Returning to the Mage Game

As many of you know I tried to run a game of Mage the Awakening awhile back with disatrerous results. More recently however, I am working on a new, more organized coherent idea for a game of Mage the Awakening. As my first run into the world of running World of Darkness games, I am getting very ambitious as I am going to be setting it preferabbly over a period of 22 years and it is going to start in the year 1923. This is going to give me my own chance to interpret the world of Mage the Awakening, mostly by writing about the early history of the Free Council after it joined up with the Atlantean Orders. (Before the counterculture-technology and magic are compatable Mages joined up with the Mages who trace there origin back to Atlantis). It also gives me a chance to have adventures with all sorts of fun stuff like Modernism, Alistair Crowley and Occult Nazis, the last two of which are unavoidable when writing a Mage game in this relative time period in my opinion. I'm also changing from usual World of Darkness format in that the game will not take wholley in a single city. I am in fact planning on setting it across most of Europe, especially in Paris and Weimar Berlin, with various possible detours in America, Spain and the Soviet Union. I've got a pretty good idea for the general direction, and I'm working in various little sub-plots and things that will happen, since I'm working with the idea that the characters are going to Forrest Gump their way thorugh history, getting into drunken boxing matches with Hemingway, inspiring Einstein's theory of relativity, having Crowley look over your shoulder every once in awhile for the Pentacle, stuff like that.
However, I am thinking about setting the story in a single city to start with and at the moment I'm torn between Paris and Weimar Berlin. Paris is, well Paris, but I think in the long run Weimar Berlin will be a better choice. Paris in the 1920s appeals to me mostly because I'm a writer and Paris in the 1920s to me is all about James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway and stuff like that. Weimar Berlin however, along with being artistic, has the advantage of being a veritable powder-keg politically. In between the Cabarets and sex you have facsists and communists fighting each other in the streets, and what's more it would . I think it would appeal more to the players since I feel I can do more in Berlin then just the Lost Generation. The characters could easily play that angle, but they could also do, say the science angle since Albert Einstein was also alive at this time. They could also play the political angle, and join up with the various political aspects. They could also go into the occult thing since I'm boning up on the occult roots of Nazism, but I doubt that any of the players will do that. I'm the guy most likely to play an occultist. I do hope that most of the characters were in World War One though, because I'd like most of the characters to be similar in some respect.

Again, I'm going to play a lot with the Mage order of the Free Council, which in game is still a recent development. So far I'm thinking that they are currently the most powerful order in Berlin, mostly because they fit well with Weimar Berlin. I believe that Paris is going to be a Silver Ladder city, but the Free Council is also very popular there. I've also decided that Alistair Crowley is going to be (at least nominally) a member of the Free Council as I have decided that in game terms he is an actual Mage, in fact a fairly powerful Mage but I don't think he's going to be that involved in Mage politics as he is more concerned with Thelema. I still don't know exactly what to do with the Free Council, except that I want to explore it as an order.

Sorry for dropping so much lingo for you.

Concerning Michael Court

Sending my short fiction to my friend Michael is one of my favorite things, largelly because he always gives great reviews. I think I could easily count him among one of my few fans outside my family. I just sent him "Godot is Dead," and he went on about how much he loved it. It may just be because he always sends emails in huge font, but he did ask me "Are you SURE you're not copying these stories from someone else and making an absolute fool of me? It's not just that they are so intelligent, it's that they are so grown-up and witty." I can also back this up because whenever he talks about my stories he's practically as enthusiastic as me, probubly more because he's more openly emotional then I am.

Michael, as I call him, is an old guy I meet at the local coffee shop readings we used to have. He was writing poetry at the time, like most people who went and we would usually talk about things after at a bar. Once Seymour and I even managed to talk him into coming over to my place and we talked about writing and stuff. It was alot of fun, since I see Michael as a very important person in my life, an older wiser writer who has more experience in such things as poetry and the great writers and things that would involve wisdom. He's really a drastically different personality from mine, which is probubly a good thing because he is more upbeat then me and I can be a pretty dark and depressing person sometimes. Look at the last post to see what I mean, I found that funny and that was about an assassination attempt. A really lame ass assassination attempt, but still.

I can't really describe Michael's work that well. I've read a bit of a short story he wrote about a boy who was lost in the Amazon and alot of his poetry, which reminds me of Rumi, short and sparse and with a beauty of it's own that I don't appreciate as much as I should. We do have something of a minor compotition to see who will be the first one to publish a full length novel, so we'll probubly look over it at somepoint. I'd like to read over his novel since it sounds pretty interesting.

If All Obama's potential assassins are this stupid, then he's going to be okay

A friend of mine once showed me this sight called Fundees Say The Darnedest Things, which basically makes fun of all the crazy stuff Fundamentalists Say, such as the world is really 6000 years old and atheists worship Satan. Well, I'm looking through there sister sight Conspiracy Theorists Say the Darnedest Things, when I came across this attempt at Barack Obama's life. If you like dark humour then this is for you, but I must warn you there are some racist comments that I don't share. I found the overall presentation hilariously incompetent.

ok we have 6 days until my Presidential Assasination.

Yes, I have decided I will assasinate Barack Obama. It's really nothing personal about the man. He speaks well, has a loving although controlling wife and two cute daughters. But I know it's for the country's own good that I do this. And I'm not racist either, my family is a little, but isn't all Italian and european families? I mean how many times have you heard the word nigger in the comforts of your home? I have a lot, and it really bothered me and I would confront them about it. No, it's not because I'm racist that I will kill Barack, it's because I can no longer allow the Jewish parasites to bully their way into making the American people submit to their evil ways. How many of you Obama supporters are now disappointed after some of his arm-twisted Jewish appointee decisions??? Make's you think he's not really in charge(which he isn't). No it's the same old, same old filthy muther-fucking kikes who are
poisoning America, who have murdered thousands of innocent lives on 9-11-01, and
are thinking that they are going to get away with it again.

Barack, I view more as a sacrificial lamb, but the sacrifice MUST take place. He had good intentions, but like the Steve Taylor song goes, "a politician next door, swore, he'd set the Washington arena on fire, thinks he'll gladiate them, but they're gonna make him a liar."

So, I'm stuck here in Mississippi, and I'll need bus fare or some way of getting to Washington. I don't own a gun, so maybe someone can give me one. And I'll need a leak in the secret service to get a close up shot, somewhere close to the podium, since I've never fired a gun, so I need to get an easy shot off. Wattdysay fellas? Any help?

You all know we can't live with the jewscum anylonger, dont cha? You got a better solution? I'm all ears.

Stevie

(Note: This man was reported by an admin and arrested by the
secret service)

Alright, for those of you who missed this I am now going to go over what he did wrong.

1. Said he was going to kill the President of the United States on the Internet
2. SAID HE WAS GOING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE INTERNET!
3. Said he wasn't racist then began to berate the Jews
4. Asked the nice racists hillbillies on the Internet for support. He asked for a gun, an opening in to shoot Obama from (which I presume he would get from the people who are trying to make sure this doesn't happen) and BUS FAIR! I mean, the gun and the opening was ballsy, but freakin' bus fair!
5. Used his name and gave a basic address (Stevie, Mississippi)
6. Gave a time frame of this (6 days)
7. Presumed the Fed were stupid.

I thought I'd just post this for my readers because the FBI shouldn't be the only people laughing at this guy.

Games and Stories

Last night I finished watching Season 1 of the Wire. I didn't bring that up, that I was watching the Wire. It's a police/crime drama from HBO that is pretty good. After watching it I want to set a Hunter: The Vigil game in Baltimore, but at the moment I am working on two different World of Darkness Games, one is a Mage: The Awakening Game that is to be set between the first two world wars and a Chanegling: The Lost game to be played here in my hometown. A friend of mine wants to see how these roleplaying games work, and I thought I'd do WoD. Changeling just came from the fact I'm setting it in my hometown, which I see as either having Changelings or Werewolves, and I'm going with Changeling. It's also appropriate because Changeling usually has that crazy aspect, and most of my friends are a bit crazy.

I'm also working on a short story called "Leviathan." I'm not going to get to much into it, but I wrote the first bit last night. I ended up getting a sort of spiritual high from writing it, and I hope to try doing more of it later tonight when everyone else is asleep. It may also be a good idea to do it while I'm on that high. When I'm done I think I'm going to send it to The New Quarterly. I doubt that my last story "The Summet of the Minotaurs," will be published since it is actually a part of my first novel.

Also, I'm thinking more and more about getting involved in somekind of Spoken Word thing. I've been liseaning to quite alot of Spoken Word poetry and I'm getting the point where I'm thinking, I can do that. Also, the few times that I've gotten involved in poetry. The problem is I'm not really that into the idea of getting up on stage and performing. It may be a passing fad or something.

Crack Squirrels! (a poem by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz)

Trip Involving My Spine, Used Books and a Thrift Store

It's been a very busy day, far more busy then I'm used to. The first thing is that I was waken up around 6:30 AM because I had to go to the hospital. As some of you may know, I have a metal rod in my back and my posture isn't that good due to a curvature in my spine and my poor muscle tone. There is all kinds of history that I won't go into, but a lot of people were noting how I tend to lean when I walk. So my parents and I drove down to the big hospital place out of town and saw a doctor. I got an x-ray and the doctor talked with me and my parents and I'll probably go back in a year or two because I do have a curvy spine and if it progresses I'll need to have another operation. It's nothing to worry about however, because it doesn't appear that any curvature is happening.
After that we went to a place called Attic Books, which is a used bookstore that I wanted to look into. I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. I picked up the following books...

• Minor Characters, by Joyce Johnson (a memoir of one of Kerouac's ex-girlfriends)
• The Delicate Prey and Other Stories, by Paul Bowles
• Billy Budd and Other Stories, by Herman Melville
• Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Luis Fernando Verissimo (a murder mystery involving Jorge Luis Borges, Kabbalah, John Dee and a the hypothetical monkey on a type writer. It's by a Portuguese guy I've never heard of who also is a cartoonist and plays the saxophone)

I also saw a notice on a poetry slam, which is in the city of London were I was. No use hiding it anymore. Here's a link, mostly for me but I figured you guys might want to see it. I've been curious about going to one of these poetry slam things.

After that my parents dragged me to a mall so they could pick up a wind chime and get me clothes. Strangely, going to the wind chime place was good for getting clothes, because it was a typical hippie new age type store and I ended up having a conversation with a rather nice lady who worked at the place, which started because one of the disc things in there Wiccan section was upside down, so it looked like a Satanic pentagram as compared to a Wiccan pentagram. I fixed this and explained it to the lady. The key is that the Wiccan Pentagram is one point up, and the Satanic pentagram is two points up. We talked about stuff which eventually lent to how my parents were going to get some clothes and she suggested this nice thrift store place that I forgot the name off. We went there and picked up some new clothes. I liked it a lot, even if I couldn't get the rather cool trench coat. It was made by a group called London Fog, so I'm looking into that. Plus, my mom says that if I shop at Thrift Stores now then she won't be coming with me because she hates thrift stores. Said that it looks frumpy. We also got birthday presents for various relations, which I won't go into because they are probably reading this.

Roberto Bolano and Me

My relationship with Roberto Bolano and his work is like a Roberto Bolano novel. I have read the works of Roberto Bolano, I have gotten down on my knees in awe of the man's work and in some example of cosmic irony I will never see him. It's not like in Bolano's work, where he is hiding out in the Sonara Desert, he simply died before I could meet him face to face.

I've been thinking of this because I've been reading 2666, which is Roberto Bolano's last novel in every sense of the word. It was the last novel he ever wrote and it is the culmination of years of writing novels. I can see connections with The Savage Detectives, since both have plot elements of searching for a writer that has disapeared. This is also key to my relationship to Bolano and his writing, because somehow you loose the writer, or never find the writer.

This is all part of somekind of underlining fatalism that runs through Bolano's work, but despite this I can't help but feel somekind of optimism that runs through his work. I wondered earlier if Bolano believed in God, and if so what he thought of God. That might help me understand his writing more.

I'm trying to emmulate Bolano's writing at the moment. He has a certain way of writing that I am picking up in his translations. For one thing he almost never uses dialouge. I'm trying that in a short story, but I don't want to get to into it because then I'll sound too much like Bolano. This is also part of another story where I, or my fictional avatar, goes on a mission to find Roberto Bolano, or a fictional avatar of Roberto Bolano, in the Sonora Desert or something. I don't know if I'll write this, because it sounds to much like a Bolano story, or if I'll just write it as a piece of Gonzo literary criticism.

Maybe Bolano still is alive, maybe he is hiding out in the Sonora Desert, or maybe he has left warnings about something that lurkes in the Sonora Desert, something sinister. Maybe it is ourselves.

Aspergers Review

Yesterday Mom and I went to see some psychologists about an assessment I did awhile back. The assessment was basically something along the lines of checking to see how my Aspergers diagnosis was going and what I should do to concentrate on work. Well, I still have Aspergers Syndrome, but it also turns out that I have some, but not all, the symptoms of Attention Defecate Disorder. The psychologists also said that I should look over books and Internet articles about Aspergers Syndrome and ADHD, since it could help.

They also brought up that it may be a good idea for me to go on meds, just to help my low attention span. This could help me concentrate more, give me the ability to take notes and even help my writing. So far, I'm indifferent to all of this. The pros have already been stated, but the cons are that I'd be taking meds. My dad thinks it would be better to avoid the whole thing and try and concentrate on my own, but I've never really been that good on that because I'm distracted easily. Heck, I've been fiddling around on the computer while I was making this post.

The psychologists also gave me an assessment about my intelligence. I can't really remember most of it since I was a bit drowsy, but I am apparently have higher then average book smarts, but most of that is obscure knowledge. God, I wish I had a better memory of what they were talking about. I do remember that they said that I find "regular" society boring, which is true, and that I'm only good at things that interest me, which is also true. I also came off as particularly eccentric and socially unskilled by leafing through some books and at one point bringing up possible studies in Numerology.

It's Dostoyevsky!

Take a good look at this picture and then watch this.

There are two possible conclusions, One, that's a good actor. Two, that Dostoyevsky is immortal.

Well, it can't get no worse

Saw Pippin last night. You know, that musical that is so big with teenagers. It's got dancing and spectacle, existential angst. I have to say that I enjoyed it for what it was, but normally I wouldn't see something like this. I'm honestly not that big on big spectacle things. Also, the end freaked me out a bit. I won't give it out, but I almost got into a shouting match with one of the characters. My parents, who are probubly reading this now, would be surprised by this but I was feeling a bit threatened. Since the play broke the fourth wall so many times I feel I am justified in this a bit.

Also, while I was waiting for my cousin to get back I ended up impailing my left hand with a pencil, largelly by accsident. My mom says it's a miracle that I was able to go so long wih so many pencils without this happening. I wouldn't say it was traumatic, but it happened very fast and my hand still hurts.

It's Getting Better All The Time

So I'm walking around my local bookstore, don't intend on buying anything just browsing as I usually do when what should appear but a copy of Roberto Bolano's 2666. The last great novel of his career, his alleged magnum opus. I check to see how much it is, since the last time I saw a copy of this book it was $37.00. This copy however is only $7.99. I knew I had to buy it. It took me awhile and a quick phone call to my dad, but I know own my very own hardcover copy of 2666. I am taking this as a good omen for my interview.

Getting Better

Things are looking better for me more and more. I got up at a desent time yesterday (9:3o AM), but not today because I was lazy, but the good news is I found the secret. It's to put my alarm clock at a distance from myself. Along with that I am going to have an interview for a job soon. I'm not going to go into any detail, but I am looking forward to it. If things get any better, I'll be having short stories published in major magazines, having my name reached out to all corners of the literary world.

I've been thinking about the movement I've been working on, and the idea that I'd start a movement is scaring me. A friend of mine is discussing founding a magazine with me about this, and I'm starting to realize I don't want to run a magazine. I don't have the neccisary skills to run a magazine. I don't even want to run a magazine. It will cut into my writing time. The idea is filling me with dread and fear in the long hours of the night, when I have sudden fears of non-existance. I'm going to bring this up to my friend, that I don't want to get involved in this.

To be honest, the whole Magic Naturalism thing was just one of my dellusions of starting a new Beat Generation, which all in all is one of the last things I would want. I don't have the social skills of a Ginsberg, or the abbility to run of and hide in my alchoholism of a Kerouac. The best I could do is pull a Burroughs and leave the country for a good long time and wait until it all blows over. That would probubly be my best move, all things considered. But with the Internet would that even matter? Would they just track me down using, I don't know twitter or something? Can they even track me down with twitter if I'm not on it? You know what I'm saying, can I be tracked down using the internet? If I do it right probubly not. I'll have to do it right then, and not tell you, because Time Magazine will be reading this then.

Oh, who am I kidding. It will probubly be Macleans.

I Thought This Would Be Longer

I've had a pretty eventful few days, filled with equal parts activity and ennui. The activity is largelly involved with me going out for a weekend with some relatives to their cottage and watching the film Apocalypse Now. The ennui is my lack of a job and thus my day-to-day activities are not exactly ordered.

The trip to Muskoka I won't go into, just to say that it was an alright trip, I editted a short story I was working on and it was very relaxing. I'll also have some pictures up as soon as my relatives send it to me.

I had been having a strange desire to see Apocalypse Now for awhile. I saw a bit of it, but I never saw the whole movie. Sunday I managed to sit down and watch the entire film. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen and I will put it on the top ten list of the best movies I have ever seen. I'll have to make that list for the blog some day, it would give me something to do.

Speaking of things to do, I am bored most of the time. I am getting up later and later, and there is little reason for me to get up at all. I am barelly reading or writing, and I spend my nights in misery because I can't get to sleep and I have no one to talk too. I am working out a way to get up earlier, for what good it will do me. I'll tell you all about it later.