Malaise

So I'm feeling kind of down today. I don't know why. I think it's mainly just boredom. I get this way sometimes, where nothing I do seems interesting to me. Generally, it doesn't happen with all of my interests at the same time, but every couple months it all comes together in a kind of a perfect storm. It always happens on a day that I have off of work and that I have to spend alone. I don't have too many days like that, but when I do have them, they suck.

Today, for instance, I didn't get any new movies from Netflix, so I can't watch that. I'm not interested in watching any of the movies that I have at home either (although I could just break down at watch something, because I usually get into what ever I happen to put in). I'm too far along on Super Mario Galaxy to get any stars easily, and I'm not interested enough today to work at it. I'm also not that into Kingdom of Loathing today.

The saddest part is that several of the things that might have interested me have instead simply frustrated me. I tried to watch a movie instantly on Netflix, but my computer kept crashing. I also tried to play some Morrowind, but had the same problem. Sometimes my computer gets in these moods where anything too graphically intense causes problems. I found out that if we update my wife's computer to Jaguar or Leopard or whatever, then we could run Windows on it and I could probably do both of those things without so many crashes.

I'm suprised that I'm writing this much here today, but I guess that I wasn't thinking about it, I just started blogging, so I hadn't developed an expectation of boredom about it before hand. I wonder if this will even be interesting to anyone else. They say that if you're bored, you're boring. I don't know if that is true or not.

I suppose I should say something about NaNoWriMo. I did attempt to write a novel in November, but it didn't get very far. The only day that I worked on it was November 1st, and I wrote only about 1800 words, making this my least successful NaNoWriMo attempt ever. The novel was about a zombie outbreak in a small town, but had only gotten as far as introducing the main characters, including one who was in jail for killing his family, who he believed had become zombies. I hadn't even gotten threw the young man's entire story of what he did when killing his family, or what convinced him that they were in fact the undead and needed to be killed.

I would say that there is always next year, and indeed I do intend to participate in NaNoWriMo again next November. However, I think that it would do me some good to start writing some fiction before then. Therefore, I do hereby declare that I will begin writing some short stories about what ever topic catches my fancy, and with a frequency that will be determined at a later day, and when complete, some of those stories may be posted right here, on my blog, for all the world to see! How's that for a pledge?

Ain't it great?

I am writing this post on the Wii that my wife and I received as a wedding present. Wild.

NaNoWriMo ideas

Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to put some of my ideas for my NaNoWriMo novels on my blog. They will also know that one of my ideas is to use a chapter structure that causes frequent changes of setting or genre or other elements, so that I can incorporate a variety of disparate ideas that I might not be able to develop into an entire novel, even at the relatively modest 50,000 word length. That being said, here are some ideas for separate sections of this year's novel, in keeping with previously posted ideas:

Each chapter would be a parody or homage to something, but in keeping with a zombie theme, some of which would include: A Vampire Hunter D parody (I'm leaning towards either Vampire Hunter A or Vampire Hunter S, which are references to Ashe in the Evil Dead series and Shaun from Shaun of the Dead); an homage to Evil Dead, George Romero's films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead), and/or Shaun of the Dead; the use of an idea I had for a web-tune, involving a team of crime-fighting zombies (each zombie would be a different type: A Romero-esque zombie; a voodoo zombie; a revenant; a Xombie-type character; an evil curse Evil Dead-type zombie; possibly others like a teenager who is a zombie when playing video games).

My journal narrative structure could be used to bookend the sections or through out. In either case, it would work best as the narrator/protagonist travels through different locations as as the outbreak of zombies goes through various stages. I suppose this would work better if I came up with a consistent reason for people becoming zombies during the book, but I think it also would spice things up if that is never made clear, and each section hints at a different cause of zombification that is consistent with what is being parodied or homaged in that section.

Another thought is that the protagonist himself would change to be consistent with the section. That could mean multiple protagonists, or it could simple reflect his own development over the course of the story arc and his persistent encounters with zombies.

Many zombie movies and books avoid the term zombie. I will not do this, because I think that the reason that it is done is to avoid confusion between different types of zombies. Since my novel will involve many types of zombies, I will use the word because it best captures the overall category of creature that I am dealing with.

Speaking of categories, I will essentially have two types of zombies. They will be either reanimated dead or the still-living. The reanimated dead will be zombies such as in the films of George Romero and revenants. The still-living will include those controlled by voodoo, those infected with something like rage (28 Days Later) or a cell-phone signal (Cell), and those possessed by an evil curse (Evil Dead). I should note that just because they are "still-living" doesn't mean that there is some way to cure them, depending on the type. It just means that they might be easier to kill (for instance, a voodoo zombie could be cured, and could also bleed to death, while a rage-infected could not be cured, but can be killed in most conventional ways; on the other had, Romero-types must die before becoming zombies, and therefore cannot be killed in the same way that a living person could be).

If I have any more thoughts, I will try to post them, but for now I am too hungry to think about much beyond what I should have for lunch. How come I only post when I am starting to get hungry?

Bored

I have a bit of a problem. I want to write something in this crazy blog of mine, but I can't think of what to write. I could write about my ideas for NaNoWriMo, but I don't really have any that I haven't shared here before. I suppose I could talk about my upcoming wedding, but I have mentioned that too. I was just found by a friend from high school on Facebook, and that has led to me being shocked to discover that he married a girl that I also went to high school with. I knew that they knew each other but I don't remember them ever dating back then. I guess they must have gone to the same college or something. Weird.

As far as my wedding plans are going, we just finalized our program yesterday. It is pretty fun. I got to draw a picture that appears on the back cover. I'm going to try to post the image on here, but I have never done that before, so bear with me. Well, it looks like that worked. On the program, the image is called "Curt and Anna", but the actual file is names "Wedding of Loathing", but cause the idea was inspired by the character designs in Kingdom of Loathing. It didn't seem like a good idea to use that name in the program though. The old people wouldn't understand. Neither would the young people, except the ones who are familiar with KoL. As far as I know, that is just me, my soon-to-be wife, and one of my sisters. That is probably too big of an in-joke for a wedding program.

In other news, I am hoping to find a way to turn my 401k into a Roth IRA without having to pay the tax penalty out of pocket. I am meeting with my financial adviser about this this afternoon, but if any of my readers have any experience with this, I would love to hear about it. For the record, I know of two people who read this occasionally, and one person who read it once, but probably doesn't keep up with it. If there is anyone else, please please please give me some kind of feed back in a comment or something. I think the pressure to have something fresh for people to read is a good motivating force for me. If I ever finish NaNoWriMo, that is what will inspire me to edit my novel and try to publish it.

Oh no! Fiancee is home. Must. Post. Now...

Things and such

So, now I am just two-and-a-half weeks away from my wedding. I don't feel very nervous about it, and I don't know if that is good or bad. Some people have told me that it is normal to have some amount of nervousness by now, while others have indicated that if you have any second thoughts whatsoever you should call the whole thing off. I'm not planning to do that even if I do get nervous. The funny thing is that the people who have said that it is normal to get nervous are people who have been married once and never divorced, while the people who say that nervousness indicates that you are about to make a mistake are either divorced or in the process of getting divorced. There is even one woman who told me that she was nervous before her first marriage, eventually got divorced, and was not nervous about her second, which "took". I think her exact words were, "I didn't have and second thoughts about it the second time, and that one took".

In other news, I am getting excited about NaNoWriMo (I am excited about the wedding too, just not nervous). I really think that I will finish this year, and that is really important to me, because until you have successfully written a novel in NaNoWriMo, you cannot lead a local group of writers during the event. I want to be able to do that, because then I can find some place to write and encourage other people to join me. I would say things like, "yeah, I've done it, you should hang out at [place], 'cause that's where I'll be and we can goad each other along".

Well, I've got to go eat lunch now. Fare thee well.

Etiquette

So I have learned a few things about etiquette lately. For instance, if you are getting married, you should send thank yous as soon as you can after receiving a gift. That means if someone can't go to your wedding, and they send you a gift a month before the wedding, you should send the thank you then, rather than waiting until after the wedding. This is apparently so that they do not need to wonder if you received the gift.

What I am still wondering about is if you are obligated to buy something at a business that lets you use not only their wireless internet connection, but also their electricity for your computer. I think I'm going to have to wing it on that one, because I am planning to leave pretty much as soon as I finish blogging.

Also, I think that I have a good start going on my Honeymoon Mix CD. My fiancee and I decided that we are each going to make a mix CD so that we can have some fun music to listen to on our honeymoon, and I decided to use my own computer so that I could by songs myself, instead of using hers and having to have her buy them for me.

Finally, I wanted to mention that at our last meeting with the pastor before our wedding, he asked what three goals that each of us had in the next five years are, and one of mine was to finish a NaNoWriMo novel and polish it up for publication. Hopefully that will motivate me.

Argyle

First off, it bothers me that video game publishers don't provide advance copies of most games to places that review games. It really bothers me that I have to wait up to a week or longer for games I am interested in to be reviewed. Specifically, I want to read a review of Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. It seems like it would be a game that I would like, but it also seems like a game that I think that I would like but then would never play again after the first week that I had it. I think that a good review would help me figure out which it is before I buy it.

Second, I have decided that when I do NaNoWriMo this year, my main character will be named Argyle, because Argyle is my favorite color. I don't know what kind of person he will be, but I am leaning towards a silent, or at least not much spoken protagonist. This is mainly because I am terrible at writing dialog.

"Terrible at writing dialog! That's awful."

Yes, it is.

Anywho, I also think that I am better at a first person narrative than a third person one, so I might have the narrator be Argyle's friend or sidekick, or I might have the story be told through Argyle's journal. If I go with the journal, then I can avoid dialog pretty easily.

"Yeah, 'cause who writes dialog in their journal."

I don't know who you are supposed to be, but yes, that is why I could avoid the dialog with a journal.

"You do so know who I'm supposed to be."

Sorry, I really don't.

"I'm the other voice in your internal dialog."

Don't you mean monologue?

"No, because you don't have an internal monologue. Your thoughts occur to you as a conversation with yourself. That is why you mishear people so often."

That's very interesting. And thanks for explaining that. Don't worry though. No one reads this, so I don't think you creeped anyone out.

"What about that person whose comment said, 'I like meat'?"

I don't think people who say things like that get creeped out.

"Good point."