Category Archives: Lucubrations

It’s Super Sunday.  The entire herd of idiots has converged someplace downstairs.  Bellowing idiot sounds at each other, getting louder so as to be heard over the others.  Christ…now they’re moving furniture around.  This does not bode well.
I am not a big football fan.  Nor am I a little one.  The truth is I don’t watch football at all.  Not voluntarily, anyway.  I’ve watched a Superbowl from time to time, but that usually had something to do with getting laid.  Outside of that, though, I can’t really be bothered.  It’s a pointless game with esoteric rules and far too many pads to be entertaining.  Besides, I heard there were going to be male cheerleaders this year.  So yeah, just another Sunday.
Note to self: there is no place called Whiskey & Wings.  If there was a place called Whiskey & Wings, I would live there.  Next time you’re thinking about opening a restaurant: Whiskey & Wings.  God yes.
N.P.: “Evil Ways” – Blues Seraceno

So when my Apple Watch started asking me questions about my physical characteristics, exercise habits, and overall health, I lied a bit.  i told it that it I am 4’8″ and weigh 585 lbs. But then I was honest about my exercise and caloric intake.  Then I told Siri to call me body-shaming names.  The result is that this thing thinks I’m some kind of medical miracle if I even get out of bed and get to the bathroom in the morning, and then delivers mixed and conflicted messages of encouraging derision throughout the day.  Here, for example, is what I was told as soon as I got out of bed this morning:

By the time I made it back to bed, I’d smashed 200% of all of my goals and this thing was issuing virtual medals and encouraging me to share my story on social media.  Which is quite an accomplishment.  I’m not sure exactly how much any one person can be expected to do in one day, but it seems like I was on the verge of overachieving.  On a Saturday.  Such a feat deserves a reward, so I decided to go back to sleep.  I mean, 200%.  I must have been exhausted.

N.P.: “I Stay Away” – Alice In Chains

The furnace is evidently stuck on “Solar Flare Enema” here at Hotel California,  I thought I was in goddamn Cuba when I woke up this morning.  I’ll be sleeping with the windows open tonight, which will make things interesting when the 70 mph winds crank up at midnight and blow a predawn thunderstorm in.  Yeah…maybe it’ll add a bit of drama to an otherwise unremarkable night.

N.P.: “Traitor” – The Sugarcubes

Goddammit, frozen reader, it’s hot over here.  Today started off well enough….thick fog at sunrise, which fog stuck around cooly until about 10:00, and then bam!  Heat.  At one point in the last 24 hours, if was 140F degrees hotter in The Creek than other parts of the country.  This winter is underachieving eater of dicks.
Now I’m depressed.

N.P.: “AEIOU Sometimes Y” – Ebn Ozn

About 10 years ago I found out that every once in a while, the earths north and south poles swap locations, and have been fairly fascinated with the entire concept since.  In the last few decades, the magnetic north pole has started shifting erratically, and in the last 2-3 years, it’s gotten so out of control that scientists have been taken by surprise and have spent the last few months majorly revising models from just a couple of years ago.  So I’ve been wondering if maybe a complete polar “reversal” might occur in my lifetime.  The last one happened almost 800,000 years ago, so I figure we’re about due.  But I talked to a science man today, and alas, ’tis not to be.  Even if the recent sudden shift of the north pole from the Canadian arctic to Siberia is a precursor, a complete swap is a few thousands years away.  Which is good, because if were to happen any time soon, it would cause a significant disruption to some pretty significant aspects of society: satellite communications would be disrupted, which means our phones would function intermittently, and weather forecasts would be even less accurate.  Navigation technology we rely heavily upon (everything from sat nav to magnetic compasses) would be less reliable,  At the rate technology is changing now, I would hope that in several thousand years things will be significantly different and perhaps the impact of the polar swap would be minimal.

This is the shit I think about while I’m not sleeping at night.

N.P.: “Leave Me Alone” – 2wo, Rob Halford

Lawd, reader…yrs. truly is tired.  I’ve been getting three hours and change for the last several nights, and it’s starting to catch up with me.  The best bet is probably to just go to bed before I can do any real literary harm.

N.P.: “This Big Hush” – Shriekback

Some of you seemed to like that silliness from yesterday…I’m glad,  Thank you. That’s a hastily  and extremely shortened and sanitized version of something from the other book I’m working on.  Yeah…I may have mentioned it here before, I’m not sure.  So The Book that I’m working is far different from anything I’ve written before by far.  It’s not funny at all.  It’s pretty dark.  And that’s why it’s taking and has taken so long: I have no way of measuring any aspect of it.  That probably doesn’t make sense.  I’ll try to explain: I’m used to writing funny stuff.  I know if something is funny.  I know it’s funny before it hits the page.  So the first book was essentially a first draft and I knew it was funny long before I handed it over to the publisher: I was cracking myself up as I was writing it.  It was very much like recording a dance song: you’re alone in the studio, but you know this is funky and it’s gonna make asses shake.  So you take it down to the club and have the DJ put it on, and yep…the whole place is on the dance floor shaking their baby makers at each other.  Cause and effect: if you do this (make the song), they do that (shake their asses).  Comedy writing is probably the closest writing can come to that inasmuch as laughter is a physical, observable, measurable reaction,  Cause and effect: if I do this (write this funny thing), then they do that (laugh and give me money).  But this goddamn book isn’t supposed to be funny at all.  So I’m writing the hell out of it, but I will have exactly no idea if it’s worth a damn or not until I hear from other people who’ve read it.  I’ve never been in this situation before…not even in college.
Anyway, whatever, I’ll deal with it.  No choice.
An added level of difficulty comes from knowing that unlike the first book, this one is going to be pretty carefully scrutinized and argued about by some people who have a lot more letters after their names than I do, so I have to be very measured and careful about pretty much every aspect of it, and that is simply exhausting.  So at the end of a day of working on it, I have to write something very different to unwind, so I started work on this other book, a slasher novel.  Just this silly thing that no one outside of maybe a few close friends will ever read.  No agenda, no stress, no rules.  So, of course, it’s a blast to write, is hilarious, and is taking on a life of its own.  It may also, incidentally, be the most politically incorrect thing ever written.  Mmmhmm.

N.P.: “Mama” – Genesis

I’ve been experimenting with the various navigation apps on my phone for several years now, and finally found one I like.  Then I started messing around with the language settings.
A recent update added an Irish option under the category “U.K. Voices,” so I rolled the dice on “Seamus,” whose disembodied artificially intelligenced voice piped up in a brogue that sounds exactly like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun if said leprechaun was on the tail end of a 5-day meth bender and had had nothing to eat except cigarettes for a week.  “Howya lad…what’s the craic?  It’s Sonday…are we off to church, like?”
I like this guy already.  Seamus is going to be my new friend.  I input my destination as the dispensary about 10 miles away.  “So we’re wantin’ a bit of the shmoke, are we?  Off we go, then.”  And off we went.  Seamus got me to the dispensary efficiently and with a minimum amount of stress.  This is going to work out well.
The following day I had a mid-morning meeting for a project I’ve been working on.  I knew perfectly well how to get to the meeting site, which was roughly 20 miles away, but since this particular navigation app does a bang-up job of redirecting one around traffic jams and other hazards, I almost always use it, even when I know exactly where I’m going.  I tested it’s ability in the early days, and paid for my dubiousness by being stuck in inescapable multi-hour traffic jams, so I drank the Kool-Aid and have never doubted its advice since.  And so it was that next morning when I entered my destination address.  Seamus wished me a good morning, asked about the craic, exactly when I needed to arrive at my destination, calculated briefly, and then seemed to send me on what seemed to be a rather circuitous, backwards-ass route, but I was running a tad late and didn’t dare get stuck in some horrible traffic jam again, so off we went.
“You have arrived,” said Seamus, when I very clearly had not.
“The hell I have,” I complained to Seamus.  “This isn’t even the right part of town.  This is a bar.  I don’t even know where we are.  I need to get to my meeting.  And now I’m going to be late.”
“Look, lad…you need to trust me.  I know ye.  You want to go in there.  Fock yer meetin’.  When you go into that pub, and you know the barman knows exactly what you want.  It comes.  You can hear it being planted.  The playful splashing of the bubbles on the top of the glass.  The condensation as it drips coolly, like a shnake, down the side of a mountain.The curves of the glass like some sort of Belgian model’s hips…”
Christ.  Seamus is mercilessly convincing.
 “And you grab that pint and you can feel that condensation teasing the palm of your hand and your fingers.  And once that fluid just flows forth like some sort of floodgate of love.  As those bubbles come through your teeth, you know you’ve come to the right place at the right time.”
Dammit, he’s absolutely right.  Fock me meeting.  This is where I need to be.  So I did as I’d been told, and spent the rest of the day drinking whiskey and beer and eating pretzels.  Made a few friends, all of whom seemed to be veterans of foreign wars.
After several hours of stiff drink, it was time to get going.  I went back out to the car and opened the app.
“Airight, lad, whats the craic, how are ya keeping?”
I need to go home, Seamus.  Tell me how to get home.  Seamus does a bit of calculating, and then continues: “You have arrived.”
That’s not right.  I try the whole deal again, even entering my home address manually.  Still, “You have arrived.”  Three more attempts, three more I have arriveds.  It must be a glitch with the Seamus voice.  In desperation, I press the little gear button on the screen and choose another voice.  The only other option under the Irish tab is the female voice: Fiona.  Select and wait.  In a few seconds, Fiona’s loaded and waiting.
“Hi Fiona, I need directions home.”:
“Don’t you ‘hi fockin’ Fiona’ me, ya lazy bastard, laid up in the pub all day.  Leavin’ me and the baby all alone in this awful gaff.  A grown adult who gets so drunk midweek that he has to get his stomach pumped and forgets his way home. Fockin’ eejit! Well, I hope by the mighty Jesus it was worth it, ya brain dead bastard!  You said you’d do Baby Shark with little Declan!   Well, ya may as well not even bother coming home now, ya drunken shite!  Ya daft prick!  Dickhead!”
Jesus.  Who the hell is “little Declan” and what on earth is baby shark?  I press the little gear button on the screen again and try desperately to change the voice as Fiona keeps screaming at me about how terrible I am.
This should work: English (US) – Jessica.  Fiona is silenced, thank Christ.
“Hi Jessica, I really need directions home.”
“I know, right?”
Shit.  “Jessica, do you identify as a millennial?”
“It is what it is.”
I shut off the car, delete the app, and go back into the bar.
N.P.: “Unglued” – Big Data

So I started writing something to go here today, but it sort of morphed into something that will be better off in a different place, which is all well and good, but now here I am with nothing prepared.  How embarrassing.  At least it would be if it was anyone else.  But it’s you, dear reader, and I know you get it.

‘Twas unpleasantly warm today, for a January day, I thought.  People let their screaming children out to play, which I think should be illegal.  Children should be kept indoors on the weekend.  Probably also on weekdays.  And their parents should stay inside as well.  I know that’s ridiculous.  But a man can dream.

N.P.: “Stack-O-Lee” – Samuel L. Jackson

Yeah, I think I need to take a break.  I’m not going to, of course, Just starting to get into a groove with the writing.  In as much as I’m doing it all the time.  Which makes things feel very strange.  Every day is pretty much exactly the same: Wake up, peck at the keyboard until things get going and then hopefully beat the hell out of the keyboard for an hour or so, take a break, repeat.  Get into bed at about the same time every night and do what I can against the evils of insomnia until the sun gets too high in the sky the next day, get up, drink breakfast, and start pecking at the keys again.  Occasionally there are meetings.  Occasionally there are date nights.  But there is no distinction between days, between weekdays and weekends.  Holidays and social niceties are ignored.  But literally everybody else, and indeed the entire world around me is very much dictated by the calendar and all of its “traditions, superstitions, false religions.”  I feel like an astronaut that has arrived from another planet with humans on it, so we have that in common, but I don’t understand why these humans do the things they do.  And I spent several decades trying to do all of these things that you are just supposed to want to do, but it was very much like trying to learn how to dance to music I cannot hear but everybody else can.

N.P.: “Grind” – Alice In Chains