Tag: random

Oh, Right, I Have A Blog

When last we spoke, I informed you of the exciting news that NASA is planning its first voyage to Mars. That’s still true, which is good. I also saw The Martian at the movie theater and liked it very much, which is also good. In fact, I loved the movie whereas I only enjoyed the book. This has everything to do with the fact that I’m an artist rather than an engineer and I tend to favor soft, squishy subjects like the humanities rather than MATH.

Ahem. Sorry. I may have lapsed into the remnants of a heated discussion about The Martian that evidently I’m not entirely over.

In other news, it’s November and November means NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo means “oh my God, I have so much writing to do, how can I waste it blogging, what the hell am I thinking, I have to get back to WORK!” So, you know, there’s that.

The new book I’m working on is pretty cool, though. At least, I think it’s cool. My working title is Dinomancer and it’s a book about people who can ride dinosaurs into battle. I’d tell you the elevator pitch about it, but since I haven’t written it all yet, it’d be somewhat insubstantial. I feel good about it, though, and my girlfriend fiancée says that she hasn’t seen me get this excited about a new project in a long time, so who knows. Maybe this will be the book that makes millions of dollars enough dollars to make a small payment on one of my outstanding student loans.

Also, this is my first winter since I moved to Washington state several months ago. My verdict thus far: seasons are beautiful, I really enjoy the cold weather, I look great in my stylish long raincoat, I hate the fact that it gets dark like at 4pm, and related to the previous bullet point, DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME SUCKS. Arizona may not get a lot of things right (politics, 115 degree summer days, the impending fiery apocalypse drought brought on by global climate change), but they’re the only state in the Union that doesn’t have Daylight Savings Time, and that’s pretty damn good in my opinion.

Anyway. Thanks for stopping by. I’m going to get back to writing about dinos.

Rainless Days

I was told that it would be rainy. I would even say that I’d been warned. One could then say I’d failed to heed the warning. “You’re from the desert,” my hypotheticl interlocutor said. “You’re used to the sun.”

“I have blue eyes and I’m very pale, perhaps even translucent. The sun is my enemy,” I said. “And I love it when it rains.”

“You won’t love it,” said he. “You will long for a glimpse of a blue sky, shivering and crawling like a goblin, and it will be denied you. The rain will be your tears. The rain will be eternal.”

“Well, we’ll see,” I said.

And so we have. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Well, it rained once last week, for about a half hour. The grass around my condo has all turned brown. When I was out for my morning walk yesterday, I looked at the brown, dead grass around me and I thought I was back in Tucson. It was a flashback, although of course I wasn’t in Tucson, because it was midmorning and I was outside and my skin wasn’t on fire.

I’ve been told this has been the driest year in Seattle history. People are looking for someone to blame.

I think it might be my fault.

“Pacific Northwest Dries Up,” the headlines will read. “Local man who moved from Tucson quote ‘brought it with him.'”

My bad, guys. Maybe it’ll rain again someday. But maybe not.

Random Thoughts On Incense

You might be expecting a post laden with euphemism or thinly veiled drug references. This is not that post. Any post I could possibly write about drugs would be very short, unless I was able to draw from my extensive knowledge gleaned from marathons of Breaking Bad on Netflix and Requiem for a Dream.

No, instead, I’m thinking about actual incense.

Somehow, I managed to acquire a box of “Dragon’s Blood” incense sticks. Most likely, somebody left them in my apartment. I certainly didn’t buy them and weird shit appears all the time around here. For instance, I have a box of sparklers whose origin is dubious. I’ve been tempted to light one of the sparklers, but I can imagine all the ways that might end in horror, tragedy, and comedy, depending on whose face gets immolated and whose doesn’t.

Without further preamble, here are my random thoughts about the incense stick that is cheerfully smoking away on the desk beside me:

  • I had a roommate that used to burn a lot of incense because he smoked a tremendous amount of marijuana. This was one of my most poignant incense memories. In fact, he convinced me that everybody bought incense solely for this purpose.
  • My mom burned a lot of incense when she had her apartment. She does not smoke weed (as far as I know). There’s a funny story, though, about her neighbor who did assume the pot smoking, because of the previously mentioned usage rule.
  • I like watching the smoke drift around the room because it’s a pure writer trope to smoke and write. The problem is that I really like my lungs and don’t want to start smoking, but I’m also heavily influenced by media and pop culture depictions of writing.
  • I wonder how bad all this incense smoke is for my lungs. It can’t be good for my lungs. Smoke is smoke, right?
  • Why did they decide to call this particular scent “Dragon’s Blood?” It smells more herbal than sanguinary or reptilian, in my opinion. In my mind, real dragon’s blood would smell more coppery.
  • Even though it’s all emotionally cleansing and such, I’m sure this is not healthy. I should Google this. I’m going to Google this.
  • Yup, turns out that burning incense, as well as candles, “can be a significant source of indoor air pollution, including combustion products from candles, which can emit varying amounts of soot and pollutants.” So that’s  good news. I feel very relaxed now that I know this.

That’s all I’ve got tonight. Sorry. I’ll try to have something more substantial for my post tomorrow. Maybe something about the political spectrum, maybe.