Chicken and Waffles Almost Changed my Life

There’s another universe out there, parallel to this one, where I became a millionaire as a teenager.

As I think I’ve mentioned on here at some point or another, my first job out of high school was as a lot assistant for a car dealership. It was an absolute circus of colorful characters and some outrageous personalities. And as is tradition for a first job, it paid like crap but acted as a wellspring for interesting stories I still get my jollies by telling today.

One that I remember I didn’t find interesting at all when it happened, but that I caught myself recounting a couple of days ago and made my jaw drop when I realized what I was saying, is as follows:

I was nineteen at the time, and Amanda and I had just started dating. I’d been at the job for about a year, but I was the lowest possible part of the totem pole, obviously. But of course – again, being nineteen – my year’s tenure meant that I felt firmly established there. We were going to take a trip down to Los Angeles for about a week to get out of town for a little while, and being that my job paid like crap, I was short on cash to actually help make that happen. To be clear, the trip was Amanda’s brainchild, planned by her, using her car, and all else. I was just happy to come along. But I still wanted to be able to contribute something other than a weakly charming smile.

So I went to the owner of the company and asked for a loan.

Oh, to be naively optimistic as a teenager. I should mention that this dealership was huge, not just somebody’s corner lot. It sprawled over multiple acres of paved parking lot, with several buildings, some thousands of vehicles, and remains a somewhat prominent part of the city. I still remember walking to the administrative building where the owner and president of the company had his office, asking his receptionist if he was in, and the confused look on her face when she let me in. Looking back, I’m sure she thought either I knew something nefarious that she didn’t or that she was looking at the beginning of some kind of lawsuit she would get to gossip about later. After all, I was a peasant boy requesting audience with the king.

But goddammit, it worked.

I walked in, shook his hand, and explained my situation, that I was going on a trip with my new girlfriend but was short on cash, wondering if I could get an advance. And remembering it now some ten years later, I feel I can better interpret the “Sure, let me understand you clearly” look on his face I saw at the time now more appropriately as, “Who the fuck is this kid, and is he being goddamn serious?” But by what I’m guessing is some combination of sympathy for a young buck just trying to do right by his lady, and a shade of respect for the sheer freakin’ brazenness of who was naively asking who for what here, he took out his wallet and handed me a hundred dollars of his own money, saying, “This isn’t an advance. This is a loan, and I expect to be paid back.”

It was a bonding moment.

And I did just that. I paid him back in full soon as I was able when we got back, and I mentioned it in passing to my manager maybe a week later. He went white as a sheet and asked me to clarify. When I simply repeated that I went to the owner of the company for a cash loan, his voice changed to the nervous tone of one who just missed a bullet whizzing past his head. “Just…uh, you know, uh, in the future, just- um, just come to me with that sorta thing.”

Now, again, to stress, I think it only worked because I was an adorable, dumbly innocent kid. I tried that kinda crap now, no way it’s working and nobody’s feeling bad for me.

Another brief adventure was getting lost in San Francisco. This was before GPS in phones really took off in any sort of a reliable way, and my phone was a cheap toy anyway. I was delivering a courtesy vehicle to a customer about an hour south of the city (the dealership is located an hour north of the city, so it was a day with a lot of driving), and when I asked them directions for the best way to get home, they started listing off a whole bunch of complicated turns and routes. “Yeah, you’re going to want to take this highway to this junction, then merge to this other junction, then turn here to merge back to this, to that, to this” so on and so forth. And so the whole time in my head I’m going, “Right. Take Highway 101 the whole way back.”

What I didn’t know is that Highway 101 in California goes through San Francisco where I was. And that the turn to remain on 101 was reeeeaaally easy to miss if you didn’t know it was coming, because the sign telling you so is reeeaaally small. So I suddenly find that I’m utterly lost in the city in a big expensive truck that’s low on gas and no sense of where I am. That being the case, I channeled my inner D&D nerd and put together a survival plan.

“What do I know about San Fran?” I asked myself. Well, it has a lot of hills and there’s water by the Golden Gate Bridge (which was what I was trying to find as my way home). So, I figure, I’ll just use a hill to go up high, find the water, then drive towards the water where I’ll find the bridge.

Which friggin’ worked perfectly. I felt like an old school explorer, like Francis Drake or Ferdinand Magellan.

But what crowned them all, probably, was the situation that inspired this post’s title.

Maybe a few months into the job, a friend from high school, Austin, also got hired on for the same position. Now there were two of us (a number that would later grow, but that’s irrelevant here). He and I are getting lunch one day from a nearby deli, and he picks up a bag of Lays potato chips to go with his sandwich. We get back to the lot and are eating in the break room when he takes a look at the back of the bag.

“Huh, check this out,” he says, and points to a spot on the back of the bag promoting a contest that Lays was having wherein people could call in with ideas for new flavors of potato chips. So we start bouncing ideas back and forth before ultimately falling on Chicken and Waffles. We agree that one’s a winner, and Austin calls the number on the bag, putting the call on speaker. A little bit of menu-hopping later, we’re connected to a representative for Lays. She asks us for our chip flavor, we give our genius suggestion of Chicken and Waffles, to which she tells us that that’s not an applicable flavor and ends the call. We shake our heads about how she’s kind of a donk (we used different words, though) and go about our day. That is until a couple of months later, when Lays unveils their new chip flavors and contest winners (and million dollar recipients).

Among the chosen flavors: Chicken and Waffles.

Austin and I are close to rioting, when the winners’ details are also revealed, and apparently a lady from Illinois had submitted our own genius flavor hardly a week before we had. I remain convinced to this day, however, that that lady doesn’t actually exist and that the game was rigged from the start. I’d bet a bag of chips that the woman on the phone with us that day experienced that phone call like this: “Hello, Lays’ chip flavor contest hotline, what is your suggestion? Ahuh. Ahuh. I’m sorry, that flavor isn’t applicable.” <hangs up phone, begins scribbling on a notepad> “Chicken and waffles, hot damn. That’s a good idea. Gonna go to the boss with this one.”

But my hare-brained Big Chip conspiracy theories aside, yeah, bottom line is that Austin and I were apparently just a few days separated from being potato chip millionaires.

Ah, what could have been.

Ciao for now, y’all.

The Legend of Eagle Grandpa

A couple of years ago, I told the story of when I learned not to be “That Guy”.

The short version is that I was standing at an ATM when someone was hit by a car, and being EMT certified at the time, I was going to finish up my transaction and go attend to the gentleman – basically hold him still and ask questions while someone called 9-1-1. In the couple of seconds it took for me to retrieve my card and turn around, there was already another fella doing exactly that, in as calm a manner as I could have or better. So, looking around to see a light crowd already forming, I figured it was best to leave rather than further congest the scene. However, there was one dude, who was hellbent on involving himself. He had long hair, sandals, and a loose backpack, and he was throwing himself at cars on the insistence that traffic in the area needed to stop. He even tried chasing one down the road in those dorky-ass sandals to get his point across.

Moral of the story: If there’s no meaningful way you can contribute to the resolution of a situation, then the best thing you can do is not get in the way. But whatever you do, don’t be that guy.

Well, a couple of months ago, I mean a new Guy.

We were in Texas visiting my fiancee’s parents, and one of our days there was spent going to her cousin’s college basketball game. Now, I’d been to basketball games before – heck I’d been in a couple – but they had all been high school level or lower. I didn’t really see any reason why a collegiate basketball game would be any different.

Boy howdy, was I ever wrong, sorta.

It was a home game for Amanda’s cousin, and as the visiting team is getting introduced, it’s a pretty ho-hum affair. “Introducing first, Point Guard for the Wherever They’re From Raptors or Something, #5, Jimmy What’s-his-Butt.” You got a weak smattering of applause from what sparse crowd there was, and this repeated for the other four starting players. But when they started introducing the Home team…

Damn.

The lights when down, spotlights began tracing the arena, music blared, and the announcer turned their mic way the hell up. It was like we got teleported straight to the middle of an NBA scrimmage game or something, and the announcer’s bias was…well, he wasn’t hiding it.

“Now, welcome to the court – he’s lean, he’s mean, he’s a divine blend of American steel and sex appeal, hung like a horse and has got a bright future – your Point Guard of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Cruuuuusaaaaadeeeers, #11! Johnny “God-Given” Griffin!!”

It was nuts.

The game was pretty great, too. Fast, competitive. A fun affair all around.

But the whole time the teams battled back and forth, I couldn’t help notice one guy. He was a spectator like us, older, and was sitting courtside beside one of the hoops in a fold-out chair with a straight posture and his arms crossed in front of him the whole time. He must have been someone’s grandpa or coach or something. Maybe he had a lot of money riding on the game, I don’t know, but he was less watching the game for fun and more examining the game with the intensity of a diving eagle.

Good thing he was, too, because while the offense was on his side of the court, a pass went wide and rocketed his way. And when I say “rocketed”, I do mean that this basketball crossed space with the speed of a bullet, and it flew straight at Coach Intense Eagle Grandpa.

This guy…doesn’t even flinch.

And he probably does kung fu.

This basketball flies at his face with enough speed to challenge the sound barrier, and in the half-moment it takes for the ball to reach him, his hands are out in front of him catching it a few inches from his nose. It was like when the hero in a cheesy martial arts movie catches the sword between their palms. It was rad. He does this, holds it for a quarter-second, and bounce passes it back onto the court like nothing happened.

THAT’S the guy you want on your team, giving you advice, or setting an example when the shit hits the fan. When a situation arises, don’t be a Loose Backpack. Be an Eagle Grandpa.

News and Blog To-Do’s

Well’p, it’s about that time once in a while where I crawl out from under my rock and fulfill the promise to myself to write on here again. That means it also comes with my usual disclaimer that it isn’t that I don’t love this little slice of internet that I get to call mine – I think I’m just lazy. Also I’m a bit of a firm believer that one should most be heard when they have something to say, and I…just kinda haven’t, lately.

But, I am alive, and that’s kind of cool.

In the meantime, I also swear to myself every time that I’ll get more punctual about announcing this sort of thing when something cool happens, but since I haven’t learned my lesson yet: News dump!

It’s been a busy month of fiction publications, writers’ meetings, and fun newspaper shenanigans, and about a week and a half ago I got to check an item off my Bucket List that I didn’t wholly realize was a Bucket List item until I did it – I did a book signing!

The short version is that a little bit ago we made a regular visit to a local game store Goblin Bros, and I noticed that they stocked an anthology series I was about to have work appear in. My fiancee had more wherewithal than I can ever lay claim to and actually mentioned it to the fine folks working there, wherein they were gracious enough to invite me to do a signing for a few copies.

I felt like royalty for an afternoon. (Who am I kidding? Almost two weeks later and I’m still riding that high.) And special thanks need to go out to Amanda and my good friend Dylan for being my emotional support people and keeping me in line while I made my squiggles.

The folks at Flame Tree Publishing were super cool to work and cooperate with, and same goes for the editing team at Crow & Quill for my other work that they helped join the literary world (I might just keep trying to do this stuff thanks to Tiffany’s kind and uplifting words). My story with FTP is a (dang fancy) reprint of my first-ever story “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, and C&Q’s anthology ‘Rituals and Grimoires’ now has my story “Speaking to Shades”, which is one that I’m really proud of, so I’m glad it’s found such a worthy home. (Ye can find it here https://thecrowshoppe.com/…/rituals-grimoires-gothic… if ye was interested.)

I know I started this post with the ritual “It’s been, like, six weeks (again), but here I am”, but I’ve also been considering doing a bit of a remodel on this whole thing. When I started it, I think it’s pretty well evident that not a whole lot of design philosophy went into the aesthetic. I just kind of slapped it together and was like, “I’ll make it yellow. Yellow’s a happy color.”

And I’m right about that.

But it only takes maybe a gram of honesty with myself to see that it’s lacking – earnest, simple, and modest, but lacking nonetheless. So in the next couple wee- okay, no. There will be an eventual remodel of sorts so this can be a halfway respectable slice of internet. A proper About Page, Contact Me, a list of Published Works, a Gallery or some junk – I don’t know, but more of what good, respectable, upstanding websites of internet society have.

I’m also going to take it back to its roots juuuust a little bit. The whole mission statement of this blog was in its namesake: The Light of Day, ie “that thing most of my work will never see.” I definitely have fun just ranting on here and thinking out into the void over just sharing scrap notes, but I think I’m going to piece out an old half-a-novel I had in the works from some years ago. Like the beloved work of the great Patrick Rothfuss and the monumental George R.R. Martin before him, the aforementioned project is hella unfinished. And it’s definitely without any plans to carry it forward into full literary life, but this is as peaceful a resting place / chance at second life I can think of to offer it with how blessedly busy I find myself these days.

Anyhoozle, Christ Almighty, that’s WAY more than enough of me talking about myself, so please continue your lives in just as awesome a manner as before I interrupted it.

You da bes’.

Ciao.

Don’t Buy Your Adult Kid a Sex Toy

Gonna say at the top of this one that the following tale from my life bears plenty of funny inferences about graphic, adult themes and, in light of those, a significant risk of oversharing on my part. So, I guess what I mean to say is that if you find yourself squeamish about feces in any form, discussions about self-pleasure, awkward encounters with one’s mother (don’t read to far into that one), or other pulpy topics that shake the buckles off a Puritan’s shoes…

Maybe skip this one.

But if what you’re looking for is an NSFW-lite story of all the above elements and more, well then, saddle up, Buttercup.

Now, where to start…?

Really, it’s a story of two parts, so let’s start where most trauma bgins and take a brief trip into my childhood.

My mom is the coolest person on the planet in the best way, that being that she doesn’t try to be cool, she’s just naturally great. That said, there was a hiccup period when I was a teenager where she went a bit out of her way to be The Cool Mom.

What does a stereotypical teenage boy’s room look like? Probably has a bit of mess, a guitar or skateboard leaned against the corner, and posters of swimsuit models on the walls, yeah? If ever we wondered where the hypothetical teenage boy in the given model got these sexy posters from, I can tell you: single mothers making an effort to be The Cool Mom.

And it wasnt just that she got them for me, she also bragged about doing so to my friends (and girlfriends) who came over. “Yeah, you know who got him those?” she would ask. “I did. And it’s, heh, hey man. Whatever, you know? I’m cool.”

A touch awkward, you say? I agree, but I was fifteen with tasteful boobs n’ butts on my wall. I wasn’t going to argue.

Now, let’s fast-forward a few years to Christmas of 2011. I’m eighteen now, have a job, have a car, taking college classes, but do still have those posters up. It’s Christmas morning, and momand I are exchanging fits. In addition to her myriad talents, mom’s an awesome gift giver. And part of that is in how she would disguise said gift in its packaging. Once, as a kid, she got me a Game Boy Advance game (which weighs about 0.0002 oz) put it in a box the size of a small dog, and weighed it down with four jugs of vegetable stock. Suffice to say, I was well surprised – the box sloshed! But part of the genius is that other times, she wouldn’t disguise something at all, just wrap it messily in paper to keep you on your toes. Is this disguised to look like something else, or is it exactly what it looks like? I dunno! Part of the fun!

Anyway, Christmas. 2011. Job. Gifts.

So we’re exchanging presents, and she grabs one in particular from under the tree with a knowing, mischieveous grin. A thing about mom’s humor: it’s not terribly sophisticated. Loud farts, poop jokes, people getting hit in the balls, and plain idiocy are all guaranteed hitters. I say all this as context for my concern when, as she hands me this…object, she says, “Heehee, I think you’re gonna have some fun with this one.”

The object in question was shaped like a cylinder, about eight inches long, narrowing slightly toward one end while being soft and squishy on the other, about as wide around as an adult fist.

Does…?

Is there anything that maybe…?

Do those dimensions remind anyone else of something like-

Okay. Yes. I was terrified in that moment just thinking, “Oh my God, don’t be a Fleshlight. Christ Almighty don’t be a Fleshlight. Just, Jesus please God don’t be a Fleshlight.”

And back me up, you can understand my logic, right? I’ve never owned one, but dammit if it didn’t look like the pictures. And that would be the escalation of the swimsuit poster principle. It’s what you’re supposed to do at eighteen in the States: buy a cigar, a lottery ticket or scratcher, and some pornography, all because you can now. You’re an adult in the law’s eyes. Flex your newfound power. Hoorah!

So it was while these thoughts raced in my mind and I broke out in a cold sweat that I shakily unwrapped my gift…

It was a thermos.

It was a plastic coffee cup with a lid. It was colored a light brown with white lettering that read, “Coffee Makes Me Poop!”

Mom bursts out in proud laughter at her own gag gift, and I loudly match with laughter that’s laced in profound relief. I just stare at it, eternally grateful that I ended up in the Good Timeline where my mother DIDN’T buy me a sex toy. Because that sh*t would change you as a person.

Anyway, a couple of years on, I’m still using the cup on a regular basis. I’m 22 now, my birthday having been maybe a week or two prior, and I’m at work during a standard morning meeting. We’re going over the day’s expectations and such when my manager looks over at me and, in front of the whole group goes, “You’re rocking a bit of a theme today, eh Evan?”

At first I raise my eyebrow, but then quickly see what he’s talking about.

I like to keep my birthdays pretty low-key, something I learned from my uncle. One year after his birthday I asked him what he got up to, and he said, “Oh, slept in a little bit. Then I tidied up the house, took myself out to lunch, got a haircut, and went a saw a movie. Nothing crazy.” And it was simple, but wow did that ever become my model for the perfect birthday.

So that week prior when I turned 22, I did damned near the same thing, but also went to a flea market that was going on a town over and picked up a few quirky things for really cheap, one item being the shirt I was wearing in this morning meeting during the call-out.

It was black with white lettering and a stick figure that was holding its arms up in celebration. It read, “I Pooped Today!”

I look at my shirt, then to my coffee cup, and realize my mistake. So I grabbed a piece of masking tape, put it over the “Poop!” part of “Coffee Makes Me Poop!” on my cup, and scribbled in marker “Smile!” instead. It was great. It cleaned up the message, but if you looked carefully through the tape you could still read the Poop! part of the cup, and there was this funny anecdote out of it now.

So, there you have it. A true coming-of-age tale with feces, sex toys, and light workplace scandals.

I Don’t Get Sick Anymore

Alright, as of a couple weeks ago, the title isn’t exactly, totally true anymore, but the spirit of the statement remains. I turned 29 back in August, and in preparation for meeting my thirties, I took a step towards taking better care of myself. Not to say that I trash my mortal coil, or that it was the beginning of a great big health kick, but I did seek out and start taking once-daily multivitamins.

And much to the amusement (or dismay) of my friends and coworkers, I haven’t shut up about it since.

You’re feeling a little slow and sluggish? Want to try a once-daily multivitamin by Nature Made?

You got the sniffles? How about a once-daily?

You sprained your ankle after falling off your mountain bike yesterday? Have you heard of Nature Made once-daily multi- you get it.

Also, to be clear, I’m not talking about the gummies or chewables. I’m talkin’ the big honkin’ horse pills that have edges and taste like grass if you don’t get them down quickly enough. It’s how you know it’s medicine that works. Anything else is just candy and it’s cheating.

And while it certainly just sounds like a joke, I’ve been pretty serious about it. Since taking them on a mostly-regular basis, I made it through Cold Season, Flu Season, and the general Winter Blues all virtually unscathed. Not chalking it up to luck, either. I was surrounded by sickies, and I could very much feel when my body was fighting something off, it’s just that every defense my body mounted was super successful.

In fact, that little disclaimer up at the top about being sick a few weeks ago only further cements my confidence in my Nature Made multivitamin theory. I spent a weekend drinking with friends, not sleeping a wink, and skipping my vitamins – boom, sick. I start taking them again the next day – bam, sickness clears up with a quickness.

Now, all of this certainly has the bones of an advertisement, but it isn’t.

Yet.

I’ve been so chatty at work about this miracle pill that is a simple multivitamin, that the idea sprouted to pursue a sponsorship from the vitamin company, and I currently have a background bet going with a coworker which gives me pretty serious bragging rights if I ever show up with confirmation of said sponsorship.

Fun fact: I have a Twitter account that I’ve used maybe two or three times ever, but one of those times was to tweet at Nicolas Cage asking him to send me five dollars for all of the word-of-mouth advertising I did for his movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”. I told him I would frame the five dollar bill to use as a conversation starter at dinner parties, but he never got back to me.

But as they say, “If you fail, try, try again.”

I think 2023’s my year. When I’m feeling confident, I’m probably going to start taking proper confessionals from those around me about all the preaching I’ve been doing and how it’s affected their lives, then sending that to Nature Made to see about a sponsorship. And I don’t need anything huge, this is for bragging rights remember, but it does need to be official. So just $1 and a certificate will do the job.

Failing even that, though, I have a contingency.

This coworker and I agreed that even if I can’t snag a proper sponsorship, if I get an official Cease & Desist from Nature Made for how much I start harrassing them in my pursuit of one, that will count for similar street cred. Maybe even more.

In the end, all I want to say, really, is this: Take your vitamins, mind your health, chewables are for cheaters, and if you eventually see an affiliate link to Nature Made products on this blog, please bear in mind proudly how much I had to annoy their company to make that a reality.

Ciao for now, y’all.

Belated Happy New Year

Woof. It’s been a second, huh?

The past twenty days have been a conflicting bunch. I’ve spouted for years that my two favorite holidays, as a devoted contrarian to the Christmas Crowd, are Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, in that order. And I think it’s in no small part, if I check the depths of my soul, because they’re holidays that most folks kind of hate.

With Thanksgiving, people dislike needing to get dressed up in their starched Sunday Best for the sole purpose of eating a dry bird and navigating a fight with their uncle over politics; and a lot of folks seem to like making fun of New Year’s for the resolution aspect, pointing out folks running or going to the gym and preaching about how the commitment will only last a couple of weeks.

Well, I say poo-on-you to both of those opinions. Thanksgiving is great (genocide notwithstanding) for the simple fact that it’s a holiday boiled down to its base and most important aspects: togetherness and feasting. Boom. It’s a classic combination, and you don’t mess with a classic. Of course here in the States, I observe the irony that Thanksgiving, a holiday meant for appreciating what we already have, comes mere hours before Black Friday, an annual excuse for the public to stampede over strangers for a deal on a television they never needed.

And if you’re going to crap on someone’s resolutions, wafer-thin commitment or not, I say you’re just projecting your own fear of failure. Allow yourself the wiggle room to try something new, the opportunity to fail, the exercise of discipline and see what comes of it. Sheesh.

Anyway, my 2022 holiday season was great. Halloween saw an awesome house party take place, and Thanksgiving and Christmas both were terrifically cozy, intimate, and memorable affairs, they way they ought to be done, in my opinion. But New Year’s…

2023 ain’t that great yet.

I know this is way too easy to say in retrospect if I didn’t record myself for posterity’s sake, but when all the “2023 is going to be my year, I can feel it” talk started going around a few months ago, I won’t lie, my gut reaction was a little, “I don’t know…kinda feeling 2024 is really going to be what’s better.” And so far, I haven’t been wrong.

I woke up on the 1st of January with a monstrous cramp in my back, and it took me almost two weeks for it to get right. I’m sort of a caveman when it comes to self-care, meaning my first line of defense when it comes to fixing health problems is to just isolate in a cave until the problem goes away. Worked great for the pandemic, not so much for dental issues, vision problems, a hernia, this back thing, etc.

My usual New Year’s tradition is to buy a calendar and start off on some of the resolutions I’ve written, but hot damn have I not been able to giddy-up for much anything yet. Here in California it’s been raining heaps, which further incentivized that “hole up in a cave” tactic, but lot of good that does when the muscles in your back feel like someone mistook you for Dracula and rammed a stake through your chest.

What the time inside did afford us here in the Davis household was some TV time (just what we need), and we finally checked out the Wednesday Addams Family series on Netflix. It was good. Didn’t love it, maybe, but liked it a lot. For some reason, my main takeaway was the episode featuring Wednesday’s birthday, and she refers to birthdays as “another year closer to the yawning oblivion of death” or something. For some reason, I set aside my usual curmudgeonly old man pants and fought that sentiment.

As opposed to another year closer to the grave, I thought, I like to think of each new year as another collection of memoires to cherish when I’m old – if I get old, you never know. Even the bad stuff, the struggles, the loss, you wind up thinking back on those times when you’re past them as notches in your belt, things you overcame or survived, things that added to your story; and I think that’s increasingly important to hold onto, as sentiments go.

Something else I’ve tried in the numbing excitement that’s been my life since last writing was that I tried out Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

For the uninitiated, Kingdom Come is a roleplaying video game that places you in the role of Hal, a peasant boy in 1405 Bohemia. And you know what I’ve found?

I suck at life as a peasant boy in 1405 Bohemia.

In the tutorial town alone, I was: beaten up, berated, covered in shit, and killed, mostly in that order. In the TUTORIAL. I eventually started it up again after some time away, hoping to gain some new ground after learning from my failures, only to find that I can add “ability to eat correctly” to my list of failures. When I wasn’t starving, I was apparently making my character overeat to the point of dizziness.

Dude, f*ck life in medieval Europe. That sucked.

Like, I applaud the game’s commitment to realism or whatever, but dang that was rough.

Anyway, back-ish into the swing of things here, and life is truly good enough that the complaining I do is just for fun. I’m currently taking part in NYC Midnight’s Microfiction Challenge 2022, and while I’m sure my second round submission has a good chance of flopping, I did come in 1st place in my heat in round one. So that was cool. Otherwise, I have some stuff coming out later this month I should probably announce on the day of…so I will, I guess. (I’m not even trying to be funny, the words you just read was my train of thought as it happened. Just felt like being honest with you.)

Ciao, beautiful people.

Epic Dreams of Dirt (+ Announcement)

I eat a lot of hot sauce. I used to put it on everything and get the really spicy ones so that I could be that guy, but I’ve calmed it down a little in recent years. I also used to specifically eat something spicy right before bed, because I noticed doing so gave me really vivid, really strange and surreal dreams.

Now I’ve stopped doing that entirely, but I guess I conditioned my brain enough to think it’s alright to give me strange dreams most nights. One such was just the other night…

Oh! I should put here that I’ve been playing a lot of Deep Rock Galactic recently, and I only say that because it’ll soon become obvious the ways that game influenced the dream. (If you haven’t heard of it and you don’t feel like following the link, in short, it’s a game where you play as a space dwarf mining crystals and minerals out of a giant asteroid-planet-thing.)

Anyway, the other night…

Like most dreams, I don’t remember how I got to the start, but I knew I was being hunted by the Italian mafia. Somehow, at the beginning of the dream, that meant I GUESS that I was in a motel outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico while on the run from them. Of course, one of their hitmen finds me and I’m sure you can guess who it is.

That’s right, Danny Trejo.

So Danny Trejo shows up going full Machete on me, showering the motel in bullets while I run, duck, and dodge behind cover.

^In case you wondered, this is what “going full Machete” looks like.
It’s a fun movie.

Eventually, he runs out of ammo and hops in an old car, trying to run me down. Now my memory gets kind of spotty around this point in the story, but the end point is that I successfully kill him in self-defense. (I think I trick him into crashing the car, or something. Let’s just assume it was something clever.)

That dramatic scene winds up placing me in Witness Protection. I remember they handed me a special form to fill out for, like, my preferences of what kind of Witness Protection I would prefer, and in the special comments section I just wrote “No Italians, please.” Which is several shades of stupid, but made sense in the moment since I was on the run from the Italian mafia.

It doesn’t wind up working.

So Witness Protection places me in a sort of special boarding house that looks like an old Victorian manor out in New England. (Heh, I just noticed the dream keeps taking place in “New” places. New Mexico to New England. Weird.) The boarding house is run by a kindly old woman with red hair and she shows me to my room toward the back of the manor. My paranoia sets in, and on one of the first nights, I remove a couple panels from the floor and I start digging.

The logic at work is that I’m going to construct a series of tunnels to really live in, or at least have as a getaway in case the mob ever finds me. I think I distantly remember reading about or hearing about an either Roman or Chinese emperor who did the same thing with their palace, filling it with a hundred rooms and sleeping in a different one every night to confuse would-be assassins.

Which is basically what I did.

I dug a whole bunch of tunnels into the ground beneath the mansion, and I filled those tunnels with a bunch of dummy routes, dead ends, tunnels that looped back in on themselves. I dug enough dirt to last eleven lifetimes to make sure the mob would never find me.

Along the way, I met another resident of the house, a young girl named Alyssa, who found my series of tunnels and asked to help me dig more because she thought it was cool. At first I said no, wary of outsiders and not wanting to share my masterpiece with another, but ultimately relented.

I also found this awesome, green, furry mole-ferret creature while digging. I never really thought of a name for him, but he was adorable, helped me dig, and loved to snuggle while making this soft purring noise. He was great.

At this point, there’s a bit of a time skip, or a fast-forwarding. I met Alyssa, found my giant ferret creature, at one point we struck ground water and essentially dug out a massive underground grotto or lake. We brought in bamboo from the Overworld (just the regular world, but we’d become underground people) to build scaffolding and walking pathways around this body of water. It was a good time.

But nothing good lasts forever.

One day while I’m hanging out on the big wrap-around porch of the house, I see a car with tinted windows drive slowly by. The window rolls down and a bald man with a scar on his cheek stares me down for a moment, before rolling the window back up and driving away. (No idea why, but I name him Spencer.

My God. I’ve been found.

I have a discussion with the headmaster lady of the house, and she gives me a sort of “Ah, alas. I feared this day would come” sort of monologue, and says she’ll prep the house for battle – or something of the sort. Eventually, it falls to dusk, and a train of twelve cars pulls up in front of the place. Out of each one, a uniquely dressed, themed, and deadly hitman steps out with an intent to kill. They charge the house, and I kung-fu fight with about four or five of them around the house, killing or incapacitating them mightily before I begin to tire and worry for the worse. All around the house, the headmaster lady and other residents are doing their own righteous battle with these (apparently still supposed to be Italian mafia) hitmen.

I’m wounded, and the headmaster lady tells me to fall back, and that they have it from here. So I do, and retreat into my tunnel system. While down there, Alyssa finds me and tells me that our ferret isn’t doing so good, she thinks he’s sick. So I pick up the little guy, he purrs against my chest and neck while I carry him down one of the tunnels, across our underground lake (taking up the bamboo walkways behind us), and into the deepest tunnel that is my Sanctuary. For extra security, I lay a couple of satchel charges in the dirt (which I apparently have) and lie in wait with my ferret creature.

The End

I woke up at that point, but I assume that Spencer the Hitman followed my trail down the tunnels and would have fallen upon me and my ferret, but got blown up by my booby traps. That’s my head canon and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, if you’ve stuck with it this far or just skipped down until you saw “The End”, either way: The News!

I’ve stopped announcing these sorts of things with any regularity, both because life is busy and because I’m not sure who’s listening with bated breath on this, my tiny, eensy weensy slice of the internet, but we’ve got another publication in the books! (lol Pun.)

Flame Tree Publishing is coming out with their Gothic Fantasy ‘Alternate History’ anthology early next year and are including a reprint of one of my first ever stories, “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, wherein we learn the tragic, twisted truth behind the cloak-and-dagger game which shadowed the American Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and I’m extra stoked about this one because Flame Tree is based out of London, UK, which means ya boi has gone international! And I think that’s worth a nod. -cheers- (<– the polite gesture at a dinner party, not a crowd erupting with applause)

Anyhoo, that’s all for now. Thanks for sticking around. Ciao, everybody.

Like What You Like, a Pirate Taught me That

I don’t know why I was thinking of this earlier today, but I’m glad I was. And don’t get ahead of me thinking there was some clutch moment where that life lesson of self-acceptance saved the day. Nope, just a mundane day at work where the thought caught me and it made me smile. In fact, with this lengthy preamble, I’m already treating this nugget of life advice like it’s some unknowable secret I’ve mastered that you probably haven’t figured out yet. Psh.

It was a scholastic book faire, circa 2006. I’m in middle school, and I should preface (some more) that I went to a tiny, tiny Lutheran private school – and yes, it was about as cool as that sounds. It wasn’t because of any sort of privileged position, either. Just that it was right by our house and my mom wanted to do her best as a parent. In truth, I would now as I would have then traded in my time for the same years spent at a public school where I could have begun cultivating meaningful friendships sooner.

At the Lutheran school I attended, it was Kindergarten through 8th Grade with around 120 kids – total. TOTAL. That meant that if you didn’t fit in with your 15 or so classmates, it was tough nuts, because you were stuck with those same 15 kids your entire time there.

I did not fit in with my classmates.

By my memory, their interests largely ranged between baseball, horror movies, Top-40 pop music, none of which interested me. Baseball? Not a sports guy. Horror movies? I’ll take a comedy, thank you. Pop music? I like Metallica. And I played D&D and read manga, things that only nowadays are sniffing “cool” territory (except you, manga, you’re still a pariah from what I hear).

So yeah, book faire.

We peruse the pencils, browse the books, and excavate the piles of colorful erasers looking for favorites, and exit into the gymnasium. Two other boys, we’ll call them Jimmy and Timmy, are poring over their haul, namely a couple of sports magazines. They ask what I came out with, and I show them: an issue of Shonen Jump with Monkey D. Luffy on the cover.

For those not in The Know, One Piece was a cartoony pirate adventure, and that grinning doof in the middle is Luffy, the happy-go-lucky pirate captain protagonist

I still remember the looks on their faces and the sound of them laughing at me. And especially as an eleven-year-old, I’d been defensive and embarrassed before. I knew the reflex to hide it in my backpack and say, “Yeah, no, it’s kinda dumb. It’s for my-” blah blah blah.

But today was different.

I don’t know where it came from or why, but a muse of some kind came out of the ether, broke into my thoughts, and said, “You know what? No. Fuck these guys. One Piece is cool, and I like this.”

It wasn’t anger behind the thought, either, just complete and total dismissal. Their thoughts and opinions on my interests could NOT bother me one bit. And I credit Luffy’s dorky grin, now that I think back on it. He felt like backup, telling me it was totally alright to enjoy the things I found enjoyable, other people’s thoughts on the matter be damned.

And good goddamn am I ever grateful that lesson occurred to me as a kid. I think we all know someone who – or maybe ourselves struggle with this – lets the opinions of others dictate their interests and pastimes.

Bottom line is this: Like what you like, be secure in your opinions because your the one who they’re for. Try new things, sure. And if someone wants to disparage your interests, like your an adult who likes video games and cartoons or someone in a biker gang that enjoys crochet, just realize it’s the limitation of that person’s worldview. Take pleasure in the things you like.

Or else, hell, what else are we even here for?

Ciao for now.

Icebreakers

Y’know, I didn’t plan the title to be quite this appropriate, but after a quiet hiatus of two-ish months, it’s actually kind of fitting. I think of good icebreakers as fun little questions, or questions you ask “because why not?” And really good ones both break the ice and tell you something about the person you’re asking them of while they commence with said breaking of ice. Not totally sure why, but I’ve caught myself asking these kinds of things of my coworkers a lot more often lately – not because dialogue with them is awkward or anything, quite the opposite; I think it’s just because they’re sort of fun.

And why make it more complicated than that?

So without further adieu, Icebreaker #1: “If you were going to become an animal, what animal would you become and why?”

My favorite part to that one is actually all of the qualifying questions that usually follow it. “Like, at will, or forever moving forward?” “Right now, or is going to happen in a week or something?” “Will I keep my human intelligence, or just- poof! You’re a jaguar now?” And to answer those, the house rules we’ve been running with have essentially been “No, it isn’t an at-will kind of thing. It’s a permanent change. No, you don’t get a week to prep for it, it just happens here as soon as you answer – go with your gut. Yes, you keep your human intelligence.”

Obviously my second-favorite part are the answers themselves and their justification. That jaguar one was a real answer, and the given reason was that he wanted to be a house cat, but if he gets to keep his human intelligence, then a jaguar is like that but a bit more badass. Plus, if you’re going to answer the question and introduce a scenario wherein you’re now suddenly a giant cat, there are some follow-up questions that beg answers: How do you tell your family? Do you tell your family? Where do you set up your new home if so, or if not? If you’re a predator now, then what/where/how do you hunt?

The possibilities are ENDLESS!

Personally, I chose becoming a hedgehog; but truthfully, that was just a gut-reaction and I don’t think it was really a smart choice. I’d become super cute, sure, but I think, like, anything that lives outdoors can and would happily eat me. Or at least brutalize me.

Lookin’ at you, stray cats.

The other classic is “If you could have a super power, which one would you have and why?”

This one everybody has heard and/or given an answer to. Mine is pretty easy: telekinesis. It’s subtle enough that most times nobody ever has to know you can do it, but it can also get powerful enough that you’re a goddamn Jedi, plus there’s plenty of room for creativity with it. But you also run the gambit of Usual Suspects:

Invisibility – Ugh, says everyone. Though, credit where it’s due, one of my friends did say that she’d use it defensively instead of to be a creep. She’d just go invisible when she didn’t want people to talk to her, and I can respect that.

Flight – Sure, but how, wings or thought? And how fast? Either way, you’re going to need goggles or something, plus it’s going to get cold. That and a slew of other problems come along with choosing to fly. ALSO, it’s one of those powers where if you suddenly stop using it while you’re using it – you die.

Teleportation – See this one’s also problematic. Is it short-distance, Nightcrawler style? Or is it like in Jumper where you can just pop across the planet? And do you think you can focus enough and picture your destination clearly enough, honestly, to be able to not end up glitching into a wall somewhere?

This last one is a little niche, but I still think it can be pretty telling of the person who answers it: “What’s your favorite D&D class, and why?”

Naturally, this will be a little limited to tabletop gamers being the only ones who can give you informed answers, but we are a growing breed, and it can be a chance to introduce newbies. Also, it can be a good way to be surprised. One friend who I was sure would swing either for ‘stalwart paladin’ or ‘playful rogue’ hit me out of left field with “I think being a druid is cool. Taming beasts and kicking ass as a bear, or something. Rad.”

Rad indeed, Robert. Rad indeed.

Personally, my favorite class is and always will be the Ranger, even if they get a little screwed over by Wizards of the Coast in the stats department. But even if their class features receive lesser support than others, it isn’t really what they can do that makes Rangers the best, it’s…well, what they are. They are so freakin’ versatile – ranged support, melee damage dealers, exploration/expedition heads, utility spellcasting, animal companions if you lean that way, etc. I get that this statement is true for plenty of classes, but I feel it in my heart the most for the Ranger: you can build it so many different ways. System-wise, Pathfinder may have done it the best, with the inclusion of “Urban” environments as a possible Favored Terrain. One of my favorite Ranger builds was making an urban explorer that was a treasure hunter, with Constructs as his favored enemy.

Taking silver is sort of a two-way tie between Bards and Monks, but that’s a separate discussion.

Anyway, so, yeah.

Tenacity is the Key to Arm-Wrestling a Giant

I’ve mentioned once or twice the life-changing trip I was lucky enough to make when I was sixteen, a student ambassadorship program called People-to-People. It was a mashed together group of about thirty of us Californian kids with another gaggle of maybe a dozen Texas teenagers, and all in all we traveled across six countries around Western Europe: England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. We were escorted by several chauffeurs who were part of the program, a couple tour guides, and our mainstay coach driver: Bjorn.

Bjorn was a big Austrian guy. Stout, dense with muscle beneath the padding, tall, and I’m sure his damn bones were heavier than a normal man’s. As a rambunctious sixteen-year-old, I knew a trophy when I saw one. So while going about our way in the U.K. (rhyme like that deserves a song, I think), I challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. His reply? A big, jovial smile and a bellowed, “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

Was that enough of a signal for me? Of course not. So for weeks, literal weeks, I pestered him. We saw the Louvre, the Palace at Versaille, the famous Dutch windmills and fields of tulips, Bonn, Germany, and so many other sights, and every step of the way I’m bugging Bjorn: “How about now, big guy?” “Aw, what? Scared of me? Weird, but probably good.” “Come on, I’ll make it quick. I promise.”

I carry on so much, so loudly and consistently, that over the course of the trip it becomes a point of interest for the rest of my travelmates. But every time, his answer is the same: “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

Finally, we’re at a hotel in Switzerland for our last night celebrating with a big old dinner and dance in fancy clothes. It was great! We had food, friends, music, some memories we’re already reminiscing over, and others being made that night to last a lifetime.

It was only missing one thing…

So I found Bjorn sitting by himself enjoying a book in the hotel’s rather sparse lobby. I approach, confident yet almost pleading, and ask again. “Bjorn. Man. It’s our last day. Can I finally crush you in an arm-wrestling match?” Around me is a small group of friends who’d heard I was going to pester him again. He looks from me, to the others, to his book. With a short sigh, he fits in the bookmark and sets it down, then with a big, beaming smile says, “Okay.”

You’d think he told us we’d won the lottery. We explode with excitement, and my buddy Peter runs off to grab a camera (phones didn’t have reliable cameras by default, back then – Christ that ages me some). We find a suitable table, a ring of spectators encircles us, Peter starts rolling the camera, Bjorn and I clasp hands and set our elbows, and with a nod show we’re ready. We get someone to referee, and they wave the flag (<ahem> napkin <ahem>) for us to start.

Immediately, I lean in full-bore. I’ve talked this up for weeks and poked the bear, I would not be made a fool of so easily now. So I throw my full weight and strength and strain into beating Bjorn. I will not let up, I will not give in, I will not allow myself to lose. And to my utter astonishment, I’m actually holding my own. Obviously I’m not demolishing him, but I’m actually being competitive. Our clasped hands are wavering at high noon, neither side able to gain ground, but also not losing it. This is amazing!

Then I see his face…

He…he was so calm, it was like he was holding the door open for a nice lady rather than arm-wrestling for life and honor.

So I ask him, my voice straining as I blink away the sweat, “Bjorn, are you even trying?”

His response? “Heh-heh-heh. No.”

At which point, he slams my hand back onto the table so quickly and with such absolute power he might as well have thrown me out the window.

If someone only tells you stories about times where they win, it’s an almost sure mark of insecurity and they’re almost certainly lying. With that understanding in place, let me tell you with utmost confidence that Bjorn kicked my ass that night. And you know what? It was awesome.