Hypnagogic State

Zombie Parker has a handy snack with a green friend.

I got my costume fix at the zombie con in my town a couple of weeks ago. Tonight is movie night. On the bill: Black Christmas (not the awful remake), Drag Me to Hell, and Trick ‘r Treat. Merry Halloween to all and to all a good night.

"The Princess's Knitted Canopy" from The Emperor's Castle by Thomas Hillier (via BLDGBLOG)

Thomas Hillier, a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, created an architectural landscape model based on a story found in the work of Japanese printmaker Ando Hiroshige. BLDGBLOG featured Hillier’s thesis project in a recent post and included images of the creation process, the story behind it, and how the story was interpreted.

The story that inspired the architecture:

The Emperor’s Castle originates from a mythical and ancient tale hidden within a woodblock landscape scene created by Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker, Ando Hiroshige. This tale charts the story of two star-crossed lovers, the weaving Princess and the Cowherd, who have been separated by the Princess’s father, the Emperor. These characters have been replaced by architectonic metaphors creating an urban theatre within the grounds of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo.

And an example of how that story was interpreted:

Image 4 (The Princess’s Knitted Canopy). The Princess, a flexible, diaphanous knitted membrane, envelopes the spaces below and is fabricated using the surrounding ‘Igusa’: a natural rush material used in the fabrication of tatami mats. Igusa expels a soothing scent as the skin undulates, which is said to calm body and mind. This scent acts as a perfume of remembrance to the cow herder and his time spent running hand in hand through the meadows with the Princess.

The sketch of that interpretation is at the top of this post. Here is a photographic example of the completed model:

Image from The Emperor's Castle by Thomas Hillier

While I have an interest in architecture, I am far from knowledgeable on the subject. But BLDGBLOG has a suggestion for how writers can adapt Hillier’s approach:

Now reverse-engineer this: take a landscape garden somewhere—or an accidental assemblage of parks, buildings, rivers, and homes—and interpret that setting as if it is literature. Do a reverse-Hillier, so to speak: start with the landscape and extract characters and motivated dramatic actions from the objects placed within it.

I am eager to try this once I have found an architectural image that feels like the write material to work with. My lack of formal architectural knowledge might come in handy in this exercise, preventing me from locking on the known details and forcing me to rely on gut feelings.

Accro is an animated short depicting cycles of futility. Appropriate material for the end of the week. Marie Opron, Léonard Cohen, and David Martin are the team behind this black and white beauty.

A button biter.

“Hands off! He belongs to me!”

If the casket rocks…

Sponsored by one of the best dance offs captured on film:

Project Gutenberg is an excellent resource for classic literature but it also houses some bizarre gems. Case in point: Surgical Anatomy, a text written in 1859 by Joseph Maclise. The book is a good read for those interested in the history of anatomical knowledge. But the best part is the series of illustrated plates, such as the one above, that are included in the book.

The look on his face reminds me of Narcissus and Goldmund, which pointed out that the face made during orgasm is eerily similar to a face expressing severe pain.

I’m currently reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife, a “how to” guide of sorts for writers at every career stage. It is an informative, interesting read that covers subjects ranging from getting enough exercise to communicating with agents to setting up a Facebook page. Many of the tips seem obvious but it is often the most obvious things that the brain can glance over in disinterest, thus losing the actual meaning behind it.

On the Booklife Now blog, VanderMeer excerpts himself on the subject of finding your strenghts and weaknesses and learning how to operate with or around them:

How can you work on problem areas without being overwhelmed? Make a list of your strengths, your weaknesses, and those gray areas in between—things you’re not terrible at but not great at, either. Even though you’ve presumably had others help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses to get to this stage, take this list and give it to a couple of friends or colleagues you didn’t include in your original analysis. Ask them if your list is accurate. After you’ve included their feedback, and been totally honest with yourself, do the following:

—Break the Strengths list down into subcategories, rating yourself in each, so you have a better idea of what those strengths mean. Stay aware of your strengths even as you work on your weaknesses and make sure shoring up weaknesses doesn’t negatively affect your strengths.

—Select two items from the Gray Areas list that you think you can easily improve and that would help your writing career. Make sure your short-term and long-term goals include ways to better yourself in these areas.

—Select one item from the Weaknesses list, even if it’s something that also scares you. Add elements to your short-term and long-term goals that give you opportunities to make this weakness a strength, or at least something you’re not bad at anymore.

—Select one item from the Weaknesses list that you don’t want to work on improving. This advice especially applies if something on your list scares you too much. Setting it off to the side is about preserving your mental health. You can always revisit it in the context of success with some other weakness.

I am not a fan of advice books in general because I tend to find them less than useful. But I decided to purchase Booklife because it had a section devoted to one of my weaknesses: online networking.

I suffer from a curious weakness of being much more shy online than I am in person. My communication style, offline, is rather dependent on being able to hear the other person (though hearing and seeing is preferred). Tone of voice, body language… those things say a lot. And they are absent from casual forms of communciation on the internet.

While I would have no problem whatsoever approaching a musician who had just played in a small club to say that I loved his or her music, I become paralyzed when faced with the prospect of emailing an artist whose illustrations I have become a fan of online. How do I smile and extend a hand for a shake online?

I am making baby steps of progress: commenting on blogs, chatting with a couple of people through email. But it is still an area I need to work on for both my professional career and personal life.

Jonathan Nix is the Australian animator/artist/musician behind Hello, a 2003 animated short that featured a lovelorn boom box. His newest animated project, The Missing Key, is a prequel that is supposed to be released late this year (which is essentially now). The colors in the trailer for this thirty minute film are much more vivid than those featured in his previous work. But there continues a similar theme of creatures with musical devices as heads. Speaking of music, the soundtrack to this trailer is gorgeous. The film may be worth experiencing once with your eyes closed.

NaNoWriMo is the still lengthy nickname for National Novel Writing Month. Writers all over the country (and some overseas strays) sign up to pledge that they will write 50,000 words of a novel between November 1st and midnight on November 30th. Entry is free, prizes are naught, and enthusiasm is high.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo  but realized as I was hitting the submit button that I have no need to write a novel now. I don’t have an idea at the moment that I feel I can carry through 50,000 words without losing quality or my mind. But what I do have is a fuckton* of short story ideas that keep piling up on top of each other. Story ideas that are fully mapped out in my brain but just need to get onto paper.

So I decided to do NaNoWriMo my way- as PaBeShStMo (Parker Betz Short Story Month, though it might also be the name of an imported ale). I will still write 50,000 words. At a rough estimate of 4,000 words per story, that gives me a loose goal of 13 stories (rounding up).

Am I missing out by not participating NaNoWriMo in the way it is intended? Possibly, but doubtful. I’m very sure that having thirteen short story drafts at the beginning of December is going to be more useful than having a novel I’m going to chuck into the virtual recycling bin.

I have three days to finish up the two drafts I have near completion now so they don’t get mowed over during PaBeShStMo. Then it is off onto a madcap race through dirigibles, yellow fever, brittle bone disease, and Tennessee Williams references. Not in the same story. (Yet.)

*SI unit equivalent to 1000 kilofucks.

The Flowfield Unity is a web comic that blends science, art, and a heavy dose of snark. Artist Adam York Gregory- one of the finest people you could ever have the pleasure of knowing- has created a following for himself with his distinctive black and white illustrations. He recently began doing animated shorts of some of his past comics. I love the short above because it seems like it could play during the intermission of a grindhouse double feature. And, yes, I mean that as a compliment.

Tor.com posted The Lighthouse Keeper this past weekend as part of their Saturday Morning Cartoon series. The dark, sleek and slightly steampunk animated short features the titular lighthouse keeper battling an unusual invader. The creative team is listed by Tor as “David Francois, Rony Hotin, Jérémie Moreau, Baptiste Rogron, Gaëlle Thierry and Maïlys Vallad”.

When I went on YouTube seeking that short, I instead came across a different work with the same title. Though the second course of The Lighthouse Keeper has slight similarities in setting and pest problems, the style is much more raw. This short was directed by Josef Prokop and produced by QQ Studio and CINDY Films.