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Joshua Alan Doetsch

~ Author & Scrivnomancer

Joshua Alan Doetsch

Tag Archives: beowulf

Colonel Mustard is a Pussy

24 Thursday Jan 2008

Posted by scrivnomancer in Uncategorized

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

beowulf, christmas, johnny law, karisa, self-doubt, sundance

Prologue:  dropping eaves

“Are you easily offended?”

“What?” the young woman said to the middle-aged stranger in line with her for coffee at the bookstore.  I’d gotten my coffee and was at a table, with my notebook.  I readied my pen…just in case.  I’ve learned to keep my eavesdropping radar up in public places.  One never knows when usable dialogue drops out of a stranger’s mouth.

“Are you easily offended?”

“I…no…I guess not.”

“Good.”  He smiled, encouraged.  “Did you know that a mouse ejaculates, on average, every five seconds?”

Bingo.  That’s a keeper.

Down to Business and Board Games in My Head

Hello, lovelings.

It looks like I’ve been away from the blog for several weeks.  Sorry.  It’s been a rough several weeks…kind of bad.  Well…that’s not totally accurate.  Most of those weeks have been good.  The holidays were fun.  I’ve forgotten a few resolutions on schedule.  Shits n’ giggles.  But one underlying aspect has been hard…

…the outline for my novel.  I’ve been drowning it it.  Consumed by it.  Sluggish progress.  Lots of staring at a screen.  Lots of feeling little and talentless and stagnating thoughts.  For some reason I’ve had a lot of trouble bending this to my will.  I was trapped in my room, trapped in a circle of thought, stagnating.  Trapped.

Don’t worry.  I fixed it.  I turned inward.  Got sensitive.  Introspective.  I went into my head, via mind’s eye.  I found the damaged soul fragment, a shard of me, one of my dimensions, the little, shivering, Insecure Me.  He jumped at my approach, jittering and nervous.  “It’s alright,” I cooed to my little soul fragment, “I’ve come here to fix it.”  Still sobbing, the little me, Insecure Me, let down his guard and walked towards me.  And then I blew his head off.  That’s right.

It was me.

In the library of my mind.

With the revolver (I lost the candlestick sometime in my teen years and I usually save the lead pipe for bashing in the skulls of inner demons).

Insecure Me fell to the floor.  I cleaned the mess.  I hid his body in a barrel of quicklime and when the police knocked at the door, there was no evidence at all—the perfect crime—ha-ha.

I know in this age of Oprah-wisdoms we’re instructed to tenderly reconcile with all aspects of our being.  That’s nice, as far as it goes…but sometimes, I think, it’s more helpful to commit brutal homicide on the little voices in our head that tell us we’re no good.

Fuck them.

Well now, catching up would take too long.  But here’s some random things that come to mind from the last couple months…


Another Saturday Night

I started the day out in a literary discussion, and ended it with my pants off at a party.

I woke up on a November Saturday morning, unusually early, and headed to Volo Bog.  Every month they have a “Bogs and Books” meeting where they discuss some book or another.  That weekk they discussed Beowulf (the epic and the recent movie) so I thought I’d stop in.  It was small and the age gap was big…but I think they were excited for some young blood I the discussion and I can hold my own in a mythology/folklore/epic discussion.  One of the women who runs the bog visitor center and the activities there was very excited to hear that I was writing a book (more specifically, that Volo Bog was featured in a chapter).  I had fun.  I haven’t had very many literary discussions lately.

That night, I braved the cold to Bloomington, to the every-lovely Karisa and ever-armed Johnny Law’s graduation party.  As it turned out…I was just about the only one to show in the vicious weather.  Even so, there was drinking and bizarre merriment and I really, really, REALLY missed seeing these folks (among others) during my purgatory in 7-11.

Gaze now, if you dare, at our eccentric fun:

Zombies Make the Best Girlfriends Because They Like to Moan in Bed

I was the go-between between Twilight Tales and Cafe Aeon and worked out a reading/signing for Book of Dead Things on November 25th.  I got to MC the show, read a story, and sign books…so it was all fun.  The Twilight Tales folk are now in love with Aeon.


Holidays

Christmas was fun and relaxing.  Saw the extended family.  I got a new bed…a water/matress hybrid that is as warm and comfortable as a blue whale’s womb.  It’s the first step in fixing my sleep troubles and it’s gone well.  Saw friends during New Years Eve.  Drank large quantities…played rock star…even lit some sugar over absinthe.


Sundance

So I just got back from the Sundance Film Festival. 

I’m very tired.  More on this later.

Night, kiddies.  In conclusion, remember to arm yourselves with those revolvers and lead pipes.  Self doubts and insecurities are everywhere.  They can even spread from person to person…so sheath those soul condoms and play it safe.

By the Pricking of My Thumb . . .

12 Wednesday Sep 2007

Posted by scrivnomancer in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

beowulf, cafe aeon, iron man, kenning, laboratory, ray bradbury, scrivener, uis

Laboratory Blues

Bubble, bubble—I’d wish for a little less toil and a lot less trouble . . .

But all in all and my laboratory is back in working order.  The flesh and limbs and mortal clay are all back on their shelves and in their jars and viscera soups.  My tools are each in their place, shining and humming and sparking.  And I think I’m ready to get back to work on the quivering thing on the vivisection table.

Yes, I’ve made the transition from my dying PC to a brand new MAC.   I just barely got out alive too . . . as on my last trip back to my ailing computer, to get the last little bit of data to transfer, and it would not start.  Now it is dead.  But we discovered it was a registered organ doner and some of its innards now reside in my brother’s computer.

I’m mostly acclimated to the i-mac now and mostly like it.

Best of all, I just bought an awesome new bit of creative writing software . . . it’s called SCRIVENER.  Check it out.  It deserves it’s own blog entry…at a later date.

I’m a Brilliant Future

Looks like I’m a Brilliant Future.  Go ahead.  Give it a click.  See.  Growing up, I was a poor gang banger from the projects . . . but someone gave me a chance—and look at me now!

Te-he . . . I am flattered that they thought of me (though a much better picture of me is summoned up if you click the link at the bottom of that page).

Also, I’ve been emailed some interview questions for an article on me that will appear in the UIS development magazine (name still pending).

Representing hard for the UIS yo!

AEON

Black envelopes marked in colored ink get my attention.

I just got an invite to an invite only event at my favorite café, CAFÉ AEON, and I’m quite excited.  They have a new website to boot.


Something Wicked . . .

I can feel the shift in season, the trip wire is tripped, by the trip-trap of autumn.  Memories like the smell of cider, pumpkin pie, and the sticky-sweat seal of a rubber mask are the phantom limb itch in my head.  So, I knew it was the right time to start listening to the audio recording of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Ray knows autumn better than anyone.  He knows why monsters under the bed are important to child development.  I had a water bed growing up—no spaced underneath, no room for anything to hide.  Incidentally, my college writing teacher/mentor, Nancy Perkins, is convinced that, that is the reason I write what I write . . . to make up for lost time.

Of Comic Books and Kenning

For you comic fans, check out the trailer for IRON MAN.

For you epic literature fans, check out the rated R trailer for the new BEOWULF movie.

I can’t wait.  I especially like the part where Beowulf is spouting off his descriptive nick names:  “I am ripper, tearer, slasher.  I am the teeth in the darkness!”  That sort of comic book/hero contrivance where they say “I am the shadow in the night,” or some such—it’s actually from the ancient tradition of epics and mythology, the magic of formulaic naming disciplines like kenning and epithets.

There are different types in different cultures…but they all come down to giving clever nick names for a person, place, or thing.  You could just take an appropriate verb and turn it into a noun to describe something—Beowulf is “Ripper!”

Or maybe a deed becomes the name of the person—“I am Cyclops Slayer!”

Or maybe you get a little more poetic—“I am the teeth in the darkness.”

And sometimes these become set formulas for referring to famous figures…like in mythology.  Gods get many different names…or different descriptors attached to that name…and sometimes you use one so that your reader/listener knows what aspect of the god you refer to.  You might call Odin, “Gallows god” or “Glad-of-War.”  You might call Loki, “Wolf Father” or “Sky Strider.”

Kenning gets really formulaic.  It’s a system of putting two or more words together to give them a combined meaning that neither word had before—for example—one of my favorite is “bait-gallows” which means “hook.”

But then kenning gets even cooler and more deceptively complex—because you can layer it.  Let’s say a pirate strides up to me, and like some ancient, Norse poem spinner, I want to call him by kenning rather than his usual name.  I might call him “Hook-Wrist.”  And that might catch on (because kenning is simple and descriptive and it catches on just like nick names in high school)…

…but if I am a master kenning slinger, I might layer the kenning.  I can take those two words and use kenning on each of them (and we go to four words).  For example, the kenning for hook (as we said) is “bait-gallows.”  The kenning for wrist is “wolf’s-joint” (this is an allusion to the Norse myth where the god Tyr’s hand is bitten off by the demon wolf Fenrir).

So now the pirate’s kenning name becomes “Bait-Gallows-Wolf’s-Joint.”  Someone who knows their kenning could break that down and know that I’m really saying “Hook-Wrist” and deduce that the pirate I’m talking about has a hook for a hand.  But even if not…it’s a fucking cool name.  It’s a conversation starter.  The pirate, let’s say his real name is Bob, would probably thank me for the bit of poetry I’ve blessed him with.

On that same line, I might be a Viking who finds himself lost in Egypt (worm-holes can happen to anyone) and I see the crazy hooked swords of the ancient middle east ( the kopesh).  Seeing these strange, sickle shaped swords, I might call them “Hook-Sword”…or “Bait-Gallows-Blood-Worm” (“blood-worm” means “sword”).

And this takes us to the ultimate conclusion of this post . . .

Who wants to join me and start a band called Bait-Gallows-Blood-Worm?

And finally, A CHALLENGE TO THE READER:  I’m curious what someone might use as kenning to refer to themself…click on the above links, read up on it, and then reply to this post with your own kennings.  If anyone replies, I’ll join in the fun too.

Parting Wisdom

Give a cannibal a severed arm, and you feed him for a day.

Give a cannibal a cleaver, and you feed him for life.

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