Unfinished

I'm not quite finished with this picture yet (ran out of time), but I thought I should post something.
In the final version she'll actually have legs, assuming that I get back to it.
In any case, I hope you all have a good weekend.

Now That's a Murder I Can Get Behind!

I don’t know how many of you out there watch “Smallville,” but I’ve been watching it for a few years now. I actually missed the first season when it originally aired, simply because I didn’t care (and for a good portion of it I didn’t get the WB anyway).
It was my assumption that it was just another ill-conceived bastardization of the Superman mythos.
I have to admit that I was mistaken.
By no stretch of the imagination is it the finest hour on television, or even the best non-comics treatment of the character (that honor goes to the 90s animated series), but it beats all of the movies, and it certainly beats that god-awful “Lois and Clark” featuring Teri Hatchers’ presentation of Lois Lane as a total bimbo (In reality, it’s my understanding that she’s actually a reasonably intelligent woman, but the sad truth is that her voice makes her sound like a bimbo no matter what. Also, her propensity for a sort of Lucy-esque style of physical comedy makes her ill-suited for playing a focused, determined, tough-as-nails, independent woman of Lois’ caliber. That being said, I’d probably still do her in a heartbeat.)
And they take an interesting approach to the character’s development, both as a man, and as a Superman.
One of the most brilliant twists they introduced was the notion that, at least initially, his heat vision was tied to his libido, for example.
This season, as I’ve mentioned before, they also introduced a young Lois Lane, played by actress Erica Durance.
She is the ideal Lois, and one of the best adaptations of a comic book character I’ve ever seen (beaten out only by J.K. Simmons as “J. Jonah Jameson” in the “Spider-Man” movies). Because she is still young, she’s not quite the Lois Lane that she will eventually become, but the potential is obviously there.
My biggest complaint about the show (and, though I do enjoy it, I have a lot of complaints about it) is the character of Lana Lang.
The actress who plays her, Kristin Kreuk (a name that, with the matching initials, almost seems like the name of Superman character) is a very beautiful young woman, but her acting skills aren’t quite up to par. It’s difficult for me to decide if I dislike Lana so much because of how she’s written, or because of how Kreuk portrays her.
I suppose it’s a combination of the two.
In any case, the fact of the matter is that I hate Lana, which is made all the more problematic by the fact that she is a major focus of most episodes.
Here’s a typical scenario.
Boy/girl is in love with Lana. Lana, being a cold-hearted bitch, in a sweet, girl next door sort of way, gently rebuffs boy/girl. Boy/girl goes home to his/her Lana shrine and vows revenge by making use of his/her superhuman powers.
(Note: When Clark’s spaceship came out of hyperspace near earth, all sorts of pieces of Krypton were blasted through as well, coming down on Smallville in a deadly meteor shower that blanketed the entire area with chunks of Kryptonite. In much the same way that when I was a kid growing up in the Upper Peninsula’s “Copper Country” and could hardly kick over a rock without finding copper, residents of Smallville are constantly finding “meteor rocks” all over the place. Under certain conditions [by “conditions” I mean it being Wednesday night at 8 pm] normal humans who are exposed to the meteor rocks gain odd superhuman abilities. It used to be that they were extensions of existing maladies, such as a girl who has a condition that causes her to have soft bones gets exposed to Kryptonite and develops the ability to change her shape, but lately it’s just whatever they need to drive the plot along. Oh, and people are constantly using Kryptonite to do stuff. One kid added some to the nitrous mix on his hot rod, for example. Because, you know, why not? Basically the writers use Kryptonite as a bigger crutch than any of the comic book writers ever did.)
Superhumanly-powered boy/girl tries to kill Lana. Clark intervenes to save her. How it ultimately works out depends on whether or not Clark has needed to make blatant use of his of his own superhuman abilities. If he was able to defeat the crazed boy/girl who’s in love with Lana without any obvious use of his abilities, said crazed boy/girl ends up in a mental hospital. If Clark has to reveal his abilities, the crazed boy/girl will end up dying.
Not because Clark deliberately kills him/her, but typically because of some sort of “happy accident.”
The end result is that the problem is solved, and Clark and Lana can go back to their angst-filled, tortured, doomed romance and we get to watch Kristin Kreuk attempt to emote.
In any case, my point is that in any given episode the action tends to revolve around Lana, and while I personally would be willing to lend a hand to members of the population of Smallville (who seem to be in the majority) aiming to bump off Lana, it is getting a little old, and I’m tired of seeing such a tiresome character being the center of the Smallville universe.
Lana’s just not interesting, and there’s nothing that can be done to make her interesting, particularly when both the character and the actress have been so completely overshadowed by Erica Durance’s perfect portrayal of the person that we know Clark is going to end up with in the future, making Lana nothing more than a footnote.
And that’s really the thing. Even long before most of the cast members of the show were born (it is primarily aimed at the same demographic targeted by shows like “The OC,” or the late “Dawson’s Creek,” after all, so it features a young, good-looking cast) I disliked Lana Lang.
I’ve never viewed her to be a worthwhile character, and she’s never really added much to the mythos, particularly since she was added to the mythos so late in the game.
Superman had been an established popular character for years when the creative staff at DC decided to retroactively create a backstory involving his youth. Thus, “Superboy” was born, even though the idea that Superman had been engaging in public acts of super-heroics since he was a kid totally contradicted the existing continuity.
In any case, because there were certain conventions that needed to be followed, there had to be a romantic interest/damsel-in-distress/meddling bitch in Superboy’s life. Rather than retroactively moving his existing romantic interest/damsel-in-distress/meddling bitch into his history, they created someone new, with the same initials.
Thus Lana Lang was born, and even though, in the chronology of Superman’s “life” Lana came first, in the chronology of the actual creations of the characters Lois predates Lana by several years.
That’s Lana’s first strike against her: she was an afterthought.
Her second is that she’s basically a cheap adolescent imitation of Lois.
Her third is that she was, right from the start, irritating as hell.
Granted, because the men writing the comics were men of their times (read: chauvinistic bastards), Lois herself was pretty irritating, but Lana was much worse.
Lana’s primary reason to exist was to constantly try to find ways to prove that Clark was really Superboy. That was it. That’s what she did.
She came up with an endless variety of schemes to do it, but they always failed, and in the end she would be convinced that there’s no way that Clark could really be Superboy.
That conviction would last until the next issue, at which time she’d be back at it.
The thing that I never understood, though, is that she was totally in love with Superboy, and hoped to one day marry him.
Okay, I can understand that part. I mean, come on; he’s got it all over some teen heartthrob. He’s freakin’ Superboy! There's no New Kid on The Block/Backstreet Boy/Ricky Nelson/Whoever that's going to compete with that.
But what I didn’t understand was how she thought that revealing his secret identity to the world was going to win her any points.
“Gee Lana, you just robbed me of my ability to escape, however temporarily, from the pressures and responsibilities of my life as Superboy by revealing to the world that I’m secretly mild-mannered teen Clark Kent. And now that he knows my secret, to exact revenge on me, Lex Luthor has kidnapped my adopted parents, the people who took me in after my entire race was obliterated in a fiery explosion, loved me, raised me as their own, and bestowed upon me the values that I live by. He is torturing them to death in some secret location even as we speak. In fact, Lex just sent me this photograph of himself forcing Ma Kent to give him a blow job. The photograph is a little bloody, as it arrived wrapped around Pa Kent’s severed penis. So…you want to go steady?”
Beyond that, though, was the condescending disdain with which she treated Clark. Even though she firmly believed that he was secretly the Boy of Steel, she treated him like a worm. WTF? If you even suspect that he might be more than he appears, don’t you think you should try to get in his good graces, just in case? Besides, even if he isn’t Superboy, he’s still a smart nerd. As I mentioned in an earlier post, giving a nerd a little sugar goes a long way.
It didn't really matter though, as Lana was pretty much the only game in town anyway, so Clark/Superboy would put up with pretty much anything to get busy with her.
Eventually to spice things up a little, rather than having Lana solely focused on trying to out Superboy as Clark Kent, the writer started coming up with ways to temporarily bestow superhuman abilities on Lana, which would naturally lead to all sorts of misadventures.
Lana would typically gain these powers from various ancient mystic artifacts that her archaeologist father would bring home when returning from his digs and leave lying around the house for her to play with, since evidently he didn’t notice all the trouble it cause the last time he left the Mayan Scepter of Power unattended in the living room.
In order to create a catty rivalry, they eventually brought a grown-up Lana Lang to Metropolis, where she competed with Lois as a reporter and for the Man of Steel’s affections.
So yeah, basically Lana’s never been anything other than a pain in everyone’s ass.
When John Byrne totally revamped Superman back in 1987 he completely marginalized Lana, which was fine by me. In his version of Superman’s history the one-sided, unrequited nature of the Lana/Clark relationship was all on Lana’s side. Byrne’s Clark always viewed her more like a sister than a potential love interest, though he did ultimately confide in her about his powers before flying out of her life to find his place in the world.
Lana left Smallville as well, but eventually returned, living a quiet and largely unobserved life on the farm. Eventually she married her and Clark’s old friend, Pete Ross (this Lana was smart enough to realize that she needed to settle for second best).
There have been some developments since, such as her husband being elected Vice President to Lex Luthor’s President, but even so, nothing has been done to make me actually like the character, and the even more annoying version of her presented on TV hasn't helped matters any.
Yes, she’s been around for a long time, but she’s just so disposable.
And yet, here she is, the center of a Threshold entry. Damn her! She’s so insidious.
Today is my niece Jourdan’s eighteenth birthday. That is terribly depressing.
Not much else is going on. I’ve been kind of slacking when it comes to drawing. I started on another picture of Alley Baggett, but soon lost interest.
Earlier today I started to work on it again, but then I found some more pictures of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke. I found one that I think I can crank out before the end of the day, so I think I’ll go to work on that. Eventually I’ll finish that picture of her in the bikini.
Probably, at any rate.
Well, maybe.
We’ll see.
In any case, that’s it for now. Sorry about the boring ramblings about Lana.

"Wonderfalls" is Wonderful, At Least Sean Hayes Isn't a Puppet of The Crustaceans, and In The Kitchen With Hellboy

If you blinked last year you would probably missed the half-assed attempt that Fox made at providing some quality scripted programming to try to mask the stench of those huge, steaming piles of reality crap that account for most of its programming.
I say “half-assed” not because the quality of the program itself was lacking (far from it), but because their commitment to airing a quality scripted program lasted for all of three episodes, with the fourth scheduled episode being preempted by a rerun of “The Swan.”
Still, I can’t place all of the blame on Fox. After all, the network that brought us “When Animals Attack” and “Who’s Your Daddy?” can’t exactly be held to a terribly high standard.
No, I pin most of the blame squarely on you.
Yes, you, you slavering reality show junkies who can’t stop stuffing your bloated snackholes long enough to realize that Simon Cowell isn’t funny, he’s just a bitch.
…
Okay, maybe that was a little harsh (though I still say he’s a bitch).
The point is, the show I’m talking about, “Wonderfalls,” was a fantastic show that didn’t get the chance it deserved.
What makes it more galling is the fact that 13 episodes were actually completed, but because it wasn’t a reality show, nobody watched the first three, and so Fox pulled the plug, unwilling to even air the remaining episodes.
Still, there was a somewhat happy ending, in that all 13 episodes were released on DVD yesterday.
So, as I had planned to do as soon as I discovered that it would be released on DVD, I bought it.
I would also recommend that everyone everywhere do the same, assuming you can handle watching a show that doesn’t feature some bitchy British guy taking potshots at masochistic dumbasses who ought to know better than to get up and sing in front of him in the first place. Honestly, don’t any of these people have friends who can take them aside and say, “Look, you weigh 350 pounds, you’re buck-toothed, you have this Afro-looking head full of thinning, bright red hair, and your voice is roughly equivalent to the sound of fifteen cats being tortured with an acetylene torch. There’s no way in hell you’re going to be the next Kelly Clarkson, and you really don’t want to get in front of that smarmy, limey bitch, okay? Sure William Hung made some money, but do you really want to make that much of an ass of yourself just to be famous?”
Hmm…never mind, this is America, after all, so that argument would never fly…
In any case, if the 10 remaining episodes of “Wonderfalls” are even half as good as the first 3, it’ll be a very good collection of episodes indeed.
While I am confident in their quailty, I’m not entirely certain just how good the remaining episodes are as of yet, as I actually ordered the DVD rather than going out to a store and buying it.
So I probably won’t actually get it until next week.
Whether or not I’ll venture out into the world to purchase something or will instead order it online depends on how much of a need for immediacy I have. Yes, I would like to watch the DVD as soon as possible, but the odds are that the price I paid at Amazon was much less than I would have paid at, say, Best Buy, so I decided that I was willing to wait out the extended period of time that the free “Super Saver” shipping would entail in order to save some money (and save myself the bother of venturing out).
Besides, watching the DVD will be a bittersweet experience anyway, as when it’s over, it will well and truly be over.
What makes the whole thing especially sad is that “Wonderfalls” was created by the same person who gave an unappreciative world the gift of “Dead Like Me.”
I didn’t do much today.
I spent most of the day reading stories by people who had managed to break free from cults (not sure how I ended up doing that), and then eventually I made dinner.
It turned out okay, though the flavor of the Fennel seeds was a bit much. I don’t think I’d be too likely to make it again.
The other day on the Web I found out that the fucktard who started the whole Spongebob flap (By the way, I called it; Spongebob is asexual) is claiming that the real issue that he was trying to address was missed because the liberal, reactionary media distorted his message.
Essentially he feels that the issue is not whether or not Spongebob is gay, but rather that Spongebob, in some fashion, helps to promote the “Gay Agenda.”
I’ve never really been sure what the “Gay Agenda” is, exactly.
Apparently they’re looking to recruit from the general population or something. I suppose that it’s not without precedent. After all, Bausch & Lamb, flying in the face of genetics, has managed to recruit blue-eyed people from the ranks of the non-blue-eyed, and those evil bastards at Clairol have been pushing their “Dye Agenda” with impunity for decades.
So I guess it’s possible that they could be recruiting, though I can’t honestly recall the last time I saw any gay recruiting posters.
I do seem to recall that in my senior year in high school, in between calls from the recruiters for the Army and the Marines I got frequent calls from the Village People and…oh, wait, that was just a song.
And it sucked. If gays want to recruit me they're going to need a better soundtrack...
Honestly, pretty much all of the gay people I’ve known have had more or less then same “agenda” that everyone else has. They want to live their lives, be who they are, and be happy.
I don’t think there’s anything especially insidious about that.
In terms of the actual gay activism in the world (as opposed to the kind being imagined by paranoid, closeted old white guys afraid of their own latent, and not-so latent homosexuality), all that gays are looking for is legal recognition of their right to pursue said happiness.
What I find really ironic is that Conservatives, who make no bones of the fact that they have an agenda, are always complaining about homosexuals having one. I guess gays aren’t allowed to have any of the privileges enjoyed by God-fearing Americans…
Such foolishness.
I still don’t understand why Right-Wingers aren’t protesting Red Lobster or Joe’s Crab Shack restaurants, since they’re pushing the “Shellfish Agenda” more blatantly than Spongebob pushes its gay (well, gay in an asexual sort of way) agenda.
Hell, even “Will & Grace” don’t push the Gay Agenda nearly as hard as Joe and his crab-loving Mama push the Shellfish Agenda.
(And if you don’t understand just how truly insidious and dangerous the Shellfish Agenda is, I’d advise that you read up on it. We must remain ever vigilant. That Callypso-singing lobster in “The Little Mermaid” was much more devious than Spongebob could ever be.)
Last week I realized that with my current set up with my old computer I can now watch DVDs while I’m in the kitchen.
I started watching “Hellboy” while I was cooking last week, and today I finished it and moved on to “Spider-Man 2.”
Anyway, I guess that’s enough random sarcasm and babbling for today.

Easy Prey

As was noted in the earlier post, we baked bread tonight and it was less than stellar. Still, it was an experience. It’s unlikely that I’ll bake bread too often anyway.
There were a couple of people who didn’t show up for the class, and a few others who were extremely late. This time Kathleen and I were on time. In fact, we were a couple of minutes early.
Even with the absences the scenery in the class didn’t get any prettier. I really can’t get over how old some of the people in the class are. One woman made a reference to the last time she tried baking bread…forty years ago! And her husband didn’t like it. How can you be married for more than forty years (or at least be old enough to have been married that long ago if you aren’t still with the same person) and just now be getting around to learning how to cook?
But whatever.
The other night on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” I saw something that was utterly horrible.
The thing to remember with most L & O shows is that at least some component is drawn from the real world (“Ripped from the headlines!”), which is what made it even more horrible.
The horrible thing wasn’t the main thrust of the story, but it was a primary component, and was at the heart of the major crime.
There was a woman, a reasonably hot woman, who would go to various conventions (Star Trek conventions, comic book conventions, etc.) and present herself as a fellow fan.
A fellow sexy fan.
Complete with outfits.
Outfits that showed the curvy, woman part of her, but which also showed that she knew her nerdy stuff.
Basically she would transform herself into every nerd’s wet dream: the hot chick who shares his nerdish leanings and his overriding nerdish obsession Every nerd dreams of meeting that chick.
So far as I know, Richard Pini, whom I’ve mentioned before (married a hot woman by the name of Wendy, who used to go to comic book conventions dressed as Red Sonja), is the only nerd to achieve that goal, as the myth of the hot nerd girl is just that: a myth.
In any case, this evil, evil woman would go to the conventions, find herself a mark, flirt with him, start dating him, get him to start giving her money, and then would ultimately con him out of his most treasured nerd prize (that first edition copy of “The Hobbit,” one of William Shatner’s discarded toupees or girdles, that copy of “Incredible Hulk” #181 [You get a million nerd hit points if you know what’s special about that issue], that original light saber still in the box, etc.) and disappear, off to her next convention and her next mark.
I just think that’s horrible. I mean, come on, what nerd wouldn’t part with his most treasured nerd trophy for the chance to score with a hot nerd chick?
And that was the worst part; they didn’t score.
It’s just so…mean.
Some poor lonely nerd who’s probably never had a pretty girl so much as smile at him has some hot chick descend on him like an angel from nerd heaven, she tickles him under his chins, tells him the smell of Stridex turns her on, and that she considers Twinkies a major food group, leads him to believe that he’s finally going to experience the fulfillment of his life-long Ponn Farr, and then he sees that his favorite action figure is missing and that the hot chick he was going to sneak into his parents’ basement to get nerdy with it (similar to getting jiggy with it...but with nerds) has disappeared.
Hell, even if he knows that she’s just out to con him out of everything he has of value, the nerd is still going to take his chances, thinking that maybe she’ll ultimately be taken in by his gentle, sensitive spirit, or that at the very least she’ll give him a sympathy hand job.
So conning nerds in that way is simply horrible. Don’t nerds get enough grief? I mean, come on, if you’re going to be a con artist, find someone a little more challenging.
Of course, that was part of the appeal for the woman. She liked breaking what remains of their nerdly spirits.
Meanwhile, though, I’m thinking, “Hmm….maybe I should start checking out conventions. Sure, any chick I might meet will probably just be out to get anything I have that’s valuable, but I’ll fool her; I have nothing of value. Also, my spirit is already broken.”
Really, I suppose the whole con is just an expansion on standard hot chick behavior. It’s not really that much of a stretch to move from flirting with a nerd to get him to carry your books for you or help you with your Trig homework to getting him to sell his Star Wars Commemorative glasses to pay for her mom’s expensive, life-saving surgery, or whatever other con she can come up with.
But whatever.
I did my taxes today (online). I’m going to get $921 back, which isn’t too shabby…until you consider that I paid in over $10,000 between State and Federal.
Doing my taxes via the Web was relatively inexpensive. Only $10 for the Federal, but $25 for State, which is funny, considering that my State refund is $25…
Anyway, not much else happened today, so I guess I’ll wrap things up for now.

The Fruits of Our Labors

Tonight in class we focused on baking bread and biscuits. We made the biscuits (shown below) while we waited for the bread dough to rise.



After the relative success of the biscuits came the relative failure of the bread. It actually turned out okay, it just looks bad. We had thought that it would fill in as it baked.
We were wrong.
Below we see Kathleen playing proud mom to our deformed, mutant bread.

New Pic (Likely to be the First of Many)

This is a picture of model Alley Baggett.
Alley primarily models for Playboy's "Newsstand" special editions, such as "Playboy's Book of Lingerie," or "Playboy's Voluptuous Vixens.”
She’s never been an official Playmate, but she has enjoyed tremendous popularity in the ten years or so that she’s been appearing in the special editions, and her Web site remains very popular.
She's even had a (really bad) comic book called "Alley Cat" based on her.
She’s so popular, in fact, that an entire system of naming and cataloging the many images of her that are floating out on the Web has been created. Called “Burg’s Alley Baggett Archive,” or “BABA,” the system creates a uniform method for naming photo files (baba00001.jpg, baba00002.jpg, etc.).
Alley fans rename any new files (culled from scans and from her site) to conform to the standard, update the database, and distribute the pictures (and the latest list of babas, usually in .csv format)via Alley fan sites and newsgroups.
So clearly there are some dedicated nerds out there who are completely obsessed with her...or who are simply very fond of her, depending on how you want to look at.
For her part, Alley tends to look at it as theft, and has sued lots of people for illegally distributing her copyrighted images.
I can sympathize with her, but on the other hand, I really don’t feel like joining her pay site (though I have in the past) simply to see pictures of her. After all, I’m not interested in live chats with her, purchasing her used lingerie (which is just creepy, on both sides of the equation), keeping up on the events in her life, or making use of any of the other features found at her site.
So as long as those nerds keep pressing their luck with the illegal distribution, I’m going to keep downloading them.
The last time I checked there were well over 12,000 baba images out there.
I don’t have that many, but I do have a lot, so I decided that I should start putting them to some use apart from simply taking up space on my hard drive and various CDs.
I like Alley because she’s cute, petite, sort of exotic-looking, and, though you can’t tell in this image, is stacked like you wouldn’t believe.
I chose to draw this image primarily because I liked her eyes (especially since in the original image they were already reflecting something that looked a lot like my signature, so drawing it was a no-brainer) and the glossiness of her lips.
Since I do have so many Alley pictures to work from the odds are that you’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the days to come.
I may even – gasp! – draw some nudes. I don’t usually draw nudes, but since that’s primarily how Alley works, I might give it a shot. We’ll see.
In any case, I just wanted to post this picture and give you a little background on Alley.

Warning! Angst-Filled Writings Ahead

The weekend found us once again treated to a dusting of snow that passes for a storm in these parts.
While the total accumulation was actually less than the last time around, this time was a bit nastier in that the snow that did fall was very heavy, wet, and slippery.
What really made it a problem, though, was that it actually began snowing sometime Saturday afternoon, yet when I was driving in to work at 5:30 on Sunday morning not a single road had been plowed.
As I was getting onto the on-ramp to the Dulles Greenway, in the misguided belief that the Greenway, a privately owned, toll road (costing more than $2 to drive on) would be better tended than most, I saw three plows parked on side of the road, waiting.
I’m not certain what it was, precisely, that they were waiting for, but clearly the amount of snow that had fallen in the previous 12+ hours wasn’t yet enough to warrant any sort of action.
The fact that I had to drive through the appalling conditions facing me on Sunday morning simply because no one had actually bothered to do anything about them is, to my mind, an example of criminal incompetence. That mess was absolutely inexcusable.
That incompetence aside, though, the storm itself was pretty anticlimactic. Yeah, it was wet, and yeah, it was slippery, but I really wasn’t impressed. The ice that sheathed my car that morning was, without question, the wimpiest ice I’ve ever encountered. I barely had to put any effort at all into clearing it off.
Apart from that fizzle of a storm, the weekend was largely uneventful. Mostly just the standard work/sleep cycle.
You know that feeling you get when you realize that you’ve been at work for nine-and-a-half hours and you still have three more to go? Oh, wait. Most of you probably don’t.
In any case, while the time off it affords is very nice (despite the fact that I do so little to fill that empty time with anything), there are times at work when I question the wisdom of cramming a full work-week into three days. My job isn’t especially demanding, and, quite honestly, is the best job I’ve ever had, but some days…
Ah well, as I said, it’s not actually a bad job, despite the fact that the length of the days can just tend to wear on you, so I can’t complain too much, though not complaining at all would be contrary to my nature.
I’ve been having a lot of odd dreams of late, though most of the details are pretty hazy.
On Saturday night I had a couple of dreams that involved Granny Smith apples, or rather, my failure you to remember to buy said apples. That actually happened in two distinct dreams.
Both dreams involved being back home in Michigan for a visit. In one, I was with my friend Joel, who was bringing me to my parents’ house. When I got there, my mother pointed out that I’d neglected to pick up the Granny Smith apples she asked me to get.
In another, I was similarly riding with my friend Gretchen, though I realized my error before getting home, so we turned around so that I could pick up the apples.
Sometime after that I had a dream that my friend Eric had called me.
When I got up in the morning I reflected on the fact that I had dreamed of several of my old friends, with one exception, and I thought, “What, no Kevin?”
At almost the same time as I was thinking that I checked my e-mail, and, lo and behold, I had an e-mail from Kevin.
It was rather strange.
Then today I got an e-mail from Eric.
It really isn’t that often that I hear from my friends. I don’t hold it against them, as I know that they all have their own lives to live, and in some cases we’re separated by a little bit more than simple distance.
Besides, if “blame” can be assigned, or if such a thing is even applicable, which I don’t think it is, I bear an equal share of it.
It’s not as if I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t really see the point of making the effort to sustain regular contact.
That sounds horrible, I know, but it shouldn’t. I don't mean to sound callous, and certainly I’m glad to hear from them when I do, and I think about them often.
It’s just that, as I said, they all have their own lives.
And I have mine.
Such as it is.
I really shouldn’t say that. Mine isn’t such a bad life. It’s a little lonely, which seems sort of paradoxical, or perhaps hypocritical, given what I just got through saying about my own reluctance to reach out to my friends, but seeming contradictions are as much a part of my nature as complaining, and besides, there are certain voids that friends can't fill, and functions that they can't perform.
When I talked to my mother today she asked me “Are you content with your life?”
I had to admit that, for the most part, I am. Certainly there are things that I want…hmm, no, that’s not exactly true.
There really aren't things that I want.
Really, what I want is to want things.
Sure, there are a lot of material things that I’d very much like to have (like this), and a little romance (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) would be nice, but in a larger, more meaningful sense, there really isn’t anything I want.
That lack of desire isn’t really born out of some kind of contentment or sense of fulfillment, or the kind of spiritual enlightenment that leads men to divest themselves of all encumbrances and live the life of the mendicant, though there is clearly a kind of monkishness to my largely solitary life.
At best, the lack of desire is simple complacency. At worst it’s…well, honestly, I don’t know what it is.
For a long time I’ve said all that I really want out of life is to be left alone.
As is readily apparent, I pretty much have that, though clearly that isn’t really what I want.
In the time I’ve been working in my current position I’ve had four direct supervisors, and at various points each of them has asked me some variation on the same question: What do you want to do?
The only answer I’ve been able to give them isn’t an answer. How can I answer the question when I don’t know what the answer is? Like a test-taking strategy, I tend to skip that question for the time being, planning to get back to it later.
But every time I go back to it my mind keeps drawing the same blank, and I’m forced to admit that I just don’t know the answer, and I can’t even come up with a decent guess.
Wow, that’s gloomy. Didn’t mean to head down that path, though I suppose, much like Rome, all roads tend to lead there for me.
In any case, to move away from the existential angst, it’s my intention to bring my camera with me to class tomorrow night, so, assuming that what we make turns out well, you’ll get a chance to see my latest culinary accomplishment. From what was said last week, it seems that we’ll be making bread.
Today was largely uneventful. As I mentioned, I talked to my mother today. Afterwards I went grocery shopping. While I was home I spent most of the day reading a comic book called “Lucifer,” which is about exactly what you would assume it’s about.
It’s an okay book, sort of spun-off of the classic “Sandman” series, though of considerably lesser quality.
Beyond that I made Tortellini with Roasted Italian Vegetables and broth.
The actual recipe called for “Winter” vegetables, but I didn’t feel like purchasing a bunch of individual fresh vegetables, so I bought what seemed like a suitable blend of frozen vegetables. It was pretty tasty.
On Wednesday I’ll likely make Chicken with Mustard-Fennel Crust accompanied by Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Potatoes and Bacon.
In all honesty I probably do well enough on my own that I really don’t need to take the class, but hopefully I’ll pick up a few tricks, and at least it gets me out into the world.
Whether or not that’s a good thing is anybody’s guess.
In any case, I think that’s enough, and probably more than enough, for one entry.