Meet this.
With so many Meet the *___* threads, I find this one most appropriate. I'm a recovering drunk, i.e. I still go out and get drunk, just not on a daily basis. Well, we'll see if I make it through this evening. As well as alcohol, I enjoy abusing other chemicals and plants, mainly nature-based as opposed to man-made but when the time and place are right and Wide Spread Panic is in town, look the *beep* uck out. This type of misbehavior has had both positive and negative influences on my writing.
I frequently write my local sports articles in the midst of a hangover that would kill a horse and keep an average human in bed well past noon. In bad weather, I'm prone to covering games with eyes glazed over with brandy. For instance, covering football games in Minnesota can leave one with quite a bit of sideline space to oneself. It also allows one to mingle with both the players and the crowd.
Upon walking into a road game in a town about twenty miles away from my worst escapade, I heard a bellow from the crowd, "Hey look! There's the guy from the paper who was totally sloshed at the DGF game last week." I laughed and waved. It was 17 degrees F with a freezing rain/sleet pelting players helmets at ninety degree angles. One look to the north and bam, here's ice in your eye. I wore shorts.
Much of my small-town Thompsonesque sports writing is of a congenial nature. I followed what one could only deem "Losers" with a capital L during the entire winter season. I received numerous commendations and a generous letter from the school board and school media head honcha in appreciation of empathy expressed in my articles. Because behind the booze, drugs and beating away of crowds of adoring women, I'm a big softy. When those girls sit dejected after a trouncing on the basketball court I feel bad too...until I get to the barstool.
When I'm not writing about sports I like to pen essays to myself about how stupid the world appears and how those in power need one thing more than anything else. A kick up the arse. I also write weekly poems of a fluffy nature to the most adorable young woman on the planet who kindly bestowed the most alluring of graces upon me. In fiction, I stem much of the character of my characters in their names alone. I can sit for about a week trying to piece together the write combination of words to tell a story about my character by his/her/its name alone.
Hence the Lunacy of Pants Inferno. Did it make sense? Wait, kind of. No, it wasn't supposed to. Did it have a punch line? Not really. It was redundant conversation and jumps in thought. I don't like to write in a linear fashion of he walked out of the house, got in the cab, went to the liquor store, hit on the 20 year old behind the counter, got slapped and smoked a cigarette. Boring. I like to capture images and fling words, especially dialoque, around as strange as possible. Sometimes I'm the only one who knows who is really speaking. But the Lunacy of Pants Inferno will prevail. It will be strange and oddly enlightening. That's assuming I ever do anything with it or some dip$hit doesn't just off and steal this glorious idea of well, not much. Some drunken ramblings and a plot yet undiscovered. Like so many things, it's all so irrelevant and meaningless.
I've got to run. I've recently been asked to submit a column to the newsletter of my favorite drinking joint and no, that's not a smokable straw.