Who let the cobwebs in here?

Just to let you all know, I've been hideously busy with either real life or my manufactured landscape of fiction writing. It's not that I haven't wanted to comment on Bill Bennett, Jayson Blair, e-paper, the Matrix media hype, Memorial Day, my recent trip to the ass-end of Oregon or anything else in between on my self-realized topography, but I've been...you know....busy.

Or, on the other end, the vibrations of popular culture and politics isn't really making me give a crap right now, and with my other fiction pursuits, I either don't have the energy or the inkling to give a crap about the millions a hyper-prude pissed away in Las Vegas casinos or how a former New York Times reporter is making a sociocultural fashion statement about being unrepentant. (Self-indulgent writer's sidenote:For a couple years now, I've been toying with remaking "Othello" and setting it in the newsroom. The eponymous main character is the newspaper's chief editor, Iago is a scheming junior reporter and Desdemona is the newspaper. The antics of one Mr. Blair is stranger than anything I could dream up).

When you stop writing on the blog for a while, you easily forget about your on-the-fly autobiography you've got going on. Since I've taken a break from writing here, I've grown a little confused about what I'm doing here. I've stopped doing running posts about politics, and I've greatly decreased link-and-run (think hit-and-run) stories. Yet, what's left if I don't put together an original essay. I could go back to finding some odd and cool on another site and posting it here with my comments, but that's just parasiting. And honestly, I don't have time to devote to writing longer essays about thinks orbiting my mental space.

I will say this, though: My story about tribal holy war is coming along nicely, although I have patches in it that I need to fill out, a true mark of a first draft. It's about, sheesh, 5,000 words....something like 25 pages. No idea about where I'm going with it. I need to get it as pretty as I can get it by my deadline of Friday morning. I'm also falling under sway of my proto-novel, gathering new ideas daily. Woke up a couple nights ago with the dreadful, chilling sensation that someone cracked open my brain and copied my novel, making it their own and got way famous off it. Great. Just as I get over those "Oh, damnit, I'm back in high school" dreams, I get fictionjacking phantasms haunting me in REM sleep.

So, I'm back on the blog for now, but I'm having an awful time spinning these plates again. I may be silent for a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you out there.

P.S. Eastern Oregon is an arid scrubland that would make for a great faked Mars landing. Just add red lens filter and mix.

A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies

Okay, so I'm linking and running on this one. Sue me.

When I see this, I can't help but flashback to the blimp in "Blade Runner" and think, "So, this is how it begins."

Note to self: Get "Blade Runner" and "Dark City" on DVD.