The Life and Times of Klee W. Freakly

How do it know?

2005-12-20T18:57:26Z

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It's the end of the world as I know it...

2005-12-15T23:18:25Z

Hoo-boy.

Mm-hmm...

Yup.

So I'm going to be moving in a month and a half. I'm going to throw it all away (for what it's worth) and run off to L.A.

Q. Why?

A. 'Cause I have to.

Q. Really?

A. Well...

Q. I mean, are you being pursued by ninjas or viking hoards or perhaps ninja vikings?

A. Well, no, but-

Q. Then how exactly do you have to?

A. ... 'Cause...

Q. Really?

A. Fuck you imaginary question asker.

Q. Hey, I'm YOUR device...

A. Fuck, you're right... So why're you such a dick?

Q. ...

A. ... Oh, yeah.

So yeah, I've decided I have to take the chance, throw myself down there and be ready to fail miserably so that you might live... Or something.

In the end I have to be there to do what I want to do, which is to write TV/Movies/Shit in general. I feel like I've done everything I can up here. I just finished up a three year run with The Free Hooch Comedy Troupe, directing the last nine shows we did this year. And I just don't think I can progress any farther towards my goal while up here. Of course at the same time I'm a lazy fuck who isn't doing nearly as much as he should to progress towards my goal in general so I'm not entirely sure why I think going down there is going to light a fire under my ass, but at the same time I think that may just be me not giving my own self the credit I may or may not deserve. There we go again.

I've all but got a place confirmed (waiting on a final confirmation e-mail) with an old Hooch cast member. He was in the troupe before I was, we were never actually in at the same time but we've hung out briefly a couple times. He's got a studio in West Hollywood that we'd be sharing. Granted, not the coziest or safest situation ever, but fuck it, I'll be in Hollywood for $400 a month so I think I'll live.

I'm trying to get my shit together, which seems to be a continuing subject for the last forever and to varying degrees I'm doing it, but I've honestly got things going in what I think may be a good direction. I busted my ass with the National Novel Writing Month thing in November and did manage to reach the 50,000 words. Didn't quite finish the story, that I'm hoping to do soon, but atleast I did that much so I'm fairly happy with that. I continue to do decent writing exercises that could easily be expanded to be short stories ready to be shopped. I just need more direction and discipline. I do honestly think the environment and the electricity of the location will spark something in me but I can't rely on the change of locale to be the thing to set me off. I've got to just make me the reason to do it.

So yeah... That's me... If you can believe it. Just to show I'm doing something let me post my last couple exercises as well for your reading enjoyment. As usual, in addition to the end product I'll be including the prompt that got me going.

Glad to be back, hope to make this more regular and I'll talk to you all later.

12-12-05 Assignment

The story must have a kraken in it. The story must have a quilt appear in the middle. A character makes someone a meal. A character is belligerant throughout most of the story. During the story, a character makes a life-changing decision.

"Where the hell is my soup?"

Billup Willford bellowed from the couch in the living room sweating and shivering. He'd been bed ridden for three days, unable to leave the house and too sick to work he just laid around, screaming for his wife Juliet, ordering her around to wait on the bulbous clod hand and foot. What did he care how he treated her? She didn't work, she should be happy to have found someone like Billup, she was lucky to have him. Least she could do is take care of him and be useful for once in her life.

Juliet wasn't attractive. All her life she had been told so in one form or another. She never really caught the eye of any of the men and truth be told she was happy when Billup initially showed interest in her. She was just happy to finally be noticed. Not that he ever treated her well. But he noticed her, and that was more than enough to win her. Juliet and Billup lived in a trailer in the Rivercrest Mobile Home park that sat, coincidentally, along the Grethit River. They moved into the tired weatherbeaten single wide when Billup's uncle moved out. Juliet She spent most of the day watching afternoon talk shows about unfaithful husbands and cheating spouses and unruly kids being sent to boot camp. She was happy she didn't have any kids like that. It was rare that Juliet would change out of her house coat all day. Why would she? She didn't have anywhere to be, she didn't have anyone to impress and Billup liked her just fine how ever she looked, as long as she'd "shut the hell up" and leave him "the fuck alone." It was all pretty good. Juliet was contented. Not happy, but content. A dull numb.

Without any insurance Billup just had to tough it out, lay around and wait till what ever was fuckin' up his insides passed on its own. That didn't bother him much, there were car chase video clip shows on channel 58 every day at one and for a couple days he'd even get paid for being sick so what was there to complain about? And Juliet mostly shut the fuck up and left him the hell alone. Every once in a while he'd grab one of her saggy tits and fart when she bent down to clean up his plate. He'd wink at her and she'd blush and that'd hold her for a while. He didn't love her, but most of the time he didn't hate her either.

"What the fuck is takin' so god damned long Juliet?" Billup yelled again when an answer didn't come back soon enough for his liking. "Am I gonna have to get up and drag my sorry ass in there to see what the fuck's the matter you fat old hag?"

"No Billup," Juliet drowsily answered back breaking open an egg on the lip of the old cast iron pot and dropping its contents in. "It's comin', just be patient."

"Be patient?" Billup shouted back, indignant at the lip he was getting. "The fuck do you get off tellin' me to be patient? Just make me my god damned soup so when you're done I can forget you exist again."

Juliet sighed, her puffy face devoid of expression as she looked down into the bouillion flavored water and began beating the first egg while crackin' a second for Billups Quick Egg Soup. Billup moaned from the other room, she knew he wasn't feeling well and a part of her was still trying to do her best to care for him, but something had changed in her, something was missing, something that she didn't think she'd ever feel and she was glad it was gone. After beating the eggs she turned the burner back on, it clicked a few times before finally flickering back to life. Instinctually Juliet moved from the stove and grabbed the thick old quilt
hanging over the back of the dining chair. She'd washed it that afternoon knowing Billup would probably need it. Gathering it into her arms she tottered around the counter and into the main room of the trailer.

"You just gonna let me freeze to fuckin' death woman?" Billup whined as a shiver rolled through him while sweat beaded on his forehead. "You good for anythin' you lazy-"

Juliet draped the old family quilt over Billup as he continued to rant. Her hand brushed over a patch of a crudely sewn knight riding a unicorn to a tower in the distance. She'd made that when she was twelve. She dreamed that a handsome knight would ride in and sweep her off her feet and take her away from her father, protect her from him, tell her she was pretty and she'd live happily ever after, just like every little girl dreams. She knew now that the knight in her dreams was just as real and just as likely to show as the unicorn.

"- and if you could keep your fat little hands from stuffing your god damned face when ever you've got nothin' better to do-"

Three weeks ago Juliet discovered that Billup was cheating on her. She wasn't so much surprised that he wanted someone else, as she was that anyone else would want him. But there it was, plain as day, he didn't even seem to bother to try to hide it. She wasn't stupid, despite what he said, she knew, she just willfully ignored it until it was impossible to. He made sure it was. She didn't confront him about it. It wasn't worth it, she didn't care, not anymore.

"And those sons of bitches at the warehouse don't give a shit." Billup continued to rave. "I work my god damned ass off and I never get any god damned credit, not even once. You know what I mean?"

Juliet nodded returning to the soup and stirring.

"I know." she said flatly.

"No you don't." he shouted back. "What the fuck would you know about it? Don't give me that shit."

Turning off the flame again just as the broth began to simmer Juliet reached up and yanked open the stubborn cabinet above the stove. She pullet over a chair and climbed it so that she could reach into the back of the neglected, nearly forgotten cabinet where she retrieved a small vial filled with white powder. Carefully removing the tape from the cap she stepped back down from the chair and returned to the pot of soup.

"What the fuck is taking you so god damned long?" Billup growled again.

"It's almost ready dear," Juliet replied in her same beaten monotone.

It didn't take much thought, she didn't feel anything anymore, the decision was easy. Slipping on her oven mitts Juliet carefully pulled free the cork. She wasn't sure how much she needed, how much it would take, but she wasn't going to take any chances. Overturning the vial the entire contents emptied into the steaming Egg Soup.

Turning the burner back on she slowly stirred the soup, blending in the powder until it was evenly distributed. She poured the broth into a medium sized bowl making sure not to spill and finally topped it off with a handful of crushed saltines just like he liked it.

"Lunch is ready." Juliet called to Billup as she picked up the hot bowl and dropped in a clean spoon.

"Well it's about god damned time," Billup snarled as he scooting himself into a semi-upright position. "Bring it here already, I'm fuckin' starving."

"Here it comes sweetheart," Juliet replied. The warmth of the bowl against her palms kicked up butterflies in her stomach and goosebumps on her arms. A faint smile slowly crept across her face and a lilt played across her voice.

"Soup's on."

12-15-05 Assignment

#3249, "Zette's Gym - Day 1665 - Thursday, 15 December, 05"

THE LONG VOYAGE...

Imagine being aboard an ancient sailing vessel, bound for a port months, or even years away. Or a starship crew, hurting through the vastness between stars, where every second spent means years lost at home.

Now, imagine a character on just such a voyage, at the exavt point where the wonder if they wil ever see the destination.

Justin

\\ Begin entry...
19-08-2108, 02:47:12

Four years, seven months, fifteen days... Half way there.

Half way there.

It's all down hill from here right? It would now officially take longer to get home than it would to get to our destination if we turned around right now. In a society of instantaneous gratification, a world where anything can be had in the literal blink of an eye a nine year journey is an infinity squared. But here I am. Of my own free will. I'd begged for the assignment. Over the last fifty-five months I've had plenty of time to reconsider.

Eugene had to be stasised last night. He'd finally gone squirrelly and tried to hurt himself. We found him in his quarters trying to cut himself with a broken table leg. It looked like he tried to hang himself from a light fixture but it wasn't nearly enough to support him so he'd crashed through the very table he'd jumped off of and decided to try to take those lemons his miscue had given him and kill himself anyway with the lemonade.

He wasn't the first to try to make a break for oblivion, but the numbers are still well within the estimated losses. The "spillage" as it were colloquially referred. But while they were not numerous, those that have tried and failed, and tried and succeeded have left a scar on the psyche of the remaining crew. Many more are opting for a voluntary stasis to avoid the potential of a forced one. I'm not. I won't. I'm already giving away nine years, I might as well be around for them, for good or non.

Before we left, and five years prior, making it nearly ten years ago, a trip like the one we're on now would have taken nearly a hundred years. When technology reached the point where that trip had become a fraction of that the offices of the recruitment ministries were flooded. Dozens of ships launched in every direction to the distant neighboring stars brought so much the closer by new leaps forward in science. We couldn't wait to be the first ones to see the sights of worlds we could only have previously dreamed. Then the cold reality hit me this morning.

We won't be.

We won't be the first ones there. And I'm not a bleedin' hoaxy loon talking of big eyed saucer jockeys or any other such fantastical farce. It's simple mathematics. We'll arrive, our long tired trip having come to it's final blissful end. And after touching down we will disembark and stumble forth like ancient mariners stumbling off the plank to kiss the newfound shore only to find the flag waiting for us. Beaten to our goal by another leap forward in technology again fractionalizing the journey's length.

An ocean sailed in months becomes an ocean flown in hours. A hundred year journey turned to ten, turned to three.

It's inevitable, and now there's nothing I can do, no where I can go.

We're halfway there.

entry ended... //

Get ta know me!

2005-07-11T21:09:19Z

What the, how, but...? Where the hell do three months go!? For fuck's sake! I am a horrible blogger, always have been. Eh, wadda ya gonna do? My problem in the past has been caring too much what other people will think, measuring what I want to say too much based on how it'll make me look, which makes writing take forever, which makes me want to do it less. I'm trying to take my cue from my new life hero (a 20 year old comedic genius that reminds me of who I could've been) and just go for it, what others think be damned. Of course this is something I've been trying to do forever but now I can blame someone else if it doesn't work, 'cause I'm always looking for scapegoats.

Things've been interesting lately, quite un-fun really, so here I am to ground myself again. Workin' for the man continues to be not where it's at. I've just got to plant my feet here and figure out my next move. I'm doing that now.

I'm going to try to share my life more on here, more uncensored and openly, the fuck do I have to lose? Going to do more writing here too. I'm doing exercises using different, fun prompts, I'm writing articles for the troupe forums and stuff and I'll share those here as well. I'm really trying, I honestly am, it's just going a hell of a lot slower than I'd like, so I'm doing something about that as well. I'm 27 years old now, I wasted the majority of my adult life, I'm doing everything I can to correct that, I haven't been doing a very good job but progress is being made.

The ultimate goal here is to make a living writing, that's the plan. But for a plan to succeed you have to actively pursue the goal. It's easy to talk about what you want, actually doing something to make those things possible is where most of us get hung up, myself even more so than others.

So this'll be the story of my making things work, sharing my progress, following the steps. I'm going to be making drastic moves soon, I've got to, if I don't soon I'll never be able to. My life is going to get interesting, and I'm always a fan of interesting, especially the uncomfortable, fucked up, interesting, that's my favorite kind, and trust me, that's on the horizon.

So yeah, here we go. Enjoy, won't you?

I'm gonna finish this off with a quiz thing. Now, normally I hate these things and don't even do 'em, but I saw this one on drderanged's LJ and I thought I'd give it a shot, killing time at work as I am. This fucker is frighteningly accurate, I call witch craft. I'm going to burn this quiz result, I'm kooky like that.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	33%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Altruism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	83%
Religious	\|\|\|\|	16%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%

Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|	16%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	37%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Vanity	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Female cliche	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

A hero is born!

2005-04-08T20:58:50Z

Well, couldn't make it three days in a row, not terribly surprised, but slightly disappointed, but not so much...

Got a little busy yesterday which is why I wasn't around to do my assignment or keep my little streak in tact. You see, I was beginning my career as a costumed fighter of evil and injustice. The hell you say? The hell I say bitches! You see, it's a well established universal truth that Oliver Queen rules, hardcore. I mean, someone with a name like Oliver Queen has to kick so much ass to compensate for his name you KNOW he has to be extraordinary bad ass to reach any level of respectable badassery. So the point I'm making here is, I loves me some Green Arrow. Since Kevin Smith's resurrection of the character to today Ollie's been my favorite character. I never knew squat about him before he was brought back but now I am the biggest Oliver Queen fan in human existence. So much so, that Ollie has actually inspired me to take up archery.

That's right, laugh it up.

So I've been inspired to take up archery by a comic book character, probably a good nine tenths of the space program owes it's existence to Star Trek so go fuck yourself.

But yeah, yesterday I went in for an archery lesson at a place up in Rocklin' about 20 miles away from the humble apartment of our hero Mr. Klee W. Freakly. So I got set up, they took me around to the indoor range in the back and I proceeded to show my preternatural archery aptitude. I'm a damned near natural by god, and it doesn't surprise me at all. For I love Oliver Queen! Now all I need is a domino mask and I'll be all ready to fight crime in this fair city of Sacramento.

This morning though I am nursing a bit of a battle wound already. See, I do have a bit of a violent bruise on my arm from not keeping my elbow bent in enough and getting it continuously clipped by the string. It was hurting like a son of a bitch and at one point I did put on an arm guard but then took it off because I was of the mind that the only way I was going to learn to get it right was if I kept screwing up and tearing up my arm. So I took it off again and proceeded to rip that fucker up pretty good before I was forced to put the guard back on. I'm sure I'll continue shooting with a guard but I do think I've fixed the problem as bending the elbow has now become a regular part of my setup. Anyway, I couldn't afford to buy my bow and everything last night because Wells Fargo fucking sucks, but now my check is in my account and I'm seriously thinking of running down there this afternoon, getting my stuff and shooting for a couple hours, it's a nice distraction when I really needed one.

So all of that out of the way I did also get back to writing, it's rushed and while it has a cool little concept that could definitely be played for fun it had to be rushed and unpolished to fit into my half hour restraints. I play favorites for no assignment... Anyway, take a look at it here...

04-08-05 Writing Exercise

#2885, "Zette's Gym - Day 1413 - Friday, 08 April, 05"

SPELLING BEE...

What would a friendly competition between witches, warlocks and sorcerors be like? Festive and friendly? Edgy and mean? Whatever the circumstances, today your character is there to watch the competition unfold.

Just be ready to run for cover when things get out of hand!

Justin

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No pre-amble or talk up for this one... And of course by making that statement I have in fact broken that promise... Eh, wadda ya gonna do? ...

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The multi-purpose room at Dragon Slayer Elementary was crammed with buzzing activity. It was time again for the annual Fire Blood Kingdom Science Fair. All of the finest minds of the land had come from far and wide to share their projects that they had been working so hard on all year.

A serpentine of banquet tables were lined up through the large cavernous cafeteria. Wizards, warlocks, witches, sorcerers and the like all with their displays of varying quality and complexity.

There were some substandard entries that were clearly thrown together in the few days before the competition. Procrastination had produced more than a few solar system dioramas of varying beliefs. One showing the Earth at the center with all other planets and stars revolving around it. Another showing a simple flat Earth partially obscured by a cut away universe showing the sheet of black velvet that surrounded the earth with it's tiny pin prick holes showing through the candle light that made the stars. Each accurate to the belief they portrayed but given more time and effort the presentation could have been better.

Then there were the projects that made you think a little, but mostly about whether you were witnessing someone simply trying to pull the wool over your eyes or if this were an actual honest piece of work just so poorly executed as to look like a fraudulent attempt. A potato "battery", several cups of soil with half sprouted seedlings and hand scribbled notes fastened to cardboard displays, poorly realized potions of varying pointlessness: the "like" potion, raising the tired, curses of unending yawns, drippy noses, dragon halitosis.

Finally though, there were the star attractions. We all knew going in who these were going to be, they were the same every year. Every winter and spring two conjurors of renown would disappear for weeks at a time, the people of their villages only reminded of their work by bolts of lightning from the clear blue sky or a bank of blood red clouds quickly rolling in and then back out of the sky above.

This year was no different as Bolivant the Vile and Shianza of Dru stood behind their adjacent tables. While the rest of the auditorium was fairly to mostly sparse, the crowd has gathered in force around these two tables.

Bolivant had done some startling research on the cause and effect of good's seemingly endless triumph over insurmountable odds. He found that beyond all seemingly logical reasoning good not only triumphed over evil a staggering 94% of the time but that the more bleak and hopeless the situation the "hero" were to face the more likely it was that they would over come it. The numbers were staggering. The odds of success were a direct reflection of the presumed odds of failure.

Shianza had spent her months trying her hand at breeding new forms of mythical beast. The griffin and unicorn and pegasus and the like had been good, they had their place, but Shianza was always looking to the next abomination the newer, better beast of fantasy.

Her dark work began at the local unicorn breeder. She purchased an unremarkable beast for a fair market price. Another handful of rare animals would follow and her experiments were ready to begin. After many unfortunate errors in judgment in animal pairings and several messy false starts the results began to take shape. The Toadasus, the Univiper, and the half man half eagle: Mervgriffin...

Shianza was needless to say disqualified for not only tampering in god's domain, but also unforgivable acts of punnery which is of course, punishable by death, resurrection and a second death.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

And I'll catch you all later, just make sure you stay on the right side of the law or you may end up on the wrong side of my bow... OLIVER QUEEN!!!

Isn't this the seventh sign?

2005-04-06T23:09:51Z

Two days in a row... Wow, let's not get used to this, this can't be a regular thing... It'd be nice if it were but I'm not going to get my hopes up. And now rather than commenting on my lameness how about I just move on? Sounds like a plan, sure it does.

So things are going... interestingly... Can't say much right now but needless to say, I'm enjoying the insanity 'cause I'm a kook like that.

Anyway, the main reason for this (and yeah, I hope to turn this away from just being a recepticle for my writing exercises someday but I'm going to be plenty happy with things if that's all that this is for a while, gotta start somewhere like I said) is today's scribblings. I prefer to get to this first thing in the morning but today I got a bit of a late start and couldn't get to it till now. I'm glad to see I pulled cootinator back into this stuff as well. It's more fun when someone else is out there playing along, and he's a much better writer than he gives himself credit for. I'll check his stuff out as soon as I post mine.

I ended up with a weird little running gag in this thing. Started by accident then I just wanted to see if I could work it in a couple different ways, to varied levels of success... Eh, take a look at it it's the...

04-06-05 Writing Exercise

#2877, "Zette's Gym - Day 1411 - Wednesday, 06 April, 05"

FIRST IMPRESSIONS...

It's an oldie, but a goodie. Today, try your hand at one sentence character description. Try to show what a character is like with just one glance. use physical attributes, mannerisms, even the comments of others in dialog. Anything, as long as it is no more than a singel sentence. Then, see how many of them you can do.

Justin

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Not a whole lot of room for interpretation on this one, pretty straight forward, yet I still find a way to mark it with my own tasty brand of tomfoolery. Ho-ho, chuckly chuckle...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

He had the kind of face you just wanted to punch.

Murielle was a gentle soul, wouldn't harm a fly, but she had no problem helping me carve up bodies after the killin' was done.

"I don't know what it is about him," Fay mewed. "But I just want to punch him in the face sometimes."

She limped like a hunchback and growled whenever she heard her name.

Preston Fletcher moved in such a smooth, fluid gate I found myself glancing down to the floor to see if his feet were even touching the ground.

Poor Brent McKlintok; looked all his life like someone had just sprung out from around the corner a second earlier and punched him in the face.

Alice made rags and twine shimmer like silk and lace.

If he weren't missin' a tooth 'r three an' that big 'ol chunk 'a ear, Billard might almost coulda been confused fer handsome.

A missing limb, even just a finger or two, was always off putting to me, but looking at old Fenton I honestly couldn't imagine him WITH all his appendages.

Maurice was a smug little prick with a kind of unwarranted air of superiority that just made you want to punch him in the face.

Yusef shuffled timidly towards the snack table, invisible to the world he still couldn't help but feel every eye was judging his every slouched step.

With a loopy half grin and the cocking of an eyebrow, Drake's cool practically lowered the room temperature ten degrees.

He was a clumsy, oafish, clod of a man, gripping his fork like a spade shovel and dribbling the quiche down his stubble dusted chins.

With the brim of his tattered felt hat pulled down across his brow it was rare you would ever catch a glimpse of Bernie's soft blue eyes, which was how he liked it.

Francis sighed as he sank back into bed and re-cradled the phone; for what ever reason, no matter what he did, it always felt like the world was just lining up, waiting their turn, to wind up and punch him in the face.

Yeah, I know...

2005-04-05T20:24:30Z

Hoo boy, I can disappear for months at a time like NOBODY'S business... Feh, one of these days I might actually do this "blog" thing right, I'm just so scatter brained for the last most of my life... Eh...

So, tale of woe, personal/interpersonal frustrations and regrets, tale of woe... There, I think that basically covers all of my regular bullshit in a tasty bitesize morsel so how about we move on.

I'm going back to Holly Lisle... again... I just keep going back there, if anyone has better places for writing exercises please let me know, I'm more than open to new sites, but I keep coming back to this one because it's always been there.

Anyway, did today's exercise, not very good, but I've gotta start somewhere. I don't think I'm even going to post this on the board I'm that big a fan of it, but I guess I'll share it here, might as well, not like anyone comes here, but who knows...

04-05-05 Writing Exercise

#2873, "Zette's Gym - Day 1410 - Tuesday, 05 April, 05"

BROKEN CITIES...

Far from anywhere, hidden by the world they once ruled, lie a string of abandoned cities. Crumbling facades and overgrown plazas now stand as mute relics of a glory only dreamt of. What destroyed these ancient ruins? And, is it still a danger?

That is what your character must find out.

Justin

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Ahhh, missed my old dividers, hello old friends, hello... Anyway, here's this, not a big fan of it as I've already mentioned, but it's something.

Let me cut and paste my previous explaination of these exercises for you...

"The point of these to me is to just write, go straight through, no editing no cleaning up, just a straight one pass first draft in somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. So they're never overly clean or complete, it's just something to get me scribbling anything."

That's a blanket explaination for why they're not good...

Once again, as I am oft one to do, this story doesn't so much stick very closely to the assignment. I generally just take the suggested idea and roll it around in my head for a second and see if it sparks anything. Sometimes I end up with something very close to the assignment, sometimes not so much, this is one of the not so much cases. You can still see the influence of the assignment in there obviously, but it's barely related...

Anyway, enough preface, enjoy it in it's non-enjoyability won't you? Thank you...

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Djelot: The City Two Steps Ahead

Even after all this time the crowd is still thick with watchers. The spectacle of Djelot brings them in from planets across the system and I'd be lying if I said I didn't slow down just a little as I passed it on my way to work every morning.

Twenty-five years ago, almost to the day (which now explains the recent influx of traffic) the city of Djelot became a fortress, whose barriers were not made of stone or steel or laser, but time. The boundary is easily breachable, there is no "wall" as it were, enclosing the city, until you're inside, so it's told. No, at any time you may cross into the city of Djelot, many have, the lure too irresistible, but no one who's gone in has ever been seen to come out. No one's quite sure if it's because they can't leave, they can't find a way back out, or they don't want to. I sometimes wonder if I would want to leave, Djelot is by now a fantastical world of the future set, by some estimations, as much as two centuries into what we know as the future.

The gathered crowd is generally quite diverse, sitting just outside the lip of the enclosure. The curious observer, looking in on the possible future, for a while not styles and trends have been influenced by what people can see inside Djelot. Fashion, architecture, design, co-opting the potential trends of tomorrow, thereby robbing themselves of the joy of discovering new things organically.

Students, particularly of anthropology, watching the progression of this "lost civilization". Hard information from inside is hard to come by, news and views of the people therein, it's impossible to know yet still what the situation is like for them. Did they even notice the change, did they try to find a way out, did they at some point stop trying and accept their fate? The only clue we have is the blur of motion and sound seen from outside.

Still others are mourning, grieving for those lost inside, long dead friends, family, lovers, children. Some followed them in when they realized what had happened, others were not so "brave" and sit now in constant vigil outside the walls.

Me, I never much think about Djelot unless I catch it in my mirror as I pass. I try not to think about it. I have a hard enough time living in the now, how could I possibly handle that hustle and bustle?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Feh, it's something written, that's about all the credit I can give it. It might have a halfway decent premise that could possibly be expanded upon but that's not the point of this... The point is it got me not only to write IT but to also write this entry, I'll take anything now a days...

Obla-di Obla-da

2004-12-20T18:45:34Z

Well lookie here, updates two weeks in a row? Yeah, I know, not overly impressive in the grand scheme of things, there's people who update twice in an hour, but for me one a week is fairly impressive. We'll work on improving that to make it more universally impressive, but we've all gotta stop somewhere.

So last night was actually pretty cool for me, I went out and caught a comedy open mic that I'd been meaning to see for a while now but for some reason just hadn't. Now the comedy itself wasn't overly special, pretty much the same midland hackery that I'm used to from low level "comics", it was the extracurricular stuff that was cool for me.

I got to talking to some of the comics there, and when I say that I mean more that they came to me and we got talking, it's not like I was actually initiating conversations, that's still another step I've gotta work on. But I talked to a good half dozen folks, got to know 'em, let 'em know what I was doing and that Free Hooch is going to be having auditions soon and all that, got some good interest from some of 'em. Hope some of 'em actually come out to auditions, we could really use some good quality comedians at the next audition.

I've got more that I could talk about but I'm not overly comfortable with the internet knowing all my damned business still, so I'll just leave that to the paper journal.

The main reason I'm here is to share more first lines. Now I didn't do as much writing last week as I would have liked, I never do. Truth be told I did very little and that's damned disappointing, but I'm trying, I'm working on it, honestly I am. Unfortunately all I've got to share are first lines. I want to get back to doing the daily exercises soon but I guess I'll just have to be happy that I did anything, even if I don't like much of it, but I'll share it anyway.

So here're my first lines for last week on this First Lines Monday. Hopefully I'll be checking in again sooner rather than later.

I did these again with the "What If" format of specific first line formats, I don't think I did as well as last time but I dunno, I definitely struggled harder to push these out than last time, eh, you be the judge.

Generalization

It was cold, as it should have been, it was January.

Eventually everyone loses it; it's just the degree to which it's lost that makes all the difference.

Description of a person

Becky Franklin pulled her old wool coat tightly around her chest, her chestnut hair whipped across her face, strands catching in her tears. She stood there for a long time, battered by the strong wings, she had no where to go.

At first glance the man in the corner seemed forgettably plain enough; tired khakis, sensible shows and a threadbare cardigan. It was upon further inspection that his metallic arm became apparent by the glint below the wrist cuff.

Narrative summary

The backyard was all done up nice and colorful, there was balloons and crate paper and ribbons. The guests were all there too even, but they left, everyone left real quick when the call came.

It was quiet for a moment, it was the oddest thing, silence. It didn't last, the murmurs of the men began to rise, the groans, the cries, the prayers. Then there was a flash in the distance, the thunder of the explosion rolled in moments after.

Dialogue

"Sometimes I just want to murder you in your sleep and I just know you're going to take that the wrong way."

"Eventually I'm going to stop forgiving you, where does that leave us then?"

Several characters no dialogue

They were all there, the aging hipster clinging tenaciously, desperately to his youth, the dramatic teen "outcast" playing the role of rebel as conformistly as possible, the art house boys, the alt chicks, the thinkers and intellectuals, all nursing their over priced coffee concoctions and listening to the mewlings of the emo folkie behind the mic in the corner of the Espresso Bar.

Mike ducked behind the checkout counter pulling Molly down with him. Mr. Krevins hit the thinly carpeted cement with a sickening hollow "thok", Becky stood frozen starring down at her English teacher. Neil and Keren just laughed, they could all hear it between bursts of fire.

Setting with one character

Bruno sloshed through the thick soupy bog, the pale moonlight his only guide. It was freezing, snot had crystallized to his mustache and hit fingertips were numb. Sunrise was still hours off but Bruno swore if he survived this swamp to morning Frenchenzo was a dead man.

He punched in the door code like he did every morning and just like every time before the lock clicked and Billy stepped into the safe room. It's be atleast forty-five minutes before anyone else showed up, just like always, but today wasn't going to be like any other before, Billy reached into his backpack, pulled out a white plastic garbage bag and began to casually fill it with bundles of bills.

Reminiscent narrator

It was supposed to last forever, that's what we all said, it was supposed to last forever.

1086, it was the best Summer of my life... What have I done with my life?

Child narrator

All I wanted from Santa was a baby turtle, but I got a brother instead. Not as fun as a turtle.

I screamed, I screamed and yelled for a long time but Mommy wouldn't get up. Then I cried, and I sat next to her, it was cold, I was tired, Mommy wasn't breathing, I got some gum out of her purse.

Establishing POV, first person

These Glixtons don't respect nothin'. Droppin' a couple'a hundred larva at a time, leachin' off the system, must be nice.

So my wife left me this morning, left me for our vet. Good for her, hope she's happy, I didn't deserve happiness anyway.

Third person

The door slammed shut and Claire waited patiently. She heard him stomp off on the other side but she knew in just a moment he'd be coming back.

The gun leapt out of Hector's hand. Through the ringing in his ear he heard it clatter to the floor. Hector turned, startled to be alive and saw the bullet hope in the bathroom wall to his left. he sighed in disgust, Hector couldn't even kill himself right.

Well, there's those, some good, most not, but I'm sharing them all anyway, hopefully I'll have more actual story type things to share soon instead of just first line exercises... Later.

What-the-what-the hey.

2004-12-13T22:50:57Z

Not sure why that line has stuck with me for so long, but it has, I actually use it every now and then, a reference lost on everyone...

Hey folks, it's me, remember me? I update every couple months or so because I'm a wishy washy ass. Well, here I am again. Now I could promise again how I'm going to be back and with some sort of "vengeance" or what have you, but I won't do that because every time I do I end up drifting off and look like an ass when the next post after my big return mission statement is a month or two past.

I've got tons of grief and belly aching I could share with yee and yorn right now, but I'm choosing not to, instead I'm cleaning out a notebook today. As another exercise in trying to get myself to be productive, I'm going to be going back to the Holly Lisle Forward Motion board again and trying to get myself to participate. Which brings me to why I'm here.

Mondays are "First Line Mondays" where you post some of the first lines you've come up with throughout the week. First Lines is just an exercise in starting a story strong, with a good hook and hopefully making the beginning of an interesting story. I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing and part of my habit was starting the day with first lines. It's a good way to just get shit on the page, just to get started moving the pencil.

I was going to start today on the FM board by flinging up some first lines from my notebook, I haven't actually done anything new in months, but I thought instead I'd throw up ALL of the first lines I have in this notebook on my LJ just for the fuck of it. I went back and read over them, I was going semi-consistently from the end of June to the end of September and there's actually a decent collection of pretty good lines. What's more interesting though is how personal some of them are. There's some that really reflect what I was going through at the time which are just ridiculously interesting, then there's some that are completely unrelated to anything other than my imagination, the interesting part for you will be figuring out which handful are the personal ones :)

So yeah, this is a cathartic little thing I guess, a gesture more than anything, I'm cleaning out this book, I'm starting fresh, it's symbolic of something, not sure what, it could just be symbolic of me reaching a little too hard to find symbolism, but symbolic none the less. So enjoy my lines, or don't, the fuck do I care. If any of these spark anything feel free to take 'em and run with 'em. Talk to you soon again I hope...

First Lines
-----------

The explosion rocked the lower Queenston apartment building, but not the residents to much; maybe this time they got 'im, but probably not.

"It's not me damn it!" JJ shouted. "This one's all you." (Ok, this one's not too hard to figure, but the rest of the personal ones are atleast harder to clearly see :) )

If the sky were any clearer and brighter he'd swear he'd have to kill someone.

Oliver stirred from his peaceful night's rest rolling over onto his side. He opened his eyes, still blurry with sleep and there she was, his reason for being, the best part of waking up, the love of his life still fast asleep, her chest silently rising and falling in rhythm. It hurt to even look at her, but it was a good kind of hurt.

Sometimes I wonder why I still do it, then I stop and take a look around and I just can't imagine being anywhere else.

The heavy stone walls leisurely closed in around him and Dr. Bizare's cackles were still echoing through the halls; the whole thing was pathetic at best. Jet shook his head and rolled his eyes waiting patiently for the last second.

The children circled slowly, they could sense the weakness, they could smell the fear and everyone knows there is no purer cruelty or meanness than that of a child.

She threw the rope up towards the dock, splashing and thrashing about. The line landed on the dock, one end, then the other. "Now pull me in!"

"How'm I supposed to help myself it you won't help me?"

If genius could be measured in yards I'd cover a football field, if intelligence were measured in gallons I couldn't fill a thimble...

The fan blade finally spun to a silent stop and the perspiration began to glaze my forehead; that son of a bitch Trent didn't pay the electrical bill... again...

March 19th, Thursday, Heath caught out of the corner of his eye a house with it's Christmas lights still up and even on. It didn't bother him, in fact it kind of made him smile, because it reminded him of Bridget, Tampa and last December. It still felt like yesterday, it already felt like forever ago.

They sat quietly across the table from one another, leaning forward, propped on their elbows on the table top. Neither knew where to start. They both knew what they wanted to say, how they wanted to say it, but neither wanted to be the first.

She slammed the door, Oliver could tell she was serious and pulled his foot out just in time.

It was all a blur, sights, sounds, all thrown together in a whirlwind flurry. All Martin knew for sure was he'd died, beyond that though everything else was up for speculation.

The pixies fluttered by carefree and overflowing with blinding joy and unconditional love for every living creature great and small... God I hated them...

Mulberry and vanilla, the smell always reminded him of the Conquest.

Through the billowing steam stepped a giant gray figure, lanky and lean, wrapped in a shimmering silver uniform, a blaster in one hand, a purple tulip in the other.

No matter how many times he ran the figures through his head the result still came back the same; if Vic couldn't find a three inch length of ribbon in the next eight minutes the Universe would die.

Aaron wanted to shout, to scream, to cry, he wanted to run after her, keep her from leaving, try to talk it over but she was gone and he had to let her go.

When something so long empty suddenly becomes so full the strain can seem almost unbearable.

The sky opened up, the clouds parted and a still came across the land as the literal hand of god descended from the heavens... and flicked Paul Westerburgh's right ear.

"I just blinked, just once, swear to god... So where'd Tulsa go?"

The glistening green and blue orb shimmered silently over the view screen, then it was gone, torn apart and strewn across infinity. Naux smiled.

She was caught red handed, literally. Skyler's blood dripping from her fingers as she stood there over him, hacksaw and ice pick in hand. Gus stood silently in the doorway, hand still on the knob. He'll never believe me when I tell him this isn't what it looks like, Megan thought to herself, a nervous, uncomfortable smile creeping across her face.

"The blue line," Barry bellowed over the noise of the display. They replayed the video one more time and there it was. "The blue line, almost certain."

The spell was crude and sloppy and stunk of swamp mud, all signs of a rank amateur, too many signs.

Mark V blinked with a near silent hydraulic hiss. It didn't need to, it was programmed to, to make others a little more at ease, but every time those cold lifeless pupils disappeared behind those lids it just made me more uncomfortable.

My momma always told me never shit where ya eat, never really understood what she meant till today.

Sand, his lungs were full of sand, now I get to figure out where the sane came from on a space station.

Tears streamed down Rachel's face, her shoulders bouncing in time with her sobs. Marcus would do anything to sooth her, but he couldn't not this time.

Brenton daintily wiped the blood from his dagger and quietly re-sheathed id.

If he had to describe their relationship in one word, Jeff would have to say it was like Soup.

(Then I get into first line exercises out of this book "What If". We start with first lines about certain specific subjects starting with Birth and Death)

(Birth)
Checking his voice mail Preston found a message from his mother in law, Elaine had given birth, good for her he thought, he was a father, good for him.

(Death)
The truck came to an awkward rest atop it's crumpled roof. Fred was still conscious, he could see Trevor on the passenger side wasn't and wouldn't be again, necks don't generally turn so much.

(Falling in love)
Alone had been good, alone had worked, but now Lou only wanted to be with Mary for the rest of his life and alone just sounded like death.

(Filing for divorce)
Murry'd heard of amicable splits and the like, never believed in 'em, just sounded wrong. A plate shattered above his head as he huddled behind the sofa and chuckled.

(Spring)
Brett always cursed Spring, the warmth and the sunshine. The thaw always revealed Winter's dirty little secrets. (Hate this one, such hackery drivel crap...)

(Summer)
Her jeans rolled halfway up her calves Lex dipped her toes in the chill river.

(This is kinda off topic, but it's next in the notebook and I like it so I thought I'd share. This is writing a story with a given first line, in this case "Where were you last night?")

"Where were you last night?" It was all she could do to keep herself from shaking him awake and screaming the question in his ear. He stank of Coors and slut, the question was moot and she'd had enough.

Julia had tried to call Oni all night, he never answered, she knew. She'd already packed all of her things, her bags were loaded up in her little Geo in the parking lot, she could've left last night, could've been gone already.

She scooted out of bed gingerly; she didn't want to wake him. She was already dressed to leave and just pulled on her sandals. He lay there, almost peaceful, he hadn't even undressed, just staggered in and collapsed, out before he hit the bed. Her stomach tightened as she reached down and touched his face. She brushed his stubbly cheek and bit her lip. He didn't deserve it, she knew that, but she would miss the good things.

He grumbled and stirred for a moment and Julie turned to leave. She grabbed her bag that lay propped against the dresser by the door. Pulling it over her head and across her shoulder she looked back at him one more time.

"Fuck you," she said impassively, and she walked away.

(Back to plain firsts...)

The gravel crunched under the tires as they pulled away, a distinct sound made by only the rubber on the rocks, a sound June had never noticed before.

Gordon roused from his deep sleep, cracked his tired eyes open and looked around his surroundings. A Peter Gabriel song came to mind.

The room smelled like taco seasoning and olives, it's all he noticed.

Chuck Dalton wasn't the most attractive man in the office, or the funniest, or the most well spoken, so what the hell was it about this mediocre bastard?

Through the window I saw Milo crossing the street and looking none too pleased.

(Then we get into an exercise on ways to begin a story, first lines with specific format...)

(Generalization)
Sometimes ya jus' cain't trust peoples.

The uniforms made them all look like game pieces, which really they were.

(Description of a person)
Her skirt was wrinkled and staticy, her hair a wind blown mess, not a whisp of make-up on and she was breaking out across her forehead, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Cleflo shook his duster in the doorway, the mid-summer rain spraying on the porch. He had a scar that ran the length of the right side of his face, deep and old.

(Narrative summary)
It didn't take long for the last of the guests to arrive, Beth knew the unpleasantness would have to begin eventually but that didn't mean they couldn't all enjoy a friendly drink in the meantime.

Sometimes Eric would feel a wave of nausea wash across him when someone would cross his path, it wasn't often, it was usually very specific and when it happened, like it just did, he paid attention.

(Dialogue)
"We all know what a bastard Coop was so how 'bout we all just cut the crap?"

"If I told him once I told him a hundred times: women kill a man's soul sure as liquor kills a liver."

(Several Characters, No Dialogue)
The bridge was silent for a very long time. Kerry at the help idly punching his panel with minor course corrections, Manx at tactical counting the torpedo cache for the ninth time in the last hour. Billup at ops browsing the database and texting his wife in their quarters. The graveyard shift on a scout ship could be slow sometimes... most times.

The bus station was crowded, it was four in the afternoon and bustling. A business man sat nervously clutching his briefcase on a hard iron bench farthest from the front door. A mother of three, practiced at tuning out the bellowings of her children was immersed in her copy of People while everyone within three rows of her wanted to beat her bleating children to death with their bare hands.

(With setting and one character)
The stands were litter strewn but otherwise empty and with the crunching of paper cups and the sticky ripping or his soles with each step Billy Holt took a seat above the start/finish line.

(This one started as Setting One Character but washed out just plain, but I'll include it anyway.)A couple hours ago Martin Chung was married, gainfully employed and comfortably well to do. That was a couple hours ago.

She'd shoved him out the door in tears nearly an hour ago but Geddy couldn't bring himself to leave. He banged on the door for a while begging, pleading for her to talk to him, he even started down the hall fully intending to take the elevator down to the garage and leave her there to her own petty bullshit like she deserved. He'd been sitting in the hall next to her door for nearly an hour now.

(Reminiscent Narrator)
I thought I would live forever in those days, we all did.

If I knew now what I knew then... let me explain.

(Child narrator)
Sometimes daddy can be mean, but usually he's kinda ok.

Mindy was a brat and she got what was comin' to her.

(Establishing POV First Person)
It'd been there all day, I know, I got in early, no name, no nothin'. My rule is simple: unclaimed lunch still in the fridge after two is officially fair game.

I'm not a violent person by nature but if pushed I will shove.

(Third person)
If he listened real hard Quentin could swear he could hear his brother laughing in the next room still.

Armed with a backpack full of water balloons Stephanie crept slowly around the Forth's immaculately sculpted hedge.

(Whew, and there you have it. Hope it was worth wading through. Now I need to get to writing new shit... I'm working on it...)

Day two.

2004-10-19T20:47:19Z

Day one is easy, there's always a day one, anyone can manage that. Big plans start, you get all worked up, revved and peppy with all your big ideas and goals and what have you. Day one is simple. Day one is no more impressive than an accident.

Day two is harder. Day two happens much less often. Day one's good intent is usually lost by day two. Excuses for how and why are easy to come by and all is quickly forgotten when day two fails.

But if you can get to day two, if you can get through day two, you've got a chance.

This is day two.

Conquering Gleepnords, Women, and Writing.

2004-09-14T20:34:02Z

Sing along bitches! Yeah, Hail Mighty Gleepnords. Cower before their might and so on... Not an overly strong first outing, but we'll take it.

Love, it's equal parts kick in the head and kick to the groin. And when the person is basically your cross gender doppleganger it only magnifies the good and the bad. I don't know how this thing's going to end up, who ever does, I just know the last 4 1/2 months have been nothing if not interesting. I'll just leave that there for now, I'm slowly working on sharing all of this with the universe...

I said I was going to get back into it and so I have. I grappled with this morning's HollyLisle exercise for about 40 minutes and was barely able to squeeze out 450 words. Not a very good 450 words either, but I'm just getting back into it so I'm just pushing through. Gotta force it out, good bad or indifferent. I want you to get back into this too Coot, just because it was fun last time we did it, and I'm inviting you also Don if you think it might tickle your tickleables...

Anyway here's my...

09-14-04 Writing Exercise

#2540, "Zette's Gym - Day 1402 - Tuesday, 14 September, 04"

WORKING THROUGH PAIN...

Has your character ever suffered an injury? Has that injury become a crucial plot element? Today, show your character struggling to do what needs to be done despite the pain.

Justin

-=-=-=-=-=-

At first glance I read it as "Working Through Rain" so I just got that stuck in my head...

The point of these to me is to just write, go straight through, no editing no cleaning up, just a straight one pass first draft in somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. So they're never overly clean or complete, it's just something to get me scribbling anything.

Eh, enough of me prefacing it... I won't be doing this in the future, just wanted to explain exactly what this was and why...

-=-=-=-=-=-

Wet socks. There's nothing worse. Each slosh and squish just makes me cringe and seethe. The downpour was relentless, a steady sheet of water oppressively slapping across my shoulders. My heavy rubber poncho pulled me down toward the mud, heavy and cumbersome. My helmet slumped down over my eyes, rain, sweat and mud mixing and caking across my face. I held my rifle tight in front of my body, it was empty, all of our weapons were.

Ahead I heard the Lieutenant bark an order. I couldn't make it out over the roar of the downpour. Slowly it filtered back through the ranks each man calling back to the one behind him.

As the order was reaching me to pass another came from ahead, this one didn't need much passing, ahead the men were all diving off the path, splitting on each side, I took the hint and jumped for the brush on the right. My footing wasn't what I'd hoped and I more fell than jumped. I clawed and pulled at the muddy rain soaked path and pulled myself behind the mossy tree. Pressing my back against the hulk I craned my head around my new cover looking over my shoulder to see what was to see.

Shots zipped by, high pitched whistles as the rounds cut through the rain. I stared into the wet black, looking hard for our attackers, I couldn't see anything, too wet, too dark, too far.

Then there was another crack, a single shot among the hail, followed quickly by a hard thud and a new kind of shower, of splinters. The tree, my cover, had done it's job, it took the bullet for me and had I been using it properly, not trying to find someone who'd been trained well on it's own ground to not be found, I would have been fine. Instead the jagged shards of bark and wood splintered into my exposed face. My right eye was forfeit. I could feel with my tongue slivers sticking through my cheek.

I recoiled, the pain was excruciating, blinding, no pun intended. I curled up on the muddy jungle floor clutching my face and screaming. I tried to pick shards out of my face but it only intensified the pain. I didn't know what to do, it was purely instinct. Marques ran to my side from his tree behind me, he was saying something, I couldn't hear over my own sobs and whimpers and the rain and the shots. The next thing I knew I was here, in this cold clay cell. Just me. There's still wood in my face, I can taste it, I can touch it, I can't really feel it, can't feel much.

Later.

Stretched oblong flesh...

2004-09-12T16:35:26Z

Ahhh, football season. Here it is. Finally. It's the only sport I really look forward to every year. I'm not a huge ridiculous fan, I don't live and die by my team (though that's because for the last hand full of years my 'Skins have been in the hands of ineptitude, this year I have some reason to be optimistic) I don't get into giant pointless yelling matches about the game and the players. I just enjoy watching NFL football. It really doesn't matter much who's even on. I can watch any game Sunday morning/afternoon.

A part of the fun of the NFL season is the fantasy game. I've been doing Yahoo! leagues for the last couple years and they've always been kinda cool, they've added to the enjoyment, but now, this year it's got the added bonus of actually playing against folks I know. THAT'S gonna be fun.

That brings us to the mighty Xyizvox Gleepnords! Hail Mighty Gleepnords! The majesty of your glistening ooze nozzle! Your magnificent external livers! Your incredibly life like vibrating three speed flaxtun moltifier! That's right bitches, THREE SPEEDS!!! Cower before the Mights Gleepnords DFL. Fear their vibrant... vibrancy...

You heard me...

Later.

Uselessly dwelling.

2004-09-06T17:24:07Z

Ah, work... Huh?... Yeah...

Well, I guess the good news is that I CAN actually get some internet at work, the bad news of course is, I'm at work...

I need out of here, I need to tunnel out of this sad existence in the worst way, but I can never seem to do anything to make any headway. The only thing I can do is write and now a days I don't even think I can do that very well, so I'm pretty well fucked. There was a time when my writing prowess was unquestioned and all powerful, but now a days I just don't know. I need to start back at the beginning, I need to break it all down and get serious, I've been trying to do that. I'm going through some of my old writing books, doing some exercises, I'm going to go back to the Holly Lisle daily exercises. I didn't like much of what I did last time I worked those, but atleast I was doing something. My mind, my words, my writing is my only way out, I've got to work harder on sharpening things back up.

I did get out last week, caught a comedy open mic at O'Malley's in Old Sac. It actually wasn't bad, couple really good people. Then there were a couple really bad. I'd seen most of the guys that performed there before, and the two that died hardest were among those I'd seen before. They weren't spectacular last time I saw 'em, but they weren't that bad either. I take a perverse pleasure in seeing these guys die horribly, I'm just a bastard like that. One guy just stuttered and stammered a little, killing all flow and timing. The other went completely blank about halfway through his set. There's nothing in the world quite as cringingly uncomfortably hilarious as seeing someone glaze over in flop sweat before your eyes as his mind just lets go. The fidgety uncomfortable shuffling of feet and hemming and hawing. It was delicious.

Gonna try to get out more this week, we'll see, I've just got to get out of the house and get out of my own head, it's just going to drive me mad thinking about and trying to live for someone who's not here. Gotta just keep working on myself for myself and just hope she's doing alright and maybe missing me a little, as selfish as that is... Anyway, that's all I got, if I start writing I'll probably put it up here. Gotta flex my freak muscles a little and a little company in that flexing wouldn't be amiss, hint, hint I say!

GAH! Subtlety be damned! JOIN ME YOU TWO!!! :)

Eh, I'm off...

Later.

An interesting four months...

2004-08-31T20:38:08Z

Behold the return of something or other! That's right, I'm back, big, brassy and bold, and by popular demand... Well not popular really, nor by any big demand so much... I'm back mainly due to cootinator's plaintive plea for me to return to postification. I've wanted to get myself back on here for a while but I've been kinda busy attempting to live what might be generously called a life...

The roller coaster started a ways back, you can actually see the first valley in the journey in the form of a one line whiny little postlet a couple months back. I'm such a lame ass little twat sometimes, and I have no problem admitting that. Anyway, over the following months I went through more, bigger, sweeter highs and bitter, crushing, gut wrenching lows, but such is love huh?

Things are still going, in their same complicated, brain bending way, but I'm patient, I'm positive, I'm likely a fool, but I don't care, I've enjoyed the ride and I'm still willing to stick it out, we'll see how things go, and we'll see if I ever become a little less vague for the rest of you who aren't Coot... Maybe, we'll see if I feel like opening up about the whole mess.

Just glancing back here at this thing before my activity really fell off I see that I was actually getting out of the house and trying to do shit, I think I might want to pick that up again, my hatred for going out by myself be damned. I need something to talk about on here. Maybe I'll really try to push myself to be sociable, it's more fun to talk about spectacular failure than anything else anyway...

So that's that, that's me, here I am, enjoy my piping hot cream filling. You'll probably, hopefully, be hearing from me more often now...

Later.

Ooh boy, look at me shootin' right out of the gate here... Lookit that... Whoo we...

2004-05-26T07:21:50Z

Well, I certainly have begun this 27th year with an over abundance of vim, vit, vigor and zest... vest?... eh... And there goes that resolution of quitting the pouting and self pity already. Well, good for me.

Holy crap I'm annoying :) I would delete this whole thing and start over chipper and proper, but that's not what this is about, I've got to face my lameitude to be able to overcome it, so it stays. Now, let's do that proper re-start, not sanitized, but less pissy.

Howdy folks, I'm listening to Morrissey with a gun between my teeth-

Ok, wait, that's not right...

Hey hey, guess who's bleeding from gaping wrist wounds and calling old friends to guilt them into joining him-

Better...

Greetings, I'm carving my unrequited love's name into my forearms with a Hormel chili can lid-

Close enough, now let's get serious. Mocking my bullshit is fun catharsis, I can now move on.

Yeah, the last couple days haven't been very productive to say the least, but wadda ya gonna do? Just gotta work on making the next better, and that'll be fairly easy to do. See, I was actually just setting the bar as low as possible to make the uphill climb a little less steep. There is a method to my ridiculosity. There is a brighter side to everything if you look hard enough, and I'm pretty good at finding 'em...

Over the last week or so I've been working on going through the new mp3.com music.download.com in search of some good new sounds. For those of you that don't know, about a year ago I started a little online radio show that then moved on to local public access and I'm working on moving it to it's next logical step the local community station KDVS 90.3 in Davis. I play local and national indy and sub-underground goodness where ever I find it. So since CNet's new mp3.com came back up I wanted to jump on there and see if there's anything good for me to find... So far, not so much. In the last 4 or 5 days I've listened to 251 bands and downloaded maybe 3 or 4 songs that might make it to the playlist (granted, I'm ridiculously picky). The song listed above is the best of the bunch, the one very good song I've found so far. So that's been one point of my frustration, not my fault really, clearly I've been trying.

I haven't gotten back onto the writing, I haven't gotten back on the eating, I haven't gotten started again on the exercise. Those are all on me. I'm gonna work on that in the morning. Clearly I've gotta schedule out every damned thing for the day or I'm never going to get anything done. I hate to do that kind of shit, I'm against any thing that might be seen as self help, Dr. Phil, bullshit, but it's a thing I've gotta do so I'll suck it up and take my medicine.

Something I did do today to some degree of success, if you read cootinator's LJ you saw that I got the idea of trying to do an Animated MCW in my head again. So at the urging of Coot I grabbed the sketch pad and tried to do a little. I've got the beginnings of something, the character models aren't bad upon further review, it's still not quite what I want but it's a start, I'm going to study some old Freakazoid to get the style I really want. I'm already kinda there but I need to streamline it. What bothered me and made me walk away was not being able to come up with a good face model. Again, that's where Freakazoid, the most underrated, under-appreciated show of all time, comes in. That's the look I think would work best with this world of MCW. You can check out the first sketches here. Since it's basically just you Don that comes here I shouldn't have to explain too much :)

Anyway, that's me for today, some pouting, some positive stuff, let's call it a wash and start over again in 6 or 7 hours, when ever I wake up...

Hail Klee.

-=-=- Regular Unleaded: $2.17 a gallon -=-=-

Dig that crazy resurection snap snap

2004-05-22T07:28:20Z

Hi, hello and welcome, my name's Klee W. Freakly, Mrs. Freakly if you're nasty, Lord Freakums Von Chuckle Bottom, St. Lunatic of Nutzville, Jo jo of Jo Jo Chuckles and the Buckle Funch fame. I rule, to a certain degree, depending upon when you catch me. All of this being said, I've been a lame fuck for quite a little while. I'm returning from the Chasm of Suck after a hard fought battle with the Beast of Lower Sad Fucklia, where I was killed several times before my victory was sealed. I return now, not just for me, but also in the hope that it will help yank Cootly Yeldud from his own similar lame spiral...

See, tomorrow is my birthday. Over the years, as I'm sure you've all noticed, birthdays have begun to suck more and more each year, serving only to remind us of how little we've done with the precious little time we've been given. Over the last year and a half or so I've seriously taken a look at the years I've thrown away, about 8 or so is the count I've come up with, nearly a third of my life, and when you take into account that for the most part our lives from 0-10 years of age comes and goes without leaving much behind it in terms of memory or consciousness my 8 pissed away years become even more depressing.

But ya know what? While the last year and a half or so has been the best of my life, I've still hung on to my depressio past, lamenting the lost time rather than doing my best to make the current days that hurtle past at blinding speed the best seconds, minutes and hours they can be as they go. I can sit around and bitch and moan about blowing my supposed "best years" or I could do something about the years upcoming to make up for it. And for the most part I've just been doing the bitching and moaning portion of that. I'm tired of that. People around me have to be tired of hearing and seeing it. "Boo fuckin' hoo, woe the fuck is me, the pain, the pain." Blah! Blah and double Blah I say... You heard me! Phooey! That's right, I got to use Phooey! I can smell the jealousy! Peshaw even! Hah! Another good discarded word! ... Damn it, I really do enjoy ME sometimes... But I'm digressing... But not before I say "Squadoo" while I'm at it, nothin' better than dusting off good old words when ever you can... Really digressing...

Where was I? Oh yeah. So this is me returning to hopefully a more regular posting with some actual entertainment value to it, enough bitchy moany whiny bullshit. Now I can't guarantee that the place is going to be whine free, but at least the bullshit should be in context and somewhat humorous in the future, that's the best I can give you right now, we'll work from there.

So I'm going to be starting a lot of stuff with my birthday as an excuse to get off my ass, I'm going to post some more writing, including the daily exercises from hollylisle.com that I'd been doing regularly for a week or so not too long ago. It's nothing special but it's something to get me writing every morning and I can always use that. On top of that I'm getting back to getting my diet back under control tomorrow and starting an exercise program on Tuesday. I've got a lot of time to make up and while I've done a damn good job this last year and a half, I've still got a lot more to do, and if I seriously put my mind to it I'm going to have no problem. Another part of me coming back here is to hopefully use this to help keep me honest. That's been the idea of blogs in the past, but hopefully I can make it work this time. All I have to do is put in some effort here and I'll be all right, the problem's been that I haven't been putting any effort what so ever into any thing at all for so long, it's hard to remember how. But I think I'll get back into the swing of things. I think I'm finally ready again, hell, I'm back here aren't I? That's a start...

Oh, and in an added spleen venting feature to the LJ, I'll be keeping records of current gas prices around here for posterity. I did an article for the Cult of Nobody about the coming of $3 a gallon gas last summer, and while it didn't come then, I know it's on it's way, and I just want to silently seethe over it with a running log of the out of control prices, just for kicks. So the price every post will come from the Arco AM/PM on the corner of Arden and Ethan in the fair city of Sacramento California. When you hear those national averages and then see what I pay you'll be able to share in my hate, keeping in mind this is pretty much the CHEAPEST station in the area... Another fine content innovation brought to you by WuF©co, you can thank me later...

Talk to you all later, but sooner rather than...

-=-=- Regular Unleaded: $2.15 a gallon -=-=-

kleewfreakly @ 2004-05-05T00:05:00

2004-05-05T07:12:12Z

It's not fair...

I'm a whiny bitch!

2004-03-19T19:46:33Z

There, it just needed to be said, move along now, nothing else to see...

Ahhhh, funny, how I've missed ye.

2004-03-15T05:06:07Z

Last show recaps for the week. It's also looking like my schedule's going to calm down a bit now so I might finally be able to talk about other things... assuming I have anything else of interest to talk about...

Tuesday was the open mic at True Love Coffee House. Over all not bad. A couple people I'd already seen, Roberta Chevrette, the host of the Fox & Goose open mic, and Steve Chance, guy I saw the week before and picked up a CD from. The best guy of the night though was Justin Farren. Had a great look and a really good sound, and fortunately, also had a CD. His best stuff wasn't on the disk but he says he should have a new one out soon so I can't wait for that.

Then Thursday was Gary Jules at Harlow's, finishing my little run of three trips to Harlow's in 8 days. The place was very sparse, it was just as surprisingly empty as Rufus' show Sunday was full, I honestly expected the crowd sizes to be reversed, but I guess I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. His two openers were good but not great, almost got a CD but they didn't move me enough.

As for Gary himself, going into the show I'd only heard his cover of Mad World. The cover is so different from the original that one would expect that that's the guy's style, but no. I mean, he wasn't bad by any means, but he wasn't great either. He had a very Paul Simon sound to him but his stuff just kept droning on a little too long with little to no changes. I need texture in my sound. Now the fact that he didn't sound anything like I expected may have colored my view of the entire show, I'm willing to admit that, so I'm going to cut him a little slack and reserve final judgment.

In an entirely non show-going related note, I'm actually being productive again. Not sure if it was not having rehearsals last week or what but all the sudden I'm cranking out sketches like it's nobody's business, and that's nice. Not only that, but they're some of the funniest stuff I've ever written, so that's also nice. Now I just need to finish stuff. I get started on a lot of things but finish precious few. Gotta change that. But for now I'm just going to bask in my productivity, it's a nice change of pace.

Klee W. Freakly - Record Mogul?

2004-03-10T02:21:56Z

When was the last time I was here, let's see... Ah. Rufus, that's right.

Well, the Rufus Wainwright show Sunday was great. A lot of people crammed into a medium sized place. He was incredible but I expected as much. I was lucky, when I showed up I found Mel (cast member in the comedy troupe I'm in) was also at the show. Somehow we hadn't relayed to the other that we'd be going to the show so it was quite a surprise to both of us. Really glad she was there though, as we know I fucking hate going places by myself and I really needed someone for the four hours I ended up being there (showed up about an hour early just to make sure I got in, which was a good thing, then the three hour show.) So in the end, great show, good night, another win chocked up in column A.

Monday I went to the Fox & Goose open mic again, the guy whose stuff I really dug last week (Cole) told me he was going to be there again and that was all I needed. Over all the quality of the performers last night wasn't what it was last week, more people were good last week than were this week, but the ones that WERE good this week were that much better than those that were last week, making the two weeks a kind of push... I hope that made sense, it mostly did coming out...

In addition to Cole another guy I saw there, the fellah whom I'm listening to right now, Scott Berry also rocked quite heartily. Two really good guys last night and Scott's going to be back next week as the featured performer while Cole also said he'd be back, so again, Monday's booked for me.

Now this all brings me to the cryptic subject of this post. Cole's a young guy, last week, my first open mic was also his first in a long while. He's an incredible talent, great writer, great guitar player, good vocals. I've been doing a little radio show off an on for about a year now, playing new sounds that I've fished out of places like mp3.com and others. I love finding new sounds, but in most cases I've found them long after they've reached some level of success, how ever small it may be. In this case I'm in on the very basement of an incredible talent. He's so fucking good I talk to him after his sets and just gush about how he can't get stuff recorded fast enough so I can buy an album from him. And that thar's when mah puzzler got all whirly an' ah started ta getsin ta thinkin'. Hyuk.

Why wait? Why not record the guy myself? I know good sounds when I hear 'em, why don't I just fucking start my own label? All good questions I thought. So I got to thinkin' some more, hell, I've got a friend, a big shot audio guy, who last time I talked to him was working on putting a recording studio together. Assuming the place is finally finished, I might be able to get him to give me some off hours time in there, hook me up a little. He's also got years of music biz experience and might be able to introduce me to at least what starting a dinky indy label and becoming a record producer would entail. I realize eventually it involves sucking the life and creativity out of every talented person I can get my talons into, raping their dreams and destroying their futures while my bank account points and laughs, I understand that eventuality of the business, but I'm not STARTING there.

Shit, I know what's good, I've got a pretty fucking solid ear. I've spent a lot of time on this end of the musical food chain, just having my Whopper and not caring less how the burger gets from the farm to me.

Now I think I'd like to learn how the hamburger is made.

Ah, the sweet, sweet, hackery...

2004-03-08T03:45:12Z

There's good and bad to being an open minded person. I've had two outings worth of mostly bad in a row now.

Friday night I went to Luna's to catch some stand-up: Tim O'Dell First Friday Comedy Showcase blah blah blah. I ordered a hot chocolate and a water. I was presented with a 1400 degree mug of molten brownness and a cup of room temperature tap water, yummy.

Of course I was ridiculously early as usual so I pulled out my notebook to try to write while the hot chocolate they retrieved for me from the surface of the sun cooled. Luna's is a tiny little place that - as I learned later - they cram far too many people into to be even remotely legal.

As the place began to pack I realized I'd be having to move eventually. My oneness hogging a table for twoness would not work. This would end up being part of why I had to leave early, though not the main crux of it. So after sitting around for probably close to an hour and finally coming up with a good fad diet sketch I was asked if I could move, I said no problem, no reason some couple should have to be penalized for my aloneness. So I was sent to a seat approximately 4 millimeters from where the comics would be. Fun.

The first guy got up and sucked out loud. The most reaction he got was a pity response he set-up mid act. He had people "Aww" at his lameness and there was plenty, purposefully and otherwise. And I get the pleasure of seeing his flop sweat up close, up uncomfortably close.

I'm a tough crowd, you don't want me in the front row of anything involving comedy for the most part. I give away no free laughs. It was painful.

The second person up was much better though. She had a much tighter delivery and much better material, she just had a little more "it" than the first guy, it's intangible but more important than just about anything else. So while I did enjoy her, the discomfort of the seating arrangement, not to mention the seat itself (the seat I originally had was nicely padded and comfy, the seat I was moved to was a folding wooden chair... yes, of doom.) plus the fact that there were at least 3 other comics coming up and they were all getting 20-30 minutes each, I just couldn't stay. If I had any confidence in the rest of the comics I might've stuck it out, but I REALLY didn't.

I'm going to go back this week to Luna's to check out their open mic, there I shouldn't have to move.

Tonight though, as soon as I post this as a matter of fact, I'm going to a show that I expect to be spectacular. I'm going back to Harlow's tonight to see Rufus Wainwright. It's a pretty pricey ticket for a Sunday, but I just recently got into Rufus and absolutely love him. It should be a good night, and of course I'll be back to give you the run down on it because I know you're all hanging on my every word, oh the edge of your seat excitement of my relaying the play by play of my lonely nights out... Oy, I need friends...

Feh...

2004-03-04T23:21:36Z

Yar, my ventures into the world continue they do... Yar... Eh...

Last night I moseyed on out to Harlow's to check out "Comedy by the Fireplace". I wasn't sure what to expect but I didn't care, it was a comedy show, it was not in my apartment, and that's all I need now a days.

I went there straight after work, all the advertisement, in the News and Review, on their own website, said the show started at 8. I get off at 8 but only work 10 minutes from the place so I expected I'd be showing up right on time to get in, get a seat and be assaulted by laugh inducing frivolity, and perhaps, if I were very lucky, maybe even some guffaw inspiring joviality. Perchance to dream!

Well, turns out all of that hogwash about starting at 8 was pure flim flammery! FLIM FLAMMERY I SAY! The show instead started at 9 I was told. That's fine, So I had about 45-50 minutes to kill, that's fine. To kill some of this extra time I now had I decided to go outside and make a couple calls to some folks, with so much time now till show time I thought I'd see if anyone was able to join me. We can all guess based on my track record so far how successful that was.

So I head back in and thumb through my mini-notebook, organizing ideas and shit, trying to attempt people watching for sketch inspiration. To make a long story somewhat less long, 9 rolled around and no show, I expected as much, no show in the history of time and space has ever started on time. We eventually wheel out the "funny" at about 9:30. That's bullshit even if I hadn't gotten there an hour early. But at least we were getting started, surely the soothing comfort of the funny would heal all that ails me, right? In theory sure...

The group of comics was of a distinct "urban" flavor. I'm trying to be diplomatic, but there's not much room for diplomacy in most of these cases. I have no problem with "urban" comics, when it's true and real it's great, but most of this was not. When your only laughs come from you cussing excessively you've got a problem.

Now I'm trying not to come off as Joe Comedy Snob but I'm a stand-up aficionado, and I loves me some stand up when it's good, but there's not much worse on the planet than when it's bad. I love all styles of stand up, super dirty, super clean, political, acerbic, left field, fucking insane and all points between. When it's good it's good, when it's bad you just want to kill everyone in the room.

Maybe 3 or 4 of the comics last night were even remotely worth a damn. The other two thirds of 'em were painful, tired hackery. I wish I'd been able to get one friend of mine from the troupe to come out with me last night because one of the comics so completely aped Mitch Hedberg's act (one of her and my favorite comics) that I would have been intrigued by her reaction, she's a lot more vocal in expressing her displeasure with things than I am. I silently hated him from my seat, I don't think she would have been so kind.

I realize this is sounding awful negative, but in the end it honestly wasn't that bad. The three or four good guys didn't quite make up for the rest of the hacks and the insanely long wait, but they at least brought the night back to a fairly even "Eh", a wash but not really bad.

While I was there I bought a ticket for Sunday's show, Rufus Wainwright will be performing. Then, just four days later Gary Jules will be in the same building. Gonna be spending a lot of time in Harlow's this week, next step, spending it WITH someone... Ahhh, yes, the tricky part... One step at a time I guess...

Well I'll be the male sibling of a simian who's borne children.

2004-03-03T01:06:22Z

Pulled myself out of my apartment last night to check out an open mic downtown. Went to the Fox & Goose for those that care, whom I'm sure are few and far between.

Color me pleasantly surprised.

It was about three hours of consistently solid acoustic music. That in itself is worthy of praise, getting one or two decent open micers in one night is something to write home about but I shit you not there was only maybe two people that came up over the course of the night that even dipped below "alright" on the patented Freakly Brand: Vague Quality Scale (VQS) I employ to grade music.

Only one guy actually had CDs on hand and he was good enough to have earned my five bucks so I picked up his burned from his home PC disk with hand written track listings on the Memorex CD. I'm listening to it again right now, and sure, three songs for $5 may be a little steep, but I couldn't give less of a fuck, it's not bad, and it's new, and I got it last night at an open mic, and I went out, and I did, and it was good, and that's better than I've been able to say for a little while, so that's good too...

Can't miss something you never had.

2004-03-01T07:00:55Z

It's funny how things work. Not so much funny "ha-ha" in this case.

A couple days ago when I started this blog I filled out a quiz-a-majig. In it I spilled my guts to establish a ground work of honesty and truth here that I'd failed to do in past blog encounters.

In said quiz I briefly touched upon my family, in particular my estranged dad. I mentioned how big a worthless pile he was and how if he were plucked from the face of existence I wouldn't bat an eye, or something similar in not so many words.

Well, Friday morning I got to test that theory.

I got a couple calls from my sister on Thursday, I generally don't jump to return calls from her. If she catches me when I'm around I'll answer, but I don't usually return a message. That's kinda fucked up I know, but that's the way it's been. So she called me Thursday morning, I missed the call, and I moved on. That night was the show, which I might go into in it's own post but right now it's ancillary to the story at hand. After the show at around ten after ten I got another call that I also missed, the show had wrapped up around that time and I was mingling with the crowd, which I never do but there were some special guests that night so I felt like going out there and talking. I'm glad I did it too because I don't think I wanted to take that call right then.

Friday morning she finally caught me. She told me our dad was dead. Initially I reacted just as I had expected, "Finally dead huh? Well alrighty, guess that's that."

Before you begin to call me a heartless fuck, and before I get to the part where I prove I'm not I'd like to give you a touch of back story on dear ol' dad.

Lary Meekins was an abusive man. My mom put up with his abuse of her, myself and my sister till, I want to say, I was 4 or 5. She got a divorce and raised my sister and I on her own, without penny one of support from him. She fought and clawed and scraped to make a life for herself and her children and she did an incredible job, working up from literally nothing and giving us the best she could. I love my mom, she's the greatest person in the world.

After he left I saw him again maybe 3 or 4 times. I talked to him on the phone another hand full of times. Years later I got a couple letters (from prison), to which I didn't respond.

I got one present from him in all the birthdays and Christmas' since he left, a Joe Theismann jersey shirt that I got when I was say, 9 or 10 or so. That's all I ever got from him. I still have it. I pulled it out Friday, the only piece of my father I have.

My dad spent his life ruining others. Spending as much time in jail as out (my last name is Jones, think about it a sec. Real inventitative fellah weren't him?) I have two other half siblings that I know of with a third on the way. I'm sure there're more.

He had hepatitis C when he died, he'd apparently picked it up from dirty needles from what I'm told. And in the end, the way I hear it, a blood vessel in his neck burst, his kidneys failed, he stopped breathing and when his heart stopped they pulled him off life support.

He died, and he was dead. He was 44.

All of that said, he was still my father. He was still the man responsible for my existence. I hated him, I never wanted to have anything to do with him again, and I didn't think I'd miss a beat when he was gone, but he was still my dad. It hurt more than I expected.

What got me the most was a couple months ago he had started calling people, I'm assuming because he knew he was dieing. My sister got a call. She'd had a lot more contact with him, she'd given him chances only to be disappointed at every turn. She tore into him when he called. If I remember correctly his last words to her were something along the lines of "Well fuck you then."

He called her, he called others in his current life in Virginia, but he never even tried to call me. That's what hurt most. It's not that I wanted to hear from him, I doubt I would've given him much of my time, nothing he could say would have fixed anything. But he didn't even try. He was dieing and he didn't even attempt to call his first born son. And now he's gone. My only wish is that his last thoughts were of me and how he fucked it all up so long ago. I know they weren't, I know I didn't even enter his mind, but I do wish I had.

My mom and sister and I got together for dinner Friday night, our own little wake for a man who didn't deserve it. It was nice. We hadn't been together, just us out to dinner, in ages.

So in the end my hypothesis wasn't quite accurate. While I don't miss him in the least, while I don't ache for a chance to reconcile that I'll never get, it did hurt, more so than I expected. I can say all the things I want about him and I've said quite a few here, but he was still my dad, as undeserving of even that honor as he was, he was still my dad. It still hurt.

It's pointless to resist the vile temptress...

2004-02-27T18:51:14Z

Ah, Cadbury Creme Eggs... The Devil's greatest trick was making the world believe he wasn't a chocolate shelled creme filled Easter delight...

May you live in interesting times.

2004-02-27T00:26:44Z

Sure, I understood the proverb, I knew it's meaning, I comprehended it completely. But since I had never lived in anything resembling an interesting time I never REALLY knew what it meant. And when I say interesting times fuck globally interesting, I'm talking locally, personally. I'd never had anything interesting happen in my life, I'd been doing little more than existing the last 8 or so years of my life. Then I believe it was November 2002 when things finally got interesting. But a little more back story...

I've been told I'm funny. That's debatable and subjective, but I've been told this. A couple years ago I stumbled into acting. I did some things in my TV classes in college, not a whole lot but enough. My real passion is writing, though based on my productivity over the years you'd never guess. But I digress now don't I?

See a couple years ago I was pulled into this improv comedy group. I became friends with Jackie Taylor, former "Lotto Lady" (On air personality) for the California State Lottery, while working for said Lotto. She was involved in this group and asked me if I'd like to come help with tech stuff for the show. I said sure. Next thing I know I'm being suckered into being in the show. I become a cast member of "Talk Show Theater". It wasn't much, I was little more than scenery for the most part, but I took advantage of all the time I was given and stole a laugh here and there. I did that for it's entire first run, then started their second run but saw I wasn't going to get any more substantial a role than before and decided I didn't need to do that again.

The show was weak, let's not beat around the bush. The concept (an all improved Jerry Springer type talk show thing) was a good one for maybe a re-occurring short scene in a bigger show, but it couldn't carry an hour every week on it's own.

Now while I was in this show I heard about another one going at the same time. The Free Hooch Comedy Troupe - a part sketch part improv group. One of the members of Talk Show auditioned for Free Hooch and came back with horror stories of how it was too raunchy and blah blah blah. I should have taken a second to think about who was telling me this - an overly uptight buttoned down hack - and given it a looksee myself, but I didn't at the time. Eventually when I saw Hooch was STILL running I went out to catch a show.

It wasn't that great. I wasn't impressed but I saw the potential it had. On a flier outside the room where the show was taking place (which was actually a little theater inside a hotel) they said they'd be having an after party at this sports bar down the road and for anyone that wanted to come by and hang out. I decided what the fuck and did just that.

Now, I'm not a very sociable person. I am seriously lacking in social skills, the hermit lifestyle doesn't really help one to cultivate witty repartee. I'm slightly better now, but only slightly.

So I hang out outside the bar waiting for them to show up, when they do I end up accidentally catching the director of the group Brian Crall. We talk a little bit, he asks me what I thought of the show and while being as diplomatic as I know how, yet still not pulling too many punches because what the fuck do I care, I don't know this guy, I tell him I thought it was alright but most of the early part of the show was pretty weak. He actually agrees and tells me how they just lost their head writer and have been kind of struggling, so we bond over a weak show, interestingly enough.

I went in and did my wallflower routine, I eventually ended up talking a little bit to a couple other members of the cast, talked to Brian a little bit more, told him I was a writer and might be interested in getting involved with the group gave him my number and that was pretty much that. It was a midland show and I wasn't impressed, but I'd talked a little with some of the people involved and I felt good that I'd actually done something.

A couple weeks later I came back for another show, it was a little better and I repeated the same post show ritual. I then caught I believe one more show, and managed to ease myself a little more into the group at that post show gathering, this little stint would really be my only real recorded incident of networking, as clumsy and awkward as it were.

Then the show closed and I thought "Well fuck, now what?"

The "now what" ended up being a weekly improv workshop that I would go on to attend for a handful of months just as something to do. I have no actual formal training in improv or acting and I was hoping the workshop would be my first bit of that, it really wasn't so much. I was hoping for an at least loosely formatted class type thing, but it was mainly just a group of folks getting together to play improv games, which I guess was alright, while not quite what I wanted it did do SOME good.

Then I got an unexpected call, it was from Brian letting me know that Free Hooch was having auditions, November 2002. Well hell, that's cool I guess, but really I just want to write, which is still kind of how I feel, but I decided I'd give it a shot, I couldn't be THAT bad. Then I just fucking tanked - or at least I thought so - my audition. But a couple weeks later I got the news that I'd be joining Hooch's new second group "The Improvimaniacs" - I shit you not, that was what it was going to be called - an all improv second show that Brian was going to put together to do a night at the new club he was going to open. Well now, that was even more interesting news.

Back in the early 90s stand-up Boom new comedy clubs sprouted up out of no where, I think there were 4 or 5 stand up clubs in Sacramento... Let me repeat that. There were no less than four 4 and as many as probably 6 Stand-Up Comedy Clubs in Sacra-fucking-mento! Can you wrap your head around how fucking insane that is? Needless to say that didn't last. For as long as I can remember we've been a two club town, Laughs Unlimited downtown and Punch Line in sorta East Sac. If the idea were for another stand-up club I'd say no way, won't work, not a chance, but this idea was for a new ensemble comedy club, a place where you could see sketch groups or improv groups, a place of the likes that simply doesn't exist anywhere closer than San Francisco. I loved the idea, I was in.

Over the months though as troubles mounted, the club ran into more and more difficulties in getting off the ground and the improv group folded before it ever got started. I was then absorbed into Free Hooch as a "Featured Player" as well as another guy, Bob, who also survived the Improv group.

I'm horrible with new people. I simply can't handle it. I'm not the type of guy who can effortlessly mingle at parties and shit. It stems mostly from the fact that I hate no less than 99.9999% of the human race, it makes it hard to get along. All of that is said to let you know that it took me a while to work my way into the group, it takes me a while to open up to new groups of people, but eventually I did, I warmed up to them and - I'm hoping - they to me. I made a niche for myself. I didn't contribute much in the way of full sketches because I was still trying to feel my way around the level of the room and the styles of the group, but I became the punch up guy.

When a sketch came in and it needed something, I had the line it needed. In a pitch session when things needed a tweak and an idea had potential but hadn't yet found a way to reach it, I provided the angle or the gag. I worked my way in slowly and made a place for myself. I was in, Bob was out, I was a full fledged member of the Free Hooch Comedy Troupe.

That sounds like the end of a story doesn't it? Fuck. That's where the real fun begins. It's just been one fucked up dysfunctional mess from there, but it's also been the best year of my life, funny how that works. Most of that insanity and uncomfortableness will certainly be shared later, mostly because of the rules of the classic comedic theorem, tragedy + time = comedy, and I do plan on actually being humorous in this journal, I know I've started off pretty heavy here but I want people to know who I am and where I'm coming from right now, it's kind of important, and it's a chance for me to let people who I've already known for quite some time to get a little more info on me and my inner workings to possibly help shed a little insight on some of my past ridiculocity.

All of that ramble is the back story of what I'm going through right now, I've been with Free Hooch for almost a year and a half now, I've gotten to know some great people, I've begun to finally grow as a person and I've been introduced to the real world for the first time. A world where attractive, intelligent, funny doctors and lawyers who could have the world are somehow miserable and self destructive, a world where family is fragile and lost in many varied ways. I'm having to learn things I should've learned a long time ago, fail for the first time at things I should've mastered ages ago. I'm feeling my way around real life like a man in a dark room, I couldn't see a damned thing at first, but my eyes are slowly adjusting and things are becoming ever so slightly easier, and while I thought I was the only one in the dark, it turns out everyone else is in this same darkness, the only difference is that their eyes adjusted some time ago, they can't see any better than I can, they just know where all the furniture is by now.

It's been an embarrassing, uncomfortable, frightening, sad, interesting, exciting, exhilarating, eye opening experience. In spite of, and at the same time because of it all, It's been the best year of my life, I'm finally living, and getting all the good and the bad that comes with that.

Tonight we have another show, and for the second time in four weeks we're doing it under a dark cloud, but it's going to be all right, we'll figure it out, we'll make it work. That's life...