Narvi Flan

I want my four dollars!

2009-11-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

Storytime last night. I tell a story. Ember tells a story. Ember turns to Liz and says:

"Mommy, you tell a story!"

Liz: "Well, Once Upon a Time, there was a Mommy, a Daddy, and an Ember... then they all got sleepy and went to bed. The End."

Ember: "That was a good story, Mommy. It was a free story."

Me: "Well, I certainly wouldn't have paid anything for it."

Ember: "I would pay you for it, Mommy. I would pay you four dollars!"

Liz: "Thank you, Ember."

Ember: (turning to me) "Daddy, can you give me four dollars?"

Dawning

2009-03-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

I awake this morning to the sounds of Ember still playing in her room as she was when I went to sleep the night before. She must have heard my alarm, because she comes into my room to investigate.

"Good morning," I say.

She looks puzzled. "Is it getting dark outside?" she asks.

"No, it's getting light outside," I answer, "The sun is coming up."

A look of shock passes over her face. "But I didn't go to sleep!"

"Nope," I say, cheerfully, "you stayed up all night."

She looks concerned. "I think I'm gonna go in my room and rest a little."

"No, it's time to get up and have breakfast. You've got a big day ahead of you."

And with that, the circle of life turned once again, and my daughter learned what sort of sympathy one can expect from a well-rested parent when you've decided the night before that bedtimes are for chumps.

To her credit, she gave it a valiant effort, collapsing only about 30 seconds short of getting any breakfast.

Those silly Sidhe

2009-03-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

I had to high-step it to make the 6:20 ferry home last night, and, by the time I was making my way up that last hill homeward, my shins were screaming in protest. You’d think it would be your thighs or calves that hurt from ascending and descending hills, but, at least in my case, it was the shins.

Still, it was a pleasant enough walk. The sun was just setting, the island easing into that cool, shadowless gloom just before nightfall. The other travelers had all disappeared off down their respective lanes or away into busses or cars, and I found myself walking alone through the silent, sleeping town. It was then that I heard the wail.

It carried on the evening breeze, a woman’s voice, a beautiful, wordless song. The way it echoed through the trees, between the empty shops, imparted a sad, wavering keen to the melody. I paused for a moment to listen, unable to guess from whence it came. Some evening music class in one of the dark buildings just beyond the trees perhaps? No telling… The pain in my shins made itself noticed again, now that I had stopped.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “you’ve really done it this time. You’ve exercised too much, and now the banshee’s come for you.” Running was out of the question. My only hope was to lure her in close and try a sucker punch. Then again, she’d probably just call the Cóiste Bodhar to come pick me up, and, by that point, had some lambent-headed undead fairy rolled up in a black coach and offered me a ride… I’da considered it.

Who watches the alarm clock?

2009-03-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

Liz and Ember were bad last night and stayed up all night long. Ember was courteous enough to come into my bedroom once every hour throughout the night to wake me up and tell me what she had been doing since her previous report, oh, and she needed a drink. Granted the wisdom that comes with age, I had a drink handy on the bedside table, so my interruptions were brief. In between, I had all sorts of random, violent, exciting dreams, of which I only remember a snippet.

It seems that I was waiting to get in to see the evil head villain, but had first to deal with his receptionist, sort of a sub-boss, played, I think, by Eddy Izzard. His villainous soliloquy was in full swing, climaxing in some sort of rant on treachery, when he flung the top from his reception desk with a dramatic flourish, revealing… a badly organized pile of old fashion magazines within the body of the desk. Eddy looked dismayed. Apparently there should have been some lethal array of weaponry or such hidden within the desk, rather than this mess. Rummaging through it a bit, he angrily shouted , “Now who’s got purple ink all over my magazines? Damn you, Rorshach!”

Suddenly, Eddy’s hand goes to his throat. A small dart there. Unconsciousness overtakes him, and he tumbles to the floor. Hopping lightly through an open window, a tall, dapper, Rorshach appears, his trench coat clean and crisp. “Ah ha!” Rorshach says, his voice full of heroic swagger, “Did you really think you could get away with it?”

“Wha-what?” I stammer, staring dumbly at this masked superhero who seems most out of character.

Rorshach stares at me for a moment, his mask unreadable, then slumps a bit, shrinking a little, the shine gone out of him. He clears his throat apologetically and speaks again, in a voice like old razorblades rolled in gravel, “Did you really think I wouldn’t…”

Staring down at Eddy’s unconscious form, Rorshach shrugs his shoulders with a resigned, “Hurm…”

“Daddy, daddy, Wake up. I need a drink.”

Sunny Days

2009-03-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

The gray skies of Seattle have finally shown themselves to be more than myth, but I’m tapping my foot to the latest Jonathan Coulton song, a cheerful little tune indeed!

It seems that I’ve contracted some sort of northern malady, previously unknown to this son of the lower latitudes. All of my fingernails are cracking and splintering, often lengthwise, much to my displeasure. I shall call this new disease “Fisherman’s Flake” or perhaps “Crabulon’s Revenge” would be more appropriate. The sea, she is a cruel mistress.

Urban living comes naturally, it seems, to Ember. She wandered into our bedroom the other night, singing in her best Snoop Dogg voice, “Laid baaaack… got my chicken nuggets and my money on my mind.” She’s already begun rewriting “twinkle twinkle, little star” as a more up-beat pop tune in her spare time.

20 floors up, and every so often I will feel a faint swaying beneath me as I sit at my desk. I postulate therefore that 1) this is common to highrise buildings, 2) I’m imagining it, or 3) Mt. Rainier is getting ready to blow up. Sometimes I’m glad that my life isn’t narrated by an ominous Orson Welles voiceover, quoting random bits of Nostradamus. Though, come to think of it, that would be pretty cool.

“At the ninth year of the new century, in the grey city, shall rise the half-legged monarch. His claw un-matched, shall draw the life of many.”

The words of a madman, or a chilling prophecy of things to come?

2009-03-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

I ate sushi today for the first time. That’s not entirely true, I suppose. I mean I’ve had California rolls and boiled shrimp sushi, but never the raw fish variety that people are usually referring to when they talk about sushi. The new head of my department took me out for lunch to a neat little Asian place near the new office. It was kind of an upscale buffet with a pretty good variety of food. I had rice and vegetables, dumplings and grilled fish, and sushi. I only got one piece of the raw fish variety. I think it was tilapia. The meat was buttery and soft, and rather spicy, so I suspect they slipped something wasabi-esque into the mix. Still, it was quite good, and not at all what I expected raw fish to taste like.

The new office is nice. I have a view of the city out my window. Everyone laughs at my desk, as I apparently have the highest monitor to person ratio in the office at the moment. I’ve never worked downtown anywhere before, and I think I like it. The streets are relatively clean, and the stench common to most cities just doesn’t seem to stick here. The dockside markets smell like fish, of course, but fresh fish. The people seem nice as well. They keep to themselves on the street, I suppose it is a faux pas to make eye contact. Yet, whenever I’ve had occasion to deal with a stranger here, they’ve always been open and kind. The rudeness I’ve encountered in other cities seems conspicuously absent.

I’m walking… a lot… but, so far I haven’t had a problem with it. The ferry is a nice change of pace from sitting in traffic. My new commute takes longer, but I don’t feel like I’m wasting gas and life sitting in a traffic jam.

I bought a new hat, one of those trendy two-tone stocking caps, to replace the thin little black one that I got out of the bargain bin at the Burlington in Austin. It seems odd to be able to walk to a store on your lunch break and buy something to wear back to the office. I had a dream once that I was in a vast, multi-leveled city of the future, sort of like the grimy, dystopian things you see in sci-fi movies, but this one was clean and safe and wonderful. The architecture valued artistry in its functionality and the lights were warm and colorful… inviting. Being here is sort of like being in that dream, and I like it.

Seattlement

2009-02-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

We’ve recently returned from our trip to Seattle whereto I will shortly be displaced. Displaced perhaps being too harsh a term, we’ll say re-portated. In short, we are moving there, and Liz and I spent a week finding a place to live. After the last trip, we’d come to the conclusion that we’d try for a place on Bainbridge Island so that I might walk to the ferry boat each morning for a short jaunt across an icy inlet of the Pacific to the new office downtown. The ferry boat is nice. It’s like a floating high school cafeteria but without a “band table” which is where I usually sat in real high school because most of my friends were in band, and I was made an honorary band member. Sadly, this did not impart any particular musical skill. In any case, the ferry is better than high school because, when lunch is over, I get to either go to my office or my new apartment rather than to algebra or something.

The whole process of finding a new settlement proved rather draining, not so much physically as mentally. The trick of it was constantly having to re-imagine myself and family in each potential situation, ranging from hardy pioneers scratching out a living in a ramshackle house, nestled deep in the evergreen forest, to swaggering land barons astride a hardwood deck larger than the house which we presently inhabit. We’d return from each day’s hunt, brain-weary and damp, for it is eternally damp there. Lying in the hotel room, we’d watch cable television (a rare treat for us), learning how chocolate is made and what part of the taran-tula is edible. In the end, we decided on the apartment, for it seemed the most familiar and pleasant to us in a land of unfamiliarity.

It is strange to stand on one stone that is tilting swiftly beneath your feet, seeing and knowing the exact stone to which you will leap. You marvel at the strange inevitability of it all, grateful for the certainty of choice, yet childishly resentful that you must leap when the stone turns. I feel as if I were once better suited for this sort of adventure, and have slept too long, forgetting the dreamer and losing myself in the dream. I need to shake off the sleep of thoughts and spring lightly to this new stone as I would have done before. This was just such a nice stone. I hate to see it turn and sink beneath me. But then that’s the trick to walking on water, isn’t it? You can’t stop moving, and you can’t look down.

I did get to eat a king crab… well some of his legs anyway. I’ve always thought about ordering king crab but never worked up the nerve. Following my policy of “gots to know” I did this time. It started out well, being the best crab I’d ever eaten, but, by the last two legs, I began to stare in horror and revulsion at the table before me. I sat and plucked quivering scraps of pallid flesh from the cracked carapace of this Lovecraftian creature, gnawing languidly at the larger chunks, and discarding others. The most awful thought just now occurs to me… that not all the beast was accounted for. Certainly, he’s short a few legs and a claw, but the majority of the thing may yet be out there. I did not see it die. Could such a thing truly die? Might it not lie still, slumbering beneath dark waves, and dreaming of man-flesh and revenge?

I’ll be waiting, Crabulon… I’ll be waiting.

It seemed like a good idea.

2008-08-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

Liz wanted to run cable through the attic from the office to our bedroom at the far end of the house. The problem was that our tastefully vaulted ceiling in the center of the house leaves only a tiny crawlway between the two sections of attic space. Our options were to either hire an anorexic contortionist cable guy to squeeze through the narrow gap or run the cables unsightfully through the inside of the house. My solution, brilliant in its simplicity, to tie a string to the puppy’s collar, push her through a small hole in the ceiling of the office closet, and have Liz (whom the puppy likes more than me) (I can’t imagine why) call to her from the other side of the crawlspace. Once the puppy runs to momma, so to speak, Liz unhooks the string from her collar and pulls the cable through to the other side.

I propose this idea to Liz, in the half-joking tone I reserve for suggestions that I’m not certain to be received well. Liz seems impressed by my cleverness, and, ten minutes later, I am balanced precariously on the edge of my computer desk, sawing a puppy-sized hole in the sheetrock with an old space-age stainless steel carving knife (guaranteed for life).

Now Liz has made a minor modification to my plan for the sake of safety (the puppy’s). Instead of affixing the length of white nylon rope (previously used as a hangman’s noose for a glow-in-the-dark skeleton two Halloweens back) to the puppy’s collar, she instead ties it to the leash of the puppy’s going-walkies harness, so that, if, for some reason, we have to pull the dog back, we’ll be pulling on the harness around her chest, rather than the collar around her neck.

Hole cut. Liz in the attic. Dog harnessed. Rope affixed. The operation begins.

Precious Puppy does not want to go in the dark hole. I feel a little bad, but hey, it’s not like I’m asking her to herd sheep or something. One quick run through the attic, and it will be a hero’s welcome and all the cat treats she can eat (apparently they taste better than puppy treats). Puppy goes in hole. Proceeding well. Feeding the rope into the hole. My mind drifts back to the heartbreaking Jonathan Coulton song about Laika the first dog in space. The rope goes slack.

Me: “Puppy? You there?”

Puppy: “…”

Ember: “Daddy, I scared.”

Me: “Puppy?”

Ember: “I want to hold you daddy!”

Me: “Ember, puppy’s in the ceiling right now and I have to help her, please wait a minute.”

Puppy: “…wheeze…”

I give the rope a little tug. More wheezing. Tug harder. It’s caught on something. No further movement.

Ember: “Daddy! I want to hold you!”

I climb as high as I can. The table sways dangerously underneath me. Elbow deep in the puppy hole. Sheetrock dust in my eyes. Coughing. Feeling in the darkness. No puppy.

“Daddy, I scared!”

“NOT NOW, EMBER! DADDY HAS TO SAVE THE PUPPY!”

Wrong answer. Ember starts bawling uncontrollably. She sniffs in rage and strides across the room, climbing up to slap me hard on the ankle.

“Ember… go… to… your… room…now.”

Liz climbs back down and joins me in the office for Puppy Rescue 2008. She climbs up to the puppy hole, slips her arm through and begins to pull in earnest on the leash. A curse. Liz hands me down the empty puppy harness. Either the puppy has managed to somehow wiggle free of her bonds, or she’s been eaten by a grue.

Liz straps on the LED headlamp her grandmother gave us two Christmasses back. She climbs the ladder in the garage, and she makes her way toward the dreaded crawlspace. This time, they’ve got her dog!

Somehow, she makes it through. In the dusty beam of the maglite, I can make out one ashen-faced Liz and a bored-looking puppy. No, sir, she does not want to go back through that puppy hole. Liz doesn’t give her the option not to. Dog in hand. Precious Puppy looks up at me and coughs. Go chase a cat or something.

So, Liz, as long as you’re up there… you want the rope? I’m kinda glad that I can’t quite hear what she says. Liz takes the rope and begins the long crawl to freedom.

Ember releases herself from time-out on her own recognizance. I take baby aggro again, leading her to her favorite DVD (Robots) and getting her a drink. I return to the office just in time to see the tangled bundle of spare rope about to disappear into the puppy hole. I lunge for it and tie it off. I proceed to the garage to pull a mangled, exhausted, dust-covered Liz from the attic.

We survived.

My boss’ first comment when I get to work this morning, “why don’t you do a wireless network?”

It seemed like a good idea.

I missed the crazy!

2008-07-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've been off the anti-crazy pills for about a week now, my prescription having run out last Friday. I can definitely feel the difference. The odd thing is that I don't really mind being off them right now. Granted, with the pills, I was completely rational and sane, able to make decisions logically and free of emotional clouding. It was very comforting and liberating, especially since I had started taking them due to an increasing inability to function under stress.

Now, I'm perched somewhere between irrational impulses and dispassionate detachment. I feel alive and passionate again, wild-eyed and dangerous, but with one foot still planted in the sane, safe world. I hope I can balance this, because I find comfort in the forgotten warmth of that maddening flame, burning with wrath and love and impossible hopes.

Ginger says she'll let me know if I start turning into a dick again.

More Narviness!

2008-07-14T15:42:00.001-07:00

Narvi Flan hated riding the school bus home only slightly less than he hated riding it to school. Narvi was not the most popular boy at Yonkender Middle School, but, to be fair, he was not the least popular. That honor, or dis-honor as the case may be, belonged to Matthew Meeks, the boy with the lazy eye who punched people between the shoulder blades really hard when they weren’t looking. Narvi’s popularity hung somewhere in the lower ranks of his classmates, poised between that of the alliterative poetry club and the Carnigan Quintuplets, five nearly identical brothers and sisters whose parents dressed them alike, according to the law of their obscure and unpopular religion. For all the ridicule these groups received, Narvi secretly envied their engroupment. They at least had someone to be unpopular with, or was it “with whom to be unpopular”? Narvi had not done well on his English exam today.

The bus hit another bump, sending Narvi skyward, where he hung, weightless, for a prolonged instant before crashing back down on the hard, grimy rubberized walkway in the aisle between the two rearmost seats on the bus. His grunt of pain drew snorts of laughter from the boys sitting in relative comfort on either side of him, three to a seat. It also attracted the attention of Mike the bus driver. Once or twice a week, Mike filled in for the lady who usually drove the bus. Narvi did not know her name, because all that she ever said was “Sit Down!” Mike, on the other hand, was a nice enough guy. He played the radio and chatted with the high school kids who got on first and were lucky enough to ride up front. He tended to drive too fast, take corners too hard and speed up for bumps, but most of the kids on the bus were appreciative of Mike’s attempts at enlivening an otherwise dull ride home. Today, Narvi’s backside ached for a bit less excitement.

“Get back in your seat!” Mike yelled back, his eyes flashed annoyance in the oversized rear-view mirror as Narvi resumed his seat on the floor in the aisle.

Narvi pursed his lips in grim determination before answering as calmly as he was able, “I don’t have a seat.”

“Well, find one!”

Narvi rose unsteadily to his feet, shouldering his backpack and swaying as Mike took another turn. He made his way slowly up the aisle, looking for an empty seat where he knew there were none. Kept after class. Last one on the bus. This was not a good day.

Narvi paused at last beside the seat occupied by the two Carnigan brothers in their matching button shirts and jeans and the neatly stacked tan totebags belonging to their three sisters who sat in the seat behind them. It was the only seat on the bus with only two occupants. Narvi pushed his thick eyeglasses a little further up the bridge of his short, upturned nose, brushed back the lank brown hair that clung to his forehead in the warmth of a late spring school bus, and cleared his throat to speak.

“Can I sit here?”

The Carnigan brothers looked up at him, and then each other. Frowning. Silently, they heaped the pile of totebags onto their laps and shifted toward the window, leaving a gap of about six inches on the edge of the seat. Narvi stared down dubiously at the narrow purchase. He was, after all, something of a “husky” boy. At least that’s how his mother phrased it when they went clothes shopping.

Another sharp turn and Narvi dropped unceremoniously into place, one butt cheek planted solidly in his portion of the leatherette seat, and one foot braced against the base of the seat across the aisle. Backpack balanced on one knee, he dug his fingers into the frame of the seat in front of him, steadying himself. It was better than nothing.

“Thanks.” Narvi told the nearest Carnigan. He really meant it.

The Carnigans grunted in response and returned to a whispered conversation, apparently interrupted by Narvi’s arrival.

“I think you should throw it away,” Joss Carnigan muttered, his voice disapproving.

“We don’t even know what it is!” Jessi Carnigan protested, his voice rising a little.

“Shh!” Joss admonished, “You shouldn’t have brought it to school.”

Narvi lifted his forehead slightly from where it rested on the nape of his backpack, stealing a glimpse. There was something in Jessi’s open palm. Small, caked in rust. Metal probably. A ring of some sort. No, too small. A pendant? What were the two little curving protrusions on either side?

A bump slammed Narvi’s backpack down hard on his leg. The metal point of his protractor jabbed through backpack, jeans, and flesh.

“Augh!” Narvi exclaimed, rubbing at the wound with his fingers. Dampness there. Gonna need some ointment when he got home. He looked up to meet the gaze of Janetta Pruitt the president of the drama club. Narvi smiled tensely. Janetta rolled her eyes dramatically and turned her attention back to her friends. Narvi glanced over at the Carnigans again who seemed unaware of his trauma.

“If you don’t throw it away,” Joss whispered darkly, “I’m gonna tell dad.”

Jessi said nothing, but the strange pendant was nowhere in sight.

Dangit! I was hibernating!

2008-04-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

And Heath has to go and prod me into action with this 6-word memoir thing.

Well, here goes:

fall into darkness, infinitely, beautifully, delayed

Ahh, back to sleep now...

Web Comic!

2007-10-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

LOLEmber

2007-10-09T07:27:00.001-07:00

So, at 4AM this morning, Ember wakes us up with, "Cheeseburger!"

Us: "What?"

Ember: "Cheeseburger!"

Us: "You want a cheeseburger?"

Ember: "Cheeseburger!"

Us: "Ember, it's the middle of the night. We don't have a cheeseburger."

Ember: "I can have Cheeseburger?"

Us: "Baby, all the cheeseburger places are closed right now, we don't have any cheeseburgers."

Ember: "... Chicken nugget?"

Friday

2007-10-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

I have to say that I like Fridays a lot. The day sort of puts the whole working for a living thing in its place. It is as if Work stands, draped in golden robes, benevolent and cold atop an alabaster... um, card table or something, looking down upon us sternly as if to say "I am your true god. Serve me and live." But then Friday comes along, and you're all like "yeah, I'm leaving early today." and Work is like, "What? You took like an hour and a half for lunch!"

I hear that in Europe they only go to work for two days a week, and they never stay late. So long as you don't want to own personal property or shoot stuff, life is pretty good there. The thought of packing up and heading to another country has often crossed my mind, but never really taken root. I don't think, having been raised a Texan, I could settle gently into the European Dream (Ciao). It's not that I often go about shooting things with wild abandon, but I do like having that option. I like American food too. By American food, I mean the food that we stole from everybody else, salted, deep fried, and dusted with powered sugar. Other countries use strange things like spices and herbs to flavor their food. We prefer it battered and glazed.

Speaking of glazing, I want a kiln. Many of my craziest schemes have been thwarted by the fact that I do not possess the ability to heat metals, glass, and/or ceramics to 1,500 heatagrade. I think the incinerator at the vet school where I used to work got that hot. One time my boss really wanted to clean out the incinerator right away, so he didn't wait the full week for it to cool down after shut off. His rubber boots melted. I remember he was always looking scornfully at me because he would want to finish projects quickly, whereas I preferred the lazy man's way of not doing stuff that was likely to kill or permanently disable me.

Me: "What's this strange fibrous gray material we're smashing with hammers? I've never seen anything like it before."

Him: "Asbestos."

Me: "Shouldn't we be wearing masks or something? I'm gonna go get a mask. You want one?"

Him: (Sighs heavily) "Just hurry up, I don't want this to take all day."

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, it's Friday. I should probably go get some lunch or something.

Cabin Fever

2007-03-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

A week alone sounded like a good idea.

Liz's parents asked her to bring the baby for a week's visit, and to see my parents as well. She asked if I'd be all right without her. I joked that I'd need some money for pizza, but she should go and have fun. I had too much work to do to take off for that long, so a week alone sounded like a good time to get things done.

The strange thing is, when I'm around other people, I'm full of energy, anxious to start and finish projects, always slightly annoyed that these people are distracting me from all the important work I could be doing. Then, when I am alone, I shuffle around restlessly, wanting to talk to someone, not wanting to work at all. Granted I've gotten a lot done these past few days, but not the Herculean tasks I'd envisioned would occur the moment I had the house to myself.

I think I'm some kind of enthusiasm leech.

I suppose the thing that bothers me most is that I don't enjoy drawing anymore. There was a point, not too long ago, that I asked another artist whom I respected for help and advice when I was at a very low point. His response was scathing, tearing apart the works I had worked long and hard to perfect... works I thought were pretty good. His bit of condescending advice was that I should take a foot-high stack of paper and draw my way through it. When I had done that, he said, I would be as good as any artist.

I'm sure he thought he was helping me, but the thing is, I've been through many feet of paper in my life. I've burned through reams of the stuff, perfecting my craft, and this guy talks to me like I'm some kid who needs a kick in the pants for inspiration. The gnawing thing about it is that I can't shake it off. I mean when I've been criticized in the past, I may have been flustered by it, but I could always justify it to myself. If they complained there was no background behind the figure, it was because I hadn't had any desire to draw one, once finished with the central character. If the anatomy looked off, it was because I had taken a shortcut and not checked my work, and I learned from the mistake. This guy, however, blindsided me, 'cause I couldn't see the flaws until he pointed them out, and that scared me.

To be a great artist, you have to be able to look at your work subjectively. If you can't step back from it and see it as others do, you can't see the faults. Now I question everything I do. My confidence is shaken to the breaking point because I honestly don't know if can see my art that way.

The funny thing is that I don't even like his work. He comes from what I call the "Dead Meat" school of art. Sure, he knows every muscle in the human body, but his characters just look like piles of muscle tissue, skinless and streaked with sweat and grime. His world is black and red and brown, gnashing teeth and spurting blood. Unfortunately for me, it is all the rage. I visit a website where he is a contributor, a site for "concept artists", and what I see there are nightmares of soulless flesh, painted with the skill of the Great Masters. A freakin' cult of gristle-worshippers, and I'm not invited.

These "concept" pieces must have taken days or weeks to complete. I seldom spend more than a couple of days working on a piece. I don't feel the need to render photorealistically when we've already invented cameras to take care of that sort of thing. In my mind, a true artist should be able to evoke an emotional response in the viewer with a few strokes of a pen. Artists who feel the need to paint every vein throbbing beneath the skin of their subjects don't trust their audience to fill in the blanks with their imaginations.

The hell of it is that I know I'm right, but I still can't walk away from it. I know that I don't want to be a "Dead Meat" artist, but, dammit, I feel like a loser walking away from a challenge. Part of me keeps saying that I'm only justifying my lack of talent by steering clear of the photorealism school. It unnerves me to realize that I'm just not that good at drawing things I see. It always comes back to my abstract perception of those things, and when I mix the styles, it just comes out a muddled mess.

I guess I'm just depressed because I have a lot of work to do. I know it should be a cause for thankfulness, but freelancing always brings me down. There's very little feedback, no chance to see a viewer's reaction to my work with freelancing. All artists, I think, do it for the applause, in one form or another, but freelancing feels kinda like pouring out your heart in a beautiful love letter, and then sealing it up and dropping it down a well. I already find it hard enough to bring pencil to paper, but now I have to do it for someone else, spending what little creative energy I can muster on someone else's project, and when I'm done, I sure as heck don't want to spend my free time drawing. I've seen the great artists, always with a sketchbook, every page crammed with scribbles, drawing constantly, never not being an artist. That's not me. Maybe there was a time that it was, but now, when I stare at the page, I just keep thinking how much whatever I draw is gonna suck.

I guess I've been burned out for a while now, years maybe, and I don't know how to get my head straight. I don't trust my own judgment anymore, and there's this pressure bearing down on me that I need to figure it all out and soon. I feel like there's a battle waging all around me, and a great victory to be won, but the people I thought were my allies just knocked me down and backed a tank over my eyeglasses. I don't even know where the front lines are, and people are calling for my help all around me.

Geez, I just wanted to draw some naked fairies!

I got nothin'

2007-03-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

OK, seriously, I have nothing to write about tonight.

Hmn, there's the art case on the shelf above my desk. Sort of like a really big, hard-sided briefcase that opens from the top with two spring-action combination locks. I got a really good deal on it back in the 90s because somebody had reset the combinations and locked it before putting it back on the shelf, so the guys at the office supply store didn't know the combination to open it. Having nothing better to do, I asked them if they would still give me the discount price if I managed to open it before buying it. They said sure, go for it.

About an hour later, I had figured out the combos for both locks and now owned a really nice art supply case for about $10. Right now I think it is full of old pencils and markers and random things like the bendy curve maker thing that I though might be useful but did not prove so.

I don't really know what the point of that story was.

That was also the office supply store where I bought my favorite office chair (on scratch and dent discount) (I'm pretty cheap). The chair lasted about 15 years before finally breaking to an extent that it could no longer be repaired. That was a comfortable chair. The chair I'm sitting in right now is not. Despite the fact that it was described as an "Executive" office chair, I think there's some sort of bolt protruding up through the padding of the seat and jabbing me in the right thigh. Occasionally, the little locking mechanism that holds the seat in an upright position will spontaneously disengage, sending me plummeting backwards into a position that I assume was meant for reclining into a self-satisfied state of smirkery as my executive response to skyrocketing stock options or perhaps another successful round of layoffs. Instead I am torn abruptly from my labors and sent into a terrified state of "Holy Crap!"edness as my arms flail wildly for purchase like some hapless German spy booted unceremoniously from atop a swaying gondola by an angry Richard Burton.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of villains, especially those in Disney movies, perish from falling? I mean, for a good guy to get away with killing someone and still be a good guy, he either has to wait for the bad guy to pull some sort of hidden weapon out after having surrendered and then blow him away (or, in the case of Ladyhawke, hurl a massive sword through his body), or he has to let gravity do the dirty work for him and then look suitably horrified and regretful that he could not catch the bad guy in time to save him. I did like the end of Disney's Lion King, where a very good villain falls for the old, "I'm gonna knock your heroic ass off this cliff! Whoah, no, I missed! Holy Craaaaaap! The Irony!" "Jeremy Irony!" (sorry) Only the twist is that he isn't killed by the fall, but rather is torn apart by belligerent, comic relief henchmen at the bottom.

Impaling is another option for particularly nasty villains. Where was I?

Oh yeah, this chair sucks.

The Christmas Cookie

2007-03-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting here at my desk trying to think what I should write about, because I enjoyed having written again last night, but nothing's coming to me, so I'm just writing about not having anything to write about, and I keep having to go back and capitalize the I's because I keep missing the shift key when I type it. Maybe that means I've got some sort of subconscious inferiority complex, or maybe my neural pathways are degenerating, or maybe I just haven't typed very much lately and I suck at it.

Anyway, I've got this Christmas cookie sitting on my desk. By Christmas cookie, I don't mean that it was baked into some sort of festive shape or anything, just that it's been sitting here since Christmas. It was some sort of gift cookie that came in an interesting box, and we saw it at the store and thought, "well, we can get a couple of boxes of those, and, if we forget anybody's gift, we'll just give them some cookies and pretend that we didn't really forget them after all." As it turned out, we just kept the cookies and wound up eating them ourselves... well, all but one.

We had white chocolate and mint chocolate versions of these cookies. (according to some show I saw on cable TV while visiting my parents' house, white chocolate is not truly chocolate at all, but I still like it and refuse to call it "congealed cocoa butter" much the same as I refuse to call "sparkling white wine" anything other than champagne) (cable TV is pretty cool) (Liz said I had to choose 2 of the following 3: Netflix, Cable TV, or Warcraft) (Cable TV lost) (I think it was Food Network that said the thing about the chocolate) (I am so glad that I live in an age when we actually have a network dedicated to nothing but food) (Like in the 70's we had to choose between the Lawrence Welk Show, Watergate coverage, and shooting the ants that lived in the bathroom with the watergun I got at the Ponchos gift shop) (Ponchos rocked) (Tortillas, deep fried and rolled in sugar, served with honey, oh yeah)

Anyway, the Christmas cookies somehow wound up on my computer desk, and I became their guardian. The mint chocolate cookies were a big hit. The baby, in particular, loved them. The only problem was that their dark chocolate coating melted instantly on contact with human skin, leaving the infant in such a state that suggested a wacky oil-change mishap. I tried to encourage her to partake of the "white chocolate" versions of the cookies which seemed to be composed of some sort of weather-resistant ivory coating around their crunchy innards, but she would have none of it. As you might guess, the cookie that sits to this day on my computer desk was one that I offered her, and, having tasted it, she rejected. Now a stronger-willed or more pragmatic parent would probably have muttered something about wasting food and popped it in their mouth, storing away the rich, fatty nutrients for the coming economic depression that gnaws hungrily at the fringe of every prosperous civilization, muttering dark prophesies of loss and despair. Me, on the other hand, just gave the slimy white blob of congealed cocoa butter a look of disgust and dropped it somewhere between my monitor and keyboard. I gave the baby one of the last mint chocolate cookies and nudged her quietly in the direction of her mother.

There it lays, snuggled between my Wacom pen and the MP3 player that saw me faithfully through art school and no further. It would take me 2 seconds to pick it up and throw it in the waste bin under my desk. For that matter, it would have taken me 1 second to do that in the first place. I should do that right now. Why do I hesitate? Perhaps because I have now written of it, granting it some importance beyond that normally due to a cookie that no one wanted. Perhaps it is because it is the last, and when it is gone, Christmas will be gone too, swept away and lost to dimming memory, clouded and obscured by the eternally bright glow of childish faith in the unknown and unknowable. The Mythic figure in the red velvet coat that knocked upon the door on Christmas Eve, sending us scurrying to our rooms to hide, lest we catch sight of him and break the spell, losing forever the Gift of Christmas and becoming as mundane as the adults who were allowed to see him but no longer wanted him to bring them any toys. Maybe I should eat the cookie.

That's pretty gross.

I pick it up. It smells good. You don't really think about the smell of chocolate. The taste is what we know. The taste is the essence of the thing. We would love it if it were blue, or red, or even white, as in this case it is, so long as it tasted like chocolate. The taste is the thing. It looks kinda dusty. Now I pretty much have to eat it, having written myself into this corner. maybe I'll just bite off an edge or something. I ate part of a crayon once, because it was funny at the time. That wasn't so bad. How bad could an old cookie be? I stole the stopwatch at the restaurant that you were supposed to time your waitperson with so you could get a free meal if they didn't get it to you in time. I harbored few illusions about whose paycheck the price of the meal would come from, so I stole the stopwatch. I don't steal things, I don't curse... unless it's really funny, or it makes a point about the way things should be. I think I've finally thought of something that I like about myself.

I stole a stopwatch once... and I just ate the last Christmas cookie.

I really need something to drink...

Hey, I Have a Blog!

2007-03-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I haven't written much of anything in the past... um, long time now. This is not to say that I haven't engaged in creative endeavors, certainly my life is rife with creativity. It's just that I don't really write for fun anymore, except for my D&D campaign which is more like "noting" for fun. I come up with a bunch of ideas and madly scribble little notes in my notebook so I will remember them for the next play session, but I know that a year from now I will have absolutely no idea what "winged monkeys!" and "Outers (BAD)" have to do with anything.

Anyway... stream of consciousness. The baby's sleeping. She played hard today while I drew 40 different versions of the 2 Handed battle-axe. I go through a lot of pencils these days. I need to buy some more. I like going to the art store. It always seems so full of potential projects, but then I know I won't really do them. I hate that about myself, how I talk myself out of projects that I know I won't finish. Maybe I just hate knowing that I won't finish them. I love starting projects.

Liz is giggling as she plays Warcraft. She missed the old guild that disbanded so we could join a larger guild that could raid the high-end instances where all the best loot dropped. Nobody talked to us in the new guild. They all knew each other, but we were just the guys from the little guild that got assimilated, and nobody wanted to group with me because I couldn't heal or tank. For those not in the proverbial know, tanking means to provoke the monsters to attack you so that they don't eat the more fragile members of the party. Tanking is usually done by the large, muscular, heavily armored types who can withstand the abuse of a roomful of angry monsters. Meanwhile the frail spell-caster types do all the damage to the distracted monsters. The irony of it all is that the steroid-laden muscle mass that is the focus of all their hate and rage does relatively little damage to them, whereas the gray-bearded ex-hippie wearing sandals and a bath robe is slinging balls of searing flame at their backsides.

Anyway, Liz is giggling. She's reformed the old guild with the people we like who liked us, and she's having fun. I guess I wanted the loot of the big dungeons, and she wanted friends to chat with. I'm such a power-hungry bastard... in the game world at least. I suppose I am different there... a bloodthirsty reaver raining steely death upon all foes in my path. It's silly really... but I love the slaughter. Must be the testosterone. Can't say that I'm really all that violent in real life, but you put that Grand Marshall's longbow in my hand, and I feel the arcane power coursing through my dragonhide armor, quenched in the blood of thousand fallen heroes, well, I just feeling like shootin' some orcs.

Everyone's desire to be a hero, I suppose. It's so easy to know what to do there. You know what you want, and you know how to get it. You know the rules of the game, and, if they won't let you get where you want to go, you know how to bend the rules and how to overcome the obstacles set before you. Not so easy here in the real world. You think you know the rules, and then it all gets kicked out from under you. Everybody has a quest for you, but none of them seem to go anywhere. It's like you keep completing epic quests, but they keep sending you back to Newbville. "Wow you did a great job slaying that dragon that no one thought could be slain, but what we really need you to do now is go down in the sewers and kill 20 rats... we'll give you a can of biscuits if you do."

So you're standing there with the head of yesterday's dragon at your feet, and those biscuits look pretty tasty.

Zombification

2006-01-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

I am sick.

It's been a while since I've been this sick, but this was the sort of thing that I felt coming on last night and knew it wasn't going to be good. As soon as I got home from work last night I crawled into bed, emerging only briefly to eat the dinner that Liz made for me, and then back in for 12 hours of huddled shivering. I was vaguely aware that the baby was having a bad night, but I chose to ignore her crying as best I could, either because I was nobly trying to protect her from the bug that had hold of me, or because everytime I got out from under the blanket, I felt like I was reinacting a scene from Titanic.

I crawled back to consciousness this morning, intent on going in to work, or at least to shamble through the motions until someone stopped me. Fortunately Liz was there. She told me to get the thermometer and take my temperature. After going back for the third time to the drawer wherein she assured me the thermometer lay, I found it. Yes it was blue plastic, but I couldn't see that for all the glare from the bathroom lights. I took my temperature.

The thermometer read 90.1 degrees. Apparently I was already in the advanced stages of zombification. Liz asked me if I was using it properly. Of course I was. It's not that difficult to stick a thermometer under your tongue. Perhaps because she had just soloed a rough baby night, she then offered to help me with alternative means of insertion. I declined the offer and began to wash the defective thermometer before putting it away. Liz glanced over at what I was doing and groaned. She took the thermometer away from me, removed its plastic probe cover and handed it back to me. The next, slightly more accurate reading was 101.5.

I decided to work from home which meant that, for the first couple of hours, I stared blankly at Photoshop and dragged the mouse around a bit. The Wacom tablet kept falling off my lap. I ate some chicken noodle soup that Liz made for me (apparently you're supposed to drink the broth too). Finally, I went to lie down for a bit and shiver. Then I got up and went back to staring at Photoshop. I eventually managed to get some real work done, and, somewhere along the way, I stopped shivering and started sweating, and the fever was broken.

I still hurt all over, and my throat is sore, but I'm feeling much better.

If things do turn worse though... aim for the head.

I'm not Ahmad

2005-02-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

My apologies to Ahmad if I've spelled his name wrong, but I've never seen it written anywhere, just heard it almost every day on my new cell phone. I've been piecing together little bits of his life from the angry calls I receive all the time asking for him. I just got a call from his bounty hunter who was kind enough to chat with me about Ahmad's habit of writing bad checks for anything he needs (50 pounds of steak last week). These checks all have my new phone number on them.

So we know that Ahmad is a large, ex-football player who likes steak, internet porn, and other people's money, and goes by several aliases that sort of sound like Ahmad.

Somewhere out there is a big man on the run, and people think he's me.

I'm tempted to change my phone number, but I kinda want to know how it ends now.

More words

2005-01-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

Heath has informed me that I must not over edit myself or I will never get any blogging done. Fair enough... hereafter is my stream o' consciousness, lacking in any form, function, or complete lists of things that it is lacking...

I am listening to some old rock-opera of War of the Worlds. I am looking forward to the new War of the Worlds movie but not really holding out any hope that I will enjoy watching it more than once. That's kinda sad. I am at work, working on sketches for a poster which is very cool, but I feel a little sad, and I don't know why.

I think about the baby, and I wonder if I'm worried about being a good father, but I think I will enjoy it. I wonder what role I will play in the baby's life. Maybe I'm afraid that I'll be like my father, a dreamer and mystic, pointing the way to a celestial ideal but snatched away and gone, and then there is only the long cold road of shaken faith between the golden glow on the horizon and the grim gray wasteland of loss.

I don't want to depress anyone. Liz doesn't like it when I talk like that. I want to... I want to do so many things.

I feel like I should have some grand goal that I am working toward, but I can't really braid all the little strings of my life together and make them go in one direction. I know they'll all come together evetnually, so does it really do any good to try to figure out how?

Oh well, I should get back to work. Hope you enjoyed the words.

Words

2004-11-23T06:22:00.000-08:00

I don't write much anymore.

When I was alone and miserable, I wrote all the time. I wrote about how unfair it was that life sucked and that people were so unhappy. I wrote a lot about dreams because I lived more in the dream world than the waking one. I wrote about imaginary people having horrible things happen to them, partly because life was unfair, even in imaginary worlds, and partly because they deserved it.

I don't think I've written anything in my diary... um "journal" for a couple of years now, and the last entry was something along the lines of, "hey, I'm still alive, and things are going well... kinda busy".

I feel bad, because I do intend to have children, and someday they'll find dad/grandad's old JOURNAL and read through a couple of decades of abject misery and suddenly arrive at a sort of trailing off "AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHhhhhhhhh....." and assume that I just died of depression, and that some vagrant soldier, returning from a distant war, had assumed my identity and taken my place, escaping from some shadowy and romantic past that still haunted him.

What the heck, that story is as good as any, because I am not the same person anymore.

Life now does have a dreamlike quality. Things don't seem entirely real anymore, and I like that. I sometimes dream that I am another person, but struggling to awake as myself within them. Being awake sort of feels like that now... like a dreamer slowly awakening inside this person I'm supposed to be. Thinking of myself beyond what I seem to be. Starting to see people more as flames of light than shells of flesh... that sounds crazy.

Some lights burn bright and wide, illuminating the darkness around them. Others flicker and fade. Some burn with more hate than anything else, darkening every room they enter, making everything around them colder. The metaphor dries out, and cannot adequately describe what I mean. I grow frustrated with words. It's like trying to draw a picture of a rainbow with nothing but a black crayon.

Maybe it is just an excuse not to write.

An Observation

2004-10-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

The reason that nice guys finish last is that they stop to wash their hands after using the restroom.

I need an Orange Safety Vest

2004-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

So this is like me first post in several months or so becasue I'm lazy and generally suck at writing in a timely fashion. Then again, maybe I just haven't had anything clever to say, and "if you don't have something clever to say... don't say anything at all..." or something like that, but then I always hated that saying, because sometimes you really do need to say something nasty, and it's the nasty mean people telling you to keep quiet that need to hear something nasty said... I digress.

Can you digress from a point you haven't even started on yet?

Anyway... Orange Safety Vest... I need one. Lemme sum up. Liz is driving me to work this morning, and I'm looking out the window at stuff beside the road at the traffic light. One of the things I see is a big, concrete-lined drainage ditch leading into a large drain pipe that has several metal bars across the opening to presumably keep trees and stuff from washing into the cavernous drain. So I'm thinking it might be cool to just lay down on top of the bars and let my arms hang down through the openings. Then I think that maybe that's kinda strange, and that people would constantly be stopping and asking if I was all right which would distract me from my enjoyment of just hanging out on the drain bars. Then I have a flash of brilliance!

If I was wearing an Orange Safety Vest, and maybe a hardhat (Liz suggested a toolbelt too), nobody would question why I was there. They'd just assume that I was there working on something and ignore me. That way my absurd behavior would fit easily into their perception of reality. They might just drive on to work, wondering what was wrong with the drain pipe. If they saw me there often enough, they might call in to their local radio morning show and complain that the city was wasting their tax dollars on projects that never seemed to get finished, but they wouldn't call 911 and tell them that some guy had collapsed in the drainage ditch and needed medical assistance.

I'm guessing that 5 minutes after seeing me they wouldn't even remember me at all.

Realtiy works that way. People can accept the most preposterous things, if presented to them in a manner that their perception of reality can accept. What if magic worked like that? A guy might leap up and fly through the air, but no one would be able to accept that it had happened... unless the report of it were followed with a chaser of "...oh, but one guy said that the other guy was a fake, and that it was done with wires". The unbelieving brain can then dismiss the troubling report, and the miracle can occur in the first place. That is if you believe time runs both ways, but of course that's just silly.

I need an Orange Safety Vest.

Movies I Actually Want to See

2004-08-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

I find myself in the rare position of having more than one movie that I'm actually looking forward to seeing on the horizon.

The first is "Shaun of the Dead"

I like zombies. I like comedies. Bango!

The second:"The Life Aquatic"

I grew up watching Jaques Cousteau and loved every minute of it. I like comedies. Bango!

So I wonder why I'm such a movie snob that it is worthy of note that I'm looking forward to TWO WHOLE MOVIES this year. Now there have been movies that I've gone to see and subsequently really liked recently. (Spiderman 2, Napolean Dynamite, Harry Potter 3) I just wasn't really looking forward to them before I saw them. Maybe the problem is that so few movies are in the theater now that aren't either sequels or based on an established property of some sort, and, more often than not, they are just studio crap churned out quickly and slickly with a name brand stuck on them to sell tickets.

I was very pleasantly surprised that, in the case of the two sequels I liked, the directors were willing to take chances with the formula and tell a good story in the way they wanted to tell it, rather than just the same old, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Hollywood grind. Honestly, I think it is broke, and it needs to be fixed. If I see one more trailer for a movie where a little dog/ferret/cat bites someone in the crotch and gets thrown out the window, I'm buying a camera and doing it myself.

In the case of Napolean Dynamite, it was really nice to see a low-budget film that refused to do what you expected it to, and do it so well. It was a good film, plain and simple, and now we will be deluged with big-budget rip-offs that just don't get it.

Crazy Dreams

2004-08-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

So, I'm dreaming along last night, and I'm doing pointless stuff, like I'm supposed to be fighting the monsters, but I have to do some shopping first. Then Aragorn shows up, and he's bought lunch for everybody. He tosses me a chili cheese burger, and I say thanks. Now a chili cheese burger is definitely not on my diet, and, if I were going to break my diet, it sure as heck wouldn't be with a chili cheese burger, it'd be with like some Rice Chex or a Krispy Kreme or something, but, hey, you can't turn down the free lunch that Aragorn brought you, so I eat it. I don't even like it, but he's sitting right there. I'm wondering why he got Heath a burrito, and me a chili cheese burger, because what's that supposed to mean? Do I just look like the kind of guy that eats chili cheese burgers?

Anyway, I finish the nasty chili cheese burger and I want to say thanks again, but I don't know what to call him. I mean "Aragorn" sounds kinda stuffy for a lunch break, but "Strider" sounds a little too familiar. I finally opt for "Strider" and he seems OK with that, but I can't really be sure that he didn't expect me to call him "Mr. Aragorn" or something. So he gets back to fighting monsters and stuff, and I've got to go clean the pool, and I'm feeling all crappy for having eaten the chili cheese burger, and now I'll have to be on Phase One of the diet for a whole 'nother week because of it.

Stupid Aragorn.

Artistic Fervor (ow ow ow!)

2004-08-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Haven't had much of a chance to blog today. Been really busy at work, but I did have a nice lunch break during which I was CONSUMED WITH ARTISTIC FERVOR(how do you make a TM symbol on a PC anyway?).

Anyway, I wrote a lot on my new story which you can check out at http://farswip.blogspot.com/

Let me know what you think of it. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum and actually get somewhere with this.

Later

Rainy Serendipity

2004-08-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, I did have to look up the spelling on "Serendipity".

Yes, I did cut and paste the word "Serendipity".

Anyway... I wanted to walk to the park today like I have been during my lunch breaks recently. The weather has cooled off enough to make it an enjoyable experience, and I love watching and listening to the little waterfalls in the stream and walking in the shade of the trees. It's a happy place and a good break from the computer when you can get away to visit the place. Unfortunately, when I got downstairs and started to go outside, I realized it was raining rather heavily, and I wouldn't be going on any pleasant walks in that kind of downpour. So I came back up to my desk and decided to start typing an outline for an inkling of a story that's been flickering around in my head for a while.

For the first time in several years, the story just seemed to flow through me as though I were dictating something that someone else was describing to me. Writing hasn't been that way for me in a while, and I forgot how much I missed that. The best part was that the little half-formed story notion that I started with seemed now to tie directly into a much larger story that I had been wanting to tell for some time, a story that loomed behind the novel I once wrote when I was a far more dark and depressing person. That novel hadn't been very good, and only touched on the big story in a very tangental manner. The self-absorbed characters had seemed almost inconvenienced to have to deal with the big story. It all felt forced and contrived. The new story just feels right.

I am beginning anew with characters who really want to be in the story and really deserve the admiration of the writer and the reader as well. A hopeful innocence was lacking in my first attempt, and I think I have that back now. I think it will be the kind of story that you feel better for having read.

Wish me luck.

What is Narvi Flan?

2004-08-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it's not a dessert item that's gone off a bit, if that's what you're thinking, though it did have its origin in the food industry. It happened one day that I was spinning around aimlessly in my computer chair when I looked over and noticed a box of crackers lying on the floor in the corner of the room (yes, I am a slob). On the back of the box there was printed a word jumble wherein, if you looked closely enough, you could make out words relating to the cracker product inside the box, that would, I suppose, make you want to consume the crackers at an even faster rate and then rush out to buy more. I had needed little encouragement to consume them (they were, after all, sour cream and onion flavored), but no amount of literary obfuscation was going to infuse me with the energy to rush anywhere(yes, I like big words) (and parenthesis). Perhaps the jumble was simply there to provide me with added value entertainment, which is what it now did.

I was too far away (and didn't care enough) to make out any of the intended cracker-related words hidden in the jumble, but I could clearly make out two jumbly gems that stuck in my brain long enough for me to scrawl them on the dry-erase board where I wrote things that I didn't want to forget... things like my phone number or "pay your bills". The words were, as you have long since guessed (and yet I continue to drag this pointless story out), "Narvi Flan".

I kept the cryptic name scrawled on my dry-erase board long enough that it eventually became a sort of un-erasable (dry or wet) stain, and the board now lives in my laundry room where I hope to place a washer and/or dryer someday, but that's beside the point... where was I?

Anyway, I eventually used the name for my Star Wars Galaxies character. SWG, in case you didn't know, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game where thousands of people from all over the place play characters from the Star Wars universe on their home computers. I'd provide a link, but I'm lazy, and it really is a kind of frustrating game.

Narvi was a rodian architect who wandered around collecting dirt to build houses and was occasionally poisoned to death by imperial medics. The most annoying part was that the dirt tended to move around a lot, so you'd have to keep searching for more dirt, and... well, it was about as fun as doing algebra. I cancelled my account, and will not be going back, but I still kinda miss the little green guy who couldn't catch a break, and I think of all that he could have been, if that treasure map he found had lead to something besides an old shipping crate containing a dull pocket knife and a half-full shaker of paprika. It's a pity he had to blast three space pirates to get it. C'est la guerre.

So Narvi Flan lives on, and his memory shall be a happy one. Let out-of-date desserts be named after him, and let them be cut with dull pocket knives and served with a dash of paprika!

My first Blog!

2004-08-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

I don't even know if "Blog" is capitalized... I'm so new at this.

In any case, I've always wanted to ramble aimlessly about different things and pretend that someone was listening to me... wait, I've always done that, but now I'm WORLDWIDE BABY!!!

Sorry, I'm just excited.

Oh well, I'll finish setting this thing up now and be back shortly.