What, no San Diego Chronicles?

I’ve been in San Diego all week, but haven’t really been inspired to write anything about it. I have been writing like crazy – don’t get me wrong… Just not about this fair city. Or its glorious sleek-bodied women with their midriffs showing and their ample bosoms bouncing as they walk, cell phones attached to their ears, ponytails streaming behind them like banners in a sex mag. I’ve been writing, instead, on my third novel. In the last four days I’ve written almost twenty pages, which – doing the quick math – translates to about twelve thousand words. Good wow.

I’m really liking where it’s going, and though I never get too much in the way of comments from my fantastic readers on my excerpts, I’ve decided to post a bit of this one. This isn’t a terribly important part of the book, it’s just the last few paragraphs I’ve written tonight. So here it is, an official excerpt from Shedding Sadness, my third novel:

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All I want for Christmas…

Christmas is the season for giving. It’s better to give than to receive. Giving is the king’s – – you know what? That’s BS. All of these quips have one thing in common. They all involve giving stuff away. Well they have two things in common. They all involve someone receiving something. You can’t very well give something away without someone receiving it, right? Well I’m ready to be on the receiving end! That doesn’t sound good. But I’ve already made the joke, so I expect no comments containing jokes about me being “the receiver” and all that nonsense. It’s Christmas, people.

So I wasn’t going to complain, but now I think I am. Just a little. All of this giving is going on. And I’m doing quite a bit of it myself. SpaceBrew did really well this year, so I’ve been able to afford a few thousand dollars worth of stuff to give to family and friends. That doesn’t mean I want a seven-thousand dollar gift coming to me. (Well actually I wouldn’t complain…) But I would like a couple of little somethings to open. Yeah? Yeah. Is that so wrong?

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A Nice Christmas Dinner

It was this time – Christmas – of 1997, and the whole world was happy. I had just gotten back from Panama, and with my hazardous duty pay and my Christmas bonus, I bought a brand new shiny black Dodge 4×4 pickup. It had the works. Everything from leather seats to CD player, heated mirrors and one of those bitchin’ built-in cell phones that looks like a pocket calculator embedded in the visor. It was Wednesday, December 24, and I had spent the better part of three hours negotiating this buy at the dealership. I finally fiinished and tore off across I-20 for Dallas to go pick up my family for dinner. We would head to Three Forks for steak and brandy, followed by lavish dessert and maybe the men would venture outside for a cigar. Well, my Pops and I at least. My grandpa wasn’t much into that.

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Minnesota Chronicles, Vol. 2

It’s Monday now; I’m heading back home tomorrow. I’ve taken quite a few pictures, but I don’t think I need to share them with you. How many pictures do you really need to see of a snowy hillside with snow-covered trees? There’s really just not a whole lot else to see here. It’s pretty, but it’s like some certain races of people. It just all looks the same.

I went to Guitar Center the other night just to get some play time in. Being out of town without one of my guitars is deafeningly shitty. I can’t stand not being able to pick one up and play it whenever I want to. I long for it. Like a junkie needs his heroin, or a nymphomaniac needs good hard sex – I need my guitars. I have to feel those hard metal frets and tight copper and steel strings beneath my fingertips. So I went to GC to play for a while. To get my fix.

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Minnesota Chronicles, Vol. 1

What’s there to say about the fine state of Minnesota? Uh, well we’ll see if we can find anything worth saying. I flew in this morning to visit a friend, and – having never been here before – wanted to see the sites. Or is that sights… Either way, there were some things rhyming with “ites” that I had come to see. Let me back up a little though.

I’ll start with the plane flight. We were delayed in taking off by almost an hour. Sigh. Okay, I don’t mind sitting in the terminal. I started a paperback my friend Jim had given me. Called Jupiter. By Ben Bova. Have you read it? Well it may be the kind of book you only read in airport terminals, I’ll have to wait and see. Anyway, I had my iPod playing and was making eyes with a couple of honeys, so I wasn’t terribly upset. Fifty minutes late, we finally boreded. (Boarded. Yeah, I’m full of it today.)

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Copperwound Chronicles Vol. 2

So we had our first gig Saturday. Since no one else wants to write anything, I’ll write about that. It went well, thanks for asking! We began our set at about 8:00, and kicked it off with a bang, playing Soulhat’s Prayin’ for Rain. Everything was going just dandily until our fourth song, where all of a sudden, the door flew open and someone waved, and half the bar cleared out in less than twenty seconds.

Bar fight! Except that it wasn’t actually in the bar. It was outside. A full-on biker fight though, it was! Exciting stuff. Except that it was the lead singer of the headlining band who had gotten jumped. These two guys had been sitting at the end of the bar for a couple of hours waiting for him to show up. And my friend Brandy had been talking to them.

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Dirty, Dirty People

I was using the great room of rest today, playing with my phone, minding my own business, when suddenly a suit walks into the bathroom. First of all, he turd burgaled me. He pulled on the stall door several times before he finally caught the hint that someone was actually in the stall pinching a loaf. Then he goes into the next stall and drops trou, sits down, and proceeds to take the nastiest ass piss I’ve ever heard. It smelled like someone had just dumped a 30-gallon barrell of fetid porpoise shit right in the middle of the room.

I instinctively looked over and saw his shoes, bright shiny brown penny loafers with laces. Ahem. And his visitor badge, dangling on the floor by his trousers. After a couple of minutes I finished up and got ready to pull the door open. I heard the bathroom door open and someone popped his head in. “You all right in there, Kenny?” he said. Kenny said yeah, he’d be just a minute. So I go wash my hands, and as I’m looking in the mirror, I hear the ole swoosh of the toilet flushing.

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Happy Halloween. Yawn.

The building where I’m working this week had a ‘fall festival’ today. Everyone was supposed to dress up in costumes (aren’t we getting a little old for that shit?) and each team carved a pumpkin. Yawn. Well, I’m not really a part of this company. I’m sort of stationed in the building using their resources while away from my home office. I’m out here building servers. But anyway, one of the organizer ladies likes me, so she invited me to the what-have-you for some free pizza and soda pops. Who can resist?

Let me start by saying I’m not totally against parties and festivities based around holidays by default. I’m just kind of against the idiocy that typically arrives at such events.

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F Bugs

I’m not a paranoid by any means. Never have been. But a man can only find so many bugs in his corn flakes before he finally decides he’s going to have to call an exterminator. Let me explain.

When I was in the military, I worked in a secure office, secure area, razor wire, etc. My work details were classified. They’re not really now. I could safely tell you what I did – it’s no big secret anymore – but meh, no point. Anyway, there were those who wanted to know more of what I did. Not me personally, but my position. People were always trying to find out what we knew. Not because we were so smart, but rather, because they wanted to get to those we protected. The point being, we had to have bug scans every several weeks in our office, as well as our dorms. We lived in the normal dorms, not separated from the rest of the troops, because they didn’t want us to stand out. But we kind of stood out when the guy would come by once a month with a fat metal briefcase full of equipment. Anyway, I digress. They never found a bug in my room with the sweep. But I did.

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There are no women in football.

Friday night my better half spent the evening (well into Saturday morning) at her sister’s house watching girly movies with their legs curled up on the sofa. What this meant to me was that I should immediately round up the fellas for a Friday-night barbecue and beer fest. So I called Stout and Trip and Boogie (yes that’s what we call him) and Minnesota Steve, and Stout called David The Great, Trip called Showboat and Arnie and Boogie called Tina. So they all came over and – wait… Who the hell invited the broad?

Have you ever had this happen on guys’ night out? Isn’t this more than just a simple party foul? When I made the initial phone call, I said the special code sentence that alerts the individual that he is to immediately report to drinking duty. I said, “Hey Name, tonight the beer flows like wine. SpacePlace at twenty hundred hours.” And that means (to you lay folk out there) that we’re drinking tonight, and to be at my place at eight o’clock. So since when are chicks invited to guys’ night out? Since when do the women drink like men? We have shit to talk about, you see. Namely women. And you can’t well do that when there are women present. Even women as neato as Tina.

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