Anatomy of a Natal Anniversary

What I did on my 24th birthday:

Rose at 7 a.m. to an alarm clock that had been inexplicably turned up as loud as possible; sort of like being screamed at by a techno-banshee. Got groggily out of bed, did morning stuff, got a bagel (oatmeal date, spread half with cream cheese, half with honey butter).

Went to work and found a journal and some nice pens, left by my secret Santa. Nice. Then Khrys (my co-worker and one of the few people I've met in Santa Cruz that I consider a genuine friend) gave me a gift (wrapped in Star Wars paper). I opened it and found Stephen King's On Writing, which I've been wanting to read very much. Basically a perfect gift. Hugs, hugs.

Checked my email, and got an online card from Sweet Meg, as well as an Amazon.com gift certificate... not to mention the package of plastic scorpions and cream-soda lollipops and the homemade birthday hat she made me; but I received those a couple of days ago, and so they don't rightly belong in this chronicle.

No birthday party at work, though we usually do that sort of thing. Half the office was out for assorted reasons, everything was hectic, and so on. Not a big deal. I spent lunch outside, reading On Writing, which is good, good, good. Actually did work the rest of the day, tweaking a brochure, making copies, other mundanities.

Asked Khrys if she wanted to watch a movie with me tonight, but she had other unbreakable plans. Lynne is out of town visiting friends, D. is working, Scott is cranking on a project... I knew all that, and had mostly geared myself to having a solitary, self-indulgent birthday, so I wasn't overmuch disappointed.

Got a rejection from Patrick Swenson at Talebones, via email. Ah, well. Why should he break a four-year streak of friendly rejections, even if it is my birthday?

I got off work and got in my car. Meg recently mailed me a couple of tapes I'd accidentally left in Boone when I moved. One was my beloved Beck tape, with various early tracks and weird b-sides (including two versions of "Steve Threw Up," and tunes from his early albums Golden Feelings and A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight). The other tape was unlabeled, so I popped it in to see what noise would come out.

Mmm. Pearl Jam. One side of the tape was Vs, the second album, and the other was b-sides from the era of the first two albums. You know, Ten and Vs, the two that rocked, before Vitalogy which only half-rocked, and well before those weird albums with all the sitar music and Eddie Vedder reading Iranian poetry or whatever. So I rocked out to "Blood" and "Rats" and "Rearview Mirror" on the way home, which ruled more than perhaps a little.

Went to the post office. No acceptance letters from Shawna McCarthy and Gardner Dozois and Gordon Van Gelder and Ellen Datlow. Those would've been nice presents, but I can't expect those folks to remember my birthday. They're busy people.

I got home, and sat on the couch with Scott a bit, watching the news to see if we have a President yet. Every day, whichever of us gets home second asks the other "Do we have a President yet?" Every day whichever of us got home first says no.

Well. I guess we say "Whooo!" first. That's the standard greeting around here. It beats the hell out of sweet nothings, and seems a little more enthusiastic than "Whassup, dog?" which tends to come out in a sort of lazy and drawling way.

Meg called, and she was a sleepy cranky just-up-from-her-nap thing. We talked about whether eggs in the grocery store are fertilized or not. I contended that they weren't, not usually anyway, and she tended to defer to my confidence, but she had a friend who'd claimed that they were fertilized, and seemed pretty sure of himself.

After we hung up, I did a quick web-scour and found information to back up my side of the fertilized-egg-debate, and emailed it to her. I do stuff like that. I hate to be wrong, or even think I'm wrong, or have somebody else think I'm wrong when I'm not. I'm usually safe, because I seldom make assertions about things I'm unsure of. It’s not like I say any damnfoolthing I want to and then get annoyed if it turns out to be incorrect. Anyway. The egg links is here, if, for some unfathomable reason, you're interested. They don't address the fertilized-or-not issue directly, but it's talked about indirectly, and the question gets answered in a roundabout way. Beware the pro-egg propaganda on that site, though. I swear, they're as bad as the Fluid Milk Processor's Association, which ignores that fact that most people on earth are lactose intolerant to some degree and that cow milk is really not particularly good for humans (they're the ones who sponsor the "Got Milk?" ad campaign, as well as those prints ads where superstars have cold cream smeared on their lips to simulate milk mustaches).

[Whoa. My computer just did something weird. The screen went all rose-colored and blank, and it wouldn't respond to any commands. I had to unplug the computer, and of course I hadn't save this document, and there was no way I was going to retype this whole thing, so I wrote it off as a loss and started eating some semi-sweet morsels right out of the bag as a way of assuaging my irritation. But then the word processor recovered this file almost totally intact, so all's well. And now I'm saving compulsively, like after every third word. God forbid y'all should miss the opportunity to read this thing]

Inspired by the chicken discussion, I went to rent Chicken Run, which I hadn't seen. I like the Wallace and Grommet shorts, so I figured I'd like Chicken Run, and I did. I'm a little bewildered by the previews, though. Instead of having previews for, like, dry British comedies, it's all trailers for animated movies. And I mean bad ones. Like The Land Before Time Part VI: The Quest for the Stone of Cold Fire ( I wish I was making that up; it's even funnier than mine and Brian's joke-movie-title, Dog Hockey Adventure), and Casper's Haunted Xmas. They assume if I like Chicken Run I'm gonna like that crap? Marketing people are idiots. Cartoons aren't just for kiddies anymore, people-- and most kiddies over a certain age have better taste than that anyway, when they aren't being dazzled by a hard-sell ad campaign.

I also rented Key Largo, but that's not due back for a while, so I'll see it later this week.

(Somewhere in there I ate a really good burrito)

After the movie I went to Pergolesi. The place is a mausoleum with the college students gone. I mean, it was only 9:30, and the chairs were up on the tables in two out of three rooms. The place was stone empty. I talked to one of the employees there I'm friendly with, and drank my coffee, and left. Who wants to hang out reading in a crypt?

Got home, and read more of On Writing. I love Stephen King. I really detest at least one of his novels, and while I think some of the others fail to varying degrees, he's written some rock-solid, great stuff. I always await his new publications with great anticipation. I really loved Bag of Bones, which most everybody I talk to hated, and I even got into The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon in the last third, though I wouldn't call that a successful novel, exactly; more a short-story with a case of the Needless Bloat. And the guy can write, when he's on. He's no James Patterson hack-working away, and he's no "listen to the dark rhythm of my pulsing words" Anne Rice, either. He writes long sometimes, sure, but since I enjoy his writing and he never fails to draw me in, that doesn't really bother me.

Anyway. It's late. Not even properly my birthday anymore (though the time is 12:12 just now, which is my birthdate... ). Sorry if I babble more than you'd like.

So. Um. Stephen King exhorts writers to write. And I thought "Why the hell not?" I put on my Jodie Manross C.D. and started writing from one of those beginning exercises that sort of intrigued me, the one about Billy Cates and the glass coffin. I wrote 2,250 words in just under an hour (a touch faster than my usual rate, which is an indication that the writing went well). The story is really sweet and kinda creepy and a little sad, influenced a bit by Bradbury and a bit by Billy Collins (especially his poem "Turning Ten") and a bit by fairy tales and even a little by Stephen King stuff like The Body and It (which I f***ing love, by the way-- I've read that book a dozen times, and I wish it was even longer). I think it's going to be a good story. I don't know why I'm not cranking more on fiction. It's nothing to sit down and write a couple thousand words every night, and I certainly have enough ideas. I'm just lazy. And, to my credit, I have been revising a lot lately... And last night I worked on Yet Another Way of Looking at a Blackbird, the unsellable novel that I return to intermittently and sort of doubt I'll ever finish. Usually I work on it after reading too much Donald Barthelme or Barry Malzberg or John Barth. Blackbird is very meta. Very pomo. I like it, a lot, but part of the joy with it is the process of writing 2 pages here and 4 pages there and leaving it for months and then picking it up again, falling right back down that particular absurdist rabbit-hole. They'll find Blackbird among my papers after I die and some shirttail relation will try to publish it in hopes of getting some money, and my name'll be besmirched forever. Or, worse, people will be like "Whoa, this is loads better than the crap he published when he was alive!"

Hmm. I've wandered far from this entry's intention, haven't I?

The last thing I did on my birthday was write a rambly-ass Tropism entry. And then I said good night to all you lovely people.