Live Blogging Obama's West Point Speech

8:00: Speech begins.

8:00:30: “DADDY I A ROCK AND ROLLER!” Lily runs up to me with a Rock Band guitar on, performs a sort of dance. Being a modern father, I document this with my camcorder.

8:02: “MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE!”

8:03: After giving her milk, she asks for a banana. We are out of bananas.

8:04: Seriously. No bananas. Offers of an orange and toast are spurned.

8:05: Crying about bananas subsides. I start listening to the speech.

8:08: “We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011.“ Awesome. There would be a ! after that if it were 2010, but I’ll have to take it.

8:09: Lily comes up to me. Looks strange. I open her mouth. Inside is my Bluetooth earpiece. I take it out, put it in my pocket.

8:10: “PINK BINKY! PINK BINKY! PINK BINKY! PINK PINKY!”

8:11: I locate the pink binky, give it to her. Obama says he owes the soldiers a clear plan. I agree. I just happen to think that continuing the mistakes of the past eight years on a greater scale, while a clear plan, isn’t a good plan.

8:12: Lily gives me a bottle of water.

8:13: Lily gives me a bottle of water.

8:14: Lily begins stacking bottles of water onto her Barbie lunchbox.

8:19: I want Obama to pull a Farley and start screaming “I WANT HOLYFIELD! I WANT HOLYFIELD!” Not entirely a joke. I get why people are calling him Mr. Spock. Show some sort of flipping emotion. He sounds like he’s giving a PowerPoint presentation, except it’s the sort where people die.

8:23: “We are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action.“ OBAMA JUST CHANNELED BUSH! THIS IS A COALITION OF 43 NATIONS??!! THEN HOW COME IT’S ONLY AMERICANS GETTING KILLED??!! THAT’S LIKE SAYING THAT EVERYONE IN DIDDY’S POSSE IS A TALENTED MUSICIAN! Wait, bad analogy. THAT’S LIKE SAYING THAT ALL OF LED ZEPPELIN’S GROUPIES WERE TALENTED MUSICIANS! WHAT. THE. EFF.

8:24: Lily is reading Goldilocks in a very emphatic manner.

8:28: Holy shit, is that guy sleeping? Yep! Bad move, Cadet.

8:29: Tools of Mass Destruction? Because you can’t build a house without… PLUTONIUM!

8:29:30: Sounds weird for me so say this, but I’m getting pretty tired of hearing Obama bitch about the Bush Administration. Move on, sir. You’re almost done your first year. Bush is back in Texas, snorting coke off of a hooker’s gazongas for all we know. He’s not in charge anymore. You are.

8:32: Obama’s laying on the magic, and these Cadets and soldiers and people not in uniforms are looking like they’re at a really, really boring Econ 101 class.

8:33: He said something that made them clap. I missed it. Lily had something else in her mouth.

8:34: Oh man, he pulled out asunder. You’re on primetime TV, Mr. President. Tone down the two-dollar words. People have two choices tonight at 8pm: you, and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause on ABC Family. Don’t make them switch.

8:35: “As one nation. As one people.” He sounds like Matisyahu. That’s not a bad thing. But I’d suggest keeping with the shaven face. Fox News would go even more than their regularly scheduled bonkers if he grew a beard. Just imagine that.

8:36: Speech over. I see someone who doesn’t have a camera in their hands. No, wait, they’re taking it out. NOW this is a well documented event.

8:37: Olbermann is asking Maddow about the speech. I wonder if Chuck Norris is on Fox. Lily gives me her milk and I put it next to me.

8:37:15: Lily cuts off Chris Matthews, screaming for her milk while shoving a box of Reduced Fat Wheat Thins in my face. Time for her to go to bed. Time for me to turn the TV off.

9:10: Begin watching “The Man With The Golden Gun” from the DVR.

The Funny Issue Of Political Identification

I’m an Independent. At times in my life I’ve voted for and/or registered Democratic, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Progressive Party of Vermont, and Green. I’m not politically schizophrenic, I just happen to agree with some portions of some parties and some positions of some candidates. The notion of being a Yellow Dog Democrat or a similarly dedicated Republican[1] is an illogical and (in light of the NY-23 race and the growing liberal discontent with the Democrats) possibly fading mentality, but one that I can understand. I am, after all, a Red Sox fan, and while I have loved and lost[2] (and twice won) I’ll be a fan until I die.

However, there’s a huge difference between a baseball team and the team of people in charge of our government. Wakefield may stress me out with his lack of performance, but if he gives up six runs before being pulled in the second inning that doesn’t result in thousands of people being imprisoned. Transversely, when Democrats say again and again that they’ll reform our idiotic drug laws and then fail to perform, people who shouldn’t be arrested are sent to sit in jail on your dime and mine. When Papi is hitting sub-.200, no one dies for oil. When Manny flaked out before he was traded, I didn’t have my credit card interest rate skyrocket as a result.

Currently I’m a registered Republican. This is a hangover from 2007, when I registered that way so I could vote for Ron Paul[3] in the primary. I liked his stance on the wars (get out) and taxes (cut ‘em), but was I a dyed-in-the-wool R3VOLutionary? No. I’m not a dyed-in-the-any-sort-of-fabric anything. I’m an independent, and sometimes it frustrates me as much as it would frustrate a political candidate seeking my vote.

Here’s a nifty list with what I’d consider some of the major issues America is dealing with on the left, and my no-bullshit opinion on the right. Feel free to ignore this if you think it’s too long, but my position is extremely nuanced.

Abortion: Avoid getting pregnant with sex education, personal responsibility, and contraception, but ultimately it’s not my body so it’s not my decision.

Budgetary Issues: If we really, REALLY don’t need something, like $200 million in design changes and furnishings for the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, $6 million for snowmaking at Spirit Mountain in Minnesota, (…one thousand pages of bullshit pork…) then maybe we shouldn’t put it in the budget. We can’t buy everybody a present for Christmas.

Church & State: Notice how they’re two words, not one. They want a political voice, they can start paying taxes. If they don’t pay taxes, like they don’t now, they can stay the fuck out of the arena and, ultimately, my life.

Death Penalty: The older I’ve gotten, the more I oppose it (racial disparity, questions of innocence, et cetera). Let the guilty rot, not necessarily fry.

Defense: I’m all for defending our country. I’m not all for running around the world thinking we can solve every conflict. Let’s get the eff outta Iraq and Afghanistan.

Drugs: Legalize and tax marijuana. The other stuff, I don’t know. I do know that thousands of people are harmed or die every year because of perfectly legal medicines, which are perfectly legal because they’ve been lobbied into legality by the multi-billion-buck companies that hawk them. Ultimately it should be a health issue, not a criminal one.

Education: Needs to be a high priority if not the highest, and I don’t mean just buying the kids laptops, demonizing teachers, and shuffling money around, which seemed to be the 2000-2008 mentality.

Energy: If we’ve got the genius and energy to put a man on the moon and convince people to buy tickets to crappy Transformer movies, we’ve got the genius to ditch oil for something that isn’t going to kill the world and fund people who want to kill us.

Environment: The world ain’t ending in 2012, Jesus ain’t showing, so let’s cut the shit and start listening to what Al Gore and, yes, Van Jones (who, incidentally, shouldn’t have been thrown under the bus by the Democrats) have to say.

Financial Regulation: When you’ve gotten insanely rich off of screwing middle and poor America, you have no reason to stop unless the government gets involved. Transversely, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd share the blame and should get the eff outta the way.

Gay Rights: Incorrect term. Should be called Gay Equality. Their marriage doesn’t affect me one bit, their having kids doesn’t affect me one bit, but having a second class of citizenry does make me want to vomit.

Health Care: If we have trillions to piss away for wars in the Middle East, then we have the resources available to help people, and if we don’t, perhaps we should reassess our priorities. But please, don't make me wait 6 months for surgery if I need it.

Media, The: I like newspapers and magazines. I tolerate some TV news. The internet can be a good way to get news out. But when you spend twice the time on a celebrity’s sex life that you do on the two wars we’re in, I want to walk into your newsroom and slap the shit out of you. Amen Mika.

Race Relations: All men are created equal. I judge Obama not by the color of his skin, but by the ever increasing list of promises that he hasn’t fulfilled. I judge Glenn Beck not by the color of his skin, but by his batshit crazy blubbering.

Social Security: I’m not expecting anything when I turn 65. That boat just may be sunk.

Taxes: Just like de limbo, as low as you can go.

Term Limits: Two terms, that’s it, across the board, end of discussion.

I’ve missed a lot of issues, but as this is my first blog post in a long, long time, I figured I shouldn’t shoot my whole load in one hit. I’ll have plenty of time when the twins come to sit on my butt with one hand on the keyboard and the other holding a bottle (of milk, for one of the kids, come on), but right now I’ve been concentrating on the dag-gum novel.

So remember, in 2010, vote for the person whose positions you agree with the most, and they don’t HAVE to have a (D) or an (R) after their name, and if it’s a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, don’t be afraid to write in another someone…

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[1] I did some research to try to find the appropriate Republican equivalent and failed to do so, but there are several interesting terms that refer to people of a certain political persuasion, being the Gypsy Moth Republican, the Boll Weevil, and the one I actually did know, the Rockefeller Republican (itself an endangered, if not extinct, species).

[2] In my pre-pubescent days I had Mike Greenwell and Roger Clemens up on my walls. Clemens was torn up due to his changing into a Yankee uniform, Greenwell (who I still respect) had his poster retired to make room for Kathy Ireland in a green bikini.

[3] Not Popeil.

Back, Forth, Back, Forth

I'm a purchasing manager at an aerospace company. That’s how I pay all the bills. My job is to keep everyone supplied, happy, and ultimately, try to save money. I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at my job. I’ve saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and order times have gone down dramatically under me. It’s an easy job, but there’s one tiny aspect of it that drives me insane: copying and pasting lines from an online order to a purchase order.

Here’s an online order:

I have to highlight each bit of info, copy it, ALT-TAB over to Quickbooks, copy it over, then ALT-TAB back, then do it again, over and over.

It’s one of those stupid things you just have to do, but it drives me nuts, to the point that my leg starts to jiggle like I’m a puppy that needs to go. Back, forth, back, forth. I can sit and read a book for hours, I can type and think and type some more at my typewriter for just as long or longer, I can walk through the woods for miles and never be bored, but the stupid copying and pasting, it’s like the hourglass turns from a steady downward stream to a sandstorm in my eyes.

Back, forth, back, forth.

I was sent to Catholic school in the tenth grade because I was failing every one of my classes. I got into a few fights and mouthed off, and weekend suspensions were common. It was a boarding school, so a weekend suspension meant I didn’t get to go back to Vermont. I would wake up, go to mass in the morning, do various assigned cleaning jobs, and then there would be a long punishment "study hall". It wasn't for actual study, but for doing whatever they told you to do. One time we watched the movie A Man For All Seasons with the volume turned off. Another time we wrote the alphabet over and over for two hours. And one time we had to take a novel, turn to the last page, and copy the book, word for word, backwards, for two hours. I remember doing A Tale Of Two Cities:

“Known ever have I than to go I that rest better far, far a is it; done ever have I than, do I that thing better far, far a is it."

Perhaps that’s why I have such a low tolerance for the frustrating and seemingly meaningless tasks that come up sometimes…

Our glorious leader, President Barack HUSSEIN OBAMA WILL KILL US ALL!!@$!!~! Or maybe not.

There’s been a lot of screaming and yelling and fighting and mass emailing and pontificating about health care lately. On one side of the argument is the belief that the gentle, loving, generous Democrats will bestow upon all of us health care for all, which will make us all live healthy lives to a good age, at which point we will quickly die without pain. It will cost less than health care costs now, it won’t interfere with current coverage if you have it, and if you don’t have coverage then you’ll finally be covered, like under a freshly laundered comfy-dumfy blanket. On the other side of the argument is the belief that the Communist Crusaders are going to turn hospitals into gulags, where decent, hard-working white folk will be lined up and euthanized by gangs of dark goons straight out of Birth Of A Nation. And speaking of births and our nation, have you heard the one about where Obama was born?

I’m a Libertarian, but a moderate one. Like, I enjoy driving on a road that I haven’t had to build myself. And I like libraries. But I’d prefer if we didn’t get into wars like in Vietnam and Iraq and the one on Drugs. And while I wear a seatbelt religiously and keep my daughter snug and safe in her car seat, I think the Click It Or Ticket program is a ridiculous waste of government money and police resources. Because I'm a Libertarian, I'm supposed to immediately reject any government involvement in health care. But I'd also like my taxes (too many as they are) to do some good, for once, so I have chosen to listen and research and think longer than five seconds on the issue.

Every week I pay $85.99 out of my paycheck for pretty wonderful health insurance. The total cost of my wife giving birth was almost $10,000, but all I had to pay was a $500 co-pay and that was that. My only other real medical issue is that I have a thickened mitral valve in my heart, which sometimes gives me chest pains, dizziness/faintness, and all that good stuff. I met with a cardiologist, got an ultrasound before and after running on a treadmill, and was told that it’s actually pretty common but that I should keep an eye on it, as it can eventually lead to blood going the wrong way in my heart and, uh, you know, death. All my visits and tests dealing with my heart put me back a total of $20. So in summation, and in conclusion, I’d like to keep my health insurance the way it is, because it’s worth the $4471.48 a year.

Now, I don’t know how much of this or this is true or sensationalist misinterpretation, but the consistency in some of the criticism of the bill has given me the motivation to actually download the text and start reading (warning: it's a big PDF), which I think should be required for any politician who is going to be voting for it OR against it. It’s one thing to read the headlines and cherry pick and bitch and accuse and namecall, and it’s another thing to actually wade through the 1,017 pages and see just how it’ll affect me, my wife, and my kids. I should be done by September.

Jesus, I sound old. And now, to cleanse the palate:

A Little Bit On Size

I’m concerned with size. No, not that kind. Eyes above the shoulders, please. Size of me writings, that is. Among all the other things I’m working on, I’m reading through a book of Aesop’s Fables I had as a kid, with an introduction by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s a printing from the late sixties, with wonderful little drawings every page or so. In reading these little paragraphs that hold so much, I’m reminded of Hemingway in a way (ho-ho), mostly the way he wrote when he was at his best: paring down his words to just the bare necessities, and sometimes even less. The iceberg method of writing, where only a fraction of the story is exposed, fascinates me and frustrates me, as I’m always tempted to wax on and off about some little detail in a Dickensian manner (“the Sofa…”). I’ve recently written a short story that came out around 4,000 words. I think it’d be a damn good piece if I could get it down another five hundred or thousand words. Like Wash says in Knocked Up, TIGHTEN.

A bit breezy in here, ain’t it?

And now, the first fable from the book. I’d like to dedicate this to politicians, past, present, and probably future:

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the lamb the wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him” “Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.” “Indeed,” bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice, “I was not then born.” Then said the wolf, “You feed in my pasture.” “No, good sir,” replied the lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.” Again said the wolf, “You drink of my well.” “No,” exclaimed the lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.” Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.” The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Short, simple, to the point. Well played, Aesop.

Hurry Up!

Often I stumble upon some book that was written by someone younger than me, and I find myself feeling depressed at the state of my writing. It’s in those times that I find myself drifting around the internet, looking up hopeful information like this:

William Faulkner: first novel published at age 29

Anthony Burgess: first novel published at age 39

It’s an obsessive compulsion, like some of the other things I find myself doing. But it has a sort of calming effect on me. While I wouldn’t dream of comparing myself to Faulkner or Burgess (or Cormac McCarthy, first novel published at 32, or Don DeLillo, first novel published at 35), it helps me put things in perspective. Lately I have written a few short stories and several poems. I’m into the thirdish draft of my second novel (well, second novel where I actually got to the end – I’ve got a stack of fizzled fireworks tucked away somewhere), and the last thing I need to do is stress myself out over such a stupid thing as being an unpublished writer at the age of 27.

Reading Status: I finished reading “The House With A Clock In Its Walls” again. Just so damn good, and worth paying the library fines for. Tried to find a copy of the second book in the series at the library but it’s missing, so I got Anthony Burgess’s “Any Old Iron”. Looks interesting, and I’ve been meaning to read his stuff for years (aside from the impossible-to-avoid “A Clockwork Orange”).

Sorry for the boring state of this post, but it's been one of those weeks...

Why am I not surprised?

I’d like this to be a more personal blog than political or anything of that sort, but sometimes a story I read on one of the many news sites I check at work brings back memories. This is a weird one, complete with a shocking headline: Bomb Parts Smuggled Into 10 Federal Buildings During Test.

You see, in 2004, I was a mailman. Officially my title was casual carrier, as I wasn’t part of the union, and thereby only allowed to serve for 6 months before taking time off to apply for full-time letter carrier status or doing whatever until my next 6 month tour came up. I was actually surprised at how much military-official lingo was used, especially when I had to take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America. I had the average American perspective of mailmen, which was that they fill up their bags and trucks and go around all day and at the end they go home and play with guns and drink their brains out. Not entirely untrue in some cases, but not entirely accurate. Some of the nicest people I’ve known are from my days at the USPS: hard working, honest, nice people, real sweethearts. Some total assholes, but mostly really nice people. They’re government agents, albeit without any real authority, other than the authority to take your personal letters and packages and open your mailboxes and apartment buildings.

A casual carrier, in my time (it’s been five years, so I don’t know what’s changed), is paid less than a regular carrier (who can earn up to $75,000 if they’re there long enough), doesn’t have a set route, and doesn’t wear a uniform. The regulars have to pay for their uniforms, true, but they actually look like mailmen. I was shown a room with discarded uniform parts (hats, shirts, capes for when it rains and snows but you’ve got to get the mail through) and I took a few items, but for the most part I wore khakis and tee shirts and sweatshirts of my own. This may not seem to be important, but it is.

Depending on the route, I’d either leave the station walking, in an LLV (long-life vehicle, your typical mailman truck), a larger truck for pickups and deliveries (like when I’d go to Phish Dry Goods, if I may casually drop a name), or in a plain white van, where the only identifying marks were the US GOVERNMENT license plates. I had a funny incident once where I delivered a package to a house that housed some college students, and they thought I was the DEA or some other agency. I got out, heard toilets flushing, and when one of the guys came out and saw me handing over an Express Mail parcel he yelled “it’s the fucking mailman!” to his friends, who I’m sure wished they had waited just a bit longer before sending whatever wherever.

How does this relate to the story? Well, I once had to deliver to a government building in South Burlington that housed a division of Homeland Security. I rolled up to the guard gate with my white van and tee shirt and khakis, and there was no one there. I pressed a talk button, and a stammering voice asked “uh, can I help you?” It was Saturday, so it seemed no one official or important was there. I said I was going to drop off the mail and pick any up, and I hadn’t been there before, could I be directed to where I need to go? The voice told me where to go, the gate was raised so I drove into the parking lot, the side door was buzzed open, and before I knew it I was wandering around the offices. I found the mail dropoff point, left the white tub of mail, and as there was nothing to pick up, I simply left.

In summation: I showed up to a government office in an unmarked (except for the license plates) van, showed no identification, interacted with no one other than over an intercom, and was able to walk around their offices. I could have swiped a hard drive. I could have brought a bomb in under the pile of mail. I could have poisoned their coffee. I’m not a terrorist, so I didn’t, but still, I’d like to think that, after five years and billions of dollars, shit like that wasn’t still going on. But as the GAO showed, it does.

Something The Day.

Instead of seizing the day, lately I seem to be just salvaging the day. I’ve been making little headway in my novel lately, but I’ve pecked at and finished two short stories recently, written some poems that I’m not ashamed of, and almost finished planting my garden. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me going, that and my wife and kid(s).

Today I intended on going to the library and cranking on my novel, but stress from work took its toll and by the time I was on my way to the library my brain felt worn and I couldn’t shake the sense of anger and sadness. However, I saw something on my way to the library that I hadn’t noticed before, and I pulled into a random parking lot to write down what I later at the library formed into a pretty damn good poem if I say so myself. After working two drafts of it, I sat in one of their firm, purple chairs and read some Robert Frost with some humble satisfaction before heading back to my place behind the desk and monitor and stacks of papers.

I didn’t accomplish what I had intended to, but I suppose I salvaged the day, and even if that’s all I get, I can’t complain all that much in the end.

The Bits You Don't Get To See

I’ve written a lot over the years, but for every story or novel or screenplay I’ve done, it seems that there are three or five or ten other things I’ve started and worked on and then left unfinished. Case in point, this is about the sixth blog I've ever started. I’m still writing one of the previous ones, just in haiku, but with the private setting enabled, so it’s just for me (all mine, all mine, muhaha).

I write however I can; I prefer to use a typewriter for fiction, as it’s less distracting that the computer, which has games and the internet and so on. But if I have to, I use the computer, and my little folder marked WRITINGS is full of completed stories and half finished ones.

According to Wikipedia there’s lots of “trunk novels” out there. Nabokov’s “The Original Of Laura” is going to be published this year, against his wishes (he wanted it to be burned). Stephen King’s got a bunch, like “The Aftermath” and “Sword In The Darkness”, that petered out or were rejected and then stashed. Herman Melville wrote a novel called “Isle of the Cross”, which was never published and then lost. I’ve lost a few works over the past fifteen years, since I seriously started writing outside of the assignments I was given at school. My favorite lost bit was one I did in eleventh grade, where I wrote a sprawling 20-page story on the path of a Bible from printing to its burning in the parking lot of a gas station in Vermont. It was an assignment for English class, and I had a lot of fun with it.

I just “took out” out of the folder and read a rough draft attempt at writing a novel based on my experiences getting sent off to a boarding school in the tenth grade. I sort of disappeared from my public school after the first quarter, and I honestly don’t think too many people noticed my absence. I wasn’t exactly in the running for most popular. More like most likely to be the person you look at in class photos and go “who was that?” or “I hope that bastard’s working at a gas station”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If I looked back at my high school years as the Glory Days, I think I’d jump off a bridge. I wrote the novel until about page 125 or 130, then lost the energy when realized I was only on the second day. If I wrote all I felt I would need to write to give the full span of the experience, I’d be looking at a two-thousand page monster, filled with bits like this:

The swings, and the surrounding wooden playground, had been built before he had come to the school, and while they showed their age they worked just fine for the kids of the day and Patrick. With his greater weight came greater speed and momentum, and he soon found himself nearly level with the top bar at each side of the swing, back and forth. The feeling in his stomach flipped around from enjoyment to a sudden irrational fear of letting go and falling. He slowed the muscle movement that kept the swing moving so fast, but just for a few seconds. When the swing was about forty-five degrees up and he felt it could and would go up further again if he continued, he let go and pushed off into the twilight. His body glided through the air for what felt like minutes but what could only have been a second or two, and then he fell to earth and the tiny gravel pebbles that the school had determined would be safe enough for the children to play upon. He tumbled, as that is the only word he could think of to describe it to himself, and his hands and knees were bit red raw by the little grains he had walked and scuffed on so many times before.

Patrick lay on the ground on his hands and knees and felt the burning increase in the parts that had made contact with the ground. Small, hot tears formed in his eyes, but with the extra years of experience he found a way to blink them back, letting only one hit his cheek and only for a brief moment before being wiped away by a gritty hand sprouting blood from miniscule fractures on the skin.

Hm. I wrote this about two years ago, and I’d like to think I’ve gotten better since then. It's almost 300 words that could be cut down to 100. It’s got sappy bits, and while I like the “gritty hand sprouting blood from miniscule fractures on the skin”, the composition feels chunky, and I’d have to rework it. “Miniscule fractures OF the skin”? “[K]ids of the day” is just a stupid way to term schoolchildren. Whatever. It was a learning process, the writing equivalent of going to the driving range or batting cage. In the folder it stays. Perhaps I could print it out and stick it in a trunk.

Driving to Sleep

I've found that one of the requirements of fatherhood is the ability to deal with a child that just won’t go to sleep. It’s a lot easier to deal with when they’re younger, as they are less mobile. My daughter is almost two, so her nighttime fussyness has made the transition from just screaming to screaming and running and throwing and out-and-out tantrums.

Last night, around nine, when she should be in or getting to bed, my daughter was doing everything she could to disturb her pregnant-with-twins mother and myself, so I resorted to the old standby of packing her in the car, putting on mellow music (classical or, as was the case last night, jazz), and driving around until she fades off into what has to be the best sleep, as it refreshes her and gives her the energy the following day to go about her day like a squirrel, dipping and bouncing and running every which way.

I like our little town in the woods, so I try to not take the same route twice when I get out with her at night (usually once or twice a week). Last night I drove up to the top of the hill that the town is built on, and as I started down the other side I saw the last layer of Pentecost red sky disappear behind the hills and mountains in the distance. In the mirror I could see my daughter in her seat, playing with her ears. That’s a telltale sign that sleep is imminent.

I took a left and drove through a rich neighborhood, one of those small, protected groupings of obese houses on lots that had once been farmland. Every lawn was perfect, two-and-a-half inches in height, and by the light of the streetlamps I could see that they were dark green and weed-free, without variation in the blades. One thing they also didn’t have were fireflies, which I have thousands of where I live just a few miles away, and which I saw many of as I passed through the developed parts of the neighborhood to the still-open hayfields that are untouched in life but divided on maps into zoned lots up for sale.

After passing through the (according to their website) “thoughtfully designed… scenic and private community”, I turned a corner and got back on the main road, a mile or two past where I had turned off earlier. Someone on the radio was doing a slow rendition of Miles Davis’ “So What”, and as I got to the top of the hill again I looked in the mirrors and saw that the sun was all gone for now.

When I got home, I took my daughter out of her seat, and she stirred a bit and patted me on the back as she buried her head in the corner of my neck and shoulder. I had been out driving for no more than fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Before I left the garage and put her to bed I waited for the security light to click off out front, and I saw a dozens of fireflies moving through the air like the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock.

Too Fast For Fiction

When I was in high school my father, in an effort to improve my grades and possibly improve upon his own intellect, purchased a speed reading course. This was before the internet took over everything, so it must have come out of the back of a magazine. The tapes came in a large, black case, with a strange looking pair of men on the back cover. It was Howard Stephen Berg’s “Mega Speed Reading”, and the photos were of Berg and Kevin Trudeau, the Penn to Berg’s Teller, if I may sully the names of my favorite magicians by making such a comparison.

If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you’ve seen Trudeau playing the part of a budget Larry King on an infomercial set made out to look like an actual news program. I have insomnia, hence I’ve seen far too much of Kevin Trudeau. One commercial that comes to mind is a colon cleansing program, pushed by a man with the dubious name of Klee Irwin and a moustache that reminds me of when my daughter eats pudding.

Much of the course consisted of Berg boasting about his abilities, such as reading Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” in about three minutes and passing a test on Stern’s radio show. The basic method was sweeping your hands over the text and skimming, identifying important words, so on and so forth. The ink from some books would build-up on your hands, which brings to mind the song “Informer” by Snow and (yes, I looked it up) MC Shan:

Take me to the station, black up my hands
Trail me down 'cause I'm hanging with the Snowman

I handled the method alright, and read a few books using it, but it felt like sticking a beautiful dinner into a blender, hitting chop, and then sucking the juice with a straw. For example: the following quote from Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit:

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

Those three sentences consist of 51 words. Berg claims to be able to read 25,000 words a minute, or about 416 words a second. That means that someone with Berg’s amazing ability would suck down that simile, given in a dialect, in a tenth of a second.

I love reading, and I wish I could do more of it. I used to spend entire days at the library or on a sunny lawn just plowing through hundreds of pages a day, getting pale when I was inside and red-skinned when I was out. Right now I’m blazing through John Steinbeck’s “The Moon Is Down”, a rich and moving fable from World War Two that was actually used as propaganda for the Allies, passed among the resistance, and banned by the Axis (the punishment for possessing a copy in Italy was death). Blazing for me is the expectation that I’ll be finishing it tonight, or about two days after buying it at the wonderful Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut.

If I was Berg, however, I’d be done with it in roughly a minute, minute and a half (it’s short, about 110 pages). I have a wife and kid and more kids on the way, a garden and writing and a day job, so my reading time is little now, but you know what? The minute or two or even three (or ten, if it’s Pynchon or certain Faulkner texts) it takes me to get through the back of one sheet and the front of another is a wonderful time, and I feel no desire to flap through it like I’m yanking sheets of toilet paper from a stubborn roll. Some things in life shouldn’t be galloped through to the end, and I’d like to think that fiction is one of them.

(Although I’d like to have all politicians trained to speed read. Then, maybe, if they actually read the laws they pass, they might not do so.)

Non sequitur: How my car's front passenger seat looks right now:

Back 'ta Woik

Last week threw me for a loop, and I didn’t write much. It began with my mother-in-law visiting (a good thing), stress at work (a bad thing), and then went into my birthday (good), and on my birthday I found out my wife is pregnant with twins (doubly good!). I’ll try to adhere to Elmore Leonard’s dictum that exclamation points should be avoided, but that last bit is an unavoidable target for a slash and a dot.

I don’t write for a living (yet… someday…) but I try to write everyday. I’m an adherent to the idea driven by Stephen King and others that writing and reading should be regular daily occurrences. I try, but last week I just didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have it in me. A pathetic excuse, but a reason as well. Last night, however, I got down to business, and had an explosion of productivity that I’m hoping to match tonight. I’m taking a small breather from the novel, just until I finish a short story that I started as a writing exercise and have since continued on towards an exciting finish line I didn’t anticipate when I first got down in front of the typewriter.

One thing I changed in my habit was where I write, which I have found to be very helpful. Before, I had been writing in the mud room of our house, not wanting to disturb the wife and kiddo, but it was a rather depressing place to write, full of junk we have yet to sort, right next to the washer and dryer, with the powerful odor of Tide and Bounce coating the insides of my nostrils. Biting insects are able to get in there somehow, possibly through the small space between the door to the garage and the floor, and I’d finish my night’s writing with several red pea-sized lumps on my hands and neck from the buggers I missed killing.

I wrote last night in the living room on our green striped couch that the cats are slowly destroying the corner of, and I finished at midnight with three solid pages from the typewriter. When typed out and formatted properly (one inch margins, 12 point Courier font) the three typewritten pages come out to roughly nine manuscript pages. I’m always tempted to obsess over what is the right or wrong way to format a manuscript, but it’s a distraction, a type of procrastination that feels like you’re doing something, but you’re not. I just followed instructions and watch my tightly typed pages become manuscript pages of 250 to 300 words each, with lots of extra breathing room.

Tonight I’m going back to the living room, with the typewriter on the coffee table that looks like the crate from Creepshow, and finishing the story. I hope to finish in time to spend a little extra time on the couch, finally finishing John Irving’s Setting Free The Bears.

Autumn In June

It’s supposed to get up to seventy here in my little area of southern New England, but it’s felt like fifty-something all day, and I love it. With the rain and the cool air it’s more like autumn than summer. That’s good for me, as autumn has always been my favorite season. My idea of heaven is a never-ending October, with harvests and Halloween and all that good stuff. Tomorrow is my birthday, but summer can go to hell.

One way I get into the spirit of the season we’re not actually in is by checking out the best Halloween related website, Pumpkinrot. If I had the money to spare I know I’d have one of his horribly awesome pieces staring down at me, waiting for the moment when my eyes closed for just a second too long… from a lack of sleep, perhaps, or the moment before a sneeze…

Continuing with my bizarre dream theme, which is one I can’t get away from regardless of what I do (medication, no medication, alcohol, no alcohol, going to bed early, at a reasonable time, late, et cetera), my last night’s dream wasn’t quite frightening, just strange. My wife, daughter, and I were on a chairlift at an exaggeratedly large version of the mountains of my hometown, a ski resort in Vermont. We were all dressed for summer weather, but it was perfect skiing weather: snowy, cold, blue-grey skies. Also, we were alone, and saw no one else on the chairlift or on the trails.

We got to the top and they stopped the lift for us to get off, and we were ordered to go buy season passes at an office set up at the very peak of the mountain. How we got to ride up in the first place was never explained. We went inside, and were informed that the season passes were now only $3, instead of the $1099 they usually are. We get our pictures taken with the old Polaroid four-punch setup that hasn’t been used for at least a decade, decade and a half, and soon the hot laminated cards are on breakable chains around our necks.

Back outside, we discover that we now have the latest and greatest equipment laid out for us, so we suit up and ski off. My wife has never skied in her life, and my daughter isn’t even 2 years old yet. The rest of the dream was just us working our way down the slope, but never seeming to get to the bottom, as the mountain appeared to have been growing just as fast as we were descending.

Non sequitur: Reason #1 I hate people my age to my age minus ten years:

The Tonys, Brought To You In Part By Xerox

As my wife was a big theater geek in high school and still tries to keep up on all things Broadway, and as my brother-in-law, his girlfriend, and my mother-in-law were all at our house last night, all being theater enthusiasts, I watched a good half or so of the Tony’s last night. I have limited theater experience, so my theater knowledge is slightly more than your average Joe Six-Pack, but not by much.

I’m not a big fan of awards shows, but the Tonys seem to be the most intelligent televised awards, a few steps ahead of the Oscars, miles away from the MTV Movie Awards, and a few light years from something I saw while scanning through the channels, the MTV Cribs Awards, which grants awards to famous people for having large houses, hosted by a woman whose greatest contribution to our culture seems to have been performing videotaped fellatio on another minor celebrity. Still, it was disappointing to see the wide array of unoriginal or iPod/jukebox shows that were advertised, nominated, and/or given awards. I’m talking about shows that are reworkings of movies (Billy Elliot, Shrek, 9 to 5) and shows that just slap together songs (Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, Mama Mia). True, there were revivals of classic shows, and several new, original shows, but just like the movie industry, and even the book world, there is an infection of unoriginality that is deeply troubling.

I’ve got no problem with being inspired by past work. It’s impossible not to find an idea and grow it yourself. I’m working on notes for a novel inspired, in part, by A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. It’s mostly inspired by my bizarre dreams and my often-boring day job, and my irrational fear of salesmen, and my lack of understanding of the way mattress stores can survive (honestly, how can they stay in business? Maybe everyone else replaces their bed every year, but I sure as hell don’t.), but Twain’s work does have a special place in my mind right now. But I’m not going to do a sequel to it, or a remake, or a spinoff. Stephen King didn’t photocopy the Book of Revelations to make The Stand, Neil Gaiman didn’t photocopy The Jungle Book to make The Graveyard Book, Diablo Cody sure as hell didn’t photocopy the script to Riding in Cars With Boys to make Juno, and I’m not going to photocopy Mr. Clemen’s work.

This begs the question: are we running out of ideas? We have a world with billions of people, infinite possibilities for stories large and small, and yet we find ourselves going to see a remake of an old television show (Land Of The Losing Money It Would Seem) or read a ‘spinoff’ of a classic novel (an Amazon.com search for “Mr Darcy” results in 118 books, at least 2 of which are versions of an imagined diary). Why risk an original novel about youth and age when you can just write a sequel to Catcher In The Rye? Why test the waters of cinematic fear when you can just do-over My Bloody Valentine and Friday The 13th?

I would suggest that, no, we are not running out of ideas. Shows like God Of Carnage, movies like Gomorra, and books like 2666 show that original stories are still possible. We’re just at the mercy of writers who are lazy, and producers and publishers that are scared of anything that’s not a sure thing. And that’s a damn shame, Diane.

Fighting The Serpent

Last night I sat down at my “desk” (typewriter balanced on two Pampers boxes filled with my wife’s comics and some hardcovers) and tried to get to writing. The night before I skipped ahead in my draft and started rocking on a scene involving the narrator, his German exchange student friend who came back from Europe and is now a very proud American, Bob Dylan, and the Quechee Gorge. It was going great, and I had stopped writing that night after the equivalent of about ten manuscript pages. But last night? Stopped after a paragraph. Just had no energy at all, and while the tiny amount I wrote was good and fit in, my eyes were closing and before I gave up I started a sentence that didn’t make any sense.

I’ve had insomnia for a few years now. It’s a combination of not being able to get myself to sleep, followed by bizarre dreams and other factors waking me up throughout the night. I don’t want to take Ambien, as I have a kid and the last thing I want to do is pick her up and try to walk down the stairs while in a drugged kind-of-sleep.

The dream I remember from last night: I was sitting at my “desk”, writing on my typewriter. Nothing was being printed on the page, but I kept writing. My writing area is in the mud room where we have a red washer and dryer set, and I sit with them to my left. To my right are three stairs and the door to the garage. I was in the process of not-writing when the skeleton of a long, thick snake came out of an unseen hole in the garage door and wound its way up the stairs and into the large pile of crap my wife and I have yet to sort out and put away since moving here in December.

I’m afraid of snakes. Very.

My dream reaction is to run into the kitchen and grab a curtain rod, split it in half, and go back to the mud room to do battle with the snake. While I was gone, however, the snake has started going through changes, and when I returned it resembled a skeleton version of the serpent from R. Crumb’s Book Of Genesis in the latest issue of The New Yorker.

Apparently The New Yorker influences my nightmares. Not too many people can say that.

I woke up my wife with my thrashings, then got back to sleep, then woke again, and now am at my day job. Tonight I’m going back to the keyboard, I’m determined to finish the scene, and I’ll try to think of a better dream weapon if I get attacked again. Perhaps a car loaded with nitroglycerin…