I started this website at a time of creative renewal. Approaching the end of college, I realized I wasn’t happy in the career path I had pursued. I seriously came to dread a lifetime of tedious corporate office work, the type of work that really does kill your soul. I had just recently started writing seriously (and better) again, and during this time I also became more inspired in my drawing. “Goddamnit,” I said, and became resolute to not going to let my talents disappear into the farty night.

So with the help of a friend I registered this domain and began to plan out the future of Thrillerverse.com. At my most optimistic, I had visions of a new weird comedy juggernaut: a dedicated platform for that type of humor and creative works that is best typified by the Thrillerverse (another dimension of confusion and flatulence that I swear exists). At a more realistic level, I wanted a branded platform to post and share my creative “slices”, as I put it, on the Internet. This included everything from short stories and drawings to funny pictures and YouTube videos. Maybe, I thought, I could even get others to join in eventually, or maybe I’d get noticed, and really get the ball rolling on a writing or creative career (this happened, sort of!).

Months and months later I actually got around to posting things. Some good stuff, some great stuff. After my graduation, I had ample time to write and draw and post it all, but (as regular readers might have gleamed) my own unemployment was a distraction, not a vacation. Even though I wanted to spurn the unrewarding corporate world, I felt betrayed that it would reject me, especially after all the time I had spent interning and networking. The last “Tips for the Unemployed” I drew and almost wrote I deemed too depressing to be published. It involved breaking all your mirrors so you couldn’t see what you were or even what you wanted to be.

During this time my own theories on what blogging fluctuated rampantly as well. I wanted Thrillerverse to be all original creative stuff – not just re-postings or “check this out” kind of blogging. I also wanted to keep a weird science-fiction vibe going, most realized in the few “Tales from the Thrillerverse” covers I created. But for the sake of content I often found myself writing what came easy: about media, pop culture occurrences and so on. I tried to look this all from a bigger, or at least different angle (sometimes successfully, as in the iTunes deletion project) in order to prevent it from just being another “pop blog”. I thought (and still think) that pop blogging is too easy – just commenting on or re-posting created or actual culture, gossip, news, whatever, isn’t the same as creating something and is a prime example of the diminishing returns of the Internet age.

But I digress. Here I am at the present, employed (for now) and curious at the future, not frustrated. And, most importantly, I’m going to loosen myself and this site up and just post shit (any old shit) I think is cool. Also, going along with the Internet’s creed of “quantity vs quality”, I’m going to just post way more stuff I write. This means that if I want to make a top 10 list of my favorite movies, god damn, I’m going to make a top 10 list of my favorite movies.

And I’m going to proof-read more, yes, but not that much more! HA!

Merry Christmas!

Last night, when I remembered it was 9/11, I looked up video clips of the event on YouTube. I do this from time to time to try and galvanize my emotions that have been worn away by the past ten years. The images speak for themselves – it was a horrific day. Even if you were not in New York or Washington, or you were not directly affected by the events, it was terrible enough to change everyone’s life.

So I sat and looked at YouTube videos of the event. I watched all thirty minutes of someone’s TiVo recording of the NBC Nightly News from the evening of 9/11. And of course there is the clip of the very beginning of CNN coverage: it starts with a Ditech home loan commercial (IRONY) and is interrupted by the breaking footage of the first tower on fire, dragging on with confused anchors for some time. Then there’s a clip from every network of the 2nd plane hitting, the towers collapsing, people escaping the dust clouds, and the Pentagon. It’s all there, proving how 9/11 was the first completely documented hell on earth.

Digging deeper there are the zanier videos. Clips detailing the “black helicopters” that were hovering nearby when the buildings collapsed, unreleased security camera footage from the Pentagon, and “proof” of the government deliberately flying smaller, unmarked planes into the WTC. There are some videos that make good points, and there are some videos that make me want to crash a “black helicopter” into the Internet to finally shut everyone up. But I realized that whether or not there is ANY weight in these conspiracy videos is a mute point because the biggest conspiracy of all is also the most obvious. The invasion of Iraq was facilitated by obvious lies and resulted in a colossal disaster for the United States. Dead troops, a disenfranchised public, and an economic meltdown (which I can personally feel, right in my nuts).

I think about how my children will learn about September 11 and how different it will be from my own education of Pearl Harbor or JFK. Will they read books and watch films about September 11 or will they simply watch YouTube videos, selected on a whim by their professor. And more importantly how will 9/11 be interpreted in 20 or 30 years. If the past ten years has been any indication, poorly.

What is most sad about it all is how the immediate tragedy of 9/11 is faded now thanks to ten years of mismanagement, manipulation, and squandering of America’s emotions by the Bush administration.

Oops, sorry, eight years.