The Dog Ate My Post

I joke about being a slacker…err, make that: I “joke” about being a slacker…

Ahem.

Like all humor, even stupid jokes have to have an element of truth to them.  In this case, it ain’t an “element” so much as, well, the totality of the damned thing.

I thought I had a blog post scheduled for yesterday.  I mean, c’mon…I remember writing one, so what the hell happened to it?

No, really, what the hell happened to it?!

How do you lose a freaking electronic blog post?  That’s taking my slackerdom to All Star status…

Anyway, I promised to be regular on this blog again, so I have to get something up.

*sigh*

Ain’t nothin’ for it, I’ll have to post a random rant piece I have sitting in my Drafts section, one I tossed off just to kill some time while I was waiting for friends.

Crap, 2019 ain’t exactly starting off gangbusters, is it?  Anyway, here’s the rant:

Are you kidding me?

No, really — are freaking kidding me?!

Look, folks, we’ve talked before about my, err, penchant for taprooms and breweries.  We’ve also talked about my impatience and intolerance for shitty taprooms.  Crap, you spent a (bare) minimum of $300,000 to open a brewery — and very,  very likely a great deal more than that — so how the hell do you screw up the face of that business?!

C’mon…a bad taproom is the brewery-equivalent of McDonalds hanging a dead rat on their front door, for fuck’s sake…

So why — why?  Why?  WHY? — do so many places screw up even the most basic stuff?

*sigh*

Okay, so I’m a perfectionist.  Sue me.  Part of the price of living & working chest deep in the craft brewing world is the burden of expectations and standards.

Crap, I admit it, this rant is one of those half-drunk posts I’ve warned y’all about before.  I’m sitting in the taproom of a brewery, waiting for some friends, and…well…  My headache is steadily growing, my patience slowly shrinking, and my beer-nerd-gland slowly putting a gun to its head as the only escape.

Music was meant to be heard and enjoyed, it was not meant to drive straight through my skull, leaving a trail of burned and gutted brain cells in its wake.  I can kill my own brain cells quite well, thank you very much.

And the chairs…

Shit, breweries are my crack, it doesn’t take a hell of a lot to make me all warm and happy.  I’ve spent time drinking in places from Tijuana to Tallinn, and every place in between, so I’m not the most demanding guy in the world.  But, and this is — pun intended — a big but, my ass shouldn’t feel like the entire freaking cast and crew of Deliverance had their way with it after just fifteen minutes of sitting on these cheap, metal stools…

Now get off my lawn, I have beer to drink!

At Play

I sat down at my favorite little coffee place to write this morning. I had a good topic in mind, one inspired by a discussion I had about depression and anxiety and the realities that affect so many people. Like so many people, the guy I was talking with didn’t think those things were “real.” He thought they were just expressions of “weakness” on the part of those who fight those particular demons…

The post I had in mind was going to be honest and blunt, and not the most uplifting thing in the world.

But I sat down to write in the coffee shop.

A young mom was in there, with her two sons. The boys were maybe 18 months and 3-4 years old. While she sipped her coffee and read on her phone, the kids were playing, rough-housing, and in general just cracking each other up.

I’ve mentioned before that soundtracks & music can (quite literally) make the scenes we want to write. Well, there are more soundtracks than just music…

It is, I discovered, well-and-truly impossible to write a post that is “honest and blunt, and not the most uplifting thing in the world” when you are laughing your ass off at the innocent antics of two young kids. At this particular moment, the bright plastic trucks lie forgotten and the 3-4 year old is “losing” a wrestling match so his little brother can pin him…

How do you write about the darker side of life in the face of that? How do you tackle difficult subjects surrounded by the simple joy of play?

I wanted to be grumpy today…now I’m chuckling and in a good mood.

Harrumph!

If Politics Were A Video Game, I’d Rage-Quite Right About Now…

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

–Marcus Tullius Cicero

 

It’s Election Day. Again.

Yay.

I guess it’s rather surprising in someone who loves the cut & thrust of politics in history, but I just can’t stand the idiocy of the modern US system at this point.

Both the Rs and Ds scream at each other, painting the other as the harbinger of death and destruction, and insisting that they and they alone are able to keep the world safe for puppies and babies.

Bullshit.

Both are part of the problem. Both exist only to promote and benefit the entrenched special interests and political/social elites who are their donors, and who drive their respective agendas. And both, in all candor, push the same, carbon-copy shit they have been pushing for decades. And, yes, I use the phrase “same shit” very, very intentionally: both (supposedly antithetical) parties/factions represent exactly the same uselessness. Boil away the fluff and tissue-paper decorations, and you are left simply with two ostensibly separate groups pushing the same agenda to benefit the same people.

Bah, a pox on both their houses! And by pox, I mean the nastiest, most incurable strain of syphilis the universe can dream up.

Einstein very famously said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. Well, welcome to United States politics, Al. Not a single idea comes out of any of these idiots that is in any way original or useful.

Nope, it’s all the same tried-and-true prescriptions that helped fuck everything up in the first place.

–No, Rs, I don’t want a goddamned thing to do with your sanctimonious pseudo-morality and regressive socio-cultural indignation.

–No, Ds, I don’t want a goddamned thing to do with your social engineering, or your dangerously naive views on economics and security.

–No, “establishment”, I don’t want a goddamned thing to do with your politics or your myopic, fratricidal squabbles.

No, just…no.

What I want is someone — ANYONE — who gives more of a shit about the good of the country, and of the people who by any definition ARE the country, than the petty maneuvering for advantage of their own “team”.

What I want is someone who gives a damn about regular folks: about those of us who would rather remove our own organs with dull spoons than go to a political cocktail-party/fundraiser…about those of us who have more on our minds than worrying about scoring points against “the other guy”…about those of us who can only lose in a rigged game played by folks with whom we have nothing in common…

Yes, I do realize I’m ranting; sorry about that.  Although, personally, I’d actually rather call it “venting”…that just sounds better. Kinda like saying your house is “alternatively heated” rather than “on fire”.

The simple fact of the matter is that I’ve had enough. Enough of the petty bullshit that makes up politics at every level, enough of the prioritizing of “red team” or “blue team” over real people, enough of arguments that are literally so old and repetitive that no one actually pays attention to the merits anymore.

I’ve been asked why I write such dark material…

Well, the answer to that is fairly complicated, both on personal and intellectual grounds — and may see some attention in future posts — but one little clue can come from simply watching/reading the news for a half-hour.

*sigh*

Nothing I write could be darker or more depressing — nor better illustrate the inane futility of it all — than that.

NaNoDrinkMo … Err, Maybe I Just Don’t Get It

Sooo…it’s NaNoWriMo time. Again. Now, maybe I’m the only writer in the world who feels this way, but…really? What the hell is that syllabic mishmash supposed to be?

If I can’t be bothered to write during the other eleven months of the year, why would November be any different?

Shit, November is the last month in which I should be writing seriously. October is home to more beer-focused events and festivals than any other time of the year. And December? Well, what the hell is Christmas except family stress and waaay too much booze? I don’t know about your family, but with mine…well, let’s just say that family harmony starts and ends at the liquor cabinet.

Honestly, November ain’t for writing, it’s for giving my liver a fighting chance to survive.

If I haven’t been clear enough: I barely know NaNoWriMo is a thing, and I certainly have never taken part.

I know, I know, there are a ton of other writers out there who love the damned concept. Giddyup, yippee-ki-yay, have-at-it….I’ll never really get it, but boats are floated by many, many things.

Okay, so enough venting and griping. But…but…NaNoWriMo…really? Why is this a thing?

I can only put this in personal terms: writing is who I am, not what I do. If ever I am not writing, there is a problem. If ever I go more than a few days without keys clicking, or pen in hand, then my life has very much taken a turn for the worst.

I can’t think, can’t process, can’t function, without writing. How the hell could I ever say, “No, let’s wait until November”…? Even in Yellowstone, amidst all that distraction, I wrote better than 25,000 words…more like 35,000 if you count the blog posts and other stuff I wrote up there. And still there is a backlog of stuff in my head — and in my soul.

So, to answer the IWSG question for this month: no, I have never written anything for NaNoWriMo. Or, more accurately, I’ve written a shit-ton in November, but because those stories — those words — demanded to be written, not because some artificial Twitter-drive told me it was time to “buckle down”.

What spurs me to write is, more than anything else, an internal thing. I write for me. If others like my stuff, then I’ll do the happy-dance…but even if I end up exactly as my family expects — and let’s not get started on that particular demon, shall we? — still will I write.

To (mis)quote a song: I don’t stutter when I write.

The thoughts and the words, well, they carry and express themselves…and that is, for me, how it has to be. That is the how and why of writing for me — not because the calendar tells me it is time, but because I simply can’t stop. Not and stay “me”.