Comments Welcome

Continuing my in-depth personal analysis in an effort to evade working this afternoon, I sit here and wonder how long before anyone actually finds this corner of the web and goes so far as to make a comment. Excluding the wife, who I currently chat with via Yahoo Messenger. At the moment, she's running out to her car to grab a Coke because studying for law school finals sucks the life out of someone faster than Mathilda May in Lifeforce.

That being said, so too does an office move where everything is incumbant upon everything falling into place at the exact time. When things do not happen when they should, other things have a nasty tendency of being due RIGHT THAT SECOND which is absolutely the one time when you can do nothing but shrug and say, "Sorry dude, you're on your own."

At which point the boss would make it her mission in life to see how far up my ass a pink slip would fit. Such are the thoughts of one stuck at work with 15 minutes to go on a rainy day when he's not five minutes from home.

Upon further reflection...

...perhaps starting up a blog the month of a massive office move in which you find yourself in the middle of multiple forces, might not have been the wisest of ideas. Then again, I lost count of the times I barely cheated death as a kid so I long ago realized that Soloman I am not.

A friend of mine actually berated me the other day for not posting more to said blog, which I found doubly funny because he's either more bored with nursing school than he let on, or he actually found my musings funny. Which they are in a way... all three of them.

I've seen all your movies.

-pause-

Both of them?

That's one of the funnier quotes in a funny movie, In & Out, that never fails to crack me up. Especially the scene with Kevin Kline dancing to the "test your manhood" tape.

That was a trick!

Yes, I really do drop quotes left and right, despite having no memory for the day-to-day things. I'd consider myself borderline autistic, but if someone asks me to count higher than five my brain collapses on itself and I pretty much stare at a wall for the next 10 minutes.

Writing on Demand

I'm thinking of reasons why I should write jack squat, and oddly enough I find I'm coming up short. Concurrently, I can't think of reasons not to write and while I'm doing all of this figuring out, I'm writing about it on the Internet.

Will wonders never cease. Apparently, irony is alive and well.

So is Mother Nature and I think the Grand Dame is having hot flashes. Here in Texas we've had every type of weather it's possible to have short of a blizzard, but I think Denver rolled snake eyes instead of us. It's now sunny and clear and 69 degrees out while this weekend we had 40-50 degree weather, clouds, rain, wind, and a few locusts for good measure. To top it off, it's pollen season which means my purple Explorer (yes, purple - story for a later time) now sports a nice tint of brownish-green. I keep thinking it's time to wash the car, but then I wait 48 hours and Mother Nature does it for me. During the summer though, you have to wash your car just to cool yourself down.

I'm finally trying like hell to write professionally again and make some money at it. Let me clarify - I've been writing professionally in some form or capacity for the last 13 years, but never made any money at it. I figured it was time for the cash to start flowing in, and as I grow increasingly dissatisfied working for anyone but myself I've looked at different avenues toward creative self-employment. Of course, not all of us can be Dave Barry. Hell, even he has trouble living up to his namesake on a day to day basis.

I flipped through a magazine last night that stated Stephen King makes it a point to write about 2000 words a day, or roughly 10 pages worth give or take. Another author stated that if you were unable to write a sentence, then write a word. My favorite piece of advice was such:

"I write only when I am inspired. And I make it a point to be inspired every morning at 9 a.m."

How can you go wrong with a statement so blindingly obvious and simple at the same time?

I think that's what finally clued me into the simple truth of professional writers - they write. They sit down, and write what's in their head, their heart, on the tip of their tongue. It's very likely that half of what Stephen King has ever written will never see the light of day, because it could be stream of conscious ramblings that helped kick-start his best novels. He could have driven past a burning building one day, then written his thoughts on the matter that night. The next morning, he might have read his thoughts and formulated Firestarter.

I'm just guessing here. We'll see where things go, but when you sit back and think about it, I'm amazed I didn't come to this conclusion sooner. We learn by doing, I guess.

Mystery of the Universe #412 = Solved

I think my boss just solved one of the mysteries of the universe this morning. We Dallasites played host to cloud-free 70-degree weather all weekend, so everyone in the office is sunburned, save for me. I was busy finishing God of War, but I'll get to that later. But the boss comes in sunburned and I comment that everyone in the office is equally burned. He then mentions how he fell asleep at the pool, which leads one to frequently ponder, "Why is it that everyone always falls asleep at the pool and it's acceptable?"

I mean, are we allowed to just lay out on our desks at work and catch some Z's? Or snoring while waiting in the drive-thru at Chick-Fil-A? Nope. Yet it's perfectly acceptable, nay, expected, to fall asleep at "the pool." As if that was the one place where anyone of any race/gender/species can go to lay around and sleep. And all because there is a four-to-eight-foot deep body of chlorinated water not five feet away.

Stunningly simple when you think about it. All one needs is to be next to a pool, and you can get away with sleepiong soundly for hours. No wonder public pools all have fencing around them: The owners have to keep non-paying customers away from a good afternoon's sleep.

Either that or they want to see kids behind bars.

Welcome to Casa de Skim

Ahoy fellow bloggers and web surfers. This be Casa de Skim and this be my first blog. Got Pirates of the Carribbean on the brain for some reason, maybe because my teeth hurt from all the sugar today and I'm thinking about Johnny Depp's gold teeth. Go figure.