Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading this book by a man call Jeffrey Hatcher on the The Art and Craft of Playwriting . It’s very well written. Hatcher offers a very lucid explanation of the basics of playwriting. For example he speaks of how a play is like a series of dramatic actions – actions that inspire change. I watched Sideways and Kiki’s Delivery Service with this in mind and I really started to appreciate the brilliance of their respective scripts.

NS is eating my brain so forgive me if this doesn’t make much sense. I can’t seem to get myself to write as long as I want to, so forgive me for that as well.

I’ve told you of my desire to actively engage in escapades. My first step will be to steal a labelmaker and use to make subversive stickers. I’d take photos to show you, but currently, I need to power said labelmaker with my camera’s batteries.

This sticker thing I’m doing isnt exactly random. It was inspired by an article I read in Juxtapoz about this guy. Street art seems to be a powerful new medium that I need to get into. It’s not like graffiti, which in some senses is kinda destructive. Relatively, it’s so much easier to remove stickers. Hell, they’ll probably wash off in the rain.

Here’s another cool sticker page for you.

I wish I could say I’ve been reading a lot over these past few weeks but for some reason I have not. I will get back on track tommorow by finishing up Moorcock’s  Earl Aubec.  I’m not sure why I’ve stopped reading, but I personally blame  Messiah CompleX and  tie ins which have got me interesting in the New X-men series.

I once considered New X-men a shallow book that rehashed tired old plot devices and played on controversial issues. Then I realized that they routinely kill characters to boost sales.This has kept me interested, since I dislike the characters.  To put it in perspective, since Morrison’s run, the mutant populace has dropped from millions to a little less than 200. In the X-school, or whatever their calling it, numbers have fallen from something like 100 or so to 27. We’re talking busloads of angsty teens and toddlers being killed by the busload. And I really mean, the busload – a  large portioned died went Christian Fundamentalists  blew up their bus. Because, you know us Christians, we’re kraaaazzzy.

It’s staggering how desperate the writers of these series must be to go to such lengths to secure sales. The X-books are so amazingly screwed up right now that I’m really amazed that they can keep track of who’s alive and who’s dead, who’s good and who’s bad, who’s in space or depowered or ret-conned out of existence.

But to be honest, this is part of the reason I still keep reading mainstream comics. I mean, nowadays, webcomics and indie companies like Oni Press  are what keep the artsy side of me happy these days. I mean, I could go on for years just watching Hayao Miyazaki movies and late night vintage Nickelodeon with appropriate application of like Watchmen, Local , Flight and Calvin and Hobbes.

Yet this only can satisfy a certain part of me – the bit that loves the under appreciated power of the marriage between art and words.  Another part of me enjoys the frivolous world of pulp fiction.  It’s the part of me that longs for a revival of magazines like Planet Stories or SF Adventures. Monthly magazines that spat out short, sharp flights of fantasy. Nowadays such things don’t exist, so I have to satisfy myself with comics. Despite their flaws, they’re still regular flights of fantasy, cheap thrills that don’t really last, but keep my hunger sated.

So that’s why I’m stuck with reading X-books, which apparently are written by people who deeply fear becoming ex-writers.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I had to buy them – it’s not stuff you could happily spend money on. Unfortunately, there are many torrents and scans online.

This is quickly become my new favorite postsecret type site.  Artistic vandalism ftw.

Recently attended class-related barbecue. Wonder if that counts as first class reunion after IB.

Also, have attempted to learn photography. I have always tried to be more impulsive and unpredictable. It is for this reason, that I recently purchasing a Fujifilm Finepix S800 from Mustafas.  It  was a great deal – something which you don’t often find, even at Mustafas. (I’m still wondering if it’s  actually stolen or defective.)

From what I’ve learned so far, photography is a nice mix of  ‘artsy-ness’ and ‘techy-ness’  – you figure out stuff like shutter speed and ISO  as well as figuring out photography as an art-form – i.e. what works and what doesn’t. And you do all this either by harassing veterans or interrogating salespeople. It’s good that this age has a happy amount of photographers – its easy to find people who know what you’re doing wrong.

Another thing I’ve learned about photography is that, once you start taking photos in a more serious fashion, you start to notice things like colors and lines a lot more. It’s exactly like literature and drama I suppose. When you have to analyze god literature or create passable drama, you sit up and take notice when you see something really good (and shrink back in your seat when you see something really bad). Colours seem deeper and light seems more alive now.

There again, this may just be another symptom of post-traumatic-examination disorder.