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Monday, March 15th, 2004
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10:55 am - Two years' absence is enough, I guess
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And in two years, what has happened? I finished my first novel and am shopping around for an agent. I have grown my hair out long, almost to the middle of my back. It's not nearly as much work to keep it clean and looking good as I thought it might be.
I'm probably going to turn this into a journal of ideas based on whatever I happen to be reading at the moment. Right now, I'm reading Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy. Pretty dark stuff -- familial murder, cannibalism, etc. All of this supposedly ends on an upper note, although I'm not quite sure how. I have been interested in the role of Dionysus and the myth of his destruction and subsequent resurrection. Has anyone actually looked hard at the Dionysian mysteries and compared them to early Christianity? I recently read Gore Vidal's "Julian," which is partially a commentary on the oppressiveness inherent in Christianity (this ain't nothing compared to the hilarious, tap-dancing St. Paul in Vidal's "Live from Golgotha"). From what I can tell, the Christian claim of redemption through Christ's sacrifice on the cross is a tepid version of the Dionysian myth, a castrating version at best. I think Aeschylus might have been the first existentialist.
I'm also reading Neil Schaeffer's excellent biography of the Marquis de Sade. Most Westerners have no idea how Sade helped make the world safe for individual freedom. Sade's paraphilias ensure that he stays off the radar in our straight-laced and completely hypocritical time. He's one of the great figures of the Enlightenment, though, and one we ought to acknowledge.
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| Monday, January 14th, 2002
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9:23 am - Tingling tentacles of torsion
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Welcome to the world, Patricia Louise Delmedico! Nine days early and slightly over seven lbs. in size. TD called me last night to let me know she had finally arrived. I told him I thought about calling him at 6 a.m. on January 2 to ask him how retirement was going, but I figured he'd be over at my house within 30 minutes to beat my ass. He said I figured right. We're going to get together for lunch in the next week or two.
My favorite niece is all up in arms because N.C. State University deferred her application for admission. She really, really, really, really wants to go there. So, we talked about what she was going to write for the 300-word essay they requested and I told her I'd call some folks and see what I could do to help her out. I really think that once she gets the essay back to them, they'll admit her without any further ado. I was very impressed with her determination to be a teacher. It's something she has obviously thought through since she was a sophomore in high school. I think she'll be a damned good teacher, too.
I haven't updated my LJ lately because I just didn't feel up to it. I'm pulling out of a depressive phase, so I feel more energetic now. The last two weeks have been a struggle just getting out of bed in the mornings. I have to finish this novel -- have to. I think I'll go nuts if I don't wind it up pretty soon.
Let me know you're out there, campers.
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| Tuesday, December 18th, 2001
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4:25 pm - Damn Hollywood types
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The area around my office is under siege by the lovely folks who bring you Dawson's Creek. About once a year, they storm into Raleigh to shoot footage for the show. The entire block around the Department of Labor and the Museum of History is lined with trailers. I saw a group of cold, miserable looking teenagers wandering across the Capitol grounds at lunchtime. They looked telegenic enough to be television actors. I don't watch Dawson's Creek, so I have no idea what its cast looks like. The group wasn't dressed for the weather and they looked pretty uncomfortable in the steady, cold breeze. Their damned trailers and hordes of grips, guys in golf carts and assorted hangers-on made it difficult for me to get to my car, which I park in the underground lot under the museum. They also make it tough to get out of the lot and onto Wilmington Street. With any luck, they'll have all of their filming done today and be gone tomorrow.
I was really saddened to read that Stuart Adamson of Big Country had committed suicide. He was one of the best songwriters in rock history and I still listen to their albums from the eighties. I think he got caught up by the usual demon -- chemical addiction, in his case alcohol. I'm finding that I have reached an age where I can fully appreciate the pain actions like Adamson's inflict on their families, friends, fans. Suicide is not an option, campers. Never has been; never will be. If you ever feel that seductive beast of despair singing to you, let Uncle Zoid know so he can provide a sympathetic ear and help you understand that all is not lost.
We're here to help each other, campers.
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| Monday, December 17th, 2001
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7:57 am - Uniformly grey
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I don't know what was going on in my head this morning while I was getting dressed, but I'm wearing all grey except for a burgundy and green tie. If I put on a clerical collar instead, I could probably pass for a Methodist minister. I got stopped on the street on the way to the office by an Egyptian man looking for the CAT bus terminal. We walked along for about three blocks, long enough for him to tell me about how the trip over from Cairo was such a nightmare, as was U.S. customs. He kept referring to me as "boss man," which I would have asked him not to do if our relationship were going to last more than the time it takes to stroll a few blocks. U.S. Customs was the worst, he said. Out of 200 people on his airplane, 125 of them were Egyptian nationals and they were apparently subjected to very close inspection before they were allowed to clear customs. I told him they weren't much easier on American citizens.
My wife is at her office for what I suspect will be a two-hour workday. She has opened her stitches up twice since her operation and she won't lay down and rest. Instead, she insists on walking, mind you grimacing in pain the entire time. The outpatient surgery was the same old thing. We had to wait a couple of hours for them to get her processed and taken into the operating room. Then, an hour later, we had to wait for her to wake up and stop puking enough for me to take her home. I entertained myself while she was in surgery by watching the ballet of the cardiac catheterization patients. Every five seconds, the CCU door would fly open and two nurses would wheel a bed with a little old white man in it down the hall to the elevators. Things got so busy that they were stacked up five deep at the elevator for a little while. The doctor said she should have the pathology report on my wife's cyst this week. She said there's about a 15% chance that it's cancerous. I guess I can live with those odds.
Last week was a bitch at work. Too much stuff to do and too little time in which to do it. This week isn't looking any easier. I need to go Christmas shopping, but I don't have the energy. I guess I'll lumber out Wednesday night and see what I can come up with. We're talking about taking Zoid Girl to Washington, D.C., for her birthday in February. That'll probably be a fun trip.
Dim your headlights in fog, campers.
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| Tuesday, December 11th, 2001
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3:24 pm - Mongol mania
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We had to run an errand at lunch, so we stopped off at the new Stir Crazy Mongolian Barbecue restaurant in Cary. This was a new one on me. You go in, get a table, then go to one of those salad bar-type tables and pick up an empty bowl. You put whatever vegetables and meat you want to eat into the bowl. None of this stuff, by the way, is cooked. Once you have the vegetables and the meat, you go to another table and put whatever seasonings you want on the stuff in the bowl. Then you take the bowl to the grill, the chef takes it, cooks it and puts it on a plate. I had beef, pork and shrimp with onion, water cress and mushroom seasoned with garlic oil, sesame oil, lime-chili marinade and two teaspoonfuls of curry. I was pretty skeptical about the whole process, but darned if what I put together didn't taste good once it made its way to the table. I think this whole thing appealed to the seven year-old inside me.
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11:11 am - Shades of grey
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We've finally had a steady rain, the first in months. The sky is this very pearlescent tone and it flattens the colors on everything it illuminates. Plus, it dampens the shadows, which sucks most of the visual drama out of the mundane corners of the everyday world.
I haven't posted for a week and a half because I didn't feel like it. Work has been a major grind lately and most nights when I get home, I just want to eat dinner and go to bed. I don't think it's depression. It's just the approaching holiday season. I don't like Christmas. I still have to get myself stoked up for the kids' sake. We went and got a tree this weekend and we're going to decorate it this coming weekend.
Zoid Mama's surgery is tomorrow. She seems just fine with it, but I'm a little worried. Always am. I hate things in my life that I can't exercise control over. I'd like to have the power to make my wife better without her having to go through an operation and days in bed. Next weekend will definitely be low-key, although I am going to slip away Thursday night for a few hours. I have a ticket for the boxing matches at the ESA in one of the executive booths. Couldn't say no to that.
I have a new ghost story for you guys. I have a friend whose father is in his early 80s. The father, Phil, is a native of North Carolina and his family, like mine, goes back to the earliest colonial settlements along the coast. Phil's family had been big plantation owners in the antebellum period and managed to hold onto the big house and some of the surrounding land after the war. Phil didn't live in the house, which was owned by an uncle. He did, however, spend a couple of weeks each summer as a child visiting his uncle, aunt and cousins at the house. When he was about 10 or 11, Phil went on his usual visit. One afternoon while he was there, he wandered up to the attic at the top of the house. It extended all the way across the house, from wall to wall, and was bare except for a few old trunks. The housekeeper kept the floor swept and the cobwebs down and Phil enjoyed playing in the attic because it was very light and clean and had a welcoming feel to it. On the day in question, he decided to rifle through the trunks out of idle curiosity. The first one he opened had old clothing and other junk, nothing to really interest a boy his age. When Phil closed the lid on it, he was surprised to see an elderly black man in farming clothes standing by one of the three chimneys that ran up through the attic floor. The old man was staring at Phil, but didn't anything. After a few long moments of staring at one another, Phil finally broke the ice by standing up and walking toward the man. As he did, the man backed away behind the chimney flue. When Phil looked behind the flue, the old man was gone. he went flying downstairs as fast as he could go, screaming that there was someone in the attic. His uncle and aunt told him it was just Old Henry. Old Henry, a sweet and meek man, had been a slave on the plantation and had died before the war. For years he had tried, without luck, to convince his owner to move him from working as a field hand to working in the house. In death, the gentle old man got what he couldn't get in life. He's apparently satisfied to hang around the attic in order not to scare anyone on a regular basis. Phil rummaging through the trunks must have drawn Henry's curiosity. And the realization that the kid could see him perhaps frightened Henry, who had every reason in the world to suspect that the family would find a way to eject him from the house. In any event, Old Henry is still in the house as best as anyone can tell.
Check under the bed tonight, campers.
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| Tuesday, November 27th, 2001
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11:30 am - Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Dreck
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I see from reading this morning's paper that Monsieur Kinkade ("Painter of Light") was the subject of a CBS 60 Minutes interview last weekend in which he offered up his considered judgment that Picasso was "overrated." This guy is a walking hemorrhoid. I can remember the first time I saw a catalog of Kinkade's paintings, thinking the people collecting them must be into kitsch. I don't begrudge Kinkade the millions he's made peddling stuff that's one step up from paintings of Elvis Presley on velvet, but let's have a little sense of perspective, shall we Thomas? Twenty years from now, your work will have gone the way of those paintings of children with big eyes from the 1960s. Keep it commercial and skip the artistic judgments. You'll be lessed embarrased later on if you do.
What is it with assholes who take an antagonistic stance against the artistic triumphs of the medium in which they're working or, even worse, against the audiences for their own work? Chris Franzen deserves the royal financial reaming he's going to get for his dismissive response to being selected for Oprah Winfrey's book thing. Just exactly whom does this dumbass think buys and reads his work? Yes, some of Oprah's selections I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (Alice Walker springs readily to mind), but the woman is trying to reconnect a large segment of Americans with their own literature. Grant her the difference of opinion on the merit of some of the books she chooses. I'll tell you right now that if I ever sold this book of mine and it were chosen for her book-of-the-month, I would be grateful and honored. I'd rather have a nation of 280 million housewives, salesmen, college kids and retirees reading and enjoying my work than the praise of a handful of inbred literary critics taking up space in Manhattan.
You know who the best American writer currently is? Stephen King. King is going to have to travel the same critical path as Herman Melville -- a century or so of dismissive reviews and a reputation as a "genre" writer, then a rediscovery of the power of his insight into human psychology, particularly paranoia, fear and loss. There are thousands of English lit grad students and professors out there who would shake their heads and smirk at what I'm saying. We'll see where Cormac McCarthy and William Gass (whose work I actually enjoy) wind up in the literary canon.
The light outside my house this morning was a brilliant copper-pink. We still have some trees with fall foliage on them and the front yard looked like it was lit up with neon amber and yellow and red. It's actually pretty warm here today, up in the 70s. The weekend is supposed to be cooler and rainy, which we need. Zoid Mama wants to go to Asheville for Christmas. We're probably going to go do all the Christmas stuff at Biltmore House. She'd like to stay at the Grove Park Inn, but that ain't happening. For what we would have to pay there per night, I could take her and Zoid Girl to D.C. for a three-day weekend of museum tours and shopping. I've been toying with the idea of taking them to Manhattan for three or four days next spring. Depends on my mood and whether I can get myself geared up to handle all the hassle of driving there. I hate flying into New York. No matter which airport you use, your flight is always late and it's a pain in the ass getting from the terminal to the city.
Time to go do something constructive, campers.
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| Monday, November 26th, 2001
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11:46 am - Shelf life
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Last week's Thanksgiving vacation was as close to perfect as I expect it to ever get. I did absolutely nothing but read and walk on the beach. I took a few photos, but I'm not sure what, if anything, will come of them. I'm going to get them developed tonight. I got through Primo Levi's If Not Now, When? and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. Levi's novel is about Eastern European Jews who take up arms as partisans against the Nazis in World War II. Nabokov's novel takes the form of a 1,000-line poem in four cantos, followed by several hundred pages of annotations. The trick is that the poem's editor is the former next-door neighbor of the poet and the editor is the thinly-disguised king of Zembla, a mythical nation which has replaced its monarchy with a dictatorship. The editor, Charles Kinbote, thinks his neighbor, John Shade, is writing an epic poem about him and Zembla, since they take long walks in the evenings and Kinbote obsesses constantly about his past. Shade, on the other hand, is ignoring Kinbote and drafting a very touching poem about his 25 year-old daughter, who has committed suicide three years earlier. Kinbote manages to get Shade killed in an assassination attempt by a Zemblan agent, then wrekes his revenge on Shade by tricking his widow into signing a contract making him her husband's literary executor. The book is sad and hilarious and full of clever humor.
Zoid Mama asked me while we were walking on the beach one day about my current spiritual state. She said she'd heard me mention several times recently that if there were a God, certain things wouldn't happen the way they do. She wanted to know if I had totally lost any belief I had in God. Not entirely, I replied, but I don't buy the Supreme Creator thing. If there is a God, He's doing an awful job. The least He could do is provide mankind with a complaint desk.
I came back to find that BethRachel had deleted her LiveJournal, which was a real disappointment to me. I wish I knew why. I e-mailed her to let her know I had noticed that she no longer had a journal, but I haven't heard anything back. LiveJournal's a really weird thing, if you think about it. It allows you to maintain some degree of privacy while still opening yourself up and making friends you wouldn't otherwise have made.
I'll write more later, campers. It's lunch time.
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| Thursday, November 15th, 2001
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3:26 pm - Gettin' ready to go
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I'll be spending this evening in a frantic rush to prepare for our Thanksgiving vacation. I have to inventory all my prescriptions in order to make sure I have enough of everything to last through next weekend. I've spent the last two nights washing, drying and folding clothes for everyone, so packing shouldn't be that much of an ordeal. I'll also have to wrestle with which books to take. I never read as much as I bring, so I'm trying to dial it back a bit this year.
We're going to Avon, which is on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Leonid shower Sunday morning is supposed to be the best in 30 years, so I'll be getting up around 4:30 a.m. to get out on the beach and watch it. I hope we have clear skies that morning. Other than that, I'll spend a week reading, watching movies, eating junk food, sleeping and lounging in the hot tub. Oh, and I'll shoot some film. I have been waiting for this vacation since April or so.
I finished the latest chapter of the novel yesterday. It weighed in at over 17,000 words. Two more to go. I'm not going to take a laptop to the beach, because if I do, all I'll do is sit there the whole time and write. I need a break from writing.
Hope you got that peaceful, easy feeling, campers.
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| Wednesday, November 14th, 2001
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8:52 am - Profile of Captain Anthrax
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Subject is a white male, age 35-45, native of the U.S., with a degree in science, perhaps microbiology or medical epidemiology. He has an IQ above 120 and feels that he has not lived up to the promise of his intellect. Subject probably works in an adjunct role for a medical or bio-engineering firm or hospital -- marketing, sales, accounting, administration. Subject has episodes of manic paranoia and will have a prior criminal record for misdemeanor assaults against family members. His work history will show evidence of this same instability. Subject may have volunteered for military service and, if so, will have an early discharge for psychiatric reasons. Suspect is litigeous and will have a record of pursuing minor or irrelevant torts. He suffers from almost psychotic levels of frustration and episodes of frustration trigger his paranoaic outbursts. He is married and has children. Close family members may suspect that subject is the person who committed the crime.
Suspect has planned this particular crime for years. He will have almost all of the equipment necessary to culture and weaponize the chosen pathogen. Neighbors and family members know that he has some kind of laboratory in his home, but may believe that he is pursuing chemistry as a hobby or that he is producing illicit drugs. Subject will have a fastidious appearance and a penchant for dressing nicely. His home and work space will be immaculate. Subject has prior experience in community theater as an actor. He has studied forensic evidence collection in order to reduce his own exposure to being caught. Subject has tested pathogen on small animals. He will most likely have a web site that documents the particular features of his paranoia. Subject will have very firmly-held right-wing political beliefs and will have a record of participation in campaigns and expressing his views in public. Subject's knowledge of current events outside the immediate scope of his paranoia will be hazy and cartoonish. He tells racist jokes.
His mid-September mailings were triggered by the attack of 9/11 on New York and Washington. Subject's own personal timetable was disrupted by the 9/11 attacks and he will complain at capture about 9/11 stealing his "thunder" on purpose. He used his existing stock of pathogens, 2/3 non-weaponized to news agencies, 1/3 weaponized to Sen. Daschle. Subject will not attack again until he has cultured more anthrax and weaponized it. Suspect will attempt to inject himself into the investigation as someone with a lead or someone who can offer expert advice to law enforcement.
During interrogation, prominent display of 9/11 with photographs of the devastation at the World Trade Centers and Pentagon and photos of the hijackers should be placed in subject's direct line of sight. Investigators should feign resentment that they are having to waste their time interviewing subject when they could be out in the field helping solve the more "important" crimes of 9/11. They should reassure subject that they do not blame him for their being stuck with such a "minor" case and they should express a desire to complete their interview with subject as quickly as possible. All of this is intended to goad subject into revealing his involvement in the crime. Once subject breaks, investigators should work to create the impression that they want to give the subject an opportunity to tell his side of the story the way he wants it told. Interruptions during taping of his confession should be kept to an absolute minimum and ideally should be withheld until subject is done relating his narrative. Subject will not be intimidated by threats and investigators should be careful not to come across as intimidating because the subject will immediately ask for his attorney.
We'll see how much of this holds up when the cops finally nail this bastard to the wall, campers.
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| Tuesday, November 13th, 2001
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2:02 pm - Four ways of representation
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Since everyone else is out sick today, I'm spending the day answering press calls, which is as much fun as watching paint dry. I have a couple of records I need to fax to someone in Durham, then I'm going to spend the rest of the day on my stuff. The guy is installing our new stove today. It will be nice to have it out of the entrance foyer, where it has been sitting for the past two weeks. I don't know how long it will take me to adjust to not having to squeeze around the damned thing to get to the kitchen or the den.
Okay, so I read part of a book by some guy named Godfrey (I think that's what it was) about conceptual art. He said there are four main ways of representation in conceptual art. There's readymades which are objects that can serve as art just as they are; interventions, objects one has intervened to change somehow (by changing the physical characteristics of the object, grouping with other objects, etc.); documentations, visual or audio or audiovisual representations of an object or phenomenon not otherwise present (think all those photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono nude. No, wait...don't); words written objects. All four of these are supposed to be open to the viewer's own personal derivation of meaning or sense of displacement. There's a Greek term that's just right on the tip of my tongue that nails what I'm talking about, but I can't conjure it up at the moment. I kind of like the theoretical construct, though. It gives me a valid defense when my photographs turn out crappy and not looking like what I wanted them to look like.
Saturday cannot get here soon enough. We have the beach cottage beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, but it's a four and a half hour drive from Raleigh to Avon, so we're going on Saturday morning. We're all waiting to see if my father-in-law brings his Houston girlfriend with him. My sort-of sister-in-law (my wife's brother won't marry her, although they've lived together for years) is afraid he's going to marry this woman and move to Texas. I'm betting that he's not masochistic and will stay put in North Carolina.
Anyone in the Thanksgiving spirit, campers?
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| Wednesday, November 7th, 2001
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2:09 pm - Lemon Diet Coke
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Has anyone tried the new Lemon Diet Coke yet? I bought a 20 oz. bottle the other day when the snack bar was out of Diet Mountain Dew. The best thing I can say about Lemon Diet Coke is that it tastes like a soft drink and a furniture polish all in one. I keep emphasizing to the snack bar lady that she really needs to get the Pepsi vendor in there to replenish the Diet Mountain Dew. God knows how badly productivity in this place has slipped since the employees have been without this highly-caffeinated brew for three days now. This is no way to run a railroad.
Once again, I had a decent afternoon of writing yesterday. If I can have the same luck this afternoon, I should have the current chapter finished. I'm trying not to get short-timer's syndrome because I still have two large chapters to go, but I can definitely feel things falling into place. Anyone know a reputable literary agent out there? Once I finish this first draft and a re-write, I'll be ready to begin my new hobby -- collecting rejection letters from agents and publishers alike. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger...
We haven't had the spectacular fall leaf show that we got last year. It's been too dry. The leaves seem to turn brown over night and fall to the ground. It's like the trees are throwing in the towel. We have had rain only once in the last 23 days. This is always the dry season in the Carolinas, though. Come visit us in January, when it pours rain for days on end and the temperature hovers just above freezing.
I went out and took some photos of sunlight passing through leaves the other day. I hope I got at least one decent shot. I also shot film of the dogs playing in the backyard. I'll be amazed if any of that stuff turns out. Zoid Dogs T and C were on extra-special high alert that afternoon. ZD C was trained as a gun dog by her former owner and she loves to play fetch. If anyone goes outside with her, she'll find a stick as soon as she can and bring it to you to throw. ZD T, on the otherhand, is half her size and not really up on the whole idea of me throwing the stick and him retrieving it and bringing it back to me. He'll go get it when I throw it, but then he doesn't want to give it to me. So, we're out in the backyard and I throw a stick for ZD C. ZD T makes a beeline for it and grabs it out from under her and takes off. ZD C chases him for awhile, then gets bored and finds another stick for me to throw her. I throw it and ZD T immediately dashes over to where it lands and manages to get it into his mouth along with the first stick. I hope the shot I got of him racing past with two sticks lodged in his mouth and ZD C in full pursuit turn out.
I like having a cable Internet connection. It really is incredibly faster. Porn clips that used to take hours to download over a modem connection now download in a couple of minutes. The forward progress of technology is a splendid and beautiful thing.
Hope your cable is hooked up, campers.
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| Tuesday, November 6th, 2001
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8:49 am - This ain't the summer of love...
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When Zoid Mama and I went to Borders on our lunch hour last week, I picked up a copy of Everclear's So Much for the Afterglow (great album, by the way) and Blue Oyster Cult's Agents of Fortune, which is still one of my all-time favorite albums. I can remember being 16 years old, working in the bottle room at Food Lion (back then people still returned glass bottles in North Carolina. We would have to rack them and clean them, a nasty job) and playing that entire album in my head. I had the bass runs down because I practised them along with the record in my basement. I can't read music, so I have to learn by hearing something played. Once I hear it a couple of times, I can remember the key and each note without prompting. I can also hear a song a couple of times and remember each instrument's individual part. I didn't realize this was an unusual ability until my stepson brought it to my attention a year or two back. One of my great-grandfathers on my mom's side of the family was a natural musician who taught himself to play violin, piano, guitar, etc. all on his own, so I'm guessing it's some genetic inheritance. Anyway, I've been grooving since last Thursday. I like my new office because it's quiet and remote. I have my toys unpacked and arranged in their proper place. Jesse, my iguana puppet ("I'm not really a dinosaur; I just vote like one in the well of the U.S. Senate"), perched back atop my monitor, tongue hanging out of his mouth. My Pets.com sock puppet is keeping my printer in line. My Creature from the Black Lagoon is guarding my bookcase. I need some more stuff since I have a lot more space. I'm going to look for Ren & Stimpy-bilia this weekend. I also need some South Park stuff.
I've gotten more work done on the novel in the last week than in any single month since I started. I'm finishing an important chapter this week. It's the set-up for the final confrontation in the story and it's been long and involved. I've let some of the characters digress into long, involved stories of past experiences and I'm not sure how much of that I'll keep. I think it's going to turn out all right. I won't get it done before the end of the calendar year, but I'll be close. I can start the new year by editing and re-writing while I search for a literary agent. I'm getting the itch to write some more theater pieces, but I need to work on my web site so I can cache them there. Sounds like another good weekend project.
We had a long chat with Zoid Girl last night. Her lead teacher had asked the students to write down three goals they were going to work on during the coming quarter. When Zoid Girl got hers back from the teacher, the woman had inked it all up, basically complaining that there wasn't enough detail. We tried talking with her about the need to go into more detail when she gets assignments like that and she burst into tears. So, we spent an hour or so talking about how much stress and anxiety she's experiencing. I'm looking for a good child counselor here in Raleigh because the child is obviously way too disposed to worry about everything under the sun. It's another question of inheritance, because my alcoholism is directly related to my anxiety, my stress and my inability to recognize the connection and know myself well enough to realize how much anxiety I was experiencing. I don't want her to go through that, so I'd rather intervene now. Zoid Girl is a perfectionist and always wants to please us, but it's out of control. No matter how much we reassure her that we're delighted with her the way she is, she seems to be anxiety-ridden.
We got dealt another one of those back-handed slaps of fortune yesterday. Zoid Mama had her regular yearly ob-gyn check-up and she has to have surgery to remove a cyst from her privates in December. She had one of these things years ago, but the doctor says that when they show up in a woman Zoid Mama's age that they're often associated with certain forms of cancer. She's going to have the operation on Dec. 12 and hopefully that will be the end of it. She's worried, though. Her mother was only about eight years older than ZM is now when she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. We're going to wait until after Thanksgiving to tell the kids the entire story. All they know right now is that she has to have minor outpatient surgery.
I better go be productive, campers.
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| Tuesday, October 30th, 2001
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7:22 am - Wellness
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It took another week of lying in bed at home, but I think I'm finally over the bronchitis. I'm not coughing nearly as much and I'm no longer aspirating mucus in my sleep (it isn't any more fun to experience it than it is to think about it). I apparently didn't miss much at work after being out a week. Anthrax panic has set in here and people are getting very squirrely about it. We've already had one idiot panic because she opened an envelope that, among other things, contained some paper shavings. She called the police, they came down and looked at it and told her it was an envelope with paper shavings in it. She demanded to know what we were going to do to protect her health. When her supervisor refused to send her to a doctor for testing, she went out and did it on her own. The mail system is under my control and I'm so glad I sat down with my folks weeks ago and went through all the available material on how to spot suspicious mail and what to do if they thought they had been exposed to something. They're the ones most at risk of contamination in the entire agency, but they're hanging in there and doing their jobs and not worrying about anthrax. They've got information on what the threat is and how to handle it and that seems to be reassuring to them. I've told them to spend the last fifteen to thirty minutes of each workday browsing the Internet and looking for more information. I figure we'll get together every week for a little while and see what they can teach me and the rest of my division.
I have this unpleasant suspicion that we're completely screwed five ways from Sunday on this entire terrorism deal. The Bush Administration doesn't seem eager to prosecute an actual war and his people have done more to sow panic among the American people than any alien enemy could ever hope to accomplish on its own. I laughed my ass off (and paid for it with a coughing fit) last week when Bush went on camera for the second or third time that day to reassure the American people that he didn't have anthrax. Of course, you don't, schmuck. You and all the other white people on Capitol Hill got your Cipro right off the bat on Sept. 11. Anthrax is for people with darker skin pigmentation, you know -- the servant class? November, 2004, can't get here soon enough.
I've got to spend the next two days moving to a new office, a temporary one until my really new office is constructed in the next couple of months. Here's how the caste system works in state government. My first office with this agency was huge, say 20' by 15', could have been even larger. It had a nice plate glass window looking out onto the government mall. Then, we were moved to another building about two and a half years ago and I went into a much smaller office. This was fine by me. I kinda like travelling light, so a smaller office meant less crap I had to lug around and find space for. Now, I have been caught breaking the code of the state manager because, in whatever fucked-up formulation they use, the powers that be have decided that my current office is much too small for my position in the organization. Never mind that I'm perfectly satisfied with my current digs. I must have a larger office or we risk social anarchy.
I can't write that novel and sell it soon enough, campers.
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| Monday, October 22nd, 2001
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10:13 am - Barry White's Voice
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If he's looking for it, I've got it. I came down with bronchitis last week and spent five days in bed. I'm just now returning to work at the office. My voice is a froggy croak and I'm running a fever, but I am doing the people's bidness, by golly.
One of the things I've used to make breathing easier is Vicks mentholated vapor rub. Now, this stuff is strong. My dogs run away when they see me pick up the tube. But, I started thinking last night that, you know, this stuff is mainly eucalyptus, which comes from Australia and is the only thing koalas will eat. Do koalas smell like Vicks vapor rub? Do they have mentholated breath? Are their farts mentolated? How about their droppings? If anyone has any direct experience with koala bears, please let me know the answer to these questions. I'm assuming you couldn't keep one in the house as a pet because the odor would overwhelm you.
So much to pick up from last week's missed work. Anthrax terror has swept through the ranks of my co-workers (actually just one co-worker, the chief deputy). I shall, therefore, spend most of my work time this week training our employees in the safe handling of mail and what to do if they touch or open mail with suspicious material inside it. I have been bombarded by other state agencies peddling guidelines for safe mail handling. Screw 'em. The protocol I developed and implemented is more rigorous and though-out than the crap they're sending me. I wish people would not allow themselves the luxury of panicking over these incidents. The whole idea behind terrorism is frightening large numbers of people so much that it saps their political will. You don't have to pretend that there's nothing wrong going on, but you also don't have to sit in an air-tight bunker waiting for the bad guys to come after you. People react to lunacy in odd ways, hehehehehehe.....
I've got to water my pony, campers.
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| Monday, October 15th, 2001
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7:31 am - Gooberville
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I spent several hours yesterday afternoon working at our agency's booth at the N.C. State Fair. It's usually a pleasant experience. People are friendly and ask questions and you usually come away feeling like you've helped at least a few. You get the odd crank, but even they are not too difficult to deal with. A trip to the state fair, though, is good validation that you're not nearly as funny-looking or ugly as you think you might be. This is an event that inevitably draws people who don't go far from home the rest of the year. And, God bless 'em, there's a reason for that. A couple of generations of cousin-marrying in a mountain hollow will produce some rather striking physiognomy. As usual, I saw a few friends I haven't seen in a while. GH stopped by for a few minutes. I teased him about becoming a wealthy developer. He's made a good living buying run-down commercial property in the downtown area and renovating and restoring it. The guy has a great eye for property and for choosing tenants who will last over a long period of time. Twenty-one years ago, we used to hang out in the hallway outside the newspaper office and the campus radio station. Who could have guessed back then that we'd become pillars of the community? hehehehehe...well, at least we have jobs that don't involve cleaning the deep-fat fryer before we go home each night.
I held a division meeting Friday afternoon to discuss biological terrorism and what procedures we were going to use to combat it. My mailroom staff had been very anxious about the whole anthrax thing, so I gathered information from the CDC website about all the Class A biocontaminants and information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on how to spot suspicious mail and went over it with them. They asked a lot of questions and seemed very relieved by the time we got done. The bottom line was making sure they understood that exposure to a pathogen like anthrax didn't mean they would drop dead five minutes later. They understand the need to take action to seal off the mailroom and isolate themselves immediately in order to prevent the spread of contamination and to preserve everything as a crime scene. I told them that the good news was that they would likely only have to take antibiotics to clear up any exposure. The bad news, I added, was that they would be spending a lot of time with FBI agents and other law enforcement answering questions about what happened. They understand that they need to be cooperative because their information may save lives down the road. Still, it was a very surreal feeling talking about bioterrorism seriously, as something they could very well face in the weeks and months ahead.
I stayed up late Saturday night to watch William Castle's 13 Ghosts in "Illusiono-vision" (Castle couldn't afford 3-D, I guess). It's a nice piece of very low-budget filmmaking, which you'll be able to compare to the much more lavish remake that is due out sometime soon. A bonus of the Castle original are Martin Milner's evil, oleagenous attorney and Margaret Hamilton's scary, bug-eyed housekeeper and medium. The ghosts are funny, too, but it's still worth renting and watching, if you can find it.
Pass the popcorn, campers.
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| Thursday, October 11th, 2001
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7:28 am - Hiatus
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I haven't felt much like writing in my LJ the last week or two. I've had quite a bit going on at the office and at home and it doesn't seem like I've had the time to do much of anything. I'm so worn out most nights right now that I go to sleep before 10 p.m. I hope I'm getting to a place where I can slow back down and spend a little more time updating this regularly.
We got to watch Zoid Girl's first chorus performance at her middle school Tuesday night. Since she's a sixth grader, she has to spend at least nine weeks in their "apprentice chorus" before she can move on to the full chorus. That means she won't be going back to the State Honors Chorus this year, but will be eligible next year. She sounded great. We were sitting toward the back of the auditorium and we could actually hear her voice. She even had a solo part, which she didn't bother to tell us about beforehand. I hope she continues with her singing, because that's something she can do as a hobby or a career for the rest of her life.
Zoid Boy has been invited to join the science and engineering version of Phi Beta Kappa. It's for students in those disciplines who are in the top one percent of their class. He told Zoid Mama that he was going to pass on joining since he was already a member of the engineering honor society and the electrical engineering honor society. Zoid Mama informed him that he would, indeed, be accepting membership in the new honor society. Hah! The look on his face was priceless. Yeah, he may be 21 now, but he still does what Mom wants when it's something she really wants him to do. He was looking for me to take his side, but I agree with her, so he's stuck.
PLT stopped by for about an hour Monday morning. We went around the corner to the Carolina Bakery and just sat and talked. It was very comfortable, no awkward pauses or anything like that. It was the first time I've seen her in two years, but she's still beautiful. She had come to town the day before to celebrate her younger daughter's birthday. I was especially pleased by the fact that I didn't experience any anxiety before her visit or after she left. Before I started taking Seroquel, I would have had major panic attacks beforehand and afterwards, bad enough to make me vomit. This time around, it was great to spend the time with her, then go right back to work without dwelling on it for the rest of the day and being angry and miserable about the situation we're in.
State Fair starts tomorrow monring. My division coordinates the agency's booth and operations, so it has been a hectic two weeks. The Sec wanted the booth panels changed this year, so we're getting new ones. They may not be up on Friday, but we should have them no later than Monday morning. I'm having the usual trouble getting people to sign up to man the booth. We have a lot of rank and file employees who would love to do it, but their supervisors do everything they can to prevent them from volunteering. That means the Chief Deputy Sec has to get all the managers together at the last moment, chew them out and order them to provide staff for the booth. Why the managers can't go along with the program to begin with is a mystery to me. We have a lot of prima donnas and backstabbers on board here, so things like this are custom tailored to bring out the worst in them.
My vacation is just around the corner -- Thanksgiving week. We rent a large house in Avon, on the Outer Banks, and my wife and her sisters and brother and father and all our families stay there for a week. No one does anything they don't want to do and it's the most peace and quiet I get all year round. As usual, I'm really looking forward to this year's trip. My store of patience and sanity is running really low at the moment and I need a quiet week to recharge.
I'll write more later, campers.
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| Saturday, September 29th, 2001
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12:26 am - It's baaaaaaack!
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I haven't complained much about my libido here lately because there was nothing to complain about. I mean zip, nada. It's the first time in my life that I've gone for days on end not thinking about sex. Boy, did that come to a screeching halt today! I was at a restaurant in Cary at lunchtime and looked up and saw this beautiful woman in her mid-20s with golden hair, long legs and -- most critical for me -- a great ass standing in front of me. I couldn't stop staring at her. It took me a few minutes to realize that...wait a tick...hey, that weird feeling is lust! I'm sure it won't be here for long, but it was a nice pick-me-up while it lasted.
I have finished another erotic story and will post it to my web site sometime tonight or tomorrow. It has a comic twist and is presented in memory of all those couples who find out what a great contraceptive small children can be. This story has been sitting around half-finished since May, which is about when my libido took leave of me, now that I think about it. Anyway, I'll post the URL here once I get it up. The story, I mean.
I talked to PLT on the phone for half an hour this afternoon. Her parents are getting up there in age and her dad has started to decline mentally. Her mother doesn't want anyone else to care for him and neither woman wants to put him in a nursing home. She is an only child, so the entire burden will eventually fall on her. She sounded pretty upbeat about things, which means she's actually feeling that way because I can spot it the minute she tries to fake an emotional state. She doesn't even try with me any more because she knows I'll call her on it. She did say she was going to try to take one day for herself this weekend. I hope that's what happens.
I'm off to the old corral, campers.
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| Monday, September 24th, 2001
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10:49 am - Art from ashes
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I read a story in one of the national newspapers this morning about how writers, poets and artists are struggling with the question of how to memorialize 9/11 in their work. Attitudes seemed to vary. John Cheever basically said it would take an extended period of thought and reflection before he would be ready to tackle the subject. Some poet I'd never heard of has already whipped out his magnum opus on the subject. I wonder how much of an impact 9/11 will make in American conscience. The symbolism of what happened is fairly straightforward and stark, which unfortunately lends itself to melodramatic (read, "bad") art. This is going to be a very pertinent question because I'm sure we'll eventually have some kind of national monument on the site of the World Trade Center towers, even if the towers themselves are rebuilt. Americans are usually blissfully unaware of art unless it offends their sensibilities or doesn't represent an important event in the manner in which they think it should. I can remember when the first architectural plans for the Vietnam wall were unveiled in Washington, how angry right-wing commentators were and how baffled many of the Vietnam vets I knew were. Now, of course, it's one of the most important sacred places on American soil and it's obvious that the design was brilliantly matched to the level of effort and suffering each man and woman who served in Vietnam experienced, whether they died or not.
Zoid Mama and I took Zoid Girl and a friend of hers to see Moulin Rouge at the Witherspoon Center on the N.C. State campus last night. I cannot remember seeing such an aggressively bad movie on the big screen since...well, I can't remember. I thought it was just me, so I kept my mouth shut on the way home, figuring I hadn't gotten it since the girls were all stoked up about it. When we were going to bed last night, my wife asked me what I thought of it. I told her I thought it was an atrocity and she sighed and said she was glad to hear me say that because she had disliked it, too, but thought it was because she just didn't get it. Baz Luhrmann goes right onto my short list of directors whose movies must be avoided at all costs. He reached almost Tarantino-like proportions in this movie. Yeah, I'm one of the handful of Americans who think Tarantino's reputation as a director and script writer are horribly overblown. Reservoir Dogs was decent, but everything after it has been increasingly self-indulgent and undisciplined. Or maybe I just don't get it when it comes to Tarantino's movies. I stayed up and watched Tarkovsky's Stalker Friday night. It wasn't as emotionally powerful as Andrei Roublev or Mirror, but it was still beautifully filmed and very eloquent. I did have a copy of his book, Sculpting in Time, buried in one of my bookcases, so it's on the "to be read immediately" pile.
I figured out something about myself that's kind of disturbing, thanks to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Everyone I know -- and I mean everyone -- is still walking around in a sort of daze about what happened. I'm the only person I know who sat right there and watched the whole thing on live television and didn't feel traumatized. Why? It finally occurred to me over the weekend that my background level of paranoia has finally reached the point where dramatic tragedies like 9/11 are pretty much what I expect to happen in life. That is not good and I obviously need to alter my thinking. It's not like I feel no compassion for the victims and their families or anger with the terrorists. It's that the whole deal is a typical day at the office, as it were.
Stay safe, campers.
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| Monday, September 17th, 2001
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11:29 am - Banal dispatches from the front
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What compels us consumes us.
Poetry is a remnant of the sacred. It seeks to dislocate us from our immediate reality.
Stillness is a grace.
Most of us mourn the mutilation of our souls; art concretizes that suffering.
Learning another language teaches you to think in radically different ways than those presented by your mother tongue.
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