I’ve kinda been feeling lately…not so much like I’m in a rut, but that I should probably switch gears or something. My writing I mean, not my life. My life I should have switched gears on years ago and the transmission linkage is now rusted in place and no amount of feathering the clutch or struggling with the shifter is doing much. So I am talking about my writing of comic book stories. After 15 years of writing you sorta feel like you are just following your own tracks in the snow.
I determined that it may be an -input problem- I have watched DEADWOOD about 48 times. I mean the entire series. I have watched the entire three seasons, one episode after the other, until the end, about 48 times. That’s 36 hours, times 48. That’s 1728 hours of my life watching Deadwood. Aside from that I’ve watched all of Madmen about 12 times. ( I’m basing those CONSERVATIVE estimates on watching the entire runs once a month…but it may be slightly more than that) Then I listen to Coast to Coast…occasionally I have the local college radio station on….and THAT is the bulk of the input going into my brain. So, not much mystery as to why my writing feels stagnate to me. It is a bit of a mystery as to why I have, in 15 years ,written exactly ONE page about the old west, and ONE page about advertising…and neither of them were that great.
Anyhow, I don’t have cable so I turned to youtube for something new to have on in the background. Youtube is supposed to have all the videos on the internet, but for some reason I just keep using it as a poor mans history channel. You watch one video on WWII and all the suggestions on the side bar are WWII stuff. I understand you can just type some other subject in but, you see something semi- interesting looking related to what you just watched, so you click it and watch…then it gives you more related stuff that looks semi interesting and it becomes a downward spiral, sort of like surfing for porn ( I’ve heard). I have seen so many different ww2 documentaries I half expect to see Winston Churchill hiding under my desk waiting for the U.S. Airborne to come and save us. “England’s finest hour” Ha! What a laugh, their finest hour was their leader hiding under an oak desk waiting for an explosion…in the U.S. that’s where interns hide…also waiting for an explosion…in her mouth… from the President’s penis. That’s OUR counties finest hour, so suck on that Churchill! Advantage ‘Merica!
So you start just watching the normal WWII documentaries , then you get bored with that and get into weirder stuff (also like surfing for porn…I’ve heard). “secret Nazi weapons” “nazi and alien connection” stuff like that. Which is never as interesting as it seems. You start with the question “did Hitler have contact with space aliens?” and after about a half an hour you get the obvious answer…no, but they did try to make some weird saucer shaped airplane. Which means nothing, here is what I have determined about Hitler, if you were not a German he was just an evil crackpot, if you were a German, he was an evil crackpot who would give you buttloads of cash for any hair brained project that might kill a non-german. Sound weapons, flying saucers, death rays…go back to 1943 and find something in a comic book, have a draftsman make an official looking blue print and collect your check.
So real life WWII started getting tedious and I found a hollywood version of it called “Band of Brothers” and watched that a few times in a row. At first all this can make you feel pretty insignificant. I didn’t fight Nazi oppression. These guys charged into rifle fire in foreign country to stop the greatest threat to freedom mankind has ever known. I think about that and feel pretty worthless…then I watch the old guys a bit closer…damned if a couple of them don’t look like the old guy at the grocery store who can’t figure out how to use the f*cking touchpad pad on the self checkout, or holds up the whole line at the Post Office because they can’t believe it’s 9.00 to mail a shoe box full of old photos. Unless you work on a deadline you have no idea what a BLIGHT on humanity these people are. I have found myself watching Band of Brothers and rooting for the Germans. And for the record, the guy in front of me in line didn’t fight any Nazi’s, that was a 18 year old who enlisted after getting drunk. The guy in front of me in line has been living off of that kids “heroics” for 60 YEARS. Since when do you get to pick and choose what acts you committed when you were 18 define your life? How about when he beat the crap out of his kids or hated black people? I want them to get interviewed about that. “so, after you got back from France you were married for about 4 years, got divorced and your wife took the kids and never spoke to you again…what was that all about?’. How about all the clap he spread after he got back?! How about your generation raising a generation of complete narcissistic a-holes? How about letting Nixon take us off the gold standard? How about Kennedy getting shot and none of you jack-asses getting to the bottom of it? You shot a bunch of nazi’s …that’s great, we all appreciate it, now how about going into the regular check out lane if you don’t know what a “pin number” is? Although, I find it hard to believe the octogenarian in front of me in line shoot any Nazi’s, I imagine him fussing with his bandoleer while everyone else in his platoon gets mowed down by German machine guns waiting for him to move his ass off the landing craft.
So the youtube starts recommending other historical documentaries. Good, great, give me something about fighting with a bronze sword so I can thumb my nose at the guy who went to war with actual boots and a medic who didn’t have a pot full of leaches. Greatest generation? Excuse me?! Have you heard of Valley Forge? Anyway, I clicked on one about Vlad the Impaler. He’s the guy that Dracula was loosely based off of and I had a small amount of knowledge on the guy, enough to be interested. If you ever have a small amount of knowledge about some historical figure…leave it that way. The more you learn, the less interesting they are. OR…this may be an example of writing horror/comedy for 15 years desensitizing me. Vlad would put people on wooden spikes and watch them die…seems like there should be more to that. Putting people on spikes in 1460 wasn’t a ground breaking idea. Greeks did it, Romans did it Persians did it, Sumerians…and it wasn’t exactly a time in human history where murdering your own citizens in horrible public displays was out of the ordinary. If he lived in Oklahoma in 1972 and put a bunch of people on spikes, then you’d have a good story. And by the way, let’s break this down…HE…didn’t put ANYBODY on a spike. He told his solders to do it. If he personally put 20,o00 Turks on wooden spikes THAT would be impressive. I want to know about the solders who followed those orders. Was there a specific platoon of guys who did this? How many people did they have to spike before they figured out how to do it without them going sideways. How many people did they spike and have the spike just fall over and the guy hit the ground face first, before the figured out how deep to plant the spike in the ground? Where did they get all those spikes? How soon in advance do you have to put an order in for 20,000 spikes? Was there some spike maker keeping his ear to the ground about how the war was going so he’d have inventory ready if Vlad won again? That’s a pretty niche market you’re dealing with when you make spikes for sticking prisoners on. What happened to that guy after Vlad lost power? I’m also curious about whoever painted that image of him (see above), he’s pretty silly looking, even by 15th century standards. I don’t just mean the mustache, which I assume was the style at the time. He’s got big bugs eyes and a pointy nose, how many artists did he murder after seeing his portrait before finally coming to grips with “well, I guess this is what I look like” and keeping this painting of himself for prosperity. The strangest thing about the Vlad story is when the Leader of the Turks was invading and saw all the bodies on spikes and got freaked out. Again, if you are a greeter at Wal Mart and you see a bunch of bodies on spikes it stands to reason you would turn around and go home. But when you are the Leader of the Turks in 1460 this shouldn’t rattle you. Especially since, according to history, Vlad learned this from YOU! The Turks were no f’n good either and did plenty of horrible crap. Did he ride up and go ” woah…beheading villagers or burning people to death or skinning them alive is one thing, but putting them on spikes…this guy might be troubled.”
It’s the numbers though, that take the romance out of it all. Vlad spiked 20,000 people. On it’s own that seems excessive, but after you just watched a bunch of other documentaries about evil bastards from the past slaughtering 1oo,ooo in some place or another, or 50,000 getting set on fire at some other place, or the Persians destroying some city of 90,000…it all just loses it’s perspective. Vlad spiked 20,000…bfd, they would have died even slower from the black plague, he did them all a favor. Hell, just before watching that I saw some documentary on Pizzaro. He was some Spanish invader who wiped out the Incas…mostly with germs he and his men where carrying. From the tone of the documentary I’m supposed to think he’s a real asshole and feel sorry for the Incas…well excuse me if I don’t see much difference between the Spanish asshole and the Incan assholes who were having big ceremonies in which they took all the people that THEY conquered pulled their hearts out and chopped their heads off. At Least Pizzaro was doing it for an actual person. He conquered, slaughtered and then got a few bucks from the Queen of Spain. these Incas cut out prisoners hearts, prayed to the sun and sat there content that the sun would not explode this week.
The point is, that human history is one despicable asshole after the next, after the next, and I’m supposed to show patience to some old crumogoen who can’t figure out how to use the copy machine and Kinkos? why exactly? Because he saved the world? I bet the guys who finally chopped of Vlad the Impaler’s head really thought they did something too. If they hadn’t stopped Hitler, it’s a safe bet he would have bankrupted himself trying to make flying saucers, or got murdered by his own men. I saw a documentary about all the times people tried to assassinate him. Bombs where the fuse didn’t go off, bombs that got blocked by a big wooden table, bombs that turned out to be duds…all of the would be assassins by the way were ALL close enough to just shoot the f*cker. Romell spent months plotting and ended up dead because Hitler found out….in those months he had about 48 opportunities to just pull out a Luger and plug him. he ended up dead anyway, what’s the difference if you get executed or shot by Hitlers guard after you shoot him in the back? Hitler would have been dead, that’s the difference. If Romell had lived he’d be the old guy holding up the line trying to get an extra .25 off a can of tuna on double coupon day. Just give the coupon to the clerk asshole! The rest of us don’t have time for you to try to read the fine print.
The hell with it, I’m just going to watch Paddington again, it’s cathartic. I remember watching it as a kid…although it always annoyed me that they would scold Paddington. Sure , he used too much detergent and flooded the room with soap suds…HE’S A F*CKING BEAR WHO FIGURED OUT HOW TO USE A LAUNDRY MACHINE! Isn’t that worth something?! Until he’s in the 12 items or less express lane with 48 cans of ensure, I don’t want to hear any complaints.
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