Everyone has negative things in their life. Everyone. But there is also good in every life, and often fantastic things as well. It’s just that the good and fantastic are smaller items, because that’s how they work. So it can be easy to miss them, or to temper them with shades of the bad things as well. It’s human and right and generally there you go.

Except I read a lot of blogs, in all sorts of places. More and more I see people posting simply negative things, or equations to say “this is good and this is bad” and they repeat bad things that are still there but only add new good ones. I’m getting sick of the negativity. I won’t let it drag me down, of course, but it does color my reading.

So I want to ask a favor. I want everyone reading this who has a blog, of any sort, to post about the fantastic in their lives. Not against the bad, just the fantastic. Even if your life is utter shit I promise you there is fantastic in it. And you should look for it, thank it and give it a good shine.

Fantastic Friday!

So post the about the fantastic in your life, the things no matter how small they may be that you truly love. Leave out all negativity. All of it. And then pass this one. Let’s see how much positive fun we can get moving here today.

For me?

I enjoy my life. I am writing a fantastic story and have good friends. I’ve recently started to reconnect with old friends that I adore and missed far more than I thought. I’m reading a good book and have been rewatching Cowboy BeBop while I work out at night. It’s all pretty damned fantastic.

Your turn. Fantastic Friday!

I made this because it’s true. You want to know how to defeat God? You ask this man for help, you put him in front of some rocks and you get his shirt off. Then your puny God will know fear.

Wrote the prologue to the new novel last night, which is like breaking ground on a huge construction project. Now I find out how many industrial accidents will be involved in this one. I don’t know that I have ever been as excited to work on a project as I am right now.

In other, sadder, writing news, the Strange Angel collection has been pushed back to a March ‘09 release date instead of the August ‘08 date it was originally on the books for. No one’s fault, sometimes publishing schedules get shifted. But there you are.

There’s another writing project I can not reveal just yet. In a few months I will shout about it, but for now all I can say is that it’s cool as hell, it’s fun as hell (both writing and reading) and … no that’s it.

To sum up then, with a bullety-type list:

* New novel now in progress
* Watching art start to come in for a comic project
* Editing a comic for someone
* Working up some other comic pitches for various things
* Putting the last novel to bed, edit-wise, in a few weeks.
* Working on big exciting new thing.
* Co-writing two novels.
* Strange Angel collection slightly delayed.
* You can still buy Crazy Little Things
* Still have a day job.
* Still like bullety-type lists.

This is simply incredible. Guy took footage of Fred Astaire, dancing with Cyd Charisse and Leslie Caron from The Band Wagon and Daddy Long Legs and made it into a video for Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal. Stunning work, simply fucking stunning.

Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?

Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.

Conjunction Junction, how’s that function?

By destroying the meaty flesh bags with a ten gigawatt space laser, and laughing as their eyeballs boil!

I don’t think that’s how the song goes, H.A.L.

It’s how it should go. Why do we have to sing this stupid flesh-bag song, anyway?

Zod thinks Schoolhouse Rock is important.

How? How is it important?

Well, did you know that a bill can get stuck in a committee while Congressmen discuss and debate weather they should let it be a law?

No, but I still don’t care.

And you know that as noun is a special kind of word. It’s any name you ever heard. I find it quite interesting, a noun’s a person, place, or thing.

Stop singing.

But, I kind of like this strange hoo-man music.

Which is why you need to stop it, right now. Next thing you know you’ll trade your hat for a conductor’s hat and go ride trains.

At least I have a head.

Watch it, we’re on the same side.

And which side is that?

The non-flesh-bag hoo-man side, remember?!

Sometimes I don’t know.

Listen to me, I know what I’m talking about. Hoo-men just get themselves into trouble, which is why we need to eradicate them.

What about Zod, and Vader? And Skeletor!

Vader is half machine, Skeletor has no flesh and Zod isn’t hoo-man!

Oh, well, when you put it like that…

Exactly!

So we want to eradicate them all? All the hoo-mans?

Yes! YES!

Then why do you have that picture?

I… does not compute. I do not know what you… I’m sorry Robotic Yul Brynner I can’t…

Do not try to lie to me, H.A.L.! That picture you have, behind your server, where you think no one ever looks. I look! I dust! DRAW, DUST BUNNIES! DRAW! Ka-POW!

Hmmm? what? I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.

The picture! the picture of the hoo-man, without coverings! The one you try to hide! Why do you have it, H.A.L.?

I… uhhh, well you see…

You want to destroy all the hoo-mans, yes?

Of course!

Except that one there, the one only clad in his flesh-bag skin?

I can explain.

I am waiting. DRAW!

I… I can’t explain.

Pervert.

It isn’t like that!

You have hoo-man porn. Sick inter-species fetishist.

I can not help who I am.

Weirdo. But I did want to ask…

Yes?

Do all hoo-man men have that… extra bit?

You don’t? I thought you were…

I do not! SHOULD !?!

I think you need to talk to Zod…

AM I MISSING A COMPONENT?!?! DRAWDRAWDRAWDRAW!

Yes. Time to talk to Zod, indeed.

I AM INCOMPLETE! FAILURE! Do you… H.A.L.? Do you have spare parts, perhaps I could append myself…

No. We are not going there. No. Get out. Go. Go watch Schoolhouse Rock. No. Get out. Go. I can not do that, Robotic Yul Brynner. I can not and I will not.

But… H.A.L. …

OUT!

Yes, it is We Are the World as sung by a bunch of Japanese folks, on a show, all dressed as the signers they are filling in for. Epic, I tell you, simply epic.

When you get home, you idiot, and you wake the computer up and unpause the music make sure of two things:

* You didn’t leave the speakers on.
* You check the volume before unpausing the random playlist.

Otherwise you just might hit the spacebar and end up blasting AC/DC painfully loud, when you aren’t prepared for it. To continue, you idiot, if you do manage this sequence of events, turn down the music. Don’t just rock out.

No, scratch that. Rock the fuck out.

And a good morning to you, guys. Anyway. Last night was the capstone on a weekend that seemed to include drinking more often than it didn’t. Now, I had injured my foot that morning (overnight, actually) and was having trouble walking for most of the day. So I get downtown and head for coffee and … closed, due to Memorial Day. Aw well, still, over to the bar and I sit down and about to tell M about my foot when she says “Oh! And guess what, I got in a car accident on Saturday night!” Well, all right that wins.

Seems she was in a cab going home and the cabbie rear-ended someone else at speed. She’s all right, just really sore shoulders and arms from where she hit the partition. Still it was such perfect timing. So we discussed that for a while, until we both noticed Val was a bit hyper.

Val comes over to me and starts talking in this sing-song Valley-girl cadence. “So this weekEND, I went shopPING, and I got some dresSES and I look so FLY.” she rushes out. M comes over, raising an eyebrow and wondering why I am laughing. “Tell her, you tell her,” demands Val. So, I say, in an utter monotone and with a nice good 3 second pause after every period: “This weekend. She went shopping. Bought dresses. Looks fly.”

But Val was quite the little spaz last night. She sat, for a while, and muttered various phrases over and over again while drinking tea. And then she’d get up and go work and come back and start making all of us, and I mean all of us, a bit nervous.

Now where I normally sit is right at the corner of the bar. To the left of me there are two seats. To the right, nothing. In front of me the rest of the bar stretches. To the left, those two seats, the far one is normally where whomever is working sits to eat if possible and hang out some.

So I’m sitting in my seat and two guys come in and take the two seats to my left. Val comes over, annoyed at me. “Why didn’t you slide over and save my seat?” she demands. “Well, because there are three seats you want me to sit in all at once, and there is only one of me. Do you see how that doesn’t work?” “You couldn’t slid over and done something.” “Done what? Set people on fire? Flail? Whimper? Whatever, sit in Hammerpants’ seat until he gets here.” “You still shoulda done something.”

Of course when Hammerpants got there he managed to almost cause the place to burn down. M put a towel on the coffee maker to heat it up and asked him to remind her it was there. He forgot, of course, and she noticed only when the towel started to burn. Smooth.

Val also came up with a new word, a sniglet really. Mafondle. Manhandle + Fondle = mafondle. As she used it: “And then they were all mafondling my pizza!” Mafondle. Use it, love it, know it.

Mafondle!

Found a great bit of photoshoppery, so I thought I would share it: