What the Hell Happened: March 2020 to Now

Chances are good that if you read this blog, you know me. I’m not famous or influential. So, maybe you know this whole story. Maybe you know parts. Maybe we’re old high school or college buddies and you saw the smallest of snippets of my life during the Pandemic and clicked it for the lulz (spoiler: not a lot of lulz in this story). So, why retread a story you knew? My wife asked me this and it bears asking. Here’s the answer:

Because I have to.

I couldn’t fully engage with my creativity for over two years of my life. The Muse is fickle on the best of days for most creatives, but the emergence of Covid was something devastating to the part of me that makes things. It was different in devastating ways.

To process all of this Covid craziness, I felt the need to put it down on figurative paper. To let it out. Because, if I don’t, I may not be able to get past the block while my mind, hands, and willpower all have a moment of clarity to work in tandem.

So, this is the story of what the hell happened since astrangesignal.com stopped posting and I couldn’t seem to write any longer.

So, this is it. I’d say enjoy… but it’s not all enjoyable.

But, it happened.

The Lockdown

So, as mentioned earlier, I’m not dead. And, if you’re on my site, you probably remember that this happened and then I went more or less AWOL here. We’re unlikely to forget the Lockdown of 2020, regardless of which side of the fence we fell on regarding the Coronavirus. That there were even sides to take up versus a potentially fatal disease still staggers my mind. There was a virus out there that spread like wildfire and people were actually against doing the things that might have stopped it so that they could go to goddamned Applebees.

libertarians are weird

In the rare instances that my wife and I found ourselves outside the apartment, we either encountered empty spaces as quiet as graveyards or mobs of people looking to hoard toilet paper and bottled water. Going to Shop Rite was fucking bonkers. They had people checking how many people came into and out of the store, blocking entrances and exits to enforce chokepoints, marking the directions shoppers had to take in the aisles, and rationing several key items people were looking to hoard. These measures were there for the community as a whole and we never wanted for any of these items as a result. So, we buckled down and accepted it. But, it felt at many points as if the theme from The Walking Dead should have been playing during the whole thing. It certainly did in my head.

shoprite walking dead
When the walkers come, this ain’t gonna keep ’em out.

So, the day they closed down my work (March 23, 2020), the Lockdown began. My state took things very seriously, like most other Blue States. The store shut down to the public while the GM worked by himself in the store. After about a week of that he told corporate that he wasn’t comfortable being the only one in there.

The co-manager came in after that and fought to bring me on because he wasn’t comfortable flying solo either. He ultimately took a pay cut to do it, and – I shit you not – we went back to work April 1, 2001. I learned how to do just about everything needed in the store that I wasn’t already doing while we got everything started again. With only one other employee working with me in the whole of our giant space, I needed to be ready to do it all for when the store re-opened in the indeterminate future.

During this time, I think everyone could tell you their days blurred. The only way for me to really differentiate weeks in that time was by what show we were binge watching: Parks and Recreation, Bojack Horseman (maybe too heavy for the time), Rick and Morty, Fargo, The Mandalorian.

Then, after a curbside pick-up only soft opening on May 1, 2020, we re-opened the store to the general public on June 1, 2020.

Hostility, Madness, and Other Acts of Economics

Being a retail worker in that time was staggeringly stressful. It was as if no one had learned anything about personal space or transmission vectors during the two months of lockdown. Or decency. Masks, too. Oh: and how to fucking wear one.

van gogh gets a pass
This guy alone gets a pass.

It seemed to me that the world had gone mad. I had to fight at a panic attack within the first hour on that first re-opened day on account of anxiety. If the day-to-day interactions of our former retail lives weren’t enough, people got fucking worse. Every day, the stress was on par with working retail during the Christmas season. Otherwise responsible people cooped up for, bare minimum, six weeks; and the assholes who were denying the dangers of a global pandemic were even worse than the cringiest of Christmas Karens. The shit I heard yelled at me and the rest of the staff in those opening weeks would wither your soul.

Asking even the nicest seeming people to respect your boundaries in an uncertain world drew down the kind of scorn you’d expect a grieving victim’s family might level at the perpetrator of their relative’s murder. Employees at my store experienced beratement, mockery, insults, and general abuse for the want of safety. It caused a lot of folks (the ones who came back after lockdown) to quit, and many more new employees to suddenly leave after a few days of experiencing the ‘new normal.’ And that’s just what we got from customers. What came from the top wasn’t often good news either, including having to fight to keep safety precautions that forced distance between cashiers and customers because ‘they didn’t look good.’

I wasn’t even in an ‘essential’ retail environment. Going through a pharmacy or a grocery store was surreal. People were awful to one another in places like that. One of my friends with a son working at a supermarket said that it wasn’t uncommon to witness three fights a day at his store between shoppers; shoppers and staff; or even between employees. New people came in and left just as fast, regardless of ‘hero pay.’

Add to all of this that the company I worked for had figured something out: with a bare-bones staff and reduced hours they could still make an unconscionable amount of money. Even more than previous years. As a result, we never got back to a ‘normal’ level of staffing after that. Even when every indicator, especially turnover, said that we desperately needed more help. I went home every day exhausted.

My creativity, which had been on the rocks for months once the pandemic reached us, finally gave up and died. I had stopped making Signals by that point but had desperately kept trying to write. The Starfinder campaign I was writing and running evaporated. There was little joy, just a lot of fear. Through it all, I saw some people running around outside caree-free, like it was all over; not caring about the people for whom it did matter. People who were immuno-compromised like my wife and I. At the time, I still counted myself lucky. I had a job. I hadn’t caught Covid. My wife was healthy, my extended family was healthy. I kept my head down and pushed through.

Thin Silver Linings and Changes

There were a few good things that happened. I experienced a field promotion in June, 2020, and a few months after that, an actual promotion in Dec, 2020. After about four-and-a-half years of funderemployment or outright unemployment, poor fits, and some truly terrible corporate experiences, I had a growing belief that there was no place in the job market for a forty-year-old man with a degree from an art school whose former campus now has an Old Navy in it.

But, at this job, I finally was starting to feel like there might be a place where a Maurice might have a decent job, if not a career. That my job was working with stuff I loved helped – as did the employee discount. I could buy things for my wife and I that could provide the occasional hit of serotonin and take our minds off of how things were outside the walls of our home.

There were also many other changes in that time. My wife and I took on a roommate for a little over a year in August 2020; a friend and co-worker who would have been out on the street during the pandemic if we hadn’t. I rigorously maintained six-feet of distance from people and often lost my usual disposition to give hugs to friends and family.

How we handled food and dining was another big change. My wife and I no longer dined in at restaurants as often in favor of cooking at home more frequently. Our roommate introduced us to the finer points of DoorDash (the good and the bad, tipping 25% minimum regardless of service to the staff who were taking risks to get people food). We opted for takeout as well, making occasional use of curbside pick-ups.

We learned the difference between Covid-19 and seasonal allergies, often in terrifying, anxiety-amplifying ways.

But, the biggest thing to change was being inside most of the time. If it was’t essential: food, work, medicine, dog duty… we didn’t go outside (beginning a Vitamin D deficiency continuing to this day).

Eventually, over that summer, we just hunkered down and waited for news of a vaccine.

Holidays With Needles

Christmas was very different in 2020. My parents were in Arizona in their winter home when the lockdown came. The CDC was strongly recommending that seniors should not fly unless the need was dire, so the family swallowed tradition. Quality Chinese food was ordered and it was a quiet Christmas in with my wife and our roommate. Family members were met later on Zoom, where we learned virtual gatherings were like in-person ones: loud, distracted, and largely spent talking over one another. The only thing missing was jockeying for personal space at my Parent’s home on the East Coast. Still, it was lonely with just the three of us in person. We lived in this insular bubble with little exposure to the outside that was not work, grocery, or pharmacy-based through those cold months.

We did receive one, much-needed early Christmas present over the pre-holiday season: word of a vaccine around October 2020. I was glued to the NPR website to learn more every day and listening to the news podcasts I loved (NPR: Up First, as well as the lefty-leaning Daily Zeitgeist).

While the first pilot vaccine programs went out in October, these were limited to persons 60-years-old or over and were incredibly hard to come by given a myriad of obstacles. With nursing home facilities experiencing Coronavirus deaths in droves they got the lion’s share in those first weeks. The new vaccines also didn’t have the massive cooling infrastructure needed to be warehoused in a lot of places anyhow. Plus, it would take some time to start mass-producing the vaccine. Without a way to get a vaccine that winter, we waited for what our state called Phase 1a: Anyone between 18-60 with immuno-compromised complications. My wife and I both qualified for 1a.

It was a long, intense wait. Five months of working in a crowded retail store for up to ten hours a day depending on the store’s need. Five months of being surrounded by people on all sides who would not respect us or care one whit for our safety or our mental well-being. It was about that time that I had to stop listening to the podcasts and news reports so closely; too anxiety-inducing. It was too much on top of the constant fear that I would catch Corona, go into the hospital, and die. All because I wasn’t old enough to get the vaccination and diabetics have a hard time fighting the virus.

It got pretty dark for me, given my high levels of just my baseline anxiety. Everything amplified through a prism of worry and fear. I eventually relented and went to my doctors and admitted the dosage from pre-Coronavirus days was not cutting it any longer. They increased my dosage by half. It helped absorb some of the difficulties, but the only bit of true relief from this time was when my parents called sometime in early winter to tell me it had happened: Arizona had opened vaccination centers and that they received their jabs.

My parents, at least, were something I wasn’t going to have to worry about now.

When Phase 1a finally came in the late winter of 2021, it was an intensive process of trying to get my first jab. I hustled for a week before finally getting disheartened and giving up, waiting to be notified through our local health system. Despite my home being served by one of the tenth-largest healthcare systems in North America, it was still massively unprepared for the demand.

I figured if I’d been safe this long I could go just a little longer. In the beginning of April, through happenstance, a friend who worked at the local hospital saw my woes on Facebook and let me know to get my shit together right then and there; they had vaccination openings due to no-show reservations and didn’t want to waste their vaccine supplies. I tried to get my wife in on that same day but couldn’t. Work was full-tilt for her (and would be so for months after as well) and there was no escaping for her despite being closer to the hospital than I was at that moment.

When I got there, I could see the line from the access road running through the medical complex from 200 feet away. It started at the Cardiovascular wing and wrapped all the way down along its side, turned a corner, then kept going.

covid vaccine line
This represented about 1/4 of the line ahead of me, and at the time I took it, it was still growing.

I waited outside in the chill for about an hour in the queue. Once I got inside, more lines waited as each person being brought in was broken down into four new lines where we had to supply our driver’s licenses. We then stood in another long line that wrapped around the indoor inoculation center, which in turn broke down into about twenty vaccination stations. The wait inside took probably another half hour. Everything was surprisingly civil. The people who weren’t being very civil at the time (and largely continue to be) didn’t want vaccinations, so no big surprises there.

Then, at around 11 in the morning, about two hours after I got the call from my friend, I was vaccinated.

vaxxed bitches
This is what relief looks like.

Spring 2021

When the second vaccination happened three weeks later, I went down hard. I had a good idea that it would happen though, so I was prepared. I ended up out of the store for three days while my immune system made adjustments. The worst I suffered from was fatigue – but the fatigue was all-encompassing. On day two, I slept for almost twenty hours out of that entire day while the vaccine worked its way through my body. I came out on the other side okay though. For a while, the weight came off my metaphorical shoulders.

Delta was around by then, had been for months, but it hadn’t been named. I had about ten days of relief before it hit the news. And by June, there were questions of whether or not the vaccine would even be effective against it. My mental health took a hit again, but I managed to fight through this time.

Despite all of this, a few good things happened while Delta was winding up to hit America hard.

First, in April 2021, my parents finally came home. We’d been separated for about fifteen months. During that time, I managed to kill half of my mother’s houseplants, and our family dog had passed in Arizona due to complications from a collapsed trachea. I’d had to manage several house disasters while they were gone, mostly centered around flooding, but when they got home, they were happy to simply be home and to know that my wife and I were okay. I was simply glad to have them back. Even at forty-four years old, I still feel lost sometimes when they’re not here.

Retail continued to be an adversarial environment when it came to basic safety matters from both the customers and corporate sides, but I managed to perform well. I wasn’t the perfect manager. But, I did okay, I think. I largely liked the people I worked with and I felt bonded to many of them in the same way people in high-stress environments often do. I learned a lot and I had a job. Lots of people were still feeling the crunch of the Coronacoaster (my favorite euphemism for living through this particular historical event) and I felt very fortunate. With the help of my new prescription regimen, I was somewhat more resilient, able to tackle the stressors of home, isolation, and work.

Sometime in June, I began using a new sort of blood sugar monitor to take my readings while managing the store, I often met with frustration in getting them to go the distance, though. I’m a big, fat dude (for now). And, when I work, I sweat. I mean unreasonably. On many occasions, I’d apply the sensor only to find at some point in my day that it had come loose (and sometimes bled all over the place as a result depending on how recently the sensor was applied).

It was an imperfect solution, but once I started using it, there was no way I was going back to pricking my finger two or more times a day, not knowing if I was on the upswing of the downswing. That ship had sailed. I mostly had my sugars under control though, especially given that I was moving about seventeen thousand steps a day on average (you read that right).

Also around June 2021, I found out I wasn’t going to have a career with the store. They had certain assumptions in place for people who wanted to go into the assistant general manager or general manager roles that I simply wasn’t going to give in to. That, and the fact that what they offered for those assumptions was… lopsided. Something must have been looking out for me though, because as I sweat in the back of the store, cramming product onto shelves, I got a call from a friend and former co-worker that he had a job opening. It would take some time. But, over a couple of months, things came together.

The New Gig and Sudden Changes

After a brief vacation in Rehoboth Beach, I got news of the new gig’s availability and I put in my two week notice mid-October, 2021. Our roommate had moved out and the spare room transformed into a home office so that I could I work from home.

For the first time in years I found myself in a position to regain control of my own health, particularly when it came to my untreated ADHD and Diabetes. I started getting my shit together. It took a long time. There was a lot of poverty induced personal neglect on my part, and slowly but surely, I started fixing things. Not enough as it turned out. But, it was a beginning. I made appointments with my psychiatric office, which had changed hands, started filling prescriptions. For reasons beyond my ken, I kept doing a lot of dumb shit though. My diet didn’t change, and rationing kept happening. Being poor for a while will make you do crazy stuff I guess. It felt like progress though.

It was around this time of relative stability that life would throw my wife and I a curveball in the form of Avascular Necrosis (AVN).

Spoiler alert: no one died. But parts of my wife’s bones did.

To make a long story short, the blood flow in the ball joints of each of her hips stopped providing enough blood to the bone. As a result, those parts of her femurs both degenerated irreversibly. We don’t know exactly when the time of death for the ball joints of the bones were, but they were diagnosed in October of 2021 after months of increasing pain. In November one of the joints finally collapsed and took my wife out of work. My new job couldn’t have come at a more fortunate time. I took on the job of shouldering the bills for two months while we worked out her temporary disability. After all the time she supported me while I was unemployed and running around in circles to figure out how to repair my life, it still doesn’t feel like I’ve done enough.

With hospitals still backed up and Covid protocols making things difficult, it took months (and emotional pain and suffering on both of our parts) to arrange the surgeries she needed as the Omicron Variant of Covid-19 began its rampage across America. If you’ve never had a joint collapse due to something like AVN, you only need to know one thing: it is brutal. I didn’t even experience the pain directly, but secondhand exposure was enough. My wife eats pain for breakfast and has the highest tolerance for it than anyone I have ever known (case in point: she broke her kneecap on the way to a funeral once; she got up, attended the service and the reception afterwards, stood through the whole thing, and never once complained until arriving home).

The first total hip replacement was in early March of 2022. The surgeon had said that comparatively, the pain of the surgery would feel like instant relief compared to the actual condition of AVN. I had my doubts (frankly, I thought he was full of shit).

He and my wife proved me wrong.

The difference was night and day. She suddenly could do more. Even with intensive PT, things got better and better until the second joint experienced total collapse. There was a long period of secondhand pain via basic human empathy on my part. Watching someone get lit up with pain for simply sitting still sucks. We waited another forty-some days and finally got the second total hip replacement surgery in late May of 2022.

Recovery

Things have gotten better. My wife and I have been vaccinated and boosted (second boosters to follow in August of 2022 if we both qualify for a second round). She’ll be back to work in September of 2022 with any luck, and I’m happy in my new job. For the first time in a while, the lights in my brain have been slowly coming back on. Creativity is something that I can feel flowing again, albeit slowly and irregularly. There’s something about living through historically significant events that diverts all of that energy into basic survival and just watching to make sure nothing is going to come out and take you out at the knees (or the hips). Hypervigilance and fear are starting to back off enough for me to hope that maybe something better comes out of the times that seemed so dark and hopeless.

The world isn’t right – never has been. But it’s less wrong in some ways. There’s still a long way to go. Especially with SCOTUS looking to take America back to the Fifties and telling us all that bodily autonomy isn’t a right. But, we live to carry on. I live to carry on.

Here’s to more posts and more work and more future to write.

Apocalypse Arcade

Like many in my country, I’m being encouraged to stay inside right now while CoVid-19 is burning through our cities. I’m spending time with my wife, FaceTiming with relatives and friends, and building a shelf to manage a lot of my older game consoles. I call the last bit Project Retro.

While I was putting the shelf together, I remembered an old gem from the 2014 Writing Challenge I tasked myself with to increase my writing output. Since it makes a good tie-in with Project Retro (more on that in further posts) I thought I’d repost it here. Perhaps it will entertain others who are similarly housebound while we wait for whatever comes next. It’s been edited and polished a little since then, and I feel like it’s good enough to share.

So, welcome to Apocalypse Arcade. I hope you enjoy it.


Pez could see the Market would be slower than usual today. Life had grown languorous in the wasteland’s summer heat. It had not rained for eight days, meaning that all that remained in the bottom of the Market’s water barrels was a rancid and foul sludge. The sour stew that came out of them was oily and dark. Few but the most desperate would drink from such tainted waters.

Growing up in the shadow of Nuñez, the Junk Dealer, meant Pez was comfortable with his thirst. It was the least of the indignities Nuñez had to offer and kept him from the rain barrels. His mother had long since disappeared, and he was unsure of whether or not his mother had even known who his father was. So it was with many of the children of the market whose mothers were whores. It was a common enough origin. Nuñez told him there was nothing to be ashamed of in that. Some of the older residents of the area used the word ‘bastard’ to label him in Pez’s presence, but the small ecology of unwanted human byproduct spawned in the red light district of Market had a purpose. Some wayward children were adopted and taken in to learn a trade such as Pez had been. Many others ended up as slaves or concubines, raised from birth to be molded into the ancient, barbaric roles long known by man. Nuñez had told Pez that in his youth children went to schools to learn without such dark destinies. Pez did not believe him. His own reality was such that he could picture no other life. A place where children were expected to simply sit and listen was a fantasy. Everyone worked in the Market. Everyone pulled their weight. Dullards starved. Abandoned children learned only as much as their profession could provide and their master could teach.

If a child couldn’t hack their master’s trade it was either the gladiatorial pit or starving to death. There were no other alternatives. Not if they wanted to stay anywhere near Market.

Outside of Market a child would not last long on their own.

A wind blew through the dusty concourse of his stall’s corner of the Market. Pez readjusted the bandana covering his lower face to keep out the grit. It was red with white dots and swirls, what Nuñez had called paisley. So long as it covered his mouth Pez didn’t much care for what it looked like or what the style’s name was. It kept the grey grit of the stalls out of his teeth and the ash off of his tongue. It could be called whatever Nuñez liked.

Nuñez’s meager table of dross bore drill bits, toasters, cast-iron skillets, and a few dull knives. The rest was just junk; gewgaws that had no discernible purpose, at least not in Pez’s young eyes. The prized items, at least according to Nuñez, were the old books that Pez couldn’t even read. Nuñez held great stock in books and read frequently. Pez had no need of them. He just wanted to work, to stay out of the pits. He didn’t need to be able to read to do that. He’d learned his numbers at Nuñez’s insistence, at least up to a hundred. As far as he was concerned, he’d never see more than a hundred of anything all at once. Why bother with more?

The grey, ashen haze of mid-afternoon was reaching its brightest. Few stragglers had come to pick through the garbage for sale, but Pez was still keeping his eyes sharp for thieves when a tall traveler appeared in one of the greatcoats from Before.

The traveler said nothing, picking up items and appraising them from behind the cool, reflective gaze of shaded goggles. Gloved hands methodically went over several items. Amongst the pieces handled were the remote for a device that no longer functioned, a radio control with no batteries, and a strange wedge of plastic with another smaller wedge inside, laced with metal. When the stranger’s hands neared several books, Nuñez took interest and came away from his bespoke office. It was a junked van with no wheels, gutted then fitted with a mattress and a desk. A battered solar array along the roof powered its few remaining electrical systems.

Hola, señor,” Nuñez opened. He tried not to sound too enthusiastic, but with the slow day, Pez could hear the old man ratchet his usual greeting up a notch. Pez looked silently at their new customer, looking over the details of the traveler’s clothes and gear. “Bienvenidos! Welcome to Market! InglesEspañol?

The traveler spoke. The voice was a dry dusty thing and older than his appearance betrayed. “English.”

“You are new to Market, eh? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

Pez tried to assess the newcomer’s gear while Nuñez chatted up his mark. Most of it looked fastidiously kept, if eclectic. Were he of a mind to, Pez had no doubt he could sell the man out to some of the less reputable inhabitants Market for a cut of the harvested bounty. He knew that Nuñez would frown upon this. At least before the sale of any goods the man wanted. Pez felt it was always best to keep his options open, though.

“Just passing through,” said the traveler.

“From where?”

“Northeast.”

“Ah, the city? Bad territory for the lone hombre to travel.” Nuñez shifted his voice to a hopeful tone, “You come with a caravan? Bring supplies from another settlement?”

“No.”

Nuñez shrugged, “I suppose not. None of the caravans seem to think much of this place. Always was a small place next to the metro, even Before.”  

Before was a time both men knew even if Pez didn’t. Nuñez always sighed when he thought of it. Pez thought it was a waste of breath. 

“You look old enough to remember before the war,” Nuñez said with a dry cough as he looked at the man’s collected kit. “You soldado?”

The traveler didn’t respond verbally but nodded ever so slightly. Pez tried to read the traveler’s expression, but could not pierce the flat affect of the stranger’s goggles and ragged filter mask.

“I thought you might say that,” Nuñez said with a grin. “You had the look. Soldado especial? Engineered? They gave you the treatments?”

The stranger did not react to this in any way Pez could see. He figured Nuñez must not see the wisdom of going down that path because he stopped trying to prise out personal information and went back to hawking what was on his table. From what little Pez knew, the soldiers from the war were different somehow. Not to be trifled with.

“You looking for something particular, amigo? I may be able to put you on the right track even if I don’t have anything for you. A little compensation is always appreciated though for a nod to another vendor.”

“Not yet,” said the stranger. “Just passing through and seeing what you might have.” The stranger paused, but the reason was obscured by his goggles. The man gave an audibly dry swallow.

“Well, let me know if there’s something that catches your eye.”

Nuñez was an expert at uncovering the needs of a mark. He could tell what was desired usually by what they carried visibly, how they spoke, and what they wore. He’d been a hawker even before the war, at least that’s what Nuñez boasted when he was drunk on the shine that came out of one of the neighboring stalls. In this instance, Nuñez was backing off.

Pez, however, had a hunch about what the man was interested in and kept an eye on him closely.

The stranger passed the junk table at the front and made his way inward through the stall. Nuñez moved deftly out of his way, keeping his hand near his own pistol. Pez watched the stranger as closely as he could without making himself obvious. His intuition and the stranger’s body language was telling him that the traveler was feigning disinterest. Perhaps Nuñez was starting to lose his sight like most of the old-timers. Pez watched Nuñez retreat back into his van to take in the cool shade.

Pez found himself anxious watching this strange, well-armed newcomer. Through his nervousness, he simply waited for the traveler to pause in front of something so he could get a better look at what had caught the stranger’s eye.

Pez picked out the item almost immediately once the stranger had stopped at an inner table. It was a tangle of junk: a worthless plastic and wood thing, squarish, connected by a lead to a black, plastic box with beveled edges. A rubberized stick popped out from the center of the smaller plastic box on its top side, and a once red but now bleached ochre plastic button was its only other adornment. The larger, wood-panel and plastic box had two long cords coming out of it – one for power and one for something else he had no knowledge of. Pez knew it was electronic, but it didn’t take batteries as far as Pez could tell and it wouldn’t plug into the solar array of Nuñez’s office. So, it had to be junk. Like so much of the rest of the junk that Nuñez typically sold for scrap it held no value Pez could see.

Pez tried again to look into the stranger’s eyes – most buyers gave away tells with their eyes according to Nuñez. The old man would often go on about the eyes being some kind of gateway to the soul. Then again, Nuñez also seemed to believe the rotgut wine he took every Sunday at the Fishers tent was actually blood. Some of the crazy old-timers mumbled over crosses and drank the pretend blood with him, but more often than not, Nuñez wasn’t crazy and he was rarely wrong. 

In this case, Pez didn’t need Nuñez’s wisdom or training to see see the stranger’s raw need for the thing. The sheer attachment to the item was playing itself out in the gesture itself. The way the stranger touched it lightly and ran his hand along its surface. In this case, the hands were the giveaway. The stranger touched is as if it was some religious icon or relic.

Pez watched the stranger grab the stick portion of the smaller box with his right hand, then cradle the box in his left placing his left thumb over the disc. He pressed it down to no visible effect, then moved the stick in a circular motion. There was no reaction from the device, but for the briefest moment it looked like the stranger might be smiling beneath his respirator. Pez smiled to match. The stranger was taken by the useless thing. He was sure of it.

Pez reminded himself that for some of the junk, use didn’t always matter. The heart wanted what it wanted. Nuñez had told him that a million times.

Señor,” said Pez. “You want to buy?”

The traveler considered this and let a silence pass between himself and Pez. Typical buyer behavior. The battle of wills had begun. 

Nuñez watched silently from the shade, appraising Pez’s gambit. 

Pez knew one of two things would come of this. Either Nuñez would have his hide for speaking out of turn or he’d get a share of the shine next time the adjacent brewmaster had some to spare.

“I don’t have chit or gold. You have currency here?” said the stranger.

“That’s for city trade, señor. We barter here like everyone else.”

“What are you asking?”

Pez heard Nuñez come to the van’s door and lean on its frame to observe his pitch.

The stranger had opened with a question and not an offer. It was typical buyer bullshit, meant to make the seller make the first gesture. The boy turned it around.

“What do you have?”

The traveler turned to leave. Pez and Nuñez shared a sentiment for this kind of thing: they both hated it.

“Señor,” Nuñez intervened, “Are you sure you want to do that? I don’t think you’ll find another one of those elsewhere.”

The traveler turned, “It’s junk. The waste is full of junk.”

Nuñez gave a disapproving look to the stranger.

“How many of those have you come across in the waste?” Pez countered with a little too much eagerness.

The traveler considered this and walked back toward the table. “Then answer me, kid. What do you want for it?”

“MREs,” Pez said. “Bullets, caseless 9mm if you got ‘em. Water is always appreciated.”

“Forget it, kid,” said the traveler. “Isn’t worth that much.” The traveler turned to go.

“I think it is,” Pez pushed. “MREs, okay, maybe that’s too much to ask. Bullets, though, we take other kinds. Most of the zip guns around here are 9 mil, but .22 is just as good, or long rifle .32.” Pez was young, but he knew the ammo market values. You had to or you could find yourself making some spectacularly lopsided trades. “That rifle you got there. That’s a .32, right?”

The traveler popped his rifle off his shoulder and Nuñez took a reflexive step back. Violence was not uncommon in Market, particularly from outsiders who didn’t know the score. Pez stood firm though as the rifle went on the counter and the stranger popped the clip. Three .32 rounds were shelled out onto the table.

“Three caseless.”

Pez looked back quickly at Nuñez for a little guidance. Nuñez looked at him as if to say ‘ask for more,’ so Pez did.

“Five.” Pez knew the stranger wanted the plastic gewgaw badly. The stranger stiffened and looked at him from behind the goggles.

“Four,” he countered.

Pez didn’t look back this time. “Okay, four. Deal.”


It had been much harder to slip away from Nuñez than it was to follow the stranger. Slipping away before it was time was against the rules, upsetting the delicate balance of Nuñez’s life in Market. Even when his smaller expeditions brought something back in, the old man worried. Sometimes that worry turned to anger. Pez had done this before on slim months, the times when Nuñez simply couldn’t pull in enough in trade to keep the stall open.  More often than not it brought a beating. Nuñez on occasion called them an ‘object lesson,’ not that Pez knew what that meant.

During slim months when trade was bad, Pez found ways to make profits with deft hands in the market throngs. Nuñez, not without the vice of pride, typically found this kind of thing distasteful. On slim months he did not question the profit Pez brought in on his riskier outings, but this was different. He’d gone on his own initiative, an action that usually resulted in Nuñez taking it out of Pez’s hide. The stranger had something about him worth the risk of tailing him, though. If not, he’d made his peace with the thrashing he would earn.

Pez’s plan was a loose one. He wasn’t here to just steal. The traveler could – likely would – kill him if he was caught. Nuñez had thought the man was soldado especial. While Pez’s own base human greed was probably somewhere in the morass of his motivations, Pez was simply curious. He might never get another chance to see one of the Before soldiers again.

Pez knew he was onto something. He wasn’t sure what yet, so he aimed to find out.

The stranger was tall and that made it easier for Pez to follow him. Pez was small and could weave through the throng of buyers and stalls without notice. Growing up in the shadows of the market had taught Pez the virtue of being dwarfed by adults.

The tall stranger stopped at a few other stalls: a water vendor, then an ammunition seller. The stranger then spent some time at a meat stand, eating skewers of god knew what and slices of the weak peppers that would still grow in the wastes. He hit another junk stall, much like Nuñez’s own. Pez waited for him outside of it for a bit and almost missed the stranger leaving after closing his eyes for a moment. He quickly picked up the stranger’s trail again, locking in on the broad-brimmed hat rising above most of the other market buyers.

Pez pursued the traveler further into Market, toward the higher rent area. Most of the Market was an open-aired sprawl, with vendors forming crude barriers between themselves and other hawkers with corrugated scrap metal sheets, worn linens, or battered planks of wood good for little else than as a line of demarcation. Inside of the rings and crooked avenues of the smaller merchant stalls was Old Market; a large, squat building that seemed impossibly large to Pez. Its exterior had begun to show serious wear and it was obvious that it had not been properly cared for even before the war. Stubborn white paint still clung in spots, but most of it had flaked off in the highly acidic rains and the hard, gritty winds that blew through the plain the market was situated on. Letters Pez couldn’t read were marked in faded green and red and yellow at the building’s front which faced the Long Road that bore most travelers to Market. It was there in Old Market that the stranger headed.

Pez weighed his options. If he was to follow further he’d have to be much more careful. People like Nuñez and the outer Market sellers were suffered at the hands of the people inside the derelict building. People who had stalls inside of the Market proper were pillars of what passed for community. There were more guards here. Pickpockets and thieves were everywhere in the Market, but the class of rogue in Old Market was of a different caliber. Pez would stick out here, even if he wasn’t looking to cutpurses. Vendors of Old Market could afford their own muscle and their own swift and brutal law. He’d been tossed out of Old Market his first week with Nuñez. The guards told him he was bringing down property value, whatever that meant. It was to be his only warning they said, and Pez knew they meant it. Old Market guards had long memories paired with sadistic streaks encouraged by years of watching pit fights.

Pez made up his mind quickly. Nothing ventured, nothing gained as Nuñez liked to say. It wasn’t a crime to look in the Market – he even had four .32 bullets in his pocket that could possibly convince vendors he was a buyer – provided he was stupid enough to wave that kind of wealth around. He had no designs on starting anything, he was smarter than that.

He darted in.

The crowds were looser here and the stranger stood out even more, but so would Pez. He passed several booths and vendors, many of whom were selling shine, companionship, and food. Pez kept his gaze down and made sure not to look like he was loitering when the stranger would stop. Unattended children were frequently abducted and put on the meat markets or sold for gladiatorial sport. 

Pez was careful as he followed the stranger through a gambling den, a tattoo stall, a guide station, then to the Slathouse: a place that passed for lodging for passers-through if they had barter to spare.

Pez knew that this would be the end of the line. There’d be no way he could get beyond the Slathouse door without something to pay with. Pez resigned the trip as a wash as the stranger made an offer to the keeper at the threshold of the Slathouse. The offer was taken, and in the stranger went.

Pez went home, disappointed, thinking that he would never see the stranger again.


Pez did, in fact, get a dressing down when he returned. It would not be his first and would be far from his last. He’d certainly had worse at the hands of the pimps who ran the brothels in his earliest years, which was his reason for escaping the brothel in the first place. Nuñez at least had the decency to rarely hit him, and when he did he took care not to strike his face and had never broken a bone. Pez supposed it was the little things. In a few more years he guessed that we would be Nuñez’s size. Then the game’s rules might change.


The next morning dragged by, and Nuñez watched Pez like a hawk, making sure he didn’t get any more funny ideas in his head while he worked. It seemed another boring day was to come and go in the outer rings of the market.

That changed when Pez felt the shadow of the traveler come over him.

His clothes appeared to have been slept in and his outward appearance had not changed a single iota. He only looked briefly, never saying a word. Pez knew better than to engage him. Nuñez’s hands had left their message well. Pez was not looking for another bout of discipline.

The Traveler fixed his goggled eyes on Pez and spoke.

“Televisions. You got Televisions, kid?”

Pez kept his jaw from dropping somehow before he spoke. “Those are rare, mister. And anyway, they’re all just junk. Broken.”

“Then if you got one it’ll be cheap.”

Pez heard Nuñez slip behind him and speak. “Let’s say I did have one.”

“What would you ask for it?”

Pez watched intently as the two men continued.

“It’s not much. But, you ain’t looking to set down roots are you? TV’s big. Liability if you’re just passing through as you said.”

“Last I checked that wasn’t your concern. You got a set or not?”

If Nuñez was taken aback, he didn’t let it show. “Well, step on back. Pez, will you draw the curtain? We’re closed until the man has his say.”

Pez watched the man walk past him and join Nuñez in the back of the stall. In a disused corner, behind a few sheets of plywood, Nuñez had always kept a secure cabinet. The top shelf stuff was in there, and he rarely advertised its existence – only to customers he knew could pay. And even then, he usually sent Pez off while he transacted.

This time though, Pez got a look inside the cabinet. Most of the televisions he saw were old even by Before standards, big boxy things that more often than not were hollowed out and used as a place to light a meager fire or to store things in their shells. This was different. It was on the small side, but its body was flat. It was covered in dust but still held a kind of promise. Of what, Pez had no idea. He knew that they were supposed to show pictures. He’d never seen a functional one and was amazed that one may have been this close all this time.

“Wasn’t plugged in when the EMPs hit or it was out of range,” Nuñez said. “I been holding onto it for twenty years. I guess… I guess I hoped I’d be able to use it again one day. But… I don’t think it’s gonna happen. So… make me an offer, gringo. Before I change my mind.”

The stranger clucked for a bit, looking over the television. “Connections don’t match what you sold me yesterday.”

“Of course they don’t. This was cutting edge when the war started. That old thing you bought yesterday was antique when I was a kid, comprende? Besides, I probably got something here we can use to patch it. Get it going.”

“Let’s say you do. In that case, I’ll give you a full magazine of .38s and three of these.”

The stranger produced from his pack four unopened bottles of purified water, seals intact. It was a ludicrous amount to trade. Clear water with no bugs or grit in it, not muddy or silt-choked. It might not even have to be boiled. The bullets almost seemed like an afterthought by comparison.

“That’s a generous offer. You, ah, don’t mind I check that water?”

“Seals are there, what more do you want?”

Nuñez produced a Geiger counter and ran it over the water. It clicked but not nearly as bad as Pez would have expected it to.

Nuñez didn’t even blink. “I think you got yourself a deal, soldado.”

“I’ll need someone to help me get it over to Old Market.”

Nuñez looked at Pez. “What are you waiting for? Get the cart and help the man.”


Pez carried the surprisingly light television to Old Market where it was revealed that the soldado had purchased a slim stall space, its curtain down. Once past the curtain, it offered only a table, a few battered chairs and a plug installed into the far wall that drew power from a solar array on the roof and a team of enslaved turbine spinners somewhere under the Market. The stranger took the television from Pez without any effort at all and set it on the table.

“You got no idea what it is I’m up to, do you, kid?”

Pez said nothing.

“It’s alright, the guy you’re working for ain’t here. You can speak if you’ve a mind to.”

“I don’t know what any of this is apart from the TV.”

The stranger set his pack down gently onto the table and pulled out the previous day’s purchase. “I had one of these when I was a kid. You read?” he said pointing to the letters on the box’s case.

“No.”

“Says ‘Atari’. You ever heard of one of those?”

“No.”

“Guess you ain’t heard of much from Before then, huh?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re gonna today.”

“Where’d you get the scratch for all of this?” Pez suddenly blurted out. It was a rude question, but he had to ask. This stranger had come from the city to the Northeast and managed to get a stall in the Old Market. Any vendor from Outer Market would have given their eyeteeth for the narrow space.

“Would you believe I used to live here?”

Pez said nothing.

“Well, not here exactly. Maybe two miles to the south. Old development called Wilton Green. Lived with my mom and two sisters. They died during the war. I was fighting in the desert for most of it until the command chain died off.” The stranger looked away from Pez momentarily before adding, “I miss ‘em. I miss the life we used to have.”

“You sound like Nuñez.”

“Lot of old souls do.” The stranger pointed to his duffel. “Hand me those things your owner sold me for the TV.”

“He’s not my owner,” Pez said with unmasked disgust.

“Sorry little man. Didn’t know. I know that people around here take ownership of people who can’t pay debts. I don’t hold with it, but… well, maybe that’ll change someday.”

“Long as there’s a pit master here, there’ll be trade on slaves.”

“I reckon you’re right. But, one thing at a time.”

“You got a name, mister?”

The strange looked at Pez for a moment that seemed too long. Like he’d asked a question that was impossible to answer.

“Mister works for me. That work for you?”

“Sure, I guess.” Pez gave Mister the assorted junk for the television and watched him start making connections. It took a while, but Mister let Pez watch all the same.

“You know, I can’t even remember who showed me one of these the first time. Maybe one of my uncles.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You happy back there? Selling stuff for that old guy?”

“I guess. It beat what I had before.”

“I guess it might have. But you never really get a moment do you? A moment when you can just relax?”

“You kidding?”

“No.”

“I work. Everyone works. You don’t work, you go to the pits.”

“Yeah. Sucks doesn’t it?”

They both knew it was a stupid question.

“When I was a kid, before the war, people used to have time. You’d go to school, you maybe did little league, became a scout. But you still might have had time to do whatever. But I remember playing with these.” 

Mister finished whatever he was doing and plugged in a power cord from the power box in the wall to the television. Mister hit a button on the ancient thing’s back and its screen cast a blue light so bright that Pez had trouble looking at it.

“Okay, TV works. Now the moment of truth.” Mister flipped a switch on the plastic and wood-paneled box and suddenly the blue was replaced with chunky blobs of random color with a small triangle in the middle of them. The chunks moved and eventually one hit the triangle. It made a noise that made no sense to Pez – but it transfixed him.

“Ah. Wasted a life. This was one of my favorites. Bought it from another vendor on the outside for a .22. Asteroids. I was always good at it.”

Pez saw the man pick up the smaller box with the stick and manipulate it. As he did, the little triangle on the screen moved. When he hit the disc, the triangle fired a pellet that broke up the blobs into smaller chunks.

They said nothing for another half hour while Mister played and Pez watched.

It was dark when Pez returned to Nuñez’s stall. The old man wasn’t angry – he’d had some rotgut to go with his water and greeted Pez warmly.

“The gringo didn’t skin you and eat you. That’s good.”

Pez didn’t say anything else, just came up to his usual seat in the stall. After a few minutes of silence, Nuñez spoke again.

“What’s the matter with you. Cat got your tongue?”

Pez shook his head.

“Kids. I suppose when your balls drop in a year or two, you’ll get even more sullen. But you got time to straighten out. I’ll take care of you.” Nuñez waved an arm in a grandiose arc to indicate his collection of junk. “Someday, all this could be yours.”

Pez had thought about taking over the stall many times before. Old-timers like Nuñez tended to get the Lumps the older they got. Or, they went blind. Or, Bloodlung took them. And when that happened, provided he could keep up stall payments, he could keep the place running.

But he wasn’t sure that mattered any longer.

Not after Atari.


That night he snuck out from the shelter of the van and went to Old Market again. He showed a small disc to the guard who let him inside upon seeing the seal of the Old Market Association on the coin Mister had given him after he’d left. He walked through the place for the first place without fear and appeared at the stall Mister had purchased. He called out and was greeted by Mister who let him in.

“Can I play?” he said excitedly.

“Yeah. You helped me get this set up. Even though I paid you… I think it’s time that you kids ought have some time to see what it was like before.”

It was the first night of many that Pez would return to Mister’s stall. After the crowds died down during the day, Pez would come to the stall to play after hours, sleep for a few more, then hawk junk with Nuñez.

The sun never got any brighter, but Pez’s future did just a little bit.

A Story in 200 Words – They Killed Our Parents

I recently listened to an episode of Start With This, a podcast about harnessing creativity by the creators of Welcome To Night Vale. Their most recent episode was on repetition, something which has been the bane of my writing style for some time now. I used to think repetition was emphatic, but it really isn’t. But, I listened to the cast to see if there was something I missed, and perhaps there was. I still don’t like the way I used repetition in the past. But, with some guidelines, I took down their assignment. I’m… strangely pleased. I’m not a very big fan of any work that is short. It ties my hands. This time it seems to have done something that at least feels interesting. The constraints were to take a single phrase and use it five times in a work of no more than two hundred words. I came in with twelve words to spare on the first try.

This is the raw result, using only Grammarly for the first draft:

They killed our parents and shuffled us into the system. She was fourteen. I was nine. They told us it was an accident. We held each other’s hands. We cried. But we knew. They killed our parents.

We started to look in all the wrong places and came up with the right answers. They killed our parents because they knew where the hidden things lay. They knew the names. They knew the lies. So, they killed our parents and thought it was done.

When they killed our parents they got more than they wanted. With no one to stop us, no one to tell us that revenge wasn’t the answer, we learned how to hunt. We sharpened our knives. We learned to see them when they thought they could hide. We found they were monsters and skinned them alive.

When the work was done, we went through their lair, and what did we find there? Two trembling forms, one seven, one five. Barely aware of the change to their lives. We killed their parents, and the books weren’t right. So, two more child creatures died in the night.

The assignment asks for the meaning and change of impact each time the phrase is used, which is what makes the difference. In this case, ‘they killed our parents’ is the phrase. The first time it appears it is simply a statement of fact, followed by an immediate result. The second time it’s mentioned at the end of the same paragraph, it’s accusatory and foreshadowing. The third time provides a reason for the killings, knowledge of things one is not meant to know. The fourth time sets up what the killers thought the narrator’s parents would bring about by their murderous deeds. The final time, it draws out the consequences – if the narrator’s parents hadn’t been killed what came next would never have had to happen.

The final paragraph uses the phrase not at all. Catharsis has come and a new cost is introduced to the narrators who learn a dark and terrible thing about themselves. There’s is then a sixth, unspoken time, that the phrase is no doubt uttered by the monstrous children just before they too are dispatched – they killed our parents.

I felt good enough to come out of my author blog cave to write about the experience and post it. I guess that’s something, huh?

I think I shall turn it over some more in my head, see what I can expand from this. I think an Edward Gorey style poem perhaps could come of it, a burst of new signals at my other site.

Creative Dispatch – R.I.P. Bob, December 13th, 2017

So, way longer than anticipated since my last post, almost a month. My entrance into the gig economy plays a part as does taking care of an adorable dog. I’ve been trying to adjust to new realities, working the gigs, and spending time with family. But, I’ve also been creating again, and that’s left me little time to write about creating.

1998’s films are almost complete! Six more to go in the Personal Blockbuster categories. It’s a whopper – already looking at 4,000 words plus and that’s after removing a couple movies from the list when I realized I didn’t have enough to say about them.

Hack Job continues development too. It’s the first work I’ve done in which I’ve simultaneously had a critique group working with me as I produce it. It makes a big difference. The First Writes group has been instrumental in pointing out to me ways to tighten the work, make it more relevant, and to introduce me to dimensions of craft I didn’t pay much attention to – if I was aware of them at all. Possibly the biggest one is what we call ‘state change’. If a chapter doesn’t do something to change the status quo in even a small way… why are we using it?

I’ve also spent a lot of time reading. A lot of it is for reference – although enjoyment has been no small part of it. I’ve decided to go back to the cyberpunk era proper since Hack Job takes so much from it. Instead of rereading classics from my youth, I’ve decided to hit the ones I hadn’t read. I’d missed Russo’s ‘Carlucci’ novels. I’d missed Pat Cadigan’s ‘Synners.’ I’d missed Wilhemina Baird’s books. I’m starting to catch up now, to get the different flavors of cyberpunk. While Cyberpunk is technically a ‘dead’ genre, its back catalog will keep me busy for years.

Additionally, I’ve done a deep dive into Paizo’s ‘Starfinder’ roleplaying game. I have missed greatly the ability to have a schedule stable enough for gaming. A friend of mine, separated by significant distance now, re-introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons in its fourth reincarnation. Amongst the many other things I gleaned from it, I found a gaming format that you can really bust down into small components if you don’t have time for a giant game. The dungeon delve was a good option then, though the group (like most groups – and my own preference) opts for longer format stories on a schedule compatible with nine to six jobs. But, you can opt out of that if you want for a roleplaying-light, heavy-tactical kind of game. Starfinder seems to be a way to do that or to find a weird, juddering medium road. I’ve read through the core rules, the alien archive, the Starfinder RPG Guild materials. I think I have enough to work with, and I’ve completed a scenario. It even has a map which let me flex my Adobe skills a little! With a little luck, good timing, and some Roll20 access, this could all work out. Maybe even help me reconnect with some of those far-off friends on an irregular basis. I could use that right now.

And lastly, I spent some time thinking about my first manuscript. ‘The Many Labors of Bob’ took a long time to write. Twelve years in fact. It started in 1999 after I had worked my first corporate office job. It was completed in 2010 after having spent eight years in the trenches of an office environment, and several years learning more and more about Greek Mythology. I’m glad I wrote it… but it’s time for me to put it to bed. It’s been seven years. I haven’t put any work into editing it. Working on it puts me in a bad place. It drew from a lot of hard times, a lot of lessons learned. It injected the whimsy and fantasy I wish my own life might have. But… it’s not to be. At least not right now. I’m trunking it. Those who have read it, I give you my thanks. It was a bloated, weird, first shot at writing something long form. I just don’t think it has legs enough for me to ever finish it, let alone sell it. So, for right now, sayonara, Bob. I wish you godspeed (which you kind of already had).

And that’s all I have for right now. I’ll see everyone soon – hopefully, faster than a month).

Creative Dispatch – August 14, 2017

Its like, news or something… but creative.

Apologies for the missed blog post last Thursday – the past seven days have been my first week on the path back to steadier income. I driving for Uber now, and I am learning the ropes while investigating a few other options. It’s been an overwhelmingly positive change so far. I like the work, I meet lots of new people, and they talk. I like to talk. When you meet new people and they like to talk, you learn about things you’d never have thought about before. I learned a couple things about recovering from addiction, what it’s like raising money for schools in West Africa, as well as the people in neighborhoods I’ve never been in before. I’ve also been drumming up a lot of old memories about places I haven’t been to in years. Then there’s the facet of a whole new way of employment – that in itself has a story brewing in my mind.

Speaking of which, let’s talk a little bit more about what’s been on my creative docket.

Creative Progress

  • Ossua: This has unfortunately stalled. I need to restructure it after reports back from my critique group. As is typical of a big idea, you need other people to show you the flaws in what you think is already concrete. It’s very much like the scientific method. In this case, if you’re going to do something extraordinary, you need to make sure you’re showing it in the best and most accessible way possible to others who do what you do. So… this could take a while. The story while interesting lacks some common things the group pointed out. So I have a lot of work ahead of me after I have figured out the way forward.
  • The Dream of the Nineties In Film: This has been a blast to write, and it’s coming to a conclusion soon. I think when it is complete, I will have the basics for a non-fiction piece that covers the nineties in film as well as my own personal experience of growing up in the decade. A lot of it has been cathartic. And a lot of it has simply been great fun. The completed work will need to be edited and then formatted (the whole format has been an evolution in progress since day one). I’ll need to add in some extra things – but that’s good. It will give new content and also show some growth hopefully. I’m not sure if it will be something I sell or provide as a portfolio piece for people who want to look at my blog writing capabilities or want an example of my ability to use InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Perhaps both on a long enough timeline.
  • New Short Story Seed: A gypsy cab driver with a slick, tech-capable ride in a cyberpunk future has an interesting night.
  • New Short Story Seed: Quantum Entanglement sheds new light on the very existence of life on earth as our sun begins to gutter out.
  • Short Story Mashups: I submitted a trunk story about societal collapse to my critique group against my better judgement last week. I liked the story when I wrote it two years ago, but when I look at it now I feel it needs something more. It turns out the group really liked it, and they noted that it dovetails with another story I submitted earlier. They’re completely right. It should have been really obvious to me, but it wasn’t. In the process, I’ve tagged at least two other stories that would also mash up to create a solid narrative. It needs more meat on the bones to become more than a novella, but it’d be worth the work as a great, Lovecraftian science horror piece. A new sticky joins my Kanban board.
  • Blog Work: I submitted an application to work for an online blogging company and also am speaking with a marketing company in Philadelphia after an interesting opportunity cropped up. Apparently, I may be able to put my storytelling ability to work for them. Hoping to learn a little more about that soon.

In Other News

I’ve been working on getting things done around the house. In addition to the usual stuff that keeps our house pest free and makes sure I don’t get arrested for public indecency, Project Retro has come out from its storage bin and awaits proper cabling. I have several of my old gaming systems lined up on a rack that was previously used to hold storage bins but has finally been cleared. I look forward to a chance to finally play Burning Rangers, as well as several of my old favorites like Xenogears or Sonic Adventures. They’ve been mothballed for a long time, so it’s good to see them out again. Once everything is set up, I shall have to celebrate with other gamers of the retro persuasion. I’m a little short on games (I’ve had to sell many) but 2nd and Charles is right around the corner.

On top of that, driving for Uber occasionally means waiting around to catch a ride. While waiting in the PHL ride share lot for the next person in queue, I had a chance to find a new author: Duane Swiercynski. Well, new to me. He has been working in crime and spy thrillers on the novel end of things for a while, and also writes a lot of capes and cowl work at Marvel. I started out with Severance Package, a tidy little story about an intelligence front company that goes incredibly pear shaped. It was Tarantino-esque in its over-the-topness. This has led me to acquire copies of further works, specifically The Blonde and Canary as well. If those go well, I may dig deeper in my quest to branch out a bit from Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror. I always felt that thriller genre stories needed more aliens, cyborgs, monsters, and ghosts. So to add them, knowing the original formulas helps. I’ve tried a little Hammett and Chandler in the past year or so. I also have some good examples in the Jonathan Maberry vein from the Joe Ledger series. The repertoire is building.

So, that’s the post for this Monday. It may take some time before I can really tackle the next phase of Dream. 1998 has a very long list of films to get to, but we’ll get there.

Promise.

 

1996: The Cutting Room Floor

So Where Were Things In 1996?

1996 started with Philadelphia and its greater metropolitan area (including my hometown) seeing one of the worst blizzards in the history of the East Coast. It closed down New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. for several days – to say nothing about the canceled week of school I got as a result (this came to be called ‘Martin Luther King Week’). That May, my high school career ended, and I transitioned into the working world before going to college. I spent two-and-a-half months working as a busboy at a country club, then later as an employee at Blockbuster Video until late spring of 1997. I attended my first quarter of college in my adoptive city of Philadelphia starting in late-August. Everything was new. I found out who I was when I was truly allowed to be on my own. I spent a lot of time in Chinatown. I spent too much money from my summer job at Tower Records and Showcase Comics on South Street. I found the food carts that wouldn’t give me food poisoning in the shadows of Liberty Place. My friends and I also frequently exploited an establishment that delivered pizza and beer without even the pretense of checking an ID. I had my first nights with booze aplenty, both home and away, and experienced my first all-night parties (with subsequent sobering at the local Denny’s). I learned to like Chinese food because it was amazingly cheap and delivery was free. I met lifelong friends whose input I value, not only pertaining the courses we took, but the decisions I made (and continue to make). Things got real in my art training, fast. I had a few good instructors growing up, but I really met some great talent in college both among my classmates and among my instructors. I also had what I consider to be my first real (though unhealthy) relationship starting that Summer. It would completely fall apart the next year after about eight and a half months – though truth be told it was probably falling apart way before then. I learned much of what I did and did not want out of a relationship after that one  – enough that I didn’t seriously date again for another six years (though I’d occasionally fumble through a first date that went nowhere or get shot down about every year or so).


As far as general culture went that year, Alanis Morrisette won Album of the year at only twenty-one years old. The album, Jagged Little Pill, was regularly played in my parents’ home; not just by me, but also by my sister. It is the first album that both of us owned, and one of the few things in those years that we could both appreciate musically (or at all). The Ramones (who I’d only discovered two summers before) played their last show that year. An iconic punk band was scattered – not that it stopped several of the individual members from doing their own things and riding the ailing cash cow until it was dead. By year’s end, people finally turned their attention from the OJ trial to the JonBenet Ramsey murder. America’s appetite for tragedy has always been infinite.

On the larger horizon, Whitewater put Hillary Clinton in the hot seat as she gave defense testimony. The Fox News channel was launched to compete with CNN, lowering the bar of journalism so low that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes might deign to crawl out their swamps to step over it comfortably. Yugoslavia was formally recognized by the EU after years of conflict and prolonged violence in the region (that would not stop then). Northern and Southern Ireland came to the table for peace talks, though both decided to cut out Sinn Fein and put them at the kids’ table while they did it. The Troubles would continue through the next few years. Iraq continued to be a total clusterfuck as UNSCOM was routinely denied access to assess their military capabilities and a suspected stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. And, after a decades long hunt, the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was finally captured in a Montana cabin. He did not look nearly as pimp as his wanted posters made him out to be.

Technology continued its march as well. Deep Blue – an early AI created by IBM – defeated Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a game of chess. He requested a rematch about a month later in Philadelphia in which he defeated the machine, presumably pushing back Skynet’s plan to exterminate the human race from August 1997 to sometime further back. The Nintendo 64 (or N64) arrived in Japan, paving the way for its eventual release in the US. America lost its shit and the console took off to rave reviews. Nintendo took a bullish stance on its game format as well, opting to continue with cartridge based games as opposed to embracing optical media. Somehow, it managed to hold its own against Sony’s booming PlayStation platform.

The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent

If 1996 seemed thin in terms of movies that affected me, perhaps it’s because there were a lot that didn’t. Let’s visit those films now.

1996 escape from la

Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood (Indifferent) – The Wayans Brothers produce yet another of their endless parade of spoof movies, this time taking a shot at Menace II Society (1993), Friday (1995), and a handful of other African-American films. I laughed, I think.

Broken Arrow (Bad) – John Travolta steals a nuke, Christian Slater has to get it back while engaging in a forced romance. Fresh off his ascension back into the Hollywood scene, Travolta makes as bad a movie as Pulp Fiction was good. It at least has one memorable line.

Muppet Treasure Island (Indifferent) – The Muppets latch on to another classic story and people it with scruffy puppets. To be fair to the Muppet franchise, I can’t honestly tell you if this was good or bad. I was in a darkened theater while the film played. That I can claim with certainty. The problem was that I was also watching the imminent implosion of one of my best friend’s relationships in progress just two seats down from me. I hope to some day see this film without a fight in progress to gauge if this or Muppets From Space (1999) marks the decline of my devotion to this franchise.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs (Indifferent) – Another rom-com love triangle in which people lie about who they are in the belief that people will magically fall in love with them. My wife and I watched this about two years ago. It’s okay.

The Craft (Bad) – Four girls do magic to become powerful and popular. This is another film so many of my friends love that just didn’t grasp me. Neve Campbell should have been enough to sell it for me, but her appearance in Scream was much better.

Twister (Indifferent) – Bill Paxton chases tornados in a special effects showcase film. It’s a standard disaster movie, though it was impressive on the technical side of things. It got a few awards to that effect as well (Best Sound, Best Special Effects). It also took home a fair chunk of box office money for the year, coming in at the number two slot for money earned behind Independence Day (1996).

Mission Impossible (Good) – A reboot of the classic television show of espionage and spycraft. The MI movies are generally fun – at least for a few films. They pulled off a lot in this one in terms of great effects and action sequences. Mostly, I love the updated theme song, a derivation of the original theme with an electronic edge. It was good fun, but nothing groundbreaking or impactful for me.

The Phantom (Indifferent) – A D-list (super?) hero film. Billy Zane rides a horse in a costume can best be described as the prototype design for the purple Teletubby. Superhero movies wouldn’t get good until we got X-Men (2000).

The Rock (Indifferent) – Ed Harris threatens to gas San Francisco after taking over Alcatraz. Only Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery can stop him. I watched this the first time and hated it. I then watched it a second time and felt I was too hard on it. It’s not terrible, but… it’s still just another action film by Michael Bay. As far as Bay films go, there are many, many more that are terrible in comparison. Like every single one of the Transformers films.

The Cable Guy (Good) – Still not a big Carrey fan, but he does a great job in this incredibly dark comedy about a lonely (and deranged) cable repairman who increasingly stalks Matthew Broderick. It’s worth a viewing for the Medieval Times scene all by itself.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Indifferent) – See also, Pocohontas. Only this time, they milk a public domain story lots of people know already, and, again, take incredible liberties with it to make it friendly for the kids. I did have a hilarious moment though watching this film with one of my close friends. He noted, with my mother in the room, that Esmerelda was pole dancing in one of her musical numbers. My mother immediately fired back with “And what would you know about pole dancing, young man?” He immediately blushed and said, “Uh… nothing, Mrs. Hop.”

The Nutty Professor (Indifferent) – This wasn’t exactly the start of Eddie Murphy’s slide into irrelevance. But, after this, the tenor and tone of his films started to get less edgier than he was known for. Haunted Mansion (2003), in my opinion, is when the slide truly cemented itself.

Phenomenon (Good) – A sad but interesting tale of a man whose tumor makes him super smart, and eventually psychic. I consider this Travolta’s counterweight to Broken Arrow (1996) for the year.

Courage Under Fire (Good) – A military drama starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan. I almost forgot that I watched this. I remember it as being pretty good, though admittedly my memories of it are hazy. I watched it with mom and dad on one of the weekends I’d returned from my apartment in Philadelphia. Probably another Blockbuster rental.

Bordello of Blood (Indifferent) – Vampires versus Dennis Miller. Meh. This was kind of a let down. This is what happens when your leading role is played by a conservative gasbag who left his best work behind in Saturday Night Live. I don’t remember much of Demon Knight (1995), but I do remember it was better than this.

Escape From L.A. (Bad) – Snake Plisken is back. He’s more or less doing the same thing he did in Escape From New York (1984)… only worse. Don’t do this to yourself. Save yourself from the ninety minutes of crap-fest you’d otherwise have to wade through.

The Crow: City of Angels (Bad) – Another guy who isn’t Eric Draven comes back from the dead with the same deal from The Crow (1994), but doesn’t make it nearly as interesting. It’s not great, and Iggy Pop and the rest of its forgettable cast fails to save it.

Bulletproof (Bad) – Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans form an unlikely pair in this action comedy about witness protection and personal betrayal. Thus began the crap movies of Adam Sandler’s career. Don’t get me wrong. I love me some Adam Sandler comedy – from the CDs. But, after Happy Gilmore, it just wasn’t hitting the right buttons.

Bound (Indifferent) – Two women steal a lot of money from the mob and try to pin it on one of their shady boyfirends. Every Y-Chromosome (and a not inconsiderable amount of XX Chromosomes, too) in the world rented this one to watch Jennifer Tilly get it on with Gina Gershon in this crime thriller. Despite that concept, this movie failed to deliver much that was memorable for me.

The Ghost and the Darkness (Good) – Lions eat people in Africa. Which sounds unsurprising, despite that they don’t usually develop a taste for long pork. But, when they do… Jesus. Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas pull of good performances in this film. Scarily enough, it’s based on true events.

Michael Collins (Good) – Again, I wouldn’t go about buying my history from Hollywood, but this was still a pretty good film covering the life of Irish Patriot, Michael Collins. Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, and Julia Roberts all star.

Sleepers (Good) – Molested and tormented kids get back at the the people who abused them while in juvie. I didn’t catch this one in the year it was released. When I finally got around to it, I thought it was a pretty solid drama.

Ransom (Indifferent) – Mel Gibson wants his son back and acts like Mel Gibson to do it. This was another date movie where I didn’t so much care about what was going on as I did being in a darkened place with a girl.

Space Jam (Bad) – A ‘basketball’ movie where there’s only one human player (Michael Jordan). The rest of the players are animated aliens and Looney Tunes characters. It was a technical experiment, as well as an attempt to sell a lot of Nike products. It was also trying to keep Looney Tunes relevant. Not really sure it did any of those things too well. Just remember: Larry Bird isn’t white, per Bill Murray.

Jingle All the Way (Indifferent) – Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to great lengths to make sure his kid gets the big toy of the season for Christmas. This holiday film has a cult following and… I guess I’m just not a member of that particular cult. It’s okay to watch, but I don’t really seek it out.

Star Trek: First Contact (Indifferent) – The Enterprise crew from Star Trek the Next Generation follow the Borg back in time to prevent them from assimilating the human race. Another longer episode of Star Trek, again. It’s okay. I like the Borg enough I guess. But it wasn’t particularly memorable for me.

Sling Blade (Indifferent) – Billy Bob Thornton plays a mentally disabled man who does stuff he shouldn’t, both in his past and in the main narrative. Then he calls for a hearse.

Jerry Maguire (Indifferent) – Tom Cruise romances Renee Zellweger and also yells into a phone at Cuba Gooding Jr. This movie haunted me for months. Not because of any stirring drama, but because I had to ask every customer at Blockbuster if they wanted to pre-order it when they reached my counter. I got the most pre-orders for the film though, and as a prize got fifty dollars. This pissed of a shitty manager who earlier in the year accused me of stealing from the till (an error on my part let a customer off the hook for a twenty dollar late fee, not dipping my hand in the cookie jar). The fact that he had to put up this money from his own pocket – more than double the amount he accused me of stealing – made it that much sweeter.

Mars Attacks! (Bad) – Aliens from Mars attack with weapons that have no connection to conventional Physics. It’s… pretty bad. Another case of a little Tim Burton going a long way, but slathering it on anyhow.

The House of Hooded Eyes (and Near Infinite Loopholes)

I’ve talked a little bit about my parents and their guidance of my film intake as a child in the previous posts, but I wanted to really break it down how they affected me in terms of of my cinematic upbringing. If it seems like my parents dropped the ball of were highly inconsistent in what got by them… that’s because your suspicions are correct. Balls were dropped, subversive content got through, and, sometimes, we all got surprised.

We’ll start with my mom.

She meant well.

Mom’s overall opinion was that everything should be strictly monitored. While nudity didn’t really bother her so long as it wasn’t explicit, she was not a fan of violence. In particular, she was averse to military violence. The cause was two-fold.

First, she objected to military violence after years of watching footage come back from Vietnam. She, and most of the country I think, had a belly full of war. Year after year of dead kids coming home in flag covered boxes and the most explicit war footage seen by civilians on TV will do that. A lot of folks in her generation were exhausted by it. She didn’t want to see anymore (let alone show it to her young kids), thank you very much.

Secondly, she wanted to keep either of her kids away from any glorification of the military. I assure you my mother appreciates the military because she was raised right next to it. It was about what life in the military had done to her and her family. She was a Navy brat. While she loved my Grandfather and she appreciated everything that his naval career brought, she also knew a life of moving from base to base every couple of months, never getting opportunity to be a kid. She wasn’t averse to the career itself (though she feared for my safety until I was too old to be drafted). She just hated being rootless as a kid. With all of the constant moves from base to base, my mother didn’t have any childhood friends save for my aunt. Almost her entire circle of friends come from her college and professional life. She didn’t want that for my sis, myself, or our kids.

As for dad, he was… generally lax. He took stands on things at odd angles. Violence was nothing he particularly worried about. When he would shield me from violence, it was usually from the most explicit kind involving gore or frightening images. I’ll admit that as a kid I was easily frightened, so this made perfect sense. Dad was sensitive to that more than the idea of violence or brutality. He’s a fan of Ancient Rome, so war and up-close violence is something he’s well acquainted with from reading the histories. And hey, if it’s cultural (or if dad just liked a thing) he’d let my sis and I settle down and watch what we wanted (lots of Clash of the Titans (1981) on TV, where they cut out all of the nudity). Sex he was likely to censor because he probably didn’t want to have that talk with his kid any sooner than he had to. After I was wise to what sex was, I’d gather that he continued to censor explicit images so that I wouldn’t try to go out and try anything that I saw on screen (as a dateless wonder for many years, he had zero reason to worry).

Both parents took their stances on things they felt were negative, either usually as a team or individually. Generally, stuff that got deep into racism, gang violence, exploitation, fell by the wayside unless there was something in there to instruct or had a historical bent. Mom had particular prohibitions on things she felt were blasphemous, where dad was perfectly fine with letting me watch The Life of Brian (1979). Once I’d completed my Confirmation classes, of course.

Their prohibitions left much room for either relaxed interpretations or total blindspots, though.

One of the blindspots was when I was let out to any friends’ homes. I had a lot of friends whose parents were much more liberal with their childrens’ watching habits. A lifelong friend of mine had a television in his basement with full cable hook-up right next to his bedroom (I wouldn’t get a cable ready room until 1997). We’d have weekend nights where I’d crash there for a sleepover and we’d watch all of the late night HBO we could get our hands on. A particularly memorable yet wholly glazed over memory was getting to watch Robot Jox (1989) there, as well as Demon Knight (1995), The Class of 1999 (1990), and Dream On (1990) and Tales From the Crypt (1989-96) episodes. Other friends had similar arrangements, and this got me on board with either racy content, over-the-top graphic violence, or military action films.

In other cases, there were deceptions. Kids are the best negotiators. They are relentless, they know what they want, and they know all of their parents’ buttons and weakneses. My sister and I were both skilled at this. Sometimes it was a game of wearing them down. Other times it was simply downplaying the violence, swearing, or sexy bits. There were a million ploys. Any parent can tell you these tactics work. Not all the time, mind you. Just enough times to get certain things past the gate. Especially with cable television available.

There were also accidents. My parents were often times exhausted from their jobs. Both of them worked as public school teachers. Despite what right-wing pundits may tell you, teaching is not a luxurious gig. When teachers leave their classrooms, they usually have papers to grade and papers to read – sometimes until very late. In the summer, they have to come up with the next year’s plans to justify their existence to administrators that probably don’t have the same goals in mind. Given their workaholic natures, mom and dad sometimes had errors in judgment, like the hilarious twelfth birthday party where they decided Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) might be a great film to keep my friends and I entertained for ninety minutes. It did, but not in the fashion they had hoped for. The film probably lasted more like fifteen minutes after boobs showed up on screen.

The greatest loophole though was the one right under their nose – my Aunt’s house. Which boggles my mind. Tove and my mother speak constantly. Practically inseparable, they should have been able to wholly monitor or course correct everything my cousin Michael and I watched. It never happened though, and here’s a few reasons why:

The first reason was that Aunt Tove was a lot more lenient with Mike’s viewing habits. He got to watch a lot of stuff I didn’t, so by proximity I caught a lot of stuff mom wouldn’t have approved of. I was there having sleepovers with their family every week during the summers (and a lot of school year weekends, too). This got me a lot of military themed cartoons like G.I. Joe (1985), Robotech (1985), or Starblazers (1979). It also got me my first horror movie, George Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985) when I was maybe thirteen years old. I was horrified for weeks.

Second, Michael was a certifiable evil genius. If he couldn’t get his parents on board with certain films, he had a seemingly inexhaustible network to obtain that which he was looking for in terms of films. He was not shy about discretely sharing these finds with his friends and family.

And then there was my uncle.

Uncle Jim is awesome, and he didn’t actively contribute to this loophole. He was just great at late night channel surfing, then falling asleep in his recliner with Mike and I still in the room. This led to Mike and I getting unhealthy doses of Up All Night with Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear on the USA network. Up All Night would show some of the absolute crappiest films ever made, many of which were cult or sexploitation joints. It’s this show, some ill-advised cable selections, and my gently snoring uncle that led to Mike and/or I watching stuff like CHUD (1984), Night of the Lepus (1972) or Hell Comes To Frogtown (1988).

The floodgates really opened though in 1997. But, we’ll talk about that in it’s appropriate year’s entry. Promise.

Cinematic Sins1996 a time to kill

The list of missed opportunities is short for 1996. But, unwatched films from this year not non-existent. Let’s add the following onto my ‘to watch’ list:

Beautiful Girls – I had this film recommended to me by a few friends as they observed that at one point in my life it seemed like something that would resonate with me. My life always feels like it’s at a crossroad, but this looks to have a good cast. I’m adding it to my to do list.

Mulholland Falls – A noir, period piece? Jennifer Connelly? Yes, please.

Eraser – After a few tentative steps into other types of roles, Arnie goes back to starring in what he’s great at: films where he gets to shoot as many extras as humanly possible. Plus, he does it with cool guns by the look of it. I know this probably won’t be great, but I’ll probably watch it anyway.

A Time To Kill – Samuel L. Jackson yells some more in a courtroom thriller. I’m game, I guess. This film got a lot of play that year, and as a result, I know a lot of the stuff that happens. But, it’s another film like Silence of the Lambs (1991) that I feel I should watch.

The Island of Dr. Moreau – Again, I know this probably won’t be good. But, it’s a H.G. Wells adaptation. It feels wrong not to have watched it.

Last Man Standing – Bruce willis shoots people in a period piece about gang war. That’s enough for me. I’m a simple creature.

Get On the Bus – A film about the Million Man March by Spike Lee. As noted from the history segment in a previous post, the March was a relevant part of the African American experience of the nineties. Even though I remember seeing news coverage for the March, I was a white kid looking in on an experience I don’t think I was equipped to understand at the time.

The People Versus Larry Flint – Porno magnate and professional pot stirrer, Larry Flint, stands up for the First Amendment using pornography. I’m a fan of the First Amendment. This seems like a shoe in.

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