le grande update

As you may have noticed, my last two posts were exceedingly brief. And as you're aware, I'm a long-winded bugger who can't abide sparing the slightest detail. So I think it's about time I gave you a full update on where I stand, before things get crazy.

First, I'm going back to Korea. It's official. It's genuine. It's true. I don't want to jinx it (this will be my fifth attempt, and every previous job offer has gone south due to unexpected delays and unforeseen obstacles), but nothing short of an Act of God can stop me now. I'm Asia-bound, so help me.

I sure didn't see this coming. I loved Korea, rest assured. It was a blast. A kick in the pants. The cat's pajamas. The elephant's instep. Despite the complete and abject lack of limes, turkey, single-malt Scotch, sausage, real cheese and decent hamburgers, the place was alright. I had a ball. I crammed my existence into a tiny studio apartment, took frequent walks, wrote in my journal, blogged, scribbled a novel, taught hyperactive children the rudiments of the English language, tried to learn Korean, lost 20 pounds, became addicted to bulgogi and kimchi, acquainted myself intimately with debauchery, danced, raved, sang, drank, ate, and was merry. Oh, and I made myself a ton of cherished friends, with whom I remain in contact to this day (and many of which I will see again come February).

But I didn't think I'd go back. I thought I was done with living overseas and making money there. I figured I'd return to the States, get some stuff done (like my pilot's license) and then find a job and get busy. I really had no ruttin' idea that things were so bad here. Now I look back at the day in 2009 when I stepped off the jetliner and into the warm, moist, smoggy air of the Inland Empire, and I giggle at how naïve I was. I thought I was set for life. I had a year of international job experience under my belt and a wad of cash in my pocket. I thought I was sitting pretty. Boy, was I whistling Dixie. What I should've done was move someplace with low rent and cheap gas (like, I don't know, Kansas perhaps?), get a crummy job and work for five years until I had a suitable sum of money saved and a modicum of job experience. Then I could've looked about me, gauged my options, moved to Alaska, gotten my pilot's license, whatever.

But I jumped the gun. Drunk on prosperity and globetrotting confidence, I decided to get my pilot's license right away. Hang the job, hang security, hang responsibility. You know what came of that. I got myself stuck in this goddamn desert pest-hole for two and a half years.

They say hindsight is 20/20. My hindsight should've been a lot clearer, though, considering how far up my ass my head was.

So, poor economic decisions aside, I got my pilot's license. I worked two low-paying jobs (a temp job at the local newspaper, which lasted about a month, and that flying job I've been talking about for ages). I lived in my parents' house. That was godawful. I felt rotten, like I was a kid again, not a forward-striding, self-sufficient man's man as I'd imagined. My folks were sweet as pie, and did everything to make things as comfortable as they could for me, giving me loads of excellent advice (most of which I didn't listen to until it was too late). They salvaged my pride at several pivotal junctures, too, bless them. But the malaise, the ennui, and the remorseless hindsight gnawed at me day and night. And worse yet, I had no escape route. Jobs there were none. Prospects there were none. Money was running out. It seemed I was doomed to remain in the doldrums forever.

It's difficult to believe that Miss H and I started looking for jobs in Korea back in June. June! Thanks to delays and unguessable disasters, we've endured one of the roughest, bleakest times of our lives. The ennui was ten times worse for her; she couldn't find any jobs at all. She worked a seasonal stint at Target last year during the holidays, and that was it. There's nothing in this damn desert. Zilch. Squat. Nada. The desperate downward spiral took a heavy toll on us.

Our hand had been forced. We decided to go to Korea. But couple's positions were thin on the ground, and the delays and backups just kept mounting. We had to make some tough calls. Ultimately, Miss H decided to stay behind. She would not accompany me to Korea. We would separate temporarily, she to seek her fortunes, I to seek mine farther afield. And lo and behold—snap—the pieces began to click together. I got a job offer from a hagwon in Bucheon (somewhere between Seoul and Incheon) the very same day I told my recruiter to find me a singles' position. And things bloomed at Heather's end, too: she got several bites from a social work agency in the same town she'd gone to college in. She knows the area, and rent and gas are very reasonable. Boom: just like that, things are looking up for us. Seems like an impossible dream after the long hard slog we've had for the past two years.

And in other news, I finished my novel. No, I mean finished: it's written, it's edited, it's proofed, everything. Of course there are few tweaks to be made, and it has to be peer-reviewed, but the thing is largely done.

That feels good.

No, really. You remember how scared, nervous, self-conscious and maudlin I've been? For three years it's been like this. I started the dang novel in Korea. Finished it not long after I returned, in late 2009. Ever since I began I've had the feeling that it was crap, and that I was a the world's largest hack, and that the whole thing was a waste of time. Normally I'm a secure and confident bloke and don't entertain thoughts like these. But I did. And they bedeviled me and my writing efforts for three long years, before I finally wised up, gained perspective, achieved Nirvana or whatever, and buckled down and finished.

The second rewrite was much easier than the first, because I felt no insecurity. I felt fine, in fact. The novel felt like a novel. The author felt like an author. The work felt like work, but more than that, it was fun. For the first time, it was actually fun. Hallelujah for that!

So I spent about a fortnight just blasting through my entire manuscript, line-editing, spell-checking, rearranging syntax for mellifluousness, and making some major revisions and rewrites. And you know what I came out with? A novel. An honest-to-Gawd debut science fiction novel. It's got plot. It's got theme. It's got premise. It's got character. It's got conflict. It's got action. It's got a climax, a denouement, and all the rest. It may be a bit amateurish (after all, it's my first book) but everything's there.

Now I just need somebody to read it. And a publisher to send it to.

This is tremendously exciting.

So, in summary, I'd just like to say that after thirty months of waiting, worrying, striving and stagnating, things are looking up. The novel's done, and I'm going to Korea. And Miss H and I are doing better than ever. 

Thanks for sticking with us.

and in other news...

The novel is finished.

Of course I'll have to read back over the manuscript again for continuity and historical accuracy. And then I'll throw it to the beta readers and let them claw it to ribbons. But for all intents and purposes, the story is finished. The manuscript is complete. My edits have been implemented. I'm DONE.

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sounds impossible, but I busted through this edit. Miss H called me a workaholic, which is something no one has ever accused me of in all twenty-five years of my freeloading existence. It was mad. I found, for the first time, that I wasn't scared of the damn thing. I loved it. I wanted to perfect it. I wanted to put the finishing touches on it. I wanted to work on it (wow!). Next thing you know I'll actually be eager to submit it to a publisher. That'll be the day.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me and believed in me. Miss H, Beth, Chris, Johnnie, Jane, Olivia, Donna, Polly, Marilisa...all you guys. You're wonderful.

Next we delve into the wonders of publication...

P.S. My recruiter in Korea has received my immigration documents, and passed them onto my school; I should have my visa by next week. I am going to Korea in February. Cue another Big "YES!" here.  

trumpeting from the rooftops

I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted for an English teaching position at the reputable Avalon hagwon in Bucheon, Seoul area, South Korea. I leave for East Asia on February 10. My prayers have been answered. Further bulletins as events warrant.

e-hiatus, day 8

I'm going to have to call the whole thing off. It's just impossible right now. I picked a bad time of year and a bad time in my life to do something like this. The first week was useful, admittedly; and I accomplished much, as I mentioned in my previous post. But the writer's workshop I'm getting involved with announces its meetings on Facebook; I have a meeting on Skype tomorrow with a recruiter; and other things like job applications, research and whatnot all require a machine and an Internet connection. Plus I've discovered several new free games available for my 'Droid and, well...yeah. I caved.

It pains me to admit it—I've caved on a lot of stuff lately—but c'est la vie. I hate to concede that my comrade Bryan was right, but in order to do this hiatus properly, I'd need a canoe, a midshipman, and a week's worth of camping supplies. Someday, I shall do it. Maybe I'll make a regular thing out of it. But for now, the e-hiatus is officially canceled. Wish me better luck next time. Career changes are in the wind (finally!) and I need to focus on those, and the writer's workshop. I think my time will still be spent productively no matter what I'm doing to relax.

Thanks for sticking around...

e-hiatus, day 7

Well, as I look back on the first complete [snort] week of this e-hiatus, I reflect that there are a great many things that I could've done better (such as, not checking Facebook).

There are some major transgressions I wish I hadn't committed (like downloading Shoot the Apple for my Android).

This e-hiatus has already gone on way too damn long (Gawd, I never knew a week could be this long).

However, I have accomplished much. My novel is 75% re-edited, and looks a lot better than it did even after the first second rewrite.

My job hunt has yielded fruit, even if it's only half-ripe fruit and not especially juicy. (More details as I get them.)

Miss H and I have become much, much closer, and for that I am thankful.

I haven't lost too many pounds (heh heh), but that'll come later. My optimism is relentless on that point.

Now, since this week has been stressful (to say the least), and I've been such a good boy for the first five or six days of this hiatus, and I'm looking at another 23 goddamn days of this crap, I believe I'll break curfew for a few hours this evening and have a little fun in the Digital Fun Park. Judge me as you will.

Annyeong!

e-hiatus, day 6

Well, I completely flubbed it today. I was on the Internet practically all day, and did nothing constructive besides: neither research, nor novel-writing, nor exercising, nor job-hunting. I even broke down, found my phone, cracked it open, and played some games on it (but not Angry Birds, thank goodness). If I'm feeling particularly seditious I'll watch a movie or something.

Oh well. Research suggests it's good to reward yourself for good behavior when you're in the midst of a new regimen, and I've held out almost a week. Plus certain events have conspired to make this little deviation almost necessary (I won't go into details; it's personal. You'll just have to trust me on it).

I did finish Starship Troopers last night, so I'll have to review that for you tomorrow. I started in on Phaid the Gambler (a little-known sci-fi tale by Mick Farren, and it's turning out to be hard-boiled, gritty and engaging so far). At least I got some reading done, right?

e-hiatus, day 5

We woke up at about ten o'clock. We ate brunch and got down to business. Miss H job-searched while I worked on the novel some more. At about 1:00 p.m., I was stricken with severe writer's block, so I went ahead and wrote that piece on A.E. van Vogt which was posted earlier. Things failed to improve after that, so I cheated on my hiatus and checked Facebook. I'm quite glad I did, because one of my friend's mothers (an English teacher at the community college) invited me to a writer's workshop on the 21st of December. I could really use some input on my writing, so I think I'll go. Might learn something useful, you know? I just have to be sure to pick a suitably noncommittal part of my novel to avoid plagiarism.

The rest of the day passed. I spent it finishing Starship Troopers (wow, what a book) and watching the movie Duel (1971) on YouTube. Excellent entertainment on all fronts. Miss H and I also came to a decision about our futures, but I won't go into that here.

I will say that the withdrawal symptoms have hit me hard...or rather, the boredom and emptiness associated with breaking a habit. I no longer find myself taking my phone out of my pocket automatically (in fact, I have no idea where my phone is). But I still open Facebook and Hotmail without even thinking about it whenever I turn on my computer. I must train myself out of this. Between job searches and novel sessions, I find myself wandering around the house, kneading my hands, wondering what to do with myself. I managed a walk with Dash yesterday but that was about it. Miss H and I have begun work on another 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and that should help keep me occupied. Maybe I'll teach myself Chinese ten or something to keep from going nuts.

Squaring my shoulders and hoping for a more productive day tomorrow! Postman out.

recommended reading

I'm supposed to be working on the novel right now, but I've got writer's block. Trying to link up an entirely new wodge of characterization and action with a previously-written chunk of exposition is harder than I thought it'd be. Plus I'm trying to figure out how to get my protagonists into the bad guy's fortress without, say, going up to the front door and knocking (which Main Character No. 1 was planning to do). Dramatic writing is tough sometimes, you know?

So instead I'll give you a book review. Or rather, I'll break with tradition and give you an author review.

I just finished reading Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt, which was not a single story, but several: two novels from the Mutant Mage series (The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn), a couple of stories from The War Against the Rull series, and Mission to the Stars, a stand-alone novel. So instead of reviewing each and every tale, I'll just tell you about A.E. van Vogt and his writing, and how they struck me.

Now, in any discussion of writing, there's two bits of writer-lingo you need to know: "planning" and "pantsing." I had never heard of these terms before I entered the blogsphere. I never even bothered to ask anyone what they meant. The sentiment was there, and the context, and I gradually deciphered both. "Pantsing," as near as I can tell, means wading into your story without only the most meager idea of what you're about—flying by the seat of your pants, as it were. Perhaps you've got a skimpy outline (or no outline at all), but you've done no preparation, taken no notes, nothing. You just dive right in and see where the story goes. "Planning," as you've already guessed, is the exact opposite: taking time to meticulously plan your story, outline it, map it, shape it, mold it, develop your characters, create a detailed setting, and set the story down accordingly.

Van Vogt and I are pretty similar. We're pantsers, mostly. Van Vogt would get an idea, knock out a beginning, look it over, nod, and continue on with it. He never bothered to go through beforehand and outline everything. I can tell van Vogt pantsed because of what he usually wound up doing to his stories: he retconned them into full-length novels and even novel series (what he called "fix-ups"). A lot of the early tales he wrote about bands of intrepid spacemen coming across nasty monsters in the middle of space were collated and grouped into one single tale, The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The same thing happened with the stories which make up The War Against the Rull.

This didn't happen with everything van Vogt wrote. He did some pretty good stand-alone novels, like Slan in 1940. (Well, he was going to write a sequel, but the poor sap was stricken with Alzheimer's disease and died before he could finish the first draft. His wife and Kevin J. Anderson went ahead and finished it, though, and it was published in 2007 as Slan Hunter.)

It's interesting to see this kind of approach in science fiction. I mean, traditionally, sci-fi writers are not only writing for fun and profit, but to make some kind of commentary on the human condition. All you have to do is read the first chapter of Starship Troopers (I'm twelve chapters in, actually) and you'll see just how strongly Robert A. Heinlein felt about duty, military service, war, and patriotism.

With van Vogt it's more subtle. He's not quite so blatant in his advancement of anthropic commentary, but there are certain facets of human civilization which deeply interest him, and they manifest strongly in his work. He had a thing for totalitarianism. Dictatorships and monarchies fascinated him to the point that some considered him a closet apologist. The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn revolve around a technologically advanced but culturally retarded civilization based on Earth, thousands of years after nuclear apocalypse and interplanetary war have almost annihilated the human race. Humankind lives in great cities and primitive villages, worships "the atomic gods" in huge temples, and governs itself with a tenuous and iron-fisted oligo-monarchy closely resembling the Roman Empire. Ancient spaceships from Earth's golden age still remain, but no one knows how they work; temple scientists are still able to operate the great machines, but their basic principles are lost to the ages. When colonies on Venus and Mars rebel against the ruling Earth government, the Lord Leader embarks thousands of spearmen, archers and horse cavalry in the giant spaceships. They fly to the other planets, and fight primitive wars on their hostile surfaces. Dissenters and rebels are uniformly executed; political rivals are sabotaged, betrayed, poisoned, exiled; and there is no end to the scheming, backstabbing, backbiting, and guile of the ruling families of the Empire of Linn.

Unto this chaos is born Clane, a mutant (his mother strayed too near one of the temples wherein the atomic gods were worshipped). His deformities prevent him from ever attaining the seat of power; indeed, he would have been killed outright had he not been the grandson of the Lord Leader himself. Instead, Joquin, a clever adviser to the Lord Leader, takes the young Clane under his wing, and fosters the boy's genius-level intellect. When the Lord Leader dies and a war of succession breaks out, Clane remains safely in the background, pursuing scholarly and scientific studies. Clane is too smart for his own good, but is able to disguise his gifts beneath mutation and shyness. He discovers the science behind the atomic machinery in the temples and aboard the spaceships, and then divines something else even more sinister: humanity was not wiped out by a nuclear war, but an alien race powerful beyond belief. What's worse, this alien race is rebuilding, rearming, and will soon return to claim Earth and her colonies. Clane, and Clane alone, can stop them, if he can ward off intrigue, betrayal, scheming, conspiracy, and barbarian invasions long enough to weaponize the technology of the ancients.

The series is sort of like I, Claudius meets The War of the Worlds. And it is freakin' awesome.

These were van Vogt's interests: power struggles, imperialism, totalitarian states, dictatorial societies, and political intrigue (with a good dash of exobiology thrown in). Such makes for engaging reading, particularly in the context of science fiction. Van Vogt's style is pleasant as well: he never minces words or proselytizes. He is direct, and just descriptive enough to give you the essential details (and let your imagination do the rest). There is poetry in his prose (particularly in delineating the cold beauty and vastness of space). He is a master of suspense, and can throw in quite a few twists and turns in a plot, leaving you unsure of what disaster or obstacle will overwhelm his characters next.

I have a soft spot for van Vogt. For one, he was unappreciated in his time: he won few awards, his critics were many and vocal, and he was overshadowed by the more famous names in the biz. I expect my lot will be the same (in fact, I prefer it that way).

But more importantly, I think both Arthur Elton van Vogt and A.T. Post write for the same reasons: not to make a point, not to silence critics, not to bewail the follies of the human race...just for fun. I know what I like and I write about it. So there.

I'd recommend the man to anyone who had some free time to be wowed in. 

e-hiatus, day 4

Woke up, ate breakfast, started a fire, worked on my novel, researched my novel, worked on my novel some more, researched some more, watched Patton, worked on my novel, researched, worked, researched, worked.

Guess what I'm doing right now?

If you'll excuse me, I'll get back to it.

The End.

e-hiatus, day 3

I have to be honest: I fudged yesterday a little. After I finished Day Two's post I fiddled around on TV Tropes for a while before going to bed. But I'd edited the hell out of my novel and annihilated seven chapters of Starship Troopers, so who's to say I didn't accomplish something regardless?

Today was excellent. I didn't even have a chance to violate the rules. At twelve o'clock Miss H and I went down to the most charming coffeehouse in town, set up our computers, and went on a job-hunting spree. We were at it for over four hours.  I created a complete profile on Clear Channel Radio's job search site, including my complete résumé and references. I applied for two jobs, a radio dispatcher position in Seattle (which I won't get, because 476 other people applied to it) and a technical writing position in Madison, Wisconsin (which I feel I have a decent shot at; they cover relocation costs, too!). I know two jobs doesn't sound like much for four hours' work, but believe me, jobs were mighty thin on the ground. I searched Monster, CareerBuilder, JournalismJobs, and several media companies' private websites. Those were the only two positions I found that (a) I could do, (b) I had the credentials for, and (c) didn't require one year of experience. That's been my biggest stumbling block in finding a job in my field thus far: lack of on-the-job experience. I'm beginning to think I should've applied myself more at my job at the newspaper, and I should've tried to go two semesters at my college radio station instead of just one.

The draining hunt for work sustained us until five o'clock, at which point Miss H and I, tired and discouraged, closed down our machines, bought some necessaries at the grocery store, went home and cooked dinner (quesadillas with avocado, tomato and chicken). We watched a movie, and read for a bit. And that has been my day. I haven't even touched my phone. I'm so tired I think I'll just go to bed at midnight instead of 1:00 a.m. like usual. Let's hope some of those job apps bear fruit.

left behind: Harriet's eulogy

In every damn movie I ever saw some wiseacre walks into the station house or up to the campfire or out of the boardroom and says "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is..."

I get sick of the jackass always treating his audience to mood whiplash by throwing out a hope spot and then negating the nugget of good cheer with some apocalyptically bad tidings a moment later.

So here's the bad news:

My dog died.

Yes, my dog. Harriet. The lovable Chow-Shepherd cross I've had since I was thirteen years old.

We were together for twelve years, that mutt and I. She was thirteen when she died (I'm going to use the word "died" instead of a euphemism like "passed on" or "pegged out" or "kicked," and you may thank George Carlin for it).

When I met her, she was squished into the corner of an enclosure at the old animal shelter down on Zuni Road. That was 1999, the year when everybody was still in a flap about something called "Y2K," the year The Matrix came out in theaters, the year Bill Clinton was acquitted of being a large and unfaithful ham, the year Nunavut (Canada's third territory) was created, the year Joe DiMaggio died, the year Napster debuted, the year the Columbine shooting took place, the year the euro was established, and the year that my brother and I first went to see a movie unescorted (Star Wars, Episode I if you want to know).

I found it to be an odd picture: the cutest dog in the world was being oppressed by the ugliest, in the same cage, no less. Harriet, who used to look like this (she's the brown one):

...and who had an expression on her muzzle akin to this...

...was being bullied by this thing. I can't even describe it. I went to Google and typed in "ugly dog" and nothing the cybersphere threw at me could even come close to encompassing this animal's unsightliness. Seriously, this was an ugly dog. Gray skin, like an anemic walrus. Woolly white fur that was flaking off in bundles. Stubby legs, a tubular body, a hideous, angular head, and a mean look in its sunken eyes. If Harriet even looked as though she was about to budge out of her corner, Old Butt-Ugly would let out a blood-curdling growl. Harriet would freeze in place and give a plaintive stare to whomever walked by the cage at that point.

And, at some point, I happened to walk by.

They say dogs can't talk, but it would've been harder for Harriet to say "Get me out of here!" any more clearly, even if she'd opened up her mouth and yelled the words in a Flatbush twang.

It was the Bambi eyes that did it, though. Harriet gave me one look out of those dark, somber, tear-jerking eyes and my heart was gone. I had to have that dog. I had to save her from Whizzo the Crazy Ugly Dog-Thing. She had to be mine. I had to be hers.

So we brought her home.

She was an unusual dog. Unique, maybe, is the term. You can't say "all pets are unique," because that flouts the very definition of the word "unique." But Harriet was, all the same. She didn't like to run or play fetch like most dogs did. She was a tug-of-war kind of girl. She loved rope toys and pig's ears and other things you could chew on. She had some bad habits at first, too. She liked to bark and she liked to dig. I can't tell you how many times I had to get up in the dark of night and go yell at her to quit barking. She dug so many holes under the perimeter fence that I began to wonder if her previous owners hadn't been Mexican immigrants.

(I'll pause a moment while you boo and hiss at that awful joke.)

We never had to go far to look for her when she escaped the yard. She always came back. It was filling in the holes that was the problem. They were many and they were deep, and if they weren't properly filled in and barricaded, she'd re-excavate them the next night. I used anything I could find: scraps of plywood, walkway tiles, rocks, whatever we had lying around. It drove me to distraction.

But finally, after repeated lessons, coaxing, persuasion, and some harsh disciplinary action, Harriet was trained. She didn't dig out anymore, and she shut up barking (almost completely). She was a healthy, amiable pup, and though she had some annoying habits (like jumping up and putting her paws on people's stomachs) she had some whimsically cute ones, too. On hot days (it frequently got up to 105 and higher in the summer) she liked to dip her front paws into her water bowl. With all her fur, it was all she could do to keep cool, short of me brushing her. I even sheared her completely sometimes, right down to the skin. She looked ridiculous (like a sheep or a poodle) but she was cool for a while.

She never forgot about me, even when I left her for months—even years. I saw her every Christmas and summer for three and a half years while I attended college. She never failed to greet me at the door or the gate, chasing her tail, hopping about like a mad thing, sniffing me all over to take in some of the exotic scents I'd picked up in my absence.

Then came the big one: Korea. I was gone for a whole year, and then some. For all that time the most I saw of her was the pictures I had brought with me, and some which my parents sent me electronically. She had some adventures of her own while I was gone. An ear infection affected her balance so much that she went around with her head tilted at a crazy angle. Fortunately it was cured quickly.

She wasn't the same dog she'd been when she left. Her muzzle was grayer. Her movements were slower. She had less tolerance to cold. She didn't chase after thrown toys anymore, didn't play tug-of-war with as much enthusiasm. Two more years went by, and she had become...old. Undeniably old. Even I could see that she wasn't the doe-eyed puppy dog she'd been when I brought her home. She was stiff, bent. She spent most of her time sleeping. She hardly ever barked anymore, unless my parents' new dog, Dash, stirred her up.

And soon it was time to make the Hardest Choice. At some point I had to ask myself whether her quality of life truly justified her continued existence. And ultimately I decided it didn't. She was in constant pain. Cataracts clouded her eyes, forcing her to look side-on at anything she wished to examine closely; she could no longer find dropped treats in the dark. Her arthritis was so paralyzing that she could no longer bend her rear legs; and sitting and laying down were painful, torturous, lengthy concepts for her.

I couldn't stand seeing her that way. Not my dog. Not the excitable pooch who used to spin in circles so fast she became a blur. Not the mutt who used to take naps in snowdrifts in Wyoming. Not the jealous girl who'd leaped headlong into the lake after Molly just to keep her from getting the stick first. Not the digger, the barker, the paw-dipper. Not my Harriet.

So I took her to the vet to have her put down.

I can't tell you how often I considered scooping her up, scrambling out of the vet's office, throwing her into the back of my Jeep, and just running away with her somewhere. About once every two seconds, probably.

I even thought of trying to end her life myself, but I knew in my heart that I didn't have it in me to load a gun and point it at her. What if I missed? What if I didn't kill her with the first shot? What would go through her mind in her last few seconds of her life? Would she wonder why her master, the boy she'd grown up with, betrayed her? Hated her?

I couldn't bear the thought.

I think it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do: to sit on the floor of the vet's office with Harriet while the poison went into her veins, and she let out one final sigh and went limp in my arms.

I'll spare you the details. You can guess the rest.

I buried her myself. I insisted on it. It seemed the least I could do. She wasn't the first dog I'd ever owned, but I'd known her the longest, and loved her the most. This was the dog I'd spent twelve years of my life—half of my entire existence—getting to know. The same dog I'd patiently trained to sit, to stay, to shake. The same one who used to dig out of the paddock and go running all over creation while I, heart in my throat, searched and called for her. The same one I couldn't stand to brush, because she had the coat of a musk ox and I always got enough fur off her to stuff a mattress with. The same stocky, fluffy, bull-nosed girl who'd come up behind me when I was sitting on the back porch and poke her head under my arm. The same one I'd dreamed of entering in the Iditarod one day, she had so much fur. The one I hoped to take flying sometime. The one I wanted to come to Alaska with me and live out her retirement chasing moose off my property.

So the veterinary staff wrapped her forlorn little body (she seemed so much smaller now, in death) in a black plastic body bag and handed her to me. I put her in the back of my Jeep, closed the door, and leaned my head against it for a moment, trying to get a hold of myself. Miss H, much more honest with her feelings, laid a hand on my arm. It helped so much. I could never find words to thank her for being there, nor what she did to help me along. I squared my shoulders and drove us home. I backed the Jeep into the horse paddock (next to the big one-acre paddock where Harriet had run in olden times). I selected a quiet spot between the yucca plant and the old corral. With Miss H helping, we dug a three-foot hole in the hard-packed sand and grit. Miss H went in the house to let me pay my last respects. I lifted Harriet out of the Jeep, laid her in the hole, arranging her legs and head as comfortably as I could through the black plastic. I hesitated a moment longer, then put the first shovel-load of dirt on her.

After that, things were easier, a little.

I filled in the hole. I put a chunky clump of dirt on top, as a sort of marker. Just so I could find the spot again if I wanted to. I poured some water over the hole, to help tamp down the loose earth and make sure no one disturbed her. Then I put the tools back in the shed, closed the rear door of the Jeep, parked it by the garage, and closed the paddock gate.

That was September 2, 2011.

I haven't visited her grave since.

I think I might be able to sometime soon.

e-hiatus, day 2

The results are encouraging: I finished reading Transgalactic and got started on a book that Miss H's mum lent me, Race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen. This will be interesting. I've read Sir Ranulph Fiennes's Race to the Pole, which details Robert Scott's Antarctic foray, and thereby learned about the English perception of their Norwegian competitors; this new book will be the other side of the coin (from the man who actually won the race). 

I didn't touch my phone. I watched the second half of For a Few Dollars More (I watched the first half yesterday to reward myself for knocking 20 pages of my novel out). I checked Facebook, but didn't do anything, except reply to a message from a dear friend whom I don't want to keep waiting for a month. I made a few calls and took a few (one from Helen, our recruiter at ESL Park, who told us that we still don't have all the paperwork we need for a Korean job, and that furthermore no positions will be opening until late February or March). Miss H and I have been in communication via e-mail (due to the ban on texting), and it's strangely exciting: suddenly, instead of microscopic blurbs of information, we can put down our entire thought process and convey a complete message, with salutations and loving farewells attached. It's almost like we're separated by some incalculable distance and are keeping contact through love letters. I never thought e-mail would strike me as a charming way to connect, but due to my submersion in texts, I couldn't gain perspective. This hiatus is already yielding startling and unforeseen revelations.

The only bummer about today is that I had to fork over a good portion of my life savings to the bank. I hate bills. Things are becoming desperate. I'm fine for next month, but the month after that might be troublesome. I applied for a bartender's position with the parks & rec district in the next town over, but I've had no word from them yet. All I can do is lounge around in my bathrobe and wait for a miracle.

I busted through two more chapters of the damn novel, trimming, cleaning, snipping, and making general improvements as well as a few major edits. The thing is streamlining nicely. I also cracked open a new book: Get Published, a volume I've owned for some time but never perused at length. Should help me jump-start my writing career, I hope. I can see now that I haven't started yet. I could be submitting articles to High Desert Magazine or the Daily Press (despite my sordid history with that latter organ). I don't have to wait for a book deal. I could get started on this crap now. I think I will tomorrow.

But for now, Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef and hot buttered rum shall sustain me.

e-hiatus, day 1

It went pretty well, actually. I spent a goodly portion of my time in waiting rooms, and fought the terrible temptation to take out my phone and annihilate a few green pigs. But apart from that, I was peachy. Miss H and I went down the hill into San Bernardino and I was distracted by the traffic and the kooky drivers. Now, I just have to avoid messing around on this Internet thingy tonight. I think I'll do my best to start (and finish) A.E. van Vogt's Mission to the Stars, just to pass the time.

Due to some rather specious comments inscribed upon my last post, I feel the need to clear the air a little. Indeed, this is not a true e-hiatus. I am still using Blogger, taking phone calls, checking e-mails, and (occasionally) watching television. If I had the means and the time to take a proper break from the digital world, completely divorcing myself from all electronics and going to live in a snowbound cabin for a year with no companions but a Siberian husky, several bottles of single malt Scotch, and Leo Tolstoy, then I would do it. But I haven't the means. That's neither here nor there. The point of this hiatus is not to divide myself wholeheartedly from the Galaxy Electronica. The point is to reapportion my energies into more constructive channels, like novel-writing, walk-taking, job-hunting and life-sorting. I have allowed myself to become distracted from my old hobbies and habits by the relentless allure of YouTube and Angry Birds. No more. I shall take a break from that crap to zero in on what's really important. I'm not going to find myself or anything. I'm just trying to get some shit done.

All clear?

Good. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post. I expect the video-game withdrawal symptoms to begin soon.

Bradbury's revenge

Miss H gave me a newspaper clipping a couple of days ago. It contained an Associated Press feature on Ray Bradbury, the famed science fiction author (now a nonagenarian), and his seminal work, Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury, an outspoken foe of e-books, e-readers and the like, has finally consented to allow his magnum opus to be made available to readers in electronic form. It went on sale last week for $9.99, and has sold a great many copies.

The sweet irony of the situation is that Bradbury predicted the existence of the e-reader, or at least the technological trends which gave birth to it. In Fahrenheit 451, humans have become so distracted with newfangled mass media that books have declined sharply in popularity, to the point of being outlawed. The first part of his prediction, at least, has come true. Thanks to the Internet, music sharing, live-streaming video, and all the other myriad forms of media, humans are subject to a constant stream of information and entertainment every waking hour.

Some might consider Bradbury's surrender to the technological tidal wave a form of betrayal. There was a time when I would have reviled the man for his decision. I once loathed technology. I staunchly disavowed Facebook, iTunes, YouTube, Wikipedia, Skype, and cellular phones. Now, I use all of these digital creations on a regular or semi-regular basis. (E-readers are still right out, however.)

I resisted the urge to call myself a traitor—at first. I needed a cell phone. I got my first cellular device in college, when I had to drive for three days to get to school. What if I broke down in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota?

Then the computer came, and that was good: with it, I could satisfy my epistemological quests on Wikipedia, get my schoolwork done, and pen short stories on the side.

Facebook was next. Bah, humbug, I snorted. I have a cell phone. Why should I get a Facebook account? Just call me, peeps. No such luck. After some persuasive rhetoric from my friends and a 30-day free trial, I was a die-hard Facebooker.

Then came iTunes. It was insidious. It sidled into my life as though it had been invited...which, in a way, it had. I was sick of trying to stuff a Walkman and two or three CDs into my coat pockets. My folks got me an iPod Nano for Christmas one year, and I downloaded iTunes the very same day...never once looked back. Me, an iTunes user! And me, the inveterate Beatles fan, the Led Zeppelin lover, Pink Floyd's top admirer! Do you know that Flo Rida is on my iTunes  playlist? FLO RIDA!

I upgraded from a regular run-of-the-mill cell phone to a smart phone earlier this fall (a 'Droid 3), and it promptly ate my life. Between texting, Facebook, Words With Friends, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds (damn you to Hell, Angry Birds!), hardly five minutes go by when I don't pull my phone out of my pocket on some pretense and start fiddling with it.

So it goes. Matters have worsened exponentially over the years, but at such a gradual pace that I hardly realized what was happening. Perhaps I didn't want to realize it. I was entranced by the Digital Seductress, her guile, her temptations, her tender charms. I failed to see the Electronic Dragon chained by her side, whose icy breath froze my ambitions, hobbies, and habits. I hardly ever find time for those long, introspective walks anymore (and when I do, the iPod comes with me). I used to check Facebook once every day or two; now I log on at least twice an hour. That huge stack of books in the corner hasn't gotten much shorter in the last few months; but around 300 Wikipedia pages have mysteriously shown up in my browsing history. My novel, going on three years old, still hasn't been edited fully. And here I sit, a twenty-something with the world at his fingertips, flat broke, living in his parents' house, all ambition and no salt.

Man, thank goodness for last-minute revelations.

I finally caught myself. I've realized what a hole I've sunk into. The digital age...what a honeypot! And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Well, no more. Tomorrow begins the new era. You are my witness. As I live and breathe, I am taking an e-hiatus. Thirty days, no more, no less. My Android is going on the nightstand; I shall not answer a text, play a game, check Facebook or read the news on it for thirty days. I shall answer phone calls and plug it into the charger, but otherwise I shall not touch it. The television (also neglected now that I have Mr. Internet) is getting switched off. I shall indulge myself in one hour's pleasure every Monday night when Terra Nova comes on. The computer shall be used for researching factual information for my novel, editing said novel, job-hunting and checking e-mail, nothing more. Facebook is officially forsaken. Video and computer games are verboten. Music shall be severely restricted; I've been overdosing on it lately and can feel a full-scale burnout coming on. I won't sit there for hours on my laptop, with my ears beneath my headphones and my glazed eyes on the screen. Those days are over. The ship has sailed. It's time to get back to basics.

I shall use this blissful respite from the e-demons to get some constructive work done: namely, finding a job, revising my manuscript (and other works-in-progress), devoting time to my relationship with Miss H, and ultimately figuring out what I want to do with my life. I hope that the perspective I gain during this hiatus will lend clarity and illumination to my next steps in life, and break the destructive cycle of stagnation and wastefulness which my headlong absorption in electronic media has begotten me.

One important exception to the rule will be, obviously, this blog.

I'm going to tell you, day-by-day, how this e-hiatus (as I shall hereafter refer to it) is going. It's been a long time coming, and I sense the chains will be hard to break. Hell, I know they will be. Earlier this evening I caught myself compulsively taking my phone out of my pocket for no reason at all, even after I'd promised to give up Angry Birds. I have it bad, folks. This upcoming interlude will likely resemble withdrawal rather than vacation time. Nonetheless, as always, I will bring you the unvarnished truth, as ugly as it may be. Stay tight, be true, and hang in there.

And for Pete's sake, wish me luck.

Day One begins tomorrow.

fortune-hunting for dummies

How does one become a soldier-of-fortune? Is it something you have to work hard at? Do you have to know how to be in the right place at the right time? Or do you just wind up there by chance?

In other words, do I need to work harder at becoming a reckless, wandering rogue, or do I have to wait and seize the opportunity when it arises?

I'm a romanticist. I'll confess the fact openly. Adventure calls to me. Yeah, sure, I hear you scoff. This is the 21st century. Adventures are passé. No one has them anymore. They went out the window a long time ago. The world shrank. The maps were filled in. Technology outran us. The world is safer now than it's ever been...and yet, somehow, more dangerous than ever. That means that (a) either the would-be adventurer just flails around attempting to have adventures and discovers that safety measures and fail-safes and civilization have occluded his efforts, or (b) he is immediately killed in the attempt by a heat-seeking missile or a pissed-off terrorist.

I know adventures are dangerous. I know I'm a foolhardy, air-headed young man with hardly any worldly experience. I know I probably won't last two seconds in the middle of an intrigue or a murder mystery or an international incident. But I can't stand just sitting around and having a normal life, cutting coupons and listening to talk radio. Maybe on my days off I'll do that stuff. For now, however, I seek adventure, and romantic old-fashioned adventure at that.

I've just been reading about a guy named Frederick Townsend Ward. Does that name ring a bell? I thought not. I'd never heard of him before, either. I've never seen his name in any history book. And yet I should've heard about him by now, because he led the sort of life I would've liked to have led if I'd lived in the 1800s. Or any century, really. This guy did it all: ran away to sea, filibustered in Mexico with William Walker, served under Juarez, rode from Mexico to San Francisco on a mule, enlisted in the French Army, served in the Crimean War, resigned after being insubordinate, and finally sailed to China. It's in China that he forged his most enduring legacy: training, commanding, and kicking major ass with the Ever Victorious Army in the Taiping Rebellion.

Now, here's the setup. A fellow named Hong Xiuquan (who was sort of like China's version of Joseph Smith) proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ's younger brother, set himself up as a prophet, established the Taipei Heavenly Kingdom, declared the ruling Manchu Dynasty to be decadent and sinful, and started a war that would eventually kill 20 million people.

Freddy Ward arrived in Shanghai in 1860, when the Taiping Rebellion was already a decade old. He and his brother had ostensibly come to set up a branch of their father's trading company, but Ward's biographers cite "ulterior motives" for his presence in China. Given that he had spent the last decade as a highly successful mercenary on two continents, we can hazard a guess as to what that purpose might've been. In any case, Ward's brother set up shop while Ward took a job as the executive officer on the Confucius, an armed river gunboat (commanded by a fellow American) in the service of something called "the Shanghai Pirate Suppression Bureau." This was a private paramilitary group put together by Xue Huan and Wu Xu, members of the Shanghai city government, and bankrolled by Yang Fang, a banker and mercantilist from Ningbo.

Sources are somewhat vague on Ward's service record with the Suppression Bureau, but he must've distinguished himself highly. Before the year was out Wu Xu and Yang Fang had contacted Ward and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Impressed by Ward's lack of racism, his military experience, and his mercenary ambitions, the two Chinese men told Ward that they were organizing a new group, which would become the Foreign Arms Corps, composed primarily of foreigners who could handle firearms and were interested in a free bunk and the spoils of war. Though anxious to keep any association between the Imperial government and the Western powers a secret, Xu and Fang realized that a mercenary army was necessary. Conscripted peasants and poorly-trained Imperial officers simply weren't cutting the mustard against the fanatical Taiping rebels. Fortunately, the Chinese G-men had found the perfect man for the job. Ward immediately agreed to head up the Foreign Arms Corps. He then went straight to the Shanghai wharves and began recruiting every Westerner he could find who could shoot a gun, even if they were too drunk to hold one at the moment.

The start was rocky. Xu, Huan, and Fang were demanding financiers, and Ward was virtually their slave until he had won several impressive victories against Xiuquan's forces. This was not accomplished easily. Though Ward's rowdy crew of sailors, deserters and brigands was equipped with the latest small arms (including Colt revolvers and rifles) they had only begun to train properly before the Manchus sent them out on their first mission. Ward protested, but in vain; at his backers' urging he and his men were forced to accompany an Imperial force to recapture Songjiang, without so much as an artillery piece to back them up. The initial attack failed. The second was successful, but at a heavy price: despite reinforcements of some 80 Filipinos and a couple of artillery pieces, the 250 men of the Foreign Arms Corps lost 62 men, with 100 more wounded, including Ward himself.

Virtually the same thing happened at the town of Chingpu, the FAC's next target, and this time around, the Taiping knew they were coming. The FAC lost half its men, and Ward was shot in the jaw. The musket ball exited his cheek and left him with a speech impediment for the rest of his life.

After resupplying in Shanghai, the FAC attempted to bombard Chingpu into submission, but Li Xuicheng, the Taipings' best general, sent 20,000 men to sweep the attackers off the map. Ward's troops retreated to Shanghai to lick their wounds. Ward himself left the city for a time to get his face fixed, and one of his subordinates (H.A. Burgevine) took over. But Burgevine didn't get along so well with the Manchu management, and after some dust-ups he was arrested and died in an accident.

When Ward returned to Shanghai in 1861, he managed to get the group back together. It wasn't difficult, even after the disastrous defeats the FAC had suffered. The Corps was beginning to make a name for itself. With its advanced weaponry, the puny force had held its own against the Taiping war machine even in defeat. Ward's stock was rising with Chinese civilians. The rogues and deserters and thieves and beggars down on the Shanghai wharves loved him too. With its solid financial basis, the Corps was able to offer extremely lucrative contracts—so lucrative, in fact, that they caused several mass desertions from the British warships in the harbor. This destroyed Ward's standing among the foreign powers, who already saw him as a filibustering, money-hungry brigand and a loose cannon. His forays against the Taiping rebels threatened trade routes and destabilized diplomatic relations. So ticked were the foreign powers that they issued a warrant for Ward's arrest. Realizing that sitting in a jail cell might impede his efforts to stuff a Bible down Hong Xiuquan's ugly neck, Ward opted for Chinese citizenship. He then led a bunch of new recruits into a third engagement at Chingpu, which likewise disastrously failed.

Then Ward sat down and had himself a think. It was no good. This kind of war was doomed to failure. He had a bunch of boisterous, drunken, disorderly vagabonds who depended largely upon the element of surprise and superior weaponry to get the job done. Furthermore, they were being pushed, nudged, chivvied and shoved into battle by their corporate sponsors in Shanghai, who desperately wanted victory and didn't care about training their troops. So Ward decided that, from now on, he would recruit the local Chinese into his army. These he would meticulously train and properly discipline into an effective fighting force.

Here, I can more adequately explain this with pictures. Freddy Ward was going to turn his army from this:

...into this.

And he succeeded. He set up a training camp in Shanghai where, aided by the most skilled survivors of the old Corps, plus a bunch of hardasses from the regular Imperial Army, he trained a crack outfit of 1000-plus Chinese troops (uniformed, helmeted, equipped and well-paid). He pronounced them ready for action in January 1862. This was timely, as Taiping forces had just re-invaded the region with 120,000 troops, bent on capturing Shanghai.

This time things were different.

With only 500 men, Ward drove a vastly superior force from their fortified positions in Wu-Sung in the middle of January. Shortly thereafter, at the city of Guangfulin, the Imperial troops demoralized and scattered twenty thousand rebels. In ensuing weeks, Ward and his hand-trained Chinese soldiers (with a little help from the Imperials) routed the Taiping from several cities near Songjiang. Thousands of rebels were killed or wounded. Ward himself suffered several wounds, which included getting his finger shot off.

Li Xiucheng, the Taiping army's best general (remember?), went out of his skull when he heard about all this. He sent a host of 20,000 men to attack Songjiang and crush Ward. Ward had about 1500 men to defend the city, and performed with flying colors. As the rebels approached, they came under fire from hidden artillery positions. Two thousand men were mowed down instantly. Like lightning Ward's infantry charged out of Songjiang and captured 800 more, in addition to some supply barges on the river. The rest of the rebel army beat a hasty retreat. The Chinese peasants in the surrounding countryside went mad with joy and hailed Ward as a living god. There was no longer any question about financial backing from Shanghai or Imperial military support. Ward had made his name at last, and his contingent was dubbed "the Ever Victorious Army." Ward was given an official title under Imperial law, an exceedingly high honor for a foreigner.

All through 1862 Ward and his army continued to pull off random acts of badassery, defeating numerically superior opponents in entrenched positions. Ward fitted a fleet of steamboats with heavy guns and turned them into floating fortresses, sending them up canals and rivers to wreak havoc on the poorly-equipped rebels.

Sadly, Ward was mortally wounded in the Battle of Cixi in September of 1862. He lived just long enough to dictate his last will and testament, in which he provided for his son, his Chinese wife, and his brother. He had endured no less than 14 battle wounds and dealt the Taiping Rebellion a blow from which it would never recover. Though Ward's army won the war under the command of a different leader (Charles Gordon, who would die himself some years later in the Mahdist War in Sudan), it was Ward who had raised, trained, and led the brave Chinese on so many successful sorties.

(Whew.) That's quite a life, huh?

Now, my question is (as it was at the beginning of this post), how do you wind up doing something like that? Post a flyer? Stick an ad in the paper? Ward was born in Salem, Massachusetts. That's on the other side of the world from China. And yet he was such a rowdy cuss and did so poorly in school that his father stuck him on a ship to make a man out of him. And so Ward found himself sailing to all these different ports all over the world—East Asia, Central and South America, Europe—and, somehow, fighting in wars or hiring himself out as a mercenary everywhere he went. That takes guts.

I'm wondering: do I lack the guts? Or do I lack the means? Do I merely need to run away to sea for a while and see where the wind blows me?

What do you think?

distressing trends in fiction

I know, I know. This is the Sententious Vaunter. I should be penning you a panegyric, not a philippic. But sometimes I discover things which make me want to scream, and the only place I can scream eloquently enough is here on this blog. So strap yourselves in. It's ranting time. 

I'm drawing attention to this subject because (a) it bugs me and (b) to my knowledge, the phenomenon has only recently been named. Finally, we have a label for all those teen romance books that involve vampires, werewolves, zombies and aliens.

I first saw the label at Barnes & Noble. Two whole sections of bookshelf had been given over to the genre, whose individual components were earmarked by the Goth-looking teenagers on the covers, the sinister titles, the dark colors, and their universal, superficial resemblance to the Twilight series. The placard over this section indicated that these works were "Teen Paranormal Romance."

What? What the hell is teen paranormal romance? I thought.

Then I realized. The resemblance to Twilight wasn't superficial. People—grown men and women, not just teenage girls—had gotten so infatuated with the type of story which Twilight offered that the series had sparked an entire genre: teen girls (and, in some cases, teen guys) falling in love with eldritch monsters.

Oh jeez, I thought. That's ridiculous. Thanks a heap, Stephanie Meyer. You really started something.

As you can probably tell, I don't approve of Twilight or anything remotely resembling it. Specifically, I take issue with the manner in which Twilight has degraded and diluted the definition of masculinity. Instead of being rough, hardy, muscular, forthright and boisterous, like real men ought to be, Meyer's ideal man is a skulking, pale, sensitive, soft-spoken freak of a pretty boy. I don't consider that manly at all. And yet scores of swooning teenage girls have gone wild for Edward Cullen; Indiana Jones, Conan the Barbarian and James Bond are chauvinistic fossils by comparison.

This is not the kind of world I want to live in.

The problem is simple. The very fact that this disturbing trend has been labeled means that it's entrenched. Teen paranormal romance is here to stay, at least for a while. It's the big thing in fiction right now. The Twilight movies are slaughtering the box office and paranormal romance of every variety is infecting the shelves of booksellers nationwide. There's no way to dislodge the phenomenon. It makes me cringe to think of what might come next.

As always, I shall be the lone voice of sanity in these insane, chaotic times (boy, ain't that ironic). While teen girls (and, I suspect, a generous sample of middle-aged women) ooh and aah over the pencil-necked vampire boys, I shall continue to write stories which feature musclebound guys, ball-crushing badasses, and suave, straight-talking champions. I shall let the purity of the masculine ideal speak for itself in my fiction. Bold adventurers, quick-thinking rogues and rock-hard heroes will never go out of style, and though some distressing trends in fiction have arisen of late (and will do so again), I shall remain a bastion of artistic integrity and truth.

There shall be a good deal of romance in my books, and no street-smart, gorgeous heroine of mine is going to fall for any pale, bloodsucking pretty boy.

So help me Crom.

(Funny story: Conan's facial expression here exactly resembles mine whenever somebody mentions Twilight.)

I also think steampunk is way overrated, but that's a story for another day. I need to go fix myself a drink. Annyeong!

airborne again

Back in November, when it looked as though we'd be here until January or February (oh, wait, hold on; we'll still be here until February), I struck a deal with my parents. If they floated me a loan of $4,500 I could get my commercial pilot's license before I left for Korea. Miraculously, they agreed. Either they're bigger pigeons than I thought or they love me very, very much.

In order to stretch the dough as far as I could, I decided to train in a cheaper airplane. I'm more familiar with the Cessna 172, but they cost something like $110 per hour to rent these days. For my purposes, I went down to M______ Aviation and picked the cheapest airplane they had: a little red Cessna 152. Two seats. One hundred and ten horses. Tricycle landing gear. Basic instrument package, no GPS or anything. Looks like this:

If that seems mighty small to you, it is. Standing on my tiptoes, I can practically see over the wings. It's rather tricky trying to cram Miss H and myself into that little cockpit. Headroom is plentiful, but the seats aren't adjustable: my legs are stuffed up under the control panel. The 152 is comfortable once you actually get in and get situated, though. Ventilation is more than adequate, too. However, putting two full-size adults into an airplane with a 110-horsepower engine presents some special problems. We had to ensure that we weren't taking off with a full load of fuel, or else the little bird wouldn't ever get off the ground. (Don't worry; we made sure we had plenty for the flights we had in mind.)

But before I could get started, I had to get checked out. I'd never flown a 152 before and, though I technically wasn't required to get checked out in it (the FAA says that private pilots can fly any single-engine fixed-wing under 12,000 pounds without a checkout), M_____ required that I at least have a familiarization flight with an instructor before I took it out on my own. I understood. They had to cover their behinds. And a checkout flight wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience; I'd just have to buy some instructor's time and submit to a few maneuvers under his or her watchful eye.

That's what I thought at first, anyway.

You can imagine my chagrin, my horror, and my utter revulsion when I walked into the main office of M_____ Aviation (which smelled strongly of secondhand smoke) and saw him sitting there.

It was Bob.

Bob the Poacher.

Bob the Loony.

Bob the Motormouth.

He of the Shadowy, Mysterious, Shady Past.

He was the kind of pilot whom all the other pilots said was off his blinkin' rocker. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a lot of half-baked, erroneous ideas about flying that were dangerous to teach impressionable students. He wasn't fit to fly a paper airplane. The rumors said that he'd been fired from every flying job he'd ever held. Rumors notwithstanding, it was an undeniable fact that he was a poacher. He'd migrated up from some airport down the hill and ingratiated himself with M_____ Aviation's management, allowing him to lay in wait at the door and pounce on any students who walked in. With flattery, high-flown promises, bravado, and a great many tall tales, Bob enticed these unsuspecting neophytes away from their current instructors and under his own wing. This insidious and highly disreputable practice is frowned upon in most flight schools, but not M_____ Aviation. The Dutch matron mysteriously refrained from pitching Bob out the door. Instead, she hired him on as an instructor, even when all her other instructors tacitly resigned in protest.

You may imagine my remorse when I learned that Bob was the one who'd be checking me out in the 152.

Good God, no.

Somebody help me!

Oh yeah, before I go any further, I should explain to you what a checkout is, and why I needed one. Let's say you're a pilot. So far you've flown only one or two types of planes (just like yours truly). I trained in a Cessna 172, and have quite a bit of time in a Mooney M20E. I'd never flown a Cessna 152 before. So, when a pilot is going to fly a new plane for the first time, another pilot (who is familiar with the airplane in question) "checks him out" in the new airplane. The experienced pilot flies with the newbie and gets him oriented. Generally, checkout flights are very short: you do some maneuvers, maybe a few practice landings and touch-and-goes.

Not with Bob. Bob sat me down and did ground school with me first.

Keep in mind, now, that Miss H was sitting in the car, reading a book, and patiently waiting for me to take her flying. Bob was unaware of this. Even if he had been, he might not have cared. He was on a roll. His ego would not permit him to take me flying before he'd demonstrated to me that he knew all there was to know about flying. To some degree, I appreciated the fact that I was getting a refresher: I was a bit rusty, after all. Going over a few things beforehand really helped me get my mind back in the game. But Bob pulled out all the stops. Though the Cessna 152 is not equipped for instrument flying, somehow or other we wound up talking about instrument approaches and landings. This was totally irrelevant to what we were about to do. But Bob was an unstoppable avalanche, and it was only my gentle pushing that finally got him to shut up. We adjourned to the plane to do a preflight check.

Ten minutes later we were in the air. Unfortunately, Bob's tendency to chit-chat, gab and proselytize continued even after we got airborne. I expected to do a few maneuvers and some practice landings. Nope. We did spins.

Just so you know, a spin is very similar to a stall—except for one thing. Instead of both wings stalling simultaneously, one wing stalls before the other. Rather than merely dropping out of the sky in an orderly fashion, the airplane begins to spin violently as it falls earthward. Spins are extremely dangerous and cause numerous fatalities every year. However, they are simple to avoid and (if you know what you're doing) not too difficult to recover from.

Eventually I would have to practice spins as part of my commercial training...but I was in no mood to learn today, especially not from Bob. I'd never flown with him before. All of the awful stories I'd heard about him came flooding back into my mind. I protested volubly, but he insisted. So we spun. Granted, they were only half-turns and not complete revolutions, but they were enough to make my stomach jump, my eyes roll and my hands convulsively clutch at things.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard, I kept thinking. Let's just get this over with.

One more spin. In distracted fury and sickening fear, I fixed my eyes on a sticker on the control panel.

THIS AIRCRAFT MUST BE
OPERATED IN THE NORMAL CATEGORY.
ALL AEROBATIC MANEUVERS,
INCLUDING SPINS, PROHIBITED.

it said.

Awesome.

Finally, the ordeal ended. We landed. Bob got out. Miss H got in. She'd been waiting on the ground for nearly two hours. We burned some holes in the sky for an hour. Then we flew back and landed.

That was the last I ever saw of Bob, fortunately. He signed my logbook and I left. I paid him $30 the next day (there was a sort of vile satisfaction in making him wait for it) and that was it.

I've made two flights in the 152 since then: one with a buddy to Lancaster for a bite of lunch, and a long cross-country with Miss H to Twentynine Palms and back. The Cessna 152 is a fun plane. It's a bit slow, but it's stable, forgiving, and fun to fly. I haven't yet made a landing that I've been completely happy with, but for all intents and purposes, I can fly the dang thing.

No thanks to Bob.

Sheesh...

Aurelia aurita

Scratch another one off the bucket list.

Have you ever heard of the Aurelia aurita?

Unless you're a native Latin speaker or a biology professor, you probably haven't.

It's also known as a "moon jelly":

And I can honestly say that I know what they feel like to touch. I indulged in some heavy petting with a moon jelly down in Long Beach last Wednesday.

My folks took Miss H and I down to the Aquarium of the Pacific as a sort of farewell thing. (We're not leaving until February, but we were originally leaving in September, and then paperwork delays pushed that back to December, and the roof fell in, so...here we are. Best to get it done before anything else happens.)

We had a ball. The aquarium was smaller than I remembered, but still chock-full of some mind-blasting exhibits. A giant sea bass the size of an armchair swam back and forth in the main gallery; sea otters broke chunks of ice into small pieces and ate them with relish; the bat rays flopped out of the water for a pat on their slimy noggins; and the moray eels poked their evil heads from their holes, like old men glaring at noisy children on the sidewalk.

And then it happened.

In the middle of the Polar Seas display room was a rectangular basin of water, about the depth of a goldfish tank, but as long as a horse trough. In this tank, pulsating to and fro, was a gaggle of pale, bulbous, semi-translucent creatures resembling nothing so much as ragged, waterlogged pieces of tissue paper. They floated about, drifting with the gentle current, expanding and contracting their mantles lazily.

As soon as I saw the aquarium staff member standing behind the tank and the Purell dispensers on the wall, I understood what was going on. 

A rare opportunity had thrown itself my way. I was going to pet a jellyfish. 

So I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket, took my place in line, stuck out two fingers, and dove in with a relish. 

My rubric for stroking aquatic creatures is not extensive. In my youth, I had handled live goldfish, and I had petted the bat rays 40 minutes earlier. This was the limit of my experience. Thus far, I had observed several commonalities between species: the firmness of the flesh, the coldness of the skin and a general pervading sliminess. The moon jelly, surprisingly, possessed all three. In touching the mantle with the first two fingers of my right hand, I expected a yielding, gelatinous substance, as tenuous as it was transparent. Though undoubtedly soft, the jellyfish was relatively rigid to the touch; I felt as though I would have to poke it much harder to make an impression in the flesh. Fortunately, I had the good sense and the biological politeness not to test this hypothesis. Keeping my hand well away from the tentacles of the onrushing herd of the moon jelly's fellows, I withdrew my hand and sanitized it.

For some reason, I was suddenly hungry.