Pet Cobra

Manifestos

There was almond butter with flaxseeds, and a container of blueberries, and some whole grain bagels. What I did was, I split the bagel in half and toasted it just so, enough for it to have a bit of a sandpaper finish, spread too much of the almond butter over both halves, added a drizzle of agave sweetener, embedded a few blueberries into the nutty cement. Voila. A perfectly sensible breakfast. Healthy, even. Outside the marine layer sprawled over inland Carlsbad like a chubby gray cat on a frat house sofa. I thought about going for a run but the kids were awake and I needed to get some work started. "Finished" was probably too much to hope for. A quick scan of the Internet: an article I'd written had yet to appear, a draft I'd started was languishing in the queue, a few email inquiries I'd met were as yet unanswered. I looked at my usual morning coffee websites. There was a post on one about a taser shotgun: it fires five tasers at once, with a range of up to 100 feet. I made a note of that; there was something in the first draft of the novel that wasn't sitting with me, and it was that bit with the tasers, and how could they do that as I'd written? They couldn't; these could. Research, research, research. Sometimes doing it yields up nothing but then the facts you need, they find you. From downstairs came the sounds of the house really waking; the muffled arguments of children, the sharp staccato reply of their mother getting them straight, triggering that response like a barrage of sonar pings against my hull; me putting on my stern face and starting to rise up out of my seat to engage...then the quiet of a poured bowl of cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios, I guessed, based on how quickly that silence descended. I read some blog posts. I thought about making some sort of declaration, some Statement of Intent, as those seem to always want to manifest themselves on days when the sky's muddled and you can't see two miles past your backyard. But such proclamations burn off when the clouds do. I just go with it.

Happy Easter!

I don't understand Easter. It has exactly zero relevance or bearing on my life. It's my least-favorite holiday. But the kids love the Bunny and his wares. They have no idea what it's about, and seeing as we are a Jesus-free household, I'm not sure what I'm going to tell them when they do finally ask. "Um, guy claims to be son of God, gets killed by the Romans, comes back to life. Here - watch The Crow. It's kinda the same story."

#winning

(from Clusterflock)

Why Is There A Goat? Because There's A Goat.

I'm veering towards Not Being A Fan Of December. December's about everyone else. The holidays bring a weight. Everyone's expectations and disappointments form a ruck, and you're at the bottom of the pile, feeling those cleats raking your back. Add that to the ever-present spectre of Christmases Past - the Most Wonderful Time Of  The Year has been forever marked by Lucas' fight with Kawasaki Disease, five years ago or yesterday, depending on our moods - and you get some serious blahs. Outside forces will do their very best to muck things up for us. It's a given. Happens every year, and this year, despite our best efforts, is no exception. 

This would be the point where I'd say something like, "but you know, you can't let things get you down. You've got a lovely wife, two awesome kids:

...a day job, two pretty awesome writing gigs, slippers, a choice of several stylish yet functional baseball caps, tea tree shampoo, a few of those individual-sized mini-Gouda cheeses, Scott Pilgrim on Blu-ray, a comfy chair, a gas fireplace like one might find at a couples-only hotel at Niagara Falls, a skateboard, adequate socks, both eyes, three flashlights, avocados, a couple of books that I haven't read yet but have been meaning to, and a towel. So, in conclusion, if I were to offer any sage advice to people like myself who may be feeling a bit inadequate this time of year - perhaps you're feeling this as well - it would NOT be "dance like no one's watching". It would be "dance like people are watching but screw them. Also, we have a Party Goat."

 

Movember, Day Five: I Finally Bathe, And Come To A Realization

Remember, remember, the Fifth of Movember. I didn't have a Guy Fawkes mask. But I did take a shower. See?

I'm often asked if that's my real hair (yes) and if it is, why do I always wear hats? I should flaunt that shit! The truth is that I wear hats because I take a shower maybe three times a week. I'm up and working at six every morning - and by work, I mean wrangling my 6-year-old, 3-year-old, and jobby-job stuff (I do have a Paying Non-Writing Job, which I do from home, as well as the stuff I do for Man Of The House, and my own sites). I ain't got time to bathe. Also, my bathroom is on the second floor, and what happens is, I turn on the water, crank it over to HOT, and wait. And wait. And wait. Meanwhile, the HOT water makes it's way down from the Rockies, into the Colorado River, through volcanic fissures that heat the water, through Arizona, underneath houseboats full of drunken teenagers, past the meth fields of Jamul, around Cape Horn (it's a water rights thing), and to my house, which has a hot water, a good thing since, you know, CAPE HORN, where the penguins and the narwhals frolic together in blissfully friggin' cold harmony, but the water heater has a timer, and the timer supposedly allows one to control the flow of hot water to the upstairs portion of the house, but the previous owners didn't leave the instructions, and so I had to look it up online, and it's a funny thing, but Googling "HOT WATER TIMER THINGY INSTRUCTIONS" doesn't yield up much expect for a few weird Japanese tentacle porn sites, and after about three hours of going through those I began to realize that maybe I was looking in the wrong spot, and thus I'm not really sure how to operate the timer, and for all I know I've enable Skynet to eventually become self-aware, so that's why I usually end up taking a shower that starts off cold and reaches a decent temperature only after I've washed my hair, and so today after I got out the shower I took that picture and after I uploaded it to this site I got on Twitter and found this article and said fuck it, being a Good Man is too goddamn difficult. But hey, narwhals.

 

Everyone Should Have A Mechanical Crotch

Yep. You read that right. And I heard it correctly: Lucas, during dinner. "Everyone should have a mechanical crotch!"

It's hard to disagree. Mechanical crotches would be useful indeed.

Think of it. Our new Gods: Polo players, male gymnasts, The Rockettes. Can you imagine? The implications are staggering. Peace in our lifetime.  Cold fusion. Colonies on Mars. Those cars that drive up the sides of buildings in Minority Report. If  humankind can develop the Mechanical Crotch, why, we will fly like Daedalus, and no sun will melt our collective wings. (Metaphorically, of course. Birds can fly because they have hollow bones. Plus they're streamlined. If you or I tried that, we'd go into the ground like a fucking dart.)

And! A thousand years of darkness, put to an end. An end to high fructose corn syrup, the Dodgers, remakes, prequels, Pete Townshend's sham "Who" Reunion Tours (and no more Roger Waters pretending to be Pink Floyd, or Roger Waters-less "Pink Floyd" pretending to be Pink Floyd), mock turtlenecks (and, consequently, Patrick Dempsey), and books about teenaged vampires. The Fox Network would be sacked, and replaced by the Wolverine Network. And no, it wouldn't be Hugh Jackman in his biker suit and CGI claws reading the news. That would be stupid. It would be ACTUAL WOLVERINES. Like this:

 

...and they would fight off wolves and dudes in White Ninja uniforms while some guy offscreen would read the news. Or maybe they could be trained to read the news while fighting wolves and White Ninjas. Shit, people - we invented the Mechanical Crotch. We ushered in The World of Tomorrow. Talking wolverines? Child's play.

 
 

Sir Ian McKellan as Gandalf Doing The Theme From The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Paul Simon was eerily prescient. These ARE the days of miracle and wonder. Example: a guy doing...well, I think the title of this post sums it up quite nicely.

Respect The Muse, Even When She Says "Cocktail Onion"

I was looking for something to write about. "Cocktail onion" popped into my head. So: 

Consider the cocktail onion. It's a paradox. An onion that goes in a drink. It stands apart from fellow onions: small, pickled, jarred. It doesn't taste like an onion. There's very little you can do with them, save put them in a drink, and as we've established, that goes against conventional thinking. The cocktail onion is a condiment without a country.

Here's the thing with the cocktail onion: way back before you and I were born, someone decided to take those poor wretched runts of the onion litter, cast away like club-footed Spartan babies, and raise them up into something that could be loved. Then someone else thought it might be a kick to put one of those in a drink, cherries and olives be damned. At some point someone else pulled a stalk of rhubarb out of the ground, ate it, spat it out in disgust, thought for a moment, took the whole bunch of rhubarb home, chopped it up, dumped a bunch of sugar on it, put it in a pie crust, baked it, and ate the result. This is how civilization advances. One day rhubarb pie, the next the space shuttle.

There was a jar of them in the fridge, and on a whim one night (Beth was out with her friends, the children were a-bed,  "Dollhouse" was on the TV, the air was electric with possibilities) I swapped out one of my two standard olives with a cocktail onion. Over the skewered pair went the vodka. The taste was interesting, the briny snap of the olive with the acrid sweetness of the onion. It was as unlikely as the name Elisha Dushku. An onion. Pickled, yes, but still an onion. In a drink. Go figure. A blog post about said cocktail onion. Again, go figure.

My New Year's Deresolutions!

 Everyone, it seems, is posting their New Year's Resolutions, and that is good, and I support you all and will do whatever I can to help you make them happen, unless one of them is "give that PetCobra guy a good pegging", any requests for which will be handled on a case-by-case basis. I have a rep to protect.

In any case, I decided not to commit to Doing anything. Finish a book, get in shape, make new friends and reforge the bonds with old ones...yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do my best, but no promises. I figure it'll be easy to tell you both what I'm NOT going to do. Deresolutions. 

I will not stop eating cheese, with the exception of the aerosol variety, or any cheese belonging to the Whiz family. I will not build an ark. I will not shave my dog. I will not wear a black leather cowboy hat. I will not record a solo album. I will not fire upon Hometree. I will not come to a complete stop if no other cars are present. I will not remove the mattress tags. (Ah, who am I kidding.) I will not use the acronym "LOL". I will not attempt to keep up with the Kardashians. I will not use a paddle to catch a wave. I will not call another blogger "brilliant" unless, objectively speaking, he or she is. I will not bring a knife to a gunfight. I will not confuse jam with jelly, nor will I confuse a dolphin with a porpoise. (I make no promises regarding dolphin jelly, however.) I will not film any prequels. I will not add zombies. I will not deconstruct the following: superheroes, chicken a la king, the novel, or the concept album. I will not re-retweet, though I reserve the right to re-re-retweet. I will not proclaim myself the new King of Pop - yet. I will not abide. I will not take a ride on anyone's disco stick. I will not steal any songs from The Beatles and give them to Charles Manson, nor will I give any songs that Charles Manson stole from The Beatles to U2. I will not drink consomme straight from the can, because fool me twice? I will not use the floor vac on the carpet because the last time that happened, a black hole opened up and Nero flew his giant ship through it from the future and destroyed Vulcan and I still feel bad about that, sorry, Vulcans, don't hate me. (Oh, wait, you can't.) I will not join your Mafia Wars gang, so please stop asking. I will not misuse or overuse the following: the exclamation point, the dash, the colon, or the semi-colon. (I make no promises regarding parentheses.) Finally, I will not write another blog post while on hold with my insurance company.