The way life should be

Welcome to Maine moment of the day #I: The wife gets back from the store and reports of serious delays on the way due to a high school football parade. Fine, nothing spectacular there. Except... a little bit around the corner from us is a heinous white-trash-incarnate mustard yellow triple deckah with requisite blacktop covered with multiple junked cars. In the summer, seemingly every denizen of this building is out on that blacktop, and every one has their own two-liter of Mountain Dew. Crazaay. The wife reported one woman in housecoat out on the blacktop this mornng watching the parade go by. Wife didn't know if housecoat was even alive, until some random segment of the parade went buy. Then, "I noticed that her gums were chattering." Oh.

Welcome to Maine moment of the day #II: We're driving back from Freeport on 136. We stopped into Freeport, and had a lovely early holiday season dip into L.L. Bean and etc. We're drivng behind a typical big-dick new monstro-Ford pickup, and all is swell and good. Until he turned a corner at an intersection rather quickly, and the deer fell out of the flatbed. Swerve. Shit. The deer bounced a time or two in the road, long enough to fully present the enterance wound, and long enough for me to see the neck. Then the driver of the typical big-dick new monstro-Ford pickup figured out the deal and pulled a u severe enough to almost hit us head-on. Apparently, it was the first day of deer hunting season today. Surprise, surprise.

Welcome to Maine moment of the day #III: picking up liquid provisions for self and the in-laws, at a market around the corner and right next to heinous white-trash-incarnate mustard yellow triple deckah with requisite blacktop covered with multiple junked cars. A sign by the deli advertised fries. "Frie's"

Maine: The Way Life Should Be. Quite.

2,000

2,000 American men and women, sons and daughers, husbands and wifes, fathers and mothers are dead. 2,000 are dead as a result of a choice made by an insular circle of insular minds that never saw beyond their myopic vision. 2,000 are dead as a result of a campaign of lies made by this insular clique. And these 2,000 are never coming back, while the clique lies on. I am sickened beyond any more words.

David Lee Roth, circa 1981, would be proud...

The in-laws are here, and I'm on another lost weekend. I might have to make the wife drive the next few days. Fucking hell...

Had a lovely buffet for lunch in the gray chill today, in which I promptly loaded up on delectable crab cakes. Perhaps I loaded up to an unnecessary extreme, but fuck; it's a buffet, right? Right. No harm, no public foul. 'Twas a marvy time.

It's 9:00 EST on a Sunday night. Shirts are starched and ironed, dishes and laundry are done, a good bit of the paper remains, but we're only in the third inning of game 2 (Go-Go Sox!)and I've got a few beers left. A few...

I can hear the leaves falling as one

We've been raking "Autumn Leaves" (Johnny Mercer, 1947), and now I'm listening to "Autumn Sweater" (Yo la Tengo, 1997). How's that for symmetry?

Inadvertent blue collar crime doesn't pay

I'm going to jail.

I'm going to hell, but on my way, I'm going to jail. For bank fraud. I used the same check number twice. I wrote a check last week, then another. Bills, y'know. Responsible citizen. With my paycheck on Wednesday, I scheduled another online payment. Balance sheet? Quicken? Huh? Naturally, I used the same number of the last actual check I wrote. So now I'm going to jail. I'm convinced of it.

I don't want to be Karl Rove's bitch. I really don't.

Decompressing

I must say I'm feeling rather pleasant after a few frosties and a rack of riblets at Applebee's (big splurge, woo!), and with a divine pint in front of me now. It's good to escape from work and pressure and thinking about stuff and etc...

Another afternoon of "We shove fun down your throat!" corporate company morale building today. Balls. My morale was greatly diminished as I spend all of two hours trapped in a rah-rah fest thinking of how far behind I was proofing the flyer and sending out necessary reports on deadline. I was stuck with a table of strangers for trivia. I knew that Chuck Jones directed the Grinch, so I won some major points for our cause. Big fucking deal. I'm all for company pride, but, y'know, not if you also expect to have a perfect flyer arriving in mail, Sunday paper and store. Fortunately I'm a master of smile-politely-and-think-vile-thoughts. Good thing I don't really have a flamethrower.

The in-laws are arriving for the second time this year on Saturday. Much to accomplish before then, and my tank of drive is on E. Great. Oh well: shut up and get it done. We will.

We were discussing the all-encompasing horror that is Mariah Carey on the drive in yesterday. While we both served up our fair share of bitchslaps, she won the battle by suggesting that Mariah probably spritzes every e-mail with perfume. Somehow, I don't doubt that for a second.

It's autumn in Maine, and I couldn't be happier...

The plot thickens, or at least presents itself...

My book is talking to me now. Setting, characters, events, plotlines...it's all coming together. I just need to wait another two weeks to start it. If I can.

The usual Saturday ruminations

Well, I Cloroxed the hell out of the cabinets and radiators and did the dishes and ran to the store in a monsoon to get the papers. That's something, right? Still plenty to do around here (laundry, dusting, straightening), but I'm also grappling with the reality that I'm 16 days away from NaNo and I have NOTHing yet. A few extremely fuzzy characters whispering, a setting or two, a vague theme, and nothing else. I've got to get crackalackin', fool. Once I get it, I have no doubt that the words will flow and my characters, once they present themselves, will start to take over. But I ain't there yet. Can't figure out my novel, can't face the prospect of cleaning the tub. Piss or swim. Coffee or beer. Groan...

Craptacular

Modern science needs to come up with more effective shit-sucking technologies.

Sure, you always have to take a nanosecond or two to prepare for stank when entering a mens room (women, of course, don't have this problem, since women don't shit or burp or eat steak or quarter pounders). Knowing that a wave of foulness is about to hit helps to dull the blow somewhat. But some days...

Really, though, what makes two sane and rational people carry on a conversation through stall doors?

One was actually outside the stall today, discussing Gal*Mart defense pricing strategy in the Albany market with his cohort...who was TAKING A CRAP at the time. Simple litmus test, people: would you do it at home? "Man, this is a great game! Hey, let's discuss the infield fly rule in my bathroom while I take a dump!" Would you do it then? Would you invite a complete stranger in to piss in your shower while you casually shit and discuss the retun on your mutual fund with your buddy? No? Didn't think so.

Shit.

The weekend approaches, and I have no plans, and I'll probably get nothing done. And this bothers me. I must become more proactive. I don't have time to be tired and piss off, not when all I have in life is this goddamn moment right now. Yet I also have no money and no drive after a balls-out week at work and commute and a lot of reading to catch up on, and it's going to rain. It's a racket, this life is, and fuck if I know how to game it.

That said, I do know that I'm going to keep the door to the bath closed. The best arias are, after all, performed solo...

In 1492, Columbus was a fraud for you

Ah, Columbus Day. Greatest holiday of the year! Yessir, I went all-out this year. Put three ships in our front yard, discovered and planted a flag for the Minty Fresh republic in the neighbors yard, discovered the wrong neighborhood on the way to work... Since annexing the neighbors yard for my own, of course, I now have to come back and claim the land and inhabitants for real, but that's a mere formality. Piddly details. Hell, it's Columbus Day!

Sorry, but Chris Rock was fuckin' spot-on. "Just call it 'Monday Off!'" (except for me, since my company doesn't really believe in company-sanctioned holidays, but I digress)

As noted, we celebrated "Steal The Land and Rape and Pillage the Natives Day" with a choice bottle of Cianti and a frozen thin-crust. Close enough.

I can't even begin to keep up with all of the stamps my mental passport is collecting lately. Suffice it to say that I miss Seattle hardcore, I miss New York hardcore, I miss Boston hardcore, and in the process I'm missing autumn in Maine hardcore, even if I'm physically present for that. Money, lack thereof, furnace woes, remodeling desires, landscaping plans, travel, food, moderate solvency, work draining, natural disaters, sleep deprivation, sleeping on my new queen mattress in my new bedroom set (five years removed from sleeping on a floor, have I mentioned that?), expenses, steadily rising credit score, responsibility, a moderate amount of peace and contentment, literary jags to follow to conclusion, events to partake in, possibilities...

I'm all about the possibilities of life these days. Maybe it'll keep getting better and better. The alternative is to think about it and overanalyze it. Not that I'd ever do that, of course.

More thumbnails from my own office space

And how did my work day begin? I ended up squirting myself from mouth to upper chest with Purell. My bottle sits on a shelf at about eye level. Must've been a clot in the nozzle. Glamorous. Coffee tasted great after that.

Furthermore, our copier is gone. Gone. Of course "our" copier is shared by at least five departments, and it's a good half a football field away from my chamber...er, cube. Nevertheless, I'm now running upstairs at least every half hour because our copier is gone. Supposedly a new copier, located a bit closer for a bit more exclusivity, is due Thursday. I certainly hope so, because I'm not digging our copier being gone.

I'm getting ready for this. Should be a trip.

Stank

Motherfucker behind me in line at the store yesterday burped pizza (judging by the melange, I'm thinking Pizza Slut Meat Lovers) at least twice. I din't hear it, but I caught those fetid clouds head on. Naaystaaay.

Randomness

Interesting. I'm a righty, and I was trying to type http://www.washingtonpost.com/ in my address bar with my left hand while pounding a cold one with my right. Apparently I entered http://www.weshingtonpost.com/, and was redirected to bronxnews.com, which lists, rather than porno sites, links to actual newspapers. Sometimes things kinda sorta work out, even when they don't.

7-2 Skanks, top of the 7th. I'm not conceding it, but I'm ready for a one-game playoff on Monday now. Groan.

It's a priceless early autumn day in Maine. We spent a few hours splitting and stacking wood at the homestead earlier. Now I'm layering and looking forward to a night of chill and woodsmoke. This is my time of year.

With this I realize I'm going nowhere. I'll try it again. Hell, it's what I do.