Forced Content (2)

Here we go. And by "we", we mean "I". And by "go", we mean "am sitting at my computer again completely not knowing what to write." But, despite this apparant fundamental flaw, there is a distinctive noise coming from the keyboard where my fingers are ticky-tacking over a row of buttons with strange symbols on them.


**fifteeen minutes of dead air**


Mercifully I was called away for a task. Unfortunately, when I returned to my desk, my computer was just where I left it and had not spontaneously generated any content for me.

In the time it would take a thousand monkeys chained to a thousand typewriters to unionize themselves and demand fair labor practices...

Once upon a time there was a story that had a beginning that went exactly like this sentence does.

- J

Forced Content (1)

I've been crawling around my own mind today like a millipede trying to reach the end of a slinky. Every time I feel like i've gotten somewhere it all looks terribly familiar. Progress is impossible to judge; my back legs are just in front of me.
The word "opportunity" keeps dangling around like it's attached by a string to the stick of someone riding me. I'm not even sure what it means anymore. Just that I want to leave my kids a legacy of more than just what I've got right now. And by legacy, let's be honest here, I mean money primarily. It's hard to see right now. I feel like i'm not going anywhere, but that life is streaming by so quickly. The days are so full of blocks of dedicated time, and during the intermissions all I can muster is a bathroom break and a few moments of wondering whetehr a snickerdoodle is actually worth three dollars.
I've got plenty of "opportunity"... screening shirts, investigating the Magic market, bugging Shane for extra work. Writing. And even that short list feels overwhelming, since where will the time come from? I feel certain that a better man would have set himself up in such a way that he would not have these problems. A smarter, harder-working, more reliable, respectible man would have a higher salary, use it to live in a nicer home, and to provide for the beautiful wife that somehow I ended up with instead of him. Of course, the rub of it is that I feel like I should have been that man, with all the talent I've got going for me. I've reached the point where discussions with myself about talent are all in retrospect. Returning to school is completely unrealistic. The clock only runs one direction, and my younger self badly misunderstood the nature of "Real Life". I tend to actively regret all the money I've wasted, but the time is a far worse sting.
When we sin, it is easy to convince ourselves to continue. It's a way of granting ourselves an ugly parody of the freedom that is actually offered by repentance. In the same way, it is terrifyingly easy for me to excuse the wasting of time presently, because of the pathetic foolishness of my past from birth up through yesterday.
God's mercies are new every day. I must ask for them, and accept them, and live in light of them, every day. There is no yesterday in Christ. There is only Opportunity.

Why am I tempted to bear that blessing as if it were a burden?

- J

Love Letters from the Skeleton Kingdom of the Moon - Part 4

Cable approached the damp musician with a measured pace. The man was sitting cross-legged, with a black velvet top hat out in front of him. Whether there was money in the chaparrel was impossible to tell, since it was half-full of water. As cable drew near, he could see that the man's eyes were glowing a pleasant lemon-yellow.
"Hello, Evan," said Cable. Evan Worth was someone who Cable had met on a previous case. Last time, though, he had been playing the accoridian and running from the law. "You're a long way from Prague."
The man, Evan, smiled at Cable winningly. "Hello, detective," he chimed, not pausing the uneasy melody of his guitar. "I hear you've got a tough case."
"News travels fast around here. Still palling around with zombies, are you?" Cable barbed, knowing that his day of investigation must have stirred the hive.
"They're so much more decent than the living," the guitar player bantered back, "They tell you right up front that all they're interested in is eating your brain." Evan giggled, still smiling braodly. "With the pre-dead, you've got to dance around it all night. Present company excepted, of course"
Cable smiled in spite of himself. Evan had his flaws, but on the whole the gumshoe liked him. Sort of in the way that a man trapped underground in a tomb liked a fresh breath of nitrous oxide. It didn't help, but it was not altogether unwelcome. Reaching into the pocket of his soaked trenchcoat, Cable retrieved thirty-five cents and a city bus token. He tossed them into the musician's top hat where they disappeared with a wet 'plorp' sound. Evan dipped his head in appreciation.
"I know you're the kind of person who hears things," Cable said meaningfully. Evan's eyebrows raised as his fingers found a diminished chord. "Do you know any deceased who might have been sending mash notes to one Mrs. Jones?"
Evan grinned an insane grin. "Well," he chirped, "you're right about me hearing things." He paused for a long time and closed his eyes while he wound his way around an extended cadenza. Cable was patient, already as wet as it was possible for a human to become and thus in no further danger from the precipitation. "I owe you from before," Evan offered. It was true; Prague had been a bad memory to Cable for a long time. "I have my little failings, but I pay my debts," the musician finished. Meridian nodded.
Evan stopped his music abruptly and looked Cable squarely in the eye. The lack of music seemed to echo through the empty street. "Those envelopes, word got round that they has some funny numbers on them."
"Do you know what they mean?" Cable inquired without hesitation. Evan smiled a little smile and stood up, placing his guitar in the concrete corner of the stairs that lead up to the hotel. Bending over, he picked up his hat and swiftly put it on to prevent the contents from pouring out.
"Do you know that Hindu werewolf that hangs out down by the airport?" he asked directly.
"The guy they call 'Hairy Krishna'? Yeah, I've heard of him," Cable said, narrowing his eyes.
"He might be able to help you. Well, so long gumshoe." Evan then rounded the edge of the stairs and walked away, down the street in the pouring rain, without looking back. Cable glanced at the abandoned guitar, considered the warm lobby of the Russle Hotel with fondness for a moment, and then flagged down a taxi.

- J