You know me, people. I believe in plain, simple talk. So believe me when I say that I'm one of those people who'd love to get an extra pound of flesh or two from Vick, and my implement of choice in removing it would be a pair of rusty vice-grips.
For the last two months, I have listened to some of the most inane arguments ever leveled in print, radio or television, and the one that crops up over and over again is as follows. Dante Stallworth, another player in the league, served a 30-day jail sentence and will serve a lengthy stint of probation as well as dropping a 2-5 million dollar settlement against the family of a man who, while Stallworth was high and legally drunk, struck and killed with his Bentley. Vick did 23 months in federal prison for dogfighting, animal cruelty, racketeering and conspiracy to commit felonies across state lines. How then, these people ask with perfectly straight faces, can one man do less than five weeks of league time in the pokey for causing a human death while the other kills dogs and is confined to a federal institution for 23 times as long?
The answer is distressingly simple, and the gall it takes to even pose the question in the first place speaks to a vast ignorance the likes of which I will never personally experience. What Stallworth did was a tragic accident. His actions resulted in the death of another human being, true, but he did not get into his car that night with the express purpose in mind of slaying somebody. The last time I checked, intent is the difference between accidental vehicular homicide (five years if the judge is feeling peckish) and premeditated first-degree murder (in Florida, you ride the lightning). That's intent, people. It's the difference between being a passenger in your buddy's car when the cop's dope-dog starts going nuts and being the driver of said vehicle. Intent makes all the difference in the world.
Stallworth did not intend to cause a death. Vick did.
In fact, Vick went quite a bit further. There are so many things associated with the gruesomeness wrought by Bad Newz Kennelz and the monsters running the joint that many of the details were reported once and never spoken of again. People seem to find the particulars of this case unpleasant; therefore, it's better to simply not talk about them. It's better and more palatable for most to talk about this case as the question of how much the life of an animal is worth against that of a human being, and by that simplistic assumption, it's a cut-and-dried case.
This case is something different. Maybe we don't like talking about the "rape stands," the devices that female dogs were tied onto in order to facilitate matings to produce more puppies, lashed into place so they had no choice but to submit. We definitely don't like talking about the metal bars and devices used to pry apart the jaws of dogs who had locked a death-grip on their opponents, or the fact that blood was sprayed nearly up to the ceiling in the fighting room with the subterranean pit. Ditto with the dead dogs buried on the property, or that dogs which didn't cut the mustard were simply killed outright, and not in allegedly humane ways like with the gas chamber. They were beaten against the ground, or electrocuted, for starters. Didn't I say something before about riding the lighting?
Oh, and we definitely don't like thinking about the concept of bait animals. It's just--
Bait animals? Yeah. See, this is where the arguments breaks down for me, the comparison these empty-headed clowns try to make between Vick and Stallworth being reduced to utter nonsense. This is where the story tales on a whole new horrifying angle, one that has never been brought up by any of Vick's so-called "defenders." The thing is, even a pit bull doesn't always want to get the motor running for a gladitorial match to the death. You have to get them psyched up for the event. Sometimes you do it by starving them. Sometimes you do it by beating them. And other times, you take a dog, cat or some other type of animal, you duct tape its jaws shut (or file down its teeth) so it can't fight back, and you throw it, alive, into the pit to be torn to shreds.
If you're Michael Vick, you do this despicable act with your own household pets. Now you see why the argument has become so simplistic. You can't defend this with a straight face if you know all the facts. When you get to the subject of bait animals, you have officially passed the event horizon.
Look over at your cat or dog right now and imagine them, terrified and doomed, being thrown to a rapacious monster who will eviscerate them alive without even a puncher's chance to fight back or at least get in one solid bite. See that person throwing them in the pit? Now, try to see that person as being one of your friends or co-workers. That's not enough.
To truly appreciate how vile this, you must visualize the monster doing this as yourself.
That's why Vick deserves a lifetime ban, and that's just for starters. What he did was not a mistake. It wasn't a tragic accident, done by a person under the influence who didn't have a straight head on their shoulders. It was deliberate. It was premeditated. It was carried our with cruel intent and callous disregard for life. It was some of the worst of human behavior, done in the name of a barbaric "blood sport" whose supporters should die a slow, cancerous death in a part of the world where morphine does not exist.
We have a word for acts like what Vick did.
That word is evil.
- Soundtrack:My Own Heartbeat
Well, because that's what dorks like me think about. That's why.
Anyway, I decided to try to figure out what I'll be doing for the 2009 edition and quickly came to the startling conclusion that I have five, count 'em, five contenders for this year's fuckfest. Since I don't have anything to blog about save the fact that I've once again begun pecking away on Black Sunshine, here are the contestants--
QUICK NOTE: Oh, and if anybody thinks that I'm being a little premature in this department, that's very possible. I'm nothing if not an obsessive-compulsive Capricorn. However, the 2009 contest is going to require more planning than in previous years due to the new Degree Of Difficulty Modifier, which in a nutshell is that it is very likely that on October 30th I will be having a serious amount of oral surgery done... to wit, four wisdom teeth being disposed of and a possible root canal. What the bloody hell, right? And in this case, it certainly is bloody. I need to have the extractions done, and since my dentist has been talking about root-canaling one of my teeth anyway, why not get the whole horrific mess out of the way at once? Right?
This is, in addition to being a serious bummer to look forward to when I'll be starting my vacation, going to add an extra level to what is already a moderately difficult circus trick. Doing 50,000 words in 30 days is hard enough without adding anywhere from three to five days of being doped to the gills, so I'm going to need one that's easy to knock out or, failing that, an outline that puts previous years to shame. Are we clear?
Onward.
( And The Nominess Are... )
- Soundtrack:Smallville - "Main Theme:
For example, the piece I was writing on tonight uses a great deal of minor chording and dissonance in the chord relations. While major steps (a full note difference, or the difference betwee the second and fourth frets on a guitar) are genrally used in sunnier-sounding music, half-steps and tritones (the largest dissonance possible, the distance between a Bb chord and an E, or an F and a B) are the order of the day in most metal, speed metal and thrash compositions. Yes, there is actually a method to the madness of bands like Slayer. You learn something new every day. By using this basic theoretical mechanism, I was able to fill in the last two bars of a nice riff I was working on, and felt pretty damn good in doing so.
In a way, writing functions on the same sort of level. There are generally accepted conventions and movements within stories that follow the same sorts of rules that are laid down in the music world. It takes a lot longer to learn them based on how varied the basic palette being used is (250,000 words or so in the English language versus an octave consisting of twelve notes), but while the composition itself may sound much different, in the end for both disciplines, the song remains the same.
So the current dry spell I am experiencing? My guess is that it will either be time or "writing theory" that will solve this. Just a bit of chin-scratching on this side of midnight.
- Soundtrack:Steve Vai - "I Would Love To"
The looming specter of Michael Vick's possible re-entry to the NFL has sparked quite an interesting little debate concerning forgiveness, paying of debts and the concept of what a second chance should be. If you've been living under a rock for the last two years, I'll go ahead and wait while you Google up an account of his atrocities. Up to speed? Good. There are three schools of thought in regards to his situation.
First is the "Nrrr, Fuck That Guy In The Neck" faction, which listens to well-meaning arguments concerning his rehabilitation, what sort of penance a person should have to do and discusses how much he has lost and flatly responds with, "I hope that dog killer meets with a horrible fucking demise, and you can quote me on that." This person holds that any questions of animal cruelty aside, there are certain things a person does that there is no coming back from, and the details of what Vick did while running the infamous Bad Newz Kennelz (under the inspired non de plume of "Ookie," no less) definitely not only puts Vick in this boat, but also gains him the deed of sale of said watercraft as well. Animal lovers in general and my wife in particular fall into this category.
Next is the "A Person Who Does Their Time Should Be Given Another Chance" school of thought, which points to the time served in Levenworth Federal prison (not a country club institution by any stretch of the imagination), the loss of all monies and property, vehicles and basically anything else he owned (and the upcoming fight concerning his utter and complete bankruptcy, meaning Vick has less of a pot to piss in legally speaking than the dude who holds up a sign at the busy intersection on your way to work), and the curled lips, horrible names and sincere wishes for him to suffer horrible debilitating physical illness from a sizeable portion of our population that says that if there are dues to be paid, Vick has paid them out tenfold. I strongly suspect the vast majority of these people are coming at this from at least a quasi-religious tact, especially Catholics who as anybody with at least passing familiarity knows are very big on penance and forgiveness.
Last is "Who Says I Have To Give Him Anything, Much Less A Second Chance?" This is where I live for the most part, along with definite deep strains of #1 as well. Sure, Vick has bled a sizeable amount of for his crimes and yes, he has done a good stint in the pokey and yeah, there is now a stain attached to his name that is never going to go away. None of this means that I have to open the doors back up for him and part of the wonderful thing about living in this country is that as a taxpaying adult, I don't have to go along with any school of thought that I think is at least partially full of horseshit. To the person who says that he has lost everything, I would argue that if I did a similar act, I would very likely also lose all my shiny things as well, suffer the same sorts of slings are arrows in terms of my name and reputation and it would all be part of the pound of flesh demanded for comitting such a serious of heinous acts. I would be a pariah afterward, and nobody should have to open their heart to me again.
I'm curious as to where the rest of you come out on this scenario. Should he be given an opportunity to try to find his way again, to appear at a local stadium near you (where he is sure to be protested), to try to make some kind of public atonement for what he has done? Or should he be thrown to the very same kind of dogs he bred, tortured, killed and forced each other to fight to the death and be given a taste of the kind of horror he inlficted?
Inquiring minds want to know.
- Soundtrack:Paranormal State - "Main Credit Sequnce"
Specifically, I was in demand.
I know how fucking egotistical that sounds. Trust me, I know. However, it doesn't make it any less true. Whether it was the fact that minimal standards have now become the norm or because I am just naturally a flaming hot ball of tuna, I had a lot of things going for me. I wasn't an asshole (stop laughing), I had all my teeth, I had a job, I had a car and my own place and was not an idiot. Basically, I was what you are supposed to be, and this put me several cuts above most of the other man-boys I knew and associated with.
Yeah, that sounded pretty egotistical. By the same token, filler people suck. Sometimes, it is what it is.
I soon realized that while my bed was empty for now, it did not have to remain this way for long and there were some ladies who were wondering if applications were being submitted yet to be the next Mrs. Could-Be-Goat. Faced with this selective process and feeling good about possibly having some sex with a real person in the near future (remember, the EOF and I didn't have sex during the last nine months of our relationship), I decided to see what my options were. In a word, plenty. I also knew, in a rare moment of actual logic when concerning interpersonal relationships, that thinking with my cock was exactly what had landed me in such a poor position last time. Therefore, something new needed to be added to the recipe. No, not two chicks at the same time... I mean criteria.
I henceforth resolved that the next woman who got my affections would need to bring some things to the table herself. Specifically, there would be four categories she would need to measure up in.
1) She needed to have a job. Broke chicks are lame chicks. Period. I know how cruel and heartless that sounds, but I had just spent almost two years and nine months footing the bill, for the most part, and that gets old very fast. Two incomes can face the future better than one, and lack of a will to find a job speaks of a serious character flaw that you're better off not getting involved with. In a nutshell, that person may be a slacker, so don't even bother kicking them to the curb; just give them the Heisman Trophy pose, and move on.
2) She needed to have her own car. Bus dates suck. Always driving across town to pick somebody up sucks. This adds up very quickly, and it's amazing how many times people without jobs don't have vehicles either, isn't it?
3) She needed to have her own place or be very close to getting one. Meeting the roommates is all well and good, but it's something that loses a lot of charm on the other side of twenty-five. Not everybody can hack their own place, and that's understandable, but if you're completely cool with the idea of living with six other people and not having cameras placed around so you can be paid for it, you may looking at being an upper-class slacker.
Are we noticing a trend here, yet?
4) Finally, and very importantly, she needed to be able to buy herself a drink legally. Nineteen-year-old hardbodies are outstanding for sweating up the sheets with, but if I'm going to go into a certain section of the all-ages club, she needed to be able to follow me. I can't always be picking up the cocktails, and while it may be that age is only a number, it also bears mentioning that a larger number usually will bring a few more nuggets of wisdom to the table that a smaller one. Usually.
Everything else was negotiable. Instead of having a "basic type" and finding the closest example of such to try to squire into bed, I went out with these four bullet points alone. Hair color, smoker/non-smoker, drinker/non-drinker, religion, chosen profession, ethnicity... all that could be handled later. If she didn't fulfill the basic four food groups, she didn't get a second interview. When I tallied all these criteria up, I realized that I wasn't looking for a girl. I was seeking a woman. A confident, stand-on-her-own-two feet kind of gal who handled her own business and wouldn't allow me to bring her down. A person who didn't need me, but would accept me, if you can see that difference.
So I resolved not to date again until I found somebody who filled this criteria. One of my friends said that my standards were "too draconian." However, this woman eventually did come along. So you know what happened next?
I married her. Scoreboard.
Standards matter.- Soundtrack:Fleetwood Mac - "Don't Stop"
Strange, but true; by this time two weeks from now, I am going to be thirty-five years old. Or, as I think of it in my mind, not just thirty-five, but THIRTY-FUCKING-FIVE YEARS OLD!
To me, this is absolutely astounding. When plotting out the arc of my life (a process that the less said about which, the better), I didn't have anything in the bank beyond age twenty-nine. That was the point where, after several spectacular professional successes and some equally crushing personal and emotional failures, I would emerge from my shell a new man. Wiser, a little more skittish, maybe... but coming out on the other side more or less intact after surviving my own personal slice o' hell.
As you may have deduced, things didn't go this way and I am profoundly glad. The lack of a publishing contract is about the only thing that still sticks in my craw about my life; by this time next year the in-laws will be gone and my wife and I will have our 1,200 square feet of paradise all to ourselves.
While hashing over the curious path my life has taken, I was struck by something out of the blue that I feel compelled to share with you all. I know that breakups have been quite the trend lately, and whether it's because the holidays are truly the most trying time of the year or because some people just don't want to spring for presents, I leave it up to you to decide. Reading over some of the takes my various LJ friends and their comrades in arms had concering what's been going on, I realized that I have never wished ill upon an ex of mine. Not a one.
Is that weird? I think it sort of is. It would be a total lie to say that every one of the women I dated in my life were the only guilty party when it came to put their signifigant other through the wringer. Lord knows I drove the bus right off the cliff wreathed in flames enough times to officially qualify myself as a mediocre/needy boyfriend, if not a bad one. However, saying all those ladies were innocent little lambs I led to an emotional slaughter would also be a lie. From the girl who when she heard my voice hung up on me to the girl who dumped me and then tried to get me back five days later all the way up to and including the Enemy Of Fun, there have been enough sins on both sides to satisfy the demands of karma.
However, no ill wishes. No devoutly praying that Sandy gets hit by a semi truck or gets a crack in her brand-new glasses. I think the closest I ever came to crossing this line in the sand was hoping that each and every one of the girls who ever dumped me would some day wake up and say wistfully, "Man, he was actually a good guy. I shouldn't have done that."
The way I saw it, I had seen something in each one of those girls/women that had inspired me to want to be with them. Whether one person or the other wasn't able to make things work for a variety of reasons didn't really matter; I tried to focus more on the beginning of the relationship than the end of it, to accentuate the positive things rather than dwelling on the ashes afterward. Even the Enemy Of Fun and I started off as a pretty good couple; our biggest sin was not going our separate ways much sooner than we eventually did.
I hope this season as I scratch my chin over the fact that I am about to be THIRTY-FUCKING-FIVE YEARS OLD that you can mine those moments for good memories, my friends.
Here's to you. All of you. Cheers.
- Soundtrack:The Blodhound Gang - "Boom"
I have been wincing every time I see a keyboard because I feel like I should be doing more in my chosen discipline. As usual, I think back to the "glory days" that were anything but glorious back between 1993 and 1998, when I experienced a period of creative energy that makes me smile wistfully every time I think about how much I did.
Lest you think I am beating my own drum, let me run down the list real quick. During that period of time, I finished the novels Diablos, Suspiria, Violet World, Endspiel and Among The Living. Additionally, I also wrote the screenplays Looking Glass, The Long Weekend and Passion & Warfare. On top of all that, I got anywhere from 20,000 to 45,000 words into the novels Lottery Odds, The Light At The End and Change Of Seasons before they were roadblocked for one reason or another. While all that was going on, I was also a full-time staff writer and editor at a local magazine up in Chico, where I put an additional 100,000 words or so over a period of about three and a half years into its pages.
I think every artist in all disciplines go through these sorts of phantom roll calls sooner or later; we put a premium on production, because for every hard-working grimy heel like myself, I am sure you know at least three people who have been working on the same pretentious Great American Novel for the past five years. There are, however, a few conditional modifiers that should be noted for the record concerning this slew of words.
1) My schedule was considerably lighter back then. Not only did I not have a signifigant other for glacially long periods of time (freeing up oodles of minutes and hurt feelings to be poured verbatim into one work or another), while I had three jobs at one point, all were part time. Yes, I know that school is considered a job by most people. Believe me when I say that, if you are taking the right classes, this workload shrinks by a considerable amount. A lot less than, say, forty hours a week and then some at the bus company.
2) Quality was not exactly at a premium. I feel somewhat lame saying that, but if I didn't, it would be a lie. Don't get me wrong; at the time I was working on whatever piece that was holding my attention, I did my best to knock that ball out of the park. I didn't scrimp, I didn't cheat, and I didn't turn away from the effort required to get the work done. Having said that, I will also hasten to point out that I rarely planned anything out beyond a nebulous idea of where it would all end up. Every page should have been stamped with THIS IS THE PRODUCT OF A CHEMICALLY ALTERED COLLEGE STUDENT all over it, and none of those works have ever felt the pain of the red pen wielded by an sharp-eyed editor who hated cliches like Arabs hate Jews and vice versa. It's pretty easy to run and gun like there's no tomorrow, provided you are not too interested in examining the smoking earth left in your wake.
3) Back then, the Internet was a very new thing. This is actually a much bigger reason now than I thought it was; I'm guessing most of you don't remember when the majority of web site URL's looked like http://208.34.163.1 and having a "vanity URL" was something for a very select group of people. Personal web pages were stocked on places like Geocities and Tripod, and the eclectic "link page" was an object of keen interest. There was no Youtube, no Wikipedia and the best search engine was the AltaVista one. There was a distinct lack of quality content, to say nothing of quantity. I didn't even have a home Internet connection until early 1996, and that was--you guessed it--a dial-up one. There wasn't a tremendous amount of avenues to waste time with, which is basically what the Internet's primary purpose is. I'm sure some of you can relate.
However, upon further review, the production hasn't really slacked as much as I thought. For the past five years, from 2003 until 2008, the roll call goes like this: Salvation, Covenant, Backlash, Underworld, The Phoenix Initiative, The Final Nine and Living After Midnight. Unlike the previous works, these ones were definitely done with at least one full eye turned toward the concept of quality. Oh, and the entire, unabridged contents of this blog, of which I am sure you have faithfully read through every sleep-deprived, chemically altered screed contained within. When you factor in the full-time job and wife as well, that actually holds a pretty decent amount of weight.
So, maybe not a slacker. Just a change of game plan.
Good thoughts to you and yours.
- Soundtrack:Testament - "Electric Crown"
However, for even better chin-scratching, I came back next week and encountered the following question, which I will do my best to turn out in my own words:
Let's say that you went to Madame Zorba the gypsy fortune teller, and after gazing into her crystal ball, she said that it wasn't going to happen. "I am sorry, my child. I know you have submitted faithfully, and you have stayed the course. You have researched, worked on your game and done all that you can to swing the odds in your favor. You have held the throttle until your hand smoked and burned, and I am sorry to say that the fates have determined this is not going to happen for you. You will never get the convergence of events necessary to make being published a reality. Five dollars, please."
Now, having been given this soul-crushing piece of news, what would your reaction would be?
I thought about this for about a minute or so, and the more I chewed it over, the more I was forced to admit that my initial response to this scenario was the honest one. As bizarre as it may sound, if Madame Zorba laid this on me... I would be relieved.
"What the hell?"
I know. Weird, huh? It's true, though. Do not confuse this feeling with that of pleasure; in no way would I be happy about this dire prediction. What it would do would take the pressure out of the equation, to remove the giant uncertainty principle from the world of writing that in some way or another, has dogged me for a large portion of my life. When I was quite young, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Once I found out that due to simple body physics I was never going to be a big-leaguer, I was able to simply enjoy the game for what it was, without some mental scoreboard in the back of my skull meticulously noting every bad play or lame at-bat for future ass-chewings. In the same way, writing would be addressed. I would be back squarely back at the beginning again, doing the craft for the love of the game and not with any sort of reward on the horizon to be thought about besides the joy of telling a story well.
Of course, it also helps that I am addressing this possibly not-so-hypothetical question at this point in my life, when I have a great wife, good job and fairly comfortable existence, not to mention a great deal more confidence in my own abilities (if decidedly less good feelings about the other elements that are completely beyond my control). Had I been posed this scenario back in my early to mid-twenties, I would have probably responded by burning down Madame Zorba's tent--because nothing says Zen like shooting the messenger, after all--and then going home to fashion a noose. I wish I could say I was kidding on that last part, but a part of me knows that I am not.
With how crappy the economic indicators have been lately, I am going to wait until the news year to start sending things out again. In the meantime, I will have fun with Lost Sundays and in the process, call some of you out to join in National Novel Writing Month with me. Join me in Hell, I say. After all, we've got cookies and punch.
The following people are being drafted.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lesliemoniot , sabrarosa , detonate_for_me , flameamongcoals , the_newbrunette , thesoniashow , mermaidinparis , vg_ford , ammepyre , cxtxc and hihankara .Don't fight, don't chicken out and above all, don't cry. It's just a waste of perfectly good suffering.
- Soundtrack:Joe Satriani - "Rubina's Blue Sky Happiness"
The question was quite simple: Eh? How did this romance come about?
It's an answer in several parts. The first reason is because as a writer, I believe it's good to have more than one project going at the same time. There have been very few times in my life when I went on one work from start to finish without any sort of side trips; whether or not this is something that can break up the continuity of a book is something that hopefully you and I will be able to discuss at the local bookstore over a cup of coffee and my newest published work. I get locked in on what I am working on, sure... but it doesn't mean that my mind's eye doesn't occasionally roam in a different direction.
Many authors do this sort of trick because it helps keep them fresh on the main project. I feel that's a good reason, but there is also the factor that sometimes, the sort of things I am thinking about and wanting to put on paper wouldn't be appropriate for what I'm working on. In fact, that's how Black Sunshine was begin. I had been longing to do a real gut-wrencher of a sequence for a long time, and the story I was in the middle of (Living After Midnight) was completely unsuitable for that jaunt into my imagination. Ergo, it was time for that back burner project to make an appearance.
The next reason is that for the last few years, I had been doing the Ring Of Fire series and a couple one-offs via National Novel Writing Month, those being The Phoenix Initiative (2006) and The Final Nine (2007). Both those stories were wildly different from the usual fare I was dealing in at that point, so they were good for stretching my literary legs... but truth be told, I really wanted to do a vanilla romance story again. An author doesn't really need any more justification than that, so there.
Well, I'll explain a little more. The Ring Of Fire books all center around the romance between Kyle Risser and Angelique De LaPaz and their struggle against the machinations of The Order to split them apart or make them bow to their black flag. There are many opportunities for these two to express their love, to take comfort and strength in each other. They are supported by a colorful cast of characters and there's ample chances to have fun with things like zombies, magic and demons. It's a grab bag where I can basically go to the well any time I want and yes, there are supplementary plot lines galore, some of them featuring romances. It's all well and good, and on some level, I really wanted to get back to basics. Guy. Girl. Meeting cute. Attraction. Tentativeness. Disruption. Despair. Happy ending.
Finally, the first novel I ever wrote (and the third) featured this same pair of characters. Richard Ventura and Stephanie Curtis have been inhabiting space inside my skull for just about nineteen years now. They appeared in the first novel I ever wrote, an alternate universe version of that same work which was a quantum leap in improvement, an unfinished novel taking place in an alternate-alternate universe, if you can dig that concept. After I had my experience in working on an independent movie, I wrote a screenplay (once again taking place in a different world, true to type) and threw these two in as part of the rogues' gallery of characters I was working with. I liked every effort... but they always left me a little wanting.
So in a way, Living After Midnight is my attempt to finally get the script down correctly. I know these two; I can see them, and I know they fall in love. They get to have that happy ending that we all want, even if they have to slog through a bit of hell to get there.
Maybe this time I'll get it right.
- Soundtrack:AC/DC - "Put The Finger On You"
This is the one where I talk about how love by itself is not enough to keep a relationship going.
This is the one where I talk about not embracing minimal standards, because that marks you as a lazy piece of crap.
This is the one where I talk about the concept of "good husband points" and cite specific examples of how easy it is to keep your relationship running smoothly.
Maybe I should start a class. Sad as it is to say, I'm sure some of you ladies would probably enroll your S.O. in my course.
EDIT: Also, happy birthday to my dad. He rocks, and I'm damn lucky to have him as an influence in my life. Here's to you, James.
- Soundtrack:Fleetwood Mac - "Don't Stop"
mermaidinparis. I won't give away to her age, except to say that she's now in the same club I am. Our conversation today via texting brought up a question that I'm sure everybody has contemplated at one time or another:If you could go back in time and live it over again from a certain point, would you?
The answer for me at first glance is pretty simple. No, no, no and a giant HELL NO for good measure. Barring a moment the question on whether I would make different decisions to change my life, the prime reason that most people answer yes is so they can be young and hot again. Well, I may have been decent-looking, but health-wise I was actually worse off than I am now. I've definitely gotten a better blood pressure and stress reading now, I've already quit the cigarettes and no longer do I treat each and every day of my life as a ticking deathwatch.
Besides, I look pretty okay these days, so that side of the question is pretty much a wash.
The other half is the life choices and life path part of the equation, and although it sounds horribly cliche and sappy to say that, my life is in a pretty awesome place right now and I would be afraid that nudging things here or adjusting things there might send me spinning off into another direction entirely. Yes, it's definitely true that I slogged through mud, blood and broken glass for a number years for mostly self-inflicted reasons and it was painfully stupid and I was my own worst enemy. Having copped to that, however, I'll also go ahead and say that without that prolonged period of insanity and darkness, I very well might not be where I am right now.
The only thing I would do differently is to grab one minute out of the time/space continuum with my younger self and say the following:
"Look, I want to tell you some truths about your life. No map for you. You're going to have to stumble through just like I did, with no compass and no flashlight. You're going to weep blood. You're going to want to bite your hands sometimes in the middle of the night because you're so fucking lonely, you're going to think you have soul cancer. You're going to destroy several decent friendships along the way, a couple of which are going to give you pause for thought over a decade after the final burning cinder rains down. You're going to get punched in the face about your writing over and over and over again. It's going to make you bitter, it's going to make you sneer a lot of the time without being aware you're doing so, it's going to scar the very depths of your soul. Got that?
"Now, let me show you a few pictures. This is going to be your house someday, a place nobody can kick you out of. This is going to be your vehicle and man, it rides like a steroided-out dream. This is you, having fun with your writing and just feeling the pure joy of creation. And most importantly, this is the woman who is going to make you a better person. She's going to marry you, my friend. You guys are going to be in love, and by that, I mean the kind of love that makes your friends gag even after half a decade. In the end, these glimpses of your life are going to be worth the hell you're going to march through. It's going to be dark, make no mistake...
"...but in the end, you're going to find the light."
So to answer the question again, no. I wouldn't change a thing.
EDIT: I also have to state for the record that Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs, long-time Boston Red Sox captain and phenomenal player, absolutely SUCKS for wearing a New York Yankees hat during the All-Star Game pregame ceremony. Fuck you, Wade. Booooooo!
- Soundtrack:Aerosmith - "Sweet Emotion"
1) High gas prices
2) The hot as hell weather
Both of them bore me to tears and I've begun telling people out loud that with absolutely no trace of self-consciousness. Big surprise. #2 is the one that causes me to roll my eyes the most; when somebody begins talking about gee whizz, sure is hot out, I give them my best deadpan look and say (without a trace of perceptible sarcasm), "Odd that this time of year would bring high temperatures. I mean, what is it, July?"
I mean, honestly, folks. I realize that talking about the weather has been a staple of the conversationally challenged for centuries. When all else fails (sports, politics, entertainment, law, economics, oh hell's bells, you get the fucking point) I guess you can always fall back on the condition of the biosphere. However, acting like it's in any shape, manner or form a surprise or noteworthy that the temperature was 102 degrees in the Sacramento valley in the month of July makes you... well, it makes you appear a little thick, as the Brits would say.
- Soundtrack:Rush - "Fly By Night"
Instead, let's talk gay marriage.
In all probability, I'm likely the most conservative person on your f-list. Not telling any tales out of church on that one, with my staunch meritocracy-based belief system. However, I also believe in minding my own business, so I wholeheartedly support same-sex matrimony. Really, what do I care? I don't. Who people want to marry means about as much in my life as what the guy at the back of the bus dreamt about last night... in other words, I could care less. My marriage is fine and really, that's pretty much the only one that concerns my thoughts on a daily basis. I have enough to do without sticking my thumbs in somebody else's pie.
It's logical. It's ethical. It doesn't impact your life in the slightest bit, unless you have to give a gift to the lucky couple or make a half-drunk toast. You would think we'd be past this as a society. Nooooooo. I have debated this in past with people, and this is how it usually went:
"But Jesse," people have whined at me in the past, "if we throw open the marriage gates, people will, um, they'll marry their dog!"
Good. I hope they do. I hope they put a white dress and a saddle on their St. Bernard and ride it down to the local Chapel 'O Love, because if you're loopy enough to tie the knot with your dog, it just means that mangy animal will inherit all your stuff when you die. That's it. Oh, and your co-workers are going to think you're an idiot. Chances are if you really think marrying your dog is a good idea, you don't have much in the way of desirable worldly possessions anyway. Who gives a shit if somebody wants to marry an animal? It's not even remotely the same as a human being, and it's a stupid argument.
"But Jesse," they say after a few confused moments, "our society doesn't permit this!"
Wrong, douchenozzle. Your society doesn't permit this. Mine doesn't give a fart in a hurricane. Our society also used to think slavery was a swell idea and additionally believed those silly, silly women should get back in the kitchen (after removing their shoes first, of course) and not even think about voting. Not to mention there was actually a period of time when Astroturf was perceived as an awesome thing. Just because the majority of people believe in something doesn't make it right.
"But Jesse," the final argument goes, "same-sex unions are a threat to the sanctity of marriage!"
Really? I won't even go into the fact that the person stupid enough to actually say this to my face had earlier told a story about how they told their spouse about somebody flirting with them so their life partner would get jealous and finally break down enough to give them oral pleasure. Except whoops, I just did. What, your marriage can't survive the fact that Larry and Chuck next door are now hitched? What a weakling you are, and how flimsy your own union really is.
At this point, the arguer tried to drag God into the whole sordid business. Isn't it amazing the stupid shit that the Supreme Being gets blamed for? Since marriage is sanctified in the eyes of God, the argument goes, the union of two same-sex people is an affront to.... bzzzzzzz, what? I usually fall asleep during that part of their rant, because the response is quite simple; if indeed the same-sex union is an affront to God, I suspect that the Supreme Being Itself will have something to say about their cavalier approach to sanctity in the afterlife, where the married gay people will have all kinds of horror visited upon them by the vengeful Forces O' Darkness. In fact, I'm sure that lofty entity has all kinds of scores to settle with stupid humans, not the least of which are people who bleat hypocritically about the "sanctity of marriage" and then conduct their own personal affairs in such a disastrous fashion that alimony becomes a way of life for them.
Last time I checked the biggest threat of marriage, as Wanda Sykes so accurately stated, is divorce. Her own marriage couldn't survive divorce, and I'm willing to bet yours couldn't, either. If the only thing keeping your precariously titling union from dashing itself to hand-wringing bits on the rocks below is the fact that gays can't get married, not only have you screwed up your own life, you have also dragged down your spouse as well. Congratulations.
In closing, here is a list of things I have found to be much bigger threats to marriage than whether or not Gay Gary and Lesbian Lucy can get hitched: fucking people who are not your spouse, choosing badly, rampant gambling, unemployment, horrific medical traumas, jackass children, having children too young, lousy career paths, abysmal living conditions, having too many people in the goddamn house, alcoholism, drug addiction, going off to prison, being stationed overseas in the military while your spouse stays stateside and just plain being a complete and utter hypocritical creep on a daily basis.
Gary marriage? I'm all for it. I don't have to buy any gifts and I don;t have to go, so why should I care? Gay people should get to experience all the pains and joys of betrothal as well, so I hope California stays the course (and how I shudder using that phrase) and says it's perfectly okay.
Thoughts? I know you have some.
- Soundtrack:Queen - "Under Pressure"
mermaidinparis.We go pretty far back together; in fact, we go all the way back to the misty year of 1987, the same year my guitar was manufactured over in Japan. I was the new guy in school, and I met a group of people that, while drama was one of the orders of the day, they were all basically decent people. As for the drama... show me a thirteen-year-old who doesn't claim to languish under the whip of the Drama Llama and I'll show you a pathological liar.
She and I became friends and in high school, I don't think it would be such a stretch to say that we probably saved each other from going off the deep end a few times. In fact, I know we did. That's what happens when you're trying to be true to your artistic (or in my case, merely creative) core while also trying to get along in a rural high school that has just over four hundred people. Total. Not our class; I'm talking about the whole kit and kaboodle. Along with another girl who rounded out our power trio, we all kept each other's heads above water and tried to do our best to steer each other past the whorls and eddies so common to teenage life.
When we graduated, we all promised to keep in touch. We didn't. That happens sometimes; I know you're thinking that we probably should have just emailed each other, but we had no Internet access in our home town to get. Seriously. Hell, there was barely even an Internet at all back in 1992, much less one we had access to in Winters, population Not Very Fucking Many. I think there were promises to snail mail each other, but it didn't pan out. Things go like that sometimes.
People say that you lose most of the friends you had in high school. That's true. What's also true is that there's a few who you lose that you really, really wish you'd been able to keep in touch with. I remembered that she had been dating a guy back in high school who turned out to be a complete douchenozzle, and I was hoping that she'd been able to avoid making that same mistake again over and over like so many other people I knew. People like me. Mostly, life went on. I had many things to keep me occupied in Chico and she had her life to lead as well. A good one, I hoped.
In my fourth year of college, we somehow got in touch again. She actually came up to my apartment and I gave her the not-so-grand tour. I tried to put a good face on things, but the truth was that I felt fairly empty and miserable, not to mention lonely and somewhat like a budding failure at age twenty-one. Despite my best efforts, things weren't going very well for the home team. She was in the same boat.
Before she left, she cried. She thought she was never going to see me again, and I told her she would. Somehow, at some point in the future, our orbits would cross again. I had absolutely no evidence backing that up as it had been almost half a decade since we'd last grinned at each other in person, but somehow I believed this. I don't know if she believed me or not, but she went back to her life again, and I to mine.
I Googled her name every now and then, wondering if she was still using the same one, to no avail. When I set up a MySpace account, I was hoping that somehow it might lead my friend back to me. Over three years later, it finally did.
My friend is back in my life.
Sometimes, the home team pulls one out.
All right, there is also a meme here, courtesy of
dawning_star. It goes: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to.Got it. "The Frayed Ends Of Sanity" by Metallica. "Practice What You Preach" by Testament. "Motorcycle Driver" by Joe Satriani. "Manthem" by The Bouncing Souls. "So Far Away" by Dire Straits. "Having A Blast" by Green Day and last but not least, "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest.
Okay.
mermaidinparis, vg_ford, lesliemoniot, hihankara, yuppiesftw, emilia_romagna and marieb, what's in your iPod today?- Soundtrack:Severed Ties - "Tattooed Fear"
I guess if we're being completely honest I should mention that I was in a three-man outfit in high school named Ominivore (don't ask) with myself on guitar, Keith on drums and Anthony on... guitar. Except I turned the tone knob all the way down on my guitar so it came out very low-sounding and rumbly, so I was technically the "six-string bassist." Once again, don't ask. What? Oh, fine; Anthony was a better guitar player than I was and we had no bassist. We played a Halloween party at Keith's, got horrifically drunk and the less said about the short and inglorious career of Omnivore, the better.
No, the one I'm talking about for the purposes of this entry was in Chico, during what would have been my third year of college. I was a very big fan of a local group called The Tuboriffic Space Pimps and after I had seen them a few times live, I knew this was my favorite group in town. Loud, aggressive riffing with maximum crunch on the guitar, slap-pop bass work that got your feet moving, funk-inspired thrash drumming and rapid-fire speed rapping vocals delivered by a guy wearing aviator goggles. They rocked. I made it a point to go to every show of theirs I could, and frequently put them over in the magazine I wrote for, which most likely amounted to little more than a very minor hill of beans, but good press is good press, right?
I heard through the grapevine that the band was in the process of auditioning new guitarists; I don't know what the story was with their old one, but I remember the split was a fairly amicable one. Most likely a graduation, and with one less pimp, the rest of the merry crew was determined to carry on. This was how the drummer and bass player ended up at my student apartment one night, sitting down across from me with some oh-very-serious expressions and saying, "Well, what do you got?"
"Original stuff?" I asked, hoping my voice wouldn't crack.
"Sure. Show us the kind of stuff you like to play."
As it so happened I did have a few original songs, a medley of riffs I hadn't put together into finished tunes yet and nothing even remotely resembling a guitar hero-type lead lick. A rhythm hog I was then, and I strongly suspect to a large extent I will always be. Turning the distortion on my Peavey Bandit 112 (a great amplifier) to maximum and grabbing my trusty Ibanez RG 550 (told you we've been through a lot together), I began sliding, power-chording and palm muting my way across the lower end of the guitar--
"Okay, I've heard enough," the drummer said, looking to his companion after about two minutes while, startled by the speed of the decision, I hit a bad chord and winced, morally sure I had given the pooch a screwing for the entire year. "What do you think?"
The bassist thought about this for all of two seconds. "Yeah. He's in."
"Definitely in," the drummer asserted.
"I'm in?" I asked, stunned.
My favorite local band wanted me? What, did all the other axe-slingers developed Lou Gherig's Disease or something? Sure, I was pretty decent in chords and riffs, but if you needed a guitar solo... yeah, don't even think about looking at me. As it turned out, the Tuboriffic Space Pimps didn't give two hoots in hell if I was Angus Young, Kirk Hammett or Yngwie J. Malmsteen in terms of lead guitar ability. They wanted somebody who was going to throw down snap-your-fingers, snap-your-neck type crunch on top of their psycho rhythm section. They wanted James Hetfield, not Stevie Ray Vaughn. My tritone-inspired doom riffing was exactly what they wanted.
Of course, then a problem reared its head. "I'm in," I said after they left, having left me with a tape containing about a dozen songs they wanted me to learn... or at least, approximate. In three weeks.
My problem was that we weren't using the rotation of Venus as our calendar to mark how many hours were in a day... a Venutian day being 243 of our own Earth days long, if you're interested. With only 24 hours in a day, my time was already spoken for by the following categories:
1) School
2) Work
3) Writing
4) Pathetic attempts at dating
Since I was at Chico to go to college, the idea of calling up my parents (m y primary source of financial assistance) and saying I was dropping out of school to join a funk-metal thrash band was the worst idea since Custer decided he didn't need any help running off those pesky Indians. At this point I still really liked working at the magazine I worked for (more on that death-spiral some other time) and the idea of giving up my weekly column and such made me fall back into a defensive crouch. Theoretically if I joined the band, my lame and self-destructive attempts with the opposite sex would suddenly be much improved (ha!) and I wouldn't need to devote any time to it at all, which was about what I was doing now.
That left writing. If I stopped working on stuff like Diablos, Suspiria and Violet World, I could make this happen. I'd still be in school, I'd be getting laid non-stop (ha, again!) and... and...
That pretty much sealed the deal. The Space Pimps, as they were subsequently renamed, took the news gracefully and got another guy to be their axe-slinger, who was much better than I was. Ironically, once we had hung out a few times and put down a jam or two, he really wanted me to be in a band with him. He would be Kirk Hammett to my James Hetfield, and all would be conquered in the metal world.
As John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans."
- Soundtrack:Metallica - "One
nanci_raygun's request to hear my screed on fanfic, Internet lulz and a bizarre, fucked-up horse trough of insanity known as Nicky The Goth. This isn't meant to offend any of the f-listers who do fanfic, as you know how I feel about your efforts. This is meant for the general pool at large. Charge!When it comes to fanfic, I am of two minds. First, as I have stated in the past, this was the arena that I got my start in. For every writer out there getting published and making lives brighter throughout the world, there was a moment when they were inspired to pick up whatever tool they use and start writing. Usually, this was a book, movie or whatever that really rang their bell and as a result, they most likely produced at least a few stories set down in that 'verse as a form of starting to pay their literary dues.
That's fine. In fact, that's better than fine. The old saying goes that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and as the original author, if you come up with something that stokes somebody's furnace so hard that they voluntarily want to spend a large part of the rest of their lives sequestered away from humanity with a laptop, you may have just written a winner. Buy yourself a beer and toast your own coolness.
- Soundtrack:The Bangles - "In Your Room"
HE: Oh wow, you drove all the way back down here to give me that?
ME: Of course. I don't want to leave anything to chance and this was the only thing left on the list. I'm sorry I didn't have it down here before.
HE: Wow. Usually I just install one in the guitar and then I forget I did it, so it's something I end up paying for.
ME: I wouldn't have allowed that. I would have insisted on paying you for the battery, because fair is fair. I think it's better to actually bring one down rather than leaving that sort of thing open to chance.
HE: (after a two-second pause) I'm going to try really hard to have this done for you on Wednesday.
ME: If that could happen, it would be awesome.
I really try not to go around breathing fire and brimstone all the time. I'm actually a pretty patient person, and I believe in the end that enough patience and determination gets rewarded. Then again, I sort of have to believe this considering my wish to be a published author, or I would have quit a long time ago. It's my hope that my patience and positive attitude (on the surface, at least) about this whole project will finally bear the fruit I am looking for in a timely manner.
And speaking of patience... by this time twenty-four hours from now, Lady Jade will be paroled from the depths of Tax Hell. In fact, she may actually get off at five tomorrow, which would be phenomenal. How will we celebrate? Why, by sleeping in a bit on Wednesday, (hopefully) picking up my guitar and then going to the Sunrise California Family Fitness gym to start the crash course of physical effort to get ourselves back into hiking shape before vacation next month, followed by dinner at Tex Wasabi's.
On Thursday if we can move, we will go back to the gym. If not, it'll be movie day. Hopefully some guitar playing will happen as well.
I hope.
- Soundtrack:Joe Satriani - "Motorcycle Driver"
While driving the bus back to the yard today, I started doing one of my extended monologues to pass the time. It's a free-form exercise in spoken word where you have a one-sided conversation wherein you rehash certain aspects of your life and see if examining them through the lens of time has led to any new and interesting moments of self-discovery. Most of the time, this is nothing more than rehearsal for interviews that will take place someday (he hopes), but on occasion, this extremely unedited and uncensored question-and-answer riffing can lead to some downright odd and interesting insights.
For example, today I learned that I don't really care about money. I was going over the process of writing and why I love doing it so much (aside from the occasional pokes in the eye with a sharp stick that every person in this field gets sooner or later), when I rehashed an old snapshot of what I thought at age 22 would be my ideal life... and nowhere in there was the mention of large amounts of money.
At first, I thought this had to be a mistake, so I circled back on the subject again. No. No mention of being stinking rich. In fact, pretty much the opposite.
The snapshot of that life went like this; I would be a successful author (duh) and a modest success in my chosen field. I would spend my days by driving up to Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood (in this version of my future, I was living in or around Portland, Oregon) and in between sessions of carving and slashing on the snowy slopes, I would retreat back to the lodge with a good hot chocolate or possibly something stronger and while away the afternoons working on my latest creation with my trusty laptop while watching whatever sport was currently holding my interest. In the evening I would descend from the mountain, go out for a nice dinner, then back to my domicile where I would spend the rest of the night snuggling with my chosen lady over good movies and mellow cocktails. In the morning, I would awaken and do it all over again.
When I pictured this, however, at no point was I driving something like a Porsche. Not even a Range Rover, actually. More likely it would be a large snow-tired equipped pickup, and not an especially high-end one at that. The place where I lived was most likely an apartment, or a particularly nice condominium. No Scarface mansions with a hot tub in the bedroom for this camper. My clothes were simple flannels shirts and jeans, a well-loved baseball cap and perhaps the nicest thing I would own would be the laptop upon which I earned my living.
While I've always wanted recognition for my writing, that's not the same as money. What I wanted was the ability to do my own thing at my own pace, and I didn't need any of the other trappings of success that so many other people seem to be ready to sell their souls for. I didn't need nice clothes. I didn't need a cushy ride. I didn't need anything more from my place to live than sleeping quarters, a place to cook and a place to bathe. I craved the simple life, even at a young age.
So in the end, what does all this mean? Simple. The moral of this story is that apparently even in my fantasy life, I am still a hopelessly vanilla Capricorn.
- Soundtrack:Ramones - "Commando"
When I wrote my first book back at the tail end of 1989, I was a confirmed King-o-phile. I could quote you chapter, verse and meter and woe be to they who dared to suggest that the King of Modern Horror was nothing more than a hacky schlockmeister who wasn't fit to carry the gym bag of that long-deceased necrophiliac Edgar Allen Poe. Stephen King was, truth be told, the first author I came to know through interviews and television as a "real person." I could relate to him. He was a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan who grew his beard during the offseason and then chopped it all down to the skin come Opening Day. Much like myself, he had an affection for the Ramones, Guns 'N Roses and the Gods of Thunder, those Australian scalywags in AC/DC.
King seemed like a groovy guy. The kind of guy you could have a beer with and not want to walk away shaking your head after five minutes. Without even trying to, he brought a nova blast of knowledge to my young world, which quite simply stated is thus:
You not have to be a complete prissbag effete snootmeister to be an author. A regular guy can do just as good as a job... in some cases a much, much better job... than the classically trained "artist." This is an attainable goal. If a poor kid from the wilds of Western Maine can do this, you can do it, too.
With that in mind, I wrote my first novel. It was, as most first novels are, fairly awful. Now here I sit almost twenty years later (and Jesus, the amount of times I've mentally groaned and smiled about that just today would fill a fucking barge) getting ready to take a trip back down memory lane. Tomorrow morning I start Living After Midnight, all plotting in order and the writing bag packed and ready for the local Starbucks. After a warmup round of Quake III: Arena to get the blood flowing, the typing starts.
Stephen King is still writing because he loves it--and Jesus, so do I.
Thirty days and counting to THE END. Stay tuned.
- Soundtrack:Guns 'N Roses - "Reckless Life"
What has been occupying my attention these days is music. I got an excellent piece of guitar equipment on Christmas, the Zoom 9002 signal processor, and have been ramping up to get the trusty RG550 back into a fighting shape the likes of which it has never seen with new turbocharged equipment and some TLC. I'm also helping Mad Evil Chris do a little preliminary guitar shopping of his own, and it looks like my man is going to join the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton by getting himself a Fender Stratocaster which if I'm not mistaken, will most likely look much like this:
That's a beautiful piece of equipment right there. Remember, kids; real guitar heroes play real guitars.
In doing this search for the combination of the right axe and the right amp to produce just the right tone, it started me thinking about how very similar writing and guitar playing truly are. I think that's part of the reason I responded so enthusiastically to both disciplines. In both fields, you have a basic piece of equipment; in the music world it's 22 or 24 frets and six strings, maybe a whammy bar, maybe not. In the writing world it's 104 keys on a QWERTY keyboard. You sit down with the same basic tools at your disposal as Satriani, Skolnick and Vai (or King, Barker and Herbert, on the flip side). Once you figure out how to hold the damn thing correctly, whatever comes next is your own extrapolation.
Of course, there are some fundamentals that will get you a long way toward your goal. Dialogue, characterization, plot, style, motivation, dynamics and intro/endings should sound very familiar if you're a Writing 101 post reader. Or, if you prefer, chords, scales, modes, root notes, tremolo picking, pinch harmonics, legato, vibrato, sweep arpeggios, string-skipping, tapping and dive-bombs in the six-string world.
I love the freedom both disciplines give you in what is essentially a closed universe. If you say to myself and Tom Petty, "Write a song in the key of A," we're going to come up with completely different takes on his Fender Telecaster and my Ibanez RG550. The sounds will not be the same, the chord progressions will be completely different, we'll have wildly different harmony lines... but they will both be guitar songs written in the key of A. Using that same 104-key setup that Nora Roberts uses, my own take on a dark night in Atlanta will be completely different than hers... and heck, even the contrasts between Roberts' work on that subject and a riff from her noir pen name J.D. Robb will be completely different, and that's being done by the same person.
Style is what you have when you've been doing it for long enough to know the difference between good structure and bad structure. The flat notes you hit early in your six-string career will smooth out, and your dreadful plotting will come around to a more natural flow once you've cut your literary teeth.
I don't know what I'm more excited about; getting the EMG's installed in the Ibanez, or the March 1st countdown to starting Living After Midnight.
It's a good time to be alive. Happy V-Day, one and all.
EDIT: For those of you who actively hate Valentine's Day, or aren't interested in it in the slightest or are hoping that an ex of yours had a crappy holiday because the motherfucker deserves it, I offer this link to give you wonderful e-card ideas.
I also thought of the Enemy Of Fun when I saw this image, so I thieved it away.
( True Romance? )
- Soundtrack:Joe Satriani - "Motorcycle Driver"
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