Halloween DIY

Hi Blog! So, I realise that it's been a while since I've written in you. I'm so sorry.

I have been working on writing some stuff, which I need to man up and finish off. In the meantime though, I've been doing other productive things! For instance, this year, me and my friends are doing The Avengers for halloween. I called dibs on Iron Man, and obviously, that meant I had to build my own Arc Reactor. So, here we go!

Step 1: The Ingredients

For the main body of the reactor, I took a trip to the Dollar Store and got myself a sink filter, a smaller mesh one, and two rubber washers. A quick trip to the hardware store got me some copper wire. I cut the white plastic stopper into the desired ring shape, and started wrapping the copper around it. It fits pretty snugly on top of the sink filter, which is going to eventually hold all the inner electronics. A little mesh filter sits in the middle.

Step 2: The Body

Here it is with the copper rings all wound up, with the inner mesh filter, black rubber washer and main ring all glued together. The whole thing is maybe 0.5-0.75 inches thick.

Step 3: The Lights

Now on to the fun stuff! I've never made anything electrical before, so I was pretty much starting from scratch. Some research into LEDs and a few basic circuitry lessons later, I figured out what circuit I'd need. I ordered the LEDs online for super-cheap, and for the wire, solder and resistors I found a place on Canal street that was tucked behind a bootleg luggage store and run by a geriatric Chinese man. Who was super-helpful!

I soldered each 'leg' of the parallel circuit together separately, which is what you see above. Turns out soldering millimeter-thick pins to wire is kind of finnicky.

And here they are wired up together and connected to the battery! It's aliiiiiiive! Turning this on was a big 'hold-on-to-your-butts' moment, lemme tell ya.

Step 4: All Together Now

And here it is! I forgot to snap a picture of the inside of the reactor with all the wiring in place, but I basically had the two battery lead wires running through a hole in the bottom, and everything else kind of mashed around in the middle. I tried to get the LEDs spaced out roughly evenly inside, to create an even glow.

Step 5: Put That Camera Away, You're Just Embarrassing Yourself

Obligatory awkward under-the-shirt shot. SELFIES! But as you can see, it shines through nicely even through a t-shirt! My plan is to super-glue this bad boy to a belt and strap it to my chest. My costume is basically going to be 'Tony Stark on his day off', since I'm too lazy to contemplate making/buying an actual Iron Man costume.

Although, now I think of it, I do have an idea how I'd make a pretty sweet glove. And I do have plenty of spare LEDs and wire... watch this space?

Nothing to Remember - 1

Sam Walker was in his third day of cornfields when he saw her standing there at the side of the road. 

It was incredible, really, how much of nothing he'd seen in the past week. He'd been warned about it before he'd left, but he'd never really believed it. Each little diner he'd stopped in, he'd had the same conversations. The accent was always the first topic of discussion, quickly followed by the list of acquaintances and friends-of-friends who lived in England, did he know them? (Of course! was always the answer, Insert-name-here! What a joker! But then he'd feel bad when they got all excited and he had to fess up. Sam was quickly learning that different rules of humour applied out here). Then they'd get around to asking him what he was doing out here, and he'd always have to answer truthfully because he honestly couldn't think of any other way to explain it: 

"Oh, I'm just getting away from it all for a bit. I needed a change. I thought I'd try driving around the midwest a bit." 

Then there was always the silence, the grimaces, the attempts at clarification. "You mean, down through to Dallas or Phoenix?" "Or up to Chi-town?"

"Nope. Just... you know. See a bit of the countryside. The great frontier, you know?" 

And they'd shake their heads, chuckle, and mutter something about crazy Brits. It seemed to endear him to them more, though, and once or twice he'd even gotten a free breakfast out of it. If you could call it a breakfast, at least... for the supposed leader of the free world, they seemed to have a distressing baked beans famine. 

They'd told him, you're not going to see nothin'. You want the nature, you want the full amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties, you wanna go out West into the Smokies, or East and down, get into Bayou country or the Appalachians. Hell, even Arizona's got something goin' for it. But the Midwest? Son, don't nobody hang around the middle of this country unless they ain't got a choice. He'd been told - and this was a fact, he'd looked it up - that more Apollo astronauts had come from Ohio than from any other state. By a big margin. And didn't that tell you somethin' about the place, that you don't just wanna leave the state, you wanna clear leave the Earth! 

Sam hadn't really taken it to heart. It came from growing up in a village that was barely big enough to host a good game of tennis, and coming from a country where a 2-hour drive to Margate was considered Going On Holiday. He'd rented the cheapest car he could find from a crooked little dealership in Tulsa and had been driving around since, taking the back roads where he could (despite the alarming protests from the car's suspension, brakes, and Everything), and firmly expecting that he'd be in Minneapolis by teatime.

Five days later, and he was still driving.

Sure, he was taking the back roads, and his route probably looked like a snake with vertigo. But it was incredible! This place was huge, on a scale that he still found it impossible to wrap his head around. And for days now, it had been cornfields - corn and corn and corn and corn with the occasional tired-looking barn or windmill or rusting watertower. He'd come across a town once or twice, and that had felt like downtown London during the Six Nations. But for the most part, it was just mind-numbing. Sam would keep his eyes focused on the middle distance and his mind would just turn to cotton wool. He'd made a game of how many bugs he could squish on his windscreen, and was up to 439 so far. It was all running together because there was absolutely nothing going on. Sometimes it felt like it had been a day. Sometimes a week. God, oh god, it was boring.

Sam couldn't have been happier. 

This, he told himself, was exactly what he needed. What he needed was nothing, and that's exactly what he was getting, and in great quantities. His cup overfloweth'd with nothing. He had nothing coming out of his ears. Just sweet sweet monotony and boredom. No idiot coworkers, no harebrained schemes, no old people, and - best of all - not a frozen chicken to be found for miles. Just him, the road, a rickety old car that smelled like Oxo gravy mix, and all the corn and lack of stimulation a young man could dream of. 

So when he saw her on Corn Day Three, standing there by the side of the road with her thumb out and a dusty backpack slung over her shoulder, his first thought was, '...great. Just great.'

I'm ashamed that I'm barely human / I'm ashamed that I don't have a heart you can break

Merdraut

   It had started raining. Again. That's all it seemed to do in this godsforsaken place. He could hear it, pattering maddeningly against the sodden canvas, a ceaseless tattoo that pounded inside his head and threatened to drive out all rationality. Medraut pulled himself from his bunk, lifted a moulding flap of his tent and poked his head out, looking around in disgust and taking a deep breath.

   "Ugh. This entire place smells like a shitheap." He laughed and spat on the ground.

   In all fairness, this wasn't entirely inaccurate. The army had been camped out here for days now, and it wasn't made up of the kind of men for whom 'military discipline' or even 'basic hygiene' were ever big motivating factors. Tents sprouted haphazardly from the ground like particularly noxious mushrooms, a metaphor made particularly apt by the fact that, by and large, they were erected on a great churned-up mess of mud and manure. Not all of it was from the long-since-butchered cattle, either. This thrice-damned rain had long since flooded out the middens. Everywhere Medraut looked, surly roughnecks were clutching their spears and swords and growling at each other, wading about shin-deep in their own shit. Oh gods, it was so wonderful, he could just die laughing.

   Medraut took another deep, satisfied breath and turned back into his tent. He glanced at the mess in his bunk. Ah well, he was growing bored of this one anyway. Pity how none of them seemed to really last. He reached for his tunic, buttoned it up, and strapped on his sword belt. The blade slapped naked against his thigh, reassuring and heavy. He laid a hand on the pommel and felt that familiar - almost orgasmic - rush of energy. Thus enlivened, he turned from the gurgling, bleeding figure on the bunk and strode out into his camp.

   He strode along through the rain and nodded amicably to all the sellswords and thugs around him. Some shrank from his path. Funny, really, the camp had seemed so crowded just moments ago, but wherever he went there was a clear, broad avenue in front of him. Men who could punch out draft-horses scattered before their slight leader. They'd all heard the stories, some of them had been unlucky enough to have witnessed them first-hand. His eyes, too, they whispered to each other... there was something wrong with his eyes. And for whatever reason, though no-one would dare meet his gaze, none could help but stare at the sword that swung unsheathed at his hip. 

   Medraut grabbed at one unfortunate who was a little too slow in getting out of the way. "Ah, Moreg!" He threw a friendly arm around his shoulder, and Moreg - who was built like an ox and was rumoured to have killed his own father for fucking his mother - felt the blood drain right out of him.

   "A-aye m'lord?" Moreg gulped and prayed his legs wouldn't give out.

   "A small favour." Medraut pinned the man down with a sincere grin. He was always grinning, like the world had told the best-ever joke and only he had gotten it. There was a distant rumble of thunder. "I've been a bit naughty, you see, and I've left my tent in a bit of a state. You know how it goes. I'm going to need you-" he patted Moreg on the shoulder, and the man choked on a low groan, "to make sure it's all nicely done up when I get back." 

   He stared at Moreg. The smile was still there, but oh gods and spirits, those eyes. Moreg couldn't help but notice, too, that the other hand was resting on the sword-hilt. He closed his eyes and nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was shaking.

   "Good man!" Medraut gave Moreg a clap on the back that damn near stopped his heart. "I'll be back before long. I shouldn't dawdle, if I was you." He strode on without looking back, and stifled the urge to scream with laughter at the sound of a grown man stumbling, slipping in the rain, and falling face-first into crap. 

   And now Medraut was alone, standing in the plain outside of the camp with the rain driving down around him, soaking his hair, running over his face, down his back. He had his sword gripped tightly in his hand. He wasn't smiling.

   The moors were an utterly forsaken place. Just like the rest of the surrounding country, really. Gods and spirits, what the hell was there here that was worth anything? Grass and lichen and great big fucking rocks. There was nothing around for miles, and when you finally did reach something, it wasn't much. How could you make so much out of so little? It was offensive. It was disgusting. It was boring. 

   Oh, it had once been great. A great kingdom, a light in the darkness, a real paradise. Justice and nobility and chivalry, and all of it gone to hell now. Medraut allowed himself a little smirk. He had seen to that.

   Now it was a lot of nothing, just another shitheap, just another windblown rain-soaked midden in the middle of a land that even the Romans had given up as a bad job. How bad did something have to be for those pious fuckwits to abandon it?
   And somewhere out there, probably not too far out, he was there. Him, with his perfect wife and his perfect god - him, in his sin and his hypocrisy and his utterly tedious holier-than-thou attitude. And now he had an army all of his own, a lovely collection of shiny knights and toy soldiers. Merdraut stared into the rain. They were out there, somewhere not too far away, cowering under this angry sky. And before much longer he was going to march all his shiny knights and toy soldiers up to Merdraut's rabble, and the two of them were going to duke it out - to the death, hopefully - all for this godsforsaken had-been-a-kingdom. 

   Ah, but that was it, wasn't it? This country might be desolately, insultingly boring; it might be a pathetic discard of the old Empire; but that was all beside the point. It wasn't Merdraut's. It was that other bastard's. His. He was the one who had built that something out of this nothing, all those years ago. The hubris! The sheer pious arrogance! And so long as this land was his, it was the most precious thing of all. Merdraut didn't give a beggar's ass about anything beyond that. He had long ago decided that he would do anything - he would laugh as the whole fucking world burned down around them - so long as he got to make sure that he got to watch his precious kingdom burn too.

   The storm was almost on them, now. Lightning crashed down on the moors. Merdraut grinned wildly, slashed his sword upwards, and screamed defiance as an answering bolt stabbed into the sky. Take that, you bastard. Take that, you fucking god of his. 

   Raindrops sizzled and danced along the flat of the blade as he thrust it back into his belt. Merdraut let out a long, manic laugh, spat against the rain, and stalked back to the camp. 

Layin' a little truth on ya, or Why You Should Hire Me

What's he up to now, you ask? Well, I'm basking in my Brooklyn backyard and... swatting mosquitos off my neck. Ick. I'm also sitting with a glass of wine and a sheet of paper with scribblings all over it, trying to decipher my scrawled on-the-go lettering and use these notes to update the ol' curriculum vitae.

If you know me, you know how I detest the rhetorical constraints of these things. It's all cookie-cutter equivocation, and it gives no sense of the person behind the formal words.

There's a fantastic book called Overqualified by Joey Comeau (of A Softer World fame) that is basically a series of cover letters written by an increasingly desperate person. It does exactly what I wish I could do - says 'screw you' to all that formality and offers something hilariously candid.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite the balls to write a cover letter that says how I really feel because sadly that is not how one gets hired. Instead, I'm going to vent a little frustration by comparing what the 'Summary' section of my resumé actually says to what it should say, sentence by sentence. God, I hope no future employers read this. Here goes:

What it says: 
"BA graduate with experience in Chinese Studies, office administration and research."
What it means: 
A college graduate with research experience. Sweet Jesus, who'd-a thunk it? I did exactly what was required me in college, and if I'm going to be honest it was kind of a special occasion if I did any more than that. I have exactly as much office administration experience as you'd expect from two 3-month internships; that is to say, heavy on the 'office' and light on the 'administration'. Oh, and the Chinese Studies bit? I took an equal amount of classes in Chinese and Japanese culture, and managed to get the diploma because my advisor basically said 'screw it, it's all Asia'. But hey, I can tell jiaozi from baozi, so I'm praying that gives me a much-needed edge.

What it says:
"A flexible worker with high attention to detail and the ability to work well under deadline constraints."
What it means:
Listen, guys. I want to prove myself. Frankly, I have some procrastination issues, and my long-term attention span could use some work. But at the same time, I'm not a fuck-up and I get the job done. My productivity curve might be a little steep, but if I need to I'll pull weekend hours and have nobody but myself to blame, and in the end the job'll be done on time. I work well under deadline constraints because that's often the only time I can shift my ass. I also have a high attention to detail because I'm kind of scatterbrained: I know this about myself, and I'm incredibly fastidious when it comes to never letting that be a problem with the important stuff. I had a few slipups back in secondary school that almost proved disastrous, and you'd better believe I learned from them.

What it says:
"Excellent interpersonal skills in both customer service and official liaison roles."
What it means:
I used to work in an office where I had to call the parents of child actors and tell them that their precious little bundle of sunshine and thespian prowess didn't make the cut. I firmly believe that this alone qualifies me for any customer service job on (in?) the market. If you - an eighteen-year-old intern whose sole job is to pass along the goddamned information - can handle an incensed adult demanding to know how such a thing could have happened, their little Timothy is such a wonderful actor, he was lead in his third grade play and everything, I demand and apology and your resignation! ... well, let's just say that schmoozing with provincial politicians from Pakistan is child's play in comparison.

What it says:
"A strong writer who is well-suited to editorial and proofreading tasks."
What it means:
Well, now I'm just bragging aren't I. Put it this way: I like writing, and I love reading. I've been reading anything I can get my hands on since I first learned how to tell 'cat' from 'mat'. I've read good books and I've read bad books. I've read masterpieces of literature and I've read Twilight. (Well, no, that's a lie. I couldn't get past the first five pages of Twilight). My point is, I know good from bad, and I like to think that I have enough of a self-critical eye to be able to tell the same when I'm the one doing the writing. I may not have a perfect grasp of MLA styles, but if you give me a block of text to read I can tell you what sounds awkward and I can spruce it up to make it sound purdy.

Phew. Okay. Well, now that's out of my system, maybe I can knuckle down and actually make these edits. Me and the mosquitos bid you goodnight, sweet blog.

I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear? 

The Lady

It's a shitty disorder that doesn't let you leave the home, but she makes the most of it. Not that there'd be much waiting for her outside; a urine-stained corridor on the top floor of a severely dilapidated housing tower, all soulless concrete and claustrophobic staircases and marauding bands of knife-wielding 9-year-olds. It's a blessing, really, an excuse to stay wrapped up in her nice cozy cocoon, safe from the horrors of the Times We Live In. 

So she draws shut her windows, duct-tapes them, makes herself a lovely chamber hermetically sealed from the hateful sunlight, and turns on the telly. It's a bloody good one: as big as the wall and as thin as glass. It's amazing, the money you save when you never go out. She sits, safe in the neon glow, and drinks in the 24-hour news cycles, the hyperbolic documentaries, even those awful reality shows, because everybody needs a guilty pleasure. They say that television holds a mirror to the world; it's a pretty tarnished mirror, but it's the best she's got and she doesn't complain.

And then, of course, there's the web. That ever-present distraction-turned-social medium-turned-augmented and alternative reality (virtual is considered a dirty word in her circles - it implies something that's less real). She can be an actual person here, or as close as you can get, which these days is pretty damn close. In here she can be anywhere and everywhere. She dances and twirls among the threads; snooping and probing, hopping around firewalls like they were garden fences, always reading and always learning. With several lifetimes of information at her fingertips she takes the world's temperature and weaves herself a picture of the state of things. She doesn't always like what she sees. 

It's not a bad existence for a crippled introvert. But sometimes, lit only by cathode rays and plasma screens, she feels half-sick of shadows. 

I know a thing about contrition, 'cause I've got a lot to spare

Duck

This one time, I caught a duck. I’ve no idea why I wanted to catch this duck – I’d certainly never had the urge before. Never in my life had I looked at a duck and thought, ‘yes. This is something that I would like to possess. I must have it.’

And to be honest, that’s not what I was thinking back then, either. It wasn’t a question of have and have-not, of my taking a duck for my own. That wasn’t the point. The point was to catch it, to get the better of it, to lure it from a state of happy idle freedom to a state of being caught. By me. All me. I’d never had such thoughts before, and I never have since, but on that one particular day – the instant I saw that smug little mallard waddling about and waving his arse at me as he ducked under the filthy water of the allotment pond – I was possessed by this all-encompassing, fierce, burning need to catch that fucking duck. It was almost scary it was so intense, let me tell you!

Looking at it objectively, there was nothing special about this duck. No special markings, no outrageous behavior, nothing to distinguish it from any other duck. It could have been any old duck, really; this just happened to be the duck I decided upon. The instant I saw it I just knew that it had to be caught, there was no question about that. Why I fixated on that specific duck is still a mystery to me.

I thought long and hard about how to catch this duck. I immediately discounted the notion of just chasing it. Sure, I was pretty confident that I was faster than a duck, but such an activity would be terribly undignified. Plus, what if it retreated to the water? What if it flew away? I may run faster than a duck waddles, but I don’t have wings. I can’t flap and soar away at a moment’s notice, unlike some creatures. So chasing was out.

Perhaps I could set a trap? I pondered this for a while. I thought about different types of cages and bait and lures. But I have to confess, despite this sudden obsession with this particular duck, I was pretty ignorant about ducks in general. For one thing, I had no real concrete notion of what ducks eat. Fish? Plants? They’re always bobbing under the water to fetch something, but I’ve never even thought about what that something was. I suppose bread was always a popular choice, but I didn’t have any bread on me. Ditto for cages and duck lures. This passion had come over me so suddenly, I’d had no time to prepare. So, for lack of preparation, traps were out.

It was really a conundrum, let me tell you. I sat on the old bench for a good hour, fuming and staring at this fucking duck, trying to figure out how I was going to catch the thing. I sat there so focused, so intent, that everything else ceased to exist. My world narrowed and honed in on that duck. It was just me and that duck alone in our own little universe. I’ve no idea how long I sat there, alone with the duck, but it felt like years.

When you’re alone in the universe with a single other creature for years at a time, you develop a kind of sympathy. A kind of understanding. After a while I felt like I understood that little duck better than I could ever understand anything or anyone else. I could know no lover, no child, no human being as completely and thoroughly as I knew that duck. And I could tell, the reverse was true. I felt that duck examine my very soul. It knew my every secret, my every hope and fear and shame. It terrified and elated me, to be known so utterly.

Centuries later, the world started to come back to me. There was the allotment and the flats and the housing projects. Sky, clouds, sun. Plants and people. And all the other little ducks.

I looked at the duck. It looked back at me, and slowly waddled over. Its fat little body rocked back and forth as it padded over and stopped at my feet. My breath caught in my throat, and tears welled in my eyes. I reached down, taking its feathered form gently in my hands, and picked it up. I cradled it to my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks. It gave a quiet honk and ruffled its tail. I smiled.

“Gotcha.”

***

I’ve never caught a duck since. Never really felt the need. That’s the thing – I don’t even particularly like ducks. I’ll pass them by at the pond and glance over, but to me they’re nothing special. For whatever reason I just had this burning obsession with one duck, but only one! Maybe it wasn’t even about the duck.

Since then my life has been… ordinary. Utterly ordinary. I do the same things I always did, see the same people, eat the same food. My feelings about ducks certainly haven’t changed in any way. My outlook on life is no different. If there’s a lesson to be learned from my experience, I haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s supposed to be. One of these days I’d like to know, and I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open, trying just a little harder to notice the everyday things. It’d be nice to understand, but I’m not sure that I ever will.

Maybe that’s the point. 

It was crime at the time, but the laws, we changed 'em

Still Alive!

Well now... it's been another long while! The past two weeks have been absolutely insane. Three cities in one week, 12-hour workdays, and 159 PRC graduate students. I've met a ton of people, seen a ton of sights, and done a great many things. It's been a lot to fit into fourteen days, and today's been the first day in a very long time in which I've had the chance to take a breath, lie back, and let myself relax. Feels good.

So, not much today I'm afraid. Just a quick note to remind myself that, yes, I do have one of those bloggy things, don't I, and shouldn't I really think about putting something into it every now and then? Don't worry, dear bloggy thing, I've no intention of abandoning you. I just need to gather my wits a little.

I've been thinking in the meantime though, even if I haven't been writing! I have a few little outlines jotted down on my phone of all places... I really ought to get a nice little notebook and carry it around with me. I've also got a nice list of books that I would very much like to get a hold of. I'm currently reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for the... fourth time, I think? One of my most beloved books, it blows me away each time I read it. I may have to write about it here sometime.

(Oh, side note: I think I mentioned Subway Love last time? Well the other day I was reading TWUBC on the F line, and the girl sitting next to me asked about it. Which was particularly great, since the pages I had open at the time were somewhat... *discrete cough*... steamy. So I told her that it was a magnificent novel by one of my favourite authors, and that she should definitely check it out if she got the chance. She smiled and thanked me, and then the train rolled up to Bergen Street and she stepped out of the train and out of my life with a little toss of her hair and another mouthed 'thank-you'. Leaving me sitting there thinking "Huh. So long then. Iloveyou.")

(Oh, double-sidenote, that actually gave me an idea for a story! Or a least a part of a story. I'll try and flesh it out here sometime!)

So anyhow, as fantastic as this book is, I'm looking for something new. Hence my list! I was in the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco (namedropper) and for some reason was really drawn to books about Film Noir. I think I still have The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can remember where. So anyhow, I'll probably wind up on Amazon buying some of these books, because they actually struck me as great inspiration for a screenplay that I've been semi-working-on for a while now. I'd also love to start watching some of these classic old films, and those'd probably be a good place to get suggestions.

Enough disjointed rambling for now, time to send out some resumés. WILLPOWER!

I picture your face at the back of my eyes