My apologies, friends, for the long absence of words. I promise, they will return someday, and we will all rejoice. In the meantime, watch this hilarious video: Animator vs. Animation IV. Possibly my favorite video of the internet.
What excuses can I give to garner your forgiveness? School has been crazy. Life has been crazy. But, if I was truly dedicated to this blog, it's not actually crazy enough to keep me from posting. I suppose I'm just not dedicated enough, although I enjoy sharing my stories, and I've been working on other writing projects.
Another reason for my absence: most publishing venues count blogs as real publications, and so if a publication stipulates that it only accepts unpublished work (as many do), then anything I share to this blog can't be submitted to more credible options. That's a big drain, and most projects I'm currently working on are for magazines or contests of that sort. Even so, if I actually get work published, then I (tentatively) promise to post it here, after!
Enjoy your lives! I'll try to get something up eventually.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
My future.
This is my future, people. Note: I was in no way involved with the creation of this comic. The proper website can be viewed by clicking on the link.
I did not make it. I live it.
http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/the-difference/
I did not make it. I live it.
http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/the-difference/
Monday, September 8, 2014
Transcendent Hope
Coach died today. He was a mentor to me, a mentor to almost every student in my school, from the kindergartners to the seniors.
"Uncle" Jay Tolar did something incredible. He had hope, which isn't easy in the face of a disease as crushing and terrifying as ALS. Sometimes, people exaggerate pleasant qualities after someone dies, but I doubt that any who knew Coach Tolar could ever suspect that of him.
From childhood, I remember him bouncing. Brimming with energy. Constantly laughing, and making others laugh.
You know something? Even when I "grew up" and coach grew older and ALS paralyzed his body, that's still how he seemed. The wheelchair didn't confine him, somehow. He confined IT. His energy and liveliness transcended it, and he still made everyone laugh -- sometimes using the paralysis to help him imitate a zombie, and sometimes singing hilarious songs while machines sucked the phlegm from his chest, since he could no longer cough. He had hope, and he laughed at the disease.
His faith gave him hope, and he gave this hope to others. Even in his death, his incredible family and those of us blessed by his life still have hope; hope that we will see him again, someday, and hope that his body is now strong and free, dancing with even more unquenchable energy before God's throne than he always displayed on this earth.
I thank God for Uncle Jay Tolar's life, and I thank him for a hope bigger than paralysis or disease or death. In the meantime, whenever I'm tempted to lose hope in any struggle of my life, I think I'll remember that Coach did not.
"Uncle" Jay Tolar did something incredible. He had hope, which isn't easy in the face of a disease as crushing and terrifying as ALS. Sometimes, people exaggerate pleasant qualities after someone dies, but I doubt that any who knew Coach Tolar could ever suspect that of him.
From childhood, I remember him bouncing. Brimming with energy. Constantly laughing, and making others laugh.
You know something? Even when I "grew up" and coach grew older and ALS paralyzed his body, that's still how he seemed. The wheelchair didn't confine him, somehow. He confined IT. His energy and liveliness transcended it, and he still made everyone laugh -- sometimes using the paralysis to help him imitate a zombie, and sometimes singing hilarious songs while machines sucked the phlegm from his chest, since he could no longer cough. He had hope, and he laughed at the disease.
His faith gave him hope, and he gave this hope to others. Even in his death, his incredible family and those of us blessed by his life still have hope; hope that we will see him again, someday, and hope that his body is now strong and free, dancing with even more unquenchable energy before God's throne than he always displayed on this earth.
I thank God for Uncle Jay Tolar's life, and I thank him for a hope bigger than paralysis or disease or death. In the meantime, whenever I'm tempted to lose hope in any struggle of my life, I think I'll remember that Coach did not.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
My Manhood is a Research Question
I get some interesting questions, working as a library research assistant. Not all of them involve research.
During my shift the other day, a woman approached the front desk somewhat warily, peering at me first from one side and then the other. She hesitated several feet away, perhaps debating any further approach, and still sizing me up. I smiled a greeting.
"Hi, can I help you with anything?"
Finally coming to a decision, she fully approached the desk.
"Yes . . . are you Rachael?"
I have a beard.
And that woman turned out be my supervisor for the day.
During my shift the other day, a woman approached the front desk somewhat warily, peering at me first from one side and then the other. She hesitated several feet away, perhaps debating any further approach, and still sizing me up. I smiled a greeting.
"Hi, can I help you with anything?"
Finally coming to a decision, she fully approached the desk.
"Yes . . . are you Rachael?"
I have a beard.
And that woman turned out be my supervisor for the day.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
20,000 words . . . lost.
WARNING: the following recounting is not for the faint of heart. It's not a happy little tale, not a bedtime story for your children. I'm still shaking.
Isn't technology great? The first computer I ever used for storytelling was my parents' clunky Toshiba, running Windows 95. It crashed, of course, stealing the pitiful beginnings of a manuscript I'd stored there, along with my motivation to continue writing the story. Eventually, however, I did continue, and it endured into my first full-length novel: Destiny's Mistake. A few other crashes frightened me along the way to this completion, but I think a month's worth of progress was the most I'd ever lost.
Until now.
I thought I'd learned my lesson, and over the years, backups grew more and more frequent. Losing a few hours work every now and again -- mostly due to the haphazard electricity in Nigeria, where I grew up -- put the fear of technology in me. Yes, I know better than most about the importance of regular system backups. But I've never been very good at learning lessons.
Today was typical: I opened my computer and waited for Windows to resume. This semester I'm trying to spend an hour a day working on personal writing, unrelated to school. Microsoft's OneDrive cloud backup is my preferred method of storage: it's a supposed fail-safe against crashes, and is also convenient for accessing writing on devices other than my laptop and tablet. The technology gods, however, are not always benevolent.
As I'd done a hundred times before, I accessed OneDrive and clicked on my God's and Chaos manuscript (early stages of the rough draft are posted on this blog). But I instantly saw that something was wrong. A small "x" was posted in the corner of the document. When I tried opening it, an error message appeared: "the file cannot be accessed because parts are corrupted." A chill trickled into my skull, but I tried again . . . and again, the same message greeted me. The details link expounded on my file's corruption and the loss on my hope.
This document is 20,000 words long: far from completion, but still extremely significant. It represents days and days of writing time -- basically my entire summer, plus some -- and I'm rather proud of various portions.
But there was no denying the situation: the document was gone. Vanished. Removed from this mortal plain. With little hope of recovery.
Scenarios and possibilities scurried through my thoughts: the last time I'd opened this document was on the machine at the library's front desk. Could that be a factor? Should I contact I.T. at the library? Surrender my computer to a techie friend? Contact Microsoft?
It felt like static electricity was prickling my brain.
Alright, stay calm, Luke. A brittle hope: try accessing OneDrive through the website rather than through the app on my computer. I tried, praying fervently . . . I accessed the website, clicked on the folder . . . the list of documents stood before me, and like an angel of judgement, I picked the document in question. As I did this, I noticed that all the other documents displayed script in their pictures, but this one just appeared blank. (I'm sure there are technical terms for all these things, but I haven't the faintest idea what they are.) For a moment, my hope teetered as the blue loading screen flashed before my eyes, just as it had in the failed attempts . . . and then the document opened, complete with text. I scrolled to the end. Everything was there.
But you can swear your life on the knowledge that there's now a second backup on my computer, and I'll probably make another on my external hard-drive.
For the cloud is mysterious. Who can fathom its ways?
Friday, August 22, 2014
Teddy's Story Joint
I was in no way involved in this video's creation, but it's bodaciously geekish enough that I felt compelled to share it. No, "bodaciously" is not a proper conjugation of bodacious, but it makes me feel more like a geek, as does this entire sentence.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Growls in the Darkness
You've played those games: the dungeon crawlers, where you creep through subterranean chambers, peer into old crates, and add items to your inventory. Perhaps you're just exploring, or maybe engaging in a quest. You spring a hidden trap or two and combat giant rats and spiders, delving ever deeper into the earth's throat. The light of your torch casts flirting shadows, and, just as you reach the journey's end and prepare for an ascension from the caverns, a monster bars your path.
I recently had one of these experiences. But I wasn't playing a video game. It was real life.
Over the summer, I've worked for an industrial painting company. The work has taught me new skills, introduced me to a circle of fascinating coworkers, and provided some memorable experiences. One of these was an adventure I think of as "the growls in the darkness."
"Luke," my boss said as I arrived one morning, "I'm sending you over to that job you worked a few weeks ago. I want you down in the old apple barn, collecting jars from the basement. You'll find some boxes in the attic."
The disused basement was filthy and dark, despite my powerful lantern. Canning jars were strewn in the mounds of rat and raccoon excrement. The smells were pungent enough that the air tasted rusty through my respirator, and safety apparel - gloves and white overalls - swaddled me from head to heels My boss called the overalls a "zoot suit," which sounds like apparel for a space-themed 70's disco. It made me feel like I was wearing haz-mat garb.
A glorious formula: hyperactive imagination, dank, subterranean chambers, and haz-mat reminiscent apparel. As I shifted through the mounds of crap, I envisioned myself as a paranormal investigator, somewhere between Harry Dresden, MythBusters, Agent Mulder, and the Doctor. Quite a persona, searching for radioactive relics that'd been stored in a cellar and recently become active.
My hands were salvaging usable jars, but my head watched a wolfish monster burst through the decomposing floorboards, probably a coyote mutated by radiation. And then, from the darkness, something growled.
There are strange twilights, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. I hesitated, hand hovering above the cardboard box. There probably weren't any mutated coyotes, but I might find some ordinary ones. Or some coons, which can get nasty when threatened.
I retreated up the cracked stairway with a box, wandering over to where my boss was working on a construction project. He straightened to greet me.
"How's it going, Luke?"
"Hey, Paul, it's going pretty well. I'm about half done. Do you have any idea if something could be living in that basement?"
Paul scratched his head. "Could be. I didn't really look in the other rooms. Too spooky."
We chatted for a few moments and I mentioned the noises. Both of us agreed that his tape measure was probably the culprit, so I wandered away, taking a few more minutes of break. I waved goodbye to Paul as he drove away. Before descending again, I circled the structure's overgrown perimeter. That's when I saw the bones.
Yes, bones. They were large, yellowed with age, crouching at the bottom of an air-chute leading to the basement. Deer bones by the look of them, and definitely gnawed. Probably dragged there by a coon.
Clutching this cheerful image, I entered the depths once again.
The growl came again, twice in rapid succession. But I had to work till all the boxes were filled or all the jars were collected.
Alongside rotten shelves and rusting farm machinery, a large cage occupied part of the basement. I'd already scavenged the jars from outside this cage, so now I crawled through the gap into the fetid space, dragging a box after me.
A mouth was trying to swallow the room. It was a doorway leading to another chamber, or perhaps a series of other chambers. Whatever the case, I'd been eyeing it since my arrival, and had the unnerving sensation that it was eyeing me, too.
The door was ominous. Its frame was eroded into a jagged opening, dark enough that I couldn't tell what waited within. If I was really sharing the basement with something large, then that doorway was a likely entrance for it. So I faced that direction as I scavenged jars, counting down the boxes till I finished.
Should I see what's in that room? Probably not. It's reckless. Coons carry rabies, not to mention the damage a trapped coyote could do . . . .
But I knew there wasn't another option. At the end of the day, I scare easily, but I also enjoy adventures, like when I snuck into an "abandoned" government facility. Probably not a story I should share online.
I knew I'd regret not exploring the other rooms, but I also knew that if I encountered something large, I might lose my nerve to finish the job. So I waited til the last jar was off the floor and the last box was above ground. Then, armed with a fresh battery pack and a baseball bat purloined from stacks of junk upstairs, I investigated the growls in the darkness.
It'd be nice if this ended with a climatic encounter between me and a coyote, or even a startled coon. Nice for our story, but not so much for my health. The truth is rather tame, unfortunately. The other chamber was completely barren, although large holes pockmarked the walls. Large enough for an animal to crawl through.
It's not the most exciting adventure I've ever had, but how often do you get your own dungeon-crawling experience? And if I hadn't braved the growls in the darkness, then I still wouldn't know what was in there.
I recently had one of these experiences. But I wasn't playing a video game. It was real life.
Over the summer, I've worked for an industrial painting company. The work has taught me new skills, introduced me to a circle of fascinating coworkers, and provided some memorable experiences. One of these was an adventure I think of as "the growls in the darkness."
"Luke," my boss said as I arrived one morning, "I'm sending you over to that job you worked a few weeks ago. I want you down in the old apple barn, collecting jars from the basement. You'll find some boxes in the attic."
The disused basement was filthy and dark, despite my powerful lantern. Canning jars were strewn in the mounds of rat and raccoon excrement. The smells were pungent enough that the air tasted rusty through my respirator, and safety apparel - gloves and white overalls - swaddled me from head to heels My boss called the overalls a "zoot suit," which sounds like apparel for a space-themed 70's disco. It made me feel like I was wearing haz-mat garb.
A glorious formula: hyperactive imagination, dank, subterranean chambers, and haz-mat reminiscent apparel. As I shifted through the mounds of crap, I envisioned myself as a paranormal investigator, somewhere between Harry Dresden, MythBusters, Agent Mulder, and the Doctor. Quite a persona, searching for radioactive relics that'd been stored in a cellar and recently become active.
My hands were salvaging usable jars, but my head watched a wolfish monster burst through the decomposing floorboards, probably a coyote mutated by radiation. And then, from the darkness, something growled.
There are strange twilights, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. I hesitated, hand hovering above the cardboard box. There probably weren't any mutated coyotes, but I might find some ordinary ones. Or some coons, which can get nasty when threatened.
I retreated up the cracked stairway with a box, wandering over to where my boss was working on a construction project. He straightened to greet me.
"How's it going, Luke?"
"Hey, Paul, it's going pretty well. I'm about half done. Do you have any idea if something could be living in that basement?"
Paul scratched his head. "Could be. I didn't really look in the other rooms. Too spooky."
We chatted for a few moments and I mentioned the noises. Both of us agreed that his tape measure was probably the culprit, so I wandered away, taking a few more minutes of break. I waved goodbye to Paul as he drove away. Before descending again, I circled the structure's overgrown perimeter. That's when I saw the bones.
Yes, bones. They were large, yellowed with age, crouching at the bottom of an air-chute leading to the basement. Deer bones by the look of them, and definitely gnawed. Probably dragged there by a coon.
Clutching this cheerful image, I entered the depths once again.
The growl came again, twice in rapid succession. But I had to work till all the boxes were filled or all the jars were collected.
Alongside rotten shelves and rusting farm machinery, a large cage occupied part of the basement. I'd already scavenged the jars from outside this cage, so now I crawled through the gap into the fetid space, dragging a box after me.
A mouth was trying to swallow the room. It was a doorway leading to another chamber, or perhaps a series of other chambers. Whatever the case, I'd been eyeing it since my arrival, and had the unnerving sensation that it was eyeing me, too.
The door was ominous. Its frame was eroded into a jagged opening, dark enough that I couldn't tell what waited within. If I was really sharing the basement with something large, then that doorway was a likely entrance for it. So I faced that direction as I scavenged jars, counting down the boxes till I finished.
Should I see what's in that room? Probably not. It's reckless. Coons carry rabies, not to mention the damage a trapped coyote could do . . . .
But I knew there wasn't another option. At the end of the day, I scare easily, but I also enjoy adventures, like when I snuck into an "abandoned" government facility. Probably not a story I should share online.
I knew I'd regret not exploring the other rooms, but I also knew that if I encountered something large, I might lose my nerve to finish the job. So I waited til the last jar was off the floor and the last box was above ground. Then, armed with a fresh battery pack and a baseball bat purloined from stacks of junk upstairs, I investigated the growls in the darkness.
It'd be nice if this ended with a climatic encounter between me and a coyote, or even a startled coon. Nice for our story, but not so much for my health. The truth is rather tame, unfortunately. The other chamber was completely barren, although large holes pockmarked the walls. Large enough for an animal to crawl through.
It's not the most exciting adventure I've ever had, but how often do you get your own dungeon-crawling experience? And if I hadn't braved the growls in the darkness, then I still wouldn't know what was in there.
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