Fear, Loathing, & Publishing

You Can Be My Huckleberry . . .

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 03:21:59 GMT

Home sweet home. That's what ahm talkin' bout, fucker!

Okay, so, yeah, right, yes, it has been six months, that is, a million years, since I have posted. And, your point is? Heh. It's a champagne jam. That's what I'm talking about. Dang!

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead . . .

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:12:49 GMT

I'm tired. It's cold. I want to lay/lie down now. I'm frosty dammit!

Q: How do I know it was Sunday night?
A: Because I woke up at 3 a.m. on Monday morning unable to go back to sleep.

Anyway, just a quick note--for no small reason due to LiveJournal having just done one of its periodic things where it eats a post I just finished--to say that blogging is likely to go back to a weekly basis instead of daily.

Just Like An Island Breeze (NOT!) . . .

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:38:56 GMT

Note to self: don't buy dumbass girlie alcohol like this again!

I still remember the exact moment when I learned to love beer (and, by extension, acohol in general). Not that I hadn't been drinking plenty up to that point but until then it had been a necessary evil to revel in the moment of the true high party-ness. (Or something.) Anyway, I was at a buddy's dorm room on a bright sunny day and something--who really knows the details before after a momentous event itself?--but I remember turning up a full bottle of Michelob to kill it on the spot and to be able to choke it down I decided that with each gulp I would say "good" in my mind so that its drinking would just be a soothing whisper of "good" over and over again. And it worked: I was sold. By the end of that one bottle of beer I LOVED beer. Drink it all day. Drink it all night. No matter the consequences!

Anyway, all that aside, other than to establish my credentials as a serious drinker, today I did the stupidest thing at the liquor store. I was looking at rum and saw this lime-flavored Bacardi rum that was half the calories of regular rum. And, I'm like, shit, I got bad body image . . . why not drink smart (and hard) and do something good for my body? I was sold. Again. (See above. Michelob? My Gawd, what was I thinking/drinking?) Anyway, I kept looking for just regular Bacardi--that flavored shit is good for a few drinks but go too far and the next day you'll wake up with a 1/3 of a bottle of coconut-flavored rum that will take even you six months to get rid off--but couldn't find any. So I got the lime, thinking that woul be the least obnoxious flavor. Just as I got back out to the black job and cranked up Prodigy it dawned on that they probably cut the alcohol in half to get the calories in half. I looked at the bottle: goddamn if I wasn't right. So then it also dawned on me that the reason there was no 36 proof (as opposed to the standard 80 proof) regular Bacardi was that this stuff was flavored (and with half the calories) to sell to college girls that don't want to taste alcohol when they drink . . . and don't want to think that drinking too much is what might be making them gain weight. I felt like a rube. I felt like I'd been duped. The first thing I'm thinking is, fuck that, two shots per drink it is, maestro. But, then, I'm like, hey, why not get in touch with my inner college girl and just have some 75-cal drinks?

You know, anything to help preserve my girlish figure.

Porcine at Recline . . .

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:25:38 GMT

To sleep or to die, that is the question.

Day Five of vacation begins with something of a whimper. My nose just keeps running which is finally beginning to make me think I have a cold or something as opposed to it being my ever-present allergies. Or, it could be the allergies given that the weather has been unseasonably warm. Anyway, vacation began as most of them do: I left work all wound up and whoopin' and then tried to plan for other work for the whole vacation and then felt overwhelmed and then decided to do nothing since it was vacation and now my immune system is compromised enough from work/stress that now my allergies and/or a cold (see above) have finally kicked in. Even Mel(ody) was so disgusted with my rolling around in exhaustion that she went up to Brutha Drain's last night to watch the Cowboys game. (It was only on satellite TV so I listened to it here on the old dairy barn radio.) It was quite the thriller.

If I had anything else to say I would say it. But I don't. So there it is.

Goodbye.

Happier Than A Pig In . . .

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 19:58:05 GMT

You get the idea. Maybe. (Or maybe not.) Who cares! I'm on vacation until next year, baby!

My God. I almost can't believe it: I'm on three weeks of vacation. This is like the first vacation kind of vacation and/or time I've taken off that will be worth a damn since I moved out of the English department. Every other time I've taken off either there was all kinds of work being left half-finished waiting impatiently for me or I would be so sick and/or worn out that the time off wasn't worth the hassle. But, this semester, finally, we got our work done exactly on schedule and the rest of the crew is back at the office working busily for the next week and a half. There it is. I was just screaming at the top of my lungs cranking Witch up on the G-Mobile's stereo as I left the campus. I mean, why can't leaving at five o'clock every day be like that? It seems like it ought to be able to be that way. But it's just not. Before I left I gave the various cacti that Mel(ody) had potted to various folks. The DS (Departmental Secretary) was kind enough to get me a 20-pack of Bud Light. Now those are the kind of people you like to have work for you!

Then, my buddy who just got shitcanned by the school came by the house last night. He had finally been let back in to his old office and was able to get his stuff out. We bought him dinner and he crashed here until taking off to Paris, TX, this morning. Who knows what's going to happen to that poor bastard?

I brought tons of new publishing books home to read over the break. I have several internet marketing books but the best one so far is called something like The Web-Savvy Writer. Basically, Mel(ody) and I were talking this week and now that I've gone through all aspects of book publishing from beginning to end and am getting a handle on the business/marketing end, I think I'm finally ready to start my own small publishing company. Knowing what I've figured out, I think we can get the company, its Web site, e-commerce site, other odds and ends of organization stuff and a book published for between $1000 and $1500. The first main thing--and Mel(ody) and I have been kicking this around amongst ourselves and a few other folks--is to find some content to publish that we can really get behind. She has an idea for a supplemental reader for her history classes that would probably instantly break even. I'm wanting to publish post-apocalyptic stories of despair, loss and . . . more loss. Plus, at Books-A-Milion today, I bought a copy of Starting a Small Business in an edition which is, happily, specific to our state. After the lawn mowing service catastrophe, I have a great desire to never pay a goddamn $4,000 tax lien to the State (or anyone else) ever again. Man, that was a serious case of the dumbass.

Give, Live, Love . . .

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:15:58 GMT

Or, just fuck all y'all . . . twice!

Today. What a day. We were supposed to have a follow-up interview with a woman who runs a management consulting firm in Austin who wrote a semi-famous book about management theory who was chatting with us for an upcoming issue of a journal we publish. There was to be a recorded interview to then be transcribed and edited. There was an official dinner to take her out to. There was a hotel to check her in at on the school's dime so she didn't have to drive back down Damnation Alley at night to get back home. I mean, these are preparations, bub. And then . . . then . . . then, one by one, the major players began to drop out. I mean, what the hell? I was already the smallest fish in the room. Then, finally, it was going to be just me and a proxy for the other guys--a proxy that I had to find--to meet with her. No shit, all last night I had nightmares about this poor woman showing up and discovering she was only going to be talking to me. I mean, really, I'm not kidding: nightmares. I felt horrible about it. So this morning I was going to email her to let her know the hap so she could make a graceful exit out of the whole thing. I got to work--late, of course--and got went down to another office to fill up our coffee pot with water to make coffee and talk to a buddy of mine down there and the DS (Departmental Secretary) comes down there to say the lady is on the phone because she can't make it today. She has a congenital birth defect: no hip sockets. As a child she had some kind of reconstructive surgery. Now her legs fuck up on her every couple of years. Like now. She can't walk. She can't drive. She's distraught that she can't make it down. I just don't know what to say. What am I to think? Is there a God? My feet do a sharp little happy dance. Is he/she this benevolent a God? I tell her that job one is taking care of herself. I send her an email saying we'll reschedule after the first of the year. We are, I tell her, nothing to sweat over at all. But, I suggest, why don't we meet in Austin this time? That will be simpler. Oh yeah. All hail Jehovah. Or, truthfully, fuck it. With happenstance like this I'm happy to say, "All hail Beelzebubba." Like the Diet Coke bottle says:

Give. Live. Fuck Off.

(or something.)

I've Got Blisters on My Eye . . .

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:29:06 GMT

Hate you, sign!

And for once it's not by virtue of letting those signs at the edge of the park across from the house get the better of me. Actually, both my eyes feel like they have blisters on them or at the very least heavy duty scraping from old, evil sandpaper. I've spent most of the last 24 hours working on registering the RSS feeds for this blog and the official publishing blog with every RSS directory I can find. Basically, people subscribe to RSS feeds to have specific content sent to their computer or to a news aggregator where they will read all the feeds they subscribe. For example, right now I have like 10 or so blogs I read on a moderately frequent basis depending on how much freet time I have. If I subscribed to all the RSS feeds for them--and that's if (usually) their writing had submitted them to RSS directories--I could have one Web page where the newest entries of all of them would show up. Crazy. I've been seeing stuff about this for a while but it wasn't until yesterday that the lightbulb went off in my head about how helpful this could be to drive traffic to both the blogs. That is, who want to read through a million blog directories to bookmark blogs? But, on the other hand, people cruise news aggregators to find feeds very specific to their interests/needs. So, we'll see how it all works out.

Heard from one of the guys--the professor in Canada--who had poached the PDF of one of our technology forecasts and posted it online. Basically, he took it all down right away but said he didn't care much for the tone of my email . . . that it was "heavy handed" and "offensive." Alright, he got the message!

You Should Be Afraid Of Me Because I Just Beat Yo' Fuckin' Ass . . .

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 02:33:08 GMT

No means no, fucker!

So as a publishing dude I publish these technology forecasts; these dudes are big ticket items; the most recent one we did retails for $150; we also sell PDF e-book downloads of these books; there's this one dude at the school; he runs the department that contracts to to have these done; we publish them; (I think I covered that part already); so this dude emails me today; he sends me links where these other dudes at their own sites have uploaded his/our technology forecasts PDFs to where any other dude can download them; and like, dude, that is so NOT COOL; so I got my copyright reference book out so see what I should do; that book told me exactly what to do; so I sent those dudes/fuckers cease & desist emails; one site got their PDFs of our shit offline in like 45 minutes; the other dude is some fucker in Canada; I knew those mealy-mouthed motherfuckers/dudes were up to no good; oh and he'll be getting them offline; and then those dudes shall know who really is the king of fuck mountain.

The Countdown Begins . . .

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:07:09 GMT

The excuse du jour.

Yesterday I created an "official" blog for our publishing operation. ("Official" means that it is innocuous and upbeat, unlike this blog that is an equal mixture of desperation and venom/contempt.) The big question now is: how many more days will it take before it is officially approved so that we can link to it from our offiicial publishing site? (There is, of course, a whole long back story here concerning the so-called channels by which things like this can be okayed.) I sent the link to the various powers-that[-shouldn't]-be yesterday. I can tell from the email properties and traffic tracking at the site that they've all taken a look at it. Any word from anyone? Of course not. Thankfully my current boss is hip: unless someone has actively complained to me by next week he said to go ahead and link it to our publishing site. You go, guy! I'm glad someone like him is around to egg me on. We had a big presentation by the school's president last month about how we need to be radical thinkers who think ourside the box yak yak yak and that if it isn't immoral, illegal, or unethical and, as well, MAKES money, then go ahead and do it. So there it is.

Blogging is, of course, what is called new media marketing. (Mainly that seems to mean internet-based applications that try to be interactive and build community.) You see a lot of authors with their own blogs to try and keep interest going in them and their work and build their audience . . . hence, the blogs of Michelle Brooks and Stephen Graham Jones I linked to earlier this week. For our part, though, I couldn't see that anyone would necessarily care about the publisher as opposed to the writer. But, the most potentially interesting aspect of this is the Amazon Associates program. That is, once you register with the Amazon Associates program they will send you specifically tailored code so that if you have a link to one of their products from your site and someone follows that link and buys the product, then you get an 8.5% referral fee. And, since I already wanted to list the reference books we use with thumbnail descriptions, this is a perfect match. Will it ever generate any significant money? Not at all. But, much publishing income--and often times the ultimate profit margin--comes from a combination of secondary income sources like this. (Another recent example would be when we licensed the foreign rights to one of our books to a publisher in India for a $1000 up front plus 10% of sales for the next three years.) So, once again, there it is.

I am NOT a CROOK . . . .

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:05:44 GMT

A windshield with a view.

This is the view from my car, the G-Mobile; this is the view from my car outside the building where I work; this is the view from my car when I go to get in it and the passive theft detection kicks in--there is a short in the electrical system that makes it think someone is messing with the ignition--so that I cannot start the car for ten minutes. Then, after ten minutes go by, I get the chance to try and start the car again. I say "chance" because we can go through two rounds--twenty minutes--of this on infrequent occasions, most recently last week when I spent 20 minutes sitting at a BP gas pump next to the Interstate. At first it was very exciting and good to know that the car was trying to keep people from stealing it. The bloom, however, is certainly off of that rose. I also thought this was a new problem--it didn't happen the first six months we owned the car--but after talking to Mel(ody)'s grandmother--we bought the car from her . . . hence its name: it was always the Gramsiemobile which we tried to make tough, hip, smart by shortening to the G-Mobile (limited success has ensued)--at Thanksgiving and it had done the same thing to her. She took it to her mechanic, dropped $300 to get it fixed before they just said it couldn't be done. You do, however as well, see all kinds of things you wouldn't normally see/notice by virtue of sitting impatiently in the front seat of your car waiting for the red blinking theft protection light in the instrument panel to finally go off. There's a story in there somewhere . . .

Work continues apace. The new full-time GS (Graphics Specialist) started this morning so we had a long production meeting to go over the spring production schedule: 4 new books (two technology forecasts, two biomed-related books), some new promotional materials, some things to be updated, and the new project of producing downloadable technical illustrations/graphics. Then I went and got my leave slip signed to be off as of Wednesday a week from now until after the first of the year. I mean, it's like three weeks. That will be the longest jump of time I've been off in years. Maybe I'll write that story about some poor unhappy bastard who is stuck seeing things he doesn't want to see by virtue of sticking around places ten/twenty minutes longer than he really needs/wants to . . .

Maybe, just maybe . . .

Three Shout Outs and a Dagger of Despair . . .

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:10:54 GMT

SGJ hobnobs with the literary elite on Halloween at the TX Book Festival.

In the right hand column here at FL&P are links to other blogs/sites of note. I've updated this today to reflect three new links that I must offer all praise and shout outs to: S4D (Students for Dialogue), Demon Theory, and Michelle's Spell.

Students for Dialogue (S4D) is site for the student group my beloved wife Mel(ody) sponsors at the community college she adjuncts history at. Currently they are having a film series where they show immoderately inflammatory films that attempt to gouge the eyes of the local powers that be. (That is, Baptists/Republicans/Capitalists.) The first in the series was Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers followed by The God Who Wasn't There and in January they will be presenting Kilowatt Ours along with a panel discussion consisting of a TXU representative and some environmental types. Although I sometimes feel she is working real hard to keep the school from wanting her around, the reality is that she's ramrodded this student group into something cool and topically relevant so all props to her.

Demon Theory links to the site of Stephen Graham Jones, a well-published author who teaches up at Texas Tech in Lubbock. He and I were in grad school together for a while studying creative writing and he is the epitome of a real writer--that is, he's always writing his ass off--as opposed to folks like me and my cohorts in the program who talked--what we thought, at least--was good game about writing and the writing life but who were too busy mean mouthing folks and trying to recover from hangovers to actually be bothered with the act of writing itself. He did sell me a moderately decent couch for $20 that I carted around with me forever before finally losing it in some move somewhere. The picture is of him amongst all kinds of writing mucketymucks at, I think, the Texas Book Festival on Halloween in Austin this year. Stephen is the guy in the middle of photo with long dark hair wearing the Western-style shirt with roses on it. The guy in the lower left hand corner is, I believe, Jay McInerny, author of Bright Lights, Big City, and a direct line, as one of his students, to Ray Carver when he was part of the creative writing program up at Syracuse. All hail to Stephen: he's worked smart and hard to get where he is, where he wanted to be, where we wall wanted to be, and my warm feelings for his success are tempered by my own twinges of jealously/self-awareness about my own lack of ability to get where he finds himself today.

Finally, I came across the blog, Michelle's Spell, of another old grad school buddy Michelle Brooks last week. Unlike me, she made it out of the program with her doctorate and is up in Detroit teaching English and, like Stephen, just write write writing. She and I were in the first creative writing class I took in grad school. It was a night class and after meeting some of the other students in the class we would go across the street to drink beer at the Flying Tomato after class. Then we started meeting before class for a few beers. Then, because it was a three-hour night class we started going over for a beer during the break. Then we started bringing back quarts of beer in big plastic Budweiser cups to drink during the last half of class. Michelle, I must emphasize, was never part of these shenanigans and, at the time I couldn't figure our her problem, she seemed to look down at us like we weren't serious about what we were doing/contributing to the writing life. Or something. Her blog has much to do with being a writer and is full of personal reflections plus thoughts on drinking: what to drink when while watching/doing what. Plus spells. Read. Mull over. Enjoy.

Driving Buddy . . .

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 17:49:08 GMT

Patrick Starfish, safely ensconced in the G-Mobile.

This is Patrick. He rides in the G-Mobile with me every day. I got him remaindered for $3 at Books-A-Million a few weeks ago when buying a hello kitty themed gift card for the recently departed GS (Graphics Specialist). This was shortly after Mel(ody) and I made a Friday night pilgrimage out to the house of her adjunct teaching buddy Reverend Jim. He has a twin bed and no furniture in his living room so we hung out in the dining room. I had taken my own low-slung lawn chair to sit in. Sitting on one low bookshelf were a set of model buildings, great skyscrapers of the world. The Sears Tower. Others from foreign countries. Asian countries, they have a ton of tall buildings. Each of the buildings has light bulb inside that can be turned on to softly illuminate some of the windows, much like the buildings that make up the backdrop on the set of Matthew Crouch's talk show on TBN. RJ says that at night he'll lay on his bed in the living room with the lights off and his buildings' lights on and he'll talk to the people in them. "Go home," he tells them, "you've worked hard enough for today. You can go get some sleep now." He also has an unhealthy fixation on Jennifer Love Hewitt in The Ghost Whisperer. (Reverend Jim, that is. Not Patrick.)

I talk in an affected high-pitched reedy voice to Patrick while scratching his stomach with one finger when going to and from work. "C'mon, driving buddy," I say in the mornings. "We've got a hard a day of work ahead of us. Let's get started!" At the end of day I'm happy to tell him, "C'mon, Patrick. We've worked hard enough today. Time to go home and get some rest, driving buddy." As we went to Austin Friday and I was getting Patrick squared away, Mel(ody) said, "You know, you could talk to me that way and touch me." But, when I used the voice on her and scratched at her leg with the one finger she recoiled. Recoiled! She's acquired the need to talk to her dad Butch concerning this. But, just look at Patrick's beaming face! There is a guy with the right kind of attitude to make it through this world in a fine fashion!

Enjoy your Sunday off, Patrick! We've got a long ol' week of work ahead of us!

In the End, My Friend, All Roads Lead To . . .

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 14:53:19 GMT

The Austin, TX, institution on Lavaca Street.

Did the job thing yesterday: drove to Austin, filled out application, took proofreading test, talked to owner who said 1) you did really well on the proofreading test (comparing four manuscript pages to a galley proof) and 2) unless you just happen to really hate your job there's no way we can make it worth your while to come down here. So, we talked shop for a while. Discovered--for what it's worth--that American textbook publishers are demanding to have all set-up/composition work done in India. Even if it's not cheaper now they think it's worth the investment because it will become cheaper in the near future. He did not think there would be any particular bias against me if/when I make the jump to a straight university press. Thought it would be a good idea--as I had been thinking about already--to do some informational interviews with the heads of university presses in Texas and surrounding states for industry info and networking. So, there it is.

Went to Waterloo and bought CDs by Holly Golightly, R.L. Burnside, the Immortal Lee County Killers, and the Kooper/Bloomfield/Stills album. Had the large XXX frito pie at the Texas Chili Parlour. Two Shiner Bocks. Mel(ody) bought odds and ends of stuff--an onion, Ruta Maya coffee, an Amy's burrito--at Whole Foods. Cursed the traffic. Got the hell out before Friday afternoon going home traffic jams got cranked up. And, oh yeah, stopped by Dan's Liquor, just 2 blocks north from the TCP. No visit to that fair city is complete without it. By mile marker 274 heading north I was feeling just fine.

This is My Driveway, This is My Heart . . .

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:54:35 GMT

Cold. Dark. Wind whipping its way through the empty spaces.

Some final thoughts on the interns reception and I can finally let that go and move on. First of all, the interns did have a good time. I managed to get each of them a different parting gift for their gift bags as picked/distributed by me and the DS (department secretary). In particular, Vietnam guy got a big glass quart bottle with stuff in it to make beer bread when one regular beer was added to it and baked. He tells me, man, it's going to take a case of beer to make this. I'm like, dude, you only need one according to the directions. Very sincerely he looks at me and says, yeah, but it's going to take a while for it to bake! Apparently, as I discovered after the fact, he also had a speech prepared to give upon receiving his certificate but I managed to chatter on enough so that he didn't get a chance to cut in. But, he was impressed that I was able to speak moderately coherently without notes. That's called teaching, bub: chattering to captive audiences while trying to maintain the merest of semblances that you have a clue as to what you're talking about and that there is some point to it all. All of the interns thought it was cool that their work had been made into big prints and mounted and they all wanted their own posters . . . who am I to deny them?

(On the other hand, when I told this story last night to my blushing bride Mel(ody) the punch line was: I told them they couldn't have the posters because that's state property. She starts giving me the cold-eyed squinchy stare and I'm like, hold on there, hon, of course they can have that stuff. She breathed out a very audible and significant sigh of relief. I asked her, what kind of bastard do you think I am? She gives me look like, what kind of dumbass are you? and says, hey, bub, I'm married to you, okay? Don't try to snow me! Oh, I said. Oh.)

As I've said before, it was a really good bunch of interns this semester. They got a lot of good work done and learned a lot in the process. Some semesters it's like you can't get rid of them soon enough. I'll be happy to get all of these guys back in the spring. Yesterday was one of those days when I was really enjoying my job and wasn't really in that much of a hurry to punch my exit visa out of this place.

(Also, a little perspective might not hurt. My buddy the Grimester who crunches data in an office down the hall from me came by yesterday morning and asked me if everything was ready to go for the reception. Oh yeah, I said, but I'll be glad it's over because it'll just be a roomfull of bastards from the school here who'd just as soon stab me in the front as stab me in the back, the kinds of sonsabitches who wouldn't piss in my mouth if my teeth were on first. He said, calm down, hoss. Nobody on the campus hates you that much. I told him, the operative phrase there is "that much." He rolled his eyes and went back down to run some more reports using MS Access.)

So, it's not even six hours until the big book production company job interview. Of course I should have spent the last few days madly studying copyediting symbols. Instead, I'm like, love me, love my lack of knowledge useful to your company. I did make some cool flash cards so I'll spend the next couple of hours going over them, getting my info together for the interview--hey, it's not bad to have copies of our three most best publications to give them!--and then wrapping it all up as soon as I can so I can shoot two blocks over from where they're at to Waterloo Records and load up on tunes for the month.

Peace out!

I'm Just Proud It's Over . . .

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:36:53 GMT

Another intern reception is thankfully over. In retrospect, as always, it strikes me like most major holidays: I dread it right up to the point it actually takes place and then it's like, what was all the fuss about? I had built it up to being such a nightmare that the DS (departmental secretary) and the PE (publishing editor) were convinced that something truly tragic/horrible was going to happen. Instead, people got to look at samples of the interns' work this semester, eat loads of food, and clap mightily has I passed out certificates and lovely parting gift bags. And, as always, tons of schmoozing abounded. As the PE and I were getting the dining area--where we had the reception--put back into shape the dean of instruction came by and we chatted at some length about various projects in the works: a history of the school, a co-op work book, the healthcare safety book, the hand tools book, and so on.

After we were done talking and he was gone I asked the PE, do you know what that was an example of?

What? he said.

I said, that's me doing my job: talking to folks about publishing books.

He was not impressed. Me neither. The best job--in retrospect--that I ever had--in terms of suiting my needs, personality, abilities--was running my own little black and white photo lab at the back of a big custom photo processing facility/warehouse in Lubbock TX when I was in my early twenties. I spent all day by myself in the dark printing photos listening to the local rock radio station and as long as I stayed two days ahead on all my orders I never had to talk to anyone unless I was in the breakroom on break. That was it. That was all there was to it. Once again, given what my job consists of now, that's irony, bub. Then again, after nine months in Lubbock I was so desperate that I boiled out of there back to Fort Worth where things were never the same again and there you have it.

Anyway, digressions aside to make a long story endless, it was a good bunch of kids this semester. In many ways, the interns are like the best teaching situation I never had: there are only 10--usually, at the most--of them per semester, they are all interested in what they're doing because it's what they've been trained to do, they're here for 10 hours a we so I get a chance to actually know them and a new bunch comes in every couple of semesters. (This is in stark contrast to the typical two-year college teaching gig where you've got five sections, 30 students each, you see them three hours a week, and all of them have better things to do than worry themselves about the ins and outs of writing essays of all things.) We've got the girl who works part-time at Starbucks and is obsessed with coffee. There is the Vietnam vet who likes to tell stories about going into Cambodia to burn down villages and kill anything that breathed. (He wore a tie today . . . and a t-shirt . . . and surfer jams.) There are the two churchy guys who are very earnest and very goofy. The level-headed quiet girl who does good work and is going to be our new work study come this spring. We awarded a publishing scholarship to our current work study who is joining the staff full-time in January. And one of the churchy guys brought like three generations of his family--some of whom had driven two hours in the sleet to see all this--was the outstanding intern of the semester so we gave him a $50 gift certificate to a local italian food restaurant.

Anyway, despite all my trepidations about all this, my inherent distaste at being in the middle of public spectacles such as this, in the end, none of this is for me anyway, it really is for the interns who did seem to have a good time. So maybe there is some kind of lesson to be learned from all this. If I was the kind of person who could draw conclusions about things like that. Thankfully, I lack enough just enough self-awareness to really break on through to the other side. I'm the guy at the party leaning on a wall at the back of the room nursing his sixth beer gladly out of the mix . . . the one who is about three more beers away from a serious case of the dumb ass. The face in the room that looks like trouble. The guy who's just itching to get his sweaty, twitchy fingers on a Radio Shack bullhorn because he's got some things to say. Thinks he's got something to say. You know, that guy.

Repeat 1,000 Times: Everything is Okay . . .

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:10:05 GMT

Today, this morning, I can happily report that life at Fear, Loathing, & Publishing has resumed its natural state of affairs after a serious detour through Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas over the course of actually getting out of town for Thanksgiving. As Brutha Drain would say, it was one of those episodes where you get up the next day and the only documentation for the world (or even, especially, yourself) you want to leave is to write "Dear Diary, last night NOTHING happened!"

So, today, this morning, we're back on track: I'm having my regularly scheduled series of anxiety-laden dreams that mean I'm waking up too early and repeating to myself "everything is okay" while in bed which sometimes means I can go back to sleep before the white noise in my head takes over but most days, like today, actually winds up getting me up and engendering the drinking too much coffee too soon that will cause me to look moderately too wild-eyed by the time I get to work and means I will be too tired, too soon to have any semblance of a normal blood-sugar level by the end of the day.

Remember Andie McDowell in Sex, Lies, and Videotape? How she was all freaked out about how much trash there was to deal with? How obsessing over all this kept her from facing the real (& local) problems that confronted her? I don't know about this last part--what's THAT got to do with ANYTHING?--but publishing requires entirely too much multitasking. Each week I make a "next step" list of the things that need to be done to keep things moving along. One upon a time, like, when I first moved out of the English department, it had like 10 things on it that were in a nice palatino linotype 16-point font but which, over time, has turned into a two-column nightmare in 8-point font with like, no shit, 50 goddamn things on it. But, what you gonna do about it? That's why the school pays me what they consider the big bucks: to seriously worry about all the shit that nobody else could care less about. Then again, while I was putting crappy certificates of completion for the interns in crappy plastic frames the DS (departmental secretary) was doing a final copyedit on the dental books . . . riddle me this, Batman, about how that could possibly be the most cost-efficient expense of our respective time? It's just too much, man, too much!

Mainly, as always, I have a sense of overlapping dread about the intern reception. On the one hand, it signals the end of the semester for us. On the other hand, it requires the big public spectacle with a bunch of--that is 40-50--people from the school, most of whom I could go the rest of of my life--and have a happily complete life--without seeing again. A big norther blew in last night so I was hoping against hope, praying against prayer, that we might get snow day today but, of course, no such luck. Normally, that is, based on past experience, I would have had too much to drink the night before the reception so that I could add a low-grade hangover to the reception fun, but this time around I manage to avoid that. So, instead, it's just a matter of waking up two hours before I really had to.

On another note entirely, I'm going to start adding tags at the bottom of each entry that will categorize it. That way, if someone/anyone/only me wants to find all the entries for that category, all they'll have to do, I think, is click any particular tag. I was looking for a blog template that would list the tags on the right-hand column but I couldn't locate on. It's at times like these I wonder why I ever got a livejournal blog to start with: uploading pictures is a hassle, no traffic tracking, and not near the features of blogger or even wordpress. What was I thinking? Duh: I wasn't thinking.

Story of my life.

Yet Another Painful Object Lesson . . .

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 01:43:27 GMT

tSo, tomorrow is the semesterly intern reception: mounted posters of the work the interns did, a free lunch buffet, lovely parting gifts for the interns, kind words from yours truly about how all of this would never have been possible without the contributions from yak yak yak. So, this morning I went over to pick up the mounted posters of their work, mainly a bunch of book covers for the new books we did this semester plus some older ones that had had kind of generic covers. Anyway, I go over to the print shop and I'm looking at them and I'm like, man, these just don't look right and then I realize that they had been printed from an early version of the PDFs that were later updated. Some labels were missing, some strokes that divided the front and back covers were also missing along with all of the project descriptions.

Okay, so since the name of the game is to place the blame for this, whose fault might it be?

Well, of course, it's nobody's fault but mine. I burned the wrong goddamn files to the CD that I took to the print shop, then I didn't look at the prints before they were mounted last week and then waited until today--when it was too late to reprint anything--to go pick them up. I mean, that's a serious case of the dumb ass. Thankfully, in the greater scheme of things, this isn't the worst thing that could happen--I had some cool labels and did some touch up work to get everything looking as it should--but, man, it's like Pilgram's/Publisher's Fucking Progress: even at the Gates of Heaven/finished product you see the Doorway to Hell/mistakes your dumbass should have caught.

On another note, another year's nanowrimo winds down. This year I did exponentially less writing than last year. It's like I say: publishers publish, writers write. On an extension of that note, the big interview--weather willing--at the book production company that works primarily with university presses is only two days away. I found out there is a proofreading test in addition to the interview. Proofreading is fine--Jesus X on a crutch, if I can't proofread now I may as well hang it up--but I'm afraid that it's actually a copyediting test so I've spent mucho hours this week trying to memorize the various style/marking convetions. Good luck with all that! Thankfully, I will get to stock up on some CDs at Waterloo so all will not be for naught. (Is that a double negative?) Then, coming up in the near future is reading a bunch of books the DS (department secretary) ordered by Robert Mager about instructional design and a bunch about internet marketing. Yup, kids, that's what you could be looking forward to with an MA in English. Good times!

The Smell of Tofurkey in the Air . . .

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 21:57:54 GMT

Actually, there will be no tofurkey this year. Tomorrow we'll drive up to Mel(ody)'s dad's house for the family gathering hoedown in the middle of the old family farm. Then, it's on to Brutha Drain's to watch the Cowboys-Bucs game.

Anyway, it's been an odd couple of days. It's like vacation started on Monday night with just a few periodic pop-ins at work until we were officially cut loose today at noon. (That is, actually eleven-thirty. Heh.) Anyway, the GS (Graphics Specialist) left as of Friday, the DS (Department Secretary) took this week off and the PE (Publishing Editor) left for vacation late yesterday morning. So it was just me for most of yesterday and today (a flashback to those days when it was just me all day every day as I tried to figure out what this publishing thing was all about) . . . even though Mel(ody) rode up with me to look at stuff on the Internet about working in Saudi Arabia for Aramco. Man, if we could actually land curriculum developer jobs we could make some serious dough. Like, in three years we could be debt free--no house payment, no student loans for either one of us--with another hundred grand in the bank. Every year after that we could be stacking up another hundred grand. Crazy, man, just crazy!

Then, when I got to work today I found that one of the jobs I applied for in a fit of pique a while back wants me to come interview at the first of December. Crazy. Anyway, it's on a Friday so I'll just take the day off to drive down to lovely Austin to check it out. I have the feeling that although I'm perfectly qualified--it's for a book production coordinator--there's just no way they could match the salary I'm making plus the fact our cost of living would go up dramatically. But, it will be fun to go to Austin and this place is right by Waterloo Records so we can swing by and buy some CDs. Maybe go by the Texas Chili Parlour. Romeo's. Who knows where all? Then again, maybe they offer me a job, pay me more money, and I punch my exit visa out of this place.

Can We Define "Irony," Kids? DAMN . . . .

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:54:05 GMT

Back when I was teaching English I would have to teach the definitions of various literary terms: epiphany, alliteration, allegory, simile, metaphor, and so on. Irony was another one we used to talk about. Irony is a deliberately perverse ordering of events. Such as the time I went dove hunting off and on for a whole season and never even saw a bird. Then, the day after dove season was over I was driving north on 281 through Morgan Mill to get to I-20 to cut over to Weatherford to teach and a dove flies in front of my truck and BLAM!!! I smack right into it and it kicks up over the cab and I look into the rearview mirror and there is a little ball of feathers slowly floating down to the middle of the highway. That's irony!

Or, on Friday, I had another instance of perversely ordered events. It turns out that we all got Xmas bonuses from the school--a little over $500--that morning. (Actually, being the ungrateful wretch I am, I'm like, "I think it's great we got a Thanksgiving bonus . . . but when do I get to pick up my Xmas bonus too?") I should have kept my mouth shut, even internally. That's because Thursday night the power cut on and off in our house and after the appliance guys came out on Friday afternoon it turns out that the compressor in our fridge was dead and so between paying for that information, getting a fridge bought later that afternoon, having it delivered and set up on Saturday, having the old one removed, we were out a little less than $700. I mean, thank dawg, I got a bonus. I'm not griping. But, man, that's IRONY!!!!!!

Anyway, all that aside, today begins a new era in the publishing: the GS (Graphics Specialist) is officially gone (as of Friday). Man, she was there--as an intern and full-time employee--for almost two years, certainly the longest tenure at the office after me. At eight thirty I interview one candidate for her position; at twelve I interview another one by phone. Then, next Monday I interview the third and final candidate. Then, hopefully, one of them can start on December 1st. That would mean the school was pretty much moving at light speed to do something like that but maybe, just maybe, it can actually be done.

I must give all props to the old GS. I was afraid she'd get short timer's disease once she turned her notice in and we wouldn't get any work out of her at all right here at the end of the fall production cycle. I was wrong, so wrong. She actually got more work knocked out in the last week and a half she was here than during any other comparable time period the whole time she was here. Go figure!

A Brief Brag . . .

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 17:01:36 GMT

As my legion of adoring (and ever-lurking) readers know, it is often a mixed emotional bag here at the publishing office. Most days I am in a perpetual state of being pissed off when it comes to how the school operates (or, rather, fails to operate) procedurally, a chunk of other days--like yesterday--are just kind of boring as we wind down the semester and its production cycle. Then, there are a very few days where things happen that are just outstandingly great. Today, this morning, happily (for the moment) is one of those last kinds of days.

Basically, we sold the foreign rights for India to one of our textbooks to a publisher in India. They will pay us a thousand dollars up front and then 10% of their sales--paid twice a year--for the next three years. I mean, can you believe it? It's like money for nothing! It's weird, I read in one of my many publishing books that selling subsidiary foreign rights--while never as much as direct sales--can be a signficant source of secondary income. So, I found a guy to act as an agent for several of our books at the Frankfurt Book Fair--this is where the majority of foreign rights get sold--in Germany this last October. Then, THIS!!!!!!!!!!

Amazing, I tell you, just amazing. I mean, really, who'd a thunk?

And That Is The Week That Was . . .

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 13:50:49 GMT

Saturday could not have possibly gotten here any quicker. I mean, really, what a week! The big kicker to it all was that I looked at our e-commerce site yesterday afternoon at 4 and discovered that instead of being dedicated to our publishing operation it is now a general online store for the school and that charitable donations are being solicited in a variety of areas. Huh? What? I have no inherent problem with this other than the whole e-commerce thing was set up and designed specifically for our publishing operationand adding this shit fucks all of our shit up. I mean, all the money paid by credit card goes into OUR account . . . why are we responsible for routing this other money around? The invoices that go out by email say "publishing" on them . . . so how does this work with charitable donations? The phone number for customer service is OUR number, how the hell are we supposed to provide support for shit we know nothing about? Basically, someone in administration went, "Gee, they can process credit cards so we'll just ram our stuff in there" without thinking of logistically how it's actually going to work. And, as always, some common motherfucking courtesy from some/any dumbass motherfucker to let me know all this was happening as opposed to letting me discover it on my own would have been nice. Instead, it's like "Fuck me very much" you know?

So, as always, when I get incredibly pissed off and/or frustrated with the school, I applied for a couple of jobs. One is in Boston. One is in Santa Barbara. As usual, I'll probably never hear from them again. On the other hand, at the very least it made me feel better in the sense that I can pretend I have some small degree of control over my future/career/life. At the most, maybe I can punch my exit visa out of this shithole of an incredibly red town/state and move to blue locale.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:22:25 GMT

Goddamn. I mean, Hey-Zeus Christo, you know? Man, what a day. I mean, there are days and then there are DAYS. And today was one of those DAYS!

1. I did not take the school car to East Texas this week but left it in my driveway and took my own car as I was already behind as the car was overheating and so I just left and was gone daddy gone. Today, this morning, I go out to nurse the car back to the school and, OH MY, now it has fucking flat on the back tire. Got fix-a-flat. Got it kind of aired up. Got it back to the school just in the nick of time as the engine was about to overhead. This all added an extra hour to my morning trip to work, dicking around with this.

2. Upon finishing that shit, I get to the office to discover that the GS (Graphics Specialist) turned in her two weeks notice while I was gone. All in all, it's for the best. This is her first real job and so her perspective about the pros and cons of the job and people she worked with wasn't as well developed as someone who's actually been in the world for a while. But, then again, while it's no great loss to see THIS GS go, we can afford to be without A GS for about 30 seconds or our production schedule is screwed. Thankfully, there are a couple of people lined up in the wings for this job but, man, the paperwork to get anyone hired for anything is a big pain in the ass.

3. Then, in the midst of all this, one of my old teaching buddies in the English dept. called to say that he had just been put on paid administrative leave and escorted off of the campus by security. Basically, his boss decided right after he was hired that he was the sick chicken to pick on in the department and has been riding his ass ever since then. The exact incident that triggered all this today--I'm not sure exactly what happened--but I know if you push people hard enough, long enough and unfairly enough that they will finally snap.

4. The presentation to new teachers today went okay but, yet, I still have Mel(ody)'s students' group movie up on their campus to go to in half an hour. The first one they showed was Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers. If that wasn't incendiary enough, tonight they're showing The God Who Wasn't There, this whole big long thing about how Jesus is just a historical creation. Or something. I'm like, baby, you're working REALLY HARD to get the school not to throw any more part-time work your way.

Then again, after all the wild and varied shit today, I'm about ready to get tangled up in the middle of my own shit myself. You know, man?

As my hero Ronnie Dobbs would say:

Awright.

And This Is The Week That Was . . .

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:08:07 GMT

Wow. Like much of talk in the blog world, I mean, the Dems, who'd a thunk? Mel(ody) and I had been hoping for a while--years!--that something like this with the mid-term election would happen but just refused to even really talk about it out loud given the Democrat Party propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. (For example, Kerry's ill-conceived comments last week.) We were driving back from East Texas yesterday morning listening to NPR the whole way and then, after I dropped off Mel(ody) at her school so she could teach her class I got home just in time to see Bush's press conference and discover, among other things, that Rumsfeld had resigned. It was one of those days that 1) gave me an extraordinary amount of hope and 2) will go down as one of the big political days/milestones in my life. It just all felt very momentous. Bush, I have to--for once--give him some credit. He was a relatively gracious loser. Then again, as it dawned on me as I was watching (and then listening back in the car as I drove back over to pick up my blushing bride after her class) to the Q&A, his early record is full of failures so he's probably given versions of that speech 3-5 times after various staggering defeats in the past.

Anyway, the trip to East Texas was relatively uneventful. I met with the president of the college out there to give him the overview of what we do and how we can help his college. (He did ask a question none of the other presidents asked: did I have a list of books we'd done so they could see if there were any they could go ahead and adopt. No, I stammered, flummoxed, I do not. DUMBASS!!!) Talked to a few folks about book projects and may actually have one or two come to fruition. Went to some 110 year old pottery factory and bought a ton of clay flower pots--huge and cheap--and a bunch of crazy tea pots that were made there that were very cool that we'll use for Xmas presents.

Today, it's back in the saddle at school. I have to do my big presentation to the new instructors--around fifteen--about the whole publishing operation. As always, I wish I'd had more time to work on it--that is, more than the couple of hours I'll spend on it today when I get to work--but it just didn't work out that way. Oh well. There it is. So sad. Too bad.

(Oh, and I must add, for the FIRST TIME EVER I actually used to workout room at a hotel while I was on this trip. I mean, I'm already verging on being as big as a house and with the amount of travelling I'm doing in conjuction with the unhealthy food on th road I'm determined to do what I can to keep the weight under control. So, there it was: 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the Fairfield Inn & Suites. Woo-hoo!)

(Still a skosh less than 1700 words on my nanowrimo novel so I'm way behind the curve on it. I am, however, determined to get caught up and finish in a stunningly victorious fashion.)

Notes From The Underground/Weekend . . .

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:31:25 GMT

1. Went to see Borat on Saturday. It was pretty aggresively offensive although also pretty funny in parts.

2. Finally got started on my Nanowrimo novel. After a couple of days work I'm almost up to enough words to count for what would be one day's contribution to be able to 50K words in a month. Then again, it's not how you start--look at me last year--it's how you finish.

3. The Dallas Cowboys. Gah! Shades of the Thanksgiving Day game against Miami 10-12 years ago. Gah!

4. Tomorrow--or, rather, much later on this morning--it's time to head to East Texas to scout for book projects. I tried to arrange this trip so my blushing bride Mel(ody) could go along and yet the details on her end didn't quite work out anyway to let this happen.

5. Next Thursday I have to do a presentation about publishing to the new instructors at the school who are in the BITC (basic instructor training curriculum. or someting) class. Shades of Spinal Tap: I'm gonna send you back to BITC school!

6. Now that the trip to Mississippi over Thanksgiving is out--not enough money--we had an endless series of discussions this weekend about where we might go instead. Supposedly we're going to Little Rock but to be honest I could give a rat's ass about that as a destination. It would be easier and much less painful to just bite the bullet and go to the the in-laws an hour and a half up the road. Basically, I haven't had a vacation kind of vacation in well over a year--a week and a half off to lay on the couch clutching my head in agony with shingles doesn't really count--and despite taking the week of Thanksgiving off it looks like I'm not getting much of any vacation this year either. Oh well, maybe next year.

7. Had the idea, as I have every few months, that I could write genre novels and then sell them--hard copy and ebooks--online. It might be a fun hobby even if it never really did anything other than, at the most, breaking even. As an idea it didn't get much traction when I floated it at The Homestead this weekend. Oh well, I might throw some energy at this during all those lunch hours I never take but need to start taking.

Basically, what is the upshot of starting a small publishing operation like that? Well, based on my experience, there are all kinds of logistical things that need to be done--doing the paperwork for a limited liability corporation (LLC), setting up a DBA account, buying ISBNs, getting an (e-commerce) online site, setting up accounts with Amazon and Ebooks.com, buying Adobe CS2 sofware for layout and design work, buying Quickbooks to keep track of money, getting a post office box, sales tax ID #, and so on down the line to the smallest details--but the most important thing is to have content. That is, you can do all that stuff but you're only wasting money until you have some product to get a real return off of. The best thing to do is to have 1-2 manuscripts ready to go and then all the procedural stuff could be taken of in the space of about six weeks. Taxes, that's the only logistical thing that worries me. (Hey! Find out some sunny day that you've got a $4,000 tax lien against you like I di about three years ago that I had to then pay off in 24 hours so we could close on the house we were buying and tell me that taxes wouldn't worry you!) Product, though, that's the key thing. That's what put me so far in the hole at the school: it took us like 14-15 months to get our first two books out. If we'd been able to hit the ground running we wouldn't be nearly so much in the hole. Of course, until we got a couple of books dones--any kind of books--nobody would have taken us seriously enough to hand their book projects over to us anyway. Who knows, it would be nice to have a couple of genre novels next fall to push. Just for fun. Just for a hobby. Something to give me work some kind of inherent interest other than seeing how many lab manuals and workbooks we can publish a year.

Oh well. It's almost one-thirty in the morning. I'm feeling pissed off and thwarted about eighteen ways from Sunday. Maybe there will be some kind of f'ing miracle and I'll just magically find myself in a better humor, if not tomorrow, at some point in the not-so-distant future.

Can We Say "Hammered Dogshit"? Yowza . . .

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:06:02 GMT

Yikes. After taking yesterday off and whooping it up to show The Man who's the man and so on it was a grim day today in Longly land. Things started off well enough: ate fun snacks, played some John Madden football, and then started watching (again) Hustle & Flow. I was up to the point where D Jay is starting to punk Skinny Black when Mel(ody) called to say that she and one of her adjunct teaching buddies Jim were coming by the house to pick me up so we could go eat. Or drink. Or eat and drink. Or drink and eat. Whatever. You know what I mean. I was already into Busch beer #5 at that point so I was easy.

As we were driving along listening to The Louvin Brothers' immortal classic "Satan is Real" we found ourselves at a local bar/dive/shithole that used to be a regular hangout of Jim's although neither Mel(ody) nor I had ever been there before. I mean, it was bad. I used to hang out at a place on north Burnet in Austin called the Poodle Dog Lounge--it was in one half of a cinderblock building with a muffler/transmission shop in the other half and their side was painted pink with giant blue poodle dawgs painted on it--and I mean that place was a dive but it looked like a hangout for the rich and famous compared to this place. I mean, I haven't been in a place this rugged since Dwayne and I used to drive up to Mingus--just north of I-20--to the City Limits where it was a bunch of dirt farmers sitting around a bar drinking Natural Light. Natural Light! My god, drink that shit all you want at home but, please, people (peeples!), hide your shame in public.

Jim used to be a regular in this place although he hadn't been in there for almost a year. It was like the return of the conquering hero. People were buying us beers, buying us shots, and whooping and hollering and talking drunk talk that was always on the verge of leading to fisticuffs. I drank mucho beer and mucho shots of Jim Beam plus peanuts and Andy Capp's hot fries out of the vending machine. It was all very surreal and got increasingly more so as the afternoon/evening progressed. Toward the end I thought that there were probably several likely candidates to be breaking their fists on my face I would have to deal with before making it out the door. Thank Gawd that after 2-3 hours the bartender, a skinny blindingly bleached blonde 59-year-old grandmother called Dee Darlin', cut us off so that by 7:15 we were on our way home after kicking Jim out at his house. I mean, I felt baaaaaad today but if we had kept drinking for another hour or two there's no way I could have done into work today. Once upon a time I would have thought this was the greatest place ever. Now I'm just glad that there is no compelling reason that I ever have to darken its door again.

Anyway, Mel(ody) couldn't use her C-pap machine because her nose was stopped up from all the cigarette smoke so she was snoring all night and that left me sleeping on the couch, every time I woke up thinking/hoping that I might feel better if only I could sleep for another hour. But, there's this stray cat that's beating up our cats--even running through the pet door to fight in the den--so at night we get the cats in and then lock the door so they can get out but not back in. Then, in the morning we unlock it so they can get in. But, last night, every half hour there would be a cat tap tap tapping on the outside of the pet door trying to get it open. So I would get up and hold the door open but of course that would freak them out and they would run away. So I'd have to sit and watch TV for five minutes so they could get in and then I could lock the pet door again and resume the crash position on my couch of pain. Even under the best of circumstances it would have been a long night . . . and these circumstances weren't even close.

So, I had to go slow at work today. Day 2 of nanowrimo has come and gone with no writing from me at all just yet. I did get a lot of work done at work, mainly because I was so tired that I could just ease along at my own pace. I'm glad Friday night can come tomorrow with me taking it easy all the way into Saturday morning.

That's what I'm saying now. But, perhaps, just maybe, there is yet another dive in this stinkhole town I can seriously damage my liver in tribute to. After all, as Dr. Johnson said, "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."