I’m finally back in Ohio after spending an exhausting two weeks up in Grand Rapids for work. I’m kind of feeling like a zombie today after getting in late last night and still coming in at my regular time today. It’s going to take me a little while to feel comfortable at my apartment again. Last night — because I didn’t unpack and basically just took a shower and went to bed — it still felt like I was at a hotel. But a much nicer hotel, with a queen-sized bed and comfortable pillows.

It wasn’t a bad time or anything, but whenever I go up there I don’t feel entirely comfortable. Like I’m just out of sorts. Last week I was up there by myself for sales training. I went out a couple of night with some guys from work, which was entertaining, and the rest I spent holed up in the hotel, drinking my two free allotted beers a night, or at the Panera down the road. This week, I went up with Mike and Steph. Mike drove, so my freedom of movement wasn’t greatly impacted. He went out with his bosses two nights, so he had to drive. Steph stayed in her room, drinking beer and talking on the phone. This left me without many options for entertainment. I ended up taking my laptop and walking the half-mile down the road to Panera. Tuesday night, I was hiking down the side of the dark road in the freezing cold, my shoulders hunched under my leather jacket, laptop slung over one shoulder. The occasional passing car would throw up a moment of gloomy lighting, and then I’d be alone again in the darkness. Idly, I started humming the theme from the Incredible Hulk like a yuppie Bruce Banner. It made me realize how glad I am that I don’t have to take the bus everywhere.

Let’s see, what else have I been up to?

I’d been reading THE WATCHMEN over the past week. I’ve tried to read it before, but couldn’t get into it and would abandon it fity pages in. This time I am actually enjoying it quite a bit. It’s a little dense, and I still can’t stand the way the books of the time were colored, but it tells a really cool story. Especially since it was really the first comic to deconstruct superheroes. TIME lists it as one of the top 100 English-language novels since 1923, which I think is a bit of a stretch. But it is good. Makes me actually look forward to the movie opening in January — that is, assuming it actually comes out.

FREAKS AND GEEKS has been in my laptop’s DVD player the past two weeks. I’ve only made it through the first three episodes, but it is damned entertaining. It stars pretty much every actor who has ever appeared in a Judd Apatow movie, which is fitting since he produced the show: Jason Siegel, Seth Rogan, James Franco, and a few others whom I recognize but can’t put a name to. The show occasionally wanders close to the “too awkward to watch” precipice, but never plunges over the side. On a whole, it’s funny as hell. I think a bunch of the same people were also in UNDECLARED which aired a year or two later, so maybe I’ll give that a shot too.

That’s pretty much it. Sarah is having a halloween party Saturday night, so tomorrow and Saturday morning I need to put the finishing touches on my costume. It’s a Heroes and Villains-themed gathering, so I am going as someone who suits me. I’ll put up some photos on Facebook/MySpace on Sunday.

JAB

Still here — alive and kicking, no less. Just been busy doing life-y type things. The Renaissance Festival, Detroit, Dave and Busters. That sort of stuff.

Am currently engaged (Make it so!) in the process of transferring everything from my desktop PC to my lappytop in an effort to make the latter my primary computer. The reasoning behind this is that I spend precious few hours at my apartment, and when I am using the computer, it’s generally the laptop My desktop is buried in my bedroom on a neat little workstation, but it always feels claustrophobic when I’m in there. Consequently, I spend little time using the desktop. But it contains all of my music and a whole host of useful programs that I miss when absorbed on the desktop.

The only downside to using the laptop exclusively is that it only has a 80 gig hard drive, so I think an external hard drive is to be had in the near future. One that can hold a terabyte or so of data. For all the porn, television shows and copied movies that make up my collection of illegally gotten material. An extralegal capitalist, I am.

Next year I might look into getting some kind of docking station for the lappy. That way I have something into which I can plug the 24″ LCD monitor I intend to buy. And a regular keyboard. Laptop keyboards are okay, but if you’re writing anything of extended length, a regular full-size keyboard is a godsend. Then should I want to emulate an actual desktop computer, I can do so.

I’m feeling poor right now, however, so none of these purchases will be made in the next six months. I am going to be tightening the checkbook I never ever use a little until next summer, save up some money. I’d also like to get a new car next year some time as well.

That’s pretty much it for me right now. How are you?

JAB

Chuck E. Cheese’s does not hold the same allure as it did when I was a kid. I don’t know if it changed so much or if I am just too old for that particular scene.

Nate — or maybe it was his wife — suggested yesterday that we take a little trip there. I was actually looking forward to going because the opening of my new story, “A Zombie Romance,” takes place at a Chuck E. Cheese. (Or “Showbiz Pizza” as we called it back in the day, when we wore onions on our belts, as was the style at the time.) It was the perfect opportunity to refresh my memory — which, sadly, is pretty damn vague when it comes to life events before age 14 — of what a Chuck E. Cheese looks like.

It’s not that the join is rundown or anything, though there were tons of trashy parents there. It’s that all the entertainment blows. The tons of video games you could demolish your friends at have been replaced by simple arcade-style games where everyone is a winner. The one game I had any interest in was a Mario Cart game, and these little seven-year-old fuckers were hogging it. So we wasted our paltry free tokens that came with the food on a crappy first first-person shooter and skeeball.

The one highlight was that Nate is still afraid of the animatronic mascot. He doesn’t even like to make eye contact with it. It’s fucking great.

I did manage to come out of it with a fairly good visual of what a Chuck E. Cheese is like. Though I think in my story I might spruce it up a little, to make it cooler. It certainly needs it.

JAB

As evidenced from the horrible title, I am in Gatlinburg for a few days’ holiday with the family. I’m having a lovely time so far, not least because I am not at work. I’ve read a book and a half so far, MARSBOUND by Joe Haldeman and the second book in the Dresden Files series. Am currently killing time before we go out to dinner.

One item of note: When we were wandering around Gatlinburg last night, I went into one of the many tiny shops selling touristy stuff. There was no shopkeeper at the counter, staring suspiciously at potential customers, which I found unusual. Most of the time that is all they do because it’s not like anyone is going to buy something. Then I went around the corner and nearly stepped on him. He was out cold on the floor, curled up behind a row of tacky t-shirts that bore clever lines like “I am a Princess (My father is the King of Kings).”

I’m not sure if he was dead but I didn’t stick around to find out. I wonder if someone beat him to death with his own shoe?

JAB

Tucking in your shirt does not hide your obesity. It in fact only makes it more noticeable. If you are required to do so for work, it is still unfortunate though at least understandable. But if you’re out and about socially . . . for my sake, and for your sake, do not tuck in your shirt.

Please cease this trend at once.

That is all.

I cleaned my bathroom today. Boy, was it in desperate need of it too. Funky doesn’t even do its former state justice. I should clean it more often, but it’s one of those household tasks I absolutely loathe. Usually I can’t even use force of will to make myself clean it. It’s like someone placed an “avoid semi-manual labor” block in my head, so that every time I prepare to clean, I instead become compelled to hop on the Internet, watch Boston Legal, or do any fucking thing else other than clean the bathroom.

So today I tried a new strategy: distract the brain.

First, I plied it with alcohol. A little vodka made everything hazy, at least enough so to make the thought of starting on the bathroom not completely unbearable. Then I put on music. The dulcet sounds of the Mortal Kombat soundtrack now thumping in my head like techno-y drum, I proceeded to start the cleaning process. Thirty or so minutes later, the bathroom was spotless, and I felt strangely satisifed having done it.

Interestingly, the cleaning chemicals coupled with the vodka did leave me a bit lightheaded. This is not a bad thing as it has resulted in me finally banging out the ending to my new short short story. I am now glowy inside.

Tomorrow is Friday. I only work three days next week. Fun events are in store in the near future.

All is well in the universe.

JAB

Brain feels like it’s being fucked by a robot with a spiked codpiece. Vicadin won’t kill the bastard. Neither will sleep.

Going to the bar in the hope that beer will. My last hope.

A few weeks back I visited the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. For the uninitiated, here’s how the museum describes itself:

The Creation Museum presents a unique and unparalleled experience, a walk through time portraying significant, life-altering events of the past, illuminating the effects of biblical history on our present and future world.

Be prepared to experience history in a completely unprecedented way.

The state-of-the-art 70,000 square foot museum brings the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form and placing them in familiar settings. Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Majestic murals, great masterpieces brimming with pulsating colors and details, provide a backdrop for many of the settings.

I, on the other hand, would choose to describe it as phenomenally executed monument to illogic and fiction that panders to the ignorant and only the staunchest of Creationist advocates. Most sane people — including, I’d gather, your everyday Christian — would regard it with a raised eyebrow, and be astounded that such a loosely-labeled “theory” can be considered as equally plausible when compared to evolution.

But enough of my soapboxing — if you care to learn more of my visit, wander on over to the photographic essay.

JAB

From a CNN article on insomnia:

The condition is classified as primary or secondary. The latter means that a patient may be having trouble sleeping because of a health condition or medication.

Primary insomnia is not related to any side effects. It is considered its own disorder that can be broken down into two groups: sleep-onset insomnia and sleep-maintenance insomnia.

Like its name, the sleep-onset version occurs in the beginning of the night when someone tries to fall asleep and can’t.

“Sleep-maintenance insomnia is much less common,” Schulman said. “It occurs when somebody can go to sleep, but wakes up once or several times throughout the night and has difficulty resuming sleep.”

This “sleep-maintenance insomnia” so totally fucking describes me it’s not even funny.

Pretty much for the last six months, I’ve been waking up between 4:30 and 5:30 am every day and not being able to go back to sleep. My alarm is set for 6:30 am during the workweek, and like clockwork (heh) every morning I wake up, glance at the clock, and force myself suppress a murderous rage because it’s anywhere from one to two hours before my alarm is supposed to go off. And 95% of the time I never go back to sleep — I just toss and turn till the alarm goes off at 6:30 and then somehow drag my beleaguered carcass out of bed to prepare myself for work. It’s awful.

But this past week, I’ve been trying to trick my insomnia. The article mentions later that you can fool your body by getting up if you can’t fall back asleep after 20 or 30 minutes. The theory being if your body becomes used to being in bed for hours at a time, unable to fall asleep, it becomes “subconsciously ingrained.” So, that in mind, the last few days I’ve been up at 4:30, 5:45 and, today, 5:00. If I’m consciously aware that I’ve been awake for more than 25 minutes, I get up and get dressed. Today I was ready to roll at 5:30 so I went to Tim Horton’s with my laptop and did some writing. It was kind of peaceful, actually. And I got some stuff accomplished.

So, yeah. Insomnia. It fucking sucks, but at least it’s no longer completely fucking me.

JAB

Earlier this month Warren Ellis wrote a lengthy post in which he — somewhat haphazardly — discussed the lack of original content found on the Web today. That a goodly number of the blogs out there exist basically to collate links from the rest of the Web and share them with the world. Ellis then declared that a change in the equation has become necessary for the Web to continue to mutate and thrive:

The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.” Put another way: we like it when Cory and Xeni are the copy/paste editors for the internet, but we like it better when Cory writes a book and Xeni makes an episode of BoingBoingTV.

Let me say now that I think a blog dedicated to collecting cool links is certainly fine to do and can be damn fascinating. Nothing wrong with it. Indeed, it’s what I’ve done here quite a bit over the years. But I think Ellis has a point. As much as I enjoy poring over a myriad number of blogs for interesting little tidbits, it’s usually more engaging when someone is offering up some sort of original creation — be it a story, a piece of music, or a short movie (Joss Whedon’s “Doctor Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog” comes immediately to mind).

So I agree with Ellis. The Web would be a more interesting place to hang out if more people used it as the medium in which to inflict their original stuff on the rest of the teeming masses (those masses who, of course, can at least use a computer). That being so, I’ve decided to do my part as a Planeteer and resuscitate this here blog and start posting fiction.

I’m not exactly sure what this entails yet. Probably I’ll start with some older stories I wrote and still like, but for one reason or another wouldn’t be otherwise published. I’ve got a ton of ideas for short shorts which I might sort through and actually write. Excerpts from my longer project might find their way out here as well. Like I said, this is still an idea-in-progress. I’ll stew on it some more and in all likelihood start posting some older stuff to test the waters. However, it is time for this site to evolve.

And like its spawn, it’s high time for the Web to grow up, move onto the next phase of its life. Puberty happened back in the late nineties, when shitty personal sites were the norm and companies couldn’t wrap their corporate heads around having a “web site.” Adolescence has been going on for most of the last decade as far too many trends have popped up and then just as quickly vanished. Now it’s time for the Web to get a grown up job, move out of its parents’ house, and stop going to fetish clubs and find a nice girl or guy to settle down with.

Nah. Scratch that last one. The Web wouldn’t be the Web without its infinitely diverse array of bizarre fetish porn.

JAB