Panos Dionysopoulos's Blog, page 4

Smoked Awesomeness

So, there was this magical guitar and it was made of wood from the enchanted Woden tree. Whenever anyone played it, birds would sing along, rivers would surge harder, deer would stop to listen and horses would make sweet, violent love while Van Halen soloed along with the sweet enchanted music with killer runs and the sun head-banged.


Also, volcanoes would erupt but that’s a given with guitars of this magnitude.


Toward the end of spring, an elderly wizard who was slightly senile limped towards the local Woden tree to gather the enchanted fruit for his mother’s foot boils and saw the guitar leaning against the tree. ‘Muse!’ he yelled happily, drool dropping soaking into his bearded chin, and raced towards it. As the wizard approached, the guitar twitched. A creaking sound emanated from its strings. Its headstock separated from the side of the tree as if being pulled by an invisible roadie. A single note resonated and the wizard stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Buh?’ he said.


A deer a kilometre away stopped and cocked its head. Van Halen powered up his amp, a volcano burped and a horse two farms over got a semi. Everyone was expecting a show.
 The wizard took a step closer and the guitar whirled up into the air and hit the wizard on the head, knocking him unconscious, then fell to the ground.
 After a few seconds the guitar caught on fire.

It burned for four days and three nights. Vikings made passing pilgrimage to it. Feasts were roasted over it (‘It tastes like smoked awesomeness!’ people were known to exclaim after eating a haunch cooked above the flaming vigil). Once it stopped burning, the guitar burst into ash. And then, the wizard woke up.
 He stood and surveyed the pile of ash in the shape of a guitar then wailed, ‘I’ll never be rock star!’ and ran home, crying. The horse never managed more than a semi again.

Cracking the whip

I have been acutely aware of the time I’ve been spending when I’m home from work sitting around watching Anime and House of Cards; playing computer games; and catching up on sleep. I have therefore decided that I am going to force myself to write every single day. I do realise that this is what I am meant to have been doing anyway, but I’ve been getting over a couple of medical issues along with the death of an old school friend. That’s right: this blog is going to be just as funny and irreverent as the ones before it. Just to lighten the mood, here is a picture of my cat, Minkah, doing an impression of me preparing to write:

This is actually going to be relevant later on in this blog post.

I was going to set a goal of starting tomorrow but realised that this meant leaving myself open to putting it off till I find myself playing more of the South Park video game at 2 am and needing to go to bed so I thought it was better to at least blog about my decision to write. My main motivation – aside from the obvious goal of being taken seriously as a professional writer – is the fact that I have a novel to edit and re-draft. This is something that I have been planning to go back to for about three years now and even got a structural edit on about a year ago.

Upon further reflection I have realised I need to make a note of the basic sequence of events and then use that to write the book again from scratch, this time with three dimensional characters, excitement, premises that make sense and more humour. Also tragedy. I also need to do more research on cats, their different types, how they act and what differences they have country to country as my book is full of them. That’s right, I am writing a book about cats. Cats who fight evil. Specifically, my cat Minkah.

See, Minkah went missing for just over eight weeks a few years ago, by the end of which we were pretty sure we would never see him again; then we get a phone call from our local vet saying that someone brought him in, they scanned the microchip, and he was ready to be picked up. I wrote the book to try and explain what was going on for those two months because he seemed absolutely fine. The only obvious conclusion I could come to was that he was fighting evil with some sort of Feline Space Corps and could only come back once a significant mission had been completed. Just as obviously, he was fighting with psychic light weapons.

Going back to my opening, the death of my friend made me realise more than ever that this span of life we have is incredibly short and we need to make the absolute most of it. For me, that means getting all these crazy ideas I have out of my head and onto paper so I can experience the satisfaction of seeing my friends, peers, and total strangers become confused, bewildered, and hopefully entertained by them. I’m also writing a play based on the main character from I Think You Ate My Sandwich. After that I’ll probably write another draft of that novel to publish properly, in a form that actually tells a complete story without so many loose ends. That’s right: this time you get to find out the significance of the pocket watch.

I’m looking forward to having a few of you along for my journey as I chronicle the painful process of cutting and polishing these crazy diamonds in the rough over the next few months. I’ve also made a definite goal to have an agent representing my work by the end of this year. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me. Maybe I should volunteer at a cat shelter…

Pummelling the New Year

You’re meant to set a precedent for the new year, so here I am writing as the first thing I do. Due to the fact I genuinely am writing off the top of my head for the purpose of giving myself a ‘brand new year’ word-count, this is obviously going to be a bit messy.

So what is routine now for the new year? Has anything changed at all? I saw much fewer new year’s resolutions in my news feed this time around, have they gone out of fashion? I got the feeling  2013 was so all-round terrible for a lot of people that it was more productive to say goodbye to it and stubbornly cling to the idea that 2014 would be knocked about like dough, pummelled and twisted around, rolled out, punched through, and turned into delicious and auspicious cookies. I was one of those people for the most part, especially since I love cookies.

I called in the new year with my wife then finally watched “Dredd”. So basically I marked the first few hours of the new year with love and violence. Paradox has always been a love of mine, much as breathing has been. I don’t seem to be able to escape it and I don’t really mind that. My whole life has been making order from chaos and being confused that those around me aren’t able to just slip themselves into the hand of cards I’m shuffling and wait for me to inevitably deal them out to a perfect hand. Near perfect; I keep flipping over the Joker.

I still am waking up, so trying to think of a decent conclusion to this ramble is escaping me. I will, however, wish you all a happy new year, a shortened hangover if you’re suffering one and at least a couple of signs that maybe, just maybe, this year will be OK. Or a sign within yourself that you’ll have the strength to bend the year to your will, mix it with water and sugar, throw it in the fridge, and then eat it later with a spoon and some ice-cream like some sort of strawberry 2014 jelly. 

I think I need cookies, jelly and ice-cream.

Not till after my stint on the exercise bike though – have to set a precedent, you know.

To Do

“I’ve written a list of what I have to do today”

“That’s good.”

“Do you want to hear it?”

“I guess.”

“Number one; become more confident.”

“Oh it’s one of those lists.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of those self-affirmation lists.”

“I guess so.”

“Mmm.”

“Number two; say what I feel.”

“Yep.”

“Number three; ask Jane about the lawyer she used.”

“Oh she needed a lawyer?”

“Yeah she just had some papers drawn up.”

“Oh ok, is she alright?”

“Yeah she’s fine.”

“Good.”

“Number four; try to express my feelings.”

“Wasn’t that number two or something?”

“No, that was to say what I feel.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Four expands on it.”

“Why isn’t it number three then? You explain how you feel, then you talk to a lawyer. I don’t get it.”

“Maybe the lawyer helps me express my feelings?”

“Huh? Alright, whatever.”

“Five… hey, are you listening to me?”

“Of course I am, how could I not?”

“Well you’re just tapping away at your laptop there.”

“I’m still listening though, go on.”

“I want your full attention.”

“What? Alright, fine. Just let me save what I’m doing.”

“What ever. Alright, Five; work out what I need to pack right away and what I can get later.”

“Pack? What do you mean?”

“Six; call my sister and make sure she can pick me up.”

“Hang on, what?”

“Seven; tell George we’re breaking up.”

“Hey, breaking up? This isn’t fair, you’ve just sort of sprung this on me…”

“Eight, it’s not me it’s you.”

“Oh nice, that’s a good one.”

“Nine; this conversation is over.”

“No, I don’t think so, you can’t just drop all this on me and…”

“Don’t be here tonight. Go to Mike’s or something so I can pack.”

“Oh come on, this isn’t fair.”

“Ten; On second thought I’m catching a taxi to my sister’s. Good bye.”

“Well this is just… Hey, where are you going? Don’t you walk away! Don’t you open that door! Don’t you…slam it.”

“Eleven!”

“What, we’re yelling now?”

“I’m glad I finally got your attention”

(optional)

I’ve decided that I will start up a blog. This will mostly consist of my thoughts, though I cannot guarantee I won’t draw from the collective sub-conscious for my musings. For all I know, all my creativity comes from there anyway.

This blog is going to contain little bits of writing, occasional reviews of things I find interesting like headphones, guitars, pens maybe. You know, stuff. You might even get a bad poem or two. I’ll also be chronicling my journey trying to edit my work that’s been amassing for the past few years.

I might make you laugh (not in this one, my funny seems to be out for lunch), I might make you cry (not likely), I might make you think about the universe in a different way (how could the universe allow such as Panos to exist without all other reality collapsing in on itself?); over all I hope I make you want to keep reading what I’m writing. Maybe even pay for it further down the line. At that point I can call myself a ‘professional writer’ and buy a special hat with “Writer” embroidered on the brim and my mum can finally give me that gold star she’s been saving for when she’s really really proud of me (or when I finally stop crying when I leave her house – just kidding, I earned that one back in preschool. Mum still has the certificate the teacher made up for me).

I’ll try not to be too ego-centric too. Did you know I published a book already? I did!

I mean, I self-published it. You can purchase it on Kindle by clicking that giant picture of the cover above. Or if you’d like a proper paperback copy, grab it from here and save a little money on buying it from Amazon. I mean, I don’t get my $2 or stats that way but I don’t expect to ever make money from it till I’m famous and by then it’ll have been re-published and edited as a new book “from the archives of Panos” and selling full price regardless. I’ll also have a jet-pack and you’ll all be ants so my evolution will be far beyond things like ‘money’, ‘stats’ and ‘begging’.

I don’t really think I’ll ever consider anyone an ant, you’re all full size to me and special in your own way. My book has a robot in it!

I look forward to confusing you all in the future, and thank you for taking this journey with me.