"What Writers Make"

One of the trickiest things in being self-employed, or so I've learned from my parents and their many self-employed friends that I've met over the years, is setting a price for your services. You want to entice someone into hiring you or purchasing your product, but you also don't want to cheat yourself or even drive people away with prices so low they assume what you're offering is crapola.

For this last script I've been paid for, I basically did a calculation based off what I knew the producers budget to be (approx.) and what my own personal monthly expenses are. But according to the GUVVERMINT I should be charging $23.82 an hour. Well, at least until I hit 55 and then I should charge a little less as my doddering old brain won't be able to churn out tales like she used to.

Roadsworth

Getting talking with some folk at a party last night, I brought up my show and this Friday's interview with Posterchild as well as the Vespahead thing etc. One of the people I was talking about brought up a character I'd never heard about - Roadsworth. As his name suggests, all his work is done literally on the street. Apparently he was arrested a few years ago and presented with an impossible fine, which was later dropped when the city of Montreal ended up hiring him to do work for them.

Lo and behold, there is an NFB documentary on the guy - enjoy the trailer.

WIPED

So for the first time in a while I did a little sketching, from this photo. It's as if I've been shoving all my time and energy into something, lately.

But thankfully one other project is over it's biggest hump, a short script I've been putting together for a fellow who rather kindly paid me for the first draft. That certainly felt nice.

Background, Check

Here are the backgrounds for Friday's episodes, in case anyone would like a look at them without my ugly mug in the way. This is from episode one...And this is from episode two..In other news I CANNOT STOP LOOKING AT THESE PHOTOS. I want to paint every single one of them!

*Puff* *wheeze*

I just went jogging and, trust me, this comes back to scriptwriting.

When I was much younger and had made up my mind that I would spend my life writing, my Dad took notice. He came up to me and pointed at his then-rotund (and still hairy) midsection and said "Oliver, if that's what you want to do then take heed boy, take heed of what I hath wrought in my years at the bench".

I may be paraphrasing here.

But yes, like some corpulent ghost of Christmas future, dad's gut was giving me a message - those who sit down for a living are particularly susceptible to becoming grossly unfit. A few years later Dad would start going to a gym and minding his diet better, at this point in his late fifties. I'd like to think the new generation can learn from the previous one, so at twenty-six I am trying to take dad's gut's message in a little earlier. I've been able to slip by on my absurd metabolism for years but, about two years ago, I noticed a small yet perceptible slowdown - like a cheetah that notices it is still outrunning the lion but by just a little bit less each year.

Being around the home and writing or editing as much as I have these past few weeks, I began to notice another little slowdown. Add this to my meeting someone fit enough to make me do a spit-take when I saw her snare-drum of a stomach and this ends up with me pushing my little legs around the neighborhood this morning. It felt good and I stopped after the point at which it would have been embarrassing to do so. A man can't ask for much more on his first day at it (said the bishop to the actress).

Anyways, enough of that - I'd rather not be the type to exercise for one frigging morning and then spent hours waxing on about how the visceral ballet of the battle of the bulge made them feel more in tune with sister Nike. Keep an eye on this spot for some of the shit I learned while getting the show up in order.

Pretty suitable for my 500th post!

They clutter cities and countrysides. Make lots of different noises. Produce a variety of odors. The world would be very different without them. You love them, you hate them. Sometimes you make love to them while hating them

Human beings.

If you know any, please tell them all to come check out In a Handful of Minutes – the web show which reviews something other than the usual crap – and to pass it along to any human beings they might know. We have a Facebook group which may aide in this purpose! Plus you can download it as a podcast, if you'd like to see me leering at you while you're while riding the bus.

Episodes are hurriedly uploading now...

Give it up...

Somehow I found time for this...

Like a lot of watercolors, it looks best at about two feet away - but that doesn't work so well with the point n' click camera!

On the cusp...

Yes, it's finally happening - go here for some exciting news and something you should bookmark/add to your RSS feed!

I would like to politely ask that any of you who were thinking about kindly linking friends and enemies to the page to wait until the debut on Friday. Folk'll be more inclined to remember to come back if they get some proper content on arrival. What I've linked to right now? That's just for little old you.

At first I thought...

...this probably wouldn't work in a city. But maybe there's a way around the difficulties posed by a higher density population?

I don't like Russian Metal music...

Blatantly stolen from Tom.

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

....but I do like over the top tributes to Mikhail Gorbachev which re-imagine him as a zombie-fighting barbarian.

Write what you may or may not have done

I could not agree with the sentiment of panels 3 & 4 more, even if I designed a machine whose sole purpose was to augment my ability to agree.

I should be so lucky...

...as to wind up being so totally indifferent to old age as my father, who has found himself on the cover of Fifty-Five Plus magazine expressly for his choice to live like A Human and not the kind of demi-human so many folk resign themselves to being after they've been around long enough.

Addendum: I think my favorite line from the article is where Karen Secord, the author, describes my father as being "propelled by intellect, a quick wit and a fierce sense of self" (emphasis mine). Though I wouldn't argue the first two, it's that third quality which I feel really hits the nail on the head - not only as part of the assessment of my father but in identifying a necessary trait for making the most out of this quick jaunt across the Earth we've lucked into.

Transcript: AHAAAAAAHhhh....oh phew......oh ho ho HO HO HO HO HA HA HEE HEE

Holy cow I just about shit a brick! Not one hour ago I finished writing the "Webcomics: What's up with that particular medium of entertainment?" episode of Handful and then I see that Yahtzee has done an episode on webcomics.


A good episode too, mind! I watched it, I enjoyed it. But mostly I was relieved that...
1) I put up that preview of the Ryan North Interview when I did, thus proving I had the idea to do a webcomics episode on my own and that I'm not aping Yahtzee.
2) That Yahtzee focuses directly on gaming webcomics, while I'm looking at the whole spectrum.
3) He's also doing a tongue-in-cheek "How to make your own" thing, while I am taking a different tack.
4) Despite some qualifying remarks in the closing credits, he's obviously taking a big dump on Tim Buckley - which is a perfectly fair thing to do with Tim Bucklebottom - and his webcomic that serves as a perfect measure of the worst in gaming comics...particularly the comedy/drama switch thing.

Oh and uh hey I got to be in Ryan's alt text today thanks to this shirt. I knew it would be good for something other than saving people's eyeballs from bursting due to a manliness overload at the sight of my pecs.

9,000 Corsets and One Man Scratching His Head

One thing that is happening while I am building steam towards launching "Handful" is that I am looking around at other shows and trying to judge what brings in decent traffic. As I was browsing through my folder of Youtube videos I noticed something that really caught my eye - the third part of my Dirk diddling in "The Movies" currently has 9,037 views.


At first I remembered, at least seven months ago now, figuring out that somehow a bunch of members of a corset enthusiasts forum had kept tripping over it - most likely while searching out things more closely related to their joi de vive (sp?). But seven months ago it was around 900 views and wasn't toooo much further ahead of the other episodes, which you'd expect to get roughly the same amount of accidental search traffic. But for it to multpily tenfold is still pretty surprising and the contrast between it and the other three episodes is stark

Views as of this moment
Ep 1: 443
Ep 2: 979
Ep 3: 9,037
Ep 4: 679
Ep 4 Redux: 286

They all have the exact same title but for the episode number. I have to wonder what mysterious X factor I am missing! Meanwhile, the view count for my first crack at directing is currently 637 - I guess my problem was not naming it "Tonight We Fall In Corsets"? Or maybe "Tonight We Britney Nipple Slip Corset"? Surely one can take succor in the thought that, were he of the modern era, Alfred Hitchcock would have had these concerns weighing on his thick, furrowed brow.

P.S. I'm older and I didn't write a damn thing about it here? OH WELL. BLOG FAILURE I GUESS. UM, "THE DAYS SURE DO GO BY QUICK HUH?".

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry...

Mr. Oliver Thomas Coles Brackenbury and Mr. Ry-an North

Oh ho ho....needless to say (but I'm saying it anyways, apparently!), I have edited this in something of an intellectually dishonest manner. The proper interview, and any others I do, will edited in a more straightforward and honest fashion.

Toxic Pacific

I wrote about this a little while ago, but I thought I'd point out that the VBS series on the giant plastic conglomeration in the southern Pacific gyre is now up to view.

Here's part one.

And I must stress, VBS's journalism just isn't the same creature as VICE magazine - which I find to be steadily deteriorating - and shouldn't be pre-judged on the magazine's merits. Give it a chance, I doubt you'll regret it.

Seven Words you probably can't say in Heaven

George Carlin dying can be fairly described, as I'm sure he'd say, as bullshit.

The days...

Jesus jumped up Christ I cannot believe I'm already on the last week of this six week sabbatical. I'm reminded of a cynical bit (as if Shannon Wheeler can write any other kind) from the old Too Much Coffee Man comics. Basically TMCM get's wound up about the progression of time and how it races by when he's engaged in projects (satisfying or otherwise) but that the only way to stretch it out is to waste it by doing nothing (or at least nothing personally satisfying).

I'd like to provide a rejoinder but I don't have one at the moment. Perhaps there's one in here.