July Sweeps - Day 524

You know how I mentioned Kylee Jenner the other day, and said I didn't know who she was?  That wasn't a lie--would I lie to you?  Now would I say something that wasn't true?  I'm asking you, sugar--but strangely, here we are, a couple of days later, and when I went on Instagram today, suddenly, there were pictures of Kylee Jenner being "suggested" to me in my feed.  Pictures with tons of boobs in them.

And I have to wonder, is this a coincidence?  Or is Instagram somehow aware of what I was typing and searching for elsewhere on the same computer?

It's like this time last year we got together for Sunday dinner, and my uncle was telling me all about cousins "hooking up," and we had this discussion about what kinds of cousin-breeding was allowed around here and what was against the law.  Fun stuff.  

And then he showed me, that same day, that he was being spammed with all sorts of incest click-bait ads on his phone.  "Don't you see," he said, "they were listening in on our conversation.  THEY KNOW WHAT WE'RE SAYING."

I didn't believe him . . . and then it was too late.

(Black Wider is watching you)

So, we went and saw BLACK WIDOW last night, and my cousin and I sat in the spot I most prefer (I got tickets a week early, so I was pretty much able to pick my seat).  Because those bastards at Disney released the movie at the same time on Disney+ (one of those filthy $30 day and date things), the screening we went to started with a promo about seeing movies on the big screen, touting how the sound and picture and ambience and overall experience was better in a movie theater.  The clip ended with a voiceover guy shouting, "See BLACK WIDOW the way it was meant to be seen, in the theater!"

And a lady in the audience shouted back, "A little late, buddy!"

That was pretty cool.

There was also a trailer for an M. Night Shyamalan movie called OLD.  It had a very intriguing premise for a movie, one I would be happy to go to see . . . and then the trailer kept going.  And kept going.  And changed genres.  And lost me.  It's so strange that they would give away so much about a film by a director who used to be all about surprising reveals.  But hey, they don't make movies for me anymore.  Or you.

I know I say this about once a month, but this might be the day, kids.  I'm really sleepy, haven't written a word, and have yet to do any exercise.

We went on our annual family dinner celebrating my brother's and my birthdays (last year we didn't, of course), and you know how you are after eating a heavy meal late in the day.  All I want to do is veg out, read Wikipedia articles, and maybe watch old David Letterman clips Don Giller has uploaded on his YouTube page.  

But you know, if I don't write and exercise, then the bullies, the terrorists, and the rednecks with gunracks on display on their way to church win.  I have to get up, get writing, get sitting-up, and maybe, I dunno, fart.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 955

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In July: 1070

So, I did get some writing in, at the end of the night, and once I started, it flowed rather wonderfully, with zero problems (I'm writing the big confession scene, where Devon tells Lara his situation, though I haven't quite decided how honest he should be with her yet).*

Regardless, I'd like to push Pause on this thing for a few days and focus on putting out a couple of my audio collections.  As I've mentioned before, I do get a royalty check from Amazon and Audible every single month, and though they are very small, they're always coming in (one is direct-deposited, the other I have to take to the bank, but am too lazy to figure out how to change it).  If I put, say, two story collections out, along with a Christmas one, and the first five or six "Dead & Breakfast" stories, there might be people out there that would buy them.  As of now, a lot of those stories are just sitting, all edited, with nowhere to go (though half of them have made it into episodes, or soon will).

Words Today: 767
Words In July: 9557

I started editing the audio for "Meet The New Clerk" yesterday, and briefly considered recording an episode for it on the drive home.  But I did do an episode for "Never Let Him Go," a D&B story that preceded it, and I've never gotten to that one (or really planned to).  Even so, I thought about recording an episode that said, "Happy 2022, kids!" knowing I could put it out at any point next year.

But I didn't.  

The point is, I'm currently editing that one, and have recorded the first half of "Made Just For You," the first of four Lara Demming stories I wrote in the last few months, and unless I stop what I'm doing and make releasing those a priority, I'll never get it done.  The audio editing is the most time-consuming part of what I do, and yet I'm unwilling to do the actual uploading (or the text file compilation that must precede uploading the audio), and that's really just hurting myself.

*I'm reminded of the brief stint I spent working on the television news station where Big worked for at least a decade.  There were the day shifts, the afternoon/evening shift, and the big old bugger, the morning shift.  I remember I would have to set my alarm for two-thirty or three in the morning so I could get there in time, and there would be a scramble to get everything edited for the first hour of the morning show . . . but then, they'd reuse most (or all) of the video for each hour of the show after that.  There were regular AM editors who did that shift every single day, and to a man, they'd tell me that the hardest thing about their job was just getting there in the morning.

That's kind of how the writing was today: the hardest part was just the first sentence, and it was all easy from there.