1. Home for the summer.
2. My future is murky. -Want to leave FGCU for good. But there’s a girlfriend there. Also, applied to two colleges but they don’t get back to me til’ July. And then there is, what if I just don’t go to college?
3. Working on my first full length comic. Maybe I’ll start posting some art here or something. If you’re in Florida, it might end up at a comic shop near you.
4. Did I mention you’re just the best?
5. According to my WordPress stats, a lot of you liked that article on the Matt Smith Hair tumblr. I guess the internet really is aesthetically oriented. About hair.
6. BOY! Am i unemployed! (How un-employed are you?!) So unemployed, I’m working for scorereviews.com. The pay is crap. But at least there’s pay. DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A JOB?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       7. Reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I really missed fiction. It is pretty smart for YA fiction. I can feel a little Harry Potter formula working inside some of it. But perhaps that’s easy to say about YA fiction. Never mind. On second thought, it’s pretty original.
8. Been tumblr addicted. The comic got one. Then fgcu got one. Now Jupiter has one. I figure everyplace I go, I can just document it with its own separate tumblr.
9. Maybe I’ll write here more. It is actually pretty refreshing to blog when you aren’t under deadline.

Conclusion: What? Are you really expecting  anything of substance to be in this spot? It was a hit from left field. Accept the non-sequitor and return home to your loved ones. Punk. AND, yeah, the PRAGUEBLOG? No way that’s ever going to be finished.

No. I’m to blame. I went back to college and got swept away in tales of romance and two-bit, fool-erranded ,fool’s-gold malarkey. Guilty as charged. But, as promised, I’ll make a quick conclusion about blogging and how it affected my writing.

1. Setting a deadline with no goals= no growth. Once I decided to separate the experiment’s days into separate categories, I started focusing on skills to improve. A focused goal= a streamlined and clearer learning curve.

2. More is not necessarily better. Neither is a deadline. Though it kept me producing, and making quick decisions about my writing process, it did not keep me writing on the days that weren’t my deadline. The lesson here is, good to keep writing, and fast. But you shouldn’t aim to churn it out, but instead have a steady process of the decisions that polish your craft.

Sporadic writing(writer’s permanent choices)x sporadic deadline < Steady writing (writer’s permanent choices) x steady long and short term deadlines

3. It did help me  take survey of my writing. And, as a blogger, it upped my readership quite a bit. To any of you out there who never believed,:fresh content, no matter how clunky, is great for your blog.

4. Still, the real question is: Did it make me a better writer? Well, the polls are a pretty shitty indicator, since little of you used it. In the short run, yes. It did. I continually made decisions on how to improve my writing. But, like all habits, I stopped and those decisions weren’t reinforced. They left. It did keep me writing but, it is no replacement for steady work. Working on my weekly comic has done more for me as a writer, then the blog has. But the blog has done more for me as a blogger. Obvious? Yeah, but maybe it needed to be said. Blogging  and writing are two different skills. I know this now. Any blogger who says they’re the same, I’d like to argue with hem.

I’ll update soon, I think. There may be a podcast starting with me in it, so i’ll post that if it comes to fruition. Otherwise, keep looking at the GEC for anything worth a damn: http://genericeaglecomic.tumblr.com/

Night.

The following is a poem constructed entirely out of phrases found in my junk mail. Enjoy.

Leave her subjects of course.

Replied tiktok.

Added in law of boots.

Lying awake.

Making the child.

Show you received it over them.

Don’t tell her boyfriend,

growled the soldier.

No body.

Be done.

Having no idea of three years.

Too many places, intolerable manner, for himself, wery much of too many places.

Hold hard by this.

Replied tiktok.

Keep them from london.

Contact Mr. Mark Harrison.

It fitted his head.

Replied tiktok.

Goodness.

Trust,

took her away to America,

down with the tack.

Nobody else is its contests of spirits.

Government doesn’t,

care.

A collapse of,

the diplomats.

Government doesn’t,

care.

All typos courtesy of the writers of the spam.

It’s got a number of geeks and nerds upset, because it announces that our current track will lead to a apocalypse of nerd culture. This is, according to Oswalt, because, in order to manufacture anything new, we must first destroy the existing plethora of internet lists, you tube autotune mashup alternate endings, co-creator spinoffs, and (the root of a juicy mine field of evil) the Star Wars prequels.  You see, the internet has made everything accessible. In the time of Oswalt’s geek formation, inaccessibility was a key note in what defined geekery (along with the more popular anti-social behavior, chess club behavior, and so on). This has lead to the ultimate flaw of the net: making geek life accessible to every one.  According to the article, this must be destroyed, because it leads to a senseless cycle of spin offs and remakes that have no originality.

Here’s my take. At one end of the spectrum you have the creation of the original geek culture. Any younger geek will bow down to this. A man who was around during the original release of Star Wars is ultimately more powerful than the child who memorizes the stats of his Pokemon deck. But, does that make either any less of a geek? No. But, let’s look at the largest dividing factor between new geeks and the old: the net.

This single thing has changed the spread of culture. Patton’s complaint is that it has done it for the worse. In his geek culture, rare gems of unreleased Alf swearing on the set footage would go around being copied from a coffee stained VHS tape. Now, that same VHS is digitally copied onto youtube, available to everyone. Is the secret mystical path of culture really what sustains the life of a geek? As one who finds himself falling under the title more and more, i think not. The following are my beliefs of what is ignored in Oswalt’s census of the nerd population:

1. Where in the hell do you categorize 4chan? Are they geeks or something more? Arguably, they’re the illuminati of the internet, but because they popularize memes and other media for the net, they’re the source of Oswalt’s complaints. This statement alone could take pages to resolve.

2. Original material: The graphic novel has come back into sway. Lots of people are making them, and the bookstores are selling new, but mostly old reprints, master hardback with the shiny cover “making of”s, and other editions of old classics. Watchmen is all over the place, most notably. With the comic library being represented thus, where is the original content ending up?

At cons and the net. These creators are local and personal. They are not like the old creators who you heard of mystically. No one can smash the magic around the name “Alan Moore.” Even if you could somehow shave off that beard, and explain his genius, the mystery would still surround him. However, a new creator has blogs, pictures on flikr, shows up at cons, and is open. The net is a sharing device.  And the old geek will find this offensive. Because it is like seeing your parents having sex.

Imagine if Patton Oswalt were to walk in to a huffing and sweaty Alan Moore over a typewriter, as he showed the world Ozymandias wasn’t so innocent after all. As Alan’s fingers led the typewriter to a literary climax, he would turn to see little baby Oswlat standing by the door. Alan would try and explain Dr. Manhattan leaves a philosophical ultimatum  in the next scene, but it would be too late. Oswalt scarred for life, because he had seen the magic of what he loved fabricated before his eyes. No one likes to see how their world was made. And no one likes to see it fall. The daddy of the old geeks is dying. And Oswalt is at it’s funeral crying, “If I can’t have daddy, no one can!”. But, it’s not true. New geekery is forming in new ways.

But, admittedly, new content is still more sparse. The actual artistic quality of creations like mashups, autotunes, and fanfics are up for discussion in another blog. However, there are undoubtedly soups bubbling. New creators are being born onto this new geek-iverse.

3. Is Oswalt being a fucking hipster or what?! I looked up the guy, and watching a youtube video of some material from his album “Werewolves & Lollipops” (2007) I heard him say this:

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHERE THE STUFF I LOVE COMES FROM. I JUST LOVE THE STUFF I LOVE!”

-Patton Oswalt, 2007, “Werewolves & Lollipops“

This is three years ago. The net still wasn’t so organized. Facebook was big, but we thought it was going to stop there. No one thought about things like wikileaks. We were still so innocent. And, at that time, Oswalt is concerned about what? The stuff he loves. When love is involved, all of a sudden it makes sense. No one wants to see their love change, become foreign. What, at first glance, looks like a hipster snubbing a culture for thinking geek culture is now pop culture, is now a teary eyed man who just wants it to be years ago when his nerd-ness felt homespun and innocent. Before it became a city gal. I feel for him. You can take the girl out of the city, but…

4. The definition of nerd: Who gives a shit! I’ve read so many responses to Oswalt’s article about how it stands for the opressed, a counterculture, the passionate, the acne ridden fat people. But, in all honesty, what difference does it make? Why close yourself in an absolute. I’ve got news for you, the revolutionaries of today do not look, sound, or act like the ones in the 1800′s. Why should anything? Why should any culture, especially one as loving as the nerd’s, choose to shut itself into one certain mold? The nerds are changing. Do I hate the lists and mashups? Kind of. Actually, a lot. But I think these are growing pains. Not the end. This is like the creators we love emulating what they loved. This is the seeding of a new generation of creators. And hopefully a new nerd.

- There’s more. But hey, I need  to pack, this blog is free, and i’d love to hear some angry nerd respond about my sweaty Moore writing coitus metaphor. Plus, the comic is starting back up this week. Gotta get things back and running….

More Oswalt Article Response:  Chronicles of the Nerds Aint it Cool News Get The Big Picture It’s All Geek To Me Youtube Response

Yeah, I was disappointed too. Not only do I find destructive New Year’s predictions amusing, I expect them. After all, what better way to motivate you towards completing your New Year resolutions than a healthy dose of over-whelming fear? So, without further ado:

The 2011 Prophecy

In the heart of the Silicon Valley, there is the Computer History Museum, and in the heart of that, lies a great mound of machinery. For the past seven years, a museum curator  has worked diligently on a single idea. Why can’t the internet be everywhere, always, and infinite? The idea was mad.

But every crux of history starts with a mad idea.

A machine was built. The inventor’s hypothesis was less than scientific. If we could project the internet on the surface of land, we would have no need for personal computers. Consequently, if we could do this all over the world, nothing would stop people from contacting, learning, and being recorded. In this process, everything in the world would become real time with the internet and vice versa. A worldwide symbiosis of technology, man, and his planet. The machine would need a great computer of it’s own to work it, and the curator had sacrificed himself as the first human computer symbiont.

The champagne was iced, and all was ready for the year 2011 to rush in more lady gaga and an television channel owned by freaking Oprah. The curator stepped back into his machine, letting the rib plates close around him, the arterial retro-speedometer slip into his neck, and the googleplexel magnets insert into his central nervous system. The curator spoke his first command. “On.” At that moment, six billion people were adjusted to his brain. He saw everything, everyone, and knew everything. He felt what it was to be god. And it was an angry feeling.

The scream of the world was terrifying. An entire race unready to interact with a  divine power, yet it had rushed in and grabbed everything.  A half of the world died, from the fear. A quarter gave themselves up in  a religious fervor. Seemed as if there was a god after all. No one knew  his name was Ned, and he worked as a museum curator. No one knew his favorite color was tangerine, or that he had a crush on Nancy Shelzinger senior year and had asked her to prom, only to be turned down. No one knew this god had been beat up, pushed around, and lived the  unforgiving life of an introvert. But the last quarter of the human race survived. And they all thought the same thing, what are you?

But Ned only thrashed in his machine. It was too much for him, and all he could do was scream no. And the Earth simply took it. As people struggled to understand, all that was projected around the planet was of a lonely man sitting at his desk, surrounded by dusty modems. Ned was losing control. His survival processes were kicking in. His body was being forced to determine whether the machine was causing a problem for Ned or in reality Ned was in the way of the machine. Urine ran down a pants leg as the machine became actively aware of Ned’s body. However, by this time, the panic had taken effect. The last humans on Earth, inquisitive in nature, had wondered into the light of the projected man. Only to find the light soon became intensely white. So much, that it burned them alive. And then these fires began to consume the forests and cities of the Earth.

Ned struggled on, the last bit of his life, slowly being taken by a thing larger than him. By a force he could not have predicted.  As the great lights razed Earth into a desert world, Ned felt the basement flood with heat. His last moment as the last human, and the only god, he reached out with his mind, asking the machine whether there was anything he could have ever done. Blood leaked from Ned’s ear. Sweat pooled. The silence had fallen. The machine spoke, using no words but a primal utterance.

“Maybe.”

A grandfather clock gonged twelve times in a corner. It was 2011. Ned was dead.

The eccentric revealing his tricks above is Joseph Dunninger. He was the “Master Mind of Mental Radio”, “The Mastermind of Modern Mystery”, and simply “The Amazing Dunninger”. A  man who credited his acts to neither magic nor the supernatural, Dunninger none the less became a wealthy man. His friends and employers were populated by celebrity; Babe Ruth, the Duke of Windsor, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, and freaking Thomas Edison too.

Harry Houdini was one of these popular friends. Houdini had a fight to pick with the spiritualists. These were men claiming they could talk to the dead, faith heal, or do anything by a higher power. He took every chance he could to show his audience that this was not so. Dunninger admired this trait and became another magic man who played the friendly skeptic. Revealing tricks and calling himself a “mentalist”, he joined Houdini in a class of new magicians. Men who claimed no higher power. Men who openly admitted it’s all a trick. Denninger questioned on the nature of his powers, replied:

“I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a thought-reader. If a man comes up to me and hits me in the eye, I don’t have to be a mind-reader to know his thoughts; he dislikes me.”

-From James Randi Educational Foundation An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

Now, both of them are dead. Not surprisingly, spiritualists don’t hear them say anything. But, if they did, it would probably be something like, “Hey. This is pretty ironic, don’t you think?“. To which the spiritualist would most likely shrug, and disregard it as the side-effect of constantly wearing a bejeweled turban.

However, their voices are still not dead to one man.  “The Amazing Kreskin” has a creed carbon copied from those now corpsed conjurers. He is a mentalist, a disbeliever, and quite wealthy. His original name was George Joseph Kresge Jr., but legally changed it to “The Amazing Kreskin” in order to better suit his career. He has made some predictions for 2011. And a Target commercial.  Never mind the advert, watch the predictions (would embed it, but AOL html is pure hatred to wordpress).

I‘m most provoked by his last comment regarding the internet.

“There’s an excitement in learning new things. And I’m worried, cus I can foresee that we’re going to become indulged by something Einstein worried about. That, some day, man would have infinite information instantly by pressing a button. What a nightmare! Because you know what it tends to do? Stifle the most important tool that we have: the imagination.”

-The Amazing Kreskin

Hm. There’s a big idea. I think he might be right. Assuming by information, Einstein is including ShoopDaWoop, ROFLcopter, and keyboard cat. Not that I don’t enjoy them…

-

-

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Tune in tomorrow for my 2011 prophecy. Tune in next week for my response to this Patton Oswalt article that is upsetting the nerd lords (and is also kind of related to the Einstein paraphrase Kreskin thing).

This continues a short story which now has its own page.

Smidge was unaccustomed to this style of communication, but was aware in other towns it identified Blue as a powerful man.
To him it was as Novel as acting in a singing cowboy film. The moment caused Smidge to chuckle.

“Ooo! Ooo! Ooooo! Hawoo!” gasped the wind bag.

“Tell me, Mr. Blue… What do you know about our town?”

I‘ve got plans tonight. It is Festivus after all. So, my post will be another blurb about something I like lately.

J Shrogen- Jahamaricana; Opposite < This song. This artist, too. He’s doing some interesting things in life involving global warming research, travel, and humanitarian acts.

Yup.

You should have seen the first draft.

< MattSmithsHair.tumblr.com

The site is dedicated to Matt Smith. He is the actor who fantastically portrays the eleventh doctor in Dr. Who. If  you don’t know what Doctor Who is, then you are a failure at everything and you do not even deserve to perform even the lowest functions of life.      To better yourself, you should click these links:  Official BBC Dr. Who Web-Home + A Brit Explains Doctor Who Better Than I +  They Also Make Pretty Good Fun of It + Craig Ferguson’s Interview with the Doctor + Some Actual Dr. Who + You Don’t Want to Click This

Great, now that it’s just us adults speaking, let me say a few words:

MattSmithsHair.tumblr.com is a weird old place where people discuss his hair. They post all kinds of Doctor Who wonder, but mostly they praise the area on his dome they adoringly dote the “Teak“. Once Steven Moffat, the head writer of Doctor Who, was asked what he thought of the tumblr.

He replied: Well, you see, these people just need some form of relationship in their lives. Go on a date, in the name of mercy! [Laughs] Oh, I’m so mad. Anyway, you were saying?

The blog being mentioned, and rejected as a virtual space filler in the hole of their  hearts, by a Doctor Who power? The blog spun into peril. The incident was named “moffgate” and there is a little piece of the site dedicated to it. I think it is all silly and wonderful. I suggest it. I even give it the title as the blog’s Website of the Month (which isn’t a real thing, unless it becomes one). Congrats you guys.