Here I sit, in my chair at the table at the cabin, a light breeze blowing through the windows. It was eighty degrees outside when I pulled up, which is quite hot for up here.* Of course, it is August, traditionally the hottest month, and that's bound to affect everywhere at once.
I have disappointed myself in how little I've written this month, especially considering we're a third of the way through August (and my goal for the month--and last month--was to finish "When You Need It Most"), and I keep thinking that if I were to either 1) finish my novel, or 2) stop writing daily altogether, that I could shift my focus to something else, like publishing or video editing, or just not giving a crap about personal creativity and catching up on some good old-fashioned television.
But darn it, I just had an idea for a guy who does the self-checkout at the grocery store, and when he scans an item, a strange message comes up on the machine, one that has nothing to do with buying Band-Aids and potato chips.
By the way, click on THIS LINK for a real-life horror story concerning the self-checkout.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In August: 1108
The water was off, of course, when I got here, but I had forgotten that when I went to use the bathroom, and was unable to wash my hands.** Later, when I did turn the water on, so much pressure had built up in the upstairs pipes that when I turned on the faucet again, it made a loud, spraying, hissing sound that scared the Sy Snoodles out of me.
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Less than five minutes later, I went to the kitchen sink to get a drink of water, and that faucet ALSO made a loud hissing sound when I turned it on . . . but it only scared me a little bit (say, the Max Rebo out of me), because the last scare had been so recent. It made me think of horror movies, and how I really wanted to make them, and see what kinds of scares work and what kinds don't, and figure out why.
I remember that Steven Spielberg talked about when they were test screening the initial cut of JAWS, and how it didn't have the Ben Gardner's head scare in it (Richard Dreyfus goes under the water, and the dead man is just there, in the hole of the boat), and he got it into his head that that was a wasted opportunity, and asked Universal if he could have ten grand to reshoot it, to add one more scare into the middle of the movie. They said no, since it was already over budget and the studio was so mad at him they'd threatened to fire him multiple times, but couldn't because nobody else was willing to step in and finish the disaster of a movie.
So, on Spielberg's own dime, he got a cameraman and a lighting guy, and shot the scene himself in his own swimming pool, pouring all sorts of junk into the water to make it milky and gritty, and using the Ben Gardner dummy head he'd gotten out of props. He shot it so there's darkness in the hole of the boat, Richard Dreyfus puts his hand on the wood, and the movement makes the dead man's' head float down into frame.
Spielberg cut it back into the film, and they test screened it again a couple of days later . . . and that got a HUGE scream from the audience, much to the director's delight. However, the reveal of the shark later in the film (the Brody throwing chum scene) didn't get as big a reaction from the crowd because they were now waiting for something else to jump out at them. He said that, while he left the head reveal in the final cut, it was a lesson he learned, that adding something new can also take away from what you have.
Apropos of nothing, sorry, but I just couldn't stop thinking about it after the back-to-back sink scares.
But walking around the cabin as the shadows are lengthening, I was thinking (as I usually do) about things that would be scary to see out here (top of the list--ALWAYS--is an old woman's face looking in one of the windows. Not sure why I always go back to that. Maybe it's a fetish), and when I went out on the deck to figure out what kind of animal was making an annoying call I could hear over the audio editing, a hummingbird flew right up by my face, making that propeller-like buzzing sound, and got a darn fine scare out of me. This is gonna be a spooky one, I imagine.
Push-ups Today: 207
Push-ups In August: 1362
Right before the sun set, I heard an interesting bird call outside, and went out to investigate. Atop one of the dead trees by one of the (five or six) woodpiles, was a hawk, just hanging out, its head turning this way and that, like an owl's. Every thirty seconds or so, it would let out this interesting, high-pitched call, and waited for a response. I never heard one.
I tried to take a picture of it--almost desperately--but none could capture any details. Inside the cabin are a pair of binoculars that belonged to my dad, so I grabbed them and watched the bird for a couple of minutes. It occurred to me that I haven't used the camera my uncle gave me this whole year, and it surely would've zoomed in far enough to give you a nice photo. I resolve to bring it with me next time I come, and just leave it up here. Of course, I resolve to do a lot of things, and that don't mean they get done.
Marshal Latham mentioned in his most recent podcast that he's the only person at the plant where he works that knows how to do his job, so he's almost never able to take vacations. That seems kind of fascinating to me--to be so important that nobody can do what you do. I'm whatever the opposite of that is (expendable, I guess you'd call it).
Words Today: 732
Words In August: 6193
*It got to eighty-five a couple of weeks ago, and plants started to die, let alone the billions of gnats I told you about--I still can't think of any other reason why they would have all died at the same time, unless there was a Jim Jones-type among them.
**Or, if you prefer, I found a can of peanuts from 2017 under the seat of my car, brought it in, and found them not only stale, but super-greasy, and went into the bathroom to wash it off my hands. Both details are true.
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