Wait, WHAT?

YOU GUYS.
There are some serious shenanigans going on here.
I am sure you ALL REMEMBER the inaugural post here on TT&TH, back in 2011, in which I shared

Well, now Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs is going to be an actual thing according to whoever.

No, I didn't watch their lameass HD trailer.

IT WILL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS IT WAS IN MY BRAIN SO STOP TRYING.

Titles Are Hard

We're rolling right along with my brilliant scheme of putting up lame teaser posts here at the mothership, my true home and the place I should be tending to instead of those Other Places.

Today's stale offering is a whine I did a while back over at the EMUs about how I can't think of good titles. Like, it's a good thing I didn't have to come up with titles for famous books, is what I'm saying.

I do invite you to share your favorites and least favorite actual titles, either there or here. 

Are there any books you would not read in public because of their titles? Any you would read only because of their titles? Do tell.

What if Writers Were Rockstars?

Okay, so, yes, I know writers are cool. All my writer friends are very cool. But it just seems like the badass characters and fantasy worlds and new slang and life-changing social commentary get all the cred, while the minds they came from are forced to wander the earth in grandma sweaters and tasteful suits.

If you saw Zane Grey on the street, for instance, you probably wouldn't even recognize him.

image by Wikipedia

Yes, that's a baby koala.

However, if you ran into Dorian Gray, you'd probably --

I'm sorry, what? I seem to have lost my . . .
my train of . . . something.

I was looking at some guitar magazines recently, and man, those guys are cool. They sling their greasy hair around like it ain't no thing while shredding on their Fenders (check out my research), and nakedly parade themselves like the supermodels they aren't. And it's not just the musicians; the whole culture of Guitar is cool -- models, strings, picks, amps, pedals, software, accessories, bands, fashion.

I want to say . . . Tom?
I don't know, I can't tell anyone in the Doobie Brothers apart.

So why can't writing be cool, too?

I've decided to launch a MEGA MEDIA BLITZ CAMPAIGN MOVEMENT to promote the fact that writers are just as cool as rockstars.

Phase 1: Come up with a hashtag!

Tweet your writing rockstar moments #writingisforrockstars. 

Example:

Woke up 2 PBR cans & Moleskines everywhere. #writingisforrockstars

Phase 2: Photoshop stuff!

Create writing rockstar ads! Share them with the world!

Okay, I actually don't have Photoshop anymore since I somehow managed to damage it so badly it refused to work again. But I do have Gimp, which is kind of just as good. And free. Go figure. Here are some I did this morning:

Let me know and I'll post them on this blog!

ROCK ON!

If My Cats Went As Gary Busey For Halloween

Inspired by this Regretsy post.

Lemurs

My dad drove me to the Big City yesterday to hear the concert I was singing in, for which I could only wear one shoe, but that's another story. In the car, I finally broke the news that Hollywood is going to be releasing Cowboys vs. Aliens. This made him pensive. What was to become of our incomplete masterpiece, Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs? I suggested he read my inspiring blog post about Brahms, and he said, "Oh, I looked at that. Something about wattles." (It's okay.  He said the same thing about Ulysses.)

But we were not to be deterred by Hollywood. This is the actual ensuing conversation that I wrote down immediately after it happened, on the back of a hotel room key envelope:

My Dad:  No, it should be dinosaurs versus . . . those little things in Madagascar.

Me:  Lemurs?

MD:  Yeah.  Dinosaurs versus Lemurs.

Me:  That would be a pretty short movie.

MD: . . . Or just lemurs.

Me: . . .

MD:  Lemurs versus everything.

LEMURS VERSUS EVERYTHING

At this point, as you can see, I became distracted by imagining Lemurs vs. Everything, and also by wondering why I had a hotel room key envelope in my backpack since I haven't stayed in a hotel in recent memory.  But my dad was still going on, and I did catch the words "mastodon" and "Formula One."

Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs

My dad and I were ALL ABOUT making this stop-action movie called Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs. And it would have been TOTALLY AWESOME. We bring complementary skills to the table, after all -- I made a stop-action film one time with my writing partner (Barbies in a convertible repeatedly running over . . . a bunny? Rainbow Brite? I don't remember), and my dad worked for 30 years on nuclear submarines and can speak Ancient Egyptian. We were Good to Go.

But production screeched to a halt when, after enough trips to the Dollar Store to enable us to re-shoot Ben-Hur entirely with dinosaurs (NOTE:  IDEA FOR A SCREENPLAY), we realized that one half of our equation was still missing.

Nobody sells plastic cowboys anymore.

I know what you're thinking. Can't you just make outfits for the 8,000 He-Man figures in that box in the garage? No. How are we going to make the hats? Do you have any idea how to make a 2-inch cowboy hat? Are there, like, patterns on the internet somewhere for people who want to outfit their own tiny cowboy army? (NOTE:  IDEA FOR A SHORT STORY)

And now, with Hollywood coming out with Cowboys vs. Aliens, it seems like the universe just isn't ready for the epic awesomeness that would have been our stop-action Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs. Aliens? Really? Are they going to fight in space? Because if you send cowboys into space, guess what? They become astronauts. Astronauts vs. Aliens. YAWN. (But if you send dinosaurs into space, they become Astronaut Dinosaurs. NOTE:  IDEA FOR A NOVEL)

So it seems that, as of right now, this awesome Photoshop poster art I made may be as much daylight as Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs will ever see. 200 years from now, our cockroach overlords humanity will look at this one, small image -- much like the tiny statuette that is the only remaining image of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid -- and wonder what might have been.

UPDATE: Cowboys vs. Aliens was awesome.