rum-and-coke.

I was at a bar a few weeks ago.  Well inebriated by the time I fought my way to the bar counter.  It was packed.  Football game.  Lots of fans who never knew they were fans until they reached the sixth one that night.  Anyway, I eventually stake my position and make eye contact with the bartender – a young man who looks to be about two or three years older than myself.

When it’s really loud and crowded, bartenders just raise their eyebrows, which is your cue to order.  It’s an interesting phenomenon because in a bar packed with almost 100 people, there is rarely any misunderstanding as to who is on the receiving end of the eyebrow raise.  At that moment, I was staring down arched eyebrows.

So, slurring just a tiny bit, I order:

“Cokeandrum.”

“What?” he asks, confused.  I figure it’s the game.  It’s really loud.

“Cokeandrum, single shot.”

“What?”

Okay, maybe it’s not the game.  I tried to locate, for the moment, the disconnect.  I could not find it.

“Cokeandrum.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, your pour in a shot of Captain and then…”

“Oh, you mean a rum-and-coke?”

…

YES, O Imperial Bartender!  That’s exactly what I meant!  How dare I, a petty commoner, transpose two words in such a perverse manner?  Surely, switching the words around changed the concept of the drink entirely.  Whereas once it was rumandcoke, I had clearly made it cokeandrum.  Nevermind the fact nobody questioned Game when he did.

What an asshole bartender.  Like the mistake was on me.  Please.  He went on to explain that I was wrong because the way I had drunkenly uttered it, it sounded like I wanted a cup of coke with a side shot of rum.  Which makes no sense.  No sense at all.  Considering nobody ever does that.

I still tipped him one dollar on a three dollar drink.  I don’t know why.  I’m nice, I guess.

Now, every time someone corrects me on something trivial, I think of that story.  And ask them for a dollar.

Oh, me?  Well, since you asked…GSMB 2.0 is coming along nicely.  God, it feels so much better than the previous draft.  And I’ll still go back through it if/when I finish and butcher it again.  But it’s nice to have characters that actually stand out on their own.  There’s some nice potential for this novel, perhaps for a series, but I don’t want to get too far ahead.  I’m trying to really balance humor with entertainment and message, and I realize it’s a difficult juggling act.  Too humorous, nobody takes messages about religion seriously.  Too serious, it’s no fun.  Too many messages, you’re pretentious.  No messages, you’re a forgettable read.  So the idea is that it’s kinda funny and it’s kinda serious.  A lot of the concepts are fairly lighthearted.  I don’t really have anything more profound to say about religion than the next guy, but I try to throw a few things in there that make people think.  Ideally, if this novel ever materializes, one of the questions people come away with, and hopefully share with friends and family, is what the nature of a “God” is and what the psychology of a “savior” is.  Is God an entity or an idea?  Is a savior inherently bound to salvage or should he even bother?  Can he decide against destiny?  Can he succeed on behalf of humankind while suffering an unimaginable personal failure?  I like the idea that these questions can be asked, and they’re fairly open-ended.

More later.  It’s 4:30am.  I’m terrible about updating, but I’m writing more these days, so that’s the reason.