BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’ve got me a big old depression on, as well I should have.

You see, our TV is about 25 years old and the horizontal O/T is acting up, not to mention the focus divider is relatively unfocused, and color guns in the CRT are drifting into an acid trip of psychedelic haze. I mean, I love me some Stana Katic on the screen, but when she’s blurry and sorta bluish like those silly-ass Avatar aliens, well… Not my thing, yaknow?

What does that have to do with a line from a song? (Aphrodite’s Child – 666 for you young’ns who didn’t get the reference in the title.)

Well…. The Rapture, of course.  I was going to nab myself a free 50″ LED Flatscreen after folks went on up to heaven. I mean, what the heck? It’s not like they would be needing them anymore.

Of course, I guess I was being a little too honest.

“What?” you ask. “You were going to steal from Raptured Christians? How’s that being honest?”

Easy enough to answer yet again. Like I said, they weren’t going to need them anymore. Basically, I was being the honest and upstanding sort because I was waiting for the folks to be gone and not coming back. If that was the case then it would sort of be like finding some lost property, reporting it, and then waiting the appropriate amount of time for it to be claimed. When said claiming didn’t happen (or could be proven to have no chance of occurring – duh, rapture) it would be mine. Completely legal.

Had I been the dishonest sort I would have run an ad in the paper, or just gone knocking on doors looking for sheeple who bought into Camping’s BS and convinced them to give me their stuff. After all, they wouldn’t be needing it anymore, so it should be an easy sell. According to the news, apparently it was an easy sell for some not-so-honest types out there. Folks were giving crap away left and right.

I guess I just stood in the wrong line.

Damn me and my scruples. Guess that’s why I’ll be stuck here playing polo with the horsemen.

More to come… (Until October 21st, of course…)

Murv

It was a day like any other day…

Well, that’s not actually true. It was a day like any other day in the first half of January, when just enough snow fell overnight – and was still falling that morning – that the schools canceled classes and left parents of Elementary school kids scrambling to make arrangements. Of course, what with me working from home – I mean, after all, you can write a book pretty much anywhere if you try, so why not at home… But anyway, what with me working from home there wasn’t as much scrambling as there was re-planning.

You see, I can’t work when I have people in my house.

This is not to say that I don’t love having E K and the O-spring at home. I do. Problem is, they are a distraction, even when they are trying very hard not to be. Either they end up making some sort of oddly repetitious noise that is at just the right frequency for me to be able to hear, or I just can’t concentrate because I’d rather be doing something with them than working.

The long and short of it being, on snow days I don’t get any writing done. I find other work to do. Used to be I’d play scrabble, monopoly, or something else with the O-spring. But these days she’s in that zone where dad is only cool if he has something she wants… you know… like money, or an orange that’s already been peeled and sectioned.

Therefore, on this particular day I parked myself in my office to do other work that comes along with the whole author gig. Answering interview questions, doing research, reminding myself to pay my HWA dues then getting sidetracked and forgetting. That reminds me, I need to do that…

Everything seemed to be plugging along okay. O-spring with her nose buried in her new Nook. O-spring singing. O-spring going all Rembrandt on some paper with her oil pastels. And me, sitting in my office, working and forgetting to do things I need to do.

Then I heard it.

“Heard what?” you ask.

The thing that strikes fear into the hearts of parents everywhere.

“Dad?” came the voice from the next room.

“Whatcha’ need, kiddo?” I asked.

“Ummm… Do we have any ‘Duck’ Tape?”

<silence> <blink> <silence>

Finally I asked, “What did you break?”

<silence>

Eventually the answer came. “Umm… Nothing…”

Snow days. Apparently it isn’t just shoveling the white stuff that’s hazardous to your heart.

More to come…

Murv