QuestionAbel Parenting

The Closer November Comes, the more nervous I am.  My friend, Jory, will be doing NaNoWriMo as well.  The positives definitely outweigh the negatives.  The only negative is now I’m feeling more pressure to succeed.  I’m really just psyching myself out.  There have been several people who have completed Nanowrimo because they didn’t realize it was supposed to be hard.

Now, that’s how life should be.

There is also less than a week until Election Day and I’m fairly nervous about that.  I really don’t welcome the sadness that will come if Obama loses.  I’m not too worried about McCain, to be honest.  I don’t think he’d do that badly in most ways – except the economy which is probably the most important issue right now.  What worries me is his age and medical history.  I’m scared to death he’ll kick it and Palin’s first step as President will be accidentily sitting on the button.

I feel a lot of people will be voting less for Obama and more against Palin, which is kind of crap.  But I am not only voting for Obama, but also Biden who really impresses the hell out of me.

Anyway, I wish luck to everyone on Halloween this year.  May your pillowcases rip open upon your return home with the weight of the candy.  I still don’t have a costume for Friday, but I’m leaning toward a Hulk costume.  All I need is green paint and purple sweatpants.

November 1st is almost upon us, and with it comes NaNoWriMo!  As previously stated, I am quite excited to participate this year.  Very ready.  I hope I can keep up with the commitment.  It is going to be quite challenging since work tends to wear me down quite a bit.  But I will do what I can.

I think the novel will be about cowboys and dinosaurs.  This is a subject very near and dear to my heart.  I think its an important part of our history mashed together without much care for sensibility.  And you can read it all here.

Wal-Mart continues painfully.  I will be back up to 40 hours for the next few weeks and then backing off to 32 again.  All my days will be at the beginning of the week, so I can sub on Thursday and Friday – at least that is the hope.  It is not as easy to sub now since I’ve been away from the jobs for so long.  I have to claw myself back to the good graces of the schools.

I am again trying to get into an MFA program for Creative Writing.  I suppose it is because there’s not much else I can do here in Stillwater.  I am trapped here for the duration due to funds and distance.  It’s not much fun.  My generally positive attitude has waned significantly here.  Mainly due to work – but I cannot get a day job anywhere, which is really pissing me off.  It’s not just that I am not getting hired, it’s that there aren’t any jobs to get.  Not unless I want to work at a gas station.

It is incredibly frustrating.

It’s on Nov 13-16 & 20-23, 2008.

We bought the paper today.  I try to get it whenever I can so I can keep abreast of the local happenings and whatnot.  We do get it every Sunday, since there are coupons we can clip.  Hopefully, after the new year we will have the capital to invest in a subscription.  Then, we can read all sorts of crazy things.  Like the editorials by Stillwater local, Samuel Kraemer.  There’s not a link up for the editorial today, yet.  I’ll post the link when it’s on the Newspress homepage.  You can read his thoughts on ANWR meanwhile.

The editorial today has all the information one can glean from a Wikipedia article.  The reader is informed about the elliptical path of the earth and it’s tilt from the sun.  All of this information is going to help him prove that global warming is a hoax.  This is so upsetting I can’t even use sarcasm to deal with it.

I get very frustrated by people claiming global warming to be a hoax.  Generally, in the event of a hoax, there is something to be gained by the hoaxer.  In this case, the hoaxers are the majority of the scientific community and most of the USA.

Gosh.  He’s gone and called us out.  Think of all we could have gained if only everyone believed in Global Warming here in the USA.  If only our agenda could have been pushed forward earlier and we could have fooled everyone.  Think of all of the evil plans we could have enacted.  Evil stuff.

1)  Energy Independence.  Why, with everyone convinced burning oil was a bad thing back when GW first came up, we might have made the foolish mistake of heavily investing in alternative technology for our energy needs like solar, wind, and nuclear.  We might even have people manufacturing electric cars!

2)  A Better Transportation Infrastructure.  Once people realize it’s not environmentally friendly to drive across the country, they might have demanded a better public transportation system developing first in their cities and then expanding into some sort of low-energy mag-lev rail system that criscrossed the country!  In a really evil move, we might have found a way to easily load our electric cars onto the rail system and drive them off the track at our destination.

3)  Less Money to Roads, more to other things.  With less cars on the road and more all-terrain bicycles, we might have taken money away from road maintenance.  Man, this is the evil plan I’m most ashamed of.  That money would have gone to help fund other things.  Probably other silly things like education and public transit.

4)  Cleaner Air.  This is the most apparent.  Obviously, those of us behind this bold hoax to promote public transportation and walking had this idea at the forefront.  Without all those messy coal and oil plants and with less gasoline cars on the roads, places like LA would have less smog.  The thing that really makes them epic in the minds of Americans everywhere.  If only there were some other memorable feature of big cities, this one might have worked.  But if you take the smog away from cities, what do you get?

I could go on, but I think I’ve hit the major four.  Anything else would be a stretch.  Like how carpooling could promote a stronger work community and therefore increase productivity.  How people could save on their electricity bill because they demand products that use less energy.

Sorry everyone.  The hoax has been discovered.  I guess our evil plans will have to wait.

Well, we are about 15 days from the end of the month.  Halloween.  I don’t really know what I will dress up as for Halloween, and doubt I will cobble together a costume.  I’m just not feeling it.  I was thinking up plans to go as a Monarch henchman from The Venture Brothers, but I just don’t feel the urge to put that much time into a costume.  I don’t think I’ve had a good costume for a few years.  The high point being my bitchin’ Brak costume in college and Johnny Cash post.  When I put my mind to it…

But what that really means is there are only 15 days until NaNoWriMo.  A month in which I really must post everyday, since I will be posting my novel right here.  What shall I post?  I don’t know.  In the confines of NaNoWriMo, I should have a fresh new idea to go with.  But What?  Perhaps a camp novel.

It’s very challenging to think about.  All I have is a setting.  There’s no characters.  No plot.  I have half a dozen started books.  But this is a novel.  The goal is 50,000 words.  That’s not too hard.  It’s less than 2000 words a day.  The hard part is figuring out what to write about.

Why did they pick November?  Thanksgiving’s in November.  October would have been the month I would have picked.  I could write a novel every month, but that type of workload is a little to cray-cray for me.

For those of you interested, I did not get the library job.  It would seem I am stuck at Wal-Mart for the next few months.  Until something better pops up.  I have been unable to find any sort of Outdoor Education program hiring people such as myself here in Stillwater.  There is a camp run by the University, but they seem to employ students only.

It is so very different from home.  There was an abundance of camps in the area.  Little hamlets gently honed from the woods.  Information on the outdoors was readily available everywhere you went.  I am still trying to figure out the system here – there is little online.  I don’t enjoy driving twenty minutes just to ask where the swimming section is.

Last night, I had a dream.  I was back in high school just after the final play, “The Mouse that Roared.”  I was in the media room helping Mr. Schutter clean things up because he was retiring – which he was.  It was very strange, since this never happened.  He was just telling me things.  He tried to tell me a lot of things when I was his student, but I didn’t really listen to others much in high school.  Still, it was an interesting experience.

Autumn.  A beautiful time of year.  When you go pick apples at the orchard and take long walks in the crisp air as the leaves explode in color around you.  Except in Oklahoma, where it was eighty degrees yesterday.  They don’t even have haunted houses here.

Sam and I tried to go out to eat last night.  We were successful.  Finally.  We really wanted to go someplace that was fancy.  We ended up at Red Lobster, which is apparently the height of fancy in Stillwater.  There is one restaurant that almost fits the bill, but their main focus is steaks.  I enjoy steak, but paying over twenty dollars for something I know I can cook at home is not my cup of tea.

When I go someplace “Fancy,” I except I’ll have to wear long pants and that there will be the following items available on the menu:  lamb, duck, asparagus, and some sort of homemade ice cream.  Especially the lamb.  Lamb is practically a non-entity here in Stillwater.

Then it was off to the movies.  Where, despite having six screens open in a ten screen theatre, we had a small selection of terrible movies.  The Stillwater theatres policy seems to be one of “If there are three movies, let’s get the worst one.”  The tickets are only six bucks, which is okay.  But they didn’t even get the movie “College.”  It’s a college town.  This is my imagined plan.

“Hello, my name is Matthew Abel.  I’d like to apply for the Manager position.”
“We don’t need to hire a Manager right now.”
“Yes.  Yes you do.”

CRIMES OF THE CARMIKE 10 IN STILLWATER:
1)  Whereupon a Friday or Saturday evening with a line extending ten feet from the sidewalk, there is only one ticket register open.

2)  Whereupon when buying food, they wait until you are juggling your popcorn and drink to take your money/card so you must wait longer.

3)  Whereupon there are human feces adhered to the toilet seat in the men’s room.

4)  Whereupon the lobby temperature is a sweltering 90 degrees and the theaters are a frigid 17.

The only good thing about this theatre is the amount of previews prior to the main attraction.  And that’s not something many people like.  The Stillwater movie experience is pretty terrible.  If I were going to be staying here for any length of time, I would be working hard at opening my own.  I could have two screens, but if I showed first run I would shut the Carmike down in six months.

Wow.  This movie was pretty not good.

Okay, problems with this picture?  The time.  It was too long, and there were several parts that could have been cut out easily.  I’ve seen this problem with lots of movies.  Too much info.  This movie could have had the first few minutes cut, easy.  The action sequences were confusing – you couldn’t really tell what was going on with all the jump cuts and whatnot.  And it was boring.

Not to mention the main problem I had – which Sam thought was silly (she didn’t like it either, though).  The whole assassination plot in it counts on a young trumpet player’s instrument containing a sonic device.  When a certain note is hit, it will trigger a crystal that will detonate.

The problem:  Any trumpet player is going to know there’s something in their horn, blocking the air.  Also, they would figure this out when they were tuning their instruments prior to playing.  Three, chances are, they would clean the instrument before playing such a serious performance.  They would definitely tune, as I just said.

The only thing I enjoyed was Billy Bob Thorton’s role.  And actually just Billy Bob Thorton.

That’s a lie.  I also enjoyed the purchase of the 50 cent refill bucket.  It’s good through December of ‘09.  That was pretty rad.

This is real pin:envelope ratio.

This is my free pin from Move On (.org).  They gave out millions of these babies, so the fact that it took two to three months to get here isn’t the issue.  It’s a lot of hard work to do this type of mailing, even with modern tech helping out.

The scandal?  Look at this pin:envelope ratio.  It’s a metal pin, I don’t think it’ll get banged around that badly.  Why did they waste so much space here?  I’m calling them out.  Maybe it will mean a bit more coming from a supporter.

There are people venomously hateful of Move On.  This type of thing gives them ammo, however small.

It just makes me disappointed.

Even though the pin is pretty damn bitchin.’

The dates for the play are November 13-16 and 20-23.  This is the most depressing play I have ever been in.  I don’t even know what I have gotten myself into.  In high school, all I ever did was comedies.  That’s what we focussed on, mainly.  The few dramas were items I don’t believe I even saw since I was backstage during them (student-directed one act nights!).

So now, I actually have to act.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually played different people in High School, its just that those people never had to emote much.  Anger was about all I had.  But now, I have to pretend to love this girl on stage.  And she’s very unlike Sammi, which makes it hard to pretend it is Sammi which ruins my whole plan.

But I’ll do it and do it well.  Everyone is invited.  We have limited house space, but you can sleep on the floor and you’ll have to buy your own food, dammit.