While you were out...

So, since I last wrote, I've turned twenty-six, somehow managed to hold onto my job called Gun Country and the Retirement States, and started writing two novels that reached 20k before becoming uninteresting...things, not novels, more just the crusty remains of ideas that weren't vibrant as they had seemed. So, started another one.

But I've come to the somewhat frightening realization that I've lost my anger and angst. This would be fine if something had replaced it. So far, nothing has. There's this weird void left, and a lot of my personal passion seems to have vanished with the other personality quirks. It used to be hard for me to get to sleep, and I'd just lay in some electronic glow - TV, Computer, Stereo - seething with fury about something. A minor slight from a stranger, how the world works and people don't, my various failings, the various failings of others, something that would allow me to have an excuse to ground my teeth and have my pulse be way to high.

God help me - it seems I've gone suburban.

And that scares me, because I dread becoming comfortable and uninterested. I'm actively afraid of caring very deeply about the state of my lawn, and less about, say, if text messaging would be useful in intergalactic travel due to the speed of light (vision - text) being faster than the speed of sound (vocal), how many genocides are going on in the world right now, child soldiers in sub-Saharan conflicts, the vast swaths of pornography on my computer, or my violent dreams where I get to be a grim sort of wise-cracking hero - like an existential Spider-Man.

But all of the stuff I used to define myself - the unending cyclone of rage inside my head, the weird "Bad Woody Allen Flick" way through the world that I had - are gone now, seeming to have fizzled out.

I blame the sitting.

I have a job that goes completely against my nature: I must sit still for eight hours (ten if you count my time in the car) total and call people asking for money. Now, as much as I love sitting, I get antsy after five minutes because somewhere out there something is happening and I missing it. Now, it has always been such - but I could at least pace around at the other jobs. Not here. I sit here. My cheeks are making a groove in the padding. And then there is the asking for money thing - I hate asking for money, even when the reason is something like "What do you want for your birthday?" I dread it, because I hate money - love the stuff it can buy like beer, cigarettes, cancer treatment and detox clinics, but I hate money - and the idea of asking it as a kind of middle man, just a weight-station en route to its final destination in someonelse's pocket just seems really very wrong to me.

But the whole job thing seems wrong to me. Hell, I still don't like this whole "life" deal. Come in through pain and suffering, mostly get kicked around, maybe kick back, spend years waking up every morning and hauling your freight somewhere (in my case an office), sell your time for a bit of cash and are expected to be grateful for the chance, then die - it's over. End of ride. Now, that's a rip off. Why isn't my pulse faster? Why am I suddenly so beaten down?

Someday.

Shanti, shanti, shanti.

Defend the River End (On Brothers)...

After the match on 8/22, my brother and I walked to the metro station. The whole weekend had been a series of misadventures and groan inducing strangeness, and my normal habit of leaving somewhere just before it goes to hell was in full swing. We were fairly quiet on the ride back to his apartment - The Union had lost to D.C. United, and I wasn't really looking forward to the multiple state drive home. But it was a pleasant weekend all the same, as most of our meetings have been recently.

At some point, I guess, every set of siblings goes through the shift - the dislike of youth gives way to amiable companionship of adulthood or vice-versa. Yeah, there are still the moments when we look at each other and wonder how in the hell we could be related - but those are only during moments when...well, when I don't know. I know he wonders at it whenever I let some of my demons out and let the reigns the modern world slip off a little. For me, it's every time I look at him.

I am short where he is tall, slight where he is broad, and steam like where he is a rock. I have few friends, he has various groups of drinking buddies, gym spotters, and roommates he gets along with and watches shows in the company of. I don't think I'm funny or smart - he thinks he's hilarious and knows that more often than not he's the smartest one in the room (and failing that, he can fake it). He's Catholic, I'm...who the hell even knows anymore? He remembers me as the weird kid. I remember one time when he ended a brawl by sitting on my head and farting.

In our youth we fought to the point of putting hole in walls, broke furniture, and one of us threw the other off of a eleven foot gravel mound behind a neighbor's garage. We also sang together, tossed pop-culture references, and went to Phillies games. We watched each other's backs during legal and mental troubles. And we've both given up things for the sake of the other that they'll never know about.

I've accepted all of those things, and consider it all as needing not to be spoken between the two of us.

Which is why I was shocked all to hell when Rick said that it's nice being able to hang out. This was on 9/4, at the match between the Union and the K.C. Wizards, as we walked across PPL's parking lot to where the Sons of Ben were holding the tailgate. "It's cool, you know? We never got to do it before."

I said "yes" like I always do when someone's right. "You mean the first twenty years of your life." A cruel thing to say, I know, but go back and read the part about him farting on my head - some things leave scars. But, yes, it is quite nice, entering a stadium shoulder to shoulder with my brother, and standing in River End with him and chanting for ninety minutes along with the rest of the SOBs in the Snake Pit. There's a lot we don't say. Family, you know. It's complicated. But then, there we were, making Son's of Ben history by chanting "99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer! Peter Vermes, give us your keys! 98 bottles of beer on the wall!" all the way down to "No more bottles of beer on the wall".

During the next game we'll be wherever we are - he in D.C., myself here. We'll trade texts about the game, and the Phillies games, and the Eagles once they start back up. And then, at some later point, one of us will take a trip, and we'll end up talking about comic books, movies, and then chanting at the River End.

The Time Is Always Right...

Rod Sterling, creator of The Twilight Zone, said this about TV shows: "How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form."

I found that quote the other day, and it is eerily similar to my point whenever someone asks me why I only seem to watch TV shows on DVD. I can't stand the ads. Also, the majority of the shows don't hold much interest for me. I loved The Twilight Zone because it was how I thought the world would be when I got older - at it's core, the show deals with karma, and the episodes that stuck with me the longest (Nick of Time, Walking Distance, and One for the Angels) were the ones that weren't so much "scary" as they were meditations about choice, life, and what it means to be human. They were always the deeply personal ones - or ones that I took personally. Good gets to live a happy life - or at least a happy end - while evil is punished.

There have been several attempts to remake the series, but it never seems to work. They do the scary stories, but they're never as plausible, and they seem to focus on just scares rather than real terror. One for the Angels - the first episode I ever saw - is scary in a way that Terror at 20,000 Feet isn't. They are two distinct stories, but both come back to the same idea: normal people put in a situation that doesn't happen.

And while Terror is spin chilling (fear of the plane crash, the monster, and the Fort Worth Star Trek Convention all rolled into one), it can be applied to any future story collection. Planes, rockets - hell, even hover cars! - all of these can be applied to the formula that ends with "There's a man on the wing of this plane!" Even Doctor Who did a version of it (Midnight). You can modernize Terror at 20,000 Feet - but One for the Angels would be more difficult. These characters don't exist any more - the toy vendor has mostly vanished from popular vision and the idea of a group of kids waiting for an older man now has a sinister cast to it.

Does that mean that we'll never have another Twilight Zone? No. Of course not, don't be ridiculous! Before TV there was an anthology show on the radio called The Clock, which can be looked at as The Twilight Zone in adolescence (the episode Personal Recommendation is a bit of a sweeter version of Nothing in the Dark). And just as there were differences between the mindset at the time of The Clock and the mindset during which The Twilight Zone was born, there are new differences now. We just need one that speaks to our time. Night Visions had this to an extent - the stories were pretty much a post modern take on the Sterling classics, and more realistic in that, for the most part, the karma was all kinds of fucked up.

What does it mean about us - and if you take the shows to be art, then they must in some way speak about us? That we've grown more cynical? That we now want to guess the twist ending rather than just enjoy the story? Hell if I know. io9 had a nice article about trope chasers and good writing - but I honestly think there's a few more levels here. There's only one story - everything else is just a weird take or twist on it. "Once upon a time someone fell in a hole. Then they got out of it." That's pretty much it. We twist the depth of the hole, the length of time spent there, the number of people involved, how they are involved, and even if they fall into/get out of the hole.

We do these things, and then we have this picture of ourselves - be it creator or observer. Slasher film excess in the '80s went hand in hand with Wall Street. Torture porn flicks of the aughts along side pretty invasive reality TV and the celebrity gossip machine - one goes inside people through various violent means, and the other floats around in the images they wish to project, and neither one really gets close to the truth about people because of either market demands or the subject matter itself.

But we keep trying, bless our crooked little hearts, and for various reasons to. And maybe the only reward we can really expect is to see our own reflections in the work and smile. At least that's the lesson I learned from The Twilight Zone.

Returning Awareness...

I have a bad history with summer. Usually when things fall apart for me, it's in the summer and it seems to fall apart harder than ever. I'm beginning to think that it was always a matter of perception - time stretches in the summer, the days last for years and the months go by like a week. Now that I have little time for anything, I have the feeling that all this period of my life will be a constant summer - but I haven't really had anything that could fall apart on me.

Hell, the only thing that's really gotten to me was the cat dying (yeah - the dogs got it), but beyond that everything else has been just static.

But summer has always been a personal autumn - things just seemed to end. Relationships, strings of ok news, and the like would always get claimed just around the time I didn't have anything else going on except the weird, seasonal ennui. But this year, I don't know. I have a new job, went on a date - all stuff that is fairly well out of the norm for me. I'm even waking up at an unreasonable hour - but for a reason. It's all new and a little scary for me - I still have no sense of direction in terms of where I'm going, but that's nothing new. The new part is, I have a scheduled time to worry about it.

For as much as I'd like to like this new phase of my life, nothing 'new' is ever completely good. I'm having trouble acclimating to the a lot of the changes, even the stuff I like. I'm not ever sure if I want to pursue writing under a pseudonym, or if I should just scrap it all and fill up my hours some other way. After years of being mildly obsessed with clocks, I feel the pressure of time now more than ever. Even setting aside two hours a night has become quite the task as I pick and choose things to no longer do.

But still, I do find it a little thrilling in a dull kind of way - change happens and we have to change with it. And I think I'm up to the challenge, except the challenge keeps shifting on me - every new change has multiple challenges, and a few of them I haven't even guessed at.

Some of the new challenges are nice though.

Time will tell, I guess.

M.A.D....

You cannot really say what's "rebellion" anymore when it comes to the social sense of the word. The idea of a counter culture is damn near laughable - with how quickly every sub-culture is subsumed into the main, acting counter to the culture at large is the matter of a few weeks of wackiness followed by a reality TV show and then bored acceptance.

If there is one last bastion of rebellion, it is against the world, lacking the trappings of fashion or "look at me" fame whoring. It is a kind ripping at all the external until only the self remains, and then probably rejecting even that as false. There is something of the Rinzai school of Buddhism's maxim here: "First you kill your parents. Then you kill your teachers. Then you kill your gods."

It's also why I loved Off With Their Heads since I first heard their 2008 release From The Bottom. There was no time for bullshit, and what little mercy they showed to the outside world just threw into contrast the utter lack of it that they showed to themselves. After years of emo's self-loathing attempts to get laid, the theme of self-examination continues in punk, but now it's broken off from either experimental time signatures/instrumentation or just dealing with romance - now it's everything. Every possible part of life - from broken homes and the dreams of finding a place to live a normal life to the intake of news to the loss of loved ones (even when they're not terribly fond of them) - is examined and deconstructed from the ground up.

I picked up In Desolation - if you want to follow the band's time line, the themes and personal input are still the same as From The Bottom, only now they're dealing with all of those problems. The broken homes are still shattered and the hope for some point of stability a promise that grows more distant with every passing day. This makes it sound like a retread, which is a disservice to the album - true, the lamenting of destructive urges is still omnipresent, but there is this sense of fighting back when there's a chance of winning, and knowing when to cut your losses and run rather than just wallow in misery.

That might be the major saving grace of the album - the band - as people and as musicians - know their limitations now, and they know how to make a good Off With Their Heads album. While some bands can get away with experimentation, there's not much these guys can off the mainstream, and they know that - they know where they can be now, and they have traces of the Ramones and Motorhead in the repetition of rhythm and beats. In lesser hands, this would make the four LPs in their catalog dull as old shit, but somehow - again, like the Ramones and Motorhead - it has staying power.

Worth a spin for casual listeners, a Must Buy for revivalists.

Here's the lead track, "Drive"

"We Need This Hell"...

I watch a lot of movies. I mean, a lot of movies. And if there's two things that cinema loves, it's big battles and quiet moments. In the hands of the right people, either end of the spectrum can become things of beauty, literally motion pictures - like the paintings of the masters given life. The problem is, Sturgeon's Law is always in effect - 90% of everything is bullshit - and movies are not immune. For every films that makes you think, make you feel, or anything else that art makes you do, there's nine Dude, Where's My Cars - films that aren't even entertaining.

"Good" and "Bad are, of course, relative terms. There's tons of people who love all three Rush Hours, where as I think buddy comedy cop flicks peaked with Midnight Run. I'm sure people will always remember The Dark Knight - but Batman Begins holds up better to repeat viewings (the "social experiment" suffers the law of diminishing returns - but the training sessions take on a more sinister tone once you know the twist). Does this take away from an argument of "good or bad"? I don't think so - but in terms of entertainment value, I'd say it is fairly damning. I'm not a good judge of skill, but I know what I like, and the films that stick with me are usually the arty ones, or the ones that I can relate to.

A further example: I liked The Hurt Locker. I liked it better in the form of Alatriste. The former is about war as an addiction. The latter is about war as a way of life, no more different than accounting or masonry.

There's a good chance you haven't heard of it, or the series of books that inspired it - this is a shame, since the books are rollicking adventures in the vein of Dumas, and the film is really a meditation on the life of a solider with some great fight scene thrown in. Viggo Mortensen's Diego Alatriste is a man who takes comfort in his friends, who takes his ward under his wing as a matter first of honor and later in a kind of familial sense, and leans on (and is lent on by) them during their times in between combat. Having served in the Spanish army since the age of 13, warfare and combat is all he knows in the world. The Spanish Golden Age is already on the decline, and Alatriste and his companions sense it, even as they attempt to cling to the ideals of the age - courage, honor, artistry.

Now, the film is limited compared to the books - and it is best taken not as a single cohesive movie but rather a series of vignettes that follow the protagonist from his agreement to look after Inigo (Unax Ugalde as Alatriste's ward) to his final stand. The movie does follow fairly closely to the high lights of the books, with a few minor tweaks that either work well enough or are different enough that they work well within the film's world. One of the strong points of the film, but lacking a few of the layers presented in the books, is the roaming duels between Alatriste and Malatesta (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) - an Italian mercenary and a dark mirror of Alatriste. The strugle between these two is one of the major lynch pins of the film, countering the father/son pattern of Alatriste and Inigo.

Alatriste's relationship with Maria de Castro (Ariadna Gil) is likewise mirrored by Inigo's budding romance with Angelica de Alquezar (Elena Anaya), with both betrayals of trust and quiet moments of romance and relationships that do sometimes border on melodrama but for the most part come across as honest.

And through it all, there is war. War between the Spanish and Dutch, war between France and Spain, war between Alatriste and Malatesta, and the home life skirmishes that can sometimes be doused by the bonds of family, and other times cannot be healed because of those same bonds. After a misadventure, as conflict flairs once again between the Spanish and the Dutch, Alatriste is given a chance to return to the very field of combat that introduced us to him, and to leave his poverty and the mark on his head behind. It was war that taught him how to make his meager way in the world, war that granted him a kind of son in Inigo, and it is war that he is good at. "Flanders is Hell," he says, and he is answered, "Without Flanders there is nothing. We need this Hell."

See this film.

To Rule Mankind and Make The World Obey...

I don't watch TV, really. Most of the shows I like get canceled early into their run, and I have a deep distrust of commercials, do to my fear that my last dying thoughts will be the jingle for "Chicken Tonight". This is a bit rough when trying to make conversation. I can deal with "have you ever seen" well enough, but "did you catch" is just a prelude to a 'no'.

The only thing that has saved me from total television hermitage has been the DVD seasons. No commercial breaks, no hoping in vein for your favorite rerun, just your TV Shows when you want to watch them. MST3K has another box set out next month. I've now seen every episode of "Kolchack: The Night Stalker" and the ill-advised reboot. And then there's HBO.

My exposure to HBO in my youth was limited to my parents occasionally reminding me they had it before I was born - the point being that they could afford it before they had me. So I had figured that I had ruined everything or it had been one bloody expensive channel.

To this day, I'm not sure which was the case...what was I talking about? Right! HBO!

Brilliant channel, really - they tend to get out of the shows way and let their creators tell their story and then stop. No dragging it out for nine unfunny seasons of "comedy" or dull, lifeless drama (so long as you don't count the middle seasons of most long run series). And I'm slowly catching up on the marvels they have done up for themselves. Having gone through "The Wire" (one season too long, but a great ending), I have started in on "Rome".

I've only seen a few episodes here and there, and thanks to the influence of my brother, I had a good enough understanding of the history of Rome to bound from episode on to five and not be too far off in guessing the year it takes place in.

Which is all well and good, but now that I'm neck deep in season one, I must say I've missed a bloody lot. Everything about the series is perfect, like "I, Claudius" having a lucid moment during a meth binge. And it has Ian McNeice, one of my favorite character actors (seriously, no one oozes austerity and decay like Ian McNeice). There's only two seasons, though.

Amazing show.

Little, Tiny Hairs Growin' Outta Mah Face...

There's something tragic in the shaving ritual. Most guys do it in the morning, bleary eyed and facing another eight hours of selling their time. If you look outside, you can imagine all the other things you could be doing - even if it's just laundry - and it seems so stupid that you're in your skivvies, looking at your reflection, removing the growth that happened while you slept just so people don't look at you like you have some form of social stigma like alcoholism or a love of sweet, sweet heroin.

Then you put a bladed instrument, preferably razor sharp, to your throat and slowly, gently, mow it down. It only takes a pound of pressure to break human skin, and there you are, not completely wake, running what is really just a modified knife over a fairly important area of blood flow and removing it's natural protection while facing the prospect of spending a good chunk of the day doing something stressful.

I can't be the only one who has gotten worried about an ill-timed sneeze resulting in sudden decapitation.

Which brings me to this - I recently picked up a shaving cream with menthol in it by mistake. I used to smoke menthol cigarettes, which still taste like your licking an ashtray but have a hint of mostly useless "refreshing" mint. They always seemed like a little bit of a lie to me, like sugar based toothpaste - your lungs are still going black and to top it off an Andes mint just shit on your tongue. The idea of applying this to body care and grooming doesn't seem to make a lick of sense, until I actually used it.

Now, as a caveat, I have to tell you that this is not my first run in with menthol additions to cleaning products. when I visited my brother while he was teaching, I bought a body wash that said it had menthol in it. It was like scrubbing with horseradish - every pore opened up and my nostrils attempted to shut themselves (and given their Judd Nelson-like state of being, they made a pretty good go of it). Then there was the after effect of having what might have been on the level of a physical rebirth - all pain and the feeling of your body being engulfed in fire - of being able to breath perfectly in a city where you can only see three feet in front of you at sea level because the smog is that thick. Sure, I was glad to be alive - the shower had been life affirming (chanting "I don't want to die" while washing your particulars will really make you rethink where you're going) but I was in the wrong place for such an awakening.

Now, though, I have this can of shave cream and my razor. I lathered my cheeks, caught the scent, and felt a part of me recoil. Then I covered the area under my nose. For a second I looked into the eyes of my reflection, and saw the advice Be very, very careful. Because shaving is one of those things you don't want to do while crying. It smears the cream, which makes you want to do it faster, which will cause you to either have razor burn or minor lacerations. And with the location of the tear ducts, this will make you look like you either have herpes or were going for that Glasgow smile that people seem to be digging these days, respectively.

Then there is the worry of cutting yourself anywhere else - which goes from the fear of an accidental suicide to the sudden terror of know that the menthol could now, nightmare like, get into your blood stream like the white blood cell version of the SS. Even the good bacteria rounded up in the colon and bladder ghettos to be expelled.

So, maybe all of this is part of the vampire fad. "Edward, man, you look like a slaughter house - *sniff sniff* - and did an Andes mint give you a Cleveland Steamer?"

Names Are Like Shark Fins...

The following is meant as observation only - the events depicted did not lessen the overall lovely time I had.

While attending Nicole & Mark's house warming party this past weekend, I came to the conclusion that people named Justin(e) and I will just never get along. Before I had about a 50% chance of getting along with them - but recent years have proven that my track record with those names has just plummeted into the negatives. There seems to be a distinct personality clash - between my own moodiness (which I will explain in a moment) and their...I don't know, a part of me wants to call it reserved nature, another part of me wants to say "pretentiousness without the grasping qualities that might make them great". But that latter definition also requires some explanation - so let's start with that.

For the most part, I'm cool with pretentious artists. I'll let a musician, painter, writer, director, whatever, slide by with complaints about modern life, a consensus world view, the soul crushing blandness of the everyday - if they are trying to depict not just those problems, but why they are problems and the potential for better. That's the "grasping quality" I actually like about those nigh-on insufferable people, and view it as fuel for their work while making bits written about them impossibly boring. Even if I do not share their views, or hope for different solutions, I can still enjoy their work and have respect for them even if they aren't my cuppa.

When the pretension falls from critics, however, that's when I begin to have a problem. This happens every now and then, and for me, it usually takes the form of Rex Reed, film critic for the New York Observer, and is probably best put into view by his take on the movies of 2008. His top film? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Mine: The Dark Knight. While I don't think either will age that well (for as great a character as the Joker is, his plan doesn't hold up to repeat viewings), I doubt I'll ever watch Button again. I didn't like it that much when it was Forrest Gump, and while the digital effects are astounding, I could feel indifference settling into my bones. My enjoyment of something equally stupid and smart (serious, the Joker's plan does not hold up to repeat viewings) versus something that in my view brought little new to an already overloaded table and failed to get a "huh" out of me.

Now that I've set this up, it seems as though I'm about the thrash the Justin(e)s of the world - not yet. All the pieces must be put into their starting positions.

My own moodiness is not in the "always sullen" vein it once was. It's no reached a level where people think I'm bi-polar...is the triggering mechanism were a light switch in a room where an unpopular kid is trying to throw a rave (quiet, I had a lonely childhood). For the most part, I have a leash on it, and can choose varying degrees of either depending upon company, but for the most part my public persona is either one of detached observation or grabbing life by the hand and running through the sprinklers. I can see where either would rankle others, hence my willingness to alter.

There are some, though, for whom there is no pleasing. First impressions are important, I know, just as every impression after that - but I only really get good around number seven. Pat of this is because I've moved beyond fretting over looking like a fool. I'm a writer who can't spell - a story teller who always prefers the spoken word to writing - if I wasn't okay with making a fool out of myself, how the hell could I cope with others pointing it out?

Which is why I tend to avoid parties - it's all new people, which I like. But it's meeting new people, which is down right bowel shaking for me. It's when I think detached observation is called for, but nothing kills a party atmosphere faster than someone standing in the corner with a facial expression you'd warn the stewardess about during the per-flight explanation of emergency exits. Also, I have a fear of getting sick and a taste for steampunk, so my methods of avoiding spreading airborne toxins is slightly less than subtle. But, in doing my best to entertain and be entertained by the lovely people I met, I kept hearing remarks from a fellow who just seemed to be...adverse to me. "That's a lot of energy," he'd say during one of my rants. When Stephen M. and I reunited for the first time in five years, and continued our flickering friendly combat of pop-cultural commentary, there was a muttered "Jesus, now there's two of them" - he being already versed in Stephen's antics and taste, which are kindred to my own when surrounded by the mostly urbane sensibilities that the party engendered.

Once the party died down, and we were left with the last stragglers, the hosts, and the last of the beer, Justin appeared ready to puke - this isn't hyperbole, he had been pounding drinks throughout the day and into the current wee small hour of the morning - while the rambunctious of us grilled one another on matters like State Capitals and and the map of Canada. When the time came to leave, I shook hands with those who remained, and Justin said good bye with a "Sean, it was a shame I had to meet you". Nicole apologized for him, but the comment was accepted without rancor (intended or not - the fellow was drunk). There's just some people you will never mesh with, and that's part of life. What can you do?

I'm fine playing the part of the fool, and laughing while others laugh at/with me because, fuck it, I think it's funny, too. Others don't, or can't and it's fine - because that's them, and they probably won't change so it's not worth bitching about unless you can make it entertaining, as I hope this has been to some extent.

And I'll be running into him again at a clam bake in July! When I start re-enacting scenes from the Muppet Show with crabs, I think he might deck me. So, at least I know what's coming. You gotta give me that.

The Touble With 'You'...

My house has a visitor. You. Obviously not you the reader, but 'You' the cat. Currently, You is making its home under our deck, and our attempts to catch it have usually ended in MASC (mutually assured slapstick comedy) of people in varying degrees of out of shapeness - be it dad's inability to move beyond a cantering limp, my own smoke addled lungs, or [deleted due to fear of mother taking comment the wrong way], or You's problem with spatial relationships - oh, sure, the little bugger can slip through a crack in the deck, but get it near a fence and I'm pretty sure it'll be concussed in five seconds.

We've guessed it's age at about six weeks, and I've named it 'You' because of my affection for the Discworld books...and also because it' probably the only nice thing I've said while chasing it (names of 'Fucker,' 'bastard,' and 'whore-spawned piece of shit - we're trying to help!' were ruled out en mass). Also, the family has taken to leaving out cat food (for kitten ages!) and either water or milk in an animal traveling box. All of this in the vague hope that at some point the cat's head will be so over taken by the concept of a meal that it won't notice one of us flipping the box up right and closing the lid.

Yeah - we're not very good at this. We're dog people by nature - literally, the only one of us that can't stand cats (dad) is also the only one who isn't allergic to them. The rest of us like them well enough - or, as is my case, have a standing detente with feline kind - but have trouble breathing around them, our eyes get watery, and we die. If it weren't for the fact that we taking it upon ourselves to protect little things, we would just leave the food out of a weird sense of pity. But as it stands we're warding off owls, hawks, foxes, and our own dogs in hope that we can catch You and it to a vet, or at least keep You alive during the summer months because sweet Maria it's hot if you're wearing a fur coat.

It's the dogs that worry me most, frankly - they're greyhounds, trained with factory like efficiency to chase after small furry things. And they're good enough to occasionally catch birds, let alone turning my back yard into a bunny abattoir. So, I'm thinking that unless You has got claws like Wolverine, and the placidity of a moose staring down a Mack truck, I'm not making it's odds out to be that good.

Then there's the other question, that of "What in the hell are we going to do with You?". Even though I'll admit to growing fond of the thing, we can't keep it. Our new tenants have expressed an interest in You, (wonder how they'll react to the name) but beyond supplying the occasional tin of Fancy Feast, they aren't really taking part in the grand quest we've undertaken for You. Yeah, yeah - it makes sense, what with You living on our side of the house, but my point still stands.

But hopefully I'll have some pictures of You, or maybe even have a picture of me and You by the end of the Summer. Hopefully the poor bastard gets wise. Or I have a fear that this time next year there will be a mess of Yous romping through the yard, in which case I'll be herding cats.

Which some how fits in eerily well with my life.

Dérive...

Well, that served it's purpose. Normally I'd put a link for the word "that", but the link is gone, the chairs are on the tables and the locks are on the door. "More things change," I guess - even with the strides I've made towards being an adult, I still can let myself have a bridge to the past without longing to burn the bastard to the [water or ground or whatever they've built the bridge over]. The problem, of course, in that we live on a spheroid, so you can only get so far before you're right back where you started wondering who would be dumb enough to burn the only bridge out of town.

So, here I am, my cyber-wanderlust having brought me this far. Another blog, another fresh start, another...whatever. To be totally frank for a moment, I've grown more and more exhausted lately - mentally I mean. Well, put "for about two years" in place of "lately". I'm tired of the irony, the bile, and the snark and the generally pointless mean-spirited nature of...pretty much everything. I'm sick of only having one mode, and I'm sick of having little to show for it. So I've organized some changes, took some chances, and basically tried to unplug myself and let the mental reboot happen. Pull the car over. Fuck this. I'll walk.

I'm turning into a Social Distortion song, and I keep thinking that maybe this time it might work - all of the effort will pay off. People will get the hints I drop, and I'll get theirs', and life can be a bit more smooth. It's probably bugger all, but it's a nice dream. As usual, I have no idea how this will go, or if it will go at all, but screw it - a plan is a list of things that don't happen. But what the hell else am I going to do while I try to unwind after a day at the cube farm?

Which also brings up another point: If you've been reading "Skipping Rocks on the Lethe," you may have noticed two things - one, it has tapered off recently, and two, like EOE, it is no longer there. No, I haven't abandoned it - but if you're gonna burn a bridge, you gotta burn the whole damn thing. It should be back up at some point in the next two week, where I'll be finishing up the first meta-arc. Between adapting to the new work schedule (ha!) and some other projects I'm working on, I haven't been keeping up the pace I had hoped for.

And away we go...