Cell Phone Tuesday #1

Took today off and got my first Covid vaccination. I feel fine. I'm not supposed to lift weights for a couple days. I'll heed that advice since this is the first one of these I've ever had. I'm still going to walk today. Because I must walk every day. 

I'm on the couch relaxing now. Thoughts drift back to yesterday about what I would do with my free time. This apparently. I may do some yard work. Just a little. The weeds springing up in the front yard after the recent rains. 

I thought of paying one of my nephews to do it. I could still do that. 

Have I talked about being Mixtec? I thought I did. My sister took her DNA test and got fifty percent Native American, specifically Mixtec (miz-tek, although Mix-tech would be a cool robot race.) 

Maybe I will get my own DNA test. Curious as to my own mix. Since I'm an odd combination of phenotypes. My dad's side is tall (for Mexicans), lean, lighter-skinned, with very little body hair, and my mom's side is short, stocky, swarthy, and dark brown. I'm the tallest in my family at a whopping 5 foot 11 (in shoes; last time I was really measured I think I was five ten and a half). I've got a long torso, thick stocky legs, and elegantly marbled shoulders. I've got a large head with a bulbous forehead, reminiscent of the larger simians or more ninja-ey of turtles. 

I believe with the right level of tan, I could pass for black, Asian, or Italian, as well. At least enough to convince people who are not of that race. 

Just need to fool them long enough to get through dinner and then once my belly is full, I will make me escape. 

Aha, yes. (Matt Berry impersonation.)

Working with medical supplies for patients with lung cancer often makes me think about the end of life. What would I do if I were dying? How would I behave? What would be different in my day-to-day life, assuming my ailment allowed me to live fairly normally? Right now, I don't know. I have such an ingrained routine. Maybe clean the house? Take up woodworking? That Japanese style of building with no nails is pretty cool. 

All the ways I imagine I'd behave are almost identical to the way I'd behave if I didn't have to work for money. Or rather, if I had sufficient resources that I could do what I wanted (within reason). If this were to happen, I have a huge advantage in that I've got years of writing to go through and see all the things I've ever wanted, and then try those. Or even things I have done, started, and never finished. It could be like a job. A personal college course of interests. Because I would need that structure. With too many choices, I would become overwhelmed and curl up into a ball. 

What an interesting concept. Brain is bad at this, so make a schedule. Automate it externally, similar to the habits I've already built internally. 

Yes, this could work. I'll probably need to get better at Excel first. Or Google Calendar. Reading, letter-writing, creating, cleaning, animal-wrangling, and sass. All the basics. Build up from there. 

Almost set up Google Analytics. I've been curious about who the heck is reading this thing. Humans? Bots? The gub'mint? 

I didn't do it. The whole thing is designed to treat this blog as a *shudder* business. I assure you, Google, absolutely nothing productive is going on here.

There's a need, however, to feel connected. Or validated maybe? I mean, I love you, but who are you? At this point in the relationship, loving you tells me more about me than it does you. I better get that book I heard about on NPR, How To Not Die Alone. 

Excerpt from the article about the book:

In her book, Ury categorizes frustrated daters into three primary categories, and they each have unique challenges.

1. The Romanticizer: If you are caught up in the fairytale about how you want your love story to play out, this could be you. 
2. The Maximizer: If you are a swipe addict with a checklist of qualities for the next best match, you fall into this category.
3. The Hesitator: If you have trouble getting started dating or have a million reasons for why this isn't your time to find love, this is definitely you.

So which one are you?

I know which ones I am, but I don't want to think about it right now.

Maybe I can fold a review of this book into dating advice for my nephews. I mean, I think about the literature we read in high school and does any of it provide practical approaches to developing and maintaining relationships? Romeo and Juliet? A Midsummer Night's Dream? Cyrano De Bergerac? To Kill A Mockingbird? Moby Dick? (Well yes, if you mean a love of chowder. I love the part of the book where Ishmael creeps over to the kitchen and yells another order of chowder and they bring it to him.) 

If memory serves, we mostly get stories where people are just instantly attracted to each other and that's that. The obstacle to their relationship is usually societal, I guess? It's not like one of them chews with their mouth open and it's very annoying and the other has to grapple with accepting them despite every meal being mental agony. (Queequeg eats steaks with his harpoon, which is just adorable (not the whole thing, apparently the head separates from the shaft, like when he shaves with it, but still I like the idea of it being a Swiss Army Spear that he uses for everything, like opening mail.))

There's Catcher In The Rye, which I didn't really like, but at least the character expresses some of the frustration of being a human who is attracted to humans. There's 1984, which does a good job of showing a relationship developing between/because of traumatized people, but that's probably not going to be as useful, although it might be eventually.

I'm kind of color-blind. I have difficulty distinguishing between pink and purple. I don't think there's a biological component to that, unless I count being dumb. Which I do. Add that to the "static" I see underneath everything and I have whatever the opposite of a super power is. 

I've mentioned the static before. It's not the same as a condition in which people see a visual snow over everything, like they're literally in a snowstorm. What I see is static beneath the images. Pretty much what I see when I squeeze my eyes shut really tight in the dark. It's a backdrop, and on top of that is whatever I'm looking at. It doesn't inhibit what I'm seeing. It's like going to a movie theater and seeing the film projection AND the screen the image is projected on. As far as I can tell, it doesn't affect anything. My vision isn't great anyway. Maybe I should get that laser eye surgery. I do have a tax refund coming up. Why not. 

Laser eye surgery for vision correction seems to work out okay for people. I'm hesitant about new technologies, and this has been around for quite a while. I remember growing up and the procedure was done with a scalpel. Knife to the eye. What were we, cavemen?

Less biologically speaking, that's one of the reasons I haven't attempted to find a Playstation 5. Let the first generation go out, get field-tested, and then hopefully Sony will refine the product to address whatever fails when it's out in the wild. Also, the peripherals aren't there yet. 

Also also also, I don't really need one. PS4 Pro still has a hundred games I have been meaning to play at some point. The PS5 doesn't have anything I feel I have to play. Unless Bloodborne 2 comes out, then it's over.

Overall, I think things are going rather well. 

Been studying up on story elements, characterization, scenes. If people see themselves as a characters in their own stories, some of this might be useful off the page. An interesting character has a want and a goal, which can be the same thing, but are not exactly the same. A character could want a drink of water, and their goal can be to find a glass to pour themselves a drink. They can't find a glass, so their goal has to change. They go outside to the front of the house and drink directly from the garden hose. Everyone at the fancy party is aghast. The want tells us something about the character, that they are a human being that gets thirsty. The goal-setting itself, the pursuit of the goal, how obstacles are overcome, tell us about the character. 

In another version, the thirsty person could lie down on the floor, dejected that they couldn't find a glass of water. Everyone at the fancy party is aghast. The host asks them how they can help, and the character says "Water is life." The host can then obtain a glass of water for them, or make them get up and come with them, or tell a servant to do it. The host, as a character, has a want for the guest as well and this can be displayed by how they goal-set and accomplish them. Genuine concern? Host rushes for the water themselves and carefully helps the person drink it, even holding it to their lips. Host just wants the guest to stop making a scene? Have a servant help them out of the room and get the water so the host can continue attending. Host tired of dealing with this nonsense because the guest is always doing stuff like this? Grab the ice bucket from the champagne glass and dump it on the guest's head. 

Worlds within worlds. As social creatures we are sensitive to all this stuff. I think less of writing as "bad" or "good" now, and try to focus on what is being presented for the reader to connect with. As a writer, are you using the reader to their full potential? 

Start the timer. Go go go. 

This is getting harder. Why? What's changing? External, internal? Some kind of mid-ternal that I'm not aware of? Slowly realizing something. It is bad when one thing becomes two. I used to have a list of quotes from the film "Ghost Dog" posted up by my work desk. It's not posted up anymore, but it's still around.

I remember watching anime and being annoyed by how often characters ask themselves "Is this a dream?" I wonder know if it's a translation thing; the American TV show equivalent of "I can't believe (blank) just happened!" which is uttered at the beginning of half the scenes to create a connection to the previous one. Man, I hate that phrase. So much so that I refuse to utter it myself now. No one will ever accuse me of using hackneyed shorthand to spur an audience's recall of a previous scene. 

I am nobody's plot device, dammit. 

Are there people who constantly wonder if they are dreaming or awake? If so, what spurs this? Is it a kind of denial at events that they feel are happening to them that they have not directly caused? As in, they don't see the causal links to the situation? It feels like a failure of imagination. Do these people dream and just stand around marveling at all the crazy happenings, never engaging? Generally, when I dream, there are stakes. There are things I want, goals I want to accomplish, things I don't want to happen, and I experience them as such. I can't say I'm "consciously" engaging, of course, because in a dream I seem to just know things. And there's the idea that a dream is a sort of memory of a jumble of abstract thoughts and our waking brain is interpreting them when we wake, basically telling ourselves a story.

Either way, I consider myself mentally prepared to deal with any situations that might be a dream or might be real. Which means I could very well end up as a plot device. Dang it. 

Outside the grey strip of office buildings, cone-shaped paper cups lay scattered like dragon's teeth across the parking lot. They rolled restlessly in the light morning breeze as if seeking fertile ground in which to plant themselves, to spring up as fully-formed warriors. This asphalt field of oil stains and cigarette butts would grow no heroes today.