If you just randomly clicked on a link somewhere and you ended up here, and now you're all compelled because I'm talking about internet archivists and such, let me tell ya a little something about me. I tend to not do well with structure, and really prefer to do things when I do them within my ever so endless checklist of wants and needs. I have the feeling that I have an obligation to do things, and I blame it on being allowed to put things in archival lists and queues. It was just steamsale, man. I have like ten more games to play now, and I want to try and rebuild the heavy metal theme park my buddy & I built back in the day on Roller Coaster Tycoon. Why are you trying to deny me that? Anyway...
You would think that expressing myself to a potential audience as a voice shouting in the crowd would give me more drive to actually do it, but man, I got other stuff going on just like you. I have to actually do all the stuff I talk about in order to talk about it. Lest someone call me out about it in the comments one day and go, "Yo that shit's lies, man. Ya dindo shit lolfag" and then I'm the one who's the asshole. No thanks.
But to quote Stan Lee in Kevin Smith's overstated commercial flop and understated cult hit, Mallrats, "You keep reading them, I'll keep writing them."
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| And more refers to stinkpalms. |
So, yeah, Holidays and flash flood warnings, and playing Mass Effect, and trying to find a copy of Christmas Vacation and having to settle on the edited for basic cable where they abuse the hell out of saying non-defecation, "shit," but heaven forbid you let grandpa drop that he drank to deal with Christmas going to hell. I don't really feel like going on a censorship rant for no reason, but the mood may hit me.
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| Habenero Hot Sauce Tamale Shooters - only @ Black Angus |
I made tamales with my family. AND for my first time ever, hot sauce, from my bongwater grown habaneros. We've got the beginnings of a Mexican restaurant from the amount of friends and family asking for some, so that's cool. Ended up with 16 or so dozen out of 75lbs of masa. We ended up doing a number of variations with the fillings. That is to say, when I took over stuffing, I mixed it up with all of the ingredients and stopped being as stingy as my sisters with the filling. My mom & I had a spirited back and forth about spreading masa. She's all into the glop it on and spread method, and I'm all about the nice even layer. I feel the superior tamales were shown in the final taste test. You know what the best part of masa is? The thin little bits that get stuck on the hoja that are all crispy. All I gotta say.
In the hot sauce department, it was cool making something out of a plant that grew by complete accident. Inspiration hit in thanks to catching up on Pretty Good Cooking. As luck would have it, the latest episode at the time was Habanero Hot Sauce. My only deviation from Phil's recipe is I added garlic, substituted lemon juice for lime, and in my final blend, I added cilantro. I feel that really boosted the flavor of it, while giving it a nice look in the bottle. Your food should always be pretty. Picture up above notwithstanding.
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| Present Day |
So, yeah, that's what my week was full of. And serving coffee too early in the day and trying to slang words by night. Still waiting for responses back on all of my pieces. The waiting game sucks. Just silent indifference after an autoreply@donotrespond. But it gives you the opportunity to futz about with other things, as you nervously edit everything down by self doubt, and because you realize that rough drafts are way too unimaginative and stale.
I mentioned last week I have a lot of chapters done already that I haven't posted, so today's ramble about antique computer games and a potentially current discipline within the social sciences that will preserve internet history for as far as evolutionary life will allow us to spread the past knowledge of the internet, our diligent internet archivists, leads us to one of those chapters. Those stream of consciousness, mid sentence asides, are exactly what you came for. Same with meta, fourth wall breaking nods to an audience that was never really there. That one was for the internet archivists of the future that know when I finally abandon this site. I'm really swinging for the fences in this one.
Which is just silly because the chapter today is also silly. We met Trip's trainwreck of a mother back in what was at one point chapter 9 (my novel is going through metamorphosis) and now in, for continuity's sake, chapter 21 we meet Decker's. This chapter is light and airy and still needs some work, but it's meant to be a breather chapter before everything gets all serious (well, as serious as it could be).
Decker's mother is sort of an amalgam of my Grandmother and my mother. As well as how my far more latino friends were treated by their mothers. That on and off switch of, "I love my sweet Angel, even if he is a worthless troublemaker," is what I tried to capture. I really need to work on my Spanish in between classes. Would my audience grow if I switched languages?
Is the English speaking world tired of me already? Am I over conflating the dynamics of grassroots marketing with a lazy and self-driven exploratory energy to make myself seem like, to an internet archivist of the future, on the cusp of my game, ready for a breakthrough? Probably.
I always imagined releasing this novel when I was first outlining it. I couldn't keep up with the schedule of that, so this has worked for me so far. I have until, what, February or something for it to be a year of me posting chapters? Lazily at that? I wanted to release a book online then package it at the end, and when I think about it, that's exactly what I've been doing. I thought of it more along the lines of me releasing chunks of chapters, and adding in notes and such in hyperlink, like above, to hilight where certain ideas were pulled from, in order to give a better understanding and more tangible world to the text. Since this is my first time doing something like this, it's pretty unpolished, and sorta slapdash put together since I'm learning on the fly, but like I said up at the top, I do things at my own pace and be real about it.
And that pace has ramped up to give you the chapter I've been hyping up as if to overconflate its value as a pet scene. How you feel about it may vary, but here's my pet dog in his Christmas cape.
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| Source: Internet Archive Photo - Dogs in clothes |
C:\>21_Travieso
Smoke perfumed the deep crimson sunset.
Only ghetto bird song and newscasters behind locked doors filled the air.
Occasional plumes of fire erupted in the hillsides from clones, or Biodroids,
or any of the dozens of hazards to normal Hollywood life.
Trip had whined about his feet for the
entire last mile of their trek across the 818’s empty streets. Decker was
surprised to see some rando hatchback sitting in the driveway of his mom’s
house.
“What
the frag, man? How did they already send someone here? I didn’t use this
address on my application, did you?”
Trip
nodded with worry in his eyes. Low lights showed in the windows with no
movement. Metallic clangs came from the kitchen, causing Decker to tense. His
mother shouted in Spanish at the dishwasher.
Trip
said, “Uh oh, dude. Mom’s home.”
Decker’s
key still worked. He opened the door as slow as he could, wincing with every squeak.
Decker’s latest step dad sat in the corner recliner, watching HV through his
eyelids.
“Tonto
macheen!” Came from the kitchen, punctuated by a thump and a whirr.
Seeing
an opportunity to get as much done without external interference, Decker
motioned Trip to their rooms. Creaking floorboards beneath each step did
nothing to disturb the parental units.
Trip
whispered, “Why are they home?
Shouldn’t they be off, somewhere?”
“Home
off,” The house VI responded.
Holographic
glow ceased lighting the room. Noise rose from the stretching fifty-something
rousted from hibernation.
“I
was watching that,” The strange man yawned. His eyes never opened.
Decker
said, “Trip, I still regret making you secondary admin.”
“¿Mijo?”
Decker’s mom peeked out of the kitchen, “Dios mio, Estúpido. ¿Qué haces en mi casa? Where were you,
tonto? You were supposed to be watching this place while we were traveling.” She
moved to smack whatever part of Decker she could grab.
She
turned to bear hug Trip. “Trevor, you look awful. So skinny. Didn’t you eat
while we were gone? I’ll fix you a plate. I made chilaquilas.”
“Hey
mom, welcome back. We didn’t put any crazy sk-stuff all over the walls.”
“He
was on a liquid diet,” Decker said to the room. In his HUD, he switched through
multiple light and audio frequencies. “Now, madre, amigo, weird guy in my
chair, please try to keep quiet. I’m on a bug hunt.” He disappeared into the
back of the house.
“¿Que?”
Trip
picked up the ball, “Has anyone been by recently, like, claiming to be friends
of ours or something?”
“No,
nobody. Let me ask Richie,” Decker’s Mom threw a chancla at Richie, “Eh, tonto,
wake up.”
Richie
snorted and smacked his lips before returning to an open mawed snore.
“Get
off your culo, rapido! My boys are here.”
“Wha?”
Richie rubbed his eyes against the low lights, “What? Boys? Whose boys?”
“My
boy, Decker, you remember me telling you about Decker. Anyway, he’s a wild one,
not like my Griselda.” Decker’s Mom thriced herself and muttered a prayer, “Pendejo
husband of hers.” She turned and slapped Decker with another chancla, “Ay guey,
why haven’t you called your sister? Anyway,” She pinched Trip’s cheek on her
way into the kitchen. “That’s Trevor. He’s my boy’s lover or something, he’s
always around, they live with each other.” She returned and shoved a steaming
plate of chilaquilas into his hands.
Richie
coughed till he wretched something he had to swallow. In between breaths he
managed a, “You boys like… somekinda… Bert n’ Ernie… or sumthin’?”
Trip’s
face epitomized ‘WTF’. “You thought we were a couple this whole time?”
“Well,
maybe not the whole time. But you two moved out together. I know what my son
likes.”
“And
what the frag is Bert and Ernie?”
Richie’s
face took a turn at ‘wtf’, “You ain’t ever watched no Public Broadcasting? That’s
wrong with ‘merica these days. Public access is the heart n’ soul of this
country.”
“What,
are you too good for my son?”
Trip
swallowed a mouthful of food, “Uuuh, I’m not Decker’s type?”
“My
boy is too much of a romantic for you. Like his mama.” Her eyes locked with
Richie’s, they made kissy faces at one another.
Richie
said, “Never thought going to a company conference would plant me neck deep in
a love field.”
Trip
laughed as if it was the correct response, “How was your guys service?”
“Richie
doesn’t believe in marriage.”
“Not
a bit.”
Dead
silence filled the living room. Trip scooped another mouthful to avoid any more
awkward conversation.
Decker
popped his head back in the living room, “You guys make it really hard to scan audio.
You know that right?”
“I’ll
give you audio.” Decker’s Mom slapped her chancla in her palm.
“Love
you too, mom.” Decker pointed his path to the kitchen.
“You
could have stocked the fridge,” His Mom said trailing behind.
“It
would have gone bad by now. You’re welcome.” Decker said from the kitchen.
Trip
finished chewing, “So, Richie, has anyone been by, looking for us?”
“No.
What, you boys got like parole officers or something?”
From
the kitchen came, “Aye Dios, mijo! Is the jail thing true?”
“Mom,
did you see us on Capital Punishment?”
“You
know I don’t watch that trash.”
“We
weren’t,” said Trip.
“That’s
a relief. You know what I tell you boy. You go to jail, you-”
“-I
know, I know, I stay there.” Decker returned to the living area, mother in tow,
“House is clean, relatively speaking.”
“¿Qué
dices?”
“Apparently,
Roplaxive hasn’t been here. Unlike the apartment. That place has as many bugs
as roaches.” Decker looked to his mother, “I thought you were in LSV, mamá.
What are you doing home?”
She
said, “We came back looking for you, travieso. I thought you were in jail.”
Richie
followed, “Little while back, coupleuv sharp dressed folk came ‘round our
motel. Wanted to know if we’d seen or heard from yinz. Fellers didn’t even
bother to leave any contact info.”
Decker
took his mother’s hand, “Mom, believe me on this, The 818 is not a place you
want to be right now. War’s coming. The fighting hasn’t blocked off all the
roads out. I need you and Richie to go. Tonight.”
“Tonight?
We were just about to go to bed and you want us to get up and-”
“-Mamá,
en serio, you need to leave town. Head to The Clean Sheets Motel, I’ll send the
gps marker to your car.”
Decker
paused for a moment and everyone began at once.
“Guys,
c’mon, this is important. I love you, mom. But I can’t save the day if you’re
here. Just believe me when I say the less you know, the better it is for
everyone.”
“Son,
what have you done? What have you gotten yourself into?” Tears coated mother’s
eyes. “Is it drugs?”
“Well,
I wouldn’t call drugs a problem, but I got sloppy on the job, mom. But I’m,”
Decker looked to his friend, “we’re fixing it. But I can’t have you where you
can be used against me.”
“Richie?”
She looked for guidance.
“It’s
yer house and yer kid, don’t ask me.” Richie shifted in the recliner, digging
the remote out of the side.
Decker
hugged his mother close, “Don’t worry, mom. I’m going to make everything all ok
again.”
“That’s
what worries me.”
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