Excuse The Clutter

In case you can’t tell, this blog could be described as Currently Undergoing Maintenance, both in terms of design (Upgraded Wordpress and the whole template ceased to exist. I have no idea why) and content, as I am currently busy writing for new homes SpinOff Online and Time’s Techland blog. Expect new words here soon, though, and maybe a new look, too.

Think About Your Troubles

I am caught in a moment of reflection.

Actually, that’s not true; it’s like a few days of reflection, and it’s beginning to annoy me. The one good thing about this prolonged thought process is that it’s not self-reflection; the idea of finding myself trapped on the one train track for days on end that’s all about me is enough to make me want to run screaming for the hills. No, this is comic-based reflection, and an idea that – if I can think it through, if I can understand it, if I can make it work – could be used for work somewhere (Probably in the yet-to-be-announced second new internet home, following last week’s unveiling of SpinOff Online). And so, I keep coming back to it, re-examining this half-baked theory and its orbiting debris and wondering how I can put it all together into something that makes sense and would make others believers, and it’s as if my mind has invented a whole new level of frustration.

I don’t do theory very well. It’s not the way my mind works; I am more instinctual, emotional and most importantly, illogical. It’s not that I have a problem with logic, but that I can’t really use it – I try, and it falls apart in my verbal fingers, turning into little bits that like to mock me as they fall to the metaphorical floor. As much as I wish I was smarter and my brain more sensible and straightforward enough to do this thing they call “thinking” in a more socially acceptable way, it’s not something that comes easy to me, which makes my current predicament even more of a predicament.

The worst part is, I’m almost there. It’s like my brain is driving to a particular destination, and I’ve just passed a sign that says “IDEA – 5 Miles… If you can negotiate all these unmarked sidestreets and roundabouts and diversions that we’ve put in your way. Oh, and there’s a giant radioactive bear with guns behind you. Good luck.” But I know I’m close, and that makes me want to stick with it and not just abandon it because… I’m almost there.

And so, I do other things to distract myself, hoping that all the pieces will manage to fall into place when I’m not overthinking them and trying to worry them into position. I read, and hope that I’m not overwriting important information with unnecessary X-Men stories; I check Twitter, obsessively, as if someone there will say the magic word and solve everything. And I write blog posts, to see if I can “accidentally” juggle my brain into action by pretending to think about something else for a change.

Dammit. I’ve just connected the wrong dots.

It’s Clearly A Taste Issue

I am not what anyone would call a foodie – I think that, even if I wanted to describe myself as such, I’d be legally prevented from doing so because of the amounts of foodstuffs that I have unexpected and irrational dislikes of – but the longer I live in Portland, the more I find myself loving the various restaurants and eating establishments of the city.

I say this the day after having an incredibly enjoyable lunch at Olympic Provisions, a place I quickly announced was my new favorite foodspot merely based almost entirely on the evidence of their steak tri-tip sandwich (Seriously, people: It’s so good), but the city seems filled with places I want to revisit and things I want to put in my mouth. This hasn’t always been the case; I’d be hardpressed to think of any great restaurants I went to in Glasgow or Aberdeen, when I lived there, and even the truly foodie mecca of San Francisco only offered up a handful of places I genuinely adored (Those’d be Pizzetta 211, Da Flora, NOPA and Park Chow, for the curious); there were many, many other places I’ve visited that I knew were serving amazing food, but none captured my heart and my stomach at the same time in the way that Portland’s eateries seem to be able to do with such ease.

Part of me wonders if this is an age thing; that, as I get older, my taste for food gets more refined to the point where I appreciate good food more easily, while my taste for experiences becomes broader and I can dig more places more expansively. It’s definitely the logical suggestion, which probably explains why I shy away from it so much. I’d much rather believe that it’s Portland itself, and just another sign of how well suited I am to Portland, and vice versa. Any city with a waffle window, Voodoo Doughnut and my new sweet crush, Saint Cupcake has to be more than a little special, after all.

We Are Here

It strikes me, with the force of a soft, much-cushioned, blow, that I haven’t really directed many people to SpinOff Online, (one of) my new internet home(s) now that I’m no longer with io9. And so: People! Go read SpinOff Online and make it very popular and then I shall be successful and the world will be good. For those who wish to stalk me, I’m still writing for Savage Critics, hopefully will have more on Comics Alliance before too long, and will be officially joining Robot 6 next week, as well. Oh, and hopefully some other places, too (Conversations to that end will be happening this very day, true believers). I’ve become an internet vagabond. Sorry, all.

Here I Was

Yes, I know; I’ve been quiet for a long time. I blame the psychic aftermath of WonderCon, although there were plenty of other things to keep me busy this week as well (including, yesterday, a mild case of food poisoning that firmly taught me the error in my ways when thinking “I’ll get a salad, that’ll be healthy.” Hello, irony), including the still-unable-to-talk-about new work. By way of apology, I’ll send you to James Sime’s photos from the Isotope WonderCon bash last weekend, wherein you can find two not-so-flattering photos of me which – seemingly by accident? – have me talking to two people I wish I got to talk to more: Mindy Owens and Geri-Ayn Gaul (whose Sidewalk Surprises should beloved by all, by the way). Back with real content soon.

Dreams, They Complement My Viewing

One of the stranger things about my dreams are when I can remember with bizarre and unexpected clarity the movies or TV shows that I’ve seen in them after I’ve woken up. Last night, for example, I saw the (entirely fictional) movie The Bright Side of Eddie Darkness, which was a kind of dark comedy about a “dirty” cop trying to go straight for the love of a good woman and failing continually (Rhys Ifans played the title character, I think; it was alright). Occasionally, I think to myself, I should actually write these stories and then, as soon as that thought has entered my head, I inevitably forget all about the details of the stories.

It’s at times like these that I think that my brain is out to undermine my success wherever possible; I find it easier to do that than actually take responsibility for my own lack of completing fiction. There was a time, way back when, when I was working on a longform story that had a major plot point appear in, of all places, Bruce Almighty before I’d finished writing it. I took that as a sign of devine intervention that I should stop writing that story immediately. No wonder I went into blogging; the immediacy, deadlines and lack of likelihood of God stepping in all help me stay away from my neuroses.

That’s The Way We Got By

Monday nights and Thursday nights, we’d go out. For pretty much the entirety of my student life, Mondays and Thursdays were the nights where we’d meet up, maybe at the Wild Boar or some other pub, or at Hannah’s flat (Sometimes, it was Andy’s flat, sometimes Gabi’s, but if we were meeting where someone lived, more often than not, it was Hannah’s), and then go to the same club whose name I, appallingly, don’t remember anymore (The names of the nights I remember: The Mudd Club on Mondays, and Disco 2000 on Thursdays. I used to wonder what they’d call it when they reached the year 2000, and nowadays, that feels like such nostalgia that I feel like an old man). The music was a mix of indie and an odd selection of old stuff: A lot of punk, (very) little dance, and the theme music from Star Wars and Starksy and Hutch. We’d make requests and get shot down; we’d bring in CDs and ask for track 2, and the DJ would listen to it on headphones and pass judgment.

When we weren’t dancing, we’d sit around, try to talk and not get distracted by the other people, whether it was people-watching or new crushes (or old flames) or whatever was happening that night. We’d shout in each others’ ears to be heard over the music, and stand so close together you would think we were intimate. When we were dancing, we were shameless, taking the phrase “throwing shapes” to an absurd level. It was dancing as accidental performance art, throwing our arms throughout the air, prancing around. We were probably a sight to see, if one that I smile at now, completely embarrassed to imagine; an ex-girlfriend, when we first met, told me that her friends called me “dancey hands man” and not in a good way (if there even was a good way).

We’d dance all night, until 2am when the club closed, and then we’d walk home. For a couple of years of this period, I lived on the other side of town, and it’d take me an hour to walk back; I’d do it nonetheless, even in the middle of winter. There was something about walking through the empty streets at that time that felt like the proper ending to the night, a way to silence all the ringing in my ears and thoughts in my head. I’d get home and collapse on the bed, fall asleep and wake up the next morning, aching in a good way.

Who Said That?

I am, for reasons that will soon become obvious, continually drawn back to the idea of writing “voices” these days; the way in which writing – and, specifically, my writing, although obviously this happens to many, many people – takes on new shape and form depending on who and what I’m writing for. The writing that I did for myself, a decade back, wasn’t in the same voice as Fanboy Rampage!!!, for example, which wasn’t in the same voice as io9, and so on and so on.

For the most part, that’s a fairly natural, or at least instinctive, change; you don’t talk to everyone in your life in the same way, after all – your relationship and status and whatever feeds into the you you are at that point, and it’s a similar thing for me, when I write. But right now, I’m feeling kind of stuck in a voice that isn’t necessarily me.

The problem is twofold; on the one hand, there’s an uncertainty about the value of my writing that I simply have to get over – It’s an ego thing, or really, the opposite; my confidence in myself is shaken, which sounds like a plot for a crappy cowboy movie where the sheriff needs to get over himself in order to deal with whatever varmints are threatening the town, steady his shaking hand and take the shot – and on the other, there’s a more tangible reaction to having written, daily, in another “voice” – the io9 voice – for more than two years, and having been edited to sound more like that voice for more than two years, and having tried to reshape my words into a closer resemblance of that voice for more than two years, it’s kind of become second nature to just default into that voice. And, as fine as that voice is, it’s not really mine.

The answer, I guess, is simply to write my way out of it and rediscover the me-ness of my writing, or at least, a palatable and adaptable voice that I can use in multiple places. I’m reminded of writing for Newsarama’s blog, when it first started, and the odd manner in which I felt like I was growing up in public by doing so, letting everyone watch as my writing voice broke, or shifted in some way. Life sure was less embarrassing for all those writers starving in secret, way back in the distant pre-internet days…

Isms and Schisms, Arriving Helter Skelter

Is there such a thing as a dream that doesn’t offer outright foreboding, but instead bode at some foreboding ahead? A foreboding of forebodings yet to come? Because, if so, that’s the dream I’ve apparently just had, and it’s left me in a very disturbed mood as I start my day. If you’ve ever been in fear of something you know is unavoidable – a dentists’ appointment, a phone call, whatever – then you know the feeling I’m talking about… The strange unexplainable unease that makes ideas like “relaxing” and “trying not to be convinced that disaster is around the corner” seem endlessly exotic.

The truly unnerving thing, though, may be how easily I am (happily) assuming disaster. I have no logical reason for assuming the worst that I can think of, and yet, all it took was one dream starring friends both lost to death and to growing apart geographically talking about my job to have me convinced that Bristolian rapper Tricky was right: Hell is around the corner. As I type this, I can feel my shoulders tense up and my concentration steadfastly refuse to settle down and stay still. I blame recent events, and the way they’ve bred me to believe that something bad is really still about to happen, as soon as I let my guard down.

Of course, I also blame that for my finally cleaning my office yesterday, tidying away stacks of books, comics, DVDs and paperwork that’ve happily laid there untouched for months, so I may just be looking for easy scapegoats. But let me say this: Waking up primed for disaster is an easy way to make you feel like you’ve wasted an entire sleep. And my office looks fucking great now.