140Story - Day 49

Oops, I missed a day.  Sorry, I was distracted.

  I'm writing a story 140 words at a time and posting the results here daily.  Can I sustain interest?  Will I lose the narrative thread?  Find out in this next installment of Bullets Ain't Cheap

left, then took my foot off the gas.  Kelly now held my phone, staring at it, waiting for the next instruction.
    ‘UR bng followed.  Lose them,’
    I checked my mirrors.  Nothing.  I looked left, right, up, down, and Kelly did too.
    “Where?” Kelly muttered.
    “Doesn’t matter,” I said, slamming the pedal to the metal.  “We evade.”
    The force of acceleration tossed Kelly backwards, and he landed with a grunt.  I took a left, a right, sped up and slowed down.  Doubled back.  Everything I knew to expose a tail and nothing worked.
    “What if they don’t have to follow us?”  Kelly muttered as he stared out the back window.
    “You mean a tracker?” I snapped.  “We only stole this car a couple of hours ago, how would they...”
    “Your phone?” Kelly’s voice was a whisper.
    I shook my head, I’d

140Story - Day 41

  I'm writing a story 140 words at a time and posting the results here daily.  Can I sustain interest?  Will I lose the narrative thread?  Find out in this next installment of Bullets Ain't Cheap
 
believed him.  Kelly wasn’t one to get sloppy.  “You’re saying someone wanted others to think you were stealing?”
    “I was separating,” he explained, “leaving Telrik.  Like you.  They didn’t want me to go.  Thought I knew about too many skeletons in too many closets.”
    “That’s true about any of us,” I replied.  “What’s so special about you?”
    “Burton’s father.”
    He said it as if that explained everything.  I didn’t take the bait, I just waited.
    “He was the one with sticky fingers,” Kelly said.  “We worked a detail together down South. I found a courier bag.  He opened it.  Took it to the section chief, who thought we three should split it.  I told him no.”
    I went to the window and scanned outside.  Never could be too vigilant.
    “They split it anyway.  And put my name on dirty money

Dear Hollywood

Dear Hollywood:

First, let me say that the last few years - heck, the last fifteen years - have been magical for me.  Really.  I think it started with 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' one of my favorite books, and one that I certainly never expected to see on the big screen.  I mean, how crazy is it that I got to see the Balrog and Rivendell and... just... everything?  So I thank you for that.  Then there was Spider-Man, the Raimi version.  Excellent, and true to the story.  Then there was Watchmen, another movie I never thought could be done in live-action.  But you did it, Hollywood.  And it was superb.  Then there were the X-Men, and Iron Man, and the Hulk and the Avengers, all Marvel properties, which I don't begrudge you.  Honestly, DC and Warner Bros. have yet to get it together for a large franchise.  Harry Potter seven or eight times, Narnia, another go at Tolkien.  There was Hellboy - twice - and Constantine and Ghost Rider and The Dark Knight and Captain America and Wolverine.  Superman two or three times.  And, yes, I'll even count Green Lantern.  You discovered superheroes at last, Hollywood, and jumped in with both feet.  The kid in me who always longed to see his comic-book heroes come to life has lived to see the day.  Which makes what I'm about to say a little difficult.

It's got to stop.

I say this as a lifelong comic collector.  I have 39 long boxes of comics- conservatively figure 10,000 issues - bought with my own money the hard way, once a week on Wednesday, every Wednesday, for decades.  The comic store guys call me 'sir.'  I know the material, I love the material, I love the movies, even the bad ones.  I'm a fan.  I'm the guy you most want in your corner, but I can't be, not any longer.  Hollywood, you need to quit it with the superhero movies.  The concept has run its course, it's not novel, it's not exciting, it's not anything I want to see.

Do you remember when you were a kid, Hollywood, maybe fourteen, and you knew your way around town and you had your own money?  You could make your own decisions and not have to answer to anyone.  Not until you got home, anyway.  And that one time you decided what you really wanted to spend your lawnmowing money on was ice cream? Not a cone from the truck, but a half gallon from the grocery store.  And you and your friend each bought half a gallon, and plastic spoons, and you went to the park and ate as much ice cream as you thought you wanted. When you were eating, it was great, wasn't it?  But afterwards... oh, afterwards you realized that the reason your mother never let you eat an entire half gallon of ice cream was that it was a terrible idea.

You're eating too much ice cream right now, Hollywood.  You're releasing too many superhero movies, and they're all starting to look the same. What began as a cause slowly became a business and now is becoming a racket.* Can't you see you're poisoning the well?
     I get it, guys my age with my kind of life experiences run you now, Hollywood, and they want to see what I wanted to see.  But it's not the only thing I wanted to see.  Twenty years ago superhero movies were tough to sell and almost impossible to make, I get it, and now that technology has advanced you can put on the screen what you never could before.  The challenge is to do that with new properties instead of retreading ideas and characters and stories that are seventy-plus years old.  I thought I wanted to see my comic books up on the big screen, but it turns out I liked them better when they were on the page.

So, that's it, Hollywood.  We're breaking up, you and I.  No more superhero movies.  I'm done.  When you get a fresh idea that doesn't involve mining someone else's work, give me a call.  I won't change my number, but I'm not going to hold my breath either.

Sincerely,
Don Hartshorn 


* thank you Eric Hoffer

Goin' Down Swingin'

I got fired Tuesday.
   Rather, my contract was canceled but the difference is just semantics. And what did I do to get my contract canceled after just seven days?
   I sent an e-mail.
   Seriously. Not a rude e-mail, not an angry one, just a 'hello' e-mail introducing myself. I was working at a talent agency - maybe THE talent agency in town - over on the West side in Century City. The commute was terrible, an hour to go twenty miles, and the company atmosphere was intolerable. Really. A horrible place, as one of my friends who used to go to this company frequently for meetings warned me. The only reason I agreed to take this gig was to try to get my writing in front of someone there. Hence the e-mail, which was me introducing myself to a lady in charge of looking for stories. I don't know if she told someone that I tried to contact her or if they found out by monitoring my e-mail. Probably both.
   Evidently they frown on that sort of thing, at least from consultants working in the building. Who knew? I suspected something was up when I didn't get the e-mail asking what I wanted to order for our lunch meeting on Wednesday, and then on my way home I got the call that they were canceling my contract. I'm not broken up about it, I had been counting the days until Christmas break and counting the hours until it was time to go home every day. I didn't belong in that poisonous atmosphere in the first place.
   I've never been fired before. I was 'let go' because of the economy and corporate consolidation, which was more of a 'we don't have a spot for you now' kind of thing, not a termination for cause. Tuesday's cancellation wasn't really for cause either - I mean, seriously, one e-mail? - but I still got fired. I consider it a badge of honor and a point of pride. Kicked out of a den of vipers? I'll take that hit then stand up again in case they want to do it one more time.
   To tell you the truth, I'd rather go down swinging, fighting for what I want, rather than to keep a job at a terrible place just to be employed. If you're not failing you're not trying.
   I'm now 'between assignments' again. Drew Carey and The Price Is Right can now rest easy, know that I'll be back with them, at least for a little while.

Carried On The Tide

You ever get the feeling that forces beyond your control are not-so-subtly pulling your strings? That maybe the seeming coincidence or synchronicity of events in your life aren't all that coincidental or randomly synchronous? That, for some unfathomable reason that is well above your mortal pay grade, you're being carried almost forcibly toward a certain goal?
   Doesn't it kind of piss you off?
   That's what's happening to me right now, at least it seems so, and I'm not quite sure how to take it. I've always been someone who hesitates on the threshold of life change, unwilling to take that step through the door until I get a serious push. I know this, and I'm working on it, I swear. But I get the feeling that I'm not getting pushed so much as getting a combat boot to the small of the back.
   I'm going along with it, since there's not much else I can do right now. They say life is what happens when you're making other plans, don't they?
   But I sure wish I felt more in control.

Where's Miss Cleo?

Every so often I like to go to the bookstore and buy a magazine I never otherwise would. Like 'O' for instance, or 'High Times,' neither of which is on my regular reading list. I particularly liked 'Make' and if I owned a home I'd probably buy it regularly. My point is, I like to expand my horizons and encounter things I normally wouldn't.
   I think I want to visit a psychic.
   This is not because I believe that psychics have special powers, rather the opposite, it's because I specifically don't believe they do that I want to go.
   I know several people who swear by their psychics, and several more who have been more than once and come away entranced with the depth and specificity of the 'psychic's' knowledge. But there are well-documented techniques - using cold reading, like what that fraud John Edward does - to get people to believe you know more about them than you actually do.
   I want to go and just see what happens. I'd have to pick my psychic carefully, go on someone's recommendation perhaps, and then just let them talk. No feedback, no nods, no responding to general questions, just listen. A real psychic would say what he or she 'hears' about me, from the spirits or her own intuition or whatever, a real psychic wouldn't need my yes or no.
   Of course, this does open the door to potential problems. I'd go because I'm pretty sure the person giving me the reading would be either so general as to be useless, or so far off the mark that they might as well be talking about somebody in Istanbul. But what if the psychic really is? What if they know things about me a stranger couldn't possibly know, specific things, like, say, where the heist took place and what I did with all the money. Then I'd be up a metaphorical creek, and I'd be forced to re-examine my preconceptions about the world and the way it works.
   I'm tempted to abandon the effort. But... then I'd always have this nagging question. I'm doing it. I'm gonna find a psychic. I'll let you know how it goes.

Odd Coincidence Or Sinister Gathering?

I drove down to the OC last night to see my older niece's soccer game. Her school - Mills College - had come down to play Soka University, and since I'm in the neighborhood I wanted to show my support.
   Game results: Mills lost 0-3, but not for lack of trying. Some good players, lots of good ball-handling but a few bad breaks. And I got to spend some quality time with my niece, one of the few players who had family close enough to show up. It was a good time and I'm glad I went.
   HOWEVER... you ever have one of those times where you see something and then you see a lot of that same something over and over again? Like maybe you see an ad for mousetraps (which aren't really advertised all that much) and then over the next few days you see lots of mousetraps in places you wouldn't usually see them?
   Yesterday it was men with casts on their arms. I saw the first one when I was walking from the parking lot to the game, a guy who was probably a student at the school with his arm in a sling. Too bad for him, I thought.
   Then as I was sitting in the metal bleachers I saw another man, a player's parent, with his arm in a cast and two fingers immobilized. An odd coincidence, I thought, and kind of amusing.
   Then during the second half I saw another man, probably another player's parent, with TWO casts, one on each arm. Now I was getting suspicious, and I started looking around for the hidden cameras, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to punk me (does he still do that, or is that reference old and tired now?).
   After the game there were snacks - it was one of the girl's birthday - and I took my leave of my niece and her soccer team. I pulled into a Chevron there in Aliso Viejo, still mildly amused/ concerned about the excessive cast-wearing I'd seen. I filled the truck with gasoline and as I was ready to leave I saw little red sports car pulled over by two AV police officers. I watched from my truck as the officers approached the driver, and then I noticed cast on the driver's arm.
   I escaped the Chevron as fast as I dared and sped back to Pasadena. I didn't know what the hell was going on the OC with men and casts on their arms, and I didn't want to join them.
   Seriously freaky.

Travel Games

I was flying from Texas to California yesterday, and as luck would have it I saw someone I knew in the airport. This happens to me more often than you would think it might, it happened just this past December, as a matter of fact. It's only really freaky when it happens in a foreign country, where you would have no right to expect to meet someone from, say, your high school.
   Anyway, I saw a lady I knew when I worked at Countrywide. She had A23 boarding number, I had A22. Which was eerily similar to the events of December, when the friend I met by chance in DFW not only was on the same plane as I was, but had the seat right next to me. The lady from Countrywide worked in HR like I did, her office was on the other side of the big room from mine. Come to find out, she's from San Antonio too, I never knew this before. I ran into her at McCarran airport - that's Vegas for you non-travel savvy folks - but she'd been on my same flight from San Antonio. Weird.
   We got to talking and I realized there's a game people play when you meet someone you don't really know all that well, but you feel obligated to make conversation because you recognize them from work. You talk about people you both know and where they are now. Mark? Don't know, still looking I imagine. Jeff? Started a business. Other Jeff? Working a consulting gig. Nathan? Working his family's pharmacy. Eve? Working for Scott - remember him? - but recently laid off and looking for work too.
   Big pause.
   What do you say when you realize you've run out of meaningless pleasantries? When you've exhausted the list of people you both might know but you still feel obligated to keep the conversational ball rolling? You talk about your shared hometown. Did you know they have music at Wonderland Mall, which hasn't been Wonderland for years but neither of us could remember it was called Crossroads Mall until much later in the conversation. You talk about what high schools you went to, and where my father went but didn't graduate from, and things that didn't used to be there and where farms once dotted a landscape now filled with ugly McMansions.
   Big pause.
   Then the boarding announcement sounded and we shuffled on board for our 3 ounce plastic cup of soda and two packets of peanuts.
   It was an awkward dance, though pleasant enough. I found out she lives in South Pasadena, as do Other Jeff and Sandra. Never knew that before either. Small world.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

Disposable tissues worry me. I'm talking about the kind you use to blow your nose when you're under the weather, a familiar brand name starts with a 'Kleen' and ends with an 'ex.' I'm concerned that these tissues might actually spread viruses.
   I mean, think about it, who do you see using these tissues the most? Sick people. So, using Occam's razor in our reasoning, it only makes sense that these tissues cause the illnesses. Right? Just like the theory of spontaneous generation, like piles of grain creating mice. And knowing what we do about the conscience-less way major corporations operate I wouldn't put it past Kimberly Clark to infect their product with germs in order to increase consumption. I mean, if I were a corporate weasel that's probably a decision I'd make.
   This isn't the kind of thing you can keep a secret, once people suspected something scientists would do their tests, and eventually the truth would have to come out. And then the government agencies that are supposed to regulate this kind of thing would get in a day late and a dollar short and they'd shut down the entire disposable tissue industry, not only the brand names but your generics, your Kirklands, all of them. No more disposable paper tissues. So then what would we as a society do? We'd have to go back to the old-timey solutions.
   I'd have to carry around a hankie like my grandfather did. A silk or cotton square, stuffed into my pocket and staying there all day. I'd take it out to wipe at my nose or the corner of my mouth, and then jam it back into my coveralls, carrying my mucus around for hours. Keeping warm with my body heat. Staying mostly liquid. Festering. Man... talk about a foot-square bit of traveling infection. And back in the day everyone had them, men in their pockets, women in their purses. It's a wonder that my grandfather lived long enough to give my father a chance to come about.
   I'd really hate it if I had to carry one of those terrible things, so I'm hoping my concerns are unfounded. Maybe that's a money-making opportunity, some sort of permanent hankie soaked in antibiotic, so you could sneeze all you wanted and it might actually help make you better. Nobody steal that one, it's mine.

I Want To Shake The Hand Of The Man

I was grocery shopping yesterday and I forgot to make a list so I was kind of wandering around the store trying to think about things I needed and what kind of meals I was going to make. And then I got thinking about how much I really wanted fajitas right then and there, in the store. But since I wasn't in Costco there was no chance I was going to get any. The first time I had fajitas was back in San Antonio, in high school, when Taco Cabana was just one store on Hildebrand that used to get closed down every two months when La Migra raided it and sent all the illegals home.
   I wanted to shake the hand of the man who invented fajitas, but the origins of that delicious food are lost in the mists of time. So I got to thinking about other great things I can't thank anyone for.

French bread pizza. It should be a travesty but it's oh-so delicious.
   Star fruit. It's fruit... shaped like a star. Sounds like a marketing ploy, but it's all natural.
Bogs. They're like swamps but without alligators and with mummified Stone Age people.
   Australian $2 coins. The best thing for scratching your scratch-off Lottery tickets.
Gyros meat. I know it's processed to Hell and back, but... mmmmm....
   Craftsman furniture. I could try to shake the hand of Gustav Stickley, but he's been dead for decades.
Carnies. God love 'em, they're so crooked they make Louisiana politicians look honest. Only hot chicks win the huge stuffed Pink Panther, how's that fair? I could shake one of their hands, but, really, I'd rather not.
    Gun shows. The only place where you can be amused, horrified, disgusted, and intrigued in the space of five minutes. Why is it the people you least want to have guns have the most?
Revell models. Really I'm more a fan of Testor's model glue, but they don't make it same way now as they did when I was a kid. No good fumes anymore. And, actually, one of the Revell founders is still alive, but he's in Florida and I never go there.
   Coca-Cola Santa Claus. Other than Nat Cole singing, nothing puts me more in the Christmas mood.
Undershirts. The thin, thin, thin kind you wear under a dress shirt. The kind Marlon Brando wore as Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar. Nothing makes you feel more like a hard-boiled 50's detective than putting on an undershirt.

Entropy Gnomes

I guess the little guy thought I was asleep. I was on the couch, after all, and it was after midnight, and the TV was still on. And my eyes were closed.
   I heard something rattling around behind the coffee table, too big for a spider, too small for a burglar. I wondered how a stray cat had gotten into my apartment, but I kept my eyes closed and waited for it to get closer. It was doing something with the papers on the coffee table, which is also where I keep bills I need to pay. I heard it come around the corner and that's when I pounced.
   I expected to get a handful of fur, but instead I got a foot-and-a-half tall wriggling little man, with a white beard, red cone-shaped cap, and a fat little tummy. He kicked his little feet and battered me with his little fists, uttering a string of what I can only assume must have been colorful curses in his native language. I just held on tighter.
   "Okay... jeez... you got me," the little man squeaked in English. "Ease up, you're gonna squeeze my dinner out of me."
   "What are you?" I asked, as the Sham-Wow infomercial played on the TV.
   "Carl," he said, offering me his tiny hand.
   "Not who," I replied. "What. What are you?
   He seemed disappointed. "I'm an entropy gnome."
   I raised an eyebrow at him and held just a bit tighter.
   "What? You think the Second Law of Thermodynamics just happens on its own?" Carl said. "The Universe needs help bringing disorder to order. That's where we Entropy Gnomes come in."
   "You sure you're not just a tiny burglar?" I replied.
   Carl struggled, punching me futilely with his little bitty fists. Finally he gave up and sagged in my grasp.
   "You ever get a notice that you didn't pay a bill, but you know for sure you did?" I nodded. "Well, that was us. You ever wonder why you only have seven forks when they come in sets of eight? Why you need to change your oil? Why a hinge starts squeaking for no reason? Where all the dust behind the TV comes from? All us."
   "Oh, I get it," I said, as realization dawned on me. "Like when I'm missing a sock out of the dryer."
   Carl shook his head, frowning. "No, those are Sock Gnomes. Creepy little fetishists. Look, I'm on a pretty tight schedule here, so if you don't mind..."
   "But I have so many questions," I said. "Like, what if you guys just, I don't know, passed me by for a while?"
   "Well, the food in your fridge wouldn't go bad," Carl said, raising a hand to his chin as he thought. "That's an entropic process. Your coffee wouldn't get cold, your soda wouldn't get warm. Your jeans wouldn't fade. Your shoelaces would always stay tied. You'd never grow old."
   I sat back against the couch, still clutching Carl tightly.
   "I probably shouldn't have said that last one, huh?" Carl continued, with a nervous laugh. "Look, we're a union shop, so even if you... get rid of me, there's gonna be another Entropy Gnome here tomorrow with the same checklist. Maybe even my supervisor, and he's a real sticker for regulations, if you know what I mean."
   "What about Entropy Gnomes themselves?" I asked.
   Carl shifted uneasily. "What do you mean?"
   "Well, if everything in the Universe is trending towards disorder," I said. "Doesn't that mean Entropy Gnomes are subject to the same thing? Shouldn't you guys eventually just fade aw..."
   Carl glared up at me, furious, as his tiny body turned ephemeral and insubstantial. "You son of a bitch."
   In a moment Carl was gone, and I had nothing to prove that he had ever been there in the first place. I went to bed, resolved never to fall asleep on the couch again.

Woe Is Me

There's a thing I've been struggling with for years, decades, actually, and I've just given up. Thrown my hands into the air and resigned myself to my fate. It's not going to get any better and there's nothing I can do about it. They've won. You know, them, the people behind it all.
   I just cannot get a good haircut.
   No matter what I try, where I go, how much I pay, how much I tip, it just doesn't matter. I can't get a good haircut. The haircuts I get aren't astonishingly bad - most of them - but they're not particularly good either. Men barbers or women hairstylists, it seems none of them can give me a decent cut.
   At first, years ago, hairstyles were so terrible that you couldn't really tell if I had a good haircut or not, nobody had a good one so I fit right in. But after disco died and then after Regan stopped being President things changed. You could get a good haircut. Or so I thought.
   Turns out good haircuts for men are like cover models on women's magazines: nobody looks like that, it's all Photoshop magic.
   There was guy back in San Antonio, his name was JB and he had cut my father's hair in decades past - no lie. JB gave good hair. He'd been doing it forever, longer than my father had been alive, and he could do no wrong. But JB was old and growing older, he came into his barber shop less and less frequently, leaving me to the tender mercies of his second-in-command, who was bald, or a lady barber who meant well but just didn't have the skills. I long for the days when could wander into JB's and never worry that I would come out looking like an escaped mental patient.
   I need a haircut right now, this very second. Have for at least a week but I've been putting it off. I just don't want to be disappointed any more.

Yeah, That's Pretty F-in' Big...

I'm still in Texas, and I took a look at the local Super Wal-Mar today. Really took a look. From the inside. No, I didn't get a job there, not that kind of 'inside,' I was grocery shopping with my mother. I noticed how much wider the aisles were than in the stores I visit in SoCal, and yet how people just as easily managed to get in one anothers' way. I kind of idly wondered just how many customers would fit inside. So I looked at one wall, then squinted across the store, past the curve of the Earth, to see the far wall. The far, far, far wall, off in distance, lost in the mists of the store's microclimate.
   Holy crap, that place is huge. Ungodly huge. Ridiculously huge. Unnecessarily huge. Obscenely huge.
   It looked to me that, wall-to-wall, the store stretched at least 100 yards across. As big as football field; and I mean real football, American football, not 'futbol.' But I thought to myself 'self, you must be losing your ability to estimate distances, it can't be THAT big.' So I looked it up on Wikipedia. The average Super Wal-Mart is 197,000 ft sq. Which, if you assume a square footprint, comes out to 443 feet on a side. I was wrong, a football field is 100 yards across, or 300 feet, 360 if you include both end zones. The Super Wal-Mart would be 147 yards across, on average, or 47% longer than the Cowboys' home field. That's 136 meters if you prefer to measure things like Europeans do.
   Hokey smoke, that's just insane. I know things are bigger in Texas, but Texas isn't the only place that has Super Wal-Marts. Chances are good the biggest one isn't even in Texas. How much electricity does that place use? How much water? How much gasoline do all those people burn getting to and from that immense building every day? How many people surreptitiously cut a fart while walking down one of those fifteen-foot-wide aisles? That's greenhouse gas right there.
   I'm not into granola and I don't wear hemp clothes. I'm not a green fanatic by any measure. But just thinking about the simple statistics for what it takes to keep this one Super Wal-Mart open is enough to turn me into a tree-hugging, polar bear-loving hippie. And then when you think about all the other Super Wal-Marts across the country... man, I'm starting to long for a Volkswagen Microbus that I can take into the forest and get away from it all. Jeez, how much do we need, and how big a store do we need to put it all in? Enough, already.
   Where's my tie-dye? I need to make some clothes.

And That's How Swine Flu Spreads

I'm back in Texas for the holidays, time for fajitas and barbeque and maybe a gun show or two. Usually airports are good places for people watching, but I was scheduled pretty tightly, no time to chit chat or dilly dally or any other slightly effeminate verbs like those two. But along the way something interesting did happen.
   I drank a Pepsi from England.
   No, I didn't buy it in a novelty British food store, a passing chimney sweep did not hand it to me, I didn't pick it off the corpse of an international spy. On the flight from Burbank to Dallas, the flight attendant served it to me right out of the drink cart. This was a Pepsi can bottled in England, with a contest paid in pounds sterling advertised along the top rim. Straight from the Empire.
   Remember, I got on the plane in Burbank, and so did the Pepsi can. And Burbank is eight time zones removed from England. So the can had to travel all that way, probably in the drink cart of an airplane taking off from Heathrow, making several stops along the way at JFK or O'Hare or Hartsfield, until finally it found its way to that one drink cart in Burbank, where it started making the trip back East. How many hands did it go through? How many flight attendants or airport catering dudes handled it? How many miles did it actually travel before I drank yet another soda I didn't need to be drinking?
   I think the risk posed by swine flu has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion, far too alarmist, but when I get a drink bottled in England on my trip from Burbank to Dallas, I can see the point of raising the issue. People travel across the globe on a whim these days - apparently so do Pepsi cans - which means their germs travel too.
   Speaking of germs, I have a bit of a cold myself, so I think it would be interesting to see who on that plane catches my cold. I'm hoping I infected the douchebag in front of me who leaned his seat all the way back, I know I tried my darndest to give it to him. Maybe, just maybe, my cold will travel all the way back to England, infecting the staff working in the bottling plant that made the Pepsi I drank. That would be cool, huh? Talk about closing the loop.

LA Thanksgiving

One of my friends invited me to Thanksgiving at her place this year, and her place is in West Hollywood, a city more known for its lavish Halloween celebrations than for family gatherings. When most people think of LA they're really thinking of WeHo. Or Beverly Hills. And when my friend told me that out of nine people coming only three ate meat, I knew I was in for an interesting time. See, I'm from Texas, and while I'm sure somebody there doesn't eat meat, unless they live in Austin they keep it to themselves. As God intended.
   Since she knows I can cook I was directed to do so, given responsibility for sweet 'taters. And they were good, thanks for asking. The freeways were empty so I got to her place waaaaay too early, first one there. Come to find out, I was going to be the ONLY person eating meat, the other two bowed out. Everybody else was a vegetarian or vegan.
   To those of you wondering what the difference is, vegetarians don't eat meat but they eat eggs, cheese, milk, that kind of thing. Vegans subsist on air and the good wishes of their fellow man, at least as far as I can tell. Maybe they're photosynthetic, I don't know.
   I wasn't really sure I belonged at a gathering like this, but as more people arrived my apprehensions subsided. These were good people, nice people, and they were good company.
   But aside from me they were still sickly vegetable-eaters, and we were in West Hollywood. The conversation veered in an LA direction several times, mainly the vegans discussing where they could get good vegan cheese (evidently a real problem), how much better some of them felt by eliminating gluten from their diet, and how to use tofu instead of scrambled eggs in a meal. Oh, and we talked about auras too. And yoga. And chakras. Really.
   I was definitely a fish out of water, but it was still a good Thanksgiving. The dog and I shared the turkey.

The Other Shoe

You ever get the feeling that the Universe is just biding its time before it puts the screws to you? I don't usually, but for the past few days...
   See, nothing odd has happened to me since last Monday.
   Others might count that as a blessing, but weird crap happens to me all the time. ALL THE TIME. Every day. People try to sell me stuff, crazy people think I'm related to them, birds follow me, machines stop working when I go by or ones that have stopped start working again, I overhear terrible conversations, and on and on and on. It's just something I've gotten used to, something I expect, almost something that defines me.
   And now it's stopped.
   You remember when Popeye would finally have his fill of Bluto, he'd eat his spinach, and then he'd wind up his forearm to make sure he got a really solid hit? I got a feeling that I'm Bluto, and the Universe is Popeye winding up for the twisker sock. If I suddenly dissolve in shower of light, or get kidnapped by Mole People, or suddenly become King of Prussia, don't say I didn't warn you.

Worthless And Weak

I've been 'between assignments' for a while now, five months, and while I am getting some good work done - fourth draft of one novel, outline for another - I am developing some bad habits.
   I make time for 'The Price Is Right.' Daytime TV is indeed a vast wasteland, vaster than prime time for sure, yet if I'm in my apartment at 10 AM on a weekday I'm watching Drew Carey give away cars and vacations. Call it a habit decades in the making, I used to watch Bob Barker during summer vacation. It's my grandmother's fault.
   I drink waaaay more soda than I should. It's a habit I won't break for some reason. It really is just as simple as not buying it any more, but just as some people smoke when they drink, when I buy Lotto tickets in the convenience store I also get a soda. I'm a prisoner of my addiction, I need a government grant to get the aspartame monkey off my back.
   I go to the same online job boards day after day. This far into unemployment, if these job boards haven't landed me a paying gig by now they're probably not going to. And yet I go back again and again, thinking things will be different this time.
   YouTube. Farting dinosaurs. 'Nuff said.
   I don't shave every day, or even regularly. I'm one of those guys with perpetual five o'clock shadow. You know the kind, you see them in a store and you wonder what kind of job they have that they don't need to shave. Inside tip: they probably don't have a job.
   Mid-day grocery store visits. This far into my vagrancy, I know that most grocery stores are finished stocking by about 9:30 AM, and most old people don't get there until about 11 AM. So I swoop in during the sweet spot between stockers and seniors, when the aisles are blissfully free of obstructions.
   I play Mafia Wars on Facebook far, far, far too much. It's not even a particularly good game, but it's just good enough to keep me coming back.
   Glee. I can't help it, I like the show, and I have this odd fascination with Sue Sylvester. It's nothing I want to explore further, not in a public forum.

I really need a job.

At The Unemployment Office

I noticed that my 'Claim Balance' on my unemployment check keeps ticking down, and, after doing some simple algebra, I figured out when the money was due to run out. Only mildly panicked - and months before the cash ran dry - I went down to the local EDD office (that's the California unemployement office) to ask what I had to do to make sure the checks kept coming.
   Let me first say the people at the EDD are extremely helpful. You can tell they take pride in getting people work, and I haven't met one of them who wasn't a genuinely nice person.
   That said, they are still a California State bureaucracy. So I went through the door and stood behind the black tape, a good five feet from the counter, and waited my turn. That's when I noticed the 'Threatening a State worker is a felony' notice just beneath the 'wait here' sign. This alarmed me for two reasons, first because the staff evidently get enough threats that they feel they have to remind people that doing so is wrong, and second because evidently the threats workers receive are serious enough that making them constitutes a felony. Maybe they need hazard pay like soldiers get.
   When the nice older gentleman called me to the desk he tapped the sign-in sheet - gotta fulfill the requirements of the bureaucracy - and asked me what I needed. I signed in and explained my concern about my money running out. 'Don't worry,' he told me, 'you're on your first renewal, right? We're working on four. It'll happen automatically, you have nothing to worry about.'
   Yikes. Four renewals. That's two years. While I have enjoyed my time 'between assignments' I'm getting anxious to get back to work. I don't know if I can last two years.
   The nice gentleman told me he was sure I'd find work before I hit my two-year limit, and I left the counter feeling that I would, indeed.
   I stepped a few feet away to stow some of the paperwork he'd given me, and he called the next person over. 'I don't know why you people can't get this right,' the surly lady began the conversation. And then I understood the 'felony' sign up front.

A Very Special Posting

You know what I miss? 'Very Special' episodes of TV shows. Time was the TV networks actually made the effort to appear to be serving the public interest, at least a little bit. Back in the day ABC actually had the After School Special, which aired after school - duh - and always seemed to star Christy MacNichol for some reason. The stories explored topics like divorce, or substance abuse, or teen pregnancy. I was a little young to watch them, and I also didn't care. My sister recently gave me a boxed set of the shows on DVD, and they came in a miniature Trapper Keeper. Sweet!
   Then we got a few 'very special' episodes of shows like Diff'rent Strokes or Blossom or Punky Brewster. And it seemed like every episode of Moesha was 'very special.'
   And now... nothing.
   Maybe I'm not watching the proper channels, but I haven't seen or heard of a 'very special' anything in quite a while. As far as I can tell this means either a) kids have wised up in the past twenty years, or b) the TV networks stopped caring enough even to pretend to be socially relevant.
   I'm guessing it's b).

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm never going to go to a Halloween party dressed as a hobo. Sure, it's cute for little kids, with their shoe-polish beards and their little bindles on broom handles, wearing Dad's old clothes and too-big shoes. But things get different when you're an adult man.
   I know that if I go to a Halloween party dressed as a hobo, I'm going to have a wreck in my car. This would be the one time I don't wear a seat belt and I'll be thrown free of the wreckage and I'll land in the bushes where my wallet will fall to the ground. When the paramedics find me they're going to assume that I'm a for-real homeless person who got hit while crossing the street. Instead of going to the good private hospital they'll take me to the crooked county hospital where they take uninsured homeless people.
   The crooked hospital will grudgingly take care of me, but when I try to tell them that I'm not really homeless I was just wearing a Halloween costume, they'll assume that I'm delusional, just another crazy homeless guy. The more I protest the more they're going to think I'm totally nuts, and since I won't have my wallet I can't prove anything. And then when they try to call my family or friends nobody will answer the phone because they'll assume the call is from a telemarketer trying get one over on them by impersonating a crooked hospital.
   When the crooked hospital finally realizes the mistake they made, instead of letting me go with an apology, they're going to decide to 'deal with' me. They know if they let me go I'll head straight for the cops and the newspapers and find a lawyer so I can put them in jail and then sue them into oblivion. They'll tell me they're letting me go, but they're really going to make me into Soylent Green.
   This is why I usually dress in a toga for Halloween; if I have a wreck nobody's going to assume I'm a real Roman.