Turn and Face the Strange
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 11th of Colddark, 716
You know how many David Bowie albums I own? Nothing but the soundtrack to “Labyrinth”, which I’m sure doesn’t count. MP3 files? Just “Space Oddity”. Yet… damn, the man was a part of my life anyway. I never changed the station when he appeared on the radio. I can’t think of a track of his that I don’t like. And like so many people I know on social media, it’s hard to believe that he’s gone. He should just still be… here.
The first time I saw Bowie on TV, he was on Saturday Night Live in one of Klaus Nomi’s outlandish plastic outfits and his trademark genderqueer makeup. I remember being disturbed and unsettled, but I was 10… clearly, a spark was kindled somewhere in my head, and fanned into flames by the original MTV when it was wild and weird. Because after all: look at me now! Thank you, gentlebeing, for being one of my first teachers of the truth that weird could be cool.
But also today, in one of those life contrasts which reminds one that the universe doesn’t single-task, I got a lovely present: a gentleman who attended our live podcast recording at Intervention produced a kinetic typography short using our 45-second audio ad for the show. It’s amazing! And I feel like this is my first ever piece of “fan art” for a project of mine. I’m beyond tickled.
So, huge emotional contrasts today. Plus, I slept like crap last night and worked my butt off again today at my job, so I haven’t had much energy tonight. That’s okay. For both David and Glenn’s sake, I’ve going to keep creating as hard as I can.
Inside Out
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 10th of Colddark, 716
I had a roller-coaster ride of a weekend. My medication is a tranquilizer, but it does nothing for depression; and through most of Saturday I was eyeballs-deep in a pit of apathy and blackness. Needless to say, there’s not much to talk about on Saturday until suddenly in the late afternoon when it magically cleared. Seriously, one moment I could barely be bothered to speak, and the next I was fine. This has happened to me before, and I have no explanation for it.
Anyway, thanks to being fine, I got the first draft of Managlitch Episode Eighteen finished. With luck I’ll be able to get it recorded soon; the date for the season finale is approaching quickly. I didn’t sleep super well last night, but today included some exercise with Maya, grocery shopping, an errand at her Mom’s, a conference call about the con I’m working this spring, and a viewing of “The Martian” (good, but the book was better).
Now if these stomach issues would clear up… I’ve been in mild pain all evening, which has been temporarily relieved by gas release but keeps coming back. Ive taken some antacids in the hope that will help somehow. Can’t be kept up tonight: I’ve got work in the morning.
I May or May Not Have the Power!
All sorts of fun today! At work, the phones went out in the morning and didn’t come back until the afternoon. (Not our fault, there was a problem with a circuit affecting several businesses.) Then at 11:30, the power went out in our building and buildings nearby; Duke Energy was having a rough day. That got fixed by 1pm. Was kinda hoping for the afternoon off.
Despite all those shenanigans, we cleared a lot of tickets because the three of us here in Tier 2.5 know what we are up to and work well as a team. Both the team lead and the IT head dropped by to express appreciation of our work; I eat that up. Tell me on a regular basis you’re really happy with the job I’m doing, and you’ll get even harder work from me.
When I got home, Roxy had to leave immediately to cover some errands with our friend Vikorgi, and I had an hour to shoot stuff on-screen, which I enjoyed immensely. Cleared some old quests, and tried to grind another level for a difficult task, but the XP in that zone wasn’t enough to really help. No matter, I love watching under-leveled bad guys drop like flies. Then The two of them returned and Roxy put together an amazing peanut chicken dinner. I practically gobbled it down.
Vikorgi wanted to watch “Minions”, and I have to say I don’t think it held up against the Despicable Me movies that preceded it, but whatever. I headed back to the bedroom for some writing, and out of nowhere my jerkbrain started screaming at me about everything in the world I felt at all insecure about, which flattened me. I forced myself to brain-medicate, which helped, but that’s a tranquilizer. After a long, busy day, the meds knocked me right out.
Here’s hoping the weekend is more productive on my personal projects.
Gyro Hit
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 6th of Colddark, 716
I’m barely keeping my eyes open before bed tonight. Another long hard-working day at the bit mines has caught up with me. Roxy and I also headed out after work to meet a friend for some (delicious) Greek dinner and an exchange of items that had to go to various cons. The food and the company were both top-notch; nothing to complain about there except maybe the hour’s drive to meet them halfway.
Emotionally, all over the place tonight. One moment I’m feeling empowered by my personal projects, the next fatalistic. I’ve been feeling a lot that for every moment of fun I get to have lately, I’ve been spending hours of responsibility and anxiety; and the imbalance is affecting my outlook a bit. Roxy agrees that we need to make some changes; of course, as I mentioned, I’ll be talking to a doctor about my chemical balance ASAP.
But Roxy thinks we could also use a vacation, a real one where we don’t even watch the budget carefully. I’m all in favor of course, but it will be quite some time before we can afford anything like that, so it’s being filed under “pipe dream” for the time being.
Hope the morning’s warmer tomorrow. Nearly froze my face off in 22-degree weather this morning, and managed to lose my gloves today to boot. I honestly miss the 75-degree weather we were having around Christmas.
Corduroy Trout
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 5th of Colddark, 716
Void, it’s cold outside. All that joking I did about those 75-degree temperatures around Christmas? It was with love! You can come back! Please?
Worked myself crazy today, and I wasn’t the only one. It was an all-day battle to keep the ticket queue acceptable, forget good: and the day finished off nicely with an on-site visit that turned out to be simply a loose cable. Yeah, I asked them to check it over the phone beforehand. Couldn’t have just come loose, either. People are playing with stuff.
Made really good mashed potatoes tonight to go with the slow-cooker turkey Roxy made. Dinner was tasty and filling, at least for a moment. I’ve been eating like a starving man all day; I can only assume my body needs it. Maybe that’s why I felt weak all weekend… but I haven’t exactly been fasting. Still don’t know what’s going on.
Watched some Akibaranger with a friend – I never get tired of that show – and last night’s Steven Universe (we’re getting them on one- or two-night delay because of the way they’re posted to iTunes). Steven Universe continues to be beautiful; the story of Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship made Roxy and me both squee. Homeworld Gems are like Time Lords. They sound really cool at first; but the more you learn about them, the more you realize you really wouldn’t want to spend much time with most of them.
Realized what was holding me back on Episode Eighteen: I know some things I want to say but I really hadn’t decided what it’s going to be about. Gave that some thought today, maybe more in the shower tomorrow. I won’t have writing time tomorrow, but there’s always Thursday. Dang, I’m behind and unhappy about it. I did learn from my head that a popular game fish seen on the tables of Managlitch is called “corduroy trout”. I can only assume that’s descriptive, not literal – without glitching, anyway.
Dinner tomorrow with Roxy and a friend. Looking forward to it; I hope work doesn’t hit too hard.
Blood Sugar Betrayal
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 4th of Colddark, 716 —–
Today started reasonably well, other than me mistaking which side of the windshield was frozen over. I had to stop a bit down the street to scrape off what I thought had collected on the inside.
First day of work for the New Year. I worked hard, but I wasn’t drained by it; in many ways those are my favorite weekdays. I have quite a work ethic considering how lazy I am. A lot of the work is learning how to work with our new Help Desk; these people are so skilled even for Tier One that we’ll be able to off-load a lot of our tickets to them and become Ticket Managers and Expert Troubleshooters. I am completely in favor of this.
Plans changed abruptly for the evening, and that may be just as well. I had an earlier dinner than I expected and crashed bad at 6:30. Didn’t recover until after 7:30, which would have interfered with with the social activities I was expecting. Roxy very much wants me to talk to my doctor about how tired I’ve been lately. She’s worried it’s thyroid.
Before I go to bed tonight, at least a few hundred words on Episode Eighteen. I’m frustrated by how slow the words have been coming lately, and my evening of relaxation last night to refresh the well didn’t go as planned. But: never give up, never surrender.
The Space of Hyper
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 3rd of Colddark, 716
Once again, I woke up a bundle of nerves. When Roxy suggested, “Time to get out of bed?” my knee-jerk response was “What’s in it for me?”
Some lunch helped a bit of course, as it always does, and a couple hours of the afternoon wasted away before we realized it was time to run errands. I have to fill my gas tank far less often now thanks to my five-minute commute, but it eventually gets low, and Costco had a great price today. A small grocery stop later, and it was time for dinner. McCormick sloppy joes, which weren’t bad.
But today was going to be an afternoon of relaxing, so I loaded up a alpha test video game I’d been invited into… and they were shut down for the holidays. Okay, fine, I loaded up my second favorite tension-killer game… only to discover I’d found a sudden ramp-up in the campaign difficulty, dying again and again. I finally said to hell with it. Never mind tension relief.
I’m a bundle of nerves these days. If it weren’t for my brain meds, I’d be non-functional; as it is, I’m slowly losing joy in many of the things that made life happier. Usually it’s because they all require massive outlay of resources on my part that I just don’t have at the moment. I don’t have a solution right now, though clearly I’ll have to find one. One trip to a mental hospital was more than enough for me, thanks.
Work tomorrow. I’m almost thankful.
Costumes and Music Past
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 2st of Colddark, 716
Today I spent half the day in bed feeling cold and drained. Once I finally got moving, I then spent too much of the evening grocery shopping. It needed to be done, but I’m a “surgical-strike” kind of shopper while Roxy is more a methodical “go carefully through every aisle in case anything’s forgotten” type. There’s something to be said for both, but when I’m already on a short fuse, the second version can get on my nerves.
Before the shopping, we had a very decent meal at Applebees thanks to a Christmas gift card from our friends Mako and Missy. I tipped well even though the service wasn’t great because it wasn’t utterly awful and wait staff are paid shit. I an not comfortable with someone having trouble meeting their bills this month just because they accidentally refilled me with Diet Pepsi the one time. (Blech.)
Starting to plan for MarsCon, where I’ll be performing with Luna-C. I hope we get a show script soon, because I’d like to practice a lot more ahead of time than I’ve done in the past. I’m also worried because of all the weight I’ve put on – so few of my costumes fit right now. (My old Next Gen Engineering tunic looked terrible when I tried it on New Year’s Eve – luckily my First Contact uniform looked a lot better.)
I really can’t wait to see Keith Brinegar again. His filk performance as White Plectrum was a huge part of my life for a while: lyric writing, soundboard, webmastering, graphic design – being White Plectrum’s “Spin Doctor” kept me busy and happy! It’s been years and years, and I can’t wait to introduce Roxy to him.
So much to do this month. I hope I can find the energy and motivation to kick jerkbrain’s ass and Get Stuff Done.
Sunbottom’s Day
Lord Bitweaver’s Journal, 1st of Colddark, 716
Today I spent time either gloriously wasted or well-spent on the foundations of a series bible for “Captain Shadow”. Maybe it will prove to be too much distraction from the chronicling of Managlitch City, but the urge to write space opera again has been growing in me. I want to do audio dramas, or even (dare I dream) video productions for the web. Space opera is my first love, and while as always it will be tons of work, it could be tons of fun.
I know why the Captain suffers from their morphic events, I know what the Voidknife exterior looks like, and I have a semisolid idea who is chasing zem. I haven’t yet decided on hir pronouns, though Roxy Ozone thinks I should shift them all the time to reflect the confusion surrounding the Captain and the crap that transpeople have to deal in real life.
I do need to get back to Episode Eighteen as soon as possible, but I’m not about to turn down creative ideas for anything when I get them.
The Macross Delta preview was great – new shiny Valkyries PLUS magical girls (though it’s all tech in this story) but it looks like we’re getting the two-dimensional bastards as bad guys we’ve been seeing in Macross for a while. The Victorian Christmas Special for Sherlock was the best thing I’ve seen from that show since Season Two at least, so total yay. The meta-text was wonderful, the repeated point that Watson is far more intelligent than often portrayed was appreciated, and I did not expect a reference to a Holmes novel by Nicholas Meyer. Nicely done.
My Starfleet past has been popping into my life a lot recently. I wore one of my uniforms for the first time in years to a New Year’s costume party, and got compliments from people who were expecting me in a dress. I just edited a new e-book version of the Multiverse Cycle, and I’m wanting to build the replacement Pathfinder model kit again. It’s nice to be getting some enjoyment again from that part of my history.
Physically and emotionally, I’ve been feeling like CRAP for weeks. Roxy wants me to talk to my doctor about checking my thyroid or something. I’ll try anything to kick loose this cloud of bleh.
And that’s Colddark first.
From the Archives
There is a Star Trek fan club called Starfleet. Once upon a time, a chapter in Lynchburg, Virginia spawned multiple daughter chapters in nearby cities such as Roanoke, Blacksburg, Hampton, and Bluefield. We all enjoyed pretending to be futuristic starship crew, and that all our chapters were part of a squadron of ships assigned to the most unusual missions. It didn’t take long at all for us to start writing fiction about these ships, and even un-subtly working in many references to our other sci-fi and fantasy favorites.
Over the course of six or seven years, some of this fiction turned into 100,000 words of interlinked storytelling covering multiple chapters, dozens of characters, and many alternate science-fiction universes. We were pretty shameless. But you know, looking at it two decades later… it’s not bad! We’ve all grown as authors since then, but you can tell we were on our way. I’m pretty proud of our hard work, and I think Tom, Beth, and Jerry should be too.
By an odd coincidence, this month I decided I needed to learn how to make an e-book, for… no special reason. And what better place to practice than with this material that would need clean-up, formatting, and other new skills. And here’s there result: 1993’s “The Multiverse Cycle”, in its complete form for the first time in 22 years. And due to matters of copyright, free to anyone who’d like a look.
The Multiverse Cycle in EPUB format for iOS, Nook, and other readers
The Multiverse Cycle in MOBI format for Kindle and other readers
Check your documentation for details on adding these books to your e-reader library. And – enjoy!
