In my continuing effort to figure out why I am the way I am, because there is some really strange wiring in my head, and because I'm essentially the sum of my many influences, I had the idea while driving home to talk about some of the larger sized crushes of my childhood and see what evidence comes out of that. When I was a kid, I never really went through the "girls are icky" phase, and I learned very early on that many girls are really really really cool. However, I could never really capitalize on the lack of girl ickiness due to my paralyzing shyness, so the two of those things working in combination with each other caused me all sorts of angst and frustration. Even so, I liked girls a whole lot. Yes I did.
Here we go ...
Mean Mary Jean. I'll be honest and tell you that I really have no idea who this is, except she was in some local commercials when I was too young to remember them now. But my dad insists that I was in love with this woman, and since she's technically the first it would be wrong not to include her.
Gwen Stacy. To put her in easier to understand terms, Gwen was the Betty to Mary Jane's Veronica in Peter Parker's Archie like lovelife. That is to say that while MJ was the vixen, Gwen Stacy was the girl next door (the MJ of the movies is more Gwenish than her counterpart in the books). She was the "good girl" and I totally dug her in a lot of the older comics I read in reprints. I say that because she died in one of the earliest issues of Spider-Man that I read. So not only did this start the germ of the good girl thing I have, paving the way for girls like Erin and Chrissy, but it also sparked my passion for tragic love affairs. I can actually draw a straight line from Gwen to Laura Palmer, who was also dead before I ever got to meet her.
Julie Newmar. I was such a fan of that Batman show and it's crazy cast of villains, but the one I always looked forward to the most was the Catwoman episodes where she was played by Julie Newmar in that skintight black cat costume. She was without a doubt the sexiest thing my little brain had ever encountered, and gave me the interest in "bad girls" that I have, paving the way for girls like Melissa, Samantha, and Jen. This early imprinting may be why I have such an interest in cosplayers like Ruby Rocket, too.
Daphne Blake. Not only was she the dish on Scooby Doo, but she was the hottest thing going in cartoons overall at the time. She almost certainly installed in me the whole Damsel in Distress thing that I've had my entire life.
Shelley Nicholson. From the time we moved to Bernardston when I was in the middle of the first grade all the way through high school graduation, she was the IT girl at school. All of us liked her, and I was no exception. This is a rare case where I was able to defeat my programming by letting her know I'd had a crush on her, although I had to do it by writing it in her yearbook at the end of senior year.
Miss Couture. The legendary hot substitute teacher of Bernardston Elementary. Everyone, without exception, loved her and I don't recall a single instance when any of us acted up or gave her a hard time when she was subbing for us. In true 70's fashion, she had straight blond hair that went on forever. I remember her being nice to a fault. Later on she got a regular teaching gig there, but I wasn't lucky enough to be in one of her classes. I think Colleen had her for a year, but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm sure she couldn't appreciate her good fortune on many of the same levels that *all* of the male children in the school would have.
Pinky Tuscadero. The only woman in the world cool enough to win the heart of the Fonz, even though they didn't end up together. They could have, and she would have been the right one for him. When she's in that demolition derby and the Malache brothers are closing in on her after her car has stalled out ... I was genuinely terrified that she was going to get hurt.
Sally Field. The first encounter was in Smokey and the Bandit, when she's picked up hitchhiking and stays for the adventure. I've always dreamed of driving along and coming across my own Sally Field. She was so awesome in that movie that I fell right in love with her. This was later exacerbated when Gidget went into local syndication.
Laura Petrie. During my childhood she'd already moved on to the Mary Tyler Moore show, but I've always loved her best in black and white as suburban housewife Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show. I hoped that someday I'd grow up and meet someone just like her.
Olivia Newton John. Of them all, this one was the biggest. When I saw Grease a neutron bomb went off inside my head, and her character Sandy became a huge measuring stick against which everything later would be judged. She had me right away as the beautiful and sweet as apple pie Sandy, but at the movie's conclusion, when she shows up all sexified and vixenish ... it's impossible to explain the impact that had on me. This movie helped bridge the gap between the otherwise contradictory impulses towards good girls and bad girls (see: Gwen Stacy; Julie Newmar) that were a swirling cauldron inside me.
Honorable mentions: Marsha Brady, Barbara Eden as Jeannie, Yvonne "Batgirl" Craig, the Invisible Girl, Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, Josie McCoy (of the Pussycats), Maren Jensen on Battlestar Galactica, Princess Leia, the Black Canary, and Zatanna.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Diary of a Virgo, volume 24
First let me make it clear that I'm not predicting you will face difficult events in the coming days. Not at all. Second, I'm not saying you will have to endure more pain than usual. Third, I believe your suffering will be about average -- similar to what normal people bear in normal times. Having said all that, though, I encourage you to be aggressively exploratory toward the pain you feel. Have long talks with your murky fears. Gaze bravely into the parts of your life that make you sad. Why? Because it's a favorable time to search for treasure that's buried in the shadows -- to enhance your psychological health by dealing with what's not so healthy. Recall Carl Jung's wise words: "The foundation of all mental illness is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering."
Well, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
Well, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sick Fuck From the Wild Wild West
Today pretty well sucked. We seem to be running out of parts again, so some of us got farmed out to do other things, Fred is on vacation, David is gone to work at Wilson Tires, and that left only a few of us to run the guns. At times today it felt very much like we were the small Spartan army facing down the gigantic Persian hordes, especially after Brad left at 2:00 (he has a family medical leave arrangement for his wife), which left me as the only bolt-fitter, and left the cell with only four of us remaining inside. Now this wouldn't be so terrible if the guns were running well, but they were not, and consequently the afternoon sucked big smelly ass. Most of the guns through the day were running at low headspace, which makes it near to impossible to find a bolt that'll fit. Barney showed up with some oversized bolts, which meant that I had to ream some guns and file most of the turned diameters on the bolts, which is fine because I can make any oversized bolts fit a gun some way or another, but then the pre-fire readings went to hell. And then I started to get frustrated and grumpy.
But after work I followed Cooter to his apartment in Claremont. He's been pushing for me to take his kitchen table, since he knows I haven't had one here, so that he can buy a different one. I was hesitant to agree to this sight-unseen, but fuck it, it's a kitchen table. I can always trade up later. It's a little beat-up, and there's some stuff stuck on the top of it in spots, which looks like melted and dried strawberry ice cream, but I figure I can clean that off somehow. My mom might have an idea how to go about it seeing as she's the world's next best thing to knowing Martha Stewart (mom knew how to clean my backpack after some orange tablets exploded all over it in the heat, for instance). While there I visited with Cooter and his girlfriend Amy for a little bit. I've yet to screw the legs back onto the table, however.
At work there's also this old guy named Bob, although we usually call him Getty, for the simple reason that Getty is his last name. He's the guy I was working for during shutdown week when I painted yellow poles yellow and painted the range doors yellow among the many other lousy tasks I had to do that week. At the time I referred to him as 'El Commadante' to Jen when I sat with her out at the picnic tables during lunch, but he's really a pretty nice guy ... when I'm not working for him. Normally, he's our Spider, which means he gets the parts we need to assemble guns with, and also means he's an all-around gofer. Since shutdown he and I have become good buds. He's originally from Turners Falls, once again proving it's a small world after all, so we've done a lot of comparative storytelling about Western Mass, which we both describe as sort of an outlaw land straight from the wild wild west. Between the two of us we paint a pretty descriptive picture of all the trouble you can find yourself in if you wander into the wrong neighborhoods down there, and of course Bob and I have both wandered into those neighborhoods.
We both tell Cooter, who is redneck straight to the bone, that he wouldn't last an hour in Massachusetts, especially in some godforsaken place like downtown Springfield or Holyoke, and that the women of that state would eat him alive and then pick their teeth with his bones. He thinks Amy is a little crazy? The boy should experience some of the shit I've seen down there from Mass chicks. In comparison, Amy is sweet and delightful (I actually think she is). He can't handle when Christy (from our cell) gives him a hard time, and she's the only NHGirl I've ever met who is actually comparable to a hardcore Mass Chick (but she's always nice to me), and I say that with a lot of respect, because Christy is one tough cookie. But she can get Cooter's goat, so it pretty much goes without saying that he'd be toast south of the border. Even Bob agrees with me on this wild generalization. "Yeah, they ARE mean down there."
There's also a running joke between Cooter and me regarding 'whores', which Bob has picked up on in a way that I'm not sure whether or not he's taking me a little *too* seriously with. Just because I happen to know where to find some hookers and whores in Holyoke and/or Springfield doesn't really mean much, because they really aren't hard to find in either city at all. But between that and some of the other running jokes and things we talk about in the cell ... he thinks I'm a sick bastard (although he always says that with a smile, and usually after I've said something reasonably horrible). I'm adding that right after Jen's assertion that I'm "shady", which she decided while we were both at LSI, as proof that my public image has changed a wee little bit from the old days.
A typical exchange will go something like this. He'll ask me what I'm doing that night or something. I'll answer with, "Well, I might pick up a couple hookers and some beer and head home." And then he'll say either a) "You sick bastard", or b) "You've got problems. You know that?"
That always makes me laugh.
But after work I followed Cooter to his apartment in Claremont. He's been pushing for me to take his kitchen table, since he knows I haven't had one here, so that he can buy a different one. I was hesitant to agree to this sight-unseen, but fuck it, it's a kitchen table. I can always trade up later. It's a little beat-up, and there's some stuff stuck on the top of it in spots, which looks like melted and dried strawberry ice cream, but I figure I can clean that off somehow. My mom might have an idea how to go about it seeing as she's the world's next best thing to knowing Martha Stewart (mom knew how to clean my backpack after some orange tablets exploded all over it in the heat, for instance). While there I visited with Cooter and his girlfriend Amy for a little bit. I've yet to screw the legs back onto the table, however.
At work there's also this old guy named Bob, although we usually call him Getty, for the simple reason that Getty is his last name. He's the guy I was working for during shutdown week when I painted yellow poles yellow and painted the range doors yellow among the many other lousy tasks I had to do that week. At the time I referred to him as 'El Commadante' to Jen when I sat with her out at the picnic tables during lunch, but he's really a pretty nice guy ... when I'm not working for him. Normally, he's our Spider, which means he gets the parts we need to assemble guns with, and also means he's an all-around gofer. Since shutdown he and I have become good buds. He's originally from Turners Falls, once again proving it's a small world after all, so we've done a lot of comparative storytelling about Western Mass, which we both describe as sort of an outlaw land straight from the wild wild west. Between the two of us we paint a pretty descriptive picture of all the trouble you can find yourself in if you wander into the wrong neighborhoods down there, and of course Bob and I have both wandered into those neighborhoods.
We both tell Cooter, who is redneck straight to the bone, that he wouldn't last an hour in Massachusetts, especially in some godforsaken place like downtown Springfield or Holyoke, and that the women of that state would eat him alive and then pick their teeth with his bones. He thinks Amy is a little crazy? The boy should experience some of the shit I've seen down there from Mass chicks. In comparison, Amy is sweet and delightful (I actually think she is). He can't handle when Christy (from our cell) gives him a hard time, and she's the only NHGirl I've ever met who is actually comparable to a hardcore Mass Chick (but she's always nice to me), and I say that with a lot of respect, because Christy is one tough cookie. But she can get Cooter's goat, so it pretty much goes without saying that he'd be toast south of the border. Even Bob agrees with me on this wild generalization. "Yeah, they ARE mean down there."
There's also a running joke between Cooter and me regarding 'whores', which Bob has picked up on in a way that I'm not sure whether or not he's taking me a little *too* seriously with. Just because I happen to know where to find some hookers and whores in Holyoke and/or Springfield doesn't really mean much, because they really aren't hard to find in either city at all. But between that and some of the other running jokes and things we talk about in the cell ... he thinks I'm a sick bastard (although he always says that with a smile, and usually after I've said something reasonably horrible). I'm adding that right after Jen's assertion that I'm "shady", which she decided while we were both at LSI, as proof that my public image has changed a wee little bit from the old days.
A typical exchange will go something like this. He'll ask me what I'm doing that night or something. I'll answer with, "Well, I might pick up a couple hookers and some beer and head home." And then he'll say either a) "You sick bastard", or b) "You've got problems. You know that?"
That always makes me laugh.
Monday, November 26, 2007
From the Ground Up
Chapter 8 is something of a difficult proposition. Through nothing more than chance, it has a higher amount of things that need to be fixed than most of the other chapters. I'll take a quick look at the scenes and show you why.
A. Kelly and Ben scene. This one isn't too bad, but it starts off with a wrestling discussion, and as I've changed the timeframe of the chapter from 2000 to 2004, that means everything they're talked about in the other version has to be chucked and done over. Or does it? As it turns out, the wrestler being discussed the most has even more relevance in 2004, and there's more reason for Ben in particular to hate said wrestler here than there was before. I was able to keep this scene mostly intact with only a few surface changes. One of those changes, which was unavoidable given the date of the scene, required me to namedrop Chris Benoit in a positive way, which is a little creepy given that he's the guy who went koo-koo-ca-choo earlier this year and killed his family. Couldn't be helped.
B. Kelly and Alyssa. This one was pretty good the way it was, and all I did was enhance it a bit. It's a sex scene to start with, but I handle that in my usual tactful way. Then it leads into something else, which pays off at the end of the chapter, which I won't spoil here.
C. Department meeting. Oh boy. This one is going to stress me out. The scene is a department meeting involving the entire evening kitchen staff, which means I have ten speaking parts to juggle, the most I've ever attempted in one scene. There's a pretty good balance between the characters, although certain characters (Gwen, Willow, Alexis) talk a lot more than some of the others. But that isn't the problem. A ways back, when I decided to change out the hospital setting, I altered this whole scene to work in the newer factory setting. Now that I'm trashing the factory setting, I have to re-hospitalize everything, which is going to be a pain in my ass. Also, I have to insert lines for the new cook character (Jill), who replaces that other person, who I never included in this scene. This is what I'm tackling tomorrow afternoon.
D. Kelly, Alyssa, and Emma. I won't need to change a whole lot here except to smooth things out a bit and change some creaky dialogue. I have a feeling that working on scene C is going to wipe me out, so I may not get to this one for a couple of days. This is actually a two-part scene, with a break in the middle of it, and a lot of important things happen, so I'm feeling a lot of pressure to nail it and nail it hard.
The chapter after that is the famous card game chapter, which was a big hit back at FMC when I was letting more (ie: too many) people read all this. Now this is a chapter I'm looking forward to working on a whole lot. That'll probably be this weekend or so, I would assume.
One thing I've noticed is that my dialogue skills are improving. There have been spots along the way where it seems less like the characters were talking to each other and more like they were just advancing some of the story. This wasn't much of an issue in the Season One chapters, since I've been over those with a comb more than a few times, but in this second season, with so much going on all over the place, I've caught myself doing that here and there.
One example was at the end of the last chapter when Kelly and Alyssa were at Temptation's Wing, and one of Alyssa's goons gives Kelly something to think about. It was a decent scene already, but a bit perfunctory, so I fleshed out that new character's dialogue a little. That character isn't based on the actual person that would have been, but instead on a friend of mine from FMC named Tim, who worked in both the kitchen and housekeeping at different times. I know he worked there sometime during 98, because he went to Church with us once, but I can't remember if he was still there during Guinevere's tenure or if he'd left by then. But he was a thin black man who hit on every female he could, and was kind of a smooth operator, and as such ... perfect for this role. In fact, I wrote the bulk of his character's speech to Kelly while on lunch break in the cafe immediately after listening to Tim talk about one of his ex-girlfriends in Springfield. I had to get it while the rhythm was in my head, and it really worked. It's even better now that I let the character take his time in saying what he has to say.
I took that same approach with Alyssa in the second scene of Chapter 8, and let her do a little extra talking to get around to where she was headed, and that worked out pretty good.
In fact, tonight I wrote my little black heart out.
A. Kelly and Ben scene. This one isn't too bad, but it starts off with a wrestling discussion, and as I've changed the timeframe of the chapter from 2000 to 2004, that means everything they're talked about in the other version has to be chucked and done over. Or does it? As it turns out, the wrestler being discussed the most has even more relevance in 2004, and there's more reason for Ben in particular to hate said wrestler here than there was before. I was able to keep this scene mostly intact with only a few surface changes. One of those changes, which was unavoidable given the date of the scene, required me to namedrop Chris Benoit in a positive way, which is a little creepy given that he's the guy who went koo-koo-ca-choo earlier this year and killed his family. Couldn't be helped.
B. Kelly and Alyssa. This one was pretty good the way it was, and all I did was enhance it a bit. It's a sex scene to start with, but I handle that in my usual tactful way. Then it leads into something else, which pays off at the end of the chapter, which I won't spoil here.
C. Department meeting. Oh boy. This one is going to stress me out. The scene is a department meeting involving the entire evening kitchen staff, which means I have ten speaking parts to juggle, the most I've ever attempted in one scene. There's a pretty good balance between the characters, although certain characters (Gwen, Willow, Alexis) talk a lot more than some of the others. But that isn't the problem. A ways back, when I decided to change out the hospital setting, I altered this whole scene to work in the newer factory setting. Now that I'm trashing the factory setting, I have to re-hospitalize everything, which is going to be a pain in my ass. Also, I have to insert lines for the new cook character (Jill), who replaces that other person, who I never included in this scene. This is what I'm tackling tomorrow afternoon.
D. Kelly, Alyssa, and Emma. I won't need to change a whole lot here except to smooth things out a bit and change some creaky dialogue. I have a feeling that working on scene C is going to wipe me out, so I may not get to this one for a couple of days. This is actually a two-part scene, with a break in the middle of it, and a lot of important things happen, so I'm feeling a lot of pressure to nail it and nail it hard.
The chapter after that is the famous card game chapter, which was a big hit back at FMC when I was letting more (ie: too many) people read all this. Now this is a chapter I'm looking forward to working on a whole lot. That'll probably be this weekend or so, I would assume.
One thing I've noticed is that my dialogue skills are improving. There have been spots along the way where it seems less like the characters were talking to each other and more like they were just advancing some of the story. This wasn't much of an issue in the Season One chapters, since I've been over those with a comb more than a few times, but in this second season, with so much going on all over the place, I've caught myself doing that here and there.
One example was at the end of the last chapter when Kelly and Alyssa were at Temptation's Wing, and one of Alyssa's goons gives Kelly something to think about. It was a decent scene already, but a bit perfunctory, so I fleshed out that new character's dialogue a little. That character isn't based on the actual person that would have been, but instead on a friend of mine from FMC named Tim, who worked in both the kitchen and housekeeping at different times. I know he worked there sometime during 98, because he went to Church with us once, but I can't remember if he was still there during Guinevere's tenure or if he'd left by then. But he was a thin black man who hit on every female he could, and was kind of a smooth operator, and as such ... perfect for this role. In fact, I wrote the bulk of his character's speech to Kelly while on lunch break in the cafe immediately after listening to Tim talk about one of his ex-girlfriends in Springfield. I had to get it while the rhythm was in my head, and it really worked. It's even better now that I let the character take his time in saying what he has to say.
I took that same approach with Alyssa in the second scene of Chapter 8, and let her do a little extra talking to get around to where she was headed, and that worked out pretty good.
In fact, tonight I wrote my little black heart out.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Grumpy Old Bastard Jr.
Things at work are rolling again. Our line was down for a few weeks last month, which meant most of us were farmed out to do other things, most of which were really boring, so I'm glad to be back in Mini-14 putting guns together. As is typical for me, I've gravitated towards bolt-fit, which is the 2nd hardest job on the line, after final build, which Fred does. Bolt-fit is so technical and complicated that the whole line can bottleneck right there if we have problems. It's difficult enough that it was decided a few months ago, while I was still doing bolt-lock (which comes after bolt-fit), that there should be two bolt-fitters on the line.
Since I started there, Jim has been the primary bolt-fitter. But when you listen to him talk about Rugers it's a lot like listening to me during my last days at LSI. He's burnt out and some of the changes they've made in the company have left him somewhat bitter, which I understand very well. Towards the end of the summer I started learning bolt-fit, and at first I was slow and awkward with it, and it took me forever to get a gun through, and it was a little discouraging. But I took every opportunity to claim one of the two benches and plug away at it whenever I could, because I was determined to learn this. By the time Jim took some time off in September, I was filling in and getting decent numbers. Nothing spectacular, but I was doing all right.
I've been doing bolt-fit pretty much every day now since then. Once we got back up and running, Barney put me on one bench and Brad on the other. Jim's been doing other things, and where at LSI if somebody else got put on the overlays, as much as I hated them, I'd feel threatened, but he could care less. I think he's glad for the break. Brad is one of the older guys on the line. He's been at Rugers for 28 years, and is a grumpy old guy (and he describes himself that way) in the same kind of way that Skip was at LSI. Something will piss him off and he'll go off on a hilarious rant. Cooter, who's more or less my best friend there, pisses him off all the time, and Brad will call him an "ignorant dumb bastard" or the like, but in all fairness, Cooter tries everyone's patience, including mine.
We've been doing good numbers. I've talked before about the 300 gun goal that management has set for us, and since I'd been there the highest number I'd seen us get to was 170, which was actually the record for the line. About three weeks ago, with Brad and me cranking guns out as fast as we could ... we broke the record and got 206. That was a great day, and boy were the higher ups happy about that, but I was some exhausted after that. Bolt-fit can be rough.
It's like this. I get a gun with a slide on it. Then I find a bolt. I put the bolt in and then run four gauges and three shims with it to make sure it's going to fit right. It can't be too loose or too tight, the shims have to slide in, and so forth. And if any of that goes awry, I have to fix it and make it fit, so there's a whole level of problem solving involved. Then I have to find a firing pin to go in the bolt, make sure the driven reading is in spec., make sure the pre-fire reading passes, and make sure the whole thing works, and then finish building the bolt. And if things are going well I can do that between two and three minutes. If we have bolts already made, I can do it even faster. If you were to watch me do this across the course of a day it's *way* more impressive than anything I ever did at LSI, and I was goddam good at screening.
Today we had some good hours and some difficult hours. Most of the time we can average somewhere between 20 to 26 guns an hour between the two of us, if we have the parts, if things are going well. Today just before lunch we hit 32 guns done in one hour, which I've never seen before. While we were flying I could tell we were having a big hour, but I didn't know it was going to be that big. I was pretty happy about that. It means I did at least 16 of those, going by the average, and there were a few times that Brad was out of the cell, so I think I had an even bigger share of that 32 than that. Whew.
Cooter, meanwhile, is one of those lazy types who only wants to do what he wants to do, and doesn't follow direction terribly well. So people, including me, give him a hard time, and instead of listening to anybody, he just gets ornery and it's fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. So I don't really feel guilty giving him a hard time at all, and given the factory nature of the place, we're pretty rough, much rougher even than at LSI, and I'm comfortable enough to just let Cooter have it, and if you don't know this, you should: I can be pretty darn vicious.
A lot of times when I'm giving Cooter shit over something stupid he's done or about his shit attitude, he'll say "Ok Brad Jr." or "Whatever, Little Johnson" (which is Brad's last name), as if to say that Brad's general grumpiness is rubbing off on me or something, which maybe it is, but we all know that I can be somewhat bad tempered in my own right, don't we. I kind of wish I'd taken the opportunity to write down some of Brad's better lines, because like Skip, he'd be totally quotable for the book. I'm not sure I could do him accurate justice here right now, but he is pretty fucking hilarious. Above that, he knows just about everything about those guns there is to know, so I've picked up all kind of tricks and such while working next to him. And he's never once been grumpy at me, similar to how Christy is a hardass chick, but she's never once been anything less than nice to me. So anyway, I've kind of attached myself to Brad's wagon, as a protogee you might say.
Almost once a day Cooter will give me some shit about being like Johnson.
I smile and tell him I take that as a compliment.
Since I started there, Jim has been the primary bolt-fitter. But when you listen to him talk about Rugers it's a lot like listening to me during my last days at LSI. He's burnt out and some of the changes they've made in the company have left him somewhat bitter, which I understand very well. Towards the end of the summer I started learning bolt-fit, and at first I was slow and awkward with it, and it took me forever to get a gun through, and it was a little discouraging. But I took every opportunity to claim one of the two benches and plug away at it whenever I could, because I was determined to learn this. By the time Jim took some time off in September, I was filling in and getting decent numbers. Nothing spectacular, but I was doing all right.
I've been doing bolt-fit pretty much every day now since then. Once we got back up and running, Barney put me on one bench and Brad on the other. Jim's been doing other things, and where at LSI if somebody else got put on the overlays, as much as I hated them, I'd feel threatened, but he could care less. I think he's glad for the break. Brad is one of the older guys on the line. He's been at Rugers for 28 years, and is a grumpy old guy (and he describes himself that way) in the same kind of way that Skip was at LSI. Something will piss him off and he'll go off on a hilarious rant. Cooter, who's more or less my best friend there, pisses him off all the time, and Brad will call him an "ignorant dumb bastard" or the like, but in all fairness, Cooter tries everyone's patience, including mine.
We've been doing good numbers. I've talked before about the 300 gun goal that management has set for us, and since I'd been there the highest number I'd seen us get to was 170, which was actually the record for the line. About three weeks ago, with Brad and me cranking guns out as fast as we could ... we broke the record and got 206. That was a great day, and boy were the higher ups happy about that, but I was some exhausted after that. Bolt-fit can be rough.
It's like this. I get a gun with a slide on it. Then I find a bolt. I put the bolt in and then run four gauges and three shims with it to make sure it's going to fit right. It can't be too loose or too tight, the shims have to slide in, and so forth. And if any of that goes awry, I have to fix it and make it fit, so there's a whole level of problem solving involved. Then I have to find a firing pin to go in the bolt, make sure the driven reading is in spec., make sure the pre-fire reading passes, and make sure the whole thing works, and then finish building the bolt. And if things are going well I can do that between two and three minutes. If we have bolts already made, I can do it even faster. If you were to watch me do this across the course of a day it's *way* more impressive than anything I ever did at LSI, and I was goddam good at screening.
Today we had some good hours and some difficult hours. Most of the time we can average somewhere between 20 to 26 guns an hour between the two of us, if we have the parts, if things are going well. Today just before lunch we hit 32 guns done in one hour, which I've never seen before. While we were flying I could tell we were having a big hour, but I didn't know it was going to be that big. I was pretty happy about that. It means I did at least 16 of those, going by the average, and there were a few times that Brad was out of the cell, so I think I had an even bigger share of that 32 than that. Whew.
Cooter, meanwhile, is one of those lazy types who only wants to do what he wants to do, and doesn't follow direction terribly well. So people, including me, give him a hard time, and instead of listening to anybody, he just gets ornery and it's fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. So I don't really feel guilty giving him a hard time at all, and given the factory nature of the place, we're pretty rough, much rougher even than at LSI, and I'm comfortable enough to just let Cooter have it, and if you don't know this, you should: I can be pretty darn vicious.
A lot of times when I'm giving Cooter shit over something stupid he's done or about his shit attitude, he'll say "Ok Brad Jr." or "Whatever, Little Johnson" (which is Brad's last name), as if to say that Brad's general grumpiness is rubbing off on me or something, which maybe it is, but we all know that I can be somewhat bad tempered in my own right, don't we. I kind of wish I'd taken the opportunity to write down some of Brad's better lines, because like Skip, he'd be totally quotable for the book. I'm not sure I could do him accurate justice here right now, but he is pretty fucking hilarious. Above that, he knows just about everything about those guns there is to know, so I've picked up all kind of tricks and such while working next to him. And he's never once been grumpy at me, similar to how Christy is a hardass chick, but she's never once been anything less than nice to me. So anyway, I've kind of attached myself to Brad's wagon, as a protogee you might say.
Almost once a day Cooter will give me some shit about being like Johnson.
I smile and tell him I take that as a compliment.
Diary of a Virgo, vol. 23
Because of changes in agricultural techniques, food is nowhere near as nutritious as it used to be. Vegetables grown on modern factory farms have 27 percent less calcium and 37 percent less iron than they did in 1975, for example, as well as 21 percent less Vitamin A and 30 percent less Vitamin C. So if you want to avoid being starved of essential nutrients, you either have to eat a huge amount, take supplements, or consume organic food. Are there any other areas of your life where the sustenance levels have dropped, perhaps without your full awareness? Is there an activity that no longer provides you with the boost it used to? Your assignment is to explore this possibility. If you find something's lacking, take immediate measures to make up for what you've been missing.
All right. I have my assignment.
All right. I have my assignment.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Into the Void
It seems that there's only one thing, aside from a couch, that's missing in my life, and that's a woman. I suppose that I added "aside from a couch" to that sentence goes a ways in explaining why I'm single, but the truth is that for the most part I could take or leave a relationship right now as there's just too many other fish to be fried. While it is true that I've had relationships where I can't get out of it fast enough (Betsy, X, Jude, Jen), the rest of them have been pretty decent to really great, and there's a few that I would have been happy to remain in if circumstances hand't intervened. Still, I do get lonely sometimes. It would be nice to have someone to go to the movies with, or to have dinner with, or to walk around holding hands with. I'm not asking for a lot here.
Like it doesn't have to be all-consuming, because then it eats into the other things I need to/want to do with what time Rugers doesn't eat up already. Even the thing with Jen, as screwy as it was, ate up a lot of time. This reminds me of one of my better ad-libs from the FMC days when a few of us happened to be talking about relationships in the vicinity of the schedule. The time was somewhere near the end of the Summer of Darkness (1998), just before the bidding war between Lynne, Krysten, and Jude kicked into gear. In the kitchen we all had hourly positions. I was a 40 hour weekly person, but some others were 32, 24, 16, 8, or per diem, meaning if you were an 8 hour person you were guaranteed 8 hours sometime during the week. You'd probably get more, but it wasn't guaranteed. So we were talking about relationships and I said, "I'm just looking to fill a 24 hour position", meaning not 24/7 but 24 hours spread out during the week. Well, the person I was talking to thought it was funny. Anyway, the point is I wouldn't mind finding something that's part-time, at least for now.
I shouldn't get impatient. The Wheel has proven itself time and again, and it did bring me to Newport for some reason. I was thinking about this earlier, and I've come to the conclusion that explaining and understanding how the Wheel of Destiny works is easier if I roll it out backwards, since it is kind of a For Want of a Nail sort of mechanism. So let's try it.
I wouldn't have moved to Newport if I didn't get the Rugers job.
I wouldn't have even applied at Rugers if I hadn't met Jen.
I wouldn't have met Jen if I weren't still at LSI, and additionally if I hadn't been moved to first shift and denied my transfers.
I wouldn't have been working at LSI if I hadn't moved up here from Massachusetts.
I wouldn't have moved if I weren't going out with Jude.
I wouldn't have hooked up with Jude if I weren't at FMC, if I hadn't been coerced into taking that team leader job, if I hadn't been coerced into leaving housekeeping.
I wouldn't have gotten the FMC job if I didn't know Troy.
I wouldn't have met Troy if I weren't with his sister.
And I wouldn't have met X if Dan (and Julie) hadn't introduced me to her.
And that all started happening right after the terrible thing I won't bring up right now in this post. But see how it all works like clockwork? That doesn't even take into account the various subplots of people moving in and out of the picture as needed for the Wheel to function.
Because I believe in this crazy stuff, I know the Wheel has something big lined up for me down the road. Meanwhile, I'm just going to enjoy life a little bit.
Like it doesn't have to be all-consuming, because then it eats into the other things I need to/want to do with what time Rugers doesn't eat up already. Even the thing with Jen, as screwy as it was, ate up a lot of time. This reminds me of one of my better ad-libs from the FMC days when a few of us happened to be talking about relationships in the vicinity of the schedule. The time was somewhere near the end of the Summer of Darkness (1998), just before the bidding war between Lynne, Krysten, and Jude kicked into gear. In the kitchen we all had hourly positions. I was a 40 hour weekly person, but some others were 32, 24, 16, 8, or per diem, meaning if you were an 8 hour person you were guaranteed 8 hours sometime during the week. You'd probably get more, but it wasn't guaranteed. So we were talking about relationships and I said, "I'm just looking to fill a 24 hour position", meaning not 24/7 but 24 hours spread out during the week. Well, the person I was talking to thought it was funny. Anyway, the point is I wouldn't mind finding something that's part-time, at least for now.
I shouldn't get impatient. The Wheel has proven itself time and again, and it did bring me to Newport for some reason. I was thinking about this earlier, and I've come to the conclusion that explaining and understanding how the Wheel of Destiny works is easier if I roll it out backwards, since it is kind of a For Want of a Nail sort of mechanism. So let's try it.
I wouldn't have moved to Newport if I didn't get the Rugers job.
I wouldn't have even applied at Rugers if I hadn't met Jen.
I wouldn't have met Jen if I weren't still at LSI, and additionally if I hadn't been moved to first shift and denied my transfers.
I wouldn't have been working at LSI if I hadn't moved up here from Massachusetts.
I wouldn't have moved if I weren't going out with Jude.
I wouldn't have hooked up with Jude if I weren't at FMC, if I hadn't been coerced into taking that team leader job, if I hadn't been coerced into leaving housekeeping.
I wouldn't have gotten the FMC job if I didn't know Troy.
I wouldn't have met Troy if I weren't with his sister.
And I wouldn't have met X if Dan (and Julie) hadn't introduced me to her.
And that all started happening right after the terrible thing I won't bring up right now in this post. But see how it all works like clockwork? That doesn't even take into account the various subplots of people moving in and out of the picture as needed for the Wheel to function.
Because I believe in this crazy stuff, I know the Wheel has something big lined up for me down the road. Meanwhile, I'm just going to enjoy life a little bit.
Angels & Elephants
I went down to Claremont earlier this afternoon to bum around a bit. The real reason was that I was considering seeing Beowulf today (I ended up not), but while looking I happened across a little gift store I'd never been in before, and even from the street I could see the angels in the window. Some have seen my collection of little angels and elephants that I possess. They intermingle freely on my shelves. The elephants are easy to explain: I've just always thought they were beautiful animals. The angels aren't as easy to explain to laypeople, but anyone reading this blog shouldn't have too hard of a time figuring that one out.
I can't pinpoint the exact origin of my collection of angels, except that it dates back to somewhere between 1992 and 1995. It wouldn't be any earlier than that, and I know I had some already by the time I met Milta. When I was seeing her I bought her an angel for Christmas and it almost brought her to tears. The one I gave her is the larger size version of the little angel that I have hanging from a hook in my kitchen. That one has very specific meaning for me.
The angels I saw from the street turned out not to be what I was looking for. I don't just pick up everything I see. There's a specific aesthetic that I look for in my angels. But while browsing I happened across a display in the back corner and fell in love with one. There were about nine angels in this particular collection, and if I could afford it I might have bought them all, but one in particular stood out. She was crouched down and was holding a large book, which was opened somewhere in the middle. I don't know if it was that, or the look of her face, or the eyes on it, but there was no way I wasn't buying it. Nearby there was a sister collection of smaller figurines of fairies. I've seen a lot of fairy figurines in my time, and none of them ever caught my eye, but these were something else.
I talked to the lady at the counter, asking if she thought these angels would be around a while. She couldn't really guarantee anything, so I put one with the book on hold and told her I'd come back Wednesday for it. Then I went further downtown. I'm in the market for a couch and a kitchen table, and having eliminated Rent A Center as an option, I checked out a cash and carry furniture store, which had some nice stuff in it. I don't have money for a couch right yet, but wanted to get some idea as to what I was going to be looking at. Then I visited the comic store.
Somewhere in there I decided that I just wasn't going home without that angel. I was going to be writing a check for it either way, and I have money stashed in my account, so what's the difference. That's what I said when I went back in the store, too -- "I just couldn't leave without her." I also added one of the small fairies to my purchase. The angels collection was all young women. The fairies were all small girls. I think you can reason out the significance.
When I got back here I rearranged some of the angels and elephants that I've put out on my grandma's old stand, which my mom gave me, so that these two could occupy the larger middle shelf, next to one of the larger elephants. Of course that angel and that fairy looked perfect together, just like I thought they would. I don't know why that is. It just is.
Those two are a great addition to my apartment.
I can't pinpoint the exact origin of my collection of angels, except that it dates back to somewhere between 1992 and 1995. It wouldn't be any earlier than that, and I know I had some already by the time I met Milta. When I was seeing her I bought her an angel for Christmas and it almost brought her to tears. The one I gave her is the larger size version of the little angel that I have hanging from a hook in my kitchen. That one has very specific meaning for me.
The angels I saw from the street turned out not to be what I was looking for. I don't just pick up everything I see. There's a specific aesthetic that I look for in my angels. But while browsing I happened across a display in the back corner and fell in love with one. There were about nine angels in this particular collection, and if I could afford it I might have bought them all, but one in particular stood out. She was crouched down and was holding a large book, which was opened somewhere in the middle. I don't know if it was that, or the look of her face, or the eyes on it, but there was no way I wasn't buying it. Nearby there was a sister collection of smaller figurines of fairies. I've seen a lot of fairy figurines in my time, and none of them ever caught my eye, but these were something else.
I talked to the lady at the counter, asking if she thought these angels would be around a while. She couldn't really guarantee anything, so I put one with the book on hold and told her I'd come back Wednesday for it. Then I went further downtown. I'm in the market for a couch and a kitchen table, and having eliminated Rent A Center as an option, I checked out a cash and carry furniture store, which had some nice stuff in it. I don't have money for a couch right yet, but wanted to get some idea as to what I was going to be looking at. Then I visited the comic store.
Somewhere in there I decided that I just wasn't going home without that angel. I was going to be writing a check for it either way, and I have money stashed in my account, so what's the difference. That's what I said when I went back in the store, too -- "I just couldn't leave without her." I also added one of the small fairies to my purchase. The angels collection was all young women. The fairies were all small girls. I think you can reason out the significance.
When I got back here I rearranged some of the angels and elephants that I've put out on my grandma's old stand, which my mom gave me, so that these two could occupy the larger middle shelf, next to one of the larger elephants. Of course that angel and that fairy looked perfect together, just like I thought they would. I don't know why that is. It just is.
Those two are a great addition to my apartment.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Ice Cold
Now you may ask me why I think Libby is so much cooler than I am, and that's a good question, since we're really the same person, so I have a good answer to that good question right here and ready. I would say that by definition any young, smart, attractive young lady with a quick wit and an acerbic, sarcastic personality, who happens to like comic books and pro wrestling, has awesome taste in movies, used to play D&D with her other cool friends, doesn't take any shit, is as tough as nails, is a recovering alcoholic, is in a committed longterm relationship with another very hot girl, has tremendous (and barely embellished) war stories from the old days in Massachusetts, and is writing a novel ... is pretty damn cool. Taking all that into account, I can't for the life of me figure out why I never made her a smoker, because that would just complete the whole package, at least in my mind.
Speaking of the Nature Girl, I've mentally committed to one last Joyride post, which will close out that whole enterprise once and for all. I have almost everything out of there that I need to keep, like my short tales featuring the super-villains I created, and I will continue wiping out the archives. Aside from that, this blog here will remain my primary online focus (other than my growing Myspace page), since I think Stray Bullets has turned out pretty nice.
I've also resurrected my old Netflix account, with the old queue intact, and restructured all the details to make it my account instead of hers. I opted for the three-at-a-time unlimited monthly rentals package just because I felt like indulging myself a little. They shipped out today and should arrive soon. Meanwhile, I'm still building up my queue, which right now has 431 items in it. The goal now is the same as it was then: see every movie I've ever wanted to see or meant to see, but just never found the time to watch. The time is now. Bring them on.
If you'll now excuse me, I have an alternate reality to destroy.
Speaking of the Nature Girl, I've mentally committed to one last Joyride post, which will close out that whole enterprise once and for all. I have almost everything out of there that I need to keep, like my short tales featuring the super-villains I created, and I will continue wiping out the archives. Aside from that, this blog here will remain my primary online focus (other than my growing Myspace page), since I think Stray Bullets has turned out pretty nice.
I've also resurrected my old Netflix account, with the old queue intact, and restructured all the details to make it my account instead of hers. I opted for the three-at-a-time unlimited monthly rentals package just because I felt like indulging myself a little. They shipped out today and should arrive soon. Meanwhile, I'm still building up my queue, which right now has 431 items in it. The goal now is the same as it was then: see every movie I've ever wanted to see or meant to see, but just never found the time to watch. The time is now. Bring them on.
If you'll now excuse me, I have an alternate reality to destroy.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Fonz Factor
Inspired by a recent column by Stephen King in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, wherein he talks about cool, and who has it and who doesn't, I had the idea to talk about that myself. The idea of 'cool' is one that's interested me ever since I was a little kid in the 70's. That's when Happy Days was one of the big shows, and every Tuesday night I was sure to be in front of the television set watching the Fonz. Fonzie, is of course, the epitome of cool, at least for most of us who grew up in that era. I'm not sure how younger generations feel on that subject, but for my money there's nobody cooler than the Fonz.
Now whether or not I'm cool is something I'll leave for other people to decide. Colleen has gone on record in the past as saying that I am, and I believe Guinevere thinks that I am, but it would be uncool for me to definitively state that I'm cool, so I won't. I do think I have interests that are cool, and the fact that I pursue said interests whether or not anyone else likes them does in fact raise my coolness quotient. I like what I like, and I'm content with that. I think it's cool to be writing a book, too. If I were to meet someone tomorrow, and he or she told me they were writing a book, one of the first things I'd tell them is how cool I thought that was. Colleen and Guin are both, for the record, pretty cool chicks themselves.
People who don't know how cool they are, or care, are very cool. People who try to hard to be cool -- and we've all met those people -- aren't cool. You can't try to be cool: you either are cool or you aren't. The last part of that comes from Stephen King himself, so you can take it to the bank. People who tell you how cool they are, probably aren't, unless it's in a humorous, mock ironic kind of way, which ironically tends to make that person seem cool. I always used to write Libby that way. Now she was much cooler than I am, and she would tell you so, but then she'd deflate it and herself right afterwords, and that made her totally cool. If you asked her internet friends, I'd bet most of them would say Lib was a pretty cool, badass chick. Oh, and being a badass is very cool.
You can find cool everywhere. On tv there was the Fonz. In the cartoons there was Bugs Bunny. In the comic strip pages there was Snoopy. In the movies there was Han Solo, the Bandit (of Smokey and the Bandit), and the John Travolta character in Grease. Oh, and the Olivia Newton John character, too, especially at the end. It isn't just a guy thing. Oh no. There are tons of cool women out there. Pinky Tuscadero was cool, and so was Rizzo (also from Grease). I remember Shaft being cool back then, too, even though I don't remember ever seeing the movie. I was kind of just aware of it, and had the theme song on a 45. That reminds me of Kojak, who was pretty cool, too.
Cool appears in more recent works, too. Jay and Silent Bob are cool. Penny Lane from Almost Famous is awesomely cool. And Tarantino movies are filled with coolness. Mia Wallace (from Pulp Fiction) is one example. Any role played by Sam Jackson is another. He's so cool that people write cool roles just for him to star in. John Travolta was super cool in the 70's, lost it for a long time, regained it during Pulp Fiction, kept it for a few years, but doesn't seem all that cool anymore. Will Smith is cool. Kristen Bell is cool. And Bruce Willis is both badass and cool.
Batman is cool. Superman isn't. Spider-Man is. Captain America probably shouldn't be, but he is. I almost hate to mention Wolverine, because he's so over-exposed, but yes ... Wolverine is cool. Now, I'm not knocking Superman, because he's obviously one of the greatest, if not *the* greatest superhero character ever created, but he's not cool in the same sense that Batman is. Although, if you watch the Justice League cartoon, which itself is cool, that is the coolest version of Superman that's been done. Back to Batman, his own animated series ranks among the coolest cartoons ever made. In live action, Adam West was and will always be the coolest Batman. There have been other good Batmen, like Christian Bale, but none of them can touch the Adam West version, which is funny because the West version is also the most square ... by far.
Buffy Summers (the vampire slayer) is cool. Veronica Mars is cool. The Starbuck character in the newer version of Battlestar Galactica is supposed to be cool, but really I think she tries too hard. Jessica Alba's Max was super cool in Dark Angel, but surprisingly, Alba is hardly ever cool in her movie roles. Arrested Development might have been the coolest show ever on tv, which might be why it died an early death. If AD wasn't, then Twin Peaks might be. It's hard for me to gauge shows like Seinfeld and the Simpsons, because they've become such institutions, and maybe the average person might not think of them when compiling their own lists, but in their time they were both about as cool as it gets. News Radio has to get a mention, too.
The coolest comic books ever put down in print: Preacher, the Authority (but only the first 12 issues, and no more), The Ultimates vols. 1 and 2, Wanted, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Sandman, Love and Rockets, and yes ... Stray Bullets. Going inside a couple of those comics, Jesse Custer (Preacher) and Amy Racecar (Stray Bullets) are both everything that cool should be.
The Illuminatus Trilogy may be the coolest book I've ever read.
There's a lot of cool in the music world, too: Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Misfits, X, Nirvana, the Pixies, Sleater-Kinney, the Donnas ... and that's just for starters. The Police are really cool; Sting is not. John Lennon was as cool as Paul McCartney is square.
There's even coolness in wrestling: Bret Hart, Cactus Jack, the Four Horsemen, the original incarnation of ECW, the Dynamite Kid, Roddy Piper, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, the Fabulous Freebirds, the Road Warriors, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and it's harder to get cooler than The Rock. If you've ever watched the Rock peform, you know why. Hulk Hogan is not and has never been cool.
Melissa may be the coolest person I've ever met.
I have two really cool parents.
I know I've said this before, but I've always thought smoking looked cool.
Strip clubs? Oh yeah. Drinking? Yes. Getting so blitzed that you puke/fall down/make an ass of yourself? Not so much.
Jen, despite everything we've talked about here, was another pretty cool chick.
This may be politically incorrect of me, but I've always found violence in movies and such to be really cool. That's part of why I think Kill Bill is so damn cool, and part of why I think Grindhouse (Death Proof & Planet Terror) is the coolest fucking movie I've seen this year. Oh, creative and egregious cursing ... also cool.
Let's end here. Are we cool? Yeah, we are.
Now whether or not I'm cool is something I'll leave for other people to decide. Colleen has gone on record in the past as saying that I am, and I believe Guinevere thinks that I am, but it would be uncool for me to definitively state that I'm cool, so I won't. I do think I have interests that are cool, and the fact that I pursue said interests whether or not anyone else likes them does in fact raise my coolness quotient. I like what I like, and I'm content with that. I think it's cool to be writing a book, too. If I were to meet someone tomorrow, and he or she told me they were writing a book, one of the first things I'd tell them is how cool I thought that was. Colleen and Guin are both, for the record, pretty cool chicks themselves.
People who don't know how cool they are, or care, are very cool. People who try to hard to be cool -- and we've all met those people -- aren't cool. You can't try to be cool: you either are cool or you aren't. The last part of that comes from Stephen King himself, so you can take it to the bank. People who tell you how cool they are, probably aren't, unless it's in a humorous, mock ironic kind of way, which ironically tends to make that person seem cool. I always used to write Libby that way. Now she was much cooler than I am, and she would tell you so, but then she'd deflate it and herself right afterwords, and that made her totally cool. If you asked her internet friends, I'd bet most of them would say Lib was a pretty cool, badass chick. Oh, and being a badass is very cool.
You can find cool everywhere. On tv there was the Fonz. In the cartoons there was Bugs Bunny. In the comic strip pages there was Snoopy. In the movies there was Han Solo, the Bandit (of Smokey and the Bandit), and the John Travolta character in Grease. Oh, and the Olivia Newton John character, too, especially at the end. It isn't just a guy thing. Oh no. There are tons of cool women out there. Pinky Tuscadero was cool, and so was Rizzo (also from Grease). I remember Shaft being cool back then, too, even though I don't remember ever seeing the movie. I was kind of just aware of it, and had the theme song on a 45. That reminds me of Kojak, who was pretty cool, too.
Cool appears in more recent works, too. Jay and Silent Bob are cool. Penny Lane from Almost Famous is awesomely cool. And Tarantino movies are filled with coolness. Mia Wallace (from Pulp Fiction) is one example. Any role played by Sam Jackson is another. He's so cool that people write cool roles just for him to star in. John Travolta was super cool in the 70's, lost it for a long time, regained it during Pulp Fiction, kept it for a few years, but doesn't seem all that cool anymore. Will Smith is cool. Kristen Bell is cool. And Bruce Willis is both badass and cool.
Batman is cool. Superman isn't. Spider-Man is. Captain America probably shouldn't be, but he is. I almost hate to mention Wolverine, because he's so over-exposed, but yes ... Wolverine is cool. Now, I'm not knocking Superman, because he's obviously one of the greatest, if not *the* greatest superhero character ever created, but he's not cool in the same sense that Batman is. Although, if you watch the Justice League cartoon, which itself is cool, that is the coolest version of Superman that's been done. Back to Batman, his own animated series ranks among the coolest cartoons ever made. In live action, Adam West was and will always be the coolest Batman. There have been other good Batmen, like Christian Bale, but none of them can touch the Adam West version, which is funny because the West version is also the most square ... by far.
Buffy Summers (the vampire slayer) is cool. Veronica Mars is cool. The Starbuck character in the newer version of Battlestar Galactica is supposed to be cool, but really I think she tries too hard. Jessica Alba's Max was super cool in Dark Angel, but surprisingly, Alba is hardly ever cool in her movie roles. Arrested Development might have been the coolest show ever on tv, which might be why it died an early death. If AD wasn't, then Twin Peaks might be. It's hard for me to gauge shows like Seinfeld and the Simpsons, because they've become such institutions, and maybe the average person might not think of them when compiling their own lists, but in their time they were both about as cool as it gets. News Radio has to get a mention, too.
The coolest comic books ever put down in print: Preacher, the Authority (but only the first 12 issues, and no more), The Ultimates vols. 1 and 2, Wanted, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Sandman, Love and Rockets, and yes ... Stray Bullets. Going inside a couple of those comics, Jesse Custer (Preacher) and Amy Racecar (Stray Bullets) are both everything that cool should be.
The Illuminatus Trilogy may be the coolest book I've ever read.
There's a lot of cool in the music world, too: Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Misfits, X, Nirvana, the Pixies, Sleater-Kinney, the Donnas ... and that's just for starters. The Police are really cool; Sting is not. John Lennon was as cool as Paul McCartney is square.
There's even coolness in wrestling: Bret Hart, Cactus Jack, the Four Horsemen, the original incarnation of ECW, the Dynamite Kid, Roddy Piper, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, the Fabulous Freebirds, the Road Warriors, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and it's harder to get cooler than The Rock. If you've ever watched the Rock peform, you know why. Hulk Hogan is not and has never been cool.
Melissa may be the coolest person I've ever met.
I have two really cool parents.
I know I've said this before, but I've always thought smoking looked cool.
Strip clubs? Oh yeah. Drinking? Yes. Getting so blitzed that you puke/fall down/make an ass of yourself? Not so much.
Jen, despite everything we've talked about here, was another pretty cool chick.
This may be politically incorrect of me, but I've always found violence in movies and such to be really cool. That's part of why I think Kill Bill is so damn cool, and part of why I think Grindhouse (Death Proof & Planet Terror) is the coolest fucking movie I've seen this year. Oh, creative and egregious cursing ... also cool.
Let's end here. Are we cool? Yeah, we are.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Diary of a Virgo, volume 22
"Dear Rob: I have eight distinctly different voices in my head. There's a hurt, oddly puffed-up voice that complains about everyone who has ever done me wrong. There's an hysterical voice that nags me with the thought that nothing I could ever do or say will make any difference to anyone, so why bother. Then there's the still, small voice. It has more gravity and feels more honest. It gives me useful instructions about specific things I could do to live a more meaningful life. The only trouble is, the other voices always blabber so loud I tend to neglect the only one that's actually helpful. Any advice? - Drowned Out." Dear Drowned: Set aside five minutes each morning and five minutes before bed. Whisper "Shut up, all the rest of you!", and then listen reverently to the still, small voice.
I've had this problem. Luckily, my equivalent of the 'little voice' is Calliope's, and I've learned to listen to her because she does make a whole lot of sense.
I've had this problem. Luckily, my equivalent of the 'little voice' is Calliope's, and I've learned to listen to her because she does make a whole lot of sense.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Temptation's Wing
So there you have it: the alternate title for the book that I've been kicking around in my noggin. That title comes from a song by the band Down, who you may not have heard of, but it's kind of a Pantera side project, the same kind of way that Probot is a Foo Fighters side project, meaning sort of but not quite. I haven't fully committed to that title yet, because I don't know if there's some copyright snaggle that comes with using a title of somebody else's song ... even though I know numerous other authors have done the same. If I had my way, however, that would be the title of the book. I guess I need to research some of the ins and outs.
Why this comes up today as a post is because the scene I'm working on takes us there. After the altercation with the cop, Alyssa softens up somewhat in keeping everything from Kelly, so she invites him there. The setting is something I really get to sink my teeth into, as I get to create the whole little world within a world of Temptation's Wing and fill it full of interesting people. At least three of the characters introduced here will show up again later on. One of them is based on Tanja, and the chapter goes a long way in explaining why I don't talk about her much in this here blog.
In the grand scheme, this is a really crucial scene. I don't give away the whole enchilada or answer all of Kelly's questions, but there's definitely enough meat on the bone to satisfy most hungry readers, and again there's a lot of stuff that I throw out there right in plain sight that'll take on a different shade once you know more about everything. That's all part of the fun.
Anybody know anything about copyrights?
Why this comes up today as a post is because the scene I'm working on takes us there. After the altercation with the cop, Alyssa softens up somewhat in keeping everything from Kelly, so she invites him there. The setting is something I really get to sink my teeth into, as I get to create the whole little world within a world of Temptation's Wing and fill it full of interesting people. At least three of the characters introduced here will show up again later on. One of them is based on Tanja, and the chapter goes a long way in explaining why I don't talk about her much in this here blog.
In the grand scheme, this is a really crucial scene. I don't give away the whole enchilada or answer all of Kelly's questions, but there's definitely enough meat on the bone to satisfy most hungry readers, and again there's a lot of stuff that I throw out there right in plain sight that'll take on a different shade once you know more about everything. That's all part of the fun.
Anybody know anything about copyrights?
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Setting up Shop
I did a whole lot of work today, mixed in with some fun stuff.
First, I slept in late. Later than I meant to, granted, but most weeks I only get one shot at staying in bed until 10 AM, so what the heck. Might as well make the most of it once in a while.
Then I watched Planet Terror on dvd. That movie makes up half of last spring's Grindhouse double-feature, along with Death Proof (which I watched last week), which still holds the top spot on my 2007 list of favorite movies.
After that I drove over to Ocean State Job Lot, which is like a mile from here, so I could pick up some things I need. I found a little trash basket for the bathroom and a dish drainer for the sink. There's like 20,000 things I don't have, so I'm filling in the gaps little by little. Next door at the hardware store I bought some sticky pads so I can finally put up my posters, so as to add some flavor to the place.
I was going to head to Claremont's Wal-Mart, and actually started in that direction, when I figured I might as well head to Lebanon, since a stop at the ATM in Hanover was probably going to be necessary to make it through the week. So I flipped a bitch and went to Leb instead.
At that Wal-Mart I found a nice larger size trash bucket for the kitchen, so that I can stop having a trash bag piled in the corner, and a little hook to hang my small angel from. I'm trying to do all this without puncturing the walls at all with thumbtacks. At the old place there happened to be a few nails sticking out of the wall near the ceiling, so that's where the little angel was, but there's nothing like that here.
I made it back to Claremont in time to catch 30 Days of Night at the theater, figuring this weekend would probably be my last shot at seeing it before dvd. It was pretty great, really tense, and even scary. Those were probably the scariest vampires I've ever seen in a movie, even beating out the ones from Salem's Lot, which scared the living fuck out of me as a kid. These beasts are just fast and ferocious, and the situation was pretty clever, too. Interesting fact: I first bought the graphic novel this movie is based on at the comic shop in Bryn Mawr the last time I was at that store.
Then I came home and got to work. I put on the commentary track for Planet Terror, and listened to Robert Rodriquez talk about his work while I went around hanging posters. The sticky pads were a success. I only had one poster fall down (the heavy South St. poster), but that was mainly because I pulled it off the wall to straighten it, but it's up there now thanks to double the sticky pads I used on the other posters. The hook was not a success. It fell down after about 20 minutes. Luckily, the little angel didn't break or get otherwise damaged, because that would have really upset me. I have a lot of sentimental value attached to it, for reasons you could probably surmise if you thought about it. I also did some work in the kitchen and bathroom, placing more stuff where it needs to go.
Oh, but I wasn't done yet. When the movie was over I turned on the laptop and wrote an entire scene between Kelly and Laurel, which as it happens is her actual in person debut, since the last time the two of them had a scene together she was on the phone. This is a really fun scene for me because I get to play around with about five different things while they're talking, partly thanks to Milo, and partly thanks to the little girl that Laurel shows up with (who isn't based on any actual little girl; I just thought it would be interesting). That little girl has what may be my favorite line in the whole book. It's only one word, but it makes me laugh everytime I get to it in a rewrite.
And then I had a bowl of ice cream and watched a Seinfeld episode out of the new season 9 box set.
Following which, I decided I ought to blog something.
So it was a whole day packed full of good stuff.
First, I slept in late. Later than I meant to, granted, but most weeks I only get one shot at staying in bed until 10 AM, so what the heck. Might as well make the most of it once in a while.
Then I watched Planet Terror on dvd. That movie makes up half of last spring's Grindhouse double-feature, along with Death Proof (which I watched last week), which still holds the top spot on my 2007 list of favorite movies.
After that I drove over to Ocean State Job Lot, which is like a mile from here, so I could pick up some things I need. I found a little trash basket for the bathroom and a dish drainer for the sink. There's like 20,000 things I don't have, so I'm filling in the gaps little by little. Next door at the hardware store I bought some sticky pads so I can finally put up my posters, so as to add some flavor to the place.
I was going to head to Claremont's Wal-Mart, and actually started in that direction, when I figured I might as well head to Lebanon, since a stop at the ATM in Hanover was probably going to be necessary to make it through the week. So I flipped a bitch and went to Leb instead.
At that Wal-Mart I found a nice larger size trash bucket for the kitchen, so that I can stop having a trash bag piled in the corner, and a little hook to hang my small angel from. I'm trying to do all this without puncturing the walls at all with thumbtacks. At the old place there happened to be a few nails sticking out of the wall near the ceiling, so that's where the little angel was, but there's nothing like that here.
I made it back to Claremont in time to catch 30 Days of Night at the theater, figuring this weekend would probably be my last shot at seeing it before dvd. It was pretty great, really tense, and even scary. Those were probably the scariest vampires I've ever seen in a movie, even beating out the ones from Salem's Lot, which scared the living fuck out of me as a kid. These beasts are just fast and ferocious, and the situation was pretty clever, too. Interesting fact: I first bought the graphic novel this movie is based on at the comic shop in Bryn Mawr the last time I was at that store.
Then I came home and got to work. I put on the commentary track for Planet Terror, and listened to Robert Rodriquez talk about his work while I went around hanging posters. The sticky pads were a success. I only had one poster fall down (the heavy South St. poster), but that was mainly because I pulled it off the wall to straighten it, but it's up there now thanks to double the sticky pads I used on the other posters. The hook was not a success. It fell down after about 20 minutes. Luckily, the little angel didn't break or get otherwise damaged, because that would have really upset me. I have a lot of sentimental value attached to it, for reasons you could probably surmise if you thought about it. I also did some work in the kitchen and bathroom, placing more stuff where it needs to go.
Oh, but I wasn't done yet. When the movie was over I turned on the laptop and wrote an entire scene between Kelly and Laurel, which as it happens is her actual in person debut, since the last time the two of them had a scene together she was on the phone. This is a really fun scene for me because I get to play around with about five different things while they're talking, partly thanks to Milo, and partly thanks to the little girl that Laurel shows up with (who isn't based on any actual little girl; I just thought it would be interesting). That little girl has what may be my favorite line in the whole book. It's only one word, but it makes me laugh everytime I get to it in a rewrite.
And then I had a bowl of ice cream and watched a Seinfeld episode out of the new season 9 box set.
Following which, I decided I ought to blog something.
So it was a whole day packed full of good stuff.
Diary of a Virgo, volume 21
Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was the supreme commander of U.S. troops in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004, thinks his government has made tragic mistakes. Citing "a catastrophically flawed war plan," he said, "There has been a glaring display of incompetent strategic leadership from our national leaders." Sanchez is your role model for the coming week, Virgo. I hope he inspires you to do one of three things: (1) raise a critique of a group or institution you've been an instrumental part of; (2) rebel against the faulty execution of an idea you support; (3) put your service to moral truth above blind loyalty.
They would almost have to be talking about Rugers, huh? Interesting.
They would almost have to be talking about Rugers, huh? Interesting.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Quote of the Week
'Did want to tell you before I forget that I find
myself saying, "What the french, toast?" to myself in
lab all the time now when something weird happens or
someone pisses me off (which is all the frikkin time
lately... for both the weirdness and the pissiness)
Oh, boy, do I need a vacation.' (Colleen)
For that reason alone, Stray Bullets has pretty much paid for itself.
myself saying, "What the french, toast?" to myself in
lab all the time now when something weird happens or
someone pisses me off (which is all the frikkin time
lately... for both the weirdness and the pissiness)
Oh, boy, do I need a vacation.' (Colleen)
For that reason alone, Stray Bullets has pretty much paid for itself.
Diary of a Virgo, volume 20
(for the week I was gone)
The owners of a parts supply store in South Carolina billed the Pentagon $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas army base. Let's install them as your symbolic reminder not to overpay for anything in the coming week, no matter how crucial it may be to your operations. And when I invoke that word "overpay," I'm referring not only to forking over money, but also to giving away your emotional energy, directing your attention, or offering up your help. Make sure that you're getting equal value for your contributions.
I think I've been pretty good that way lately, in fact.
The owners of a parts supply store in South Carolina billed the Pentagon $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas army base. Let's install them as your symbolic reminder not to overpay for anything in the coming week, no matter how crucial it may be to your operations. And when I invoke that word "overpay," I'm referring not only to forking over money, but also to giving away your emotional energy, directing your attention, or offering up your help. Make sure that you're getting equal value for your contributions.
I think I've been pretty good that way lately, in fact.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Since I Been Gone
Hello there. I'm back. What we have here is my very first post from my brand new, shiny apartment in Newport. I've been here about a week and a half now, as far as actually living in here, but the new apartment feeling hasn't worn off at all. It still feels very very new and different. Of course, that's because I just spent six point five years living in a little one room shoebox with now kitchen and a pair of community bathrooms. So having a bedroom that's by itself larger than my previous living space will cause some adjustment time. I also have a living room that's almost as big, my own bathroom, and best of all, a kitchen. You have no idea how sick I am of McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Subway, and et cetera. One place I'm not sick of, and may never be, is Dunkin Donuts, but that's mostly because I can go into the local one any time of the day and the nice girls behind the counter have the uncanny ability to make my ice coffee exactly the way I like it. West Leb was always hit or miss; Newport gets it right every single time.
My dad came up that Sunday to help me move out my bigger pieces of furniture. By then I'd emptied that little room of everything that could fit into my little Honda, which left only my bed, two dressers, the computer stand, a desk, the bookcase, and my comfy chair here (I'm sitting in it now). My plan was to run a trip out there early and then meet him in Lebanon, but when I called my mom to get a time estimate on his arrival I found out he was already on the way. So instead of making two trips I stuffed my car to the limit. In a nice bit of ingenuity, I sandwiched the dvd player, the vcr, and the PS2 between my pillows on the floor of the passenger seat. I wouldn't have thought of that if I'd had more room, but necessity is the mother of whatever, as you know.
We ended up making three, three, three trips with my dad's pickup to get everythying over there. Some of the furniture just took up more room than anticipated. I'd started working on the apartment at 7 AM, and by the time I brought the last load of the night in from my car at 9 PM I'd pretty much checked out for the day. Dad and I set up the bed, I set the clock radio, and I was done. Whatever was left in the car would wait until Monday afternoon after work. It was pretty lonely that first night here. I didn't have any major appliances plugged in, no cable, no CD player set up, and my clock radio couldn't pull in a single radio station. So I went to sleep in the dark in the quiet, feeling very alone.
During one of our trips back to Leb, Dad and I did a little shopping. We picked up a new computer table to replace the old, heavy monstrosity of my old apartment. That way, not only was the new one better looking and more stable, but we could just abandon the old clunker, thereby avoiding having to carry the frikking thing down the stairs. And that's what we did. I left it there. We also picked up a smallish entertainment center at Wal-Mart, which was essential in my eyes, as the old set-up just wouldn't cut it. Having your tv and related appliances sitting on top of a dresser might work in a one room hangout, but it looks really stupid in an actual living room. I ended up assembling that puppy on Tuesday night, and while it's sturdy and looks fine ... I am *no* carpenter. I'd bet you wouldn't notice the mistake I made unless I pointed it out to you, but I know about it and it bothered me for about 24 hours ... until I decided I wasn't going to be Monk about it and decided not to care. It's fine. It works.
Mom and dad both came up Wednesday. I'd made a spare key for them, as dad suggested they could come up before I got out of work, the better to set my mom loose on things that are her specialty -- like hanging the curtains. I'd have been lost on that if left to my own devices. I'm glad she was able to come up so soon, because she was the person who most of all I wanted to show this place off to. I'm doing all this self-renovation for me, but deep down I really just want to impress my mom. And it was pretty gratifying that she really likes the place.
As mentioned before, there's no Borders here. My plan was to keep my desk free of the egregious clutter that was constantly on top of it at the other place, so that I could turn this joint into something of an office. And I've kinda done that. The computer is right next to the desk, and both are in my bedroom. It took me longer to do this than I thought, but last night I finally broke out the laptop and test drove the new plan, and the plan was a success. I did more work tonight, just before I signed on here. The best part is the freedom I have. I can write a little, get up and make some dinner, or take a shower, and then come back to it. Before Newport, those three things had to be done in totally seperate compartments: writing was done at Borders; dinner was something I picked up somewhere else and brought home; and the shower was across the hallway. Now I can do whatever the hell I want to, and that, my friends, is a tremendous improvement in the quality of my life.
Oh yeah. I really like it here.
My dad came up that Sunday to help me move out my bigger pieces of furniture. By then I'd emptied that little room of everything that could fit into my little Honda, which left only my bed, two dressers, the computer stand, a desk, the bookcase, and my comfy chair here (I'm sitting in it now). My plan was to run a trip out there early and then meet him in Lebanon, but when I called my mom to get a time estimate on his arrival I found out he was already on the way. So instead of making two trips I stuffed my car to the limit. In a nice bit of ingenuity, I sandwiched the dvd player, the vcr, and the PS2 between my pillows on the floor of the passenger seat. I wouldn't have thought of that if I'd had more room, but necessity is the mother of whatever, as you know.
We ended up making three, three, three trips with my dad's pickup to get everythying over there. Some of the furniture just took up more room than anticipated. I'd started working on the apartment at 7 AM, and by the time I brought the last load of the night in from my car at 9 PM I'd pretty much checked out for the day. Dad and I set up the bed, I set the clock radio, and I was done. Whatever was left in the car would wait until Monday afternoon after work. It was pretty lonely that first night here. I didn't have any major appliances plugged in, no cable, no CD player set up, and my clock radio couldn't pull in a single radio station. So I went to sleep in the dark in the quiet, feeling very alone.
During one of our trips back to Leb, Dad and I did a little shopping. We picked up a new computer table to replace the old, heavy monstrosity of my old apartment. That way, not only was the new one better looking and more stable, but we could just abandon the old clunker, thereby avoiding having to carry the frikking thing down the stairs. And that's what we did. I left it there. We also picked up a smallish entertainment center at Wal-Mart, which was essential in my eyes, as the old set-up just wouldn't cut it. Having your tv and related appliances sitting on top of a dresser might work in a one room hangout, but it looks really stupid in an actual living room. I ended up assembling that puppy on Tuesday night, and while it's sturdy and looks fine ... I am *no* carpenter. I'd bet you wouldn't notice the mistake I made unless I pointed it out to you, but I know about it and it bothered me for about 24 hours ... until I decided I wasn't going to be Monk about it and decided not to care. It's fine. It works.
Mom and dad both came up Wednesday. I'd made a spare key for them, as dad suggested they could come up before I got out of work, the better to set my mom loose on things that are her specialty -- like hanging the curtains. I'd have been lost on that if left to my own devices. I'm glad she was able to come up so soon, because she was the person who most of all I wanted to show this place off to. I'm doing all this self-renovation for me, but deep down I really just want to impress my mom. And it was pretty gratifying that she really likes the place.
As mentioned before, there's no Borders here. My plan was to keep my desk free of the egregious clutter that was constantly on top of it at the other place, so that I could turn this joint into something of an office. And I've kinda done that. The computer is right next to the desk, and both are in my bedroom. It took me longer to do this than I thought, but last night I finally broke out the laptop and test drove the new plan, and the plan was a success. I did more work tonight, just before I signed on here. The best part is the freedom I have. I can write a little, get up and make some dinner, or take a shower, and then come back to it. Before Newport, those three things had to be done in totally seperate compartments: writing was done at Borders; dinner was something I picked up somewhere else and brought home; and the shower was across the hallway. Now I can do whatever the hell I want to, and that, my friends, is a tremendous improvement in the quality of my life.
Oh yeah. I really like it here.
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