Cats, Zombies, and Re-Entry

I'm terrible at writing these sorts of posts. By these sorts, I mean the returning-after-a-long-and-unintended-hiatus sorts, the ones that I half-feel require a lengthy justification of my absence, while also the ones I feel that, if they included a long explanation, would be (let's be honest) unnecessary and a little bit boring.

And the longer I put of writing the Return of the Nick post, the more daunting it becomes - and so I put it off a little further. But no more! Here I am, conquering the mountain of procrastination and re-entering the blogosphere.

The truth is, I haven't really been gone for any particular reason (insert wild gasps of astonishment here), so I really want to make one up. And the truth is, having been gone for quite a while, I really miss you guys. I really do. Over the last year and a half I've met some of the most amazing people, and discovered that the internet is more than just a place to rofl at hilarious pictures of cats doing stupid things (although that's probably number two on the list of reasons for the internet's greatness).

I've genuinely loved getting to know so many of you (albeit not quite as many as as I would like), and, while this rather unexpected break was quite nice, I don't think I'm ready to sacrifice all those awesome blogging friends yet. Let's save that kind of stuff for a zombie apocalypse (mwuahahahaha).

I'm not exactly sure how Writing Fire is going to be run from now, but count on it: you haven't seen the last of me!

Wildcard: Awesome Terrible Analogies

The title says it all. These apparently came from the Washington Post, and are hilariously funny. Enjoy!

• He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.

• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

• The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

• You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.

• I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.

• Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

• The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

• He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.

• He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

• The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

• He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Wildcard: Bloodgeoning

Write. Shoot. Cut. Survive. This is the motto of New Zealand's V48 Hour Film Festival, which, several weekends ago, I was lucky enough to take part in. Participants have 48 hours, from 7PM on Friday to 7PM on Sunday to create a short film from scratch, after receiving a number of restriction to prevent pre-planning.


It was seriously the greatest experience in the world.


Notable events were getting a face full of red maple syrup (which actually served as fantastic blood), making far too many Blues Clues references, writing my first ever film script, as well the police showing up to the edge of a forest where we were filming at 3 o'clock in the morning. And, of course, not sleeping.


One of the first things I noticed about being tired from not sleeping was that everything was funny, even when it wasn't - and then some. We had some hilarious moments that didn't really make much sense. The other thing I noticed about not sleeping was that it completely blew my sense of time out of the water. One night, I went to bed at 3AM, got up at 6AM and then had crashed again by noon. And when I woke up at about 1PM, I had no idea why it wasn't dinner time yet.


Anyway, this is the film we made: a short horror called Bloodgeoning. Our restrictions were: horror; a leaf as a prop; an unlucky character named Nicky Brick; a line of dialogue, "I did that"; and at least two seconds of slow motion. Enjoy! Oh, and watch the bloopers too (which are the bottom one), because they're completely awesome!