Daddy Wants a Shine Part Two

For those of you too lazy to scroll down, part one can be found here.

When it comes to film, there's few directors that I am in as much awe of as Stanley Kubrick. There's really not much I could say about his genius that hasn't been said elsewhere, but out of all the Kubrick movies I've seen, The Shining is the only one that isn't very good, despite the fact that it's incredibly entertaining.

So how does a guy like Kubrick fail at adapting The Shining, especially when he takes the same approach to adapting the novel that he took with all his other adaptations?

I think, quite simply, it's because Kubrick had no interest in retelling the story and decided to film a straightforward horror movie chock full of cliches. To be clear, I have no qualms with Kubrick's approach. I think it was a fantastic idea to strip out all of the back story. Films are not books, and as such, have to get the point across in a much shorter time than a book does. Likewise, replacing some of the more fantastic elements with practical ones, such as replacing the topiary with the hedge maze.

In the book, the hotel grounds sports a bunch of hedge animals that come to life and chase the characters around. Now, this is one of the aspects of the book that I flat out disliked. Admittedly, I'm not much of horror fan, and things like anthropomorphic shrubs are part of the reason why. They are just silly. I really liked them early on in the book, when they were just haunting the Jack and Danny, but by the end when Halloran is wrestling a lion bush, well, it's silly. Others may not think so, and that's fine. But I think it's a good example of something that "works" in a book, but would look silly in a movie.

Likewise, in the book Jack chases his family around with a Roque mallet as opposed to the Axe Nicholson used in the film. This allows him to be a truly brutal character by severely beating his wife. It also allows for some haunting foreshadowing with Danny's visions of a monster chasing him down a hallway with the steady thunderous thud of the mallet on the wall echoing after him. But let's face it, an axe is much more immediately frightening. And Nicholson nailed the scenes where he chops through the doors. I think it was a good choice.

Also gone is the history of the Overlook Hotel. As I understand it, the hotel is haunted simply because a lot of people died there, thanks to gang dealings, suicides, and so forth. Trauma such as that leaves behind psychic imprints which people with the "Shine" are able to see. Kubrick sidesteps the various gangster murders by instead focusing on the previous caretaker's daughters whom the caretaker murdered before killing himself the previous winter. This is another good choice. It provides a strong visual that's actually more relevant to the characters situation. I was actually a little surprised King didn't focus more on them in the book.

So, strip out the excessive back stories, the silly bushes, etc, and you have a much tighter story. But Kubrick doesn't stop there, he goes further and strips the characters down to their core. Firstly, gone is Jack Torrance's resentment toward authority figures. This is fine, focusing on just the alcoholism gives you more room to drive home the point. Also, Wendy is no longer the resilient woman she was in the book, but rather a meek, victim, typical of horror films. I don't enjoy this. Seeing a strong female character turned into a typical horror movie "woman victim" is a little disappointing. Likewise, Danny's psychic visions are changed from being his inner self explaining what the visions are to an creepy alternate personality. This presents Danny's telepathy in a more horror film context, making him sound possessed instead of oddly intelligent. I don't mind it so much, as it's basically a shorthand to get across the creepiness his parents feel about his telepathy.

So, I stand by the decision to strip out a lot of the excess and keep the key scenes. But in doing so, you lose the narrative of the story. Now all we have is a bunch of disparate scenes without much motivation behind them, and this is where I feel Kubrick failed, because he couldn't provide a strong narrative for the remnants of the story.

What he does instead, is cram in a bunch of horror movie cliches, such as Wendy being a meek victim mentioned earlier. The hotel was built on an Indian burial ground? Really? Is that supposed to be some sort of an explanation? Halloran shows up and gets murdered in a yawningly "shocking" method. And worst of all, the scene where Danny first encounters a ghost and realises that they can hurt him(because his psychic powers are bringing them to "life") is replaced by another typical horror cliche where upon Jack meets the sexy woman(in full frontal) ghost and proceeds to make out with her, only afterwords to realize that she's suddenly turned into a decayed hag woman. Man, I saw that scene already in movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But I think the worst offender is the fact that Kubrick didn't even bother to try to present Jack as a loving father. The complex Jack Torrance of the book, the man who when drunk accidentally broke his son's arm, who went sober out of fear of hurting his loved ones or anyone else for that matter, who submits himself to humiliation and back breaking labor just so he can provide for his family...is completely gone. Jack Torrance in the movie seems to actually hate his family before he even gets to the hotel. It's so off base, I can only assume it was done on purpose, which if that's the case, I can't fathom why. It takes all the punch out of a strong family unit trying to kill each other. Part of it could just be that Nicholson is just a surly character actor, I don't know, but whatever the case, in the movie Jack is an unrepentant asshole.

Finally, we get to the ending, which...is baffling. In the book, the Overlook Hotel wants Danny to die so that his psychic powers will stay with it, thus keeping it and the ghosts a conscious entity. It uses Jack to do this. It manipulates his vices, coerces him to give into his paranoia and ego in an effort to get him to kill his family. In the movie, I don't even know what Kubrick was trying to say. At the end, after Jack dies, the movie zooms in on a photo of the Overlook staff from the 20's, and featured in the front of the group of employees is non other than Jack Torrance, implying(I guess) that Jack is the reincarnated caretaker or that he was absorbed into the hotel somehow defying space and time. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense and is purposely ambiguous. This just reeks of a scatter shot attempt to provide a horror film ending.

Furthermore, there was a scene in the original cut of the film at the end where Ullman states that Jack's body was never found. This is ridiculous, and just further proof that Kubrick was throwing whatever horror cliche's he could think of to get some cheap thrills in place of the story he cut out.

So why do I think this movie was a poor adaptation. Well, I think it was the right decision to strip the story down to it's bare elements, but unfortunately Kubrick didn't seem to be bothered with trying to present the story at all, but rather present some vivid scene's tied together by horror movie cliches. Scene for scene, it looks great and Nicholson is fantastic, but the movie is so gut wrenchingly weak as a whole, I can understand why Stephen King would want to remake the movie, this time in a series of three hour long episodes. So, how does that work out? I'll give my insights in the next blog post.

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Three

"SO LONELY"

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

I pawed at the alarm clock, trying to stop the irritating noise. Then I realized that I didn’t have an alarm clock. It wasn’t an alarm clock buzzing at all, it was my phone. Ringing. I was cold, where the hell did my good blanket go? How much did I drink last night? Didn’t matter. I picked up the phone.

“Hullo.”

“Mr. Calico.” It was a lady, and she sounded like she was making a statement, not asking a question.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Calico, this is Pamela Shelly. I was calling to see if any…progress has been made…since we last talked.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, bitch? Calling me up, checking up on me! You don’t trust me to do my job? Like I’m not going to give you all the information as soon as I get it! Fucking classist bitch, where do you get off?” At least, that’s what I was thinking before I remembered that there HAD been progress made; and that I had promised to call her this morning to let her know if I got the pictures or not. Fuck, I’m a mess.

“Uh, yeah. But I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone. Can you meet for lunch, same place as last time?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, see you there.” And I hung up the phone. Shit, I needed a shower.

I needed to check my camera and see what photos I got. I was too tired and hung over to remember much of the previous night and needed to get myself straightened out before I made any commitments to the Shelly woman. I wandered out of my bedroom to get some coffee. My apartment was small, but I didn’t mind. I don’t own a lot of stuff so what did it matter. Five steps across the living room and I was in the kitchenette, salivating over some instant coffee.

The coffee didn’t do much to wake me up, but I guess it never got a chance to. I turned around and dropped the mug. Landing on the carpet, it didn’t break, which was fortunate because it’s my only coffee cup, but the coffee was going to leave a stain. None of this mattered of course because I was too distracted by the naked girl sleeping on my couch. At least I assumed she was naked under my good blanket. That explains where my blanket went. She’s gotta be naked.

Probably.

She was lying on her side, face buried into the couch cushion. She was nestled up tightly under the blanket, one naked leg sticking out one end and her short black hair ruffled by the pillow on the other end.

I took a few deep breathes and tried to keep from gawking at her leg, but my eyes wouldn’t pull away. Where did this girl come from? She looked much too young to be with a guy like me.
She rolled over. She was definitely too young for me. Her pert little nose twitched uncontrollably, one arm fell out from under the blanket and dangled off the edge of the couch. She had a warm, familiar face. God, I’m lonely. I should go see Sandy. She’d take care of me.

Always has since my wife left.

Of course, it had to be at this moment, the moment of my gawking, horny, resentment, that the girl opened her eyes and let out the appropriate scream.

I stumbled backwards, my feet tripping up in some kind of loose fabric, causing me to come down on my back hard. The girl ran into the bathroom. I laid there for some minutes, afraid to move for fear of having broken something. This would be an appropriate end for me, I suppose.

After a few minutes, I craned my neck up (nothing broken there) to see what I had tripped on.
It was a wig. A blonde wig. The fragmented memories of last night came flooding back. The bodies, the blood, the girl…the costume. Shit, she wears a blonde wig. The girl that I was lecherously eyeballing was the same girl I swore to help last night. What the fuck’s wrong with me? She probably thinks I’m going to rape her now and locked herself in my bathroom. Damn, and I need to get cleaned up before meeting with Mrs. Shelly. Shit, what time was it anyway?

I looked at my wall clock. It read 11:43. Christ, no time for a shower anyway, but I can’t leave with that girl locked in my bathroom.

I pulled myself up off the floor and made my way toward the bathroom.
“Listen, uh,” I paused, trying to remember her name,” Jen, Jennifer. Listen, sorry if I startled you. I’m, uh, not used to other people being in my house.”

Silence.

I continued,” Look, I need to go, some work things to take care of. I won’t be gone long. There’s really not much in the fridge, sorry. I’ll bring some food back, though.”

More silence.

“Okay, well…well I’ll be back in like, an hour. Bye.”

I threw on some clothes and grabbed my camera and my coat and made my way out. My apartment was on the third floor of a rundown building sandwiched between two other rundown buildings in a rundown neighborhood. It’s no castle, but it’s cheap. And cheap suits me just fine.
The meeting with Mrs. Shelly went surprisingly well. I hadn’t developed the pictures yet, but I told her what I saw and that the pictures were coming. She took it surprisingly well, she didn’t seem to want to make excuses for her husband at all. Which I don’t mind at all because it makes my job that much easier. The meeting took ten minutes; we didn’t even get food, just some coffee. Truthfully, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been said over the phone. But if I hadn’t met her in person, then I couldn’t have squeezed another check out of her.

So that went well. I cashed the check at a gas station and picked up some food for Jennifer, some Scotch for myself, and filled up the gas tank with the leftover money. So I was at least set for another week or so.

I was trying to feel good as I parked across the street from my apartment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer. Secretly, I hoped she had run off while I was gone and I’d never hear from her again. But that wouldn’t keep me from worrying about her. But hey, that’s what the Scotch was for, right?

But whatever good feelings I could sum up from a bag full of groceries and a fresh bottle of Scotch were instantly diminished when I saw the police squad car parked along the curb right outside my apartment.

Daddy Wants a Shine

Last month I read The Shining, and these last couple of weeks I've watched both the movie and television miniseries. Like many movies I didn't see until I was older, The Shining was ruined for me by The Simpsons, but in a good way. That was definitely the spark of my interest in The Shining story, but more recently I've become quite interested in the Intellectual Property(as it were) as I think it's a great example of what goes wrong when trying to migrate a story across mediums. The movie and the miniseries both take a decidedly different approach to adapting the story and as far as I'm concered, they both failed in doing so.

Let's look at the book first. Now, this is actually the only book by Stephen King that I've read, so I'm not going to presume to be an expert on him or his writing style, but I've read a lot about him and his insights into writing and I think all those insights are on display in this book(for better and worse). Cheifly, what I liked most about this book were the characters. I think King's greatest strength as a writer is his ability to present the character voices quite distinctly, especially though third person narrative. This makes the book pretty accesable and quite easy to read. Though this, King presents a haunting tale of a man struggling with alchohol and authority issues, driven mad when he's manipulated into giving into his vices. It's a good book, if a bit rambly in it's approach to the climax(which is really good).

In his book On Writing, King states that stories should not be plotted out beforehand, and that the writer should instead focus on the "seed" of the story and let it grow itself. I both stenuously agree and disagree with this(Ambivalence!). On the one hand, I think that a good idea, with well rounded and developed characters should be able to write itself(to a degree, naturally). In that, the writer should never really reach a point where he can't decide what he wants the character to do. If the character is fully developed, the writer should know how the character will react to most situations. On the other hand, I think it's a terrible idea to to write a story without a clear idea of what you want to say and how it's going to be said. Now, keep in mind that this dilema could easily be solved with some strong editing, but that's not always the case.

In the case of The Shining, I feel that some tighter plotting could have made the book much better. The chapters almost seem to hop without any concern for the flow of the book. I don't think it's all that distracting, per se, but upon finishing the book, it felt really long for only having a few (what I would call) key scenes. King also likes to dwell on backstory, which adds leagues of sympathy to the character of Jack Torrance, but the story seems to lose some subtlety in doing so.

But all in all, it's a fantastic story. Ghosts, a madman trying to murder his family, a pshychic child, it's no wonder Hollywood would want to mine this for a movie. But there's no way you could trancribe a suitable screenplay by using everything in the book. It's litttered with backstory, it's a very long, slow build to it's climax, and some of the supernatural elements are seemingly impossible by the special effects standards of the time. So, how does Hollywood do with an adaptation?

More to come later.

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Two

"BEING HONEST"

The police sirens began to fade into existence like a Polaroid snapshot. I knew I had to get out of there; unfortunately I was pretty distracted by the girl. There was something about her; she couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. I was suddenly reminded of my daughter, Anne. God, I haven’t spoken to her in so many years. So many memories flooding into my mind, struggling for dominant attention, I couldn’t really focus on anything. Wait, did she just say she was a superhero?

“Holy shit,” I stammered. I admit at this point, though not drunk, I was a little buzzed and subsequently at a complete loss for words. Fortunately, this girl didn’t really seem interested in striking up a strong conversation; she seemed much more interested in resuming her panic attack.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Azul’s dead!” She repeatedly cried. Then she did what comes naturally to a person who’s not used to being surrounded my dead bodies. She threw up.
Something had to happen, and it was becoming painfully obvious that I had to make it happen. I grabbed the girl by the arm led her back to my car.

She wrestled free from my grip, “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“We have to go,” I grunted.

“Are you going to take me to the cops?” she asked gravely.

“No,” I answered honestly, although it was my back up plan, “but they’re on their way, so unless you want to stay and talk to them we’d better go.”

The girl looked around frantically, probably hoping to find somebody else to save her.

“Okay,” she said, realizing that I was her only option.

We ran back to my car and sped out of the parking lot, passing the brightly lit police cruisers along the way.

What the fuck had I gotten myself into? I was just witness to a murder scene, one of the persons involved was sitting in my car (incriminating the hell out of me I might add), and said person was a crazy girl in a cat fetish costume. Shit, she may have even beaten that other guy to death. I wouldn’t peg this girl for a killer, although one look at her and its obvious wasn’t working to the same standards as the rest of the world. I drove blindly for a few minutes, unable to collect my thoughts. This was a bad idea, one of my worst, probably. There would have been a dead silence were it not for the girl’s sniffling; clearly trying to hold back a torrent of tears. I felt like I had to say something and opened my mouth to do so.

“Put on your seatbelt,” was all that came out.

Surprisingly, she complied. I realized talking wasn’t really my thing and restrategized. I’ll just ditch the girl and drink til I forget the whole night.

“So….where am I taking you?”

“What?”

“Where do you live, where am I dropping you off?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where you live?”

“I live in New York City.”

“Jesus, what are you doing here?

“Crime fighting.” She said plainly.

“Well, I’d say that was ridiculous, but I can see you’re already in a costume.”

“There’s nothing ridiculous about justice.”

“You don’t need to sell me on anything, girl, I was a cop for thirty odd years.”

“You’re not a cop anymore?”

“No.”

“Did you retire?

“Something like that,” I croaked, my throat hurting from all this talking. Besides, I wasn’t really interested in talking about myself. I tried to turn the conversation back to her, “Look girl, what are you doing out here?”

“Fighting crime.”

“Right, you said that, but what happened, back there?”

“What do you think happened!” she snapped, “We were stopping a drug deal and they shot the Azul Amigo! Jesus Christ, I told them this was going to happen! I fucking told them! And now Azul’s dead!”

“Who? Told who? Were there others beside’s you two?

There was an uncomfortable silence, and this time it wasn’t soundtracked by sniffles and tears. This was graveyard silence.

“I can’t talk about it,” she finally said.

Well fuck. I briefly considered just dumping her off at the nearest street corner and resuming with the drinking plan, but every time I looked at her, her blonde curls a tangled mess, I imagined Anne’s face under the mask. I had to help her.

“Okay, that’s fine. I want to help you,” I said rather straightforwardly, “If you don’t have anywhere to go, we can just go back to my place and figure it all out in the morning. Is that alright?”

She nodded, slowly.

“Okay, it’s settled. Now I know where I’m going. My name’s Frank, by the way. Did I already tell you that? My name’s Frank. Frank Calico. I’m a private detective. You can trust me, okay?

“Okay.”

“So, what’s your name?”

“Night Cat.”

“Hmmm, yeah, I guess you don’t want to tell me your…” I couldn’t believe I was actually saying the words, “secret identity.”

“No, I don’t have a secret identity, when I’m not a superhero I’m Jennifer.”

“Oh, okay…well Jen…”

She cut me off, “No. I’m not Jennifer. I’m Night Cat. Jennifer is safe right now. Night Cat is here.”

I think the car drifted off the road slightly, because I found myself frantically swerving the wheel to get the car steady again. Holy shit, please don’t tell me this girl is crazy. Sad as it sounds, it would explain the costume. I mean, shit, who else would go out in a costume and fight a bunch of gun wielding drug dealers? This girl really needed my help. I could see it all so clearly; it was like, my sacred duty to help this poor crazy girl. Although, really, who was I to say anything. She’s no more fucked up than me, if I’m being honest, which I guess I am.

Great performance of a great song

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter One

"WE'RE SUPERHEROES"

As a child, I wasted a lot of money on frivolous entertainment. Entertainment such as comic books. Superheroes were my favorite, Batman, Superman, Spider-man, and so on. And being a child, I believe in superheroes. We all did. We read about their adventures. And after reading about them, we’d pretend to be them. But I eventually grew out of it. And as I grew older, superheroes were never much more than an afterthought. That is, until today, when I saw one bleeding to death in a hotel parking lot.

The night was clear and warm. It had been a pretty relaxing night, made even more relaxing with a bottle of whiskey. The parking lot was pretty empty; the types of people using this hotel don’t usually own cars. I had been sitting in mine for six hours, waiting out the Shelly case. Mrs. Shelly hired me to tail her husband, a suspected adulterer. Thirty years of doing real police work and now I’m just a professional peeper. It pays the bills though, so who am I to complain. Desperate, jealous wives are the backbone of the Private Eye industry. I did my best to remain inconspicuous; fortunately my piece of shit car wasn’t going to stick out in this hell hole. One of the benefits to being a poor son of a bitch, I guess.

Jerome Shelly has been inside his hotel room for the last five hours and thirty-eight minutes. Some woman entered the same room four hours ago. I got some pictures, but I was waiting for the big one, one of them together. This guy was playing it pretty paranoid; never let himself be seen with the girl at the same time. Fuck, I hoped he didn’t know I was out here. Had to remind myself that he doesn’t know who I am. Can’t let my own paranoia get in the way of rational thinking. I was already starting to get a little restless. I should just run up and kick the door down. Catch them right in the act. What could they do, nothing. They’d just lie there, naked and helpless while I caught them in their lustful lies. I told myself I was going to do it, but I didn’t believe me. I just needed that fucking picture. Without it, I didn’t get the big payoff. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t get off on destroying marriages, but without the irrefutable proof of a square picture, wives like Mrs. Shelly always make excuses for their bastard husbands. More often than not they expect me to prove them wrong, to assuage their fears, not confirm them. And more often than not, I confirm them. And then I get yelled at. A lot. It’s typical of these broads, but I’ll put up with any abuse just as long as they pay me.

I looked at the dashboard clock. It read 12:56. It was getting late. Finally, the door began to open. I grabbed my camera and started snapping shots in successive order. But like always, luck was against me. A barrage of thunderous gunshots drowned out the sound of my camera right before the hotel door slammed shut. What the fuck was going on? Before I could get my wits about me, a car came barreling around from the back of the hotel. It sped past me and fled onto the highway. Gunshots were never good, but at least it looked like it had nothing to do with my guy. This wasn’t all bad. Somebody probably called the cops, though I doubted they’d show up around here for another half hour at the most. Jerome must know this, hell that’s probably why he meets here; he knows no respectable person dares show his face in this part of town. He’s probably in there right now, yelling at his bitch to calm down so they can make an exit plan. He’s going to want to leave soon, before any cops show up, doesn’t want to get spotted by anybody. He’s going to be even more careful, more paranoid now. Not good for me. But that’s not terrible. I can still get the picture.

At least, that’s what I was thinking when the girl started crying. Or, to be more specific, wailing. Not the girl in the hotel room. This was coming from behind the hotel. Where the gunshots came from. This was bad. Every cell in my brain was commanding me to stay in the car and wait for the picture, but still I found myself climbing out of my car. I told myself that it was my old police instincts kicking in. Yeah, that’s why I would do this, not because I’m a fucking stupid drunk with a death wish. My pistol rattled unsteadily in my hand. The shakes were back. Fucking great. I made my way across the parking lot and leaned against the wall, catching my breath. Only an old fool would get winded running toward his own death. There was still time to get back to the car, but I knew I wasn’t going back. I could hear the girl crying, and something that sounded much like a person being beaten to death. Foolishly, I spun around the corner, completely unprepared for what I would find.

Lying on the ground, not five feet from me, was a corpse covered head to toe in garish blue spandex. There was some kind of yellow lettering on his chest; his face was covered by the same blue spandex as the rest of his body. It was dark, the parking lot was not well lit, but I counted four visible bullet wounds. The blood seeped out from underneath him, pooling around him in the uneven concrete.

This was not the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen. Be a police detective in this city for long enough and you see some strange shit. But there was something about this image, this costumed person lying dead; it shocked me to the core.

The screeching girl brought me back to reality. I suddenly remembered why I had run over here in the first place. I looked for the helpless girl, but instead found something even more shocking than the dead kid. There was another body.

This one looked more like your standard street corpse. Blue jeans, wife beater, tattoos, and his hand gripped around a .357 caliber handgun. But crouching overtop him, was a girl. She too was wearing some kind of spandex costume, this one a deep red. She wore a mask over her face that allowed her long blonde hair to flow down her back. She was the source of the crying and wailing. And she was beating the shit out of this guys face.

I ran over and tried to pull the hysterical girl off of the dead gangbanger. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. As soon as I placed a hand on her she spun around and took a swing at me. Thankfully she was off balance and toppled over as she blindly swung her bloodied fists. She screamed.

“Wait!” I coughed out.

She spun around on her butt and looked straight at me and froze. She was wearing some kind of Halloween mask. It vaguely resembled a cat. “Don’t shoot, please!” she cried.

It was then that I realized I was pointing my pistol at her. I quickly shoved into my pocket. It wasn’t until later that I hoped I put the safety on. “I’m not gunna shoot ya, girl,” I said.

“What…what do you want?” she stammered out between whimpers.

I was dumbstruck. I’ve never really had an answer to the question in my whole life. “I’m a detective, I want to help.”

“Are you a cop?” She spurted out.

“No, not anymore. Are you okay? “

“They killed him. He’s dead. You bastard!” she screamed as she resumed pummeling the dead guy.

“Hey, get it together. My name’s Frank, what’s your name?” I asked, trying to get her under control.

She got off the beaten body and stumbled over to her dead friend, muttering incoherently. I was beginning to have serious doubts about getting involved and began the standard cycle of self loathing that comes with regretting your life decisions. But then she turned around, finally showing a semblance of composure and said, “He was the Azul Amigo. I’m the Night Cat. We’re superheroes.”

Me and my big mouth...

"Starting next week, hopefully, I'll begin putting up chapters..."

On a cosmic level, it was really funny that I typed that. Let's see, it's been....about two months. Yeah, so much for "next week." The day after I posted that previous blog entry, my computer imploded. Which effectively cut off my work flow. There's not really much else to say about it, complaining about it won't give me the time back. The good news is, that I got a much better computer that is much more useful in every way, well...except for the various Vista problems.

Anyway. After the initial fear that all my work had been destroyed(it wasn't), I was pretty peeved off about being computerless. Not just for all the daily uses like communication and getting news and such, I actually don't mind being disconnected from the grid, as it were. What really bothered me was that my motivation was completely derailed.

For myself, and many others I imagine, getting started is the hardest part of...well anything, if you ask me. Even after I got a new computer, I still had a hard time getting back on the horse. It just becomes so easy to allow yourself to be distracted by the rest of your life. I've heard people say that they write, draw, play music, etc. to escape from the stresses of life. But I can't say that I feel the same way. It's actually the opposite for me. I write to work out my problems and stresses, so that I can deal with them(or not deal with them, in some cases). Which, I think is why it's so easy for me to get distracted. I mean, really, who ever wants to face their problems. Not I. It's much easier to play video games and read books and so on.

Regardless, this is kind of a dumb post. What I'm saying is I've got my shit together and am going to start posting chapters of Real Life/Real Death, immediately. Like, as soon as I get done typing up this little explanation.

Oh, and to steal a line from "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" when I say, "Dad, sorry I said "fuck" so much."