Line 'O the day - August 9, 2008

The world is gonna end someday. But that don’t mean shit to me right now. (Rather unoriginal)

I'm a hollow motherfucker.

It sounds bad, but it ain't. Like a hollow tree is probably a dead tree, which isn't good for this analogy. A trumpet is hollow too though. And when the world spits and blubbers in one end ideally I can take that shit and make it sound like music when it comes out the other.

Line 'O the day - August 2, 2008

I understand the allure, but I just don’t see the pay off.

Being a historian

I'm filling up a notebook with shit I want to imagine I need, but probably don't. The quick run down is that I have an idea for a fantasy comedy series. Think Lord of the Rings, but shenanigans, dick jokes and fowl language take precedent over whatever the hell Joseph Campbell was always yammering about. The great monomyth is my backdrop, it is my bar in Boston, my community college study group, my deluxe apartment in the sky. And with the idea I have I think I can mine some decent comedy out of the situations.

Now I'm doing two things at the same time with this idea before I actually sit down to write my first episode. First and more importantly I'm figuring out who my characters are. There are five main characters and a few pop ins. Now I do this with all my characters, create their back story and play with how those experiences have shaped them as individuals leading up to whatever fucking events are about to transpire in their lives, which is what I actually want to write about. This ain't a novel or a feature script and the serialized nature of the thing in my head means I perhaps might leave a little more malleability to the characters than I normally do, so they have room to wiggle if I want to do something with them later that might not fit in with a rigid character outline. Still though it's a lot of shit to build up that I really want to rush through so I can sit down and actually write their misadventure. You can't rush through it though cause in practice what I write suffers if I don't lay the ground work. This is filling up a fair bit of a notebook, but that part isn't my problem.

The second thing I'm doing at the same time is where I might have gone of the rails, but I'm reluctant to pull the brake because it might end up somewhere worthwhile. See all of those fantasy worlds have a rich and expansive history. So while I'm building my characters I'm also chronicling the tales of the 'realm'. I've come to find out that this history is fucking elaborate. There's a page in my notebook with the heading 'mini time line' which has seven, like one sentence, points under it. It's a quick outline of the Ages of the world. Just for reference sake, from the beginning of history in this fantasy world to the present day that my characters inhabit is roughly about 14,000 years. I thought well I'll start from the beginning... Fuck me.

I needed gods and their mythology. One of them is not a nice god so the others get pissy at him. The gods leave the world to its inhabitants and the real sort of history begins. I spent a mere three pages on the gods, which is perhaps too long. Once real events start happening to real people though I decided to just make it like a cliff notes version of history. Which still means I'm making up FOURTEEN THOUSAND YEARS of stuff, all of which is important to the world, but perhaps not so much to my hero and his sidekick's mundane (though ideally funny) conversation about how elves are kinda assholes. I'm through about 5,000 years, but I made some big fucking leaps, like a thousand years here and there. Which is easy cause the elves ran the show for quite a while and they're basically immortal, yes obviously the elves are immortal you can't question that, so there were big chunks of time where peace enveloped the land. Once I get into the human histories I'm seriously going to have to narrow down what is and is not important.

The point being I'm aiming for a no winking vibe, like the world around my story is just as real and filled with conflict and weight as Tolkien's compendium, and my silly characters live there, but the shit they do is funny and odd, but no one really recognizes it as such. Conversely these weird bastards are also very important to the world as their my Frodo or Rand al'Thor (No I haven't read The Wheel of Time, I just do my research). Do I need to know the histories of elves, men and dwarves (of course there are dwarves I've already got elves) to have the aforementioned mundane conversation? Part of me says no, and another says yes. And in my writing I've learned that when in doubt take the long road. No matter how much you may dislike the scenery it will deliver you to your destination in far better shape than if you take the quick and easy route.

So basically I'll just continue to scrawl out tales of this other world because... what else am I gonna do. Essentially I just wanted to vent a tad bit and hadn't posted a blog in a couple weeks.

Line 'O the day - July 23, 2008

If ‘home is where the heart is’ it’s amazing how long I can live without my heart.


Present day note:
That's a couple weeks before my birthday. Little bit of longing going on for the old homestead.

Line 'O the day - July 20, 2008

Well I don’t want to oversell it, I was slightly frustrated.

The nastiest smell I've ever encountered

On the farm there is a never ending array of foul scents that can and will assault your nose. A cow lot kinda smells, a hog lot is worse. Noxious weeds find their way into hay and can catch you by surprise with their odor. The same goes with snakes and other small animals, who weren't quick enough to get out of the way of the hay baler. When you come by a few hours later or the next day and pick up the bale it smells like dead. That's a common phrase where I come from, 'smells like dead'. No further description needed, it never really matters what's kicked it, it all smells the same. The smell of death plays a factor in this story, but scale and time augmented the odor me and my brother came across. First...

Molasses is used as a supplement for cattle and you can present it and a host of other minerals and supplements to the animals in a variety of ways. Hard little blocks they lick, lapping up small amounts of the stuff with each pass. A slightly less dry version of the little blocks which comes in what amounts to like a ten or twenty gallon little tub. Or you can opt for a liquid form that comes in a big plastic tank. The liquid tanks are pretty inventive, as they have a lick wheel. The cow licks the wheel, it turns and the sticky molasses clings to the wheel and the wheel remains covered in the stuff. That is until the tank runs empty and you have to refill it. The idea of refilling the tank is where my older brother and I come in here.

An old busted lick tank.  You can't verify this, but it's sitting in about the same spot where this little story takes place.

A guy in a truck comes by and just fills it up, but our tank had sat empty for a long time and filled up with twenty or thirty gallons of rain over a period of... I don't know how long. Well our old man tasked Jake and I with dumping the water so he could get it refilled. From a technical standpoint this is a simple task, and we set about it without knowing what we were in for. We got over to the barn lot the tank was in and popped off the top. It's like a big lid. Immediately we were staggered by the smell. There had been a little bit of the molasses mixture still in the tank when it began to fill with rain. This sweet easy to get at source of sustenance was a fly magnet. Alas flies are stupid and while they found their way into the tank easy enough a great host failed to exit. It's hard to say, but I honestly think it might have been into the tens of thousands range on how many flies made up that foul soup that rippled in the bottom of the tank.

We stepped back to compose ourselves. Jake's plan, which was a good one, was simple enough, get under one side and dump it over away from us. Side by side we grabbed the lip of the tank and hefted it up off the ground, the brown rather thick liquid pooling at the far end. It was heavier than we thought and our leverage on the tank wasn't as good as it could have been. We dropped our edge and in a rush the water rolled back to our side of the tank splashing up into our faces. I gagged, turned made it a few steps and let loose whatever was in my stomach. I was a bit preoccupied, but I think Jake managed not to throw up. The smell was... well it's hard to describe; stagnate water, pounds of dead flies, mixed with what was left of the sweet smelling molasses, all fermented nicely in the tank for weeks if not months.

It was heavier than we initially thought, but we could dump it over, we knew that much. Jake got a little angry at me cause it took me a few minutes to settle myself enough to walk up to the tank alongside him. We had stirred it all up and now the smell was constantly emanating from the mess inside. I gave up about halfway through our second attempt, which really pissed Jake off. After another few minutes of pacing around I finally walked up to the tank and we upturned the damn thing. I can still see that shit spilling out onto the ground, uhhgg.

Promptly we got back over to the house and I jumped in the shower. It's been probably damn near twenty years and there has yet to be anything I've encountered that rivals that unholy stench.

Line 'O the day - July 9, 2008

The balance between being accommodating and being assertive is nearly impossible to maintain.
Or
Nice guys finish last because it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make for the sake of others.


Present day note:
My best friend half hates me because of this aspect of my personality.

Line 'O the day - July 4, 2008

I don’t believe in God, because I don’t give a shit if anyone believes in me. And if, as they say, I am made in God’s likeness then my thoughts are akin to his, and he probably don’t give a rat’s ass if I believe in him or not.


Present day note:
Contradictions and half truths abound in this Line. At first I say I don't believe in God, but then sorta allow God the ability to not give a shit. Also I say I don't give a shit if others believe in me. That's kind of true. I'd prefer people like me, and wouldn't mind if a few folk on this Earth cared about me, but if they'd rather not buy stock in Zeb that's not a big issue.

Line 'O the day - June 21, 2008

I regret an ungodly number of instances and aspects of my existence, but when I look at the whole I don’t think I could feel better about it.


Present day note:
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it is also informative as a motherfucker. If you really take the time to learn from the past.