The Monster's Back

The few of you who have read this blog for a while may remember that my first blog was called 'Monstrus Dei.' I abandoned it after deciding I wanted to write in a different style, and because I couldn't really think of much else to say.

Now, though, I think that I've both developed my voice enough and have enough angry, sarcastic rants bottled up inside me that I'm reviving it. Or rather, I deleted all the old posts and am beginning it over again. It's no great loss: I don't think any of the old posts were that great anyway.

So, if you've got a fairly high tolerance for bluntness and sarcasm, go take a look.

7 Quick Takes Vol. 20: First Aid and Online Dating

1.     Today was our annual first responders training at work, and since I’m a first responder that means I spent most of my day watching a video on First Aid. My main takeaways were A. that if I ever need CPR I really, really hope the person administering it doesn’t take time to put on latex-free gloves or fiddle with a mask to avoid catching some infectious disease from my spittle or vomit while my brain cells die by the thousand due to a lack of oxygen and B. that according to the CDC, the human race should never have made it out of the caves, since apparently any spilling of blood is a biohazard outbreak only just shy of unleashing the T-virus. I know blood-borne diseases are a real thing, but seriously people? In the video they showed us, people were putting up caution tape because a woman got a mild cut on her arm. Meanwhile I’m imagining Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, or even the 19^th century and wondering why they didn’t all end in mass extinctions.  

2.     On that note, the video goes on to talk about how companies are required by law to offer Hep B shots to employees who might get cut on the job, and that if employees refuse, they’re required to offer it again if they do in fact get cut, along with a complete medical exam, preventative shots, and counseling. The last bit made me laugh: “after we’ve filled your head with horror stories about what might happen if you touch blood, we’ll pay to help you through the trauma if that actually happens.” I’m all for companies taking care of their employees, but this struck me as a bit much. I mean, good Lord! At this rate a broken glass in the break room could send a company into Chapter 11!

“Well, we were going to bring on two new guys this month, but Ted had a nosebleed, so hiring’s been suspended another year.”

 “Way to go, Ted.”

3.     I know I promised a piece about my retreat the weekend before last, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Instead, I’ve spent my time writing posts about online dating that morph half-way through into Friday the 13^th jokes. I’ll get to it sometime soon.

4.     Speaking of which, my stabbing hasn’t yielded much fruit yet, though I admit that I haven’t really started in earnest. The girl I was going to take a stab at didn’t come to anything, so now I’m searching for another girl who looks interesting enough to stab at. Stab, stab, stab.
      
      Just keep stabbing, just keep stabbing la! lalalala! I love to STAB!

       (hm, I hope none of my prospective matches see this).

5.     Thoughts while browsing Catholic Match: “Nice, but lives in California and doesn’t do long distance;” “Seems really insistent on ‘outgoing’ as a quality in a match, so much for that one;” “Her profile pic makes it look like she wants to bite my throat out;” “Perfect! But I already tried her and didn’t get a response;” “…This one’s entire ‘about me’ is a Bible quote. Thanks, that helps a lot;” “…And this one spent half her introduction talking about her dog!” “I already tried this one…but that was a really long time ago and she’s got a ton of common interests, so I’m gonna give it another shot.”

6.     On a happier note, I discovered that some generous soul uploaded a host of classic film serials. I love classic serials! I’ve been enjoying Federal Operator 99 all this week, which was actually a lot better than I was expecting. I mean, I love serials, but they’re often not what you’d call good. This one, though, is one of the better one’s I’ve seen; it has a worthwhile hero, a nicely oily villain, and an atypically gutsy and involved heroine. Usually in these things the girl doesn’t really do much except get kidnapped and imperiled (which I like, don’t get me wrong), but this one actually plays an active role in foiling the bad guys. She even rescues the hero at one point!  

7.     You know, it’s funny; when I’m at work, all I want to do is write. When I’m at home, I have to really force myself to sit down and get to it. Maybe it’s because there’re fewer distractions at work, or maybe I’m just in a ‘work mode.’

 Wherefore art thou, Conversion Diary?

The Whims of Writing

So, I was supposed to be buckling down to work on my Epic Fantasy series. Either that or doing editing work on Hendricks. Instead, I hit upon an idea which has been percolating unseriously for a while and which I pretty much just started on a whim. Now I find it's just too much fun not to play around with. It's just a quick, fairly short book about a teenage girl who takes up a hobby as a cat-burglar.

The premise is fun enough, but what really makes it a blast to write is that it's in the first person perspective of a rather bubbly and easily-distracted teenage girl, who is reporting in semi-present tense. In the opening scene, for instance, she has trouble remembering which character from The Iliad the ancient mask she's stealing is supposed to be connected to, then complains that the method for beating motion detectors doesn't work as well as it did on Mythbusters ("Jaime and Adam lied to me"). It's frankly just too much fun to put down.

More Online Dating Stuff!

So, my online dating experience has been pretty lackluster so far. I keep finding beautiful, interesting-seeming women with a lot of common interests who don't so much as glance at my profile when I messege them. Or they glance at the profile, but don't reply.

That makes me wonder whether I'm going about this the wrong way; am I supposed to open with an "I like this, this, and this about you and would like to get to know you better" message, or should I just dive right in with a chat invite? Anyway, that's what I've decided to try next. There's a very lovely young lady I've got my eye on whom I'm going to take a stab at...okay, I took a stab last night, but I'm not sure whether she was online or not, so I'll take another one. And I'll just keep stabbing until something happens!

Wait, that sounds wrong...

"Stab, stab, stabbity, stab...so, are you into horror movies at all?"

7 Quick Takes Vol. 19

Still hosted by Conversion Diary!

1.       I went on my long-weekend personal retreat last week. I’ve been meaning to write a dedicated post about it, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Consider this a foretaste. In any case, I had a wonderful time; I read and wrote and played my violin and walked around the woods hacking tree branches with my machete to use in a fire and just sat outside looking at Lake Michigan and reflecting.

2.       I loved the quiet of the UP (though I wasn’t as isolated as I had hoped; there being cabins on either side of me and Escanaba right across the bay). I could just sit and breathe and think for long periods without an distractions, and I loved it. Speaking of no distractions, there wasn’t any wi fi, so I got a lovely four-day break from the internet, reinforcing my previous suspicions that I use it way too much.

3.       As part of the reflection part I read (partly) through two excellent books: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller. I’d read both before, but enjoyed the chance to review them and re-absorb the powerful messages therewithin. They both helped me do some diagnosis and planning for making a better life for myself. I’ll probably talk more about that in the future when I’ve had more opportunity to digest my reflections.

4.       I also read some Plato, which was delightful, and it inspired me to do some work on a very casual book on Ethics I’ve been fiddling with. Ethics is sort of my passion philosophically; I love parsing and fiddling with it and coaxing out all sorts of lovely little rules and axioms. Most of my writing, though, was dedicated to the new book series I’m working on, about which I don’t want to say too much except that I’m aiming at the young adult market and it has an extremely marketable premise. J  

5.       So, I recently got a new desk-top computer to supplement my over-taxed laptop. This means that, for the first time in ages, I’ve been able to indulge in my hobby of making music videos. At least, I managed to make one before my external hard-drive, which contains all my video files, broke down, necessitating my sending it out to try to get the data recovered, which will take a few weeks and cost a considerable amount of dough. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

6.       Of course, everyone in the Catholic blogsphere has been struggling mightily to come to terms with Pope Francis’s recently revealed penchant for giving off-the-cuff interviews in which he says things that are easily misconstrued, which in the process means that a lot of his less-confusing and lovely statements get missed. For my part, I rather wish he’d be a bit more careful, but I also wish everyone reading him would calm down and listen a little more carefully. I still love Francis, though he certainly isn’t my style of Pope (I’m more like Benedict; bookish, quiet, and not really a fan of being with a lot of people). Speaking of which, we’ve been hearing from Pope Emeritus Benedict a lot more than I had expected, which is all to the good! If you haven’t read the released sections of his letter to the atheist mathematician regarding the latter’s review of his book, go find it now!

7.       I was shocked to hear that Tom Clancy – whom I haven’t read nearly enough but consider myself a fan of – died at the much-too young age of 66. Clancy was a conservative and at least in some way a Catholic, both of which are sadly rare things among bestselling authors. But what we’ll remember him for is his excellent thrillers like The Hunt for Red October and (the only book of his I’ve read and one of my favorites) Rainbow Six. Requiescat in pacem, magister.

7 Quick Takes Vol. 18

1.       So, here’s a question: do I have a bad attitude if I honestly don’t care about my job except insofar as it pays the bills? I mean, I work at a place where people basically spend their time re-inventing the light bulb. I really wasn’t aware of any great defect in my car’s head lamps, nor of any need for novelty mood-lighting in the interior. I’m sorry, but it’s hard to get excited about endlessly refining something that pretty much has worked fine for at least half a century.

Cars in general just don’t interest me much; they’re just tools, and not even particularly fun tools (like shotguns). My ‘dream car,’ as far as it goes, is one of those pick-up trucks that keeps running for decades and only gets sold when they stop making parts for it. In short; I honestly don’t think we’re doing anything particularly important, and even if we were, I wouldn’t have much interest in it. Is that bad? Should I try to make myself care about my job? What do you think?

(I really hope my boss doesn’t see this.)

2.       A series of recent internet articles/discoveries from disparate sources has helped me really make peace with my introvertedness. I seriously could have used this kind of advice a little earlier, when everyone was trying to get me to go out and ‘socialize’ with people and acting like there was something wrong because I didn’t find much common ground with my fellow high schoolers. Better late than never, though.

3.       I’m still breaking from the online dating scene. I have the idea that I really need to settle on a career/vocational path and make a little progress in that field before I search for a mate.

4.       Our esteemed hostess at Conversion Diary mentioned an argument with her husband about the possibility of mixing rap and country. I loathe rap and love country, but I have to come down in the “it CAN be done” camp, based on the song Answer to No One. How many songs involve someone boasting about being a ‘Republican voter’? For that line alone, the song rocks hard.

5.       I just took the Meirs-Briggs Personality thingy again, and this time I came up as ‘INTJ.’ I’m not entirely convinced that’s accurate (I’m not aware of much ‘unrelenting self confidence’ at the moment), but it’s kinda cool. Well, except that, according to the website, INTJs are “likely to be completely clueless when it comes to attracting a partner.” Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Apparently, I’m the same personality type as Vladimir Putin, Augustus Caesar, and both Hannibals (the general and the cannibal). Suddenly, my dreams of world-domination don’t seem quite so fanciful.

6.       As part of this week’s 7 Quick Takes, we were also asked to come up with the song that best expresses our personality type. Me? I picked The Impossible Dream; idealistic, defiant, magnanimous, and devoted to higher ideals to the exclusion of conventions. That sounds about right.

7.       I plan to use my upcoming vacation to do some serious discernment and come up with a good blueprint for some short and long term goals. Time, I think, to buckle down and get serious about, as the subheading says, crafting the life I want.

7 Quick Takes Vol. 17

Conversion Diary again. 

1.        Missed last couple weeks for one reason or another. Actually, have falling off blogging almost entirely, for one reason or another. I’ll try to remedy that soon.

2.       So, Chronicles is now on its fourth week, and I’ve gotta admit, I was expecting a bit more response. I don’t know; maybe people aren’t aware that it’s up? Maybe they just don’t really care? One of my friends said she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to comment. For the record, if you’re reading it, that’s pretty much the whole point! Anyway, the little response I’ve gotten has been positive so far, so that’s good.

3.       So, I’ve been fairly successful at the buckling down thing I’ve been mentioning: not very consistent, but have managed to put in a good amount of time drawing, exercising, praying, violining, and even dusted off my Italian Rosetta Stone. Regarding the violin, I’ve got a surplus of new sheet music (including a 300+ page book of Irish Folksongs I got cheap from Amazon), so that should keep me busy for a while. Recently I’ve been mostly working on Fields of Athenry, Men of Harlech, and Bridge Over Troubled Waters. I also got a version of Modern Major General, but it’s a bit out of my league at this point.   

4.       Drawing wise, I think I’m actually beginning to improve a little; I actually produced at least one (1) copy that I think doesn’t suck!  I don’t have any scanning technology, so I can’t show it to you, but it actually came out (I think) pretty well. Go me!

5.       I’m taking a break from the online dating scene. Partly because I want to focus on other things at the moment, partly because I was getting very tired of finding attractive women who share a lot of my interests and who then never respond when I try to get in touch with them. I’m taking this as a sign that God doesn’t really want me dating at the moment, and I plan to put the extra time and effort to good use.

6.       Problems of a Fantasy Writer:

·         Could I get away with calling something “the Forbidden Zone”?

·         My Romanized Hebrew dictionary doesn’t have all the words I’m looking for

·         I’ve got someone fencing with a rapier and dagger in what’s supposed to be based on Ancient Israel.

·         Would it be worth it trying to find a reference/dictionary for Ancient Punic?

·          Should this world have crude firearms or not? I don’t really want it to, but if not, how do they fight off the allosaurs?

For the record, I didn't make any of those up: those are all real issues I'm working on at the moment.

7.       Well, I’m all set for my vacation up north; I’ve rented a cabin, I’ve got time off, and it’s coming up fast. Whew!  I plan to spend about four days relaxing, doing serious writing, and playing my violin. Maybe go for a hike in the woods. I’m really looking forward to it!