The Secret the Science Fiction World DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

I have very recently made a discovery that changed my life, and I'm going to share it all with you now, so that I can change your lives as well. Besides, if I tell fourteen people, those fourteen people will tell fourteen people, and then almost thirty people will know this earth-shattering secret. Are you ready? Here we go.

Human cloning is real. I have met Neil Gaiman's clone.

You're shocked. I know, I was too. It took me several days for this to sink in. When it first hit me, my brain tried to rationalize it in a lot of different ways. Mostly that this guy just looks a lot like Neil Gaiman. But that just isn't the case. He's a clone, and he was grown sometime in the early 80's. Which is the other thing that really rocked my world. Human cloning is real, and has been real for my entire life. I got kind of depressed when I realized this, having wanted a few clones of myself for many reasons ever since I found out what cloning was and what having a day job was.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions here, obviously. If Neil Gaiman has a clone, for instance, who else does? I can't even speculate. This is too huge. Why would Neil Gaiman clone himself, and then keep that clone in southern Minnesota?

I know that there are going to be a lot of skeptics out there. Probably at least 20. And that's okay. I want each and every one of you to know that I'm going to do my best to verify this report, up to and  including a proper DNA test. But that's going to take a while, because Neil Gaiman is a very busy man, and he's not just going to come to my house to give me a cheek swab when I call him about the matter. That'll probably take a few weeks. And also, obviously, pics or it didn't happen. I'm going to get a photo of them together when I get the DNA samples. Because otherwise some jerk could come in and say, "That's not a clone of Neil Gaiman. That's just a hack Photoshop job of an old pic of Neil Gaiman 'shopped into a gas station. Loser." And that will make me cry, because I don't even have Photoshop.

But those are all incidental. I know the real argument against Neil Gaiman having a clone is the fact that the first mammal cloning wasn't until 1996, which is a long time after the early 80's. But on that, I'm one step ahead of you.

 

In other news, I've been working a lot of overnights at work, in an effort to utterly miss out on all the crazy holiday shopping madness. I haven't had a full, decent night's sleep in almost a week. I'm not sure if it's because of the work, or because this is just too much of a revelation for one brain to stand. 

I'm guessing the latter. The truth is out there, people.

It Gets Worse and Worse Every Year

I had intended to write this before Halloween, but shit happens and at least I'm writing at all. Now that I've been working in retail for a few years, I've become more acutely aware of a complaint that everyone seems to make around this time - namely, how early stores begin putting out their Christmas decorations and merchandise. I hear it while walking through the store all the time. "Can't we just get through one holiday at a time?"

Now, I do understand why decking the halls this early is so frustrating for pre-holiday shoppers. I know that for a lot of people, the holidays are a crazy, stressful time. I know that it is a lot easier to focus on one thing at a time. I know that there are a lot of reasons people hate this early setup that I'm not aware of. But there are aspects to the situation from a retail standpoint that other people aren't seeing either. So here are some of the reasons why, while it might not be totally pleasant or satisfying for the general public, or even any of the 11 13 people that will ever read this, stores start setting up for Christmas before Halloween even gets close - from my limited perspective.

Reason the first: I've only worked in one retail store. My store competes with a number of other retail stores in the city, one of them being a WalMart. I can only speak for my store, and certainly not for WalMart, but our operating situation is such that we don't have the staff or budget to pay them to get things set up after Thanksgiving.

I've heard that Nordstrom's does all of its holiday set up while the store is closed on Thanksgiving day. They are lucky sons of bitches.

Over the last few weeks, we've had a few members of staff steadily working on getting the holiday decor onto the sales floor and getting set up. They're doing other, non-holiday-related set-ups for the store, so it's not a constant thing, but it is steady. There are a lot of projects, throughout the store, that happen in the many weeks leading up to the actual holiday season. It adds up to a lot of man-hours.

If we were to put off all those projects until after Thanksgiving, we would still have to give our staff work to do in the interim, and pay them for the work they do. Post-Thanksgiving, all those projects would be then compressed into the space of a day or two. Maybe a week. We'd need an increase in staff and hours in order to get it all done. It's just beyond our capability. So we start as early as we possibly can, and we hate it as much as everyone else.

Reason 2: We start getting sent holiday stuff unspeakably early. It can start getting shipped to our stores as early as September, or even August. And then it sits there, taking up space in the back rooms, until it can start going out. The earlier we can get that crap out onto the sales floor, the more room we'll have for the next wave of still unspeakably early holiday stuff. Or even the regular stuff, that also needs a place to sit until it can go out onto the sales floor.

If we stockpiled the holiday stuff for weeks in an effort to maintain any semblance of holiday sanity, it would overflow, and we'd eventually be buried under an avalanche of bells, bows, and chocolates. And there'd be no room for the regular stuff, too, so you'd have the occasional cases of motor oil and toilet paper adding to the avalanche. Fun!

Reason 3: This ties in to the previous reasons. The holiday merchandise takes up a large portion of the store. What would you think, as a shopper, if that portion was empty, devoid of product or decoration? We have to fill those empty places up. If we don't fill it up with holiday stuff, we'll have to fill it with regular stuff. And when we can put it off no longer and the holiday stuff needs to go out into its rightful place, that regular stuff has to get moved, either to another home in the store, or to the back rooms. It's a case of either doubling the necessary work, or not utilizing available space.

Let's face it, folks. Stores are places for the public to buy things. If there is an area that is not being used to display things that can be sold, it's being wasted. If there are products in the back that are not on display to be sold, those products and that space is also being wasted. For a store trying to stay open and provide jobs, we have to make this small sacrifice.

Ultimately, it all does boil down to money. Delaying the inevitable holiday set up has a huge financial impact on a store trying to stay competitive. As a shopper, is it more important to you that the holiday decor and merchandise is in place at the proper time of the season, or that it's clean, and well-stocked, and that the employees are able to help you with the things you need, even if they start decking the halls in October?

That said, there is no excuse for playing Christmas music any earlier than Thanksgiving. I've heard it's already started in some stores. I've been away from work for the weekend, but if I start hearing carols tomorrow night when I go back, I'm sure it'll make me quite a bit stabby.

EDIT: The Christmas music started yesterday. Somebody should be fired.

Crypticon Swag

This year's Crypticon was a bit more subdued for us than the last 3 years, but I took home some decent swag, and here it is.

 I am a huge nerd. This is me going RAWR!

 Artwork by AntLucia.com. I had a hell of a time deciding which print to pick up.

The Arsenic Lullaby book, from last night's post. Your eyes don't deceive you - that's an illustration of someone choking a baby on the cover.

Fuck yeah, Crypticon!

Sexy sexy shoes from Iron Fist. I actually also have a matching shirt, that is also sexy sexy.












That's pretty much my swag.

Possibly My Favorite Exchange From This Weekend (aka How Much Of a Twisted Son Of a Bitch Are You?)

We just got back from Crypticon, which is one of the year's highlights for me. And now I will present to you my favorite exchange from this weekend.

Nick and I walked past the table for Arsenic Lullaby, and one of the gents at the table said to Nick, "Hey, you look like you've got a twisted sense of humor! Come here! Do you think things that are strange and wrong are kind of funny?"

Nick and I looked at each other. I tried not to laugh too hard. There are a whole lot of inappropriate things that make us giggle, and so he allowed that yes, he does have a dark sense of humor. The other gent at the table looked at me and asked if I was a little bent in the head as well.

YES.

We were both handed a copy of the 10 year book, already opened to short pieces that would gauge how twisted we were. We read the pieces, and I got a good chuckle out of the one I read. This encouraged the gents at the table to select other pieces for us to read. I read one near the end about the boogie man. It made me laugh until I cried. The second gent turned to the first and said, "Dude, I think you asked the wrong person."

THE END

Fuck yeah, dreams! Fuck yeah, theatre!

I've blogged about my dreams before. More often than not, the dreams that I remember come from those times when I've woken once already, but sleep in because sleeping in is for the cool kids. It's those mostly-asleep states that generate, for me, the most interesting, memorable dreams.

I really liked this morning's dream. In it, I had written a children's play about fairies who hadn't gotten their wings yet. On reflection, it's pretty damn close to the Cutie Mark Crusaders from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. But it's a dream, so I'm not going to be too hard on it for being a bit of a rip-off.

It was hard to tell from the dream whether I was watching the play, in it as one of the fairies, or stage-managing it. I remember that there were 3 fairies who had yet to get their wings and were very frustrated about it, and one fairy who had her wings, but couldn't fly, which was really embarrassing. There was one bitchy fairy who was a total bitch at the other four for not being able to fly, and she had this sort of lackey character that she could drag around and feel superior to. That's really as developed as the story every got - at least in the dream. After I woke up and thought about it a bit, I realized it would probably work better with fewer fairies. Two without wings, tops. And bitchy fairy's lackey shouldn't have wings, either. Because then there could be a plot thread that would allow one of the fairies to realize that she was actually just like the lackey, who was like a pixie or sprite or something - she wouldn't be getting wings, but she could do fucking magic, which kind of made up for it. It's a children's show, these kind of things totally make sense, I promise. Also, spoiler alert: bitchy fairy couldn't fly either. She was just being a bitch to hide the fact that she was just as flummoxed by the whole flying thing as the non-flying fairy was. And spying on non-flying fairy to see if she can figure out the trick first. But they all learn a Valuable Lesson about stuff at the end.

The set was awesome. There were poles set up stage left, painted green so they were like flower stems, that the actors would swing around. Um... kind of like pole dancing, my brain has just pointed out, but more fanciful and fun, and a whole lot less smutty. Apparently dream brain is much less smutty than awake brain. Or more so. ANYWAY, the fairies would swing around on the flower stems and pretend they were flying, and it was all a whole lot of fun for them. There were trampolines strategically placed around the stage, so that fairies that could fly could jump on the trampolines and fly through the air without having to get into any of the complications of a fly system, which, I'm given to understand, isn't any fun for actors. Besides, it's fuck-off expensive. Look at that Spiderman musical. Even when I'm asleep, I'm completely focused on low-budget theatre. The first play I was ever in was A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which I played the fairy Cobweb. We used trampolines to fly, and it worked really well. Plus, it was wicked fun.

I even dreamed up a meeting with the costume designer, as we tried to figure out how to do the fairy wings. The initial idea was to use those lame wings that you always see on bad Halloween costumes, but we ended up coming up with something much better. The actors would wear a lightweight harness that held a pair of thin, curved PVC pipes (or something similar) at their shoulders, that were draped with colorful ribbons to make it all look fluttery when they moved. Trust me, visually, it was epic.

Even though I know that I'll probably never get around to fleshing out this dream into a fully-staged play, unless I get a co-playwright to work on this with - I am not good with kids, you guys - I like that a part of my brain is still thinking about theatre, and wanting to be involved in it. It's been hard going to school for 9 years, high school and college combined, and having your whole world revolve around the stage, and then only working on two plays in the 5-6 years after you graduate. I have this hope that starting next year, things will change and I'll be able to do a lot more of that type of thing. The ultimate hope is that I'll be able to create a career out of it eventually. I'm just stuck right now.

UPDATE: I just got confirmation from a 100% legitimate and not-completely-perverted scene designer that my flower stem poles are the way to go. So take that, smut!

New Shiny

I received a new laptop today, and there was much rejoicing. Now, there are a great many things I can do that I could not do before. The intended goal of this purchase is to get me to stare at a blank page more frequently, in the hopes that I'll stop being so afraid of the goddamned thing and put some fucking text on there once or twice. I spend a lot of time on the futon (still too poor/cheap for a couch) watching television and movies via the magic of Netflix and our ever-growing personal collection of DVDs and, let's face it, sometimes what's on the television screen isn't all that interesting. Those who follow my Twitter feed (which should be nearly all 11 of you, considering where my traffic sources are coming from*) will know that I'm currently in the middle of a prolonged Nicolas Cage marathon. We love it when he goes psycho, but his films are largely hit or miss. Largely miss. And so up until today, I've spent a whole lot of this movie-watching time doing crossword puzzles on my phone, or playing Dragon, Fly! on it, or just generally paying more attention to my smartphone's screen than that of my television.

Anyway, I eventually gave in to that nagging feeling that since I was really just sitting on my ever-flattening butt, I really should attempt to at least finish the current draft rewrite re-re-rewrite of the novel I wrote when I was in middle school and the beginning of high school. It might not have sparkly fucking vampires or magic wands and shit, but it's been sitting in my brain like a fat albino toad in an empty soup pot**, and having a laptop will give me less of an excuse to not stare this beast of a book down while Nic Cage is losing his shit.
At least until we get to the end of the marathon (which will be quite soon, we just finished watching Lord of War today), at which point we will have to find some other marathon to latch onto.

So here's me, writing in my blog instead of staring at a blank page and wondering what the fuck Peria is going to do to help Twaise and all his people, and how to not make it so goddamn fucking obvious who the really really important person that's been hiding in plain sight is. I'm giving the whole first bit of the book away right here, and I don't care because I know I'm going to get dissatisfied with the 45 pages I've already got in another year or two, and start a re-re-re-rewrite. Largely, my problem is that while I grow increasingly satisfied with the development of the relationships between the characters, the actual events that allow that development to unfold leaves one fuck of a lot to be desired. And that's why I spend so much time staring at a blank page. Because while the characters are solid in my squishy brain, the events are not so much, especially since the latest rewrite kind of threw a whole lot of the early stuff out on its stupid ear.

When it comes right down to it, I'm just in a cranky ass mood because I wanted to see a movie tonight, but the showing that I intended to see was mis-labeled as being in 2D, and fuck 3D right in its stupid ass. I love David Tennant, and I was really looking forward to seeing him in leather pants, but I'm not going to spend money to tell movie executives that seeing David Tennant in leather pants is worth prolonging this stupid 3D trend. So I'll go see the only 2D showing on Wednesday, or wait until it's released on DVD, because that's how I roll.

*Except whoever is using that Trafficfaker site. Seriously, where the fuck is this blog linked that is so embarrassing that you have to use Trafficfaker to hide it?

**I'm almost completely sober, I swear. It was just the only analogy I could come up with that didn't involve turds, or nutsacks.***

***I've been reading Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. One of my favorite bits is where a dude's nutsack is described as being covered in the only wrinkles that bring anyone any pleasure. Also, according to that book, every dude in England has an enormous, veiny cock.

OMF.

I thought I'd take a shower to help me come down off this trip I like to call... ok, I don't have a name for it. Not important. What is important is that I took a shower, and I had a fucking brilliant idea.

Someone needs to create a scale for inside the shower. Not for crazy people who obsess over how much they weigh whilst soaking wet, but rather for crazy people who obsess over how much shampoo they have left in the bottle versus how much is left in the conditioner bottle!

I don't know about you guys, but it's a pain in the ass when you run out of shampoo before conditioner. Or vice-versa. Because you can never catch up! Or you have to use way more conditioner than you really need, and just waste it, in order to catch up with where you think you are with the shampoo, because maybe that bottle feels just a bit lighter than the conditioner bottle.

So just picture this with me. You're in the shower, and you're not one of those really smart people who buys the shampoo and conditioner 2-in-one bottle. Or even those really really weird people who buys the shampoo/conditioner/bodywash people. You don't want to be one of those people. Because the only products I've seen with the 3-in-one are Axe products. And you don't want to use Axe products because you don't want to be a cockbite.

Anyway. Shampoo bottle. Conditioner bottle. You weigh shampoo, and that comes up something like 5.23 oz. You weigh conditioner, and it's 5.30. "Hmmm... I've been a little stingy with the conditioner, lately," you think to yourself. Or, if you swing that way, "I've been using too much shampoo! What have I been doing with my life?!" With the handy-dandy Shower-Scale-Thingy, you can now moderate your morning (or afternoon, I'm not judging) ablutions accordingly, so that you can run out of shampoo and conditioner at the same motherfucking time!

Best part of this: you sell a single scale for the regular price. You sell a double scale, where you can weigh shampoo and conditioner at the same time, as a deluxe model, for an extra $20 $35. People will buy it, too! They love those As Seen on TV products. They're all the rage.

Ok. One of you go and invent this product, sell more units than the Snuggie (whose only purpose to me seems to be as a Halloween costume. You get a red one, an fancy red hat and a saucy moustache, and go as the Snuggie Inquisition, which nobody will expect) and you get back to me. I don't even ask for much of your millions. I think 10% is fair, considering how all I really did was take a shower and type some words, while you had to do the hard part of inventing it, marketing it, and overcoming the fact that shampoo and conditioner often have vastly different consistencies, and so the same volumes of each may not exactly weigh the same.

Forget that last bit. If you don't, that just means that you hate money. And I know you don't hate money. WHY DO YOU HATE MONEY?!