Fiddlesticks and the Narwhal

Tidbit and the Giant(s)

Before work - remind Annie to post cat care payment

Call car ins about check re-issue

Yep, I’m at home and Annie and I are about to head out for our Valentine’s Day date night. I know we’re a few days after the fact, but this way we don’t have to deal with any of the other dunderheads in love. =) We can be the grossest ones in the bar if we want. We’re heading out to Beatniks to see a stand up comedy show. I’ve hardly ever seen any live comedy before, but we both love listening to stand up or watching video of it, so I’m only hoping it’s even better live. Of course, I suppose that depends on how the comedians are. So, fingers crossed……!

arrange & clean kitchen - mostly there, push to finish

spend at least 1 hour cleaning/arranging my room, at least figure out tattoo spot

unpack tattoo machines

get all clean clothes put away, do laundry, archive or donate whatever clothes necessary. throw away unrepairable

patch old jeans

practice the lady and her felon new then old

update budget

guitar practice at least 3 times, they don’t all have to be long practices - one down

I realized tonight that one of the most important reasons that I like good writing is because it reminds me of the things I want to pay attention to. 

It seems sometimes that I am overloaded with stimuli. Everything wants a piece, everybody’s poking me, and it all takes time to watch/read/listen, process and sometimes respond. And that’s not even including stuff I’m interested in and how much time a hobby can take up. I like it hectic, I like it busy, even though I’m far from organized.

Lately, though, I’ve been slowing it down a little, trying to find some balance. Taking a moment to recognize a special event is just what I’m looking for. What I’m saying is that it’s great to really live. Taking the good and the bad, reveling in it all, firm in the knowledge that this is my life, scars and zits and all, and it’s up to me to make it worth writing about.

Hell yeah, actually got a Flash Fiction done tonight. Didn’t know if I would or not, but it just flowed pretty well. Of course, I’m up too late and I’m going to be a little tired/cranky tomorrow, but it’ll be fine and besides, it’s worth it. 

The fun part about the short story tonight is that it is fiction instead of autobiographical, which is what I usually write. I’ve been wanting lately to try to work more into fiction, but I’m a little daunted by it. I mean, creating believable characters out of thin air? We’ll see. =)

Title:  The New Meds

Author: cnutstodo.tumblr.com

Genre: General, Tragedy

Synopsis: Darian’s new meds don’t stop his dreams like the old ones did.

Word Count: 455/500

Darian wished they’d change his meds back to what he had before. The old pills were potent enough to slow him down a little, and they had a couple of uncomfortable side effects (the most surprising was how much they made him shit. No matter how many dumpsters he’d eaten from back outside in the free world, none of that half-rotted fodder had done anything even remotely like that to him before), but they were absolutely the only thing so far that could stop the dreams. They were the only way he could truly rest, and if being a little dull-witted and heavy shitted was the cost, well then so be it. 

The dreams come from his current circumstances. He got in with the wrong kids for exactly 2 nights, just a week after his 17th birthday. One bad decision and his life has drastically altered its course. His friends had way more jones than they did money or sense, so the right plan to them was to take what they wanted. Their intended victim ended up in intensive care, and the assailants ended up much more incarcerated than the original plan called for. Darian was the lookout for the job, wasn’t physically involved, but was just as guilty as everyone else. They all rolled over on each other, with the wickedest of them being the best actors, as cooperative as they could, shifting blame whenever possible. By the end of all the interviews and interrogations, Darian looked more like the ringleader than the mascot.

In Louisiana, 17 years old is an adult as far as criminal law is concerned. Darian was charged with Aggravated Robbery with a Deadly Weapon, later escalated to Capital Murder when the victim died in the hospital. The boy was sentenced to life without parole and carted hundreds of miles away from his family in Angola, one of the roughest prisons in the nation. 

His days now are violent and boring in turns. He doesn’t get to relax. And where many people would find the respite of sleep, Darian only finds the same heartbreak every morning when he wakes up from dreams of release, love and freedom to realize that he will never touch a woman again, never wake up with the ability to choose what will happen with his day. Without those dreams to remind him what he’s missing, he can manage to sink into routine enough to almost forget. But those damn dreams of freedom give him wings and sunshine and happiness for those few minutes before waking every morning, sore from the thin mattress on the metal bunk, the sounds of hundreds of men waking behind bars, his heart broken and alone.

The Day After was a made-for-TV movie released sometime in the mid-80s….Ok, scratch that, I looked it up. It was released in 1983, the year I turned 8 years old. I mention it because I can remember it. More and more of my earlier memories are of some kind of media event. I think their sticking power is at least partly because of all the hype and advertising that surrounded this type of thing. With this particular video, though, much of my memory can be credited to the film itself. I don’t know, mass media is definitely a tool for evil in the hands of most, but occasionally there is a great piece of art or something truly compelling that actually makes it through to the mainstream.

Mainstream had a different definition 30 years ago. At that time, the programming was much more limited than it is now. There just wasn’t that much in existence. The technology was expensive, and the distribution networks were even more expensive. Hell, now,? Literally anyone with a video capture device, a computer and broadband internet can make their own show and distribute it to the world at large. But back then? Hell, TV was still a novelty of some sort. There were 3 major national channels then - ABC, NBC, CBS. You’d have 1 or 2 PBS channels (I can still remember WGBH Boston, another bit of media lodged into my earliest memories), then UHF brought maybe 6 independent local/regional channels, if you were lucky. The UHF channels were the only place you had any real diversity of programming from one region to another. Everybody was watching the same few feeds. Promotion and hype were a whole different animal and I think that advertisers took themselves a bit more seriously. It reminds me of looking at different schools of painting. It was a noticeable event that was live simulcast in several time zone markets at once. I first learned of the existence of time zones from TV movie advertisements. Now, it’s all crawlers and bottom corner animations but then the standard of the networks was no distractions during the content, just a barge of semi-cleverly written catchy jingles during the commercial breaks. Like a drunk freshman, they achieved penetration by rote, telling you that you needed it until you believed it.

During the weeks leading up to the release of this film, it’s existence and merit were drummed into our heads. Our eyes were directed to watch the messages from the sponsors, which would all be shown before the nukes fell in the movie - no commercials at all from that point on. Experts were talking on shows about making the proper mental preparations so that our psyches were not damaged permanently by confronting the possible horrors of nuclear war. This was to be the media event with the balls to do just that: to try to accurately convey just what a nuclear detonation would mean to East Nowhere, Kansas. As cliche as that may sound, it was well done, with the early part of the movie dominated by strong, sympathetic character development. Jason Robards has a great role as a busy doctor with a rakish side. It was powerful, especially to an 8 year old. Some stories should be told, and told well. Some disasters have to be faced. I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid, and I still remember its impact on me.

I’ve been obsessed with it for the past few days. I watched the beginning of it tonight, and will watch it starting again from the beginning within a week. 

I see him often. He runs in the same circles as I do, talks to the same people, goes to the same shows. I’ve seen him sing for his band, and he’s good in his own style. He hails from Connecticut or some other place out-of-state, but tells everyone he’s from Southie. It doesn’t really matter - I guess everyone needs some way to identify themself, something to build on. It doesn’t really matter how true that original spark is if the results are spectacular.