Crom Unhinged

This is about the only piece of stand up that I ever thought about for more than a few seconds. here’s how it goes:

“How many people here tonight have NEVER been to a strip club?…. Oh yeha? a few of you… Well for those people who have never been, and perhaps for some that have, here’s the one thing you need to understand: Never eat the steak sandwich at a strip club. … That wasn’t a euphemism. Don’t. Do Not. If there were a “LIfe” Survival guide, “Do Not eat Strip Club steak sandwich” would be on page ONE. Christ, it might even be in the title: Life Survival COLON Do not eat Strip Club Steak Sandwich.”

I have a one man show… a One Act I suppose… or perhaps a One Scene. It’s entitled “My Last Cigarette”.  I feel that it’s short enough, and this forum perfect for the entire script. Behold.

SCENE 1- EXT-Office Building

A large man exits the building in a hurry. He moves away from the building, until he’s 10 meters from it, and skids to a halt. He rifles through his pockets, and then suddenly looks at the audience.

CURTIS

This is my story… I call it “The Last Cigarette”.

He continues to rifle through his pockets until he finds his pack. He flips it open.

CURTIS

My god… just one left. Look at it, all alone and scared.

A shaking claw of a hand reaches for the cigarette, but stops. He stares down at it intently.

CURTIS

(To the Audience)

I can’t just puff through this one like a mad dog. This is the LAST… I have to savor it. The flavor, the experience of pulling the sweet draft deep into my lungs. This is IT.

(beat)

Maybe I’ll just wait.

His hand closes the pack, and he takes a deep breath, sighing upwards into the sky. Suddenly he tears open the pack, mashing the cigarette between his lips. A shaking hand brings up his lighter, shaking so bad it can barely click the flame on.

He lights it, and sucks in a deep breath.

CURTIS

Oh Christ, that’s the stuff. SO good. But totally killing me, Right? I know. This is it, the last one… better enjoy it.

Curtis smokes the cigarette like he’s making love to it. After it’s down to the nub, he tosses it away. He spends a few moments looking up at the sky.

CURTIS

Okay… I have a new title for this story…”My Second to LAST Cigarette”….

(beat)

“Carton.”

FADE TO BLACK

A masterpiece? Fucking A.

I’m not saying “Up in the Air” is a bad movie. I did not say that. It didn’t happen… back the fuck up.

But I am saying that it’s a vague film. A series of emotional corners that we crack our delicate shins on a few exasperating times. We are presented with an image; a man with familiar emotional cracks. We bear witness to how the waters of regret, and loneliness seep into those cracks, and we await some revelation, some change.

And then one comes… but leaves us sitting, wondering, waiting for that last crack on the shin to form into a catharsis… but it never really seems to arrive. We’ve been left homework from the film; sent back to our lives with a loose thread to rationalize in our own quiet time.

This is a growing trend in films. A kind of anti-climactic ebb of energy; like the great wave of the story crashed against a final rock that was too high, and too old to be washed away. The water simple drains off, leaving us with no real release. I don’t think the audience wants to be spoon fed, by any means, but I do believe they want the possibility of hope, of continuance, of life. Here, and in several other films, they seem to hang back, just far enough that you don’t see any light at all.

I want to be sent home with some homework… but just enough to keep me searching, not so much as to make me give up.

It bears bitter fruit, doesn’t it? Eh? Indeed.

I can only implore all of you to refrain from traveling via the skies. They are no longer friendly, and have never been all that well organized. Now we have flaming pants attempting to detonate travellers, and hard eyed Customs pimps rifling through our luggage.

I’ve spent many a long night waiting in a terminal for the twin jet monster to be fed its liquid diet, and then cram all of us on board so it can sling a fat parabola over the mid-west, and come to a teeth chattering halt on the frozen tarmac in YYC. I’ve been hustled through many security check points, been asked to remove many articles of clothing, and had more than a few things tossed into the trash because they’ve become verboten over night.

And I can say with almost no authority, that this system does not work. In the big city terminology used within the security community, this failure is called “Enumerating Badness”. The long and short being that everytime something nasty comes our way, we put it down on the naughty side of Santa’s big list, and no longer allow it. The Powers that Be believe that if we keep this list keen, and sharp enough, we’ll stop any of the nasty evil-doers from bringing heavy duty shit on board a plane, and scattering it across the local county lines.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work. Only the Shadow knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men.

Every move that is made by the TSA on their Fisher Price chessboard, the bad guys counter. Because no matter what is scratch off the Okay List, they’ll use whatever is left to cause mischief. Perhaps if they just kept people on government watch lists from getting on the fucking planes to begin with, this wouldn’t happen.

But I have neither the expertise, nor the disposition to argue that one. My solution for you is simple: Don’t Fly anymore. it doesn’t matter where you have to go, or what important meetings may be waiting for you on the other end. Your life is too precious a commodity to piss away on these clowns and their metal detectors. Fuck Them.

Drive if you can, phone if you can’t, and relax at home with a martini. It’s worth it.

It’s pretty hilarious that even after so many years, the community on Efnet has basically remained the same.

I used to hang out there for days on end, and pick off sweet dcc’s from the warez channels that floated to the top, before being mercilessly crushed. A few weeks ago, I thought I’d pop back on. Our old channel still remained, with a few old souls keeping a quiet vigil on the bygone era that was. I wasn’t able to pick up my name (Crom obviously), so I settled for something similar but pseudo-hardcore enough to get by.

It wasn’t a hanging matter, only a few people are still around, and to be honest, I’m not die hard to remain. But funny enough, my moniker came available a little while ago, and I changed it up. So Crom resides on the efnet network, as he once did. All is right in the world (from my pov at least).

And sure enough, people started griefing me to get the nickname back. Now part of me could care less, since in the end the 12k or so users that still cling to irc are probably not going to have much of an impact on my life… but something about the whole experience recalled a darker side of my personality, that hasn’t come out to play in a while.

The childish lack of reason is what comes out of me. In perfect response to that which is thrown my way by the people whining to have back something valueless. I didn’t even want it, but now they’ve poked the bear with a stick, and part of me wants to keep it just from spite.

What’s that flavor on the wind? Is it 1994? I think it is.

Let the War begin.

Nov 21 – “Girl @Co-op ringing the donation bell like it’s her mortal enemy. I cannot donate money, it would reinforce bad habits. Ring it like a sleigh bell you dumb slut”

Nov 26 – “it won’t be long before they sentence me to non-compliance. The weasels are closing in.”

Dec 3 – “undercover cops bought a girl for $4000 dollars from a chinese hair dresser; low-balling. Who uses the word “kerfuffle” in the newspaper? Assholes. do not use fly-over mom vernacular”

Dec 4 – “the pimp looking doorman, who keeps turning away all the teenagers looking for weed, steals all the money and slips out the back.”  – May have been a dream.

Well the clock ran out on the big game, but I managed enough touchdowns.

The act of writing 50k words over 30 days is always stressful, but where last years woes involved a lack of narrative to follow, and a shady idea in the first place, this year was simply a case of time management. The narrative was worked out fairly well ahead of time, although the same pitfall as last year befell me: This book shouldn’t be 50k words long. More likely 30k.

Writing with a defined narrative is such a pleasure compared to trying to come up with 2000 words a day of bollocks you have no handle on. And really, it only took a few hours of sketching out a structure, in order to have enough to play with. Now the game will be to take the book as it is, refine the narrative, probably a few times, and rewrite it. That process will take the better part of a few months. I won’t really be bothering with the book until the new year; for now I have two projects to deal with, but I’ll yammer about them some other post.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Statistics:

- Number times the word “Fuck” was used as an active verb: 9

- Most popular band/album listened to during the course of the month: Toss up between the old standby, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and a new comer to the lineup, Turisas “Battle Metal 2009 Rerelease”.

- Average Daily word Count: 2100 (There were three whole days of complete inactivity through out the month. SLACKER)

- Number of meals eaten out: 23 (which is not easy for a newly diagnosed Celiac)

- Ounces of caffeine consumed: 1 billion. (I don’t know… A LOT)

- Average hours of sleep per night: 5 (god, i’m STILL tired, and i’ve been sleeping constantly the last 3 days)

On the whole it was a success. I learned more about myself and how I write, discovered interesting considerations about characters and forces in novel work. I wrote another book, and that’s more than most can say. I have written 2 books.

Huzzah!

It’s the middle of the month, and things have gone rocky in the NaNoWriMo.

The first week of the contest was easy like Sunday morning. Word count was well ahead of the quota. Week 2 was another story.

I spend my days working in IT, trying to pretend like I know what’s going on, and keeping servers from exploding with fire. Well last week things exploded… they exploded real good. I was behind the whole week on my word count.

But Last night, I fought back. A mad session of writing got the word count back over the quota, and I stand now in the light of positive word count vs. quota. There’s two weeks of this party left to rock, and I’m determined to finish ahead of the gun.

I’ll throw out a more detailed post once it’s over, and let you know about the book, what it’s about, and how it went.

Stay frosty.

The NaNoWriMo has begun, and I clocked just over three grand in words today. This is a good start, but will probably not be the model upon which the book is based. I’m certain that within a week, I will melt down, and destroy everything I’ve worked for.

This is the Nature of the Beast.

The A&C narrative docs did not get finished, Jim still needs some edits over at Flashback. Basically, I’m a total retard who didn’t get it all done before the shit storm blew into town. Wonderful. I feel like crying, and then eating some ice cream. But I’m lactose intolerant, and desperately trying not to become a complete bitch. I’m pushing this word count up as much as I can during the week, and then I’ll address the above during the weekend. Things are going to get dicey.

If you’re in the same boat, have faith. We can defeat the Ko-dan armada, even though we are the only Star Fighters left in the galaxy. Buck the Fuckle UP, and join me for a weep. If you need encouragement, hit me on twitter.

@Crom may not be the bat-signal, or even that weird H-belt that Hercules had, but I will see the signal, and we will fight the Hydra together.

VICTORY!

There are precisely 6 days, 3 hours, 3 minutes and 25 seconds until the NaNoWriMo begins. In the scintilla remaining, I must write another article for Jim over at the Flashback Universe, finish the Axe & Crom narrative document, hopefully treat it, and if a miracle comes, draft a version of the script. Also the narrative document for my NaNo novel isn’t complete, and I really need a god damn road map.

Time keeps on ticking, into the future. Even now as I write this, precious moments are fading into the netherworld of history, and the Future is becoming the Now. Why am I still typing? What’s wrong with my brain that I don’t use this precious life-blood to actually work on the above things? Have I been struck by a rare, and possibly fatally stupid disease?

YES TO ALL THOSE THINGS. I am operating on an edge of hysterical madness that only a select few are ever privy to. The Pig-Demons engineered this business, solely to laugh their sick bray at me while I steer the failing Zeppelin into the ground, and die in the mushroom cloud. These whores will ride my bones all the way down to Arallu, and let carrion pick the last tender morsels from my crotch. These next few days are going to be a hash of edge work and pure speed; there is no room in the Panic-Cloud for sluts with a weak heart.

Begin the count down, I swear by Falcor eyebrows, I will reach the top alive. Keep trucking, Bitches.