Whenever you feel down because it seems you'll never finish that story... or you've been waiting on that offer letter forever, please consider this striking mockumentary:
Remember, one day you will get there... in a court room with silver cuffs on. And when you do, tell the judge that Eddie Murphy sent you.
:)
One Black woman's mad-feroz fantasy fiction world of talking horses, cheeky damsels, lesbian assassins, cat cities and bedtime stories...
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
It's been a good year for story art, more to come
Before we get to the finale story for this year, let's take a moment and reflect on the madness which is Randitty's ever-changing blog art:
Each feature story on this blog is planned with a corresponding page design. The banner, backgrounds, and even positioning of the sidebar and main wrapper change for every flight of fiction, since I think it's far more fun for the entire reading experience to be thought of as a work of art. At present, I'm working on code that will unite blog posts with their monthly templates, so that it will possible to enjoy feature stories in their shiny, natural habitats. In the meantime, you can always view all the blog designs for previous feature stories on the new Story Artseses page.
And why all the strange slang? I'm not amused with anything that doesn't sound DC-street-fabulous, on this blog.
Next: Jawbreak Blue takes a great big, dramatic breath (when the Redskins do something unthinkable), and then holds it for... I have no idea how long it will take, honestly. So, please don't try holding your breath for the duration of fictional plot-tension at home, folks.
And why all the strange slang? I'm not amused with anything that doesn't sound DC-street-fabulous, on this blog.
...
Next: Jawbreak Blue takes a great big, dramatic breath (when the Redskins do something unthinkable), and then holds it for... I have no idea how long it will take, honestly. So, please don't try holding your breath for the duration of fictional plot-tension at home, folks.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Paperclip Safari, 5 The Blackest Friday
Randiddles
by J. Ingram
And so, the mighty Silverback Titan emerged from the frozen earth, looking for his lost pack (of paperclips). Titan missed his mate Strawberry the most. And the cub, little Pipa. The two juveniles he could leave--and Titan grated silvery metal jaw as he hopped along, enjoying the thought of finally being able to put out the irrascible twins. Joba and Boba were not his own, he sensed, but Strawberry insisted on keeping them along...
Titan had been following his pack's scent trail for many long months. Through summer and fall, over forest trail, in street gutters, and also through an elementary school cupboard... Titan hadn't figured that part out yet. Had Strawberry gone to hibernate someplace around people? How desperate of a situation were they in?
It would be necessary to get to them before true winter set in, because DC winters can be mild and had been for some time before the big blizzard last year. Among paperclips it was called Clipageddon Three. The first had been a hundred years ago, when there was a tornado in DC that blew apart any manner of survival chains they had formed to hold onto trees, car antennae, or so very many government buildings.
The second devastating Clipageddon was during the formative years of the Nation's most popular Office Supply Chain, which is having ALL KINDS OF SALES TODAY--BLACK FRIDAY, ALL YELLOW LEGAL PADS 50% OFF, STAPLES 500 FOR $1, AND PAPERCLIPS, WE'LL SHOWER YOU WITH THE HUSKS OF THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SPIRIT-BROKEN PAPERCLIPS: MOTHERS, BABY CLIPS, WHATEVER YOU WANT, AS SOON AS YOU WALK IN OUR DOORS!!!
And so, you see how terrible it was.
As Titan recalled the old stories (mostly, they were the shiny gesticulations of his grandsire's upper fang), the gray clouds parted over a field in Rock Creek Park and the steely silverback saw what he'd been hunting for.
Strawberry and the cub Pipa were nearby, their scents were unmistakeable. But if he did not see them, then they were upwind somewhere, perhaps very upwind, hiding out in the safety of treetops. No sign of her majestic red, oblong curve...
In the winter clearing, two full grown males stood with fangs fully unfolded and bared, each on his own hindleg (clips have but two ends, when you unfold them). Joba and Boba had grown from juveniles to full silverbacks.
Titan did not like their aggression, he approached from the side, going two-dimensional and less intimidating. They did not heed. The foolishness of youth, to approach him like this, with no respect for what he had done for them! Protecting them, raising them as his own, even if they were vastly annoying and constantly hungry, and launching onto the loose shoestrings of passerby with no regard for the safety of the family pack... and even if Titan didn't enjoy their company... well, he was planning to confront them anyways. But not so dishonorably!
Strawberry had been right to hide. These rogue youths had cruel intent, indeed. Titan only hoped that the cub Pipa was safe, as he began to unwind and refold himself, into something that was all fang.
There had been three Clipageddons in paperclip history. Titan intended to make sure, for Joba and Boba's ruthlessness and complete disregard for the safety of the pack, this would feel like Clipageddon Number Four: The Blackest Friday.
by J. Ingram
Five: The Blackest Friday, part 1
And so, the mighty Silverback Titan emerged from the frozen earth, looking for his lost pack (of paperclips). Titan missed his mate Strawberry the most. And the cub, little Pipa. The two juveniles he could leave--and Titan grated silvery metal jaw as he hopped along, enjoying the thought of finally being able to put out the irrascible twins. Joba and Boba were not his own, he sensed, but Strawberry insisted on keeping them along...
Titan had been following his pack's scent trail for many long months. Through summer and fall, over forest trail, in street gutters, and also through an elementary school cupboard... Titan hadn't figured that part out yet. Had Strawberry gone to hibernate someplace around people? How desperate of a situation were they in?
It would be necessary to get to them before true winter set in, because DC winters can be mild and had been for some time before the big blizzard last year. Among paperclips it was called Clipageddon Three. The first had been a hundred years ago, when there was a tornado in DC that blew apart any manner of survival chains they had formed to hold onto trees, car antennae, or so very many government buildings.
The second devastating Clipageddon was during the formative years of the Nation's most popular Office Supply Chain, which is having ALL KINDS OF SALES TODAY--BLACK FRIDAY, ALL YELLOW LEGAL PADS 50% OFF, STAPLES 500 FOR $1, AND PAPERCLIPS, WE'LL SHOWER YOU WITH THE HUSKS OF THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SPIRIT-BROKEN PAPERCLIPS: MOTHERS, BABY CLIPS, WHATEVER YOU WANT, AS SOON AS YOU WALK IN OUR DOORS!!!
And so, you see how terrible it was.
As Titan recalled the old stories (mostly, they were the shiny gesticulations of his grandsire's upper fang), the gray clouds parted over a field in Rock Creek Park and the steely silverback saw what he'd been hunting for.
Strawberry and the cub Pipa were nearby, their scents were unmistakeable. But if he did not see them, then they were upwind somewhere, perhaps very upwind, hiding out in the safety of treetops. No sign of her majestic red, oblong curve...
In the winter clearing, two full grown males stood with fangs fully unfolded and bared, each on his own hindleg (clips have but two ends, when you unfold them). Joba and Boba had grown from juveniles to full silverbacks.
 |
| A dramatic DC winter sky. So dramatic! |
Strawberry had been right to hide. These rogue youths had cruel intent, indeed. Titan only hoped that the cub Pipa was safe, as he began to unwind and refold himself, into something that was all fang.
 |
| Titan is all fang, baby. And, some clear tape. |
...
Next: Teeny, tiny, tinny battle of the Stripey Link Clan!
(Randitty-o-Meter: 10. Those paperclips are so adorable.)
Monday, November 15, 2010
From DC to Hollywood and back
Have you seen Outsourced yet?
The show isn't just funny, it's groundbreaking on many levels. Outsourced is opening doors, windows--and one also gets the sense that it may one day lower something of an iron-clad drawbridge for up-and-coming artists of my generation who have been hungry for more cultural diversity in the media and popular artistic genres since before Obama. In Outsourced, we finally have a program that is doing well, by doing right: making a conscious attempt at showing an authentic India in all its religious and ethnic complexities. Which, if you can imagine, is only a sliver of what the entire world, of which the United States has always been a part, truly is--a brilliant and often painfully-beautiful multicutural reality.
Consider that, for so long, having a black president on a television show was a hard and fast way to establish setting, as did actor Dennis Haysbert's, President David Palmer on 24, or Avery Brooks' Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both iconic roles, cast as racially distinct characters, served to help establish the sense of a future where many of humanity's problems were already resolved, and then it was easier for these shows to focus on conveying greater moral battles to the audience. (It's also tempting to make the connection here, that fiction, in a fantasy setting, is ruthlessly effective at managing the same thing, by leaving what is a human struggle the only familiar element in exotic universes.) And these days, we're living in that very world where real diversity is right on our flat-screens. Freaky, huh?
Well, it's really a more intimate, progressive future we're living in than even that:
In an interview that appeared on online magazine Religion Dispatches just last Friday, November 11, a background actress on Outsourced, Sara Zerina Usmen, spoke eloquently about what the show has been able to gift fellow Americans:
"Outsourced is navigating uncharted waters and proving it can be done in today’s climate. American society is more than ready to discuss hot topics in comedy in good measure... In fact, I think we need shows like Outsourced. America is in an identity crisis, and trying to reconcile its past isolation with a rapidly changing global present. There’s a lot of tension in society around race, religion, and economics in recent years spiking in election seasons. If we can’t laugh about difficult things, how can we get through them?"
Sarah is also, herself, the real deal--She's not just a unique, recurring presence on the show, as possibly the first character in a while on television to regularly wear a hijab. Sarah is a talented young director and writer working on the ground right now in Hollywood to start her film career. She's already seen some success too, through Queens of Waban Entertainment, namely for her award-winning documentary Muslims in Love.
For that reason, I was humbled and greatly honored that Sarah Zerina Usmen mentioned me, when asked who her favorite author was:
"And my favorite authors are as of yet unpublished! I would look out for the upcoming fantasy novels of Janica Ingram, whose vivid imagination for characters and storytelling far surpasses mine."
Sarah is familiar with so many random stories I've been telling and writing over the years about talking horses, elephant men who win crowns not for their illegal mating dances but by pretending to be cursed with having to listen to a woman, Muslim princesses who enchant Christian kings through a kind of medieval political satire of their polarized policies, and interracial love triangles that reincarnate themselves from an ancient time to enforce encore apocalypses on worlds that didn't want to discover one another--all in what only at first seem to be your regular fantasy-fiction settings. Sarah has also read the first chapter of my novel manuscript-in-progress, which is slated to complete late this year.
Likely, this won't be the last time you see a cross-country artistic connection as intriguing as this one, between a black DC native and a South Asian-American Muslim in Hollywood. It shouldn't be so surprising in this country. Mostly because, there are so many similar, bright and committed people already in the U.S. who have been wanting a voice too, for a long time now. As I've already said, the future of story-telling is here. It's on television in Outsourced, it's already in films like Muslims in Love--and it's only a matter of time before the future is on your bookshelves or clogging up the mysterious innerworkings of newfangled iPads too, with shining gold, bisexual dragons from the ancient Ghananian Empire.
I'm electric that there are artists out there in my generation who are trying to open doors to diversity for all of us, especially in film, where our voices are needed. Whatever could be next?
Here, I'm tempted to say 'Yo Momma.' But I don't dare waste this rare opportunity to tell the world about another amazing development and end this article on an intellectual high note--Ah, screw it.
YO MOMMA is next.
...That was so worth it.
The show isn't just funny, it's groundbreaking on many levels. Outsourced is opening doors, windows--and one also gets the sense that it may one day lower something of an iron-clad drawbridge for up-and-coming artists of my generation who have been hungry for more cultural diversity in the media and popular artistic genres since before Obama. In Outsourced, we finally have a program that is doing well, by doing right: making a conscious attempt at showing an authentic India in all its religious and ethnic complexities. Which, if you can imagine, is only a sliver of what the entire world, of which the United States has always been a part, truly is--a brilliant and often painfully-beautiful multicutural reality.
Consider that, for so long, having a black president on a television show was a hard and fast way to establish setting, as did actor Dennis Haysbert's, President David Palmer on 24, or Avery Brooks' Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both iconic roles, cast as racially distinct characters, served to help establish the sense of a future where many of humanity's problems were already resolved, and then it was easier for these shows to focus on conveying greater moral battles to the audience. (It's also tempting to make the connection here, that fiction, in a fantasy setting, is ruthlessly effective at managing the same thing, by leaving what is a human struggle the only familiar element in exotic universes.) And these days, we're living in that very world where real diversity is right on our flat-screens. Freaky, huh?
Well, it's really a more intimate, progressive future we're living in than even that:
In an interview that appeared on online magazine Religion Dispatches just last Friday, November 11, a background actress on Outsourced, Sara Zerina Usmen, spoke eloquently about what the show has been able to gift fellow Americans:
"Outsourced is navigating uncharted waters and proving it can be done in today’s climate. American society is more than ready to discuss hot topics in comedy in good measure... In fact, I think we need shows like Outsourced. America is in an identity crisis, and trying to reconcile its past isolation with a rapidly changing global present. There’s a lot of tension in society around race, religion, and economics in recent years spiking in election seasons. If we can’t laugh about difficult things, how can we get through them?"
Sarah is also, herself, the real deal--She's not just a unique, recurring presence on the show, as possibly the first character in a while on television to regularly wear a hijab. Sarah is a talented young director and writer working on the ground right now in Hollywood to start her film career. She's already seen some success too, through Queens of Waban Entertainment, namely for her award-winning documentary Muslims in Love.
For that reason, I was humbled and greatly honored that Sarah Zerina Usmen mentioned me, when asked who her favorite author was:
"And my favorite authors are as of yet unpublished! I would look out for the upcoming fantasy novels of Janica Ingram, whose vivid imagination for characters and storytelling far surpasses mine."
Sarah is familiar with so many random stories I've been telling and writing over the years about talking horses, elephant men who win crowns not for their illegal mating dances but by pretending to be cursed with having to listen to a woman, Muslim princesses who enchant Christian kings through a kind of medieval political satire of their polarized policies, and interracial love triangles that reincarnate themselves from an ancient time to enforce encore apocalypses on worlds that didn't want to discover one another--all in what only at first seem to be your regular fantasy-fiction settings. Sarah has also read the first chapter of my novel manuscript-in-progress, which is slated to complete late this year.
Likely, this won't be the last time you see a cross-country artistic connection as intriguing as this one, between a black DC native and a South Asian-American Muslim in Hollywood. It shouldn't be so surprising in this country. Mostly because, there are so many similar, bright and committed people already in the U.S. who have been wanting a voice too, for a long time now. As I've already said, the future of story-telling is here. It's on television in Outsourced, it's already in films like Muslims in Love--and it's only a matter of time before the future is on your bookshelves or clogging up the mysterious innerworkings of newfangled iPads too, with shining gold, bisexual dragons from the ancient Ghananian Empire.
I'm electric that there are artists out there in my generation who are trying to open doors to diversity for all of us, especially in film, where our voices are needed. Whatever could be next?
Here, I'm tempted to say 'Yo Momma.' But I don't dare waste this rare opportunity to tell the world about another amazing development and end this article on an intellectual high note--Ah, screw it.
YO MOMMA is next.
...That was so worth it.
...
We love our hijabi jedi:
Outsourced, Thursdays 9:30/8:30c, NBC
Outsourced, Thursdays 9:30/8:30c, NBC
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