MY GNOMEY EMAILED ME!!! :D

Poor thing's been so busy with work and life that she hasn't been able to contact me lately. But she made a point to email me Tuesday and it MADE MY FRIGGIN' WEEK!!! MY MONTH!!! (She calls me "Beautiful"! hehe As in "Hey, Beautiful!" How hot is that!)

Sorry I haven't made and entry lately, but it's kind of been more of the same... I spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday trying to figure out what I was going to write before Tuesday.

Then, Monday morning, just before I was going to turn in for the night, inspiration struck and I churned out just over 7 pages!!! (I consider anything between 5 and 10 pages good, but if I turned in only 5 I would feel guilty.)

Also, my friend Lothar -- who is new to SecondLife -- has inspired me to want my own residential house. For years, the thought of a residential home in SL seemed kind of silly because once I log off, I cease to be until I log in again, during which time I'm unlikely to spend much time in my house.

However, lately I've been just sort of hanging out in SL again. PLUS, Lothar has this dream pad that made me want one, lol.

Besides, though I haven't been able to duplicate the success of writing a script in Thoreau's cabin by Walden Lake in SL, I'd like to try. (Come Monday night when I don't have any pages written yet, I always wish I could escape some place cool to do my writing. Maybe a groovy SL pad could be such a writing nook.) (Maybe... Worth a shot.)

Plus, besides hanging with my baby in SL, I'm never more happy than when I'm making something!

So you can expect picks in a week or two.

What else...?

OH!!! LOST RETURNS TOMORROW!!! :D My friend Tommy is throwing a Season premiere party! I already told him that I wasn't going to be able to make it, then my boss came in late tonight and told me I'm off tomorrow!!! So now I just have to wait for Tommy to wake up, get my text messages and emails, and get back to me, lol.

Worst Case Scenario: I'm off on the busiest day of my work week and finish building my SL hose, then watch the Season Premiere Friday or saturday, when it goes online, lol. ;P

Hope you all have a FANTASTIC Thursday!!! (And the rest of the week, too!!!)

PEACE!!! :D

CLOVERFEILD ROCKS!!!

I finished the pages (all of them) that I hoped to finish yesterday.

So today has been a day of drinking and celebration. :)

I watched CLOVERFIELD online, and I CAN'T WAIT to see it on the Big Screen!!! :D

Know that I would prefer to see movies Opening Weekend, and to be able to pay for the tickets, and help influence the weekend box office grosses. But I'm not a rich man or a "man of means" and therefor, I must enjoy what I enjoy by any means I stumble across, lol.

But the point is that CLOVERFIELD is a WORK OF GENIUS!! :D

It's what I hoped the American GODZILLA would be!!!

It may be one of the GREATEST monster movies EVER MADE!!! :D

Okay.. I'm going to hang out in SecondLife for a while.

PEACE!!!

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY-GODDESS!!! xoxoxo

:D

I Should Be Writing

Well, technically I am...

About 80% of writing is thinking about writing, trying to come up with what happens next.

Or, put another way, about 80% of writing is procrastination.

So writing this blog entry is actually part of the process.

WE'RE CAUGHT UP ON LOST!!! I finished Season 3 last night! :D Now it's all about waiting for January 31st!

And I'm on Level 8 of TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY! That's really cool for me! I've made it to Level 8: "Tomb of Tehocan" in Greece. 6 more levels to go! In fact, once I get to Level 9 I'll have beat Peru and Greece and will be in Egypt for another 3 levels.

So that's cool.

I was worried about the gorillas, and -- it turns out -- rightly so. They're BASTARDS! I mean, they're not all that hard to kill, but they always manage to do damage to you, and they always show up in 2s!

And the game's not shy about sicking them on you! "You're leaving a room? COUPLE OF GORILLAS!" "You're entering a room? COUPLE OF GORILLAS!" "You're leaving that room? A GORILLA AND A LION!" "Entering another room? COUPLE OF GORILLAS!"

And they're scary, too! I mean, mowing down zombies is creepy, but seeing a couple of realistic-looking gorillas hurtling toward you is terrifying on some deep-down primitive level.

LOVE TO MY SWEET THANG!!! xoxoxo

I haven't heard from my Gnomey-Goddess for a while now, so I'm guessing she's up to her sweet tush in work.

I'm gonna go now.

I want to crank out 15 pages tonight, so I should probably stop procrastinating.

PEACE!!!

:D

LMAO!!! :D

I don't know if my last blog conveyed the SHEER HEAVEN that Brian's sushi was, but we FEASTED on more sushi than you can eat at a buffet! Seriously, if we had paid for the quality/quantity of sushi we consumed a few nights ago, we'd have to sell both our cars and take out, like, 3 more credit cards!

I mean, have you ever felt FULL from SUSHI?!!

I ate one meal that day: Brian's sushi feast!

Okay, so, to give you a little context... Money's tight. (Not a big surprise in my life, but I managed to pay off ALL my bills, so it's particularly tight this paycheck.) I've allotted myself $2 for a meal each working day. There are these great, microwavable Chinese cartons for about $2 (I'm fond of the Chicken & Rice, but the Garlic Shrimp left me a bit dissatisfied) as well as a few bowls of instant Chinese noodles (the dry kind that you add water to and nuke), and as I came home this morning I was pondering what I might grab on my way to work tonight.

I have also been craving corn dogs for a few weeks now.

No idea why.

BUT...!!!

I discovered these Hill Country Fare coorn dogs with beef franks THAT ARE REALLY GOOD!!!

They're nuke-able, and they come 5 to a $2-package...

So...

If I have a fairly large breakfast (at 6:30 pm, lol) before I go into work, then I can make a meal out of 2 of them, and I have 3 for a meal the next day!

Now, I just want to clarify that this isn't a telathon, and I'm not asking for donations, lol. I'm actually having a great time at the moment, and I find our financial... challenges... kind of quaint! I've lived long enough to know that when I sell that million-dollar screenplay or novel (or I win the lottery, or whatever) I'm going to look back on THIS very time in my life with a sort of odd fondness. Perhaps even a wistful sort of longing. (The Past -- once we've survived it -- often seems preferable to the Present. Sometimes I recall my first few years in Austin, living with my parents again -- most of my day spent pounding away on a primitive "Brother Word Processor" on a third- or forth-hand particle-board desk -- with a pang of nostalgia. Go figure, lol.)

So anyway...

I open the fridge and see a Tupperware container with two tiny notes stuck on it:

"Sushi for you OK" and "You Are Happy!"

LMAO!!! :D

Brian and I often rejoice in what is known as "Engrish" -- those wonderfully enthusiastic signs and slogans translated from Asian languages into English! NEWS RADIO did an episode called "Super Karate Monkey Death Car" in which Jimmy James writes an autobiography that doesn't sell well, but it sells really well in Japan, so he has it translated back into English and resold here in the states, to hilarious result! (It inspired a blog entry not long ago.)

Engrish (or Janglish) ads and signage are particularly genius!!! "Go Skating Funny Boy! Just Stand There, Don't Fire Back!" "Please would paper chuck in wastebin Thank you!" "Let's Play! Become delghtful time!" "Sunny Town Erection Party 21" "Please don't worry if a fire is occurring. Our hotel has reliable scattering facilities to ensure you evacuate safely."

And so on, lol.

Anyway, so finding Brian's "Sushi For You OK You Are Happy!" was a fantastic way to wrap up my day on SO MANY levels!!! :D

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[Erm... Political Correctness Check: Please know that it is not my intention to mock a people, culture or hemisphere here. The Asian languages are said to be the most complex and subtle on the planet, and I have no doubt that that if I attempted to speak them, the results would be equally -- if not more -- hysterical. I normally don't give a flying fuck about "political correctness", but it's also not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings.

Except my friend Kelly!

If he's reading this, I hope he's crying like the little baby he is!

YOU HAVE A GIRL'S NAME, DUDE!!!]


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[Okay, Political Correctness Check #2: Please know that above, it wasn't my intention to mock men named Kelly. Just my best friend, who happens to be named JORDAN KELLY! I mean, come on! JORDAN KELLY!

CRY, BITCH!]

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[P. C. Check #3: Okay, I didn't mean to hurt the feelings of ANY Jordan Kellys -- or even Kelly Jordans -- EXCEPT my buddy.

I love him dearly, and he's one of my bestest, bestest friends EVER.

But I like to make him cry.]

Hey! You Got Yourself A Fish Biscuit! :)

I've spent the last 3 days on a mysterious island with Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley, and on the planet Virgo where humans will have begun colonizing the planet in 3010.

Both places, you may have guessed, are fictitious, lol.

Brian & I have finished Disc 3 of Season 3 of LOST! ("It only took the polar bears 2 hours." "How many of them were there?")

And then, naturally, I've been working on my novel.

But I'm declaring "Brain-Fry" and taking the day off.

I woke up to Brian in the kitchen looking like...

Well, looking like this...



There's some backstory here...

I think it was after we finished Disc 5 of Season 2 of LOST, we're jonesing for more LOST but we've got to wait for Netflix to send us the next discs. So we went back to Season 1...

Now Brian is sort of a culinary adventurer, and so when Jin makes some mysterious something (that the filmmakers never show us, but which everyone on the island is reluctant to eat) Brian gets this obsession with the idea of mastering sushi.

He wants to make sushi.

Now, we're drinking at this point and we're broke, so I go online -- Wikipedia, natch -- and learn a few basics about sushi.

First off, what we know as sushi is makazushi, the rolled form.

Also, the green/purple "skin" that holds the rice and stuff in place is called "nori" and it's made out of an edible seaweed.

When I go shopping for the weekend's groceries, I find some rice and nori that's designed to make sushi-making easy.

I buy it, and Brian tries it out and it's delicious!

But Brian's not satisfied.

So a few days later he buys some sheets of nori, and stuff to put inside the sushi, and so I wake up to Zushimon's Sushi Lab...






I can't wait to try it! :D

I heard Brian moaning with ecstasy a minute ago... I'm guessing that was the sound of him trying his first peice of sushi and judging it satisfactory, lol.

Oh, and the pirate getup... No idea...

I mean, sushi is seafood, and pirates lived on the sea...

I dunno.

But it looks cool, right?

Anyway, I'm gonna check with the Zushimon and see if our sushi's ready yet! :D

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY-GODDESS!!! xoxoxo

*******************************************************************************

UPDATE: Just thought I'd let you know that the sushi was a resounding success!!! The best I've ever tasted!

My brother is a genius!

And now we're laying about, full of sushi and ridiculously contented, lol.

Life can be GOOD! :D

DON'T SHAVE THE MONKEY!!!

I'm at work, battling a sudden need to sleep, as well as a desire to write coupled with a weird sort of block.

Well, it's not a block, really. It's more like... a whiny-baby wish that I had a writing partner who could follow me around and do half the writing, or at least talk to me and encourage me and give me ideas or help me make my ideas better when I do have time to write.

I can so relate to Douglas Adams:

When he wrote the first 2 THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY radio series he had a producer or two and some other creatives around him to bounce ideas off of and generally keep him company as he wrote the scripts...

Then when he wrote the first two novels, he was simply adapting the radio scripts to a different medium...

A combination of the radio series and the first 2 novels then made him internationally famous, and probably more than a little well-off...

Then came time to write the third (but not last) book of the 5-book "trilogy"... This one, I suspect, came with more difficulty, because all he had was what had gone before... But this time he was all alone when he wrote...

While writing the next 2 HHGG novels -- as well as 2 Dirk Gently novels and the non-fiction LAST CHANCE TO SEE -- he gained a reputation for hating to write. He was (in)famous for procrastinating, even to the point that someone from the publishing house would be sent to his home to sit there and wait for him to finish writing each chapter.

What changed between that which made him a famous writer and the rest of his career?

PEOPLE!

While he was writing what made him famous, he was surrounded with creative folks to help keep him inspired and encouraged and (presumably) having fun while he wrote.

AFTER he became a famous, successful writer, he was left alone to do it by himself.

I, similarly, began my creative endeavors as an actor in community theatre. Always people around, and the acting (and costume and makeup and set-building) got done between long stretches of laughter and fun and craziness.

But writing -- unless you have a partner or a writers' room -- takes place in solitary confinement; you're often told to shut people out and explain to them that you need to not be disturbed while you're writing.

I think writing would be better if it were a group sport, somehow, lol.

Blah.

Anyway...

DUDE!!!

Yesterday before work, I managed to conquer Level 4: Tomb of Qualopec!

Then today before work, I managed to tackle Level 5: St. Francis' Folly!!! :D

I'm just cruising right along!

I am SO NOT looking forward to the bosses at the latter levels, but I've got about 7 levels to go before I even need to start worrying about that.

HOWEVER...

The next level is Coliseum, and I don't mind telling you I'm terrified of the gorillas and the crocodiles!!!

I mean, I've played the first 2 TRs a couple dozen times, and it's scary whenever you run into a gorilla or a T-Rex or something... And that's with graphics which are a bit embarrassing nowadays, lol!

When I ran into the raptors and the T-Rex in TR Anniversary I very nearly soiled myself! :O The state-of-the-art graphics make the adversaries just a million times more intimidating and scary!

And I caught a screencap of the gorillas in TR Anniversary...!!! :O

On the one hand, there is a crazy part of me that can't wait to experience it, to see just how difficult they are to defeat...

On the other hand, there's the saner part of me that prefers to scale ledges and hop around obstacles, free from the threat of dismemberment, lol.

I mean, like, the BEARS! The old-school bears were fairly innocuous: Big brown representations of an animal that SHOULD be scary, but just really isn't.

The bears in TR Anniversary? They LOOK like BEARS!!! You know, those thousand-pound monsters that can kill you with a single swipe of their claws!

Tomb Raider rules! :D

OOH!

And Brian & I have finished Season 2 of LOST, and should be getting the first 3 discs of Season 3 in the mail tomorrow!!! :D That's really exciting!

I considered helping the time pass here by watching a couple of episodes tonight, but I felt a bit guilty watching them without my bro.

It's more fun watching the show with him anyway!

Okay, I'm gonna go pretend to be busy.

PEACE!!! :D

I Think I'm Getting Over It...

It's Tuesday before I'm supposed to go back into work, and I think I'm actually going to be able to.

So yay there. :)

I report this with cautious optimism, though, because I came down with this junk (a sort of persistant chest cold, not a full-on flu, thankfully) New Year's Day, and I thought I was just about over it when I went into work last Wednesday.

I stayed at work for 2 1/2 hours. :(

Then I called-in for every day last week. :(

I started feeling a bit better Sunday. Like I really am on the other side of this. The "getting well" side.

We'll see.

But I've been writing the last 2 days. Before Sunday, if I even tried to write my brain just didn't function.

See, when I write -- even just a blog entry or an email -- it feels like there is some not-physical substance that resides inside me, and like I'm tugging this substance out.

Imagine a closet door that is jammed and can't be opened very wide, and you've got a huge, puffy comfortor in there. You reach in, grab a handful, and just tug! You pull out as much as you can until you've forced the whole thing through that narrow opening.

That's what writing feels like for me. (Like, when I sit down to start writing. There are different ways to describe the feeling when I'm actually writing.)

Before this shift happened Sunday, I couldn't get any of that comfortor through the closet door. It just wouldn't come.

So, I think I may actually, genuinely, be on the mend.

At the very least, I hope I'm well enough to get back to my job. I'd hate for them to realize they don't really need me there, lol. ;P

DUDE!!! LOST!!! :D

Brian and I have watched the first 5 discs of Season 2 of LOST! We're waiting for the last 2 discs, as well as the first 3 from Season 3, to show up in the mail now.

And check this out: I discovered tonight that we don't actually have to wait for Netflix! You can watch episodes from all 3 seasons of LOST online!!!

How cool is that?!! :D

We have the first season on dvd, though, so we're just rewatching Season 1 for the time being.

Oh, and speaking of the genius that is J. J. Abrams... CLOVERFIELD!!! I've been obsessing about that, too. I did a little research into the Dharma Initiative, which lead me to researching LOST more generally, and the LOST EXPERIENCE, and it turns out that CLOVERFIELD is being marketed in the same viral fashion that Abrams & Co. market LOST!

Check it out: Here are some viral promotional websites for Slusho, Tagruato and TidoWave. The first 2 are fictitious corporations (that have something to do with the events -- or the events behind the events -- in the movie) and the third one is a fictitious group that is protesting the activities of one of the corporations.

How friggin' COOL is THAT?!!

The Tagruato one has an update about "an altercation" that happened "at the Chaui Station", but assures us that "Tagruato is taking every measure necessary to ensure the safety and well being of all staff and crew." :) I'm guessing this is setting up backstory for the events that will unfold in the movie.

Then the TidoWave site has a post from 1-5 that warns:

"Do NOT return to The Farm. It’s crawling with agents on Tagruato’s payroll. It’s a set up!!!"

I mean, how cool is that?!! No idea what it means, but then I'm not suppose to! I'm just supposed to start imagining things and asking questions.

And I am! :)

What's insane to me is that my friend Kelly and I have been talking about cool ways to make a story (a movie, a novel, whatever) this cross-platform experience that sort of engulfs the person experiencing it. We've come up with some amazingly groovy ideas, too!

But then I discover that Abrams & his collaborators ARE DOING IT! These cats really are spreading their stories into these deeply textured psuedo-realities! :D

Very cool!

Okay, I'm rambling now.

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! :D xoxoxo

Okay, going away now.

PEACE!!! :D

What Color Do Hallucinations Taste Like?

I don't think I'm currently living in the real world, lol.

I've been in bed since this past Monday, getting up long enough to try to go to work Wednesday, but only making it for 2 and a half hours. I've been doing the hand test, checking my forehead with my hand to see if I have a fever, and my face is never hot enough that I think I do have one.

But I feel REALLY trippy at the moment!

I woke up this morning in straight-up pain, coughing and hacking as though my lungs had dissolved overnight, but now I'm just in this weird state, where reality seems to be behaving in a way other than what I expect it to.

I mean, I'm not talking to my deceased father or anything, but reality isn't acting entirely real at the moment.

I WANNA BE WELL AGAIN! :(

You hear that expression "At least you've got your health" and you SO take it for granted! But even if you have bills piling up that you can't pay, you really have a lot if your body's working correctly!

I keep a few music videos on my iPod, one of which is Pink's "U + Ur Hand" -- (1) because she's hot, (2) because it's a bad-ass, rockin' song, and (3) because it, for some reason, reminds me of my baby, who is the one that introduced the song to me -- and I swear the video kept changing tempos on me as I watched it. :( I can't possibly be in my right mind at the moment.

Or... Perhaps Reality isn't behaving correctly at the moment... Maybe Reality has a cold...

I guess that's equally possible...

Maybe...

Maybe I should return to bed and stop pestering you with my madness, lol.

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! :D

Peace!!! :)

Bloggin' From The Sickbed...

I'm taking a break from fevered dreams and going to sleep freezing and waking up covered in sweat...

Night before last, I wanted to write a quirky blog about what I like about being sick, lol.

It would have entailed the sensation extravaganza of being too hot and too cold in one's bed, and the sort of fun of trying to find that balance.

But then I went to work last night... and came home... And now I'm sort of lost in the uncomfortable-ness of being sick.

So I can't write that blog entry anymore. :(

See, when I was young, back in school, and I would get sick, it was kind of like playing Hooky, only with more restrictions. I could lay in bed and watch movies on the VHS, and that was kind of cool.

And the last time I remember being this sick was a year or two ago, and while I tossed and turned in bed I watched EVEL KNIEVEL and SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. I even watched HIS GIRL FRIDAY on my ZVue!

So when I spent 2 days tossing and turning and jumping from freezing to sweating bullets, I blissfully thought I was simply processing a cold.

Then I went to work...

It was the first day I was scheduled to return after my 2-week vacation.

I thought "I've been in bed for 2 days... I'm surely on the upside of whatever this is."

And hour and a half into my shift, I discovered I was not. :(

NOW I remember why it sucks so much to be sick. :(

When I got home last night, after 2 1/2 hours of my shift, I popped PRINCE CASPIAN into my CD player to help me drift off to sleep as peacefully and pleasantly as possible...

I had THE STRANGEST DREAMS!

I don't remember much about the narrative of the dreams -- and there were many -- but I remember that they all had to do with going to sleep freezing beneath sheets and comfortors, and waking up -- literally -- soaked in sweat!

And there was a lot of confusion about The Way The Kingdom Was Back Then and The Way The Kingdom Is Now. But I don't recall the particulars.

See, I've got a strange relationship to illness because, from my perspective, it's just part of being a human. However... DAMN it hurts! lol

This New Years Eve and New Year's Day was mostly me laying on the couch and Brian & me watching TWILIGHT ZONE episodes.

And that was fun! Please don't get me wrong.

But if I had paid more close attention to my body and what it was telling me, I might (MIGHT) have noticed that it was descending into a cold. :(

Still...

Okay, sitting upright in a chair is making me all kinds of dizzy at the moment, so I'll bring this to a close...

One thing that SO helps the human body's recovery process is contact with those you love... My baby called me today after work, and it was SO AMAIZING!!! For those however-many-minutes she and I chatted, I felt just fine! (Besides the odd gut-wrenching-cough from time to time, lol.) My baby ALWAYS makes me feel better than I did before!!! (Bless her!)

Another thing that helps one recover, I believe, is a decent dvd library, lol. Brian & I are watching the second season of LOST, but while I've been recovering, I've been falling asleep to the first season of LOST, as well as THE COMPLETELY MENTAL MISADVENTURES OF ED GRIMLY and (less successfully) THE CHRONCLES OF NARNIA audio books.

Now, granted, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA didn't help me out a great deal... But I believe that's because of the episode I picked, rather than the series as a whole.

But I wouldn't have answered the call from My Baby if I hadn't been home, sick...

So I have to conclude that -- whatever the inconveniences -- being ill DOES play an integral part of being ALIVE. :)