The end of Chilldaddy?

Say goodbye to this guy.

I'm still chill, and I'm still a daddy, but in order to reflect my recent growth in maturity and sophistication, I am now calling myself, 'The Big Plain V'.

Here is where I update now.

I got nuttin

I'm feeling pressured to update cuz a all the recent activity ya'll been up at, but I don't got much a whatnot to say. Still here. Still workin. Still writin. At the moment I'm reading blogz, as you can see the little picture a me taken "at the moment".

I'm thinkin a startin up a new blog. One what just has family stuff an writin stuff an regular Ray stuff all mixed together like a fine stew. That ways I kin just have the one blog ta ignore. Ya know? Like normal folk.

Whaddya say? Would y'all come to visit me on a new blog site?

(And speaking of changes, I just gotta say that it amuses me to no end that Ms. Bunnyjo comes back on the scene after almost a year, and the first thing she does is tinker with her blog name. . . Same ol' Bunny. . . Gotta love 'er. . . Looks like I'll have to update my links - again.)

A blog post.

So here’s something weird that just happened:

I took a break from my writing to wake up and get some fresh air by going for a walk through the woods on the trail around my house. I get into the trees, and I look up, and I’m face-to-face with this deer almost. Ten yards anyway, pretty close. “Oh, hello,” I say. Then when she doesn’t answer, I say, “Wow, I’m surprised you let me get this close.” And she’s just staring at me and I realize that this kind of an abstract thing is happening and I get just a tiny bit creeped-out, so I say, “You know, you should probably run or something,” and so she does.

Whew.

But there’s these other deer in the woods too, and I swear they were kind of circling me as I walked. They stayed about fifty yards away, but they kept moving around and watching me and they wouldn’t run away which would be proper deer behavior. I figure that either they were mustering up the nerve to mug me, or maybe I was close to their nest and they had eggs or something. Anyhow, they never made their move and I got home okay.


Check out my word-count. Betcha can't guess when I got sick and was trying to quit smoking. (hint: I'm still sick and still trying to quit, but I'm getting used to it)

photos of sexy women in locker room

With a title like that, I'm hoping this will be one of the most-viewed posts in Chilldaddy's history. And if you have just read this first line and are suddenly feeling the initial tingling sensation one gets when it begins to dawn on them that they have been betrayed, lied to, made a fool of - relax. This post does indeed deal with the subject matter of 'sexy women', and equally indeedly, photos of them, which reside in our lockers at the hospital.

This initial photo sets the stage. Three lockers. Andy's, Craig's, and mine. Note that of the three of us, only Craig cares to lock his locker. In my ten-plus years of living in this locker, I have never had a single item stolen, except for a certain personal item that somehow found it's way into Andy's locker. It was in fact, a sexy photo - of my wife. After that, tension escalated. Eyes en-squinted and looked sideways at co-workers. Private detectives were retained. Anonymous tips were made to government agencies. Retaliation was inevitable.

Thus began a history of distrust and unspoken hostility.

The latest development in this mire of unfortunate circumstance began perhaps two weeks ago. A picture of Craig's girlfriend, Kelly (also one of our co-workers... hmmm, better give y'all a quick player roster: Andy B. - surgical tech, Notoya B. - surgical tech and Andy's new wife, Craig - X-ray tech, Kelly - surgical tech and Craig's beloved, Cindy V. - cytology assistant and my beloved). So a picture of Kelly fell out of Craig's locker and he did not notice. I found it, and as a joke, attatched it to the outside of my locker with a note that said: 'Ray's other woman'.

A fierce battle of wits ensued. A ballet of attack and counter-attack, 'tit-for-tat' (another innocent insertion of a word designed to attract internet browsers), 'you-got-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter', and 'you-got-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate'. The whole unpleasant drama was recorded on this scrap of paper you can see to the left. The caption evolved, the paper changed lockers, and at one point, the picture of Kelly was replaced with a picture of a dude.

Even now, as I look back over the visual reminders of our epic war, I cannot help but shake my head and wipe my nose to clear the running snot of sadness.

Okay, on to the present day.

Yesterday I arrived at work to find that Andy had taken the drama to whole new level. Hanging on his locker was the following series of pictures.

Somehow he had acquired pictures of me with my wife, and Craig with Kelly, and then spent a considerable amount of time on his computer, cutting, pasting, and trimming, until our handsome and rugged faces were obscured by his weasel-ey visage. (By his own admission, he was supposed to be raking his yard that afternoon, so, you get some idea to what extent pure evil reigns in his heart) The note above the collection of forged photograph's proclaimed them to be: 'all of Andy's women'.

What can I do? How do I top that? I'm just a simple husband and scrub-tech, and I find myself ill-equipped to do battle in a war of this scale. Sure I've referred to myself as a 'creative genius' in the past, but I've sworn only to use my powers for good. Faries, unicorns, frolicking little elves. I cannot face this darkness. I am outgunned.

And so I turn to you.

What should I do?

Here's the pathetic little bit that I've come up with so far. Step-one: under the caption 'All of Andy's women' I wrote 'fantasize about real men'. Step-two: I got my hands on a label-maker.

Andy's locker has a new name.

Step three: well, see for yourself. I thought to myself, 'what man wouldn't be driven into a state of jealous madness at finding a picture of his new wife nestled in close to a dashing pirate?'

But there are two problems. First off, this pirate looks quite gay and not at all dashing, and secondly, I'm just playing copy-cat. I need something better.

Any thoughts?

A halloween party our young wasn't welcome at

Here we are, Cindy and I, all festive and pirate-y. Cindy was sick and I was not, so Cindy drank nothing but water. I drank everything but water. And so, we had our fun, despite our beverage preferences, and went home happy with our heads full of fond memories. In the lower collage, you can see my baby sister Jamie as 'Dead Anna-Nicole', Barb, a freaky punk chick I went to high school with, and my other sister Laura and her priest. We all thought it was strange that she brought her priest to an 'adult' party, but he was pleasant to talk to and kept his hands where people could see them.

So, there is this video.

I didn't post it because it's exceedingly dark, but I will, if I get, say, five individual comments begging me to. "But Ray, what good possible reason would we have to slip out of the anonymity of the shadows and call attention to ourselves?"

Because, my shy little friends, the title of this video is: "O Brother - Drunk Gay Pirate Karaoke".

'tsallright.

Awww, does the widdle baby need his ba-ba?

You know how when you're quitting smoking, it feels like you're swimming through maple syrup most of the time? And those little details just refuse to stick to your consciousness, sliding right off the refridgerator door of your mind as if you were trying to tape your reminders to ice. Emotionally, it feels like you've had a good friend die, or that you've had a particularly cherished limb amputated. You know what I'm saying? Of course you do (because for the purpose of this blog post, we're all quitting together and experiencing the misery simultaneously). Another thing I hate is when you're trying to write and the sentences that sound so good in your head land on the paper with a wet slap like vomit and no amount of pushing them around with a spoon will make them better cuz your sentences just keep getting longer and longer and your grasp of the mechanics of punctuation seem to elude your ever-distracted mind and then your kids want to know what you're doing and you yell at them to spank themselves and go to bed even though they just got home from school but you don't want them to come in and see you letting a sentence turn into such a trainwreck and suddenly you're struck by what a profound impact chemical stimulants have always had on your ability to control your writing muse but that control is now nothing more than a shadow of a ghost of shred of a scrap. And it's all gone.

Quitting smoking is the armpit of... I don't know, something exponentially more foul.

I could have picked a less busy time to do it, but really, the perfect time never comes. And besides, I'm the king of quitting. I do it all the time. I rock at not smoking. But of course, I suck at staying not smoking. So, yeah, I'll probably fail in a week or two. And then around New Year's you'll get to read yet another post about how unpleasant is it to quit.

But do me a favor: pretend like it's the first time you've heard it and respond with appropriate plattitudes and feigned sympathy.

I do other things besides write

So I was driving my motorized unicycle through this ritzy neighborhood, and this cellphone-shaped spaceship landed and these zebra aliens got out and challenged me to a race. I won, of course, but I sustained no fewer than thirty-one mortal wounds from the rings of fire and my airbag which has a tendancy to cause hangnails when mean-spirited telekinetic spectators set it off unexpectedly. My prize was a romantic weekend getaway with a balding werewolf woman at Micheal Jackson's 'Neverland Ranch'. It was either that, or 'Dollywood' with a three-eyed Roman gladiator but the Chill don't swing that-a-way.

I have absolutely nothing to blog about. Just felt the irrational urge to update.

Speaking of updating, 'Ancient Dance of the Chill' had 310 visitors last month and zero comments. It don't make no nevermind to me, but like most manly men, I'm strangely aroused by statistics. So. Thought I'd share.

National Novel Writing Month

Okay, if you are cool, and only if your cool, then this challenge is for you - during the month of November, simply write a novel. A complete novel. That's all. 50,000 words, 1600 a day, nothing could be easier.

Unless you're some kind of wuss.

I'm doing it, some other people I know are doing it, and during the time that all us cool people are doing it together, we're gonna meet at fashionable and intellectual places like coffee shops and librarys to talk about the processes of creating literature and do other highbrow stuff like nibble biscotti and snicker at ignorant people. So unless you want to be snickered at, better join us. Cooooome-ooooon...... all the cool kids are doing it. It'll make you look older. I swear.

This year, I'll be writing my eleventh novel, a little story I plan to call 'Gameworld Talonshale'. It'll be the first in a series that takes the popular on-line games of today and turns them into gaming worlds in the distant future. The twist in every book, is that the gameplay, eventually, for different reasons, becomes real. That's right y'all. Kids pretending to be wizards suddenly have to protect themselves with their magicks. Kids pretending to be soldiers suddenly find themselves in the midst of blazing gun-battles. Kids pretending to be writers suddenly find themselves trying to finish an entire novel in a month - it's non-stop nuts.

Soooo, looking forward to it. Looking forward to seeing my nano friends again. Looking forward to reading my own completed eleventh novel, that's for sure. (If you notice: I'm talking about writing my eleventh novel, and in my last post, I talked about finishing my ninth novel. No, I'm not just colossally bad at math {yes I am}, I'm just racing to finish my tenth novel. 'Thundergate Tower'... yeah... two weeks left... I realize that... It's a short novel though... Hundred pages... Well into it... So leave me be... Gotta write.)

CLICK HERE BRAVE WRITER, JOIN THE NANO QUEST

Spryton Wyldes - The Pinecone Wedge

Finished my ninth novel - the first draft anyway.

Here is a not-well-edited bit from the beginning

It does my old heart good to see so many of you have turned out to hear my tale. So many, by Erin, that perhaps it is too good to be true? Are we playing a little joke on poor Zvano? “Let us go and pretend to listen to the old storyteller, and then when he thinks he has caught us in the magick of his words, we will laugh at him and call him a fool.” No? Is this not the case? Have you truly come to hear the tale of Dobie and his band of misfit heroes? Of the ill-fated 'Pinecone Wedge', formed for the salvation of Spryton Wyldes, ready to do deeds that would ring down throughout history, but betrayed instead, by one of their own number?

Of course you have. Very well then.

Know that this is not a story that has ever been told by the bordermen of Cloverville.

Ah, you laugh. I see that Zvano is not the only one to sneak into the human village to listen to their tales. I find it a wonder that they know anything of the sprytes at all. I find it more so amazing when they actually get one of our tales right, as if they had been sneaking into our festivals and eavesdropping on our storytellers. Could you imagine? Borderman, hundreds of acorns tall, crouching down behind the stone grass to listen to Zvano’s little stories? Don’t look now, we wouldn’t want them to know we’d noticed them, would we?

No, gentle sprytes, if the storytellers from Cloverville were indeed spying on us, they would know that pyxies and bronnies are two kinds of sprytes. Again you laugh, but the borderman think that a pyxie and a spryte are roughly the same animal – its true. I’ve heard them argue this point on many occasions. They’ve never even heard of the other kingdoms; they’re likely to hear ‘grennies’ and ‘ruddies’ and ‘grellings’ and think that we are saying ‘greenies’, ‘reddys’, and ‘graylings’, as if we liked being named by our skin color.