Eh...I should probably explain what my last post was all about.

I was mulling over how I've adopted the title of vegetarian. I don't feel it's entirely accurate. I should say that meat makes up about 3% of my diet.

Then of course, there are the occasional meat binges.

I played around with the idea of a person going on such a binge, much the way an alcoholic might. Instead of being out all night drinking, the guy is waking up after having been out all night devouring Nummy Burgers.

I switched perspectives towards the end (from first person to third) because I thought the scene would be more intriguing if you didn't know what the character was thinking.

First-person is nice because you can get away with revealing everything the character thinks. It can become a crutch for me because I'll just gloss over all the other details that an observer would notice as cues to inner thoughts.

Also, I'm too jovial in first person.

The paragraphs then kind of developed themselves, planting little seeds of questions that would eventually need to be addressed.

Why does he have a wall-scroll of St. Augustine's Libertine's Prayer?

Why doesn't he clean out the damn beer cans that aren't even his? He has a waste basket!

Where can you even find those old bathtubs with the claw feet?

The questions will eventually have to be answered. Maybe if they're nagging enough, I will.

* * * * * * *

My father tried talking to me while I was sitting and typing. He wasn't very successful. He had noticed that I hadn't really been getting up and going to school this week and asked me why. I didn't answer him, which is what I do whenever I don't want to talk. (It is one of my more annoying traits.)

He watched me work in silence. I forgot he was there until he spoke again.

"You need to read the Bible," he said as he stood up to leave the room. "It says that you do not light a lamp and then place it inside the cupboard. You do not light a candle only to put it under the table. When something gives light, you must place it somewhere high so that it may cast light for others."

"Some of us like the dark," I muttered at as I continued typing.

* * * * * * *

I've been reading On Writing by Stephen King. I've been getting mixed reactions when I tell people that. Even I was skeptical when D.C. told me that he was reading it. I mean, I like Stephen King books, but I also love Evil Dead 2, and not because I kid myself about they have a profound cultural and artistic impact.

I'm only half-way through, but I'll say right now that I have a great deal of respect for the guy, not firstly as a writer, but as a worker. That man knows how to work.

Happily for me, he works as a writer.

Stephen King writes a funny/insightful bit about being an alcoholic. (I read this intensely because, after an 82-day period of total abstinence from alcohol, I am carefully re-introducing myself into my natural habitat.)

He discusses the "world-famous Hemingway Defense."

Although never clearly articulated (it would not be manly to do so), the Hemingway defense goes something like this: as a writer, I am a very sensitive fellow, but I am also a man, and real men don't give in to their sensitivities. Only sissy-men do that. Therefore I drink. How else can I face the existential horror of it all and continue to work? Besides, come on, I can handle it. A real man always can.

Now what kind of guy would think that way, really? Um...eh...

Then he talks about being confronted during an intervention:

I bargained, because that's what addicts do. I was charming, because that's what addicts are.

Very interesting stuff.

The most relevant thing he has said so far, the lines that have been running through my head this entire week, are these:

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

It hit me pretty hard because I've been in the kind of mind-set where I've wanted to take everything out of my room and just have my desk and my books.

By the time I had read that paragraph, I had already taken apart my bed and put it into the storage shed in the backyard. I would lie on the floor at night and read. Then, when I got tired, I would curl up on the carpet and fall asleep. It was actually working out pretty well for me.

My parents thought it was odd, but it is hard for me to really surprise them anymore.

At the time I had just been formulating various definitions for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Not that my definitions would ever be in a real Guide. Real Guide? That doesn't sound right. I mean that I was making up definitions as I thought they might appear in a "real" Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The one I had come up with for "Writer, Earth" is "A creature whose primary objective is to be alive, and, having fulfilled this condition, writes."

I thought myself very clever at the time. Curse that Stephen King, being so much more eloquent, so much more making-it-universally-applicable, and so much more read by a large audience.

I can't even say I thought of it first; On Writing was published in 2000.

This is where I leap to my feet, raise my clenched fist defiantly at the ceiling and shout, "Someday, King! Someday!"

This is also where I go to sleep since I have to be at work tomorrow morning.

Man, I hope I'll be able to find my teddy bear under all those empty beer cans.