You're just asking for it

We went out to the bar for Father's Day the other night, and I was very put off by the demeanour of the particular establishment we went to.

Now, we don't exactly have a great selection of bars where I live, mostly because there aren't a lot of people there and we're in the middle of nowhere, which is why our favorite bars are the neighbors' garages. But since we had a special occasion to celebrate, we all decided to go to the nicest bar in our neck of the woods.

I've been to this place a couple times before, and it really is a gorgeous bar, but drinks are expensive so we rarely go there. I mean seriously, a bottle of cheap beer is five bucks when I can go to the store and buy an 18 pack of the same beer for fifteen dollars. Silly, but we figured what the heck, we never go out anyway.

Mistake.

We're outside people and so naturally claimed our territory out on the patio. It was almost nine, but the temperature was still in the triple digits outside. Since there was a mister system surrounding the patio, we asked the waitress when she came to take our order if she would be able to turn them on. They are there to cool off the customers after all.

Um, no. They're really not. They're just there to drive you crazy and make you think of how freaking hot it is outside and how much you wish you could be sitting in a refreshing mist.

After I asked about the misters, the waitress looks at us and straight up says, "we don't turn them on at night because there's nothing to dry the water and puddles form."

Wow. Really? It was 106 degrees and there was a nice breeze, not to mention the system was a good fifteen feet above the ground. Plus we had just left another place with misters that were actually closer to the ground and there was no water on the floor because it was hot as crap outside.

So I said to the waitress, "you don't have to turn them on full blast. Even a low setting would be nice."

"No, we don't do that here."

Well okay then. Dumb, but whatever.

A little later on, we realize that this bar has the most amount of rules we'd ever seen in a bar in our lives. Every five feet there was a sign posted telling you what NOT to do. Not only were they signs telling you what you couldn't do, they were DUMB signs telling you what you couldn't do. We just couldn't believe that everywhere we went there were these signs saying, "DO NOT put feet on furniture" and "DO NOT put feet on fire pit" and "DO NOT use fire pit as an ashtray". Well no shit dude, its a propane fire pit, why would I use that as an ashtray? And who do these people think they are, my mother? I don't think I've had someone tell me to not put my feet on the furniture since I was eight. Stupid.

Now obviously I'm the kind of person that hates rules. Yeah most rules are there to keep people safe, and those are cool. But when it comes to dumb rules that don't seem necessary? I can't stand them. So what did we do?

First we had a scheme to start sticking post it notes all over the place with our own DO NOT rules. You know, things like "DO NOT leave water running in bathroom," "DO NOT leave patio door open." Dumb things like that. Instead, we came up with an even better plan to do new things that would irritate the owner, and hopefully cause them to waste more money putting up a dumb sign everyone will hat just so we could say we made our mark. Turned out to be the most fun thing of the night.

All night the waitress was coming over and yelling at us to not have our legs on a chair, or to not sit on the fence, or to not sit on the fire pit (its one of those cool above level stone ones). I'm pretty sure she hated us by the end of the night because every time she came and yelled at us we just said, "hey, there's no sign saying I can't do that," and she'd get pissed and walk away. Mature? No. Necessary? No. Fun? F***ing hilarious!!!!

Normally I don't do things like that, but I seriously believe if you have the audacity to post ridiculous signs of things you'd say to children around a bar, you're just asking for people to be obnoxious. Treat someone like a little kid, and they're likely to act like a little kid. So of course with my little kid mentality, if I have someone constantly telling me what I can't do it's my natural proclivity to try to do everything I can to annoy the crap out of them. After all, they WERE asking for it.

A litte self examination

No, not that kind of self examination you perverts/medical students. I'm talking about examination of personality and character.

This summer I'm taking a communications class to finish up my English degree, and our first two weeks is all about the self. We had to take a personality test, and it was surprisingly accurate. It really reflected my traits, and pointed out some key things that I liked. Also an activity that turned out to be fun was our personal ad. Everyone had to write like a personal dating ad but couldn't put their name, gender, or anything about their appearance on it.The whole thing turned out to be an hour long laugh riot as we all tried to guess who had written the ad.

While writing my own ad, I found it extremely difficult to make myself sound cool about the things I like to do. Let's face it, I'm extremely normal in my likes, so normal its almost boring. I like the usual things. You know, dirt bikes, fishing, dive bars, old movies. Yawn fest.

But then I got to thinking, what about the things I don't like? Are they the normal, boring, usual things most people don't like? Well, I started really thinking about it and shared my list with some new friends I'm still getting to know. Turns out, most people's Don't Like It list is way more amusing and entertaining than their Like It list. Here's mine, feel free to share your own!



1. Ostriches. I'm not quite sure why, but I hate ostriches more than anything else on the planet besides the stereotypical hate it list most people have, like Nazis, child molesters, rapists, animal abusers. If you're an ostrich, Nazi, cho-mo, rapist, or puppy kicker get off my site! Why ostriches have made it to my hate list I don't know. To my knowledge nothing terrible ever happened at the Ostrich Festival when I was a kid, and I've never had one attack me, yet every time I see one I become enraged and want to punch them in the head. Sorry ostriches, but we'll never be friends. Ever....unless maybe an ostrich saves my life one day.

2. That weird gum licking noise dogs make. It sounds disgusting. I don't know why they're doing that because their tongue never leaves their mouth to actually lick anything. And they always seem to do it in the middle of the night. I can be dead asleep and still hear my dog making that noise in the middle of the night even if he's out in the hall way. It's just as annoying as a person who chews with their mouth open.

3. Car testicles. Not sure who came up with the idea to hand a fake sack on their bumper, but it is really, really dumb, I don't get it, and it makes the rest of the world think you're compensating for something. Every time I see one of these I want to grab a pair of bolt cutters, hack the things off, and tape it to their windshield with a bumper sticker that says "You've Been Neutered!" Nope, I've never actually done that because you shouldn't destroy someone else's property no matter how stupid, but I fantasize about it every time.

4. Guys who wear shirts that drape to their knees. I'm pretty sure if your top goes to your knees or further this is called a dress. If a man wants to wear a dress, fine, totally cool with me. I'm talking about these kids who think they're gangster or something and wear clothes about 25 sizes too big for them. It's weird, I don't get it, and every time I see dudes who do this I automatically start calling them Miss. They are wearing dresses after all.

5. Motivational Posters. Really don't get the point of these things. They're degrading when you really think about them. There's a demotivational poster somewhere on the web that perfectly sums up how silly motivational posters are.

Writing Updates

So I really wanted to have G-157 done and ready to upload this weekend, but it looks like that isn't going to happen.

I'm super cheap and refuse to print out more than one copy of the book, which in turn has screwed me over in the final editing process. One of my readers has been holding the book hostage for the last month, and its about time to start planning a reconnaissance to get it back. I have a few other people who still want to read it, and the several others who have read it are looking forward to having an autographed copy (which sounds so weird now that people are really saying that because I'm still a nobody in the literary world). But hopefully I will be able to rescue my book this weekend, and my final two readers will be able to sink their teeth into it and give me feedback.

I have the house to myself for a day this weekend, and intend to finish up The Sledgehammer Club. I've tried to do revisions on it this week, but it's been way to busy and my brain refuses to do anything but shut down and fall asleep every time I pull the manuscript to do anything.

And of course my other novel, Deceptions, is always calling for its finishing touches. But I figure that its waited six years to be polished, it can wait a little longer.

This summer is going to be busy, but I'm trying to get into the habit of working on a project for at least a half hour a day. And now that I don't have a computer anymore, it should be that much easier to not get distracted while writing. But us writers are creative though, aren't we? So I'm sure I'll find other ways to do anything I possibly can other than writing because I always run the pace of a slug when a story is almost finished. But I vow to do my best until my 30 minutes are done each day!

"Rules" on Writing Part Three-The Weather

Another "rule" of writing states that one should never describe the weather in fiction. The weather is there in our lives every day, always constant. It effects mood, and therefore I think it is perfectly fine to talk about the weather in literature.


Weather can actually be an integral part of the plot. The storm in Stephen King's THE MIST very much needed to be included so it could move the story along and set events in motion. Sure he could have said, "there was a bad storm outside." But wasn't it much better to see the details of the storm? To show the family sitting with candles in their home, to feel the fear of the parents as they watched the trees smack against the windows? This particular description of weather was so well written that even though it was 115 degrees without a cloud in the sky while I was reading it, I felt like there actually was a storm brewing outside.


Or how about the tornado in the WIZARD OF OZ? How would Dorothy have gotten to that strange and magical land if it weren't for a twister? How would the reader (or watcher) have felt the fear of the characters if the weather hadn't been described with great emphasis? Again, the weather was needed, and it's so much more fun to go into the details about the weather rather than just to write something simple like "it was windy," or "it was hot."

The weather is integral. Sure, some stories don't need anything about the weather included, because it really has nothing to do with the story. Most need a little description of what it's like outside. Others need a good chunk of emphasis on the happenings within the Coriolis effect. Hell, in some stories the weather actually becomes a character.

However, some literary agents hate the weather so much that they automatically dismiss a book and will read no further than the first sentence of chapter one if the author starts the story with describing the weather. I think agents who practice such subjective thinking are idiots who think they are some type of deity in the literary world but really are just stuck up pricks trying to tell the rest of us what they think good literature should be. You know what all you snobby agents who instantly think a book is crap because it starts with the weather? You're not only jerks, you're morons. I've read plenty of surprisingly great novels that start with boring old weather. Did I scoff at the author for starting the novel by talking about the weather? Obviously not. Of course dear agents, this is all my subjective opinion in an extremely subjective industry.

What I think it all boils down to is this; describe the weather when appropriate, but don't bore the reader with it and don't describe it when you don't need to. Weather is another one of those things in literature that every author must learn to tango with in every story, but I also think that's what writing is all about, learning to dance to the beat with your story.

Thank you firefighters!

On Mother's Day 2012, a cabin in Crown King, Arizona caught fire. Thousands of acres of forest and desert were burned in what came to be called the Gladiator Fire. Cabins were lost, several small towns had to be evacuated, and Arizona almost lost the gem ghost town of Crown King.


For two weeks the few hundred people who have come to love the rare jewel of Crown King watched the news, blogs, and podcasts for updates on the fire. Over a thousand firefighters battled against the Gladiator Fire, and after two nerve racking weeks claimed victory over the inferno.

I cannot sing the praises of firefighters enough. They work thirty-six hour shifts digging trenches, clearing brush, chopping down trees and risking their lives for complete strangers. That is truly amazing, and is the epitome of the greatness of the human spirit.

Firefighters, you are genuine heroes, and I cannot say thank you enough. Your bravery, courage, and compassion are extraordinary. You are true leaders, and I cannot express my gratitude enough for everything you do for our communities.

To all of the active and fallen heroes in fire stations across the country, thank you for what you do.