Bittersweet Nothings

3:34:15 AM EDT

I dreamed I was Gary Cooper and I was living in Japan. Or at least I was plying my trades there, as an architect and a poetry man. Somewhere 'tween drawing buildings and writing with a feather, I formulated an adhesive that would hold anything together. My Oriental friends were all impressed with me, this glue would serve them well for they had a plan, you'll see. They'd built their buildings to the clouds but wished to add on more. Perhaps with my glue, they reasoned, they could add a few more floors.

So they slathered on the crazy goop and- Huzzah! -added ten more stories! The newspapers and the TV news all heralded my glory. I was fed and feted nightly, just like a movie star; gifted with the city's key and a shining tiny car. Oh, how the people loved me! Me and my gooey stuff. When asked, I drawled, "Aw, shucks... weren't nuthin'.", still, they couldn't get enough!

But soon came the tsunami season that threatened the city's towers. Would my sticky stuff stick still? Or would it fail, underwater for hours? The rain and winds went on for days, a frightful tempest blew! Would the building stand or fall? No one really knew!

The morning after the rain had slackened, a crowd watched from the hill. As the mist slowly cleared away... the building stood straight still! But as one and all stood watching, a gasp came from the throng. The towering top ten stories seemed to... slide... ever... so... slightly... Something was decidedly wrong!

It seemed to take forever, that slipping, sideways slide. The men all stared in disbelief, women fainted, babies cried. Finally the last glue glob gave way and what happened next you know... the top ten stories teetered, tottered, then crashed to the street below!

Happily, the streets were empty, evacuated days before. Or who knows how just many folks who were would be no more?

Suffice to say, the festive air, all the plaudits I'd accepted so coolly, turned sour just like day old milk and the crowd seemed most unruly. Some uttered phrases calling for my public execution, some brandished knife and sword! I exercised the better part of valor then, there was no reasoning with this horde!

I dodged and weaved through alleyways and back streets, running madly! I feared the crowd, for if they caught up, this story might end badly! Finally, my only five true friends saved me from my plight by cramming me into my tiny car and driving off into the night. We stopped but once for pizza( go figure!), delivered to the side of the road, then set off for the airfield to book my long flight home.

The populace wanted my head, it was true, and my friends all thought it best to play the role of one deceased- hidden in a coffin, no less! I said, 'No way, dudes! I'm not getting in that box! Let's just put my name upon it and weight it down with rocks.' I dressed in a flowing purple robe with a hood to hide my face and told the flight attendant, "I'll go with his body to its final resting place."

Now I don't remember taking off or flying overseas, I sure don't know what became of the maddened Japanese. I only know that my career as an architect didn't fly, let's face it, there's no excuse for gluing girders in the sky!

And there you have the dream I dreamed, it makes no sense, I know. At least there were no sharks involved, nor nakedness in the snow. And if I dream again tonight and recall it on the morrow, I'll try to make some better rhymes that cause but lesser sorrow.

The End.

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6:59:45 PM EDT

...lookit here! Another entry and hardly two weeks in the 'tween! What? Do I have anything new to report...? Well, no... not really...

Wait, how about this: I'm officially a 'comics artist' since our friends over at Affable Comics have seen fit to include several of my scribbles in their Affable Comics - News page. Huzzah, huzzah! Break out the bubbly!

So, if I'm killed in a fiery crash tomorrow- a long-running, darkly humourous comment of my own creation, now somewhat less humourous since the near-head-on collision a few months back! -my friends in mourning can talk amongst themselves, 'You know Wes finally has some comic art published?' 'Really, that hack?!?' Hey! Who said that!?!?! Probably Chuck Sacco or Rick Holtry!

Speaking of that happenin' traffic event: I'm suffering stoically- okay, not so stoically; everybody knows men have a lower pain threshold than women, right? -all week this week with twisting, burning pains radiating down one lower limb accompanied by numbness and general malaise and limited mobility. Ain't that a happifying news item? Given the utter lack of alternative events as a specific causative factor, I'd have to cite that sorry happenstance as the penultimate and singular origin of my present discomfiture.

Of course, given the willingness of other parties to the event to stand up in open court and publicly proclaim claims opposite my own unyielding and certain purview- 'That light was yellow, Your Honor. Period.' BANG! 'Guilty, pay fines and go away, citizen. Next.' -I'm left with no recourse but to seek medical assistance and foot the bill for who knows how many moons hence.

I'm sure I'll stop moaning about it ere long. But right now it sticks in my craw. It's the proverbial 'clog in my muffin'. The fly in my ointment. Where's Robert Vaughan when ya need him, I ask ya?!?

(In case you don't get that near or far, no less a personage than Robert Vaughan, erstwhile Man From U.N.C.L.E., serves as a pitchman for attorney services on the TV hereabouts...)

Hey, you know what's a funny word? 'Unguent'. Ung-YOO-int. What does that mean? Is that the same as 'ointment'?, I wonder... Where's my dictionary? No, not the little one, the BIG one... Ouch! My back!!!

"Ah'll be back...!" Later.

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1:45:27 AM EDT

Okay, then... it was under another moon I made the last entry here, tempus fugit and ain't it the truth? Bearing down on the start of production of, well, either/or a comic book or an animated short for which I've been working up character sketches. What a blast! Some real trepidation at the outset has been replaced by some better-than-tentative glee at the re-discovery of a drawing technique I used to practice way-back-when in my glorious school days. It's exploratory, loose and grabby all at once, if I do say so myself.

   At any rate, I'm having real fun putting pencils to paper again, finally. This kind of drawing was the stuff of life during high school(when I thought I was pretty hot stuff) and during my abbreviated career of higher education(when I learned the meaning of 'little fish in a big pond'). I drew every day and some days all day; in class, out of class, in my rented room, under the bell tower on the lawn of the student center, in the student center, in the library. I drew people and faces, cartoons and things that never were, things pulled from the ether of my gray matter mixed into mythology both modern and ancient and subject matter I diligently tried to copy from comic book artists I used to admire and white haired perfessors of the illustrative arts. It was just what I did and how I was recognized by others and by myself, 'the kid who draws'.

   A fellow named Todd Burgard, once Robin to my Batman, used to call it my 'like thing'. His 'like thing', the thing he liked most to do and would whenever the opportunity arose, was fishing. He once espoused his philosophy to me that included everyone indulging their 'like thing' whenever possible to keep their sanity in a crazy, mixed up world. It ain't deep but it is true, true, true.

That 'like thing' got lost for me in the shuffle of 'real life' in the intervening twenty-plus years and it's gratifying for me to take a stab at it again- especially since somebody else will enjoy the stuff as well.

Doesn't hurt my feelings getting paid for it either, you bet.

With the approach of the publication of the long form that will employ said characters- robots, rock 'n' roll girls with guitars, scary spacegoing creatures with lotsa teeth and chrome eyes, dark hooded vigilante superheroes -rendered by 'comics professionals', I'll be able to add my renderings to my own public art gallery which has been practically a dead zone (crickets chirping...) since its inception. Yay! What fun that will be! I can stop tooting my horn about it and show it off a little, so stay tuned, eh?!?

In other news: The cat of the house has been so well trained to take her place at the foot of the bed at night that tonight she ambled in of her own free will and took her place half an hour before anyone else was inclined to retire! Good kitty. Yet still she refuses to scratch at her new carpeted scratching post, preferring instead to unroll the bathroom tissue by the ream. Lemme tell ya, nothing'll put the 'clog in your muffin' so much as  hurrying to that esteemed place in the house and finding the complete supply of paper shredded and clawed beyond repair at your feet. We say in jest that she may be trying to use the paper as her litter box is close by... but, no, I don't really think so.

I've heard of 'horse whisperers' and 'dog whisperers'. Surely there is also a 'cat whisperer' because I need one!

Recent back trouble- due in no small part to the predominantly sedentary positioning required by my arts and crafts and drawing both (and, I'm suspicious, perhaps by the recent automobile collision as well) -has abated somewhat and those muscles were duly tested today by helping a pal with some tree parts that had been taken down. Normally my strapping young lad of a son-boy would be recruited for such labors while I keep at my drawing board and rubber molds but he was unavailable, sitting a day or two with his younger cousin who is recuperating from an appendectomy, so I volunteered. Tomorrow will tell the tale, whether I can even get out of bed or determine to lie silent and still hoping not to aggravate that delicate condition any further.

But rise I must, I must, as its a hastily scheduled 'play date' in the morning with local toy pals, Big Don and Pattoo. We'll make a short road trip to the celebrated Green Dragon flea market over Lancaster/Ephrata way and see what kind of vintage or new playthings we can see and perhaps even gather unto ourselves for the trip home.

Speaking of playthings: I've got some new things on the horizon in that venue- new boxes, new outfits, new heads on the way, just new stuff all the time! Well, okay... some of the time. Once in a while, all right?!?

And the fun never ends! Now, there's a phrase I'd like to learn in Latin! Who can help me out there?

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12:59:37 AM EST

Well, what an exciting month it has been, almost, since my last visit here. No, not really. I think I reported on the WHAM! collision that made us a one-car family again, just signed that vehicle off as junk today, huzzah. Saved myself several hundred dollars in storage fees- I think the body shop guy was doing me a favor, I think -but when the case comes to court- Oh, yeah, I'm not just forking over another hundred dollars or so and taking the attendant points on my driver's license lying down. That light was yellow, not red, and I intend to stand up in the office of the district magistrate and say so out loud. After that I'll sit down, wait for the crack of the gavel- Do they still do that in court, I wonder? I guess I'll find out... -and then I'll fork over the hundred or so dollars and take the points on my driver's license for running a red light that was yellow, by thunder. -will having junked the car impact the outcome of the proceedings? I doubt it.

In other news, my mother-in-law had herself a little house fire. She insists it was only smoke but you know the old saw, 'Where there's smoke...' At any rate, the fire department made the proclamation that the domicile was not fit for human habitation until such time as the wiring and other structural problems were reconciled and so mother-in-law- a woman of, how shall I put it?, no slight interpersonal skills but rather tenuous family connections -is camped on the sleeper sofa in the living room. Makes my habit of late night movie viewing or early morning tea and toast untenable for the nonce so I'm spending more time goofing off in my little toy lab or on the computer at night and sleeping in mornings. Not a good habit to get in to, I'm missing Andy Griffith among other things. On the plus side, it's one more happified breakfast customer for the self-proclaimed Breakfast King of my address, moi. Of course, that's usually around lunchtime instead of when most of the rest of the civilized world is having breakfast!

Got some drawings on the horizon again, watch for those to appear in the long dormant Bittersweet Studio folder over at my PhotoBucket cache ere long. There are times when I get afeared that nothing will happen when I finally put pen to paper, the periods between real exercise for those muscles is so protracted. Not thatI don't get any encouragement in that arena, just not from anybody close to home! Besides that, I'm actually catching up on a spate of homespun playthings, people been in the wings for a month or, in some cases, months while I get my act together or bug the two or three craftspeople I've managed to corral to lend their skills or products to my little sideways endeavor.

Other than that and a weeklong-turning-into-two-weeks spell of back spasms that reminds me all too vividly of my warehousing and FedEx truck loading days that seemed to come from nowhere, life is good. I make a point of having some real fun every day- whether it's dusting one of my collected gewgaws, re-reading some laugh-out-loud Calvin and Hobbes strips or tying a string to the cat's favorite stuffed mouse and then to her tail and watching her spin circles trying to catch it -and once in a while I still have dreams during sleep. Boy, I had a whopper the other night, seemed about six hours long and consisted of six or seven long scenes but I've forgotten it all by now. I should have written it down right away or at least made some notes.

And, finally, in a strange case of 'never say never', the guy who never watches football unless it's because he needs a Sunday afternoon nap, watched a goodly part of the Super Bowl. That's right... believe it... or not. Why, you ask? Because several weeks, a month ago I made the mistake of mentioning to my football mad son that as a lad I once had a NY Giants football helmet which- according to him -automatically  made them 'my team', even at this late date. So it was with some small smidgeon of interest that I watched part of the game that cinched their participation in the 'big game' and, I admit, a mite more interest during the last minute win on Sunday. I'd even go so far as to say I was actually quite 'gleeful' for their win, mostly because now I won't have to listen to his incessant braggadacio over Tom Brady and the Patriots and 'The Perfect Season' with a capital 'P' and how 'They ROCK!!!' and 'Boo-Yahhhh!' with both arms raised in a 'V' and on and on.

That would have been insufferable, to say the least. So, a heartfelt 'Thank you.' to Eli Manning and company. Thaaaank you. Take that trip to Disney World, spend that big bonus in some sunny locale and, above all, flash that ring, baby.

And there you have it. Another small, insignificant chapter from the center of the known universe. Thanks for your attention. Now go back to what you were doing...

 

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4:33:30 PM EST
Hey, hey! It was an early but light day of toy delivery at yon day job so I took a few minutes on the way home to make some stops for craft items and scout some needful gewgaws, meanwhile the forecast snow-maybe-sleet-maybe-rain turned to snow in earnest- creating no small anxiety on my part for the drive home given the untoward results of another recent workday drive home -and it is still stacking up, wow! It's likely only going to amount to an inch, maybe two, and then will be gone with the rain tonight or tomorrow so I'm gonna grab up the camera and make some pictures of the snow-laden trees and whitened fields adjacent to out little corner of the world. Might be the last chance for snow scenes this winter, who knows?!?

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4:45:39 AM EST
Ack! It's 4:36 am and here's the latest: One car is wrecked since last Tuesday- That light was yellow, dadburnit! -the other was promised to my son, who knows what'll become of it now. Mother-in-law's house caught fire yesterday, she's camped on the sleeper sofa for who knows how long? With the scaling back of 'real job' hours, I actually got some drawing done this week, a handful of sketching, little finish, a flourish and >voila< the recipient is quite pleased so far. Fun superhero type stuff, yay!
The usually sluggish PC is acting up tonight, refused to load the 'add entry' form for this dusty olde forum so I'm IM-ing this entry. I am, quite literally, on the cutting edge of science!Technology is great! No, I don't really think so. It serves its purpose, I suppose, but too often it's just a distraction. Like I need more of those! A shuffling of goods in the toyroom re-discovered a built-up Tarzan model kit somebody sent my way so I'm on the lookout for more vintage superhero model kits now, along w/ a dozen other general categories of playthings o' yore!
Well, I thought I was smarter than the computer... Got my italics stuck and it still won't lemme edit, waahhh! Anyhoo, I guess a little shut-eye is in order. At this rate I won't be climbing outta the rack until PM!!! Double-Ack!!!
Hey there! I did it, I did fix the italics! i'M SMARTER THAN i THOUGHT...i...OOOoops! Ohhh, never mind...

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11:10:22 AM EST

Okay, I'm officially suffering from 'occupational burnout'. Probably more than anything the result of the previous several years as a dedicated man of leisure, crafting my homespun doodads and not much else for a few hours a day, so that being dragged kicking and screaming back into the workaday world- albeit still on a part time basis -has got me on the ropes. The drive is a little more or less an hour each way and that doesn't help, add in travel time and it makes the twelve hour toy delivery days a regular grind. It's more physical burnout than mental, the actual 'work' is great fun, especially when it includes the satisfaction of fulfilling the search for that one needful item. Yesterday that included a Creepy Crawler Thingmaker- the last one found buried under some baby dolls in the stockroom made a teen goth chick and her family super happy campers -and a High School Musical Troy doll. I was only a little afraid of the gaggle of soccer moms holding their breath under the ladder as I scoured the back of the shelf out of arms' reach of anyone standing on the floor. But, boy, when that little plastic man came out, the excitement was simply electric! I've got most of the cash register issues figured out- credit v. cash, coupons, discounts, employee discounts, grandparents' rewards, returns and exchanges, et al ad infinitum -so there's a little less anxiety over that part of the whole. And despite the foibles and momentary dramas that accompany any gathering of strangers in a confined space- shared germs, spilled drinks and bruised egos -it's really a swell bunch of people to work with.

But, like all good things, it may be coming to an end. The hours will definitely shorten across the board after the peculiar madness of the holiday season wanes- with the cost of fossil fuel to power the car anything less than eight hours in a day is just paying to add gas to the tank to make the trip! -and what's more, there may be a >gasp< full-time gig looming on the horizon. And I do mean 'looming'. Rather daunting after my extended absence from a forty hour occupation. Besides, how is a guy supposed to keep up with the demand for homespun playthings- not to mention eBay browsing and online Boggle -while spending so much time in a mundane pursuit of a regular paycheck and attendant benefits? I mean, c'mon, do we really need health insurance? Sure, my eyes aren't getting any better on their own and doctors and dentists gotta eat too but, well, I dunno... I'm just determined not to lose sleep thinking about the family history of diabetes, heart disease and cancer and the occasional numbness in my left hand while others in the house lean to the opposite extreme of the worry chart.

And there you have it: your long overdue 'real life' update from my little corner of the planet. Which is, in fact, the center of the known universe.

Depending on your perspective, of course...

Thanks for tuning in!

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10:56:52 AM EDT

Y'know, I haven't mentioned in this forum the most amazing development since our return from the week at the beach: Miss Pussis, formerly of the look-at-me-and-I-will-flee school of emotional detachment, the not-so-finicky-as-Morris eater but decidedly aloof in her interspecies relationships, the cat whose personal slogan is 'Just Feed Me and Let It Go At That, Willya?!?'... has become almost 'friendly' after her week of forced solitude. Can you believe it?!?

The report from the friend of a friend who looked in on her during our absence was that she effectively hid herself somewhere in the house all week long or at least when her food and water was being filled and litter box tended.

But, boy, when we opened the front door upon coming home... she bolted out of hiding, came right up... and meowed! That's right, the original silent feline film star mewled like a baby and actually swirled underfoot looking for attention! What a striking development!

She spent the first week the same way, sticking close to feet, jumping up to be petted and scruffed and just made a real fussy show of being glad to see us. What's more, since then she has actually shown a desire to cross over the formerly fear fraught threshold of... the bedroom! Yeah, she'll complacently allow herself to be carried in at night, placed in her spot at the foot of the bed and will willingly stay put for most of the night. Until restlessness or hunger wakes her up in the wee hours and she lets herself out, scratches the door open and heads for the food bowl.

She still likes her chair to herself all day long and is not really keen on being held and petted while TV watching or anything 'human' like that but, all in all, a definite turnabout in her demeanor. Like night and day.

I mean, we know she's the same cat... but it's like she's a different cat!

Although she's still no dog...

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10:56:05 PM EDT

Now... would you look at that? I'm just now noticing the duplicate- or almost duplicate anyway -entries below. I had written up the report of the toy-store-delivery-gone-sour and either the pc shut down or froze up at the very end of it and I assumed it was lost in the ether, as it were.

I did my best to replicate the earlier version- whilst editing myself as I always am wont to do here in this forum -and it's weird to see the repetition and emphasis and the added note about the suddenly-mysteriously-missing-hat coming back.

Which it did, I'm pleased to report.

Doesn't smell any different so I guess it wasn't mistreated too badly during it's... er... wayward...ness...

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12:35:35 AM EDT

Wildfires in the news / but I got rain in my shoes / if I wake tomorrow to meet the day / will the world look the same way? / I know the scene is changing / I don't doubt it's true / it's not just the weather / but the color of me / and the color of you.

There you have it. Another bittersweet nugget of joy tinged with heartache and sunny pessimism. Thank you, thank you very mush. Don't applaud, just throw money.

Funny story: Well, not really a 'story'. Not even a vignette, just an aside overheard from atop a wooden ladder in a toy store. Man says to his woman companion while browsing the preschool aisle and looking over a familiar spud-headed character toy:

"Look. They have Mr. Emesis."

Wha...?!?

I couldn't believe my ears and what the heck was he talking about?!? He said it again, the woman repeated it and, unable to make sense of the exchange, I, looking down from my lofty perch, just had to ask...

"Say what...?!?"

He says, "I said they have Mister and Missus... Potato Head..."

Oh... okay then... as you were...

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