Rough Sailing on the Mini Pearl

Ok, so there is a plan for the Mini-14 cell in which I work. The administration wants us to get out 300 guns a day. They say that the sales department can easily sell that many. To me that seems like an astronomical number of guns. Where in the world are all those guns supposed going? Anyway, that's their plan. Getting to that goal, however, is going to be a struggle. On our best day, which was Monday, we cranked out 170. That was with the cell at full power and pushing hard. Granted, that number is an improvement over what we've done since I've been part of the mix, but it's still far away from the 300 they want.

This is running our cell at nine people. Indiana Bob and the others believe with some tweaking, and a good deal of improvement on the parts we get from the machine shop, that the goal can be accomplished. The way things are organized now it'll be done with one gas-blocker (Eric, the new kid), one slide-fitter (me), one person building bolts (Brad), two bolt-fitters (Jim and Mark), one person on bolt lock (Allen), one person building trigger housings (Amanda), one person as a float (Christie), and one builder (Fred). The people who have been there a long time don't believe this is possible, and in fact are very vocal about thinking that going back to incentive is a better idea than the system we're using now. Having never seen that system at work, I dunno. But being the sort of person I am, I'm going to try like a motherfucker to crank out as much as I can.

Today Fred and Jim were out, so we had to adjust. Mark (who usually works in repairs) worked on bolt fit along with Jordan (ditto). I built bolts so Brad could go down and build, and tried to cover slide-fit as much as I could. Eric is pretty good, so in addition to gas-blocking he did some slide-fitting as well, and so did Mark and Jordan. Sometimes we have pretty good teamwork in spots; sometimes not. It depends who's there doing what. Sometimes people will be left to drown, as I've been here and there. I try to be as much of a team utility player as I can, just because that's how I roll. Today we only did maybe 120 guns, which isn't so bad considering we were down two of our more experienced players.

And this is the curse of the Mini Pearl, which is what a few people in the group refer to our cell as, giving me a metaphor to play with that I didn't have to think up my own self, which is pretty nice of them. Our motley crew is out there sailing those rough waters, looking for Ahab's white whale, and god only knows what sort of horrors we'll have to suffer through to find that whale. And as we slowly close in on it, the whale has let us know it's name.

300 guns.

Diary of a Virgo, volume 11

"There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren't worth doing," wrote novelist William Gaddis. That's important for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. You'll receive a flood of invitations, but only some of them will be intimately related to the unique work you're here on Earth to do. Those few may be so amazingly useful, though, that they could dramatically change your life for the better. Please say no to all the others so you can attend to the good stuff with your heart on fire and your mind as fluid as a mountain stream.

Ok, if I can figure out which is which ... I'll get right on that. I have a sneaky feeling about which potential invitations to avoid, too. That is, if any invitations from that one particular source happen to arrive, which is always a toss-up.

Everytime You Think You Know All The Answers, I Change The Questions

Ok, so after the Chris Benoit scandal I closed the door on my long wrestling fandom, and I thought at the time it would be for good. It had been petering out slowly over time, and the newer product didn't grab me the way that the classic stuff used to completely enthrall me. And then one of my favorite wrestlers, one I respected, turned out to be a murderer, and enough was enough. I figured it was time to pack it in and move on to other things. That was a few months ago.

Then recently I started to miss it. About a month ago I had a weird dream wherein I forgave Chris Benoit. Then when I woke up, all the angst and bad feelings I had towards him and wrestling in general had pretty much evaporated. Even so, I didn't plan on coming back. Professional wrestling as an artform, however, was then redeemed by Mick Foley. You may not know who Mick Foley is, but he's one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, having worked under the names Cactus Jack and Mankind. He's also a best-selling author. His first autobiographical book, 'Have a Nice Day', started the whole wrestler biography craze, and is still the best of the entire lot. I have that one and his two follow-ups in hardcover. Lately, I've been pruning the bookshelves somewhat, and when I went to take a look at those books I could not bring myself to purge them out. Same goes with the Dynamite Kid's autobiography.

Then the desire to watch some old matches came back. I'd sold off what remained of my dvd collection back around the 4th of July, thinking it was done for good (I only had a small handful left by then anyway). But I missed it, so I started to look to start up the collection again. Sometimes I have little to no control over these impulses, and I just turn it over to my personal Mistress of Influences (that would be Calliope), because she knows what sorts of things I need to take in so that I can be as well rounded as possible. The Harry Potter thing of a few weeks back works under a similar principle.

To break it down, I see it this way: the more things that I'm open to, and the more different sources that I let influence me ... the more imaginative and creative my own work becomes. And wrestling, such as it is, plays an important part here, because it has influenced me in various ways, just like comic books, cartoons, and other supposed juvenile things always have. Whatever. It works for me.

So I've started rebuilding a small stash of good wrestling dvds. They're also good for helping me unwind after a long work day. I can come home with some chocolate milk, put in a Simpsons episode, some Looney Tunes, or a great wrestling match, and they relax me.

Instead of turning my back on the things I enjoy, it's time to embrace some of them.

The Mighty Gwen

So after a week or so of marginal writing progress I went to Borders today determined to make a dent. I've been stuck on that first hospital scene all this time, for one reason or another, and I finally worked it out. Everything I converted over to a factory type setting has been converted back to the hospital, but better since I was able to keep a few nice character notes for Gwen that came up when this scene was factory-ized. That's a bonus. Once I got through those two or three set-up paragraphs, though, the rest was cake.

The rest of the scene covers the conversation between Kelly and Gwen, and I just smoked it. That stuff was pretty good to start with, and with minimal tweaking it really sings, especially when Gwen is describing her horrible date with Todd, because she is a character I find completely hilarious. It helps when I know the person the character is based on really well, too. So I'm biased a little bit there. Anyway, I'm really happy with the scene.

I also got to set up the tension between Gwen and Willow, one of my favorite running bits in later chapters. Having two strong-willed female characters who hate each other, for really no good reason, just tickles my funny bone. I'm kind of a jerk that way.

Up next is the first Laurel scene, by way of telephone, which I'm looking forward to tackling tomorrow afternoon.

So, I'm getting there.

From the Archives, part 1

While dissecting my other blog, I've saved a few posts that can't be replaced. Most of those posts are disposable, unlike these here posts, but there are those would miss if they were lost to history. Case in point, the following post. The following is a case where one of my friends (or Beth's friends, to be totally accurate) challenged me to do something, and when challenged I always rise to the occassion (or in this case lower myself to the occassion), and I think I certainly did that here. In fact, as usual, I went well beyond what was necessary in covering the challenge. A word of warning, though, what follows is vile, disgusting, revolting, and a little reprehensible ... but it's all part of the fun. Those of you with weak hearts or a weak stomach might want to skip this altogether, but I'm proud of what I've done here, and so for posterity ... my version of the Aristocrats.

*****

This is a true story. My uncle told it to me several years ago when I finally turned old enough to join the family business at the age of five. He swears it's true, and who am I to doubt him? After all, I saw his own act several times before his unfortunate death under the feet of the elephant he was jerking off during the big conclusion. I know the story is true, because I've also heard it from my dad numerous times around the campfire since then. My big sister also swears it's true, but you never know with her. She also told me I was raised by wolves for the first three years of my life and left on the doorstep. So she might be pulling my leg.

Anyway, the story goes like this. There's this talent agent named Mitch Freelander, who my family knows and still works with here and there. They go way back. One day this gentleman comes in to see Mitch about auditioning an act for him. Mitch was always on the lookout for new and different things, still is, so he figured what the heck and asked this guy what he had. Might be worth a laugh.

It's a family act, the guy told Mitch. Wait a minute, said Mitch, family acts never play around here. Hear me out, the guy said. You've got three minutes, Mitch said. My name is George Hollandbacker, the man said, and the act goes a little like this:

First I come out on stage with my beautiful wife Janet, along with my son Bobby and daughter Jennifer. He's 13 and she's 8. We do a little song and dance routine to begin. The music's playing. Janet and I are twirling batons. And then the kids get naked. Yes, that's right, naked as the day they were born. Jennifer lies down on her back and then Bobby goes down and starts eating her out. Janet and I finish the song and then retrieve several kitchen knives from a trunk just off stage. The kids roll over so that Bobby is now laying on his back, and Jennifer turns around on him so they're doing a 69, see. Meanwhile, Janet and I start juggling the knives back and forth to each other over top the kids while they keep going at it. And this goes on for a bit, Bobby's eating her out, she's sucking him off, and we just juggle faster and faster and faster. Knives are whirling around everywhere. Very exciting.

We drop the knives to the side and then both Janet and I drop our pants and get naked. Jennifer does a 180 so that she's back around on the floor again, making room for her mother who squats down on Bobby's face, and he starts eating her out now. Meanwhile, I take my cock and ram it right up Jennifer's tiny little asshole. This is the tricky part, see, because I'm much bigger than her and naturally it's pretty uncomfortable, and it takes a lot of concentration for her not to bite down on Bobby's dick when I go in her backside. So to bring you up to speed here, I'm fucking Jennifer up the ass, she's blowing Bobby, and Bobby is eating out his mother's cunt. Sounds good so far, right? Ok. This is when we bring out grandma.

She might be an old lady now, but she's got showbiz in her blood, and she's pretty spry for her age. While all of this sucking and licking and fucking is going on, grandma starts doing cartwheels over us, and then lands in a split. At this point we all break from each other. I'm the last one to pull out, because the sound my cock makes when it pulls free of Jennifer's tiny wormhole makes a sound like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle, which is sure to be a crowd-pleasing moment. Wait, but there's more.

Grandma starts jerking off me and Bobby while Janet and Jennifer make out. Grandma has a lot of experience, right? So her hands are pretty skilled. She really knows how to polish the knobs, if you know what I mean. By the time we come, at the same time, it's like two fire hoses spraying. My spluge hits Bobby in the chest, and his hits mine in a hot spray. Janet starts licking the semen off of Bobby, and little Jennifer starts slurping it off of me. I start playing with her tits, and squeezing her nipples. Bobby does the same with his mom. And grandma starts fingering both of them. Both girls gargle the cum afterwords while Bobby starts fucking grandma and I take a piss in her mouth.

Grandma starts gargling the piss, puts her head back, and then spits it straight up in the air so that it sprays back down on her face, right? Still with me? Ok, then we all get in a circle and start licking each other's assholes. I'm licking grandma. Grandma is licking Bobby. Bobby is liking his mother. She's licking Jennifer. And Jennifer is licking me. While this is going on, grandpa rolls out a xylophone followed by his five Chinese nephews, all naked. They're names aren't important because they all look alike anyway. They take their erect wangs and put them on the xylophone keys while grandpa starts playing a tune. All the nephews start to perforn 'Singing In The Rain' while grandpa goes to town, hitting the keys and the dicks as he goes along. And as you can imagine by the second chorus the nephews are having trouble keeping the tune, but they're troopers so they keep on as best they can. And grandpa keeps on playing. Dong a long a ding a ding. You know, like that.

Grandman, Janet, and Jennifer then stand on their heads. Bobby and I stick candles down their assholes and light them. The lights go down and a violin player comes out and starts a romantic tune. The five Chinese nephews all take a shit on the floor and grandpa sweeps it all into one big steaming pile. I roll out a slip and slide mat and line it up in front of the pile of shit. Bobby, grandpa, and myself all take a piss on the mat to get it wet, and then take turns running up to the mat and sliding into the pile of shit. So the three of us are pretty much covered with feces after that. We lie down on the floor. And then Janet, grandma, and Jennifer walk over, still on their hands mind you--they're very talented--and start licking the shit off of us. Meanwhile the candles up their asses are starting to drip wax down into their cunts, which is a little painful I grant you. But those girls are all professionals, I tell you.

Grandpa pulls out all three candles, licks the end of them clean, and then starts juggling them--still lit, mind you. Bobby and I punch each of the Chinese nephews in the stomach, causing them to vomit on the slip and slide mat. Jennifer goes first, sliding down the puke covered mat, followed by Janet, and then grandma. The nephews go out back and wheel out a casket. Inside is great grandma's almost mummified corpse. The three ladies kneel down in front of the casket. Janet gets two of the nephews; one puts a cock in her mouth and the other up her ass. Grandma gets two of the other nephews; same thing. The last nephew starts fucking Jennifer up the ass. Grandpa discards the candles and sticks his wrinkly dick in Jennifer's mouth. While this is going on, Bobby climbs inside the casket and starts giving it to great grandma's dead rotting corpse.

While the audience is focused on all of that, I run out back, grab a card table, and wheel it out. On the table is a large pile of used bloody tampons, from both Janet and Jennifer, which we've been saving for the last six months. All five of the nephews and grandpa, while still in the middle of their assorted sex acts, lean back with open mouths. They just open them as wide as they can. And then I take the bloody, smelly tampons, one by one, and lob them backwards over my head, trying to use their open mouths as a basketball hoop. My aim is only so-so, so I get some in and the rest land all over. If any of them catch them in their mouths, they just hold them there until I'm all out. Around that time, if our timing is just right, everybody pulls out and jizzes all over Janet, Jennifer, and Grandma. Well, everybody except Bobby, because we're not ready for him quite yet, see. Then all the tampons get spit up into a bucket, along with another supply of vomit. But we'll get to that later.

This is when a midget, who's actually my cousin Ritchie, comes riding out on a unicycle, pulling the family dog Bub on a leash. Bub is a German sheppard, and he's kind of a big boy. Very well trained, though, so don't worry. The girls all stay down on all fours, right, and then Bub comes over and starts fucking Jennifer up the ass. Now you'd think I'd start with grandma and work down towards the big finish with little Jennie, right? You'd think that, but Jennifer is just his favorite to fuck up the ass and he just performs better when Jennie is first. So we just go with it. He's a dog, you know? Who can argue with a dog? Come on.

So Bub goes right up the line. Jennifer, then Janet, then grandma. Meanwhile, Bobby keeps on fucking great grandma's corpse in her coffin. The five nephews line up around the coffin and start jerking off. That gets a fine spray going right up and into the coffin with Bobby and great grandma. Grandpa and I take the bucket with the vomit and the bloody tampons and then piss in it. After the dog is done fucking all the girls, we bring the dog over and the dog takes a big shit into the bucket. Bobby pulls out of great grandma--he hasn't come yet--and unloads a big load of spunk, into that same bucket. Then grandma comes over, squats over the bucket, and drops a runny slimy diarhettic stream of poo into the bucket. She hasn't been regular in years, you know. Janet follows, drops some shit in it. And then Jennifer does the same. Then grandpa grabs a big bag of apples, and drops them all in the bucket. And then I take a large stick and stir the whole thing up. It's a pretty large bucket, did I mention that? Ok, just stick with me.

Jennifer goes first. She sticks her head right down there into the bucket, you see, bobbing for an apple at the bottom of this bucket of shit and piss and blood and semen and puke. And she just sticks her head right down there into it until she finds an apple and pulls it out. She comes out and her face and head and hair are all covered and matted with the contents of the bucket. Bobby goes next. Then Janet. Then I get an apple. Then grandpa. And finally grandma. And the end of that we're all covered with the excrement and other ingredients, and it's all dripping off of us all over. The nephews come over and take the apples out of all our mouths with their teeth and then eat the apples. And the one apple that's left over goes to Ritchie the midget. After the apples are consumed they all get regurgitated right back into the bucket. Oh, we're not done with the bucket yet, no.

The midget rides his unicycle backstage and returns with a black sack, about the size of a grocery bag. I wheel out a small grill and grandpa fires it up. Jennifer reaches into the sack and pulls out a small aborted fetus. And you guessed right, it's hers. It's still fresh and everything, only a couple of days old. She puts it on the grill and I turn it up to about medium. You certainly don't want to overcook something like that. Even so it takes some time to do this just right. Immediately the smell starts rising up off the fetus. Mmmm, you just can't beat that. While waiting for that, Jennifer, Janet, and grandma strap on some dildoes and take turns fucking all the nephews, grandpa, the dog, and the midget up their asses. Oh, and these are big, industrial sized dildoes, see. Like about as big as a salami loaf. Yeah, and you should hear the midget squeak when he gets it. Always a crowd pleaser.

When the fetus is done cooking the Chinese nephews pick up the knives from the earlier juggling and start ginsuing it onto several plates. They do it because, you know, being Chinese they're all good at that sort of thing. Everybody on stage gets a plate, even the dog, and eats it right up. The left over bits go into the bucket. Following this, we split into two groups on opposite sides of the stage and then everybody takes a dump into their hands. Everybody except for the midget, who starts climbing a 30 foot ladder up to a diving platform right over the bucket. While he's climbing all the rest of us start a brown snowball fight, which is just a huge melee of flying shit. Once he's up top, Ritchie the midget cannonballs off of the platform into the shit and piss and vomit and blood and tampons and semen and fetus leftover filled bucket, which causes a huge splash that covers all of us in the goo.

Then we do a short tap-dancing sequence to 'Putting on the Ritz', and end with everyone down on one knee and our arms spread wide. We all yell 'TA DA' and it's punctuated with a thunderous fart from all of us. Then the dog howls just to put the cherry on top.

So Mitch the agent takes all this in, right? He needs a few seconds to mull this over because he's just flabbergasted by what he's heard. Tremendous, Mitch says. What in the world would you call such a thing?

George, that's the father in the act remember, holds up a finger. One moment, he says. This is the best part. I'll tell you what happens next. I pull out a remote control with a red button on the top. I presses the button and suddenly a small bomb sewn into great grandma's dead corpse explodes, unleashing fireworks, confetti, and a spray of intestines, rotten flesh, and bone fragments which rain down all over the theater. It's just an amazing sight. And floating down with the confetti is a large banner. On the banner it says....

THE ARISTOCRATS.

And then Mitch was so impressed that he signed them to a three year deal.

At least, that's how my uncle used to tell the story.

The Week in Chunks

I'm going to break the usual format and try to cover as much as possible in this one post in an effort to catch up to the present day. Buckle up! Here we go.

Jen. In her usual spooky way, and this has been documented here before, the morning after the Calliope post went up she called me before work, for the first time in a week and a half. It's almost like she has some kind of spider sense that lets her know when I'm at my most disgruntled, even if she's had no communication from me at all, and she hasn't. It was kind of an awkward conversation, because I wasn't giving her much of anything, even though she mentioned thinking that I was pissed at her for some reason, but I kept it non-commital, as 3:30 in the AM is not my best time for hashing things out. To be honest, I'm not even really all that interested in hashing things out at this point, because this all has gotten tedious. But since I am still in this relationship I suppose it must be hashed out at some point. The conversation should take place in person, though, because that is when I'm at my strongest. I'll let you know how that goes.

Work. The job continues to go really well. I'm getting a lot better at what I do there, my confidence is growing, and I think that shows. I'm evolving from the new quiet guy into my more animated self, and I'm going to push that even further. I've moved up a rung on the ladder, too. They fired Jason for chronic absenteeism, so instead of being 8th, I'm now 7th in the cell. We've hired a new kid, too, named Eric. He seems a decent, likeable sort. As usual, I've taken it upon myself to kind of look after him and help him out when he needs help. I don't have to do this, nobody told me to do this, but coming from FMC and LSI it's something that I feel is my responsibility as a more senior staff member. I'm not going to let the kid drown ... like some others there might.

I'm also coming up on my two month review, and I'm very anxious for it. Hopefully, I've improved on some of those marks from the 30 day review (which weren't bad at all), because it's nice to get that kind of vindication for busting my ass, which I assure you I have been doing. At my 90 day review I should get a pay adjustment, and I'm a little nervous about that, not because I'm afraid they won't think I deserve one, but because Allen (aka Cooter) just had his and he got bumped up $2 to $11.50. If I go into mine and end up with less than that, I'm going to be pissed.

Writing. I've solved the kitchen staffing issue. I needed a cook. Originally, that spot was covered by a character named Pam, based on Jude. She's been written out of the book for years now, and I never replaced the character. Now that everyone is back in the hospital again, there needs to be a cook. So I wracked my brain to think of someone I could base a character on that would fill the same sort of story elements that Jude brought in. I need someone older than Kelly (who is 19), married, has kids, and with a particular sort of energy. I ran through several people, but nothing clicked, then I thought about LSI second shift from way back when I was there, and came up with the person. There was a girl, about my age, named Jill who did turn-on for us. Strangely, she was the first person there about whom rumors of her and I having a fling began, something that would continue for the rest of my seven years there. Anyway, she's perfect to add to the kitchen mix. In a stunning bit of originality, I named her ... Jill.

Colleen. This week's big news is my sister's impending move to Andover, Massachusetts. Ian has been offered a job there, so they're moving from Philadelphia to much much closer, which I think is excellent. Colleen is my favorite person to hang out with in the world, and this will be the first time we've lived in conjoining states since 1991, when she went to Bryn Mawr. They'll be moving sometime in September-October from the sound of it. I should be moving to the Newport area myself in that timeframe. This means that even if my lovelife hits the skids, my little sister will be there to go to concerts and movies with.

I think I hit most of it. There you go.

Diary of a Virgo, volume 10

Are you ready to leave the past behind, drop all your assumptions, welcome the return of your innocence, adopt a beginner's mind, and start fresh everywhere? I hope so, because that's what the universe will be nudging you to do. Here are some words of wisdom to incite you and arouse you. (1) "You don’t know what you can get away with until you try." - Colin Powell. (2) "Never underestimate your power to change yourself." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (3) "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." - my friend Lucy Spinner. (4) "God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." - Frederick Buechner.

Very interesting given what's been running through my mind lately.

As a follow up to last night's radio show post, this is how Calliope appears in my head. I always think it's helpful to add some kind of visual aid for my weird, abstract ideas. So when Calliope returns to co-host a post again, and she will, keep this girl in mind.*



*courtesy of Harley Q, via Myspace.

The Sparky and Calliope Pirate Radio Show

Hey, folks. It's me, Sparky, once again on your radio dial. And I'd like to introduce my co-host, the lovely and delightful Calliope.

"Hello hello."

I'm glad you could tear yourself away from the Mai Tai's and Pall Malls long enough to join us for the show, Cal.

"Anything for *burp* for my Puddin', Puddin'."

That's sweet. What have you been up to?

"Oh, not much. I hung out with Terpsichore on the beach for a while this morning and got some sun. I have to watch my bikini line, y'know."

I've been watching your bikini line my own self.

"Ain't you a sweet patootie."

I have no idea, but sure. And how's your sis?

"She's five by five. Then Thalia and me went and lit off some firecrackers down at the old folks home."

Always causing trouble, aren't you.

"You should see them jump!"

I'm sure that's entertaining. It's been a slow week on my end.

"Yeah. How's the love life, boss? Have you been seeing .... that girl?"

Jennifer? I haven't talked to her lately.

"I don't like that one."

You don't like anyone.

"That isn't true! I did like that Chrissy girl. And that Amy girl from Best Buy seems very nice."

I don't even know her.

"That's an easy fix, boss."

Besides, she's like 20. I think maybe I should shoot a little older the next time.

"Yeah, but you'd totally do it with her, wouldn't ya?"

That's besides the point, Cal. If that was all I was looking for I could find that somewhere or other, I'm sure.

"So it's the whole romance thing."

I wouldn't mind finding someone where the relationship would be a little more stable is all.

"That Jen is just too fruit loopy, ain't she."

Something like that. Don't be too hard on her, though. She did save my life after all.

"It isn't like she pulled you out of a burning building, boss."

I don't mean for you to take that literally. It's a metaphor. Why must you be so literal?

"I'm here for inspiration and stuff. I'm not Skunky White."

Strunk & White?

"See? That's what I mean right there."

Right. What I'm saying is that she provided the impetus for me to try and get my life together. Without her I'd probably still be at LSI, and I'd be like ... well, like I was several months ago.

"Oh, when you were being all Mopey Dick."

Yeah. Like that. I'd still be like that.

"I don't like to see you that way."

Nobody does, Cal.

"It makes me sad."

I know, Cal.

"Then I'm a sad Calliope."

Yes, well. Things have gotten better since then.

"Yes. Yes. And that makes me a happy Callie."

For that, if nothing else, it's been worth it. Still, it would be nice to find that special someone to share time with and such. Not that I dislike Jennifer or anything. She just has different priorities.

"I don't like that one."

So I've heard.

"All that dangling you on a string stuff. That ain't cool."

I know. I know. I'm tired of it, too. That's why I've backed off so far this past week.

"And she hasn't called you!"

She did call once on Saturday morning, but I was at work.

"Didn't leave a message, though, I notice."

That's up to her. You'll notice I didn't call her back.

"And I approve. She can't be all dangly and dangle you around and get away with it!"

Not anymore, anyway.

"Stupid dangly dangler!"

The problem is I'm still susceptible to her charms, and I will be until somebody else comes along.

"Ok, so she's like charming and stuff, but it's a whole manipulative thing."

I'm aware of that. Can't help it.

"Geez. You nice guys don't have to make it so easy for chicks like us to twist you around our pinky fingers."

It's something I'm working on.

"Stick with me, boss. I'll help ya with that."

Thanks, Cal. You're a peach.

"Mmmmmm. Sweet juicy peaches."

I don't have an easy time of meeting nice, interesting women, though.

"You just have to put yourself out there, boss! You're cute! You're funny! You're nice! And kind of a catch. Just be more confident."

Right. Confident.

"Seriously, yo. There are chicks out there in the world looking for a nice dude like you."

All right. Any suggestions on where I can find one?

*Calliope flips her hair and looks suggestively at Sparky*

Calliope, you know we can't jeopardize our professional relationship that way.

"Well, poop."

We've been over this.

"Yeah, yeah. I know. But c'mon. That Jennifer ain't good enough for my Sparky."

So now I'm *your* Sparky.

"You've always been MY Sparky, boss."

I'm touched. Any suggestions nevertheless?

"All right. What about that lady at work? The one what's been giving you the eyes."

Sherry? I haven't figured her out yet. For all I know she's married.

"So what!"

Well, you remember what happened the last time.

"Yeah. She left her hubby for YOU, boss."

Uh huh. And then what happened?

"Oh yeah. True."

It's something to consider.

"But you don't even know if she's married or not. And she gives you them eyeballs everyday. There's definitely some sign of something there."

I know. It's about as obvious as when Lynne stopped by the kitchen every afternoon to see me.

"So like totally frikkin' obvious."

I'm looking into it.

"Talk to her!"

I'm going to. It's in the works.

"It's always 'in the works'. And then sometimes you wait too long and careful your way right out of the picture."

I know.

"So talk to her. Get out there and do it. Like they say, fortune favors the something something."

The brave.

"Exactly! So go out there and be a brave mofo, boss."

You know, after getting involved with people at work time and again it does occur to me that maybe I should date somebody who I'm not working with.

"I've heard that before."

I'm sure you have.

"You never stick to that, y'know."

I probably never will. Something about the work environment brings out the best in me.

"I think it's the structure of the environment and whatnot."

Something like that. And I have the time and opportunity there to work my magic.

"Ok, so you're going after Sherry then."

I probably am.

"Well, good for you."

And if she's married, or if I'm reading these signals wrong, then it's back to the drawing board.

"But don't give up!"

I won't. I'm better now.

"There are other nice ladies out there. And I'm sure there's gotta be somebody you'll like who'll treat you better than that Jennifer."

I'm sure.

"I like that Guinevere, too. She'd treat you good."

For one thing, she lives in Florida. For another, she has a boyfriend.

"Stranger things have happened!"

I'm not ruling anything out, Cal.

"Good boy."

There is still one snag in the plans, though.

"What, boss?"

I technically still have a girlfriend. Neither of us have officially called it quits yet, remember. She's still out there.

"I don't like that girl."

Sigh.....

Last Tango in White River Junction

Now, that's a title. 'All Fall Down' works as a working title for the book, but when publication time comes I need something like this. At any rate, that isn't what we're here to talk about. Instead, I have a tale.

Last Saturday I was doing my own thing. In lieu of believing my girlfriend actually wanted to hang out and do something, perhaps if she could fit me into her busy schedule, I decided not to hang around and wait for the phone to ring. And for good reason of my own I wasn't initiating a call my own self. Those reasons may not impress anyone, but I know what I'm doing. Add to that I wasn't sure how I was feeling about Jennifer overall, and I was still kinda annoyed with her. So to get back to the point, I was at Borders working on my future best-seller.

When I got home in the evening I checked the caller ID and saw that Jen had called me. This was probably around 5-ish that I checked, perhaps a bit later. Instead of checking for any potential message or calling her back, I decided to turn on some Resident Evil 4 and blow some zombified freaks to kingdom come. After about forty-five minutes of that I figured I'd check the messages. Besides, the phone had rung another time and I blew it off believing it might be her. She hates it when she can't pin me down and when I'm not right there to answer her calls at any time of the day or night. So I've taken to letting her sweat it out a bit.

She'd left four messages. When I make myself unavailable and she can't figure out what I'm doing that could be more important than waiting for her calls it really does aggravate the girl, and I like that. So the messages increased in urgency and aggravation across the span of them, which I found amusing. Apparently, there was this thing that night that she wanted me to attend. It was something she mentioned during our first date way way WAY back in March, and I said I'd go, but since then I'd heard that these things had been indefinitely cancelled, and plus there's been a whole lot of water under the bridge since then. Anyway, I called her back.

Where the hell have I been, she asked. Too bad she couldn't have seen the grin on my face when we got into our recently begun running joke about me banging some skank on the side while blowing Jen off, but yes ... I was a grinnin'. So we got into a conversation of whether or not I was going to show up. She was basically demanding my presence, and I was doing my thing where I do a slightly exaggerated bit of indecisiveness while not answering the question, which aggravates her all the more, which was the point. We got into a thing about what I should wear to show up for such a thing, and said I wasn't fancying myself up or anything, and finally agreed to show up over in White River Junction. I'd meet her and Jenn (her friend from the ass-hopping tale) there in a bit.

It was a benefit for AIDS awareness (or somesuch, as much as I was paying attention to that detail) gussied up as a Drag Queen show. Which is to say, there were a few gay men there dressing up and performing as women, and some lesbians also performing. Strangely, none of the lesbians dressed up as guys, because I figured in a drag show everybody would swap, but nevermind. Sure, I'll go. Who cares? I've had gay friends ever since I started working at Stop N Shop 20 years ago, so it doesn't bother me at all. Plus, I've met Todd, one of Jen's friends, a few times in passing and he seemed like a decent bloke. I wasn't reluctant to go because of the theme, but because Jen blew me off most of the week and then waited until the last possible minute to invite me. Sure, I delayed that by a couple of hours myself, but ask yourself this: how long would Jen have known about this event?

Anyway, when I arrived Jen and Jenn (or The Jens, as in, "Evening, Jennifers.") were outside smoking cigarettes with a few others, so I joined them. Now, Jenn I like. She's a good kid, even though Jen complains about her sometimes for 'only calling me up when she needs something'. Yes, feel the irony. Anyway, I joined them for a smoke outside. Todd came out in drag and I didn't even realize it was him the first time. There was only one other guy in drag, the one who was running the thing. They both looked fantastic, but I figured there would be more. When I agreed to come I was expecting something more like the Goth night that Larissa talked me into attending in Noho, which was like a black on black armageddon. This was a lot more low-key.

Once inside I started to drink. The first one was a Sam Adams, which was dreadful, but given the choices it was the only label I recognized. Even so, put a beer in my hand if I'm out in a social setting and it disappears. And it did. Todd was watching the door and taking money for tickets (Jen paid mine), so he asked if I'd go get a Corona for him, so I did. When time came for my second drink that's what I had, and I really liked it. I think I've found my beer. That second one didn't last a whole lot longer than the first. Meanwhile, people were taking their seats around the perimeter of what would be the staging area. Jen got drafted into running the spotlight, so I sat with Jenn and her mom. Whenever Jenn broke away for a smoke she motioned for me to come along, so I went along. And a few times Jen found me out there in the smoking area when she lost track of me.

The show started and it was pretty entertaining. People would get up and offer dollars to the performers, who would then take said dollars ... sometimes in a lascivious manner. I took everything in, but remained a spectator on the fringe. It would be different if I knew some of those people, but I don't really. Sometime during the first half one of Jen's work friends, Becky, showed up dressed in some pretty slutty clothes. And just imagine what those clothes have to look like for me to think they look slutty. I was left with two impressions here. First, Becky was *smoking* hot. I mean like Jacquie hot, since I know my readers will remember how bad I had it for her, except -- and this is true -- Becky is hotter. Second, if Jen invited Becky, and Becky came dressed up and prepared, just how long *did* Jen know about this ahead of time? And she called me that day.

Anyway, there was general dancing during the intermission. Jen and Becky went out there and danced, causing my mind to wander towards sandwiches, IF you know what I mean. Meanwhile, I was working on my second Corona, and third beer overall. The buzz was coming in. Jen motioned for me to come out on the dance floor, but I ended up outside instead with Jenn and a cigarette. This time I had my own pack even. Before the show Jen mentioned she was hungry, and so was I, and since she couldn't leave, Jenn and I ducked up to McDonalds for some take-out. "Is this going to turn into 'Sparky, can you do me a favor?'", and of course it did. I also stopped at a nearby gas station so Jenn could replenish her own cigarette supply, and she bought me a pack. When in Rome ....

I went back inside during the intermission, and Jen did drag me out on the dance floor for a bit, and it turned into a threeway dance with her, me, and Becky, which was nice for a minute or two before things broke up and I went back to my beer. The show continued, and it was still fun. Jen and Becky did an impromptu number, which was pretty hot. I even had a dollar or three out on the table, but they never went anywhere. I probably should have gotten up like some other people did, but fuck it. This was my first one of these, after all. I know how things work at strip clubs. Drag shows are a new experience for me. Becky left before the end of the show. She and Jen talked over at another table, they went outside, and then she left. I don't think Becky and I really clicked there, but chances are I'll never see her again anyway, so who cares.

End of the night. I went outside first. Jen found me there. Jenn and her mom took off. Jen could only linger a bit because she was supposed to meet a friend of hers down in Windsor at midnight. Some chick I don't know, or whatever. At this point I don't really care about the details. It could be her going off to meet her ex again, like that time in a much earlier post where I got all wound up, and I'd just shrug and say whatever. See how things have evolved? By this time I'd put down four Coronas, for a total of five beers, which is equal to or a little less than what I'd consume during an average Church night, but those nights were ten years ago. Not only that, a lot of those times I was not ok to drive home, even though I did. And I intended to drive home from there, too. Yes, I was buzzed, but I knew I could do it.

But Jen lingered a bit too long while trying to decide if I was all right, and I was perhaps a bit more talkative than I should have been, because before I knew it she was insisting she was driving me home. Of course I put up a small argument about it, but I knew she was probably right. She wouldn't take no for an answer anyway, so I got into her car, left mine behind, and she drove me home. Thanks to the beer I was uncharacteristically gregarious, and somewhat less snarky than I'd generally been during the night, and she started to feel me out to see if something else was wrong. Being inebriated, and having had a good night out, I wasn't really in the mood to get into my actual opinions of a few things, so I blew that off, although I don't believe she was convinced there wasn't something on my mind. One more Corona was all it would have taken, though, and she would have gotten everything, including a lot more than she wanted to know.

She dropped me off here and went to meet her friend. It was kind of touching that she cared enough to make sure I didn't wrap myself around a telephone pole just so she could keep her appointment, but let's not make too much of it. There was still the matter of retrieving my car on Sunday, and even then it was running through my mind whether or not I could depend on her to show up and drive me over there. I'm sure I discussed that possibility with Guinevere during our chat after I got home, during which I was little more than a rambling drunk. But at least, like Jen said, I'm a happy drunk.

The next morning I decided to be pro-active, and not wait around for the call to come (or not, as the case may be). So I set off on foot to pick up my baby girl over in White River Junction. It was a little hotter than I thought it was, so by the time I got there I was exhausted. But it was only 4.5 miles, which I used to walk every afternoon after the morning shift in the kitchen, so I guess I'm just out of shape. She did call around 3:00, although by that time I was back asleep. When she called again at 4:30 I picked up. She asked if I wanted a ride over there, and I thought about playing with her a little. If she was already in town I'd have said sure come on over, and then I'd have been out there sitting on my trunk when she pulled up. But I had the idea she was still up in Sharon, and that's way too far to draw her in just for a practical joke, so I told her I already had the car. It would have been interesting to see her face right then while she was trying to decide if I'd walked or if some skank had given me a ride over there. But I was touched to see that I could count on her after all.

Ok, at least in that instance. The jury is still out on the rest.

Along Comes Jones

On the subject of last names, there are few better than Jones. As someone who's had to come up with a lot of names for a lot of characters, this is something I've given some study to. It's even better than Dufresne because Jones works with virtually anything you could ever think of. Check it out.

It works with regular type names: Amy Jones, Emily Jones, Melissa Jones, Rachel Jones, Samantha Jones, Tabitha Jones, Laura Jones, Bethany Jones, Jillian Jones, Willow Jones, Jessica Jones, Gretchen Jones, Allison Jones.

It works with more fanciful names: Guinevere Jones, Calliope Jones, Magenta Jones, Seraphim Jones, Artemis Jones, Aphrodite Jones, Athena Jones, Callisto Jones, Sylja Jones, Kitten Jones, Cujo Jones.

And it works with more comic-booky character sort of names: Dynamite Jones, Kamakaze Jones, Blaster Jones, Discordia Jones, Delerium Jones, Firefly Jones, Hellcat Jones, Tiamat Jones.

I discovered that a while back while working on my name database project. There is the rare name that doesn't quite ring true, but that last name will get you out of a jam 99% of the time.

I totally did that thing here where a word loses all meaning when you repeat it too many times. It took a few minutes for Jones to look right again so I could finish this post.

I See Calliope's Underpants

Ok, so we know the goals, right?

1. Become a published author.
2. Continue to write books.
3. Land a comic book based on my credentials.
4. Find *the one*.
5. Have a baby.

That's about the size of it, more or less. There are other things that fit in there and around the edges, but that's the big stuff to concentrate on. I suspect some of those items will be harder than the others, but there isn't anything on that list that I don't feel I can accomplish somehow or another.

I'm convinced Jen isn't *the one*. There's more to that, obviously, but let's leave it there for now. The woman at Rugers who has been giving me the eyeball since Day One probably isn't *the one* either, but there's no reason I shouldn't pursue that lead as a time-being sort of thing, if indeed I'm reading those signals right. As a rule of thumb, if **I** think someone is flirting with me, she probably is, as I'm historically the last person in the room aware of such a thing. Anyway, we'll talk more about this at a later date as well.

I was tentative about putting that baby goal out there into the void when I wrote up that other post, but now that cooler heads prevail ... it's still the ultimate goal. I haven't waffled on it. I want one. And if I just keep it in the back of my mind as a vague sort of "someday" thing, it'll never happen, and I'm not getting any younger here. I'm looking towards accomplishing this goal between now and my 40th birthday, but if things are progressing fine it could happen even a little later than that. But it will happen.

As my alter-ego, fixated on twin girls, I used to brainstorm out some possible names for this hypothetical offspring. I have some thoughts now.

1. London and Paris
2. Magenta and Seraphim
3. Gwen and Mary Jane
4. Erica and Loren

Through pure accident my alter-ego has a last name (Dufresne) that fits with almost any first name I could possibly think of. Don't believe me? Try it. Everything sounds pretty good in front of her last name. In real life, while I have a good, strong last name, it won't necessarily fit with everything I think of, and such is a possibility out of those suggested names. Even so, none of those are clinkers.

Chances are they won't be twins, and the baby might not even be female, but we'll adjust as necessary at the appropriate time.

I have to find the mother first anyway.

The Ballad of an Exhausted Slide-fitter

There's this job I've been doing lately, which is fitting a slide to the barrel after it gets gas-blocked. The job is basically file, file, file, file on a 45 angle, file on another 45 angle, and then straighten it in a fixture. However, there are slides that just don't want to fit easily onto a gun no matter how perfect and straight they are. Sometimes it's the gas block that needs to be replaced, but sometimes the slide can be made to fit through some furious efforts of hammering it or beating it into shape, and I've gotten reasonably good at it. There are few times I can't get a stubborn slide to fit onto a barrel.

And it's this exact thing that I'm doing to Chapter 4 currently. Almost everything that needs to be fixed in the whole book, as far as details of setting and characters and whatnot, begins in this chapter. If I can straighten it all out here, then the rest of the book should have a much easier flow. And so I'm filing, and straightening, and hammering the fuck out of everything to get it into proper shape so that this chapter will slide up and down the rest of the book like butter. How's that for a metaphor, huh?

I've pretty much figured out what to do about the hospital crew thing, even though I'm sure I dropped an employee somewhere along the way in one revision or another. Right now my crew stands at nine people, not including a cook, who I still need to replace with somebody (this person doesn't have to be drawn from the FMC pool, either), but I have tomorrow to figure that part out.

Here's who we have right now:
-- Kelly (me), the team leader.
-- Gwen (Jessica), 2nd in command and food service aide.
-- Alexis (Tina), works in the nutrition office.
-- Brian (Walker), pot washer and fsa.
-- Matt (Russ), fsa and pot washer.
-- Willow (Meredith), runs the cafe.
-- Parker (Malisa), runs the cafe.
-- Maxine (Charlene), works in the nutrition office.
-- Dana (Meghan), fsa.

Doesn't it seem as though I'm a fsa short? I do have Lindsey (Jacquie) coming in later, but not for another ten chapters or so. Trying to cram someone else in there now might be pushing it. I still need a cook, though, because there's no way I'm cooking the food.

I also think some changes to the Kim character need be made. At this point she's essentially there just to be broken up with so that Kelly and Alyssa can hook up, but I don't want to make her too unlikeable. The person she's based on (Betsy) isn't anyone I feel any animosity towards, so making her a complete hag (which I haven't, I don't think) is out. I also hope people reading feel a little sympathy for her character after the break-up scene. What I need is a balance between people thinking that going with Alyssa is the better option while thinking that Kim isn't a terrible person. I also don't want Betsy reading this book someday and thinking I just slagged her for no good reason. But as far as what small tweaks to make on the character, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

And that's where we are.

Diary of a Virgo, volume 9

Jaeyana Beuraheng, a mother of eight, decided to travel from her small village in southern Thailand to Malaysia for a day-long shopping trip. But she accidentally boarded the wrong bus, transferred to another wrong bus, and ended up in a distant city where everyone spoke a language she didn't understand. Her money ran out, and she started begging in the streets. Accused of being an illegal immigrant, she was given shelter in a social services hostel. Years went by. Finally three people from her village visited the hostel by chance, and she was able to communicate in her native tongue. Through their assistance, she went home. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned, is this: Whatever wrong turn you made, and however long ago it was, you're ready to go back home.

Hmmmmm. I wonder if they mean what I think they mean.

Welcome to the Sparkyverse

Writing a novel, especially one that follows certain events that come from the experiences in your own life, is a mine field of technical hurdles. In the earliest drafts I didn't have a good idea how to weave around that explosive shrapnel, and ended up doing too much of a literal translation of the World As We Know It, which is to say I didn't allow myself a whole lot of artistic freedom. Through revision I started to figure out that the story was what was important here, and not how closely I represented the actual workings of the Franklin Medical Center or all the logistics of travelling from Greenfield to Amherst, and so forth. I got totally bogged down by all that sort of thing instead of just telling the story.

Then I started to modify certain details to better suit the story, and that loosened some of the tension on the gears. Now, a lot of what appears in the book is my own creation, and that allows me greater freedom. What I'm going to do here is discuss some of the ways in which I reshaped the universe so that I could tell the story of Emma, Alyssa, and Kelly in a clearer fashion.

-- There is no such strip club as The Fuzzy Peach. I would bet a lot of people just assume I modelled it after Anthony's, or even Castaways, but the Peach doesn't resemble either of those clubs very much at all. If anything, it's closest to a strip club I visited exactly once, in San Francisco. While that's true, the basic structure of that chapter and the Fuzzy Peach already existed on paper before that trip to California. The Fuzzy Peach is my own creation.

-- I've had good relationships with several strippers over the years, Chrissy notwithstanding, but I've never had *that* sort of deal with any of them. Sylja is based on Chrissy, yes, but nothing like that ever happened to me inside of a strip club. Outside of one .... ?

-- Annville and the whole of Lapham County are also pretty much my own creation, with additional inspiration provided by a couple of other sources. I decided early on there was no way I was going to try to represent any actual Texas area, since I've never set one foot in the state, and considering the content of Chapter 2, I thought it best just to create my own county wholesale. Without that conceit, writing this chapter would have been impossible.

-- This same line of thought led to taking key people from my life and inserting them into the book in brand new roles. For instance, Guinevere shows up as a waitress at the Diner. A character based on Krysten appears throughout as Laurel's best friend, although she only met Colleen once (for about 10 seconds). One of my all-time favorite waitresses from Anthony's shows up as the other prominent Diner waitress. Four characters who are very closely based on FMC kitchen staff show up as stand-ins for Melissa's friends during the famous card game chapter. Markwell shows up as my cousin in another chapter. And that's only scratching the surface. There's a ton more.

-- Keeping the story in Massachusetts was a creative dead end, too (sorry, Guinevere). Moving events to New Hampshire freshened up everything, and gave me a better field of movement in which to move the various players around. It just feels right, so I'm going for it. To get this to work, though, I've had to make some alterations to the Upper Valley. For instance, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is far too monolithic to try and use as a setting, at least for my needs, so I tore down the much smaller Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, which is right here in Lebanon, and I'm replacing it with a smallish hospital of my own creation (to be named later), although it's going to be little more than a duplicate of good ol' FMC. I may have to do something similar with Lebanon College as far as making it a little more GCC. Artistic license is a wonderful thing.

-- Instead of beginning in 1990 and ending wherever I end it (with all the telescoping of other things I haven't figured that out yet), I moved the start date up to 2004. Trying to make all the details specific to the early 90's was just another distraction, since it doesn't matter a bit when this story happens as long as I get all the important things emotionally correct ... if that makes any sense. It makes sense in my brain, at least, even if I can't quite explain it here. Having a more contemporary feel to the story opened up a number of other creative possibilities as well. I expect the span of the main part of the story to be about three years, with some aftermath to follow.

Is that everything? I feel as though I've missed something else worth listing, but I'll be damned if I can think of it. You get the point, though. The book is still what it was originally intended to be (Erin's story), but it's grown into a whole 'nother thing also during the process. That is to say, it started out as my account of something I wanted to write about, and along the way it turned into a novel.

It's neat how that happens.

Ugly Truth

There is an interesting post upcoming detailing what I did Saturday night while out with Jen, which I'll probably do tomorrow. Considering the inebriated state I was in while chatting with Guinevere about it afterwords, it's a wonder I remember any of it at all, but like with the old days of Church I remember every detail. I just don't have the energy to tackle it head on right now. So let's go elsewhere.

I thought of this one today while driving home. My life as an inconoclast during my time as my alter-ego wasn't created out of thin air. I've always held some unpopular opinions, or at least some that aren't politically correct. Just because it was on my mind, and because I need something to jumpstart the second 100 batch of posts, I figued I'd bring some of those things up. Here we go.

Smoking is cool. I've always believed this, and I probably always will. It has nothing to do with the Marlboro Man or Joe Camel, but since I was a little kid it has looked cool to me when someone is smoking a cigarette. Sorry.

I'm surprised I never became a smoker because of that. It seemed like lighting up would make me cool, and when I was younger I needed whatever help I could get, because when I was a teenager me and cool were pretty far apart. Colleen might disagree with that, but she'd be the only one. I didn't know anyone at the time who smoked either. Since then, I've been good friends with lots of smokers, including Dan, Adam, my ex-wife, Milta, Shannon, Becky, Larissa, Tanja, Lisa, and Jen. Yes, Jen is a smoker, too. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that here or not. I used to hang out in smoky strip clubs and other bars. And the Diner was wall to wall smoke morning, noon, and night. I've been a secondhand smoker for a while now.

Oh, I have smoked a cigarette in my time. Truth be told, I have a pack in my car right now. Back in the day, I used to take cigarettes from Dan or Larissa and air-smoke them, which is to say I would go through the motions of smoking a butt without inhaling. Sure, that's dumb, but I wanted to know what it was like to see how the other half lived. Soon after that, I started smoking some teeny weeny cigars, because fuck it, I wanted to smoke something. I did inhale those, too, and I used to get a wicked headrush out of those. I stopped with those sometime around when I closed down the whole Church thing in an overall effort to clean myself up. But I picked that habit back up during my stay on second shift at LSI, if for only a few months.

It was Jen who taught me how to really smoke a cigarette. You would think it would have been Dan, or Shannon perhaps, but nope. I never actually took a real puff until Jen taught me how to smoke for real while we were sitting at a picnic table plotting evil the day before she got fired from LSI. The headrush I got from inhaling those Marlboros almost knocked me out, but they weren't really so bad. Now I only have one once in a while, just for the hell of it, like today on the way home from work. It's no cause for concern, because I can really take it or leave it.

But now I've seen how the other half lives.

It Isn't Nice to Fool With Mother Nature

For this, my landmark 100th Stray Bullets post, I figured I'd do something special, even though I have other topics on the burner. I wanted to finish up the trilogy I started way back with the Wheel of Destiny post (Save the Cheerleader), and recently continued with the Nice Lady post (The High Cost of Living), and try to tie all these things up in a nice, neat little ribbon ... if that's even possible given the weirdo nature of these topics. So from here we go into what I believe in, why, and where it all came from.

For a while I didn't believe in anything, as far as religion goes. Our family, or at least the four of us, didn't go to church, and the concepts of god and all that never evolved for me past a kind of abstract idea. When I was little I did assume there wa sa god and he was out there somewhere, as depicted in the cartoons and other places, that there was a Heaven, and all the Jesus stuff happened like they said it did. I'm not saying I was a believer in the sense that I was religious or anything, but I just took it all for granted the same way I did with Santa Claus and such.

My first real experience with religion didn't come until I was hooked up with Betsy, and she tried to convert me to the Catholic Church when I was 18, and by then it was just too late. I gave it an honest effort, but really I was just going through the motions of trying to appease her and make her family happy. I'll try it, but that's about it. Then she gave me a whole book of stuff that I "had to believe" if she and I were going to get married, and I looked at it, read some of the stuff in there, and sorry ... I just don't think so, babe.

Around that time I played around with the idea of atheism, but that was never little more than a pose. If anything I was just agnostic, and didn't know what I believed in. Even so, even if I didn't buy into everything that Betsy wanted me to, there was still a sense in my head that there was something out there in the universe directing traffic. Now remember, this was long before the notion of the Nice Lady came to fruition as a benevloent force helping me out, long before I had any ideas about the Wheel of Destiny, and even before I found Calliope. I just had a vague sense of something.

The first thing I came across that started to connect the dots was Chaos Theory. The first time I'd ever heard of that theory was in Jurassic Park, where the theory is expounded upon by Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum), one of my favorite movie characters of all time (he has all the best lines in that movie). I didn't know if chaos theory was something real or if it had just been made up by Michael Chrichton and/or Steven Speilberg, but I was utterly fascinated by it. A couple years later, Colleen bought me a book on chaos theory for my birthday, which I still have, and even though I'm utterly confused while trying to read that book, I'm still fascinated by the theory. In the Cliff Notes version of the theory, it's the thing you've probably heard about where the flapping of butterflies in Africa can cause hurricanes to hit the United States. That sort of thing. But it's way more complex than that.

As influential as chaos theory was, however, it was something that stayed in the back of my mind, and it didn't cause any sort of religious epiphany. Then I bought and read the book that changed my life. It's funny how books can do that. There are others, and I'll write a post about those later on, but I don't want to get too far off point right now. The book is The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. It's a book that defies rational description, because it's the most bananas thing I've ever read, dealing with conspiracy theory, secret societies, the secret history of the world, and all sorts of other wacky things. Most importantly, it introduced me to Discordianism, which is the religion I now most closely associate myself, even if I don't follow it to the letter.

Discordianism itself sort of defies any rational description as well, except that the Goddess they've chosen is an old goddess from Greek Mythology, so obscure I didn't even remember her, even though I'm fairly versed in that mythology. In the Greek myths her name is Eris, and she's responsible for the start of the Trojan War, through an act of mischief and troublemaking among the other goddesses. She's the goddess of chaos, and she's all over the Trilogy. As soon as they started talking about her, I knew she was the one for me. I even tracked down a copy of the Discordian bible -- the Principia Discorida -- and studied it until my brain hurt. This was ten years ago now, and I still don't understand it all, but I find it endlessly fascinating.

In the Trilogy she's given a full name: Eris Kallisti Discordia. As portrayed there and in the Principia she'd be enough goddess for anyone, but I didn't stop there. If I had, I just wouldn't be me. I started to think about the universe being run by a crazy woman, and thought about chaos theory and how that works, and I sort of made a connection with the Wiccan goddess (I won't talk about Wicca very much here at all, because I haven't studied it, and I'd only be talking out my ass), and it struck me that if they worship a sort of nature goddess, and I'm interested in a chaotic goddess, and chaos can affect nature in a very real way, that Eris as I understand her could be the real name of Mother Nature. As with the Nice Lady it all just locked together in my brain.

I found an image that kind of represents Eris as I see her in my brain, personified here by Myspace icon Holly Clark. Rather fetcing, no?


You can call me a lunatic if you want to, but it all makes sense to me. Compared to what Betsy wanted me to swallow, I think it makes *more* sense.

Hail Eris. All hail Discordia.

Sparky Sells Out

This goes back to another conversation I had with Colleen a couple weeks back when she was up for a visit in advance of mom's hip surgery. We were talking about Harry Potter, as the seventh and final installment of the Potter saga was out and all the rage everywhere you looked. And like I said then, and it's still true now, I haven't read a single sentence of any of the Harry Potter books, nor have I watched a minute of any of the movie adaptations. It didn't start out as any sort of boycott on J.K. Rowling or anything like that. At first I just missed the boat. Then it got so over-hyped that the thought of touching any of those books made me feel ill. I just started avoiding the entire thing.

On the other hand, there was this feeling that I was missing out. I'm sure the books are well written and that I would enjoy them whenever I finally broke down and decided to give them a shot. In my lifetime here I've decided that I need to experience everything possible that I can experience, and especially the best stuff, so I'm really just hurting myself by not digging in. It would be like if I never started reading Stephen King in the mid-80's because he was this monolithic best selling author. That wouldn't have benefitted me, and I'm sure this isn't either.

My local comic book guy kind of put it in perspective, too, in a roundabout way. Back when Sandman first came out and was all the rage, he put off reading it because it was so hyped, and everybody kept pushing it at him, and then he swore a vow that he'd *never* read it, and he never has. And this is Sandman, perhaps the best comic book series ever put out. He's missing out. I don't want to miss out.

So today I broke down and bought the first Harry Potter book. I haven't touched it yet, because I got busy this evening (that's a whole 'nother post unto itself), but I might tomorrow. I've decided to open myself up to Potter-mania.

It had better be worth it.

Victory From the Ashes

It's been a long week. We're back in gun production after last week's shutdown, but Barney, our cell leader, has still been on vacation, as has Mike the supervisor, so we've pretty much been on our own. That isn't a biggie, since Fred, Brad, and Jim know what to do inside and out, but as they aren't really the authority none of them really broke down what everybody would be doing (Brad would be the one to step in if none of us were to do anything), so we kind of all fell into our default positions. Since Jason was also out all week on a leave of absence something or other, I took over both gas-block and slide fit, which can be a daunting task. But that's the kind of thing I do. I take the biggest bite of the pie that I can handle, even if sometimes I can only barely handle it. That's because I still feel as though I have something to prove.

Anyway, trying to cover both spots while keeping up with Jim, who was doing the bolt fit part that follows the slide fitting part, is a challenge. If I get in trouble on something, and it sets me back, people might be waiting for me, and I hate that. So I push hard to make sure that nobody ever has to wait for me to finish something so that they can do their thing, no matter what. How I set out to do that sort of violates the piece flow ideas advocated by Indiana Bob, but tough shit. If left alone I'll build up a reasonable supply, so that anytime Jim turns around I have a gun there for him. And for me to feel comfortable I need to build up a cushion of three or four parts ready.

There's a phrase for how I go at this, which is borrowed from some movie or other (I dunno; but I haven't seen it): Attack and never stop attacking. That's how I used to screen the foil, too. I would throw myself at the jobs with reckless abandon until they were done. Here, I keep building as much as possible ... without getting *too* far ahead.

However, the week was rough. On Wednesday we started the first of what would become four consecutive orders of Targets. Those can be a problem. For whatever reason the pieces that are needed for those guns don't fit together as well as the parts that go to the others. So I got into trouble trying to get the goddam gas block bottom, gas pipe, and bushing to fit. Then I got into trouble with some misaligned gas block tops, and ended up stripping a slew of screws trying to get the fucking things put together. And then the slide assemblies were tricky to get working, too. So Wednesday closed out rough. Thursday was a clusterfuck all day, to the point where I was only just not swearing out loud in colorful form. I got behind, people were waiting for me, and even when I was keeping up it was only by the skin of my teeth. I was never more than one ahead at any point, and I felt the pressure.

After lunch, Kent, who is like Mike's boss, came by to see how we were doing, and he observed me reaming out some of the gas block holes, and asked why, so I told him why, and I showed him one, and he took those parts down to the machine shop to look into it, and then one of the machine techs came out to see us, and I showed him, and he knew what the problem was and went to look into it. Meanwhile, I still had to do my best with what I had to work with, and I was so aggravated and frustrated that I started contemplating looking through the want-ads for other work opportunities. Or maybe I'd up and move to Phoenix or something. Whatever.

Today didn't start out much better. I continued to struggle with those gas blocks, until I got Bob (our spider) to switch out the ones I had with some fresh ones from the machine shop. Oh, and they fit together like watch parts, baby. And then it was ON from that point. I started slamming like a motherfucker and built up a lead of four guns on the slide bench, and two more in the gas block area, and I maintained that lead the rest of the day. In fact, since that was as far as I let myself get ahead, there were times that I got to stand around and wait for the next operation (especially when Jim passed it off to Allen, who doesn't really know how to do bolt assembly all too well), and I enjoyed that. I'm not much of a stand around guy, but given the couple days I'd just survived I was all for it.

A bit after lunch Brad took over the bolt fitting part, and I kept that same lead built up. Everytime he took a gun from my stash of four I had another one ready to go over there. Jim was kind of watching how I was doing it, and I think he could see the instincts that were coming into play, how I was watching for when Brad took a gun and whatnot, and he said

"I think you would have done great on incentive."

Incentive is the old system Rugers used to use, in which people were paid more the more guns they churned out. I don't really get how it works completely, but the older guys really like it better than the Lean system they're forced to use now. So I understood that to be a rather nice compliment, and it was just what I needed to hear this afternoon.

I understand that I'm not a natural at this sort of work. As with many of the things I do, I need time to build up my skills. I'm not sure I've ever drilled anything before in my life, in fact. When I got there I didn't even understand how the whole gun worked, and I'm not sure that I do now either. But I wasn't a natural screener either, and I became the best. I may not be the best in that cell, since there are some really experienced guys in there, but I sure as fuck will not be the weak link of the group.

And nobody will ever try harder than I will.

This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated

You know, if books were rated the same way that motion pictures are, everything I'll ever write will get at least a hard R rating, if not an NC-17. A lot of my ideas just lend themselves to sex and violence, and a lot of both. I'm not criticizing or anything. That's just what I enjoy. But the chances that I'm ever going to write a sweet little book for kids might be a longshot.

Let's take book one (working title: All Fall Down, even though I know that's been used before. I have an alternate in mind, but I have to check into how copyright stuff works because it's also a song title.): it's probably the least violent book I'll ever write. However, there's a lot of rough stuff in there. We know what happens to Emma in her chapter already. Another major character takes a severe thrashing around about Chapter 12. There are other fights, very near fights, a few people take a serious pounding, and there's a whole lot of sexual content and foul language. Chapter 1 might get me that R rating just for it's tone.

Book two (working title: Bloody Cigarettes): This is the one I mentioned before that comes as an offshoot of the Shannon and me thing. It's going to be much more violent than the first book. I won't be holding back this time, and the blood will fly. If it comes off like I think it might, this book could get me one of my subsidary goals: to hit the 'banned book' list. It's got a shot.

Ok, so what else? My mom is after me to write a mystery book, based on a fairly hilarious conversation Colleen and I had a couple weekends ago. Ok, so my mom has also said I should write a science-fiction book and a children's book, too, but nevermind. It's possible that I could drum up a decent mystery type something for Book Three, but I doubt I'll do it in the standard gimmicky style that's all the rage. It'll be a lot more Pulp than that. I even have some idea who my detective character could be, and since I've spent so much time portraying her online, I know her pretty well. Besides, a sarcastic, anti-social, alcoholic private investigator sounds like a lot of fun to write. She even comes with most of the supporting cast intact. This could be a real idea, and it could work, so don't judge me.

There's also the matter of the fifteen or so stories I wrote for the Batcave dealing with my own super-villain characters, which I am saving for myself from there while I'm pulling the rest of it apart. I think they're viable, and most of the overriding story is complete in my noggin. I could make some money off of those girls, either in prose or in comic book form. I'm not going to abandon the concept, at any rate. And keeping with the theme of this post, any book that I create out of those characters will be *obscenely violent*. The proof of that is in the body of work I've already put out there.

Maybe I have some issues?

Diary of a Virgo, volume 8

Why fight for rights that are already yours, Virgo? Why sacrifice yourself for the benefit of people who wouldn't fully appreciate your gifts? And why are you even thinking about dividing when you should be multiplying? Any of these acts would be a crime against yourself. So listen up: You just have to hold out a little longer. If you can avoid running up a big karmic debt in the next few days, if you can refrain from hurting yourself in a misguided attempt to fix situations that can't be fixed, you'll be home free. Soon the whole cast of monsters, demons, and goons will pack up their inane torture devices and go trundling back to the hells where they came from.

You know, this sounds good on the surface ... but for some reason it makes me a little fearful. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Karmic debt. I wonder if I should belay any Church plans, not that I have any at the moment.

Oi! Prick!

There's a better title for this post, but as my audience is entirely female ... it was deemed unuseable. Alas.

While working on Chapter 4, which has been a struggle this time around so far, I get to work on one of my favorite characters, which is Ben, who is based on Dan, who was my best friend from the spring of 1992 until about the end of 2000, at which point we lost touch, partially thanks to some mucking around by Jude. Why I haven't since tracked him down is a matter of some conjecture, but it is on my list of things to do this year. I don't know if he'll be as receptive to it as I hope he'll be, but that's something I'm going to find out.

Anyway, Ben is Kelly's best friend in the book, and their relationship is very closely based on our real life relationship, and the hundreds of times we used to hang out at the Diner and discuss the minutitae of our lives, and in particular every girl we met, down to the atomic level. It's fitting then that our first look at these two takes place at the Diner, where they are discussing the events of Chapter 3, and Alyssa in particular. If I based that friendship on it's real life counterpart only, it would probably be enough to be entertaining, but as usual the things I watch that I really like play an influence.

The most prominent is probably Seinfeld, as I was onto this one way early in the game. A lot of the riffs at the Diner pay homage to Jerry and George at the coffee shop. What we really used to do is a lot like what you see on that show, and I'm reflecting it back. There's also a helping of Dante and Randall in how Kelly and Ben get along, and I would say especially from Clerks 2, a movie I loved *way* more than I expected to. And there's a third influence, too.

A few years ago Colleen bought me Shaun of the Dead for X-Mas, and it is such a brilliant movie, but rather than give you a review of it here and now, I want to point something out. The relationship between Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) is almost a blueprint for what it was like to hang out with me and Dan. It's almost letter perfect. What's happening between Shaun and Liz at the beginning parallels the effect Dan had on two of my relationships. And the Winchester is really just a proxy for the Diner. Whether or not you like zombie movies, or even a satire of zombie movies, you should watch SotD just for this reason alone. I think Colleen, at least, had enough exposure to Dan so that some notes of recognition would register. To a lesser extent, you could also watch the same two actors in Hot Fuzz, but SotD is much more spot on.

There are a lot more Dan stories to tell in the blog, and I'll get to those in good time. Writing for his character, which he was a big fan of by the way, just made me think of these influences, and I thought it would make for a good post.

Plus, I miss the big lug.

Endgame

I'm going to work towards the point behind this post gradually. You might say I'm going to sneak up behind it. There is a reason for it. You'll see.

Anyway, I started 2007 with a plan. Really, it was nothing more than the typical sort of things you come up with at New Years to fill out your resolutions, most of which will be ignored and forgotten when spring kicks into gear. And I made some of those, and by the time spring came along I was busy and distracted with other things. But you know what happened next already, right? I met *that girl* and she introduced catastrophic change into my life, and then when things really started moving I restructured the plan.

1. Leave LSI. Step one was no more than leave that company. Accomplished.

2. Decide what company would be the one where I was going to stay. In case Rugers didn't work out, I worked on some back-up plans. Since Rugers worked out, that's where I'm staying. Accomplished.

3. Figure out where I'm going to live. I've wanted to move out of this rathole for a long time, and it would be nice to have a real apartment. Where I'm moving to was dependant on which job I was going to stay at. Now that I know, I'm going to start looking in the Newport/Claremont area pretty soon.

4. Definitively figure out what's going on with Jen and me. This step here was set in my head before she and I started going out in official capacity two months ago. At that time we were doing the confusing mixed signals thing, and I figured it would take until about now for us to come to some conclusion. However, she went ahead and jumped this one up in the batting order when she told me she was willing to give it a shot, after I made an issue of a few things. Of course, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since, and there is no way to know how this story is going to play out, but at some point the decisions we made will have to be revisited.

That's as far as I numbered these out, but those four items are only the beginning. I have massive, major plans for my future. Obviously, writing tops the list. I will finish this book and get it published. And then I have my second book already in mind. If I'm successful with those, I'd like to parlay my talent into a regular gig writing a monthly comic book ... while working on my third book. There's a lot I want to do, a lot I want to accomplish, and a lot I want to experience. All those gears are starting to turn, and plans are being put into motion.

But what do I really want? If you boil it all down, what is the one thing I want more than anything else. Yes, I want to be a published novelist, and that is an attainable goal. I just need to put in the hard work. But that isn't it. That isn't enough. I know what I want. It came to me about a week ago, and I've been sitting on it, thinking about it, deciding whether or not to talk about it here. And it will probably come as no surprise to some of y'all.

I want to have a baby. Now, I'm not saying tomorrow. Or this year. Or even next year. This might be a three to five year plan. It might take longer than that even, as there are numerous factors that will come into play here. But that is the goal. That's the endgame. I don't know who the mother will be, I don't know if we'll be married, if we'll just live together, or if we won't even be a couple at all -- I have no idea. We can worry about that later. First, I have to get myself into position. The way it looks, it'll be a lengthy road to travel, starting from where I am right now. But I will get there.

What about Jennifer? I won't get into it all, but she is both unable and perhaps unwilling to ever conceive a child. Let me say right here that I'm fine with that. And if she and I were in a normal relationship that I was happy with, there is *no way* I would ever end it for that reason. We'd work something out, one way or the other. But we don't have a normal relationship, and there are some unsatisfying elements inside of that relationship, and there's always been an invisible clock ticking down on the both of us. There's no way to know when that clock is going to run out, and even though I wish some things were different, I'm in no hurry for time to run out on Jen and me. But as much as I really *really* like the girl, there's almost no chance that she'll be the mother when the time comes around. There's a good chance she'll be in another part of the country by then.

So I'm thinking way ahead. The inherent conflict laid out in the last paragraph troubles me more than you know, but it's clear to me how that relationship will eventually end up, barring some very unforseen circumstance or a change in her basic nature, which I don't see happening.

Either way, the endgame is in view.

The High Cost of Living

The things I believe in are strange. I know that. But as bizarre as they may seem to those of you reading, everything in my belief system has grown organically out of circumstance. I've never been religious, per se, not in the traditional sense, even though Betsy tried her god damnedest to convert me, but the combination of various different things, culled from disparate sources, is more or less the religion that I follow. We've already looked at the Wheel of Destiny, which has proven itself to me beyond a shadow of a doubt with how the Jen/Rugers angle has played out so far, and that is a part of it. The Wheel acts as a function of the Larger Plan, which itself is a part of the Greater Purpose. What my ultimate greater purpose is .... I don't know. I will find out.

What I want to talk about this time is the Nice Lady. As I understand her, she also serves the Greater Purpose ... as some sort of guardian angel. I believe that she has saved my life at least half a dozen times, if not more, keeping me around so that I can fulfill my destiny, whatever it is. If that doesn't sound crazy enough, the concept of the Nice Lady begins with a ghost story.

When I was really little we lived in Westfield, Massachusetts. We weren't there very long, and I barely remember it at all. But this ghost story comes from that house. I wouldn't necessarily give any old ghost story so much credence, but it comes from my dad, who is about the last person you'd ever expect to hear a ghost story from. He might not be certain that this is in fact a ghost story, but any alternate theories I've heard, like an intruder in the house that evaded detection on the way in and out, stretch credulity more than a tad. I'm calling it a ghost story and sticking to it.

I was upstairs sleeping in my bed. Since we were living in Westfield I couldn't have been more than three years old, and maybe I was even younger than that. I'm not sure. I have no recollection of this episode whatsoever. My dad was downstairs reading the paper or something. My mom wasn't home and I don't think Colleen was around yet, or if so, she was just a baby. But to summarize, just me and my dad were home. Dad then heard footsteps going up the stairs. Thinking mom was home from the grocery store, he went out to the kitchen to see if he could help carry in some bags. The car, however, was not in the driveway. It wasn't mom. Then he shot upstairs after the footsteps.

I was awake. Wide awake and sitting up, he says. I asked him, very clearly, "When is the Nice Lady coming back?" So he asked if I meant my mother, and I said that I didn't. He verified that a couple of times. Nope, not mom. The Nice Lady. I believe he even tried some alternates, like some of my aunts and such, in case I was thinking of somebody else or had been dreaming or whatever. Nope. I insisted that the Nice Lady had just been there. My dad, feeling a little unsettled now, searched the entire house for any sign of anyone -- anyone who might be a Nice Lady or who might have been walking up the stairs only a minute ago. This included a search of a deep walk-in closet located within the room I'd been sleeping in. And he describes going in there, with a whole mess of clothes hanging, and having to look behind them all in case some crazy woman was hiding in there. He didn't find anyone.

So there's always been this ghost story of the Nice Lady, but for a long time that's all it was: just a story. I never connected it to any other thing, even after I had my first car accident, which should have really fucked me up .... but didn't. The Nice Lady didn't take on the pseudo-religious implications, and become the guardian angel of my ultimate destiny, until about three years ago. And then an issue of a comic book put it all together for me, and the epiphany hit me like a runaway freight train.

The comic is Sandman #20, "Facade", written by Neil Gaiman. He's an author of some note. He's written some excellent novels, which are now starting to be adapted into movies (like Stardust), and his run on Sandman is considered by most knowledgeable comic fans as one of the greatest runs ever, period, end of story. I'm not hoping to convince anyone to go out and read this particular issue or anything, because I know how that'll go, but I think it's significant that the same trade paperback that connected the Nice Lady for me also has the issue of Sandman that gave me Calliope (#17).

Anyway, to make a long story short, there's a character in the story with a problem, and she's extremely depressed. She's also, due to her super powers, functionally immortal, and she just doesn't want to live anymore. And she's visited by Death of the Endless, who talks to her about her problem and then helps her solve it. And in that story I saw my Nice Lady represented. Now, before this point I never pictured the Nice Lady looking like that particular comic book character, but I do now ... even if my interpretation of her role in my life isn't exactly representational of her role in that comic book. It's complicated.

Before that epiphany, however, I'd been aware that there were several instances where something or other happened through which I should have been seriously injured or died, but wasn't and didn't. I've always thought that something aside from the natural world reached down and saved me from my first car accident, in which I slammed sideways into a telephone pole at a high rate of speed, and woke up thirty feet away from the car with only a scratch on my forehead. It should have been much worse. My second car accident was a pretty rough affair, too, out of which I only got a minor concussion. There are also my several drinking and driving adventures from 1998, which I survived completely unscathed. A few other times during that same summer I did incredibly foolish things and nothing happened, including one time in Springfield I could have been shot dead. And a few things I won't mention here at all, and probably never will, but were a product of severe depression. Either I'm a cat and I have nine lives (at least) .... or the Nice Lady is watching out for me, and she's saved my life numerous times so that I can go on to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do.

I know which one I believe.

Ain't No Cure For the Summertime Blues

I'm weary of the Jen Saga right now, so I won't do a whole post on that, even though things are somewhat better today. I am still annoyed with the girl, but that's my cross to bear at the moment. And I'm too hot, tired, and dirty from work still (it was about 110 degrees in there), beyond the ability of the shower I took to fix, so the only thing I really feel like talking about is writing progress. There is yet a whole host of other topics to touch on, but I'm sitting here sweating my nuts off, so fuck it.

I finished Chapter 3 yesterday. That isn't big news. I'd only left myself the last 1.5 pages, so it was kind of a lay-up. I finished out the initial dance between Kelly and Alyssa, left the chapter on that interesting note of mystery, which I haven't even explained yet all those chapters later, and I think it's pretty good. Next up is Chapter 4, which I didn't get to today, because after my shower I just collapsed into bed and stayed there until about 9:00 when Jen called again; she'd also called around 5:00, but I was too lazy and weary to answer it ... even though I suspected it might be her. Alas.

Ok, so Chapter 4. The opening scene is the first time we visit with Kelly at work, and there is the problem. Some time back, tired of the hospital setting, I changed it to a factory setting. Now I have to change it back. What I changed it to is way too LSI, and I'm not having that. But there are positives and negatives. I feel as though the hospital is the correct setting for this crew, and the factory is not. However, looking through the pages, I changed the setting so convincingly that it works very well. The small bit of Gwen and Kelly discussing their night ahead is really good, better than it was in the hospital setting. Also, when I had the chapter so that it went through what Kelly did during the night in the kitchen, it just seemed so boring and trivial, which is why I think I changed it in the first place.

But overall, the hospital setting does work better. It's easier to manage what everyone is doing, for one thing, and especially Willow and Alexis. It was especially hard to shoehorn in a position for Alexis at the factory that was somewhat equivalent to having her work in the nutrition office. But that does bring up another thing, too. At the hospital, since it runs seven days a week, that means someone always has to be on shift, and it's impossible that every crew memeber is present during any one shift. So how I contrived that scene with the crew meeting where everyone is present in that small office ... I'm not sure. I'm really trying to make this seem like a natural work setting, where people have days off and such, unlike say Mel's Diner, where anytime it's open Mel, Alice, Vera, and Flo are all there, and it just doesn't make sense that a busy diner only has four people working in it, and that diner has to be open every day, too. Converting these scenes back to the hosptial kitchen means I have to figure out a better flow.

Oh, and the factory ran Monday through Friday. If I do the hospital again, someone has to work Saturday and Sunday evenings. What days does Kelly work there, anyway? How late do they stay? I know in the earlier versions of these scenes they worked until 11:00. Maybe I should scale that back. I don't know yet. This requires some thought.

So tomorrow afternoon, this is my task. I have to hammer out these issues in some satisfactory way. The rest of the chapter is pretty solid, and thank goodness for that.

*****

Ok, while I was figuring out the labels for this post, I had a thought ... kinda. What if Kelly works Monday through Friday, and on those nights the kitchen is open until 11, but on Saturday and Sunday they're only open until 7 or 9. I have to think this out a bit yet, but it's a start.