Beautiful Handcrafted Animals

A solid contribution to the WTF Files is this story about nine-year-old Jericho Scott.  His fastballs have been clocked in at 40 miles per hour and his little league has told his coach and parents that he’s not allowed to play baseball in their league because he’s too good.

Buh?

You can read it for yourself, folks.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but honestly, isn’t that the shape of the world, nowadays?  I mean, I can understand parents being concerned about their kids going up to bat against a kid throwing that fast, sure.  But aren’t we supposed to encourage talented kids to, oh, I don’t know, exercise those talents?

Good talents, I mean.  Tell that kid on your block who pulls the wings off of flies to cut the shit.

There’s a whole ruckus over this issue, but you can read that for yourself in that link up there.  For my part, I’m just going to sit here and be amazed, maybe a litle embarassed, too.

I will say this, though; as I finished off that article, I couldn’t help but think, “maybe about ten years from now, that kid’ll be a superstar and someone will dig up that old story and it’ll get emailed around as a, ‘look how funny’ kind of link.”

I hope so.

I’ve been re-reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods on my Amazon Kindle this week, going rrrrealy slowly and catching lots of stuff I hadn’t caught in previous reads.

“Reads”?  Yeah.  I think this is my third time through.  The Kindle is funny that way — I’ll pick up new stuff I might not ever look at and really enjoy it, but I’ll also fill it up with “comfort food” for when I just want to curl up with an old friend.

It’s also funny in the stuff that you can’t read on it.  J.K. Rowling remains adamant that she won’t allow the Harry Potter books to appear in any electronic forms (even though you can download pirated versions of all seven).  Do I really need to re-read those again?  Not just yet, but I’m sure I will eventually, and I’d really appreciate not lugging around monstrous hardcovers when I do that.

I want to read Jose Saramango’s, Blindness, though that’s not on the Kindle, either.  Same for Cory Doctorow’s, Little Brother, which queerly enough WAS available, but only for a couple days (I missed my shot on that one).

There are a few Robert A. Heinlein books available, like Glory Road and Stranger In A Strange Land, but not his whole booklist, stuff like Time Enough for Love or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Some of the choices are downright odd, to be honest.  And I’m a bit of whore when it comes to “collecting” stuff like this; doubly so when its stuff I can collect that won’t pile up in my house-of-many-piles.

I’ve also grabbed a couple “Complete Works Of” collections for the Kindle, finding them to be, almost universally, utter crap.  Why?  Well, I got “The Complete Conan”, which I thought would be a funky thing to have.  Problem: they formatted the text wrong so, instead of flowing from line to line when you read, it cuts off every 1.5 lines so it looks like some extended damned poem, or something.

You try to read it and you find yourself trying to squeeze the lines into meter and/or rhyme — NOT a pleasurable way to read.

What started this sort of free-association post going, by the way, is I was thinking about re-reading some other, non-Kindle stuff.  Stuff like the Hellboy collections and the Sandman Ultimate editions we have in the house.

Plus, with the Watchmen movie coming out this Winter, you sort of have to give that one another go, no matter how many times you’ve read it before, right?

Unless that’s just me.

I doubt I’m the only person who reads and re-reads stuff ad infinitum, but I have to wonder sometimes.  I mean, it takes a while to chug through all 75 issues of Sandman — do lots of other folks do that on a regular basis?  Do folks just read them once, think, “hey that was nice” and then move on with their lives?

Dunno.  I figure in a given year at least a quarter to a third of everything I read is stuff I’ve read before.  I couldn’t guess if that’s grossly high or grossly low or what.  It works for me, though, and the “comfort food” is good to hit between the really big meals.

Saw Sex and the City last night with Jessy and I’m pleased to report that my genitals did not retreat back into my body. Men! It’s safe to take your girlfriends and wives to see this movie.

Honest.

I’d make sure to get some popcorn and a drink, maybe some candy. There’s a Fashion Week montage that’s timed almost perfectly for a bathroom break and you get to see a decent amount of topless women (it’s almost like they tossed in the montage and the bewbs just for us).

So go see it. Score some brownie points. In a Summer with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, The Dark Knight and probably a dozen other “man movies” I’m forgetting to mention (not Indy 4 — that movie sucked donkey scrotum), it’s the least you can do.

Oh, unless you’re like my buddy Sam, who broke up with a girl he was dating two days before the opening so he could avoid the movie. You have to kind of admire balls like that, eh?

As the title clearly indicates, this is a dignified, sophisticated post.  I started writing it earlier today, describing how I spent Sunday driving in and out of New York City, how I saw the uncovered pool at the house I’m buying for the first time, how Jack The Dog had a nice walk on Saturday before it got too hot.

Nice, huh?  Sounds really family friendly and all that.  I might have even worked in some bit about how, “spending a day running around, interestingly enough, lets the deep-down part of a writer’s brain work some stuff out while you’re not concentrating on it.”  Then I could tell you some plot development I came up with.  Allude to it in such a way as to not “spoil” it, should the book ever see the light of day.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about the UroClub.

What is the UroClub?  Well, I’ll tell you: it’s a faux golf club you bring out on the course with you TO PEE INTO.

Take a moment and digest that.

Yes, it looks like a golf club, “like a standard 7 iron”, the site says, in describing length, only it’s hollow AND YOU PEE INTO IT.

Presumably, you then carry it around with you FILLED WITH PEE while you play golf for three to five hours.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been out on a golf course (hell, I don’t even know if you exist — I could be telling this story just for myself), but if you have, there’s one overriding detail common to EVERY golf course in the world . . . plenty of things you can pee on.

Seriously.  Desert courses are nothing but sand and brush and more sand.  You can pee on sand.

Grassy courses have . . . grass.  We’re allowed to pee on grass, right?

Some courses even have, oh, I don’t know, bathrooms.  You can pee in a bathroom, can’t you?

I picture someone getting this as a gag-gift and bringing it out to the course.  It’s a laugh and all that, but then, after a few holes and a few beers, it’s time to give back the rental beverages.   As is likely to happen, the other three members of the party have to pee, too.

So they go to the bathroom (or pee off to the side of the course on sand / grass / whatever).

But not our boy.  See, he showed everyone his silly UroClub and now they want him to use it.  They tease him about it.  So, okay, what the hell, he laughs, and he goes off to the side (probably where they went) and he drapes the little, attached towel across the front of his pants, and he does his business.

And now he gets to either (a) carry his faux golf club filled with pee around with him all day, or (b) pour the pee on the ground.

Neither option is great.  In the first one, well, that pee’s going to get pretty warm as they keep playing.  It’s not going to smell very nice when he gets home.  Baked-in pee doesn’t clean off very well.  I’d say his wife’s going to “accidentally” toss that out when he sheepishly hands it to her to clean (c’mon, fellas, don’t pretend).

Or, he’s going to pour the pee out but, well, here’s the thing.  It’s not like he’s got a hose handy to rinse the inside of the club, right?  So there’s still going to be some pee.  Oh, it won’t be sloshing about, but it’ll be there.  And now it’s even worse, because maybe he doesn’t give the club to his wife when he gets home.  Maybe he figures, “it’s clean, I poured it out” when he got home and left it in his bag.

Left it for the next time he plays.

Left it sit.  Baked-in pee and all.

I daresay that’s going to be a worse smell, eh?

I’m going to steal some bandwidth here and link from their site.  If it gets pulled I’ll download it and then upload it to my server here, but I figure some stuff you HAVE to share:

This is what it looks like when you unscrew the top to PEE into it:

Verrrrry Sophisticated.  No one would ever guess . . .

Well, like I said, it’s a very dignified, sophisticated post.  Next time we might have to get a little low-brow with ourselves.

Just like the title says, I’m a lazy bastard. Blogging, it turns out, is something I’m only good at in the abstract. See, I feel like I should have something interesting to say if I’m blogging and lately . . . well, not so much.

Okay, so we’ve seen a couple movies, so that’s something.

And I started writing a new book. I figure that’s something, too.

Movies first, then? We haven’t seen anything surprising, I’m afraid. Iron Man was uniformly excellent. If you actually cared, though, you’d have already seen it, and made up your mind for yourself.

The new Indiana Jones movie was uniformly not excellent. The most enthusiastic reviews you’ll find online or in print sound like nothing so much as rationalizations or apologies. People reach to emphasize the stuff that worked for them (like hearing Harrison Ford talk “as Indy” again, or the swell of John Williams’ score). Others — like me — just can’t get past the crap.

Here’s my one sentence review of Indy IV. Do with it as you will: “In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we’ve got the “Star Wars Prequel” effect in full force; bits and pieces are good, but overall it feels like the storytellers are talking down to us, explaining where no explanations are necessary, and making us feel, not the joy of youth, but the, “don’t talk down to me” feeling so many kids have.”

Also, I’m going to start using, “Nuked The Fridge” from here on in when describing entertainment which has moved, ahem, past its freshness date. Used to be, “Jumped the Shark,” but in my opinion, that phrase has, heh, nuked the fridge.

Other stuff? I’ve read a couple books, re-read a couple old favorites. I wish more Robert A. Heinlein was available for my Amazon Kindle. Suppose that’s just a matter of time.

Oh, and the book. Yeaaaah, that . . . okay. Beautiful Handcrafted Animals is right where we last visited it: resting. First draft is done, or all-but done, which is really the same thing. The next words I’ll type for that beast will be for the Second draft which, hey, let’s all keep our fingers crossed that’ll be the Final Draft, eh?

But.

But I had another idea. More to say, it’s an old, old idea which I’ve been tossing around for a long, long time. Out of the blue, all of a sudden, boom, I had an idea which I like very much pop into my head. So I’m playing with it. One of the nice things about being an unpublished novelist is you can sort of flit here and there at will. Nobody’s breathing down my neck to finish finish finish by a certain date. So if I want to monkey about, I’m free to.

What’s the story with the new book?

The title, and some folks are going to start getting the idea I have a thing for weird book titles, should be, “Lions Together Are Called A Pride.” I’ll be referring to it internally as, “Lions Together”, mostly because it’s less to type.

What’s it about? Hmm, another one that’s hard to sum up. Essentially, it’s the story of a woman who experiences something extraordinary. Possibly she’ll learn something about herself, even though I’m not really a big fan of self-discovery.

If that seems vague, it’s purposely so. To explain what the, “something extraordinary” is, or what she takes away from it would be to give the whole thing away. Suffice it to say, I think it’s an interesting idea and, more importantly, an interesting character to write about.

Her name is Nicola, “Nikki” Arlen. Not that it matters. But if you see me talking about Nikki, you should know who I’m talking about.

I’d tell you about the other characters in the book, but so far they’re all dead. You’d be amazed how hard it is to write for dead people . . .

Oh, and for a final move, as far as, “what’s up now?” the answer is . . . stuff. Writing. Reading. We’re moving to a new house towards the back half of the Summer months. Things are good, and feeling good.

I’m going to work on posting here more regularly. That seems to spur me to write more regularly, which is, of course, a good thing.

So, there you go.

Christ on a stick, it’s been a rotten month.  Busy as hell at the “day job”, and it seems like every mouth-breathing fool with my cell phone can’t help but call up and stammer in confusion.

It’s  been a rough month.

And I’ve been really, really bad about posting.  See, nothing to post about, no writing, and basically nothing but days and days spent alternating between firing off emails and hours on the phone.

And my hands-free is busted, so I’m actually (shudder) talking using the phone itself.

Hold me.

I don’t know that there’s an “end” in sight for this ridiculous business.  My office (the downtown office) was under construction for a month and I figured that would be a good opportunity to catch up.  Get some writing done.  Maybe get to the gym in the morning and stuff.

Nope.

Every day, literally every day, I would get off to my computer and find insanity waiting in my Inbox.  Every day, literally, every day, I would find 3, 5, 10 messages waiting on my cell phone.

Don’t ask me, man.  Maybe it’s something in the water.

We’re doing jobs in Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Georgia.  Out of nowhere.  We’ve had weeks where we were doing 200, 300, even 400 person projects.

Out of nowhere.  Literally.  Phone call on Wednesday for Friday out of nowhere.  Phone call on Thursday for Thursday NIGHT out of nowhere.

Also, I got an awesome upper respiratory infection.  My doctor told me, “try not to talk for a couple days.”

So, of course, I spent the next two days SOLID on the phone.

Argh.

I don’t think it’s over.  Nosirre.  I don’t even think I’m going to get a break.  But I can’t wait for that to happen — it could be months or more before the wolves retreat to the hills and let me be for a drop.

So, here we go.

The plan is to give a quick read on the presently-existing First Draft.  Minor notes, mark it up but don’t fix it sort of thing.  Then I’ll get started on the Second Draft.  This is a much slower process, and may take many months (or longer, or shorter, depending on how hard the rest of the world starts kicking my ass).

I will update this space as we go.  Or as we don’t go.  People should feel free to harass me and/or make fun of me as we go along.  No posts?  Smack in the head.  Time, she is a wasting.

So, here we go (again).