I lied.

I know.   I know.
I lied.
I said I was going to post more.  But I didn't.
Then later, I said I would post more.
And again, I didn't.
Now I've gone about a month with no post.
I'm sorry.

At my birthday, which was recent, I looked at all of the projects I had floating around.
There are a lot.

I have a picture book of the Soft Ninja I want to do.
I have a distopian novel I started.
I have a children's novel I started.
I have two separate concept musical albums I've been wanting to record.
I have sketches I've written that I want to record.
I have poems I've written that I want to compile into a book.

The list actually goes on for a while.

The thing is, every couple of months I realize all of the projects I've begun, but abandoned.  When a project gets hard I start a new one because starting is so much easier than finishing.

But when I hit my most recent birthday I made a promise to myself.  I told myself I would not do anything else until I finished one of these projects.  A specific project, truth be told.  One of my oldest open projects: the children's novel.

So I've been writing.  I am making progress.  But it is slow.  It is hard.  The desire to cry is my partner.  In fact, by writing this blog post I am breaking my promise to do nothing else.

But I am going back to it now.  I don't know how long it will be.  I will not come back to this blog until the first draft of the book is complete.  But when I do return, I will have authored a book.

Even if the book sucks it will be a huge accomplishment for me.

I really hope it doesn't suck.

Poem - Change

I regret to admit that I am a little over my head at work.  I hate my job... well... that's not true.  I don't hate my job or my boss or the people I work with.  I hate that my job is my job and not someone else's job, and that my job is not some other job that I would rather be my job.

But you know this.

And I assume that you have assumed that while I hate my job, I would hate even more being without a job and a means to feed myself and my family.  I would hate that more.

Anyway, it's federal reporting time and I am swamped with work.  This will last about another week.

In the mean time I hope to offer up some tidbits there and here for your reading consumption.

Today's offering is a poem.

I don't know if it is good.  It may not be.  I like to say that my poems have been rejected by the finest poetry magazines around.  But never have they been accepted by anyone.  So they may suck hard.  You decide.  If you want you can even let me know.

Change

Why avoid change?

No one else will.

You try to keep from changing

In a desperate attempt to hold the world

In some idealized past

Or to prevent an imagined troubled future.

But the change is already in you.

For in the past you were not trying

To prevent change.

So in that small respect

You have changed.

But even if that is the same

You cannot keep your friends,

Your acquaintances

And everyone around you

From changing.

They will change.

Whether they want to or not.

And your world will be different.

You will be the only unchanging thing

In a sea of change.

And while you desperately cling

To your romanticized past,

Pretending in your heart that you are holding things together,

You will become the chaos

To everyone else’s predictable future.

“But if we all try to stay the same,”

You might suggest,

“If we all try to prevent change,

We could make it work.”

That is possible.

But here you assuming that everyone was happy

Back then.

They weren’t.

So they have changed.

And your insistence that they stay the same

Is like asking them to stay unhappy.

But maybe you hope to convince them

That they were happy.

Maybe you think you can make all the world believe

Things were better back then

When they weren’t.

And that we should all work to advance to the past.

Maybe you can convince them to change

So that they will work

To prevent change.

But don’t count on me.

In this matter, ironically,

I am resolute.

Though everyone else

May join in your stationary parade

I will not.

I will throw no confetti.

I will shout no cheers of praise.

I will not stand by and observe.

I will not even be me.

For I have changed.

The Trump Presidency

Ok, guys.  I'm not a Donald Trump fan.  I never have been.  Never liked the Apprentice.  But I'm starting to think that his presidency may not be all that bad.

My reason?

Well, it isn't exactly causal, but the Georgia Department of Labor, where I work, now has 2 ply toilet paper.  2 PLY!!!!

That kind of luxury can wipe away a lot of ills.

Ill Advised

I like to wander a little around the city before I reluctantly head on into work.  While I'm on these little walks occasionally I'll come across something that just seems like it wasn't well thought out.  I'll tag these with the label "ill advised".

I have to say it - and if you aren't thinking it then you should be - "Ju-Tox" is an awful name.

Seriously?  JU and TOX.  No.  This is ill advised.  Someone either failed to run this name by their more responsible family member or the more responsible family member was either drunk or angry or both.

First lets talk about the TOX part.  I assume that tox is meant to be an abbreviation of detox, but detox is already an abbreviation of detoxification.  You cannot abbreviate abbreviated words.  It gets confusing.  The DE in detoxification is a prefix which means "to remove".  If you take the DE out of detoxification, then you have toxification, which isn't a word, or you have toxication, which is.  Toxication means poisoning.  So best case scenario Tox means leaving in the toxin.  Worse case scenario it means actually poisoning someone.

Ok, now we have to talk about the JU.

Look, I know that Ju is supposed to be short for juice, but it doesn't sound that way.  It sounds like Jew.  And that is just wrong.

If we ignore the obvious religious overtones, and I don't think we should, we still have the serious problem of the TOX.  If JU is for juice then the best I can guess from the name alone is that this store is selling juiced poison.

But maybe that's the point.  Maybe this is a "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" juice joint.

Owner:     What can I get you kind patron?
Patron:     I had the Liquid Nicotine yesterday.  It was good, but I want something new today.
Owner:     How about the Chocolate Asbestos?
Patron:     Yeah, that sounds great.  Can I get extra oxidants added to that?
Owner:     Sure.  For an extra dollar I can also add tar.
Patron:     Go for it!

This lovely picture I posted to my Instragram about a year ago.  In case it is not obvious this is a delivery van for some alcohol that George Clooney endorses.  I'm sure it's delicious (if you like that kind of thing) and that it costs a fortune.

But I didn't take the photo because the drink looked bad.  I took the picture because of the slogan written across the bottom of the DELIVERY TRUCK.  "Brought to you by those who drink it."

Now I will admit that it doesn't say, "Brought to you by those who are currently drinking it," but it does leave the possibility open.  I think this phrase was ill advised.  It needs a quick rewrite.

Ghost Pirate Trees

Ok, Blogger rant below.  I wanted to post a video to give any readers who wander by something to look at.  The video above is of a tarp that blew away on my in-law's farm.  It got caught in the trees and now looks like a spooky ghost pirate ship... in the woods.  I thought the effect was cool.  Hopefully it will translate in this video.

I don't know if this video will work.  The new "free" Blogger phone app sucks.  I'm sorry, Blogger, but it does.  You cannot publish anything in the app.  You can write a draft in it, but if you want to publish it you have to purchase the non-free version.  Or, you can write the draft in the app then come to your computer and publish the draft.

Bad, But Good At Being Bad

In his book “On Writing” Stephen King categorizes writers in four ways; bad, competent, good and great.  He goes on to say that a bad writer can never be made competent and a good writer can never be made great.  A competent writer, however, can achieve goodness with considerable practice in reading and writing.

I wonder what that means for the great writer who never practices or the bad writer who practices constantly.  Can you be a bad-great writer?  Can you be a good-bad writer?  This is important for me to know.

Mr. King humbly does not categorize himself as a great writer.  He may think it and it may be so, but he does not say it.  In fact, he gives every indication, short of saying it, that he would call himself a competent writer who has achieved, through decades of devotion to his craft, goodness.

This puts me in a troubled state.  I know I am not great.  I have enough presence of mind to understand that everything I’ve created, poems, short stories, all of it, falls short of the glory of being memorized by high school seniors or being collected in a publisher’s century in review. 

I also have considerable reservations with putting myself in the same place as Stephen King.  How can I?  The man has written forty books and all of them – every last one – has been a world-wide best seller.  Being a best seller once could be a fluke, but not forty times.

Further, I have submitted my works to several publications in the past.  Poems and short stories have been coldly and sometimes politely rejected by all.  I have a hard time even getting family to read my short stories.  The short ones.

This leads me to the conclusion that my writing must be bad.  Now, don’t fret, dear reader of this widely ignored blog, for I have no intention of ceasing my writing.  I enjoy it.  But I’m curious.  If I practice my craft as Mr. King instructs in his book, can I become a good-bad writer?  Can I be bad, but be good at it?

Mensa

Am I the only one who thinks that membership in Mensa is rarely a good thing?

In case you are not aware, Mensa is an organization of really smart folk.  In order to join you have to have an IQ of 130 or so.  In other words, you have to be in the top 98^th percentile of human intelligence.  But that’s the only requirement.  You have to score high on a test.  There is no requirement for having accomplished anything of greater significance than that. 

Or more plainly, there is no requirement for having accomplished anything.

I can’t imagine joining Mensa.  I used to dream about it as a child.  I wanted some way to prove to others that I was brilliant in spite of what they thought.  I wanted to point to my membership and say, “You were wrong about me.”  But invariably my imaginings would go on to the wonderful things I had also done aside from being in the group.

Over time I’ve changed my thinking on this.

In my life I have heard a small number of people boast of being in Mensa, usually it’s someone on some reality TV game show.  Whether they did well in the game is beside the point.  The point is I hadn’t heard of them prior to the show and I never heard of them after.

For me, membership in Mensa is like a giant sign saying, “Here is someone who should be crushing it in life.  He should have accomplished everything because, after all, he’s a genius.”  (I use the masculine pronoun here because I’m a guy.  It could just as well be a woman.)  I wouldn’t want to join such a group until I had accomplished something to prove I deserved it.  Something beyond the IQ test.  But then, if I had accomplished said thing, I don’t think I would feel the need to have a Mensa membership to validate me.

If you are in Mensa and you haven’t done something so awesome that most people would say, “Hey that’s genius,” then you’ve really wasted your time.  But that’s just my opinion.  And I confess that it did not take me a lot of effort to make it.

Stephen King's "On Writing"

It was brought to his attention that he had written everything in the passive voice.  How could this have happened?  What could have been done to prevent it?

His writing was loved by him.  His process was carefully honed.  But, it seemed, his time had been wasted.

A tiny flaw was brought to his attention.  A passive voice had escaped his notice.  A shitty writing had become of his everything.  A frown he was had.

****

So I’m reading Stephen King’s “On Writing.”  I was reading it and loving it until he got to his metaphor of the tool box.  Apparently your tool box is supposed to have vocabulary, grammar and some non-grammatical no-nos to avoid.  There are other things too, but I haven’t gotten to them yet.

So I’m pretty good on vocab.  I’m not the greatest in the world, but I think I hold my own with respect to my peers.  King says that you should not intentionally improve your vocab, you should just read and improve it passively.  I don’t agree.  I mean, that’s a fine way of doing it, but I like looking new words up in the dictionary.  What I don’t do is intentionally try to use big words in my writing.  I think this is really what King was hoping writers avoid.  I use big words as I would in my regular speech, which is to say, on occasion.

On grammar I’m middle of the road.  Believe it or not, I learned most of my English grammar in my college German class.  I had been taught the rules before, but they didn’t stick until I learned them again in German.  I still have issues from time to time.  If I ever read a sentence I’ve written that confuses me grammatically I just rewrite it in a way that makes sense.  I will confess, however, that I do have a tendency to write sentences that contain a lot of commas and semicolons.  I’ll work on it.

But the one that got me was his list of no-nos.  In his list he says avoid over use of adverbs.  Got it.  I’ve got that completely.  Totally completely.  He also suggests avoiding sentences that aren’t sentences.  Duh.  Stay away from adverbs in phrasing, such as:

“I hate eating sand,” Michael said painfully.

King suggests we stick with he-said/she-said.  I was happy to hear this one because I long ago adopted this philosophy.  I’m sure I was taught this by someone somewhere.  But it’s my philosophy now.  Of course I let it slip from time to time.

The one that got me was the passive sentence.  Putting the subject as the object and using “to be _____ed” as the verb combo.  That’s an oversimplification.  I’m not going to give details about a passive sentence.  The first three paragraphs of this post are passive.  It sucks.  It obviously sucks.  King says it’s weak writing by a timid writer.  Sad face.

Worse is that I had a nagging suspicion of something.  I checked the story I am currently writing; the one I secretly hoped was wonderful.  And yes, it is full of passive voice.  It was discovered that I suck.

South Mouth

So this weekend my daughter wanted to try ramen.  My son is not big on food experimentation.  He’s a teen and this year he finally decided that he would branch away from cheeseburgers at sit down restaurants.  He’s branched out to chicken strips.  It’s a big move for him so I’m applauding it.

My daughter, on the other hand, has been experimenting with foods for a while now.  She started marginally earlier than my son, about four or five years ago.  In case you don’t know, she’s a few years older, so she’s only a little ahead of him.

About a month ago I took them to a Korean food court in our area called ASSI.  We are not in agreement on how to pronounce it.  While there I got the bibimbab. Bibimbab, which I’ve seen spelled different ways, is a bunch of different things.  Basically, it is rice, coupled with vegetables, a spicy soup, a fried fish, kimchee and sometimes other things.  It’s a lot.

To my kids’ credit they both tried it.  But neither seemed especially in love with it.  I guess it has to grow on you.  Now my daughter talks about craving kimchee and wanting to go further in her Korean food experimentation.  So this weekend we got ramen.

She had ramen with some vegetables and chicken flavor.  Mine was chili flavored.  Hers tasted like chicken and vegetables while mine tasted like fire.  I swear I could feel it burning in my stomach.

Later that evening I told her that my stomach was very upset and complaining.  But instead of tossing his opinions up he was “shouting through my south mouth.”  To this both she and I started cracking up.

I’ve never heard the phrase before so it was new and a surprise to both of us.  I know that there are hundreds of people on this planet, possibly thousands, and that some of them also speak English.  So I know there is a good possibility someone has said this phrase before.  But I’m going to pretend I made it up and log this creation here. 

New Phrase:      Screaming from my south mouth.

Meaning:           Farting or expelling gases and/or substances from the colon; especially with some                               degree of noise/commotion.

To My Reader(s) part 2

So I’m reading Stephen King’s On Writing.  So far so good.  But one of the things he repeats and makes pretty clear is that in order to be a writer you must write.

When I started this blog it was – ostensibly – to become a writer.  You might have guessed this from the title.  But it was more specifically to become a writer at [adult swim] the grown up/night time version of Cartoon Network.  To that end I wrote every day, or nearly every day, for a year or so.  Then I got frustrated and distracted, as I’m known to do, and I left the blog for a while.  Then I came back, left, came back, started several other blogs, left, came back and left.

Now I’m back, and this time I think I’m here for good; for better or worse.

But I didn’t just “leave” the blog.  I stopped writing.  When the blog started I had gotten into a habit of writing in it every day and I saw my writing flourish.  Then I got involved in a book I was writing and my blogging stopped.  Then I stopped working on the book, but I never came back to my writing.

Let me rephrase: I am almost always creating.  There are some days when I don’t because I’m too busy with work/family/Skyrim.  But most days I have some kind of creative output.  And frequently that is writing.  I write a song.  I write a poem.  And some days I write haikus to put in my kids’ lunches.  If I’m not writing then I’m drawing or developing back story for something.

But those are excuses.  I should be writing, formally/semi-formally every day.  I should be putting words in a cohesive order to express an idea every day.  Not necessarily a story.  Not necessarily long.  But every day, putting something down.

So that’s what I’m gonna do.  For my 43 year (which begins soon, but I’ll go ahead and start now) I’m gonna write in this blog every weekday.  I will attempt to write on the weekends too, but my access to a computer is more limited on the weekends.  But Monday through Friday I will be posting to this blog.

I hope you enjoy.

To My Reader(s) part 1

Am I the only one who has a hard time eating the bruised parts of the banana?  I hate to waste anything, especially food.  But I can’t eat the brown parts.  Even if I’m the one who dropped the banana and made the brown part.  And yes, I am aware that in order to make banana bread you have to have very bruised bananas.  I can’t help it.  I’m sorry.

I also can’t eat the bruised parts of apples or peaches or the mushed parts of an orange.  And those flimsy old grapes that are barely hanging onto the bunch… I hate those.  In the store I do my best to find a bag of grapes that has none of those.  Especially the green grapes where the part that connects to the bunch is brown.  And the grape sorta looks like a deflating balloon.  Yeah, gross.

I’d have never survived the middle ages.

Hey, Blog!

Hey, blog.  What’s up?

Everything been going ok?

…pause to listen and really absorb… (I'm a good listener)

Yeah, I get that.  It’s a hard situation.  I’m right there with you, though.  I think if we can be true to our core values we’ll get through it.

…listening…

What’s that?

Yes it is a good time to believe in heaven.

Anyway, I just want you to know that I’m thinking about you.  You’re a very special blog.  To me.  I can’t speak for anyone else.  But to me, you mean a lot.

Terror Talk

You know, it’s probably not a good idea to spend a lot of time near people who scare the shit out of you.  Even if you know that person isn’t going to harm you and would never harm you.  There are some people who are always talking dooms day scenarios and watching the clock tick toward midnight.  Or those who are certain that Ebola is somewhere on their desk.  Or adamant that crime is flowing into the neighborhood and anyone could be next.

These people are entitled to their stupid opinions.  I have my own.  But if this kind of talk frightens you then maybe this kind of person isn’t good to be around.  (I'm saying this to me).

I’m old; 42 – almost 43.  When I was in first grade Ronald Reagan was elected president.  Everything I heard about at the first grade water cooler was nuclear war.  Most days I could push the thought to the back of my mind and cover it with some kind of mental blanket where my brain couldn’t see it and I couldn’t think about it.  But as soon as one of my classmates said “war” or “nuclear” or “Russians” or “Soviets” or “communists” my brain went to that awful place of terror.

I wasn’t imagining nuclear war.  I was too young to have any concept of what that would entail.  I didn’t imagine anything and that was the problem.  I was frozen in fear.  My brain was like a computer stuck in an endless logic loop.  I was nothing but afraid.  These feelings could last a day or two.  If I was unlucky and heard such talk at just the right intervals in times the fear could kill a week.  I would get in trouble at school for not doing my work.  But I was afraid to tell the teacher that I was too afraid to do the work.  My mind would not stop being afraid of nuclear war.

It wasn’t until third or fourth grade that I finally had enough of it and I went and told the great source of reason and authority in my life, my father.  He could see the terror in my eyes and he told me that I had nothing to worry about.  He said that no one really wants nuclear war and the odds of it every happening were extremely slim.  I don’t remember what time of year or day it had been or what the temperature was before, but suddenly the sun rose and it was a summer Saturday morning.  I went outside and played.  I wish I had said something to him years earlier.  Positive thinking and hope made everything better.

People don’t act when they are terrified.  They react.  Or they do nothing.  It’s not a healthy place to be.

Obviously sometimes we are forced to act in situations of terror.  You cannot control life.  But you can control who you surround yourself by.  So if you have a person who is constantly taking you to that place of terror, whatever your place is, and halting your peace and ease of living and your comfort with no positive talk of solutions or ideas or hope then perhaps you don’t need to be around that person.

I’m 42, as I have said.  I’ve been working for my boss for about 7 or 8 years.  Generally speaking he is a rational and funny guy.  But ever since Donald Trump was elected he has been all talk of war with China and the end of days and Russian subterfuge and hopeless and worry and kids and grandkids and a world with no future.  You get the picture.  He says it with a laugh as though he has overcome the worry.  But so did the kids in first grade.  They wanted to hoist their worry onto someone else and hope that person could carry it for them.

I’m hearing this doom talk from a lot of different places and I’m feeling like a helpless first grader again.  And I think I’ve had just about enough of it.  I’m tired of worthless worry talk.  I’m ready to think positive and act positive and try and find solutions to the problem rather than tossing my worry off onto other people.

But it does leave me with a job dilemma.  My heart cannot take this talk anymore.  Logically I know how to cope with it when it comes, but for a few minutes every time I hear it I'm taken back to that place of terror.

I know what you’re thinking, “Michael, you’re a grown man, suck it up.”  You’re right.  And I probably will.  But this is one more straw, and a rather large straw, on the back of a camel that already doesn’t want to be carrying this job around.

(solutions to follow)

I digress.

I’m 42.  Soon to be 43.

If I look down at my feet they aren’t there.  They’ve been swallowed by my stomach.  If I lean I can see them, of course, but you aren’t supposed to do that.  You are supposed to stand up straight and look down without leaning forward and be able to see your feet.  If you cannot you are medically over weight.  It isn’t a value judgment.  You aren’t a waste of a person necessarily.  You’re just over weight. 

When I was two I could do this – look down and see my feet.  Sometime between six and seven I lost the power.  Then by a stroke of magic I gained the power back at 15.  I kept it until I was about 22.  Then I lost it again.  For fifteen years after I struggled to keep fit and maybe push myself further to the point of actually being healthy.  But I never achieved foot sighting again.

I gave up a few years ago.

To be fair I did not just give up on my stomach.  I gave up on so much.  Exercise, religion, music, writing, reading, going out, praying, keeping my brain fresh, hygiene, advancing my dream career, keeping my actual career and appearing to give a shit.

I’m up to 172 pounds.  I’m 5’7” on a good day.  That’s 78.02 kilograms and 170 centimeters if you’re not American.  That’s a pretty bad weight ratio.  Not the worst, by American standards, but not good.

I only shave once a week.

I don’t stand up straight.

When I was 13 my friend Brandon and I found a dragon.  Some would probably call it a lizard or a salamander.  But it was a dragon.

We were digging deep into the ground on the side of a mountain.  We hit a place just right and a whole slab earth crumbled away.  There was the side and back leg of a brilliant orange and black dragon.  I had never seen anything like it before.  It was enormous, probably five long and two or three tall and it was protected by some kind of magical stunning spell.  We froze at the sight of it and it scurried away, digging deeper into mountain side.  “Don’t follow me,” I heard its voice inside my head say.

After the spell wore off we agreed we should go after it.  We dug for hours, but never found a trace of it.

That story is absolutely true with some embellishments.

From the time I was six to the time I was 14 I was a wood sprite.  My every free moment was spent in the woods and I was the master of it.  I knew where every vine and tree bridge was.  I knew where every bike trail was.  I knew where to find water spiders and I knew where to find turtles.  I wasn’t afraid of anything except loose dogs.

From nineteen to twenty one I was Hermes.  A slow Hermes, but a god of running.  I ran every night, four or five miles.  I almost had abs.

From twenty five to thirty I was the greatest songwriter alive.  I wrote about fifty songs.  I still like most of them and think the world would too, if only…

The week before I turned 33 I woke up absolutely certain that I was going to be a writer for animation.  I started this blog and I eventually drew the attention of an Austrian cartoonist by the name of Florian Satzinger.  He hired me to write a few episodes of a cartoon he was developing.  I got paid and everything.  But the world economy crashed and blah, blah, blah.

After the writing job fell through I pressed on for another year then lost heart.  I decided that if I could not find a cartoon to write for I’d write my own.  So I began to learn animation.

News flash: animation is hard af.

From 32 to 36 I was a home owner.

No one wants to lose a home.  But when you have to leave behind so much of what you accumulated inside that home...  To this day it hurts my hearts when my kids say:

I wish I still had a bike.

I wish we still had the cats.  (The cats were given to a good home with the promise we can have them back when we have a home of our own.  They were not left in the old house.)

I wish we still lived by our friends.

I wish we had our own rooms.

One of the things people don’t realize about the poor – when they say things like “the poor are poor because they don’t work hard” – which, incidentally, when they say this they are actually channeling the devil.  The real devil; Satan.  If you have said this, and I mean this honestly and without reservation, you were the devil.  You might not always be.  You might usually be a very nice man/woman.  But at that moment, you were an awful piece of shit.  And I think you know it.  But what you didn’t know, or didn’t want to believe, though you probably knew it deep down, is that if that person had your education and background, they could do your job. 

Yep.  I said it.  You aren’t that special.  It isn't that poor aren't working hard and you are in your lap of luxury simply because you do work hard - though I don't question that you do.  I'm certain you do.  It takes work to keep a job and keep a home and keep a spouse and keep hope.  What separates you from the smelly, grimy people on the street is nothing but a long string of fortuitous circumstances. 

The poor do work hard.  It’s hard to feed yourself when you don’t have a job.  It’s hard, the first time you do it, to look at food in a trash can, and decide that you can eat that.  It’s hard to ask another person for money.  It's hard if that person is a stranger or if that person is family; especially family that you've always wanted to impress and to make proud.  It's hard when deep down inside you, you know there is a successful person.  There is a genius.

But that genius has been trampled by one foot after another.  One humiliating defeat after another.

It’s so easy to give up.

You get tired of being the only liberal in Sunday school who believes in social programs.  Week after week listening to dicks of privilege say in the same breath that they believe in Jesus and that they should not pay extra taxes for welfare.  So you give up and quit going.

You get tired of playing devil's advocate for uber conservative friends on Facebook, so you unfollow them.  Soon you’re following no one.

You get tired of waking up early to work out, so you wake up with just enough time to get the kids ready for school.  And you promise yourself you’ll work out tonight.  But you get tired.

I started a book when I was 35.  It was good.  It was juvenile literature, but not simple.  It was like Roald Dahl or J.K. Rowling, I felt.  I had 26 chapters, but the book never wanted to end.  It just kept on going.  I tried to solicit the help of friends, but no one had time.  They got tired, I guess.

I digress.

Suffice it to say, I gave up.  On me.  At some point in the past.  A little bit here and a little bit there.  Until I gave it all up.

Last night I had a dream.  A very short, but terrifying dream.  I dreamed the planet was alive.  Not just alive in the sense that living things can grow on it, but it was a living thing itself.  And after a million years of tolerating humans the planet’s immune system had decided that people were an infection.  So the planet’s immune system did what all immune systems do when faced with infection.  It got a fever.  And the temperature began to rise to try and kill the infection.

I woke up disturbed.  I thought, what if I am nothing but an infection?  Just a nasty bacteria chewing away at the flesh of the world.  Doing nothing to make the place better.  Just chewing.

For the first time in years I prayed earnestly.  I promised God - whom I believe in, even if I’m not quite sure sometimes how to believe in him/her - I promised God that I would start trying again.

And so I will.

You Don't Deserve It University Tech

It's a fairly common practice to see a university grant honorary degrees and Ph Ds on persons in the public square who go above and beyond in their field and who improve the social knowledge base of a given subject.  In my opinion this is usually a very good practice.  I'm sure that most of these universities are only doing this because they want to bring said excellent individual into their fold of alumni and there-from guilt them into contributing their wealth.  Nevertheless, these hard working and high achieving individuals are being recognized as knowledgeable on a level at least somewhat equal to a scholar in the given subject.

I think this is an excellent practice and if I were to review it I'd give it an A.  And probably an honorary degree.

But this isn't a review of that practice.  This is a proposal to take it a step further.  If real colleges can give real degrees to people who never went to school but who have shown that even without the education they really get it, then I think there should be a fake college to review people who have received real degrees from real colleges, but who, through their own ineptitude and stupidity, have proven that they don't know the first thing about the subject of their degree.  The greatest example I can think of is doctors who still, in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, claim that vaccines are dangerous.

I propose we name the college You Don't Deserve It University Tech, or YDDIUT (pronounced idiot).  An YDDIUT degree sounds dumb because it is.

We don't give these honorary degrees to people who don't have a degree and perhaps should not know any better.  Nor do we give them to people who have a degree in one discipline, but who are complete morons in a different discipline.  But we do give them to anyone who, in spite of all evidence, and in the field of their degree (so they should know better), continue to hold an opinion that is wrong and dangerous to the public at large.

Is this too harsh?

The Soft Ninja

It's been a while since I posted any pics from the Soft Ninja.  If you want to keep up with all of my SN art the best thing to do is follow my Instagram account.  Everything new gets posted there.  My user name is: alotapeople.

The Soft Ninja will make sure you get what you deserve this Christmas.
I love the ones that have a slightly ominous message.  Almost all of the original SN drawings were ominous like this.  I don't like the "lip" in this one.  It should have been protruding from the other side.  It would have looked more realistic.

 

The Soft Ninja catches Time off guard.
Action drawings are fun.  I need to do them more.

 

The Soft Ninja's brain freezes while contemplating campaign promises.
I really like the detail captured in the clothing wrinkles and tears.

 

The Soft Ninja can feel your chocolate covered judgement.
Yeah... my eating indulgences got a little out of control around this time.  Matched only by my gaming indulgences.

No one fails a New Year's Resolution faster than the Soft Ninja.
This is probably the best SN drawing I've done in a year.  I really liked it and the message.  Incidentally, one of my New Year's resolutions was to cut back on the pessimism and stay optimistic.  It has been hard.  

Salt Cured Atlanta

The whole of downtown has a heavy white dusting of salt. 

Last week a winter storm swept the country and Atlanta, Georgia was threatened with receiving 2-6 inches of snow. We almost never get that kind of winter precipitation so we really don't have the snow plows you see in northern states. The last time Atlanta was hit by a winter storm hundreds (maybe thousands) of people were stranded. I got lucky and caught the first bus out of the city. It was standing room only and it took twice as long to get home. By the time I got to my car the streets were barren and covered in ice. 

So ever since then Georgia has been a little trigger happy with calling the next winter catastrophe. Last Friday I was sent home early along with all state employees. Needless to say Atlanta got just about nothing. Not even enough to was away the salt. 

The suburbs did get a little. The trees in my neighborhood got some ice which made for some nice pics:

 

 

I've lived in Georgia my whole life.  We get ice storms a good deal.  Once or twice a year, and usually much worse than this most recent "event."  But I think it has snowed enough to have a real snowball fight only four or five times total. And enough to make a legit, human-sized snowman once. 

Happy New Year, You have nice hair.

So I'm walking to work this morning feeling totally down about my job and my commute and my age and everything, and I see this tall, black woman standing at the entrance to the commuter parking lot. 

Her race had nothing to do with it, now that I think about it.  It's the kind of thing that my daughter would probably call me on.  "Why does her being black matter?"  I suppose it doesn't.  Except, I suppose, as a descriptive.  IF she had assaulted me then I'd want to be sure the cops knew she was black.  But she didn't assault me, so I guess I'm back to the fact that her race didn't matter.

Anyway, she was standing at the entrance to the parking lot and my first thought was, "Is that a prostitute?"  She wasn't wearing fishnets or anything remarkably skanky, and we simply don't get hookers in this part of town as the street has a ton of cameras up and down it.  Still, she was just standing there on the sidewalk like she had no where in particular to be.  She was just "hanging out" like you see prostitutes doing in movies and TV.

I wanna say she was wearing black boots and a purple skirt under a long coat, but I may be projecting back on the experience now.  After all, I was only looking at her from the corner of my eye.  The moment you make eye contact that's when people ask you for money or to vote for some ass or to be a Jehovah's Witness.  I know because I'm a big softy and they can see it on me.  They real me in and I give them money that I honestly can't afford to give.  But as I walked by she said something anyway.  She completely ignored the fact that I was ignoring her.  I couldn't hear what she said because of my earbuds, so I took one out and said, "What?"  I was kinda hoping she'd say something like, "Wanna go into the alley for some strange?"  Not because I wanted that, because I really didn't.  I wanted her to say something like that because it would make for a great story.

Instead she said, "Nice hair," and I immediately felt bad for thinking she was a prostitute when all she wanted to do was comment on my awesome hair.  Ok, my hair isn't that awesome.  I mean, it's totally awesome, but I'm supposed to say it isn't so I don't seem arrogant.  Trust me, I'm a short, overweight, middle aged, balding, plain looking guy, but, at least for a little while, my hair looks awesome.  And it was nice of this loitering woman to notice.

Except, in that very short moment before the next thing happened, it started to occur to the back of my mind, where the cynical jerk in me squats, "This could be bait for a trap. Don't take the bait"  But the rest of me said, "It isn't bait, you jerk. Besides, what am I supposed to do, ignore her compliment?"

"Thanks," I said to her and I began to put the earbud back in my ear when she said, "Are you LGBT?"

"No," I said and thought, "what the heck is this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said.  "I didn't mean to offend you.  I'm trans and I just thought with your look you might be part of the LGBT."

"My look," I thought.  I'm wearing an old coat, khakis and a green button shirt.  Then I said, "No, you didn't offend me." And she didn't. "I support the LGBT community.  I'm just not one," which is true.

"Oh," she said.  "That's great.  Could you help me out with some money so I can get some Chick fil a and so I don't have to resort to prostitution?"

"HA!" I heard the cynic in the back of my head shout.  "I was right."

"You were not right, you ass," I thought back.  "She's nice.  And I'm gonna give her $5 so she doesn't have to be a prostitute."

"You're such a naive idiot," he said.

I gave her a few dollars and she gave me a hug with a little more cheek touching than I was comfortable with.  I could feel her face stubble.  I wished her happy new year and she wished it back.

As I walked away I was torn between feeling good about myself and loving this strange and diverse city, and wondering if I should come to work a different way tomorrow.  I also made a mental note to buy more button up shirts.