According to his blog, my pal Scott Phillips’ latest indie classic Gimme Skelter just won Best of the Fest Feature Film at the Halloween Horror Picture Show Film Fest in Tampa, Florida.
It’s high time his uniquely twisted genius started to gain widespread recognition. Financial success in his case is inevitable. It should happen sooner rather than later. He’s put in his time.
Emma is such a good girl.
We went to the vet for the first time today. Nothing dire: when I went to Archon in September of 2004, Emma boarded with a nice woman from the shelter I got her from (which I won’t name because, although they treated Emma and me quite well, they are currently screwing over my friend Scott), who gave Emma a three-year rabies vaccine. And subsequently Em’s gotten her other annual shots when I took her to Corrales Kennel over Archon.
This year, of course, Archon happened in late July. It was too early to get her vaccinations then.
So I made an appointment for us today at Río Grande Animal Clinic with Dr. Holly Meuser. We owe Dr. Holly and the Clinic eternal gratitude because back in August of ‘05 she saved TJ and Squeak’s lives when they went into liver failure from not eating. They’re good people.
I was a bit concerned how Emma would react. She seemed a little subdued from the time we went in the door. When we got called back I warned the tech who helped us, a young woman named Alex who wasn’t all that much bigger than Em, that she’s suspicious of strangers. Aside from acting a bit reticent Emma didn’t really respond, though.
We got her weighed - they now have a rubber mat on the floor in the corridor, probably with piezoelectric sensors below, so that owners can just walk their dogs right on it. Which makes tons of sense. (So to speak.) Emma weighed in at 97.4 pounds, which amazed me. I thought she was about 85.
She did not like being in the examining room. I’m guessing she has bad memories. But again, instead of getting defensive with Alex and Dr. Holly Emma got even more subdued. I’m guessing she went into her Total Overwhelm Mode (I’m surely doomed to die a horrific death now; such is the lot of a dog.) She even refused treats offered by both Alex and the doc.
Of course the original Allman Bros. quote is, “Dreams I’ll never see.”
And these, frankly, have a bit of ambivalence for me. Some parts I’d like to see. Others less.
I didn’t sleep too well last night, for no reason I can perceive; I kept waking up and staying awake, but not long enough to make it worthwhile to just say screw it and read or write. Just enough to cost me rest.
But in between I had a series of dreams I found pretty intriguing. I’ve had a lot of vivid and unusual dreams lately.
In this case, I dreamed I was involved in making a movie of The Cybernetic Shogun
Of course that may’ve just been dream logic. We all know how that song goes.
That’s the part, you likely figured out on your own (being the smart, perceptive people my bloggers readers naturally would be!), I hoped I would see.
Less so - much less so - were the dream segments in which I seemed actually to be living in the world of Cybernetic Shogun. How you like your fantasy now, monkey boy?
Since I went ahead and posted about this on Freelancefolder.com, in a comment to a (useful) post called “7 Can’t-Miss Ways To Kick-Start The Writing Habit,” I figured I probably ought to talk about it here. It’s something I came up with 4-5 years ago.
It’s called Five Words. It’s a way of getting yourself started writing, and getting yourself into the habit of writing daily.
It’s what it sounds like: commit each and every day to sitting down and writing a minimum of five words.
They don’t have to be good words. They should be sensible and purposeful and bring you at least plausibly closer to your objective: “The End.” That means not just writing the same word five times - unless for some reason that’s actually called for - or five random words.
Once you do your Five Words, you are okay with yourself for today. That’s your pact with yourself. You don’t have to do more.
Of course, you can. Five Words is a minimum, not a maximum. Clearly, what you really want is to write more. With Five Words you’re trying to trick yourself into a state conducive to writing. You’re also trying to create a habit of going there daily.
There’s nothing magical about the number five. I snagged it because it strikes me as a solid sort of number. It’s enough to produce a decent sentence. The point is to set a goal so low it’s just near-impossible not to reach it.
Again, the keys are state and habit.
Five Words serves me, and various other people who’ve tried it, pretty well. You can apply it to endeavors other than writing: come up with some other simple quantum of any task, such that it’s more trouble to talk yourself out of doing it than just doing it.
One caveat: the Five Words technique may not help you produce as much as you want or need to. If it doesn’t there are other tricks to use - the post I linked to above offers some good ones. The first step toward producing enough every day is producing every day. “Five Words” is an easy way to build that fundamental habit.
Emma Dog and I just got back from a walk along the clear ditch by the Río Grande Nature Center. Beautiful, warm, clear autumn afternoon.
As we turned down the path back to the end of Candelaria the pumping station there, which I think gives water seeping down from the city’s storm drains its final kick to the Río Grande, belched loudly and then released this vast, gurgling slosh. It sounded … obscenely biological, but on a truly industrial scale. It put me in mind of some kind of subterranean Chinese dragon suffering a seriously liquid gastric upset.
Emma jumped right up in the air and spun around to glare in the general direction of the noise. At that moment a man emerged from the path to Candy: a skinny old gent in shorts and tennies, with RGNC badges and patches on his ball cap and vest. He resembled an extremely elderly bloodhound. I think he was one of the Bird Nerds who volunteer to answer questions from visitors.
Immediately Emma transferred her alert stare to him. Clearly she suspected he was responsible for the awful gurgle, and hence a Bad Sorcerer.
I told her to cool it. First, he probably wasn’t a Bad Sorcerer. Second, there will be no maiming of Bad Sorcerers, or anyone else, without my permission. Third, in the unlikely event he really was a Bad Sorcerer, messing with him would probably be a bad idea. If Emma and I turned up back home as field mice, the cats might get ideas.
Poor Emma. She’s my self-appointed bodyguard. She takes the job extremely seriously. And she’s totally convinced that every time we venture forth we encounter myriad lethal threats I don’t take seriously enough. (”No, sweetie, I really doubt the old lady in the wheelchair we just passed is going to whip out a MAC-10 and fire us up. You can’t hit squat with one of those things at this range, anyway.”)
Slowly I assert control over my yards, fore and aft. I’m conquering the weeds and preparing to put in some form of landscaping.
What I want is xeriscaping. Not just because it saves on water, although practically it’s a concern. I happen to think it looks cool.
What I’m not so clear on is: okay, how exactly does a xeric plant differ from a weed?
Case in point: I was surveying for a final season-ending orgy of weed-whacking when by the north front corner of the house I saw exploding from the tip of what I took to be a Noxious Weed a spectacularly beautiful blossom, with deep red-purple petals surrounding a bright yellow head.
Well, weed or not, I wasn’t purging it. It’s too dang pretty. One of the prettiest flowers I’ve seen, in fact. Moreover, as a couple days have passed, it’s been joined by similar blooms.
Driving back along Griegos from walks with Emma Dog (notice the subtle way I work her in here; she draws more traffic to the site than I do) I’ve noticed similar flowers blooming in a number of yards, some from pretty respectably-sized plants (mine are a tad on the, well, weedy side.) They’re obviously incorporated deliberately into designed xeriscapes, not just happy accidents like the ones by my house.
I looked for them in my sundry books on xeriscaping and couldn’t find them. Then I finally turned up my new copy of The New Mexico Gardener’s Guide: Revised Edition
And a couple/three pages into the listings I found myself staring right at the culprits. They’re Cosmos. Cosmos pinnatus, in polite company. Which these hardly are, to be sure.
How these beauties came to sprout in my somewhat blighted front yard is a mystery to me. But I’ll nurture them, and be sure to grow plenty of them deliberately next year.
I’ve been wondering what flowers I wanted to grow in the beds by the house and the fences. Now I know one for sure.
Indeed do many things come to pass.
Back in the early Oughts, when my ex and I split and my life - personal and professional - had hit bottom hard, one of the paths up I explored was investigation of Neurolinguistic Programming.
That led me to self-hypnosis. I even took a class at the (sadly) departed Sage Ways seminar center here in Burque.
I accepted there was much behind self-hypnosis immediately, because I recognized one fact right off: when I’m writing I tend to go into an unmistakable trance state. The deeper in I am, the better - and more, for want of a better word, ecstatic - the writing goes.
People have expressed much amazement at my ability to write seemingly anywhere: in airports, on trains, even at parties. Last night at the monthly ASFS meeting, which I attended in part because I’ve been so isolated of late and at risk of turning into a cheese - I startled club newcomer Gerald Weinberg
It’s the trance, folks.
One thing I’ve tried to do with indifferent success has been learn how consistently to put myself deep into writing-trance. It’s never been reliable with me. And for a while I’ve had a hard time really, I guess, committing to it.
At this last Bubonicon, I was on a panel about how writers write. Somewhat to my surprise it was well-attended. Even more to my surprise it actually turned out to be interesting - to me, and on the evidence, both my fellow panelists (who included Betsy James and Walter Jon Williams; I’ve spaced out the others for the moment: sorry) and for the audience.
For my opening statement I sucked it up and took what I thought was the radical step of copping to the whole writer’s trance thing. I fully expected to get hit with Massive Skeptical Denial, both from the rest of the panel and the audience.
Actually, it came to us of its own accord. And thereby hangs a tale of terror, appropriate to the remorseless approach of Halloween.
As recounted in my previous post, When Great Sky Demons Attack!, my Black Sharpie, Emma Dog, is terrified of hot-air balloons. She’s afraid of Round Monster Heads as it is. When they’re great big and fly and roar and breathe fire - well, how would you expect a girl to react?
Even a Tuff Chick like Emma, who is in almost all ways a most valiant defender of Daddy and Pack.
Once, walking along the lateral ditch that runs south of Montaño to the clear ditch, Emma and I encountered a stout, elderly Lab-cross dog running frantically the opposite way. Usually I’m upset by loose dogs; I’m always concerned they might get frisky with Emma, and issues ensue. In this case, no: the poor beast was puffing hard and clearly scared stumbling.
Her owner, a pleasant young lesbian (the haircut, the bulky sweatshirt - just give me this one, okay?) came trotting in hot pursuit. “She’s trying to get home before the Moon comes up,” she explained in passing. “She fears the full Moon. She thinks it’s a hot air balloon.”
At which Emma and I could only shake our heads in amusement. Emma doesn’t fear the Moon, full or not. She knows it’s just an orbiting celestial object. Whereas hot air balloons are Great Sky Demons.
Nonetheless I dared entertain the hope I might wean Emma from this particular phobia (why, I admit, I’m not sure.) Until, that is, a certain afternoon early last winter. Or perhaps the winter before.
Emma was out in the backyard. Suddenly I heard her just totally fly into pieces. This wasn’t just barking; it was nigh hysterics.
I ran out, expecting Charlie to be coming over the wire. Or at the least the back fence. Instead I beheld, floating neither high up nor far off, the familiar inverted-fruit shape of a hot air balloon.
Actually, they haven’t much this year. Yet.
Emma Dog has always had problems with monsters with giant round heads. Not long after I got her in May of 2004 we were driving down Candelaria in Albuquerque’s North Valley to our usual walking-place, the ditch that runs along the east edge of the fields of the Rio Grande Nature Center wildfowl preserve. It was afternoon, full summer by then, and hot. And walking toward us on the far sidewalk I saw a couple of people with a parasol. Oddly, that’s something I’m not sure if I’ve even seen before here in Albuquerque, although given the stinging - and burning! - quality of our UV-rich high desert summer sun, it makes all kinda sense.
And Emma did this Jim Carrey-in-The Mask
According to the best and most sense-filled book I’ve read about dogs and their bizarre longstanding relationship with a certain primate, The Other End of the Leash
Emma and I went for an early walk (and by “early” I mean, “around 11″) in the perfect bright autumn morning, down by the Nature Center. Having breakfasted joyfully on some 2nd Birthday cake (not 2nd year birthday, obviously; my 53rd birthday 2.0) I was writing enthusiastically on DinoLords, and avid to get to the new Annja when I was done. I’m violating most of my rules, here: I’m rewriting Chapter 01, and the way I’m trying to teach myself to write means don’t backtrack.
But perhaps my cardinal rule is, never spurn Inspiration. When I was a kid in high school I remember we always used to say, “You can’t force creativity, man.” We had to say “man” because this was the 1960’s-early ’70’s, and it was, like, required, man. Anyway, about the first thing I learned when I started writing full-time professionally, at the advanced age of 20, was, if you can’t force creativity, you can kiss writing for a living good-bye. That said, when Inspiration does zap me, I go with it.
And I was really going, because I was filled with the perfect way to do Chapter 01. No point in hoping I’d still remember in a month or two or three when I’m finished with the whole draft. And I’m past the halfway point, on the downward slope, as it were; I’ve got momentum up. No harm.
I got up to go attend to something. When I got back the notebook PC had gone to sleep. And when I jostled the touchpad it refused to wake.
I wasn’t too concerned. I’d been running on battery power - Inspiration hit hard, and I was so caught up rollin’ with the punch I didn’t slow down to plug in. So I plugged in.
Nada. It did not awake.