I'm a driver, I'm a winner. Again.

I cannot say for sure if the Universe loves me or hates me. I think that my being inspires some sort of twisted passive aggressive love-hate mania in whatever cosmic force that drives reality. Last march, my job disappeared and I found myself rather suddenly unemployed. This happened about a month after I first bought into the brand new Health Insurance plan. I was insured for a whole month!

There was of course the downside of things. No income. I did happen to receive unemployment benefits for a few weeks. I live in Michigan and the economy here has been in the hole for as long as I've been alive. I actually was employed on the strength of my sister's performance. She's intelligent and hard working and they decided to hire me as well. I'm a bit dimmer but driven to keep busy, and I took on every task that was thrown my way. I've written about the experience previously.

But they were re-organizing and my position disappeared. So it goes. The only thing that burned me was that the company kept a sleazy, unreliable... I have more

I took the time to read and write and work on other projects. I revised novels 5 and 6 and then wrote and revised novel 7, along with a double-handful of short stories. There were also loads of books and regular exercise. I re-discovered the joys of the local library. I built up my post apocalyptic survival library. All while looking for work elsewhere in the country. It felt great to be productive again. I was living on natural time, life was mostly good, if a bit uncertain.

My co-worker calls this delightful state of being “Pretirement” as she postulates that we'll never actually be able to retire so we might as well take advantage of our brief periods of unemployment whilst we're young. I do not disagree with this supposition, though I'm optimistic that one day I'll at least be able to get my writing career going to the point where I can support myself doing something I love. Still, I embrace my unemployment with glee, even as I try to avoid it.

Sometimes it feels as if the universe is giving me a taste of what life could be like. Like an extremely subtle demonic temptation. Sell your meager soul and live the dream of the hack novelist!

So we come back to the original statement in this post. I was offered a job as a driver full time running a route that I had occasionally covered during my last stint in their service. They hired me back. More pay. Different hours. No data-entry. I get to drive a car with a manual transmission – another topic previously hit upon, a skill that I picked up while working for this company.

Sweet! How fortunate!

I mean, I've already got some fun anecdotes. One dude in a wheelchair said that he loves me. I thanked him for that. I mean, there are other sources(beautiful women) whom I'd rather hear that declaration from - who hearing utter it might make my decade. But you take it where you can get it, so I thanked him and moved on.

But here we go. I do live in the state of Michigan. The weather is cold and we tend to get a lot of precipitation due to the fact that we're surrounded by lakes. In the winter we see this in the form of snow, sleet and freezing rain. I've come to realize a new functioning law in the universe. If I'm driving and there is a chance that it will snow or rain that night, it will snow or rain that night. Of the less than 10 days that I've been working, the weather conditions have been adverse for at least 80% of the time. But, Michigan, winter. Blah blah blah. This is all expected. A given. A fact of life to be complained about despite all the rest.

There were a couple incidents last night that really made me wonder if I offended creation by turning down some pact that I was just unaware of.

So far in Driving I've nearly been creamed by a cop car and have had a couple other close encounters to brag about. Part of the risk of driving at night. But yesterday, the universe re-introduced the ever looming threat of Deer to be the bane of my existence.

Deer. Louis CK is quite explicit about his feelings for them – and I feel that he has some valid points.

Last night, after leaving my third stop, I came across a herd of five does(a deer, a female deer) off to the side of the road. They were blocked by a tall fence that hemmed them out of some person's property and they see my car flying down the road in their general direction. As usual, they decided to break and run, right in front of my car, at the last second. - this is after long hesitation that allows me to come closer and closer. The company car that I drive is a Chevy Aveo. A Kleenex box on wheels. I don't need deer to throw themselves at me and crumple my ride. I missed the dumbest member of the herd by about three feet as it waited until the very last second to run across my path.

Luckily, I saw them early and was able to slow down. Fucking stupid deer. We need to breed wolves that can only digest white-tail deer flesh and set them loose on the herd.

Now for the figurative deer encounter. Same night maybe 4 hours later. My run was over and I had punched out and was driving home for the night while I was driving along in my own sweet ride – a white 96 Chevy Lumina that is somehow still able to start and drive, though a growing percentage of mass is represented by Iron Oxide. It's a round-town car, as it tends to vibrate uncomfortably whenever is passes the threshold of 60mph. I call it the Drift, and it gets mention in my Pharmacy novel.

Back to deer encounter 2. I was rolling along homebound on one of the main streets around 11pm and thinking about climbing into bed and going to sleep. Suddenly a car darted out of the cross street right in front of me. And then the driver stopped dead and froze, creating an impromptu roadblock and an excellent implement for an action movie chase scene.

Luckily my breaks still work, which surprises me, or I'm sure that Drift would have dissolved and burst into a ball of fire.

The silver lining? I wouldn't have to worry about paying my student loans back. Well, back to another evening of living dangerously.

Fuck you Brain.

Aliens is my all time favorite movie. Still. Even after twenty years further cinematic adventures that lead to encounters with hundreds(maybe thousands) more films. My best friends and I used to 'play' Aliens. My weapon of choice was the nine-barrel mini-gun from Predator. I was specific about the number of barrels that the weapon had as I imagined myself fighting off the swarms of warrior bugs.

I still have nightmares about the Aliens movies.

You haven't seen Aliens? Watch it. First watch Alien and then the sequel. You might even enjoy Alien 3. Skip Resurrection and the Aliens Vrs Predator drek that Hollywood shat out. Do try the AvP computer games, especially AvP 2 for Mac and PC. Alien is one of the Top Horror movies. Aliens one of the finest Action Horror movies. Each was made by a master director with a talented cast of actors portraying believable characters.

In short, they are fine cinema.

Further - The stories are set in a universe not unlike our own. There is no Utopian society. Mega-corporations are extremely powerful and influential in both political and every day life. People are greedy and selfish, they are noble and brave, or cowardly. Just like they are now. It is implied that there is no global government, the world is broken up into alliances and nation states. These work with the Mega-corporations as humanity spreads out into the stars. Actually, no government, beyond the corporate government, is ever seen. The characters work with the corporation. Even the Marines seem to be an arm of the Company.

Space travel is slow. Humanity generally seems to believe that it is largely alone in the galaxy, as no other species are mentioned directly in the movies. At least nothing intelligent.

We do have a Colonial military force and military starships, so there must be some hostile force out there. Their weapons are a primitive high tech. No lasers or phasers, they use slug throwers and explosives and fire as their tools of death. They pack body armor and knives, feed on cornbread substitute, wear video cameras and ride around in armored vehicles of questionable value. The Marines, are bad hombres and masters of foul language.

I so wanted to be a Colonial Marine as a kid.

Now to the Aliens. Imagine an eight foot tall carnivorous insect with a black exoskeleton razor sharp claws and teeth. It can run down humans and tear them in half, climb walls and ceilings. The best part? They have sulfuric acid for blood. Slaying one just might kill you in return. They work as hive force and are utterly fearless, but are at the same time very intelligent and are able to change tactics to suit the needs of the battle. They can see in the dark, so there is no place to hide.

Frightened yet?

One last thing, the most terrifying of all: They use other animals to breed. The Aliens are insects, with one queen that lays eggs and the rest are drones. The life cycle is such: Queen lays egg → Egg hatches into parasites called facehuggers → the facehuggers scuttle about and find a host, attach, implant the egg and then falls off and dies → the egg hatches and the chest burster erupts into the world → the chest burster grows at amazing speed.

The aliens don't care what host they use. Human or animal. How they managed to get into space is unknown, they just have. The Corporation is interested in the species. But I won't give anymore spoilers away. Watch the movies.

So, I've had a reoccurring nightmare over the years. The cast and setting are always different, sure, it's like a rebooted film franchise that uses the same general story – I'm in a place that has been infested by Aliens. Either facehuggers, for the really bad dreams, or drones in the less intense ones. Usually it is at night and often in a strange building. One bad one involved a mansion that was infested with facehuggers. They were crawling everywhere.

This time, I was outside an enormous stone building(1/4 mile wide and long, 10 stories tall) at night. Captain Janeway from Voyager and I think my friend Ryan – both in full Colonial Marine gear. What did I have? An empty rifle. I swear, all of the firearms I laid my hands on (about 20 of them) were empty. Didn't have any full magazines, but I had a knife. Thank you brain for that, you gave me a knife to fight against aliens that bleed acid.

And that's the gist of it. There was a lot of running through dark corridors in the basement – which was a lot like a factory with metal grated floors, large machinery and tons of fog/mist/steam.

What does this say about me? I'm optimistic and pessimistic in the same breath. In the dreams I refuse to give up and keep running and fighting where I have to, even when it is hopeless. And I know that it is hopeless. But I push forward regardless of my chances. Because it beats stopping.