May Sweeps - Day 474

I probably won't be getting any push-ups or sit-ups today.  Normally, that would feel like some kind of monumental failure to me, but my mom ordered a new gas grill yesterday, and my brother-in-law and I carried it from the front yard around the house to the back deck, and the damned thing must have weighed two hundred-plus pounds.  I don't understand how I, who exercise every single day, would have a harder time lifting it than he did, but that's how it goes (he works for UPS, though, lifting boxes of various sizes every single shift, so maybe that makes a difference).

For me, though, I have spent the day being surprised and re-surprised by just how excruciating back pain can be.  One day, about twenty years ago, I threw out my back, and it was both extremely painful, and extraordinarily scary, because it hurt so much that I laid down on the floor, and then was completely unable to get up again for several minutes.  

Luckily, I've not experienced that sort of thing again in the years since then, though I have injured myself a time or two.  Today, however, every time I drop my keys, or have to walk up or down stairs, or worst of all, sneeze.*

Push-ups Today: 40
Push-ups In May: 2222

I've been sitting here typing for the last half hour, and the pain goes away, but then I'll change my position, or reach for something, and the pain starts again, like George Lucas making yet another change to the Star Wars Trilogy.

"Who the eff are you, I wonder."

I made the dumb decision to come to the park today instead of the library, thinking I needed a change and the cool, sunless afternoon might feel nice (and it does).  Unfortunately, a family arrived to eat their Chik-Fil-A meal, with their half-dozen children running around, and oddly, it's not the children making all the noise, but the parents, talking to each other so loudly, you'd think they were at a Megadeth concert rather than the gazebo at a city park.

Okay, they've gone off to play with their kids on the swings, and now I'm alone again, and can concentrate on my writing . . . except I don't want to.  It's Church Muse once more, because when that family was jabbering on so distractingly, all I wanted to do was write Layla finding out the truth about her sister, but now that they've gone, I'd rather blog, or go for a drive.  Dang.

Sit-ups Today: 30
Sit-ups In May: 1979

So, at the very end of the night, having not dared do any sit-ups, I considered just going to bed with zero.  But, oddly enough, I got angry instead.  If I failed now, then they win, I thought to myself.  Specifically, they are all the people who I feel inferior to, who never had to sit home on Saturday nights, listening to the radio and watching Lorne Michaels's show, whose parents were proud of them for excelling, holding down a good job, nailing a cheerleader, getting straight A's, or making a touchdown or a goal or a free-throw, who never drove to Idaho alone to see a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event because nobody would go with him.

And that anger fueled me to go into the living room and do the hardest sit-ups I've ever done, wincing when I didn't keep my back completely straight, and holding my arms out in front of me like I was Bela Lugosi playing Frankenstein's Monster.**  I only managed thirty, but I'll do better tomorrow, and not every day can be a home run . . . sometimes I walk to First is gonna have to do.

As far as the twins story goes, I reached that point of no return I've been talking about.  I should have made a list of possibilities, and then picked the one with the most potential, but instead, I just went ahead and chose what I wanted the answer to be, and then started in on that scene.  I've little doubt that I've made the wrong decision (wouldn't it have been brave to just have Layla have lost her mind?  That she couldn't bear to be away from her twin for a weekend, so she invented this idea that something was wrong in order to cope?  Hell, the big revelation could've been that Layla was a single child, and the twin was only in her head, though I'd have had to go through the story when I was done and rephrased every conversation, so I didn't end up with a contradictory pile of garbage like an Ehren Krueger screenplay).

The fact that literally no other people will ever care how I resolve this question should be a bit of a load off, not having to deal with fan backlash, but if anything, it makes it all seem all the more pointless.  Kind of like life, Tommy.  Kind of like life.

Words Today: 1062
Words In May: 13,176

*I have never counted how many times I've sneezed in a day, but it's more than I thought, since each one is like getting an electric shock to my spine.

**Yeah, Bela Lugosi.  That arms outstretched version you see in cartoons and such is based on his blind version of the Monster, from 1943. 

May Sweeps - Day 473

Last night, at about three, I was about to go to sleep, and realized I had very few words written for the day.  And I tried--I really did--to get a couple more paragraphs written, just to raise that total a bit.

And I guess I succeeded . . . sort of.  Because what I ended up with was stuff like the following:

As she had this thought, she saw somebody walking on the sidewalk ahead of her, wearing a white sweater.  It was ___ ____, who had gone on the trip to Washington.

She didn't have time to pull out her arm and fix it, she had to follow the girl.  She made it through the front doors of the school, and lost ___.  But it didn't matter, another student wearing a white jacket, this one ___ ____, came down the hall and headed not for the ___ room, but the library.

Well, that's kind of embarrassing for me now, in the light of day, but I can fill in those blanks, sort of translate the above into English, and I doubt anyone will ever know that zombie me wrote it.  I'm guessing.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1949

I'm back at the library, and I've written zero words.  This blogging thing has grown tiresome, but it would be a lot less so if you'd comment every once in a while.

Push-ups Today: 171
Push-ups In May: 2182

Well, I buckled down and wrote what I could.  I've talked about the fact that I'm pantsing this one, right?  Maybe I never stop talking about that.  The problem is, I'm here now, at The Big Reveal . . . and I still don't know what it is.  I'll think about it on my run tonight, and maybe I can come up with something that satisfies me.  

Words Today: 1444
Words In May: 12,114

May Sweeps - Day 472

Big Anklevich got back to me with the cover for "Two Month Retreat."  Behold:

I only wish the darn story were as good as that cover is.

But ah well.  Live and learn.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1838

My cousin and I went to see ARMY OF THE DEAD tonight, the epic zombie movie by Zack Snyder.  I had wanted to see it ever since hearing the fun premise (Las Vegas is overrun by zombies, and the government plans to nuke the city, but a team goes in right before to raid the vault of one of the casinos of its two hundred million dollar cargo), but I felt weird asking my cousin to go see it with me, since he had really wanted me to go see MORTAL KOMBAT 2021, and I outright refused, having seen MORTAL KOMBAT 1995 in the theaters and never quite being able to get the stench out of my clothes.

But he seemed willing to go, and the local theaters have started to do the discount five dollar Tuesday shows again, so I drove over there and grabbed us tickets.  Half of the theater had been set up for vaccinations, so I had to buy the tickets from the concession stand.*  The girl who rang me up wore a mask, so I can only imagine what she looked like, but her name was Ashton.  I've never known a female Ashton before, but the names of young people tend to be both vexing and fascinating to me.

You might be asking, "Rish, why would you pay to see a movie when it will be available for free on television in three days?"  To which, I say, "Well, I don't have HBO Max, so I wouldn't be able t--"  To which, you say, "No, Rish, it's on Netflix.  You pay twenty-three bucks a month to have Netflix, despite never watching it."**  To which, I guess I have to say, "Really?  It's not on HBO Max?  Huh."  

But the thing is, I love going to the movies.***  I love the history of it, the darkness of the theater, the experience of being whisked away on a journey of laughter, tears, and sticky floors.  There's a laundry list of movies I love that I never saw again after the theater because that is the way I'd prefer to see them (and dang, during the pandemic movie season last summer, I should've gone to more re-releases, instead of the four that I did see (RAIDERS, EMPIRE, JURASSIC PARK, and SUPERMAN).  Going to the movies is one of my favorite things, and I'm happy to pay money to support the local theaters and ticket-takers that were born in 2004.  

The movie itself was very long (I guess you could call it "epic," if you wanted to praise it, but two and a half hours is more than we've ever gotten for a zombie flick), and to call it excessive would be to call THE WIZARD OF OZ colorful, or SE7EN a little dark.  It was fun, though, and super violent and mean-spirited, and had a lot of fun ideas I'd not seen in a zombie movie before (though granted, I haven't seen one since probably WORLD WAR Z, which was even more expensive than this one, though not nearly as enjoyable).  

The film it most reminded me was ALIENS, and after two or three scenes that directly paralleled that classic, it made me wonder what James Cameron would do with a zombie movie.  Besides rack up an unprecedented budget, that is.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 2011

As far as writing goes, I got nearly none done.  I took the work I'd done on Sunday and tried to drop it into the main document, but somehow, I'd written one of the same scenes either on Thursday or Friday or so, and had to find a way to make it fit.  

One of the things they teach you in screenwriting (not quite up there with Show, Don't Tell and Get Into The Scene As Late As You Can) is to Kill Your Darlings.  That means to not be precious with the stuff you write (the scenes, the dialogue, the descriptions, the characters), because to make a good screenplay, you'll have to change and/or cut out quite a lot, even stuff you've grown to love.

I never learned that lesson.  At least, not very well.  It would take six months or longer before I'd be able to do an edit on my scripts with anything like objectivity.  

And I apply that lesson to my prose writing not at all.  Screenplays, by their very nature, require honing and trimming, sometimes endless rewrites, and it was always hard to lose stuff I had worked very hard on, because you feel like you're throwing it out.  In my stories, I end up writing scenes over again when I lose them ALL THE TIME, and occasionally, I'll find the previous scene, and I always try to keep everything from both of them.  In a laundry list of bad character traits I carry around with me, it's annoying, sure, but not one I'm particularly interested in eliminating.

I was talking to my friend Jeff about comic books last night (he called me at nearly two am, because of the time difference), and he was complaining about how Stan Lee wrote comics, packing every single page with two to five pages' worth of dialogue and action.  And today's comics now do the opposite.  I have read modern books where the same story would have been told, in the Silver Age of Comics, in three or four pages.  The sweet spot should be somewhere in the middle, I realize, and my stories probably should be too.

I always complain, when I write a story for a contest, that I have to cut too much out to make it fit into the 1000 or 500 word limit, but I tend not to bat an eye when a two thousand word idea ends up as a four or five thousand word story.

Words Today: 334
Words In May: 10,670

*Oh, this was a weird little thing I noticed.  There was a big sign in front of the two bored medics waiting for people to get their shots that read "VACCINATIONS ARE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY."  But underneath that, in Spanish, it read, "No appointments necessary."  I found that really strange, and I wonder if they were just trying to be accommodating to Hispanics, since they are less likely to come in to get the shot.  That's just a guess, though--I don't know why they'd turn anybody away at this point, since they're surely going to have to throw out vaccine doses that go unused, now that the demand is far outweighed by the supply.

**This is actually true.  I did start watching that ENOLA HOLMES movie about two months ago, but turned it off about halfway through because I was enjoying the accents a little too much, if you know what I mean.  And I never turned it on again.  Every two weeks Netflix sends me an email that says, and I quote, "Don't forget to finish Enola Holmes!"

***Years ago, my friend Kristina told me that I would never, ever get laid if I spent my weekends going to movies, and Bossk bless her, she was a true precog.  

Marshal and I Review THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934)

Marshal Latham and I are both Alfred Hitchcock fans, and have talked about a handful of his movies on Marshal's Journey Into... podcast sub-show "Outfield Excursions."  When I found a copy of a DVD collection of twenty of Hitch's movies at the library, I scooped it up, watching THE LADY VANISHES, and eventually the 1934 version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH.

We thought it would be fun to watch it and the 1958 remake to compare and contrast them (it was the only film Hitchcock made twice in his lengthy career).  The copy I watched was in pretty bad shape, and the whole film is on YouTube for free, ironically, in a slightly better transfer than on the DVD.

Our review of the first movie is available at THIS LINK, with the conversation about the remake to follow.  Marshal does the editing of these podcasts himself, which is just about the most thankless task you can imagine, believe me.

May Sweeps - Day 471

Last night, after writing quite a bit (over a thousand words) and really getting into my story, I decided to save the file and email it to myself.  As I did so, I discovered it was default saving into a folder called Docs . . . and that there were several files in there.  Among them was the missing scene from the Pizza Triangle story (the same doggam scene I rewrote about a month ago), two scenes from the unfinished Will Choner story, the start of a story I wrote for a Broken Mirror contest last year I didn't enter because you had to be a student or faculty of the college that was running it, a section of "Only Have Eyes For You," and, ironically, the missing section from "Two Month Retreat" that I rewrote myself only last week.

It was vexing, because I had searched for a couple of these quite hard, and, as I said, ended up rewriting them because they didn't turn up.  Well, I've got them now, even if I do nothing with them.

I got an email from Paypal the other day that said, "You still owe $4.61 in unpaid postage."  I looked over the email, and it did appear to be from Paypal (legitimately), but it didn't have a transaction number or a name and address that corresponded to it, only a link where I could pay the $4.61.

But it did have a date the package was shipped, so I went into my history to try to figure out what I sent, and why I could have been that off (I mean, $4.61 is a big discrepancy, don't you think?).  But I couldn't find it.  I had shipped six packages that day, but they were all light and cheap.  I ignored the email, because I don't think this one was my mistake (oh, I've made a lot of them in the past, probably a hundred by now--hell, I sent somebody the wrong Ahsoka Tano figure just last week, and the SAME DAY I got an email from the buyer telling me that I'd shipped the 2020 one instead of the 2019 one . . . the 2020 one sold.  How the fudge does that happen?).

I'll let you know if they try and stick me for the $4.61 again.  It seems like, if it's a legitimate grievance, they won't let it go--EVER--but will simply bug me about it, or freeze my account, until I give the devil his due.  You know how it is.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1727

 I continue my search for an image of a silhouetted man in a stairwell.  Today's post (from Unsplash) is this one:

Again, it's not quite right--a little too beautiful, romantic rather than ominous, even if you matted out the blue sky--but somewhat close.  

As far as writing goes, I did go to the library, and stuck the missing "Bundling Made Easy" scene into the master file.*  I was pleased to see that it fit perfectly, bridging the two sections I already had, like frog DNA completing an incomplete string for a dinosaur.  I did have a character who appeared there referred to as Tallulah, but I changed the name to Addie, to match what I had, at some point, changed it to instead (Tallulah's a supremely weird character name, even for me).  

Not that Addie is one I hear every day.

Push-ups Today: 171
Push-ups In May: 1961

Then, I went to paste what I wrote last night into the master file for the twin story ("Exact Duplicate?  Does that work?) . . . and it wasn't there.  

I guess I hadn't emailed it to myself after all.

But I continued the narrative right from where I left off to have ice cream last night, and have just about gotten to the bit where the truth with come out.  And I am anxious to find out the answer.**

It's so weird to have "pantsed" a story like this for so long, to the point where I'll find out the truth when the character does.  Of course, that could be a major disaster if inspiration doesn't strike and I can't think of anything, but I'm not going to let that sway me.

Right now, I have to pee, all of a sudden, and I look at the thirty-two ounce water container sitting in front of me . . . the empty thirty-two ounce water container, and I'm not surprised.  I guess I'll take that as a cue to be done for the day, even though I didn't get nearly as many words as I did last night.

Words Today: 676
Words In May: 10,336

*That's the third "Lara and the Witch" installment I wrote, at the end of last year.  But it takes place AFTER the two I wrote this year.  I wonder if I shouldn't put out the earlier stories before I put that one out.  Or if it even matters.  Like I've said before, these are like the Conan the Barbarian stories Robert Howard wrote, jumping around in time, and not necessarily depending on one another for continuity.  

**I'm kicking around the idea of Alex Bettington, the Senior Class President, walking right up to Layla and planting a sloppy kiss on her mouth.  She has to react naturally, as though she's her sister, but whoa, this is supremely weird.  Shay has been seeing Alex Bettington?  And they kiss with tongue?  What else do they do?  And again, why the hell has Shay never told her about this?  I really, really, really, really like stuff like that in stories and movies, and since I'm living vicariously through these characters, why not let plain, bookish Layla Shonauer get pawed by a handsome and popular guy at school, just to see what that feels like?

May Sweeps - Day 470

So, yesterday on Facebook, I posted an image of this character from SHANG-CHI (or, more specifically, an image of the action figure of this character from SHANG-CHI), whose name is Xialing, along with the caption, "How would I pronounce this character's name?"

Usually, within seconds of posting something online, I'll get notified that someone has Liked or replied to my question or comment.  But I got nothing.  When I logged on a couple of hours later, I was informed that no one had seen my post, but that it had been removed "due to Insensitivity."

Now, I ain't gonna whine about this and claim I'm being treated badly or anything (I'm a grown-up, and as sensitive as I am, mine was the last generation born on the planet that could legitimately take a joke), but I do resent the implication that I was being a douche or a racist or even asking the question sarcastically.*  The name starts with a bloody X, and I honestly wanted to know how it should be pronounced.

Shoot, now I am angry about it.  I hadn't been before, just a bit disappointed.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 1616

In today's coverage of me trying to find images to use from the website Unsplash, I came across this photo:

It's really, really great, though not appropriate for any story of mine that comes to mind.  Even so, do you see a face on that tree, or is it just me?  Abigail Hilton needn't answer, since she doesn't see faces.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In May: 1790

My nephew, over the past year or so, has gotten really, really fixated on cards (mostly Pokemon, but also basketball and football).  He told me that the Mickey Mantle card is the most valuable card in the world (the equivalent of an Action Comics number 1), and I didn't believe him, remembering a card from the Twenties that was the gold standard of baseball cards, and even on the cover of the UK edition of Stephen King's "Needful Things."**

But I looked it up, and indeed, the 1952 Mickey Mantle by Topps is the number one.  It sold for over five million at auction this past January.

That reminded me, though, that when we were spending months cleaning out my childhood home, my mom told us we should pick the things that we personally wanted, and set them aside, so that they didn't get claimed, taken, or thrown out (all of which did happen with fairly-valuable stuff).  I ended up tossing about a third of my own stuff, from yearbooks to letter to toys to clothes, and the only thing I wanted that belonged to my dad was the sword my grandpa brought from France and Germany in 1945.  I suspect the other siblings would've wanted it, but they don't love World War II and Nazis as much as I do.

Whoops, guess I should rephrase that in today's political climate.  

I love GERMAN Nazis, not American ones.  

Or Canadian, while we're at it.

But while I was cleaning the downstairs bookshelves (mostly unchanged since I was in high school), I found my dad's autographed baseball that he told me he'd gotten signed by Mickey Mantle and a couple of other Yankees on a trip to Los Angeles in 1961 or '62, where they played the Dodgers, and the team hung around after the game to meet fans.

Well, I'm not embarrassed to say that I absconded with that little item too, despite not being a sports guy.  I guess I should mention it to my brother and ask if he'd like the baseball, since it does nothing for me but sit in a drawer.***

And, if I'm reading you right, you've just asked yourself, "Why doesn't he sell the baseball, if it means so little to him, and it was signed by the Commerce Comet?"  To which, I say, I thought he was known as The Mick, but maybe that's just me being racist (I am suspiciously fond of the Third Reich, after all), but also, well . . . Mantle may have signed the ball, but it's in my dad's handwriting.

So, at the end of the night, I really wanted to watch TV and veg out, but I hadn't written a single word.  But I sat myself down, with no TV and no music, and made myself write at least three hundred words on my twin story.  Finally, I had reached the bit that made me want to write it in the first place: where Layla decides to take Shayla's place and find out just what the deuce is going on.

I got quite into it, and realized around one-thirty or so that I hadn't watched the program I'd intended to (and that the ice cream I'd gotten out of the freezer no longer qualified as "ice" cream), so I stopped, quickly watched my show, slurped up half of the ice cream, and called that good.  As I always say, a real writer would've just kept on writing, and tossed the ice cream container in the garbage when he was done.

Words Today: 1109
Words In May: 9660

*I originally typed the word that starts with "face-" that means the same thing, but I remember swearing in 1991 that I would never, EVER use that word, and I've made it close to thirty years, so why not use "sarcastically?"

**It was Honus Wagner from 1909.  I looked it up so you didn't have to.

**Of course, my grandfather's sword does nothing for me but sit in the closet, but I ought to pound a couple of nails in the wall above where I hang my microphone so I can look at it from time to time.

May Sweeps - Day 469

I'm at the library again.  It closes in almost one hour (fifty-something minutes).  My goal is to a) write at least five hundred words, and b) to stop farting.

So last night, I went ahead and recorded "Everybody Poops" in the voice of (Fake) Morgan Freeman.  I'd say it's up there alongside the worst things I have EVER done.*  I can't say why I did it, your honor, only that, were I to go back in time, I'd not do it again, I swear.

Except . . . I went to Target the other day, and I saw this book on their shelf:

And I thought, "Wouldn't that be fun read in the voice of Jimmy Stewart or Al Pacino?"

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 1516

I continue my search for a cover-appropriate silhouettes on the Unsplash website.  Today's photo is this one:

Gosh, I love images like this.  They're so simple, yet so evocative.  It makes me think of PSYCHO, and maybe made you think of TITANIC, but it would work great for a horror story cover.  Just not the one I'm trying to find an image for.  And crap, I realize I've been writing about this particular cover art since April 7th.

And that reminds me, I did ask Gino to do me an image for my story "Dying Is Easy," the other day, and sent him my own sketch for what I wanted.  This is what I managed, and the poor Kiwi bastage has already wasted far too long trying to make a presentable version of it.  Whatever the Unified Wellington School District is paying the guy, it ain't enough.

I'll keep you updated.  After all, I gotta have stuff to blog about every single day.  Ugh.

And the library kicked everybody out.  But, I had managed 619 words, so I consider one of my above two goals achieved.

Sometimes I will get random friend requests on Facebook, from people I don't know, or worse, hot Eastern European model types that I sense are not who they say they are.  Often, I would accept their requests sight unseen, since I have/had a podcast that strangers listened to.

In 2016, I got a request from another one with a funny name and I accepted.  He immediately sent me the message "hello  how r u" with no punctuation.  A month later, he sent "how r u" again.  I didn't reply because, well, I guess I deserve to be alone.  In 2019, I got another message, this one an emoticon of a hand waving, with the message "Gwazo is waving at you."  I ignored it, but a few months later, he sent the message "Don't kill her" to me.

Now, I have no idea what he meant by this (whether it was some odd spam, madness, or a genuine attempt to get through to me before I degenerate further), but I actually responded to this one, typing back, "Alright.  But I would've gotten away with it this time."

I also have little clue what he/it thought of that, except that it took him three months to reply with "my friend."  Warms your heart, don't it?

Push-ups Today: 170
Push-ups In May: 1724

Today I did something I've only done once or twice before, since this whole thing started (the first time was on Valentine's Day, so it's easy to see why): I went on TWO runs.  It was about eleven o'clock, and I was going to watch "Saturday Night Live," but first I did some push-ups, and then I thought, "Why not run again?  After all, my clothes already stink from the first one."  

So I did.  No reason.

Lastly. I was looking at an article about the Israel/Hamas conflict going on in Gaza right now, and while I was reading about the number of women and children dead (nearly a hundred), I saw that people on the internet are still whinging about Karen Gillan's (glorious) outfit in JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE.

To which, I post both Captain Picard AND Commander Riker facepalms:

Thank you, sirs.

 

Words Today: 667 (shoot, over by one)
Words In May: 8551

*I guess it would rate right below letting a stranger bleed to death outside my Los Angeles apartment, and right above carving the f-word into a car with my keys in 1991.  Your mileage may vary, though.

May Sweeps - Day 468

I haven't gotten beaten up (physically) in a long time.  But the day after getting the vaccination shot feels awfully similar to the day after a beating from one of the bastards of yesteryear.  I have to admit that, despite having no excuse for it (I sat on the couch and watched three or four hours of television last night until I finally fell asleep), I took a nap in the afternoon, and still feel weak and sore and fat-arsed.

My sister told me that one of her coworkers is extremely religious (her husband is a pastor) and said that she absolutely will not get the shot, because only atheists get the vaccine.

Sigh.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 1416

Exercising was hard today (for the aforementioned reason), and for the first time this year--and maybe since I had COVID or earlier--I had to alternate running and walking on my usual 1.6 mile jog.    Honestly, I had suspected that maybe all my soreness and weakness was psychological (ie, I had been told that I would get knocked out by the second shot, so I convinced myself I was hurting when I really wasn't), but I just had a difficult time doing anything, from going down stairs to putting the lawn mower away (my nephew has now been given the job of mowing the lawn, which is fine and good, but he's not capable of emptying the grasscatcher or getting the mower back in the shed).

If I don't feel better tomorrow, I'll start to worry that it might be AIDS.  I think I heard the weatherman on Fox News mention it's AIDS season again.

Sorry.

I continue searching for images of spooky silhouettes on Unsplash.  Today's photo is this one:

Now, THAT is actually pretty darn good.  I like that it's vague and ominous (and vaguely ominous), so I totally could use it for "Meet the New Clerk," but I don't think I will.  I have this image in my head of a scary man standing in the shadows in a stairway (probably because that's a scene in the story, and one I thought worked quite well in the recording process).  I don't know if I'll find one like that, exactly, but maybe I'll find a picture of a silhouette, and a picture of a staircase, and ask Gino if he'll combine them for me (or Big could do it too, I suspect).  

In the meantime, I'll keep looking for pictures.

Big Anklevich tells me that "Florian" is a masculine name, so I oughtn't to use it for Victoria Holcomb's sister.  But I like it because--

And then it occurred to me: I wanted to use Florian because it sounds like Klarion.  As in, Klarion the Witchboy.  

Again, I've never read a comic (or seen whatever animation the above image is from) with Klarion in it.  I just love the name, to the sickening point of having to buy a comic with him in it.*

I remember in THE LAST BOY SCOUT, Bruce Willis's horrid daughter (played by Danielle Harris) was named Darian.  I thought it was the worst name I had ever heard.  That was, what, 1991?  And I still remember it.  So, so weird.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 1554

Because I had recovered somewhat from my lethargy (and because Krispy Kreme was about to close), I asked my nephew if he wanted to go with me to Krispy Kreme and get some donuts.  At nearly that exact same time, my sister and brother-in-law were going to a friend's house to play some cards, and my nephew didn't want to go with them.  So he said he would go with me--the lesser of two evils?--and as soon as my sister left, he no longer wanted to go.

Even so, I thought he was just being a selfish little kid, so I made him put his shoes on, get in the car, and drive over with me.  But when we got to the donut shoppe, he absolutely refused to get anything, even though I was buying.  When I asked him why, he wouldn't say (I suspect it was to spite me, but he probably hasn't the vocabulary to express it, since he spends all his afternoons watching video game playthroughs on YouTube), and when I told him to get a donut he could eat tomorrow, if he wasn't hungry now, he still said no.  When I asked him what normally liked, he wouldn't say, so I ended up ordering donuts for myself.

And you know . . . that made them taste not as good.

They weren't like ash in my mouth or anything, but the experience was definitely soured.

Lastly, I'm getting closer to the end of my twin story.  Since I don't know how it's going to end, I don't know how close I am, but I'm very near to the big revelation scene, which I conceived of right before deciding this would be my next story.  

I really have to decide where this is going to go--especially if the story ends right afterward.  I got so close to a thousand words today, it isn't even funny, but I gave up after rewriting a sentence, and then in trying to copy and paste it into the wordcounter, I ended up pasting it over the ENTIRE document, taking 947 words down to 26.  You'd give up too, kids.  Maybe longer ago than I did.

Words Today: 963
Words In May: 7884

*Ooh, maybe I'll sit down and read the comic and do an episode about it, combined with the one where Morgan Freeman explains that everybody poops.

May Sweeps - Day 467

After finishing the last books (in the past month, I read "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett, "Later" by Stephen King, and "The Death of Mrs. Westaway" by Ruth Ware), I picked up the latest Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith.  I think* that when I started the series, Detective Strike was older than me, and now, just a few breaths, naps, and farts later, he's quite a bit younger than I am.  Messed up that.

I have only an hour--less than an hour now--of time here at the library, and I have set two goals for myself: one is to write at least three hundred words (easy if I have a scene I'm passionate about, hard if nothing comes to mind), and the other is to come up with a title for my most recently-finished "Lara and the Witch" story.  

In it, Lara (who I believe I placed in 9th grade in that one) decides to give her English teacher a happy Valentine's Day.  So, I want a romance-type title, if I can find one.**

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1316

I looked over the list of slogans (a different list than I used the last two times, and the time before that), and found "The company to remember for life," which is the motto of American National Insurance Company.  It doesn't apply to this story (nor does "We keep our promises," the slogan for America Mutual Insurance Company), but they COULD work for stories.

The motto of Western National Insurance is "The relationship company."  And that's the closest one to what I'm looking for on the list.  The problem is, that's not a sentence, just the subject in a sentence, and it makes for a lousy title (considering Lara would be the "company" refers to).

Push-up Today: 169
Push-ups In May: 1504

I continue searching for silhouettes on Unsplash.  Today's photo is this one:

I like it a lot, especially the mist/fog, but it won't work for what I'm looking for, because the figure looks like a teenager, instead of a horribly-burned ghost like Bob Englund used to play.

I got my second COVID shot today (Pfizer, which the eleven year old pharmacist told me was not difficult to spell, despite me saying, "Well, does it start with a Ph, an F, or what?"  To which, she said, "Ph").  They just opened it up to everybody over twelve years old here, and I was about a week late getting mine, but ah well, it's not a race.

Unless it's a race to Krispy Kreme donuts.  I'd forgotten you get a free donut with vaccination card.

Words Today: 339
Words In May: 6921

*Though it could be an old man's faulty memory playing with me here.

**Apropos of nothing, I decided to have Layla's Science teacher in my twin story be the same Science teacher Lara had in the aforementioned story, just a couple of years later.  That does, now that I think of it, mean that Lara and Layla might go to the same school at the same time.  Hmm.  Maybe I'll make a point of including at least one student in common, just to entertain myself. 
Because it *certainly* doesn't entertain you.  (Huff!)

Rish Outcast 197: Will He Finish What He Begins?

Rish talks about abandoning stories partway through, and reads THE ENTIRETY of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Lighthouse."

To download the episode directly, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon--finally?--just click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Finish Him!" Moretto.

May Sweeps - Day 466

My dog, I have accomplished so little today.  I have zero excuses too.  I don't know what to say.

Except I could run over to the park and sit on a blanket in the sun and write--and not get up until I have five hundred words.  That's what a person with ambition would do.*

I did sit down and re-record the first bit of that story today, and managed it in about a third the time as I did it the first time through.  That sounds pretty efficient, unless you take into account that, since writing it in September, that would count as my FOURTH draft.

So, I did run (drive, actually, though a run would've been a lot more healthy) to the park just before the sun set, and threw a blanket down on the grass, opened my laptop, and . . .  well, it was cold.  It was February cold, for some reason, not May cold.  There were tons of people there at the park, but as soon as the sun went down, they scattered like cockroaches in Big Anklevich's rec room.

I forced myself to sit there until I got 500 words, then I went back to the car, shivering like I'd had an icepack on my taint (speaking of Big Anklevich . . .).  But hey, at least one time I suffered for my art this week.

Which is nothing compared to your suffering, were you to read the story.

I had a conversation with Marshal Latham the other day, wherein the name Florian came up.  It's such a bizarre name to my ears, one I've never heard before (that I can remember).  I've decided to name at least one of Old Widow Holcomb's sisters Florian because of it.  Hopefully, I'll find another name I like just as much for another one (I can't recall if I established she had two sisters or three).**

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1205

My mom brought 75% of a cheesecake home from her birthday party on Saturday, and gifted it to me, since she will never eat it (she won't even taste it).  So, I tried to do a few more push-ups than normal (and 11 more sit-ups) to make up for it.  I know, I know, it would take a thousand more.  But who asked you?

The other day, I was searching for silhouettes (a term I've typed into search engines so many times I can actually spell it now), and found this disturbing image on Unsplash:

I can't think of a story to use it with, but the idea of something showing in a reflection but not in real life is wonderfully creepy.

Push-up Today: 150
Push-ups In May: 1335

I stayed up fairly late with Marshal Latham podcasting last night.  We talked about a 2020 horror movie called THE TURNING, which had, cards on the table, one of the three or four worst endings I've ever seen in a movie (HALLOWEEN 6 is up there, as well as a flick called LOST SOULS that I went to a test screening of and never quite heard whether they'd fixed it or not).

Anyway, THE TURNING was so bad, I felt rather guilty making Marshal watch it***, and then he revealed to me that he, in turn, made his entire family watch it.  And his wife made him sleep, not on the couch ("Couch is too good for the likes of you"), but in the barn that night.  And that meant he had to go across the street, since his neighbors have a barn and he does not.

He seems eager to let me prattle on and on, but I never know if I am irritating or inconveniencing him.  For years (more than ten, at this point), I used to bug Big Anklevich about sitting down and recording an audio commentary for a movie sometime, that we would put out for our podcast listeners.  It never happened, or even came close to happening, as far as I can remember.

But last night, Marshal mentioned the possibility, and I said, "Yeah, I guess we could do that sometime.  I'd have to use my sister's Disney+ account, though."  To which he said, "Alright, that sounds good.  Let's do it right now."  And we did.  So weird.

So, so weird.

Words Today: 524
Words In May: 6582

*Yeah, yeah, a person with ambition would write a thousand words.  And do it every single day.  And never fritter a single day away.  And live his life so that people took their hats and/or pants off whenever they saw him, saying, "Now that's the death I want to have."

**I looked it up, and there's a mention of a Tanya, that was either Holcomb's sister or her cousin.  The witch tells Lara that Tanya was always trouble, but Lara doesn't know which girl that refers to.  Honestly, I'd love Holcomb's sisters to all have distinctive, fun names, like Ariel's sisters did in LITTLE MERMAID.

***It got an F Cinemascore, which is really rare.  Marshal asked me how rare that was, and I didn't know.  But when I looked it up, only thirty-three movies have ever gotten an F Cinemascore.

Little piece of advice: when you do an image search for "F," turn on your SafeSearch option.