Tilapia Were Falling From The Sky

I guess hurricane season has become like baseball season—pretty much all but one month a year. But anyway, last Friday I was thinking about anything but hurricanes. The first I heard of Hurricane Sandy was from a guy on the subway who was selling candy and generally raving about a wide variety of subject matter. As much as I tried to ignore him, and read, when he mentioned "Miss Sandy" and how we should stay home next Monday, when I got back to the office I looked at the crystal ball and sure enough, there She was, coming our way. It's not like I never check the weather, but the weather websites usually have so many ads on them it's worse than watching college football on TV. The ads usually jump off the screen and try to disembowel you with dripping fangs, or even worse, you get the spinning rainbow ball and have to force quit. I just can't tolerate that much pain.

There have been long stretches in my life when I had no TV at all, and only recently have I had the internet at home. My phone already wakes me up in the morning and goes with me everywhere but the bathroom, so I don't want to ask it to give me weather updates. So... I very easily could have gotten up this morning and headed off too work, thinking, wow, a lot of wind, I wonder if a snowstorm is coming like last Halloween? I went out for a walk a few hours ago and it was no worse than that, at this point. One of the subway entrances had the measly orange tape (that indicates it's closed) removed, so I could have easily bustled down the steps with my lunch pail and my work attitude, resigned to spend the next nine hours in someone else's garden. At which time I would have been devoured by rats, since, as everyone knows, the only thing that keeps the underground rodent population at bay are the rats of the human variety. As they sucked out my eyeballs and gnawed on my liver, the last thing running through my mind would have been that guy selling candy, "Watch out for Miss. Sandy!"—and me thinking: I thought Sandy was a man.

October 2012 Newsletter

October 2012

New Blog!

STATE THEATER

State Theater will be writing about movies.

Old, new, popular, experimental.

This is also where I'll be posting, one by one, my

100 Favorite Movies of All Time list.

Not necessarily the greatest movies of all time…

except to me.

My website is here:

RANDY RUSSELL

…until next time

Randy Russell

randysrussell@gmail.com

Why Not Ten

It's hard to concentrate on anything else when you're trying to make a big change in your life. And I'm trying to make many big changes. One is trying to make my job better. I raised the issue at my job that I need help. I'm not imagining that I need help. I've been working crap jobs for nearly 40 years, and in that time I've had some difficult jobs, some cushy jobs, some pretty pleasant work situations, and some impossible ones. I've got a pretty good idea of my strengths and my limitations, and what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, and about how much can and should be done in a day. When I say that I am now doing the job of two people, that isn't merely a boast or an exaggeration. That is what I'm doing, and it's wearing on me.

I've also been trying to start my new novel for a year and four months now. Some would call that "writer's block" but I find that term not useful at this point. The happy thing is that I have finally got started on my new novel (though it wouldn't be the first time to get started and then throw it all away and have to start over). My new novel is called... well, it's a secret, and it's about 10 authors who are writing novels. If that sounds similar to The Doughnuts (then you read The Doughnuts, and I'm taking you out to dinner!) that's because it's based on the structure of The Doughnuts. And each of these authors has previously written a novel that hasn't been published yet, and in each case, every person they have given that novel to, to read, has vanished mysteriously.

That means I have to come up with ten names for the ten novels each of these characters has written. Sometimes I think I come up with these crazy ideas just to keep myself going.