X-Plane is a flight simulator which boasts a comprehensive flight model. It even allows you to simulate flying the Space Shuttle.

Which is why you should visit its website, today, to see a great example of true class.

Today our DSL started behaving like DSL again. While a week of 14.4-style modem speed gave me that warm nostalgic feeling, to be back at real speed, especially with Safari, is stunning.

Zing!

Squelch, write post. So, we return from another binge of non-postings. I've been distracted; I discovered my lost love of adventure games after I went looking for a way to play Zork on the Unix layer of OS X. I found that (as well as a way to play them on Palm OS), but discovered there a whole sub-culture out there, who refer to such games with the somewhat lofty title of "interactive fiction," and a whole sub-subculture of folks who write new programs for the "Z-machine," the virtual computer which the old Infocom games ran on. There are free Z-Machine interpreters for nearly every platform out there, and not only are the first three Zork games released to the public, but so is The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, which was actually the first adventure game I ever played.

So now, I'm thinking: Hey, I'm a writer and an actor and a programmer to boot. What could be better than trying to create an interactive world? I can see it now! I'll learn the language. I'll enter contests! I'll take them all by storm!

All the while, never revealing that I never actually finished an adventure game except Hitchhiker's, and that only because I bought the hint book and read every darn hint...

Literally? Heard on All Things Considered last Friday:

You have a situation where the President and CEO of an organization are literally dropping boulders on each other in public!
-- David D'Ellesandro of John Hancock Financial Services, speaking of what must be really nasty infighting at the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Sauerkraut.

Now that S bnkrkimeut. So, how well does .&his thing ma G work?

Sorekm good, sore&ing's not so good .. . . Undo! * " d 1 I be Kwyl! ka rye. Rye n bread rocks myworM. ^ N m w WORM? What be fade js a u ornt This is a test of Apple's Ink 'technology . =

-M seem to * preHy WM, as by as you don't screw up, it won't S crew up, eim. However, if you do... }} 5 *

YO U R'E IN TR0 UB vE./ j l Nit underskud ya. 1hr is a lot of Fm, 7 must admit. 7 Must admit ? Who He hell is SEVEN? } Sem of mI Ornot? wwn fuck??? B b ., tr. S 5 ! I

Yesterday the Gonnas performed at a party. It was like we were rock stars, man.

Startin' early.

D stopped going to a developmental pre-school (which was doing him no good at all) and started going to his regular nursery school five mornings a week. He had been going there three days a week--Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in a very small class with only three other boys (no girls). Yesterday was his first day at the Tuesday-Thursday class. There are two other kids who go all five days, and the rest are new.

So we asked him who he saw at nursery school, and he answered, somewhat rakishly:

"Malcom, and Marcus... and girls!"

At what point does a mom-and-pop store become an evil, profiteering monolith from whom it's OK to steal? I mean, would you have ripped off the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) when they were building machines in their garage? Or, would you have made (if you could) and released an MP3 of "My Guy" when it was the first hit for Barry Gordy's upstart record company?

Think about it.

As for me, I encourage you to steal content from this blog. I've given up on riches, and I'll settle for notoriety.

This is worth a look. I don't neccesarily agree with the implication, but it is food for thought.

Funk soul brother.

Have a good weekend?

There was something profound I wanted to say. Alas! I don't remember what.

Someone asked me the other day to help work on a Star Wars fan film. Except it's not a film, but a radio drama. They had seen Star Wars: Episode One and a Half and enjoyed it, so they asked me to do some dialogue editing.

I'm touched. I'm also busy. But I'm afraid I have the Michael Caine disease (I Just Can't Say No). Still, I really really want to finish my current projects before I embark on anyone else's. So I'm thinking I should decline on this one.

On a side note, I found out today that my older brother, who I haven't seen in well over twelve years and haven't talked to since 1995 (nor has anyone in my family), got married in 1998. My Dad told me this, and he found out vis a Google search, of all things. Yes, I love the family communication skills.

Really, though, my brother (whose name I won't mention in this blog, to protect his privacy--he is not my younger brother C---s who I've previously mentioned) is a stranger to me. We didn't grow up together, he's twelve years older than me, he lived with his mother while I was growing up, and he doesn't keep in touch with anyone in our family but my older sister (also a product of my father's first marriage). I do have a few happy memories about him on the rare occasions he would visit my Dad; one particularly vivid image was one spring day, and all of us were running under the "helicopter trees" (you know, those seeds that spin around as they fall through the air) which were showering down like mad, and I ran straight into him and we bonked heads somehow (he must have been bending down). I can still hear the clonk! sound it made.

That's actually one of the few happy memories I have from childhood. Not that my childhood was unhappy; it's just that when a divorce happens, it tends to crowd out all the other memories. So I imagine my brother doesn't remember that moment, since his folks (obviously) divorced before mine... not to mention that if his folks hadn't divorced, his little brother Squelch wouldn't have even existed.

Bumped. Well, the NPR story came and went and they didn't use K after all. However, she did pop up in this USA Today article, where she even got a promotion (she is most definitely not "head of the [National Marine Fisheries Service]'s highly migratory species office").

(Burma Shave)

and a lot of things, at that.

I actually have things to say

so it will look like

post tiny little sentence fragments

I think I will just

Oh, and I actually made some progress with the music for the movie. Sounds like utter carp [sic] but hey, it's a start. There's time to finesse it after I get Directorial Approval.

K's NPR bit didn't happen tonight, so presumably if you listen to Morning Edition tomorrow, you'll hear it.

More! More! Give me more, I want more! (You know who you are, you PIRATE!)

I want to perform again. I want people to tell me how wonderful I am and how privileged they feel to just be in the same room with me. I want to make people laugh and cry and love. I want to be flattered because people think I'm in a position of power. I want to be surrounded by fakes and hangers-on. I want to have an agent, a manager, a personal assistant, a makeup artist, and various other people whose sole purpose in life is to make me look good. And then I want it all to go away in a flash, so I can spend the rest of my life trying pathetically to recapture my glory days.

Oh, wait. That already happened. It was called "high school," when people used to stop me in the street and say how much they enjoyed my performance in the school plays. And I was sure I was the best performer in the school, nay, in the state. And when I was on stage and people were laughing, there was no one who could touch me, damn it.

I mean, sure, I never kissed a girl 'til I was nineteen, and my father would occasionally throw me out of the house, and my sense of self-worth when off stage was nonexistent... but so what?

Whatever that ineffable Thing is, that It, that thing that's generally translated as Talent, but also encompasses charisma, confidence, presence: I had It then. Then I came to college and It started to weaken as I realized there were folks around me who were better than me; and then college ended, and I gave up, and now It's gone forever.

I want validation, and yes, it is painful, and no, no matter how good it is, it will never be enough.

I'm like a drug addict, and my whole life has been a search for that high...

You know, people pay ridiculous amounts of money to have video edited. Maybe I should hang out a shingle?

Violin, lin, lin... My friend Rex and I have a film we've been trying to finish for over a year now, gathering dust (metaphorically) on my hard drive. We finally did two re-shoots a month or two ago, so now all that's holding it back, really, is the score, which is up to me to write. Have you ever tried to compose music whilst caring for a toddler and an infant?

Sometimes I do wish I had a genuine STUDIO where I could compose, edit, animate, and write to my heart's content. But would I do those things, or just fritter the time away like I do now?

I'd love to not have to share this computer. But then, I'd love to not have to share time, either, to not have any obligations, to just do MY THING whatever it may be.

I AM A GIANT ENORMOUS BABY!

Waahh.

Anyway, needless to say I didn't do the music yet. I have the tune and beat that I want; but I have to actually get it into the computer with my *&@$#% software synth and sound-editing suite that only works under Mac OS 9. So does my video editor, for that matter, so I have to reboot the computer every time I want to work on the film. This is what I mean by not wanting to share; I can't just let the machine linger, knowing that K will use it if she needs to and won't disturb my projects. As long as it's sitting in OS 9, K can't use it.

And now stupid Apple says that the newest Macs won't boot up in OS 9 anymore. So if I ever get a new Mac, I'll have to get a new video editor, sound editor, and software synth.

It's enough to make one turn to piracy. Hello, LimeWire?

Miss K is supposed to be on All Things Considered tomorrow, or possibly Morning Edition on Friday. Enjoy.

Cool shit:

Forwarding Address: OS X
The Humane Environment

Talk to me instead! So my wife will be interviewed on NPR in the next few days, though I don't know for which program. It's always been my dream to be on NPR. I've been reminding her of this ever since I found out. I wonder if she's annoyed yet.

Anyway, I think she'll probably be dropped at the last minute. Why? Well, I was checking my referral logs today, you see; and there were three page views from someone searching Google for her name. With some dread, I checked what server this person was using. Guess what it was.

Bits. Another birthday present was a new SmartMedia card to go with my new digital camera. The one that came with the camera had 8MB--the new one has 128MB. For comparison, consider that I could take about 16 high-quality pictures with 8MB, and now I can take over 250.

What really brings it home, though, is that this little chip, about half the size of a business card, has ten times the storage capacity of the computer I used throughout college. And 1024 times the RAM of my first Macintosh. And an insane amount more than my first computer, a VIC 20 with 5K of memory, of which 2K was video...

Irish.

I turned on the baby monitor, thinking both our kids were asleep. The moment I did, D broadcasted this important message:

"I love potatoes. PO... TAAAYYY... TOES!"

Another day older. Things aplenty have been a-happenin' here. First off, today is my birthday. Had a nice chocolate cake and a few presents, the best of which was by far being able to go to a movie alone with my wife while someone else watched the kiddies. (We saw The Two Towers, but that's neither here nor there.)

Secondly, I'm finally able to burn DVDs and SVCDs on my iMac. I have a G3 processor and an external DVD-RW drive and those programs like iDVD only work for G4s with internal drives. BUT there are now, apparently, open-source DVD burning utilities which, though primitive (no menus, yet) do allow one to burn video DVDs that can play in your regular player. I did a test with a clip from the Star Wars spoof project, and man, was it ever exciting to see that in pristine 16x9 video! So that'll be my first full DVD burn, I think.

Thirdly, The Gonnas are gettin' serious. We're gonna invest in a digital multitrack recorder and make a decent demo CD. And--ta da!--you can now listen to our songs at www.mp3.com/gonnas. So stop on by!

Phew! If I posted more often I wouldn't have to write so much at once. And I didn't even mention the silent movies...

Pet peeve. Fully loaded with a 1GHz PowerPC G4, 1MB of L3 cache, AirPort Card, Mega-wide display, Radeon graphics and a slot-loading SuperDrive, the 15-inch Titanium PowerBook G4 boasts jaw-dropping features -- including it's price: all this is now just $2799.

They make good software, great computers, and the world's best operating system; but they still don't know the difference between it's and its.

The first story is pretty bad, though. NaNoWriMo started me writing stories again, albeit at great cost. The key to success--for me, anyway--is to set deadlines and have a schedule. To that end, I've started a new site, called One Story, One Month. As its name implies, I will write and post a new short story every month. Some will be good, some will no doubt be awful. I hope that a few will be very good.

Unlike Rooster Spice, One Story, One Month will have comments as well, for any and all reactions (though I'm hoping more for specifics than for your story sux get a life d00d). Even if no one reads the stories (which I fully expect) at the very least I will write stories. And that's the important thing, isn't it?

Wookin' pa nub... Beatles lyrics, as interpreted by a three year old:

But if they seen
You talking that way
Keep wiping my face
-- You Can't Do That (A Hard Day's Night)

'Cause baby, achoo
(La la la la la la la)
Baby, achoo.
-- Baby It's You (Please Please Me)

Can't Mommy love?
Love?
Love?
-- Can't Buy Me Love (A Hard Day's Night)

K finds that last one a little disturbing. I wonder why.

I cost $2,222,298.00. How much are you worth?

Thanks to Trash Heap for the link.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little blogs. Well, we just finished paying the bills for December. After that orgy of spending, we have six dollars and forty-three cents in our checking account. That's actually better than we do most holidays, in that this year we didn't have to dip into our savings account. Heck, we have to do that most months, which makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, we're living beyond our means.

Oh, darn. My eyes fall on a reciept from Jiffy Lube--since it's a full sheet of paper, I missed it when I was putting in all my other checking account reciepts. I suddenly realize this means we're actually overdrawn by about fifty dollars. A cold hand clenches my heart. It is the hand of the Bank Examiner from It's a Wonderful Life, saying, "Mr. Bailey, there's a deficit!" Clarence! Clarence!

Oh well, we'll survive. We just won't, you know, eat 'til K's next paycheck. Suddenly I'm seized with the need to earn money again. But how can a stay-at-home father with few marketable skills (and less spare time) make money? How? HOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR?

It's a holiday, isn't it? Which one? Then, maybe I think it is just because it's my birthday month. That must be it. I wish I could remember why I'm awake at this hour. There must have been a reason but it's escaped my sievey brain.

Hey, look! The odometer!

Access of evil. Hey everyone. We've been having technical difficulties here at Rooster Spice Studios; in fact it'll be a miracle if the DSL stays up long enough to post this message. Anyway, that, and not anything nasty like suicide or nervous breakdowns, is why I haven't posted in a while.

I coulda been a contender day. For those of you who returned to work today: welcome back. For those who continued their vacation: lucky you. And for those who never had a real day off in the first place: grab a beer, and let's commiserate.

Oh, no, I don't do that sort of thing. Mike has already mentioned the Amazon clothes horses in his blog, but to add to his account: while looking for the Spider-Man link in the last entry, I noticed that Amazon has started to promote its new Apparel store with this bit of deathless prose:

Customers who wear clothes also shop for:

It's good to know they're being specific, so as not to alientate the nudist demographic.

Chestnuts thrown halfway across the room...

D did NOT have a good Christmas this year. The poor kid's sick and had a runny nose all morning--plus he hadn't had an afternoon nap in five days. (He took one today, thank goodness.)

In fact, he didn't wake up 'til 8 A.M., and he demanded to eat breakfast before he finished opening his presents. He must be really sick--or maybe he's not really my son.

E, on the other hand, seems to grasp Christmas even at the tender age of five months, since she woke us up at 4 A.M. Always the overachiever, that one.

D got the most mileage out of the magic markers and crayons my folks gave him; kid loves to draw, or to be precise, loves to make us draw. Shapes, usually (you haven't lived until you've heard a three year old ask for a "parallelogram"), which he then colors in, if he's so inclined.

The stuff we got for him--a wooden train and a toy workbench--didn't go over quite as well. But as K said, "At least he's not materialistic."

The same could not be said for K and me, as we enjoyed my gifts to her (an eyemodule and a keyboard for her PDA, as well as the new Fellowship of the Ring box set) and her gifts to me (the aforementioned digital camera and the Spider-Man collector's gift set). Oh well, somebody's got to be a typical American.

Gadgets are good. We open some of our presents on Christmas Eve, in keeping with K's family's tradition (I come from the "wait-till-morning" school). And so it came to pass that I'm now the proud owner of a digital camera.

Okay, fine, that's what everyone gets this year. But you need a little history to understand how remarkable this gift is.

The cameras I have owned have met the following fates (from most recent):

• Chewed up and left for dead by our dog, Buddy;
  
• Stolen while on a trip to London in college;
  
• Been run over by a school bus at my high school;
  
• Left behind at the end of summer camp. (This last was my first real camera; a genuine single-lens-reflex from Pentax, and I took black-and-white photos with it and developed them myself and everything. Man, losing that one was a heartbreaker.)
  

So you see, it's a leap of faith to give me a camera--any kind of camera, let alone a digital one. But on the whole, maybe I should think of it as a computer gadget. Those, I can make last remarkably well (says the proud owner of a Macintosh 128K).

I'm dreaming of a multi-hued, non-denominational solstice... It's snowing in Greenbelt on Christmas Eve!

I shoulda been a copy editor. The local shops around here give out free calendars every year, as I suppose shops have done since time immemorial. Today I got one which was a joint veture between two of them: CENTERWAY MINI-MART and GREENBELT VARIEYT.

ZAP. Does anyone else find themselves strangely fascinated by the "Currently" entries--i.e. currently reading, listening to, watching, etc.--that's found on some blogs?

Yeah, me neither.

I mean, sure, it's nice to find out what people are exploring, but sometimes it seems like self-aggrandizement. For instance, I could mention that I'm reading Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Herodotus' Histories, and Theories on the Curvature of Space-Time and Multiple Dimensions by Stephen Hawking. But wouldn't that seem, I don't know, slightly condescending?

OK, what the hell does this mean and why am I number four on the list?

In the style of 'Tis. It's not a faux pas to buy a gift at a used CD store. It may or may not be a faux pas to listen to the gift before wrapping it, especially if the CD was opened when purchased. However, it's a definite faux pas to wrap the case by itself because you forgot the CD was still in your player. And of course, to mail the gift before this is discovered, goes past faux pas all the way to stupidissimo.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution. Will someone tell me what it is?

Obligatory politics. You know, I'm not gonna say whether I'm for or against war with Iraq, mostly 'cause I don't know yet myself. But I will say that it's a little disturbing to continually read in the op-ed pages about plans for a "post-Hussein Iraq." Hello? We haven't even fought the damn war, yet alone won it!

As seen on Jackass.

The bulk of the Christmas shopping is finally done, and the Christmas lights are finally up on the oak tree in the front yard. Boy, that was a sight to see. E was in her little chair on the front porch, and D, het-up and overtired from pre-school (from whence we had just come), was running around, throwing the mystery magazine as far as he could while singing "A Hard Day's Night" at the top of his lungs. And, not to be outdone, there I was, on a rickety 6 foot ladder, hugging the tree while trying to throw the lights over a branch just out of my reach.

We wrap the Christmas lights around rolled-up newspapers to store them, and I've taken to writing messages to the future on the paper, to be read the following year. As a measure of how much the world has changed, I opened one string of lights where the paper was dated Jan. 1, 2001 (we must not have used it last year) and my message was "How's George W. doing?" The next string had the paper from Jan. 1, 2002, and I had written "Are we still alive?" Ah, the boundless optimism of late 2001...

To be honest, the bulk of this post will be written at 5:42 PM, not when the time stamp says, because when I first wrote this post, I only wrote the first two words: "To be." I must have been answering Hamlet.

And you must go here: 'Tis the Season

They took the sky from me. Firefly's been canned, according to the Post. What a shame... it seemed to have real potential.

No, Lord Halliwell... the butler's the one who's dead!

Recently I did something rather quaint and pre-Information Age... I subscribed to a magazine. Yes, you can still do that! There's still stuff to be read that isn't on a computer screen.

It was all part of a fundraiser for D's preschool; some percentage of the money went to the school. (Yeah... it will be a glorious day when our schools get the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber, I know.) We got a toddler-age nature mag called Your Big Backyard for D, MacAddict for me, and then we had one left... so with some reservations, we took out an interest in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. We're Sherlock Holmes fans, but not huge mystery buffs. I personally have always found the mystery novel in general somewhat tired. (And don't even get me started on series characters--I had really hoped Murder, She Wrote would end with Jessica Fletcher finally getting nailed for all those killings that seemed to follow her around.)

But the mystery short story! Oh, what a joy to discover! Typically, I take in a story's title and style to determine whether it might interest me. There were more than a few to which I said, "Oh, I won't bother with this one, it's not my bag," and then my eyes strayed along a paragraph and next thing I knew I was hooked. Uncanny, the power of PLOT!

Makes me want to try to write one. Alas, I'd probably wind up aping Shear Madness, given the time I've spent backstage for them. And the last thing the world needs is another Shear Madness...

All right, our objectives have been achieved, and I can stop posting again.

Addendum. I should point out that a couple people wrote and said they were glad I was back. That was definitely good to hear.

I'm better now... want to buy this bridge? My recent vacation was not taken in the most elegant way, hm? I suppose I should have hung a sign that said, "Gone Chopin--Back in a Minuet."

I stopped blogging because, frankly, too many people were caring about me. This seems like an odd thing, I know (an odd thing... can't you tell I think myself a writer, with word-choices like that?), but on bad days I look on this as less entertainment than therapy, and somehow therapy seems more useful if it's screamed to the world rather than stuck in a dark corner of a hard drive. Hell, once I remember I typed out (this was in eighth grade, and I had a computer, but I liked to use an actual manual typewriter) a missive against my Awful Life, including some choice insults of my dad's then-girlfriend, and I left it sitting on my desk where I knew full well my dad would see it. He thought it was really funny and clever, which was not precisely my intention.

Anyway, I clearly have always enjoyed airing out the dirty linen of my addled brain in public. And it may sound ingenuous, but I really don't care about the "come on Squelch, get together, you're a good man" school of replies. I mean, they're appreciated, sure; and I'm glad that people care about me. But I'd far rather hear people's reactions to, say, my memoir experiment or a really clever story (although that last one was linked to, I must admit). When people write to me trying to cheer me up, it just seems like pity.

Of course, whenever someone compliments me, it seems like pity.

So where were you while I was gone?

-- with annotations by Squelch, Esq.

• New Year Clearouts and Amnesties have begun. Now we have five in the Real Blogs of Note section. I aim to reduce the Ghoul Club list, so that I don't spend so much of my working day catching up with people.
  
  I've already been removed from the Ghoul Club (justifiably), so I can finally say what I really think: a) she should have left her twit of a husband weeks ago, and b) she shouldn't insult Americans so often; we can't read that fast.



• The machine which I was going to put into my MAME cabinet died last night. It won't boot; it gets partway through the POST routines and freezes. Fortunately, the motherboard has a series of LEDs that indicate where the trouble lies. Unfortunately, it indicates a different problem every time I try to boot it.
  
  Huh?



• 23 minutes. Yes, I was in Rome 23 minutes before being pickpocketed, setting a new record for involuntary donations to the Eternal City's underground economy. I wrote to my manager, telling him, and he responded, "How boring." That's so true it is painful--it seems that every 4th person into Rome gets taken for a ride, and my number was simply up. It is no wonder that sexy designer fashion wallets are a big sales item here.
  
  Since this interesting set of entries, Mike's been back to his usual fare--simple hyperlinks with minimal comment. Ah well, at least that way he doesn't need to worry about my envy attacks.



• The sky. Glorious, even more than last Monday: huge, blazing coral and orange and gold, below layers and layers of thick dark smoky-blue clouds going all the way up. I kept wondering if the other drivers noticed. How could they not? Every time I saw it from another angle, I involuntarily gasped under my breath, "Oh my God." There was so much of it, like a gift. I wanted my camera, so badly. Fast fast roads, wonderful, smooth, magnificent soaring music to match--"Oh Sister," "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"... I sped home, watching, watching, racing, ran in and grabbed my camera. I knew there was little hope of it staying for so long, but I turned back around and drove Route 9 over again, just on the chance. It was too late; the sun was low; no more colours. Just pale gold and black tree outlines and blearing smearing lights, beautiful too, but not glorious. Wasted time? NO.
  
  She still writes beautifully, although too much about The Band and Dylan for my taste. At least she's no longer sending me subliminal messages--the Pope and George W. Bush have taken up that mantle.



• New York City is a dog town. Us wacky New Yorkers love our dogs, and there's more amenities and perks for pooches per square mile in Manhattan than probably any other place on Earth... I learned over the weekend, though, that Boston does one thing for dogs that New York City does not: let them ride on the subway.
  
  I just like this guy's writing. Not to mention his common sense. And when I heard about this, I knew he'd have an elegant riposte.



• LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD IN ACTION: Does this surprise anybody? From Butler in Hoboken.
  
  Possibly the only one on the list who's written even less than me lately.



• Me (with a big customer service sincere smile): "Hello, sir, may I ask; are you an actor?"
  Random relaxed & cocky audience member on the first row: "No"
  Me (smile shifted slightly into snarl....): "Then get your feet off the damn stage. Sir."
  "Thank you. Sir"
  
  I wish I read her more often, and I love the new design, which suits the funniest dramaturg in Glasgow.



• I had a bad day at school a few days ago. Some students were unprepared, late, disruptive - the usual teacher annoyances. The night was dark and cold as I walked to my car, and I would have to scrape the frost from the windows. But as I leaned against the handle of the ice scraper, I thought about how nice it would be to get home, see The Wife, and listen to The Girl's quiet sleep movements through the monitor. ... There are those who hate going home. I don't know how they do it.
  
  Try never leaving home for a change.



• The New York Times is running a series on the Ten Commandments that makes the God Squad seem scholarly. The ostensible reason for the series is that the Commandments "resonate in a season when many take time to carve out sacred space in their lives," and each installment purports to showcase a "personal struggle to comply" with one of the Commandments. ... The Second Commandment -- forbidding the worship of graven images -- is examined in an installment about a "tour rat," or groupie, of the band Phish. Although the Commandment "calls on believers to worship the mystery of the divine" and "cautions them against paying homage to objects created by humankind," young Beth Senturia has dropped out of college to follow the band around and believes that the band's lead singer, Trey, is God. But isn't that more of a violation of the First Commandment? Trey is not an object created by mankind, but a false god. And I'm not sure why any of this is Beth's personal struggle, since she doesn't appear to care about the Commandments in the first place.
  
  I won't comment on this except to note that my brother followed Phish around for a time, and he also goes to church every Sunday. So I guess he's deluded twice over.



• And though I love my current job, I saw this and thought, hey, that would be cool. Working for Yahoo, moving to California ... then I noticed the location, and who wants to live on top of the Hellmouth?
  
  Welcome to the newest Seal of Approval blog. We look forward to many more Buffy references in the future.

When we last left our hero... Ain't that always the way? My first post in ten days and Blogger dumps it. Ah, well, after that long (not to mention at least fifteen days since Real Content) I can at least be sure no one's listening anymore.

Wait, is this really Squelch, the Audience Whore, talking? Hmmm...

Got lots to do: must fix the archive page, get rid of the NaNoWriMoProMe, rejigger a few of the Seal of Approval links, and, oh yes, write. Mustn't forget that. Did I mention that, despite the initial euphoria, I haven't written a word of The Novel since reality crashed my party? I did, however, join an informal writing group; I'll be doing one short story per month. We'll see if it's easier doing 5000 words than 50,000.

I still believe that Getting a Schedule is the secret. What that schedule will be... ah, there's the rub. (Reaches for ointment.)

I'm losing my mind. This is troublesome.

I hate myself. Why?

I could say to check back often for when I Get My Blog Back On, but what's the point, really?

It was a bad day. Again...

Who cares?

what is the sound of one finger blogging?

Well, we did it. And it went spectacularly well. The Gonnas had their full-band debut on Friday night; we even snagged some folks who we didn't know personally, and we gave away half of our CDs (the band members themselves gobbled up the rest). Giving them away was a choice, since it was National Buy Nothing Day, as previously mentioned.

I will share the whole story (good, bad, and ugly) soon. For now, why not click on what will eventually be our website?

Rooster Ghost. No, Gentle Readers, I haven't vanished. Just been getting ready for the big show at Art-O-Matic. Change of time: 8 PM, Nov. 29, Cabaret stage. As of this writing, we're billed as a comedy improv group. This is a problem.

Attempting to mix a crappy 4-track casette to digital has proved to be a challenge. But with luck, we'll be able to give away a 3-song CD at the performance.

Tell your friends, tell your enemas...

Well, there is Al Gore. There's an InstaPundit and a Daily Pundit. There's a Shi'a Pundit, a MuslimPundit, and even a VodkaPundit.

But what I want to see? A ChiaPundit.

Maybe mediation would help.

Nimüe, our cat, pees on the couch regularly. Today K pointed out that she always pees in the same spot: the place where D, our resident cat-chaser, likes to sit.

I guess the verdict is in...

Mention Rooster Spice and get 25% off! Did a little research into anti-consumerism yesterday. It turns out there's a National Buy Nothing Day, and that's what we're supposed to celebrate on our performance (Nov. 29, Art-O-Matic, Cabaret Stage, 10 PM, be there or else), since anti-consumerism is the Theme of the Evening.

Now, the problem with encouraging people to buy nothing is that most bands promote themselves by selling CDs. But if people can't buy them on that day...?

An elegant solution: we'll be cutting a special 3-song EP and will give it away for FREE at the concert! So come on down and get it!

Just don't tell anyone that this 3-song EP will in fact be our first and ONLY compact disc...

I'm so tired.

"It's time I had some time alone..." -- R.E.M.

Today's KidsPost (yes, I get my news from a paper designed for 13-year-olds) asks the following question at its masthead:

What does an English person mean when she says, "Put the bag in the boot"?

The answer they gave was, of course, "Put the suitcase in the trunk." Personally, though, I thought a more accurate translation was, "Put the ugly old woman in the trunk."

Maybe they'll save that for the Mafia KidsPost.

Sincerely, your favorite GBA Yank...

Whiners never quit. Well, I guess I have to admit that I'm probably not going to finish NaNoWriMo on time; the last week just took too much out of me. Sigh.

I'm still writing and will keep updating the meter, at least as long as Jeff keeps it going.

Aside: I've always wanted to fill a post with so many hyperlinks that the entry is rendered completely unreadable. I think this one comes pretty close.

I've got it! I've got it! Anti-Consumerism.... and Uncle Commercialism!

I feel improvocated. My friend Stephanie, who was the heart and soul of RATS, the improv group of which I was a founding member (and which disbanded about a year ago), has started a new one: Improvocation. They had their first performance last night at Art-O-Matic, a D.C. arts festival.

I'm not going to write about how well they did, both because A) I didn't see it; and B) it's not part of my Blog Mandate. Rather, I'm going to tell you how I feel that Stephanie started a new improv group and didn't ask me to join.

Aw, screw that. I'm too happy. You see, the Gonnas are performing at Art-O-Matic, too!

Rex, our lead singer and another former RATS'er, went to see the show, and managed to con the Art-O-Matic folks into giving us a gig. We'll be performing Nov. 29, the day after Turkey Day, on the Cabaret stage at 10 P.M. So, if you're in the area, come on by.

The theme for the evening is anti-consumerism. So I guess I'll have to stifle my neo-conservative leanings. (Well, no, I'm not a neo-conservative, except in comparison to the socialists who run Art-O-Matic.) We also don't have any songs about anti-consumerism. But hey, who's counting?

[Edit: Stephanie did not, in fact, start the Improvocation group--my mistake.]

Slowly. This entry, the one that said "get over it," is probably a little too flip. I do appreciate the hordes--well, okay, the many--well, okay, the three, one of whom was my mother--people who have written in concern and sympathy. It's helped. Not as much as it should, but it has.

Anyway, things are a little better. Not solved, but better. I wish I could have made it clearer--I'm not worried about myself, per se. I'm worried about what I might do to my children. That's what put my undershorts in a twist.

Every day that E smiles, and every day that D sings a Beatles song (gosh, that kid has a great ear!), I feel better about being a father. And I feel more like I'm a good father.

I guess that's progress...

To quote the folks from IKEA: Maybe you feel sorry for this blog? That is because you are crazy! Blogs do not have feelings. And The Raving Atheist is much better!

Because it is stupid. I'm approximately 5,500 words behind. This of course doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, except that I think I was writing a damn good story.

What if it's NaNoWriMo that is killing me? How odd would that be? Write a story on one hand--remain sane on the other. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around--telling stories keeps you sane?

Yes, I am seeing a psychiatrist. On a regular basis. And I have an emergency appointment tomorrow, in fact.

Those of you who are worried about me:

Get over it.

(It is appreciated, though.)

This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This two shell pas. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass.

I have to admit, it's getting better
It's getting better all the time
(Can't get no worse)

I know everyone has bad days.

I know I didn't actually hurt anyone.

I know taking care of a toddler and an infant is a difficult job.

I know all these things, and yet I'm still helpless in the face of all my knowledge.

I lost it again today--not violently, but I had to abdicate all the same. K has to stay up late tonight, in fact, making up work hours, because I made her take care of D and E.

And so I could go to bed on time, I skipped out on band rehearsal. And of course I haven't written a word of the novel. I'd simply quit, but then I'd hate myself even more.

How can I do this? How can I survive? I'm not strong enough.

What will I do if things REALLY get tough, as opposed to the ersatz tough that I find myself enveloped in?

Fuck myself. Fuck the world. Fuck everybody except my family, 'cause they're the only people I really love...

I can't leave that entry festering like a sore. So, things were a little better today. Wa hoo.

There's a dent in the drywall from the chair, too.

My first full-length play was about, in part, a man who was terrified he was an abuser. Today I found out I was writing about myself.

I was tired. I can keep telling myself that; I was tired, so was D, and E is sick and had been screaming all morning. I can keep telling myself that over and over but it will make no difference.

The first thing I did was whack myself upside the head, repeatedly, with a children's book. Just to hurt myself so I wouldn't hurt anyone else.

Then about an hour later, I put E down (she was screaming), curled into a ball, and screamed myself.

When I fixed D lunch (we had to hurry, because K had just called; she's sick, too, and asked to be picked up from work), I gave him milk, which he pushed away. A tiny bit of it spilled. A tiny bit! Nonetheless I screamed at him. "HEY!" A long, drawn out HEY right at his face. I breathed. Caught hold of myself. Apologized and kissed his forehead and told him I loved him.

This is just a minute later, now. E is screaming again. I asked D to please eat his lunch. He refused. And something snapped inside me.

I grabbed the chair next to his and pulled it out from under the table. The table swiveled a bit. It may have actually hit him in the chest or it may have simply stopped as it reached him. . . I'm not sure how much force it had. I didn't notice, I was too busy screaming "SON OF A BITCH! DUMB SHIT!" I don't know who I was addressing this to. Not D. Maybe myself. I threw the chair into the corner, where it hit the closet door and knocked it off its hinges.

I got a hold of myself. D was crying and looking at me with abject terror. Like I was a monster. I was a monster. I am a monster.

My hands were shaking. I pulled the table away from him. There was a little red mark under his shirt, but it didn't look like a bruise. He was okay. E was quiet, fascinated.

I don't think I will ever forget D's face. And he will probably never forget mine. This is one of the moments that defines a child's worldview, like when my own father smashed a dinner plate directly in front of me simply because he couldn't cook the french fries correctly. That image has come back to me again and again and I'm sure today will come back to D, unless, of course, I do something even worse.

I felt like turning myself in to the police or getting myself committed. I'm sick. I'm wrong. I will hurt someone unless someone stops me. I feel like I need to leave them all because I don't want to hurt them, ever; I love them too much.

What am I?

Those of you who have heard my self-loathing before: now do you believe me? Do you understand that I wasn't full of shit when I called myself evil, twisted, and (more prosaically) a putz? I can't stand what I've done. I can barely live with it. How will I survive this? I have to. I have to work it out. But how will I ever regain their trust?

I wish this were a scene out of my stupid novel.

Zzzz. Good night.

And please send all your good karma Erzsebel-way. How about that--I think I spelled it correctly.

THE LITTLE RED DOT MOCKS ME!

Phew. I made it. 12,150 words. Boy, is it terrible. Here's an actual quote:

I thought maybe I was getting scurvy, which I had learned about in social studies class. I started eating oranges to ward it off.

That came straight out of Dave Barry's column for today. Oh well, it'll never see publication anyway, right?

I jinxed myself.

Now it's like pulling teeth. I'm super tired and seem to be in the middle of a depressed phase which may have something to do with it. I still managed to get to 10K words yesterday, but I have no idea how I'll get to 12K today. My eyes are falling out of their sockets and my jaw is scraping the keyboard. But I've gotta do it, right? No matter how crappy it comes out. That's the point of the exercise.

Meanwhile, real life goes on: D went poo-poo in the potty for the first time today, and those of you who aren't parents can just imagine the most impressive thing you've ever heard of--the rest of us know what I'm talking about. The rest of the day he was a little temper demon.

Days when I feel like this, even a walk around the lake doesn't clear my head, and I start thinking horrible thoughts and get ready, in my head, for the end of my marriage (well, we'd have to get a sitter before I left, that sort of thing) and what I would do to eat if I had no one to freeload off of, suddenly. None of this is even a remote possibility, and K certainly hasn't done anything to trigger it, but it's how my mind works.

I suppose at least that I wasn't thinking about suicide, so that's a step forward. These moods are so debilitating; no matter how many times I try to remember how good I've got it, these feelings of despondency, worthlessness, despair come on like a ten-ton truck and run me over.

Now I'm sitting here at the iMac, and writing a blog instead of a novel. But it has to be done; gotta exercise the muscles somehow.

Well, thanks to K, there are now new photos of Da Progeny, including a quiz where you determine Who's Who. Check it all out at squelch.net.

There were too many numerals in that post, weren't there?

Grrr. I only managed 1200 words yesterday. Grr.

Fortunately I was 500 words ahead of schedule, so I only have to do 2300 to hit 10,000, which is where I need to be today to hit 50K by Nov. 30.

Wake up, America, you're dreaming.

All four Gonnas meet tonight for the first time since Tony's wedding (one of the nice things about middle-aged folks in a rock band is that you don't break up when the bass player gets married). He's just back from a nice honeymoon in Italy. That's one of the nice things about getting married late, I guess; ours was spent at the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and it was before the wedding, since I had to start a job two days after.

'Course, Tony's not getting married all that late, since he and Leslie are both 28 (I think).

Anyway, we'll just have to see if a husband can play as funky as a single guy.

The entire day I've been suffering from spending late nights on The Novel. Twice I got kid's stuff to eat lunch on (the first time D's plate, the second, a sippee cup), and then when making dinner, I poured the uncooked pasta into the pan that was supposed to be for the sauce. The strange this [edit: that should have been "thing"; see what I mean?] is I don't feel sleepy at all. Whether this is because of the writing or my new low-cholesterol regimen, I don't know.

And that novel? Couldn't get on the computer today, so I don't know the word count, but I still managed to get a lot written in longhand. I love this shit!

Clarence: you're damn straight gonna get a copy.

And another thing: my Dad was right. Sure, it's another father-son story like thousands of Arthur Miller plays, and sure the writing style owes a lot to Rick Russo and Steven King circa "The Body." But you know what? No one could have written it but Squelch, thirty year old father of two. And damn it, that's great.

(I was SO hoping I could get to bed before ten. I almost made it, too...)

Knock on wood, for God's sake, KNOCK ON WOOD! I can't believe how well it's going. Was this all I needed? To sit down and write, with a daily quota? The characters are spinning away in ways I couldn't have imagined. All those cliches that happy writers use, you know? They're all true. The characters really do tell the story.

And what's most liberating is that I don't know exactly what's coming next and I don't care. I mean, I believe in writing stories, not moods, and I certainly have a general arc and at least one scene that I know I want to write, but the rest. . . it's just gravy, man. And 2200 words came out today at ONE SITTING where I just plain didn't know what to do next.

I can't believe it, and I'm so afraid it's just a fluke.

Meanwhile, as Jeff puts it, "All over the Web, people are reading the blogs of NaNoWriMo participants and saying 'I don't care about your stupid novel! Entertain me in your usual fashion!' Fortunately, I doubt anyone is normally entertained by my blog, so I don't have to worry about that."

Sorry, folks. I hope you don't have to wait 'til December before I talk about anything else.

Nothing written, nothing gained. Now is when it gets shitty.

On another topic, I like Tom Toles' take on the midterm elections.

"Nano" means "tiny," doesn't it? I'm into chapter three and holding steady at over 2000 words a day. If you want to read an excerpt, feel free to go here. That's all you're gonna get until it's done, though. And maybe all, ever. Depends on whether or not I'm proud of it at the end of things.

Perversely, if I'm not proud of it, you will see it.

Oh, and there's an in-joke for you there, Laura... but just a little one.

I said, AUGH! Once again I had a poignant, trenchant, witty entry, and the evil combination of Blogger and iCab ate it.

So all you get is my observation that National Novel Writing Month sounds really good in song, especially when combined with the Progress Meter:

(to the tune of Pretty Woman)
NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMoProMe,
NaNoWriMo, the kind I like to see,
NaNoWriMo...

The Republicans own the world now, by the way, so we can finally march unimpeded to the Promised Land, where everyone owns a gun and sings patriotic, Christian songs while walking over the asphalt which covers the world. After all, you can't drive your SUV through a forest, can you?

AUGH!

First chapter done. Up to 2200 words. Now, bedtime.

Well, thanks for the link to it, Godfrey--I have now officially begun my very own NaNoWriMo odyssey.

So why am I writing this?

I did my civic duty today. Did you vote? You shoulda! I wonder who our next Governor is?

If every idea is a novel, then why am I afraid to try this?

Every idea is a novel these days. You'll forgive me, of course, for not writing recently, but I've been writing. No, really! Okay, not in the actual "putting pen to paper" sense, but I have been THINKING about a story--a short story, to be precise, for a contest sponsored by Flashquake, a literary e-zine in which my buddy Rex has been published.

The contest (for those too lazy to follow the link) is to write a 500 word story that takes place, at least in part, at midnight New Years Eve. So something is forming in my head, coalescing around that concept.

At the moment, it's coalescing at about 5000 words, alas. So time to cut the coalesced fat.

I'm not a Satanist, but I play one on TV. Well, I missed it, though since I found out only yesterday, I guess I have an excuse. Still, I wish I could have marched.

Wonder if the Post will mention it. It'll probably be squeezed into "News In Brief."

You know, I hate to ask for sympathy in general, and I'm not quite as vociferous as some, but nonetheless I do feel that atheists are the last minority group that it's OK to discriminate against.

To put it in perspective, of course, no one is trying to burn us at the proverbial stake or anything--I'd wager most folks don't even care. That's why I don't bother getting angry about it.

Still, I remember when I found out about the George H. W. Bush quote back in college, I was stunned at the collective yawn it engendered in my classmates--as though it was OK to say that atheists weren't American citizens. I mean, come on--what if he had said "I don't think Jews should be considered citizens"? Yet because he said "atheists," no one cared.

Hug An Unbeliever Today!

And on another religious topic: I was listening to WPFW, the local jazz/left-wing radio station, briefly on Halloween, and the deejays were saying they were having a Halloween show--but they were at pains to say again and again, "Now, we're not devil-worshippers, we're just having a little fun, we certainly don't believe in witchcraft or anything like that," and went on to explain that in fact they weren't even saying the kids should go out trick-or-treating, their kids certainly weren't, they were going to a little indoor festival sponsored by the town, but in this day and age they would never suggest going door-to-door--

--and I wanted to slap them.

For our part, D and E did go door-to-door, and loved every minute of it. D was Eeyore, and E was a puppy. I wanted to don a wife-beater undershirt and boxers, and carry a beer and a TV remote, so when people asked "What are you dressed as?" I could belch and say, "A dad."