Seeing things?

I worked in a plastic factory for many years. Sometimes I had to wear ear protection due to the specific job of the day being extra loud. I noticed something strange whenever I had to wear the ear protection...I would keep seeing movement behind me, as if there was a huge crowd moving behind me. It was really impossible for there to be anyone behind me, the machines went nearly all the way to the back wall and there were pipes, tubes and barrels filling in the tiny little space there was. Yet, I'd be working along with the "ear muffs" on and again I'd see movement out of the corner of my eye, a vast crowd milling about.

One night, I was working with them on and I happened to look up. For a split second, I saw what appeared to be a black man, lunging towards me. I jumped back in shock but as soon as I saw this apparition, it was gone.

I have no idea why I "saw" these things. Maybe by removing my sense of sound caused any psychic ability I might have to become stronger...or maybe not being able to hear causes the brain to get bored and make shit up. I really don't know.

History's Greatest Monster AKA Brian

This won't be a very long post.

For three years I loved and cared about someone and each day that person hated me more and more for the simple reason that I did love and care about them. Finally, this morning I decided to stop being nice and return some of the verbal abuse I've been receiving.

I have found myself in this situation several times over the years. As long as people view me as a sweet, selfless, simple person they love to have me around but as soon as I start to become a complex person with needs and personal goals of my own...well, they can't handle that and look for the first sign that I'm a "bad" person and cut ties.

I don't want to be an angel.

Or a devil.

Just a man.

Just two of the people that live in my head

I have so many ideas for novels, stories and movie scripts in my head. I'm really bad at writing, I never seem to be able to just sit and write, I feel almost sick with anxiety when I try to write. Even this blog post is a torture for me,lol! Over the years, I have had many characters come to life in my head. I will tell you today about two of them.

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Dark Mr. Fripperton

I was a huge fan of the "British Comic Writers Invasion" of the 80's. Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano-all my heroes forever and had a massive effect on shaping me into the person I am today. (In fact, my first encounter with Alan Moore's writing will most likely be a blog entry sometime soon.) Another member of this group was Grant Morrison. He took over writing two DC Comics, Animal Man and The Doom Patrol. Both of these titles had been around since the early 60's and not long after taking over, Morrison began taking them in bizarre and wonderful new directions.

I began reading Doom Patrol in '92 and loved it. I still haven't read the early issues from his run yet though, but I have read about them and one thing that has always stood out to me: a character named Shadowy Mr. Evans. I loved that name so much! You can read about him here: http://www.angelfire.com/ar/hellUSA/Shadowymrevans.html

I started writing "This ___ has been a Shadowy Mr. Evans production" when I finished writing a new poem, story etc. However, the twin desires to create a unique character and to not be sued led me to create Dark Mr. Fripperton.

I think the name came from my love of the music and experiments of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. The name Fripperton stuck in my head and I thought it was great. I then needed to create the character of DMF. I knew he was a master manipulator and would only come out of the shadows at certain points. For many years I worked on it and I wrote this in the notes for a novel I may write:

1. The Order of the Dying Swan/Dark Mr. Fripperton

Legend has it that the Earth was created by the “Then” Gods (see below) and set on the back of a giant swan to drift around the heavens in peace and harmony for all eternity. But the “Yet” Gods (see below) were very jealous of this sublime creation and vowed to destroy it at any cost. They took the greatest hunter of the first people to live on the Earth and gave him the most powerful bow and arrow ever created. They raised him far above the world and bade him to slay the giant swan. Seeing the enormous bird, the hunter could not resist a shot to bring it down. However, the arrow, forged by the chaos minded “Yet” Gods, was not perfectly straight and the arrow did not fly true. Instead of killing the swan, it only wounded it. Gravely hurt, the swan sailed around the cosmos erratically, causing strife and war upon the beleaguered Earth.

Enter the Order of the Dying Swan. Believing themselves to be descended from that original mighty hunter, the men and women of the Order have pledged to finish the job and deliver the mortal blow to the swan, killing it and sending the Earth to sink into the fires of creation, destroying it forever. To do this, the Order carries out specific assassinations and acts of terrorism to hasten the world toward certain “node” moments (and yes, one of these nodes is on December 21, 2012) when the destruction of the Earth would be possible. Obviously, they have thus far been unsuccessful…

No one is certain exactly how many the Order numbers, but it is said that no matter where you are on the Earth, a member of the Order is never more than two hundred miles away. All races, all creeds, all levels of social status make up the order. Men are given a name that begins with “Dark Mr.”, women are given names that begin with “Dark Mistress.” The headquarters of the order are rumored to be in northern Greenland.

Enter Dark Mr. Fripperton.

The greatest warrior the Order has ever produced and also, secretly, it’s greatest failure. For Dark Mr. Fripperton is a secret acolyte of the belief of War Without End, which is in direct opposition to the agenda of the Order. The Order is working towards the Final War and the destruction of the world-the swan must die, the Earth must fall into the fire and die. Dark Mr. Fripperton envisions a world even more chaotic and dangerous then it is now, an endless series of conflicts and wars that will beat humanity down to an animal submissiveness and then take them out into the stars to do battle with the very universe itself. So far, his goal has been well hidden from the rest of the Order…although some are beginning to have suspicions.

Like all members of the Order, the life of Dark Mr. Fripperton before he joined is unknown and perhaps forgotten. It is possible it will never be revealed.

So that's where things stand with Dark Mr. Fripperton at the moment. Hope to have more in the future.

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Winright Enfield

I've had a TV show going on in my head since the mid 90's.

I guess I could describe it as The X-Files meets Moonlighting with a little bit of Misfits of Science mixed in. It's about a group of people who investigate strange events. There's a main male and female lead duo who are ostensibly the "stars" of the show but the wacky supporting cast would be meant to "steal" the show...and none more so than Winright Enfield.

Winright is a scientist and a brilliant one. He has degrees in pretty much any branch of science and medicine you can think of and many more you can't begin to imagine existing. He's also very old fashioned which is where a lot of the comedy would come from. His favorite greeting is "Good day, good sir/madam."

He is very tall and thin with thick curly hair and a mustache. Very Kurt Vonnegut-esque. He would start off in the "series" as a buffoonish character but over the course of the show would become a deeply complex person.

I have no illusions that this show will exist anywhere but in my mind. It's just too complex and there's been too many "wacky X-Files" like shows on the SyFy (God I will always hate that) Channel, people will think I'm ripping those off. But Winfield is a very real person to me and he will live on in my head and I can revisit my favorite "episodes" featuring him any time I wish...

Happiness: How The Fuck Does It Work?

Hi everyone, welcome to my new blog. I'll try to post here as often as possible, talking about my views on life. Back in January, I had a psychic tell me I should write about life, I guess I will take that advice. I'm a huge fan of the radio show This American Life, so that will kind of be my template for what I write here.

I've been thinking a lot about about happiness lately or maybe more accurately, the lack of happiness. Something happened last night that really made me think about it.

I was on Facebook and I was getting ready to play a game on there, the "bouncing ball" game. While you're waiting for the game to load, a commercial will play. Usually it's some stupid Geico ad but this time it was for Chips Ahoy, you know, the cookies. The commercial takes place in a beautiful kitchen, it's one of those perfect bright, sunny summer California days you always see on TV or the movies. There are maybe three or four kids in this kitchen, aged around 8-12, not real small little kids but not teenagers either. They are all laughing and stamping their feet, waiting for cookies. The Mom reaches up into a cabinet and pulls out that famous blue package and soon everyone is eating chocolate chip cookies and laughing even harder. Life is wonderful.

Well, this commercial really depressed the hell out of me. I think I've isolated three reasons why it made me feel that way. First, there was a basic kind of jealously... I wish I could be young again and the only worries I had in life were how many cookies I could score.

Second...life, for the most part, just isn't like that. Sometimes there are moments that are simple and full of joy but those are pretty rare and you'd have to be a pretty shallow person to not have a few dark shadows on the edges of happy times. Maybe that's just me though. Maybe I'm just not used to totally giving in to happiness.

Finally, on a third and I guess you could call this the Meta level, it depressed me because it REALLY wasn't real-it's just a damned cookie commercial filled with some ad exec's ideas of what makes people happy. It kind of made me feel uneasy the way amusement parks do. It's a forced, artificial representation of something that's not even real. Or, at least, a frame of mind that we only have when we are very young.

So it just seems to me that a lot of what we call happiness in the modern age is fake. I hope I don't come off as some joyless person who doesn't believe in true happiness. I do. It just seems like life makes real happiness hard to achieve and tries to foist a lot of phoniness onto us. I want the real thing!

Sorry this first post was a bit on the gloomy side. I promise to lighten things up in my next post! I think I will discuss characters that I have created and live only in my head-so far!