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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

"The World Is, Generally and On Balance, A Better Place To Live This Year Than It Was Last Year"

...according to this uplifting article by Ramez Naan, anyway, but also according to Spider Jerusalem, my favorite fictional anti-authoritarian druggie bastard liberal journalist of all time, whose voice and opinion are clearly superior to any non-fictional persons real or dead (other than Warren Ellis or Hunter S. Thompson).

So before you pop that bottle of bubbly, here's one of my favorite short comic book stories of all time—about winters, futures, and totally sweet snowblaster guns. Happy new year!

Legal-y things: Transmetropolitan was written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson. I did a quick & simple Google search for these page images, but it was originally published by in "Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3" and later re-printed in Transmetropolitan Vol. 4: "The New Scum". And you really need to read Transmet if you haven't yet.

Also, thanks to Jenna Scherer for reminding me of my own annual posting of this delightful message.

JRR Tolkien's Top 10 Tips For Writers

I feel like I'm supposed to make a snarky comment about Peter Jackson* in order to contextualize this, but the truth is, I haven't even seen The Desolation of Smaug or Battle of the Five Armies yet, because I found An Unexpected Journey to be little more than an overlong cut-scene from a corny Tolkien-themed Disney ride. But anyway, this is still fun!

*For the record, I was even skeptical when Jackson was first announced as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, because he was one of my favorite go-to directors for my frequent Horrible & Horribly Offensive B-Movie nights back in high school. Don't get me wrong, Beautiful Dreamers and The Frighteners are both pretty fantastic — but Meet the Feebles? Dead-Alive? Bad Taste? Let's just say that he's better telling someone else's story than his own.

Although, he did give us this:

All The People That You'll See At Every Nerd Convention

Whoa. I don't know how I missed this until now, although it feels particularly timely with New York Comic-Con this weekend (I'll be there doing coverage for Bleeding Cool and Tor — let's hang out!). Dorkly artists Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman created these infographics breaking down every single stereotype you're likely to find at a comic book / video game / general geek culture-based convention, and, well, they're all pretty accurate (not to mention utterly hilarious). 

Whether you've been to a con or not, you'll be amazed at how long this list keeps going. And every single caricature is remarkably accurate. So I guess it's good that there are so many, because at least we're stereotyping people into too broad of categories? Sure, that sounds like a rational justification for laughing at other people (most of whom are just like me).

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An Ode to Candy Corn

I wrote this poem a few years back, but I thought it'd be fun to share again. Really it's just a long and convoluted way of saying, "That shit's gross, man; so why do I keep eating it?"

rounded wax wedges, waning; a tawny
base that tapers towards a soft point
white like tundra, in taste and texture,
bleeding out from burning copper ribs
hardly mellow hardened creme
of candle crops to harvest fat
free treats, a sign of times once pagan-
pluralistic-primal-precocious-pre-
human, uncivilized, re-captured,
re-claimed, costume the dead alive
and turn the season, turn to shovel
handfuls into mouths full of rotting
teeth a special offer, a limited time only
exciting when available but hardly
missed in memories of stomaches
turned to sick, in children as in men
but indulging in each dish we find it
harder to resist the solstice sweets
and let ourselves get lost inside
that sadistic sugar maize

Holy Recaps, Batman!

Some of you may have caught the first episode of Gotham last night, the police-procedural-cum-superhero-origin-show about the early days of Gotham City before Bruce Wayne became Batman. As an avid fan of both noir and comic books, I've been looking forward to this show for a while, and I'm excited to announce that I will be handling the weekly Gotham recaps / reviews for Tor.

My overview of the pilot episode is already up (though admittedly, it's rather long and overly-detailed — not unlike the tepid episode itself), so please stop by and add your comments, then join us in the weeks to come!

In the meantime, to tide you over to next week's episode, here's a supercut of every instance of Bruce Wayne's parents being murdered on television and film:

Help Me Raise Money For Suicide Awareness & Get Free Stuff!

That's me and Mike to the left, circa 1999. Mike was one of my first friends I ever had, very much raised as a brother to me. He lost his life to suicide nearly five years ago now, and while you learn to deal with loss as time goes on, it never really goes away — you're left with questions and loss and one big hole that will never ever get refilled. That's part of the reason that I'm so sensitive and vocal about mental health (aside from own struggles); because I know what that suffering is like on all sides, and I don't think anyone else should ever have to experience those things.

I had other friends who'd lost loved ones to suicide, but Mike's death was really the first time I was forced to deal with losing someone so directly close to me, and especially in such a way. Unfortunately, when it comes to dealing with loss, I've gotten my fair of share of practice in these last five years, and Mike's wasn't the only one of those that could have (maybe, possibly) been helped, or stopped.

I could go on and on about this, but since suicide has recently been in the public eye, I've decided to do something different. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention hosts walkathon fundraisers every year to raise money for research, education, and outreach programs about suicide. The Out of Darkness walk (as it's called) in my hometown is not just for Mike, but it is taking place right around the anniversary of his passing. I want to raise some money for the walk, in the hope that even though its too late to save my friends, it might make a difference in someone else's life, so that they don't have to suffer the same.

So here's the deal: I've put together a sweet little package of music and eBooks, all various things that I've created, and they can all be yours with a donation of any amount to the Hamden, CT Out of Darkness Walk for the American Foundation for Society Prevention (Go Team Mikey).

All you have to do is click here to make your donation, and the download should start right away! (It's a pretty hefty ZIP file, because all the music is uncompressed)

Thanks in advance for your support. It means more to people than you realize, and I hope you enjoy your little rewards. Here's what you'll get:

eBooks:

  • Fixing a Hole, a one-act play about two friends and a hole at the end of the world. Mike lived for theatre, and shortly his death, I wrote this as a kind of elegy to him, and a reflection on our relationship.
  • EndProgram.txt, a darkly comedic (or maybe just sad) short story about the death of a robot. Originally written and conceived in the 5th week of the Clarion Writer's Workshop under the guidance of Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler. 

Music:

  • If You Really Want To Hear About It, the unreleased EP from my college band the Roland High Life. Six tracks, plus two bonus b-sides. Track 2, "Your Last Fall" was written before Mike's passing...but listening to it now, it feels frighteningly prescient.
  • Three new cover songs recorded especially for this occasion:
    • "The 59 Sound" by the Gaslight Anthem, changed to "The 69 Sound" in honor of the recording of Mike's beloved "Let It Be";
    • "I Was Meant For The Stage" by The Decemberists, one of Mike's favorite bands, this song could just have easily been written from his point of view, especially given how he had committed his life to theatre. At the reception following his funeral, some of Mike's friends played a haunting video of him singing this song at karaoke (my parents actually thought it was a song he had written). Recording this was the first time I've listened to this song since then;
    • and "You Were Cool" by the Mountain Goats, an unreleased track, with a few lyrical changes, as John's protagonist lives in his version of the song (also Mike wasn't really known for wearing high heels back in high school, although I did think about changing it to something like "stalking down the concrete hallways / in your tight jeans / back in high school," but then I didn't). Still, the lyrics remind me a lot of Mike growing up, and what I wish I could say to him now.


If you have any trouble with your download, please let me know.

Legal stuff: all content made available in this offer is available free and will not used for personal profit or gain. All files, content, intellectual property, etc. is the legal property and copyright of Thom Dunn and is made available through a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike4.0 International license, with the following exceptions: 

  • "The 59 Sound" is copyright 2008 Brian Fallon / The Gaslight Anthem
  • "I Was Meant For The Stage" is copyright 2003 Colin Meloy / The Decemberists
  • "You Were Cool" is copyright John Darnielle / Mountain Goats

Dear Star-Lord: Who Is Your Daddy And What Does He Do?

Continuing my apparently never-ending coverage of Guardians of the Galaxy for Tor.com, this week's article suggests some theories about the identity of Star-Lord's mysterious absent father, as alluded to at the end of the film (oops, sorry, spoilers). Check it out, and share your thoughts in the comments below!

Oh, and also, there's this:

You're welcome.

This Is My Brain On (Legal, Prescription) Drugs. Any Questions?

A friend of mine recently contacted me about a friend of his who had been diagnosed with Adult ADHD (and no, not in that "asking for a friend" kind of way). As I'm generally very publicly and ashamed of my condition, I was delighted to give him some advice, and as I typed to him and organized my thoughts, I realized this was something that was probably worth sharing with other people as well — especially those who don't have ADHD, but know someone he does, so they can better understand the daily struggles, including the mental and emotional exhaustion of basically having your brain on overdrive 24-hours a day.

Despite what you've been told, living with ADHD is not all fun and games and shiny objects. It's both a challenge and an asset, and often at the same time. Our brains don't work in quite the same way as everyone else's, which isn't necessarily a bad thing — it's just different. This is probably why people don't tend to take it as seriously as other learning disabilities or forms of mental healthcare. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, "being really annoying to go grocery shopping with" is a far cry from, say, being bi-polar (although that can sometimes be a symptom as well). But that still doesn't mean it's easy.

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