Just a quick (well, relatively) test I threw together in Half Life 2’s Source SDK to see if I could do anything worthwhile with it. I think it turned out okay. Feedback plz.

Higher quality here.

Welly welly well well, it appears that this site is broken. I’m not sure why it is, but I can’t personally get to any of the other pages- film, art, contact, etcetera. Everything appears to be working fine behind the scenes, but they’re just not showing up. Since only about two people actually ever look at this site I’m not going to declare a state of emergency just yet, but I am trying to figure it out.

Not very hard, though.

From the moment the dame sashayed her way into my office, I knew she was trouble. I could smell it in her perfume and see it reflected in those deep brown eyes. Trouble. Trouble in heels.

“Private Investigator Jon Phillips?” The words rolled off her luscious lips, music in the air. I frowned. This broad was raising the temperature in here already, not a welcome change with the heat of summer blowing in waves through the window.

“Yeah, that’s me.” I lit a cigarette and leaned back, stabbing a fork deep into my eye.

The blood squirted in rivulets, waterfalls of crimson, down the front of my shirt as she leaned forwards, raising an eyebrow. I knew this couldn’t end well.

“I’ve got a job for you, if you want it.”

I didn’t, but the business hadn’t been exactly profitable lately. I’d be an idiot to turn away any job at this point. I stood up and slammed my head against the window, creating a satisfactory spiderweb and driving the fork further into my ocular cavity. Blood cascaded down my face, bubbles forming as I talked.

“Well, that depends on the job, Miss…”

“Week. Finals Week, Detective.”

“Please, call me Jon.”

I slammed my head against the window again. The spiderweb branched out, sprawling through my ruined vision, a inner city highway system designed by a spastic. I turned back around, stumbling a bit.

“About a semester ago, I was involved with this cop out in the lower district-”

“A dick?”

“A little.”

“No, I mean, a detective?”

“So did I, Mr. Phillips.” She looked up from the floor, hitting me with those headlights, rooting me in place. She was beautiful, but I could tell that wasn’t the extent of this broad’s personality. There was something up her sleeve. I took out a rope and threw it over a rafter. As I tied the noose, she continued. “His name was Not Paying Attention In Class, and he was a crooked cop if ever there was one.”

I’d taken my share of bribes, nicked a few sets of wheels and murdered an innocent elderly woman or forty, but the tale of corruption she wove for me that night made even me sick to the hard little pit in the bottom of my stomach. The bastard was guilty of everything from absenteeism to dozing on the job, doodling, playing The Secret of Monkey Island… he was the monster under the bed, the darkness that you fear when the lights go off.

She wanted me to find him and kill him.

“I’m not an assassin, miss.” I slit my throat with a decorative letter opener my partner’s missus had given to me a Christmastime past, before they both croaked it. Jugular blood sprayed over the entirety of the room. Miss Week didn’t even blink as she was coated in it.

“That’s not what Study said.”

So the dame had done her homework. The innocent little girl guise was gone, she knew her stuff, and she held all the cards. I sighed, taking the plastic bag off my head.

“Give me a couple days, I’ll find out what I can and get back to you.”

TO BE CONTINUED…?

(No)

Dear Diary,

This is the year I finally get diabetes! I can feel it in my bones (or rather, I can’t feel it in my toes! Ha ha!)I am pretty excited, because I finally get to join the ranks of many of my many predicesors, the Diabetes Magnifique. The Choir Diabetic. The Insulin-Nots!

I looked at some website or other, and realized that I fit most of the requirements. History in the family? Check! Insatiable thirst? Check! Frequent urination? Check! Sleepiness? Check! Love of disgusting, fattening, sugary foods? Check and mate, my good friends!

You might be saying to yourself, “But Jon! Diabetes is no laughing matter!” Well I would throw up the flying V to that, dear readers, because I can laugh at anything I want. I’m a terrible person.

In other news, I’m working on a new short, which is coming along slowly but surely. This would be great, except it’s for a class, and “slowly” means “it was supposed to be turned in as a fine cut a week and a half ago and I’m still trying to get the basics of the edits down, and that’s not even starting to talk about the massive problems with the audio”. But it’s going pretty well otherwise. Camera angles and lighting are pretty good. Here’s a screenie.

So what else is on the horizon for your humble narrator, besides disease and failure? …not much, actually. Pretty much anything I do ends in disease or failure, and with finals week rapidly approaching, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Cheers.