The Demonweasel Speaks

Someone I’m acquainted asked me today about printing my comic (the Gifted ashcan) and my plans for the future, and I started off on a long, rambling tirade (but quiet. A quirade) about how I’m pretty hopelessly depressed about writing and the like lately. How I’ve been querying agents the past few weeks and artists for work on other projects, and with the exception of one agent, none have given me the courtesy of a rejection, just a blank empty nothingness that says “You are beneath me, I shall not respond to your ridiculous requests.” The whole thing has just really bugged me and it makes me feel like I can’t work at all.

Then I realized that she meant “Where and how did I physically get it printed?” and I glumly said Kinkos.

So that’s what creativity has been like for me lately. Everything else is pretty fucking sweet.

TV

Fringe – Is very entertaining, like a very early X-files. No real connections to any of the characters yet, as its been mostly plot. A small cast will do that, and if they aren’t careful this will hurt them in the long run.

Terminator – Shirley Manson is a T1000? Really? I mean, I geeked out hard when there was a T1000, because I was telling someone before the premiere that you could absolutely do a 1000 on TV now and have it look like the movie nearly 15 years ago. AND THEN THEY FUCKING DID IT! Sweet! And this weeks Cameron secret origin was great. A Terminator civil war? Yes. They need to have a vote in Terminator congress to talk about the proposed bailout of Terminator Wall Street, and if their continued unending War on John Connor will ever amount to anything more than wasted Terminator lives and billions of Terminator dollars. Terminator Larry King should have them debate this on his show, after a debate moderated by Jim Lerher (he’s not a Terminator, though).

Ugly Betty – Fun, typical, Betty. No big surprises yet.

Heroes – I said that if they start the season again with someone going to the future and then coming back with a warning of great disaster then I am going to stop watching. They called my bluff. It is seriously every story they have ever had on this show, already. After a season and a half. Ali Larter is trying to understand her powers and come to terms with them. Global disaster from the future. Hiro is naive. A character goes on a long journey by himself to discover a great revelation. Irritatingly, it’s still entertaining and I’ll watch, but seriously, you guys are in trouble. Shape the fuck up.

True Blood – Every place I hang out online seems to hate this show, but I enjoy it. I never really get down with the whole anthropomorphizing of Vampires (except Buffy), and this straddles the line really close. However, they are still fairly ferocious, if not sexsexsex Vampires, and that’s to be expected. Anna Paquin needs to see the dentist, though. Mind the gap.

Dexter – Good, solid first episode. Big cliffhanger, so I’m pleased.

Gossip Girl – I will fully admit…I like this show. It is trash, delicious, soap opera-y trash, but its lowest common denominator fun. Despite the fact it exists in an alternate universe where the drinking age is 7, and that most plot points you can see coming like Vegas at night. However, it will throw you a curve ball every once and a while, so that’s good.

Boston Legal – Last season jitters. I hope Denny goes off his meds and becomes, well, competent. That’d be a twist.

Desperate Housewives – Again, a good pick-up of last seasons flash forward. I knew Mike wasn’t dead, though, and I’m waiting for Lynette’s evil stepdaughter that they sent away to come back as a total fucking psycho teenager. With knives and a gun. Plus, Edie’s new husband (Lt. Hawk from Star Trek First Contact) is the right kind of creepy.

Project Runway – I’m amused that Kenzie is having the “Grrr I hate that person” reaction when it comes to Kenley, as I had that with the neck tattoo retard and the Fierce guy.

Entourage – Remains entertaining.

SNL – I would accept 4 years of McCain/Palin for 4 years of Tina Fey as Palin. Every time I see those sketches I take about a year off my life laughing.

The schedule is brutal though, as the week is front loaded with a lot of shows on top of each other. No Monday Night football for me this year. Speaking of, the Giants are 3-0. I’m happy, despite the fact that they had to go into overtime to beat the Bengals (really? really?) and its not how you start, but how you finish (remember last year? I do.)

The only other bad thing is that tonight my phone broke, and the battery has to be rubber banded/taped into place so it stays on. Thankfully, I’m eligible for a phone upgrade next week. I think I’m going to invest in a Blackberry-esque phone so I can keep my work shit organized. We’ll see, because I don’t want to have to pay for the data package, but if not that then what’s the point?

Which brings me back to where I started.

So the agent that had the full manuscript (btw I hate that word, it’s made of pretentious garbage) of my book made a post in his journal last week that he was quitting agenting, but was going to pass along the stuff that he liked to the other agents in the firm. I emailed him to see if mine would make the cut, because it’s been a while (he’s had the whole thing for just over a year, I originally queried them in January of 07).

Newly energized, I figured I’d put a fresh coat of paint on the first chapter, because I haven’t touched it since I sent it to him. After about a half hour of work, I took a pause to check my email and surprise, there’s an email from him.

I didn’t make the cut, apparently.

Which is fine, I guess, but still…stings.

I talked about it a lot, and I probably jinxed it, and now I kind of feel like an ass because I’m back and square one, which is where I was anyway, I just didn’t want to see it.

I kind of want to give up right now. I’m probably not going to, but still…

It’s all really frustrating. No other artist that I try to talk to about comic stuff even writes me back, much less acts interested. We’re slowly crawling ahead with Gifted, but it’s slow and neither one of really know what we’re doing.

So yeah. I’m unhappy.

So if I’m going to watch any Republican convention coverage, I’ve realized that I have to wash it down with some Daily Show right afterward.

There’s not really much of substance I can say about the whole thing that isn’t articulated better by millions of other bloggers and folks having conversations all across the country, but I’m just going to say this: You can’t make the debate about experience and then try to elect some chick that hasn’t been governor for more than two years. You can’t be up Hillary Clinton’s ass since 1992 and then play the gender card now that you’ve got a pair of tits on your side of the ticket. You can’t say, Rudy Guiliani, that if we “loose” the war in Iraq then bin Laden and Al-Qaeda win, because they were never fucking there. You can’t say “Hey, leave her family alone they’re off limits,” and then parade them around in a speech like they’re vice-presidential accessories and set up all their bios. You can’t, as Jon Stewart said tonight, say that you have to respect Bristol Palin’s choice and then try to govern the choice of others. You can’t also play the sexism card when you have delegates wearing pins that say “The Hottest Governor from the Coolest State” (no matter how true that may be). And you can’t say that she has foreign policy experience because she’s near Russia, because that’s fucking stupid. You can’t turn your nose up at someone for being a “community organizer” like Obama was (and in fact have conventioneers raucously laughing at it), and then be indignant if people suggest the town you were Mayor of was too small (because I think the communities in Chicago he was organizing probably had about 9,000 people in them).

You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, and that is why you fail.

I hope.

It’s funny and frustrating because I know I can’t really change people’s minds about politics, and that in a lot of ways debate is pointless and just causes raised blood-pressure and hurt feelings (and I have delicate feelings, and according to the blood pressure machine at Wal-Mart I’m pre-hypertensive), but we do it anyway, and often find ourselves in places where we just have to throw ourselves against the unmoving wall of “fair” and “right” and common sense. I had an incident at work the other day that left me very shaken and angry in a way I’m not used to feeling, and so much of that came from the fact that I was (and still am) right, and this person was wrong. Not only wrong, but hurtful and offensive and completely and happily oblivious to that. The “you don’t even know who I am” card was played, as well as the “I bet you’re not even from here” card, both while on the way out the door, leaving me with either letting the thing drop and not be able to rebut (you are no one special, which is true of any person who ever uses the phrase “Do you know who I am?” and I’ve lived in this town for almost 15 years) or chase her and her 11 year old on to the street to continue it.

I stayed inside and I fumed, sick to my stomach and angry at my powerlessness to change that persons mind or to make them see that they were being unfair and unreasonable. It’s a weakness of mine that I’m painfully aware of, that when I encounter something that’s unjust and not right that I cannot abide it. I will throw myself against it until I’m sick, and usually until I make those around me sick.

There’s no help for it, there’s nothing you can do, but I persist and it frustrates me beyond all rational thought.

Just like politics, I guess.