Training Continues: Lesson 34: Pwnage

All the baby books say that your child should be teh pwnzor by their first year. They're coming along well; today Ender said his first Chuck Norris joke in l33t speak.

So people always ask me, "Do you put up the picture first or write and then put up the picture?"

No!

That is, no, nobody ever asks me that.

In truth, I pick out the picture from a plethora of art I've stolen- ...eh, art I've fair-used from the various internet tubes and then proceed on as usual. Sometimes the image will provide me with an anchor for a mood or theme but usually not. In the editing process, the image appears as a bunch of html code and that conveys to me very little mood except for maybe futuristic-robot-language mood. (That mood can also be conveyed by gratuitous amounts of LEDs.)

Sometimes I'll listen to music. It also helps establish a mood but even less consistently so than an image. I can listen to a few songs or albums over and over again to try to grasp what I'm feeling but not many. Sarah Mclachlan's Surfacing album works pretty well for the introspective stuff. And for falling asleep to. And maybe the rare karaoke party when I'm alone in my room.

I'll throw in Live's Throwing Copper when I'm feeling morbid.

Portishead is good for when I'm feeling morbidly obese.

I haven't chosen an image yet. Maybe I won't. I didn't used to. The original intent was not particularly artsy; nowadays with tabbed browsing and e-mail instant messaging I figured a picture would indicate at the quickest glance that I had put up a new post thus saving some people the effort of reading the first few lines to find out.

People are often surprised by how considerate I can be. The inverse is also true.

Rituals are important in my writing process. Not crucial, but I certainly know that at night if I get out of the shower and sit down to write with my wet towel tucked haphazardly around my waist I have a much better chance of engaging in critical thinking than if I say, slide over to YouTube to watch videos about copyright law explained by Disney characters.

Today as I fed Ender and Joshua a healthy breakfast of single-grain oatmeal and Cheerios, NPR played a live recording of Every Day I Have to Cry by musician Arthur Alexander. He wrote songs for the Beatles. As I engaged in the daily battle to get more oatmeal into Joshua's mouth than onto his face, Joshua began to bop side to side in his high chair to the music. I stopped, looked at him for a second, then I began to dance along with him. Ender looked at us like we were crazy, then he bopped right along with us.

I think this is why people have kids. Moments like this when you suddenly have someone to dance with. It feels like you'll always have someone, that they'll be with you forever.

I don't want to have kids. I don't believe anyone will be with me forever. We're all here for a little while and I prefer to enjoy as much of our little while together as long as I can. It's okay if it's not forever. I have this small time with my nephews now, the three of us splattered with oatmeal and dancing. What more do I need?

I won't deny the possibility that I'll change my mind. It's also possible that I'll find religion and join the Marine Corp. Parents, mystics, and Marines have the same mantra, "You can't possibly know until you experience it."

I can only respond gently with "But now you can't possibly know now what life would be like without it."

I don't think I'll put a picture up today.

In the constant maelstrom of reorganization that is my bedroom, I stumbled across a pile of journals. The earliest is from 1998. It would be an admirable summer goal if I were to organize everything I'd written chronologically and translated where necessary. This is not a new idea, but every time I consider it the same fear arises: as I gaze upon the anthill of what I've produced my edges will blur into depression. And depression leads to poetry. Nobody wants that.

Besides the inevitable delusions of euphony, it'd be bliddy hard to track it all down. The journals' relationship with linear time can only be classified as blatant infidelity. I will write in one journal until I'm distracted by the bright color or page size or sultry binding or dark color of another. If arranged from most-written-in to least, the cheap, wide-ruled composition notebooks with covers that look like a dead channel on a tv screen or the world's laziest Rorschach, they would contain 98% of the handwritten writing. The beautiful leather-bound journals would contain the other 2%. Sort of the opposite ratios of the economic classes they metaphor.

Ooh, second summer goal: Fill up the nice journals. Fight the alphabetic disparity. Redistribute prose to the pages that need it most. After all, we're the most English country in the world. If anyone can do it, it's us. I mean me.

Damn, I've lost myself in analogies again. I'd better just go to bed before I hurt myself. I'll do all that stuff I said tomorrow.

A note about blogpolitik: In the event of an overwhelming desire to voice some small embarrassing truth, best to slip it in on a Saturday morning. People will not see it; they will be asleep. Freedom is here in the wee hours of the weekend.

Sundays can be tricky. Best to avoid them entirely.

I would like a wandering albatross tattoo. I'd get it on my upper chest, hanging head down, wings spread out below my clavicles. It would make me happy, I think.

I'm not remembering much right now. Today was a good day; I enjoyed it. It's only at this moment, now, that I'm inclined to recall a melancholy that didn't exist while the sun was up.

Blogger has a new autosave feature. It saves about once a minute. I'm glad of it. I've lost a few posts to electron-related happenstance and it would be appropriate to celebrate such precautions.

It's only now, at this moment, that the blue button flashes grey and reminds me that a minute has passed and I've written nothing. Another flash, another minute of nothing. Another flash, another reminder, another chiding, another nag, another flutter of discontent. Another goading. It heaps me.

I'm sure I'll get over it.

Love,

Guillermo

My father demonstrates the "hold-two-grandchildren-without-spilling-a-drop" technique that I assume made raising myself and my siblings almost bearable.

* * * *

I signed up for a couple of writing classes to take this summer. Neither will bring me closer to graduation but there is the possibility I will learn something. Seems worthwhile.

There is a fire outside my bedroom window. My window blinds are flaring flickering orange. It's pleasant and I will continue to think so as long as it remains confined to the fire pit.

In preparation for the classes, I am mining old journals for discarded ideas. Er, useful discarded ideas. These papers would provide a gold rush for impractical discarded ideas:

Mexicans will go to NASCAR as soon as someone invents the burrito helmet. They just have to solve the problem of keeping it safe from hungry passers-by and errant nibblers.

I don't think I could stretch that one out to ten pages.

A man gathers sufficient courage and peers into his soul expecting to uncover a repressed tempest of emotion stirring a writhing sea of genius and finds instead a partly-filled glass of tepid quinine in which a dead housefly makes slow, lazy circles.

Eh, if there's an assignment on poetry I can throw some erratic spacing in there and call it a night.

My books have taken me to harsh deserts and unforgiving tundras [Desert Solitaire][Arctic Dreams]. The terrains' voices echo through me. I believe I know these things. Years ago, as a child exploring South Mountain and as a teenager fleeing the machina duties of my government's military. To learn, to forget, to learn of forgetting. How many times has this occurred? How do I stop it?

I delighted in finding this pen. Younger me's/my old selves hide them in nooks to squirrel out later. I know the best way to keep things safe is to forget them for a little while.


Idunno.

We three, Jenna, Brian, me, crawled through ancient lava flows and neglected cell phones. I struck my head. There is delight to be taken beneath the earth where it is always cool now that the lava has passed on.

This one might have a shot. Someone could get lost, I could pass out for a while, the lava could come back for revenge. The possibilities are as endless as that cave, whose end we found 40 yards in.

I'm watching a Damien Rice video. If he gained enough weight he would look a lotta bit like Jack Black.

















They also make a lot of the same facial expressions when they sing although I assume Jack Black exaggerates for comic effect while perhaps Damien Rice exaggerates for melancholy effect. Either way, it's hilarious.

* * * *

After all the corporate strife with my newest former editors, I've put Otter Of Despair on hold while I develop a spin-off based on a minor character from OOD 3: Disillusionment Delta. It's called The Pug That Never Was. Once I overcome the unique illustrating hurdles that arise from having a main character who is neither, I expect to be able to retire off this one.

* * * *

I should rest. I haven't been sleeping terribly well. Especially not at work because every time I let my guard down the nephews find some way to hit me in the groin.

They better be careful. They act like Guillermo won't shake a baby.

Day Two of Ender's training has begun. All successful writers, most notably Hemingway and Sylvia Plath, have battled and overcome at least one orca whale in their lifetimes. Since he's only a baby, I let him start out fighting on dry land, on the home turf of the living room, no less.

The orca whale wasn't hard to locate; a few pods are always cruising around the neighborhood, spy-hopping and whatnot. I dressed Joshua up like a penguin and had him crawl around on the porch. When the orca breached, I nabbed him. I also caught a few Jehovah's Witnesses but those I just tagged and released.

* * * * *

The Otter of Despair has taken more twists and turns. The original concept was for a sea otter, but my editor felt that river otters were more "accessible." I countered very politely that it would muck up the ending, as it is very uncommon for an otter that is living mainly in a river to drift off into the fucking ocean.

After security guards pulled me off him, I was escorted out and told to conduct all future negotiations over the phone.

Oh, he's calling now. "Hello? Of course it's me, who else doesn't hang up at the sound of your grating voice? ...Ah, so you understand why it can't be a river otter? Good, I-

"You want to change the 'of despair' to 'of happiness' and the 'otter' to a 'pig'? ...I understand. Say, are you coming to the Fourth of July party? Good, good. You should wear that tie, the really thick, strong one. It'll be perfect. Yes'um. Goodbye."

Well that seems to be that.

I'll have to scrap my idea for the sequel. Otter of Despair was going to drift to South America and run into a romp of giant river otter. They're great, they can grow up to six feet long and weigh over 75 pounds. That's the size of your Jewish uncle. Well, these river otter eat piranha and will rescue OOD from being eaten by a school of them. Then OOD will join the romp and learn a valuable lesson about eating piranha. And since there's no seaweed in the river he'll soon float along to his next wacky adventure.

I only have the roughest outline for book three, but I can tell you this: it will have Venom in it.