Momentum

Well, I finished 'The Bridge to Camas Swale', the novel I mentioned before, and have set it through quite a few revisions now. I took a few weeks off to keep up in the small press to some extent and am now about half way through a second novel. I imagine I'll continue doing this until I'm dead. If the worst happens, these novels will just end up on my hard drive next to the stageplays, screenplays, collections of novellas, books of short stories, and the other 64 books of poetry I've penned and revised the shit out of, at this point.

I'm tired.

Wait... there's a crazy woman two booths down from me that keeps singing nonsensical words and telling me (I'm the only other one here in this restaurant) that she'd give up college if she had a boyfriend and that there's nothing wrong using an animal. I'm not entirely sure what she is inferring by this. Is she talking the whole 'men are like animals' thing, or something more like 'I make love with quadripeds'?

Now she's singing 'Cherish the Moment', but making up a lot of the words.

Shit, she's talking to me again. She's asking me if they make the cheesecake rightside up.

Another customer came in and was promptly approached by the crazy woman, who told the new customer (a hispanic woman), that both of them were ugly and deserved it. The hispanic woman ended up shouting curse words at the crazy woman in very fast, staccato spanish, and then angrily left. Huh.

And there we go, the crazy woman has just thrown her coffee cup across the room. Now they're escorting her out.

This is much more fun than creating the 14th chapter in my new novel.

Anyway, I'm tired. I'm going home. Goodnight. This more domestic and oblique form of madness is generally distracting, and I have a baby at home to cuddle anyway.

-Ray

Dear writers, I have an unpublished novel, too... So, am I invited to the party yet, or what?

I'm about to begin seeking an agent for a novel I wrote in the last couple months, and am excited, to some degree. I'm aiming high. In the meantime, my son has volunteered to be both my agent and editor until I can manage to acquire a more professional representation:

This is him after getting off the phone with a higher-tier, statuesque executive over at Knopf.

I've recently had some spoken word work put out, which is a little odd for me, as I don't do much in the way of public reading and spoken word. The last time I performed, I was (and this is no exaggeration) heckled from the stage under threats of being beaten to a pulp by some gigantic asswipe everyone kept calling 'The Drunk Steve'. This was in Olympia, Washington (Yeah, there's nothing like a heap of drugged-out, retro-clad, punk-adopting, Indy-worshipping hipsters with English degrees to perform in front of. Fun times. Those greeners, man... after a long day of making your coffee and talking about films and coke-parties, they sure do like to rip shit up at the grange and tell you all about how talented they are and you're not). So, various people in the crowd where I was performing began shouting "Do it Steve! Kick that poet's ass!" while I was still on stage performing, because the organization that put me on the stage set me up between metal bands, which was a horrible arrangement. A girl with a pink mohawk and Hello Kitty gear hurled her shoe at my head, which I kept. So naturally, I don't like readings anymore, and my spoken word is all oddity, anyway. However, John Vick picked up three pieces over at 'The Adroitly Placed Word', and one of them has been adopted by Beau Blue for a future animation project at the Cruziocafe. I'm pleased. I've got a little artwork involved with both appearances, too. Now, all I have to do is wait for 'The Drunk Steve' to stumble across them and show up at my house to exact his boozey vengeance, for which I am prepared.

Painter is doing well, as you can see from his picture below. We have a wonderful relationship and he has begun talking, finally. I look forward to being able to explain WHY one shouldn't touch a hot stoveburner, rather than the earlier, parental 'no' that most of us have to use. I explain anyway, but it'll be great once I know he's able to understand me, preferably by stating 'I totally understand why you're always right, dad... wow-- you certainly know a lot and I respect you to the point of comparing you with powerful Zeus in high Olympus. You are the Oddyseus of knowing handy things."

Happy new year, as well. 2007. Though, I have to say I am not without complaint. I mean, why can I not yet teleport? Who's in charge of that, as I'd like to lodge my complaint about this 'future' all of us are having to deal with. No teleportation. No commercial jetpacks. No ovens that will make you an omelette on their own, while reading you 'Of Mice and Men' and calibrating the brakes on your car... What happened? We wanted vaccines and moon travel, and we got Enron and Ipods.

I'd give up moon travel with no qualm if I could get a television that could tell me when something good was on. I mean, actually tell me: "Ray, there's a special on channel #93 about boy-bands, which is dumb and tasteless, but it's almost over, and when it is, a really rare episode of 'Fishing with John' is going to come on. Would you like me to pre-remove the commercials and tell the oven to start a pizza? I could also check the answering machine for you, because I think I overheard a message that one of your friends was in town, and maybe he could come over to watch it with you. That might be cool. What do you think?"

But that's shooting for the moon, right there, yeah?