It seems I’ve dropped off the face of the planet again. No real entry since almost two weeks ago. The last three or four have been bullshit, haven’t they? Yes, it seems that they have. No thought required in most of those. Probably not a lot of thought in this one, either, by the time things are said and done. But I think I shall delude myself into thinking this entry important, at least until I post it and reread it. Then it will become useless.

I'm hiding in my cubicle, hunched down and hoping people will forget I'm here and hence avoid the tortures known as "real work," plotting my literary future. Had an action/sci-fi themed dream the other night, and it's got my mind swarming with a plethora of new ideas for scenes. It's fitting them into the plot that is going to prove slightly more tricky. It was a fantastic dream, involving chasing terrorists through our local courthouse. The terrorists had phaser guns that shot fatal cosmic goop (it was dream, for crying out loud. If you're looking for reality, check elsewhere). I was chasing the bad guy, who had just killed a town full of people, and wound up heading down a head-end corridor, dodging bullets and trying to take him down before he did something more drastic. I turn the hall and he's standing there with an evil grin and a detonator, somehow in front of a wall of mirrors. In the mirrors' reflection I can see the workings of a massive bomb. I turn to see whether the bomb is real or an illusion and he presses the detonator--

--This is exactly the moment my next door neighbor decided to fire up his weed eater and trim the bank outside my door, waking me up and keeping me from getting blown up, and scaring the hell out of me. I've been playing that one scene over in my head since then, and it would make a fantastic beginning for the sequel to Out of Nowhere (tentatively titled "Evolution"). Problem is, I already have about three too many opening sequences in mind for this particular novel, and no idea of which order to put them in. I keep wishing I could write this novel the way people watch a movie, with quick juxtapositions and split-screens with two pieces of action and plot running simultaneously. To pull this novel off, I'm going to need to come up with the literary equivalent of that without making things seem too jumpy.

But I suppose I should focus on finishing the first novel before getting ahead of myself.

Blogging from home now, still on the same entry, which I had to email to myself. Turns out I have to work at work after all. Having a cubicle right outside my manager’s door is not conducive to looking busy. The good news is my hacker friend got the old laptop to boot, and it’s presently balanced precariously on the edge of my desk, backing data up to a CD. I tried to just network the damned things with Ethernet, usb and some delightful printer-cable type cords designed for the specific purpose of data transfer, but the new computer wisely decided not to have anything to do with its predecessor. So the USB cd-rom is the relay center. I can breathe a little easier now that I have access to my font library and all Photoshop templates I use to design my web pages.

If the dream wasn‘t indication enough, this week has been an adventure into the odder aspects of life. It started on Sunday, when I made the mistake of doing yard work instead of showing up for our weekly D&D session. We have a pretty liberal policy about letting other people play our characters. It comes from necessity born from the fact that everyone in the game has a rather unpredictable schedule. Turns out that on the one day I don’t show up, we have to fight a tribe of giants. Four of the six of us got stepped on and kind of killed. Guess who was one of them? It’s times like this that you cringe at the fact that your deity is a mythological trickster who is as likely to screw you over as grant divine intervention. Come Saturday, I get to pray for resurrection and hope hell I don’t get screwed over.

Note to self: Worship Odin. It’s safer. Odin likes me. I am a favored child of Odin.

I get to feel sufficiently and semi-justifiably accomplished this week, as I have finished that chapter of Bound I was working on and uploaded it for mass consumption. I have a few people reading it who assure me it’s good stuff. I still wonder if I’m calling this novel in, as the saying goes. Truth is, at this point, I probably have to. Time to write by is not as forthcoming as it once was, and if I really let this book go where it wanted to, how it wanted to without any attempts to reign it in, I could very easily wind up with a 5,000-10,000 page monstrosity on my hands. Which would provide a major sense of accomplishment, yes, but probably at the expense of what’s left of my precariously-balanced mental state.

That said, I think I am going to shift gears and try to turn out a quick chapter on Lin and Edward that involves drugs, rock and roll and, of course, sex. The entire story is going to run about eight chapters, according to the outline I hammered out today, and I have two of them finished. I miss the pair of them and their interactions, which always leave even me wondering which way things are going to go. Presently, I’m in the middle of a scene in the chapter ahead of this one I have yet to write, which involves a major emotional blowout of potentially irreparable proportions, which are the kinds of things I love to write, and can write pretty effortlessly.

After that, I suppose I have to turn my attention back to Alec and the rest of the Out of Nowhere gang, as I have yet another insufferable but necessary interlude chapter to complete before moving on with the plot. I want desperately to put this novel aside until I feel more in the mood to write it, but the last time I made that decision, I would up losing eight months of my life I stand no chance of getting back. I shall trudge onward and hope for the best, as I still maintain a fool’s hope that I can finish this novel by the end of the year.

There’s also a good chance that my place of employment could be shutting down soon and I will find myself amongst the ranks of the unemployed. More on that story as it develops. Things are still in the rumor stage. I have already decided that if our jobs are shipped to Oklahoma, I am joining Zombie in Las Vegas for more than a 4-day vacation. I can make far more money in Nevada and possible go back to school at a respectably university while I do it. Las Vegas is a gorgeous city I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in before, and I would love to live there almost as much as Manhattan. To be honest, I’m almost hoping the office goes under. It would give me an excuse to get on with my life.

I think I shall now turn my attention to contemplating the eccentricities of the Wednesday Mind Hump, and hope to get it posted some time before Friday.

My grandfather had a box of photos and old albums in his bedroom. In them, we found pictures dating back to times when photography was still a new concept. He’s not much of a memento keeper, though, and was ready to throw them all out in the quest for more closet space. Gran and I salvaged them and spent most of the day sorting through memories, mostly made between 1930 and the times of the Korean War. Gran is in the process now of buying many, many multi-picture collaging frames. While she was distracted, I stole a trio of photos to make a collage of my own. I’ve decided to share them.

The first is of my grandfather, taken at a bar in Japan while he was stationed overseas during the Korean War. At the time of the photograph, he was physically ill from too much sake the night before. Understandably, he was not very happy about having his picture taken.

The second is of Gran and my mother, Earlene, taken at a photo booth at a mall in New Jersey back in the mid 70s, when mom was still in her early teens. I love this photograph immeasurably. My mother was always loathe to have her picture taken, and very few photographs exist of her. Today was the first time I got to see my mother as a teenager, wearing a goofy floppy hat that was at one time considered in style, with my grandmother dressed almost identically. I feel a connection to them both through this picture, spent most of today thinking about the stupid things mom and I used to do together, which never included dashing into a photo booth for some pictures to laugh at on down the line. I’ve been thinking that I wish I had more photographs to fill the gaps in my memories, most of which I’ve chosen to forget in order to make staying sane a possibility. Six and a half years after I buried her, I’m only now allowing myself to start really thinking about my mother again, because I’m tired of trying to live with the memories of a mauve casket draped in roses.

The last picture is of me. This is the three surviving generations of my family, grandparents, their only child, and their daughter’s only child.

Mood:   Creative
Now Playing:  Ordinary by Train
Now Writing:  Chapter something-or-another of Bound 
Swear Words Spoken:  less than five

Writing on this novel seems to inspire my poetry.  I blame Vienne entirely and am thinking of making her write greeting cards  as a profession for spite.

I need salvation from this world of my design

Before I’m shattered by the weight of unmet expectations

An escape beyond all constraints of space and time

Realms that gods have long forsaken

Across the stars and all these miles apart

I yearn to be filled by you

Consumed by your desires made mine, consummated in our souls

Enraptured by your fingertips as they trace upon my skin

Drowning in the rhythm of your pulse

Seeking haven amid the chaos of destruction

The Mindhump:

Was a set of miniature windchimes I purchased for four dollars from Wal-Mart.

In a similar vein, the Lyrics from a few entries ago are as follows:

1.)  So-Called Chaos by Alanis Morrisette
2.) Suede by Tori Amos
3.) Dixie Chicken by Garth Brooks
4.) Don't Let it Bring You Down by Neill Young
5.) Hey Pretty by Poe

I warn you now, not all stories have happy endings.  Or, as I have learned, any sense of closure whatsoever.  I went to the pound last Friday, bright and early, as promised, and spoke to a congenial enough young man who was feeding the dogs.  One dog visibly missing was a cute little yellow gal with pointy ears and white feet.  I asked if Oli had come through at all, gave him a description of her.  He shook his head sadly and said no dog like that had been through the pound.  Then, seeing my confusions, asked me if I was the dog’s owner.  I said yes, hoping for a lead to her potential whereabouts or some leverage, and he asked me where the pooch had come from.  I explained the story of Oli’s abduction by the local Game Warden, which was met with an even more dismal face in response.  The man again told me she had never been to the pound, of that much she was certain.  He spoke with a saddened voice that said she had probably never made it to the pound.

I am without a yellow dog to curl up in my lap, and I feel like a failure for letting this happen.  The guilt led to a wonderfully heated discussion with my grandfather, who didn’t seem to give a damn that he was no better than the people he had said should be imprisoned for setting her on the side of the road.  At least they didn’t have her killed.  I told him as much.  He didn’t seem to like it.  Just as well, I have no real interest in talking to him for the rest of the foreseeable future, and have lost most of the little respect I used to have for him.

Today is Typewriter Day.  In honor of the first patent on the typewriter ... wait, what's a typewriter?  Is that anything like a keyboard?  Okay, now we're talking.  Using the letters K-E-Y-B-O-A-R-D tell us something about your blog or your blogging habits.

K – Keyboarding.  I do it strangely.  With the fingers poised far above the keyboard, hitting down on the keys themselves with the tips of my fingers one at a time.  It is an odd little typing dance I do, but it drastically cuts down on spelling errors from doing it the right way.  People like to laugh at the way I type.

E – Eating.  I am almost always munching on something while I type.

Y – Yahoo-ooooo.  Specifically Launch.  It’s an invaluable source of mediocore tuneage to help break the silence on long, particularly useless nights.

B – Blog has become my primary source of communicating information to the outside world (anyone who exists in it besides me).  My human-to-human interactions have been drastically cut in half since I found this place—not that that in any way should be considered a compaint.

O – Occasional.  It’s the name of the blog for a reason.  I either make 3-4 entries a day, or none for days at a time.

A – Always procrastinating.  I keep saying I shall write on my novels.  Instead, I blog.  Tis a never-ending, vicious cycle.

R – Really shiny, new Compaq Presario.  My new baby, love of my life. I shall be doing many, many blog entires on that oddball keyboard.

D – During my work shift is the most common time that I blog.  There is a nice lull in business after midnight, which explain why most of my entries are made between 1 and 3 in the morning.

This week's hump -- an even dozen of "I say ___, you think ___"

01.  stroke: Dirty songs by Clarence Carter.
02.  sketch: My soon-to-be more publicized “Draw My Characters” Campaign.  Watch this blog for details.
03.  poke: what Luna always does on messenger to get my attention.
04.  doh: D’oh, a deer (Homer Simpson musical tune)
05.  tongue: this book I just finished reading which involved tongues being cut out so the victims wouldn’t talk.  Disgusting stuff.  I bet you’re glad I shared.
06.  post: Post office.  I desperately need to check my mail.
07.  twirl: twizzlers.  Don’t know why.
08.  fore: Horrendous netspeak.  Bfore U go, meh peep…..  Man, it’s been a long time since I did a grammar rant.  I should think of one.
09.  cup: coffee.  Need coffee.  In a cup.  Cups are what coffee is for.
10.  curly: What I wish my hair did naturally.
11.  swim: what the fish do, for lack of other modes of transportation.
12.  snooze: Naps are gooood.

For extra fun, hump this:

Think of an item ... 

 ...don't tell us what the item is.  Now, describe that item in brief paragrah (the size, the color, etc) but don't give it away.  Okay, now you're ready to hump it up.  Replace the name of the item with the word "hump".  Other players will come to your blog and try to guess what your hump is.  Tomorrow morning, add the answer to your hump and for big fun add a picture.  If you don't have a camera do a Google image search.

My hump is held up by a black string and a copper hook.  The hump has thin, hollow, metal reeds hanging down from a wooden support.  The hump is mesmerizing everyone who walks by my cubicle and plays with it.  The hump makes wonderfully soothing music.

I find myself in a state of semi-fuckedupeddness. The laptop is finally dead, Odin rest its weary soul, and I am now $`,300 short in my Vegas Vacation fund. The newest arrival into my household is yet another Compaq Presario laptop (may it serve me better than its predecessor) a nice little wide-screened deal I got for a massive discount because it was the store’s display unit. I’ve spent most of my morning going through the hard drive, removing other people’s downloads and spy ware (seriously, why download MP3s in Circuit City--it’s not like you can use them.) This should also explain why I dropped off the face of the planet around Friday night. New computer killed out then and, after spending a weekend camping in the mountains of Virginia (where I happen to live, so big freaking deal), I had to come home and find a way to replace the old laptop. So now there is this monstrosity, and I do mean monstrosity. I haven’t seen a laptop of this width since they came into vogue in the early 90s. The screen is bright enough to catch some serious rays from, despite my best efforts to dim it. And all my data is still on the old computer, which refuses to acknowledge my existence.

This is, ladies and gentlemen, my fatal flaw. I am She Who Forgets to Back Up Her Data. I have most of my 15 gigs of amassed stuff accounted for. Problem is, I have this nasty little habit of forgetting to back up my novels more than once or twice a year. Everything I have written since January still sits on the old hard drive, which refuses to go past the sign-in screen. I have tried to slave the old computer onto this one and thus acquire my data, but no luck thus far. I am planning to turn the matter over to some hacker friends of mine who should, hopefully, fix the issue in no time. Barring that, I suppose salvaging this data is worth paying for a call to good old Microsoft Tech Support.

I also kind of forgot to back up the 500-odd fonts I have accumulated over the years. This, for some reason, is irking me worse than the loss of data. I have amassed these fonts from the web, other people, odd cds I no longer have and so many other sources that I lost track years ago. These were the fancy, beautiful fonts I was using for titles and letterheads of my books, scripts that will be impossible to track down again now that they are lost. I hold out hope of salvaging the old hard drive long enough to back up a copy, and to update my literary works.

On the remarkably bright side, though, this new, pretty version of Microsoft Works (not Word, thank you God) is compatible with my older version, which dates back to the glory days of Windows 95, and which all of my novels have been written on. The files I salvaged opened upon command, and promptly went ballistic. Another of the downsides, I am learning, is the need to re-program your spellchecker to recognize words like Aleczicandre and Amon as real things and not some gross user input error. The poor auto-correct doesn’t even know where to start.

I am also discovering as I type this entry, the first thing of any length I’ve done on the new computer, that some of the keys are in the most inconceivable of places. The Windows key is hidden in the top-right corner, where the Home, End, and Page keys are also crammed. I am going to be doing a lot of accidental backspacing before I get the hang of the new layout. The Control and Function keys are also completely reversed from what I’m used to. I think I shall have a nervous breakdown along with my poor spellchecker before things are said and done. I am learning, also, that this keyboard is just a fraction of an inch wider than my previous one, which is also aiding to the already impending nervous breakdown of my new spell-checker. The mouse is in precisely the right spot to scroll to other points of the document at random, input the cursor, and start my typing amid something already completed. This is definitely going to take some getting ased to, though I think I just found a fantastically magical button that disables the mouse altogether. Odin be praised. This thing also makes some delightfully cool noises. It purrs like a velociraptor while dialing up to my ISP. Creepy, as I have this paranoia about velociraptors coming to kill me while I sleep, but cool nonetheless.s

So, aside from being out 500+ irretrievable fonts, my copy of Photoshop, three or four dozen “acquired” MP3s, all the templates for my web page and about 100-odd pages of randomly written material including a few half-finished chapters I was hoping to turn into fully-finished chapters before week’s end, the new setup is going smoothly so far. This computer, who needs a name (the old one was Alec, go figure) is proving to be much faster and efficient than its predecessor, stupid user input problems aside.

On a closing note, I leave myself with the following words of advice: next time, back it up.

The beast is conquered.  The demon has been slain.  I rejoice on a field of victory amid much wine and dancing and revelry.

Odin be praised.

Mood:  Anticipatory
Now Playing:  So-Called Chaos by Alanis Morrisette
Swear Words Spoken Today: 0

I have fallen victim to the ever-popular song meme.  Below are lines from five songs. I want titles and artists.  No googling, as that takes all the fun out of it.  First person to answer correctly gets a prize of some form.

1.  "I want to be naked, running thorugh the streets"
2.  "Anybody knows you can conjure anything by the dark of the moon"
3.  "She took me to the river where she cast her spell"
4.  "Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load"
5.  "Well I've got a mind full of wicked designs"

Leave your answers as a comment.

And, as part of back-to-back Meme madness, here's a completed book meme that I stole from Xaos who stole it from the Angry Alchemist, who stole it from someone else.

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
   Obsidian Butterly by Laurell K. Hamilton
   The Third Option by Vince Flynn
   Sharpe's Escape by Bernard Cornwell
   The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
   Song of Susannah by Stephen King
 
2. Book #1 -- First sentence.
I was covered in blood, but it wasn't mine, so it was okay.

3. Book #2 -- Last sentence on page fifty.
What are you still doing here?

4. Book #3 -- Second sentence on page one hundred.
God damn it, he thought, but he would make Lavisser pay.

5. Book #4 -- Next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty.
He did not fight so much anymore, as his style was one that relied upon speed and acute vision.
 
6. Book #5 -- Final sentence of the book.
King's family, which had gathered in part to celebrate Father's Day, is in seclusion tonight.

7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.
I was covered in blood, but it wasn't mine, so it was okay. He did not fight so much anymore, as his style was one that relied upon speed and acute vision. God damn it, he thought, but he would make Lavisser pay.  King's family, which had gathered in part to celebrate Father's Day, is in seclusion tonight..... What are you still doing here?

I called the pound today,, spoke with a grouchy and generally disgruntled sounding older man.  I asked about the hours of operation for tomorrow, and was told they are only open from the hours of 12-4 because, for the rest of the day, they would be “working with the animals.”  I am assuming this means injecting them with chemicals that cause them to stop breathing and their hearts to stop beating. 

I asked this same disgruntled man, very nicely and very specifically if there was a yellow dog that had been brought in on Monday, one who had a white streak on her face, a white underbelly and two white back paws.  I mentioned she was probably a whiner.  His answer was to tell me gruffly that they were open from noon until 4pm and to come by then.  He slammed the phone down on me.

I am not optimistic at this point that Oli will find her way back to me, but I am getting up early in the morning to drive up to the pound so that I will be there just as they open.  Hopefully, she will still be waiting for me.