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I’ve created a monster. An awesome awesome monster.

It seems that the good people of Procrastination Productions got word of my work on the greatest literary masterpiece known to man – Uncle Fuzzies Bunny Cuddle Farm. and have already bought the option to film it.

_{*cough*millions*cough*}

Today they’ve released the first teaser poster -

They’ve also released a synopsis of the film. At first I was a little upset that they seemed to be giving away a lot of the story but it doesn’t really spoil too much of the surprises and there’s still plenty more to keep everyone watching.

Here it is –

In a post-apocalyptic future, a young sexy group of sexy survivors from the first wave of zombie attacks wash ashore on a remote tropical island. The group – A famous doctor, an amateur underwear model, a teenaged computer-whiz and a hip young television reporter – take refuge in an old abandoned fully furnished cottage.

Unbeknownst to the young sexy group, the remote tropical island is the home of a secret genetic research lab run by the infamous Dr Arnold Fuzzington. In an attempt to save humanity, the eccentric scientist has genetically recreated the recently extinct bunny as an alternate food source for the zombies… But before he can finish he needs some human guinea pigs for product testing…

To make matters worse for the sexy young survivors a bunch of the rabid ravenous rabbits, led by a super-smart cottontail, escape from their cages and begin hunting the group down, one by one, to satisfy their new genetically altered carnivorous cravings.

The sexy young group try to make their sexy getaway from the crazy mad scientist and the blood-thirsty bunnies by breaking out of the laboratory and heading into the islands massive jungle…

But what awaits them in the jungle is much more terrifying then they ever imagined.

Who will survive Uncle Fuzzies Bunny Cuddle Farm?

Phineas Black, Reginald P Winterbottom and Thadeus Dinsmore have all signed on to the film.

I’m especially excited about having someone like Reginald P Winterbottom starring in the movie. I think he’s perfect for the role of Mitchel Mitchelson, the wise Janitor who appears from nowhere to fill the group in on the history of the island and the doom that awaits them.

I must admit, I’m a little awestruck around him and can’t wait to start filming. ‘The Archer Affair’ is one of my all time favourites – “You want a puppy? You want a puppy? You can’t handle a puppy!”

Filming will begin shortly after the release/immediate success of the book in September 2012 and should be showing in your local cinema somewhere around 2013-2014 Christmas period.

I’ve created a monster. An awesome awesome monster. And now I have to write the bastard…

AKA – A long post about what I’ve been up to lately…

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it looks as though I may not complete NaNoWriMo again this year.

I say “may” because there is still time left, and if I were to write just over 5000 words per day for the next week I might finish… Though a daily word target like that is highly unlikely to be hit around here. I haven’t even finished cleaning my place yet.

But I have come up with a list of ways to NOT get it finished. Here is the top ten things to do if you don’t want to finish NaNoWriMo this year.

Number Ten – Procrastinate.

…Obviously. Putting things off is a great way to not get things done and there are so many ways in which to do this.

A few personal favourites include watching Tv, cleaning, twittering, or even just going for a walk. All of these are a great way to push work away for a good chunk of time.

When all else fails, I like to use coffee as an excuse to put things off for a few minutes. This works well as I love my coffee and it sounds quite reasonable to say “I’ll get started right after a coffee”

Number Nine – Quit your job.

This sounds like a good idea, and in most ways it is.

But it won’t help you if you’re looking for more time to write. With so much extra time there is no longer any urgency to get any of it done. There is always time to do things later, you have all day tomorrow to catch up and next week you can work extra hard all week to make up for what you didn’t do this week.

I quit my job a few weeks ago. For other reasons, not to make time for writing, but I did think that with all that extra time and with a little tenacity I might be able to get a lot done.

That was until I…

Number Eight – Burn your hand

A great way to keep yourself from writing is to incapacitate yourself. And what could be more laborious and slow than typing with one hand? I mean apart from typing with no hands.

Nothing. Exactly.

So that’s what I did.

This happened to me one night while saving a box of kittens from a burning building, I was set upon by a group of ninjas and robots… and robot ninjas. They were all packing microwave meals, overcooked and only seconds out of the microwave. They demanded the box of kittens and when I didn’t comply they began throwing the meals at me. I managed to dodge most of them except one, which gave me second degree burns on the fingers and palm of my left hand.

I swear all that is true… Except the building, the kittens, the ninjas, the robots and the robot ninjas.

Number Seven – Watch Television.

I know I put this under number ten as a form of procrastination but there are two reasons that it needs it’s own spot.

For one, Television is the enemy of creativity. It really is.

Just by having it on you’re slowing yourself down, but added to that it dulls the creative process. I’ve always found that days in which I watch less television, I get alot more (and better) work done. Unfortunately television works much like any addiction in that unless you cut yourself off from it completely, including all access to it, then it will slowly and inevitably creep back into your life.

And I’m not ready to do that just yet.

Maybe after this season of Dollhouse has finished…

And the second reason this got it’s own entry – I accidentally miscounted and when I realised I didn’t have something for seven this was the first thing I came up with.

Number Six – Get Tattoed

A great way to spend a sunday afternoon, having needles stuck in your arm and/or leg and leaving deposits of ink there. Ah, good times.

Got two done myself last week… After six years since my last tattoo, I finally got around to getting some new ones.

And if you wanted to waste a little more time you can do what I did and walk to the tattoo parlor. Then, once the tattooing is done, you can find out that you’re in some backwards place that doesn’t have eftpos and so you’ll need to spend some more time walking to the shopping centre down the road. All in all, I spent about an hour and a half walking that day.

** A haircut could be substituted here if you prefer not to get tattooed… Or you can do what I did and get a haircut aswell.

Number Five – Buy a new computer

Who doesn’t like a new toy? Especially a nice big-ass super-expensive one like this –

This is my spanky new bitchin’ all-in-one touchscreen multimedia high definition yada yada computer. Ain’t she sweet? The touch screen is fun to play with. It’s heaps big monitor-wise and it’s all new and pretty.

The best thing about new toys like this?

You can spend all day just setting it up. Installing all your favourite programs and getting all the settings to how you like them and so on. I’m still not finished doing all that.

Number Four – Have a personal life

I’ve been trying this out lately. Doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve learned that there is nothing better to get in the way of writing than to have a personal life. Especially one as disasterous as mine.

People lie, people betray, people confuse and humiliate, people leave voids and people leave sorrow.

And you can’t control them or understand them like you do the characters you’re writing.

Bastards.

Number Three – Work on plot

Stop and think about your plot. Are things flowing as you want them too? Is the right information revealed at the right stage? Which scene goes next? Is the story moving to slow? Or too fast? And so on…

This is a great wait to slow down your writing. And if you really think about it, it may stop you altogether.

I did this. I decided to do a bit of plot planning, starting with listing all the scenes/elements that I wanted in my story. I came up with a list of 105 things, and it’s still growing… much more slowly now but still it’s growing.

Here’s a wordle of the list -

(because I haven’t posted a wordle in a while)

Anyway, working on the plot always seems to lead to –

Number Two – Starting from scratch.

Yeah, I’ve started to do this…

Well, I will when I’ve finished with everything else on this list. I’m still working on the plot a bit more. I’m going to put all of the elements/scenes that I listed in order and then write more on each one… and all the rest of it. You know how plotting is.

Writing is like eating soup with a fork, only you keep missing the bowl and stabbing yourself in the forehead.

Number One –

Instead of writing the story, write a top ten list about how to fail at writing the story.

To be fair, it’s not exactly a top ten list. It’s more of a ‘first ten things I thought of that I’ve been doing lately instead of working on NaNoWriMo’ list…

There are probably more that I could think of but I have some writing to do… So I’m going for a nap now.

Once upon a time, in a land before Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, there lived a young nerd. His afternoon’s upon returning from high school were spent watching Monkey Magic, TinTin and to play on his computer.

One state of the art 486 with a VGA Monitor, 256kb memory and a massive 20mb hard drive, loaded with the latest DOS 6.2. Swoit!

Now, back in this magical time, computer games were much different to the ones we know and tolerate today. The games in those times favored logical thinking, puzzle solving skills and an appreciation for good story telling that sadly gave way to today’s mash the buttons till you get the tops score type games.

The pinnacle of these “Point and Click” games, in the young nerds opinion, were a series of satirical space games known as Space Quest and a Pirate based adventure known as The Secret of Monkey Island. (Amongst many others, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

On any given afternoon you’d find this young nerd playing these games, pulling his hair out at the puzzles, laughing at the jokes, Saving often, restoring after being killed, and having an all round good time.

And how do I know this?

Because I was that nerd.

So, here is the point when I get to my… point.

If you recall, in my last post I mentioned something about “lovin’ the shit out of Treasure Island”

While reading it though, I also got to reminiscing about The Secret of Monkey Island. Remembering those afternoons trying to pass the three tests to become a pirate and fighting the ghost of LeChuck in the process.

I decided to do a little internetting and what do i find?

Not only has there been a new episodic continuation of the series, which is all fine and dandy, but there has been a remake of the original game, which has apparently stuck to the 2d platform, point and click style that all us nerds from those days know and love. Basically just upgrading the graphics and adding voice to replace the old text.

The game has been aptly titled “Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition”

And, apparently, it was released as recently as a month ago. Awesome Timing, right!!!

I guess I can no longer say “They don’t make computer games like they used to” if they go around making the games that they used to.

Kinda thing.

Anyways, here’s the website – Click Here. Check it out and enjoy muthafukkahs!

P.s. Crossed fingers someone will do Space Quest next.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is a question that many writers are asked… Apparently.

And I hear them sigh at the “Stupid question” and attempt to explain that ideas aren’t like shoes. There isn’t a particular store that the writer goes to and picks up a new pair of ideas because they liked the strap, or their old pair of ideas got worn out from running away from crazed fans like in a Beatles music video.

But here is the real truth.

Each and every one of them do, in fact, have a secret place where they get their ideas. They just don’t want to tell you about it because you are very untrustworthy and might pilfer their ideas.

But you wouldn’t do that would you?

No.

So I’m going to tell you my big secret. Just between you and me. Where do I get my ideas? I’ll tell you.

In my backyard, underneath an old tree is a two hundred year old brick lined water well. Unbeknownst to all but me, this is no ordinary two hundred year old well centred in a fifteen year old suburb. It is a portal to a magical world full of magical creatures such as penguins who practice various forms of martial arts, bunnies who are all named Sebastian but are never confused as to who you’re talking to and horses who change colour on impact… to name just a few.

As you exit the portal you’ll find yourself in a vast forest, look around for a large yellow rock shaped like Keanu Reeves. Just next to that you’ll see a large tree with a knot in it. If you ask the tree which direction you should walk in then… Well, the squirrels will all laugh at you. Trees don’t talk. Stupid.

The squirrels, on the other hand, will be very helpful in directing you where to go. However, they won’t listen to you at all if you don’t talk in rhyme. Here is one that I have memorised -

Squirrel, Squirrel, Show me the way
To the place where ideas erupt
To the place where I can find my muse
And finally smack my bitch up.

The squirrels will take you through the forest to a clearing where stands a house built out of old Philip K Dick books. Open up the Ubik door and step inside. They serve a lovely brunch for only $4.95, and also – they serve their breakfast menu all day. That’s right, It’s a magical world. (P.s. Try the Palmer Eldritch. It’s to die for!)

After you have finished your meal and have exited in style through the bathroom window, head down the hill to the lake where the penguins swim and do tai chi. Hire a canoe from the old man with a corn cob pipe and head out across the lake. Just a note: Keep an eye out for sea monsters.

Once on the other side of the lake you’ll find yourself in a meadow of beautiful daffodils. Head to the northern most part of the meadow where it begins to raise toward the snow capped mountains. There you will find a two hundred year old brick lined water well underneath an old tree. Now, this is no ordinary two hundred year old well centred in a magical world full of creatures such as penguins who practice martial arts, bunnies who are all named Sebastian and horses who change colour on impact…

It is, in fact, a magical well. A magical well that holds every idea imaginable.

And that is where my ideas come from.

First it was from the air and now they attack from the ground. They planned a stealthy ground attack this time, sending a blue-tongued lizard to approach quietly from the jungles of my front yard.

It is a common fallacy that blue-tongued lizards are named so because of the colour of their tongues. While it is true that their tongue’s are blue this was actually caused by a miscalculation in a genetics laboratory in 1969 by Dr. Louis Zahur, long after they had already been given the name. Blue-tongued lizards were in fact named so for their propensity to curse a blue-streak.

This is actually how I came to discover one such evil beast lurking in my garden, preparing for his attack.

I was just sitting down, enjoying the latest episode of a repeat show that was canceled before it was made, when I heard from the yard – “God damn, sonofabitch!”. I paused the tv and went to investigate, but saw nothing. Then I heard “Mother Bitch!!” and “Son of a Crack Ho!”

And then I knew what it was. There was only one evil beast that was capable of such profanity and that was the dreaded Blue-Tongued Lizard…

And there is only one way to defeat a blue-tongued lizard. You have to out-curse him. For every swear word and insult about how fat yo’ mama is, you need to come right back with a crack about his mothers infidelity or an insult so degrading that he would have no way of redeeming himself in the eyes of his peers.

He yelled up to me in a voice not unlike Grandpa Simpson, “Hey you! Shit-for-a-face! What do you think you’re doing treatin’ a bird that way?”

(the lizard was referring to the encounter I had with a kingfisher less than a fortnight ago – Seen Here)

I yelled back, “Your mother said she enjoyed it!”

“Bitch, Leave my mother out of this!” He shouted back, “and once we find out who yours is, I’ll do the same!”

I came back at him with a quick, “Yo mama’s so hairy the only language she understands his wookie!”

To which he replied, “Yo mama’s such a bitch when I tell her to sit, she does… and then expects a treat!”

“You’re losing it, you bastard!” I yelled to the demon lizard in the dirt.

“Yeah well, Yo mama’s an astronaut!” It yelled before disappearing back into the jungle of my front yard.

I don’t think this is the last attack I’ll receive from the animal kingdom, but thus far it’s two-nil… so I say Bring it on!

It was a night like most others. I was somewhere between relaxing on the couch and checking the internets for updates (I have quite a bad case of update-itis, which means I must check the internets every thirteen minutes and eighteen seconds without fail). When, suddenly, I was viciously attacked by a wild animal! It darted into my room in a flurry of wings and squawks and perched itself in an attack position on my dvd shelves.

This beast is known as the Kingfisher. Named so because in the middle ages these birds would sit in trees and dangle large steaks attached to thin wire by hooks. They would wait for a hungry king to pass by and… well the rest is history.

In modern times, however, the Kingfisher is known for having poisonous darts which it shoots from its long beak and microbombs which it disperses from it’s wings as it passes overhead. So, I was sure to duck for cover each time this vicious animal crossed the room, attempt after attempt of fly by shooting. It tried to corner me, outsmart me. It tried to cut off all avenues of escape -

Finally, I got the best of it. The hunted capturing the hunter, I outsmarted this beast with a very basic rule of indoor combat fighting. – You must have walls. The Kingfisher was unaware that I had placed a wall in its path and thus it fell to the ground, warning me off with it’s horrible squawks.

Using my skills in combat hypnosis, a secret skill passed down to me from Master Smith in the jungles of Siberia, I hypnotized the devilish animal into submission. And, using my back-scratcher with extended attack reach, I lifted the animal and took it to the forests outside where it was to spend the rest of its days in exile, for the Kingfisher community is not a forgiving one.

I felt that punishment enough for its attacks on my life…

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

To end this argument once and for all, I headed into the woods.

There were three things I would need.

1 – A video camera with a working microphone.

2 – A tree that would fall within my limited window for this experiment.

3 – A second tree to be used as a control subject.

After several hours of searching, I finally found a suitable tree for the experiment. It was a great distance from the local population and through a series of tests determined that no one would accidentally hear the tree fall and thus ruin the experiment. All the leaves had long since fallen and It had significant rotting around the base, It was only a matter of a few days until this giant would fall.

I set up my video camera with a motion activated sensor. If the tree moved more than a few inches, it would be recorded.

I left my subject to it’s own schedule and went on to find my control subject.

In order to prove that a sound is made by a tree that isn’t heard, first I would need to show that a tree with an audience makes a sound.

After another short search I found my perfect control subject. It looked much like the subject of my experiment minus the rot around the base. I grabbed my axe and went to work chopping at the tree.

It took several hours of ‘experimenting’ with my axe in hand, when I finally came to the conclusion that a tree with an audience does, in fact, make several sounds.

First, it makes a deep rumbling groan. This is followed closely by the sound of the tree cutting through the air as it falls toward the earth. Soon afterwards comes the crushing sounds of the tree landing on somebody’s rooftop and crashing through into their living room.

This is followed close behind by a lot of shouting and finally sirens approaching from the distance as I decided that it was time to check back with my experiment…

Fast.

As I approached my experiment I was happy to find that the tree had already made it’s final descent and landed on the ground, knocking over another couple of trees in the process. My results should be very conclusive.

Unfortunately, as I arrived at the site of my experiment I found that my camera had been stolen.

I searched the site for any evidence of who had stolen my camera but found only leaves. There was only one conclusion I could have come to. I believe this theft to be part of a vast conspiracy by the trees, in an attempt to keep quiet the sounds of the unwitnessed forest.

They will not succeed in keeping me quiet for long.

Until next time, I’ll be working on the sound of one hand clapping…

Don’t Panic

You haven’t missed it.

Grab your towels by the hem hitchhikers! Today is may 25th, otherwise known as Towel Day, A day to pay tribute to that hoopiest frood Douglas Adams by taking your towel with you all day long. An annual tradition that began two weeks after the great author’s death in 2001.

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide:-

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So don’t be a strag, take your towel with you and have a pan galactic gargle blaster.

So Long Douglas, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Sequels.

Is there anything worse than a sequel to destroy a cult film?

The answer – No.

Forever after any discussion of the film will no longer be talk of the films attributes but of the sequels short comings.

“I loved that movie” will forever have the suffix – “but not the sequel”

And the latest to suffer this act of malicious sabotage?

The ominous self-enclosed film about coming to terms with life and death and where one stands between them.

Donnie Darko.

I’m sorry. This isn’t a practical joke. This film is in production as we speak.

Donnie Darko’s Writer/Director Richard Kelly has stated on his blog at MySpace -
” I haven’t read this script. I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever
be involved.
I have no control over the rights from our original film, and neither I
nor my producing partner Sean McKittrick stand to make any money from
this film.”

Why do bad things happen to good films?

The Sequel’s script was written by someone called Nathan Atkins… (??) and is to be directed by Chris Fisher, whose previous works include the critical and commercial failures – Nightstalker, Dirty, and Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders.

Fisher has stated: “I am a great admirer of Richard Kelly’s film and hope to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality.”

Which is good, because we all know that when trying to emulate someone else’s vision, well your doomed certain of success.

It seems that only one person from the original has decided to return – Daviegh Chase will reprise her role as Donnie’s younger sister Samantha Darko.

From Screen Daily:

“The story picks up seven years after the first film (and Donnie’s death) when little sister Samantha Darko and her best friend Corey are now 18 and on a roadtrip to Los Angeles when they are plagued by bizarre visions.
[...]

Simon Crowe of Velvet Octopus added: “I think there is a new generation of cinema-goers who will be very excited to see this film.”
[...]

Crowe quipped to ScreenDaily: “Donnie’s not in [the new film] but there are meteorites and rabbits.”

Well then. At least there’s rabbits.

Holy Crap, I loved this movie.

As a dollar Tuesday at the local video rental place and a day off work for me, I was at the video shop early. My only problem: Trying to find something that’s not crap. I find it terribly hard to find movies that aren’t entirely predictable. I mostly hope to get a few surprises along the way before reaching the obvious end.

I grabbed a few dvds off the shelf that I hadn’t heard too much about. One was Gabriel, a thoroughly disappointing film about archangels fighting for control of purgatory. It seemed like it could’ve been something special but it wasn’t. Maybe some more research and a few more script drafts first.

The second was Tin Man. A mini-series “based” on the wizard of oz. There wasn’t a great deal to it but it was a bit of fun. Unfortunately the video shop clerk forgot the second dvd. I’ll have to watch the final part tomorrow, after bruising some skulls.

The third was Southland Tales. I saw the cover. The words – “Sarah Michelle Gellar” slapped me across the face. As a long time Buffy fan, I immediately picked it up.

“I think I heard something about this a while back,” I thought to myself. “Doesn’t Buffy play a porn star?”

And so, without closer inspection of the cover of the dvd, I paid my three dollars and took my pile of plastic home for an afternoon of entertainment.

Later that night, after being thoroughly pissed that I couldn’t watch the end of Tin Man, I grumpily threw the Southland Tales dvd into the machine.

Four seconds into the movie I got my first surprise.

I paused. “Did someone say my favourite phrase – The end of the world?”

I immediately perked up. I have a penchant for end of the world stories.

Then came the cast. A number of familiar faces popped up all through the movie. One in particular was Christopher Lambert. I had only yesterday been thinking about an old movie of his called Nirvana and wondered to myself whether he’d made anything recently. Well, I got my answer.

Then, around the time that Jon Lovitz arrived on screen and did his dirty deed, I knew I loved this movie. I watched as the strings that would soon intertwine each revealed themselves.

I wondered, “Who came up with this Hilarious and brilliant piece of work?”

I found out on the imdb that it was Richard Kelly. Writer of another favourite of mine – Donnie Darko. Another movie I had picked up knowing nothing about, except that it starred “that guy from Bubble Boy”.

I watched on and began to notice several similarities between Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. For instance – They both feature a character with a bullet wound to the eye.

Also, much like Donnie Darko, When the credits rolled I sat fixated on the screen.