My neighbors got a dog.

Now, I’m a cat guy. Cat’s are sneaky and quiet and just a little bit evil, and every once in a while you catch them looking at you like they’re weighing the fact that you bring them food with the fact that they hate you and want to eat your soul, and they’re not sure whether or not they should smother you in your sleep. So they’re a lot like me, is what I’m saying. Anyway, I’m a cat guy, but I don’t exactly have anything against dogs.

Except when you take your dog out at five in the bleeding morning, right under my bedroom window. And, of course, my neighbor isn’t all bleary-eyed and wanting to crawl back in bed and die. No, he’s a morning person. “Who’s a good dog? You’re a good dog! That’s right! Yes you is! Yes you is!” He’s like the Tony Robins of the dog world. Awaken the Canus Maximus within you. And then there’s this jangling, which I guess is him scratching the thing and rattling the collar.

He leaves the dog tied up on the side of his house, on a thirty foot rope. Our houses are about fifteen feet apart. My lawn is not littered with dog crap, and I woke up this morning to find that he had begun excavating the foundation of my house. I think he was trying to get into my basement.

I don’t like talking to people, so I’m not looking forward to having to ask my neighbor, “hey, asshat, could you please keep your dog from relieving itself on, and then digging a crater in, my yard? Oh, and could you shut the goddamn hell up until the sun has finished rising?” So instead of talking to him, I think I’m just going to buy some rat poison.

Of course, after I’ve killed him, I’m still going to have to figure out what to do with the dog.

Richard Blumenthal.

For those of you who (wisely) don’t keep up on national politics, Richard Blumenthal is a dick. Specifically, he’s the Democratic nominee for a Connecticut US Senate seat. He’s suffering some controversy as of late, due to some slight misstatements he’s made to the press.

Oh, no, wait, he said he fought in Vietnam, when in fact he didn’t.

Now, I don’t have the best memory in the world. Sometimes I forget where I put my keys. Every once in a while I’ll get up and go into the kitchen, and totally forget why I went in there. But I’m pretty sure I’d remember fighting in a goddamn war.

Seriously, how in the nine fires can you make a mistake like that? “Yeah, man, The Nam was hell. My whole platoon got taken out by a bunch of VCs, and I was held as a prisoner of war. Left to rot in a pit filled with my own filth, tortured. Then, when I got back home, this small town sheriff gave me grief, triggered a flashback. I blew up the whole damn town, man. Oh, wait, that was Rambo Ha ha, my bad! Vote for me!”

The best part is that he apparently figured no one would bother to check. Which I guess sort of makes sense. When you tell a lie that big, a lot of people are just going to accept it. I mean, you wouldn’t think people would be crazy enough to lie about being in Vietnam, would you?

Also, everyone that’s covering this story? Stop calling what Blumenthal said a “mistake” or a “misstatement.” It’s a lie. He’s a liar, who told a lie.

Which makes him perfectly qualified to be a politician, actually.

The BP Oil Spill.

These asshats have basically destroyed the Gulf. At the same time, they’re making enough profits in one week to pay for the cleanup. They are, of course, trying to legally limit their liability. Because god forbid that a corporation be held responsible for something in America.

Their efforts to stop the spill have so far amounted to “drop a cup on it,” and “stick a straw in it.” Now they’re talking about filling the hole with golf balls. Bloody hell.

Sarah Palin, of course, says that Obama is in BP’s pocket, and that’s why he hasn’t taken action. Yes, professional oil exec fellator Sarah Palin said that. “Drill Baby Drill” chanter Sarah Palin said that.

Sarah, do us all a favor: stay out of business you don’t understand, and focus on what you’re good at, like preventing teenage pregnancy.

This is AJ and me. It’s also our first picture together. We’re both using it as our profile pics on Facebook.

AJ, the murderous little strumpet, is under the mistaken impression that she can get more comments on her Facebook than I can on mine. Please leave a comment letting her know how wrong she is. And please not: we’re only counting comments on the actual photos, so please comment on Facebook, not here.

“I knew that if anyone other than me was describing these symptoms I would lovingly handcuff them and take them to the hospital and help the shit out of them, whether they liked it or not.” -Rob Delaney

The description:
We all know him and love him, but as loyal friends we must do what is right and protect Thomas and the future of our earth from himself.

The latest news:
In a recent interview with Mr. Galvin, he said “I am fully aware of the fact that I am completely unqualified to care for, raise, or influence the development of a child. Or a dog, for that matter.” Clearly, there is hope in the prevention of spawn.

The next upcoming event:
The Intervention and Forceful Enrollment of Thomas Galvin into a Monastery

The group:
Let’s Sterilize Thomas!

A couple of friends have mentioned that I’ve been fairly absent from the Internets the last couple of weeks, and they wanted to know why the Tubes have been devoid of my trademark witticisms and scathing sarcasm.

The short answer is that I’ve been in too bad a mood to make fun of it all. Yeah, the Things That Make Me Angry? That’s me when I’m mellow. Lately, I’ve gone past “humorously agitated” and all the way to “genuinely upset,” and that’s just no fun to write about.

So, at the risk of further throwing the universe off balance, the Galvin Institute for Higher Sarcasm brings you yet another Thing That Don’t Make Me Angry.

I was still awake when the sun rose this morning, so I planned to sleep in a bit. Instead, I woke up at 7am, because something was doing its level best to bore a hole through my window.

I ignored it at first, but after fifteen minutes of “thwap, thwap, skitter skitter thwap,” I decided that I needed to find out what, exactly, was trying to invade my home. So I rolled out of bed and jerked back the curtain, and came face to face with…

A tiny little finch. He was sitting on the window sill, looking up at me like I had caught him trying to steal a cookie out of the cookie jar. He didn’t even fly away, at first, just kind of looked at me, hopped a couple of times, pecked at the window screen, and then took wing.

He was adorable, so I let him live.

Speaking of:

This is the most adorable thing I have ever seen. Which is a trick, because “slick green skin, that’s usually kind of moist,” isn’t that high up on the list of things I expect to provoke warm and fuzzy feelings. But this little dude manages to pull it off.

Well, okay, maybe this is the most adorable thing ever:

I mean, look at the tongues.

And in case you’ve got some kind of mammalian bias:

No, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sit in the corner and squee like a little girl.

A few weeks ago (or maybe a few moths ago; my sense of time is all wonky), I saw a headline on the Fox News home page: Urgent: Somali Pirates Recapture Hostage. The article was about Captain Richard Phillips, who had been taken captive by pirates, and who had failed in a brave attempt at escape.

For Phillips, this was an urgent situation. For the SEALs that were tasked with rescuing him, it was an urgent situation. For the commanders calling the shots, it was an urgent situation. But for me, safe behind my desk in Rome, New York? It wasn’t particularly urgent. Nothing I could do could change the outcome of that situation. Nothing I learned would have helped Capt. Phillips escape.

The Swing Flu (which I call Piggy Sniffles, and which I refuse to call H1N1, because you don’t get a do-over when naming your crappy pandemic), has been in the news for weeks. Television and radio stations have assaulted us with information, the CDC had been all over it, and the World Health Organization has declared an official pandemic. But I don’t have Piggy Sniffles. I don’t know anyone who has it, either. And I’m pretty darn sure that this virus isn’t the way I’m going out.

And Terrorism, my God, the Terrorism. Everything is about the Terrorism these days. You can’t bring a bottle of water on the plane because of the Terrorism. You can’t take photos at the mall because of the Terrorism. The MPAA has actually argued for stronger copyright laws because of the Terrorism. But I’m more afraid of high cholesterol than I am of being bombed by a random extremist. I’m actually more likely to be killed by my car than by the Terrorism.

Here’s the thing: news channels and papers are in this business to make money, and the only way to make money is to get more eyes. And the best way to get more eyes is to make everything urgent, everything life or death.

But it isn’t. Somali Pirates and Piggy Sniffles and The Terrorism, and all of the other things that the media blathers on about? Chances are, it’s never going to affect you. The things people get all spun up about? Chances are, it’s just wasted time and wasted energy.

So here’s my humble suggestion: stop. Unplug the television. Turn off news radio. Don’t read the paper. Take a week, just a week, and stop listening to all of the voices telling you how you, your family, and your pets are going to die, unless you watch the special report at eleven.

Take a week. You’ll be amazed at how many things don’t kill you. And when that week is up, maybe you’ll discover that all of these things weren’t quite so urgent, after all.

“Are you okay? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Um, so, you do realize that you look like you just smoked a big fat blunt, right?”

“What is wrong with your eyes?”

“God, when was the last time you slept?”

That’s just a small sampling of the conversations I’ve been having the last couple of days. So, for those of you playing along at home, no, I’m not sleeping well again, but that isn’t particularly interesting. What’s interesting is what happens when I do manage to hit some approximation of REM.

A few nights ago, I dreamed about Database Ninjas. These were full-on Ninja, with the black pajamas, the masks, the funny little split-toes boots, the straight-bladed katanas, the whole nine yards. They dropped down silently from the ceiling, concealed by their smoke bombs, and stalked silently through the forest, which had somehow been planted in my office. When they got to me, they bowed, slid in front of my computer, and installed Oracle on my laptop, then disappeared as silently as they had come. Also, this entire dream was a cartoon.

In another dream, I was out for a walk, enjoying the sunshine and birdsong, when a car fell on me. Yes, fell on me. I haven’t figured out how, exactly, the red station wagon became airborne, but it fell from the sky and pinned me to the ground. Contrary to popular belief (and several urban legends, only a few of which I am responsible for), I am not strong enough to bench press a Buick, though I did try mightily. I was relieved when I saw a friend walking over to me, since I assumed that she would call for some sort of help, but she just patted me on the head, assured me that I would be all right, and encouraged me to keep pushing. Stupid girls.

I also had a dream about Ultimate Frisbee, which isn’t all that unusual, considering how often we’ve been playing it lately. Of course, when we play, the opposing team usually isn’t made up of rabid wolves. Or possibly werewolves. I wasn’t quite clear on that point, and I didn’t get close enough to ask, what with the slavering fangs of doom and all.

So, yeah. Nighttime hasn’t been the most restful of times.

“Thomas, you’re always so negative.” “Thomas, why don’t you do a post on things that make you happy?” “Thomas, every single thing you post implies that you’re one bad day away from committing murder, possibly on a genocidal level. That joke’s been done, and frankly, you’re kind of scary.” “Thomas, doesn’t anything put a smile on your face?”

Fine.

It’s summer, and I’m happy about that. And since The Google and The Digg seem to love Top Ten Lists, here’s a bunch of things that I like about summer.

1. I Can Shut My Heat Off This is the kind of thing you never think about until you have your own place, but as soon as you’re actually paying your own heating bill, the sound of the furnace kicking on becomes synonymous with the sound of money being lit on fire. It’s warm out now, and that means I don’t have to set fire to piles of cash to stay warm.

2. Ultimate Frisbee One of the best sports ever invented, and a great cardio workout, as well. Some of you may scoff at that statement; I assume said scoffers think of “Ultimate Frisbee” as something played by khaki-shorts and popped-collar-polo wearing college students in between classes. You, my friend, have been deceived. When we play Ultimate, it looks suspiciously like Rugby.

3. Volleyball Another one of the best sports ever invented. One of the things I like about Volleyball is that I can pretty much go all-out without the fear of hurting someone. Though I did smack a girl in the face with the ball once. And my teammates are kind of in danger, when I lunge for a ball. Also, I broke my ankle once, when I went up to block and the hitter came down on top of me. But other than that, it’s strictly non-contact.

4. Basketball. Not one of the greatest sports ever invented, but still fun. This also tends to end up looking suspiciously like Rugby. Or Judo. Pretty much anything except Basketball, which we all suck at.

5. Voss’ The best hot dogs on the planet, bar none. Even the buns at Voss’ a great; they cook them on the same skillet as the dogs, so they’re golden brown and kind of buttery. The food here is so good that people willingly wait in line for half an hour, just to get a hot dog or seven.

Thomas’ Special Summertime Tip: the best time to go to Voss is in the middle of the day, when it looks like it might rain. The line is usually pretty short then.

6. Of Wolf And Man Fun fact: Metallica wrote a song about werewolves. Of Wolf And Man is kind of my “I’m about to do something physically improbable” theme song. That comes up a lot more during the summer.

7. Bare Feet Mine, that is. You all can do whatever you like. When I used to do Karate, I trained outdoors, barefoot, all the time. Now that’s mostly limited to Volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee, but I still like the feel of grass between my toes. Or sand. Or sandy grass.

8. Cool Summer Nights This one is kind of oxymoronic, but one of the things I like about the hot summer days is the nights when it gets sort of cool. There’s nothing quite like a seventy degree night after a week of ninety degree weather. I guess this sort of falls under the “but it feels so good when I stop banging my head on the wall” category.

9. Longer Days In the winter, I’m usually at work before the sun comes up, and often don’t leave until it has set. Which means I can go for a few days at a time without actually seeing the sun. In the summer, though, I actually get the chance to go outside like a normal human being.

10. Bonfires Combining my love of all things burning with my tolerance of a very select subset of the human race, a bonfire is a great way to kill an evening. Also: s’mores.

Super Secret Extra Bonus Thing That Thomas Likes About Summer: Movies. This is the time of year, that magical time, when the cars drive fast, the guns are fully loaded, the explosions… explode, the average IQ drops by ten points, the air is filled with the smell of popcorn, and we all sit down, shut up, and watch mutants battle aliens for the hearts of supermodels with telekinetic powers.

Wolverine. Star Trek. Transformers. Terminator. Harry Potter. Public Enemies. ‘Tis a good time to be a fan of things that go “bang,” “boom,” “vroom,” and “crucio.”

Also, Word knows how to autocorrect “telekinetic.” That’s kind of awesome.

No one that follows my blog – nor anyone that’s gotten spammed with a couple of hundred Thomas Posted a New Note messaged on FaceBook – will be surprised to hear that I write a lot.

Communication is kind of an interesting thing for me. I’m really not good at small talk; I don’t have the conversational skills, or sometimes the patience, to fill a whole lot of dead air, so if you want to talk with me, you’re probably going to have to do a lot of the lifting. But when I do have something to say, and when I can control the conversation, I excel.

That’s why I like giving speeches and writing; it lets me craft my message, to frame things just so, to set the tone and the temp. Everything works together when you’re writing. It’s usually much more elegant.

So, I write a lot, and I post a lot of what I write. But there’s a lot more that I don’t publish. I’ve got quite a few blog entries sitting around waiting for the right occasion, and a few ideas sitting around, waiting for the right motivation.

I also have a few longer pieces. I have one novel that’s essentially finished, and that I’m in the process of revising. I have notes and plot sketches – some fairly extensive, some fairly brief – for at least seven more. I really don’t know what I’m going to do with all of that, but at the very least its served as good finger exercise.

I’ve tried following the suggestions of various professional writers, tried to mimic the process that they say they use when they write, but I’ve learned that my brain just doesn’t work that way. When I write, even when I’m writing something that will stretch across two hundred pages or more, I do a lot of daydreaming, and have a lot of plot points and arcs in my head, and I’ll write myself little notes as inspiration strikes me, but sitting down and actually hammering out a complete outline is just about impossible for me.

I’ve recently changed the way I write my long-form fiction. I generally like to use the third person when I write, because there’s usually not one single character that sees everything I want my readers to know. The problem with that is that all of the sections, and therefore all of my characters, end up having the same voice – mine. Here’s Thomas describing how Sarah feels about her boyfriend. Here’s Thomas describing how Michael prepares to meet his enemy. And so on.

While first-person writing is excellent for developing a character’ voice, and also excellent for pulling the reader into the story, it’s just too limited for what I want to do. So what I’ve been doing – and this is sort of an experiment, so I’m not sure how well it’s going to work – is writing a draft from multiple first person perspectives. Each section, or chapter, is from a particular character’s point of view, which gives the reader access to their voice, their thoughts, their emotions, et cetera. But the next section might be from a totally different character’s point of view. Then, when I revise it, I’ll re-write all of those sections as third person narratives, but keep all of the internal dialog and such. The technical term for that is deep third person. It might end up sucking, but so far, I like what I’ve seen.

Joss Whedon, who does character-driven fiction better than pretty much anybody, once said (something along the lines of) “the key to writing good fiction is to hate your characters.” Drama arises from conflict. There won’t be any conflict if you’re too nice to your characters. So, if you want to write good stories, figure out worst thing you can do to your heroes, and then do it.

It can be hard to view your own writing objectively. There have been times when I’ve been sitting at the keyboard, staring at the words on the screen, and calling myself the worst hack on the planet. A few days later, though, I’ll go back and be pleasantly surprised by how those words turned out. There have been other times when I thought I was writing gold, but later realized that I was too tired, too drunk, or both, to have been at the computer at that moment, and should have just gone to bed.

Taking a few days, or even a few weeks, away from your work is essential. When you step away from your work, when you forget what you’ve written and why, you can look at it more objectively, like you’re reading it for the first time. When you’re looking at something you wrote a long time ago, and it makes you gasp, or want to weep, or pump your fist in the air, you can be pretty sure that what you’ve put down is worth reading.

You can also learn a lot about yourself by the things you write. Your sense of humor, your romantic streak, your hopes and dreams and fears, all have a way of coming out on the page. There have been a couple of times when I’ve looked back at some of the things I’ve written and said “Damn, that was cool,” followed almost immediately by “you know what? I think I need help.”

“Did you know,” Quin asked, “that Kim Jong-il is a robot?”

“Shut up,” Terry said.

“It’s true. Same model that they tried to set up in those Steel Mills in Iowa. Turns out they’re great at running Communist nations, too. Now, I don’t know for sure that it was Thomas that took him out, but I don’t know of any other Secret American Agents that were in Korea at the time.”

“Secret Agent?” Terry said, incredulous.

“Yes sir,” Quin said. “You see, his… little adventure in the Dominican caught the attention of certain US agencies. They’d been trying to take out Jose El Papi Jose’s Bandoleros for the better part of a decade, and Thomas brought the whole organization to its knees with one home made knife, in one night. When he came back state side, they recruited him, and his first mission was in a certain Communist Dictatorship…”

---

Thomas was strapped to a dentist’s chair. A pipe was leaking water onto the floor behind him, and the only light came from a dim, bare bulb overhead. He reflected on the life that had brought him to this place…

His skill set was, admittedly, unique. Software, religion, foreign cultures. He had the heart of a warrior, tempered in a forge of loss and pain. And, perhaps most importantly of all, he had no close friends, no family.

No one to miss him if he didn’t come home.

“Son, we’re asking a great deal of you…”

“Think nothing of it, Mister President,” Thomas said humbly. “A simple investigation into the Korean Nuclear Weapons program, and the assassination of an international terrorist? I’ll be home by the end of the week.”

“I hope so,” the President said, extending his hand. “Your country thanks you.” The President saluted, and Thomas returned the gesture, turned smartly, and boarded the waiting helicopter.

That had been five days ago. He wasn’t sure how he had been discovered – perhaps the presence of a six foot tall white man in a nation that forbade foreign visitors had given him away, but it was also possible that he spoke Korean with a slight Mandarin accent – but it didn’t really matter. It had been foolish to accept a drink for that mysterious beauty at the bar, but he had let his guard down…

Done in by roofies. What a sad epitaph.

And so, here he sat, tied up and awaiting interrogation. He had been briefed in Korean torture techniques. In fact, he had a plan…

“Good day, Mister… Thomas.” Thomas looked up. He had been joined by the infamous Korean interrogator, Doctor Painhurter. “And how are you doing today?”

“I’ll be doing better once I make the world safe for democracy,” Thomas said defiantly.

“Perhaps,” mad Korean doctor said. “We shall see. Why don’t we begin by explaining what agency you work for, and what your mission is in our glorious nation?”

The interrogation lasted several hours. The mad Doctor Painhurter tried the best tools in his arsenal, all to no avail. He blasted New Kids on the Block music non-stop. He held Thomas’ eyes open with toothpicks, and set a television playing the latest reality shows in front of him. He doused him with cold water, and turned on a fan. But Thomas refused to crack.

“Fine,” Doctor Painhurter said, “you leave me no choice. You will answer my questions, Mister Thomas. You will.” He picked up a pain of pinking shears from his tray of medial equipment, and grabbed Thomas’ hand. He studied it for a moment, then grabbed the pinky finger. “Let us start small, shall we?”

Thomas gritted his teeth.

---

“He never did tell them anything,” Old Man Quin said. “Even though they took his fingers, one knuckle at a time.” He touched the corner of his eye casually, and no sir, he was not crying.

“What a terrible story,” Terry said. “How did he escape?”

“That’s the thing,” Quin said. “Thomas knew how the Koreans tortured people. In fact, he counted on it. He knew that Doctor Painhurter would start with the smallest, weakest fingers… leaving him the biggest, strongest, deadliest fingers. And when that second finger was gone… his hand was small enough, and slick from all the blood, to slip right out of his restraints. He grabbed those pinking shears, dropped Doctor Painhurter on the spot, and made his escape. Now, I don’t know for sure that he used those pinking shears to take out the real Kim Jong-il… but like I said, I don’t know of anybody else that was over there just then.”

Terry let out a low whistle. “Man. That’s some story.”

“Yes, they are,” said a calm, chill voice. “Very interesting stories, indeed.”

The men looked up and gasped: Thomas was standing there, listening to their every word.

Tune in tomorrow for the Anticlimactic Conclusion to The Legend of the Half Handed Man!