The first part of this morning post comes to you courtesy of Matt of X-Entertainment, who in the X-E blog has posted a "poll" of sorts (it's not really a poll; more like a question, really), asking readers what they would take with them in the event that disaster struck and they were forced to retreat into a fallout shelter of their own design. My answer to the question is below, in its entirety:

I'd definitely want to have some books down there -- particularly the complete works of Plato and collections of short stories by Kafka, Poe, Hawthorne, and Flannery O'Connor (to name a few). My dvd collection (along with the means to watch it) would also be nice to have.

And a number of legal pads and a large supply of pens, so I could continue to write my own fiction, god-and-creativity/inspiration-willing.

Other than that? I'd really want to have my toys down there, and my digital camera, and my computer, with a broadband connection, so I could continue to update SC with toy comics (and dvd reviews). I'm sure you'd do the same with X-E, Matt.

Oh, and I guess we'd all starve without food...so I'd also want my shelter to have a tunnel that led to an underground lake, on the shore of which lived a number of fishermen and Japanese sushi chefs who worked together and offered up the resultant wares for free.

And I guess mundane stuff like purple toothbrushes and baking soda toothpaste and comfortable toilet paper, etc., would be necessary too.

Interesting poll, Matt. 🙂 You wouldn't happen to be so worried about the future that you're starting construction on one of these shelters, with this poll being a way for you to get suggestions, would you?

I wouldn't blame you.

So last night I finished reading Camus's The Plague and picked up my pen to do some more writing, but found that I couldn't decipher all of the notes to myself that I write in the margin to help me pick up where a story left off and therefore couldn't continue the story like I'd intended. It's not that they're illegible, it's just that I'll have to reread the MS (and all of the notes that I wrote to myself as I wrote it) to get back into the mood of the story. Then the notes will make sense, and then I'll carry on as planned. That's usually how it works, anyway. It's been a while. I did read the story up to this point on the computer -- since I have it typed up to that point as well -- but the notes are absent from that version and so it's not really helpful for getting me "back into my head," so to speak. I like this story, though, and think that it deserves a finish -- though it's already way longer than I'd intended it to be. I'm already aware that it's a story that not many would find interesting or would finish (apparently most of my stories fall into this category), but I do think it's worth reading and worth finishing. So I'll have to do that.

Since I couldn't write, I picked up Everything That Rises Must Converge, a collection of Flannery O'Connor shorts, and read "The Comforts of Home". Hopefully I'll have more to say about it later -- perhaps along with a brief review of The Plague -- but for the time being I'll just say that it was good. Reminded me of some of my own pieces, too, with the conflict at the end and the abrupt conclusion. Flannery O'Connor's stories always strike a chord with me, like we're in some kind of harmony or something. One more story in that collection to go. I think I'll dig up my collection of Hawthorne stories -- which I finished a while back -- and reread a few of those. Not only are they great and worth reading again (and again), but it might help me get back in the writing spirit myself. These are two authors whose works inspire me.

But today I've got to go back to the master and pick up Plato. Besides, there's a speech I wanted to write into this new story, one I wanted to be based off of something Socrates says in the Symposium, so I've got to go and reread that to get in the mind to do it.

Yay, reading! Yay, writing! I missed you guys.