Duh

He was dead, I was sure of it. There’s no human being on the planet capable of surviving every shot in a full revolver. I knew I got him at least twice in the chest- I’d seen him jolt when they hit. And one of them must have gotten him in the leg because a dark, thick liquid was steadily making its way down his shin before he’d crumpled to the ground. Carefully I tiptoed closer and found the guarantee I was looking for: a large dark puddle forming around his head and thicker chunks of what must have been brain goo.
I forced myself to release the breath I was holding, but I still felt unsettled. I stood there in the dark, looking down at the form, wondering what was underneath that damned mask and reassuring myself that I’d chucked the machete far enough that he couldn’t suddenly jump up and grab it.
What was I thinking? Jump up? There’s freakin’ brain bits seeping out of his skull! He’s dead! It’s over!
But there was this choking sensation in my throat or chest or wherever that I couldn’t breathe past. This trepidation that I couldn’t shake. Every fiber of my intelligent mind where logical and rational thought ruled was telling me to calm down, to slow down my pulse before I had a heart attack. But the insistent pounding of my heart against my rib cage told me that my logical brain did not know the full story, that there was still cause for fear.
I took a step back, suddenly feeling faint from the massive blood pressure. Just then his hand shot up, grabbed me by the neck, and started to lift me off the ground. I hadn’t seen him stand up, hadn’t seen him move! I pulled the trigger of my gun and it clicked empty. I kept clicking at his chest futilely and screaming at myself in my head. What the hell! He’s dead! He’s dead!
The last thing I heard before the darkness blacked out my vision was an inhumanely deep voice coming out of a throat that sounded like it had been torn open:
“What? You never watch a horror movie?”

A Clarification of Semantics

Given the responses I got from yesterday’s post I feel the need to clarify my meaning. And today’s word of the day just happens to lend itself perfectly to the task.

When I spoke about life sucking and letting go of Hope for it getting better I was speaking mainly of my job. You all know this already because I’ve been kvetching about my job situation virtually non-stop since I was hired six months ago. Most of you are pretty damned sick of hearing about it, and I’m right there with you.

What I mean when I talk about letting go of Hope is letting go of the notion that something- be it a crappy job, a bad relationship (which thankfully I have none of in my personal life) or a bad personal habit will improve when you have no evidence to back this up. Hope, in this context, is destructive. It prevents one from focusing on the problem or working on fixing it because it keeps your focus on the future and that imaginary hope of things being better in that future.

Hope in this sense is very different than the context it is often used in when speaking casually. I.E. “I hope it stops raining this weekend.” This use of the word is perfectly appropriate because you have evidence to base it on: It was sunny before, it has gone from sunny to raining and back again in the past, there is good reason to believe that this current episode of rain will end and it will return to being sunny. That kind of Hope is perfectly appropriate.

Hope in the context that I’ve been using it in is not appropriate. My job did not become crappy after being good for a while. It was crappy from the beginning and for many months I hoped that it would improve. This was not a wise choice as I had no evidence on which to base the belief that it could improve other than a misguided faith that nothing could actually be that laughably bad. That’s the kind of hope that I need less of in my life.

For the majority of my adult life I’ve been experiencing things- events, people, what have you- that have made me think “Well, it can’t actually be all that bad.” Or “he can’t be that much of an asshole.” Or “they can’t really be that stupid, right?” The answer, unanimously, is “Yes, actually it/he/that can.” And hoping for whatever it happens to be to improve when everything you’ve ever experienced has taught you that it really is that bad is a crappy plan.

It is in cases like these that hope is destructive. Because hope, in these cases, keeps one in a perpetual state of denial. “It can’t really be that bad” leaves one waiting, anticipating and hoping for some future improvement that you have no factual reason to believe will occur. And waiting is inaction. Inaction breeds stagnancy, bitterness, cynicism- basically all the things I have become by hoping.

So, if I abandon hope and accept that things are really that bad then I can focus not on some future which most likely will never come, but on the present. And specifically on what I can do in the present to bring about a positive change for myself. For example: my job. If I accept that it will not improve I will have more energy to focus on getting the hell out of it.

And in the meantime, if I accept that it will not improve then I can stop giving a useless status update to those who care about me. Instead of answering “Nope, it still sucks.” And kvetching about how much it sucks I can instead focus my attention on the things that are good in life.

This is what made me think of Wemmick. Wemmick was one of the most miserable bastards you could ever hope not to meet when the main character first encountered him. We later learned that this was because he had to be in order to remain sane in such a cruel job. But outside the office in his personal life he was one of the most jovial people you’d ever stumble into and he made it pleasant to be around him. (He lived in a castle with a moat, for pete’s sake! That’s awesome!)

In this respect, I want to be Wemmick: my job can be crappy all day, everyday. But instead of coming home and complaining about how utterly miserable it makes me to everyone around me I need to focus on the rest of my life. My relationships, after all, are pretty great. My hobbies are pretty bad ass. My favorite holiday is coming up. These are things I should be talking about and focusing on. Happy, giddy Bev outside of work. Stone cold, no crap Bev inside of work, to survive.

So, to clarify, my life in no way sucks. There are many things that I have to deal with, as a matter of circumstance that have, do, and probably always will suck. It would be a disservice to me to continue to hope that those things will improve.

However, if I let go of that useless hope and focus on the small percentage of things in my life that I do have control over and therefore are pretty damned good (see John’s comment which lists quite a few of them), I can and will be happy, for the most part.

Some of you may be reading this and thinking “Well, yeah- that’s what optimism is.” Or “Duh, that’s why they always say ‘(insert random phrase I’m not familiar with that sums up everything I just said in a much more succinct way)’. But for me, it’s a bit of a revelation. (Which explains these posts describing it.)

P.S. I intend to end the month on far more silly, ridiculous, fantastical and happily Halloween-themed posts so stay tuned!

Abandoning the Shackles of Hope

I started off this month talking about satori and hoping that I might be able to gain some sense of it in spite of a rather important element of my life being in crisis. It is the same desire that I have had since this whole career crisis of mine began back in March and I hate to admit that I haven’t had much progress during that time.
However, I was speaking to a friend of mine last night about this whole thing and I explained how cynical, disillusioned and jaded I have become with my entire career path since all this hit the fan. I stated my hypothesis that this change of perspective has turned me into an incurable pessimist.
My friend, who is one of the smartest people I know and who despite what I can only assume is a very stressful job and a busy schedule and all of the same everyday headaches and crises and other crap that I and everyone else on the planet endures, is a die hard optimist. No matter what may be going on in his life he is still one of the most legitimately happy people I know. He explained that this is because he is one of the few people in the world who gets genuinely excited about solving problems. You can see how this would be valuable: the more messed up things are the more opportunities to problem solve.
He said that he did not believe I was a pessimist. He said that my disillusionment seemed to be based on reality and that my perspective, therefore, was not pessimistic but rather realistic. I asked him how I can be that jaded and cynical and disillusioned if I’m a realist. And he said the obvious answer: because things really are that bad. That the hard truth of the matter is that, in a nutshell, life’s a bitch and then you die.
I always used to consider myself someone who, because of their steadfast belief in the possibility of a life slightly less ordinary, could see things differently and approach the world and all of the problems in it from a different point of view. That I could operate both in my personal life and in my professional life without getting bogged down by how difficult things are. That I could enjoy life because I allowed myself to act like a kid, see things outside the box, and live in enough of my own world that I wouldn’t get bogged down by the problems of the real one.
I have come to the conclusion that I was not. I was, I now realize, naive and sentimental in a way that prevented me from acknowledging the hard truths. And when forced to acknowledge them I did not accept them and move on (as evidenced by my handling of this year’s events)- I just got depressed.
And when faced with this conclusion- that life actually is that crappy and that all of these beliefs I held were inaccurate- my first inclination is to get depressed. Woe is me, jobs suck, people are cruel and I’m going to have to fight tooth and nail to survive in this shit hole, blah, blah, blah.
But I have an idea- an inchoate little fantasy- that perhaps, with another change of perspective, I could accept this hard reality without getting depressed. That I could look at the world and at my life with the clear understanding of how much of it will be challenging and of how little will come to me because it’s the right thing (morally, ethically, karma-wise, whatnot) and enjoy it anyway. That I could accept- truly accept without becoming depressed or feeling sorry for myself- how many things really are just that bad and still enjoy the little bit left over that I can control and enjoy.
I haven’t fleshed this idea out yet. I don’t quite know how to execute it. But if this many people- my friend whom I’ve mentioned here, my writing Yoda, my dear friends whom I’m eagerly anticipating Thanksgiving with- can go through so much crap and see things as dire as they really are without being depressed about it then why the hell can’t I?
My answer? Because, I think, up to this point I haven’t really tried. I never allowed myself to admit that things really were that unfair. I kept holding out hope. And I’m starting to think that that wasn’t the way to go about it. I’m starting to think that perhaps letting go of hope might be the best course of action.
Because to truly understand all the evils of the world, and to accept how little of life is anything we would choose for ourselves but have to endure anyway and STILL be happy? Well, that’s a heck of a lot better than hoping for things to stop being the way they are.
I’ve always been a fan of Charles Dickens. Specifically, of Great Expectations. Even more specifically of the character Wemmick. Wemmick was a man who absolutely refused to discuss any detail of his private life at work and who just as steadfastly refused to discuss or even acknowledge any element of work in his private life. He separated things so strictly that he was almost two different people. I’ve always thought that he might be on to something, but the full weight of his efforts are only starting to illuminate themselves in my mind.
Although I do not want to become a split personality, I would like to invoke a bit of Wemmick in my life. I would like to be able to be cutthroat and unmoving in work and endure all the horror it throws my way but still be silly, happy, child-like and excited in my personal life. Not that I’m wishing to have a shitty job. I would still very much like, and am still actively pursuing, a better job. But I would like to-even if I have a shitty job- have a good life. So that's what I plan to do.

The Ghost Hunter

When Mac announced to his family that he was going to become a professional ghost hunter his father nearly had a heart attack (it later turned out the chest pains were from a panic attack) and his mother began crying hysterically. To them, it was as if he had announced that he was going to join the circus. How could someone with an engineering degree from an accredited universtiy wilingly throw away a good career to chase the boogyman? How did he possibly expect to eke out a living? How would he afford any lifestyle at all, let alone a family? He must have been crazy.
In hindsight, he recognized that he was. There had to be a certain level of craziness or disconnection from reality in order to believe in paranormal activities. To see the specters as they apparated, to feel that cold chill that came from crossing the path of one, to allow onself to believe all of these things which everything that logic teaches us proves they're impossible was a bit crazy. But that didn't mean it wasn't real.
Years later he found that those who loved him, even if they didn't understand his work, appreciated his viewpoint. And they certainly appreciated the tv show he'd managed to introduce to approving audiences.
He wondered sometimes if he was dishonoring or even angering the spirits he encountered by exposing them to the world. But then he often received the answer that they wanted their story to be told and that that was why they hung around in the first place. So he consoled himself with the knowledge that he was doing a service. Not to the living whom he provided with entertainment and a connection to the otherworld they might not be able to acheive indepedently, but to the dead.

The Test

Jim walked into math class with that small tightness in his stomach that he always got before a big test. He'd stayed up till 2am the previous night cramming and had, he thought, finally cemented as much of the information as he was going to get into his brain. He'd been studying all week to try and finalize the equations he'd need in his memory and practicing well over a hundred problems in preparation. He told his nerves that he was as prepared as he was going to be and now was the time to bite the bullet and let his mind spit out what he'd crammed in.
He walked in, sat himself at his desk, and looked over at his friend Matt who was pouring over sloppily written notes that seemed like they'd been stained with last night's dinner. In front of him was an assortment of objects- stones, a pilot's pin, a rabbit's foot and a variety of other small items.
"What's all this about?" Jim asked as he reached over and picked up the foot.
Matt jumped and grabbed the foot back, stroking it and carefully placing it back on the desk where it had been.
"Don't mess with my juju, dude. I need this shit," he said, going back to his notes.
"Hey, I know this is going to sound absolutely crazy to you but some people have better luck studying rather than relying on, you know- luck," he teased.
"Whatever, dude- you got your plan and I got mine. You won't be laughing when I pass this thing."
Jim raised an eyebrow at him and chuckled.
"Alright, alright- papers away. The only things you should have are your calculators and two -count them- two number 2 pencils. Anyone who does not have a number two pencil may come up to my desk and beg my mercy," the teacher instructed.
Jim watched Matt fumble with his notes and cram them, sloppily, into his backpack. His legs started vibrating under his desk as he straightened his pencils on his desk and stroked his rabbit's foot repetitively.
Jim took a deep breath, closed his eyes, reminded himself that he knew everything he needed to know, and waited for the tests to be passed out.

A Moment With Gran

I agreed to go apple picking with my grandmom operating under the false assumption that it would not interfere with my regular Saturday schedule. I.E. sleeping until noon. Needless to say, I was confused and ill tempered when awoke at 8am.
“Come on, slugabed- time to get up. You know what they say, the early bird catches the worm,” she said in far more perky tone of voice than any human being should be capable of at 8am on a Saturday.
I sat up, rubbed the sleep out my eyes and tried to make sense of what the hell she’d just said. I had no earthly idea what a slugabed but I gathered it wasn’t a term of endearment. And what was this about worms?
“I thought we were going apple picking?” I said blearily.
“We are silly- where do you think the bird gets the worm from?”
I thought about this for a second and couldn’t come up with any response more appropriate than “Eeewww.”
Fast forward an hour and we were in the car on the way to east bumble fart because apparently there aren’t apple orchards anywhere near where she lived. Had I know this vital piece of information I would have passed.
In spite of myself, I enjoyed the car ride. She was right- you can’t see anything worthwhile in terms of landscape unless you get the hell out of the city. And as boring of a game as 20 questions I’ve never found a more entertaining person to play it with.
We got the orchard around 10am and made our way up the hill. The apple varieties were parceled out by what you used them for: a list of sauce-making apples, a list of pie-making apples, a list of sweet, a list of tart. Gran had been an avid sauce maker since I was a baby and she’d promised me years ago that one day she would take me and show me all the tools of her trade.
We picked what seemed like a full bushel of apples and I had to get a wagon because the bin was too heavy to carry. By the time the sun past its midpoint we’d collected what seemed like a ton of apples. As much as I bemoaned the manual labor of lugging all the apples back to the car and then into her kitchen I had to admit it had been a nice outing.
She then began the process of showing me how to peel, slice and soak the apples (apparently they had to be soaked in order for the spices to set in). Then we threw them all into a huge pot on the stove and checked as the slowly simmered for seemed like an eternity.
She promised me that freshly made hot apple sauce was better than anything else in the apple kingdom I could have tasted and after an eternity she gave ma bowl and I had the chance to see for myself. I took a spoonful and blew on, somewhat trepidations about putting steaming applesauce into my mouth. I took my bite and found that my grandmother was right, it was even better than pie.
I sat there, spooning through my bowl of hot, freshly-made applesauce and I had one of those moments where you realize that you’re in a moment. A moment that means something. A moment you’ll remember. A moment that you might tell your grandkids about in another lifetime. I looked over at Gran thinking all of this and she smiled at me.

The View From The Other Side of the Sentence

I've always believed, incorrectly, that there were some things that certain people just "got". For example: math. I have never in my entire existence understood math. From as early on as I can remember I struggled more with that subject than just about any other I encountered. It just wasn't something I 'got'. So, relatively early on, I concluded that my brain just wasn't meant to "get it" and I gave up on ever forming any rudimentary understanding of the subject. I mean, don't get me wrong- I can calculate the tip for dinner in my head, but that's really about it. You ask me to perform any basic mathematical calculations towards an end goal of, let's say... figuring out my taxes? Nope, not happening. It doesn't really bother me that I'm math illiterate save for times when my more math-savvy peers will ask me a question they think is extremely basic and I look at them like they're speaking Martian.
Another thing which I never really got is grammar. I know some very basic things- like the difference between your and you're and when to use it's vs. its and some other things like that. But if you asked me to explain adverbs and prepositions and split infinitives I'd be at a total loss.
It isn't that I wasn't educated. I can remember sitting in class and the teacher parsing out a sentence and having us identify the object, the noun, the verb, stuff like that. But when it came to using those concepts to check my own compositions it seemed much like looking at math equations that I didn't understand.
I like writing, obviously, Otherwise why would I continuously subject myself to all this? And I believe, on some level, that I'm not horrifically bad it. Save for my grammar. My elementary school teaching friend has told me that it has, somewhat inexplicably, improved over the years. I'm inclined to believe her simply because I wouldn't be able to tell.
I know that I could, with some time and effort, learn how to correctly use grammar in sentence construction. I could dig out my old copy of Strunk and White and start pulling apart some passages I admire and see if I can figure out the elements involved. I know that "getting" grammar isn't magic, that it takes practice like anything else.
But the fact of the matter is that, to me, that would be an exercise in torture. To dissect a sentence like that would defeat everything positive about writing and turn it into something... sterile, uninspired, bland. To me, the fire and passion that comes from writing is that momentary thrill from slamming your fingers down on the keyboard to get out a thought or an idea or a scene as fast as you can so you don't lose it.
Maybe that's why I like NaNoWriMo so much. And why I've never been able to really successfully edit. Any why I tend to prefer relatively simple sentence structures. And why I write in so many damned fragments.
Maybe it's a maturity that one reaches in writing? When you become more seasoned and gain the ability to hold onto whatever you loved about what you wrote while revising it into something more expressive and coherent. Maybe it's something I'll gain over time.
Or maybe I'll continue to butcher the english language and send Strunk on a daily spin in his grave. I don't know yet. Hopefully, in time, I'll learn.

The Bet

It was a stupid bet to make, Jake knew that. Anyone would tell you that of the bunch Jake was the easiest to scare. In fact, that’s part of the reason why these bets were made so often. If someone jumped out at him it was good money he’d startle. He knew his friends weren’t deliberately trying to be mean, but it had started to wear on him none-the-less.
So it was he, and not them, who had come up with this wager. He bet all of them that he could spend the night in the 'Deadly Forest' all by himself without shitting his pants. He knew the same stories as they did- that the little girl who was found dead there back in the 70’s still haunted the place, searching for her killer and trying to find a way out. But he figured that a forest tucked in between the recycling plant and the police station couldn’t really be that dangerous. And he hadn’t quite made up his mind about the whole ghost thing, anyway, he was hoping he’d prove intelligent enough not to believe in such things.
His friends were more reluctant to take the bet than he would have thought. They expressed genuine concern for him, after they got the hysterical laughter out of their systems and concluded he was serious.
“You? Are you kidding me? There’s no way you’ll make it a whole night. You’ll literally die of fright!” they’d warned.
“I don’t believe in ghosts, that’s stupid,” he’d chided.
“Ghosts or not- you’ll be scared. YOU will scare yourself even if there isn’t anything to be scared of!”
“Maybe I’m not as much of a scaredy cat as you think. Without you assholes jumping out at me I’d be fine!”
“Ok, dude. Your funeral.”
He couldn’t help but think about that conversation as he set up the campsite. He trained the camera on his sleeping bag so he wouldn’t have to adjust it when he went to sleep. He checked the sound, started a fire, and sat. He was perfectly happy to read and listen to his discman until the crepuscular dim made it too dark to read. Then he decided to get up and stretch.
He checked the camera, the red light was blinking consistently letting him know that all was being recorded. He stopped his discman and took off his ear buds out to listen to the sounds of the forest. He could hear the nocturnal animals coming out- the hoot of an owl, the scamper of a rabbit running through the brush, something climbing up a tree. He couldn’t resist the urge to advertise the fact that he wasn’t scared of the noises and the dark.
“Oh, boy- it sure is getting scary out here,” he taunted the camera. “Don’t know what I’m going to do!” He chuckled and gave the finger to the camera. “This is so dumb, but hey if you guys are stupid enough to shell out fifty bucks just for me to do a sleepover in the woods that’s your bad. I’ll be enjoying my gametime on God of War and laughing when you guys can’t afford it for yourselves."
There was a sudden snap like a twig breaking and he couldn’t help but snap his head around to see where it came from. His eyes wouldn’t let him make out anything other than the shape of tree branches and vines. His heart sped up into his throat for a second until he closed his eyes and forced himself to realize what an idiot he was being. The biggest risk he ran in these woods was running across a skunk and so long as he had the flashlight from his cell phone he’d be fine. Logic revived him and he opened his eyes again. Nothing had moved, the shadows were where they had been. He laughed at himself and settled his ear buds back in place and slipped into his sleeping bag, content to watch the red blinking light on the camera. Why his brother had invested in a camera with night vision he never understood, but he was glad for it now.
In spite of his fear he was able to focus in on the music and it lulled him to sleep, just as he had planned. He slept soundly, or at least as soundly as one can when resting on leaves in the middle of the woods. The night went on as it usually did. Mice ran through the underbrush, hungry foxes chased them, the occasional owl hoot echoed through the clearing. At one point Jake came unknowingly close to his greatest fear as a curios skunk walked disturbingly close to his sleeping bag and then moved on. Jake slept undisturbed by all of it, dreaming of pulling off awesome combination attacks in God of War.

Real Vampires

As a long-time fan of the vampire genre I can't help but be appalled at what has happened to the vampiric costumes this year. I tend to browse online for the year's costume fads for fun and i've noticed a disturbing trend of skinny, emo-looking boys wearing white cake make-up and spiked hair and claiming to be "Edward". WTF?
As if the books themselves weren't insulting enough you're actually encouraging people to dress up like the pansy characters? What do you do to get in character? Sit around and brood? That is painfully lame!
Vampires are supposed to be powerful, blood-thirsty monsters not angsty, emo boys who look like they dropped out of an Ambercrombie and Finch catalog and suddenly started coruscating!
Where's the fear? Where's the awe at their inhuman abilities? Where's everything that we hold near and dear about the genre? The only vampire movie that's come out in past years that was even remotely tollerable was 30 Days of Night and that wasn't even that good. I mean, at least they were monsters that would rip your throat out and slaughter people for fun! Of course, then brooding Josh Harnett had to go and mess that up, too. (But at least he fried in the end, that was rewarding.)
My point? If you're going to dress up like a vampire this year please, please dress up like a respectable one. The Dracula cape and fake fangs may have been done to death but at least they reflect a time when it still meant something to be a vampire.

My old Jalopy

“Ok, what have we got here-ere… oh…”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Uh, I don’t think I’m gonna be of much help here.”
“But you said you ‘fixed a million old cars’- your words, not mine.”
“I said old, not antediluvian!”
“It’s not that old- it’s an 87! It’s not like I’m asking you to fix a 50’s antique!”
“That’d be easier- people collect those things, they at least have stores that carry the parts. But this? What the hell kind of make is this?”
“Uh, let me see- it says “AMC’. Yeah, AMC.”
“Ha! That company doesn’t even exist anymore! I’d have to look through a junk yard to find parts for this thing. You know why? Because they’re junk!”
“Ok… so what do I do?”
“I’d say put it in the junk yard with its friends”
“Uh, yeah- that’d be great if I could get a new car to replace it. But I’m poor. Need money to buy new car.”
“How are you even driving this still?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad? Have you ever heard the term ‘moving death trap’?”
“Quite a lot, actually.”
“I’m not surprised driving a hunk of crap like this. I’m surprised the thing hasn’t spontaneously combusted!”
“Look, as much as I appreciate you endlessly ridiculing my car I’m in need of actual, you know- help. If I can’t get the parts then what am I supposed to do? I don’t have money for a new car.”
“Hmmm… you could enter it in a demolition derby- might win money. Then you could get something that runs!”
“Uh- huh. I’m sure that worked well in whatever 80’s tv show you’re referring to but this is the real world, you know? Non- syndicated? I have a job, what do you want me to do? Sell a kidney? Rob a bank?”
“Well how did you get this car?”
“My dad gave it to me.”
“Oy. Your dad doesn’t like you very much, does he?”

The Tastiest Treats

I have become overly fond of baking in my adult life. It took me a while to figure out why I liked baking so much and yet avoided cooking real food whenever possible. I figured it out, eventually.
There are two main reasons. Number one: baking involves sugar. I am a sugar addict. (I know that’s an odd thing for a diabetic to say, but it’s true. I don’t know how I’ve managed to re-introduce so much sugar into my diet and still stay within in a normal range but I’m not about to look that gift horse in the mouth!) Sugar is the tastiest substance on the planet and there are not many dinners I know of that utilize it. Garlic? Sure. Salt? Yup. Other various spices that are far more healthy for you? Usually. But sugar? No.
Number two: baking, in general, is done for a much larger group of people. When I make dinner, only I and my boyfriend eat it. Before I moved in with boyfriend I did almost no cooking at all. Why would I want to put so much time and effort into something that only I would eat when I could so easily pop something in the microwave or eat something that takes five minutes of boiling water out of the box? Now that I do live with someone I have developed a rather 1950’s-esque desire to make a healthy home-cooked meal for my man but not so much that my hard-core laziness doesn’t win over that desire pretty frequently.
Why does the large audience matter? For the same reason that you want people to come to your music recital or sports event: praise. Having people ooo and ahh over my tasty treats is one of the greatest pay backs I know of. In fact, I have gone to extremes making baked goods that take hours of rather difficult preparation simply for the satisfaction of having someone take a bite and proclaim its deliciousness. I would never, short of serving an entire party of people, go to extremes making a dinner. Baking is just far more rewarding in that way.
Thus, for my upcoming Halloween party I plan on cooking up a whole variety of viands for my guests to enjoy. I am so into Halloween baking, in fact, that for my birthday I asked for (and received) two Halloween-themed cookbooks. Why? Because the only thing that makes my favorite holiday even better is spending the whole day leading up to it making tasty, sugary, weird and/or creepy-looking deserts whilst listening to Monster Mash repeatedly.
That delightful scene is only a week away and I am purposefully allowing the excitement to get to me in anticipation. Halloween baked goods: it’s what’s for dinner!

Spectacular Specter

He’d been aiming for the award for the bulk of his afterlife. Every ghost in the business had. But it wasn’t enough just to put on a show anymore- people couldn't just be scared. They had to be scarred for life. They had to be scared so badly that they would develop phobias that years of therapy with expensive analysts couldn’t undo. This, needless to say, was no easy task.
He’d been studying the winners and noticing a trend at the annual ceremonies. These weren’t the moaning, humanistic ghosts of his youth. No, these were the laconic serial killers of the underworld. No gimmicks, no huge production, just little things building up until they can’t take anymore. And then- when their sanity is hanging on by a shred- that’s when you strike. At least, that seemed to be the trend.
So, he went slowly. A random creak in the floor, an appliance turning on out of nowhere, a knock at the window. At first he thought that maybe she was just hard of hearing, so he got a little louder. Not much, still within the realm of normal everyday noises. But loud enough so that he was sure she’d heard.
The sound of footsteps walking down the hall. Ruffling upstairs where no one was. Moving objects to another room. The wind howling when it wasn’t particularly windy. But still, nothing.
He thought she was a sure bet- old widow living all alone, few visitors, ridiculously superstitious. All of the classic signs of someone easy to crack. And yet here he was, months later, and he couldn’t even get her to show signs of paranoia. It had taken the one from 'paranormal activity' less than a month to completely destroy that young couple. Granted, he’d never physically dragged this woman screaming from the bed but he’d messed with her sheets, turned on her fan in the middle of the night, hidden her glasses from her. And with no one else in the house to be doing these things it seemed guaranteed that she’d worry, or at least think it odd.
But she went on about her life as if nothing were at all peculiar. At this rate he would never win the coveted title of Spectacular Specter. Hell, at this rate he might be the one to crack first.
Finally, he resorted to drastic measures. He took her hair ribbon off her armoire and waited for her to sit and braid her hair as she did every evening before bed. She combed out her long, white mane and began folding the hair over on itself as she always did. He waited behind her, watching her in the mirror and trying very hard to make her feel it. She finished the braid and reached down for her ribbon which was not there.
That’s when he slowly, but deliberately dragged it across her neck and started pulling it tight. She looked up into the mirror as if she’d be looking at him if he a reflection and spoke in the calmest, most content voice: “You know if you were trying to scare me you were better off with footsteps.”

Death by Cocktail Party

Jeff had situated himself in the corner near the bar and was watching the party goers with a bored expression. he had made his rounds and grabbed himself a gin and tonic as was his now usual custom. He could remember a time, not too long ago, when he actually looked forward to these events: a chance to meet and greet some of the top names in the field and shake the hands of practicing researchers he'd admired. But it didn't take long for the amusing math jokes to grow old and for the stories to start repeating themselves.
If he, like every other scientist there wasn't desperate for the funding he'd had have stopped coming to these things when the novelty wore off. But he was desperate and every year no matter how much they published it never became any less of a fight to get the funds to field the next study. So now he stationed himself in the corner so he could nod and wave to those he recognized, be visible to those who came late, and sip his drink in peace.
He saw his buddy Dave enter and gave him a wave of acknowledgement. Dave nodded back, rolled his eyes, and entered the fray. Within short order he too finished his rounds and made his way over to Jeff's corner.
"Hey," he greeted him.
"Hey Dave," he said, offering his hand. "You gonna make it?"
"I don't know, man," he said, shaking the hand that was offered. "These things are getting so damned old."
"I know, i'm right there with you. Or rather right here with you biding my time in the corner," Jeff said, taking another sip.
"You think we can quiety slip out before the speeches?"
"No way, Chuck would spot us or something. I swear he has x-ray vision and can see you across a room full of bodies as soon as you make a break for it."
"Yeah. Well, then what the hell are we gonna do with ourselves for the next hour?"
Jeff thought about it for a minute and then had an idea.
"Well, my dear chap- why don't we make a wager?" he said in his faux english accent which popped up from time to time when he'd had enough drinks to bypass the usual embarrasment it would cause.
"Oh, no- you're doing the british voice again? This can't be good," Dave said warily.
"Humor me, won't you? I say we pass our time by seeing who can spot the most fulsome fellow first."
"Hmmm," Dave said, stroking his non-existent beard. "Alright. But let's make it interesting, shall we?"
"You mean a wager?"
Dave nodded.
"Delightful! How much shall we wager?"
"Oh, let's say twenty pounds," Dave mocked in best faux english accent.
"Pip, pip- good show. I'll wager you twenty pounds that... oh, let's see," Jeff said, scanning the crowd. "Ah! I'll wager you twenty pounds that our dear Dr. Bromley will show his true colors first."
"Dr, Bromely, eh? Alright then, i'll take that wager."
And so the two watched for the next half hour as the subject of their bet made his way through the party. He started off in good performance, laughing far louder than was necessary at jokes the two had heard at least a dozen times and shaking the hands of literally everyone he crossed paths with. But after a good run straight out of the gate he began to show signs of strain. He quieted and meandered over to the bar to refill his drink without even stopping to sing the praises of their boss.
"I don't know, my friend- he seems to be running out of steam," Dave said.
"Come, now- have faith!" Jeff replied.
Just then the director of research for one of the wealthier companies walked up to the bar. Both Dave and Jeff knew that the man hadn't done anything more exciting then sit on the board and snore quiety for the past five years and therefore would be difficult to compliment. Jeff grew excited when he saw Dr. Bromley look up from his drink and smile at the old man.
"Arnold, how are you?" he said in the same exagerated air he'd held for most of the evening.
"Good, good, I suppose- getting tired in my old age," he said, putting his empty glass down on the bar and signaling for a refill.
"Oh, well you don't look it. You look rather distringuished. In fact, have you done something with your hair?"
Jeff sputtered and chocked on the sip he'd been about to swallow and had to stop himself from launching into hysterical laughter.
"He didn't!" Dave whispered.
As soon as Jeff regained the ability to breath properly he cleared his throat and pronounced "Oh yes, he did- he just complimented his toupe! Pay up!"

Homicidal English

My teacher told me to write from the heart. She praised my grammar, my diction in reading my work out loud, my correct sentence structure. But she said that wasn’t enough and she told me to “dig deeper”. I had no idea what that meant and I told her so.

She asked me to think about the most exciting experience I’d ever had. At age 14 I didn’t have much experience to draw from. In fact, I hated her for asking me. I sat up late the night before class, racking my brain for something, anything that might make an interesting poem. Apparently writing about landscapes wasn’t exciting enough for her. After what seemed like an eternity with no ideas that seemed interesting enough placate her I gave up and went to sleep cursing my composition teacher for suggesting I take the stupid creative writing course in the first place.

At class the next day my heart was pounding a mile a minute as she walked up to my desk and looked down at me. I told her I hadn’t come up with anything. To increase my embarrassment at my ineptitude she called me to the front of the class and invited them to help me brainstorm. It seemed like a purposeful excuse to torture me further and I found myself thinking homicidally.

“Come on now,” she teased, “everyone’s got something they’re passionate about. Class, help Martin think of something he’s passionate about.”

“What’s your favorite animal?”

“What’s the coolest vacation you’ve ever taken?”

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Do you play any sports?”

My classmates called out over and over, and I just wanted to crawl under my desk and hide.

“Now, now- one at a time,” my teacher asked. “Raise your hand if you have an idea.”

One hand shot up faster than anyone else’s and I knew who it was before even looking. Chelsey was the biggest ass kiss I’d ever met and she loved any excuse to play herself off as the perfect student.

“Well, I recently wrote a poem about my grandfather because he inspires me. Is there anyone in your life that inspires you?”

“Chelsey, thank you for that wonderful suggestion. Martin- is there anyone in your life that you find inspiring? Someone that’s accomplished something or lived through an interesting period in history?”

I thought about it. No one immediately jumped out. My head felt like it was on fire and I seriously thought there was a good chance I’d faint before actually coming up with anything. But then it occurred to me that of all the things an adolescent boy could do that might get them a bad reputation accompanied by a horribly insulting nick-name fainting had to be high on the list. So, I clenched my fists and tried to think of something, anything, other than the room of students starting at me.

“Uh, my uncle’s pretty cool, I guess,” I stammered.

“Ok, what is your uncle like? Or what does he do that inspires you?”

“He’s a pilot. He took me out on his plane once and he let me fly.”

“Cool,” came from one of the kids in the back. It made me feel a little better to know there was approval.

“Perfect!” my teacher exclaimed and jumped to write the word “Flying” on the board, her chalk almost slipping out of her hand. In all my schooling I’d never had another teacher that got so animated over using a blackboard.
“And what did that feel like? To fly a plane, how did it feel?”

Again, I thought. It had been really cool, though not the earth-shattering experience she seemed to be looking for. I didn’t really know what to say about it. “It’s ineffable,” I replied hoping that my vocabulary might make up for my lack of descriptive powers.

“Oh, come now, martin,” my teacher chastised me. “If that were true we wouldn’t have any great writers.”

I looked at her face and imagined what it might look like if her neck were replaced with a large pike. The thought made me smile.

The Blaster

At age 5 it was considered quite normal for him to play with his toy soldiers. Although tripping over the little green pieces of plastic may have annoyed his parents, no one thought it unusual.
At age 10 it was considered lucky that his favorite subject was history and that he excelled at memorization of war dates and famous generals.
At age 15 Norman had accepted that chicks didn't dig history buffs and accepted his fate as the ridiculously intelligent although forever single head of the school's sparsely populated Society for Historical Reenactments.
At age 18 when guesses as to what he would study in college ranged from heading straight to the military to pursuing a doctorate in order to become a history professor he shocked everyone by skipping college and joining an excavation crew.
At age 23 when he'd been an apprentice for years and his parents had given up on their son "the scholar" he got to head his first demolition as leader.
As he suspected, he'd never experienced any greater thrill in his life than watching a 29 story hotel that had taken years to construct be blasted to smithereens in mere seconds. From the time the dust settled, and for the rest of his short life, he was hooked.