Crooked Nose Radio

Are you fucking kidding?

2007-10-21T02:28:35Z

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071020/ap_en_ce/books_harry_potter

Yeah, notice how I didn't use that idiotic "are you fucking serious* joke. I'm sick to death of slash-fiction, and Rowling's latest announcement on her characters reeks of pandering.

I never read "gay" in Dumbledore's character. I read "driven" and "singular". That article points to the fact that Dumbledore had no close female relationships like it was some sort of clue that he was gay. The man sacrificed everything for his goals, he did whatever it took to achieve them. Is it that hard to believe that he didn't have time for dating?

Here's the thing. I understand that he's Rowling's character and, technically, she should know these sorts of details. My problem is that this smacks of pandering (to a certain blog-happy group of HP fans, slash fiction writers), and out right attention seeking behavior: anything to keep the spotlight a little longer now that she's given the golden goose a hysterectomy. She'll be getting free press on-line (which, I know, I'm giving her right now for each HP tag I slip into this thing), and looooads of press on TV and in print, now that she's given the Christian Right something solid to attack (think about it: before this, they had a reall crappy platform of "oh no, she's teaching our kids witchcraft" which had no basis in reality. Now, whether it's an acceptable lifestyle or not- yeah, of course I think it is- the activists actually have something that no one can argue with to harp on).

I don't care if Dumbledore is gay. I just honestly never saw it before. I also don't care if any slash-fiction writers saw it, because lets face it, they were pretty well convinced that it made perfect sense for who knows how many slash couples to be boinking. Serius/Remus, Snape/Hermiony, Harry/Ron, Harry/Draco. None of it had any basis in the canon of course, except those little tell tale "signs" that the writers saw because they wanted them to be there. It's because she never gave it validation, even hinted at it (in any solid ways, I still don't buy the whole "no close female relations" as even a hint given his dedication in all other aspects of his life), that I feel that this is just a whistle for the spotlight. A giant, non-literative "look at me!!!!".

Alright, let the flames commence.

Shtuff

2007-07-16T03:47:52Z

Job Shtuff: I've sort of started a new job. This would normally be fantastic, as I hate the Ruby Tuesday corporation with the fury of a thousand burning suns and all. Unfortunately, they haven't officially offered it to me as a permanent gig, so I can't quit my wretched waiting job just yet.

The new job is nice. It's at my mom's office, so transportation (including gas) is taken care of. I basically sit in their junk/mail room all day and sort through credit card transfers, or unpack gift cards. Other stuff comes up now and then. It's fairly easy, if somewhat tedious work, but it's tedious work for 12 bucks an hour. Even after taxes I'm making more money than I do at Ruby Tuesday's, and I don't have to rely on oh-so unreliable tips to make it. I also get to wear normal clothes, and listen to my iPod while I work. I really, really hope that they let me keep working there for a while.

Music Shtuff: I've probably been spending too much money on iTunes, but I've gotten some awesome music out of the deal, so I'm kind of ok with it. I bought both of the Chris Cornell solo albums, and after the first few tracks of the original, I wondered why on earth I hadn't bought it earlier. I love Soundgarden. I love Audioslave. I really liked the single from Euphoria Morning (Can't Change Me). I dunno what kept me from it before. Anyway, they're both fantastic. A friend of mine hates Cornell because apparently he once claimed that he should be paid more money than the other members of Audioslave. I looked on-line and couldn't find the quote anywhere, but hell, even if it's true...I kind of have to agree. Chris Cornell is one of the most outstandingly talented vocal performers that rock has to offer today. The other members of Audioslave are the remnants of a band that was weighted down by their horrendous lead "singer" and made most of their money attracting disaffected youths with their politically charged lyrics. I'm willing to accept that Rage Against the Machine was a more politically aware group, but while I certainly don't MIND when bands speak their minds about politics, I need for those opinions to be backed up by loads of talent for me to care all that much. Chris Cornell has the talent as both a songwriter and a performer. Even if he did say something as tactless as the statement mentioned above, he damn well deserves it. Anyway, as far as the CD's go; check out When I'm Down from Euphoria Morning, and his cover of Billie Jean from Carry On. They're both very bluesy tracks, and his voice works amazingly well with that style. It's a range he didn't get to play with much in Soundgarden, and only experimented with a bit in Audioslave.

I mentioned a singer several, several entries back by the name of Carina Round. She's put out a new album that has a lot more work put into the instrumentation. I liked her previous work, but unless you can really appreciate JUST the vocal performances on a track, some of them were a bit empty sounding, kind of minimalist I guess. There's a lot more going on with the second album to back up the blues/singer songwriter/trip-hop thing she had going on last time. Downslow is a standout track, and the CD came with an acoustic version of the song as well.

Queens of the Stone Age's Era Vulgaris is entirely worth the money for QOTSA fans. I can't really expand on it too much because...well, I love the band, but there's no better way to say it: You know exactly what to expect with their albums. They do the same damn thing over and over again, but they do it well, with enough small variations to keep things interesting.
(On a little side note, the lead singer from this band has a side project that he participates in called The Desert Sessions; it's a collection (10 albums so far) of music recorded jam-style with various other musicians from the stoner rock vein, often (apparently) under the influence of drugs. The drug use shows at times, but it's amazingly well put together for a jam album.)

Rasputina is an interesting little suggestion from iTunes' Just For You feature. They suggested it based on my purchases of a few of Voltaire's tracks, and seeing as they're (mostly) a cello trio that plays gothy/punky/rocky music, I can see why. It's a pretty trippy group, but I like what I've heard so far. They have a cover album with versions of Bad Moon Rising, Wish You Were Here, and Rock and Roll amongst others. Saline the Salt Lake Queen is a standout track as far as their original recordings go.

Reel Big Fish has kind of disappointed me with their new album Monkey's For Nothing and the Chimps For Free. The title of the record is just about the most amusing thing I've heard so far. I think that maybe I need to listen to it a few more times to form a better opinion, but so far it's lacking the combination of proficient rock/ska fusion and very clever lyrics that their other albums had plenty of. Maybe it has something to do with their split from their label, I dunno. I'm hoping I'll find something more to like about it; it'd be sad to lose interest in one of my favorite bands.

Book Shtuff: Laurell K. Hamilton has made some headway in re-establishing herself as a legitimate writer with her new book- The Harlequin. It has an actual plot (a fairly interesting one at that), which is a giant bonus on her last book in the Anita Blake series. I'm hoping that she continues in this trend with her next Merry Gentry book; even though that one wasn't actually a bad read, it felt like it should have been added as additional chapters to its predecessor. The last Anita Blake novel (the last two actually) received terrible fan reviews all across the board. It's interesting to think that maybe she realized she was losing her meal ticket and tried to get herself back on track. I know that sounds bad...because I wouldn't want to be at the beck and call of every fan whim, but this is more a case of a writer that grew noticeably lazy, when her core group of fans knew damn well that she could do better.

I finally, after being repeatedly instructed to do so by my writing instructor and fellow students at school, picked up Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners. I'm barely a third of the way through the first short story, and already I'm kicking myself for waiting this long. I fully understand, based on my writing choices in the past, why she was so highly recommended. She has an approach to narrating the fantastic that is so matter of fact, it's an amazing technique that I've played around with a little, and I hope that I can refine as much as she clearly has. She uses humor in similar ways as well, honestly, this one is a little like the Chris Cornell thing; if it hadn't been for the fact that she's a fairly obscure writer, I would wonder why I hadn't heard of her before.

Social Shtuff (Weird for me, I know): I'm going to Dragon Con, yay! I've been playing World of Warcraft a lot with my massive amounts of down time. I joined a pretty laid back guild in-game, and I've made quite a few friends there. There's this program called Ventrillo that lets gamers on-line communicate through a VOIP. It's pretty cool, and it makes the experience a little more sociable than if you were simply typing everything. I went to Tennessee a few weeks back to visit one of the players (A pretty awesome girl named Jayme), as well as to meet some of the people who would be going to Dragon Con with us. There's a whole group going (something like eight people); we're getting a hotel room so we'll be able to stay the whole four days and not miss anything. I've never done the Con thing all the way before. Last time I went it was just for two days, for a few hours each day, kind of a let down considering how much there is to see and do there. Along with some of the writers and game companies that I'm excited to see, there are some actors and T.V folk who I know my friends would be pretty excited about. The Weaseley twins are gonna be there, along with Neville. Spike will be there, and hopefully someone will be there with a cattle prod to make sure he maintains his usefulness by speaking with his British accent the whole time. The Mythbuster's Build-team will be there, which is pretty awesome...mostly because it ups the number of hot redheads at the con a little.

That's pretty much all I can think of...I know it's a shit-ton of information, and probably no one will read it all the way through, but there we go.

cameronfunk @ 2007-06-04T19:49:00

2007-06-04T23:54:24Z

Story number three. I'll admit that this story was almost entirely concieved as a vehicle for the fairy tale fracturing I do at the bridge. Anyway, here's my favorite of the class' work.

Cameron Funk
“Fifteen” Page Story
ENGL 4310B/ Josh Russell
Funkrockheaven@yahoo.com

Cigarettes and Thin Mints

We hiked along the rough path that wound higher and higher around the smaller hills and mountains. We’d left the truck back on the side of the dirt road that led to this particular trail, you could only get so far before you had to get out and walk. I did my best to keep up a reasonable pace; it was fairly important to get there by noon, for one thing, the hike took more than a few hours either way, and we only had the babysitter until early evening. My job today kind of depended on keeping to a schedule; this necessity was being severely tested by two increasingly stubborn traveling companions.

            The more cooperative of the two followed a few paces behind me, tethered to my left hand by a stout length of rope. While I had little to no experience with farm animals outside of doing my utmost to combat their overpopulation by eating as many as possible, the snowy white male goat was behaving well enough so long as I kept the veggie scraps coming. If I left him hungry for too long, he dug in his hooves and got incredibly difficult to herd about. I idly wondered how goat-herds got them to do anything- I knew my way was crap, more than a day or so of this and the animals would be too fat to do anything useful. So far I was simply calling him “the goat”, it seemed a little cruel to name at this point.

            Aubrey was proving to be considerably more difficult. She trailed behind the goat, entirely unprepared for the hiking experience though she claimed she’d been taking our son Chris on these trips since he could walk ably. Her boots weren’t broken in, she hadn’t packed enough water and her trail food consisted of four individual packets of chips and three snickers bars. She called for the fifth rest stop since we’d set out four hours ago and I relented as I had the last four times. I sighed and made my way over to the side of the path, prodding a fallen log with my walking stick a few times. When nothing skittered or slithered out from under it, I sat down and took an apple from my pack, watching as Aubrey pulled a crushed cigarette packet from hers. I took a sip from my water bottle and gave her a look.

            “You’re kidding me, right?” I shook my head as she lit one of the cigarettes with a neon-green plastic lighter. She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at me, puffing away happily.

            “Just because you’re wearing that god-awful hat and that geeky uniform doesn’t mean you can go all smoky-the-bear on me “Ranger” Doyle.”

            I winced, partly because of how silly that air-quotes gesture looked, especially one handed, but mostly because she hadn’t stopped ribbing me about the forestry department uniform since I’d picked her up in the morning. It’d been her idea for me to get a job with a regular paycheck; and while I was morally opposed to the idea of receiving wages rather than being handed neat little stacks of tax-free currency, after a couple of weeks I’d actually come to like the work- it was nice and outdoorsy. They let me keep a rifle in the department truck, and I even have some vague law enforcement powers...although I think they’re mostly limited to giving stern looks to people who hunt out of season or break some of the more extreme park regulations…like smoking or lighting fires outside of designated areas. Hell, I was going to start making fun of myself if I started thinking in regulations.

            “Technically it’s Forestry Commission Officer Doyle.” I took a breath and gave my best pleading puppy dog expression. “Look, just do me a favor here. It would look pretty bad if I was found traveling with a willful firebug and hadn’t even made an effort to stop her. And hey, we might even make better time if you had something approaching pure oxygen in your system for more than ten minutes at a time.” I finished my apple and held out the core, letting the goat snatch it up from my outstretched fingers.

“Blow me. I’m not gonna torch the place dork; I promise I’ll be careful. Scouts honor.” She held up three fingers and attempted a look of childlike innocence, somewhat hampered by the lit cigarette clutched between the fingers of her right hand.

“There’s no way in hell you were ever a girl scout.” I looked at her blankly, trying my best not to crack up or imagine what she’d look like in a green beret.

“I was too, for five whole years before I left. All on my own.” She’d started out with a rather cute little pout at my incredulity, but the act had faltered when she’d stumbled over a lie.

“Left all on your own, eh? You weren’t, oh I dunno, forcibly removed? Asked to leave for the moral safety of the troop? Nothing like that?” I grinned, absolutely enjoying her discomfort.

“Bah. They wouldn’t even let me finish my last badges. I was only in it for the cookies anyway.” She shrugged and sat down next to me, smiling sweetly while she pulled the water bottle from my unresisting hand and bopped me over the head with it before taking a drink. “Stop thinking about me in uniform.”

I actually blushed, I hated that I still did that for her in public, let alone out in the middle of no where without any witnesses to point and laugh. “I was not thinking about that…I was thinking about uh, cookies. Yes. Cookies. Thin mints. And those little peanut-butter ones. Yes, nice wholesome cookies.” I grabbed the bottle back and packed it away.

            She smiled impishly and leaned her head against my shoulder. Smoke wafted up around us like incense, she shifted her head, looking up at me. “I’ve been meaning to ask though…what’s with the goat? I mean, I doubt that walking goats is official department business- wouldn’t your little ranger buddies be just as concerned if they saw you accompanying strange livestock through the woods…or is this for your other job? Doing some more courier work?”

            “First, I’ve been working this job for a couple of month’s tops- I don’t have any ranger buddies yet. Second, I would hardly be wearing this uniform voluntarily, so this is at least partially for the state job. Third, yeah, this is kind of a courier thing; the goat is part of the package.” I hurried on before she dug around more in that topic. “You’re the one who wanted to come along on these little trips, after I took a little time off to make that last delivery.”

            “You were gone for three whole days Doyle, it was supposed to be overnight. I missed out on the interview with that magazine because you weren’t there to watch Chris for me.” I was amazed to see her looking concerned; she’d been pretty pissed when I got home from that one. “I just want to have some idea of what you’re getting yourself into. I never know when you’re coming home sometimes…I kind of thought we’d try to get away from that old routine.”

I nodded and looked away, feeling a little ashamed at my carelessness. “I’ll keep you updated from now on, I promise.”

“Damn right you will. Look…your courier job, it’s not anything…you know, bad, is it?” She looked up at me, the parental concern replaced by genuine fearful worry, the kind that could turn into something darker at the right prompt. I saw her eyes dart to the tethered goat and drew the same conclusions she probably had.

“I’m not actually going to sacrifice the goat to some dark…thing babe, it’s nothing from your mothers’ end of things, I promise. Even my substantial sense of profit-seeking is won over by self preservation in this case. I don’t work for those people.” I wasn’t kidding either, there are some people you don’t want anywhere near your resume- all but the most loathsome jobs would dry up in a hurry if I associated with the wrong sort.

“She…she’s not coming back, right? You said she couldn’t come back.” She spoke quietly, watching the smoke rising from her cigarette intently, going very still.
I hated seeing her like this. The massive crack in her otherwise well maintained defenses had always been her mother, a literal wicked witch. She’d tortured Aubrey for years while she was growing up. She’d been the real reason Aubrey had left town with our son. She’d fled for a safe haven states away, and had kept under the radar until the old bat had gotten killed. I had nothing to do with it, though I kind of wish I had sometimes. Aubrey hadn’t known about my connections, my work with the faeries and other agencies at the time. She’d spent years thinking she was crazy, didn’t want me to see any of it, or to draw me into her mothers’ line of fire. I suppose it was noble and all, but I missed out on a chance to help her out, could’ve gotten our lives together before now.

“I helped out on the clean-up after her last little tantrum ‘Bree. You missed out on the storm she called up- capsized a bunch of fishing boats, wrecked the marine biology research center, royally pissed off the water sprites all along the coast. Once someone goes badly in such a big way…well, there are, sort of concerned citizens groups out there- sort of neighborhood watch deals. They stamp down on this stuff pretty hard, no one wants that much attention called to our types.” I shook my head, having seen the results of the summery execution myself. “She won’t come back from what they did to her. I promise.”

She gave several quick nods, reassuring herself quietly. I could see her building up her front again. She puffed down the rest of the cigarette in that nervous manner that’s actually a little frightening to watch. By the time she was finished, she was smiling again, a little brittle, and seemed to be ready to go.

She stood up, carefully stubbed out the cigarette in a patch of dirt and, after I gave her a meaningful glance, picked up the butt and dropped it into our carry out trash bag. I fished a carrot out of my bag and waved it at the goat, shouldering my pack again as we started up the next hill. I checked my watch for the hundredth time, noting that we’d probably make it with a little time to spare. I was quiet for a little while, negotiating loose soil and rocks as the trail got steeper- the final hill almost a set of natural stairs, with irregular steps carved out by the placement of deep roots and rainfall. I gave up talking as until we reached the top- my lungs weren’t exactly tar-free; I just had better sense than to light fires around a giant kindling factory. We were both panting with the effort of the climb by the time we reached the top.

The bridge was an old stone number that was completely and utterly out of place this deep in the forest. It’s one thing when you see those ancient wood and rope constructs that didn’t take all that much time to throw up, and could be easily repaired from time to time. During my rough training, I’d seen a few guys string up a serviceable rope bridge in an hour or so, maybe two. It just wasn’t all that uncommon out here. The stone bridge didn’t make sense. We didn’t have a quarry nearby, there was no heavy human traffic; county records didn’t seem to be aware of the existence of the bridge. It was also too long- it lacked the middle supports you’d think a bridge of its length would need. It was wide and flat, with an arched bottom that spanned across a relatively small gorge- with good light you could see the wide stream at the bottom of the drop. The rocky sides of the canyon were probably climbable, with enough equipment and more nerves than I had. I’m no good at engineering, but some books I’d consulted told me that the bridge was probably anchored into place by its own weight, the pressure from either side pushing the wedged arch together with lots of physics-y words that started to make my head hurt. I decided to fall back on an old standby and assume that it was held up by magic.

There were sets of low pillars on either end of the bridge; they looked cool, and the air coming up from the gorge would probably have felt nice, but I halted at the top of the hill, putting out an arm to stop Aubrey from going any further. She frowned at me but stayed put, waiting for another explanation, and taking advantage of the delay to catch her breath a little more completely.

“Alright, back to the job. Technically I am still working for the state, clearing part of the trail so we can open it up to the public in a bit. The area had been off limits for a while ‘cause of a high incident of what they were calling bear attacks.” I saw her eyes widen and knew what was coming before she said it.
“There are bears out here Doyle? Christ, were you planning on telling me this when one of them lumbered out of the woods to fucking eat us?” Her voice was getting higher with panic, her southern twang creeping into her speech as she got nervous. I held up both hands and shook my head.

“Relax…oddly enough, no. There aren’t any bears around here. I’ve been checking out the area for a while now- no tracks, no dens, no shit, not even any old carcasses. There ought to be bears here, I mean, this is bear territory- but they’re just gone. I’m thinking the troll probably took care of them.” I bit my lower lip and watched her carefully, anticipating a slap or punch that never came. She tilted her head and took a deep breath, glancing at the goat, then back to me and the bridge behind me.

“The troll.” she stared hard at me, her forehead creased with equal parts annoyance and confusion, “You say that like it should make me feel better than the threat of a bear attack.” Her voice was surprisingly level. I wondered how long she could maintain it before freaking out.

“Well…yeah, I mean, it makes me feel better. You can’t reason with bears, and if I shot one, there’d be all kinds of paperwork- I hate paperwork- and it’d just be a big mess really. Trolls are easy. Long as you know what you’re dealing with.” I checked my watch again, and started for the bridge, it was eleven fifty-eight. “Come on, two minutes until he’s likely to show up…just stay back a few feet from where I stop and you’ll be fine.”

I could feel her watching me as the goat trotted ahead, nearly leading me across the bridge now- something in his ancestral instincts must have kicked in, he knew how this was supposed to go and was eager to get to the punch line. I glanced back at Aubrey and motioned for her to follow, feeling that she was waiting for me to let her in on the big joke. She ran to catch up, slowing as she reached the actual bridge…the sides barely came up to the waste, and there was a stiff wind. The goat’s hooves made a clear, ringing trip-trap sound over the stones as we crossed.

“Why is this…troll, more likely to show up at noon?” She asked, wearily edging along the bridge. “Isn’t all this…magic stuff supposed to happen at midnight?”
“Midnight would be ideal- trolls don’t love sunlight, but really it’s more about midpoints. Midday, midnight, they’re halfway marks. It’s more magic-y. Like uh…you know, crossroads, or midsummer eve- oh! Halloween-, that’s a good one. The barriers between the worlds thinner at midpoints- trust me, mostly though; he’ll show up because of this little guy here. It’s tradition.” I tugged at the rope, reigning in the eager little creature; we were approaching the middle of the bridge- I stopped and for a few seconds, the clicking of the hooves on stone as the goat came to a halt was the only notable sound. Then the tinny little sound of my watch’s alarm beeped out signaling- I got a little satisfaction from hearing Aubrey jump in surprise.

On the far side of the bridge, a section of the craggy wall of the gorge slowly moved out of place like a horizontal landslide. Bits of earth moss and stone flowed across the canyon wall until one section reached out and grabbed hold of the edge of the bridge itself. Another section joined the first and now, dangling as it was away from the earth and stone wall of the gorge, it was marginally easier to see the troll in some detail. The two massive arms pulled the swinging body up onto the bridge in one alarmingly swift motion for something so large. Everything about the troll was fluid greens, grays and browns. Soil and moss veins pulsed and flowed under translucent stone skin that filled the air with millstone noise at every movement that would, given enough time, become extremely annoying. It steadied itself on the bridge, taking up the whole width with its bulk, and stalked forward until it stood a few feet in front of the goat, who was giving it a haughty goat look, baying and grunting out some assuredly regal goat speech to its species’ ancient enemy. The troll regarded it with bright, sharp quartz eyes and then switched its gaze to Aubrey and myself.

I gave it a nod and switched my walking stick to the hand that held the goat’s rope, reaching back to take Aubrey’s hand in mine. I felt her squeeze it in a death grip, but didn’t dare look back to reassure her with a look. She was being uncharacteristically quiet- it was a little worrying.

“Howdy.” I said, my neck already complaining at the angle I was holding it in to maintain eye contact with the troll. “Names Doyle, this’ Aubrey” I nodded my head in her direction, “What can we call you big fella?”

The troll seemed to consider this for a moment, and then shrugged its shoulders, eyeing the goat wearily. It finally spoke in crisp, clear English, with a heavy German accent. “Thurs. You will call me Thurs.” Its voice had a hollow scraping quality, much like its movement caused.

“Thurs” I said flatly. “Your name is Thurs. Thurs is Norse word for troll. I didn’t expect to get your true name but this is a little…” I cut myself off, taking a breath; it’d go badly for my reputation if I freaked out about something so trivial. “Fine then, Thurs.” I pried my hand from Aubrey’s and dug around in my pack briefly, producing a loosely tied roll of parchment, good old goatskin vellum- the troll snatched it up and carefully unrolled the note. Hands that should have been far too large and clumsy to perform the task did so smoothly. “Here are my papers. I’m technically working for the Duchess Autumn, though the Georgia Forestry Commission is chipping in- I’ve only got a badge for them, they don’t go in for proclamations really- anyways, the Duchess wants free passage through this area, and the Commission would be ever so pleased if hunters would stop showing up dead and maimed in the creek down there. You are to be compensated with one billy-goat per equinox, of varying degrees of gruffness and, of course, the Duchess will owe you quite a large favor. I’ll make personal deliveries at whatever time is most convenient for you- we’ll work that out later of course.” I cleared my throat and reached back to take Aubrey’s hand again, but she slapped it away and I glanced over my shoulder briefly to see her glaring at me.

“You’re going to let that thing” she spat the word out “eat that goat…and feed him another one…” she paused to work out the equinoxes in her head, “twice a year?” She kept up her stern look- I could just see her thinking about grabbing the rope from my hands, making some sort of desperate escape down the mountain. The goat still seemed to think it was on the verge of something grand.

“Aubrey…it’s a goat. It’s not an angora, it doesn’t give milk. It’s food. Besides, the little bastards really have it coming.” I shrugged and nodded up at the Thurs, allowing him the right to explain. The troll scraped loudly as he nodded, eyeing the goat wearily.
“This is true. They trick us; they drown our young in rivers. They are bullies.” The troll pointed a thick, stony finger at the goat. “It is policy to eat them on site now- no matter how meaty they claim their brothers might be.”

I nodded and glanced back to Aubrey, who wore a bit of a stunned expression. “They’ve been doing it for a long time now- just look at the little guy, if he had a bit, he’d be chomping at it.” The goat was pawing at the stone of the bridge, eyeing the troll with more than the usual amount of malice goats can mange. “We’ve never been able to figure it out really. They’ll be peacefully giving milk, milling about in pens for years- you put one of them out on a stone bridge with a troll and it gets all riled up and murderous.”

Aubrey frowned, clearly a little put off by the sudden shift in the goat’s attitude. “But…well, if you hadn’t brought him up here, he never would have gotten all kill-happy, right?”
“Nope…but then Thurs here would still be all ornery about hunters disturbing his forest, and we’d have nothing to placate him with. For the low, low price of two old gelded,” I leaned back and checked just to be sure. “Yup, gelded goat per year, we get safe passage for anyone who happens to want to come through here and good favor with the old established and esteemed trollish community.” I gave a quick bow to the troll and he responded with a flinty grin.
“Safe passage for anyone who wants to come through?” Aubrey had developed a thoughtful expression. “And one person who wants safe passage is this…what did you call her, ‘Duchess’ Autumn?” She raised an eyebrow, apparently losing her concern over the goat, forever disqualifying her for PETA membership. “Who’s Autumn?”

I blinked, and stared at her for a moment, then looked up to Thurs for some sort of vaguely male sense of companionship, the troll had backed away several steps however upon hearing the tone of her voice. Clearly I was on my own.

“Aubrey…Autumn is- hmm- well, she’s sort of a fairy princess…only, you know, a duchess, not a princess. She’s a sidhe, one of the nobles. She’s also my employer from time to time- purely a working relationship. Huh, you know, I think you might have met her once, back in Savannah. Oh right, you met her at her sons birthday party…um. Shit.”

Aubrey’s eyes had widened with sudden recognition. I briefly calculated my chances for survival if I jumped off the bridge.

“Are you talking about that dried up old bitch that had the nerve, the fucking nerve to pull me aside and tell me I wasn’t good enough for her dear friend Doyle? The one who said that I’d only end up hurting you?” She stood there, hands on her hips, daring me to make one wrong move. I tossed the rope to the troll who gladly caught it, jerking the rope taught with one swift movement that sent the goat into little spasms as Thurs swung him around over his shoulder. He had the ecstatic look of someone who wasn’t going to be involved in a domestic dispute.

“She uh…she didn’t know you at the time ‘Bree, didn’t have a chance to get to know you. Everyone was very busy back then.” I very carefully refrained from admitted that she’d been nearly a hundred percent right, at the time at least, I had won my battle against suicidal slips of the tongue.

“But you still work for her? After she insulted me like that? Hell, she insulted you too; she insulted your taste in women- how could you take that from a supposed friend?” The anger was starting to give way to a hurt look, if she started crying I was in real trouble.

“Aubrey,” I reached out for her hand and only just caught it as she tried to pull it away, “Aubrey- I told you, it’s purely a working relationship. She pays me, I do things for her. You don’t get to pick and chose jobs a lot when you freelance for these types” I waved my hand at the retreating troll, who was enjoying a snack on his way back to the underside of the bridge- bits of red-sodden white wool littered the flagstones, “It was work. And if it helps, apparently she’s a little crazy now anyway. Don’t think I’ll be taking too many more jobs from her. ‘Sides, she was wrong, wasn’t she? Here we are, together again, neither of us has run off for a whole eight months straight…and we’ve got Chris, right? Don’t worry about what she had to say back then. It’s past.” I gave her hand a squeeze and tilted my head, watching her eyes, waiting for that first tear to fall.

She wiped her eyes a bit with her free hand, grinned suddenly and hugely, and punched my arm firmly before pulling me into a hug. “Damn right its past. Good thing you remembered that, or I might have had to kick your scrawny ass. Like I would let that uptight biddy get to me like that. We both know you’re my bitch.”

I smirked and took advantage of the hug as I often did, squeezing her tight enough to make her accuse me of breaking her ribs, while she was still out of breath I lifted her up over my shoulder and started walking back the way we came, carefully balancing her until I stepped off the bridge. She beat her fists against my back until I put her down again at the edge of the downhill slope.

“So if I’m scrawny, what does that make you?” I looked her up and down as she hurriedly swept fingers through her waist length hair, not that she was being vain or anything.
“Adorable with a rabid metabolism.” She stuck her tongue out at me and started carefully skipping back down the trail. “Come on…we promised the babysitter we’d be back before nightfall.”

I let her lead me down the path this time; lagging behind a little to watch her skip with possibly feigned enthusiasm. It was a nice day, we’d made good time. The trip downhill would be easier and I felt like taking my time. Having concluded the business at hand, it was her turn to pull me along back into the business of being a parent.

cameronfunk @ 2007-06-04T19:42:00

2007-06-04T23:49:44Z

Story number two here. My least favorite out of this years work, ah well.

Cameron Funk
Ten Page Story
ENGL 4310B/ Josh Russell
Funkrockheaven@yahoo.com

Pooka Day

It was dark out; the clouds from the swiftly growing storm had covered the nearly full moon with an effect that would have been impressively spooky had anyone important been outside to see it. Raindrops were already making themselves known, though it’d be a few hours before the storm really got itself going. It wasn’t a good night for traveling, but inter-neighborhood forays would probably be acceptable for a while. Parents were spared having to console cranky, candy-starved children in half-applied costumes cooped up in the house all night. Instead, they were treated to hyper-active, candy-high children in half-removed costumes who wouldn’t be ready for sleep for hours. Those of an agricultural persuasion had taken in the last of the crops earlier in the day. As the storm started to pick up speed, sensible people were getting warm indoors, or had holed themselves up in parties that would continue well into the next day, November the first.

It would be argued by many who knew him that Doyle was about as far from a sensible person as you could get, and so it would surprise them very little to find him trudging along through an abandoned field in middle Georgia, in the middle of what was now a full on thunderstorm, on Halloween night. He was wearing a heavy oilskin cloak- the kind with a great big hood to keep the rain off- that was just barely appropriate attire considering the holiday. It was clearly giving him trouble. Every few steps the beam of the flashlight he was carrying would become erratic as he raised his hand to push the hood up out of his eyes. His other hand gripped a short knobby walking stick, which he used to frequently test the ground in front of him for rabbit holes. He spent some time walking around the field in a slow spiral, turning his flashlight this way and that until he seemed to be more or less pleased with his progress. Stopping at the center of the field he swung a knapsack out from under the cloak and hurriedly pulled out an over-sized zip-lock freezer bag, a thermos, and a small plastic bowl from inside. He hunched over the bowl, using his body to shield it from the worst of the rain, and filled it with milk from the thermos. Opening the zip-lock bag next, he pulled out a small loaf of bread and began tearing it into pieces, tossing it into the bowl along with the milk. Stowing the knapsack back under his cloak, he sat down on the muddy earth and turned off his flashlight, settling in to wait in the rain-splattered darkness.

After an hour he was still waiting patiently.

An hour after midnight would find him becoming just a little impatient.

The rain started to let up around three in the morning. Doyle frowned and started to reach out to dump the contents of the bowl, when something batted his hand away with a cautioning swat. He stood up, fumbling to turn on his flashlight. Aiming toward the bowl, he scowled at the sight in front of him as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. A young man lounged in the mud of the field, though neither the rain nor the mud seemed able to soil the pirate costume he wore. He seemed to be the center of his own little universe of calm style as he sat there, grinning hugely, picking bits of disintegrating bread from the bowl of milk. A tri-cornered hat was perched on one knee as he ate; exposing perfectly disheveled, black hair that shone in the weak light and slightly pointed ears. The beam of the flashlight caught his eyes just for a moment, causing them to flash catlike, first deep, dark green, then bright yellow under the beam.

“I know that you’re a real stickler for tradition old man, but honestly, if you ever want to get a hold of me in the future, I have a perfectly serviceable cellular plan that went to waste tonight.” The boy shook his head and lapped up a mixture of crumbs and milk from his fingers.

“We both know you wouldn’t have showed up otherwise, Eric. I always have to break out the old tricks with you.” He shifted in back and forth in his seat, clearly uncomfortable in the wet mud. “Just how long were you going to let me sit out here waiting for you to show yourself?”
“Oh, not much longer; just about as long as it took me to get all the way out here. I was in fucking Atlanta, Doyle. At a party. You took me away from good food and excellent drink. And well, even if I did swing that way, your ugly ass is no substitute for the girls I was chatting up.” The young man shook his head and finished off the bread and milk, looking stylishly sullen now that his meal was done. He began to fastidiously lick his fingers clean with a sandpapery sound. “Damn stupid holiday if you ask me. No one over here even leaves out crops for us anymore; you’re stuck in the past man.” He paused, licking his lips. “Nice bread though.”

“Count yourself lucky that I haven’t spread word around boy. At least you know that I know what I’m doing. How’d you like to have drunken new age teenagers calling you up all day, asking for all kinds of useless crap?” There was an edge of threat in Doyle’s voice as he sat on the wet ground in front of Eric. The boy held up his hands in mock terror for a moment, then rolled his eyes and put his head on its side.

“Just what exactly has crawled up your ass and died? Not that you were ever Mr. Cheerful at the best of times, but hell. You’re threats are usually a lot more…empty sounding than that. That’s just plain cold.” He recovered his grin quickly enough, and a match flared in the darkness as he lit a battered, hand-rolled cigarette pulled from behind his ear. “Trouble at home is it?”

Doyle ignored the question, pulling his staff from the loose earth. He gathered up his things and watched the boy puff away; both the lit tip of the cigarette and the match glowing warmly despite the rain. “Alright, now you’re just showing off.”

“Hey man, it’s my day. I can’t think of a better time to let everyone know how awesome I am.” Eric laughed quietly to himself as he started to walk out of the field. Though his costume included knee high leather boots, the only tracks he left were large paw-prints in the mud. “Let’s get out of here, ‘s raining cats and other smaller cats, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“My car’s the other way” said Doyle, nodding toward the distant points of light that marked the highway. “You don’t plan on walking to Atlanta, do you?”

“Fuck your car mate; it’ll be here in the morning. And no, I don’t fancy making that walk when I don’t have to. We’re gonna take the fun way.” He grinned, showing pointed canines.

“I can’t help but be reminded of some of your other “fun” ideas in the past. Am I going to regret calling on you tonight?” And yet he followed the other man through other muddy fields, to the edge of the forests that hemmed them in.

“No doubt you will, by the time we’re done with our bargaining. I promise though, that our method of travel will be minimally traumatic. It’s not as if you’re a stranger to poking around old tombs.” He laughed at his own joke, leading Doyle to a massive oak set aside from the rest of the trees, ringed by overgrown toadstools. There was a man-sized hollow set into the western face of the trunk. Scowling, Doyle lifted his flashlight, but the beam did nothing to light the space inside, though it shouldn’t have been more than a few feet across. As the beam moved about, it did pick up on the frayed remnants of knotted ropes than hung from several of the lower branches.

“Christ, you dig up one graveyard and suddenly you’re some sort of ghoul. It was bad luck the guy I was looking for was in the last grave I checked. Not my fault that they hadn’t properly cared for the headstones over the years. I was going to put everything back too…but it was starting to get light out and I almost got caught by the caretaker.” He sniffed indignantly and nodded his head toward the rocks. “Anything guarding this one?”

“Nothing we need to worry about friend, not when you know the right people…and you know me.” He scratched his chin and stared hard at the doorway. “Now if I can just remember how to open the damn thing…”

“See, this is why I like cars. You don’t need a secret word or ritual to start a damn car. They come with their own easily reproducible keys” He shifted irritably, prodding Eric with his walking staff. “Come on boy; let’s hurry it along shall we. Some of us aren’t so lucky as to walk between the damn raindrops. I’m fucking soaked and I want a drink.”

“You don’t happen to know the elvish word for frie- All right all right, only joking. Spoil sport.” The boy stepped up to the hollow and rapped his knuckles on either side three times. The darkness disappeared instantly, replaced by the feint light of a single light bulb that could be seen swinging at the back of the little space between the bark. The bulb swung gently and illuminated what seemed to be a small room containing a bucket and mop, an old step-ladder, and a bit of shelving stacked with cleaning supplies and ancient dried paint tins.

“I have to say,” muttered Doyle, switching off his flashlight, “that I am quite impressed. You’ve managed to find a magical broom closet.” He stepped forward through the hollow to inspect the room and shivered; the single pace between the rocks had been strange, the air had felt thick, offered resistance like walking into a stiff wind. He turned around to comment and was faced with the blank wall of the back of a closet. He tilted his head and turned around again; jumping in surprise as this time he was faced with a grinning Eric, standing in front of the door.

“Told you it was the fun way” the young man chuckled and opened the door, stepping out into a dimly lit dive of a bar. “Come on, you get us a table, I’ll get us drinks.”

Doyle shook his head and stepped out after Eric, closing the door to the closet behind him. It was very late (or very early) and there weren’t many patrons left at this hour. The bartender chatted with Eric amicably, and didn’t seem at all phased by their odd entrance. Doyle wandered toward the back of the common room on instinct, homing in on a table nicely tucked into the corner of the building, near a set of stairs that probably led to an office. He unclasped his cloak and started to shake the rain off. The noise of the rough material flapping and shedding water was fairly loud, and a few of the patrons glanced up from their tables at him. He waved a little stupidly and sat down heavily, waiting for the promised drinks.

The bar was nearly empty, and it was technically past last call anyway, but among the sparse patrons were two dejected looking girls in matching fairy princess costumes, wands laid forlornly on the table, crowns askew. Doyle watched as Eric sent the pair drinks and cheered them up with the usual buckets of charm and compliments. Twenty minutes later he walked back to the table Doyle had picked out with two bottles, and two new phone numbers. Doyle shook his head at him as he grabbed his beer.

“Don’t you ever get tired of doing that? They don’t see you; they just see all that…sly glamour. Hell, they’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”

“Hey man, some of us don’t spend all our time pining over the one that got away…and came back again. Then left, and then came back.” He cleared his throat, pressing on as he received a glare from Doyle. “Anyway, I look at it like this: they’ve had a bad night. Got stood up by a couple of frat boys and are gonna need a cab home at this point with what they’ve drunk so far. I give’em a little magic, a little fairy dust, and they wake up tomorrow with nothing but happy thoughts about tonight.” He shrugged and turned around, tipping his hat at the girls, giving them another wave and a bright, flashing smile. “And later, if I should so feel the urge, I can always give them a call; nothing wrong with that.”

“You know, I’m pretty certain there are some cops out there who would build a date-rape case, if they knew enough.” Doyle smirked at the sudden hunted look in his friend’s eyes. “Relax. Just drop the player act ok, it’s just you and me here…” He smiled a bit. “How is Betsy treating you these days anyway?”

“Short leash man, short leash.” He grinned, holding up his cell phone. “I do love these things, but it’s damn hard to be as lecherous as my nature demands.” He shook his head, his smile softening a bit. “Really though, she’s great. Probably a good influence and all. Angelic really…more or less. She’s dragging me back to school this next spring. I tried to argue that, as a semi-deified personification of folk traditions, I don’t really have any need for a degree. But she seems to think it’ll give me something to do with my free time.”

“She’s a good girl. There are some bets running as to how long it takes her to realize just what a massive project she’s adopted in you. If this goes on much longer though, we may have to change the terms. You’ve got another week and a half to screw up or we all lose.”

“Speaking of inhuman bets on our friends personal lives: if you could schedule a break down sometime early 2008, I’ll cut you in for a third of the profits” Eric sighed, sitting back heavily in his chair. “Seriously though man. Some of us are a little worried. Never seen you like this before. It’s been nearly five yea-“

“She came back.” He shrugged at the look on Eric’s face. “Not on purpose. I moved out of Savannah after she left last time, didn’t want to run into her again. I’m up in Helen now, working with the Forestry Commission.” He drained the rest of his beer, setting down the bottle heavily. “Apparently my son has a great enthusiasm for camping. They were gonna go for a little hike. Their car broke down, and I was at the nearest visitor’s center when the kid showed up asking for help. It was…uh, awkward. Still kinda is. Chris, well, he doesn’t know I’m his dad yet. We have to figure out a way to break it to him.” He looked up to find Eric hunched over the table, jotting down figures on the back of a napkin. After a minute or so he looked up at Doyle.

“Well I’ll be damned. We have got to stop letting oracles in on these pools. The bastard got the thing down almost to the letter.” Having the decency to look at least slightly embarrassed by this, he crumpled the napkin up and tossed it over his shoulder. “But I mean, hey…that’s good, isn’t it? That they’re sticking around?”

“Yeah, I mean, absolutely. They’re renting a cabin right now. I mean, I put them up for a night but that couldn’t last too long without seeming a bit…odd. He’s a smart kid, he’d ask questions.”

“I just hope he doesn’t end up looking too much like his dad.” He saw Doyle’s expression and shook his head sadly. “Poor kid…” He smirked, dodging a wadded up napkin.

“You’re lucky I need you alive kid.” He opened up his knapsack, and riffled through it, pulling out a wide, flat Tupperware container. “Your mom asked for one of these a while back. I was having trouble for a while, but luckily some of my new neighbors were oh so happy to oblige.” He pushed the container across the table; Eric could taste copper through his sinuses even through the sealed container.

“You know, if you’re going to be transporting organs, I find that those little plastic coolers are much better at keeping the smell in.” He opened the container and wrinkled his nose at the bloody woolen cap that dripped continuously into a puddle that never grew large enough to overflow the container. He raised an eyebrow and looked across the table. “How you got one of these off a Red Cap is a story I would very much like to hear.” He frowned a bit, closing the container again. “What did my mother want one of these for?” His voice had suddenly lost much of its playful quality.

“You know I don’t ask questions like that. ‘s bad for business. I know that the esteemed Duchess’ credit is good, that’s all that really matters. Anyway, I really don’t know. I think she’s gearing up for something big- don’t you two talk anymore?”

Eric stood up suddenly, shoving the container under one arm. He drained his beer and backed away from the table. “Look…do you want me to drop you somewhere? I can take you back to your car, or to a rental place, whatever. It’s- it’s late, right? Early maybe? Whatever.”

“That’s alright- I’ll make my own way back.” He watched him walk away, giving him a short nod. “You just get back to Betsy. Get some sleep…but you get that cap to your mother by the end of the week, or I’ll make sure she knows who to blame.” He put some money on the table, watching his friend retreat from the bar at full speed. People could get so touchy about family.

Workshop Story #1

2007-06-04T23:41:55Z

Ok, this is the first of my three workshop stories for my seminar class last semester. Have fun. I'm gonna go ahead and post the work from last semester. Two more to come.

Cameron Funk
Five Page Workshop Story
ENGL 4310B: Josh Russell
Funkrockheaven@yahoo.com

Uncertainly Certain (revision)

I woke up, and the first thing I noticed was that the bed was once again empty. I hadn't really expected any different; it was normally empty and my surprise visitor last night was hardly the type to hang around. We'd developed a sort of ritual over the years when she could be bothered to track me down. She'd show up, usually late at night, we'd either snipe at one another or be painfully, stiffly polite depending on our moods and whether one of us was drunk or not, and then she'd ask to spend the night, because hotels are so expensive these days you see. So I'd make up the guest room (if I had one) or the couch (much more common these days) and we'd say goodnight. Sometime around three in the morning, there'd be a knock at my door and she’d be there, clutching a pillow or blanket, wondering if she might crawl into bed with me. I often find myself consumed with compassion at this point (I'm a real trooper) and will of course invite her in. We don't sleep much after that point, but once I do nod off, she takes advantage of the situation to slip out before I even have a chance to offer her breakfast. We'd been doing this for years, and even though it'd been nearly four years since the last time we'd seen each other, I find its best not to expect too much of her.

"Her" is Aubrey, a girl I never got around to marrying because she had the distressing habit of running away every time something important came up. When we were together we tended to click in exactly the right way, but she was skittish, and I was impatient. She ran off for the first time when she found out that she was pregnant. She was gone for almost the whole nine months before turning up just long enough to let me know it was mine. It was nearly a year before she came back again, and, because this is the kind of luck I have, she came back while I was “entertaining” my friend Daniel’s sister. We’d been friends since Daniel introduced us, but our recent failed relationships, my ever increasing penchant for alcohol, and our combined interest in infuriating her brother had led us to get a little closer. After seeing (possibly “catching” would be more appropriate) the two of us together- she never gave my keys back, just walked right in like she owned the place- she stormed out again, leaving a packet of baby pictures and freshly shredded adoption papers. It was after that meeting that we started falling into the pattern of brief meetings once or twice a year, until all of a sudden, four years ago, she just stopped showing up. I moved out of Savannah after it looked like she wasn’t coming back again, and headed up north to Helen where I used my incredible charm and panache to weasel my way into the position of part owner and head manager at the one and only twenty-four hour diner in town. I needed an all night gig, and I liked to be able to make my own hours. I have a buddy in the state department that I owed a favor to- he’d been trying to get me to accept a position with the forestry department for a few years now, but I’d always begged out. Now that I was living in the area, he was leaning on me extra hard. I spent a few nights out at the stations on a strictly volunteer basis, on the grounds that exposure to mind numbingly dull shifts that went on hours after the isolation had stopped being peaceful might coax me into taking the job.

Last night, a kid, seven or eight years old shows up at the visitors station, says his mom needs a tow truck and some medical attention. He's all sweaty, looks like he's been running the whole way from wherever they stalled out. My replacement would show up in an hour or so, and I know the local mechanic is out of town so I drive him down the mountain road a little ways to where they stalled out, thinking I can at least give them a ride to a hotel or something. The kid talks non-stop, insisting that I speed up, worrying about his mom’s arm (she'd cut herself while digging around under the hood). I pulled over when he pointed to their SUV, and got out with a flashlight and first aid kit. I'd barely taken five steps before the glare of a florescent camp light, hanging from the raised hood, lit up a terribly familiar figure. I slowed down a bit but cleared my throat to try and get the woman’s attention.

"Miss? Your boy here says you had some car trouble...you won't be able to get a tow truck this late around here, but I could probably give you a lift, maybe take a look at your arm while I'm at it?" Even when I'm certain of what I want to do, I have a hard time forcing my statements out as anything but questions when I'm nervous, and as I slowly stepped closer and got a better look at her, the whole situation was making me increasingly anxious.

"I think we'll be fine on our own...thanks for bringing Chris back, but I'll be fine, it's just a cut." Her arm was wrapped with a ripped-up shirt, but the cloth was clearly soaked through. She still hadn't turned around, and apparently hadn't recognized my voice, but I knew hers well enough. Four years had done nothing to cure her of her stubbornness. This meant, however, that the kid I'd ridden over with was probably the same one from the baby pictures that sat in the trunk under my bed back home, and I wasn't at all sure how to deal with that yet.

"I dunno, that arm looks pretty bad. At least let me clean it up, check to see if you need stitches. I'll even drive you into town, it’s really no trouble." I knelt down next to her, opening up the little first-aid kit, calmly sorting through bandages and alcohol pads, waiting for the realization to dawn a few feet above me.

"Look, I'm pretty sure I said that we would be..." Yeah, there it was. I listened to the non-sound of her mouth opening and closing as she tried to cope with this particular shock for a minute and then stood up, pulling her unresisting arm into the light. Exchanging the ripped up shirt for a fresh bandage, I stepped back and started to clean the blood off of my hands with several of those annoying little alcohol pads. I turned to the boy and looked him over briefly.

"Chris...topher, why don't you get your stuff and toss it in the back of my truck. I'll give you and your mom a lift into town. Dunno if there'll be any rooms open this short notice, there's some sort of convention. Quilters or something. So very many old people." I nodded to Aubrey and packed up my kit, heading over to the truck. I got in and started up the engine, flicking through radio stations while I waited. It took about ten minutes; they had a lot of gear, and she had to change her mind several times.

She started to climb into the cramped back "seat,” but her- sorry- our son insisted that she should sit up front with me. We both fought the urge to give the kid a warm, parental slap, and settled into a chilly silence for most of the ride. I really was planning to take them to a motel, but there really was a convention on- the town, Helen, up in the north Georgia mountains- was a bit of a tourist spot for a certain kind of tourist, and the motels actually were all booked up. 'Bree wouldn't let me pay for a bed and breakfast, so it was off to my spare room for the two of them.

I kept glancing at Chris in the rearview on our trip back. Completely unsure of how I should be handling the situation, whether I should announce myself or not. He looked healthy, and now that I knew what to look for, I could see he’d been cursed with more than a little of his fathers looks. I listened as Aubrey explained to him that they would stay with the nice Ranger for the night, or at the most until a hotel vacancy opened up. Once we arrived at my small house outside of town, he was sent to bed with the promise that they would continue their camping trip as soon as their car was fixed. Since I was in such a giving mood, I offered, just before he closed the door to their room, to drive them up there myself so they wouldn't have to lose much time. The look on his mother’s face, and the effort she expended to hide it from him was well worth the night’s discomfort. I walked off to my room and left her to tuck him into bed. When she opened my door a few minutes later I was sitting back on my bed, waiting.

"That was some stunt you pulled there. I don't normally invite total strangers along on family trips you know." She spotted my small drinks cabinet and yanked it open, popping the top off a bottle I'd been planning to save for something a little more joyous. She wasn't too happy with me, but I had a bit of a trump card in this case.

"So I'm a total stranger am I? I was kind of wondering about that. I guess you didn't take any pictures with you when you left...well, I know you didn't. There's a box in storage with all your stuff in it, just in case you wanted to pick that up while you're here. You know, one of us should probably wear a tracking collar or something, just so we don't accidentally end up in the same city." I watched her fill a glass to the brim, downing good scotch far too quickly. "So what's the story exactly? Are you divorced, separated...where am I in all this?"
"You're dead." She paused between two heavy gulps, setting the glass down hard, rolling her eyes at the look on my face. "It sounded better than the truth at the time...at least this way you didn't run out on us or something...I could have told him that. Don't worry, it was a car accident. Drunk driver. Very tragic." She started to fill the glass again and I stood up, slipping the bottle from her hand.

"Dead...right." I shook my head and tipped the bottle back a little sans-glass, but kept it a light pull. I make it a point to be more sober than Aubrey when we're together. She has a habit of being far too clever if I'm smashed. I passed her the bottle again and sat down on the bed once more. She joined me a minute later. "I never got a chance to say anything before, my fault I know, but if you're not gonna let me be the kid’s dad, I'd at least like to help out a little...I dunno, help pay for school...child support, whatever. Something." She made it hard to think, even dead sober…but, dead? I watched her stand there with only the barest traces of guilt hiding out around her eyes. I babbled on for another minute or so until she interrupted me.

"We'll talk about it in the morning." She cuddled up next to me, laying her head on my shoulder, filling the air around us with vanilla perfume.
"In the morning. Right." I sighed and slipped an arm around her, the doubt in my voice must have been fairly obvious.

"Yeah, in the morning asshole- we'll be here. We're going camping." She nuzzled against my shoulder again and closed her eyes, tired from their long car trip. After an hour of listening to her breath, saving little bits of information for the next four-year gap, I drifted off.

As I said before: I woke up, and the bed was empty. I shrugged, attempting to convince myself that I didn't really care all that much, and trudged down the short hallway to my bathroom. The door was closed, but not locked. Bleary eyed and groggy, I got as far as raising the toothbrush to my mouth before I become awake enough to notice the gentle sloshing sound coming from my tub, which was soon followed by a very pointed cough. My head snapped to the sound on early morning auto-pilot and I froze, eventually working my way to up to her face, wearing a self satisfied little smile that said that she knew damn well that the bubbles did nothing to cover anything above the water line, and was also well aware of exactly what sort of effect it was having on me. After a few moments it finally dawned on me that while she was being awfully calm about it, staring too openly was probably rude. It took me another minute to fully look away (It'd been four years, give me a break). Clearing my throat, I set the toothbrush on the edge of the sink and stepped back out into the hallway.

"I'll just...go make some breakfast then. Lemme know when you're done, alright?" She just laughed, sinking back into the water. I shut the door and wandered downstairs. It was early, too early to open up for lunch, maybe I'd just caught her before she'd had a chance to run off. Of course, most people in a big rush don't stop to take a bubble bath first, I wondered where had she found bubble bath, I certainly didn't have any and who takes that stuff on a camping trip? She was here though, and I was making breakfast for three. I'd make pancakes. And eggs. I'd see if I had any bacon rashers left from the butcher’s. I'd make fresh coffee with the press and real beans from the freezer packet, not the slop I normally drank in a rush. Then we'd go camping. Then we'd come back home and maybe I wouldn't have to stall them a day at a time, sabotage their car so they wouldn't be able to leave. Maybe I would wake up to find them under my roof each morning, or at least in the same town.

When Chris skipped down the stairs (an honest to god skip, I had no idea kids actually did that), there was far too much food sitting out on the counter for the three of us. We started in on it while his mother finished up. I started telling him about all the trails we could take a look at, stuff normally out of bounds with out a guide. He seemed excited. He seemed intelligent. He seemed a lot of things. I watched him intently until Aubrey came down and inhaled the coffee while only paying minimal attention to the food. She smiled at me again and, if for no other reason than to play with my head and see that stunned look I'd given her in the bathroom day after day, I knew that they’d stick around. For a while. Probably.

cameronfunk @ 2007-05-11T23:50:00

2007-05-12T04:07:59Z

First off, the band that I'm listening to right now, The Vincent Black Shadow, is now one of my favorite bands ever. Go listen to them. Mach schnell!

Second: I got my final grades tonight. Ended up with two A's and a B+. The A's were in my Creative Writing Senior Seminar class (kind of hard not to get an A really, though there was one girl I felt should have been failed due to the depressingly poor quality of her work), and Irish Folklore (Also a fairly easy A, mostly because I've had this professor before- he represents the WHOLE folk lore department- and I know what he expects for his finals. The B+ was in my Philosophy of Religion class, and I'm actually surprised that I scored that high. I love talking about philosophy (and religion) in class, but I am almost completely illeterate when it comes to technical philosophical language. I'm glad that I managed to cobble together a coherant final paper. I'll be graduating with a 3.13 GPA. I know, it probably should be better, but my Math classes (and one or two of the Japanese classes) really killed my GPA for a while there. I'm not terribly dissapointed though. It's a B average, which is just about what most people who know me would expect.

Third: Tomorrow I graduate. I'm not terribly excited yet, mainly because we don't get a fancy private ceremony for our department (Damn you Amy), and partly because I'm expecting any other feelings I have on the day to be over-ridden by the mind numbing terror I normally experiance when forced in front of a large crowd. The only thing I've really thought about is that after graduating, I'll be able to take the Sorceror's Apprentice hat I got at Disney (might have to cut off the ears), add it to my robe, and I'll be all set for a Harry Potter costume for the book release (which is on my birthday- so hoping she kills Harry as my present).

Also, seriously, go listen to The Vincent Black Shadow. I know they sound like some sad little goth band, but they aren't. Apparently they're named after a motorcycle.

cameronfunk @ 2007-05-05T22:30:00

2007-05-06T02:47:37Z

Just a couple of short items:

First off, apparently my parents ran into the mother of She Who's Name Shall Not Be Spoken, a Hellspawn I went to high school with, and were told to pass on congradulations for my upcoming marriage. Of course, since I'm not even dating anyone at the moment, it came as a bit of a shock to them, and then to me when I got home from work today. I'm...just very curious as to how this news even started. I haven't really spoken to ANYONE from high school in a long time, except via Myspace or Facebook, and those weren't people who would be likely to give ay news to the Hellspawn's crowd. And..hell, even if they were, I certainly haven't been making up stories about my love life. It's just weird.

Second thing. There's a girl at work I'm getting along with pretty well in an entirely platonic way, but she's awfully friendly, and kinda touchy feely at times. I don't actually mind that much- she is pretty cute and everything- but I've been noticing a weird reaction in myself whenever I get hugged or petted (she pets, I dunno, kinda strange, but I'm going with it). I get incredibly, incredibly tense whenever I get physical contact like that now. It's been a long time since I was around friends who hugged and stuff, or had a girlfriend, so I'm not entirely sure how new this is. It's not exactly an uncomfortable feeling... I just sort of jump into flight or fight mode whenever she gets touchy (or feely). I don't want to beg out of the contact, 'cause it is nice and all, plus, I'm a bit worried that if I bring it up, it'll sound like I'm making a big deal about it, which might sort of distance myself from her and other people at work (who I'm already on ghost-like terms with). It's a very weird feeling. I wish I knew what was bugging me about it so much.

So yeah. That's about it. Also, graduation in exactly seven days. I finished my last philosophy paper (which was terrible), and I'm going to put together my creative writing class portfolio tomorrow after work (and Spiderman 3), so that the only thing I'll have left to do is my Irish Folklore in-class final Monday night.

cameronfunk @ 2007-05-01T22:51:00

2007-05-02T02:58:02Z

Do you ever walk out of a store, have the alarm go off due to a faulty tag or something, and then have the clerk just wave you out anyway? Every time that happens I get a little sad that I didn't actually steal something and consider taking something the next time through just for the hell of it. This happens at the bookstore at school all the time, and with the mark-ups that they put on damn near everything I feel the sting of missed theft opportunities even harder.

Also, I graduate on the 12th. I just got the confirmation letter from school stating that my senior exit portfolio received a passing grade, so that means that I will in fact graduate.

...I have no fucking clue what I'm doing next. Though the option of crawling under a rock somewhere seems more appealing every day.

Gakked from Mellie

2007-04-19T05:23:43Z

Comment and I will:

1 - Tell you why I friended you.
2 - Associate you with a song/film.
3 - Tell a random fact about you.
4 - Tell a first memory about you.
5 - Associate you with a character/pairing.
6 - Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7 - Tell you my favorite user pic of yours [if it pertains].
8 - In retort, you must spread this disease in your journal.

cameronfunk @ 2007-04-15T23:27:00

2007-04-16T03:50:37Z

Say someone comes to your house every week, and every week, they start a fire. Or punch you in the crotch. Whatever. They're dicks, and you don't want them in your house. You would ask them not to come back again at some point. I mean, I would. I dunno, maybe some people like their houses to be on fire, and I know for a fact that some fringe elements of society love to have their crotches mistreated. Not really the issue here.

Apparently, the rules of general hospitality, and cost/benefit analysis don't apply to corporations. Take, and I'm just pulling this out of thin air really, a restaurant. Say that there is a group of customers that come in every week on Sunday, apparently on a break from church. Lets say that every single week, every time these people enter the establishment, they cause trouble. They ring up more than a hundred dollars in food, but go out of their way to demand free anything they think they might be able to complain their way into. They lie, they try to steal. They come in at separate times, but insist on being seated as on huge group, and then complain when everyones food doesn't get out at the same time. Not to their incredibly late guests who should have either shown up on time, or sat somewhere else as a separate table, but to the servers. Every week the restaurant wastes money on these people. At some point, you have to be willing to tell people "No. Seriously. Go somewhere else. We don't want your business. You piss everyone off, take up space, cost us more money than you bring in. Take it somewhere else." Apparently you can't do that when you're a corporation. Because being a dick is ok, so long as you remember to send a threatening e-mail to the help department.

Honestly, one of the things that upsets me the most about these people is that they're coming to our store FROM CHURCH. One of the guys who is a notoriously horrible tipper, and who tries to steal from us every single time he comes into the store wears a fucking priests collar. If I ever had doubts as to whether capital G god was a load of crap, those doubts were erased when some divine power repeatedly fails to strike down the ass-hole who has the nerve to lie, cheat, and steal in the vestments of His order.

We go through this every week. The bartender and I (there are usually only three of us left by the time these people come in) spend the first third of every Sunday reassuring one another that maybe, just maybe, they won't come in this week. These are consistently terrible people. Terrible church people. I swear, I still can't get over that. Even though I spent much of my adolescence being ridiculously anti-Christian spurred by the excessive crap I saw mostly in Scouts, part of me still holds onto the belief that there has to be some shining example of Christianity that I'll encounter in my every day life.

The food service industry is probably the wrong place to start looking.

Bah

2007-04-10T16:11:01Z

I'm going to have to start keeping a log of these, but there are certain phrases, in certain situations that I never want to hear.

From any girl with a boyfriend: "Why can't more guys be like you?"

Thank you, that is all.

cameronfunk @ 2007-04-10T10:36:00

2007-04-10T14:38:09Z

Today, at around 4:30 this evening, I'll be turning in my final workshop story for my senior seminar fiction class. It felt so nice yesterday, when I finished typing it up, knowing that that was really the last big thing I had to do for the semester. I have two take home finals in my other classes, and a portfolio full of revisions for the seminar class, but nothing that will stress me out as much as writing stories for workshop does. This semester was actually better than most, and my workshop group has actually been helpfully responsive, as opposed to the previous workshops I participated in. It's been nice, but I'll be glad when this semester is finally over.

I've found a few new bands that I'm pleased with.

I downloaded some of the Zutons and found them to be very awesome, then I watched a music video of theirs on Yahoo and found their sax player to be a really cute girl. Doubleplusgood.

There's a band called Elysian Fields. They're interesting- apparently slotted into a genre known as noir-rock...which I guess is kind of like less depressing, repetitive, and whiny goth? I dunno, it's kind of hard to describe. They've got a very loungy feel, kind of like a more rock version of Portishead, they're a little trip-hoppy too I guess.

There's a great bluesy singer named Carina Round (say it out loud) who unfortunately only has one album on iTunes. I'll have to hunt down more of her CD's.

I've finished reading the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher. I bought the latest paperback book in the series at school because I'd finished the book I'd brought with me earlier than I'd expected and it may very well be impossible for me to go half a day without something fresh to read. So yeah, I started with the eighth book in the series, and then went out and bought the previous seven over the next few days, as soon as I'd finished it. It's a fantastic urban fantasy series. A bit like the Anita Blake/ Merry Gentry books my Laurel K. Hamilton, only without all the rampant sex.

I used to quite enjoy the sex in the Hamilton books; it started off nonexistent, and then kept getting amped up through the books until it hit a high (but reasonable) point in Incubus Dreams (the last book with any real attempt at plot. Up until her last two books, it's always been really well written, and- believe it or not- had some relevance to the story. But she's started making it into too much of a crutch. Her last two books- one for each of her series'- have been sacrificing plot for excessive, and not even all that interesting anymore, elaborate sex scenes. It's a shame because while I think that Butcher is a superior writer, Hamilton's world building skills are far more developed. For a quick run down, Hamilton's stories involve private investigators (female) with supernatural talents that live in worlds that are fully aware of the existence of the supernatural world. Vampires have been granted limited legal rights (although they can't vote yet) lycanthropy is an infectious disease, and its carriers are treated like AIDS victims, there are real fairies running around, and the use of magic to commit a murder is punishable by the death penalty without a trial. It's a really well built world that deals with the interaction between the mundane and supernatural worlds by sidestepping the usual trick of having the supernatural realm as a hidden, monolithic empire that somehow evades detection by the rest of the world.

Butcher's world is still developing. There seems to be some limited awareness of magic and the like, but most people don't want to accept that its part of the real world. However, the series seems like it could head for a more open approach. The main character after all, is a wizard that advertises as such through the yellow pages. Even if Butcher's world building skills aren't quite as original (only in the overall sense- even though the hidden empire thing is a bit played out, the specifics are stunningly unique) as Hamilton’s, he beats her out by a long shot in dialogue, humor, sense of timing, and characterization. Hamilton can't help but put the climax of her novels at the very, very last moment of the books. You often get this feeling, around the last chapter or so, that there's no way she could possibly wrap things up at this point, that there's just too much that needs to happen in ten short pages. She manages it...but only by rushing things to the extreme. Her endings are almost always reflective, even though the rest of the book is very much in the present tense. She just can't seem to get the hang of pacing. Butcher does a much better job of this. You get to the climax of the story and there are still a few chapters left to help things wind down at a coherent rate. The man also writes some of the most hilarious dialogue and prose I've read in a long time. Not since my first exposure to the Discworld novels have I ever laughed out loud while reading a book. I do it all the time while reading Butcher, it's a nice feeling.

One thing to note: The Dresden Files as books are fan-fucking-tastic. The Dresden Files on Sci-Fi is fucking terrible. The characters, details, and plots have been utterly changed from the books, bearing almost no resemblance at all. I watched my first episode having only read the eighth book, and I already picked up the kind of details changes that just make you terribly confused. Nicholas Cage is apparently a producer. I think that he should be banned from taking part in the film version of anything that was once in print. He ruined Ghost Rider, and now the Dresden Files. I hate that man so very much.

Shtuff

2007-03-19T04:41:13Z

Things that I like:

Scrubs- I'm collecting the season DVD's. There's some great commentary and other shtuff. Sarah Chalke is amazingly hot for a blond, and John C. McGinley has grown to be one of my heroes as Dr. Cox...which is probably not a wonderful thing now that I think about it. They're expensive of course, but luckily business at work has been picking up lately, which brings me to the second thing that I like.

Good tips- People who tip on top of gratuity are awesome. This only happens with the parties of eight+ who don't realize that we've already forced them to tip. I've been getting nifty 30 and 40 dollar tips from one table thanks to these beautifully careless people. I've been thinking that maybe we should charge gratuity based on the ticket amount rather than table size though; I had a party of seven today that racked up a 99 dollar ticket and only left 12 bucks as a tip. Meh.

The Fratellis- I love all this retro rock that's coming out now. Good retro rock. Wolfmother, Louis the XIV, The Arctic Monkeys, and I suppose I can throw any psychobilly band in here too, since they live and breath off of using riffs from rockabilly. It's good stuff, when its done right. I read/hear people talking about these bands (particularly Wolfmother) being derivative- which can absolutely be a bad thing if its done too often, too quickly, but these guys are doing new things with old sounds, not just re-hashing 'cause they don't have better ideas. The Fratellis were featured in an iTunes commercial, and their CD is one of the only one's I've actually bought on iTunes in a while, as opposed to acquiring it by other (more nefarious) means.

When My Workshop Stories Get Positive Reviews: This semester's workshop has been interesting. My first story was mainly criticized for not making sense...which made sense to me since I'd cut out everything remotely unusual (fantasy-ish) to avoid getting 17 reviews about how everyone hates genre. The stuff I cut out was fairly plot important, and ended up making a few things not quite make sense. I fixed them in revisions, but I got frustrated and went crazy with my next assignment, heading full tilt into the land of genre. It got almost entirely positive reviews, and the only negative ones were from people who clearly didn't want to read/review genre. Big change from the genre story I turned in for my last workshop class that got a bunch of crap that had nothing to do with the writing. I love it when I go in and everyone points out problems I already know are there- it might seem like a waste of a workshop, but at least it doesn't mean that there are great big holes that you were completely blind to during and after the actual writing process.

Bah

2007-02-25T06:05:06Z

I was watching SNL (sorry) and this band Arcade Fire was the musical guest. I wasn't terribly fond of what I was hearing during their first song, and then the lead singer did something that made me hate the band for good. The song they played (I have no idea what it was called- I was so bored that I didn't really pick out any noteworthy lyrics) was incredibly sedate, boring, and gentle- and then once they were finished, the singer broke his guitar in a fit of...what? Contentedness? I dunno. I'm not even particularly thrilled when bands with something even remotely approaching passion smash their guitars. But when you're displaying about as much "rock" as an American Idol winner, it just makes you look stupid. Of course, given that they're one of those "indie" bands, I'm sure that the band itself, or their fans would simply say that he smashed the guitar ironically, because that's an excuse for doing pretty much anything for those people.

Thank you. This has been another installment from Cameron's "I really should be either sleeping or completing my ten page story/senior portfolio, and am scraping the bottom of the barrel for distractions" theater.

Robot Chicken

2007-02-19T04:04:18Z

"On behalf of all the red shirts that have fallen before me, it makes me proud to speak the following sentence: "I'm the only one who brought a gun". "

This was spoken by a red shirt on Robot Chicken just before he shot the named crew. They were stranded on an abandoned planet and were trying to decide who to eat first. Kirk called chain of command and they were all descending on the red shirt when he broke that line out. Earlier in the sketch he'd used the logic of "I'm a red shirt, you've GOT to have a red shirt" to be one of the five people allowed to beam off of the Enterprise before it blew up. Fantastic.

Music!

2007-02-18T06:43:59Z

Just dropping off a list of some songs I've been listening to over and over again lately. Some of these have been used during scenes in Scrubs, which I have also been watching over and over (11-Noon on Comedy Central, then again from 7-8 at night, 10:30 on whatever it is The WB is calling itself these days, and 11:30-12-30 on channel 15...whatever the hell that is. Yeah, I'm a bit obsessed.)

Dreaming of You- The Coral: A springy, finger snapping song with fairly depressing lyrics.

Overkill- Colin Hay: Um...yeah, I'm not really a Men At Work fan, but this is one of the Scrubs songs that just burrowed itself into my brain.

Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldnt've Fallen In Love With)- The Pete Yorn version from Scrubs and Shrek 2...its a little cleaner than The Buzzcocks' version. Some punk bands should just write songs for other people. This one is really sticking in my head a lot lately,so here are some lyrics just in case you haven't heard the song:

You spurn my natural emotions
You make me feel like dirt
And I’m hurt
And if I start a commotion
I run the risk of losing you
And that’s worse

Ever fallen in love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
You shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with

I can’t see much of a future
Unless we find out what’s to blame
What a shame
And we won’t be together much longer
Unless we realize that we are the same

Ever fallen in love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
You shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with

You disturb my natural emotions
You make me feel like dirt
And I’m hurt
And if I start a commotion
I’ll only end up losing you
And that’s worse

Ever fallen in love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
You shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with

Ever fallen in love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
Ever fallen in love
In love with someone
You shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with
Fallen in love with
Ever fallen in love with someone
You shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with

The Lovecats- OK Go: I just found this on an E.P. of theirs on iTunes. Had to buy it. Love these guys. And I was just looking for the lyrics for this song when I found out that it's a cover...I'm a dork...or possibly just not a Cure fan. Damn...the OK Go version is much, much better. How sad for the Cure.

Flathead- The Fratellis: Heard it on the latest iTunes commercial, their other stuff is pretty good too. Can't wait for the full album to be sold over here.

Laid- A cover by Better Than Ezra: The original is a little bit better but I like Better Than Ezra and this song would be pretty awesome played by just about anyone.

New Shtuff!

2007-01-27T04:11:25Z

Haven't updated in a while, not that that should be a huge shock or anything. Here are some random updates.

The surgery went more or less well. There were no complications or anything, but the recovery is taking longer than I'd like. Lots of infections I guess. Also, one of the medications I'm taking, prednisone, can apparently cause your bones to become a little brittle. I found this out after finally getting an orthopedics appointment because I'd been walking around on a stress fracture on my left foot for about a week. The managers at work have been fairly accepting so far, but I'm waiting for them to fire me for having to take so much time off. I'd almost welcome it at this point as it'd force me to get a different (and almost certainly better) job. We'll see how that goes.

School is interesting this semester. It should be my last one as long as I can get a working portfolio developed in time. Here are the classes I'm taking:

Senior Seminar Writing Workshop for Fiction: This is a fun class. The professor is the same guy I took my Narrative Techniques class with, and I get along with him great. I was relieved when I saw his name attached to the course because of some of the horror stories I've heard about the other professors for this workshop. We have five, ten, and fifteen page stories due over the course of the semester. I turned in my five pager last week, and I feel pretty anxious about it because I know its crap. I had about twenty pages in notes and re-writes that I'd been working on for weeks, and I think I just blew a fuse and tried to fit too much into too little space. It just kinda sucks because I know my first review day of workshop is going to be uncomfortably silent because people often don't like to be terribly cruel during workshops, or I'll be hearing about a lot of stuff I already know is wrong with the piece. Bah.

Irish Folk Lore: This one counts as an English class for my major, and I would have taken it even if it didn't. This'll be my third class with this professor (because he literally is the entire folk lore department) and I really enjoy his classes. The last class I had with him was British folk lore. Irish will be a little more fun for me just because it'll be harder to avoid some of the faerie stories when discussing the actual folk tales with the Irish than it was with the British. The British have plenty of fairie stories (November 1st is Puca (Pooka) day, where people in rural communities leave out fresh bread from the newly harvested wheat in the field for the vaugely malevolent faeries the pooka...slightly malicious horse spirits who would take unsuspecting travelers on terrifying, but hardly ever deadly wild rides late at night) but they had more influence from the mainland and so they lost a bit more of their home brewed beliefs over the years than the Irish. I'm definitely going to get my minor in Folk Lore while I'm doing my graduate work (I'm in the process of talking that over with my advisors, yes I know I'm starting late).

Philosophy of Religion: This is taught by another professor that I've had before for World Religions. He's a smart ass, and highly enjoyable at lectures. This class, so far, is mostly just depressing me. I'm having trouble understanding how the philosophical community hasn't declared a "win" against the religious philosophers after 5000 years or so on the subject of the existence (or lack there of ) of the Christian god. Every argument in favor of Gods existence has pretty much ended with a philosophical fudge, a sort of "well, we don't have the mental capacity to understand why that is, because it's about God" or "We don't know the answer yet, but we will some day", or some other variant of "It's God, so the normal rules don't apply". None of these are logically sound arguments, and I have to imagine that philosophers arguing against these people spend a lot of their time bashing their heads against walls in frustration. I'm really interested to see if there are some decent pro-God arguments out there. Fortunately, we're only two weeks into the class so there's plenty of time for my hopes to be dashed.

Introduction to Journalism: Yeah, you know how when you first started college, and you were really, really confused about that senior in your intro classes? I absolutely understand why they were there at this point. The class offerings here at State have been sparse these last few semesters, especially considering the fact that I had two semesters to take a total of three classes for my degree. I needed four classes for full time status this semester, so I picked up the intro class for the hell of it. It's not completely depressing. The instructor is slightly annoying with her extremely slow speech patterns, like talking is too much of a physical effort for her, but she seems nice enough. The material is easy, and it'll pretty much only require that I continue to have a basic understanding of mass media, and follow the news like I do anyway. I'm having some issues with the ideas that are being taught. Like apparently its still textbook knowledge that newspapers are still the default "historical" texts for when people really need to know things. In the age of digital media where you can go to You Tube or pretty much anywhere else on the Internet and dredge up video of damn near anything you want, I find that idea to be just slightly behind the times, but who knows. The only other issue I have there is with some of the other students. We've got a few typical freshmen "I don't really want to be here, but I haven't resolved myself to getting an education yet so I'm gonna waste time in every possible way" folks, and there's one kid who describes himself as a libertarian, but seems to have enough venom only for the democratic party. He commented on how disgusted he was with the Democrats lack of support for the presidents goals at the State of the Union address. I'm more than a little confused about why a Libertarian would be HAPPY with this president. Those guys are supposed to hate Big Government with a passion; Bush and his administration have been enough Big Government for three democratic parties these last few years. I always thought the libertarians were supposed to be all about the government staying the hell out of their business, but then maybe that only counts for their personal financial business. Before he moved to a different seat last class, he would also spend the entire class muttering comments to himself (but loud enough for anyone "interested" to hear, because otherwise how would he get attention), mostly in response to something offensively democratic.

Time for music.

I've been obsessively clicking the "more" button on iTunes' Just For You program. I have a love/hate relationship with that thing. On the one hand, I wouldn't have ever heard of quite a few bands if it weren't for that system, on the other, it keeps suggesting really weird things that are either only distantly related to my purchase/library information, or are so far out in left field that I can't even understad how they got there. How does buying The Open Door by Evanescence make them think that I should also be buying the next Christina Aguilera CD? That was one of the more confusing ideas they had for me. Anyway, here are a few of the new bands I'm listening to.

Metric: Apparently they've been around a while. They're a new wave/indie band that kind of reminds me of a less Riot Grrrl version of Sleater-Kinney. They have a female singer, which gives them about a bazillion bonus points in my book right away. I'm lumping them in with a new genre that I've created just for my music library that consists entirely of bands that seem to have lead singers or song writers that are really poets, but figured out that they couldn't make much money in the academic field. Like that guy from Cake. He doesn't really sing, he just sort of does that extended talking thing from The Music Man. I'm cool with that. It sounds good if you have a good band behind it. But yeah, there's Cake, The Pixies, Metric, Sleater-Kinney (I actually hate their singers voice some times, but she sounds good when she doesn't warble all over the place) and several others that I can't think of right now.

Damone: An awesome little rock band that almost borders on being power-pop because their lead singer is something like 16, and when you have a sixteen year old girl as a lead singer, things can get a little poppy sometimes. Fortunately, she has an awesome band that really rocks backing her up, and this stops them from sounding like another Avril Lavigne. Their older stuff actually seems to be worse than their newer album, which is exactly the opposite of how normal bands work. Kind of like the Foo Fighters. I've always liked their radio hits, but I once walked out on their set at Big Day Out because I hadn't heard all of the flowery, sappy stuff that was on their first couple of albums. Since then, I've been increasingly in love with anything that Dave Ghrol does (He is possibly the hardest working man in rock, I imagine him wandering around studio to studio while other bands are recording, just randomly offering to play drums with them for a song or two).

The Libertines: I have my newly musically blooming ex-girlfriend to thank for this one. This is another band that I had apparently been under a rock in a cave for for the last few years. Oddly though, I was very into one of the bands that people always say sound LIKE the Libertines (The Arctic Monkeys) first. A lot of the recordings I've found of these guys are kind of shitty; I'm chalking that up to that damnable indie DIY attitude. Other than that, they're a highly enjoyable post-punk revival band. Great lyrics, and entirely tolerable vocals so long as you ignore the lead singers random desire to scream atonally before some tracks.

Mad Sin: A psychobilly band. Apparently one of the originals. I like these guys, they're energetic, competent musicians, and I got 17 of their songs off of iTunes for six bucks. Gods bless the punk rock determination to not make any money. The lead singer sounds eerily like the guy from Necromantix, and I'm starting to suspect that this is because ALL male singers for psychobilly bands sound alike, I think it might be part of the theme (I have to say, I just did a wikipedia search to confirm that he isn't actually the Necromantix guy- I had to check after finding out that that guy is also in the Horrorpops). Now that I have a better sampling of these bands, I'm starting to understand that there is a passable reason for separating rockabilly from psychobilly. I had some trouble with this before, and I still suspect that there are some elitist reasonings behind the whole concept, but there are enough thematic differences that I can accept the re-naming.

There are plenty of other new bands, but damn this entry is getting long. Ok, I'm done.

Surgery

2006-12-27T12:44:03Z

My rescheduled surgery is going to be at 10:30 today. Once again, it's outpatent, and I should be home about four or five hours after they're done. If I'm not around for a while (just in case anyone notices) this'll be why. Later everyone.

grrr

2006-12-21T16:32:22Z

So...I got the the hospital, they took down my information, gave me some pills for my stomach, put me on the IV, actually put me under into the anestesia....and THEN decided to ask if I'd brought my CAT scans with me. I had not. So they apparently couldn't do the procedure without the scans...so I might go back tomorrow, if they can fit me in, or I might have to wait until next week. Grr.

Meh

2006-12-21T04:05:00Z

So. I'm going in for some surgery tomorrow morning. It's outpatient, I'll be home later in the day, so hopefully it shouldn't be a big deal. So if I'm not around for a while, it's probably because I'm full of magical happy pain pills.

Juicy Pear and Buttered Popcorn shall not mix.

2006-12-10T04:58:53Z

So I was in Target doing some shopping tonight after work. Mostly foodstuffs, but I found several penguin themed items for my friend Kat, who is obsessed with Penguins. She also likes Jelly Belly's, and since there were about 20 different flavors, I called to ask her which were her favorites (which was good, 'cause I remembered peach for some reason instead of juicy pear). She told me that she wanted buttered popcorn and juicy pear, but that they shouldn't be put together because the flavors might rub off on each other. So, for no apparent reason other than to remind the higher powers that I am in fact hell-bound, I said that the juicy pear and buttered popcorn jelly belly's would be separate but equal, to which she replied that she'd actually prefer more juicy peach than buttered popcorn. So I announced that they would simply be segregated in the good ol' fashioned southern tradition. All of this, by the way, was in a fairly crowded Target in Duluth. I went on (obviously rather eager to secure my place in eternal damnation) to declare that the buttered popcorn jelly belly's (The lesser of the two flavors) would be put in a shabby, cramped, poorly constructed container, while the juicy pear (The superior candy race), would be given spacious and extravagant living quarters.

The whole thing was entirely too funny at the time, but I don't imagine it will carry over too well now. It reminded me of the episode of Robot Chicken that had the Care Bears ethnically cleansing the Care Bear Cousins so that the cloud land would be pure.

I'm a bad, bad man.

cameronfunk @ 2006-10-31T23:36:00

2006-11-01T03:36:19Z

I was handing out candy tonight, instead of out at a party or something, because of the lameness that I'm sure you all know infests my very soul. Anyway, I didn't really have a costume, but I was wearing my horns from ren-fest. My currently shaggy hair hides the string really well, I think I might wear them tomorrow. Most of the kids and adults just kind of chuckled when they saw the horns, but one little girl, after I deposited her handful of candy, looked up at my head and gasped "He has horns!!" And then ran off toward her father yelling. "He has horns growing out of his head!!!" I was quite amused.

cameronfunk @ 2006-10-27T00:49:00

2006-10-27T05:09:24Z

Last semester I ran into a problem. I only needed 3 classes to graduate; my creative writing fiction senior seminar workshop, and two upper devision level English courses. They don't offer the senior seminars in the fall, something about wanting to bring everyone in on a set timetable. This was a problem for myself and several of my classmates, as not taking the class this semester would mean that we would be stuck here for a whole semester longer than we should have been, forcing us to waste money on fluff classes to maintain full time student status. After this semster I'll have my two upper devision level classes, but I still need that workshop to graduate.

So when I went to register for classes yesterday, I was mildly worried to see that I had to e-mail the creative writing department head to ask for permission to be in the class, but I went ahead and sent the e-mail. I got a reply today (late in the after noon, meaning she wouldn't get my response today) asking if I really needed the course this spring. Apparently she's "working on a long waiting list" for the course, and wanted to see when I was graduating. If I don't get in, they're going to try to milk another semester out of me, and I really can't afford that. The thing that really pisses me off here, is that when I tried to ask them to create a special section of the senior seminar for this current semester (last semester, when I found out they wouldn't be offering it) they told me that they didn't want to do it because if they offered it, and not enough people enrolled, the numbers would reflect badly on their orginazation skills and would probably hurt the departments budget in the future. They wouldn't even give me the e-mails of creative writing students who might need the class so I could spread the word a little amongst people who weren't in my classes. We had a teacher lined up who was willing to teach the class if they'd offer it. But they just didn't want to risk getting in trouble. Now the class is apparently on a waiting list, and they're only offering one section of it. I'd say the demand for the class is pretty fucking high. High enough that they could have offered it this semester as well, and been in tip top shape with their bosses.

I have no clue what the hell I'm going to do if they don't let me into the class. I can't afford to not take classes next semester, I need the full time student status. I also don't want to take 4 more fluff classes next semester, I don't think I could line up a minor at this point- if I'd known I was going to be in this situation when I was registering for this semesters classes, I might have been able to get a few pre-reqs out of the way, but at this point I just don't think I have the time. I have a feeling that this is going to come down to sheer luck (meaning I get into the class), or my yelling at everyone in the department I can find until something gets done, which'll fuck up my already tenuous relationship with the department heads. I also have a feeling that I'm fucked either way this turns out. Yippie.

cameronfunk @ 2006-10-24T13:25:00

2006-10-24T17:46:15Z

I should probably be paying attention in Editing class right now...but I really don't feel like it- so very bored. The class is 2 and a half hours long, but only meets once a week. I keep telling myself after every one of these classes I take (5 so far) I tell myself that I won't do it again; this is one of those times that I wish I could stick with my plans more reliably.

I picked up the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (can I get a Ramen?) at Barnes and Noble yesterday and am quite pleased with the text. It's an excellent display of critical thinking, and a wonderful piece of satire. I'll scatter a few quotes later, but pulling a book out for referance would attract more attention than simply typing.

Also, I don't want to walk home today. Even though every person that reads this journal lives more than an hour away, I think that someone should really come and pick me up. The lucky driver will be compensated with a freshly baked cookie.

cameronfunk @ 2006-09-27T06:33:00

2006-09-27T10:41:12Z

The president of Pakistan was on the Daily Show last night. He's meeting Bush today. An important foreign government official met with Jon Stewart BEFORE he met with our president. This is both hilarious, and a little pathetic on our part. I'm sure that there's some scheduling explanation; maybe he's leaving right after the meeting with Bush and couldn't make the taping for the Daily Show today or maybe he did have an unofficial "friendly" meeting with Bush prior to his Daily Show appearance. Of course it's also pretty likely that our president, our government is such a joke that it gets outranked by a fake news show. That new Robin Williams movie seems slightly prophetic right now.