The Ice-stache (grow one for your own safety), Hotwheels, No Age, and Serial Commitment

So I'm taking the next step toward building something to get me closer to making the writing I want to be able to make. Not necessarily the next step toward it as much as a reanimation, reorganization, of the effort. Partly, I want to get more from short stories and I can't expect to get more character development and practice from trying to cram more into small jars. Not that I haven't enjoyed the challenge and sucked at it and succeeded in parts and pieces (by my measure), but it presents problems with having a job and other things to chase after that are life necessities not granted. I have to step into something that won't force me to make endings where they don't belong and rush souls into bodies, and while there are people to animate and worlds to create, I have to give myself time where time is all too often short. And I need the pressure of show and tell to push it forward. The answer? Serials. One chapter at a time. The thing is, I can't even press myself into that old trap (I did once and it worked out well until a stretch of weeks where work overtook time available to chop a story into chapters and commit to staying put at the pen and paper to force out entire chapters, because, let's face it, not all chapters are created equal, so some days I could sit down and bang out a magnificently lengthy, but appropriately so, chapter and others days I couldn't because I had to go to bed at some point or stop to get ready for work, and things simply would not resume the same flow and grip it had when I left it and I ship wrecked myself repeatedly between the start of one and its end.

An organizational thing. Maybe show and tell is not the right motivator. It's hard to systematize it. I guess, part of it is that I don't trust myself to continue. I'm sure I could learn, at least I think I am sure that I need to force myself to learn. Learn the low lines, the high latency, and it's benefits. Put less pressure on myself and shift that strength of worry and fear of failed completion into something more positive, more enduring than the eye crossing, tongue chewing, wind sprint of watch hands across freed hours to produce things less panicked, scattered, and hit and miss spiny. Actually, as I'm talking this over, I think the best commitment to make may not be a serial one, but a commitment to development with fewer showings. Going farther down the rabbit hole is by necessity a thing that divorces a person from constant communication and seeing little dividends every day in views is encouraging. Encouragement is fairly impossible to come by. I envy the people that can get it often. So, in doing this I would be giving myself fewer opportunities to enjoy the little pats on the back, but I would also be putting myself in a position to work longer and more thoroughly on everything.

It's not a question of motivation anymore. At first it was. At first it was overcoming the fear of being connected to the things I do that I am passionate about that people might not agree with or could say "wow, you're terrible." I'm comfortable with that now. Have been for a while. Motivation came up when I lapsed for months and swore off all communication because I didn't feel like it. I couldn't feel it. I lost touch with the worlds in my mind and couldn't care to find them again, until things fell apart and I realized they are one of the few steady states, though changing, one of the few places where I feel myself all of the time. Anywhere can be learned to be home, but within my head everywhere is always home and it's like pulling up a chair with old friends I love and love to hate who know me and talk to me about things and we mull things over and they ask me about you and everyone else and they love and kill and do things I wish I could do and sometimes I do things they wish they could do and it's a back and forth that's so much a part of me I completely took it for granted for a while until I was utterly miserable and realized what was missing. It's not a question of motivation anymore. I have to engage it deeper and add taking care not to let the reduction of constant connection to a couple times a couple months get to me (it's not like I connect with people everyday this side of the bridge). Then again there will still be this in between to keep me company so it's not all bad. Not even half bad. Just not the conclusion I would have drawn this time last year.

Consider it a year end retooling of the factory. The final sessions of congress in a year that's not quite closed yet in my head.

Which takes me up to the ice-stache. So I'm walking home and it's a good 25 minute walk if I'm not running on most of my cylinders and my nose is running. Which is fine. You get used to it. Working in a cooler for hours a day, you can't rub your nose every single time it runs. By the end of the day you would have a red coke nose-ish hole in your face where your nostrils should be and then when you got home you'd have to deal with that junk all night only to go back to work in the cooler to repeat the process and get so nicked up about it that you end up putting a hole in the wall (that you'd have to fix) or putting a fist sized dent in your locker (that would probably get you suspended for a week and assigned to anger management when you got back [not that a week off from that crap would be a terrible thing, but I sat through anger management classes three times before and it's more of a pain than nursing busted knuckles and wrecked up wrist bones). You get used to it in the Winter.

The best thing about letting your nose run though, is that if you don't want to be talked to while you're out and about, letting your nose run is the best way to do it. People either assume you are a badass who does not give a fuck or are too retarded to realize your nose is running and therefore would not acknowledge, understand, or participate in a conflict along understood, predictable, or reasonable manner. Not to say that you wouldn't still get mugged by a coke head or someone not looking for reasonable conflict that sticks to standard rules of engagement. Which is why you can't just let your nose run. You have to make sure you are outside long enough for the snot and the condensation of your breathing against your upper lip and stache crystallize into ice and grow into a full on mustache of icicles. Then you are not just careless, retarded, devil-may-care, but you are also tough enough to be outdoors for long periods of time, possibly under dressed, with people and places you need to be that demand you be there regardless of the mode of transportation and that, potentially, these people will be looking for you if you don't show up when you said you would, and maybe you won't respond to threats and maybe you're late and have already had it up to your eyes with the weather, and walking untold distances, that you will absolutely blow up at the drop of a half smoked cigarette or suspicious footstep or even a "hey you" if you are kind enough to respond at all. So ice-stache it up. Worst comes to worst someone might yap at the back of your head, but all you have to do is turn around with your viking face on for a second and who wants to deal with that at any time of day? And then keep walking, because the only thing more certain to produce a fight, than engaging idle talk, is staring at groups of individuals when the only thing at stake is their bogus sense of pride. And after all, it is half past two A.M. and you still have a ways to go.

Hotwheels are amazing, by the way. Walking through stores and seeing the blue displays doesn't really bring me back to any particular period in my life, but I love cars. I dream about cars. Next to viking ice-staches, cars are awesome and every time I see them I want to know what exactly, which car exactly, is being modeled to scale and whether or not I can add it to my garage someday. Half the time it turns out to be some dopey made up car with ugly body work and funky orange tinted windows for some reason and chrome wheels in enormous flared wheel arches that pretty much touch the apex of the A pillar and the whole thing makes you scratch your head and wonder who thought it was a good idea.

Then every now and then, the thing that makes you stop and look every damn time, you stumble across a model of a DMC-12 DeLorean, or a Boss Mustang, or a bright blue and white Yenko Camaro, and you know you'll never make enough money to own them. You see a 240z in that hotwheels orange and blue blister pack and your eyes go wide because someone thought that fair lady from the 80s deserved to be forever immortalized on some lucky kids shelf and if you had a little less sense, maybe yours. You could have them all, and it's not at all about saving them because they might be worth something later, it's just to have them all in your fantasy garage made real, in a way, and be able to stroke the body work and see the curves from every angle you will never get to see them in person, quite possibly for as long as you live. It could be there, just for you, for a scant two bucks. That Ferrari GTO, right there at your fingertips, right there. You can feel the speed and feel the air slipping by the rear views and splitting away clean across the spoiler. I don't know when I'm going to outgrow hotwheels. Quite possibly never.

So that's it for now. That and there will never be that party that makes me feel my age. At least not in a physical sense where a person is like "oh my god, this hangover is too much. I can't drink like I used to." I already had that sense of that party where I was like "wow my beard is way thicker than the pubes any of these people have ever experienced in their lifetime if they never shaved them at any point between the time of their birth until now" and my beard wasn't even that thick. I definitely had it in terms of "wow the music I remember fondly in the club is all music by artists that stopped making music before these people owned their first discman. Oh wait, they've never even held a discman before. The hell am I doing here?" I also definitely had it in terms of overhearing fights and thinking "really, is it really that serious? Don't they have bills to pay or something?" But in terms of raw "too old to throw down..." never gonna happen. This old panther still has moves that'll make your mullet spin. That's from venture brothers. The best cartoon action series, possibly ever.

Let's work on it as we wrap this year up and catch up with the rest of the Earth. Orbit adjustments aboard the good ship.


///no song today. just some thought.


///just kidding. music is life.


///Paul Murphy - "Soul Call" This jazzy jem from Paul Murphy always makes me happy to be alive to hear it. It was a dead heat between this and Aphex Twin's Girl/Boy Song. Maybe next time around.