Irrelevant Cheetah

After some quiet reflection on the Meaninglessness and Purposelessness of Life (for all of four days, which is all it took to reassure myself that Life does, indeed, have No Meaning) I am ready to actively return to the Blogosphere. Not with a bang, perhaps; nay, I shall whisper in like a breath under the covers of your mind, keeping your feet warm while I –

Oh, never mind. I’m back, and perhaps a bit more cynical and jaded, but also still able, I think, to find the humor in everyday situations. Whether or not I’m able to impart it to you, well…

Posting to resume shortly, perhaps beginning with this Evil Meme whatchamahoozit that WordVixen tagged me with. Now excuse me while I go scribble all over her blog.

I left my last job in February of this year because, to put it simply, the evil, greedy, soul-sucking Corporation had decided that my position was no longer necessary. It wasn’t as much of a blow as you’d think, since I was trying desperately to leave anyway, and I never held any ill-will towards my fellow workers. Even my boss, Jim, (whom I once sold on eBay) was ultimately only following the directions of the shareholders to cut costs and make more money.

As time went on, I kept planning to go visit my previous workplace and see everybody, some of whom I had, after three years, gotten to be pretty good friends with. But, of course, everyday life got in the way, and I still haven’t made it back there to visit.  

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a former co-worker, who was laid off a few months before I was. She has kept in better contact with our former workplace, and she had some news for me.

It seems Jim (my previous boss) and his wife attended a party this past Saturday night. Among the people there was a man named Tony, who has worked with Jim for over ten years. Apparently, Tony has always had a bit of an anger problem, and these issues are exacerbated when he’s drinking.

About 1:00 Sunday morning, Tony expressed a desire to drive home. Jim, however, told Tony that it was a bad idea, since Tony had been drinking heavily. Tony didn’t like that, and he and Jim got into a heated argument in the kitchen, which then turned into a full blown fight. At some point, Tony put Jim into a choke-hold, and the two of them crashed through the railing on the back porch and landed in the yard.

They finally managed to peel Tony off of Jim, and Jim hit the ground, no longer breathing. While his wife called the police, another party-goer performed CPR, but was unable to revive him. Jim was pronounced dead at 2:00 Sunday morning.

He left behind a wife and four children, and he died because he was trying to do the right thing.

I can’t eulogize him; nor would I presume to try. I didn’t know him well enough. Rather, I’m sitting here in this shell of silent shock that normally surrounds people after they hear of a death, and I’m trying to gauge my own reaction. It’s a hodgepodge of thoughts that don’t really seem to follow any particular thread.

Was it senseless? Sure.

His wife watched him die, and now she’s probably trying to figure out how to spend the rest of her life without him.

He was well-liked, and he will be missed.

I never got around to see him in the past seven months, and though we weren’t close friends, his death still bothers me quite a bit.

Funerals are no fun.

Another friend of mine was murdered several years ago, and after that experience, I thought, “Well, that’ll never happen again.” Ha!

I wish I had some moral to the story or some gem of wisdom to share, but I don’t. It just sucks.

At first, I was going to write this about how I’m busy at work, and I can’t blog as much for a while, and yada yada yada. But then I realized it’s just more excuses.

So I thought I’d try something else. I write music as well as words, and the jury’s still out on whether my music is any more tolerable than my words, but I thought I’d give you guys a listen, much as Seiche did on his blog not too long ago. I’ve been playing piano and keyboards since I was little, and though I don’t play as much as I used to, I still tinker every now and then.

This one is called “Regrets and Passions,” and I wrote it several years ago. The link below should take you directly to its hosted page on Broadjam, a very cool site where musicians can upload their stuff and sell it, get reviews, etc. Just hit ‘Play.’

Regrets and Passions

Anyway, there it is. I’d be interested in your feedback, good or bad. Hopefully work will slow down a bit soon, and I’ll be able to write some more. Enjoy, and if you feel like sharing the link, feel free!

I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. I don’t know if we get reincarnated, or if we go sit on a shiny cloud and play the harp, or if we end up playing bocce ball with the Great Crocodile God for all Eternity, or at least until he runs out of pipe tobacco. It’s such a weird journey being alive that I can only imagine how much weirder it could get when you’re no longer burdened by little things such as eating and breathing.

However, I think it’s good to have goals, and there’s no reason your goals should die when you do. In other words, I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come up with a few things I’d like to do when I die.

First of all, if it’s an option, I’d like to go haunt somewhere. Perhaps a Laundromat, or – even better – the local pub. No quietly being deceased for me! I plan to make noise and knock things over and generally misbehave in the most spiritual sense. Peanuts will placate me, as will draft beer, but only for a short time. Then it’s back to flipping light switches and goosing the waitresses.

I’m also resolved to be a well-dressed ghost. No ratty T-shirts and sweat pants for me. No, I’ll probably sport a tailored tuxedo on my nightly excursions. I’d like to be taken seriously as a ghost, and we all know that the clothes make the phantom.

And finally: I’d really like to screw with the psychics, I think. When somebody finally calls the Travel Channel to investigate after seeing me playing Skee ball with my head one too many times, I think I could really have fun with Sylvia Longbottom or whoever shows up, camera crew in tow.

TV psychic: “Yes… Yes… I’m getting an image, now. I see a man behind the bar. He’s not only devilishly handsome, but he’s also very smartly dressed. I’m getting the impression he’s wearing a tuxedo, but he’s also… Yes, he’s also wearing flippers. And a diving mask.”

Then I’ll scream at the top of my (ectoplasmic) lungs that I’m merely testing to see if Verizon wireless can still “hear me now” from the other side of the grave.

I noticed something in the shower this morning.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Well, maybe I don’t. But regardless: this isn’t that kind of blog. Rather, this is the kind of blog where I blather on about the ideas that occur to me at 4:45 AM while my brain is still on autopilot.

The label on the bottle of shampoo reads “Directions: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

Aside from the implication that the person reading the bottle for directions is an imbecile and is probably incapable of opening the shampoo bottle, much less reading it, I have to wonder:

Does anybody – and I mean anybody – actually do this? I wash once, use some conditioner, rinse, and I’m done. There’s only one time  I washed my hair more than once in one sitting, and that was because I’d had the great idea to crack a raw egg over my head and see if it made my coat shiny and healthy. Apparently, in order to receive the coat-enhancing benefits, it is necessary to ingest the raw egg. Who knew?

(The only way I can describe the feeling of a raw egg splattering on your scalp is by telling you to imagine being accosted by a small, horny octopus. The memory of the yolk oozing into my ear is one that will haunt me for the rest of my life, I tell you.)

So where was I? Oh, yes. Given that I had no desire to smell like an omelet for longer than necessary, I quickly hopped in the shower and shampooed, and discovered that getting an egg out of your hair is a neat trick. It doesn’t tell you on the egg carton that uncooked eggs are shampoo-resistant. You’d think they’d put something like that in large print.

So, anyway, that was my thought process this morning. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have access to any unstable chemicals at work. But I’m curious: do you follow the directions, or are you a shampoo rebel such as myself?

I don’t read Cosmopolitan. Occasionally my wife will pick up a copy, and I might thumb through the pages while I’m waiting for my water to boil. I probably should read it; after all, as Jeff Foxworthy says, it’s kind of like spying on the enemy.

However, I am very, very close to buying a copy of the latest issue. Apparently, there’s an article in there that I find mighty intriguing: “Is Your Man Gay? The One Surefire Sign!”, or something to that effect.

Now let me say right now that if someone is gay, I don’t care. Doesn’t bother me. One of my best friends is, in fact, gay. I would also think that it would be pretty self-evident that your boyfriend is batting for the home team. The most telling symptom, of course, would be that he doesn’t want to have sex with you. And he dresses better than you do.

That being said, however, I can’t help thinking that the ability to pick a gay man out of a crowd, learned from this insightful article, might be a useful trick.

Agent 008 hunched over the device, the last words from HQ running through his mind.

“Now, remember, 008: In order to deactivate the doomsday device, you have to cut the chartreuse wire. Not the puce wire – the chartreuse one. If you cut the puce, kiss your keister goodbye if you’ve got time.”

Agent 008 cursed. How the hell was he supposed to tell the difference? He stood and scanned the crowd, his eyes darting like lightning as he looked for a gay man for help. Luckily, while waiting to be briefed for this mission, he had flipped through the September issue of Cosmo, and he knew exactly what to look for. Just as he was about to admit defeat, over by the window he spotted the One Surefire Sign.

008 sighed. This day might just turn out all right, after all.

The other part of this is, of course: what if I exhibit this One Surefire Sign? I am quite certain that I’m heterosexual. However, you might remember my run-in with the Gender Genie, my arch-nemesis. That experience led me to doubt myself somewhat, and if I am showing the One Surefire Sign, then I might need to re-evaluate my wardrobe.

And the last obvious thing to think about is that if I am trying to protect my heterosexual image, the last thing I need is to be seen buying a copy of Cosmo. I guess I’m screwed. Any of you ladies reading Cosmo care to fill me in?

I read enough author blogs and agent blogs and stop-writing-now blogs to know better. It finally sank in that as a wannabe first-time novelist, my chances of selling a trilogy to an agent/publisher are lower than the chances of Menudo making a comeback. I think I finally got it when Nathan told a commenter that it makes no sense to be writing a sequel to a book that may never sell in the first place. It’s a waste of time.

SO…

I should be getting my first batch of critiques on Book 1 back soon, and here’s my tentative plan. First, I shall spend some time crying into my beer. Next, I shall determine if the patient is worth saving. If I determine that to be so, I shall resuscitate the patient (i.e., rewrite it) and in so doing rework the ending so that Book 1 can stand on its own. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. If Book 1 is accepted somewhere, it’ll be at least a year before it hits print, and during that time I can be working on Book 2 and possibly Book 3. But while I wait for validation Book 1 to be accepted, I can be working on something else.

And there will be something else, of course. Lest you think that I would have nothing else to whine about, let me reassure you that there are at least two unrelated books currently scratching at the inside of my skull, begging to be released.

I won’t give up on my trilogy. I’ll continue to take notes and perhaps even outline the next two books, but I’m going to spend my actual writing time on something different. It’ll be fun, I think.

And in case you’re wondering: I’m going to finish the trilogy I’m currently reading before I do anything. If my brain lets me, of course. Stupid brain.

I have been suffering from a creative slump lately. Almost immediately after starting to take notes and plan Book 2, the creative part of my brain decided to take a vacation to who-knows-where, so I ended up with two pages of notes, a poorly sketched map (Geez, it’s hard to draw maps!) and a blank document in Micro$oft Word.

After spending some quality time trying unsuccessfully to beat my subconscious into submission, I decided to take advantage of the slump to do some reading. I love to read, especially a good fantasy, but it is an unfortunate fact that I can’t read fiction when I’m writing. As a result of me finishing Book 1 and then subsequently attempting to start Book 2 and mucking about with some half-baked short story ideas, there is a huge TBR (To Be Read) list waiting for me.

My favorite fantasy author is Terry Brooks and his Shannara series, and there’s at least one trilogy in his series that I haven’t read. Since I was having trouble writing, this past week I picked up the first book in this new series and started to read, and was enjoying reading a good story instead of having to try to figure out how to write it for a change.

Maybe my subconscious needed brain fodder. Maybe I’m not supposed to do any reading for pleasure. All I know is that at 0600 hours today my brain started gushing with ideas. The first chapter of Book 2 appeared, fully formed, floating in front of me like an image of Christ in a tortilla. Bits and pieces of sub-plots that I’ve been struggling to figure out fell into place. Plot elements I hadn’t even thought of waved at me, sat down and helped themselves to some Brie. Of course, I had no choice but to flip to M$ Word and start writing frantically and there’s been some definite progress.

But, dammit, I don’t want to stop reading! I’m halfway through the first book, it’s really good, and I want to see what happens next! I want to just sit down and read for a while. But I can’t ignore the ideas flowing, either. So I’m going to try to finish reading the series, and at the same time keep taking notes about Book 2 without actually writing it and see if I can work that way.

Bleah.

One thing I have always enjoyed about Anchorage is the fact that if you drive north or south for twenty minutes, you’re out in the wilderness with almost no sign of human habitation. (In case you’re wondering, you can’t drive east for very long without running into a mountain, and if you drive west you’ll end up in the ocean.)

That being said, after working for a few hours on Saturday, the offspring and I climbed into the Jeep and headed west with the intention of driving until we ran out of road. I wanted to get some pictures of the Inlet, and there are some roads I have never driven all the way to the end.

After driving for about a half hour we reached the end of drivable road. Luckily, we only had to walk for about five minutes and we came to this view:

Anchorage just seemed to stop, and we stood at the top of a very high, very steep cliff that led down to the mud flats and the Inlet. I started taking pictures, and the offspring, who is slightly afraid of heights, hung back and watched.

The best part of the whole experience, however, happened after we had been there for about ten minutes. Something made me look up, and there, about fifteen feet from us, was a huge golden eagle in flight. We were high enough that he was at eye level, and he was close enough that I could almost count his flight feathers. I would guess he had about a six-foot wingspan, and he flew by as if he didn’t even know we were there. I wanted to take his picture, obviously, but the camera was powered off and still attached to the tripod. I knew that by the time I had the camera ready he’d be gone, so we stood quietly in awe and watched him grab an updraft and fly south.

It was an awesome experience. I’ve never been that close to an eagle except in a zoo, and although it only lasted about thirty seconds, the sighting remains indelibly burned into my mind. He (or she) was so powerful, and so still. The best word that comes to mind is regal, and I know it doesn’t give it justice.

All in all, a good day.