The Loiterer, Or: Making Things And Being Happy
Posted on | December 5, 2009 | No Comments
Good afternoon.
I am writing this post at Boston Stoker, trying to work up the motivation to brave the cold and go home. Except for a bearded, corpulent fellow who is barefoot and reading a book, I am the only “customer” here. I put that in quotation marks because I finished my hot tea an hour ago, and am now more or less loitering.
Managed to write a little bit today. Not much, only 600 words. I’ve been fighting a damn cold all week and mostly losing. It’s been confined to my head, thankfully, so I haven’t been completely miserable. But it does seem to have fucked with my muse, a belligerent Brit who shouts at me, and I haven’t felt much inspired to write since Thanksgiving.
No, that’s not entirely accurate. I forgot that on Thursday I came up with a treatment for a short movie I’d like to make in the near future with Ryan. It’s called GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE for now. I’m going to let it percolate for a week or two, then write the script. It falls into the comedy/drama genre, which is much different from the sci-fi/urban fantasy I usually write. I’m going to have to stretch a bit to write it, and that excites me, which is reason enough to actually complete the script, even if it never makes it past the written stage.
There’s one more creative project that I’m entertaining doing: filming a live-reading of an old poem of mine called THE MONKEYS HAVE STOLEN MY CHEESE, but done in a “fireside chat” or Masterpiece Theatre style. I need to revamp the poem first before that goes anywhere. We’ll see if this one happens or not. At the very least, I think it could be fun to make.
It’s odd: the office closing and the intervening month seems like it has completely rejuvenated me, both creatively and in spirit. I want to make weird and fun things again, and hang out with people. I guess I never realized just how unhappy I had become over the last three years. Life has actually become enjoyable again, and being creative has been a large part of making it so.
Oh — the computer has just thrown up the low battery warning. Time to post this and scram.
Shopping Is Hell
Posted on | November 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
Ugh. It’s going on 13:30 and I’ve already been up nearly nine hours. I know others have been up even longer that, but this was the first Black Friday trench run I’ve ever experienced — at least from the consumer’s point of view — so I felt obligated to get up early and venture out with my dad to a few stores.
I picked up a few small deals while out: oil and a filter for my car for $5; an 8GB flash drive for $15; and THE DARK KNIGHT on dvd for $4. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, as I am not completely retarded and easily led to believe that I will get anything and everything that is a “great” deal today. Most of the stores were busy, but it was a manageable sort of busy, the kind that is kind of fun to be out in.
Except for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart was hell.
We got there around 5:30. It was our second stop after Target. The parking lot was packed, but we found a spot easily enough, which made me think, Oh, this shouldn’t be too bad. Upon entering the store, however, I nearly shat myself. The queues for people waiting to check out stretched all the way to the back of the store, and over into the lawn and garden section. I couldn’t discern where it began. There were no gaps in the queue, which in many spots was two or more persons deep. Fortunately, a young fat woman was asleep at the wheel, staring down at her cell phone, and she had let a small space open. We dashed through it, hopped over an abandoned pallet, and then were through what I was sure was the worst of it.
Wrong.
A few moments later, we made our way back to the perimeter of the electronics department. This area was even more heavily congested, so much so that one could barely move, let alone shop. Getting in to the actual electronics area would have required a feat of magic, or perhaps Nightcrawler from the X-Men. So, bowing to the inevitable, I offered a quick word of condolence to Brandon, who was nearby working in the photo lab, and my dad and I turned around and slowly pushed our way through to the exit.
I worked these Black Fridays at Wal-Mart for five years. This was easily the busiest that joint had ever been.
So what am I really thankful for this year? That I no longer have to deal with working at that bullshit. All said, though, this morning’s experience was actually kind of fun.
Damn These Mitten Hands Of Mine!
Posted on | November 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
Lately, whenever I am feeling down or a little sad, I open this photo…
…and I remember that someone always has it worse than me. And that cheers me up.
Of course, Nate the Penguin also does a wonderful job of brightening my mood.
You Know What Scarves Are Good For? Strangling People.
Posted on | November 19, 2009 | No Comments
Got bored today, so I went down to the Fairfield Commons to grab lunch and peruse the Barnes & Noble. Also brought my laptop in case I felt moved to write. I did, and produced a quick thousand words. Now I am typing up this blog entry and trying not to stare at all the hipster kids with their skinny jeans, Uggs, scarves, and too tight clothing. It is very hard. I already feel overly conspicuous just being here with my laptop.
Oh, great. Coldplay is playing over the satellite radio. Just kill me now.
Moving on. Must finish this quickly and get the hell out of here.
Work on PROPHECY GIRL continues to progress at an agreeable pace. The other night I finally came up with a way to properly tie together the first chapter with the rest of the story. When I started writing PG a few weeks ago, the beginning was giving me a hell of a time. I’ve known the very first sentence for a number of years, and have had a general idea of what needs to happen in the opening chapter. In fact, I’ve written the first chapter several times before, but have never been satisfied with it.
So instead of agonizing over it for another month or year or whatever, I simply skipped the first chapter and moved onto the next chapter that I had a grip on. Once I did that, the words came out pretty easily. And then the other night, with most of Part One now sussed out, an interesting (at least I hope) and workable first chapter sort of sprung into existence in my head. I stopped making dinner, went over to the lappy, and spent the next hour transcribing what amounted to a braindump of ideas and notes. And then as I was writing those down, a number of thoughts and ideas on the middle and end Parts presented themselves, and I wrote those down as well.
I was damn well starving by the time I was finished, but very happy.
Now: time to leave Barnes & Noble before I start using scarves as murder weapons.
Love Poem to THE NINTH GATE
Posted on | November 18, 2009 | 2 Comments
Sitting on the couch as I type this, and drinking tea. Was seated at the kitchen table earlier, clickety-clacketying away, but the window there apparently isn’t sealed as well as it should be, and it was starting to get a bit drafty.
THE NINTH GATE is playing on the TV, more for background noise than anything. I have seen it probably sixty times or so, and know much of it by heart.
(“You don’t like me very much, do you Mister Corso?”
“I don’t have to like you. You’re a client, and you pay well.”)
I have a strange love for THE NINTH GATE. It’s certainly not the best of Polanski’s films. CHINATOWN and ROSEMARY’S BABY would probably be considered those. Oh, and THE PIANIST (which I don’t care for particularly, but it did win a couple of Oscars and others seemed to really like it, so I suppose if should be included). CHINATOWN is one of my favorite films, and I’ve seen it several times. But it’s not a movie I’m compelled to watch on a regular basis. A viewing every couple of years is more than sufficient. I’ve only seen ROSEMARY’S BABY once, but that one time was very good.
But something about TNG (heh) keeps drawing me back to it time and again. It’s got a lot of things to like about it:
1) the marriage of the world of antiquarian bookselling with a supernatural story centered on the devil;
2) a noir atmosphere very reminiscent of CHINATOWN;
3) Polanski’s flawless directing;
4) Johnny Depp performing the main character as a bastard so well; and
5) last but not least, the wonderful book that the movie is based on: THE CLUB DUMAS, by Arturo Perez-Reverte.
So for many reasons, THE NINTH GATE is one of my favorite films, even though at this point it’s inadvertently become more of a comfort movie than anything. These days it tends to play in the background while I’m doing something else, such as it is today, or at night if I’m having trouble sleeping, rather than it being something I actively sit down to watch.
There is more I was going to write about, such as progress on my project of a novel-ish nature, as well as some thoughts on how I might start blogging in the future, but my knob-slobbering of THE NINTH GATE went on longer than I’d anticipated. So those will have to wait for future posts. Other things are now calling my attention.
I Would Beat You With Your Turn Signal If I Could
Posted on | November 10, 2009 | 2 Comments
Hurm. I just wrote a “colorful” rant about people who drive horribly in parking lots, but decided not to post it. Just in case any potential employers might be googling me, I’d rather they not see some of the vitriolic things I occasionally say when I am enraged.
So, I’m on the third week of being a gentleman of leisure. It’s going pretty well so far. No job interviews yet, but these things take time under the best of economic circumstances, which we as a nation are definitely not experiencing right now. I’m not worried, though; something will come along eventually. My money situation, even were I not to get the unemployment, is secure enough for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, I’ve been staying busy and am pretty happy in the rhythms of my new existence. A typical day might start out with me going to the nearby gym to work out. I am ordinarily too cheap thrifty to pay for a gym membership, but since it is free, I will happily not pay to use it. The reasons for it being free are still unknown to me. All I know is that residents of my apartment complex get a free membership, which is good till my lease is up.
I also go running nearly every day at the park behind Good Samaritan North. There is a path that runs along the back and into the Dayton Metroparks system, so there’s plenty of territory to explore. It is also quite lovely this time of year, with the leaves coating the ground and craven critters suicidally jumping into my path. (Seriously: chipmunks and their furry ilk can suck it.) I’ll be a little sad when it becomes too cold for me to be comfortably outside for more than five minutes.
I have to admit, the whole daily-working-out-thing has been awesome. I had been exercising for a month or two before my office closed, but it’s really nice to be able to do these things more frequently and more intensively.
In addition to this burst of healthiness, I try to do some piece of writing every day. Work on the project of a novel-ish nature has been progressing steadily. (Sorry, but saying, “I’m working on my novel,” sounds much too pretentious to me.) Ever since I have relocated my “office” into the closet, I have been much more productive. Right now, I think I’m about 1/10th of the way done, so there is still a ways to go. But — it’s more progress than I’ve made in the past several months.
What’s been really nice about not working is that I can see my friends more often. We all work different schedules, and I don’t like to be out really late during the work week. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is without shorting myself on a regular basis. Being more socially active has been awesome and definitely been better for my mental health.
Okie-doke. Enough rambling. Time to make dinner.
R.I.P. GeoCities
Posted on | October 26, 2009 | 3 Comments
Today’s XKCD reminded me that Yahoo’s GeoCities web hosting service was closing its doors today, and taking the zillions of late ’90s- and early ’00s-era we pages offline forever.
I used GeoCities for my first two web sites: “Elephantitic Monkey” and “Stranded on the Edge of Infinity.” I made Elephantitic Monkey when I was still in high school, and Stranded the year after I graduated. They were awful looking sites, as you might expect, but they were badass at the time.
GeoCities’ PageBuilder was a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG application that was a bitch to work with to build a web page, and an even bigger pain to update. Because I knew nothing coding at the time, anytime I updated the sidebar — where the navigation choices would be listed — I had to update every single page that had been previously made. After a couple months’ worth of content, this became a teeth-grindingly tedious and frustrating process. Eventually I had a friend who actually knew the back-end processes write up some HTML code for frames, which made the updating much, much simpler. I watched him come up with it in about five minutes, and it may as well have been in Cyrillic for all that I actually understood it. Of course, then a few months later, I abandoned Stranded in favor of the first incarnation of this here web site.
I didn’t archive either Elephantitic Monkey or Stranded, and I kind of wish I had, just so I could be nostalgic and mildly offended at the same time. A quick Google search doesn’t reveal any archived version of them, either. (Though it did bring up a result for a book entitled: STRANDED: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF INFINITY — how random is that?)
BUT — since I do keep copies of all the actual files of everything that was on those pages, I was able to go back and read some of the stuff that was on Stranded. I forgot how collaborative a site it really was. There were seven people contributing columns at one point, four or five people contributing short stories and poetry, and several people turning in photos and artwork. That’s pretty fucking cool, actually.
Part of me thinks that it would be intriguing to put together a similar community like that again. If I could come up with an easy enough way to design and maintain it — and find enough people willing to contribute to make it a worthwhile endeavor — I would. It’s certainly something to think about.
Gainfully Unemployed
Posted on | October 26, 2009 | No Comments
I was disconcerted this morning when the alarm clock went off at half past six and I realized that I didn’t have to get up and go to work.
It wasn’t a bad feeling, honestly, as at this point I had come to loathe my former job, but it was still unnerving not to have said job there anymore. As it turns out, not having a job when you wouldn’t mind having one is somewhat daunting.
However, I am happy to report that it didn’t stop me from falling back to sleep readily enough.
The sun shining through the window at 8:15ish eventually woke me up again and I got up. There was nothing pressing I had to do, but I’m trying to stick to some semblance of a schedule during the week: waking between eight and nine, and going to bed between midnight and two. Why stick to a schedule? I think because the routine is comforting. Waking up by seven in the morning is something I’ve been every day for over three years. Not doing it would make an already weird situation weirder.
Now it’s time to try to contact the HR people at my former place of business and get some final details sorted out. Then I believe I will work out and go for a run.
More later on the whole situation, once I get it better deconstructed in my head.
A Wall Calendar? How Analog
Posted on | May 30, 2009 | 4 Comments
I noticed the other day that my 2008 Venture Bros wall calendar has mysteriously ceased to be accurate for some reason, so I’m scouring the web for a 2009 wall calendar of some sort. Something classy. (And yes, I realize that the year is nearly half over — I’ve just been putting off buying one for a while and then suddenly it’s June.)
I’d like some sort of steampunk or retro-futuristic calendar, but those are surprisingly hard to find. The only real contender thus far is this one, which promises “12 months of retro sci-fi rockets, robots and death rays.” It’s not bad, it’s just missing . . . a certain panache. It lacks moxy.
Or should I perhaps switch gears, and go for a Ziggy calendar instead? After all, Ziggy is just so darn funny! Like cancer.
Sigh. Back to searching.
Greetings, Starfighter
Posted on | May 28, 2009 | No Comments
Still ill. Not as bad yesterday, thank gods, but am still pretty un-good.
I didn’t go to work yesterday, as all I was really up for was sleeping and puking, and for some reason they frown on this at the job. Instead, while trying to kill brain and body with a number of drugs, I halfway watched 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and THE LAST STARFIGHTER. I have seen both several times so I didn’t feel compelled to follow them very closely, which I think is always best when you’re sick. In fact I think I mostly listened to THE LAST STARFIGHTER as I was really out of it for that one.
After slogging my way through work today, my plans tonight consist of making instant mashed potatoes and trying to sit through INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF. It doesn’t appear that Paul “Dude, I’m not a buster, bro!” Walker is in this cleverly titled sequel, and I’m honestly not sure if that will make the movie better or worse.
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