Oh yeah, this thing.

We have school off today. Joy.

I've spent an appallingly small amount of time on the computer today. Mostly because I had to shovel the back porch, which was not fun. Though it wasn't that cold out.

In other news, my school's winter dance, which I was planning to ask this girl to go with me to, was cancelled. So, depression, woe, et cetera. I'll compensate by writing more - I've started a new novel series about some teenagers with superpowers. Yeah, original, I know. Based vaguely on Maximum Ride, but with a few big differences. Namely, no wings, and they got their powers relatively recently. If you're interested, the company in question is called Sabertech, after their name for their upgraded people ("Sabers"). I have a plan for a few books that will fill up the group with four or five in total, complete with tangled hormonal romances and mind control.

No longer thinking as much about publishing my NaNo novel, though I may come back to that over break.

Using google chrome and pandora (www.pandora.com) now. Google chrome is nice, and its nice to be able to have 8+ tabs open at a time. Pandora is also fun. Lots of hard rock/metal for me, but I've also got an Aerosmith station.

Honorary NaNoWriMo update

I've won!!!
That's right, mah all-nighter has led to my winning NaNoWriMo early. 50007 words in under a month. It didn't seem possible.
I'm still writing, though - I've got my epilogue to tie up, with some tediously heartwarming (I have been using that phrase a lot) romantic scene. And then, of course, there's the printing out, the red pen editing, the retyping, the reprinting, the re-red-pen-editing, the reretyping, and the tedious business of getting CreateSpace to do what I want it to. But, for now, I'm treating myself to some good music, and probably TV in a bit. And waaaay too much bragging.

Late NaNoWriMo update III

Right in the middle of writing a bluffing scene. Why is Tobias bluffing this guy? He could deal with Ukobach. There's no reason to bluff.
I'm having less and less control over what happens in my story. Legion is in the middle of a really epic battle with the Devylwurm, who I may or may not have mentioned earlier.
Tobias made a false alliance with the Antichrist and now has a killer death body. With his normal head. It made sense at the time. And now they're all together and journeying off to kill the Antichrist. Meanwhile I've set the stage for Jake and Ashley (Tobias's best friend and his best friend's girlfriend) to become major characters, which probably won't happen until the sequel, which is now definite. I can't wait.

NaNoWriMo update 2

I've more than doubled my wordcount from the last update. In the time since I updated last, I added a new character and killed him off. Tobias and company (main characters) are marooned in Hell, and have finished a journey to the legendary City of Dis. And they've stopped in a tavern. A tavern for demons, who, apparently, eat. There's also an obscure reference to Roma mythology - see if you can spot it once the novel's published. 'Tis in Chapter Four. My chapers are effing long.

NaNo update

Awesome.
I've got almost 9.5k already, which amounts to over 5 days worth of writing. By the time I'm done today, I'll probably have done six. At this rate I'll be done halfway through November.
And not only is it flowing greatly, the plot is awesome. I may have brought in the action a bit early, but I'm satisfied nonetheless. My characters are developing in ways I never would have expected, and events are unfolding that I honestly never planned in any way. It's almost like watching a movie.

7 Minutes

Till the start of NaNoWriMo. Frenzies of last minute research into obscure Christian mythology and lots of nervous energy...

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month. http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Starts November 1st the second after midnight, ends November 30th the second before midnight. You have to write a novel in that amount of time. That's 50,000 words in 4 weeks. Sounds like a daunting task, but I think I'll give it a go. I figure that, if nothing else, it'll give me a motivation to write. I've got some vague ideas of a science fiction story that I might use, or I may wing it.

Nature

I was reading a debate recently on vegetarianism and veganism, and the pros and cons of each. As such debates always do, it evolved into one centered around cruelty to animals in farms. The debaters began talking about the intelligence of the animals and what they’re really missing out on, and (here’s what I really wanted to get to) whether farming was natural. One debater kept persistantly making the arguement that farming should be abilished because it is “unnatural”, and he was repeatedly shot down for this. I’m going to shoot him down a bit more (though I find it highly unlikely he’ll ever read this…).

There really can’t be any arguement made for the “unnaturalness” of farming. All animals have one purpose: to survive and make more of themselves; before we came along and got really insanely good at using tools, the competing animals were pretty much balanced enough to prevent anything like large-scale society or farming. But then humans appeared, and started making the ant-harvesting sticks fancier; next thing you know, we’re domesticating animals for pets and food and sprawling across the Earth’s surface. All of this stems, ultimately, from a desire to survive. We evolved intelligence to help us in this regard, and though it has been used for many and varied other pursuits, it’s ultimate purpose has mostly been to aid us in not being killed. And, as such, we’ve begun using our intelligence and skill with tool-making to breed lesser creatures to insure a food supply. Which would have occured had any other creature gained our level of sentience, intellect, and ant-harvesting-stick-making skill with said hypothetical animal’s food source.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone cruelty to animals; farming should be humane. It just shouldn’t be abolished because of some distorted and Disney-warped definition of nature. Urban sprawl may be screwing with the environment, but it’s still a product of the natural human desire to survive and dominate. All animals want to survive, and all sentient species would most likely come to dominate as we have because of that primal urge to survive. Thus, our unique dominance of planet Earth is not unnatural in any way; it’s about as natural as you can get.

OMGBLOG has moved

I heard about blogspot and moved OMGblog there. It seems to have a much friendlier interface.