They called him Mole. He was four foot ten and had an overdeveloped brow. Kids can be cruel. Adults are crueler.

I feel the dice rattling around in my head. It’s the emptiness that keeps me from achieving anything.

Throwing, tossing, drawing, spacing words on the page in the hopes of finding something to say. I wanted to talk about Mole, but I realized I have nothing to say about him, no way for me to make him a hero, which is what I wanted to say about him. He’s a four foot ten hero. But I’m not good at making heroes. I’m only good at making pathetic anti-heroes—I wouldn’t even go that far. They aren’t “anti” in any good way. They’re anti in the most basic, menial way imaginable.

Wow. I’m down on myself. I wrote something yesterday, but I didn’t post it as the video game world sucked me in. I’m having a lot of fun playing about once a week with Doolies and my friends from graduate school. Yesterday was particularly good. We would have played all night if Doolies didn’t feel so tired from working too hard lately. I miss her and I worry about her. Her current rotation is wearing her out. Only two and a half more weeks and she’ll hopefully get through this current nightmare.

I’m drained of words. I know, you don’t want to hear more consternations. You want to hear beautifully simple stories. But I can’t think up stories. I’m realizing that now. Take this example: I wanted to tell stories about immortality. I got as far as the “immortality pill,” but as I read more short stories (e.g., Kurt Vonnegut), I read good stories about immortality that go beyond the pill. Sure, it’s there; society is revolutionized by the pill (or drug), but he then takes the next step. What happened because of it? In one story, he shows how crowded the earth has become, and how a grandfather, the patriarch of an increasingly large family, taunts his family by threatening to disinherit members of the family who disobey him. The family lives in a small space (as more people are born, space becomes a priority), and live within fear of their grandfather (or father or great grandfather). They can’t get jobs because the older generation refuses to give up working. In this short story (not a particularly good one—the later stories in Monkeys book were rather disappointing), he shows this world and builds characters and a story around the original thought of immortality. My only original thought (besides the immortality pill—which it turns out is not terribly original), is the incredible risk-adverse behavior the immortal inhabits display. Not that it’s that original, I’m sure, but I should take it and run somewhere.

Those are more words than I thought I could get out today. Sure, they’re complaints, but at least something is better than nothing, right?