August 25th, 2010 by Neal

It is just that really good things are happening. Stay tuned.

February 27th, 2009 by Neal

I PUSHED IT TO THE LIMIT!  (But not father)

I stayed up, I plowed through, I gave that book its final read-through TONIGHT. And it is now OUT THERE. In the ETHER. Handed out to the HANDS THAT WILL DECIDE!

I am now at THE LIMIT!

I am also, to wit, the only motherfucker on Earth who never needs to drunk post, because I just have too much of a weird sense of humor to possibly top this shit I find when I am researching novels.

In case you’re wondering, I found a lot of what I’ve been posting for the last year looking for the 80s fad ninja geeks who I grew up with. I could almost fill a book with all of the weird, undocumented shit I have found.

Good night.

February 26th, 2009 by Neal

TIMBER! Get it? No? You will by the end of the post, I hope.

A point of my book about ninjas is that existentialism is stupid. The idea that we can reduce arguments to the point of absurdity by questioning the constinuent elements of the question bother me. Yes, when I ask the question “What is god?” we must first define or have understood the words “what” and “Is” and “God” but too often, I find the existentialists I encounter use it as a way to avoid the question, “What is god?” by ignoring the question and muddying the waters.

To that end, I am pissed, because I cannot draw a metaphor. There is a man, alone, in a room full of people he calls his associates, and I want to make the “If A Tree Falls in the Forrest” gag. The idea being, the intention of the question is to ask what a thing means when humans aren’t there to experience it, but I want to poke at, “Does a thing mean something if many people experience it, but there’s no point to it?”

But I know it would fall by the wayside, because people are so damned religious, and the subject/object paradigm is so enmeshed in our damned society that even without knowing why, if I were to do that, they would think something wrong.

We are convinced we are special as entities, and thereby religion is a fine thing for us. We want to feel better than what we are, so we say, “Yes, we will live forever!” even though our existence is finite. To that end, I’ve “lost” the tree in the forrest argument many times to someone who will not acknowledge that if a tree falls in the forrest, and no human is around to perceive it, YES, it still makes a fucking sound. We just weren’t there to hear it. The idea that without US, or without the implied ME, things do not happen, it just baffles me, even though I’m the most arrogant son of a bitch in the world because everybody loves me. He chortled.

At any rate, I see it as the center of the universe argument, its kin.

For all we fucking know, there are people in the future looking back on that forrest. For all we know, there are alien telescopes in space watching that tree’s every fucking move, and that tree is their version of Jesus or Buddha. For all we know, there’s an old hermit no one ever loved or listened to in that forrest who saw that tree fall, and when he dies having told no one of that tree falling, it’s only not heard because we were too dumb to listen.

To pragmatically accept the idea that NO ONE heard it, and no one possibly could, begs the question of how we were even aware of it to ask the question in the first place, and contradicts itself.

In other words, fuck existentialists. Give me a devil’s advocate first any day.

But beyond that, I have completed all but the clerical work on the novel. I will read it one more time tomorrow, and probably find one or two errors, but otherwise… my tree is downed. Do you care to hear it?

February 24th, 2009 by admin

I got that image from “patent exhaustion.” This amuses me, because it’s an internet article on a blog that uses many patented images, and it’s talking about the subtle nuances of copyright on the free information highway. But that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about I LOOK LIKE THAT GUY. Well, except in my damned underwear, in a messy office, and surrounded by empty cans, vitamin C, and candles.

I have finished the fifth and sixth respective drafts of Renegades, but that’s actually misleading, because it’s actually a dramatic (and warranted) rewrite. I am pleased with the progress, and am aiming to meet my self-set goal date of Friday come hell or high water, mostly because I know if I want to take my week off and not have to come back to a fuckarow I need to have it done this week so I can slap out the rest of Caroline next week and dance on the ruins of the stupid stage.

My back is a mess. I worked for eleven and a half hours today on JUST NOVELS. That is HARD. That is VERY HARD. I estimate that I edited about 8,000 total words via total rewrite, which goes much slower than the regular writing process.

It feels fucking great. I think my brain is broken. Kristen called me away for Ernest Goes to Jail to deaden my brain a little for about forty minutes, and I took a bath. Other than that, here I’ve been.

I am going to go and collapse. Tomorrow I get a well-earned break for a few hours, and then it’s the home stretch. I think I’m gonna do this, which is a miracle given that all heaven and hell and life have conspired to stop me. Eviction. Bankruptcy.

I will not be deterred. Perhaps the image should be Doomsday breaking free of his cage after millenia imprisoned.

Well, except I’m not a green clothed murder machine. But anyway… good night. I’m going away before I crunch a deer’s neck or some shit.