Peanuts and commonly misheard words

"He ate my peanuts."

Isn't that a fun line? I started a short story with it. Every time I read the short story I have to make sure that I put an extra emphasis on the diction of peanuTs (with an added emphasis on the uh sound). Twice now I've started the story with unwanted snickers of people thinking that the story is suddenly about fellatio and not the intended annoyances that come with overly large people on airplanes. While the first is definitely funny it isn't the desired outcome.

Brice Beckstrom. I think it is probably the best pulp super hero name i've ever heard. So I made him into my ubermensch. The billionare pilot Brice Beckstrom, saved from certain death by the radiative Dark power becomes the Pioneer. A man of boundless strength and endurance. Able to withstand the blows of bullets and defy the laws of gravity.

He's going to be a follow up character to the Hero of the Second City Trilogy (expect those finished by the end of summer (especially once the semester gets finished and I have time to work and research)).

Apartment hunting tomorrow. And Looking for a job potentially for over the summer. maybe I'll check the ALA district office.

A friend mentioned to me this idea the other day. He was saying how every college needs its own super hero team. This is in reference to the Marvel Civil War (which was more like a civil dispute, but that's for another time). It's spring now, and that means running season, which also means I'm going to be listening to American Gods in a marathon-like manner, because it is a spectacular audiobook, and a great excuse to keep going (though i can already quote most of it). So when he said that every college should have its own super hero team I started thinking, well hell, every college should have its own pantheon of gods.

So I started writing it.

It's turned into a pretty interesting short story. There are different factions within the gods. The sports gods, and the Greek (more like patron saints of the fraternities), there is the God of Beer, and there is the God of Good Grades, and then there is a demi-god (very Loki-esque) called the Procrastinator, who leaches off the worship of other gods, and is the arch-nemesis of Grades.

Right now I am working on a conversation between Grades and Beer. It seems that the sports gods are rather unsettled by the fact that Beer (who is the greatest of all the college gods (think about it)) is knuckling in on their territory with the advent of Beerpong.

I've got some friends coming down tomorrow to spend the weekend with me. We're gonna hit up a John Vanderslice concert (hopefully). I've got a ton of homework that I need to do, that I'm not doing... Figures that this is going to happen with the end of the semester.

If you're reading this, go check out the comic book, The Damned: Three Days Dead. It's a crime-noir set in the 20s with demons. Pretty good stuff.

Trying to finish the Hero vs Mr. X, the first novella in the book I'm writing called "Hero of the Second City." If I stick with it, I should have the first draft hammered out by the end of April, willing to push it into May if I need to because of homework...evil evil homework.

~Nathan

PS: Was searching around the internet when I should be working and stumbled across...

How bout dem apples?

Heard a great line in the movie The Lookout. Jeff Daniels tells the main character who has a hard time sequencing events to "go to the end." That as soon as you know where it is it's easier to figure out how it got there. So work backwards. I'm giving that a try in my writing this week because I seem to always get stuck when I'm writing fiction. I'll get two or three chapters into it and then BAM. it sucks I'm stuck.

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. As of right now I am going to be graduating May of 08 (a 4 year (yeah I'm surprised too)). The thought is really inspiring and enlightening. I'm looking forward to grad school now, and to being able to hit th real world.

My plan is to go to Library School (UCLA is quickly climbed to the top of my list) and focus on youth and international librarianship. I have this crazy notion that I can impact the world through bringing libraries and information to the underpriveleged undeveloped nations. Knowledge is power, man.

Started my first story of completely unrelated material in Fiction 2 last week. It's nice because everything else that I have been working on ties into this idea of the Cineverse, and the mythos world that I've created, in some form or another. So all this year I've been working on stuff for that, with barely anything new or interesting. We did a Person Object Action experiment, where you take a random Person a random Object and a random Verb, and then write a story. I mostly ignored the verb part because nothing could really fit what I was thinking. the Person was Man and the object was Raft. The short story became about this guy forced to leave London on a transatlantic flight. He is going through the same emotional turmoil that I went through coming back from LA, and so he is too busy staring at the girl he is leaving in the airport (there was no girl in LA for me, just a good focus of emotion for this character) to notice that guys are arguing over Engine #3. So he gets on the airplane, they take off. Some jerk next to him eats his peanuts, but the main character is just too nice to really say anything about it. Suddenly, mid flight, the engine falls off, and the plane crashes. The main character manages to get an emergency raft and survive. He is floating in the middle of the ocean when suddenly the cart full of peanuts floats by and he finally gets his peanuts.

I'm thinking this may be the start of a series of short stories revolving around this character and his insanity. Could be interesting, a little crazy, and something unique. He has a really strong voice and a severe case of story telling ADD, managing to get off topic so many times.

So that's my writing in a nutshell.

I'm not going home for easter. It kind of has me bummed, but it'll be nice to have the apartment to myself for the weekend. Listen to my own music, watch tv when I want to, but turn it off when I want to. Maybe I'll smoke the hookah again.