I never realize how much I like weekends until I have two on call in a row.
This last one made some money (the one before didn’t); enough I would have gotten the wife that netbook if she’d wanted it. The thing’s so small when I asked if the screen was longer than my cock, she had to think real hard. (the screen won, but I hear it’s the girth that matters anyway). But the money’s only a band-aid. For it to make a real difference, it’d have to be something like … hmm … if 30x=600 … 20 calls. 20 calls, if they weren’t terrible and were properly spaced, wouldn’t be impossible. I think coworker1 got 25 calls over the Thanksgiving weekend last year–when I was enjoying a fine Thanksgiving dinner catered from Le Central, the decent French place (is it snobby to have a decent French place and then the French place you really like).
Speaking of which, am I having the fam in for Thanksgiving this year? I think my dad invited himself. My sister might be busy. I was kind of hoping my friend D would come in because we had such a good time when he visited over New Year’s and this time I wouldn’t have to take any time off, but it’s not looking promising. I saw that and he’ll probably be crashing on my couch come November anyway.
Hopefully, the wife’s mom and grandmother are coming out for Christmas. I say hopefully because odds are I’m going to fuck up by then.
But back to this weekend.
I’m going to read. I already know that.
Sunday morning I think I’m going to get agent queries together and then just print out the pages and use the postage at work on Monday.
I haven’t decided if I’m drinking Sunday. If I were just giving it up because I were trying to be healthy, I’d definitely do it. But the last drink yesterday hit me pretty hard. Could have been the Diet Crush. Whatever it was, not sure I want to be drinking hard Sunday. It might make me real sick, so I could stay up late Saturday and get ripped. But I suppose that move isn’t a wise one either.
Eh.
So what to do with the weekend?
Sleep; read; watch a movie (I was thinking Once and a George Sanders Saint and something else, maybe the Towering Inferno, but then I remembered the podcast movies). No idea when we’re recording the next episode so I guess it doesn’t matter too much.
The PC had trouble running the following (at once): excel, chrome, tweetdeck, yahoo messenger, itunes and… something else… maybe internet explorer. Oh, and some shitty freeware PDF viewer that lets you do mark-up.
The Mac is currently running: Mailplane, ecto, tweetie, yahoo messenger, Drive Genius, Mail, Time Machine, Growl, iStat.
Guess which one works better? Yeah, the much slower (by the numbers above) Mac. I’d love to install Intel Leopard on the PC but I a) don’t know how and b) probably shouldn’t futz with a work computer so definitively.
Oh, I also tend to have Yojimbo, Excel, Word and Taskpaper open on the Mac without problems.
iTunes is a different story. Since I use SimplifyMedia to play the home library and because that’s another app that’d be running and using up resources, I just have my iPhone plugged into speakers and run SimplifyMedia off it. I can’t search and can’t repeat playlists, but it’s a small price.
So what can’t the Mac do?
Well, most online video apparently. The PC–I think–can. The G4 PPCs always sucked for mpeg-4 and now that youtube’s gone over to it… well, it’s a good thing I’ve got the iPhone around in a pinch. If I just desperately need to watch youtube, because it comes up so often. Though I suppose if someone were to send me a link to a Coldplay music video… like Fix Me… I’d want to watch that.
I can’t play any games on the Mac. I mean, I suppose I could if I wanted to dig up a bunch of three or four year old games. But since I’ve had the iPod touch/iPhone, I haven’t given a shit about computer games to kill the time. iPhone games are much better for the short five minute diversions.
Well crap, Port Map doesn’t work with whatever shitty router they’ve got here. Because it’s ancient, I’m sure (or because I’m connected straight to the DSL modem via wireless). Doesn’t really matter. Don’t need a lot of home access to the work computer. I could set up logmein.
I just realized I could set up Bento to make emergency forms. That’d be kind of neat I suppose. Seems like a lot of work.
So what’s the benefit to the Mac at work? Well, Mailplane’s superior. So’s Yojimbo (Yojimbo actually makes my job–that actual job I rarely do–much easier and faster). Tweetie’s kind of better than tweetdeck. Kind of. There’s a lot I don’t like about Tweetie, but it’s the best native Mac twitter client I’ve used.
Spotlight’s another big deal. I have Google Desktop on the PC but it’s freaking useless; running Leopard, which has a much more intensive Spotlight than Tiger did (and therefore shouldn’t run well on this shitty PPC), I’m able to pull up whatever I want. When I need it.
I’ve never really had a real use for Spotlight. At home, I use it to delete old files I haven’t opened or some shit. But here, at work… in a few days, it’s totally changed the way I do my job.
Of course, I do still have 56 to do items in my email. But I’m slacking on those because I’m lazy and I was lazy on the PC too.
So, waiting between sets, I figured I’d make use of iStayFit’s notepad feature (since you can’t leave the app and have the timer continue).
Here’s everything from 5/7/09
* * *
A tomato falls
Splats on the sidewalk
I step in it
*
A landing clamp
Open on the floor
Takes me to space
*
Muscles in my arm
I’ve never seen before
Start to hurt
*
I cough up blood
It covers my lips
Not that pretty
* * *
Live twitting the podcast with a designated twitter account?
Listener voted shows?
What the heck is our email?
Tell cohost to think of the next show’s movies so we can announce them
Does port map work on work mini? Can I set up dydns?
Is any external hard drive built to last?
A g4 mini as a work machine. Notes for the blog
* * *
The first series is me working haikus because I’m freaking lazy and I don’t write poetry and I remember how much I liked writing haikus in undergrad with the prominent Japanese American poet who’d rather talk about hamburgers than poetry.
The second bit is a list of podcast-related stuff.
No idea why I want port map working at work. I think so I can reset remotely?
Is any external hard drive built to last is a reaction to something I heard on the macgeekgab.
The G4 Mini as a work machine… I’m thinking about writing about using this ancient, broken machine for work—and having it be superior to the newer XP PC.
I have two monitors at work now, one for the PC, one for the Mac. The M1, just because, sent me this picture she took of some objects. A drink, some stamps, a list of books, etc. It makes for a brilliant wallpaper. Change the list of books to a list of upcoming DVD releases circa 1999 and I think I have the back cover for my novel. Maybe even the front cover, since no one liked my other ideas.
Then the M1 made me this other, similarly awesome wallpaper for the second monitor. Same idea, arranged objects.
About a year ago, the Iconfactory released an Indiana Jones wallpaper. It was supposed to be his desk. I’m not going to do my whole Indiana Jones IV post right now (and probably never will).
In grad school, I took a class with David Robbins (and, wow, if he googles himself and finds this, he’s going to learn a lot more about a student than he’d want to). He was very big on artifice not affecting art.
So, the M1 staged those photos–definitely the second one, probably at least one part of the first one–but it doesn’t matter. They’re great photos. Great wallpapers.
So what about a site of created wallpapers. Or fuck that. That seems like some lame way to make money off selling shit.
What about people making wallpapers for other people. Almost everyone has a digital camera, right? And a bunch of stuff (presumably, I mean, you’re an American and we love our stuff–if you’re not, I apologize for assuming you’d have to be an American to read this blog. Wow, that sounds … German, doesn’t it?).
Like a wife or husband making up a desktop wallpaper, of objects, indicative objects–a collage of a person’s stuff–for their spouse overseas. Or like a cheap ass mix tape, since mix tapes, at least as far as I can tell, require some computer geekery to pull off these days.
I’m going to make M1 a wallpaper (she hasn’t asked for one). I have no idea what I’m going to put on “the desktop” yet. But since hers are so great, I’ll have to do something particularly good.
I’m listening to I’ll Be Gone (Moby + Patti LaBelle)–for a couple reasons, 1) coworker1 hates it and she’s been texting for the last twenty minutes so fuck her and 2) Miami Vice.
Until recently, Mann always had at least one great cinema moment in his films. Thief has one, Manhunter has one (“my man”), Last of the Mohicans (theatrical, not director’s), Heat has three or four, Miami Vice has one (the I’ll Be Gone sequence). Insider doesn’t, Collateral doesn’t. Et cetera, et cetera. Public Enemies will not, Ali doesn’t have any.
Other great moments–The Last Temptation of Christ, the ending. Henry Fool, the ending.
Those are the ones I’m thinking of now … maybe the helicopter rescue in Superman (maybe).
These are cinematic payoff sequences, where the medium just skyrockets in potential. Most movies don’t have things like them, most great movies don’t have things like them (Kubrick never had one of these). They’re somewhat populist moments. I’m trying to think of another example and I really can’t. Mann’s kind of the best for them, just because he understands that kind of payoff storytelling.
In grad school, when I was still working towards a story collection versus a novel, I used to want to write something with one of those cinematic payoffs. It’s incredibly hard to even conceive of a way to get them down in a draft, much less edit them, much less make them successful. I’m trying to think of a novel with one of those moments. Cat’s Cradle has one. Vonnegut has them, but he usually saves them for the endings. In Cat’s Cradle, he does it early. Bluebeard’s got a great one.
Novels don’t tend to work in moments like that. In singularly memorable moments … not even punch in the gut ones, just moments in general.
As a going present, my professor/mentor gave me an annotated copy of Dracula. I fucking hate Dracula. I wrote an essay about how much I hated Dracula–and she read it out loud because I was busy with my mom’s … I guess memorial service is what it’d be called. So I couldn’t figure out why she was giving it to me.
HUGE Dracula reference in the novel. About it sucking no less. And I totally forgot about it. And giving a copy of Dracula as a gift was part of the fucking scene in the novel. I felt like a douchebag. It’s probably the second most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten. No, first. The only competition was when my dad got me this Muppet Show soundtrack CD. So I douched on this great gift, because it wasn’t a memorable part of my own fucking novel. I mean, I kind of recovered–I blamed it all on being a drunken dipshit.
No big cinematic moments in the novel, the first one (no idea what’ll happen in the second). In fact, one of my advisors told me to put one in–the eureka moment–to make it more sellable and I argued for about two hours to not. It was a funny scene–I mean, I hated this two-faced woman but she did know some stuff and sellable was one of them–because we were in this “family friendly” coffee shop and there was this kid around and we both kept swearing and getting nervous looking, like we’d get 86′d.
I think I’d like to do one of those moments. Paul Pope does an amazing one in 100% (ending). But they’re not easy in literature. I”m pretty sure T.C. Boyle’s never had one, no for Rick Moody. Pynchon has a bunch, obviously, but he always cuts them short. I feel like I just read another one–besides Cat’s Cradle–but I can’t remember what.
Absolutely hate it. Hated shoveling it, hated driving it. I once spent six hours in a car on Christmas Eve trying to get home from work (downtown Chicago), all because of snow.
But I will say something for it. It looks good. When it’s snowing, it does look good.
Makes me think of The Ice Storm (film, not novel, just for the visual effect) or, strangely) Ford’s The Hurricane (which just an amazing storm sequence at the end). I haven’t seen any of the recent (are they recent?) weather-related disaster movies–I think the last one I saw was Twister–so I don’t know if CG’s gotten to the point of being able to do good bad weather.
Writing does it well, but it’s a trope so it’s hard to use it anymore.
For some reason, the whole thing reminded me of Days of Heaven, which I’m not a particular fan of, because Malick shot the whole thing–the daylight scenes–during the magic hour. You couldn’t do that with snow. Snow looks good when it’s snowing and then goes to shit and slush when it’s not. I mean, constant snow on the ground–I did grow up in the middle west after all and douchebag best friend did live in Michigan until he was 21 and I hung out up there–looks really great sometimes. But in general, it’s never as asthetically compelling as when it’s falling.
So, I was clothes shopping yesterday. Window shopping. I don’t need sweaters for a while and the sport coat’s absolutely useless except to have a really nice sport coat (coworker1 told me to get a suit at JC Penney… I don’t think she gets it).
Well, I’m sending the stuff I find to the wife and tweeting it.
The wife tells me to pick her out a top.
So I do.
I make the mistake of mentioning this to coworkers1-3. Who tell me men should never shop for women.
I mean, I could make the same disparaging remarks about why I wouldn’t want to shop for any of the three coworkers I made to the wife last night, but I’m going to be a tad more general.
If a guy can’t look at a woman’s wardrobe and figure out what’d look good on her, he’s not using the right part of his brain. WTF?
If a guy can’t shop right for his girlfriend or wife, it’s because he isn’t shopping for the right person. I mean, I can understand with the coworkers (that sounds terrible, doesn’t it?). But come on, as a blanket rule? It’s bullshit. It’s more than bullshit. It’s silly.
But I’m also the kind of person who… you know… doesn’t think one should get a sport coat from JC Penney if one wants a good sport coat.
What I really need to be looking for is summerwear for New Orleans, considering it’ll probably be 120 degrees when I’m there.
Oh, but the whole point of this is men not knowing what looks good on women? That’s fucking absurd. When I was a freshman in undergrad, we made this goofy horror movie at my dorm. And I picked out, from her wardrobe, the lead’s outfit. And I did a fantastic job, which all the girls were somewhat surprised at… why?
She was hot. I simply picked clothes to accentuate her hotness.
Which is why I can pick out my wife’s tops.
But it also… explains why coworkers1-3 can’t have their husbands shop for them.
Is that diplomatic enough?
I mean, don’t women want some input on these things from their partners? I email my wife a top and say, I think you’d look good in this… where’s the confusion….
fldisinhibition
10:36 pm on April 22, 2009 Permalink
| Reply Tags: AWP Conference, Disney, Elgato, Mel Gibson, Paul Brickman, Ransom, Risky Business, Tom Cruise, Turbo.264, Warner Archive, Warner Bros. ( 2 ), Wyatt Earp
By one week ago today, thanks to the cardio versus muscle days, I know I was almost totally fucking gone.
What suffered? Let’s see… too much to list right now. I might do little post-marriage counseling thingies, but I don’t know yet. Haven’t decided.
But this blog definitely suffered.
Driving home, passing the bus stop, I noticed there weren’t any cute girls. Which got me thinking about having sex with a cute girl on a bus. Which got me thinking about having sex with a cute girl on a train. Which got me thinking about having sex with a specific beautiful young woman on a train. Which got me thinking about Risky Business.
Warner Bros is making a big deal with their Warner Archive DVD series, but they haven’t discussed whether they’re going to do anything really interesting–like the director’s cut of Wyatt Earp or the director’s cut of Risky Business.
See, has this specific beautiful woman seen Risky Business? Not really for her generation–I’m pretty sure the M1 is from that generation where Tom Cruise was no longer popular. Though I’m not a 100% on it, I’m pretty sure.
Well, can she see Risky Business? Sure, she can rent it.
Can she see the director’s cut of Risky Business? No.
Because Warner didn’t include the director’s cut of Risky Business, didn’t do streaming, just slapped the director’s cut ending (the rest of the film is Brickman’s) on the recent special edition disc. Want to make a director’s cut? Have to do it yourself, like I did.
It’s not just not being able to recommend it to M1–my douchebag best friend can’t even see it and he’d love it. I mean, I could go through the trouble of sending him a copy, I could easily make a copy available for her to download (but won’t because I’d rather she watch the other movie I recommended)… but then, driving home, still thinking about all this malarky, I realized I might have encoded it while my Elgato Turbo.264… which does an ass job. Not an ass job, but nothing something I’d want a permanent copy of a film in.
So I can’t decide if I want to check… or just pretend it’s fine since I won’t watch Risky Business again for at least nine months (douchebag best friend is coming to AWP… if he bookends it with some extra, non-drunken stupor visit time, we might watch it). M1 is, oddly, also invited to AWP, so if we timed things right, she too could see the Risky Business director’s cut. But I don’t think she’s coming out for AWP. I’m psychic about these things. Just like Warner Archive is never going to give me my nice anamorphic Wyatt Earp Director’s Cut… M1 is sitting AWP out next year.
Other douchey non-DVD releases… oh, there’s only one, starring everyone’s favorite anti-semitic bigot Mel Gibson. I recently had a discussion about him with a gay friend–yes, Mel Gibson is a piece of shit. Total piece of shit. Good movie star. Ransom rocks. Need the director’s cut. The theatrical cut is lame. But that’s a Disney thing, unrelated to Warner.
I had one job where people would come in and talk about their fucked up dreams. That was fun.
The people I work with now probably don’t have very fucked up or entertaining dreams.
I was thinking about using the girl dressed as Fozzie the Bear thing in something–but I’d have to lose Sherlock Holmes fetish reference in the novel so it ain’t happening–and it reminded me of one of my finest moments.
I stole it, of course, but I stole it from WKRP in Cincinnati, which gives it some real texture.
One day at work, a few people were talking about their dreams. And I followed them with: yeah, I dreamt I killed my father and crawled into bed my with mother–weird, huh?
Everyone just stared at me. No one knew what to say.
It was freaking great.
I’d love to use it again here; I don’t know if anyone could deal with it (and my boss might say he dreamt he killed his mother and crawled into bed with his father). It’d be superb. Too bad they’re all so boring.
Apparently, I wrote a good female protagonist piece. Not a good piece–there was no comment on its overall quality and it’s certainly not one of the best–I’ll never be submitting it, without serious and almost fundamental revision, for publication as a stand alone–but a good female protagonist. Well, successful.
Have I already talked about why I don’t do the female protagonist? I used to do it a lot more, in undergrad, because at a certain point of writing development, guys really love writing female protagonists. I don’t understand why, maybe because they don’t want to attribute some thought to a male character–like checking out the receptionist’s ass every day–their mother might ask about. Or wife.
So I 86′d the female protagonist all through grad school. No one seemed to miss them.
But I ended up–24 days into the new project–writing two of them so far. The last one was really close. And it got a solid review (as being from a female point of view) from an unbiased female reader.
My concern is I’m going to start using them more, especially as the project has become so multi-layered and confusing already–I don’t know if I have all the characters yet, there could be more still. One of the main characters, a female character, is still unnamed. I’m not going to do the written equivalent of Maris Crane or Norm’s wife on Cheers–I just haven’t figured out what her name is yet. Given how long it took to come up with the male protagonist’s name (thanks to an unintentional Summer School reference) it might take a while. I really can’t justify leaving her unnamed, of course. It needs to be done.
My fear–have I already started a paragraph with “my fear?”–is I’m going to change gender in some of the more edit-friendly pieces to give her some attention after I name her.
These are the things I worry about at work instead of work. Having a real job must be difficult. But it occurs to me, even when I did have a real job–I mean, working at the Options Exchange was a real job–I still had time to think about this kind of shit. More possibly.
jennthewriter
5:19 pm on April 22, 2009 Permalink
| Reply
Why worry about whether you’re using a female protagonist or a male? Why not just write for the sake of telling a great story? Does it truly matter? If you have the story, and it works with the female, then go with it. Just because you’re a guy, doesn’t mean that everything you write has to be written with a male lead. Even Stephen King wrote books with a female protagonist. If it works – go with it. Your work will ultimately benefit.
And as far as a name for your character goes, I’m sure if she is important enough to the story, a name will come to you. And if not – then you could leave her unnamed. After all, you are the creator here. Best of luck!
So, coworker1 can look at shoes all day online but when I look at clothes, there’s something wrong with it?
She told me to buy a suit at JC Penney. I mean… I suppose if I needed a suit for something and had a budget… I’d get a suit at JC Penney or Target or Goodwill or whatever the fuck. But I don’t need a suit for anything except looking good in a suit.
I like coworker1 and all, but I can’t stand being around women who don’t understand why a man would want to wear fine clothes.
Couple remembered dreams. Both of them day specific… so I figured a fast post before I got caught up in writing today’s post for the M1, which kind of makes me feel like having to write The Erasers in one drafting, without any notes.
Coworker1 forgets to bring me the cup of coffee she owes me. Apparently, I’m very worried about it.
M1 asks me dancing–this afternoon–and I keep thinking I can’t go… because I have something to do. Except, I don’t think I do. And, waking up, remembering it’s on call day… I don’t, so dancing would have been fine to schedule.
The return to caffeine and the general lack of sleep (six hours a night) are cutting into what I can remember from dreams. But I’m thinking, depending on what I read next, it could get shaken up.
My best is a short story I wrote where some girl showed up in a wet t-shirt and the word nipple was in there for no reason (I wrote this story when I was nineteen, so I hadn’t learned about editing yet).
Anyway, some woman just wished me a happy holiday and–she’s in Louisana–I got confused. First I thought, is she wishing me a happy Passover? Then I realized she shouldn’t be on the phone if she’s wishing me a happy Passover.
Easter. I forgot about Easter (because it, unlike Passover this year, doesn’t affect me in the slightest).
But more–Easter’s a holiday you wish people to have a happy holiday over?
Pragmatically speaking… you don’t a) get presents or b) get a day off of work (which actually makes it one of the more acceptable federal holidays to me, since it doesn’t fuck up my mail). So what’s there to be happy about? There aren’t Easter pies or cakes, are there? I mean, Thanksgiving and Christmas have good desserts at least.
So, like I said before, I grew up the child of a couple failed Catholics. Even though I’m pretty sure my dad wasn’t raised Catholic for long. His mom was raised Catholic at some point and it’s kind of always there. My mom was a nun. So… I guess if you quit being a nun for liquor, tobacco and men, that makes you a failure as a Catholic. My father, as far as I know, never went to church except for funerals and weddings. My mom was the same way, though she threatened to go on a couple holidays and rarely did.
Growing up, until high school, I basically knew Catholic people and Jewish people. There must have been protestants in there–I mean, my hometown has a fuck-load of churches–but they never talked about it. I did have a friend who was Jehovah’s Witness or something… he couldn’t celebrate holidays. Anyway.
In high school, I encountered my first churchy. He wasn’t that bad… he thought dogs had a heaven, so obviously, he wasn’t a good churchy.
After high school, I worked with Jewish people and Catholic people. My closest “friend” when I worked on a stock floor was this devout, self-loathing Catholic who was a hoot. Got thrown out of college for robbing his frat’s treasury to buy coke. Hilarious guy. I’m sure he’s dead. He was a bit of a piece of shit, but an amusing one. And he’d talk to me about religion, him being a Catholic. Made me watch The Exorcist once, didn’t understand why I wasn’t as freaked out as he was. Whatever. Solid guy in a lot of ways. Nice to my mom. I kind of miss him. But not really, he was a sexist, racist piece of shit. The Jewish guys I knew were older, they were traders; we had breakfast most days of the week.
Somehow, though, it didn’t occur to me until two days ago I have no idea what Passover is.
I think I got days off of school for it. No idea what it is. Considering I thought Easter was all about the Easter Bunny–no religion in my family holidays, though I did manage to offend my mother, when I was twenty-two, by suggesting a Jesus doll that sang “Hey, now, it’s my birthday” and kicked his legs out to the sides on a cross–I’ve since learned, of course, there’s a connection between Passover and Easter. Somehow. I’m not really interested in that connection, I wanted to find out what Passover was all about.
And, if you’re reading this and you think you know why I want know about Passover or you’re the reason why I wanted to find out about Passover, you’re right. Thanks, you’re encouraging me to learn. That I’m only learning this because of you… eh… ignore that part.
I started at wikipedia, kind of browsing their article. I got caught up with the matzo thing. It seems very complicated, like I might need a diagram. I mean, really, I know the place names from The Last Temptation of Christ, so… it’s kind of hard. I might need a map too.
But, I figured, if the Agnes Moorehead of Colloquial Blogs isn’t for explaining how an athiest learns about Passover, what the fuck is it for? I don’t know if Agnes Moorehead would be proud. I doubt it. It’s not an insult. She’s an incredibly handsome woman. It’s kind of Orson Welles’s fault for never casting her as the love interest.
Anyway. Passover. For Athiests.
So, I found chabad.org’s article, which seems to be written for kids. (I also can’t understand why they allow comments on it–first rule of cheap hits, attacking someone’s religion–which the first comment is–I did this to great effect in a short story once, I was so proud of myself, immediately turned everyone against the protagonist). But, I get it now. Some of it.
Let’s take into account… most of my understanding of Jewish traditions come from things like The Big Lebowski.
Walter Sobchak: I told those fucks down at the league office a thousand times that I don’t roll on Shabbos! Donny: What’s Shabbos? Walter Sobchak: Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don’t work, I don’t get in a car, I don’t fucking ride in a car, I don’t pick up the phone, I don’t turn on the oven, and I sure as shit
[shouts] Walter Sobchak: don’t fucking roll! Shomer shabbos! The Dude: Walter… Walter Sobchak: Shomer fucking shabbos. The Dude: Oh fuck it. I’m out of here. Walter Sobchak: Dude, come on…
[rolls his eyes at Donny] Walter Sobchak: BABY…
[Donny nods]
Which does not provide, really, a lot of information.
The chabad page is okay–the links are really neccesary, like the one to the Laws of Yom Tov, for people like me, who also probably learned most of what they know about Jewish tradition from episodes of “Seinfeld,” which might not have had education in mind.
Am I just confused, Christians don’t do stuff like this, right? Do they? There’s the long repetitive thing Catholics do at funerals, which I’ve blocked out (not because I’m a general dick, but because I’m a specific dick–it reminds me what a fucking lousy grandson I was), and some other stuff… but…
I mean, I think I’ve seen The Ten Commandments–but, as a bored kid–so….
I’ll close this with something I think Lewis Black needs to do. He has to do a TV series where he lectures about the New Testament. It’d be fucking hilarious. Here’s his skit about Christians talking about the Torah.
For those wondering if the whole point of this post and my survey into Passover was simply to find out what was up with one person for the next seven days (i.e. level of communication). Yeah, it probably was… I mean, what the fuck, right?
Am I worried this person is going to think I’m shallow? Not really… a little bit, but nothing to be insecure about.
Like I said before, the reason I learn something isn’t as important as that I learned. I only learned to read as a kid because of Penthouse Forum*. The blog’s not called Frontal Lobe Disinhibition for nothing.
That statement is actually not true. According to my mother, I only learned to read as a kid because I wanted to read about monster movies. The Crestwood House Monster series, actually. By Ian Thorne. I’ll have to thank ol’ boy for getting me to read in some dedication somewhere.
imagining a certain someone crawling on top of me in my chair. We’re trying to make room for her legs to go forward around me.
In a strange remake of a Fellini or maybe a Dali painting. Warehouse with lengthening and shortening corridors.
Kissing someone so hard, so intense, we pass through a wall. My eyes are wondering where we’ve gone.
I freaking love this… It’s basically how I wrote for an entire class in grad school (and is the way the novel got it’s start). Don’t think coworker1 is a fan of me sitting over here catnapping though.
So, coworker2 and coworker3 have been talking about their weekends for like two hours.
Not everything you do on the weekend is interesting.
They both have timestamps on their stories–so they must check what time these interesting things (like a dog doing something unspectacular) and remember it for when they tell the story… presumably just to each other.
I’m not even suggesting they should do work, given how little I’ve done today. But at least talk about something interesting.
Now coworker2 is telling me all about why she’s going to be late… yada yada yada. At least it gives me an eye to crook, given how apparently she won’t stay with her stepkids to make sure they get off to school. I don’t think they’re particularly old….
How could anyone want to hear about the mundanities of life? Nobody gives a shit about how I went to one store and not another one because the one store has… I mean, I fell asleep writing the sentence, how could anyone stay awake reading it?
Sure, there are exceptions, there are people who’s mundanities I’d love to hear about. Well, I’d like to hear about M1′s mundanities. And Thomas Pynchon’s. Maybe George Clooney’s. But someone I work with. I could give a shit. And I can’t understand why anyone would pretend to give a shit? Coworker2 and coworker3 really can’t find each other all that interesting–though I do have a theory coworker2 tries to impress coworker3 with her “domestic” lifestyle because she’s in the closet.
Lengthy dream about bonding with coworker1 and her husband. He and I talked about exercise and law enforcement. She and I talked about my mother’s death. Guess I don’t want her to quit.
It’s got to be the endorphins, but I feel great. Better than I’ve felt in years.
I feel like this:
Verse 1:
Yeah, said it’s all right
I won’t forget
All the times I’ve waited patiently for you
And you’ll do just what you choose to do
And I will be alone again tonight my dear
Verse 2:
Yeah, I heard a funny thing
Somebody said to me
You know that I could be in love with almost everyone
I think that people are
The greatest fun
And I will be alone again tonight my dear
In the Bottle Rocket context.
I don’t remember the last time I was as excited about a project as I am the new one.
The four year old movie site is getting the short end of the stick, but it never turned into a paying job and it was a lot of work and it’s just got to chill. I shot the load on the Crossing Guard. That’s a respectable finish. Did I mention it was taught in a college writing course? A good college, much better than the one I went to and can’t even afford to go to for my second master’s.
Home’s good. Made it through wife’s first day back after spring break (thought I needed a hazard helmet for that). Work’s good. I can write there. Only thing pissing me off is really the apartment plumbing’s new foghorn system….
Glad I found an occasional IM buddy in the Mac Aficionado.
Can’t even verbalize how I feel about finding M1–don’t have the vocabulary to do it. (The mix “tape” was for her… hoping she digs it. I’m listening to it right now. It fucking rocks).
I’m even thinking, depending on how the new project turns out… I might do the writing PhD. Shh, haven’t told the wife (only if I get an agent for the first novel first). I’d rather have someone else pay for my degree than take out more fucking loans.
Maybe it’s just because I nailed my weight work out today. I felt like Prince or something.
The last time I felt like Alone Again Or was my personal soundtrack, my life came crashing down. Awful time. Hope that doesn’t happen again.
And I think I’m going to actually work at getting some communication open with ol’ girl. It might be worthwhile.
I don’t smoke anymore. It’s one of the things I gave up so long ago, it’s almost impossible to remember smoking almost a pack a day (that I was sixteen and my mom bought me the cigarettes… well, whatever).
But, after writing that lastest post for M1… I need something. Cold shower… I’m dehydrated too, I just realized.
And I finally got around to doing work, which didn’t take as long as I thought it would, but I was sick of being distracted.
(I’m sweating too).
Hopes she’s as affected reading it as I was writing it.
I’m trying to remember when I was eight. I don’t remember much… I think it was the next year my dad and I went to New York for the first time–I think… I know we (mom, sister and I) went to see my mom’s parents because my dad went to see Aliens in the theater while we were gone. I’m sure my dad bought something electronic while we were gone (he always did that).
I would have been in school, right? Eight? You’re in school when you’re eight. I really need to get my picutre books from my dad so I know what the hell was going on.
I know when I was ten, I went to visit my friend and his girlfriend beat me up. He was eleven and she was like fourteen–yes, there’s something kind of weird on that age difference–and she kicked my ass for some reason and his mom told me it was because I was jealous of him. I think this girl ended up in prison. I also think my friend started dating her little sister when he was sixteen and she was fourteen. But then I think I made out with her before he ever did or something….
But that didn’t happen when I was eight.
I wonder if I still had my bowl cut when I was eight. Or if my mom was still rinsing my hair with lemon juice to keep the blond in.
But I’ll bet I wasn’t as well-behaved as this kid. I’ll bet I was already cursing, probably already making lewd comments (eight? definitely by ten).
I didn’t know Sexus was about Henry and June. I started reading Henry Miller because I thought it was supposedly to be good writing in the same sense as… Hemingway or Pynchon. Actually, Miller’s really a lot more like FLD. He just lives this awesome, terrible life and writes about it. I never read Nexus or Plexus because they’re probably like Sexus, a whole lot of fun, but not really the kind of narrative venture that would help my own writing.
Maybe after I’ve given up on a writing career or am old, I’ll sit down and have a great time reading Miller.
I think I was a sophmore in undergrad when I read it and I used to put up all these terrible quotes on my dorm room door (this was a door plastered with a collage of offensive imagery–Hitler, the Nazis and the bigots were not, according to my female dorm dwellers, as offensive as the handful of pornographic pictures). So no one read the Miller quotes.
But there’s a great bit in Sexus about not buying anything for yourself. You bum money off people–I never did get this one down–and never get around the repaying them. My failure at the time could have been being ostracized for my dorm room door, but who knows… at least one person came up and told me how awesome it was.
Anyway, the whole bumming things off people. Apparently, it really pissed coworker1 off. I used to bum Ibuprofen off her and coworker2 and eventually she got all pissy and asked if I ever “bought anything for myself.” Obviously, given my wife wants $150 butt toys for herself, something’s going to get forgotten.
But I hadn’t even realized I’d become someone so capable of bumming. I’m proud of it. I only had to go get the coffee today because the boss is coming in even later than usual and so I can’t make him go get me a cup.
I’m really going to miss things about this job (free coffee, not really doing any work).
I made it forty-five minutes before the hard-on became a fixture…
Not sure if I’m proud of myself or disappointed.
I have a roll-out keyboard tray… which I can’t sit under anymore. Yay… didn’t realize it was going to be on display!
I’m a little terrified someone’s going to notice my constant hard-on today. (I blame it entirely on the mischevious one). Yesterday, I had the day off so it didn’t matter. Hell, the wife even helped out with it twice–once for the 3:30 wake-up I had with one (I wish her spring break lasted a month instead of a week).
But today I’ve got to go to work and regardless if coworker2 knows I have a big dong–she got the wife’s memo, but didn’t get to see the laminated photo (I’m actually investigating getting my wife postcards with a picture of my cock on them–really–as a gag gift)–coworker2 isn’t even there this week. And I don’t want coworker1 noticing the constant boner because she’d probably say something (not suggestive, but along the lines of, “Why the hell do you have a boner?”). Coworker3–I really wouldn’t want her to see–but her office is out of view from where I’m usually moving around.
Shea is discussing. 
M1 is discussing. 
jennthewriter is discussing. 
Everthing you write I enjoy