Automatic Fiction #2

He just sat there at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes and sipping bourbon as he looked out at the empty streets. Strange how the streets always seemed to be empty these days. There never seemed to be a kid wandering by on his way home from school or a neighbor working in his yard. Hell, there was never even a stray dog cruising the neighborhood for food.

It wasn't as if everything had shut down. The grass seemed to get cut somehow but he never saw anyone cutting it. In the fall the leaves were raked and in winter the snow was plowed but he never once saw these things happen, and not for lack of trying. Jerry sat by the window most of everyday for the better part of two years and never saw any sign of life outside the glass.

Every Wednesday, he ventured out into the empty world and made the short walk to the corner store. Sometimes, he thought it was odd that he always went on the same day, like he had somewhere else to be the other six days. There was, of course, never anyone in the store and no employees in sight and yet, somehow the shelves were always stocked. There were always three cartons of Camel smokes and five bottles of Crown Royal. Jerry would grab his tobacco and liquor rations for the week along with whatever food caught his eye, usually just a box or two of saltines, he really didn't eat much these days, and then simply stroll out the door. When he came back the next week, the Camels and the Crown Royal and the saltines would all be waiting for him.

As time passed, Jerry became a bit unnerved at the quiet of the world. One day, with much trepidation, he turned on the small black and white television that sat on the kitchen table and switched to a random channel. A rerun of an old Monty Python's Flying Circus episode was just beginning. Without batting an eye, Jerry settled into the chair with his cigarettes and his whiskey and lost himself in the surreal British humor of an earlier life.

Now for something completely different.

______________________________________

For an explanation of the concept behind Automatic Fiction, check out Automatic Fiction #1.

Imagine All the People, Living Life In Peace

What if the United States chose to lead the way to a world free from the threat of the dreaded "weapons of mass destruction" by disarming and destroying it's considerable nuclear arsenal? There are some schools of thought that think this would be playing right into the hands of the terrorists who "hate our freedom". Others might say that our having nuclear weapons is the only deterrent to all out nuclear destruction by one of the world's other nuclear powers. I don't know about all that.

I think it's possible that countries that don't have the bomb would be in less of a hurry to get it if WE didn't have it. It's also possible that at least some of the other nuclear powers will follow our lead. Hell it's even possible that we really could disarm the world by leading the way. Maybe not, but who knows?

What if we chose to "stand down" our military not only in Iraq but all over the world. What if we said "we will not be an aggressor and we will not retaliate to attacks on our nation but instead will promote a world of peace and prosperity"? Would we be attacked immediately? Would the Taliban or al Queda rule our country by the end of the week. How much good could we do for our own country and the world with the billions of dollars that we currently spend on national defense?

I know that these questions are idyllic at best and dangerously naive at worst but, maybe what the world needs is for somebody to step up and take a chance. I'm not a Christian but, I was raised Catholic and I do know that the bible teaches us that retaliation is wrong. It teaches that we should "turn the other cheek" in the face of an aggressor. I AM a Buddhist and, for me, part of what Buddhism is about is wisdom and compassion. Compassion for both sides in a conflict and the wisdom to follow a path to peace. The wisdom to accept things as they are even though they are often not as we wish them to be.

I may be completely out of my mind but, I don't believe that refusing to engage in war would mean an end to our way of life. I am aware that there is evil in the world but I'm not entirely certain that the constant cycle of threat and aggression doesn't play a role in creating that evil. Would it be worth trying something dangerously crazy if it could lead to an end to the insanity of war?

"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..."

from "Imagine" by John Lennon

The Dreaded "Nuance"....again

There's an interesting thing that happens in every congressional election (House of Reps or Senate) as well as every time a congressmen runs for another office. It seems to me that in every election there is an increase in advertising which blames the candidate for voting either "for" or "against" a specific issue. For example, in Ohio Mike DeWine is running a series of ads, with the taunting, school yard refrain of "Sherrod Brown let us down", that say things like "Sherrod Brown voted against body armor for our troops ten times".

There are a lot of things that bother me about this approach but, chief among them is that the success of this advertising counts on the voting public having no idea how the United States congress works. If you're paying attention at all you know that bills in congress are never so simple as to be simply "for" or "against" any one thing. This is especially true of complex bills like those for military spending. It is offensive to me, and more than a little depressing, that this type of advertising is not only widely used but also seems to be extremely effective.

There is always more detail behind any vote in congress than the black and white world portrayed in these ads. This is the dreaded "nuance" that seems to be increasingly absent from political discourse. If you read back to the beginning of this blog, you'll know that I supported John Kerry for president and I will say now that I still think he would have made an excellent president. What really hurt him (other than the fact that the Republicans basically stole the election in Ohio, but more on that another time) was nuance. I had numerous conversations with people where they were unwilling to listen to any detailed analysis of Kerry or Bush or even to engage in a critical discussion of their stances on the issues. The opposition to John Kerry was entirely distilled to simple sound bites about swift boat veterans and Kerry being for the war before he was against it. The fact that it worked so well makes it even more reprehensible.

All I can say is that I hope people begin to pay more attention and be less willing to allow their politicians to boil complex issues down to meaningless slogans. As a nation, we should accept nothing less. When making your voting decisions this fall, take a little extra time to look into the details, the nuance, if you will, behind the candidates views. It's time we made our representatives understand that we are smarter than they've been giving us credit for and we are unwilling to accept their bull shit.

Talking Bob Dylan Blues

I've been spending a lot of time listening to "Modern Times" the new Bob Dylan record and it has been a truly rewarding experience. I am always fascinated when an artist is able to summon the courage - or maybe resolve is a better word for it - to create a piece of work that stands with his incomparable past. Dylan is sixty five years old and this album not only shows that he still matters, it stands comfortably with the best work of his career.

There's a great interview with Dylan in the newest issue of Rolling Stone in which he talks about wanting to be compared with the other music of today instead of always being compared to his own work. I have to say that "Modern Times" rises to this comparison well. While he's not the same as, say The Raconteurs or Audioslave, to name a few artists with amazing recent records, Dylan's newest music is every bit as vital as any of the "modern music" currently being produced and more vital than most of it.

I don't know if it's a bi-product of the baby boom or what but, there is a tendency to compare so called "classic rock" artists of the 60's and 70's to their own best work. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, The Who, all of these artists have touchstone moments in their careers by which all of their work afterwards is measured. In Dylan's case, it's "Blood on The Tracks". It seems that every album he makes is referred to by at least a few critics as "Dylan's best work since Blood On The Tracks." Every time I read this, I am struck by just how ridiculous it is. It not only discounts the excellent body of music that Bob Dylan has created SINCE 1975 (the year "Blood on the Tracks" was originally released), it also discounts the place his music holds in the current music scene.

Often we think of older artists as being "past their peak". We are forever looking back and saying things like "I LOVED their early records" or "this new album is good but it's NOT as good as their early work". Sometimes, these statements are actually true but often I think they are colored by nostalgia. I think that nostalgia will always play a role in how we experience music because, after all, it is the soundtrack to many of the big moments in our lives. However, when we become too bogged down in looking back we run the risk of missing what is right in front of us which, in this case, is the depth and beauty of this stunning record.

"Modern Times" is easily one of the best albums of the year and, surprisingly, it looks like it will also be one of the most successful. I was shocked last week when I looked at the Billboard charts and saw that it had ENTERED the charts at number 1! This week it had only dropped two places to 3. Way to go Bob!

If you haven't heard this album yet, stop reading this and go get it now. Better yet, just open your iTunes and buy it from there so you can hear it right away. Albums of this magnitude don't come along every day and when one does, we owe it to ourselves to experience it.

Automatic Fiction #1

Yesterday, I ran across one of the best blogs I've seen so far. It's called "The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy" and the author writes short fiction based on random photographs found on p2p sharing networks. This is a fascinating idea to me. Whenever we look at a photo of people we don't know, I think we ponder what's going on in the photo or more accurately, what went on just prior to and just after the shutter snap of the camera.

In a way, this reminds me of the "automatic writing" practiced by the Surrealists of the 1920s. I don't get the sense that these stories are written "automatically," - I think they are carefully considered and written but, there is something, I don't know, improvisational about the idea of building a story from a randomly obtained photograph.

In the spirit of this, I'd like to try something similar. I'm going to call it "Automatic Fiction". The idea is to write a brief short story without first considering what I will write. I guess the idea is to "improvise" the story and revise it only subltley to correct any grammatical errors and make sure that it is readable.

So, without further adieu, here goes my first shot at "Automatic Fiction", at least for public consumption. I'm just going to clear my mind and start typing, wish me luck!

______________________________________

She woke up when she heard the car pulling in the driveway and immediately felt threatened. Glancing at her watch, she sat up on the couch and tried desperately to wipe the sleep out of her eyes.

"Carol! I'm home"

Jerry sounds edgy, she thought to herself as she flipped on the bathroom light and began brushing her hair. Jerry ALWAYS she sounds edgy she added as she looked briefly at her mostly faded make up. She decided she didn't have time to do much about it and flipped off the light.

"What's for dinner?"

He was standing in the hall, shuffling through the mail she had piled neatly on the table earlier that day.

"I..." she started and then changed her mind. It would never do to just tell Jerry that she'd fallen asleep and that there was, in fact NOTHING for dinner.

"I thought we could walk down to Tony's for pizza, it's been ages since we've done that. Remember how we used to stroll around the neighborhood when we _ "

The back of his hand struck her cheek hard enough to leave a mark and she fell back against the wall.

"You stupid cow!" he shrieked at her "I work my ass off to make a nice life for us and what do I get when I come home? A walk? For freakin pizza?"

It always amused her when he said that word - freakin. He sounded like a catholic school fifth grader trying to swear and not get yelled at by the nuns for it.

"Don't you mean a FUCKING pizza Jerry?" she said to him in a calm voice, almost not even realizing that she was speaking out loud. "Well, don't just FUCKING stand there, let's get a FUCKING move on and walk down to FUCKING Tony's for our FUCKING pizza. You don't want to FUCKING starve do you?"

He stared at her in disbelief. For a moment his mouth moved as if he was going to speak but no words came out. In fact, no sound at all.

"What the FUCK is the matter Jerry? Cat got your FUCKING tongue?"

***

She woke up when she heard the car pull in the driveway. For a moment, she lay on the couch, blinking at the ceiling, trying to decide if she was really awake this time. Was that really just a dream? God knows she'd never talk to Jerry like that in real life. Her life wouldn't last to long if she did.

The front door slammed.

"Carol! I'm home....CAROL!"

Calmly, she walked the short distance to his desk in the corner of the room, opened the top left drawer and took out Jerry's pistol. Just as calmly she waited for him to emerge from the front hall.

"Carol! Where ARE you! Did you remember to cook_"

The gun exploded in her hands and Jerry's hand went to his chest, his eyes bulging as he slumped to the floor.

Calmly, she dropped the gun on the coffee table, sat down on the couch and flipped on the television to catch the evening news. She thought about calling Tony's to have a pizza delivered but then thought better of it. Instead, she picked up the half eaten can of Pringles she'd been munching on earlier that day.

____________________________________

Well, there you have it! I don't know if it's any good or not but, it was fun to write. Thanks for playing along, I will definitely be trying this again.

Incidentally, there's a link The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy site on the left side of my page under "blogs and links of note."

Hello? Is this thing on?

Sometimes I find myself wondering if anyone reads this blog. Anyone, that is, besides my buddy Jim who has told me that he reads it. I guess it really doesn't matter that much but, I guess it does bring up the question of why I bother writing it if I'm not even sure that anyone reads it.

There's a lot of reasons that I write this blog. Probably the main reason is that it gives me an opportunity to flex my prose muscles and keeps me writing. Well, it keeps me writing when I actually bother to post here, which has actually been a fairly regular thing lately. I also write this blog as sort of a diary or journal. It's probably a bit too public to actually function as a journal but it is sort of a running dialogue on what goes through my head and is very similar in tone to my actual journal (which is written on PAPER of all things). As the title of the blog states, I also write this blog because I got a lot to say. I don't really know how true that is, after all I'm writing a post about writing a post today, but I guess it's part of it. We all think we have a lot to say until we actually sit down to try and say it.

A few weeks ago, I started posting to this blog again after a few years of ignoring it. Since that time, I have also started to read other blogs as I run across them. Mostly I find them through the "recently updated" links on the main page of blogger.com or by clicking those "next blog" buttons that appear on many of the blogs hosted by blogger.com. I've read a lot of them and have added a few to my list of favorites and continued to read them on a fairly regular basis but I think I'm fairly invisible to the writers responsible for the work that I am reading. Blogging should give us an opportunity to interact with our readers as well as the writers that we read (that was a very crazy sentence, I know, but I'm going to resist the urge to edit it).

I'm wondering, if there is anyone reading this, who are you? This question is not for you Jim, I KNOW who you are. I'm speaking to the other readers that may or may not be floating around in the ether of the world wide web. How did you find my blog? Do you have a blog of your own that you think I might enjoy checking out?

So, if there is anyone reading this (besides Jim, of course) post a comment and tell me how you found it, what you think of it and if you have a blog of your own. Even though I've had this blog for a few years, I'm still new to this in a lot of ways and I'd really like to know if there's anyone out there.

This may lead to an embarrassing moment if NO ONE posts a comment but, again, if no one's reading it who do I have to be embarrassed in front of? In fact, if there are no comments to this post, I may just start posting my perverse sexual fantasies here. After all, what would be the harm? Who would know about it? Somehow, even if no one's reading, it seems unlikely that I will resort to using the recesses of my sexual psyche for material (sorry Jim).

Grammar Crackers

Have you noticed people in your life who constantly mis-use words or say things that aren't words at all or speak in endless double negatives? Does it drive you crazy like it does me?

I realize that the previous paragraph, and for that matter this entire post, is probably a MESS grammar wise, which makes me a bit of hypocrite but, I digress...

I guess I'm not talking so much about grammar. I'm more thinking about words and the effect that our usage of them has on others. For example, I had an instructor in a theater class once who often used the word "irregardless." Well actually, that's not a word at all but he used it regularly anyway. This particular person was someone that I had a lot of respect for. He was one of the smartest, most interesting teachers that I've had but, every time he used the non-word "irregardless" I stopped listening and started thinking about whether or not I should tell him that the word he wanted was "regardless."

I recently met another person who dropped the phrase "and stuff" into their speech at odd intervals like this:

"I have this project to work on and stuff and I'm just getting started and stuff and I get a phone call about the other project from last week and stuff and I'm totally busy and stuff and have no idea how I'm going to find time and stuff to get all of this done and stuff."

Then there are, of course, the users of the double negative. "I don't have none" which I think means that they do, in fact have some. Whenever someone drops one of these on me, I stop listening and try to figure out what the phrase means compared to what they think they are saying.

Mostly I'm just having a little fun here. I'm not the grammar or word usage police but I do think we could all benefit from an occasional look at a dictionary. As anyone who has read this blog can attest, my grammar is far from perfect so keep that in mind. I am merely pointing out things that I have noticed, irregardless of the fact that I don't have no reason to do so.......and stuff.

Daily Records

I've been fascinated with vinyl records lately. Don't get me wrong, I've ALWAYS been fascinated with vinyl records - at least since my brother brought home copies of "Who's Next" by the Who and "Sticky Fingers" by the Rolling Stones when I was around seven years old. There's just something about those big sleeves and the crackle and pop of the lead groove when you put them on your turntable that makes me shiver.

Although I bought thousands of them, I never quite took to the compact disc the way I did to my beloved vinyl. Sure I liked the convenience and I guess the sound is fine but, over the years I realized that they changed the way I listened to music. Some of it was good - it became much easier to listen to music in the car or at work or outside. But I also started to spend less time just listening to music as a opposed to listening while driving or working or hanging out with friends or doing dishes or cleaning the house or whatever. This is partly because I got older and had less free time to lay around playing records than I did when I was a teenager but, I think it was more than that. When you can play music whenever you want, what is your motivation to make time to just sit and listen to music?

With the advent of CDs and better car stereos it became commonplace to listen to a new record on your way home from the store you bought it at. In the era when vinyl was king, I'd race home as fast as I could, charge into the house and put that new slab of plastic on the turntable to see what is sounded like. This built up a level of anticipation that just isn't possible with instant gratification.

A few years ago, I bought an iPod and was amazed to see how easy it was to start selling off my CD collection as I backed the mp3 files up on my computer. I found that I didn't care much at all about the actual CDs, it was the music inside that I needed. Conversely, I've never even considered getting rid of my substantial collection vinyl. Hell, I've even continued to add to it, especially recently.

Records are somehow more organic for me. There is beauty in the sleeve and beauty in the label and beauty in the way they feel in your hand, in how careful you have to be with them to keep from fucking them up and finally there is also beauty in the music within. I don't think that they specifically sound better (as a lot of vinyl purists do) or worse (as most people do) than CDs or mp3s. I just think they sound different and that to me is a beautiful thing. Playing a record is just a different experience. I don't really know how else to explain it.

Most of the music I buy these days is off of iTunes or eMusic (the most amazing indie music store in the world!, check it out) and I really like the immediacy of that. I like the idea that I can download a new record on the morning of it's release and listen to it five minutes later on the way to work. But once in awhile I like to buy a new record - a new release or maybe something from the used bin, or a new single - just to bask in the ritual of it all. Just to feel that rush of anticipation as I claw my way through the cellophane and drop the needle on a new record for the first time. It always reminds me of everything I love about music.

By the way, "Daily Records" is the name of song by the Who from their "Who Are You" album, which is, of course, part of my vast collection of vinyl treasures.

Do I really have a lot to say?

I've been struggling to think of something to write about on this blog for about a week now and I decided it was time to just jump in, start writing and see what comes. I love the idea of writing this blog and hope that it is readable and at least mildly interesting but at times like this, when I can't think of what to say, I have to wonder. What exactly am I trying to achieve here?

With the millions of people around the world who are blogging, there has to be more writing being put in front of readers than at any other time in history. But are we all just blathering on, adding to the din of voices in the wilderness with very little to say and entirely too much time to say it? Do I have a responsibility to maintain a certain level of quality on this blog? It's entirely self imposed but, I think that I do. Blogging has opened up a whole world of interesting reading on the web and I hope that I am adding to that and not detracting from it.

Writing is something that I've always done but almost never done steadily. I seem to write in fits and starts (just look at the dates of my previous posts to confirm this) which I think keeps me from ever really finding my groove. Good writers can always come up with something to write about and great writers are always compelling to read, even when they have little or nothing to say. I'm rambling on, filling up space on the screen all the while confident that my writing is most certainly not great and quite possibly not even good.

Since I started posting to this blog again a few weeks ago, I've been spending a lot more time reading other people's blogs. I'm looking for inspiration I guess or just looking for interesting reading. The sheer quantity of blogs is staggering and I am also surprised by how often I find something interesting. There is, of course, a lot of light weight bullshit (some of it is no doubt right here in my own blog) but a lot of it is at least slightly compelling on some level.

I guess we bloggers are this century's journalists. I don't mean journalist as in a member of the press, I mean diarist, I guess - if in fact that is a word. I've read a lot of journals and collected letters of famous writers and I wonder if people a hundred years from now will be reading bound volumes of blogs to understand the way people lived in the early part of the twenty first century. Hopefully, people are keeping copies of their blogs, either on paper or as files on their computers so that they can be part of posterity. I know that I've kept most of mine.

I don't really know what point I'm trying to make with all of this. Like I said, I thought I'd just start writing and see what came out. If anyone has read this and has continued to read through to the end, I want to thank you and express my hope that I've held your interest or at a minimum haven't wasted your time. Hopefully next time I sit down to write, I'll have something to say. If not, I'll at least try to say it well.

The Theory of Moe Howard and Iggy Pop

Sometimes I wish I had a theory. I mean a BIG THEORY like the Theory of Relativity or …. uh…..now that I think about it, I can’t really come up with another famous theory. I know there are others but I just can’t bring one to mind at the moment. Hmmm… It seems unlikely that I have what it takes to develop a BIG THEORY if I can only think of the name of one such theory. Ah well, maybe it’s best to leave the really important thinking to someone else.

I have to admit that I’m at a bit of a disadvantage today. I’m on vacation in Myrtle Beach and spent most of the day lying around in the sun reading a book. Now I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel, listening to kids scream in the pool (why do kids always scream when they’re in the water?) and writing this on my laptop. This, as I have often said to my wife, is the life.

In actuality, the screaming kids aren’t in a swimming pool at all. They’re in something called a “lazy river” which, if you’ve never seen one, is something to see. Basically it’s a swimming pool that is about three feet deep and, instead of being a circle or rectangle is actually a “river” that’s about eight feet wide and usually travels around the pool area in a meandering oval. The water is somehow propelled and usually heated and the idea is to lie in an inner tube with your butt in the water while you float ‘round and ‘round. At any given time, there are several adults, usually with cocktails in hand, doing just this. There also seems to always be at least ten, often as many as twenty, kids sort of running around in the water, hitting each other with inner tubes and, of course screaming. These activities, in my opinion, make the term “Lazy River” a bit of a misnomer.

As you wonder whether I ever plan to get back to my BIG THEORY, I’ll move on to something else entirely. As was often said on Monty Python’s Flying Circus: “And now for something completely different”.

Today I finished reading a book titled “Koko”, written by Peter Straub. If you’re not familiar with him he is sort of a horror, fantasy, thriller, mainstream fiction writer who also occasionally writes poetry (I guess he’s tough to categorize).“Koko” is about a group of Vietnam vets who band together to find a member of their unit who is apparently killing people. They also share a dark secret about some events that happened in a small village during the war.

The thing that I find fascinating about Straub is that his characters are so vivid and his writing often has a poetic, literary quality that you don’t often get from a genre fiction writers. I call him that because he’s probably most famous for his horror novels - “Ghost Story” being the most famous – and for a couple of books he co-authored with Stephen King. However, Peter Straub, much like Elmore Leonard has done in crime fiction, has brought an entirely different level of artistry to his particular genre. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Stephen King – I find King’s best novels to be excellent – more as praise for Peter Straub. Anyway, if you stumble on “Koko” it is an “excellent read”, as people often say.

So I started out this post to write about my desire to have a BIG THEORY and I haven’t really made any progress toward laying one out have I? I don’t think I’ve even really approached a BIG IDEA but I will say this: I like when Moe Howard of the Three Stooges says to one of the other Stooges “What’s the big idea?” And speaking of the Stooges, were they also in the legendary Detroit band, Iggy and the Stooges, with Iggy Pop? Does that count as a theory?

Logitudinal Latidude In North Carolina

I’m typing this while riding in my Honda Element on I-77 South. My wife Charlotte is at the wheel. We’re about fifteen miles north of Charlotte, NC and amazingly, we are listening to Car Talk on NPR. I say amazingly because I, like most Northerners, tend to think of the south as being some sort of uncultured wasteland. I don’t know why I have this bias when I know it isn’t true. In actuality, I’ve traveled enough in the South and gotten to know enough people to know that it is just as “cultured” as anywhere else. Besides, what’s so damn cultured about Car Talk on NPR anyway?

Actually, a few years ago we purchased this cool NPR station directory from, well I guess it would be from NPR wouldn’t it? Anyway, we keep the directory in the car and whenever we’re traveling and we feel like a break from music, we just whip out our handy NPR directory and before you can say “Nina Totenberg” we’re enjoying some fine programming courtesy of National Public Radio. We have yet to travel anywhere in the US that doesn’t have an NPR station within range and THAT is a beautiful thing.

This is the first trip I’ve taken with a laptop and it’s kind of fun in an embarrassing to admit, geeky kind of way. For example, my laptop has a program called Microsoft Streets & Trips which came with a cool GPS sensor that plugs into the USB port. This allows me to monitor the progress of our journey in a way that is only rivaled by such high tech activities as “looking out the window” or “checking the speedometer”. For instance I just took a quick glance at our location and found that we are at 35.395 degrees North latitude by 80.851 West longitude and I have to say….if you’ve never been here (and let’s face it, I’m not even there anymore), it’s a lovely place.

I should also point out that we are traveling at 85 miles per hour (yes Char’s a bit of a lead foot), which, I could’ve found out by leaning over and looking at the speedometer but, this is WAY cooler and far more practical. I could easily spill my coffee or strain my neck the other way. Also, we are traveling almost directly due South, which I couldn’t tell you unless I had a compass (which I don’t). I can also tell you that we should arrive at our destination (Myrtle Beach, SC) at around 2:30 pm this afternoon. Now THAT really is one piece of information that I couldn’t have gotten without this laptop. Well, unless I, you know, looked at a map and maybe did some math.

People always think I’m crazy when I tell them this but, I really like these long drives (this one will be around thirteen hours). We always wind up listening to music we haven’t heard in years, talking about all sorts of crazy shit that seems to only come up when you’ve been in a car for hours on end and laughing at things or people that we would never have seen from an airplane. I also like the idea of waking up in one place and, just by the simple act of driving (or in my case riding, since Char does most of the driving), going to sleep in a place that is several hundred miles away. It seems more, I don’t know, basic than flying in a plane. Flying is obviously quicker and has a different kind of magic going on, but there’s a lot more apparatus involved. Airplanes and air traffic controllers and airport security and science that I’ll NEVER know about, just to mention a few. When you drive, you just put some gas in the tank, get behind the wheel and hit the road. Well, unless you’re me. Then you also have to plug in your new laptop and fiddle around with your GPS sensor for awhile before you can even leave your driveway.

I guess I’ll wind this up now so that I can use one of the other high tech gadgets that I brought along to while away the hours on this trip. It’s called a “book”.

As a cursory glance at this blog will tell you, it's been a LONG time since I've posted anything here. Since the 2004 presidential election to be exact. I wish I could say that I abandoned this blog because I was too distraught about the state of our nation to continue writing. That may even have been a little bit true the first few days but the truth is, I just got out of the habit (I don't know if you can call a handful of posts a habit but...) and then sort of forgot about it. This is nothing new for me and I'm guessing it's nothing new for a lot of bloggers. I can't be the only person with a pile of half filled journals around my house, all of which start out with something along the lines of "THIS time is gonna be different. THIS time I'm gonna write in this journal every day until it is full". Of course, I've NEVER filled an entire journal in my life. I sometimes think I should tear out the pages of all those half filled journals, bind them in one book and VOILA! a complete journal!

And what IS a this blog if it's not a journal. Well, it's a bit more public than an actual journal but, it's kind of the same thing. I could make my big proclamation right here. Maybe something like this:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY UNTIL IT IS FULL

Oh, wait, that wouldn't be right. I'm not positive but, I think it may be impossible to actual FILL a blog. There's always more space isn't there? Okay, how about this:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY UNTIL I DIE

The trouble with this one is that last part. The "until I die" part. What if I'm very ill for a long time before I die and I am unable to post for the last several weeks of my life. I guess that would render my proclamation to be total bullshit. Maybe a simple time frame is better. Sort of a reachable goal. Also, who knows I could actually out live the internet which would also be a problem (especially for me because I would be incredibly OLD). Something like:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT YEAR

But a year IS kind of a long time isn't it? What if I get bored or distracted? What if I lose my job and have to sell my laptop for food? What if am struck with amnesia and forget that I've made this proclamation? I know I'm probably over thinking this but, what's the point in making a proclamation if you're not gonna see it through? What I need is a much more attainable goal. Hmm...wait! I have it! How about:

I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG UNTIL I HAVE FINISHED WITH THIS PARTICULAR POST

And I've already done it.