Dilly-dallying-ding-dong-dell

Had to face that fact that Christmas is coming and this goose ain't fat in the wallet, so a few presents bought and cards sent out and that is that for this year. Now I'm out of excuses other than just plain laziness when it comes to writing.

I'm getting this damn thing done this weekend. I could dither and dather (is there such a word? Spell-check don't like it) for the rest of my life and I ain't got time for that. I've got a dozen different stories to write and who knows what more will come?

Something that sparked me on one story -- "Coby O' and the Pink Palace of Texas" -- was reading a post on a thread I follow from a 21 year old kid whose mother found some texts on his phone to another guy and realized he's gay. He posted some of the text messages she sent him...and they are chilling. That any parent could say things like that to their child -- not merely disowning him but calling him some of the foulest names possible and wishing horrible things on him. It was sickening. And proof of just how little things have changed.

I was luckier than that. I came out slowly and usually after members of my family had figured out I was gay, but I ran into some troubles, too. One branch confronted me and used the excuse they were afraid I had AIDS for it. I don't, but I don't think they believed me. This was close to 25 years ago, when lies and misinformation about the disease were rampant. There are still lies about it being spread by the right wing scum, but it's no longer the horror it was when there was little information to counter the hysteria.

I didn't see anyone from that side of the family until recently, but that stemmed more from me not bothering to keep in contact with them than anything else. I'd always seen myself as part of the family, with them, but that incident made me re-evaluate my relationship and see I'd been the one maintaining it. And when I stopped asking them for information on how things were going in their lives, they never volunteered the info...except when someone died, and then it was usually after the funeral so there was no chance I might show up out of respect.

But that wasn't really a rupture, not like what this kid went through. Mine was more of a "just letting go" and ending a pretense.

Anyway, "Coby O'..." goes through the same thing as that boy did -- being violently thrown out of his family's life and being told to stay away from his brothers. I'd thought I was going overboard on it when I wrote that section so put it aside. Guess I wasn't. And damn, doesn't that depress me?

Okay, I now has an ennui...which is short of has'ing a mood...or is it the other way around? I have to look into that.

Lazy bum

That's what I feel like, today. I slept till noon. Didn't get out to doing errands till 1:30...and only got half done. Just a total waste-oid. I did get a bit more done on IF, mainly rearranging some bits in the story in hopes of getting it closer to how it should be, but now I'm confused as to what's where. Not a good way to use the day.

I'll be doing good to finish the first draft by Christmas, at the rate I'm going.

I've been having some odd dreams dealing with moviemaking and bringing someone water, and for the first time in a while I feel as if I was in the dream to its end instead of jumping out of it when I awoke. That's an odd sensation...almost a sense of completion to it. I will say, I'm waking rested and in a decent humor. But since my job starts at 9am, it'd be hard for me to not be up by 8, during the week...so I can't keep it up. Dammit.

I dunno, maybe my vampire pre-life is coming to the fore and I'm wanting to sleep all day to avoid the sun. It and I have never been friends. In fact, the damned thing's given me second degree sunburn more than a couple of times, once even right through my clothes. That was in Hawaii, where I got blisters on the tops of my feet and my back, even though I was wearing tennis shoes and a t-shirt.

Speaking of sun, I'm now looking forward to seeing my short story, "Desert Land", in a copy of "The Florida Review." No money for it; just publication. Which I'm surprised happened since it's such an intense, minimalist sort of story, very unlike my normal style of writing. I had a number of journals turn it down, and I felt it was probably too severe to work as a bit of fiction. I guess we'll see what the general reaction is to it.

Now I've got a friggin' headache. Came from being bent over my laptop while I was doing laundry; I know because it happens every time and I'm too dumb to change my habits to avoid it. I must be elderly, now. I say that because I read an interview with Chris Evans, who said he's getting old because his wrist aches and he gets pains in an arm or something, and I nearly screamed. He's 30 and in perfect shape. By his standards, I should already be in the grave, the gorgeous little shit.

Just for that, Chris, I'm gonna do a picture of you being tentacled (don't ask what that means; you don't want to know -- trust me).

Slowly I turn...step by step...

Inch by inch...growing closer and closer to a  first draft of "Inherent Flaws". I broke through 58,000 words and found the motivation for Vinnie's partner being so violent in certain situations. Not gonna SAY it, of course, because Vinnie wouldn't understand it so how could he articulate it. But it'll be there.

Right now I've cleaned up to page 152 and have another 125 to go. Then I'll have to do one last restructure to make certain everything fits in the proper order. And I'm still debating about him cheating on his wife. It's human and real, but I don't know if the story has the space and balance for it.

I feel a lot better, today. I'd sort of been drifting in and out of zones until I left the clock alarm off and let myself sleep till I was ready to get up. Went to bed at 2am. Woke at nearly 1pm. I'm way too out of shape to handle this nonsense. That has got to change.

And now from something more from the city of Hong Kong...or not. I can't figure out how to share my desktop with my Mac Book, just vise verse. Irritating. But then again, I'm hardly a techie.

Ah-HA!

 This is Gloucester Avenue at evening rush hour.

The Exhibition Hall area, where the book fair was being held.

All the high-rises are decorated for Christmas, with some having bursting snowflakes and dancing neon going up 50 stories. Wild. 

No, no, no

Next week's packing job disintegrated so I'll be able to focus on IF better...in some ways. I'd planned it out where I'd be on the train from NYC to Buffalo, again, so I'd have 8 hours of comfortable writing time. Oh, well. There's always the weekend.

I've been dancing around IF, since I got back from Hong Kong, unsure if I should do the restructuring before I'm done with inputting all the story or just plow through to the end and work it out from there. I'd have a better idea of what needs to go where, I think, but right now I feel I could easily be repeating myself and don't want to waste the effort on sections I'll wind up cutting because they're redundant.

And my brain is zoning, again. I don't remember having such trouble realigning myself with this time zone after traveling abroad, before. I'm trying to recall how I was after returning from Bangkok, and I was pretty wrecked after that, but I ascribed it to the nasty heat and humidity. Maybe it's just the 13 hour time change. Ireland and the UK are only 5 hours ahead of me, here, and even from LA the time difference was a mere 8 hours. I was usually back on my feet in a day. Of course, I was also more physically active at the time.

I guess I'm just getting old. I had an idea about a old man whose best friend just died, so he decides to take him on an adventure. It's set in Buffalo in the winter, and one of the old man's habits is to do the Friday Fish Fry at Wegman's and listen to live jazz in the dining area. Dunno what it means or where it's going...but it's cutting a bit close to the bone, right now.

Okay...just for the hell of it...to kill this funk...

This is a FaceBook friend I'm thinking of making into a painting. The beginning mock-up to see how it might look...and already I'm not wild about the fence behind him. Dunno how it will turn out when (or i) I do it because I don't want to be as precise as the layout of these colors, but it's a happy pose.

I should work on this when I has an ennui.

Am I outdated?

I'm having trouble watching "The Big Bang Theory" online via Amazon's streaming setup, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's due to my computers being a few years old. When I try to watch on my Mac Mini, the video has little hiccups and the sound is out of sync. I had similar problems when I tried Netflix's streaming videos and just couldn't watch them. So I shifted back to my laptop.

I'd watched a couple of episodes at Newark on my laptop, and it had issues too, but only a couple of times. Mainly just stopping to reboot once each episode. So I tried it here, and it turns out to be less problematic than my laptop. It's still not perfect, but it works better. Maybe I should consider upgrading to at least OS 11. Hmm...is that Snow Leopard or Tiger? I never can get the names of these programs straight.

I will say, had I watched the first five episodes of TBBT, I wouldn't have kept with it. I chuckled a few times and did laugh a bit, but too many of the jokes were cliche based and geek bashing. Obviously the writing got a LOT better and the cast began to click as the show went along. And I can actually see the jokes growing more and more involved.

I had brain blankness and was only able to function at work because it was not too demanding. I zoned when I got home and took a nap, which zoned me more. Tomorrow I have to get back to working on IF. I want a first draft done ASAP...one that's readable. I can already tell that what I have now needs restructuring. It's supposed to take place over 3-4 years but my timeline is wonky.

I almost had another packing job in NYC but that sort of self-destructed. Now I'm set to fly into LA on February 9th and work the book fair in Pasadena, then head home the 13th. Be good to see some friends, again.

I think I'm hooked

I watched 6 episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" on my flight home...along with "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" (60s liberalism at its most cloying), "The French Connection" (all the depth of a puddle of water), "All About Steve" (I now agree Bradley Cooper is the sexiest man alive and still love Sandra Bullock, but what a stupid movie), part of "Anatomy of a Murder" (see it and it's still boring), "The Last King of Scotland" (ugly, just ugly) and "Quantum of Solace" (seen it and still prefer "Bourne"), and episodes of "Castle", "Body of Evidence" (meh), "Bones" (I don't get this one), "Psych" (trying WAY too hard) and something else, I think...all in order to drown out that obnoxious baby. And the only one I fully, completely, and totally enjoyed was "TBBT".

It's a rare comedy that can educate you as well as it tickles your funny bone. I remember seeing the first episode way back when the show began and thought it was going to go for the typical dumb jokes directed at nerds. And having the requisite dumb, beautiful but sweet blond thrown in actually helped me decide not to watch it, again. Well, I was wrong to do that.

The show's jokes are brilliant, and I actually laughed when the soundtrack laughed. Sheldon's relationship with Leonard is so much like two vaguely competitive brothers, I cared about both of them...even though Sheldon really is an arrogant, prickly little shit. With Raj and Howard to round out the quartet, this seemed too much like a group of people I actually knew in Houston.

What's even better is, I saw an episode that is fairly recent and has the dumb blond being friends with a couple of female geniuses, one of whom is played by Mayim Bialik, who was "Blossom" and played Bette Midler as a child in "Beaches"! Her deadpan delivery of some very cutting but appallingly frank lines is priceless. I bought the Amazon download of the first season and will watch it from beginning to end (it's cheaper than Netflix and a lot quicker, too).

I didn't get home till after midnight, last night; my plane from Newark was an hour late. And just to add to my bitching about that damned airport -- at 8:15 (an hour prior to my planned departure), I went to grab a DP and set up downstairs where the gate is located. (The flight's a 38 seat puddle jumper so you go outside, in the rain, drop off your bag for gate-check because it's too big for the overhead bin, and climb the steps into a cabin you cannot stand upright in.) Well, I pass by the "Departures" screen...and just happen to notice that the one flight to Buffalo that's listed there is saying, "Departed." And it was my flight number.

Well...I'd be lying if I didn't say I freaked out and did a screeching u-turn and ran straight to the gate (since no one else was around to talk to with United), wondering if I'd have to take an overnight train to get home (not something I wanted to do because I was really feeling the need for a bath after that stuffy 777) and why wasn't there an announcement in the airport and howling curses in my mind. That's where I learned it was an error on the airport's part, and that my plane wasn't even on its way to pick us up, yet. And they never corrected it on the main screens.

It is now my goal in life to avoid Newark forever.

Newark's Airport Is The Pits!

I can see why people don't like coming here. It's very disorganized and not at all people friendly. But then, United/Continental is not the most user-friendly airline out there. The plugs under my row of seats for the 777 from Hong Kong to Newark did not work. I heard other passengers complaining about that, too, as we disembarked. And there was a noisy baby -- sometimes happy, sometimes bawling -- the whole 14 hours, while the crew did as little as they could to deal with it. I wound up watching half the movies and a number of TV shows offered on the flight just to drown out the brat's noise. The food was "meh," and was all but tossed at us as the crew whipped by pushing their tall, narrow carts, and you do not have the option to direct AC at you on those planes, like you do on 737s, so it can get stuffy in there.

Air travel is definitely not the joy it used to be.

But Newark takes the cake. It's old, ratty-looking, uncomfortable, and you have to pay for WiFi while I'd get it free at JetBlue in JFK. Plus there is no way for you to connect to another terminal except by Air Train unless you completely leave the terminal. Then you have to go through security, again.

I'm stuck here till 9:15 and am not happy about that. I wish I'd been able to take Cathay out of Toronto. Direct flight both ways.

Damn, I'm tired. I must be repeating myself. Maybe I'll try and take a short nap.

Hong Kong Airport

There's just one word for this place -- big. Nicely planned out...but my gate is literally a mile from the checkin counter. I have to take a train to get there. I got a glimpse of that when I took the cable car up to the big Buddha in Ngong Pin.

I took a photo but it was so hazy it didn't come out very good, so I'll play with it in photoshop. But you can see the beginning of it to the left in this photo. Until then...this is the second leg of the journey up to the Buddha. rising maybe 700 feet up a hillside and supported by nothing but that cable. They offer a car with a glass bottom so you can look straight down, but it was $100HK extra so I used that as my excuse not to travel that way.

This was actually an interesting journey, once you got past all the gift shops for tourists. There are about 250 steps up to the Buddha, and I climbed them. Hell, I climbed Arthur's Seat and that was up 200 meters above Edinburgh, so I figured I could do this. I only had to stop to let my weary legs catch up to me four times (my lungs used that as their excuse for me to stop).

I saw the gold reclining Buddha in Bangkok and that was impressive, but it seemed a bit cheesy. This one seemed just right, for some reason -- on top of the mountain with a spectacular view, a hazy day keeping the sun's heat off, and various people standing at respectful distances, silently praying.

I'm not sorry to be heading home, not like I was when I visited Ireland or Berlin, but it turned out to be a decent trip. At least now I can say I've been here...and I honestly have no need to return except for business.

More impressions

This is from The Peak. You take a funicular cable car up a 45 degree slope for five minutes then ride up a series of 6 escalators, the last of which costs an additional $28 HK to reach the very tip-top...and now I know where they take those famous photos of the city. That was yesterday.

Today…I hopped a ferry to Kowloon to see about getting my name on a chop (a seal that has “Kyle” in Chinese characters carved into it). The concierge said The Jade Market might be a good place to look. But that area so reminded me of Bangkok with its traffic and crowds and people hawking everything and almost getting mauled in the Market to get me to buy something (albeit with none of the heat and humidity), I left within an hour and caught the metro back. Then I hopped an express bus to Stanley and got it done there on a deep blue stone polished to perfection with a soft white streak down one side. Cost me $25 US, but I like it. Now I just have to remember which end is up when I use it.

I’ve seen enough of Hong Kong. Parts of it are amazingly beautiful while parts are hideous. There really are some breathtaking skyscrapers, while so many other buildings just bring out a WTF reaction. The place is fairly clean -- the Metro was phenomenally so -- but I’ve seen areas that are trashed up, and don’t get me started on the narrow little alleyways. As for the people, I've decided they have this passive-aggressive sort of politeness going on. If you’re talking to them, they’re normally very helpful...to an extent;  but man, if you’re in their way, they will shove you aside. And nothing, nothing, nothing is free.

As for the traffic -- it’s like this insane version of "chicken" when cars or busses or trucks need to change lanes or merge. I stood on the first floor walkway (our 2^nd floor) of the China Resources Building, Thursday evening, and watched the ebb and flow along Gloucester Road of remarkably undamaged vehicles as taxis, vans and sedans zipped off a cross road to force their way into the backup. It was almost like ballet…no, Martha Graham style dancing is more like it. Very impressionistic.

It was a bright sunny day and a bit on the warm side, and even though I was using sun block, I still got pinked up around the nose and cheeks, and my brain (what little I have) got baked more than I expected. The bus back from Stanley stops in front of my hotel so I hopped off, sat in a nice hot tub for half an hour and took a nap, so now I’ll be up late.

Am I sorry I came? Not really. It actually sort of met my expectations as a place I’d like to see but not stay at for very long. Unfortunately, it’s also made me less interested in visiting Tokyo, and for sure no-place else in the Western Pacific Rim even begins to attract me.

Just call me Euro-centric.

Quickie

I’ve never seen so many Rolls Royces outside of LA or London as I have in Hong Kong. A lot of Jags and Mercedes, as well, along with Maseratis and Lamborginis.  Traffic is as bad as LA in rush hour and the people are non-stop. Talk about a 24 hour city, whooh.

Their skyscrapers look like they’re out of “Blade Runner” or Times Square and some are amazingly ugly. But then, so are some of the cars, with their cheap-assed super-chrome front ends. And nothing’s free in this town if they can help it. Wifi at my hotel is about $5 for an hour.

My plane trip wasn’t bad. I had an aisle seat at the back of the plane, but they de-load you fast. It took less time to empty a 777 than it does to get everyone out of a Southwest 737. The food was meh, but I had so much space to play with, it was worth it. If the woman beside me hadn’t been so restless and flumpy, it would’ve been perfect.

Move-in’s all done at the book fair and everyone’s happy. I’m dropping by shortly to make double sure then doing the tourist thing, I guess. Then comes Sunday evening, when all hell will break loose because they aren’t allowing anywhere near enough time for the dealers to pack and get their stuff out. That does not look pretty.

Oh, and I thought I'd found a good steak place by the convention center, but I made a major error -- I ordered a Chilean Sea Bass. Never order surf at a turf shop; they won’t know how to make it edible. And it cost WAY too much. I'm stuck with Mickey D's from now on, to keep on budget.