Still life, with Cthulhu

I woke up on Sunday morning and I realized I´d just been through a nightmare: There was this eerie mansion on the outskirts of town, it was all brand-new and lavishly-decorated and empty. There was a pool-like structure in an indoor garden filled with human eyes sprouting out of the ground like flowers. The eyes were shut and never budged even when punctured with the penknife I´d just happen to have with me.
Afterwards there was this huge ceremony, like a wedding, at an adjacent ballroom, with the only difference being that, instead of Jesus Christ, there was this tiny green Cthulhu hanging from the cross above bride and groom, tentacles and all.

I woke up and looked at the book over the night table: “Whoa,” I told myself. “Easy on the Lovecraft, buddy.”

Of course it was either that, way too much H. P. Lovecraft during the day, or the drinking binge with _____ the night before, that started with the champagne at this swanky hotel bar at eight in the evening and ended with more champagne near three a.m. at this pretty cool bar downtown with mirrored walls and neon lightning up the ceiling, but of course that happened only after we´d gone back to the restaurant in which we´d had the shrimp soufflé with the Riesling, to pick up ____´s birthday present- namely the mid-1980s Rolling Stones, that he´d left behind after dessert.

Applied science

It´s the 20th of October and I´m rummaging through some leftover Post-Its scattered over my desk at the office.
On one of them, a very poorly-drawn Dr. Fate is warning me I have up until the 31st to submit the Introduction to this Monograph I´m supposed to be writing as a requirement for my MBA accreditation-- which I´d completely forgotten about so far.

"Ten Days?! Jesus Christ!," I exclaim aloud to myself. "I could probably come up with my own space-program and terraform goddamn Mars in ten days!"
Then I make a bet with myself that I can get it done in less than two hours.

"And this is...," I smile, crack my knuckles against one another and whistle the opening lines to the Jackass theme song, "Extreme monograph!"

Never stop

Post #400: And thus it comes to pass the time for coming up with the script for the season finale arrives: The screenwriters from Hell have all prepped up their typewriters and polished up their hooves. They take a puff from their cigars and blow the smoke over the rotting blank sheet of paper in front of them. SCENE 1, they type. Then a smile, oh so pitch-black and devilishly. SCENE 2, they type. Then 3 and 4 and so on.

They all do have a plot in mind, mind you. It´s all the screwing up creeping up and piling up like a gestalt of bad ideas all rolled into one: It´s the ingrown toenail-gone-half-hemorrhage, it´s the patellae getting blown to bits all over again, it´s my almost getting fired on 9/11 for bypassing SAP roles restrictions for my team then again my almost getting fired on 10/11 for pulling up stunts to bring up everyone´s attention to risks in data security. It´s also, and I guess mainly, the heartbreaks and the passing ups, it´s all the hang ups and the passing-throughs, the long weekend nights wasted staring at the wall or behind empty glasses in crowded nightclubs. It´s F. calling me up like months ago to say she misses me like hell and me, well, I just shrugged and pretended not to care, cool enough to freeze white-hot Napalm burning in the jungles of Vietnam, then speeding up with everything, moving so fast the ensuing months passed like early morning sunlight refracted through a drop of water.
Yet the screenwriting guild under Satan´s employ type on: SCENE 5, 6. SCENE 20, 21.

Maybe life´s telling me to slow down, to think or plan a little before acting, to stop moving so goddamn fast as if I´m fleeing from this entire twenty-century ahead. Maybe.

The screenwriters from hell take a little break: They go for a drink of water, free internet p*rn, whatever really. When they come back into the room and face the script lying on the typewriter—alas!—the surprise.
Someone, someone has sneaked in and continued the script from where they stopped, right there as the plot climaxes. They find written down the following words:

THERE IS NO LAND BEYOND THE LAW WHERE TYRANTS RULE WITH UNSPEAKABLE POWER. IT´S A DREAM... FROM WHICH THE EVIL WAKE UP TO FIND THEIR FATE... THEIR TERRIFYING HOUR...
--THE SANDMAN.

They look up, outraged, exchange suspecting glances amidst one another: Who could´ve dared... Then their attention is caught up by someone standing over the window sill, a silhouette against the full moon outside.
“Ta.. da.. da-daaaaaaa-daaaaa!,” I chant that mid-1990s Batman cartoon leitmotif with my arms spread over my head, holding up the bottom of my jacket like a makeshift cape. “Okay, fine”, I tell them. “Maybe you did get me with my pants down, something like that. And maybe I do have to slow down a bit, cool off a notch, think up some. I´ll grant you that. But I´ll never stop.”

“Going away on vacations for a week won´t save you, you know,” says one of them.
“You´ll be back within a week after you´ve gone,” says another.
“Perform as many miracles as you like,” says a third one. “But once you´re back it´s still November and that will give us plenty of time to catch up.”

“Yeah well about that.” I think for a moment as I sit down over the ledge with my legs hanging inside the room. Then in the back of my head, from out of the blue, Fleetwood Mac starts playing Go your own way. I think of the streets of Manhattan a couple of weeks from now. I smile at the screenwriters from Hell: Regular people get Norns or Furies knitting up their fates in a strand of wool, something like that. I get short baldy cigar-smoking screenwriters in Hell. Saying they want to catch up with me, no less. God. Okay, fine, I tell them: “You guys wanna catch up with me, you´d damn well better get yourselves a Maserati.”

You know you´re straight when...

I was watching TV last night and Sex and the City was on HBO (the movie, not the series). I sat through the entire movie even though I didn´t get like 2/3 of the jokes. “I think I´m supposed to laugh on this one,” I´d often think as someone crapped her pants, and someone else just wouldn´t go back to her cheating husband out of sheer spite.

I liked the bit with the sushi, though.

Lost in the moment

I´m sitting back on the couch in my living room with the computer on my lap, writing this under the pitch-black darkness of a blackout. Bruce Springsteen rages on through the MP3 player.
The back of the room basks in the bluish-silver glow from the monitor and is reflected back against my nape by the wide two-paneled window just a palm beyond the sofa.

There´s this airplane-shaped pencil sharpener resting tucked, half-lost, half-found among the throwpillows at my back. My grandmother gave it to me as a gift a few days ago, some memento from this little resort town we´d used to go back when I was a kid.
“You so used to love airplanes, do you remember?” she told me over the phone when I called in to thank her. “Do you remember how you used to know the names of all airplanes that ever existed?”

I´m holding the little faux-brass plated toy in my hand, watching its sleek copper-plated surface turn green against the lit-up blue monitor screen: MADE IN CHINA, it says. It´s the miniature of a B-1 Lancer bomber. It´s this tail-end relic from the waning days of the Cold War now, firebombing caves into cinders under Mid-Eastern desert skies.

K. got married last weekend and I was the Best Man sitting at the front row, no, second-front row with this gorgeous girl I used to know from long ago, back in the day, College and stuff, by my side. She was wearing purple. All the maids of honor were also clad in purple.
When the priest, this amiable if not a tad annoying, short, stocky little friendly stump in a white cape like a medieval Liberace minus the diamonds, began fooling around as to how the bride had ensnared, dazzled, captured the groom´s heart, K. slid his hand behind his back and gave us all-- the audience- the thumbs-up sign.
You know. Right off the bat: Firebombing the congregation just like that, just like a Lancer or a popstar.

“Yer gonna bring me a Wii from New York, right?,” the Maid of Honor turns to me and asks, and just like myself, she´s totally lost in the moment, but for all the different reasons.