Stunted, convoluted

I am chagrined at my lack of blog postings. I lean on the fact that the busier I am, the less time I have to ponder and pontificate on the subject of my own life. Sometimes I'm just jerking around, but lately, I've been making changes, learning, growing. These events will make worthwhile blog posts, but they'll have to wait for retrospect. I'm a little caught up in the moment lately.

In other news, the November 21st Comedy Night at La Contenta in Valley Springs is selling tickets hand-over-fist; if you haven't scored your ticket yet, it's getting late. They're over 85% sold.

In related news, this show keeps asking more and more of me, beyond the initial arrangement. I am bending, reaching and growing to fit the shape that is required of me.

Onward!

Happy Anniversary

My wife and I took yesterday to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We spent it in true middle class fashion, driving into a real town with movie theaters, shopping centers and other civilized services, and spending money.

We held hands the whole drive.

We spent money in amounts that would embarrass the poor by their extravagance, and the rich by their paltriness. For us though: just right.

I shopped for books, she shopped for candy, and we were both happy. We talked about tattoos, music and how silly conditions at work are. We ate like denim royalty and at the end, we were full.

My brother's the shit

My brother is the only guy I know who can choke on a taco and turn it into a regional event. Way to go, Bickle.

After a brief but harrowing incident that led him to the brink of death, he is rebounding nicely under a physician's care. He's been brave and relatively good natured (depending on whom you ask) through most of his troubles over the last few years, and I'm proud of the gutsy little troll. I say that with the utmost of familial warmth and respect.

I have not lied a bit in this brief and cryptic account, but I admit that I have wantonly misrepresented a few details in the hopes that my bro will hurry home and counter-blog to defend his good name. I'm not good at manipulation, but I'm learning, and that's what counts.

Passion II

Following some good advice, I took another look at what I love to do, rather than the things I must do. I departed from the comfortable norm, and drove two and a half hours to downtown Manteca last night, performing a four-minute set at a two-hour comedy show for a good crowd.

The upside: I got a respectable amount of laughs. I stolidly acknowledge that I didn't bring down the house and that there were many funnier, more experienced comics in attendance. No posing here.

That said, I must also say that it was thoroughly exhilarating to have done some time and not only not embarrassed myself, but to have acquitted myself reasonably among local peers. As wordy and mild as that last sentence is, the buzz of the experience carried me home and kept me awake for hours last night. Opiates have nothing on the joy I felt last night.

Passion, and lack thereof

While I had a few days off, I never really got much done, other than housework and minor fiddling around. I can't seem to muster enough passion about any one subject or endeavor to really dig into it. This must be what ADHD feels like: a broad-but-not-deep fascination pool, and the inability to focus on anything for long.

When I do try to burrow into something that attracts my interest, I find the interest flagging after not too long. The only good news is that it always comes around again, like some great merry-go-round. Trouble is, progress is disjointed, scattered, and many things must be re-learned, sometimes several times.

This is no way to run a psyche...

Know what I mean? Or are you just saying that?

You ever get the feeling that there's almost no one you can relate to? And even fewer that you can trust? I've got that feeling right now. Cold. Alone. Not lonely, just... isolated. Hell, maybe it is loneliness, by another name. I dunno. I've got that right now.

...

I waited a while to post the above, and it's a good thing. It gave me time to reflect, and realize that there a few - a precious few - that have got my back, and wouldn't hurt me for anything. That is a comfort, and I'll lean on it.

Still, it's discouraging what people do to each other, and unnecessarily. Out of fear. Out of greed. Out of malice. With a few notable exceptions, people really just bum me out.

Problem solver

If people are ever forced to carry around RFID-type chips in their bodies (I assume I'll be dead by then, or in jail from firebombing to protest lost civil liberties), one piece of information that is absolutely vital is one's résumé, in editable form. Carry around your driver's license, your medical history, passport. Sure, carry all that, but for god's sake, don't forget your résumé.

Because when I return to work after two scheduled days off and find a note from you that says: "we're out of hand towels in the bathroom," I want to be able to (again, I realize I'll be dead - fair enough) bring up your vocational credentials and on the bloody spot irrevocably delete the portion that says you're a "top-notch problem solver," and replace it with "useless, barking moron."

Squirrel! Part two

I finally offloaded the pix of my squirrel hunt, and I even got a few useful ones. More than I expected, really.

A last, evil laugh

You remember that scene in the first "The Lord of the Rings," where the group struggles through some dark, stinky crevices underground, running from a fiery, angry demon, and although Gandalf makes a portentious stand, ruining not the ugly demon but the ground upon which he stood, sending him to the anonymous darkness never to be seen again? And then the evil demon, hurtling towards its ignominious demise lost in a forgotten hole lashes out with one final, desperate and unlikely bid to save himself and ensnares Gandalf by the ankle, dragging him down with himself? It was like that.

In other, unrelated news, she quit recently, but staged a spirited comeback attempt by appealing to an uninformed and apparent democratic majority when her chief critic was out of town.

I only mention the two because, you know, it's faster than making two separate posts.

Front page, baby

A few days ago, I happened upon a water line break along the road. Any geyser is visually interesting, but this one was directly behind a CCWD (Calaveras County Water District) sign promoting water conservation as hundreds of gallons of water pissed futilely into the sky. I'm all for conservation, but I giggled as I caught this visual irony on "film."

I submitted it for publication into the Valley Springs News, and they used it in today's edition! I have to admit, it's pretty exciting to be a part of the giant behemoth that is the mainstream media. I hope to do more of this type of thing as soon and as often as I can.

I've got a black and white sample here because I'm not at a place where I can get a color scan. You get the idea, eh?

Squirrel!

I bought this new camera recently, and I've been making an effort to use it and get to know its features. It's my first dSLR, a pro-sumer camera with a lot more under the hood than my years-old Kodak point-n-shoot.

One of the things I've looked forward to photographing is wildlife. I'm lucky that my rural area is rife with critters, as is my workplace. Every morning as I drive to work, sans camera, I note hawks perched on power lines or winging their way to nearby treetops. At work, where squirrels are already braver than your average rodent due to routine human exposure, squirrels chitter and chase each other over ground, up trees and across limbs, just feet away.

On my days off, when I have time and bring my camera, the route I normally take to work is practically a desert in times of winged wildlife. Even the crows hide from me. Escorting my 300D on a lunchtime stroll, the roads and trails are silent. It is maddening that these clowns of the forest, normally all but climbing into my shirt pocket and juggling acorns, have now vanished. I walk my normal route, and back to the office where I work without spying a single one of these bloody Sierra Nevada rats.

I was just about to give up when I found one. He even did me the favor of posing - in the afternoon heat, heat sprawled on his belly along a split-rail fence. Unfortunately, the sight of a pudgy amateur photographer clumsily stalking him with a small, gray device clutched to his chest was too disturbing for the little guy to remain in his vulnerable position long enough to snap his photo. I got some other shots, and I wish I could post a sample or two here. But, I haven't had time in my busy life to get them onto a computer screen for review. Maybe later... Still, I'm glad I found one, anyway.

Sort of stupid

As if my fellow humans didn't do enough things to irritate me, here's one more: the superfluous adding of "sort of" or "kind of" to their sentences. It wouldn't be so annoying if people didn't reach for it so quickly and lazily, and adopt so easily it as a posing habit. I noticed people adding these qualifiers recently, as if they just couldn't hit on a sufficiently accurate descriptor, often during a self-indulgent traipse down memory lane:

"I don't know, I guess the experience just sort of opened new doors for me as a person..."

Did it? Did it sort of open new doors for you, or did it just open new doors for you? Oh yes, that's right, your story and its slippery little point are simply too complex and elusive to be captured by mere and common turns of phrase; but you, ever the bon vivant and irrepressible storyteller will just have to make do with the paltry language that human civilization has patched together over the past few thousand years. Do struggle on, won't you, and sort of patch together your high-minded repartee, in a kind of grandiose pastiche of sloppy metaphors and unnecessary, trendy figures of speech? Oh, won't you, do?

I admit, I am easily annoyed.

Meta Blog

Nearly another week gone by and I've written darn little of personal import. I used to love writing in this thing, and now it's becoming an effort. I feel that I'm losing a grip on something important, and I don't know if it's so that I can have a hand free for what's next, or if something's just slipping away.

Sometimes I feel like I'm turning into one of them - one of the norms, the everyday zombies who lack introspection, irony and the sense of being just out of sync enough to remind themselves that life is weird and once you're comfortable, you're probably dead. "It's warm and welcoming, here in the herd. Give in to our embrace..." It sounds tempting, inviting and creepily like a suspense thriller film, and I know it's not right.

Tumult

My boss quit a few days ago, and the workplace is in relative chaos. As much as livelihood issues square dance around my panic button, I find it very instructive to watch how individuals and groups react to the stress, strife, threats and opportunities that upsetting an apple cart provides. It's pedagogical to see who grabs for apples, and who tries to right the cart.

Even more so, it gives me an opportunity to read people and their reactions, which become transparent when there isn't sufficient time to cloak skulduggery in the sleight-of-hand that usually accompanies ulterior motives. With haste, these feints and grabs become naked, and even those like me who find human nature fairly impenetrable can perceive them easily. Instructive, but I find every lesson disgusting and repugnant.

Rut

My personal life is great in a lot of ways. Most ways, even. However, there is a rut that I've fallen into, only in my own head, and I don't like it. I am working to break out of the status quo persona, but it's tough.

On other other hand, it's a great (worst) problem to have. Generally speaking, I need to work out the kinks in how I spend my free time. I feel like enlightenment and progress are right around the corner. It's a great time to be alive.

Rut

My personal life is great in a lot of ways. However, there is a rut that I've fallen into, only in my own head, and I don't like it. I am working to break out of the status quo persona, but it's tough.

On other other hand, it's a great (worst) problem to have. Generally speaking, I need to work out the kinks in how I spend my free time. I feel like enlightenment and progress are right around the corner. It's a great time to be alive.

What's new?

New, new, what's new...

• I've just posted a new blog entry at HumorMeComedy.com about Open Mike Night experiences.
• My brother is ailing, has taken a recent turn for the worse. I hope he's back in the pink soon. He's a good guy who had enough trouble before crippling pain and disability threw gravel under his skateboard. Things like this are the reason that if there was an omnipotent God and I could meet him on the street, I'd kick him in the nuts.
• My son has started soccer practice, with his first game next week.
• I'm considering replacing my digital camera, which is several years old.

Long weekend

I had a good weekend.

I busted out housework like it was going out of style. I'm usually pretty good about that, but I went above and beyond this weekend.

I feel bad for my poor wife. She's had a nasty two weeks, pushing herself through a terrible cold and crippling backache. A new schedule and maybe too strenuous a pace could be forcing her to take it easy for a change. I tried to help out so she could slip into a lower gear, but she's still burning some oil. I hope she feels better soon.

I do wish I'd spent more time with my son. I flipped between two modes: busy as hell and fairly exhausted. Neither really made for excellent parenting modes. The boy was happy enough doing his own thing, but I can do a better job.

Big Day

I woke up this morning with the realization that today is my son's first day of kindergarten. It was no surprise and the anticipation hasn't really affected me in the preceding days, other than logistical concerns involving who drives where and when.

Still, as I opened my eyes I had the distinct sensation of a roller coaster car reaching the final, clanking, uphill procession, and that of a passenger looking down at an unstoppable, exponentially speedy trip down a nearly incomprehensible and frightening series of twists, loops, volcanic leaps and stomach-torquing drops.

Here we go. Too late to get off now. And breakfast isn't sitting so well at the moment.

Head cold

I have a cold, which is turning out to be a real family heirloom. My son gave it to his momma, who gave it to me. My wife is suffering from it much more than I, sadly. I have a low-impact job indoors, and have been careful to take lots of water, and lay off the sauce. My woman, on the other hand, appears unable or unwilling to take it easy, and suffers from headaches, backache, chest and head congestion and general malaise. Sucks!