30 Days to a Better Man, Day 18: find your N.U.T.s

That there may be no speculation, "N.U.T.s" means "Non-negotiable, Unalterable Terms."

They're related to your core values, which we discussed during Day 1 of this challenge. The example The Art of Manliness article gives is this: if one of your core values is fitness, then one of your N.U.T.s could be "I will work out six times a week, no matter what." As the article so adroitly states, "N.U.T.s are the things you’re committed to, the things that matter more than anything else: your kids, your career, your primary relationships, yourself, your purpose, your spiritual practice, your hobbies, your integrity, your morals and your psychological well-being."

Before we start, take a look at this picture, here:

That's Hiroo Onoda. He was in the news recently, but not because he has way too many Os in his name. The guy was a Japanese soldier in World War II, left behind and isolated on a Philippine island in 1945. He had been ordered by a superior to keep fighting. So he did. He refused to believe the war was over. He dismissed the newspaper and radio reports. Even when his own people dropped leaflets on him telling him to surrender, he thought they were Allied propaganda meant to demoralize him. He slept in a hole and lived off the land, waging a shadow war with the local Filipino population. He had some squad-mates with him in the beginning, but two of them surrendered in the 1950s and the other was killed in a skirmish with Filipino militia, I believe. Onoda finally capitulated in 1974, 29 years after the war ended. After a Japanese student found him in the jungles of Lubang Island near Luzon and sent his picture to some government bigwig, Onoda's former commanding officer (now a balding librarian) was flown in from Japan to personally order the steadfast soldier to stand down. Onoda handed over his sword and left the island. He then lived out the rest of his life as a peaceful citizen of his native land. He died yesterday at the age of 91.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Imperial Japanese Army doesn't have the cleanest rap sheet. Onoda may not have personally had anything to do with that, but he did kill some innocent Filipinos during those three decades as a holdout. I don't admire him for it.

What I admire him for is that unshakable sense of duty which led him to (literally) stick to his guns for 29 years, despite the whole world telling him to throw in the towel. Think about that for a second. Reach way down inside yourself. Is there anything you believe in so strongly that you'd be willing to give up 29 years of your life for it? Even then, do you truly think that you've got the determination and the stick-to-itiveness to do so? 

Onoda believed so hard in his duty as a soldier and a subject of the Emperor that he did just that. He put his money where his mouth was. He gave up thirty years of his life fighting a war he didn't know he'd already lost. In 1974, when he was discovered, Onoda's rifle was in perfect condition despite sitting in a jungle for three decades. He had stockpiles of ammunition and food which he stole from the locals. He was a literal one-man army, and he did it 'cause he felt he had to do it. Voices must have whispered to him a thousand times, a million times: stop, desist, stand down. He must have been tempted to listen to the news reports. To believe the rumors he'd heard. To turn himself in and go home. But he didn't. He never gave up. Something down deep in his soul, something made of furnace-forged steel, compelled him not to quit until his commanding officer told him otherwise.

If that isn't a N.U.T., I don't know what is. There's a reason Onoda's on this list of real-life Determinators.

So! Here are my N.U.T.s. You may think I spent a lot of time agonizing over these, but I didn't. Truth be told, I've already done this challenge. This was a separate AoM article before it was part of this 30-day challenge, and I saw it, and just for kicks I brainstormed and wrote some ideas down. I couldn't find the notebook I wrote them all down in, but I remember them pretty well. I've reproduced them here for you: 

1. I will not refrain from doing something just because my mind thinks it's scary.

2. I don't trust first impressions. I'll try anything twice.

3. I don't need to justify my choices or my actions to anyone but myself.

4. I see things through, but only if I decide that there's a good reason for doing so.

5. I say nothing about anyone behind their backs that I would not say to their faces. 

6. I accept jokes made at my expense with grace and good humor.

7. I never lie: I say what I think and I mean it.

8. I will never be satisfied with the man I am, and constantly strive to top myself. 

9. There is never a wrong time to learn. 

10. Skills can always use improvement. 

11. I waste minutes and hours, but not days: every day I write, move, live, and experience.

12. Everyone, no matter who they are, has something they can teach me.  

13. I judge movies, books, and albums by their covers, not people.

14. There is more to life than my life. 

15. I am aware of my bad habits and I combat them actively.

16. Humanity will remember me for something. 

17. I will leave this planet a better place than I found it. 

This is only the first draft. I'm going to refine these during the final weeks of January. Something should probably be thrown in there about my commitments to others: my job, my family, the love of my life, etc. But for starters, this is what we've got. What do you think, dear reader? Are these good-lookin' N.U.T.s? 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 1: define your core values

A natural consequence of my life as an autodidact was the realization that, in addition to improving my mental capacity, I could stand to improve other aspects myself as well. Man does not eat of the Tree of Knowledge alone. There's a lot about me that could use some work. I'm in horrible shape, for one thing. And the term "emotional health" makes me, a red-blooded American man, think "Ewww, cooties." I could definitely use a shot of confidence, too. I've written hundreds of thousands of words and haven't gotten a single novelette published.

So! To that end, I hit upon the idea of doing Art of Manliness's Be a Better Man in 30 Days challenge. Why not? It can only help, right? Another year has gone by. It's January 1, 2014. I have once again realized how much of a lazy slob I can be, and how lacking in the most basic manly competencies I am. It's time to take matters in hand, and this challenge is just what the doctor ordered. I'm twiddling my thumbs at home for the entire month of January, and this will dovetail nicely with my writing-and-exercise regimen. The benefits are twofold: I'll be shouldering a new challenge (which has become a hobby of mine recently) and I'll take a delightful romp through the well-trod but classy Garden of Manliness. Classical manliness, none of this Billie Joe Armstrong skinny-jeans-and-eyeliner emo crap.

I understand, of course, that no Internet article can tell you how to be a man. But it can give you some handy tips on how to run your life, which if followed can improve the average man's mental, physical, financial and emotional well-being. If I take some of these lessons to heart, this challenge will make me more independent and confident in my doings, give me a more versatile skill set, impart clarity and certainty to my beliefs, and make my life just plain simpler.

This, then, is Day 1: Define Your Core Values.

I've been messing around on AoM for some time and they have a plethora of useful, timely, relevant, well-written and pithy articles. I agree with their judgment that manliness is a lost art, and much effort should be put into bringing it back. I've actually attempted a few of the items on this list already (and some of them I've already done), but not this one.

The main idea behind this challenge, as AoM states, is simple:

When I look at photos of men from my grandfather’s and even my dad’s generation, I can see a sense of purpose in the eyes of those men. Yet when I look at men today, I often don’t sense that kind of steely focus. Instead, I see dudes who are just sort of drifting along whichever way life pulls them. 

I’ve heard a lot of men my age complain of a sense of shiftlessness. They don’t have the drive, purpose, and ambition that our forebears had, and they feel adrift.

And this isn’t some sort of cranky old man observation about “kids these days.” Several books and articles by sociologists back up these observations.

There are numerous factors why men are just sort of drifting by today. Changes in the economy and societal shifts in regards to gender are definitely two major factors. But, let’s be honest. There’s not much a man, let alone a man stuck in neutral, can do about these things. So, today we’re going to focus on something that we all have the power to control: our core values.

I used to be a drifter. I was indecisive, dissolute, hedonistic, and lazy. I was just sort of coasting along all through my early twenties. I wanted to travel, I wanted to write, I wanted to fly, but I didn't have the drive to accomplish these things, or even a clear idea of how or when I would do it.

Today, I've learned better. I'm still indecisive, dissolute, hedonistic, and lazy, but now I actually care enough to do something about it.

I followed the directions outlined in the article and I came up with some ideas for core values, scribbling them down in one of the trusty notebooks scattered about my apartment. I'm putting them up here because I need to have accountability. I would like you, dear readers, to call me on anything I've put down which is weak or vague or unworthy. Censor me, if you will. Cherish the opportunity, for it shan't come again.

Without further ado, reproduced here for your consideration, are my core values: 

     1. CONFIDENCE. The lack of this has plagued me my whole life. It's kept me from leaping at opportunities that I would have cherished: submitting short stories and travel articles for publication, dancing with pretty girls, shouldering new responsibilities at work, acting in school plays, volunteering at magic shows and carnivals, and taking helicopter rides, to name a few. (That is correct: at the age of six I chickened out on riding in a helicopter. Me, the future pilot.) Confidence is hard work, but it's infinitely rewarding. I learned that when I got my pilot's license. When I first started flying, I was deathly afraid of screwing up and crashing. Overcoming that fear and becoming a more proficient flier made me more confident man. I'll never forget that feeling of triumph. Nowadays, even if I'm not sure I can do something, I give it a shot anyway. When I'm afraid of something, I have to challenge it. I have the confidence to pursue my goals, voice my opinions, and stand against the liars and fools. 

     2. HUMOR. An odd one, perhaps, but this has been a core value of mine ever since I was a kid. It's how I got through high school. Making people laugh was the only way I knew to get noticed, to be remembered, to be somebody. Subsequently I discovered just how genuinely good it felt to make people laugh or just crack a smile. Humor puts people at ease, smooths over conflicts, breaks the ice, and brightens a dark day. It's been my constant companion, even if I don't do it right all the time. 

     3. INTEGRITY. This is where I'm the most deficient. I am the most dissolute bugger ever. For the past five years I've promised myself that this year, I'll get in shape. Every year I continue to sit around on my duff and eat horrendous food. My natural inclination toward hedonism and Epicureanism have undermined my attempts to be healthy and get in shape. It's not just the physical arena that needs improvement, though. I often promise people (or myself) that I'll be more assiduous in my habits or more careful about my words, and then I'll turn around and commit the same old sins. I can be ill-tempered, impatient, selfish, hypocritical, immoderate, lazy, excoriating, insulting or just downright cruel at times. No more. A true man, in my opinion, does what he says he's going to do. And he only says he's going to do it once: he doesn't keep making the same promises over and over. Less talk, more action — consistent action. That shall be a clearly-defined value of mine from hereon out. There's nothing more satisfying than saying something and meaning it — and then living by it.

   

     4. GROWTH. Perhaps the most general of my values. There's a lot that falls under the label of "growth." It encapsulates all of the above values, for starters. I want to become more confident, more humorous and more consistent. Beyond that, though, I want to be smarter. I want to learn about the stuff I don't know about, fill in the gaps in my brain, continue by never-ending quest for knowledge. More importantly, I want to be wiser. At 27, I've experienced a few of life's lessons and learned them well; some of them I'm only just coming to know. Others surely await in the dim and unknown future. I want to be the kind of man that laughs at hardship and strives harder in adversity. I must learn to be kind to the unkind, forgiving to the unworthy, and temperate in all things. I want to be stronger (mentally and physically), funnier, kinder, and more discreet. I want to sharpen my skills, hone my mind, sculpt my personality, reflect upon life itself. I believe in being true to myself, my home, my relatives, my friends, my loved ones and my upbringing — to have that integrity I mentioned above. But I believe in the journey also. I hope I never stop learning to write, to fly, to be a human being.  

 

     5. LEGACY. Values are not goals. They are not something you strive for, nor boxes to be filled in, nor items to be scratched off a list. They are values: adamantine beliefs which I hold and cleave to. And I believe, firmly, that I have a job to do here. There's some karma that controls my destiny. I have a purpose to fulfill (and fulfilling it will be very fulfilling). That purpose, dear reader, is not my personal contentment. I used to believe it was, but I've come to know better. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said (emphasis mine), "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." There you are: my job is not to be happy, but to be a useful man, not a waste of space. I hold Emerson's words in my mind every day. The purpose of my life is to live well and make a difference. What difference? Will I reinvent the wheel? Cure cancer? Bring world peace? Champion a new age? Well, no. Probably not. I don't want to, either. I'll leave that to the dreamers and the eggheads. I'm just a humble geek and inveterate hack writer. All I want to do is write a bunch of books that make people laugh, cry, smile, scratch their heads, and wonder about the true nature of humanity and the Universe we live in. That's all. If some post-human race from the year 10,000,000 A.D. finds one of my sci-fi novels in a time capsule, translates the barbaric chicken scratch on its wood-pulp pages, and is somewhat amused by the comradeship and high adventure within...then my time on Earth wasn't wasted. 

That's it. Five core values. They have been defined for your reading pleasure. AoM says you're not supposed to have more than five, and I concur. Five's a goodly amount. Any more and you start to forget what you stand for, and making correct choices becomes more difficult. It wasn't hard to think of these. I've been mulling them over for quite some time. Perhaps I've known them all along, and had to put words to them to understand them completely. I'm glad I did.

So there you have it, readers! The things I stand for. Are they satisfactory to you? Suitably explained and outlined? If so, then the ball is in your court. Don't accept any more of my pathetic excuses. If I say I can't do something, or make a poor choice, call me on it. Use my own values against me. Delineating them is only half the battle; living up to them is the other. I'm going to try to do that for the rest of this month...and beyond. Tune in tomorrow for Day 2.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

happy November

Halloween was fun. I had five classes that day, and I knew I had to scare the daylights out of my half-dead students. So I bought a Venetian-style masquerade mask for ₩3,000 at E-Mart, packed a Nerf gun in my briefcase, got dolled up in my best three-piece suit, and leaped into the classrooms brandishing the pistol like some kind of madcap bank robber. Quite a few of them jumped or yelped—even the boys. Mission accomplished!

But I didn't come here to tell you that. On to the meat of the subject:

Chalk up another failed attempt to get on the O-Train.

Miss H and I rose up at 6:00 a.m. this morning, grabbed a ₩13,000 cab to Seoul Station, arrived with mere minutes to spare...only to discover that the 7:45 to Jecheon (the railhead in Gangwon-do) was sold out.

On a whim I made my way onto the platform to watch the dratted train itself pull out of the station, and I found out that it's only four cars. No wonder it sold out. Next time, Miss H and I will have to book tickets in advance. We'll try for next Saturday (November 9), I guess. I hope we don't miss out on the autumn hues.

Looks like the cosmos wasn't having any of it today anyway. The sky is overcast and starting to drizzle. I don't know about you, but I was hoping for a train journey through sun-washed valleys and over sparkling rivers, not gray, leaden hills and water the color of gunmetal. Let's hope next weekend has better weather, too.

To pass the time, Miss H and I have decided to grab a few more hours' sleep, then head down to the newly-built Starbucks a few blocks away and work on our respective NaNoWriMo projects. Remember, I'm not officially participating. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. I'm a thousand words in, so I'm a bit behind. I need to write 2200 more today to get caught up. I also need to keep editing Mugunghwa and finish writing Novel #3. I should have plenty of time to work on those today too.

Aside from a workout at the gym this evening, Miss H and I plan to sit down and get caught up with the TV shows we missed: the new season of Castle and the last few weeks of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Can't wait to find out what happens with both of 'em. I'm hooked.

Happy November...

33 things I'm no longer allowed to do on Fridays

1. Sing along to The Planets suite by Gustav Holst.

2. Give my characters names like "Rita Book" and "Justin Thyme" on The Oregon Trail.

3. Argue that the main characters of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are the pinnacle of manliness.

4. Croon "O Tannin Bomb" as I'm opening a bottle of red wine.

5. Watch Monty Python sketches on YouTube for hours on end.

6. Or Bugs Bunny cartoons.

7. Or episodes of Cheers.

8. Liking the Black Keys does not make me an "honorary hipster."

9. Consume a can of mixed nuts and a bottle of beer and call it an appetizer.

10. Demand that my students use the phrase "sock puppets" in every essay they write.

11. Watch the climactic scene in The Road Warrior while listening to "Yakety Sax."

12. Not listening to K-pop does not make me Nietzsche's Übermensch.

13. Finish all my sentences with the word "TOASTY!"

14. When cooking bacon, I am to actually chop the bacon into bite-size pieces rather than thwack at it with a blunt knife until it's in barely-digestible chunks.

15. Walking down five flights of stairs does not count as exercise.

16. Advance the theory that Jim Morrison is actually kind of a poet.

17. Refer to Kim Jong-un as "Jackie Flan."

18. Hang a sign on my cubicle wall that reads 'THE DOCTOR IS IN' during office hours.

19. Pretend I know jack squat about British, Irish, Australian or New Zealand politics.

20. Complain about the mysterious brown and green stains in my copy of The Bartender's Bible.

21. "To Serve Man" is not the best Twilight Zone episode.

22. Refuse to shave and claim that I'm saving money on razor blades.

23. Before spraying the bathroom walls down with bleach, I must remember to remove towels and toothbrushes from the area.

24. At the Mountains of Madness is not H.P. Lovecraft's annual family camping trip.

25. Intimidate my pupils with French if they complain that English is too hard.

26. Clean my glasses with my necktie.

27. Cooking with vodka is not an excuse to do frequent taste tests.

28. Name every chapter of my novel after a classic rock song.

29. I am not permitted to sell the extra pistol ammo I pick up during side missions in RAGE. This is called war profiteering.

30. Play air piano along with David Bowie's "Life on Mars?"

31. The fire alarm does not signify that North Korea is invading.

32. "Motorcycling through South America" is not a valid reason for a sabbatical.

33. Use hashtags on Facebook in the name of satire.

let's say "plans" instead of "resolutions"

...and while we're at it, let's call them "premeditated" instead of "late."

I was never one to go spouting my petty New Year's Resolutions to everybody within earshot, but listing them here would keep you from being caught unawares later on. And calling them "resolutions" would seem to invite them to be unequivocally broken in short order. So here you go, my plans for 2012 (to be immediately rendered null and void if the Aztecs decide to let the world end):

Number One: Ascend to my rightful place as a writer (i.e., have more confidence, dammit).

I'm through with the crippling lack of confidence and dithering indecision which plague me whenever I try to gauge markets, write relevant stories and articles, look up potential publishers, and submit works. Hunter S. Thompson never bothered with any of that crap. He just went out, did what he had to do to get a story, looked around and submitted it somewhere. That's what I'm going to do from this moment forward. I'm looking up markets for creative nonfiction as we speak. Who says I need only do travel articles and short sci-fi stories? I'm sure I've got lots to say on other subjects...and can tease it out of my brain without the aid of chemicals. So, to that end, I intend to become a more prolific writer this year...and a more assiduous salesman.

P.S. This may or may not include publishing that damn novel. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how easy it is to publish a novel from a foreign country, and I don't have Ernest Hemingway here to tell me. Maybe that magic Internet thingy will come to the rescue! TA-DA!!

Number Two: Go back to Korea (i.e., drink a lot of soju, meet crazy foreigners, do the cool stuff I didn't get to do before, pig out on bulgogi, and all that rot).

Well, shoot. That's taken care of. Helen the Eminent Recruiter tells me that my paperwork is where it needs to be and my E-2 visa is expected any day now. My room is still in rampant disarray, but order is precipitating out of the chaos. My desk is cleaned out, my closet has been divested of all garments which shall not be accompanying me on my Asian odyssey, and that big pile of stuff in the armchair is looking less like a war correspondent's personal effects and more like a roving journalist's kit bag. I should be ready to go in—criminy, twenty-eight days!

Number Three: Give Hulk Hogan a wedgie (i.e., sneak up behind him on the set of his reality TV show and yank his Fruit-of-the-Looms up over his cute little head).

Just checking to see if you're still awake.

Number Four: Live for others...a little bit (i.e., get involved in some charity work).

The only things I've ever donated to others are a few hours at an old folks' home in East Tennessee (which nearly scarred me for life; cue the old lady in the wheelchair screaming for her dead husband) and a few fistfuls of change for the Salvation Army. I aim to change that this year, and put some real charitable man-hours under my belt. Some of my foreign friends in K-Land have gotten involved with organizations which donate food and clothing to North Koreans in need, which interests me something fierce. I never did a flipping thing to help the poor NoKos the last time I was there, and the thought wracks me with guilt to this very day. Once I get back to the States I intend to put my time in planting trees and passing out soup at homeless shelters, too, but that's a story for 2014.

There's more to my list, but these snippets are all I can think of for now. I need to read more books this year (and write a few, too). I recently rediscovered reading for pleasure, and since then a whole host of worthy volumes has passed under my eyes. I'm way behind on reviewing 'em, too...especially since I decided to review only one book at a time on this here blog. I'm five chapters into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am enjoying the living daylights out of it. But more about that later.

Cheerio, people. Send me some heroic resolve...

Thoreau's hit list

If he had one, I'm on it. And probably Karl Marx's and Friedrich Nietzsche's, too.

Why?

I have way too much crap.

Way too much.

If Thoreau, Marx and Nietzsche were teleported into my bedroom at this very instant, and perused the absolute disarray to which it has been reduced, with piles of junk and trinkets and baubles occupying every flat surface, and umpteen bazillion hats and coats and shoes in the closet (yes, I'm a clothes-horse), and papers and notes and photographs and picture frames lying everywhere, and no less than seven cardboard boxes of books shoved into my brother's room for safekeeping, they'd be appalled. Thoreau would holler at me to simplify, Marx would fulminate about my materialism, and Nietzsche would aim a few mocking jibes at my sentimental and pointless memorabilia.

I wouldn't blame them. I've been doing likewise.

The intervening time between this and my last post has been spent desperately trying to whip my small room into some semblance of order, to cram the trappings of my life into manageable containers. I've lugged some cardboard boxes out of the shed, taped them together, and have been steadily stowing away all the detritus of my quarter-century's existence. I cannot believe I let this go so long, nor the sheer volume of material I'm dealing with. There are so many things which I should have let go long ago: old pictures, greeting cards, outdated documents, rough drafts of stories too puerile to preserve...the list goes on and on.

But I'm making progress. My nightstand has been cleared of CD cases, notebooks and electronics; my filing cabinet has been purged; only the dust remains under my bed. I still have, however, the daunting task of clearing the larger gewgaws out of my desk drawers, and packing up the clothes in my closet. This'll take some doing. And I must exercise caution and restraint as well. The well-worn seat of my armchair, now a repository for the equipment and essentials I will bring with me to South Korea, is near to overflowing.

Where did I pick up all this crap, anyway?!

I look around the room (a roadrunner just ran by the window, making me think of Jerry's desert musings). I see a beaten canteen hanging from the chair, along with the plastic bag full of taco sauce pouches I promised Smithy I'd take to Korea with me. Suspended from the other side is the plastic bag with all my medicines and first-aid equipment in it, and a shoulder holster with a ripped seam. Lying on top of the desk is a boggling assortment of trinkets: a Lego seaplane, several sets of headphones, cables and power cords to who-knows-what, a packing tape dispenser, an old Walkman, my new laptop speaker, a photograph from our trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific, a coffee mug with my name on it, library books, a jar of Korean wishing stars painstakingly handmade by my lovely girlfriend, and a desk lamp that has my prized Stetson fedora and the tassel from my university mortarboard hanging from it.

To my left, on the top shelf of my closet, I can see an untidy jumble of hats, a mosquito net in a drawstring bag, and the glow-in-the-dark hockey mask I wore at the Halloween party and scared the bejesus out of John and Matt with.

On the small TV tray in front of the bed there's a picture frame showcasing my great uncle's uniform patches and insignia from the cavalry regiment he served with in Vietnam; a pair of orange hat brushes; my brand-new HD webcam, still in its package; a tin of Icebreakers Sours; a lottery ticket; my checkbook; and the DVDs for Spider-man 2 and 3, awaiting transferal to some less discerning owner.

In and around the armchair are haphazardly piled a couple of laptop briefcases, several decks of cards, a small heap of books (concerning alcoholic beverages and card games, mostly), passport pictures, address books, important papers, artifacts from my travels, and my precious journals.

The dresser is by far the worst offender, a fountain of materialistic indiscretion. Quite apart from the raiment overflowing from its drawers, its summit is crowned with flotsam. Shammies and chemicals for cleaning spectacles and LCD screens; a small vanity filled with loose buttons, batteries, ticket stubs and foreign coins; a pinochle deck; more books (Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me); a ledger where I keep track of my spare change; rolls of quarters and nickels and dimes; a flashlight; a disassembled music-box, given to me by one of my Korean students; a nifty black pouch containing my five USB drives, and thereby my entire writing career; several pairs of glasses and sunglasses snug in their cases; a can of lighter fluid; a toy Model T and several metal-and-plastic warbirds; and a whiskey-tasting certificate from the Old Jameson Distillery in Dublin, Ireland.

On the hooks behind the door are two mostly-pristine flight suits in desert tan, American flags gaily gleaming from their shoulders; my old blue TacAir  baseball cap; two pairs of bathrobes; and a dusty ocarina from who-can-tell-where.

The walls are mostly bare; I've taken my Korean flag down, and all the pages torn from various warbird calendars; but the framed jigsaw puzzles and the Indiana Jones theatrical posters remain.

I've gotten rid of us much as I possibly could. I'm no hoarder, but it's difficult to lightly pass up the virtues of the pack rat. It seems like every bauble, every half-faded line on a wrinkled sheet of paper, every dog-eared book and creased photograph holds some happy memory within it.

I'll stop there. You know what comes next: a load of maudlin reminiscence. I'll spare you.

Suffice to say, this is a more monumental task than I anticipated (but isn't it always?). I'm slogging through it. I anticipate having my room entirely packed up, my existence encapsulated, by the middle of the month. All of it will go into storage while your humble author and a few select garments and trinkets and novels will sally forth unto East Asia. More about that later.

And by the way, Happy New Year.

British barbecue blues

There was hardly any time to breathe, let alone detoxify, after Jeff and I returned to Newcastle from Ireland on the 17th of June, 2010.

We had a barbecue to prepare.

Being guests from the colonies, we thought we'd repay our kindly English hosts by throwing them a little bash. Jeff and I would put our heads together and bring the best of our backyard party skills to the fore. I'd grill up some ribs and hamburgers and Jeff would do his famous cornflake potatoes, with some other side-dishes thrown in.

It sounded good on paper. How it actually turned out is something else altogether.

Adam took Jeff and I down to Morrison's (the big grocery store) the evening of the 17th to get all the ingredients we'd need...including the charcoal, and even the barbecue itself. Adam's mum didn't have one, you see. Living within spitting distance of the North Sea, she doesn't have cause to grill outdoors very often. They have that stuff out in England called rain, you see. I don't know exactly what it is, but I guess it has something to do with water coming out of the sky. I have a difficult time imagining such a miraculous phenomenon, but I can see how it would make fire-starting difficult.

So we picked up the goods, lugged 'em back to Adam's mum's house in a taxi, and set about getting the preliminary preparations done. I assembled the new grill myself, which I'm rather proud of. I'm not the most mechanically able, but give me enough time (and mulligans) and I'm usually able to work it all out. I got it done just before dark (at 11:00 p.m.) and we all sat around having a few beers and admiring the thing. It was the same shape as a typical tripod grill (wheels, tray, big black pot with a round lid, etc.) but about half the size. You had to stoop to flip anything grilling on it. It was about the size of the grill on the left in the picture below, here:

Again, I wish I could show you my own pictures (this one's from Wikipedia), but I have none. I think I tried to take some photos of the grill I assembled, but by that time it was dark and the pictures came out unrecognizably blurred and obscure.

We had a marginally decent night's sleep that night. When you get the bunch of us together—A, E, Jeff, and me, not to mention E's friend M—well, we have a tendency to bounce of each other and egg each other on, and what was supposed to be "a few drinks" and "an early bedtime" turns into yet another late-night lesson in debauchery.

The day arrived, and after an eleventh-hour dash to Morrison's for some forgotten ingredients, all was in readiness. The ribs had been seasoned and rubbed, the charcoal was resting comfortably in the tiny grill, the burger patties were lovingly shaped and patted down. Jeff, with E's help, had already mixed up and baked his cornflake potatoes, the recipe for which I shall not include because it is a sacred H_______ family heirloom, and to divulge it would bring the wrath of all Canada down on my head.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Jeff's preparations were now done, and he joined the rapidly growing crowd of guests in their cans of Carlson while I flitted between the kitchen and the backyard.

Things were not going as planned. I had two five-pound bags of charcoal at my disposal. The first one burned far too hot. Seriously, the burgers were being instantly charred. That was all well and good if I'd been preparing only the burgers, but I was trying to put together a whole course of meat dishes here. I only had one extra bag of charcoal and this one was burning up too fast. I was only able to dish up about five or six burgers before the heat died completely.

British barbecue: 1
Postman: 0

Daunted by a fast burn and low heat retention (on the part of the grill itself), I was determined not to lose to the second bag. I readied the remaining burgers and ribs, lit the last load of charcoal and prepared for some heavy action.

None came.

The second batch was far too cool. The inferno of the first bag never materialized. The second bag was slow to ignite and when it finally did burn, it was cool enough that I could place a finger on the bare metal of the grill lid and not be burned. The ribs and burgers just sat there, not even cooking, as pink as they'd been at the supermarket.

I was eventually forced to move the uncooked meat from the useless grill and finish it off in the kitchen oven.

Oh, the humiliation.

British barbecue: 2
Postman: 0

I did get a consolation prize. Everyone enjoyed the burgers, and even more so the ribs. Though I was slightly dilatory in serving up the goods, the assembled guests complimented my grilling prowess, and even commiserated with me.

"It's a British barbecue, mate," said N (one of Adam's friends), as if that explained everything.

Jeff's cornflake potatoes were by far the most popular thing on the menu, but we won't talk about that. I can't have it said that a Canadian served up a tastier dish at a barbecue than an American, can I?

Way to upstage me there, Jeff old pal.

Anyway, we made a jolly night of it. Once the cooking was done I was able to sit down, relax, enjoy a burger and a beer, and yell at the TV along with the rest of the guys as the English World Cup team played to a somewhat embarrassing 0-0 draw with Algeria. (The ladies sat outside with a bottle of wine, sharing some much-needed girl talk. Jeff joined them, but we won't talk about that either.)

After the game we all got drunk and partied until the wee hours of the morning.

Pretty good day overall, I guess.

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?

a funny thing happened on the way to the bookstore

So there I was, wandering around Barnes & Noble, trying to figure out what the hell they'd done to the place. Everything was swapped around. The manga section had been shunted 30 feet to the northwest, the science fiction shelves had done an about-face, and it was anyone's guess where the dictionaries and thesauri had disappeared to. In the middle of this pursuit, I locked eyes with a two people coming inside the shop, who like me appeared somewhat disoriented. The woman was tall, middle-aged, with clear blue eyes, short dirty-blonde hair, sturdily built, wearing lots of denim. The man was similarly clothed, and had the look of a congenial vulture: tan-skinned, goggle-eyed, hook-nosed, pencil-necked, with a bald-patch crowning a ring of feathery brown hair.

I grinned sympathetically.
"They've switched everything around on us."
"I know," the woman said. "What's up with that?"
"Science-fiction section's over here now," I said, pointing, just to delineate which component of the store I habitually haunted. The woman, who was still wearing the same smile she had been when she entered, said, "Who reads science fiction? This is the book for you."
She held out a book. It was a large paperback with a black cover, and white, angular, futuristic lettering on it. It had some strange sort of illustration, like the Earth consumed with fire or laser beams. I turned the book over, and skimmed the synopsis. It was a militant science fiction epic, reminding me vaguely of Ender's Game, or perhaps Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
"Looks interesting," I said, handing it back.
"I wrote it," the woman said. Far too late, I noticed the similarity between the garishly-lit photograph on the back cover and the woman standing in front of me.
"Oh! Well...nice job."
"Yeah, thank you."
"Congratulations, you broke into that competitive market," I effused, grateful that I'd managed to think of something more edifying than "nice job."
"Thank you!" the woman said. She held up her book. "It's on the Barnes & Noble website. They won't put it on the shelves, though. I self-published, and they only stock the major publishers in their stores."
"Elitist pigs," I sympathized.
"That's why I'm here," she continued. "I need to talk to them about that."
My interest was piqued. I'd read a lot of blogs and websites about self-publishing, and I was beginning to think about trying it myself.
"You self-published?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said. That smile hadn't moved an inch, all the time we'd been talking. The woman's boyfriend (or whatever he was) had sneaked away and was paging through a large coffee table book in the markdown section.
"Self-publishing's the way to go," the woman said. "Self-publishing is killing regular publishing."
"So I've heard," I said. "I've read a lot of blogs and websites about self-publishing. I'm beginning to think about trying it myself." "Do you write?" she asked.
"I've got a completed 53,000-word manuscript at home," I said, trying to remain in neutral. "Also science fiction."
The woman held up her book again. "This was originally 127,000 words. Then I came in here and bought a book about editing. I was able to cut out about 24,000 words."
"That so?"
"Yeah," she said. "Which is good, because with self-publishing, you pay by the page."
"I didn't know that."
"Yep," she said. "But my friends and readers said it was too short. They didn't want it to end."
For the first time, the woman's male companion spoke up. He had a pronounced English accent.
"I'm holding out for the sequel," he said to me. "Her book was good."
"What are you doing?" the woman asked him, looking at the book in his hands.
"I was trying to see if your Vista was in here," the man said. The woman peered at the book in his hands, and read the title aloud. "The World's Worst Cars?"
The man grinned, and let out an evil chuckle. Chuckling herself, the woman grabbed the book from him and threw it back on the shelf with its fellows.
"Are we getting out of here, or what?" she asked.
"Good luck with your negotiations," I said to the woman.
"Yeah, thank you!" the woman said, her smile hitching up another notch. "Good luck to you too."

I stayed at B&N just long enough to ascertain that copies of Writer's Market were in stock, then decided I could just sign up for an online account for $5.99 per month. Then I left.

Self-publishing. It had been something I had considered, and am still considering. I haven't yet tried (nor, therefore, failed) to find a major market for my book. Part of me would like to keep trying to get published by a well-known and established publishing firm, just to say that I could and did. Part of me would like to see my novel on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, gussied up and beautiful, the cover art shining out brighter than Botticelli's Venus, the name Bantam or Penguin or Doubleday emblazoned on the spine. The other part of me doesn't care WHO the heck publishes it, as long as it's printed and circulated, and finds its way to the hands and eyes and hearts of people who want to read it. The first part of me snickers at the second part and says, "Yeah, right. Thou craven! Wouldst thou forsake the emblem of Bantam or Doubleday? Wouldst thou content thyself with inferior binding, with a cheap paper cover and second-rate cover art, with limited circulation? A work which flasheth in the pan?"
"Thy argument hath merit," the second part of me sighs, shoulders slumping.
"This digit I hold before me hath knowledge of thy mother," sneers the first part.
The way I see it, there are pros and cons to self-publishing, just as there are to mainstream publishing. With self-publishing, your book will be published, if you can pay...and don't care how small an audience your work reaches. On the other hand, you're nobody's fool, and don't give a hang for money-grubbing editors, unfair book deals, copyright scams, inept agents, or any of that rot. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I'll have to think about this one.

To publish, or to self-publish? That is the question.

treading the boards

So, says the storyteller, sitting in a chair on the back porch, a gin gimlet in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time I was in a play?
It was 1992. I was six, and in first grade. I had been tapped to perform in Oakview Elementary's Thanksgiving play. And get this: for some mysterious reason, I was picked to play an Indian.
This wasn't the most politically correct play, either. In the early 90s, political correctness hadn't evolved beyond an amorphous invertebrate thrashing its way around a primordial soup of bull-squeeze. Be it otherwise, the ACLU would've been on this play like white on rice. I don't remember much of it, unfortunately. I don't think I had any lines. My memory of the affair is almost completely gone. Most of what I know I gleaned from the videotape.
Yes, Mom rented a camcorder and taped the whole affair. Of course. I can't hardly stand to watch it, even now. It mostly consists of me, my costars and I, wearing brightly colored headbands with feathers stuck in them, dancing around in a circle in front of 300 people, kicking our legs up, flailing our hands around, and singing in little-kid voices. "Hiya, hiya ah hiya hi-ya-ya-ya Hiya, hiya ah hiya hi-ya-ya-ya!"
You honestly can't blame me for mentally suppressing this, can you?
I didn't win an Academy Award for my performance. Before and after the big dance number, my costars and I just sat around looking complacent, grinning like woodchucks and waving to our mothers. I highly doubt that Squanto would've recognized us. Even the Pilgrims would've laughed themselves sick. If there were any history teachers in the audience, I didn't see 'em. They probably excused themselves before the intermission.
That's the only play I've ever been in. I have since become afflicted with chronic stage-fright, which still hasn't wholly deserted me. Class presentations scared me stiff; standing in front of more than three people was torture; I died a thousand deaths before every piano recital. The only thing that didn't scare me was reading aloud. That's because I knew I did it a million times better than anybody else in class. It's called "inflection," people. You may have heard of it.
Since I've tagged this post with a "humor" label, I shall leave you with a joke. I went over to my buddy John's house one afternoon a while ago. His father was busy doing some landscaping. John objected to this. Why? John's father had removed a bush from the side of the driveway. John claimed that this bush provided him with a landmark vital to the act of reversing his car out of the driveway. John's father was nonplussed.
"You know," he said, "they have these things called mirrors."
"Yeah," I agreed, "you might wanna look into 'em."
Next up: a long-overdue book review. Stay tuned.

Kelly's Heroes

Most war movies fit into into one of three molds:

Mold #1: Bunch of guys. Guys claim to hate each other. Guys are really buddies. Guys go to war. Guys have to take some hill or something. Most guys die. Remaining guys feel guilty. We Were Soldiers (2002), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Green Berets (1968), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Gallipoli (1981) fit this mold.

Mold #2: Bunch of guys. Guys are behind enemy lines/inside a prison camp/up against overwhelming odds. Guys have to escape. Guys come up with interesting harebrained scheme to escape. Harebrained scheme works. Some guys die. Remaining guys get away with mixed feelings. Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Von Ryan's Express (1965), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Hell is for Heroes (1962) fall under this category.

Mold #3: Bunch of guys here, bunch of guys there, bunch of guys somewhere else. Bunch of guys here take a hill. Bunch of guys there conquer a town. Bunch of guys somewhere else destroy a vital enemy thing. Overarching picture of heroic war effort is painted. The Longest Day(1962), The Battle of the Bulge (1965) and other war epics belong here. Patton (1971) might also fit in this category, except that in his case, it's just one man going all over heck and back, machine-gunning this, exploding that, kicking the hell out of the other. 

Noticing a pattern here? There's this bunch of guys. And they have to get something, or go somewhere, or blow something up, or all three. But the theme is doing. Setting aside pessimistic flicks like Apocalypse Now (1979), war movies generally concern the selfless bravery of ordinary men in pursuit of a lofty sociopolitical cause. Serving one's country. Protecting the defenseless. Accomplishing a mission. Learning to cooperate. Establishing peace and justice. Patriotic sacrifice, high moral feeling, the do-or-die kind of mentality. Even movies about P.O.W.s, such as the excellent Stalag 17 (1953), or nihilistic WWII movies that are really about the Vietnam War, like The Dirty Dozen (1967), conform to the same school of thought. (The Dirty Dozen, by the way, is totally effing brilliant. You'll feel as though you could chew on solid rocks or split rails with your nose after watching it. That's how masculine it is.) It's all about defeating the enemy, forwarding the good and righteous, courage under fire, upholding a nation's pride, or just fighting for the man next to you. You never saw a war movie where the protagonists were in it purely for themselves, did you? (Okay, okay, I know...The Dirty Dozen.)

There's also Kelly's Heroes (1970), starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, and Don Rickles. France, 1944. The Normandy invasion is several months old, and Allied forces have pushed deep into Fortress Europe. One battered unit, an element of the American 35th Infantry Regiment, has been pushed particularly hard. They've been at the front lines for months. Not only have they had to deal with the fiercest soldiers in the Wehrmacht, but they must also routinely dodge incoming fire from an inept American artillery commander. Every time these guys get close to a town, with booze and soft beds and warm baths and "passionate women," the 3rd Army comes in and takes over, and the 35th goes back out into the rain and mud again, up to the front lines. Needless to say, these guys are sick and tired of the business. 

The movie opens on an especially dismal night. The rain is bucketing down. The thunder mingles with bursting shells. Kelly (Eastwood) is sitting in a Jeep with a captured German officer...right in the middle of a horde of mobilizing German troops. A traffic cop spots him and Eastwood calmly drives away, out of the town, back across friendly lines, and up to a large barn near a canal. Inside, the platoon's commanding sergeant, Big Joe (Savalas), looking harassed as usual, is yelling at that aforementioned artillery commander to lift his barrage: the mortars are not coming down on the Germans, but rather the barn. Kelly goes about interrogating the German officer, who speaks good English. Inside the Hun's briefcase are papers, documents, and some rather suspicious-looking lead bars. The German officer is noticeably nervous. Kelly takes a closer look at one of the bars. He soon discovers that the lead is merely painted on. And there's solid gold underneath. 

Kelly doesn't waste an instant. He grabs the bottle of "liberated" brandy, sits the colonel down in a corner, and proceeds to interrogate him. Sure enough, the Germans are transporting a mountain of gold bars from France to Germany. Kelly learns the location of the convoy from the now-sozzled colonel, scoops up the briefcase, and runs from the barn just as it explodes under an American fusillade. After the platoon's deadhead captain sets them on leave at a secluded farmhouse ten miles from the nearest town, the men have finally had enough. They agree to go after the gold with Kelly. 

There's just one catch: it's behind enemy lines, inside a locked bank, in a German-held town, guarded by three Tiger tanks. But that doesn't stop these guys. The gold fever is full upon them. Millions of dollars in gold bullion is a far better payoff for risking their necks than the regulation $50 they earn each month. So they mount up and head out. Along the way, they acquire some unusual allies: Crapgame (Rickles), the tightfisted, financially-minded supply officer who finances the expedition; and Oddball (Sutherland), the philandering commander of an AWOL tank squad. He and his fez-wearing crew are hippies 20 years before it's cool. They laze in the sun, have dalliances with the local women, get drunk, listen to strange music, and shoot paint-filled shells out of their tank guns. But they're handy in a pinch. This unlikely team somehow manages to sally 30 miles behind enemy lines to the bank, and...

Well, I won't spoil it. Suffice it to say, Kelly's Heroes is a splendid movie. The plot is refreshingly unique: instead of the usual heroics and derring-do, we get an adventurous, often-comedic tale about a bunch of guys sating their greed. But mind you, the premise doesn't eclipse the plot. There's plenty of action in this film for war-movie nuts like me. There are shoot-outs, espionage, and fireballs galore. Indeed, the demolitions budget must've been astonishing: the film has more explosions per yard than even Patton could boast. The final sequence (the taking of the town) is one of the most brilliantly crafted battle plans I've ever seen, wonderfully shot and expertly choreographed. The characters are diverse and endless fun. Big Joe, played to the hilt by a masterful Telly Savalas, curmudgeonly as hell; Little Joe, the timid radio operator, always changing his story; Cowboy, the drawling Texan and half-track driver; Willard, his harmonica-playing sidekick; Oddball and his delightful laid-back flakiness ("Why you gotta be hittin' me with them negative waves so early in the morning?"); and many more.

Memorable characters, a one-of-a-kind plot (for a war movie, anyway), explosive action, and hilarious hijinks—culminating in a memorable showdown scene at the movie's climax—combine to make Kelly's Heroes a fun and worthwhile film for almost everyone. Those who enjoy a rousing tale about a motley crew of greedy buggers sticking it to the man should watch this film, by any and all means.

And don't be hittin' me with them negative waves.

fireside chat

I was reading something on Jon Paul's blog Where Sky Meets Ground about how this one blogger has surpassed 100 followers after blogging for just two months. Why? Because her content is amazing, he says. I've run across several blogs which other folks label "amazing," and I'm still not sure exactly what the common factor might be. As near as I can figure out, though, these "amazing" blogs are popular because they speak the truth. They resonate. They tell stories everyone can relate to. They showcase the human condition in some evocative way. They're simply written, intimately personal, refreshingly honest, and often eerily familiar. Jon Paul has declared his intention to begin publishing stories about the lessons he's learned during his eighteen-plus years in the military, specifically in regards to writing. That should resonate with any male between the ages of 13 and 99; plus a vast cross-section of the population who are interested in writing, or need help with some of the particularly trying aspects of it. Now, I'm not saying that I blog just to garner followers. No worthwhile blogger does. That's not the point. Having a zillion followers is good in some ways; feedback, community-building, and (for writers) literary criticism. But it's an added bonus, not the ends of the means. That being said, I wouldn't object to appealing to a wider audience. Right now, I suppose, this blog is pretty esoteric: booze, literature, aviation, travel. If you're an earthbound, jingoistic, illiterate teetotaller, the Sententious Vaunter will hold no interest for you. What am I missing? Those stories. Those relatable, resonant, intriguing vignettes. Those intimate, whimsical glimpses into people's lives that I (and many others) love to read. Dumb dogs. Vanishing passports. People who forget their gender after a few drinks. After all, people don't live on book reviews alone. Unfortunately for me, I don't get drunk often enough to tell war stories about myself and Wild Turkey. I'm not living in a foreign country, unless you consider my room the home ground and the rest of Mom and Dad's house alien territory. Nothing much ever happens in this town besides murders, rapes, gang fights, drug deals, and sexual predation. Most of the stuff I do with my friends is pretty typical: we watch movies, go to dinner parties, drink beer, go off-roading, etc. (Actually, THAT might be worth blogging about...something really interesting happened. We were driving back down Pilot Rock Road after failing to reach Fawnskin the back way due to heavy slush when a dirtbiker flagged us down, and...) But fear not! I may have failed to judiciously post current events and thus keep my blog timely, but I shall not fail in this. I hereby resolve to devote a few more posts to personal stories. I bloviate a lot, but I don't reminisce enough. So I'm going to tell you some of the funny, interesting, whimsical, didactic, touching, enlightening, enrapturing and hilarious things that have happened to me. If nothing funny, interesting, whimsical, didactic (etc.) has happened recently, I'll draw on something from previous years, college life or childhood. We'll have ourselves a little fireside chat every now and again. Should be a good time. Stay tuned. And if you like what you see, follow along. It'll probably get better.

concern

One of the perks of driving from Los Angeles to San Diego on the night of the 15th was that we got to sleep in the morning after. I awoke about 8:00 or so, having slept passably well on a soft bed in an unfamiliar room with airplanes flying over all night. Honestly, it reminded me of our old townhouse back in Alexandria, Virginia. We were practically within spitting distance of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Every three minutes or so, a jet plane would take off and climb into the sky with a dull, faint roar. They did that around the clock, every day of the week, morning, noon and night. I used to stretch out on my bed in my second-story room, facing west, watching these planes as they clambered into the black and starry night, lights winking merrily, their soft thunder muted by the glass windows, the distant rumble strangely comforting. Ten years later, in San Diego, these airplanes didn't wake me up. But they might have kept me from sleeping as deeply as I should have. To summarize, I didn't feel particularly rested on the morning of the sixteenth. The free continental breakfast at the HoJo closed down at nine, so Alli and I got ready and headed down there about 8:37 or so. We broke our fast on cold cereal, toast and almost-ripe fruit. We took the opportunity to pull out the map of San Diego we'd picked up at the front desk and study it. We'd chosen hotels wisely. We weren't but a few miles from SeaWorld. So, after we'd finished breakfast and checked out, we loaded up the Jeep, got on the road, made a few hectic right turns, stumped up for parking, and were walking through the park gates in the warm sunshine in less than a half-hour. I'd been to San Diego a few times before. I used to have a great uncle living down there. Uncle Joe, we called him, but his real name was Alvin. He had a two-story, bungalow-esque sort of place about 15 minutes' walk from Ocean Beach Pier. His wife, Dee, passed away some years before he did, leaving him alone in that big old house in the palm-coated hills. It was a bit sad. At least he never had to deal with any hard winters. No matter what time of year we visited him, the temperature was always a uniform 80 degrees. Sometimes it got up to 82, but that was a heat wave, Joe would say. Of course, Allison and I visited S.D. in mid-December. The temperature had plummeted to something like, I don't know, 75 degrees, with plenty of warm sunshine and a sweet, cool sea breeze. I claim to hate California, but I lovelovelove San Diego. It's one of only two places in my home state I'd actually consider living in for longer than two seconds. We paid up, ducked back to the car to deposit a few contraband items (the lady at the gate was checking bags most assiduously), and entered SeaWorld San Diego. Ahhhh, what a glorious day. See above. The place was every bit as nice as I'd remembered, if not more nicer. There were Christmas decorations strung up everywhere, as there had been at Universal Studios. The 400-foot Skytower had been hung with gigantic strands of lights and capped with a huge star, dolling it up like an enormous Christmas tree. Hymns and carols issued softly from the park's speakers, and that wonderful sea breeze kept blowing, mingling with the happy laughter of children and the sounds of rushing water. Maybe commercial entertainment ain't so bad after all. Allison and I wandered about in semi-logical fashion, doing and seeing just about everything the park had to offer. We visited the sea turtles, petted the dolphins, chuckled at the sea lions, made a fuss of the penguins, touched the sea stars, fondled the stingrays, winced at the eels, and ate all the barbecued meat and fries we could get our hands on. It was a good, good day. Shamu was in fine form, too. The last show we saw before leaving the park was the big ol' killer whale extravaganza at 2:30. It was everything I'd remembered: some jumps, some big splashes, a whole lot of oohs and aahs, and quite a few fish. Every time I go to a zoo or an aquarium, it's as if I'm seeing it for the first time. I never remember just how much is inside. We went to see the sea lion show (hence the chuckling), and whaddya know! It was abjectly different from the other one I saw before, with new gimmicks and new actors, human and pinniped alike. I'd completely forgotten about the freshwater aquarium, with its humongous bullfrogs and piranha swarms and see-through guppies. I got to pet the stingrays last time; this was the first time I'd ever petted a dolphin. THAT was COOL. They were friendly as all get-out, and swam right up to us, clicking and squeaking. They even seemed to enjoy a good pat on the head. Touching a dolphin was, somehow, even weirder than fondling a stingray. They were wet, of course, and extremely tough and rubbery, but not slimy as the rays had been. It was a fantastic experience. We happened to be standing near a zookeeper in a wetsuit, who was busy brushing away at the edges of the enclosure. He noticed what fun we were having, and introduced us personally to the dolphins who swam up (Captain and Bugs). He was friendly and knew his stuff. He even helped us call them over. It was one of the most marvelous things I've ever experienced, that's for dang sure. Another reason that we chuckled at the sea lions was this: sea lions, in fact, possess similar gender discrepancies to humans. Let me explain. We walked over to the sea lion exhibit after the show. The sea lions were separated according to sex: males in one pen and females in another. (Are female sea lions called sea lionesses? They ought to be.) Picture this: the females are getting along swimmingly. They're sleeping in heaps, perfectly free and easy with each other. Swing your head a few degrees to the left and look into the males' enclosure. You will observe the largest boy sea lion launch himself from the water and unceremoniously slap the smallest sea lion off a rock with his flipper. The smallest sea lion falls into the drink and sullenly swims off in search of a less coveted rock to lie on. Yep. That's boys and girls for you, folks. Alli and I both enjoyed ourselves immensely, but there was a tiny worry tinging my peace of mind. Allison was pretty quiet. She seemed, in fact, a little distant. I was agonizing insecurely over this perceived coolness. I honestly couldn't tell if she was just tired from all the sleep we'd missed thus far, or whether she'd soured on me in the wake of yesterday's car accident. And it was killing me. I know, I know. 'Twas stupid of me to worry. She's a good friend, after all, and had told me that she didn't hold it against me. I should've just taken her word for it. But I guess I must be more fragile inside than I like to admit. I was convinced that her opinion of me had slipped a few notches, and I was, shall we say...concerned. Next up on our to-do list: Ocean Beach. Allison had expressed a keen desire to walk on a beach, seeing as it was -16 degrees and snowing at her house. I figured Ocean Beach, with its fine sand, tidal pools, copious piles of flotsam, and huge pier (the longest on the West Coast) would suit just fine. The trick was getting there. We had to get on I-8 again for a bit, and that proved to be problematic from SeaWorld Drive. For me, anyway. As has already been proven, I'm a boneheaded driver. Despite Alli's best navigational efforts, I missed the exit, and had to come back and take another run at it. We made it the second time around, and found ourselves on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, searching for Niagara Avenue, which lead to (and, in fact, turned into) Ocean Beach Pier. We cruised through suburban San Diego in so doing. Alli commented that, "minus the palm trees," it looked rather like her aunt's neighborhood back home. We reached Niagara and hauled right. By some amazing quirk of fate, we found a parking space. Some guy in a pickup was just pulling out as we came back down Niagara after a fruitless first run up. We parked. I paused for a moment to make a call to my insurance company; I'd meant to do it earlier, but hadn't. They'd actually been attempting to call me. The woman I'd hit had apparently already contacted her insurance company, who had gotten in touch with mine, pronto. I managed to get a hold of a living body and set up a time to get everything hashed out. Alli, decorous as ever, stepped out of the car to preserve my precious ego. I was nonetheless red-faced as I climbed out of the car to join her on the sidewalk. At this point, any reminder of the screw-up I'd committed was bound to bring my desire to turn into a pile of sludge bubbling back again. I shook it off as best I could and the two of us moseyed up the gently sloping avenue to the pier. The Pacific Ocean blossomed before us, lit by the westering sun. Shame and concern were instantly swept away in that sacred glow. The clement sea air swirled gently about us like waves on the nearby sea, washing us free of travel grime, scrubbing out souls as it passed. The palm trees swayed in that magnificent breeze. The sky was an amalgam of purple and orange, feathered with the most delicate traces of cirrus clouds. Surfers in wetsuits wobbled on boards a few hundred yards offshore; the waves clamored merrily upon the sand; young men kicked soccer balls across the beach, while an electric guitar's tinny chords filtered out a boom box; hippies and freaks of every size and description wandered up and down the sidewalks, toting guitar cases or backpacks or dreadlocks or joints, gathering here and there in groups; joggers huffed steadily along the pier; and windburned fishermen looked to their lines, standing here and there by the rails. Everywhere were young couples strolling hand-in-hand. Sailboats scudded along the horizon. I haven't been treated to a scene that beautiful in a long time. Alli and I joined this menagerie of human life, walking slowly along the pier, past the fishermen and joggers, past the restaurant, out onto the very end of the pier. There we stood, and took in the ocean and all it had to say. Seagulls and pelicans soared over the waters, and that sky kept getting more beautiful by the minute. There was hardly any need to speak. We stood there for a time, drinking it all in, wandering back and forth, snapping pictures and making comments. I remembered just how much I loved coming to this pier, even though poor old Uncle Joe had passed on. I had to admit, though, it was a million times better coming here with someone than just by myself, even if that someone had witnessed me backing into someone and then almost doing a runner. The light was dying as we walked back down the pier, down the steps, and onto the beach...but not before we'd encountered this fellow. He was nakedly interested in some of the fishermen's dividends. He was flapping from one side of the pier to the other, rail to rail, and darting furtive glances all about him, like an old man heading for the cookie jar. Our prior visit to SeaWorld had gotten us both in the mood for a little beachcombing. So we strolled across the sand, past moldering piles of kelp, to the tide pools. We hopped among them, rather like the macaroni penguins we'd seen earlier, and peered into every puddle. We didn't turn up much. We found one large, mysterious, pulsating mass half-hidden inside a conch shell, and a tiny hermit crab. We didn't mind. It was something just being down there, twilight beginning to gather, the waves resounding with the incoming tide, sailboats wending their way out upon the open sea, the sky deepening its hues with the oncoming night, and the music from that boom box drifting idly across the beach. If there's such a thing as heaven, I hope it's similar to what I've described above: serene and beautiful, with a few boom boxes thrown in. We finally packed it in, walked slowly back up the stairs, down Niagara Avenue, and back to Roger. After a brief stop for fuel, we were back on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, looking for I-8. We found it easily...or rather, its terminus. That's right, I actually got to get on Interstate 8 right where it actually begins, just a few hundred yards from Ocean Beach, San Diego. How cool is that? I mean, people travel on interstate highways all the time, don't they? But how many of them actually get to the end? We weren't on the 8 for long. It began to get choked up, so Allison suggested we dodge north on CA-163 instead of waiting. That sounded like a good suggestion to me, so we did. Unfortunately, when we actually merged onto the 15, I missed the carpool lane. So I had to sit there in traffic for an extra 20 minutes before things finally thinned out and we got back up to speed again. (For those of you who may be unfamiliar with carpool lanes...they're these really neat highway lanes open to any vehicle with two or more passengers. They're meant to thin out traffic during rush hour, and encourage carpooling. Since I had Allison with me, I could legally use the carpool lane...only, for some reason, I kept forgetting to, which meant that I spent a LOT more time stuck in bloody traffic jams than I should have. Oh well.) Darkness fell completely by the time we made it to Corona, where we'd promised to meet Allison's cousin, TJ, for dinner. By an amazing coincidence, Allison has a cousin who works with Young Americans (a song and dance troupe) and works in Corona. (But he lives in Long Beach. Ugh, I wouldn't fancy that commute. He said he had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to make it to work by 5:30. Eee-yuck.) So she called him, and, after a lengthy discussion of our plans, finally managed to make a date with him. We had a little difficulty locating the right exit, particularly in the dark, but after a few missed approaches and wrong turns, we were sitting in the Corona T.G.I. Friday's and ready for some wholesale meeting-up. Presently, TJ and his Canadian girlfriend, Tara, came in. We rose to meet them, and spent the next two hours chatting and scintillating. We even called up Alli and TJ's aunt, Toots, who was having a birthday, and sang to her over the phone. It was one of the most interesting times I've had with a couple of complete strangers. TJ picked up the tab, too. Great guy. Must be, if he's related to Alli. And so, wearied from our two-day odyssey in La-La Land, Alli and I said our goodbyes, climbed back inside Roger once again, and headed for the open road. Traffic by this time was light. We reached home base in good stead, before the parents had retired to bed, and sacked out forthwith. My concerns about what Alli thought of me were far from fading completely. But, as I lay on my cot in the solacing dark of the family room, I thought they'd faded at least a little. That was good. I'd need all my concentration to survive what would come next...an all-nighter in the world capital of sin, vice, and dreams brought to life... ...Las Vegas, Nevada.