May 12, 2010

Andromeda Finn - Chapter 1 - Introduction

Greetings from the deep end!
I thought that it would be ever so much fun to start writing a short story today. Enjoy.

Andromeda Finn had a stupid name. Or at least he thought so. Andromeda's parents were a little weird, by everyone's standards, not just his. They had a crazy obsession with stars and planets and galaxies, thus his stupid name. It was because of that name that Andromeda was known as the child of the local "star nuts". His parents were always studying the stars and went to space conventions and made dumb space jokes. Both of them were teachers in the little town where their family had lived for generations. Andromeda's father was a science teacher and mother was a math teacher. Their classrooms were always full of posters and dioramas of the solar system. They were always talking about the stars and having their students do projects about them. The students in the school generally just thought Andromeda's parents were weird. As a seventh grader in a small town junior high of about eight hundred students, where his parents taught, he wasn't able to escape the negative influence of his families insane obsession for even a minute. In big cities kids could hide under the radar, they could fade into the crowd and hide in a mass of people. Andromeda did not get to enjoy that lifestyle. Everyone knew everyone else and he was often picked because his family was different, because his parents were "weird".

In many ways Andromeda was a normal kid. He enjoyed television, video games, movies and music. He was looking forward to learning to drive in a couple years and couldn't wait to get into high school where he might get a little relief from the grief he endured on a daily basis by going to school in the same place where his parents taught. The only real problem in Andromeda's life was the shame he felt from being related to people who he didn't understand, who he didn't feel that he belonged with. Andromeda was uncomfortable in his skin, uncomfortable in his surroundings, uncomfortable as a part of the family he was born into. Even that was common among other thirteen year olds, but Andromeda didn't know that. He only knew that he was unhappy and wanted to be a part of a "normal" family like everyone else.

When at school Andromeda often did everything he could to avoid other people. One day after school, Andromeda was walking down an out-of-the-way hall on his way to his father's classroom to wait for his ride home when he noticed an open door. Andromeda had never noticed a door down that hall before. He quickly decided that he simply hadn't been paying attention in the past and that the door had always been there. Andromeda made to walk by the door and continue on his way when curiosity got the better of him, and Andromeda chose to peek inside. He was astonished at the size of the room. It was easily as large as a gym, perhaps even bigger. The room contained piles and piles of odds and ends, wrestling mats, books, desks, boxes of pictures and trophies. There was an old score board leaned up against a wall next to a pile of old speakers and audio equipment. There was also a pile of old reel to reel video equipment and tapes on shelving in the middle of the room. This stuff looked old. Andromeda knew that the school had been a high school building years before but he had never thought that there may still be things stored from back then.

Taking a few steps into the room, Andromeda called a shy "hello" to see if anyone was in there. No response came so he entered further. As he walked around taking mental notes of all he saw there, Andromeda's mind began to wander, wondering what history left all of these things here. Who had used this stuff, why wasn't it thrown away? He wandered around until he made his way to the shelving with all of the video tapes on it. Andromeda began to read the titles to himself. Most of them were old school plays and football games, but as he came to the last reel his blood ran cold and the small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The title of the last video was, "Andromeda Finn".

May 10, 2010

Sad Confessions of a Small Town Techie

Greetings from the deep end!
It's been a while hasn't it? I should write more, but I have seriously been lacking in the inspiration department as of late. This morning I found some inspiration tucked away in a forgotten drawer of my work desk next to the salt and pepper shakers that I keep there for emergencies. Actually, it came from two more much more common and less entertaining places (though I do have salt and pepper shakers in my work desk). First a friend of mine made mention of some of his audio recording technical woes on Facebook and I commented on it. After that comment I was pondering the whole gamut of technology and technological issues when I remembered some technical issues that I had yesterday morning while setting stage and sound for a Pacific Life Bible College missions team at our church in Sheridan. Thus inspiration was born. 

My friend wrote that he was having some technical troubles in the recording studio, to which I replied, "Audio stuff is just like really really expensive legos. You gotta take it all apart and put it back together again from time to time or you aren't getting the full value out of the product." How in the world did I adopt such an optimistic view of technical trouble? Why am I not like the people in the world who would much rather blow up the system than fix it? The answer to that question is simple. My name is Derick Brown... and I am... a... TECHIE!!! 

Techie - web definition - a term, derivative of the word technology, for a person who displays a great, sometimes even obsessive, interest in technology, high-tech devices, and particularly computers...

I enjoy tearing apart a sound system and putting it back together better than it was before. I look forward to such projects almost as much as I look forward to Christmas. Since I hastily rebuilt our system for the traveling group, I get to re-rebuild it for our use this evening. I am so excited. We (Pam, Xander and I) are going to pull all of the cables and snakes in the system, clear the sound board and plug it all back in so that it is more organized and more easily used by the remaining members of the church after Pam the kids and I leave. Think of it as spring cleaning for musicians. We will be throwing away all of the old busted drum sticks that have accumulated behind the drum cage, we are going to untangle the spaghetti bowl of cables and we are going to find out what channels are really shot and which ones are just faking. 


What does this situation have to do with everyman? I say it has everything to do with everyman. Everyman has things in his life that need to be gone over and repaired from time to time. Not so much physical, tangible things as I have been writing about today, but my heart is pushing me more towards speaking of relationships. Every relationship needs to be gone over from time to time so that it can continue to function at its prime potential. It is good to spend some real time with a spouse or friend from time to time and just talk. Take a moment and let them know you still care. Talk about past hurts that haven't been dealt with, untangle emotions and thoughts that may have run away from you over the past however long has it has been since the relationship was last evaluated and repaired. Relationship cleaning is like rebuilding a church sound system, it doesn't have to be done. A person can still continue to just modify things to make things continue to work. The problem with however, is that, the more you modify, the more tangled things get, and the better the chance of a break down. Everything works much better when we can begin again from a fresh build from time to time. Though they are both necessary for a productive system, I do not enjoy rebuilding a relationship as much as I do a sound system, but then again, I am a Techie, not a Relationship-ie.