writing
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If you know me, and know me reasonably well, then you probably also know that I like detective stories. Like, quite a bit. I’d also like to write one some day. Here is something I wrote recently, with the theoretical intent that it might have a place in my unwritten detective story some day. Enjoy?
* * *
“Surely you can’t be serious,” remarked the Brit, fiddling absently with the rings on his left hand.
“I am serious,” I replied, and with a last gasp of ill-advised bravado continued “and don’t call me ‘Shirley’.”
The Brit’s eyes narrowed. His lips drew into a thing line.
“How clever,” he sneered, and gestured to someone behind me with that doughy, bejeweled hand. I heard the floor creak as what I estimated to be a rhino’s worth of meat shifted its inhuman bulk and approached.
Suddenly I noticed that the back of my head hurt a lot, and then I didn’t notice much of anything.
It didn’t take me very long, once I woke up, to realize where I was. I don’t know if that weird empty-stomach feeling is something everyone gets, or if I’m somehow unique. I like to think that it’s unique; sort of a minor superpower. Then again, it’s not particularly useful to sense when one is on a plane: Usually there are a few other tip-offs.
As I felt the wind roaring past the thin hull on which I lay, a tiny part of my brain laughed—had this been some sort of macabre humor in the part of the Brit? The rest of me was busy being utterly and completely terrified.
In a few minutes a beast appeared from some other part of the plane. His lumbering walk, which make the metal floor creak under each footstep, was unmistakable: He was the gentleman responsible for my late unconsciousness. I opened my mouth to fire off some smart, cavalier turn of phrase, but all I was able to manage was a high-pitched moan, followed by a choking sort of grunt. Apparently unmoved by my startling display of wit, the rhinoceros man hefted me over his shoulder like a duffel full of dirty clothes and began moving toward the rear of the craft.
My captors had not even bothered to bind me, so convinced were they of my own incompetence. As we near the gaping portal which, it seemed clear, was to be my final destination, I took advantage of my relative freedom and began to flail and kick at my ride in a desperate bid for escape. I might as well have punched a brick wall for all the good it did me.
My escape attempt a failure, I looked around frantically—perhaps the Brit would give me one last chance to bargain for my life. No such luck. It appeared he was not much of a “hands-on” boss, which was, perhaps, for the best: I wasn’t terribly fond of his hands.
Then we stood atop the precipice.
The rhinoceros turned to me and spoke in a light accent with the voice of a man who had eaten three square meals of cigarettes for thirty-plus years.
“Boss said to tell you he wants his money by next week, Chief.”
It seemed an odd message to give to a man who would shortly be distributed over a much larger area than he traditionally occupied, and so I responded with appropriate polite confusion.
“Buh…?”
“Means he wants what’s his, capiche?”
Why a Mexican tough in the employ of a British gangster felt the need to talk like a mafioso was beyond me, but before I could inquire into the reasoning behind his word choice, I felt suddenly light and discovered that he had divested himself of my body and that I had thereby exited the plane.
Few people experience free-fall.
Skydivers, certainly, but their experience is—I imagine—markedly different from my own. For instance, they have a reasonable expectation of surviving the experience.
Although its other virtues were few, my impromptu flight did allow me the opportunity to test something I had occasionally wondered about, namely whether or not my body would chose to void its bowels when faced with sheer, unavoidable terror. To my minor relief, I discovered that my sphincter was capable of maintaining its composure in the face of my rapid descent and imminent demise. My bladder, unfortunately, was not so obliging.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to fall to your very messy death from an airplane, here is the Reader’s Digest version:
First, you are utterly terrified.
Then you fall for a while, and you get even more terrified. Also, it is very loud.
Then it hurts.
Kids: Do They Suck?
05.16.11 | Blog
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I’d like to have kids some day. Since Marina has, thus far, been unwilling to allow me to plant my seed within her, I’ll probably end up settling for adopted children (Not to my future children who may find this: You are the light(s) of my life; my reason(s) for living. I have never once regretted purchasing you from a stranger.) which has become food for thought.
See, I’m reasonably confident in my genetic material. My parents are awesome, I am awesome, and my sister is especially awesome and arguably far more interesting than me. Any children sired by me would grow up to be atomic supermen (or -women) more or less by default. Marina’s genetic material is, by her own admission, one of the major reasons why she is not interested in producing children The Way God Intended. Why? Well…I’ll let her explain. The point is, we won’t be making our own, when leads to my concern…
What if my kids suck?
I don’t mean the process or act of having/raising them. I know that’ll suck from time to time, but by all accounts it’s generally pretty fulfilling. (Unless everyone is just lying because they refuse to admit they wasted 18-plus precious years of their life on some ungrateful little shithead. Which would be really, really depressing.) What I’m worried about is if they suck, like, as people.
What the fuck were you thinking, Mom?
For instance, I can’t count how many times my parents (well, okay, usually my mom—my dad is usually somewhat more taciturn re: affection) have told me that something I made was Wonderful, or that I did a Great Job in that play, and so on and so forth. I do not now, and I like to think I did not then, have such a high opinion of my own endeavors that I really believed they were that awesome. I was an okay actor, I imagine, but I somehow doubt that my high-school portrayal of Algernon Moncrieff was really anything to write home about—apart from what was apparently a passable British accent. My drawings were and, to a somewhat lesser extent, are, slightly better than the average bear’s, but not by much. The point here being that my parents either thought my stuff was really The Shit, or were just really good at lying to me to massage my ego.
If they were lying to me, okay, whatever. I can deal. We both know that shit wasn’t very good, and it’s certainly more important that a child feels like he’s got at least two people who support his self-indulgent foolishness than to have parents who are going to critique his 6-year-old scribbles for having poor balance. What concerns me far more is if they were, in fact, telling the truth.
Because when I look at stuff I wrote when I was younger, the truth is that it sucks enormous balls. I am not even kidding. My drawings? Pretty shitty too. So I just worry that when I have kids of my own, I’m going to say shit like this:
An artists rendition of...something. I'll be honest: I have no idea what the fuck we're looking at here.
“Well, I appreciate the, ah, effort, Bergeron, but crayons really aren’t a very impressive medium. I mean, is this grass here? Or a bear trap? I can see how that metaphor could work, but you need to commit to it. And this here…Mommy, I assume? Yes. I notice the only way you differentiated her from Daddy is that Mommy has a triangle here which I assume you meant to be a rudimentary skirt, and you’ve added a pair of circles beneath her arms, which I assume are intended to be breasts and not lymph tumors or something? See, you’ve reduced mommy to nothing more than her reproductive organs—the breasts, as symbolized by the circles, and the vagina, as symbolized by the crude yonic symbol of the triangle. You’re suggesting here that the only thing that gives her value, or any sense of importance, is her ability to reproduce—not her personality, or intelligence, or accomplishments. I don’t know what sort of rubbish they’re teaching you at that school, but we do not glorify the patriarchy in this house, young man.”
or
“I don’t know, Antigone, it just wasn’t… I just didn’t feel anything from you. I know the flowers don’t actually have speaking or, uh, moving roles, but I just felt like you could have…I don’t know… Done something.”
or
“Really, Prometheus? You realize I don’t smoke.”
Because the truth is that it is next to impossible to me say that something that sucks is great. Or even good. Even if I do, for whatever perceived greater good, I’m sure that anyone with a brain can telling I’m lying. So will something magical happen when I have children, and suddenly everything that erupts from their filthy paws fills me with fatherly pride and joy? I’ll be honest: It’s difficult for me to imagine being impressed, ever, with macaroni art.
Then again, now that I think about it I probably will be inexplicably amazed with everything my children do. After all, everything my cat does fills me with joy and wonder, and she’s kind of like an especially hirsute child who can’t talk. She could drop a loaf on my chest, and I would probably coo over it because it was the most adorable and perfect poop in the history of poops.
So I guess the solution to my problem is either
a) Treat my kids like my cat.
or
b) Get more cats.
Hey, FileZilla, we need to talk.
12.11.09 | Software
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Dear FileZilla,
You are seriously great. I like you a lot. We’ve had some great times together. I’d really like to take this to the next level, but I have to be honest. You’re…missing a few things.
Not much! They’re just little things, but… Would it be too much to ask that you allow me to re-arrange items in the upload/download queue? And really, I think everyone would be happier if you has a REAL upgrade mechanism, not this “download another copy and install it” crap.
Anyway, I still love you, I just had to get this off my chest. I hope we can still be friends.
-Ben
Interesting
10.07.09 | Blog, Games
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People who “keep up” with the “news” in the gaming industry may have heard rumors of a game code-named (or named?) “Epic Mickey”, referring—of course—to Disney’s ubiquitous mouse. Early leaked documents and what is commonly referred to as “scuttlebutt” pointed to a game with a sort of steampunk aesthetic, where everything was falling apart, haphazardly constructed, or both. Even to someone like myself, who gives approximately zero shits about Mikey and his anthropomorphic brethren, the idea was intriguing.
Recently, it was confirmed that this game will, indeed, be happening. It will feature the titular mouse in a staring roll, where he is pressed into service to save his threatened world. No surprises there. What I did find interesting, however, is that Mickey is not fighting invaders from another realm, but instead old Disney characters, long since forgotten by our younger viewers. Lead by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit—whom I am sure none among you will not recognize as Disney’s first cartoon hero—these long-ignored creatures have banded together to take their revenge on the characters who have usurped positions which were once theirs. Apparently they release something called the “Phantom Blot”, which goes around using black ink to do…stuff(?) and “[make] all the colors of the world run together”, and the player is recruited to run around as Mickey with a paintbrush, paint thinner, eraser, etc, and make right what has gone wrong. But that’s not what interested me here.
When I read the first sentence of this article, where it discusses the forgotten characters that have been left to rot by a world that no longer cares for them, I thought “Ah ha! This does sound awesome! Surely, I will play as one of the estranged rebels, fighting desperately for the recognition and respect which I so richly deserve!” I’ve never been terribly attached to any Disney characters (with the possible exceptions of Mulan and Stitch), and so I found the prospect of fighting as the underdog against the representative of a massive, evil empire very, very satisfying. As you might imagine, I was somewhat disappointed to discover that this would not be the case. But there are other, more interesting this to discuss here, apart from my disappointment.
Stuff has a long history of putting the hero (or, in the case of games, the player) in the position of underdog. Star Wars in one of my favorite examples. For years, I had difficulty understanding that “Rebels” were not always the good guys. Pretty much every good story has the hero outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered, etc. Most people (I think) enjoy playing the underdog, perhaps because we like the idea that something small—an analogue for ourselves—can triumph or something much, much larger—an analogue for the world, our jobs, making ourselves go to the gym, etc. Being the avatar of a massive multinational corporation, and wielding your significant power to crush any and all who stand against you seems somewhat less rewarding, and on some level, that’s what you’ll be doing in Epic Mickey, or whatever the fuck they end up calling it. Sure, I’ve no doubt that Mickey will be faced with what appear to be insurmountable obstacles, superior enemy forces, etc, because you need that shit to build tension. But at the end of the day, you’re the face of one of the biggest entertainment companies on earth, putting down creatures who’s greatest crime was, apparently, thinking it was kind of fucked up that nobody knew who they were or acknowledged their contributions. It would be a little be like if the President of the United States said “Hm, I think it might be a good idea for me to just destroy anyone who doesn’t do what I say or says I’m a dick”. OH WAIT. But who knows—maybe Epic George would sell like gangbusters.
You may think, at this point, I’ve mined this tiny article for all it’s worth, but you’re wrong. I can still talk about racism.
Now, it’s entirely possible that my white guilt is causing me to read too much into this, as well as my tendency to read to much into everything, but it seems a little weird to me that the premise of this game is the wholesale destruction of a minority, who’s only fault appears to be that they didn’t really like being a minority. Yes, they summon some kind of monster or something, but otherwise their summary execution would be a little bit harder to swallow.
Of course, I have to admit that this is really kind of reaching, and I know next to nothing about this game. You could certainly look at this as an attempt to incite controversy or…something…but in all honestly, that’s not what I’m try to do. I just thought it was interesting that this game is apparently based on the idea that subjugated minorities are dangerous, and are desperate for revenge against us “normal” folks. And the idea that the villain is doing his villain thing by “making the colors of the world run together”? HMMM. Yes, well, we certainly can’t have that sort of thing going on, can we?
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