Goin' Outside

Well, you know you're a homeowner when you're cleaning old leaves out of your gutters and desperately hoping that the wasps didn't also make a nest up there. From the looks of it, the only nests were in the old grill the previous owner left behind, and I sprayed those down with pesticides one night last week so hopefully that's the last of that.

We've got bunnies and chipmunks in the yard. It's kind of cool, although I now wonder if we also have things that eat bunnies and chipmunks living nearby too. The town we're living in now is thoroughly suburban but our area is kinda woodsy.

Celebrating a few Small Victories

So if I haven't already mentioned it here--and I'm sure I haven't--my drabble, "Lab Rats" just won The Drabblecast's 2011 People's Choice award for best drabble (cue excited party noises)! The story first appeared in the Drabblecast's 229th episode, opening for the story "Singularity Knocks" by Bill Ludwigsen.

In other news, I just made sold a story for over the $100 mark for the first time, and it astounds me that people are willing to pay that much for something that could be interpreted as the product of a fever dream or mental illness. Still, it's a good excuse to open up that Ommegang Abbey Ale I'd been saving. Cheers!

Pleasant, Controlled Screaming

George Carlin once said something to the effect of singing just being a form of pleasant, controlled screaming. I don't agree that that's the case with all singing, but there are some bands out there which fit the bill.

Last year I finished a novel partly inspired by the Diabolical Masquerade album Death's Design. Near as I can tell, it was released under the guise of a soundtrack to a movie that, in fact, never actually existed. Something about people being between life and death and quite literally running for their lives, trying to get out a neutral zone in between. The novel--which I've tentatively titled "Up in Hell" and, though finished, has not been subbed anywhere since I've yet to work up the nerve--turned out to be about puppets trying to survive in hell. When I'd started it I only aimed to make a short zany story about a sock puppet freaking out in amusing ways as its set upon by demons. It turned out to be something a  lot harsher and probably a lot less funny.

It's funny how music can drag you along sometimes. More recently, the band Alcest struck the same chord that Death's Design had, with a track off of Ecailles De Lune called, coincidentally, Ecailles De Lune (Part 2).

There's something beautiful in the contrast between words delivered in a hoarse scream and carefully controlled, occasionally dreamlike instrumentals. It's chaos rocketing over a well-ordered landscape. Can't think of a better way to describe it than that. When the screaming is only a part of a larger whole, and its placed against something more serene, it actually feels like it serves a purpose other than being loud. It feels like a fight has broken out and some lone individual is trying to make themselves heard among something more ordered and easier to listen to, if that makes any sense.

I'm not big on throaty scream metal, most of which sounds anywhere between ridiculous and unlistenable in my opinion. This parody video by a band calling themselves the Black Satans hits what I'm tallking about dead on. A lot of that really hardcore metal just piles on the evildarkgrimevilsatanblackness until there isn't enough contrast for it to mean anything.

Stupid Nonsense

I wish I had been born with one really big hand, like the size of a tennis racket. I'd just go around slapping the shit out of people. I suppose I could do that if I'd been born with two enormous hands, but really if that happened I'd be more likely to play basketball with people's heads.

It's funny how body shape affects your outlook on life. Like, for instance, I'm kind of a big guy. Not morbidly obese or anything, just kind of stout. Dwarven, we'll say. I sometimes go for that extra slice of cake because, hey, I'm a big guy. Obviously that might be part of the reason why I'm a big guy at this point, but that wasn't always the case. I was a pretty average kid until about 4th grade when my genes caught up with me, and prior to that I didn't eat any more than anyone else. So I guess my big-guyness came before the things that perpetuated that state.

I do have pretty big feet for my height. That's not so bad. Still, they're not comically big, just helpfully balancing big. If they ever swell up to about size 15 or so I might take up tae kwan do or ballroom dancing. Or anything that might cause bodily harm or property damage.

Finding a New Pizza Place

We used to go to Cousin's Pizza in Mansfield, or rather, they would come to use after we ordered online. I really liked them. Their pepperoni did that thing where it curls into a bowl full of grease. Now we go to a place called Briggs Corner Pizza, and it's not bad, but I still like Cousin's better.

We moved to a new town in December, and the biggest downside I can think of is having to find all new places to eat, buy groceries, buy miscellaneous stuff and so forth. It's mitigated a bit by the fact that we're adjacent to an area with lot of chain stores, but all those little local shops we used to like are now out of reach.

Other than that, I guess the other thing I miss is actually having a neighborhood to speak of. We're on one end of a cul-de-sac off of a main road, and there's nothing around for miles. It was nice being at the center of our old town, where we could walk to most of the stuff that was worth visiting. Here, walking takes you out onto a major road where cars are whipping by at 50 miles per hour or more, and it'd be about 3-4 miles to the nearest donut shop.

I mean, I like donuts, and I like walking, but people drive like maniacs around here.

Not Dead Yet

I'm alive and well, though obviously the blog is covered in cobwebs. My wife and I moved to new digs in a new town around Christmas, I got (and subsequently was laid off from) a new job, and we spent a lot of time visiting relatives.

But those are just a bunch of excuses. Really I've been playing Skyrim for like two months straight.

Has it Really Been a Month?

If blogs were children, I'd be in prison for neglect.

My wife and I are looking for houses, and I wish I had something insightful to say about the process but all I've learned as that I really like old houses and that I don't want a house that doesn't have a basement. And if it does have a basement, it better have a high enough ceiling that I'm not smacking my head into it all the time.

But on the subject of old houses, there's just something I love about all of the little odd incongruities that were either built into the house or that have cropped up over the years as new owners have moved in and out and decided that they didn't need the attic, or didn't need two closets and tore one down for more space in the bedroom. Or decided that, hey, this big empty space in the bedroom would make a pretty nice closet. I have so many damn shoes, Herb! You know that!

The houses we've seen that've been around for about a century or so seem to have grown organically just as much as they've been built. There are dressers and drawers and cabinets built into the walls, and old wood with dozens or hundreds of little nicks in the finish, and little doors here and there that may or may not lead into John Malkovich. We saw a house recently that had a small door (presumably to an attic, possibly to an actor) set twelve feet up into the wall of the master bedroom.

In addition, we looked at one built around 1880-ish that had an all new interior... except for the basement, which had a dirt floor, a fieldstone foundation (just lots of big rocks mortared together) and was propped up by literal tree trunks.

It's kind of a shame that I love old houses, because I'm sure I don't want the problems that go with owning one.