The Fat Man Today

It's amazing what useless things a night of sombre, slow music, some rhum, and a peanut butter sandwich can do for you. Such as this really rather silly, pointless thought it plunged into my brain. It's so annoyingly senseless that I don't understand why I'm still thinking about it. But there it is. It's stuck there, like margarine or pork fat on a frying pan after a heavy bout of saute-bleu. (So what's the thought already?) Don't interrupt. This has to be orchestrated slowly. Like a flower going into bloom, or the slow, rumbling approach of an earthquake. You savor the moment, lest it runs away from you. Remember Kodak. Think picture-perfect. A single second trapped for ages. So okay. Here it is. The thought that has been bugging me ever since I read that webcam-related post about long-distance face to face communication. The One Thought. To Rule them All. (Get on with it, you bitch.) God, but you're pushy. Fine, fine. Here it is. If you cross the iner...

There are cats on mars. And that's all I have to say as of now. Okay, psych. I twisted my blasted knee the other day. So I've been hobbling around the house in a very House-like manner, and it has been fun. Of course, the fact that I have to crawl up the bloody stairs is annoying. And the fact that bending the leg involves moments of oh-so-excruciating pain. Since I'm used to this, though, I was up and about by Saturday (had to go pay the Internet boo). And then watch a dance competition (don't ask). And then go drinking. Go. Ask. In other news, I finally had my watch repaired. Yes, my life is very interesting indeed.

Okay. For the past couple of months (or more) I've been going through a workout that's evolved from a simple calisthenics routine, incorporated some basic karate movements, sprouted fish wings, swam in an imaginary sea, became the vial of eternal youth, and now provides me with enough sweat and muscle pains to hold my own in an arm wrestling match with a guy who executed a perfect German suplex on live television and maybe shed enough pounds to earn me a neck (this last part isn't necessarily colored for viewer entertainment). The workout usually runs this way: first comes the aforementioned calisthenics routine for about ten minutes. Then some stretching exercises to make sure my bones and muscles are all greased up and good to go. The hard stuff begins when I set an alarm for twenty minutes later, put my mp3 player on random, and begin to methodically run around the apartment in a flimsy attempt to imitate jogging (I live in a village with very few paved roads, which in t...

It's ten thirty in the morning, and I'm staring at two things: one of them is a short story I'm working on. I should actually be working, but since today's a national holiday (or since the national holiday tomorrow was moved to today, works either way), my mind is currently in Morocco. Unfortunately, this also has dire effects on the story, and I've added a sentence during the last six hours that I've been intimate with my laptop screen. the other is a work of art in the form of a canonical nod to male chauvinism everywhere. And I've been on that for the last twelve hours. Yes, I do not sleep. I am the Vampire Le Stud. What frightens me is that I have nothing but oatmeal in my larder, along with powdered milk, coffee, and lemonade, and a box of yellow label tea that's going to run out in the next, oh say, eighteen hours. That, and the fact that I've been listening to The Marriage of Figaro for the past, oh, fourteen hours (I was playing Avernum 3 ...

Just a quick one while I'm chasing after my deadline. I'm eight articles away from the end of this set, and I'm already reeling. This writer's work is a net of patchworks that I have to rearrange in order to come up with a good document worth a short feature in National Geographic. I'ma end this today, but a couple of hours later than what was supposed to be my deadline. Add the fact that I woke up hella late this morning. And my stomach hurts. Too many crunches, methinks. Add the fact that my boss is currently MIA. And the 2nd shift is starting to look like the graveyard shift. I need a beer. Haha!

It's weird. I'm working on the rewrites for Sleepwalking Awake , and then it hits me. Recently, thanks to all the stress I've been getting from work, I've been remembering more and more of my dreams. Now, normally, I don't remember any of my dreams. If I didn't have a stressor of some sort - like when my grandmother died (I had a doozy of dreams at the time) - I end up forgetting my dreams. The fact that I've been remembering all of my dreams for the past few days kinda frightens me. Why, you might ask. Well, the story of Sleepwalking Awake is about a man who can't sleep because his dreams get in the way. Now, my dreams aren't getting in the way of my sleep, but you know this thing about fictions mirroring real life. In this case, I'm afraid that my life is mirroring my fiction. My character is an aimless security guard, trapped in a world of the mundane and routinary. He ends up getting so bored that the two parts of his head decide to literall...

Normally, I like work. Yes, normally. Editing is fun. The rush that you get when you're crossing out words, making sure that this or that writer actually makes sense, mentally cursing the dumber ones to the land's end - these are all, believe it or not, perks of being an editor in this business. The stress, the headaches, you know every cell in your body's actually enjoying all this excruciating pain. It's like a writing curse. You beat yourself up until the right words come out. Writing is a masochistic art. But this. This isn't even writing. This doesn't even come close to descriptive writing. A one hundred and ninety character limit that's eaten up by various keywords that have to appear on the description lest all your trouble is for naught. This is like AdWords, except that AdWords lets you be creative. There's more room to be creative. This is excruciatingly, mind-numbingly, earth-shattering, paradoxically and undeniably boring. If I have to go thr...