A WEE RAMBLE, FUELED BY FISH BROTH

Yer Bunche, enjoying a late night/early morning cup of miso soup.

Current random iTunes soundtrack: "Voodoo Doll"-Toyah Wilcox, "Agent Double-O-Soul"-Edwin Starr, "Action Woman"-The Litter, "Ahead"-Wire, "I'm An Agent"-Gary Numan, "Run for Your Life"-Al Hirt, "There'll Always Be An England"-Alfred Piccaver, "The Mob Rules"-Black Sabbath, "Needles in the Camel's Eye"-Brian Eno, "Praying Hands"-Clawhammer, "30 Years"-Electric Deads, "Margaya"-Fender Four, "The Big Beat (theme from "Front Page Story")"-Eric Delaney's Big Beat Six

(Regarding the above playlist: I always write with music on random. Helps my thoughts maintain their skewed rhythm.)

As I begin writing this it's nearly 12:30 AM and I am not sleepy in the least. One of the things that happens to me during periods when I don't have to answer to 9-5 programming is that my nocturnal nature returns with a vengeance, and lately my average bedtime takes place right around sunrise. Don't worry, ladies; I assure you that I am not a vampire (also vulgarly referred to as an "undead suckface") and I definitely do not sparkle.

This schedule can be both a blessing and a curse, allowing me to work on various writing projects without the annoyance/distraction of noisy daytime sidewalk and street traffic, but also meaning that by the time I wake up I've lost a good portion of the day and therefore available hours when stores and some restaurants are open for business. It's also rather lonely because everyone else in the world, at least those counted among the employed, is home from work and completely worn out by the time I'm ready to play. A re-adjustment is clearly in order, although I have altered this pattern for the days when I have had job interviews...

I swear by Cthulhu, if I hear the fucking phrase "You're ideal, but you're over-qualified" one more goddamned time...

...I will do nothing. Nothing except press on and say "Next!," a catch-word that I usually reserve for when the pursuit of whichever woman I was chasing at the time doesn't work out.

I'm working on two book manuscripts right now and have the notes for two more works ready to rock, so this moment of being adrift in the sea of mid-life is at least a period of free-flowing creativity. I'm approaching the books from the standpoint of them being things that I just need to let out of my head, rather than anything I may get rich off of, but if that happenstance occurs, I will not turn up my nose at filthy lucre. All I know is that even in this odd period of creative isolation in a tiny apartment that sometimes feels like a cell with amenities, I'm feeling wheels turning in my mind, heart and soul that have lain dormant for too long and there has really been no excuse for that state of affairs. Too much time has been allowed to pass without producing anything to satisfy my own artistic needs, and that will no longer stand.

I'm writing all of this and publicly stating it in order to keep my forward momentum going and send that positive energy out into the aether. With creativity expressed comes a great and fulfilling freedom and for too long I have gainfully toiled crafting what amounts to a surfeit of bullshit, especially at the job I was laid off from around four months ago. Flowery copy for churned-out consumer products, right-wing news organizations, spoiled heiresses and style guides for bad TV shows (HEROES, anyone?) may have paid the bills to some extent, but the price for that was a part of my soul, a soul I felt atrophying with every hour I spent in the design 'ho house. My time in comics had its ups and downs, that's for certain, and it may have ended on a very sour note, but my heart was in that line of endeavor, something I cannot say for writing mindless horseshit when not proofreading the boring minutia found on the sports-related trading cards that the 'ho house regurgitated back to its main client.

In short, I have been a whore for the past three years, selling the textual equivalent to man-pussy, and I'm glad to be done with that mess. I made some good friends at the design 'ho house, some of whom also got cast into the winds and some who remain within its creatively bankrupt walls, and I miss them, but right now it's all about the freedom, the centering and the enlightenment to be found by not trying to please a massa what don't give a shit 'bout his niggers (including the white ones).

With that thought in mind, I have just lit my fuming incense stencher (as the late, great Frank Zappa so eloquently once put it), cracked open a brew and am readying to sit through THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS before I retire for the morning. Tomorrow is another day, and it is looking pretty good.

Holy shit! I just realized: I turn 45 in less than a week. Hunh...