Bulk of the day went into admin stuff, and it's already 4:30pm with absolutely no creative tasks tackled at my presumably creative job. Only reason I have some hope for developments in A.I. is that I'm really hoping for day when a bunch of invisible robots will do all the many things that get between me and writing/drawing/painting.
But as far as I can tell, it seems to be going in the other direction: helping admin people have things written/drawn/designed for them.
Flattering review of THE SOLAR GRID #8 by Carson Grubaugh over at Living the Line on Youtube.
It may have been a mistake to work for 10 hours straight today, spine not quite working.
But at least I got 14 pages of PROJECT OLDBOOK done. Will be satisfied if I can push it to 20/day. Not today or this weekend though, I'm on daddy duty.
As if Israel/Palestine stuff wasn't enough, today's headlines:
US issues dire warning to Taiwan about potential China/Russia threat.
US Intel Chief: China building huge network of satellites that could be used against US troops.
Russian troops enter US military base in Niger amid rising tensions.
On a somewhat lighter note: Entertainment made by North Korea | Five-hour (!) youtube video that is incredibly informative and at times hilarious even.
7:40 am, another dark stormy morning. Jumping right back into PROJECT OLDBOOK first thing. About 90 pages to go, need to work round the clock if I want to be done with it in the next few days.
Won't be able to slide back into TSG until this is out of the way.
Dark morning, hard rain. Occasional flash of lightning followed by a loud roar from atmospheric belly. Doesn't look like this storm will let up for the next four days, at least not much.
A wrench in my rhythm when I can hardly tell night from day.
Sounds like Netanyahu is genuinely worried about the prospect of an ICC arrest warrant issued against him. The problem with such a prospect however is that it would make the US complicit given America's unwavering support and backing of Israel. And the problem with that is the American Service-Members' Protection Act passed in 2002 which defends US officials and military personnel from possible detention or prosecution by the ICC. Informally known as “the Hague Invasion Act”, the law also authorizes the president to use “all means necessary”, including an invasion of The Netherlands where the ICC is located, according to Democracy Now.
There's a side character in SNOWPIERCER, the movie, who is an artist. Living in the tail-end car, he does depictions of his fellow tailenders and what they go through. I couldn't help but picture a scenario where that same character's art was instead wholly different. Either:
a) Completely abstract line-work, things first-class passengers could precure and display in their car without it looking the slightest bit out of place.
b) Escapist stuff; him and his comrades rescued by mythical space heroes, or perhaps a family of tailenders fighting off all the other tailenders in the car who had for some reason been turned to zombies.
If we, as an audience, were to see that that's the kind of art this character was making, we would most certainly scream: What the fuck are you doing, man?
And that tells you everything you need to know about the state of [most] art today.
“When I taught creative writing, I would have my students do an exercise where they had to pick one of their close friends and write about the first time they met them. What were the writer’s first impressions of the friend? What was their initial dynamic with the friend? Then I would have them write a couple of scenes set in subsequent years showing how their impressions changed as they got to know the person better. Were their initial impressions correct? What did they learn that deepened their understanding of their friend? Showing that kind of evolution in perception and in the dynamic between two people is one of my favorite things about characterization.”
That's Sarah Stewart Taylor on Crimereads where she and several other writers weigh in on “the writing life”.
