Rants

Art does not require pain; joy is worth celebrating

December 13, 2011 0 Comments

I’m not much for the whole posting quotes thing, but this quote from Ursula le Guin’s award-winning ‘Those Who Walked Away From Omelas,’ which can be read in full here, strikes me as worth sharing: “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain … But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” In the world of…
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Random Musings, Rants, Writing

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Complaining about things I shouldn’t complain about, aka Writing can be boring

October 11, 2011 0 Comments

Leaning forward with a glass of bourbon and ice next to me, hair frazzled. A human drama plays itself out in the background, all loud voices and chaos, but I can’t pay attention because I’m under the spell of inspiration, and as those words hit the page each sparkles like a shiny gold coin. Each sentence is a hundred dollar bill constructed with the power of my words. The keyboard is on fire with the rush of my work. It’s invigorating. Nah. The above scene is bullshit. Writing for pay is not always interesting. In fact, sometimes it’s downright boring. Hell, it usually is. I can still remember a time when that thought would have seemed preposterous. Get paid to write? Like, money and stuff?…
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Rants, Writing

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Small town nitwits try to harass writer out of teaching job

April 28, 2011 2 Comments

So here’s a story that got me steamed. Two “think of the children!” nitwits, Deanna Stepp and Wendy Apple, of Middleburg, PA, are raising a stink because a high school teacher there also writes romance/erotic fantasy novels. The teacher of 33 years — apparently well liked and respected by her students, according to a Facebook page in support of her — writes on her own time, and does so under a pen name. But according to these two moral crusaders: “We are not questioning Mrs. Buranich’s teaching credentials. We are not even questioning her ability as a writer … . What we’re questioning is that the two jobs are not compatible with one another.” That’s according to Stepp. Oh, and it gets better. According to…
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Rants

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TELEVISION: The Walking Dead was overrated

March 21, 2011 3 Comments

I’m an unashamed geek and make no bones about it. I love geek stuff. Hell, I took part in co-writing a really great geek book. Proud to have my name attached to all things geek. But this needs to be said: AMC’s smash-hit television show The Walking Dead, while quite entertaining, was also highly, highly overrated by my geek brothers and sisters. Sorry, my geek brethren, but it’s true. We were so caught up in the thrill of getting something delightfully geeky that we elevated the show to a lofty status it has not yet earned. Now I’m not saying the show was bad. Far from it. I thought the casting was phenomenal, the writing was generally pretty good (though certainly not always), the acting…
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Geek Stuff, Rants, Television

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Screw you, time. SCREW YOU

July 1, 2010 4 Comments

Time can go to hell. Or more specifically, the lack of time that seems to exist around me can go to hell. Right to HELL. I don’t ask much of this world. As little misery at work as possible, some time with friends and family, some relaxation, and the opportunity to pursue the projects I want to pursue, whether professional endeavors (“Stuff Every Husband Should Know“) or hobbies (recording music or doing comic anthologies). But there isn’t time to squeeze it all in. This stacks up with that is piled onto that other thing, and pretty soon you’re tearing your hair out, picking priorities, dropping things that aren’t all that important to you, and just hoping to escape with a few shreds of sanity —…
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Random Musings, Rants

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