Of Bells, Whistles And A Hammer

Suppose I asked you to list the top ten most annoying sounds that you are familiar with on a pretty much daily basis. In the optimistic chance that you actually follow through with that strange request…

The likelihood of the phrase ‘alarm in the morning’ or a suitable variation of that being included close to the top would probably be high.

If this was some article for a major network or research journal, or even something backed up by the slightest bit of evidence, this is the point where the numbers come in. I say, let’s just ignore the fact that the following numbers are totally made up and continue as if I have something really important to say that you probably should hear.

It has been scientifically proven (no, it hasn’t) that 95% of the female population and 45% of males in most countries set an alarm at night before they go to sleep. Further study has shown that of these people who indeed set alarms, 85% of them use their phones, smart or otherwise, to set up these alarms.

And of the cases where the alarm does indeed ring at the correct time (assuming that the battery hadn’t died during the night, that the user hadn’t gotten am and pm mixed up again or that the dog carried it off to the kitchen for the fifteenth time for no reason) roughly 83.378% of people who hear the alarm reach over and set it to snooze, probably imagining that they really are going to wake up in five minutes. (chuckle)

Ah, the snooze function. What would we do without it?

Down Lanes and Over Stiles

After all the tense nights of nocturnal studying (three of them, specifically the ones just prior to E-Day), the worry filled days of emotional breakdown (two, to be exact. E-Day itself, and the day before), and the hard work that went into preparation (no comment on that line), you would think that now, on this side of the Dreaded Day of The Exam (that's the E-Day you were scratching your head about), I would have some free time to myself.

Give me a second to catch my breath while you go along and re-read that to see if it makes sense.

See, bottom line, I deserved a break. Oh yes, I did. The tension, the panic, the three hour and twenty minute torture of sitting in once place and writing on the same subject without pause… surviving something like that calls for a week of relaxation, with nothing but movies, cartoons and writing.

  

My mother, however, as most mothers are wont to do, did not see it that way. It turns out that, unlike me, she had actually noticed the growing pile of papers and strewn clothes accumulating around my room over the last week… and the only reason she had kept her peace was because she didn’t want me to use the ensuing conflict as an excuse in case the exam went south.

What I want you to take from that last line is how resourceful I can be when occasion warrants. 

When Stress Does The Talking

I have been extremely scatterbrained of late. If you have been following me long enough, you might have noticed that for the second time in my entire blogging career (which happens to be 5 months and seven days to the date), I have ignored Golden Rule... (or my Only Rule, but the other way sounded much cooler) ... my three to four day cycle of posting.

I think (thankfully), I’m well past the point where I thought if I slipped up, I would start unravelling, and then lose it altogether. Like my buddy N said; I might have come too far to quit now.

Everything changed the moment he said that. Till that point, it was like I was walking into the Minotaur’s lair, that ball of string in my hand and everything. Sure, I was stepping into darkness, possible death and destruction awaiting me a little further in.

But, see, the light from the door was spilling from behind me, and all the while I had the reassuring feeling that if things went south, I could make a dash for that door and pretend that the whole thing had been a nightmare.

Of Pacts and Impacts

There I am, minding my own business.

I’m in my zone; on my bed, my laptop on my lap, the pillows behind me, cushion under my ankles, and the KEEP OUT sign hanging on my door. Yes, the sign that everyone ignores.

What am I doing? Researching bows, financial statements, arrowheads, recent exchange rate fluctuations, YouTube videos on dual sword wielding; with the exam coming up, I try to stay focused. And for legal purposes, note that I say ‘try’.

 I always use a mouse with my laptop. I’m still not used to the touchpad yet, and probably might never be. What you need to know for the purpose of this tale is that my right arm was resting on the bed next to me, and right hand was on the mouse.

I feel a tingly, tickly sensation just below my elbow. I ignore it. See, I’ve lived in this room for a few years, and I have over the months familiarized myself with its other inhabitants. It’s a dictatorship, yes; but it’s fair for all. Simple rule: stay out of my way and I won’t stomp you.

Come within reach and you will die. Crawl over my foot and you will die. Zip back and forth more than four times across the floor in plain view and you will die. The last would be especially personal since it would have made me get up from whatever I was doing and then have to settle back in again after it was done. Totally unnecessary for both parties concerned.

So there’s a tingly feeling on my arm, and I ignored it. Might be a mosquito, which I’ll kill in a while, or a fly, which I’m too lazy to chase after with the swatter. The tingling doesn’t stop, so I finally glance down.

On Makeovers and Making Do

Quite a few things happened in the last two days since the previous post. Firstly, by some lucky coincidence, my contribution to The Iron Writer Challenge #62 managed to pull through and get voted the best. Have to admit, I did not see that coming. This would be the same thing I wrote about three posts ago.

So now that I passed the initiation, I guess I really am a member of the Iron Writers… and this win has put me up for what they call the Summer Open; so I’m back up there on the 26^th of June. This time, against the winners of the other weekly Challenges.

As if that wasn’t enough for me, I went ahead and asked Brian to sign me up for another Challenge. So, C68 has my name on it, and that’s the 5^th of June. Better hope for another miracle.

And speaking of miracles… we got our telephone line restored a day ago, and Wi-Fi is officially back up and running again here at home. Until, of course, the next big disaster.

These past 48 days have been extremely illuminating to me. Here’s some of what I’ve managed to learn: 

·         Getting pissed off will not, by any means, be of the slightest help to you if the object/person that you are pissed off at is not within crushing/strangling reach,

·         The mood of your mother will depreciate at a rate faster than that of yours when you are in an emotionally disturbed state. This rate of depreciation will accelerate in direct proportion with the cost of objects that get mortally affected during outbursts

·         If you though that the public sector was lazy and incompetent before you found yourself in a crisis that required their assistance, your faith in that belief is only strengthened as time goes along,

And most important of all:

·         When there’s nothing else to do… just start writing.

May the Month Be With Me

Believe it or not, it’s May already.

We’re already five months into 2014, and yet sometimes I still forget it isn’t 2013 anymore. For instance, every time I remove the battery or SIM card on my beat up old Nokia, I get prompted to reset the time when I switch it on again.

I continuously find myself always having travel to settings immediately after. You know why; to find the “Time and Date” option and change the year to 2014 again.

Nope, I still haven’t settled. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll only truly feel the 2014 vibe somewhere in September. By that point, January will roll around in the blink of an eye and I’ll be stuck till September 2015 writing down 2014 as the date everywhere I go.

The circles of life are many, my friend. This particular one is a regular of mine.

A couple of weeks ago, I’m getting on the bus to town and I notice N’s younger brother there. I decide to go sit by him, and we begin to chat.

I ask him what’s new, and he tells me that he has his exams coming up this May. I sympathize with the guy. After all, that was me five years ago, worrying about my first big paper. But even as I say the right things, inside my head I’m going, “Aw, the wee wittle kid, still having his wee wittle…”

That’s when I literally stopped in mid-thought there, because a memory hit me so hard, it felt like I had just gotten a whack on the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper.

The Tale of The Depressed Goatee – When TIWs Gather

It was a few months ago when I joined The Iron Writers, and since then, it’s been uphill for me. The confidence I was lacking, the inspiration I needed; I found it all there, being shared out liberally among all the amazing, incredible people who make up the group.

Each and every single writer there is unique in their way, and yet at the same time, they all share one beautiful quality: they know how to have fun.

In between the soul draining, four-element-related challenges that Brian constantly manages to cook up, TIWs keep things going on the group Facebook page, and it looks like one of the job specifications of being an Iron Writer is to be able to embarrass, insult, harass and victimize fellow respected Irons on a constant basis, all in the name of sharing laughs.

 Wars of words rage, and alliances form and break off quicker than those in Westeros; and when the gauntlet is thrown, things are settled in what TIWs call a Grudge Match, which, though I’m still fuzzy about it, I’m willing to try out should the occasion arise.

Suffice it to say that there’s always something interesting or downright hilarious going on there. Most of the time, I watch from the sidelines and poke a cautious needle when the opportunity presents itself, but since I’m still a newbie, I try not to get right down into it.

The unexpected happened, though, when fellow Iron Writer Neal Sayatovich changed his profile picture recently, and in it he displayed a truly magnificent growth of facial hair. It literally begged for comment, and comments did it get, courtesy of yet another talented IW, Dani J Caile.

The Iron Writer Challenge #62

I have never been fond of writing flash fiction. Maybe it started back in the fourth and fifth grades when my teacher used to tell us to write essays or stories under a specific word limit. I always, always jumped that limit. I guess I always hated writing within any sort of specific barriers.

Still do.

So, probably the last thing you would think of me doing would be to join a writer’s group based around weekly and even daily flash fiction challenges.

Ask me about it a month ago and I would have been “Puh-leeze, no,”

But when Brian Rogers himself, the man behind the Iron Writer Challenge, ask you to join… you would be crazy not to.

And so join I did, and in doing so, chalked up one more thing right that I’ve done as your friendly neighborhood anonymous Mathew.

The basic structure of the Iron Writer challenge; four authors are given four days to come up with a five hundred word piece of any genre that contains four given elements. And Brian never lets his people have it easy, no. He just thinks up the most incompatible, mismatched, unusable objects and then meshes them together for each week’s challenge.