Mood:  caffeinated

How much mileage can I get out of the same decent rendering of my main villain? A bit, as it turns out. In my next chapter he's gonna be caught on candid camera during a bit of a horrific slaughter on a dwarf planet called 'Ceres'...

Contrary to popular thought, the BYDO don't have an actual 'taste' for human blood.

That's just Antithesis's thing... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 10:40 PM ADT

Updated: Sunday, 1 July 2007 10:45 PM ADT

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Mood:  on fire

Looks like the sand-eating, 4th-century-old shitfaced towelheads are at it again. This time they've hit Scotland.

(Okay, yes: it's Glasgow, but that's STILL technically Scotland...)

 Let's say this again, you 'religion of peace' practitioners:

 Fuck you. You want Sharia law worldwide? FUCK YOU. We will NOT live in the 4th century, like you all do, and I SORELY regret that 20th century devices like machinery, electricity, and technology ever managed to trickle into your back-ass-water countries.

(DISCLAIMER: Shane knows a few American Muslim practitioners, they're friends, and they're spot-on okay, but about 90-percent of 'em worldwide are really NOT...)

Fuck you: Arab street. You are not the future: you are the distant past, and the best you can ever hope for is annihilation in a full-scale West-vs-Middle East conflict (in 'Typers' I call that the "ARAB WAR", and if you're wondering, it does NOT end well for you...)

May Allah have mercy on you all.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:46 PM ADT

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Mood:  happy

I've had a couple small 'Little Nemo' books lying around for awhile now (that's LITTLE NEMO, not the guy who built the Nautilus...) and my new one came in the mail just the other day:

This baby's got it all: fairly high-quality reprints and TONS of 'em. It's not nearly as gigantic or detail-oriented as the stunning 'So Many Splendid Sundays' edition, but it doesn't cost 100+ dollars, either...

...affordability is a spicy aphrodisiac, after all...

I guess my attitute towards this dated little comic strip are clear: 'Best... Comic... Ever..' (with 'Calvin and Hobbes' a close second....)

Oh, and just while we're on the subject: BEST... VIDEO GAME... EVER!

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT

Updated: Saturday, 30 June 2007 2:47 PM ADT

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Mood:  irritated

More 'fishines' from one of Uncle Sam's leading exporters.

I rather loathe Communist China.

Yes, I'm an American, and yes, I LOOOVE Capitalism and yes, I'm somewhat tainted by patriotic zeal, but look: China is a country that absolutely HATES open discourse, and a country that still calls the Tiananmen Square Massacre a 'non-issue'. Try finding ANY dissatisfaction with the Jackboot thugs of the Communist Party on the 'People's' Daily. 

Now these shoddy goosesteppers are literally poisoning the planet, both with carbon emissions (of which they have easily outstripped the US) and their blatantly toxic and dangerous products, from deadly dog food to Toxic 'Thomas the Toy Trains' and antifreeze-addled toothpastes.

And though I may loathe Red China, I reserve my REAL hatred for North Korea. If the Chinese government is a brutal thug, then North Korea's leaders are a bunch of genocidal psychopaths who literally leave their people in the 'dark'. Those wackos in the North are also China's 'little brothers', too: so the very existence of a North Korea is another reason to hate the Chinese leadership.

In my book I include the 'Sino-Confederacy' as a somewhat outcast branch of the greater 'Allied Military'. They're kind of like the creepy kid in the back of the classroom that spends all his time drawing decapitated bunny rabbits and eating paste: no one dares approach 'em, and no one really wants to.

By the time of 'Typers' I have South Korea overrun by the North (seeing's how North America was wiped off the map by a fallen 'Bydo Mass'. Without those 'evil' Americans to protect 'em, I've no doubt that the Southies will fall to their 'friendly' Northern neighbor. Anyway: I envision 'Unified Korea' as being opposed by a tiny island nation of free-living Koreans (think Taiwan, if you like) that I call the 'Airen'.

None of this has come up in my story much, but I expect to dedicate a good-sized story-arc to the Tears' Shower Squadron's unpleasant run-in and dealings with such an expanded nightmare state.

The kind of evils embodied in North Korea's setup, as well as China's business practices, are far more vile than anything I could image the Bydo Empire perpetrating.

And now I'll just step off this soapbox before I fall... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 4:35 PM ADT

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Mood:  sharp

 So I have a new favorite t-shirt (this one replaces a heavily faded and coffee-stained faux-vintage Rolling Stones '75 North American tour shirt):

This is a present from someone, actually, and I think it's bloody fantastic. It's actually renewed my interest in the original thought-experiment. I'm kinda an amateur science-nerd (not smart enough to be the real thing) and I like to work scientific theories and principles into my writing. By comparing and contrasting them with observations on human nature I at least get writing that SOUNDS smart, whatever the truth may be. In a previous chapter of TYPERS I used the concept of magnetic/electrical dipoles to illustrate how people who are very alike or very different can both attract and repel each other (just like electricity-versus-magnetism).

In the case of 'Schrodinger's Cat' I like to think there's literary gold to be mined as well. For example: a kitty-kat can't be both alive AND dead at the same time, so isn't it true that a person can't both love and hate another person, experiencing both emotions equally and at the same time? The answer would be 'yes', they can: emotional ambivalance is more than common, isn't it? Human emotions suffer from the same 'quantum indeterminacy' that the decaying nuclear isotope in Schrodinger's Box suffers from.

Our attitudes and feelings are nebulous- like the nature of a nuclear particle, and not tangible and fully-explainable- like the vital stats of a tiny kitty-kat.

That's part of being human. 

Well, that settles that: one of my future chapters is almost sure to be themed along those lines (I doubt that the title ITSELF would be 'Schrodinger's Cat', but the thought experiment will certainly make an appearance, somewhere...)

...maybe I could have one of my female characters dress-up in a catsuit?

Okay: I need to stop now...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:41 PM ADT

Updated: Wednesday, 27 June 2007 2:42 PM ADT

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Mood:  silly

"Your tongues can't repel flavor of THAT magnitude!"

 I'm not a major Star Wars geek, but that line is one of the funniest god-damned things I've ever heard...

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Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 4:53 AM ADT

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Mood:  chatty

Hiya!  My name's Shane.

This li'l ol' blog is getting started mostly because I have a patent love of originality, and it's so VERY original to be starting a blog these days, isn't it?

Eh, don't answer that...

These days it seemed like myself and two of my neighbor's dogs were the only people without a blog, so I've decided to keep this concrete database of my most brilliant and educational thoughts (as well as any good chile-con-carne recipies, if they happen to come up). I do this as a side to my 'main' site on the interweb: I'm the author of the TYPERS novel series (if you're reading this right now then you already know that because you almost certainly came here from there...)

Anywhoo: I figure that this little nook'll serve to dish up a hotbed of my opinions and ideas (who wouldn't love that?). A LOT of the stuff here will be related in some way to my books and the writing process in general, more of an informal brainstorm and 'behind-the-scenes' discussion (and because of this I'll likely be half-trashed on Grolsch when I cobble together most of these entries: pray for coherence, dear reader, pray...)

Other entries will likely be more 'free-floating': by that I mean whatever floats my boat or ticks me off on that particular day. While we're at it I do NOT expect to make this the ultimate site of bloggy goodness: don't expect the moon, folks, but if it's mildly entertaining you can think you've come out on top...

For my first official entry I thought I'd go over the name of the blog itself: Cotton Thistle Clearance. The title comes directly from a theme in my books, but the name is actually born from a very 'prickly' experience I had some years back.

First, the book part: 'Typers' is (loosely defined) a military science fiction series, and anyone who's read my online drafts knows that my fictional military security clearances are given the names of deadly plants ('Belladonna' clearance, for example, is inferior to 'Digitalis' clearance).  The highest possible clearance, however, is named for the Scotch Thistle, AKA the 'Cotton' Thistle (it ain't poisonous, but it hurts like HELL when it pinches your bare skin...)

This site kinda gives you (the reader) the highest 'clearance' into my mental processes (stop me if this drippy prose makes you feel nauseous...) so it's an apt name, and the real story behind it is more humerous and embarassing than anything:

Several years back I was on summer holiday over in Scotland (which, if you didn't already know, I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY like...). I was in a place called the Trossachs near Loch Katrine with some buddies. We were wasted ('natch) and did some off-trail hiking. When we finally FOUND the trail again we were separated from it by a wide streak of purple-headed flowers (the eponimous Cotton Thistle) and, long story short, I made a bet that I could jump those spiny bastards in a single bound...

Turns out that I couldn't. I was wearing shorts that day, and that night I was wearing a slimy film of Neosporin... 

Back then I certainly didn't have 'Cotton Thistle Clearance' (that's another thing I love, by the way: puns, so live with it, 'kay?) but now I DO have it, for better or for worse. So, there it is. I hope you can enjoy it.

Cheers.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:15 PM ADT

Updated: Monday, 25 June 2007 4:56 AM ADT

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