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Humanity really isn’t all that special, or evolved, or even nice. Wanna know how I know? I’ll tell you how I know.

Rubberneckers.

You know the ones. Accident at the side of the road, and everyone cranes their neck for a better look.

Some of us are so dead inside that even the scary, primal, direct-from-our-caveman-ancestors kind of jolt like the one I’m talking about is preferable to the numb, empty feeling that we carry around in our chests day-in and day-out. It’s like punching a wall just because you haven’t experienced pain in a while, and you want to re-familiarize yourself with the whole concept of ‘Ow, that hurt.’

Maybe it’s the involuntary (and one-hundred percent free) shot of adrenaline that you get when your subconscious starts wigging out at the sight of something dangerous, possibly fatal, that has just happened. When cavemen were roaming the mountain ranges and plains, if they came upon something like the still-bloody remains of what appeared to be a fellow caveman, survival instinct took over, and the pre-language equivalent of “Get the hell out of here right now!” would start playing inside their heads at the loudest possible volume, glands would get squeezed for every ounce of action-juice they could muster, and the caveman would flee to somewhere safe. Heart beating in their chest, they’d finally make it back to wherever it was they called ‘home’ and count their lucky stars that they didn’t end up like whats-his-face. That whole fear instinct lets us know that danger, or the potential for danger, is somewhere nearby, and that fleeing to safety is one heck of a fine idea.

Does that feel good to some of us? Living in a society that is relatively safe from violent animal attacks, fatal acts of nature and other caveman concerns, is that sort of thing something that we miss?

See, I’m not saying it’s precisely an addiction . . . but there’s a reason why reality television does as well as it does.

It doesn’t matter if you believe that human beings are inherently peaceful creatures who should all be vegetarians and live in harmony with nature so that everything can be about peace and beauty and everything wonderful. Fact of the matter is this; humanity didn’t get where it is by being weak, or passive, or gentle. We are the apex predator, folks, able to kill any other animal on the planet. If you are a living creature on this planet, you have ‘man’ listed as one of your natural enemies, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an elephant, a shark, or a baby kitten. Sure, human beings are aggressive, brutal animals, but by God . . . we’re very, very effective.

Thing is, you don’t take thousands of years of aggressive, violent, bloody instinct out of an entire species overnight.

And what does reality television focus on? Why, it focuses on angry people, or excited and crying people, or people who are *this* close to getting into a fist-fight. They focus on what’s ugly, or competitive, or humiliating, or aggressive, or violent, and they broadcast only those moments to as many people that will watch. The hours and hours of peaceful coexistence gets piled up on the cutting-room floor. They’re trafficking misery, the ability to judge and feel smugly superior to the poor hapless bastards you’re watching, thankful that you’re not one of them.

Maybe that’s a little closer to the truth than people are comfortable with. Most people aren’t as happy when good things happen to them as they are when bad things happen to people who aren’t them. Maybe it’s that shot of adrenaline that wakes us up from the cold, the numb. Maybe that satisfies the blood-drinking savage in you, the one you’re suppressing day-in and day-out.

The next time you pass a wreck on the side of the road, try to ask yourself why you’re looking. Then, when you have a second, look up the word ‘junkie’.

Update: Black Glass – still chugging away at 50%

Yeah, this whole Wednesday update got kind of dark on me. Maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that I’m barely halfway through the chapter right now. Maybe it’s because of a bunch of stuff. Maybe I just need a good night’s sleep.

Hey, that’s a hella plan!

Well, stumbled through the doors pretty late last night, and as a result I didn’t have much of a chance to do my update, never mind performing some even more complex maneuvers, like think. So, very quick update this morning on where I’m at, because I don’t have much more time for anything else.

Update: Pride – Previous total + 10 paragraphs

Worked on some actual new stuff, in a brand new un-started chapter 11 in section 2. I actually started it – brand new words and everything. This ‘breaking back into the unfinished story after multiple edits’ thing has really opened my eyes as far as stuff like that goes. Turns out you can be so happy with the direction your words have taken you on a re-read that you get inherently anxious about adding new words to them . . . like when you’re painting and you get one part of the canvas just the way you like it and you think to yourself, “Yeah, that’s good!” and then suddenly you’re afraid to add any paint to it at all, because it might ruin the whole thing.

Hmmm, maybe that’s not the best idea – taking something that very few people have experienced and comparing it to something else very few people have experienced. How else can I put it?

Okay, it’s like . . . you’ve just watched Season 1 of Heroes, and you’re afraid to watch Season 2, because Season 1 ended so perfectly, and you don’t want to see anything bad happen to those characters you left at the finale.

Yeah, that’s much better I think.  :)

The weekend was spent relaxing and getting some rest, since the previous week had been filled with such tales of unspeakable horror and a soul-crushing workload that can only properly be expressed through a Science-Fiction Trilogy, and uses words that I have yet to learn.

Once I was back to feeling more or less human, that is to say ‘once I regained consciousness’, I noticed that I had a seven-day growth of beard on my chin, had qualified for an imaginary PGA tour, and had sketched a quick note about a wrestler who died and willed his wrestling talent to a young boy.  Then, after attempting to go to sleep at 10:00, I noticed a strange sort of pain in my arm, one that I couldn’t un-notice until 2:00am, and only with the assistance of pain-killers.

So, this Monday = “Ugh”, as I may have just mentioned. Similarly, updates = “Ugh” as well.

Quarry – Outlining still 50% done

Ah, but I have spent a couple of hours sitting down and thinking about the story, pondering what sorts of encounters could be exciting, and how to make the existing ones even more interesting in an adrenaline-pumping sort of way.

Shakespeare – The Scottish Play – Act 3 Scene 1 50% Done

What is it with this guy?! I mean, who thinks like that?! Anyways, yeah . . . Macbeth is about to kill his war buddy. What a charming guy. “Oh noes, I have to kill Banquo because he might know! And then I have to kill his son! And the butler! And the ice-cream man! And . . . and . . . and the whole world!”

I’m sensing that Bill Shakespeare didn’t much care for the Scottish people.

New Idea! (Oh no, not again!) Untitled Future Memory Swap Project

See that note up there about the Wrestler who died? Yeah, it’s along those lines. Semi-complete story, with a nice Phillip K. Dick sort of premise inside of it. Gotta think for a while, mull things over, find out if it’s really a workable and unique sort of idea, or if I just had a flash of imagery that made me go “Hey, cool!”, but which was actually something I half-remembered from an episode of Mission Impossible.

Didn’t go to work today, due to the fact that I woke up at around 3:30 this morning and made five separate trips to the bathroom, three of which involved some very “Wow, I must be sick” activities, two of those being accompanied by sounds like those you’d find in the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Y’know . . . the Bog? The one in that muppet movie with David Bowie, and they went to the bog, and . . . whoosh! C’mon, people . . . work with me here!

Okay, so loud-ish bass tuba noises aside, I did get some stuff done.

Poison Princess – 3 pages done on Chapter 4

Yeah, starting to like this whole scenario, because I really really hate the bad guys in it. It’s all about the “GAH! Oh, I hope something bad happens to you, buddy!” kind of vibes. The monsters are doing monstrous things, and you find yourself hoping for the person you’re supposed to be hoping for. Hard work, actually.

Shakespeare Project #2 – Act 1 Scenes 1 & 2 80% done

Yes, this is project #2. Turns out that most of what I went through with Project #1 transfers over to #2, so actually getting down to business and writing #2 is looking like a piece of cake. I spent all that time working on a usable format, and now that I have, I can just plunk all these new words into that format, and create content in the template that will be used for printing! This’ll be easier than trying to get a cat to ignore you!