log entries of timotheus

I have a head cold, consisting of a runny nose, headache, and cough. This makes this announcement more meaningful.

This is an important announcement to anyone who uses Alka-Seltzer. Although the fizzing sound of the tablets dissolving is quite soothing in itself, that doesn’t mean you should become lax in noticing your surroundings.

You might find yourself walking out of your lunch room at work, a glass full of happily-fizzing Alka-Seltzer in one hand, a sandwich on a plate in the other. You are half an hour overdue in taking it, so you are really looking forward to the relief Alka-Seltzer will bring you. As you walk out, you focus keeps drifting to the euphoric sounds from your glass.

You turn a corner, your gaze still captivated by the upward rushing healing bubbles that is Alka-Seltzer, instead of what could be around the corner. Suddenly, a large object looms in your peripheral vision, on a direct collision course. Conscious thought is put on the back burner as pure animal instinct kicks in. Protect this bubbling glass of magical elixir at all costs.

Your non important arm will reach up, reflexively to intercept any sort of harm that might be incoming towards this chalice of healing. The fact that the monster in your view is really a co-worker, or that the ‘non important’ arm is holding your sandwich really holds no meaning in this moment. Your sandwich will be slingshot across the hall before gracefully setting down on the carpet.

There will be confusion and shock at first. This is normal. Remember two things.

1) Your fizzing tincture of Alka-Seltzer is safe, meaning relief from your maddening symptoms will soon be at hand.

2) The three-second rule applies, so pick up your sandwich fast.

I had a very vivid dream last night, that was a little crazy, but cool. I think this happened because I was thinking about my trip next week before I fell asleep.

I was visiting my friends in Berkeley over the holidays. I don’t remember the beginning, just that I was there, and we were eating Japanese Curry from bowls, and walking around their new home. It was a really massive place, and there were dozens of little rooms. It was neat, all the rooms reflected their owners personalities. (People had more than one room, it seemed everyone had their own room, study, and a project room too.) The corridors connecting the rooms were very tight, steps up, steps down; like we were on a ship. Partway through the tour, I commented how the whole place gave off a Firefly vibe, and apparently that was the goal. Susan’s room, in particular, felt a lot like Kaylee’s. I told her that, and she got very excited about it, as only Susan can. (And I mean that in a good way!) Kimi and Justins room was multi-leveled inside, which was cool, and painted yellow, which I didn’t expect them to choose. Jasons was, of course, black. He did have a SWEET six LCD monitor setup that had all kinds of linuxy, command line streaming data spewing out all over the place, like he was compiling a world simulation or something.

As we’re finishing up, the rest of the group wanders back to their areas, but maiki leads me to this one door.

“Dude, you will really like this. Check it out.” and he opened the door. The rest of the building was a massive warehouse. Shelves everywhere full of parts of all kinds of things; workbenches around the place with half assembled things on them. Many places have dusty brown cloths laying over mounts of equipment. There were no lights, all the light came in from the short, wide windows that bordered the place. Outside, you could see the surrounding countryside, brown hills mostly. As I look, I’m seeing lots of plane shadows on the ground; I can tell they are B-29 bombers.

“Wow, probably an air show nearby.” I said, and maiki agreed. We walk around for a bit, and he’s showing me the place. Apparently all this stuff was here when they bought the place, and he’s still working on inventory. I happen to look out the window again, and there are planes outside, hovering in midair!

“Whoa, check that out,” I said to maiki, and we both stare out the window. Suddenly I see how it could be happening. “Wait a sec..”

We both run up this rickety set of stairs, up to what looks like a foremans office above. You can see the whole warehouse floor from here, but we both stand on the table and look out the forward-facing outside window above it. We see the roof of the warehouse, then I see that we are surrounded by old aircraft and clouds! We’re flying through the air, somehow in the middle of a WW2 bomber squadron that’s doing an airshow.

“Oh my GOD!” maiki and I both yell at the same time.

Now the view switches to a 3rd person view. One of the bombers is talking on the radio, and I can hear the chatter. The warehouse is off in the center of the squadron still.

“Tower, did you give clearance for “Happy Times” to enter formation?” Like a warehouse flying was normal, but why wasn’t he informed of the squadron change? I’m clueless as to what “Happy Times” is, until the view changes again. I’m to the side of the warehouse now, watching as it is screaming through the air, slowly dropping. The wind is tearing off bits of corrugated steel from the sides, bits of wood, etc. As it pans across my field of vision, I see a big logo that looks like it’s been painted on the side of the warehouse forever; the image if half flecked off by time. It is this. (For some reason when I woke up, this was the most important part, so I had to draw it. It took forever to get the smiley face the way it looked, and the letter spacing right..)

Back in the foremans office, maiki and I are watching in horror as the nose of the warehouse is dipping towards the earth, getting closer and closer.

“maiki, you’ve got to pull up!” I shout, because the whole place is shaking from the speed.

“Pull up? Pull up?! It’s a F#$*^ warehouse!” maiki shouts back.

As we watch, we fall closer and closer until it looks like we’re going to smash into a million pieces. Suddenly, the front noses up, and we crash land gently (I know that makes no sense, but that’s what it was) to the ground.

We both look at each other.

Then I woke up.

I’ve been working on trying to merge my old wordpress blog (2004-2006) with this new one. The problem I’m having is since it’s WordPress 1.2, the database structure is totally different. I might be able to use some PERL to parse the things, but that will be a little tricky.

In the meantime, I was looking through my old entries, and I found this one from July 2005. I had just moved into my first apartment. Check it out:

I’m sitting in my old room at my parents house. I needed to come here one last time because my metal media rack and dresser are still here. My Dad and I will go to work tomorrow, then get the company truck and use it to haul my stuff tomorrow night.

I’m sitting in my old room at my parents house. All my clothes, books, and computers are gone, with the exception of my laptop. In this absence of distractions, I find my imagination filling in lapse moments with random images. I think my imagination works better with nothing to distract it.

I’m sitting in my old room at my parents house. Last night I slept at my new apartment, on the living room floor. I needed to be there early for the comcast guy. Anyway, it was around 9pm, and I had nothing else to do, so I laid on my back, and listened to the ‘World of Warcraft’ soundtrack on my MuVo. I looked at the textured ceiling, and noted that if I wanted any image to be formed from them, all I needed to do was concentrate of what I wanted to see. Nothing specific, but something to give my brain a rough idea. An example would be, “an angry face”. In a moments time, the light and dark patterns of the ceiling have a pattern, and I can piece together a face of a man, howling in rage. The phrase ‘howling in rage’ occurs in many books, but this was the first time I had seen it. Rage looks to me like someone allowing hatred to fill the essence of their soul, even pushing out all the good things to make room for the hatred, then focusing all that raw hate towards a single person. I can feel what this image feels. Just staring at the person you hate isn’t enough, but words can’t describe the feeling you have. The hatred must have an outlet, so it taps into your vocal processor, and emits a sound. The two cannot interface properly, it’s like describing the color ‘blue’ to a blind person, but what erupts from the mans mouth gets the point across. If hatred could be personified as a sound, that is what comes from within this man. His howl of rage. It appears hatred is a powerful and destructive ally.

I’m sitting in my old room at my parents house. I had a dream last night, that I was in a society of people who wore masks. I never saw a face, I just saw the persons mask that best defined their personality. Some people were smiling, some were frowning, some angry, and some sad. Masks can be so very descriptive of emotion; even the eye slots were different for each one. I walked around this marketplace, and talked to several of the masked people there. Then there was a commotion on the far end of the square. A lone man entered, and people gave him a wide berth. He walked slowly, almost gliding; his hands not moving in motion with his body. He had a mask I hadn’t seen until that moment. It had thin rectangles for eyes, and a bigger rectangle for his mouth. No emotion at all. People started going back to their jobs, but the nearest one to him got too close, and the emotionless one jumped on her. He buried his face in the victims neck, his mask getting pushed up a bit in the process. A horrible sound came from the victim, then she was quiet. The emotionless one stood up, his back to me, and repositioned his mask. He then helped the victim up. They both turned to me. Both their masks were emotionless now. They both turned to two emotional masked people next to them. They jumped in tandem at their victims. Tandem screams from their prey. In a matter of minutes, all the people in the square were similarly attacked and turned emotionless. People stood at their carts, or at the tables, not moving. Only staring at me. All their masks wore the same emotionless blank. All sounds stopped. That strange noise that is heard when there is dead silence filled my ears. Slowly they all took a step towards me. I was frightened.

I’m sitting in my old room at my parents house. I can’t help but notice the other conscience in my head. It has always been there, this other-side-of-the-coin Tim, but I’ve always never listened to him, in fear of what he’d do with me. It’s not another personality or anything, it’s more like the same song in a minor chord. Happy things become mournful. Good endings become futile. I need this side of me for my writing to improve. He knows he has something I need. I’m scared to ponder what it will cost me.

Just a little update, I’m in Berkeley visiting some good friends of mine.

Maiki and I are participating in NaNoWriMo, and actually are both writing a story in a fictional world we created. (More maiki’s than mine.) We’re posting our stories up on a blog we made specifically for this. See the banner on the right to check it out. My story is the one tentitively titled “Skyships and Tech Chips.” We’re posting our content as we write it, so it isn’t a finished product or anything. It’s a good way for each of us to keep an eye on each other, and make sure we’re making those entries.

When we’re finished, I believe we’re going to take a month to edit our stories, then use a print-on-demand book printing company like Lulu to print our work, and make an actual book out of it. It won’t be a “Lord of the Rings” or anything (or will it?!?!), but it should be an entertaining read anyway. We’re also releasing our story under a Creative Commons license, allowing for derivative works with attribution and share-alike.

Ok, now I need to get to work on todays 1,666 words! I realized last night, reading through what I’d written, that I rushed a scene. Today’s work is mostly going to be fleshing that out more.

“These late nights at the office are going to kill me,” he thought, pulling down the covers of the bed. In one quick motion, he crawled in, turned out the light and pulled up the covers. The gentle night noises sooth him; the rythmic ticking of the clock make his eyelids droop.

He sucks in a quick breath in fear and opens his eyes wide into the darkness.

“I don’t have a clock..”