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About This Author
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Complex Numbers
Complex Numbers
A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.
The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.
Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.
Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.
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January 31, 2020 at 12:07am January 31, 2020 at 12:07am
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Did anyone get here by clicking through from "Born Funny"  by NaNoNette  ? If so -- Hi! I'm Waltz; since you have the perspicacity to be reading the Comedy newsletters in the first place, you probably already know me. If not, short version: I like the indoors, live an alcohol-positive lifestyle, love science and philosophy and music and movies, and am owned by cats. Also, all the stuff at the top of the blog is meant to scare off math-phobes; "Complex Numbers" is a multi-level play on words and I rarely actually talk about mathematics in here.
Thanks for linking this in the NL, NaNoNette . Now I'm under pressure to be funny, so I probably won't be.
Since the 30DBC ended yesterday, and I now have an even bigger backlog of blog fodder, let's go straight to the stars.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/betelgeuse-supernova/605251/...
The Biggest Celestial Event of the Year Could Happen Tomorrow
... or, well, maybe not for 100,000 years
Spoiler alert: It didn't happen tomorrow. Article was dated January 23, and I'm sure I looked up between then and now, and still nothing. But since that involves going outside, I can't say it didn't just happen. You'd think that, when it did, it'd be all over the internet, but no, everyone's too busy freaking about about Kung Flu.
What is "it?" A supernova.
Sometime this week, you might walk outside in broad daylight, look up at the sky, and see a luminous orb as bright as a full moon. Only it wouldn’t be the moon. It would be something far more explosive: the dazzling aftermath of a cataclysm hundreds of light-years away.
Now I'm depressed that it probably won't happen in my lifetime. Because that sounds cool as shit.
In the night sky, the constellation Orion is most well-known for his belt, a row of three luminous stars.
Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. No, I didn't just look that up. Orion is probably the best-known and most easily identified constellation of all - the Big Dipper being only part of a constellation - so at one point I knew the names of all its visible stars. Now it's just those three, plus Rigel and Betelgeuse. I could look up the rest again, but can't be arsed.
Those names, like many star names, are of Arabic origin. While Europe was languishing in the dark ages of superstition and deliberate ignorance, the Arab world was busy giving names to stars.
For the last few months, though, astronomers around the world have been particularly interested in his right shoulder, the home of a star called Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky.
Just to be clear, we imagine Orion as an anthropomorphic figure facing us, so his right shoulder is on our left as we look up at it whilst facing south-ish.
The supernova wouldn’t harm Earth. Betelgeuse isn’t the sort of star whose demise would produce radiation that could roil the planet’s atmosphere. At about 650 light-years from here, Betelgeuse is nearby on a cosmic scale, but thankfully not close enough to cause any damage.
I just wanted to include this paragraph in case you can't be arsed to click on the link.
So how might people react? Judging by what happened in New York about a year ago, there would be confusion, even panic.
[insert Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference here]
And sigh. Because if people weren't so damn willfully and boastfully ignorant about these things, they wouldn't panic.
A similar scenario would likely play out online in the case of a surprise supernova, with NASA and other science institutions leading the awareness campaign.
Right, because when there's a big scary light in the sky and you haven't been reading my blog (or any of numerous science articles available on the web), you're going to trust what a government agency says. "They're covering it up again! Aliens! Armageddon! Zombies!"
The star might explode tomorrow or in 100,000 years, says Stella Kafka, the executive director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers and an astronomer...
And I'm just including this bit because if I were writing a novel featuring an astronomer and executive director of [insert astronomy organization here], and I named the main character Stella Kafka, my editor would insist that it was unrealistic and I should change it to something less godsdamned perfect.
On top of that, astronomers don’t have any proof that the mysterious dimming is a precursor to a supernova.
In journalism, they call this "burying the lede."
When stars explode, they release a cascade of newly forged elements into space. These elements glide across the universe inside particles of dust, settling on whatever they encounter. Astronomers have detected this stardust all over Earth, inside mud on the ocean floor and snow in Antarctica. It is these explosions and the cosmic droplets they unleashed that helped give rise, over eons, to other stars, planets, and, in our case, life. Someday, a bunch of stardust might look up at the sky and see it happening all over again.
That's very poetic and a great way to end an article like this one. It's not a new interpretation, and some might even call it trite because it's been repeated, in one form or another, for decades now. But I never get tired of its philosophical power
To add a bit more detail: when the Universe was a baby, it was roughly 3/4 hydrogen and 1/4 helium by mass (gross oversimplification, but the point is, very few heavier elements existed then). This gas clumped into galaxies and stars, and within the stars, fusion began to create slightly heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. These stars exploded, spewing their contents into the void, contents which then formed other stars - still mostly hydrogen, but with some heavies (what astronomers call "metals"). Those stars, in turn, exploded, etc.
The thing about fusion is that knocking nuclei together to create everything up to iron in terms of atomic number releases energy, while iron and above absorbs energy. There is a lot of energy in a supernova, so you end up with a lot of iron and a few other heavy elements like, e.g., gold or uranium. So the supernova blasts these elements into interstellar space, and they later accrete around a nascent star, and some of them form planets, and some of these planets (at least one, anyway) go on to develop complex life that utterly depends on a wide range of elements, including iron.
There's probably no helium in you, unless you just inhaled some so you can talk in a squeaky voice, so every single atom in your body (except the hydrogen) was forged in the heart of a star and driven across the galaxy by the incredible forces of a supernova. Hell, even if you have been sucking on a balloon, that helium is probably the decay product of some radioactive element that was star-born.
I don't care how many times I hear it. That's fucking cool.
One final thing: don't get confused by anything that goes something like "Betelgeuse might have already exploded, but the light hasn't had time to reach us yet!" This is technically true, but irrelevant. It's not like we have a warp drive to go check out the vicinity and see if it's "already" exploded (and if we did, the Enterprise could be in for a really rough ride when it drops out of warp). For any reasonable linguistic value of the present tense, the supernova happens when we see it, and not before.
I wasn't going to continue with the musical tie-ins, but this one was just too obvious.
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
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January 30, 2020 at 12:04am January 30, 2020 at 12:04am
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PROMPT January 30
Congratulations on making it to the last day of the competition! What was your favorite prompt from the last month? Did you learn anything new about your fellow competitors? What was the most rewarding aspect of participating in the competition?
I had a better time with this than usual, this month. I don't know - maybe it was the musical selections I decided to do for a theme for the month. It wasn't always easy finding an appropriate song, in terms of lyrics, mood, and a title that would work as a blog entry (something I think I managed to do every day except for the first one). Music does tend to inspire me. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed almost every prompt. Especially amusing to me was the "naughty kid" prompt ("The Thin Ice" ) -- not only for making me remember the icy bay, but seeing the responses of others.
Which ties in with the "Did you learn anything new" question: Yes. Yes, I did.
Seriously, though, I've very much enjoyed the interaction with other bloggers - giving and receiving comments. Much thanks to all of you -- organizers, participants, everyone who stopped by, and, most especially, the lovely, talented, benevolent, fair, and incomparable judges.
I'm not going anywhere, though -- next month is February, home of the despised V-Day and my birthday, as well as crappy weather. The month has nothing else to recommend it, so I might as well keep writing in this thing.
To close out this month of musical theme tie-ins, here's a song that is not the song you think it is. But it's much better.
Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing
But there's nothing really happening
And the place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night
And my very close companion
Gets me fumbling gets me laughing
She's a hundred but she's wearing
Something tight
And I lift my glass to the awful truth
Which you can't reveal to the ears of youth
Except to say it isn't worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
And it's once for the devil and once for Christ
But the boss don't like these dizzy heights
We're busted in the blinding lights
Of closing time
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January 29, 2020 at 12:06am January 29, 2020 at 12:06am
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PROMPT January 29
Everyone did a great job with filling the war chest yesterday! There's so many great prompts and I'm sure Em will love every one of them.
Since today *is* War Chest Wednesday, I'm going to grab one.
What is your favorite virtue? Give a few examples like kindness, cleanliness, tact, truth, generosity. Is your favorite one you possess, or one you simply admire in other people? Do you have a strategy to develop it yourself?
Prompt is courtesy of Kåre เลียม Enga 
Snark.
Wait, is that a virtue? No? Everyone hates it? Well, shit.
I'm glad Kåre เลียม Enga's other idea, the one involving a certain mouthless feline, didn't make it into the prompt. Still, I find the juxtaposition of "tact" and "truth" amusing, since those are sometimes incompatible.
Other examples of virtues? Well, I suppose there are two loosely defined kinds of virtues: directed toward the self, such as tenacity, self-control, or mental flexibility; and directed toward others, like charity, fairness, and loyalty. There might be a third kind, but it's intertwined with religion, and one does not need to be religion to be virtuous; sometimes, it seems, religion gets in the way.
But there's one virtue that, I think, influences many of these others, both inward and outward, and that is compassion. One can be compassionate to others, obviously; but it's also good to be compassionate to oneself. I know I'm harder on myself than I am on others, and I could stand to cut myself a little slack now and then.
Unfortunately, for myself, compassion isn't something that comes naturally. I have to think about it deliberately. I mean, my first reaction when someone's holding up a line at the grocery store, or cutting me off in traffic, or trying to sell me insurance, is usually annoyance. I have to reach for serenity, and I have to reach for compassion: knowing, logically, that everyone is the star of their own show, and they can each justify their own actions, and maybe they're just having a bad day. Maybe their dog just died, or their house has a leak, or they're worried about a friend.
And yet, compassion is the one thing I want to strive for. On a purely selfish level, it helps me as a writer to try to see others' points of view. But more importantly, I think that if I could crack the code of compassion, perhaps other people will appreciate it if they know someone cares about what they're going through, whatever that may be.
There was some discussion a while back about what people are "really" like. I believe that we have to practice being who we want to become. If something that you want to be isn't a part of your character, is it "fake" to try to practice that virtue until it becomes a part of you? I don't think so, myself; otherwise, how could any of us deliberately change? So, no, I'm not a compassionate person. But I'm working on it.
I'm not very good at it. It's not like I can learn it like I'm learning French, or like I learned how to do engineering. But I've seen peoples' actions that I have identified as "compassionate," and that's what I strive to emulate.
One such person that stands out for me is a lesser-known singer/songwriter named Dar Williams, who as far as I'm concerned is the Avatar of Compassion -- so it's her song I'm going to feature to tie in with this theme.
Go ahead push your luck
Find out how much love the world can hold
Once upon a time I had control and reined my soul in tight
Well the whole truth
Is like the story of a wave unfurled
But I held the evil of the world
So I stopped the tide froze it up from inside
And it felt like
A winter machine that you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound
And when I chose to live
There was no joy it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found
And if I was to sleep
I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I traveled down a whispering well
To know myself through them...
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January 28, 2020 at 12:03am January 28, 2020 at 12:03am
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PROMPT January 28
Let's fill Emily's war-chest of ideas!
What's a topic you've always thought would be a great 30dbc discussion, but has never come up in the prompts? Why do you think it would stimulate discussion?
I guess I've been doing these challenges on and off for over a year, now. I can't say I've "always thought" a particular prompt would make a good discussion -- I save my prompt energy for my weekly contributions to "Invalid Item" . I'm content to go with the flow and see where someone else's prompts take me. Also, my memory is crap so there's no guarantee that anything I come up with hasn't already been done, even if it was in a month in which I participated.
So I gave it some thought, and thought some more, and then worked backwards. I figured since I've been doing the musical thematic tie-ins all month, I'd just pick one of my favorite songs and go from there. Any prompt I propose here is going to come from either humor or pathos -- or perhaps both at the same time, as the line between them is sometimes blurry, and sometimes nonexistent. So this one is brought to you by Bruce Springsteen.
We've all heard the pep talk: "Don't give up! Never quit!" Like many pep talks, this can be harmful in the long run. There are times when the best thing you can do is to give up, abandon your dream, change course, retreat... surrender. Have you done this? Or have you actively resisted it? Either way, what was the result? Any regrets?
Why would this stimulate discussion? Well, I think it's likely we've all been there. When you face a challenge, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose; sometimes you press on, and sometimes you just let it go. It's relatable and, I believe, could help people examine their own habits and motivations, and isn't that what self-reflection is all about?
I could write about this from both sides - fulfilling a goal, and on the other hand abandoning a different one. Neither one made me particularly happy or sad in the long run, so my assertion is that, for me, it doesn't matter -- what matters is having goals in the first place.
If you want specifics, though, you'll have to wait until it becomes an official prompt -- and that's assuming that I'm participating at the time. And that I remember what I was thinking of, besides the music.
Well, we busted out of class
Had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three-minute record, baby
Than we ever learned in school
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes
And follow your dreams down
Well, we made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Like soldiers in the winter's night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender
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January 27, 2020 at 12:06am January 27, 2020 at 12:06am
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PROMPT January 27
Invalid Photo #1056988
Discuss a time in your life when someone has tried to "fix" or "solve" a problem for you - but you didn't see it as a problem in the first place.
How do you generally handle unsolicited opinions/advice?
My ex-wife, shortly after she moved in: "You have too many books."
Me: How is that even possible?
I still miss the books she "helped" me dispose of. More than I miss her. To be fair, though, I once had a mole removed that I miss more than I miss her. Don't get me wrong, though; we're on speaking terms - we just don't have anything to speak about anymore.
Before I met her, I dated a woman I'll call B, because she doesn't have any Bs in her name and I'd rather keep people anonymous. We didn't date for very long, and after we broke up we stayed friends. Yes, it really does happen. We were still friends when my ex dumped me, so we started hanging out again - not dating, though. One time, B and I were in a store and for some reason I had the munchies [Narrator: It was weed] and wanted to buy a Rice Krispies Treat - you know, one of those horrid amalgamations of Rice Krispies cereal and melted marshmallows.
"Don't buy that crap," said B, or something very similar. "I'll get the ingredients and we'll make some."
Now, one of the reasons I got along with B [Narrator: apart from the fact that she always had good weed] was that there are few people in this world who are worse housekeepers than I am, and she was one of them, so after buying the ingredients, we went to my place to make it because her kitchen was unusable. She made the things and, in her defense, they really are better than the store-bought kind. But then, instead of a single Treat and a discarded wrapper, I ended up with an empty box of Rice Krispies, half a bag of evil puffy marshmallows, a lingering scent of cooked sugar in the house, two dirty cake pans, a bunch of dirty dishes, utensils, and the pot wherein the nasty white things were melted, and a refrigerator full of Rice Krispies Treats that it would take me a few weeks to eat before I decided the remainder had gone stale and dumped the leftovers.
I mean, seriously, I have to have a serious case of the munchies to eat those things, and that just doesn't happen very often.
Result: A lot more work, a lot more time, a lot more calories, a lot more money spent. Still, I remember that day fondly; we had a good time.
Remember a bunch of entries ago when I realized that I was being stupid about the Tilex or whatever? Well, I guess I'm not alone there. Regardless, I'll always listen to advice. Ever since the Tilex Incident, especially, I'm open to the possibility that I'm Just Doing It Wrong, whatever "It" is. Doesn't mean I'll always follow it, but at least I'll give it some thought.
Still, B ended up moving to the precise opposite end of the country from me [Narrator: weed is legal there] and I miss having her around. Almost as much as I miss my books. At least B and I text every now and then. Today's Complex Number always reminds me of her.
"This is..the first way Counting Crows ever sounded, it was me and Dave in bars and coffee houses playing open mics, doing this song this way. The song begins with a guy walking out the front door of his house, and leaving behind this woman . But the more he begins to leave people behind in his life, the more he feels like he's leaving himself behind as well. The less and less substantial he feels like he's becoming to himself. And that's sorta what the song's about because he feels that even as he disappears from the lives of people, he's disappearing more and more from his own life. The chorus is, he sorta keeps screaming out these idioms these lessons that your mother might say to you when you were a kid, sorta child lessons ya know, "round here we always stand up straight", "carving out our names". Things that you are told when you are a kid that you do these things that.. that when you're grown up it'll add up to something, you'll have a job, you'll have a life. I think for me and the character of the song they don't add up to anything it's just a bunch of crap kinda. Your life comes to you or doesn't come to you but those things don't really mean anything. By the end of the song he's so dismayed by this that he's kinda screaming out that he can stay up as long as he wants and that no one makes him wait...the sort of things that are important if you are a kid. You know that you don't have to go to bed, you don't have to do anything. The sorta of things that don't make any difference at all when you're an adult, they're nothing. And uh and uh this is a song about, about me."
- Adam Duritz; Counting Crows
Round here we're carving out our names
Round here we all look the same
Round here we talk just like lions, but we sacrifice like lambs
Round here she's slipping through my hands
Oh sleeping children better run like the wind,
Out of the lightning dream
Mama's little baby better get herself in out of the lightning
She says "it's only in my head."
She says "shh, I know it's only in my head."
But the girl on the car in the parking lot says
"man, you should try to take a
Shot. can't you see my walls are crumblin'"
Then she looks up at the building
And says she's thinkin' of jumping. she says
She's tired of life, she must be tired of something.
Round here she's always on my mind
Round here (hey man)i got lots of time
Round here we're never sent to bed early and nobody makes us wait
Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late...
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January 26, 2020 at 12:01am January 26, 2020 at 12:01am
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PROMPT January 26
Yesterday was Opposite Day!
Today I want you to take an opposite point of view.
Imagine a place you go to regularly - they gym, your regular coffee shop, wherever you choose. Take up the POV of the person at the counter, the bike across from you, any one person you choose.
What's your first impression of yourself?
Is it the real you or one you plan and project?
Well, about the only place I go to regularly these days is the gym. Yeah, I know -- not "a bar." Well, the theme is "opposite day."
So the chick at the gym's front desk:
"Oh hey, it's Waltz again. He's so dedicated! And built. 'Hi, how's it going?' Oh, he's just smiling and nodding again. The strong, silent type. I like that. I'm just going to ignore all my duties and watch him. That long hair looks really good on him. And the goatee - every woman's dream! He's getting on the elliptical trainer again. Consistency - always a plus. I'm just going to stand here and watch his ass. It's a nice ass. And he's always watching something on his phone while he works out. I should make videos so he can watch me while he works out...
"Now he's going over to the weight machines. What amazing strength and power! I bet he could bench-press me. That would be nice. Or maybe we could have a drink first. Yeah. He's always wearing a tight shirt with a beer on it to display his bulging biceps. I bet he likes beer. That's so sexy!"
...or, well, you know, it being Opposite Day and all, just reverse all of that, and that's what she's really thinking.
I don't eat, I just devour, everyone in every hour
All is me, is all I need and that's all that I care
Propelled through all this madness by your beauty and my sadness
I'll never change or rearrange till I've finished what I've started
And life leads me here
It showed me I have never really loved no one but me
Like the time, you slipped through my hand
I'll never understand why I'm such a selfish man
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January 25, 2020 at 12:03am January 25, 2020 at 12:03am
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PROMPT January 25
CREATION SATURDAY! Put on your creative thinking caps 
You're headed down to Imagination Station to pick up your imaginary friend.
Tell us about the friend - is it human? Humanoid? Animal? Talking banana? Three-headed monster who's afraid of heating blankets? What's their story? Likes/Dislikes? What name do they answer to? Why are they in your life?
Don't forget to tell us how your friend ended up at the station in the first place!
Obviously, Imagination Station is a bar, and my imaginary friend is a beer.
Not just any beer, of course; that would be silly, because then it wouldn't be imaginary. No, this one is magical -- well, more magical than usual, if that's even possible -- so it never runs out, or away.
Beer has been around since the dawn of civilization. Arguments have been made, compelling ones, that there was a causal link there, that beer is what kick-started civilization. There were probably other factors, notably cats, but the manufacturing of beer required a level of cooperation that only cities could provide. That's what civilization is, you know: cooperation and specialization.
So Beer didn't "end up" at Imagination Station. Imagination Station was built around Beer.
Incidentally, as similar as the names are, there doesn't seem to be an etymological connection between "bar" and "beer." The former is named for the counter where drinks are poured, which in turn was named for the metal rod or bar it traditionally sported, in an example of nested synechdoche (Nested Synechdoche would be an awesome name for a band). The latter is derived from the Latin verb for "drink." "Imbibe" is another derivative thereof.
As old as Beer is -- and it is old, by human standards -- it spent much of its history ignorant of its own provenance. It wasn't until the microscope came into being that we discovered what made Beer beer instead of malted barley soup: yeast. Until then, the process of fermentation was, at best, obscured; it might as well have been magic.
Here I was setting out to craft a story and I got bogged down in history. It happens. It's all fascinating to me, though: both the history and the science, of course, but also the creative spark that I'm just not feeling tonight. Maybe someday we'll invent a tool to examine creativity and find its source, the way the microscope enabled us to discover yeast. That wouldn't end creativity, I think, just as discovering that alcohol is essentially yeast piss didn't end Beer.
For now, though, I'll just raise a glass to science, which may not always make everything better, but certainly increases our understanding -- if not our creativity. And to Beer, which made it all possible.
All God's children need traveling shoes
Drive your problems from here
All good people read good books
Now your conscience is clear
I hear you talk girl
Now your conscience is clear
In the morning I wipe my brow
Wipe the miles away
I like to think I can be so willed
And never do what you say
I'll never hear you
And never do what you say
Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
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January 24, 2020 at 12:03am January 24, 2020 at 12:03am
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PROMPT January 24
Yesterday celebrated National Handwriting Day in the USA. How often do you still hand write anything substantial? Do you think the decline in children learning cursive writing will be a hindrance to their generation?
The decline in the ancient and venerable art of flint-knapping is worrisome. All these kids running around today with their fancy bronze swords - they'll never know the joys of chipping off a perfect flake of stone, coaxing from the rock an exquisite hand-axe or arrowhead...
It's too bad that kids these days will never know the finer points of team-driving. With the advent of the "auto-mobile," what beauty will be lost in the decline of the unification of Man and Equine...
Schools these days just aren't teaching FORTRAN the way they used to. Why, back in my day, we'd have to punch holes in cards, each one perfectly formed to deliver a useful program to the mainframe. You just don't get that precision with compilers of C++ and the knowledge that, if you make a mistake, you can just edit the code like it's some sort of word processing program...
Yeah, I'm probably going to have to turn in my Old Guy Card.
Some years ago, I read about a dude who, when prompted to sign his credit card receipts or pay pad, instead of laboriously writing his name in cursive like a normal person, would sketch a male organ in the space. This worked for an entirely unreasonable amount of time, until someone actually compared this schmuck's johnson to the signature on the back of his card and found that they didn't match.
The moral of this story is: if you're going to be a dick, go all the way.
I relate this for two reasons: first, a friend of mine pointed out that my blog suffers from an appalling lack of dick jokes [Narrator: this is a lie; no one has said that to him, ever], and second, to illustrate that even that last bastion of cursive writing, the signature, isn't strictly necessary. My own Hancock (see what I did there?) is an impenetrable scrawl that bears almost exactly zero resemblance to the flowing curves of the handwriting we were taught in elementary school, and which, to be a lot more honest than I was at the beginning of this paragraph, I sucked at (snort - I did it again).
By the time I went to engineering school, I'd abandoned cursive in favor of the block-caps preferred by those in my profession-to-be. It was actually faster for me to take lecture notes in block caps than it was to cramp my hand into the unnatural and entirely too artistic knots required for script.
This ended up serving me better than even I expected; when I got my first job in the field, it was as a drafter. In the days before AutoCAD, we hand-drew plans in ink on mylar or vellum, and my capacity for crafting clear, bold, and consistent letters, freehand, only helped me when it came time to label the drawings.
Now even that skill has been rendered obsolete for me, first by the aforementioned drafting software, and then by my retirement. (Do I mourn the lack of skill in using traditional drafting tools? No. Plan readability is improved, and that's what matters.) I still write in block caps on those occasions when I actually have to hand-write something, which in practice is usually only when ordering a beer and popcorn from my seat at the drafthouse cinema (talking is prohibited, so we write our orders; I am sure that my block lettering is much easier to read in a dim theater than any cursive would be).
Is something lost in the process of cursive's obsolescence? Sure, and change is often difficult for some people to accept. But as in the examples with which I opened this entry, it's not like we don't have things to replace it. One "feature" of cursive is its variability among different individuals, combined with its supposed consistency as regards a single individual. That feature is one reason the "signature" came to be a thing in the first place. Traditionally, I've been informed, the illiterate would mark an X, which as I understand it was supposed to be witnessed by someone who could read and write - hence the modern practice of marking the signature lines on forms with that cryptic letter. But I digress; I was writing - I mean, typing - about individual differences. See, as with Dick Boy above, there's no real reason why a person's signature, or mark, couldn't be a particularly individualistic sketch; such would be just as easy, or difficult, to forge as a signature is. (Oddly enough, I got really good at faking my parents' very different signatures, although I never did master my own.)
The other interesting thing about cursive was its use in the personal letter. I know a lot of people believe that there's something special about receiving a missive from a friend or lover, written in their personal style by their own hand. I'm inclined to agree with that point of view, though I'd assert that such individuality, today, finds its expression in the particular way someone spells (or fails to spell) words in a text message, and their idiosyncratic preferences in type and density of emojis. Just as I have difficulty interpreting emoji, though, I often struggled to figure out what a cursive-writer was actually trying to say.
So - no, there's no hindrance to kids-these-days to remove cursive from the curriculum. It's not a life skill, even if it was once. It's an art, and like any art or skill, people can learn it on their own if they're so inclined. I know I wouldn't be, but as far as any art is concerned, my skills are indifferent at best.
Also, as today's musical illustration hopefully demonstrates, it's not the formation of the characters that matters so much as the actual content. Again, this may be my personal bias showing - I always did focus on function over form - but I can't imagine that Leonard Cohen's actual letter, if it actually existed, could display in the sweeping curls of its words any more emotional punch than is contained in the words themselves.
It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train, and
You came home without Lili Marlene
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January 23, 2020 at 11:10am January 23, 2020 at 11:10am
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PROMPT: January 23rd
Finish this story:
A girl, sitting alone on a rock at the edge of the woods, jumps when she hears…
A girl, sitting alone on a rock at the edge of the woods, jumps when she hears, not from the cracked, faded, tufted pavement in front of her, nor from the slope to her right that curves sharply up the mountain, nor from the long, straight expanse to her left that leads, were someone foolish enough to brave the journey, to overgrown fields, then to howling empty subdivisions, then to the infected city, then to it doesn't matter where because you're not getting past the ruins; the sound not beginning in the shadowed, leaf-strewn forest floor behind her and then continuing, crescendoing, impinging on her consciousness only slowly so that she would have time to become aware, time to run or at least to hide in a culvert or behind the weeds waving in the wind on the other side of the deserted road -- no, directly behind her, less than a meter maybe, certainly no more than that, the sudden unmistakable ca-crunch of a once-human footstep.
I've been learning about suspensive sentences lately, and thought I'd give one a try. This prompt seemed suited to it.
Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane, fine, then
Uh oh, overflow, population, common group
But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
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January 22, 2020 at 12:03am January 22, 2020 at 12:03am
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PROMPT January 22nd
Your bags are packed. You have unlimited funds and resources to travel anywhere you want. Where do you go, who do you bring with you, and why?
Thanks, yeah, remind me about how I'm not going to get to go to Scotland with my friend.
There's a part of me that wants to travel, and keep traveling, and never look back. It urges me to go out there, anywhere, everywhere, see all the sights, do all the things, drink all the booze, while I still can.
For what? Asks the other part of me, the part that wants to stay home and run a routine. What's the point? It's not like you have anywhere to run to, or anything to run from. It's comfortable here. And besides, you have cats counting on you. All those travel experiences, sooner or later, all those moments will be lost in time...
So, as with anything else in life, we compromise. I stay home most of the time, but sometimes I go out there, looking out at the road rushing under my wheels. Other times, I fly, even if, sadly, not under my own power.
A few entries ago, I wrote, "There are few people I can get along with for more than a few hours or days." It occurred to me much later that this could be interpreted in at least two ways. What I meant by it was that I don't like to inflict my presence on other people for very long. So, I generally travel alone. I don't have to, though. I'd bring anyone who can put up with me.
As for where? Well, where not would be a more appropriate question. I'd probably stay out of war zones. And there's no point in going where there's no booze. Plus, my idea of "roughing it" is staying in a two-star hotel; camping in the wilderness is a hard pass. So is trekking across Antarctica. Fuck that noise.
That still leaves a lot of ground to cover. And ocean; cruise ships count as "not roughing it."
Some things on my wish list: Trekking across Canada the way I've done with the US - summer only, thanks. The civilized part of Alaska; also summer. Japan, for many reasons, chief among them a particular brand of Japanese whiskey I just can't get in my country. A river cruise down (or up; I don't care) the Danube. A few weeks in France, sampling as much wine as I can. Belgium, for the beer and the food. Germany. Scotland, as I've noted (technically, I've been there, but didn't get to drink any scotch). The Caribbean. Parts of Central America (see above about staying out of war zones). Parts of South America; that is, the parts that don't involve piranha nibbling on my tenders. Australia, New Zealand, Iceland. There are other places, but that's a start. Hell, I'd even consider Antarctica if I can mostly stay on the cruise ship.
And so we come to "why." I'm trying to resist the temptation to leave it at "why not?" Why does anyone do anything, knowing full well that there's only one certain destination, after which everything else you've done won't matter anymore? Well, if nothing else, it'll give me more stuff to write about.
Isn't that enough?
If it takes all night, that'll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave
Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
Look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes, I see them running too
Running on (running on empty)
Running on (running blind)
Running on (running into the sun)
But I'm running behind
Honey, you really tempt me
You know the way you look so kind
I'd love to stick around, but I'm running behind
(Running on) You know I don't even know what I'm hoping to find
(Running blind) Running into the sun, but I'm running behind
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January 21, 2020 at 12:03am January 21, 2020 at 12:03am
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PROMPT January 21st
How much of your own life or the lives of people you know do you put into your writing? Do you mine your past for inspiration, or do you create wholly new places and characters?
I mean, I write science fiction and fantasy.
Still, it's inevitable that some souvenir of my past, some moment of doubt or pain, of joy or satisfaction, whether mine or someone else's, will make its appearance in my fiction. And it should go without saying that blog entries are as honest as I can make them, within the boundaries of an imperfect memory as well as a desire to avoid identifying specific other people in less-than-ideal situations. Well... and also allowing for the occasional hyperbole or other truth-stretching for comedic effect. Never let the facts get in the way of a good joke, I say. Or a bad one. Especially a bad one.
It's inevitable, really, that the past should creep in to any writing, as that is all that is real. The future is unknown outside of a few constraining assumptions, and the present is a geometric point on the timeline, without dimension, an illusion, the limit of the recent past and the immediate future. Yes, only the past is real, but, like the grammatical tense, memory of it is imperfect - I was running somewhere, they were singing some song, she was on her way to the prom when...
The minutiae of the past are sometimes sketchy and unreliable, so I use some memory that seems sturdy as a scaffolding, a framework on which to build the specifics. Like the skeleton of a building, this defines the general shape, and while some details are clear on the blueprints, others I have to make up, or pull from other memories. Some other situations - like someone in free-fall in a spaceship - I obviously have no personal experience with, but even there I rely on memory: memory of scientific descriptions, of books, movies, and TV shows that I thought got it right (most don't).
Or if it's a fantasy world, maybe something from a dream will pop in there: terrifying monsters, shifting landscapes, rivers of metal, forests of feathery hair. Again, all part of my past, even if not a part of consensus reality.
Point is, and this goes back to what I've been saying for some time, there's nothing useless when you're a writer. You never know when something you or someone you know has witnessed, or learned, or dreamed or watched or endured, can be useful in writing, perhaps just as a metaphor or simile, much as sometimes, that spice that's been languishing on the rack might be just the thing to transform a meal from merely good to delicious.
Maybe that's why I tend to keep things around: for spice.
A picture postcard
A folded stub
A program of the play
File away your photographs
Of your holiday
And your mementos
Will turn to dust
But that's the price you pay
For every year's a souvenir
That slowly fades away
Every year's a souvenir
That slowly fades away
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January 20, 2020 at 12:53am January 20, 2020 at 12:53am
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PROMPT January 20th
Today is a national holiday is the US: Dr Martin Luther King Jr Day. Dr King believed that fear was the ultimate cause of hatred, prejudice, and violence. Do you agree or disagree with his assessment? Give examples.
Lots of people certainly think so. The "-phobia" suffix literally means "fear," but it's been hijacked into service to mean "hatred" as well: homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia. I don't think that people who harbor a distaste of different lifestyles or religions necessarily fear them, so I object on general principles to conflating hate and fear.
Once, many years ago, when I was more social, I attended a meditation class where the leader would give a little sermon kind of thing before the meditation part, kind of like church I guess. Most of them slid right out of my head, but one homily that I remember to this day: "There are only two emotions: love and fear. All other emotions boil down to one of those."
I found out later that this was stolen from a book called A Course In Miracles, which from what I understand (never read it) is one of those new-agey self-help type books. But I'm not one to accept or reject an idea just because of its source; as they say, even though in our digital age this cliché is becoming increasingly irrelevant, "even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
So I gave it some thought. Emotions don't lend themselves well to a scientific approach, I think, but eventually I came to the conclusion that the love/fear axis is certainly one way to categorize them, if we can categorize them at all as if they all belonged to either the plant kingdom or the animal kingdom.
Typing this now, I vaguely recall having this discussion in a prior blog entry, but I can't be arsed to go look it up. In any case, it's been a while, so maybe I have new perspectives on the idea, a different approach to its narrative. Perhaps if you go digging you'll find it. There will probably be contradictions between this entry and that one. It happens. Memory isn't like a videotape; it's more like a book that you never stop editing and sometimes can't remember what chapter you're working on or even who the main characters are.
But I digress. Love and fear. Under "love" in this system, I suppose, fall all of those emotions that we consider positive or desirable: joy, satisfaction, affection, whatever. I'm no expert on emotions or naming them. Conversely, then, "fear" would encompass all of those negative, dark-side emotions such as anger, jealousy, and, yes... hatred. I'm sure there are emotions that don't fit neatly into one category or the other, though; "amusement," for one, seems positive and yet it often has a tragic source; much of humor is based on some misfortune or embarrassment or even injury or death. Probably only tangential to the discussion at hand, though, so I'll table that one.
But in trying to reconcile this world-view with my own (which, to be honest, isn't very emotion-centric at all), it occurred to me that, if you're going to categorize emotions this way, you can go one step further: fear is, after all, a real or perceived threat to someone or something that you love (possibly including yourself), and so the only emotion, the mother and father and ultimate source of them all, is love.
People are welcome to push back on this idea. After all, what I'm saying is this: the "ultimate cause of hatred, prejudice and violence" is love. Should I not be called out on that? Should I not be kicked back into my dark, forsaken hermit cave for daring to tar the sacred name of Love? Maybe you feel a bit of, dare I say it, anger that I could make such a blasphemous assertion? If so - and it's okay if you do - perhaps it's because you love your world-view and your own particular thoughts and feelings about emotions, and what I'm saying here might be something of a threat?
If, on the other hand, what I'm saying doesn't threaten your world-view, you might not feel any emotion about it at all. Maybe you're just rolling your eyes and shaking your head like a teenager embarrassed by her parents. But hey - there's love in that scenario, too, isn't there? You can't be embarrassed by the antics of pure, indifferent strangers, after all.
Still, how can love be the source of hate? That seems contradictory, because those are often considered opposite emotions (though as I imply in the previous paragraph, I believe the true opposite of love is indifference). Well, let's take the kind of hate MLKJr was talking about: racism. I'm probably going to tread on sacred ground here, too, but bear with me, if you would; I really am leading to something.
My country's Original Sin was racism: first directed at the indigenous population, and then at the African slaves brought over against their will, and, at various times, against the Irish, the Italians, Asians, Muslims and of course always the Jews. While nominally founded on the idea of equality for all, we've always fallen short in practice. The particular brand of racism of white-on-black metastasized into hatred, the ironically-named Civil War, institutionalized segregation, and lynchings and the like - all bearing the same resemblance to "love" as a pile of shit does to a cute puppy.
Nevertheless, just as it's possible, in the extreme case, for one to love only oneself (narcissism), it's also possible to love only one's own family, not giving half a damn about others. A step up from that, I suppose, would be to love one's own clan or tribe to the exclusion of all others, or even preferring one's own perceived race to that of others (I say "perceived" because "race" is ill-defined). This kind of exclusionary love is still love - but it contains within it the darkness of hatred and, yes, fear.
Fear, because anything different, however you may define "different," is a threat - real or perceived - to the things that you love. We fear death, for instance, because we love life.
I sense that I've gone on too long, now, and I won't flog the point any further. I will say that, once I came to this realization - as I come to most of my epiphanies, whilst driving alone at night - I changed my own relationship to love and fear. I can't say that I'm fearless, of course; that would be idiotic and a lie, but I can say it doesn't have the same grip on me that it used to.
I will note, in closing, that you might have heard about a rally that's going to take place in my state capital, once the capital of the Confederacy, today. The purpose of the rally is ostensibly gun rights, an issue that, in the US, is charged with racism (if you don't believe me, look at the now-defunct NRA Channel, and count the number of people of color featured in their programs - or if you can't bring yourself to look into the wayback machine, I'll provide a spoiler: zero, or close enough to it as to be statistically identical). Now, I don't live in that city, though mine has not been without its international news coverage recently; "Charlottesville" has become a household name for all the wrong reasons, as all of the bad actors here were imported from other places, other states even.
It's no accident, I think, that they chose MLKJr day for their protest. Now, this is the US, and most particularly Virginia, so I'll defend their right to protest and be heard, regardless of whether I agree with them or not, but a lot of people are expecting this to turn ugly.
What probably didn't make national news, though, is that last week, in that very same city, Virginia became the key 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. This probably has no more than symbolic value, as that particular Constitutional amendment was proposed back in the early 70s and some legal experts assert that it has expired. But symbols have power, regardless, and whatever happens today, I wanted to contrast the negative with the positive.
Fear is real. Hatred, prejudice, and violence are all part of the human condition. But so is love, acceptance, and the desire to become something better.
And cowbell. Lots and lots of cowbell.
Love of two is one
Here but now they're gone
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn't go on
Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then he appeared, saying don't be afraid
Come on baby, and she had no fear
And she ran to him, then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodby, she had become like they are
She had taken his hand, she had become like they are
Come on baby, don't fear the reaper
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January 19, 2020 at 12:02am January 19, 2020 at 12:02am
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PROMPT January 19th
Write about something ordinary that brought you unexpected joy.
Other peoples' misfortune.
Okay, no, not really. It's true that schadenfreude, when applied to someone who I deem to deserve it, does often make me smile. Unfortunately, more often than not, bad things happen at random to people who probably didn't do anything especially wrong; conversely, people who deserve a dose of instant karma can go indefinitely without any noticeable ill effects. Life, it seems, is fundamentally unfair.
Thing is, it's usually unfair in my favor. I suppose this is what they call "privilege." I've noted in previous entries some misfortunes that have befallen me: health issues, inconstant wives, disappearing friends, dying parents, dead cats, the closing of my favorite bar, etc. But these are ordinary problems, nothing that billions of other people haven't experienced. Yes, they affected me deeply (some more deeply than others; man, I miss that bar), but they're all part of the general human condition.
On the upside, I've been really fortunate in other ways. For instance, I've only been in a formal job-interview situation twice in my life (I've had more than two jobs, but those were more "Can you show up on time and do the work?" "Yes." "Okay, you start tomorrow.") [Narrator: he never could manage to show up on time.] On the more recent of those occasions, the custom of throwing curveball questions at the applicant was just getting into full swing, and one of the interviewers, a woman with a can-I-speak-to-your-manager haircut, broadsided me with the question, "What brings you joy?"
I stammered out something about seeing something I designed becoming reality - true enough, but boring - and I didn't get the job. That's okay; I'd just been checking out the hue of the trans-fence grass, and I didn't really need to switch jobs at the time. I don't know what answer she was expecting, though. "Hookers and blow?" "Crushing my enemies under my Reeboks?" "Really good sex?" "Getting cabbaged and inflicting karaoke on strangers?"
Still, that question stuck in my memory for some reason, prompting me to identify actual joy on those occasions when I feel it - so something good came out of the failed interview, after all. It's important, especially to those of us prone to depression, to take our joy where we can, but to do that we have to know what it feels like.
There was the time, driving on a deserted highway in central Virginia on a quiet Christmas Eve, when the full moon silvered the empty landscape and limned the mountains in its pale light.
More recently, and I think I noted this one in a blog entry last year, there was the occasion when I was about to see Bob Dylan perform live; I had just achieved beerenity at a bar in NYC when Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones" issued from the bar's sound system (it's CC's tribute to Bob Dylan, so it seemed absolutely serendipitous).
Another time, toward the end of an excellent Springsteen concert, all the lights in the stadium came on at once and the band launched into "Born to Run," and it was the perfect climax to an awesome four-hour show, like a cool breeze after a long, hot, but productive day.
Come to think of it, most (but not all) of my peak moments involve alcohol, music, or (preferably) both.
But - and I think I've mentioned this here before also - it's almost always the more conventionally depressing songs that make me happy, while upbeat, optimistic songs tend to make me stabby. Why that might be is above my pay grade. But the same is true for booze; they tell me it's a depressant, so why does it make me so fucking happy?
Which is why today's musical selection, by Robert Earl Keen, is, on the surface at least, an outlier. A casual reading of the lyrics pegs it as a happy song. "It feels so good, feelin' good again." And yet...
I have a different narrative for it. Now, I'm no expert in music, but it sounds to me like it's presented in a minor key, though a quick glance at the published chords indicates that the body is a G-Bm-Em-D progression, with a C-D-G refrain. I guess the Bm-Em transition gives me that impression. Point is, minor chords are almost never used for happy music, and I stand by my impression, because it's mine.
But how do I reconcile the (to me) inherent sadness of the chord progression with the apparently-joyful lyrics? Is it just because it's the genre "country," which tends toward the despairing and desperate? Here are the full lyrics with chords marked.
Well - again, this is my personal opinion - look at what happens in the lyrics. Everything is coming up Keen: "A chill north wind was blowin' but the spring was comin' on" sounds a lot to me like when I'm coming out of a depressive episode. "Stepped into the hall and saw all my friends were there" - I mean, seriously, how often does it happen that "all" of one's friends are in one place? "My favorite band..." finding unexpected cash to spot the crowd a round of drinks... and then the one person (presumably a life partner or former one, as they are not included in "all my friends" earlier) he's wishing to see shows up.
All of this paints a picture that's relatable to me, even though country isn't my go-to genre: the gathering place, the drinks, the music, the longing that is ultimately fulfilled. But then it hit me: that's because it's not real. I don't mean that in the sense of "of course it's not real; it's just a song." And I'm probably giving this more thought than it deserves, but everything fits when you think of the scene as a dream - or an idealized afterlife. In other words, I think the narrator is dead or dying, and at the end, he's finally getting all of the simple pleasures he'd been hoping for.
Man, I hope Keen doesn't see this analysis, though I'm sure it reveals more about me than it does him. But I'll stand by this much: giving the song that interpretation makes it better, to me. Happier. More joyful. Against all expectations.
And I wanted you to see 'em all
I wished that you were there
I looked across the room
And saw you standin' on the stair
And when I caught your eye
I saw you break into a grin
It feels so good feelin' good again
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January 18, 2020 at 12:12am January 18, 2020 at 12:12am
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PROMPT January 18th
It’s Show and Tell Day here at the 30DBC! Think of an item that is special to you (it may help if you are able to see your chosen item while you write your entry). Describe it in as much detail as possible. Then, tell us its story. How did it come to be in your life and what makes it important to you?
My memory can be really lousy, sometimes. I can remember song lyrics and endless trivia about history, math, science, whatever, but I block out or forget the shadows of who I used to be. Sometimes I go back through this blog, or the one I kept before this one, and go, "I wrote that?" And I'm embarrassed, impressed, or both.
Point is, that's why I keep stuff around, and keep it for as long as possible: it's a reminder of what used to be, for good or ill. I'm not the kind of person to purge mementos of failed relationships or hard times. My last ex was that kind of person, on my behalf, which is why I don't have much stuff from my first marriage. Probably just as well. I really should let go of my resentment over that. It's really the only lingering negative emotion from that time; stuff is that important to me.
So trying to identify one object, one thing to talk about in response to this prompt initially gave me a kind of paradox of choice: so many things, and I'm supposed to pick just one?
Then I realized that the answer was right under my nose, and I mean that literally.
The detailed description? Well, it's a table. It's table-shaped, wooden, has four sturdy legs, and it can be pulled apart and extended. The finish is whatever you call that deep dark brown stain. Walnut, or whatever. Which is not to say that's the wood it's made of, just the color. I don't know what kind of wood it's made of. Tree wood, I'd imagine.
What else can you say about a table? It has matching chairs. It's high-quality, and probably wouldn't break even if I sat on it a bit over a year ago when I hadn't lost much weight. I usually don't work at a desk, but have my laptop set up on the table. So when I'm not on my back deck "enjoying" the weather, that table is where I sit.
But, like almost everything I possess, it's got a story. And it's not one I to which I can do full justice in a blog entry. So I'll try to condense.
I have - or had - a friend who, for the purposes of this entry and anonymity, I'll call W. We started out as co-workers, discovering a shared interest in science, SF/fantasy/horror books and entertainment, video games, snarky internet humor, drinking, and general geek stuff. Further, we have the same birthday (though not the same year; he's a bit younger).
That's about where the resemblance ended, because while I like to travel, W is way more restless than I ever was, and has been all over the world. He's also more interested in (shudder) the outdoors, hiking, hang-gliding, scuba diving, whatever. And, perhaps most importantly for this story, I'm a hoarding clutter-freak, and he's a minimalist light-traveler.
Nevertheless, it happened that my ex dumping me exactly coincided with W needing a place to stay. Since the ex had unilaterally gotten rid of a table of mine that I was quite fond of, replacing it with one she got from her mother, she took the replacement with her, leaving me table-less. Like I said, I should really let things like that go, but dammit, I liked that old table. It was perfect for playing D&D. Anyway, W moved into the spare bedroom with a little bit of stuff - it was during the recession and he'd just lost his job and consequently his house, but had some furniture - and he set up the table in the empty spot where my ex's had been.
It turned out that, despite our differences - the classic Odd Couple housemate situation, if anyone still groks that reference - we got along just fine, mostly because we generally kept to ourselves. Except, of course, when we'd sit at the table and drink excellent scotch or some new craft beer (W had gotten another job pretty quickly, but that didn't return his foreclosed-upon house to him).
After a couple of years or so of this, he had the opportunity to get a scuba instructor license, which involved him moving to the Philippines. Rather than schlep the table halfway across the world, he traded it to me in lieu of a month's rent. And that's how I became the official owner of the dark, sturdy table. Right after he moved out, I got another housemate, who I'll call A. She was a friend I'd met through my ex-wife. A moved into W's old room.
Not the end of the story, though. W and I kept in touch, and he also became friends with A. At some point, the life of an itinerant scuba instructor (like I said, all around the world) got old for him and he moved back to the States, living with his parents for a bit - until I had a heart attack, when he visited to provide moral support, and then moved in again because when you're middle-aged and restless, living with parents gets really old really fast. So for a while I had two housemates, both good friends, and the lack of friction between all of us still surprises me.
After a while, W got another job opportunity that required some education in a different state, so he left - but, again, we kept in touch and got together whenever we could. But then the actual job W got was on goddamn Maui. MAUI. So of course I took a month and visited him there. In a February. It was the first February of my life that I didn't hate, but then, any February that doesn't involve me having a heart attack the day before my birthday is a win in my book; being on a tropical island is a bonus.
W and I made plans to visit Scotland to sample all the excellent scotch they have, after he moved back to the mainland to take a different job.
And then, after fifteen years of being close friends, he disappeared. Ghosted me. Fell off the radar.
I don't make friends easily. There are few people I can get along with for more than a few hours or days. Losing one isn't fun. Not really knowing why just makes it worse. From what little I can tell, I think he'd lost his job, and maybe he couldn't face breaking our plans for Scotland. And he was developing health issues. I'd like to support him through those, as he did with me, but I don't even know where he is. Texts and phone contact just... stopped, on his part. And neither of us do social media. What little I know came from mutual acquaintances who do have social media.
Unlike with my ex, I don't harbor any resentment. I mean, I think I understand, even. If he couldn't do the Scotland trip, though, all he had to do was tell me.
So I have the table. I still drink at it sometimes, and when I do, I have a propensity for getting drunk and listening to Leonard Cohen and/or Brandi Carlile. Not something I'd recommend to anyone, but it works for me. It's one of the only ways I have to actually feel something.
I might do it again today.
Broken sticks and broken stones
Will turn to dust just like our bones
It's words that hurt the most now isn't it
Are you sad inside, are you home alone
If I could just pick up the phone
Maybe you could see a better day
And you won't waste away
Under my watchful eye
Because I'm your hero and you're my weakness
Who's gonna break my fall
When the spinning starts
The colors bleed together and fade
Was it ever there at all
Or have I lost my way
The path of least resistance
Is catching up with me again today
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January 17, 2020 at 5:07am January 17, 2020 at 5:07am
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PROMPT January 17th
Use the following words in your entry today: tumultuous, navigate, journey, and gargantuan.
English is missing an important word.
We have the word "hunger," which means a physiological or psychological urge to consume food. We have "thirst," which signals a need for hydration. What we don't seem to have, and desperately need, is a word to describe the psychological desire to drink enough booze to alter one's state of mind for a limited time.
I'd want such a word to be distinguishable from the negative connotation of addiction, as befits my alcohol-positive lifestyle. It's not as if I feel that way every day, or even every week. When I tried to navigate the most common search engine to find an appropriate word, Google sent me to a bunch of sites like "How to cut back on alcohol" or "How to stop drinking booze" or "Reasons to live alcohol-free." While I'm sure those are helpful for some people, fuck you, Google. That's not what I asked for. First you censor porn and now this?
So to hell with it. When we want new words, we can usually turn to Greek or Latin. Unfortunately, I never learned Greek and don't remember much Latin. Fortunately, even if Google is run by accursed puritans these days, it can still provide translations, though perhaps of dubious provenance. According to that apparently neo-Prohibitionist, and thus suddenly suspect, search engine, the Greek word for wine was something like oinos, and one Greek word for desire was epithymia or epithumia. So for the purposes of this one blog entry I'm going to call it oinothymia. It's my blog and I can make up words if I want. If I were less hung over, I could probably come up with a better word, perhaps even of Anglo-Saxon origin. Maybe I will, eventually.
Point is, prior to the Bordeaux wine tasting that I talked about in yesterday's entry, hosted by the French person from France, I started to feel oinothymic. (That would be the adjective version of oinothymia.) Consequently, I decided to walk to the tasting in case I would be in no condition to drive back home. It was to be in a grocery store in the same retail paradise as the movie theater / drafthouse I've mentioned in here before, and close enough that I would feel silly Ubering over there (yes, I have verbed that noun; sorry, Lyft, you should have come up with a better name because Lyfting is kind of taken) when it's only a half-hour journey by foot.
It being January, that meant I needed to dress warmly, so it was also an excuse to wear my black leather trench coat. Last time I wore it, I was much heavier, and it didn't really fit. Now, I can actually button the thing, and I gotta say - I checked myself out in the mirror wearing it, and damn, it looks good on me.
So I walked in the chill January night, the bitter wind flapping my coat hem and scarf, with my shadow, when cast from a streetlight or a passing car's headlamps, making me feel like Harry Dresden or some film noir private investigator. I'm not that impressive a person, so I take my joy where I can.
On the downside, crossing streets at night whilst wearing all black is probably not the best idea. Still, the hazard is worth the risk in order to look as awesome as I did.
When I got there, the supermarket was packed solid with people, like a gym on New Year's Day, a tumultuous crowd rushing around the store. At first, I was puzzled by this; it was Thursday evening. And then I remembered: one weather report had predicted a 5% chance of a few flakes of snow on Saturday. Around here, that's all it takes for the mob to descend upon the grocery stores and clear the aisles of milk, bread, eggs, vanilla extract and cinnamon. For some reason, everyone makes French toast when they're snowed in. Or even if there are five minutes of flurries. Or the remote possibility that a flake might waft from the sky. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if they closed all the schools today, you know, just in case.
It's a good thing, then, that the wine tasting was in a private room in the back of the store. After all of the above, I'll spare you the details; suffice it to say that 1) the wine was excellent and 2) there wasn't enough of it. Consequently, after purchasing a bottle of the most excellent of the wines, I moseyed on over to the taphouse - by which I mean the one that's not in the movie theater, but the other taphouse in the shopping center (this place has everything I need in life except for a cigar store) - to satisfy my oinothymia with some delicious craft beer.
In addition to wanting more booze, though, I was also hungry. While they had provided some palate-cleansing cheese between wine courses, all that did was whet my appetite. So I sauntered up to the bar and ordered a pint and a gargantuan salad.
What? Don't look at me like that. I'm still losing weight, and booze has calories.
Yeah, oh yeah, you seen me walk on burning bridges
Yeah, oh yeah, you seen me fall in love with witches
And you know my head is held inside by stitches
Yet you know I did survive all of your lonely sieges
And you know that I'll pick up every time you call
Just to thank you one more time
Alcohol, oh alcohol, alcohol
And you know that I'll survive very time you call
Just to thank you one more time for everything you've done
Alcohol, alcohol
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January 16, 2020 at 12:12am January 16, 2020 at 12:12am
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PROMPT January 16th
What are you waiting for?
There are so many ways to answer this question, both light and heavy, so I look forward to reading where you go with it!
Death.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way...
I'm one of those people - yes, those people - who usually answers rhetorical questions literally. And "What are you waiting for?" is normally a rhetorical question. "Will you take the trash out, dear?" "Sure." "...Well? What are you waiting for?" "The sweet release of the Apocalypse."
It's not that I don't recognize rhetorical questions; it's that I hate them and respond with snark. Well, sometimes I legitimately don't recognize them. It's the same for me with sarcasm.
When it's not a rhetorical question, it implies a call to action. "You say you want to go to Belgium. Your passport is up to date and you have money. What are you waiting for?"
Well, for one thing, Not January. I hate being cold, and Belgium is kinda... north.
For another, I still have a reluctance to travel to a foreign country alone. I mean, I did it with the UK, but there, I have a rudimentary grasp of the language, and also I was visiting friends.
But mostly, it implies that I should be doing something other than what I'm doing right now, but whatever it is I'm doing right now is generally what I really want to be doing. In the battle between "should" and "want," "want" wins every time. That's just the way I am. My trick has always been to work toward wanting to do the things I should be doing, and it sometimes works (as with exercise), provided someone else doesn't muck things up by trying to noodge me into doing it.
(First known use of noodge, 1967? That doesn't make any sense. My mother had a meager knowledge of Yiddish that she got from her mother, and for Grandma, it was her first language. By 1967, Mom knew all the Yiddish she was ever going to know, and noodge was one of the words. I know this because every time I asked for something more than once, I got "Stop noodging me!")
Really, I'm not waiting for anything important. I have a few set plans: there's a wine tasting tomorrow, of Bordeaux wines hosted by an actual French person from France...
...and then next Tuesday the local cinema / drafthouse is going to have a Big Lebowski movie party. I resemble The Dude, so it should be interesting. Also, next Saturday is a winter beer festival, so my Sunday morning blog should be amusing, from a certain point of view. You can wait for that if you want.
But it's not like I'm sitting here just waiting around for these events. I have Netflix shows to binge.
This bloody road remains a mystery
This sudden darkness fills the air
What are we waiting for?
Won't anybody help us?
What are we waiting for?
We can't afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It's a do or die situation
We will be invincible
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January 15, 2020 at 12:01am January 15, 2020 at 12:01am
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PROMPT January 15th
Write your entry today about commitment. Committing to an activity, craft, person, way of being, etc. Consider the concepts of diligence, honesty, and responsibility. What does commitment look like to you?
The inside of a padded cell.
I mean, really, English? Using the same word for these two concepts? "I was committed" has two possible meanings, distinguishable only in context.
As with being confined to the room with the plush walls, though, the other kind of commitment can be stifling - depending, I think, on whether you choose it or not.
If you've been following along, you might get the idea that I'm afraid of commitment. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. We should be afraid of it. It should instill a mighty fear, one that would keep us from entering into covenants without due thought and consideration.
I do fear having commitment thrust upon me without my full consent - because I take it seriously, and will do everything in my meager power to fulfill one.
"But you've been divorced twice, Waltz!" Yeah... her idea both times. I wanted to keep my commitments.
It's true I didn't want to have kids, but I chose partners accordingly. One of them went on to have one anyway. Good kid. Nothing at all like his deadbeat dad who wouldn't recognize an obligation if it hit him upside the head. Her choice, though. If I'd had that responsibility handed to me, I'd have done whatever I could to be a good father. It's just that I didn't want to be a father, so instead of spreading my seed around like a firehose, I took precautions. That's also responsibility.
I wish I could say that I've always done everything I promised I'd do, but I'm far from perfect; I've slipped. But I try to do so. Promises to myself fall by the wayside faster than promises to other people; like anyone, I've failed at following through on goals. But when there's another person involved, I do my best to be diligent.
So I choose my commitments carefully. That's not avoidance; that's just knowing my limitations. I can take care of cats just fine, but I'd grow to resent the constant demands on my time that dogs represent. Hell, I can't even keep a houseplant alive. Seriously. No matter what I do, they always wither and die. And I spent my childhood growing vegetables on a farm. I once decided to get an oregano plant, because I put oregano on a lot of things and fresh is better than dried. It took two days before it was brown, brittle and droopy. Yes, I did water it.
Don't ever trust me with a houseplant is what I'm saying. I have a black thumb. Somehow I manage to do okay by my cats, though.
If you search for tenderness
It isn't hard to find
You can have the love you need to live
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind
It always seems to be so hard to give
Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you
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January 14, 2020 at 12:02am January 14, 2020 at 12:02am
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PROMPT January 14th
Write about a time when you made a wrong assumption. Did you realize your mistake right away, or did someone tell you later? What did you learn from your mistake?
Me? Make assumptions? Mistakes? What?!
Oh, fine, here's one.
Generally, I like to buy non-consumables exactly once. It saves money, which can better be used to buy beer and scotch. It really annoys me when something wears out and I have to buy a replacement; it's never the same and I'm out of sorts for weeks afterward because my routine has been threatened. The only exceptions are things like computers, which I'm aware have to be replaced every few years, if only to keep up with the latest gaming technology.
As a result, I never have anything to sell or to donate to Goodwill or whatever; by the time I'm done with something, it's hopeless.
I'm just explaining this because it's important to know my mindset going into these things.
So. Back when I was married, my wife brought home a new shower curtain. Okay, fine, even I could see that the old one had outlived its usefulness and was at that point of interest only to the most dedicated biology post-grads. But, determined to make this one last longer, I picked up one of those spray bottles of chemicals that, supposedly, when sprayed onto shower surfaces after a shower, help to keep it clean.
One day she caught me spraying the curtain with the tilex or whatever it's called. (Hey, we were married; shut up.) "Why are you doing that?"
"To make the curtain last longer."
"Don't bother with that. We'll just get another new curtain."
I ignored her and did it anyway. I'm not buying another damn shower curtain. Those things cost money!
It was only some years later, we'd separated for reasons that probably were unrelated to that argument, that, while in the shower and thinking "maybe it's time to get a new shower curtain; this one needs to go to the Institute for Xenobiology," that it hit me.
A shower curtain is like $12.
A bottle of that spray shit is like $5.
Even assuming that I spend half the spray shit, usefully, on long-lasting surfaces like tiles, it would take about five sprayers to break even. It would be cheaper to buy a shower curtain every couple of months than it would be to keep buying all that cleaning solution.
And then I thought, "Why didn't I think of that before?"
And then I thought, "Oh, shit... what else do I have a mental block about?"
I still don't know the answer to that last question. But it made me realize: we all have mental blocks about some things, and that, apparently, was one of mine: I was thinking of a shower curtain as a permanent fixture, and a bottle of shower cleaner as a consumable and, like I said, I only like to buy permanent fixtures once.
Since then, I've been trying to identify other brain failures on my part. I haven't found many, at least not of that amount of boneheadedness. But since I had one, I'm sure I have others; I just don't know what they are. And I don't have anyone in my life to tell me. My ex didn't explain her reasoning to me, perhaps not believing that I, a certified supergenius, could be so fucking stupid about something so basic.
That's the problem with cognitive biases: they're not obvious to the person who has them. Otherwise, they wouldn't be biases.
I got the last word in on the cleaner vs. curtain debate, of course; now that I'm single, I don't feel the need to spray down the shower. Though it does get a thorough cleaning once a month. Don't look at me like that; I hire a cleaning service for that sort of thing. It may not be cheaper than doing it myself, but it sure saves me a lot of hassle.
If you think you need to go
If you wanted to be free
There's one thing you need to know
And that's that you can't count on me
No you can't count on me
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January 13, 2020 at 12:16am January 13, 2020 at 12:16am
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PROMPT January 13th
In your entry today, write about games! Board games, video games, card games, sports games, mind games, etc... Share a memorable story.  
I'll skip the mind games, thanks very much. Had enough of those when I was married.
I gamble on occasion, but I've only played poker in a casino once, just to say I did it. I wasn't the first one out, and that's the best I can say about that. Mostly, I stick to blackjack; I understand the odds and strategies there. Roulette is too random, and dice games are, well, dicey. Slot machines are pretty much just vehicles to part people from money, but I sometimes play them anyway; they can be entertaining and, what the hell, sometimes I get some of the money back.
I don't like sports. Not watching, not participating. Last time I was at someone's house watching football, I was struck by just how little is actually going on, between all the penalty flags and shots of angry sideline coaches and idiotic commercial breaks. I know sports-watching is a big part of a lot of peoples' lives, though, and I'm not judging. You like what you like. The closest I get is sometimes I enjoy watching martial arts competitions.
In practice, the games I play most are single-player video games, preferably of the open-world variety. Examples are the Elder Scrolls titles and the Fallout series. I detest most multiplayer games, because there's a high percentage of assholes in the gaming "community."
But if I find a group of people who don't suck, I'll play the hell out of D&D (or other roleplaying games of its ilk). This kind of game emphasizes cooperation over competition; there are competitive board games that I play, but I have to avoid both smug winners and sore losers. As I've noted here before, I don't like winning or losing; I prefer the teamwork aspect. Also, at their core, RPGs are about storytelling, and, well... look where we are.
So, since I saw the prompt, I've been racking my gray matter trying to come up with a compelling gaming story. I know I have a lot of them - lots of memorable characters and groups over the years, and when I'm playing one of these games, often something will remind me of an epic battle or hilarious situation. Naturally, now, when I try to think of one, they disappear into the mist.
There was the time I was DMing and the party was tracking trolls. Said trolls had retreated to their lairs, which were in a series of caves in the side of a cliff. Trolls were better climbers than the party, and no one wanted to be the first one into a dark, smelly troll cave that was sure to be an ambush, so they hit on a solution: they tied the halfling to a rope and lowered him down from the top of the cliff, the idea being that if they saw a craggy troll hand swiping at the hapless thief, they knew there were trolls in that particular cave. But if they didn't, then that was probably the cave to enter so they could set up their own ambush. I mean, the halfling wasn't good for much else except picking the occasional lock and the party's pockets, so he was expendable.
Or there was the time when I was playing a halfling, myself (being sure to not be annoying to the other party members - well, not annoying enough that they'd use my character to fish for trolls). He ended up as werewolf chow, as I recall. Turns out that when you piss off a werewolf, you don't have to run faster than the werewolf; you just have to run faster than the slowest party member. Which is almost always the halfling.
And then there was the time I was playing a not-very-annoying human fighter-type with a big honkin' claymore. Our party managed to piss off not one, but two armies: the orcs caught us stealing from them, but we got away; and the human army we were supposed to be working for kicked us out because the party's bard managed to flub a Persuasion check (not easy to flub a persuasion check if you're a bard, but he managed somehow). So we spent the next two or three gaming sessions fighting off scouting parties from both sides until, having enough of that nonsense, we hit upon a plan:
First, we snuck into the orc camp at night and eliminated a few of them, being sure to "accidentally" drop a scroll of "orders" from the "human army" that read something like, "Your orders: go kill some of the orcs and make it look like the renegades [my adventuring party] did it. Signed, General Brod of [the human army]." The DM made the appropriate dice rolls, and the deception worked.
Next thing we know, we're watching from the forest as a hundred+ angry orcs descend upon the camp of our former employers. The orcs won, but only after taking heavy losses - heavy enough so that we were able to clean up the few remaining - and gave us the spoils of not one, but two, military camps.
Then, of course, the DM decided that was too easy and sicced a dragon on us, but that's another story.
The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrant's face is red.
Oh the war is common cry, pick up you swords and fly.
The sky is filled with good and bad
That mortals never know.
Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.
The pain of war cannot exceed
The woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall,
The ring wraiths ride in black, ride on.
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January 12, 2020 at 12:30am January 12, 2020 at 12:30am
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PROMPT January 12th
Describe a time when you exhibited bravery. 
Well, one time I touched a cat's belly fur...
Or... no, I shouldn't talk about it.
Okay, fine; I've been drinking, so I'll talk about it.
Long, long ago, when I was young and stupid (as opposed to now, when I am old and stupid), I was banging this married chick. She lived a couple hours away, right on the edge of the state, and sometimes I'd go over there on Friday nights and stay the weekend. The alternative was staying home and dealing with my first ex-wife, who hadn't yet moved out.
The woman's husband, a long-distance trucker, was never home.
One time I went over there, on invitation, and he was home.
So I played it cool. Just friends. Hanging out. No big deal.
Until he brought out the guns.
"Hey, Bob, let's go target shootin' in the woods."
Gulp.
Oh well. I'd recently been in bed with two hot redheads (the wife in question was one of them), so I figured this was as good a time as any to slip the bonds of this mortal coil. I just hoped he would make it quick. So I agreed, and he handed me one of the rifles.
A bit more background: as I've noted here before, I spent my childhood in rural Virginia. Rifles and shotguns were just tools to me - like tractors or scythes, things with a purpose that also happened to be dangerous, so my dad had instilled in me safety procedures for the various farm implements, including guns. Some of these procedures actually stuck. There wasn't any of the modern-day abject fear of the weapons themselves in me; I'd been shooting rifles, shotguns and even pistols since I was old enough to stay upright after the recoil.
Fear of jealous husbands, now, that's another story. I'd always said that I wanted to die by being shot in the back by one whilst trying to escape out a window, but what I meant was it should happen when I was 100 years old.
Not 30.
Besides, the guns, as it turned out, were old-fashioned single-shot muzzle-loaders. I'd never fired one, and I was curious. As I recall - this was, of course, some time ago - you stood the weapon upright, packed in a charge of black powder in a little sack, and then packed the lead ball on top of that. After, you didn't want to point the gun down, lest the bullet fall out. All of this, The Husband explained to me as we stood out back of their house, a paper target tacked to a tree just over the property line on National Park land (this was probably illegal, but that was the absolute least of my worries at the time).
Spoiler alert: he didn't shoot me. In fact, I think that either he believed that I was just some random friend she'd found on the then-nascent internet, or - more likely - he knew that his job kept him away from home for extended periods, and he didn't begrudge his wife the occasional dalliance.
(I should further note, here, that I was between wives at the time. My first wife had just asked for a divorce, harsh things were said, and she finished with "I hope you get what you deserve." She'd said it in a way that implied that she thought I deserved getting my nuts stuck in a paper shredder. So we officially separated. It was that weekend that I found myself between two hot redheads. Later, after we'd divorced and gotten on speaking terms again, we had a good laugh about that.)
So, in retrospect, I think The Husband just wanted to see if the dude his wife was banging had the stones to go out back with a larger guy who was holding a gun. Whatever the reason, I learned my lesson. No more married chicks for me. Well, except for the one other time, but my excuse there is she was married to me.
Oh, and for the record? I was a much better shot.
Some girls they want a handsome Dan
Or some good-lookin' Joe
On their arm some girls like a sweet-talkin' Romeo
Well 'round here baby
I learned you get what you can get
So if you're rough enough for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
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