The New abNormal

Writer's Block: Play it again, Sam

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:23:28 GMT

If you could only listen to one CD for the rest of your life, what would you choose and why?

Is this question even relevant anymore? If it had to a be a single CD, then I'd just burn my own mix of about 20 songs I love (which honestly varies from day to day), and NO MATTER WHAT THEY WERE, I'd be sure to hate them within the week. And, since this question didn't specify anything about a deserted island (and speaking of which, do we even have those anymore? I kind of thought they were all turned into beach resorts by now.), I'm going to assume I could just have a piano. In which case, if there's a song I get a hankering for (and due to the inexplicable ban on "surplus CDs" do not have), then I'll just learn it and play it. Or play something close to it.

Clearly, I have a problem when it comes to nearly rhetorical questions. Hey, let's talk about our favorite flavors of ice cream!

Castle meets Firefly meets Buffy

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:47:04 GMT

Okay, okay, yes. I watch TV. But I just saw a clip from one of the shows I watch - "Castle" (mondays on ABC) - and Nathan Fillion is wearing his old gear from Firefly! Yes, indeed, Browncoats, Malcolm Reynolds rides again - suspenders, gun, the whole shebang.

And when their victim of the week is killed in a graveyard with a stake through the heart... yes, he makes a crack about Buffy.

Fun times, man.

to my friends in the Los Angeles area:

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:17:21 GMT

A plug I'm happy to pass along - an old friend of mine is putting on a one-woman play about the life and works of Dorothy Parker - "You Might As Well Live" through the month of November.

She's amazingly talented and, let's be honest - Dorothy Parker is pretty much made of awesome. If you're in the area and have the opportunity, go support my friend Ashley in what is certain to be a really exceptional show. The details are here - I sadly can't make it down there, so at least one of you needs to go on my behalf :)

Loving the "Mute" button

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:07:09 GMT

Part of my job involves a lot of conference calls, many of which are attended by many of the high-mucky-mucks in my organization.

Without going into too much detail, a call from my morning included discussion of the H1N1 flu. Two great points which made me nearly fall from my chair in uncontrollable giggles were:

The Safety Concerns involving Hand Sanitizer, and Social Distancing.

Apparently, one of our buildings tried to get their local building maintenance to install a series of bulk hand sanitizer dispensers in the public restrooms, but were denied on the grounds that it presented a fire hazard. Yes, you read that correctly. FIRE. HAZARD. Now, granted, putting it in a more centralized and more easily accessible place is better; and putting it in the bathroom is somewhat redundant in that most people (MOST PEOPLE, I said, I'm a cynic) wash their hands with soap and water and applying hand sanitizer wouldn't be as necessary (the more likely fact being that a lot of people would use hand sanitizer in lieu of washing their hands. Which is just gross. But anyway.) and besides, just going INTO the bathroom makes you a candidate for using hand sanitizer. So, redundant, sure. But Fire Hazard?

Yes, hand sanitizer contains alcohol and is flammable. But let's be honest - there are a lot of things that can catch fire in a bathroom (including methane, right?) and it doesn't happen so very often. I fail to believe that the introduction of hand sanitizer will exponentially or dramatically increase the chances of huge fireballs.

The hand sanitizer conversation digressed into the overall safety of having hand sanitizer AT ALL - it's toxic and children aren't supposed to ingest it, etc. At this point, I started laughing so hard that I couldn't hear the rest of it.

The next topic I was able to hear involved the current hot-word of "Social Distancing". It's a cool term - in case you haven't heard of it, it just refers to keeping away from undesirable people - - currently used in conjunction with people who are sick. A person's sick? You socially distance yourself from them. "Ohhh, you don't look well. Get away from me!"

In the plus column, it's good to see how seriously my company takes this whole thing, but I'd be happier if they extended their monkeysphere a bit in these conversations.

Bah.

Still, though. Flammable Hand Sanitizer. That is just gonna give me the giggles for a while yet.

exerpt from "The Morrow Stone" posted:

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:40:48 GMT

In honor of the one year anniversary of starting last year's book, I've posted a small snippet from it, here:

Work has already begun on the sequel.

This is my day. How is yours?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:19:05 GMT

Back to the mike

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:55:19 GMT

Sorry; it's been harder to get back into the swing of things than I anticipated.

So let me try and catch up here.

A little over a month ago, Jillie started complaining of low level stomach aches, lethargy and her appetite pretty much vanished. She got pretty skinny over just a few days, was voraciously thirsty, and started using the bathroom a lot. We didn't think TOO much of it, but after a few days of this we all got concerned - including Jillie - so we took her to the doctor.

They checked her blood for potential infections, and had her do a urine test (which she hadn't studied for and still did quite well on) and found a higher-than-expected sugar content. So they did a blood check for blood sugar, which came back as 477 (compared to an average target of 80-120). We were then sent to Seattle Children's Hospital, which confirmed the diagnosis - Jillie has type 1 diabetes.

Now, I had no idea what it really was - not the differences between type 1 and type 2, not really anything at all about it. My first response was, I understand, fairly typical. I broke. I thought of my little baby having to find out that part of her body was just not going to work anymore, and that as a result of this, she'd be on a lifetime regimine of blood checks and insulin. But I had to swap out with Lizz at least once when holding Jillie for the IVs they had to put into her hands. It's just impossible to stand by and do nothing while your child cries in pain - even when that pain is being caused by something which will help.

Single most difficult moment of my life thus far.

Type 1, apparently, is genetic - a defect in the genes themselves and not one of environment or development. So to all the people who look at my diabetic daughter and wonder if maybe we should've fed her healthier foods or something, well that may be the case, but one thing's got nothing to do with the other. I don't know why that should matter to me, though. At least, it's not like I honestly care what you think about me. But I would hope I'll never have to catch someone looking at my daughter like she's somehow responsible for this, or "well, if only she'd taken better care of herself..." Yeah, you really don't want to go there with me. The other day, one of the vets responded to my mentioning the type 1 as "oh, that's too bad. Kids are getting that sort of thing younger and younger these days." and I smiled pleasantly and reminded myself that he was there to take care of my dog and he probably just didn't think before he spoke.

The next few days were pretty intense; working to find a balance for her blood sugar and teaching us how to check her blood sugar levels, eat right (in order to help the insulin treatments be effective), give shots, etc. Lizz stayed in the hospital at night while I made daily runs back home to take care of the animals, clean up around the house, bring back clean clothes and try to pretend that I didn't want to keep collapsing under the realization of this new thing in our lives.

Jillie will be on insulin for the rest of her life, unless a cure is one day discovered. Maybe it seems like I'm overdramatizing this, but the reality is that I need to write it, say it out loud. It will help make it a real thing for me. Honestly, it's just a "thing." Everyone has one of those - the thing that just is a part of your life and that cannot be changed; often tied directly to your own sense of mortality.

I drove home one of the nights, screaming out into the universe. I realized that I didn't want to hear anyone try to console me with "god has a plan" platitudes, because I discovered that if it was in some big eternal plan that my 8 year old daughter should have to get something like this... well, then this "God" chap and I were gonna have words. It also gave me a really interesting opportunity to evaluate my feelings on a lot of religious-based issues, but I'll jot those down at another time.

By the third day, I was adjusting better to it. We heard a great term - "the new normal" - which has really stuck with me, now. I came to learn that although diabetes is a nationally protected disability, people with type 1 or type 2 live good, strong, healthy lives.

Meanwhile, Jillie was making friends with... well, pretty much everyone in the hospital. She just has that innate talent to do that. I'm so impressed by her. But not as impressed as I was within a few days when she was doing her own blood tests, and even giving herself her own shots (not every time, but honestly doing even ONE really made me the proudest dad in the world).

I'd like to also do a shout-out to the Seattle Children's Hospital. It's just... amazing. The staff was excellent, the surroundings were great, and they really just made us feel good about being there - in spite of the $13000+ bill we looked at later (all but about 2000 is covered by insurance, thank god). Lizz tells me that the night nurses were all very cute, which now makes more sense as to why she wanted me to go home each day and take of the dogs and cat. Nice. :)

Note: One of the nurses told me I looked like Andrew Zimmern, though, so I don't really suspect sending me home sincerely would've made a difference. Are there that many women lusting after that kind of look? Shaved head, overweight pasty white middle-aged man? Yeah, I didn't think so. I think I'm safe, thanks. :)

It's funny how things just kind of settle into a rhythm. Blood checks in the morning and evening, before every meal or as necessary (including at 3 in the morning) and dual insulin shots - short term and long term insulin to normalize her normal blood sugar and assist with the processing of the handfuls of sugar carbs ingested from pretty much everything sold and packaged as food. But we're making our way.

Somewhere along the line, my back started hurting, and my efforts to make it NOT hurt somehow ended up with my tweaking my neck to the point of near-immobility.

So it was back to the doctor, this time for me. I got pills, advice and, two weeks later am almost back to normal. Normal. Huh. That's such a weird word now.

One other nice element of the past few months has been a serendipitous reconnection with a lot of old friends - some stretching all the way back to high school days, in fact. Thank the gods for the internet. In some of the cases, its almost like a little emotional time capsule - - - but in some of the cases, I've rediscovered (or uncovered completely) good friendships that time has somehow not only not managed to erode, but has even miraculously increased.

Or perhaps made more timely, more relevent, more resonant. Don't know.

What I do know is that the past few months have brought a lot of the disparate parts of my faith - both in people and in faith itself. I found that in some cases, my faith has been misplaced; whereas in others, it hadn't been placed at all. Also, Jillian has come away from this with a level of strength that - when not made into Crazy by the occasional bout of bedtime high sugar - dazzles me to the core of my soul. Bravest person I know, hands down.

I'm not saying this was all part of some big plan to teach me to trust people again, or to put my faith in order. I'm just saying that I can at least glean one or two positive results from what I can see as an otherwise pretty difficult challenge.

And, honestly, I don't need more than that - and even if I did, well, I think this is as much as I dare ask.

Right Place; Right Time

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:21:47 GMT

My family and I used to go camping and hiking. A lot. Well, "a lot" by my current standards. And one of the things I do remember - aside from really not generally enjoying it - was the moments that really felt good about it. It'd usually happen when you cleared a rise and paused to rest. You could often see, in those moments (and usually only then) just how far you'd come. It would also, unfortunately, underscore just how far you'd have left to go, but that's just the pessimist angle.

This year has been chock full of a goodly assortment of ups and downs, but things have a way of balancing out in the end, don't they?

I know I promised more information, but my brain's just too tired to be coherent. Bear with me a bit longer, friends.

Health Care Reform (warning: adult language)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:23:59 GMT

I'm going to be talking more in the near future about my newly enhanced views on health care reform, but I'll give you all a little sneak preview.

My 8 year old daughter has just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

It's a thing she'll get to live with for the rest of her life. With effort and care, she can live a happy and healthy and otherwise perfectly normal life. But if she doesn't...

Now, I recall from my studies in american government that we are assured the rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Note: life, liberty AND the pursuit of happiness. Not "or". We are not told that we have to choose between life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But with our current health care system, we do. If you're sick, you either get better or you get worse. And what generally makes the difference is what you can afford.

And why is this? Because they know that when we're sick, we'll pay whatever it takes to get better - or, when its the people we love most, we will clearly pay whatever bill we are given. I know this now. I don't even care what it costs, I will do whatever it takes to give my daughter what she needs to live a long and happy life.

This is my eight year old daughter, you financial motherfuckers. YOU are taking our money, and holding my child's life hostage to line your fucking pockets. There is no forgiveness for your actions. I will never ... EVER... forgive you for putting my daughter's life in danger, just because you want a summer house in the Poconos.

So why don't you go ahead and feed me your stupid political platitudes about "socialized medicine" or "governments shouldn't intervene." Go ahead. I fucking DARE you. While you're at it, why don't you tell me how it's God's plan for some people to suffer, or that only God knows why some bad things happen to good people.

Yeah, feel free to lay out a plan, talk about the roots of what you think is wrong with the health care system OR the plan to "fix" it; bring your arguments about what you think should be done.

But just know that I'm not going to play nice if the best you can do is spout frightened bullshit regurgitations from some political platform - EITHER ONE, please note - then just know I'm going to fillet your nonsense. Every day of my life, I'm going to hate the current system until it starts to improve. Now I have TWO personal stakes in it, both lifetime changes for the two most important women in my life.

So don't tell me the system is perfect. Yes, it's got some nice benefits, but it's not what it could be; it's not what it should be; and it's not what it would be if there were a few less people raking in all the cash at the expense (literally) of the people who can't afford to be sick.

And if you don't like the current health care system, then either bring up a better alternative, support the ones being proposed, or shut your fucking mouths.

Maybe I'll be more soft-spoken about this in the future, but until then, stay the hell off my ass. This is my daughter. She's the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD to my wife and I. And I'm sorry, but nothing else matters as much to us. And if you have children, then you should understand EXACTLY what I mean.

Who does he think he is?? The President???

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:38:29 GMT

So recently there's been a huge furor and hubbub over the President's decision to address a special chat with school age children.

Like, people - even a few I know (if by "know" I mean through Facebook or LJ or something) - have been so angry about this that they've decided to pull their children out of school during the presentation simply on principle, if the schools won't agree to block the presentation. Now, the funny thing is that I wouldn't likely have thought twice about the idea of the President having a little discussion with all the children of the nation - especially since his message is expected to be one of "stay in school, work hard, study hard, grow up to become a functioning and useful part of our wonderful nation". I really wouldn't have given it a second thought.

But now... damn, now I am REALLY looking forward to it.

Now, I've REALLY tried hard to figure out why some of these people don't want Obama talking to children. I've even asked them and they've yet to give me an actual logical argument against it. All I can assume from this is that they just don't like him. In fact, they don't like him so much that in many cases, a lot of these people WHO DONT EVEN HAVE CHILDREN are telling schools not to show the speech. Seriously, what the hell?

This is the same country of nitwits who are screaming about their rights to include the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. Who demand that Creationism (or "Intelligent Design") be taught alongside Evolution in school. Who don't want people to dress with the affectations of their religions. Who won't allow the inclusion of contraception in the sex education classes - if sex ed classes may be taught at all.

These are the same people - many of them, at any rate - who have demanded that everyone else cowtow to their specific requirements for a "proper and moral" education; and for the most part, the rest of us have conceded their demands. We've bent over backwards to try and allow them a balanced and moderate (ie neither fully radical nor ignorant) educational experience.

Now, as part of their educational experience, these children are being offered a pretty impressive opportunity - a chance to hear the elected President of the United States address them directly. Not talking to the adults, not lawyers, legislators or special interest groups; addressing mostly people who will never be able to vote for him at all. And whether you like the man's ideas or not, as a father I think it's great that my President at least wants to ACT like he cares about my child. It's been a very long time since any of our Presidents have behaved like that.

Personally, I think its about time that our world's leaders turned their attention to children. They will one day rule this planet, and we shouldn't ignore them. We should include them in the Big Discussions, because if we don't, they're going to have to take over without the benefit of preparation or education.

Now, I have a few theories as to why people are so up at arms about this idea. I don't know if any of them are accurate - to be honest, I really just don't understand their objections. But here's a few of my theories:

1) Sore losers. The GOP is WAY behind in the polls. They like to say his numbers are slipping - which they are, he's now into the mid 60s overall. Which is about 3 times better than the previous president's numbers, so they've got every reason to be annoyed at him. I'm sorry your candidates couldn't maintain their elections, but even when a lot of us were angry at our previous president, we didn't try to lock him in the white house, plug our children's ears and go "la la la la la" until 2008.

2) No good argument. A lot of his ideas - even if the particulars are a bit off here or there - are pretty much in the right direction for the needs of our nation. And his detractors just don't have any better ideas, so they just want to scream at him for anything he does. Like that "Cash for Clunkers" idea. They sure aren't happy about how well THAT went over. The only complaint they ended up having was that a lot of car dealerships were left with no cars on their lots.

3) I'm gonna say it: Racism. Sorry, guys, but let's be honest. Some of you have NO REASON to hate him so much. You're just mad that some Hawaiian-born son of a Kansan is taking a job away from good honest white folk. I hear the same vitriol when some folks scream about mexicans coming across the border and taking all the hotel housekeeping jobs. Are these the same people who are mad about "all them blacks" filling up the NBA and NFL? Kind of sounds like it.

See, here's the deal, peeps. If you don't like the policies, then yes, please speak your mind. JOIN THE DISCUSSION. But by all means, stop thinking that just because YOU feel a certain way, that it's the ONLY WAY. We're a big nation, full of ideas and people to share them. And we don't all get what we want.

You know the words, sing along: "you can't always get what you want..."

But if you try sometime, you might find....

...you'll get what you need.

Oh yeah.

silence... is it really so golden?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:35:34 GMT

has it really been a week since I posted anything? Geez. It's been a busy week.

Sorry for the silence. Believe me, it's not been free of thoughts and ideas, just been too busy to write here. Too busy to write anywhere, in fact. Bear with me.

Back later.

writer's neighborhood

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:15:28 GMT

Been squeezing - relatively unsuccessfully - the author's hat back on my head. Chugging forward with the new project, but really only sketched out about 4 or 5 pages, just to start getting a feel for the tone. Kinda reminds me of how you paint a little square on a wall just to see how it goes with the rest of the room. The rest of the book is falling nicely into place, though. Random things - a train ride, and a boat? Hmm. Supporting cast... villain, and the method to his madness, etc. Cast headshots, too, are coming in. Alec Newman is the face of William, the titular character. I think I'm going with Matthew as the main character, possibly with the face of Edward Norton. Just spitballing at this point, stirring the pot to see what floats.

Work's been....work. Eh.

Politics have been disappointing me - well, it's not that I'm depressed, it's just that my relative optimism has been diminished by all the nonsense going on.

The more I look at the need for health care reform, the more I think it's one of the critical issues at the heart of our national economic struggle. And the more I look at the current health care reform bill, the more I feel like... well... what's the word for the polar opposite of "reassured"?

As a startlingly apropos analogy, this health care reform bill feels more like they're trying to treat the symptoms - badly - instead of treating the disease. Yes, a problem of health care is that not everyone has access to health insurance. But I keep thinking that responding to that by just giving everyone health insurance isn't the answer.

That'd be like trying to resolve the poverty issue by giving everyone a voucher for 100 poker chips and sending them to a casino.

Why not dig deeper? Why is health insurance even involved in this equation? If health care were free - or even borderline AFFORDABLE - you wouldn't NEED insurance. If pharmaceutical companies' feet were held to the fire and not allowed to charge as per the urgency of the medication, perhaps even medicine would be more affordable. If frivolous lawsuits were held more in check, then doctors wouldn't need to pay such high amounts on their malpractice insurance, and they could again adjust their rates accordingly.

Health Insurance should not be required. It should be a luxury, for people who simply don't want to bother. Health Care ITSELF should be available to everyone. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are basic tenets of our presumptive rights in this nation, and one cannot have any of those without health. We can't promise that everyone will be healthy - but we should at least have the access to what medical processes as exist to keep us as healthy as our technology can provide.

And, unless we want to continue in the vein of "the rich stay healthy, and the sick stay poor" (thank you, Bono), we need to even that playing field out. Normally, I'm not a huge advocate of "distribution of wealth", but I do believe in a management of excessive wealth when that wealth is made off the resources of the sick or dying. It has been said that the quality of a people can be discerned by their treatment of their poor; or their old, the uneducated, the infirm, and so on. We are of the value we display through our actions upon the least of our society.

And by that scale, we are wretched and have failed. Miserably.

But another issue with the whole "health care reform" as they like to call it: Lifestyle dictation. Several congressmen have commented on how "healthy lifestyle choices" should play a factor in government involvement of health care. After all, if they're going to make us better, they should be able to give us advice on how to live so that we might stay healthy, right? And in fact, if they're going to do that, maybe they should be able to reward us for doing what they ask - or maybe even punish us when we don't. For that matter, maybe they should just tell us outright which choices we should be making before they even take care of us at all.

Because, at the end of the day, they don't want sick people to be a drain on the wallets of the rest of the country, right?

So if something can be prevented, isn't it better to try and avoid it? Like smoking? Drinking? Overeating? Extreme sports? Sex? Unprotected sex? Sex with the same gender? And before you accuse me of being a fearmonger, just be aware - those things I just mentioned have ALREADY BEEN DISCUSSED as potential dealbreakers by members of congress with respect to granting or denying health care coverage.

All in an effort to maintain what I've heard referred to as "Wallet Rights" - meaning, the length you're willing to go in defense of your rights - - - - usually until it actually starts to cost you money.

Here's the question: How much health care would you like to see given to our nation's citizenry? All the health care they need? Would you honestly deny any one free medical care, if they needed it? Well, what if it cost you a dollar every time someone visited the doctor? After the first hundred or so people, would you still be so generous? How about the first thousand people? Ten thousand? Million?

Well, here's my question, turned back on you: If someone you loved - (you or someone else) - was sick, how much would you pay to make them well?

If you really lay out the pieces like that, it becomes pretty clear why health care doesn't have a chance in hell of being reformed.

At least not so long as we let the current lawmakers do it.

Save.... Cameron?

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:09:14 GMT

I would love to say this came out of my brain, but I gotta give credit where credit is due - in this case, the effervescent Matty Ballgame from the Filmspotting movie review podcast. (and by the way, if you haven't checked them out, I can happily recommend them. I can usually see where they're coming from, even when they're completely wrong.)

In honor of the recently departed John Hughes, they did a countdown of their top 5 (what is with people and top 5 lists? We'll have to have a top 5 reasons why people do top 5 lists, but not today. One joke per day, thank you very much.) John Hughes characters.

Up near the top of Matty's list was Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Matty says he saw the movie as not being about Ferris Bueller at all - after all, one of the elemental characteristics of the central (or pivotal) characters in a book, movie or play is that they, over the course of the production, change.

Ferris doesn't change. He really doesn't. He doesn't really learn a lesson, and really the most that can be said for him is that he learns that his sister can be a lot cooler than she lets on. Besides that, he's pretty much the same characer start to finish.

No, the character who DOES evolve is Cameron. He's the one who confronts the really horrifyingly dark fears surrounding his father, and accepts the mantle of adulthood to a certain degree, with the simple detail of embracing the notion of calling his father by his name - thus addressing him as a peer rather than as a subordinate.

So in light of these two primary factors, Matty draws this stunning conclusion:

Ferris Bueller is Cameron's invisible friend.

Matty, please write that alternate screenplay; I will gladly pay cold hard cash to watch that production.

Insubstantial Blogging

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:02:10 GMT

It's monday. I'm trying to figure out how today has differed from a few hundred other mondays, to no avail. I feel a bit more awake than, well, pretty much all of last week; but I just feel like otherwise this is just like every other week.

No big news to discuss, no new philosophical revelations or deep profound not-so-rhetorical questions. Feeling strangely unmotivated today. And yet with a brain full of ideas.

Pretty sucky dilemna.

My Thursday Was Given to Crazy

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:08:57 GMT

So after dealing with work-related chaos for an entire night and then going into work the following day, I discovered a really interesting chemical reaction caused in my brain by dramatic sleep deprivation:

Apparently, I become intensely silly.

On the one hand, I really don't remember a whole lot from yesterday, but the snippets I do remember are kind of embarassing. I got into a soft argument about the relative hootchiness of Cheetara (from Thundercats), which I see as one of the essential apexes of my crazy. I don't think I even had a rational argument, I just was emotionally opposed to thinking of her in that way.

The worst part is that I hosted a couple of work-related conference calls yesterday. Ye Gods. I think it might be a small miracle I'm still here.

Lesson to self: no sleep? No workies. No exceptions.

On the bright side, yesterday seemed to just whiz by, whereas today feels like molasses in slow motion.

Random thoughts on a wednesday

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:24:55 GMT

1) Can someone tell me why socialized medicine is bad?
2) Can they do that without being emotionally reactionary?
3) For that matter, why is the ability to form an intelligent argument an almost entirely dead art form?
4) Why did a half dozen undersea cables in the depths of the Pacific ocean take a huge steaming dump on my wednesday?
5) I forgot what I was going to say.
6) I'm hungry.

z z z z z

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:23:58 GMT

wow. Been at work for a bit over 2 hours, and am feeling every whit as asleep as I did then. Coffee didn't even crack this at all.

The new book is changing shape a little more every day. It's gone from a book that centered around the concept of immortality (without fangs) to being more about death. And yet, I keep having all these ideas for little mood-lifting jokes here and there. What's all THAT about it? Does it want to be a comedy or a dark action thriller? The character I originally saw as the main character is becoming a secondary character, but there's so much about him that appeals to me as a writer... so maybe this book will be an introduction to him, and I can write more about him later. Still too soon to tell.

I need to get a full synopsis written out for this one. Maybe then I'll have a clearer idea. Been so up to my armpits in a totally different story, it's taking me a bit to find my voice on this one, I guess.

Random Junk emails

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:46:47 GMT

Got one today that actually made me pause. Under the subject "Confused", it says:

"A worth disables the faith."

And that's it. The whole email.

Definitely a far cry from the typical junk mail I get. I realize it doesn't actually MEAN anything....but I find myself wanting it to mean something. Anything.

I wonder, if I ever get some minor degree of fame from publishing or music... will I get weird freaky $h!t like that all the time?

Cos, honestly, that's kind of cool. :)

turn it up!

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:12:37 GMT

Honestly, I think I'd already heard all the "Global Warming" jokes this past winter from all the "What Global Warming?" folks. As of yesterday, these same people just didn't seem to find the jokes as funny. So I'll just shelve that for now. We can come back and discuss it again in six months, but for now let's just try and maintain a clear memory of how insanely freaking HOT it has been this week. Do. Not. Want.

I don't even know where to begin commenting on the state of affairs from a national perspective. There's just too much, I wouldn't know which little droplet of concentrated stupid to focus on. CNN is struggling to give it all equal time. Rabbis being led away in handcuffs; President Obama stepping in the middle of a little police action and getting most of it on his shoes; "Birthers" debating aforementioned President's validity in the office to which he was duly and constitutionally elected (and let's be honest here: at least HE was actually Elected, unlike his predecessor. And yes, I went there.); weather craziness (apparently, only Texas is suffering from the heat. Who knew?); the stalled health care reform bill, and on and on.

But then I read about other things. Horrible, small, hidden stories, buried by the nationalized idiocy of corporate media... And now I don't feel like writing today.

Let me process this and I'll see if I can write about it tomorrow. In my absence, be nice to people. Please.

You May Rely On It (exerpt)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:58:05 GMT

Gary almost laughed when his eyes fixed themselves on the dusty black sphere on the back row of items on the shelf. He’d come in here looking for a nice accent piece for his new cube at work – something with a bit of character to it, maybe something artistic. Maggie had suggested one of those electric meditation fountains, but those just made him need to pee. He’d driven past this old antique shop – why are there never new antique shops, he’d mused – various times on his way to or from work, and he simply felt the jones to swing by and check it out today. A sort of celebratory tour in honor of his recent promotion, he decided.

It was a nice – if not mildly overpriced – selection in the musty store. Mostly handmade and well-worn items from the 1920s, some WWII memorabilia and signage, a slightly wobbly coat rack and loads of furniture. He blinked, trying to rationalize the appearance of this silly toy from the 1980s. But his eyes weren’t deceiving him – it was a magic eight ball. He reached out and picked it up, blowing the thin layer of dust which had collected on it from presumable months of being overlooked. The faded and handwritten orange sticker listed the price at $1.00. He smiled, shaking it lightly and wondering to himself, should I buy you, little eight ball?

He turned it over and nearly dropped it when he read the words float to the surface of the deep indigo liquid: Yes, you should.

He looked up, feeling a little strange. He’d never owned one of these back then, but he couldn’t remember that having been one of the phrases on the plastic geodesic widgets inside of these toys. “Whoa,” he breathed. “That’s creepy.”

The owner of the store was an older gentleman, likely retired, with a blue shirt and grey slacks which were held up by a pair of dark green suspenders. His thin reading glasses sat further down on his pointy nose than would likely have been helpful, and Gary had the momentary suspicion that he only wore them to add a sense of dignity to his appearance. He was shuffling about near the front window displays with a feather duster, meticulously adding a few million motes to the already cluttered air. The sunlight outside the window seemed almost helpless to penetrate the countless floating specks. The old man looked over at Gary, half-smiled and returned to his task.
Gary was shaking up the ball again, muttering to himself. “Why even bother? The place is just gonna get dusty again in five seconds.” He grinned at his pessimistic observation, but stopped instantly when he saw the words floating up on the surface of the eight ball: I know exactly what you mean.

He extended his hand, suddenly uneasy with the toy. But before he could replace it, he decided to give it one more test. He closed his eyes, inverting the ball and giving it a gentle shake. Do you really know what I’m thinking?

He held his breath, turned it back over and read: Of course I do.

He bit his lower lip, furrowed his brow and thought again, giving the ball another spin. “How much do you cost?” he whispered.

When he spun it upright to read the spindle, he gasped. It read: One Dollar.

He paid the dollar in cash and left the store.

------------------

I've posted the full story up at http://anachronology.blogspot.com/. If you're bored, feel free to take a look.

Blog Migration

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:49:28 GMT

It's with a conflicted heart that I announce the appearance of yet one more place for me to inhabit. I'm going to make a shift to a separate blog - - for the more structured writing elements, and dedicated more to what I hope will be a professional writer's blog.

If I move this to a paid account, I might just set up an RSS feed from there to here, but as I transition over to the new blog, I'll cross-post thematically relevant blogs between both sites. Over time, however, I'll plan to separate them almost completely.

So if you're interested in following me, it will be here:

http://anachronology.blogspot.com/

If not, I won't take it personally.

I'll still be here from time to time to catch up on all of you and what you've been up to.

Take care and happy blogging!

The New Prayers

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:27:25 GMT

Commuting can be fun. No, really - I'm not being sarcastic here. I've got a thirty or forty minute commute in my little vw beetle, and it's really kind of evolved into a good experience; one I almost look forward to at the start and end of my day. Some days I'll just enjoy the scenery in which the sheer quantity of traffic forces me to indugle; other days I'll test my impact resistance of the windows in my car by belting out...well, whatever playlist I deem best on my iPod (this week it's Dream Academy and Ai Otsuka), and if you ever happened to drive past me during one of those days, then I thank you for not staring or laughing.

Some days, though I just want to talk. Occasionally, I'll scroll through the phonebook on my blackberry and figure out who I haven't talked with in a while - but if I get a couple voicemail answers, I just put the phone away. It's never pleasant to look forward to a good conversation, only to get shoved into a mailbox. I know it's nothing personal - or is it? - but it just doesn't wet my whistle, if you understand me.

Many years ago, I'd just send my words up/out/down/in to God. Just kind of a free-form prayer or something. Not a formal "Our Father Who Art In Heaven..." or something, just kind of a "checking in with Dad" conversation. If there were things on my mind, the process of mental ramblings would often hone the comprehension of my thoughts to a degree to where I could generally figure out the answers to my own questions. Back in those days, I'd just take this happy little response as some kind of confirmation to my faith - God answering me in the 'still small voice' in the flutterings of my heart.

I think that's the one single thing I miss about really believing in God. There was always something kind of comforting, like knowing the monsters can't get you when you pull the blanket over your head when you're five years old.

On my way home yesterday, I found myself in that distantly familiar mindset. And I didn't know who or what to talk to. That was kind of annoying to me. But did I let that stop me? (Clearly, no, or this would be an even more depressingly pointless blog than I fear it could yet become.)

Most of what I found myself saying... well, that's a blog for a different day. But the thing that it impressed upon me overall was the idea of prayer itself. Prayer. I remember a line from "Shadowlands" - that movie about the life of C.S. Lewis, played by Sir Anthony "Hannibal Lecter" Hopkins. He was encouraged in a moment of grief and sorrow to pray to god for blessings or whatever, and his response has always stuck with me: "I do not pray to god to change his mind; I pray to god....to change ME."

There's a poignant and significant element to prayer about how we see ourselves in an imagined reflection of a Perfect Being. In those eyes, who would not feel small and insignificant? The greater and more omnipotent we conceive our god to be, how much more broken and worthless do we become? Appreciating this comparitive self-analyzing attribute of prayer has made me address a "chicken and egg" scenario for myself:

Did I stop believing in God when I believed myself too "aware"? Or did realizing I had no belief in god gradually cause my ego to increase?

The worst part of that question is knowing where the questions themselves have come from: fear.

Sometimes, faith - to me - looks like playing the lottery. Like, they play because they're afraid if they don't play, they'll never win. When, actually, it's very likely that they never will even if they do. What's the old joke about the lottery? "It's a tax for people who can't do math."

Well, what about faith? Is it really as bad as that?

I don't have an answer for what's REALLY out there; I've had hopes, I've had this feeling or that, but no single event that couldn't more easily been attributed to chance or coincidence. Well, okay, serendipity - a happy little convergence of random events which, when viewed from a certain angle might look like something else. But it's all figures in clouds. People don't KNOW. They believe, sure, but "know"? Not even the leaders of the various religions or churches know for certain. I can see it in their faces when they talk about it. It's an act, a performance. Even the leaders of my old religion - they didn't see the face of God him/herself, they didn't actually hear the Actual Voice of God with their own actual ears. They've even said so - but understandably, those quotes don't really make the headlines.

So, knowing this, it makes it a challenge to pray. Because then, you know, it's just me talking to myself. It just kind of slid into place yesterday, though, in the midst of my auto ramblings:

That's why I blog.

Sure, I know there's maybe four or five people who read this - maybe one or two even get to the end! - but in between the punch lines, the political commentaries, or the imported webcomic strips and YouTube clips... there's the occasional blog like this that I write just to write it out.

I'd love to think God (or whatever) reads it. But honestly, even if not a single person ever sees one word of it....

it feels good to just write it down.

It's a big world. A bigger universe. And maybe I'm just a butterfly in an open field in china - but maybe the collective breath of my fellow insects will gather itself up into a summer rain that sweeps across Nebraska. and perhaps those rains will nourish the crops there, sending a fresh batch of health to a needed village in the center of africa. And maybe one of those villagers will grow up strong and sound and go off to school to find a cure for everything. Then, with those longer lifespans, scientists will figure out a way to leave this planet and meet our neighbors across the vastness of space. And in that collective web of ideas and experience, we will push ourselves just a little closer in our evolutionary path towards a perfect being.

And maybe, to the little butterflies like me, that being will each down their hands and be God.

Sure, it's a broken analogy, but if you've gotten this far, I wanted to at least give you something to laugh about.

Have a day. Blog. email. Send it out.

I might be the Walrus

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:31:07 GMT

We watched the first volume of the Beatles Anthology documentary series, and if you haven't seen it, I already highly recommend it. We're planning on picking up the Rock Band release in september created around the Beatles franchise, so I figured it made sense for us to brush up on our Beatlesology, so there we were.

I should have also figured it would creep its way into my dreams.

I had three last night - or perhaps 3 chapters to the same dream, I'm not sure. But it/they were really interesting, hence all the sharing.

The first one was on a set I call my "urban cul-de-sac" set - it's a cobblestone side street, somewhat reminiscent of the brick frontage street down by Pike's Place market, but with other shops in the place of the flower and food vendors. There's a little two-story cafe in the location (in my dream), and I've hung out there a few times. There's also a small venue next to the cafe where various acts have shown up (Once, Pearl Jam was there, holding auditions; another time it was Peter Gabriel doing an acoustic set). In the opening scene in my dream(s) last night, it was just a club where various local bands were performing. I was a pianist (a stretch, I guess?), but I didn't so much have "a band" as much as I was working with a variety of groups and trying to finesse my way into a headlining gig. But apparently I'd become something of a staple, because a lot of other bands kept coming over to me for advice or requests.

A really successful local band walked by and the group went silent. "That's the Police", someone whispered in reverent tones. "Their bassist is AWESOME." Sting brushed some of the wild hair from his face and nodded in confident acceptance of their admiration. I begrudingly admitted they were totally right. Damn him and his ego.

They finally opened the doors to the performance hall and some of us filtered past the milling throngs into the backstage area. All our instruments were there, but my keyboards were locked up and I couldn't get to them. We eventually busted the locks and pulled them out, but all the buttons were written in some kind of japanese characters and all I could do was to make the keyboard make little laser sounds.

Before you ask, yes, I know what the really not-so-subtle message there was.

Anyway, we did one number and managed to make people like us, though the other members of the band I was playing with it kept giving me dirty looks. Finally, I abandoned the keyboards and started playing the old piano at the side of the stage. It sounded pretty tinny and distorted and was slightly off key, but it filled out the arrangement better than little laser sounds, so it was good and the band stopped hating me.

Unfortunately, the audience apparently preferred the lasers and booed us off the stage. We walked off the stage under a hail of beer bottles but felt like heroes.

Back up on the street, we laughed and joked about the night's performance and the other musicians came by to offer their congratulations. The Police meandered back by, and Sting nodded to me, a subtle hint of a smile on his far too cool face. It was better than a Grammy or a Gold Record.

The darkness in the sky faded to light, and we started to stand up and make our way back to our homes to sleep off the day like musically precocious vampire lads and when one of the other musicians asked me where I was going (I was at that moment stepping onto a bus), I explained that I was going to go "do a mission." He assumed I was talking about "video game stuff", so nodded and gave me the thumbs up.

I hopped on the bus and it flew off. (yes. It's a dream. They can do that there.)

When the busplane landed, I was in the wilds of spanish arizona or something. The ground wasn't quite red enough to be the arizona I know, but the houses were all made of clay and though nobody was of a particularly distinct racial appearance, they all spoke spanish and russian. Or something. It sounded russian, it could have been klingon, for all I know. Anyway.

They started asking me a lot of church fact questions, all of which I answered. They were all very happy with me, and said I was going to be a great asset for them and their "great work" to convert the rest of the world. I looked around the rest of the world and couldn't see anything but a wasteland beyond the little scattered houses I could see directly around me.

I asked them how many people were left, and another much older person stepped out of a small house and said, "only 1000 people left, and half of them are already ours."

I was invited in with a few other "missionaries", who finally looked at me with my button up shirt, long hair and beard and asked me why I was there.

"You're not a missionary, are you?"

I laughed. "No, I'm not even a member of your church," I answered.

The local missionary leader's brow furrowed. "Then why are you here?"

Not really sure how to answer (what do you say when your dream-people ask you about your dreams?), I shrugged and said I didn't know.

They all escorted me out of the building and told me I needed to leave, because I didn't belong there. "You don't have the proper underwear," they said (this makes a lot more sense if you're familiar with the mormon church, btw). "We can do this without your help."

I thought of a thousand things I wanted to tell them, but was once again reminded that you cannot tell someone a thing if they don't want to know it. And, besides, my alarm clock was going off, and I needed to wake up.

I hit snooze but didn't really awaken, instead going right back into the dream.

I was now back at the cafe, but dressed in nicer clothing and with a much better haircut. But all the other musicians were still there, but looking a bit older and with a bit longer hair and dirtier clothes than before.

They asked me where I'd gone, I told them. They laughed. "Really? A missionary? But why?"

I explained it was because I'd needed to know what I believed in. The laughed again and poured me another beer.

From behind us came a voice at another table. It was Sting, now looking more like how he looks in fact, today. At his table was John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Sting gets the best tables, damn him.

Sting said, "So what did you find out?"

I looked back at him. "I found out that I didn't believe in anything."

Jimi laughed. "No true, man. You can't find nothing."

John agreed. "Even when you don't find what you wanted, you do find something else. Faith is faith, even if it's not the faith you were looking for."

I looked over at Jim, expecting something else as an addition, but he just half-smiled behind those annoying sunglasses of his, and pointed a thumb at Lennon. "it's cool that you took the journey, man, you gotta be happy with that."

Sting just shrugged. "Best thing you ever did was leave the road they gave you in search of something new. The trouble now is that you don't know where to go."

I agreed, recognizing the truth when I heard it. "Can't I just go everywhere?"

Jim raised his glass. "I like this kid."

Sting and John shook their heads. "Not all at once. Just one road at a time."

The low beeping started sounding off out of the club again, like some truly annoying pager. The four musicians raised their glasses. "You're on, kid," the guy at the door said.

"You'll do fine," said Sting.
John peered at me over his glasses. "But you already knew that."
Jimi took a long drink and nodded.
Jim leaned back, looking up at the sky. "The only thing stoppin' you is the stoppin', man."

I looked back at the club's opened doors and closed my eyes.

Least Favorite News Conventions

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:58:14 GMT

1) Putting "-gate" on everything potentially scandalous. "Watergate" was the name of the effing building. It wasn't a scandal about Water, you tards.

2) "Breaking the Glass (insert random noun)" - "Breaking the Glass Ceiling" can't become "Breaking the Glass Rotors" just because she's a female helicopter pilot. There's no such thing as glass rotors on a helicopter. Besides, the term "glass ceiling" is a metaphor for an projected inability to move up in one's organization based on being a member of a relative minority.

3) "Balanced Reporting" = Putting two loud and diametrically opposed people on the screen and let them scream over the top of one another. Balanced reporting should be a calm and logical explanation and representation of the facts, not a cage match of the most enthusiastic extremes.

4) "Breaking News" = It might be an explosion, it could be a kitten up a tree, but it's HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!

5) Editorializing masquerading as "professional interpretation." You're a talking head, not a truth filter.

6) Pharmaceutical sponsorship - ever wonder why the ads during news channels tend to be treatments for depression, ADD, and sexual dysfunction? Maybe it's all the news' fault that we're all unable to maintain an election. Yes. I punned. Get over it.

7) Reporting on the News: yes, we get it - you're the news agencies. We realize that when you run out of things to talk about, you talk about yourself. But that's when we're changing the channel.

8) Talking about the other guys: this reminds me about dating girls who talked smack about their past boyfriends. It always made me think, "god, how are you going to rip on me to the next guy you go out with?" Keep it professional, and stop trying to talk yourself up to me against your competition. Ripping on them just makes me want to go watch them instead of you.

9) Graphics and High-techitude: if it gets in the way of the information it's supposed to be providing, then maybe you need to stick to just talking.

10) Ripping on the Internet, Bloggers, Twitter and YouTube: they'll always be just a little better and faster and have less commercials than you. Stop whining.

Change of Mind

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:19:51 GMT

So i'm trying something new. As I float in the relative zero g between self-determined projects, I'm reminded that I need a simple reminder of what it is I'm trying to do.

To that end, I present "I Am David's White Blood Cell", a short story I wrote last year in anticipation of diving into the novel that became "The Morrow Stone." I've got another one - "You May Rely On It" - that I'll put up here later, but with all the changes to the "modern publishing model", I see less of a motivation to sit on my ass and keep myself reclusive from the professionally murky waters of contemporary publication. Oh, I'm hoping to find my way there at some point, but I'm seeing many comparisons to the music industry of late - and not good metaphors, either.

Frankly, hard-printing a CD or a book is lovely and all - there's something corporeal and tangible about that finished product, all shiny and glistening with birth juice (where the hell did THAT come from? "Birth Juice"? Someone needs to either bring me another coffee or keep it far away from me) that connects the process to us.

I try to keep a copy of my old CD nearby as both a self-congratulatory trophy and a cautionary tale - - even the best intentions and clever ideas can in time go...nowhere. Many consumers are on to the reality that it does not actually cost the music companies 18 dollars to print a CD. And most artists get less than 10 cents per unit sold. So where does the other $17.90 go? I made my CD for less than 75 cents per unit. And it only cost me about 500 dollars in actual cash to print the 1000 copies I got from the initial printing. The remainder of expenses included allowing for the use of two of the songs to be used in a local television show, an hour spot on a late night radio show, two bottles of mead (for which I traded a bottle brush, 5 feet of surgical tubing and a 5 gallon bucket), and several hours of free studio and live engineering time on my part.

The thing is, it's not expensive to record an album AT ALL. Not even close to expensive.

I've e-met several people who actually make a moderate living off the internet music industry. And by "industry", I mean they pretty much create and market it themselves, using a lot of the established music providers.

I have my own CD up on CafePress.com - and for the 9.99 CD, how much do I make? Half. So, I make more money per unit than, probably, Sting does. That kind of tickles me. Yes, I realize he sells MORE CDs than I do, but this is theory I'm speaking of, here.

Anyway, the music industry is being challenged - and not philosophically or whatever, they're being challenged in that people are able to get out and get money on their own merits - without needing to be involved in the big moneymaking machine we know as the "Music Industry." With search engines being essentially free, marketing takes a whole new spin.

(heh. I just googled myself, and still pull up 2 full pages of links referring to me before you get into renting diesel engine vehicles. One entry is of a photographer in Ohio who's only one letter off my name. That was cool. I sent her an email wishing her luck.)

The conventions are changing. I don't think Dr Spengler is correct - print isn't dead...not yet, anyway. But stories live on. The contemporary mythologies we're inscribing will still emerge from the creative birthing canals (better than "covered in birth juices") and some of them may just survive us.

The trick is to find a way to make a living at it - or at least to have enough of a brain left over from working the other jobs we perform that make us the money to be able to afford to write our stories.

thermalscorpion and I are tossing a few new ideas back and forth about this - in particular, the potential of creating our own media site to basically promote him and his wife and I (between the three of us, we have writing, art and music more than covered). It's kind of an "anything goes" landscape, this internetional marketplace - - the guy with the good idea can more easily expect to make a buck from the idea; at least, moreso than 20 years ago.

It's a David v Goliath setup, and it no longer requires David to take on Goliath by himself. Now, there are a million other Davids, all with their own slingshots. Anyhoo. Just touching base. What have you been up to?