The Machinery and Habits of Love

We all want perfection.  It's true.  Don't doubt it for a moment.

Maybe not in all things, in fact, certainly not in all things... but in something, we want perfection.  We want that perfect car, so we look at the styles and bodies and we pick the one that strikes our eye just so and we find that rusted out hulk.  We tinker, we build, we paint, we improve, and then we revel.  We want that perfect movie, so we watch trailer after trailer and we go to opening nights.  We want that perfect body, so to the gym, to the road, and to the weights in the corner of the apartment we go while supplementing with drinks, shakes, diets and DVDs.  We want that perfect love, and we strive and we change and we compromise and we fight, knowing it will all be worth it in the end.

But in to every sky a cloud, on every beach a sharp shell, and every sun a burn.  There are always flaws.

The best heros in any novel make the worst decisions, and then overcome them.  A hero that never fucks up is a boring read.

Batman became an alcoholic after Robin died.

Spawn cut a deal with the devil to come back for the woman he loved.

Justice never truly figured out if he was insane, or from another dimension.

The Navajo have a tradition when they make a beautiful piece of art.  When they produce a bead-work, they put one bead in that is off color.  When they paint a picture, they leave a brushstroke undone.  There is an oddity to any silver work, whether it be patterning or luster... there is a flaw.  Why?  Why ruin a beautiful work with any sort of -intentional- failure?

Well, it's hard to explain.  But the long and the short of it is that they believe that everything has a spirit, and that small flaw is left as a 'vent' to any badness or evilness or negative energy to escape through.  If they made a perfect work, it would be a static, stagnant thing.  By leaving that small aperture, they ensure the work shall continue to be beautiful, because anything within it that festers, any negative energy it picks up, can be vented and exhaled back in to the world.  It's a lot more complex than that, though... and that's what makes it so difficult to explain.  The idea at a core is that when you make a piece of art, any piece of art, you are sharing your soul with a static piece of the world.  And if you make it a closed system, a stagnant thing without a vent, then that part of you will be trapped within and will grow toxic.

The same, I think, is true with people.  People have problems.  They make bad decisions.  I have some very good friends who are going through some very serious shit right now, and my heart bleeds for them.  I will never think that there aren't reasons for the situations they are in, but here's the thing, and it correlates to the point I just made:

The work of art is only appreciable by the person viewing it.  If someone is staring at this amazing piece of art, and they can only see the flaw, that is not the work of art's problem... that is the fault of the viewer.  People are completely the same.  If you love someone for the beauty they have injected in to your life, it should be no problem to look past the bad decisions, past the hardships, and revel in the beauty and the intent with which they better you.  But equally as important is to leave your own flaws present, to not change yourself on an intrinsic level to the point where you become a closed system.  Leave your own flaws in place, your own problems, or you will potentially cause stagnation for your mate.

More importantly, people need to realize that the flaws an individual has are just as important as the positive qualities.  There is no perfect person out there.  There's just not.  There's simply someone who has insanities and passions and problems that mesh with yours with a minimum of cutting to either side.  Cutting being the operative word... there will always be grinding.  We are talking about two gears who are misshapen and come together to drive an engine powered by love.  Rust will flake and fall to dust, metal will grind and sift in shards to the ground, and eventually those gears will mesh perfectly but it will not be a painless or instant process.

A machine is a work of art.  A plethora of parts that work together to a focused goal, fueled by liquid, by lubricants, and by explosions.  Love is the same kind of machine.  There are liquids, there are lubricants, and there are explosions.

The difference is that physical machines have interlocking nuts and bolts, have tightly fit parts, and have engineers to help them stay together if something doesn't quite fit right.

Love only has you, and your mate, and those around you who understand the both of you and can reach out to tap a piece in place, turn a bolt tighter, or add a bit of fuel when your engine is coughing or sputtering.  It needs to be fed, this engine, it needs to be maintained, and cleaned, and periodically taken out for a long-hard run on the highway to blow the carbon out of the carburetor.

And it takes both people to do it.  Sometimes one must do more than the other.  Other times the load will switch, but both need to keep carrying it, or the system breaks down.

Love, true love, is worth whatever fight it takes to continue it.

My Itsy Bitsy Friend

World, meet Wendy.  Wendy is a spider.

I've been having a pretty rough time lately, dealing with some things that I need to deal with.  Those close enough know what I'm talking about, those that don't probably don't need to know.  I decided to get out of the house for a while and go maybe write something... so I came downtown, ordered some tea, and then started pulling up old stories and looking them over.

I thought for a while about writing more about Victoria, who's a character I dearly love, but I'm not sure what aspect of her life I should focus on next.  Or if I should focus on her alley gator instead.  Nothing spun up, so I closed that door and looked through others.  Several small snippets rose and fell before the thresher of my mind, and then I started to think about spiders.  I started to think about writing a story about how the first creature to reach space was a spider that had ballooned too high, and then I discarded that idea as lame.  I mean who would want to read that?  Seems just stupid to me, so like so many other ideas, I threw it aside.

And I'm sitting there, staring now at old photos, my mind wandering to places where no torches burn, and I look down and I have a little friend sitting on my keyboard.  This spider.  Wendy.  Nature, yet again, comes to tap me on the shoulder and say "Hey bro.  Gonna be alright."

So I sit back and watch her for a while, and she scrambles across my keyboard and skitters towards the screen, crawls part way up it then over to the side, and runs over to my phone's charge cable.  She's been sitting there for the last ten minutes as I just stare at her and sit and think.  And so I decided to take a picture, and then write about it.

My own experiences with spiders started pretty young, with one of my uncles either going through an entymology phase or just having a severe hardon for spiders.  His wall was covered in dead spiders all put up on display.  I don't remember how the conversation came up, but I do remember him telling me once that spiders are very good luck, and you should never kill one if you could in any way avoid it.  They're great house guests:  They're clean, they help keep other pests away, they prefer to stay out of sight, and they create their own art.

I could use a little luck right now, and a little art, and little Wendy here seemed to have known.  She still hasn't moved from that cable, going on twenty minutes now.  My mind spins in weird directions and I wonder if she's a happy spider.  Spiders have some pretty amazing neural work, and I figure there has to be emotions in there somewhere.  Has she already picked this place as her home?  Is she going to live her eight legged life out at the Root Note Hipster Cafe?  Will she ride someone's clothes out side, maybe latch on to some thick horn rim pair of hipster glasses and gain her freedom to the streets of Lacrosse?  Will she catch a steady wind and fly away to some exotic place over the bluffs where there is no concrete?  Will she have children, will she live a long spider life or be snuffed out by a cruel boot or some other hunter?

And I wonder what she thinks of this giant thing clattering on keys nearby.  Why is she sitting here staring at me?  I mean if I were her, I'd probably want some more distance from this giant mass of pale flesh and hair.  But she stands there fearless, keeping a few eyes on me.  

And I still can't think of anything to write.  So maybe I will honor her life by writing about a spider.

Test #2, after theme removal

this is my second test I'm not a Google Voice going straight to my blog

they look out across the open waters of the Mississippi half frozen like some sort of still dream I wonder how long it's gonna be before people actually realize the religion is some sort of an informational virus that should be banned or at least medicated against.

I heard want to some friends of mine that were teaching their children all of the stuff out of the Bible just like it was fairy tales.  teaching each individual pale but putting it into the same context that 1 would put jack and the Beanstalk or Little Red Riding Hood just so they know that this stuff is out there they also know that it's fables it's tails if things that we should learn from it's not literal.

and I wonder how long it will be until people started knocking leaving their children against this.  how long would take before people actually realize that is just another form of control it's just another form of domination 1thought form beating out the other thought forms and trying to suppress creativity.  to stifle heretical thoughts things that might lead sheep away from the flock.

I'm inspire disease thoughts by looking across this great river at this weird mission this sits on the other beach.  a mission the only seems to see you were shippers during the summer time zone people come out and swim their prayers and great big river.   during the winter months when it's too cold to come out regularly when only the psychopath to jump in the river for the Polar Bear Plunge brave enough to risk losing data does it see any action.

this lonely mission sits there on it stretches stand right next to some sort of a construction machine not a bulldozer but 1 of those big hook machines with the Giants pork on the and the dig dig dig about the earth

anyway I've done some editing on this poster never left most of it clear as quote unquote translated by google voice

so there you go I wish I could insert a picture of the kitten for you but I can't because it's my voice

Shitty Kinda Nightmare

Had a shitty kinda nightmare last night.

I say kinda nightmare because parts of it where a nightmare, and other parts were not... but only in retrospect.  However, since I only got 3 hours of goddamn sleep, it was still a shitty fucking nightmare.

I remember wandering in the dream, a sense of aimlessness kinda consumed me.  I yearned to find something, not a physical something, or even really a mental something.  The weird thing was it was more that I yearned to find something to find.  I felt like a shitty bunch of min-maxed non-background written characters in a seedy bar waiting for a shitty GM to come up with something to do.  But instead of any mage or king or shifty eyed criminal hiring them, they just kept drinking and boozing and talking about how if there were any girls there, they wanted to do them.

The terrain kept shifting, forests and plains, crags and ravines, beside an ocean, walking across the waves, sand, inside caves, and everytime I would look somewhere for more than a moment I would feel a sharp pain from behind, or from my side.  Little wounds would appear, little bite marks, all over, no real sense to it, just randomly getting bitten.  Soon, blood began to be drawn, and I could hear familiar laughter from all over the place, stronger when I'd get bitten.  The sounds of old parties, the sounds of people I used to know, and I distinctly remember the smells of Thanksgiving.  

It was about then that I began to take off my clothes, I was getting really damn hot, the sun was baking down on me and for some reason I was sweating honey.  I hauled ass into a cave and the sun crumbled the rock above, continuing to bake me.  The bites kept coming harder and faster, and then blood began to spill out with the honey.  I began to scream, to throw my hands around wildly, but my pudgy fists weren't able to do a goddamn thing to protect me.  They'd hit something with the wet splat of a thrown mushroom sometimes, but the bites kept coming.

The longer I was being eaten, the more tired I got.  It was not long after I left the cave that I started to see small shades flittering around, the hunched postures of people I for some reason trusted.  Darting in, claiming more pieces of me.  I remember screaming and feeling a surge of energy.  I ran off across the plain only to have a lasso secure around my neck, shackles around the wrists, a bolo take me at the ankle.  Felt like an elephant was stepping on my lower back as my face pressed into the grass which turned into an ash-stained, moldy carpet.  Blades sharpening behind me, the sound of dice clattering.

Hunks of me were sawn off, and I remember being thanked that I had come back, that everyone had just missed me soooo much.  It was then that I woke up, I remember my hands hurt from being clenched.  Aleister was a subtle friendly warmth against the backs of my knees, and Sedalia was sitting inches from my head on the arm of the couch.  I gave her a little pat, and in one of those purely Sedalia moments, she gave me a pat back.  Not a swat, but just a small reach out of her paw, and a pat pat to my hand as it retreated.

I thought a lot about what it meant... I mean it's pretty fucking obvious really.  Sometimes my mind is pretty fucked up when it comes to nightmares, but sometimes it just comes straight out and says "Yo dude, here's some science."

Anyway, that's my shitty kinda nightmare that makes me glad that I escaped the real one. 

The Scratching at the Door Beyond Light

It starts like an itch in the back of your skull, or maybe not even there.  Like a scratching at the door in a part of your basement you don't usually go into, distant, quiet and intrusive.  You start to wonder what it is, what this odd sensation is that's coming from somewhere you don't visit.  Sometimes you try to ignore it.  Sometimes, it'll end up going away.  Scritch scritch scritch, pause... scritch, scritch, scritch.

But sometimes it doesn't go away.  Sometimes no matter what you do, that scritching will continue.  Tiny little claws of some unknown beast across the raw brick of your basement.  Unrefined, unknown, and completely without direction.  Scratching, clicking, ticking as it strides to and fro outside of your notice, but still somehow starting to consume your reality.  You ignore it at your breastfast nook, trying to overcome the sound with the crunching of your Fruity Pebbles or the burbling of your coffee maker.  You ignore it as you take a shower, throwing your head madly underneath the thundering water, trying to wash it away.  As you zip up your pants, as you vacuum, or as you watch TV.  But in those slow, creeping silences that are so completely inevitable, the sound returns.  Scritch.  Scritch.  SCRITCH.

Sometimes the moment you hear it, you know, and you go open that creaky door to your basement and look down that dark stairwell.  Or you manage to ignore it for a couple hours before you break, sometimes a day, sometimes a week, a month.  Sometimes years, but it's always there.  Scritching.  Eventually, you go and you look.  Your bare feet grinding down the steps resolutely, the gritty grime coating the bottoms of your feet, the uneven and untreated wood of the stairs feeling like it might splinter at any time.

And that feeling just gets stronger, that now you're not alone in the basement, that there's something lurking underneath those stairs, or just around the side of the water heater, or behind your old stacks of comic books.  Swallowing the angst, you pass all those minor horrors towards that dark and distant doorway marked not by a frame, not by a knob, but by a single line of colored light on the floor.  That single line of colored light that lays at the other end of so many other doors which have gone silent, lines of fading light below doors never opened.

And you see those scritching feet walking back and forth in that line of light, small and savage shadows marking the passage of something tiny, something inevitable, something ready to change things.  Sometimes you can hear the claws.  Other times, it's not even feet, but something far more squamous, gibbering, or even floating.  The floaters are the worse, marked more by a dimming of the light than an actual shadow.

You may start to reconsider, but you can't.  You've already looked into the basement, you've already passed the Thing Under The Stairs, the WaterHeater Beast, and the Boxed Lurker.

You have, as the cliche goes, come too far.  You can't turn back.  Running would solve nothing, the thing behind the door already knows you know of it, and has already shown that it will not stop.  It will keep itching, and scritching.  Scratching, clawing, and biting until it chews through that door, walks past the minor horrors of your basement with all the regal intent of a visiting Head of State, and marches straight into your mind with a thousand lockstep tubas at its back.  So taking one last breath before you to the deed, you reach out and grab the knob, shoving the door open.  Your eyes dilate, your mind widens, and you look full force into the face of the idea that simply will not leave you alone.

This is what it's all about.  This little thing on the floor.  This tiny little idea staring up at you with perhaps two, or perhaps thousands, of little tiny eyes all blinking innocently.  Or maybe there aren't eyes, maybe it waves antennae at you, or pseudopods, or a small radar dish tracks slowly across your face as it reads your features.  The point is it recognizes you as its savior, its parent, its owner and also its slave, and it could not be happier that you've come to recognize it.  That you've come to focus on it.  It lets out a mew, or a bleat, or a yip, or a servo whine as your hands bring it up on high to be carried back up out of the basement of your mind.

You bring your idea up out of the basement, out of the darkness and into the bright shining brilliance of your breakfast nook.  Your fingers run across its fur, scales, skin, solar panels and you preen it.  You check it for ticks, burrs, parasites that might harm it and you as it laps from a bowl of milk or oil, and you sit there getting to know it, this wild and untamed thing.  Perhaps you touch it in a way it doesn't like, and that idea shows you displeasure by drawing a line of anger through your heart in the form of blood beading on your hand.  You look it over from every angle, checking it every way you can, wondering what it would become, what it can become, and how best you can care for this marvelous beast that has, for some reason, chosen you to raise it.

Maybe you doubt, for a moment, your skill as a parent to this creature.  You've seen the glory that others have raised their private beasts to.  Could you do that job?  Do you dare?  The Kings, the Martins, the Gibsons and the Dicks.  Those great beasts that march across the minds of the young and old, sometimes even breeding in strange climes and creating varied and amazing young of their own.  Or maybe you wonder if it's even within your skill to raise such an odd beast... that maybe you've gotten an unlucky draw.  Maybe your beast is too weird for you, and you just can't comfortably wrap your mind around it.  Maybe you think that your beast would be better raised by a DeVille, or a Vandermeer, or maybe even a Lovecraft.  But once it's out, it's out, you can't take it back into that basement, it won't let you.  And you can't box it up and send it to someone else.  It wouldn't survive the journey.  Someone else's mind doesn't have the right fruits to raise it, to nurture it, to guide it towards being all it can be.

So it's up to you to raise your beast, for good or ill.  Or let it die, starving for attention, slowly wasting away as you ignore it, the pain of its struggle to remind you that It Is Still Here sometimes causing an ache that lasts for days, or weeks, or years.

This is how it is.  This is how I feel being a writer.  Sometimes I don't want to hear that scritching at the far door Beyond Light.  It hurts inside, feeling that I can't possibly raise all these wonderful ideas.  I have to pick and choose which doors I open, and once I do, it wounds me when I can't do it justice.

There are always things that invade my life, take my time away from the beautiful young creatures I so dearly desire to raise.  There are jobs, and phone calls, and bills, and rampaging neighbors.  There are visitors, storms, and worries.  Illnesses, concerns, old rivalries and small victories.  All these things take attention away from my little menagerie.  And they're always there.  Once you free them from the basement, once you judge them worthy to risk opening that door, there's no getting rid of them.  They're always there staring out from behind your eyes, sometimes quiet, sometimes clamoring for attention at the most absurd times.

I'll be at a party, or at a bar, and all of a sudden one of my half-raised beasties will grab me by the heartstrings and shake my like a two person tent in a hurricane, screaming into my face that it needs attention and food.  The whole scene around me fades out as my imagination kicks into overdrive and I zone out on whatever I'm doing.  Words untended fall stale from my mouth as I babble, my mind anywhere but the conversation I was literally -just- having.  Instead, my mind races through unseen vistas and across uncharted worlds as I try in vain to keep up with this marvelous creature that I've half-raised to life.  I have no control over it.  It takes me, I'm taken, and I can only to my best to take notes.

Sometimes those notes get lost along the way, sometimes they're so soaked in alcohol when I write them down that the ink instantly blurs and fades.  Sometimes the notes suck, and I wad them up, using them for a cook fire to stew up something different.  And sometimes that note is the raw brick of unobtanium I fucking need to make something truly brilliant.

An old friend, now passed, once asked me what it's like to be a writer.  This is the only answer I've come up with after years of thought.  I can't put it any other way.  I can only imagine it is much the same for artists.  A million designs a minute, and each one whining for your attention.  It's the saddest thing, to walk through the Dog Pound of your mind and look down at each wagging tail, each pair of soulful eyes, each set of floppy ears begging you to Please, Please Pick Me, Pick Me Before I Die.  And you just can't take them all.  You can't, there's no way.  So you have to be choosy.  You have to reach down for the ones that you think you can truly bond with.

The ones you can raise up, the ones you can train to be Good Little Beasts.  The ones who, after you put all the effort in to it, can make you happy to sit back and be proud of what you've created.  And you can't think about the ones you've left behind, you can only hope that they somehow escaped the Pound to go frolic across whatever aetheric depths lay between the  minds of mankind to find someone else's basement to lurk and scratch in until that door gets opened, and the cycle begins anew.

The Superbowl

I just spent the last 2 hours throwing words at my screen in an attempt to let my head breathe a little bit.  I need to write more, I need to get out more, I need to be more proactive in creating things and doing things, and so this was my (quite obviously) forced attempt to get my mind in motion.  It's crap, but here it is.  It's a story that won't ever go anywhere, doesn't really have a point, but here it is.

-Blaze

-----

The alarm clock had gone off a while ago, the shaking polyps creating a distinct organic ring that sung through the surrounding waters to wake the dreamer.  Silt and detritus was still cascading slowly off of the bulky, rounded form as it hauled itself off of the massive stone altar.  Squinty, tired red eyes raked the brackish and clouded water nearby before the entire chamber reverberated from the sound of a mighty morning cough.  Cthulhu slammed down a mighty fist, splattering the clock and sending small algae fragments everywhere as he yawned and reached into his nightstand for a tin of salted cultists.  His claws scrambled feebly at the hook ring for a few moments before it caught.  Pulling the top back, he coldly regarded the deep one who stood quivering at the door.
Another harsh cough shook Dread Cthulhu’s form as he leaned forward, his red eyes searching for something to smoke.  He hated mornings.  He dug a salted cultist out of the tin with one huge claw and stuck it through his tentacles.  Bone snapped before he swallowed, then fixed his hard crimson left eye again on the messenger, his other pressed tight in a suspicious, angry glower.  Murray, he thought, why do they always have to send fucking Murray to wake me up?
The deep one fidgeted again.  “Master, great dreamer, you spoke the sacred words to us so long ago that we were to awaken you once the great storm had come, the stars had aligned, and the Superbowl was ready.”
The water rushed around Dread Cthulhu as he heaved a mighty sigh and began to crack his knuckles.  “And?”
A moment’s pause, then the nervous horror began to speak.  “The, ah, the storm has come and gone, the stars are in alignment, and the Puppy Bowl is almost over, great one.  Your time nears now and can be measured in the heartbeats of a mortal.”
His massive, unclean talons scraped across the back of his rubbery neck before he heaved himself upwards.  The mirror still stood across the room and his tentacles went rigid as he eyed himself in it.  The years had not been kind, he looked like he’d lost several tons during his sleep.  Gone was his gargantuan, rotund belly stuffed fat with the crying souls of uncounted worshippers, and his claws looked unfit to even pierce a dolphin’s thin hide.  He began to plod towards the temple’s exit and grabbed a file on his way.  Claw shavings drifted lazily in his wake as he took great strides out into the open water of R’lyeh, Murray hustling behind him, trying to keep up.
The water shivered around him as he spoke.  “Everything’s ready, right Murray?  No goddamn fuckups this time?”  He didn’t need to speak anymore of his displeasure of the last two times he’d been awoken when the stars were still slightly off kilter.
Murray kicked off the ocean floor and swam rapidly up alongside the striding behemoth, his overlong arms clawing him with unnatural speed through the water.  “No, no, great dreamer.  All is ready, all is in order, all is, ahhh... all is ready.”
Cthulhu stopped and turned, his ornery left eye dwarfing Murray from this close up, his anger palpable.  “Murray, I’m not just some worthless bastard of a elder being.  I am the devourer of worlds.  I am the most motherfuckingest badass creature from beyond time and space that has ever been left to slumber under the muck of any shitty planet just to make sure that it’s destroyed at the right time.  I am also known for my amazing and deep graciousness and the particularly merciful end I give to all who worship me when I am no longer in need of their services, aren’t I, Murray?”
This water around Murray grew slightly warmer, and far more foul as his nervousness was made manifest.  “Y-y-yes, Dread Cthulhu.”
The tentacles twisted across The Devourer’s chest wrathfully as he regarded the lesser horror for a few moments.  “Then why are you testing me, Murray?  I fucking -hate- mornings, I don’t like you, and I’m in a mood to goddamn destroy about eight hundred somethings every heartbeat... and here you are testing me.  If there’s something goddamn wrong, tell me, and I will dispatch you.  If you don’t tell me there’s something wrong, and there is something wrong, I will give you to Nyarlathotep or that fucking asshole Azathoth to play with for the rest of eternity.  Got it?”
Murray choked out a response that told Cthulhu he understood.  The water continued to grow more foul around the smaller creature.  After several moments of silence, the Dread One turned and then launched himself off of the seabed, beginning to swim with great strokes towards Louisiana.
The water trembled around Cthulhu as Murray fought his way through it, his bulbous lipped mouth opening to shout something over the roar, unheard by the great one’s ears.  He closed in with several more strokes and grabbed onto the lobe of his Master’s ear.  His lungs swelled with water as he screamed what he was certain would be his last words.
“We’ve done everything we can, Dread One!  It’s Obama!  We haven’t heard back from Obama yet!  He hasn’t guaranteed that Beyonce will sing the sacred words as th...” the rest was crunched off by a clenching of a mighty fist, reducing the seven eon old form of Murray to so much chum.
“Goddamn Americans. You can’t follow through on a single goddamn thing, can you.”  The Great Devourer swam on, sending out a telepathic call for his second most trusted deep one, Helen, who came rushing out of her household in R’lyeh with a fresh baked soulpie for the Devourer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

“Bubba?”  The two men sat close together in the upper decks of the colosseum, watching the spectacle.
“Yeah, Tyler?”  The man took a deep drag on his Parlaiment and squinted down at the field where armored figures were crashing into each other once again after the halftime show had concluded.
“Y’don’t... y’don’t really believe all this nonsense does ya?  About all’a ‘em ends of the world and what not?  I mean Gawd wouldn’t lettit happen, would’e?”  Bubba didn’t pause as he dug two more cigarettes out and lit them, then passed one to his apprentice.
“Welp,” he said, flicking the old butt down into the stands carelessly. “Lookitit this way, Ty.  If we’s right, an we stops it, we’ll never know.  If we’s wrong, an we do this, we’ll never know.  But if we’re right, an we don’t stops it, an no one else does, we won’t be too long in carin about it, will we?”  Smoke clouded around him as he exhaled.
Tyler’s thick lips twisted in a frown as he looked thoughtfully at the distant form of a cheerleader.  “I guess not, Bubba.  But, I mean, y’know, whattabout Gawd?  He kin stops anythin an there aint nah stoppin that, right?  If we don’t do it, then wouldn’ Gawd stop it?”
A heavy sigh cut the air as Bubba took his eyes away from the game and returned Tyler’s frown.  “Look, Ty, buddy.  The Big Guy, he supposedly works in mysterious ways, yeah?”
“Uh yeah, ‘course, erryone knows that.”
“So, if he works in mysterious ways, then there ain no way in tellin if we’s the way he’s workin, right?”  Another long drag and an exhalation of smoke.
“Uh ‘spose.  I figger, yeah.”  
“An even if somethin horrible comes up an ets us all, well, I guess that means He’s gotta be pretty fuckin tired of us screwin around, aint he?”  Ash drifted down onto the leg of his blue coveralls, mingling with some old grease spots and deer blood.  His watch beeped a few times, telling him under a minute was left.  “Looks like it’s time, Ty.”
“Well, ‘spose, he’s gotta be tired’a all’a ‘em queers an such an...” Tyler trailed off as Bubba grabbed the hatchet from under his coveralls and glared at him.
“Ty, you are a fuckin retard.”  The axe blade came down and cut hard through a support cable, which freed the weight on several power lines that immediately crossed before popping from their sockets, sending the arena into pitch black silence for a few moments.  Bubba knew if he just pushed Tyler, he’d be doing the world a favor, but his pa would be pretty pissed if he ended up sacrificing his brother even as he stopped the Dread Coming of Cthulhu from destroying all of mankind.

-----------------------------------------------------

“Get fucking Obama on the horn, Helen!”  The deep one had finally caught up just before the surface, and was struggling to keep a grip on the Great Devourer’s neck as he swam stroked towards the Gulf Coast.
“Master!  All is well, the evocation was sung, and even now is being reverberated through the speaker systems at the proper rhythm!  By the time we get there, all thirty three incantations will be rung!”  The deep one had to pause every fourth or fifth word as another wave crashed over the massive bulk of her godly conveyance.
“It fucking goddamn better be, Helen!  I am so not in the mood for this shit.  There’s only so fucking many things I can dream in strange eons, you know?”  He was really jonesing for a smoke now, a few hundred crushed up cultists and several thousand innocent souls would help take the edge off.
Helen produced the pie from behind her back and coughed.  The Great One ate it with relish, calmed a bit, and continued his swim.  “You always were my fucking favorite, Helen.  Murray was just so damned old, had seniority.  Fucking unions, you know?”
“Yes, Master, fucking unions.  Goddamn liberal claptrap, they are!  Am I to understand, Great Devourer, that I am now your chief deep one?”  The lights of New Orleans came into view over the water, and the absurdly large being doubled his speed.

The Wild West, sans Steampunk Armadillos

So anyone who has lived in Skyrim (the Minnesota/Wisconsin/Michigan/Dakota area) during the Time of Frigid Tears can attest that it sucks cold balls.  The constant grey skies, the blustery winds, the peeking out the window to see if you have to shovel 8 inches of fallen white powder that you could maybe resell if you could only find Booger.  It sucks.  It's depressing, and it sucks.

Most people who have gone through this have figured out that the best thing to do if you live in this area is to get the fuck out of it while the skies are bleak.  You pick up, you move, you git along little doggie, and you go somewhere... oh... what's the fucking word... "pleasant" for a while.  You recharge your batteries, then you come back and glare at the sky and ask it why it is so goddamn fucktardedly grey.  If you're really smart, and usually well heeled, you become what's called a Snowbird... and you just GTFO for the cold times, coming back in the spring.

The Beebs (my utterly and completely kickass wife, pictured below) and I recently did this.  We got the fuck out.

She does make snow look inviting, doesn't she?

Now before I really spin up my posting guns... a little bit of self realization and background for you who may not have known me for a while.  I used to hate Texas.  No real good reason that I can think of, other than the governmental arena.  Shit, I used to live in New Mexico, and state rivalries being what they are, I never hated Texas.  I was ambivalent towards it.  Then over the last several years, for no goddamn good reason, I developed a serious dislike of all things Texan.  This view has been shifting for a while now, and has now done a complete 180.

The trip started as most trips do... there was some chaos and some packing, some frenzied cleaning, a few days taken off of work, and then some driving.  We arrived in the even more northern climes of Minneapolis to hang out with two very good friends, Tammy and B.

Minneapolis.  No, I'm not shitting you.  This picture was taken at the Mall of America.

There wasn't much time for socialization.  There was time for sleep.  I showed Tammy a few awesome things on the PortaBrain, we talked yarn and lentils for a while, and then there was sleeping.  At the end of it, we woke up, at 4 fucking AM or some non-existential time.  My feet half in the dreamlands, I hugged my wonderful wife, we packed up, and set out with Tammy to head to the Dragon's Roost to hop a ride out of Skyrim.

The city guards were unkind.  Perhaps too many arrows to delicate parts of the anatomy.  They didn't like the fact that my wife is like killer beautiful, either that or they liked it too much and wanted to walk her walk away and then back again.  They sent her back to the ticket desk to get the name on her ticket changed because they couldn't fucking understand that a Wedding Certificate that shows a legal change of name is, you know, a legal fucking change of name.  Hired monkeys, the lot of them.  I guess I can't complain too badly, they let me through without a second glance.  Maybe they're racists.  Maybe it's because she's Texan.  I don't know.  Bebop kept her cool, got her shit done, and pranced through security on her second try.

Down a long corridor, some waiting, down another shorter corridor, some sitting, some waiting... and then WHOOOOOSH.  Up, up, and away.

Here's a fun bit of trivia.  There used to be a band named "Steel Dragon."  This I just learned as I was googling for an image to continue with the Skyrim thing.  This is NOT what we rode into the sky.

The wingspan is not adequate for the necessary lift.

So we get up to cruising altitude, and the Beebs has her face pressed against the window.  Why?  Hey, flying is fucking cool.  I'm a bit jaded to it these days... since I've flown more times than I can count due to being tossed across the country as a young lad several times.  She doesn't have that jaded outlook.  She's amazed, and rightfully so, at the beauty that can be seen from 30,000 feet.  The best part of it for me wasn't looking out the window, it was just looking at her as she looked out the window.

Unfortunately, the asshat sitting to the right of me, who was for some part of the flight reading and re-reading what looked to be a religious pamphlet, decides that she has the right to ask Beebs to close the fucking window.  I had my headphones in.  I didn't hear it.  But as soon as I noticed, and I said something, and I was informed, I got pretty fucking pissed off.  We paid 15 bucks for the window seat.  She didn't pay jack shit for her aisle seat, and I mentioned this.  Beebs, being the much more socially non-barbaric of the pair of us, just lifted the blind a few inches and continued to oggle the curves of Mother Earth.  I seethed a bit, and then gave up, because she was just so damn beautiful as she looked out at the world.

We came down in Dallas, and my first thought was "Fuck, it even looks warm out there."  Because it did.  Not only was there no snow on the ground, but there was a big ball of fire in the sky.  We hopped out of the plane and grabbed her bags.  A brief and somewhat chaotic bus ride later, we get to the car rental joint where some woman named Cherise decides to dispute Beeb's name... AGAIN.

It was at this point that I decided that whatever GM was running our Adventure To The Epic Southlands was being a complete bratty, petty prick, and was going to toss every minor boondoggle at us.  Making us roll on each and every useless encounter.  Maybe I should have burnt a twelve pack of Mountain Dew and a bag of Ranch Doritos before we took the trip.  Naturally, Beebs pulled out her 18 charisma and +3 in speechcraft, and we got our car.  The reward for the encounter?

We...

Okay maybe he's a bit prettier than I am...

Got to ride around in this...

A bulbous backed little cargo vehicle with more pep than it looks like.

I can cope with that.  We get in to the car, and immediately blast off for a restaurant that Beebs has been talking about since before we met.  A little place called The Egg & I.  We sit down to what she likes to call "A Hunter S. Thompson Style Breakfast."  The food blew me away, hands down the best breakfast I have had in a long, long time, and the service was spot on awesome.  We need one of these up here... unfortunately, in the Twin Cities, some asshat started up a false Egg & I, with a totally shitty menu and crappy service.  Fuck them.  Go to Texas next time you want a good breakfast, they'll hook your ass up.

After that, we jumped back in our Firefly and headed on over to Houston.  On the way in to town, we got a personal message...

A'ight.

We checked in at the hotel, took a brief rest, got all gussied up and then headed over to meet the first part of my Family-In-Law.  Mother-In-Law kicks butt, but this I already knew, as we'd met during the wedding.  Sister-In-Law 1 is pretty cool as well, very artistic and quiet, but when she does speak, she's very well spoken.  My Brother-In-Law and I got into deep discussions over dinner at a place called Taste of Texas... we talked everything from planets and moons, to nuclear reactions and the structure of suns, to various types of sleds and snowshoes, to hunting techniques for various great beasts.  Did I mention he's eleven?  Yeah.  Brilliant young mind.  

It was during these discussions that I received one of the greatest compliments I could from my Mother-In-Law, which I actually didn't hear... but Beebs did.  She said I am going to make a damn good father.  I happen to agree, and I can't wait.

The night ended with a quick trip over to my other Sister-In-Law's place.  Another cool meeting, if a bit subdued because we were so very tired.  All in all, my new family kicks major ass.

The next day saw us through the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  My amazing wife knows how much I love science, and what I saw in there blew away my biggest expectations.  Every exhibit was fucking fantastic.  I could have spent hours in the Energy exhibits alone, but there were about 50 screaming children all playing with various bits of knowledge, and I couldn't learn a thing.  I like to think that these kids will go on to create a new and awesome engine that runs off of something other than dead dinosaur.  The paleontology exhibits were incredible, and provided many awesome chances for photos.  The Egyptian area left MUCH to be desired... it was about as big as my bedroom, but it did have a real true-to-life deadguy in it.  I really wish I could have taken some pictures of the jewelry exhibits.  I am not joking when I say there were simply too many diamonds in every piece for my camera to properly focus.  Too much Bling, as it were.  Pretty incredible.

Bebop, facing down a long dead horror of the deep.

When was the last time a T-Rex got high fived?  Sometimes, you just gotta hook a brotha up.

Unfortunately, by this time, my lovely and far better half was feeling the onset of GM's Bullshit Malady #45... an ear infection and throat problems.  A fever, some light coughing.  We headed out to get her some food at Yia Yia Mary's, where I had the most incredible gyro ever.  From there it was on to meet The Grands, and her father.  Everyone was just as cool as the other side of her family... I got along with them great, and they apparently think I'm a pretty good guy as well.  I took care of my wife best I could while we were there, kept her on the couch, got her everything I could, and in the end we headed back out to the car.

Okay, so there's one thing in Texas I can do without.  Most of the driving was alright.  But at night, these people turn into fucking meth-ridden werewolves with adrenaline fixations.  That little firefly we were driving?  I had to take it at about 90 through 1 lane construction, with Bebop snoozing in the passenger seat, and a semi-truck breathing down my tailpipe for about 10 miles.  My heart vibrated into another dimension, and somehow I found that monster inner zen that you only really attain during lifes little "Oh Fuck" moments like this one.  The whole drive was about 3 hours or something, but it seemed like those 10 miles took up 95% of it.  As we were no where near Sparta, I'm damn sure it was Madness.

Not as playful when seen in a rear view mirror doing 90+ in tight quarters.

We pulled in to Dallas about midnight, hooked up with our room, and promptly crashed out.  We woke up and Bebop was feeling even worse.  Not cool.  I ran for some fever cutters and pain killers, some water, and other such necessaries.  The dance classes were scrapped, no way it'd work, but still she soldiered on... have I mentioned how badass she is?  She went into Dallas and tried to hunt them down, to no avail.  But she did discover the Dallas Water Garden, which she showed me later the next day.  We got some pretty cool pics, here's just a snippet.

The slippery, deadly path being conquered by my killer wife.

We did have the chance to be visited by our friends Ghost and Julie while we were in Houston, which was extra special, as they've been with us over the interwebs on every step of our journey together so far.  It was wonderful to see them again, and to get to hug Ghost as only men can hug... covered in sparkles.

And even though I've lost weight, this picture reminds me of the Fight Club Quote of:
"Bob.  Bob had Bitch Tits."

The next day we saw the Water Garden, and then headed to the airport.  We were pretty wrecked, it was an awesome adventure, but I was fighting off what Bebop had, and she was in the full throes... so we weren't really much for doing anything.  At the airport, there was like no freakin static.  The lines were non-existent, the place was clean and sane, and we zipped right through security after saying goodbye to the Firefly.

And we came home to this...

Yep.

This was the best trip I'd been on.  We barely scratched the surface of all the awesome stuff we wanted to do and see.  There was one place in particular, which shall remain nameless, that I wanted to visit, but we just didn't have the time.  No matter, this will be the first of many, many visits.

Texas is now firmly ours.  It lays in our palms like a dusty nugget of gold, gleaming and shining with probabilities that we've only begun to probe.  I am so glad my eyes were opened to the beauty of that state, thanks to the beautiful mind of my lovely wife.

The day of our Engagement brought fireworks... and the world just keeps getting brighter.