Recent Writing – August 09

This month has been light on meetings. To that end I’ve taken some time to write on some projects that are not very funny. Though that presupposes that any of my work other is funny by contrast. It’s more accurate to say these recent projects are not intended to be funny. Or perhaps that the bulk of my work is not funny and this will be no exception.

What I’ve been working on:

• This (new) Website
• A gritty war series featuring cute animals
• 15 minute animation series, golden age superheros struggle with issues
• A semi-autobio movie about Frosh week

This (new) Website

Over a few weeks I looked into many avenues for getting off of the cumbersome Joomla 1.5 site. The media managing was crass. The posting was entangled. The lag time was failing saving throws left right and centre. Are these D&D refrences for anyone but me? There were no analytics to speak of. In short, the Joomla site was holding us back. This is not to knock Joomla, but we are just not a savvy group of techies. We write scrips and articles, not code. After a lengthy trial and error process WordPress beat out Blogger and Movable Type for overall bloggability and now here we are.

Band of Beavers (or Badgers)

I saw a preview for G-Force. If you haven’t seen their ads I’ll fill you in: The US army uses animals as soldiers and has done so since carrier pigeons right through to mine defusing dolphins. This is of course a terrible pretext for a talking gerbil movie full of ethnic stereotypes and an abuse of children’s minds. Seeing it’s success I propose the following: It’s WW2 and the Allies aim to make a beachhead in Hitler’s Fortress Europe, their secret weapon against the German war machine? A  crack team of specially trained beavers (or badgers).

It would come down to a 6 webisode series. Maybe 5 minutes each tops. Really 4 minutes of content with the intro and credits. Four principal beavers in little WW2 uniforms with little guns, killing off Nazis and committing war crimes while they deal with character flaws, interpersonal conflicts, and grow together as a family till most get blown right up. To be animated in flash with a style like a much darker Happy Tree Friends. 

Just Terrific

I re-watched the Watchmen movie. I’m a big fan. It got me thinking on a hypothetical question:

“Could a super hero, who was married and had children, when divorced, retain custody of his children?”

To my best ability it seems he could not, but what a court battle that would be. Bare in mind it’s not the squeaky clean alter ego on trial here, it’s the man who upturns cars to crush villains, has a private arsenal in his garage and masked nemeses gunning for him during the off season. Not to mention the hours away from home fighting crime and the poor example of anti-social behavior as he exacts vigilante justice above and beyond the law.

This series would follow the life of Captain Terrific, a blend of Cap America and Iron man but with depression, living in a military compound and struggling though divorce proceedings, government cutbacks to his world saving operations, his idiot friends living on his couch, and the public scorn visited on super heroes, all as he tries to reconnect with his seven year old son and teen-aged daughter. Needless to say he also has layers of psychological damage from year of battle fatigue and the death of his childhood dreams at his own hands, and a defense mechanism that causes him to make terrible puns in the face of adversity using comedy like a crutch.

Example: When fighting an evil ninja scientist in a solar powered battle suit, he says, “Time to feel the impact of fossil fuels!” before crushing him into paralysis under a fuel tanker. News reporters would later show him as a wise cracking sadist.

Frosh, the Movie

This is really just an autobiographical retelling of what happened to me and my pals during frosh week. Think an Ottawa based Superbad in the first year of university: booze, broads, drugs and dirty jokes. It’ll bring back the childish insult “dick tree”, and it’s superlative, ” Cock Jungle”. Used in context: “You are not just a dick, you’re a cock jungle, you are a jungle made of cocks instead of trees”. This is an excerpt from a real conversation that happened in the real residence of 90 University at a real university. This is where frosh week gets real! Word to your Mom.

So that’s what I do when there are no meetings;  I let the mind manatees push idea balls all over the place.