Smoking Lizard Media

© 2020 G.N. Jacobs

Elections, like this last one, aren’t good for me. In keeping with the official “I just help writers” non-political stance of this blog, I’ll leave it at they’re good excuses to freak out over things that haven’t happened, yet. Mostly, because of the need to lash out at the people who voted for the other guy. I promise to be less vague about who I thought the other guy was writing the dealer’s choice of autobiography, memoir or an angry letter to the New York Times.

I take walks late at night. Usually the walk is just about – “Ooh, a full moon, Blue Moon if you’re keeping score!” – or – “Cool! I can actually see Orion and Mars tonight!” – or even just listening to the crickets going nuts in the sagebrush in the city’s intentionally open spaces. However, the election intrudes and I sometimes start the walk raging at people who have otherwise done nothing wrong. I react to the logic of who they like and how these candidates speak about all of our abilities to write without getting leaned on by dipshits that just shouldn’t that much state power in the first place. 

I do have an opinion about which candidate scares me more based on who’s likely to get first at-bats in this area, but I do have to acknowledge my side also has these concerns waiting in the wings. I mention this to keep obfuscating my political opinion for the purposes of this blog that doesn’t get to be this political. All you need to know, my response to censorship of any kind – “Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on…Sir.” – will cause problems should either veil of douchebaggery fall.

Believing the other guy to be the one promoting the more immediate threat to me as a writer, I freak out at the start of the walk raging at family members and friends. If the worst happens, they will have supported the force that put me in jail or executed me. In some cases, I get pooh-poohed because the worst might not ever happen, but pooh-poohing is the single worst way to start talking these things out. 

This all builds into looking like a raging nutter off his meds (nighttime, no one sees) on the outbound leg. Walks by themselves are good for getting over this bullshit however temporarily. On the home leg, I remember that I still love these people and that you shouldn’t buy tomorrow’s problems a day early. 

However, going out angry usually means waking up the next morning sad and depressed. Stay in bed all day sad or consume too many donuts and chocolate-laced coffee sad…take your pick. Accepting few excuses about myself, I have shifted the too many donuts part of the story to eat cereal and try to do something about it in the day’s writing quota more days than I haven’t.

In an effort to chill out when not on these walks I’ve gone in for all kinds of distraction. Baseball (Padres showed up for a great season, yay!). Football (Hey, fellas, we don’t support the Chargers anymore, so maybe show us the East Coast game that turned out to go into overtime?). A few extra go arounds on most things Star Wars and/or whatever shiny object crosses my path on the presently open streaming service. And I also write. All worthy pursuits, until you realize that like most drugs, the good parts about Liquid Distraction are over too soon.

A couple days before the election, I wallowed in the sad at my computer. I decide to check in with a good friend’s blog having forgotten for a couple days. The premise of Tale of Adequacy, a pointy-eared Alien American schoolteacher and superheroine’s daily life acts as the web comic illustration for my friend needing to vent…including an incessant trashing of Aquaman’s total uselessness to the Justice League team. There are ponies (not terribly tolerant of My Little Pony outside the context of this blog) and all kinds of Magic the Gathering (so far, I’ve missed this gaming boat) references and team-ups…with Donut Man, most recently, but there are others.

As shown in the panel above, Cap leans against a roof parapet sharing coffee and donuts with Donut Man. Cap has “generic, Silver Age Alien American superpowers” is teamed with hero having “a complete dominion over coffee and donuts.” Donut Man semi-breaks the Fourth Wall to speak for my friend to let people in on the joke and act of mass distraction that teaming up with a pastry hero is. He says he’s only useful in certain pastry related situations.

And now because I’d spent too much of the preceding couple days sad and yelling at no one in the room and that I’m also occasionally just a contrarian crank, I’m now suddenly acting like Donut Man’s life coach. It is now a matter of honor that I playfully pop off about the possible uses for these super powers in a real spandex fight and I’m going to do it in the blog’s comment box and not texting him as I normally do. A nerd fight can also act as a writing challenge to keep the gears oiled.

I made four points.

One. If the comic book physicists and lawyers rule it so, Donut Man also has access to unlimited coffee. I’m instantly flashing to The Hunt for Red October and Captain Ramius (Sean Connery) smashing the political officer’s head on the table. Then to cover his tracks, he splashes tea everywhere and works up a good bit of shocked, shocked! Thus, coffee is a slip and fall substance.

Two. Complete dominion of all things pastry means being able to come up with donut dough. Screw the mix just right and the consistency can range from thick and sticky gumming up machinery and gluing people to the floor to watery and runny. Runny donut dough is also a slip and fall substance.

Three. This complete dominion also presupposes an unlimited supply of raw materials. My high school chemistry teacher demonstrated raw flour’s flammability throwing it in the air and setting the cloud alight with a match. BOOM! Burning villains’ eyebrows off or worse is nothing to sneeze at. Other ways to be useful might include having access to rum because some donuts use rum-soaked dough…150-proof rum? Or an unlimited store of cooking oil. Oh, right more ways to torch and deep fry bad guys, so pretty much the same category of spandex weapon. Moving on.

Four. The post is still about my friend throwing his own hard elbows entertaining himself in his own way, so I have to acknowledge his thinking with – “never underestimate his ability to give his enemies diabetes.”

Once I’d posted these four points, I suddenly had all kinds of better to my day. I started my walk that evening in a much better frame of mind. I didn’t worry about the upcoming election. And I was happier, all because as I walked, I silently gamed out all kinds of fights in which these superpowers could affect the outcome and save the day. I woke up better, too.

Okay, that basically covers my personal psychology at the moment. This is still a blog that tries to help you all get through your writing day. Can this kind of nerd fight help you? Probably, don’t know…not sure.

For those of you that still need to ask how it only took me a few minutes to bust out my four suggestions for how Donut Man actually helps in a real fight I can retort with…at this point I’m an underpaid professional at these kinds of things. Also Known As repetition, repetition, repetition and, you guessed it, repetition. Start slow and small and don’t pop any ligaments. 

Really though, I have to admit that I’d already created a similar character, Captain Cupcake. Due to an almost Bride of Frankenstein origin that doesn’t need further explaining here, she wakes up with the ability to extrude any chemical substance she can imagine married to a voluminous cybernetic database of applied chemistry solutions which can include cooking. So, I’d already gamed out this lady’s ability to lay olive oil or, worse, 10-W-40 motor oil on the steps as the hero team escapes the villain base amid the union-mandated explosions. As a matter of policy, admit when the wheel already exists.  

Not all nerd fights are created equal. The flavor referenced here is the fun kind where we roll up our sleeves and discuss things like how Superhero X teams up with Superheroine Y. Or discuss what the logical consequences of Spandex Story Element A that might’ve been overlooked by the original creators. Or, even to discuss how tired we might be of certain interpretations of certain 80-year-old characters where their core wound/inciting incident gets referenced at every turn when that origin is all over Wikipedia.

You’ll notice the word discuss highlighted three times in the previous paragraph? Talk it out, don’t yell it out. Otherwise, prepare to get kicked out of the store as the friend referenced and promoted in this post has done many times – “you have no idea how many times I’ve actually had to break up real life versions of The Silver Surfer Kirby v. Moebius fight from Crimson Tide.”

Above all, I see this kind of nerd fight as a problem-solving exercise that can help with more than the chess game of how powers work. Could someone writing a nut busting family squabble benefit from gaming out that fight and the subsequent make up (or bellyflop from the Ten Meter Platform, if the story is a tragedy)? Maybe. Maybe not…don’t let me tell you your writing process. 

The game out session/nerd fight that we do when we’re alone is visually indistinguishable from going completely insane. But then again, everyone with a cell phone who uses Bluetooth earbuds looks insane until you get close enough to see the technology in their ears. Semi-facetiously, I suggest that either the writer understands about not getting caught and/or this bit of wisdom from The Madness of King George – “I have recovered my ability to seem.” – or they have the discussion with somebody real in the room.I thank my friend for teeing up a playful snark fest where I get to pop off about a character he created and didn’t think was anything more than a one-note joke. Which then allows me to distract myself from my lingering sadness at a story for which my meager attempts to change had already been recorded…and reveal a tiny bit of my writing process.

Anyway, reciprocity requires dropping in the link at least twice so that you may enjoy for yourselves. Remember, steal your fun and writing techniques (to the extent they aren’t direct synonyms) wherever you may…