The Orange County Register...

Just got off of the phone with them - and I figured out a way to make the conversation as nice as possible, besides just hanging up on them...make them laugh. I was telling her how cheap her offer was, and what an amazing deal it was that she was offering me. I told her that I hated her newspaper, and that I have a fear of mulch. I told her that there was no way, ever and what-so-ever that I would ever get another newspaper delivered to my door unless she told me that she was going to kill me if I didn't accept her offer. She said that she wouldn't ever say that. I told her, good. I asked her how the Oscars were and she said that she liked them but eventually fell asleep. I told her that Hilary Swank's dress looked like crap, didn't it? And she said that she liked Million Dollar Baby. I said that she definitely didn't spend a million dollars on her outfit - but I was glad that Charlie Kaufman won for best original screenplay. She said, who? And I asked her if she really watched the awards and she said, No - that she didn't - that she never watches them. I told her that I'll buy her paper when I'm famous and to call me back in 74 years when I am. She said that she would.

And then we hung up.

Then Turn The TV OFF...

It's hard enough to watch MTV when you're awake - but somehow in this last week the TV's been playing MTV all night while I've been sleeping AND LAST NIGHT WAS THE SECOND TIME THAT I'VE HAD A DREAM that involved me hanging out with my friend, NICK LACHEY. Not Jessica Simpson - not even Ashlee Simpson. Just Me and Nick hanging out. And YES, we both had our clothes on, you schmucks. There were also subplots involving a dead pig, jumping trucks over curbs, jet planes that looked like UFO's at first, and a tiny kitten that was bleeding that I eventually ended up naming FLEA.

I will now go back to sleeping to Empire Strikes Back.

Or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Both are better than MTV.

Barrow, Alaska...

First Hunter ST dies and now this. My comic book store is closing, going out of business, finito, no mas. Sucks for me, now where am I going to go to get my stupid comics? Waste time after work?

I walked in there today and there were a bunch of other nerds milling about with lost looks on their faces. Fatties were piling up Thor and Captain America statues in their enormous arms. Geeks were whispering to other geeks and telling them to hurry up and come down because action figures and shirts were 50% off.

I was just kind of sad. Nerdy hobbies should be easy and effortless – that’s why alcoholics have it easy because they have hobby shops conveniently located on every corner for their pleasures.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the demise of local arcades, and about how there aren’t any around anymore like there were when I was growing up, when I was young, that’s what you did – you rode your bike to the arcade and comic stores. THEN at night tried to get in trouble – but what do kids nowadays do? Stay at home. They have everything they need. Why go out?

It’s dangerous out there for kids now as it is, so is it better? I’m probably gonna keep my kids at home too. Swimming in public pools in the summer? Somebody might put acid or piranhas in the water. Fly a kite in the park? Might get electrocuted by terrorists who can wield the power of lightning. Kegger parties are okay though, the worst thing that could happen is that your kid gets laid.

Regardless, I’m sad. Tonight I will be tipping my 40oz. Of Old E to the million deaths of the written word and will give a big ol’ fuck you finger to the squashings of imagination and creativity.

Excelsior.

For Your Consideration...

To remember an important lesson that you had taught yourself before,
but forgotten along the way.

To get it back from wherever you lost it,
and then,
to now,
do more with it.

To give yourself another final try.

To succeed.

To create beauty.

And to beautify others creations.

To have others learn from what you teach them.

To not be forgotten.

To be a beacon for those trying to find their way.

To push everything, constantly.

To be beautiful.

Try to remember.

To do all this.

I Am The Face Underneath The Apple On Top Of Mrs. Burroughs' Head...



I just heard something break. At first I thought that it came from the kitchen. I've craned my neck to see where it came from. It wasn't from the kitchen. It couldn't have come from outside, because the crash was too loud. It couldn't have come from the next room. The cats are right by me. Nothing has fallen off of the shelves. There are no pictures on the floor.

What was it?

Should I get up and investigate?

What broke?

And where did it come from?

It sounded loud.

It sounded heavy.

It sounded valuable.

expensive.

One-of-a-kind.

I can't replace it.

Whatever it was...

It's GONE.

Forever.

I could hear it saying a million, tiny goodbyes.

Baraka...

I would rather swing through the trees of an Ewok village rather than a Wookie one, because as a guest of the Ewoks,I would probably be able to push myself around more.

Really Makes You...

feel like schmuck when you procrastinate on doing a couple of things and let it go for a loooooong time - and then it takes you ten minutes to do them.

Stark Enterprises Whiskey...

Where My Ideas Come From
Filed under: faq— warrenellis @ 2:08 am
I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 3 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea".

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That’s how it works.

(Written in 2003 for the Bad Signal mailing list.)

Count Katsu...

Things are starting to slow down now.
I can finally get back to my normal non-productive self.
I love this, and want to spend the rest of my life doing absoultely NOTHING.

I will make this so.

I will try my hardest to accomplish this.

I Would Swap Bodies With You, Stephen Hawking...In The Name Of Science.



But we're both, probably just as skinny as the other - so maybe this isn't as cool for you. You won't get laid more because I know, from what I've read - that you have horrible taste and self-destructive, bad judgement when it comes to the opposite sex. Who woulda thunk it, Steve? You - one of the most brilliant minds since Albert Einstein? Bah! C'mon Steve! This is like me flunking a Spiderman test.

What gives? You can talk to me. My speech, at times, is just as fragmented as yours. We're all the same grains of sand in the cosmic beach, right?

You can talk about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and I can talk about Jack Kirby.

Let's sip some beers through straws. I can sneak you puffs off of my cigarettes when the scholars aren't looking. We'll take a gander at all of the pretty ladies strolling by us. We'll slowly nod our big heads up and down to the beat of distant music. Nothing can stop us, Steve. NOTHING AT ALL.

WE HAVE JUST BARELY BEGUN TO TAP INTO OUR RESERVOIRS. We've only reached a fine, top-layer of film - It's like scratching the faces off of the first picture of the world's tallest stack of wet Polaroids.

I know that you and me, Steve have a lot of years to live - we're practically babies -and you and me both know that in the grand scheme of things, that nothing exists for any allotted amount of time, except for hot, fiery suns and drying laundry in coin-operated machines. Nobody can tell me when to stop, nobody can tell me when to go, Steven. NOBODY.

Our minds, hearts and souls are our own miasmic and dichotomous beautiful combinations of Big Bangs Theories and Black Holes. Our lives are the only time that small, soft creatures get the chance to play GOD. If dyslexic dogs get to aim high - then I do too.

We have so much potential. Let's show all of the sidewalk worms some rain.

I want what I've had since birth, Steven -

A chance to die GLORIOUSLY.

Inazo Nitobe…



I was watching Freaks And Geeks via Netflix and decided to have a cigarette in the front yard and brought the newspaper with me. I’m like this when I eat also. I can’t just sit there if I’m by myself. I need to look at something or else I feel like I’m wasting my time. My health? Blah. Time? Ooohhh, so precious…

Anyway. Was sitting on a step and reading about ABC and the NEW Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from the calender section of The Los Angeles Times when a car from down the street made a really stupid turn. The car stopped in the middle of my street. I just sat there and stared at them. Then people yelled out my name, so I didn’t have to kill anybody. It was two guys that I work with and a couple of their girls. I walked into the middle of the street and said hey. They either saw me sitting there while driving by and saw me looking like a dork at two o clock in the morning or were going to cruise by my house to see what I was doing anyway – I wouldn’t know and didn't get time to ask because a car started coming in my direction from the opposite end of the street and I needed to stop standing in the middle of it. So, I said later and told the guys that I worked with to remember about poker tomorrow day. They drove away. I walked back inside my house.

The funny thing is that the guys that I work with are 20 years old. 20. I’m far away from that. It’s no big deal. Trust me, I don’t age. When I look in the mirror I look at a guy who looks like he’s in his mid-twenties but fell down a cliff full of heroin needles and baseball bats sticking out of it. I am Peter Pan. I am trapped in time. This is because my mind is always in a constant state of retardation or it must’ve atrophied way beyond all hope of re-growth years ago. I usually forget how old I am – I don’t ever think about it except when I move my legs, bend or stretch. Funny to think though, that I have friends that I hang out with that aren’t even of legal drinking age and my oldest friend that I hang out with is in his eighties.

This means something cool, I think – but doesn’t make you feel too cool when it’s Friday night/Saturday morning at 2 AM and the young one's are out getting back from partying and you’re in the front of your house reading the newspaper OR maybe this means that I was always doing this kind of thing in combination with going out at all hours of the morning. I do still go crazy - just not as much.

Maybe this just means that I felt like a schmuck because I had the bad timing of being out by myself in the front yard when a carload of giggling Unicorns drove by.

Maybe this means that I am the bridge between all generations. Yeah! Maybe I’m like Mr. Rogers. Appealing to the awe-struck young and nostalgiac old.

Or maybe this means that I am very, very GAY.

Goodnight, self.

Goodnight non-spellcheck.

And also, goodnight to my friend that is in his eighties, because I know for a fact that he went to sleep at least six hours ago.

Time for another cigarette.

Sloan Valve Company...

Last night I was driving home after work and stopped at a light, ready to turn left. A guy in his early twenties rode by on a bike and screamed out, "AAARRRRR Mateys!!!"

I jumped a little because, of course, that was the last thing that I expected. There was nobody else around. I had to ask myself if I really heard what I heard but there was no doubt in my mind that he said it. He wasn't dressed abnormally. He didn't have an eyepatch, pegleg or a parrot hanging onto his shoulder for dear life.

Hey just fucking yelled out "AAARRRRR Mateys!!!"

I do not drive a pirate ship. I drive a car. Maybe I had played Pirates with this guy when I was a kid but he was in a hurry and couldn't stop to say hello? I started to smile a little bit and by the time my light turned green, I was convinced that that was one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me. That whole five seconds. And I think that the guy is brilliant...or insane - or both. Doesn't matter really. Undercover fucking pirates on bikes?

I am now on the lookout for Ninjas.

I Somehow Always Arrive Beneath Your Window When You're Dreaming...

And I cant help myself. I tell myself that I'm just going for a walk. I tell myself that it's cold outside and that I should be home doing all of the things that I need to be doing.

It's always the same window. Not always the same night's chill, it's sometimes warm. Sometimes the sweat miasmically mingles in with the just-as-warm tears from my rubbed-raw eyes.

There's no shuffling of my feet because I stand perfectly still. I picture you curled up like a puppy. Sometimes like a dragon. Sometimes I picture you not actually asleep upstairs in that room and in that bed. Sometimes I think that you may be somewhere else.

Sometimes I regret what I'm doing, but don't live in fear of you finding out because I know that even if I was standing in front of you and not beneath your window-

You'd still never even know that I was there.

And how could I care?

I can't help myself.