good morning. there is no snow here, which disappointed the hell out of shannon. she was really looking forward to being snowed in this morning. she's never been snowed in; she's from california. i told her not to get too excited about the possibility. "there's no snow until there's snow." the weathermen are not always that great at predicitions.

anyway. i took advantage of my day off yesterday to do absolutely nothing. i got a haircut, bought my yearly allotment of clothes and went grocery shopping. and i watched pitch black again. it had some very good spots and the way the color was used was really, really effective. and once you knew the story, you could see the undercurrents as they happened. it was very impressive.

we also watched gone in 60 seconds. not bad, if you like cars.

and my shoulder hurts. i got a good night's sleep, but i think that a trip to the massuese may be in order. or a physical therapist. something. i hate it when i can feel my body start to fall apart.

i find it interesting to read what other people are blogging about. i just saw one called looking for matt, which caught my eye for obvious reasons. strange things out there. one of the stranger things being that there are so many other people, each with their own loves, hates, appetites, desires, ambitions, dreams, fears, etc. the list goes on. and every single one of them is naked under their clothes.

that thought stops me in my tracks sometimes. especially in the mall.

i have the day off today (because i asked for it, thank you). i went shopping earlier and now i'm getting ready to watch pitch black again. should be fun. got a haircut, too. whee!

the new issue of the authority was good yesterday. i'm really amazed that mark millar would do that. on second thought, no i'm not. it was absolutely appropriate and desirable.

now that not fish; duck is done, my time has blossomed like a flower. we've been talking about determining rates of response and how to determine the ratio of lurkers to active members on the list. interesting conversations. the people left on (like myself) are still there because we still crave the human interaction and have the time to deal with the list during these quiet days.

i made two pictures of andi (to left of screen). the top one turned out really well. the bottom one has some interesting bits but i'm more uncertain about it. oh well. you can't get where you want to be unless you're willing to experiment.

i have to get on the ball about this divorce thing. goddamd vicki. chomping at the bit but unwilling to do anything for herself. so now i have to take care of things at her pace instead of mine. it doesn't help when people harrass me like that. it doesn't make me feel obliged to take care of things. deep sigh. deep breath. hold for a second. let it out. let the tension go. exhale.

it's really cold in my office. we have a heater in the ceiling (what a stupid place for a heater!) but the floors are like ice. there's supposed to be heating coils under our offices but it doesn't feel like it. and the air conditioning is on. everyone is bundled up in here. it's funny to walk down the hall and see people in parkas and gloves at their desk. sort of. the worst is that we're not allowed to have personal heaters because they blow the power. our server almost went down yesterday. so all we've got is layers.

and puerto rico is having connection problems. sigh again.

now that not fish; duck is done, my time has blossomed like a flower. we've been talking about determining rates of response and how to determine the ratio of lurkers to active members on the list. interesting conversations. the people left on (like myself) are still there because we still crave the human interaction and have the time to deal with the list during these quiet days.

i made two pictures of andi (to left of screen). the top one turned out really well. the bottom one has some interesting bits but i'm more uncertain about it. oh well. you can't get where you want to be unless you're willing to experiment.

i have to get on the ball about this divorce thing. goddamd vicki. chomping at the bit but unwilling to do anything for herself. so now i have to take care of things at her pace instead of mine. it doesn't help when people harrass me like that. it doesn't make me feel obliged to take care of things. deep sigh. deep breath. hold for a second. let it out. let the tension go. exhale.

it's really cold in my office. we have a heater in the ceiling (what a stupid place for a heater!) but the floors are like ice. there's supposed to be heating coils under our offices but it doesn't feel like it. and the air conditioning is on. everyone is bundled up in here. it's funny to walk down the hall and see people in parkas and gloves at their desk. sort of. the worst is that we're not allowed to have personal heaters because they blow the power. our server almost went down yesterday. so all we've got is layers.

and puerto rico is having connection problems. sigh again.

whew! i finally (!) finished not fish; duck. it was a long, hard road, but it's done. sort of. it came to 70,931 words, plus fifteen pictures (which would put the total at 85,931 words, technically). that's a monster. it's too big for the binder clips. can you believe that? now i need shannon to read it so that i can rest assured that it makes sense to someone who isn't me. that's the big fear right now.

shannon went through the writer's market and sorted out a pile of publishers that might be interested in the podium. that's our next big project: getting it rewritten and solicited. so now we have a mission and a purpose. and a next book, too. as soon as we finish the computer conversion in march, i can start in on how stands ethelred's ghost. about time.

god, it's cold in my office.

movies first. we saw castaway on sunday (and then went to my parents house). we saw crouching tiger, hidden dragon yesterday (and chinese food afterwards. how apropos.) castaway was good. i liked it better than shan. i especially liked the ending, where he was standing on the crossroads. it was a good metaphor. i bit heavy, but sometimes they have to be. shan's mother said that it would have been funnier if he'd been hit by a fed ex truck while standing there. ironic, yes. funny? i dunno.

crouching tiger was beautiful to watch (so was castaway, for that matter). the desert was spectacular and the fight sequences were like ballet. i think the biggest problem i had while parsing that movie was the fact that there were no explosions. i'm not used to seeing a movie with that much violence and no explosions. still, see them both. they are good.

at my parents house, we had fondue and played scrabble. it was fun. everyone liked their gifts and keith gave me a copy of ok computer! cool beans!

it's freezing in my office. very cold. very very cold. as cold as a very cold thing. colder, even.

i'm four chapters away from finishing not fish; duck. i made a big push over the weekend and wrote pretty much all day today. i tallied it up and it comes to 80,000 words (with the pictures, which i count 'cause it's my book). i don't know if it holds together well, but i like it. i just wonder about some of the stuff. is it explained enough? did i pull my punches? are there too many tangents? is it clear? these things plague me. a complete rereading will help, probably. i still have to redo the podium and i want to get started on how stands ethelred's ghost soon. before the end of january, at any rate. i may be disappointed in that last one, though. january through march are going to be rough. work work work.

home home home.

we're checking out our movie schedule for this weekend. will we see cast away at 1:20 at merrifield? will it be unbreakable at 12:40? or state and main? we have to be in kensington at about 4:30, so we'll see.

anyway, that's the movie situation.

i've been thinking about writing, which really doesn't count, does it? no, probably not. this is all just ill-considered. i dunno. i'll think of something.

for some reason, it doesn't feel like christmas this year. i think i'm completely disconnected from the swirl of the holiday calendar. yes, i see the holiday traffic at the mall (how could i not? it's right across the street from me and i have to brave it if i want to do something simple like go to blockbuster or get my comics.) but the holiday cheer has been obliterated in the utter cold of winter. god, i hate the cold.

as you can see, i'm busy creating art in my spare time. my galleries have some oldies in them and i'm busy putting new stuff together. my output is indicitive of me avoiding my writing responsibilities. i'm plugging away and i hope to come out of this weekend with some new product, but it's tough going. this is why i couldn't do creative writing on demand. i have enough internal struggles. i don't need any external ones to add to the confusion.

i had a good idea for some side material i've got bouncing around. i like the idea of bending the science fiction genre in new and interesting directions. i know my writing style well enough by now and i have a genuine love for the material. it gets put in the queue for next year sometime. i'll get back to it simply because i really want to work with the material. the idea is very rough at this point, though. i'll have to work on that. i may have to ask the list for advice on how to proceed. at some point.

so this is christmas. bah.

i've been making pictures and sort of pottering around the idea of finishing another section of not fish; duck. not really doing much, actually. it's probably irresponsible of me, but you know how it goes sometimes.

it's started to snow now. whee. winter is in effect. fun.

not much more for now. i'll let you know later what's going on. when i'm in the mood.

blogspot has been down (like you haven't noticed) so i haven't been blogging. what point is there when you can't get the visceral thrill of immediate publication?

we passed the test. i am now a certified help desk professional! yes. you may worship me if you choose. or not.

i finished the writing the first two sections of not fish; duck yesterday. it's a grueling process. i only have three chapters of the next section to write and then i'll be over halfway finished. the only problem is that i'm scared that this thing may not be as good as i thought it was. i'm panicking, i know, but self-confidence is an iffy thing. i'm getting good notices on the podium from the list, but that's sort of making me scared. what happens if this one tanks? is the story too prentious? i know you're not meant to let them see you sweat, but nobody reads this thing anyway. i'm not afraid to admit that i'm sweating hard.

i've been through this before, of course. the podium was tough to write. it took me months to write the denouement. i'd start and stop. i'd get close and go write something else. it was not an easy book to write. the actual writing process is tough to do. it's the inertia of going form one state to another that's the hardest part to overcome. i think.

still want to be a novelist? this is one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life. it's like a private little battle with myself. no one pushes me to do this. i do it to myself. if i don't write, i end up laying in bed at night thinking about the words i haven't written. it's true. a long, dark path that i drag myself down daily. i wouldn't wish this on my own worst enemy. it's like a pitiful obsession.

busy day. still no test, but that's what happens. ho hum. little by little, i'm getting the chadwick sections of not fish; duck written. they are not spectacular at this point, but that comes later, after i've gotten the initial words written. writing it first takes the greatest amount of effort. revision? that's easy.

i was driving home from blockbuster last night and thinking about novel writing. i've come to the conclusion that it's really not that difficult to do, really. you find a story, you write it down. anyone could do it, if they were determined enough. that determination's necessary, though. writing novels can be very boring. you really want to get to the good bits and you don't want to slog through the set up. the set up's not that exciting to write. no. writing a novel isn't tough. a lot of people can do it with ease. writing a good novel, though. that's the real trick. that takes skill and effort. it's a challenge. it can make the smoke come out of your ears if you're not careful. and there's no point in writing if the novel you're writing isn't good, frankly. but that's just my opinion. danielle steele may disagree with me.

otay. so we went to lori's cocktail party last night, which was fun. then we went to catacomb, which also had a high fun factor. the social scene.

we saw dude, where's my car? today, which was funny in a brainless fashion. better than little nicky and it sort of invoked bill and ted, too. in a good way. shibby.

and that's it, really. the weather was beautiful this morning but got progressively worse. ah so. and another sunday slides by....

i believe that there is magic in this mystery. i really, really, really like the new james album (which has been out for over a year). everyone wants to be happy. oh yeah. that's the stuff.

we went blacklight bowling last night. neither of us won, but we had a lot of fun. it was fun talking to everyone and just hanging out and stuff. i'm a decent bowler as long as i don't let go of the ball too early. when i do that, it's just bad. lots of fun with the blacklight pen, too. it's what happens when you put tattoo artists (four people from perforations showed up) together with artistic implements. i hope we made people look twice.

i'm dithering on not fish; duck. not out of anything in particular. just dithering in general. i know the story. i want to write it. but its starting to get boring. i just sit and look at the pages and they sit and look up at me and then, suddenly, it's more interesting to watch the discovery channel with the sound off while listening to mozart, you know? boring is bad. real bad. the whole point of writing is that it's fun and enjoyable. and right this instant, it just isn't.

it really doesn't help that not fish has a lot of potential to it. a whole hell of a lot. it could be really good, i think. and that's scary. it means that i'm pushing my limits and i don't know how to get to where i want the story to be.

take elmore leonard. i read his stories and there's nothing there; no real story or plot to speak of, just characters interacting with each other. somehow, though, it works. he makes these fascinating pieces that hold together and tell a great story. i have no idea how he does it. where is the glue that holds these things together? i wonder if i'll ever know.

now, i'm no elmore leonard. i don't like people anywhere near as much as he does. but i write straightforward stories. the scenes go from point a to point b. sometimes the people talk about philsophy or poetry or a lesson is learned, but there are times that none of that happens. it's just a "this happened," story. but the whole thing hangs together. and i don't know how that works. and that lack of knowing is very frightening. extremely frightening, to tell the truth. to be able to do something but not know how you can do it? there is magic to this mystery, but i don't understand either the magic or the mystery.

i guess, if i were to speculate about the meaning of the term "journey of self-discovery," i'd say that the journey is about using my talents (such as they are) to explore those same talents. the meaning. the ability itself. the how. the why. the what the fuck? the magic and the mystery. maybe i'll even explain a bit about myself to myself. perhaps.

nah. that would probably be going too far. i'll just stick with the magic and the mystery.

for now.

i don't usually blog this early (well, it feels earlier than it actually is) but i saw this website on halcyon's blog and found myself contemplating where people get their ideas. i mean, how wrong is this?

at any rate, i have rolicking plans to take (and pass) my help desk certification exam today. and, once that's out of the way, maybe get some more pages written, which should be quite a trick, considering that i left all of my novel notes at home today. on purpose, but that's because i thought the breakfast luncheon would take longer than it actually did.

in case you were wondering, i got pcanywhere to log on my local machine, but the whole "log on central server" bit isn't going down so well. i'm examining the issue through trial and error. it isn't the permissions, but i'm buggered if i know what it is, exactly. something else entirely? hurm. bit of a cranium scratcher. i'll keep you posted. i know you're as curious as i am. (yeah, right!)

i'm wondering if a little seperator might be in order so that the average user can tell where one post starts and the next one ends. (or something to that effect.) allow me to contemplate this one further.

sigh. what a long day at work. so many issues, so little time. we got the mississippi connection sorted (once i figured out which state it was on the map). we spent an hour on colorado and crossed our fingers, which seemed to have worked. we spent an hour and a half on minnesota and discovered a fairly simple fix that is going into our little bag of tricks. but i still can't get pcanywhere to do the log thing. that's annoying.

oh well. idi is sending in the corporate happy people tomorrow to feed us breakfast and present us with "gifts." and tim has no official word on when our christmas bonuses will come in. yeah, right.

going to talk to my grandfather about the podium on saturday. it'll be my first face to face conversation with him since he read it. we could probably talk about it at length over the phone, but we both prefer the actual human interaction. call it old-school, but you get a lot out of that real in-depth conversation. no sense of "is he actually listening to me?" i hate it when i get that. i may be good at telephone conversation but that doesn't mean that i have to like it.

and i'm deleting the screen saver i downloaded from refresh. it's just annoying.

so i guess now we're back to having blogger issues again. sigh. so it goes. i had some major scale troubles yesterday. i wrote a nice long, thoughtful post and it got erased. then i wrote an abbreviated version and that bit the dust, too. then i just said fuck it and got my frustrations out. sorry if you were expecting something interesting or enlightening. you should've been here. it was great, really. not at all like what i actually posted from yesterday.

oop. there i go pretending someone actually reads this on a daily basis or something.

to sum up what you missed. vicki's was being bitchy at me on monday because she's all fired up to get the divorce papers filed asap but she doesn't want to do it herself. that "i'll ride your ass instead of expending effort of my own" schtick really makes me lose any lingering sympathy i may have had for her situation. broad hint: playing the martyr is not an attractive role. it's different if you're actively taking steps to correct the issue. whining about the situation with no indication that you care about the resolution is just a waste of time. i've got better things to do. like pick my nose.

lessee. what else? apparently, des moines has gotten big enough to get another area code. unfortunately, their changeover didn't go down as planned. neither area code is accessible. god forbid there should be an icbm headed towards iowa. you couldn't tell anyone. and there's snow on them plains, too.

i had a whole little tirade about audience and purpose in response to a link i read about why people do online journals. i'm not going to provide the link, but my thoughts are still valid, i think. basically, my feeling is that i have a single audience member: myself. everyone else is superfluous. not that i'm narcissitic, mind you. more like the final arbiter of whether my art is good is me and should only be me. i'll certainly take criticism under consideration and it's really nice to hear a compliment. it's also a big thrill to give a piece to someone and get that "i like that" back. but if i'm not satisfied with a piece for any reason, it's my sole perogative to decide that it still needs work. that's what having a journey of self-discovery is all about. it's personal. the audience is sort of extraneous.

(i think i misspelled every big word in that last paragraph. how about them apples?)

did i mention that i liked groove? or that i finished gene wolfe? i did. so there. (btw. i'm backing this post up just in case something nasty happens to the woodshed... er... blogger server.)

i've already posted to this thing twice today and now it's starting to piss me the fuck off. blame the blogger server for today's lack of content. i actually something interesting to say today. guess you'll have to wait until tomorrow, huh?

urg. now i'm in an email argument with my ex-wife over the fact that i'm not handling the divorce proceedings fast enough. she doesn't want to have to do it. period. that would require effort. she's the one in a hurry but she doesn't want to deal with the details. wonderful. six months of seperation and she's still driving me up the wall. if it's not guilt because i had to be the adult, then it's aggravation because i'm not doing what she wants done at her speed. i just told her to take care of it herself.

god. i hate it when she decides that she's going to be mean and nasty on a monday morning. it makes me grumpy.

anyway. i remixed a few pictures and salvaged some from my unused folders. i also made some brand-new pictures this morning. in all, i had enough to put up a new hallway in my gallery. the three best images are in the sidebar. lemme know what you think of them.

what did i do yesterday? hurm....

i spent most of the afternoon playing with webtools. there are two sites that give the user random sentances. they just get generated from scratch. or from a javascript, which is pretty much the same thing. here and here. i blended them together using a cut up machine and then remixed the whole thing using another cutup machine. then i gave the whole thing chapter breaks and a title from a dada website. i know i keep coming back to this stuff, but it flat out fascinates me.

is it real art? is there something to the fact that there is a definate and distinct seperation between the creation and the creator? there is no real involvement in the meaning of the creation; it's incidental if it exists at all. if you have any thoughts, i'd love to hear them.

we went to jenna and andrew's party last night. that was a lot of fun. shannon has pictures up on her site. there's one picture of me playing with andrew's groovebox, which is a really neat music-making toy. i really like it and wouldn't mind if i got one for christmas (hint, hint).

we're going to watch groove tonight, followed by futurama (if the redskins game doesn't run long), the simpsons and malcolm in the middle. television is good sometimes.

so this is friday. (bear with me, people. you have to pretend that i have john lennon's singing voice....)

we had some interesting events today. possible mess with colorado. and fuji taught us how to transfer the contents of one hard drive to another. that was interesting, actually. sometimes my job is kinda cool....

i like some of the ideas of william burroughs. the cut-ups and what they do to narratives - suggesting things before they happen. that's kind of cool. i also like the work he did with tape loops, where he tried to determine what people were actually saying. in a subliminal way, you understand.

technology is great when you wonder about this kind of thing. you have the cut up machine and the spam encoder. i've played with the cut up machine before (and i'm thinking that a search for a babble sampler might be a good idea, actually). i just got the spam encoder today, though. i like this. i like it a lot. now i really want to put actual spam into the decoder to see what subliminal messages spammers are sending out. or even just random pieces of narrative and exposition. might be interesting....

technology can be fun if you have the determination to fuck with it and use it in ways it was never intended for.

oh yeah. i also wrote some today. mostly, though, i just did some formatting and sampling. good stuff, though. i have to lay my foundations before i can build. that's very important.

i think.

do you know what i really hate? you know when you get the option to have your internet explorer save a password for you, there's a little box that says "don't offer to do this again"? i hate the fact that there's no way to reactivate that feature. EVER. i really hate that. what happens if you change your mind? huh? what then, bill? are you listening to me, mr. gates? huh? huh?

sorry.

so i'm back. training was fun. pedestrian, but interesting. we learned some interesting things and we also learned that we've got it made. i don't ever want to leave this job. ever.

if i was an evil dictator (note reference to world domination from a few weeks ago) then i'd follow this list. to the letter. i'm thinking about writing a story where the villain follows this list. might be interesting. thing is that i hate stories with obvious villains. i mean, come on. how often does that actually happen? was your raise blocked by someone sitting in an office down the hall stroking a white cat? did you have to battle someone to get into them? aside from the secreatary, of course....

so i finished the book on james. very interesting. made me want to listen to the albums again. and again. and again. now i'm reading shadow of the torturer by gene wolfe. (finally!) i'll let you know what i think if i remember to.

so tomorrow chuck and i are off to our "how to be a good helpdesk person" training course in greenbelt. this should be amusing. i mean, we have to pay attention because the two day course cost the company $1000 and we have to take a test to get certified and all. i can just imagine what would happen if we came back and we weren't certified. ooooh boy.

finally finished fuji's documentation. gah. the site is right here, if you want to take a look at it. tell them matt sent you. there is some discussion of a bonus if one of my referrals signs up. plug plug. i also wrote the pricing page. double plug.

awright. reading update. i still haven't picked up gene wolfe. i started rereading walking on glass by iain banks instead because the structure of it had some similiarities to what i was planning for not fish; duck. oh yeah, and i wanted to see if it was as bad as i remembered. (it was much better, actually.) so now i'm reading folklore, which is the official history of james. interesting book. good story. made me want to hear their music, so i brought most of my collection in today. "i know what i'm heeeere for..."

so i thought about a tarot structure for not fish; duck and i decided to go halfway with it. originally, there were 25 chapters. with the addition of the other threads, that got tripled. i noticed how close the numbers were (75 and 78) and wondered if i should use the tarot structure to introduce some kind of burroughs-esque jump cutting where the sections aren't in chronological order. thing is that i'm not sure that i'm ready for that kind of experimentalism just yet. it's fun to do, but reading it is a pain in the butt and it just comes off as pretentious. instead of actually doing the jump cuts, i've decided to up the section total to 78, introduce the idea of the tarot imagry and suggest that the jump cuts may have been possible. i dunno how it will play, though. guess i'll find out when i've finished.

as for the podium: i spent a few hours yesterday going through peter's comments and making my own notes. he brings up about two dozen interesting points that i should really explore. if i do it right, i can wind these explorations around the major points that peter noted in the first place. a lot of work to do on it all, methinks. i'm still torn over which i should do first, though. given my time constraints, i won't be doing anything until thursday or friday. maybe not even until monday. just too much to do. blah. this job is starting to cut into my writing schedule! i hate it when that happens.

ooooh. so much to do today. i got my corrections back from peter, along with a new issue of playboy (which i get for the articles). i also have the sunday paper to read and there were 87 messages in my inbox this morning. today is a reading day.

yesterday we went to my parents house and played scrabble, which was fun. we also played with my father's new telescope (the only thing he really wanted from his father's estate). we saw the rings of saturn and the moons of jupiter. we also saw faint stripes on jupiter's surface. on the cool meter, that ranks right up there, lemme tell you. i'd never seen the planets in a telescope before. now i know how galileo felt. sort of.

anyway. off to reading. take care. talk to you tomorrow. probably.

whew. such a busy day today. there were so many emails in my inbox from the list that it was close to ridiculous. i'm almost done with the info project that ann-marie gave us earlier this week. right now i'm just waiting on call backs. shouldn't be too hard. aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's friday! hooRAY! a full weekend ahead. good.

i'm still throwing information into not fish; duck while i let the specific problems of the podium percolate in the background of my mind. i know i'm going to have to switch gears on the two rather abrubtly and i just hope that i have enough information down about not fish that i don't look at a note go "what does that mean?" there is at least one story in a notebook that i worked out the structure to and then put down (probably to do something silly). before i put the idea down completely, i wrote a note to myself that says "write this, you bastard!" with a little arrow pointing at the diagrammed idea. i still have no idea what the specifics of the story were. something about time travel, i think. sometimes i wish i knew. oh well.

the only problem with listening to the white album is that you have to listen to both disks. other than that, it's a great album. i hadn't been paying attention to the fact that it's the 20th anniversary of john lennon's death next week, but i must have picked up on it subconsciously because i've been listening my entire beatles collection all week. someone asked me on monday if i was listening to the new album (one) and i said "why get the singles when you can listen to the entire albums?" why indeed?

and finally, vicki sent me a site about canadian world domination. my contention is that canadians are infiltrating the american economy through our entertainment industries. there is some vast canadian entertainment mafia that's using the american entertainment industrial complex to export canadian culture to the world. well, how else do you explain bryan adams?