Ray Succre - Specific

Ah, Homework

2012-01-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

In an effort to continue maintaining, in some form, this journal (I have grown quite boring in the past few years), I began, last year, posting various homework I was assigned at school. The point of this was to share with the world the strange and bizarre things I've found I get away with, at school, and to post a few things here and there, assuring the three people who actually read this blog that I am technically alive.

A new term has begun, and I am now going to be posting more homework. For you. Here is the first assignment:

ASSIGNMENT: Write an introduction (about a paragraph) that will serve as your greeting to the class, describing yourself and your life, and explaining what you hope to take away from the class. Feel free to submit a picture of yourself, as well. Submit this introduction to the online discussion forum, and comment on two other introductions.

THE RESULT:

Subject: Thank You for Reading This Post

"This first sentence is designed to expain that my name is Robin. In this second sentence, I would like to express not only a cordial greeting to all who may read these words, but also to make certain you all know that the world revolves around me and my incredible pectorals. In this third sentence, I would like to express that I have but one fault, which is that I often write sentences that are strangely self-aware, and that I am known, when the mood strikes me, to tell voracious lies. This fourth sentence is not self-aware, and I can tell you as much because I often speak the truth regarding sentences. I am 78 years old, 4'4" tall, involved in a polygamist marriage involving two wives, three husbands, several geese, and one rude, spite-eyed, ungrateful spider. That last sentence was not self-aware, but I still lied; I am 35, devastatingly awkward, full of remorse for my past indiscretions involving English and my proclivity for using 'aint' in academic papers. I can most often be found picking lice and other small parasites from Glenda, a female chimpanzee that is not one of my wives, but who may become one if she passes the initiation period and starts focusing more (she is so scattered and, sadly, quite lazy).

"My goal regarding this class is to dislodge some of the odd construction I've picked up over the years, regarding my sentence structures, and reinforce my grammatical core.

"While I find it unfortunate, it does seem as if one of my wife-geese is going to soon leave the fold, having chosen to migrate for at least the current season. I suppose she is tired of Coos Bay and would like to go south, see what else there is to the world, take a "gander" at things. Get it? A gander! Ah, that's funny. I can be funny, at times, ask any of my wives (but not my husbands; they're all drunks and they lie more than I do). At length, we are now introduced, so I will use this last sentence to end my introduction.

"I lied; this was the last one."

Marketing

2011-05-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

Having no literary agent, finding this sort of advocate to be even more difficult to procure than an actual publisher, I have, for many years, been struggling to get any of my books published. While I have no particular advocate in the publishing world, I do, however, have an Uncle Randy, and this individual, rarely present but for the occasional holiday, happened to have once been college dorm roommates with a man named Alex Hanson, who later became the head of Acquisitions at Shinplaster Publishing, LLC. In addition to a well-meaning uncle, I also have unpublished manuscripts, the number of which is near to surpassing what can be counted on two hands. My uncle has owed me a favor for some time, and he has managed to get me a meeting with the actual head of acquisitions. I have failed in my interactions with publishers for five years now, most of my rejections occurring at the query stage, without a single word of a manuscript being read, but I have vowed that this meeting with Mr. Hanson, this foot in the door, will change everything.

I enter the small office on the 28^th floor. This is one of six floors that Shinplaster Publishing manages and uses. It is a large operation, and I know they have three other headquarters, as well. This is New York, however, and main headquarters, and as I enter Mr. Hanson's office, I am suprised to find myself in a room devoid of books or shelves. There is a strange mosaic of a percent sign hanging on the wall, the symbols of the zodiac circling it.

Mr. Hanson is a pudgy, twitchy man, sitting in his desk. The desk is an expensive bit of furniture, mahogany and well-waxed. When I sit down opposite the desk, he promptly sets down a styrofoam to-go box that contains half of a sandwich. He chews, swallows, wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and promptly lights a cigar. He then folds his arms across his chest, obviously annoyed with having to meet with me. After digging in one of his back teeth with his tongue for a moment, he inquires about Randy, my uncle.

"Oh, he's good," I say, "And he had a lot of good things to say about you, Mr. Hanson. I'm glad we're getting this chance to meet."

"What the hell does somebody like Randy do when he retires?" Mr. Hanson asks.

"Well, he fishes and... uh, he's just enjoying his life and all."

"Does he get any tail?"

"Fish or-"

"Who cares about fish?" the publisher says, interrupting me.

"Right. Well, Uncle Randy's been married for twelve years, so... I guess yeah, technically there's... there's tail. One."

"I'd bet she's a four. Candy Randy only ever dated fours. Sixes in the Summer."

"Candy Randy?"

"Hell, she's probably a three with makeup."

I do not respond to this statement, not certain what I might say regarding my aunt Wendy being a three or a four. I suppose she would hate being mentioned in such a way. The silence in the room becomes awkward, but is broken quickly.

"Well?" Mr. Hanson asks.

"Sure, okay. On to business. The reason I've come to Shinplaster Publishing is because-"

"I know. It's always the same. I don't need a cover letter here; we're in the same room. Lemme guess: You toiled away for a hundred years or something and after all that hard work, you finished 'The Novel'. Now you want someone to act like they care," he said, carefully putting out the cigar in an ashtray. It had remained lit for less than a minute. The office had a terrible odor, saturated in old smoke that rode hints of sweat and suit cloth.
"Uh, well, not a hundred years, and I actually have nine books, but what I've-"
"Great! That was the handshake! Banter!" he says before lowering his brows, "Now can we move on? This is my lunch break, here, so let's get to it: Why should I print your book?"
"What I've got is a solid story that regards-"
"Nope, stop right there. Don't get all bent pinky on me; don't have the patience for it. Tell me about money. That's why we're here." I watch as he begins lighting the cigar again.
"Money?"

"Yeah. What's your book worth, in real-world dollars? What type of money will buy it?"

"Oh, you're wanting to purchase! Great, I'm open to negotiations. What do you-"

"Not money for you," he says, rolling his eyes, "Good God. Money for me. What type of money will your book get me? Not how much... we'll get to that. I mean what type." At this point, he puts out his cigar for the second time in two minutes. This is strange behavior.

"Like... what country's currency would your profit come in?" I ask, confused.

"No. I mean gay money. Feminist money. Teenager money. Housewife between the ages of 24-36 money."

"Oh, people. You mean what sort of people would buy the book if you published it?"

"Not people. Money. People don't buy books. Money does that. What sort of money would buy your book?"

"Uh, I don't know. Gay fives and housewife tens? Urban debit cards?"

"Oh, you're a jokester," he says, aggravated and getting ready to re-light his cigar, "Your uncle was a jokester too. Look at him now. Crap fishing and coming home to a three. But fine. We can focus on this... this people thing, since that's all you seem to be able to grasp. Who -snort- will give your book sales numbers?"

"Well, people that read books and that like the idea of a story that involves-"

"Start over. That wasn't an answer. I said: WHO?" He is staring at me as the flame burns into the charred end of the cigar.

"...uh... fans of... a good story and strong writing?"

"That's not a who. That's puke. Be precise. And the more precise you are, the more I'll be interested."

"Are you asking me to talk about demographics?"

"I'm asking you to know about money. MONEY. What is so hard to understand about that?"

"I think the book would make some?"

"Which money? What kind?"

"Money from people's paychecks? Shit, I don't know... that's not really my skill in all of this. I don't know what you mean. I write books. Selling them is more your forte, right?"

"Don't you tell me about my job. I know all about my job, you prick. That said, tell me about my job: How would I market this book?"

Trying to catch my thoughts on the matter, I watch with bafflement as he then puts out his cigar. He has lit and snuffed it three times now since I entered the office. It seems a troubling and odd way to smoke.

"Can I ask you about the thing with the cigar? You keep lighting it and then putting it out, over and over again," I say. Mr. Hanson raises an eyebrow and debates with himself for a moment, gauging me. He then decides to explain himself.

"If you were smart, I wouldn't tell you, but since you're not, I don't have to worry about giving up one of my interview exploits. You're so dumb it'll work even if you know about it. I read some marketing a few years ago that said schmoes get intimidated by a person in power lighting a cigar in their presence."

"Oh," I manage, "but why do you keep putting it out and re-lighting it?"

"If lighting a cigar gives me a bonus to managerial command, it only goes to say that if I do that ten times in an interview or negotiation, I become ten times more commanding. Nobody can compete with that."

"That makes no sense," I say. I watch as he quickly lifts the cigar and sticks it in his mouth, staring at me with menace and applying the flame to the gnarled, black end as if I were the recipient of that flame. "Take that", his action infers. I am a little more intimidated. He leans back with a smile.

"There's plenty of sense about it," he says then, "Numbers and facts. I'm a hundred percent correct, which means I don't just make sense, I make all of it. All the sense ever because there's nothing bigger than 100%. That's everything with nothing left over. I know what works and what doesn't when I see the report and the percentages. Now shut up about my exploit and answer my question: How do I market this book?"

"I... I guess I would expect you to use your... your percentages? And your marketing abilities?"

"What are those?"

"...You don't know?"

"Oh, I know."

"..."

"I lost track of what we're talking about," I say, struggling with the room. He puts out his cigar, but not well. Smoke still trickles upward from the ashtray. The room seems hostile to my presence.

"Christ, you're somethin'. Old Candy Randy's brother must have had the Syndrome, eh? Fine, we cut straight to the orgasm. I can go rough. Hit me with it. Gimme the Pitch. Ten seconds: Go."

"Wh- hold on, wait, uh, I- I... just wait-"

"That pitch did nothing to me."

"No, no, see... I really just don't know anything about marketing. I'm a storyteller. Won't you just look at the book? Please, just take a look at the actual book. That's... that's what I do and where I shine. Just read a bit of it. That's what a written story is for."

"I know what book is for, dipshit. They're for niches and not everything can be made for TV. What I'm baffled about is why the fuck you're here. Does your uncle know how clueless you are about your own field of work? This is just... you're not even in this room right now. You haven't brought anything to the table. Good God, you're decapitating my lunch break."

"I'm sorry, what would you like me to do?"

"Let me see if I can put this into words you can understand: Romance. Me."

"Okay. See, Mr. Hanson, you're... you're absolutely going to love my book. It's-"

"Don't pitch me on what I'd like. I don't like anything. Pitch me on WHO ELSE would like it. Enough to buy it. Who are we marketing to?"

"We're just going in circles. I think you'd have a better idea of what marketing could be done if you took a look at the book and-"

"READERS DO THE READING," he shouts, throwing the still-burning cigar at me, "I PUBLISH. YOU WRITE AND MARKET." The cigar has bounced against my shoulder and I begin furiously slapping my palms against my lap, where the glowing bits have ended up. When I am no longer in the position to suffer burns, I attempt logic.

"Mr. Hanson, I don't know anything about marketing. That's an entire career I did not major in. People spend vast amounts of time learning to be a marketing analyst, and that is not my trade. I write fiction. Books. Lots of them. It's difficult and I work very hard at it. I can no better market than a marketer can write. Why won't you even try reading some of the book? I have it with me. Please?"

"WAAAAAAH. Baby just wants to write. Waaaaah."

"..."

"Are we still talking or am I supposed to leave?" I ask.

"Are we talking?"

"That's what I asked you."

"Pal, I see your lips moving, but all I hear is farts. Let's start with fact, here: What size are we looking at?

"140,000 words."

"Words are stupid. How big is the book?"

"In page count?"

"In fingers, dipshit. How many fingers is the book?"

"Uh... I guess about... two fingers thick?"

"Little fingers or big fingers?"

"Medium?"

"That's 25% too much finger, buddy."

Against a variety of walls, I reach over and quickly take his desk's lighter and the ashtray, startling him. He raises an eyebrow, about to speak when he notices that I am slowly lifting the cigar from my lap and placing it in my mouth.

"Hold on, there. Don't you-" I light the cigar, puffing on it, drawing the flame into the wet, grotesque thing. I watch him and drag the smoke into my mouth, attempting the look of power. He swallows, nervous and intimidated. I have gained 10% more command. At this, I remove the cigar, and put it out.

"Okay, all right," he recants, "I can see you're someone to hear out. Lay it on me, tell me about your story."

"The story involves two men, migrant workers, that travel the countryside looking for-"

"Two?"

"...yes, two men that-"

"Are they cool?"

"In some ways. Basically-"

"Is one of them a woman?"

"No. There's a woman later in the book, though."

"How later?"

"Three chapters in," I said.

"That's way too late to launch a chick arc. Empowered? Feminist?"

"Not really, no."

"Risky. How old is she?"

"Young, newly married. She's not a major character. She's background story."

"Then I'm bored. You're dumb."

I lift the cigar again, preparing to use it, but Mr. Hanson, in a desperate manner, throws his entire body onto his desk and flails a fat arm out, stealing the lighter right out of my hand. I sigh and rid myself of the foul-smelling cigar.

"Look," he says, panting as he sits back into his chair again, holding the lighter, "Now that we're on even ground, I'm gonna do you a favor and give you a crash course in how this works. I don't ever do this, so you'd better pay attention. Publishing 101. You ready? Might want to take notes." I listen closely as he wipes the sweat from his forehead and begins.

"All right, Rule #1: Your book is bad. No matter what critics say, no matter what your friends say, or other writers, or professors, or publishers, or even fucking history. It doesn't matter; your book is utterly awful, by default, for not being a movie. Rule #2: Your book is irrelevant. Stories are like lies and people only like them if you lie about cool shit. Fiction is pathetic and asks people to commit to a bunch of thoughts that are about as useful as half-ply toilet paper. If I could sell books with nothing in them, believe me, those are all I'd sell. Rule #3 is the most important rule, so listen close: The market is the truth, the way, and the life." I frown at this, frustrated and tired of listening to this man relate everything in the world to money.

"I don't see how anything new or original could ever function in that system, Mr. Hanson. Writing involves risk, right? So does publishing. You can't remove the risk or you have nothing to gain or lose," I say. Mr. Hanson dabs his finger at an intercom button and gives an order.

"Get me Cody Oatmeal."

Not twenty seconds have passed, Mr. Hanson glaring at me and refusing to speak, before the door to the office swings open and a gangly, tired, young man enters. He closes the door behind him and steps forward, halting beside me, glancing down with worry, as if afraid I am going to strike him.

"There he is. My good pal, Cody Oatmeal. Say hello, Cody," Mr. Hanson advises.

"Hello," the weak, young man mutters, fidgety.

"Cody here wrote a book for us, and that book was a bestseller last year. You know how much we like Cody's book?"

"A lot?" I offer.

"We paid him. We paid him in money. Sure, it didn't amount to more than about twelve grand, which comes out to about .80 cents for every hour of work he puts in, and he would have made more money working in a fast food franchise, but to someone like Cody, twelve large might as well be a billion."

"He wrote a bestseller?" I ask.

"No, he wrote a book. We made a bestseller with it. You're working on a sequel, right Cody?"

"Of course, sir," Cody says, weak.

"Watch how this works," Mr. Hanson says to me before returning his attention to Cody.

"Why should I print your next book, Cody?" The young man gags and then leans forward, emphatic, speaking extraordinarily fast and continually pointing at Mr. Hanson.

"The book categorizes mainstream applications from advertising campaigns and pits them against consumers in a subjective format that will appeal to commercial interests across a variety of strong-market demographics. 38% of men aged 29-39 have an inborne understanding of these comparisons and will identify with each chapter in an experiencial way. Combined with the female age 20-27 demographic in rural outlets with at least one Wal*Mart, and the single mother demographic aged 18-24 and its cross-pollination with the cage fight fan demographic of males aged 30-58 in urban areas, and 12-70 in rural areas of unemployment at greater than 10%, we can have an imbedded readership of 1.1 million individuals comprising 39 states that contain a Barnes and Noble outlet, and 842 thousand through online retailers within the first two quarters, after which we delineate in readership 12.8 percent for each subsequent quarter, pulling the book from market and burning remainders in the following year."

"Cha-Ching! There we go. See how it's done?" Mr. Hanson asks me, proud.

"I- I just don't know how to do that," I reply, "It doesn't make any-"

"What's your book about?" he asks me then, indicating Cody and the manner I should describe my book.

"Uh, well, it's a story about the loss of hope and confidence among migrant workers that-"

"Stop. Jesus Christ, stop. Did you just take a shit in my office? Yawn. Cody, slap him." At this command, Cody spins and yanks his hand back, about to strike me. I throw my hands up in a panic.

"Whoa, stop. Cody, man... relax, it was a figure of speech," the publisher says with a laugh. Cody starts shaking.

"I don't like those," he mutters, "they don't say things right."

"I know. It's okay," Mr. Hanson coddles. He then turns his attention to me.

"All right, you. Last chance. Gimme a good hook."

"The hook... Uh, the friendship of two traveling laborers is destroyed when a series-"

"WAIT, you said 'series'. Hold on... is this book part of a series?"

"No, it's not," I say.

"Ah god, then don't say 'series'; you just gave me blue-balls. What a waste of my lunch break. You've bored me and cheated me. Can't even provide a good hook. Cody, show this amateur what's what. Let's hear what your book is about."

Cody Oatmeal throws his skinny arms out, his eyes like those of a stabbed cat. He swivels into a stance of impending danger, a pose of action, and launches his storyline with much emphasis.

"Twitter comes to life-"

"Holy shit!"

"-and turns into a monster with a green head!"

"You just made me attracted to you, Cody. I'm confused, yet stiff. But why green?" Mr. Hanson asks.

"Because people have been proven to prefer green heads on monsters by many studies in reputed schools. In my book, the monster hunts young, attractive girls in C and D cup sizes who sexually experiment with one another. These experiments are formatted to provide moderate sensuality without alarming older generations. One of the girls likes three of the songs that we have projected to be in the single digits of the Top 40 at the time of estimate release, tying the book into mainstream American music culture, which is what kids are."

"Did I say 'attracted', Cody? Let me rephrase that: You can pound me right here and now. Write in me, Cody. Write in me."

"We'll market the book on Twitter, as well, culling 140-character tidbits of awesome synergy into our campaign. I've already made Twitter accounts for all of the characters. The profile pictures are hot. Not regular hot; porn star hot. The book starts with one of them tweeting 'I feel like a monster is watching me. Still horny, though. Lol.' The story is very networky and keenly social."

"Dear God, it's beautiful," the publisher mutters, "That's- This is me screaming eureka, Cody. Now... oh, you incredible, glistening, veiny love of my life, can you give me a hook in less than ten words?"

"Twitter," the young writer mumbled.

"O-M-G, Cody. O-M-F-G."

Mr. Hanson then reaches into his desk's thin, front drawer and retrieves a quarter. After waving it in the air, getting Cody's attention and bringing the young writer to the point of moaning, I watch as the publisher tosses the quarter on the floor. Cody immediately drops and begins eating it, his eyes lost in manic pleasure.

"Now, let's see if we've learned anything. Once again," Mr. Hanson says, turning to me, "Why should I publish your book?"

"I can't talk to you. This is madness," I say, "Just read it. Shit, read a one page of it. Just... just take a look at it."

"Why would I do that? There aren't any shows on it."

"You have to read it. The story is in the words."

"Here we go again," he sighs, "You can't tell me if I'd like it or not."

"By reading it. That's how you know if you like it or not."

"Reading your book would tell me nothing. Good, bad, either way. Show me the market. If I jump off a skyscraper, how do I know I won't be killed when I hit the ground? I need information."

"A skyscraper?! You would be killed. You should know that because lots of people have died that way and it's common logic that a fall like that will kill you. You... you do know not to do that, right? Jump off a skyscraper?"

"NUMBERS!" he shouts, slamming his fist down on the desk, "VELOCITY! MATH! THAT'S how I'd know. You show me the diagram and give me the market, and I'll believe whatever the hell you hippies want me to."

"Fine," I say, relenting, "Let's try this: If you read my book, a demographic of one, I think you would like what you read, which is 100% market saturation in this situation, because... because 100% of every... of every you that opens the book will note a proven experience 85% positive, and this is... well charted, and has been cross-pollinated with the 18-70 demographic of... you, an established publisher of fiction who is... is in 75% of the United States publishing world... which is... which is a demographic of... of 100% of you, yourself... um, across America, quarterly. The uh, research speaks for itself. Also, plus... we can burn the remainders and sell the ash to big tobacco."

I am now lost and poor in the office, entirely submerged in a lake of triviality. It is as if I have just tried and failed at making love to a hair style I do not like.

"Do... do you like any of that?" I ask.

"Your marketing plan... it's interesting. I think I follow. Show me your proposal," he concedes.

"You want me to write down everything I just said as if it were fact?"

"You don't have it written down?!"

"No, that was fake. I just made it up."

"Write it. Fax it to me. No letterhead."

"But it's a lie. It wasn't real," I say.

"Can I enter it into a spreadsheet?"

"I guess, but-"

"THEN IT'S REAL!" he roars, startling Cody and causing the young writer to run from the room while making a frightened, hooting sound.

"But it's not! It's just-"

"Is this fucking amateur hour?" he interrupts, "Why can't you authors figure this shit out?"

"Because we're not marketers? In the entirety of the publishing system and all the arrangements that are made in it, the author is probably the absolute least qualified to talk about marketing. The LEAST qualified. By the time an author comes to you, that author has already done all the things they can do regarding the book. They wrote it, revised it, and are on hand for more of that. We write the books that publishers print. Someone has to. All the books in the world were written by someone, at some point. They do not write themselves."

"That's your fault, not mine. Get me that fax by Tuesday."

"Is... is there any way I can get you or... or someone in Acquisitions to read the book? Even just a small sample? That's... that's the actual product you'd be selling. Don't you want to see the product?"

"Once I know it's good. Until then, absolutely not. We don't have the time to look at things unless there's a good reason. If a writer can't provide that good reason, get lost."

"The good reason would be in the book. What it's about, how it's written, whether it's a good book to print."

"Oh, that's enlightening! Because I could have sworn my economics classes back in college said something about how commercial business was done in money. But I guess your book solves everything! We can pay off our national deficit by giving other countries crates containing tons of big words. Perfect."

I lower my head and rise from the chair. There is nothing I can do to convince Mr. Hanson, the head of Acquisitions for Shinplaster Publishing, to ever look at even a single page of my manuscript. I toss the old, wet cigar back onto his desk and prepare to exit his office. I will go home, I suppose, and be what I continually am: An ignored man.

"I do have another book," I say then, "about viral videos on YouTube made by child celebrities. It's one and three-quarter fingers thick. My hook is: Tween Dreams."

Mr. Hanson stumbles upward from his chair and falls against his desk in exasperation. His mouth opens as if he is being strangled.

"WH- FOR REAL?!"

"No. I think we're done," I say. His head deflates and I believe for a moment I can discern the sound of someone howling in pain from a distant room on one of the floors above.

"We're done, huh? Well, that's a logical absurdity, because we never started, asshole. Give my regards to your uncle. My regards look like this," he says, extending his pudgy, middle fingers.

"I'm leaving," I say, going for the door.

"Pal, you never even got here."

Homework - Comparison Paragraph

2011-03-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

More homework shenanigans from college. This was an assignment in which I was to write a paragraph or three that functioned to either compare two things, or contrast two things. Somewhat basic stuff. I chose to compare, and turned in the following this morning. On a side note, due to the submission system my school uses, I was unable to upload the chart you'll find at the end of this assignment. At least I can rest assured that the chart (which was not necessary) won't alter my final grade on this.

A Comparison of Herd Hierarchy:
Avon Representatives and Hamadryas Baboons

When given close scrutiny, a certain parallel can be found in the hierarchal complexes of Hamadryas Baboons and Avon Representatives. These groups consist of distinctively different animals, but they bear large similarities in function and enjoy an almost interchangeable social structure. Both primates, Hamadryas Baboons (mostly native to desolate, semi-desert savannahs and lower plains) and Avon Representatives (mostly inhabiting isolated, semi-matriarchal regions of lower income), enjoy a status of stability in their habitats, exist in a very male-dominated system, are often considered “nuisance animals”, and unlike other primates, both are highly terrestrial. Perhaps most similar between these two factions is the presence of a 4-tiered command system, as well as a pyramidal social structure (Chart 1.1). Though one might be tempted to distinguish these as being dissimilar between the two groups, regarding ultimate purpose and the result of various labors throughout each tier, I believe the similarities far outweigh the contrasts, and a cursory study of these two factions produces certain results that are difficult to ignore.

Avon uses a multi-level marketing schematic, similar to the 4-tiered social hierarchy of Hamadryas Baboons. With Avon, the comparative counterpart to a Hamadryas baboon clan leader is the Avon Leadership Representative. These elusive animals exist in rare numbers, presiding over and mentoring the next level down in the hierarchy: Training teams. Both the Hamadryas Baboon second tiers and Avon training teams then preside over an even lower level, numbering quite high. This particular tier is very locally specific to both groups, functioning as a regional management, with tasks decided upon and then doled out to the bottom-most tier, tasks more in league with the needs of the particular region in which each herd exists. The bottom-most tier, of either entry-level baboons or Avon serfs, consists of those creatures most likely to be seen by the general public, and performs a variety of tasks, as well as functioning as the main body of the gathering function inherent to both structures, whether in money from door-to-door sales (Avon), or grubs and ticks from small, desert mounds (baboons). Both the upper baboons and the Leadership Representatives enjoy success by nurturing their “downlines” and subordinating resources and duties to their underlings. It should be addressed that while Hamadryas Baboons and Avon Representatives can both fall prey to lions, leopards, and cheetahs, this alone is not a significant descriptor of similarity, as these predators are known to travel great distances in searching out a variety of prey. Researchers also have yet to address possible similarities in fang-size between the two groups. With regards similarity, however, we must remain empirical, and focus most on social structure; hierarchy is a much more reliable and palpable method with which to gauge similarities between the two groups.

A comparison of the two primate groups also calls into question their future. Due to their social order and the nature of human cultures around them, over time, it is not difficult to look at the past of one group and use it to suppose a future for the other. Hamadryas Baboons were often depicted in ancient Egyptian art as sacred attendants of the Egyptian deity Thoth, who had the head of a baboon or, at times, an ibis. Due to similar social functions and hierarchy, and the fact that human beings have a tendency toward belief in higher powers (with a near-cyclical behavior in elevating some earthly matters and animals to these heights), it is not difficult to imagine (though subjectively) that future Avon Representatives may enjoy the same idolizing Hamadryas Baboons once received. The plausibility of Avon Representatives reaching the exalted status of being considered sacred creatures is solid enough to warrant further investigation. What Thoth may have preferred in his ancient baboon hordes, Thoth might readily find available in future Avon Representatives. It should be noted that while mighty Thoth was occasionally depicted with the head of an ibis, Avon Representatives do not often herd within close proximity of ibis herds. It is possible that there is a longstanding pack rivalry, or ongoing feud, between the two. Further study is needed to confirm or refute this claim, but an indicator would be that ibis herds are remarkably similar in social hierarchy to representatives of Avon’s main competitor, Amway, Inc. While the dots would seem to be present, the lines connecting them have yet to be drawn in field study.

The future is uncertain, of course, but a powerful, group hierarchy can often shape animal interactions generation after generation, and so long as each group enjoys a society, the similarities between Hamadryas Baboons and Avon Representatives will continue to shed more light on the complex social narrative they share.

Chart 1.1

Click for larger image

~~GRADE PENDING...~~

UPDATE, 3-18-11: A+

Assignment: Introduction

2011-03-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

Here's another assignment from the start of last term. I'd forgotten about this until recently. This was for a class I decided to take online, as the physical class had odd hours that simply didn't fit with the rest of my school schedule. It was a mandatory health class. The assignment, given on day one, was to log into a discussion forum and introduce yourself to the rest of the students in the class. SOCC is the small college I've been attending in Coos Bay, Oregon, and in case you weren't aware of it, I use a pseudonym. Here was the introduction I submitted.

___________________________________________

Class Introduction - Oh, Hi There

Hi, I'm Robin. I was born a misfigured, hermaphroditic dalmatian, but due to the vast improvements in medical prosthetics and facial reconstruction, I am now a bona fide person. My snout was re-constructed and tapered back in 2008, and I no longer speak dog, of course, as SOCC is ill-equipped to handle my native tongue. I have progressed with English somewhat, and now find it comes quite naturally. In fact, I'm pursuing a teaching degree in the subject.

After the removal of my tail, I was quite sore and had a difficult time adjusting to walking without it (our tails help with balance, something you humans can manage with free upper limbs, which I don't have, yet). Things have come along well for me, and I am now able to take part in courses and have even (as you may have noticed) learned to type. While my paws have yet to be removed, a special keyboard will allow me to take part in discussions online and perform the coursework required of me.

I live in Coos Bay, and I decided to take this course for the same reason you did (though my interest in the human form is more pronounced, as I'm well on my way to having one... a few more major surgeries in Amsterdam to go).

Did you know that humans are the only mammals that can't breathe while they drink? I know that because I'm a dog and I can drink from a bowl while breathing all I want and I've seen you humans choke while trying to do that. It's a trip. Also, I will not tolerate intolerance regarding my canine ethnicity, nor the customs of my race (my breath often carries the scent of Alpo, and yes, we bathe with our tongues- deal with it).

It is wondrous to meet all of you, or as we say in my native language, affrarrurrar yip. Had I a tail, I'd be wagging it. Seriously. You're all great.

I've attached one of my baby pictures, if you're curious.

-Robin

___________________________________

Not graded, but caused most of the students in the class to reply, at least.

More Homework

2011-02-16T13:34:00.000-08:00

As with the previous post, I'm continuing the habit of posting homework assignments to my journal. Having returned to college after ~~fucking around for ten years~~ a somewhat long hiatus, I am now buried in assignments, and I've had to put poetry and novels on hold for a short while. All of my writing attention is being taken by homework. There is little I can do with these assignments once written, so I've decided to post them here, along with the grade they received.

This next one was a simple assignment to write a short paper outlining how to do something. A process with a few supporting elements. A few hundred words, tops. While the majority of the class tended to write papers dealing with the preparation of brownies or the changing of a flat tire, I decided to go a different route. I considered submitting this to my pals over at Modern Drunkard, but they're currently not taking on any new articles, so I've decided to post it here.

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How to Better Support Your Descent into Alcoholism

While there are many impediments to becoming an alcoholic, focusing on regimen, role models, “get-me-bys”, and a compelling atmosphere can help keep you on track and successfully guide you toward your goal of lifelong inebriation. Becoming an alcoholic is not easy, and many have given up on their goal due to exhaustion, monetary trouble, and even at the urgings of loved ones, but an introductory knowledge of how to get around these impediments can provide some much-needed support on the path to drunkenness.

The first major roadblock to becoming an alcoholic is a lax regimen. Many people fail at this milestone by not keeping up their intake of alcohol. It is important to have a daily regimen of drink, and not fall back on self-defeating excuses like “It’s okay if I don’t drink today, because I’ll make up for it by drinking twice as much tomorrow.” The trick is to push the envelope further and further, making sure you are never far from an alcoholic beverage. There will come a point when you simply do not want to drink any more alcohol, likely due to incessant vomiting, dizziness, and a general feeling of misery. All goals require effort, however, and you must persist. It helps to develop an altered sense of logic, like “When I throw up, it’s just my body getting rid of the bad alcohol to make room for more good alcohol,” or “I need to drink just to feel normal.” These mindsets and a healthy regimen of drink are important in the forming of ‘drunk walls’, a key aspect of keeping yourself drinking when you want to give up.

Many find that it helps to have a role model with regards alcoholism. In your favor are a variety of celebrities and figures that have all shown the great things that can be accomplished while being an alcoholic. History has a great many role models that you can look to in admiration. President Ulysses S. Grant, infamous literary figure Ernest Hemingway, and the brilliant military strategist Alexander the Great, are but a few of the iconic figures you can look to for guidance. Remember, you’re not alone! You’re joining into the ranks of some of the most important individuals in history.

Even with a variety of role models, however, the problem of monetary expense can still be a constant frustration, and at times can severely interfere with a drinking regimen. A major impediment to fostering a strong alcohol addiction is monetary expense, and many budding drunks simply cannot afford the supply of alcohol necessary to compel addiction. With this problem, however, there are a variety of “get-me-bys”, or, simple solutions that prove cost-effective in carrying an alcoholic during times of little income: Cooking wine is often quite inexpensive, as are some brands of mouthwash, all of these providing enough alcohol to get you by until pay day. Also, scraping off and swallowing the detergent foam in unspent cans of Sterno can provide a hearty drunkenness, and even give the added bonus of brain damage from caustic chemicals, which, in turn, can help you with your perspective and heighten your need for release through intoxication.

Perhaps most important in compelling your drinking habit is the creation of an alcoholic-friendly atmosphere. Surround yourself with items that depress you, or remind you of more troubling times. Keep these things visible and always within reach: Termination slips, images of loved ones that have passed on, or divorce papers. Remember, you’re not shooting for the top of the world, you’re diving for the bottom of a glass. Keep this in mind as you stagger toward achieving your goal. It helps to develop associations and friendships with others who share your goal of alcoholism. They will come and go, and you’ll find them highly unpredictable, but their occasional support can be empowering when the hangovers are getting to you. Atmosphere is everything, and once you’ve reached your goal of drinking daily, it’s important that you begin distancing yourself from friends and family. They will try to help you stay sober, and they will certainly mean well, but help and well-meaning will not further your goal of alcoholism, and in fact, these benevolent forces will actually hinder your progress. The atmosphere you create for yourself cannot contain people that interfere with your drinking. Many potential drunks find that it is useful, during the transitional phase between heavy-drinker and alcoholic, to spend less time with people who do not drink, and more time in bars alone. A very large milestone for the emergence of alcoholism is that turning point between drinking with others for fun, and drinking alone out of desperation. Desperation is your best friend, and will become a crucial element in nurturing your inner drunkard and helping you achieve your goal of lifelong inebriety.

Remember, sobriety is your enemy, and it’s everywhere, but if you can maintain a strong drinking regimen, use a variety of “get-me-bys”, have role models to admire, and live in an atmosphere you’ve carefully made conducive to your drinking, the goal of alcoholism is within your reach.

_________________________________

A+

Because I'd Like to Post More Often

2011-02-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

Due to my hectic regimen, and trying to shoehorn this blog into my schedule along with all the novels, poetry, publication, the full-time college routine, and being an overtime dad, I haven't been able to post much this last year or so. To remedy this, I'm going to start posting random bits of things from school. Why? Because I spend all my damn mind there, and I tend to have fun with my assignments. It's not as if I can ever publish my homework, but I have a ton of it and I need things to post, so I've decided to throw the occasional, finished assignment onto this blog from time to time.

So here goes:

The following is an assignment in which I was given several statements regarding a husband named 'Roger' being selfish, and I was to supply supporting evidence, as his wife, to qualify those statements in paragraph format. You know... finish the paragraph. That sort of thing. We were asked to provide specific details that reinforce that 'Roger' is selfish.

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Specific Support – Roger’s Selfishness

(BOLD denotes provided starting material)

My husband Roger is a selfish person. For one thing, he refuses to move out of the city, even though it is a bad place to raise the children. We inherited some money when my parents died, and it might be enough for a down-payment on a small house in a nearby town. But Roger says he would miss his buddies in the neighborhood. He walks around with his shirt off quite often, flexing his pectoral muscles at me, and when I try to say anything about this behavior, he only flexes them faster and interrupts me, saying, “Oh, stop it. They don’t need your words.” His buddies are a strange sort, and they all seem to speak in an odd, indecipherable language, but last month, when I asked Roger what language his friends were speaking, he only laughed and said, “You don’t have to hog your way into everything. Just accept that some things are mine. Because guess who knows more than you? That’s right, me. And everyone.”

Also, when we go on vacation, we always go where Roger wants to go. When I proposed the idea of going to Epcot Center early last Summer, Roger forbade it. This would have been a fun vacation and also allowed me to visit my mother at the retirement home Roger had forced her to live in, but when I asked, he merely frowned and told me “Florida’s where families go when they have no imagination of their own. People rot in Florida. And they should.” My husband then chose to take the family on a tour of pubs, and brought one of his friends with him over our six-state tour of these particular places. Night after night, Roger would leave the family, drink pints of cheap beer, and return to the RV barely able to walk. Our family vacation was more of a vacation for Roger and his alcoholic friend, with myself and the children allowed to tag along and sit in the stolen RV while he drank himself into multiple arrests. When I bailed him out of jail the first time, he didn’t even thank me, but instead muttered “These cops nag almost as much as you do.” At one point, near the end of the vacation, he returned to the RV at three in the morning without his friend, and instead had with him another woman. When I inquired just what it was he thought he was doing, he gave me three dollars and told me to go find a Denny’s. I took the kids and as we left, he said he’d meet up with us later, and to order him a Moon Over My Hammy, once we'd been there an hour.

“Oh, and waffles for the pair,” he added, indicating the other woman.

Another example of Roger’s selfishness is that he always spends any budget money that is left over. Once our bills are paid and we’re out of the hole for the month, whatever is left should go toward family-oriented activity, maybe a nicer grade of meals for us, and any number of other things that most would consider important and useful wants. Roger made money ice-cream by first withdrawing the excess money we had at the end of the month and then churning it with scalded milk in an ice-trough. He bought his own private mini-fridge to store his ice cream and beer in, and when I complained that we couldn’t afford to make money ice-cream, he then barred me from having any and purchased an expensive lock to put on his refrigerator. He wrote ‘No Ice Cream for Nags’ on the white, front wall of the appliance. Whenever I see this message, my mood plummets into a dire, recurring guilt, somewhat matching in scope the acute drop of our finances into suffocating, inescapable debt.

Finally, Roger leaves all the work of caring for the children to me. While I know that we do not have children in the traditional sense, the dolls are most certainly conscious and if their whims are not met, they will cause me horrid thoughts and sing that terrible song of theirs. I resent Roger for it, but he does not seem to care. He knows how important it is to keep the dolls pleased, and that when their eyes light up and cast red on the walls of the room, it only means trouble for me and that more pictures of me will spontaneously catch fire around the house, but Roger will do nothing to aid me in sating the dolls. When the children give me nightmares, he only laughs and purchases more of the awful dolls for me to take care of. They sit on a shelf labeled Roger’s Babies. The few times I’ve asked him to do his share of doll-rearing, he simply waves his hand and tells me that children are for girls, even though the dolls have made it clear to both of us that they belong to Roger, and not myself. They call me ‘The Interloper’, and Roger ‘Daddy’, and when they want more blood poured onto the sacrificial anvil they had us build under the house, Roger can never be bothered to go out and find it for them. Honestly, how does he expect us all to ascend into the Realm of Black Torpor, a place the dolls have promised to take us, if he doesn’t do his share of the work? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one keeping our church alive at all.

Also, he recently painted the image of his face on all the mirrors in the house so when I try to look at myself, I see only him. Roger is so selfish. Sometimes when I talk with him, I become so exasperated that I find myself wondering if he might fit in the oven or not. I think he would if he were unconscious.

________________________________________________________________

A+

I think I'll post more homework throughout the next few terms. I'm somewhat interested in what I can get away with.

YouKidz

2011-02-02T17:38:00.001-08:00

This is an image I put together and submitted to a Cracked Photoplasty contest. The constraint/theme was "If Everything was Designed by 5-Year Olds." I centered mine around what it might look like if a five-year old designed the site Youporn. What would it look like, if the focus was no longer on what adults think is naughty, but on things a child might consider naughty. You know, like eating too many cookies, or hearing dad say a bad word. Playground cams. Silly stuff, really. I figured you'd end up with a much more innocent and friendly site, of course, catered to kid interests, rather than adult interests, but while still keeping the weird porn 'vibe' that sites like Youporn give off.

Submitted it. Didn't win. Didn't place. The image wasn't even chosen to see the public. Oh well. I have nowhere else to put it, so I'm posting it here for anyone bored. Clicking the image should bring up a larger size.

Because there's nothing wrong with mentioning porn and children in the same joke, right?

The results of the contest can be found here, if you're in the mood for more of this sort of thing: http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_162_if-everything-was-designed-by-5-year-olds/

Publish Me

2010-11-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

I've been working quite hard this past year, and thought I'd post a bit about what I've been up to. I began attending community college last Spring, and managed to make honor roll for the two terms I've been enrolled. I'll be starting up again this Spring (Fall term was missed due to clerical errors in the school's financial aid office, just like last year). School is interesting, and it was odd to begin attending in my thirties. I'm not a kid anymore, and my take on things has an entirely different bent, these days. Writing research papers was fun, and giving the occasional speech was a new endeavor for me. In particular, giving a dramatic reading of the final chapter of Of Mice and Men was quite fun, and being able to go off about Dante, villanelles, and salinity, made the terms lively and enjoyable. I'm using every chance I get to go into a more literary mode with my homework. A history assignment wherein I have to research a book written between 1850 and 1890? Song of Myself. A research paper on a topic of my choosing? Masaoka Shiki's haiku reformation near the turn of the 20th century, or the collapse of Rod Serling's career in his later years. I've been lucky thus far in being able to use most of my homework for further literary study, which is good, because there isn't much of that in my small town community college and I'm trying to prepare for actual university schooling, which will start up in a year or so. I'm hoping to get into Iowa. Not for the Writer's Workshop, really, but because it's an excellent English program and I wouldn't mind living in that state for a bit.

I've had about a hundred poems picked up for publication through various mags over the Summer and Fall, several stories, and a handful of articles. I have an on-air interview coming up with Jane Crown, and have been a regular guest on Elijah Brubaker's Whipping Post podcasts. I've been revising much this year, while attending school and raising my little one. Painter, my son, began kindergarten and we're all sorts of happy-family right now. These are good days.

On to the bigger projects. I finished Thank You and Good Night, a novel I began last year, which serves as a narrative and somewhat experimental biography of Rod Serling, best known for his writing and hosting of The Twilight Zone. In general, I wrote a biography of Serling, but did so in narrative, so we get Serling as protagonist in his life, rather than a research study. Oh, I did tons of research, yes, I just didn't want the book to feel like an overly long encyclopedia entry. I wanted it to be accurate while feeling like a novel. The book swivels into screenplay form from time to time, for setting scenes and shifts in time-period, different portions of his life, and I've even included commercial breaks. The book takes place across five decades, so this is the first time I've had to write a book that takes place in different eras, and not my own, modern time. It's a solid book, I think, comes in at just over 140k words, and is both informative and a bit of a rollicking, surreal adventure through this man's life. Think biopic meets The Hudsucker Proxy, throw in a little Videodrome, and we're good.

I also wrote another novel, entitled Miel, which follows a mute, orphan-raised husband through some serious marriage struggles and incarceration. The book's protagonist, Miguel, cannot speak, and hasn't been able to since the age of twelve, after having a botched thyroid surgery. He has no real tether to any family, a people, a place... and he cannot express himself well. He's the epitome of a life-long outsider, but one who has worked very hard to try and fit in with usual life. The book follows him from his release from jail (an assault conviction, though a once-in-a-lifetime thing for someone like Miguel, who is quite gentle), through the crumbling of his marriage and career, and then into a strange, surreal spiral of his past and present, which takes us into the heart of the book, which is that Miguel is no longer able to feel much in the way of emotion. He begins having explosive bouts of anger and depression, always short and leaving him in a bored state of numbness. Miel is a narrative glimpse at a case study in narcissistic rage and unpredictable violence, as we follow along behind a man that will do nearly anything to feel again.

Started another book, Beyond the Great Gate, this one a private sort of project for my son and I. He gave me a handful of details and a basic storyline (Painter, my son, is five-years-old now), and then I began turning these details into a book. With the details he gave me, it seemed obvious I was going to be writing something in the fantasy genre, which is something I've never done. A shorter book, I'm nearing the end now, having written 18 chapters, with a couple to go. The idea was that I'd write Painter's book for him, and read it to him at night as I wrote it out. In short, I've been writing my son's ongoing bedtime story for the past month. Things are going well, and he very much enjoys the story (which features Painter and I, ourselves, as protagonists, and a rather distressing, mad king as antagonist). It's called Beyond the Great Gate, and takes place in a terrible world in the throes of a five-thousand year long holocaust, set into motion by a patricidal, mad king and his thirst for stealing children from our world into his. Painter and I get pulled into this alternate world, The Fog, and have some horrifying adventures trying to find one another. The mad king is trying to catch Painter to make a sacrifice of him on a blood-anvil, and I can't let that happen. Lots of magic and creatures and fun things going on. I should have it finished in about a week or so. No plans on trying to publish it. For now, it's just for my little man.

I'm still trying to shop A Fine Young Day around, looking for a publisher. For anyone new here, A Fine Young Day was my take on a horror novel. It follows Tom, a man shot in the chest at the edge of a lake on his fiftieth birthday, as he sets out through nine miles of Camas Swale woods, trying to get home before he bleeds out. As he travels, with a feral, pregnant pig as his companion, we descend deeper and deeper into a terrible, haunting nightmare of the woods, made of Tom's mind and his past, one that hunts him as he makes his way home. The woods are populated with wooden people, carved by Eat, who seems to be a horrific usher to the nightmare in the swale. The woods do not like Tom. Once leaving the woods, he treks through an abandoned suburb, along the old highway, and finally makes it home. When he arrives, he discovers that the final sheer of this nightmare is not solely a trouble with the woods, but has only just begun churning to life. His home is a prison for his loved ones, and freeing each person from a room becomes all-consuming to him. At times, he reverts to his childhood self, and at times, he is in his fifties again, always trying to solve the problems of his life before the horrific demons in his mind eat their way out and take him back into the woods forever. It's currently in a seventh draft, and comes in at just under 70k words. I designed it to be short and sweet, and wrote it line-intensively, as I would poetry.

That's about it. There's more, but I need to get back to the book so I have a chapter to read Painter tonight. I'll update soon, however. Until then, if anyone is looking for something to read, take a look:

Poetry: Tons of it in journals and magazines, and my book through Differentia Press, Other Cruel Things
Novels: Two of 'em currently in print, Tatterdemalion and Amphisbaena

Five Family-Friendly Games that can Damage Relationships

2010-08-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

NOTE: The following was an article I wrote for a list-oriented comedy site. They didn't want it (actually, they never read it, as the idea was rejected at the pitch stage). I'd already written the article when I gave the pitch, to no real response, and I can't really do anything else with it, so I'm simply posting it here.

Five Family-Friendly Games that can Damage Relationships

by ray succre

There are a variety of games that exist for gatherings of family and friends. Perfection, Mousetrap, LIFE, Jenga, watching dad drink a pint of Old Forester and sneak up behind Aunt Cathy with his pants down in front of the whole family as he swabs his genitals across her ear, saying, “Everybody’s asleep. Ssh. Huh? Who’s in what room?” Over the course of past eras, many games have been invented as ways to consume a night’s time among people you somewhat have no choice but to spend time with. There are some games, however, that simply have no place being played among friends and loved ones, no matter how family-oriented they claim to be. These games contain specific gameplay elements that run a high risk of endicksulating the people who play them. It’s all fun and games at first, but inevitably, some people can’t play these games without douching out on the people around them. Hell, even a game as old-timey as and quiet as chess can erupt in violence, leading to news articles with actual quotes like: “…had to throw the pieces out, they were covered in so much blood”. We’ve compiled a list of the top five perpetrators, and with each, we have tried to capture the undercurrents as to how these games are so expert at planting the seeds of anger, mistrust, and outright despisal needed to damage a relationship in but a few sittings. These are games to hate your family over, mass-produced pastimes of mild fun that can go so wrong they actually end friendships and can lead to assault.

#5. Connect Four

Hasbro’s Equivalent of Standing in a Doorway and Refusing to Let People Through

I know what your thinking: What’s wrong with Connect Four? It doesn’t seem all that confrontational. It’s just an old school good time waiting to happen, right?

Connect Four is the very defining nature of confrontation. Two competitors sit across from each other, engaging in uncomfortable proximity and a mortifying stare-down, taking turns trying to foil, and finally, defeat the other. This is so close to the definition of confrontation that the previous sentence could almost be used as a description of warfare in general. The reason a rather innocuous setup like the rack in Connect Four is so ugly in intent is due to the way the game is played. Every time you place a colored round into a slot, you’re giving a quiet, logic-inspired ‘fuck you’ to the other player. You’re using the rounds as symbols for a trench-warfare of wits. You spend more time trying to shut down the other player than you do trying to win, yourself. Really, you’re trying to defeat your opponent’s MIND, which many psychologists would argue is the core, personal makeup of a person’s self. You’re not taking property, you’re not stealing, you’re not using chance to out-luck your competitor, you’re trying to use the strength of your mind and some two-moves-away planning to thwart your opponent’s mind and his two-moves-away planning. You’re showing that, were the two of you living in a more primitive time, you would get the women and first go at any carcass, and they would gnaw on rotted leftovers, exposing the bones you might later pick up and use to pummel them if they got out of line.

“The red circle is all. Behold, the weight of my mind now manifest.

Accept your defeat, yellow tribe, and fetch me your women.”

Here’s an example: You sit across from your seven-year-old son (because only a child could confuse bright red and yellow circles of mental domination and subjugation as fun). You drop a yellow circle down into the machine of your confrontation, the hole-punched, plastic battlefield of wits. Your son lifts a red circle and drops it beside yours. Were you planning on heading to the right, daddy? Because fuck you. You respond by dropping another yellow circle beside the first, to the left. You now have two in a row. He reacts by dropping his red piece and cutting off your progression, sealing your two pieces between his juggernauts of red death. What’s wrong, daddy? Have to start over now? Yes, yes you do.

And the game continues until one of you gets four of your colored rounds to line up without being broken by your enemy’s troops. When you destroy your seven-year-old son’s feeble attempt at standing up against your magnificent, adult brain, when you crush him with bright color, he loves you less. Just a little. You are now two or three obligatory Connect Four rematches from your child screaming ‘I hate you!’ and crying himself to sleep. If you let him win a few games, he’ll begin to think even less of you than had you won: I want candy for dinner. Why do I need to eat these cruddy vegetables? Because dad said? I’ve learned recently that dad doesn’t know shit from a yellow dot. Goodbye vegetables, hello diabetes.

#4. Scrabble

The Game of Rule Pigs and Obsessive Compulsion

The nature of Scrabble can be fun, and consists of drawing seven, random letters from a bag, and then trying to form them into a word on the board, oftentimes playing off of letters and words placed in previous turns. The strategy sound, provided you don’t mind having to make a word out this hand, which seems to happen more often than ‘random’ would imply: Q, Z, R, T, S, N, and B. On the opposite side of Scrabble fate, you could very well end up with a hand of E, E, A, I, A, O, and Y. You can’t make anything with the first set (though you’ll hold out forever on a U and an A so you can make the devastating QUARTZ). As for the all-vowel setup (and sometimes Y), it never ends well; using whatever genius you possess to make EYE and YO makes you feel stupid.

You sit down to have some fun with a friend or two, maybe have a beer and play around with some letters. The problem is that some people take Scrabble way too seriously. These are opponents that have to look up every good word you use, or keep monstrous dictionaries in play. There are also a lot of innocent procedures that on the surface seem like simple point-gathering, but end up causing small amounts of annoyance that add up over time, like when someone simply places an ‘S’ at the end of one of your words and gets more points than you did for it. There are also people that refer to the rules of Scrabble with such solemnity, you simply can’t handle playing with them. They use the phrase ‘no proper nouns’ with such speed and fortitude that it almost seems as if they’re using it as a sort of verbal slap in the face, and yet if you try to call to mind that same rule during their turn, they outmaneuver you like a Bond villain with a cleverly concealed escape hatch. For instance, they use a few letters to turn AGO into CHICAGO, to which you respond, “Oh, you can’t use the name of a place, man. That’s a proper noun,” only to have them yawn against your insignificance and cooly explain with the nonchalant wave of an arm, “The style of pizza”.

Naw, cuz check this out: ‘Snoop’ can be a adjective, dog.

The biggest problem with Scrabble is that some people consider it with such tactical reverence that they sap all the joy out of playing. These people are so into Scrabble that there are televised competitions. That’s right, people that are really into Scrabble are actually filmed playing Scrabble so that other people that are really into Scrabble can sit on their couch and see just how really into Scrabble these champions are. There are even documentaries about the televising of the competitions of the people that are really into Scrabble, documentaries that are over two hours in length. Watching one of these is only slightly less irritating than playing Scrabble against a rule pig.

Are you tired of hearing the word Scrabble, yet? Of course you are. It’s just some game you’ve played a few times. That’s all. Certain other people… not so calm about it. Violence has occurred while playing it, ending in murder. Take a look at this article, which digs into the strange incessancy with which Scrabble is mentioned in works of fiction that often connect it to sleaze, obsession, lust, mental illness, and outright homicide.

The forms of horror a serious Scrabbler can wreak upon you take on many guises, and as with other games, there are certain bothersome moves opponents can use in to torment their opponent. This is staple, but with Scrabble, there are fewer of these dick moves than there are dick types. There are three known, and many more possible. Types like:

The Lexicographer

The lexicographer challenges just about everything you come up with, devalues your poor attempts at spelling, and doubts the definitions you offer. The lexicographer enjoys chuckling lightly when you’re placing your letters down, and is the sort that has a massive dictionary pretty much for the purpose of pissing you off during the one and only time you or anyone else plays Scrabble with them. These people want a definition for everything, even the simplest of words, just because they know they can ask for one.

“Good word. Define it.”
“Zap? Are you serious? All right, fine. A zap is… when… when something… it’s like a… ah, come on. We both know what the hell ‘zap’ means.”

   They usually begin showing their more troublesome colors once you’ve placed a non-obvious word, and begin asking you the definition, which the Lexicographer will be inviolably picky about.
   “I don’t know about that… give me the definition.”
   “A ‘brocket’ is a deer,” you say. The Lexicographer begins looking it up.
   “See. A deer,” you repeat. You’re smart. You watched the nature channel last week and you didn’t fall asleep or anything. There were volcanos. Also brockets.
   “Eh, I can’t accept that. It’s in here, but uh, you’ll have to be more specific."
   “Fine, Alex Trebek. A damn brocket is a… a deer that’s from some other country… they have horns… it’s a deer, pretty much. Just a deer. I think they’re young, too. Like a buck. Yeah, a brocket is like a buck. Give me the points.”
   “Sorry, man. It says a brocket is ‘A male, South American red deer in its second year’. You weren’t specific enough.”

“I slept with your wife.”

“What? Which one?!”

“First one. She talked you into getting the vasectomy? FYI, that was my idea.”

The Referee

The Referee is that person so quick to jump into the Scrabble rulebook they purchased, that any sort of fun one might glean from playing with them is completely nullified. These are the above-mentioned rule pigs. Playing against a Referee is like trying to play with an intensive bureaucrat who doesn’t realize he’s off work. He hogs over the handbook with such zeal that the game may as well have been shipped to stores in a layer of thick, red tape. In order to be acceptable, every move must be technically correct.

Meme phrase.

Let’s say the word AXIS has been played vertically. Later in the game, you place another A beside the X. The Referee balks. Rather than let you have your paltry nine points and get rid of one of your seven vowels, he blusters and puts his hands up.

“Uh, no. AX is not a word. You have to put an E on the end.”

“Actually, the one time I played with Tom, he said the same thing, and then he looked it up. Both AX and AXE are correct. They’re both in the dictionary.”

“Both?” he questions, aggravated, reaching for his handbook of Scrabble rules and flipping through it with agitation, looking for any particular rule that tells him how he should logistically react when encountering two correct spellings. He is unwilling to let you have the nine crappy points your placement of A would net until he absolutely has to. Ten minutes of abject boredom go by, minutes wherein you replay the series of events that led to the board game gulag you are now trapped in, and when the Referee doesn’t find a rule regarding dual spelling, he gives you the damn points and then ceases talking to you at all. The silent treatment. Nothing but the sound of tiny blocks of wood being nudged into little square spaces of hatred. He only breaks this punishment of silence near the end of the game, when it seems you are going to win, barely.

“Just so you know, you cheated. You’re a cheat.”

“Your fiance is crazy hot.”

“Huh? I’m not engaged. Dude, I’m never getting married.”

“I know. I just thought it might be good for you to hear yourself say it.”

The Scout

While The Lexicographer may be the most irritating sort of person to play a game of Scrabble with, The Scout is the most horrifying of the bunch. The Scout has spent so much time calculating how to win at Scrabble, that when your novice ass comes over and you make the mistake, usually after a few beers, of agreeing to play, the storm of potent moves begins. Not only does The Scout know how to play, and well, but he has managed to memorize a vast army of tiny, potent, archaic words, allowing him to play things like YCLEPT, ZEL, and PYX. The Scout has done reconnaissance, you see. Scrabble black ops. He has, outside of game time, looked up strategies and calculated letter potential. He has waded into the depths of unknown (yet still somehow existent) words that allow him to play off of nearly anything. These are his power plays, and they are going to send you into a deep murk of douchbaggravation in the very near future. In his study of Scrabble (his study), the Scout has crammed so many words up his brain-ass that you don’t really stand much of a chance against him. Playing against a Scout will ruin the game for you, not just for a week or two, but forever. They’re like vampires, in that once you’ve experienced the massive defeat a Scout offers you, you have no choice but to give up Scrabble forever, or, growing angry and vengeful, become a Scout yourself.

The thing that makes a Scout so much more unbearable is that, rather than use his bizarre ~~obsession~~ skill to try his hand in Scrabble tournaments, against other lonely people more to his ~~compulsion~~ caliber, he instead chooses to feed you beer and then crush your unsuspecting mind with the strength of his ~~personality disorder~~ forethought. It’s like a soccer champion pretending to be in a wheelchair, approaching another man in a wheelchair and challenging him to a fun race through a grassy field, and when the second man agrees and begins wheeling toward the field, the champion rises out of his wheelchair, strips down to his customized running shorts (complete with his corporate sponsor’s logo on the side), and begins putting on his thousand dollar running shoes.

“What the hell is pyx? Is that a real word?” you make the mistake of voicing. The Scout will then snap into a strange monotone, as if an old reel-to-reel has been activated and a soulless narrator has possessed him.

“Pyx. A box or vessel in which coins or consecrated Eucharist are kept.”

“Is that actually in the dictionary?” you ask, again making a terrible mistake. A Scout almost always doubles as a Lexicographer. He is a living, breathing one-two punch of lingual douchbaggery. After asking your question, he reaches beneath his ratty, mustard-stained couch and lugs out a dusty, four-pound, hard-covered tome of the English language, compiled nearly ninety years ago. He then slides the dictionary over to you with a look of complacency.

“It’s in the ‘P’ section.”

“I had sex with your wife.”

“What? When?!”

“Any day now. What’s Eucharist?”

Of course, like all games, Scrabble is designed for some thoughtful, time-wasting entertainment. It’s fun to play with words and pray to whatever deity you suppose to be overlooking the board and the awkward wanweird of your Thursday night, asking that you be granted the miracle of a vowel sometime soon. As writers, losing at Scrabble ranks about as high on our list of fun activities as gathering around the dilapidated bed and saying quiet goodbyes to the pale, jabbering husk we’ve been told is still, somehow grandpa.

“Twenty-four points. No, wanweird is a word. Fine, it refers to ‘an unfortunate fate’. Well, I don’t care if it’s not in there. Gaydar wasn’t in there but I gave it to you, so now you have to give me wanweird. Dude, stop removing my let- oh, you are such an ass.”

#3. SORRY!

The Game for Enforced, Obnoxious In-Your-Facing

The premise behind the hit Parker Brothers (a subsidiary of Hasbro) game SORRY! is that you have a skinny, cartoon phallus (four of them, actually), and draw cards that give you the number of spaces you can move. That’s after you’re out of the “start” spot. In order to get out of your initial start spot, you have to continually draw cards, turn after turn, until the lucky number turns up, in order to give you the right to begin moving your little, pointy dong around the board. After the ninth or tenth roll, the number finally arrives and you are granted the ability actually to start playing the game, moving your piece, turn by turn, around the square board. The idea is to go all the way around the board, and then take your cartoon phallus piece up a taller, more bulbous cartoon phallus until you’re “home”, at which point you retire the piece and then try to get your other three pieces up the same phallus row to home. At times, you might hit a “slide” arrow, which sends you down a few extra spaces of movement, just to be nice and help things along. This is to make up for what happens next.

At any point someone lands their pointy plastic dong on a space that already contains your pointy plastic dong (and due to the law of nature that disallows mutual dongship in confined squares), you’re piece is removed and sent back to start, where you have to again roll numerous times for the right to begin playing the game again. This cycle happens over and over. Unfortunately, this is not all that happens when you’re sent back to start. The player that screwed you gets to then say the relished, sarcastic term for which the game was named. They take your piece and carelessly fling it back toward your start space, knowing they’ve just set you back about eight turns, and then raise their voice with a phony, clownish smile, and bray out: “SSSSOOOOOOOOOORRRY!”

Yes, it’s in the rules that you have to exclaim this. If you had any doubts, they printed the name of the game itself in a font that seems to be somehow both sympathetic and saying ‘Loser!’ at the same time. The name is also in all-caps, bold-faced, with an exclamation point, letting you know right from the moment you first set the game on the table that some obnoxious, caustic jackassery is coming your way in the near future.

To be straight here, this is the only time in one’s life when this word can be uttered in such a hideous, grating tone without it being responded to with a knee to the groin.

“Dude, just tell me. Have you been messing around with my sister?”

“Yeah. But it was her idea. Whatever.”

“No, not whatever. That’s a really big deal. She’s still taking Language Arts and you can hang out in bars.”
“Pff. Yeah, she was all like, unexpecting and trying to seem all brave or something, and I just totally wrecked her and sent her ability to trust all the way back to start. SSSSOOOOOOORRRY!”

#2. Monopoly

The Simulation of Socioeconomic Despotism

Monopoly is the longstanding golden son of Parker Brothers/Hasbro games. The game takes an atrocious, highly illegal, corporate business-model of absolute, economic tyranny (a system that forces the ruination of hopes and dreams, causes suicides, and destroys all it touches) and has you try it out on your loved ones. For… for fun. Still aren’t sold that Monopoly is a game that could cause more than hurt feelings? Tell that to Kenneth Repke, who, after having his bid to purchase Park Place was declined by his old lady neighbor, leaped from his chair and slapped her out of her chair, landing him in jail for assault. At some point, the arch-demons at Parker Brothers apparently decided that turning grotesque human malignancy into a toy was great, wholesome entertainment. They could have just as easily made a game that portrayed forced slave breeding in a cheery, family light, or even a board game themed around death row social hierarchy.

“Ha ha, you’re about to get some spokes knocked out of your meatwheel!”

“Nope, try again. I still have a Shank Card.”

“Damn it! I never get the Shank Card.”

“Looks like you’re stuck in the infirmary with Dr. Touchy until you roll a seven. Maybe it’s karma for always taking the bedsheet-noose when you know it’s the piece I want to play.”

That’s far-fetched, of course. No one would actually make a board game centered around prison rape.

Despite the sociopath level of fun a biological warfare themed board game might have given mom and dad, Parker Brothers chose to go with corporate monopoly, and that over the mass-ownership and renovation of urban property, where you destroy with money and soul-less, contractual phalanxes, rather than with sharpened broom-handles and toilet drownings. Why? Because snaking the land out from under people is a blast! You buy a cheap spot, fix it up a little, and then crank up the rent to absurd levels. Sound familiar? Yeah, you know people effected by this behavior in real life, except they lose out on real homes, instead of scraps of orange paper. But forget all that, you’re turning the pawn shops into your own private Hiltons and running utilities as if they were check-cash stands. Soon enough, you'll be sitting pretty with a couple of high-priced hotels on a handful of city streets. As for anyone living on the other side of the tracks... Hey, no problem. You bought out the tracks, as well as their sources of water and electricity. The money comes rolling in.

The premise is that you purchase spaces on the board as property, or purchase a space that serves as a utility, and then let your inner slumlord out by charging exorbitant rent to anyone that has the misfortune of landing on your property, and a nagging sort of fee to anyone who lands on one of your utilities. You’re basically role-playing a pipe-wielding superintendent banging on a door at four in the morning and shouting, “All right, fucko, I know you’re in there. You’re rent’s late. I don’t care if you’re paraplegic, you wake up and crawl your ass to the door and pay me, or pack your shit.” The game is incredibly boring for the first three hours, until everyone owns just about everything available. All but one player will have scattered properties that are somewhat useless on their own, due to the wondrous random nature of rolling dice. One player, however, will own a whole set of high-end property, also somewhat by random chance. Now the game kicks into gear, and all the buying and spending and dice-rolling and time in jail and missed turns (which allow your opponents to gather up every scrap of property you still needed to complete your own monopoly) will finally pay off.

And pay off, it does. In about three, short turns. The power of chance turns up whatever number you least wanted, and you end up being tossed onto their property, and they grin, smug, as they say, “All three properties with hotels on each. Oh ho. Looks like you owe me three grand.” You scowl as you look over your fake money, which is about four-hundred dollars worth of fives and tens and that single twenty you’ve been saving. You go over your assets, then. Your properties. Nope. They amount to another six-hundred bucks. You have been financially ruined, execution-style. You’re out of the game, and the person with the monopoly gets even stronger by taking all of your things for their own, setting up more monopolies. It is only a matter of time before the game lands each player, one by one, like a slow deathmarch, onto the high-stakes property that took you out, which instantly ruins them, as well. The game ends and the winner leans back and says, “Eh, it’s only a game,” and “We should do that again sometime. That was fun,” which are code, respectively, for “Don’t be a sore loser, loser,” and “pwned lol”, cluing you in on just how much they’ve enjoyed destroying the past three hours of your life.

“Hey grandma?”

“Hmm?”

“You know what?”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Fuck Park Place and fuck you. I’m leaving.”

“Oh? But honey, the nursing home only allows one visitation a week!”

“Well, maybe you should have thought about that beforehand, Ms. Fat-Cash.”

“Please don’t leave. They feed us bugs.”

“I wish you were grandpa.”

Still not convinced? Here’s a forum thread chock full of people complaining about the level of animosity that Monopoly creates.

#1. UNO

Cards, Conquest, and Royally Screwing Your Loved Ones

Uno is the only game in this list that is not owned by Hasbro or its subsidiary, Parker Brothers. Uno is a product maintained by Mattel, and considering the level of vitriol in the previous games on this list, one might assume you would need a thousand men shouting every terrible thing they could think of for five straight years in order to meet the level of dickishness needed to beat out Hasbro in the top spot of this list, as Hasbro seems to have cornered the market on disguising hostility and detriment as clean, family fun. We’re probably overreacting in placing UNO on this list, because it’s not as if anyone has ever lost their shit, beaten their family, and threatened them with a knife because of it.

The basis of Uno is quite simple. Everyone starts with seven cards. The cards are generally, but not always, numbered and colored. Someone puts a card down. Then you have to play a card of the same number or color. You do, and play moves to the next player. The first person to run out of cards is the winner. Of course, it is yet another game wherein something is annoyingly shouted at you right before you get the shaft, but still otherwise innocuous.

“No! NOOOOO! I had UNO! I had UNO!”

The aggravation comes when you begin seeing the directive cards. Remember, you’re trying to get rid of your cards, but if the person before you plays one of these directive cards, you either lose a turn or are forced to pick up yet more cards and lose a turn. Draw Two makes you do just that, setting you back two turns as well as missing your current turn. SKIP makes you lose your turn. REVERSE makes you lose your turn in a slightly different way. When Uncle Hank runs out of cards he can screw you with, he can play a REVERSE card, which reverses the rotation of play, thus letting Aunt Myrna a chance to unload her cards on you, too. The worst by far is the Draw Four card, which not only costs you a turn, but sets you back FOUR MORE turns, by making you pick up four more cards. Basically, getting a directive card used on you in UNO is about giving you ‘turn debt’ while everyone else happily goes along winning, or being screwed, themselves.

So, your waist deep in a heated UNO game with the family, and you’ve been kicked in the sweet spot by dad three times now, and everyone seems to have the power to reverse the deck whenever you actually have something you can play. This is annoying enough, but you’ve been hit with a Draw Two card and not one, but TWO Draw Four cards. Now you have about eighteen cards, and everyone else is down to two or three. You are not going to win. The depths to which you are being screwed are more pronounced than those on the receiving end of the Pepperidge Farms product that wanders around beneath Ron Jeremy’s fatbelly. Your ability to even stomach this game is dropping with every turn, and you’re not losing due to your own ineptness, or failure to grasp the rules, or even due to the expert skills of other players, or luck, for that matter. You’re losing in direct proportion to the impudence of the people around you, and you aren’t even being allowed to play, which lowers the dickhead bar so close to the ground that even your mild-mannered great uncle seems willing to step on your balls in boots, and is probably flipping you off beneath the table. You get so quietly angry (because it’s just a game, which means that your unavoidable anger is also unacceptable), that you don’t even want to look at them. They’ve made you a receptacle for all the shit cards one can use. You’re the Draw Four dumpster.

The cycle seems like it will end and you’ll finally be able to unload all the high-point cards weighing down your hand, but no… you are then made to draw two cards again. Then you get skipped. This continual torture just means you’re not only being robbed of turns, but everyone else is being given more instances in which they can rid themselves of cards. When someone wins, all those cards they crammed in your hands with their dickishness benefits them, as they are tabulated into a score they get to keep. Their level of win is determined by your level of loss. You could easily end up with a veritable deck in your hands, and then the hammer falls and the person preceding you says: “Ooh, looks like somebody has to Draw Four! Again, heh heh. Oh, and UNO!”

This is when you smash your bottle and leap across the table, grabbing their hair in one hand and jerking their head to the side, swinging the busted glass wildly with the other arm and bellowing “I’LL CUT THAT LARCENOUS LOOK RIGHT OFF YOUR FUCKING FACE, MOM,” while exposing that soft target of check-flesh just waiting to know what happens when someone wrongs you.

All of the games mentioned here bear the ability to bring out the sadistic side of players, but of these, UNO is the easiest game to lose your friends and loved ones to. Having sold over 150 million copies worldwide since being created in the early seventies, UNO just might be responsible for more disintegrated marriages and familial isolation than Everquest and World of Warcraft combined. It’s a deck-based kick to the nuts. You might find on Wikipedia that the original creator of this game was also the pioneer of the deadly cocktail that makes up our modern day lethal injection, but you just as well might not find that. This in no way makes it any less plausible.

UNO is a game that slowly, round after round, breeds hatred and despisal. Quietly. Ask our mother. Two nasal reconstructions, an incapacitating pain-pill addiction, and a cheap, plastic mask later… well, she knows what she did.

I Do Things. You Do Things. Let's Do More Things.

2010-06-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

There have been few posts here the past year or so, which is good. This means I've been busy. I thought I'd give an update.

I've gone back to school, aiming for the MFA and teaching credentials. I've gone through two terms this year. I'm headed for English. Literature. Creative Writing. Teaching them. Any and all would be wondrous. I put in two college years in my youth, and those still count, so I'm starting out in my third year, for the most part. While I have always been somewhat of a D student, I'm surprised to note that I've made the honor roll this time around. Two terms now. I suppose I can officially start showing people my All Grown Up certificate.

My son has finished pre-school and will begin kindergarten in the fall. He's amped, asks questions constantly, and I'm endlessly fascinated with the things he comes up with.

"Hey daddy, what's your job?"

"Me? Well, I'm ~~unemployed~~... I'm ~~a student~~... writer. Heh, I'm a writer, son."

"How much money do you get?"

[jaw clenches tight] "It's fine. Everything. Is. Fine. People... people will read."

"I don't like books."

"Go to your room."

He is highly imaginative, makes up stories daily, loves to build things and is weirdly preoccupied with symmetry in everything he builds. Even I'm sort of baffled by that one. While I love his particular curse of creativity, I do know he's in for a rough time. Creative kids mature late and don't quite fit the mold as well as they'd like. Ever. Ask me.

I wear a watch that doesn't work and a newsy cap to be different.

Things are going well. My brother-on-law is staying with us, which has been fun, and Mary and I are enjoying Summer as best we can in Oregon's never-Summery weather.

On to the projects: For those of you new here, Tatterdemalion, somewhat of a psychological thriller with some comedy here and there, and Amphisbaena, my experimental romance novel, (both novels through Cauliay), are still available and some more reviews have turned up, all very positive. I'm happy about how these books are doing. Give one a read; I can promise you I spent a lot of time writing them, revising through ten drafts each, working them over in a variety of ways, and getting them published.

A Fine Young Day, my take on a horror novel, is currently in its sixth draft and I've begun sending it around to publishers. Another novel, Thank You and Good Night, a fictional biography modeled very closely on the life of Rod Serling, is also finished, and is currently in its third draft. I'll put it through a few more revisions before sending it out, so don't expect this one anytime soon. It's a long book, as well, so the revisions take more time. Differentia Press put out a collection of mine, online, titled Other Cruel Things. This one isn't fiction, but poetry. Those of you that know me are well aware that poetry is my mainstay, so this was a nice setup. I don't have any plans for future chapbooks or collections of poetry at this time, mainly because I prefer to break up all the books of poetry I write and send the poems around to the great mags of the small press. I've been doing this quite a bit with the Summer. Submitting to publications I like. At some point, I'll probably send a collection out to someone, but I have no actual plans for it right now.

I'm starting a new novel in a few weeks. The idea I have in mind is quite ambitious and will be difficult to put into concept, much less write. I like ambitious. I like difficult. You readers are ambitious and difficult. I like you, too.

That's all for now. I'll try to get back here within a month or so. Until then, read a book, or write one. Let's hang out.

'Other Cruel Things', 'A Fine Young Day', and 'Thank You and Good Night'

2009-12-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

Hello electronic world, I greet you in the middle of December with the usual apologies for lack of update and other, thick behavior. For those three or four of you that read these posts, I give you much information regarding several projects either underway, completed, or outright published.

OTHER CRUEL THINGS, my first and fledgling book of poetry has just been released through Differentia Press as an ebook, free for all, and edited by the always great Felino Soriano. The book compiles what I feel to be some of my best work from the past 18 months or so, and can be read here: http://www.differentiapress.com/2009/11/other-cruel-things.html

I worked hard on this one, and I hope you enjoy it.

In other news, A FINE YOUNG DAY, my third novel, is currently in my publisher's hands, and I'll let you know the minute I've heard back. I'm nervous about this book for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost being that I think it's the best thing I've ever written, which always makes one nervous. The other reasons for my shaking knees involve the subject matter, the way the book unfolds, the more poetic and sound-oriented language I let myself use, for once, and the outright disturbing things that happen throughout the book. There's no whimsy in this one. It's my take on a horror novel, and it runs both pretty and repugnant at the same time. My thanks to Andrew David King for his artwork on the potential cover.

I'm about 28 chapters into a new novel, THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT, which has come along nicely thus far. I'm having a surreal round of experiments with the biography format, and this book has much going on, beyond it's large size. A fictionalized biography modeled on the life of Rod Serling, the novel snaps into teleplay format often, has commercial breaks, and generally follows the rise and fall of Rod Serling's career. There is some real tragedy in this book, and it doesn't let up much, as well as some moments of Rod's early achievement and success. It spans forty-five years. In short, I'm writing the life of Rod Serling in a fictional style, Serling as a protagonist, and doing so as if he were a fictional character on his own famed show.

That's about all for now. I did finish another book of poetry, but have no plans to seek out a publisher for it just yet. I'm going to send the poems around a bit, see if anyone likes them for the glorious mags of the small press.

Life is busy but good. My son will be turning five in February, and my wife and I are having a great end-of-the-year with present shopping and other, various shenanigans of festivity. Hurrah!

Happy holidays to all.

Amphisbaena Officially Released

2009-08-13T20:37:00.001-07:00

My second novel Amphisbaena is out and available in a variety of places. Read the last few posts and you can find out all sorts of things about this experimental, surrealist romance novel, including some reviews that have gone live and synopsis.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon, which has it in stock:

http://www.amazon.com/Amphisbaena-Ray-Succre/dp/0955899273

And for anyone who received that mailout I recently sent, which outlined Amphisbaena's official release, you may have realized that the link within the email for the Reviewer's Edition is busted. My apologies, it tested before I sent the mailout to all of you, but there's been a problem with the service. I set up a new download, but now that one has problems as well. Geh. If anyone wants the special features, just let me know with your postal address (send it to raysuccre@hotmail.com), and I'll send out a disc. It's no trouble; I like doing this and I'm confident you'll like what I've put together.

Postal mail is all I have for the program, at the moment. If anyone knows of a good free service to store a file for download, by all means, leave a comment below.

For those who use torrents, I do have a dedicated torrent over at Mininova for the program, guranteed to be seeding:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2629217

Also, feel free to contact me if you think you'd be interested in doing a review, but would rather have the .pdf, without all the features or the large wraparound program: raysuccre@hotmail.com.

Enjoy the end of Summer, and check out the book if you're interested.

A Review

2009-07-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

A great review of Amphisbaena has gone live over at Unlikely 2.0. Check it out:

http://unlikelystories.org/blog/content/?p=133

The release date for the book has been pushed back a few weeks, but should be out shortly.

Amphisbaena

2009-05-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

My second published novel, Amphisbaena, will be released on July 4th, 2009. That's Independance Day, here in the States. While it was written last Summer, I've been working on this book all year thus far, with numerous revisions and drafts, until complete. Amphisbaena will be released through Cauliay Publishing (who you might remember published my novel Tatterdemalion in June of 2008).

Here's the trailer:

From back cover:

"A sober disinterest in relationships causes Bill Sherman, failing calendarist, to abandon dating for many years. When pressured into a speed dating event by his brother, Bill meets Amy and decides to attempt a relationship again. He learns quickly, however, that Amy is two people: The inseparable Amy and Janine. These two women design to date Bill in tandem, both to his confusion and enjoyment. Where Amy holds Bill dear to her heart, Janine is unable to function outside of physical pleasure. Bill soon discovers that this strange predicament is only the beginning of a much larger system of rules and interraction, and the relationship changes more when Bill realizes that the two women happen each to be one half of an ancient, two-headed black snake. Amy is the alpha head and has subjugated her poison in an attempt to understand human notions of beauty. Bill is not allowed to touch her. Janine is the enticer head and may not be in league with Amy where Bill is concerned.

Can a man love if there is only appetite? Will he care more deeply for the woman he can never touch? What happens when monogamy becomes taboo and a fine-tuned machine of murder learns the human consequence of going against one's nature for a greater meaning?

Laden with whimsical depiction and a foraging exposition on gender, occupation, and dating in modern society, Amphisbaena is the story of three people trapped somewhere between nature and culture, through a humorous adventure into the biological mess of love and romance. "

So there you have it, a surreal and quite expository romance novel between a man and a two-headed snake. There's much more to it, of course. Here's a very low-resolution version of the front cover:

As with Tatterdemalion, there is a comprehensive and detailed special features package I've put together for Amphisbaena. This is fully interactive and contains animation, dozens of audio tracks, introductions... even a few hidden features (if you can find them). The special features are part of the Amphisbaena 2009 Reviewer Edition (I'll place a link to this download below). The Reviewer Edition also contains the entire ebook version of Amphisbaena for free, to anyone who wants to read it.

Included in the Reviewer Edition:

About the Author section containing images, synopses, and full publication history with links.

An interactive video trailer for Tatterdemalion, with sample chapter and links to the free download.

A themed Concept Art feature.

An Alternate Cover Art feature, exhibiting the 12 alternate covers created for the book.

An audio introduction from the author.

An animated feature on speed-dating.

An animated feature telling the story of the Amphisbaena and its mother, Medusa, from Greek mythology.

Explanatory Notes about the some of the machinations used in the book, including the excerpt system that introduces each chapter.

Information about Cauliay, an in-depth link page, much in the way of video and audio, hidden features you can hunt for, ordering and contact information, and so much more. Seriously, I spent a busy year programming this.

The entire book, Amphisbaena, free of charge in an ebook format. You can view the book from directly within the special features program, or open it in any .pdf viewer. There are links for a download of my previous novel, as well, should you decide to take a look.

How I loathe sounding like a pitchman.

Moving on, here's a link to the download (yes, it's somewhat large, but entirely free of cost and more than worth the wait): http://www.daedalao.com/downloads/Amphisbaena.zip

For those of you in the torrents, Amphisbaena and the Reviewer Edition can be found as a dedicated torrent here: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2629217

I'll post more information as the book nears print. I hope you enjoy the book. A lot of time and effort has gone into writing it.

The Rat is Here

2009-03-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

Announcing the release of The Rat, an executable, fully animated, interactive publication edited by Ray Succre, containing new poetry by Alan Morrison, Alissa Nielsen, Andrew David King, Christian Ward, Constance Stadler, Corey Mesler, David LaBounty, Dee Rimbaud, F.D. Marcel, Felino Soriano, Justin Hyde, L.Ward Abel, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Matina Stamatakis, Matthew Zapruder with Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman, Michael Lee Johnson, and Misti-Rainwater Lites, featuring an animated piece by Beau Blue, and original audio tracks by Kevin MacLeod.

Here's a link to the download:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/5/16/1915229/The%20Rat.exe

Going through The Rat is somewhat like taking a very visual tour through some truly good poetry. Go grab something to drink, start up the mag, and settle in. If anyone would like to give a shout-out for The Rat, by all means, go for it. Feel free to send the link to anyone and everyone you think will enjoy it. I spent a lot of time on it and the poetry in the issue is superb. Make sure your speakers are on, because this thing has audio tracks, videos, flash animation, tons of images, effects, and text animations. It's a bit of an experience, if you don't mind me using that tired term.

The Rat is a single issue, invitation-only magazine I put together as a sort of present to some of the poets I greatly admire. On another note, I tried everything I could think of (and then some) in trying to create a program that would also function on a MAC, but simply couldn't do it. Sorry MAC users. Grab a friend who owns a PC, head over to their place, and hang out drinking coffee and taking a look at The Rat on their machine. They'll love the company and it's a good way to spend the afternoon. Besides, PC owners miss you. Come visit.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email at raysuccre [at] hotmail.com. I check it pretty often and will get back to you shortly. Enjoy the mag.

My Novel 'Amphisbaena' to Be Published

2009-02-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

I've received some good news recently in that my second novel, Amphisbaena, has been picked up with Cauliay for print. I'm pleased as hell right now. The release date is yet to be decided, but if my first book, Tatterdemalion, is an indication of schedule, it's likely Amphisbaena will be released sometime around the middle of June. I'll be posting various details and information as we go along, and have begun the revision and drafting tasks which will absorb me for the next few months. My first novel, Tatterdemalion, received strong and very favorable reviews, so if you're on the market for a good read, give it a shot. If you enjoy it, you'll enjoy Amphisbaena.

I'm developing a special features promotion for the book, as I did with Tatterdemalion, and will release it in the next month or so. Details (and the download, itself) will be posted here. For those of you who missed the large project of Tatterdemalion special features I put together, or have an interest in that book, any reviews, or locations where it can easily be ordered, go here:

http://raysuccre2.blogspot.com/2008/06/tatterdemalion-news-and-update.html

As with my first novel, Amphisbaena will be a print book, but my publisher and I will be creating an ebook version available to all for free. If you want to read the book (or my last book) and don't have the extra cash around (and who does, these days?), you can read it free, so long as you don't mind doing through a screen, or hitting CTRL-P and printing it yourself. I'll post more on this as it's developed.

On to a very brief description:

Amphisbaena is the story of a thirty-something calendarist, Bill Sherman, who lives with his divorced brother, two odd nephews, and an uncommunicative niece. Bill has a serious disinterest in dating, having all but abandoned the notion, and his career in calendar design is waning hard as all the major calendar presses are trimming down their production. Through the convincing pressure of his brother, Roger, Bill agrees to attend a speed-dating event with him, and finds himself unexpectedly enthralled with a particular woman, Amy. The feeling is mutual, and things quickly escalate from interest into deep-seated care. Bill learns, however, that there is much more to Amy than he at first realized. Amy has the bizarre rule that she will not date Bill unless Bill dates her roomate, Janine, as well. He can have a relationship with both of them, or neither. He is reluctant but does agree, and soon discovers that this strange dating situation is only the beginning of a much larger system of rules and interraction. Stranger still is his discovery that Amy and Janine, while appearing to be roommates, are actually a single creature, each woman being one of the heads of an ancient, two-headed snake. Amy is the alpha head, the upper half, and has subjugated her poisons in an attempt to understand human notions of beauty. Bill is not allowed to touch her. Janine is the enticer head, the lower half, and may not be in league with Amy where their relationship with Bill is concerned. Janine seems only interested in sex.

Can a giant serpent designed for killing and eating men temper it's nature to keep and love one? When offered a seemingly endless reservoir of sex and physicality, without the constraints of whim or approach, can Bill be satisfied, per Janine's theory, or will he begin craving the other? Can he love when there is only sex? Will he care more deeply for the woman he can't ever touch? What happens when monogamy becomes taboo, and a fine-tuned machine of murder learns the human consequence of going against one's nature for a greater meaning?

These are a few of the things I've tried to give thought to in Amphisbaena, but there are many more running themes involved.

Amphisbaena is a modern, surrealist romance novel describing the courtship of three people trapped somewhere between nature and culture.

I hope people enjoy it, and I'll post more in the near future. On a side note, for anyone on Facebook, I've posted some potential cover art for Amphisbaena in a photo album. Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments. I'll be adding more of them as we go along.

Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=56013&id=661626574

Also, for anyone who enjoys my books, I promise that the third book won't have a one-word title. The others just happened that way, is all.

2008-12-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

Have a season's happy merry holiday joyful deck the noel or kwanzaa dreidel PC or MAC whatnot and the such.

Maisy and Painter

"This is True" - a poetry postcard that,

after being rejected, I have nowhere to send.

So here.

Painter posing, and then Painter's actual mood.

He wanted a hot chocolate and we told him he had to wait.

Family Picture: Maisy looking beautiful, Painter still

wanting a hot chocolate, and Ray dressed up like a yuppie.

Enjoy your holidays!

Trailer and Updates

2008-09-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief update on some of the books and projects I'm working on.

For anyone who might be interested in giving Tatterdemalion a read, but who might still be on the fence about it, you can check out the trailer for the book:

Full Book Trailer (.exe - pretty and fully interactive): Tatterdemalion by Ray Succre
Book Trailer movie (.mov for Mac users): Tatterdemalion by Ray Succre

This is a full video trailer for the book with orchestration, the works. It's in .exe format because of the features at the end, which are fully interactive. When the trailer concludes, you'll find links to information on the availability of the book, Cauliay Publishing, reviews and interviews, and you can also read an excerpt from the book and even view the front and back covers in an interactive panoramic. You can also download the entire ebook and special features for Tatterdemalion from directly within the trailer, if you're so inclined. A lot of work has gone into making this, and I think you'll enjoy it. The other downloads are for simple video versions of this, for PC and MAC, and are not interactive.

Amphisbaena (pronounced AM-fis-BEE-nuh), my new novel, is complete and currently in the revision stage. Amphisbaena is an experimental romance novel about a man in a relationshsip with two women who are actually one creature, which happens to be a giant, two-headed snake. There will be more to come regarding this book shortly. The abovementioned trailer for Tatterdemalion is actually excerpted directly from the Reviewer's Edition special features program for Amphisbaena. All is coming together well. Here's a concept cover (not official or anything).

I'd also like to give congratulations to two of my friends, Elijah Brubaker and Andrew David King. Elijah has been nominated for the great 2008 Ignatz award, and Andrew is a recipient of the prestigious Foyle Young Poets Award, out of the U.K. Everyone give an ovation.

Beyond that, my son began preschool, which is a new arrangement for me. While I'm still getting used to the idea that Paint-paint won't be around for a portion of the day, I will have more dedicated time to write now, so there are many things I'm going to be adding to my plate, including more frequent posts at Blood and Ink, and a few more Interviews with the Dead. I'm aching to start a new book of poetry, so that will begin quite soon.

That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by. More information about Tatterdemalion and Amphisbaena can be found in the previous few posts.

Amphisbaena and Tatterdemalion

2008-09-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

Tatterdemalion has now been out for a couple of months, and there are some new reviews coming out in the fall, as well as a couple of events I'm scheduled to attend, and information about the book tour. I'm pleased to say I've finished a new book, Amphisbaena (pronounced 'am-fis-bee-nuh'), and am putting it through the first revisions. Amphisbaena is an experimental romance novel involving the relationship between a man (Bill Sherman, a struggling calendarist) and a woman he meets while speed-dating. This woman happens to be a giant, two-headed snake, which takes on the form of two women. In order to date one of them, he has to date both of them, by their rule. It's both or none, indefinately. One woman is the alpha head, or the 'upper half', and the other plays the enticer head, or 'lower half'.

Each woman represents one of the heads of the Amphisbaena, which functions with each head working in tandem for a single goal. In their past, this was for killing and eating men, but in the book, in our current times, they're trying to cease this in order to achieve something higher, and want to understand the intrinsically human notions of beauty, trust, and at some point, love. The charmer head entices men close, tempts and transfixes them, while the alpha head delivers the killing bite once the man is entranced, though in Amphisbaena, the snake uses this same system for dating, being the only way it knows to interract with men. Much of it comes from Greek mythology, yes. Below, you'll find a teaser image of Amy, the upper half, straight from the special features I'm putting together for the book.

I've received a ton of comment on the special features I created for Tatterdemalion, and this time around, I'm throwing a lot of myself into the special features for Amphisbaena. Trailers, animation, video, 24 audio tracks, 12 features (many with numerous sub-features), articles, explanatory notes, concept art, alternate cover art, a bit of history, some hidden features... and there's even more. The project is nearly completed, as well. Here's one of the images (scaled way down) from the concept art.

That's it for now. There will be more to come on both Tatterdemalion and Amphisbaena. Hope everyone enjoyed Summer. I spent mine writing, revising, and making covers.

Tatterdemalion - News and Update

2008-06-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

To all cavorters and general discussants of the book-reading world,

Tatterdemalion has now been officially released (as of June 15th, 2008), and is available in a variety of places, which I've provided links for below. Most bookstores can order it easily through their distributors, and there are numerous places online where it is stocked and available.

In addition to the print release, I'd like to inform anyone interested that an electronic version is also available, and is entirely free. The download of this edition is fully interactive through a specifically designed graphic interface, and contains a large assortment of special features relating to the book and its creation, including a great amount of cover and character art, introductions, history, and more about its author, as well. This edition has also been pirated, and is available through a variety of torrent sites, some of which I'll list below, as well as provide links for the dedicated download locations.

Tatterdemalion has been getting some strong reviews. The following is a list of those that have gone live, as well as any articles, interviews, or features involving the book. I'll update it whenever I learn of new material.

Unlikely Stories 2.0:
Review (Gabriel Ricard): Click Here
Interview: Click Here

Prick of the Spindle:

Review (Erin McKnight): Click Here

Publication: Click Here

Chaotic Dreams: (Note- 'Dawn Griots' at the top of the linked-to page is the name of the set of features, and not a person. 'Dawn' is self-explanatory, and 'griots' is a West African term for 'storyteller'.)
Book Excerpt: Click Here
Interview (AngelaMichelle Smith-Brown): Click Here

Neon:

Review (Christopher Frost): Click Here

Print Publication: Click Here for ordering information.

Decanto, August 2008 Edition:

Print publication: Click Here for ordering information.

There is also a nice turn of events that has occurred, in that I've been offered to do a U.K. book tour. This would be a great experience and I've certainly signed on to do it. I'll post more about this, and locations/events, as they're slated and things roll along. It's a little ways off. For now, I've got a few events lined up (to be announced shortly) that will be more local.

Back to the book:

Tatterdemalion is now stocked at many bookstores, and can also be ordered through all of these if not already stocked (ordering through your local, independent bookstore is a great thing to do). The following is a short list of other online sources that can be used to order the print edition as well:

Powell's
Cauliay Publishing
Amazon [Amazon.ca, Amazon.jp, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de]
Borders

Blackwell

Booksense / Island

Barnes and Noble
Target

AllBookstores.com
Alibris
eBay

Lovereading
Eruditor
LibrariaUniversitaria.it

Capris.no

Download locations for the free e-book and special features edition:

Tatterdemalion - 2008 Reviewer's Edition via Daedalao: http://www.daedalao.com/downloads/Tatterdemalion.zip

Tatterdemalion - 2008 Reviewer's Edition via Fileden:

Click Here to Download

Here are a few of the torrent sites from which the book can be downloaded (not guaranteed to be seeding when you visit, but it is often available):

Mininova - Link
The Pirate Bay - Link
BitDig - Link

That's all for now. Read a review, scout around, buy a copy...

And hey, enjoy summer.

Tatterdemalion Official Release Date and Pre-Order

2008-04-12T17:26:00.001-07:00

Tatterdemalion: Front, back and spine

The official release date for my novel, Tatterdemalion, is set for June 15th, 2008, though it is conceivable you'd be able to get it as soon as May 1st, through my publisher, Cauliay Publishing. Below is the link to the inquiry/pre-order page at Cauliay, and some concept images and other material. I have a rather unique promotional disc that I am sending to reviewers, which includes a ton of bonus material and special features, all fully interactive. The disc is also loaded with bonus features, supplemental material, and a wide assortment of media relating to the story, its publishing, and its author. These special features are entirely interactive, through a stand-alone platform that will autorun when inserted in your computer's CD/DVD drive. There is much to see, and a great amount of information on the various characters, creatures, devices, and background of Tatterdemalion. You'll find alternate cover art, concept art, author and publisher introductions, explanatory notes, small press tie-ins, even several easter eggs hidden within the menus, and much more.

I've put in just over 200 hours into creating it, and it includes a pre-release Reviewer's Edition of Tatterdemalion. Anyone interested in reviewing the book can email me for a copy: raysuccre@hotmail.com.

PRE-ORDER: http://www.cauliaypublishing.com/productssimple3.html

The story of Tatterdemalion is one of discovery, loss, fantasy, and reality, and where these meet in and beyond the mind of a man vanished within his times. Tatterdemalion moves between ample humor and a near dismantling misfortune with ease, from thought to action, and back and forth between logic and emotion, mystery and disarray, adventure and domesticity. This is the story of a frail yet unstoppable man and his modern, action-prone quest to find a jar, to be rid of enemies that live in his apartment's appliances, a quest for his own mind, under the guidance of obfuscating, heraldic dragons and a madness that aches of logic. The world shifts beneath this man, people change places, a city-wide protest breaks out against him, and even the notion of his telephone bears a cursed meaning. What is real and what is fantasy is a large part of the book. This is a world in which a person with no experience can gain employment as a surgeon, astronaut, or police officer by visiting the employment office, a world of facsimiles and fates, a modern world of juxtapositions, physical metaphor, and loss. This is an abstract world of Boston in a slow mania, and the lost man within it.

If interested in the book or you'd like to consider it for review, email me at raysuccre@hotmail.com

Tatterdemalion and a New Book of Poetry

2008-03-25T20:51:00.001-07:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned my novel 'Tatterdemalion' being picked up by Cauliay Publishing, and also promised to give a few updates from time to time. I've been sparse, dotting various Twitter posts in my revisions and other information, but thought it was time to post here and update the two people that read this on the happenings.

Tatterdemalion is nearly complete on the publisher's end. We've got the book finalized and ready to go out, save for a couple of incidentals that we're working on right now. I've spent a huge amount of my time (all of it, really) over the last few months putting together a supplemental material package to send out to reviewers. It's huge, autoruns, and I had to design every page in it both graphically and in regard to its content. Here's a list of some of the things on the disc (which is all nicely labeled with full-color inserts... the works (and I designed all of that, too).

1. Background information on the book, including specific reasons for writing it.

2. Author's Introduction

3. Publisher's Introduction

4. Character concept art of the heraldic characters in the book

5. Cover art for the book

6. Alternate/concept covers for the book that we didn't go with (7 of them)

7. Small Press tie-ins (the Main Character sends out to real mags, and often)

8. About the Author section (this is where a bio and all that is found)

9. Explanatory Notes (on the bizarre styling, characterizations, and trickery in the book)

10. The ebook version of Tatterdemalion

11. Contact, link, and order information

And a ton more. Each one of the above 'features' has a few pages within it, full of other related features. There's video, audio, images, effects, a lot of painful design that I've finally managed to make smooth, and it can interact with the internet cleanly. The entire thing is interactive, and runs as a stand-alone program. You can email me, surf the web for details on the book, and even read the book, all while in the bonus feature program, or outside of it. You can even set up your own music playlist in the bonus features, with your own music, to listen to while you read, if your the type who likes music on when you read. Every page is dotted in various graphic art I've made for it, even as background material. There are even easter eggs hidden in the depths of the features.

I've worked pretty hard on it. Here's a teaser screenshot:

I've also been working on a new book of poetry, with an incredibly long title. All my books have had shorter titles lately, so I thought I'd go out on a limb and use a long one. The title of my new book of poetry is:

I Won't Breathe for It-- The Dull Chatter of Ends, Humping Catastrophes and Lounging Where One Sets Aside the Mind.

So yes, long. Here's a couple of images of some poems in the book. I added effects to the pictures so you won't be completely bored.

That's about it for now. I was also recently invited into the World Poets Society, and had an interview recently in Tom's Voice. No Tell Motel will be featuring some of my work in April, and there are some new spoken word tracks up over at The Adroitly Placed Word, as well.

Lately (well, continually), I am entirely enamored with my little son's antics. Being a stay-at-home dad is wondrous (though at times, it can be extremely difficult to get things done... i.e. subsequent revisions of a novel for one's publisher...) Paint-paint is talking well now, and just last night sat me down to tell me a 'story'. I'm a writer so that was poignant as hell. His story was about a ghost playing with his toys. He struck the ghost on the ass with his fist and frightened it. The ghost then ran away and hid in one of my son's Hot Wheels cars, driving slowly away.

Funny, I never took him for the horror sort.

Oh, hi there!

2008-02-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

Dear World, Please Read My Book... Please.

2008-01-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post here for a few days regarding the hammer of good news that hit me last week.

Yes, it's official: My novel 'Tatterdemalion' has been picked up by Cauliay Publishing and is scheduled for a 2008 release. For those of you who haven't read this blog before, I wrote a novel at the end of 2006, for which I wrote a post on. I was very excited about the novel, which was gigantic and, due to its enormous size, likely unpublishable so long as I'm a newcomer. Anyway, after I finished that novel, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and in a zone, so I wrote another one. I sent the first book out to various agencies. Half of them rejected it, the other half never even bothered to respond. The second book, 'Tatterdemalion', I sent to the wonderful Michael William Molden (from here on referred to as 'my publisher'). The first book is dead in the water, but the second book was accepted by my publisher and the process of more revisions has ensued.

So, instead of being a struggling novelist, I have been upgraded to the regular kind, just really, really broke.

I'll be posting much here on the developments to come, dealings with my publisher, and of course, the release dates and where you can find the book. I will also be going through a short process of deflating my head and slapping myself around a little, to get clear.

On another note, I've recently finished another book of poetry, 'Skep', am hard at work revising 'Tatterdemalion', and getting ready to write a small series of poems for an upcoming peace conference I've been invited to read at.

New work at several publications accessible from my main page / publication history: http://www.raysuccre.blogspot.com (those at the top are the most recent).

Happy New Year to all,

-Ray

Huge Budget Hollywood

2007-12-19T19:36:00.000-08:00

Having recently watched 'I Am Legend' and a few other newer movies, I have decided to write a brief letter to Hollywood, asking and entreating the producers and writers to hear my pleas.

Dear Hollywood,

It has come to my attention (forcefully, with Dolby Surround Sound), that certain things in many of the recent movies being released simply don't work. The reasons for these numerous troubles are varied, but I've decided to give you a short 'heads-up' in regards to some of them, in case the overpaid film-designers in your ranks haven't done their research, or are too lazy to care.

1. Stop shortening film titles. There is no logical reason why 'The Way of the Peaceful Warrior' needed to be shortened for the movie version to 'Peaceful Warrior'. We're not so dumb as you think, and have the brain capacity to handle more than a three-word title. If you greenlight a script entitled 'Night in the Desk of Calvin Coolidge', there is no need to shorten it to 'Coolidge'. Titles aren't simply for exhibiting the lowest-common-denominator of the subject in summary.

2. Bad script alert: If you receive a script with any of the following lines of dialogue in it, the script is bad. I'm serious.

A. "No, that's impossible! We killed you!" No one wants rehashes of Freddy Krueger stories or badly made things in a similar vein.
B. "Get me the _______" (name of a person or superhero like Cobra, Daredevil. Also: President, Secretary of Defense, Media, etc...)
C. "So what you're saying is..." This is always used to introduce really obvious backstory, and it's like a slap in the face. EXAMPLE: "He's a real loner. He's complicated and keeps to himself." "So what your saying is he doesn't trust anyone?" "Yes."
D. Any dialogue where a white kid talks in a really false and overexaggerated street-slang and using overemphasised hand gestures. We get it. You're setting up this character to be the butt of some dumb joke about how he's not black, to make the dull character doing the joking more witty. The thing is, it's transparent and DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. Also, other stereotypical bullshit.
E. Any dialogue that begins with "Think of it this way..." This is usually just an excuse to take your space-jargon or other 'technical' description and translate it into something for the audience. "Think of it this way... The air will be pulled displaced from the room and he'll suffocate." "Oh, thanks for pampering me. I was too dumb to know carbon monoxide could hurt you."
F. Any narration in a preview that includes the three words 'in the dark'.
G. "You gotta be kidding me."
H. "This could mean the end of..."
I. "I grew up in the sixties."
J. "What are those things?"

The list goes on and on... Anyone with suggestions can place them in the comments to this post.

3. No matter how much you think it's great, Man fighting CG is old. We know it's CG. How do we know? It doesn't look real. Why doesn't it look real? Because it isn't. Seeing Will Smith fight off packs of roving cannibal-mutants in 'I am Legend' would have been a lot better if the 'mutants' mouths didn't stretch like taffy to unbelievable proportions whenever they screamed (making noises no human larynx could, I'll add). Also, while I'm bitching about 'I am Legend', if your foreshadowing is really obvious and statement-oriented, you haven't done it well.

4. This one is a big one, Hollywood: ENOUGH WITH THE TRILOGIES. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 should have been called 'Men Fighting on Things that Roll Down Hills', and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 should have been called 'What the Hell is Even Going On? Johnny Depp's In It, That's All We Know."

5. It grows embarrassing for everyone when a movie spawns B-sequels that begin to have nothing to do with the original. American Pie, anyone?

6. Let Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz go. They've been trying really hard to do it themselves. Just... just let them go.

7. Oh, also, can you start levelling the volume in your DVD releases a little more? Please? It gets really annoying having to turn up the volume twelve notches so I can hear the dialogue, then clutch my chest in seizure when someone in the movie kicks in a door and makes my fucking windows rattle, forcing me to grab the remote and hit volume-down in a mad panic at 1 in the morning.

There's so much more... I can't focus on it there are so many weirdnesses to fix...
If anyone else has anything they'd like added to the letter, feel free to post them in the comments.

Sinister Events Strike in the Heart of My Small Town

2007-12-07T13:53:00.001-08:00

Article from 'The World' newspaper, Coos Bay, Oregon

Cows lead police on chase in Coos Bay

December 7, 2007 - 11:33 a.m.

COOS BAY — The Coos Bay World reports that two cows have led police officers on a chase through the streets of Coos Bay.

A driver stopped for gas for his truck, which was towing a livestock trailer. After getting his fill, he drove away. His cows stayed behind.

According to the Coos Bay Police Department, the driver of the truck failed to properly close the back door to his trailer and the cows got out.

The two cows led police officers on a chase through the streets of city, rushing up toward the high school, past the U.S. Post Office, back downtown and even into the bay.

At last check, the chase appeared to be slowing down near the waterfront.

The following image was not taken from the newspaper, but does demonstrate the nature of these criminal, devilish cows well enough, I think:

And this image sums up the nature of the police in my town, as well as local sentiment quite well:

Dadda, Painter Need Surgery

2007-11-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

I woke this morning and, after bidding my little boy 'good morning', was greeted with the same statement for which this post is titled. I stared for a moment. Did he mean the word 'sugary', as in wanting some sort of candy? Had I simply heard him wrong, or he'd gotten his words crossed?

"Dadda, Painter need surgery."
"Uh... wow, kid. Do you mean sugary? Candy?"
"Dadda, Painter surgery. Please."
"Surgery?"
"Yeah, sick. Painter need surgery. A doctor."

So that was that, he did, in fact, mean 'surgery'. No doubt this idea of his was spawned from my own surgery I had earlier in the month, though it wasn't something I'd ever explained to him. He just assumed I was 'sick'. That's the cutest thing I've ever heard of. I did go over the notion that he required no surgery, though he kept pointing at his stomach.

"Need surgery."

Creepy as hell, that was. I pictured him being a character in a Stephen King tale.

I think I mentioned something in a previous post about posting an image of my surgical aftermath, but I can't remember and I'm not going back to check right at this moment. Here you go-- My disgusting, abdomenal, post-operative self:

Most fun. And yes, I look ridiculously pot-bellied, and they shaved me. I don't know what I'm up to with posting this picture and the one in my last post, showing my disturbing, permanently injured, ever-bloodshot eye, but it's certainly not showing off my good looks (of which, by now you'll realize I have none).

And here's The Little Boy Who Wanted Surgery (I may use that as the title of one of my children's books, at some point, along with my previous big hit "The Little Boy with Ants in His Heart"):

Skep

2007-11-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note on my new book, Skep, which is coming along well enough. I'm at about 24 poems in, and will continue until the vacinity of 80. A 'skep' is a sort of natural beehive, usually constructed out of hay. What does that have to do with a book of poetry? Enough for what I have in mind. Below are two pictures of my work in progress. Yes, this is a college-ruled pad and yes, my handwriting is fucking tiny (three handwritten lines fit within one college-ruled space qualifies the term 'fucking' in this statement). For no particular reason other than to give indication of what writing this small does to me, I've separated the two images with a picture of my right eye, which has been bloodshot since I was a kid. I actually have a permanently injured eye, so the bloodshot nature of it never goes away. My left eye is normal. Look in my author images (main page) and you can spot this bloodshot right eye in action here and there.

I should have it completed in a little less than a month. Yeah, I put some effects on the pictures. If interested in what these particular two poems are about, look through my Twitter posts (http://twitter.com/raysuccre), for the titles of the poems: Stingray, and In a Flock of Strange Things.

Appearance Links

2007-11-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

I've had more than a few people lately explaining a difficulty they've been having with my main page (raysuccre.blogspot.com). The trouble seems to be that they're trying to locate some of my work online, for passive reads, but don't like navigating through the archives of online mags and the such. I use my main page for several purposes. The first and foremost is to post a bio, some author images, and a complete publication history / editing history, etc... The Twitter posts add a bit of me to the page, as well. The page is simple, and I post all on a single page, able to be scrolled through for long durations, or quick-linked from the sidebar, whatever your flavor is. The page is mostly designed for editors, who, after correspondence with me, via submissions, subscriptions, and other various queries, can take a look around if they'd like to get to know me on paper. This blog, raysuccre2.blogspot.com, is a much more personal page designed to allow a little access to me outside of publishing and the such. You know, what I'm up to, all that.

However, the people that have contacted me recently (and there have been mentions in the past, as well), feel my Publication History on the main page would be greatly enhanced by posting appearance links as well. They think it's great I link to all mags that have or are planning on printing my work, and that I link to the editors of these mags as well, but people don't want to wade through archives searching for my work. So, from here on out, I'll be adding appearance links to any online/electronic publications in my history, for anyone who'd like to read any of my published work.

I suppose anyone who follows one of those links and reads something of mine has an interest, and so anyone who does so is free to email me with any opinions or criticism they may have. I may not follow it, but I'd love to hear what people have to say. It's one thing to print in mags, and you know there are certainly readers somewhere that have gone through your poem, but it's another thing to actually get feedback from readers. It's a kind of proof, really, that yes, someone read what you wrote, which can offer a much-needed dose of momentum to someone like me.

So there.

Recuperation is Swift but Shaky

2007-11-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

Having undergone my vibrant and unruly surgical procedure, and had my junk laparoscopically and systematically 'improved', I have been spending some time at home recovering. With the exception of the tightness that has overwhelmed my entire abdomenal region, I'm doing well with it all. I tend to heal rather quickly, so I wasn't entirely worried about it. Mostly, my worry was in dealing with the surgeon, who, despite any argument I could muster, would still end our relationship by slicing into me with a scalpel. There was no avoiding it. My doctor/surgeon was a talented young buck, but the ways of medicine still frighten and elude me.

Still, I'm recuperating and feel around 80%, and by this time Saturday, I should be back into my normal frame of juggling regiment with whimsical sloth. This is how I expect to be feeling by then:

To anyone out there debating whether they'd like to have an inguinal hernia or not, go ahead and weigh your options, but my ten cents is that you should avoid the situation. Sure, you get to meed new people, network with the rising stars of American McMedicine, and they get you wasted at certain, crucial points on difficult to pronounce drugs, but the overall testicular shrieking and the folding of your gut like origami just ruins the party.

My Literary Life and My Crotch are Spread Too Thin

2007-11-01T16:47:00.001-07:00

To the Grand Republic of Blog Purveyors,

This is a quick update on various happenings that have occurred and are slated to occur, as well as a touching commentary on the nature of my busted crotch, for which I am to undergo a magnificent and vivid surgery.

First off, a great thing has happened in that some of my spoken word is going to get some radio play in Scotland, on SHMU, November 4th, 2-4 p.m. GMT. The time zone difference equates to the following in the U.S.: 5-7 a.m., Sunday the 4th. This has been set up by the excellent Michael William Molden, of Cauliay Publishing, who has graciously invited my work onto his broadcast, as well as showcased some of it on his site. The link, for those of you wishing to experience this joyous occasion, is http://www.shmu.org.uk/radio/radofrm.shtml. You can tune in live for the broadcast, and I'm fairly certain you could access it later, if you're the sort that likes to sleep in the wee hours of the night/morning. The show goes out to around 200,000 listeners.

I'd like to thank Mr. Molden, the academy, the little people, and everyone in Aberdeen, Scotland. I shant forget you.

Blood and Ink, the collaborative effort disseminating all sorts of how-it-works information on the arts, and of which I am a contributor, has moved to a new home with wordpress, and can now be found at http://elijahbrubaker.com/bloodandink. It appears in connection to the site of the illustrious Elijah J. Brubaker, illustrator extraordinaire and all-around great guy you should love and buy things from. Go. Right now.

I've begun a new book of poetry, and have managed to gain some print in quite a few lovely mags in the last few months, for which I owe much. You can find any of these magazines and publications listed on my main page, http://www.raysuccre.blogspot.com, under 'Publication History'.

Now, on to the crotch. Everything always ends there, doesn't it?

I was recently diagnosed with an inguenal hernia, after a bout in the E.R., where I was seen clutching myself and shivering. For those without knowledge of things inguenal, or who haven't studied up on this sort of hernia, it works like this:
Yes, that's what happened to me. In fact, this is an actual photograph of me, except they got some of the 'dimensions' wrong. Anyway, the randomnity of the pain is horrid, and I've now had two different doctors wring out my junk like a dishrag.

Though I was seen in the E.R., and diagnosed but 5 days ago, the repair of this problem is slated to take place this Monday, the 5th of November. They're going in through my stomach area with wriggling little night-vision cameras to fumble around in my guts, and build some things in my groin from the inside. This pelvic strike is to take place with me unconscious, anesthetized, and most likely, drooling into nightmare. I have enclosed several images that, in an abstract way, symbolise the way I feel about this entire situation.

And here is the hospital wherein the adventuresome surgery will take place:

That's all for now. Wait, no... we took Paint-paint out for Halloween last night in his spankin' cool costume, which was a blast, even though I had to limp the entire way.

Awwwwww...

Flash Gordon: Saviour of the Universe

2007-10-09T20:27:00.001-07:00

Recently, my wife and I decided to rent Flash Gordon: Saviour of the Universe Edition from our local video store. This is the one in which Max Von Sidow plays Ming the Merciless, and Queen plays the soundtrack. The movie is everything I remembered it being, and there was certainly a bit of cheesy, embarrassing nostalgia involved in viewing the film, as I loved it when I was a youngster.

In the special features of this edition, is an entire episode of the 1930's era Flash Gordon serial, starring Buster Crabbe. I'd never actually seen the original serial, and have only a rudimentary connection to the comics and stories that have involved Flash Gordon over the years. We thought the special feature was neat, so watched it. Near the finale, my wife and I both began exchanging looks of confusion and intrigue. I'll explain the scene in question, as it had both of us laughing to the point I was unable to contain my laughter and had to leave the room until I could get ahold of myself.

The scene in question is in Episode 1 of this Flash Gordon serial. I've included screenshots. In the scene, Flash has been captured by Ming and his minions and has been tossed into an arena to fight.

He is noticeably worried about the situation, as can be seen in the screenshot below.

I am noticeably worried about the situation.

I mean, seriously, what's going to happen to poor Flash? He's a good-lookin' guy, probably plays sports, knows his way around a stiff drink and a loose lady, but come on... He's just crash-landed beside some giant lizards, been abducted by another humanoid race that seem to wear an awful lot of bondage-like gear, he's trapped indefinitely in an alien world, the chick he likes is being held beside the evil lord of this strange place (who probably has the hots for her, too), and a bunch of metal-clad guards have just tossed him into an arena, presumably to face something malicious, horrible, and life-threatening.

When thrown into this terrible predicament, this magnanimous and dire situation in which his very life could be on the line, all he sees is this:

Nowhere to hide!

That's right, three iron-barred gates... and THEY'RE OPENING. What's going to happen? Is this the end of Flash's life? Will he never play football and score with chicks again? Mortal combat is approaching... But what infernal horror is about to be unleashed upon him? Ming seems pleased at Flash's fright, and indicates what a weakling Flash must be, by pointing at him in front of the metal-clad guards as if to say "Look at the wuss from Earth. He shall surely pee his pants."

Power.

Then the gates fully open and, panicking, Flash gets into a fighting stance. It all comes down to this tense confrontation. Will it be inhuman monsters? Murderous machines? Claw-sporting animals with a thirst for the young jock's blood? Wait... here they come... it can't be... no... NO.... THEY'VE EMERGED! it's, it's....

SABER-TOOTHED JEWS IN DIAPERS.

Well, okay... just two saber-toothed jews in diapers, and one regular, non-saber-toothed jew, but still in a diaper. The three attackers, making grunt-drool noises, slowly lumber after Flash, who must fight for his very life. Mostly, the saber-toothed diaper jews only seem to want to wrestle, kind of greco-roman style, and Flash finds this to his advantage. He must have wrestled in high school, because he knocks the creatures around for awhile. However, the saber-toothed diaper jews only seem to get more aggressive as the fight continues, and soon, they gain in speed, rushing poor Flash again and again.

Fucked.

It's only a matter of time. Flash is human... inevitably, his energy will run out while defying death by fighting these superhuman, razor-toothed, incontinent, lumbering semites. What can be done? He valiantly pits his blonde, buff self against them, waging epic, pectoral skirmishes again and again, but in the end, he is defeated. The diapered ones make their final play and catch Flash off guard.

It's over.

After subduing Flash Gordon, the creatures are called off. Flash has failed. His semi-girlfriend nearby, beside Ming screams out, "Oh Flash!", but nothing can be done. The three creatures hold him down and drool and grunt some more, but seem incapable of inflicting any further damage to our hero. They just kind of crawl around on him and make goofy noises. Ming is pleased.

Mwa ha.

The episode pretty much ends on that note, with no further episodes on the disc. I watched it several times, unable to control myself. So take note, modern world: The Earth can be a pretty tough place. We have famine, disease, inequality, confusion, malarchy... but beware, for one day Ming may send us his horde of saber-toothed jews in diapers, and on that day, we will know what poor Flash Gordon went through, and all of our world's problems until that moment will seem as but the minuscule trifles of lesser things.

Beware, for the day will come...

Nostalgia

2007-09-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

Now that I've got a wee tot myself, I've been going through the memory banks and trying to remember the things I liked when I was his age. I'm having trouble with it, because he's 2, but I do have a couple of memories that I can draw from. I had a plush zebra that I slept with incessantly, among other things. Painter has a donkey. I remember my parents both had really big paychecks come in one year, when I was 4, and we had a gigantic Christmas. It was the one year wherein they decided to officially spoil us, even once. Out of the huge medly of toys I received that year, two stand out. These are the greatest toys ever made. No matter what toys you liked when you were a kid, these beat those toys up all day long.

The Speak & Spell is pretty obvious. I played with mine from the age of 4 until 8. I rigged it to alternate power sources, I toted it everywhere. It is no wonder I later became a writer. I spent my childhood staying inside and spelling shit all day.

The only difference is that my Godzilla figure shot its fist off with eye-blacking power, and his other hand was replaced with red missiles that were best launched with a trajectory leading them to my toddler brother's head. I have no idea why this toy had rockets for one hand, or what sort of bizarre marketing that was, but I loved the thing.

Painter plays with Hot Wheels cars. That's his thing, for now. We've got a thousand, at this point.

And when he falls asleep, I play with the Hot Wheels cars.

Wings of Icarus

2007-09-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

For those interested, Andrew David King and Tony R. Rodriguez have a new ezine looking for good work, Wings of Icarus. Send your best.

http://www.freewebs.com/wingsoficarus

More information can be found in their guidelines.

The House

2007-08-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

In a much earlier post, you might remember I posted a number of images that showed my grandmother's house sitting in the waterof the Coos Bay flood, a year-and-a-half ago. The house was salvageable, but had to be gutted completely. It's taken some time, for which my grandmother has been in a series of trying and stressful situations with insurance companies and grant-workers, various other organizations relating to the flood that occurred, but finally, something is happening with her house. They're raising the house ten feet in the air, and rebuilding the ground beneath it. Here are the odd, surreal pictures. Keep in mind that I spent three of my high-school years in this house, and now my bedroom is 15 feet up in the air. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any pictures of the water at it's largest height against the house, as we didn't have enough time to wade out there... this was a very sudden flood and receded after a day or two, then happened again, then receded after another day or two. Here's an image (note the mailboxes for an indication of height):

And here, a year-and-a-half later, are a couple of the house-raising images:

The above image shows the house at about 12 feet off the ground, and it took around 6 hours to raise it with water-pressured hoses attached to specialized lifting jacks. I don't know the parlance or terms for these sorts of machines. The entire interior of the house has been gutted and removed. This is a house on the outside only. There are no walls, no pipes, nothing. There are a series of large beams running through it, which you can see in the above images.

It was strange standing underneath my high-school bedroom and looking up at the ceiling, which was now 15 feet higher above me than it used to be. Walking under the house in general is surreal, as you can look up into it, and it just seems like you're looking up into a two-story house who's ground level has been destroyed, though it's really just a one-story house up on beams. What a trip. I'll post an image or two of the finished house when it's done. They're currently pouring a new, huge concrete-walled foundation beneath the house at the level it's at in the above picture. The house will be raised a total of 10 feet, once all is said and done, and remain there indefinitely.

Interviews with the Twilight of Blood and Ink Pigs of 2007

2007-08-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

It has been a small time since last post, but my initial point to this ugly little thing was to post about once a month. Much has been happening recently, and it's difficult to boil it into a format I can quickly type.

The writing has been going well. In the last year, I've written two novels, one of which is gigantic, and 4 books of poetry, at around 80 poems each. The last, 'In the Twilight of Pigs' is a bit different for me, but has worked out well. I've currently got it tied up in a few handpicked submissions to a few handpicked magazines that I'm hoping will handpick me back.

I'm going to start a new book of poetry later tonight, though am giving serious thought to working on some short stories for a collection, instead.

This year has gone well for me in the small press. This year thus far, 2007, I have poems appearing or forthcoming at Takahe, Skyline Magazine, TheEclectics, Kafla Inter-continental, Prakalpana Sahitya, Riversedge, Four Volts, The Verse Marauder, Paperplates, Small Spiral Notebook, My Name is Mud, Red China, Coconut, Ancient Heart Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Kritya, Dispatch, Sein und Werden, Ceremony Collected, EOAGH, Unfettered Verse, Wandering Army, Wet Asphalt, The Persistent Mirage, Static Poetry, Pemmican, Tryst, La Fenetre Magazine, The Smoking Poet, First Time, Greensilk Journal, LostWriters, The Swallow's Tail, The Written Word, Wicked Alice, East Village Poetry, Tipton Review, Going Down Swinging, Ken*again, Bergen Street Review, The Scribbler Ink, Ygdrasil, Venereal Kittens, MEAT Journal, Brave Little Poem of the Day, Chaotic Dreams, The Flask Review, Clockwise Cat, Bolts of Silk, Death Metal Poetry, Salt Flats Annual, 2000, Blue Skies, Faulty Mindbomb, Ceremony, Breed, Ceremony Collected II, Flutter Poetry Journal, Rokovoko, Enfuse Magazine, Conceit, edificeWRECKED, The Aggregated Press, Halfway Down the Stairs, Riverbabble, The Cynic, Harûah: Breath of Heaven, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), and most recently, The Blotter.

I am very thankful that things have turned around lately. I'd be stupid not to be.

Maisy and I are trying to move to Portland, and were hoping to be there at the start of September, but now it's looking like we'll have to wait another few months. We spent too much money trying to scout out a place to live there, and everything we got a lead on went bust. We can always wait until tax season, and then use our return to move, if we have to. Especially now that we've paid off that ancient student loan of mine that septupled in size long before Maisy and I ever met, and for which I didn't even attend school with ($1500 loan that turned into nearly $8,000 worth of debt over seven years, with most of these years seeing me homeless or on the verge, spare-changing and groveling about my little town to keep alive). I almost miss those years, as much as they battered me at the time.

Painter is growing and talking galore. Today, he woke me up by shouting, "Oh, mail! Dada, mail!" I love it. I've gotten all milky and dopey in previous posts about how much I love my kid, but jesus, it's powerful, right? What a scampish, bright little man he is. Anyway, being a stay-home dad is enjoyable, though not without it's difficulties (cabin fever, for one, getting my boots pissed in one morning, for another).

I've been writing for Blood and Ink for quite a few months now. It's a sort of repository for a few writer and illustrator colleagues to post articles we're writing on the different facets of creating art. I've been focusing on publishing in my articles mostly, but have some new work to place there soon on various forms of poetry (Ghazal, Sonnet, Pantoum, Fugue, etc...). I've just realized that I have yet to mention it much here. A shame, as it's worth your time. The articles at Blood and Ink are written from the knuckle, truly.

http://www.bloodink.blogspot.com

Also, I've been doing interviews with certain celebrity writers over at Interviews with the Dead, for some time now. The people I've interviewed thus far are Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Homer, Kobayashi Issa, Walt Whitman, and Dante Alighieri. Most of these were difficult interviews, but a few of these authors were cooperative, sort of. Interviewing the dead is always hit or miss. I've contacted Mark Twain and he's consented to an interview, so I've been preparing questions the last few days.

http://www.interviewswiththedead.blogspot.com

Oh, and you may have noticed the syndicated Cat and Mouse strip at the top of my page. This is a product of my illustrious friend Elijah Brubaker. Visit him immediately at EJB Comix.

Enjoy the rest of Summer.

Jahul Needs You

2007-07-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

To my various compatriots, of which I believe there are in numbers less than three, I announce that Jahul can now be found on YouTube, as well as Google Video. See him fulfill his destiny, watch as he resurrects the unfortunate, witness as he ascends to paradise on the Holy Receptacle, view his chase and conquering of the fearful Child of Light, and you can even experience the trailer for his feature-length, forthcoming film, "Jahul: Beast of Time". Yes.

To locate him in these bins of showmanship, approach Google Video or YouTube and search for 'Jahul'. You will find him in a driven mood. It is his gift to you.

Poor Ed, He Can't Be Trusted, and Neither Can His Kids

2007-06-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is Ed, and Ed loves his video games.

Now, Ed is 30 years old, and grew up with video games in vast production. They eclipsed books as a source of his childhood fun. As he grew older, like all of his friends, more adult games were released. When he was 18, he voted, then went out and bought a pack of cigarettes and some porn, because he was 18 and could these things. He was a grown up, finally. This delighted Ed.

When he turned 21, he went out and had a drink in a bar, then a few more. He could. What a wonderful thing being a mature, consenting adult was. No wonder his parents knew so much: They were grown ups and had choices. Ed is now 30, and can vote, be tried as an adult, own a home, buy pornography, cigarettes, prescription drugs, alcohol, hire prostitutes (in Nevada), and rent movies where people are decapitated, shot, starved, screwed, anally raped, beaten, and even killed as part of genocide. He can serve in the ARMY and question authority, and can perform any variety of sexual acts with consenting whoevers. His tastes are his own, because he is an adult human being.

But Ed recently discovered a hitch in his natural right as a grown up:

http://www.el33tonline.com/main/show_news/3140

It seems the one thing Ed can't do is play Manhunt 2, a game he's been looking forward to, on his Wii or Playstation 2, or ever in the future on his Xbox, because it's been rated an 18-and-older game. Wait... 18+? That should be fine, because he's 30. Ed was 18+ before it was cool. But it seems he won't be allowed to play this game as is, because it's been banned in the U.K., Ireland, and refused (at the last second) by it's distributors, who now won't carry it.

Does that make any sense? It doesn't to Ed, that's for sure. He's 30, so an 18+ game should be all clear, right? Unfortunately, this particular 18+ game has now been banned in two countries, Ireland and England, and both Sony and Nintendo, who were slated to release the game in the U.S. on July 10th, 2007, now will not. The reasoning? The game is an 18+ game, and both companies have refused to sell an 18+ game.

Ed is confused. He's upset. He's getting pissed off. What possible problem could there be in a 30-year-old man, and a man weaned on video games his whole life, playing a game rated just for him? Banning Manhunt 2 because it received an adult rating is the same as banning a movie because it's rated R. Others may not like or approve of the game, but it's Ed's choice if he wants to buy it. And he does. He wants to buy it bad.

So, as it is, Ed won't get to play the adult game he's been waiting on, since he's an adult who, as the basic message can be perceived, isn't smart or trustworthy enough to buy something he's legally entitled to. It's a shame, too, because Ed's been getting awfully tired of being given child-like games. The games made for kids are great for kids, but Ed is a grown man, and no amount of hopping around collecting coins in the form of a cute, smiling animation in a virtual world is going to satisfy Ed's need to be a grown up that can both handle and satisfy himself with the material he decides to buy. He isn't the sort to watch handfuls of Disney family movies in his little apartment all day, and he doesn't want to play the video games of them either.

Ed can't play Manhunt 2, wherein an escaped patient from a mental institution goes on a killing spree, but he can certainly watch the myriads of movies on the exact same thing. He can read Silence of the Lambs, if he wants. He can watch it on the news, certainly. He can rent all the Friday the 13th movies he wants, wherein an unkillable lunatic in a mask goes about on a rampage, killing innocent people in horrid, disturbing ways (and Ed can even play the video game based on it some time back, which was released with a rating appropriate for him as a CHILD, when he played it).

Does the video gaming world realize they have created a vast demographic of adult fans that they aren't serving at all? A demographic that's slowly leaving because they're getting tired of being programmed down to? This game was slated to be released, is finished, and ready to ship. Now, it won't until Rockstar Games dumbs it down and makes it 'happier' for us all.

What use is a rating system if everything is for kids?

Shit, Kurt Vonnegut Died

2007-04-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

There are remarkably few authors that have managed to snag my adoration. By adoration, I mean an unruly and logic-defying literary crush. I've had a few, and a small number of them have carried on into the present. Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Dante Alighieri, Dylan Thomas, Hart Crane... hell, when I was very young, old Stephen King was in there. Kurt Vonnegut held a strong running in me.

Kurt Vonnegut was an author whose works I met, like many young writers, in a passing phase, but whose work, unlike other authors I read in that time period, stuck around in my head for some time. I read Slaughterhouse Five, Galapagos, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night, Deadeye Dick... about a dozen or so. I even read Sirens of Titan and that book of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. I've actually written poems based on imagery in my head that I somehow kept from reading his descriptions of Dresden's firebombing. I read his son's book, too, hoping to learn more about the author I couldn't know.

It somehow does bug me that I'm writing about him now that he's dead, because of it. It makes me feel like a phony asshole. I don't know if it's supposed to bug me when an author I've crushed on dies or not. It didn't bug me much when Bukowski died, or Burroughs, and it doesn't bug me that Vonnegut has. It seems appropriate, I suppose. Conclusion. End of book. Now we can watch our culture slowly boil all the flavor out of the books he wrote and footnote him in annotated textbooks and tribute anthologies, the occasional indie rock song that utilizes a term of his. Hey, that sounds dire, but it's not. It's the tragic stipend of having written, popularly. I was in love with Vonnegut's work for awhile, but it's difficult to discern from reading them if he enjoyed them as much as his readers.

Have a good one, Mr. Vonnegut. Thanks for being human, and for the books, as well.

You Sap

2007-04-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

It’s been some time since I mentioned the fatherhood thing, which was to be my original subject of this online journal. The reason there hasn’t been much in the way of parenting posts is because things regarding fathering and raising my baby kid happen with such incredible frequency that they begin to blend together into one, long memory. The minute I have something I want to post, something I’ve come up with or even a basic observation, something else will occur, and I just can’t keep up with all the parenting happenings I’ve wanted to place here, online. So, I’ll keep it brief and give an update from time to time.

While going through numerous pictures on my backup drive, I found some of the early images of Painter, and found myself shaken considerably by the sheer amount of change he’s already gone through. Two years ago, I looked no different than I do now. But the difference in Painter is astounding. Sure, all kids change considerably between birth and two. They have to. It’s still baffling to me just how much difference there is. I know that the shocked sensation I felt was only due to having been with Painter for two years, and his growth and development have been somewhat analog to me. Things slowly change, day by day, and you don’t notice so much until you see an old picture. But it still catches me off guard when I note this:

and then look at this one, taken on his second birthday.

This has occured during the time I’ve had this blog.

Being a father is both incredible and completely mundane at the same time. I love it. It’s like finding a buck laying on the ground, but every time you leave the house. And I get at least another 16 years of it (or until I get outmoded by his more interesting friends, somewhere in the vacinity of junior high). Fuck, I hope this next decade doesn’t go by too fast. I’m digging every minute of this.

Of course it will. And so will I. And so will you.

So for now, I get to hang out with my little man and my wonderful Maisy, most days, and write novels and poetry, and publish and revise and do most of the things I like doing, and I can even feel generally good about it. I’m ugly and broke, but that’s never really hindered me with these things.

I hope I see this the same way in hindsight, much later, and remember what a lucky piece of shit I was.

Un-Wii-sonable Wait

2007-03-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been trying to locate a Nintendo Wii since November. My wife bought me a copy of the new Legend of Zelda title, for the Wii, with the plan of also securing me a Wii for Christmas. Unfortunately, the near impossibility of securing a Wii in my little town proved too much, and I ended up with the game, but no system on which to play it. Shortly after Christmas, I bought a second game for the system, believing I’d be able to play it after a short while, when stores became able to stock the system more regularly.

After 5 months, still no Wii. The problem with obtaining one in my town can be broken down quite simply, by store. There are only 4 stores locally that sell the product, so if you want a Wii, you have to get it at one of those 4 places, unless you order online. Online poses a problem, as just about everyone who claims to have a Wii for sale will only sell it as part of a ‘package deal’, requiring that you also purchase a handful of other merchandise as well, in order to buy the Nintendo Wii. There are many places to order a Wii online, I’ve discovered, without a ‘package deal’ but these are almost always overseas, and are selling the PAL version (the U.S. version is different), which means I’d forever on have to order my games from Europe or Japan, not buy them here, in my town, as the local games would be incompatible with my system. I am also unwilling to pay a vastly marked-up price to the scalpers on eBay. So, online is out, for now.

No Wii for you, young man.
Why don’t I have a Wii? Here is a description of my encounters with the 4 stores locally that sell them:

1. K-Mart: After months of phone calls, I’ve discovered that K-Mart seems to never receive a Wii in their shipments. They hint that they do sell the product, but I have no proof of this and, as far as I know, they haven’t received a Wii ever. While most store personnel won’t give out times of freight arrival, you can figure it out pretty easily. After checking back time and again, they just never seem to get a Wii. They had some at launch (they say), but after that, as far as I know, they’ve never had another. I consider calling or going into K-Mart to look for a Wii is pointless and I’ve about given up on them.

2. WalMart: This is pretty much the only place in town that seems to be receiving Wiis in their freight shipments (or so they tell me). Unfortunately, WalMart employees are very fond of telling me that they have absolutely no foreknowledge of when their freight will come in. They say it’s random, and have no idea what time of the day or night it will arrive, much less the day. Could be 2 in the morning, early Monday, or it could be Thursday around 4 in the afternoon, or any time before, after, or in between... just anytime. They have no idea. So, getting a Wii from Walmart is, for the most part, a random occurrence that you can’t plan or strategize for. You simply have to be the lucky, random person standing in front of the display case on that lucky, random day or night, when they unload their lucky, random freight, which has that lucky, random Wii inside of it. No amount of waiting in line or staking out the area seems to help. I may as well be waiting for one of Willy fucking Wonka’s golden tickets.

Of interest: WalMart does guarantee you a Wii online. Hearing this, I went to check it out. It was, of course, a ‘package deal’. They’ll guarantee you a Wii and hand it over, if you buy a certain number of other pre-selected items from a check-boxed list. I think you have to buy seven items, and they’re all quite spendy. The cheapest you can get away with this is for $628. Considering that’s nearly 3 times what the Wii costs (and the cost of the Wii is a major selling point), that’s a pretty disgusting business practice. It’s also a hell of a lot more than I have to spend. I kind of want to just buy the product at its advertised price with the money that’s been sitting in my pocket for 5 fucking months.

3. Sam Goody: After dozens of phone calls over the last two months, several stops into the store to speak with employees and whonot, I was finally told by a manager yesterday that their Sam Goody store hasn’t received a single Wii since launch. That was 5 months ago. In 5 months, they haven’t received one. Not one. Is my small town too insignificant for the heads of these companies to send a couple of Wiis? Apparently so.

4. Fred Meyer: Many of my friends managed to get Wiis in the last few months, so the question has to be asked, how did they do it? Where did they go to buy a Wii? Fred Meyer, for most of them. Apparently, Fred Meyer was getting Wiis in somewhat regularly after the November launch. That’s where everyone seems to have gotten their Wiis. When I heard this, I was stoked. Perhaps I’d get one soon! No. Perhaps not. In February, I began staking out Fred Meyer, believing that the launch/Christmas craze had died down and I wouldn’t have to wait outside of a store for a day-and-a-half to buy a Wii. I figured things would be more relaxed now. Well, ‘relaxed’ is one word for it. I went to Fred Meyer for my first 3-hour sitting session in the store, waiting on the next freight shipment (I know when the electronics freight arrives at Fred Meyer, and so am always there when it arrives, twice a week) at the start of February. It is now half-way through March and they haven’t received a single Wii since I first started showing up for their freight arrivals. That’s nearly 7 weeks of freight arrivals I’ve sat in the store waiting on, and still nothing. Over and over and over again. In what way can you say you sell a product if you never have it? I pose that same question to K-Mart and Sam Goody. If 5 months go by without you being able to supply a product... guess what? You don’t have it. You don’t sell it. You haven’t been able to carry it. Stop advertising that you’ve got the product, because you don’t. You’re lying to get my business, hoping I’ll come in and buy a bunch of other shit.

Today, I went down to Fred Meyer for the shipment (I’ve got it down to a science now, and don’t have to wait long at all), and was informed by an employee that their regional office sent a letter stating they ‘probably’ wouldn’t be getting a Wii for at least the next several weeks. That would make it, if ‘several’ means 3, about 2.5 months that I’ve been waiting for a product I can’t get. The sad thing is that no one else is there. I’m the only guy waiting for a Wii at Fred Meyer. It’s just me, by myself, patiently waiting time and time again. So, if one comes in, it’s mine. I’ll get the Wii. I don’t have to beat anyone else to it because the line starts and ends with myself. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter that I’m the only one waiting for a Wii, because it never shows up.

What pisses me off most is how many ‘package deals’ online you can find. They’re all over the place. Think about it: a ‘package deal’ admits that the company offering it does, in fact, have a supply of Wiis to sell. They just want to make more money off of you (probably trying to recoup the losses they’re seeing in the PS3). What irritates me is that these stores are taking many of the Wiis they get and setting them aside for their money-making schemes and package deals and whatnot, instead of selling them to the people that want to buy them. So, one of the major reasons I can’t get a Wii yet is because certain bottom-liners want to cash in on the lack of stock, by cranking up the price. This is illegal, of course, as the price of Wii’s are somewhat fixed, so they arrange these ‘package deals’ instead. Best Buy does it. Wal-Mart does it. Toys R’ Us does it. Look online... everyone’s doing it.

So I have games at my house I can’t play, and I already ditched my old system. With thumbs this anxious and unappeased, it looks like I’ll simply have to twiddle them for a few more months until Nintendo stocks the United States, and the stores therein stock their urban counterparts, and then, by trickle-down availability, the stores in my small town will finally get a couple of Wiis, hopefully one of which I’ll manage to buy.

Also, eBay needs to fuck off. Scalping is illegal in real life. Why is it tolerated online? Probably for the same reason email scams are tolerated online. Nobody wants to fuck with it until something jabs at them, personally.

Either way, this wait for a system is un-Wii-sonable and disheartening. You don’t realize how inconsequential big business thinks your small town is until demand for something kicks up. When that happens, you start to get it: Your yokel-cash isn’t as good as metro-credit, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

I should say that my take on this is subjective. I haven’t really done any research on whether the larger, metropolitan areas are having such a Wii drought. It might be interesting to call the Portland or Seattle Sam Goody and Fred Meyer stores and inquire as to the last time they got a Wii in their shipments. Something tells me it wouldn’t amount to months.

UPDATE 4-11-07: Though I was told by Fred Meyer that they wouldn't be getting any Wii systems in for at least the next several weeks, it seems they got three of them in yesterday, and promptly sold them. They tell me not to come in for a few weeks, at least, and so I stopped going in. Then, when I'm just about to reinitiate my shipment-waiting at the store, I find out they actually got a few and sold them when I wasn't there. Now I'm pissed. I suppose I should have been rigid, and resumed my active wait a week sooner than they told me. To their credit, they did try to call me and tell me they got three Wiis in, because the store personnel I've encountered thus far at Fred Meyer have been very nice to me. Unfortunately, my baby boy broke the phone a week ago and so I've been having to use my cellphone solely. I didn't get the call. I didn't get a Wii. I really hope those three Wiis weren't the only shipment they're getting for the next two months, like last time. I'll be even more pissed if I go down there and have to wait another nine weeks because I missed the one damn shipment when the product arrived.

The Good, The Bad, and the Clerically Ill (Ongoing) Part 6

2007-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

The Good:
Matt DiGangi and Editors @ Thieves Jargon

An interesting email, part preformatted response, part additional talk about my work. Basically, they're passing on my submission, but said they all came to the consensus that I'm interesting to read and they’d like to read more in the near future. Of note is that this was probably the most elegant and well-written rejection I've ever received. They know sound at this publication. I comes across clearly.

The Bad:

Nancy DeCamillis @ Sculptural Pursuits

I received an email from the editor stating they had received my poems, but that they wouldn’t be considering my submission because they thought the poems good, and would rather me resubmit them for their about-to-end contest. This contest was scheduled to be decided at the end of the week. Oh, I'm sure they would have preferred that. It costs $35 bucks to submit to their contest. I don’t think I need to spell out what a collossal money-grope this is. How does that work, exactly? Thanks for submitting, but we won't read these, because we read them and we'd rather you re-submit them with money? I suppose I’d end up in their magazine next year, if I won. A little couth could go a long ways here. If you’re going to excavate for contest entries, at least have the courtesy to be inobvious about it. I can smell a product pitch a mile away, and it’s not as if this is a broad demographic we’re hitting up: poetry related to sculpting. What possible big demand could there be for poetry relating to sculpting? It’s like a magazine for rap songs that rap about country songs. It's kind of strange that I even had some sculpture-related poetry to send, but I did, and thought I’d see if they were interested. $35 oily dollars... I’ll pass, thanks.

The Clerically Ill:
Editors @ A Public Space

Preformatted rejection. Nothing of interest at all. The reason this qualifies for ‘Clerically Ill’ is their submission and tracking system. I found their online submission form (and the trend of using them in general) to be pretty cold and atrocious. It's also a hideous way to waste your time, going to the site day after day, entering in your username and password, clicking sign-in, then seeing your submission listed with the word 'received' next to it for several months. That's around 90 times I went to their track-your-submission page, believing that I would only know their response if I continued checking the site. In the end, after checking and checking, they finally decided to reject the poems, which was fine, but then they sent me an email to let me know. This was frustrating. Of course, I prefer an email but what possible use does the sign-in-and-track-your-submission page serve if they just send you an email when they’ve decided anyway? It renders the entire check-back process this publication utilizes void. They should ditch the track-your-submission page, as it convinces writers that it’s the only way they’ll know if their work was accepted or not. Submitters might check it day after day after day, only to discover at the end of the long wait that they didn’t need to type in their username and password and wait for the results to load those 90 or so times. They could have skipped it and waited like they would for any other magazine. The track-your-submission page has to go. It’s one more straw on a lively back.