I ended up watching Time Bandits with Sophie. It was an excellent way to spend an evening. We sat around munching on homemade chicken fingers and chortling at the awesome special effects in the 1981 classic film by Terry Gilliam. Sophie noted that the Supreme Being looked an awful lot like the Wizard of Oz except the WoO had better effects.
She kids because she knows the Monty Python guys can take it.
Anyway, I've been dinking around with the novel manuscript - not that I can be bothered to pick it up off the floor and work on it - but turning it over in my head, considering some character development, tying up a couple of loose ends and even finding a way that makes the ending more entertaining (I hope). I'd put it on hold for a long time - months, I guess, but it's been backstroking its way across my stream of consciousness for a week or two and I actually added Edit at least 10 pages on History We Don't Know to my To Do list this week.
Me having a To Do list is huge.
Me adding a goal for the manuscript is massively huge. Like the giant in Time Bandits who wears the ogre's boat for a hat huge.
Today something happened that cinched it though. It being the fact that I have to get back to work on the revisions for this book and get it out there for rejection or publication. I don't even give two shits anymore. I just want to finish it.
I was getting ready to run some errands and I dropped some coins into my hoodie pocket. The coins sounded funny. I fiddled with them and they clinked with a higher pitch than usual. Did I accidentally scoop up that franc from my summer in France? I reached into my pocket and dug out three quarters. One of them was from 1944. Made of silver.
Well.
Part of my manuscript is set in the 1940s.
I'm seeing the signs. It's the yellow lab roaming the neighborhood this afternoon and Teri's post about writers and labs. It's me cleaning out the garage over the weekend and saying to MathMan, "That is not mouse poop." and then running the line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off through my head over and over. You know the line, right? He's in the restaurant pretending to be Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, and the maitre'd threatens to call the cops and Ferris takes the phone and the rather rodent-like maitre'd grabs for it and Ferris says "You touch me and I yell rat."
And then I go upstairs for dinner and what's on TV? Ferris Bueller. And there's that scene. My ears pop, perhaps my nipples hardened. I'm seeing signs because why can't I hold onto the ridiculous, the nonsensical? If I can't buy liquor on Sunday because somebody's god might take offense, then I'm going to see signs and omens in 1944 quarters, rat poop, movies and dogs.
How about you? Do you see signs? (Smart remarks about No Parking, no smoking signs, etc. will get you a purple nurple. I know some of youse guys and you won't be able to resist.)
