Chrome, Random Thoughts

chrome

he awoke staggered to the bathroom
brushed his teeth
a foul taste in his mouth,
blood maybe

he went back to bed and dreamed
foreboding, of monsters

it rained and slowly
the wind rose clearing
the light of the full moon gleamed
on the wet grass

he awoke again and
sat in the bedroom
alone
listened to the sounds of the freeway behind the house
the cars the horns
tires on wet pavement
whistle of passage

the monster
came through the window
in a shower of glass
and killed and ate the man and

ever after its nightmares were
of chrome

~~~~

I reworked this from a piece I wrote 15+ years ago -- not sure I like it. I really like the central gag -- a monster who's afraid of cars. But this isn't rocking my world.

~~~~~

I've almost finished the proposal for "The Elements of Speed," my book on database design. I'll probably send it to O'Reilly for starters and see if they're interested -- Tim O'Reilly mentioned me in a blog post recently, so he knows who I am, in any event.

~~~~~

I finally got the edits into DR & TF last night at 3:30 AM. One more pass to make sure I haven't missed anything and they'll go off.

I'd been up about 36 hours straight when I finished the edits -- Wednesday afternoon I took a nap from noon to two, knowing I had to work all night, and then ran until Friday morning. I can't do that the way I used to, but I still like those stretches when I have to execute at top capacity under real stress. Delivered code to two clients, jumped rope with my new jump rope intermittently, went to the gym, wrote several hours, edited several hours, dictated some ideas for a standup routine I'm never going to perform but might put into a character's mouth ssomeday, babysat two groaning databases that had been pushed to their endurance and got them into a happy state, swung Connor by his ankles, and watched some "Babblestar Galactica" with my sons. Good times.

(I kept calling "Battlestar Galactica" "Babylon Galactica" -- one day I popped off with "Babblestar Galactica," and now this is what we call the show at my house. This is one of the problems of watching TV only on DVD -- the world is bored with your discovery of fine work: "Yeah, we knew that." But for those of you like me who only watch time-shifted, sometimes by years -- "Galactica" is hugely entertaining. It approaches Babylon 5 for scope, exceeds it on execution (in every way -- the dialog is merely good, but that's a huge upgrade from B5; the characterization and other writing approach NYPD Blue in good stretches, which I never thought I'd see from an SF show. The acting is first-rate, the cinematography and effects and soundwork kill. But you knew all that already, didn't you?)

~~~~~

I'll post a new draft of the copyright statement in the next few days. I do like the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License," though it'll require a little tweaking. If no one has further comment, I'll reissue all the PDF/RTF files to Immunity.

Ran across audio of a speech I gave in D.C. 10+ years ago -- not long after the '94 bloodbath when Republicans took the House. Audio quality's not great, but if I can clean it up, I'll mp3 it and send it to Immunity.