Mechanically Inept and Proud of It

Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up so angry that you want to rip paper, beat a drum with a stick of pepperoni, eat raw cookie dough at a Weight Watchers Convention, and show cows pictures of hamburgers. You know, super villain stuff. That is how I woke up today. After getting a paper cut from the papers I was tearing, eating the pepperoni, and not being able to find a Weight Watcher (I live in a chunky neighborhood) or a cow (they don’t like living in this part of town due to the chunky neighbors love of roast beef), I decided to take it up a notch. I did something that was truly horrifying since my mood was bad already. My car now has a new alternator.

Before you jump to any erroneous conclusions, yes I did do it myself. Normally, I don’t like to do mechanical work since I have limited skills in spite of my dad’s best efforts. He tried and tried to teach me about motors and carburetors and the joy of peeing down the drain the garage. Okay, the peeing part I liked. Now, thanks to his tutelage, I can change the oil or the spark plugs and have excellent urinal aim. I have changed a fuel pump which involved removing the bed from a Ford Ranger. Gas tanks don’t drop far enough when you don’t have a car lift. Who knew? But this project was one that I faced with courage, determination, several YouTube videos on my computer and alcohol. You would think the booze would have been a deterrent. It helped. Trust me.

 

This is where the article gets technical. I removed the doomalflatchy from the gizmo. I took out two bolts to free up the whoziwhatsit, then had to remove the nut that freed up the other part of the whoziwhatsit. It was at this point that I realized the doohickey had broken off the gizmo so I would need to get a new doohickey before the gizmo would work right. After taking the snakenstein belt off with the spring loaded zipzip bouncing back cutting my finger, the alternator was free to fall on my foot. I won’t bother telling you about putting the new one on because I was drinking by that point and it’s all a little fuzzy.

It only took two trips to the auto parts store, eighteen band-aids, three stitches, one new tool (Yea!) and a five shots of spiced rum and butterscotch schnapps. The shots are equal parts of each, placed in a shaker with ice, and poured into shot glasses. It is so good it makes you forget about the blood loss from your hand being mangled in a snakenstein belt that did not want to go back on the way it came. These shots are a must-have for any auto repair task.

So who needs help? I’m ready to try my hand at fixing your car. Did I ever tell you about the time I broke a gas tank while changing the oil. Funny story…

What Makes You Happy?

When you look around at your life, which things make you happy? I’m not talking about the obvious things like family, friends, and microwave burritos. Who doesn’t love those? I know family can get on your nerves. Well, my family says I get on their nerves. And friends can be irritating. Wait, my friends say I can be irritating. There seems to be a trend here. Back to the topic, what makes you happy in your life? If you are missing happiness, I have come up with a few things to make you happy if you just think of it like I do.

Doesn’t it make you happy when…

… you know that you have never had a pogo stick accident that required surgery. (Don’t even ask where the pogo stick ended up. You REALLY don’t want to know.)

… you are not the guy who cleans the streets after the circus elephants parade through town. (I could come up with all kinds of smelly job jokes here but I’ll let you make up your own.)

… you get to laugh at the guy who falls waterskiing and forgets to let go of the line. (Yes, that was me you were laughing at last summer.)

… there are more doughnuts than people in the office so you know you can take two without anyone complaining too much even though you didn’t know they were for the conference later in the day. (This is not based on actually events no matter what my coworkers say.)

… the goose that was chasing the little boy at the duck pond gets kicked halfway to the fountain by the boy’s mom. (Mama bears have got nothing on this lady. I almost fell in the pond laughing so hard.)

… a movie star can laugh at themselves when they make some silly mistake at awards shows. (It makes me happy knowing that they are human, too. Well, not Sly and Arnold. They were replaced by androids years ago.)

… the Winter Olympics are over so you can see something besides reruns. (Yes, that did bug me. Just not into figure skating or skiing or any sport that requires frostbite protection.)

I hope these examples have helped you see how happy life can be! If not, let me know and I’ll make up some other things so you can see it could be much worse.

Writing in a Blender

The other day I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop typing away on my word processor. I was minding my own business when a couple walked up to me. They asked me what I was doing because it seemed like I was typing something that was really important. The actual phrase they used involved the words “manic” and “mad man” but you get the kernel of meaning. I explained to them I was working on a novel called New Fallen and then went on to explain far more than they ever wanted to know. The young man asked me a question that I couldn’t answer very well. He asked, “So how do you write a novel the way you are doing it?”

That got me thinking about the “process” (for lack of a better word) I use when I start writing. Let me begin by saying that I do not recommend this method for anyone else. It works really well for me, but I’m not normal. Looking at the process used by other writers like James Patterson and organized writers, I am impressed. They outline out the whole story in painstaking detail. For me, that would be painful detail. My style is like a blender. I know where my stories begin and where they end. The middle part is always spinning around until it finally stops.

For example, Angelcide was my first novel. I knew that I was going to have Ezekiel (the angel) and Anthony (the human) as my main characters. There would be some demons causing problems here and there and some angels helping them out. Zeke was going to be the straight man to Tone’s off the wall comedy. The secret to Tone’s identity was planned from the beginning; however, Zeke’s personality changed after the book was complete. He needed more attitude so I rewrote many of his parts. There also needed to be some kind of really powerful villain that could kill angels and demons. (SPOILER ALERT) It also seemed like a good idea to have the main characters survive in case I wanted to write another one about them. Other than that, I wasn’t too sure what was going to happen.

About chapter three, I had made some decisions about the bad guy, Bubba. (No, I didn’t start off calling him that. That was Tone’s idea.) I finally knew what he was. It wasn’t until chapter eight that I knew who Bubba really was. I wrote the epilogue at that point.

Some of the supporting characters just showed up in the story. I was really surprised by several of them. Arino, the healing angel, was not part of the plan until Tone got hurt. Then she left, came back and wouldn’t leave. Nazilaq and Irkja, the angels in the skimmer, also wanted to be in the story when I discovered that there were rivers in the Spiritscape. Irkja reminded me a lot of several professors I had in college and grad school. Every one of the demons just jumped into the story. A couple of them were inspired by some teachers I’ve had, too. Zadrol was a major surprise. He just came around to cause trouble. When he appeared in the story, I actually said, “Hmmm. I didn’t see that coming.” You would think I would know what was going to happen. I really didn’t.

When I write a story, I let my imagination go wherever it wants. It is a fun way to write. Now the down side: it takes a lot of editing after the fact. There are a few characters who wanted to be part of the story but just didn’t fit in and got edited out. Most of them understood and several of them have lobbied to be in New Fallen. Torkel, the angel mechanic, made a good case for being included in the next book so he already has a cool part to play. Also, the unicorns that Tone wanted to see in Angelcide scare the crap out of him in New Fallen. A few more characters – mostly demons – are getting a role to play. There are a few that are so rude that I just won’t use them. I won’t have figments of my imagination pushing me around!

Does that make any sense? I hope not. I have no clue how I write either.