Wings Over the Pyre - January 10th, 2004

05:30 am - From Ray, With Love

[The Hero] must be a complete man and a common man and an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in this world and a good enough man for any world...

The story is the mans adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

So writes the master of the dirty, hard-bitten hero, the Lord of Noir, Raymond Chandler. Seldom has any author so caught the imaginations and the vision of the American literary public like Chandler did, with his sparse prose, characters who turned on a dime, and dames whose legs meant nothing but trouble. Pretty much anyone who's anyone in the literary biz has been influenced, one way or another, by Chandler.

I've always loved Chandler's alternate sparseness and rough lyricism (not that you could tell from my rambling, Lovecraftian purple prose). Its hard, oh so hard, to carry on at length, though. You need a kind of stolid solidity that I'm not sure I can pull off in the long term, but ... maybe its time I tried.

Of late, inspired by things like White Wolf's Adventure! and Politically Incorrect Games' Two-Fisted Tales, I've been hungry and desirous to work on -- a web comic.

Yes, yes, I know. I can't draw. But I can script. I can script like a motherfucker. So, from time to time, I might post a few pieces up here as they come to me. Who knows? One day I might meet a comic artist who wants me to write their manga opus.

Who can say?

10:40 pm - 39 Minutes From Home

They said it couldn't be done. But in the sleepy little town of Montrose, California, nestled in the hills surrounding JPL, master watchmaker Garo Anserlian of Executive Jewelers is perfecting a timepiece for hundreds of Earthlings bound to Mars' irregular day. Past the glass cases of what looks like an ordinary jewelry store is a workshop where watches are losing 39 minutes a day.

I love technology. All technology, really, not just the humming and thrumming electronica I'm usually associated with. I love the brass and mahogany of Victorian steampunk, and the tiny tin and steel of the watchmaker's art. I love the warm brilliance of Venetian optics circa 1200. I love the stirrup.

The thing that unifies all these things is that they're all products of the human mind and hand. You can keep your sunsets, I'd rather watch a clock's monotonous action. Retain your forests, I want to wander the urban landscape. Swallow your oceans, I lap at the waves of energy that wash the minds of man. People say that humans are not natural creatures and his works are unnatural, then they oh and ah over a beaver's dam. Where is the difference, save ours generally serve a purpose more than flooding?

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.

No, man delights not me, but I know his works, and by his works ye shall know him.