Scott Ian has a sense of humor. Whod’a thunk?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chiVMrWMHko]

Teen arrested after mom found in freezer – Crime & Punishment – MSNBC.com:

…People close to the family described the teenager as very quiet and a good student, with no history of violent behavior…

Seriously, everyone: if they ever somehow miraculously manage to track down the secret burial ground where I’ve hidden the bodies (not to mention connecting the evidence, no matter how badly decomposed and tampered, thanks to a flame thrower, gallons of lye, and my own napalm-like recipe of gasoline, packing peanuts, and toothpaste), I want you all to say this about me when talking to the media:

Yeah, we wondered when this was coming. I mean, he had a clean life and his background checked out, but we knew it was only because he paid the right people and killed the rest. For chrissakes, he almost failed out of high school, and anyone that anal-retentive who listens to heavy metal well into their thirties has some problems, you know? Frankly, I’m just surprised it took you pigs this long to catch him. He’s not that smart, you know. Hmmm. I guess just lucky…

Fine. For the sake of my mother, who hates when I joke about such things as me finally breaking the Green River Killer’s record for “Longest Trail of Bodies Left by a Single Unidentified Person” : I’m not joking.

Okay! Alright. Stop hitting me. Statistically, you really don’t have to worry about me. Most serial killers are between 18 and 34, male, single, loners… And see? I turn 35 this year. And I’m not really single, at least in the sense that I’m fairly sure that CL would notice if I were gone for long, unexplained stretches of time. Of course, I could always blame that on her blood sugar problems…

Hang on. I’m just making myself a little note, here.

Okay, I’m back. Where was I? Oh, yeah. No worries about me, unless you look at the fact that I like to defy common knowledge based on statistics. Or unless you consider that I might have gotten started years and years ago — say, when I was between the ages of 18 and 34. Or if you think about the fact that it’s middle-aged men that have sudden bursts of anger that translate into massive body counts, usually in the workplace.

But seriously, it could happen.

No, I just like keeping people on their toes, making them wonder a little here and there. Oh, and don’t fire me. And CL, you might think twice about this before you ever have an affair. Or leave me because I’ve started talking back to the voices in my head at really audible volumes. Or burning my dinner.

*I’m kidding here, people. I promise. Of course, by kidding, I mean, “tossing the idea out there to see what kind of response I get, just in case I ever decide that, hey — maybe a prolonged killing spree followed by a nomadic life on the run punctuated by occasional random homicides (just to stay in practice for the eventual invasion of the alien overlords from Sirius that the voices assure me will happen in my lifetime)… Yeah, that sounds like a really good way to break the monotony of a Saturday afternoon.”

It’s unfortunate that normalcy is such an ugly word for me.

See why I like change so much?

I’ve spent the week struggling to figure out why my computer was acting like a bartender who has suddenly been denied their cocaine supply (yes: slow, whiny, and prone to irrational behavior that makes sense only to other crazy people).  Today, I decided that I’ve had enough, and performed what used to be a biannual ritual: The Great and Wonderful Secret OS Reinstall.

Apparently, I’ve waited far longer than six months to do this this time around, even with the new motherboard.

So here I am, waiting on the first of many rounds of Windows updates to download and install. Meanwhile, a beautiful woman is 20 feet away from me, sleeping soundly in what some (me) would see as an inviting, spoon-shaped position.

Some priorities I’ve got, eh?

At least I got my three scripts turned into Sidewalk today. So the timing could have been worse…

It’s funny, this writing thing.  Not this writing thing, particularly, though there are days when you feel like there’s nothing really to say, but still, those site hit stats sure are hot when they occasionally cross into the double digits, and without new content, readers go away, so you throw something, anything on the screen and hit publish…

No, the writing thing that involves novels and screenplays that I occasionally do is what I’m referring to.  And it’s kind of a bitch sometimes (now).  There’s an art and a craft to writing, and times like this are proof that I’m not much of a craftsman when it comes to my art.

Muckfuppet came out of me in a three hour burst of typing, fully formed.  Very few edits were made to the first draft, and those were mostly correcting typos.  Pentium Lad and… Chip? was a quick hour and a half knock out with a revised ending (because the first one [arguably the whole thing] sucked).  Even The Beauty of Distance — a 90 page feature screenplay — was kicked out over three weeks between me and Lance, with I think one revision pass after the first draft was done.

And yet there are some stories that sit in my head and won’t come out, no matter how long I sit in front of the keyboard.  If I start typing them, they come out wrong, or something else altogether comes out.  So I start surfing, playing around with Acid on a song for CL, or writing blog entries.

The really sad thing about this is that these stories are finished products in my head.  All the details are there, full pictures that might as well be alive.

So why won’t they come out?

These are some damn good stories, too.  Award-winning, if maybe a little on the (very) (shouldn’t ever see the light of day, at least with my name attached) dark side…

Sigh.  Where are my loop CDs?

Everything Is Wrong With Me
Beer, for me, is my girlfriend. She’s safe. She takes care of you – fixes you dinner, is pleasant company in your free time, gives you regular sex. And you take care of her – take her to dinner, buy her presents, spend your money on her. Sure, once in a while things might get a little crazy and you’ll fuck on the kitchen floor or in a stairwell, but for the most part you know what you’re going to get: a nice, even time. You love her because you need her. That may not have always been the case, but it is now.

Whiskey, for me, is my whore. She’s nuts, and it’s precisely her insanity that drives you crazy. She’ll toy with your emotions, lulling you into a sense of security, before she’ll pull away from you entirely, make you look like a jerk in front of your friends, leave you lonely and confused. But you put up with her because when you have sex her body because a piston (a piston that spews forth the dirtiest words in the English language – or any other language, for that language). And because nothing cures boredom quite like danger.

Read more of Jason’s stuff.  And laugh, puppet monkeys! LAUGH!

• I’ve changed the title of the current script from 10 Equals 2 to Pentium Lad and… Chip? After proofing the short this morning, it just seems a little catchier. Don’t worry. Both are equally meaningless in the overall big picture.

  This script isn’t the real one, either. It’s kind of a throwaway, but there’s a scene in it that had some dialogue that I had to get out. No choice. None. Nada. Choiceless.

  Which, coincidentally, is the working title of script number two, hopefully to be written tonight.

• The glorious little bunnies are scanned from a book about Bunny Suicides. I came across it in a Barnes and Nobles once, and proceeded to laugh so hard that I peed a little.

  Okay, a lot. Yeah, right there in the store. And yes, it was a little embarrassing.

  But Jesus, man — Bunny Suicides!

• The vacation over the weekend was, in fact, to the north*west* part of a state, not the northeast. Oops. Geography was never my strong point.

  But I did get to meet CL’s mother, sister, and nephew. Meeting family for the first time is always a little unnerving — mostly because you never know how judgmental they are, and what their reaction to long hair and tattoos and earrings and such will be.

  Fortunately, I felt at home with them immediately. Her sister (who is our age) is a really sweet girl (and, dare I say it publicly – pretty hot, herself. Yay, good genetics!), and CL’s nephew is a ball of energy. I think that anyone looking for perpetual motion might do better to start looking at three year old children. A really nice, really relaxing (yeah, I know — what do I know from relaxing?) time. I look forward to visiting with them again sometime this fall.

• You may ask yourself — is that me? Really?

  Right now, my family is looking for where I hid the pod.

• Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Hatemail. Hilarity ensues.
• Finally, there’s a game coming out from Valve called Portal — and while I’ve by and large lost all interest in videogames (although I really need to finish X-Men: Legends 2 one of these days), the trailer makes it look to be incredbily worth playing. More puzzle than anything else….

“Much of my life has been a pilgrimage—constantly learning, changing, growing and maturing.”
–Rev. Billy Graham

Two things are certain in life: death and change (don’t give me that taxes crap; I’ve got friends and acquaintances that haven’t filed or paid in a decade [and yet have no qualms about bitching about how the government spends money]).

Personally, I think these are the exciting things, the entire point of getting out of bed in the morning.  Who wants a world of the same thing, day in, day out, utter predictability waiting around every corner?

Right.  Republicans.

I hope never to look back twenty — hell, one — years and think that nothing has changed in my world.  Especially to realize that I haven’t changed, that I’m the same person underneath the new gray hairs and the ever-increasing evidence of gravity. Obviously, I hope to find more balance and moderation (even in my balance and moderation) as the years pass, but even a shift to some extreme is better than stagnance.  Stagnation?  Staying put, either way.

It’s frightening to me to look around at some people and realize that, by and large, they are the same people that I met ten or twenty years ago.  It means that they haven’t grown, they haven’t learned, they haven’t moved.  Decades have passed, and they’re still right where they were.

Does anyone really imagine at 20 or even 40 that they’ve got it all figured out?

Is it possible they do?  Sure.  Likely?  Not.

I’m glad that there are constants in my life. Laws of physics, personalities traits, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge. But even those things might change without warning.

The best static element in my life is the group of people that I call friends: Wade, Kevin, Richard, Andrew, my parents and siblings, Neely, Jonas, Chance and Carlos and Eric and CL.  Even a great lengthy friendship may shift or dissipate while you blink (Daniel and I had fifteen years between us, as an example), but that’s part of the dynamics of life, isn’t it?

My Super Ex-Girlfriend: sadly, not so great.  Not even Eddie Izzard saved it.  Lack of chemistry all around, nothing really firing on all four cylinders.  Great concept, a few good laughs, and that’s about all.

Talladega Nights: everything that Anchorman was and more.  If you don’t laugh yourself sick watching this one, then (to paraphrase Ricky Bobby), fuck you. Worth putting up with redneck teenagers at midnight, even.
Out of here.  Three days away from the new home, the cat in heat, email, and life as I know it.  Just me, CL, and whatever awaits us in northeast other state. Posting as normal will resume post-vacation. But in the meantime, just remember:

Ten equals 2.

There’s nothing worse (at this exact moment, any way; get back to me in a few days when my vacation is over) than staring at the screen, two fully formed short scripts in your head, neither wanting to jump from brain to screen.

I’ve got until August 10th to get at least one (though there’s no reason not to finish both, as they are complete, at least in my head) done, in time for the Sidewalk Sidewrite contest.  And there’s a large part of me that is willing to wait until August 10th to start writing them.  But in the meantime, life continues to take steps forward, time passes by, new ideas are popping into my head, and nothing is getting accomplished.

I shouldn’t be as hard on myself about such things as I am.  After all, I’ve been largely consumed for the past month with moving and all that that task ensues.  And there’s been CL, whose company I enjoy immensely — enough so that I’m finally starting to slow down, for the first time in a long time.  Which is good, I think (and my body and brain agree, at that).

So in the meantime, I distract myself by talking about working, here, for all of you to see.  You lucky bastard(s).

Alright.  Time to force something out.