Monday, November 14, 2011

...Looming Like a Great Looming Thing

By Kathleen Bradean

"...Looming Like a Great Looming Thing"

Any fan of Blackadder will recognize that quote. Anyone who doesn’t know Balckadder has missed one of the best comedic television series of all time. I'm most partial to the Elizabethan ones, which feature such great actors as Miranda Richardson and Stephen Fry. If you're a Huge Laurie (of House fame) fan see the Regency ones. The entire cast comes together perfectly in the World War I episodes.

I'm off on a tangent, which is bad news considering that I have a deadline quickly approaching. Sundays are my deadline days. Every week I have an Oh Get a Grip article to write, and every month I review a book for Erotica Revealed. I used to review for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association too, but when reviews were cut down to a max of 700 words, it felt more like rewriting the back blurb than writing a real review. Besides, ERWA only accepts positive reviews, so I often read an entire book only to find that I couldn't "review" for them, so I felt my time was wasted.

Like every other adult on this earth, my time is in short supply, so I have to be on the constant look-out for claim jumpers. You know what I'm talking about. Those people who guilt you into coaching soccer teams (as if I'd ever fall for that again, after falling for it twice) or working a fund raiser for the high school band or pitching in with set building for the high school musical. And why is it that with the hundreds of kids involved in these activities, I see the same twenty parents at all of these events? How are the rest of those parents weaseling out of any commitment? What would happen if the twenty of us went on strike? And it isn't just school stuff. Jean could tell you all about her struggles to keep Pride Day going in her town. Everyone wants to enjoy an event, but no one wants to do all the dull, time-sucking crap that makes it happen. Oops. Another tangent.

I wish I had a vault full of spare time like Scrooge McDuck's vault of gold, and that I could sneak down to swim in my horded minutes and hours whenever I wanted to or better yet, toss great wads of time on my bed and roll around in it with sybaritic abandon. So much lovely time. I'd grab handfuls of it and let it trickle through my fingers while laughing gleefully and perhaps a bit maniacally but only for the cartoon effect. Deadlines? I'd sneer at them, because my infinite supply of spare time would act as an impenetrable force field. Maybe I'd call myself Time Girl or maybe The Hourglass. *looks at figure* Well, obviously String Theory is out of the question.

I once met a girl whose name was spelled Infinite but pronounced Infinity. Maybe there was supposed to be a little accent over her final E. Anyway, imagine the possibilities. She was the embodiment of TimeItSelf. Sort of. That was her brother's name. No fooling.

Tangent.

Anyway, there are three ways to handle deadlines. 1) See them coming from far away and plan accordingly. 2) Panic. 3) Denial.

You get to guess which method I chose this week.

10 comments:

  1. Oh, wow, Kathleen, your Scrooge McDuck scenario is priceless! Hahahahaha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. As to deadlines - personally I seem to do all three, sequentially. But at least it's not only me. The bit that amuses me is when the people I deal with at publishers miss *their* deadlines and I get panic-stricken emails asking me to proofread something and get it back within the next couple of hours...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fulani - It's not only in publishing. I get that all the time at work. One coworker has yet to catch on that when I say "Just let me rearrange the space-time continuum first," I mean "You're an idiot."

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I was reading your blog and especially about Scrooge McDuck I was thinking about Nicholson baker's book the "Fermata". It would be wonderful to be able to freeze time like that and walk around and read and write at leisure. Or like the guy in the Fermata, write erotic stories and slip them into ladies purses while they;re frozen in time. Or editors slush piles.

    Garce

    ReplyDelete
  5. Garce - It's been so long since I've read that book. But yes, it would be wonderful. I wonder what I'd get up to with that extra time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh yeah, love the whole Blackadder series, but II is my favorite too. Every episode of it is a gem. Hugh was excellent as a German Baron in the last episode of the Elizabethan series as well as being featured in III, the Regency one.

    Ah, you've distracted me... Now I have something to blame for that deadline I'm about to let slip by.

    See, that's another way of dealing with deadlines. The old grade school classic of fixing blame. i.e. The dog ate my manuscript.

    Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Craig - This topic reminded me of that quote "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."~ Douglas Adams.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Just let me rearrange the space-time continuum first"

    Ah yes! Perhaps that's what we should be working on. It should be possible, theoretically.

    I love your sense of the absurd, Kathleen.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Lisabet - Thanks. And I'll let you know as soon as I figure out the space-time continuum thingy.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.