From Utah, With Love

Well, hell.

Been about a month since I updated this here blog. Twitter is so much less hassle, and is SO much more copacetic to my short attention span.  El Bloggo just doesn’t fit into my awesome fast-moving techno lifestyle.

Blogs are SO 2005-ish. I mean. Really. They have that smell.

In the interest of furthering my goal of total web pimpination, however, I shall now provide you with brief dispatches from my glamorous trans-global jet-setter lifestyle.

Destination: Utah.

Contrary to anticipatory trepidations, I was not forced to sell my wife to the Cult of Mormon in order to enter. Instead, we (me, wife, son) were strapped into a Hyundai Sonata and forced to drive to ridiculously beautiful natural landscapes.  Specifically, Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.  At each of these collections of holes and/or rocks, I felt a strange compulsion to hike until my legs fell off and snap pictures until my index finger was worn to a stub. Also rode a horse, went over rapids in a rubber boat and discovered, while pinned down in a trench by withering crossfire from two guys named Travis, the subtle taste sensation of the elusive Yellow Paintball.

Of course, all this was prelude to the main event.

We cashed in a bunch of miles and flew first class (natch!) and on the return flight from Vegas, I sat in 3C. I had just gotten comfortable when a small young twentyish blond female zipped into 3D before I could get up to let her in.  After a while, she mumbled something like, “uh, looks like the cabin door’s still open… think I’ll go to the lavatory…”

“Go for it,” I said in my suave jetsetterando tone.

She obeyed.

While she was gone, I couldn’t help but notice that she left her boarding pass sitting on the spacious first class armrest.  The name:  Anna Kournikova.

That’s right, kids: I let Anna Kournikova go to the bathroom. 

With great power comes great responsibility, and I kept my cool. Okay, I sniffed my pits. After a week of Utah, you can’t be too careful. Otherwise, I gave no outward sign of recognition when she returned and fiddled with her phone for a while. Soon, it was belts on. She yanked an enormous white pillow out of her bag, slipped on a blindfold, pulled her hood over her head and went to sleep.  Really.  Except for the rock on her left hand worth that was worth more than my house, she looked like just another hibernating nun.

When we set down in Miami, I made a witty comment about the torrential rain. She didn’t say anything.

But that’s just how we roll in the first class cabin.  Subtlety and discretion at 35,000 feet.

Yep. It’s MINE!

Behold! I have been immortalized in circular suburban geography!

View Larger Map

I think I want to be buried there.

Take me down
To HJ park
Dump me in a shallow grave
‘tween the sliding board and swingset
That I may watch the girlies’ bums hear the children play

Wednesday Bloody Wednesday

This morning, my tires slipped on the blood on the parking lot ramp. You can’t cut without somebody bleeding, and yesterday the axe fell hard.

I don’t blog about work much, but it was a hard day, although not as hard for me as it was for six former coworkers.

I work(ed) for a small family owned business with 25 employees. Been in the same location for over 20 years. I’ve worked there for 15 but there were eight with even longer tenure.

And then there were four.

Us programmers were deemed necessary, although two recent hires were also let go.

It made business sense — the victims were all in areas that the Big Company has covered — hardware and documentation. Doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

The silver lining is the benefits: major improvement. The savings on health care will be like a modest raise and my vacation days have effectively been doubled. I really look forward to a going somewhere for more than one week.

I just wish my former coworkers were paid for their time off.

Just a Quick One…

“Baby Teeth” made the short list for the most recent submission period at Withersin. Will know by June 15.

Have been blasting The Who, “Live at Leeds” for the past few days. People driving behind me probably think I’m having a seizure, air-drumming along with Keith Moon.

Tough Love

I’m a negligent blogparent.

I’m surprised it hasn’t been made a ward of the state. The poor thing doesn’t have any friends. Plus I feed it deep-fried Twinkies and jugs of high fructose corn syrup, let it skip school and stay home watching Spongebob.

It needs good hard posting, but Twittering is so much easier.

(There you go kid. There’s your posting. And no whining! Why, when I was a kid, the only posts we got were up the sides of our heads! And it wasn’t none of this digital crap, neither — it was solid wood! With railroad spikes! And we was damn glad to get it, too. Now get yer little packets out there and propagate, gawdammit!)

Terror From the Downspout

We have more than our share of weird critters roaming our yard. Hey, it’s Southern Florida, a natural refuge for the cold-blooded — and not only the criminally insane kind.  Last week I found the discarded skin of an Everglades Racer snake.  Almost four feet long.

Tokay Gecko (gekko gecko)

Today’s featured critter: the Tokay Gecko. We only have one of these beasties. He lives in a downspout at the back of the house and his calls are a delight. They’re loud and completely off the wall — although, as a gecko, he can easily walk on the wall (or the ceiling.)

Here’s a recording, although our dude has a much fuller tone (the male call is halfway down the page.)

These suckers will bite and will not let go unless you submerge them.

Also referred to as the “fuck you” lizard by soldiers in Viet Nam (I can hear that in the call: FUCK you, FUCK you….)

I almost drowned ours a couple of years ago.  One day I was out in the yard and saw a thin hairless tale disappear into the top of the pipe.  It had to be a rat (aka Miami Night Squirrel) so I blocked the bottom  with a rock and shoved the hose in the top.  After running the water for maybe 15 minutes I moved the rock, and a funky pink dinosaur nose sticking out.  I felt terrible, but he came to in a few seconds and climbed back up.

First Quarter Report

Almost April 30th, so it’s time to update my ( imaginary) investors.

But think about it. Big time outfits like GM or AIG lost well over half of their value.
If all these pissed-off investors had given their money to me, they would have been a lot better off.

People want stability. I’ve lived in the same house since 1992.

People want low service fees. My costs are low because I pledge not to do a damn thing with your precious capital.

Security? Got it covered. My wife’s a light sleeper, plus we have a dog — and a cat with a ‘tude. And there’s that Red Ryder BB gun in the closet.

Just in case.

Call me. We’ll do lunch.

Life Imitates Pulp

Headline from the Miami Herald this morning:

Alligator Alley is closed; wildfires threaten

From the article:
A growing wildfire in the Everglades has authorities warning that Alligator Alley, closed since Wednesday evening, could remain shut down until Monday…

A wildfire fueled for days by 10,000 acres of dangerously dry Everglades vegetation may force authorities to keep Alligator Alley closed for the weekend, creating headaches for travelers…

The Florida Highway Patrol has kept the highway closed since about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, when smoke from the fire began billowing over the roadway in spots of Collier County and Big Cypress National Preserve…

This is from my story, “Smoked:”

The River of Grass was burning.

It hadn’t rained in months.  The cloudless sky had become a cauldron of eye-burning haze as the fires burned deep into the ancient muck, turning the dark blood and soul of the ‘glades into air pollution.

The creatures of the Everglades were on the move, fleeing the holocaust in search of life-saving water.

Other refugees had thirsts less easily satisfied. Exhumed by flame from Florida’s graveyard of convenience, the toxic souls of the vengeful dead, sustained by the ancient geological evil that resided in the primeval limestone bones of the peninsula, joined the smoke and wandered in the hot aimless wind.

Hopefully, the toxic souls of the vengeful dead are still resting fitfully.

Red and White and Black All Over

I changed my theme.  Woo.

Look, just because you right dark fiction doesn’t mean you have to have a dark blog.  White letters on black gets to be a drag — like reading the labels on a TV remote in the dark.  So now it looks like the easy-t0-read version of the New York Times.  Live with it.

I should learn CSS and roll my own.  As if.

Queried the Dead Bait people, “Red Tide” didn’t make it into the anthology. Bummer.  Will be resubmeating it elsewhere.  I’m so disorganized when it comes to sending things out.  I barely have time to write, and having to research and ponder their arbitrary and vaguely insulting submission guidelines is torture.  I like Chizine’s guidelines (very slightly shortened:)

• Dark.
• Well-written.
• 4,000 words or less.
• Go to it.

I  hate when they suggest that you buy (not just read, but buy) a copy of the pub in order to “improve your chances of acceptance.”  Sounds like they staple a copy of your order right to the manuscript.  Keeps ‘em from sinking to the bottom of the slush pile.

Back to the grindstone…

Trajectories

How ’bout this for the opening line for a story:

The cunt of cold-war technodeath was in it’s prime when they decommissioned the missile base hidden deep in the  Everglades…

Yeah, it’s over the top, but tough shit.  I’ve decided to pull out the filters on my grindhouse story, “Smoked.”  Need to get it out of my system.  Ideas are percolating, the characters are copping attitudes and Darryl will soon be pistol-whipped and dragged behind a police cruiser.

This one has drunk driving, vehicular homicide, psycho-toxic industro-military waste, wandering spirits, cannibalism, amputation, brush fires, spiritual possession, zombie roadkill, multiple personality and torture.

I love post-modern romance.

I seem to have reached the ebb of one of my periodic mannish-depressions that mark my descent into the “manopause.”  I no longer despise all living things, sleeping is somewhat regular and life doesn’t seem like a placeholder for death.

With a little luck, I’ll be peaking by the weekend.