Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I enjoyed this big band cover of the Killers’ Mr. Brightside.
This cover of The Killers’ Mr. Brightside is a swinging tribute to the big band era, and what’s weird is that it really works.
Just for kicks, here’s the 2004 original (which is really great, I forgot about them):
After completing a personal test, I can confirm that drinking black, unsweetened French Roast coffee while eating a prune IS NOT a satisfying combination.
I can’t vouch for other coffees, nor say whether sweetening the coffee has an effect.
I try to stay emotionally balanced and optimistic, but with my personality and worldviews, balancing on a paring knife is almost as easy as it for me to keep my balance.
I fell off within the last few days. As usual, I crashed into angry, bitter darkness. I felt lost and alone. It’s not fun. It’s exhausting. Walking and writing both help me climb back out of the dark canyon. It was a long climb this time. Today’s walk definitely helped.
So did conscious efforts to release my anger, bitterness, frustration, sadness, despair, hopelessness…name a negative emotion or reaction, and I probably had it in the mix. Each step on the walk was punctuated with me hissing to myself, “Release my anger, release my bitterness, release my frustration,” and so on. Eventually, feeling stronger and cleaner, and enjoying a sense that those negative energies were evaporating, I turned it into a more positive urging, “No anger, no bitterness, no frustration.”
This plunge felt deeper and darker. I don’t know why this one was so deep and dark. I don’t know why that was so. Outwardly, all was well. I’m editing a novel. Other novel concepts swirl through me head. Projects are established.
I was having issues with Amazon KDP and their paperback process. It took longer than expected. Of course, I’d been set up for disappointment with claims about how fast – five minutes – and easy it’s supposed to be. It was not that easy, which might just be me, and nothing else. I found their support process short of expectations, too. When I contacted them with a problem using their Cover Creator, they kicked back something nonsensical and suggested I use their Cover Creator.
Eventually, with stubbornness and persistence, I overcame the issues. Then the darkness hit.
So I walked today. I hadn’t planned to go so far. Sometimes I intuitively know what’s needed. Today, my mind and body requested a hard, fast, long walk.
After a mile, I was striding fast. Sweat soaked my Tilly hat and shirt, and tickled my neck as drops dripped off my hair and ears. I breathed hard and my heart thundered in my ears. Still, I pressed on until I realized that I was out of the shadow of darkness. The world seemed better, then, and my hope and optimism were restored.
Still, in the aftermath, I wonder what it is in me that causes these regular, recurring crashes. I know my wife hates them. I’m not fond of them, either. I imagine others experience them, too. If they’re like me, it’s probably only those closest to them who are aware that they’re going through. If they’re like me, others probably aren’t aware of the depths of despair, bitterness and frustration encountered.
My outward signs are that I become almost a mute. I’m often truculent when I do respond to others. It’s not deliberate, or a choice, but something I endure, and try to overcome. I’m probably okay for another twenty to thirty days.
Then it will come again. I’ll try to be ready, and I’ll resist it. Sometimes, I’m more successful than other times, but it’s not at all predictable.
I’ll take it on when it comes.
I usually walk a bit of Ashland before my writing session. Walking frees my thinking. Thinking is often useful when I’m trying to write. You can probably find some critics who claim that my writing is mindless, so they’re probably surprised to find that I actually think…sometimes.
This morning, I walked down Main Street to Lithia Park, and then crossed over and took Water Street to B Street. B Street was followed to Pioneer, where I turned left and went down to A Street. From there, it was easy; I walked A Street to 8th Street, then took 8th Street to B Street. I went down one side of B Street to Mountain, crossed B, and then walked the other side back down to Pioneer. At Pioneer, I returned to Lithia, turned left onto it, and then went up until I picked up C Street. C Street was then followed to 8th street. By then, it was warm and sunny, and I was sweaty, so I headed for the Boulevard Cafe on Siskiyou Boulevard.
See that? A, B, and C Streets.
It’s a pleasant walk in the morning. Predominantly residential areas, sidewalks shaded with trees keep it cool and comfortable. Grizzly Peak, other mountains, and the vineyards on the other side of the valley are frequently visible. Crosswalks are at most corners, and all the drivers encountered today acknowledged me crossing in the crosswalks, so my blood pressure stayed down.
The walk took an hour, and gained me three miles and fourteen flights of stairs, with the elevation changes. Those miles add up. My daily average for the last week is up to eight point zero four miles. Sweet.
My monthly average has increased to seven point five six miles, and my three month average has gone over six.
Progress, right? Sure. Every step counts.
This one is dedicated to all those dreamers out there, all those writers, singers, poets, actors and artists who have a hope and won’t stop believing.
Here is Journey – with Steve Perry on vocals (instead of, say, Peter Griffin) – with “Don’t Stop Believing” from nineteen eighty-one.
“Do you need a break?”
Those were the words Coyote had awaited. “God, fucking yes.” Seizing the remote, he thumbed the volume up over the sirens passing outside and people shouting, and listened to the commercial. Details were confirmed in his head. He wrote down the website and then went to it.
Stasis. That was exactly what he needed – a month away from his life. Thirty days, technically, but still, fucking yes, he needed a month away from his job and his wife and the general malaise and ennui sucking the energy out of him. He’d dreamed about going into stasis since the first time that he’d read about it. But stasis wasn’t for middle-class people like him. The cheapest stasis was two grand a day. Two grand a day. Fucking outrageous. Like the rich needed stasis. Why would the rich need stasis? Just another thing to lord over the other ninety-eight percent, the bastards.
But this was different. This was a lottery. Tickets were ten dollars per. Proceeds were supporting school vouchers and health insurance subsidies, the usual beneficiaries of lotteries. Ten dollars per, ten winners picked per night. Tickets could be bought online, paid for with Bitcoin, debit and credit cards, or Paypal.
After skimming exceptions and warnings, because it wasn’t completely safe – nothing is completely safe – he sweated the math, established an account, and charged five hundred dollars of chances to his Visa, rationalizing it as an early birthday present.
Then he had to wait. The next drawing wasn’t until the next day, six thirty P.M. Pacific Time, twenty hours away. In the meantime, he wondered, how the hell had he missed hearing about this? Still, he didn’t mention it at work, nor to his wife. That was easy, because they weren’t speaking to one another, again. He thought about telling The Third, but he was on another fucking anti-government rant. Coyote decided telling The Third would be like tossing an M-80 on a campfire, so, no.
He didn’t win the first night, and bought fifty more chances. He didn’t win that lottery, either, causing him to scream at the fucking television as fire trucks and police cars roared by outside, sirens going as loud as a rock song. It wasn’t fair that he hadn’t won, but that was his fucking life, wasn’t it? He never won anything, never got any damn breaks while everyone else in the world was blessed. He consumed a case of Miller’s bemoaning his luck.
Fifty more tickets were purchased. He giggled as he did it. He was fully committed, all in. Yeah, he was committed all right. Heather would have a shit-fit when she saw the Visa bill. But if he won, that confrontation wouldn’t occur for a while. Besides, she would eventually thank him. This would be a vacation away from him for her, too, as much as it was a vacation for him away from her.
He didn’t win.
He was down fifteen hundred. He sweated over the number. Fifteen hundred. That had become a relatively large number in their financial world. Five hundred wasn’t bad, a thousand was okay, but fifteen hundred. Going into the Visa account, he checked the balance.
Thirty-six hundred.
Holy shit. Sweat poured over Coyote’s face. That had to be incorrect.
He brought up the statement’s transactions details and almost crapped his pants. They’d overcharged him for the stasis lottery tickets, charging him for tickets the day before he’d bought his tickets, and the day before that. Damn fucking crooks.
He chugged down a beer to consider his options. Truth came up with a burp.
Heather was buying stasis lottery tickets.
That bitch.
His jaw dropped as he went through the Visa statement again. Besides the stasis lottery tickets, she’d purchased airline tickets.
Coyote broke into her email. She hadn’t changed the passwords. She was a fool. He’d changed his passwords about a year ago, when the marital cracks seemed like the precursor to separation and divorce. He really thought the ice princess was going to leave him. Well, in a way, she had, hadn’t she? If – as he thought – she’d won the stasis lottery. When was the last time he’d seen her, anyway? Day before yesterday. No, two days ago, three. It’d been the night before he’d first bought tickets. She’d had a business trip. Yes, but was it really a business trip?
The etickets receipt was in her email. She’d flown to Montana.
Montana was where the stasis center was located.
Her ticket’s return date was thirty-two days later.
Then, he saw the other email.
She had won.
Sitting back, Coyote stared at the email in disbelief. She’d won – she’d bought tickets, and she’d won, and left – without saying a word to him. Not a word.
Unfucking real. It just wasn’t fair. Giggling, he popped another Miller open. Well, there were advantages to be had, here. Heather was gone, into stasis. So, if he bought more tickets —
A buzzing noise sliced through Coyote’s thoughts. A door opened. Blinding light streamed in. As he raised his hands to protect his eyes and squinted, Coyote asked himself, “What the fuck?”
“Hey, Coyote, how was it?” someone asked behind the light.
The room dissolved around him, becoming a tight cylinder. Cringing against pain, Coyote asked, “How was what?”
But he knew as soon as he asked. He could take a break from his life, but it wasn’t the problem.
This song came out in two thousand three. I was working for ISS, managing BlackICE consumer sales and support. We were located in the Bay Bank building on the eleventh floor in San Mateo.
I often played music in my office, but my team couldn’t do the same. They worked in a pit, our reference to the square of cubicles they shared. Each cubicle’s back was open to the middle, so the leads could walk around, talk and help. I didn’t like the arrangement, but the team had come up with it, so *shrug*, I lived with their choice.
But their choice meant no music for them, unless they were on headphones while troubleshooting an issue. So my music often drifted to them. When I first began hearing this song, “Bring Me To Life,” by Evanescence, I was taken by it. It was different than most rock on the air in two thousand three. I wanted to hear more of it to understand who it was, and what they were singing.
The Level Three Lead heard it playing and came in to talk about it. Blue-haired with a green beard and multiple piercings, he was border-goth. He loved this song, but as we talked, the rest of the team drifted over to express their disenchantment of it. Of the twelve people there, only he and I liked it.
Well, I hope you like it. I admit, again, this is another video that I’d never seen until today. I never got into the habit of watching music videos; I just listened to the tunes.
Catdow (Catfinition): A terrible affliction that causes humans to lose track of time and forget what they were doing while in the presence of felines. The term, coined by Professor Felinus by combing the words, “cat” and “shadow” and dropping the first syllable of the latter, was created to explain what happens to people when cats are around.
“It’s like cats cast a shadow,” Professor Felinus said in a Cat Mystery interview in nineteen ninety-seven. “People caught in a cat shadow, or catdow, forget what they’re doing and focus on what the cat is doing, or what the cat might need. The effect is amplified by the number of cats, or if the cats look directly at the people, and the people see them. Worse, of course, is if the cats are kittens. People have been lost in the catdow for hours when kittens are encountered.”
Michael Seidel, writer 