When aliens attack

(That video will make sense later...)

I'm a big believer in writing muses. It's either superstition, or a good excuse to allow myself not to feel guilty for failing to write in my free time, but...

No, seriously, I think that sometimes the muses hit, and other times they don't. When they do pay you a visit, you must obey. Normally my muses speak to me at the most obscenely inconvenient times. For instance, I never made it through a finals week in college without feeling like Odysseus trying to withstand the sirens... 

The problem is, if you don't write something down, it's like it never happened. (Tom Clancy taught me that.) Since I've learned the write-it-or-lose-it lesson through unhappy experience, when the muses hit, I'll write on anything I've got handy. I keep a pad of sticky notes by my bed (full if illegible scribbles, since I'm usually asleep). I've got pages and pages of teeny tiny notes I took during my college biology class. I've filled up all the memo space on my phone with notes, and the majority of my phone's "sounds" section is me whispering parts of stories into the microphone.

One of the greatest tools I've got, though, is this:

Picture not actually taken at 4:32 a.m....

This is my recorder, and it has been my friend through many, er, dangers? (Name that movie!) It moved to Washington, D.C., with me in 2009 and recorded many an interview/hearing/bill markup on Capitol Hill. Back in Utah, it has recorded interviews with city officials, local celebrities, and even the doltish head of a college department. (Some of you can probably guess which one...)

But most importantly, this dear little recorder provides a handy dandy way for me to channel the muses while making the arduous 2 ½-hour drive from my hometown to my current town. It's much safer to talk into a recorder than it is to balance a notepad on the steering wheel while driving.

World—you're welcome.

The other day I pulled out my recorder to interview my roommate for a class assignment and discovered that it was full. Luckily, this happened around the same time that I was due to take a trip home, so I used that boring drive to listen to clips and erase the ones I didn't need. The majority of the clips were from Washington, and consisted of lawmakers sounding roughly like the teacher from Charlie Brown: Whaaa-whaaa-whaa, whaaa-whaa whaaaa-whaaa whaa…

Some of the clips, though, were bits of my stories from as far back as 2009—bits I had forgotten recording, and was pretty excited to have found. If I learned one thing from listening to the clips, though, it's that my mind shifts into ADD mode when recording/driving/mentally writing/channeling muses.

Observe:

Bring all these characters together and have him talk to them all, and it will be a good time. One hour. It's going to be like, 9:30 before I get home. Blegh. Anyway, so he's there trying to avoid all these dumb people and…"

"So they journey along and… I think this is a cop……………………… Yep, it was! Hope he doesn't mind that I'm going 5 over. Whoops. Anyway…"

"She's unhappy and—the lake is pretty! It's dark blue in the middle and light blue on the edges with pink from the clouds and the sunset! *GASP* It's pretty! Anyway. I just had to make a note of that. Okay. So, she doesn't trust this newcomer, and…"

"Now, he's annoyed by her because she's not right. DUDE! A PELICAN! That's cool!"

So there I was, listening to myself blather on about cops and pelicans when I switched over to a new file, only to hear Brother No. 5. (Read it with a puffed-up newscaster voice to get the full experience:)

"Hello?

"Hi.

"This is (Brother No. 5) reporting from the crash site of the alien spaceship. And we've been seeing strange flashes of light…

"Oh no! The doors are opening up! Oh man! There's an alien crawling out!

"The president's now here trying to make peace and contact with them.

"The alien's just standing looking around… Wait… It has something. It looks like it's going to move up to shake the president's hand...

"HE SHOOTS THE PRESIDENT! OH MAN! THIS IS SCARY!

"The Secret Service is going up—OH! THEY BURST INTO FLAMES! OH, THIS IS SCARY! THIS IS JUST TERRIBLE!

"OH, I'M GOING TO… UHHHH…. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

And just like that, Brother No. 5, in his 2009 squeaky little 12-year-old voice, managed to surpass anything else that will probably ever exist on my recorder. Ever.

Dang him.