A stunning revelation.

All right, my subconscious and I usually get along pretty well. I trust him, and he's honest with me. We don't talk much, but we know the other's routine well enough to compensate for it. We're like roommates that communicate only through notes on the fridge:

"Aqua: Really appreciated that impulse purchase yesterday. It's a great shirt. Thanks! -Denton"

"Dent: Glad you liked it! I'll be out hunting story ideas for a day or two -- let me know what you thought of "Stardust" when I get back. -Aquadeo"

(So what if I named my subconscious after my Internet handle? I had to name it something, and "LukeDuke76" was taken.)

Anyway, I think I might have to have a man-to-superman discussion with Aquadeo tonight. And it's not because he keeps eating my breakfast cereal. You see, my November novel is about the adventures of some wayward ghosts, lost in their city. With no residence, and no possessions, all they can do is wander the streets, trying to focus on a small area that they can become familiar with, so that at least they've got a semblance of home. They're told by another ghost of a great being, "The Caretaker", which will come for them, and take them on to their intended destination in the afterlife.

However, when the Caretaker does appear... well, this is where I wanted to put in a Godzilla attack. Of course, a giant radioactive lizard might violate some copyrights, so I designed my own monster. I call him Nodrog. Nodrog is what you'd get if an 19th century foundry became possessed, and started absorbing all the mud and brick and asphalt around it to grow arms and legs. It picks up a layer of pavement with every step. It has smokestacks jutting out of its back like spines, acting as exhaust pipes. On its face, under two glowing yellow eyes, is a nigh-immobile weld of rebar and plate, frozen in a toothy grin. Its real mouth, however, is in the center of its chest, huge, gaping, and all-consuming.

Now, it may be a monster, but it's still the Caretaker. Therefore, it absorbs ghosts into itself when they come too close, and those ghosts forever lose their individuality, sucked up into the Caretaker's collectiveness.

Now, I was having a fun time writing my novel up until today... but now, I've got the Caretaker lose in the city, chasing these ghosts through the city streets, eating and destroying everything it passes along the way.

Have you noticed the problem yet?

I'M WRITING A PAC-MAN FANFICTION.

What have I done? How did this happen? And how long had Aquadeo known, and simply decided not to tell me? Believe you me, I would have preferred finding this out before I'd written 40,000 words. Ugh.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I still like the novel, I'm still having fun, and I'm still going to finish it. On the other hand, this is going to take a lot more editing than I initially thought.

It's for research purposes.

Tonight, I dine on chicken wings while watching "Godzilla vs. Mothra vs. King Ghidorah".

Regardless of the benchmark you use to judge February fourteenth -- that's a pretty good Wednesday evening right there.

0 min: Whoa. Its full title is "Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack". The quality of this film has just improved considerably.

5 min: Interesting... according to the story, Godzilla was thought to be destroyed fifty years ago (in the first movie), although a monster attack on New York City last year has the army worried. They're actually acknowledging the Hollywood abomination in this 2003 production! Although they can't help but have one character comment, "I don't think that was the real Godzilla, though." Well, good for them.

15 min: Let me get this straight... those tanks can launch missiles, which open up their nosecone to reveal giant drill bits. Then, the drill clamps onto its target. Then, the drill starts to bore, itself being separately rocket-powered. Finally, when the drill has gone underneath the surface of the rockslide, only then does the explosive inside actually detonate.

Either that's the most extreme landscaping in history, or this is foreshadowing.

20 min: "The epicenter has moved underground"? In any other genre, I'd be throwing my remote at the display right now.

30 min: GODZILLA!

35 min: BARAGON!

37 min: Ouch. That had to hurt. No wonder Baragon didn't get his name on the title.

40 min: MOTHRA!

45 min: KING GHIDORAH!

(Blogging disabled during fifty minutes of giant monsters battling, until the end credits)

ohhhhhhhhhhh, yeah.

That's definitely a quality Wednesday.

G'night, all!

I wanted Harrison Travolta; I got John Ford.

I've always found 'meets' descriptions to be a necessary ugliness in marketing. You know the sort: describing Kung Fu Hustle as "David Zucker meets The Shaw Brothers", or Serenity as "John Wayne meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the Millenium Falcon." I always cringe when I see those sorts of phrases in advertising -- they compliment neither subject nor object of comparison.

The other danger to them is the lack of focus. In 2004, I tried writing a novel entitled "The Quoxcerpt", and I had pitched it to myself as "Saturday Night Fever meets Indiana Jones". Awesome like a glee bomb, right?

Unfortunately, it put me in a situation familiar to all Canadians: defining my identity by what it resembles, then trying to prove that it doesn't. In the end, the novel turned into "Xanadu meets Cory Doctorow", which wasn't quite the same thing.

And yet, here I go again. A concept so bizarre that I can't turn down the challenge of writing it: The Secret of NIMH meets Godzilla.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but I'm definitely enjoying the research -- in addition to the horrible, wonderful movies, I've bought copies of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Watership Down, and an undergraduate textbook on parasitology.

Don't put that glee bomb away just yet.