Irrelevant Cheetah

Negotiations have begun.  I expect some of the bargaining to be hard and fast, and there may be concessions on both sides.  Both parties involved are skilled negotiators, but in the end, there will be only one winner.

The intense talks of which I speak involve what foods I will no longer be allowed to eat, on pain of divorce proceedings.  It seems that certain foods – chili dogs, for example – cause me to emit large quantities of methane at a rate that can melt the bed sheets.  According to my wife, it is only the high thread count that has thus far prevented us from sleeping in a pile of rags.  And indeed, it was the consumption of chili dogs last night that precipitated these discussions.

For some reason, the dog’s nocturnal emissions have almost entirely ceased recently, making it impossible for me to pin the blame on him as I have done in the past, though normally with good reason.  Now, however, I stand alone, accused and in danger of losing not only my chili dogs, but my Brussels sprouts and my broccoli as well.  What am I to do when Beano and Gas-X have failed me? Apparently the small arsenal of odor-destroying products which accompany my wife to bed at night are not powerful enough to subdue the gaseous invaders, and so she has taken the next step, obvious to any general in pitched battle: attack and cut off the supply lines.

There is one thing I will stand fast on:  I will not go quietly into the night without my eggs.

Book tally:  242 pages, 70100 words

The Universe is a big place. Really big. I mean, it’s so mind-bogglingly big that trying to wrap your brain around the concept of its bigness can make you feel, well, small.

So in this vast expanse I refuse to believe that the human race is alone as the only intelligent life form. If there aren’t others out there now, then there either have been or will be or both. Whether they’ve visited us or not is another story; all I’m concerned with is that they exist.

If they exist, then at some point they will detect our existence. Like SETI on Earth, some extraterrestrial intelligence will someday point a radio telescope at the sky and be able to watch “I Love Lucy” and “Howard Stern” and “Jackass” and know that we were here. A continuously expanding bubble of radio/light/TV waves is emanating from the planet, broadcasting our existence.

Perhaps that bubble will entice a more advanced civilization to make the journey to our galactic backwater planet and see what complete idiots ever came up with “American Idol.” If and when they do, perhaps they will read this blog, and if they do that, I’ve got a few questions for them:

Hello. Thanks for visiting. I hope you had a good trip and didn’t have to stop for too many bathroom breaks. I hear there’s a nice rest stop on Zerquod Prime. Did you have too many problems translating into your language? I hear English can sometimes be a tough language.

As I write this in the beginning part of the 21^st century after we saw fit to kill a nice guy because he was, well, too nice, I wonder what you will find. See, I’m of the opinion that those of us alive now are witnessing the fall of Western Civilization. It’s only a matter of time before somebody gets trigger happy and Homo Sapiens (that’s what we call ourselves) goes bye-bye. I just had a few questions for you – not that you’ll be able to answer them to my face, unless I finally did finish that machine I’ve been working on…

1. Where did you come from?
2. Have you been here before?
3. Who’s in charge of the planet now? I’ve got a lot of money on the cephalopods – specifically, the squid.
4. What specific thing made you decide to visit? I’m really sorry about the whole “The Osbournes” thing. Yes, he’s actually speaking English. And Rush Limbaugh is a freakin’ idiot – don’t blow us up because of him, please.
5. And last: are the Pyramids still standing? I always thought they were really cool, and I haven’t had a chance to see them yet, though it’s on my to-do list.

Well, thanks for the read. Enjoy your stay, and say hello to Dick Clark for me, would you? I’m sure he’s knocking around somewhere.

First I had to go home from work today because my computer is no longer on the network. I tried everything I know how to do to fix it, with no success. Since my job entails being able to move files back and forth from one machine to another, and since the IT guy doesn’t start until later in the morning, I went home. I finally received a call from my boss telling me that some program I had on the machine had set off alarms at world corporate headquarters and they had pulled the plug on my network connection.

What program, you may ask? Well, I recently acquired a Motorola Razr, and it’s a really cool phone. And I thought it would be cool if I could transfer my Outlook contact list to the phone in one transfer, instead of punching it in number by number. So I downloaded Motorola’s Mobile Phone Tools and installed it. The transfer didn’t work, so I forgot about it. But now I’m thinking it had something in it, like a Trojan, that set off the alarms, and I got a stern talking-to from my boss about installing personal stuff on company equipment. I know, I know - she’s right. I just thought it would be cool, and it was work-related.

So I came home and thought I’d do some writing. I logged into my MySpace account to see if I’d had any blog reads, and found that someone had accessed my account in an unauthorized way and invited about 3 zillion people to be my friend. I’m not a complete hermit, but that was a little ridiculous. They had also sent all kinds of messages to other members I didn’t even know.

End result? I deleted the account. It hadn’t really gotten me anywhere as far as networking goes, anyhow, and I was just as prone to the spam as everybody else seems to be. I’ll find other ways to contact my friends. If you’re out there and reading this, you know how to reach me. Just wait until Tuesday, ok?

I haven’t written anything in my novel for about three weeks now, and I feel horrible about it. It was going so well when I stopped. I had just finished writing a key scene and was extremely pleased with myself. I even remarked to my wife, “I think I can see the end of this thing.” But then I stopped, and I haven’t opened it again. It’s been sitting on the figurative shelf (actually on my USB flash drive), untouched, waiting for me to get my shit together and finally finish the damn thing.

It’s still going well - don’t get me wrong. I’m at least 2/3 finished, I think, and I can finish it without too many problems. But there are times when it flows, and times when it doesn’t, and right now seems to be one of the times when it doesn’t.

I’m still writing, though. Let’s have no misconceptions on that score. I wrote a short ebook the other day about making your own pet food and put it up for sale on a few sites, and to my surprise, I’ve sold a copy already. I’m blogging, too. In fact, it’s probably a good way of seeing how the novel’s coming along - no blog entries: busy writing novel. Lots of blog entries: novel not going so well. I just wish I could figure out why it is that whenever I go a spell of time without working on my novel it feels like I’ve been horribly negligent and deserve to be taken out and beaten.

I’m not slacking off, I swear. I want to finish it as soon as possible, if for no other reason than I want to read it and see if it’s as well written as I’ve imagined it. Does that make sense? But I can’t write if it’s not flowing, so I sit and beat myself up instead. Productive, eh?

Yesterday I got a rejection letter back from one of the book publishers to whom I have submitted one of my children’s books. Not quite the standard form letter, however. Instead of “Your submission doesn’t meet our current needs,” it read “We have already chosen our publishing catalog for the 2007 publishing season. Please check our website for updates as to when to submit again.”

Disappointing, yes. But encouraging as well, because they also returned my cover letter, and scrawled on the letter, as if in some kind of internal memo, were the words “Janet likes - 3/27.” Janet, apparently, is the submissions editor, and although they chose not to accept the book, the comments were both encouraging and appreciated.

Kind of funny when a rejection letter makes you feel good inside. Reminds me of the saying: “A true diplomat is one who can tell you to go to Hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.”

Really. Show the world that devil-may-care attitude. You know, that attitude that says, “You know what? I don’t back up my files on a regular basis! Because horrible system crashes can’t happen to me! I am Non System Wide Crash Man!”

If you’re wondering where that came from, let me enlighten you. As we at writingup all know, writingup.com has been suffering some… er… hiccups in service lately, which seems to be making all of the regulars around there skittish. You know, “What’s going on? Should we leave? How will anybody find me?” Which is odd, considering the last time I actually took the time to find someone, I was slapped with a fine and a restraining order.

But I digress. Anyway, I was jumping on the bandwagon, as I am wont to do. Horrified that all twelve of my regular readers might be unable to obtain a wolf-fix at the drop of a hat, I started setting up a mirror blog. (This one, if you’re wondering.) And once I got it set up, I didn’t want a brand new, empty blog. You know, in case somebody wandered by, I wanted the thing to have a ‘lived-in’ look.

But since I have never, ever, ever saved any of my blog entries, transferring them to my new blog requires hard work and discipline, things that I often avoid. I am forced to log into writingup, click on all of my blog entries one by one (which, incidentally, gives me more reads - hooray!) and copy the text into my new blog. It’s time consuming, and, quite frankly, sucks.

I’m not leaving anytime soon, though, unless the site goes down in flames. ‘Cause that would mean changing all of my bookmarks, too. Whaddya want from me? Blood?

I have an awesome idea, but there is some background information that I have to share first, so bear with me for a moment. I apologize if any of this is TMI, but it’s worth the payoff. Trust me.

Over the past few weeks walking has become more and more painful. Several months ago I got what felt like a splinter in the bottom of my foot that I could not find in order to remove it. Since I couldn’t find it, I tried to ignore it. As the weeks progressed, it began to hurt more and more. I tried exploratory self-surgery with a needle and an X-acto knife (something I do not recommend without large quantities of hard liquor) but had no success.

Since I am an average human male, the thought of going to the doctor never even entered my mind. “I’ll just learn to deal with it,” said I. “It’ll go away eventually.” Oddly enough, it not only failed to go away, it actually got worse. I began to limp. The other foot began to hurt, since I was overcompensating for the painful one. I was, in a word, crippled.

It got so bad this past weekend that when my wife firmly suggested that I finally visit the doctor, I gave in. I told the doc I either had a tumor or an alien implant, something which he didn’t seem to find as amusing as I did. His diagnosis? I have a corn.

Who the hell gets corns? I thought it was reserved for old ladies with bunions and walkers. Since this initial assessment was obviously wrong, I did some research. A corn is formed thusly:

1. Something irritates the foot, whether a splinter or a blister or the inside of your shoe.
2. The body reacts by hardening the skin around the irritation, forming a small keratin nodule.
3. This nodule further irritates the foot, resulting in more hardening of the skin.
4. The cycle (2 - 3) repeats.

You know what that sounds like? It’s exactly the way a pearl is formed!

Basically, I am forming a human pearl inside my foot. How cool is that?

Of course, I’m not sure what to do with it. My first impulse, of course, was to get rid of this irritating little Nodule of Pain and Suffering, but now I’m not so sure. You wouldn’t dissolve a pearl, would you? For some reason, when I offered to put it on a necklace and present it to my wife, she was less than enthusiastic.

I’m thinking eBay.

Hello? Is this Lost and Found? Oh, good. Listen, you’re the fourth place I’ve called, so I really hope you can help me. I’ve lost my youthful idealism.

What’s that? Well, I had it not too long ago, but now I can’t find it anywhere.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Um, I don’t know, purple? I really didn’t look at it much, you know? I was just happy that it was there, so I never really took the time to inspect it. Bu then I woke up one morning and realized it was gone, and I don’t know where I left it.

Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably been a few years. I realize your box of ‘found’ stuff may not go back into the archives that far, but I thought it’d be worth a try.

Describe it? Let’s see… It was one of those ‘I can change the world if I only try hard enough’ versions that came out towards the end of the 20th century. Before the ‘ME! ME! ME!’ version was released. I used to use it a lot - back when I thought I’d be one of the big people, before I realized that I was one of the little people, with only a blog and a dream. I wanted to be one of those that could make a difference and leave my mark on the world, you know?

What? Oh, well, once I realized it wasn’t getting me anywhere, I quit using it. And you know how it goes: use it or lose it, right? You probably get that a lot, working at a ‘Lost and Found.’ Although, given, it’s a bit easier to misplace a pair of mittens, I suppose.

No luck, huh? Well, thanks for looking. What did you say your name was again? Alice? Well, Alice, you’ve been most helpful. Say, while you were poking around in there, you didn’t find a set of marbles, did you? No? Oh, well. Thanks again.