I’ve never really experienced the so-called “writer’s block.” Not that I’m bragging…but I often just don’t find I have enough time to write.
By which I mean, writing seriously. It’s easy, however, to find time here and there just to jot down some random thoughts.
(Aside note: if you type really quickly on the WordPress smartphone app, it autocorrect “random” to “radon,” which would put you in an entirely different frame of mind.)
I wasn’t able to post short stories and news from my smartphone (which is what I had been doing on the train to work) bc I went way over my ISP plan and got throttled for about a week.
Then December started, and work got really busy. And I look up and suddenly realized I haven’t even watched more than the first ep of the live action Cowboy Bebop.
(It was OK. Too many guns and not enough kung-fu.)
I’ll get back to regular posting soon.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of what it looks like on the hiking trail behind my house. (“Wild dogs and boar suddenly appear. Beware!”)
(Yes, I have seen a few. They come with their piglets down to the creek near us at night and then on the property next door dig in the ground with their tusks, looking for bugs to eat.)
I started writing stories when I was in 5th grade. Our teacher gave us a list of vocabulary each week — about 10 to 12 words, I think — and said we had two choices: 1) write down all their definitions along with a sample sentence, or 2) work them into a short story to show that we understood the meaning of the words.
I chose the 2nd option. In fact, I was the only one who did out of a class of about 25.
The thing is, the teacher wanted us to read them at the front of the room.
Man, that was not something I was looking forward to. But somehow I managed.
I wrote nothing but detective stories, all in the first person. At some point, I borrowed my mother’s old manual typewriter (originally my grandfather’s, from the 1950s) and typed them all out. I still have most of them.
But my peak as an elementary school age creative writer came part-way 6th grade, when I attempted to write my first horror story.
I was lucky: I got to watch Cowboy Bebop (the classic anime) in 2000.
I had just moved to Japan to teach English as an ALT the previous year. Stuck in the countryside with no friends and very little to do when not working, I immersed myself in Japanese language study.
Part of that involved keeping the TV on in the background, even though I couldn’t understand any of it.
After a few months of studying, I got help from a student in the English Speaking Society (a club at the high school where I was working) in getting a membership card at the only video rental store in town. At the time, the owners weren’t so keen on allowing a foreigner to rent videos; they even asked how I could guarantee that I wouldn’t simply up and leave and take their videos back to my home country.
Over the three years I was in the town, I borrowed hundreds of videos from that little store. None of the Japanese-language ones had English subtitles (obviously), and Cowboy Bebop was a series I must have borrowed at least three times, understanding more each time I watched it.
In the anime, the primary characters all have katakana names – Spike, Faye, Jet, Edward – and their computer screens always show English. The opening credits are in English, and the text behind the credits is also in English, even as the characters use Japanese (it’s never said, but we can assume universal translators in action). The show features multiethnic interaction with no hints whatsoever of racism or prejudice. A show way ahead of its time.
As various websites have pointed out, it was originally designed to sell Bandai toys, but the director had other ideas.
Episode 5 explains, with text behind the characters: “This is not a kind of space opera.” It slips in references to shows and movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, but it’s really an angst-ridden, existentialist space western with misfits galore.
Based on jazz.
“Space jazz,” really, is a better description of the show (even though pop, funk, and even heavy metal are played — entirely made by Kanno Yoko’s band, which she specifically created just for the show).
The live action remake version was just released on Netflix on November 19th (EST; click on the link to see the trailer on YouTube), who I sincerely hope do it justice (most, if not all, of their recent remakes of anime have quite frankly sucked donkey).
It’s not supposed to have a happy ending. I hope it doesn’t.
And I hope there’s no second season. The anime is brilliant. Don’t ruin its legacy.
Thousands of debris fragments forced the astronauts/cosmonauts (and “taikonauts” in the Chinese-only space station) to shelter in their own separate modules.
“A kind of space madness,” is how one analyst phrased it.
Scientists around the world always have to deal with political maneuvering (i.e., bullshit). (Reference: 2010: A Space Odyssey – The Year We Make Contact).
Kamo’oalewa is one such piece of lunar rubble that spiraled away from the moon. But rather than landing on Earth or simply tumbling off into the void, it found itself a quasi-satellite in its own right.
Dunno what’s cooler: the name of the Moon fragment or the fact that the grad student at Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona that discovered the ”moon” is named ”Sharkey.”
Also, the complete and utter lack of visuals is appalling…plus the repetitive politically-oriented automatic videos and random ads irritates me. Honestly, WTF is up with US-based websites these days. Unreadable.
Still, it’s telling that the ”moon” has a Hawaiian name. Much like the navigator in my story…
Where’s the Artemis?? What’s up with Mars? And Ceres seriously…?
Sorry I haven’t kept up the story posts, everyone.
I know it’s been almost a month since the last Bringer of Light episode. Work just got dumped on me, and I can barely find time to give my writing students feedback. We switched back to face to face classes…with live streaming on Zoom for students who couldn’t or wouldn’t go back to campus…which is definitely NOT a teaching style I would recommend to anybody, anywhere, ever.
It’s been like laying down tracks in front of an oncoming train. Every day.
There is lots more good stuff for Riss and her crew, I swear. I’ve got drafts up to Chapter 42, and plots to the end after that. Let me see if I can get the next one up for you all in a day or two…
Apparently, this is designed to shoot alcohol into your hand “whenever and wherever you feel like it.”
Hmm. I don’t suppose a clever person could figure out what else to fill it with that would be easily slipped into someone’s drink or food. Or spray your own hand and then shake your enemy’s. Or touch his face.
Say, didn’t this happen already to a member of a certain pariah country’s ruling family?
And, uh, Spidey doesn’t just spray his hands. That’s not really how it works. Just saying.
OK, I readily admit that I am once again waaaay behind on my scifi blogging.
At some point last week, I looked up from the mass amounts of work I had left to do and went, “Uh. August 21st? Was that really the last time I posted?”
Uh. Yup.
😣
I’ll do my best to get the rest of Riss’s story online on a biweekly basis, like I promised I would.
In a video on the YouTube channel Bloomberg Quicktakes, Fearn and Woodward propose using the “Mach Effect Gravity Assist” drive to cut interstellar travel time down to within a human lifetime.
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