Scotch Whiskey
Smoky sweet seduction,
Dancing vapors
Air, Water, Fire
Earth
Ancient wisdom
She inspires me
as I breathe her
message from beyond the grave
Scotch Whiskey
19
Monthly Archives: August 2004
Programming Note
For those who enjoy literary criticism, I recommend Writing.com. It’s a place where writers post their work and others give constructive criticism. The quality of the work is all over the map, but some is quite good. If you decide to sign up, I think I get points if I refer you.
I thought I had killed Baghdad Burning – as soon as I added the link she stopped posting, but it appears to be on the air again.
I stumbled across a site called blogshares (the logo at the bottom of the sidebar will take you there). It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know if I have the time to play at it. You invest in blogs, and as other people create links to the blog its value goes up. There are all kinds of other pseudo-financial plays you can make, but I haven’t figured them out yet. It may be a good way to find interesting blogs to read, since it is easy to spot active blogs which have been linked to by many people. Apparently someone did a play on MR&HBI a while ago, pumping up the stock and dumping shares. Take a look if you like that sort of thing.
The Monster Within
While the poll is at a dead tie I can release the story and not tell you whether I’ve fixed the glaring errors or not. That way you can decide. Leave a comment here if you want me to email you a copy. Don’t put your email address in the body of the message unless you want the killer spam robots to see it. If you have a mac, tell me if you would prefer RTF or Jer’s Novel Writer format (with JNW, you will see my margin notes and stuff, which might taint your judgement, but you might find interesting anyway.)
Disclaimers:
- Although I have deleted big problem chunks, some problems still remain. I will be working on them even as you read this draft.
- I expect criticism from anyone who reads this draft.
- The second part of the story (Part 3 if you count the prolog) just went through a major rewrite, and still doesn’t flow as well as the rest of the story.
- There are likely to be continuity problems after my big delete-o-rama. It is difficult for me now to catch all of them, because I know what happens, even if I deleted that part. It will be particularly helpful if you point out the places where you said “huh?” as you read.
- While I have started to correct spelling and stray commas, there are probably quite a few places that still need help. Feel free to point them out.
And finally, to give the horse one final whack, the whole reason I am asking for readers is to get criticism. Criticism is what will turn a draft into a manuscript. Feel free, though, if you run across a part you particularly like, to mention that as well.
So step right up, folks! Be the first on your block to come to grips with The Monster Within.
Google ’till it hurts
For those new to my blog, this is a semi-regular feature. When there have been some interesting searches that led people to this site, I like to share them with you. Sometimes I put the search words in pig latin so that future searches will continue to go to the correct entry.
- duranceengay eargay – came up fifth in a google search and led to the episode about my pants. There might be a business opportunity there.
- sex words – led to my episode “Sex, Death, and Words “. Someone went through several pages of search results and then chose my blog. I wonder what they were looking for.
- bachelorette party ideas for the pregnant bride – I came up 13th for that phrase on yahoo. Most of the words matched one of my episodes from the Cannery in Bozeman
- Great Googly Moogly – linked to another episode like this one
- weblog sailing
- “Nick Cave” “Her Long Black Hair”
- cowboy bar
- write a novel in a month
- illionmay ollarday owboycay arbay acksonjay olehay – fourth in Google search (The first two are the bar’s official Web site). My review is probably not too good for their business.
Of course there were also the usual squirrel, x-ray, and Dolce Vida hits. Egg cooking is still a very popular topic, but I can’t tell if my culinary advice has changed anyone’s life.
Tiki Reunion
That’s not the official name of the night. It’s something like $2 pint night. But I’ve always called it Cheap Bastard Night. Others have tried to rename it Two-for Tuesday or Tightwad Tuesday. Nah. It’s Cheap Bastard Night, because I’m a cheap bastard. I named it after myself.
It was like a reunion at Tiki tonight. Old faces I hadn’t seen in a long time. Some I never expected to see again. The biggest surprise was Connecticut Bill, an incredibly sharp guy whose life is vanishing up his nose. Was vanishing, perhaps, if his time in jail gave him a chance to straighten out. Observers are not optimistic on that score.
I didn’t notice Connecticut Bill right off the bat, so I don’t think he was there when I came in. He’s hard to miss with his energy and his opinions on everything under the sun. He’s also the one who will play Velvet Underground on the jukebox. When I walked in the front door I saw Bevins sitting there and I climbed aboard the stool next to his. After a brief moment of non-recognition (he hadn’t seen me clean-shaven yet) I recieved a warm welcome and unbidden Tiki Dave was pouring me an Anchor Steam. The game was coming on soon and I was in my happy place.
Suddenly on my left appears another old buddy from my days hanging out at Joe’s Place. Tom had selected alcohol as the drug for destroying his life, but for the last few months he has managed to get it back together. Naturally, that means a lot less time in bars for Tom. They’re just not as fun when you’re drinking non-alcoholic brew. Tom is one of the only people in the world to have read The Test, an incomplete work that I set aside when it started to spiral out of control. The story has gotten so big that it will probably end up being a series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in an author-driven genre, but I feel strongly that even in a series each book should stand on its own. Which means The Test needs an ending, even if it is just volume one. Tom’s commentary on the story was, well, embarrassingly gushing. And protracted. He had read the incomplete work in 16 uninterrupted hours. I promised him I would put an ending on it and get it published. He gave me a dollar to help offset my expenses in the meantime.
Somewhere during that time, Connecticut Bill showed up and there we all were, lined up with our elbows on the bar, watching the home team blow a lead, Billy feeding the jukebox and telling about his time in jail. We talked about this and that, nothing important, favorite comic strips, rehashing some of the old stories that had been dormant too long.
Finally it was time to leave that place. I moved on without ceremony, as if it was just another day at the bar. Things to do, etc. I left, knowing that we might or might never all be there again.
Ocean Beach Bar Hopping
Most of last night will have to wait until I can disguise it as fiction. Going out on the town with Amy usually works out that way, it seems. I had left a message with her, looking for a place to sleep, and she eventually called back. She was hanging with Rory and Alabama, two of her friends from out of town. They were at South Beach bar in Ocean Beach (A very nice place with a decent beer selection and excellent appetizers. Best fried calamari anywhere. Behind the bar are picture windows looking out over the beach. A good place for sunsets.)
They were just having some shots when I arrived. It didn’t break my heart to miss out on that round, as they looked like some kind of goofy sweet mixed shot instead of good ‘ol straight booze. Why people go to the trouble to get one of those things and then knock it down their gullet so fast they never taste it is beyond me. For that matter, why people pay for top-shelf tequila or scotch and then just throw it down the pie hole is a mystery I may never solve. If you’re not going to taste it, why not just throw some grain alcohol back and wait for the bomb to hit?
I kept my mouth shut about silly shooters, and Amy’s buddies turned out to be pretty cool. I was just finishing my beer when Erica called. She was heading to Sunshine Company and so were we. Sunshine Co. has a good happy hour special and is popular among smokers because the patio (where smoking is legal) is for all intents and purposes indoors.
It’s funny how many smokers I’ve been around since smoking was banned in bars. The sequence goes like this:
- Smoking is banned in bars
- Jerry starts going to bars more
- Jerry hangs out with other bar patrons
- Most bar patrons are smokers
- Jerry inhales more second-hand smoke
At Sunshine company the pitchers were coming fast and furious but somehow I manage to stay out of their evil grip, nursing two beers the entire time I was there. It was great to see Erica again, bubbly fun sweet and cute, and we talked for quite a while. She’s in love with some boy in Belguim. Our crowd shot some pool, and being the most sober person there I didn’t suck at it. Some girl hit on me – and everyone else in the bar, male and female. It was her birthday and she was looking for a present. She didn’t get far with me, but she didn’t try that hard, either. There were other people in our group she found much more interesting, often several of them at the same time.
Things started to get crazier. A blue-haired butch-looking girl had her hands down Amy’s pants. Amy was trying to use her own sexual wiles to connect Rory and Birthday Girl together. Birthday Girl seemed more interested in Blue-Hair and Amy. Birthday Girl and Blue-Hair were sucking face like a pair of lampreys on spring break. Erica mildly disapproved. Finally it was too much for my poor sober ass. I made Erica promise to come to Prague whenever she went to Belgium, got Amy’s keys and went back to her place.
Amy showed up two hours later with another friend. I made grilled cheese sandwiches (double cheese). The friend would not leave, and It turned into a late night. Finally I curled up on the short sofa and closed my eyes and he took the hint. He’s a nice guy, really; Amy had called him in the middle of the night for a ride home and he had complied. I was just very tired. Making grilled cheese sandwiches can take it out of a guy.
The final image as I turned out the lights was of Amy curled up on the couch, jealously guarding a package of Goldfish even as she slept. I reached out and tugged on the package, open and about to spill, and she snapped down around her precious crackers, contracting like a sea anemone gulping down its prey. I let go of the bag before anyone got hurt.
Lotto-matic
While sitting in a bar with Lotto the other day I noticed that when no one won a particular prize the dough (or at least some portion of it) rolled over into the next pot. For instance, if no one gets 4 out of 4, then that pot rolls over. I’m assuming that the more people who bet four numbers, the more cashola goes into the next pot. That makes it possible, if the prize rolls over enough and enough people are playing (paying) for that prize, that the expected value of the reward could conceivably exceed the cost to play. In other words, the prize would be larger than the cost of covering all possible outcomes. (The one time I did the math it looked like the return on a dollar bet was in the $.50-$.60 range depending on how many numbers you chose, far worse than almost any bet you’ll find in Vegas.)
Normally when a jackpot gets really large the expected value of an entry decreases because so many people participate that the chances of sharing the prize rise faster than the value of the prize itself does. But with ordinary ho-hum lotto you would have to be extra diligent to notice when the prize had grown to an enticing level. Since there is a new drawing every few minutes, when the prize does get large enough there is no time for a gambler to respond.
So what you need is something that monitors the lotto channel and watches for particular prizes to roll over an extraordinary number of times. (Ideally you would also be able to see how much money rolled over each time.) When enough moolah is on the line, Lotto-matic would enter you in that drawing for all possible permutations. I doubt that would be possible—entries have to go through special machines. Failing that, the system would notify you and you would spend the next ten minutes furiously filling in lotto slips.
Of course, if the system can’t enter you automatically, you have to already be at a location with a lotto machine (say, perhaps, a bar) when the opportunity strikes. The cost of sitting in a bar waiting for the right moment is likely (at least in my case) to dwarf any potential winnings. It might, however, be tax-deductible…
Joe’s Last Stand
Muddled Ramblings…
I’ve been here for quite a while today, doing some serious deleting. Six chapters: adios. Big chunks of other chapters: ciao. Two characters: beat it, punk. It’s all about purity of essence, so I’ve taken to drinking only rain water and grain alcohol. This is how it’s supposed to be, baby. The synapses are firing with alarming randomness, making pink elephants de rigeur. There is a node in my brain, undocumented, undefined, but up there in my head without a doubt. Its sole purpose is to fuck up the other nodes. It strikes with lightning swiftness and randomness, shutting down the speech center for a few critical seconds when I’m talking to a girl, blasting away my motor control when I try to dance. It is an evil node, or at least a capricious one, bent on making an ass of me.
Like I need its help.
Flashback: months (years?) ago I was here, at this very table, plugged in, writing away. Joe and his band set up on the other side of the bar, and started playing not long after eight o’clock. I listened from my remote spot, pounding with salt and pepper shakers when appropriate. Finally, during a break, I decided it was time for me to go. On my way out I waved to the band, and Dave, the Garfunkel of the group, saw me and said, “Jerry! When did you get here?” The whole bar turned to look at me.
“Uh… two?” I said.
As I was writing the above, Dave came by my spot here, patted me on the shoulder and said, “All is right with the world.” They’re playing on this end of the bar tonight, which probably represents a time limit on my writing tonight. Some geek typing away does not really add to the party atmosphere. Dave’s family is at the table next to mine. Put the condoms on the shakers, we’ll be having some kind of fun tonight. [Note – rather than putting napkins over the salt and pepper shakers so I can use them as musical instruments, this time Leah brought me a pair of mustard bottles.]
Joe is moving to Tennessee, which pretty much puts an end to these parties. Just as well I’m out of here.
I owe these guys a ballad, but it seems kind of late for that now. I’ve got it in my head, a good sad song, an Irish song, but I never got it out on paper. Now they’re all going their ways, and I’ll have to take my ballad somewhere else.