Nerves.

I joined the Online Writing Workshop for SF, F, and Horror a while back, intending to get feedback on my novel, Gods of Gray Hill. As they say, "you get what you ask for." Most of it has been really good, but I have to brace myself every time I see a message in my inbox letting me know I have a new review.

I've had only one "I don't get it" review; the rest have all been painfully helpful. The story really is coming out of my head and forming on paper, finally. I've still bitten off more than I can chew, but if I can pull this off, I should be able to do pretty much whatever I want to.

Anyway. I finished a particularly agonizing revision of an early chapter and decided to reward myself by going over an old short story and posting that to get feedback.

The story is called "Things you don't want but have to take." I wrote it one day while sitting in a systems class for work, because the instructors have to repeat everything they say six times and then answer questions. I originally submitted it to Weird Tales. The guy that read it sent a short note, stating in no uncertain terms that he didn't get it and that it was too weird. No strong language, no gore. Go figure.

I reread the story, and it gave me the creeps, so I decided to do a little editing and send it off. A week later, I just posted it.

Tell me why I'm positively twitchy about this story, having spent all of maybe ten hours on it both then and now, when I've spent years on GH but only need a little bucking up to face crits on it.

Dude.

I was reading a book of Tom Waits interviews the other day when I saw that he did the voice of Tommy the Cat on the eponymous song by Primus. Looked it up on the credits. TW's there, as "voices."

Cooooool.

A P.S. of Duh.

Tommy the Cat. O-kay. It took a while, but I put it together. Tom Waits. Tommy the Cat. How often is it you get to sing on your own hommage song?

The Scientist.

I had just banished Ray to her room, and "The Scientist" by Coldplay came on. She'd been eating the covers off her books, after everything else she'd been doing for the last hour.

A line from the chorus:

Nobody said it was easy/but no one ever said it would be so hard.

--So I let her come out.

Zen monks shave their heads, don't they?

The new Disturbed album, "Ten Thousand Fists" is out.

A quote from "The Gateless Gate," a very old Zen text:

'Joshu went to a hermit's and asked, "What's up? What's up?"(="Have you any Zen?") The hermit lifted up his fist. Joshu said, "The water is too shallow to anchor here," and went away. Joshu visited the hermit once again a few days later and said, "What's up? What's up?" The hermit raised his fist again. Then Joshu said, "Well given, well taken, well killed, well saved." And he bowed to the hermit. '

All this and lots of guitars, too!

P.S. I thought I should mention that I went to Borders to buy the album with what I had left on a gift card, but then I saw the Strangers in Paradise 3rd pocket book. Zen Schmen.

P.P.S. Lee, the sweetie, bought me a copy of "Ten Thousand Fists." There's an excellent cover of "Land of Confusion" by Genesis. Ironically, there's a verse in the song:
"I won’t be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We’re not just making promises
That we know, we’ll never keep."
Sigh.

P.P.P.S. Because I took the new album to work and telling the story of how Lee found out I wanted it, I ended up trying to explain to someone what a koan was, and what this koan in particular meant. This did not go so well.

"My brain hurts," she said. "Thank you."

D--- it.

I finally got to see Kaylee.

I brought my camera.

I took 0 pictures.

This speaks volumes of my ability to focus on anything except the cuteness that is Kaylee's little head, which still smells like baby head.

Bush

Every time I see one of those ubiquitous "W" stickers, I ask, "Did you get what you wanted yet? Or are you just getting what you asked for?"

Commentary on Katrina by the wise and wonderful Marn.

It's going to be Bugs Bunny in the carrot patch. Again.

Fictional Truth.

Just as when a character says "the plan is..." it indicates that things will not go according to plan, when a characters says, "we know that..." whatever follows is wrong, wrong, wrong.

This goes double (for six wrongs) if anyone agrees.

Steven Wright.

I hurt myself at work today, laughing so hard:

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Half the people you know are below average.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth.
On the back it said, "Wish you were here."

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.

I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They
went "Aaaaahhhh..."

I still have my Christmas Tree. I looked at it today. Sure enough, I couldn't
see any forests.

The sky is falling...no, I'm tipping over backwards.

Is "tired old cliche" one?

I had my coathangers spayed.

I took lessons in bicycle riding. But I could only afford half of them. Now I
can ride a unicycle.

I put my air conditioner in backwards. It got cold outside. The weatherman on
TV was confused. "It was supposed to be hot today."

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I'd doubled my age in a year.
I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I'm six I'll be ninety.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the
ocean would be if that didn't happen.

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.

In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often
I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a
woman in Madagascar. She said, "Cut it out."

I got up one morning, couldn't find my socks, so I called Information. She
said, "Hello, Information." I said, "I can't find my socks." She said,
"They're behind the couch." And they were!

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box.
I was an only child....eventually.

I saw a bank that said "24 Hour Banking", but I don't have that much time.

I love to go shopping. I love to freak out salespeople. They ask me if they
can help me, and I say, "Have you got anything I'd like?" Then they ask me
what size I need, and I say, "Extra medium."

I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap
department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know
when to stop unwrapping.

All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs
synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a
department store...with a pricing gun. She said, "Give me all of the money in
the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."

A cop stopped me for speeding. He said, "Why were you going so fast?" I said,
"See this thing my foot is on? It's called an accelerator. When you push down
on it, it sends more gas to the engine. The whole car just takes right off.
And see this thing? This steers it."

I can remember the first time I had to go to sleep. Mom said, "Steven, time to
go to sleep." I said, "But I don't know how." She said, "It's real easy.
Just go down to the end of tired and hang a left." So I went down to the end
of tired, and just out of curiosity I hung a right. My mother was there, and
she said "I thought I told you to go to sleep."

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He
caught every other fish.

I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats on
them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.

Shark Boy and Lava Girl:

Children's movies should be rated on a scale of one to five based on the number of times you can stand to sit through the movie in a theater. Second-run theaters count.

The parental survival rate after three viewings of SBLG is 100%. Three stars.

Would you like a baguette?

I'm at Panera Bread, trying to order a cup of chai. There's nobody at the bakery counter, so I stand in line at the cafe counter. Someone comes out from the back of the house and starts sweeping the bakery, so I ask her if I can get a cup of coffee from her. She doesn't look up, so I laugh and say, "Can you hear me? Can you hear me?"

She jumps. "Oh!"

"Can I order coffee over here, or should I wait in the line?"

"Oh, no," she says, and starts punching things into a register. "Just a cup of coffee?"

"No, actually," I say. "A cup of chai."

"A chai latte or an iced chai?"

Now, the menu doesn't say chai latte, but Hot Spiced Chai. "Not a latte, no coffee in it," I say. "But still hot."

"That's a latte," she says.

"But I don't want the coffee," I repeat, because I quit drinking large amounts of caffeine over four years ago and I am afraid.

"There's no coffee. A latte just means, just means it's--" she holds out her hands in some kind of gesture I recognize as "Good-God-what-is-the-word-I'm-looking-for"-- "hot!"

"That's what I want. Just a hot chai. No coffee."

She rings me up and makes me a big mug of chai. "Here you go," she says.

"Thanks," I say. "I'm sorry. I'm just easily confused."

"Me too," she says.

"We should be careful around each other," I say.

She looks at me like I'm an idiot, or maybe that's just self-defense, because I think she's confused. But that's okay, because she just walked over to my table and offered me a baguette, because they had too many baguettes. She has been passing out baguettes to various people. Not everyone, though. I'm not sure why.

And I noticed that most of the people, when they accepted their baguettes, got this look on their faces, like she was an idiot.

One man said, "Do I want this huge loaf of bread? Do I look like I'm an idiot?"