Cleaning Out the Closet

I figured I'd take advantage of my topical blogging dryspell and do a little more deconstruction of the Joyride. I removed another 200 or so posts, bringing me down to about a little over a thousand to go. A lot of the posts were only so-so, and a lot of the good ones were LSI related, so not anything I'll really miss. Some, however, were so good that I had to keep them, and they are right now sitting in a wordpad file, and sooner or later they'll probably find their way into here. I've also saved all of my awesome Kudoverse stories that I've come across, which are going to be saved to disk and then transferred over to my laptop, from where I will be able to work them all into a cohesive whole for possible future publication in some form or another.

While sifting through the wreckage over there I came to find that I really miss Libby. I don't mean that in the way that I wish I was still actively using my alter ego, but I do miss her carefree, take no shit, blog about whatever she feels like attitude. Even on the worst of worst days, she was really entertaining talking about it. Even more, I miss that she would talk in graphic detail about whatever movie or show or comic she was reading, or about whatever crazy-ass project she was working on ... whether anyone reading would give a rat's ass or not. And put those things together and I really think Lib had that over me. While I have done a number of posts here that I think are really great, I feel that I haven't quite managed to achieve the same devil may care non chalance in doing whatever I want to with this blog that Libby maintained for a solid four years.

Which I see as a challenge to myself for the future.

*****

Today at work we were listening to music. That's kind of illegal, as we're using the company's electricity to plug the radio in, and we've been officially asked not to do that. So we're kind of sneaking it by. Usually Jim brings in his own cd's, since we can't get a radio station to come in underneath all of those lights, but lately I've been bringing my own in, too. I kind of have a good read on what things of mine are playable in that cell, so that it isn't like the time that Guinevere and I played the Police at FMC, which horrified most of the crew (except for Charlene, who was pretty cool) (It was the Police wasn't it?).

One of mine we played today was the greatest hits of Huey Lewis. The song "The Power of Love" then sparked a conversation about Back To The Future, to which Cooter added a remark about Amy that showed me once again that I really dodged a bullet back in January. According to him, she *hates* that movie. He said that and I was aghast. "What? How could ANYONE not like Back to the Future?" "I dunno. She just hates it."

Honestly, I don't think I could be in a relationship with anyone who doesn't like Back To The Future.

*****

It took a while to hit me here in Newport, but I've finally started to come down with Projectitis again. In addition to the book, which I'm faithfully working on, I have all sorts of other things on deck. The aforementioned Kudoverse stories are one of them, which I'll talk about another time. The other things are just starting up.

I came across a notebook a few days ago containing ten pages of notes I'd taken from various movie reviews by Roger Ebert. Those of you know know Rog as just "the fat one from that tv show" are really missing the boat. He is, in fact, one of the two best writers on movies that have ever lived (the other one is Pauline Kael). Nobody loves the movies like Ebert does, and even when we don't agree on a movie, which happens more than you might think, his passion for the artform is clear, and his reasoning pro or con about a movie is always solid. But the point is, he's teaching me how to write better.

I've learned more from Ebert than anyone, save Stephen King. At first, I didn't even know it was happening, but I was reading one of his movie guides way back in 1996, and I started to notice his reviews had an extra layer in them, and I started to write down notes where I found them. I still remember what the first one was, too:

"After all, writing good dialogue takes some intelligence." (About Last Night)

Once I started looking for them, I found them everywhere. Especially important, and something I've found in several different reviews is that "the muse visits during composition, not before". That one thing alone has helped me more than anything else, mostly because it's true. And there are tons more.

When I got the laptop one of the things I did was to take the enormous amount of notes of things I'd jotted down out of an Ebert review, and type them up into a cohesive, organized file. Admittedly, it's only loosely organizied, but I've done my best to make it coherent. It's currently at 66 pages of Wordpad file.

And counting.

*****

I know I don't do the same kind of lengthy work related posts that I used to do, and that's mainly because there's no central conflict between me and the supervisor, and there's not a lot of the same shenanigans that me and Starr used to get up to, but the job is going well and I do enjoy it there.

This week has been pretty kick-ass. Mike really wants us to get out 175 guns a day if at all possible, and usually there's too many issues or problems to reach that number, but we've done it this week so far.

And a lot of that falls on the bolt-fitter, which is me. Actually, it's me and Cooter (or sometimes me and Brad, or me and Jim, but always me). But seeing as Cooter is somewhat lazy and slack-witted, most of the burden falls on me, which is kind of a parallel to how things used to be at LSI, but at least now I don't hate what I'm doing.

On Monday Cooter didn't show up, so Brad was the second bolt-fitter. But after we finished the 6.8's and changed over to the Alloy guns, they needed to have the barrels adjusted somewhat, so Brad took care of that and straightened slides, since we had no one to do that, and I took over bolt-fit as a solo act. And in the afternoon I kicked some ass, baby. I really wish they would give tours so that someone could come in and see me doing my thing, because it's way more impressive than anything I did at FMC or even LSI. We did 175.

Yesterday Cooter was in, so we were the regular team ... you know, with me doing five guns for every gun he does, but whatever. Brad was doing repairs, so we had no slide-fitter again. Usually Cooter and I will share that if nobody is doing it, but yesterday he pretty much abdicated bolt-fit to me and did the slides. On the one hand that was fine, because if I'm doing slides and he's bolt-fitting, no guns are getting through. If he's doing slides, there's a lot more pressure on me, but I'm badass enough to handle that pressure. And I was flying. I had a 24 gun hour followed by a 27 gun hour, which is just freaking amazing if I do say so myself. We got out 176.

Today. The Alloy guns were going awesome. It was the same arrangement as yesterday. I bolt-fit everything while Cooter did slides, and when he had a good pile behind me he'd come over and do one or two, and then go back to slides. The challenge, as laid down by Mike, was that we could go home when we got to 175. And I was determined to make it, not so much because I wanted to leave, but because I wanted to prove I could do it, and also ... to prove I'm the best there is. Because I just *have* to be the best at whatever I'm doing, you know.

I bolt-fit today like I've never bolt-fit before. There wasn't an hour where I was under 20 guns put through, which is just about unprecedented. I put through the last one we needed right about at 2:30, and when Fred was finished with them all down at final build it was just before the 2:50 bell, and we got out of there an hour early. Yeah, that's right. I did it.

And that's pretty fucken badass, son.