news from the side

You probably already know that I like the Marx Brothers. My favorite is definitely Groucho, or "Julius" as he was sometimes known. Clever man. Always up for a good laugh, and if there wasn't one handy, he'd supply it. My favorite Marx flick is 1933's Duck Soup, where Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the dictator of a small European country, Freedonia. (Don't that beat all?) For various uncomplicated reasons, Freedonia is drawn into a war with a neighboring country, thanks to the double-dealing ambassador, Trentino, who has secretly been trying to subvert Firefly's power.

Firefly's having none of it, though.

Then it's war! Firefly commands the troops in the field, keeping a Thompson submachine gun in a violin case by his side. A soldier comes in and hands him a message from the front.

"I'm sick of getting messages from the front," gripes Firefly. "Why can't I ever get a message from the side?"

Fine, fine. Go ahead and groan. Jeez, nobody appreciates intelligent humor anymore. Nowadays it's all bathroom humor and sex jokes and flatulence.

Soapboxes aside, I have some news for you.

I want to apologize for tapering off from my current spate of blogging fervor. Several things have come up. Firstly, I finally have a second job. The proprietor of the small café down at Apple Valley Airport, Mack, keeps asking me if I want to wash dishes for him, only half-jokingly. Since none of the bars in the area are hiring, I finally decided to take him up on it. I've read Bill Gates's 11 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School. Number Four is as follows:

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed about making minimum wage, either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

That's telling 'em, Bill. For what it's worth, I agree with him. Work is work. I need the money, I'm able-bodied and capable, and it's not embarrassing or degrading. (Heck, more embarrassing yet would be sitting around my parents' house all day blogging about how broke I am.)

So I've taken the job and am working towards my goals with added zeal (and increased income, hallelujah!). I've survived the first weekend, so I think I'll be fine. It was tough, make no mistake. Mack runs a catering service on the side, and in addition to the café's dishes, I had all the catering trays and pots and pans and bowls to do. Saturday was ten hours and Sunday was eleven. Thank goodness for rubber gloves or the skin would've been sloughing off my dishpan hands.

So that took up Saturday and Sunday. The other thing that's been going on is...girls, dude.

I've gotten myself one.

Sorry ladies, the Postman is now taken. He's been reserved. Snatched up. Diverted by a wonderful lady. I'll call her Miss H. She's an old high-school friend. We had quite an amiable relationship in class, went our separate ways during college, and met up again one night back in August. What with one thing and another, we decided to go steady. So here we are, having a ball. We're an old-fashioned couple: we go to movies at the drive-in theater, sit out on hilltops and stargaze, or go prowling through used bookstores. We're both taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. I'm feeling much more sanguine about life in general since Miss H and I took up together, let me tell you. It's as though this void in the center of my chest has suddenly been filled up. Something's back in my life that's been gone for too long, and it's the grandest thing. She's a classy lady and a real kick to be around, cute as a button, easygoing all get-out, and shares a lot of my interests. What more could a guy ask for?

And last...did I tell you I sent a story off to Fantasy & Science Fiction? Well, I most certainly did. It's a 3,500-word humor/science fiction piece concerning two Earth astronauts who are trying to communicate with an alien life form—and failing miserably. Science believes that we may discover sentient crystalline life on exoplanets with odd geological makeups. So my question was, how would we communicate with them? How do you talk to a crystal? My two astronauts are trying some unusual methods: interpretive dance and impressionist art, for starters. If this story gets published, you'll see the results.

That's about the news. I've been trying to finish and finalize two of the other stories I've been working on, both much longer (in the novelette range, 10,000+ words). One of them needs to be rewritten; I've decided that this first draft is rather puerile and doesn't explore the themes fully enough. The second isn't finished, but I've got a handle on where it's going.

This just in: I had jury duty today, but I called up the automated hotline just a minute ago and it said it was canceled! So now I've got the rest of the day off, thank goodness. Looks like a busy week ahead, though. The chase program is finally starting up again on Thursday and there'll be another load of dishes to do on the weekend...but Miss H and I have a nice trip to the bookstore planned for later this afternoon. Maybe I'll pick up yet another forgotten sci-fi classic like The Escape Orbit. (Which, by the way, is turning into such an excellent work...the plot has gotten more convoluted than I ever would've imagined. Full review coming later.)

How's things been with you?