"My human core forever lost in the Infinite City; concrete canyons hide the light that leads man home. Shadows we are. Even so, the animal still exists." --Nobius Black

Fell four page preview from Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith.

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." --Johann Goethe


The Obvious by Orgy.

Lyrics are poetry.

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." --Babe Ruth

Non Creative Garbage - What Would Xenu Do?. James has a very unique writing style. In this post he talks books, Tesla, and Boheminan Lager.

I'm almost finished writing issue nine of the Blue Rabbit Chronicles. This one contains plenty of flash fiction, some poetry, mailing comments, my thoughts on visiting the back issue bin at the comic shop, and of course what I thought of the latest Star Wars installment.

"If you want me, HOLD me back." --Seether

The White Rabbit - *BLACK HOLE* just celebrated it's second birthday on 6/21.

Has it been that long already?

Ha ha ha. Not a surprise here. I hated the eighties. But I do know what Samantha Fox was most famous for. Because quite frankly I was watching. :P Stolen from Scott.

You Scored 35% Correct

You know some 80s stuff Like that Paula Abdul was a star back then But you're not sure who Suzie Q was And you don't know what Samantha Fox was really famous for!

Dakota Fanning is a natural. She doesn't know why she has her gift, nor does she question it, she just uses it. Good story on the greatest child actress of our time Dakota Fanning.

"Industry is cheap. It is laziness that costs. It has cost many a bright man a bright career." --John H. Patterson

I hate when these things are this accurate. :)

You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do. You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don't mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

In Flames: New Album Details Revealed.

The Londonist does Warren Ellis. When do *I* get to interview him?

Another reference link for my future writings. Phillip K. Dick Robot.

The Search for Roots. Primo Levi's essential reading anthology.

How Ron Blogs. Similiar to how my original pieces come about as well.

The Comic Pimp.

James Sime doesn't just sell comics, he pimps them. In this article, Sime reintroduces himself. Over the next several weeks, he'll be showing us how he re-invented the comic book retailing wheel. And how you can too.

Sime reminds us that as the all-mighty Stan Lee once said, "Every comic is someone's first."

Amen.

NEWSARAMA.COM: GRANT MORRISON: THE DCU REVAMP GUY.

Anyone following my writing knows I'm a huge fan of the ever quirky Morrison. This article mentions something I would love to get my hands on. Morrison produces copious notes including background story and sketches for the projects he does. I want to read some of that.

When one of my comic projects makes it off the ground, I'll definitely include background material/scripts/etc. However, I may not wait for the trade for the DVD type commetary. :)

Steven Grant's Permanent Damage is always a great read covering far more than just comics commetary. This week check out Grant's time line leading up to the war in Iraq and his political commetary on the Right trying to remove term limits from the presidency.

A Home Based Business Modeled After Google.

Great article on differentiating your business endeavors from the competition. Though aimed at home based businesses, the advice is solid for anyone in business.

Be unique, GOOGLE was.

Still is.

From Career Key:

Nobius,

Here are the scores for each of the personality types and the list of the jobs that you chose for each type.

Next, you will want to learn about the occupations you have chosen. What do people do in them? What training is required? How much do they pay? Just click on any of your jobs listed below and your questions will be answered. For those jobs that interest you, be sure to bookmark the page (add it to your "Favorites") or print it so you can study the it later.

Next, go to Career Key's eBookStore. There you will find electronic books written to help you. They are reasonably priced and you receive them instantly over the Internet.

Or, return to your choices ... to explore the rest of the Career Key website.

Realistic = 1


Investigative = 5


Artistic = 12:

Biographer

Editor

Editorial Writer

Playwright

Poet

Writer

Desktop Publisher

Photographer

Actor/Actress

Radio and Television Announcer

Social = 8

Enterprising = 12

Lawyer, Civic Law

Lawyer, Private Practice

Archivist, Curator or Conservator

College President

Desktop Publisher

Editor, Newspaper

Editor, Technical and Scientific Publications

Radio/TV Newscaster

Reporter or News Analyst

Marketing Manager

Promotion or Sales Manager


Conventional = 9

From my Blue Rabbit Chronicles zine:

I’ve been asked many times about what my poetry means. I’m of the school that poetry should have individual meanings to us all and that a reader might not see a piece the way the author does, and shouldn't have to. Interpretation can be a good thing. As long as a piece leaves the reader with a sense of real feeling then a connection will be made.

The following is a line by line break down of a favorite poem of mine that’s appeared here before. Create was written at 1 o’clock a.m. on an evening when my brain just couldn’t shut off. It is the creator’s curse and blessing. Everyone creative has had this happen. And that is the basis of this poem.

Create

Glimmer. [Something in the mind.]
Glimmer. [Words winking at me.]
Shine. [Poetry ready to be written.]

If Heaven was in the palm of your hand--
Would you feel it...
Or simply crush it?
[Man kills that which is good, it’s his nature.]

Ashes to... [Ashes to Ashes]
The Creation of all poets-- [What makes someone a poet?]
The Creation of this poet [I know what made me begin to really write.]
Was the death of one man. [My Dad’s suicide.]
The soul of our family was ripped away.
Nobody cared. [I was pretty much left in the cold with out anyone when he died. I’d been an adult six days. After the funeral, everyone forgot me.]

The world can't be reduced to sound bites...
If it could I would write about everything.
All of my feelings made whole. [My pain comes out as poetry.]

Ashes to...
I won't fade away. [I won’t go into depression.]
Again. [I’ll face this if it takes all of my days.]
Thinking, [Face it over and over.]
Longing, [Missing Dad.]
That memory of flames
Got me burnt. [My grief caught me on fire.]

Open wide Firefly. [Glowing bugs never know why little boys smash them.]
It's not the love you give... [Neither do boys.]
It's the bullet you take. [It’s not important that he loved me anymore, it’s what he did to me that I can’t forget.]

Mouthful of dust... [In the grave.]
Every bit of life leads to death. [We are all dying.]
And the creation of another poet's
Sad song. [Don’t let even my worse enemy lose a family member to suicide. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.]
Ashes to... [Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust]

Glimmer [He sparked the idea for my poetry again.]
Glimmer
Shine. [I wrote it all out.]
I can't see you. [He’s in Heaven, I’m not.]

You can hear me read Create here.

John Newton said:

"We can easily manage if we will only take, each day,
the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too
heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again
today, and then add the burden of of the morrow before
we are required to bear it."

"Does anyone remember me?" --Testament

Doing some career exploring and the like as advised by What Color Is Your Parachute.

Here's my results from the Princeton Review Career Quiz:

Your interest color is BLUE: "People with blue Interests like job responsibilities and occupations that involve creative, humanistic, thoughtful, and quiet types of activities. Blue Interests include abstracting, theorizing, designing, writing, reflecting, and originating, which often lead to work in editing, teaching, composing, inventing, mediating, clergy, and writing."

Your usual style is BLUE": "People with blue styles prefer to perform their job responsibilities in a manner that is supportive and helpful to others with a minimum of confrontation. They prefer to work where they have time to think things through before acting. People with blue style tend to be insightful, reflective, selectively sociable, creative, thoughtful, emotional, imaginative, and sensitive. Usually they thrive in a cutting edge, informally paced, future-oriented environment. You will want to choose a work environment or career path in which your style is welcomed and produces results."

Interesting that a number of these tests I've taken say that I have a personality for religious work.

I am trying to find my path in my life. The one I lost when Dad died. How will I ever help my little ones find their's if I continue to be lost in the void?

Speaking of Father's Day, the wife took me to Batman Begins last night. It was really good, much better than it's predacessors. More on that later.

Found something from Free Comic's Day that I hadn't finished. Since today is Father's Day and I am a Father, I am spending most of today lounging. But instead of beer, I've got books. The effects for me are the same, a good story is intoxicating.

Wizard's Top 100 Tread Paperbacks of All Time is great. Widely varied, you can't help but want to read every book it mentions. The ending include's Comic Relief some of comic's funniest moments. I enjoyed it, I mean who can't laugh at Superman's machine that changes Lois lane into a black woman.

Tribe.net. Another Internet doo-hickey that I don't comprehend. Someday social networks like this will be wired straight into your cell phone if they aren't already. This link links to Warren's page.

Grokker - A New Way to Look at Search. Not sure I quite get the graphical hierachcy idea of this search engine but it intrigues me anyway. I love search engines. Interestingly enough, this search engine picked up this blog and my Link Kick blog but not my Live Journal.

"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort." --John Ruskin

Though I may run it here down the road, I am about to begin writing some pieces for my next Blue Rabbit Chronicles zine. One of which comes from What Color Is Your Parachute. The book suggests you make a list of your "dream" jobs no matter how unrealistic. Things that you would really like doing. Jobs that would give you a sense of wonder and purpose. I know writing, martial arts, and comic books will all fall in that list. Now, I need to figure a way to tie those things together.

Pac-Man Chomps Up Milestone. I love that guy!

Year One: Batman/Ra's Al Ghul. Imagine a world in which no one dies -- ever. It sounds idyllic, but just because no one can die doesn't mean they shouldn't die.

Finished What Color is Your Parachute? which is a remarkable book. I'll talk more about it here and in my zine soon. It gave me a lot to think about. And I do mean a lot.

All that heavy thinking made me decide my next book should be a bit lighter. And a bit more fun. In honor of the recent Star Wars movie I'm reading another Star Wars universe book: The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton.

Though Darth Vader and the Emperor are dead the Empire lives on and a weakened Alliance must find powerful new help if it is to survive. The answer could lie in the Hapes consortium of sixty three high tech worlds. And they will join the New Republic as long as Princess Leia marries the Queen Mother's son.

Slow and Steady

Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It'd really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment. They expect you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then usually decide against it.

It's not fair how much better Joey can write than I can! :) Your machinery is too much for me.

PSP Hackers Go Retro. How the hell does one hack a PSP? Or should I say, where does one acquire this skill? Fess up man, and pass along the secrets.

Wario Ware Twisted. Damn, I love minigames.

More research stuff. A guide to Posthuman.

I've been reading In A Dark Time for sometime myself. Here the author talks about some of the poetry he reads. Good stuff. You'll see.

One of the secrets, never consider the possibility of failure.

Melvins tribue album due August 23rd. Time to cue all these bands up on my Internet radio.

I may have BLOGGED this before, but even if, it's still worth taking about again. Neil Gaiman talks about where his ideas come from. Simply put. He makes them up. In his head.

Check out the May 30th pictures from the Judas Priest show my brother and I were at. Phenomenal show. Rob still sounds great. And though my current musical tastes are much harder and lean more towards alt-metal, there will never be another Priest

You always remember your first.

Non Creative Garbage - NCG 2 and 3.

James is at it again with issues three and four of Non Creative Garbage. I hear some cool writer named Nobius makes an appearance in issue two. Maybe, just maybe, if you're really, really nice he'll send you a copy.

Wired News: How Humble BBS Begat Wired World. And yes on a BBS is where my wife and I first met.

Found a copy of Elementals #1 Volume 2 at the comic shop Saturday. It was fun to relive it. My original copy was sold when I got rid of many of my comics to pay debts. Not necessarily a good idea.

Elementals was created by the great Bill Willingham creator of the currently running Fables comic series. Imagine the X-Men for adults. Unfortuatnely, there are no trades of the series currently in print that I am aware of.

I'll be rummaging around the back issue bin more in upcoming months. I'll let you know what I find. I think Suicide Squad is in my sites next.

I took this damn test, and all I got was this lousy score. :)

Your IQ Is 115

Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Exceptional Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Above Average

Found an issue of Rick Veicht's Brat Pack miniseries yesterday at the comic shop. It appears though in limited supply, the trade paper back is still circulating.

Brat Pack is a brutal take on the super hero genre with the antiheroes of the story all resembling characters in mainstream comics. The Batman take for example is called Midnight Mink. He's a sadistic homosexual with strong overtures of pedophilia. The story will both sicken you and make you think. What would happen to you if the weight of saving the world fell on your shoulders twenty four hours a day? Would you become one of them?

Live fast. Love hard. Die with your mask on.

"The Lost Angels of Los Angeles...like me they have no way to go but up." --Warren Ellis

Ellis's Desolation Jones is a nearly perfect mature comic. Smart, funny, and undeniably addictive...completely different from Transmet yet similar in the same where the fuck does he come up with this shit vain! Jones is one spy you won't soon forget. Who but Warren can write a comic with the line, "Everything goes better with Bukkake" and still create a character you can take seriously. Dare I already wonder, is this the next Transmetropolitan?

Just watched Closer on Pay Per View with my wife. What an astounding movie! Sex, deception, the brutality of love...it's a powerful story written in exquisite dialogue. Poetry in motion. Time to add the book to my wish list.

Jill Thompson's Death manga At Death's Door takes place during Neil Gaiman's Sandman Season of Mists story line. Other than the innovative and sometimes beautiful Japanese style artwork, I didn't like much else. The story was weak and resembled a kid's comic rather than a mature themed piece. It's a pale companion to the greater Neil Gaiman world it exists within. And there is only one Neil.