Caution! Caution?

I drove by a church bus this weekend. On the back there was a hand-painted sign that said,

“Caution! God’s children on board”

Well, what does that mean? What do I do with this information that you’ve just given me?

Am I supposed to drive real careful because these kids are special? They’re somehow “God’s kids”? Why does He think these kids are so special? What did they do, win a Bible trivia contest or something? And if they are so special, wouldn’t they require less caution if God had designated them as “His”? Wouldn’t the need for a sign imply that God isn’t protecting them from some kind of accident any more than anyone else’s kids?

I’m just a mortal and I’ll protect any kid that needs it. But MY kid gets the most protection. That’s just how the system works. Parents should always look out for the neighbor’s kids but their own children get special attention. Of course, there is a lengthy book chronicling what happened to God’s last known kid… Not exactly “Parent of the year” material there Jehovah. So maybe the sign should read, “Help us! God’s children on board and you remember what happened to the last one…”

Or are they some kind of mutants that God imbued with super-powers that I have to be careful around? A bus filled with the brood of Angel-raped-virgin offspring and they are secretly perfecting their powers to take over the world. Jesus got the immortality/resurrection cheat code just like Wolverine. I’m guessing there’s a Rogue, Storm, Juggernaut and a Magneto on board? That means there’s also a kid with laser sight on that bus and you need to be “cautious” because he might accidentally cut your car in half. Okay, probably NOT what the sign meant…

But in the eyes of the believers, isn’t EVERYONE God’s children? And if so, why would these ten or twenty warrant special caution? What about me, according to what I learned in Sunday School, wouldn’t I be included in the group of “God’s children”? So who’s being cautious around me? And if everyone is God’s Children, wouldn’t being cautious around anyone be a 24/7 thing? So you wouldn’t really need a sign then would you?

The sign was useless.

It served about as much purpose as those old yellow “Baby on board” signs. Hey yuppie prick, fuck you and your infant! I’ll obey the traffic laws and try to avoid hitting you, but if it comes down to a head on collision or sideswiping your Volvo; you, your little precious cargo and your fucking ridiculous yellow sign are going into the wall. (And I secretly hope it explodes afterward.) Reality doesn’t change just because you posted a stupid sign.

Fucking people and their need to feel special. Special comes from who you are and what you do with it. Special is not bestowed upon you by simply making a claim, you have to go out there and earn it.

I’ve been working midnight windows all week long. I haven’t been getting any sleep and I’m tired. I’ve been hounded all week long, nothing I say or do comes out right. All of this magnifies all the other little problems and suddenly, I am really fucking tired of all this bullshit…

So I go off on another late night run to Hilliard, the fog has been real thick all week and I’m driving while pissed off. The whole way there I’m thinking of how great it would be if I just unbuckled the seatbelt, ran off the road and hit a tree. I grit my teeth and make it in to work but my mentality is no better for the long drive.

When I finish the job, I gather all the equipment I’ll need for tomorrow night’s work. I hit the door and the rain is coming down hard. Rain? Really? I’m carrying my laptop, a test set and two large cardboard boxes with parts and cards in them. I sigh and walk toward the parking lot.

Just before I get to the overhang the rain lets up. My first lucky break! I make a dash for it and part way to the truck the skies unleash a torrent of rain like nothing I’ve seen in a long time. Big fat raindrops coming down like mortar shells. I took the bait I guess…

One of the boxes slips and as I try to catch it the rest of the load falls loose and I stumble to the ground. I catch myself without doing any damage but I ended up flat on my back in a pitch black parking lot at 3am staring up into the falling rain.

What can you do? I laid there and laughed my ass off. Fuck the laptop, to hell with the test gear and the cards. I sat there in the rain for a whole minute just giggling like a madman. Eventually I gathered the equipment and loaded into the truck. I sat there and stared out the windshield for ten minutes…

It seems so easy to fix what you perceive as “wrong” in your life. They say all you’ve got to do is chuck it all and start over. Well there are parts of my life that I like. In fact, the longer I sat there the more I counted all the good things. So why are the little things so difficult to get over? (I mean, aside from the clinical depression)  We make such a big deal over the tiny brushstrokes when the overall picture is actually pretty damned cool.

Nice thought, but that won’t make me feel any better the next time I catch shit. So, now it looks like I’ve got a decision to make…

I drove home real careful in the rain. I hung my clothes up to dry and then I crawled into bed.

I put my arm around Teresa and smiled in the darkness…

Remember a few weeks ago when I said I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo this year? Yeah, I’m doing it again this year.

And doing well so far. I’m on track, even slightly ahead of schedule. I have no delusions that I’ll make the 50,000 word target. It’s still early and I’m finding time to write but there will be plenty of days when I can’t write, not to mention the five days I’ll be traveling… But 50k or not, I’m forcing myself to “find” the time to write and that’s all I want out of this.

Priorities. Do I want to finish this story or do I want to play Modern Warfare3? If I want both then I have to cut something out like television, or bathing…

I’ve been writing forever. It started out as paper-wasting angst and journals full of self-righteous tirades. Most kids go through it, I just never grew out of that phase. Many of the writers I talk with started out the same way but I’m seeing a new breed enter the stream and I’m not sure what’s going on.

Every element of every story you’ve read came from something inside the author’s brain. Something they read, something they saw or something they felt inside… A work of speculative fiction is an illustration of the inside of the author’s mind. The writer is relaying a distorted experience to you the reader.

One of the worst kinds of writing I’ve ever seen is when someone writes a thinly veiled autobiographical fantasy piece. If the phrase “Everyone has at least one novel in them” is true, it’s because it allows people to write a story that is about how they wish their lives had turned out or to spill out on the page a fantasy of what they’d like to do now that life hasn’t turned out the way they wished. You’ll often recognize this when the author’s first name rhymes with (or is just one letter off from) the hero of the story…

I’m not sure if it’s the nature of NaNoWriMo to attract noobs or if we’re just getting a bumper crop this year but WOW, I’m seeing a lot more hack writing than usual.  I know I’m a hack. I’ve always said that. But now I’m starting to wonder if the evidence is piling up against me…

The word count is coming easier to me. I’m 10k+ in to this story and I’m not reorganizing major plot points yet so I’m actually spending my time writing instead of worrying about ideas.

They say (“they” being everyone) that your first million words as an author are crap. There’s no way around it. Write them out, clean them up and then forget about them. I’m figuring I’m clocking in at just over 1.5 million words… Does this mean I’m through the “lame, poorly disguised angst, autobiographical dreck” phase? Is the reason I’m now seeing more hack writing related to the old poker adage, “Look around the room and try to spot the fish. If you can’t find him, it’s you.”? The crap-writing noobs aren’t new, they were always there. Did I just not see them because I was one of them? And now that I see them, does it mean I’ve graduated to a higher plane?

So off I go on my newfound path with a little spring in my step, happy that maybe I deserve a little credit, maybe I need to stop being so hard on myself. I sit down at the keyboard and…

Nothing comes out. I write a paragraph and suddenly I’m second-guessing every word on the page. I’m afraid to write anything for fear that someone will read it and know the inspiration behind it and accuse me of writing autobiographical noob crap!

Rowling never flew on a broomstick, King never owned a haunted car but something in their lives drove them to write those stories. If I relate to my hero, am I a hack? If I turn one of my experiences into a plot device, will someone recognize it and call me out on it?

Ah, who cares? I need to get back to writing (If I fall short on word count, can I include these last few 900 word blog posts?) I just needed to vent about all these sickeningly sweet transparent hacks who are writing shit like:

“Kris was a tall and handsome man. He went to the store and bought a soda. Then he drove his Lamborghini to the yacht club where he worked as a security guard because he was actually an undercover private detective with a beautiful girlfriend and he made lots of money. Kris caught the bad guys because he was wicked smart and better than all the bad guys. He is also very strong and handsome. Then he went home to his mansion and had dinner with James Bond who said Kris was cooler than he was. The end”

You know what the fucked-up part about that blurb is? As I typed it and tried to make it unbearably crappy, I heard the voice of a small child in my head and I actually began to type differently. My fingers hit the keys more pronounced and in an even cadence. It was weird, like I was possessed or something…

I like to think that writing is just the same as being a “psychic medium”. I have screaming voices in my head and the best way to shut them up is to write everything down.

(First person to say I’m more of a “psychic extra-large” is getting kicked in the neck…)

If I were to believe one side of the propaganda, the one that tells me that 99% of the people are so bad off, the one that tells me that only 1% of the population is sitting fat and happy…

If we (the 99%) are sooo broke;

Why is McDonalds doing so well that I actually have to wait in line when I want coffee?  If 99% of us are struggling to get by, McDonalds should be fucking EMPTY!  Of course I could go to (one of the) Starbucks across the street but the line is actually LONGER over there.  $4 for a cup of coffee and there are so many people buying them, they can’t pass them out the window fast enough…

It’s amazing that movies like “Real Steel” and “Paranormal Activity 3″ have made over $100 million.  You wouldn’t think 1% of the population fills up the theaters like they’ve been…

I get my new work phone and I can’t get it activated because AT&T tells me “Due to the overwhelming response of the iPhone 4S it may take longer to process your request.”  I’ve seen people discard their working and functional iPhone4 to buy the newer iPhone4S.  I’ve got people thrusting their iPad2 in my face showing me how awesome it is.  I looked up the prices, these things are not cheap and yet they seem to be very popular toys at the moment…

I pre-ordered “Modern Warfare 3″ a couple weeks ago.  I spent $60 on a frigging video game.  The guy said it was a good idea to reserve my copy because between MW3 and Battlefield3, there was going to be a big rush on these games.  People around the country will stand in line at midnight and throughout the day, the games will fly off the shelves.  This particular store is only one of twenty-two GameStop locations in Jacksonville alone.  They expect all stores to be sold out by the end of the first day.  This does not account for WalMart or Best Buy.  $60 for a video game.  The previous MW2 sold 8 million games in the first week and in overall sales topped $1 Billion (that’s with a B)…

I hate sports but Teresa loves her local football team.  I looked into buying tickets and taking her to a game.  You could go cheaper but if you buy realistic tickets where you can actually see the game, parking, a drink or two… A family of three isn’t getting out of there for under $500.  Let’s just say that’s average, you could buy cheaper tickets, skip the drinks.  But tickets also get MUCH more expensive.  I looked around at the channels this Sunday, the stadiums across the country are full.  Baseball is coming to a head, NHL is starting up, NBA is in there somewhere, college football is fucking NUTS, and the NFL is just pleased as punch to take your ticket money.  It’s not cheap yet people fill the stands week in, week out…

Want to go out to dinner at any of the strip-mall chains?  Outback, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn…  The place is packed every night.  ”Wait in the lobby, we’ll call you in 30 minutes.”  You wait out front with ten or fifteen other parties of 3, 4, 5 and 6 and you look around.  The restaurant is easily pulling in $1500+ just in people waiting to get inside, not to mention every table already occupied inside.  Everyone’s shelling out big bucks for steam-table versions of food they could make at home for a fraction the cost…

…

All of this is bullshit anecdotal evidence and proves nothing but from what I am told, am I to believe that all this waste of wealth is generated by just 1% of the population?

That’s the real bullshit!  I don’t know anyone in this fabled 1%.  I’ll probably never know anyone that rich, yet I’m surrounded by people throwing money around on crap.  I know I waste most of my money.  My house is too big and I have too many toys.  There are seven functioning computers in my home right now and that does not include the smart phones or iPods.  If I saved just the portion of my money that I throw away on fast-food I’d be a much wealthier (and healthier) man.  But I spend it.  I spend, spend, spend until the money’s gone and then we wait until next payday and then we spend again.  All this “spending” I’m talking about won’t balance the national budget, I really don’t have THAT much disposable income but what I do have I spend on having fun, living my life and on fiddling grasshoppers…

This “I am the 99%” is full of shit!  I am not part of your protest!  Is it possible that they are the same small vocal segment of the population that is always bitching about something?  They want to sit down and complain, chanting “Revolution” but occasionally calling “time-out” so they can go home and tend to their real lives; charging their Blackberry’s, driving their Hummer’s to the mall and patronizing the very corporations they are protesting against.  ”Hey, pass me the marker so I can make a protest sign.  Ohh, be careful, you almost spilled my iced macchiato all over my MacBook Air.”

Enough with the hippie-bashing, I’m not about to go all Kent State on them but both sides are selling propaganda and no one is calling these people out on this 99% bullshit.  Protests are good, in the past they’ve brought about change that we really needed… but STOP counting me in as your “99%”.  I’m not rich, I don’t fall in your “1%” group but the difference is, I’m not blaming someone else for my failure to accumulate wealth.  Yes, the system could be better, yes I’m glad someone’s willing to step up and say something, yes I’m excited and happy at you exercising your right to peaceable assembly and redress of grievances but YES, I’m also sick of this whiny ”Us versus Them” bullshit.

I’ve made my choices, if I chose better I may have stayed awake in Calculus class, I may have a better job (I may be able to help my daughter with her homework…) But I didn’t.  I had fun, wasted my time.  And I’ll live with these choices without protesting in the streets and abandoning my job so I can run amok in the streets pointing at “THEM”, They cost me my job, They are the reason I’m not better off, They are the reason I’m not happy…

“They” had nothing to do with it.  “We” motherfucker, WE did it to ourselves!  We all went shopping on credit cards, We bought McMansions that we couldn’t afford and didn’t need, We bought luxury vehicles we can’t put gas in, We bought a lot of CRAP on credit and now the bill has come due and we’re wondering where the money’s gonna come from to pay for it all.  Well, it’s not flowing from mommy and daddy anymore.  The baby boomers are collecting the last of the Social Security and dying off… The American Dream simply became too decadent and the system is correcting itself.  It used to be about a land where you could work hard and make it, somehow we erased the “work hard” part but everyone still expects the “make it” part.  We’d better start acting like adults around here and get our asses to work.

I wanted to get it, I wanted to understand.  I asked for help and people pointed me to a webpage titled, “What the Occupy WS protesters are angry about”.  I thought to myself, “Oh joy, I will finally understand these poor misunderstood hippies.”  And it had lots of graphs and charts so even a moron like me could understand it.  I stopped about three paragraphs into it when I read, “Jobs are scarce so many adults have stopped looking for them.”

Ahem… If I may… … …  Jobs were scarce NO ONE in the industry was hiring when I got laid off in the World-Com crash.  Telecom was dead and it was the weekend after Thanksgiving; who the hell hires in December?  I had a job by January.  I was flipping burgers at a fucking “Village Inn” restaurant.  One week I’m designing and engineering fiber optic cables into the largest buildings on the Jacksonville skyline, the next week I’m sloshing eggs and pies through a small kitchen window.  Sure I was angry at the IT bubble burst and sure I focused my anger at Bernie Ebbers, the man who “crashed the car” I was riding in, but I worked every shift Village Inn let me and I kept my family fed.

When my chosen industry remained a wasteland well into the new year, I found employment doing work I thought I left behind years ago.  It was shit work and involved swallowing my ego but it was slightly better pay and it turned into contacts and opportunities that finally, after 18 months, led me back into the telecom field.  It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t as glamorous as sitting on Wall Street with a sign saying I can’t find work and I blame the bankers, but I kept finding work.  It wasn’t in my field, it was work “beneath my station” but guess what my trendy-protesting-dickhole friend?  When you are a responsible adult, you sometimes do work “out of your field” and “beneath your station” because no one EVER promised us life was going to be fair, make sense or even continue to point upward.  Sometimes you do what it takes to get by.  Can’t find a job with that expensive “Liberal Arts” degree you paid too much for?  Well let me point you in the right direction; Mugging for the cameras and holding a protest sign is nowhere near as effective as lowering your expectations, sending out resumes, filling out employment applications and making contacts from within the system.  Plenty of Cousin Eddies out there “holding out for an executive position…”

Maybe you weren’t told, it was something many of us knew instinctively; you start at the fucking bottom and work your way up.  Sinking your ass deep in debt at med-school does not automagically create a top position for you at a prestigious hospital where you get to walk around and act quirky because Dr. House gets away with it.  No, you get to work long hours at a free-clinic wiping dried fecal matter out of a homeless bum’s eyes.  After years of work like this, you graduate to emptying bedpans.  Life looks so simple on TV and in the movies.  Mom and dad tell tales of the geniuses who made the world a better place “overnight”, you’ve come to believe the bullshit.  Wake up Neo, “success” is an illusion.  Everyone is so damn scared of working for a living.  If you start at the top, if you get the “big time” job straight out of school, guess what?  You’re the dirty-rotten 1% everyone is bitching about…

So stop calling me 99%.  I’m not the 1% either.  I’m part of the 100%.  We are all fucked, We have done this to ourselves, We had better figure this out right fast or We are going to be in some deep, deep shit.  So to both the bankers and the protesters alike I say;

Fuck your propaganda, Fuck your partisan bickering, Fuck your media circus and you know what?  Fuck you all…

I am the 100%