Stylistic Nonsense

 So, I'm kinda sittin on my hands around here and considering exactly what it is that I need to do next.  Charlie, Jason, and I have put our little trio together, Charlie is lighting up the website, Jason is putting pen to paper, and I...well I'm looking at the mountain of things I have done and trying to consider how you can package them up neatly in a form that a publisher would be happy to consume them.  I must write a synopsis of the story I am nowhere close to finishing, go over the other one that I already did for another story I am nowhere close to finishing, edit the scripts, look at my own writing more than I enjoy, and try and figure out what's wrong with my writing before someone else does...

Huh

Anyway, that's just my way of stressing out about things going well.  Things could be bad, then where would we be?  

Now Alicia and I are planning for Baltimore come October, hitting the big con there.  I'm looking forward to making an impact.

 So I'm sitting in Open Eye writing this thing while I promised myself I'd be writing Knights of the Realm, but truth be told the coffee is having the effect of making me antsy which is the opposite of helpful at the moment.  So, I started looking around at the paintings on the wall.

First, I want to start with this note:  I like this trend.  I like that local artists (local in theory anyway) have a place to display their work and give them that stepping stone to having a real show or getting a job where they can do art.  Plus, makes decorating the coffee shop much cheaper I imagine.

But here's my thing, perhaps the coffee shop should be more selective.  Now, I'm not suggesting the coffee shops start setting a higher bar for art, who are these guys to determine what's good?  Just that perhaps the art should be such as to keep my appetite intact.  Maybe coffee shops should stick to less abstract and unsettling forms of art, you know.  501 diner is actually very successful with the art they hang in there even though most of it is shite.  Sad fact:  wooden popsicle stick animals have a market.  You know the rules, sex and popsicle stick animals sell.

I know this all sounds very "commercial" "mainstream" and several other hipster buzzwords, but it is a business and as such has an obligation to do what it do and put other things second.  Should we have paintings of yummy looking coffee and snacks?  Maybe not all the time, but worse ideas have been born of blogs...like the blog.

Oooh, by the way (or BTW for some of you) I have finally mastered enough of livejournal to put links in my sidebar.  Check out links to my artist buddies Charlie and Jason as well as some of my net based creative endeavors.  Feel free to comment there or here, you'll make my day.

So anyone that hasn’t visited the link to Jason Strutz’s homepage on the right of this blog should go ahead and do it, because the man is awesome.  The artwork on the site itself was enough to pump me up about working with him, but the stuff I’ve seen from our upcoming projects really rock my world.

For those of you that don’t know Jason, he’s a sort of freelance/whatever he happens to want to draw guy with mad skills.  Right now we’re working on two things:

First is Jason’s baby, Monsters of Rock.  Monsters of Rock is a kids book about a group of young monsters who form a rock band to compete in the local Battle of the Bands.  Jason had been kicking around the idea for some time but was having trouble making it what he wanted it to be.  He gave me the script and I put my shoulder to it and pumped out a fun little script (which I am quite proud to say rhymes).  I’ve been watching it come together as Jason sketches it out and I finally got a finished rough pencils draft to take home and make marks on.  The pictures are going to be awesome and I finally made it sound just the way I wanted.

The second project is still its fledgling phases, so I’m nervous to talk too much about it.  Suffice to say, it’s based in the concept of the current knights of England being called to take up their posts and defend the country from threatening magical forces.  Jason got a nice finished and colored version of the first page done and I am psyched.  It’s beyond what I could have hoped for when I wrote it.  I hope we get to keep doing this, cause I really feel like this could be a huge success.

 Okay, so, I'm tired of looking up career sites and fighting with my own personality trying to apply for jobs I don't want that bad interlaced with jobs I do want that bad and am not really qualified for.  I'm going to start doing what it is I want to do and use this lame economy as an excuse just like everyone else has.  There are fewer jobs for more people, well, so be it.  I will not compete with those people, I will instead create my own job.  I'm going to follow that one god awful and universally true piece of advice that has been shared with me by every professor I have ever had:

Writers Write

So I am going to write, I am going to write often.  I am going to write well.  I am going to write what I want to write.  I don't want a career in technical writing.  That's like advising someone who really wants to be a chef that compiling cookbooks might be fun.  Technical writing is the opposite of what I want to do.  There's been a whole lot of rationalizing with me an tech writing.  Well, at least it's writing, I think.  It's not the act of writing that I love so, but the act of creating through the writing,  "Well, you can't be a teacher, but why not a crossing guard, you'll still get to work with kids."  Well, no more, not interested.  If there is no job for me than I will create a job.  If that doesn't work then I will create a new world in which my job exists.  Take that.  

And so, I guess this may be in it's own way an answer to the writer's block question.  I declare my independence from necessity and circumstance (which is much easier to do when you have an increasingly mindless full time job and a hard working wife who brings home the bacon.)  

Anyone else graduating?  Anyone?  I've been to three in two days including two today and I have had enough.  God couldn't have the common decency to provide normal weather?  First Thursday we have the freak thunderstorm to beat all and then Saturday we get Iraqui style heat!  I think I may not leave the house tomorrow for fear of flaming hail.  

Hey, I want to start a writer's group around here, anyone interested?  Anyone already have one?  If so, you want to mingle it with some artists maybe, work on some cross genre projects?  Just puttin that out there, get up with me if you're interested.

So, thanks to all this running around I haven't done too much writing this week, but I do have this massively crazy handwritten pocket square shaped outline of New West that I'm a little excited to try and put down in comic book form.  I tried doing in with this dusty old narrator who may stay or go, but the important difference this time around will be that I know where I'm going (always for the best when I'm writing).  I did too much research for this last night and was having horrible nightmares about sharia law.  Not good times!

My little sister is working on writing a play and I really want to help with that, hopefully the summer will give me a chance to do that.

So, I have this great idea, but it could be just a tad bit offensive to a number of people whom I appreciate and admire.  So, I'm gonna put it up to a poll.

What I want to do is write a series of non traditional westerns.  By that I mean that I want the story to follow the general outline and themes that we associate with the "American Western" but I don't want it to happen in the "American West".  In fact, one could justifiably refer to some of the underlying ideas as "un-American" but that's hardly the point of the story.

So the first one I want to write, from whom this idea spawned, is a western about an Afghan man living in the area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.  He is a veteran of the American backed Russo-Afghan war.  He fought for his country and chased out the Russians.  But in the aftermath of the war and the overly quick American exit, every thing he fought for was destroyed by the Taliban.  After 9-11 the Americans seek out his help again, but he refuses.  The story is about his viewpoint of the American War on Terror, the (again) quick exit to devote forces to Iraq, and his choice to once again pick up arms for one last battle to keep the same thing from happening to others that happened to him.

I want to make clear that the Americans, while not being bad guys, are not going to come off particularly well.  The thing is, and this is the idea behind the series really, the westerns we love so much and the heroes that live in them are no longer what exists in America.  But that doesn't mean that these sort of men don't exist, sometimes they're just not on our side.  That's the definition of the western hero after all, isn't it?  The man on his own, with no backup, who wades into the sea of bullets to defend what is right.

So, what do we think?
Poll #1413570 My story Idea
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

Good idea or bad idea

I've had my fill of overpaid corporate goons!  I detest a man in a sports jacket showing up in my store once ever six months to point out the things that are not set according to a planogram in my store.  I get it, we have guidelines, you know what?  My store is smaller than your office, so shove it.  Really, I just want the CEO to come in one time and help us set the store to the planogram.  By the time he gets done either his head will explode or it will look nothing like what he had originally intended.  Happens to me on a weekly basis!  Better yet, lets just save the company money by cutting all the middle corporate management.  They spend half their times on conference calls with the big guys who are telling them what to do and the other half on the phone with the store managers relaying the same messages.  If you cut those goofballs out, not only would we get the unfiltered message, but there wouldn't be 800 different "best practices" and "guidelines" in my mailbox every day.  The more they talk about customizing the store, the more iron fisted their control gets.  Spare me another "transformation" and let me do my job.

So, it's my day off and I just thought that I should update my blog.  See, the thing about that is I really don't have anything specific I want to talk about.  That means this post is probably going to wander lazily through a labyrinth of pointless exposition and end up where it started.  If you're still reading, good on ya.

Okay, I'm alternatively three or four posts into each of the initial three blogs and they seem to be going all right.  Well, except for the fact that Alicia has told me 1)she is better at writing blogs than I am and I should let her do it and 2)that Paula sounds like a ridiculous mid-nineties black woman and that no one refers to them self as a "sista" anymore.  Alas, have my hours of watching Living Single finally become meaningless?  JQ on the other hand seems to like Paula's blog, so maybe Alicia just doesn't refer to herself as a sista anymore.

Funny story, when I friended a girl in high school I knew on facebook a while back, I got this message that said "Jeremy, I didn't know you married a sista!"  Alicia read the message and wrinkled her nose, "A sista?  I take it she's black?"  She is...if there was a real point to this story, other than to demonstrate that SOME black women still do use the word, I've forgotten it.

I just finished writing what I've tentatively labelled "Issue 30" of Dreamers' Daughter.  As yet, it's nothing to go gaga over, but it finally starts Elana on her own way.  This is the first whole issue of DD I have written in about a month, but I had the foresight at Open Eye the other night to sit down and lay out people's paths for the upcoming arcs.  I think some of the characters are going to drop out a little bit and some of the smaller ones are going to become more important.  Of course, that's sort of the way I've designed the story to work, so *pats self on back*.

I'm also working on a couple other stories, one of which I really love because it's giving me the chance to work with some mythological characters.  I love it.  I'm tentative to talk about it too much on here, cause it's still taking shape, but if you're interested, you can ask me.

I saw Jason's early pencils for Monsters of Rock the other day.  Man, this book is going to rock some little kids' worlds.  Seriously, if someone doesn't pick this up, it will be a loss to children everywhere.  I'm pretty proud of my little rhyming script, but once Jason gets done, I doubt people will even notice there are words till the third time through.

I've found myself enemies with Heroes Con.  How can that happen you ask?  Well, Charlies art on Dreamers' Daughter has had to all but stop so he can get ready for his big comic book convention debut.  I'm happy for him, for real.  The more he can get out there and do what he needs to do the better the book is going to be in the long run...assuming there is a long run, look at me getting all presumptive.  Anyway, as soon as we get a solid chunk done, you're going to see it everywhere because we are determined to do a blitz with this book.  The blogs are just the begining.

Oh, speaking of the blogs, anyone who does read them, if you would have the goodness in your heart to "follow" them and even turn others on to them, that would be great.

And on that note, I am as I promised, right back where I started.  Which of course means it is now time to close this little blog o' mine and get back to doing something truly useful, like making a sandwich.

So, for anyone that doesn't know already (which is close to no one), I have a passion project.  My comic, "The Dreamers' Daughter" has been in the works for a long time.  Now that I finally have an artist and he's finally finishing up with his prior obligations, things should soon be popping into high gear.  I'm forbidden to write any more issues until he gains some ground on me, so I'm slowly engaging ins something quite viral.  If you would like to visit the blogs of my individual characters and learn a little more about them, you will now be able to do that.  Please keep in mind, the story takes place twenty years in the future, so it may take a while for them to get back to you on any comments.

For Zuri's blog visit:  The Dreamers Daughter
For Paula's blog visit:  As Told By Paula
For Altsoba's blog visit:  War Baby

There will be more to come in the future, you may just have to overlook slight glaring inaccuracy with little things like dates and times...nothing important.

          All right, anyone that knows me well knows I'm pretty solidly against text language.  I despise the far reaching overuse of it in written conversation and as a number of my teacher friends will tell you, yes, it does effect people's ability to spell correctly.  There's nothing I hate more that BTW.  Here's my thing, it's not that long of a phrase.  Shortening things like For Your Information (FYI), I can understand.  That one's been around a lot longer than texts.  For the most part though, it's become somewhat of a disease.

     There is one exception to my rule though and that is the king of all text abbreviations: GTG.  Why gtg you ask?  Well, this assertion is based on a long study of the phrase, it's many uses, and the new power it has given me in life.  Nothing compares to GTG for getting away from an over long conversation.  It's never been easier for me to get away frome that IM chat at two in the morning that I never really intended to have.  The thing I like about GTG the most, is that it can be followed by anything.  I mean anything.  It can be non, verb, or adjective.  For example:

GTG homework
GTG hot
GTG your mom
GTG vomitting
GTG magic wand
GTG stegosaurus

You don't even have to explain, because GTG is your out.  When you use GTG, they assume you already went and so don't have to answer any more questions or get caught up in an awkward goodbye battle.  GTG is that thing I desperately tried to find in high school when I dated women who wanted to talk on the phone for an hour and a half.  If I had been aquainted with GTG then, my life would have been a lot happier and I'm sure I would have gotten more homework done.

So, GTG, oh great excuse me on high, I salute you, for making my life a little better and a little more interesting.  And now...GTG bored.

Damn.  I started writing something without knowing where I was going.  I do it every time and it's a fool proof method for getting writer's block.  It reminds me of mowing a wet lawn.  If you take the mower our into the middle of the lawn and start it, it will bog down without fail.  You have to start at the edge and go a line at a time.

Hey, anybody else sick of this live journal birthday stuff?  There's a reason it's called a birthDAY not birth year, ya putzes. 

No big rants at the moment, I just feel like I oughta update this thing.

So this past weekend was partially consumed by the wedding of Sarah and Paddie at Emerald Isle.  It was a nice beachfront wedding of which I took literally hundreds of pictures.  It's a sickness when I start fiddling with my function buttons on my camera.  I have never had a piece of tech which I love so sweetly as I love that camera.  I spent a lot of time chilling with the Meredilla and my own true love, Alicia.  Also, we took a side trip to the aquarium.  I would like to say one more time that sharks are evil soulless killers.  I apologize if I offended any sharks out there, but nothing creeps me out more than having one of those things swim only a few feet from my face.

I got together with Charlie and Jason again last night and had a good old time.  Charlie is still working on the big pages for the book, but things seem to be coming along nicely.  I would link to something here, but he hasn't put any of it up anywhere.  Meanwhile Jason has been doing the early drawing on Monsters of Rock.  We've decided to go with my now beloved rhyming scripts.  Let this be a lesson to all, when you have on too many cups of coffee, things will inevitably start rhyming.  There is no stopping it.

I just started working on a scripts for this graphic novel I want to do called fearless.  I'm still working out the kinks, but the basic story is about fraternal twins who are genetically engineered in the womb to be without fear.  What comes later is a mess still, but I've done some intense character work and look forward to putting this into a script I can really do something with.  It's a plot that's been festering in my brain for a while now.

Outside of that, I'm dealing with the shifting reality of the summer moving season.  My Ashley will be back in town for good soon and I intend to do my best to horde her whenever possible.  But as people return, so must people leave.  The Taymo has departed for DC and is looking for a job shining the shoes of the Washington Elite.  One of these days, I'm going to get back all the comics of mine that he has...

READING:
Preacher, finished Volume 1, hoping to borrow next few from Charlie
Wolverine (Intereing issue this last week, still waiting for the conclusion of Millar's Old Man Logan saga)
Dark Avengers (Both the main comic and the individuals, Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel are both fun)
Air (READ IT)
Destroyer (Holy shit!)
DMZ (if you haven't, pick up the trades)

LISTENING:
Green Day, "21st Century Breakdown" -- on a first listen, I like it...we'll see with further inspection.
Cream, "The Best of Cream" -- Man, I mean really, what can I say about Cream that hasn't already been said.
Decemberists, "The Hazards of Love" -- the more I listen to it, the more I like it.

WATCHING
My Bloody Valentine -- Horrible, no matter how many dimensions it's in
Weeds Season 4 -- Oh, I didn't realize how much I've been jonesing for this show
X-Men in Blu Ray --  Please, come back to us Brian Singer.  Watch this after seeing the new Wolverine, see what a difference a good director makes.

All this time and narry a comment on anything I've written?  I'm beginning to question my credibility as a blogger.  Gee, that's a funny phrase.

Hey Blog, how you doin?

            So met with the guys tonight and things seem to be going apace.  Jason had notes on Monsters and Charlie has a very impressive looking pencil of our first look at Durham in Dreamer's Daughter.  Everybody's got their own shiz going on, so nothing (per standard) is going as fast as any of us may like.

          Just finished what is my fourth draft (second rhyming draft) of Monsters of Rock and it has been zipped off to Jason via the Web.  Hopefully, he'll find the rhymes more solid and I'll have cut out most of my dumb assonance.  I look forward to seeing what the project will look like once he gets into the painting.  He's a good one, that Strutz.  If you haven't seen his stuff I highly recommend zipping over to www.strutzillustration.com and seeing his stuff.  Or, I'm told, one could stop by the Looking Glass in Carrboro and see some framed sketch work.

         Speaking of great artists, I got to spend a chunk of time helping one of my favorite young couples move this weekend.  For anyone that doesn't know, Charlotte and Sarah are amazing.  Apparently, between the two of them they have not only managed to buy a house but entirely paint and refloor the inside.  I am officially wasting my life.  I'm starting to feel that great feeling I had in college again where I'm surrounded by beautiful artists and kindred spirits (is that phrase okay for guys over two hundred pounds to use, ah screw it).  The only problem with that is I feel like I gotta be on my A -game so I can be a worthwhile participant in that community.

         Speaking of which, Drinking Liberally this Wednesday!  Good times are certain to be had by all.  If you don't come already you should join us at the Station at 7:30.  Be there or be conservative.

       Went and saw Wolverine this weekend.  Could have been worse.  Could have been better too.  The first half hour was great and the Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool showed great promise, maybe they'll fix their mistakes if they make the Deadpool movie that Ryan apparently really wants to do.  Gambit was quite well done.  As a long time fan of both characters, I was glad to see them do their thing.  As for the last half hour of the movie, I would have rather they hadn't.  The neverending procession of cameos was maddening.  Really, you advertise Emma Frost, she turns out to be like fourteen, has about two lines (which could have easily been spoken by female mutant 2) and then she's gone in five minutes.  Not cool.  Then again, if you had told people the details of the actual plot...they might not have come.  Aww well, it made good money so here's hoping it leads to the X-Men movies that I do enjoy seeing.  Goyer wants to push ahead Magneto and everyone's talking about Gambit and Deadpool, both of which have high potential.

Alright, update on me and various projects:

Jason Strutz and I are working on a kids book about a band made up of classic horror movie monsters.  It's going to be cute as a horribly disfigured button.  Bonus:  Now it rhymes!  Whom does that make happy, eh?

Charlie Harper and I are still in development on the first pages of our first issue of our eventually to be ongoing comic book series titled "The Dreamers' Daughter".  The finished pencils on the first few pages are looking quite nice and I'll be excited to show them off once they're finished.  I am currently writing and editing issues in the late twenties.

I'm once again working on writing what will someday be the worst superhero comic ever, The Scintillating Sarcasmo and his Less Than Stellar Friends, rest assured the adjectives will be rotating no matter what else happens.  Right now I am writing a second issue, though the first one may eventually see a facelift.  I hope to be able to do this with at least partial art help from my lovely wife.

So, I'm dreaming of doing this vampire story.  I'm not exactly sure on the format yet.  It could be a possibility for comics or particularly webcomics, but also may see light as something else.  Anyway, it's going to be about two old European vampires living in America and one's obsession with reclaiming his long lost bloody legacy.  They bitch about the way humans taste and read trashy vampire fiction.

My last one for the moment is still in sort of a beginning phase.  I started writing it a couple of times, but the motor just isn't purring the way I want it to yet, so it may have to go back to the shop before I really take it out for a run.  This one I'm looking more for a long form novel type thing.

Oh, and there was another kids story I promised Jason I would work on with him, but as it will also rhyme, I need some rhyme rehabilitation first.

Whew, so that's some stuff.  What's going on in May?  Oh, a belated happy birthday to Sarah Robinson whom I intend on helping to move tomorrow.  I made an effort to reach out to fam to go see Wolverine with us, so, the process being what it is...I still haven't seen it.  Also looking forward to the slew of new movies hitting the theaters in the next few months.  Star Trek, Transformers, Angels and Demons, Harry Potter, Public Enemies (Depp and Bale in a Dillinger movie directed by Michael Mann, sign me up!), Inglorious Basterds, GI JOE, and I know I'm forgetting things but the point is:  If you want to do anything with me this summer it should involve a movie.  Just sayin.

Here's a good one to add to your list:  Suddenly decide that the kid's book you're writing should rhyme.


I know, bask in my glory.

      Nothing makes me so angry as to be tolerated.  The very word makes me nauseous.  Tolerance has been spread as a word for what we must have for others.  We must tolerate the fact that one person's skin is darker than ours.  We must tolerate that one person goes to a mosque instead of a church.  We must tolerate the fact that one person prefers a partner of the same sex.  We must tolerate the diversity of ideas.

     Is there no end to the things you will tolerate?  Are you standing on the sidelines of life, gritting your teeth and minding your manners?  How can you live like that?

     I call for an end to tolerance.  Stop staring, wondering, and whispering to your neighbor.  Ask a question for god's sake.   Tolerance has scared us into a permanent defensive stance.  We have been trained neither to wonder or care what makes other people tick, but to keep to ourselves and mind our fingers and toes.  Gay people, black people, Islamic people -- they are not tigers.  The vast majority of people are either proud of what makes them different from you or spend their life fretting over whether you will tolerate it.  

     The idea of tolerance as a standby goes back to the old civil rights movement when it was expected that you would hate the person next to you on the bus and you would just have to get over it.  Have we progressed no further than that in all this time?  Please, say it ain't so.  The richness of experience and culture is what makes America great.  The fact that are free to discover what we are and share that with one another is something a lot of people don't have.  We ought to have the common sense to embrace that.

     It wasn't until I started dating a black woman that I discovered just how little I knew about what it means to be a black woman.  I've spent my last four years listening and doing my best to understand.  I'm a hell of a lot better for it.  I know more about black hair now than some black men I know.  It pains me to think of all the black women I knew before her and think how little I knew about them.  What worlds of experience have I merely tolerated for twenty-five years?

     Of course the big thing we tolerate these days is homosexuality.  This is one I have real difficulty understanding.  While I'll be the first to admit that I find gay sex a little on the yucky side, I know plenty of gay people that feel the same way about straight sex.  However, it's through my gay friends that I've truly been able to understand love. 

     Most, if not all, of us are raised on a spoon fed Shakespearean "how can I possibly express it" kind of love.  A man and a woman hold hands, then they kiss, then there's a baby.  Eventually we grow up and we learn to be cynical.  We realize that seventy-five percent of the people that tell us they love us are either lying or will change their minds.  Given the right situation, even those remaining twenty-five percent can change their minds.  Whether we mean to or not, this is what we teach our teenagers.  People are going to fuck you over and there's nothing you can do about it.  But if you're really lucky (really really lucky) you might find that one person who was meant for you and live happily ever after.  That's what the majority of romantic comedies are all about.

     Why is it that we can teach our children that horrible and deeply cynical message, but we're not willing to give them a much truer and far less cynical message, just because we think it's a little icky.  That being:  "Love" as it were, comes in a lot of different packages.  You can't always predict it, you certainly can't choose where and when it will come, but it is almost never going to be what you expect.  I have gay friends that love eachother far more than a number of the straight married couples I know ever will.

     When it comes down to it, I guess that sentiment embodies what it is I'm trying to say.  You never know what love is going to be like, so to merely tolerate the world around you is to deny it access to your heart.  The only way to live is to stop tolerating and start finding out.  Don't miss love just because it doesn't (or does) look like you.

So, yeah, what's my biggest worry with all this?  Well, despite the fact that I've done excessive amounts of homework and dedicated my whole self to this project, when it's all said and done. I'm just another middle class white guy.  Granted, I am white, but I feel like being married to and in love with a wonderful and beautiful black woman gives me a special perspective on things.  But isn't that just the sort of thing I hear other people say just before I snort at them?  What do I know about racial and religious conflict?  How dare I be pretentious enough to write something like this?

The answer to that is very simple, because my children will have no option but to deal with it.  Maybe if I start now, I can do something for my children.  Maybe my daughter can read a comic book about a black super-heroine whose name does not contain the word "girl".  The examples are few and far between.  I've always loved Storm, but then we get into the issue of African as opposed to African-American.  Not to mention, and I know some people love this stereotype, it's disingenuous to imply that black people have some sort of miraculous connection to the land/weather.  I know, for one, my wife, her mother, and all three of her sisters hate nature.

Anyway, off topic.  Art is always ultimately going to be about the artist and the world around them, so why not start using the art to create a world that I want to be a part of.  I've always liked the notion that life imitates art and well...there's enough bad art out there to imitate at the moment.

Anyway, my new catch phrase, and my artist Charlie will attest to this is:  That's a problem I would love to have.  When it gets to the point that I have to answer questions like that, I'll have already been successful.  Hell, I'll be happy if I can just get people talking.

    I had to pay $350 dollars to get my car working today.  When I came home, my tax refund was in the mailbox.  Oh...I still don't have my inspection done though.  Damn you check engine light!