Irrelevant Cheetah

When I pulled up at the house after work last night I was met by my son with a perfectly reasonable six-year-old request. “Daddy, can we get a trampoline?”

I happen to know that he means one of the big trampolines – the ones that are so big that erecting one brings to mind the scene in Independence Day where the giant alien spaceship is hovering over L.A. “I don’t have the money for one of those,” I told him. “Sorry, buddy.”

To which he replied, “That’s ok – mommy has lots of money.”

So apparently, as far as my son is concerned, my wife is living high on the hog while I’m living like an emaciated hobo, barely scraping together enough cash to buy an occasional Slim Jim, yet we live in the same house and share a bank account. Curiouser and curiouser.

Yesterday I was thinking about librarians (I know, it’s a long story – don’t ask.) In order to get a job as a librarian you should have at least a bachelor’s degree in Library Science. A master’s degree is, as is so often the case, even better. So then I started wondering why. Out loud, even, until my wife told me to stop. I mean, I know my way around the Dewey Decimal system like nobody’s business. If you want me to alphabetize a stack of books, or filing cards, stand back. I’m an alphabetizing fool. ‘Guitar’ goes before ‘Unicorn’ every time. ‘Platypus’ trumps ‘X-Ray.’ And as far as I know, those two tasks are the most challenging of a librarian’s duties.

So what could you possibly learn in the Library Science course of study at Anytown U.? For six years? What sort of hidden knowledge are these graduates privy to that the rest of us will never know? I probably spent way too much time on this train of thought and came up with the following list of possibilities:

1. Remember the movie The Librarian, with Noah Wyle? I’m thinking something along those lines, where the librarian is charged with the preservation of King Ogle’s Scepter and Jamela of Igglescomp’s Mystic Salad Fork.
2. Bill collector training, so they can deal with numbskulls like me who owe $13.73 in overdue fines for over two years.
3. Okay, this isn’t a possibility, but it bears writing: ‘librarian’ is not an easy word to type. It tends to come out ‘libarian’, and then Micro$oft Word puts those angry red little squiggly lines underneath it telling you you’re a dumbass.
4. They learn about the hidden corners of the Internet, like how to find Brad Pitt’s home phone number and where to purchase Alien Abduction Insurance.
5. Or perhaps they become part of a global conspiracy.  With their knowledge of books and rubber stamps and codes like “NAD001.34.FRY” they are thus able to steer humankind’s learning in a specific direction, away from interstellar travel, cancer cures and edible fruitcake recipes.

I’m leaning toward the global conspiracy idea, myself. I’ve dealt with more than one freaky old library lady that peered over her glasses at me and hissed “Get out! And take your rubber chicken with you!” So then I had to gather up all of my poodles, and disconnect the EKG, and it was really just a definite inconvenience, you know? So I think they’re just not telling us everything. But that’s just me.

Yup. It’s finished.
Of course, I mean “finished” in the laughable way that authors use to describe the first draft. Right now, per everything I’ve ever read about first drafts, I wouldn’t even show it to my dog. It needs re-reading and editing and re-re-reading and re-editing and…
But it’s done. And I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, aside from the expected feeling of accomplishment. I do know one thing, though - I’m having a beer. Have one on me, ok?

Current total: 315 pages, 91697 words. 

Woman #1: I don’t know what we’re going to do. Tim has a good job, but with three kids, I don’t think we’re going to be able to afford college. It’d probably help if I worked, but I’d rather spend all day chatting with my friends over coffee.

Woman #2: Hmmm. Have you thought about going to www.wecollectyouremailandsellittospammers.com? They have all kinds of ideas about how to make money online.

Woman #1: Really? What kinds of things? Dirty webcam things? (shudders)

Woman #2: Well, I can’t tell you too much, since I do want you to visit the site and give away your personal information, but I can tell you that with their help I’m making over $56,000 a month online, working as little as 37 seconds a day!

Woman #1: Wow! That sounds like something I could do! What was that website again?

Editor’s note: You get a ninety-day free trial, so there’s no risk involved. However, in order to sign up, we will need to get your name, address, credit card information and name of your first-born. With any luck, by the time you realize that we’re selling complete bunk as a front for our email-harvesting scheme, we’ll have also managed to sell your credit card info to a portly geek in Malaysia with a lisp.

Book tally: 301 pages, 87669 words 

How do you do it? Even if they’re not ‘real’? You’ve lived with a character for days, weeks, even years sometimes. You know them better than their mother would, if they had one. And then you kill them off.

This may sound surprisingly sappy, but it’s actually more difficult than you’d think. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a horror writer.

Book tally:  291 pages, 84893 words

Are there any words that drive you up the wall?

Mine is “orientate.”  Makes me want to scream.  You don’t “orientate” something, you “orient” it.  I’m also not fond of “proactive,” but it doesn’t make me itch like “orientate” does.

Oh, and as for little bodily gestures: You know when someone wants to physically illustrate the concept of double quotes, so they use their index and middle fingers on both hands and make that little waving gesture in the air? That little thing just adds to my desire to eradicate most of the human race.

Okay, ‘nuff said. Actually, I’ve been feeling guilty for not posting lately, but as you can see below, I’ve been busy…

Book tally:  290 pages, 84358 words

I am walking a little funny this morning.  There are places on my body that are not bending the way they should, and there are other places that aren’t supposed to bend that are flopping like overdone spaghetti.

Like many Americans, my wife and I are attempting to get back in shape. Having the outside temperature at below-freezing levels for six months out of the year does not bode well for fitness levels. Now that spring is here, we are planning hikes and camping and bike rides – in other words, enjoying the Alaskan outdoors.

In order to do these things without being reduced to a quivering puddle of wolf-jello, it is necessary to get into shape, and my wife helpfully suggested Pilates. Winsor Pilates, to be exact. “It’s what all of the celebrities use to stay fit,” she said cheerfully, with an evil glint in her eye. “Come on – it’ll be fun.”

Now, if any of you out there are snickering, snicker away. You obviously have not experienced the pure Evil that is this exercise routine. The bright and chipper blonde presenter lady (whom I can only assume is Mari Winsor though her identity is never revealed, probably because of death threats) guides you through a fifteen-minute routine that is designed to “sculpt your body slim,” according the promotional materials. While that may be so, I respectfully submit that weight loss probably occurs because it is difficult to eat improperly while in a coma. Within three minutes I was sweating like a Republican at a Greenpeace fundraiser, and three minutes after that I was begging for mercy. Begging. As in, “I don’t want to move my legs anymore. Please bring me morphine.”

In my own defense, my 17-year-old stepson gamely agreed to try it with us, and even he had a few choice words for Blonde Presenter Lady, normally in response to her helpful, cheery comments such as “Now, I know you’re feeling the burn back there now,” and “I know it hurts, but it’s worth it.” I would have responded as well, but I was too busy whimpering.

The part of this that makes no sense whatsoever is that rather than acting rationally and destroying the DVD after we had finished, we all had a good laugh and are planning to do it again in a few days, probably as soon as I can once again bend over and tie my shoes.

Book tally: 272 pages, 79435 words

We all have certain things - triggers, if you will - that set our teeth on edge and make us want to curl into a fetal position. For some people, it’s fingernails on a chalkboard. For others, it’s rubbing balloons. For still others, it’s the sound of styrofoam.

Of course, it’s not always sounds. My wife has a hilarious (in my opinion, at least) aversion to cotton. She can’t open a bottle of vitamins unless she brings it to me to remove the cotton packing. Yep, that’s me - Cotton Remover the Brave. Something about the feel of it between her fingers just makes her shudder. In fact, if she’s reading this, she’s probably shuddering right now, just thinking about it.

I’m always trying to be fair, so I will here post my personal heebie-jeebie inducer: marbles. If you want to make me leave the room in a hurry, just rub two marbles together. If you want to take me out of commission altogether for a while, just force me to do the actual rubbing as well. Eeeeewwwww.

That was actually difficult to write without stopping to grind my teeth down to the nubs. I’m not sure why certain things do that to us. I read a theory once that these sounds/feelings mimic something that triggers evolutionary survival instincts. We dislike these things intensely, so we avoid them, which enables us to survive. I’m still trying to work out the details of how marble-rubbing could possibly be deadly to my simian forebears, but it sounds as good to me as any other suggestion I’ve heard.

Sounds and feelings aside, what is it about certain people’s voices that can drive you loopy? You know, those people that send you screaming from the room before you have to listen to them say ‘good morning’? John might be a perfectly nice, normal guy from Accounting, but his voice makes you want to kill puppies.

I have a theory. Perhaps this is an evolutionary signal as well. Perhaps Mother Nature is telling you that there’s a 96.4% chance that John in Accounting is considering hanging you from the rafters and using your insides to make an origami snow monkey.

Makes me wonder if my voice drives anybody up the wall. Considering my new theory, perhaps it should.

Book tally: 268 pages, 77971 words

I know I’ve complained about this before, but it bears repeating: I need more time to write. I think I could finish the damn thing (yes, you know of what I speak) in a weekend, if I sat down at the computer with a stash of PBJ, Gardettos and a never-ending supply of coffee.

But who the hell has a weekend to just sit down and do nothing write? All of the chores that don’t get done during the week because I’m working at my soul-sucking corporate job need to get done sometime, and the weekend wins by default. So I continue my little one to three pages a day when I can squeeze it in, and it plods slowly, inexorably on. (Isn’t inexorably a cool word? I’m going to slip it into my everyday conversation somehow.)

On the plus side, I wrote my first love scene the other day (no nudity, just a “I fancy you. Do you fancy me? Cool!” type scene) and I think it went rather well. I don’t think Harlequin will be calling me anytime soon, but still. Good stuff, I think.

Book tally: 250 pages, 72000 words.