And my life is just an image of a rollercoaster anyway

Hello again. It's been nearly two weeks since last post, and at first I didn't think i'd post until my life got interesting. I had nothing of interest happen. Last weekend, ordered Massive Attack tickets and my lovely wife and I will be standing on the main floor, gazing up to stage. I have no idea what to expect, but the new single ("Live With Me") is worth your hard-earned 99 centsUSD at ye ol' Apple Music Store. It's a bluesy lament, caked in an imaginary cityscape where the streets are layered in a fresh coat of rain and the sun is coming up over the skyline, black outlines of telephone wires and buildings hiding their souls as they are backlit from a rising sun that can't burn off one man's sorrow.

My second birthday gift is coming in the mail, with the good folks at ThinkGeek and UPS letting me know visage del Miyamoto will be at my door by Monday. All is well.

Or was well. The writing had stalled out, and I was trapped with piles of pages and nothing unified or interesting. Imagine creating a skeleton and surrounding tissue, but unable to design and texture the skin to hold it all together, to give it a smooth, silky appearance to hide the guts and the alien bones underneath. For days I'd be trapped, unable to make any serious headway. I'd sit, and nothing strong would come. There's a saying that sometimes the definition of bravery is to say "I'll try again tomorrow," but really, we all know that's slipping into Lame Excuse Village. Stalling in the artistic void, and eventually the thermals would give out, leading to a catastrophic plummet.

And then everything just accelerated, moving laterally and in swerves. The aircraft morphs into an out-of-control sled that screams down a dark, wintry hill, and everything appears this ghostly blue-black, including the tree racing at you.

In brief.

1) My job might be evaporated sometime in 2007. The newspaper I work at is entering into arbitration with our cross-town rival. Years ago, the two entered into a joint-operating agreement with a clause that if one side could show that they were taking three consecutive years of losses, they could break from the JOA and go their own way. The bad news is, the newspaper I work at can't survive that divorce. We share the printing press as well as the sales/circulation staff. Imagine losing your mouth, legs and veins. It's that bad.

Well, our cross-town rival had dragged us to court a few years back saying that, yep, they lost three-years worth of money and now they want out. Our strategy? Stall and bleed them dry, because one of the JOA rules states that if they put their paper up for sale, we get the first shot. Plus, some of their accounting for three years of red ink looked questionable, so the thought was lose their complaint in the courts until they gave up, they went under, or until our future robot masters took over the world.

A couple days ago, the word came down: our rival and our lawyers were moving into arbitration. The good news: everything would be decided by or before May 2007. It would be over, and our rivals (if ruled against) would go back to their cave and lick some wounds and we could go on with thinking about kicking their asses on a daily basis in print and online. The bad news: Nearly everything else.

If the judge rules for them, then we're over with. If the judge comes back in, let's say, December, and says, "The other guys win," then the judge has to set a date for our dissolution that will be anywhere from six-12 months from the ruling date. No appeal. If that happens, then we are all crossing out fingers that our corporate overlords offer us the same severance package our sister paper in San Francisco got when their had their doors closed not too long ago. By my math, it would be six-months pay, a comfy cushion to soften the blow as I try to find gig that doesn't involve a paper hat.

2) Before the news came down, I came across a job listing on Seattle's Craigslist I couldn't pass up. It's a writer/editor job at a local gaming company, with requirements that sing to me with golden notes, practically crafted for yours truly. I submitted my resume and a trio of small writing samples two Tuesdays ago, but I haven't heard back yet. I try to tell myself that they are probably getting bombed with hundreds - if not thousands - of resumes from everyone who games and thinks he can complete a sentence, and that my Zen Jedi perfection is just trapped under a Word document avalanche.

Of course, I'm also reading it in the insecure junior high mindset of "Well, if they really liked me and thought I was pretty, they'd invite me to the big dance on Friday by now." And this was back when I didn't know my job might be lined up in some Death Star target station for demolition. I'm weighing the pros and cons of writing a follow-up note, considering nouns and verbs that don't reek of desperation. Ideally, I'd love to get the job after getting an offer of a severance package from here, but then again my wife wants a pony and we all can't get what we want.

3) I am writing again, but it's on a new project that I think my brain came up with in order to rescue me from the morass I'm in with the current novel. I'd love to spill all the beans on it, but I can't. I'll just reveal this: It's a superhero-ish story about an urban (likely Seattle) woman who inherits a timeless ability as well as set of siblings. It's in the vein of Piers Anthony and Neil Gaiman, a sort of magical realism and mythology of how the metaphysical world works. I'm taking lots of notes at this point, writing a couple fragments as I go in a running brainstorm. I'm not abandoning Rayelle or Divine, but I find myself enjoying this batch of fresh air. Lots of fun to be had here and the critic is almost silent as the glowing amber idea generator in me flares as bright as a supernova.

4) Oh, finally saw "Brokeback Mountain." Sucked, and not in the homoerotic way. As my wife put it, "How can a movie about two hot guys humping each other be so boring." I mean, I understand the movie intellectually, but emotionally it was a dead zone.