I woke up an hour earlier than needed this morning.

Have you been reading my posts? You already know I’m nuts so that question doesn’t need any further pondering. I mean really.

I’m trying to find my story focus once more. You see I’ve hit a bit of a story speed bump and I’m trying to get myself immersed once more into the narrative in hopes of pushing through it.

So here I sit on the train heading into work a half hour early. Why? Because the video I was watching on Scrivener by some nameless tool on YouTube was a joke. Listen I don’t really care if you lost all of your files on your portable usb drive when you plugged it into your system. I want to know how to use the software and not get distracted with your inability to store multiple copies of your works. Yes you finally figured out that you need to be saving your files onto Dropbox, congrats. You know what’s even better Einstein? Syncing that same Dropbox to multiple computers so that each of them also has the same files and updates themselves every time you turn one of them on. I have my stuff synced on my work computer, my home computer, my netbook, and my tablet. So even if I manage to lose a few devices to some disaster I always have the others synced up to within a few days of their last boot up.

I printed out the last five chapters of my current story, Sup-Her, and come tomorrow morning, once I wake up and sneak out, which is another reason I have been getting up earlier than usual to self-train myself into not sleeping in so easily, and am going to lay them all out on a table and go through them with a grand overview to see how these things needed to be weaved back together. Did I do that comma thing right?

Random change of topic segway ~

So yesterday I was listening to NaNoWriMoEveryMonth and heard my question(s) answered by the show’s host. I am a horrible man and can’t remember names to save my life which is another reason I call my wife “hunny.” I believe her name is J.D. Sawyer but what do I know, she doesn’t do the dishes all that much so why should I bother remembering?

Anyway the host gave me a kind of slap in the face, not that he was rude but more that he gave me an unintended reminder of something somebody else told me once that I apparently needed to be reminded of. I am my own worst enemy. You see for whatever reason, genetically, how I wasn’t loved enough as a child, the lizards that ate my older brother, whatever. The truth is that I have always held myself in low esteem. I have never had a strong belief in my own abilities and that is why I have always held myself back. I also know that part of this is due to other people always being full of shit and not having the ‘balls’ to ever speak the truth. I have also fallen prey to the fake people who seemed to have it together but in reality are nothing more than charlatans that are trying to keep themselves afloat upon the bodies of those they have drained dry.

I have been unsure of myself. I have been afraid. I am inexperienced but I have never been fake. I… want the knife. Okay that is a bad Eddie Murphy movie quote but that is just how my mind works. “I” just saw “I” had written a bunch of “I’s” and thought “I” needed to poke fun at “I-self.”

Self-deprecation, in m“I” opinion is the part of humility and self-acceptance. The world is too stupid not to poke fun at yourself now and again. It can also be very grounding. My problem has always been not in the brakes but in the gas. Writing is a form of gas for me, it burns inside of me. I have a passion that needs an outlet and I am the biggest thing standing in my own way.

Yesterday I took another baby step in the right direction by sharing the entirety of my Doug story with a “Friend” that I have yet to meet face to face. We have been having some sort of bromance over email for about two months and have a lunch date planned for Monday. I’m thinking it this upcoming Sunday might be a good day to finally take a shower?

The train is about two stops away from where I get off. Ewww… Why do I say these things? I mean bromance, shower, getting- anyway….

That’s it for now,

Laters.

I ran across another potential author online but it’s been nine days since I last heard from her. I sent her a refresher email a few days ago as the prior email had reached the week mark from not being responded to.

I’m thinking I scared her off?

Why oh why are people so busy with their own lives not to get enthralled in my own? (YES SARCASM)

Was it the stench of my feet? Was it the fragments of dried up crusty boogers that I leave everytime I touch my screen?

Huh…

Who knows.

Hey I wonder whatever happened to that person I knew back in junior high and had meant so much to me but now I’m failing to remember their name.

Life moves on. People, much like farts, disperse in new directions. Am I making to much out of nothing for no particular reason other than it’s humorful?

You be the judge, and then promise to get back to in 9 days or so.

*CHEESY GRIN*

Okay I understand I am going to get some grief for this topic but please try your best to hear me out. A couple of years ago I was working on a short story, around 5,000 words, which eventually turned into the first few chapters of my Joy Left The World story. At the stories birth I was enrolled in a community college course about creative writing and it was up to my peers to review my stuff and provide feedback. My story was originally about a distraught woman having an argument with her husband and things just getting worse between them from there. I’m not sure how accurate my memory is of the timeline but I’m pretty sure I had an inkling that this short story was just the beginning of a much larger story that had yet to be written. I was also sure I wanted a nasty archetype of a woman from which we would have our protagonist. Over the course of the eventually expanded story she would come to terms with the core reasons for her rage and eventually grow to become a kind of reinvention of herself.

If you have ever seen the television show “My Name is Earl” then you get the crux of just who my “Joy” is modeled after.

Anyway, back to my conundrum. Most of the feedback I got from women was ‘This woman is nasty’ and stuff along the line of ‘You sound like a woman hater.’ That kind of left me in a bit of shock. For you see I was trying to show a human being who just happened to be female at the same time. If I had shown a scrooge type man as my protagonist would I have gotten the same level of grief? Hard to say. All I know is, in my feeble opinion, is that I was getting the impression that in the women reviewer’s minds, that womanhood shouldn’t be portrayed like that. Women have been shortchanged throughout our real history since time began and by god they wanted their literary 40 acres and a mule to never show them as being vile again. Yes I acknowledge this sounds a bit eccentric, and it is but again I am coming at this from my own personal interpretation.

You see my wife, when we first got together, admitted to me that during any given election, if there was a choice between a woman candidate and a male candidate that she would always vote for the woman regardless of their qualifications. I was shocked that she could be this shallow, this was pre Sarah Palin mind you, and did my best to try and convince her to view the candidate as a service to herself and ignore the gender bias she might have. Yes in some instances, perhaps half the time, a man might make a better candidate than the woman. Now if you want to utilize the gender as a final divider between two equal candidates then I have no problem with this kind of final decision making as we do need more women in politics.

Another thing I’ve noticed is what I call the Disney Delusion. It is the (lack of?) self-empowerment of women all over the world to wait for their man to come into their lives for that is their single reason for existence. Older Disney movies are notorious for this type of mind set. I don’t think I’m going to much argument in stating this. The flip side however, again in my opinion, is maybe just as dangerous. You see as womankind has identified this grievance they have swung the pendulum the other way which has its own adverse effects. Some women are not finding what they think are equal men in their own lives. Yes that is probably true. You know why? You are being an elitist, that’s why. As you lift yourself up in your own frame of mind you are starting to ignore everything you deem beneath you. In short you are doing nothing more than inserting yourself into the role of the problem and not the solution.

As a true humanist/feminist I hate myself for going here but back in the good ol’ days of the 50’s when men had more of the power they weren’t as ‘picky’. Perhaps that was because they knew so few women who were available who matched them or rather women that did match them frightened them. I’m open to a myriad of interpretations but in truth this is another topic for another day. Uh… I’m feeling a bit Bill O’Reilly nauseous right now. Getting back on point, men didn’t discriminate on social economic status because the pool was pretty much even with women being less than men. I’m not saying men are less picky or better but more that when everything is vanilla you can’t scream about missing your chocolate. I know men and women can be just as stupid as each other thinks they are.

Moving back to today. Women, those that have achieved, are able to pick from a rainbow of flavors of perspective partners. Maybe is because all the women all looking for (Is red the top of the rainbow?) red men and ignoring the other colors because they are self-serving and shallow? I get self-serving, but to a point. This is where my Disney delusion comes back in. It’s like they only want the red and nobody is going to accept anything less. That, once more in my humble opinion, is the definition of a feminazi. You are not truly looking to equal the field so much as displace the hierarchy with your own version.

So wrapping this all back up into itself, when women have told me I shouldn’t use a woman character like that, is it because they are under the reverse Disney delusion or that the character truly sucks? In the years since I have since shared this same story with other women, who I personally deemed to be a bit more societally unbiased, and have not gotten the same reactions. Yes the character was dark but in no way did they try to sterilize the character I had written. They seemed to accept that black can also be a color of the rainbow.

Over this past weekend I did get to go see the latest X-Men movie with my dad. What did I think? I enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t as strong as the Days of Future Past one or First Class but it was still enjoyable. I would give it a solid “B” score.

Six months ago I saw the latest Star Wars installment “The Force Awakens” and also thought that one was a “B” rating. That was given a “B” because it was so predictable. The X-Men movie wasn’t so predictable so much as it felt rushed. They tried to cover far too much territory with the limited amount of time they had to work with.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the story but Jennifer Lawrence’s character of Mystic/Raven plays a pivotal role which felt a little too much like Katniss in the hunger games. Right now I am forgetting who played that but I’m getting the image of some blonde headed bimbo in my mind. You will have to forgive me for I haven’t seen the hunger games movies or read the books. It just felt like a Logan’s Run rehash wrapped up in a new YA universe.

My favorite parts where were Quicksilver came to save the students at the x-men mansion but that seemed to go on for a bit longer than it should have. I would say that part was filled with far too much visual gimmicks than needed to be in it. I really didn’t need to see how he saved each and every goldfish from the mansion. I can fill in the blanks all on my own thank you very much. The other thing that stood out is they explained how Professor Xavier loses his hair. I liked that part.

Overall I am going to recommend you go and see the movie if you are a fan of the super-hero verses and especially if you are a fan of the x-men verse. It is a fine movie and stands on its own but next to DOFP it can look a little overshadowed.

– Wonder Twin Powers Activate! (Yes wrong brand… bite me!)

Here I sit on the train once more.

San Diego Comic-Con is but 6 weeks away. My Sup-Her story is close to the halfway mark of being redone. I would like to see it done but other things keep calling to me. Right now I’m at a point where I need to concentrate on mixing a couple of chapters together in order to merge them as seamlessly as possible. This would require some uninterrupted brain time which in my hectic life seems to be in short supply.

Solution?

I’m going to print out these chapters and start highlight the key parts I want to keep in each of them and then rewrite them hoping to hit all of these key points.

In practice?

I actually came up with this plan, which I’ve used a couple of weeks before, but have failed to actually printout said chapters. Why? Because I’m so fucking busy is why. I know “how hard is it to hit the print button?” It’s not that hard but when I’m at work my mind is in work mode and not writing mode. When I’m at home I’m in daddy mode and not in writing mode. This Saturday is one of my writing group ‘Meetup’ days, the early one. I just need to remind myself to get to bed early enough on Friday night that I don’t ignore my alarm some Saturday morning. I hope to be able to sneak out of the house and ditch the family earlier than usual so I can go and get some writing done and not go bat shit crazy over this mental speed-bump.

I know some of you are probably thinking “but aren’t you writing this blog post now?” Yes, and it’s the only thing helping to keep my sanity in check. I’ve never tried/taken(abused) any kind of drugs but let me tell writing and being able to express the dreams and fantasies of one’s soul is the closest I have come. It’s an awesome feeling. I need to get my cooped up brain out of my head and down into something else.

This last weekend I spent almost all of it working on a patio, which still isn’t done, and so haven’t actually written much of anything in close to a week. As a person with a high writing drive having to abstain for so long is giving something of a depressingly blue balled mind.

The thing is the hour I get being tossed about on the train as my hands slap the keyboard isn’t enough. I need to have uninterrupted time where I can focus on my thoughts and not from dropping my laptop or having it bounce out and strike the person sitting next to me. I know how crazy that sounds but, at least to me, being in a comfortable environment is key to achieving mental focus.

– Bounce-oodles

Over the memorial weekend I spent much of it throwing stones for my new patio. Can you tell if my hands are in pain right now?

I’ve got several more but decided to spare you all the rest of the gory details.

The patio is still not done but I’m going to give my hands two weeks off to heal up a bit.

Now… do I temp fate and pull out my laptop to see if I can write pain free? I’m finger phone typing and even this hurts.

Ouch-els

I pride myself on telling the truth. I would even say that I go so far as to do myself harm by how honest I am. Here goes continuing this time-honored tradition.

Damn!

The woman who got off the train from the seat in front of me was a schwinging hotty. My attention, mental and physical, is still on her and she left twenty minutes ago.

I love my wife but I still have this woman in my mind. I’m thinking I am going to need to do a little purging when I get home.

Now for the record, I have always been a faithful man, much to my own detriment. Why detriment you say? Well, I was a virgin until I was nearly 22 in age. I had chances earlier but elected not to take for fear of ruining my life before it even got started. The last thing I wanted to do was raise a kid before I was done being one myself. I sometimes wonder that had I been homosexual that I wouldn’t have been as conservative minded as I was.

What is also interesting is that over my 23 years of active service I have had a total of two sexual partners. Yeah, I’m kind of a square. Let me also say I have been divorced once and have married twice. You do the math. I am faithful to a “T”. Again probably to my own detriment.

I am no saint, far from it. I just made decisions willingly and stand by those choices. I am a man of conviction… and right now a serious boner. My god she was hot. I am but a man made of weak flesh.

God, I hope I can convince the wife to help me get my head straight later tonight. I love her. I know I can control my actions but am powerless against the thoughts.

Have I bored you yet? Ready for the real kicker here? I have gotten genital warts before and it was from a man. Yep, you read that right. Why would I make something like that up? So here is the “juice” of it. I was in the army, it was basic training, and as you can imagine we had some real asshole enlistees. As far as I can figure one of the bastards decided to refold his nasty underwear and place it in my clean drawer. With basic training as it is, sleep deprivation and having to get up at the crack of 4am, one does not spend the time inspecting their undergarments before dawning them to go out and run your 2 miles.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Grossed out yet? I’m not. I’m still thinking of that woman.

– GGrrrrrr-ootles

I woke up today an hour earlier in hopes of getting some stuff done. I did some small stuff like a bit of minor cleaning and throwing some small and neglected kid stuff away. I can’t throw anything away while they are awake because they will catch me. Not so much my daughter so much as my son. He is addicted to trash and trash like accessories. Do I sound a little like Hank Hill from the animated television series? That is somewhat intentional.

Something else was I was going to try and do some writing, which didn’t happen :(. I have to do some big brain thinking about how I’m going to merge the information from some chapters around and try and not disturb my timeline too much. Sadly that didn’t happen. I think my mind just wasn’t awake enough yet. Okay, I admit it, I got in a good couple of rounds in MOO4 this morning :).

I was also supposed to move some files from one-half filled memory card over to another half filled memory card in hopes of having one now full and one now empty. This doesn’t sound like its too difficult but since my primary gaming machine at the moment is a net-book I didn’t want to tax the CPU anymore than I had to from my game. So that didn’t get done either.

So here I sit on the train, transferring files around as my brain is a bit more lucid and typing away. Hey would you look at that, It’s done with the transfer. It took 25 minutes and I still haven’t gotten a whole lot written.

Something else I noticed while sitting here is just how much people are creatures of habit. I must admit that I do enjoy sitting along the right side of the train as it allows me to use my right hand for typing as my left is wedged in against the person to my left and is not conducive to being hitched outward for typing. The hitching outward tends to poke that somebody on my left into the ribs and that is just rude. Today I am sitting on the left side of the train, no biggie as right now I’m heading into work so it isn’t that crowded. What is funny however is just how territorial other people are when it comes to their favorite seats. I tend to like to be left alone, introverts raise a hand (*up*). I see people purposely wedging themselves in between others just so they can sit as close to their favorite spot as possible even if that means ignoring an entirely open bench in favor of nestling up next to somebody directly in their spot. I’ve been riding this train for over two years now and know these people’s habits. This is why the human race is doomed. We litter, we are greedy, we repetitive, we just don’t care.

Sitting across from me is an older man who works just one block from where the train drops everyone off. He walks fast, and I mean fast. I would, in fact, say he walks just as fast as I do. Mind you I’m not trying to race him so much as I have a natural speedy walk. Anyway, this guy doesn’t use his head mirrors at all when walking. What I mean is he assumes he is the fastest thing out there and acts accordingly. In the past, because of train positioning, I have gotten off before him, and like a good samaritan, I clear some distance between myself and train before stopping and pulling out my phone or doing some other mindless activity. This guy, passing me by, no big deal mind you, zooms along like he is the only guy on the sidewalk. Finishing with my activity I start walking again on my way into work. This geezer, not realizing that I have been catching up to him, does the whole lane change right in front of me and cause me to put on my brakes because he isn’t courteous enough to glance around before making unpredictable momentum changes. The first time he did this I gave him a startled “Hello there” to alert him to cutting me off. He didn’t look back. The second time he cut me off I was more prepared for it this time, I made sure I kicked a tree twig on the ground, up into his footing which caused him to trip himself up a bit. He, of course, turned his head that time to see what had happened. Then he just continued on as if that something was a nothing and went about his business.

Right now he is asleep and looking as if he is going to tumble forward and down onto my laptop. Maybe this is all some part of his revenge plan? Who knows. I knew I should have brought my uglier net-book today instead of my nicer one. Hey, he just woke up. I don’t see any drool, just curmudgeon.

So… how many words is all this? Pausing to check here. 850-ish. Not bad I just realized the time, its 6:55. The train is a bit late and I have three more stops until I and senior grumpy need to get off. I figured out who he reminds me off. Charlie Sheen’s show Anger Management has a crusty old man whose name escapes me at the moment. This guy reminds me of him. I have never spoken to this guy but that is just the vibe I am imagining. Two stops left now.

Okay, I’m done. Checking again…. 950 🙂

– Tootles ya all

So I started working on day 11 and you know what?

This is where i imagine you saying… “What”

Well I’ll tell you. It turns out day 11, & 12 cause I looked ahead, also need to be merged into my day 10 mess. The good part is since I got my timeline (mostly) straightened out, as seen in yesterday’s excel sheet upload, it shouldn’t be that mentally taxing. It will still require some cerebral resources but just not as much as I hope it wont.

That is it for now…

– mixoodles

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HMYF0oO1uDmI3dhZimLbhat_RY2OfCEs1KQncPWVInE/edit?usp=sharing

As the story is still being rewritten I will do my best to keep this up to date.