azurelunatic

20,393 / 100,000 (20.0%)

This is 10,000 short of where I wanted to be by now, but it's getting up there. easalle is officially ahead of me, but I'll see if I can't change that by getting some serious writing in. Not that I know where I'm going, mind you, just that it's somewhere in thattaway type direction.

I was going to go out and buy lettuce, but the Pitch Black that I had at work hit hard before I got a chance to, so I'm home and about to crash hard.

Before I do that, though, some thoughts:

I am extremely, perhaps excessively, fond of the narrative style that has one or more characters recapitulating insane, improbable, and/or hilarious events that you really had to Be There For to another character or group of characters who was/were actually not There For It. When the scene would take up too much room, or we wouldn't have our viewpoint character with a reason to be there (or we couldn't leave the "camera" there), I like to use that method. I especially like it in order to get extra laughs from a situation that, described real-time, might take too much of my notional effects budget. (I have an unspoken convention that only the action situations that in some way are important to the plot, the ticking away of K'tepi's "clock", should get onscreen effects time.) I also use this in place of flashbacks when I can.

I have a few favorite variations on the narrative exposition of humor. ( Collapse )

I can and do write live-action humor, but the timing is a lot more tricky there, especially for a situation that unfolds slowly. It's a lot more interesting to hear about a character spending a few hours buck-naked on a rooftop after the fact, unless it's a major plot point that deserves stretching out live over several hours. I find it very "cheating" to write "Several hours later, he was still sitting there, staring at the sunset sky, waiting for the alien mothership to arrive," when I'm not going to do very much more with that character. Someone who was there, though, can summarize the important stuff for someone who wasn't.

I like humor.

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This is one of those songs that's never made real lyrical sense to me, but is really nice to sing along with as loud as you possibly can, and possibly wind up feeling better than you started out feeling.

It was also playing just a few moments ago from the apartment next door and/or across the way; I haven't pinned down a direct location of the music, but given that it's 3 in the morning, and the music's clearly audible, I may have to come up with a few new character descriptions for neighbors.

I suspect that this sudden infusion of Hair Band Era rock ballads is linked to The Clanking Door -- there's a mysterious clanking noise, as of a big-ass windchime with only one chime, or a resonant object striking against an immobile object, and this clanking sound seems to be tied to the opening and/or shutting of a door (I can hear the hinges squeak).

Also:

You're my angel: come and save me tonight.
You're my angel, come and make it all right.

There is creaking, squeaking, and clanging. There is knocking on doors, and not the nice quiet kind either.

Ah, city apartment life. Hooray.

"If you put XP on a machine that's been running 95, if it loads up, you're not guaranteed same-day response."

A well, duh moment: don't leave your laptop unattended in a public place.

Heh. I have 2/3 of the programs that this guy is recommending for the first level.

http://www.sysinternals.com
http://www.mlin.net -- startup control panel
http://www.anti-phishing.org
http://www.uscert.gov/reading_room/HomeComputerSecurity
www.sans.org/resources/malwarefaq