Qui-Gon Must Have Been Bad At Math...

• I've had this on my mind since The Phantom Menace came out and I've decided I can remain silent no longer.
• The reason Qui-Gon Jinn made a BFD about Anakin was because he thought he would fulfill an old Jedi prophesy.
• This prophesy was a BFD for the Jedi and they seemed to regard the fulfilling of said prophesy as a good thing.
• The Jedi counsel agreed that Qui-Gon might have been right, but was unsure about training Anakin anyway.
• The prophesy was of "one who will bring balance to the force." This is the problem I have: as of the Naboo blockade crisis in the entire galaxy there were only 2 Sith and like a thousand fucking Jedi. WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY WANT BALANCE?! THEY WERE WINNING! 
• Mace Windu should have been like, "He may be the one to bring balance to the force... HOLY-COCK-SHIT-BALLS-ASS! WE NEED TO KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKING KID RIGHT NOW BEFORE HE CUTS OFF MY GODDAMNED HAND OR SOMETHING!"

• The other thought I had was that any time Qui-Gon decides it would be a good idea to go out of his way to help someone without orders, don't help that person (or gungan) kill them; kill them immediately.

Bob Ross is a Sorceror

• Watching his show feels surreal, he'll look like he's smearing colors around at random then abruptly one of his dabs will turn the amorphous color blobs into a fucking tree lined meadow. One second his painting looks like a gorilla's finger painting and the next its a beautiful landscape it seriously wrinkles my brain.

Nothing Woos Like Prose

• Of all the major forms of art prose seems like the least romantic.
• Example: Poetry produced The Body Electric by Walt Whitman (lulz quivering love jelly). To cover the exact same topic prose has produced Greys Anatomy (a medical textbook).
• Which seems the least likely to provoke a gushy emotional response?
• A love poem comparing the subjects eyes to the sky or diamonds and what have you.
• A love song (pretty much the same as above with slightly less class and significantly more guitars and cliches)
• A painting of the artist and his beloved on a hill looking at the stars or some crap
• A five paragraph essay outlining the pros and cons of copulation with the paper's author.
• Actually I think that essay thing might work on the right girl. (Something tells me I should run that idea by my people first though.)
• Fiction prose might work better than non-fiction now that I think about it, but it also seems like it would have a much higher chance of of being creepy as all hell. (Writing fan fiction about real people seems like it would be frowned upon and I'm pretty sure slash fiction counts as grounds for sexual harassment charges.)

I Swear I'm Not An Asshole (I Think...)

• I do this thing where if I hear someone who speaks in an interesting manner I will subconsciously start imitating them (I think everyone does this but I do it to a greater extent than most.) This occasionally leads to situations my friends find hilarious where I seem like I'm making fun of people.
• The most memorable instance of this was one of the many times I ordered a pizza. When I order food I don't just give my order and get out (that's boring) I try and chat up the person I'm interacting with so my orders can take longer than normal. On this particular occasion the nice perky pizza hut employee had the most pronounced ridiculous lisp I have ever heard. When I had finished ordering my friends were giggling and giving me the expression I have learned means I just did something hilarious without realize it. I asked what it was and immediately realized (only then) that I was speaking with a RIDICULOUS lisp. I asked how quickly I had started doing it and they said I had spoken to her like that for 90% of the order.
• I bring this up now because today I watched The Godfather Part I and Short Circuit back to back today and have had to constantly stop myself from speaking in an increasingly bizarre manner.
• "You come to me on this the day of my daughters wedding and you say to me, 'Don Corleone I need input...'"
• How the fuck do you punctuate a quote within a quote?
• Big Big news, two whole people actually commented on one of my posts! They were both positive (which you could have read for yourself but i felt like saying it anyway). One of them said it is very helpful to him and he has learned a lot which is an enormous surprise (and mildly confusing) to me.
• I can only assume he/she/it/them mean they have learned about writing from me which would make me oh so very happy and surprised (and a little bit afraid for them; I'm not exactly Heinlein)
• Happy Note: the post box's spell check actually has the correct spelling of Heinlein.
• In writing related news there have been a few developments:
• I finally decided on a new years resolution: to write every single day (no exceptions) even if it is totally unrelated to any of my current book projects. I decided improving myself as a writer was more important than trying to force myself to complete projects.
• I think stipulating that I don't have to advance a current project will make it far more likely that I actually follow through on this vow.
• I also think that having a vow I will stick to will in the end make me far more likely to end up working on actually finishing projects.
• On Thursday night/Friday morning I wrote an entire outline for a brand new novel from scratch.
• It has all the parts a beginning, a middle, even an end (which I can usually never come up with.)
• Having said all that it isn't very in depth (its only 920 words), and I think the end is kind of weak.
• I have writen several other book outlines and then never (as of yet at least) done anything with them, but I think I'm going to commit myself to this one and try and actually hammer out a full manuscript for it rather than just fiddle around with it for a while before moving on because: 
• A: At the moment I'm not heavily working on any other project (other than slowly going through Modsoldiers and cleaning it up line by line).
• B: I like the main characters I've developed for for it, and for science fiction and fantasy (this one is low fantasy) I think the characters, more than the plot, are what make or break a good novel.
• I'm going to try and do something new with this project which is tell it in a non-linear fashion i.e. start about half way through the story and reveal the first half through occasional flashbacks.
• I think this will make the story much more interesting by creating more suspense/drama/what have you by making the reader wonder about previous events and the characters motivations. Also it should make the characters seem much more dynamic by juxtaposing scenes taking place at wildly different points in time. The changes in a character between scenes taking place at different points in the plotline should show far greater contrast than between scenes taking place one right after the other.
• I'm also going to try something fairly new with perspective. Typically I write from an omniscient 3rd person point of view only occasionally poping into the mind of a character for a limited 3rd person perspective. For this book I'm planning on telling the whole thing from that limited third person perspective with each scene being from the POV of one of the characters in it.
• My project name for this book is MartArt2. Yes I already have a project named simply MartArt (it is actually one of those outlines I completed, didled with for 2 days then never returned too) but this project is so different I felt it needed a different title.

I Accidently The Silmarillion...

• Most all of my fantasy story projects take place in more or less the same fantasy world I've created.
• I've worked quite a lot on these stories but unlike other story projects which I more or less have one version of that get slowly refined over time the fantasy writing I do often ends up using some or all of the same characters to create totally different storylines often incorporating one or several of a number of various recurring scenes or story elements from one another. I quite like writing these but I find I really like only a certain specific scene or plot section from each story. In new stories I'll try to jam the various scenes, plot sections, and characters I liked from previous attempts all into the same plot. This leads to many rambling or disjointed plots as they can't all really be crammed together like that.
• As I keep writing various different similar and dissimilar story attempts in this world I think I might be gradually moving closer to having a really neat epic story many years from now.
• I enjoy working with the characters and having them interact with eachother in various different combinations.
• The longer I play around with them the more good ideas I have and the more developed and refined the setting, characters, and so on become and hopefully one day I will be able to assemble theses elements into a real sweeping fantasy epic like the lord of the rings or (hopefully) a wheel of time that doesn't drag on.
• I used to be frusterated with my inability to create a single solid plotline with these various elements but now it has become quite interesting and rather fun.
• Even if I'm really not actually making any progress towards someday combining all these disparate ideas into some masterpiece the time I spend cranking out new scenes, characters, and plotlines is certainly great practice and making me a better writer.
• Hmmmm that was one of the more poorly explained streams of thought I've jotted down here (For Shame!) I hope it made some sense.

Skyrim Anyone?

• The cake used to be a lie, but then it took an arrow in the knee.

Oh Weyrleader, My Weyrleader

• My favorite writer Ann Mcaffrey died... I'm surprised how saddened I am by it. When Arthur C. Clark died I was like: He was still alive? but for the dragon master I feel like my surrogate mother just died. She will be missed.
• I'm gonna have to redouble my own efforts to try and take up some of the slack her absence leaves.
• Elizabeth Moon is hereby forbidden from dying ever.
• In other famous author news I finally finished A Dance With Dragon the newest Game of Thrones book and was quite disappointed.
• Its not that it wasn't a good book, it was. It just doesn't compare with the others. Reading the first four books was like sex; reading this one was like... riding a swing set.
• When I finished it and reflected back on some of the character and chapters he included my only reaction "What the fuck was that shit?"
• In other places it kept setting the stage for really awesome things to happen and then being like "Psych! read the next one." I REFUSE TO PUT UP WITH THIS DRAGON BALL Z HORSESHIT!
• (in this DBZ analogy the Dornish prince is defiantly Hercule the asshat who wastes entire episodes you thought were going to be about one of the real characters, you know the ones who are cool and I care about?)
• Does anyone else ever wonder what happened to Rickon? I've considered writing a letter to Martin and reminding him that there was actually another Stark. Rosey the hooker had more follow up than poor Rickon and Shaggydog. (god bless HBO btw)

Short Story Experiment: Space Marines with Ray Guns Blowing Shit up for its Own Sake. (It will NOT be an allegory for Iraq it will be an allegory for Space Marines With Ray Guns Blowing Shit Up)

• Having finished my Modsoldiers first draft I can't do much anything more with the story until I've gotten some editing and feedback on it.
• The next day when I went to write and realized I was (for the moment) done with the writing stage of Modsoldiers and should start working on one of my other projects. I found myself more than a little dumbfounded... Now what? I have so many stories I want to right.
• I think this is the first time I've ever felt this kind of indecision because until now the only time I would stop working on one project was when I had some inspiration for some other story and started working on it.
• I thought about perhaps going back to work on ME2S which is, next to Modsoldiers, the closest any of my books is to completion, but as long as I know I'll be turning my attention back to Modsoldiers in the hopefully near future I'm reluctant to dive back into another massive not-quite-all-sorted-out protonovel. Also I'm still rather burnt out on ME2S from my last stretch of working on it (i.e. I opened the folder for it on my computer, saw all of those horrifyingly familiar files, and was struck by the powerful urge to gouge my eyes out then set my myself on fire.)
• So for the last couple of days I've just kind of toyed around with a bunch of fun ideas I've had kicking around but can't seem to wrangle into anything like a plot, or stared at my laptop and played minecraft.
• Today however I recalled a conversation I had with my friend Jake (the one who shouldn't have dick skinning gloves) and have a new idea for what to write while struggling to get Modsoldiers cleaned up.
• I've often bemoaned my difficulty in writing short stories, which I've heard and read are vital to break into genera fiction, and on this particular day Jake said something along the lines of, "You know I'll bet you could write a pretty badass fight scene that was about the length of a short story. You know something along the lines of No Disintigrations, Please."
•  No Disintigrations, Please is one of the better known Star Wars short stories (its in the compilation Tales from the New Republic). It doesn't have too much in the way of mind blowing plotting or painting a brilliant tapestry of multidimensional characters. What it does have is Boba Fett kicking a helluvalot of ass. The story is that Boba has a target who's protective elder brother is the commander of a full blown imperial planetary garrison. Boba Fett vs. an entire imperial garrison: fight!
• This is an interesting idea to me because while I worry that a story that is light on plot and character in exchange for being heavy on hardcore ass whupping isn't what editors are looking for, I am good at writing and choreographing cool fight scenes, and I can create them fairly easily.
• To make a long story short I've started a second short story tentatively titled, either Assault Drop or Combat Drop.
• I've always wanted to write a full scale combat drop by sci-fi power suit wearing ass kicking space marines; think John Steakly's Armor meets Saving Private Ryan. Now I am.

The Take-No-Prisoners-Yes-Even-the-Younglings Juggernaught of Pakistani Industry

• This is something that has bothered me for years: why in the hell is every goddamn soccer ball in the world from Pakistan?
• How could this have come to be and why has it stayed this way?
• I would have thought that at least India would maintain some kind of soccer ball production base to ensure their internal supply of soccer balls could be maintained if they're already volatile relationship with their neighbor worsened and the Pakis began a full scale soccer ball embargo.
• Having written all that down I feel almost certain I've started down the road to being the next Tom Clancy, I'll bet he saw something like this and that was where the idea for Hunt for the Red October or Clear and Present Danger came from. I can see it now: new best seller Rogue Cell: The Football Agenda
• I hope saying Pakis doesn't get me put on some sort of list or go all Salman Rushdie on me.
• Now that I think about it though if no one had ever seen or heard of the Satanic Verses it probably wouldn't have caused such a stink so I think I'll be fine unless those few noble russians I spoke of the other day or, god forbid, Sally the Imaginary Hypothetical Blog Reader, put out some kind of fwata alert on me.
• Man us atheists miss out on all the cool vocab religions get; Islam has Fwata's and Jihads, and even the catholics get stuff like transubstantiation and excommunication (which sounds like a big ass sci-fi space gun or something; seriously if Moff Tarkin had said, "Transubstantiate the Excommunicator!" instead of lame old, "You may begin the demonstration." Leia probably woulda talked; that shit sounds scary.
• We do get Apostate though which sounds kind of badass. (Note to other atheists: the word apostate is like tyrannosaur urine to a Christian, one whiff of it and even Mormon missionaries will shy away from your territory.
• Catholic: "My title is lay person."
• Me: "Nice to meet you, my title is apostate *boom crakooom crash!*"
• Catholic: "My god! So... many... syllables and hard... consonants..."
• Second Catholic: "I think I just shat myself."

Concerning Bacta

• There comes a time in every man's life when, due to a set of circumstances far to embarrassing to ever explain to anyone, he finds his crotch in terrible need of a bacta tank. When that time comes the man is, unfortunately, totally fucked because bacta isn't real.
• There's no particular reason I'm mentioning this now though; none at all.
• I finally rediscovered the edit post button and in finding it I am only more confused as to how I could have failed to find it.
• Apparently 14% of my blogs page views last months were by Russians (or at least people in Russia), clearly my philosophies have a broader appeal than anyone had thought.
• Everyone had thought they had no appeal anywhere to anyone, but 8 Russians proved them wrong by virtue of they probably ended up here on accident.