Got Mashed Potatoes

I'm typically not fond of rules.

I had a great philosophy professor who once convinced the entire class that they were for censorship. Many students objected, noting how they believed censorship was wrong, ill-considered, and biased. He responded by saying, "So you think we should provide child pornography to convicted rapists upon the completion of their prison sentence?" Of course no one agreed, so he concluded that we were all in favor of censorship. Many still disagreed, saying they hated censorship in most other instances, that his example was just an exception to the sentiment. He pointed out that sentiment was all it was -- but by that one belief, we all were in favor of some sort of censorship somewhere.

So while I am not too fond of rules, I must admit I am for them. My example -- my "kid porn to rapists" -- which made this very clear for me . . . is this guy at work. He has convinced me that if one decides to bare-chest a shirt -- basically, to wear a shirt with no undershirt -- that that shirt requires laundering before its next appearance.

Furthermore, if said bare-chester decides he's too good for undershirts, and if said bare-chester has a fair amount of chest hair, and if said bare-chester is not John Travolta, or hell, even if he is, then I think the shirt needs to be buttoned -- at least -- up until the tie button at the top.

And if he has any inkling that the air conditioning won't be working and the call center is going to be 80 degrees, an undershirt is required.

Rules, damnit. Rules.

So much, so much to say.

Since I was gone I wanted to say that thanks to this year's Chicago Bears . . . defense really doesn't win championships. So take that, you smart-ass pundits.

At work they just moved this guy who sat by us who was a real big Jesus-guy at the same time as he was a real big gigolo. Obviously, I know him as the Jesus-Gigolo. And it's so great that they moved him because he was a real nice, friendly guy I wanted to kill because he wouldn't stop laughing. Laughing at what? Oh, at women he thought were pathetic and easy and at all the non-Jesus people who weren't lured into going to church with him. Rather than try to converse with this mental giant, I avoided him, kind of like how Walter never really said anything to Jesus. "8-year-olds, Dude." My thoughts exactly.

My current favorite Pixies song is "I've Been Tired". Not just because I have been. But because it's funny and politics does go so good with beer. "Excuse me pleeeaaase?"

I'm drinking Black Dog Ale, right now. Out of . . . Montana, I think. It's really good. Flavorful. It's a real good beer for anybody who's had too many light beers lately. This is the kind of beer that proves to the drinker -- damnit, it's meant to have taste.

I'm so into this band, Lesser Birds of Paradise, that I wish I could be their drummer. They're from Chicago, so I probably didn't do myself a whole lot of good by just ripping the Bears. It's not that the drumming would be that much fun to play -- just regular rock. But the songs are so good, you just want to play on them. They know how to produce and mix. That's a lost art. They do this harmonization on one track that's so perfectly imperfect, you'll never hear it done better ever.

It's so wet around here, that we're pretty much screwed, I think, with regard to the mosquito situation. There's so much standing water that they're just multiplying exponentially. I go running and hit clouds of these things so thick I think they'll pick me up and take me to their leader.

I'm eating my wife's strawberry ice cream dessert as I write this. It's been in the freezer for more than a week since she told me she'd chop off my balls if I touched it, so I think it's fair game. Hell, it's partially freezer-burned, so I think I'm doing a service here, taking care of some good dessert before it goes bad. Things have actually been pretty good on the home front, and I think that is mostly to do with my wife's current obsession, which happens to be Trader Joe's sun-dried tomato, basil hummus. As long as that hummus in in stock in our fridge, things are copasetic around here. But if that hummus runs out . . . let God have mercy on the soul of the poor bastard who has to deal with my wife.

"running on empty, he's coming around, has had his plenty, and when I found, that the light is blinding, the streets are clear, and reveal these findings . . . ."

I'd like to apologize to all the people at the Jelly Belly factory today who happened to be on the factory tour at the same time me and my wife and boy were there. That screaming child who wouldn't stop screaming, and was just a complete, irrational, screaming maniac, who you probably wanted to turn around and strangle because he wouldn't stop screaming was my boy.

I don't know why he screamed the whole time. I know it was a boring tour, but it sure didn't warrant such a display. I wanted to grab him and walk out, but the lady at the front said we couldn't exit the train. But it wasn't really a train, was it? It was more of like a 'tram'. And it wasn't really a tour of the factory, was it? It was more like a tour of a warehouse used by the factory, where they had installed a bunch of TVs that we had to stop to watch for 99% of the "tour". And then it kind of turned into a real money-grab at the end, there, didn't it? The way the tour ended conveniently at the gift shop.

It fairly sucked, didn't it?

But that's no excuse, I know. I still apologize. Because for as much as it sucked, my son made it even worse. But take some solace. Some day when my son is old and successful, plainly full of himself, he can come to this website and learn how his mom and dad wanted to take him to the nearest orphanage, zoo or street corner and sell him for $50 bucks one cold, rainy day in April, during the terrible two's.

So I have this new iPod. And it has all this space on it, so I've kind of decided that I'm going to put everything I own on it. Well, just music. But believe me, that's plenty.

It has 80 gigs of space, so I can afford to put everything on it. But I don't necessarily like where this has put me, in terms of how I view my music collection.

There are some positives. I may have one of the city's best Neil Young collections. Neil alone must take up several gigs. Then there's all the Neil & Crazy Horse stuff, and the Neil and Pearl Jam stuff, and the Neil on collection albums where he's labeled as "Various Artists". It's a lot.

And other bands are also well-represented: Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Modest Mouse, Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, Black Crowes, Pixies, Spoon, Wilco, Beck, Bob Dylan, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Nada Surf, Stephen Stills, Decemberists, Steely Dan, Smashing Pumpkins, and Pearl Jam are all well-represented, if not presented with their entire catalogs including some bootlegs.

But then the concept of "everything" kicked in, and I ended up dredging through some of my wife's music. Like her Bon Jovi box set. Some awful Sheryl Crow live CD with like 10,000 guest musicians. Her 4-CD dance music collection which is supposedly "great for working out". Her live, Loggins & Messina double-CD with these awful 10- and 20-minute songs that sound like they are in an alien language.

Then came the kid's music: some terrible, British, Bob the Builder CD. A 3-CD set of mind-numbing children's songs; each of the songs are only a minute or two long . . . but there are 45 songs per disc. Some awful Bengali chant music that never put him to sleep.

But not all this blame can be given away, I'm afraid. Yes, some of these turds are mine. For example: the Hanson CD I bought in college to use as a party closer. It's on right now. It's worse than I remembered it to be. Then there's my well-documented, hated All-American Rejects CD. There's the Justin Timberlake album that BMG sent me when I forgot to respond to their email. That one wasn't even opened because I meant to return it to them two years ago. Then there's the CD the wife and I bought for $10 on our honeymoon. It was this guy, singing Bob Dylan songs while we were at dinner one night. He was great. His CD isn't. It contains no Bob Dylan songs -- no folk of any kind. But it has plenty of '80s synth keyboards and cheesy lyrics. Here are the song titles: "Do It For You", "Brighter Day", "Don't Give Up Your Dream", "So Nice To Know Ya", "The Master's Hand", "Do It For You (Instrumental)". I remember putting it in for the first time. My wife heard it and said, "Oh. Oh. Oh, boy. Will. Turn it off."

I gotta put in some Heatmiser. This Hanson is getting into my brain. I'm can't go to sleep with this in my head or it may hardwire to my memory and kill me.

There are rare times, at work, when I stumble upon brilliance.

Tonight's incident does not involve any remarkable gain in efficiency, or any magnificent quantity of tickets completed, agents assisted, defects identified, or products supported.

It was late. I'd had my fill of coffee. But something was . . . lacking. So I grabbed my packet of oatmeal, took up my trusted Shriners' cup, and walked to the lunchroom. And there it was: the last piece of someone's birthday cake. Avoided by the rest of second shift because of its four and a half hours on the table, it was ready for me.

I ripped open the oatmeal and emptied it into the Shriner. Then I cut the piece of cake in half and dumped it on top of the oatmeal. I added a half-cup of steamed water from the coffee machine, mashed it all up with a fork, and took a taste.

Good. But that last half of the piece of cake was eyeing me hard.

Into the Shriner it sank. I mashed some more. Added another snoose of water: Perfection. The perfect nighttime snack.

I should patent this stuff. I can't say it was the best day at work. I was too busy to get anything done, which always makes the day feel a bit worthless. But it wasn't worthless after the Oatmeal Cake Shake. How many days can one say he created a new dessert? I should be on the Food Network.

It is inevitable. At some point in time, you see enough of these things, and you can't turn them off in your head. They are built to be crack for your kids, and they end up sticking in your head too. And before you know it, you find yourself enjoying or hating these things, just like your kids (but do they ever hate them? - probably not). So here they are in my view.

The Best

Charlie and Lola
Maybe it's the British accents, but this show is hilarious. And my kid has the biggest crush on Lola, who he stares at wistfully, and calls, "La-laaa". It's pretty predictable, but always funny and British.

Sesame Street
I agree that SS pre-Elmo was great, but it's still pretty good. He does grate on you, sure. But you still got some old cast members, which is amazing. And the Cookie Monster pretty much makes the whole thing worthwhile. It doesn't matter that he does the same thing every time. He gives gluttony a good name, and it's a beautiful thing to watch his self-control break down and see him take down all those cookies.

Bob the Builder
No one will admit it, but everyone likes this show because we all love to see how they build or fix things. That's really all there is to it.

The Worst -- These are the shows I try to keep my kid from even finding out about.

Barney
Not that this one needs an explanation. It's just so sickening with his sugary voice and all those weirdo kids fake singing and dancing around. And those kids never fight, do they? They're always just getting along like the saints on Sunday. What a load that is. Even on Sesame Street, Elmo and Zoe fight over her stupid pet rock.

Rafi
Click the link and take a look at the picture. Would you leave your kid with this guy?

The Wiggles
This is the worst of the worst. I'm just going to say what everyone else is too politically correct to say: It's four gay, 40-something Australian guys dancing around in Star Trek clothes. I don't know why kids fall so hard for these guys. Beyond being mind-meltingly annoying, they rank a solid 10 on the creepy scale. These guys should be used to torture political prisoners and terrorists. Lock the prisoners in a windowless room for four hours with the Wiggles and see how they do.

My little part of the city prides itself on being:
- reborn
- hip
- safe
- clean
- non-commercial
- liberal
- growing

So everyone here is all up in arms because of some recent gang robberies which targeted about three dozen small businesses around here during the last four months. Politicians are requesting more police be trained. Security guards are being hired. And everyone seems to have one of two attitudes:

1.) We're a strong community, and we're not going to take this! Let's talk tough on message boards and learn gang signs and walk the streets once a month together to show those gangsters!

2.) There goes the neighborhood. Fuck this bullshit -- we're leaving.

While I know the first premise is the right frame of thought, it's also ridiculous. Citizens can't patrol the streets or do the cops' jobs for them. And while I understand the second premise is a bit cowardly, it's also realistic. Nothing is going to stop the robbers except the robbers deciding it's not a good idea. Government and internet message boards don't hold sway.

At some point in time, it becomes unavoidable. You look around and realize you can only travel to half of the city because the other half is ghetto. You pay a tax bill the size of a small fortune. You understand the public schools are battlegrounds. You don't swim in the lake because the smell of it hits you before you can get to the beach. City officials should stop wondering why the population rolls resemble a yearly exodus. If family weren't here for so many people, we would all be fools for not realizing there is some place, many places, better.

It's done. Finally.

480 pages.
134,134 words.
187 hours composing.

About a month ago, I said I wouldn't post here again until Claims from the Pit was done. And thank God, it's done.

I remember doing very well on it the first year, then hitting a stumbling block. Not a writer's block, just a lack of motivation. Then I wrote stop-and-start for a long time, putting in a strong push in late 2005. I probably added less than 10 pages in the entire year of 2006. The whole time I felt guilty about not completing it. This is partially because I knew the ending the whole time. I just had to write to it (easier said than done, I found out). And then this year, the guilt caught up to me. I kept listening to this song that was about waking up. And so one night, the book woke back up. I edited for a week, and I liked what I saw, with some exception.

The first 100 pages are probably my best work to date. But then things don't quite go so smoothly for our narrator. And I don't know how readers will react to that. Not that there will be any readers. I love this book dearly. It is hard giving it up. But it alienates everyone. The whole premise of the book is that a sane person can make the decision to kill himself. And, yes dear readers, to ruin the ending -- he most certainly does.

Athenian: What of a man’s relations with himself – should he think of himself as his own enemy? What’s our answer now?

Cleinias: Well done, my Athenian friend! . . . . You have made the argument clearer by expressing it in its most elementary form. Now you will find it much easier to realize that the position we took up a moment ago is correct: not only is everyone an enemy of everyone else in the public sphere, but each man fights a private war against himself.

Athenian: You do surprise me, my friend. What do you mean?

Cleinias: This, sir, is where a man wins the first and best of victories – over himself. Conversely, to fall a victim to oneself is the worst and most shocking thing that can be imagined.

Plato, The Laws

There's plenty to bring readers in -- certain readers. There's more sex and violence in this book than the other two I wrote combined. It's meant to be very un-sexual, though. The titillation draws you in, but there's always a repercussion. That's an easy way to make a point, and I like working that way. Subtlety be damned! But I did work this strategy over and over in this book. The message is never stated, but perhaps too clear.

There's also so much happening in the book that I perhaps missed some things. It needs future drafts to better develop all that goes on. There is idealism confronting capitalism and drugs. There is friendship and language, which I need to develop more -- the idea how language changes over the course of a friendship. There's also plenty of Mormonism, nihilism, Henry Hudson, American Dream, relationship dynamics, suicide, bar life, and five different Beatles songs as world views thrown in for good measure. Adding to all that is a stream of consciousness voice meant to add some perspective and throw off the reader. Of my three manuscripts, this one is furthest from being publishable work . . . but it may say the most.

I found that it's difficult writing a dark book when things are going well for you. It's hard to 'turn off' and write to suit the novel. And to complete the book's premise, the build-up to the ending had to be just right -- I was really concerned with it coming off forced, just to end it the way I dreamed it. It needed to work and make some sort of sense.

Additionally, I can tie the writing and non-writing of the book to when my son entered the world. It is hella-hard to write after waking up a 9:AM, spending the morning watching the kid, and then working a full shift of work. It is much easier to come home and watch a move, play Railroad Tycoon 3, or watch the Internet.

With that said, these past four weeks -- about 85 hours of writing which accounted for approximately the final 87 pages of the novel -- has been so much more fulfilling than my other options. I think I'll take a month off, edit Claims, print it out and put it under my bed, and then start another.

...the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out...

The Book of Mormon

Jacob 7:26