Sad but true...

Life is too short to be sober.

The Six-Year Novel Saga, Update

I am hoping to get this grad school application stuff done and the GRE taken so I can finish my book. 

The missing pieces are all floating in the recesses of my mind.  Every time I do get to work on it I feel that much closer to truly being done.  It is hovering around 71,000 words and will probably end up around that length. 

I have been adding important parts that tie it all together and taking out unnecessary parts and parts where I over-explain.  Then I will line edit. 

I am also trying to settle on a name, and I am pretty sure I have one.  However, I am not at liberty to reveal it yet.  

When I am finished I have a plan for publishing it that will work in conjunction with getting other short stories published, this blog, the social media, and promoting myself in other venues.  It is a pretty good plan, if I do say so, myself.  With any luck it will all come together by the end of the year.

Hey, look at what I Found at the Salvation Army: The Dialogue, Part 1

"Wait a sec, didn't you make a vow to not buy anymore books for a while or something until you get the ones you already own read.  And isn't this about communism or something?"

Yes, I did make that vow, however, I can't help myself.  I also found some other cool books, including some John Updike and Jonathan Franzen...  And no, Escape From Freedom isn't about communism, it's about the human tendancy towards totalitarianism...

"Oh" he mutters, thinking "dirty communist" and then says "That's cool."

Gabe does William Carlos Williams, "This is Just to Say"

I wrote these for my poety class.  Enjoy.

1.

I’m sorry I gave

You syphilis

You had better

Get that treated.

Trust me

I let it go

And now I’m

In great pain.

I had a good

Time and so did

You, that’s what

Matters, right?

2.

I smoked the

Last of the crack.

I’m not sorry,

Though.

I think that

You have a

Problem and

Need treatment.

Perhaps you

Should go to

Betty Ford. I hear

It’s nice there.

3.

I have eaten

The paint chips

That were flaking

Off the icebox

They don’t use

Lead paint on

Metal, do they?

I don’t think so...

They went well

With my cereal.

Fruit Loops never

Tasted so good.

Sorry folks,

I should probably delete that last post but I'm not.  Here's a random picture from my phone to distract you.  This is my legal defense team.  Chi Chi, who looks like an ewok, is my lawyer, and Elliot is her paralegal/secretary.

Dilbo the Disco Disco Rabbit, part 1. The groovy part.

I am going to make a concentrated effort to bring "groovy" back to the mainstream idiom.  It will be awesome (hahahaHA)!

Late for Work

I swerved through traffic my radio blasting Marilyn Manson as the person in the car I just ripped past gave me the finger.  I couldn't be late, not again.  My boss had made that clear.  If I was late again I would be out on the street without a job.

I pressed down on the accelerator when I came to a stretch of a clearing in the left lane.  Five more minutes down the highway and I would make it.  I could do it in three if I really pushed it.  Hopefully I wouldn't run into any cops, or get cut off by some shlub or anything.

Is the job really worth getting a speeding ticket or getting into an accident, though?  Surely I need a job, but at what cost?  What the hell was I even doing working there?  A couple generations ago, a person with an English degree probably would not have had to settle indefinitely for a job at a restaurant.  An education used to mean something back then -- even one in the humanities.  What happened?

I thought about it, and the more I did, subconsciously, the slower I went.  Before I realized it, I was holding up traffic.  The first opportunity I had I got over in the slow lane behind a semi.  If I was late, I would be late, whatever happened, I would let fate decide.

Revelations With Extreme Prejudice

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." -- Revelation, 22. 13

And he comes down from the heavens, an Elvis looking Jesus in a wool suit and tie, with a Gideon’s Bible in his back pocket.  Jesus is an Evangelical.  His own light reflects off of his magnificent cross medallion and blinds the onlookers of the world with righteous fury.  His eyes wear a self-assured scowl behind his sunglasses, but no one can see that except for him.  Behold, the Archangels, smiling with certitude, on his flanks armed with automatic weapons.  With a sweeping point of his finger he sends all the sinners to Hell and all the saints to Heaven.

The ride home

The Devotchka hit us, put us in the the right mood.  Back, back to the Ohio countryside.  Small bankrupt towns sprinkled out over dead winter farmland and wooded stretches half naked with the evergreen scruff like body hair amongst the barren deciduous trees.  I stare out the window as the scenery rolls by, but I see none of it.  I am lost in thoughts.  Plans for the future, collectively, my plan of action.  My life's goal.  It seems so close, but yet it is still beyond the class.  In order to get it I am going to have to get in and stare back at the where I am from and try to make sense of it all.  Then I will be free to improve upon it, in some small way.  It has worked for me so far, why change now.  The only change I have to make is within myself, but the mystery behind that change is the greatest mystery of all.  Life.

New thought 1

I am going to document my life.  It will be a page, like a journal, but also like a creative outlet.   I can do it for free so why the Hell not. 

NeW bEgiNnInGs

As I can now use my phone to update this blog, I am now much more likely to keep up with it.  My goal is to use this page as my main website for all my thoughts, stories, poems, pictures, art...  If I am going to be serious as a writer I need to start somewhere, and at least this way I can control the content and get my ideas out to anybody who is paying attention.  So, yeah, marketing...