The Strange

Having done what I had to yesterday, it was rather strange to occupy the same spaces today.  Made me itch behind the eyes.  The feeling would probably have been less frequent had I not had the spur to memory of muscle pain in my left hand and shoulder.  Put me off my feed, and those of you who know me personally know just how fucking hard this is to do.

I was tired and irritable all day.  Until soccer practice, where all but the girls and the game faded form my mind.  We came home and ate well. I read my daughter another Chapter of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

I vegged for five minutes, then retreated to the bed where I wrote about 15oo words in an hour or so.  Production would have been higher, but I had to work through some sensitive subject matter to a conclusion I think satisfies. I hope to finish this weekend.

Saturday is my 38th Birthday.  Fuck me.  So much to do, so little time.

More Shit I Can't Really Talk About:

Today was the first I had to arrest someone in a long time. I consider it a failure, in that I wasn't able to talk the arrestee to where they needed to be.

Still, it is good to know the mojo can still cause 180 pound males to fly through the air when and how I will it.  Of course, the exercise of said mojo strains the body as well as the mind.  In other words, I am going to hurt tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a lone quote, "That dude started out soundin' like Barry White, by the time the officer was done with him, he sounded like Pee-Wee Herman."

Driving for Dumb Motherfuckers

It occurs to me that I might be calling some drivers asshats when they know not what they did that causes said nomenclature to spring to mind. Hence, in the interest of being completely fair, I provide the following stages of driving for dumb motherfuckers:

Stage 1:  get in the car well in advance of the time of any appointment you might have, and, and this is vitally important:  allow for the time it might take to get where the fuck you are headed!  As part of this, you should know, at least generally, where the hell you are going in advance.

Stage 2: Pay attention.  Did you check all around your vehicle? Repeat this check with every movement of your vehicle, regardless of whether you are accelerating, stopping, changing lanes, turning, or merging.  You moving or changing rate of movement, you must constantly look the fuck around!

Stage 3: If you miss your turn/think you want to be in a different lane than that which you are currently occupying, signal your intent, repeat Stage 2, wait a moment, repeat Stage 2, and when it is obviously clear and safe to do so, then and only then complete the fuckin' movement. When any doubt exists as to the safety of a movement, don't make it. Wait.  Go around the block.  Get off at the next exit.  Do not skip any of the stages.

Stage 4: Do not ignore signs and then expect other drivers to comply with your stupidity or otherwise behave as you do.  In other words, don't honk at me to get out of your way when we are at a light and turning right.  I might see something you can't that prevents me from turning right safely, fucktard. Another fine example: If you are speeding, don't tailgate, honk at or flash me with your brights to get me out of the way.  The speed limit is there for us all to obey or not, don't get pissed because I choose to actually adhere to the law of the land.  Now, if I'm not an asshat, I should, as a matter of courtesy get out of the fast lane as soon as I have gone through my own assessment of the safety of doing so using Stage 3.

Stage 5: Drive according to your actual capabilities and present condition, as well as those of the road and the vehicle you are driving.  You may be a formula one driver, but if you happen to be behind the wheel of a minivan, slow the fuck down before you kill someone!  If your car is a clunker that parts may fly from at any point, don't get on the road.  If you are hung over, drunk, angry over your divorce,  or simply waiting to die, don't fuckin' drive. If the road you are driving down is full of potholes, slow down.

Stage 6: Be prepared! At any time things may change, so you may need to change your direction, speed or whatever. But being prepared means remembering to complete and repeat the other stages of driving, regardless of what the asshat sharing the road with you might or might not be doing at any given time. 

If you adhere to these stages of driving, you are, I think, more likely to avoid an accident than those that don't.  Certainly you will be less likely to cause an accident and endanger others...

Transmogrification Of My Superior Cranial Spaces

Do not adjust your monitor, this is the new visage of the Transmogrified Griffin:

Gone are the pathetic anger sharks of his earlier, inferior coping mechanisms.  In their place we have implanted the most excellent cranial enhancements.  He will soon stop whining so much, lest his throbbing brain explode in a violent display of intellectual flatulence.

Do not think to say he looks like a penis, he will use his newfound mightiness to call down a rain of frogs upon your firstborn sons!

Beware the mighty Transmogriffin!

Shit I Need But Probably Won't Get

1) A new gut: I need a slimmer one, this one's all pallid, slack, and bouncy. Reminds me of a bullfrog's belly.

2) Glasses: The eye-pads on this one are yellow and didn't start that way.

3) Laptop: Ye old Viao has been incredibly reliable, but it's dirty, overheats under my right wrist, and is starting to cramp my style with summat frequent blue screens of death.

4) Tires for the bike: I do so much straight-up riding my tires have a bit of a stepped pyramid-look going. Dangerous for the occasions when I do take a corner deep and hard, not to mention when the rains start.

5) New Roof: That's right, the house needs a new one. No leaks, but I can't let it get that bad.

6) Teeth: I still need to get implants in the back where I let things get way out of...hand?

7) Scrivener: This looks like exacly what my ADDass writer brain needs. If go over to the Dark Side and join the Apple nuts with one of their laptops or an iPad, I could get this program now. If I don't, I can wait 'til January or February for a Windows version.

8) A book deal: The Last Captain is reaching it's rage-filled conclusion, and I would sure like to get a book deal in the new year.

9) Renewed patience for the bullshit: 'Nuff said, I should think.

10) Cleats: So I don't fall and injure myself trying to demonstrate ball skills for my daughter's soccer team.

Flash Gordon Theme

Given that Borat is playing Freddie Mercury, I am writing some SF, and I just love the camp of Flash Gordon regardless, I thought I would post this up for you, my loyal readers:



It gets repetitive, but I love the intro.

I think Ming deserves his own theme song by Mr Lawnge, then he could say, "I am Ming, couldn't you hear my theme song as I entered?"

Can I Be A Dick?

Well, I certainly can be one on occasion. I try to limit my inclination to do harm when I feel the urge, but on occasion it bursts free of the bonds I place on it.

It did so on Twitter today, with someone who had already shown they were sensitive. I made an apology as public as the original comment, but don't know if I was read. Beyond feeling abashed at the statement I made, I cringe at the thought I might be considered a troll or worse yet, a 'social media bully'.

Ah well. It's a new frontier, and I, like everyone am bound to make mistakes.

I shall be sure to own them all as I do all my past ones.

ADD and Dyslexia?

Some things, like typing smeeling instead of smelling, just bring a smile to my face.  I dunno why, they just do.  I wonder at the scribe-monks of the midieval era and whether some things they spelled differently were simply because it made them smile. 

I have a fascination with the way I type and mis-type things, partly stemming form my continuing struggles with dyslexia (see, I misspelled something in that previous sentence, and it wasn't the 'five dollar' word).  I have managed to train myself pretty thoroughly against most errors.  Usually it's words like believe and others that, even with the I before E rules and such, I just cannot seem to soak up.  One just seems like it might be in front of another.  I have to make little hand movements when hand-writing a b or d.  It's the way I'm wired.

And before you ask, learning to march was an absolute fucking bithc!

I wonder at it sometimes, and sometimes I get angry at my errors. 

At others I just laugh.  I mean, come the fuck on, ADD and dyslexia?  Smeeling?  How can you not laugh?

Shit.

Nevermind The Tentacles, Behold My Fantastic Abs!

Behold!


Of course you wouldn't mess with that which eternal lies, but allow me to provide you with this PSA, brought to you by the Hermetic Order of The Silver Twilight and Associates:

We are all about the helping you not get eaten.  Just obey, it'll all be good when R'lyeh rises and the boss settles accounts.

Sanity Roll, anyone?

Oh, and for more immediate concerns, here's how not to get beat by the popo:

Twittage and Catching Up

This week the #Litchat was all about the oppression of man upon the women writing literature.  I opted out.  I shall return next week. Maybe.  But only if I can oppress.

I look forward to #scifichat this week, as it's about Post-Cyberpunk science fiction.  I liked Gibson, but LOVED Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired.  I grew up reading cyberpunk along with military SF like David Drake and Jerry Pournelle so I am interesteed to see if what I write qualifies under the genre.

This week's #1 rager:  @GiasGirl has overtaken the famed tirade of @JohnCusack.  She's got it in for @TilaOMG and just added #Shitmydadsays to her skin-ripping roastage.

So much to do, so little time to do it. 

I am on target for the end of this month to finish The Last Captain.  I can't fuckin' wait.

Boo got hurt in her soccer game last night. A shame besides the pain, in that we might have won had she been able to stay in (Yes, she's that good.).

More Shit I Can't Talk About.

I have more shit I can't talk or blog about.  Frustrating in and of itself, but to not be able to truly beat my chest here is salt upon the wound.

So I'll just look up some funny shit to post:

Dear Lord-

please grant me the patience and grace to survive and rise above the idiocy of the asshats.


Please.

Slow to Post

I haven't been bloggin' much lately.  My exuse:  I've been hammering out the end of The Last Captain.  That's right, I'm nearing the end, at least of the first draft! I actually think I'll be done by the end of September!

Then, I think, it will be time to get stinking drunk. 

Then, with my lowered brain-cell count, revise it and send off to my agent.

In order to distract everyone, in case it's no good:

Some May Wonder...

Some may wonder why I've been rather intermittent with the bloggage lately.  The reason is simple:  I have been eating my way through some of the finer restaruants in the Bay Area with Mark L. Van Name and his companions in culinary exploration, Jennie and Ticia.

For the price of a ride, walking tour of Mission streets, and what little contribution I can make to table conversation, I was treated to Chez Panisse on Thursday, Ti Couz for lunch yesterday, a milkshake at St. Francis Soda Fountain, and Incanto last night.  All were good meals, but the company and conversation were what drove the excursions from the merely pleasant to the exceptional experience.

Tonight: SF in SF, then Flour + Water. 

I'm gonna 'splode all over the wall at this rate.

Unfucking

It has been my experience that any situation that needs unfucking generally got fucked by someone else, and they aren't around to unfuck it themselves. Or, worse yet, they are around and incapable of accepting responsibility for fucking their own shit up. Further, they want someone to hold their hand and do battle with the fucked situation unfolding about them, generally with all the pleasurable rack, ruin, bloody mess and screaming of a ninety-mile-an-hour-miscarriage.

I tire of the fucked-in-head who suckle at the tit of ignorance, believing that the tit remain there and theirs; unchallenged, eternal. That some unfucking specialist will remedy their self-made clusterfuck each and every time they decided to mount Fate and give it a good pounding with the cock of their stupidity.

To those ignorant fucktards: Educate yourself, but never believe you have all of the answers, or even the right one, on any given issue. Be restless. Quest. Seek. Internalize what you learn, but do not become a black hole into which knowledge sinks and does not return. Force yourself to the discomfitting thought.

Agonize.

Do it long enough, hard enough, and your own life might suddenly evolve from a series of painful, searing blunders into idiocy to something resembling life. You might even be called on to unfuck someone else's situation.

And for those pig-ignorant fucktards who can't let go of the massive tit of ignorance and its cream-dripping nipple of bias:  fuck you.

ODWYCDo

It is an acronym, but not a military one.  I came up with it after a victim came to me to complain that his case was being mishandled by my coworkers.  I was taking his information for the report when he waxed very disrespectful of me and law enforcement in general.  From what he claimed were quotes from the officers that he dealt with first, he had a leg to stand on, too.

Now, as I said, he started to try and chew on my ass.  I clearly stated that while he may have complaints against someone else for what had happened in the past, I was doing my duty, behaving civilly toward him, and would appreciate it if he could keep his extraneous comments to himself. 

He became enraged.  I stood back and waited. He went on for several minutes. 

Aside from monitoring my safety, I put my mind in neutral, helped by a rather gorgeous and scantily-clad young thing that happened to walk by and stare at the hissy fit the man was having and the uniformed man standing nearby.

When he had wound down, I stepped up and got the rest of his statement for the report, handed him the incident report number and told him where to go to get a copy of the report.  I later wrote the report.

The man filed a complaint against me for unprofessional conduct and failure to do my duty.

I managed to get a "Not Sustained" result for the unprofessional conduct and 'Unfounded' for the duty complaint.  To interpret for you non-SF folks:  They could not prove whether I had or had not talked shit, but they could see I had written the report.

When asked by my partner, who had stood by while all this was going on, why I wasn't more pissed, I just shrugged and said, "Only Do What You Can Do."

I meant that I can only be responsible or concerned with what I do and have done in the past, not what some asshat on his bike thinks of me.  He will still be an asshat, wherever he may go.  I have to be concerned with what I do and say.  This goes also for supervisors, or other people who fuck your work up.  Hey, I did my job to the best of my ability.  You got a problem, it ain't with my work ethic.  I don't intend to shift blame with this thought process, but rather embrace what I can do something about. And ignore, as much as possible, that which I cannot.

It is the same with writing.  I can only be responsible for those things that I did.  If sales are low and I didn't push my stuff and do everything I could to make it happen, then that's on me, I didn't ODWYCDo.

On the negative or critical side:  If I wrote some inflamatory things, then that's on me, but I won't lose sleep over someone's blatant, intentional disregard for what was actually written in favor of their 'opinion' of what went on.  If you don't already know the saying about similarity between assholes and opinions:  Everyone has one and they all stink.

Oh, and my little acronym is pronounced OdeWickDoh!

Not Much To Rant About

In order to better quasi-stalk a writer friend of mine, I recently started Twittering.  Now I think I may have already managed to become an irritant to some of the folks I have met there.  At least, they are replying to my messages... If they aren't irritated, then they might actually be, dare I say it, replying to what I am saying? Such a novel idea.  Perhaps I should read further.

Well, being such a joiner, I joined a couple of chat groups there: namely #litchat and #scifichat.  Both are fast-moving forums where much is discussed.  Litchat is three times a week, and often has very serious Names as guest speakers or just sitting in and adding to the discussion. It is, of course, right smack in the middle of my work day, so I am not able to be as attentive to it as I would like, but there is usually a log of the chat available a few days later. I have thus been able to monitor some interesting discussions, and made some new aquaintances (I dare not say friends yet).

Today's Scifichat (which is thankfully during my lunch) was about the Hugos and Nebulas, and was a spirited discussion that CJ Cherryh joined in on.  Having won both, I believe, she had some brief yet pithy statements to make about them and graciously answered some questions, even ones I had.  Remarkable.

But enough about the things I am learning, the really cool thing about Twitter is I can hear all about what Sarah Silverman

Aisha Tyler

or John Cusack

 want me to hear about what they might be doing or heated about at any given time they choose to let the twitterverse know they are up to something. 

I am beside myself with fanboi paroxyms of joy!

Not really, but it is fun to read posts from people who seem genuine, even through the 100 character filter of the Twit...

Careful What Data You Ask For, You Might Just Get It

A friend of mine, the same one who told me to blog a few of my cop stories, also informed me how to track the whos and whats of my blog visits, using Big Brother...

Big Brother, in this case, is Google Analytics, a terrifyingly efficient and brutal data aquisition module I added to my blog about three months ago.  Yes, I've been tracking you, visitors to my little musty mind space. I know the cities whence you come, what browser you use, how many pages you peruse, and even how long you stay...

I can't claim to be anyone's Big Brother, I doubt I can even claim to be a big brother... Some stats to prove my decided lack o' impact upon the world through the dates of June 17 to Sept 2: 2010


1112 Visits to the site
Meaning times the blog was visited.

304 Unique Visitors
Meaning people who vistited the blog

27% return rate.
Meaning that most people return and read something I've posted about four times, which indicates that those that do stop in like what they read.

4 Minutes, 17 seconds is the average time that most remain on-site
A clear indication no one wants to listen to more than one song of the music I put up, if any.

The vast majority of visitors are from the US
Go figure. Most of the people I know are living here.  It is an english language blog, too.

Followed (from a great distance) by the UK, Switzerland, and Canada. 
Some strange, to me, locations pop up:  Poland, Finland, Czech Republic... Most are short-timers I assume were led astray by their search engines, but Poland stands out as one nation where someone's really reading... or listening.

All in all, my friend was right!

Few want to hear about my writing, most want to hear cop stories.  Ah well, hopefully my writing will one day convey some very beleivable yet fictional cop stories and those numbers will go up.

It's Taking A Long Time, But I Will See This Through

All on my lonesome, I caught a real bad dude back in 2007.  I can't go into details, but I caught him, then testified at his preliminary hearing sometime in 2009, where he was held over for trial.   Today I recieved my subpoena for the jury trial.  I will have to continue to wait through to the middle of next month, when he will finally have his jury trial.

Regardless of the delays, I will be there with bells on, ready tell it like it was.