BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

So, there hasn’t been much by way of new fiction coming out of me the past couple of years, I know. There are a number of reasons for that – Various changes in my day to day life, a move, homeschooling our daughter, and a host of other things. One of those things – a major one, in point of fact – is the fact that book piracy has hit me (and many other authors) so hard that it has had a literal impact on the bottom line. By bottom line I mean things such as the difference between having fresh vegetables for dinner or having two bucks worth of pasta and cut-rate sauce for three days in a row. Okay, so maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but what I am trying to say here is you can live day-to-day or you can have a buffer that will allow you to one day retire without the need for subsisting on dog food and Ramen. That’s kind of where I want to be, because I have never really seen myself as Mel Gibson driving around in a wasteland and shoveling Dinky Di into my mouth (Yeah. Road Warrior reference.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming anyone (other than the pirates and those who download the pirated books). I’m simply saying that (as I’ve outlined in the past) I took a huge pay cut when I quit my job as a Field Service Technician in favor of writing for a living, but I was still bringing in enough to make ends meet, have some disposable income, and contribute to the IRA here and there. Unfortunately, the impact piracy has had eliminated both the IRA contributions and the ends meeting anywhere near the middle. Those things make it sort of hard to write for a living. THAT SAID, I haven’t stopped writing. I’ve just had to change my schedule because I have had to re-enter the day-to-day work force. Not complaining; just explaining. It is what it is.

However, I am not here to talk about piracy. I am here to talk about ladders. The above intro basically explains where the ladders come from – that being, having re-entered the day-to-day work force. I have two day jobs – one as a dispatcher and parts manager for a printer repair company (go figure. Might as well use those skills I honed for 25+ years). The other is as a part time maintenance guy for the St. Louis Ethical Society. I like both jobs, but I absolutely love the latter (not ladder), because I really enjoy fixing and building things. I have autonomy there, and in short it’s a pretty Zen job for me. Unfortunately, this is where the ladder comes into play.

In case you haven’t heard, I am temporarily confined to a wheelchair. I can get up with a walker, but at this point I have a few more weeks before I can even start physical therapy. This blog entry (or perhaps series of entries) is going to be all about that sentence – the one about the wheelchair, I mean.

Dateline… Friday, December 8, 2017  11:55 AM

I had put in a few hours on projects at the Ethical Society, and then as is my norm I grabbed a stool in the kitchen for 10 minutes and tossed some groceries down my neck. Following that I had dropped my lunchbox off in my truck, then headed to the side of the building with the pre-school while toting an extension ladder. One of the earlier projects had been to clean out the channels for the scuppers that drain the water from the flat roof. I had done one side of the building already, but this side had to wait until the pre-school let out for the day at noon. Parents were already picking up their kids, so the asphalt deck area off that side of the building was clear and I had the go-ahead to take care of that side of the roof. (There’s a giant spire in the middle of the building, so you pretty much have to do the roof in two sections. In short, you can’t get there from here, and vice versa.)

And so, to continue… as I said, I toted the ladder up onto the deck area (very large raised section of the building. Not really a deck sort of deck, per se.) I propped the ladder against the side of the building. Extended it. Locked it. Chocked it. Rattled it. Climbed up a few rungs. Jiggled it. Climbed back down. Did it again. Verified that the ladder was locked in place and solid as a rock. SOLID AS A ROCK. Tweren’t nothing movin’ it short of an earthquake or a hurricane. Trust me, this ain’t my first rodeo. I may not be fond of ladders, but I know how to use one.

Once I was absolutely certain the ladder was solid and safe, I took a quick look at my phone to see if there were any messages. Noted the time, 11:55 AM. Then I started up the ladder. Again, it was solid. Rock steady. Damn thing was going nowhere. While I was trepidatious – as I always am when climbing a ladder – it was that sort of nervousness that makes you extra fucking careful. It forces you to take it easy and not scramble up the ladder. Feel it as you are going. Listen. Make sure you are safe. That’s what I was doing. I arrived at the top of the ladder, still solid as it could be. I carefully swung a leg out onto the flat roof, shifted my weight onto it, and started bringing my other leg around to put myself fully onto the roof.

That’s when the ladder attacked.

For some reason that will likely never be known and can only be categorized as a freak incident, the ladder kicked out from the wall. Unfortunately, my other leg had not yet fully cleared it.

The rung on the escaping ladder caught my foot and yanked me backwards. Much like you see it happen in movies, my entire world shifted into slow motion and at that moment as I pitched into a head down fall with nothing to grab onto, I had a very real feeling I was going to die.

More to come…

I’m sure you’ve noticed that shit has gone wonky in the world. More specifically, the United States – not that they are particularly united these days, unless you count the fact that 48 of them are pretty much stuck together by simple geographic necessity.

At any rate, let me flash back a bit…

Back during my late teens there was this movie. It was a bit of a spin on the Moon Landing Conspiracy nuts and it was called Capricorn One. (Warning, Spoilers) The basic gist of the movie is that at the last minute the government realizes that their mission to Mars will fail due to a defect in the space capsule, so just before launch they yank the astronauts, played by James Brolin, O. J. “If I Did It” Simpson, and Sam Waterston. They cart them off to a secret, hidden facility, where they have a mockup of the capsule, the lander, the martian landscape, and the whole nine yards. They fill them in on the story and convince them to act out the rest of the mission as if everything is fine – all in the interest of not embarrassing their nation. And so, they go along with it, for a while… Their compliance sort of changes when during the return flight the capsule fails, burns up, and that’s the end of that. Now the government has no choice but to off these guys and bury them somewhere, then hold a big public memorial for these fallen heroes who never actually left the Earth’s atmosphere. So, instead of saying, “Okay, I’ll take a bullet for the cause” they escape and strike out across the desert. Of course, the gubmint chases after them.

Enter Eliot Gould – intrepid reporter. He has figured out something is up and he has traveled out in search of where this secret base might be (he was tipped off by Rossi from Lou Grant… No, seriously, he was)… At any rate, after some serious acrobatic flying by Telly Savalas (Yeah, Kojak was a crop duster, who knew?) they rescue James Brolin (O.J. and Sam got offed by the federales) and deliver him to his own public funeral, right there in front of the TV cameras and everything, effectively toppling the house of cards built by the bad, eebil gubmint.

It was actually a good story, and not a bad movie. I even bought it on DVD many years later and have watched it a couple of times since that summer of my teens when two dollar matinees were the norm, and an air conditioned Wherenberg Theater was the place to be to escape the heat.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that today.

I’m pretty sure you could literally have this exact scenario occur and nothing would topple… Just look at our current election cycle. There’s a racist, misogynistic liar getting busted left and right – by himself, on tape – and he still has rabid followers who are convinced that it’s all just a plot to take down their guy. What’s worse, there are a lot of them.

Maybe that one way trip to Mars they were advertising a while back isn’t such a bad idea after all…

More to come…

Murv