Squirrel With a Singing Bologna Sandwich

This is a clip from "Jack's Big Music Show", a cute kid's program that DS and I both enjoy. I think this bologna sandwich is the man.

Go Spurs!

I got to catch most of this game on the radio.  I'm a fan of both the Spurs and the Bulls, but it's the Spurs who I'll root for down the stretch over...well, everybody.

A Happy Birthday Poem to My Wife

It's my wife's birthday today, so I spent this morning concoting this Grammy-award winning song for this special day:

Today you are twenty-nine

(Again)

And that's a sign

That you're as wonderful and wise

And pretty (that's no surprise)

As you have been for so long

So we wrote for you this song:

"We Love You, Liberty

And we hope that this will be

A very wonderful time

For you."

(It's tough to rhyme!)

Happy Birthday, Angel.  We Love You.

Tools!

Ok...I have to admit that I'm not usually much of a "guy" when it comes to tools.

That's all changed.  Check out the coolest hammers you'll ever see.

Writing Excerpt from "something black..."

Here's an excerpt from my latest Nanowrimo novel, "something black...".  I'm hard at work on the sequel, "the hollow", but just for the fun of it, here's an excerpt from a "flash forward" sequence of my little scary story.

tomorrow morning…

Mist the color of blood.  A sky like bleached bones.  The wind was as cold as a winter’s breath and strong, strong enough that it could be felt even through thick clothes and the thick wall of bones that they’d built since the beginning of this war.

It is a war, Kane thought.  He’d never thought of it that way before.  He’d always thought they were just surviving, just doing what they could to keep the human race from going away, even if they didn’t know why.  But it’s not that simple, he realized.  I guess it never was.

There were only three of them now, and soon there very well could be none.  Their faces were as dry and as pale as the bones that littered the ground, and their eyes were sunken, hollow, ringed with the sort of black that, in the old world, you would’ve had to apply with Halloween makeup.  Kane flexed his fingers.  There was so much grime and grit accumulated in his skin and beneath his nails that they’d never be clean again, even if they could find another facility that actually had running water.  Much of it had been accumulated digging the Kane for all of the bodies they’d come across.  The rest had come from killing.  He couldn’t help but realize that he was rubbing someone else’s dried blood or skin into his scalp every time he ran his hand through his lengthening blonde hair.  Even now, after all they’d seen and been through, the notion of being covered in someone else’s remains made him wince.

It’d be nice to wash up, he thought, and he couldn’t suppress a quiet laugh.  Jesus, listen to me…we’re going to die, and here I am wishing I could wash my fucking hands.  Stress did that to you, he supposed.  Stress.  Understatement of the century there, bud. 

The ground was as thick as clay, dry and cold, and it smelled of age.  Dead, thick-limbed trees swayed in the bitter wind; Kane spied an occasional dry leaf as it floated across the backdrop of the bloody horizon.  They were camped at the top of a steep, craggy hill that overlooked a low valley of old farmland.  Thick, brackish water had swallowed up the crops and soil some time ago, and now the thick mist, made red by the setting sun, clung to the water like a shackled prisoner.  Kane smelled meat, old meat, and heard the sound of dying breaths, like leaking air tainted by soft moans.

“They’re close,” he said quietly.  The others just nodded.  He heard the clack of metal, the kiss of steel, the sound of guns being loaded.  It wasn’t going to do them much good, but it was better than nothing. 

Kane stood up.  Even with the trees looming overhead and the wall of bones at their backs, the world felt so…open.  Empty.  He looked up into the sky, and felt tiny, like it would swallow him up.  When he was young, he used to be just a little afraid when he stared up at the stars, shaken by the infinitesimal nature of the sky, frightened by the notion that, if he were somehow to fall off of the surface of the earth, he would literally fall forever.  He hadn’t felt that sensation for over twenty years, until now.  He knew what it meant.  They all knew what it meant, and there was no need to communicate it.  His mind went to that other world, the world before, and as he tried to remember, he readied himself: fixed the leather armor in place, secured the steel plates over his shoulders, elbows and knees; loaded the guns, too many guns, not enough guns, meaningless, all they had; the katana that he’d found in the old pawn shop slung across his back, and the knife in his boot.  He was winded by the time he finished, not so much from the physical efforts of preparation, but from the dread that stemmed from a horrible truth he’d barely been capable of acknowledging.

He could not remember life before the black.  It hung there, just out of reach: the notion of a job, of a wife, of children and friends and TV and sports and eating out, but the specific memories were blocked off, like they’d been wrapped in a sack and thrown into the water.  All he saw was the sack, bobbing, sinking, and floating away.  Soon, if he lived that long, he knew he’d forget completely that there had ever been a time before the war: a time before the black.

Kane let a single tear fall. 

The howl came fast from the night: the blood red sun had just finished its descent, leaving a faint, dripping haze on the horizon that set the mists alight.  The curdled sound erupted from the black like a knife through skin.  No matter how many times he heard it, Kane’ nerves tingled at the howls, as hard and metallic in their tone as to almost be a physical presence.  Calming breaths, one, two, three, and a flex of the fingers.  One more count, and then he was ready.

The others came to his sides, flanking him.  None of them had any reason to make a stand, except that there was nowhere left to go, nothing left to do. 

We are the champions of the damned, Kane thought.  God help us.