Why I'm Scared Of White People

So my reading -- you know about my reading, right? Here's what Joe Clifford, the guy running the thing, says:

It's a brutally honest piece about violence, ignorance, and racism, a dangerous topic, and Sean doesn't shy from illumining his own prejudice and weakness, his own part in the play--but just as importantly, he does not apologize (as so many writers in his spot might do) for the same in others. In short, it's a gritty, real, and raw story about American, urban living in the modern age. I am proud to have him read at Lip Service West. (And you should come, because he's right: he fails to bring 10 people, I take the thumbs. Them's the rules. He knows that going in.)

Lip Service West
Friday, August 12
5512 San Pablo Ave. Oakland, CA
7 p.m.

There will be wine and cheese and hot dogs and such things as well as a solid line-up of writers performing edgy autobiography -- this actually is an enjoyable event.

Anyway. Speaking of race and violence, I just put things together, and I realized one of the reasons white people scare me. Aside from Goldman-Sachs. Yes, I am white, but I'm fucked-up white -- my mom was raised by an ama, spoke Tagalog before English, and had the physical habits and mannerisms of a Phillipino. Since I have fetal alcohol syndrome, I have epicanthic folds in my eyes, and have been mistaken for Asian more then once. I grew up in a community that was primarily African- and Mexican-American, and a lot of my speech patterns and mannerisms come from there. I get called everything from 'rice boy' to 'mister man' to 'funky nigger' when I step out of my door.

In other words, yeah, I'm white, but I am under no fucking obligation to be a goddamned example of whiteness, okay?

Anyway, white people creep me out. It's true, and I need to get over it, but there are reasons.

Good reasons. Don't-go-in-the-attic-reasons.

The subject of UPC codes on books came up in one of my email discussion groups, and I just got a full and massive white person flashback. Everything fell into place and I understood why I don't just think of white people as people who tend to be pink-to-buff, but as a group.

A conspiracy.

It started when I was a kid. In my school, whites were very much in the minority, and there was a filthy little trick the administration played in order to increase racial tension enough to mandate regular beatings for the vulnerable.

There was a series of classes, one for each grade, that was designated as being for 'bright' or 'advanced' children. Which meant any white kids who weren't regarded as actively defective, and any non-white kids who actually were bright.

Yes, I was known to be bright. Bright the wrong way. They did not want to encourage that shit.So the only white kids in my classes? The other losers. That's what made them stand out. And I was the biggest loser of them all -- or, rather, the skinniest and weirdest.

I saw the kids in the advanced classes, and they seemed as though they were all together, a unit, and somehow even the other white kids in my class were part of it. I was white, but I wasn't one of the White People.

Events occurred, and junior high, high school, and all along I still feel as though I'm outside of this thing -- but I also know that I'm the kind of person who's prone to feeling this way. How could there actually be a White Thing?

In high school, this white guy named Marty sits in front of me in math, and tells me just the craziest shit I've ever heard a human being say out loud and expect to be taken seriously. There are lasers burning invisible UPC codes into people's foreheads (Marty ruined zebra labels for me), and that lets the government control their minds, and everyone's history is on file with a computer called The Beast, see, like the Beast in Revelations, and...

I mean, he went ON. He did not stop. And every word was crazier than the last, and he insisted that he'd learned this science fiction shit in church. Which I knew was bullshit, because come on. There is no way you'd go to church and hear stuff that was, well. Obviously, transparently false. Nutty.

At that time I was working at the Point Richmond Child Development center, and one of the instructors there invited me to attend her fiancee's baptism. It's always a little hard when someone targets you for conversion -- it's a compliment, but a terrible, stupid, embarrassing compliment that's impossible to receive gracefully.

When I show up for the baptism, I'm first taken aside to attend Sunday School, and that's where I get a shock. All the biggest assholes --

Okay. Black dudes? Generally, one fight. A lot of the time, they'd even act as though they were friends with me afterward, which confused the living fuck out of me. The bad ones?

Black girls and white boys. Black girls would actually hurt you, cut you, do tricks with bobby pins that left blood blisters, and they'd look right at you while they did it, faces cold and mean. It was important to them that you know they didn't like you and they wanted to hurt you.

White boys were just too fucking dumb to live. Stupid, mean, and looking for another white boy they could safely pick on. And every bad-news white boy I knew was in that Sunday school classroom. These were the shitheads who had beat on me for years, just pounded on me until I got scary and they stopped, and here they were talking about the Prince of fucking Peace, and the Love of Christ, and you know?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

They were so glad to see me. Real warmth. Whether I got a beating or a cookie depended entirely on how these thuggish sluggish meatloaves related me to their favorite fairy tales. This is a human trait that always inspires me with genuine revulsion.

Anyway, that guy Marty from my math class was there. And he had not been shitting me. All of them were spouting off about how the Wankel engine had been predicted by the Elders of Zion and so on, all of them just radioactive with mutually-reinforced self-approval. So pleased with their lunatic beliefs that they just glowed.

Anyway, after spending an hour listening to these poorly-crafted hominids congratulating themselves on being compassionate, humane, and altogether Christlike, we adjourned to the...

Fuck it. You had to call it a theater. It had theater seating, and a huge glass tank behind red curtains on a stage, and it was dark except for the stage. The preacher came out and began an extensive sermon, one dealing specifically with the yawning mouth of Hell and the torments awaiting the unbeliever.

He was preaching to me.

He had clearly been informed that I was coming, and he addressed himself directly at me, going so far as to point at me in order to punctuate such words as 'sinner.'

How very nice, I thought to myself. As my eyes grew accustomed to the lighting, I was able to look around me and see...

... them. The White People. All the pale folks I seen in school, the ones who had nice clothes and nice lunches, who played together. The ones who had hit me, kicked me, threw stones at me, called me faggot. The girls I had crushes on. The ones on the inside of the White Conspiracy.

All of them, looking at me, smiling hopefully, faces shining in the dark.

Fictional Me: A Daydream Game

This is taken from the collection Lat's Lot, copyright 1977 by the Malaysian cartoonist Lat. Lat's work is just wonderful, the kind of thing I periodically force down people's throats.

Anyway, I'm not the only one who plays this game! This is a panel from a cartoon Lat did on the same subject. I remembered it while writing, and was able to track it down.

It's been a while since I did something properly goofy. Just for fun, here's one of my daydreams.

Hey, writers? I have actually gotten a number of stories from this little game. And if you read this blog for soap-opera purposes, I will no doubt make some truly unfortunate unconscious revelations here, along with some tragic misapprehensions of self. Should be good for a laugh.

Here we go:

If I were in a thus-and-such type of story, what would it be like?

And to clarify, the whole thing has a casting sort of quality to it -- there are roles that I've played in certain books, I can always get work standing in the back of a Viking scene, that kind of shit. Remember -- daydream.

Hard-Boiled Detective

I'm starting here because in this genre? I am not the lead. I'm the guy who knocks the detective out. You can tell it's me and not just a random thug if there is --

-- a revelation of unexpected depth of character lending a tragic tone to my inevitable demise.

-- a hint of sympathy directed toward the detective.

-- I turn out to be a sadistic intellectual who smugly torments our hero.

(As an aside, I also play this basic role in a number of Daniel Pinkwater books, but I'm a butler for one of the heroes in those ones.)

Police Procedural

An amusing witness or suspect. Really, not a whole lot of point to me in this genre. I'm just another one.

Cozy Mystery

I hate cozies. Hate, hate, hate 'em. The domestication of murder for the amusement of human housepets rankles severely.

Too bad, because I am custom-made for cozies. I'm a fact reservoir, a detail-noticer, a loveable good-natured eccentric, and when that one little moment comes when violence is threatened? By cozy standards, I am a warrior king. Thankfully, I am also bound and determined to mind my own damned business.

But as all fiction writers know, that just means I'll be dragged into the mystery kicking and screaming against my will. How? The writer's groups. The band. My attempts at breaking into the arts. These all provide interesting points of contact with the world that could fuel a series.

But worst, and most obvious of all?

The missus. She throws herself into the middle of every dramatic situation that comes along because if it interests here, then it's her business, isn't it? And yeah, we do in fact banter amusingly, bicker ceaselessly, and come to one another's rescue on a regular basis.

I really wish I liked cozies, because that series writes itself.

Adventure SF

I'd be good here, but nothing special. I'd fit in all kind of roles. One of the settlers on another planet, a field illustrator in a time travel story, the guy the aliens first contact, all that stuff. Unfortunately, I'm too quirky for the starring role in this stuff. Fine with me, he said huffily, you're all a bunch of dummies anyway. (I'm just bitter because I wanted the male lead in a Stanley G. Weinbaum planetary romance, and the woman has to be the quirky one in those.)

I'm putting this here because of the psychic powers in Known Space, but Larry Niven could get a good alien race out of me.

Hard SF

Similar, but with less scope. I'd be the one who asks the questions the reader wants answered. Maybe if I'd had more study skills when I first tried college...

Quest Fantasy

Again, a tooth-gritter. No really good roles for me. I might be like Beorn from the Hobbit or (oh, I hate this) Tom Bombadil. The good-natured outsider with an uncanny link to the natural world, who provides both a place to rest for the heroes and a vague sense of menace.

Or I'd be an orc, or a troll. Ah, well. It's work.

Heroic Fantasy

God help me, this would be the perfect fit. If you've ever read blurbs describing characters like Conan ("A man of great mirths and great melancholies...") or Kane ("Half-savage, half-savant, with a dash of Satanic seasoning..."), well. Jesus. Have you ever hung out with me?

I even have a knack for swordplay -- when I studied fencing in high school, a number of instructors gave me free lessons, and I kinda got the impression they thought I might go somewhere with it. Too bad money issues ended that.

My main problem with life is that it isn't sword-and-sorcery fiction.

Memoir

It's been done. I'm The One That I Want by Margaret Cho. My brother Duncan is a major character. I'm the briefly-mentioned bit player who means nothing to the reader but the writer needed to acknowledge. At least I can walk into bookstores and see my name in print.

Mainstream

Well, you should be able to figure this out. I do not have a mainstream life, my life's subject matter has been strongly genre. So I'm stuck in an outlying subplot -- 'Whatever will become of our beloved shining nutjob?' I wind up dead in a lot of these, usually suicide. I blame society.

Underground

Do I look like an idiot? Ask me in person. You might want to get some booze in me first.

Superheroes

Okay, three ways to go. In mainstream comics, I'm definitely a Marvel guy -- I'm uneasy with the ideas of good and evil as supernatural forces influencing the world, and there's a lot of that lurking in DC's mythos.

I'd start off as one of those guys who comes across as a villain at first because he's too caught up in his cause. I would guess an endangered species of some kind, probably a reptile. My costume would be one of those ones that looks dorky in a comic, but might be okay on Halloween. First appearance would be written by Don McGregor or Steve Gerber. The Avengers would have second thoughts after beating the shit out of me, eventually I'd lead the team for a brief run, and my unsuccessful limited series would feature me getting made a fool of by a sexy supervillainess in a complete tonal about-face from any prior appearance.

In the movies? Costumed adventurers would be all supervillains initially, carving the world into despotic city states. I'd be a man with nothing to lose, who in a moment of desperation finds that he once had powers, and they've been stolen from him, and he can only get them back by killing the bad guys one at a time. This one is just oodles of fun. I might write it someday.

Independent comics? I'd be a quirky, humorous hero along the lines of the Badger, Flaming Carrot, or maybe an oddly dramatic one like Kevin Matchstick in Mage or Go-Man. The book would be rough during the first few issues when the focus would be on me, but then I'd start taking a back seat in an ensemble piece.

I'd be an unbelievably neurotic hero for hire, whose staff manages to keep him in line enough to be a force for good, mostly, by cuddling, cajoling, badgering, threatening, teasing, and general bullyragging. It would be about the idea that it takes a dozen or so people to actually make one superhero -- or regular human being -- work. This one might get written as well.

Romantic Comedy

An unexpectedly good fit. The difference in appearance between me at my seediest and me at my best totally satisfies the ugly duckling requirement. My general emotional neediness and neuroticism make me a hard but satisfying nut to crack, romantically (the missus has a well-rehearsed performance on this subject), which is good drama. I can provide pratfalls and physical comedy, then turn and provide a strong masculine presence. I am easily flustered and embarrassed and given to blushing, and I have been given the impression that while in that state I am most amusing.

Truth be told? I tend to view my life as a humorous horror story, but it has a strong romantic comedy element as well.

Thrillers

I'm two guys here. The one who raises the monster and is heartbroken when it turns on him just as the story gets going, and the cannibal genius psycho-killer. The first one depresses me, and the second one has been thrown in my face on a regular basis since childhood.

When I read Silence Of The Lambs, I knew it was just a matter of time before someone said I reminded them of Hannibal Lecter, and I was right. It was amusing the first few dozen times it happened, but now when some distant acquaintance comes up to me and says, "I read a book/saw a movie last night, and there was this character who really reminded me of you," I just feel creeped out.

Horror

Oh, this is such a natural. There are two main roles for me here. The misunderstood monster, and the shapeshifter slowly devoured by the beast within. I could do a little mad science, if it was required. Maybe bravely allow myself to get killed so the lead could get away.

Situation Comedy

Like romantic comedy or sword and sorcery, a totally natural fit. But while I find it easy to put together something where I'd be the lead, I'm actually more a side-character. I'm the one who periodically sums up the situation in a bafflingly hilarious statement that turns out to be either dead accurate or utterly incomprehensible.

And so on. The fun part of this game is when the rules of the genre force you into a role you may not care for -- or which surprises you with its aptness. Yeah, it's fun and, if you write down what you daydream, do it well, and sell it, it's profitable.

There are times when I wouldn't trade being juvenile for anything in the world.

Touched By An Imbecile

The fun thing about this technique is that it opens up all kinds of color possibilities for the images if I get the chance to do them as large-scale prints.

The missus is visiting her mom, so I decided to take advantage of her absence and indulge myself by pacing through the house in the dark instead of sleeping. (If she was here, she'd make me turn on a light.) Well, I got an idea so brilliant it impressed even me. I swear to God, I'll be able to retire on this one.

I want to do a TV show called Touched By An Imbecile. You'd get a group of regular old idiots -- you know, like the kind at work, or the ones who have a hard time telling you where the C-clamps are? No one so slow that you'd feel bad about making fun of them, but none of them so smart that it's a good idea to let them drive and vote and stuff. The kind of people who 'feel truth in their heart.'

So we'd give them a van, and have them go around the country and show intelligent, well-educated people that their so-called 'smartness' is just something they put on to avoid facing their basic humanity, and that all it does is keep them from seeing the magic in life. Fun and hijinx will naturally ensue.

Then at the end of the season, the van, with the cast in it, will be driven into a crusher. People will be able to bid on-line for the right to trigger the crushing mechanism a little at a time, and they will be given the option of having their name and image flashed to the people inside the van so they know who's killing them.

Most smart people don't have a lot of money, but if we do this we'll get pretty much all of it.

Loco Motion

None dare call him Hoverbutt.

So, I haven't filled you in on Laszlo the dog in quite some time. He's now a thoroughly established member of the household, and I have to say it's a relief to have a thoroughly non-neurotic component in the social machine.

And here's the thing. He's my dog. Not a matter of ownership; he's my dog the way the missus is my spouse, or the Hon. Richard Talleywhacker is my guitarist. It's a mutual relationship, mutually agreed upon.

This is kind of a big thing for me. While I'm an animal person, I never really had a dog that was my dog until I moved in with the missus, and her Shar Pei bonded with me. Not to go into the sad details, but the poor dog wound up getting weird around children, so we had to put her to sleep. It wasn't easy on me, and since then I've had a bit of an emotional barrier between me and the household pets. Never thought of them as mine; I loved them, cared for them, but there was a distinct degree of reserve.

But Laszlo won me over. The simple joy he takes in my presence is something I can't help but return. I suffer greatly from anxiety at night, and I cannot express the comfort I feel when I'm laying there in the dark and I feel him stretch out against me or rest his head on my leg. I think of the first day I met him, how I turned around and saw him staring up at me like he was making a wish. I can't help but think that his wish came true.

It makes me feel good.

And like me, he has a tendency toward inadvertent physical comedy. It isn't simply awkwardness -- that lacks the touch of poetry that lifts ridiculous moments into the realm of the sublime. Rather, there is a combination of desperate, frenzied energy and a calm, joyful confidence in his athleticism that is frequently seriously misplaced.

As a long-bodied dog, his specialty is an arching leap that reminds me irresistibly of a dolphin. Shame about the landings, which typically involve the kind of crumpling that makes me fear for his long-term spinal health.

Usually I get to see these when he's getting ready to crash on our bed. His freedom of motion is limited, based on Roxie the terrier's growling territoriality, and the human reluctance to have certain body parts trod upon.

So Laszlo will pick his spot -- usually the lower right-hand corner -- and launch himself in a lovely gravitational curve that ends in a sprawling thump, rapidly followed by scratching, slurping, and snoring. "Sweetie! Watch how he springs into inactivity!"

But the other day he came up with something brand new. I think he may have been the first animal to ever make use of this particular type of locomotion. Science fiction writers, take note. Imagine a world where all animals move about in this fashion.

He and the missus were working on the concept of sit, and he had a conceptual breakthrough. You could see the light bulb over his hairy little cranium. The word, the act -- he was thrilled to sit. (I am not being patronizing. The missus and I are terrible at training the dogs, and they deserve all credit for any breakthroughs.)

Anyway.

So thrilled he was that his hindquarters rose an inch off the ground out of sheer joy. He forced them down again -- which compelled them to rise in response to his triumph. But Laszlo is a good dog, and his will to do right would not be defeated by a happy rear end. Down.

Up.

Down.

Up.
Down.
Up.
Down. Up.
Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.Up.Down.Up.Down.Updownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdownup...

And he lifted. He rose like a fart-powered hovercraft, fidgeting to such a degree as to render himself frictionless on the hardwood floor, and began to skitter about, slowly rotating as he careened off the furniture and finally drifted out of sight into the bedroom. Have you ever played air hockey? He moved the way an air-hockey puck moves.

The missus was almost paralyzed with laughter, but she was still able to clap her hands and holler. "Laszlo! Here! Sit!"

Laszlo shot out of the bedroom, scrambled frantically to make the turn, hit full speed on the straightaway, then sat down when he was six feet away from the missus.

He slid those last two yards in the sitting position and came to a rest at her feet, gazing up lovingly, tail wagging. It was nicely done.

More then that, it did a damned good job of reestablishing his credibility. After that, most dogs would have wound up being labeled 'Hoverbutt' for the rest of their lives, but not Laszlo. It's been a couple of days and the name hasn't come up once. His dignity may not be all-encompassing or of the greatest magnitude, but it can take a good bit of battering and come out intact. Even enhanced.

And let's face it. The typical sit session is about the human telling the dog what to do. That was not the story here.

I'm not sure what it is this dog has, but I hope it rubs off.

WooHoo! Road Trip!

Of course, some would regard it as a bad decision to post this after the last post, but this conversation came up yesterday, and if a conversation has a punchline, I can't help blogging it.

If you don't know, my whole family is the
same way as me, pretty much. I'm just the XXX version.

The Oaf: I've been thinking about running amok lately. I dunno; it's not always a bad idea to let go of your dreams. I think I might be out of the game.

His Dad: Really? You think?

The Oaf: Well, there's three ways to go. Serial killer, mass murderer, and crime spree. Serial killing is right off.

His Dad: How so?

The Oaf: Well, it's basically a form of masturbation, and the great feature of masturbation is its convenience. I mean, you toss one off and you've got a body to dispose of? That just doesn't work for me.

His Dad: Yeah, I'd rather roll over and go to sleep.

The Oaf: Exactly. And mass murder... I mean, in terms of what you're doing, that's the one that appeals to me. Just start killing and keep it up until they kill you. It's the prep-work that throws me. I couldn't get ready for something like that in advance. You ever read Erica Jong? My ideal mass murder is pretty much the same as her zipless fuck. I might dive into a crowd from a height, but probably not if they were only one person thick. I dunno, maybe if I'd been in the military...

His Dad: Vets always get the blame.

The Oaf: Well, tell me why, Mr. Postman? See, they've been trained to respond to stressful reactions with violence just like me, they've been trained to view groups of people as dehumanized victim galleries just like me. But they have guns and shit laying around, and they have an excuse.

His Dad: So I'd ask you why you bought a gun and you'd get all red faced, start mumbling about home protection...

The Oaf: Exactly. And if I just run downtown and start bending people, man, what a fucking waste of time. Get to Hell and have Charles Whitman being all, "Ah, one point seven five? Shit, that's no body count for a man. I told you 'bout how I got sixteen, right?" at me for the rest of eternity. No thank you.

His Dad: Well, you should have thought about that when you were younger.

The Oaf: Shoulda, coulda, woulda. And a crime spree... I dunno. I don't think I could make enough consecutive bad decisions to get a crime spree out of it.

His Dad: Oh, crime spree's the one for me.

The Oaf: What? Really? Huh. Is it a matter of getting the right Caril Fugate?

His Dad: Nah, I just like a road trip.

Magical Blood Math

(Art scanned from the rule book for purposes of review/slander. I couldn't find any credits for a specific artist. Sorry, artist, I would name you if I could.)

So I clapped eyes on this, and thought, "Holy shit, this is an actual revolutionary moment in popular culture. I've never seen anything like this before -- an attractive older Latina, a little on the stocky side, none of that brass bikini crap. This is something that would make someone none-white feel a little more at home, that won't make a woman feel shitty automatically. It's pop-slop crap, but the health of the image is more than compensatory. This is motherfucking fantastic!"

Then I noticed she was a Dwarf. (Not a little person; a Dwarf. Sorry, it's not my fucking terminology.) What the fuck? That ruins everything!

Or does it? Maybe it's still cool. No it isn't. This is...

My thoughts felt like angry bees for a few moments, and then I settled down and asked the real question, one which brings the current vernacular term 'shorty' to mind.

If MILFs are Dwarfs, then are standard hot chicks hobbits?

No, this is a motherfucking hobbit. The four-year old listening to The Hobbit being read aloud has just been left bleeding in the intersection, thank you very much, but I like this a lot.

Because it is a triumph for a commercial artist working with the corporate machine, man.

Here's what happened.

Art Director: Okay, so Bilbo Baggins was a burglar, okay? And he had a sword called Sting?

Artist: Here. Sting's a cat burglar with a sword. Give me my fucking check.

And that fucking candyass gave him the fucking check. Go, team.

So I mentioned that I've been spending more time with my nieces, who for blogging purposes may be known as Poppy and Spike. Poppy had a birthday recently, prior to which my sister and I had the following exchange.

Oaf: I've been trying to think of things to do with them. An evil corner of my soul thinks I could drag them down to perdition and get them into Dungeons and Dragons.

The Sister: You've got to do it. You've got to geek them.

So I picked up a copy of the Basic Dungeons and Dragons boxed game.

I have a gaming history. I got into it back in the mid/late seventies and played until I left Richmond at eighteen. When I started playing, there were no high-impact dice. Blue-cover basic was my start. Did a lot of stuff with a mix of AD&D and Arduin, which is the role-playing equivalent of making fire with sticks. I wrote a bunch of games myself, even played a few of 'em. These days I'm a distant spectator, but I still follow things.

So I had a few hopes. I'd always figured role-playing had a real industry in it and sure enough, it's here. I'm used to RPGs being strictly amateur night. I knew what was coming, but it turns out I wasn't ready for it.

Corporate fantasy.

I have seen a lot of shit fantasy on the shelves over the last forty-six years, and I believe I have located an asshole. This is fantasy systematically stripped of anything resembling individual vision, and reading it is like eating gravel that smells bad. It is Tolkien heard the sixth time round the ring in a game of Chinese whispers.

Worse. This isn't shit fantasy. This is a set of instructions for creating shit fantasy. There are some wonderful ideas in here -- doing character creation as a solo adventure that produces a character the player will enjoy playing is just brilliant. Shame the type is so small, the rules so needlessly complex --

There we go. That's part of it. When I said this was stripped of anything resembling individual vision, I overspoke. There is a love of rules and math here that speaks clearly. This is the product of people who, in playing Pac-Man, would rather not use a computer to run the algorithms. They'd rather do it themselves.

Because of this love, they did not want to strip the game down to the point where it would actually be accessible to someone who had never gamed before. There's another aspect, too. If someone can jump through the hoops this rule set presents, they are likely to be the kind of person who would like to work with even more rules. This is an industry run on rule consumption, thousands upon thousands of pages of rules. Here's how that works out in real life.

When Poppy opened the box she was thrilled with the maps and the counters, and devoted a lot of speculation to what the characters were like and who she'd like to be in the game.

Then she cracked a rulebook, and started reading. A few minutes later, she came over to me, a look of irritated concern on her face. "Do these people have any idea at all what kids like?"

Case closed.

Mental Commercial

I'm coming to realize that I've stacked up so many images that even if I don't have an original image for a post, I can probably find something wiggy that hasn't been seen for a while...

Just like the rest of you, I am saturated in mass media. I've had the forms of the ad and the commercial ingrained so thoroughly in my mind that my brain will from time to time emit an ad or commercial spontaneously.

My subconscious has the same techniques as the regular ad houses. It just has different concerns.

I'm in an interesting state, what with everything, and my brain just shot a television spot into the visual cortex that I would kill to see on the screen.

It's a standard battery office, a regular cubical farm, right? Warm white walls, lots of blues... people pecking away in front of their monitors...

The door comes off its hinges with a bang and the cops just flow in.

"Everybody freeze! You! Cardigan! On the floor!"

Cop looks at the monitor. "Oh, yeah. He's the one."

Close up of Cardigan's face to the carpet, gun to the back of his head. And then the written message goes up, with sound effects, block letters top and bottom.

SLAP

WHITE COLLAR CRIME

SLAP

ISN'T IT TIME?

See, that's the thing about my subconscious. Throws me into the emergency room, then turns around and gives me a treat like that. Brain, you are indeed a wacky pal.

(Holy shit. What a movie idea! Cops find out that busting white-collar criminals is easy, safe, and gets them brownie points from the public! Cop Rampage! Once the parasites are pulled from the public body, the swine once again grows fat. Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson for the lead?)

Going By Appearances

Another Pink Dinosaur for Breast Cancer. I don't know what it is about charitable work that brings out the mischief in me. "Oh, it's free -- but it'll cost you."

There are two entities who I wish to address in this blog post. First, society considered as a whole. Congratulations, Society. You are now a proper noun.

Let us be honest. We have an adversarial relationship, and that fundamental fact is unlikely to change. However, you've recently made some concessions that show a generosity and open-heartedness that has taken me by surprise. I must apologize; my judgments of you have unquestionably been harsh to an unwarranted degree.

I would like to do something to show you that I am willing to meet you halfway. I cannot claim that I feel entirely at ease with the course of action on which I'm setting out. It involves the abandonment of principles that have guided me throughout my life. But, Society, given the changes in our relationship, it behooves me to do something that is more than a gesture. Something that will unequivocally state that I am no longer an active opponent of yours, that I am willing to accept my place in your greater being.

So here it is, Society. From now on, I will try and put more of an effort into judging people on the basis of their appearance.

(Yes, Society, I did actually type in 'opinions' instead of 'appearance' just now. Yes, it was a total Freudian slip. But if you keep fucking giggling like that the whole thing's off.)

Now this represents a challenge. First off, I've got a hardcore bias for the underdog. I always assume that underneath a unique, eccentric, or appalling exterior lurks a gem of humanity.

Society, you must grant that this has led me to wonderful experiences with wonderful people. But I must admit to you that my assumptions as to the presumed value of other outsiders has also led me to spend hours, days, years in the company of jackoffs of both the sullen and giggling varieties, human vapors ranging from the thick to the vague, defect collections, self-cutting utensils with bladed handles (my handle is padded, thank you very much), and any number of other sick tools.

I will also admit that some of the attractive people I've known have been very pleasant in their way.

Society, you're the boss. From now on, the amount of slack I cut people will be based entirely on your standards of attractiveness.

This is going to be tricky, though. There are two obvious issues here; I don't get your tastes, and I am almost totally blind.

These are some pretty serious hurdles. But if you are as interested in my participation as you've indicated, then I hope you'll extend a little effort on my behalf.

I think the best, most practical way of handling this is to simply have me only cut slack to people who are celebrities, or whose personal attractiveness -- your standards, not mine, no smart people, no fat people, no weirdos, no slobs, only Benneton-style non-whites, I got you, I got you -- is so overwhelming as to guarantee eventual celebrity.

Here's where I'm going to have to ask for help. And here is where I address the second entity, which is You. You, reading this now. You, a real person who may at some point interact with me.

I will judge you strictly based on your appearance. I promise. But since I seem to have terrible taste in human beings and my vision is isn't a sense so much as a concept, you will have to tell me what your appearance is.

And if I already know you, and you're funny-looking, then stay the hell away from me. But tell me why, so my feelings aren't hurt. If you just duck out of my life I'll assume I did something horrible, so let's keep everything clear and aboveboard.

This is for you, not for me, so don't go acting all weird and defensive. Be clear and concise in your description of yourself. Don't say, "I look like Brad Pitt," because so far as I'm concerned Brad Pitt is a blur only distinguishable from Jennifer Anniston (sic) by pitch. Tell me what you look like and how attractive you are to your desired gender/s.

Don't tell me how attractive I am because I do not want to know. No matter what the answer, it will demolish my sense of self. Just let me figure it out by how mean people are to me. That's how the rest of you do it, right? I'm not asking for anything special that I don't absolutely need.

Oh. This part is important.

No fibbing.

(Follow-up note -- I checked with the missus, and it turns out she's gorgeous. I figured as much, but it's still a relief. Could have been awkward, you know?)

Helping Anonymous

Yes, I know. We're acting like a couple of children. That's just how it is with hyperintellectuals and whatever the hell he is.

Anonymous said...

My google alert caught your response & i was atingle to discover a new blog. If i'd known "That really stupid essay in the Times" was not in quotes for irony, i wouldn't have been so underwhelmed by your boring word choice. Try some subtle gradients in your prose !It sound's like Waynes World, which was satirical mockery of dude jargon in the last century. No idea what you were trying to say about anything but your own choice(?) or default (?) lack of skillz with words. And yes, i used skillz because it's from back in the day when middle school kids called called everything fucking nuts &retarded, dude. ;)
Use a thesaurus! Edit!
Bonaboba

Look. Anonymous. When you criticize someone's prose, it's a good idea to either qualify your criticism with a statement like, "I not smart but know words stink," or "Since that's how I'm handling it, my writing is going to be fucking awful," so as to draw attention away from any of your own shortcomings in that area.

Another way of handling that situation is to show some minimal command over the English language. On consideration, that might be best. Let's see how your comment would read if written in something closer to standard English, just for chuckles. Proper nouns, punctuation, all those petty things with which we low-grade prose stylists are so infatuated.

Anonymous said...

My Google alert caught your response and I was atingle to discover a new blog. If I'd known the post's title, That Really Stupid Essay in the Times, was not in quotes for purposes of irony, I wouldn't have been so underwhelmed by your boring word choice.

Whew. The obvious fixes are not going to be enough to salvage this one. Now, I know this isn't a compliment. So as we go, if I find myself feeling as though I've been praised, I'll know I'm in error.

"If I'd known the post's title was intended seriously --"

Really? That's what that said? Interesting.

"If I'd known the post's title was intended seriously, I wouldn't have been so underwhelmed by your boring word choice."

I fail to get the connection here, but this does look a lot like a comprehensible sentence so we'll let it stand. I'm nurturing a fantasy of Anonymous hoping for a brilliant excoriation of that squealing, vapor-filled article fit to stand with the works of Swift and Mencken, and writhing in an agony of disappointment on finding, instead, the word 'dude.' Alas, this sentence is our only hope of knowing more.

"Try some subtle gradients in your prose! It sounds like the dialog in Wayne's World, which was a satirical mockery of dude jargon in the last century."

I think the exclamation point is a bad idea. It pokes a hole in what's left of your gravitas after the capitalization and spacing errors had their way with it. But it's your anonymous comment, Anonymous.

I have to admit, you pricked me with this one, you scoundrel. I must admit, I'd thought a piece of writing that runs from, "Are those guys huffing thinner?" to, "Anyone with the most infinitisimal grain of sense or experience knows that suffering is an absolutely necessary and unavoidable part of life, and that exaggerated attempts to avoid it cause grotesqueries that bring suffering of themselves," might have some subtle gradients to it, but then, we're always the worst judges of our own work, aren't we? Thank you, Anonymous, for calling this weakness to my attention.

No idea what you were trying to say about anything but your own choice(?) or default (?) lack of skillz with words.

Anonymous, at this juncture I must act with boldness, and I crave your pardon if I misread your intentions. However, this sentence is a crafty foe, and resists all conventional analysis. I must allow myself the luxury of intuition. And out of sheer love of invective, I will endeavor to bring your insult out of the murky depths of awkward syntax and up into the light of day.

I have no idea what you're saying here, due to your extremely poor writing ability. I would suggest that you polish your 'skillz.'

Ho! Ho! Anonymous, I just slapped my thigh in mirth. That's the stuff, is it not? Do you notice how it's not necessary to explain that your use of the word 'skillz' is sarcastic when the rest of your missive is written in standard English? I may not be able to write the way you think you can, but I do know a little bit about humor. Word to the wise. Make sure your jokes are funnier than you are.

Now that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. How about...

You should know, only middle-schoolers use terms like, 'fucking nuts,' and, 'retarded.' 'Dude.' ;)

You have no idea what it cost me in terms of emotional health to leave that emoticon in place. But for you, Anonymous? No sacrifice is too great.

Use a thesaurus! Edit!
Bonaboba

Okay, I'll leave those there. In a way, they're the best part.

First off, 'use a thesaurus' is terrible, terrible advice to someone who needs access to a more varied and flexible vocabulary. Learn to use words in speech before you put them into your prose. When you fish in a thesaurus for interesting words while you're composing, you wind up with the kind of verbal slop McMahan produced in The Meat Eaters.

And that last word. The cherry on top. Literally the punchline. Edit! At the end of that email, the command, Edit! Really, Anonymous. Now you're just being silly. If your comment is the result of someone scrupulously editing with a thesaurus at their elbow? Do I need to continue?

So let's see how it turned out. From...

Anonymous said...

My google alert caught your response & i was atingle to discover a new blog. If i'd known "That really stupid essay in the Times" was not in quotes for irony, i wouldn't have been so underwhelmed by your boring word choice. Try some subtle gradients in your prose !It sound's like Waynes World, which was satirical mockery of dude jargon in the last century. No idea what you were trying to say about anything but your own choice(?) or default (?) lack of skillz with words. And yes, i used skillz because it's from back in the day when middle school kids called called everything fucking nuts &retarded, dude. ;)
Use a thesaurus! Edit!
Bonaboba

... to...

Anonymous says...

My Google alert caught your response and I was atingle to discover a new blog. If I'd known the post's title was intended seriously, I wouldn't have been so underwhelmed by your boring word choice.

Try some subtle gradients in your prose! It sounds like the dialog in Wayne's World, which was a satirical mockery of dude jargon in the last century. I have no idea what you're saying here, due to your extremely poor writing ability. I would suggest that you polish your 'skillz.'

You should know, only middle-schoolers use terms like, 'fucking nuts,' and, 'retarded.' 'Dude.' ;)

Use a thesaurus! Edit!

Bonaboba

Bonaboba... Oh, you tease. You may be Bonaboba to your mother, but you'll always be Anonymous to me. And Anonymous, just between the two of us? When we're together, I imagine -- and how sweet it is, to imagine this -- that you are Jeff McNamara. Ours is a strange love, is it not?

That Really Stupid Essay in the Times

Further refinements and a touch of color. I don't like the black corners; only the streetlamp and lines should be black.

Note the subtly varied color -- I've found that by using layers of transparent gradients, I can get a much more interesting, much less 'dead' result than a straight-up from the box gradient. Bringing life to digital art is the real trick.

I thought I was going to be able to avoid writing about this, but I've been obsessing on it to the point where I've been losing sleep. This is retarded, but this is what it's like to be crazy. How crazy?

Crazy enough to care about the state of intellectual discourse in the US. I mean, you've seen crazy from me before, but not on that scale.

Here's the article I'm addressing.

If you ain't up for it, dude is saying hey, shouldn't we be thinking about how we can eliminate meat-eating? As a behavior? In animals everywhere? Like, just get rid of the carnivores because they're real mean.

I shit thee not.

I tried to imagine that this is some kind of put-on but if it is, this guy puts Andy Kaufman in the fucking shade. I really think he means it. Red wine? Pot? Both of the above, maybe a little medication mixed in? Because these just do not seem like the thoughts of a sober man.

Let's get this straight. I don't think Jeff McMahan is a bad person. And for all I know he's done work that would blow me out of the fucking water. But as I write this, I will abuse him as a fool over and over and over again because this essay is stupid as shit -- which is bad -- and it was published under the rubric of the New York Times. This is fucking nuts. Isn't that the paper of record? Are those guys huffing thinner? What the hell is going on?

Okay. I don't want to spend time on this. I want to spit my bile and move on. Since that's how I'm handling it, my writing is going to be fucking awful, so I won't make a big deal out of how...

Rob once sent out a rejection letter where he accused the person's manuscript of having been 'rat-fucked by academia.' If you're wondering what that means, go read the essay. 'Too stuffed to jump' is another phrase that comes to mind.

Anyway. On to the meat. First off, the core of his position is this statement.

"It is relatively uncontroversial that suffering is intrinsically bad for those who experience it, even if occasionally it is also instrumentally good for them, as when it has the purifying, redemptive effects that Dostoyevsky’s characters so often crave."

I'm sorry, but that's a load of stupid you need a wheelbarrow to move. It is not at all uncontroversial; rather, it is the exact opposite of the truth. Anyone with the most infinitisimal grain of sense or experience knows that suffering is an absolutely necessary and unavoidable part of life, and that exaggerated attempts to avoid it cause grotesqueries that bring suffering of themselves. Without the experience of suffering it is impossible to truly understand the suffering of others.

Life exists in a dynamic situation of contending forces. Pleasure is the way our organismic selves guide us toward things that have proven beneficial to the meta-organism in the past, while suffering guides us away from things that have proven harmful. To the species, not the individual, please note. Suffering is not a source of harm; it is a warning that harm is being done. To struggle against the real sources of suffering is a noble thing. To attempt to eliminate suffering itself is like tearing out your goddamned smoke alarms. Jackass.

Are you familiar with the fate of those who do not feel pain? They, and those around them, must be constantly inspecting their bodies for unnoticed injuries. They frequently die young.

Get me?

And starting off with that muttonheaded Schopenhauer quote -- “one simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”

What kind of idiot actually thinks that is a reasonable picture of life? I rather doubt it was one who had any experience of animals and how they live. Note the pleasure/pain dynamic above. It is tuned, so that a typical animal under typical conditions will of course experience more pleasure than suffering because that is how the relative functions of pleasure and suffering balance. Mild pleasure lets you know you're doing okay, suffering tends to indicate special circumstances. An organism that suffers more than it experiences pleasure is not a typical organism -- it is unfortunate.

And as for the specifics of one animal eating another. This is squeamishness, plain and simple. Would you rather be eaten by a shark or die of AIDS? Neither will be pleasant; the first will be much faster.

It also may not be as bad as you'd think. When David Livingston was attacked by a lion, he reported a dreamy sense of disconnection; anyone who's handled animals injured by cats has seen something of this.

Listen, McMahan? Most animals don't die of predation. Most animals die worse deaths. Most small animals die of pneumonia. Think of all the tiny mice and birds laying on their sides and quivering as they drown in their own snot and then tell me how cruel predators are.

Goddamnit.

Next up is this little doozy. In reference to the notion that it may be possible to some day engineer carnivorous behavior out of the ecosystem, he says, "Rather than continuing to collide with the natural world with reckless indifference, we should prepare ourselves now to be able to act wisely and deliberately when the range of our choices eventually expands."

So let me get this straight.

If we ever get magical superpowers, we should already have our wishes lined up. Is that what he means?

The idea that we should invest thoughts in hypothetical situations like this does have a place. It is in fiction. And if McMahan had plotted this out with the intellectual rigor used in the best science fiction, he may have come up with something of interest to say.

But that would mean speaking from a position of knowledge. He would have to say something meaningful about how predation operates in the ecosystem, how we'd manage birth control for moths and so on. He would have to really think, not engage in the outgassing of an intellectual colon.

Doing this kind of half-baked wambling about does not have anything to do with real thought. This piece consists of words and half-understood emotional impulses chasing one another around a cranium that is either permanently fuzzy or temporarily pixilated.

To prime oneself for possible action based on guesses made from a position of profound ignorance is a terrible, terrible idea. Jesus, McMahan! What the hell!

Okay, I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. But it really, really pisses me off that this kind of vague dopey slop -- and sorry, McMahan, I'm sure you're a nice guy and this isn't representative of your work, but this honestly does read like the transcribed ramblings of an over-educated stoner -- is being placed before the public eye and given the gloss of credibility that comes with The New York Times. This is the pathetic state of discourse. And here I sit, stewing bitterly in petulant insignificance. Unread save for the true elite.

(If for incomprehensible reasons McMahan is reading this, that was for you -- I am a spiteful nobody. Go ahead and dismiss my ravings. Plus, really, I'm irked because you want to get rid of all my favorite animals.)

Listen up, US of A. This is a warning. I'm watching you.

Think better.

Or else. I mean it.

PC Chicken for Breast Cancer Stakes

I suppose you're wondering what this is all about. Well, it's a fundraiser for breast cancer. Here's the scoop, and you won't get a lot of this without the background story.

I should not have spent the morning doing this. Rob will kill me for not working on Swill, and I will kill me for not working on the novel or my grammar homework. But if I didn't get this out of my head, I was going to keep waking myself up with the giggles from thinking about it.

See, this is going out onto a child-friendly site. So the question is -- how many of these can Peter post before he loses his nerve in the face of their basic horribleness?

So what I'm doing here is playing PC chicken for breast cancer stakes. My mother actually would be proud of me; I got it from her.

This was fun and easy and I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't do more along these lines...

And just for the record. My mom didn't just have a deeply sick sense of humor; she died of cancer. So did my grandfather. And so on and so forth. I've got a big fat lump in my neck that's probably a cyst.

Cancer is everywhere, all the time, for everybody. Honestly, if I have to explain to you why unavoidable tragedy is hilarious, you really should steer clear of my stuff.

RAHR!!

A Child's Garden of Serial Killers

Here's the finished version of that one I put up the other day. Honestly, would it have killed me to put in a little scrub on the ground? And that shadow is just awful. Still, I dig the mood.

An E-Mail Exchange

The Oaf: I thought I'd run this by you before I posted. If I wind up writing about the girls often -- and if I don't, how will I steal all their best lines? -- I'm gonna want some pseudonyms for them.

The Sister: Go with it, and just consider them your resource to exploit.


I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've been walking my younger niece home from school on Thursdays and Fridays, and spending some time with her and her sister before their mother comes home. On Friday we had a little conversation that pretty much tied my brain into knots, and I suspect I have a good deal more cerebral trauma ahead of me.

I'd made some passing reference to clowns that set the whole thing off.

"Clowns aren't funny," she said. "They're scary."

"Well, you're right," I said.

"Once there was a clown who really, really liked cub scouts." Her voice was perfectly dreamy -- she'd slipped instinctively into once-upon-a-time mode.

And I basically crapped my pants. Where the hell did she hear about Pogo the Clown?

"He'd take care of the cub scouts and take them camping but sometimes..." And there was that sweet little smile as she strung me out just a little bit, playing up the suspense. She's still in elementary school, you know. "... sometimes he'd whisper to one of the scouts and tell him they could be special friends and he'd show them special things. And then when they were aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall alone the clown would do something horrible to the cub scout and then kill him."

Oh, brother. On one hand, there was part of me going into full-on panic mode. I punched the red button and screamed Your tiny niece is a serial killer freak! This has to be your fault! Lower periscope! Dive! Dive! Dive!

Then, I also had a sense of relief that she was looking at the situation with that kind of analytic thought. Behind her words was an assumption -- if a grownup offers you special things and secrets, do not motherfucking trust them. I was glad, glad, glad that she had that suspicion.

And then on the other hand, part of me was going, Fascinating. You're watching history turn into folklore right before your eyes. This is the evolution of Märchen for Motherfuckers, and this kid is a bellwether. I've been listening to some Native American folk tales that are basically all about scaring the crap out of kids so they don't kill themselves by doing stupid shit, and the kid is telling me exactly that kind of story.

And then on the other hand (my mind is a hundred-handed monstrosity), I was, more than anything else, amused in very particular way. See, it was hard to be that worried by this because, well...

"I know another story."

"Oh, really?"

"There was a man? And he gave these people drugs and made them kill people. And the last lady they killed?" You cannot imagine the glee smeared out over her milk-white freckled face. "She had a baby in her stomach."

That's not how Charlie tells it. According to him, it was all those crazy sorority girls. I didn't say that out loud, though. I wasn't going to panic just because this copper-topped gamine was au fait with John Wayne Gacy and the Manson family. I needed a little more information before I could react. "So where did you hear about these guys? Was it on TV or something?"

"No, my sister likes scary stories."

And that changed everything. My social conditioning was wrong, my instincts were right. What might seem like a horrifying aberration was actually predictable, standard behavior for someone in my family. I was younger than my nieces when I was checking out books on shark attacks from the Richmond Public Library, spending hours staring at the gaping wounds caused by bites, pictures of body parts fished from stomachs, storing up fuel for the series of nightmares and hallucinations that would rock my late teens and early twenties.

So right now I'm working on a little lecture on the subject of eyebleach, of garbage in/garbage out processing in the human brain. Let the girls know that someday they're going to look at a picture they'll wish they could unsee or read a story they'll wish they could forget without setting them up to expect it. This kind of chat all too easily turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I want no part of that.

Freaking out about this kind of thing does no good. I read a decent book on the subject of children's fantasy lives called Killing Monsters by Gerard Jones. He said the best thing I've heard on this subject -- it's both foolish and destructive to regard the fantasies of children as having any power in and of themselves. A fantasy is a fantasy, and it's usually best to just play along. She's a good kid with a good heart. This doesn't actually mean anything. She's just testing the edges of the human experience.

And this isn't coming from an adult feeding it to them. They're going out and finding it, the same way I was able to find photos of animal maulings, war atrocities, and sideshow freaks when I was their age. I didn't even have the internet, and my world was bursting at the seams with inappropriate information.

Let's face it. It's not a G-rated planet, and expecting smart, curious children to remain innocent is dumb. Hiding things from them is simply a way of letting them know what kind of research they want to do.

This is an aspect of liberty that is troubling and also unavoidable. To allow a child a healthy degree of freedom is to embrace risk, and well. She's one of us. A member of my family. Which means she's got a morbid sense of humor. Which means this probably is my fault.

Her birthday's coming up this week. I think I'll get her a wood chipper.

Twelve Apothegms and A Dream

These were taken from my old website, which is due for a massive reconstruction soon -- except for the dream, which happened this morning.

An apophthegm is a saying or truism; the word literally means a cleanly spat gob of phlegm, which strikes me as appropriate for my brand of wisdom.

1. Self-esteem is for the self-satisfied. The self-propelled are insecure.

2. There are two types of people in the world; those who categorize and those who do not. I fall into the latter category.

3. The difference between an artist and a craftsman is that an artist is paid by the piece while a craftsman is paid by the hour.

4. Tuning is never a mistake.

5. In fighting the world remember that the world has reach, power, and endurance on you. You're going to have to cheat.

6. The self is at once the greatest of all mysteries and somebody else's problem.

7. The second trip to the liquor store is always a mistake.

8. People are just like snowflakes or fingerprints -- it takes an expert to tell one from another.

9. Two wrongs may not may make a right but sometimes they make parity.

10. Pee when you can, not when you have to.

11. Before you panic take a deep breath and check all the cables.

12. It would be nice to be somebody else's worst enemy for a change.

A Dream

I was in the kitchen cooking and the missus walks in with a cloth over her face, muttering.

"What's wrong?" I ask

She pulls the cloth from her face; her features are swollen and she's weeping. "Where is the love you showed me just last week?"

I said, "Listen, if this is a crazy argument, you're going to lose. We're cuddling right now."

And I woke up. And we were.

Ten Things I Learned From H.P. Lovecraft

What the heck. Let's see what happens if I post a few lists.



Please note that these lessons were learned both directly and slantendicularly.

1. A story in which fantastic elements are mingled with realism must be constructed with as much care as if it were a hoax -- and it's possible to utilize many of the same techniques.

2. Don't make horrible statements in public, then repudiate them in private years later. Make your apologies as quickly and loudly as possible.

3. It is possible to say deep and profound things about life and character in fiction while seeming to avoid those subjects. Through prose, pacing, mood, and imagery, the writer may be illuminated as clearly as if by description and incident.

4. It's not enough to be a decent husband. You also have to be persistent.

5. Fantasy is a legitimate and enhancing aspect of reality. A fantasy may not be an expression of reality -- but it is a real fantasy, occupying a real place and function in life.

6. Try and be at least a little bit healthy. Don't kill yourself by eating nothing but shit.

7. Art is an excellent basis for friendship. Nothing cements a relationship like shared creative effort.

8. The universe is without volition. There is no purpose given to us by an outer source. It is our responsibility to find our own purposes, since we're the ones who need and value them.

9. Our perception of the universe is pathetically limited, and the closest thing we have to a real sense, one that connects somewhat directly with objective reality, is mathematics.

10. Monsters are our friends.

The Quality of Cool

The Oaf: It's not fair. I've been cheated.

The Missus: What now?

The Oaf: Okay, I'm brilliant, right?

The Missus: Well, yeah.

The Oaf: And I'm intense, right?

The Missus: Oh, yeah.

The Oaf: I'm moody! I'm a sensitive brute with a dark side, for chrissakes! I've got all the ingredients, but I'm just not cool.

The Missus: You don't think you're cool?

The Oaf: Listen, would you ever, in describing me to a third party, use the word cool?

(At this point the missus betrays a shy and wistful smile.)

The Missus: Weeeeelllllllll....... You're just too dorky.

The Oaf: I've been ripped off.

Crass Chew Toy

The product actually has a vulgarity meaning semen in its name. That dog is disturbingly enthusiastic and performing a pelvic thrust behind a modesty curtain. "Playful," it says. Right. "Playful." That ain't what the missus calls it. And remember, this is a chew toy. At some point you pick up the phallic object with your hand and place it in the mouth of a dog. This is not something classy people do, I'm telling you. The dollar store can teach us many valuable lessons about graphic design and packaging, and their relationship to barely-concealed cartoon dog boners.

So the other day, I'm in bed editing when the missus calls out, "When they fix dogs, they cut the testicles off, right?"

"That would be it."

She then addressed our new puppy in a disconcertingly cheerful tone. "Snip-snip, Laszlo!"

"Jesus fucking Christ, don't talk to a male that way!"

"snip-snip, laszlo -- snip-snip!"

There was a relish in her voice that I did not like. I've noticed this from certain women at certain times -- a tendency to find entertainment in the possibility of male genital mutilation. They can leave one with a suspicion that the nut-cutting might start at any moment.

Getting a kick out of fixing the dog is an excellent argument for misogyny, but the bull-penis phase was a better one. That's right, she fed the dogs bull penis. Watching the woman giggle as her brutes tore into their stinking chunks of choad did not make my life seem less weird.

And now Spunkeez. It's as though she can't feed anything to the dogs but dick. I mean, this is silly, right? I'm blowing things out of proportion, looking at them the wrong way.

Still. It makes me feel a little nervous.

So How's The Novel Going?

Even an hour or two worth of practice once a week or so (hey, Deborah!) is enough to start stripping the rust off of my draftsmanship. One step at a time...

So how's the novel coming?

Well, classes have started. This semester I applied late, and wound up not being able to get a full course load. I'm trying not to look at it as a disaster. I'm taking courses in grammar and scientific literature. The scientific literature course is already a blast. I feel completely at ease with the material and the instructor. The fact that it's a requirement for going through the biotech training program has provided an interesting side effect -- lots of cute girls in the class.

So how's the novel coming?

When the one in the pigtails with the eight-inch skirt turned around so she was perched in her knees in her seat and chirped, "So is this class fun?" the gulf between our species appalled me. I doubt that our kinds will ever be able to communicate.

I considered letting myself develop a travel-sized crush on the crabby-looking one in the leather aviator's cap, though. If Rocky the Flying Squirrel was the brooding, moody member of Shonen Knife, that would be exactly what this young woman looks like. But I'm not actually attracted to her. It's more some kind of weird sidekick thing. It's probably the Bullwinkle in my soul.

So how's the novel coming?

I showed up a month early for my grammar class, based on email communications. If I'd gone by the catalog, I'd have been a month late. Wheee! Someone took me aside and gave me a lengthy, roundabout little lecture in which he more or less said, 'this is fucked and nobody has any idea what's going on.' Good to know.

So how's the novel coming?

Yeah, I've been cleaning my studio. It's in better shape than it's been in years. Scored some CD racks at a yard sale this weekend and mounted them on the walls yesterday; for some reason, they make the place look like a used bookstore, which pleases me. And I fixed that busted drawer in the bedroom; actually, I just swapped it out for another one. But I've been pretty busy around the house, yeah.

So how's the novel coming?

Going out to sign the last papers on the house sale this afternoon, start paying for some motherfucking groceries, you know? Actually, I've decided that as part of the overall studio renovation, I'm going to get myself a real stereo. No high-end audiophile stuff, but something better than utility grade. I'm fucking forty-five years old, for christ's sake. I shouldn't be listening to music on fucked-up yard-sale boom boxes.

So I've started doing a little research on the subject. Found out that you need to match components properly and so on and so forth. There's a high-end stereo place I pass on the way to school. I think I'll drop in and ask a few questions -- and hell, they might have something that would suit me. You never know.

It's really interesting. One of the side-effects of my attempts to get an understanding of my position as an artist has been a recent shift in musical consciousness. See, my relationship to music was formed in the last century, and as a result, music is not just a matter of hearing the tunes -- there's a whole set of relationships involving physical possessions, the art and writing associated with an album, the very concept of the album, and so on.

I've decided that for now, I'll embrace that. The twenty-first century relationship with art is not going to be primarily about physical objects (assuming that civilization lasts for a while), but that's part of the whole thing for me. But I wouldn't be surprised if that changed in my old age. I find it easy to see myself abandoning my various libraries and collections in favor of sharing the public informational spaces.

So how's the novel coming?

I've been getting obsessed with role-playing games lately, as well. Something tells me I might want to try my hand at something in that realm. I am haunted by the rattle of polyhedral dice; I can see virtue in the works of Erol Otus.

And I've been fucking around with synthesizer stuff in the middle of the night, driving off insomnia by doing a Dr. Moreau on the Pachelbell's Canon in D major. Among other things, I'm doing it in A. I'm starting to wonder if I'm chasing my own tail by trying to vary the arrangement -- part of its effectiveness as a sedative lies in its repetition.

So how's the novel coming?

Oh, God, shut up, shut up! Are you trying to fucking kill me? Is that it? You want to see me stretched right out there on the fucking floor, grabbing my chest and blarting out a nasty old death crap right in my fucking jeans, is that it?

Christ. It was going so well until I got sick, and then when I returned to functionality I was fighting on a bunch of different fronts -- I need to rewrite the initial visionary passages to give them an absolutely convincing sense of biological verisimilitude and establish Mr. Popeyehead as a gatekeeper. In the interests of the latter party, I also need to rewrite Matt's most recent incursion into the Limbus. The musical passages that earned me praise from readers up to and including professional writers and working musicians, that really let the reader feel as if they're part of the musical process? That have lasted intact right from the start? Damnit, they need to be rewritten. Too much music theory, not enough emotional description of musical experience. And the next chapter is going to be entirely new, and I'm going to have to start it out with a vista shot of the Limbus as an alien landscape that's going to have to be a fucking heart-puncher to do what I need it to do. And Corrie's coming up and I can't quite hear her in my head. I need to score a copy of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to get a sense of rhythm. I've picked up two copies at yard sales and can find neither.

I've also got my piece for the next issue of Swill weighing heavily on me. It's pretty fucking hilarious, but I need to rework it, need to frame it. Lotta work on that one, and Rob'll have an ear if I fail to cough it up pronto. (The Yakuza technique of demanding a finger as punishment for failure is effective partially since it renders them less effective in combat, and thus more dependent on their comrades. To demand a finger from a writer for deadline violations is counterproductive; it slows typing.)

So that's what's going on with the fucking novel. Sigh. I let myself be overwhelmed. Time to break it down, and tackle it one section at a time, and fuck getting more chapters to my readers until I'm flowing and rolling again. Start off with that first vision, show the stoma as an organism, and go from there.

Damnit.