December 4, 2002

Today is the day to give advice to a complete stranger..

We decided to do a review of childhood on Flak Magazine. Check out my analysis of "the ugly years." I don't mind if you laugh at the picture; that's what it's there for.

Also, I've got a book review on Popmatters of The Future Housewives of America.

27

George lolled in bed, staring at the ceiling. He had that overrested feeling of somebody who's been on vacation much too long. He wanted to stay in bed, but he was at the annoying conclusion that he was too awake to be there. He stretched, and all his joints cracked in a satisfying manner.

Sometimes a person procrastinates all the way to the end of the line. They exhaust every possible means of putting something off, of ignoring it, of whining about it, and then, to their surprise, one day they have no other option but to do it. That doesn't mean that they suddenly acquire the desire to do so; they just realize that they have to get it done.

George didn't want to follow this through anymore. He was sick of talking to his family and friends, sick of the mysterious letters, sick of trying to figure out where his inspiration went. But he knew that he had to follow it through, or else there would be no resolution (in his life, or in the real, 'meta,' way.)

Besides, he really had nothing else to do.

George rose and performed the life-affirming action of opening his drapes. The non-life-affirming weather of early Washington DC winter stared back at him. The brittle cold dryness of winter was not helped by the fluffy, glorious snowfall that other areas of the country enjoyed. The sun will shine mockingly while a cementlike wind crawls beneath jackets. While the area enjoys fairly mild weather, the cold days in Washington can be largely unrewarding and, in a word, crappy.

Still, George was not to be stopped.

You may remember his brother, Tom, the simple mechanic. And again, it must be reiterated that Tom was not simple because he was a mechanic, he was simple because he never went to college. Just joking. He was simple because that was simply his way. He had neither the pretension of George nor the raging bitterness of their sister Meredith. In some, Tom Foreman was the child of his parents.

Tom, through the trickery of spam, had 'accidentally' been inspired to write a short story for an internet literary site. And you know how that goes. Write for one site, an editor at another site asks you to write, and so on and so forth. Suddenly you're a star.

Well, not really, but it was still highly unusual for Tom. On a whim, he had decided to enter his name on a search engine, and was genuinely surprised to see not one but one-and-a-half pages dedicated to him (minus the ninety-three pages of all the other Tom Foremans in the world.)

George, normally and unusually, wouldn't begrudge his sweet brother his success, if only it didn't apparently come at his own expense. He wasn't sure how he would handle it with Tom; he didn't normally speak with him, anyway. How am I going to get anything out of Tom? George thought. He doesn't even know what's going on with his own life. He fixes cars for a living.

George might be sympathetic to his brother, but he was still a snob.

George was again tempted to return to his big screen TV and comfortable house for distraction. But he knew what he had to do.

The worst thing about Tom was that his shop had caller I.D., so once George dialed the number, he was in it for good.

"Georgie boy! How are ya?"

George cringed. But he would forge ahead.