Death Threats 4: Cartoons

I’m gonna try to make a go of the death threats thing because it suits my current ADHD state. Thinking about it, I realised that there are a lot of crazy threats that will work much better visually, and would make a book more interesting anyway. Must try to avoid bunny-suicides territory.

Here is a terrifyingly bad mockup of the first cartoon. The line needs work.

Fantasy with a tweest world-building 1: Races

So, let’s continue with our tweested fantasy story with a discussion about the world they inhabit. Should it be a completely serious fantasy world full of the usual stereotypes, or would there more comedy gold available in a world where all the usual expectations are reversed. I’m always careful when I think about fantasy comedy to keep Terry Pratchett in mind. His work overshadows this genres and is so brilliant that it’s truly difficult to do anything without people saying either ‘Yeah, but it’s not Pratchett, is it’ or ‘Pratchett totally did that’. The additional danger is that Terry is a great hero of mine and I love all of his books (except truckers and diggers and their ilk). In the Discworld series, Pratchett put a hilarious spin on many fantasy races, something much more subtle than what I will attempt here.

Putting self-deprecation and hero-worship aside for a moment, let’s see what we can do with some generic fantasy races. I can already see that taking the exact opposite of an established race would be a mistake because if you take dwarf and make him tall, he’s no longer a dwarf. So let’s just try for a comedic spin that isn’t a complete opposite.

Race and type	Comedic spin
Elves: Graceful, magical, willowy, flighty, good with bows, hug trees, zen-like calm.	Not graceful. Have ancient magics that they use for completely mundane and stupid stuff. Live in trees but suffer from vertigo. High-strung and paranoid.
Dwaves: Angry drunken stumpy people with a passion for ale and gold. Use axes and hammers. Berserkers. Don’t like elves. Forge magical items.	Calm, quiet, mormon-ish race who hate gold and wealth in general. The Ned Flanders of the fantasy world. Bake cookies.
Orcs: Brutish, warlike, stupid, kinda happy-go-lucky in a murderous sort of way. Into pillaging and burning.	A nation of builders and diplomats, who respond to violence by siccing the orc ninjas on you. Noble, honorable, funny.
Trolls: Huge, slow, also stupid, hard to kill.	Huge, very quick, very very clever.
Dragons: ancient and powerful, love gold, very wise, fire-breathing	Giant cowards. More afraid of you than you are of them. vegetarians
Halflings: fun-loving, friendly, prone to kleptomania, very short.	Murderous little bastards. Like the leprechaun in the movie series. Probably the main villainous race. Furry feet, crazy eyes.
Gnomes: Short, bald, possess a much higher level of technology than the rest of the world, very much into gadgets. Bumbling.	Allied race to the Halflings. Into torture and building machines of mass destruction. Many different types of gnome.

It’s late, I’m tired.

I frittered away the day on my DS playing Puzzle Quest, and then went to our friends’ house for some dinner and a movie, so today is not going to be a long one. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

Here, for your entertainment pleasure, is a poem:

 

 

If you have no time

To write something beautiful

haiku for the win

Book idea.

So I was toying with yesterdays post about a comedy-fantasy that turns fantasy stereotypes on their heads, and I came up with an altogether different idea that might be quite fun.

It’s a story about a group of role playing geeks who, one night, saddened by some news of a particularly vicious crime or general criminal activity, decide to become the heroes they play in their games. They each choose a class or role within the party and prepare to do battle against evil. The characters are all adults, and they’re not stupid. They know that they will be going up against hardened criminals and guns, and they make plans that will offset their disadvantages.

I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t just throw themselves into a fight, but maybe near the end of the story they get drawn into one. Their experiences in the story will cement their friendship and cause them to grow in ways they never expected. It’s a story about the will to do good in an uncaring world, the little fears we must all overcome if we want to change, and the fact that no one can be easily defined as ‘geek’, ‘criminal’, ‘hero’ or ‘coward’.

I’m thinking four player characters and maybe a DM. Classes would include a warrior, a mage, a cleric and a rogue.

I might keep them as all dungeons and dragons players or some of them could be cyberpunk, cthulu or white wolf style characters. As for genders, I’d probably go with one woman and the rest men, and that’s pushing it. Statistically they should all be men. A tall one, a short one, a big fat one and a skinny one. Perhaps the DM is a woman? I’d like the characters to be realistic, and the female players that I’ve experience in role playing are either girlfriends or wives of other players who have no idea what’s going on, or they’re extremely dedicated players who are very much immersed in the world of geekdom. Stereotypical as it is, most women choose to play support roles in role playing. This would make a female player the cleric or possibly the mage. Let’s run through my visions of the characters and see where we go.

If readers have any suggestions, I’d be glad to hear em. 

Fantasy with a tweest!

I’ve been thinking about trying to write a few characters up and then put them in various situations, but I’m finding it really difficult to get back into serious fiction. Let’s try some not-so-serious fiction.

Playing with fantasy stereotypes is nothing new, but maybe if they were extreme enough, it could bring about something funny. So, with that in mind let’s list some stereotypes and some comedic possibilities that can be mined from playing on them:

Stereotype	Exact opposite	Comedic middle ground
Young male hero with a secret royal/magical lineage. Orphan	Old female heroine who is a foul-mouthed peasant. Huge family	Old male hero who is a foul-mouthed peasant and has a huge family. Married with kids and grandkids.
Discontented spoilt-rotten princess with a bad attitude. Usually very smart.	Completely happy simple-life-loving prince who is also really simple.	Happy, stupid prince who believes he is the hero of the story, but no one really takes seriously. Kind of batty.
Wise old man who shall be a mentor for the young man	Young, brash mage/priest/prophet who doesn’t think so much before acting.	Young, brash prophet who sees visions and misinterprets them, then immediately takes action. Pisses the hero off.
Sturdy friend who is there when the hero needs him. Often a blacksmith or animal handler.	A complete dick who hates the hero and often sabotages everything.	Complete dick who owes the hero a debt, won’t rest until it is repaid, and is a tool about it all the time.
Lean, scarred old weapon master guy	Fat, unscarred young weapon master guy	Fat, unscarred old weapon master. Cheats extensively. Hidden weapons, sneezing powder and so on.
Big warriors type. Bluff, friendly, likes beer and breaking people’s heads.	Small, unfriendly warrior who is an ascetic and hates violence.	Small, ascetic warrior who hates violence, but is a complete berserker when unleashed.
Small, fast dagger-using guy. Maybe emo. Usually a fast talker.	Huge, slow, broadsword-wielding type. Not emo. Talks slowly.	Huge, slow dagger wielding type. Tries to be sneaky, never quite manages. Extremely honest. Father was a sneak thief, but he sucks at it.
Magical thingy that the heroes have to retrieve or keep away from the bad guy.	living magical person that follows the group around constantly and brings danger down on them.	living magical person that follows the group around constantly and brings danger down on them. Highly enthusiastic glowing ball of light or gem perhaps. Extremely talkative singing sword.
Villain with supporting cast of underlings and captains, intent on the destruction of everything the hero holds dear	Hero at the bottom of the chain of military command who is trying to save the world, but just ends up screwing things up all the time.	Proper hero and proper supporting cast of old man, bluff warrior, dagger guy, weapon master, hot princess and sturdy friend.

25 other things about me

1. I’m smart, funny and sexy – a rare combination.
2. My milkshake brings all the…girls to the yard.
3. I have a gun that shoots tanks.
4. I died once, but I challenged Death to a Muay Thai kickboxing match and handed him his bony ass.
5. All of my friends would die for me. Some of them have.
6. When I’m sad, all the lights and fires in the world dim just a little.
7. I dance really well, but don’t often do it because it usually starts raining. One day it started raining men, so I cut back on the dancing. What a mess.
8. Strength of the bear, speed of the puma, eyes of the hawk. I’ve got em all.
9. I have no insecurities whatsoever.
10. I killed the dinosaurs.
11. They’re going to have to build a new, upgraded heaven if I ever die.
12. I’m never going to die.
13. If a tree falls in the woods, I will hear it.
14. Many people look up to me. That’s because I’m 6 feet tall.
15. I eat nuclear waste and crap low-cost housing for the poor.
16. I had to quite advertising because I was so good at it that people literally lost their free will.
17. My hair smells like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
18. If I wanted to I could kick Tiger Woods’s ass and become the best golfer in the world, but I only like more challenging sports, like bungee-lacrosse.
19. Da Vinci was a HACK.
20. When I walk through a neighbourhood, crying babies quiet, dogs stop barking and flowers bloom in my wake.
21. I can sing bass and tenor. At the same time.
22. You are all still alive. Am I not merciful? AM I NOT MERCIFUL?!?
23. The most tedious part of my life is making sure the sun comes up every day.
24. I can see in the ultraviolet and x-ray spectrums. This is not nearly as much fun as you think it is.
25. Many of you have already set my profile picture as your desktop background.

25 things about me

 

 

Prompted by a Facebook chain-letter that goes as follows:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

 

1. I’m a jack-of-all-trades and seemingly a master of none. The story of my life is one of constantly starting things in the hope that I’ll be naturally fantastic at them and therefore have to expend no effort to be successful at it, which brings me to…
2. I’m extremely lazy, but fortunately if I am lazy for a long period of time I tend to freak out and become very productive for a short period of time. I hope my blog will not fall victim to my capriciousness.
3. I like to use long words (see no.2). I read a lot as a kid and for some reason I like the idea of a single word being able to encapsulate a complicated concept.
4. I am typically male in my love for useless gadgets, and spend an inordinate amount of money on them. Currently my most useless gadget is an ultraviolet light on my keychain bought for the purpose of finding rocks with luminescent properties, but mostly used to annoy people by shining a purple light in their face.
5. I am an extremely typical second son, driven forwards, backwards, to and away from my older brother.
6. I like deep blue and deep green. Recently I’ve been tending more towards green than blue. Maybe it’s living in a city.
7. For someone who likes writing, my understanding of grammar and punctuation is terrible. I’m especially bad with dialogue.
8. I used to be an enthusiastic fisherman when I was younger, and look forward to going back to that hobby when I’m older.
9. I used to be a firm cat-hater and small-dog fanboy, but after living with Courtney for so long I now like cats and I’m more interested in having a big dog as well.
10. I hate almost all forms of cardiovascular exercise, and can only stand it if I’m not really thinking about it. Karate, Capoeira, Frisbee, punching a bag, skipping (badly) and any team sport is okay with me. I hate running with the power of a thousand burning suns.
11. I was born in Windhoek, Namibia, which at the time was still a part of South Africa. Then I moved to Cape Town when I was about four years old. My mother is Dutch and my Father is German. I like to think this makes me cosmopolitan. If we hadn’t moved to South Africa, I might still be in Namibia, managing a sand farm or driving a truck.
12. I often make the same mistake twice. I studied Latin in school as a puny act of rebellion against my father. I was really bad at it. Then I took accounting as a subject in high school as an acknowledgement that my father had been right about Latin. Turns out I was really bad at that too. Ah, the teenage years. How many of us wish we could do them over again?
13. I don’t eat anything that arrived on-plate with legs, eyes, ears, noses, flippers, beaks, or feelers.
14. I used to be a really good singer before my voice broke. Now I’m a pirate.
15. I used to dream about joining a rock band and being the guy who plays the bagpipes. Unfortunately the dude from KoRn stole my idea.
16. I have a paralyzing fear of the dentist, but who doesn’t?
17. I’ve had two honest-to-god near-death experiences. Once I fell down a mountain and almost slid off the edge of a cliff and when I was very young my father saved me from being run over in Holland by shouting at me to stop. I believe I might have actually been chasing a ball across the road. Neither experience turned me into a dynamic, outgoing thrill-seeker with an insatiable zest for adventure. In my opinion, anyone who comes close to death and then seeks to replicate that feeling is asking for trouble.
18. Boxers.
19. I thought I had a talent for painting miniature figurines, but it turns out I just have a talent for sitting very still for hours and hours as life passes by outside. World of Warcraft players have the same talent.
20. After my first 10 months of living in Japan, during which I lived like a hermit in Courtney’s flat while she went out to work, I pretty much forgot how to use sarcasm. I remember now.
21. When I was eleven years old and in primary school, my love of writing was fired by the discovery of the library at school and Mr. Clements, my English teacher. For a year I answered every essay topic with a ‘gory story’, no matter what the title was supposed to be. Someone always died or was gruesomely dismembered (and then died). I used to get pretty good marks and loved reading my essays in front of the class. I’m glad Mr. Clements never saw fit to stop me. The most he ever did was question how the escaped torture victim killed one guard by strangulation and then went on to deal with the other ‘similarly’. Was the other guard happy to just stand around and wait to be strangled? I told him that the guard was particularly stupid.
22. I weight train for a number of reasons, but undoubtedly one of the strongest is that I’m short.
23. I will probably never grow up. What’s the point?
24. Something positive, something positive…I cook a mean roast.
25. I wouldn’t want to be anyone other than me.

Manly Fiction 2: More Manlier

 

Where others would look and see no parking spaces, Kent ‘Stoneface’ Anvilton saw a Daihatsu. There was a loud crunch and a tinkling of safety glass as Kent’s Humvee mounted the Korean sedan like a love-starved rhino. Kent swept up his gun and the envelop with his mission details in it and dropped down to the tarmac. He pressed a button on his key ring and the Hummer’s lights flashed like a tiger’s eyes in the night. It would take a small army of very dedicated tow truck drivers to impound Kent’s car.

Kent strode up a short flight of steps and nodded once to the security guard as he entered the nondescript grey building. Inside the building was a nondescript door. Behind that door was another, thicker door. Behind that door was a ninja. He leapt at Kent with a bloodcurdling scream. Kent’s meaty fist moved in a blur and he blocked the strike with the point of his bowie knife. The ninja groaned and hopped backwards, pulling his foot off the blade.

‘Morning, sir.’ he said softly as he applied pressure to the wound.

‘Ken.’ said Kent.

‘Go on through, sir.’ A doorway slid open and Kent stepped into Central Command. Radars pinged. Gadgets bleeped. Strong coffee bubbled. On the other side of the room, an agent was disemboweling a mannequin with a pair of cufflinks. Large screens displayed maps, satellite photographs and blog feeds, keeping Central Command up to date with the world. Kent ignored all this and strode to the desk in the centre of the room. In the middle of the desk was a small transistor radio.

‘Morning, Kent.’ said the radio.

‘Sir.’ Kent didn’t salute. Saluting was for cub scouts.

‘Big day, Kent’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’ll be taking the bulletpipe to Canaveral where you’ll transfer to a Stoop. You’ll touch down within a couple of klicks from the target and from then you’re on your own. When the mission is done we’ll get you a blackhawk. Questions?’

‘Do I have to kill him quickly?’

‘I leave that entirely up to you. But, Kent…give him one for me.’  For the second time that day, Kent smiled.

‘Yes, sir.’

Fifteen minutes later Kent lying in his Bullet, a cocoon-shaped transport pod that would transport him to the other side of the country in an hour. As a few last-minute checks were being completed, Kent checked the contents of the envelope one more time. He felt his heart rate increase as his eyes roved over the turban, the long beard, the piggy little eyes.

‘I’ve got orders from the new pres, Osama.’ he muttered, ’Change is coming.’

Fun things to do when you have children 1

1. Throughout your daughter’s childhood, tell her that she is adopted. On her eighteenth birthday surprise her with the news that no, actually, she is your biological daughter. Happy Birthday!
2. As your infant son drifts towards sleep at night, croon him a quiet lullaby, interspersing every few words with a loud shout.  “Rooock, a bye baaaaby on the tree- AAHHHHH!!! When the wind blows, the cradle AAAAAAHHHHHH.”
3. Become a collector of jack-in-the-boxes, store them all over the house so that your curious toddler has plenty of opportunity to join in with your hobby. You can keep your jack-in-the-boxes in places like your child’s bedroom cupboard, in the cookie tin, in the fridge, inside the toilet just under the lid, in lunchboxes, school bags and drawers. Tip: those jack-in-the-boxes with extremely wide smiles and really big eyes are the most fun.
4. Teach your child that red is green and that green is red. Comment on the beautiful red grass, the greenness of that apple (a green apple), the large number of redbacks you’re spending on a vacation, the fire-engine-green crayons your child is drawing with, and how love is like a green, green rose. Also, remember to tell them that when they cross the road, green means go and red means stop.
5. As you bring your kids up, make sure that they always remember to eat their miracle fruit before meals. This handsome little fruit reverses your taste buds,causing onions to taste like apples, lemon juice to taste like maple syrup and so on. Bring your children up on a healthy diet of broccoli, asparagus, brussel sprouts and so on. Then enjoy sending your child out into the world and watch as they adjust to a world without miracle fruit.

To be continued…

The solution to your calorie-counting worries!

I guarantee you’ll lose 25lbs in three weeks! And you’ll be able to bench press a truck! And fly! And melt steel with your laser-vision. No, not really, but you might find it a bit easier to count your calories. Most people round their daily caloric intake to the closest hundred, and this gives us a good opportunity because it means that everyone’s diet can jigsaw-puzzled together by simply taking 100-calorie portions and fitting them together.

This isn’t particularly new or anything. Already in America there are multiple lines of 100-calorie snacks that help you feel a little less guilty because 100 calories isn’t all that much. One problem with this is that in almost all cases, you’re eating one hundred calories of pure crap. A follow-on problem is that crap is usually very calorically-dense.

Hence the idea of 100 calorie portions of healthy foods.

Did I stun you? Are you stunned?

Didn’t think so.

It’s not mind-blowing, but it might be time saving. Below, you’ll find a chart with 100-calorie portions of various healthy foods. You can print them out and stick them to the kitchen wall. The list is by no means complete, but you can always add your own foods to it. You can even add bad foods to it, but you’ll notice that you’ll get less of the bad food than healthy food for 100 calories.

Note: Some foods don’t work so well with this method because of the number 7. How I hate it. For example, a large egg comes in at 74 calories. Vegetable and berries are also very low calorie for their weight. I dare you to eat 100 calories of cucumber, for example. Some foods I’ll work out to 150 calories or 50 calories. If you have something that’s 150cal and add 50cal of veggies, you’re set.

I just worked out the values for macadamia nuts by using the nutritional information on the back. There’s 746 calories in 100g of nuts, so I divided 746 by a 100 (7.46), and then through trial and error came to 13grams providing 97calories. I’m sure people who can do maths could figure out a better way to do this but, sadly, I am not one of those people.

 

 

Food	Calories	Weight
Macadamia nuts	100	13g
Eggs	150	2 large
Roast chicken breast	100	60g
Lean sirloin steak	100	55g
Lean pork tenderloin	100	60g
Dry oatmeal	100	28g
Skim milk	100	270g/ml
Strawberries	50	150g
White potatoes	100	110g

Sweet Potatoes	100	110g
Raw Salmon	100	85g
Raw Yellow fin Tuna	100	95g
Dry couscous	100	25g
Feta cheese	100	40g
2% cottage cheese	100	110g
2% milk	100	200g/ml
Fresh blueberries	50	90g
Broccoli	50	150g
Kidney beans	100	130g

 

And so on and so on…

So here are the steps.

1. Figure out what’s healthy. Your job

2. Work out how many calories you should be taking in. Use the formula or your own experience or both.

3. Put foods together until they reach your caloric intake.

4. Try to keep some balance. Don’t eat nothing but carbs or nothing but protein or nothing but fat. a split of about 33/33/33 is probably the best for overall health.

5. DO EET!