Healthy Obsession or Freakish Transistor Porn?

Would a steam-powered probe be able to function on the nearly airless surface of Mars? I think not.

Obsession.

Some call it a driving force that leads to paradigm-shifting innovations on par with inventions like the light bulb, the radio, and Al Gore’s internet.

Others call it a debilitating mental disorder that leads to extremely clean hands, the hoarding of old JC Penny catalogs, and keeping an unsustainable average of 1.5 cats per square foot of your home.

The missus says I’m obsessed. I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a cry for help.

I’m not obsessed with the things a healthy male is usually obsessed with: fast cars, loose women, self-mowing lawns.

Though I admit to more than a keen passing interest in that last item.

No, the focus of my laser-like interest (I refuse to call it an obsession) is transistors.

And are not these noble devices worthy of our attention?

Without transistors, the computer or phone you’re reading this post on would not be possible.

OK, maybe it would be possible, but then your computer would be really slow and its steam-powered operation would leave your home so humid and hot as to be inhospitable to life. Not to mention the carbon footprint of your coal-fire furnace used to generate the steam!

And clearly, such a phone would be so large as to be impractical as a ‘mobile’ device.

That’s a taste of the world we’d live in devoid of the mighty transistor. Horrible, isn’t it?

But wait, it gets worse:

Abacuses the size of a room.

A spike in eyeball trauma due to carelessly operated slide rules.

No Wincest fan-fic.

OK, the Wincest fan-fic would exist, but only the author would have access to it, because the internet wouldn’t exist!

Right now, those of you familiar with the Sam and Dean Winchester incest genre might be thinking, “Maybe we should build a time machine to go back and stop the invention of the transistor.”

Bad news, kill-joys. Without the transistor, there can be no time machines!

So for good or bad, the transistor and all the wonders and horrors it has wrought are here to stay.

I love my transistor collection. It is, if I may say so myself, almost as magnificent as I am.

I don’t mean to boast, but I actually have one of the paper clips and razor blades used by Bardeen and Brattain to create the first point contact transistor in 1947.

It still has flakes of germanium on it! Squeeeee!

The missus tends to get very flushed and throw out her comments about being obsessed whenever I take these items out of their hermetically sealed, environmentally controlled vault to admire them. I can’t tell if she’s angry or aroused, but as my amorous advances that immediately follow such outbursts always result in me curled up on the couch with a bag of ice between my legs, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she’s confused.

Don’t worry. In moments like this, to comfort myself, I spend that cold night on the couch cuddled up to the crown jewel of my collection:

The Fairchild spFDB69N12.5 ‘super transistor’.

Only twelve were made, and none ever appeared in a product catalog.

They were custom-designed and built as part of the imaging system on the Viking I and Viking II Mars landers.

The prefix ‘sp’ has long been rumored to stand for ‘secret program,’ but while this has made the history of that vaunted transistor all the more tantalizing and raises questions about the true extent of the Mars Viking missions, no corroborative facts have ever been, pardon the pun, unearthed.

Two each were put into the landers on Mars, two were put in the Earth-bound prototype, five were destroyed in an unfortunate lab fire, and one was removed from that lab before the fire to cover up its theft was started.

Through a circuitous and shadowy route that I cannot disclose here, and involving far larger amounts of money than I ever had legitimate claim to, I obtained that final transistor.

To preserve the spFDB69N12.5 for my heirs and my heirs’ heirs, it is embedded in a cube of Lucite™. To prove its provenance, this block of acrylic glass has the fingerprint of Neil Armstrong on one side. I hear his finger was quite badly burnt when his kidnappers pressed it to the still hot block of Lucite™, but such is the cost of history.

And traceability, as anyone who has worked for a government contractor knows.

This transparent thermoplastic cube which protects my Precious has the added benefit of rounded corners, so if left in the freezer for a few hours, it can serve as an excellent substitute for the bag of ice.

And that makes my night on the sofa one of pure bliss.

So I ask you, discerning readers, how is that in any way, shape, or form tantamount to obsession?

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Necrophilia: Yet another argument for cremation

It is a well-known fact that the Honda Odyssey is the preferred vehicle of necrophiliacs. It must be the smooth ride and impressive air conditioning.

I’m worried about what will happen to me after I die.

I’ve always been worried about dying, though more out my reluctance to leave a huge vacancy in the lives of my friends and family than due to my abject terror of shuffling off this oh-so-cursedly mortal coil.

But I’ve suddenly realized that something truly terrible could happen to me after I’ve died.

My corpse could fall into the hands of a necrophiliac.

Yes, I am now kept up late at night by worries of being violated in flagrante delicto mortum.

Not even my wife’s repeated assurances that I’d be lucky to get any while alive provide any comfort.

But she tries, and that’s why I love her. And my kids. I love my kids because despite looking nothing like me, they are clearly a part of the woman I love.

So what is one to do? How can one protect the sanctity of one’s body after death?

Who would want to have sex with a rotting corpse, especially one that looks like yours? is the most common response I get when I raise this question.

They’re necrophiliacs, people! Depraved misfits who get off on disgusting acts. Nothing is beneath them.

Save perhaps the occasional corpse.

So you can’t just blithely rule the possibility out.

You’re dead, you won’t care, now can I please leave? is another response I’ve been hearing a lot lately. Mostly from co-workers I’ve pigeon-holed in the smaller conference rooms at work. Their callous attitude makes me suspicious they have darker motives for convincing me to drop my guard.

Damned closeted necros.

Yes, if I’m dead, I might be oblivious to the trespass, but knowing it could happen then makes me care now.

Right now.

So what can I do?

Cremation seems like the perfect solution, until you think about it.

First off, what’s to stop someone desecrating your urn? Sure, ashes might not be the sexiest lubricant, but if the particles are fine enough…

No, I have not thought about this too much! You can never think about something this important too much!

But assuming you order the extra-coarse cremation option (and frankly, this ought to be an option, crematoriums), there’s still that period of vulnerability between the moment of death and the embrace of the furnace.

You could end up in the care of an unsavory cremation technician who’s been exposed just a little too long to the fumes of the crematorium furnace fuel.

Hell, if I was a necrophiliac, and I wanted a pool of perfect victims where there would be no unpleasant embalming fluids to deal with (I imagine formaldehyde would burn … sensitive areas) and you’re not just expected, but encouraged, to burn all the evidence, cremation technician would be the perfect job.

And that’s assuming your body is found right away. What if you have the bad luck to keel over while alone with a secret necrophiliac?

Or worse, killed by one? One who has meticulously planned your murder to minimize physical damage in order to stuff your naked body and keep it as a trophy in his (or her) underground dungeon, right next to the naked Blake Shelton Real Doll?

At least I hope that’s a Real Doll!

Or, worst case of all scenario, you’re murdered by a necrophiliac who abuses your poor corpse for years, and then the bastard dies of a heart attack, how else but in flagrante delicto mortum. And thus is your body discovered and photographed for evidence (and for the private collections of some pretty sick CSI techs), and then you are turned over to a cremation technician.

A cremation tech who enjoys huffing and just happens to like the cut of your jib, as it were.

Talk about a final indignity!

If you aren’t worried about this, you should be! No one is exempt from the perverted attractions felt by amorous necros. And lets face it, they probably aren’t getting a lot, so they’re gonna feel really, really amorous.

Like large quantities of alcohol, that’s only gonna lower their standards until no one dead is safe.

We need as many people working on a solution to this problem as possible because frankly, I haven’t slept a wink since this threat became known to me.

This means I’m really tired.

Combine that with my driving a mini van now, quite possibly on a road in your neighborhood, and I think you are properly incentivized.

And when you think about it, that’s clearly what’s really bothering me: I drive a mini van.

Which means I’m old.

Which means I’m closer to dying.

And falling into the clutches of a depraved cremation technician.

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The REAL Blake Shelton reads, while naked AND nude: Alpaca poetry gone wild

Recently a friend of mine posted about the tags in her blog that generated the most hits.

While I’ve ranted about my most popular tag here already, I thought it was time to a) look at the cold hard statistics, and b) reveal the little experiment I’ve been running.

When asked if I want the good news or the bad news first, I always like to reserve the good news to serve as a balm to help me heal after being kicked in the googlies by the bad news. So here’s the good news:

I’ve been running an experiment, inserting specific, unrelated tags into my blog posts to see which ones generated hits. Here are the tags I used:

• Blake Shelton naked
• Wil Wheaton naked
• Rush Limbaugh naked
• Benedict Cumberbatch naked

This is good news because science, and its use, is always good news.

Now for the bad news:

‘Rush Limbaugh naked’ only lost to ‘Wil Wheaton naked’ by three percentage points. THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS! RUSH LIMBAUGH? How is that even possible?? Lovecraft couldn’t have imagined a horror that terrifying (or more non-Euclidean in its geometry)! Click on image to see the horror in full-sized clarity.

Clearly there is no hope for Humanity.

The only thing more disturbing than the huge landslide win achieved by ‘Blake Shelton naked’ is all the various misspelled and I-don’t-know-what versions of that phrase dumped into search engines that landed these sick freaks at my blog.

To spare my gentle readers (i.e., those not here to gawk at Blake Shelton), I aggregated them all into the Blake + Shelton + [some form of 'undressed'] category. Here are some of the more family-friendlyish variations on this nudie Blake concept:

• the naked blake shelton (not to be confused with all those naked Blake Shelton impersonators)
• blake shelton gets naked
• blake shelton nake
• blake shelton nude fakes (oh wait, there are impersonators out there!)
• blake shelton completely naked (look, either you’re naked or you’re not naked – none of this I-can’t-decide nonsense in your internet-posted pictures, please. If the focus is so bad I can’t tell whether or not you’re completely naked, don’t bother posting it (though in the case of Blake Shelton, I thank you for the poor focus))
• black shelten nacked
• blake shelton nakt

Blake shelton nakt? Is there no end to your depravity, internet?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rinse my eyes out in bleach, then drill some holes into my skull to destroy two parts of my brain, the section that make mental pictures out of words that I read and the section that remembers those pictures.

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The Stray Dog Gambit

Vicious stray dog terrorizes neighborhood. OK, just me, but I live in this neighborhood!

If this post seems a bit disjointed, please bear with me. I’m pretty sure the copious amount of coffee I drank this morning was spiked with prescription cold or allergy medication, if the shaky hands and perceived fuzziness of the world are any indication.

And no, I’m not paranoid. There are people out there who would do this to me.

It all started yesterday morning.

OK, it’s been going on longer than that. More accurately, it came to the missus’ attention yesterday morning.

I found a stray dog.

In addition to her name, Olivia*, there was a number on the collar. I called it. Owner answered, relieved, and said he’d be right over.

I waited outside my house with said stray dog. Green SUV pulls up, passenger window comes down, and a relieved-looking man leans forward, thanking me for finding his dog.

I hand Olivia over.

As green SUV drives away, I’m struck with the thought, “What if that isn’t the dog’s owner? What if it’s some super-genius, Sherlock-type guy who:

a) deduced I was holding a stray dog and waiting for the owner based on visual cues, and

b) happened to be a sociopath who enjoyed dining on other people’s dogs?

Yes, you’re thinking about now, “Geez, this Ian guy is a paranoid nut bar.”

Hold that thought.

Because of this fear, I note and memorize the license plate of the green SUV.

Five minutes later, still outside my house working on a project, a grey mini van parks across the street. A man gets out, walks over to me, and says, “So where’s Houdini?”

I am understandably confused. “Who?” I ask, blinking.

My allergies are bothering me these days, so I do a lot of extraneous blinking.

“Olivia.”

Oh crap.

Long story short, if I hadn’t had that license plate number, I might be involved in a sticky civil suit over lost dogs and dining habits.**

So, note those license plates, people.

Then, last night, as I was scraping up all the little ‘presents’ the feral cats in my neighborhood left on my lawn, a nondescript sedan pulls up, parking in front of my driveway.

Blocking it completely, so there’s no way I could leap into a car and escape.

The driver looks at me and gives me a nod.

I have no idea who this guy is. He’s just unassuming and nondescript enough to start the ol’ internal alarm bells a’ringing.

He gets out of the car.

I’m wondering if this is related to the unpleasant Olivia situation that erupted this morning.

He opens the rear driver’s side door and reaches in.

At this point, I’m bracing for a sprint, surreptitiously seeking out good cover should automatic gunfire erupt.

The man pulls out…

Pizzas.

The missus ordered pizzas for dinner.

My appetite temporarily depressed by my fight-or-flight response (and let’s be honest, fight was never really an option), I decide to relay my reaction to the missus while I wait for my heart rate to drop below 120 beats per minute.

While clearly not where it began for me, this is where it all began for the missus. She looked at me, her head cocked in a manner suggesting both fear and horror, grip tightening on the pizza cutter, and said, “You’re a paranoid nut bar.”

To which I responded, now feeling hungry, “Is there any stray dog on that pizza?”

Olivia, wherever you are, I hope you’re OK.

* To protect the innocent, this is not the dog’s actual name. But it is so close to the actual name as to render the protection of the alias virtually meaningless.

** Not strictly true. In actuality, the first man was a friend of the dog’s owner. But the truth is far less interesting and, in point of fact, makes me look like a paranoid nut bar. This is my blog, dammit, and I’m not about to criticize myself. Just because they weren’t out there with a stray dog and prescription cold medication yesterday morning doesn’t mean they couldn’t be out there later. Or before that. Or even right now!

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Sing, O Muse, Of Your Superfluousness

I just recently came out of a long dry spell that I’d been enduring.

For writing. A dry spell for writing. The dating dry spell ain’t going away, cause I’m married. The sex dry spell, well, I’m married with kids. Young kids. You do the math.

Actually, one could argue I’m not completely clear of the writing dry spell just yet. I’ve jumped back in by editing a couple of ancient projects that have been avoiding dust in a hermetically sealed desk drawer for the last decade.

Yes, decade. I’m taking baby steps. And not just so I won’t wake my sleeping toddlers.

But this long dry spell got me to thinking about Muses, because I’m without one.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had Muses before, and plenty of them.

My first Muse came to me in high school and stayed with me through college. As with most tales involving heterosexual male writers, she was a woman, I was madly in love with her, and I was too terrified to tell her.

Ah, happy days.

Instead of asking her out, maybe dating her, and, you know, being happy for a few weeks before my complete and total lack of social graces and maturity poisoned her to me forever, I did the next most logical, obvious thing:

I wrote for her from a distance.

She was in my poetry, short stories, not-so-short short stories, and a play I wrote.

Funny thing, that play. My muse actually ended up being cast as the character based on her. It struck me as a sign, and still I said nothing.

What can I say, today-Ian may be a mercury-poisoned mad man, but college-Ian, who hadn’t been exposed to mercury yet, was a flat-out idiot.

Which is not to said I’m sad and mopey and wish things had turned out differently. My life is awesome, with an amazing wife and adorable children, and I could never risk erasing them from my life by going back in time and bitch-slapped some common sense into my earlier self.

It’s true. And I’m not just saying that because my wife reads this blog. Or because traveling back in time, in addition to being impossible unless you’re wealthy enough to afford a DeLorean, could create a paradox that destroyed the very fabric of the universe.

My point is, I had a Muse. And holy crap, I had output too. Every free moment, even those that would have been better spent hitting the books, was spent writing.

And dating other women. There was some of that too.

I’ll bet those women, since I’m sure all of them, to this day, still think about me, wished I would go back in time now to fix things with that first Muse and prevent my ever meeting, let alone dating, any other women, potential destruction of the universe be damned.

To which I can only say, I am so, so sorry.

And then, one day, I moved on.

OK, my muse got married. To someone else. And he wasn’t even American!

Talk about adding insult to injury.

I had other Muses. Other women. Many of them also oblivious to me, or only aware of me in the most peripheral way. Usually dating my best friend or something. Not that I’m bitter at all. No sir.

But none of them were quite the same. No Muse is ever like your first one.

My wife was my Muse for a while, before we got married. In fact, and this is relevant later, she was my Muse when she lived far away and we rarely saw each other. I wrote some stuff I’m rather proud of with her in mind.

And some stuff I’m not proud of, but that was true of all my Muses, even my first. Sometimes I was just a hack and no amount of Musing can overcome that.

But somewhere along the line, writing changed for me.

I’m not sure where, but it might have been Nanowrimo, when writing became about the deadline and word count and turning off your inner editor. Then I got serious about writing, ended up self-publishing, and the writing became about marketing and selling books.

It became a business.

Which is about when the dry spell started. Hmm…

I also got a day job, bought a house, got married, had kids. Shit got real.

But whenever and however it happened, the end result was I stopped writing for someone beyond me anymore.

I lost my Muse.

And I didn’t even notice until recently.

Which got me to wondering. As writers, do we need a Muse?

I’m not so sure. For quite a while, I was doing pretty well without one. Sure, maybe not so much lately, what with the re-hashing of old work, but excluding the last six months or so, the last few years have been good for my writing.

Are the last few months relevant to this question about having a Muse? Or are they, perhaps, crucial? If I had a Muse six months ago, would I have still fallen off the writing wagon, or would I have climbed over the harness rigging the horses to the wagon and whipped them into a frenzied gallop of writing abandon?

So, there it is. They question of the hour.

Do writers need a Muse?

And if we do, who would be my Muse?

My kids? Seems like a great idea, writing for my kids. It’s an idea I had before my kids were even a gleam in my eye. But if having my kids as Muses results in stuff like Kleencut (FREE picture e-book, just released on Smashwords, should be hitting Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. soon), then maybe they aren’t such a hot choice.

Plus kids get so territorial:

“Who’s the better Muse? Me or my brother?”

“I know you say we’re both your Muse, but it’s really just me, right?”

“I’m the Muse for your good books, right, but be honest, my brother’s the Muse for the terrible ones.”

I don’t want to break the heart of the lesser Muse by having to tell him that he sucked as an inspiration. That’s the sort of thing that leads a kid to grow up into a serial killer.

One that starts with his writer father.

So kids are out.

My wife is the obvious next choice. But I think there has to be pain and distance associated with a Muse. The Unattainable, set on that Pedestal of Too Highness that is just out of reach. Without a blend of angst and ‘maybe, some day’, well, you have nothing to which you can aspire.

This is what happens when all your dreams come true, when you marry and move in with the woman you love.

Suddenly the Unattainable is not just Attainable, but Attained, and that Pedestal of Too Highness has succumbed to the mighty lifting power of a shared bed.

Seriously. Our bed is on stilts. It’s this kink we have. Don’t judge.

So clearly my wife is out.

And just as clearly, at least if I want to talk about it publicly, all other women are also out.

Do you have any idea how rare it is to find a heterosexual woman with a stilt fetish who’s willing to settle down and marry? When your dreams have all come true, you don’t rock the boat with a bone-headed idea like dragging in another woman as your Muse.

How do you have that conversation with your wife?

Me: Hey, I’ve found a new Muse for my writing.

Missus: Took you long enough, considering I’ve been here all along.

Me: Oh, well, it’s not you.

Missus: Oh? Who is it then? Bill in Accounting?

Me: Bill? No! Why would it be- Never mind. No, she’s not someone I work with. Not directly, anyway.

Missus: She?

Me: Yeah. I saw her on the subway, followed her home, went through her mail to learn more about her.

Missus: I see. Tell me more about this Muse who isn’t me.

Me: Um, she’s…nice?

Missus: Nice as in better looking, or nice as in more loveable?

Me: Um, no, it’s not like that at all.

Missus: Really? Then how does it work? How exactly does she inspire you if she isn’t tugging on your heart-strings? Or…wobbling your stilts?

Me: Just because she’s a rich, successful heart surgeon doesn’t mean I’m interested in her like that. She’s way too young, like in her early twenties, and her bust is way too big for me to- ACK…GARKGLE…hurting me…please…release testicles from steely grip…

[End scene]

Yeah, neither I nor my boys need that kind of drama. So, what does that leave?

Men, you say?

No. Despite the huge surge in hits my blog would get if I chose, for example, Blake Shelton naked as my next Muse, it just doesn’t do anything for me.

And doing something for me is kinda the point.

Once believed to be extinct, the Muse Turtle, or Chelonia gregārius, was known to be common in Greek and Roman times, and appears in much of the literature from those periods. If this over-sized turtle choking down a weed inspires you, then you're an even bigger loser than I am.

So, that leaves animals. And plants.

Well crap, that sucks. I’m allergic to animal dander, so I’d end up doing more sneezing than writing if I went the animal route (though I suppose reptiles or amphibians might work). But animals require upkeep, too, and I’m barely keeping my marriage and family together as it is, what with the younger, bustier Muses and the testicle-squeezing and the high cost of stilts maintenance.

And pining after someone else’s pet frog? Would you want to read something written by a creepy person like that?

Yeah, me either.

And if I chose a plant, well, with my luck, it would be poison oak. Plus I have a pollen allergy too, so sneeze-fest.

And come on, a plant as a Muse? What kind of sorry life would I have to lead where I’m inspired by an unattainable vegetable? It would have to be one of those exotic vegetables that they don’t allow in California for fear of fruit flies or something.

I’d have an easier time finding another woman with a stilt fetish.

Which really makes me hope that Muses are superfluous.

Because if they aren’t, I’m screwed.

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I Don’t Want To Embrace My Inner Child – He’s A Total Prat (And Not In The Good, Sociopath Way)

I'm outraged! And I feel old! And I'm outraged I feel old!

Lately I’ve been feeling old.

It might be the grey hair. Or the onset of constant low-level joint pain. Or the fact that a pack of teenage girls recently rolled their eyes and laughed at me, saying, “Not a chance, grampa!”

For the record, I was not hitting on them. One was wearing an improbably short, impressively garish orange and purple plaid mini skirt, more lacy trim than skirt, to be strictly honest, and along with the mohawk and Wellingtons, how could I not stare?

But feeling old reminded me of that old saying about getting in touch with your inner child.

Lately I’ve also been feeling really angry.

It might be the yahoos on the freeway, cutting me off. Or the power walkers on residential sidewalks who won’t get out of my way (share the road, bitches!). Or that old lady ahead of me in the line at the bank, depositing a thousand dollars into her account, one penny at a time.

It makes me feel like a tea-pot that’s about to explode.

Seeing as how these two facts combine to make me an old, poorly engineered tea-pot that’s bubbling with rage, I started thinking about forms of release.

Instead of getting in touch with my inner child, I pondered getting in touch with my inner sociopath.

(It’s possible that The Dark Knight was on TV when I came up with this combination. It’s an awesome movie, and has probably inspired countless other brilliant ideas.)

What’s not to like about this idea? Let’s review:

Sociopaths know no fear.

Sociopaths don’t care about anyone or anything.

Sounds perfect! I don’t want to fear the consequences of my actions, and I certainly don’t want undue concern for my fellow humans to prevent me from running some a-holes off the road (or shoving them into a bank vault that’s on a timed lock right before it closes on a Friday afternoon). Let’s do it!

Come on? Who among you hasn’t wistfully thought about going on a rampage down the streets of a major city, controlling a crime syndicate while battling masked vigilantes?

Oh, but wait. I suppose getting in touch with your inner sociopath is like losing your virginity. Afterwards, everything changes, and you can’t go back, so you want to make sure you wait for the right moment, the right person, before you surrender to that dark, ever-hungry urge.

Because there’s no returning from this journey. Like sex, once you’ve tried sociopathy, you can’t stop. You just want more, more, more, and then you stumble across a saucy little number in a garish mini skirt and she calls you “grampa.”

But I digress.

So I’m not really sure what to do. I’ve tried researching embracing your inner sociopath, but not surprisingly, there are far fewer pithy articles in the mainstream media about doing it than there are about embracing your inner rug rat.

So for now, I bide my time, taking comfort in knowing that I’m not alone in the struggle with this question, that we all are wondering when we should cut loose and let our wild and crazy out.

Oh, it’s just me, you say?

Never mind.

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Now THAT’S a spicy meatball!

Always read the fine print. And the slightly larger print. And the large print. Any one of them could have eardrum-preserving information embedded in them.

So I learned a valuable lesson about parenting this week.

Nay, an essential lesson about parenting.

When you go to the store to buy baby powder, pay attention to the label!

You’re thinking, baby powder labels? Who cares? Baby powder is baby powder.

No, it isn’t.

You’ve got your expiration dates. Yes, baby power has an expiration date. Who knew? And some unscrupulous stores will still sell it to you.

If the hot dogs on rollers look leathery, be sure to check the date before you buy that baby powder. I’m looking at you, neighborhood 7-11. If you weren’t open all night, I’d never shop inside you.

You’ve got your minor differences: talc, corn starch, with or without aloe, cut with cocaine, not cut with cocaine.

Yes, it works both ways on the cocaine-cutting front, and if you’re putting your kid down for bed, make sure you use the cocaine-free stuff. Trust me on this.

Then you’ve got your major differences: mild, medium, spicy, Thai spicy.

Don’t buy the Thai spicy.

Trust me on this.

The screaming didn’t end for days.

I don’t know what possessed the baby powder manufacturers to expand their offerings beyond ‘Mild’. I guess there are babies out their who enjoy discomfort that ranges from slow burn to all-consuming fire on their nether regions.

Or maybe it’s parents, sleep deprived one day too many, who enjoy inflicting it?

I don’t know. But I do know this: I’m not the type of parent who wants to inflict this kind of character-building pain, nor, based on the recent test case, are my children interested in experiencing it.

Their pathological fear of diapers has yet to dissipate. Here’s how diaper changes go following…the Incident In The Nursery (or as I call it, The Curious Case of the Baby That Did Scream):

Me: [sing-song voice] “Do you have a poopy butt?”

Son: [backing up, scaling wall to nearest window] God, no! Stay away! A pox on your house! [looking plaintively at brother] Please! Kill me!

My son isn’t three yet, and he spontaneously developed the above vocabulary after a careless application of Thai spicy baby power by yours truly.

So if you can get past the side effects, maybe you can use this as a learning tool. Personally, I’d rather have inarticulate kids than go through this again, but your mileage may vary.

Even his brother, who witnessed the sad drama as it unfolded, has not been left unmarked. Whenever I approach him with a diaper, he looks at me with eyes narrowed and his breath catches with fear. I can see the assessment of the room taking place in his head: exits, witnesses, is daddy wearing a cup today or not.

It’s very sad. My kids aren’t afraid of a monster under the bed, or in the closet. They’re afraid of a daddy in those places instead.

Seriously. When the missus puts them down each night, they say, “There’s a daddy under the bed! It’s gonna get me and burn my poopy butt, which isn’t poopy by the way, so I don’t need a diaper change!”

And the missus dutifully looks under the bed, in the closet, behind their pillows, in the dresser, under the carpet, and everywhere else my kids scream there might be a daddy lurking.

I’m worried how this will affect the ties I get on Father’s Day in the future.

On the plus side, this has proven to be an excellent excuse to foist all diaper changes on the missus. She’s not happy about it, but the logic behind the decision is irrefutable. I withdraw to a respectful distance and smile at the thought that I’m not the one dealing with the screams and thumps of my little diaper conscientious objectors.

So maybe, dads out there, you do want Thai spicy baby powder.

Just don’t use corn starch – it’s plain wrong and illegal in eighteen states.

—

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I Met The Egg Man, Goob Goob Ga Joob, He’s Kind Of A Shirty Bastard

There but for the grace of Super Chicken go I...

I entered my man cave this morning and found an egg on my desk.

No plate, no bowl. Just an egg. On a desk.

Not whole. Fried, sunny side up. Staring at me with a gelatinous yellow eye.

The yolk looked firm, not runny. It felt like a glare, actually, a sort of non-verbal “How could you do this to me?”

“It had naught to do with me,” I said, somewhat self-consciously, as I’m not used to talking to non-verbally communicating fried eggs. “I’m as confused as you are.”

I excused myself, ran into the house, and inventoried our supply of eggs. All present and accounted for.

“This is very strange,” I said upon returning, hands behind my back. “You did not come from my house.”

“How could you let this happen?” the egg seemed to ask in response. Had it moved after I left?

I shrugged. “How can you hold me responsible? I didn’t do it. I doubt very much the missus did it. And the children, young as they are, would most certainly have injured themselves in the attempt, and I would have put a stop to that. It’s a mystery.”

“I had dreams, you know,” the egg calmly stared back.

This was a bit unnerving. A shimmer of heat rose from its moist, glistening skin.

“I was going to be fine, strapping rooster,” it continued. “Explore places. That corner under the loquat tree, for starters. Maybe root around in the vegetable garden, assuming you ever replant it.”

Was this egg taking me to task over the sorry state of our garden?

“We’ll plant again as soon as this rain lets up,” I said. “If you hadn’t been cooked,” I continued, trying to regain the moral high ground, “you’d still have ended up on someone’s plate, as a chicken leg, or breast, or, more likely, both.”

“I could have been an egg-laying hen,” the egg stared back reproachfully. “They don’t get eaten.”

“I thought you were going to be a rooster,” I pointed out.

“I’m saying I had potential, could have been anything,” replied the egg unwaveringly.

“Of course, an egg-laying hen is just cranking out more eggs to be fried like you’ve been,” I said. “Bit disingenuous, that, isn’t it?”

The egg had no reply, but continued to stare.

“And think about me,” I continued. “I had work to do this morning. Writing. Now I’m arguing with a fried egg about wasted potential. Oh, the irony there. Plus I’ll have to clean this mess up. I bet your grease has stained my desktop.”

“You’re a heartless bastard,” stared back the egg.

“Technically, so are you,” I couldn’t help but say as I brought the plate and fork from behind my back. “You also look delicious.”

—

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How Many Bloody Rabbits Do I Need To Kill To Get You To Stop?

Curse my friends. Especially the ones who are sisters of each other.

I’ve found the heavy burden of not breaking yet another chain letter internet meme thrust upon me by the most inconsiderate Audrey Goshorn.

She did this despite my dire explanation about the consequences of breaking chain letters.

Families torn apart.

Civilizations collapsing.

Alien overlords landing.

Mayan prophecies, no matter how objectively stupid, coming true.

I don’t need that kind of responsibility right now. I’m several episodes behind on Awake and Castle, dammit.

But since it is the fate of the entire world resting on my shoulders…

1. What snack (if any) do your prefer when writing?

Something I can eat without using my hands. Or having to move my eyes too far from the screen. So, grapes hand-fed to me by adoring coed interns.

The missus feels threatened by this mode of snacking, for some reason, so it has been some time since I’ve been ‘allowed’ to eat while writing, Most distressing…

2. What is your next major writing goal?

I could say, get my second Marlowe book through the last round of edits, but that would be a lie. In all honesty? My next major writing goal is to start writing again.

Life hasn’t been handing me lemons, it’s been firing them at me, with extreme prejudice, through a modified super-sonic potato cannon.

While I admit that this is extremely inconvenient, I do have to give props to Life for the off-the-charts awesome looking super-sonic potato cannon. As soon as I’m done dodging this one, I’m gonna get me one of those.

But weapons envy aside, until someone comes up with a high-speed lemonade mixer/Kevlar™ catcher’s mitt, I’m keeping my head down and my butt in the fox hole.

3. How would you feel about your book being made into a movie?

Meh. So many of my books have been made into movies.

Oh, wait, you mean movies not just in my head? I’d be bouncing off the walls, screaming my head off, and then, when I found out they didn’t cast Stephen Fry as the voice of House, I’d get very, very sullen.

Yes, I know, Hugh Laurie plays Dr. House on the TV show. My House is a different House, and in my head, he’s voiced by Hugh Lau-, er, I mean, Stephen Fry. If that confuses you, join the club!

4. What is your dream writing space?

Bomb shelter with a secret entrance, grainy black-and-white video surveillance of the outside, and wall-to-wall bookcases stuffed with survival guides.

The only source of illumination, besides my hamster-powered OLPC computer? A naked bulb swinging from a cord, flickering as I laugh maniacally at my computer screen. Flickering because it’s a mercury-infested compact fluorescent, mind you, not some energy-sapping incandescent bulb.

This is a modern writing lair.

Did I mention my chair rests on a trap door over a pit of disinterested cats? A trap door with a fidgety locking mechanism? I know, it doesn’t sound very horrible, but I’m deathly allergic to cats, so it adds a sense of drama, not to mention urgency, to my writing.

I’ve found there is no better way to keep your book’s pacing on track than the threat of plummeting into a mound of hungry yet still disinterested cats.

5. Where do you go to scope out ideas for characters and dialogue?

I go to the dark places in my mind. Sometimes I bring a flashlight, but I can never get it through my ear canal. But flashlight technology is getting smaller, so it’s only a matter of time. Until then, these trips cause major headaches.

I also go through a lot of gauze.

A lot of gauze.

Actually, I get the most interesting ideas hanging out with friends, or reading people’s twitter feeds and blogs. But I can’t act on those ideas, or the people who inspired them might get the wrong idea about me.

I’m already on thin ice with most of them, and can’t risk any more trouble.

6. What are you doing to become a better writer?

I’m trying to get back into the habit of reading an excessive amount of books per year. I’ve recently managed to claw my way up to ‘a non-zero, but still unimpressive’ number.

It would help if my kids didn’t grab at my books and eReader. Or color in the books and on my eReader.

My Nook Touch is now a Nook Touch Color. But not in the good way.

7. Do you outline before you start a novel?

Yes. I used to be a pantser, but found that writing Book 2 in my Marlowe and the Spacewoman series, Balloons of the Apocalypse, went amazingly well with an outline to guide me. The damn thing practically wrote itself.

So yeah, I’m totally an Outline Man™ now.

8. What was the last book you read?

A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Definitely the sort of book to appeal to a teenage boy, but I still enjoyed it.

Hmm, what does that say about me? I’m young at heart?

Speaking of which, John Carter was a fun movie. More people should go see it.

9. What is your biggest distraction when you write and how do you deal with it?

The internet. And my writing groups. Especially my online writing groups. We totally don’t stay focused on writing when we meet. So far, I have not dealt with this very well because…

…as mentioned above, I haven’t been writing lately due to that lemon-hucking bastard, Life.

If I had any will power, I’d quit Humanity cold turkey, build myself a shack in the woods, and mail bombs to academics write the next twelve Great American Novels.

Scratch that, why limit myself? The next twelve Great Human Novels.

I want my books to be the ones our alien overlords read to understand us after wiping us out. I want to be the author our alien overlords point to when they tell the cloned-from-frozen-samples new humans, “This, this is why we brought your species back. Live up to these books and we will make you gods!”

Sadly, we’ll be extinct again six years later. No one can live up to my characters. Even the flawed characters.

And the aliens’ language is very complex, and the humans won’t understand the instructions.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, really.

10. What is your favorite sentence you have ever written?

When French gourmet chefs go insane, they’re exiled to Belgium.

But that’s a short sentence, so how about one more?

Even Marlowe felt himself moved by the graceful, haunting sounds arising from Finch’s throat, rich notes that were neither words nor instruments, but something a thousand times more effective than either.

11. What should the title of my YA paranormal romance be?

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.  I’ve Only Got Poltergeist For You

No, I will not apologize for that title. You asked, so suck it up.

Time to spread the pain around. You guys wanna lob flaming lemons at me, in the form of chain letter internet memes, well, then, right back at ya!

These questions are directed at poor Marj (because I’m always hitting innocent bystanders while targeting the guilty) and Kit and Audrey and, what the heck, Anne Marie and Tamela too. Now I’ll see who reads my blog amongst you, and who doesn’t!

Muhahahaha!

1) What is your favorite color, and why?

2) How many hearts have you broken in the course of your cold, heartless life?

3) What is your favorite vacation spot, and why isn’t it the Poconos?

4) Do you buy lottery tickets? Explain the reasoning behind this choice.

5) What is the next book you want to read, and why, if it isn’t mine, isn’t it mine????

6) Favorite grade in school? (Year, not letter grade – no bragging, smarty pants!)

7) What is the best dream you remember having?

8) When in Rome, how do you act? If you’ve never been to Rome, how would you act? Penalty for going with the obvious answer.

Extreme penalty.

9) What are: your first pet’s name, your mother’s maiden name, and the last four digits of your social security number? If it helps you remember, you may provide the entire social security number.

10) What is your earliest memory of music?

11) Why?

—

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Why I hate Blake Shelton

I’m depressed.

It could be because of the crippling lack of sleep I’ve been suffering due to that most perfect form of birth control, toddlers.

I didn’t mention this in my previous post on the evil of toddlers, but they also tend to scream a lot at random intervals between the hours 8pm and 8am.

And once awake, I am restless and can take as long as an hour to fall back asleep.

Or it could be my rapidly fading faith that Humanity has a future.

I’ve been mini van shopping, and how can you have hope for a species when you have a comparison site lauding the 15 cup holders in Brand X’s 8-seat vehicle over shameful Brand Y’s mere 10 cup holders in their 7-seat vehicle?

How many freakin’ drinks do 7 or 8 people need to lug around with them on trips?

“Oh, I can’t drink the beverage in this cup holder – it’s for holding my northbound cup, and we’re currently traveling north by northwest. Hand me the Tab in my NW holder, please. Ah, thank you.”

Yeah, the conclusion we are completely and utterly screwed (but most likely fully slaked when it comes to thirst) is inescapable.

It could be my complete and total inability to put on a believable fake Scottish accent.

You’d be surprised how desirable, if not downright important, that skill is in certain situations.

Look at this smug, evil, fully dressed bastard!

But I’ve narrowed it down to Blake Shelton. Which is why I hate him.

Oh, it’s not poor Blake Shelton’s fault. Don’t know him, his music (or his TV shows, or his art, or whatever it is he’s famous for).

It’s his fans.

In particular, the ones hell-bent on seeing him naked.

Or nekkid, nekked, and nude.

Which would seemingly lead right back to the whole “no faith in Humanity” jag, but that’s not where I’m going.

It leads right back to me.

Someone I follow on twitter mentioned adding a “Blake Shelton naked” tag to her blog. As a joke. And getting a huge spike in search hits.

So as a joke, I added this tag to a blog post that had nothing to do with Blakes, Sheltons, nakeds, nudes, nekkids, or nekkeds.

I thought it would be funny. All these Blake Shelton fans, hot and bothered about the nudie pics they were about to see, landing on my blog instead and becoming crushingly disappointed.

<insert evil laugh here>

And then, not long after that, I discovered the Site Stats feature on WordPress.

Now I don’t get a huge number of hits every day. Or a lot. Or even very many. Or, possibly, by some people’s standards, not even a few. And that’s pretty depressing in and of itself.

The hits I do get? Steadily, day after day, more than half who reach my site are using some combination of the following search terms:

Blake/Blak/Bake + Sheldon/Shelton + naked/nude/nekkid/nekked/huge throbbing/well-oiled/priest collar/vintage

And that’s depressing.

—

And now, a word from our sponsor: me!

 

My book, (the edited) Marlowe and the Spacewoman, is out!

 

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