The Muse of Molly Malloy

A tormented artist tells the story of the seven murders he committed.

Cast:

Michael - Aaron Sailors

Mr. Winston - Michael Spence

Outtro - Julie Hoverson

Promo "Lighting Spliced" from Zellie Blake

 

Also, my blog is http://prefacesandasides.blogspot.com/

Phill Rossi of Crescent and Rad Bear of Super Number One do musical battle with my jackass concepts (ok, not really, but good songs both.)

Rad Bear sings a song based on my writings here and here in a song called "Drinking with Mr. Shadow."

Phil Rossi plays controller Demitri Decker's version of "Hey Jude."

(Before you start reading this thread, please, indulge me and turn on this song if you can.  I'm a bit fired up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5YJfPBqPNE )

Ok got it?

Seriously? You guys are so rad.  So.

You guys are seriously the most awesome clan of evil little hipsters a hack like me could have and I literally and figuratively want to felate every single one of you (except tim... fuck you tim... fuck you right in your eye socket.)

I'm cracking the whip on myself to make entertaining you guys my whole life.  So while we're working on One Eighteen, and I'm finishing Barfly, here's everything I ever wrote for not a goddamned dime!

http://prefacesandasides.blogspot.com/

My theory is this, I like to write, you like stories, so if you happen to get bored and read a story, bam you just bought me an eightieth of a cup of coffee and I have swindled you! (Because my prose really does suck.)

There are a fucking lot of you, you literally came out of the woodwork to support me and seriously I would take a bullet for all of you (except tim... tim you little monkey fuck I hope you choke and die and I don't capitalize your name for a reason.)  Also, like, not in the dick or anything.

All of you (sans tim) just had my back when I needed it.  So I'm going to see what I can do about returning the favor.  I decided I'm not sure I even want to "Publish" anyway, I'm not really a writer (something latin) moreso just a guy who likes to tell stories.  It seems kinda dickish to charge people if I like doing it.  So this seemed like a good compromise.

Anywho, I got a lot of uploading to do including complete One Eighteen scripts and (non spoiler) project notes.  Oh and One-Eighteeners, meet Barflies, you'd make a good couple.

-Will Ross

AKA Mr. Hacktastic

(P.S. Fuck tim.)

 

 

 

First of all, we're not dead.

So I'm going to go into some minorly "real" shit.  If you're not interested, that's way cool.  The thesis statement is that 118 is not dead, we're working on it. 

So I've been struggling back and forth about this, Chris is of the opinion that nobody really needs to know my business, but I sort of disagree.

Free or not you folks made a commitment to this book. You put in time.  You made comments that helped shift the story and make it a better book.  You've brought others into the fold.  But it's more than that.  One day this book may be sold in some shape or form, which means maybe a few bucks.  If said money ever materializes it will be because you guys made this a better book.  So I really do consider you all part of the crew. 

Ok so here goes.  I am PROFOUNDLY damaged as a human being.  I'm a severe manic depressive, with a fun dose of anti-social personality disorder on top of that.  Sometimes when I disapear, I'm in the hospital.  Sometimes I just refuse to get out of bed for weeks.  I'd rather dream than be awake.

Then the manic hits.  If I notice it coming on, I can focus it into decent writing, but often it gets me doing things that I have no business doing while you folks are waiting for entertainment.  I don't need to be playing through Mass Effect 1 and 2 in 12 hour sessions. 

On top of that... I have a weird phobia about things going right.  My outlook is so goddamned negative that when things start going profoundly right (IE 37000 episode downloads) I freak out.  I panic.  I've spent my entire life disapointing people that I'm just sure that streak will keep going.  And during the whole thing, Mr. Shadow won't shut the hell up.

"Named another character Sarah, did you?  That's what? 27 Sarahs?"

"You really don't think people are buying this bullshit do you?"

"The episode is three days late.  Nice one Will, you fucked up again."

It just gets on top of me.  The meds would help if I could afford them, but a 500 dollar Abilify RX is way out of the price range of the uninsured.  The Lexapro is ok, but it's sort of weak tea, and going to the doctor to try new meds is money I ain't got.

So, yeah, that's pretty much why I can't get things out on time.  Not an excuse, but I felt you deserved an explanation.

 

 

A series of short pieces and a preview of episode 9.

Shiver - by Will Ross read by Will Ross
Nightingale - by Will Ross read by Will Ross
A Lamb for the Underdark by Will Ross read by Aerten Naverathna
Quitter - by Will Ross read by Will Ross

A man finds a strange and terrible way to deal with the anger he feels at his family.

Read by Chris Wiig

Jonas tries to save Donna, and implements phase one of his plan to take revenge on Kevin and save his kidnapped group members.

An airship captain fights to save the ship he loves from bloodthirsty pirates.

Read by Aaron Sailors, Will Ross, Chris Wiig, and Sean Roberts

A psychopath tries to save his sister from a brothel

By Will Ross, voiced by Aaron Sailors, Sean Roberts, Hope Clary and Aerten Navarathna

Jonas and company arrive in Omaha to find it deserted... well, mostly deserted.

A thief's greed lures him into a trap. 

A strange encounter leads to stranger insights about the nature of Jonasâ relationship with the Dark Thing.

Jonas and company stop for fuel and meet a group of survivors with an unusual family plan.

Jonas and company are finally on the road. Surely things will go smoothly from here on.

Planning to leave a town like Greenly is one thing, but making it happen isnât going to be that simple.

A couple teasers for Season Two coming August 1st.

Len's awesome YouTube vid of him creating the art for Season Two.

Interview with Daphne Abernathy with a two minute preview of Ep One Season Two (Finding Zombies on the Craigslist)

Ok so bad news good news.  Alot to read here, bullet point is obviously no shows yet, new firm date for show starting is August 1st.   

Bad News: New shows will not start till August 1st.  I can't keep teasing you guys with deadlines I can't meet and it makes me feel like the worlds largest bag of douche to do so.  We've got one recorded and another couple out of sequence written, but I've got nine days where I'll be out of the country coming up in July, so if I put it out there there's going to be a lot of time in between and that would suck. 

Good News:  To help meet my deadlines, we've added a new person to the crew.  A few of you may have met Daphne Abernathy in Second Life, and she's the host of Going Broke With Daphne Abernathy and Daphne's Random Thoughts, along with a lot more stuff.  She is also the hardest working woman in podcasting, and she's going to join as assistant sound engineer to help me cut down the "Main Voice Track."

To geek out for a bit, the MVT is the hardest part of the process, it's taking a 2-3 hour recording session and cutting it into two episodes and two blooper reels, and it eats about seven hours of editing time.  It's not exactly difficult, but it pulls my focus away from writing and producing, and mixing sound.  I brought Daphne on for a couple reasons.

Her work ethic is second to none, shes in love with the show, and we're good enough friends she can call me an asshole for not getting shows out without me being able to get upset.  She's going to be half assistant and half fire under my ass. 

Also, While I will be gone for nine days this month, they'll only be vacation in terms of my money job.  I plan to use the freetime to write and edit the rest of season two and hopefully part of season three, to give me more time to work on editing in between shows. 

Finally, we really want to thank all of you for your patience, and for how much you dig the show.  I personally (Will) want to apoligize AGAIN for having gotten off track (also for lack of spell check on this computer :) )

-Will

 

Here are the teaser props we gave out in the goodie bags at the Otaku Omaha Anime convention.  Props were made by our own Christian Haunton and attendees recieved just one page of the four cause we're evil like that.  Just something to nom nom on while we're getting episodes ready. 

Please note that if you read these you will go insane.

More fun stuff to come. (Also feel free to snatch these and do whatever with them, I just think they look cool as hell.)

Will Ross, Shiftless Vagabond

 

---

 

 

OneEighteeners,

I know you're in total shock but we're gonna be running about a week behind, and by we I mean me (Will.)  If you don't already know we live in Omaha, NE which had like three tornados in a week and a half and between power outtages, sump pump issues and branch removal has kinda gotten me off track. 

Yes, I am the Alan Moore of podcasting.

-Will Ross, Dangerous Sociopath

Season Two of One Eighteen: Migration starts June 13th, 2008 (the day the mess started!)

We decided to make Episode 9 the cut off for Season 1 because it seemed like a more logical place to seperate the arcs, and because it will make it less convoluted on I-pods based on our current labeling method.  (Long story short, when you get to two digit numbers, my bad labeling would confuse your Ipod)

Blah blah blah summation, we hope you like Season 2 as much as you enjoyed Season 1 :)

-Will

 

Fetch catches up with Jonas and calmly expresses his displeasure.  With a bat. 

Guest Stars: Cupcake and Tea (http://www.youtube.com/user/CupcakeAndTea), Michael Spense, Kevin Erhart as Em Caulton, Sean Roberts as Willie Fetch, Barb Ross as Margaret Hess.

Radar Masukami reads the Episode 3 Recap

Excerpt:

February 17th, 2009

Turns out I can take a punch.  Actually, let me rephrase that.  Turns out I can take a fairly severe ass beating.  It's been a bad day and writing is painful, but I'll get as much said as I can before I have to stop.  "Bad day" may be the understatement of the century.

Let me start at the beginning. I went to church today, less for the religion than the company.  Everyone in town goes to church, so it's normally standing room only.  There aren't many true holy rollers anymore,  because if God has a plan for all this, clearly we're not part of it.  Who knows, though, maybe this is the second flood and he plans to wash us all away and start over with what's left.  Unfortunately, if Greenly's an ark, he left us without a drunk to steer us to the mountaintop.  So, no, I am not personally religious.  I used to be, but not any more.

But since there's no television, movies, or video games, church is one of the few things that makes one day any different than the other.  That, and the heat.  During church Horace fires up a wood stove and a few gas heaters, and for two hours we can all take our coats off and stink together.  We don't have a pastor any more, since he was part of the Paradise Falls expedition, so we take turns reading the services.  This adds an awful lot of "ummms" and "errs" to the bible that may not have been in the original translation, but at least they're trying.  We avoid Revelations.  It hits too close to home.

After the sermon, half a choir trudges it's way through a few hymns and then we hold a memorial service for everyone who we've lost in the previous week.  The first few months these were somber, serious affairs but after so many deaths, it's hard to take them personally anymore.  If the rest of the family is already gone, and the deceased had no close friends, we just go through the motions.  If it's my day to read the eulogy I'm more partial to Hamlet or Emily Dickinson than the Bible.  After nearly two hundred funerals we know all of the good funeral verses by heart.  People rarely cry, even for family members or close friends.  You just get to a point where you don't have any tears left.  Death is as much a part of life as breathing to us now, and most of the somberness has to do with the society we lost, not the person.  Another dead body is just a symptom of the greater disease.

The last funeral that really made an impression was the service for the Paradise Falls expedition.  But even then, we weren't really mourning the deaths of our friends, or family members.  It was a funeral for hope.  That was the last time anyone who wasn't a deputy left Greenly, and the day most of us finally accepted that we'd die here.  Horace did the service himself, reading the names of the group one by one, as Sarah sang "Amazing Grace" quietly in the background.  That was the last time I cried at a funeral.  To me, it was a funeral for civilization.

When services finish we gather in the common room for some coffee made with grounds that have been brewed four or five times already. If we're lucky we can cut it with some sugar or syrup.  We talk, catch up on gossip, and people talk about what they're going to do when this is all over.  We like to pretend that one day the government will sweep in here, and tell us everything has been put right, and we can go back to watching prime-time TV.

The best part of coffee hour is when Marian Hess and I get to play book swap.  Marian runs our town library, and that's as close to a movie theater as we have right now.  On Sundays she gives me first crack at the new acquisitions. The entire living room of her house is filled with mismatched bookshelves, organized by subject instead of author.  There's a bookshelf for detective paperbacks, a shelf for textbooks, half a shelf of poetry.  She keeps and organizes comic books and magazines for the less serious readers, and I try to pick up a few comics for Wendel when I can.  Wendel is obsessed with comics.

She's got a huge hope chest filled with collateral, and tips are completely up to the borrower.  I leave a hammer, and take Keats.  I return it, throw some bullets or soap her way, and grab a few Sanford paperbacks.  If I need the hammer, no sweat.  I leave something else.  It's very good system and Marian and her son Luke run it like true professionals.  Luke is in his late twenties and used to be a damn good car salesman from what I've heard.  Most of what they earn with the library they spend to expand it.  I just wish they'd let me buy instead of rent.

"Don't be greedy, Mr Waight," Marian will say in her stern, librarian way, "Knowledge is for everyone."  She's right of course, I just wish she'd let me keep a few.  I've got a minor book fetish.

Today I skipped coffee to avoid Sarah, which was painful because Marian had been hinting about some new textbooks the deputies brought back from a hunting expedition. Non-Fiction is my favorite, to the point where I've even perused an anatomy text book when I was hard up for reading material.  But I couldn't deal with Sarah, not after what she showed me on Saturday.  I felt her watching me the whole service, giving me evil little smiles whenever she managed to catch my eye.  She was wearing a white, long sleeved dress, and looked angelic, but I could feel the tattoos hiding underneath, pictures of things a seventeen year old girl shouldn't know about, let alone be able to depict in ink.  Her being in church made the whole place feel dirty.  She was defiling it with her presence.  When the final song was sung I was first out the door and I didn't look back.

Jonas tells us a little more about town... and about the curious dreams he has nightly.

Guest Stars: Catie Miller as Sarah Goodman, Michael Spence, and Laurence Simon as Mr Hurley.  Laurence's podcast 100 Word Stories can be found at http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/

Daphne Abernathy reads the Episode 1 Recap

Excerpt:

February 15th, 2008

I'm using the flashlight tonight, small minded superstions be damned.  If you've never tried to write by candlelight, it's a pain in the ass.  Between the flickering and the shadow cast by your hand it's nearly impossible to write legibly.  It also kills your eyes, and for some reason I suspect few optometrists survived.  No offense to any eye doctors who happen to read this.  I need clear, electric light if I want to get any serious journaling done after sundown.

News first.  There was another attack today.  It's been too cold for the dead things to move, and because of that we've gotten lax about security.   Well today Mensa candidate Steve Jarvis got up on his roof today with a snow shovel.  Frankly with Steve I'm suprised he didn't try to lug up the snowblower.  So there's Steve, a couple shots of newpotato moonshine in his system, up on his roof shoveling snow off when he hit a patch of ice, slid off the roof and broke his neck.  He  turned, then went inside to kill his wife.  From there two of them went thundering through Greenly charging anything that was alive.

That's how it happens, multiplication.  Two dead, they kill two.  Four dead.  They kill four.  Eight dead.  Suddenly you've got a major problem on your hands.  Luckily for Greenly it was too cold for anyone but that idiot to be out this morning, so most of us were asleep.

Where were the deputies during all this you ask?  Wandering outside of town, drinking and taking pot shots at the frozen ones as far as we can tell.  They call it hunting but they rarely bring anything back.  When they do bring back food, it's more often canned than killed. 

So, there's Greenly, with all of it's brave defenders out drunk and playing in the snow.  This could have been a major problem it it wern't for Alex.  Alex Wilks, our towns chef, took Steve down with a revolver and a crowbar and probably would have been killed my Mrs. Jarvis had Horrace Greenly not waddled his fat ass out of the sheriffs office at the last minute and picked her off with a rifle.  Alex was not very happy and took a swing at Horrace.  The phrase "do your fucking job" was used, along with other, more colorful phrases.  They are both master swearers and watching them argue was something to see.  I think Horrace would have thrown Alex in jail if he thought he could find someone to cook for a hundred and thirty people.  Well, a hundred twenty eight. 

Iâve been reading over what Iâve wrote in my first journal entry, and it strikes my that I am making a pretty big assumption in thinking that whoever reads this will know whatâs going on. What if this journal isnât found for centuries?  Ok, centuries may be a bit much.  It's just a 99 cent notebook so I'm probably screwed when it comes to saving things for posterity. But what if what is happening here is different than other places?  What if it's ONLY happening here.  I can't make any assumptions.  I realize that there are some things I should make clear.

First, and most central on everyoneâs mind: the dead are trying to kill the living. Thatâs it in a nutshell, I guess, but Iâll try to put down the specifics (or at least the ones I feel pretty certain about). I'll try to sort speculation from fact wherever possible.

It all started back on June 13th, all over the world, the entire planet: one day. People who died began getting back up, and they started trying to kill everyone around them. No one knows how it happens, no one knows why (though we've all got our pet theories), but everyone whoâs still alive can tell you this:

1) It happens to every living thing, and it happens every time. When something dies, it gets back up. Person, dog, squirrel, or those fucking deer. Doesnât matter, itâs coming back. 

2) It takes one minute and eighteen seconds for a dead thing to get back up. This part really screws things up for those of us who like our answers neat and logical. The dead thing can be five pounds or five hundred. It can be dead from old age or dead from buckshot. It can be male, female, young, old, warm-blooded, cold-blooded, or cut in two. Itâs still always one minute and eighteen seconds. One eighteen â thats the number that the numerologists chew on.

3) It's not contagious.  Being scratched or bitten will not, as far as we can tell, turn a living person.  It's the function of death that's changed, not any sort of disease or infection.  The dead don't rest, but they can't infect the living.  They don't need to, they're perfectly capable of biting, scratching, punching and gouging.  The fresh ones are as fast as they were when they're alive,  but over time, their speed and agility deteriorates.  I'm no biologist, but my guess is that their bodies just don't repair themselves.  They go as best they can for as long as they exist.  They're not exactly smart and not exactly stupid.  They look for ways in.  They don't attack things that are unreasonably larger than they are.  Undead mice don't attack a person who's awake, typically.  They don't run until they see something they want, they just seem to drift and wander until they find what they're looking for, and then they charge it and kill it.  Sometimes they eat some of it, sometimes they don't.  But they always stop when it dies.  They seem to sense the transition and they don't attack their own.

4) Animals hate them, especially from their own species.  When we see a group of dead things, we run.  Animals don't.  I've seen supposedly tame dogs charge these things and tear chunks out of them.  A few weeks ago most of the cats in town disapeared, and were gone so long we suspected someone was eating them.  They came back dragging an emaciated, destroyed racoon.  Just left it in the middle of town like a warning and returned to their respective owners.  These things offend life on a very visceral level.

5) ...and most importantly, if you take the head, the things stay down. Most agree that itâs catastrophic damage to the brain that does it, but Iâd suggest getting that head all the way off for safetyâs sake.  I've seen things keep going after a headshot.  Ninety percent of their brains are superfluous to their purpose in life.  They don't need memories, logic, spacial recognition, emotions.  They just need to go, smell, hear and kill.

Jonas introduces himself, and teaches us all some important lessons about Greenly. 

Guest Star: Michael Spence.  More about Mike can be found at http://michaelspence.us

Excerpt:

February 14th, 2009 - Valentine's Day.

Hi.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to start this Journal.  I considered the poetic "My name is Jonas Waight , and I am Alive." or the scholarly "A dissertation on the rebuilding of society in the presence of the animated dead."  I thought of Ramboesque rallying cries to inspire future generations to fight or quotes from Shelley Poems to set a proper mood of dread for the situation we find ourselves in.  There's something so relevant about:

"'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'"

In my darkest hour I even considered starting with a Webster's dictionary definition.  I'm sure quite a few of my students would have found that a touch hypocritical, if any of them are still alive.  I really used to hate that.  But the majority of my students couldn't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, so it's unlikely that if they're still walking around they're spending much time searching for hypocrisy.  It IS ironic though that it wasn't until death that they actually started to prefer brains over looks.  My apologies for the digression.  That will happen a lot.

The sad truth is that I am a hack.  My major was Religious Studies and my minor was History.  I got a B in English Comp. Nothing I write will be sufficient to address just how grave the situation is that we as a species find ourselves in.

So I settled on "Hi."  It's simple, and it's human.  To me that one common greeting says more about what it is to be a living, breathing person then a thousand well chosen quotes from the best poetry or prose..  The dead don't need greetings, or pleasantries. They don't need ideas or tools, because they do not and will not ever seek to build.  They are strictly destructive creatures, like locusts, or bacteria.  They are selfish, angry things being driven by instincts, and nothing more.  To be crude, they break shit.  To be human is to create, to wonder, and to collaborate.  And cooperation, not intelligence, is why some of us are still alive.  Well, that and a fair amount of luck.

So what's the purpose of this journal?  To be honest, I'm not quite sure yet.  I expect it to be roughly one half log of events, and one half a place to jot down my personal thoughts and experiences.  I may edit future versions, if only to spare the feelings of some of the people I plan to write about.  Frankly, I just felt like I had to write.   There's not a lot to do in town after nightfall, and writing passes the time.  Whether anyone will ever read this is irrelevant to me.

One Eighteen: Migration, Coming February 14th, 2008