The Shack - Scene 3

Scene Three of The Shack.  Might need to come up with a new title.  Not sure how much the shack is going to be around now.  Still really don't know where it's going, but at least it's going.  Enjoy!

Shick. Thunk! Screech. Clip, clip, clip, clip.

Lane continued to watch the older man make his way from the stairwell door toward the general direction of the security shack. There was something wrong, though. Lane wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought he had seen a flash of bright red when the man pulled his hand away from his temple. He quickly left the shack to see if there was anything he could do to help.

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?”

Gary Newland looked up at the unexpected voice. It took a second for his eyes to focus, but when he realized that there was someone heading toward him, he averted his gaze and quickened his pace. Dammit, dammit, dammit! I’m getting sloppy in my old age. Should have remembered the guard shack. At least I don’t recognize him. Should be easy enough to get past.

The Shack, Scene 02

Okay.  Just to explain a little.  We're going back to "The Shack" today.  It may not be terribly obvious from the get go, but then it seems like that's to be said about the whole story.  I still don't know where it's going, but at least now I've got a little more breathing room.


About an hour to get a little over another 1,000 words.  I have no idea if that's good average or bad.  It seems really slow to me.  Guess that's what happens when you don't know what's coming next.


If you like it, let me know!  And if you know what's going to happen next, drop me a line, would you?

---

12 Hours Earlier

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t have the authority to do that’!?” Gary screamed at his computer screen.

“It’s my damn project! Why did they revoke my access to it? Who are they going to give …” he sputtered off the rest of his sentence. In his frustration he placed both hands on his desk in front of him and pushed.

A Photo a Day? A Story a Day? 1,000 Words a Day? Nope!

Since we're only a couple weeks away from that wonderful time where we like to tell other people what we're going to be doing good with our life for the next year, I thought it wouldn't hurt to warm up for it.  You know, like a runner stretching before going on a hike, or a guitar player practicing scales on a xylophone.


Over the years, I've come to learn something about the way that I think, and the way my reality operates.  If I state out loud (and the more public the forum, the harder it is to get around this) my intent to say, paint a watercolor every day for the next 365 days...  come day six there won't be a watercolor.  It's not just the physical arts, I've tried this with writing something every day, taking a picture every day, taking photos of the same locations over the course of a year, and on and on.  None of these things have been carried through as initially intended.


Sure there's been some great pictures.  Sure there's been some crappy writing.  Sure there's been some crappy writing that some of you think is really good and want me to continue.  The thing is, once I say I'm going to do it for the rest of the year; forget it.

Every Have One of Those Days

A day where that even though you didn't go to work, you didn't do anything physically hard, didn't really have to think that much, but come 10:00 you can't even keep your eyes open?  Well that was my Tuesday.


It all started easily enough.  Tuckey had got me hooked on browsing through YouTube looking for some good, well thought out, video mashups (or is it mash ups?).  Any time that you see a mash up that also uses some old-school jazz... watch it.  Doesn't matter if you like jazz or not.


The most inspirational ones that I saw, I'm not going to link to them here, but at the end, were very intriguing.  Probably the most famous of the ones I was getting gobsmacked over was a mix of The Bee Gees "Staying Alive" and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall".  If you had never heard the songs before, you'd be hard pressed to see that it's actually two songs.  They fit together so well it was truly bizarre.  


The other that got me thinking good was one that starts off with Radiohead's "15 Step" and has some of Brubeck's "Take 5" in it.  Again, you can't beat good, interesting jazz.  Notice the use of the word interesting there.  Otherwise, you could just be wasting your time on notes that have no set value and lyrical threads that look worse that a ball of yarn after loosing three kittens on it.


So it got me to thinking.  What in my collection of 'odd music' do I have that could possibly work for my first attempt.  I had thought to try to figure out a way to do some of the tracks from the many soundtracks to Battlestar Galactica, but then was like, mashing classical ethnic with other classical probably won't work.  Maybe something funny, like Heywood Banks, or Dr. Demento?  Again, what would I put with it?


After many hours sorting and trying and trying again, I finally came up with what I'm calling "The Heart's Filthy Beats".  It's a mash of David Bowie's "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" with Beats Antique's "Beauty Beats".  Songs are different lengths.  The software I used is not really designed to do what I did with it.  Then there's the wonderful video.  I've never had to make a video like this where it's basically a bunch of stills with music on top of it.  But that's what I had to do.  Didn't want to spend more time on it than I did.


So without further ado, here's my first attempt at a mash up, "The Heart's Filthy Beats".  Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to comment, or make suggestions here on the blog.  That's what that comment box is for at the bottom there.  

And if you were interested in the other inspirational viewing, click on through.

No Writing Just 'Pretty' Picture

So after yesterday's 1,000 words, I figured I really needed to rethink this writing thing.  Or at least how I'm approaching it.  After piecing together the wonderfully horrid intro yesterday, I decided it was time to play with Photoshop.


I've got a Wacom Bamboo tablet that I've used off and on.  It was nice to get the tablet set up properly on the new laptop.  Always nice to have pressure control.


So here it is.  All that work yesterday (did a couple other tutorial style pieces as well, but they're not completed), and I still feel like I didn't really do anything artistic.  Without further ado, here's my first attempt at trying to do mountains without using a 3D program.  Enjoy!