Dirt Herding.

Of late, my goal's been to make money and I've really been putting my education and my writerly sensibilities to work, breaking my back in factories and raking leaves and such. The latter got me a cold--yay cold!--and the former got my hands covered in bruises and wounds. When I came home at night the skin on my fingertips was so marred by the dirt and the heavy-duty soap at the paper factory that everything I touched felt coarse, and now I can't see my fingerprints--but that's not important now.
What's important is that I learned a new activity. In sweeping the floor while coughing my lungs out, red-eyed from all the paper sawdust in the air, I noticed while I was climbing across the gaping, chomping blades of The Shredder (guess what what does) that there was a hose dangling from the ceiling, with a gun-style handle at the nozzle. Some of you may recognize this as a compressed air hose.
A world of Newtonian play opened up for me. Blasting the floor with the proper intensity, from the proper height, causes the dust to be blown away in a circular fashion, so to guide the dirt into the proper corner for later sweeping took some skill, which I slowly developed. Blast to get the dirt moving, then shoot past the rim to get the excess back, then step around...
Sweeping would indeed have been easier, but much less fun that this: dirt herdin'. Git alawng, li'l dawgies!

This mode of speech reminds me of the White Wolf Western Omnibus by Hal Dunning -- which has nothing to do with the role-playing games manufacturer, but rather a tawdry Western fiction writer. I picked the book up for two pounds at a thrift shop in Belfast and the style of it is a constant marvel to me.
I write long, you see, detailing the look and feel of things. People, places, motions, intentions, interior dialogue, all that post-bicameral stuff, but not Hal. For Hal, it's perfectly possible for a man to ride into town, round up a posse, head over to Hacksaw Johnson's farm to bring the varmint to justice, hang him in the village square and then go to the Lone Star Saloon to drink to their victory, all in one single page.
The amount of plot in his stories is astonishing to me.
While I was giving the NaNoWriMo workshops at the local American Book Centre, I brought two books to illustrate writing 'short' (Good old Hal!) and writing 'long', for which I had brought my Oscar Wilde collection in hardcover where I had a three-page sentence bookmarked.

Merry christmas, everyone!

Updatism

So, I went to a wedding confirmation ceremony where the bride's relatives turned out to be the Von Trapps, only, you know, without the morally suspect Third Reich connotations. I've been negotiating various thoroughly exciting things with the good people of Sofawolf Press, which is one of the reasons why progress has been slow on FANG 2FG -- the other reason being the sheer, staggering volume of submissions, and of those that I've read almost all have been nothing short of excellent.

In the event that there's enough interest, will be hiring me to record a book-on-CD version of his excellent novel Volle, which I'm very excited about. It's a return to the theatre which I so loved but simply haven't made time for in recent years. I've recorded some samples, which Kyell will be putting up shortly to gauge interest and if there's enough of a response (responses being pre-orders with which he'd pay me -- 'tis the season for commercialism!), and, just for the lark of it, I've engaged in that most atrocious of musical traditions:

Karaoke.

For your enjoyment, The Fairy Tale of New York, originally by The Pogues, now performed by the cast of "Volle" :)

The above was recorded in a single take, no less! Lyrics and singing characters below the cut.

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Helfer
It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, 
won't see another one

Volle
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Helfer
Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you

Volle
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

Dereath
They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old

Arrin
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome

Tally
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more

Tish
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

Xiller
The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

Ilyana
You're a bum
You're a punk

Welcis
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

Ilyana
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Richy
The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

Dereath
I could have been someone

Volle
Well so could anyone

Dereath
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you

Volle 
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

Helfer
The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

Cerebral cinema.

I had a dream related to the action-adventure genre of Hollywood cinema. It began very cinematically, following a number of events whose significance now escapes me, but at the time was crucial to the dream's plot. Someone committed suicide, which turned out to be the first symptom of a vast supernatural plot. Much of this section took place in a housing estate full of black people where, after a very sweet girl was kidnapped by supernatural forces, one charismatic young man gathered himself a posse, saying that if he went after her alone, he'd absolutely, most certainly die, but if they went together, they might just take 'that bastard' with them.

I went to a cathedral-like university building in the middle of Manhattan to meet my friend Peter Parker, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who wasn't Spider-Man, I was. Not that I ever got to use my powers. I interrupted our conversation to run up to some semi-cute waiter and ask for his number, and got shot down. No harm, no foul.

There was some more plot with the black folks which now sadly has already begun to fade, but the long and short of it is that I was standing in a large circular space, which had a big pit in the middle traversed by a single walkway, surrounded by a balcony. On one end Captain Mal Reynolds and I stood shoulder to shoulder, on the other end, The Operative from Serenity and that creepy corrupt Fed in the turtleneck from the Firefly episode The Message on the other. I found a Luger on the floor (a reference, no doubt, to my playing Call of Duty last weekend).

There was some banter, posturing, mutual threats. Some insults in regards to my marksmanship, which were totally grounded until I shot the Creepy Fed in the heart, after which I explained both to the captain and The Operative that of the two, the Fed had been the more unpredictable with his firearm.

I am unsure whether Mal shot The Operative, but time slowed down and Mal ran across the dividing walkway, followed by the ghostly image of beautifully sloshing water, after which a small, proud Japanese man addressed a group of Japanese people and told them that what they had seen ( the ghostly water ) was a cinematic simulation of what was apparently a natural Japanese phenomenon, ghostly zero-G water coursing through spaces. He also informed them that his cruise liner had a simulation that was not only lifelike, but also interactive, and would they all please follow him.

I love having a brain. I love it so much. This stuff's gold!

Astonishment.

Who thinks I have what it takes to be an airline steward? And why, or why not?

Me for the win!

You scored as Captain Jack Sparrow. Roguish,quick-witted, and incredibly lucky, Jack Sparrow is a pirate who sometimes ends up being a hero, against his better judgement. Captain Jack looks out for #1, but he can be counted on (usually) to do the right thing. He has an incredibly persuasive tongue, a mind that borders on genius or insanity, and an incredible talent for getting into trouble and getting out of it. Maybe its brains, maybe its genius, or maybe its just plain luck. Or maybe a mixture of all three. Captain Jack Sparrow 71% The Terminator 67% James Bond, Agent 007 58% Lara Croft 50% Indiana Jones 46% Batman, the Dark Knight 46% Maximus 42% Neo, the "One" 38% El Zorro 33% William Wallace 33% The Amazing Spider-Man 33% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

FurRag - beta.

"Hey Osfer, have you been a big dirty slacker lately? I haven't seen you post anything--no stories, no LJ posts... have you turned lazy and unambitious?"

Haha, no. Aside from the fact that I'm courting two prospective employers in the real world and that I've been offered a job as editor of a fairly well-known furry publication, aside from the fact that I've started the first of a series of five NaNoWriMo writing workshops I'm giving, aside from the fact that I'm participating in this madness with the full intention of getting the result published--I've been working on a project.

Yes, yes, I know, "you and your fucking projects", but listen, this is a doozy. A sweet and talented coder friend sacrificed way too much of his free time to make some of my more frivolous dreams come true, while the fabulously talented Kamui contributed reams of artwork and the result is this:

FurRag, the definitive furry fiction archive (beta).

Even at 15% of its planned functionality it's already on a par with the functions of just about every other fiction archive out there and there's tons more to come. Despite the fact that it isn't finished it's now been opened to help furry participants in the National Novel Writing Month through the nifty integrated per-chapter and full-story word count and forum integration functions.

Zawesomes, now?

October to November

After the Day of the Dead comes All Hallow's, or Hallowmas or Sammy
Haine or whatever poncy name is given to good old Halloween. For those
three mice and two squirrels that didn't get spammed by me yet, FANG's Halloween edition is out and an early bird who orders now can still have it in time for the Dread Eve.

Yeah, I know. Months with no updates, and then spam? Just wait. There's more.

These past months, together with an old friend and brilliant coder whom
I won't name unless he says it's okay I've been developing a new story
archive, a rather ambitious undertaking that will take quite some time
to fully develop. However, since it offers some functionality eminently
suited to NaNoWriMo a beta version will be made available to the public specifically for use during NaNo.

Should be good fun!