Bryan Fuller Is Galactus

This is why the internet is a dangerous place. Think on this: Angela Bassett and Rosario Dawson as captain and first officer in a Star Trek series. Read it again, dammit, ‘cause you ain’t heard me.  Rosario Dawson… and Angela Bassett… and Star Trek.

Read THIS, then join me in my ready room.

Reality…can only handle so flippin’ much because the imagination is constantly poking at it. Poke, poke, poke. Stretch, stretch, stretch.  A finger inside a plastic bag. Bryan Fuller, sir, you do not speak of such things, you do not even JOKE of such things, and expect life to proceed “business as usual.” You goosed life. Goosed it good.  I’m typing this swinging my legs like a kid and eyes so wide I can see through concrete. In my younger days Star Trek was my religion. To this day I still get reverent when I hear strains of Vulcan harp. The Glorious Revolution would lack luster if not for Jim Kirk’s “In every revolution there is one man with a vision” speech (“Mirror, Mirror” ep; YouTube that sumbitch). Trek was creative, Trek was cool, Trek was Gawd.

Amen, I say unto you, amen.

But you, sir, who’ve been a part of Trek’s success before, had to go and say you’d love to see a new Trek series, hell, get Angela Bassett and Rosario Dawson to star, why not; while here in Detroit during a cold and bleak and ugly winter in which I’d sell all of humanity for a heat-giving lump of coal, I look on the internet and see your article. I spazzed way past publicly acceptable levels.  Which is why I risked the wrath of copyright infringement to create this:

Give us this… and FOX  can have all the teen-porn/snuff films as TV shows/intellectual-retardation dross they want. I don’t frikkin’ care, because I will personally be in front of the television precisely one hour on a specific day every week per week, and that’s whenever Star Trek: Federation (my idea totally, came up with it before DS9, premise: anthology show about life in the Federation, copyright, pat pending) is scheduled. Tweak the deets. Yours doesn’t have to be an anthology show. If you get Bassett and Dawson it can be about the captain and first officer staring at the view screen for an hour saying, “Yup, that’s space. Lot of it.” I don’t care.

Just for the love of all that is wonderful seeing as how reality has been torn asunder make your offhand, pipe dream, here’s fairy dust for my unicorn to snort remark so!

Please, Gawd, make it so. I can’t go back to anything the way it used to be now.

Bryan Fuller is Galactus, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Damn internet.

The Same Place Twice

Bad things happen. They have always happened. There has never been a single day otherwise. Dinosaur laid its eggs; turned around, they were gone. Oog created a family unit. Lost half to predators, half to sky. Lightning. No clue in his primitive brain that the fire it left was the world-changer he needed. Oog simply went away. But we found Oog's paintings in a cave. Oog preferred a mix of dark and red muds. Didn't know why. The words "personal" and "aesthetics" hadn't conjured themselves yet. Oog saw the world and placed himself in it, and here, now, we see the world through his eyes. Oog never had a single day that was not lightning, teeth or pain, but in every cave Oog huddled fearfully in while the night chased notions of strength and bravery away, Oog made sure to find the time to paint, even if nothing more than a tired, muddied hand slapped angrily against stone to show that he had made it another day.

There has never been a perfect day.

And yet we don't give up.

There's joy in repetition, so I repeat it: we don't give up. We will get kicked and we will get cut and we will die but, by the gods, we shove aside each and every day to get to the next in defiance of everything that tells us "No!" No matter how tired we get we tell this world with each breath that it has not...won...yet. Those who are lost and striking out have not won. The lightning has not won. We remain. We have slapped our hands against the wall before fitful sleep, but the reassurance of that stinging is the reassurance of the tiniest yet greatest victory: I am alive right now! And let not man nor animal nor principality dare to intervene.

The Glorious Revolution begins, ends, and begins each moment your mind allows you another day. May there be more illumination, more art, in 2014 and a lot less psychic blight. Tune out the false narratives of what passes for news on all our genius machines that forever scream hate's name. Tune out fear-driven bloodlust. Tune out the need for recognition. You are alive right now. That's all you need to know. Isn't that glorious enough?

A revolution of one toward the greater good.

Threesomes

I've got 3 books out. This makes me happy. Each is different, each is lovely, each is me, each is not me. If I were a more patient man willing to jump the flaming hoops of traditional publishing --which I will with other projects, I'm sure-- I'd have released them via the caring hands of Random Penguin or some such, but these 3 are me, myself and I.

Just as in any threesome, each has to stand on its own merits.

This they do.

Meet the willing partners.

Random Zombie Bits for A Tuesday Afternoon

Zombies would have to learn to be fast eaters.

Would Rush Limbaugh make a Zombie lose its appetite?

Zombies clearly have brain activity, and since they've got a jones for brains, shouldn't they be eating each other's heads? A lot easier pickings than going after fast, dangerous prey like the "living."

Would there be groups saying "Pray the zombie away"? I think not. That'd be ridiculous.

Slip a zombie inside the congressional chamber during a full session then lock the doors. It's better that way.

Attach a canister of neurotoxin to a Roomba and let that sucker go. It'd be like febreezing the Zombie Apocalypse away. Everybody chill indoors with gas masks and Morrissey records till over. Go out, clean up, yay humanity.

Zombie sharks would be way cool. Search your feelings, you know this to be true.

Eventually a zombie is going to want to start dating again. Tragi-comic romance up the wazoo.

It's pretty easy for me to evade a stumbling three year old, so no problem navigating a Zombie Apocalypse, unless the suckers take Pilates to keep themselves active and limber.

Vegan zombies. Can't be easy. Discuss.

Fuzzy woolen sweaters and bike helmets. Nobody likes wool in their mouth. Crisis fashionably averted.

Roland Emmerich's next movie while still waiting for Will Smith to bring the Manna: Aliens infect humanity with the zombie virus. A beautiful CDC worker (played by Channing Tatum) realizes the extraterrestrial nature of the attack and traces the virus' genome structure ("Don't you see? This virus' chemical structure weighs less here than it should. Almost as if it were fabricated...on the moon!") to there, setting off a desperate race to get the space program re-funded so a shuttle can get to the moon before the next full phase and destroy the aliens' zombie virus factory. Little did Channing know that falling in love with the shuttle's gruff, washed up commander who's the only person who could possibly pull off this mission (played by the Rock) would make saving the earth the most difficult decision of his life: the Rock is half-alien, half-human! Also starring Djimon Hounsou as Sacre Feshul, the brilliant African scientist who would do anything to see his former student Channing reach the end of his epic destiny.

I'm A Mer-MAN!

When I was a kid I thought I'd grow up to be a seeker of mysteries. I'd go off with a camera to find what I could find about the Loch Ness monster, about Bigfoot, UFOs, all kinds of excellence. If I found something I would share it, and if I didn't I'd share that too without any attempt to mislead. Fast forward to now and the plethora of bastardized "explorer" shows and I realize, wow, what a fool I was. Misleading is the way to go. Money and ratings hand over fist. Recently there was a program on purporting to be about mermaids, featuring "actual" footage. Well, just like those people in commercials who are said to be "real people"--because, technically, they are real people whether they're actors or not--actual footage is anything shot. It's footage. It's fake but it's still footage. Never mind that there wasn't even the courtesy of "dramatic re-enactment" flashed across the screen. The makers of this "documentary" on Animal Planet, a network purporting to be dedicated to the natural world (at the third purporting I will lose it), went out of their way to create footage as supposedly real as real gets. Video from a cell phone of a dying mermaid creature beached alongside several small whales; video of a mermaid swim-by from a deep water oil rig camera; video of a mermaid skittering off a rock in broad daylight, all of it very cinema verite. Kudos to the effects crews. But all of it as fake as the actors hired to play scientists and the stiff guy supposedly interviewing them. I didn't watch the entire program 'cause I call bullshit when I sniff it, but I've read online that at the very end of the show in teeny weeny sublim-O-vision there's a disclaimer that the entire preceding show was a dramatic representation of what might kinda sorta coulda happened if such footage was ever actually truly found. I wouldn't have had a problem with this program at all had they not gone to pains to portray huge bits of it as authentic footage by actually having the words "actual footage" on screen several times...but they went there. And that's when Wayne Brady has to choke a bitch. Reality has been so co-opted, particularly for the younger generation who think that tiny, invisible cameras hover around everyone at all times capturing wicked cool footage of choice moments, that it's irresponsible and despicable they'd put a show like this on without so much as a nudge nudge wink wink. You KNOW folks flocked to Twitter with the OMGs and OMFGs saying the mermaid apocalypse is upon us.

Why are they trying to kill our sense of wonder and replace it with sideshow fear?

File this under "Bullshit floats, doesn't smell," 'cause that's how it's packaged and sold.

Mind Your Home-Training

Today I am guest-blogging on Deatri King-Bey's site. Dee has publishing knowledge six miles deep and a generous spirit twice that. And yes, I wiped my feet. Head on over to her house. http://deatrikingbey.com/

http://deatrikingbey.com/2013/07/10/keeping-it-real-by-zig-zag-claybourne/

Pulp Fiction

Paper, that is. Felled trees. Recycled toilet. What I'm saying is that, in no uncertain terms, Neon Lights is available in print via Createspace, Amazon, and other tentacled outlets. What I'm saying is this goofy book has a physical presence, not just in the ether, and that's how Cthulhu got started. What I'm saying is I hope it makes you laugh.

https://www.createspace.com/4238020

Not to get all biblical on you, but it is finished. Unless Harper Collins wants me to add a wise-cracking kid to the book, that's it. The mic is dropped, I walk away, there are other books to be written, other troubles to get into.

Many thanks and hugs to every advance reader, every purchaser, the cover artists and anyone who's tolerated me hawking this thing on Facebook. I like this independent thing. It's frustrating but fun, and truth be told, I couldn't write a wise-cracking kid if they force-fed me entire seasons of Diff'rent Strokes.

Direct link HERE, my glorious revolutionaries; purchase, review and skewer as necessary.

Best,
ZZC