Living La Vida Sitcom

We may need to tweak the definition of reality TV. I’m beginning to think reality has become television, and that I’m living in a sitcom.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound too bad. You get to have a bunch of zany friends and hijinks are always ensuing. People speak in witty one-liners, the day ends with all the plot threads wrapped up in a bow, somebody delivers a closing zinger and we all fade out on a laugh. Sounds like the good life, huh?

Not quite. Consider, if you will, the dark side of the sitcom: no matter what happens to you, good or bad, there’s always a reversal, so that at the end of thirty minutes (or twenty, if you’re zapping the commercials) everything has reset to zero and you’re right back where you started.

That might be okay for the Bundys and the Simpsons and Jerry Seinfeld and his posse, but some of us might want to improve our lot in life. That’s tough to do when life’s rubber band keeps snapping you back to square one. That’s the sitcom formula. Nothing changes. Nobody falls behind, but nobody gets ahead, either.

For those of you who read my post about my adventures in the workplace (“T Minus 36 and Counting”), that’s what I’m talking about. My entire work history consists of a series of jobs that started out great, went bad and then ended, usually in layoff, within an average of two to three years. This happened regardless of position, company or industry. At one point I had a home typing job for a local printing company, a stringer job for a business newspaper, and had just gotten my foot in the door at a greeting card company, all at the same time. Within two years the greeting card freelancing dried up (I think they got bought out by a larger company) and the typing job went to India. I tried to go full-time with the newspaper but they wouldn’t hire me. I ended up having to start over at a full-time job that was totally different from all three of the jobs I’d been doing. Typical sitcom plotting, except this is my life.

(In fact, sitcom families have it better. Sitcom dads work at dead-end jobs that still somehow pay enough for them to own a house, two cars and raise a family even though the wife doesn’t work, and they manage to hang on to these jobs no matter how incompetent they are. I can toss off one-liners and be incompetent. Why can’t I get these jobs?)

It even goes beyond work. True-life adventure: Several years ago I was sitting at a red light when a kid who wasn’t paying attention rear-ended my car. Cost to repair the car: $150. Payout from the kid’s insurance company: $1700. (This is why your insurance rates are so high.) Even after getting the car fixed, that was still well over $1000 in my pocket. Party time!

Um, no. Soon after the check arrived I developed pain in my jaw. My teeth had turned on me. I ended up needing a double root canal, to the tune of $1300. Between that, fixing my car, and paying the rent that month, I actually lost money on the deal. No party for me. This is a sitcom. Everything has to go back to exactly the way it started.

It just happened again. I’ve blogged about my recent financial luck: a hefty tax return, bonus work from my current freelance employer, royalties from recent ebooks. That was last month. The tax return went to pay my last fuel bill of the snow season, and the extra money I got from writing-related work got eaten up by the medical bills incurred from a doctor visit and tests for what turned out to be acid reflux. (Quickie side rant: one of those bills was for “discharge.” I assume that means discharging me from the hospital. My “stay” lasted for roughly an hour, while they were taking the X-rays. They charged me $45 to tell me they were done and I could leave. I thought health care reform was supposed to stop things like that. What exactly did Obamacare “reform”?) I never got the chance to get even a little ahead. I’m right back where I started.

That’s it. I’m done with sitcoms. I’m jumping ship over to episodic dramas. Get myself a story arc where I come out the winner. Better still, a miniseries. Those tend to end on an upbeat note, with the implication the protagonist goes on to a better life. I don’t live in Hollywood, so I stand a better-than-average change of landing a happy ending.

As long as I don’t get canceled. Then it’s syndication and reruns into eternity. No thanks. Been there, done that.

The Idea Machine

Where do you get your ideas?

If you’re a writer, or trying to be, sooner or later some wide-eyed civilian is going to ask you this. The standard answers are, “Everywhere,” “I don’t know, they just come to me,” or “Schenectady.” (This last is a famous joke among science-fiction writers. I believe it was Harlan Ellison who started telling fans he got shipments of ideas from some guy in Schenectady in exchange for a monthly fee. SF fans, who on the whole have no sense of humor, started demanding the guy’s address. I’ll bet some enterprising person in New York State made himself quite a mint with that scam before he got found out.)

For myself, I’m going to have to go with answer #2, or maybe a combo of #2 plus #1, because sometimes I honestly don’t know. I’ll be reading something, or watching TV, or overhear something while standing in line at the supermarket, and all of a sudden I’ve got a new character or plot.

Sometimes nothing happens with these creative snippets. I jot them down in a notebook for resurrection when I have a dry spell. Either I get back to them or I don’t. Sometimes the idea demands I go to work on it right friggin’ now, and I end up writing the story. Sometimes a couple of these ideas mash up together and create a whole new story.

The requisite examples: I’m currently on the second draft of a mashup story. A couple years back I toyed with the idea of a M/M romance between a rancher and a shapeshifter posing as a mustang. Nothing came of it until last year when I was trying to get a romance between two motorcycle enthusiasts to gel. It didn’t work until I made one of them a werehorse with a love of bikes. I made his boyfriend an ex-Army man suffering from survivor’s guilt and it practically wrote itself.

In another case I was reading an interview with a comic-book writer and how his childhood obsession with the Wild West, Wyatt Earp and Universal’s monster movies eventually morphed into the Wynona Earp comic and TV series currently airing on SyFy. Out of nowhere I got a flash of a comic book writer/artist with a crush on his neighbor who uses the guy as the model for a superhero character. The comic book takes off, much to the neighbor’s chagrin. I’ll get to that when I’m done with the other six ideas I’ve got waiting their turns.

Sometimes it gets weird. I’ve been reading a lot of ménage and erotica lately as part of my freelance job. In one book a restaurant owner offers the BDSM heroes banana splits, “made special, just the way you like them.” Instantly I pictured big mounds of ice cream with nipple clamps on the cherries. I didn’t say all my ideas were good ones. This one’s good enough for a laugh on the Shapeshifter Seductions blog, where it will be appearing tomorrow.

I’m beginning to think some people are just wired this way, to be idea machines. Their brains mis-hear words, make jumps in logic, smoosh non-related notions together and create something entirely new. How many dozens of patents did Edison file in his lifetime? Or Da Vinci. Did the man ever sleep?

Closer to home we’ve got the legendary Jack Kirby. If you’ve seen a Marvel movie in the last five years, you’ve seen Kirby’s creations on screen. Thor. Iron Man. The Fantastic Four. Captain America. The Hulk. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Ant-Man. The Black Panther, comicdom’s first black superhero, is about to make his big-screen debut in Civil War. He first appeared in the Fantastic Four comic, as did Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Doom, and the Inhumans (who Marvel is pushing until they can get back the film rights to the X-Men—another Kirby co-creation, by the way). Not Spider-Man, though. That was Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Although it’s rumored Kirby may have helped design Spidey’s costume.

You want to see an idea machine running at full throttle? Look at Kirby’s output during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’m pretty sure he never slept either.

It’s debatable how many of these concepts were Stan Lee’s or created in conjunction with Lee, and how many may have been pure Kirby. But consider this: Kirby left Marvel for DC in the 1970s. While at DC, Kirby debuted his “Fourth World” series—four different comic books, each with their own brand-new characters and concepts, that when read together told one huge, overarcing story, something unheard-of back then. He also did a couple other new books on the side. Stan Lee did not create any new characters for Marvel after Kirby left. Eventually he moved into the publisher’s chair and stopped writing altogether.

I’m not saying all Kirby’s ideas were good ones. And his execution sometimes left a lot to be desired. His writing, for instance. Kirby’s dialogue tended to be “stiff” and “stilted,” with a lot of phrases in “quotation marks,” which made the “word balloons” look like “this.” Like William Shatner talking, but in prose. As an artist, he set the standard for years. As a creator, he was more prolific than anyone this side of God. As a writer … eh. They can’t all be winners, folks.

That’s the other problem with ideas. You can’t always go with the first one that pops into your head. Sometimes they just need to sit and ferment for awhile. You may have to mix two or three together in order to create a plot or characters that work. Or maybe the idea’s okay, it’s your execution of it that’s not working. Hand that one off to a writing friend and move on to something else.

If your idea machine’s running, you won’t have to worry about running out of inspiration. In fact, you could make yourself a nice little sideline selling the extras to aspiring writers, like that guy in Schenectady. I’ve got a dozen ideas right here to get you started. Just send me $10.95 every month …

Creationism

I wasn’t planning on watching Fox’s new crime show Lucifer. And not because I have any moral objections to the Devil being portrayed in a positive light. Bad guys are usually the most interesting characters in any given fictional story (see: Darth Vader). My problems with the show stemmed from the pilot, where Lucifer confronts a dying shooter who’s just murdered an old friend of his and fails to ask the most obvious question: Who hired you? Yeah, the show would have been over in the first ten minutes, but that’s no excuse for a lapse in common sense. Besides, I prefer the version of Lucifer on Supernatural, where he’s a deliciously over-the-top bad guy. Currently Misha Collins is playing him, doing his best Mark Pellegrino impression, which only adds to the fun. Last week we got both Misha and Mark, playing the same guy. Wins all around.

So I figured I wouldn’t be tuning in to the crime-busting, semi-good guy version of Satan any more, unless I heard the writing got better. Then another week rolled around. I wanted to watch TV and nothing better was on. The writing hadn’t improved by much, but the actor’s cute and he has a British accent. That’s enough to rope in most women, me included. Though I still prefer Supernatural’s Satan. Maybe the networks will do a crossover.

While we’re waiting for that, allow me to clue you in on a little something I noticed about the show’s credits, and who’s getting paid—and who probably isn’t—for this.

Fox’s Lucifer is an adaptation of a DC Comics/Vertigo title. Yep, the Lord of Lies had his own comic book series for a while. He was HQ’d in Vegas in that one, which makes more sense for the Devil than the Los Angeles of the TV show. I didn’t read the comic, so I don’t know who came up with the idea, or who the originating writer and artist were. (Note: It was writer Neil Gaiman who introduced Luci in the Sandman comic. Thank you, Internet!)

Familiar with how comic book creators tend to get the shaft when characters they created get the big-screen (and big-bucks-earning) treatment, I kept a close eye on the opening credits. There’s the usual cluster of producers, the episode writer and the director. And a single “Developed for TV by” credit for somebody. No “Lucifer created by” credit for the original writer and artist. Not even a “Based on the comic created by” or “Inspired by” credits anywhere I could see. Maybe the acknowledgement to the original creators is crammed into the closing credits, which flash by at Warp Factor 12. There’s an eyeblink shot of the DC and Vertigo logos right at the tail end of the closing credits. That’s the only hint you get that the show started life as a comic book.

Something tells me the original writer and artist aren’t getting paid for this. That happens a lot in the industry, especially now that comic book adaptations into movies and TV have turned out to be so lucrative. All those billions of dollars generated by Supes and Bats and Spidey and all their amazing superfriends have to go into somebody’s pocket, and somehow it never seems to be the creators’.

Which could be tricky in Lucifer’s case, seeing as how he was created by God.

Maybe that’s the excuse they’re using. “We can’t pay you for creating the comic because you didn’t create the character.” True. Lucifer previously appeared in another famous book. The Lucifer in the Vertigo comic is too derivative of that character to earn royalties for his creators. (This excuse was actually used in regards to the Barbara Kean character on Gotham. Here’s what Babs’ creator, Alan Brennert, has to say about it.)

So that’s why there are no creator credits on the show. Though a “Lucifer created by God” credit would have been polite.

Which leads to other problems. You get on-screen credit, you’re owed money. That’s why these credits are so important. If God created the show’s lead character, shouldn’t He be getting a cut of the take? Where would you send the royalty checks? The Vatican? Does the Lord have direct deposit? We know for a fact He’s got tons of cloud storage, but what about a bank account? There’s also that Lucifer on Supernatural. Is God double-dipping with his characters?

But aha, say the corporate lawyers. The Bible was produced before copyright laws. The Bible and all its contents are in the public domain. This particular version of Lucifer is copyrighted and the property of Time-Warner. We can do whatever the hell we want with him, pardon the pun, and we don’t owe You a cent.

So God, creator of everything, doesn’t get jack squat. He winds up in a bar on the outskirts of Hollywood, where Alan Brennert buys Him a beer. “Welcome to the world,” says Alan.

Now that’s true evil. You don’t suppose Lucifer is on the board of directors at Time-Warner, do you?

I know for a fact he works for Disney. Everybody works for Disney.

Now the question arises: what happens if Lucifer gets cancelled? Will it trigger the apocalypse? Will the world end? Will Mark Pellegrino and the guy who plays the Devil on Fox have to fight it out? Either way, the writers and artists and deities who created the heroes and anti-heroes we’re watching won’t see so much as a dime. Remember, kiddies, always read a contract all the way through and make sure you understand all the clauses before you sign your rights away. Don’t let this happen to you.

Here We Go Again

Let me start off by saying it’s not my intention to single-handedly bring diversity to the world of M/M romance. Or romance in general. Or any genre currently dominated by straight white characters. I myself am straight and white, so that’s my default position. As with a lot of businesses and institutions in the U.S. of A., publishing tends to be dominated by straight white people. I almost wrote “men,” but I recall reading somewhere that there are more women than men involved in the publishing industry, at least in editorial. Somehow I suspect it’s a man sitting in the CEO’s chair. It usually is. Men are obsessed with sex and money, while women would rather read a book. That’s right, sweetie, she’s faking it. You’re nowhere near as good as she’s making you think you are.

That’s neither here nor there, however. We’re talking about diversity.

There’s been some squawk among readers and writers about all the straight white males that populate popular literature. Where are the gay, bi, and trans characters? Where are the people of color? Where’s the Asian trans bodybuilder and the asexual black queen of the fantasy realm? I’m sure they’re out there somewhere, but if so, they’re minor characters. The leads and their circles of friends are still predominantly white.

A glaring example: DC Comics. The characters they’re now trying to make billions with in movies were created back in the 1940s. Take a look at any copy of Justice League from the 1960s, during the height of the Civil Rights movement, and you’ll behold a sea of white faces. (Okay, Martian Manhunter’s green, but when he changed form to fake humanity he changed into a white guy.) They tried to course-correct in the ‘90s cartoon by including the John Stewart (a black guy) version of Green Lantern, but now that a Justice League movie is looming on the horizon they’re reverting back to whitebread Hal Jordan. Cyborg, formerly of the Teen Titans, is now part of the Justice League as their sole black member. Welcome to tokenism, Vic.

Marvel Comics has it a bit easier. They came of age in the 1960s, with younger, hipper creators than stodgy old DC. They’ve always had racial diversity. Joe Robertson, editor of the Daily Bugle in the Spider-Man comics, was always a black guy. Marvel had the first black superhero (Black Panther, born in Africa) and the first African-American superhero (the Falcon). Okay, there was Wong, Dr. Strange’s Asian servant, but nobody talks about him. And Nick Fury wasn’t always Samuel L. Jackson. He used to be a white guy. And almost every prominent character in the first Avengers movie, with the exception of Mr. Jackson and Ms. Johannsen, was white, male, and supposedly straight. (Loki has been a woman in the comics, so he gets a pass.) I never said the system didn’t have its glitches.

The point is, pretty much everybody populating those thousands of books in the Barnes & Noble is a straight white person, probably male. The readers buying those books, however, run the entire gamut of the racial and sexual spectrum. They want to see characters that reflect who they are. Can you blame them?

Just try to swerve off the straight white path if you’re a straight white writer, however. Publishers will smell the possibility of a lawsuit on your manuscript and email it right back to you. Apparently only people of color or different sexual orientation can safely write about characters of same. Then they’re told there’s no market for their books, and the status quo perpetuates itself.

True story: a straight, white male writer of children’s books wrote a story about a biracial boy. It was rejected by the publishers he sent it to, and word leaked back to him the reason for all the nos was because he, the writer, was a white guy. Here’s the kicker: his wife is black. His son is biracial. So it’s okay for him to raise a biracial kid but not to write about one. A point he publicly raised at a publishing conference, in front of an audience and panelists that was mostly white.

What does all this have to do with me and my M/M stories? Nothing, usually. I stick to my Caucasian comfort zone. Except when I find I don’t have a choice.

Like now.

I’ve written black characters before. My last ménage had a brown-skinned lead character, but the book took place on an alien planet so he slid under the radar. I work the system by not calling attention to any character’s race. I’ll drop in a couple of hints that suggest a different ethnicity and let the readers picture them any way they want to.

The problem reared its head when I started my current WIP, which involves a circus populated by shapeshifters. I work on the theory that a shapeshifter’s human ethnicity is determined by their animal form’s continent of origin. Shapeshifters can’t stay animal all the time. They have to blend in with the human population. Therefore a tiger’s human form will be Indian, wolves will be white European or Native American, and horses will be white European, or maybe Arabian. Simple evolutionary survival.

What do you find at the circus? Elephants, tigers, lions, bears, camels, the occasional monkey. Where did those animals originate? Not in the white countries, that’s for damn sure. If I’m to remain true to my personal rules, my white hero is going to walk into a predominantly African/Asian/Native American environment and meet the other hero, a lion shifter. Who I originally pictured as a white guy, but if he’s a lion his human form will have to be African-American.

I didn’t sit down with the intention of writing an interracial gay romance. It just turned out that way. I’ve already given in to panic and made my lion shifter half-human, so he can keep his blond hair and green eyes. (Clearly his mom was a white woman.) As for the rest, I won’t dwell on race. There’s a brief passage where the hero considers the ethnic diversity surrounding him, then it’s never mentioned again. If an editor asks me to delete that scene, I will. Or maybe I’ll just change it to the shifters and the human circus workers eating at separate tables and make that the only overt racial diversity. (Another true story: during the filming of the original Planet of the Apes movie, the actors had to go to lunch in full ape makeup. Within days they began segregating themselves: chimps ate with chimps, gorillas with gorillas, orangutans with orangutans, regardless of the skin color of the human actor underneath the prosthetics. Birds of a feather. We are indeed a strange species.)

With the race problem out of the way, I can concentrate on the important stuff, like my human hero falling in love with the lion man while trying to catch a killer. The killer’s a straight white male, by the way. I’m not taking any chances.

My Personal Woo-Woo Moment

Remember the theme from The Twilight Zone? Hang on to that. You’ll be needing it shortly.

Over on another blog I once gave my opinions on self-help books. Here’s all you need to know: you only need to read one self-help book because they all say essentially the same thing. Boiled down, it’s this: if you want to succeed—personally, financially, or at life in general—you need to take responsibility for your life, work hard, have a positive outlook and take positive actions. If you work at a non-skilled or hourly job, skip the sections about how to succeed at work because those chapters are aimed at people who work in management or sales. That’s where the money is. Companies promote, prefer, and pay more money to people who bring money into the company and therefore into their pockets. Self-help books target managers and salespeople because they’re the ones most likely to have money to spend on self-help books. Want to make more money at your job? Figure out what your boss wants most and make it your job to give that to him/her. That’s the secret to work success. You now owe me $28.95.

And speaking of secrets …

Yes, I did read The Secret. Some of its advice I found helpful, other chapters got the side-eye and a snort. Its premise that your thoughts shape reality is valid, but only up to a point. Your thoughts do shape your own personal reality. If you believe the world is an okay place, it will be. If you think life sucks, it will—for you. We form opinions in our heads and then go looking for examples to prove what we already “know.”

Example: If you think you won’t get that job you desperately need, you’re right, you probably won’t. You’ll go into the interview negative and defeated, and the interviewer will pick up on that. Don’t expect a callback. On the other hand, if you go in smiling, relaxed and confident, with a clear, direct gaze and a spring in your step and your enthusiasm obvious to everyone—well, you still may not get the job, but your odds of coming out on top are infinitely better. If you don't get that particular job, your upbeat attitude is sure to net you several other offers. Meanwhile, Mopey Moe over there, who knew at the outset he wouldn’t be hired, is not at all surprised when he isn’t. He then proceeds to bitch about it to anyone who’ll listen, a group that becomes smaller and smaller because nobody likes a whiner.

So The Secret does work, after a fashion. Just not all the time. If, say, you’re standing on the sidewalk and a car goes out of control and starts barreling toward you, I recommend you get out of the way. Otherwise you’ll end up a grease spot, positive thinking or no.

I’m about to get to the point of this story. Thanks for sticking with me.

I recently picked up yet another self-help book. I have a problem with procrastination, and this book promised to help me. Well, they all do, but this one’s working because for once I’m doing the exercises. That’s the downside to all these books: sooner or later you have to take some kind of positive action. Otherwise nothing will change. Taking timely action of any sort is where I’ve been falling short.

Following instructions, I picked a goal: “I want X amount of money by the end of the year.” Every day I write down this goal, then list ten things I can do to achieve it. Then I rank them in order of priority and that’s what I do all day. At the end of the list I write the mantra, “Failure is not an option.” To this I added a mantra from The Secret: “I am a money magnet.”

My logical side understands how this works. It’s not your thoughts shaping the Universe. It’s your brain training itself to focus on priorities, and to stay alert to life around you, because that’s where the opportunities are. For instance, one of the things on my daily list is, “Keep an eye out for loose change.” Next time you go for a walk, or even cross a parking lot, casually scan the ground for dropped pennies and nickels and such. Last week I found a quarter on the floor of the library. I also found—well, that’s my woo-woo moment.

Last Tuesday, after I’d been at this exercise for over a week or so, I had a dream. I was with my best friend from high school, walking around Philadelphia. I spotted a five-dollar bill in the street and picked it up. Shortly after that I spotted a dollar and nabbed that too. No, I didn’t split it with my friend, though had the dream continued I’m sure I’d have treated us both to a cheesesteak or something. But hey, six bucks. I am a money magnet, even in my sleep.

Two days later I went up to the library. As I was setting up the laptop, I spotted something at one of the other tables in the lobby. It turned out to be money, just lying there on the seat of a chair with nobody around. A five and a one. Just like in my dream.

(Insert theme from Twilight Zone here.)

Like I said, there was no one around. Nothing else had been left on the seats or the table to indicate someone was coming back. The table was unoccupied when I came in. There was no way to tell who’d been sitting there. I was at the library for two hours, and in that time nobody came by looking for missing money. I took it home and added it to my stash. I’m now six bucks closer to my goal.

Other things have happened since I started doing this exercise. The freelance job gave me a huge assignment, at higher than my usual pay. I had my taxes done and discovered the federal government owes me a refund. I didn’t have to pay the state anything. Okay, I had to pay local taxes, but I was expecting that, and it wasn’t all that much. Just the other day I learned DC Comics will be offering writing workshops in their search for new talent. I may just apply.

Have my thoughts rearranged the workings of the Universe to my advantage? Or am I simply more aware of existing possibilities? Which doesn’t explain the dream or the subsequent payout. I’m going to file that under Whoa.

Okay, then. Back to thinking happy thoughts, setting priorities and trying to write for a living. And keeping a sharp eye out for change in parking lots.

Life is Not Fair

Maybe I’m still feeling echoes from that blog I reposted about my bad luck in the workplace, but the other day I got thinking about Survivor. the reality TV show. I was an avid fan for the first couple of seasons, then lost interest as I realized it was total a-holes screwing over each other, with the biggest a-hole getting rewarded with a million bucks. Watching Survivor is like reliving a bad experience with office politics in the worst job you’ve ever had. I’ve had enough of that in real life, thank you very much.

In one of the last times I tuned in, it was because some local woman had been picked as a contestant. Nobody I knew. She didn’t even live in the area any more. But she had at one time, so she got a lot of pre-show press coverage here in Dutch Country. I turned on the show to see this local celebrity. She was one of those annoying people who’s always chirpy and upbeat, with a penchant for bursting into song at inappropriate moments. She was probably a morning person too. She and nineteen other people got dumped on a tropical island. Let the games begin.

Oh, wait, not just yet. Once they’d settled on the beach, Jeff Probst announced this season’s twist: they had too many contestants. Before the game even got started, two players would have to go. Method of determination: schoolyard choose-up.

Yeah. No contests, no challenge, no demonstration of skills. The first two people to reach the island were named the heads of their “tribes.” They each picked a person. Those people then picked two people, and so on down the line. The two left over at the end were eliminated from the game.

I wasn’t at all surprised when Annoying Local Woman didn’t make the cut. There’s a time and place for show tunes, and it isn’t on a tropical island with a bunch of hungry, sweaty strangers. Or any place other than a Broadway stage, for that matter.

So they shipped her back to Dutch Country, singing all the way, along with the other guy who wasn’t picked to play. I didn’t learn much about him in the half hour leading up to the team selections. He didn’t get much air time. Not at all surprising, considering how it turned out.

Without the benefit of film clips, we the viewers were left to wonder why he wasn’t picked. He was a young, good-looking, healthy-seeming guy. He didn’t display any bad habits during his five seconds of air time. So why was he left standing on the beach? I have no idea.

I’ll bet he didn’t either. It must have really pissed him off. No telling how many times he auditioned before he finally got the nod. He probably prepped like mad, getting himself into physical shape, learning survival skills, studying past seasons of the show, planning his strategy. He probably already had the million dollars spent in his mind. This was it, his one big shot, his fifteen minutes—or sixteen hour-long episodes—of fame.

Then he gets to the island, and only then finds out they’ve changed the rules. Five minutes later it’s over. He’s out of the game before the game even started, because none of the other kids on the playground wanted him on their team. So much for weeks of prep.

To add insult to injury, this was the first time Survivor had ever played the game this way, dumping two people right at the outset. To my knowledge, it was also the last. Never before, and as far as I know never since, have they done it this way. Just that one time. Somebody with a brain probably realized it was expensive, not to mention pointless, to ship twenty people out to Pango Pango if you really only wanted eighteen. Or maybe Annoying Local Woman sued them for breach of contract. She signed on to play the game and then the show reneged. If I was a lawyer I would have represented her, as long as she didn’t sing in court.

They did this on Amazing Race as well. Maybe it was even the same year. One time, one season only, they brought in twelve teams and then cut one right at the starting line. At least this happened by challenge. Twelve teams competed in a mini-contest. Last to finish got sent home then and there. Again, what was the point, other than to crush somebody’s hopes and dreams right off the bat on national television?

None of this helps that guy, or that race team. This was their shot at the big time. How were they to know the game would change the one time they got to play? Or that the rules would change back for every subsequent season, after their one chance was over? Timing is everything, and sometimes it sucks. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Take it from me. I’ve had too many jobs yanked out from under me because the rules changed after I got there. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with that happens. Stay flexible, I guess. And get out of the traditional work force. Start your own job and make your own rules, and adapt them as needed to a changing marketplace. My current job could go belly-up at any second, with no warning, and through no fault of mine. I should be concocting a Plan B, C, and D right now, just to keep my butt well and fully covered.

And not waste time watching Survivor, though I’ll stick with Amazing Race. I like Phil. He comes across as a nice guy. And nobody sings show tunes on there because they’re all out of breath. That right there’s enough to recommend it.

Return Engagement

This is my fourth attempt to write a blog today. I hate to skip a week, because I don’t want to disappoint the one or two people who may be looking at this. I could skim by and post an excerpt from one of my WIPs, except I have The Reading Room page for that. I want those one or two readers to get their money’s worth. Wait, this thing is free. Yeah well.

So I’ll just type aimlessly and see what happens. Maybe something good will occur to me.

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I know! I’ll talk about my medical problems. Just what people want to hear. Lucky, lucky you.

Twelve years back I had surgery to fix a stomach hernia. Looks like the sucker may be back for a repeat performance. The incident that finally sent me to the doctor was burning chest pains. Y’see, the symptoms for acid reflux and a heart attack are surprisingly similar. The last time I had acid reflux (a side effect of the hernia) I had pains on the left side of my chest and shooting pains down my left arm. The tests revealed my heart was fine; it was my gut acting up. Once I had the surgery, everything cleared up.

Since I wasn’t having any other symptoms (no sweats, nausea, pressure in the chest), I was 90% sure it was acid reflux again. However, that ten percent uncertainty made me call the doctor. He put me on antacids and within a day I was fine. I’m currently going through X-rays and blood tests to see whether the hernia’s back. At this point, all signs point to yes.

Sidebar: here’s even more fun attached to heart disease. Those classic heart attack symptoms—chest pains, shortness of breath, shooting pains down the arm—are based on a man’s reactions. Women’s symptoms are different. They may mimic muscle strain, or the flu. We may not even have symptoms. One second you’re fine, the next you get dizzy and keel over. Not something a woman my age with heart disease in the family background wants to contemplate. Thanks a heap, medical science.

So I’m going through the tests. That’s two X-rays and two rounds of blood work. The X-rays had to be scheduled at the hospital; the blood work’s walk-in, done at a local lab. Both sets require fasting for 10-12 hours beforehand. Here’s a tip for that: get the tests done early in the morning. You can burn off 7-9 of those fasting hours overnight while you’re asleep. Have yourself a nice heavy meal—I recommend pasta—around 6 or 7 at night and you’re good to go.

One thing I didn’t know: if you’re giving a blood sample, it’s okay to fill up on water. Recommended, in fact. It plumps up the vein so the tech doesn’t have to root around for it. Wish somebody’d told me that beforehand.

As for the X-rays … here’s where things get interesting. One of my lead-lined glamour shots involved a barium swallow. They need to coat your gut so they can see your innards better. You lie on a table and gulp down this heavy, crappy-tasting stuff while the nurse clicks intestinal selfies. Why does it have to taste like chalk? Why can’t they make it fruit- or candy-flavored? They can do that now for children’s prescriptions. Who decided medicine has to taste crappy just because you’re an adult?

Afterwards they recommend you go heavy on the fluids and maybe take a laxative to get the barium out of your system. I definitely should have paid more attention to that part.

I had the X-rays Thursday morning. Got home, was fine. Was fine the rest of Thursday and most of the day on Friday. It wasn’t until Friday night that the barium came back to bite me. It’s called constipation, in this case in all caps, underlined, with three exclamation points. Trying to dump that junk was like trying to pass Mount Rushmore through the eye of a needle. You get the idea.

Fortunately, I live in a neighborhood with a lot of retired people. I was able to bum some laxative off my next-door neighbors. Remember when folks used to ask to borrow a cup of sugar? I don’t recommend going door-to-door and asking, “Hey, got any ExLax?” But I did, and they did, and it worked. Things loosened up the next morning. I’m drinking more water now, and upping my intake of green leafy vegetables.

Just had the blood tests this morning. I didn’t faint this time, hooray! Last time I had blood taken I made it through collection, only to pass out after they took the needle out. Good thing I never got hooked on heroin. I’d definitely suck as a junkie.

That’s it for the tests. In two weeks I go back to the doctor and find out if there’s surgery in my future again. And how do you plan on spending your summer vacation?

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Let’s inject some good news here. Supernatural has been renewed for a twelfth season. My last couple of books, and the two I’m working on now, were inspired by that series. If it ever goes off the air, I’ll have to give up writing. Maybe that’s a good thing. Stress is never good for the body, and writing is stressful. There are days when trying to poop out words is harder than trying to poop out the barium. And on that lovely metaphor, I’d better call it quits. Stay healthy, folks.