Month: June 2020

Sidetracked

I’ve been sidetracked on side stories while pursing the novel-in-progress.

These side stories are about the characters and the quintessential question, who are they? They’re entertaining but time and energy consuming.

One of the characters is Tink. I knew his companion, Deca, very well, and was coming to know his friend, Belt.

Not Tink. I’ve been wrestling with Tink’s character. I couldn’t get a handle on him. Part of me worried about this Tink because of other characters known as Tink, like Tink on “Lovejoy”, the tinker in rhymes and titles like “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, or Tink as in Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. Didn’t want my Tink to be like those Tinks. My Tink’s name is not short for Tinker; it’s not short for anything. He is Tink, has always been called Tink, and doesn’t know who came up with it.

So, busy on other matters this morning, and suddenly his voice arrived. No fanfare, just there, flashing into my head. Sudden subsequent spurts of excitement were enjoyed: aha, that’s Tink.

Love those eureka moments. Think that’s what I live for as a writer, getting the answer to these queries I’ve created for myself. I always thought the scenes with Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel in Stranger than Fiction (2006) when she’s wrestling with what should happen. The restlessness, obsession, irritation, and contempt personified what I sometimes experience.

Got my coffee. Time for Tink and I to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Floofy Playground

Floofy Playground (floofinition) – Indy alternative floof rock (flock) band formed in the mid 1990s in Floof York.

In use: “Floofy Playground’s biggest hit to date is “Sex and Catnip”, which came out in 1997 and reached the top ten in many floof charts.”

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This is one of those days when I awoke and for some unknown reason have some song snatch in the stream. Does this happen to others? Am I the only one with a playlist in my head that goes click when I get up and start thinking?

Sure, I’m not. These aren’t the same as earworms, mind you. Sometimes they are earworms, which is a song that’s stuck in your head. There’s a different feel to earworms than just a the mental jukebox flipping something on. These songs aren’t necessarily stuck, just present. I’ll heavily bet that they are related to some auditory cortex wiring, though.

Aside: remembered this WebMD post from a few years ago and dragged it into the light: “Songs Stick in Everyone’s Head”. It mentions reasons related to neurosis and obsessions, and the cognitive itch. As a writer, I become obsessed; that’s a large part of being a writer for me, getting obsessed with ideas, concepts, stories, and characters, and trying to wring them out of my head and into the world in a way that the rest of the world might understand.

Today’s song, “What’s My Age Again?” is from 1999 and a group named Blink-182. I really liked the album name: Enema of the State. Good play on words? With many people and orgs battling ‘the state’ for a variety of reasons, maybe that’s the cognitive itch that supplied my stream with this song.

Or maybe the cognitive itch is the song’s year, 1999. Seems like things really began spinning weird with Bush v Gore and the Florida hanging chads (which could be the name of some kind of group) in the next year. 1999 was a good year for me in my world. Maybe my mind lauds it as the last good year.

Well, here it is. The song, I mean, not my world. It’s a video. I’d not seen it before today, but it’s amusing to watch three naked men (except shoes and socks) running around.

That is all.

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Diversity Fail

Saw an article today: “Friends Creator Marta Kauffman Tearfully Says She ‘Didn’t Do Enough’ for Diversity”.

No kidding, right? Black characters were few on that show. Past that, though, I thought, now there’s a timely sitcom: “Diversity Fail”. It would be about all the ways that diversity fails, and would feature a diverse cast, not just of races, but sexual identities and genders, sexual preferences and fluidity, and religion. It’d be a broad, rambling show focused on one person struggling to grasp it all without offending everyone. I’m thinking it’s more like “Fleabag” than “Friends”, though.

Got to stop thinking about it. It’s a distraction to the novel in progress. I’m already distracting myself with side stories trying to understand my characters. Gotta get more coffee. Then it’s back to writing like crazy, at least for a while longer.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A bit of contra programming for myself today. Reading the news and watching videos of protesters losing eyes from police firing rubber bullets into crowds sickens me. Some respond, well, the protesters shouldn’t have been there. I disagree. They have the right to assemble right included in the bill of rights. Why huge police forces must escalate with violence is the disturbing part. Fighting fascism, the fascists say in classic double-speak.

It’s all hard to handle, which kicked the Black Crowes’ cover of the song by the same title into my music stream. Otis Redding wrote and recorded the song, and it’s been covered by many since the song’s first release in 1968. I enjoyed Otis Redding’s version and found the BC’s cover was a fatter, slightly up-tempo version that works for me. So here it is, from 1990.

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Goo Goo Floofs

Goo Goo Floofs (floofinition) – American floof rock (flock) band formed in Floofalo, New York, in 1986. The band have achieved considerable success, selling over fifteen million albums.

In use: “One of Goo Goo Floofs’ many pop floof songs includes “Floof Balloon”. Released in 1999, the song reached number sixteen on the floofstream charts.”

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Cell Floof

Cell Floof (floofinition) – An animal who guards, likes, steals, or uses cell phones.

In use: “Seeing the unsecured cell phone on the bench in the foyer, Tucker assumed his cell floof fur and curled up on it, allowing only a little to show, so his people could appreciate what he was doing.”

Tucker returns from his outdoor napping and sentry routine, and assumes duties as a cell floof (see it by his head?).
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Puzzle #11 Is Finished

We finished the “Dream Garage” (Michael Fishel) jigsaw puzzle today. Took us three days to assemble the 1,000 pieces.

While the odd shapes put me off, I enjoyed the puzzle details and vivid colors. Remember how gas stations often blazed with neon signs? Seeing those logos invited television jingles into my head.

Lots of Coca Cola memorabilia, but give me A&W Root Beer!

“STP is the racer’s edge.”

“See the U.S.A in your Chev-ro-let.”

“Only Mustang makes it happen, only Mustang makes life great. Mustang, Mustang, ’68!”

“You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big bright Texaco star!”

Then the cars. Four of them were the sort of cars I slobbered over as a fourteen year old in 1970: Mustang, Corvette, Camaro, and Challenger. I ended up only owning a Camaro. It was a fun, memorable car, good gas mileage, excellent performance, and reliable. It was just a 327, though, not an SS 396 featured in the puzzle.

Besides the Coke and car stuff, there was a cigarette machine (how long since I’ve seen one of those?), a Wurlitzer jukebox (in the puzzle’s center), a pin-up calendar (over above the purple Challenger) and movie posters for Some Like It Hot and Bullitt. (See Steve McQueen up there in the right hand corner by the clock?)

Be a few days before we begin the next one. We have several in the closet awaiting their turn, but I’ve been eyeing a few on the net, so…we’ll see…

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Monday’s Theme Music

War.

Climate change. Natural disasters.

COVID-19 pandemic. Rising deaths.

Black lives matter. Police brutality. Corruption. Protests. Riots. Looting. Tear gas.

Murder hornets. Asteroid heading for Earth. Forty thousand year old worms dug up, thawed out, and living again.

2020 is seen by many to be a year of worsening situations. Many read something new happening, fill with dread and ask, “Oh, no, is another disaster about to strike the planet?”

Chuckling to myself over this today, Europe’s song, “The Final Countdown” (1986) entered my musical memory stream.

The song is about leaving Earth, but you know, just pause a mo’ and shift words around, and it’ll work for this year.

If we need a theme song for this year, maybe this is it. Maybe it is the final countdown, not to leaving, but to another crisis.

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