Max: 3 AM Blues: Part the Second

I don't know quite why I am here or what I am going to write. I just know it is 3 AM and I am not in the best of moods. When I look back at my old journals, my meager collection of fiction and doggerel, I am somewhat astounded. A decade or so I barely ever wrote. But I wrote more than I do now. I guess part of it is that I had more free time. Another is I often wrote as a response to stress, depression and other icky emotional crap. Now my response to all that is to shut down.

That said, I have written a little more over the past couple of weeks than I have in a while. A while back I got one of those "What if" scenarios going through my head. Some years ago I got the urge to create what I called the Super Taco. It was really more of an ambitious pile of nachos. I just took a pound of ground beef, browned it and threw in a packet of taco seasoning. I then spread a layer of tortilla chips in a pan, threw down a layer of beef, some cheese and some hot sauce, topped with a few more layers of the same. Jericho and I then scarfed. Once the beast was conquered, Jericho, paraphrasing a line from Red Dwarf, cried out, "Oh God! I've been Super Tacoed to death!" From that memory my mind put together a scene that I found amusing. I kept playing with that scene - the people in it, etc. Somewhere along the way I started thinking of it as a scene in a movie. Most ideas like this die a merciful death when something comes along and distracts me from them. But I kept coming back to this one. It excited me in a way few ideas have. I thought about the characters, including modified versions of characters Laura and I once thought up for a comic book.

Then a few days ago I sat down and wrote out some dialogue between two of the characters. It was a little rough, but not bad. It was a little darker and angstier than I had been planning for this little project. But with the lightness before and after it, it becomes more of a counterpoint to the overall humor of what I had in mind. After writing the dialogue, I went a few days without writing anything more on it. But it stayed on my mind. I spent days wrestling with what the story was to be about, about where it was leading to and what was to be the ending. I wanted something of a non-ending ending - more of a plagal cadence than V-I resolution. I wanted something that would satisfy, that would show that all the sound and fury of the story lead to something. But I also wanted it clear that these characters were going to live on beyond the end of the movie. I wanted, "I guess this will do for now," rather than happily (or tragically) ever after. I have had a Notepad window open for the past few days where I jotted down my thoughts. I think I have found where I am going. That will make it easier to flesh out the characters and the story.

If I continue.

The past few days have been particularly unpleasant. The job seems more intolerable than ever. My usual inability to do anything right has grown exponentially. Generally I a disgusted with my life and myself and it seems hard to see this movie idea as anything more than another distraction that will lead to nothing. But at least it is a distraction. If I am going to hide from everything, why not hide in a story of my own making instead of someone else's? That's what I used to do.

Of course, everything that I used to do is what lead me to where I am now.