Cheers

I have 44 submissions sitting there unread in my Thrice box for issue 5. I'm thinking of just having pictures in the next issue. Maybe we'll make a comic book. We have great art in our magazine but I haven't heard one word spoken about the writing. Nothing. Oh well, in law silence gives consent.

NewPages and Review Review have notified me that they have the advance copies and there will be published reviews... some time.

I'm on vacation for the next eleven days. I have a list of things I want to accomplish around the house. The evenings will be spent going through these submissions and trying to do something of my own once in a while.

I really love baseball. You can sit there and watch the old 19th-century game and not have to bother with anybody.

Easter was okay. I spent most of the day avoiding the three drunks in the garage. We celebrate the Jesus dude rising from the dead with shots and beers and race jokes and humor at the expense of missing relatives who are in trouble. Doesn't pay to be a no-show at our parties. I spent most of my time watching the last round of the Masters, and I can't STAND golf. So that should tell you right there how that day went.

I've written myself a strict schedule for my vacation week. Did I mention I have a lot of work to do around the house? Painting, straightening, cutting, digging, fixing. I should have been a monk. An aesthete. A hermit. I like having a strict schedule so I can keep from falling apart.

That's all I got.

Pack Rat

I don't know how it is I end up being such a pack-rat, aka slob. Just spent the better part of the evening straightening up my office and carted a full regular-sized garbage bag downstairs for the Monday trash.

Catalogs for stamp auctions I participated in and are OVER (again, I'll brook no ridicule that I collect stamps. I can live off them for a while if worse ever comes to worse. So wimp this, sucker).

Bits and sheets and napkins and notebook rip-outs I've used to write things on for stuff I am currently or want to eventually write. Worse because they've already long ago been put into the work and I don't need them any more.

More bits and sheets and napkins and notebook tear-outs I've used to give numerical values to baseball players for fantasy leagues, horse racing figures and notes I'll use for going to the OTB. Worse because I've used all the info already (and am ahead for the year, horse racing-wise).

Notes I've written to myself LAST YEAR about music I want to add to my holy iPod.

Recipes I've already transferred to my recipe book a long time ago, for Chrise sakes.

Unattended sheets from the tear-off daily calendar on my desk. Dude, seriously?

Plus all the usual whatnot.

Then there's the stuff I keep for whatever reason and just needed to organize.

My collection of anarchist publications and brochures which were all over the place. Including my correspondence with Fred Woodworth.

A list of places I'd rather be living in than the USA. I put this is my journal. Yes I keep a journal and, no, none of that ever sees the light of day here. Then I threw it away because I already know where I'd go if I ever could, because I love America but can't stand Americans. So never mind.

Movie and TV show CD cases that have been separated from their disks, plus the disks that wind up here and there. It's a pet peeve of mine - CDs not returned to their cases. And I - as it turns out - am the biggest criminal in that regard.

Mail that should have been mailed last week.

The cards from the 1911 baseball season purchased from Strat-O a couple years ago which, in the wee hours of some mornings as I live this insane schedule, sometimes gets its schedule played and games recorded, solitaire, and ends up here and there. Ty Cobb's Tigers on top of a history of the Negro Leagues. Oh the irony!

My 3rd grade reading book that I found on Ebay and won. I have no idea why it is under the stack of New Yorkers I subscribe to. Nor do I understand how my model train parts catalog ended up under all the Thrice copies. Sheesh.

Not to mention the Minutes from Western Yearly Meeting I've been bringing home and never reading.

More whatnot, of the keeping variety.

I look at this stuff and I wonder just who the hell I am sometimes. There's so much contradictory stuff.

Not only that, but I still think Spike Lee's Malcolm X is one of the best American movies ever made. Here's a scene near the end just before the Nation of Islam guns him down...

Where I'll Be

What starts now is my period of wage slavery at the hands of good church-going Catholics everywhere who only show up on Easter and Christmas. They have a name for that kind of attender but I can't remember what it is. Anyway I owe my income to these folks because for those two holidays we have to put in a ton of overtime making 50% more bulletins than we normally do for all 1722 churches we handle around the country. So I may not be around much as of tomorrow all the way up to Easter. In the meantime I've posted a picture of a pretty little Spanish woman who was part of the anarchist militias in 1937.

Hey I found out today that Rush Limbaugh's show is put on by Clear Channel, and that the company that has Clear Channel in their portfolio is something called Bain Capital. So see? Who says Governor Romney doesn't have conservative credentials? He owns - oh alright used to own - a piece of ol' cyst butt. Seems as though Rush, the voice and conscience of the GOP, is having a little trouble these days. But he'll weather the storm. Losing a few sponsors with so many on the waiting list is not a big deal. There are plenty of companies looking to sell products to conservatives and Republicans. Burial plots. Gout remedies. Viagra. Happy pills. Nazi collectables. Nude photos of Ayn Rand. Phone numbers of available little boys for fun and profit. Bibles. Investment property in Utah. That kind of thing.

Funny if you characterize black people by some stereotype you lose your radio job, but do it to a woman and nothing happens.

To be any part of the Republican Party these days I guess you have to be real crabby. It seems to be their cultural trait nowadays. Angry white guys unite!

I'm hoping and praying for, and willing to actually send money to, Senator Santorum's campaign. I have a driving need to see him carry the GOP banner this fall. Since there will end up being virtually no difference between Governor Romney and President Obama the potential for entertainment this campaign seems very low. We need Senator Santorum now!

I see also where the Speechdollars (it's a word I made up to label the money given by faceless PACS who can now spend unlimited funds on lies and treachery and be protected by the 1st Amendment, meaning that their speech is freer than your speech simply because you can't afford to broadcast your lies like they can broadcast theirs) have been being spent by the millions already just among the Republicans. There's a robocall going around Ohio right now telling people they can "Vote for Santorum and American values or vote for homosexuality and Romney." Wow. Just... wow. I hope you members of the GOP reading this right now are proud of yourselves.

Dumbasses.

So anyway sorry to say you won't be seeing much of my happy happy thoughts for a while. No doubt the conservatives among you are quite satisfied with that. But in the meantime you can always visit my official website that went online a while ago.

Also, get ready for issue #4 of Thrice. I saw some of the first "rushes" from dave2 this weekend and it's so good it will rot your liver. We're guessing it'll be out by the 18th. I may be back for a little while before then. Who knows.

Hey, my old magazine got listed at Read/Write (formerly the Underground Library) in Chicago. Here's our page.

Oh and here's Charlize. Darken her hair and sling a rifle over her shoulder and she could almost be part of the militia. Hmmm...

I Survived

And it also turns out that Rocco is one of the most gracious, thoughtful, and inclusive guys I've seen in some time. Here he is in Donnie Brasco in a scene with Pacino and Depp (click to make larger). It's not that I was expecting him to be some kind of snob or something - I remember him as a pretty quiet guy in school - but I was impressed that he even remembered me and shared some personal asides with me during the proceedings. Now you know I couldn't pass it up, so when they were giving his credits and mentioned that he'd been in "Far and Away" with Tom Cruise I simply had to lean over to him on the stage and whisper "I here Tom Cruise still can't fly," to which - in all honesty - he almost lost it there for a second. So, yeah, a cool dude. When I first walked up to him he seemed pretty glad to see me and shook my hand very warmly. But I did tell him who I was just in case first so he wouldn't be embarrassed.

As for the talk I had to give I had two missions given to me by the organizer, who is a teacher there and also someone who was a fellow alum of ours from that era. If I had an anecdote about Rocco, that would be very much sought after. And if I could say something about the effect teachers have on their students that would also be appropriate. So I parsed it into two parts under the idea that "there are 2 things I share with Rocco Sisto." The first was a thing that happened to us when we were in a play together and the second was our theater director/teacher - which led me into the desired "few positive words" for the faculty.

I decided to go without notes because I knew that if I brought anything up with me to the microphone I'd probably just end up reading it and none of it would have worked. This, of course, made my terrors even more pronounced. I didn't sleep well at all the night before, until I took a little killer and for a while that didn't even seem like it was going to work. Just before we went on stage I completely blanked. I had no recollection of what I planned to say. When it started I wanted the people ahead of me to just keep going. Maybe it would never come my way.

But it was not to be avoided. Sooner or later the ball would be passed to me and I'd have to do something. Somehow.

The way I used to handle it was just to get my feet moving and get up there. No matter how I felt, I just moved. That's how I'd always done it and that's how I did it yesterday. Like somebody who never jumped out of a plane straps a parachute on and just says "oh well what the hell" and jumps, trusting the conclusion to God and the forbearance of reptiles. This is how I always did it. Why not do it now?

Once I got to the microphone I was fine. Because I didn't have notes to check I made eye contact with the audience and engaged them at every moment. They laughed when they should have laughed. I even got (I talked to Sligo after it was over and told him the same, and it's true) one belly laugh. My problem, as it has ever been, is that I can't for the life of me remember what I got the score with. I don't remember what, exactly, it was that I said. But there was supposed to be a laugh there so it worked out. I just didn't gauge how loud it was going to be. But, you know, you get chuckles within the first minute and you know they're with you. They did everything they were supposed to do. So it worked out in the end.

I talked to my wife on the phone and she said I'm just silly. In his email Sligo more or less sounded like he knew nothing bad was going to happen. And a couple people came up to me during the reception afterward and gave me some positive feedback as well. So I guess I did have a support system after all. Well I'll be damned.

I had a picture taken with Rocco on my camera but the person taking it didn't frame the picture well at all and we look like we are standing a hundred miles away. So I'm not putting it on here and of course I have no idea when that chance will ever happen again. Oh well.

During his talk he told a very funny and self-deprecating story about the time he was walking his dog in a park (he lives in Manhattan). He's going along and someone comes up and says "excuse me." And, as he told it, he thought - aha, here it is. Someone recognizes me from something and they're going to tell me how much they like me. But then the person said "I'm a casting director," and - as he explained - he immediately thought - aha, here it is, this guy recognized me and is going to give me the role of a lifetime just like they did with Lana Turner. Then he goes "I said to myself, I'm going to be Lana Turner!!" (you see this is my kind of humor already, I know). And then he said "the guy wanted to know if he could take a picture of my dog."

Turns out Rocco's dog has now done several commercials.

That was pretty funny. He was also pretty up front about the realities of the business. He's not a star, he explained, but a working actor for 30 years and pretty proud of that. He explained that at any given moment a large percentage of actors who are members of their union - I think he said something like 90% - have no jobs. No jobs equals no income. So to be in stuff from Matlock and NYPD Blue and Star Trek (I forgot to tell him how much I enjoyed seeing an Italian Vulcan, dammit) was good enough, considering the obstacles.

Turns out he's going to stay in town a few days and actually give a few lab sessions with the high school actors who are putting on a play this very weekend. So, yeah like I said, a cool dude.

Everything worked out A-Ok. Then I went to work and punched in. Then I worked all night and got home an hour ago. Then I wrote you this. Oh and on the subject of working... the shop looked pretty dismal after all that showbiz stuff but I'm still happy to have a regular paycheck, and even Rocco said his advice to people starting out as actors was "don't quit your day job if you don't have to."

So it turns out Rocco is an OK guy who is very realistic about the way things are but also blessed with a lifetime of working at something he loves. And he doesn't need the stardom everyone seeks at the beginning. By the way he has a new movie out called A Bird of the Air, the trailer of which looks kind of interesting (no he's not in the trailer). But it's like an indie flick so you might have to go some to find it. Here's Rocco's blurb from the cast list.

So anyway if you happen to see the guy in a commercial or another supporting role somewhere with some big name over-acting super star, just nudge the person you're with and say "that's Rocco Sisto. And he's a pretty cool guy."

Late One Night

Been working long hours. Fifty hours a week. Sometimes more. There's more to come too. From now until the end of the year. I suppose I should be grateful. Time and a half is the workingman's bonus. There won't be any others. Since I work overnight sometimes my mind has a tendency to wander. This is not always a good thing. I hate when I remember things that are embarrassing in some way, out of the blue, and I have to go through feeling stupid all over again, but there I go.

Tuesday is the day I go to my old high school to do seven minutes in front of an assembly being put on to honor Rocco. It would be easier if I didn't have a history of the terrors before I have to go in front of people. But I better get this handled. The only way out is through. I know what I got is humorous enough, but I have to deliver it right. It's the complexity of nailing it that gets me nervous. I know what I wrote, and if it's done well it'll be a great addition to the proceedings. That's the hard part... doing it well.

I used to be pretty good in front of people. I have no confidence now, topped by a poor self-image. It's going to be a struggle, but a major win if I can pull it off. Who knows.

It's the night we push the clocks back an hour and I don't know why we do that. I never knew why we do that. I'm glad to get the extra hour to play with since I'm working Monday and worked this last Friday and am clocking so many damn hours. Tuesday's going to be crazy because I'll be on the clock Monday overnight, then have to show up at the high school Tuesday afternoon, and then go in to work after that - overnight. So I'm either going to be a complete mess or so whacked that everything will go just fine but I won't be able to remember it. I'm getting kind of old here.

To make matters worse my wife will be out of town next week. Not that she can always get available to be a support system for me, but it means I'll be walking into the Tuesday thing alone. Either a Christian before the lions or some other, more positive, metaphor i can't think of right now. But I'm repeating myself.

The whole thing is yet another of my "mystery achievements" - stuff I do that my broader family has no idea is going on. Like stuff I've published, Thrice, this little speech thing. Not that they'd care. I'm just the weird cousin/uncle/brother to those folks. So what the hell. Doesn't matter.

At the same time this week my nephew (more specifically my great-nephew) is being shipped off to Afghanistan and I still don't know what the hell we're bothering for. But he's a Marine, and a Recon Marine to boot (meaning - you know - Marines are assault troops and always the first in... and Recon Marines go in ahead of THEM so... yeah). So in the big picture my little nerve problem is pretty insignificant, by comparison. My wife bought him a St. Michael medal (patron saint of the Marines) and we're not even Catholic. Well he is, so there's that.

I remember when he was a baby. Gad...

Little Nothings

Yesterday I was taking the MINI in for it's yearly check-up at the doctor's office and shelling out $600 worth of tune-up shtick and so forth. It's just a "drive in when you feel like it we'll be done in a couple hours" set-up so I always go to the bookstore a little ways down the road to browse, read and have some coffee while I wait.

Of course all this does is reinforce the fact that I find it difficult to read fiction for pleasure any more. I don't get the same enjoyment from it that I used to. It doesn't have anything to do with editing Thrice because when I'm reading submissions people send that's for a whole other reason and I am actively looking for things. I'm talking about the feeling I got when I discovered Bruno Shulz or quite accidentally fell upon the genius of Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan). It's not happening for me any more.

It's not because there aren't great things going on out there, even great old things I probably haven't discovered yet. The problem is I can't help but look at everything with a critical eye now. Again that's not because of the Thrice gig. It's more because I've grown more and more vicious regarding my own stuff and I find it carrying on to everything I read.

I mean it's not wholly unusual. Many's the time I would be reading, even in my yoot, something like, say, Arthur Conan Doyle. And I'd be happily wallowing in the atmosphere of the Great Detective's world only to come upon YET ANOTHER example of Doyle's stilted, ridiculous, unreal, affected, and amateurish dialog and throw the book across the room in disgust. So this isn't a new phenomenon.

It's just I find the feeling enhanced as of late.

Like I said, it's not just me-to-others. Mostly it's me-to-myself. I'll open up work I did just yesterday and I don't like the sentence structure or I see that this would have been better said with 40% less verbiage, or that whole paragraph has all the signs of being overworked, or this vignette has no business anywhere in the work at all. And I delete with relish. I think - and this is no exaggeration - I must write 40,000 words for every 2,000 I keep. And that's a conservative estimate.

So I either obviously suck at this or I'm hyper-anal. I guess it depends which day you catch me.

Back at the bookstore - I picked up two "literary" magazines. You know, the well-funded kind nobody in real life actually reads. And I'm going through them and I keep shaking my head. No no no. Oh God don't say it that way. Are you trying to be Victor Hugo? And so forth.

I finished my coffee and decided to head back to the car, convinced I could easily contribute something to either one of these two booklets in the future since what they're accepting is just so much shit.

And then I get home and go through my pile of things never submitted anywhere, only to find I don't like anything in it and no matter what I sent it would need a major overhaul before I'd feel good about presenting it. And there I am, convinced I could do better than these shmucks one minute and certain I don't have anything worthwhile to send the next.

Welcome to my world.

Well that's my lament today. In thirty minutes I've got to go off to my real job. 40 hours in three days begins in 3... 2... 1.

It's okay though. It was pointed out to me that, though my schedule is intense and all-consuming for 72 hours, I only actually work twelve days a month. That's a sustaining thought anyway.

----------------------------------------------------
Oh and, may I be permitted a "blast from the past" from an old blog post of mine? Why yes. Yes I may...

SEPARATED AT BIRTH...?

Sorry, couldn't resist. I just got done telling someone how I dislike celebrating revenge and now I go and republish this photo set. Just kill me now...

Didn't Feel Like Making The Bullets Though

This was always one of those strange, enigmatic paintings that make you look twice. Ferdinand Hodler's Night from 1890. It's just a little disturbing unless you don't really look at it. Um... what?? Doesn't look like the dude is too happy with it.

Yes and after last night's list I'm sure you see by now that I am attracted to things that are just a little bit off. Oh well... "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state of a small city."

Since I'm up most of the night now I just came in from setting out the garbage for the service in the morning. I got some kind of strange little joy rumbling out the garbage can at 1:30 in the morning - the shank of my day - while everybody on the street is asleep.

Got some news today that's kind of interesting. I'm going to have to have surgery on both my eyes to remove cataracts that have decided to hitch a ride. Both eyes. I guess they're pretty bad and when I told the family I got a lecture about how I don't take care of myself. Things don't change much. Anyway these operations are nothing anymore. I get to have a happy pill and when I'm done I won't have to wear glasses anymore, I'm told. And I'm not sure how I feel about that because I've worn glasses since the third grade. I can't even tell you what I look like without glasses. I'm not even sure I WANT to be without glasses. I'll keep you posted. I don't know when this is all going down.

The lack of interest in Facebook and blogs on my part towards others and others towards me has entered another week. I'm not totally sure what to say at this point. I don't want to talk to angry white conservatives anymore. I don't really have an interest in trends. I had a really good idea the other day. Dave2 wrote this cool posting about how he came up with the artwork for the first issue of Thrice. So I was going to do this bit of me going through the stories with empty liquor bottles and mussed up hair and an original concept drawing of a bunch of squiggles as the goal and clocks saying it's late at night and me getting more and more frazzled. And in my head it was pretty funny but then the idea of taking pictures of myself in various conditions just seemed kind of stupid and I dropped it. So just imagine it, k?

It's all due to a lack of enthusiasm I think. Not that all enthusiasm is gone for everything. Far from that. I'm in the usual dead zone that you get into 20,000 words into a novel where you think it's all shit and you want to start on something else. That usually lasts a week or so and then after trying some detours you're back at the first thing you dropped again. Happens all the time. The last thing I did at about this point I just started over. And I've got four starts for this latest thing and hate them all. Just part of the process I think.

I'm ending a 5 day weekend. It was like a little vacation except for the fact that I had to have the stuffing in my ears I picked up in Florida evacuated from my poor impacted ear canals, the eye doctor's appointment and that news, plus the Easter thing (I'm just not a big fan of the traditional Easter fare I think. In fact I think it's becoming more and more inedible to me). Because it's a Catholic company I work for and the work is overnight we didn't go in on Thursday because that would have taken us into Good Friday and that's a no-no. So we worked Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday instead of Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday for 40 hours plus after 5 days off I'll get an extra 8 hours pay for the holiday. Pretty sweet. I hear Thanksgiving is a 6 day weekend around these parts. Well, after my operation at least I'll be able to see what the plant actually looks like!

Plus I am overcome with the idea that if I were the manager of the 1959 Washington Senators I bet I could have made a run for the pennant that year. But maybe that's a book idea. I can't tell any more.

That's it for now kiddies. Ended up once again needing a dump truck to unload my head. For a guy with nothing to say I sure blab a lot.

What I'm Looking For

Yet another post on the work change. Sorry. It's a rather big step at this point. There is still a legitimate question about being on my feet for a whole shift (it's 3 13 hour days folks. That's kinda scary. A little). Health issues. Stuff I didn't have 14 years ago, the last time I was in a print shop.

I'll be working on equipment as pictured here, btw.

I don't want to have to have an opinion. I don't want to have to talk to young entrepreneurs (most of whom - by my experience - are selfish, conceited, snobbish, unaware of their own foibles and sometimes just outright pricks) any more. I don't want to produce a number out of thin air or sit in meetings where people spend hours looking at charts and Power Point and coming to the same decision they would have four hours before anyway.

I don't want to sit in a bar at a convention and have people look at my watch or other people's watches or talk about how much they nailed down in new commissions last month. I don't want to sit at booths at trade shows and say the same thing over and over again to people who are just trying to look interested but really just want to go home.

I'm tired of having to look and sound like an expert at anything. Tired of talking about politics. Tired of caring about the latest news going on in the country or outside the country, or who said what to enrage who about what on the radio or the TV. Who is screwing who in Hollywood.

I remember standing in a gas station about a year ago this time and listening to people talk. Listening to their cadences. The words they skipped over. The fact that nobody talks in complete sentences. I started putting it into what I was writing. The way people actually talk. Not what reads best. Using the exact phrases and expressions. I remember how the book Huckleberry Finn used the language of the time to create a masterpiece. I remember seeing a couple guys standing there talking about the work they were going to do that day. And I remembered all the times people in one strata of the working world would go out of their way to cut down people like these. And I recall participating, being so smug and special now that I was wearing clean shoes every day, in those days.

And every once in a while I'd feel a little envious of the surety. The 1 -2 - 3.

I used to say - wow, what a relief it would be to be on the clock again. Just come in, do your work, punch out and not have to generate a plan of attack for tomorrow. A presentation in the morning. An organizational excuse. To not have to have a strategy. A four step program to greater success. And then have to have other people judge you on what you think and how you think it.

Of course you're not supposed to take steps back. I can tell you right now that people are already working on how they're going to explain themselves at our high school reunion this year. You can count on it. Well I started out on the crew but now I'm the General Manager to the Vice President In Charge Of Looking Out The Window. Well I'm between jobs right now but molecular epidemiology is my field of expertise.

I'm going to say I print and cut and fold stuff. Let people figure it out from there. Say what they want. Think what they want. Kick themselves for pumping up their status and their position so it sounds real good in the program.

But that's not what I'm trying to say in this post. It's not even where I wanted it to go. It's what I'm looking for that counts right now.

Since the late 90's, when I started on the road to corporate/national sales and blah blah blah, I never did jobs I wanted to do. I did the jobs I had to do, and jumped on every opportunity that just laid itself out for me. And I kind of got away from myself in the bargain. It wasn't until I started saying - admitting - that this wasn't the direction I ever wanted that I started back into seriously, purposefully writing again. I was too busy pushing my energy into travel and sales goals and taking this ridiculously unattractive persona and making it presentable to people. Meeting decision makers. Talking to people with those stupid tassels on their shoes.

And I'm sure I'm romanticizing it. But I do remember being in a mix of people I understood, for all their faults. And my faults. And our warts. You could bite into a wet Italian beef sandwich (it's a Chicago thing, sorry) and drip down your chin and onto the wax paper it was wrapped in and no one is sitting there going "oh heavens, how uncouth." You could stop in a tavern on a Friday and the first thing you buy with a paycheck is a big greasy Reuben with a pitcher of beer. For yourself. Go to poker games where there weren't mixed drinks. Or go to poker games at all. Bowling. What about bowling? You could go bowling.

It's relative, of course. This milieu is full of it's own bullshit too. But at least it'll be my bullshit. The bullshit I'm used to, instead of the rarefied kind I've been in for the last 14 years. There's something to that I think.

We'll see.

Future's Uncertain

Anybody on Facebook who reads me knows by now that I'm changing jobs. You also know that one of the reasons I'm changing jobs is because the current job I'm in hasn't paid me since Christmas. I'm not worried it will come so that's not the issue, but I don't see things changing in the construction business for some time and it isn't going to get better soon. There will be the usual spring-summer increase in projects, from which if I don't get the full pay Friday (my last day) I will get it in time. Can't think about that right now though.

I'm doing something I've been thinking about for a while now.

When we were first married my wife was a check-out person at a local food chain and I worked in a print shop. Both of us had to go to work to support ourselves as soon as possible so college wasn't something I ever finished or she even started until well into our married life. Eventually MrsRW became a nurse and from there she's been escalating her game to where she now trains hospital staffs in advanced medical record keeping something-or-other that takes her on the road for one or two weeks a month. I, on the other hand, went from printing to operating a CNC to the unlikely position of sales and made a lot of money during the building boom.

Now that the building boom has turned into the bubble bust you have companies competing for for a smaller and smaller list of jobs. Until the backlog of unoccupied, foreclosed homes gets whittled down new construction (which the company I'm with relies on) will probably not come back. All we're doing now is homes for the super-rich who don't care what the economy is doing, or low-margin renovations. Hence my pay situation.

So I'm going back to the printing world. As in presses and cutters and folders and collators and staplers and gluers and all that kind of thing. It's been about 14 years so there will be a curve through which I will have to re-learn the trades but I figure in a couple of weeks I should have it down. I was lucky enough to have experienced the computerized breakthrough equipment in the industry a little bit before I left it, so I'm hoping I don't look like a complete idiot once I hit the floor again. I started in this trade at 19, and worked for three different companies for almost 25 years - 19 with one before they closed the plant. So it's a bit like coming home.

It's not as lucrative as the job I'm working right now - when I get paid at all - but it will be steady and for all you working people out there the opportunity for "time and a half" looms pretty large around Easter and Christmas. That's because the company I'm working for in two weeks prints and produces fliers, brochures, newsletters, cards, pamphlets, and all manner of paper products strictly and 100% for the Catholic church in America.

Okay you stop laughing now.

Apparently they can't get enough people. There's more work than they can handle and they just added six people. The place is huge and there are three shifts. I'm starting on the overnight shift which works 2 13 and 1 14-hour days in the middle of the week with a 4 day weekend Friday through Monday. It sounds intense, I know, and I'll have to change my internal clock (I've worked 3rd shift before), but the thought of a 4 day weekend offsets any of the other concerns.

I got the job through networking. I know a sales person for a Catholic book publisher who knows two women at a church who use the products of this company and after I'd sent in my application they sort of bombarded the place with recommendations for me. I'm working on sending flowers all around, don't worry!

This sort of makes the point, though, that Monster.com and CareerBuilder and Indeed.com and Snag-A-Job and all those other job sites I've been sending resumes through for the past six months (sometimes 2 a day) and NEVER GOT AN ANSWER FROM have been particularly useless and pointless for me all along. As many times as I sent out applications (and some of these jobs - with my national sales list of builder guys that I know - were perfect fits... oh well) there were never any responses except for bogus multi-level-marketing schemes (read: PONZI). Without a network you got nothing. In my case it was a small group of Catholic church ladies who started a little campaign in my behalf. Well, after the impetus of my friend in the Catholic publishing world.

So I start March 1 and I'm kind of excited because after years of sales and customer service, where your "product" basically has to be made out of thin air, I'm going to once again have my 'product" right in front of me; physical, tangible, and right at hand. It's kind of like that old scene in Coal Miner's Daughter where Loretta Whatshername gets famous and her hick husband goes to work at a car mechanic's and is contented. I've heard people say it sounds like a step down... and though there is a (temporary) dollar hit until I get up to speed I just don't see it that way. I think folks like that are really snobs. Honest work is honest work. I think folks who have a problem with that need to check their luggage on that one.

Now I don't think this will have much to do with the blog here, and I know it's not going to stop the other writing. Plus I've already scaled this down to once a week with determined intent. But who knows? A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.

Let it roll.

Onward And Sideways! Sorta...

Though it still might be too early to tell, by now you may/may not have gathered a new take on the blog these days. Moving to a weekly post format, and then only when there's something to really say. I have always felt that less is more. Hopefully quality will trump quantity. In any case I've got too many entries where I look back and say... what the hell was I thinking?

It's a product of trying to be more productive and helped me finalize that "book with no name." At last.

And now, I've gone on to the next one - ideas for which began swimming around my head even last month. But I hesitate to say what it is because if I were to look at where I started with the last one and compare it to where I ended up they are two completely different things. Allow me to demonstrate...

The notion for this new one came while I was watching something or other on TV about ancient Egypt. The story was about the occasional pharaoh who was erased from the record or the actions of one pharaoh to erase the memory of one in the past. And I said to myself (I says, says I) "wouldn't it be funny if there was a President we don't know about because all record of him was erased" I says.

And immediately I envision this minor clerk in some government record office finding a document signed with the name of a President nobody ever heard of - the first document found to prove *they* didn't get ALL the evidence destroyed. And it bounds on to cover-ups of cover-ups and is fed by all the weird-o conspiracy theories running rampant out in the real (cough... coughcoughcough) world.

I even began looking through the list of Presidents we've had to see where I could squeeze him in and the most likely place is that bit of weirdness with President Cleveland serving two non-consecutive terms. Not sure exactly how, but something about there.

And from there it went down a side street into a whole dystopian thing. And this - mind you - all in a matter of a week or two and I'm sitting here with an opening scene I stole from something else I wrote and set aside where a guy is sitting at a bar and is literally, physically, falling apart in front of the friend (narrator) he demanded to meet to *tell him something* he's known for years.

And suddenly I'm three miles away from where I started and now if by some chance somebody reads this and steals the idea what can I say? Point being that in two years, maybe three, when I'm done with this one there's really no telling if any part of what I just said will even remotely play a role in what it ends up being.

So there you have it. I'm a nutcase.

And I probably just broke the very rule I started off talking about (re: blogging when there's actually something to say instead of just blithering) by boring you to tears with this latest bit of garbage lightning that goes through my head all the time and may not ever come to anything.

Well, rules were made to be broken. And people with blogs are goofy.

When You Come Right Down To It

I'm generally an optimist.

I always believe it's not as bad as we think it is. I generally feel there's always a chance. I'm pretty much open to new music, new ideas, new people.

I still think I can do it. I have this feeling that something else can always happen.

People who lay out that negative vibe, even if it is negativity disguised in "trying to help," I can usually set aside and walk away from.

I don't much like to hang out with negative people or people who always have an exception, a cutting remark, a justification for their opinion even when it wasn't called for, a desire to interject their critique about something when the drift of the subject points another way. I try to walk away as much as possible. Stay focused. Don't take it to heart. Keep moving.

You point to something funny and they have to tell you why something about that something is something they don't like.

They're very willing to tell you why you need to get "practical" and "down to earth" and live in the "real world," but their own horizons are steeled into a strict, narrow avenue of what is acceptable. Unless of course someone else is doing the exact thing they just criticized you for, and then "they are a great example."

I long ago realized that I'm not going to make everybody happy. I'm not going to satisfy other people's expectations. Nor am I at the mercy of those expectations.

I'm saying all this but I'm not completely sure why. Maybe it's just my inner Stuart Smalley . Maybe I'm honing in on a "resolution" for the coming year. Yeah I do those sometimes, when they're needed.

I think this one may be needed this year. We shall see, eh?

No Idea What This Post Is About

(You'll need to clickee these pictures to get the whole deal)

So let's see what do I have to say today? Christmas is coming. This Saturday I'm taking my daughters to Stephanie Izzard's place. My second time, their first. When I went on my birthday I was apparently the only one having fun. I liked it fine & thought it not only worth the trip into town but up to standards for a name chef.

In two weeks we're taking the grand daughter to the Goodman to see A Christmas Carol again. It's a kind of tradition around this time of year. I think they've been running it 33 years now. Last year I got in to the ticket rush late and the best we could do was upper balcony. Grand daughter didn't mind & had a great time. But THIS year I scored 4th Row tickets, center stage-right. I think I dove in the second or third day the tickets came available. It's a big deal in Chicago. It's going to blow her mind to practically be able to reach out and touch it. She's in Second Grade. In other words 7 going on 13.


Then after the show, which is a matinee, we're taking her to Macy's what used to be Marshall Field's where, since 1907, the Walnut Room has been operating on the department store's 7th floor. In particular this time of year because that's where you can sit under the Tree which goes up every Christmas season. Normally breakfast is the best - because we always got champagne with our waffles and that is just evil good - but we're doing dinner this time because it's the only time we'll be in the city before Christmas Day. But, my God, I first sat under the tree when I was in second grade... and now here's my grand daughter. Did you know that the ceiling in the main part of the store is by Tiffany?


Tis true indeed. You can even travel up to the whatever-floor-that-is and get so close you can see where there are little glass mosaic pieces missing. But it's pretty awesome. I can't imagine what that might be worth up there, dollar-wise, but all of this - and more - is what makes me happy to still be living in the town I was born is. Even if the snow we had last weekend has frozen solid white because we haven't been over 20 since SUNDAY FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!

No but I can't think of living anywhere else.

Except Gibraltar.


Of course that's not something likely to happen because pretty much I think MrsRW and I will never end up very far from the grandchildren so I don't know where I get this.

Except to say that if what I see about to happen here in the US actually does happen - meaning the reins of government about to be taken up sometime in the next 4 years by forces that will represent some kind of anti-intellectual, common man, xenophobic, foreign-intervention minded, God-fearing gun owner ideal - I'd surely consider leaving if it were possible. Which it won't be, but I'm just saying. Lately everywhere I look I'm seeing signs of a groundswell of narrow-minded reactionaries gearing up to take over. And I don't think it can be stemmed any more.

And so I was thinking about "hmmm what places that are a little out of the way and yet have all the comforts you'd need, plus English because as an American I can only speak one language, would be cool to go to?" And prancing around the internet I come up with Gibraltar don't ask me how or why. It looks exotic without being threatening, or whatever that is.

But the more I look at it the more interesting it becomes. A great mix of Spanish and English, Moor and Moroccan. never gets below 55, mostly Mediterranean cloudless in the summer tempered by the sea to rarely get too far over 85. There's 30,000 people who live there and it is far enough away from all the coming troubles while still being close enough to cultural centers. I mean the chances of us actually ever getting to Spain (my dream) are bad enough so this is a big pipe dream but, you know, it's kind of a game.

And yet, truth be told, every time I'm away from Chicago more than a few days I miss it. And I miss it bad. Even if I'm on a family vacation where everybody's with us, I miss it. The place I mean. I like knowing that if I wanted to I could get in my car and drive to my old neighborhood. My White Sox and my Bears are here. I don't really mind the weather (we don't tell you about May and September when the days have warmed up and the clear nights are cool and things are just about perfect - we only talk about the bitter winters and muggy Augusts because we don't want to give you any ideas you might want to live here, actually), and if I'm not used to it by now wtf?

So I'm still the same crazy mixed-up kid I always was I guess. In the same place I've been for a while now.

Mystery Achievement

Laboring in obscurity can be a tough gig.

If you just plug away it honestly looks to most people like you're going no where, despite what you yourself may see as progress. If what you're doing is an uphill climb anyway - even if you realize that - maybe sometimes people who should support you are really thinking "this will never work."

You make defense mechanisms like "well if it doesn't work out I had fun doing it." And while that may be true it's an obvious attempt at convincing yourself of it and everybody knows it.

And while you're in the foxhole swinging away at it every day, everything else goes on as usual all around you and before you know it days have turned into months. Months into years. And you're still not there.

I think you have to be an ornery cuss who can flick people off like a surprise snot on your shirt, just so you can get through this crap sometimes. This, of course, gets you another reputation, of the "what a cold snob that guy is" variety.

I think if the same people who look at you funny are patting others on the back for doing the same thing, then maybe it runs deeper than you thought. But you could also be just a little touchy about it.

The best thing to do is keep going, maintain your standards, and be vicious in your self-editing. What other people are doing and saying doesn't matter. Truly. Doesn't matter. You decide if you believe them or not. If you let them bring you down it's YOUR fault. Not theirs.

There's a meme going around about "who lives in your head?" And it's basically talking about modes, influences and reference points. In many ways it's neither a negative or a positive because it's like a list of personas that define your personal traits. Though I'm sure - certain in fact - that there are influences on my personality and ideas, I tried to think of some that "live in my head" but couldn't.

It's really because I'm the one who lives in my head (okay not always a good thing, I admit). I have a running conversation with myself all day long. Even when I'm sleeping. There isn't anybody else in here.

And what's scary is that yesterday I found a way to represent that in fiction without it getting all weird and confusing. My mystery achievement.

So you guys are in real big trouble now.

What?

I need to take better care of my relationships. Not meaning my wife or daughters because I'm solid there I think - but everybody else from the family starting out from that and also friends.

I have a lot of revolving door phenomenon in my life with people and I do know why it is. I mean it isn't a mystery. A small percentage is just sometimes I can't see that somebody is a sociopath. Everybody has that to a degree. But I'm talking about the larger percentage of walk-aways being folks who willfully walk away and truly don't give a shit any more.

And the reason for that is that I'm not really what you'd call an overly friendly guy. I mean I'll give money for somebody's operation or funeral or shit like that, and I can sit around talking about old times and all that. I'll go to your birthday and your wedding and your anniversary. I'll show up for game night if you're having a thing and I'll even organize these things myself sometimes.

But if your marriage is falling apart or you're having a mental breakdown or you really need somebody to talk to about your problems I'm probably not your contact. Just so you know.

It isn't that I'm a meanie or I can't help you and console you and maybe even take a walk with you so you can blab... I mean vent... it out of your system. I can do that, and have. I can be that guy. It's just there's a limit to how much of your angst I can deal with. I have like this tube that can only accept so much blue stuff and then the system shuts down and I revert to the Cher - In - That - Movie - Approach - To - Mental - Health. A good slap across the face while shouting "snap out of it" into your eyes.

I can only take so much of your problem before I lose interest and want to be somewhere else. And it's really hard for me to hide my squirming. That isn't good. I know it. It's rude and maybe it is a little cruel. I know.

This stems, I just know it, from my own inability to confide in someone else about things that have been, were, or are on top of me at any given moment. I mean this is even a thing my wife has told me about - everything is in my head and it never comes out. I just try to work it out and even if I make a stupid resolution to it I don't bounce it off anybody. I just do it. Not healthy.

In the past, even surrounded by peers and people who meant well, I always kept my story to a minimum. I always felt that, when I did confide or vent or worry out loud to someone, that there was a point at which I was really boring the shit out of them and I felt I was unfairly wasting their time. So I'd just shut up and deal with it. Until, by now, shutting up and dealing with it is S.O.P. in these parts.

The other thing is when people do or say or believe or act out something really stupid, there's a real good chance I'm going to just wave you on and that'll be it. I have a quick trigger on that. Like we'll be going along and then you tell a joke about black people that we all heard thirty years ago and think that's just the funniest thing you ever heard... you're gone. If you want to talk you can contact me but I'm not going out of my way to see how you're doing. I want to say I do recognize that this is a character flaw of mine and not yours, but I'm pretty good at forgetting people forever once they fall off the table. And that's not altogether very cool. In fact that's probably an aspect people leave my company over. My ability to throw you off the bus and not look back. Ever. Yeah in fact I know it is.

So the point of all this is to say to any observer that this is the reason the cast of characters in my life may have a tendency to change more than most (if you're observing that), and why - as the last week and a half with my wife in NY have proven once again - I don't seem to put too high a value on human contact. And I'm going to try and work on that.

Eventually.

Happy Columbus Day

The final draft will be in the area of 34,000 words. Small. Novella sized and therefore probably doomed. But I cut a farkton of fluff, so there I am. Officially described as "absurdist" - since people need to know the "genre" - it's really... I don't know what it is...it's short. Out of all that stuff you may/may not have read in bits and pieces, it ends up being about a guy who gives up everything in life in order to save one hundred thousand dollars in cash. He's just a slug who works in a warehouse and is doing this on a basic paycheck living in a crummy neighborhood. And just when he's about to add the final bit of savings to his stash he realizes he's dying. So he's got to come up with his next move in that context, even though he has nothing, knows no one and just sits around drinking all night long because he's connected to no one and nothing. It's called THINK FAST, and the last (of about 6,000) rewrite should be firmed up this month, with query letters going out this November. So, here we go again.

The crazy thing here is that I don't want to work on that anymore because I already have the germ for the next one. This phenomenon, which occurs every time at this stage of the game no matter how much crap I write, always leads me to think that what I'm close to finishing is shit anyway and I should just go on to the next thing because that will be better. I have no idea why it's like that. When I'm working on something it's great and takes on a life of it's own and at moments it even writes itself, but when I'm done I have no interest or affection for it whatsoever. In fact I usually end up thinking it's total garbage. I don't think I've ever ended up liking anything I've ever written. Crazy...

MrsRW is off to Utica NY this morning where she will be for the next two weeks. I tried to cheer myself up by telling her it should be pretty there this time of year. Yes I said cheer myself up, what about it? When she does one of these two-week jobs and stays over for the weekend I have to especially guard against my normal process of personal deteriorization that I go through when that happens. Even if we're both busy with our own stuff in different parts of the house for hours it's always better when I know she's here. What can I say?

When the wife is out of town being a heavyweight consultant to places like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and whatnot (and whatever this hospital in Utica is) I console myself with cooking experiments. The only thing I'm going to experiment with in the next two weeks is a better "take" on the mango-habanero chicken I made the other week. I didn't like it at all. I made it from fresh mangoes and actual habaneros and it was tasty - sorta - but not what I wanted. Too much like a sauce. So I'm going to start with mango salsa instead and have it be more like a topping than a marinade. If I think of it I'll let ya know how it turns out.

But mostly, lately, the experiments have wound down into a list of usual things I make for myself, like a list of dinner staples we all have. So during the next two weeks I'll probably do another chivito and some more cacio e pepe which I can't seem to get enough of and is ruining all I've accomplished, weight-wise, over the last couple of years. I know, it's very exciting around here when the Mrs is gone, ain't it?

Luckily I have my youngest daughter, Kelly, who comes over every Thursday to watch her "Project Runway" during which I usually pick the winner and loser fairly regularly. I always try to make something new for dinner when she comes over and she's a skinny little salad eater so this Thursday I'm making a walnut-apple salad. It is an entree-type vegetarian salad, meaning it has potatoes and I think cilantro and with some bread and wine it'll be the whole dinner. So there's that. I enjoy project Runway a lot more than I usually care to admit if only because, despite it's extravagant basis and practically irrelevant nature I do consider fashion design an art form equal to painting and writing and theater and etc. So kill me.

And, ya know, we're in the middle or nearing the end of the campaign season for the upcoming election. Oh hello. And I have hit that usual place wherein I can't stand anybody on any side of the issue. What is scaring me a little is that it feels like for the first time in my life I may end up voting completely straight Democrat if only to protest the "lowest common denominator" tactics of the Tea Party and the GOP which it is leading around by the nose. I have never in my entire life voted a straight ticket. So this little bit of anger and huge amount of contempt I am harboring for the mis-information, scare-tactics and general anti-intellectual caveman shit from the Know-Nothing luddites now in control of the GOP heart and mind may lead me to a personal first. I know... to some of my older friends that is probably shocking. But I am just that sick of it too.

But more importantly, what did I do to turn you off? Just asking.

A Series Of Tubes

I like the internet and I don't like the internet. I've met some good people through it and met some crappy people through it. It's helped me learn and made me stupid. It's made me more productive and wasted a lot of time. It's helped me appreciate people more and made me truly believe there are folks who are completely irredeemable. In other words it's just like real life, only it's in a box.

The best thing about it is that if there are too many trolls and cranks around I can just turn it off and walk away. You can't always do that with real life. And that's the other thing; you used to be able to differentiate "internet" vs. "real life." I don't think there's a difference any more, except that if you're lucky there aren't that many trolls and cranks walking around your neighborhood. Hopefully.

Sometimes I'd like to be away from it altogether and other times I can't wait to turn it on. I think I liked things better before it existed but I can't imagine not having it.

Like everything else it's what you make it. I'd play Talk Talk singing "Life's What You Make It" but nobody likes that song so I won't. That's another thing that's wrong with the internet; you having an effect on what I like.

Who the hell do you think you are anyway? Don't make me turn this off!

If I turn this off you don't exist anymore. Like if you stop reading a blog they stop reading you. Kind of phony then, ain't it? No that's okay you're not a troll or a crank. Of course I don't actually know that. I've had people turn on me before. Anything is possible.

The internet makes me paranoid.

Of Course You Won't Mind

I'll be stepping aside for a while starting today (okay actually yesterday but I wasn't serious about it til now). Not sure how long it'll go but this is a note to say just that.

There is absolutely nothing big or Earth-shaking / terrible / serious / OMG going on, it's just a brief hiatus and I'll be back on the other side of it before you know it. Probably extends to Facebook as well, but none of this is permanent. I can't possibly stay away from you guys forever. You know your uncle wuvs the dickens out of ya.

>Cough...<

I'd set up "guest-posters" but I honestly don't know what that's for and it's not like you'd get any extra traffic for your blog if you did so that's out of the question.

Ten points for what the guy in the cartoon has to do with anything going on here. If you figure it out let me know?

It could be a week or a month. Who knows. I did this once before and it paid off for me, so hold my hat, we're going in again. This is to say don't forget us, and if you don't see a comment on your work for a while I'm not hating you - k?

brb lunch.

What Happens When The Cat's Away

Well the answer is, not a whole helluva lot. This week MrsRW is in lovely Oceanside NY, which puts her on the wrong side of the Brooklyn Bridge from where she'd like to be but a job is a job and money is money and duty calls. I've been to Oceanside. It's a lot like what's on either side of it, town-wise. But so is just about everything on Long Island until you get to about Yaphank and then they start making wine and stuff. I don't know what Indians lived on Long island but they didn't want you to know where they were hiding. Cutchogue? Ronkonkoma? Yaphank? Say what? Funniest town name for LI, though, is Hicksville. No, seriously. Hicksville USA. You wouldn't think to look for that in New Yok.

So what I do most of the time is try new dishes. Last night I made a just-burnt edged fresh shrimp with a ginger-apricot sauce. I took some tomatoes from the garden and sliced them up, then added some pepperoncini - also sliced. I hit it with some fresh ground pepper and viola... er... voila... salad. No I didn't eat them at the same time. I don't know - ginger and pepperoncini. No. I did it as two courses. It was pretty good.

Tonight we enter the city of Rome with some cacio y pepe, which I saw them make on Bourdain's show last week. Basically you need fresh ingredients to have any chance of tasting somewhat authentic when doing Italian. So I got a wedge of pecorino romano and a wedge of parmigiano reggiano which I will fresh grind for this receipe. But mostly the rest of it is just pasta, butter and fresh ground black pepper.

It's supposed to look like this...


Going to see the White Sox/Yankees game this Friday so getting off work early so we can cook up some grass-fed burgers and play a little bean... bag... thing... in the parking lot. But outside of that and a big plate of bacon wrapped dates... (I wasn't kidding)

it's going to be just hitting Word to keep smashing away at the book and maybe scouting a "Himalayan Cuisine" (I know, right? What the hell is THAT?) place that just opened up nearby to see if it's wife-worthy. But yeah that up there is pitted dates wrapped in center-cut bacon and stuck with a toothpick. You oven that for 10-20 minutes depending how you like your bacon and go. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

I assuage my solitude with food, baseball, and fiction. Which is what i do when MrsRW is in town too but... anyway what the hell.

Drool and wish you were here all you want. It won't work.