my new cardboard box

Okay, so the astute of you will have noticed that I took my last post down.

It should never have been put up in the first place. I wish to apologize to all of you for bringing you into what was an extemely personal matter and i mostly wish to apologize to the person involved. I was upset, I was emotional, and I acted without thinking.

But I did learn something.

Seven years ago, I had three incredibly dark years after my divorce. So dark, that at the end of the first, I said to myself, "Wow, this can't get any worse, at least."

It did.

Then it did again.

And I had nobody to turn to. No one. Not any family, not any friends.

Everyone had turned against me, and told me I was wrong.

I remember a point, sitting on my bedroom floor for about seven hours, with a big piece of paper and a pencil, listing out all the facts... because gee, if EVERYONE in the world except YOU thinks you're wrong, then, well, maybe you need to reassess....

I came out of those seven hours knowing I was right. You CAN be right when everyone else says you are wrong -- it actually is possible.

In the end, everyone did sway my way. Everyone saw that I was in the right and she was in the wrong, but it was a hard battle. But I WAS right. And the path to discovering that -- that I had the strength to see through everyone else's opinion -- gave me more strength that I ever imagined I was capable of, but it would have been far easier had I had friends to fall back on.

My LJ post a few days ago showed me something I never imagined: I have friends now. Some of you I don't even know!! Some of you I know very well. All of you are most excellent people who will always be invited into my home and who, if you ever need me, I will be there for.

So for that, I don't regret my post at all. For every other reason I do.

Thank you. You guys really did help me through what was a very, very hard few days.

Michael.

This is my wordle, based on the prologue of my new novel:



I like that the word "Small" comes out so large, it really is one of the themes of the book.

Click on it to make it bigger.

Added:

I thought afterwards, without the actual prologue, this make little sense, so here it is:

Prologue

The grass is tall, painted gold by the setting autumn sun. Soft wind blows through the tips as it slopes up a small hill. Near the top, the blades shorten, finally breaking to dirt upon which stands a willow. Its roots, twisted with Spanish moss, split and dig into the loam like fingers. The splintery muscles of one gnarled arm bulges high above the ground, hiding the small body, naked and pink, on the other side. Fetal positioned, her back touches the knotted trunk. Her eyes are closed. Above her, the small leaves shake together as their thin branches shiver in the cold breeze. The red and silver sky gently touch her face. Her breath is gone. The backs of her arms, the tops of her feet, are blue. She's too small for this hill, too small for this tree. She's too small to be left alone under all this sky.
# # #


erdnase out.

Spending the morning watching Cloverfield. Then, like all DVDs I watch (because I watch them to learn story and everything else), I will watch it again with all the commentary tracks.



So far (50 minutes in) I'm liking it. Lots of cool stuff. I would love to write a short story like this. Funny how some things you just can't encapsulate in prose, though. I see that all the times in comics. My current comic research is bing done on the Whedon/Cassady X-Men 4 TPB. Very nice, and in places, almost impossible to recreate using plain prose.

I suppose you learn to work within your medium.

erdnase out.

I found my rock:



A few years ago, back when the world was green and there were more kinds of animals than you've ever seen, I went through three extremly bad years. And through them all, I always kept this rock in my pocket that my daughter made for me while she was in the first grade. It is painted and varnished and even has her initials on it.

It grounded me, even at times when I was ungroundable, because rocks have that quality. That grounding thing.

Then one day, it went missing, but thankfully I was through all the bad stuff.

But I still really missed that rock.

Tonight is my daughter's seventh grade graduation party. And guess what? I just found the rock again!

I am so happy.

erdnase out.

I got if from mikigarrison. Check out her site for more of the story, but to me, it's just very happy :)



I've been to Buenos Aires. I'm sure it's quite easy to get people to dance with you in the street.

erdnase out (and happy).

I finally managed to find some time to sit down and create a new web site.

My last one literally sucked donkey balls. Seriously. I had to fish two or three out of its mouth before it choked on them.

You can find my new one at the same place: http://www.michaelhiebert.com

Let me know what you think, what you like, what you hate, etc.

I haven't really spent much time on it, but the last one I spent like seven minutes one, so the two hours I spent on this one vastly improved it.

Thanks!

erdnase out.

Oh! PS: Does anyone know how/if I can syndicate my journal entries from that site onto here?

My mac mail account has been dropping emails sent to me. There is no spam filter. Mac uses BrightMail and doesn't give you an option to turn it on or off. If BrightMail decides it doesn't like the email being sent, you simply don't get it. The sender doesn't even get a bounce.

So I went looking for someone to complain to about this, and found this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1184 which offers this UNBELIEVABLY sage advice:

If all else fails, the recipient .Mac member can contact .Mac Support. Fill out the support form here. Make sure you include the full header and body of the message that was not received.

Does anyone see a problem with this, or is it just me?

erdnase out.

...CHOCOLATE!!!!



erdnase out.

It occured to me last night that I have an even bigger reason for hating this movie. I embedded this into the comments, but I want to post it out where it's noticable.

The WORST part of this movie, by far, is how freaking CONVENIENT it is that the protagonist studies new medicine and technologies to cure brain tumors and his wife HAS A BRAIN TUMOR (and the worst part) BEFORE THE MOVIE EVEN BEGINS THAT HE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT.

This is the worst case of Deus Ex Machina I have seen in a long time.

I don't mind her having the tumor, but have HIM accidentally cause it. Or have something about the environment cause it. Or have her tumor the REASON he starts studying brain tumors. But something. How hard is this writing stuff anyway? I just thought of three off the top of my frigging head.

I mean brain tumors aren't that common. It's not like one in thirty people don't have brain tumors.

It would be like having the movie HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS start with the kids already tiny without anybody explaining why. "Oh, our kids are tiny? Good thing I just HAPPEN to be working on this thing to make 'em bigger." Of course, then they would need to add another sixty minutes of computer graphic sequences to fill up the space, just like this movie did.

Jesus Freaking Christ Bouncing On A Pogo Stick.

Did I mention I hated it?

erdnase out.

Anyone seen this movie?

All I can say is: WTF was THAT?!

Thank freaking God (absolutely no pun intended) I bought it for $6 instead of paying $12 each to see it in the theatre.

Unless you're some sort of masochist or a lover of, oh I dunno, maybe David Lynch films -- actually that's not even fair to David Lynch and that's saying a lot -- stay away from this movie. It's a ninety minute trailer.

And a bad one at that.

And i Know I am opening myself up for those of you who have a different take, but I'd love to hear from you.

erdnase out.

When I was 17 or 18 years old, me and guy named Jeff House, got together and made some music.

We actually cut our own cassette tape (some of you might not even know what that is). The front of it looked like this:



The inside of it looked like this:



And here, thanks to my good friend LV, who sent me a copy from Nova Scotia, and thanks to Jeff, who digitized and cleaned the thing up, are copies of the actual music in mp3s:

Clockwork: As Strange As It May Seem - Side One

Clockwork: As Strange As It May Seem - Side Two

Yes, that's me singing. No, I'm not really British. Ha.

Oh, and for the record, this is how I looked back then:



If you want to hear some of my new work in this area, you can find it here.

erdnase out.

So, I'm laying on the sofa reading a book full of essays on the writing of Neil Gaiman.

As some of you know, I have a piano in my living room. My son, who just turned one a few weeks ago, crawls up on the piano stool and starts plunking away randomly on the keys.





Mashing them with his hands. You know how kids are. But I am absorbed in my book, which is a really good book and if I'm not mistaken, at least ONE of my LJ friends contributed an essay to it (and it's a great essay, btw.. just sayin'), so I'm just sort of hearing the plunking and mashing in the background. Not really paying attention.

Until...

Until...

Until he starts playing perfect intervals. Not one. Not two. Not the same one over and over. A minor third. A perfect fifth. A fourth. A sixth. No seventh, but i doubt he could reach a seventh.

Hey, seriously. Maybe I'm biased. There was a bit of mashing between them, but not that much. I would say there were more intervals than mashing.

How old was Mozart when he wrote his first symphony? Two? Of course, I wouldn't wish that life on anybody, but still....

Anyway... I have a second post coming soon that has something sort of to do with this one. Just hang tight. But until then, I'm just asking -- am I biased? Or do all kids know a perfect fifth when they play it? Because he definitely played that one over and over before progressing to the minor third.

erdnase out.


[edit:] My buddy TS, after reading this post:

TS: babies are like poems.
erdnase: in which way?
TS: everybody thinks theirs is amazing.

My baby turns one year old today!

Absolutely amazing he's still alive. I figured he was like the plants and we'd have to replace him in a month.

Turns out he's more resilient than the plants :)









Happy birthday Little Buddy, I hope you have a great day (then, most of your days are pretty much all the same...) :)


Love, Daddy.

(and, for those of you wondering: I did the highlighting BEFORE I scanned it. This is what we old tech guys call "Kicking it Ol' School")

erdnase out.

As many of you know, I am a huge Warren Ellis fan. In fact, I have now read every comic he has written that I have been able to get my hands on (I still haven't been able to find The Authority in TPB, but it's next on my list.

Without fear of contradiction his best, is Ocean



Okay, so there's fear of contradiction because, really, this is just my opinion and most people are going to tell me Transmetropolitan blows this out of the water. My introduction to Ellis was Transmet and (at least I think) Ocean is better.

Ocean is as good a comic as Serenity was a movie (which is saying a lot because I am also a HUGE Joss Whedon fan) and if it hasn't yet been optioned for Hollywood, the world makes no sense. Or the world makes as much sense as when I saw WARREN post a message about lisamantchev on his blog (I have since made peace with this discrepancy... thank you Lisa :) And if Ender's Game can't be as good as Lisa's blog...).

Anyhow, just had to tell y'all. Refer back to my earlier post many months ago where I said I have seen the face of God and He looks like Warren Ellis. Now I'm saying this:

Ocean. It's the bomb. Buy it. Read it. Support good comics, because most of them suck.

erdnase out.