September

Already? I don't know why I'm so surprised every year about this time. Summer is almost over-- although we've got another month or two of weather I would have called summer living in England. I'm on the downward slope to my next birthday. I think about all the things I said I was going to do this year, and try to work out if I can get them done in the next four months.

First and foremost, I had hoped to have an agent by this point. I finished draft one back in December last year, which seems like a lifetime ago. I re-drafted it, and gave it to someone who had offered to give me an outside perspective, a rough edit, before polishing it myself and submitting. She had it for a month. That month has now been five, I've given up hope of her coming through, and someone else has it instead.

Not that I've entirely wasted my time. As of tonight I'm thirty-two thousand words into book two. Starting book two before I'm done with book one is a definite help. It's drawing attention to things I left out, or need to mention in book one. When I get book one back I'm going to have to sit down and plot out on my whiteboard the exact timeline, because if even I am having trouble keeping up with the ages of the characters, what's a reader going to think?

My whiteboard. I have a 3' by 4' whiteboard hanging on my bedroom wall next to my bed, and every day it hangs there, silent and accusatory, reminding me of future book/play/screenplay ideas. I've jotted down a couple of almost-remembered dreams just in case. The problem is that I do a lot of my writing in down time at work. I know the music and the show so well by now, that it almost serves as a quiet place that I can shut myself off from the world. But it's not practical to take the whiteboard to work every day.

Anyway, back to the goals for the year. Agent, nope, but book two started? Hells, I'm almost half-way through. I've started work on a bunch of other projects, some literary, some theatrical. I built a set for the show BNTA's opening in less than a week. I came up with a new five year plan. So while I suppose I only had one goal for the year, I haven't achieved it and in the time left I'm not sure whether I can achieve it, there's all these other things that I've managed to do without even having them as goals.

I hate the idea of a bucket list. When I think bucket I think of the galvanized ones my grandfather used to have in his garden. Though there's nothing wrong with them per se, they had a tendency to sit there, year after year, collecting rainwater and mosquito larvae. They never moved. No one cared about the water they had in them, except maybe the mosquitoes. And the list part of that? Making lists is useless for me. If I write out a shopping list, I'll inevitably leave it at home and forget half the crap on it. And if I remember the list, how do I add to it in the store when I don't have a pen? A list is too finite. I've just got things I'm going to do at some point.

Like get an agent, as soon as book one's in the state it needs to be.

obsession

I have a healthy tendency to obsess about things. I say it's healthy, because it's how I've manages to get where I am today. I obsessed about working on cruise ships while I was in University, and two months after graduation I signed on for my first contract. I then obsessed about working for Cirque Du Soleil, and two years later I moved to Las Vegas and started working at New York New York. I've become obsessed with being a writer, earning a living doing it, and I'm chipping away at that too with novels and screenplays and short stories underway. And now I have a new obsession. It's been about a week now, and it probably has a little to do with watching the DVD of my 24th birthday last week, and some of what's going on financially in my world right now (that's a whole 'nother blog). But basically, I've become fixated on living on a boat. My own yacht. Nothing too guady or ostentatious, but no floating bathtub either.

It just sounds ideal for where I am in my life right now, or rather in a couple of years once I have a writing income. I know that's assuming a lot, but if I don't aim for it then I won't get there. But living in Vegas for over six years, I feel a little trapped. I'm trapped by the mountains that ring us on all sides, and the dirty ceiling of smog. There's still too much for me to go and see and do in the world, and living a 5 work-days-a-week isn't cutting it for me. I want to sail through the islands of Puget Sound and catch my salmon for to grill. I want to sail back through the Panama Canal, and actually set foot in South America rather than be yards away and still not there. I want to go to Galapagos and dive with the schooling scalloped hammerheads. And I want to do it all on my terms, in my time.

And it's the perfect time for me. I'm young enough that it still seems like a great idea. I'm also young enough to be able to forgo some of the things we take for granted in our daily lives, rough it a bit. I'm single, with emotional attachments that would for sure be tested with prolonged absences, but that's been the story of my life so far and those friendships I still have are all the better for it. I'm old enough that I won't just jump into it without doing the proper research and preparation. I'm old enough to know that it's not as glamorous as most people might think. And I'm old enough that I've done a lot of things that were goals as I was growing up, so I'm in search of new goals.

My opaternal grandfather was a fisherman, and my matyernal great-grandfather was a fisherman. Or maybe great-great, I'm not a hundred percent on that. My father was in the British Merchant Navy after school, and that's partly why I worked on cruise ships, to fulfill some sort of perceived familial obligation. But it's more than that, I realize now. There's something terrifying and fascinating between me and the Ocean. It scares the crap out of me, with its changeable moods and bewitching peace. It's a healthy obsession to have because it's seventy percent of the planet's surface. And wherever you go on it, you're linked to everywhere else.

So I shall live on a boat. I'm giving myself five years to achieve this goal, and I'll definitely be talking about it again as I head towards it. Five years. I'm obsessed.

I've already got a name picked out.

Memory. . .

. . .all alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old days. . .nah, screw Cats. I was going through the stack of disks that I have in my office. Some are labelled, most are not. There are CD's and DVD's, not all of them play, and it has become my life's work to work out what is on all of them. Half way through one of the piles, I found one labelled 'Amazing Grace, January 2004.'

I don't remember if I've talked about my 24th birthday before on here, so forgive me if I bore you with the details. I was still working on cruise ships at the time, and it was towards the end of my contract on the MS Zuiderdam. That's right, the contract I got put on the corporate blacklist for Holland America Cruise Lines after. Anyway. A group of us, the people I hung out with most during that contract, decided that for my birthday we should rent a sail boat. So as soon as we could, eleven of us got off the ship with a bunch of coolers, and headed to the rental place. Our boat was a 42-foot Catalina 42mkII 3-cabin yacht. Not something you'd take 11 people on for an extended cruise, but for a day it was perfect. Getting away from everyone, disappearing for a few hours where no-one could reach us was perfect. We drank beer and snacked, sunbathed, got naked and splashed about in the water, snorkelled, and stopped caring about the world for a while.

The memories I have from that day are some of my fondest. It's almost definitely my favourite birthday so far, which is funny cos no one does anything special for their twenty-fourth. The disk had a short video of the day on it, so I popped it in my computer to watch. It was exactly how I remember it, with Jurgen narrating over cheesy music he'd added. Alec and TC by the wheel, Katie rapping, Mel sticking out her tongue at the camera. Ben and Audrey, Dom and Jessica.

My memory of the day is better. When I remember the day, I can conjure up how I felt that day, and out myself into the situation better. Watching the video, all I could think of is how many of the people who figured in my favourite birthday have fallen by the wayside. I'm in touch with a few through Facebook, but I'm not close with any of them any more, especially Mel, who I haven't talked to since my twenty-fifth birthday when she randomly called me as though we hadn't been through a completely shitty break-up. I've tried to say hi to Dom and Jessica when I've gone to LA or they've come to Vegas, but there's nothing but silence form them. I couldn't even tell you what became of Ben.

The thing is, none of that matters. Watching the video didn't steal the memory from me, I'm still going to look back on it fondly. I still want to take a vacation one day, three couples on a yacht in the Caribbean for a week. The memories give me dreams, goals, and no matter what happened between us, I'm still grateful to the people who were there for helping build those memories.

It's the same thing with my friends in Portland, Oregon. They aren't the same people I spent a year in Austria with. They aren't the same people who shared stories about their first blowjobs (on a back alley in Florence from a chick called Di 'like the princess' as she told him), or got chased by drunken Frenchmen with (bottle of Jack between the four of us), or walked around one of the most famous sites from antiquity with hangovers with (who knew Delphi had such cheap wine and an awesome dance club? It's in the middle of the mountains!). They've all moved on, and I'm not saying I haven't, but they've all settled down, started families. When I was in Oregon in June I realized it, but they're still with my friends despite the diapers and dribble in their lives. Finding video of friendships I don't really have any more makes me treasure the memory more, because I can't reminisce about the memory with anyone that was there. I can always talk to about head if I wanted to, because we are still friends. Until he reads this, that is. The video and my memory I have of Tortola, where we rented Amazing Grace for the day, will always be how I remember it because there's no one I can talk to who can fill in the gaps I may have developed over time.

So is it the friendship that's important, or the memories? The only answer I have is a cop out. It depends on the friendship, and it depends on the memories. Friends are important at the time to create the memories, but sometimes it's the memories that get you through the droughts.

Stars

I've always been fascinated by the stars. I remember trying to learn some of the constellations when I was younger, and only got as far as the plough (the big dipper to you in the US) and Orion. I can usually find the North Star, and sometimes the Pleiades, but that's about it. IF pressed, I'll give any number of excuses, from I didn't have a telescope while growing up, to I moved to the US and the star patterns are different here, as to why I don't know more constellations. That's actually almost a valid excuse. The North Star, living in Vegas, is much closer to the horizon than it is in England. Everything shifts as you move further north or south.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention to the stars. I took them for granted. The bastards were always there, hanging in the night sky above me, so I didn't have to think about them much. I lost sight of them. I still appreciated them when I remembered to look up. I spent most of my time looking out, staying at my level. I lived in cities, on cruise ships, where ll the bright lights are within a couple degrees. I didn't have to crane my head back to look at different worlds, I could see them behind the twinkling in the distance when I looked out over the Willamette river, or on a different deck drifting above the inky black ocean, or as part of a cluster in the newest, shiniest, most-advertised hotel Vegas has to offer. Street, room, head, night lights became my stars, and I looked to them.

Well, fuck that. I miss looking up. I'm done looking at a hotel tower, room lights giving a poor impression of a close-up night sky. Having lived in Vegas for six years, I think I've come to know what to expect from the stories behind the lights, and not much of interests me any more. We've become a culture of instant gratification, of misplaced self-importance, and that's what each and and every one of those lights has become. When our VIPs have become people with handles rather than names, with no discernible skills other than making the rest of us worship/hate/envy/mimic/mock them, then what is the point in looking up at a building and wondering what the stories are behind the lights? They're all the same. It's a bunch of people who saw The Hangover, or Swingers, or any one of a thousand movies or shows about Las Vegas, and decided that they could reproduce that when they came here.

I don't want to spend my time looking at lights, and wondering the stories behind them, when I can give a pretty good guess about them. I want to have no chance to guess. I want the people behind the lights to be original, have dreams and aspirations and stories and pasts that I cannot begin to guess at. I'm done with clones, with media-inspired plebes. I want to be able to look at the lights of a city or cruise ship or collection of humanity and find intelligent life, rather than having to turn my gaze skywards and hope that somewhere out there it exists.

Because we're doing a damned good job of killing it down here. We need new role-models, new leaders, and new selves. We need to stop using other people's drama as entertainment, and go out there and let the world entertain us. If you stop to think for a moment, the stars up above have a much better sparkle than the ones we fixate on down here.

Busy

I love being busy. Sure, I'll bitch and moan about how much crap I have to do, but bitching and moaning makes me kinda happy too, so that's all part of the joy of having so much to do you go to bed with your feet sore. Things are happening with the theatre company. BNTA has been asked to produce Super Summer Theatre's September show, and we're doing 'The Foreigner,' by Larry Shue. The show is a perfect fit for us, because it's about two Englishmen in rural Georgia. And while Las Vegas isn't exactly rural Georgia, there's a lot in the show that all three of us can empathize with.

But enough about the show, if you want to know more you're going to have to come see it in September, out at Spring Mountain Ranch. Doing the show is keeping me pretty busy as I'm Technical Director for it, and that means, in a company as small as ours, everything from building the set to stitching sandbags to pretending I know something about sound. And funnily enough, running around like this makes me happy. We've rented a decent warehouse space until the end of August for me to build in and the cast to rehearse, and Wednesday I settled in, with a couple of beers, and went at the set until I had all the walls up. A couple people stopped by and helped, but the best time of the day for me was when I could just crank up the music, drink a beer, and work alone, at my own pace.

And staying busy like this has me happier than I have been in weeks. I was there for twelve hours, 'till 11pm. I had a bunch of stuff I had to do at home, and you know what? I did most of it yesterday morning before going to a meeting with one of our BNTA board members. I finished the rest of it this morning. I slept better the past couple of nights than I have done in weeks, and it's definitely not because I'm more tired than I have been in weeks. Until a few nights ago I was lucky if I got six hours of sleep a night, with all the things I had on my mind. Going to bed at four and waking up at eight was a regular occurrence, but I was managing to waste the extra hours I had awake because I didn't want to do anything in them.

So here's a hint. Don't try to talk me out of whatever's bothering me, cos I can talk quicker and louder in the confines of my own head. Instead, give me something to do. Something I'll enjoy doing, that's going to challenge me and make me have to use my brain. Cos I don't stop using it (even if it seems I'm being completely fucking dense), and that's why I'm a miserable bugger half the time. If you want to cheer me up, give me a project. Hell, buy me lego or a jigsaw puzzle, something to occupy my time. . .although I'm a jigsaw snob and anything under a thousand pieces isn't worth my time.

Oh, and wait until after the 9th August, cos I'm just too busy between now and then.

Advice

I spent two nights this past week giving relationship advice. Each time was to a woman, who if they were single I would be interested in dating. But they're not, so I'm not, and instead try to give advice to the best of my abilities. I'm just not sure why people listen to my advice when it comes to relationships. As I believe I've mentioned before, I've been single now for six years. In that time, whenever I've even come close to a relationship I've managed to convince myself it's not going to work before I've even given it a chance. I know this about myself, and still kill them before they even have a chance.

Regardless of that, I spent Sunday night- well, Sunday night into Monday morning- talking to a woman I'd just met about her current relationship. She's been seeing this guy for a few weeks, and really enjoys the time they spend together, his personality, she thinks he's hot, and the sex is great. And despite all this, despite the fact that when he goes out of town on business and calls her every day, she keeps asking herself why he's with her. She's pretty confident, and although I had only met her that night and we were both a little the worse for beer, she seems pretty sensible and put together, but because he's friends with a couple of playmates she questions why he would be with her.

Now, if he was to keep her away from his other friends, I could see why she'd be suspicious. But she's hung out with them all, they all know here and know he's with her. The logical part of me says it would make no sense for him to introduce her to them if he wanted to cheat on her with them. I mentioned this, and told her to just enjoy being with him because the more she over-analyzes everything, the sooner it'll be over.

The second friend, I'm not going to go into as much detail about, because it's a harder situation to give advice about. It's easier to give advice that someone wants to hear, as in the case of friend one, than advice that might not be welcome, which is what I gave friend two. She basically described the relationship to me, and I told her I have no idea why she would be with him. Beer was drunk and reasons were given, none of which I thought were any good. Admittedly there may have been a lot that she held back, but from what I got he treats her like crap and she shouldn't have to settle with someone like that. That's the advice I tried to convey, but nickel PBR has a wonderful charm and I probably wasn't as eloquent as I fancied.

So why advice from me? I can think of myriad reason to not come to me for advice. . .Been single for six years, I'm sometimes too logical about things, and I tend to drink when dispensing advice, to name a few. But thinking more about it, I'm not sure that it was something about me that had them asking my opinion. I think it's one component of our society, our species even. We ask advice even if we're already convinced of the path we should take. I know I ask people's advice, but don't always listen to the response. It's more about getting it out there, saying it, because that often helps me work through whatever I'm going through on my own. Not just with relationships, either. When I'm writing I like to let a few people read what I'm doing, and technically it's for feedback, but I've made very few changes based on feedback I've received so far. I'll add a few lines here or there to explain a situation better, but that's about it.

So here's my goal. To actually use the advice I'm given. Mostly. Cos it stands to reason that not all advice is good advice, but when someone suggests something to me that I know is the right course of action, I've been thinking about it myself for a while, I'm going to try and do better at heeding it. Starting today. Got some advice last night, and I'm trying to stick to it today. It's been. . .interesting. Not the easiest thing, but we'll see how things work out.

And if they don't, I can always blame the bugger who gave me the advice.

Success.

I'm not there yet. Not by a long shot. But I think I've made a pretty good start on it. The hardest part was deciding what I wanted out of life, but for now I've mostly decided that. It's good, it gives you something to strive for. I've decided I'm going to be a writer. Scratch that, I've decided I am a writer, just not a published one yet.

I know I've listed them off before, but I'm going to do it again because it keeps me focused on it. I'm currently working on four novels (although one hasn't been looked at in months, it's still there waiting to be written). I've got four short stories I consider ready to be published (and I might just throw a couple up here in the meantime, see what you think). I have three short screenplays that could be filmed tomorrow. I'm working on two feature screenplays, with one more I need to start and a fourth I'm thinking about.

Now, none of this is success, because one of the purposes of writing is to be read. I'm not Kafka. I want it all published, even the stuff I don't finish before I die (and just a heads up, I am so going to fuck with people and deliberately leave something bizarre unfinished). I haven't been successful yet by my definition as a writer, but I think I'm on a good track and it'll come.

I've been working in theatre for eighteen years. From being a chorus member and giving a hand at weekly set builds, to programming Automation for a Cirque Du Soleil show, and being the TD for a theatre company I helped found, I've come a long way. That's pretty successful, I think.

But there's one aspect of my life that I feel is a failure right now, and it's bringing down the rest of it. I feel like my personal life is a shambles, that I'm failing at something that used to come so naturally to me, and it's buggering up my focus and my motivation.

I always thought I was a good judge of character. I prided myself on working out who someone was, and what they were like, and whether they were worth my time. Moving around as I did, this was really handy; I didn't have years to develop friendships, bouncing from one place to another. I made a lot of good friends, most of whom I still have today. But it's been living in Vegas, and doing so well in every other aspect of my life, that has made this stand out recently. I still have a few good friends here, but I've always been better at focussing on the negative rather than the positive, and it's the friendships that have fallen by the wayside, that have revealed themselves to be less than I thought they were, that I can't get out of my head. It's the people who declare friendship, but then only remember it when it's convenient, or they need something. And I feel that it's my failure. I don't understand people any more, I don't get how they can be like that. I feel like I'm disconnected from the human race, standing outside looking in, and scratching my head in confusion.

It turns out that the search for alien life has been a success. You need to stop looking off-planet, because I'm here, living amongst you, watching, making mental notes, and trying to understand. Although whether or not it's intelligent life is debatable. . .

Self-Branding.

Ever since I've had access to the internet, I've messed around with it. We first used AOL, when we lived in Louisiana, had dial up, and a mac performa computer. I had a geocities website. Actually, I think I had a couple, but I kept forgetting passwords and/or got bored with what I was doing with them, so instead of deleting and redoing I'd just start another one (it's much the same with my house; when one room is messy, instead of cleaning it I move on to the next room). But I realized at some point that it wasn't good to keep moving around, as far as the internet is concerned. I still have every intention of moving around as far a physical, tangible location is concerned (apartment over the Med, you will be mine). Online is different tho, and I think it was probably going to Austria that helped me see this. I was ready to up and leave my life behind again, disappear to mid-Europe for ten months, and needed a way to keep in touch with people that I could continue to use, hopefully with the people I met abroad once I got back as well.

So that's when I started using my .co.uk email instead of AOL. July(ish) 1998. I've been richeperkin online ever since. I go by Rich, E's my middle name, and Perkin doesn't have an 's' on the end. And for some reason, anyone from Eastern Europe has always called me Richie for some reason, so I guess it works at that level too.

Now it's more than that. If I'd have ever thought I'd spend as much time as I do on the computer, I'd have taken classes. I've have waded in when I had geocities, instead of dabbling. I'd know what all the abbreviations and programming terms mean. And there's still some hope for me, I think, but I'm fully expecting the next time I see my nephew Aiden that he's going to start teaching me html whatever number we'll be on by that point. He's a couple months old right now.

One thing I did do is buy richeperkin.com. I'd become that in my emails, digg, facebook, any online presence I have, and I've never met another one, so I figured why not? I bought it, with the intent of shutting down myspace.com/richeperkin and starting a real blog. But then there was all that code, and learning how to do CSS, so for the past couplea years the domain sat with a nice little holder saying it was waiting for me to move in.

And now, the branding is a step closer to complete. Feeding off a friend's enthusiasm and motivation, I'm finally moved in to my new (online) apartment. The view's not bad, and the neighbours are pretty laid back. Weather's nice too, no need to run the a/c all summer.

I took that analogy too far, didn't I?

But my point is, and I know I've taken way too many words to say this, but creating a persona online is important. Especially when you're someone like me, who as yet isn't really anyone known by the greater populace. But with writing I intend to change that, and I want people to know who I am rather than remain some far-off, aloof figure. I want people, specially with this blog, to be able to hear me saying what they're reading.  I want to create my virtual brand as similar as my real-life brand as possible, maybe leaving behind some of the less select parts.

So I know reading this doesn't seem like much of a change from my other blog posts if you've read those, except for maybe the new theme. But it feels like a big step, to finally have stuff at ground zero for richeperkin. Despite all the bollocks that tries, on a daily basis, to grind me down, depress me, or piss me off, I'm feeling surprisingly upbeat about this. There might even be room here for a couple of short stories, you never know.

Piling Up

At what point do you cut your losses and move on? I'd love to be able to say straight away. Need to move on? Sure, doing so now, consider it done, next! If only it were that easy. And by the way, I'm talking about everything here. Moving on from a job, a house, a friendship, a lover, whatever has run its course in your life and needs to be left behind.

But it's not that easy. If it were, I think for the most part the world would get on a bit better than it does. We could let things go that really don't affect us in the grand scheme of things, worry about what's important, and not give a shit about what isn't. We could get over elections that we perceive as having been stolen, and instead of screaming hateful, hurtful things at one another we could get on with being a part of a country, rather than a faction within it.

We could move on from failed relationships, not linger on what we did wrong, or what we think they did wrong, and wait or hunt for the next one. Not just romantically, either. A perceived slight, something that causes a friendship to break apart might just be that: Slight. So slight that the other person doesn't even realize it. On the flip side if there is a falling out for very real reasons, then so what? A friendship shared is still something that you once had, and don't let someone turning into a twat spoil the good times you may have shared.

Course, this is something I need to take my own advice on. I need to be better at moving on than I am. But it's hard to do. It's hard to forget the bullshit someone said to you, that really brought home that they aren't someone who has anything to add to your life. It's hard to forget a failed almost romance, when your heart still lurches as she walks in the room. It's hard to get over a grudge, held for years, about how someone treated you and your friends. Instead, I'll linger on it, going over things in my head. How should things have happened instead? Was any of it inevitable?

Maybe it's all just fuel for stories I have yet to write. Maybe I'm being led somewhere, or driven somewhere, everything piling up until one day I have no choice to move on, for sanity and safety. I like the idea of being driven, let's go with that.

Half a Lifetime.

Fifteen years is a long time when it's half a lifetime. I moved to the US fifteen years ago yesterday. 28th June, 1995. I left my Grandfathers home in Salisbury and flew to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where my parents had already lived for a year with my Brother and Sister. By some coincidence, the 28th was the same date they had left England, but they didn't go straight to Baton Rouge. They went through New York City, where they did a lot of the tourist things people are supposed to do: The statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center.

I joined them about a month after they got the Baton Rouge, for summer holidays. Back to England for Autumn Term, Louisiana for Christmas holidays, England for Winter Term, Louisiana for Easter holidays, England for Spring Term, then the US for good. At the time, for good meant a couple of years, couple more years of school, and then probably back the England for University.

If there's one thing I've realized in the past fifteen years, it's that your probablies probably won't turn out the way you expect. The couple of years away from England have turned into half my life. It's not over yet, but I probably won't move back to live in England permanently again. When you travel, when you move, it isn't so very hard to retrace your steps, and go back in geography; the steps you can't retrace are the steps in time. I'll never be the boy who was excited, lucky, to be going to the US for a little while. A friend in school, Robin, had lived in California for a little while and we all thought he was the coolest guy ever. I thought I'd end up like him, but in retrospect it was him being him, not him having lived in LA for a while, that made him cool.

England will always be home. It'll always be where I'm from, regardless of my being born in Germany, or leaving at fifteen. I'm planning a trip home in April. But home has grown to mean, in the time I've been away, the whole country. More than that, it means Britain. while I'm there, I'll see friends in London, In Ireland, as well as Salisbury. I never spent much time in either place (I never went to Ireland until after I'd moved away). If I have time, I'll go to Scotland for a couple of days, maybe Cornwall. Those places that are now half a lifetime away, and always with me, in my soul.

That's the cynic in me. In my soul. I'm still not willing to accept anything as in my heart, except blood and maybe the beginnings of arterial plaque. But I carry these places in my soul. The hills around Salisbury that have been inhabited and farmed and fought over and loved for thousands of years. The comfortable, depressing grey of London as it lurks under rain clouds. The sound and smell of the Cornish coast, so similar to every coast in the world, yet special to me. After fifteen years of being an ex-pat, I think they mean more to me than had I stayed in England. After fifteen years I've found that while I may not love where I've been since, I don't have to choose between any of them. I don't have to cut out parts to make room for more. The Cornish coast hasn't been replaced by the Oregonian, or any of them I came to know from my time at Sea. The drizzle of home hasn't been replaced by the drizzle of Portland, or the downpours of Louisiana, or the warm showers of Hawai'i. You just expand the place, build an extension, open up the basement and the attic. There isn't a finite amount of room. You don't have to knock it down, replace the old with the new, and maybe that's one of the things I find uncomfortable about living in Vegas. Every couple of years, things have to be reinvented. A gift shop becomes a tattoo parlour/lounge. An old hotel gets blown up and built bigger, shinier. A club gets remodelled and renamed three times in the space of five years.

That's why people are better than real estate. Infinite capacity, and an ability to grow slowly over the years, without having to start all over again. So when I leave here (and that's not a probably, but a definitely), I won't erase all traces of Vegas, or Oregon, or Baton Rouge. I won't erase any of it, but keep adding, and end up with another half a lifetime of experiences to bullshit about.

last night

I got married last night. It was a pretty rushed ceremony. And I was surprised by the guest list; there were friends there I haven't seen in years, people I wouldn't have expected to show up, and some people noticeably absent. I wasn't wearing a kilt, like I've always said I'll wear.

I actually helped set up the room for the ceremony. I know that the groom doesn't usually take a part in that, but I think I was doing it to keep myself busy. It's been less than 24 hours, but I don't remember the decor, or the colours my bride picked. We didn't have anyone in the wedding party.

After the ceremony I walked outside, wondering how I had got myself into this situation, and how I could get out of it. I almost spoke up during the ceremony, but a terrible character trait stopped me. I couldn't be the guy who leaves the bride at the altar. For some reason that, to me, is worse than getting divorced at a later date. I felt that it would have been more upsetting for her to leave there and then, stop mid-vow, than to end it after the fact. And even though I went through the ceremony barely there, wanting to be anywhere else, I remember the looks on the faces of my friends, and I'm a little disturbed by them.

To a person, they looked eager to see me married. There was a disturbing hunger to the way they watched the proceedings that didn't make me any happier about what was going on. Even the moment when my bride appeared, and they could see the look of dismay I was unable to hide, it didn't matter to them. They were there for a wedding, damnit, and it was going to go ahead regardless.

My bride. Someone I've known for years, since freshman year of college I think. I'm not sure why her, but there she was, clutching her bouquet, looking completely ambivalent about the prospect of marrying me. I've never thought of her in that way, I doubt she's ever thought of me in that way, yet there we were, binding ourselves to each other forever until I could find a reason to get unmarried.

I think it's probably a good thing I don't remember my dreams more often. If they're all as bizarre and disconcerting as last night's dream was, I'm going to start being afraid of sleep.

breaking up

getting back from a trip away is a lot like breaking up. You're left with a period of depression, of not knowing what to do with yourself. There's laundry to be done and the house to be straightened up, as if it magically got rearranged while you were away. You feel tired. Your friends all ask how it was, but you don't really want to talk about it. You find yourself with less money than before it started. And then you start planning your next one.

I got back Monday morning, and I'm already looking into going away again, but this time somewhere I really want to go; I wanted to go to Oregon the past few trips, but I'd much rather have gone somewhere further afield that I'm not so familiar with. For October, I'm looking into Europe.

Originally I wanted it to be a full three week trip, but as part of the whole I'm-thirty-now-and-need-to-be-a-bit-more-responsible thing, I'm actually acknowledging that I can't afford that, so it looks like it'll just be the British Isles. Scotland with the parents and grandfather, London with a couple of friends who live there and I haven't seen in years, and Ireland with another friend who I haven't seen in years.

My vacation time is very precious to me, and I don't get enough, but finally after six years with MGM Mirage, I'm on three weeks vacation, so of course I want to make the most of it. But another part of the sensible thing I'm trying, is that maybe I should start going to writing conventions. I should start networking, meeting people in the industry, and using up my precious vacation time to work on never needing vacation time. Most people I know who are in an industry go to the conventions as and when they can. My problem is that I wouldn't really go to listen to other people as much as I should. I write what I want, rather than what I think people want. I'd go to them and not really care much about the speakers unless it was someone I was a fan of. I don't know if I'd get anything out of going to one.

That's probably exactly why I should go. It's all very well typing away, and letting a couple people read what I'm beating out of the keyboard, but I should probably throw myself into it more than I already have, and by it I mean the industry. I should buy the books, listen to the podcasts, go to the conventions, sign up for the periodicals. I just want to keep myself happy with the illusion that writing isn't work, even after I get paid to do it. I want to see it as a treat, as theatre used to be and ceased to be a while ago.

So to use my coveted vacation time to do that? We'll see how I'm doing once I get book one back. Maybe it's time to look into it, put myself out there. Because if I do, then I have the potential to be a serial monogamist. I can go from vacation to vacation, writing all the while, and never having to go through the break-up period of malaise and frustration that I'm in right now.

Babies and Bouquets

I spent half of May up in Oregon. I was there the first time for my Sister's kid, my first Nephew. The second time was for a college roommate's wedding, and a barbecue the day after with eight kids, most of the parents of whom I was in Salzburg, Austria, with. That was May. It's now June, and I think I've finally realized something. Maybe I'm a little slow that it took me this long, but it was probably necessary. I've got let go of the past and move on. And it's not just me, I think we all have to.

I managed to move on from England. I'm not sure when it was, but at some point I realized I would never live there permanently again. When asked the question "Will you ever go back?" my answer went from "probably some day," to "I doubt it. Maybe for a little while, but not for good." I managed to move on and accept that it was a part of my life that was over. Being up in Oregon a couple of times this past month, I've come to the same conclusion about Portland (I never had any intention or desire to think about moving back to Eugene). Portland's a great city. There is so much about it that I like, that I miss, and that I remember fondly. But if I was to move back there, it wouldn't be the same. Everyone else has already moved on, hence the title of this blog. That's what they've all been up to. I've done neither, so maybe that's why it's taken me longer to get to this point. If I moved back up there I'd be the only one not in a family situation. I'd be looking for something up there that I wouldn't find, and I think I'd rather enjoy the memories than keep searching to make more of the same ones, and lose those I've already got.

So for now I'm in Vegas. It isn't really a bad city, despite the fact that the drivers are shit, the road construction incessant, the summers too hot, the roaches too big, and the people too concerned about trifles. I have a decent job here, and that means I don't get to walk in the rain as much as I'd like. I have my own townhouse, and that means I don't get to just drive to the beach in an hour and a half. I have good friends down here, that means I don't get to see the others I have scattered across the planet.

So I'm moving on, and truly looking forward and. . .looking forward. Now I just have to convince the rest of the planet to do the same.

Let's move on, people. Let's get over this whole division thing we're doing right now. When it's got to the point that people can actually argue that the oil spill in the gulf isn't a bad thing, something's fucked up. We need to move on and realize that businesses can't be trusted to regulate themselves. We need to get over the influence that corporate lobbyists have on the Government. We need to get past this, and actually become the country we pretend to be.

We need to move on, and understand the world doesn't work the same way it did when the Bible was written. Technology has changed. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, you can't dispute that fact. And for that matter, the world doesn't work the same way as when the Constitution was written. The Founding Fathers would probably have been all for the Internet and the sharing of information, but you know why there's no mention of it being a right in the Bill of Rights but they do talk about the right to bear arms? Because it hadn't been sodding invented yet.

I don't have much hope for any of this, to tell the truth. I learned through my trips up to Oregon, but there are too many people blatantly and willfully ignoring the world the way it is and looking back with fondness at the way things were, to get out of the hole we're putting ourselves in as a planet.

I'm curious why people would want to go back the way things were? Do we really want to return to a time when women or people with a different colour skin were considered property? Let's go back to a time when adultery was punishable by stoning to death, shall we? Because I'm not sure you'd end up with even a quarter of the population left if that were to happen (look up the Bible's definitions of adultery. It ain't just about cheating on a spouse). Or we could take the Second amendment, and use it to mean that you have the right to bear arms that had been invented at that time. That's what they were referring to in 1791, when the Second Amendment was added, so get rid of your automatic weapons and pick up your blunderbusses. The bright side to that is you don't need to stockpile ammo for the day Obama stops honest businesses from selling the ammo you need to protect yourself with, cos you can load a blunderbuss with anything small enough to fit in the barrel.

So come on, let's move on. We've made so many advances in technology, let's advance our viewpoints as well.

Gonna.

I'm hoping that history repeats itself. When I was in University, I lived in Kenna Hall. We'd have parties there. But one particular party, I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and took a walk along the bluff. (The University I attended, University of Portland, is situated on a bluff overlooking the docks in Portland) I walked out there, in a mildly alcoholic haze, watching the lights below me and just able to hear the sounds of machinery as the kept working late into the night. The activity was almost all focused on a cruise ship in dry dock. I made up my mind there and then that I would work on a cruise ship when I graduated. I went back to the party, and started telling people that I was going to work on ships. I thought about doing it for a summer or two, but going to Salzburg for a year got in the way of doing that, so it would have to wait until after graduation. But for three years, I told people I was going to work on cruise ships.

I joined my first ship in July of 2001, six weeks after graduation, and worked on them for almost 3 years.

While working on ships I learned Automation. That is to say, I got taught the order in which to push buttons on an Automation console, which is what passed for training. The learning happened later, when things broke and I had to pull some sort of show out of my arse using a couple of joysticks and no variable speed, or overnight phone calls to London from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to troubleshoot problems. When contractors were sent out for jobs that were too big to do on the ship, or we went into dry dock ourselves, I tried to pick their brains and learn more about the systems (and generally realized that they were bluffing as much or more than I was). It was my first contract, before I learned Automation, that I learned about Cirque Du Soleil, from an Argentinian guy I worked with, Jeronimo. He talked about the shows they put on and the equipment they got to use, so I decided, like him, that I would work for them some day and started telling people this.

I started at Zumanity 10th June, 2004. (And Jero went on to get a job with them on tour).

So now, I'm going to be a writer. I've been telling people that for about two years. I'm not sure when I went from just writing for the hell of it to deciding I want to make a living doing it, but I did, and I do, so I will. I know everyone keeps saying it's hard to get into it, it's hard to make a living at it, but I've been successful so far when I've put myself out there by saying 'this is what I'm going to do.' There's no point in aiming to have just one thing published, make enough for a week long vacation in the Azores and then going back to your regular life. Sod that. I'm going to make a living as a writer.

Now maybe I should start making other statements of intent, if that's the right phrase. Statements of desire? Statements of . . .of the future? I intend to be a writer, I desire to be a writer, I shall be a writer? Well, whatever statements I'm making, I'm also going to start saying I will get in shape, I will travel more, I will make it to space one day.

There, I've said it, so now it's going to happen. I'm just not going to lie back and wait for any of it, I'm going to work for it. Now.

Potential

I sat for an hour with my Nephew, Aiden, napping in my arms this evening. He stirred a couple of times, twitching in his sleep, eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. It's my first Nephew, and it's the most exposure to a baby I've had. A few times he raised his head and muzzily looked around before flopping back down, and for being only twelve days old I'm told that's pretty good process. So what do babies dream of? If dreams are how we process the events of the days, then it makes sense that babies dream. Everything is new to them, so there's a lot to process. And being out of the womb and in the real world must be one of the most bizarre changes of scenery imaginable, if they had the experience or vocabulary to talk about it. How are they even able to dream, given that I still don't have the ability to put in words some of my dreams, and I've had thirty years of abusing the English language.

Maybe there's some sort of different level they function on, where thoughts aren't words. After all, there are so many instances in our lives where we don't need to use words to communicate: a loving glance, the memory of a smell, the brush of a hand, different colours, music, almost everything about our lives is given to communicating, and very little of it, when you stop to think, is done with words. Maybe when we're born we think in colours, and every sound we hear, unmuffled by our mother's belly for the first time, is perceived as a colour, and this gives us the ability to dream from the first breath. Or maybe it's smell. After all, smell is more linked to memory than any other sense. Maybe the connection of smell to memory is linked to how we first learnt to dream, cradled in our parents arms, associating smells with new sensations.

Either way, what to babies dream of?

Impossible question to answer, so this is what I decided, sitting back with Aiden in my arms, what I want babies to think and dream of.

There is so much potential that you hold in your arms when you cradle a baby, it's incredible. There is the potential to change the world, to impact the entire population of the planet, for good or bad. You could hold the next Leonardo Da Vinci in your arms, or the next Joseph Stalin. They might create something that it remembered for generations to come, or they might destroy what others have done. They could be remembered for generations to come, or become part of human history without impacting it in the slightest. Potential seems to me very similar to miracles. A miraculous event can be as bad as it can be good due to a series of coincidences. In the same way there's no way to measure how good or bad a child's potential is. What I like to think that a baby dreams about, in those first months of life, before language exists and there's just the senses, is their own potential. Their own potential to change the world, dreams about how they're going to accomplish those changes, and hopes for the future. Maybe in those first days, when life is a chaotic scramble and every sense is tested for the first time, those tiny eyes are flickering behind closed lids and plotting a course in life, in dreamful sleep, that is no more explainable to them as it is to us.

Whatever they are dreaming about, as Aiden's uncle I'll do my best to help him get there.

Unclehood

Sitting in McCarren Airport again, waiting for a flight to take me up to Eugene, OR, and my new Nephew. That, and the grey hairs I may or may not have found recently seem to point to my being unable to deny getting older any more. We always figured Lorna would have kids first. When she was little, she had this doll that went practically everywhere with her, even though when she got it it was almost the same size as her. And as it got taken to place after place, it started to suffer. The head developed a tendency to fall off, which was hilarious when people actually mistook it for a baby. Anyway, Lorna was always fascinated with babies, but she always seemed shy around them. Me? I guess I didn't feel either way. Somewhere there was the knowledge that I was one once, but getting older took me further and further away from nappies and prams (except for a really bizarre party we had once. . .) until they seemed irrelevant. There just wan't any point or need of babies in my life.

Until recently, when all my friends have started sprogging. The trip up to Portland last year was to meet a bunch of them. This trip is to meet one that I'm actually related to, and I couldn't tell you the last time there was one of those. Apparently my world's going to change. Apparently I'm going to want kids of my own when I meet my Nephew, Aiden. Apparently all my vacation time is going to be taken up visiting him. This is what I've been told by a few people now, and while I'll never say no way, I still doubt it.

I'm not old enough for kids. I'm still to selfish. Whether I love the little bugger or not, my next vacation is going to be a trip back to Europe. They can come visit me in Vegas, but I really have no desire to fly out to North Carolina. And the only extent that I think my world's changing is that I've got one more birthday to remember, which I've never been good at. What's one more birthday to forget each year?

And the kids of my own? Jury's still out. Jury will probably still be out until I a) die alone, b) stand there holding my firstborn, c) get killed my one of my kids so they can get their inheritance. Until I reached about 24 I was vehemently against kids of my own. Then I mellowed, due to a couple of relationships that I realized 'yes, I think this woman would make an incredible mother.' It became about someone else rather that myself. A couple of them are proving that they are incredible mothers, but not to my kids, and there's one that I shudder I even thought it.

My sister's the sort of person who'll be a great mum. She always wanted children for their sake, not hers. She didn't need children to validate herself, or to confirm her and John's marriage. And that's why I'm no interested in having children at the moment. Because there's no need for them in my life, there's no desire for them in my life. And there's actually no way for them to be in my life, cos you kinda gotta shag for that to happen.

So for now, I'll settle with being an uncle. I'm going to be an awesome uncle. Maybe not a great brother, but why change things now? I'm going to spoil the kid, take him out for his first beer, tell him stories of travelling and cruise ships and vegas, and completely and utterly fill him young, impressionable mind with all sorts of things to get up to. . .

Shit, maybe I will be spending more vacation time visiting him. All that stuff takes face time.

Greed

Is what's going to kill us all. Not climate change, or war, or religion, but greed. Now, we might all die because of climate change, but we're helping that along quite merrily because of the greedy bastards out there who want more all the time. We might all die in a planet-wide nuclear holocaust, but I guarantee it'll happen because some smarmy shit in a suit somewhere is trying to get a larger slice of the pie. People claim that religion has killed more people than anything else, but I'd hazard a guess that most of those wars weren't started over belief, but over greed. The crusades were a grab for land and loot and an excuse to levy taxes.

And the probelm is that greed is everywhere you look today. It starts at the top, and goes all the way down. Almost everyone wants a bigger slice of the pie than they've already got, whether it's a bank or an oil company, or even me. I want more than I've got, for sure, but  I don't want more if I'm taking away from someone else. And I would say most people are like that. I'll take a pay raise, but as long as it means someone else isn't having their pay cut.

Greed is royally fucking this country up, but not just because of corporate bonuses and bailouts. It's the greed of the media that is doing more damage to America than anything else, because of people like Limbaugh and Beck. Here's why.

One of the things I hear over and over is that these people are just entertainers. They say what they need to, get their audiences going, and cash in. But there's a problem when the people listening to you believe what you're saying, and start fighting against their own best interests. If they're just entertainers, then where are the disclaimers? It's like we as a country are all calling in to phone-sex numbers, and believing what's being said to us on the other line-- the difference is, the ads for those have discalimers that it's for entertainment purposes.

Right now in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of gallons of oil are pumping out of a BP well and doing immeasurable damage to an entire ecosystem. Probably because someone somewhere, answering to shareholders, cut a few corners to make a few bucks. And yet Limbaugh has made a point of attacking environmentalism and conservation, because more often than not it conflicts with making money. I'm sure in the next few days he's going to come up with some bullshit statement and convince half his audience that there's nothing wrong with what's happened down there.

At least BP posted record profits last year, so they can afford the clean up bill this is going to cost, right? They've got money lying around, they'll take care of their own ballsup, right?

Wrong. That's not going to fly with the shareholders. What's going to happen is they'll ask the government to help. The government will help, but the cost of deploying the coast guard and national guard, and whomever they throw at this problem, well, that's going to come out of tax money. Meanwhile, BP will lament the damage that this has done to their bottom line, and ask for tax breaks from the government. The government, whether you think it should be bigger or smaller or non-existent, is ultimately there for us. That's why we get to vote. That's why when something like this oil spill threatens to devastate a chunk of the country, they are duty-bound to do something about it. But I'm fed up paying taxes so the government can use that money to clean up the fuck-ups huge corporations make over and over. I want better roads and education. I want universal health care. All should be easy to pay for if we stopped giving these companies tax breaks and incentives. Guess what? If you can't afford to do business without tax breaks and incentives, then you're a casualty of captialism, deal with it.

And if Beck keeps going on about how the businesses need incentives to create jobs and fuel the economy, well it just so happens that there's one business that looks like it just destroyed hundreds of jobs along the gulf coast. Or maybe he'll explain that the oil spill is a good thing, because the clean-up is going to create jobs.

BP: Admit that you fucked up, and pay for the clean-up yourselves. Don't take it to court, just accept responsibility.

Limbaugh and Beck: If you don't truly believe what you're saying, then accept that you've got enough money and admit it was all for the ratings. If you do believe what you're saying, well the you're fucktards.

labels

There are so many labels that we're given throughout our lives, by our friends, our enemies, by ourselves. Even society has jumped on the label-assigning bandwagon, and with much more gusto than a bunch of eight-year-olds calling a kid with his first pair of glasses 'four eyes.' More gusto, but with about as much feeling. And with the same end result. You remember the kids back in school, who were always the ones to come up with the nicknames for everyone? They haven't stopped, they're just pundits and pollsters and politicians these days. And journalists.

Watching the healthcare debate unfold, as a self-labelled socialist, I've had incredibly mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, this country HAS to do something about the status quo. On the other hand, what's happened isn't what should have been done. I'm in the percentage who don't agree with the bill, but before you take that and run with it as me being against the bill, I'm against it because of the evisceration that it suffered at the hands of the GOP. I don't think it was 'liberal,' or 'progressive' enough.

But that's a blog for another day. Labels. The healthcare bill has been given these labels; 'progressive,' 'liberal,' 'socialist,' 'communist,' and possibly my personal favourite, 'apocalyptic.' They should have run with the last one, because that's the secret to winning anything these days in the media. Be the one to give the label first. For example, in the debate about abortion those who believe that abortion should be completely outlawed won an amazing coup by labelling themselves as 'pro-life.' That almost precludes any debate about the issue, doesn't it? How can anyone be against 'pro-life?' Tho other side weren't left with much, even though throughout the rest of the world it's actually access to and regulation of abortions that decreases the number of them (Link 1).

The Right has a habit of getting the good labels first. Whether they're labelling themselves or their opponents, they've done pretty well of it up until now. They called people unpatriotic when they protested against Bush, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's much harder to argue against an accusation than beat it in the first place. They started calling Obama and the current administration as a whole Socialist, still a dirty word in this country. If they'd have left it at that, I think they'd be doing much better than they are right now.

But the problem is, they continued to label once all the good ones were used. Yes, I have to use the label 'pro-choice,' I dare not call myself pro-life, even though I am completely in favour of life for everyone even past the point of birth. But I'll begrudgingly accept that label, which is much better than being called a tea-bagger, because all of us filthy progressives know what that meant before it was co-opted by a group of angry people who mistake opinion for fact and bullshit for news. Incidentally I've been called tea-bagger for years because I'm British. At least that's stopped with the tea parties.

And labelling didn't stop with themselves. They've pulled out every label they can possibly think of to denigrate 'the other side.' Fascist, Communist, Nazi, the three politically evil words from the past seventy years have all come out. The problem with these words as labels is that they don't fit even a little bit. They're too recent and too evil. There's no implication there, in the way that pro-life implies the other side is anti-life. Pro-life is clever. Fascist? too overt, although ironically enough check out this list and see how many of these became part of our way of life under the Bush administration (Link 2).

So. I label myself a progressive. A guy I work with heard me say that, and tried to tell me that I'm not a progressive, I'm as conservative as he is. I wouldn't say that's true, and I won't deny that I have a(n incredibly deeply buried) conservative streak, but I still stand by my salf labellation. I am a progressive, because I want progress to be made. I want stem cells to be used to expand our understanding of how we work and how to fix us (I'm still planning on living forever). I want us to progress into space, explore the universe, because I'm sure out there there's another planet just begging us to roll in and show it how to be a better place for us all. I want society to progress, because it's come quite a way but we haven't progressed enough. We never really progressed out of the middle ages with our financial systems, because a disproportionate distribution of wealth was how the landowners and lords kept control over the freedmen and serfs. Now, we're the peasants and the banking industries are the lords.

But again, that's another blog. We need to treat the labels that are being hurled about with the appropriate reactions. If you get called socialist, then take that as you agree with your tax money being used to better the country you live in by providing police, fire, health, and education services. If you're called a progressive, then you're looking and striving for a better future, free of the favourtism and distrust that exists in our society right now. You're not looking for the destruction of America, you're looking for the betterment of it. And to that end, that's why I'm trying to focus on positives rather than negatives. I think everyone should give that a go, and maybe we'll just find a way to make everything work.

Link 1:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202287.html

Link 2: http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

first draft

A couple of nights ago, I finished the first draft of a short screenplay I was asked to write by a bloke I work with. It felt good to finish, partly because it's not just my work but came from the ideas of a few other people, and because I'm half-way to filling a commitment. I gave it to him before I left work, and the excitement on his face was extremely gratifying, not to mention a little nerve-wracking, cos what if he thinks it's crap? Either way, he'll read it, let me know what he thinks and what he thinks we should change, because this is something they're already planning on filming at some point this year. So he'll read it, and I'll go through and edit, and we'll film it, and hopefully it'll be good.

But there's a part of me that hopes I don't need to edit it. For some reason, and I think I've mentioned this before, I seem to do much better at first drafts than I do with editing. And I don't think I have the problem that some writers have-- I'm not too attached to my own words to cut, change, or move them-- I just don't like to edit.

My life is filled with first drafts. My writing folder on my laptop has (holy crap, just counted them) 14 short stories, 12 of which haven't made it past the first draft stage. When Jo and I do the panto scripts, I always write the first draft then palm it off on her to make it produceable/directable/actable/watchable. Editing Atlantis stalled about a month ago, so it's going to be a slog to get the first edit done by the end of March like I wanted to.

But to take the analogy further, it's more than writing. I get half-way through a project, and call it good then lose interest (the paint in my downstairs bathroom will attest to that. I built a computer to run two operating systems, never put a wireless card in it, and only got around to installing one OS. I started to learn the harmonica, and once I could get one tune out of it (Rivers of Babylon) I called that good enough. I manage to wash the laundry, but never put it away.

And to get really obnoxious with it, it seems to relate to relationships too. Do any of them, either friendly or romantic, get past the first draft stage? I get as far as names, but I couldn't tell you birthdays, or music types, phone numbers, or favourite colours, goal, aspirations, for fewer than a handful of friends And of those friends, I don't know all of those facts about any of them. I could sit here and blame society, or social networking for not having to learn those things about friends, but it's a bullshit excuse. Just because something like a birthday is easily accessible on Facebook doesn't mean we shouldn't take the time to learn those things that used to comprise of really knowing someone.

So my goal is to finish more drafts. Maybe take a few friendships past that stage. Edit the things I write. Finish painting the downstairs bathroom. I'll let you know how any of it goes.

auto(erotic)biography

Is it pretentious to start writing your autobiography before you've really done anything? Probably no more pretentious than writing a blog and expecting people to read it. Especially when it doesn't have structure, or regularity, or a theme. But the thing about a blog is you write it, you leave it out there, and sometimes people will stumble across it, sometimes they won't. Writing an autobiography implies that you'll shop it around and try to get it published, all in the hopes of one day walking into your local Barnes and Noble to be confronted by a glossily-covered hard-backed image of yourself. Always wanted to be a 'local author,' and so far I think I can claim that for four places, with every intention of adding to the list.

But the thing about writing an autobiography is how much of a twat should you make yourself? Everyone's got some sort of embarrassing anecdote they can tell about themselves, and some of us have a plethora of the buggers. I could probably fill a whole book on 'stupid shit Rich has done,' and have more left over for the sequel. It's not like I'm shy about admitting to the dumb stuff I can, have, and will do. If you've read more than just this entry you'll know that.

The one thing I will not admit to trying, or having any desire to trying, is choking myself while pulling one off. Not interested. Don't want to try it, never have, never will.  The thing that worries me about my lack of interest in auto-erotic asphyxiation is that maybe it means I'm never going to get anywhere with my writing, never be a known, a local author. Because it seems to me that every few months you hear of another celebrity who has managed to choke not only the bishop, but themselves as well. Is is just a celebrity phenomenon? Or are there scores of people in every town, village, city, strangling themselves mid-masturbation right now?

Maybe that's the price of fame; you make a deal with the devil that you'll have fame and fortune, but be found dead in a pretty embarrassing way. Maybe that's how David Carradine secured his comeback. Too soon?

I don't think that's a deal I'm ready to make. Unless I can specify that I'll auto-erotically choke myself to death when I'm a hundred and four. Ugh.

Nope, when I'm writing my autobiography, there will be no section on that. Orgasms are great enough, I'm not greedy and have no interest in intensifying the experience if the possibility is getting found dead and naked.

Not really sure when I was going with the post, or where it came from, but it's helping take my mind off the car accident I had couple nights ago. The auto accident. See what I did there??