2004-01-18 - 3:46 p.m.
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Lord of the Things
I've been writing a lot lately, not so much in here at all but still writing. I'm planning a series of short stories that are randomly done styles. I don't like to sit still at all and I certainly don't like to tell stories the same way twice, so this should be fun for me. Each story will be prefaced by an older poem, which will hopefully enhance or deepen the meaning of the story. And, hopefully, it won't totally suck or be an absolute waste of my time.
I've had a lot of time to think over a few things about my life lately and I'm glad to say that things have been going well as of late. Plenty of interesting events to open my eyes wide the fuck open.
I quit smoking at New Year's and I notice a significant decrease in my overall tiredness and apathy. I guess nicotine made me not give a fuck about a damn thing. Either that or I'm too high strung now because I'll kill you and wear your scalp like a hat if it means I can smoke a cigarette again.
Just kidding. I wouldn't wear it all the time.
In all honesty, I have very little to complain about. I'm going to Mississippi this week to go cover the Mississippi Association of Mortgage Brokers Annual convention. Fantastic. It's being held in a casino in Biloxi and I can guarantee it will be one of the more complicated things I ever have to do for a job. 6 hour plane ride and I get dumped by my lonesome into Mississippi, with a roll-on bag of field equipment and a shoulder bag of clothing.
Let me explain to you a little Belmo fact: I have never left the East Coast of the United States. I might have even said this before, but it holds even more potency right now. This one trip will mark the furthest I've ever been from home. This is never a big thing for some people seeing as nowadays you can hop in a plane and be somewhere within hours and come back in time to sleep in the same bed you woke up in, only you were 500 miles away from it earlier that day. That's fantastic and all that people do that and more power to them, but I'm nowhere near that right now.
This is big. Think of that one scene in the Lord of the Rings where Sam actually realizes that it is the furthest he's been from home. Now subtract that whole part where they go to the mountain 3 movies later and smite evil by throwing a ring in lava and replace it with a big room filled with 25 tables and a couple hundred mortgage brokers. Take away all of the magic and orcs and talking trees and hobbits and wizards and crazy battle scenes and CGI reality and replace it with coasters and fancy pens with the logos of a couple dozen mortgage professionals on it.
So, in short, my experience will be absolutely nothing like the Lord of the Rings. In fact, it may be the exact opposite.
However, I will be staying at a casino, which is pretty awesome because of one thing: drinks. The one amazing factor about casinos is that, for the price of a tip, you can have anything you've ever wanted made for you. Hell, sometimes the waitress doesn't wait for you to get your money out and she walks away and that gin and tonic you just ordered is absolutely free. Granted, you've probably sunk about $50 in the machine in front of you, lost $200 more on the blackjack table (if you're lucky) and the least you could get out of it is a free 5 buck drink. But if you promise me free booze and the prospect of walking away with more money than I showed up with, I'm a happy man.
I'm looking ahead to this trip and I know it will be just another work day - a couple hundred miles away from home. And a few drinks deep. And in a casino, in my own hotel room with my own shower and other things.
So, in short, it will be nothing like just another work day.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
