I think there's a decent noodle shop around the corner from Desert Island Comics in Billyboog.

I called goddamned everywhere that 'Cuse was gonna either gak it in the second or first round.

I don't even know that much about hoopsball.

I just know pattern recognition.

I dunno about the idea of the beginnings of new artistic movements growing out of grand refutations of previous movements, like, ever.

Ladies and dudes wanna entertain or they wanna make art or they wanna vent spleens and they do that and only later do college professors and assholes at "Rolling Stone" construct high-minded confections of hindsight.

Theorists love saying that kinda thing but I doubt that it was such a thing in the conscious minds of early punk rockers.

Garage rock was dudes wanting to make music without having much training at first, wanting to jump right in and figure it out as they went along, and punk was just a more urban permutation of that impulse, you know?

I kind of doubt that motherfuckers just wanting to go to a bar and scream out their frustrations with the three chords they'd figured out so far were working on thesis critiques about their actions. They wanted to get loud and get laid, you know?

Though, of course, never let it be forgotten that the Sex Pistols were molded together by a fashion designer in a manner surprisingly similar to how boy-bands are formed today.

Projecting purity of thought onto the past is always a dangerous dance.

My ex was so thrilled when she found a magazine with naked bear-ish men in it and was so disappointed when she got to the centrefold and it was a skinny little dude blowing a big bear-ish man.

Broke her heart when she found out she wasn't the target audience.

Bottom Feeder.

2013 started off with such potential and then just slowly petered out into a mess of things that I tried to start where other people dropped the ball.

Jobs, relationships, creative projects, blah.

2014 started with my ma yelling at me not to go to the poetry open mic tomorrow because it's only encouraging me to not go to grad school for no good reason.

No "happy new year" no "oh your awful cold is sounding a little better" just starting the fuck right in.

I hate living like a fuck*ng child, I hate being stuck in this fuck*ng town, I hate having no money, I hate having no day job, I hate having no lady in my life.

The end of 2013 was fuck*ng awful on a scale of my own personal tolerances and experiences (I realize that in reference to others' lives I'm blessed, we only work off our own contexts emotionally, though) and 2014 started appropriately.

Being lectured like a teenager while sick as a dog.

Lovely.

fuck*ng lovely.

Happy New Year!

I did love that strip!

I do like saying that the Bechamel Test is if two characters talk about the French mother sauces, though.

Though I've only got extensive notes back from wombles and one of my high school best friends, I'm pretty happy that I've gotten some really encouraging but constructive things from them... but yeah, that's why I haven't asked more of you alls' opinions on it yet, this was a draft written... 53,000 words in 25 days... this is an exceedingly rough draft.

Most happily, though, I've come to the realization that the brunt of the next draft's work is about adding things and moving things around... with only some paring back of extraneous details that muddy the waters here and there. Poetry, journalism, screenplay, short story... every other form I've ever written in, I write a first draft and most of the work is dialing back. Long-form prose is the first form where, no, actually I didn't cover enough yet. Which is encouraging.

I need to develop the character who is... closest to an antagonist's role... a good deal more, everyone's saying that. Spread the sci-fi/magical realism elements around a little more evenly, not gloss over a few situations involving disappearances to bowl forward right back into "the good stuff", let the mystery linger and grow a little...

And then use the development of those elements to even out the plotting which is admittedly still weak. There's a plot there, there's a progression there but it's herky-jerky, in fits and starts and sometimes undermining the pacing because I wanna get to the next big weird thing. Hell, maybe there's a more marketable title. "The Next Big Thing".

But between wombles and Adam's notes and less extensive reactions from others, I think I have a weird interesting beginning, a big weird finish, a lot of well-developed characters and settings and some Large Ideas to hang everything on. I think I have the rough form of something good.

I need to apply the elements still missing in a manner that buttresses the pacing, more than anything.

And yeah, in subsequent drafts, I will probably run it by a few more of you girls and guys.