The Sounds of Silence
(16-25 July 2001)

25 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Hm, not so easy...
-History is nothing but repetition.  Endless opportunity for change, endless rejection of the opportunity, & then the opportunity dresses itself up new & charges again.  That's what this planet's all about, it would seem.  One of a few things.  But really, at root, only a few.
-"The cross is in the ballpark..."
-Halfway through Part Two!!  You'll notice that I started Part Two just a week ago, as it's FLYing by at almost 7 pages a day.  Insane.  With current totals at 245p/81,069w, I think a 1 August completion target is looking very reasonable.  Even if that doesn't happen, being a clean week ahead of deadline is HIGHly probable.  Oh baby, so tasty!
-So I had some inexplicable desire this afternoon to go to the TRAMWAY Waffle House.  Beats me.  Anyway, once I got there, the waitress looked a little familiar, but the gobs of blue eyeshadow prevented me from making a sure connection.  It wasn't till I heard one of the "regulars" at the counter calling for Rita that I suddenly remembered my senior project & a woman named Rita, looking uncannily like this, who was perhaps my favorite co-worker at Noonday.  Wow.  I can't be sure, but I'd say with 95% certainty at this point.  But then I was just wondering.  She didn't recognize me... I was wearing a hat & my hair's probably 3 times as long as it was back then, & if she's got a steady job, she's probably trying to forget the bad old days.  Which is why I felt too awkward to blurt out "Did you used to do community service at Noonday?" or some such thing.  But it would've been nice to know.  Instead I just left a 40% tip & wished her a good day.  Maybe I'll go back there before summer's through.
-Then I went to the public library across from AA, mostly because I'd never been there, but also because I didn't know if I was going to meet JP for basketball at AA or not (turns out not).  Regardless, I was looking for familiar authors, & they didn't have much worthwhile that I hadn't read, but they did have this copy of WD that was the same edition as a Hannukah gift I gave in '96 (you do the math) & I started thinking altogether too much about where that edition is now.  It chilled me to think I could be holding it right there.  Too bad I don't believe in book inscriptions by non-authors.  Anyway, yeah.  There's nowhere good my mind could go with that, but I picked a story at random from the 1999 Best American Short Stories collection, which turned out to be a well-written but misdirected piece about deception & how (if I recall the quote exactly) "life is full of empty coincidences & accidents".  Like I said, misdirected.
-Then I drove towards home & listened to old Wallflowers (not old old Wallflowers, but old Wallflowers) & watched the God-clouds & felt a little somber, but kind of good somber, like I'm synchronized with all that Benevolence & Sorrow.  Once upon a time, they called me the bleeder.
-In other news, Transmission (linked above) is back!  But with a distinct absence of Archives, which is unfortunate.
-Also, the APDA website is on its way back from the dead, & at a new address!

24 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Wanna know something scary?  Actually, this will mean nothing to any of you, but I'll go ahead anyway.  I was sitting here thinking "Hm... July 24th, that means SOMEthing, doesn't it?".  Well it does.  The County System started 13 years ago today.  It's okay, I don't expect anyone to understand, but it was worth noting, I thought.
-Summer's fading all of a sudden.  It's like today I really realized that I'm not in real danger of not finishing the novel, so I came up for air & suddenly it's hitting me that school & all that's coming back in about a month.  Sheesh!
-WEIRD dream last night.  With a side of fries.  Very very real, even though the focus was meeting a stranger in a movie theater.  Odd.  Anyway, it's rare that I'll wake from a dream & think that I really want to meet that person in real life.  Hmmmm.  Ah well.  Maybe it was so realistic because they actually exist somewhere.  Right...  & maybe there's a REAL explanation.
-By the way, folks, Jaque is okay in Australia, & tried to send out an e-mail to "the guys" that apparently didn't get through.  Just thought I'd give the proverbial heads-up.

23 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-If I start a petition to ban Creed & Staind from radio play, will anyone sign it with me?
-That wasn't so hard.
-No matter what one does, the future just keeps coming.  But sometimes, quite remarkably, it comes slower than one expects.  & that's kinda spiffy.
-Damn songs.  Damn timing.  Damn.
-Yay!  Redscape is back up!  If you want to check it out, I'm involved in the "Dixhuit" game (as Russia, of course)...

22 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-10 pages in this overnight brings me to 225 total.  That's quite exciting.  I'm on the verge of that point in the novel where I see where everything, even the small little things, are going to come together exactly.  It's enough momentum to really make quick work of these last 50-80 pages, methinks.  I don't know for sure.  But at this point, things are flowing very well as I sail over 70,000 words.  My spirits are sailing mostly.
-I never can be sure what some of my friends will be flattered by & what they'll be offended by.  & before you get all excited, THAT worry has NOTHING to do with the novel.  Promise.

21 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Hee hee!  Lisha went & saw "Happiness" (read all about this at the above link).  Funny stuff.  The biggest problem is now that she's written all about it, I've had to think about it again, & that movie is the popcorn between the teeth of the mind.  Yucko.  That one just doesn't go away if one gets thinking about it.  I remember talking to Ariel about this (she, Decker, & I saw it when it was at the Beantown theater... the only time I've been to Kendall Square Cinema without a girlfriend who I was within less than a month of breaking up with, incidentally) & about a year after we saw it, she said she still thinks about that film.  I think that the main point is to show how vile humans can be without giving any obvious appearance of such.  Maybe it's not COMMON, but it's there sometimes & doesn't necessarily show on the surface, especially to the oblivious.
-Rita Mae Brown has the ultimate quote of the millenium, also related to happiness (this time the concept, not the movie):  "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."  Truer words I have rarely seen.
-Tonight was a really fun night, consisting in (finally!) seeing John, & hanging out with him & DK at both DK's place & the Texas Land & Cattle steakhouse.  I managed to find something to eat... jalepeno poppers & fries, & the waitress decided to say that I was the one getting lots of grease!  I promptly told her that I needed it, which she eventually agreed with, but Kunx & JP accurately wondered why she didn't pick on them for their steaks.  I guess steakhouses just don't know what to do with vegetarians.  Ah well.  Then DK & I watched some more non-vegetarians in "Jurassic Park III", which wasn't terrible, but really had some problems.  If that's the going rate in Hollywood, I should shift from novels to scripts.  But there were some classically funny moments too.  I just don't think any of the actors for one second took it seriously that they actually existed on the same worldly plane as dinosaurs.  The cell phone stuff was great, though.  It was funny & I just can't stay away from dinosaurs.
-I don't get out much these days, do I?  Well, about 3 more weeks & if I finish the novel, I'll be euphoric all the time.
-Oh, & I almost forgot:  it's survey time!  Schneider claims that no females like Blink-182.  I strongly disagreed, but really only had Fish's sister as a counterexample.  There must be more!  I mean, I'm not saying females like them at the same rate they like DMB, but still, it's higher than John thinks, right?
-I'd hate to jinx myself, but since starting Part Two, I've been rolling along at just under 6 pages a day, which might actually mean that I'd finish BEFORE deadline (assuming, of course, that I keep it up).  Yowza.

20 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-In case you're wondering where Mesco's Transmission (linked above) went, she informed me the other day that it's on a more or less permanent hiatus.  Maybe without archives.  I don't know what to do with the above link per se, but sometime when I'm more focused on the web than my novel, I'll get around to doing something.
-Happy Birthday Drew!  Glad to hear Buffalo's improving a bit.  & 24 ain't THAT old, right?
-If the upcoming 3 weeks equal the output of the past 3 weeks, I'll be just fine.  To the tune of 300+ pages, basically.  Which is right on target, or even a little better.

19 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Whoa!  Hotmail got all crazy-like.  Actually, they just changed the whole format, & it actually looks a little bit better.  Which is groovy, because with my new Diplo game, I'm gonna be using hotmail much more!
-Part Two begins tonight!
-Everyone's summer has just been some downtime, it would seem.  Nothing wrong with that.  I dunno.  Mine certainly has, but I haven't been very focused on that with all the writing I've been doing.  Should be writing more e-mail (still), but I just don't know.  Once I finish the book, I'll be writing like crazy to everyone.  Seriously.  Because (A) I'll have things to say & (B) I'll want to do writing other than my novel.  Right now, though, I'm just trying to cruise in another 75-100 pages in the next 3 weeks.  Wish me luck...

18 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-No traction.
-In the midst of the badness that was last night, I wandered upon this site, which I fear could be a major time-waster of mine for years to come, or at least for a while.  If you're craving some Diplo, methinks that might be the place to go...

17 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-DONE with Part One!!  This is seriously exciting stuff.  The final stats (first draft stats, of course) on the book so far (Prologue & Part One combined) are 62,144 words which, because of heavy dialogue sections, works out to 197 pages by the calculations I've been using.  Those of you scoring at home will realize that, counting the rest of today, I have 23.5 days to write Part Two, which means that said Part will be shorter, which is what I've been predicting all along.  Optimism riding high!  Woo!

16 July 2001
[from Albuquerque]
-How I love Waffle House.
-This novel would be a whole lot more of a fun process if I didn't WORRY so much!

 

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*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers", by SWClayton.