fine whine

Friday I had so much fun reading my "novel" that I finished it today (reading, that is), clandestinely, and have decided that I want to clean it up and publish it. On Cafepress, of course, so that I can buy a copy of my own book without laying out all the cash involved with having a real print run. So now I just need to fix all of the errors, write a foreword (I have the dedication already) and colophon, and make a cover for it. This should be fun.

Though I have not found any good examples of one, it is possible to have an eight letter vanity license plate down here in the fine state of North Carolina.

Nothing new on the Jessica's grandma front.

Just what is the official relationship between me and her parents' siblings? Aunt- and uncle-in-law? Do I have cousins-in-law too?

I'm writing this, sitting in the bathroom of a cheap hotel in High point, North Carolina. At this time last night I was behind the wheel of my car, cursing the modern hotel industry's apparent utter disdain for what I had thought to be three of the defining characteristics of hotels, namely friendly service, the "NO VACANCY" sign, and having enough rooms to meet the demand.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. Jessica and I are not in NC for some sort of vacation. We did not pack our swimsuits. You see, Jessica's grandparents live here, and grandma hasn't been doing too well. She's been in and out of the hospital for some time and apparently during this last visit the doctors did not give a very favorable prognosis. Yesterday night after dinnertime Jessica got The Call from her dad and it was soon apparent that our plans to hit the ribs festival were going to need to wait for next year's. We were on the road by around nine, having needed to get some cash and return the next several days' worth of library materials.

We might not have planned everything too well, but at least we're clear on library fines for the next several days.

What we did not plan well was our eventual accomodations. While I was aware that even with a full day's work under my belt I'd still be more than capable of a seven-hour drive through the mountains, but around midnight we decided that sleeping might not be a bad thing. Big mistake.

We'd listened to a story on NPR about the President's first visit to Beckley, West Virginia. In fact, as the reporter revealed, he was the first sitting President ever to visit Beckley, W. Va. This might explain why every single hotel room in Beckley was apparently rented. Frustrated slightly, we continued on to the next stop, and found the same lack of vacancies. So on and so forth, and before we knew it we'd run out of exits and were in High Point at five-thirty in the morning. We managed to find a hotel and check in around six. What could be easier?

Well, not quite that simple. We can probably only blame Bush for one or two crowded exits. Elsewhere we saw evidence of some district championship, NASCAR fans and a Jehovah's Witnesses convention. Everywhere we found handwritten or inkjet-printed signs in the windows saying "Sorry, no vacancy" or something to that effect.

Whatever happened to the good old neon NO VACANCY sign, anyway? Half of the time we needed to fight badly-parked cars and gravel driveways to read said letter-sized sign. This was, to understate completely, completely annoying.

But we made it. I got to meet Jessica's grandparents and also to visit a bit with one of her aunt and uncle's family who we haven't seen since the wedding. Nice folks.

As for her grandma, I've never been around a dead person except after the embalming stage. I realize that she's still breathing and talking at this point, but she's not going to last much longer. I'd like to have met her sometime before, but we cannot change the past but home to make the most of the time we have in front of us.

As for me, I should probably get some sleep.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of trying out a new restaurant before the rest of the riff-raff. The joint was called Abuela's and they just put one in at Easton Town Center. A co-worker hooked me and six other people up with an invite to an exclusive training event for their servers (and their assistants) and cooks. Though I am something of a picky eater (so I am told) I managed to stuff myself silly and enjoy every bite of it. The appetizer was something of a soupy cheesy sauce that had stuff floating in it. We dipped chips into it and the lucky ones came up with shrimp included in the tasty goop. For the main course I had beef fajita tacos with everything but the meat on the side, which is to say, on a separate plate so I didn't need to eat it. The meat was fantastic. I didn't do so much with the refried beans that came with the dish but I did eat a goodly amount of the potatoes-and-stuff. I heartily recommend it as a good Mexican restaurant, though I really have no basis on which to make that statement since I've probably only ever eaten at three or four. Still, it's good.

The iced tea's top notch, though they provide only sugar and Sweet-n-Low. No Equal or Splenda, if that matters.

Lunch took about an hour and a half, and when the time came to return to the office it was with a satisfied smile on my face, a full belly and a complete lack of desire to do any work that I arrived at my desk. I did some cursory work answering emails and working on some Micrografx sketches, but anytime the urge arose to do something else I snuck glances at the "novel" I wrote back in November. There's a lot to read there, fifty thousand words and all. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had remembered, though it was excatly as scattershot, unfocused and pointless as I knew it to be. And it was rife with typos, from silly mispellings to words stuck to each other to aborted sentences mashed up with ones that were allowed to live.

But in between the errors and the sentences beginning with "And" and "But" I found more than a few well-written clauses and phrases and the occasional joke that made me laugh out loud.

Quietly, that is, as there were still a couple people around trying to get something productive done.

In an attempt to save you the trouble of actually reading all of it (at least until I clean it up and format it better), I've excerpted what I consider to be funny and well-written, or failing that, worth excerpting.

• 500 measly words. I have written exactly 500 words about Murray. It's a start, though, and not too bad for about a half hour of real concentrated effort. If I can maintain this rate I'll be a winner in just over two days of writing. Not too shabby, I'd say. But I'm going to stop now to make a sandwich, I think, since the eggs weren't enough and I need to be civil to my wife and anyone else I bump into today. Civil, even jovial, becuase I'm sure I'll be tossing the fact that I'm writing a novel into whatever conversations I encounter. This should be fun.

• I have a noir story I started in sixth grade that will forever be unfinished, leaving the gumshoe surrounded by menacing thugs and a gun pointed at him. Not a good position to be in, though I bet he'd be more motivated to work on a novel than I am right now. I fear that I need to lie to my coworkers tomorrow about my wordcount.
• Nuking the whole planet would be about the most definite way to eliminate all possible competition. Unfortunately such a move would also wipe out all potential customers. Such is business, I suppose.
• Now I'll have to look up rainforest stuff, unless I relegate the trees and such to background as far as my characters are concerned. A tree's a tree to Murray, I just decided, and I'm not going to Clancy-fy the novel by detailing the flora and fauna to death. I need word count, but I'm not going to pad it with a bunch of stuff I'd be pulling off of Google; nor would I want the burden of fabricating an entire ecosystem. I'll leave that for the companion novel starring Bob the botanist or some such nonsense.
• I don't want to pattern my novel after ones that I didn't like, though. I've never seen or read Gone with the wind but I imagine the burning of the city at the end isn't exactly a good thing for anybody, so that's maybe a decent downer example.
• Seeing as this planet's so nature-aware, though, its inhabitants aren't interned in coffins or mausoleums but effectively chucked naked into the dirt. After a tasteful ceremony, that is. I'm all for such a thing so I would carefully describe it only in the most favorable terms. Incidently it is this that I hope is done with my remains when I die, or so I say now. This novel isn't leaglly binding, though, and would serve little purpose as my will and testament. That would be a marketing coup: a first novel slash last will and testament. But only if it is well written.
• Eat your heart out, Stephen King. And then eat that one you keep in the jar on your shelf, you sick bastard.
• Some books I'd really like to hear a commentary track, but would I want to hear it or more appropriately read it? Why would reading it be more appropriate?
• So I have thirty nine thousand words to write in just about thirteen days, which works out to just about three thousand words a day. So logical, and yet so daunting. I will not be daunted, though, for I am pretty sure that daunt is not a transitive verb. I will have to look into this, as if this writing thing doesn't work out I can always go around daunting people. Or things, whichever it ends up that can be daunted, again if such is possible.
• Just before that year ended, I stumbled across a microwave in the alleyway. Stumbled over, more, but this is my story and I'm damned if I am going to come off as a klutz.
• There I go, fictionalizing again. My couch wasn't lead-lined, my walls were. Ha ha ha.
• Good words like this don't vote along party lines but stick with their convictions and never split infinitives either. They don't start sentences with "And" or "But" but they don't look down on those that do. These are the words that cannot be corrupted, no matter how much money or sex you throw at them, but are easy to spell and unambiguous of pronunciation. They will loan you five bucks whether you need for a root canal or just booze, and they never use apostrophes to pluralize. These are the words that I will be using tonight.
• After 3115 words and some time had passed I had forgotten the whole thing.
• So here I had a device that could sort macaroni by some measure of quality, or some quality of measure.
• I vaguely remember references to G.I. Joe shows ending with a safety tip, generally along the lines of "It isn't safe to do what you just saw us doing on television. We're fighting COBRA and you are just a kid, a wimpy little kid who can't even fight his little sister and win, let alone a strange and bizarre yet large and powerful crime syndicate led by a shadowy figure whose face we never see. And that's just Inspector Gadget. I can't imagine you would try anything on his show, since he's always sticking fingers in odd places and makeing impossible things pop out of others. And that whole telescoping neck and eyes thing? So unreal. I can't believe you watch that crap, kid. You should be outside playing with your friends. In traffic. But look both ways, you hear?" and so on.
• At the same time I should probably include some real content instead of this blathering on and on, but the night is not getting any younger nor am I getting any more creative.
• ...and as it is being shown that he was having a nightmare (perhaps again with flashback) Murray takes center stage. Or better yet he's on the side of the frame, so as to make making a full frame DVD of this film that little bit more difficult.
• I might even make him more productive in the dream, but cannot be sure what that would say about him above and beyond the whole not getting up from the desk bit. This little tidbit would of course not be made apparent to the audience so they would thing that I am a cinematic genius no matter however each person interprets it.
• Then again I tend to have strange dreams: I have dreamed of being a staircase not once but twice, and apparently staircases see in black and white.
• Now you Fruedians can have a field day with that, go right ahead. And while you're at it, go read a better book, one with real veiled references and subliminal and unconscious desires and whatever. This novel doesn't even have a plot line, let alone anything else hidden between the lines. Though if you come up with anything, go ahead and send it over to me.
• For a Microsoft product, though, I found it to be very polite in this way of telling me its utter uselessness. Safari was not even rude, choosing the path of "if you have nothing good to say, then say nothing at all" or however the mantra of the really nice and the really silent goes.
• I can only backpedal on this point so far, so I will stop. If I remember correctly, pedaling backward on some bikes makes them stop; at least the one I had as a child.
• Paul sells tires now, is waiting to become an ordained minister and I do not lie in streets anymore. This novel is not about him, though, but I bet he would be a good supporting character. He is the sort of character that left unchecked could easily sidetrack the narrative and end up taking over the story.
• Actually, you do not have to believe me. By definition of this being a novel, you cannot believe me completely as at least some of this has to have been fictionalized. By definition I am lying to you somewhere in this crisscrossing and wayward text, leading you down corridors of deceit and untruth, but fear not, lying is the worse that I will do to you. Nothing in this book should scare or frighten you... Your trips to the basement, even the side not as finished and with the noisy furnace, confoundingly low duct work and crazily angled floor, the one with the clown suit hanging in the dim light of a below ground window, will be uneventful and you will stroll, not sprint up the stairs. This is not by design but lack thereof. I cannot be expected to create terror when I cannot muster the effort to dredge a mere plot up from the depths, so rest easy, dear reader, you will be able to easily rest, even with the lights off.
• It amounts to forty eight thousand words of whining about some two thousand that didn't follow themselves up with any better material. I can't say that I could write something like this, but know well that I would never want to. Having suffered through it, I think I know the guy as well as he thinks he knows himself, and really, I almost pity him. Let him put that on the cover of the paperback, maybe it will sell some copies out of sympathy.

Hey, they were interesting to me.

I've recently rekindled my interest in model railroading--which is to say that I've been borrowing the magazines from the library. My temporary conclusion is that I don't care much for the actual running of the trains but rather just want to build tiny things. Of course, once I start buying those hundred dollar locomotives I may be singing a different tune.

Then again, maybe not.

So I've decided to come up with some sort of fashion-based affectation with which to distinguish myself. Today I tried keeping a pencil behind my ear, and I have to admit I sort of liked it. I think next time I'll use a pencil with an eraser, just to have the perfect image and whatnot, but there's definite possibility there.

And it's a heckuva lot cheaper than buying new shoes, I'd wager.