Perfect Timing

I could have gotten more NaNoWriMo in today, but I wrote some setting stuff for Other//half instead, in an attempt to work out what my 4-page comic is going to be (retroactively: was already,) as part of the comic book workshop showcase book. I think I know, there's something I did on my mission or just after it that would fit perfectly in four pages, but the notes for that are at home. Luckily I'll be heading there in a couple of days, eh?

The writing I did do today though, well I did finish off section 14 of my outline TTDECBA-wise, but I meant the writing for the Other//half project: the sheer nature of the technological advancements that would need to have taken place by the time the main plot is set, it's rife with political conflict and interesting story possibilities. That's why I said I wrote some "setting stuff," today, instead of "backstory" or "worldbuilding." It's been over five years since I first mentioned it, but the future world of Other//half really would be a killer setting for an RPG, with so many intriguing campaigns able to take place any number of places along the world's timeline.

As far as NaNoWriMo does go, I'm just about 3,000 words behind from where I need to be average-wordcount-per-day-wise. Thanksgiving is on the way, though, and good thing too, like I said-- within 72 hours of writing this, I'll be in a car, on a long trip home with almost nothing to do. 

Minor spoilers, but looking at the outline, the scene I'm going to be on by then will be an auction scene and the lead-up to a heist, the execution of which takes up much of part 6 (I just finished part 4.) So we'll see how I handle that.

Also, I'm turning 26 tomorrow. It being past midnight in this timezone as I finish this post. I just realized this. Which means hopefully I'll get some birthday money, I'm not sure if I'm too old for that, but seriously I tried logging in/signing up for the online bank card thing with the new plasma debit card, and I can't get past the ReCaptcha. Maybe I could, attach the number to my PayPal, and send the money to myself? Anyway, if I am getting money tomorrow, then it truly is a time for thanksgiving, because, look at all this fortunate timing.

Chili Jr

I guess I still haven't told you the story of last chili cook-off. It's not the only thing I promised to tell you about but haven't got around to, so we'll just put a dog-ear in that for now. What matters for today's post is, there was another one. Another chili cook-off, this afternoon.

I got third place. Made the same chili, basically, as I'd made last time, so I knew it would place, or at least suspected it would (it tying for first last time.) It being third just meant it was called first, which means the suspense was least, so I'm thrilled. My prize, $50 off of rent for next semester, nets me a $25 value after spending about $25 on ingredients. Hold on, I've got my receipt right here... $19.32, spent on ingredients, not counting tax, also providing me with a good meal or two's worth of leftovers.

I'd said I wasn't going to be buying anything else this month, but I technically have $45 more this month after paying tithing, if I'm able to donate plasma both Monday and Thursday of the week after Thanksgiving. I tapped into that fact to pay for ingredients: $45 is more than the $41.71/$41.62 of the budget I'd had, which means that I still was able to use the old card to pay for groceries, knowing I'd just cover the difference in the due balance using the new card. 

Which would be cleaner, anyway, also, since I'd only have to figure out how to transfer money from my new card to pay for everything (both grocery cost of this Monday, and the tithing cost of the Monday after next,) instead of figuring out how to transfer money from the new one and the old one, and pooling from both (the old card to cover the price of last groceries and the new card to pay tithing due.) Now, I just have to pool the new card into my bank account, and cover the grocery cost AND the tithing money in the same transaction. Linking the old card up, only to need to use it for one transaction, that's not very efficient. This idea is way better. If it works.

And if it doesn't... birthday money will probably be in the mail on Monday?

Eritrea, Caesurae, & um Ordet again I guess

Doing some thinking, the slash marks do represent path parts in URLs. The double slash is restricted solely as a separator between scheme and authority parts, though, so there wouldn't be able to be an http://oth.er//half, just an http://oth.er/half, which just isn't the same. And though there is a .er, it belongs to a tiny African nation so small I've never seen it on any map before, located on the horn between Ethiopia and Somalia, which doesn't use its own top-level domain anyway and actually allegedly has an even worse media freedom track record than North Dang Korea. So that's a double-shot shut-down.

There are a lot of cool ways to pronounce "/" though, so maybe I'd be able to name the website after that instead. Virgula, Shilling, Solidus, the list goeth onward and onward. Caesura, kind of, if you want to indicated both slashes at the same time. That'd be dope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(punctuation)#Alternative_names
That hash mark in the above URL is also a great example of the introduction of a fragment identifier, as long as we're talking about punctuation allowed in URLs. Anyway.

Taylor, who runs comic book workshop, really likes the New 52, and the Man of Steel movie, and has been told he's somehow not a true comic book fan for doing so, even though he's like the biggest comic book nerd most of us will have the pleasure of knowing. He had a big "rant" about this at the beginning of the workshop yesterday evening, which I walked in late for (getting in right after it wrapped up) but which I picked up the details of later (I was a few minutes late because I was working on my novel and also waiting around for baby news, but, realizing it would have been my O/h launch date if not for the first thing, I set off for workshop in spite of the second thing. I've got my email on my phone anyway so I didn't really miss anything in that department.) 

Like what you like, basically the moral of the rant boiled down to. I'm not sure if what comes next is a caveat to that, or a separate point entirely.

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things, Joseph Smith said, speaking for the values of the whole church. The workshop part of the workshop wrapped up ten minutes early so Taylor could give a lesson on that- there are two sliding scales, one of morality and one of quality, and ideally the media we consume should be on the high end of both those scales, not just one or the other. 

It's part of what makes Ordet such a great movie, is how it's high-quality but also really boldly Christian, though I use the word with some reservations. Most Christian entertainment is, well, Christian entertainment, you see-- but Ordet is, more like, an excellent movie about Christians, that also happens to have one or two major miracles brought on from simple childlike faith.

Um yeah, just a couple follow-ups from yesterday's post, and I guess nothing really happened today. It rained all day. I don't know.

Nanowrimo, Mamihlapinatapai, & Ordet

Today's the day that Other//half would have gone up had I not decided to go into NaNoWriMo this year instead (no TTDECBA post up yesterday, sorry about that I was tired and didn't know where to go with the story, but it's all good now; I've put in some connective tissue. Which makes me, two days behind, again, after catching up and everything, but there's going to be a long car ride home for Thanksgiving so it's not like I'll have anything else to do.) Also, URLs don't allow the "/" symbol in them, just letters numbers and the minus/dash sign, so I'm not sure how I would have done/will do that.

I decided at least to go to Comic Book Workshop this evening. Make some token advancement toward O/h, and it would give me something better to do than wait as my incredibly pregnant sister-in-law burst. The Workshop is doing a thing, like a comic book showcase that participants in the workshop can submit to, four pages max of comic, per person; I know how to use InDesign so I volunteered to be the one to assemble the digital file for print. Submissions are due on the 30th, so it looks like I've got half a month to get something Other//half-related done after all. Maybe I won't have it done by Friday, but the deadline is after then, so I may as well have submitted my comic by the time Justice League rolls out, and I'm the only one who would know any different since I'd be submitting to myself anyway.

I'm the only one, that is, besides all of you, whom I've just told.

Umm, shoot, I may have to kill you all now.

Naw, just kidding. Anyway, after Comic Book Workshop, whom should I run into as I step out of the room at the end but Nick and, um Mrs Nick, from Art Night. Hm, I should know her name, she was the one I designed the cat-astronaut tattoo for in that tattoo debacle. Weahhll I'll think of it. Anyway, they were checking out the Wayne Kimball exhibit, and I invited them to art night. Apparently they weren't sure if it was happening that day, so they went to Carla's house and didn't see anyone over so they decided to check to Wayne Kimball exhibit out instead. I told them it was indeed going on that week, just not last week, and so we, after spending a bit more time checking out the Wayne Kimball exhibit until it closed because oh muh gursh he is such a good artist, set out to art night together.

I showed them the shortcut I use to get there, and talked about um myself, I guess, since that was the subject of conversation.

Upon arriving at Carla's house, the lights were on but nobody seemed to be in the dining room, which you can see through the window. There were three of us, and I don't think even Yaghan has a word for three people exchanging looks when all three of them want something done but nobody wants to do it, so I rang the doorbell. Even if there hadn't been going to be art night that night, three people had just shown up, and that would instigate art night in just a de facto sense.

It turns out that there had been going to be art night that night, just nobody showed up, so they decided to eat dinner instead. In the kitchen instead of the dining room, and lit by candles instead of electricity because it's fun, so it hadn't looked like anyone was in there when in fact there was.

We ate Oreos in the candlelight, and instead of doing art we decided to watch a foreign film instead, that an art night friend whom I had not met before, also named Nick, wanted to show everyone. It's called Ordet, which probably means "The Word" in Danish, you know, most likely.

Ordet is probably my favorite Danish film now. It shares a director with The Passion of Joan of Arc, and an actress with Babette's Feast, the two other Danish films I can name off the top of my head and have seen. There's a childbirth gone wrong as a central plot point, which is pretty harrowing even on days when your sister-in-law isn't going into labor. As a film it's allegedly slow-paced, but I watch a lot of movies like that so I really didn't notice. But it's an amazing film, and I know I say that about almost every movie I see, but I try to learn at least 5 things from every movie (since when? since now) and I learned nothing but good things from this one. Not just as a film, but as a work of art that has a lot to say about Christianity and morality and mortality and the nature of faith.

Oh also I made S with Rumble this morning. Not even S- or anything. I'm really not sure if I deserve it, since I died precisely one more time this time than I did the last time I made "just" S-, with my kill/death/assist score being otherwise the same, but~~.

MvM

Settling up my tithing debts, making sure the math is all squared away; there's a temple dedication this sunday you need to be a worthy temple recommend holder, and thus a full tithe payer, to watch. It would be nice to have money right now, but my patriarchal blessing specifically mentions how rad it is to pay tithing, so.

But man if I had money, I just found something fantastic to blow it on.

It's a cooperative board game called Mechs vs Minions, and I'd heard of it, seriously ranked 21 on Boardgamegeek, but it's also, um, like, super pricey. Like, up there with Gloomhaven, pricey. I'm only talking about it here instead of immediately adding it to my wishlist, it's so pricey. I could get 6 of those t-shirts I linked to yesterday, for the price of one of these games.

But it turns out that it's a League of Legends board game. And not just any League of Legends board game, but one more-or-less based around the champion I main as.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209010/mechs-vs-minions

But I, like, it blows my mind; the whole scenario behind the game is that it's academy training gone wrong, put on by my main man Rumble, training his fellow yordles how to fight in mech suits against minions the way he do. He doesn't come as a playable character, like no miniature of him as far as I know, but there's a campaign, and stuff to unlock, so I don't know. But the game does come with painted miniatures, of Ziggs, and Heimerdinger, and Tristana, and Corki, and you won't know those characters if you don't know your League, but I know those characters, and I love playing those characters (as bad as I am at some of them,) and I hate playing against those characters, and this is super exciting to know that this is a thing.

Also it's a programming game and that's one of my favorite game mechanics.

...

Uuum so actually never mind, good news, it's actually just super expensive on Amazon for some reason, must be a Wave 1 thing, and Wave 2 is available on the official Riot Games store for half of Amazon's price, here. BONUS. Still not going on my Amazon wishlist, but, you know. The link's right there if anybody's interested.

Allocated Monies, Allocated Problems

This morning I worked out exactly how much money I can spend between now and the end of the month, and still have enough money to pay my tithing- $41.71. The tithing thing is important; I haven't paid it in a solid year and a half and there's a tithing settlement party thing at church tomorrow, and so I really want to get on it, though I'd have a lot more money if I ignored it that doesn't seem like a good idea. So, $41.71.

The plasma center recently changed the way they pay, or not changed the way they pay they still load money onto a debit card they provide you, but they changed the service provider, which means that we got new cards, and the old cards can still be used until they run out of money, but they aren't having any new money loaded onto them. $41.71 is what I have on my old card. And that's the most it will ever have again. The new card, meanwhile, should have enough money on it to cover all the tithing I haven't paid, including the money I'm making on said new card itself, next Tuesday.

I went grocery shopping today, planning on just for the week but seeing enough bulk sale to make it instead for the whole rest of the month-- $41.62. Which sounds like I could afford it, with 9 cents to spare, but it's more complicated than that.

There's a 50 cent fee for using your card for grocery shopping, for some reason. Just groceries. Not at restaurants or whatever. So it may seem like I had 9 cents to spare, but I was actually 41 cents over, and had to... well, the 50 cent fee gets charged after the fact so it's not like it would have declined, and I've had a negative card balance before just that always gets resolved by the time I check it next, because in between shopping and when the fee was applied I'd gone and donated plasma again, so. I really don't know what would happen if it got stuck like that, so I had to fall back on my bank card which doesn't have a grocery fee.

There is a way to transfer money electronically from plasma debit card to bank balance, but I'm not sure if there's a fee for that. Still I think it'd be the best option to drain the bottom of that particular money smoothie. 

All that math neglects the minor fact anyway that the end of the month, still, there's a total of $4.50 additional that I need in my bank account, that I have to scrounge up somehow.

So for my birthday, a good gift would be $55ish (not counting the tithing I'd need to pay on top of that.) Or this shirt. Whichever. (Do grandma and grandpa still give money for birthdays? Man, maybe I didn't need to be so stingy. What a godsend.)

Regretty Over Spaghetti, Would Hit with a Machete Until It's Deady

I think I remember that regret. Finally. It's been, a sixth of a year. (Here.)

I get flashbacks sometimes, such as today when there was a choir at stake conference, to my mission, being in the choir, but playing hooky every time the Tab Choir was putting on a concert scheduled at the same time we were scheduled to go on. Regret!

In church they pretty much tell you that the world is crappy, which I never believed, but maybe it's true? Because there's a lot of messed-up folks in the world, or that is, people's lives are messed up. Nothing ever goes wrong in my family, and, well, to a worm in horseradish, the world is delicious delicious horseradish, so it's little wonder why I think life is good and people are good and dramaticies are aberrant. How the heck is my family so awesome, talented, good-looking and well-adjusted? Luck? Genes? Nurture? Nature? I don't know, but apparently living a suck-free life is an anomaly. 

I've a roommate venting over the phone to his mom right now about how poorly he's doing in classes and how his teachers are bad and how he doesn't have any money and how his computer's all messed up and, well I guess we all have different problems. Is the fact that I frequently feel urges to stab people to death, and that all my problems are apparently internal, less than his problems? A lot of the questions that plague me actually have to do with how much church tells me life sucks or whatever, and, well, I guess I don't have to mistrust the Church on the matter anymore, so. Yeah I guess his problems really do make mine any less.

I'm still skint broke though.

I think I need to sell some stuff. I've got like too much of it. Too much stuff. Also, not enough money, which is the real motivator. But my apartment is way cluttered, and like 80% of it is mine. For a while back there I was paranoid that I'm covetous, but the reason I buy things is because, maybe partly as the owner of a small business that hasn't really gone anywhere, I love patronizing business I think need it. I shop locally wherever I can, eat at local restaurants instead of chains, never pirate any copyrighted content, donate more than I can afford to chaos, that kind of thing. Charities, I mean. Not chaos. I don't want money for myself, which is good because it fulfills its own goals, makes it so that I have no money for myself (what am I going to do, save?, yeah like that contributes to the economy,) but that's bad because there are still expenses coming up. And the fact that I don't want money for myself doesn't mean that I don't want money. I just need, what, $500, for next semester's tuition...?

I do have $603.47 worth of Zootopia merchandise that I don't technically need... 

...which merely holds a candle to the $3,400 worth of printing equipment that I can't do anything with, which cost doesn't cover all the t-shirts I bought to print on, and the plastic bins I bought to store some of the equipment and shirts in besides. 

By this point, three quarters of a year later, I feel like the 100 Floors of Frights going all in on David Pumpkins. Somehow. By which I mean, it would surely have-- heck, I've explained my motivations already. 

I could cut back on that without giving up on this section of my life I've already poured a lot of time and consideration into. Somehow. It's kinda tough to admit when you've been overzealous, though.

Understanding God

I've got all these thoughts, I guess. It's, stake conference, I guess it hadn't been a month ago, during that time I had to stay home sick from church. Something about music? Music must be important for worship, but it's always baffled me why we sing hymns in church. Music doesn't seem a churchy thing.

They tell us not to be duplicitous, they tell us to be happy and friendly and kind and loving toward others, and all that, but they also expect us to be reverent in church. I don't understand that. I don't understand the religion I believe.

I guess every religion has some aspect you're not supposed to understand- most say that it's God, is the part that you're supposed to be mystified by, but God's a fairly straightforward guy, and I've never found him particularly mysterious. The part of my religion I don't understand isn't God, but His church itself.

Mystery!

One of my roommates had a couple of friends over last night, to crash for the night on their way from like Utah to like somewhere else. I left 6:45 in the morning, stepping outside to take photos of the moon- it was a most glorious half-moon, a perfectly bifurcated semicircle. I'd left the door open behind me, and one of the guys closed it- I turned around to find the door locked, but that was alright, since I'd been about to go anyway. The door having been left open may have been a mystery to the guys at first, but I know what happened because IT WAS ME.

After I left, though, around 6:30 it is reported (though of course it had to have been after then,) apparently someone came into the apartment? Someone... else. He had longish blond hair and glasses, and, the guys just figured it had been Ryan (whom they hadn't seen the night before, him having gone to bed early to get up in time for his janitorial shift.) Only, obviously, that ain't Ryan.

So we're locking the doors from now on. We hadn't been before. Except for apparently this morning- that's another part of the mystery.

Getting Lost, Going to the Movies, Buying All the Pies

I'm pretty sure there was an Indexing training thing this evening, showing you how to work with the new in-browser Indexing program FamilySearch has, but I tried to find the location where it was allegedly being held and the address didn't exist. So I decided to go to the movies instead, maybe catch Thor Ragnarok again and also get groceries, but I was so mixed up and lost after not finding the address, that I had to knock on a stranger's door (technically basement window) and get directions. And then trekking out in the direction they'd indicated (two lefts, with a mile and a half in between them!) he drove his truck up behind me (technically to my right) and offered me a ride.

And the time saved meant that I could catch the Thursday preview of Murder on the Orient Express instead.

That movie is, okay. There's a lot to admire about the cinematography, and the adaptation is pretty nice, and Kenneth Branagh kills it as Poirot like you don't even miss David Suchet at all, okay maybe a little bit because he's David Suchet, but still I hope there are more Branagh Poirot films, but, you know the ending, where it's like man you never would have seen it coming, I think, here's what I think, I think that they try to build up to that reveal, only instead of building up it kind of slows the movie down at the end, actually; but, the rest of the movie is awesome, just the ending is kind of boggy, which is why it's getting mixed reviews. A lot of the time I can't see why critics would dislike a movie (see: Monster Trucks, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, etc, etc, etc) but this time I can. But the boggy ending, that's the only part not great about the movie. The rest of it is, like, oh my gosh the cast is so awesome, Josh Gad kills it, like seriously Josh Gad I didn't see that coming but he's powerful in this, and even Johnny Depp kills it, like, he does actual real characterization in this movie instead of the "quirky" whatever he usually does.

And then he dies, because he's the corpse du jour. It happens.

And then I went shopping, and I bought, five, five pies at least. So many pies. More pies than you can shake a stick at. And, a pizza pie, too; counts as a pie.

FAQ time.

Q: can you even afford all that pie?
A: heck no.
Q: worth it?
A: heck yes.

Stuff I'm Good At?

Man, that League of Legends is really a jiving scene right now. Joint is jumpin', you know? Place is hoppin'. They've totally revamped the, system thing, and really streamlined a lot of things. IP and Blue Essence have been combined into just Blue Essence, and hexes and masteries have been combined into one and the same as well. And some other stuff.

Every update wipes the, replay, queue, thing; that is, they save the last 20 games you've played so that you can download them and watch them again should you choose, but they dump that data every time they update. And I'd had, like, four or five games I'd downloaded and meant to replay, which all got wiped. That's actually okay, though, because this new update is so tight.

Like, also, now, you can level up beyond level 30; you still earn XP after hitting that and everything. I'm maybe 75% of the way to level 31 already.

Also, maybe I wouldn't have brought up League at all (even though this new update really is super great) but for the fact that, hey check it out: I earned S- on Rumble again, just now. Which means that I'm halfway to getting him to level 6. And I also got a chest for my accomplishment. Though really I can't recall what was in it... probably a skin for a champion I don't own...

Yep, nothing at all trivial about my victories! (But seriously, it's one of the few things in life I'm capable of winning at. It's actually somewhat important to me.)

I'm thinking of posting up some of the Rumble victories I downloaded, replayed and recorded (like seriously there was this one game, oh man,) post those up with commentary onto my YouTube channel. That'd be some good, content... And maybe people will start subscribing to me then! Because I'm a filmmaker!

Shooting for Tony Boi this afternoon; there's one more scene I'm in after the one we shot today, and that's it (technically just a continuation of the same scene we shot today, like, we only shot half of it, but it requires fancy camerawork to complete the second half so they're holding off on it till they're ready.)

The cast and crew were waiting at the Cocoa Bean for the shoot to begin, taking place in the alley across the street, and there was a woman there, college-age I'm going to say, but already it looks like she was a professional artist. She had this illustration, and these digital mockups of what it would look like colored, that she was going over with some guy, doubtless her client. She was way good. She's probably an illustration major, even, because it looked like she had some serious technique. And I saw that and I thought, must be nice to have your degree in something you're actually good at.

But really, videography. Doing NaNoWriMo, coming up with these crazy and deep plot points on the fly, and everything, makes me realize that, though I guess I love filmmaking, and as far as graphic design goes printmaking, but-- and with today's shoot, how intensive a process filmmaking is to get right-- as good as I may or may not be at those things, writing is still what I'm best at. (Or, it makes me realize more fully; "we know the written word is your medium," Mom wrote in an email to me a few months into my mission, and that's stuck with me ever since.)

I don't know what this means, though. I mean, I announced only a couple of weeks ago that I'd be stepping up my filmmaking game, because that is apparently what I'm good at. So, what, script my YouTube videos out more fully? Sure.

...

The soup place is never open when you need it... seriously I've a hangry hankering for some soup right about now...

Seven List (Six List Part the Second)

A sequel post to everything discussed in this one? Well, you don't have a choice, that's what I'm doing. I don't have much interesting stuff to say about all of it, but I do about enough of it to make me choose this as my topic for the day.

1. Tony Boi shoots. There was one yesterday, and there will be one tomorrow, and another one on Friday. But none today. I could go to the temple today instead. I don't even want to say how long it's been.

2. Art Night. It would be tomorrow, but there's none this week. Even though we actually have real tattoo paper this time, and a plan set up to collaborate on an installation at the Spori together this semester.

3. Date this evening to see My Little Pony: The Movie. She actually really did like it a lot, which is good, because tonight I realized, going to the movies is a terrible date idea if your taste in movies is as, um, acquired, as mine is. I strongly suspect that the my Little Pony Movie is a good one, but I also strongly suspect that about, most movies I watch. Because they're the kinds of movies I'd watch in the first place maybe? Going to the movies isn't supposed to be that great a date idea in the first place, actually, because it's hardly a date, but it's super low pressure, plus you get to eat popcorn in a room both large and dark.

4. Pasted up flyers for being a freelance family historian tutor entity around the places that they allow flyers to be posted up, over the weekend. Churches are apparently not such places, not for for-profits at least. Oops. No calls yet. Or anything. I know I should be patient with it, but I need $501 for next semester's tuition, somehow, by next semester. It's at that sweet spot where it's too much for me to be able to cover without a job, but too little to get desperate over. I'm trying to make money on my own, but, well, I've illustrated previously my magical lack of ability to get hired for anything I apply for. I still want to spend next summer working up in Alaska, but next summer kind of takes place after this winter semester, funny thing, so it would only be good for maybe paying off student debt if I decide to go into debt to pay next semester's tuition, but like I said it's not enough to get desperate over, so.

5. This week's Writing Excuses is about serialized storytelling again. Brandon Sanderson has an interesting process of outlining a series. You can listen to him explain it if you want to. Yeah, not much to say about that. Though, I might as well talk about writing then, using this point as an excuse to do so. This also continues from my previous point, which is fortuitous. Because it involves making money. Dad asked me today/yesterday, via Facebook post comment, whether I've considered selling my writing work to short story magazines or anything. The short answer to that is yes, but the long answer is, Writers of the Future is an awesome competition, which I want to enter and hopefully win, but a requirement for entering is that you mustn't have made money off of your writing so far, open strictly to amateurs and not professionals. I do have a story I want to submit to them, but it's only outlined and not written. I don't think I'll be able to write it until after NaNoWriMo. Another great segue, because speaking of which...

6. NaNoWriMo stuff. I reported yesterday, how circumstances changed between my outline and my novel as written so far? Still kind of stuck, but I think I have a solution. You'll see if I succeed or fail on A Real Thing., I guess.

7. Also something about Fandomonium[!] that I'd forgot to mention is that there's always a League booth, with some game always playing live on TV, and now that I actually know what the heck would be going on, it's especially disappointing that it didn't happen this semester. It would have been a week ago today, had it gone on. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Actually a Lot of Alliteration

NaNoWriMo stuff. The outline I'm working off of for my book, section 6 is like crazy long and has so much stuff that happens in it (and that would need to happen in it, due to changes from the outline I made during writing) while section 7 is comprised entirely of one fight scene and its aftermath. Which fight might not even need to take place, now that I made further changes from the outline. But which, actually does still need to take place, because important character motivation later on? So, huh... 

But, section 6 being so long and section 7 being so short, I'm just, not breaking them cleanly, like I've done so far. I've tackled a great deal of section 6 in today's writing, and will tackle the last chunk of section 6 as well as section 7 somehow, tomorrow.

Also. I'm really starting to freak out, because there's something that I'd noticed, and today found out it goes deeper than I'd realized: in my book, like, everyone's name begins with the letter M.

Moone, the main ch-- protagonist. His first name is Finnegan, but I've only referred to him by his last name so far. And his middle name also starts with an M.

MacBeth. The psychic of the team. Starts with an M.

Cloud. The sorceress of the team. I refer to her by her last name mostly, but I do mention her first name a few times, Mushroom. 

All M's, right? And I'd realized all this before. But it goes deeper.

Gef. I call him Gef. But do you know his full name? Gef the talking Mongoose. Mongoose! It's even got a double-o like Moone! (Also, nice, I apparently inadvertently built a stealth pun into the main character's name.) Mushroom, Mushroom also has two o's in it...

And now in this chapter, our main man Moone is meeting... the Mothman.

I'm way paranoid now. There are a few characters who have no M's in their name... but I can only think of exactly two. Two is a few. But two is too few.

It's best to make character names distinctive, so that the audience can tell without having to think, who's who. Have your characters named similar things, it gets super confusing. Sometimes people do that deliberately, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but I think they did that in a movie once, but either way yes it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

But in my case I don't think it is, even, confusing, I think I get away with it, for another reason: most of these people's names, they're already words as it is. Nobody's about to confuse a mushroom for the moon, or at least get those words mixed up, even if they are somewhat similar on the surface, because they are both words already. I reckon.

November Legacy

I really don't have much heart to do the NaNoWriMo for the day. I don't need to, of course... but I'd need to make up for it later. And that'd be even worse. I'm just, I've got no idea how to get the pieces in place that the outline requires me to have. That's happened before, a couple of times already only four days in, and I discovery wrote and lined everything back up, but still...

Charterstone looks like the kind of game I'd either absolutely love or absolutely hate. It's got both worker placement and economic themes, and both of those are huge tossups for me; some of my all-time favorite and all-time least favorite board games are from those categories. That being said, with the experience being all, legacy, and playing with the same group of people and developing in-jokes and thematic justifications for your in-game actions, and everything, even if I'd dislike the game I think I'd enjoy the company quite a bit.

Also I'm not sure how the heck Season Two could even be a Pandemic game. I'm getting a SeaFall vibe off of it, but where do the diseases come in? Smallpox-infested blankets, that kind of thing? Holy crap, that's not only awesome, but way gutsy of them. If that, is how they'd do it. And it looks like it's paying off; people seem to be really giving it high marks...

I guess NaNoWriMo is like, a legacy game, in a sense. I could choose to skip writing for the day... but I'd have to pay the consequences on a later turn. And the choices that I make in writing the story affect the choices that I'll need to make later on...

NaNoWriMo: Legacy? Actually, it was two Novembers ago, when Alex and I played Pandemic Legacy Season 1...

Squeesomeness

I got an S- on Bard today. Ever since yesterday I need two S-'s or higher on Rumble in order to advance on my honor track for him. Or something. I am way better at League than I am at Overwatch. And, dang it I don't care if nobody plays it and they hardly support it, but I also kind of want to get into BattleBorn as well? It's, like, a cross between both. It has to be awesome....

It snowed some today. Um, also for some reason everyone today had a North Dakota accent? I mean, my roommates are from Alaska and, like someplace else but slipping into a Canadian accent sometimes, but like everyone else I encountered today, for a chunk there, had a northern sort of accent as well, as did I. The Fargoing has begun I guess?

Prince Pretzels was a featured background character in today's page of Furry Experience. I'm finally just what I've always wanted to be, a black guy! Um, ish. Also a white guy.

https://furryexperience.thecomicseries.com/comics/614#comicimage

Oh my gosh, I luv my tail so much. 

Also, gotta get me a hat like that...

Also speaking of FE there had been an art livestream thing tonight but it got postponed due to technical stoof, so I'm just going to have to have nothing on in the background while I write today's NaNoWriMo chapter.

Some Wins and Losses

Totally spaced the fact that art workshops are on Fridays. Start at 4:30; I would have been shopping at the time. They allegedly went over character design, from what I heard; I'd thought that they were going to do that last week but they talked about how to create raster art instead, and if there's one point of graphic design I actually have proficiency in it's raster art. I mean, I know the basics of character design, but they were also supposed to offer pointers on how to draw the same character consistently from different angles and over multiple times, and if there's one point of character design I need pointers on it's that. At least I'm not doing that webcomic launch this month like I'd planned... 

I somehow managed to get my NaNoWriMo wordcount in; it's a very exposition-heavy chapter. My outline has a lot of that exposition being done in sections one and two (i.e. the first chapter,) but writing the thing I couldn't find place for it so I put it all here, which would have been a short section otherwise. It's just the last few paragraphs that are outlined for this particular chapter.

I did get in the, technical wordcount for the day, but doing the math I actually need about 700 words more in order to be at 5,000 words, or three days or 10% of the way through the month. Eh, shouldn't be too hard.

Saw Thor today. The My Little Pony Movie is out of FatCats 6 and into Paramount 5 now, already; disappointing, because I couldn't bounce from one to the other. I chose some weird obscure matinee showing, and it was pretty full; the only movie theater I've seen more packed on opening day was non-matinee Zootopia (though even this one wasn't nearly as full as that; I had the entire first three rows to myself today.) Also, this evening was International Cinema Night; it was a, Scandinavian-Icelandic existential drama? Its name escapes me, but of course I enjoyed it very much.

Designed and printed out my flyers for my service as a family history trainer, seeing if I can make any money doing, something I've already been able to make money doing in the past. (I've got one cent left on my I-Card, after this print job.)

So yeah. I'll probably be able to, like, ask about character design next week's artist lab; I'm actually putting it into my schedule this time.

Nanner Rhymer

Yesterday I accomplished so much, but nothing I really planned to. Well, I did finish the latest tor.com post of Oathbringer, like I'd meant to but was too busy Halloweening on Halloween to get to on Tuesday, and I did finish Head Cheese which is probably one of the best things I've ever written, though I couldn't start my NaNoWriMo novel except plan a few things in my head. But really: 

• Went to Walmart to get new pants and to dump my piggy banks into a Coinstar kiosk to redeem for surcharge-free Amazon credit, but they were out of my size in the pants I wanted and the Coinstar was full and couldn't accept any coins more. 
• Was supposed to get some shooting in for Tony Boi, but the weather was dreadful so they canceled all shooting until next week. 
• Went to Art Night to make some art and swap some temporary tattoos, but the paper that the tats had been printed on turned out to be decal sticker paper instead accidentally, stickable to everything but human skin- and they hadn't printed out my particular design anyway. And there was just way too much Halloween goodie goodness to do any art.*

And yet, it all feels like the most productive day I've had in months.

I'm a meticulous outliner, but having to charge blindly into a story, knowing only the basic plot points that need to happen and working from point to point, going back and editing as needed in between writing bursts but not generally self-censoring during the writing process... there's something kind of (oh and I also won my League game for the day but lost my Overwatch rounds; laggy internet for the day left us no hope Overwatch-wise but my League team could sweep the floor with the enemy team in spite of my losing mid lane) magical about that, the way the words just come to me, like building a bridge as I cross it. 

That's the life I imagined for myself, thinking ahead at what I'd be, near the end of my mission. The life I knew I'd need to live, if I were to accomplish everything I knew I wanted to. Building a bridge as I crossed it, creating awesome well-composed and cohesive things, on the fly. It's a thrill, writing these first few chapters of the Anachronominion, the first book of the Things That Don't Even Come Back Around trilogy.**

And after doing all this writing, I'm already gaining awesome wordcount power. That whole chunk of text up there, till now? Took me like 5 minutes to write. Flaming guitar lick.

Reviewing my earlier short fiction, though, I'm a lot better than I remember. You guys, I think I may actually be a really good writer. That's encouraging. I actually made a lot of compromises with my latest spooky story, come to think of it; it's not bad as a first draft, but... First draft is the NaNoWriMo ideal, getting those words out I mean, but I posted that sucker as a completed story. May have to do some revisions, if that's not too dishonest of me.

As for now, though, cranking through the novel mostly, like a meat grinder. I so need to get groceries, and I've been hungry and fatigued all day-- lesson, lesson; eating is important because even if it takes time it makes everything else so much more productive.

It's also becoming increasingly obvious that I need to structure my writing time better. Cut it down to just a few hours a day, or something. There was an "Evening of Quiet Creativity" at the public library where I could get a lot of work done†, but with the idea of NaNoWriMo looming above my head all day, the knowledge that I could have been working on my novel instead of whatever else I was doing was more like a soft maroon migraine in my skull, than something fun and exciting like it should have been.

The At-a-Glance that I've got this year breaks down each day by the hour; it's been far too restrictive to have been useful to me generally, as apparently I need a to-do list but need to decide the order and scheduling of things on it myself. But this month it's been super useful. Not sure if today was quite as productive as yesterday; I made it through my first chapter, which was the one I had the least ideas/idea about, so.

Also! Signed up for classes class today; it looks like I'm finally going to be able to take advanced typography. The class that was so much of my downfall schedule-wise and everything, is going to be my final class here. Something kind of poetic about that.

Head Cheese

THE GROUND WAS LITTERED WITH HOOF FILINGS. Anthony Nathanson swept the ones in his direct vicinity away with his heel, considering the large caltrop-like clippings littering the ground, and recalling what little he knew about cattle. Ungulates walk on what to humans would be toenails, yes, and paring these down could be done in swathes. These lay here, thick and crusty, against the spongy brown, sun-dried ground of the caked layered manure. The part of the barn he'd entered at must have been a medical area of some sort.

The dusty sky was a pale golden yellow, tinged with red like an egg yolk that had had a blood vessel burst in it. Nathanson shielded himself with his hand against the sun, and surveyed the killing field before him, recessed about 20 feet into the ground at a sloped curve. He stood at the top of a cement ramp down into the pit, slick with dust and decorated with the odd plops of manure. Before him the large field was populated with toy-figure-sized workers and cattle, as well as odd-shaped lumps, nearly cattle shaped but just off enough to be disconcerting. No wonder why this place has been flagged as a safety violation, he thought. 

Four people had gone missing, without a trace, and he'd been sent to investigate. People drowned in manure pits all the time, he'd read- sure enough, to the west left of him, he could make out the lagoon-like silage pits. He would have been able to smell it from here, but the whole place smelled like that. A digestive tract, the whole place, with no difference between any one part of the alimentary canal. It was all the same here. What difference was it, then, to have the sewage entering your nose and mouth, making its way down to your lungs?

As Anthony pondered these things, he heard someone approach behind him. He turned. A well-tanned man with leathery skin and light tan coveralls humped up the incline from the pit, up the hard dirt ground to the right of the ramp, and walked amiably toward Anthony, right hand thrust forward for a shake. He accepted it, over the railing that ran around the ramp. 

"Detective Nathanson?" the man asked, still shaking Anthony's hand.

Anthony nodded curtly and withdrew his hand. Hopping the railing, he made identity confirmation of his own. "Mr Fowler?" 

"Call me Iggy," Fowler grinned. His teeth were small and evenly spaced. "I'm afraid we're going to have to walk-and-talk. Shall we go down?"

They descended, Anthony following Fowler. Anthony steadied himself with his left hand on the rail at his side, but Fowler needed no such handicap. As they walked into the sun-baked pit full of cattle and workers, Iggy describing the process in an unmodulated tone, audible above the thrumming din of the activity below.

"This here facility is what we like to call a holistic ranch. That means whole, as in, um, Whole Foods. You know the old uu--uu--uuhh--hh American Indian, Native American, um, process, proverb of using the whole buffalo?" Anthony waved his free hand. "Not sure if that's true. Saw a Far Side cartoon once- well anyway, that's what we do here at least. Leather, milk, bones, and meat. Meat especially. Intestinal skin is washed out and goes onto become sausage casings. These processes can be done with the corpses of any mammalian animal. Cattle are used because that's the animal that people are most comfortable with," Iggy explained. "We eat them all the time, drink their milk, and that's the only function they serve in society." 

They slowed as they reached the place where the plane leveled out. "You have any leads, in regards to what happened to those men?"

Anthony shrugged. "Figure they drowned in liquid fertilizer. Any idea if they'd have any reason to be over there?"

Iggy did the scratch-and-shrug, a classic sign of someone pretending to think. "We're not so sure that's it. If you're positive that that's what happened, we can rake the silage pit, but my bet is on the methane harvesters. Cattle produce an asston of methane, and we harvest that here. Squeeze out their guts like squeezing air from under a, laminated, bit of lamination. It's automated, mostly, but accessible. Breathe in a little of that an' you're toast."

Anthony nodded, doing the scratch-and-shrug himself. "But the fourth man who disappeared was an OSHA worker. You figure he'd know the protocols for entering a methane-rich environment. And it still doesn't explain what happened to the bodies."

Iggy, who had made as if he were going to walk on, turned back at this. "You do know what happens when methane catches fire, though, right?" 

Anthony was silent at this, so Iggy continued.

"It's a pit, a big, pit. Like a nuclear silo, you know? Blows up all the time. There's so much methane that comes through here. So much methane. I'm not sure why those three men only disappeared recently, with the OSHA guy come tumbling after, but smart money is, look there. DNA test the soot on the walls. I don't know."

Anthony nodded, Iggy seemed to relax, and they recommenced walking. They went further, closer to the workfield, where workers herded cattle through a complex maze of rails, gates, and open areas. Those workers, their faces curiously white, were still in the distance somewhat. Before them lay the almost-cow-shaped lumps that Anthony had seen from above. And as they walked forward, all at once, the identity of the lumps revealed itself.

The lumps were cow-shaped because they were cattle, or had been. The cattle had been split in half, bones all been popped out. Iggy led Anthony through, and they wove around the corpses: hollowed-out shells of cows, split in half like pistachios, the interiors emptied out leaving only the stiff felt-textured leather. The shells were far too thick to be just the leather- looking closer the meat itself was also intact, but molded over with brown fuzz, like the leather was a culture that grew to encompass the entirety of the corpse. Tawed, Iggy explained. Injected with salt or alum as a preservative. And then just left out in the sun, in the very fields they'd been slaughtered in. There was nothing intrinsically unhygienic about it.

The bones would go on to be ground up and made into gelatin; the rest of the shells, in this area at least, was dried out and turned into something that could function as both or either leather or jerky. Iggy gave a name for it, which Anthony tried to hold onto, though with frustration he found a few minutes later that he'd forgotten it. Leathermaking as a process, Iggy explained, usually involves stretching out the hide in the sun, applying a caustic agent and scraping the fat and meat off; this was an experimental process delivering good results. It all seemed rather strange to Nathanson, but the way Fowler carried on about it seemed to chide him that he wasn't the expert here.

Still, something seemed off. Something was nagging at him. Instead of turning to go back up to the sewage-methane area, Nathanson hung doggedly to Iggy's side as he went to oversee more work, walking to a new area, with swarms of workers. And things got stranger and stranger.

Here the workers themselves wore masks resembling bulls' skulls, the peaked nosey bits sticking out in the front like the beaked masks of renaissance-age plague doctors. Their coveralls here were dark, coarse, assembled from odd cuts of leather, as opposed to the denim coveralls Nathanson had seen the workers above wear. Their movement was odder, here, too. These were the men who slaughtered on a regular basis. As a detective Anthony saw death all the time, but how must it affect you, he thought, to see that much death, not only see it but participate in it, as a job? He looked back up to the workers' masked faces and shuddered in the Arizona heat. Those weren't masks, he realized. Those were real cattle skulls.

Something moved in the midst of the workers, as it traveled through the maze of rails. The workers prodded it along in the right direction, into one of the open areas right before where Nathanson and Fowler were standing. Something was odd about the way the bull moved. Blindly, drunkenly, stumbling this way and that, dancing like a puppet on strings to the zaps of the cattle prods on all sides of it. It entered a pen in front of a gate into the open area, and at first, for half of a second, Nathanson mistook it for one of the workers. All at once he realized what it was and why it had been moving so oddly.

"Its face is gone?" Nathanson asked, with as even a voice as he could muster.

"You ever hear of head cheese?" Iggy asked, a slight smirk to his tone.

Nathanson said nothing at this. "But why before death, why not wait till after you kill it?"

This time it was Fowler who said nothing. Fowler talked too much, usually. Didn't allow for any lulls in conversation. Nervous? Garrulous by nature? But now he was silent. Nathanson decided, from the way that he shied back when prodded about certain subjects, that he must have been hiding something. Methane explosion my a--

The bull burst the gates open, and charged forward blindly, and Nathanson could see it more clearly as it got closer. The face had been peeled off cleanly, bloodlessly, leaving only the white skull beneath, and ragged strips of flesh around the face. The only blood on the face pooled out from the eye sockets, where some meat still remained, mostly congealed and crusted over- the eyes themselves were gone, also taken out, and the sockets hollowed out like balled melons, leaving only their deepest recesses meaty. Blinded and faceless, the beast could only sway its head back and forth as it listened to its surroundings, flinching back and twitching at any brush against it. The white-skulled workers repositioned themselves around it.

What must it be thinking, Nathanson thought, staring hard at what was going on before him. What must that feel like. He should have been repulsed, but by this point he was numb.

The workers, working in tandem and in one swoop, lowered down a simple mechanical apparatus around the bull's head. Deftly, not touching any sides of the head until the sides touched the sides of the neck equally on both sides. Like a giant grotesque game of Operation. The apparatus looked like a giant cigar guillotine, with white red-stained plastic covering on the far part, and the cutting blade and metal exposed. The bull felt as its sides clamped around its neck, and threw its head up and down violently, flinging spittle-like flecks of blood from its sightless sockets and thick mucusy saliva from the open hole in its skull, above the mouth where the nose cartilage would have been.

A second later, it was all over- one of the workers flipped a release on his handlebar, and the blade sliced silently through the bull's thick neck. The guillotine lifted up and out with the same motion, and the bull fell with only a soft groan and a few spurts of curiously clear blood.

The head, still living, twitched with what little it had- the jaw clattered together as though cold, and the large rough tongue protruded thickly through the gap in the skull where the nose cartilage would have been, licking the caked dust of the velvety ground. With a final spasm, the jaw fell open and the tongue came to rest lolling out of the skull, empty eye sockets staring forward at nothing.

Further white-skulled workers, previously waiting out of the side, came with hooked poles, each pole manned by two workers, each pole grabbing a foot with its hooks. The corpse was lifted, rear legs higher into the air, the remainder of the blood drained out into a recessed basin at the side. Nathanson looked on all this with impassivity that surprised him; it was just too surreal to affect him beyond a slight pressure at the inside corners of his eyes.

He had to get out of here. Clear his head. He looked back up at the workers again, their thoughts impenetrable behind the empty eye sockets of their bulls' skulls. Amet, the Egyptian god of death. Had a bull's head. Or at least, that's how Anthony thought the myth went. How must it affect you, he thought again. How must it affect you.

He asked for the break room, and made his way to the area that the white-skulled workers indicated, a wide grey building made out of cinder blocks. He navigated through the halls until he found a place to rest.

Drained, Anthony slumped at a counter, and mentally reviewed the facts of the case. Three workers disappear, followed by the OSHA worker sent to investigate. No traces of where they went, or what happened to them. Fowler had suggested something about the methane pits, but there would have been no way that wouldn't have left any trace. Unless...

No part of the animal is wasted, Nathanson recalled. Every part is used, eaten up... without a trace. Nathanson jerked to sobriety as the full implication of the idea hit him. These processes can be done with the corpses of any mammalian animal. 

No. He had to get out of there. As soon as he'd started to panic, though, Anthony heard an alarm sound, somewhere distant. Great. They must have been watching him, knew he was onto them. The way they must have done to the OSHA worker.

He knew why they'd kill and butcher the OSHA worker, for having realized what was going on, but what had the first three workers done to deserve the fate? Nathanson tried to reason it out as he ran. Not out that door, they'd be expecting that. He turned a corner. There must have been some accident, Nathanson decided, that they tried to cover up, and--

Bursting through the exit, Nathanson shrunk back. Before him, a few yards away and walking in his direction, were three workers, one leading the others. At first it looked like their faces had been peeled off and turned into head cheese like the bull's face had been, but Nathanson realized the truth as soon as he thought about it. Instead of wearing cow skulls like masks, they were wearing the front halves of human skulls. And instead of dark strips of leather, their coveralls were made of tan strips. 

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Anthony recognized the gait and body dimensions of the lead figure as being Iggy Fowler's. The figures continued to approach him.

No. Anthony slammed the door shut, desperately scrambling to lock the door, but the lights turned off behind him, sending the world into pitch blackness. There were three figures out there, Anthony realized, and four people missing. He felt something grab his shoulders roughly. Fingers wrap around his neck. He tried to struggle as his windpipe was squeezed shut, but he felt himself grow weaker and weaker. Until he lost consciousness entirely.

...

Anthony woke up. But as he tried opening his eyes, he felt no eyes to open. It was like a bad dream, or being awake while still under sleep paralysis, but Anthony suspected the real reason. He stumbled out over the ground, blinded, rough electrical shocks prodding him on from both sides. No. No, no, no. He reached up to his face- rough and slimy, and further in than it should have been. A face that didn't feel back. A face that wasn't there. Hands trembling, he reached his fingers up to his eyes, and into his sockets. He could feel the squishy parts of the backs of what were once his eyes. Feel a slight pressure there. No no no NO no no no. He felt around, realized he had been led into a pen of some sort. Realized the gate was in front of him. Realized what was about to happen next. No. Found the latch to open the gate. Flipped it. Ran. 

But he felt something snag around his ankle, and the something around each of his wrists. And then around his head, and down to his neck.

And, as the apparatus closed around his neck, but before the blade came slicing through it, a strange thought passed through Anthony's mind. The first coherent thought ever since his coming to. His last thought at all.

So, Anthony thought. This is what this feels like.

Hallowpost

I needed a few hours to polish off my story (oh man it's gross and gory and creepy and awesome) but the Treehouse of Horror marathon on FXX is STILL GOING ON like seriously they've been doing it for almost thirty years so I've just been watching TV for 15 straight hours (though it's not the only thing I've been doing) and also I haven't had nearly enough candy today like all I had was one Reese's three Snickers three Whoppers a mini cookies n' creme Hershey's and that's it; I can remember all the candy I've eaten today off the top of my head and it's like so disappointing, and, candy, man.

So I'll be posting up my Halloween short story tomorrow? And also since I'm writing tomorrow a bit anyway, I'll guess I'll make the announcement now that I will be attempting NaNoWriMo finally this year; this does prevent me from that Other//half preparation and launch that I'd planned... Maybe I'll reset the deadline to the next Avengers movie, instead of the Justice League movie? Or, you know, the Avengers movie after that... I don't know when I'll be ready for anything. Though I think I'm ready to start a novel now.

Also I've got a page up, archiving in one convenient place all my Halloween shorts so far:

http://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/p/spooky-short-story-archive.html

Spooky Story 2017

I don't get nightmares. I fear very little in this world-- being trapped out on the open ocean, being lost in a pitch-black cave, my own inadequacies, and sometimes there are caves in my dreams, and sometimes there are inadequacies in my dreams-- but I've only ever had one nightmare in my life, back when I was around 3 or 4 years old, still in my trundle bed with the cowboy-themed bedsheets.

It consisted of a giant boxen Power Ranger, or Zord of some sort, standing in front of a moody atmospheric sky, and very very slowly making poses.

That's it, that's the entire dream; for some reason it was terrifying-- but that's the only nightmare I've had in my life.

I get scared in my dreams sometimes, but not really terrified, not enough to classify them as nightmares. 

About halfway through the month this month, still uncertain of what my scary short story for Halloween would be this year, I had a dream. 

And it terrified me.

I hope you're up for it. You probably aren't. Either way, it's called, HEAD CHEESE.

Six List

1. We'd planned to shoot some Tony Boi this evening, but Ben, our lead, only arrived right when it was getting too dark to shoot. We snapped some photos for posters and promos instead. Got some really really dope images out of that, with the dark blue of the sky and the red and the green of the neon in the alley. They look great. Tony Boi has yet to have any official social media presence, as we're building up such promotional materials, is apparently what we're doing.

2. Making a tattoo for Wednesday art night (we're designing and printing temporary tattoos for each other.) The designs are actually due by Monday, so that they can all be printed by then; here's mine:

3. Had a dream the night before last, Dad told me to get a girlfriend. ??? So okay then. I'm only going to be here one and a half more semesters, so no long-term pressures or anything. I'mma just be axin ladies out right and left, takin em to go see the My Little Pony movie, and covering the popcorn and soda myself going out to get the refills because I've already seen it.

4. I wrote the day before yesterday about holding myself back or whatever, and I didn't really write about the intended follow-up. I don't need to work some office job or at any restaurants; I've applied for such jobs and never got a word back, so it's time to take a back door, and freelance at something I'm actually good at. There was a Sunday school lesson at church today about genealogy and how important family history is, but then a Sunday school lesson about giving and not expecting anything in return, so I'm kind of torn; I had been going to go around offering my services as a family historian or something, posting up flyers on church bulletin boards around, charging by the hour like I've done before...

5. Listened to last week's Writing Excuses, Serialized Storytelling, this afternoon- there's a lot of writing advice out there, truly really helpful and everything, on how to structure novels and self-contained works, but I've been trying to find out how to structure my webcomic (and man I'm not sure I'm ready, my writing process is very percolative, I can't rush plot points I just can't); the podcast today being on exactly what I've been trying to figure out, was extremely helpful.

6. And then I refreshed the page, and the latest Writing Excuses is there: this week's episode is a primer on NaNoWriMo, and, man I'd forgotten that was coming up, it's right here on our doorstep, 50,000 words in 30 days, maybe I'll actually do that this year, maybe I'm ready to get through TTDECBA this year finally, I've been meaning to post there lately...

7. EDIT: Seventh thing I just remembered; usually Fall semester has Fandomonium[!] on Halloween, but it looks like Fandomonium[!] isn't going on at all this year, as nobody stepped up to lead it or something. Shame; I've been really meaning to have a booth showing off all my Zootopia swag, and this semester was the perfect opportunity to do so...