It is well known that writing is not a lucrative path. Just ask all those people you've never heard of. (Ten cents per what? I'm insulted. Thank you very much, sir. May I have another?) Heck, even ask most of those people you have heard of -- dollars to doughnuts the lion's share have the same trouble paying the hydroelectric bill as you or me.

Typographic mega ultra superstars aside (your Kings, your Rowlings, your Suesses), writing is basically something you give away. Even when there is money involved it's usually a loss when the dust settles. The work is a donation.

(The local magazine I write for wants all the contributors to get together for lunch, but it's hard to agree on which soup kitchen is most convenient for everyone so the actual date remains a perpetually uncollapsed waveform.)

So this is why I have a day job.

It is rumoured that my son can, or rather has, travelled in time.

(Certainly, the first thing that gets sticky is tense. English is notoriously Chauvinistic when it comes to accommodating temporally wobbly states of action like would be ifs, could dids, or any of the various clades of feasibly constricted co-probabilities you might encounter in a day to day chat occurring in a chronologically nonlinear context. Like a café, maybe.)

 I am now officially in the market for a Jolly Roger.

Somebody, somewhere ought to be punched in the dick for telling a generation of impressionable young man-children that there was a living to be made going all smashie-smashie with virtual facets. To compound this harmful lie, someone apparently suggested to all these poor kids that only a modicum of training would be required in order to become respected professional facet smashers. Such a scholarly skim could even be provided by the seemingly most academically and artistically paltry of institutions -- "schools" operated in the rental space over retail shops, for example, or in the basements of malls.

My tits hurt. That's what push-ups'll get you.

We'll all be taking golden showers once I figure out a way to amplify the transportative effects of Littlestar's SUNRISE GOGGLES to a global scale. If my calculations are correct, this will not have any significant impact on anthropogenic warming but it will make any eventual environmental calamities appear especially striking, aesthetically.

A somewhat less heavily redacted diary.

All the fish are gone from our ponds, because a crane ate them. The crane is the size of a pterodactyl. The crane is stalking us. The crane circles the Old Schoolhouse like a vulture.

[REDACTED] lies in wait, determined to bring the crane to justice. Like Wile E. Coyote, he is surrounded by jury-rigged death contraptions. The crane has declared war, and [REDACTED] will answer the call. Comeuppance, thy visage is squinty.

Chumps with stuff

Like Ahab, I limp and scowl.

I'm in a hurry to wait for something. I hobble with purpose, deaf to ringing telephones, insipid questions, pocket vibrational thingamajigs.

I check the render farm's virtual displays with a flurry of VNC. All is as it must be: poised on the brink of ruin. I nod and shamble on, mincing my fingers and muttering of occlusion maps, Coca-Cola and rosette-manifold texture terrains.

My wife wants to know when I'll be home. I tell her to check the weather forecast for Hell.