When the going gets tough, the tough get a new wardrobe.

I've been thinking lately I needed a change of style, or perhaps one might refer to it as an upgrade. Not necessarily of style but of quality, you might say. For once in my life I actually have someone I want to impress (More on him in a moment). So since I still have a disconcerting number of clams in my bank account, I decided after work tonight that I'd go to Wally Wonka's Wild World of Wal-Mart. See, at the times of night I go to WallyWorld the cashiers are pleased as punch to see a sane, normal (?) human being in amidst the rampant oddness that congregates there. For a while when I was having to go to WallyWorld fairly regularly at such times to get cat food before going home I had a plan worked out. If anyone asked why I was getting two bags of Funyuns, a six pack of 24 oz. Diet Cokes and a jar of pickles, I was planning to say "My girlfriend. Eight Months. She wants to name it Blueberry." I figured that would stop any further questions cold.

Anyway, back to the story. Clothes. Yes, Hell has frozen over, and Satan looks quite fetching in those asbestos long undies and the hat with the pom poms on top. Before any of you get any ideas, I'm still going to be doing the Johnny Cash riff. But instead of the cheap 5X size t-shirts I buy 6 for $25 at the salvage outlet place and guys' pajama pants and the odd pair of sweats, I'm actually wearing jeans again. Jeans, when I haven't worn a pair of jeans in at least 10 years. One might consider this Phase 1 of a plan to eventually end up in clothing that I would have to wear at a real job. Like at NASA.

Admittedly there is the occassional bit of color, so don't none of you faint should you see me and wonder if it's really me or are you hallucinating. It's me, and yes those green bunny rabbits really are doing the Macarena. You should have looked at that stamp before you licked it.

With four new pairs of jeans and six new shirts, I have enough clean clothes to tide me over til Monday for laundry. You knew there had to be a catch, didn't you?


One week til Revenge of the Sith.


I was thinking tonight at work . . . we'll never wait for a Star Wars movie again. This is the last time. Waiting for these movies through my life taught me patience. When I was a kid and waiting for Return of the Jedi, it seemed that three years was forever. Now, it seems only a day or two since I was writing "Way of the Mystics" -- six years ago. So much has happened between Phantom Menace and now. I've lived so much in these last six years. From one perspective I found myself, only to find that who I am changes day to day. Every story I write I think is the best I've ever done --it is, until I write the next one. I've faced fears with varying degrees of success -- those drug dealers who broke in to my apartment in Red Bank, buying the house, going to Philadelphia to see Ray back in 2002, detaching myself from Harry and being truly alone, trying to train myself out of the social phobia. If you're the outgoing sort you've no idea how difficult it is for someone like me to say things to strangers, to try to be something less than the silent statue in a corner. I think I unnerve people sometimes because I can be quiet. It used to bug Aaron. We'd be going somewhere and I'd just be sitting there and he'd ask me why I was so quiet. It's not a sign that I'm angry, it just means I have nothing to say. When I have something to say, these days I actually say it. These days I'm even half-way witty sometimes. The point is, I'm doing it. I've been trying to convince myself that I don't have to come out with the Hallmark Card Quotable Quotes on Weighty Matters all the time, that it's okay to waste airtime on inane things like Steven King looked, like, really unbelievably young on the back cover photo with that old manual typewriter and gee, ain't it weird how he kind of looks like someone's dad or uncle if your dad or uncle got his jollies out of pulling the wings off flies and torturing rats with a hacksaw. It's okay to waste words on silly stuff like that. It's okay when you unintentionally say something unbelievably crass or cruel or stupid. You're just going to look stupid for that one night. You can always say you're sorry. Other people do it too. This isn't "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". The fate of the entire universe does not hang on your every word. So babble. You never know when you'll say something genuinely funny.

Being a Jedi means facing all fears, large or small. It's not about the lightsabers and mind-whammying bartenders for free drinks. It's about not panicking when you're stuck in a taxi cab with a foreign driver who doesn't know the city for three hours and the very real possibility that this guy is going to dump your mutilated body out in the middle of nowhere for the $100 in cash you have in your pocket. It's about overcoming a lifetime of shyness to actually meet the man of your dreams and survive the experience. Being a Jedi means realizing you're going to die with a hell of a lot of regrets if you don't change your entire life -- then being presumptuous enough to set your sights on a career at NASA when all you have to reccommend you is a Technical Writing certificate and a love of science-fiction. Being a Jedi is learning to ignore that stack of rejection letters that keeps growing and to send the stories out again, to believe that someday somebody will want to publish these things. One must learn what is right for oneself, and to keep doing it in the face of everything anybody says against it, and to do it with dignity, grace and good humor.

It isn't the getting there, it's the going.

But in one week we'll never wait again. We'll know everything. Star Wars will be done.

Time passes. Things change. This is the way of the Force.



In other news, I finally saw the CGaW again tonight, after a dismal two weeks without! I was in the lunch room tonight on my lunch break and he tried to steal my wrist pad. After the obligatory threats of spanking (!) he put it back. Apparently he's "been places" these last several days. Hmmm... a likely story. Then Harry showed up and the CGaW sat there watching us riff off each other ("If you tied his hands he couldn't talk. Really. He's Italian.") and grinning in what seemed either bemusement or slight disbelief. (See, people at work used to ask me and Harry all the time if we were married. Those that didn't thought we were brother and sister. That I could never get. Aside from the fact we're both short and somewhat overweight, he's very obviously of primarily Meditteranean descent whilst I am just as obviously of primarily Celtic heritage. How a lily-white, freckle-skinned, green-eyed Celt with a thick Southern drawl could have come from the same parents as a loud-mouthed, swarthy, Italian with the last vestiges of a nasally Chicago accent is beyond me. It smacks of Heinleinian genetics.)

Still, I didn't dive at the CGaW in a vampiric frenzy, so I guess things are cool and fruity on that front.

And so tomorrow I guess I'll wear the new duds and see what happens.


Scrumptiliously froobish!