M.E. Purfield's Blog, page 6

Like They Faked The Landing On The Moon

More work on Cities that Eat Islands. More revising than usual. More action going on and more psychic play with Carmella in the climax so it was required. Much happier with it. See how it reads on Thursday.

D is sick again. Strep. Swear the schools are petri dishes of diseases. Home schooling is so appetizing. And with school shootings all the rage, why not?

Figured out that there were only 19 school shooting during my high school years (88-92). 29 when I went to college(92-96). Not bad.

Watched John Water’s Hairspray co-staring the great Divine. Forgot that he played two roles in the film and John Waters played the doctor that tries to cure the girl of her love for Negros. All the cast is amazing. Even Ric Ocasek from The Cars.

Yeah, now that America is cured of racism I wanted to remind myself of how it used to be. As PG as it is, the film is really offensive to the white middle class. So fucking funny.

I haven’t seen the remake or the stage production. Nor do I plan to. John fucking Travolta who killed his own son based on his religion? No thanks.

Still thinking about yesterdays post about media. I had a humorous thought which relates to racism. How they, some people, don’t want you to believe those videos on the news of cops executing black people.

Yeah, they’re all fake. Like they faked the landing on the moon.

Or maybe the people in them are crisis actors?

Fucking morons.

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Not Believe In The Media

Started this weeks new batch of pages for Cities That Eat Islands. Down to the last part and all that leads to the climax. Ka-ching. I imagine there will be a lot of tweaking.

Started Mark Miller’s Hellraiser: The Toll. A novella that’s placed between Barker’s novella and his novel the Scarlet Gospels. So far so good.

Still amazes me how there are many people out there obsessed with media and how the same people are telling others not to believe in the media. Not to let it control you.

“Media controlled person who then tells other person not to let media control you.”

I may have born with a brain unlike neuro-typicals but this just does not make sense to me. If you can explain it then please leave one in the comments.

Media, the news, is important to me besides in a professional position. It informs me of the world. The past and the present so I can better move into the future. I use it to filter through the many sides of reality to come to my own conclusion of the truth.

Truth = What we read + What people experience +  What we experience.

True, media is about click bait and gaining readers. They want to grab you with the headline. I do the same thing. It’s a business. We need to make money. By the way, did you buy my book yet?

But aren’t most adults with an average education able to decipher a piece of journalism between opinion and reporting? Able to tell when someone is trying to lead a reader along to one side or just giving the who, what, when, where, why and how?

The most tragic part is when I see twenty somethings tell teens not to trust the media.

What kind of future will there be?

But then I see said teens blow those twenty somethings away with their convictions, with their truths based on the equation above.

Maybe all will be all right in the world.

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Shit Like That Doesn’t Happen Anymore

Friday Night

Watched Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground. Was impressed how gritty it was. Even when it moved to the rural upstate New York setting.

Robert Ryan was great as the violent cop who faced his literal demons. Through out the picture I was wondering where I had seen him before and remembered him in Act of Violence where he played the soldier who came home to torment the other into confessing his crime. Ida Lupino was again brilliant but didn’t show up until  halfway even though she got top billing. I think Ed Begley was the killer. If he was, he was great too.

Saturday

Finished editing goal for Cities That Eat Islands. All goes well, only one and half week left.

Read Robert McCammon’s Tales from Greystone Bay. Out of the three collected it has one I hadn’t read before. Perfect for my McCammon collection. The master.

Neen and I saw Back To the Future at the Loew’s Jersey last night. 50 foot screen and the original print. Nice warm colors with sprocket skipping. The way film is intended. Can’t find that in digital. Havent seen the film like that since I was 11. When that movie came out it played in theatres for a whole year. Shit like that doesn’t happen anymore. Movies are pulled out no more than a month and dropped in digital markets ASAP.

Anyway. It’s still funny and worthy of the model for pop screenwriting. The audience cheered when dad punched Biff and Marty hit 88 on the way home. It was the last film of the season until September.

Sunday

Spent the day recovering from a horrible night. Restless leg syndrome kept me up. Couldn’t close my eyes no matter how tired I felt. And when I finally did go to sleep, M woke up at 4 and wanted to party. She does this once an a while. For an autistic child she sleeps well. All of us are truly fortunate. My own sleep patterns are not so great.

Did tech work as you can see on the site. Less clutter, simpler. Maybe.

I will leave you with a strange quote I ran into over the week end about a baseball field in my town:

“it is equality because those fields aren’t open to anyone. They’re only open when there are baseball games.”

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Stereotype and Expectation

M was home with me today and I was not able to do anything except sneak in an Instagram and Facebook ad. I’ll have to catch up tomorrow.

Another school shooting in Texas. Big gun state. No one shot him down though. Ten dead, I think. So far the killer goes against stereotype and expectation. Everyone will have a solution.

Again, then country will get everything wrong.

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Still Interesting and Still Inconclusive

More editing on Cities That Eat Islands.

Rearanged our DVDS. Finally made the whole bay in auteur and the second bay will be broken down into genre. saw a lot of titles I don’t think we’ll want anymore. I’ll have to double check with Neen. Should have a good handful to Swap out in the future. Be nice to have things broken down into Slasher, Ghost, and Sci-Fi for when I’m in the mood for certain things.

Origin of Species isn’t going so well. Darwin is not a very good writer. I’ver read MUCH better science writing than this. He states too much and doesn’t engage the reader. Doesn’t take you through the learning process. I’m going to try to at least get a quarter done. If he doesn’t convince me then I’m going to put it to the side.

M got sick in school today so I had to pick her up this afternoon. Explosive diarrhea. Ruined two sets of clothes. Should have a fun time washing those this week end. If they’re salvageable. She’s just fine. Must have caught a germ on her class trip the other day. We’ll keep her home tomorrow just in case.

Watched Suddenly today. Still a great noir. As menacing and subtly sympathetic Sinatra. I still don’t buy him over powering the great Sterling Hayden. Visually, I mean. Yeah, he had to shoot him in the arm to keep him down in the movie. It reminds me of Michael Pare against Willem Defoe in Streets of Fire. Your opponents should be equal in size or at least have your bad guy larger. Unless you’re doing a cartoon like film. Like Batman or something. Hayden was such a bad ass in everything he did.

The argument for guns is still interesting and still inconclusive. Something they don’t do anymore today. I like that in my art. Another reason most current cinema doesn’t interest me.

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Returning To Form

More editing on Cities that Eat Islands. More light stuff.

Ordered proof for Surly Girly.

Updated my To Do list. Want to simplify this site more. Work on my store. What store? Yeah. I have a store for my ebooks. I need to work on it and make it more prominent. Hopefully get some use out of it for those out of the USA.

Watched Toxic Avenger 3. Again, good. Not brilliant. I laughed. Still better storytelling than mainstream films. I don’t think I’ll move on to part 4 tomorrow since I watched it in the last 2 years. I recall part 4 returning to form of part 1.

Started reading Darwin’s Origin of Species. Feels like I walked in on the middle of a conversation but I’ve started books like that before.

Found out my daughter was invited to a second graduation this year in her school. Not only will she be graduating pre-k but integrated pre-k if we want her to be part of the ceremony. We decided against it since my wife might have to take a second day off of work too and it might be too much for M.

Aggressors (bullies) can be neutralized.

Victims are under-estimated.

Victims are believed.

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the Joy and the Movement and the Dead

Due to my wife’s birthday today, my work sched was rearranged. I did no editing on Cities That Eat Islands. After taking her out for breakfast and to the mall and other refinements, I managed to finish the Miki files. All 11 novels are snazzy with nifty fonts and a design at the chapter head for those into that. Also the chapter breaks are more defined. I don’t think they will get more professional than this. All sales channels should be updated in a few days (kindle, nook, apple, kobo, etc,)

I plan to do the same for the older books but since you people only read my Miki books I’m not rushing. Definitely this year though. Sooner than later.

I’ll get back to editing tomorrow.

Bought my wife the blu Arrow edition of George Romero’s Season of the Witch aka Hungry Wives. This movie hasn’t been rereleased in maybe fifteen years or so and on DVD by Anchor Bay(?) Looks like it has a longer version of the film as well.

Also got her Insidious 4 which we saw in the theater.

She was excited to say the least.

Next up, the anniversary in less than two weeks.

Finished reading The Godfather today. Besides the poppiness of it and how ripe it was to be filmed, I noticed the structure and wondered if Quentin Tarantino was influenced a bit by the book. He has stated how his movies are literary and his structure certainly seems influenced by Puzo’s plot structure for this book.

Two striking deaths yesterday.

Glenn Branca: guitarist and composer dies at age 69

For lack of a better word, Branca was a genius and an inspiration. His contribution to punk, art, and life was immense. I have many of his movements performed by his guitar orchestras and his work with Theoretical Girls on my shelves.  His work has brought such joy and spiritual movement. He has also influence many of the greatest musicians of our time and will probably continue to do so.

Margot Kidder, star of Superman films, dies at 69

Of course every one knows her for being Lois Lane in the only Superman movie that matters. But for the freaks, she was that insane, drunken college girl with the best lines that you couldn’t help but feel a little sad for in Bob Clark’s Black Christmas and the other disturbed twin in DePalma’s Sisters. She had other memorable roles, but those two I hold close to my heart, that move me the most.

 

 

A Bitch and A Blessing

Started next forty pages of editing for Cities That Eat Islands. Still a solid first draft. Mostly cutting useless words, rephrasing grammar, and moving word order. The benefit of editing as you go when writing the first draft. Still proud of what I wrote. Still the best I wrote so far.

Paper back cover for Surly Girly came back. Looks great. Resubbed for technical revisions. Should get it by tomorrow and can have it ready for the proof.

People (kids) can only take so much from an aggressor (bully) before they strike back (shove). Sometimes there is a mediator (adult) on their side who wants peace for all. Aggressors (bullies) beware tomorrow.

Cognitive empathy can be a bitch and a blessing for me.

I don’t have it.

Blessing: In times of emergency like a car accident or when the kids or wife get hurt, I am cold and focused and take control of the situation to heal them. (Autistics make great EMTs)

A bitch: When the kids or wife or anyone whine to me how sick they are or how horrible a situation is, I can’t empathize for the moment.

I try and say, “That’s horrible” or “That must be terrible for you.”

Sometimes it works but to the more immature individual (children and emotionally stunted adults) it doesn’t. They can tell I’m sort of faking. They think I don’t care. They get mad.

No, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just I don’t have the brain parts to do it. I wasn’t born with it. I have the autistic brain.

The further bitch of it is that I want to empathize at that moment. And like someone who can’t communicate to people, I get frustrated or angry.

One of the biggest myths about people on the spectrum is that they don’t have empathy. We do. We empathize with the world a lot. With people. With their struggles, with their pain. So much that it’s a major part of our depression. We’re very sensitive people.

We just don’t have cognitive empathy.

See the difference?

 

To Wake During The Closing Credits

Friday Night

Watched Fred Olen Ray’s Deep Space. Kind of like the remake if The Blob. The dates of the two are close. Note sure who ripped off who. A man made government creation comes down from space and starts killing people in LA. The creature FX were pretty good for the budget. The cops were over the top but so is the nature of genre. I fell asleep the last ten minutes. Woke up right as the credits were rolling. Damn. I’ll have to go back and watch it again.

Saturday

Sneaked in the last of the offline revising of the Miki files before I had to go out to my parent’s house for mother’s day/father’s birthday. All I left now is online work with distribution. Should definitely be done by end of the week mixed with other goals I have planned.

After driving home through the storm we watched Jeff Lieberman’s Just Before Dawn. Been wanting to see this for a long time. Didn’t disappoint. Great slasher with a nifty twist in the end. Again, I feel asleep at the last ten minutes and woke up at the credits.

Sucks when the body turns old.

Sunday

Took the mama of my children out to get drunk during lunch and got her the Arrow special edition of Argento’s Cat O’Nine Tails. Of course she didn’t know about it. If it looks as beautiful as the other Arrow revisions then she should be happy. Supposed to have lobby cards inside it two and a booklet.

We drank a bit. Funny about us is that we both don’t drink or do drugs. Not even weed. I guess you can call us straight edge. Our whole lives. Not for political or health reasons. Just never had reason to. Or maybe we saw too many negative effects from it.

But a few years after we got married we tried having a few drinks out. Like one or two. Now we do it occasionally. Once every two or three months.

Autistics make for happy drunks.

Well, buzzed anyway.

 

 

After 22 Years, The Party is Over

Continued revising and updating ebook files on Miki novels. Almost done. About half of them are on sale for download and look snazzy with updated back matter. If you have bought them before you should be able to redownload them with the new formatting and graphic. At least, I know you can do that on kindle. I should be done with the other half by the end of next week.

Finished Toxic Avenger part one and viewed all of part 2. Not as powerful as one. 2 has a longer length by twenty minutes which I think they could have cut. Although not the Klans man fight sequence in the beginning.

I’m not positive but I think 2 and 3 were shot back to back and were supposed to be one film but were for some reason broken into 2.

It was gorier than I remember. I think I previously watched the R or PG-13 versions? I don’t even remember it having a sex scene.

Learned a bit about locked baseball fields in public parks today. Very touchy subject for those on both sides.

Interesting article:

‘It’s just horrifying’: Seven killed in Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in 22 years

I guess this makes for a good argument for no gun control in this country now. People for it always use Australia as an example for how gun control works. The party is over. After 22 years seven people have died n a mass shooting.

Please.

Would the opposition go to such extremes? Probably. We live in such an extreme society. Some want an all Republican country. Some want an all Democrat country.

All Conservative.

All Liberal.

All.

All.

All!