The Season Between

You know, the season between summer and fall. Or Spring and summer. Or winter and spring and summer and fall. Construction season. Heaven forbid we upset the tourists by working on the road in the summer, no, let's disrupt the lives of the locals by digging up main arteries and the side streets they'd normally use to get around. At the same time, so everyone is forced onto one narrow road at five o'clock. Just you and 5000 of your closest competitors jockeying for 8 feet of road. Welcome to the land of rocket scientists.

Then there is the 16 miles of barrels dividing the Interstate. They've been there for months, curiously there is no sign of the evasive state highway maintenance worker. Rarer than an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in these parts. Did you know driving through 16 miles of narrow construction barrels at ten at night is the next best thing to sleeping pills? Orange, black, orange, black, orange... The only antidote seemed to be Fun With Highbeams, much to the annoyance of the OtherLaners. But the black, unlined pavement is so very pretty and devoid of roadkill. So far.

Hey, just for fun, let's construct two new buildings and an apartment complex across the road from each other. Then the locals can play dodge'em front end loader, and rock'em, sock'em forklift. Did you know the speed of a loose Tyvek construction wrapper is only slightly less than the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? (European, before you ask)

This whine has been brought to you by the elusive fifth season. Construction. We now return you to the regularily scheduled disruptions in YOUR life.

But first, a poem.



Prep Work
by Constance Brewer


Back and forth
.........back and forth
the CAT
spins over
and over and
over again.
........Back and forth
sloshing water—
a satiated farm animal,
pounding club
feet into rich soil
with lumbering
force. Back
and forth
crushing silt
and clay until
I hear bleating
under the dirt.
The sheepsfoot
roller rolls—
back and forth
.........back
and forth
.........back and
back
.........and forth.

Dark Side of the Tunes

I spent a good two hours last night looking through iTunes, listening to samples, perusing artists and genres. Guess what I ended up buying? Nothing. Yep, Two hours of my life I’ll never get back, all because hope springs eternal that I will find more music I like. I seem to be stuck in a rut, listening to older music, soundtracks, and the occasional metal band my child inflicts on me. I don’t even listen to the radio any more, vapid is the word that comes to mind. So where to find new music? Right now I go mainly by recommendations. Music from bands that play at our Celtic Festival – Indulgers, Gobs O’Phun, Men of Worth, Lalla Rookh. Opera rec’s from Gabriele. My anonymous brother has been a good source for folk and bluegrass, my children keep me up to date on metal and rap – although the oldest shares my tastes in Pink Floyd, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and others of that ilk. Kind of scary when you ride in a car with a 17 year old and can agree on the music. And want it louder.

Part of my reluctance to purchase more music is financial; I can’t see paying yet again for Pink Floyd in another media. Luckily I had most of the CD’s and could just load them, but there was a couple disks too scratched to work with, or at least that’s what my computer tells me. How many copies of “Wish You Were Here” or “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” does one person really need? Not to mention the transfer of old laptop files to new laptop went… okay. But if I find the person who decided grouping iTunes folders by whatever weird method they came up with, I shall beat him with a USB cable. The logical person would put all the songs off an album in one file folder. Not so iTunes. If there was a guest singer, or additional musician listed, they go off into a separate file folder, sometimes under the grand title of “compilations”, sometimes under some archaic and Byzantine method I have yet to figure out. I’m sure there’s a box to check/uncheck somewhere to fix it, but I don’t need to work that hard, you know? If I buy an album, it should be ready to play in the order the artists intended. I want to listen, I don’t want to have to do rocket science just to hear some tunes.

That was the iTunes whine for the day, on the bright side; I have a stack of 93 CDs waiting to be ripped. In my copious free time. At least this way, I can eliminate songs I’ll never listen to, and compile things in my own weird way. I’ve made mixes for my iTunes and iPod just for writing. Songs for Writing Battle Scenes, Songs for Background Noise, Foreign Mood-setting Music, podcasts on writing, Escape Pod podcasts for inspiration, Audiobooks of poetry, and instrumentals. Tunes to compose poetry by – which aren’t as fluffy as you would think. Fatboy Slim can be really inspirational. Honest.

In a training module for work, one of the icebreakers the trainer asked was, “What is your favorite song?” Interesting question, because if he asked about books or paintings or even cars, I would have hemmed and hawed and had to consider it at length before coming up with an answer. Not so with music. At least this decade. I had no problem volunteering my answer straight away.

Pink Floyd - "Learning to Fly".

The video is not my vision of it, but hey, I’ll cut the artists some slack. *g* So have you made music collections just for writing? Is there some tunes that get you racing to write that battle scene? Music to Off Bad Guys? Great, sweeping bits to sketch scenery by? Please, share with the class.

What’s YOUR favorite song?

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Inspiration, Animaniacs Style

Demons, gods, sea monsters, egotistical magicians, fresco artists, warriors, little girls with daggers, llamas and tigers living together… Trying to get everyone in tune for the final battle is proving a bit nerve wracking. Since I’m slogging my way to the end of the Untamed Fantasy Novel©, of course all sorts of ideas for the Rampant Run Amok Military Sci-Fi Novel© decided to erupt instead. What the heck, working on a bit of the RRAMSF Novel couldn’t be all bad, could it? Then I could return to the UFN and figure out how to kill off a god. Nothing like a little cosmic mayhem to make the words flow.

Not.

My RRAMSF characters stubbornly insisted on talking. Chatting sociably about their problems, as if they were having tea in an upscale Shoppe instead of fighting to save their little corner of the cosmos. As if they were the most important thing in my quasi-created universe. How dare they! I had to get their attention, and refocus them on priorities – mine. Desperately seeking inspiration, I turned to my old standby. Cartoons. Is there no wisdom they can’t impart?

Yakko's Universe

Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.

And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.

And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
Though we don't know how it got here
We're an important part here
It's a big universe and it's ours!
You might think that you're essential
Try inconsequential
It's a small world after all!

Writer: Randy Rogel
Voice of Yakko Warner: Rob Paulsen

"Anonymous" Photos

This just in. Pictures of the (in)famous "Anonymous" poster to my blog. Delivered by carrier Gnome in the middle of the night with utmost secrecy. Said Gnome promised more as long as the library paste kept flowing. (What can I say, gnomes are easy AND cheap)

First on our hit parade, the 1960's, era of bell bottoms, hippies, and banana seat bikes. "Anonymous" seemed to have missed the memo on the bell bottoms, however. Check out the highwaters on the kid on the left, the one with the slightly apprehensive look, as if he suspects popping wheelies on a banana seat bike will lead to no good. I know we lived a block from the river, but yeesh. And leather slip-ons? At least the Cuz on the right had the good sense to wear Keds, like a normal goomba.

That brings us to the late 1970's.

I know "Anonymous" will claimed he was framed, but I say he did it to himself with those disco Elton glasses. Another victim of involuntary parental photography, "Anonymous" grits his teeth and hunches his rather skinny shoulders in classic family mug shot pose.

Bonus points if "Anonymous" can identify A) the doorways he's standing between, and B) the picture his head so artfully bisects.

The 70's gave way to the late 1980's -- decade of epic disasters and benefit concerts, and apparently ushered in a era (ear?) of

Corn for the Unwashed Masses.

While "Anonymous'" mother stood in line for hours at the mall to secure a Cabbage Patch Kid for "Anonymous'" daughter, "Anonymous" ate corn. While millions watched the fall of the Berlin Wall on tv, so did "Anonymous". While eating corn.

One can only wonder if this fascination with corn outlasted the 80's. I would imagine it to be a lifelong obsession, stemming from an unfortunate covert incident on the Susquehanna River, involving a rubber raft, a cornfield, and an incredibly gullible little sister.

The late 1990's. A renaissance return to the eyewear of the 70's, a Gladiator haircut, and a Freudian beard. What message is "Anonymous" attempting to send?

--The layered look never goes out of style--

--I missed the Grunge generation and I'm playing catch up?

--Quick, bring me another Yuengling if I have to endure more photos!

--Help, my better half has a gun in my back and is forcing me to take this picture?

The world may never know, but one thing is for sure. There's more pictures where these came from, "Anonymous". I'm still waiting on some Stan Rogers CD's.

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Don't make me use the Photoshop.

It could get ugly.

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Brought to you by the Society for the Encouragement of Torturing Big Brothers, Western Chapter.