The Chapman Challenge

My Iron Mutant Certificate is finally here!

When I posted a picture of this on social media, one of my friends responded, "Oh yeah? I dare you to watch a double feature of The Beast of Yucca Flats and Manos: The Hands of Fate. I double dog dare yah." They were both on YouTube for free, so I did it.

I watched The Beast of Yucca Flats first. It wasn't particularly hard to watch, just really, really, really boring. The narrator made it feel like we were watching a National Geographic special about radioactive man-beasts instead of a horror movie. 

A particularly funny moment was near the beginning, when the evil Soviet assassins were trying to kill Tor Johnson. During the gun fight, he just started shambling off into the hills, even waving back like, "Y'all go on. I'm gonna hang out up here." Despite the fact that he had no cover at all, NOBODY SHOT HIM. I liked when the hapless father made it back to his wife and was like, "You stay here where crazy people are shooting at us from an airplane, honey. I'm gonna take the car and go get help." 

At least, unlike Ed Wood, these people had the sense not to give Tor any actual lines. It was pretty funny watching him stagger around in the desert with his walking stick, though.

Next up was Manos: The Hands of Fate. I actually enjoyed this one. Yes, it was bad, but it had some fun ideas and I actually did want to see what was going to happen next. You could make a really good horror movie out of this if you had some money.

I had a good laugh when Mr. and Mrs. Clueless were getting all worked up over that painting of Borat, after deciding that spending the night with Torgo the Constipated Meth-Fiend was only a mild inconvenience. Also, I guess one of the powers Manos grants to its cultists is the ability to slap people to death. Fits with the "hands" thing, I suppose. It was funny when Borat was watching his brides argue with this exasperated look on his face, but that might have been intentional. 

And of course you have to love when, after they've seen the altar and the standing stones with a whole crowd of women stuck to them and they know something perverse and almost certainly dangerous is going down, Mrs. Clueless goes back to the room and decides that this is a good time to get undressed for bed.

I thought the ending was cool.

I made it through the whole thing without even finishing my drink. Now let's see you get through Sledgehammer and Things, Mister Chapman.

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Matrix Ressurections

I never had high hopes for Matrix Resurrections, and two or three of my friends said it sucked, but I'm glad I watched it anyway, because I really enjoyed it.

For one thing, the way it mocked its own (I'm guessing) reason for existence and corporate art in general was hilarious. Neil Patrick Harris was great. Not-Hugo-Weaving and Not-Laurence-Fishburne did their jobs well. I didn't really care that the originals were mostly absent. Jessica Henwick is always good.

I liked how it was no longer just humans versus machines, so what Neo did in the other movies actually meant something. And it was just a fun story. I was really pleasantly surprised.

Don't forget to stay for the after-credits scene.

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2021: Year of the Cat

Funny year, both creatively and just, whatever. I started off by moving from Cleveland to Northwest Arkansas, where I worked my old job from home for a while and then, predictably enough, got laid off. I didn't get a lot of writing done after that, because job-hunting is at least as time-consuming and more emotionally draining than having a job. 

I had a fairly productive trip to Devil's Den early in the year, though. That place always revives me.  

I wrote a bunch of material for a couple of serials and then decided, as much fun as it was, I needed to get back to The Nameless Way. I wouldn't say I've abandoned the serials, but they're on hold. Gotta get that book done.

While we're talking about the book, I also found a way to do a map I like. It's already changed a bit from the picture up there, but that's pretty close to what I'm going to publish. In other map-related news, I finally got around to putting my venerable World of Greyhawk maps in poster frames so maybe they'll be a little bit better protected.

I finished Hogz-- errr, TerrorHog, as well. I'm not going back to Peryton Publishing in any other capacity, but that's another project like the serials that I drifted into because I thought it would be quick and easy. You'd think I'd have learned by now that it's never quick and easy. Anyway, I'm proud of the result, and now it's done so I can move on and get back to serious writing.  

So where am I with this book I keep saying I'm focusing on? Bgrargh. I mean, I guess I shouldn't put it that way, because I'm enjoying working on the center brain-stage again. I just now started doing that, though, and a few leftover TerrorHog tasks are still nipping at my ankles now and then. We'll see. Seems like this is taking a lot longer than it should. 

I'm kinda burned out on gaming. Like, even as a player. Partly it's the teleconferencing stuff, but this just happens occasionally. You could probably scroll back on my blog and find several other times I said the same thing. I'm sure I'll be a fanatic again after a little break. I mean, just look at that Greyhawk map. How could you not get ideas? Also, I'll probably run TerrorHog at least once. 

Here's a picture of my friend, Charlie, who died of COVID early in the year. I don't really have anything else to say about that. And then there's some cat pictures. The cats aren't dead or anything. I just like sharing their pictures.

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Whiplash

Yeah, never mind that other stuff. They're both great projects, but I never should have let myself get sidetracked. I'm working now on the thing I need to be working on. After that I can come back to the serials. 

 

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Seriously Serialized

Back when Amazon announced Vella, it occurred to me that something like this might be a better way to publish my Blackridge stories. I had originally planned on a series of short novels or novellas. After I started that, I became aware of Radish and decided I could do the Komar book that way.

So... yeah. Now I'm writing two serials. It's been killing my progress on The Nameless Way, which is really frustrating. I kind of dove into this without really thinking about what I was doing. I'm not even sure anybody is reading the darn things. 

I think I'm starting to get a handle on it, though. Earlier this month, I finally settled on a job. Well, a gig anyway. I've been doing one of those phone app food delivery things and I actually really like it. The fact that I'm not job-hunting anymore and that the work I'm doing has a flexible schedule is helping me get serious about writing.

So anyway, let's talk a little bit about the two serial projects. Eventually I guess they should have their own pages here, but I don't much feel like setting that up now. I've talked a lot less about the Komar one, so I'll start with that.

Forgotten Cities of the Komaran Sea -- https://radishfiction.com/stories/14126

Waking up in a confused post-dream state, a traveler remembers a dizzying panoply of experiences, but only in jumbled, fading fragments. He finds his way through a misty otherworld to an abandoned underground temple, where he meets a group of ruthless treasure-hunters and learns that he is in a desert in a completely unfamiliar land. Seeing little other chance to survive, he joins the strangers and helps them search for the relics of the lost civilization. This one is actually a sequel to Losing Lanterns, but it stands alone so I've been afraid to mention the connection for fear of scaring people off. That link is just a summary. You need the Radish app to read stories there. The first three episodes and the app itself are free.

Ghosts of Blackridge -- https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/product/B092RX1GVT

An inhuman spirit preys on students in a fictional late-80s college town in the Arkansas River Valley. No one knows where it came from or who to trust. Or maybe some of them do. There's another newcomer to Blackridge, someone with plans to put the demon to use for his own schemes. I used the town where I went to college and some of the people I knew to build the template, but of course I changed a lot. I don't want to be thinking of these characters as my friends when I start tormenting and killing them, after all. As with the other one, the first three episodes are free.

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9/11 Memories

I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar; that much is true. But even then-- Wait a tick! Wrong story. That's a song, isn't it?

Dear Penthouse, I never thought something like this could happen to me, but-- Shit, no, that's... just a side gig.

I dunno. I totally forgot what I was going to share. Something was supposed to have happened today, right? Was it that thing with the computer that went crazy and turned that dude into a giant space baby?

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Wight Now

Every year, Alice Cooper looks a little more like Trampier's Wight illustration from the First Edition Monster Manual.

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