The Story Folder

I own a ridiculous looking notebook that is decorated with about forty line drawings of cats surrounding the words “Live. Laugh. Meow.” I’ve taken to writing the best points of my day before I go to bed, and though I don’t actually manage it every night, I’ve done it enough this past week to gather some shareable highlights:

• What a joy to sing among Lutherans, good voices and bad joined together as the harmony breaks out.
• Had the rest of the afternoon to myself. Love the quiet after a nice brisk walk in the freezing rain.
• Found my favorite brand of conversation hearts at Walmart. Ate 1/3 of a bag within the course of an afternoon. I love chalky sugar.
• Bought a new exercise game for my VR and now I can’t lift my arms.
• LSB 740
• Played soccer. Remembered why I liked it.
• Feb. 5: I should do something for my birthday. I always tell myself I’m not going to bother, and then I change my mind at the last minute.
• My legs ache so good after playing soccer both Wednesday and Thursday. There is no pain so satisfying as that of micro-tears in your muscles healing stronger.
• Feb. 7: Never bothered to make plans or even tell anyone about my upcoming birthday, but my parents succeeded in tipping off my coworkers to the fact that my birthday is tomorrow anyways, by sending flowers to my workplace. Likely to make doubly-sure, Mom ordered the bouquet shaped like a birthday cake. Look at this absurdly pink thing—it has candles. As my niece would say: I LOVEIT. 
• (But seriously: I LOVEIT.)
• Consequently, I now have birthday plans for tomorrow. Dinner followed by a Komets hockey game with one of my favorite families here in Fort Wayne.
• Feb. 8: the Komets (down all their best players due to either injury or fighting-induced suspension), finish at a dismal 3-6 against the Oilers, but the Johnsons and I laughed through and spent the time we didn’t grumble about the Komets making fun of the row behind us, who showed up in the second period and filed out five minutes into the third, taking their 90 decibel rated voices with them. (FYI: 60 dB is normal for conversation; they conversed at the approximate volume of lawnmowers.)
• Happy 33rd birthday to me! What a satisfying day.

Writing accomplishment of the week:

• Johnson looked like a dad. He had the wife, the kids, and the dad bod, and though he rarely told jokes he always enjoyed them; the subtler the better. He was also the only member of the team whose entire family history didn’t hail from Europe, and it hurt Patty’s misplaced sense of advocacy every time Hench called him Token Black Guy, which was why Johnson sometimes called himself Token Black Guy too.

Bonus points this week awarded to best spam:

First place: “You should be a part of a contest for one of the greatest websites on the net.” I will take it under advisement, totally not fake username ΝΤΕΤΕΚΤΙΒ.

Runner-up: The spammer who copied and pasted “âàæíî” into a comment 54 separate times, which, naturally, made me think of a cartoon character falling over a cliff.

(Admittedly, not the best example, though a magnificent dub. UUUUUUGGHHHHHHH. A better representation for AIEEE!!!: Sid from Ice Age.)

Two hundred and nineteen, for the record. Including this one. Also, does it surprise anyone that the Schultz siblings text in descriptive and largely grammatically correct sentences?

Which reminds me, picked this up during my unannounced hiatus:

Speaking of bluescreening:

If I was unknowingly the main character in the Truman Show (which, full disclosure, would have been canceled years ago for lack of compelling action and character development)—but say it hadn’t been canceled and there were secret cameras telecasting my every move—I’m pretty sure there’d be fan theories on those TV show discussion forums about whether or not I was secretly insane. I live alone in a single bedroom apartment with a cat and a loftice, which means I go no holds barred crazy person, especially at night when the sun goes down. What it has to do with the sun going down is beyond me, but there it is. I leave the bathroom door open at all times, talk to my cat in a Muppet voice, and laugh suddenly and without warning as amusing thoughts come to me.

Case in point: tonight I was getting ready for bed, thinking about the original Star Wars (like you do) and about that awful CGI George Lucas added to his series because he can’t keep his mitts to himself, and I was specifically visualizing that moment in the special edition of the first movie where Han Solo walks on Jabba the Hutt’s tail like the crime boss wouldn’t have immediately had him shot by his minions for blatant disrespect, and, naturally, Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs popped into my head. So I’m standing there in the shower in a dead quiet apartment, save for the sound of running water and the quiet desperation of an old bathroom fan trying to keep up with the steam, and out from behind the dark of the full bath’s curtains (because I find it relaxing to shower in low light with only a nightlight casting weird shadows up the wall) comes this single, dramatic line:

“…and he ATE himself to death.”

I have said nothing else out loud this entire evening. I am going to giggle once, a little shrilly, tell my cat I love her in Mokuba Kaiba’s voice, and take myself off to bed. Check back here tomorrow at 8/9 Central for our next installment of the Truman’s Going Insane Show.

Lately I’ve taken to calling my cat “Booger” in a stupid voice, goodness knows why; so much so that I’m afraid she’s going to start thinking it’s her real name. Naturally, to combat this I’ve started immediately following up “Booger” with her real name, said in a lower, more serious tone. I’ve been doing this for a couple of months at this point, so by now she undoubtedly thinks her name is “<muppet voice>HiBooger!<husky voice>HelloHarper.”

In other news, a new tenant has moved onto my apartment landing. He’s crowding my apartment door, but I missed my chance to evict him when he was first setting up shop. He’s built quite the mansion now, so I guess I’m stuck with him. Here’s a shot of him being neighborly:

He’s also taking care of other unwanted intruders, leaving their desecrated corpses to litter his walls like some sort of macabre decoration. More unfortunately, every time I see him he’s less likely to go screaming into his hidey-hole. He’s taken to holding his ground, undoubtedly glaring at me as I lock or unlock the door on my way in and out. I can’t help but imagine he’s got bigger game in mind:

If you never hear from me again, you know why. Any silence from here on out definitely has nothing to do with my work ethic.

LOOK AT IT. *Loud oohs and aahs follow*

In other news:

Long on earth the battle rages,
Since the serpent’s first deceit;
Twisted God’s command to Adam,
Made forbidden fruit look sweet.
Then the curse of God was spoken:
“You’ll lie crushed beneath His feet!”

Please note: I am, in fact, in this video. Or at least my voice is. I happen to be placed perfectly in the path of the director. And yes, I realize this is not a very good update for a site called “The Story Folder,” but at least it will please my mother. That and it gives me chills, and there is nothing I like better than to share thrilled shivers. Someday I may actually do so with writing.

I very nearly made it two months without an upload. If it weren’t for my meddling IT Guy, I would have gotten away with it too. He sent me notice that he had performed some housekeeping on the tech side of the site, and then very gently insulted me. (“Also, haven’t commented on there yet, but you be approachin’ that two month mark. :P”) The nerve of some people.

(Also, a good deal more seriously: Danke schön, Herr Schtep-Hen!)

Part of his email also included instructions on ways in which I could fix some of the problems I’ve been complaining about for the past two and a half years. You likely won’t notice any of these edits, but since I have nothing else to talk about I am going to point them out. I’ve spent the morning cleaning up my menus (the only thing of real interest here is that I added a rhymed description to the Poetry Page and created a novella section on the Story Page; it only seems fair to let people know what they’re in for when they click on a link) and going through my blog, scouring each post for videos that I can replace with links to my YouTube page. Yes, I have a YouTube account. It exists solely as a repository for my videos.

But the real discovery this morning was this: that the titles for my blog posts are ludicrously unhelpful. That said, these titles do—when viewed in order with the chaff removed—imply an intriguing story, involving the murder of an officer of the law:

This is not how I want to go
A Nickel’s Worth of Free Advice
I find public confession cathartic – don’t mind me
For Blood and Money
We Attack at Dawn
I’d say I have a good excuse, but
TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY
I guess it actually WAS me, officer
Well – There you go
I don’t get no respect
My Honor demands I pick up that glove and give satisfaction
Flying Officer Irv Peterson Bites the Big One

The story having turned ugly, we then get into the psychology of guilt and a possible motivation behind the tragic death of Officer Peterson:

And I would’ve gotten away with it too
They Found Me
In the meantime
I’m Back (sort of)
Requiem for a missed chance
Radio Blackout
All Quiet on the Midwestern Front
In fact
GASP
Schizophrenia
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
HOLY CRAPOLI
Foiled Again
FOR SHAME

In the next section, a desperate escape attempt follows:

AA666
Nine Million Feet in the Air
Homebound
Yeah, but who’s driving this thing
Wait
What SAY you
Point Is
Congrats, I guess
Liquor on Isle 2
Whoa buddy
Well, here you go
Abandon All Hope
Until Morale Improves

Morale, however, never improves, as the story ends, like all tragedies do, in Chicago:

Unseen Crackdown
No Harry Don’t Look at the Light
The Last of the Light Bleeds Out
The Black Hole of the Midwest

Mind you, this does not take into account such posts as “Eyebrows in Heaven”; “I live somewhere in the vicinity of the Wood Between the Worlds and an English-to-Idiom Dictionary”; “Rhymes with Idiot”; “Schmidiot”; “The Many Faces of the Lernaen Hydra”; “Adventure Time with These Guys”; “By Hook or by Crook”; “King Friday Speaks”; and “There is no entry in Microsoft’s thesaurus for the word snot.”

(Though, now that I lay these out in order too, it appears there was also a high-adventure epic fantasy woven between the grittier threads of the noir novel at play in the foreground.)

On a totally serious note, it must also be pointed out that, since I’ve only tagged approximately 5% of my posts with appropriate descriptors, your best bet for locating anything on my site is to Google it. Still, I do find it poignant that the blog post left standing for nearly two months as the most recent update to thestoryfolder.com was the diatribe about Chicago (“The Black Hole of the Midwest”). The obvious implication being that the city truly did exhibit a gravitational acceleration strong enough to hold everything from particles to electromagnetic radiation to a 32-year-old office worker, once more inexorably sucked into an airport capable of deforming spacetime.

Somewhere on my blog is a tagline that reads: “A folder of ideas, stories, ramblings, and rhymes”. I am, however, beginning to realize that the tagline should read, in its entirety and in all caps: RAMBLINGS.

Also: I’m back, kids. I don’t know yet what that means for my post schedule, but time—as always—will tell. While on the plane between work conferences, I filled out a couple of pages worth of notes for a quarter-baked story I’m hoping to throw into a cake pan later this month, but time will only tell that too. In the meantime, I could scalp some of my other projects to fill out this post, but as they deserve full development, I’ll fight off the temptation this time. Save for this set of lines, which will someday serve as the synopsis on the back of a book:

“What’s the ‘E’ stand for in ‘E-Team’?”

Standish crossed his arms. “Evil. Obviously.” The hello, duh was implied.

“Let’s be honest here,” Hench added without looking up from the paper. “It certainly doesn’t stand for ‘exceeds expectations.’”

July is going to be a rough month for updates. As you may have already noticed. We’ll see how August shapes up.

In the meantime, I receive spam from several online sources, and one particular email caught my eye; so much so, I forwarded it to my regular email from my work one so that I could share it to my blog. It contained such gems as:

• He was a young lady
• traffic was a beast and your egomaniac sister is acting up again
• She realized that could have been a mistake when Date Nine looked her up and down then frowned
• Dating can be fun some fun!
• Sorry for exposing your secrets, roughness
• Be well picked Pete, I’m not used to that kind of date
• dodge personal topics
• Perfect for finding things that you have that resembles your date.

Until finally closing on this last helpful piece of advice:

• And speak your