Symptoms of My Encroaching Insanity

Chapter 43

2007-09-03T14:57:00.001-05:00

It wasn't so much the spoiled milk as it was the wilted lettuce. Milk -- Jake could take it or leave it. But the lettuce, that clinched it.

"Who left the damned refrigerator door open again?" he yelled to an empty house. He lived alone, but it helped to blame someone. He checked his doors and windows to see if some fridge raiding burglar had been in his town house. All locked. That left two choices: ghosts or aliens. He didn't believe in God, so that somehow ruled out the ghosts also.

"Freakin’ aliens," he muttered. He went over to the sink, ran the cold water and began methodically shoving the ruined food down the garbage disposal, all the while cursing the government for participating in a huge cover-up of alien visitations. If people only knew, he thought, they could protect themselves. He watched TV, so he knew that the aliens could just "beam in" to his apartment, bypassing his locked doors and windows. Maybe he would just get a big, mean dog. His landlord wouldn't like it, but he didn't like a lot of the things Jake did, like paying his rent with quarters and not having a phone.

He sat naked on the couch after disposing of the rotten food and contemplated the decision to buy a dog. First off, a good dog would be expensive, it would be better if he just stole one, but it would have to be a puppy, which means it wouldn't be mean enough for a year or more. That much thinking started to give him a headache, so he got up, slipped on a bra and a matching pair of panties, then into his coveralls. It was time to go to work. Eight hours of baggage loading with his crack smoking crew, then back home. Forget the dog, Jake decided he would just sit up all night with a shotgun and keep an eye on the fridge.

Chapter 42: Dream

2007-09-03T14:56:00.001-05:00

I dream quickly between snooze button presses and “Use the Force, Luke” backedits into my dream as the clock beeps. I stumble to the clock with my eyes shut to hold the dream, but I stub my toe, open my eyes, and it’s gone. I crawl back to bed for another nine minutes and have another dream.

Chapter 41: Typing What You Think

2007-09-03T14:55:00.001-05:00

My mind I write I think recurses cursing back to the point tip confused sounds stomping in the hall too prosey spelling open eyes edit, just did that, out of order, editing hard to do this think about typing and eyes closed stay on track can’t do it, mind parallel, already thinking about what to open eyes to check format typing/writing, I forgot what I was doing.

Chapter 40: Stream of did I lock the front door? consciousness

2007-09-03T14:52:00.002-05:00

sign - sale - house - road - truck - ship - ocean – Europe - Paris - bread - cash - bills - birds - penguins - ice - drink - vodka - Russians - bears - mountains - streams - trout - rainbow - rain - wind - march - kites - string - telephone - wires - poles - sausage - pork - pigs - mud – slinging - slingshots - crabapples - jelly - canning – soup - corn - stalks - hot - August - emperor - Rome - ruins - chimneys - farms - cows - milk - ice cream - sandwich - Earl - gas station - windshield - motorcycle - helmet - skiing - jump - canyon - desert - cactus - coyote - comics - TV - debate - fight - gloves - snow - snowman - Tibet - orange - tree - palm - Florida – beach - sand - shell - lobster - Maine - pine - wait - want - Christmas - Christ - Israel - Hitler - airplane - bomb - Japan - sushi - seaweed - kelp - otters - teeth - sharks - boats - marina - rent – sign

Chapter 39: NTB #2

2007-09-03T14:52:00.001-05:00

Hey dude,

Don’t run away

Take this pen and

Sign the letter

Remember

To hold your tongue in

Don’t cross your eyes

It makes you look better

STARDUST (GO SEE IT)!!

2007-08-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry to shout. The movie was absolutely great (not that you should get your expectations up or anything). We all just got back from seeing it and everyone in the whole family loved it. Applause and some tears at the end and everything. The cast was dead on (even the guy who played Tristan who was a perfect choice since he was surprisingly good in exactly the right way for his character). Best of all, it felt like a Neil Gaiman story. Wow.

The only bad thing was that it was showing on one screen at our multiplex and the theater was only about 1/2-2/3 full, which is very sad so everyone should go see it quick.

Technorati Claim

2007-08-10T10:54:00.001-05:00

Technorati Profile

Just Curious

2007-05-01T14:21:00.000-05:00

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Chapter 38

2007-04-23T08:51:00.000-05:00

NTB

The lone and grunting toad
That peed, on your floor
I saw it squatting there
So many times before.
Don’t leave it squatting there
Kick it out the door…

Many times I’ve heard it croak
And many times I’ve tried
To get my hands around its throat
Or feed it poisoned flies

And still it’s staring back
With those weird yellow eyes
Don’t leave it squatting here
Kick it out the door.

Chapter 37

2007-04-23T08:49:00.000-05:00

~~CUT~~

Knife-edge:

Macroscopically smooth.

Serrated

Where it counts.

To rip and tear

With the illusion

Of smooth cut -

Sliding destruction.

Permanent

Separation.

Increasing entropy,

Fragments

Of the whole.

Edited…

Chapter 36

2007-04-23T08:48:00.001-05:00

Eye wrapped mine uncle own adore

Know won Thera guest

Sew eye win tome

Chapter 35

2007-04-23T08:45:00.000-05:00

Dwarf Language Lesson

The word ‘dark’ in the Common tongue of humans actually derives from the Dwarf word ‘darrachk’ (rolled ‘r’, hard and guttural ‘chk’) which not only means “without light” but is also an emotionally loaded term associated with Dwarves who isolate themselves from society and disappear into the darkness of the deep mines and caverns, becoming bestial and degenerate and/or evil. Going ‘darrachk’ is a horrible thing for Dwarves and the very term gives most Dwarves the shivers. The term ‘darrachk’ is also a swear word, like “damned” or “cursed”.

Orcs are, of course, one of the long time enemies of the dwarves. Orcs, for all of their bad appearance and evil behavior, are at least intelligent and have a society or sorts, wear armor, speak, etc. In some circumstances though, even orcs can go darrachk if they are, for example, trapped underground and separated from orc society. Over generations, they can lose the power of speech and become mutated, cannibalistic beasts (orcs are more subject to genetic mutations than other races). These darrachk orcs are the Bogeymen of Dwarf myths and are used to scare children to keep them from wandering off into the dark. They are semi-mythical, however – no one knows for sure if they exist.

The phrase “darrachk orc” sounds funny to most dwarves because of the repeated guttural sounds (and because it rhymes with a Dwarf slang phrase – ‘ach orc’ is a crude slang for penis, literally, “little orc” - so in typical Dwarf fashion, it is usually contracted. Dwarves who have no contact with humans who speak Common think nothing of it, but more social Dwarves are aware of how and why humans are amused by the term and it embarrasses them somewhat.

Either way you say it, d’orcs are the most feared and evil enemy of the Dwarves.

Chapter 34

2007-04-13T15:01:00.000-05:00

“I have a lot of trouble writing dialogue,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ve written this exact conversation before, with the same wordy, pretentious meta-jokes.”

“Oh, stop griping. Your dialogues are fine.”

“Part of the problem is just punctuating them correctly. And I never know whether I’ve put in enough ‘he said’ ‘she said’ lines. When you’re writing, they all sound terrible. When you’re reading it later, you realize that you didn’t put enough in. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

She turned off the water and wiped her hands on the dishtowel, then said, “The best thing to do is to make sure the reader knows what the characters are doing. Where they’re located. That makes it easier to picture the scene.”

“I know.” He stubbed his toe on the water sprinkler and cursed.

“Such language,” she said frowning.

“And take cursing. My mom might read what I’ve written for Christ’s sake. What’s she going to think if everyone goes around saying *%&@ and ‘shit’ all the time?” He sat down and started putting on his shoes, glancing up at the sky to see if it was going to start raining soon.

“What about sex scenes?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘What about sex scenes?’.”

“Oh, they’re the worst. If you leave them out, you’re an unrealistic prude. If they are too graphic, then you’re just writing pornography. No matter what you write, you’ve still got to worry about your mother reading it.” He slumped back onto the lawn chair dejectedly.

“Come inside, I need to close the window before it rains.” As she reached to close the window, she added, “Besides, we’ve got the house to ourselves tonight. Let’s screw on the kitchen table.”

Chapter 34

2007-04-13T15:00:00.001-05:00

The paint was peeling from the walls, revealing strata of past decorations stretching back three hundred years. The ceiling wasn’t that old, since it had been replaced several times, but it was still water damaged and ugly. The floor, however, once he was finished with the pressure washer, was a beautiful tile mosaic with very little damage.

What he really wanted this house for was the view. In the salon was a huge window facing out into the depths of Valis Marinaris and at night the Strip along the rim, so tacky when you are walking the streets, shone like a string of Christmas lights and the taxis going between the port, the Strip, and homes in the Valley looked like fireflies back home in Mississippi.

After returning back “home” after a trip to Barnard’s Star, he had discovered that in the five hundred objective years he had been gone, Mars was as close to Mississippi as he was going to get. The world of his childhood, just twenty years ago to him, had been destroyed by a buggy nanophage assembler 352 years ago, so his home, his relatives, the pine trees, and the fireflies, and ever other carbon bearing matter on the Earth’s surface was now part of a large diamond shell, two miles thick, covering the surface of the dead oceans. He took an orbital tour after he got over the shock and the planet looked like a low detail world globe. The continents were flat and scoured and the oceans were dark blue and featureless, like a big glass aquarium.

The phage still lay dormant, so there was a quarantine in effect. Silly, since anyone who landed would soon be dismantled and incorporated into the diamond wall with the leftover bits blown away as dust.

Chapter 33

2007-04-13T14:59:00.001-05:00

“In the cut, there ain’t no twinning. It’s just you and the ghosts and all you’ve got to save your ass is your wits and your meld.”

I considered this as I watched Gammer string the mesh, lining up the nodes with a sort of techno Feng Shui, guided by the blue laser dots along the rock face. I pulled on my gloves, then secured the hood over my face. I felt the tugging of the cables attached to my chest and the tightness of the piezo-generators strapped on my thighs.

“You ready?” Gammer asked gruffly.

I did a spot check and nodded.

The drug hit my veins at the same time I was snatched downwards into the tunnel and I awoke naked on a pebbly beach under a green sky.

Chapter 32

2007-04-13T14:57:00.000-05:00

“Mail me the script and I’ll run it past the readers and get back you”
“It’s pretty big. I takes a lot of data to describe a person, you know.”
“That’s OK, I can handle it. If it all looks OK, we can have her nanomanufactured for you by next Thursday”.
“Can you make it Wednesday? The prom is on Thursday night and I'll need time to buy a dress.”
“A complete designer wardrobe is included in the fabrication price, but Wednesday shouldn’t be a problem. We just have to check the data – you don’t want an eight foot tall prom date with a hunchback do you?”
“Well, now that you mention it…”

Chapter 31

2007-03-29T16:13:00.002-05:00

CODE

It’s a geeky cliché

But when I’m writing code

I feel like a wizard

Weaving spells that bring

Life and thought to inanimate matter.

I carefully choose symbols

From an arcane grammar

And string them together on a glowing screen

Like the sorcerer’s apprentice

Commanding recursive armies

Of dumb slaves, forcing them

To do my bidding.

With a flick of my wrist,

I summon up my intangible

Spell books and check my syntax

So that I do not summon forth demons.

I test the spells in a

Virtual pentagram that protects

The real world of data

From my sorceries.

Then, poised at the edge of

A giant web of pulsing mana,

I invoke the Name

And unleash my creations on the world.

Chapter 30

2007-03-29T16:13:00.001-05:00

As I stepped up to the podium, I remembered when I was about six and I went to the zoo with my family. I stood for a long time watching the elephants and my parents had to drag me away and I cried. Then I thought of how wonderful the sunset looked across the bay during my last vacation. Then it occurred to me that I’d better keep my mind from wandering because the audience was beginning to stare.

Chapter 29

2007-03-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

The Pit

In the stinking humid pit, thousands of curling tendrils hide, sheltering the masses of unthinking organisms that feed on the briny secretions that flow out from among the roots. Suddenly, unbeknownst to the blind crawlers, the chasm widens and fresh air comes in to waft away the stench of their excretions and then the hissing, roaring torrent of killing chemicals and they all die silently, encased in an oily sheen of Right Guard.

Chapter 28

2007-03-29T16:10:00.001-05:00

Great was he, Dergoth, who strode across the lands clad in skins and armor, bearing his ancient sword whose name cannot be spoken and is known only to Dergoth and the sword-God Tyv’rth.

And great, also, was Dergoth’s body odor, which was said to be more powerful than the stench of a thousand tigers’ litter boxes.

Of friends, Dergoth knew but few as none since his mother could abide his stench. As for the pleasure of women, Dergoth was a frequenter of the brothels of the veiled Gorath women, who cut off their noses at puberty and hide their hideous and misshapen countenances behind thick scarves – the only article of clothing that they ever wear.

Chapter 27

2006-04-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

Another fun one: try to image what the world and the universe is really like.

We feel it by rubbing our skin against it and the friction and temperature is translated into electrochemical impulses that are analyzed by our brain. We taste it based on chemical reactions in our mouth. The same with smell. More troubling, we only see it by perceiving the way a certain spectrum of radiation is reflected, refracted, and absorbed by it.

Try to imagine the world the way it is.

Color (and light itself) is artificial. So imagine grey matter in utter darkness. Think of objects down to an atomic and sub-atomic level – at a certain point, there is no “matter” – it’s just a kind of standing wave of energy. What is the energy? Who knows, because we can’t perceive it. Even at the atomic level, all but some infinitesimal fraction of “matter” is really just a vacuum. Tastes and smells are just invisible chemicals, rubbing off and floating through a soup of air molecules. Sounds are three dimensional ripples in the soup. Radiation across the spectrum zips through the universe, changing everything it touches. Everything is different – there are no “classes” of objects, that is just an artifact of understanding and language. Think of a field of a million flowers. Every one is a unique configuration of matter, dark and buzzing and distinguishable from the air and ground only by density and pattern. Think yourself into the deepest layer of reality, where weird quantum effects cause matter to be created and destroyed on an un-understandable whim. Then, move back up the chain until you get to people. Moving, growing, miraculously thinking collections of nothingness, creating a world we share purely by the mechanism of perceiving it and simplifying it to an understandable level.

Note: When I was researching some links for my cross-over post about books, I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Douglas Hofstadter, which led to an article about Daniel Dennett, where I found a link to an article about qualia, which was a term I had never heard before, but, as it turns out, it was something that the last entry (and this one a bit) touched upon (the sensations of seeing colors and how our senses relate to the real world). Weird serendipity.

Chapter 26

2006-04-19T15:49:00.000-05:00

I am inside my head, as far as I know. Am I my head? I’m not inside my feet, although I feel that they too are a part of me. I can’t see my eyes or my ears. I can sort of see my tongue, but it just looks like a pink blur. My teeth feel bigger if I feel them with my tongue. I had a fold in my ear that I didn’t notice until about two years ago. I feel sleepy often, probably because I am. I wonder sometimes if I perceive the world the same as everyone else. Is the green that I see the same as everyone else? If what I see as green is the same as someone else’s red, could anyone tell the difference? There is no way to describe green except in the context of greenness or it’s relation to other colors, but if other people’s color perception is completely different, all of the relations would be consistent also. There is no way of knowing. We may all be only a few minutes old, or existing in a discrete, quantum moment, being created, destroyed, and recreated in quantum time. I may only exist in the instant and never have existed in my past. Reality could also be fragmenting in a many worlds scheme. At any given instant, other me’s could be dying, visited by time travelers, abducted by aliens, or an infinitude of other experiences (not to mention an infinitude of realities in which I never existed). If our universe in a non-linear set of quantum states in an infinity of dust, all of these things could be true simultaneously. To someone (impossibly) “outside”, ten minutes ago may have been 10,000,000 years ago and one minute ago may have been 5,000 years in the future. All in all, it doesn’t matter, but it is good for creating a headache. The me who is writing this is the continuity of multiple experiences who survived, wasn’t visited by time travelers, wasn’t abandoned in a dead end universe, and hasn’t been swallowed by a dragon. Other me’s were unluckier (or more lucky, depending on your point of view).

Note: This is one of my favorite entries. I had obviously been reading too much Gödel, Escher, Bach, Metamagical Themas, The Mind's I and Greg Egan before I wrote this. It is a semi-random exploration of existence and consciousness and, to me, contains a lot of fun contemplations.

Chapter 25

2006-04-19T15:48:00.000-05:00

My staples bent the wrong way, until I turned the staple anvil around. It had a little spring-loaded knob, but I never looked at it too closely. I just cursed my splayed staples. The splayed ones are easier to remove, but they tend to hang and scratch too much.

Chapter 24

2006-04-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Frogs scared her, but she didn’t mind blackberries.

Chapter 23

2006-04-12T12:02:00.001-05:00

Even high up in the frosty mountains, he couldn’t escape the feeling that the dolphins were watching him. He knew that they rarely flew around, because it was too hard for them to maintain their invisibility, but their high technology (based on kelp, fish bones, and underwater lava flows) enabled them to make sophisticated telepresence tracking devices.
He knew they were after him because he was the only one who knew the two dolphin-kind secrets: where they came from, and what they did with squid.

Chapter 22

2006-04-11T10:06:00.000-05:00

Fossils

Dusty yellow stone
Permeated with stems and fronds.
Exposed to air, sun, and water
After two hundred million years

When a dusty yellow backhoe
Ripped open the folded strata
Atop a living mountain
Which used to be a seashore.

I picked it up from dirt and mud,
Wiped it clean and smiled.
I was the first to touch these bones of coral.
The first mammal to see them.

I dream of finding dinosaurs
But I know these creatures are older:
Crinoids and corals that sifted warm seas
Before anything walked on earth.

Note: Another literal poem that I dashed off one afternoon and, for some reason, was slightly embarassed by. When I ran across it months later, I really liked it. On a shelf in my office, I have several fossil encrustred rocks that I found on the mountain above our old house on a road cut where they were building a new subdivision. This part of North Alabama used to be under the sea, and there are millions of crinoids, corals, shells, and other Pre-Cambrian sea creatures. When I first found them, I was excited because I knew that people had found mesosaur and plesiosaur fossils in Birmingham, but when I did some research, I found that it would be unlikely to find such fossils in this same area, because this strata was over 200 million years old and pre-dated the dinosaurs, or actually any vertibrates.

Chapter 21

2006-04-11T09:38:00.000-05:00

PM ramblings

If this is Post-Modernism

Give me Pre-Modernism

If rambling, disjoint (oxymoron) T E X T

That flows (*b*u*r*p*s*) like staccato bursts of machine gun fyre (dam the speling) (or paint

splatters) Is the soul of the

M O D E R N A G E , And words are a psych-test emotional tone response monkey wired

Gimmick -- and coherency out the window is

(e e cummings did it better but hes dead)

simply the mirrored light of high albedo dust and the dying fire of distant suns

Then

s o m e t i m e s

I think i prefer traditionalism and staid cascades of logic

Because some (most) times, If the medium is the message

The message is as empty as a mirror (i n a n e m p t y r o o m ?)

And don't even mention hypertext...

Note: This is, strangely enough, one of my favorite poems. I wrote it both out of frustration against some modern literary theory and as a protest/parody/homage to the some of the bizarrely formatted poems that I would find on the web about 10 years ago when I first put some of my poems online. It got a bit of "fan mail" over the years and one of my wife's students ran across it, printed it out, and put it on her bulletin board in her classroom. He claimed that he liked it, but he may have just been trying to embarass her by showing everyone how weird her husband is...

Chapter 20

2006-04-11T09:32:00.000-05:00

Cheap Sunglasses

I don't want to see the world through rose-colored glasses -

I prefer the yellowed tint

Of cheap amber sunglasses

Which color the world

With the faded tones of old Polaroids.

Of the beach when I was young...

Of birthday parties with people I don't remember...

Of pictures of my family...

A memory on the edge of my mind

With every glance.

Note: This is a very literal poem, but I like the imagery. Back when I wore contacts, I picked up a really cheap pair of Blu-Blocker type sunglasses at a gas station. They really screwed with the colors of everything and made everything I looked at look like faded, yellowed photographs. My car at that time had a gray tint at the top of the windshield and I remember telling Renee that everything I saw when I drove around wearing those sunglasses looked the Life in a Northern Town video. This poem was written as a commentary on that.

Chapter 19

2006-04-11T09:31:00.000-05:00

Naked fliers hang silhouetted against the red sunrise, risking life and skin by floating unprotected against the fiery radiation of the nearest star. As the first pure rays of light stream through the clouds like lasers, the fliers tuck and dive into the ocean, their splashwake indistinguishable in the surf. Underneath, in the bluedark, the fliers smile silently as they swim toward the underwater caves to wait again for night.

Chapter 18

2006-04-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

Leaves, leaves, and leaves that store
The summer sunlight of a hundred years
In the vault of wood that seizes them

Until the Fall

Then begs them to return each Spring
To feed the greed of the gnarled old tree
Until time or spark forces the selfish hoarder
To share with others
That sunlight of a hundred years.

Chapter 17

2006-04-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

A Visit From Mars

On the red cratered plains
Of dust and ice,
No Burroughsian cities
With spires of steel and glass
Rise to meet the welcoming sky.
Only rocky crags,
Dark, eroded, crumbling.

In the deep valleys and canyons,
No oasis jungles of exotic plants
Line the banks of mighty waterways,
Home of wonderful sights and sounds.
Only dry graves
Of rivers long boiled.

In the deserts,
No wise representatives
Of ancient dying races
Sing songs of remembrance and understanding
From their simple, Spartan homes.
Only the piercing wail of frigid, supersonic winds
Born of the eternal dry winter.

And in the heavens,
No hurling moons of Barsoom light the night.
Only a single, silver-bright watcher
Drawing tides of ghost seas.
The harbinger of madness.

Note: This was, I believe, the first poem I ever wrote that wasn't required by an English teacher. It was written back the 80's, during the end of the Cold War, when fears of nuclear war and nuclear winter were commonplace. I liked the juxtoposition of standard science fiction portrayals of Mars and the reality of Mars as shown by the Viking missions with the twist in the title ("from" instead of "to") to equate those conditions with a post nuclear Earth that is only revealed by the last stanza - Luna, of course, being the "harbinger of madness" and Mars being the God of War.

Chapter 16

2006-04-04T16:32:00.000-05:00

Coded messages pass from frond to frontline in the never-ending battle of night. Feathery flyers pass unseen over the hunkering heads of the sleeping soldiery. Come morning, the pellets will fly and the suns will shriek as many die and rise again to fight anew. Blue and green clouds welcome the day, but they burn off by mid-morning, revealing the rusted hulks hanging motionless above in the dark indigo sky. A solder wants to quit – all soldiers want to quit, but someone needs them. It isn’t necessary that they know who, as long as the food arrives on time. Fortnights of fighting have passed and the soldiers do not stir, for to go forward or back is to die a truer death than any of them are prepared to face. The enemy is everywhere, perhaps lying beside them in the concrete trench, or calling them with the voices of their dead wives and children from the snarled razor wire in the no-one land. They release the tunneling mines and pray to St. Agnes that they will go straight. The enemy releases their metal weasels to find them and to convert their sand-minds to return to their home and share their gift of death. It is beyond the other side of fear that the soldiers find calm. Their hopes lie in the saints and the mythical General Scientists who send the new weapons screaming to the front lines on parcel rockets. The army is a field test. Quality engineers who work for no pay and die whimpering from the mistakes of others or the successes of the other side. The battle is decided by those not on the line and, eventually, the roots of trees crumble the trenches and moss covers the sleeping mines. The soldiers will still wait.

Chapter 15

2006-04-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

split personality

There is a silent partner to our thoughts
Who lives inside our head.

He, or she, or it
Listens to our voice, spoken or unspoken
And winces at our faux pauxs
And argues silently with us.

He, or she, or it
Is afraid of the dark
And of the unknown, and
Is still a child
And walks the tightrope of the corpus callosum,
And is a disbeliever of logic
And occasionally slips in a comment to the
outside world
That startles us.

So we keep him, or her, or it caged
Like a madman in a Victorian asylum
And consult with him, or her, or it when
We are confused

And converse with him, or her, or it in the
Darkness of our mind
When we know
No one ELSE is listening

Note: After publishing this poem on my old web site, I received more e-mails about it than any other that I have written. The strangest was a kid in Canada who was told to find a poem and write an essay on it. I think the teacher meant a "real" poem, but the student found mine and sent me an e-mail asking questions about it. Made me feel weird...

I've also had e-mails asking me if I knew anyone with multiple personality disorder or if I suffered from it myself and relating experiences that they have had with depression and schizophrenia. Actually, the poem isn't about mental disorders at all - it is a comment on how mental subprocesses work within our brains.

Chapter 14

2006-04-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

Sweet Potty-Penny gam-gamboled along the stinkriver sidings
selling stone sandals to the inkmen to wear as they sandpolish
the barge bottoms. She has a he who sells as she does,
but he sells heli-hoverers to the hags who paint the aerials
on the triskadectic sails of the Borgie-boats. Together they
love under the rusttinned shack where the stinkwater flows
over the edge of the world.

In springsummer, and only then, fruits are sold at the pens
by the edge, that enable the eaters to see the stars beyond
the mists. Hardly anyone buys them except PP and her
boyfrond, for to see the stars alone is a sin and a shame,
but to share the sour fruit and dangle your barefeets
over the edge of the world
is a pleasure reserved for the young who live,
even if they love in a rustinned shack,
where the stinkwaters flow endlessly
into the black.

Chapter 13

2006-03-27T17:00:00.000-06:00

     “Play that song again. The one that I like so much”
     The crowd in the lawn, none of whom were musicians, averted their eyes and tried to strike up new conversations, but he was persistent. He gesticulated wildly, almost losing his grip and falling out of the tree.
     “I want to hear it one more time before sunrise!”
     He was ignored again, so he started throwing pine cones with unnerving accuracy. After a couple of dozen found their marks, the people began screaming obscenities at the man in the tree, whereupon he sat back and sighed, “That’s the one. Thank you!”

Chapter 12

2006-03-26T21:15:00.000-06:00

His long beard and unwashed robes made him stand out among the other people in the city.

That, and the fact that he was an orangutan.

Chapter 11

2006-03-26T21:14:00.000-06:00

     “It’s a sign from God!”
     People always say that when gigantic spheres of flaming rock appear floating in the sky over all of the major cities on Earth. You’d think they would learn better, but they keep hanging on to those foolish superstitions. Everyone should know by now that the spheres are the results of kobolds mating with fire elementals.
     Sheesh.

Chapter 10

2006-03-26T21:13:00.000-06:00

In ancient times, before writing was invented, it was easier to lie and cheat since there wasn’t any damaging evidence left lying around. People’s memories were better, of course, so it was harder to convince people that you really didn’t say you were going to rape sheep and that you really said you were going down to the temple to make a sacrifice. Then again, people believed in all kinds of supernatural beings, so you could just say a demon had clouded their minds and leave them to worry about being stoned by the other villagers if they persisted with their delusions.

That’s all I’ve got to say about the subject.

Chapter 9

2006-03-17T15:37:00.000-06:00

If you fold it right, Saran Wrap can make a formidable weapon. I should know as I couldn’t get the image of that Saran Wrap shuriken out of my head as they wheeled me into the ER.
I couldn’t get the shuriken out of my head either, but that’s what doctors are for.

Note: I'm going on vacation so if anyone is actually reading these, there will be a one week hiatus on posting...

Chapter 8

2006-03-16T16:25:00.000-06:00

Simple and Complex

To move and to think
Which is more complex?
An ant can move.
A human can write a sonnet.
Simple?

To choose an action is
A snap of synaptic state --
A mapping of intent that changes
Nothing without action.

To take a step is
An interplay of gravity, muscle, nerve and synapse --
A juggling of balance, perception and feedback
That changes the face of the world.

The rules of baseball are reducible
To logic and formula.
Catching a baseball is a magical act
Of memory, chemistry, physics, and calculus.

It is a human conceit
To deify the complexity of thought.
But it’s all we’ve got.
What part of us was created in the image of God?

Chapter 7

2006-03-15T13:56:00.000-06:00

Time Traveler’s Will

A pocket calculator to Sir Isaac Newton...
A camcorder to the disciples of Jesus...
A tape recorder to Mozart...
Star Wars to a 1950’s Saturday matinee audience...
A map of the world to Columbus...
A screening of Branaugh’s Henry V to William Shakespeare...
A hearing aid to Beethoven…
A Xerox machine to the library at Alexandria…

Note: be sure to include batteries and/or portable generators as well...

Chapter 6

2006-03-13T11:10:00.000-06:00

Amazingly enough, my ham survived the fire. It was a little crispy and blackened, but I like it that way. Of course, it didn’t taste much like ham, but as chewy pieces of carbonized animal flesh go, it wasn’t bad. I couldn’t find the eggs – I think they were vaporized by the blast. Gone to egg heaven with the milk and orange juice. Actually, I guess the milk went to milk heaven and the orange juice to orange juice heaven, but I was always a little weak in inanimate theology. I sat amidst the twisted steel wreckage and chewed on the blackened ham and watched the confused fire fighters assemble below me. I bet they missed their breakfast. I was just too lucky.

Chapter 5 - Dive

2006-03-10T10:44:00.000-06:00

d i v e

A sea of brown beer bottles collected on the knife-scarred table
Like amphorae from a Greek shipwreck, swaying in the current.
He took another from the weary waitress, turned it up
And thought of clear water washing off a reef top after a wave has passed.

A couple danced over by the jukebox, not touching, swaying in rhythm.
He remembered a sea turtle fighting the surge along a reef wall.
But the girl’s eyes were distant and she held
the sleeves of her sweater in her hand
Dreaming of calmer seas and a warm beach somewhere.

The noise washed over him and blended into a loud silence,
He could hear the hiss of his breath and the pounding of blood in his ears,
All alone in the crowd of brightly dressed people
Like hanging motionless inside a school of fish.

The bar, of course, was dark
Sunlight cannot reach into the depths.
The colors were warm -- brown of beer and wood
Only the blues penetrate.

It was time to go back to the boat,
He checked his watch,
Because he was afraid of the darkness,
He took a breath of staling air.

He rose and stumbled to the door,
He ascended with the bubbles,
And walked out into the crisp quiet night.
And broke the surface in dazzling sunlight.

Note: This poem was published on my other blog previously, but it was also in the book...

Chapter 4

2006-03-09T15:38:00.000-06:00

     “Doog!”, he said conversationally.
     I ignored him and kept on slicing peaches. He put his socks back on and left through the window and I heard the sirens as the ambulance came to scrape him off the sidewalk.
     “Forgot about them pesky gravity waves, I reckon” I said to no one in particular

Chapter 3

2006-03-09T15:37:00.000-06:00

     I like the feeling of sand between my toes, but when the sand is 125 degrees and laced with tiny, needle sharp thorns, I prefer to wear shoes. I’d left my Birkenstocks back on the boat, so I wore some combat boots I found attached to some skeletal feet sticking out of the side of a sand dune. They clashed with my sombrero and thong bikini, but since there was no one around to see me except the buzzards and a few wandering rhinos, I figured it was OK.
     Besides, it was after Labor Day.
     If I had thought about it more, I would have brought some water. I had a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup, but after sucking down about half of it, I was thirstier than ever. I looked longingly at the rhinos.
     Suddenly, and without warning, one of the rhinos fell over dead and the buzzards left to get some of their friends.
     Later that afternoon, I saw a plane, but it was only paper.

Chapter 2

2006-03-07T14:04:00.000-06:00

     My dog, Fletch, was gnawing on the doorknob to my bedroom this afternoon, keeping me from sleeping. I’d been up all night, counting my toenails, and I was pissed. I picked up the Ghanestian hoolbangler on my nightstand and hurled it at his head. He ducked so quickly that his fedora fell off, then he looked back at me and said, “There’s nuns out there, man! Let me out!”
     “Get back under the bed where you belong, cat licker.”
     I turned over and pulled the newspapers back over my head and tried not to think of the Guatemalan land crab I had seen hanging from the light fixture. If it falls on the bed, the weasels will go crazy, I thought. The nagging worry about the crab/weasel confrontation drove the last thoughts of sleep from my mind, so I got up and went to work.

Note: This is one of the weird ones.

Chapter 1 - A Poem

2006-03-06T14:19:00.000-06:00

I have a multi-dimensional geography
In my head
Where the real, unreal,
And barely imagined
Co-exist.

In my universe
(and everyone holds a
universe in his or her head),
Arrakis, Middle Earth, and Discworld
Are fleshed out more completely than
Kazakhstan or Arkansas.

An idle thought can create a world
And a brief daydream can write a
History of things to come.

I am Death, Destroyer of Worlds
I am Legion.

My universe began when I was born
And will die when I do.

It is not a closed system.
It interacts with the
Universes of others,
Like n-dimensional Venn diagrams.

New worlds and ideas are siphoned in.
With force of will and action,
I can shape the universes of others.

Nothing is lost,
But things are forgotten –
Sometimes misplaced,
Sometimes disconnected forever
Depending on electro-chemical whims.

Places, friends, and lovers are created
From dust in my dreams and
To dust they return
When I wake.

I am sane because
I can sort and classify.

Title Page, Dedication, Table of Contents

2006-03-06T14:14:00.000-06:00

Title Page:

Symptoms of My Encroaching Insanity
A Work in Progress

by
Christopher M. Palmer

Dedication:

Dedicated to the authors of every book I’ve ever
read – they’ve made me what I am today.

The bastards.

Table of Contents:

Table of Contents

Page 1..................................................................................... 1

Page 2..................................................................................... 2

Page 3..................................................................................... 3

etc.

Notes:
As I said in the introduction, I actually made this into a "real" e-book, so this was the first couple of pages. It didn't actually have chapters and most entries were untitled, but I will turn each page or entry into a "chapter" for the blog. When I finish publishing the online version (or if I get tired of doing it), I'll post a link to the full book. I don't want to give away the ending too quickly...

That's a joke. It doesn't really have an ending. It's just stuff.

Introduction

2006-03-06T13:56:00.000-06:00

At one point in my life, I thought I would really like to be a writer. I had just moved from a fairly good, but boring, job to one that was potentially better, but the work environment was driving me crazy and I started re-thinking my career choices.

In both jobs, I had a certain degree of free time, both real and as a result of procrastinating on tasks that I should have been doing. I read a lot of books and articles about writing and, of course, the advice boiled down to "If you want to be a writer, you have to write!"

That wasn't much help, and neither was "Write what you know." So I started looking at writing exercises and the one that fit me best was: "Sit down and just start writing something. Anything. Write dialog, write scene descriptions, write stream of consciousness, write poetry. Just put words down and you'll get better at it."

So I did. Whenever I had some free time, I'd open a Microsoft Word file on my computer, scroll to the end, and start writing something. After doing this on and off for a while, I didn't feel much more like a writer. As a matter of fact, reading the random stuff I'd came up with made me think that if anyone else read it, they'd think it was the ravings of someone slowly going insane. Instead of deleting it, I created a small e-book that I called "Symptoms of My Encroaching Insanity". I sent it to a few of my friends and they thought that, yes, I must be crazy. It's sat on my computer (actually on a succession of computers) for nearly five years now. I went back and started reading it today and it's actually not too bad. Some of it is kind of funny, some of it indescribably weird.

So, since I had a few free minutes, I decided I would publish it on a blog - one chapter a day (or so) - and share it with the rest of the world (assuming that anyone finds it and reads it).

Feel free to comment. I can take it (I think). Just don't call the men in white coats to have me committed. I'm sane. Really.