Ralph Pullins

I have been in a loop, a snake eating its own tail.  I've got work to do, words to write, people to help. I've got pending requests and approaching deadlines, and all I can do is sit here and watch internet videos of people falling down, or getting bit by geese. This is not block, which I am convinced is not real, but is a word used by someone who doesn't understand their own story.  I've got stories that I understand.  They are there, all queued up, I've got ten days to complete a tricky bit of storytelling, a strange parallel world and it is important, and not just to me.  And yet, I'm crushing candy, I'm watching stupid TV. I need some rest. I need to stop resting. I am filled with this deep and pervasive apathy, a sense of futility, and the problem is, I feel pretty okay emotionally; I am just having a hard time seeing the point of trying so hard.  Maybe I need to be less ambitions, maybe I need to just give in, and dedicate myself to the pay job, become...

This is all a lie, or at best, a partial truth.  All of this is a caricature, a persona, a mask.  You don't get to see me; you don't get to know me.  You get what I share and this is it. So I have something to say and I'm not sure how to say it, or if I mean what it is that I have to say; I'm just going to pound the keys and hope for the best. I saw something written about the current political situation that said, in effect, on the bright side, think of all the great punk music that will come out of this tumultuous period. It suggested that this may bring about a revival, that there will be a resurgence of the punk movement. I said, hey asshat, we've been here the whole time, just doing what we have always done, without your permission or notice.  We do not need you.  We don't want your approval, we don't care what you people get up to out there. It was a reminder that we are outside for a reason, that legitimacy is not something to strive for, it is the be...

I love watching fail videos.  Some fat guy slips on the ice and smashes his ice cream cone in his own face, trampoline accidents, someone getting whacked in the face at a pinata party, all comedy gold.  I eat it up; I can't help myself.  I like this stuff partly because I feel a certain superiority to these people:  What were you thinking, dumbass?   But mostly I like it because I can recognize my own failures in them.  I, too, have slipped on ice, wrecked my skateboard, fallen off a roof.  I, too, have dropped my ice cream, have tripped on the stairs, have walked into a closed sliding glass door. I saw this video once of a huge ship, coming in to dock, the thing is enormous, like a floating city.  On the video, the ship just plows into the pier, and there is a terrible noise, and the ship just keeps going.  The pier shatters into fragments, and there is a scream of metal, and still the ship just keeps going, carried by its own momentum, deep into the port, where it crashes into a ...

So as has become tradition, I would like to take the last post of the year and review last year's goals, and set new ones for the upcoming year. According to my last post of last year, I laid out the following goals: 1. Write a new book: DONE, though it wasn't the four novellas idea that I thought it might be, instead it turned out to be a middle grade sci-fi adventure story because my boys kept bugging me to write something they could read. It turned out better than I could have hoped and will eventually be a trilogy. 2. Find a home for Flagg : Er. This is still pending. Still pending. Still pending. Note: if you want to be an author, prepare to have every tiny shred of your patience tested, because nothing goes quickly, nothing is certain, nothing is ever final, and even now, I have no idea if the damn thing even arrived at its destination, let alone was read and considered.  Even still, I know the book is good, and will eventually find a good home, so there is that. 3. Have ...

Okay, so I'm not a reviewer, I have no desire to be a reviewer, and I suspect that my reviews don't mean shit to anybody, even if I wanted to write them which I don't. I hate writing reviews. However, I do owe several friends and colleagues reviews.  Since I genuinely have enjoyed their work and want to help share the word, and I know every little share makes a difference, instead of being a dick about it, I thought I would review a bunch of things I have run across recently as well.  Not new stuff, necessarily, but new to me, stuff that I have loved, books and music and other things, and maybe this won't be too boring, making everyone who comes here for the crazy stream of words and ideas just jump ship. Here goes: NOFX, "First Ditch Effort" I mean listen: first and foremost this is a NOFX record which means you pretty much know what you're going to get, which is a bunch of great, fast, polished songs.  These guys have been making killer punk tunes for a ...

Outside, in the streets of this city, in the fields of this country, in the hearts of our citizens, they are lighting fires, they carry their gas and their torches, they are wearing their masks, they are wearing their uniforms and they are carrying their shields, they are painting people with the brushes of their choosing and they are calling them enemy.  The flames roar over long-dead tinder, old threats and grievances dug up, taken down from the attic, where they had sat long forgotten, and they come with their fires to burn all that we have built, and the air fills with smoke and ash, and the skies are lit dirty red and orange.  They are coming. And in here, we sing, a bunch of lost kids, outcasts and freaks, discarded and unwanted, ragged and patched together, taped up, stitched.  In here we turn our faces to the ceiling and we sing. Because we are True Believers. Someday, they will come for us.  Someday, because we shout our defiance to those suits and devils.  We will not kneel, ...

I want to die laughing. I imagine it, this big final guffaw, watching a video of someone falling down or being attacked by a goose, just this terminal laughter, a giggle or a wheeze, that's the way to go out. We're all dying, just some of us faster than others, some are torn away and some drift off, but the destination is the same for each and every soul on this beautiful miserable planet.  Whether it be by accident or murdered by time, we are all on the same ride. I want to be taken away by the Death of the Discworld, like I imagine Terry Pratchett did, the classic hooded skeleton, blue fire eyes.  On the Discworld, you pretty much always get what you expect; the afterlife is what you believe it to be.  I imagine Sir Terry, wherever he ended up, laughing his face off, turning his brilliance on the world itself, holding a funhouse mirror up to distort images into strange shapes, recognizable, but seen from a different perspective. Godspeed Sir Terry. Mind how you go, sir. I wan...