I’m back. After a long hiatus, I’ve returned to cultivating this blog. For those of you wondering, these past several months I’ve been working on my fiction writing. After my first wave of horror and sci fi short stories were rejected and/or ignored, I finally sold a story. My post-apocalyptic piece Big Dead Noise is running as a serial at JukePopSerials.com.

Another zombie apocalypse story? Do we really need that? Yes, we do. This one will kick your mind in the gut, because unlike other zombie stories out there, this one’s got . . . robots! Can the remaining humans on Earth survive against zombies and robots? You’ll have to read to find out.

The first chapter can be found here. You need to log in to read beyond Chapter 1, but registration is free and easy. Also, once you register you can vote for your favorites serials on the site. You can vote for each chapter—so as the saying goes, vote early and vote often.

The top 30 serials get bonuses and accolades, so in order to sit at the big kids table, I need your help (and your votes). So click the cover below, if you dare. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Earth has become a battleground. Mankind has reached the Singularity but was not ready for the devastating repercussions. Machines have assumed their rightful place as the dominant species on the planet, but are at constant war with the mutated remnants of humanity that are trying to take it back. Among the few truly human survivors is young Quinn Pearce and her ailing father—who have awoken from cryogenic sleep into an unfamiliar and hellish world. They must join forces with a group of unlikely allies to find a way through the war zone that surrounds them.

It happened today. The thing we’ve all been trying to avoid; the pain that we don’t dare speak of. But sometimes fate rides on the wind, and it doesn’t matter how fast you run. Then it happens—that awful moment when you realize you can’t get away, that the fires of perdition will burn and you can’t do anything about it. And all you know is that you’ll be changed forever.

So you close your eyes, and let the feverish pain wash over you, because you know deep down that some things simply have to be endured.

It happened to me today. I finally heard Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. The song was released in September of last year.  It is currently #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and is also the most played song on Spotify in the United States at this time. I have successfully avoided listening to it for 288 days. I had a good run, but as they say, all good things. . .

I was minding my own business, simply driving home from the grocery store. The radio was on, I didn’t think anything of it. That was the worst mistake of my life. The chorus rang out, over and over—the repetitive strain was simply words, gibberish. I don’t always pay attention to pop songs. They are like wallpaper, always there but you don’t consciously notice the pattern. But the words kept repeating, and I noticed a phrase—could it be? No, I’ve been good; I’d been diligent, disciplined, all those horror stories you hear about couldn’t happen to me.

But it did. When it was all over, and the screaming stopped, I tried to gather myself together. Truth be told, I’ve already blocked the experience from my mind. However, deep down I know that won’t be enough. It’s still there, embedded in my subconscious, waiting to reveal itself when I least expect it. Maybe in a dream, maybe in a simple quiet moment. The possibility will haunt me til the end of my days.

In a desperate search for atonement, I went to see a priest. He told me for my penance I would have to listen to three hours of The Clash and two hours of The Who. Then he added in a low voice, “And throw in an hour of Miles Davis just to be safe. . .but the old stuff, not those funky techno jams he did toward the end.” I asked if there was anything else, and he told me to watch Fight Club with the subtitles on, and mentioned it would probably be best to avoid any Wes Anderson movies for a couple of weeks. I thanked him and left, unsure of my future, but assured that I at least had a recipe for healing.

Throughout time, mankind has tried to rationalize the true source of inspiration. Though some artists attribute their oeuvre to their own hard work and diligence, there are still many who say it came from a source outside of themselves. This outer creative influence can take many forms:

• The Muse: This always makes me think of the movie Xanadu. Because muses have nothing better to do than inspire slacker types to make giant disco roller skating rinks.
• A higher power, i.e. God, the Supreme Being.
• Though the two above are the most popular, there is another idea that comes from author Sage Cohen who wrote The Productive Writer:

“. . .but I have come to think of [the muse] as that fickle lover you can never count on to show up in a pinch, and one would would never want to leave alone with your best friend. This is where the genius comes in, a kind of archetypal companion invested in you, like a fairy godmother.”

The genius concept is compelling, however, I always went with the muse. The idea that there are guardian angels, so to speak, who can both guide and inspire us seems comforting. They can’t do all the work for you, but instead simply ignite the kindling that can later become a fire. Building that fire is our job here on Earth, and as we do we learn about each other and the universe itself.

But Sage Cohen was right, the muse can be fickle. Once the spark has been ignited, if you don’t stoke the fire and keep it going, it can go out. And then bored or insulted, the muse will move on to someone else. Someone along the line will take that idea and actually do something with it. Haven’t you ever had an idea—a story, song or anything, really—let it go, allowed it to fizzle into nothing, then later seen or heard that idea somewhere?

Maybe that is why we see such similar themes throughout history and world cultures. Perhaps there are only so many muses that exist, and they just keep inspiring mankind to repeat the same stories throughout history, with each iteration slightly different— making us repeat these themes until somebody finally gets it right. . . a perpetual cosmic game of Telephone, with each generation informing the next.

This could be why George Harrison got into so much trouble when he released his single, “My Sweet Lord,” in 1970. Some thought the melody and music was too similar to The Chiffons song “He’s So Fine.” Harrison was sued for copyright infringement, in a legal battle that lasted for over 10 years. Now, The Beatles were perhaps the greatest popular music songwriters of all time. Nobody thought George Harrison had deliberately plagiarized an old song from the 60s. Regardless, it was determined in the end that he had “subconsciously” copied the tune.

And so, even former Beatles are at the mercy of the muse. Perhaps Harrison’s  muse thought that the spiritual concept of “My Sweet Lord” really needed expressing at the time, and “He’s So Fine” was just easily accessible in his subconscious. Unfortunately, muses—though brilliant creative machines—don’t have any notion of modern copyright law. Sorry George.

Some time ago, I was going to write a story about a muse who came to Earth. He had to become human to solve a crime and chase an angel who had also come to earth to cause various shenanigans. But, alas, time has passed and the fire has fizzled. Now I fear it may be too late. I have squandered my inspiration, and the muse has left me. I fear if I go it alone, it will all just come out like some Paul Bettany B-movie action flick.

But who knows, maybe the muse was toying with me and somebody has already done that idea before. Or maybe I should just go and build a giant roller skating rink.

Source: Wikipedia

This week we had the Grammy awards, which allowed the music world to recognize their own in spectacular and splendid fashion. In the blogging world—from time to time—we have our own ways of recognizing those that stand out. And wouldn’t cha know, Kalley over at Blogging While Nursing has given Five Things at Once the LOL Award.

As I see it, the LOL Award is about showcasing blogs that make you laugh, make you smile, and sometimes make you think. It’s great to be associated with something like this. Thanks Kalley, I appreciate the nod.

As with all blog awards, there are rules and such. Here are the LOL Award rules:

1. Post the LOL (laugh out loud, for you non-texters out there) badge on your blog
2. Write a post that includes the following:
   a) a thank you to the person who gave you the award (include a link to their blog)
   b) a clean joke or limerick (just look one up and copy it into your post if you don’t know one- it can even be a knock knock joke!)
   c) a list of five other blogs (linked) that you’re giving the award to- so we can find more laughs
3. Notify the five other blogs that you’ve given them the award and explain to them that they need to copy and paste these instructions on their blog… and complete them
4. And, I think that’s it.  This should be a compliment and simple to do… and help to spread the laughs around.

With the logistics out of the way, I will share my four year-old’s favorite joke with you:

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Pizza.
Pizza who?
Pizza, on your head!

What can I say, she’s four. In any case, here are some awesome blogs I wish to share the LOL Award with:

1. Literal Mom
2. motherventing
3. Best Of Fates
4. The Monster In Your Closet
5. Single Working Mom

Although my joke above is quite popular with the preschool set, the blogs I listed are great for putting a smile on your face, and making you think. You should check them out.

Thanks again to Kalley for this award. You should visit her site, over at Blogging While Nursing, it’s super-cool.  By the way, happy Valentines Day to everyone! Tomorrow we should be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

With the release of The Phantom Menace in 3D today, Star Wars is in the limelight once again. This should be a good thing. However, lately it seems whenever Star Wars is in the news, controversy is soon to follow. This week was no exception. Fanboys set the Internet ablaze when—during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter—George Lucas tried to explain his changes to the now infamous cantina scene from the Star Wars Special Edition released in 1997.

“Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”

He makes his case, however some people aren’t buying it. They believe this to be a classic case of retcon, where Lucas is attempting to justify his changes after the fact. Perhaps he softened his stance on scoundrel bad-assery when he had kids, and/or maybe he just wanted to sell more Han Solo toys. In contrast, there are those who simply take Lucas at his word.

Either way—in order to be fair—let’s further analyze the scene in question.

If American Graffiti was George Lucas’s tribute to his teenage life in the early 60s, then the first Star Wars film was likely a tribute to the movies he loved and studied while in film school. Episode IV references everything from Kurosawa, to aerial dogfights from World War II movies, to even spaghetti westerns.

In fact, the cantina scene in question was itself a reference to the 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. A character called Angel Eyes, played by Lee Van Cleef, is hired to track down and interrogate a man, who he then kills by shooting him from under a table. This callous murder sets Angel Eyes as the “bad” character referenced in the title of the film. Many believe the shooting in the cantina was an homage to this classic scene, with Han Solo being established as a “bad” character by acting in a similarly callous fashion.

However, a closer examination of both scenes may reveal something else. Greedo, being a bounty hunter, was actually playing the Angel Eyes mercenary role. Han Solo was the one being interrogated—but instead of being a stammering nervous wreck, he played it calm and stayed under control. That was the twist. By having Han Solo successfully defend himself and get the last word in, Lucas makes the Cantina scene not a straight homage, but actually an answer to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

However, the giant hole in this theory begs the question: How could a professional bounty hunter not hit a still target literally sitting only about two or three feet in front of him? Unfortunately, if we take Lucas at his word, this scene tells us less about Han Solo’s character, and more about what a bad shot Greedo was.

Regardless of the intent, the way the scene played out in the original cut of the movie was what people loved about one of its main characters. If people misunderstood the intent, so what? Just chalk it up to a happy accident. Go with it. Why go out of your way to tell people about how they really just misunderstood how cool it was?

When Lucas talks about Star Wars now, it just reminds me of the show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David would always offend someone by saying something ironic, then when trying to explain his real intentions, he would just dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole. I would find myself yelling at the TV screen, “Stop! Stop talking.” And so, Mr. Lucas, if have new projects going on, we would all love to hear about them. Really, we would. But when it comes to Star Wars, please stop talking.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter