Assortments of Assorted Assortments

My wife is pretty sick, yo. While she seems pretty shy and sweet on the surface, there are things going on under the surface that I don't understand. Here's the thing.


I've been working on a pretty gruesome short story for way too long now. It's called "Bridge" (for now) and it's the ugliest, most graphic, and evil thing I've ever written. I like it quite a bit. Still, there was a part of the story which was a bit too graphic for even me. After consulting with a couple of people that I respect their opinion, I removed the super-extra disturbing phrase from the piece, and felt good about it.


The next day I tell Jen about it and while she reserves her opinion, I detect a tone. When I press her about it, she just says that she'll have to read it. I argue my point, saying that knowing that this heinous little thought was in my main character's mind makes him less likable. She says, "OK."


So I start thinking about it. Why do I care if my character is likable? Why this weird need to defend him? So we started talking about it during the course of drive, discussing possible motivations for the man. In the end, the ugliest, most graphic, and evil thing I've ever written just got ten times worse (in my mind, at least). My character now just isn't less likable, he's a monster.


I read the story (all 25 pages) aloud to her tonight (reading aloud lets me catch so many mistakes that I would normally miss). When I got to the part where my gross little story takes a nosedive into hell, I glance over at my sweet innocent bride.


She's smiling. Ick.


In happier news, I've been quite the good consumer lately. Last weekend I was able to get a couple of tickets for this summer's Radiohead show at Blossom Music Center outside of Cleveland. I'm hoping an out of town friend will be able to join me, but if not, I'll drag my brother along again. He went with me the first time I saw them after Kid A/Amnesiac. I really like the new album, and I even liked a bunch of stuff off of Hail to the Thief, when a lot of people don't. It wasn't their best record, but even when Radiohead is so-so, I still like them better than 95% of everything else out there.

I also bought a new gas grill over the weekend and hope to be able to pick it up tomorrow. We'll be mixing in some dinners here soon (stupid diet) and I wanted the grill for all of the fish, chicken and veggies we'll be cookin' up. Gotta tell ya, I love my funky red grill.