Aye

In answer to Nate's question [it's on the comments page, look it up for yourself if you gotta know]: yes. That's what the contract calls for. And my last two have been, strangely enough, bang fucking spot-on their contracted length.

However, as the mutual fund gougers like to disclaim, past performance is no guarantee of future results.


And, yes, I got my pages done today. That's why I'm here. Got 'em done yesterday too, but I had nuttin' to say. Friday, too.

Arithmetic

Did the math today: if I can write 35 pages a week of keepable Ep III material, I'll be able to turn in the ms on time and even have a month or six weeks for revisions before things start to turn ugly.

I can do this. Which is a relief: I'm not in as much trouble as I thought.

The upshot is that if you see a post in this place, it means I've accomplished my five pages for the day. Today was six, so I'm feeling particularly virtuous.





See you space cowboy . . .

More jokes.

Losers.

I know all those.

How about:

What's red and black and can't turn around in a telephone booth?

A nun with a javelin through her head.




What do you call a red-headed test-tube baby?

Bozo the Clone.




Scott Lynch dies on Monday and goes to Hell. Satan meets him at the gate. "Hey, Scott, great to see you. Come on in!"
Scott looks around. It's the Tropicana meets Club Med. He starts thinking, Hey, this atheism shit worked out pretty good. He says, "What's it like around here?"
Satan says, "You like gambling?"
"Sure!"
"Oh, you're gonna love Tuesday. No limit, any games you want, and you never lose. You like good food?"
"Yeah, who doesn't?"
"Great. Wednesday is gourmet night. Any cuisine, the greatest chefs in history, and you never get full and you don't gain an ounce. You like drinking?"
Scott's thinking, How lucky can I get? He says, "Of course!"
"Oh, Thursday'll be your favorite. Cognac, single malts, small batch bourbon, microbrews, drunk as you want and you never get sick and there's no hangover. How about girls? You like girls?"
Scott's thinking, can it get any better? He says, "Sure, girls, bring'em on."
Satan says, "Friday will be great for you. It's that Muslim Paradise. Endless virgins. And you're hard for all eternity."
Scott says, "Great! Holy shit, I'm glad I went to Hell!"
Satan's right with him. "And we're glad to have you! By the way, how do you feel about being boned up the ass with a dildo made of red-hot barbwire?"
Scott (wincing): "Um, I'm not really into that."
Satan. "Oh. Well, tonight's gonna be a problem, then."
Scott swallows hard.
Satan shrugs apologetically. "And, um, Scott buddy? In Hell, it's ALWAYS Monday."

The death of the joke

So a penguin walks into a bar. He goes up to the bartender and says, "Hey, have you seen my old man?"

The bartender says, "Dunno. What's he look like?"






I've been thinking lately about the death of the Joke. Nobody tells jokes anymore. Not like they used to. I tend bar for a living -- when I'm not writing books -- and I can't help noticing that jokes are dead. Nobody under 40 tells jokes anymore, and that's the death knell of any art form.

Guess it's one of those skills that people figure they just don't need. Twenty years ago, the ability to tell a joke counted for something. It was more than just repeating a line from some crappy stand-up; it was Acting, and Storytelling, and Knowing Something that Nobody Else Knows. It was an art in and of itself, and it's dying.

That sucks.




Tell jokes. Make up your own. Keep it alive.



My girlfriend's so skinny, she's gotta tease her hair to keep her pants up. And ugly? Shit, her whole body's covered with little round red marks from where people keep touching her with ten-foot poles. Then there's my wife. Fat? She fills the bathfub, THEN she puts the water in. Yesterday morning, I'm trying to get to work, she's sitting in the driveway. I try to go around, but I run out of gas. I get in a cab, I ask the hackie to take me someplace where I can get some action. He takes me to MY house. I come home early one day, I see a naked guy running across my yard. I say, "Hey, what the hell are you doing, running across my yard naked?" He says, "Hey, you came home early." I go inside, there's a guy fucking my wife. I say, "Who said you could fuck my wife?" He says, "Everybody." My old neighborhood's so tough, we bowl overhand. When I was a kid, we used to nail worms to the sidewalks, watch the birds get hernias. Shit, my neighborhood's so tough, the signs in the library say "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"





It's all in the delivery. Which is, of course, the problem.


Practice. It's worth it.





btw, the above jokes were all stolen from Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield, among the last of the Great Jokesters (along with Milton Berle, who stole material from both of them).

Novelizing

Here's my piece of useless writing advice for the day:

Regardless of how much your fictional universe may resemble the one in which we live, its actual existence is solely in your mind; there is nothing there which is not you. When writing, never forget that you are God. Writing well requires that you be every bit as ruthlessly capricious as the god which imagines our own reality.

Or even more so: never give the fuckers an even break.




Oh, wait, that's supposed to be "suckers."




This has been on my mind of late, due to my theological demotion: in writing Ep III, I am reduced to a minor diety, less even than a demigod -- say, maybe, an angel (which derives, someone might theoretically be interested to know, from the Greek word for "messenger"). I am charged by God -- er, George Lucas -- Himself, through the Archangel Del Rey and the seraphim at LFL who guard The Franchise with swords of flame, with delivering the Message. What latitude I have is restricted to style: I can shout or I can whisper, work in prose, blank verse, or rhyming couplets, but the Message -- the facts of the story -- must remain unchanged.

Not that I'm complaining. It's an interesting process in itself. Currently, I'm leaning toward dactylic hexameter. It's got a sort of Vachel Lindsay rumpty-thump thing going, which makes me want to dance.




Oh, okay, not really.

The blog is waiting . . . waiting . . .

Jeez, this sucks.

As if I weren't neurotic enough already, it seems that having a blog is creating a bizarre psychic pressure . . . I know it's out here, electronically patient, waiting for me to have something to say.

Waiting . . . waiting . . .

Must . . . resist! Must . . . write STAR WARS. Must . . . write STAR WARS . . .

And now for something moderately similar . . .

Okay, here I am.

First: a round of applause for gabe chouinard, who (in addition to hosting this place) has done all the heavy lifting around here. He pretty much had to, since everything I know about coding for the Web could fit into the end of my dick, and he was getting altogether tired of pestering me to start a blog. This looks like home to me, and if you find yourself comfortable here, drop a line to let gabe know. He loves fan-mail. Hey, me too.

I'll be around.