If you have had the good fortune to be living in a secluded bunker incapable of receiving television or radio signals, you might not know that the end is near.  Worse, you might not know how many of us are eagerly anticipating that day, welcoming the silence, the cessation of hostilities, the termination of robotic voices heralded by the non-stop ringing of our phones.

You would think that someone like me might welcome all the attention.  It’s nice to know that my phone number is known to someone other than my parents.  That warm glow of attention evaporated with the sound robotic voices, nothing more than unholy harvesters of my attention.

Our national suffering will end in less than 48 hours.

All of the election-related voices emitting half-truths and hollow rhetoric, insults and inflammatory images, they will finally be silenced.   Facebook feeds will be returned to the ho-hum minutia of food consumed and errands completed;  gone will be the postings asserting that people on their side of the discussion are clearly smarter, kinder, and better for our country, while the people on the other side are ignorant,  selfish, and “ist” (i.e. sexist, racist, ageist, elitist, jerk-ist, zombie-ist, etc).

It’ll be nice when the misleading statements and ridiculous promises we hear are related only to things like hemorrhoid cream and cable companies.

It’s hard to think that the one thing we have in common as our nation looks down the barrel of the ballot is our collective fatigue over getting harassed over the phone, in the mail and on the radio and TV.  After the chads have settled, we can all go back to the consensus generated by the state of apathy that settles over the country between presidential election cycles.

I am looking forward to returning to peaceful time when I’m ignored by the political machine, because, the only time they seem to know I exist is when they want something from me.

This year, I’ve decided to vote for the candidate that spent the least amount of money filling my recycle bin with useless mailings and my voice mail with long-winded messages that I couldn’t wait to delete.  Which, as I’m sorting the propaganda, is starting to look like a vote for Roseanne Barr.

And then, I remember that she’s well-known for atrocities against her writing staff, and I must stand in solidarity with my fellow scribes, and make sure that she doesn’t get the opportunity to nationalize her policies. By the end of her first 100 days, she’ll have ferreted out all the people who made jokes about her candidacy. She’ll have them put on a list, and rounded up for a quick trip to Gitmo. While there, we’ll all be water-boarded, and forced to watch the Conners live their lottery-lifestyle dream, over and over and over again.

Maybe I should re-think my voting plan.

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I pay far too much attention to bathtubs.

I’ve always been that way. I remember as a toddler imagining that the chrome plate with its two screws holding it to the side of the tub was a face, and the screws were eyes, and the lever which controlled the drain stopper was a nose.  It was my own private Pinocchio, and I was oh so gentle when tweaking that lever up or down, lest I injure my friend.

There came a time when I wished I hadn’t imagined the chrome circle as a face, because, it became awkward to have it staring at me while I was naked and going on about my business.  In those moments, it was convenient to hang a washcloth on that nose and cover its eyes.
As time passed, and my contemporaries moved onto taking showers, I remained, in large part, fond of a good cleansing soak.

People speculated that my reluctance to shower was brought on by a perfect storm of seeing “Psycho” and reading Stephen King’s “It” soon after learning about the sewer-dwelling necromancer that reanimates pets buried via the toilet. That necromancer, with his army of goldfish, crocodiles and hamsters, liked to invade households through the plumbing and torture them with the corpses of their former pets.

I will neither confirm nor deny this theory, except to say that I have never actually read Stephen King’s “It,” and didn’t see “Psycho” until I was out of college.  Necromanced hamsters, on the other hand, could possibly be a contributing factor in my ongoing preference for avoiding the shower.

It’s not like I never take a shower. If that were true, I’d have graduated college with a fine crop of radishes cultivated in the thick layer of top soil on my skin.

But, back to the bathtub.

This week inspired a whole new crop of thoughts about bathtubs, as I got acquainted with a whole new tub in my mother’s apartment.This tub is oval-shaped and wider than the typical bath, which I suspect is handy for recreating that one scene in “Pretty Woman,” not that I anticipate that will be happening anytime soon.  A basin built for two but only being used by one was not the most cheerful thought.

The more awkward discovery was yet to come. I soon realized the placement of the chrome plate, which has but two screws and no lever for a nose, is in quite an unfortunate spot.  That was the moment I noticed it reflected my underthings right back to me.

I admit that I don’t particularly want that view while I’m relaxing. And while I’ve not seen much of that region since I added a sub-basement, I am not interested in getting reacquainted.

With no handy hook to hang a rag, well, other methods for blocking those prying eyes had to be arranged.

But that’s another story. Which I will not be sharing.

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As Halloween decorations spring up in yards all over the city (and, I assume, the country), I am constantly fighting the urge to critique the displays.  Most of the ones I see make me want to fix them.

I see handfuls of “spider web” lazily draped on a fence or bush, and they make me want to cry.  They’ve managed to take one of the few commercially available tools for creating authentic looking atmosphere and turn it into a sad statement of decorative apathy.

Where are the true builders of a nightmare? The people who take the time to really stretch those webs to their fullest extent, to make them not only believable, but, make them invisible when the sun goes down, guaranteed to cause a shudder of fear and revulsion to the poor soul who walks into the gossamer threads of pure evil.

In my mind, a Halloween display should tell a cohesive story, one which unfolds like the layers of an onion, the longer you look at it, and the closer you get to the door.  I want every element to contribute to the illusion, and not pop the bubble of my growing terror.

In other words, if you are making a cemetery and have a “stone” that reads “Rest in Pieces?” You thought it seemed so clever on the shelf, didn’t you? POP goes my little bubble of disbelief.

My highly refined sense of proper Halloween displays is directly at odds with the predominate decorating theme out there. The kindest description I use to describe it is the “hodge-podge” approach. This method seems to apply the wisdom of Christmas displays to the Halloween season. The motto for this technique?  “More is better.”

I hate to break it to you, but with scary? More is definitely not better.

Maybe I’m asking too much. I’ve got the wrong perspective.  Most people haven’t contemplated how to actually create a scary setting. Most people just want to put out some nice decorations and have an excuse to pretend that that the Christmas lights they’ve left up for the last year work just as well for Halloween. Maybe most people have lost the true meaning of the holiday:  terrifying young people into expensive psychiatric care.

I have no nostalgic memories of spectacularly decorated yards for Halloween. The scary houses were scary year-round, with authentic run-down fences and weeds, and a broken window or two.  The most anyone bothered to do in the way of seasonal yard decorations was to make a nice, traditional jack-o-lantern and put it on their porch, where it would usually get covered in a few inches of snow on or about the 31^st, and then would sit there until it rotted into a creepy lump of mush.

Now, of course, Americans spend seven billion dollars celebrating Halloween.  I just wish they’d gotten better value for their decorating dollars, and tried harder to create a truly memorable experience, instead of a holiday version of a cluttered yard.

Admittedly, I’m not particularly fond of Halloween, so, my disappointment with the assorted yard displays is more than a little ironic.  I really have no business being critical of people’s attempt to liven the holiday with a bit of Halloween cheer.

Stranger still? I don’t get this worked up about Christmas decorations.

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If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, for many years, I cheerfully responded “taller.”
This was a much more satisfying response to me, because a) I pretty much always go for the joke, even if it’s a weak one that has been used a billion times, and b) I didn’t have a better answer.   I’m liable to answer the same way if you were to ask me that question today, because, I’d love to be able to get stuff off the top shelf without the rope and harness.

I realize that knowing I’d like to add a few inches to my height is hardly helpful in identifying my true destiny. Sadly, I’m far more certain of my desire for extra inches than I am with knowing what path I should be following.

“Follow your bliss” is great advice, and I totally would do that as soon as my bliss arrives. I put in a request for it to drop by and guide me wherever I’m supposed to go, and I suspect it got lost. I bet it went to the house with the serial killer, and we all know what happens when good things happen across the path of those with a tendency to perform terrifying, random acts of gardening when there’s snow on the ground.  The worst part is that I paid for the “Extra-helpful De-vaguifying Bliss” and that is $28.47 I am not getting back.

When I’m feeling philosophical, I have answered “useful,” because, being useful is awesome, and, well, it doesn’t commit me to a specific trade.  The answer is less awesome when you realize that the exact reason this answer is awesome is exactly the same reason it is useless, because if this is your heart’s desire, then it doesn’t particularly matter what trade you pick.

Of course, there seems to be a wee bit of disconnect between what you are destined to be, and how you keep yourself in cream puffs and porcupines.

I’ve heard there are people who get paid to do what they love, but it seems to be one of those myths that has been busted for all practical purposes.  You are probably more likely to receive money in exchange for following your bliss if you have figured out what it is. People hesitate to throw money at you for just doing things you like to do.  I learned this when I wanted people to pay me to watch T.V.

Maybe the trick is just to learn to enjoy what you do.  It’s part mind control, and part self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you tell yourself you like what you do, and then it’s a simple step to convince yourself that you are, in fact, doing what you love.  Seems worth a try.

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There are few things crueler to a writer than successive days of battle with the arch nemesis, and nothing more to show for it than a blank mind and a rising panic.

You didn’t know writers had nemeses?  You suspect that I’ve conveniently invented my arch nemesis to have an overly dramatic way to describe something that’s probably ridiculously insignificant, don’t  you?

Are you insinuating that writers overreact to things? That our over-active imaginations tend to turn ants into fire-breathing lizards with horns and machine guns and a magic talisman that turned people to gerbils?

Okay, fair point.

Now I’m wondering if I should even bother to tell you about this whole “arch nemesis” thing, because, it’s just another example that illustrates this tendency to hyperbolize everything, which means the next time I have an authentic problem, you all will just suspect I’m crying gerbil lizard.

It’s true. Writers learn every life-lesson from reading stories and fables with morals.

I’m not helping my case am I?

Well, in this case, I am not entirely exaggerating. Instead, I’m personifying a more abstract concept in concrete terms for comedic effect.  That’s something else we do. And, for those following along, I’ve now stretched my initial teaser with its promise of epic action and blind fear over seven paragraphs, which, with any luck, has heightened your interest in the piece as a whole, and kept you reading along greedily, eager to find out exactly who or what I consider to be my arch nemesis.

My arch-nemesis, in fact, looks a great deal like me, which might put you in mind of the “evil twin” trope.  It makes me wonder which one of us is the “evil” one.  After all, no one is the villain in his or her own tale.

Where was I? Right, I was padding out the story, trying to hit my word count, and, with any luck, “punch” the whole thing up a bit and heighten the suspense without unduly frustrating my readers. It’s a fine line, and I suspect,  with this sentence, I’ve very nearly crossed to the side of frustrating. Sorry about that.

My twin sounds like me, too. She speaks to me in my voice, only she is much more critical of things than I am.  She looks over my shoulder as I write, and tells me that everything I just wrote is humorless, unoriginal, and boring.

She loves to tell me that every idea I’ve ever had is not good enough, and encourages me to just give up. She tells me I should just tell you all I had too much going on, or had an emergency or just couldn’t hack it, and you’ll all forgive me, and then I can be done, and go to bed early.

I generally refer to her as my internal editor.

She’s not all bad. She does have some good points. She has better hair than I do, and is much better than me at bowling and miniature golf.  I’m slightly jealous of her incredible knack for the scathing insult, and her impeccable taste in literature, food and screenwriting. She never tires of reminding me of her aptitudes and opinions in the most hurtful ways imaginable.

How I loathe her.

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I have been thinking hard about young adult fiction lately, and figure its time I dusted off my little time-travel setting and write myself the Next Big Thing.

Except, I still have some *teensy* little problems to overcome before I get started.  Like, I still haven’t figured out the characters.  Who they are, or what they’re like, or even how many of them there are.

I was thinking that maybe one of them could be a girl, with a lightning scar on her forehead. She got this peculiar injury in a car accident when she was a baby. Her parents were killed, so, she’s an orphan.  I haven’t decided whether or not she knows archery or not.

One of the characters could be a really smart guy who reads all the text books before school starts, and is sometimes a know-it-all, but, usually saves everyone’s bacon when they’re in a tight spot.  Also, of course, he has a huge crush on the girl with the scar.

Maybe there can be a girl who just moved to town, who complains about everything, and has a crush on the mysterious sparkly guy. I suspect, I’m going to make him a zombie, because I think the vampire tropes are on the way out.  At least, the sparkly vampires.

It might be cool to have a zombie from the future apocalypse get zapped into the past, where the people aren’t familiar with the disease vectors and dispatch protocol for zombies, and the disease causes way more havoc than the bubonic plague, and the population gets so decimated, even without air travel, that our heroes have to fight the zombie plague in two time fronts.  But, then, I just realized the time paradox of two zombie fronts is going to be too much of a headache, so,  I’m going to put that on the back burner for now.

My original plan was that the world was pretty much this one, but, with a secret time travel squad protecting the time stream, but, I’m hearing that dystopian worlds are really what publishers are looking for, so maybe I should institute a law that no can live past the age of 30. To keep the people from rioting, those over 30 are entered into a lottery,  and 30 of them are selected to fight to the death in an arena called “The Carousel,” and only one can emerge as the  victor.

Sure, I’ve read a number of writing sites out there that seem very wise, and they tell me that I shouldn’t try and capture the latest hot-selling book trend. That I should just write the book I’d like to read. This is excellent advice, except for part where I want to read a book that sells millions of copies, and is beloved by an entire generation and is considered to be well-written and inspiring. I mean, is that too much to ask?

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There are some days when I regret the decision to write a humor column.

Mostly, this is because humor is much, much, much harder than anything else I could’ve picked to write about, you know, like rocket surgery or brain science.

Why couldn’t I have picked a subject matter that didn’t demand a certain level of cheer, like dental surgery or auto repair? Forget that I know nothing about either of these topics, I can probably make something up, and fake my way through the finer points, which, now that I’m thinking about it, turns that into a comedy of a different sort.

Certainly, choosing the easy way out has never been my style. I tend to turn my nose up at making anything easy, which either means I’m an uncompromising visionary or a masochist. Most the time, I land on the side of masochism.

When I get into those darker moods, my humor tends to wander into bitter sarcasm, which is not actually very funny, and not at all the tone I want to project.

Yes, I realize this is me taking the hard path again.

The rational part of my brain, which, let’s face it, is not the one I’m listening to when I’ve fallen into a pit of despair, tells me that I’m listening to fear, and that fear is a big fat liar what lies, but, I’m not listening to little Miss Rational. She’s boring and not nearly as convincing as the scary horrible things that have leaked out of the dark parts of my brain.

And now I’m picturing a certain killer snot monster from outer space hanging out on my ceiling? Thanks for that.

The weeks I lament the choice I made are, as you might’ve guessed, those weeks when I’m feeling less than optimistic. You know, like the week when I read the entire Hunger Games and my brain got a case of “over-identify much” and decided to wallow in delicious depression and loneliness. Not remotely hilarious.

The good news is that most weeks are not filled with dark thoughts and snot monsters.

The better news is that even when the dark weeks have decided they missed me and must visit, there’s usually a touch of kindness that makes it possible to get through it. Like a thoughtful gift basket from the Café Du Monde, or a friend taking a moment to say a few kind words.

The best news is that there is no such thing as a small act of kindness, and I’m grateful for each of them. Especially if it means I can channel it all into a column that might, just maybe, be funny, and neither depressing nor sarcastic. Fingers well and truly crossed.

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Some weeks, it’s a simple matter to come up with a topic to write about. It pops in my head, and in a few minutes, I have something that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve eaten a bowlful of ground glass.
Those are good weeks.

Then there are the weeks when all I feel like all I’ve eaten for three days is those shimmering bowls of glass.

Those are the weeks were I hoard stray thoughts in hopes that I can hammer them into something presentable, and for a few minutes I can keep the panic from exploding out of the mess that is my shard-filled stomach.  The sad part is that my gut knows that I’ll probably never be able to do a full column on elf rights, the tyranny of ice cream cones, or that strange, shifty-eye pigeon that keeps following me around.  False hope is better than no hope at all.

There are more than a few of these random half-formed ideas that I’ve worked on for hours, getting them almost done, and then realized they were hate-filled stink bombs that should never be loosed upon the world in any form. Those, I’ve kept to myself, thinking maybe they can one day be salvaged.

And, sometimes they can be. The one in which I wished my blind date were actually blind? I completely re-wrote that one at least four times.

As Sunday approaches, and I still haven’t come up with a workable idea, I look through these half-finished orphans, with hopes that I might be able to make them into something workable quickly, so that I can move past one more deadline.   They mock me.

Sadly, most of the time I read through them, remember why I stopped writing it, realize I don’t have a clue how to fix it, and close it.

Then I really start to panic.

I call family members and confide to them I haven’t got a single clue what to write for the column, and beg them for a nugget of something—anything to write about.  Admittedly, this is part procrastination and part inspiration.

Then there are times when I sit myself down, in front of the computer, and force myself to write something, and hope that whatever I write will turn into an actual idea.  I have no idea what I thought would come out of typing “It was a dark and stormy night” over and over again, but, it made me feel like I was, at least, writing something.

This rapidly devolves into a maddening check of the word count, which boils down my hours worth of blood, sweat and tears to a mere 128 words.  Thanks a bunch, word count tormentor.

At this point, I remember that I need a picture to go with the post, and I spend three hours scouring free image sites hoping to find something that could possibly fit with the content, and  then, panicing again when I realize I’ve only got two hours left to post, and it takes at least an hour to set everything up.  This is also largely a procrastination ploy.

Finally, I re-read, and fix things, and try and “punch it up” a bit, and then decide it’s good enough,  I’m just going to send it out and hope no one unsubscribes.

You probably don’t have to guess into which category this idea falls.

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Today, I was saddened (and, I won’t lie) a bit thrilled to learn that I had inherited 10 million dollars because some relative in Nigeria had met his/her end. I didn’t know anyone in my family lived in Nigeria, or even that someone in my family had 10 million to bestow on me, an unknown, but clearly favored, relative. I’m not even certain if my relative was a man or a woman, but the nice payout authority of the Central Bank of Nigeria is anxious to hear from me.

I was touched.  No one has sent me an “old school” Nigerian scam in so very long.

It made me a bit nostalgic about the old days of the internet, just a few short years ago, when all the scammers were Nigerian, and all they wanted to do was give me money.  It was a simpler time.

In those days, I only had one e-mail address, and only one password.

Now, just like snail mail,  I get more junk e-mail than mail I care about, and my inbox is filled with people who want to enhance body parts I don’t even have, or emergencies regarding bank accounts I don’t have.

Sometimes, they use my name, as if they are some long-lost friend contacting me, out of the blue.  I won’t tell them that no one except bill collectors calls me “Kathryn.”

Yes, okay, you caught me.  Sometimes my mom uses that name when I’m in trouble. But, she usually doesn’t bother with e-mail. She just calls.

I have occasionally been tempted by the foreign language programs that promise I will speak any language in a matter of weeks , for a mere $100, plus shipping and handling. Really a bargain, but, I admit to being skeptical. It might be because they spelled foreign “fouregn.”

Sure, it’s easy to pick on their spelling, and use them as a cheap joke.  I’m not even going to apologize for getting a laugh at their expense,  unless, of course, I failed to actually get a laugh. In that case , it’s just embarrassing.

In addition to creative spelling and grammar, I also admit to getting really good chuckles out of “internet security” offers, since I wonder if they protect me from people like them. Honestly? If they really cared about my security, they’d stop sending me unwanted spam.

If Dante had been around in this century, I suspect that he’d have created one more special hell for those who try to steal money from people via e-mail scams.  Maybe there’d be room for them in the one for child molesters and people who answer their cell phones in the movie theater.  If anyone deserves to have their movies interrupted, it’s those people.

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