|
|
Friday, January 29th, 2010
|
|
Monday, January 25th, 2010
|
| Time: | 5:58 pm. |
| Mood: | Collision. | | Music: | Scorpions, Sill Loving You. |
|
"Where once she seemed to waft, now only chunder hurtles." MudMan's illustrative hand dawdled like a butterfly, then plunged like a hawk, flinging beer droplets and foam across the living room. Akka/Dekka, having been drinking for his entire 14 hours of wakefulness, so far around the bend of his characteristic grim he was practically frantic, eyes glazed and rolling, managed "What?" without moving his lips. Overhead lights all blazed into an incurious black perhaps 90 minutes from the sun's rise--reggae disappointed from the mammoth speakers, the High Style's lone concession to feminine presences, generally. "Badinage, sir. Persiflage. Creet, sir. I believe she had begun to feel her load before repairing to yonder...yonder. Even now I suspect...Technicolor yawn."
"Gives a fuck?" Dekka sagely offered, then cast his eyes toward the coffee table. Near 'Man's boots hunkered a ravaged plastic bottle of warmish oily fluid; a pitched battle had consumed some six hours and the consciousnesses of both El Humidor, splayed and sprawled on the stairs, and Jerry Rig, inert and lumpsome on the porch couch, and yet perhaps four inches of gin remained from the original handle. Several lunges sufficed to attain a grip on the bottle's slick neck, and not much ended up on Dekka's lap when he decanted it into his predictably chipped teacup. Winded from concentration and exertion, Dekka's bleak gaze rejected the coffee table, indeed all coffee tables now and forever, and he was tucking the bottle between his side and the arm of the couch when Creet came wobblish back into the living room.
"Coltish, unsteady, and yet not without a certain compelling grace." Creet weaved without walking, propping herself on the cusp of the room. Addressed herself to the supine MudMan in the corner chair. "Why're you...narrating me?"
"Therein lies the tale. If miss would be so kind as to avail herself of the Dekka-commandeered bottle, I should very much like to wet my whistle, whet my wits for the impending yarn which, it is to be hoped, will knit up the ravel'd sleeve of care."
Gin being slopped into several cups, MudMan speaking apparently to the room's far corner, Akka/Dekka and Creet bemusedly comfortable on the couch, MudMan began. (A thin, querulous snore issued forth from Humidor's storm-tossed face. Somehow he'd managed to slump so badly on the stairs that he was head down.)
"It is possible," he said, "you do not know very much of me. I am not from...around here. My home is not so very far, counted by the mere mile, but when reckoned by culture or...modus vivendi...it's as far as any land you could care to name or conjure. In bare fact, I am from beneath the surface of this earth, a son of those who move through the planet's living rock like you move through swamp or other thigh-high water: slowly, in an ungainly but productive fashion. Anyways, I am not, as you would understand the matter, precisely human. This is none of it strictly to the point."
"For the moment, it suffices to make clear two things. First. I left my people and nominal home because it frankly pleased me to do other things with my life than were smilingly judged in the stalagmite-ridden caverns of my youth. Second, I am young only by the standards of my own race. We are long-lived, as we age in geologic time, and cause and effect of this is a pronounced...gravity in all that we do. In specificity, I am accustomed to a great deal of patient refection before beginning a project of any moment. Thus it was that I chanced to spend the bulk of one week on the porch, an interlude you perhaps remember."
Akka/Dekka strode forth into the living room, striding out smartly before slacking his pace, blocked by the bulky form of Jerry Rig, hunkered by the wall of the staircase. Peering at the wall, nose bare centimeters from it, a thick stylus clutched in his scrabbling paw.
"Jerry."
"..."
"What is this."
"What do you think it is?"
"It's either...a portrait of your mind splintering into psychosis...or...shit. You were drawing an old game of SimCity?"
"Close."
"Close?"
"Close. It's a slot car track."
"A slot car track." Repeating Jerry Rig's dialog never works.
"A slot car track!"
"Why is it on the wall?"
"Hunh?" Rig was disappointed that this was what Akka wanted to talk about.
"Why is it drawn on the wall?"
"I don't have any paper."
"'Man's always got all that graph paper."
"Yeah, but he's on the porch."
"Still?"
"Yeah."
"What's that make it?"
Rig bent with surprising swiftness for a portly gentlemen and snatched up a wriggling, 20-centimeter grandfather clock that'd been gamboling. It squealed, steam-driven gears grinding with unimaginable pace and ferocity, as Rig casually grabbed the pendulum's bob and wrenched it around to look at its back.
"A week."
"He's been out there a week?"
He had been out there a week. A few times a day he'd rise, walk to the side of the house or just to the end of the porch to void his bladder. He'd continue to the quickiemart for another couple 22ouncers of Steel Reserve and another pack of Black & Milds. He hadn't slept in days, nor set foot in the house.
Nor spoken. If approached, he'd simply stare at his potential interlocutor until he'd withdraw. His only sounds the drop of bottle or cap, the clint, hinge & snick of Zippo. Eructate, break and ruin wind.
"Fuck. Rent's due tomorrow. Hope he's got the money."
"Where's Humidor?"
"Was he at the 'Box with us last night?"
Two men stared at each other. Memories failed to happen.
Baffled, Rig: "You got anything? Anything at all from yesterday?"
"Well," Dekka offered, "I went to work."
The one good thing about working, thought Akka/Dekka, pushing a door open, is at least you get to go to some new bars. As his eyes adjusted to Elowsky's gloom, he saw 12 filthy reprobates clutched together like a fist at a pair of tables shoved together toward the back. Some kind of bizarre diorama sat before them, and they chanted together in terrifying low voices. Only the barest snatches could be made out. "Two! The guards are through! Four! Major gives the rope a fix! Got a date! In the den!"
Dekka shrugged and began slurping a red beer.
"Eventually my boss came in for lunch, found me sitting there, drinking a beer."
"Nice. He fire you?"
"Yeah. Said it was a roofing company. Not a goofing company."
"That's awful."
"Yeah, I told him that wasn't even a rhyme."
"You got the money for rent?"
"Yeah, barely. But Humidor's not around, and I can't get 'Man to talk to me. So that's fucked." Rig didn't respond. Getting no response from the guy who was there, Dekka began to fuss and fume over the somewhat larger number who weren't there. "Damnit. If Tapestry sent Humidor off on some stupid quest, I'm charging him rent!"
But Rig didn't hear. He was back at the wall, using his vast Marks A Lot like a drunk mynock wrestling with a light saber. Skittering whorls appeared on the wall, Lovecraft horrors drawn by Escher. Imagine a cloverleaf intersection drawn by a man eschewing the compass and French curve in favor of a pretzel. With jumps.
Entranced by the thick lines, Dekka forgot his tantrum. "Wow, Rig. That's really coming together. Like a bowl of warm worms. In a centrifuge."
"Mrrm." Clearly, the wall would be filled long before Jerry Rig reattained the plane of verbality. Frustrated, furious and in sore, thorough need of distraction after last night's fight after the firing, Akka/Dekka did quit the living room. His next few hours were spent ordering items in his sanctum santorum, avoiding working on his novel, currently called, but only behind his back, Shiny Bunny Triumphs Again. It takes a lot to avoid thinking about heckling pigeons in a drunken afternoon, shrieking again and again "Why won't you fly? Why won't you fly?" It takes a lot to tell yourself you didn't spend the whole walk home from closing time bellowing "Freedom there ain't no fucking freedom." It takes a lot. After perhaps another hour of surreptitious markersniffing, Rig, wrung out and scraped clean like a hollowed gourd, a husk, had plopped his husky self down on his typical couch spot. TV puled burble quietly. Unseen by all, MudMan had, in the meantime, slipped off the porch and down and out the streets to a diner he adored.
El Humidor glided into the living room, a cigarette burning in each hand. "Hey, Hum. Where you been?" Said without taking eyes from the television.
"My homeland was being...reallocated."
"?"
"My people have long been...contentious. Fractious. You could fairly dub us feckless. And our once-fertile lands had suffered greatly under our twinned whip hands of exploitation in service of our war machine economy devoted in exclusivity to the production of...ah...war...machines, yes, and the devastation of wrought by those machines in eternal twilight titan-clash struggles."
"I thought you were from Aloha." Dekka stalked into the room, sensing rent.
"Nay, fair friend. Far from it. Just off the shoulder of Orion hangs my world. Rather, that world what once was mine and now no longer. You see, decades ago, as I prepared to sojourn here, amongs the likes of you and yours, a...figure appeared. Wielding unfathomable power and a most ungracious mien, this figure did promise us a peace and a paradise. With a price."
"That price," said Humidor, "was the possession to our very planet. Since the devil gave us what we prized, we passed the place. I went back for my buyout. I can never go back. But now again I have money."
"Who bought your planet?"
"Todd MacFarlane."
Rig looked at Humidor for the first time. "Your planet is owned by Todd MacFarlane?"
"Yes. In all seriousness, it is."
Settling into a seat, MudMan reflected on the true beauty of a foodery with a counter. The best features of a bar blended with a subtle mitigation of the awkwardness of eating alone. As he set about fishing the menu from its clear plastic home, a young, beautiful black girl caught him utterly defenseless by emerging from the unexpected quarter of behind the counter, near the coffee maker. Instantly hesitant and abashed, MudMan leaned back on his stool and found himself oddly silent. Finally he forced out "Hey...can I get...a cup of coffee," this seeming to choke the young woman. She put a hand to her mouth and fluttered the other near her jaw, entrancing 'Man wholly.
"That's what I was gonna say." Unwavering eye contact. "What is that--neither of us can talk the rest of the day?"
MudMan found himself possessed by one of his rare huge smiles. "I think...lots of people wouldn't mind if I shut up for the day. You...go ahead and talk."
From there it was all eggs, potatoes and scratch biscuits. One thing I know for sure, mulled 'Man toward the end, somberly regarding the last third of his fourth coffee--in a cup, on a saucer, becomes sometimes life is actually worth living--I may not like biscuits, but when they're specially noted as homemade, you goddamned well order the biscuits. Then he sighed, a little, and realized it was time to quit stalling. Time to get back to work.
The work began unsteadily, wobbling and lurching--the server had put her hand just above the small of his back as he stood to leave, stood next to him to say "Thanks. See you again soon," and this unexpected affection had him bemused--but his focus improved with the hours and in time he had another few pages scripted and thumbnailed. Writing made-to-order porn comics is nobody's idea of an easy job, but MudMan had made a reasonable living for years plugging lonely men--and occasional women--into depraved scenarios featuring the stars of the world. Heroes, mainly, but he'd done surprisingly well penning and inking tales in which a young maiden would submit to the ravages (ravishment) of, say, the Amazing Colossal Man, healing his agony and taming all but his sexual rages. His current project was a mammoth task, an adaptation of Voivod's seminal thrash concept album, Dimension Hatross: eight full chapters--retaining the sociopolitical themes and commentary on evolution--of cold and cerebral penetration, repression and revolution. It was MudMan's first chance to work out his Ballard jones in a fully pornographic environment and he strained every nerve and thew towards its perfection.
Humidor's story had proceeded to make less and less sense. "I became a wizard for the court battle--"
"A...wizard?"
"Yes. I am," Humidor explained with a minor flourish of humility, "known in my land as rather a powerful worker with magic. It began as a young man," he launched into what was pretty clearly a disbelieving silence.
"The young of the castle, we would gather, and to the way of the young, we would compete. Quickly, became it evidence that I had a potent mastery of fluid energies, wielding a mighty staff, higher than my own head even!"
Dekka muttered to Rig "You have any idea what he's talking about?"
"Some. I know there's a game called Wizard in which you tape a beer to your hand, and form your wizard's staff by taping empties to it as you create them."
"You think he's talking about...a drinking game?"
"Well, the alternative is believing he's a mystic master from a far-off planet owned by Todd MacFarlane."
"So...basically a toss-up, then?"
"Yup."
Hours passed. The narrative chasmed on. MudMan emerged from his pornfugue and basement. Eventually the four lapsed into silence. "That's...quite a story," Dekka said. Humidor inclined his head graciously.
"Speaking of which," sneered Rig, "how's your novel? Your tale of love and sex sailing the stars? Gotta tell you...doesn't sound like your area of expertise, buddy."
"Maybe not, but you gotta pander a little or you'll never appeal to the fanbase," speculated Dekka.
MudMan blushed deeply. No one noticed, as his blush is of a sort visible only to enhanced senses.
Rig, never one to quit before raising a hackle, drilled down deeper. "Interstellar, indeed interspecies mating, precisely rendered and rigorously imagined, no doubt?"
"Hey, at least I'm not the one who pleasures himself to Scarecrow and Mrs. King."
"That. Never. Happened."
"Or was it Beauty and the Beast?"
"It was Adventures of Clark and Lois. But it never happened."
Since no one wanted to revisit this legendary episode ("Don't Touch Your Self on the Couch"), the quartet split, maundered toward their several happier climes and places.
Jerry Rig still sat spinning, grave at the kitchen table. A meticulous spiral galaxy made of rainbows equally immobile on the table in front of him. One forgotten rotted in his mouth for hours as the space opera in his mind bludgeoned blood, thunder and broken hearts frozen by nobility through his memories. Black and white images flickered. A doughy hero, a doughty sidekick. A mountain fortress and more.
Jerry Rig sat gravely at the kitchen table. Small movements manipulated tiny pods in various colorful formations. The nature of these formations was revealed when, after a lengthy and in-theory entertaining toilet-flushing noise series, Akka/Dekka sauntered in and swept a handful of M&Ms off the table. The Skittle formations then outnumbered the candy-coated chocolate, and a crushing victory clearly awaited.
"You...you just ate the 3rd Interstellar Star Brigade Brigade of Irregulars Battalion--the Capering Skinks!"
"The Capering Skinks?" through Akka's chocolaty tongue. "Well, Jer, hadn't you always wondered what would happen if a whimsical god demolished an entire battalion?" Shrugging, Akka: exeunt.
Jerry winced, squeezed his eyes hard shut in his Pillsbury face. Muttered through the next steps. "Okay, so Fleet Marshall Nacirema Lirg would see the gap and assume it was a ploy by Diputs Erohw to draw her into an ambush. She'd order Yunnfnu Ekoj to investigate, while at the same time Kaisermandante Erohw would dispatch Daed Esroh. This is the first time Yunnfnu and Daed have met each other since their affair on SinWorld, when they were both on SinWorld, on hypershore extraleave, projected by the world-sized computers. Though still fighting on opposite sides, they'd thought fondly of one another, so they see no reason to exchange blows; rather, they decide to investigate together. Turns out neither has found the one, and as they fail to find any trace of the Capering Skinks they trade some insipid banter."
"Years later, both would bitterly regret settling for one another. Daed had resigned his commission and defected. Though he'd managed to convince Nacirema Ling of his loyalty and sincerity, he'd had to rebegin his military career and never scaled the heights he believed he would've attained under the Kaisermandante's service. He felt Yunnufnu had never fully understood his sacrifice and he chafed under her occasional complaints about the (lack of) progression of his career. 'First she asks me to start over, then she doesn't say thanks, then she chews me out for being on the bottom rung? What a nuct,' he'd think, using a futureslang slur for somebody with an o'er-robust sense of entitlement." (Cf late-90s slang: "California girl".)
"Imagine how he would have felt if he'd known she was still occasionally fucking her ex, mercenary and Dickensian tout Randy Cunnyworth."
"For her part, Yunnfnu wished Daed would just SAY he was bitter about his career and his sacrifice. If they could talk about it, maybe the poison could flow out of its reservoir, could be drained and lessened. But no. His stupid Quaker pride--&, she knew, his real devotion to her and his desire to spare her his anger and his negativity--had never allowed him to be forthright on the topic. She forgave him, the best she was able, and likewise forgave herself for her occasional sorties back into the arms of Randy Cunnyworth, who, for all his manifold faults, at least was always forthcoming about her percieved shortcomings."
Frantslin "Sling" Brooklecobblyn did not suffer fools gladly. This included himself, however, and it was years since this bartender would allow the bar to be empty on his watch. His mind was exceedingly broad, and his thought process worked like a millstone, grinding all obstacles into undifferentiated atoms. Surveying his uninhabited Pillbox, he sighed and reached for the phone.
MudMan skipped from the kitchen, past the empty Jerry Rig and found Akka/Dekka and El Humidor alone together in the living room. Neither acknowledged his entrance, Dekka leafing through a battered and much-annotated Monster Manual, Humidor dabbed leaky eyes, sitting on the very edge of the couch, transfixed.
On the screen, a pale man in pyjamas stroked a cat. The man's yellow eyes gleamed evilly. The man called the cat "Spot" and Humidor gasped "He love that cat--so--much!" MudMan, though curious to discover why Data's pet ownership had reduced his friend to tears said only "It's dead at the Pillbox. Sling says he'll buy us a couple if we come down."
Akka, sardonic and wholly in character "I don't leave the house for a couple." (Also lying.)
"Pitchers."
Humidor's head came up like a pointer's tail, erect and intent. "A--couple--pitchers!"
Dekka cocked his head, the Monster Manual forgotten. Staring at MudMan like a hammer stares at a nail, his agile mind probed the plan from every possible angle.
"Could it really be so much!" MudMan assured Humidor that such riches were attainable. Dekka surged lurchways to his feet. "Somebody wake up Rig." Moved squarely toward the stairs.
"Where you going?"
"Get my boots."
A half-hour later, MudMan, Akka/Dekka and El Humidor occupied the make-out booth. An ashtray apiece, a half-full pitcher and a schooner each--a fair sight better than the days of sneaking in their own cans and struggling to stay sober enough to remember who'd already bummed each of them a smoke.
MudMan asked "You guys tip Sling?"
Jerry when roused had hilariously claimed to have "plans tonight". After a forced, fake and really mean laugh, Dekka had growled "Cut the shit and grab yr crap. We're going to the bar." The last words met only Rig's keg-broad back as he made for his room.
"Why? Didn't buy nuthin." Dekka: typical.
Without saying anything, though surely a "You fucking guys" crossed his mind, MudMan gave the blank-faced humidor and Dekka each a dollar. As Akka walked sullenly to the bar, Humidor chirped a thanks.
"No...it's not for you. Give it to Sling. He's hooking us up. We have to take care of him."
It is given to no man to know whether Humidor followed this complex social logic, but he did as he was told, with a good deal more grace than Dekka, who hid his manoeuver by asking for pinball quarters and pretending to tip on change.
"And then we came home, pausing only to buy a large bottle of gin along the way." MudMan stretched hugely and silently extricated himself from the corner chair. Smiled fondly, a bit gassy, at Creet and Akka/Dekka puppied on the couch. Stories. We all tell stories, one to the other, from and to self. 'Man draped a rancid hoody over the slumbered pair and went back downstairs to work on porn.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
|
|
|
Over to here:
http://kimgeklin.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-fine-book.html
is old pal Kim being 'way too nice about Queen City Fall's draft. Thanks, buddy!
New computer in the next week or 2, so expect lots more sharpish.
As for my goals: new pants attained and delicous. Plant attained and was thriving this morning when I forgot to put it in the sun. Oops.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Friday, December 11th, 2009
|
|
|
1. compilation of a novel-length manuscript
2. pants that fit
3. nice shoes, maybe ankle boots, something besides my asinine hipster sneakers
4. sex with someone else (i.e., besides myself)
5. travel: minimum two new countries, five new world-class cities, one major bike trip
6. remove beer gut and saddlebags from thighs, continue to add muscle & definition
7. acquire and keep alive minimum one houseplant
8. double existing output of S!H!S!H!
9. study, learn significant amount of Latvian
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
|
|
|
I am dumm.
Riding home last night, I had to forcibly restrain myself from shooting unshootable gaps and kept wanting to scream at drivers, pedestrians, etc. My hot streak vis-a-vis productivity exists, yes (though I didn't get much done last night outside desultory reading of Moby-Dick/Defenders and watching/listening to a LOT of hockey) but when combined with the emotional performance of my ride home... So, it turns out my traditional midnovember manic episode is a couple weeks or a month late this year.
Worst part is that I can trace it back in retrospect to before a mammoth social/interpersonal meltdown I had last week; a meltdown I really regret/resent and that need not ever have happened, if only I'd been a little more aware of my mental state.
Regret's a poison, and I've no use for it in this life, but damnit damnit damnit when am I gonna figure this shit out? Thirty-fucking-five. No LP or novel to my name, and I'm still pulling these ignorant blunders, burning bridges by accident.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
|
|
|
No shit: was at a dinner party and talking to Elric and his wife. They were terrified that their son might be autistic--he was nearly 7 and had yet to say a word. I pointed out he might simply have nothing he felt he needed to say, and argued that his fixed stares on nothing were as likely as not evidence of being a powerful mystic.
"He could be controlling an entire pocket universe, after all," I said, "Just think about his lineage and you'll see what I mean."
The wife took it well; Elric merely brooded in the corner.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
Dunno if maybe I'm finally growing up a little, or going thru a smooth patch or what, but I honestly feel right now like lifethings have got a bit different--better--since I hit 35 a couple weeks back. Take this week. Last night I (a) finished some re-reading (Crying of Lot 49 again) (b) did some writing on three separate projects (c) typed up some (in retrospect, disappointing) porn I'd written for one of those projects and began trying to figure out whether or not it can actually be thrust wetly into that waiting, quivering project (d) made a friend (e) made a necessary beginning gesture towards amends to another friend (f) worked out (g) got quite drunk (h) did some new reading (Defenders Essentials volume 3, still in the thick of Gerber's run). That's pretty fucking good for 3.00 thru 9.30, says me.
Day before was similar, with less beer-drinking and more going to the record store and bike shop, then fixing bike, going to the post office to mail out copies of Queen City Fall, and like that.
Seriously, dog, I feel like I'm killing it.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Monday, December 7th, 2009
|
|
|
seven consecutive sentences
that I couldn't stop laughing at at work, on account of hearing them in the voice of an old co-worker from the warehouse, who liked to describe women as having "tig-ol' bitties" and who once asked me in front of my crush, "Hey, Fat, you pull any trim outta that bar yet?" -- PLUS one sentence I am sure he would have added.
Installing trim can be one of the most exciting things that you can do for your home or business.
As much as anything else, interior trim will give a room a sense of personality and depth that is both attractive and inviting.
The perfect accent to that new paint job or the perfect complement for those custom doors, the right trim doesn't simply decorate a home -- it completes a room.
That's why when you're looking to install trim along the interior of your home or office, you should only work with the best.
And having been in the business for over 18 years, perfecting our craft the whole time, Trimmasters is the best.
At Trimmasters, we know everything there is to know about trim.
If you're looking for the best interior trim in the area, then you're looking for Trimmasters.
"It's no brag, ladies; it's just a fucking fact."
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
|
|
|
I could tell you your story--I could tell the story of all the world--if only I could finally at long last tell mine. And I'm trying, I really am, to get that my story straight.
It would go better if my story didn't appear to be a collage of songs by Izzy Stradlin. I will say that.
|
|
Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Monday, November 30th, 2009
|
|
|
Drop me a line if you'd like a copy. At this point, I'm pretty interested in feedback along the lines of "should I even bother continuing the fucker" b/c I'm pretty thoroughly sick of the project. That said, the whole point of making the draft copy was so that I could communicate the format to artistic types who may want to provide some art for me, replacing the stolen placeholder art that's there now.
ANYway.
|
|
Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Friday, November 20th, 2009
|
|
|
You see what happens when you're a tshirt designer and you say "how can I communicate to my team what a Kid Rock tshirt should look like?". Guess what. Now this is happening.
Pull on your butt-kicking boots and prepare to hold your lighter HIGH, kids, cuz Kid Rock is coming to town. America's biggest fan, Kid Rock travels everywhere in a huge, windowless van that's pulled by 50 giant bald eagles. Off the back of the van flies an American Fucking Flag that's made out of chain mail and awesome. The side of the van is covered by the biggest mural you've ever seen: a timber wolf riding a Harley while his woman bends over a pool table, her cutoff shorts riding up her ass, her soiled wifebeater barely covering her breasts. In the background, Skynyrd and Run-DMC pass joints around and play their favorite bands for one another.
The chain-mail American Flag? Hand-crafted by biker babes out of mountains of empty PBR cans. Every one of those babes has huge hair and feathers clipped in to that hair. The clips are so they can smoke the roach all the way down without burning their fingers.
Fire up a cheap cigar and prepare to tell the forces of Job, Sobriety and Propriety to Kiss Your Ass. Now design me a mother-jumpin' shirt already.
-Kid Rock
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
|
|
|
So, I put myself on a schedule according to which I'd crank out a S!H!S!H! story every two months and use the interstitial time to work on & finish other projects. That would have meant one finished project and an issue of S!H!S!H! out by Hallowe'en, if you're counting.
Neither of these things happened, quite. There's an issue in the works; many of the pieces are in place, and I'm just struggling to find the time to move them around the board in the appropriate inappropriate ways. And I've got this absolutely mammoth Selavy thing that I've been really struggling with.
And I think I had an idea for a actual novel the other night. The real kind of novel, the kind that takes research and is about a whole bunch of different people and stuff.
The big struggle is simply time. Time time time and laziness. I can make time to do pushups every day, but it's infinitely harder to force myself to pick up the pen every day.* But I am not here to wallow in that. No, I am here to announce the unaborting of the oft-aborted Queen City Fall project. As I noted over on the Twitter feed that I didn't bother to tell anybody about, it really looks like I might have a beta dead-tree version of this thing on hand when I go to Portland, this friday night.**
I've got the whole mess, more or less, here with me at the coffee shop, and it's funny to look at all the scraps, the notes and flails and failings and reworkings and stuff, dating back to late summer/early fall of 2007. This isn't THAT long to sit on a project, I know, but for something that's as short as it is, it sure feels like a long time.***
Anyway, beta copies will will be distributed free to whoever wants them. Drop me a line any which way you care to, and you will receive something in the MAIL.
*I would be appalled or daunted by Kim's productivity if I hadn't known her for so long: as it is, I am thoroughly comfortable knowing she is simply much smarter, more diligent and more organized than I am.
**Beta version will include the stolen placeholder artwork that actually inspired some of the project, and be missing the annotations and appendices. Whether or not the annotations and appendices are ever made public, my back pages style, will depend in part upon the reception of the beta. All that back matter stuff is probably more therapy for me than anything any non-Collision human might want to read anyway. That said, I personally love reading that shit, so.
***I'm not going to chase down the reference, but io9 not long ago mentioned that Disch and Delaney--and maybe another heavy hitter like Octavia Butler or somebody--both aborted novels b/c the love affairs that sparked them ended. In similar fashion, it appears that I can only work on QCF when I'm crushing / happy in a relationship. Which, heh, means I best hurry up and bash this fucker out before I fuck it up, no? Yes.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
|
|
|
Another rejected list from Fat.
a topographic map of my soul, as constituted by interactions with friends
OR the first word of the last 21 text messages I have received
The
If
Fuckin
Fuck
How
Slap
Eat
Rather
Going
I
C
Dam
Sorry
Metalstorm
OK
Packing
Maybe
Got
You
Hey
Dude
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
Found this the other day while looking for the bag in which all Queen City Fall materials had been shoved.
headphones (spare?)
light batteries
porn
pillows
soda water
groceries
ant chalk
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
|
|
|
Like everybody else, I'm currently obsessed with the Pissed Jeans record. Like most people, I'm stuck at work, feeling stupid and empty about my life choices. The interesting thing about the reception that Pissed Jeans has gotten is how everybody seems to view them as "just working dudes", where I get a consistent and thorough vibe of art fag. Anyways, it's just side 2 of My War with some charisma added so it doesn't suck anymore. Highly, highly great.
And blah blah blah, issue 14 of SHSH should be up soon, I'm working on the biggest, hardest chunk of Rows Selavy EVER and I think I'm ready to finish Queen City Fall.
And who gives a shit, anyway.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
|
|
Monday, August 31st, 2009
|
|
|
Your mom is right: breakfast is the most powerpacked meal of the day. Jerry Rig never quite learned that, so he was taken entirely off-guard by the totipotent combination of egg scrambled and imbricated with soft, wet potato. Wrapping it in an oven-warmed tortilla had proven far too puissant for his gin-wracked morning body, and he had made for the dubious comforts of the porch couch, bolstered by running the boom box' power cord through the window and fortifying himself with his all-Boston mix tape and the cleanishest glass from the kitchen (for a lengthy series of red beers).
It wasn't like he wanted to vomit, or die, or go back to bed, exactly. It was like his heart wanted to vomit, his eyes wanted to die, his neck felt made of splintering beestung granite. Flickers of flashback guttered over and through him like choppy seas surging amongst chunks of calving iceberg.
o0o
"I dunno. I loved the first one as much as anybody, but I genuinely think identity-fuckery combined with musings about that which is real versus the ersatz and the simple sadness that the satisfactions of the latter may well be more profound and accessible than the former is/was a bad choice for sequels--indeed, for a franchise. A certain dilution has occurred, and the subtlety of the original formulations has been lost, has become mere obfuscation..."
Humidor stared, straddling the beach cruiser he insisted upon riding everywhere. "Akka/Dekka...I am stunning. That was...easily...the most nuanced thing you have ever said. On anything."
Dekka shrugged and yanked at his backpack straps. Squinted into the early evening sun and muttered around a cigarette. "'Man said it. I just read the note he passed me."
The four grunted quietly as their respective bikes creaked under them, empty beers forgottenly stuffed and leaking their can-leavings in four men's bags, the last single-screen theatre in Portland receding behind them, the marquee grimly inflicting TOTAL RECALL 3 on any eye turned to the east on this sunday afternoon. Any eye at all: the letters were vast pillars of an eternal eldritch flame, dozens of cubits high.
o0o
"Fuck you, buddy!"
Rig rolled his eyes and adjusted his fanny pack. A stub of cigar worked its way around his mouth as the dank, starkly underlit club shook itself to pieces around him. Leather squeaked inaudibly everywhere, piercings gleamed and flashed, fishnets more a uniform than an accessory. Rig liked the flesh parade, bodies colliding as though they were in a large, invisible rock tumbler turned on its side, but mostly he just filed away the flickering cleavage and pale thigh meat for lonely later use. His mind fixed on strange, pointless things as he strained to avoid the things that actually bothered him. How had nobody ever noticed that the main riff in this tune was lifted directly from "woodpeckers from Mars"? Did nobody have ears?
In this way and by maintaining a very strict regimen of one tallboy per song was Jerry Rig able to avoid thinking about how a cover band--Hedgehog's Dilemma--had become a huge success playing songs his own band had never had a whole lot of luck playing, even as that cover band cavorted photogenically on the chest-high stage at Duckworth's. It had been a long day. Bike ride to their favored theatre for a free noontime screening, mile upon mile to the east. A brief post-film visit to the graveyard, a hustling exit before being rousted by the paracops, some amiably unsuccessful attempts to grill in the back-yard, followed by a sighing abandonation of tantrum-stricken Akka/Dekka, who'd climbed up on the roof for no reason anybody understood as everyone else jettisoned themselves into the remains of the sunday. Energy expended leaves a void to fill with alcohol; this cavity sours quickly, home to a sullen rage, the lashing pout of the naturally overlooked and underappreciated.
o0o
Rig had passed out on the couch, running the boom box cord out the window. He came to to a monday afternoon spalled by the flinty tenor of Akka/Dekka, raised yet beyond its usual car alarm heights. "My loan!? Her birthday? This is bullshit! What do you expect to talk about next--period panties, the glass ceiling and mascara ads? I'm talking ACTION! MAN TALK!"
As Rig fussed with his musty lab coat, sweat-moist from drunken, overfed couchsleep, Dekka's unfocused eyes strayed to the corner where walls and ceiling met. One arm hung limply from a bum, bruised shoulder. Almost no time passed. "Uh-huh. Okay, yeah. You're right. I will. Today, I promise. Today. TODAY. Right now. Love you too, mom."
Scowling, Akka/Dekka hung up the phone and repaired to his war room. All the rage and despair locked within that craggy frame would have to wait another day. Afternoon lost time like shedding hair and evening slid over the High Style like mustard on a biscuit. Sweating and shaky, Dekka clambered out of the stifling, repurposed mud room. "Ha-HAH!" his rough cry, a flat lozenge held above his head with his working arm. "They said it couldn't be done. They later retracted that statement and lengthily questioned my abilities, my suitability for the task. And yet I stand. Here I stand--victorious."
Jerry, drinking on the porch and enjoying Boston's late period, nearly audibly ignored Dekka. Humidor was long gone to the bar and Mudman lurked below, still playing games alone. Grumpy and underappreciated, Dekka intoned "Yup. Cool. Is. The. Word. What I got right here is probably the best thank-you note any man ever wrote to his aunt. For kicking down a little cash when she makes like a million dollars a minute. And I am currently between jobs. Which she expects to be paid back in like 2 months." When this proclamation somehow failed to win the spectacular response it merited, Akka/Dekka dropped his envelope hand and went to rummage the couch for stamp change. Still grumbling.
o0o
His night both ruined and fulfilled, his face lumpier and bloodier than usual, Rig slumped on the ped access platform of the Steel Bridge. About a third of the way across it (going east) there's a spot of black between two lights. Rig was treating his soul to one of his beloved punk rock picnics, a Black & Mild smoldering, bebourboned Plaid coffee half forgotten, a filthy handkerchief around a fistful of ice held to his bleeding brow. Occasionally he'd toe the rear tire of his jounced and battered mountain bike to hear its comforting ticks. As the ice melted through the handkerchief, blood from his eyebrow seeped around and covered the stains from the 5 fluids from all 4 of his body's front's primary emitters of same.
o0o
It started in a tavern. It always starts in a tavern. Humidor hadn't noticed anything odd or interesting about the Pillbox when he's stopped in as afternoon lost a savage match against evening. Had he noticed two pairs of ember-eyes hotly glowing from corner shadows, he would simply have waved to Jukeboxer and Ritch Tapestry.
Who sat beclouded by smoke and gloom. Back by the pinball machines.
Humidor approached the bar. All he heard was two old men at talk. "Wow, your ex?"
"Yeah. Dating my girlfriend's stepson."
"They came in here?"
"Right up in here. Said they didn't know I drank here. I felt like a Mexican in a bookstore, for sure."
"..."
"Awkward. I felt very awkward."
"You're a fucking asshole."
Armed with a tall yellow beer, Humidor beat a retreat to the pinball forest. "Humidor. Sit." Ritch Tapestry stood over the pinball machine like a stalk of bamboo. The ball hurtled through the gates and switches, careened off throbbing obstacles and caused lights to strobe. The score mounted, grew intimidating. Though his hands were in the customary and appropriate place on the table, his fingers never moved, the buttons never were pressed, and his eyes always burned, never straying from Humidor's wan, swarthy face.
Jukeboxer leaned forward creepily and got to the crux. "It is time, El Humidor. To be tutored in the ways of power. For example, you can walk down the street drinking a beer. Right out in the open."
"No! That's not true! That's impossible!"
"You know it to be true."
Time passed. Humidor's mind was further blown. The jukebox transmorphed into a pulsing vortex--something like a screen saver or a particularly good visualizer--eldritch spectra frying eyeballs over comet/planet collision drumbeats. A phalanx of guitars grinding like cavalries churning across the steppes. The portal didn't open so much as simply appear; by its very presence the dingy tavern was changed.
Humidor in a strangled voice asked "You mean...like some kind of...Eternal Champion?"
After a pause, Jukeboxer answered him. "Yes. No. Well, an overnight champion, one could say. A midnight warrior of a sort, chosen to battle once--"
"And only once." Tapestry followed his interruption with a freight train of a glance and a brief monologue. "You must understand. Grim forces abound. Occasionally a man is selected to help another throw one or another dire yoke. You wear the mantle of the midnight warrior like a rank, and sally forth on some yet unknown sortie, like so many before you, so many yet to come. No one knows who will be chosen, or when, or where. Except us. Jukeboxer and I have the honor of introducing you to tonight's task."
Cued, Jukeboxer said "There are ways, Humidor, ways of power you have been introduced to. Ways any of us can, for one moment, hold the whip hand."
"Yes. And save another." Tapestry sat back and smoked. Jukeboxer glanced at the portal somehow disgorging Creet.
Humidor knew why he had been chosen. "What...what must I do?"
"Her. Buy her a beer." At Jukeboxer's point, El Humidor steeled himself and swallowed hard. Then he swallowed beer. A lot of beer. Then got up, squared his shoulders and his recollection of his bank balance and headed to the bar and the slim young lady waiting there.
o0o
Akka/Dekka woke up in free fall.
"Fu--" whump.
When a man falls asleep on the roof, he will sometimes wake up on the ground, or nearly so.
o0o
Creet smiled. "Hey, El Humidor."
"You have on me a disadvantage. I think we haven't never met."
"Oh, I was at a party at your house a while back. Don't get out much now."
"No?"
"Nah. Dumb desk day job thing. Dress code, the whole bit."
Humidor finally caught the bartender's eye. Thickly he thumbed at his envelope, impressed at a distant remove by the bulk of his rent money. "Hey..." distracted by the jukebox, omnipresent as the surf and powerful as summer thunder, "Can I get another? And whatever she's drinking? And some quarters?"
Receding to the shadows, Jukeboxer mumbled a question at Ritch Tapestry. "You think he's got a shot?"
"I think he'd better."
o0o
Gorgeous late-summer monday afternoon in Portland. Cloudless sky, everything's clear, blue and green. The air has a magic sweetness rarely attainable by lesser cities, even near Jerry's cigar, on a porch that could be promoted to ramshackle with a few free hours and a pressure washer. "These Dreams" blared, because Jerry's view of "all-Boston mix tape" is as whimsical as everything else.
Dekka and Humidor mounted the porch from opposite directions, both struck by Rig's struck face.
"The fuck happened to you?" Akka/Dekka gently inquires. "You fall down getting the mail again?"
o0o
Pinball, jukebox and vast accessible alcohol took the night out back behind the barn, shoved a rifle in its mouth, delivered an Oscar-worthy disquisition on the topic of renting oneself, and loosed two shots. The second was just for effect. Creet and El Humidor laughed with newly-won familiarity as last call happened, and delivered their orders with glee. Somehow they'd spent most--55, maybe 60%--of the night talking about Creet's "dumb day job".
"Seriously. Not one person there will drink a beer at lunch. At least three people have told me they don't understand why I'd rollerblade to work instead of owning a car. They decorate their cubes and can't understand why I dress the way I do. I get there in a good mood from my ride; by lunch I'm furious. Every night I roll into my pad and just go to bed I'm so tired from dealing with all the bullshit."
Humidor shoved his cigarettes across the table. Creet spoke around one, absently clicking her Zippo a few times after lighting the tube.
"It's like getting beat up. My life is getting abused. Bruised. They won't let me be who I am when I'm there. By the time I get home, I'm too exhausted to be who I want to be."
Humidor cleared his throat quietly. Now was the crucial moment--as the midnight champion, he needed to strike a blow for the forces of freedom. He could just tell.
"Would you excuse me for a moment?" Creet's eyes were focused on some dimension unknown to most as she unfolded her lanky frame and vanished out the front door. Humidor slumped, crushed by the weight of failure as Jukeboxer and Ritch Tapestry appeared behind him, radiating thrill and not a little surprise as the bar's get-out lights suddenly shed harsh illumination on outing's end.
"Good man."
"Well done." And they were gone. Confused, Humidor finished his quarter-inch of beer, eyed the surround, shrugged and downed Creet's last inch. As he attained the pavement, Creet rushed him. "Wanna hit the Plaid? We have like 6 minutes."
"Thought you worked in the morning, not?"
Creet moved her cell phone like a tambourine. "Nope. I just called them and quit. Let's grab a sixer; I want to show you that anime I told you about."
"O-ohkay."
o0o
"Well, I don't entirely know. I remember going in to La Dolce 'Gina for a second, and getting kicked out for getting blood on the stage."
"The hell did you get the dough to go to a peeler bar?"
"I wasn't there for long."
Rig was lying. He'd been there for about a hundred bucks. And he knew perfectly well what had happened to his face, now that a raft of red beers had reassembled his sundered memories. As Hedgehog's Dilemma had wound up their second to last number, Rig's voice had unleashed the mightiest known heckle. "You're not very good!" The words wheeled around the room like predatory birds. The Bowie knockoff known as Kludge had hurled his keytar to the ground and leapt feetfirst onto Rig's grinning, furious face. He'd hung out alone on the bridge for a bit, then paid to look at naked women. But your roommates don't need to know everything.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
|
|
|
Make it so the random feature on your .mp3 player can accommodate classic-rock-radio-approved formats like "2fer tuesday" and the all-conquering "rock block" aka the "menage a troi weekend".
The only problem with this is that it would require slightly more subtle/robust categorization schemes than currently are easy. I think I solved this problem for a customer of mine at the bar like 6 years ago, but I doubt he ever went anywhere with it...
The idea was this: people at the time didn't like the iPod shuffle, b/c they thought it wasn't random. The problem is that PERCIEVED randomness is much much different than actual randomness. Actual randomness tends at the small-scale level to be clumpy as hell, which bugs a human being told to expect randomness. The other problem about randomness as it applies to a small collection of music, and here it is violently relevant that the shuffle held on the order of 100 songs, is that a human's expectation of randomness is operating on more than just the song level. That is, given a 100 song capacity and assuming 10 songs per album, allocated in the following way:
Guns & Roses (4 albums)
MC5 (2 albums)
NoMeansNo (2 albums)
Bad Brains (1 album)
Blue Oyster Cult (1 album)
A standard "random" procedure will give you a GNR song 40% of the time. This will strike your average listener as a seriously unrandom preponderance of GNR b/c the expectation a LISTENER has of randomness operates on the song and on the band level.
My solution involved categorizing each song as an ordered n-tuple, encoding minimally band and album; the algorithm would pick a path thru the n-tuples such that starting with n-tuple N, all the values of n-tuple N+1 would have to be distinct, and that this rule would apply at every instance. So, given (GNR, Patience, Lies), song two would have be be NOT GNR, NOT Patience, and NOT Lies.*
Given a scheme where the songs were categorized in this fashion, it would obviously be a simple matter to say, ideally, that 2fer tuesday would vary song + album but NOT artist and so forth. This would also facilitate my old mix-tape trick of like 4 songs in a row called "swallow my pride".
But that's a different post.
*My actual suggestion to the Apple employee** was tailored for the shuffle and involved picking a satisfactory path thru the entire search field at the beginning of the operation. That's relevant to ensure that the thing doesn't end up randomly bouncing between two songs for a while, which probably would have resulted in some smashed-up shuffles.
**No, I'm not making this up. I also had an idea for a spam filter that the guy said "that would probably work, and I wish there were a way for you to get paid for that." Now I suck cock for a living, down at the Olive Garden, and I'm still getting spam. FML.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
|
|
|
More soon: I wrote this at work, where I have no access to the original work, hence the paucity of quotations. Attempting to find the pdf, I stumbled over the following link, in which a desperate(ly) hateful monster describes other human beings in atrocious ways. I had to read it twice to get what he was getting at and (thus) attain maximal despair re: this race.
http://mypetjawa.blogspot.com/2004_01_28_mypetjawa_archive.html#107531992791729862
Jarkko Clenninden's magisterial "Sexy Little Jawa", a work of such originality and power that it has remained unpublished for over a decade, has finally been issued in a well-translated English edition. While $149.89 seems a high price for a pdf file, it will be the task of this review to convince you to lay out the cash and forever discard your well-thumbed samizdat version of this essential tome.
Lovingly annotated and compendiouslyly researched by the small circle of Jawa eroticists that sprang up upon the release of an early version of this work (late afternoon on a tuesday, June of '91), the crystal clarity of Clenninden's vision has never been more compellingly presented. His limpid prose is vividly--some (will) say luridly--accompanied by some 13 dozen illustrations, collected here for the first time. While longtime fellow travellers will recognize many of these, it is frankly a mitzvah to have them all in one place. Leafing through Appendix Q, where scholars have attempted to turn all the extant sketches into a flipbook--sort of an animated Kama Sutra as imagined by Larry Flynt and populated nigh-exclusively by Jawas--is a strange delight, like chewing cactus.
A work wholly without genre, "Sexy Little Jawa" veers from autobiographied fantasy to speculative xenopology to rigorous biological exegesis, always with the consummate verve and exhaustive--indeed exhausting--scholarship Clenninden brought to all his projects.
(It is my sad duty to inform his American readers that Clenninden recently died after choking on a fish bone. It didn't kill him, but the fistfight he provoked with the chef, his about-to-be-estranged wife, did.)
Jawas, those tinker-pirates of Tattoine's high deserts, have been said to be among the least eroticizable races in speculative fiction. (E.g., Safire 1979, Bloom 1980, 1983, 1987) It is not merely a (large, and haphazardly interconnected array of) personal kink(s) that led Clenninden to spend many of his most productive years demanding that we ALL fixate sexually on these vaguely rodenty midget cyborg hackers of robots, these nocturnal nomads of the sand, and the nearly 48,000-word passage exhorting all to give in to the power of the "Jawabreaker" still thrills after all these years. By politicizing the sexualization of the entirely alien, he alienates the very notion of sexuality itself, in a vermiform demonstration of the highly ramified "body politic" so endemic to late capitalism.
Like all Clenninden's work, the gimlet-eyed focus on Others and Otherness is but the thick part of the blade; the heavy lifting is done by the robustness of his introspection. While the narrative trends in social science have largely been supplanted by a recent move towards simply making things up and studying the implications of imaginative artificats, "Sexy Little Jawa" still reads as thoroughly up-to-date. Particularly stirring (as in "stiffening") is his multi-part recollection of becoming aware of the erotic and frankly sexual potential of the Jawa race, investigating and rejecting various human-standard sexual fetishes as altogether too bland*, and finally his fervent decision/belief that long about 2012, the Jawas would come and cum to Earth to release us from one kind of bondage and introduce us to a savagely satisfying other kind.
A personal favorite comes about two-thirds of the way through the text, a section commonly known as "just lemme sniff on 'em".
*After you've tortured a file cabinet with feet to blow a load, tying somebody down or fucking your sister or whatever probably seems a tad tepid.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
c_collision's journal