I’m sitting in the lobby of a car maintenance shop early on a Saturday morning.  I’m tired, zapped up on coffee, and since it’s the weekend, I smell like a cig.  Much to the chagrin of the lady sitting in the laptop booth next to me, presumably (and, kind of, hopefully).  While driving down the highway an hour earlier, listening to that nasty moan of metal on metal that indicates I’m about to spend a bunch of money  on new brakes, I spotted a car on the side of the highway.  It was in a ditch, its tail end pointed towards the woods, and the front of the car facing the highway, but also pointing slightly in the opposite direction than it would have been coming from. Damnit. Now seriously, how in the hell did it end up that way?  I shouldn’t have cared.  It has nothing to do with me.  But it sure pissed me off.  And it reminded me of how much I hate cars

Cars are kind of like humans.  They are much too complicated.  They require way too much ongoing maintenance.  And they allow too much opportunity for stupid people to find themselves in a ditch, sideways-facing, with their nose pointing at me as I drive by, tired, zapped up on coffee, and smelling like a cig.

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It’s been a stressful week of work so far, and I was looking forward to sitting down in front of the laptop and banging out some text in an effort to cool out a bit.  But here I am and, well, nothing’s coming.  I’m staring at the screen blankly, then reaching over to grab a drink of beer, then staring blankly, then stepping out for a smoke, then sitting back down, and, still… nothing.   Well, damnit.   You know, when you have a blog that consists of nothing but self-serving stories and insights about yourself,  there’s really no excuse to have writer’s block.  Surely I can think of something about me that I want to bore the internet with.   Hell, I guess there’s nothing to do but just keep typing and see what happens…
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It was one of the sadder moments in my life when I discovered that Dungeons and Dragons and beer drinking do not mix, and when it was time to continue my journey… only one of them could come with me.

Ahh, but let us put this unfortunate epiphany on the shelf for a moment, and reflect back upon the good memories.  The good memories of pretzels, Diet Rite, and hours and hours of totally awesome role-playing.

I was maybe eight years old or so when my older brother Dre came home with the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Rules Set 1, a wondrous red box topped with an immortal image of a brazen warrior battling a ferocious gold dragon with nothing but a broad sword, a shield, and his wits.  Immediately I was stricken, and I watched, fascinated, as he lifted the box top, pulled out the folded cardboard module, the paper character sheets, and the handful of peculiar dice.  The diamond shaped eight-sided (d8), the odd triangular four-sided (d4), and of course, the almighty twenty-sided (d20).   He set up shop, pulled out a pencil to scratch out some notes, and morphed into his newly acquired role of Dungeon Master.  Immediately I was transported into a new world as Dre began to speak…

“The crumbling stone stairs lead down into the shallow archway of the cavern, where darkness awaits…”
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I’ve always been interested in those theme-based bar crawls.  Organized events where dozens of dudes and ladies meet up  in a particular part of town, everyone dressed in a common costume, and parade from pub to pub, laughing, drinking, and generally engaging in good-hearted misbehavior.  Some local examples would be the Santa Pub Crawl, PiratePalooza, and Bar Golf.  I’ve always been interested in them, yet I’ve never participated.   Maybe because I’m too unmotivated to go track down the requisite costume, but more likely because my crippling narcissism prevents me from supporting someone else’s good idea when I could rather be organizing my own.  Course, I never have organized a themed bar crawl, nor will I likely ever do so, as it requires much more effort and promotional talent than I’ll ever possess to successfully pull one of these off.  And I’m pretty sure that if I were going to organize a bar crawl, it would consist of my emailing three or four of my friends at best,  and we’d probably spend the entire night at the first bar where we met up, our unworn costumes piled up on the empty stool next to us.

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Hey gang,  hope you are all having a wonderful Valentines Day!  Today is the perfect day for romantic dinners and … wait a minute…  Valentines Day was last week, wasn’t it?  Crap.   Oh man, my girlfriend must be pisssssed off that I missed it!  But then again, I don’t have a girlfriend, do I?  So I guess I’m ok…  But wait, if I don’t have a girlfriend, then who is this girl here in my bed?  Or, um, this isn’t my bed.   Where in the hell am I?  And… um… why is this girl wearing a wedding ring?  And why is there a man sleeping next to her, wearing a matching ring?   And why am I curled up in fetal position at the foot of the bed???

Where am I?!   What in the hell happened last night???

….and now they’re beginning to wake up.  Great.  Just great.

This is going to be awkward.

I’m just kidding, I’m actually sitting here alone in my office, and I’ve just posted a new short story.  What do you say about that?  Excited?  I know you are.  It’s my latest tale, and I think it’s a pretty decent read, and more importantly, a relatively short read.   It’s called Proposal.  Thus, the brilliant wedding ring-related intro to this post.  Oh wait, this story isn’t about weddings.  Damnit, this is going nowhere.

Anyway, you can find the story here, and the pdf version here.   And an unrelated picture of a delicious glass of milk here.

Cats,

Bones

The bartender had not expected the words to come out of my mouth, and he struggled to refrain from looking over at me as I sat there on my bar stool, friends on either side.   The gang laughed.  Not necessarily at me, but rather, at the unexpectedness of the statement.

“Sometimes when I’m hungover, I like to go antiquing,”  I had confessed.

It was a true statement.  I’m not ashamed.  I do, indeed, enjoy wandering through the quiet halls of an antique shop, browsing the dusty bric-a-brac as the prior night’s leftover alcohol crawls out through my pores.  It’s a wonderful bittersweet feeling to stumble upon a certain useless artifact that brings sudden pangs of nostalgia to the forefront of my currently over-sensitive consciousness.  Or to spot a piece of old unwanted retro furniture that induces that momentary brilliant epiphany of “Hey, maybe I could turn my empty guest room into an old 50s diner” or a tiki hut, or an old-time cinema, or a run-down side-of-the-highway motel room complete with creepy faded brown floral paintings and suspicious stains on the comforter.  There’s something about seeing all that old shit scattered about a room when your hangover has put your nerves on high alert and set your emotions to hyper-sensitive.  When the site of a battered alarm clock can make you pine for those innocent middle school days, or a box of cassette tapes invites you to revisit the simple memories of family car trips.  Or that creepy mannequin lurking in your peripheral stirs up another one those “Wouldn’t it be terrifying if…” inspirations.

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Hey gang, what’s the haps?  How’s 2010 treating you so far?  Are you as excited as I am that we’re now only 102 years away from year 2112?   That’s right, only 102 short years until we can finally toss out all those tired old New Years Party songs and ring in the new year with “The Priests of Syrinx.”   I can barely contain my excitement.   Other than that, I haven’t had time to write any posts as I’ve been furiously scribbling my memoirs for my new book, “Bones: Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin.”   I think the title has a certain ring to it.   Then again, having two colons in the title might be a bit awkward.   Maybe I’ll switch it around a bit.    Maybe “Going Rogue:  An American Life by Sarah Palin by Bones”.   Hmm, they’re both pretty strong titles.   But I’m still open for ideas – please let me know if you have any suggestions.

What else?  Oh yeah, I just cracked open my latest homebrew.   And I’m very pleased to say that it rules!  It was my seventh and last batch of 2009, and the best one so far.  Awesome.  Ladies and Gents, please welcome  The Kasinka Russian Imperial Stout.

Kasinka Russian Imperial Stout

Yesterday I started a new batch – a Nut Brown Ale made from ingredients that my friends Jaguar and Jamie gave me for Christmas.   Next weekend I’ll be transferring it to the secondary fermenter and tossing in a bunch of Georgia Pecans.   Delicious.

Oh, good news – my brother just started a new blog.  It’s awesome.  We used to write on the same blog a couple years ago, and I’m really excited that he’s picked up the pen again, cause the dude can write a hilarious damn story!  Check out Stuck Behind A Mini Van - you’ll be stoked!

Well, that’s it for me tonight.   Remember the tough girl from Facts of Life?  What was her name?  Joe, I think?  She was pretty cool.

Snakes,

Bones

It was a beautiful thing, this beer store.

Rows upon rows of bottles.  Trappists, Lambics, Stouts, Pales, and any assortment of high gravity craft brews.  In my hand I clenched  a bottle.  The label read Spaten.  I lifted it to my face to get a closer look and noticed an odd logo perched towards the top.  Schlitz, it read.

Eh?  That’s confusing.

No matter.  I wasn’t in the mood for a Spaten anyway, not with this palace of pleasures that awaited me.  I placed the bottle on the rack and headed down the aisle, following the sparkles of light that bounced and glistened off the glass and led me further and further in.

Suddenly the bottles began to rattle and bounce off each other, as a horrid screaming noise pierced the paradise.  And I watched in horror as the beer store began to engulf itself, pulling its reality inward, imploding, until it was gone.  And I was left floating within a deep black void.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

And then I was awake.
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Well, I’ve finally reached the tail-end of a nasty-ass work bender, and similar to the software project I found myself engulfed in at the close of 2008, this one was a doooozie, my friends.  An intense month of unrelenting stress and long days and nights in the office,  weekends in front of the computer,  mornings of waking up with that familiar sense of dread and rolling out of bed to immediately check the Blackberry and learn what new frustrations awaited, sitting in my car in the office parking garage thinking, “Man, I’m not in the mood for another day of this,” saying “fuck” way too often and way too loudly in front of coworkers…

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We sat in the waiting room, basking in our joyous mood after having just received the “It’s a Boy!!” text from my little brother in the delivery room down the hall, announcing the entrance of his and Jenn’s new son into the world.  We were now waiting for the “all clear” sign that we could get up from our seats, throw away our soggy McDonald’s cups, and go meet the little feller.  To make the time go by faster, Jamie offered up a topic of conversation.

“What do you think little Cameron is going to be when he grows up?”

The gang threw out a few suggestions.

He’ll do something with computers…

He’ll be a podiatrist…

We paused.  A podiatrist?  An oddly exacting profession to toss out there.   Maybe not the first thing one might come up with when thinking about a 10 minute-old boy, but yet, who knows, right?

Half-sitting, half-lying in my seat, I offered up my opinion.

“He’ll drive a Ronthanton.”

The gang turned to look at the guy who suggested something even more random than “Podiatrist.”  So random, in fact, that the term didn’t actually exist.

“A Ronthanton,”  I repeated.   “A flying machine.”

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