March Sweeps - Day 408

My mom often tells me that, even though she's now in her seventies, she still has that dream where you've overslept and you're late for class, or you make it to class and there's a test you didn't study for.  I do too, but today, I actually did oversleep.  My phone was not there to wake me up this morning (I'm not laying blame on anybody, but when I found it in the living room, someone had installed a tower defense game on it that was not on the phone yesterday), and when I opened my eyes, I couldn't really tell what time it is, since the time changed two nights ago.

Turns out, it was late.  I should probably type that in all caps.  It was so late that I felt guilty about it for about three or four hours.  Still do, in fact, since my body thinks it should be about eight right now, but the clock at the bottom of my laptop says it's 10:47.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1529

Tuesday mornings are garbage days in the neighborhood, so every Monday I have to take the garbage cans to the curb.  Today I tried doing it with rollerblades on.  And--big surprise, actually--it was easier than I would've guessed, and an EFF of a lot easier than rollerblading on concrete.  One of them has a little clasp in it that is inside the boot, and it digs into my foot pretty painfully.  I wonder if its a remnant of when I broke my foot twenty years ago, or if the boot is just badly constructed.

Here's a photo of my foot:

I'm not posting this to say it's a terrible injury or anything--it really isn't--but I'm just wondering how a pair of rollerblades I've worn for a total of thirty minutes over the last three weeks could do that to my foot, through my socks.  

Maybe the next time I do it, I'll wear two pairs of socks.

Rollerblading In March: 4 (of 10)

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In March: 1503

During my run tonight*, I thought that for that Dead & Breakfast story I wrote last month, I should call it "The Bad Guy."  But I was worried that somebody would think I named it after that revolting Billie Eilish song, so I thought maybe I'd call it "The Bad Man" or "The Bad Guy In Room 2."  Or "Bad Man In Room 2."  Let me know what you think in the comments, okay?

Well, since I know nobody will respond to that, I've decided to name the story "Kabuki Dong."  Thanks.

Words Today: 423
Words In March: 12,256

*My mother is sure that I'm going to get run down sometime, and I'm starting to think she was right.  t's like Big Anklevich used to always say about his ninety minute commute to work--that he knew that one day, there would be a crash, and that was how he would meet his end (and three months later, his wife would remarry.  THREE).  I'm beginning to be convinced that I will get killed that way.  I've had cars almost hit me a handful of times now, just because people either don't pay attention or I've lost so much weight they can't even see me (oh, and there's the two assholes that were driving on the wrong side of the road too, let's not forget them).

March Sweeps - Day 407

I can't believe that March is half over.  Looks like it's going to be another month where I only accomplish my sit-up goals.  

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1429

As far as audio editing goes, I started on that That Gets My Goat episode from 2019 that was presumed lost until I found it again in January.  I only got it about a third of the way done, but it has been neat to hear us speculating about THE AVENGERS since I (vaguely) know how all of it worked out as far as the films went.

The other day, I was walking down the sidewalk, when I saw a bag tied to the branch of a tree.  I assumed it was dog waste, somebody's garbage they had tossed out of their car, or at least a Walgreens bag filled with cash (like you sometimes see).  But no, it was two boxes of crackers or cookies, along with the receipt from the grocery store (the bag was pretty transparent, like my story about the guy who threw up in the parking lot or the one about the guy who was in an elevator with Britney Spears's sister and soiled himself).

It does make me think of one of those stories I love to write where there's a little town with a weird observance, and somebody goes to town and sees all these bags tied to trees, each with an item of some value in it.  Heck, look at that one, it's got an electric razor in it, still new in the package.  This one appears to be those sharp tools used to break up ice.  And that one, is that dynamite?  

Push-ups Today: 148
Push-ups In March: 1443

March is half over and I haven't managed nearly the rollerblading I had in mind.  I cannot oversell how scary it is for me, but I'll admit that doing it on the lawn where, even if I fell, the damage would be negligible, is much, much easier.  I did go out and did it it today, just as the sun was setting, and went around and around, concentrating on singing "Science Fiction Double Feature" the whole time instead of on my legs.  If I could get that good on cement, I'd consider myself a good enough skater.

Rollerblading In March: 3 (of 10)

I did get another chapter recorded in my audiobook, but that only amounted to exactly 149 words.  I jotted some more down before going to sleep, but I don't know if they'll make sense (I guess I can always rewrite them and count that as writing too), but at least I managed more than 150.

Words Today: 437
Words In March: 11,833

The Podcast That Dares 26: Gatekeeper

Rish shares his short story "Gatekeeper." That is all.

If you wish to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wish to (finally) support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Weightkeeper" Moretto.

March Sweeps - Day 406

Well, I sort of shot myself in the foot today.  I had another headache and it made me super sluggish (it was snowing steadily outside all day long, the wet and gray kind of snow that turns to puddles and mud as soon as it hits the ground and makes the world look the way Frodo saw it when he put on the One Ring), and the library was going to close, so I grabbed my laptop, got in the car, and drove over an hour before it closed.  But when I turned on my laptop, it decided to do another system update (the same thing I suspect that skragged me a couple of weeks ago with the sound), and I had to sit for twenty-five minutes as the computer updated itself, just reading Facebook posts on my phone while I waited.*

I made the mistake of opening Instagram on my phone, and even though it was on Silent, a fuggin' Megan Thee Stallion song started blaring (at full volume) that had both the p-word and n-word in it, drawing the view of everyone on the Quiet Floor.  Cute, huh?

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1329

I managed almost no words in the library today, but who cares, no big deal.  But I want more.  I want to be where the people are.

In a bit of other news, I finally found a Star Wars collectible I have no interest in owning.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In March: 1295

And somehow, though I wasn't wasting time watching TV or surfing the inter--was I?  Is that where the hours went?--the day was over.  I got my run in, I got some sit-ups, got some push-ups, got some dinner, and recorded my lines for an audio drama I was asked to voice.  It's a five episode commitment, and to my surprise, I am the second lead, sort of a Ben Kenobi to the main character's Luke.  I'll admit that I was hesitant last week when I got an email (we all did) asking that we not do any accents for our characters, but to speak with our regular speaking voices (I had planned on doing a sort of Giles from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" voice for the mentor role, when reading through the character bio, and had to disabuse myself of that notion).

Ultimately, I chose to do a much lower, scratchier version of my own speaking voice for the character, who is very principled and never uses contractions.  I decided to record all the episodes at one sitting, so I could keep the voice straight, and discovered that doing a scratchy voice makes me cough and completely effs up my throat, causing me to abandon the chapters of my own work I was going to record tonight, which would have gotten me a few words of writing, instead of the nearly nothing I'm left with while typing this.

Oh, and this is the latest I've blogged this year (it's 4:10am right now), and maybe since I started doing this.  I drank some Coke Zero at around eleven, because I was falling asleep at the computer, and now I'm wide awake.

In related news, I went all of January and February drinking only diet soda.  I finally found one I like the taste of (Coke Zero, which may not technically be a diet soda, otherwise they'd just call it Diet Coke), and tried my best to only drink that in this new year.  Then, last week, I went to the storage unit, where I have several twelve packs of soda, none of them diet, and was momentarily struck with Whatthehellism, and opened a regular Pepsi to drink.  Now, I had been warned that, after only drinking diet drinks, the regular sugared kind would taste super syrupy and way too sugary, so I was a bit worried, but I chugged it down anyway due to being thirsty. 

And it tasted like poison.  Not like sugar water or when you mix all the flavors of soda together, but like there was something wrong with it, like the mix was off at a convenience store fountain nozzle. 

It reminds me of a guy I knew a few years back who had no experience drinking alcohol but went out to a bar with a bunch of work friends, and was given some kind of drink that tasted exactly like rubbing alcohol smells.  He nursed it, tiny sip by tiny sip, utterly miserable, while his friends drank down margarita after margarita, beer after beer, rum and Coke after . . .  

Finally, his coworker Kristina said, "What is wrong with you?--You're still on your first drink!" and he said, "I've only managed to get about half of this down--it just tastes so bad."  And Kristina said, "Give it here."  She took a tiny sip, and spit it out onto the bar floor.  "Jesus!" she exclaimed.  "This isn't a Tom Collins, there's something wrong with it!"  The guy just shrugged and said, "I didn't know what it was supposed to taste like."  

She marveled at his stupidity, and was not at all surprised when, a few minutes later, he was out in the parking lot, violently ill, puking all over the tires of his friend Brandin's car.  Poor bastard lost his driver's license that night too, and had to pay to get another one (though maybe he could've used having left his ID at the bar that night as an excuse not to go out to another club with the coworkers, no?).

Anyhoo, I went back to Coke Zero after that.  I only wish I liked Diet Coke instead, because there's a store up the road that sells cans of it four for a dollar that they can never get rid of, whereas literally every other drink they sell (including Tab.  THEY SELL TAB, for Bossk's sake) sells out immediately.

In other news, I told my cousin on Tuesday that HALLOWEEN III is the most underrated movie in film history.  Care to agree?

In other non-news, I guess I should go to sleep now.

Words Today: only 406
Words In March: 11,396

*I guess I could have written in my notebook, gotten some words in that way.  Whoops, now I think of it.

March Sweeps - Day 405

I was a couple days behind on my blog because of the stupid Superman thing (which I started writing on Tuesday, and kept bumping to the next day), and I may actually have missed a day.  Hmm.

"Waffle Iron Man" ended up one hour and one minute long in its edited form.  The next story I edited this week, "Murdertown - One Mile," was only twenty-one minutes long.  Guess I'll edit the Outcast episode for that one next, and see if I can't get it out before March is through.  It'll end up being one of--if not THE--shortest episodes I've put out.  But hey, after years of shows at least forty-five minutes long and often more than an hour, maybe people are hungry for a thirty minute one.  

What, no?  Nobody's hungry for any Rish Outcast episodes?  Oh, alright.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In March: 1229

Yesterday, I mentioned Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  Out of curiosity, I looked up what you call a person from there.  Turns out it's Saskatonian.  That's much, much cooler than I would have ever guessed.*

Push-ups Today: 147
Push-ups In March: 1229 (whoa, the numbers are even!)

The thing I said earlier, about my "Murdertown" show being short?  I think I could talk about something else in the episode that would add four or five more minutes to it, and still get it out by the end of the month.  I can leave nothing alone, it seems.

Words Today: 884
Words In March: 10,990

*I had a friend back in Los Angeles from Guam, and I asked her what they called people from there.  She told me they're Guamanians.  I think I was still laughing a week later.

March Sweeps - Day 404

So, I finished editing my story "Waffle Iron Man."  The plan has always been to run it on the podcast, but to have Gino Moretto on from the future, since he was there for the inception of the idea (when it was about Siren Head), and was interested in telling me about a Kiwi urban legend.  I'll make it a goal to get that episode (or episodes, probably two, since the story is more than an hour) recorded by April.

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In March: 1082

I wanted to remind you to go HERE to support me on Patreon.  They get the occasional exclusive episode, and the other episodes they get early.  For example, the episode that drops for you on Sunday was put out for Patreon supporters on December 6th. 

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1118

Back on Tuesday night, my cousin and I watched the first episode of the new Superman series on the CW, called "Superman and Lois."  It was pretty good.  

After the show, I talked his ear off about the Man of Steel, and it turns out I'm much more passionate about Superman than even I would've guessed. 

At one point, I said, there needs to be a rule set at DC and Warner Brothers, where they ask anybody who is in the running to write, direct, star in, or produce a Superman movie, cartoon, TV series, or comic book, "Do you think Superman is boring?"  And if they say yes, as SO many comic fans and creative people seem to believe, you shake their hand and thank them for their time, letting them know your secretary can validate their parking on the way out.

Superman is only boring to the most limited of people, those who could pigeonhole other superheroes to their most basic, myopic one word descriptions that miss the point completely, like "Spider-man is a geek, Daredevil is a lawyer, Wolverine is short, Black Widow is Russian, Spawn is a black guy, Captain America is old, Batman is crazy, Deadpool talks a lot, Wonder Woman is tall."  While all of those things may be true, they hardly encapsulate the characters they describe.  

Superman is many things.  He's a hero, a symbol, an example, a policeman, an unknown, a savior, an alien, a soldier, a leader, an immigrant, an All-American, a sex symbol, a loner, a Boy Scout, a threat, a philosophy, a god.  He's also Clark Kent, and all that entails (journalist, husband, thinker, bumbler, investigator, coward, everyman, friend).  There's a dozen different angles a writer can look at him, a dozen different ways he can be portrayed.

Yes, he's unbelievably overpowered, but any one of those powers can be interesting if well told.  But also, he's not omnipotent, and how does he deal with the knowledge that eighteen climbers in Tibet plummeted to their death because he was in Missouri putting out an oil fire?*  And there's always that thing of, what happens if the bullet bounces off of Superman and hits Perry White, or what happens if Jimmy Olsen boasts that Superman's his best pal in front of the wrong person?

Gosh, I could blog all day about Superman, how while he's not my favorite superhero, he's the greatest, most recognizable of them all, and he deserves to have his stories told by people who respect the character.  By people who love him.

I wonder if my cousin would even want to keep watching "Superman & Lois," if it means I stretch every episode out to two-plus hours.

Words Today: 1028
Words In March: 10,106

*My cousin often told me about a "Justice League" episode where Batman is incapacitated, so Kal-El volunteers to put on the Batman costume and patrol the streets of Gotham City in his place, and this lit up my imagination with the thought of: for one night out of the year, there were no murders in Batman's hometown, no rapes, no muggings, no drug overdoses, no domestic abuse cases, no one got hit by a car or fell from a fire escape or was run over by a subway car.  How glorious, no?
BUT Superman then considers that eleven people died in Albuquerque, nine in Baton Rouge, nineteen in Saskatoon, thirty-eight in Chongking, seventy-three in Anuradhapura . . . and three back home in Metropolis, because Superman was spending all his time in Gotham.  And he feels guilty about it, just as he always does any time someone suffers because Superman can't be in all places at once. 
That's what heroes do, apparently.

March Sweeps - Day 403

I got a brilliant* idea today when my mind broached the subject of putting on the rollerblades again: Why not do it on the lawn, where the ground is softer, and the grass will keep the wheels from spinning out of control?

It wasn't so bad.  It wasn't good, mind you**, but I didn't ever fall down and I didn't get hurt, even though I went around the backyard five times.  THIS I can do ten times in March, though, truth be told, I doubt it will help me learn how to rollerskate in the end.

I was looking up K-pop bands to reference in my "Lara and the Witch" story, and ye gods, they all have such awful, generic names, more times than not in all caps.  I had originally used BTS, the only Korean band I knew before, but settled on something called Blackpink, which I'm sure my old coworker Carolina (who listens to all that stuff like she was cursed to be eternally thirteen) would dismiss as too mainstream.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1018

In anticipation of recording another chapter of my own story, I grabbed a couple of stories by W.W. Jacobs, the author of probably the greatest short story of the Twentieth Century, "The Monkey's Paw."  Having never read anything else by the man, I sat down and recorded "The Toll-House," about four friends who dare themselves to spend the night in a supposedly-haunted house (amazing to contemplate that that particular premise was an old one even a hundred years ago).

I tried to give all four (British) friends different voices, and the story was quite short (about twenty minutes to record, fifteen or so once edited down), but it didn't really do anything for me, and I saved it to my laptop and promptly deleted it (like I did a pair of H.P. Lovecraft stories I recorded last fall while at the cabin, realizing I'd never do anything with them).

However, there is another story by Jacobs that I'm going to read through and see if it's worth recording.

Push-ups Today: 146
Push-ups In March: 1022 (the push-ups have finally passed the sit-ups in total--what a joyous occasion!)

Unfortunately, I sat down to record the third "chapter" of my D&B story, and it was already past one o'clock.  I considered the wisdom of recording so late when I was up past three the night before, and ultimately chose not to.  I went ahead and published "A Sidekick's Errand" on Amazon, and was surprised to discover that there wasn't a Series page for The Sidekick Chronicles.

Turns out, they implemented this Series option (where you can create a series and tell Amazon how each installment fits in--whether they must be read in a certain order, whether short stories and prequels fit in or are ancillary pieces, etc.) since I published the last story, and only the "Dead & Breakfast" series has a Series page.

I created a page for this story (which is the fourth one I've published--fifth I've written--and is a sequel to "Birth of a Sidekick" but a prequel to "A Sidekick's Journey"), but now I'll have to go in and add those details to the other three.  Then, if I am ambitious enough to finish "Sins of a Sidekick," I might be able to put that one out and the long-delayed "A Sidekick To Miracles" after that.  Although I wonder whether it matters or not.  Since the stories have been written out of order (2 then 4 then 1 then 6 then 3), does it matter in what order they're read?  I imagine the Conan the Barbarian stories are just as enjoyable reading them in publication order as chronological order, no?

Which makes me think of the ever-lovin' "Lara and the Witch" stories.  If the first two I wrote take place in one town and all the rest after that take place months or years later in another town, there's no point in numbering them, right?  Especially when I could write ten stories in between "You're In Good Hands" and "Bundling Made Easy" over the next couple of years.  Is it enough that I just keep writing them, and mention early on that one is set when Lara is in high school and another is set when she's in junior high?

I don't suppose any of this really matters.  The amount of sales I generate for each little $1.99 or $2.99 short story are practically zero, and I really should just sit down and podcast each one instead, since that earns more money, and might actually get a couple of new Patreon supporters after a while (I did record another Patreon-only episode this past Sunday, in which I present a [fairly-mediocre] story that was otherwise only going to be available in my "Female Protagonist" audio collection.

Words Today: 543
Words In March: 9078

*Your mileage many vary.

**I know I'm writing an Old Widow Holcomb story, because she uses phrases like "mind you" and "let it alone," and nobody else I know does. 

March Sweeps - Day 402

After yesterday's (admittedly) manic creative burst (a bit messy), I should just rest on my laurels, but I must confess to being curious where the story is going, and finding out what Old Widow Holcomb has to say about another witch at Lara's school.  I thought a bit about where it MIGHT go whilst running last night, but one thing about pantsing is that you can have the story surprise you.  And that can be good or bad.  Good if it ends up impressively better than you planned, but bad if it goes down a blind alley and you find yourself having to backtrack, or worse, stuck in a dead end with your leg in a beartrap.

Sit-ups Today: 66
Sit-ups In March: 918

I decided, at some point last year, that all the "Lara & the Witch" stories would have mushroom themes--although none of the stories at the first one have any mention of mushrooms--and I did a search for free images involving them.  I found a perfect one that I thought I'd ask Big to Photoshop into a Christmas scene for me, but he didn't answer his phone.  So I went ahead and used it to, I dunno, kill ten minutes of time I would've been using productively otherwise.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In March: 876

My cousin and I finished "WandaVision," only three or four days after everybody else did.  The internet did its darndest to spoil it for me (as they always do), but the Big Spoiler turned out to be a lie, so that was an interesting surprise.

I thought the series was really good and very cleverly done, and probably got more attention for its unusualness than a more typical Action series like "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" (which was originally scheduled to come first) would have done.  And they finally got her in the darn tiara.

There were a couple of aspects to the show that reminded me (rather embarrassingly) of the Old Widow Holcomb stories I've been writing, and it occurs to me now that maybe I've been so interested in new Lara Demming stories is because I've been watching a show about witches.  Something that I think the television series was missing was the sort of misandristic anti-male rhetoric shows about witches tend to revel in.  It's always men that are wanting to take away women's power and exterminate witches and that are frightened by groups of females practicing secret arts that only they understand.*  I think it's a natural bedrock beneath witch mythology (much less so than the devil-worship aspect that those from the pulpit will insist on), and it has been fun to toss little references to such things in Holcomb's dialogue, most of which fly over Lara's head (and to a certain extent, my own).

Of course, a certain friend of mine's wife would not appreciate me writing all these stories from a point of view I can never comprehend ("Oh, no.  Has Perpetua Trevorly been asking you for your menstrual blood again?"), and that I should stick to what I know, namely sports and chest hair and prostate exams and John Cougar Mellencamp.  But I never wrote this stuff for her anyway.

Even so, I did pretty well today too, nearly reaching a thousand words before that intercom clatters not unlike the gong that the natives use to summon Kong.

Words Today: 975
Words In March: 8535

*Oh god, I remember how terrified I was by the trailers for THE CRAFT back in 1996 or whenever it came out.  Every single micron of my patriarchal, midwestern, traditional religious upbringing was repulsed by it and its unsubtle Girls Over Boys themes.  To this day, the very thought of Fairuza Balk makes me strike at my genitals with a woodcarver's mallet.

Weird.  I thought that was everybody.

March Sweeps - Day 401

"The rumors are terrible and cruel,
But honey, most of them are true."
Taylor Swift

Today, Monday, was so busy with work (the money kind) that I could be forgiven for not writing at all, but after yesterday's pathetic display, I feel like I have to at least double my numbers from yesterday.  

I have to go to the post office, to Fed Ex, and to the storage unit (where I really ought to do a song . . . why can't I have an extra two hours today, just to get things done?), and it just occurred to me that I didn't eat lunch, only a bit of breakfast and a Coke Zero.  Whoops.

Sit-ups Today: 110
Sit-ups In March: 852

A year ago, I was flirting with going jogging, doing it a couple of times a week, for about two-thirds or a half a mile.  Now, I go out running either six or seven days a week (but never more often than that--I'm not some kind of nutcase or anything).  On bad days, I get the need to turn around and go home before the half-mile point.  But on good days, I get to thinking about writing projects or ideas, and I am able to focus on that more than on my running, and before I even realize it, I'm a block from home.

This particular run, I was thinking of a new "Lara and the Witch" story, but not the ones I've been telling you about.  It occurred to me: What if Lara Demming ran into another girl who used witchcraft at her school?

And my imagination just started to run after that.  

Push-ups Today: 145
Push-ups In March: 810

Now, you've heard me bemoan that Big Anklevich once said to me that you knew a story was written by Rish Outfield if the main character was a big loser.  I know I've complained about that too often (he has since revised his statement that you know it's a story I wrote if the main character is a geek [which I'd say is a step up from being a loser]), but I would be totally fine with it if somebody said to me, "You know it's a story written by Rish Outfield if there's a mention of boobs, breasts or juggs somewhere."

One of my Facebook friends said in 2019 that she was no longer going to write any stories, from that point onward, that didn't have gay, lesbian, or LGBTQ characters in them.  This seemed awfully limiting to me at the time (since I sometimes write Children's, YA, and Western stories), but I think I understand her reasoning.  And I'm tempted to make a similar bold resolution, that I'm not going to write any stories from this point onward that don't mention breasts in them (or sketches or songs or haikus, while I'm at it).

Wish me luck.

Anyway, at the library, I started this story where Lara meets another witch (or "witch" in this girl's case), and if the place had been open its normal hours (instead of its shortened COVID schedule), I might have gotten two thousand words written.

But after my nightly run, I was eager to jot down my ideas, and I ended up writing more at the end of the day, bringing my total up way higher than anytime recently.

Words Today: 2141
Words In March: 7560

I Perform "A Case Study in Natural Selection" on Tales To Terrify

A teenager tries to balance coming of age and simple survival in the post-water apocalypse of Southern California, in Eric Guinard's "A Case Study in Natural Selection and How It Applies to Love," in the newest episode of the Tales To Terrify podcast.  This is among the longest stories I've ever been asked to narrate for somebody else's show, and I decided (a page or so into it) to do it in my Teen Boy Voice 1.  But don't worry, the other characters get Teen Boy Voice 2, in case you miss that one.*

This is an amazingly bleak story, set in a future where global warming has turned the United States into a brutal desert, where human beings struggle for resources, and occasionally spontaneously combust.  Editor Seth Williams asked me to perform the story, but gave me the option to reject it if I chose (they usually do this, and I can't think of a single time I've ever turned them down--though there was one where the main character was definitely supposed to be female, and I asked if they were sure they wanted me to do it--though there have been one or two I wish I had turned down).

Still, it's absolutely made for me (unless, of course, you hate Teen Boy Voice 1), and a couple of moments really resonate with me, imagining an End of the World episode of "The Wonder Years" where everybody gets to nail Winnie Cooper but Kevin.  

I don't think I've ever written anything like this, but I'd like to give it a try (I couldn't manage anything this bleak, though, as shitty as life can be, which includes lines like, "As Liz leaves, I almost tell Tommy how unfair natural selection is.  For in this environment, I've become the least likely to propagate.").  If I, or the world, live that long, that is.

If it interests you, check it out at THIS LINK.

*I don't know why you would; I'm sick to death of it.

February Sweeps - Day 400

Today marks four hundred days in a row of writing, although the numbering is most likely off.  I wish I had some spectacular blogpost for you, summing up all I have learned, or at least a huge number of words I got in today, but nope.  I didn't get anything written until the very end of the night, even though I'd grabbed my laptop, threw it in the car, and headed out around five, hoping to park somewhere and write someplace where I could see the sun set.

But it was cloudy, and I got talking to Big Anklevich on the phone, and before I knew it, the sun was pretty much gone, and I started thinking about heading back and getting a run in before it got dark (and briefly, I did think about trying the rollerblades on for a few minutes, but I just don't dare, and won't even come close to my goal of ten times practicing in March).  I still got my exercise in, though.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 742

So, last night, I did sit down--though it was late, and my heart wasn't really in it--to record the first section/chapter of "Meet the New Clerk."  There are a couple of lines from the ghostly antagonist, and I had intended on giving him a really deep, really big voice.  But in my head, the guy is a Cletus Cassidy type (a skinny, scraggly, big-eyed white dude who isn't PHYSICALLY intimidating, but his crazy eyes tell you to back away anyway), so I gave him a scratchy, amused voice, kind of like Matt Frewer would sound if he played a serial killer (and maybe he has, I dunno).

I also had to establish Meeshelle Lovett's voice, and John Lennon's (although Meeshelle has appeared in two other stories I've recorded before).  The story/novellette starts with Meeshelle speaking to the former Beatle on the phone, and to get his voice in my head, I typed "John Lennon interview" into YouTube, and the first thing to come up was one of the last (if not the last) interviews he gave on TV, with Tom Snyder on the "Tomorrow" show.

Sadly, the interview (which Snyder refers to as "not terribly entertaining or enlightening") didn't do much to affect my impression, and I was sorely tempted to watch the whole thing instead of recording anything.*  But record I did, and the damn program froze over and over, despite me closing every other program running on the system, and probably doubling the amount of time it took to get that short first segment taped in.

John is by far the most beloved Beatle, and not having a lot of friends that revered them, I've mostly had to talk to myself about them and their impact (sometimes I'll jabber at my niece, who until recently, would listen raptly to my wisdom and life experience, before, at age nineteen, she has already eclipsed what I've accomplished), but it's hard to put them in perspective, since we live in a world where artists like Drake and Mariah Carey and I dunno, Mackelmore, are touted as being bigger than the Beatles.

I was very young, but I did live through Michael Jackson during the "Thriller" era, so I do have a little idea how big a deal John, Paul, George, and Ringo were.  Still, as much as I like Michael Jackson (especially that song), it hasn't changed the face of popular music like the Beatles did.  John seemed tired of talking about the Beatles in that interview (in which he was only thirty-five), and I can't imagine, were he alive today, that he'd even want to have the subject brought up.**

Something really interesting that John said in that interview was that people tended to leave him alone in New York.  They knew he lived there, and didn't bother him, didn't pester him for autographs, didn't follow him around.  I guess that's irony for you.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In March: 665 (would it have killed me to do one more push-up?)

I did the second section of "Meet the New Clerk" tonight--I never know whether to break stories into chapters or just segments with asterisks in between.  If it's novel-length, sure, but on something that has just crossed over 15,000 words, I don't know what the answer is.  I break the audio files up into chapters anyway, but there's something pretentious about putting chapters in a short story, or worse, doing that thing where you not only number the chapters, but name each chapter something.

Words Today: 299
Words In March: 5419

*I hadn't quite reached a thousand words for the day, which was my goal, and to my embarrassment, when I stopped recording at nearly two in the morning, I had only added 48 words to my total.

**It reminds me of how Michael Crichton would come into our video store all the time, and I was warned (more than once), "Do not bring up JURASSIC PARK with him."  He seemed like a friendly guy otherwise, always willing to talk about his (other) books and movies, but I never tested him.