the Sententious Vaunter

purgatory

2012-02-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

Imagine believing that you were immune to a crippling disease only to have the ailment blindside you with a vengeance.

Love is a complex organism. I say "organism" for a specific reason. Even though love is an emotion, and as such is merely a cascade of hormonal responses to physical and psychological stimuli, it is far from being a simple biological process. It takes many forms. It has many facets, many dimensions. It grows, blooms, develops, quietly coalesces; booms, explodes, resounds, vibrates; inspires, infects, invigorates, impels; deepens, widens, broadens, brightens; extrudes, inflates, surrounds, pervades; conquers, commands, embroils, enslaves; leaps, flies, whirls, floats, splashes; sings, roars, screams, mumbles, gibbers; and does a great many more things which writers, musicians and poets have not yet found the words to encapsulate.

Love is at once a disease, an enigma, a paradox, a riddle, a torrent, a disorder, a storm, and a living, breathing creature, constantly shifting and changing.

I only realized this fact when I left my beloved Miss H behind to come to Korea. The revelation of it has nearly struck me dumb with shock. The constant sorrow and fear I feel at being separated from her is paralyzing, numbing, all-consuming.

I never knew love could be like this. Before I fell into it, I thought love was like water. Either you were in it or you were out of it, getting wet or drying off. But now I feel more like love is the vast, spinning Universe itself: nigh-incomprehensible, ever-changing, broad, dynamic, constantly morphing, governed by laws beyond the understanding of humankind. To be involved in it—truly involved, not mildly interested or childishly infatuated—is a mind-blasting, life-changing, paradigm-shifting, eye-opening experience. I feel as though I've been wandering around in the dark my entire life, only to suddenly be told that I'm wearing too big a hat. Upon doffing it, my eyes behold for the first time the vastness of the world, its vividness, its wonder, its beauty, its charm, and its staggering diversity, and my brain is simply knocked for a loop.

I have her to thank for telling me my hat was too big. Miss H, I mean. I wish there were words in the English language—or Korean, or any tongue known or unknown—to describe precisely how wonderful she is, how she makes me feel, her charm and grace and demureness, her every intoxicating movement. The fall of her hair, the glow of her skin, the light in her eyes, the sweet music on her lips. It's utterly indescribable. But then again, perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps the very act of describing such beauty would thereby ruin it, just as the most heavenly work of art may be crudely interpreted, and the funniest joke diluted with needless explanation.

So when I tell you that I am missing my beloved like crazy, I want you to understand my full meaning.

It is only this sudden separation which has given form to my mental state. It was only after we had parted that I realized just how much I love her. And with that realization came soul-crushing agony, a bitter and sorrowful loneliness, a longing that spans oceans and continents, as every inch of every foot of the 5,500 miles which separate us pierced my heart to its core.

For three days, I have been an absolute wreck inside. Granted, some of it was garden-variety homesickness, and some of it was new-job nerves, and some of it was living-out-of-a-suitcase frustration. But the balance of my anguish was the affection I have for my girlfriend, and the tyrannical yearning to see her angelic face again, in the flesh, even only for a moment.

Honestly, I don't know how I've survived. At home, we would regularly go five days without seeing each other; here, with the Pacific Ocean dividing us, I was ready to break down after 48 hours.

Pitiful, I know, but true.

I'm feeling better. I've isolated the grief, broken the emotional circuits, cordoned off the crime scene from the rest of my soul's prying eyes. I still feel her absence acutely, and wonder every day whether it'd be feasible to jump on a plane and fly twelve hours back to see her, but I've come to terms with those feelings and have established a modicum of control over them. Having taught a few classes has certainly helped. Goodness knows it was difficult trying to contend with heartsickness, homesickness and jangling nerves all at once. Now that I've taught a bit, the uncertainty is gone. I feel better about teaching again. I've remembered that I can do it if I just stay on top of things. This weekend I'm moving into my apartment, too, and will commence making as much of a home out of it as can reasonably be expected. All that remains, in fact, is the crippling lack of the queen of my dreams.

We've discussed various options. She might fly out to see me in summertime. She might get a teaching job near me and come live in my apartment. Or we might try to tough it out for a whole year. We're still tossing things around. As bad as things have been for me, for her they have been worse: sitting at home, staring out the same old window at the same old scenery, with no new job or new horizons to distract her from my absence. She's as desperate as I am to reunite. We'll figure something out, I'm sure.

The insanity of the moment has passed. We're no longer feeling lost and frightened. We have Skype, after all; it's not like we won't see each other for months and months. But it would be desirable if we didn't have to go a whole calendar year without the pleasure of each other's company. We'll attempt to find a compromise, a way in which we can see each other again.

Until we do, my personal purgatory continues.

welcome to the R.O.K.

2012-02-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

I've arrived.

Being back in Korea is as much a frustrating pain in the neck as it is a nostalgic reunion. I'm glad of the triangle gimbap, the godawful convenience-store food, the PC-bang and the excellent exchange rate, but on the other hand, I'm being reminded of all the things which annoyed the hell out of me the first time, too. The complete lack of public garbage cans, for one thing. Can't find one to save my life. The homicidal drivers, for the other. The cab driver who brought me from Incheon International Airport to the S.R. Hotel in Bucheon was a classic example.

And now, having checked into a hotel, exchanged all my money for Korean bills, let my family and friends know that I'm alive and well—and having survived my couple of days on the job—my head's in a whirl and I'm feeling completely overwhelmed. And yet somehow, I'm relieved. As I should've expected.

Perhaps I can sum the whole affair up in the message I sent to my parents earlier last evening:

Okay, here's the scoop. I'm a hotel room. This is pretty standard since the person I'm replacing hasn't moved out of the apartment yet. I'll be taking possession on the 12th.

Whoo boy, where to begin? I arrived at my room at around 6:45 PM on February 7; I fell into an exhausted slumber at 7:30, awaking around 5:30 AM this morning. I channel-flipped for a few hours (finding two English-speaking channels, one for dramas like CSI and one National Geographic Channel), then put on my clothes and began to explore the neighborhood. It was bitterly cold and windy, the wind chill putting the already frosty 19 degrees down into the single digits. Thank GOODNESS you guys bought me some long underwear and I've got my rabbit fur hat and gloves with me. I'd be so frozen without them...

I should add at this point that my hotel room is VERY warm, with a heated floor, hot water, a big bathtub and shower, and this computer I'm typing on. I finally got it to work!

So: Mr. M (the English fellow who is apparently the head native English teacher at Avalon) came at 1:30 and we walked me to school. It's quite close by...not even five minutes from the hotel. And right next door to the apartment complex where I'll be staying eventually. But this is where it gets complicated. Avalon actually is TWO facilities: the old one on the second floor of one building, and another on the fourth floor of the building next door. Some teachers work primarily out of the one campus; some teachers primarily out of the other; some both. It's maddeningly confusing. Things only went downhill from there. My head is a whirling tornado of grade levels, classes, and other information. This Avalon school is a LOT more stringent and professional than Reading Town was. They make Reading Town look like a half-assed wannabe English school, in fact. They make you keep daily reports (which do come in handy for keeping track of things); fill out lesson plans; and are in the process of overhauling the curriculum. Rumors abound that class times (which currently stand at 70 minutes, five classes per day, though most teachers only teach four) will be altered next semester, which begins March 2. That's right, I've come in on the tail of a semester. Swell. I felt overwhelmed at first...still do, in fact...but after sitting in a couple of classes (two of them taught by Andy), I feel a whole lot better. Andy assured me that this looks a lot more complex than it really is, and I'm beginning to see that. I'm just going to have to really sweat it out for the first week. I'm teaching two classes and observing one tomorrow. The good news is I have three hours to prepare my lessons, with the aid of Mr. M and the woman I'm replacing.

Her name, incidentally, is C.A., and she's from Columbia, South Carolina. She does have a bit of an accent. Out of decency I haven't pumped her for the details of her dismissal, but I do know that she already has another job lined up in a podunk town south of Seoul, in an elementary school. For lunch break today she took me to a little shop she knows of which sells street food. We ate sausages on a stick while she took me up to the apartment I'll soon be occupying, No. 908. I love the layout. The bathroom is surprisingly spacious, there's lots of storage and the view is spectacular. There's a little sleeping loft above the kitchenette which is a perfect nook, in my opinion. I'll send pics as soon as I can. I received more good news in that I don't need a transformer (both my laptop and my phone charger can run on up to 240 volts, so all I need is my adapter; I'm beginning to think the monitor of my old laptop getting fried was just a tragic coincidence).

So...long story short, I have the Internet in my hotel room (so I don't need to use a PC room and pay money for the moment); my laptop is charging; my first day of work went swimmingly; and my living quarters are VERY close to a humongous amount of shopping, plus bus stations to the interior. This really couldn't be a better setup. My only worries are my wrinkled clothes, being thrown into the teaching crucible tomorrow with virtually no training, and trying to get organized and in-step with operations. Plus I'm homesick as hell, even worse than last time. The cookies you baked me are definitely helping, Mom. I'm trying to set up Skype on this computer so maybe we'll talk this afternoon, eh?

Love, Andrew

the champion of León

2012-02-05T22:50:00.000-08:00

from thecouponguide.net

And so, W-Week has drawn to a close, and the to-do list has been completed with assiduous diligence.

On Wednesday I got up at 4:00 a.m. to ride with Miss H's father (Mr. B) while he delivered a 28-ton load of lime to a construction crew at Camarillo Airport. That was a fun trip. There were a few things about riding in a big rig that I didn't expect: namely, the noise, the cramped quarters, and the constant leaping and shaking. That huge diesel engine is LOUD. The cab is not as spacious as it may seem. And all the kinetic energy from the two tanks we were hauling was transmitted directly into the rear axle of the rig itself, which shook us in our seats like marbles in a jar. The ride was only 2½ hours down and the 2½ back, but I nonetheless felt sorely abused by the end of it, as though every tendon and muscle in my body had been pummeled by a grizzly bear. It was intriguing, however, to see how a semi handles, and to get a look at the logistics of the trucking industry: the logbook Mr. B keeps of his travels (mileage and hours); the ear-splitting air pump used to blast the lime from the steel tanks and into the dispenser truck at the construction site; the complications which stopping for food and bathroom breaks represent; and all the other aspects of the biz. I left feeling like I'd been hit by a train, but enlightened no end.

Thursday was a largely unremarkable day, because Miss H wasn't in it. I had to leave her at home while I finished packing (completely finished, mind you) and went shopping. Shopping for what, you ask? Presents. Gifts. Cards. As it happens, my father's birthday is February 12, my girlfriend's is February 13, and February 14 is Valentine's Day. I was a shopping fool: chocolate, a new leather wallet for Dad, lotions and fragrances and candles from Bath & Body Works, and a necklace from Icing.

Friday was a designated fun day. Miss H and I had set aside that day by prior agreement to celebrate her birthday and Valentine's Day. I gave her her presents, she gave me mine, we hugged, we kissed, we laughed, and we may have misted up a little, perhaps. Then we hung around the house and relaxed. I hadn't noticed, but this moving-back-to-Korea thing has exacted a heavy toll on me. I've been under a lot of stress and last-minute panic. I hadn't quite realized just how heavy the weight was on my chest until I packed my last sock, zipped up the duffel bag, looked around the room and heaved a deep sigh. I felt like collapsing on the floor and not moving for a week.

Then the unexpected happened. An old friend came in from out of town. I'll refer to him by his initials, B.E. He happens to be a Canadian friend of my other Canadian friend, Jeff. I met him in Seoul during Seolnar a few years ago. He lives in San Francisco and he came all the way down to see me off. What a pal. He, another buddy Chris and I went to a dive bar in eastern Apple Valley and whooped it up until 2 a.m.

After getting my head screwed back on Saturday morning, Miss H and I went to the local arcade for some one-on-one time, the last we would probably have before I left. But lo and behold! B.E. and Chris showed up out of nowhere. We bumped into them as soon as we walked through the doors. We all bought some tokens and set about throwing balls into holes worth 4,000 points and shooting rampaging tyrannosaurs and punching crocodiles on the snout. It was a blast. Then Miss H and I picked up some Pizza Rolls and headed back to set up for the grand cocktail party send-off. A fun time was had by all. We drank, we caroused, we joked, we played Would You Rather? and Taboo, and just generally invested capital in the bank of camaraderie. The party broke up at three, and Miss H and I fell onto the bed and were asleep in milliseconds.

And today was a red-letter day! For we packed up the truck, drove to Buena Park, and feasted at a wonderful venue called Medieval Times. For those who may be unaware, Medieval Times is a feudal Europe-themed eatery where you gorge on tomato bisque, roast chicken, prime rib and garlic bread off pewter bowls and plates (with your hands; no forks or knives) while, below you in a dirt-floored arena, knights in shining armor joust and duel for your entertainment. It's an immersing experience. Strobes flash. Heroic trumpets sound. Standards whirl through the air. Sparks fly from clashing blades. We were seated in the green section, which meant that we cheered for the Green Knight, a champion of León. Sadly, he was defeated in his second bout by the Red Knight (who was later slain by the tournament champion, the Red-and-Yellow Knight). The entire show lasted about two hours, with exhibitions of falconry, martial skill, and fine horsemanship. Andalusian horses with gossamer manes pranced and cavorted in dressage. The food was delicious, the entertainment rousing, the company marvelous and the evening well-spent.

And now here I sit in a hotel suite somewhere in the vicinity of LAX, preparing to make a late-night run to Taco Bell (for my last taste of godawful Anglo-Mexican fast food before I leave for Korea). My flight leaves at 11:50 a.m. The countdown is almost over.

Further bulletins will, from here on, originate in the Far East.

Wish me luck...

W-Week

2012-01-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping my arrival in Korea won't look exactly like this.

It's W-Week, and as we count down to D-Day, H-Hour—the moment I leave for Korea, in other words—I'm beginning to think I tried to pack too much into it.

What day is it today, Tuesday?

Yeah, okay, here goes:

On Monday Miss H and I just sorta hung out. Oh, and we packed my bags. Two of them. Duffel bags crammed with shirts, pants, shorts, belts, socks, underwear, shoes, and coats. Whatever empty space remains shall be filled by decks of cards, harmonicas, shoeshine cans, grooming kits, and whatnot. They weigh 43 and 35 pounds, respectively. Maybe there's something to what Miss H says when she tells me I have more clothes than she does.

Today was jam-packed. Miss H and I went in and hung out with a friend of hers, Steve, at his apartment. (We found all sorts of interesting ways to kill Lara Croft.) Then we grabbed some fast food: Tom's Burgers, which happen to be massive, succulent, and fantastically tasty. [Insert naughty metaphor here.] We drove to Hesperia Lake Park and ate lunch under the skeletonized trees, listening to the babbling brook and the entitled honks of strident geese vying for pieces of bread from the other park-goers. Then we fed the ducks some crusts and read a chapter of our books (I'm reading Skeletons on the Zahara, and Miss H is digesting Don Quixote).

After a quick stop at the post office, we went to a used bookstore in Victorville and turned in some old volumes my parents didn't want anymore. In exchange for these, I nabbed some serious military nonfiction: The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us by Peter Goldman and Terry Fuller, and Abandon Ship!: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by Richard F. Newcomb. (Believe or not, these aren't just for fun: they're valuable research material for future novels.)

Then we went to the mall to try to find a bigger duffel bag. No joy.

Tomorrow I'm riding with Miss H's father as he delivers a load of lime to the airport in Camarillo. This'll be my first time riding in a big rig. I've always wanted to. I have a thing for heavy machinery. I occasionally cheat on airplanes with tanks, ships, bulldozers and excavators.

Thursday I'm running around like a madman trying to make all the arrangements for my dad's birthday (February 12), Miss H's birthday (February 13), and Valentine's Day (you-know-when). All of those dates, as you'll notice, fall after my departure on February 6, so I'd better have my act together.

Friday Miss H is coming over and helping me do the final packing, and we'll finish that blasted thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle we've been beating our heads against for ages.

Saturday is a big day: all my friends are coming over for one last cocktail party. Cheers.

On Sunday (assuming I'm not totally useless) Miss H, the folks and I will be driving down to Medieval Times for dinner (another thing I've never done), and staying in a hotel in Los Angeles (ditto, actually). This way we won't have to leave my house at the crack of dawn and drive two hours to get to the airport on Monday morning.

And on Monday morning, I leave.

I'll try to blog at least once more before I do.

Wish me luck.

let the countdown begin!

2012-01-26T00:44:00.000-08:00

Technically it's already begun—you've probably noticed that cute little widget over on the right. However, the gears have finally meshed. Two days ago I received my passport back from the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, stamped with a shiny new E-2 work visa classifying me as a "foreign instructor," and guaranteeing me a one-year sojourn. This was the last piece of paperwork that I needed. I can flash this little honey in the faces of the Korean immigration officials, waltz through customs, and enter South Korea as a legal immigrant. All of my ducks are in a row. I could leave tomorrow if they wanted me.

But they want me on February 7. After a little jockeying, some back-and-forth nonsense, a glut of vacillation and a smidgen of misinformation, the date of my departure was finalized. I am, needless to say, tremendously excited. The contents of my room (stuffed into way too many heavy cardboard boxes) are safely tucked away in a storage unit in town. My suitcases are half-packed, and all the equipment I'm bringing with me has been inventoried and set aside. Decks of cards (three normal decks and a pinochle set); my grooming kit; shoeshine supplies; hat brushes; journals and notebooks; battery chargers; plug adapters; packs of gum; medicines and taco seasoning; and, perhaps most important of all, books. I've got all my cocktail recipe books with me, and some stuff about card games, and my Worst Case Scenario: Travel guide.

And then are the works of fiction I've selected. Sapsucker that I am, I neglected to choose these volumes before packing up my personal library, so I had to go back through the boxes and mine these buggers out of the tenebrous depths.

They are:

The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, which I'm reading now.

I've read Heart of Darkness before, but that was years ago, in school, and I didn't pay it much attention because I was too busy trying to avoid having my upper body dunked into a trash can. Like Moby-Dick, I have attempted to read Frankenstein repeatedly, but always petered out near the end of the first chapter. The Great Shark Hunt (also known as The Gonzo Papers, Volume One) is Thompson's true account of his adventures as a drug-addled gonzo journalist in a country turned upside-down by chemicals, counterculture, rock 'n' roll, political corruption, and war. (The Sixties, in other words.) Skeletons on the Zahara is likewise nonfiction: a tale of woe, desperation, suffering and privation regarding the crew of the American brig Commerce, shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in 1814 and sold into slavery by Saharan nomads. It's pretty good so far. Should be a good read on the plane, if I don't finish it before that.

Speaking of books, I am so far behind on my book reviews that it ain't even funny. Okay, maybe it is a bit funny. But that's beside the point. I'll spare you a long, dull, wordy series of reviews that you undoubtedly wouldn't have the patience to read. Instead, I'll review each book in one sentence:

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: A breathlessly suspenseful epic and yet also a sinewy and hard-lined analysis of patriotism, military service, war, and human conflict, in the guise of a rollicking good science fiction tale about well-trained space soldiers in powered armor battling hideous alien bugs. 9/10
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Journalist and inveterate traveler Krakauer details and examines the life, motivations, adventures and ultimate downfall of the ill-fated super-tramp Christopher McCandless. 9/10
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson: An excoriating satire of drug culture, chemically-enhanced ramblings, and late 20th-century vice in the world's most sinful city—sportswriter Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, speed off to Las Vegas in a giant red convertible and a trunk full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. 8/10
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: A powerful, gut-wrenching, no-holds-barred peek into the lives of black folks in the American South in 1959...seen through the eyes of white novelist Griffin himself, who darkened his skin artificially and set off to the South to find out the truth about the "Negro Problem." The truth is viscerally shocking. 7/10

There. Now you know what I've been reading. Incidentally, I've never read any of these books before. I don't know what took me so long to get around to Starship Troopers. Perhaps it was the awful movie adaptation. Thankfully I set my prejudice aside and read the book, which, as I understand, is required reading at West Point, and a great favorite among the 75th Ranger Battalion (the guys who fought through hell in Mogadishu in 1993). Now if only Barack Obama and the Democratic Party would read it...[sigh]...

And finally, since I will become an immigrant (emigrant?) in ten days, I'll leave you with a little song. Yes, yes, I know. I should be using "The Final Countdown" or something, but I hate that song. So take it away, Zep.

if I had $300,000,000

2012-01-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

I don't like television. As a general rule, I find it flabby, unwholesome, dissatisfying, crude, and pointless.

So when I tell you that my favorite television show is Firefly, you should understand that the show itself is none of those things. It is, in fact, pure awesomeness incarnate.

Tragically, it was canceled after a measly 14 episodes had been filmed, due to Executive Meddling. More's the pity.

In an interview, Firefly's male lead Nathan Fillion stated that, if he had $300 million on hand, he would buy the rights to the show, and probably continue it, free of interference from the powers-that-be.

That got me thinking. What would I do if I had $300 million?

I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd start up my own movie studio.

On-Target Productions, I'd call it. Or maybe Faithful Studios. Something to convey my sententious but entirely truthful belief that Hollywood is incapable of producing a piece of cinema which is in any way faithful to the source material, and that my studio, by virtue of its firm grounding in literary value (and complete disregard for monetary gain), is.

Anyway, the name isn't important. What's important is that I'd outfit this studio with the best equipment my limited budget could buy, hire the most hardworking personnel I could find, write a bunch of screenplays (the way I like 'em), and make some movies that are entirely accurate and complete interpretations of the media upon which they're based.

I mean that quite literally. Entirely accurate and complete. No chopping or dissecting or mulching being done here; if I mean to make a movie out of a book, I'm using the whole goddamn book: every scene, every line of dialogue, every sentence if needs be. There'll be no "lost characters" like Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings or Peeves the Poltergeist from Harry Potter. And there'll be none of this cutting-out-minor-scenes-because-they-don't-advance-the-action-fast-enough-and-we-can-totally-skip-those-scenes-anyway-because-all-they-do-is-reveal-minor-nuances-of-character-that-we-can-gloss-over-in-the-third-act malarkey. These are going to be faithful interpretations, like I said. That means every little scene, no matter how insignificant a two-bit brain-dead Hollywood screenwriter might consider it, will be reproduced in exact facsimile. No exceptions.

Having my own studio (and not giving a fig whether my productions are marketable, or even if they will be marketed) will give me room to breathe. I don't have to worry about length, or mass appeal, or tone, or censorship, or any of that other crap that the Gilded Mulcher has to worry about in order to sell movie tickets. I can reproduce these great source works as I see fit, with complete creative control, and revel in the realness and truthfulness of the results. I can bring my imagination to life for myself and a few other acolytes to enjoy. Everyone else can go spit.

I'm not saying these films will be unwatchably violent, sexy, or disgusting. There's practically no sex in any of the works I have in mind to adapt. And the violence won't be worse than anything you'd see in a typical action flick. As for the darker, scarier stories...well, it all depends on what you think might blast your soul from your body with cosmic horror.

by Pete Amachree

And mind you, I won't object if a few independent-minded cinemas agree to pick up my works and release them at a few small drive-ins and dollar theaters. Those are the kind of folks I'd want watching my films anyway, not the bigwigs from Hollywood and Cannes.

But that's beside the point! Aren't you curious to know which books and stories I will be adapting for the screen?

I thought you'd be. I have some very specific ideas on that score. They include, but are not limited to...

Several tales from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian mythos. If you haven't read any of Howard's original Conan tales, it's time you started. Howard's barbarian makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pantywaist choirboy. The stories are gritty, bloody, sweaty, and hard-boiled, bursting with darkness, danger, hideous evil, swashbuckling adventure and testosterone. Some of the stories I have in mind are Beyond the Black River, The Tower of the Elephant, Iron Shadows on the Moon, and Red Nails...as well as a weird Western tale, unrelated to Conan, The Horror from the Mound.
Selected works of H.P. Lovecraft, including At the Mountains of Madness, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shunned House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Dunwich Horror. It'll be interesting to see if Lovecraft's works translate well onto the screen. A lot of the horror and suspense in his stories is conveyed through description and inarticulate mentality, not through dialogue or action. Many of the horrific implications and disgusting monsters are best left to the realms of the imagination, too, rather than put up on a screen in CG and pixels. Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
Most of H.G. Wells's full-length works, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Most have been made into films already, but none of them have been done correctly. That's not my opinion, that's fact. I'll treat 'em right if no one else will.
Many of Jules Verne's classic tales, like Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Can you imagine what giant squids, raft-rides through lava tubes, and thrilling heroics on speeding steam trains would look like on a humongous theater screen? It gives me the chills!
Dozens of science fiction novels and short stories by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and Fritz Leiber. Here are a few I've got in mind.

The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (a respectful interpretation); also The Roads Must Roll and Universe
The Empire of the Atom, The Wizard of Linn, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt
The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak
Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

A live-action film adaptation of the superb and underrated Hanna-Barbera cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. A fur-clad warrior with a magic sword wanders the post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 3999, after a rogue planet cast human civilization in ruin. In his ongoing quest to save the scrawny, ragged survivors from evil wizards, mutants and strange monsters (many of which are holdovers from the 20th century), Thundarr is aided by the beautiful Princess Ariel, a sorceress, and a huge, furry Mok named Ookla. I'm thinking some big-budget disaster scenes and a lot of Scenery Gorn.
Some of the video and computer games I've played have definite potential, such as Crimson Skies. Maybe if I'm in a really fun-loving and goofy mood I'll do Serious Sam.
Yes, I know I've railed against remakes on this here blog. But I can't help it. I'd redo a few of the old stop-motion monster flicks, not because I think CG would make them better (certainly not; Ray Harryhausen has no equal and never will), but simply because I'm curious to see what they'd look like with a technological makeover. Just curious, is all. I can't help but wonder what a reboot of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi, Them!, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would be like. Specifically, the monsters. You know how much I like monsters.

And that's it. I think it'd be a lot of fun. I've always wanted to try my hand at screenwriting. And I'll bet I could hire an assistant until I got good at it. Then I'd just go to town. My studio would crank out these films, and they'd go for limited theatrical release or direct-to-DVD, and whoever was interested in real, faithful, true adaptations of good books and cartoons and movies could buy 'em and watch 'em. That's all I want. That's what I'd do with $300,000,000. Maybe a few bucks to charity here and there, but for the most part I'd launch my vendetta against Hollywood and revel in unmitigated artistic license.

What would you do with $300,000,000? Buy a monkey?

the best sci-fi stories you've (n)ever read

2012-01-23T14:19:00.000-08:00

Science fiction is arcane stuff. I get that. Not too many people are into it, except the science professor with the corduroy trousers and the geek down the block with the inch-thick glasses. More people are into fantasy (you know, that weird crap with unicorns and leprechauns and sparkly vampires and swords and magic and sexy witches) than sci-fi.

But I didn't come here to pontificate.

The odds are you're not a sci-fi fan. Two-thirds of you reading this probably aren't. Either that or you're a mere dilettante, someone who claims to love science fiction when the most you've ever done is go see Thor and Spider-man in the theaters, or glanced at Fahrenheit 451 in high school, or taken a shortcut through the sci-fi/fantasy section in Barnes & Noble because it was the quickest way to get to Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama at the mall entrance.

Oh, right. I'm not supposed to pontificate. [ahem]

So I'll help you out a little, because I happen to be a real sci-fi fan.

My collection includes everybody from James Blish to Poul Anderson, C.M. Kornbluth to John W. Campbell, Jr., Fritz Leiber to Gordon R. Dickson, Robert E. Gilbert to Edgar Rice Burroughs, A.E. van Vogt to L. Sprague de Camp...and it may soon extend to Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Jack L. Chalker, and Orson Scott Card.

I know my stuff.

I know who Isaac Asimov is (and therefore I know just how much the Will Smith version of I, Robot sucked).

I have read pretty much every story that H.G. Wells or Jules Verne ever wrote.

I know what happened in the year 802,701 A.D. I can carry a gun for dinosaur. I know why sea monsters love lighthouses. I can (probably) flush out a shape-shifting alien. I've learned what a "gestalt organism" is. I know what lies at the earth's core. I can recite the Three Laws of Robotics. I remember what happened to Thor V. I discovered where Captain Nemo lives.

I think I'm pretty qualified to judge what constitutes "good" sci-fi and "bad" sci-fi.

If you're not a science fiction fan, but have been curious about the genre, the following would be my pick. I have here, for your consideration, a list of what I believe represents the best science fiction written in the last hundred years. Some authors' names you may recognize, some you may not. The stories themselves are, to you, probably unfamiliar. Even if you haven't read them, though, you've probably seen them on the silver screen. A lot of these were made into classic, memorable, or semi-memorable films.

More importantly, though, these works have influenced me on a profound level. Someday I hope to be half as good as the people who wrote them. If you, dear reader, should choose to peruse them, you'll receive a crash-course in the mind-blowing storytelling and incredible writing the world of science fiction has to offer.

And as an added bonus, you just might mutate into a full-blown sci-fi nut. Here's hoping.

I was originally going to make this a ten-item list, but you can't read three science fiction anthologies (and have a used book store in your town bursting with dog-eared arcana) without, you know, winding up with a few more favorites than you'd like to admit. More to the point, however, there is absolutely no way to distill an entire genre down to ten items. I needed enough leeway to clue you in on both the genre's classics and its lesser-known short works in order to give you the full picture of the organ's merit and the writers' genius. Then again, you lot are uninitiated, uncultured swine, and I can't overload your gnat-like attention spans with as much material as I'd prefer.

So here you go, twenty items. I slaved over the list for months. I picked these works because (a) I liked 'em and (b) they will literally blow your mind. I dare you to read even three of them and see if your universe hasn't widened a smidgen.

The Fog Horn . . . . Ray Bradbury (short story, 1951; inspired the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)
Who Goes There? . . . . John W. Campbell, Jr. (novella, 1938; adapted into 1951's The Thing from Another World and 1982's much more faithful The Thing by John Carpenter)**
Black Destroyer . . . . A.E. van Vogt (short story, 1939)*****
Nerves . . . . Lester del Rey (novella, 1956)**
Code Three . . . . Rick Raphael (novella, 1963)*****
The Spectre General . . . . Theodore Cogswell (novella, 1952)***
Thy Rocks and Rills . . . . Robert Ernest Gilbert (short story, 1953)*****
A Pail of Air . . . . Fritz Leiber (short story, 1951)*****
The Time Machine . . . . H.G. Wells (novella, 1895; so much better than the two movie adaptations)**
E for Effort . . . . T.L. Sherred (novella, 1947)***
The Last Question . . . . Isaac Asimov (short story, 1959)*****
A Gun for Dinosaur . . . . L. Sprague de Camp (short story, 1956)*****
Heavy Planet . . . . Lee Gregor (short story, 1939)*****
Scanners Live in Vain . . . . Cordwainer Smith (short story, 1948)*
Arena . . . . Fredric Brown (short story, 1944; provided the basis for a Star Trek episode of the same name)*
The Machine Stops . . . . E.M. Forster (short story, 1909; adapted for TV in 1966 as part of the U.K. sci-fi series Out of the Unknown)***
A Rose for Ecclesiastes . . . . Roger Zelazny (short story, 1963)*
The Big Front Yard . . . . Clifford D. Simak (novelette, 1959)***
Microcosmic God . . . . Theodore Sturgeon (novella, 1952)*
Call Me Joe . . . . Poul Anderson (novella, 1957)**

A in case that wasn't enough, here a few stories I thought deserved a nod. They may not be as "good" as the ones I've listed above ("good" here having the meaning of deep, profound, insightful, provocative, didactic, romantic, or mind-blowingly awesome)...but they're fun. So there.

The Escape Orbit . . . . James White (novel, 1983)
The Island of Doctor Moreau . . . . H.G. Wells (novel, 1896)
Harrison Bergeron . . . . Kurt Vonnegut (short story, 1961)****
At the Earth's Core . . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel, 1914)
Tale of a Computer that Fought a Dragon . . . . Stanislaw Lem (short story, 1977)****
The Gods Themselves . . . . Isaac Asimov (novel, 1972)
A Clockwork Orange . . . . Anthony Burgess (novel, 1962)
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream . . . . Harlan Ellison (short story, 1967; made into a computer game in 1995)
The Hammer of God . . . . Arthur C. Clarke (novel, 1993)

And that's the list. Pick a few out and give 'em a whirl. You won't regret it. All I ask is that you read, think, and above all, enjoy.

That's what sci-fi is all about.

* The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume I, ed. Robert Silverberg, 1970.

** The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume IIA, ed. Ben Bova, 1973.

*** The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume IIB, ed. Ben Bova, 1973.

**** The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell, 1989.

***** The World Turned Upside Down, ed. David Drake, Eric Flint, & Jim Baen, 2005.

sordid tales of me and music

2012-01-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Blogsphere,

I've joined a writer's workshop here in the High Desert. We meet every alternate Wednesday at this charming little coffeehouse called The Grind. The affair is supervised by an English teacher from the local community college (and the mother of one of my high school buddies). It's mostly for poets, but we stick some fiction in every now and then. I've already gotten help with one of my short stories, and was glad to find out what worked and what didn't.

The overseer doesn't give us "prompts" at the end of every meeting; she gives us "dares." One of the ones she gave us yesterday entailed the following: write about the first time you ever heard a particular song. Any song. Pick one. Write about the context. Where were you? What were you doing? Who was with you? Describe the scene in excruciating detail. (She didn't the word "excruciating"; that's creative license on my part.)

So, for your consideration, I thought I'd give you my response to that dare. It concerns South Korea, for which I am leaving in three weeks. And it concerns one of my very favorite songs, one which I shall forever associate with Korea, friends, being an expatriate, godawful Korean lager, and...well, a whole bunch of other things. Read for yourself.

I was halfway through my fourth glass of beer and moving steadily into to a lolling, drunken stupor. Adam sat across from me, as tipsy as I was, a toothy grin on his whiskery face as he dealt the cards for another round of Tripoley. Elaine and Jeff were in the kitchen, mixing up some vile concoction of soju, orange juice and various liqueurs. The scent of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air, soaking every surface in the apartment—skin, clothes, hair, upholstery, wallpaper. Gossamer strands of vaporized carcinogens drifted up to the ceiling and hung there like lopsided spider webs.
It was pitch-black outside, except for the streetlights and neon-lit storefronts. The apartment was brilliantly lit by overhead fluorescent lighting. The curtains were closed, providing few hints about the dank, humid night outside. The linoleum floor was covered in crumbs, dingy tennis shoes, dog-eared paperbacks, smutty magazines. The glass-topped card table was populated with stacks of shuffled cards, sweating beer glasses and their telltale wet rings. Squashed beneath the glass were scraps of lined notebook paper with odd missives scribbled upon them in untidy ball-point: pot, kitty, king, queen, king-queen, ace, jack, 10, 8-9-10 all one suit.

Another day in South Korea had drawn to a close, and four beleaguered expatriates—Jeff (the Canadian), Adam, Elaine (a Geordie couple from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), and their American friend had gathered together for a long night of decompression and relaxation. A comforting dinner of beef and vegetables had been laid to rest in our bellies, various grievances had been levied against fractious students, copious amounts of booze were being consumed hourly, and the evening had gotten into its stride. Now we all sat down to the table, drinks in hand and giddiness in our heads, to play cards for unshelled peanuts.

Behind Adam, balanced on the ottoman, was a battered laptop computer hooked to a pair of squat speakers. From this was blasting an endless stream of music—house rhythms reminiscent of English nightclubs, highlights of 1960s American rock, and several contemporary selections. Among this was scattered a pleasing ensemble of R&B.

And then it happened. As Adam dealt the cards (a Marlboro hanging from the corner of his mouth), a wave of sound slammed into the alcoholic fog hanging over my brain. It was a simple sound, but powerful, primal, elemental in its ferocity and intensity. The power, the melody, and the pounding rhythm seized my soul in their sinewy clutches and refused to let go.

It was an electric guitar and a drum kit. That’s all. Okay, there was some bass in the background, but the guitar and the drums were what got me. Two instruments bare-knuckling their way out of jerry-rigged speakers, filling the smoky air with raw noise. It was the blues—but the kind of blues which human ears hadn’t heard on this earth since the fabled days of John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy. It was dirty, gritty, unfiltered, like a cigarette butt ground into the pavement. It started low and slow, and then got loud. It was impossible to keep my feet from tapping and my head from bobbing as thundering drums and jagged guitar riffs blasted ‘round the room like a sonic tsunami. Even in the midst of a boozy funk I was stricken, overawed. I leaned ravenously forward, elbows on my knees, straining to absorb as much of the music as possible from my remote position five feet away.

“Adam,” I asked, “who is this?”

Adam craned his head around and swiped a finger across the laptop’s touchpad.

“The Black Keys, mate,” he said. “They’re mint.”

So it was. I leaned farther forward and squinted. The song was called “Busted.”

Even the godawful Korean lager tasted good that night.

let's say "plans" instead of "resolutions"

2012-01-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

...and while we're at it, let's call them "premeditated" instead of "late."

I was never one to go spouting my petty New Year's Resolutions to everybody within earshot, but listing them here would keep you from being caught unawares later on. And calling them "resolutions" would seem to invite them to be unequivocally broken in short order. So here you go, my plans for 2012 (to be immediately rendered null and void if the Aztecs decide to let the world end):

Number One: Ascend to my rightful place as a writer (i.e., have more confidence, dammit).

I'm through with the crippling lack of confidence and dithering indecision which plague me whenever I try to gauge markets, write relevant stories and articles, look up potential publishers, and submit works. Hunter S. Thompson never bothered with any of that crap. He just went out, did what he had to do to get a story, looked around and submitted it somewhere. That's what I'm going to do from this moment forward. I'm looking up markets for creative nonfiction as we speak. Who says I need only do travel articles and short sci-fi stories? I'm sure I've got lots to say on other subjects...and can tease it out of my brain without the aid of chemicals. So, to that end, I intend to become a more prolific writer this year...and a more assiduous salesman.

P.S. This may or may not include publishing that damn novel. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how easy it is to publish a novel from a foreign country, and I don't have Ernest Hemingway here to tell me. Maybe that magic Internet thingy will come to the rescue! TA-DA!!

Number Two: Go back to Korea (i.e., drink a lot of soju, meet crazy foreigners, do the cool stuff I didn't get to do before, pig out on bulgogi, and all that rot).

Well, shoot. That's taken care of. Helen the Eminent Recruiter tells me that my paperwork is where it needs to be and my E-2 visa is expected any day now. My room is still in rampant disarray, but order is precipitating out of the chaos. My desk is cleaned out, my closet has been divested of all garments which shall not be accompanying me on my Asian odyssey, and that big pile of stuff in the armchair is looking less like a war correspondent's personal effects and more like a roving journalist's kit bag. I should be ready to go in—criminy, twenty-eight days!

Number Three: Give Hulk Hogan a wedgie (i.e., sneak up behind him on the set of his reality TV show and yank his Fruit-of-the-Looms up over his cute little head).

Just checking to see if you're still awake.

Number Four: Live for others...a little bit (i.e., get involved in some charity work).

The only things I've ever donated to others are a few hours at an old folks' home in East Tennessee (which nearly scarred me for life; cue the old lady in the wheelchair screaming for her dead husband) and a few fistfuls of change for the Salvation Army. I aim to change that this year, and put some real charitable man-hours under my belt. Some of my foreign friends in K-Land have gotten involved with organizations which donate food and clothing to North Koreans in need, which interests me something fierce. I never did a flipping thing to help the poor NoKos the last time I was there, and the thought wracks me with guilt to this very day. Once I get back to the States I intend to put my time in planting trees and passing out soup at homeless shelters, too, but that's a story for 2014.

There's more to my list, but these snippets are all I can think of for now. I need to read more books this year (and write a few, too). I recently rediscovered reading for pleasure, and since then a whole host of worthy volumes has passed under my eyes. I'm way behind on reviewing 'em, too...especially since I decided to review only one book at a time on this here blog. I'm five chapters into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am enjoying the living daylights out of it. But more about that later.

Cheerio, people. Send me some heroic resolve...

Thoreau's hit list

2012-01-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

If he had one, I'm on it. And probably Karl Marx's and Friedrich Nietzsche's, too.

Why?

I have way too much crap.

Way too much.

If Thoreau, Marx and Nietzsche were teleported into my bedroom at this very instant, and perused the absolute disarray to which it has been reduced, with piles of junk and trinkets and baubles occupying every flat surface, and umpteen bazillion hats and coats and shoes in the closet (yes, I'm a clothes-horse), and papers and notes and photographs and picture frames lying everywhere, and no less than seven cardboard boxes of books shoved into my brother's room for safekeeping, they'd be appalled. Thoreau would holler at me to simplify, Marx would fulminate about my materialism, and Nietzsche would aim a few mocking jibes at my sentimental and pointless memorabilia.

I wouldn't blame them. I've been doing likewise.

The intervening time between this and my last post has been spent desperately trying to whip my small room into some semblance of order, to cram the trappings of my life into manageable containers. I've lugged some cardboard boxes out of the shed, taped them together, and have been steadily stowing away all the detritus of my quarter-century's existence. I cannot believe I let this go so long, nor the sheer volume of material I'm dealing with. There are so many things which I should have let go long ago: old pictures, greeting cards, outdated documents, rough drafts of stories too puerile to preserve...the list goes on and on.

But I'm making progress. My nightstand has been cleared of CD cases, notebooks and electronics; my filing cabinet has been purged; only the dust remains under my bed. I still have, however, the daunting task of clearing the larger gewgaws out of my desk drawers, and packing up the clothes in my closet. This'll take some doing. And I must exercise caution and restraint as well. The well-worn seat of my armchair, now a repository for the equipment and essentials I will bring with me to South Korea, is near to overflowing.

Where did I pick up all this crap, anyway?!

I look around the room (a roadrunner just ran by the window, making me think of Jerry's desert musings). I see a beaten canteen hanging from the chair, along with the plastic bag full of taco sauce pouches I promised Smithy I'd take to Korea with me. Suspended from the other side is the plastic bag with all my medicines and first-aid equipment in it, and a shoulder holster with a ripped seam. Lying on top of the desk is a boggling assortment of trinkets: a Lego seaplane, several sets of headphones, cables and power cords to who-knows-what, a packing tape dispenser, an old Walkman, my new laptop speaker, a photograph from our trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific, a coffee mug with my name on it, library books, a jar of Korean wishing stars painstakingly handmade by my lovely girlfriend, and a desk lamp that has my prized Stetson fedora and the tassel from my university mortarboard hanging from it.

To my left, on the top shelf of my closet, I can see an untidy jumble of hats, a mosquito net in a drawstring bag, and the glow-in-the-dark hockey mask I wore at the Halloween party and scared the bejesus out of John and Matt with.

On the small TV tray in front of the bed there's a picture frame showcasing my great uncle's uniform patches and insignia from the cavalry regiment he served with in Vietnam; a pair of orange hat brushes; my brand-new HD webcam, still in its package; a tin of Icebreakers Sours; a lottery ticket; my checkbook; and the DVDs for Spider-man 2 and 3, awaiting transferal to some less discerning owner.

In and around the armchair are haphazardly piled a couple of laptop briefcases, several decks of cards, a small heap of books (concerning alcoholic beverages and card games, mostly), passport pictures, address books, important papers, artifacts from my travels, and my precious journals.

The dresser is by far the worst offender, a fountain of materialistic indiscretion. Quite apart from the raiment overflowing from its drawers, its summit is crowned with flotsam. Shammies and chemicals for cleaning spectacles and LCD screens; a small vanity filled with loose buttons, batteries, ticket stubs and foreign coins; a pinochle deck; more books (Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me); a ledger where I keep track of my spare change; rolls of quarters and nickels and dimes; a flashlight; a disassembled music-box, given to me by one of my Korean students; a nifty black pouch containing my five USB drives, and thereby my entire writing career; several pairs of glasses and sunglasses snug in their cases; a can of lighter fluid; a toy Model T and several metal-and-plastic warbirds; and a whiskey-tasting certificate from the Old Jameson Distillery in Dublin, Ireland.

On the hooks behind the door are two mostly-pristine flight suits in desert tan, American flags gaily gleaming from their shoulders; my old blue TacAir baseball cap; two pairs of bathrobes; and a dusty ocarina from who-can-tell-where.

The walls are mostly bare; I've taken my Korean flag down, and all the pages torn from various warbird calendars; but the framed jigsaw puzzles and the Indiana Jones theatrical posters remain.

I've gotten rid of us much as I possibly could. I'm no hoarder, but it's difficult to lightly pass up the virtues of the pack rat. It seems like every bauble, every half-faded line on a wrinkled sheet of paper, every dog-eared book and creased photograph holds some happy memory within it.

I'll stop there. You know what comes next: a load of maudlin reminiscence. I'll spare you.

Suffice to say, this is a more monumental task than I anticipated (but isn't it always?). I'm slogging through it. I anticipate having my room entirely packed up, my existence encapsulated, by the middle of the month. All of it will go into storage while your humble author and a few select garments and trinkets and novels will sally forth unto East Asia. More about that later.

And by the way, Happy New Year.

le grande update

2011-12-30T22:58:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, my last two posts were exceedingly brief. And as you're aware, I'm a long-winded bugger who can't abide sparing the slightest detail. So I think it's about time I gave you a full update on where I stand, before things get crazy.

First, I'm going back to Korea. It's official. It's genuine. It's true. I don't want to jinx it (this will be my fifth attempt, and every previous job offer has gone south due to unexpected delays and unforeseen obstacles), but nothing short of an Act of God can stop me now. I'm Asia-bound, so help me.

I sure didn't see this coming. I loved Korea, rest assured. It was a blast. A kick in the pants. The cat's pajamas. The elephant's instep. Despite the complete and abject lack of limes, turkey, single-malt Scotch, sausage, real cheese and decent hamburgers, the place was alright. I had a ball. I crammed my existence into a tiny studio apartment, took frequent walks, wrote in my journal, blogged, scribbled a novel, taught hyperactive children the rudiments of the English language, tried to learn Korean, lost 20 pounds, became addicted to bulgogi and kimchi, acquainted myself intimately with debauchery, danced, raved, sang, drank, ate, and was merry. Oh, and I made myself a ton of cherished friends, with whom I remain in contact to this day (and many of which I will see again come February).

But I didn't think I'd go back. I thought I was done with living overseas and making money there. I figured I'd return to the States, get some stuff done (like my pilot's license) and then find a job and get busy. I really had no ruttin' idea that things were so bad here. Now I look back at the day in 2009 when I stepped off the jetliner and into the warm, moist, smoggy air of the Inland Empire, and I giggle at how naïve I was. I thought I was set for life. I had a year of international job experience under my belt and a wad of cash in my pocket. I thought I was sitting pretty. Boy, was I whistling Dixie. What I should've done was move someplace with low rent and cheap gas (like, I don't know, Kansas perhaps?), get a crummy job and work for five years until I had a suitable sum of money saved and a modicum of job experience. Then I could've looked about me, gauged my options, moved to Alaska, gotten my pilot's license, whatever.

But I jumped the gun. Drunk on prosperity and globetrotting confidence, I decided to get my pilot's license right away. Hang the job, hang security, hang responsibility. You know what came of that. I got myself stuck in this goddamn desert pest-hole for two and a half years.

They say hindsight is 20/20. My hindsight should've been a lot clearer, though, considering how far up my ass my head was.

So, poor economic decisions aside, I got my pilot's license. I worked two low-paying jobs (a temp job at the local newspaper, which lasted about a month, and that flying job I've been talking about for ages). I lived in my parents' house. That was godawful. I felt rotten, like I was a kid again, not a forward-striding, self-sufficient man's man as I'd imagined. My folks were sweet as pie, and did everything to make things as comfortable as they could for me, giving me loads of excellent advice (most of which I didn't listen to until it was too late). They salvaged my pride at several pivotal junctures, too, bless them. But the malaise, the ennui, and the remorseless hindsight gnawed at me day and night. And worse yet, I had no escape route. Jobs there were none. Prospects there were none. Money was running out. It seemed I was doomed to remain in the doldrums forever.

It's difficult to believe that Miss H and I started looking for jobs in Korea back in June. June! Thanks to delays and unguessable disasters, we've endured one of the roughest, bleakest times of our lives. The ennui was ten times worse for her; she couldn't find any jobs at all. She worked a seasonal stint at Target last year during the holidays, and that was it. There's nothing in this damn desert. Zilch. Squat. Nada. The desperate downward spiral took a heavy toll on us.

Our hand had been forced. We decided to go to Korea. But couple's positions were thin on the ground, and the delays and backups just kept mounting. We had to make some tough calls. Ultimately, Miss H decided to stay behind. She would not accompany me to Korea. We would separate temporarily, she to seek her fortunes, I to seek mine farther afield. And lo and behold—snap—the pieces began to click together. I got a job offer from a hagwon in Bucheon (somewhere between Seoul and Incheon) the very same day I told my recruiter to find me a singles' position. And things bloomed at Heather's end, too: she got several bites from a social work agency in the same town she'd gone to college in. She knows the area, and rent and gas are very reasonable. Boom: just like that, things are looking up for us. Seems like an impossible dream after the long hard slog we've had for the past two years.

And in other news, I finished my novel. No, I mean finished: it's written, it's edited, it's proofed, everything. Of course there are few tweaks to be made, and it has to be peer-reviewed, but the thing is largely done.

That feels good.

No, really. You remember how scared, nervous, self-conscious and maudlin I've been? For three years it's been like this. I started the dang novel in Korea. Finished it not long after I returned, in late 2009. Ever since I began I've had the feeling that it was crap, and that I was a the world's largest hack, and that the whole thing was a waste of time. Normally I'm a secure and confident bloke and don't entertain thoughts like these. But I did. And they bedeviled me and my writing efforts for three long years, before I finally wised up, gained perspective, achieved Nirvana or whatever, and buckled down and finished.

The second rewrite was much easier than the first, because I felt no insecurity. I felt fine, in fact. The novel felt like a novel. The author felt like an author. The work felt like work, but more than that, it was fun. For the first time, it was actually fun. Hallelujah for that!

So I spent about a fortnight just blasting through my entire manuscript, line-editing, spell-checking, rearranging syntax for mellifluousness, and making some major revisions and rewrites. And you know what I came out with? A novel. An honest-to-Gawd debut science fiction novel. It's got plot. It's got theme. It's got premise. It's got character. It's got conflict. It's got action. It's got a climax, a denouement, and all the rest. It may be a bit amateurish (after all, it's my first book) but everything's there.

Now I just need somebody to read it. And a publisher to send it to.

This is tremendously exciting.

So, in summary, I'd just like to say that after thirty months of waiting, worrying, striving and stagnating, things are looking up. The novel's done, and I'm going to Korea. And Miss H and I are doing better than ever.

Thanks for sticking with us.

and in other news...

2011-12-30T00:50:00.000-08:00

The novel is finished.

Of course I'll have to read back over the manuscript again for continuity and historical accuracy. And then I'll throw it to the beta readers and let them claw it to ribbons. But for all intents and purposes, the story is finished. The manuscript is complete. My edits have been implemented. I'm DONE.

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sounds impossible, but I busted through this edit. Miss H called me a workaholic, which is something no one has ever accused me of in all twenty-five years of my freeloading existence. It was mad. I found, for the first time, that I wasn't scared of the damn thing. I loved it. I wanted to perfect it. I wanted to put the finishing touches on it. I wanted to work on it (wow!). Next thing you know I'll actually be eager to submit it to a publisher. That'll be the day.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me and believed in me. Miss H, Beth, Chris, Johnnie, Jane, Olivia, Donna, Polly, Marilisa...all you guys. You're wonderful.

Next we delve into the wonders of publication...

P.S. My recruiter in Korea has received my immigration documents, and passed them onto my school; I should have my visa by next week. I am going to Korea in February. Cue another Big "YES!" here.

trumpeting from the rooftops

2011-12-27T21:44:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted for an English teaching position at the reputable Avalon hagwon in Bucheon, Seoul area, South Korea. I leave for East Asia on February 10. My prayers have been answered. Further bulletins as events warrant.

e-hiatus, day 8

2011-12-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

I'm going to have to call the whole thing off. It's just impossible right now. I picked a bad time of year and a bad time in my life to do something like this. The first week was useful, admittedly; and I accomplished much, as I mentioned in my previous post. But the writer's workshop I'm getting involved with announces its meetings on Facebook; I have a meeting on Skype tomorrow with a recruiter; and other things like job applications, research and whatnot all require a machine and an Internet connection. Plus I've discovered several new free games available for my 'Droid and, well...yeah. I caved.

It pains me to admit it—I've caved on a lot of stuff lately—but c'est la vie. I hate to concede that my comrade Bryan was right, but in order to do this hiatus properly, I'd need a canoe, a midshipman, and a week's worth of camping supplies. Someday, I shall do it. Maybe I'll make a regular thing out of it. But for now, the e-hiatus is officially canceled. Wish me better luck next time. Career changes are in the wind (finally!) and I need to focus on those, and the writer's workshop. I think my time will still be spent productively no matter what I'm doing to relax.

Thanks for sticking around...

e-hiatus, day 7

2011-12-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

Well, as I look back on the first complete [snort] week of this e-hiatus, I reflect that there are a great many things that I could've done better (such as, not checking Facebook).

There are some major transgressions I wish I hadn't committed (like downloading Shoot the Apple for my Android).

This e-hiatus has already gone on way too damn long (Gawd, I never knew a week could be this long).

However, I have accomplished much. My novel is 75% re-edited, and looks a lot better than it did even after the first second rewrite.

My job hunt has yielded fruit, even if it's only half-ripe fruit and not especially juicy. (More details as I get them.)

Miss H and I have become much, much closer, and for that I am thankful.

I haven't lost too many pounds (heh heh), but that'll come later. My optimism is relentless on that point.

Now, since this week has been stressful (to say the least), and I've been such a good boy for the first five or six days of this hiatus, and I'm looking at another 23 goddamn days of this crap, I believe I'll break curfew for a few hours this evening and have a little fun in the Digital Fun Park. Judge me as you will.

Annyeong!

e-hiatus, day 6

2011-12-19T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I completely flubbed it today. I was on the Internet practically all day, and did nothing constructive besides: neither research, nor novel-writing, nor exercising, nor job-hunting. I even broke down, found my phone, cracked it open, and played some games on it (but not Angry Birds, thank goodness). If I'm feeling particularly seditious I'll watch a movie or something.

Oh well. Research suggests it's good to reward yourself for good behavior when you're in the midst of a new regimen, and I've held out almost a week. Plus certain events have conspired to make this little deviation almost necessary (I won't go into details; it's personal. You'll just have to trust me on it).

I did finish Starship Troopers last night, so I'll have to review that for you tomorrow. I started in on Phaid the Gambler (a little-known sci-fi tale by Mick Farren, and it's turning out to be hard-boiled, gritty and engaging so far). At least I got some reading done, right?

e-hiatus, day 5

2011-12-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

We woke up at about ten o'clock. We ate brunch and got down to business. Miss H job-searched while I worked on the novel some more. At about 1:00 p.m., I was stricken with severe writer's block, so I went ahead and wrote that piece on A.E. van Vogt which was posted earlier. Things failed to improve after that, so I cheated on my hiatus and checked Facebook. I'm quite glad I did, because one of my friend's mothers (an English teacher at the community college) invited me to a writer's workshop on the 21st of December. I could really use some input on my writing, so I think I'll go. Might learn something useful, you know? I just have to be sure to pick a suitably noncommittal part of my novel to avoid plagiarism.

The rest of the day passed. I spent it finishing Starship Troopers (wow, what a book) and watching the movie Duel (1971) on YouTube. Excellent entertainment on all fronts. Miss H and I also came to a decision about our futures, but I won't go into that here.

I will say that the withdrawal symptoms have hit me hard...or rather, the boredom and emptiness associated with breaking a habit. I no longer find myself taking my phone out of my pocket automatically (in fact, I have no idea where my phone is). But I still open Facebook and Hotmail without even thinking about it whenever I turn on my computer. I must train myself out of this. Between job searches and novel sessions, I find myself wandering around the house, kneading my hands, wondering what to do with myself. I managed a walk with Dash yesterday but that was about it. Miss H and I have begun work on another 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and that should help keep me occupied. Maybe I'll teach myself Chinese ten or something to keep from going nuts.

Squaring my shoulders and hoping for a more productive day tomorrow! Postman out.

e-hiatus, day 4

2011-12-17T19:19:00.000-08:00

Woke up, ate breakfast, started a fire, worked on my novel, researched my novel, worked on my novel some more, researched some more, watched Patton, worked on my novel, researched, worked, researched, worked.

Guess what I'm doing right now?

If you'll excuse me, I'll get back to it.

The End.

e-hiatus, day 3

2011-12-16T23:47:00.000-08:00

I have to be honest: I fudged yesterday a little. After I finished Day Two's post I fiddled around on TV Tropes for a while before going to bed. But I'd edited the hell out of my novel and annihilated seven chapters of Starship Troopers, so who's to say I didn't accomplish something regardless?

Today was excellent. I didn't even have a chance to violate the rules. At twelve o'clock Miss H and I went down to the most charming coffeehouse in town, set up our computers, and went on a job-hunting spree. We were at it for over four hours. I created a complete profile on Clear Channel Radio's job search site, including my complete résumé and references. I applied for two jobs, a radio dispatcher position in Seattle (which I won't get, because 476 other people applied to it) and a technical writing position in Madison, Wisconsin (which I feel I have a decent shot at; they cover relocation costs, too!). I know two jobs doesn't sound like much for four hours' work, but believe me, jobs were mighty thin on the ground. I searched Monster, CareerBuilder, JournalismJobs, and several media companies' private websites. Those were the only two positions I found that (a) I could do, (b) I had the credentials for, and (c) didn't require one year of experience. That's been my biggest stumbling block in finding a job in my field thus far: lack of on-the-job experience. I'm beginning to think I should've applied myself more at my job at the newspaper, and I should've tried to go two semesters at my college radio station instead of just one.

The draining hunt for work sustained us until five o'clock, at which point Miss H and I, tired and discouraged, closed down our machines, bought some necessaries at the grocery store, went home and cooked dinner (quesadillas with avocado, tomato and chicken). We watched a movie, and read for a bit. And that has been my day. I haven't even touched my phone. I'm so tired I think I'll just go to bed at midnight instead of 1:00 a.m. like usual. Let's hope some of those job apps bear fruit.

left behind: Harriet's eulogy

2011-12-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

In every damn movie I ever saw some wiseacre walks into the station house or up to the campfire or out of the boardroom and says "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is..."

I get sick of the jackass always treating his audience to mood whiplash by throwing out a hope spot and then negating the nugget of good cheer with some apocalyptically bad tidings a moment later.

So here's the bad news:

My dog died.

Yes, my dog. Harriet. The lovable Chow-Shepherd cross I've had since I was thirteen years old.

We were together for twelve years, that mutt and I. She was thirteen when she died (I'm going to use the word "died" instead of a euphemism like "passed on" or "pegged out" or "kicked," and you may thank George Carlin for it).

When I met her, she was squished into the corner of an enclosure at the old animal shelter down on Zuni Road. That was 1999, the year when everybody was still in a flap about something called "Y2K," the year The Matrix came out in theaters, the year Bill Clinton was acquitted of being a large and unfaithful ham, the year Nunavut (Canada's third territory) was created, the year Joe DiMaggio died, the year Napster debuted, the year the Columbine shooting took place, the year the euro was established, and the year that my brother and I first went to see a movie unescorted (Star Wars, Episode I if you want to know).

I found it to be an odd picture: the cutest dog in the world was being oppressed by the ugliest, in the same cage, no less. Harriet, who used to look like this (she's the brown one):

...and who had an expression on her muzzle akin to this...

...was being bullied by this thing. I can't even describe it. I went to Google and typed in "ugly dog" and nothing the cybersphere threw at me could even come close to encompassing this animal's unsightliness. Seriously, this was an ugly dog. Gray skin, like an anemic walrus. Woolly white fur that was flaking off in bundles. Stubby legs, a tubular body, a hideous, angular head, and a mean look in its sunken eyes. If Harriet even looked as though she was about to budge out of her corner, Old Butt-Ugly would let out a blood-curdling growl. Harriet would freeze in place and give a plaintive stare to whomever walked by the cage at that point.

And, at some point, I happened to walk by.

They say dogs can't talk, but it would've been harder for Harriet to say "Get me out of here!" any more clearly, even if she'd opened up her mouth and yelled the words in a Flatbush twang.

It was the Bambi eyes that did it, though. Harriet gave me one look out of those dark, somber, tear-jerking eyes and my heart was gone. I had to have that dog. I had to save her from Whizzo the Crazy Ugly Dog-Thing. She had to be mine. I had to be hers.

So we brought her home.

She was an unusual dog. Unique, maybe, is the term. You can't say "all pets are unique," because that flouts the very definition of the word "unique." But Harriet was, all the same. She didn't like to run or play fetch like most dogs did. She was a tug-of-war kind of girl. She loved rope toys and pig's ears and other things you could chew on. She had some bad habits at first, too. She liked to bark and she liked to dig. I can't tell you how many times I had to get up in the dark of night and go yell at her to quit barking. She dug so many holes under the perimeter fence that I began to wonder if her previous owners hadn't been Mexican immigrants.

(I'll pause a moment while you boo and hiss at that awful joke.)

We never had to go far to look for her when she escaped the yard. She always came back. It was filling in the holes that was the problem. They were many and they were deep, and if they weren't properly filled in and barricaded, she'd re-excavate them the next night. I used anything I could find: scraps of plywood, walkway tiles, rocks, whatever we had lying around. It drove me to distraction.

But finally, after repeated lessons, coaxing, persuasion, and some harsh disciplinary action, Harriet was trained. She didn't dig out anymore, and she shut up barking (almost completely). She was a healthy, amiable pup, and though she had some annoying habits (like jumping up and putting her paws on people's stomachs) she had some whimsically cute ones, too. On hot days (it frequently got up to 105 and higher in the summer) she liked to dip her front paws into her water bowl. With all her fur, it was all she could do to keep cool, short of me brushing her. I even sheared her completely sometimes, right down to the skin. She looked ridiculous (like a sheep or a poodle) but she was cool for a while.

She never forgot about me, even when I left her for months—even years. I saw her every Christmas and summer for three and a half years while I attended college. She never failed to greet me at the door or the gate, chasing her tail, hopping about like a mad thing, sniffing me all over to take in some of the exotic scents I'd picked up in my absence.

Then came the big one: Korea. I was gone for a whole year, and then some. For all that time the most I saw of her was the pictures I had brought with me, and some which my parents sent me electronically. She had some adventures of her own while I was gone. An ear infection affected her balance so much that she went around with her head tilted at a crazy angle. Fortunately it was cured quickly.

She wasn't the same dog she'd been when she left. Her muzzle was grayer. Her movements were slower. She had less tolerance to cold. She didn't chase after thrown toys anymore, didn't play tug-of-war with as much enthusiasm. Two more years went by, and she had become...old. Undeniably old. Even I could see that she wasn't the doe-eyed puppy dog she'd been when I brought her home. She was stiff, bent. She spent most of her time sleeping. She hardly ever barked anymore, unless my parents' new dog, Dash, stirred her up.

And soon it was time to make the Hardest Choice. At some point I had to ask myself whether her quality of life truly justified her continued existence. And ultimately I decided it didn't. She was in constant pain. Cataracts clouded her eyes, forcing her to look side-on at anything she wished to examine closely; she could no longer find dropped treats in the dark. Her arthritis was so paralyzing that she could no longer bend her rear legs; and sitting and laying down were painful, torturous, lengthy concepts for her.

I couldn't stand seeing her that way. Not my dog. Not the excitable pooch who used to spin in circles so fast she became a blur. Not the mutt who used to take naps in snowdrifts in Wyoming. Not the jealous girl who'd leaped headlong into the lake after Molly just to keep her from getting the stick first. Not the digger, the barker, the paw-dipper. Not my Harriet.

So I took her to the vet to have her put down.

I can't tell you how often I considered scooping her up, scrambling out of the vet's office, throwing her into the back of my Jeep, and just running away with her somewhere. About once every two seconds, probably.

I even thought of trying to end her life myself, but I knew in my heart that I didn't have it in me to load a gun and point it at her. What if I missed? What if I didn't kill her with the first shot? What would go through her mind in her last few seconds of her life? Would she wonder why her master, the boy she'd grown up with, betrayed her? Hated her?

I couldn't bear the thought.

I think it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do: to sit on the floor of the vet's office with Harriet while the poison went into her veins, and she let out one final sigh and went limp in my arms.

I'll spare you the details. You can guess the rest.

I buried her myself. I insisted on it. It seemed the least I could do. She wasn't the first dog I'd ever owned, but I'd known her the longest, and loved her the most. This was the dog I'd spent twelve years of my life—half of my entire existence—getting to know. The same dog I'd patiently trained to sit, to stay, to shake. The same one who used to dig out of the paddock and go running all over creation while I, heart in my throat, searched and called for her. The same one I couldn't stand to brush, because she had the coat of a musk ox and I always got enough fur off her to stuff a mattress with. The same stocky, fluffy, bull-nosed girl who'd come up behind me when I was sitting on the back porch and poke her head under my arm. The same one I'd dreamed of entering in the Iditarod one day, she had so much fur. The one I hoped to take flying sometime. The one I wanted to come to Alaska with me and live out her retirement chasing moose off my property.

So the veterinary staff wrapped her forlorn little body (she seemed so much smaller now, in death) in a black plastic body bag and handed her to me. I put her in the back of my Jeep, closed the door, and leaned my head against it for a moment, trying to get a hold of myself. Miss H, much more honest with her feelings, laid a hand on my arm. It helped so much. I could never find words to thank her for being there, nor what she did to help me along. I squared my shoulders and drove us home. I backed the Jeep into the horse paddock (next to the big one-acre paddock where Harriet had run in olden times). I selected a quiet spot between the yucca plant and the old corral. With Miss H helping, we dug a three-foot hole in the hard-packed sand and grit. Miss H went in the house to let me pay my last respects. I lifted Harriet out of the Jeep, laid her in the hole, arranging her legs and head as comfortably as I could through the black plastic. I hesitated a moment longer, then put the first shovel-load of dirt on her.

After that, things were easier, a little.

I filled in the hole. I put a chunky clump of dirt on top, as a sort of marker. Just so I could find the spot again if I wanted to. I poured some water over the hole, to help tamp down the loose earth and make sure no one disturbed her. Then I put the tools back in the shed, closed the rear door of the Jeep, parked it by the garage, and closed the paddock gate.

That was September 2, 2011.

I haven't visited her grave since.

I think I might be able to sometime soon.

e-hiatus, day 2

2011-12-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

The results are encouraging: I finished reading Transgalactic and got started on a book that Miss H's mum lent me, Race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen. This will be interesting. I've read Sir Ranulph Fiennes's Race to the Pole, which details Robert Scott's Antarctic foray, and thereby learned about the English perception of their Norwegian competitors; this new book will be the other side of the coin (from the man who actually won the race).

I didn't touch my phone. I watched the second half of For a Few Dollars More (I watched the first half yesterday to reward myself for knocking 20 pages of my novel out). I checked Facebook, but didn't do anything, except reply to a message from a dear friend whom I don't want to keep waiting for a month. I made a few calls and took a few (one from Helen, our recruiter at ESL Park, who told us that we still don't have all the paperwork we need for a Korean job, and that furthermore no positions will be opening until late February or March). Miss H and I have been in communication via e-mail (due to the ban on texting), and it's strangely exciting: suddenly, instead of microscopic blurbs of information, we can put down our entire thought process and convey a complete message, with salutations and loving farewells attached. It's almost like we're separated by some incalculable distance and are keeping contact through love letters. I never thought e-mail would strike me as a charming way to connect, but due to my submersion in texts, I couldn't gain perspective. This hiatus is already yielding startling and unforeseen revelations.

The only bummer about today is that I had to fork over a good portion of my life savings to the bank. I hate bills. Things are becoming desperate. I'm fine for next month, but the month after that might be troublesome. I applied for a bartender's position with the parks & rec district in the next town over, but I've had no word from them yet. All I can do is lounge around in my bathrobe and wait for a miracle.

I busted through two more chapters of the damn novel, trimming, cleaning, snipping, and making general improvements as well as a few major edits. The thing is streamlining nicely. I also cracked open a new book: Get Published, a volume I've owned for some time but never perused at length. Should help me jump-start my writing career, I hope. I can see now that I haven't started yet. I could be submitting articles to High Desert Magazine or the Daily Press (despite my sordid history with that latter organ). I don't have to wait for a book deal. I could get started on this crap now. I think I will tomorrow.

But for now, Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef and hot buttered rum shall sustain me.

e-hiatus, day 1

2011-12-14T19:59:00.000-08:00

It went pretty well, actually. I spent a goodly portion of my time in waiting rooms, and fought the terrible temptation to take out my phone and annihilate a few green pigs. But apart from that, I was peachy. Miss H and I went down the hill into San Bernardino and I was distracted by the traffic and the kooky drivers. Now, I just have to avoid messing around on this Internet thingy tonight. I think I'll do my best to start (and finish) A.E. van Vogt's Mission to the Stars, just to pass the time.

Due to some rather specious comments inscribed upon my last post, I feel the need to clear the air a little. Indeed, this is not a true e-hiatus. I am still using Blogger, taking phone calls, checking e-mails, and (occasionally) watching television. If I had the means and the time to take a proper break from the digital world, completely divorcing myself from all electronics and going to live in a snowbound cabin for a year with no companions but a Siberian husky, several bottles of single malt Scotch, and Leo Tolstoy, then I would do it. But I haven't the means. That's neither here nor there. The point of this hiatus is not to divide myself wholeheartedly from the Galaxy Electronica. The point is to reapportion my energies into more constructive channels, like novel-writing, walk-taking, job-hunting and life-sorting. I have allowed myself to become distracted from my old hobbies and habits by the relentless allure of YouTube and Angry Birds. No more. I shall take a break from that crap to zero in on what's really important. I'm not going to find myself or anything. I'm just trying to get some shit done.

All clear?

Good. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post. I expect the video-game withdrawal symptoms to begin soon.

Bradbury's revenge

2011-12-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

Miss H gave me a newspaper clipping a couple of days ago. It contained an Associated Press feature on Ray Bradbury, the famed science fiction author (now a nonagenarian), and his seminal work, Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury, an outspoken foe of e-books, e-readers and the like, has finally consented to allow his magnum opus to be made available to readers in electronic form. It went on sale last week for $9.99, and has sold a great many copies.

The sweet irony of the situation is that Bradbury predicted the existence of the e-reader, or at least the technological trends which gave birth to it. In Fahrenheit 451, humans have become so distracted with newfangled mass media that books have declined sharply in popularity, to the point of being outlawed. The first part of his prediction, at least, has come true. Thanks to the Internet, music sharing, live-streaming video, and all the other myriad forms of media, humans are subject to a constant stream of information and entertainment every waking hour.

Some might consider Bradbury's surrender to the technological tidal wave a form of betrayal. There was a time when I would have reviled the man for his decision. I once loathed technology. I staunchly disavowed Facebook, iTunes, YouTube, Wikipedia, Skype, and cellular phones. Now, I use all of these digital creations on a regular or semi-regular basis. (E-readers are still right out, however.)

I resisted the urge to call myself a traitor—at first. I needed a cell phone. I got my first cellular device in college, when I had to drive for three days to get to school. What if I broke down in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota?

Then the computer came, and that was good: with it, I could satisfy my epistemological quests on Wikipedia, get my schoolwork done, and pen short stories on the side.

Facebook was next. Bah, humbug, I snorted. I have a cell phone. Why should I get a Facebook account? Just call me, peeps. No such luck. After some persuasive rhetoric from my friends and a 30-day free trial, I was a die-hard Facebooker.

Then came iTunes. It was insidious. It sidled into my life as though it had been invited...which, in a way, it had. I was sick of trying to stuff a Walkman and two or three CDs into my coat pockets. My folks got me an iPod Nano for Christmas one year, and I downloaded iTunes the very same day...never once looked back. Me, an iTunes user! And me, the inveterate Beatles fan, the Led Zeppelin lover, Pink Floyd's top admirer! Do you know that Flo Rida is on my iTunes playlist? FLO RIDA!

I upgraded from a regular run-of-the-mill cell phone to a smart phone earlier this fall (a 'Droid 3), and it promptly ate my life. Between texting, Facebook, Words With Friends, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds (damn you to Hell, Angry Birds!), hardly five minutes go by when I don't pull my phone out of my pocket on some pretense and start fiddling with it.

So it goes. Matters have worsened exponentially over the years, but at such a gradual pace that I hardly realized what was happening. Perhaps I didn't want to realize it. I was entranced by the Digital Seductress, her guile, her temptations, her tender charms. I failed to see the Electronic Dragon chained by her side, whose icy breath froze my ambitions, hobbies, and habits. I hardly ever find time for those long, introspective walks anymore (and when I do, the iPod comes with me). I used to check Facebook once every day or two; now I log on at least twice an hour. That huge stack of books in the corner hasn't gotten much shorter in the last few months; but around 300 Wikipedia pages have mysteriously shown up in my browsing history. My novel, going on three years old, still hasn't been edited fully. And here I sit, a twenty-something with the world at his fingertips, flat broke, living in his parents' house, all ambition and no salt.

Man, thank goodness for last-minute revelations.

I finally caught myself. I've realized what a hole I've sunk into. The digital age...what a honeypot! And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Well, no more. Tomorrow begins the new era. You are my witness. As I live and breathe, I am taking an e-hiatus. Thirty days, no more, no less. My Android is going on the nightstand; I shall not answer a text, play a game, check Facebook or read the news on it for thirty days. I shall answer phone calls and plug it into the charger, but otherwise I shall not touch it. The television (also neglected now that I have Mr. Internet) is getting switched off. I shall indulge myself in one hour's pleasure every Monday night when Terra Nova comes on. The computer shall be used for researching factual information for my novel, editing said novel, job-hunting and checking e-mail, nothing more. Facebook is officially forsaken. Video and computer games are verboten. Music shall be severely restricted; I've been overdosing on it lately and can feel a full-scale burnout coming on. I won't sit there for hours on my laptop, with my ears beneath my headphones and my glazed eyes on the screen. Those days are over. The ship has sailed. It's time to get back to basics.

I shall use this blissful respite from the e-demons to get some constructive work done: namely, finding a job, revising my manuscript (and other works-in-progress), devoting time to my relationship with Miss H, and ultimately figuring out what I want to do with my life. I hope that the perspective I gain during this hiatus will lend clarity and illumination to my next steps in life, and break the destructive cycle of stagnation and wastefulness which my headlong absorption in electronic media has begotten me.

One important exception to the rule will be, obviously, this blog.

I'm going to tell you, day-by-day, how this e-hiatus (as I shall hereafter refer to it) is going. It's been a long time coming, and I sense the chains will be hard to break. Hell, I know they will be. Earlier this evening I caught myself compulsively taking my phone out of my pocket for no reason at all, even after I'd promised to give up Angry Birds. I have it bad, folks. This upcoming interlude will likely resemble withdrawal rather than vacation time. Nonetheless, as always, I will bring you the unvarnished truth, as ugly as it may be. Stay tight, be true, and hang in there.

And for Pete's sake, wish me luck.

Day One begins tomorrow.

fortune-hunting for dummies

2011-12-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

How does one become a soldier-of-fortune? Is it something you have to work hard at? Do you have to know how to be in the right place at the right time? Or do you just wind up there by chance?

In other words, do I need to work harder at becoming a reckless, wandering rogue, or do I have to wait and seize the opportunity when it arises?

I'm a romanticist. I'll confess the fact openly. Adventure calls to me. Yeah, sure, I hear you scoff. This is the 21st century. Adventures are passé. No one has them anymore. They went out the window a long time ago. The world shrank. The maps were filled in. Technology outran us. The world is safer now than it's ever been...and yet, somehow, more dangerous than ever. That means that (a) either the would-be adventurer just flails around attempting to have adventures and discovers that safety measures and fail-safes and civilization have occluded his efforts, or (b) he is immediately killed in the attempt by a heat-seeking missile or a pissed-off terrorist.

I know adventures are dangerous. I know I'm a foolhardy, air-headed young man with hardly any worldly experience. I know I probably won't last two seconds in the middle of an intrigue or a murder mystery or an international incident. But I can't stand just sitting around and having a normal life, cutting coupons and listening to talk radio. Maybe on my days off I'll do that stuff. For now, however, I seek adventure, and romantic old-fashioned adventure at that.

I've just been reading about a guy named Frederick Townsend Ward. Does that name ring a bell? I thought not. I'd never heard of him before, either. I've never seen his name in any history book. And yet I should've heard about him by now, because he led the sort of life I would've liked to have led if I'd lived in the 1800s. Or any century, really. This guy did it all: ran away to sea, filibustered in Mexico with William Walker, served under Juarez, rode from Mexico to San Francisco on a mule, enlisted in the French Army, served in the Crimean War, resigned after being insubordinate, and finally sailed to China. It's in China that he forged his most enduring legacy: training, commanding, and kicking major ass with the Ever Victorious Army in the Taiping Rebellion.

Now, here's the setup. A fellow named Hong Xiuquan (who was sort of like China's version of Joseph Smith) proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ's younger brother, set himself up as a prophet, established the Taipei Heavenly Kingdom, declared the ruling Manchu Dynasty to be decadent and sinful, and started a war that would eventually kill 20 million people.

Freddy Ward arrived in Shanghai in 1860, when the Taiping Rebellion was already a decade old. He and his brother had ostensibly come to set up a branch of their father's trading company, but Ward's biographers cite "ulterior motives" for his presence in China. Given that he had spent the last decade as a highly successful mercenary on two continents, we can hazard a guess as to what that purpose might've been. In any case, Ward's brother set up shop while Ward took a job as the executive officer on the Confucius, an armed river gunboat (commanded by a fellow American) in the service of something called "the Shanghai Pirate Suppression Bureau." This was a private paramilitary group put together by Xue Huan and Wu Xu, members of the Shanghai city government, and bankrolled by Yang Fang, a banker and mercantilist from Ningbo.

Sources are somewhat vague on Ward's service record with the Suppression Bureau, but he must've distinguished himself highly. Before the year was out Wu Xu and Yang Fang had contacted Ward and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Impressed by Ward's lack of racism, his military experience, and his mercenary ambitions, the two Chinese men told Ward that they were organizing a new group, which would become the Foreign Arms Corps, composed primarily of foreigners who could handle firearms and were interested in a free bunk and the spoils of war. Though anxious to keep any association between the Imperial government and the Western powers a secret, Xu and Fang realized that a mercenary army was necessary. Conscripted peasants and poorly-trained Imperial officers simply weren't cutting the mustard against the fanatical Taiping rebels. Fortunately, the Chinese G-men had found the perfect man for the job. Ward immediately agreed to head up the Foreign Arms Corps. He then went straight to the Shanghai wharves and began recruiting every Westerner he could find who could shoot a gun, even if they were too drunk to hold one at the moment.

The start was rocky. Xu, Huan, and Fang were demanding financiers, and Ward was virtually their slave until he had won several impressive victories against Xiuquan's forces. This was not accomplished easily. Though Ward's rowdy crew of sailors, deserters and brigands was equipped with the latest small arms (including Colt revolvers and rifles) they had only begun to train properly before the Manchus sent them out on their first mission. Ward protested, but in vain; at his backers' urging he and his men were forced to accompany an Imperial force to recapture Songjiang, without so much as an artillery piece to back them up. The initial attack failed. The second was successful, but at a heavy price: despite reinforcements of some 80 Filipinos and a couple of artillery pieces, the 250 men of the Foreign Arms Corps lost 62 men, with 100 more wounded, including Ward himself.

Virtually the same thing happened at the town of Chingpu, the FAC's next target, and this time around, the Taiping knew they were coming. The FAC lost half its men, and Ward was shot in the jaw. The musket ball exited his cheek and left him with a speech impediment for the rest of his life.

After resupplying in Shanghai, the FAC attempted to bombard Chingpu into submission, but Li Xuicheng, the Taipings' best general, sent 20,000 men to sweep the attackers off the map. Ward's troops retreated to Shanghai to lick their wounds. Ward himself left the city for a time to get his face fixed, and one of his subordinates (H.A. Burgevine) took over. But Burgevine didn't get along so well with the Manchu management, and after some dust-ups he was arrested and died in an accident.

When Ward returned to Shanghai in 1861, he managed to get the group back together. It wasn't difficult, even after the disastrous defeats the FAC had suffered. The Corps was beginning to make a name for itself. With its advanced weaponry, the puny force had held its own against the Taiping war machine even in defeat. Ward's stock was rising with Chinese civilians. The rogues and deserters and thieves and beggars down on the Shanghai wharves loved him too. With its solid financial basis, the Corps was able to offer extremely lucrative contracts—so lucrative, in fact, that they caused several mass desertions from the British warships in the harbor. This destroyed Ward's standing among the foreign powers, who already saw him as a filibustering, money-hungry brigand and a loose cannon. His forays against the Taiping rebels threatened trade routes and destabilized diplomatic relations. So ticked were the foreign powers that they issued a warrant for Ward's arrest. Realizing that sitting in a jail cell might impede his efforts to stuff a Bible down Hong Xiuquan's ugly neck, Ward opted for Chinese citizenship. He then led a bunch of new recruits into a third engagement at Chingpu, which likewise disastrously failed.

Then Ward sat down and had himself a think. It was no good. This kind of war was doomed to failure. He had a bunch of boisterous, drunken, disorderly vagabonds who depended largely upon the element of surprise and superior weaponry to get the job done. Furthermore, they were being pushed, nudged, chivvied and shoved into battle by their corporate sponsors in Shanghai, who desperately wanted victory and didn't care about training their troops. So Ward decided that, from now on, he would recruit the local Chinese into his army. These he would meticulously train and properly discipline into an effective fighting force.

Here, I can more adequately explain this with pictures. Freddy Ward was going to turn his army from this:

...into this.

And he succeeded. He set up a training camp in Shanghai where, aided by the most skilled survivors of the old Corps, plus a bunch of hardasses from the regular Imperial Army, he trained a crack outfit of 1000-plus Chinese troops (uniformed, helmeted, equipped and well-paid). He pronounced them ready for action in January 1862. This was timely, as Taiping forces had just re-invaded the region with 120,000 troops, bent on capturing Shanghai.

This time things were different.

With only 500 men, Ward drove a vastly superior force from their fortified positions in Wu-Sung in the middle of January. Shortly thereafter, at the city of Guangfulin, the Imperial troops demoralized and scattered twenty thousand rebels. In ensuing weeks, Ward and his hand-trained Chinese soldiers (with a little help from the Imperials) routed the Taiping from several cities near Songjiang. Thousands of rebels were killed or wounded. Ward himself suffered several wounds, which included getting his finger shot off.

Li Xiucheng, the Taiping army's best general (remember?), went out of his skull when he heard about all this. He sent a host of 20,000 men to attack Songjiang and crush Ward. Ward had about 1500 men to defend the city, and performed with flying colors. As the rebels approached, they came under fire from hidden artillery positions. Two thousand men were mowed down instantly. Like lightning Ward's infantry charged out of Songjiang and captured 800 more, in addition to some supply barges on the river. The rest of the rebel army beat a hasty retreat. The Chinese peasants in the surrounding countryside went mad with joy and hailed Ward as a living god. There was no longer any question about financial backing from Shanghai or Imperial military support. Ward had made his name at last, and his contingent was dubbed "the Ever Victorious Army." Ward was given an official title under Imperial law, an exceedingly high honor for a foreigner.

All through 1862 Ward and his army continued to pull off random acts of badassery, defeating numerically superior opponents in entrenched positions. Ward fitted a fleet of steamboats with heavy guns and turned them into floating fortresses, sending them up canals and rivers to wreak havoc on the poorly-equipped rebels.

Sadly, Ward was mortally wounded in the Battle of Cixi in September of 1862. He lived just long enough to dictate his last will and testament, in which he provided for his son, his Chinese wife, and his brother. He had endured no less than 14 battle wounds and dealt the Taiping Rebellion a blow from which it would never recover. Though Ward's army won the war under the command of a different leader (Charles Gordon, who would die himself some years later in the Mahdist War in Sudan), it was Ward who had raised, trained, and led the brave Chinese on so many successful sorties.

(Whew.) That's quite a life, huh?

Now, my question is (as it was at the beginning of this post), how do you wind up doing something like that? Post a flyer? Stick an ad in the paper? Ward was born in Salem, Massachusetts. That's on the other side of the world from China. And yet he was such a rowdy cuss and did so poorly in school that his father stuck him on a ship to make a man out of him. And so Ward found himself sailing to all these different ports all over the world—East Asia, Central and South America, Europe—and, somehow, fighting in wars or hiring himself out as a mercenary everywhere he went. That takes guts.

I'm wondering: do I lack the guts? Or do I lack the means? Do I merely need to run away to sea for a while and see where the wind blows me?

What do you think?

distressing trends in fiction

2011-12-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. This is the Sententious Vaunter. I should be penning you a panegyric, not a philippic. But sometimes I discover things which make me want to scream, and the only place I can scream eloquently enough is here on this blog. So strap yourselves in. It's ranting time.

I'm drawing attention to this subject because (a) it bugs me and (b) to my knowledge, the phenomenon has only recently been named. Finally, we have a label for all those teen romance books that involve vampires, werewolves, zombies and aliens.

I first saw the label at Barnes & Noble. Two whole sections of bookshelf had been given over to the genre, whose individual components were earmarked by the Goth-looking teenagers on the covers, the sinister titles, the dark colors, and their universal, superficial resemblance to the Twilight series. The placard over this section indicated that these works were "Teen Paranormal Romance."

What? What the hell is teen paranormal romance? I thought.

Then I realized. The resemblance to Twilight wasn't superficial. People—grown men and women, not just teenage girls—had gotten so infatuated with the type of story which Twilight offered that the series had sparked an entire genre: teen girls (and, in some cases, teen guys) falling in love with eldritch monsters.

Oh jeez, I thought. That's ridiculous. Thanks a heap, Stephanie Meyer. You really started something.

As you can probably tell, I don't approve of Twilight or anything remotely resembling it. Specifically, I take issue with the manner in which Twilight has degraded and diluted the definition of masculinity. Instead of being rough, hardy, muscular, forthright and boisterous, like real men ought to be, Meyer's ideal man is a skulking, pale, sensitive, soft-spoken freak of a pretty boy. I don't consider that manly at all. And yet scores of swooning teenage girls have gone wild for Edward Cullen; Indiana Jones, Conan the Barbarian and James Bond are chauvinistic fossils by comparison.

This is not the kind of world I want to live in.

The problem is simple. The very fact that this disturbing trend has been labeled means that it's entrenched. Teen paranormal romance is here to stay, at least for a while. It's the big thing in fiction right now. The Twilight movies are slaughtering the box office and paranormal romance of every variety is infecting the shelves of booksellers nationwide. There's no way to dislodge the phenomenon. It makes me cringe to think of what might come next.

As always, I shall be the lone voice of sanity in these insane, chaotic times (boy, ain't that ironic). While teen girls (and, I suspect, a generous sample of middle-aged women) ooh and aah over the pencil-necked vampire boys, I shall continue to write stories which feature musclebound guys, ball-crushing badasses, and suave, straight-talking champions. I shall let the purity of the masculine ideal speak for itself in my fiction. Bold adventurers, quick-thinking rogues and rock-hard heroes will never go out of style, and though some distressing trends in fiction have arisen of late (and will do so again), I shall remain a bastion of artistic integrity and truth.

There shall be a good deal of romance in my books, and no street-smart, gorgeous heroine of mine is going to fall for any pale, bloodsucking pretty boy.

So help me Crom.

(Funny story: Conan's facial expression here exactly resembles mine whenever somebody mentions Twilight.)

I also think steampunk is way overrated, but that's a story for another day. I need to go fix myself a drink. Annyeong!

airborne again

2011-12-04T18:06:00.000-08:00

Back in November, when it looked as though we'd be here until January or February (oh, wait, hold on; we'll still be here until February), I struck a deal with my parents. If they floated me a loan of $4,500 I could get my commercial pilot's license before I left for Korea. Miraculously, they agreed. Either they're bigger pigeons than I thought or they love me very, very much.

In order to stretch the dough as far as I could, I decided to train in a cheaper airplane. I'm more familiar with the Cessna 172, but they cost something like $110 per hour to rent these days. For my purposes, I went down to M______ Aviation and picked the cheapest airplane they had: a little red Cessna 152. Two seats. One hundred and ten horses. Tricycle landing gear. Basic instrument package, no GPS or anything. Looks like this:

If that seems mighty small to you, it is. Standing on my tiptoes, I can practically see over the wings. It's rather tricky trying to cram Miss H and myself into that little cockpit. Headroom is plentiful, but the seats aren't adjustable: my legs are stuffed up under the control panel. The 152 is comfortable once you actually get in and get situated, though. Ventilation is more than adequate, too. However, putting two full-size adults into an airplane with a 110-horsepower engine presents some special problems. We had to ensure that we weren't taking off with a full load of fuel, or else the little bird wouldn't ever get off the ground. (Don't worry; we made sure we had plenty for the flights we had in mind.)

But before I could get started, I had to get checked out. I'd never flown a 152 before and, though I technically wasn't required to get checked out in it (the FAA says that private pilots can fly any single-engine fixed-wing under 12,000 pounds without a checkout), M_____ required that I at least have a familiarization flight with an instructor before I took it out on my own. I understood. They had to cover their behinds. And a checkout flight wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience; I'd just have to buy some instructor's time and submit to a few maneuvers under his or her watchful eye.

That's what I thought at first, anyway.

You can imagine my chagrin, my horror, and my utter revulsion when I walked into the main office of M_____ Aviation (which smelled strongly of secondhand smoke) and saw him sitting there.

It was Bob.

Bob the Poacher.

Bob the Loony.

Bob the Motormouth.

He of the Shadowy, Mysterious, Shady Past.

He was the kind of pilot whom all the other pilots said was off his blinkin' rocker. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a lot of half-baked, erroneous ideas about flying that were dangerous to teach impressionable students. He wasn't fit to fly a paper airplane. The rumors said that he'd been fired from every flying job he'd ever held. Rumors notwithstanding, it was an undeniable fact that he was a poacher. He'd migrated up from some airport down the hill and ingratiated himself with M_____ Aviation's management, allowing him to lay in wait at the door and pounce on any students who walked in. With flattery, high-flown promises, bravado, and a great many tall tales, Bob enticed these unsuspecting neophytes away from their current instructors and under his own wing. This insidious and highly disreputable practice is frowned upon in most flight schools, but not M_____ Aviation. The Dutch matron mysteriously refrained from pitching Bob out the door. Instead, she hired him on as an instructor, even when all her other instructors tacitly resigned in protest.

You may imagine my remorse when I learned that Bob was the one who'd be checking me out in the 152.

Good God, no.

Somebody help me!

Oh yeah, before I go any further, I should explain to you what a checkout is, and why I needed one. Let's say you're a pilot. So far you've flown only one or two types of planes (just like yours truly). I trained in a Cessna 172, and have quite a bit of time in a Mooney M20E. I'd never flown a Cessna 152 before. So, when a pilot is going to fly a new plane for the first time, another pilot (who is familiar with the airplane in question) "checks him out" in the new airplane. The experienced pilot flies with the newbie and gets him oriented. Generally, checkout flights are very short: you do some maneuvers, maybe a few practice landings and touch-and-goes.

Not with Bob. Bob sat me down and did ground school with me first.

Keep in mind, now, that Miss H was sitting in the car, reading a book, and patiently waiting for me to take her flying. Bob was unaware of this. Even if he had been, he might not have cared. He was on a roll. His ego would not permit him to take me flying before he'd demonstrated to me that he knew all there was to know about flying. To some degree, I appreciated the fact that I was getting a refresher: I was a bit rusty, after all. Going over a few things beforehand really helped me get my mind back in the game. But Bob pulled out all the stops. Though the Cessna 152 is not equipped for instrument flying, somehow or other we wound up talking about instrument approaches and landings. This was totally irrelevant to what we were about to do. But Bob was an unstoppable avalanche, and it was only my gentle pushing that finally got him to shut up. We adjourned to the plane to do a preflight check.

Ten minutes later we were in the air. Unfortunately, Bob's tendency to chit-chat, gab and proselytize continued even after we got airborne. I expected to do a few maneuvers and some practice landings. Nope. We did spins.

Just so you know, a spin is very similar to a stall—except for one thing. Instead of both wings stalling simultaneously, one wing stalls before the other. Rather than merely dropping out of the sky in an orderly fashion, the airplane begins to spin violently as it falls earthward. Spins are extremely dangerous and cause numerous fatalities every year. However, they are simple to avoid and (if you know what you're doing) not too difficult to recover from.

Eventually I would have to practice spins as part of my commercial training...but I was in no mood to learn today, especially not from Bob. I'd never flown with him before. All of the awful stories I'd heard about him came flooding back into my mind. I protested volubly, but he insisted. So we spun. Granted, they were only half-turns and not complete revolutions, but they were enough to make my stomach jump, my eyes roll and my hands convulsively clutch at things.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard, I kept thinking. Let's just get this over with.

One more spin. In distracted fury and sickening fear, I fixed my eyes on a sticker on the control panel.

THIS AIRCRAFT MUST BE
OPERATED IN THE NORMAL CATEGORY.
ALL AEROBATIC MANEUVERS,
INCLUDING SPINS, PROHIBITED.

it said.

Awesome.

Finally, the ordeal ended. We landed. Bob got out. Miss H got in. She'd been waiting on the ground for nearly two hours. We burned some holes in the sky for an hour. Then we flew back and landed.

That was the last I ever saw of Bob, fortunately. He signed my logbook and I left. I paid him $30 the next day (there was a sort of vile satisfaction in making him wait for it) and that was it.

I've made two flights in the 152 since then: one with a buddy to Lancaster for a bite of lunch, and a long cross-country with Miss H to Twentynine Palms and back. The Cessna 152 is a fun plane. It's a bit slow, but it's stable, forgiving, and fun to fly. I haven't yet made a landing that I've been completely happy with, but for all intents and purposes, I can fly the dang thing.

No thanks to Bob.

Sheesh...

Aurelia aurita

2011-12-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

Scratch another one off the bucket list.

Have you ever heard of the Aurelia aurita?

Unless you're a native Latin speaker or a biology professor, you probably haven't.

It's also known as a "moon jelly":

And I can honestly say that I know what they feel like to touch. I indulged in some heavy petting with a moon jelly down in Long Beach last Wednesday.

My folks took Miss H and I down to the Aquarium of the Pacific as a sort of farewell thing. (We're not leaving until February, but we were originally leaving in September, and then paperwork delays pushed that back to December, and the roof fell in, so...here we are. Best to get it done before anything else happens.)

We had a ball. The aquarium was smaller than I remembered, but still chock-full of some mind-blasting exhibits. A giant sea bass the size of an armchair swam back and forth in the main gallery; sea otters broke chunks of ice into small pieces and ate them with relish; the bat rays flopped out of the water for a pat on their slimy noggins; and the moray eels poked their evil heads from their holes, like old men glaring at noisy children on the sidewalk.

And then it happened.

In the middle of the Polar Seas display room was a rectangular basin of water, about the depth of a goldfish tank, but as long as a horse trough. In this tank, pulsating to and fro, was a gaggle of pale, bulbous, semi-translucent creatures resembling nothing so much as ragged, waterlogged pieces of tissue paper. They floated about, drifting with the gentle current, expanding and contracting their mantles lazily.

As soon as I saw the aquarium staff member standing behind the tank and the Purell dispensers on the wall, I understood what was going on.

A rare opportunity had thrown itself my way. I was going to pet a jellyfish.

So I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket, took my place in line, stuck out two fingers, and dove in with a relish.

My rubric for stroking aquatic creatures is not extensive. In my youth, I had handled live goldfish, and I had petted the bat rays 40 minutes earlier. This was the limit of my experience. Thus far, I had observed several commonalities between species: the firmness of the flesh, the coldness of the skin and a general pervading sliminess. The moon jelly, surprisingly, possessed all three. In touching the mantle with the first two fingers of my right hand, I expected a yielding, gelatinous substance, as tenuous as it was transparent. Though undoubtedly soft, the jellyfish was relatively rigid to the touch; I felt as though I would have to poke it much harder to make an impression in the flesh. Fortunately, I had the good sense and the biological politeness not to test this hypothesis. Keeping my hand well away from the tentacles of the onrushing herd of the moon jelly's fellows, I withdrew my hand and sanitized it.

For some reason, I was suddenly hungry.

writing high

2011-12-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

My muse has been holding out on me. For weeks I've suffered from ennui, a lack of enthusiasm, a debilitating absence of inspiration, courage, and wherewithal.

But man oh man, am I ever in the writing mood today!

I felt it coming on in the afternoon: a sudden, mastering urge to get back on my computer and write, dammit, finish rewriting this damn novel, because the whole thing is just too awesome to describe and it needs to be done and published and sent out there so other people can enjoy it.

And boy, was I right. As soon as I got home and sat down, the effluence started pouring off my fingers like it'd been stored up for months, which, in retrospect, it probably was. I've been so scared, so reluctant, so uninspired lately...my shortcomings staring me in the face, my lack of ambition gnawing on my backside, my intimidation from the professionals riding high.

But all that went out the window today. I started fixing my stilted, drab and puerile first chapter, and

SHAZAM!!!

It was like I actually knew what I was doing! Characterization? Easy as pie! Pacing? Think nothing of it, my man! Tone? Precisely, PRECISELY the way I wanted it. I was channeling Arthur C. Clarke's wondrously descriptive, refreshingly approachable, and wryly humorous style. And it was almost better than sex, for Pete's sake. I'm sure you know the feeling, fellow writers. That burst of inspiration comes (a cloudburst, more like it) and down come the words like rain, flowing together into delightful puddles and tributaries and streams. Feels grand, doesn't it? Like a literary version of the Midas touch: everything I turn my mind to turns to gold. Characters sizzle and pop, the pace advances with intoxicating fervor, plot and premise transform themselves from ragged threads into a majestic double helix, the DNA of a completely new and fantastic organism.

So here I am, rattling along. I've smashed through two (out of twelve) chapters, where before I could hardly be bothered to correct a paragraph or two. This feels wonderful. I'm wondering what's different today that wasn't there all the other days I tried to revise. Maybe the perspective I've been slowly garnering via meditation (and tactical amounts of whiskey) has finally sunk into my subconscious. Maybe I've encapsulated all the hard-won wisdom I've shared with you over the past few weeks. Whatever the reason, it's working. And it's danged effective. This is the first time since my novel's completion two years ago that I've looked at it without disgust. Hell, this is the first time I've ever looked at it with raw excitement. I see potential now. I see effervescence. I see mellifluousness. I see marvelousness (that's a word, isn't it?). I SEE. All the possibilities and angles and contingencies (and more importantly, what I need to do to attain them) have all become nakedly visible. My muse zapped me in the eyes with some literary LASIK surgery, and abruptly the world has become limitless. I can see for miles.

This is the first time I've experienced anything like this, so I'm going to take advantage of it while it lasts. Goodness knows when it'll ever come again. I just took a quick break from revising to tell you about it; if you'll excuse me, I'd like to dive back in now. Ten more chapters are calling my name. I might just bust through all 51,000 words tonight, so help me. It'd be worth it. Then maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and start the publishing process without reservations or misgivings.

I'll let you know, either way.

And now, let's have a song!

news from the front

2011-12-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm really behind and I know it. But that's what this post is intended to rectify.

First off, the outlook for Korea no longer looks bleak. After weeks of trying to go through other channels, other recruiters, other schools, our original recruiter—the first one we e-mailed, and with which I dealt when I went to Asia last time (ESL Park)—contacted us with a job a few days ago.

Huzzah!

It looks good. It's in Dongtan, a smallish town on the outskirts of Seoul (connected by express bus and subway line). The pay is 2.2 million won per month per person, and we get paid housing, airfare, and all the other benefits. The unexpected plus side to being in Dongtan is that it's where Jeff, my Canadian homey from the old days on Geoje Island, now lives. It'll be just like old times!

Only problem is, the job doesn't start until late February.

Rats.

So that leaves us to find temporary employment here (one of the worst places in California) for a meager three months until we leave for Asia. We have to make ends meet somehow: we both have bills to pay, supplies to obtain, and thirsty cars to buy drinks for. We need jobs, and quick.

To that end, Miss H and I have decided to stop by the local employment offices tomorrow morning and see if they can place us anywhere. And I do mean anywhere: Miss H and I are young, strong, and unafraid of toil, and we'll be happy to make ourselves useful instead of lounging around all day. The money coming in will sure help eliminate them Poverty Blues. (I might just take my harmonica or my concertina down to the Target parking lot and sing some of them "Poverty Blues" for passersby. Maybe I can get some pocket money that way.)

I'll let you know how it all goes.

So! That's the news. Now, I'm way behind on my reading updates and I should let you know how they're going. It's far too late to do a detailed review so I'll just summarize for you quickly:

The Sand Pebbles: Richard McKenna's breakout novel stars Jake Holman, mechanic's mate aboard the gunboat San Pedro on a routine patrol of the Yangtze River...right before the Kuomintang's Northern Expedition of 1926 shatters the warlords' grip on the country and unifies China under one flag. Caught in the midst of the chaos and struggling to find meaning in it (and his burgeoning love affair with a missionary's daughter), Jake must somehow keep his wits and his spirit together as the world he knows dissolves all around him.
The book was simply but beautifully written; the description was rich and satisfying; the drama was heartrending, visceral and pulse-pounding; the characters were so real that they seemed to sizzle; the action resounding and the suspense torturous. It was an epic work which took a snapshot of the world at a pivotal moment in time (seen through the eyes of a straight-shooting, hell-raising boy from Nevada); and that snapshot was so fleshy and vivid that it practically leaped off the page. I'd highly recommend The Sand Pebbles to anybody interested in China, American naval history, or a damn good read.
Into the Storm: The first installment of Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series. Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy, a Naval Reservist, and the weary but battle-hardened crew of the aging destroyer U.S.S. Walker desperately flee the fearsome Japanese cruiser Amagi after the disastrous Second Battle of the Java Sea...only to be sucked into a mysterious squall which dumps them out in an unfamiliar world. The continents, islands and landmarks are the same, but the ocean waters teem with strange monsters and dinosaurs roam on shore. Reddy and his crew happen upon an enormous seagoing vessel filled with what appear to be sentient lemur-like beings, under attack by vicious reptilian warriors. After routing the reptiles, Walker befriends the furry sapient things, who are known as the Lemurians. Their enemies, the scaly Grik, are an evil race who mercilessly attack and slaughter any living beings they encounter. Reddy vows to help and protect the Lemurians, but as the numbers of the Grik swell (and the ammunition and fuel supplies aboard Walker dwindle), will that promise become too much to for the destroyermen to keep?
Despite receiving some rather lofty praise from others in his field, Anderson didn't cut ice with me. His writing, in my opinion, was absolutely terrible. His grammar was infuriatingly juvenile: at times I felt a four-year-old child could've produced better. He employed sentence fragments with vexing frequency, and his descriptions lacked poetry and subtlety. His heavy-handed approach to characterization and dramatic elements soured what might otherwise be an excellent story. Nonetheless, the plot and premise were sound, and all in all I enjoyed the work. I might even be persuaded to pick up a sequel or two and see what happens, because for all his shortcomings as a writer, Anderson did create some rather lovable characters and forged engaging relationships between them. I'm curious for more.
The Hammer of God: Arthur C. Clarke had nothing to prove when he started writing this book. He was already the accomplished and world-famous author of some astounding science fiction. Nonetheless he surpassed himself and created a humdinger of a book, and what might arguably the forerunner of all Armageddon-type sci-fi stories and movies. The Hammer of God concerns, simply, the massive peanut-shaped asteroid dubbed Kali, her imminent impact on Planet Earth, and humanity's concerted efforts to divert her from her course...sabotage, religious fanaticism, bureaucratic fumbling and unforeseen problems notwithstanding.
What I enjoyed so much about the book, apart from its suspenseful (and yet unpretentious) plot, was the manner in which Clarke gleefully and effortlessly fleshes out his stories with intelligent and scientific speculation. He envisions marathons run on the lunar surface; artificial brains so intelligent that they have been granted human (or near-human) status and rights; homes which are entirely self-contained and self-sufficient, right down to their food-recycling systems; genetic advancements which allow us to miniaturize any animal and turn it into a household pet; concepts of marriage and sexuality free of confining religious mores; and the first digital religion, an amalgam of Christianity and Islam conceived by disillusioned veterans of the First Gulf War. The book, whose format is a rapid-fire burst of one- or two-page chapters and frequent side-notes and prosaic enrichment, is vastly enjoyable and a must-read for any disaster sci-fi fan. Clarke makes this look easy.
Transgalactic: Two novels by A.E. van Vogt compressed into one, both concerning the nuclear mutant Clane, born into the royal family of a world devastated by war, where men on horseback ride into giant spaceships and do battle on other planets with bows and arrows and spears...a world where a special caste of scientists worship "the atomic gods" and tend to the giant machines which run on divine power. Clane was a natural-born genius: not only did he figure out how the machines worked (and what the power of the gods really was), but he also discovered that an alien race, not the humans themselves, had decimated the surface of Earth. Those invaders had been likewise destroyed, but now they were rebuilding, and would soon come to reclaim the humans and their planet. Only Clane could stop them.
So far I'm liking it. Van Vogt, like Clarke (who speaks quite highly of him), has an approachable style, a way of telling science fiction stories without sounding lofty, high-minded, pretentious or sanctimonious. (That's a rare quality, in case you didn't know.) I'll let you know more when I've finished reading.

Satisfied? Okay. Immediately after I finish Transgalactic, I'm starting A Man's Life by Mark Jenkins (or sooner, depending on when Miss H gets done with it). Mark Jenkins has a life I'd like to emulate: he's a veteran travel journalist, one of the old breed who still likes to be the first to climb mountains and explore uncharted jungle depths instead of twittering about how nice the tea in the picturesque village is. He's hitchhiked across three continents, was the first man to bicycle across Russia after the Soviet Union dissolved, and has climbed more unfriendly-looking mountains than the average snow leopard ever dreams of doing.

Oh yeah, and he's also married and has two daughters.

Miss H and I would really love to know how that works.

If you want to do me a favor, raise a glass and toast my triumphant return to East Asia in late February 2012.

Thanks. I'll keep you posted.

...and so the hammer fell

2011-11-27T23:00:00.000-08:00

An addendum to this afternoon's post:

Thanks to the diligence, hard work and cunning of the lovely Miss H, the recruiter with whom we had lines in the water (Aclipse) has been revealed to be an affiliate of Chung Dahm Recruiting, which, according to informed sources, is one of the most unscrupulous, underhanded, dishonest and dangerous recruiters out there. Honestly, there's a list of violations, infractions, lies and criminal activities a mile long on Chung Dahm's rap sheet. Thank you, Miss H, for trusting your gut and checking the facts when I dropped the ball. Glad we're well out of there.

So, weeks of effort wasted. We are quite literally back to Square One. The only recruiter with whom we now have contact is ESL Park, the same company I went through last time. I'm expecting an update from them in early December, and then we'll see about what's available in K-Land and what isn't.

And of course, stay tuned for more info on that upcoming expedition to Vegas.

Postman, signing off.

disheartening dispatches, #1

2011-11-27T14:08:00.000-08:00

Seems like I've got nothing to relate but bad news or maudlin musings these days, don't it?

I'm dreadfully sorry. This is supposed to be the Sententious Vaunter, not the Lugubrious Downer. I tell you what I'll do: from now on, whenever I'm posting bad news up on this blog, I'll label it with the above title. "Disheartening dispatches" should inform you that the following content is morose and sorrowful and downhearted, and, thus forewarned, you may skip it if you want. That way I won't ruin your day.

We got some more bad news about Korea.

"What else could possibly go wrong?" I hear you ask. I know, right? Don't seem possible.

Remember that lovely position in Cheonan I told you about? The one that started in December? The one I was absolutely jazzed about? The one that would royally save our necks (and wallets, and sanity)?

We're not getting it.

They gave it to somebody else.

We're back to Square One.

I knew it was a good idea to remain "cautiously optimistic."

Apparently the English academies in Korea are serviced by multiple recruiters, and even though I contacted our recruiter and volunteered us for the position, it had already gone to some other couple through some other recruiter. We waited several days for a phone interview from the school, but nothing materialized. So I finally called our recruiter to ask what happened, and it was only then that they gave us the bad news.

Marvy.

So this is pretty much how Miss H and I are feeling right now:

To say that this back-and-forth, up-and-down roller-coaster ride has inflicted a heavy toll on the two of us would be a gross understatement.

But we do have a few other prospects. We're slowly pushing through an application/interview process with Aclipse, but the soonest we can now get to Korea will be 2012 (most likely February).

And yet, hope springs eternal. Determined not to remain discouraged for long, we came up with Plan B. It's wise in this economic climate to cultivate multiple options, so instead of putting all of our hopes on Korea, we're going to hedge our bets.

We're planning a two- to three-day trip to Las Vegas late this week. Vegas, baby. That's the nearest place we decided we'd be okay with living. Others more far-flung (Chicago, Seattle, Anchorage) will have to wait. We're only 200 miles or so away from the Nevada border, here in our little corner of the desert; easy driving distance. So we plan to head up there this weekend and pound the pavement. We'll scour the classifieds, hit the streets, and shotgun applications all over the place.

I'm fairly hopeful about this endeavor. Job-hunting websites are all well and good, but nothing beats actually going to the city of your choice and having a look in person. And it sure would be a kick to live in Vegas. Despite Nevada's high unemployment, I'm confident I can find a bartending position there: they have more bars per capita in Vegas than...than...well, heck, think about it. Pick a casino, any casino. There's a bar every six feet. The hotels all have bars. And there are regular ol' free-standing bars not attached to any particular edifice. There's gotta be a job for me in one of 'em. Las Vegas is awash with airports and airlines, too, so I imagine it won't be difficult to get the rest of my commercial requirements (and perhaps even my instrument rating) done. Then I could start flying for one of those Grand Canyon tour companies, perhaps...!

Well, that's all pie in the sky right now. Again, I must remain cautiously optimistic. But I'll keep you posted on all this. Miss H and I aren't giving up no matter what the world throws at us. We're far stronger than that hard, cold, cruel place. This is just the bumpy road we have to get over before we turn left on Easy Street.

Stay tuned. And sorry for the bad news.

how to train a writer

2011-11-26T16:15:00.000-08:00

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."
— A.A. Milne

Positive reinforcement.

They say it's the proper way to train dogs and children. (Doesn't work too well for soldiers or politicians, though.)

I think it might work for writers, too.

I haven't been a writer for long. (Or, perhaps, it's more accurate to say that I haven't called myself a writer for long.) But even in such a short span of time, it's occurred to me that a writer's medium is ink, paper, and ego. We're violently insecure creatures, we writers. After all, we are putting ourselves down on paper, not just words. Our most intimate feelings, fondest wishes, darkest desires, and wildest imaginings all appear on the printed page. It's only natural that we'd feel shy about baring so much of our psyche for all the world to see.

But it isn't only our imagination that's on trial: it's our ability to translate our imagination into words on paper. Dreaming up an idea is only half the battle. (I could go into the planning vs. pantsing debate here, but that's a blog post for another day.) After giving mental form to our brainchildren, we must make them tangible. Somehow those impulses, feelings, and thoughts must wend their merry way from our brain to our fingers, diffuse through our skin onto the keyboard, and pop up magically on the page (or screen) in front of us.

That is where the real insecurities manifest themselves.

An idea, a paragraph, or a sentence which seemed so real and true and good and pure and perfect in our heads can fail miserably to materialize on the page. Distilling haphazard neural impulses into English isn't quite as easy as our favorite writers make it seem. Something inevitably gets lost in translation. As Stephen King puts it, the best writers are the ones who can conceive a viable idea—discover a fossil, as he puts it—and then, through hard work, persistence, critical thinking, and hefty revision, tease most of that fossil out of the ground without breaking, chipping or scratching it. You're never going to get all of it. But with practice, you can retrieve everything important.

I think it's that arena where I'm most lacking as a writer. I could dream up good story ideas all day—one pops into my head every hour or so. But putting 'em down on paper is another matter. Whether it's because I haven't practiced enough, or haven't read widely enough, or just haven't had that seminal burst of inspiration...I'm not sure of the reason, but I have awesome difficulty in translating my ideas into words. I can think of a good story, but not write one.

I've been meditating lately about my difficulties as a writer, and my shortcomings: all the things I wish I could do better, like the professionals. I wish I could bestir myself to write more. Seems like every time I feel I should write something I inevitably wander off to my books, games, movies, or introspective evening walks.

Strike One: Not working hard (or often) enough.

Even if I do start something, I'll inevitably bang a few thousand words out, then stop for the day. I'll read some rewarding piece of fiction by Clarke or van Vogt or Asimov. I'll take another look at my paltry work, and delete it in disgust.

Strike Two: Not having enough confidence as a writer.

Let's say I even finish something (long odds, now that you've seen what I'm up against). Suddenly, as the last word is typed, and I sit back and look at the project as a whole, I'll become afraid of it. It'll mutate into a monster, a hideous abomination of unpolished writing, undeveloped themes, flaccid characters, and puerile premise. On the instant, my lovingly crafted story becomes an unconquerable mess. Self-destructive thoughts spin through my mind: Yuck. This is terrible. There's no way I'll be able to fix this. Robert Heinlein couldn't salvage this junk. There's so much to read over, to repair, to tweak, to trim, to perfect. I'll never finish. Hell, I don't even know where to begin. I think I'll just leave it for later.

Strike Three: Not having the persistence, or courage, to edit and revise (let alone submit).

Noticing a pattern here?

Fear.

All of my shortcomings as a writer stem, fundamentally, from fear. Insecurity. Lack of confidence. Inexperience.

I understand that I am afraid. I've blogged about it before. (Go back and look for the specific post if you want; I'm too distracted to get up a link.)

Now, that begs the question: since I know what my problem is, how do I go about solving it?

Well, a little affirmation would be nice. It'd be great if somebody (preferably a discerning science fiction fan) would come up behind me while I was typing, look over my shoulder, and say "Cool idea," or "Nice turn of phrase there, chief," or "Wow! I never thought about it that way," or "Hurry up, I wanna know what happens next!"

I caught myself thinking these exact thoughts this morning, as I revisited a science fiction novelette that I had submitted to Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, which had been rejected for "failing to excite the interest of the reader."

And then it hit me: maybe the reason I'm so afraid, insecure, and under-confident about my work is that, well, I've never received any positive reinforcement. Nobody in a position of authority has ever told me "Well done, keep up the good work." My friends and family have read my drivel and told me they liked it, that it was well-written and engaging, but as kind as their comments are, they're not expert. The editors of sci-fi magazines have been reading sci-fi for years (and often write the stuff themselves). Moreover they are well-informed where their readers' tastes are concerned, and know exactly what'll turn an audience on or off. And so far, none of my stuff has been up to code. And it's been rejected. Flat-out.

So maybe, subconsciously (for I would never think something as insecure or foolish as this out loud), I've gotten the idea that I'm not a good writer, and that I shouldn't even bother trying.

Amazing, huh?

Fancy your humble Vaunter thinking a thing like that!

Hell, I know I'm a good writer. I like what I do. I have a masterful command of the English language, and I can turn a phrase on a dime. It's just funny what the lack of positive reinforcement can do to a person's mind. Just because Gordon Van Gelder has never written me an enthusiastic letter praising my brilliant work, and begging to be the sole recipient of any future fictive endeavors, I somehow assumed that I wasn't that good. And that lack of self-esteem and confidence might've proven absolutely debilitating if I hadn't caught it in time.

I'm glad I had this epiphany. Praise is not a shot of espresso (or adrenaline). It's the icing on the cake, a pleasant glow to bask in after one has achieved something...usually not the something that one expected to achieve. If the famous writers of sci-fi had set about their work with popularity and acclaim in mind, and refused to budge without it, then the annals of science fiction would be barren indeed, if even extant.

I just have to keep perspective. I need to look at every fresh project as a clean slate, and to give it my all (and fix its shortcomings in the revision phase). I need to keep working, keep learning, keep practicing, keep writing. I need to remember that there is victory even in the attempt. I mustn't let my fears and doubts weigh me down. Nothing worthwhile in history was ever achieved without effort—or fear. The winner is distinguished from the loser not by his lack of fear, but by his refusal to bow down to it.

And so, cheers to you, fellow writers. Cheers from the catbird seat. Your brother-in-arms is out here, still endeavoring to craft something worth an editor's second glance. Keep calm and carry on.

POSTSCRIPT: For the final irony, I was listening to AC/DC while typing this post. The last song played before I finished was "Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be."

a breakthrough...maybe

2011-11-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

At this point I must label myself "cautiously optimistic" (in the manner of a seasoned politician or similarly practiced equivocator), for I've been disappointed before, and am warned against further indiscretion.

THE STORY SO FAR: Things have gone rather rotten for me in the past few months. I had accepted a job in South Korea as an English teacher, but it fell through due to paperwork delays. (Totally unexpected and unfair paperwork delays, mind you.) In consequence, I lost my job, because I gave my notice too early. When I finally did get my paperwork, the job market in K-Land had dried up like a...like a...like a thing that dries up really fast. So there I was, in limbo: no job, no prospects, still stuck in my parents' house, bills to pay, and hope fading fast. Miss H was in the same boat, only ten times worse because her parents drive her up the wall.

THE BREAKTHROUGH: One of my friends (and a fellow Korea expatriate), whom I'll call Smithy, pointed out to me that, in the absence of a job offer from one recruiting agency, I should court several more and see if they could turn anything up. This I did, and was both genuinely surprised and ludicrously glad when a service called Longbridge Pacific e-mailed and told me they had a splendid couple's position available in Cheonan, Chungcheong-do, South Korea.

Cheonan!

If that name sounds familiar, there's a darn good reason: the ROKS Cheonan was the unfortunate Pohang-class corvette that made headlines back in March 2010 for being split in half and sunk by what North Korea assured the world was most definitely not a North Korean torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine.

Curious, I went online and looked it up (the city, not the ship). Cheonan, it seems, is the main transportation hub of western Korea, and serves as the gateway to the Seoul area. My interest was already piqued. Living on Geoje (the second-largest island in the R.O.K.) was nice and pastoral and everything, but a two-hour bus ride (or a bouncing ferry) was required just to get to civilization. It would be nice this time around if I lived someplace that was well-connected to the rest of the country by road and rail. And the location was perfect: central Korea, only 50 miles or so south of Seoul, and about as far north of major cities like Daejeon (where the Costco is).

This was looking really good. And it was looking that way before I noticed that the job offer paid each of us ₩2.2 million per month (about $2200); that we'd be working with no less than six other foreign teachers; that our apartment came fully furnished; and that all the usual goodies (paid rent and airfare) were in place.

Hot diggity damn.

So I jumped on it. I e-mailed Longbridge back and told them to sign us up. We're waiting on phone interviews, and then we'll send our documents off and get our visas. And then...we're gone. Like, in December. We don't have to wait around until flippin' February to get jobs! Halle-frickin'-lujah!

And then, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be having the time of our lives. Pigging out on kimchi and bulgogi and sannakji (you remember that, don't you?); taking in the majestic sights and sounds of the Korean countryside; reveling in the nation's proud history and cultural traditions; living it up with our fellow foreigners; and, of course, raking in the won. Why, by the time this little junket is over (two years, if I can talk Miss H into it), we'll have enough money to go anywhere in the States that we like, get a decent apartment, find jobs, pay off loans, maybe even get Miss H her master's degree and me my commercial pilot's license. Maybe even my instrument rating! Hot diggity damn!

Oh wait. I'm supposed to be cautiously optimistic, aren't I?

the silver key

2011-11-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

or, the long road to literary enlightenment

I hope you'll have the patience—or tenacity—to stick with me on this one. This is a landmark post. Seminal, you might call it. Yeah, definitely seminal. It marks a turning point in the career of that damn novel sitting under my bed, dusty and neglected.

Sometimes it pays to reread things. Be it a news feature, an essay, or a work of literature, there's usually some information to be gleaned from it the second time around...and only on the second time around. I knew this to be true with humor pieces (like Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series) and epic novels, but just a few minutes ago, I received a surprising piece of inspiration from an unexpected piece of material. It's funny how the passage of time and the garnering of experience can alter one's perspective.

Maybe this lays a morbid cast over my efforts as a writer, but the source of this evening's epiphany was none other than the master of cosmic horror himself, H.P. Lovecraft.

I have a tradition. I instituted it this autumn. When the weather turns cold, grey, wet, and otherwise inclement, I take out my H.P. Lovecraft collection and reread it. It's a modest collection, but it includes almost all of his better-known short stories and a modest number of undiscovered gems. It consists of two books: the novel-length At the Mountains of Madness, which has a few brief stories tacked on at the end, and a compendium, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre.

I didn't really believe that I'd find anything truly instructive in them. Like I've said before, I read for pleasure and education. There's always something to be learned from any book. Every author's style is either a lesson or a warning. I had been warned against Lovecraft's writing by Stephen King, who, by his own admission, adores Lovecraft's talent for horror but loathes his tin ear for dialogue and adjective-soaked prose. Both King and I are ardent fans of Lovecraft and hold the man in high esteem, but I can see King's point. So I keep the editing goggles on whenever I read Lovecraft, to protect my own writing from negative subliminal influences.

So there I was, perusing Lovecraft's best works. I was flipping through the pages, vaguely wondering what to read next. I had reviewed "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Thing on the Doorstep," had devoured the very brief "In the Vault," "Pickman's Model," and "The Rats in the Walls," and was making inroads on "The Whisperer in Darkness." It was a toss-up whether to proceed onto "The Haunter of the Dark" or "The Colour Out of Space," the latter being lengthier but of considerable quality.

Then something caught my eye: "The Silver Key." I have a photographic memory, and a title will usually remind me of the finer details of plot and character. "The Silver Key," however, evaded the grasp of my recollection. Curious, I began to read.

The following passages hit me like a thunderbolt.

     He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears a superstitious reverence for that which tangibly and physically exists, and had made him secretly ashamed to dwell in visions. Wise men told him his simple fancies were inane and childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.
     They had chained him down to things that are, and had then explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world. When he complained, and longed to escape into twilight realms where magic moulded all the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his mind into vistas of breathless expectancy and unquenchable delight, they turned him instead toward the newfound prodigies of science, bidding him find wonder in the atom's vortex and the mystery in the sky's dimensions. And when he had failed to find these boons in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creations.
     ...
     With his dreams fading under the ridicule of the age he could not believe in anything, but the love of harmony kept him close to the ways of his race and station. He walked impassive through the cities of men, and sighed because no vista seemed fully real; because every flash of yellow sunlight on tall roofs and every glimpse of balustraded plazas in the first lamps of evening served only to remind him of dreams he had once known, and to make him homesick for ethereal lands he no longer knew how to find.
     ...
     Then he began once more the writing of books, which he had left off when dreams first failed him. But here, too, was there no satisfaction or fulfillment; for the touch of earth was upon his mind, and he could not think of lovely things as he had done of yore. Ironic humor dragged down all the twilight minarets he reared, and the earthy fear of improbability blasted all the delicate and amazing flowers of his faery gardens. The convention of assumed pity spilt mawkishness on his characters, while the myth of an important reality and significant human events and emotions debased all his high fantasy into thin-veiled allegory and cheap social satire. His new novels were successful as his old ones had never been; and because he knew how empty they must be to please an empty herd, he burned them and ceased his writing. They were very graceful novels, in which he urbanely laughed at the dreams he lightly sketched; but he saw that their sophistication had sapped all their life away.

Wow.

This is heavy stuff.

And with it came a revelation, a breakthrough, a foe-tossing flood of self-discovery.

I was stricken on two fundamental levels: first, I recognized that I had been laboring to construct my own science fiction novel as...well, fluff. Under the noble guise of science fiction, a revered medium which the savants of yesteryear employed to paint pictures of the Universe both unsuspected and overawing, I had constructed something intolerably artificial, mere varnish laid over a poisonous message of social criticism and allegory. Second, it reaffirmed my confidence in my chosen genre. The more I tried to summarize to myself (and explain to others) the premise of my novel, the more I found myself overcome with shame and doubt, a creeping disbelief in the credibility of science fiction as a vehicle for one's literary goals. Sci-fi, I increasingly allowed myself to believe, was kid stuff: childish and immature, not as worthwhile or credible as "realistic" novels.

Lovecraft saved me from that self-destructive train of thought. In one stroke, he made me realize the needlessness and puerility of embedding a sociopolitical message in the flesh of my fiction (indeed, why should it not stand on its own?) and simultaneously assured me of its worth. He reminded me of the marvels of science fiction and fantasy, the wonders which the mind can create, the boundless adventure that the wizard author may manifest on the printed page for all the world's dreamers, poets, thinkers and star-gazers to enjoy.

So here's where the seminal part of this blog post comes in. I'm instituting a major (and I mean major) overhaul of my novel manuscript, effective immediately. I haven't touched the thing in months, years. Perhaps I've been overcome with reality. Logic and realism have—how does it go?—"dinned into my ears a superstitious reverence for that which tangibly and physically exists." I've been unsure of myself as a writer, but more than that, unsure of myself as a writer of science fiction. Thanks to Lovecraft, I'm no longer afraid to delve into fantasy. Why the heck not? It's fun, dang it. You're supposed to do what you want with your life, aren't you? Hang the critics!

But most important of all, I'm ridding my novel (and all subsequent novels in the series) of all traces of ulterior message. The political significance, the social commentary, the biting satire—out with it. I don't need it. It was becoming too much to handle anyway: constantly scrutinizing my plot devices and characters to ensure they encapsulated the proper symbolism. Fundamentally, the novel is about doing what you want with your life, and having the guts to actually carry it through to the finish. So that's what I'll focus on. To the blazes with all the rest. If my fiction isn't good enough to stand by itself without political messages, social mores, commentary or satire, then it shouldn't be written in the first place. I've been ignoring the advice of Stephen King all along: I should write first, and worry about the thematic elements later. I should be teasing them out during the editing process instead of hammering them in too early. I'll write first, and if a message develops out of the subsequent product, then I'll refine it. But it won't be anvilicious and it sure as hell won't be political. If I was meant to be a political writer, then you'd be reading about Obama and Romney and Palin and Pelosi on the Sententious Vaunter, and not Lovecraft and Heinlein and Asimov. Same thing applies to my novels, starting this minute.

So, now that you've borne witness to the Great Revelation, I'll go one step farther and include you in the Great Work. I am GOING to start rewriting my novel soon. I'll keep you up-to-date on the process. In my long hiatus from novel-writing, and my long steep in the cleansing waters of inspirational science fiction and related literature, I've had a few other minor epiphanies which I feel will thoroughly improve the plot, pacing, and characterization of my novel. I'll take this opportunity to implement those changes. And when I get done...I'll have a real, honest-to-God manuscript, not just a bunch of loose pages bundled together and stuck under the bed with the dust bunnies.

And now, you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to take Lovecraft's silver key and use it to open the gate of dreams. It's been shut far too long, and for too trivial a reason. Stay tuned.

May your epiphany come to you likewise, and bear equally righteous fruit.

perspective and soda

2011-11-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm working on two Gibsons and one whiskey and soda, so we'll see how coherent this blog post turns out. Coldplay's "Paradise" isn't helping, either (and yet, somehow, it's helping oh so much).

There are many recurring archetypes in fiction. One of the most overdone is that of the "invincible young dude." You know 'em, you love 'em: slick, loud, brash, overconfident. Unafraid of death or misfortune. They're on top of the world, and they're hot stuff, and nobody can tell them different. They're practically begging to be taken down a peg.

And sure enough, it inevitably takes a calamity (a buddy's death, a close encounter with the bad guys, a near-death experience, or some-such) to wake them up, bring them down to earth, and make them realize the truth: they are not invincible, and never were. They're just as human as the next man. They're privy to all the ills which flesh is heir to: pain, suffering, displacement, impotence, deprivation, loss, failure, death, injury, disability. And whenever a cocky young buck gets his comeuppance, there's a painful interlude in which they reappraise their outlook and readjust it—allowing for failure. It's a heartrending thing to watch, but it's a necessary growing experience. Ultimately the brash youth will be more mature the next time a catastrophe comes around.

Never have I identified more with this trope than I do now.

I have received my wake-up call.

For many years, I thought I was immune to life's downturns. Pukey economy? Ha! Job slump? Not even on my mind. Housing crash? Fuhgeddaboutit!

As Emperor Palpatine would say, my overconfidence was my weakness.

Keyword: "was."

Everything has finally caught up with me.

A niggling fear has been dogging me for the last few months, a fear I had never acknowledged or suspected before. I never dreamed that I would suffer at its hands, not in a million years.

The fear of mediocrity.

It feels, lately, that everything I ever planned, hoped for, strove for, dreamed, daydreamed, or wanted is slipping slowly away from me. All chance of worth, accomplishment, notoriety, fame, or happiness turns increasingly dim. These days it seems like the best I can manage is shadows and dust: a half-life, a skulking, underdone fugue of broken dreams, wants unanswered, hope turned hollow. Insecurity and doubt plague my every step. In the face of adversity, crippling economic disadvantage, the humiliation of dependency, and the general pervading listlessness, it seems as though all my personal demons have crawled out of the woodwork to torment me. Suddenly, my novel's prospects fall miserably short of expectation; at best it will manifest as a paperback on the bottom shelf of the science fiction/fantasy section in Barnes & Noble. Suddenly, my lofty pilot's ambitions fall to rubble before my eyes; I feel I will live out my days as a peon copilot for some regional airline in the Midwest, ferrying disagreeable passengers between Springfield and Chicago or Des Moines and Minneapolis. Suddenly, I realize that I will never work as a drink-slinging bartender in a high-class establishment in Las Vegas or Edinburgh or Santiago; the best I will manage will be half-assed Manhattans in my basement.

A painful process this has indeed been.

Yet hope springs eternal. I've got quite a few more novel ideas floating around my skull, and I think I know how to fix my current manuscript. I'm working on the perfect Gibson; pretty soon I'll turn my hand to Manhattans and polish them until they're perfect. And as for flying...well, I don't want to say anything too committal here, but I believe I have a deal worked out. I'm placing an important call tomorrow, the outcome of which will determine my fate. Further bulletins as events warrant.

In the meantime, I'll dream of Paradise.

turning point

2011-11-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

Well, blast it all.

I used to look at pictures of people waiting in bread lines during the Great Depression and think "Wow, I'm glad that's not me."

I'm still far from living on the streets or Dumpster-diving for dinner, but nonetheless, I'm beginning to feel less and less exempt from the general economic crunch.

Especially now, since I have no job.

Let me explain.

Remember how I said I was going back to Korea?

There are certain pieces of paper one requires if one desires to work overseas. The Republic of South Korea demands that all American immigrants obtain a background check from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and send it to the State Department to be notarized. This notarization consists of an apostille—a big fancy stamp, basically—which legitimizes the document for use by a foreign government.

When I checked the State Department's website in August, it clearly stated that the processing time for an apostille was four weeks.

Perfect, I thought. The job we've been accepted for in Korea starts September 12th. I'll send these forms off on August 5th, and we'll have them back by September 5th or earlier.

Ha-ha. What point did John Steinbeck make about "the best-laid plans of mice and men"...?

I sent the documents off on August 5th. A week later, I logged onto the State Department's website again, just to check up on the status of our apostille.

The Department's electronic literature now said that the processing time for an apostille was EIGHT weeks.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It was all up with September. We missed out on the position. We had to call our recruiter, explain what happened, apologize profusely, and decline the position. The marvelous, marvelous position in Bucheon, Seoul, which would've netted us 4.6 million won (about $4600) per month, and left us with $50,000 U.S. to take home afterward.

Well, darn.

Our apostilles came in on October 5th. By that time, the jobs in Korea had all dried up. The hiring season was over. Our recruiter mournfully informed us that Miss H and I would be high and dry until January, when the next wave of hiring began.

Shazbot!

After a great deal of soul-searching and some late-night discussions, Miss H and I decided to wait it out. We'd obtain temporary employment here in the High Desert, work some dead-end jobs for a few months to keep afloat, and ship out for Korea in January.

It was shortly after this that we discovered that San Bernardino County has the second-worst unemployment rate in the entire country after Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mother&%@#er!

So here we are: applying for jobs all over the tri-city area, without so much as a callback or an interview. Both of us are going mad, being 23 and 25 years old (respectively) and still living in our parents' houses. It was cold comfort that Rush Limbaugh said on the radio this morning that 30% of all unwed males in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 34 are still living with their parents. I don't wanna be one of 'em. I want to be out on my own, dammit. Self-sufficient. Independent. Striding forward to my destiny. I really feel like I'm stuck here in the desert. It was just an inkling before, a terrible dream, a half-imagined dread. Now it's real. And it's constricting my chest. I perpetually feel, living here in the Victor Valley, as though I can't get enough air. Some days I just want to walk off into the desert and see how far I get. Just to maintain the illusion that I'm my own man, and my fate is still in my hands, you know.

This would've been easier to take if I was still chasing Predators. But I'm not. After I'd read that the State Department would take only a month to process my apostille, I gave my one-month notice at work. I retracted it as quickly as possible after I learned of the State Department's true colors, but the damage was done: my superiors had already begun searching for a replacement. And they found one, and he'd quit his job to work with us, and he needed to work full-time to support himself and his wife. So there it was: I was out. There was no getting around it. No plea bargain, no parole board, no second chance. October 28 was officially my last day. It's my first week off and already I'm going crazy.

So I made a decision this evening. I decided that I would polish off that bottle of über-peaty Ardbeg 10-year-old Scotch that's been sitting on the pantry shelf for eons.

More importantly, I decided that I would swallow my pride. I went out to the living room and asked my parents (who had just forked over $500 to replace the leaf springs on my Jeep) for a loan of $4500 to complete my commercial pilot's license. It was hard, but I felt it was the right thing to do. They had extended the offer previously, and I had refused it. But now I feel like I have no other choice. I've got to start making money somehow, and my journalism résumé is far too anemic to do me any good in this economical climate. I'd wanted to get my instrument rating first (only one checkride that way), but that's another 45 hours with an instructor. I only need 38 more hours of PIC (pilot-in-command) time to get my commercial license, excluding checkride prep with an instructor and the actual test. If I go down to the airport every day and fly an airplane around for an hour or two, making landings at towered airports and doing a few long cross-countries and night flights, then I'll be up to speed in no time. Then, hopefully, I'll pass my tests on the first try and be able to saunter forth into the world of commercial aviation.

And I'll use my first paycheck to reimburse my parents' loan. I promise.

Hold me to that, will you?

cocktail review no. 63 - Planter's Punch

2011-10-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Tropical drinks are a rum do.

A wealth of visual imagery and context and light and sound and feeling and fury lie bound up in those two words.

Most people immediately think of tiki bars, and rum bars, and tropical bars, and beach bars, and barbecues and summer nights and sambas and limbos and rumbas and tangos and lambadas when you say "tropical drink."

They think of tattooed women caked with makeup, drinking way too much and wearing way too little, easy prey. "Oh, I can't taste the alcohol, it's fair game for me!"

They think of paper umbrellas, and friends staggering on the street, and loud clubs, and garnishes almost too gaudy to be edible, pineapples and cherries and pomegranates and God knows what else. "For Christ's sake, where's the booze? This tastes like fruit juice!"

They think of outlandish names, monikers fit for the Sheriff of Nottingham, Vlad the Impaler, Robespierre, Ceauşescu, Shiro Ishii: the Zombie, the Scorpion, the Tidal Wave, the Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning.

Maybe that last one's a stretch, but it's imposing regardless.

There are a few hardy folks, however, who don't subscribe to the trendy, hip, club-going, bar-hopping, street-puking, alley-humping "in-crowd." Some of us out here in the ether still dream of seaplanes, hammocks, palm fronds, zebra stripes, native girls, ukeleles, volcanoes, howdahs, bungalows and sprawling plantations while we sip tropical drinks.

I do, anyway.

And this drink, Planter's Punch, made every daydream I'd ever had about a voyage to the South Seas or a passage to India or a beach house in Cuba come galloping to the forefront.

1 ounce dark rum
1 ounce light rum
½ ounce orange Curaçao
2 ounces fresh orange juice
2 ounces pineapple juice
¼ ounce fresh lime juice
½ ounce simple syrup
dash of grenadine
dash of Angostura bitters

Shake all ingredients well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Top with club soda.

I need to tell you about a little book I found at Anthropologie.

The book, the acquisition of which cost me fifty-three U.S. dollars, is the jewel of my bartender's collection.

It's called Vintage Cocktails.

Part of Assouline's line on travel and culture and fine dining, the book features photography by Laziz Hamani, who is better known for his pictures of Louis Vuitton handbags than alcoholic drinks.

That should give you some idea about how lush the photography is.

As Brian Van Flandern explains in the introduction:

"The word vintage often implies antique, a relic from the past that has come back into vogue. Not to be confused with the classic cocktail, the vintage cocktail conjures images of specific places in time when a particular cocktail gained global popularity. Many of the recipes featured in [Vintage Cocktails] survived the devastating years of Prohibition (1920-1933) while others, like the Brandy Crusta (created in New Orleans in 1852), boast legacies of over a century."

What we have in this book is a collection of cocktails that are very old, mostly unheard of these days, known to only a few old-fashioned drink-meisters, mentioned frequently in black-and-white films, sometimes seen on those giant prints that Red Robin loves to put up on its walls. Nobody drinks this stuff anymore, but once you taste it, you may never go back to your Scooby Snacks and Blow Jobs. These names conjure up images of dimly-lit mahogany bars, and brightly lit ballrooms, and yachts, and verandas, and red carpet and movie stars and black-tie affairs.

The Sidecar.

The Brandy Flip.

The Gin Mule.

The Dry Martini.

The French 75.

The Sazerac.

The Irish Coffee.

The Stinger.

The Sloe Gin Fizz.

The Pousse-Café.

The Hemingway Daiquiri.

The White Russian.

Between the Sheets.

Pimm's Cup.

And all the rest of it. You can just see a bunch of Hollywood's greats lounging around in tuxedos, sipping on these masterpieces. (And indeed, there is a picture in the front pages of Vintage Cocktails showing Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart, tuxedo-clad, enjoying a "drink and a joke" at a New Year's Eve party in Beverly Hills.

Wowzer.

So these drinks (with a few exceptions) have a long, epic history, steeped in tradition and class, endowed with unimpeachable reputations, crafted from the finest ingredients, and savored by some rather legendary human beings.

One of these is—you guessed it—Planter's Punch.

And it has earned its place on the list of vintage (and classic) cocktails.

I've had tropical drinks before. Lots. I like 'em. Makes me feel a little closer to my idols (Ernest Hemingway and Bartholomew Roberts come to mind). But I've never had one like Planter's Punch. It is a doozy. For once, the pineapple juice does not overpower or undermine. It smoothly backs up the orange juice and complements the sour kick of the lime, while its best qualities are brought out by the simple syrup. The simple mix of light and dark rum creates both a smoky undertone and a sweetly alcoholic finish which entrances nostrils and taste buds alike. (Some recipes for Planter's Punch include three or four kinds of rum; this is, I believe, an unnecessary and wasteful practice.) The bitters balance out what would otherwise be overwhelming sweetness. The grenadine provides both a textural solidarity and a slight cherry undertone that creates, in my opinion, the perfect tropical flavor. Many tropical drinks taste foully or overwhelmingly of pineapple; some are sickly sweet; others dilute the booze to fantastic degrees. The Planter's Punch does none of this. The addition of orange juice and orange Curaçao provides just the right amount of orange overtone (supplemented by the lime) without submitting to or adulterating the other sensations.

Sorry, I'm gushing.

Putting it bluntly, I think I've found my favorite tropical cocktail.

But, as always, don't take my word for it.

I need Paul Theroux to kick my @$$

2011-10-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

You've heard of Paul Theroux, haven't you?

If you haven't, I'll give you the skinny. It's subjective, of course, so you are cordially invited to do as you've always done and make up your own damn mind.

Paul Theroux is a travel writer and novelist. You might know him for crafting books like The Mosquito Coast (which most people have never heard of until you mention that it was made into a godawful movie with Harrison Ford).

What he's best known for (i.e., what I know him best for) is travel writing. Specifically, train travel. Paul Theroux loves trains. He's ridden them across most of the world's countries, across every continent that has railroads. He's a consummate train traveler, the kind who boards a train, finds himself a sleeping compartment, and then holes up with a bottle of wine or whiskey or gin and either reads Faulkner novels or scribbles notes in his journal as the countryside rolls by. He'll slither out of his lair at mealtimes to take in refreshment in the dining car and converse with his fellow passengers. Most of these passengers he will inevitably snark at, either in person or later in print. Theroux is a snarky devil. He is excoriating in the extreme, and will not hesitate to latch onto a perceived shortcoming in his interlocutor's intelligence and follow it to its source; he seldom rests before ripping it out by the roots. He will calmly and ruthlessly stick a chisel into cracked logic, whether it be as simple as someone's raw-foods diet or as complex as a society's cherished beliefs. He borders on being a misanthrope. (If he's reading this, I'm sure my use of that word will annoy him no end; for one, he's the type of man who despises such labels, and for another, he will instantly deplore the degraded and decaying state of the American educational system which induces such an inherent tendency in arrogant youthful minds to use a word like "misanthrope" so readily and lightly.)

Long story short, Paul Theroux loves trains. He hates people. I've said it before.

Nonetheless (and you can probably tell this from what I've written) the man gives me an inferiority complex.

Not only has he been to more countries than I have, he is also a ferociously good writer, and well-established in both the fiction and travel markets.

Perhaps "inferiority complex" is inapt. It would be more fitting to say that everything I do (or don't do) makes me wonder what Theroux would think of me. Each transgression I commit against my craft, every sinful negligence I indulge, takes shape in my mind as a black mark in Theroux's ledger. I feel as though his living spirit, taking my nightstand or desk lamp or pencil-case as an avatar, is constantly watching my feeble attempts at a writing career and passing brutal, silent judgment.

If I let my novel go untouched for more than three weeks, I can see Theroux shrugging in a dismissive manner and staring out the window of a moving train. And before I can order a dry Gibson and begin to plead my case, he gets up and walks away.

If I let a day go by where I don't write (and there have been way too many of those lately), I can hear Theroux give a derisive laugh and stomp off to his sleeping compartment.

If I reach for the Xbox or computer games or comics, I can hear Theroux flipping the pages of a Dashiell Hammett book and tut-tutting under his breath.

This has a profound effect on my psyche.

I alternate between periods of glorious rebellion, where I couldn't give a fig for Theroux or any other high-minded footloose world-traveling novelist. On occasion, however, my conscience awakes, avenging harpies swoop out of the sundered heavens, and Paul Theroux rises above the horizon, his arms folded and his brow pinched together disapprovingly. And I skulk about the house like a beaten dog, cringing at the sight of my laptop and the notebooks full of scribbles and the manuscripts under my bed, each page a grievous blow to my ego.

Yeah, okay, I know. I'm insecure. No well-adjusted person would ever feel inferior to a travel writer a few decades older than them, nor allow a mental picture of that person to control them in such a ridiculously comprehensive fashion.

Well, who said I was well-adjusted?

This is probably good for me. Just by opening a Theroux book (I have three of them so far, all train-related; several more populate the wish-list) I get a free kick in the butt. One snide remark from Paul and the guilt rises in my throat like bile. No matter how engaging his tales of chugging through the Khyber Pass or across the Australian outback may be, just reading about them makes me want to throw the book down and get to work on my own career. Of course, that's where the Catch-22 comes in: as soon as I put the book down, Theroux's hectoring becomes much easier to ignore. It's only when I'm actually reading Theroux—surprised at every turn by his depth of feeling, his powers of perception, his talent for description, the wonders of his travels, and his sheer snarkiness—that the guilty feelings pervade. I had my last bout with shame and inferiority when I read The Great Railway Bazaar a couple of years ago. Having recently finished The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna (more about that later), I picked up The Old Patagonian Express two days ago and launched into it.

And wham-o, wouldn't you know it? The old Theroux-Induced Inferiority Complex has kicked in again. I'm feeling behind. My life hasn't started. I haven't done anything. I'm a nobody. I'll never get anywhere at this rate. I spend my days reading comic books and playing video games instead of squaring my shoulders, marshaling my courage and pursuing my dreams.

It's funny how difficult something as simple as chasing one's dreams can be sometimes.

That's why I need Theroux to kick my ass.

dead ends

2011-10-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

You know that moment when you're in a game of high-stakes poker and you look down at your cards and you raise your opponent by two hundred bucks and realize you've just made the gravest mistake of the game, and have inextricably f—ed yourself over?

I came to that disturbing epiphany just last week. I am in a deep hole, and it's going to take some doing to get me out of it.

We might be facing a crisis here.

An unexpected delay in the paperwork process for our Korean visas (apparently it takes EIGHT weeks for the State Department to process an apostille, not four as originally advertised) has forced us to wait until now to get all of our documents in order. In the meantime, Miss H and I have missed out on some excellent opportunities in Korea, opportunities that may not repeat themselves.

My situation at work has compounded matters. Due to the delays, I was forced to retract my resignation from my company and stay on for an indeterminate length of time. Meanwhile, however, my superiors had already hired a replacement, who now must needs be trained. That means that my hours have been cut back by half. Thanks to my parents, my financial situation is by no means desperate, but it can little stand any loss. I'm beginning to worry about my loan payments and credit card bills. (My credit account, in fact, is still reeling from the trip to England I took last year.)

So that's the situation: dwindling funds, missed opportunities and dashed hopes. Miss H and I are scrambling to cultivate other options in case the worst should happen (i.e., we can't find a teaching position in South Korea before mid-November), but it's a slow and dicey process. Increasingly I feel as though the walls are closing in on me.

I have a few cards left up my sleeve. I'll keep you posted.

cocktail review no. 62 - Shark Bite

2011-09-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

Say a beverage struck you as repulsive the first time you tried it. Don't give up. Head to another venue and sample their version of the same drink. Chances are you'll be pleasantly surprised. You may even discover a keeper.

The cocktail world is subjective. There are millions of ways to make the same drink. There are as many margarita recipes as there are cells in Jimmy Buffett's body. If a drink (especially a popular drink) fails to catch fire with you, look up a different recipe...or a different bar. It's too early to quit.

I found that out with this drink.

1 ounce light rum
½ ounce vodka
1½ ounces Blue Curaçao
4 ounces sweet-and-sour
½ ounce grenadine

In a margarita glass half-filled with ice cubes, combine the rum, vodka, Blue Curaçao, and sweet-and-sour. Drop the grenadine into the center of the drink.

Now, let me set the stage for you.

I had tried the Shark Bite at Outback Steakhouse a few months prior. I was underwhelmed. On an impulse I decided to try the same drink again at Joe's Crab Shack. Different venue, different recipe, right?

Wow, did that ever turn out to be the right decision.

And not only did Joe's version of the Shark Bite turn out to be superior in taste, the presentation was second to none. The people at Joe's are pretty clever when it comes to prettying up strong drink. Aside from their kick-butt Mason jar margaritas, they serve a mean-looking Shark Bite. You get the drink in a big goblet. The Blue Curaçao renders the drink a vivid blue, like the ocean. The grenadine is served on the side, in a beaker stuffed into the mouth of a rubber toy shark. You, the customer, then drop the grenadine into the center of your drink.

The result is something like this:

Pretty cute, huh? The grenadine looks for all the world like blood in the water. And having that "blood" served up in a "shark" only makes the experience more novel.

I've listed the ingredients for this libation, but the amounts are approximate; it came out tasting pretty good, though. This is not a typical tropical drink. It doesn't reek of pineapple or drown in fruit juice. The vodka and rum combine to form a sweet, boozy kick which the orange tang of the Curaçao overlays and enhances. The sweet-and-sour simultaneously takes the edge off of the spirits while providing a sweetness of its own to the mix, while the grenadine (once you've added it) provides a cherry overtone which gets stronger and stronger the deeper you go.

What more do you need? The flavor's good and the drink is guaranteed to thrill the guests at any party. Get out there and mix.

That is all.

cocktail review no. 61 - The Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning

2011-09-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

This picture is highly satirical.

Sounds like a head trip, don't it? And it would be, if you mistakenly confused it with this drink.

But you know me. I get (most) of my classic drinks from one source, and one source only: The Bartender's Bible, by Gary Regan. One thousand and one recipes to suit your every need. This one is another lovely tropical cocktail.

The only thing unusual about it is the name. Okay, yeah, and a few of the ingredients.

1½ ounces light rum
½ melon liqueur
1 ounce pineapple juice
½ lime juice
1 teaspoon orgeat syrup
1 cup crushed ice
1 teaspoon cherry brandy

In a blender, combine the rum, melon liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice and orgeat syrup with the crushed ice. Blend well and pour into an old-fashioned glass. Drop the cherry brandy into the center.

The Sleeping Dragon, they might as well have named it. Not merely for its habit of lunging out of the crystal cave and biting you on the ass, but for its surprisingly delicate flavor as well.

Let me delineate here and now that, (a) I was slightly drunk when I originally mixed this libation, so my discourse on its charms may not be lucid; and (b) due to (a), I forgot to drop the cherry brandy into the drink. I just blended it all together.

Not much was lost. Light rum is sweet and faintly redolent of spice, but possesses none of the fire and flavor of darker rums. Therefore its role in mixed drinks becomes something like vodka: a "negative" or binding agent which maintains a characteristic undertone while allowing other flavors to be stacked on top of it, like Lego bricks. Rum possess an inherent sweetness which greatly enhances any tropical drink (and a great many non-tropical highballs besides). This sweetness is the basis for the Green-Tailed Dragon, which is then accentuated by the lime juice (providing a sour citrus sting); the pineapple juice (its pleasant flavor punctuating the rummy backdrop); the melon liqueur (a gustatory counterpoint which steals the show—the flavor both outshines the rum while simultaneously standing on its shoulders, lending the Dragon a pleasant fruity bouquet and a smooth finish); and the orgeat syrup (which, if you'll recall, is an infusion of citrus flavors, almonds and rose water, combining to form an extremely sweet medley). The cherry brandy is the finisher: though present in small doses, it retains its potency, rendering the drink a luxuriant dark red color and providing a deep fruity overtone to the finish.

Trust me when I say this is nothing like any tropical drink you've sampled before.

Then again, you don't have to take my word for it.

Just forgive the bartender for the funny look he gives you when you belly up to the bar and request "The Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning."

channeling Dostoevsky

2011-09-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite books—and the only one I didn't sell back to the Royal Rip-Off Club (the university bookstore, in other words)—is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I couldn't really tell you why I kept it, except that I like it. The protagonist of NFU is not a likeable fellow. He's a neurotic mess. Mind you, his environment has something to do with it. His job was boring and didn't pay well. His (few) friends are all better-off than he is. His butler is passive-aggressive. And to top it off, he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, which (Dostoevsky puts this quite delicately) is a frigid cesspool. Understandably, this unnamed protagonist is lonely, distraught, and used to be downright ornery (before the ennui overwhelmed him and turned him into an apathetic pile of dithering paranoia). His self-esteem is in tatters, and his perceived inferiority to others drives him to fits, so he takes this bitterness out on people. He acts solely out of spite. Everything he does is done out of spite. He even spites himself when there's no one else around. He finds pleasure in toothaches and liver pain. He was as nasty as possible to the petitioners who appeared before his desk. In his own words:

When petitioners came to my desk seeking information, I gnashed my teeth at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid folk: naturally—petitioners. But there were also some fops, and among these I particularly detested a certain officer. He absolutely refused to submit and clattered revoltingly with his sword. I battled him over that sword for a year and a half. And finally I got the best of him. He stopped clattering.

This novel entertains me. On the surface it's the depraved maundering of a nihilistic sociopath, who once would've liked nothing better than to set his hooks into you and drag you down with him. (Now, his soft insides hidden beneath a layer of calcified spite, he sits on the sidelines of social interaction and cackles like a demon at the artifice of it all.) Underneath it's one of the first existentialist novels, and a complete rejection of utopian socialism. It pulls no punches in presenting humans as irrational, uncooperative, uncontrollable beings.

Much as I enjoy the idea of a happy little world filled with soap bubbles and hearts and fluffy clouds, where everybody gets along and all are considered equals and nobody kills anyone else and whatnot, the idea is laughable. This is a central theme in my own novel, in fact.

Moreover...

It is ample justification for what I am about to tell you.

I once had a coworker whom I couldn't stand.

The man was an utter and complete idiot. He wasn't safe to work with, lacked any understanding of his trade, and worse yet, he would equivocate, exaggerate, downplay and flatter to avoid being called on it. He'd say anything to wiggle out of being blamed for mishaps he caused. (And he caused quite a few.) He undermined our supervisor's authority by calling the higher-ups behind his back. He treated near-misses nonchalantly, as if they didn't really matter. He routinely forgot (or conveniently misplaced) the most fundamental things. (I could list more of his transgressions, but I wish to avoid casting aspersion on the company.) Suffice it to say that this fellow was a piss-poor worker, forgetful, sneaky, inept, incompetent, and conniving—and his arrogant attitude compounded the problem tenfold.

So I saw nothing wrong with giving him hell on a daily basis.

I called him out on his errors. I raked him over the coals when he screwed the pooch. I sententiously bossed him around in the cockpit (remember who you're dealing with). I contravened his wishes (though never in an unsafe manner). I second-guessed his intentions. I challenged, I questioned, I snarked without mercy. In short, I submarined him any way I could. If he borked, he got an earful...and so did the supervisor, chapter and verse.

Got a problem with that? Sue me.

I was on a holy mission. The Royal F@#&-Up and I had to work together. His foul-ups weren't severe enough to get him fired. And I wasn't in a position where I could logically or conscientiously refuse to work with him. I had gone before the higher-ups and complained, and there had been problem-solving sessions and group discussions, but in the end, the Jerk was exonerated, and I had to suck it up and roll with it. But I didn't have to acquiesce to his stupidity, I decided. As the duly-appointed safety observer, it was my job to point out any issue I felt needed to be addressed. And did that. I was civil about it, too, mostly. But I didn't have to like the guy. I figured it was better for him to watch his ass when I near. I wouldn't tolerate failures or slip-ups. After all, if he balled up the airplane, I'd get splattered all over the countryside along with him.

I looked at this the same way the Underground Man in NFU does. There was a battle of principle taking place. The Royal F@#&-Up refused to submit and began rattling his saber. So, I vowed, I'd gnash my teeth at him until he quit.

I finally got him to quit. Or to crack, at least.

It started innocently. It may not even have been a hill worth dying on. We had a slight disagreement about procedures. Tomato, tomahto. He did something, I questioned him about it, he defended himself. I filed the matter away to be discussed later.

And when I brought it up...

He exploded. He used a rather naughty word. He threatened to quit, which made me quite happy, if only he could've known. He said he didn't need this kind of aggravation. He was the superior here, he insisted. He would do things the way he saw fit, the safest way he knew how. I could barely choked back the laughter. I leaned against the nearest wall and soaked it all up. I'd beaten him. I'd shaken his cool. I'd rattled his cage. I'd cracked the ridiculous veneer of professional calm which he'd exuded up 'til now. Victory was mine.

By and by he calmed down. He said that he didn't have a problem with my calling things to his attention, per se (odd, seeing as how that was what had set him off in the first place), but my delivery could use some work. I was nitpicking and hypercritical, he said. (Excellent, I thought, he picked up on it.) My tone came across as condescending, he said. (Oh good, he'd noticed.) I shouldn't stop bringing these issues to his attention, he said, but my bedside manner could be more polite. Delighted, I agreed. I'd continue my duties as safety observer, but I'd work on my delivery, no sweat. I was chuckling inside all the while. Sure, I'll be nicer. Now that I've knocked all the supports out from under you, and revealed you to be the pompous, egotistical, scheming nincompoop you always were. And now you know I've revealed it, too. And indeed, his manner was conciliatory. He seemed to regret his loss of temper and took pains to ensure that we had resolved the conflict—and by proxy, that I wouldn't report anything to the supervisors. I didn't report a thing. There was no need. I'd gotten what I was after: sweet satisfaction. I felt almost no guilt about it, either.

Undermining people's egos isn't something I've made a habit of since, largely because I've never again been forced to work so closely with someone I despised.

But now that I've done it, I can see the benefits (and potential harms) of it. And I understand Notes from Underground a lot better, too.

Because, to a substantial degree, I didn't need to do what I did to the Jerk. I'm not a malicious man, and neither was Dostoevsky's protagonist. We are not, by nature, spiteful or hateful or nasty or mean. We were just amusing ourselves.

Because it can be mighty amusing.

...or maybe not

2011-08-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I lied.

Due to the lengthy processes involved with putting a stamp on a piece of paper (????), it seems Miss H and I will be delayed further in our venture to Korea. Our FBI background checks still haven't been returned, and further research has told us that an additional FOUR WEEKS will be required to put an Apostille on said background check. In the meantime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation must send us our background checks via snail mail, and then we must send them to the Department of State, wait the requisite month and THEN send all our prepared documents to our recruiter in K-Land. In addition, we are still waiting for our diplomas to be notarized by our respective institutions, and to have Apostilles put on THEM by the Secretaries of State of North Dakota and Illinois.

Jeeeeeeeeeeeez.

The upshot of all this is that we won't make the deadline for the marvelous job we'd been hoping to snag, the one which begins on September 12. At this rate, we won't get over to SoKo until mid-October.

Rats.

There are definite fringe benefits to staying, Miss H has pointed out. More time to go camping, enjoy Disneyland, visit San Diego, and all the other farewell things we were planning to do. We can also have a cocktail party for my birthday and (potentially) Halloween.

But it still annoys me. The only upside is that my friends from England who are going back won't be there any sooner than I will. Their governments are giving them problems as well.

"That's what governments are for, get in a man's way."
— Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

cocktail review no. 60 - Scorpion

2011-08-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love about drinks is the wild abandon with which they're labeled. Monikers for beverages can be clear off the sliding scale of weirdness and obscurity, and dang near unpronounceable to boot. Tropical drinks are most guilty of this (although shots sometimes take a hand). Although most are semi-normal (Planter's Punch, Hawaiian Cocktail, Tidal Wave), some are downright bizarre (Zocolo, Zombie, the Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning).

And then, of course, there's the Scorpion.

The name alone fascinated me, as it does with most drinks I'm compelled to sample. Scorpion. In a world of limp-wristed, foully-named drinks, this one word encapsulated pure-d badass to my ears.

I'd have included a picture of a real scorpion, just to prove my point (as I think scorpions are one of the most badass animals out there), but for one, that would probably have creeped some of you wimps out, and for another, this is a tropical drink I'm reviewing. Which means you'll probably drink it on, near, or within 500 miles of a beach. So here's a sea scorpion for you. Don't worry, they may have been ten feet long but they've been dead for millions of years. Feel free to dunk your toes in the water.

1½ ounces añejo rum
½ brandy
1½ orange juice
1 ounce lemon juice
½ orgeat syrup
1 cup crushed ice
1 orange slice
1 maraschino cherry

In a blender, combine the rum, brandy, orange juice, lemon juice, and orgeat syrup with the crushed ice. Blend well and pour into an old-fashioned glass. Garnish with the orange slice and the cherry.

Pretty straightforward, right? The only oddball ingredient is that one right there in the middle. "Orgeat syrup." I had to look long and hard for that one. I finally found some at Wine & More, Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga. Or rather, Dad found some. My folks were making a trip down there and I asked them to pick some up for me if they saw it. The clerks really couldn't understand poor Pop when he said "or-gee-at syrup." He finally made himself understood, though, and the clerks came back with a big plastic bottle of pink stuff. In the meantime, I was at home, on my computer, researching. Turns out it's pronounced "or-zhat" syrup. French, see? It's an infusion of citrus juices, almonds and rosewater. And MAN, is it sweet. I suppose it's the syrup you use when simple sugar won't suffice.

Anyway, the taste:

I can confidently say that the addition of brandy and orgeat syrup created a flavor above the norm and beyond the pale in the realm of tropical drinkage. There's a tendency for tropical cocktails to be over-fruity, with pineapple juice taking a dominant role over the booze. Thus you get a crush of fruity redolence, pineapple most primary, with sugar adding a sickly undertone. I've tried a lot of tropical drinks and I'd venture to suggest that this is the main problem I have with them. One gets bored after a while.

Not so with the scorpion. Just as giant scorpions have three ways to kill you (mouth-parts, pincers, and stinging tail), the Scorpion cocktail has three things going for it: the rum, the brandy, and the orgeat syrup. The pineapple juice, I'm glad to say, takes a backseat. The orgeat syrup provides all the sweetness necessary while accentuating the citrus goodness of the orange and lemon juices. The almond flavor provides a lovely counterpart to the smoky spice of the brandy, which gives you a midrange boost (enough to make this blogger rear back, look at his drink, and go "Mmmmm!"). Overlaying this is the rum, which is not subverted and subjugated as in other drinks; it hovers smokily above the rest of the components.

I would venture to suggest that this is the best tropical drink I've ever slugged back.

As always, I invite you to decide for yourself.

a slight setback

2011-08-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, rats.

In my recent post (#250) I mentioned that I had racked up enough hours requisite to become a commercial pilot.

I spoke too soon.

Caveats will be the death of me. I need two-hundred and fifty hours, yes, but fifty of those hours must be pilot-in-command time. (A PIC is the guy who is ultimately in charge of the airplane, safety, flight planning, and all that stuff. Solo time counts as this. Dual instruction does not.) I have over 250 hours of dual instruction, but only twelve hours' time as PIC.

Rats.

That means I have to acquire at least 38 more hours of PIC time (at about $100 per hour) before I'm even close to being able to become a commercial pilot.

As you may have heard, I'm going back to Korea pretty soon. There really isn't time (or money) enough to get my commercial ticket before I leave. So, as tragic as it is, I'll have to wait until I get back to finish. But I will, never fear. I still entertain vague hopes of becoming a licensed seaplane pilot and starting up an airline in the bowels of Alaska somewhere. Which I will most certainly blog about, of course.

But for now, flying's going on hold again.

I know, you're crushed.

travelin' plans

2011-08-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Man, it's been a while since I did any travel-related posts, hasn't it?

Well, no, not really. I just finished telling you about that trip to England I made last June. But it took me over a year to give you the skinny and, if I'd been on the ball, that ship would've sailed a long time ago.

But before the idioms get completely out of hand, let me tell you some news.

I'M GOING BACK TO KOREA.

It's true! Miss H and I, after some discussion, soul-searching and much mulling-over, have elected to try our luck on foreign shores rather than languish in poverty in the economical cesspool of our homeland. So we called up some recruiters and haggled and dickered. In the end, we came up with an apartment near Seoul and positions at a couple of hagwon. (Hagwon are private after-school academies where hopeful Korean parents send their overworked children for extra tutoring in subjects like English, math and music. I don't know how the little buggers do it. Some of the kids I taught in Geoje were up until midnight every night, doing homework from their regular school and three different hagwon. Their eyes were drooping, their expressions haggard. I felt for the little maggots even as I abetted the soul-crushing process which made them that way.)

The start date is September 12. So, as early as September, you guys, I could be (once again) broadcasting to you from the darkest depths of Eastern Asia.

I don't need to tell you how excited I am about this. It's finally coming to fruition. I've been longing to get out of this damn desert for over two years...ever since I got back from my first stint in K-Land, in fact. I feel like my life's finally getting back on track. I'll be off and wandering the world soon...and I'll have the most beautiful woman in the world by my side. That, ladies and gents, is the perfect combination.

Miss H and I have laid some plans for after Korea, too. We're hoping to get our Russian visas (let's hope the process isn't too heartbreaking) and take the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia (Vladivostok to Moscow) and kick about in Europe for a few weeks. It'll take some serious arranging, but I'll have some advance warning this time. Think of the fun we'll have, and the writing fodder I'll accrue!

After that it'll be back to the States for a bit. I still need to acquire my commercial ticket (see the ensuing post for more info on that). After that...well, I'm not really sure. It'll depend on how much money we've got, where the jobs are, how the job market is, and how soon we can get our careers started. We might even wind up in Australia, me flying, Miss H taking beautiful pictures from her studio.

Whatever happens, never fear: you know me, folks. The Postman's got more travel ideas in store, and hopefully Miss H and I will have the guts and gumption (and green stuff) to do 'em all.

Stay tuned...

writing updates

2011-08-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

I have sent a novella to Fantasy & Science Fiction!

Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote a novella. And actually got up the courage to send it to a publisher. I sent it off in early July.

...and got it back three weeks later, with a rejection slip enclosed.

This is only the second time I've been rejected. Heck, it was even the same magazine. I might've known what was coming. An amateur can't expect his first five, ten, or 1500 works to be accepted at a veteran sci-fi mag which has played host to everybody from Stephen King to Daniel Keyes. King himself got a nail and hammered it into the wall above his bed and stuck his rejection slips there. He had a whole pile of them before he got accepted anywhere. Sylvia Plath submitted one story to The New Yorker thirty-six times before they finally accepted it. I can't logically expect anything different.

But still, it hurts.

I had high hopes for this story. It was 23,000 words of what appeared to be, at the time of submission, 100% Grade-A effluence. The plot (I thought) was superb, the setting grandiose and compelling, the premise timeless. The characters sparkled and sizzled. The twist at the end was dynamite. To the FACE.

Boy, was I wrong. The assistant editor at Fantasy & Science Fiction wrote back and said, basically, that the story "couldn't hold interest."

Ouch.

Well, I shrugged, I'll have to do better next time.

I was flying around at 10,000 feet yesterday, with the bright desert sun shining in the window and burning my face to a crisp, when suddenly two new ideas struck me full-force. One concerns a boiling planet 73 million miles from its super-hot sun, where the inhabitants scurry about like rats beneath the surface until an alien race from an ice planet shows up and begins siphoning all the heat off; and the other, "Refuge" concerns an extraterrestrial mendicant who just happens to show up in the backyard of a—

Now, now; any more and I'd be telling.

Succinctly, I have two new story ideas burning holes in my brain, and I'll start work on them forthwith. Whether they'll actually be published is up for debate, but I think I'm getting a little better with every piece of crap I churn out. Someday one of them is going to catch the eye of somebody sitting at a big desk. And you'll be the first to hear about it.

Or something like that.

I have one last momentous piece of scribbling shop-talk for you.

I have resumed work on the Novel.

Yes! That damn novel!

I was sitting around the airport one day, bored out of my skull, wondering when I was going to get over my fears and finally implement the edits and changes I'd been kicking around, when something inside me said "Screw it." I clicked on the link and the monster itself appeared on the screen of my brand-new Toshiba.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I highlighted a chunk of puerile drivel.

Licking dry lips, I moved my index finger to the top right corner of my keyboard, and punched the DELETE key.

The garbage vanished.

And just like that, the Novel got a little better. I added in a few paragraphs of new dialog and characterization, liking where it was going. The beginning is a lot less dry and preachy and a little more punchy now. It shows promise, much more promise than before. My inklings were correct about what needed to be done to improve the storyline.

I shan't stop here. I'll keep on editing, slowly, carefully, so the night-terrors don't overtake me again. And soon the monster will hopefully come out looking better than it did in the beginning.

That is all...

Wish me luck.