ScreenDump

So, I sorta forgot that I still have one of these here blog thingies. I should do something with it, eh?

It’s easier to be the good guy when you believe in God, or Karma, or any other form of spiritual accounting system, but it’s hard as hell to be the good guy when you know that life, at its core, has no meaning whatsoever.

Just in case there was any ambiguity: there is no chance this blog will turn into a book.

Recently, while surfing television channels, I stumbled across the 2005 version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the last iteration of the famously inconsistent and ever-evolving collection of stories with which its creator, Douglas Adams, was involved. When I initially saw this version in the theater, I was disappointed, as the essential flavor of the story was more frenetic and, I perceived, less intelligent than the other versions of the story. This time, however, I enjoyed the movie much more, as I was able to approach it without my previously unrealistic expectations. I could just appreciate it on its own merits.

While watching the film, my kids would drift in and out of the room, not unlike hobos, but very unlike murderous hobos. They would come in, flop down on the couch, watch a bit, then wander away. Having not come in at the beginning of the film, and not having had the decades of history with Adams’s work, they were prone to ask me what, exactly, the hell I was watching.

I have a tendency to respond to these questions with an over-long answer, and my family members have learned to ask such things while they are walking out of the room, leaning out a window, or fighting a lion, so that they have an excuse to vanish before I get too wound-up. This time, however, I had them captive, and I launched into a diatribe about how playful literature was so influential to me as a young man.

When I was ten years old, I found a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth sitting in a collection of discarded books that someone had given to my parents. I don’t know what their eventual destination was to be, but the Jules Feiffer illustration of Tock (the Watchdog who only went “tick-tick-tick-tick-tick”) and Milo embossed in faded colors on the book cover spoke to something deep in the recesses of my mind, and I flopped down on my bed with the book. This was apparently a copy of the book that had, at one time, been the proud property of the Cleavland library, and was checked out sometime in the seventies. Someone owes some massive late fees, I would imagine, but I am indebted to them. I’ve read this book at least ten times, probably more, and read it to my children at least once each. I owe my love of the English language to Norton Juster and his playful literary experiment.

Some time later, I discovered Roald Dahl, and was immediately a lifelong fan of his work. Again, it is hard to separate Dahl’s wok from that of his illustrator, Quentin Blake, but it was the brilliant and playful use of language that hooked me. To this day, I consider Danny the Champion of the World to be one of the finest novels ever written for children, and I attribute my love of unique and odd-sounding words like “pernicious,” to Dahl’s masterful and accessible use of language.

This love of language, fostered by Norton Juster, Roald Dahl, and a host of other brilliantly playful and imaginative writers, has served me well in my life. I was not a successful student in school, and left my high school career with the flaming wreckage of my college and career aspirations still smouldering in a twisted hunk of disillusionment behind me.

There were a few years of bouncing around, which I’ll skip for the sake of brevity and because I can’t do a cool montage with Eye of the Tiger playing in the background. I do think Clubber Lang would have beat me into a sticky red mess, but that’s a narrative for another time when I can wax rhapsodic about my less-than-natural fascination with Mr. T.

With such a stellar educational background, it’s a small wonder that I didn’t end up basing my entire retirement plan on being a fry cook at Wendy’s. Instead, I have, over the course of the past twenty years, built a solid career as an instructional technologist.

If there’s one thing to which I can attribute the fact that I have managed to achieve a moderately successful career, it’s my love of language. Every time I have ever been interviewed for a job, I have discovered that those against who I am competing have advanced degrees in the field and sometimes years of experience doing the work for which we were both being considered. In each case, I have prevailed because of my command of the English language. Some time after getting hired at my current workplace, I was told by one of my co-workers that, after I left the room for my initial interview, the lead interviewer turned to his colleagues and said, “That is the most articulate man I have ever met!”

Now, I’m not trying to spend a lot of time talking about how great I am, because you should already know that. What I am attempting to drive home is that love of language, grammar, and spelling is more than just a way to experience some of the finest stories ever written. The ability to express yourself clearly and to demonstrate that you understand the language will provide the kind of career advancement that very few other avenues ever will.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy my kids some Douglas Adams books.

An early-morning drizzle, painting the world faintly blue and grey, rapped lightly on the porch roof like the faint sound of a thousand ants tap-dancing. Wilson, fingers laced around a cup of steaming coffee, silently reclined in his cane deck chair and contemplated the scene before him.

The morning’s condensation, combined with the low temperatures, seemed to make the apparitions more visible. Faint misty forms, roughly six feet tall, roamed without purpose through Wilson’s yard. They were incorporeal, as far as Wilson could tell, but seemed to react for some reason to the rain, as it made them appear to shimmer and twinkle like a cluster of distant stars.

About six months ago, these incandescent phantoms had appeared and started aimlessly wandering around the surface of the planet. First widely reported when they appeared to float off the deck of the USS Carl Vinson while on maneuvers in the Indian Ocean, the ghosts (as they were commonly called) began to slowly phase in across the planet, and had now become a common fixture across the globe.

Less than three feet from him, a ghost silently drifted through the hedge, then the porch railing, and hovered in front of Wilson. With no discernible features, it was easy to imagine they were staring deep into one’s soul, and Wilson had to shake the uneasy feeling that this ephemeral being was sizing him up.

A sharp pain traveled up Wilson’s thigh, a badge of pain earned as a child when he was hit by a car. As a young man with daredevil tendencies, Wilson failed to prevail in a conflict with a speeding car while he was on a bike, and the resulting damage to his leg meant that changes in barometric pressure sometimes caused a reaction in Wilson’s leg like someone was standing on his shins.

Wilson held the cup of coffee up to his lips and blew across the surface of the still-hot liquid while extending his aching leg and rotating his ankle. He felt the muscles in his leg flex and stretch, a habit that had served as a placebo for the occasional pain for many years.

In front of him, the ghost flickered, and Wilson froze. He set his coffee cup on the end table next to him and contemplated the apparition, trying to decide if he’d just imagined it.

So, I might want to expand on this one a bit more later. There are some interesting possibilities here …

It depresses me a bit that the number one tag on Tumblr at the moment is LOL.

For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.

Deuteronomy 3:11

As the early morning sun cast its rays through the narrow crevice in the roof of his dwelling, Og opened his eyes and groaned. His back, twisted and knotted after years of sleeping on iron grates and slabs of stone covered with dirty hay, hurt more than usual this morning.

I need to get a proper bed, thought Og as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Maybe that will improve my general disposition.

Being six feet wide and fourteen feet tall made it difficult to order mattresses online, but after more than two thousand years of sleeping on unsuitable surfaces, Og felt that the time had come to get a proper mattress. He didn’t like being so grumpy, and he felt that a good night’s sleep might just change the course of his life. Who knows? Maybe he’d feel so good, he could go out into the world. Make friends. Get into pro wrestling. He’d be an awesome pro wrestler.

First, however, Og had to procure a feather bed that covered roughly one hundred square feet. This might take some doing.

“Hold him still,” yelled Jackson as he dug frantically through his tool box. He grabbed the hammer and tent spikes, cursing silently to himself. He should have been better prepared for this. All the signs had been there, and he’d had plenty to time to get ready.

Neptune, a slight girl of sixteen, struggled to hold the gibbering monster in place. It was bad enough holding down one of the mongrel zombies from the wastes, but these urban types were another matter. Whatever had mutated them was powerful stuff, and the extra limbs and mouths made it extra difficult to avoid getting bitten.

“Okay, I think we’re ready,” said Jackson, shaking a cheesecloth bag over the mutant’s head. Bluish flakes rained down, scoring the flesh everywhere it touched. Within a few seconds, Neptune felt the monster go slack, and it’s mouths lay open in a cruel parody of slack-jawed surprise.

“Can I let him go now?” asked Neptune, craning her neck around to her mentor, her pale face smeared with dust and monster spittle.

Jackson silently noted the scratches on his protege’s arms and neck and made a mental note to remind her to put some salve on her wounds before they got infected. “Yes, Neptune. We can put this one to rest now.”

Jackson gripped the tent spike in one hand, a generic department store spike tipped with a shiny metal blade of his own design. With his other hand, he raised a worn rubber mallet high into the air. Chanting under his breath, he prepared to drive the spike home. This was the only way to bind the creature to the earth and keep it from springing to life again.

Jackson raised the mallet. He closed his eyes for a moment, composing his mind for the final burst of energy required to complete the binding, when he heard a familiar sound, a frantic scratching at the wooden door of the compound, accompanied by a low gurgling growl. There were more of them outside, and the pain of their comrade meant that they were angry.

“Boss?”

Jackson sighed, felt his shoulders slump for a moment. He composed himself once more, fixed his mind on the task at hand, and swung the mallet, driving the spike into the creature’s skull with a loud cracking sound.

“Neptune, you may as well get some more spikes ready,” said Jackson, picking up his bag, “We’re going to be busy for a while.”

As the Sunday morning light poured through the stained glass behind him, Father Harshaw lightly gripped the edges of the pulpit and looked out over his flock. Here was a crowd of people who relied on him to be their conduit to God, and he was having a crisis of faith. The aging Catholic priest, once a dedicated spiritual advisor to his congregation, was now certain that his decades of belief in God had been a cruel lie.

Long before he entered the priesthood, a young James Harshaw had felt a warm comfort, knowing that God had created humanity, his chosen people, to inherit the riches of the universe. Many times, James had looked at his prized possession, a red plastic ant farm, and thought about how similar humanity was to the small insects that scurried about in their simulated underground world. He had taken care to provide for his ants, and felt a genuine sadness when they passed on, leaving his ant farm empty.

Now, with the news full of stories of the invasion, he no longer felt like a cared-for pet in a spiritual terrarium. The invaders had suddenly appeared, brilliant flashes of light marking the arrival of their machines, and the human race had been utterly subdued in less than twenty-four hours.

The invaders, when they appeared on televisions across the world, crowing their triumph through terrified human representatives, we so utterly loathsome and unnatural-looking that Father Harshaw knew, upon seeing them, that the God he had cherished for nearly sixty years was a sham.

Now Father Harshaw stood before an expectant congregation, seeking comfort and reassurance three days after the fall of humanity, and he had no comfort to give. They wanted to know that this was all part of God’s plan, that the Lord would see them through, and all Father Harshaw felt was a twisting emptiness in his gut at the knowledge that he had nothing for his flock.

“Events have transpired,” began the priest, “that have caused me to reevaluate the purpose of humanity, and the very validity of everything we have believed for over two thousand years.”

In the short silence that followed, Father Harshaw saw and felt the shock and discomfort in the crowd. They knew something was wrong, and like frightened animals, were on high alert to discover the nature of the threat.

Each time someone walked across the deck above him, Stanley would squeeze his eyelids tightly shut, hoping that the debris and dust wouldn’t fall onto his eyes. Most times, he was successful, but he would occasionally time things wrong, and a bit of dirt would get through, triggering his tear ducts, and an ocean of salty tears would obscure his vision.

Crouched below the deck as he was, Stanley could barely make out the people walking above him, and each time that dust would irritate his eyes made it that much harder to keep track of them. The narrow spaces between the irregular boards that made up the deck were barely large enough to let in sunlight, which fell in stripes across Stanley’s face like iridescent war paint.

Stanley could best identify the men above him by the sound of their voices, and the rhythm of their steps as they paced or stomped across the deck. The leader, an annoyed-sounding man with a gruff voice and a measured stride, would send cascades of debris flying wherever he walked. The young soldier had a higher-pitched voice and a brisk, but light, walk.

There was a third voice there, but Stanley didn’t have a sense of this man’s walk, because he didn’t appear to move, although his voice seemed to come from different places as though he were walking. The young solder had referred to him as The Spook, so that was how Stanley remembered him and his quiet, raspy voice.

“See, sir?” the young soldier was saying, “We run the scan on the house three times, and nothing comes up. Maybe the signature was an error.”

The Spook laughed, a sound as hollow and raspy as his voice. “Clive, did you calibrate your scanner, or is this another lawn ornament?”

“Fuck you, Spook,” retorted the young soldier. There was a quick movement above, and Stanley ducked.

“You missed,” laughed the Spook.

“Okay,” barked the leader, “can it you two. Let’s finish processing this location and move on.”