LETTER
Dear John,
This is just to say
I’m breaking up with you
Forgive me
for stealing
from William Carlos Williams
But I am so bored
and my new boyfriend
is on his way
Things to Read
A Week of Poems: Wednesday, “Connected”
CONNECTED
I don’t doubt that the couple in the booth,
who are both looking at their phones
instead of talking to each other,
are totally in love.
They’re taking pictures of their food
so they can remember this date
when they’re old and gray,
looking at their Facebook timelines.
They will think back on the meal,
and the looks they shared between status updates,
and the number of likes they got,
and smile.
Call me a romantic.
A Week of Poems: Tuesday, “Apology”
APOLOGY
I’m sorry I tripped,
and fell on your dog,
and broke the vase,
and knocked over the candles,
and set off the smoke alarm.
You should know it’s only because you’re so beautiful,
not that I’m blaming you.
A Week of Poems: Monday, “Seafarer’s Poem”
SEAFARER’S POEM
Hey,
I saw something through the porthole.
It might have been a mermaid,
but it was probably a dolphin,
or something else normal.
Sorry I keep doing this.
“Commute” by Jake Christie
“Commute” is a piece of interactive fiction I wrote to test out the capabilities of Twine, a program for writing interactive stories. I only scratched the surface – there are some spectacular games out there, like “KING OF BEES IN FANTASY LAND” and “Depression Quest,” and many more – that tell really great stories and play with the form and capabilities of interactive fiction. I don’t think this story does anything big with the form, but I’m happy with the way it came out.
You wake up.
Maybe that’s a little charitable. Your cell phone alarm goes off, and you have that panicked moment before you open your eyes where you realize that, yes, it is Monday morning. Whatever was left of your weekend energy drains out of you, and you feel like a limp piece of meat lying on a serving board. Well, tangled on a serving board, in wonderful, warm blankets. So soft. So comfy.
You roll over and squint at your cell phone. You have just enough time to shower, make coffee, eat a bagel, and get out to your car.
“The Language of Achewood” by Max Robinson, Deadshirt.net
Achewood by Chris Onstad. March 5, 2003.
Achewood is, without a doubt, one of my favorite things. Chris Onstad’s webcomic has influenced my sense of humor and my writing, as well as providing a model for truly unique self-published work that can can an audience and a rabid fan base.
In a piece on Deadshirt.net, Max Robinson examines one of the main magic draws behind the black-and-white comic – the language. Achewood slang has entered my vernacular, but it can leave the uninitiated scratching their heads.
It’s clear that Onstad puts a staggering amount of thought and effort into considering language when writing Achewood. Not only do his turns of phrase, his word choices inform the characters that make up the strip, they give the strip as a whole a flavor of it’s own; a lyrical energy that keeps us returning in spite of delays and personal hiatuses. I don’t know that you can totally explain why something’s funny but once you get past the initial language barriers of Achewood, there’s a sweet spot you enter as a reader, where the comic genius of Ray trotting out “Horse Dogg Maniac” is enhanced a hundred-fold because now you’re in on the joke.
“‘Damn. This is a thing, isn’t it?’ The Language of Achewood” at Deadshirt.net
“40 Days of Dating” by Jessica Walsh & Timothy Goodman
Two friends in New York – designers Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman – found themselves single at the same time. Tim was concerned about his “inability to commit”; Jessica wondered why “all [her] relationships keep failing. To confront these issues and learn more about love and dating, they decided to date for 40 days:
It’s been said that it takes 40 days to change a bad habit. In an attempt to explore and hopefully overcome their fears and inadequacies, Tim and Jessica will go through the motions of a relationship for the next 40 days: the commitment, time, companionship, joys and frustrations. Can they help each other, or will they fall into their same habits? Will they damage their friendship? What if they fall in love?
While this may seem, on the surface, like a premise for a romantic comedy, the honesty that Jessie and Tim bring to the project is touching and fascinating. At the end of every day they answered a list of questions – What’d you do? Did you learn anything about yourself? How do you feel about the relationship/project? – including drawings, pictures, and even screenshots of text messages and emails they exchanged.
They stopped posting updates on Day 36, just shy of the (revelatory, transformative?) 40-day deadline, but there’s a new video on the site promising updates after Labor Day. Take some time to read their beautiful account of love, frustration and modern courtship before they return – hopefully with some kind of happy ending.
“Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America” by Dan Kois, The New York Times
Jack Handey / Photo by Jeff Minton for The New York Times
A profile of one of the greats, Jack Handey.
The archetypal Jack Handey sketch is about Frankenstein, or flying saucers, or a cat who, for some reason, can drive a car. “Little-boy stuff,” Handey explained. He often worked alone on his sketches rather than team up with other writers, and he liked to work from his and Marta’s Chelsea apartment, so he would show up each week to Wednesday read-throughs with these fully formed, immaculate sketches that would freak everyone out. Franken recalled a sketch called “Giant Businessman,” about an actual giant (played by Phil Hartman) who calls the cops on the loud party next door, then is terrified when the neighbor threatens him. At the read-through, Franken laughed so long and hard at the sketch’s final beat — in which the giant asked the F.B.I., sincerely, if he might join the witness protection program — that he had to excuse himself from the crowded room because his laughter was interrupting the next sketch.
“Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America” by Dan Kois
“A Game Development Love Story” by Colin Campbell, Polygon
Driftmoon screenshot / Instant Kingdom
I haven’t played Driftmoon yet, but the RPG earned great acclaim since it was released earlier this year. Polygon has a great piece about the story behind the game – the story of married co-creators Ville and Anne Mönkkönen and how they came to work on the daunting project together:
This is a love story. It’s a tale about two people who meet, fall in love, share their lives and — through the seven-year making of a video game — find that the unique qualities which separate them as individuals are just as important as that which binds them together.
“How Military-Style Drones are Changing Adventure Filmmaking” by Joe Spring, Outside Magazine
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Last weekend my fellow writers and filmmakers Jon and Travis helped out at a video shoot for a local web series. Part of the shoot involved an unmanned remote-controlled drone, which are becoming cheaper for consumers to purchase (Brookstone, for example, offers one with a built-in HD camera for just $300). In an piece for Outside, Joe Spring takes a look at how these consumer drones and inexpensive consumer HD cameras could change adventure filmmaking.
Unmanned drones, once used primarily by the U.S. Department of Defense for wartime operations, are becoming a staple in the adventure world, deployed to do everything from monitor endangered orangutans in Indonesia to aid in search-and-rescue efforts in Colorado. But they’ve become especially popular with filmmakers. This is partly because, even at upwards of $5,000 per day, a drone runs a fraction of the cost of a helicopter rental. It can also get close to athletes without propeller wash kicking up snow or dust. And since drones are unmanned, they allow filmmakers to take greater risks in pursuit of the ultimate shot. In the past few years, unmanned drones have captured innovative footage of surfers in Australia, mountain bikers in England, and skiers in Oregon.
“How Military-Style Drones are Changing Adventure Filmmaking” by Joe Spring
Jake Christie 