Originally posted on the Benrik website: http://www.benrik.co.uk/...
Nate is READING: The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke
LISTENING TO: Seamus Kennedy, "The Scottish Song"
WATCHING: House, M.D.
The Book: http://www.amazon.com/...
As per usual, I'm going to start off the blog entry by pimping my serialized online novella, Ghost Dance, which is the story of a boy, a girl, two swords, two pagan gods, and one very old and very powerful undead spirit that's very, very pissed off.
I finally posted Chapter 6, which is the chapter where Frank and Linda finally have sex.
You can read the most recent chapter here: http://authorofghostdance.wordpress.com/
If you haven't been following or if you're just joining us, it starts here: http://authorofghostdance.wordpress....
I'm sorry to say that Chapter Seven will not be up until later. Expect it later tonight or sometime tomorrow evening.
And as before, I've got a MySpace page up and running. http://www.myspace.com/...
Essentially, the MySpace page is the same as the Benrik blog, except alot more ergonomic.
Posted that reincarnation poem on fictionpress. It's very Germanic; written in unrhymed meter with lots of repetition, alliteration, even a few kennings. I got in a gorgeous row with some moron who thought I was making an ironic historical reference when I talked about the Warrior's battles being raged for "simple hatreds or some great crusade". I tried to explain to him the difference between crusade and Crusade, but he would have none of it; he got very condescending, even going so far as to lecture me about how "as writers our goal is to pick the choicest words to convey our meanings, we
have to be truely careful because if we think to little we miss the big
picture, think to much and the big picture is lost in attempting perfection.
maybe i was reading too deeply, but i saw something in your writing you didn't
expect and it will happen again, i've seen allusions before that writers
didn't realize they used, but used they were used nonetheless."
Those are his exact words, copied and pasted. And all this from a disagreement about the connotations of the word "crusade"! I don't like this modern obsession with inserting significance where there's obviously none.
He also missed the point of the poem completely. Dummkopf thought that it was about the futility of human conflict (i.e., battles being fought over and over again through all time and for all kinds of reasons); it's actually an HOMAGE to Man's violent nature: The character dies to be reborn a warrior, and he fights because that is what warriors DO. Bloody pretentious condescending fool.
Through http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/ I found one of those blatantly racist Facebook pages and trolled the trolls for a while. It got old pretty quickly (one of them made a comeback so monumentally stupid that I couldn't think of anything worthwhile to say to him), but it was fun while it lasted.
Why is it that people think that saying something extremely racist is okay as long as you add, "But I'm no racist."? It's pretty much a sure thing that when something is prefaced with "Now, I'm no racist, but . . .", whatever comes next is going to be pretty offensive: "Now, I'm no racist, but y'know, I just don't like black people."
But enough of this! Enough, enough, enough! You'll be able to read all about my political and artistic philosophies in my Official Biography. (Beyond this point, it gets silly)
Finally got to hang out with the Best Friend again after over a month. Apparently my weight-training is having a noticeable effect; his reaction on seeing me was "Dude! Your arms look like CANNONS!" And they do, at that. But I just can't get rid of my beer gut; core exercises just make it bigger because they beef up my abs; I hope Hot Emma doesn't mind having alot to love. :) But I digress! We chatted about this, that, and the other thing for a while, I had a pleasant time, and it wasn't until after he left that I remembered I had a picture of Hot Emma in my wallet that I wanted to show him. Alas!
Today's Task according to the U.S. version of the Book was to learn Swedish, in case Sweden ever becomes a major military power and takes over the world. You can't really learn a language in one day, so I compensated by practicing my German a little and by reading about Ed Abbey's Scandinavian vacation in "Confessions of a Barbarian," his collected journals.
Speaking of which, why is it that in the end we always find the writer at least as interesting as his writing? Mayhap one day when I'm a Famous Unknown Author, they'll publish a collection of tidbits from MY sketchbook. If so, I hope I live to see it.