*Original musical version released in 1958, written and performed by Eddie Cochran.
Summer, more accurately mid-summer, a week after the M.L.B. All Star Break, colloquially referred to as the Dog Days. Welcome dogs everywhere. Of course, if you're like me and have a dog, you already know that every day is dog day, or in the case of my dog, Princess Dog Day. Ever notice how even a seemingly dumb dog can upon occasion display flashes of sheer brilliance, pretty much get you to do anything it wants, and at some point you just have to stop feeling bad about yourself for being so easily manipulated by a dog?
Anyway, Dog Days. Courtesy of the ancient Romans who, apparently, in addition to inventing sewer systems, tossing Christians to lions and slaughtering barbarians, occasionally glanced up at the night sky.
Note* A little known fact; up until two hundred years or so ago, nights were dark and the night sky was actually visible. Who knew?
The Romans, it seems, were intrigued by Sirius, brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, which according to some earlier Greek guy resembled nothing so much as a big dog. Hence Sirius became the Dog Star. As Sirius and our own Sun are in conjunction during the summer (rise and set at the same relative time) the Romans mistakenly surmised that the energy emanated by the Big Dog star was combining with the energy of the Sun, thereby explaining the typical summer heat waves experienced in Rome.
You see where this is going, right? Hottest part of summer = Dog Days.
(We shouldn't be too hard on the ancient Romans for assuming that a star approximately 86 trillion kilometers from Earth could have an effect on its weather. Recall that until the 16th Century anyone with the temerity to suggest that the Earth was not the epicenter of the Universe was routinely burned at the stake. Until the late 19th Century the scientific consensus was that everything in the universe - time, space, mass, energy - hung like Christmas tree ornaments from an invisible, light-propagating medium called the Luminiferous Aether. It required the glial-rich brain of Einstein to put this wacky idea to rest.)
Note* Einstein was an avid dog lover, frequently observed on long walks conversing excitedly with his pet sheepdog; although exactly how much, if any, the animal's insights contributed to what would eventually become the Special and General Theories of Relativity is unknown.
So let's assume that many of us are currently ensconced in the hot and humid Dog Days of summer, perhaps secretly longing for winter, despite the fact that we absolutely hate winter, complain endlessly about it while we're in it. Maybe you're thinking, okay, you got me there, but at least in winter I don't have to spend half my time hunting down and killing mosquitoes. Putting aside for the moment the karmic implications of doing such a thing, this segues nicely into ...
Curious facts about mosquitoes:
Mosquitoes can smell the warm blood of a mammal at up to sixty meters.
They are particularly attracted to people with O type blood.
They are especially attracted to the blood of beer drinkers.
The blood of a pregnant woman is considered a special treat.
A mosquito is 500 times more likely to bite you during a full moon.
The obvious conclusion: The last thing you'd want to be in summer is a beer drinking, pregnant, scantily clad woman with O type blood trapped outdoors during a full moon on a typical Dog Day evening.
F.Y.I. World high & low temperatures for yesterday, July 22nd:
Ouargla, Algeria: 119.7 F (48.7 C)
Davis Lgb 46 AWS, Antarctica: -94.7 F (-70.4 C)
In terms of appealing summer destinations, more or less a toss up.
But then as Neil Young said (sang, actually):
"I'd rather be burned in Canada, than freezing in the south."
**Correction: The above was never uttered by Neil Young. The line actually comes from the song
"We can talk," performed by The Band on the album "Music From Big Pink." Apologies to Levon Helm and the gang
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Brain Hacking, Eyeball Licking And Other Fun Tips For Summer
Part One:
Sure, there's plenty of stuff scientists should probably be doing:
*Coming up with an easy-to-understand way to convince the right-wing naysayers that global warming is not some sort of liberal conspiracy (something written at an elementary school level, with plenty of pictures. 'Here's a photo of Dick and Jane bursting into flames in Death Valley.' And, of course, a title which draws them in, without letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak, too soon. Something like, THE BIBLE of global warming )
*Figuring a means to compel the vast multitude of twitter users to think, in however muddled a fashion, before they actually tweet
*Calculating the adverse impact on the planet once all 1.4 billion Chinese start driving cars (China already holds the world record for traffic jams - 1327 kilometers long. People sat in their cars for up to 12 days, waiting, presumably, for a miracle, possibly in the form of an alien spacecraft appearing and vaporizing all the vehicles ahead of them. Eyewitnesses reported an ominously thick black cloud hovering over the roadway, subsequently determined to have been only slightly less toxic than a full-blown nuclear power plant meltdown)
*Developing a vaccine for the Rapidly Deteriorating Intelligence Virus ( R.D.I.V.), which has apparently already reached global epidemic proportions ( the problem here, of course, is that the scientific community is not necessarily immune to the virus, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the dumber the scientist, the less likely he or she is to come up with a cure for dumbness)
*Finding all the missing dimensions postulated by String Theory, because it really is such a cool theory, and if you're anything like me, you, too, want to know where all the missing gravity went, and also those extra dimensions might provide a safe place for us to hide once things in regular three dimensional space start getting really scary.
Etc....
As it turns out, discovering safe hiding places is the last thing on the collective scientific mind these days; in fact, it's the elimination of that one completely reliable and impervious-to-all-intrusions hiding place that science has set its sights on. Your brain.
A group of rogue researchers in California has apparently successfully developed prototype technology for reading minds. At the present time, effective mind reading requires fitting a large, metallic cranial cap to the subject's head, attaching an array of sensors to various parts of his or her body (the risk of electrocution during the process is, researchers insist, minimal; about as likely as spontaneously bursting into flames while visiting Death Valley) and conniving him or her to ingest copious quantities of LSD.
In a recent interview, however, project leader Dr. Wilfred Wigglesworth revealed that a practical, affordable mind-reading app should be available within the next few months, easily downloadable to any upper-end smart phone.
And many of you might be thinking, how cool is that? A smart phone that's also a psychic phone. Your own personal psychic hotline. I absolutely have to have one. In which case, I suggest you think again!
One of things that occasionally terrifies me is the thought of being surrounded by millions of people, all of them constantly thinking stuff, minds swirling with fuzzy, tedious thoughts, always threatening to somehow escape their skulls, and having to imagine the awful consequences of what that would be like.
Bottom line: Last thing I want to know is what the weirdo standing next to me waiting for the light to change has going on in his head.
Consider: You run into a guy you haven't seen in years, which is fine because you never liked him, found him annoying, passive aggressive and not particularly bright. However he somehow manages to cajole you into having a cup of coffee with him. You sit down, slip out your phone and engage the mind-reading app.
Guy says: You know, it's uncanny. I was just thinking about you and then like wham, there you were.
You check your phone: Lie. He hasn't thought about you in at least five years. Also isn't thinking about you now.
He says: Must be one of those Jungian things, you know, synchronicity.
Phone: Another lie. He has never read Jung. Only knows the term synchronicity because his ex-girlfriend invoked their obvious total lack thereof as an additional excuse for dumping him.
He says: In any case, it's great to see you again.
Phone: Big lie. He's thinking, just when you think your luck couldn't get any worse, you run into this son-of-a-bitch. If I wasn't so damn passive aggressive, I could have just given him the finger and walked away. At least the prick doesn't remember the 200 bucks I owe him. Come to think of it, maybe I can hit him up for another hundred. Better still, I can just rob him.
You're thinking, damn, why did I leave my gun at home? But you say: So, what are you up to these days?
He says: Let's see, I started my own software company, eventually sold it, made a bundle, bought a co-op, where I currently reside with my supermodel girlfriend and now I'm working on the next great American novel.
Phone: Unmitigated Whopper. In fact, lost his job at the post office two years ago, forced to move back in with his parents, until they got fed up and kicked him out. Currently shares a cardboard box under a bridge with a Mormon couple who may or may not be brother and sister.
Okay, partly your fault for agreeing to have coffee with the guy, but you've got the app and how are you supposed to resist using it? But seriously, was any of that anything you really needed to know?
Stay tuned for Part Two, a discussion of Japan's latest erotic and completely disgusting craze, eyeball licking, a.k.a. worming. Pros and cons, techniques, how to spot and avoid these tongue-wagging trend setters before one of them manages to start licking your eye, etc.......
Sure, there's plenty of stuff scientists should probably be doing:
*Coming up with an easy-to-understand way to convince the right-wing naysayers that global warming is not some sort of liberal conspiracy (something written at an elementary school level, with plenty of pictures. 'Here's a photo of Dick and Jane bursting into flames in Death Valley.' And, of course, a title which draws them in, without letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak, too soon. Something like, THE BIBLE of global warming )
*Figuring a means to compel the vast multitude of twitter users to think, in however muddled a fashion, before they actually tweet
*Calculating the adverse impact on the planet once all 1.4 billion Chinese start driving cars (China already holds the world record for traffic jams - 1327 kilometers long. People sat in their cars for up to 12 days, waiting, presumably, for a miracle, possibly in the form of an alien spacecraft appearing and vaporizing all the vehicles ahead of them. Eyewitnesses reported an ominously thick black cloud hovering over the roadway, subsequently determined to have been only slightly less toxic than a full-blown nuclear power plant meltdown)
*Developing a vaccine for the Rapidly Deteriorating Intelligence Virus ( R.D.I.V.), which has apparently already reached global epidemic proportions ( the problem here, of course, is that the scientific community is not necessarily immune to the virus, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the dumber the scientist, the less likely he or she is to come up with a cure for dumbness)
*Finding all the missing dimensions postulated by String Theory, because it really is such a cool theory, and if you're anything like me, you, too, want to know where all the missing gravity went, and also those extra dimensions might provide a safe place for us to hide once things in regular three dimensional space start getting really scary.
Etc....
As it turns out, discovering safe hiding places is the last thing on the collective scientific mind these days; in fact, it's the elimination of that one completely reliable and impervious-to-all-intrusions hiding place that science has set its sights on. Your brain.
A group of rogue researchers in California has apparently successfully developed prototype technology for reading minds. At the present time, effective mind reading requires fitting a large, metallic cranial cap to the subject's head, attaching an array of sensors to various parts of his or her body (the risk of electrocution during the process is, researchers insist, minimal; about as likely as spontaneously bursting into flames while visiting Death Valley) and conniving him or her to ingest copious quantities of LSD.
In a recent interview, however, project leader Dr. Wilfred Wigglesworth revealed that a practical, affordable mind-reading app should be available within the next few months, easily downloadable to any upper-end smart phone.
And many of you might be thinking, how cool is that? A smart phone that's also a psychic phone. Your own personal psychic hotline. I absolutely have to have one. In which case, I suggest you think again!
One of things that occasionally terrifies me is the thought of being surrounded by millions of people, all of them constantly thinking stuff, minds swirling with fuzzy, tedious thoughts, always threatening to somehow escape their skulls, and having to imagine the awful consequences of what that would be like.
Bottom line: Last thing I want to know is what the weirdo standing next to me waiting for the light to change has going on in his head.
Consider: You run into a guy you haven't seen in years, which is fine because you never liked him, found him annoying, passive aggressive and not particularly bright. However he somehow manages to cajole you into having a cup of coffee with him. You sit down, slip out your phone and engage the mind-reading app.
Guy says: You know, it's uncanny. I was just thinking about you and then like wham, there you were.
You check your phone: Lie. He hasn't thought about you in at least five years. Also isn't thinking about you now.
He says: Must be one of those Jungian things, you know, synchronicity.
Phone: Another lie. He has never read Jung. Only knows the term synchronicity because his ex-girlfriend invoked their obvious total lack thereof as an additional excuse for dumping him.
He says: In any case, it's great to see you again.
Phone: Big lie. He's thinking, just when you think your luck couldn't get any worse, you run into this son-of-a-bitch. If I wasn't so damn passive aggressive, I could have just given him the finger and walked away. At least the prick doesn't remember the 200 bucks I owe him. Come to think of it, maybe I can hit him up for another hundred. Better still, I can just rob him.
You're thinking, damn, why did I leave my gun at home? But you say: So, what are you up to these days?
He says: Let's see, I started my own software company, eventually sold it, made a bundle, bought a co-op, where I currently reside with my supermodel girlfriend and now I'm working on the next great American novel.
Phone: Unmitigated Whopper. In fact, lost his job at the post office two years ago, forced to move back in with his parents, until they got fed up and kicked him out. Currently shares a cardboard box under a bridge with a Mormon couple who may or may not be brother and sister.
Okay, partly your fault for agreeing to have coffee with the guy, but you've got the app and how are you supposed to resist using it? But seriously, was any of that anything you really needed to know?
***
Stay tuned for Part Two, a discussion of Japan's latest erotic and completely disgusting craze, eyeball licking, a.k.a. worming. Pros and cons, techniques, how to spot and avoid these tongue-wagging trend setters before one of them manages to start licking your eye, etc.......
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Readership Inexplicably Surges / Bloggers Panic
All of a sudden - out of the blue, one might even be inclined to say - the blog is getting a relatively large number of hits, and those of us here responsible for content are clearly feeling the pressure. Previously, the assumption was that readership was limited to a group of five or six people, all of whom felt some perverse sense of moral obligation to occasionally check in on the fictional lunatic's progress.
"Oh crap! There's a new posting on the dog blog."
"He'll never know if you don't read it."
"Oh, he'll know. I don't know how he knows, but he always knows. It's actually a little creepy."
"You're actually a little creepy."
"And morally obligated."
"Oh, for God's sake!"
When you presume you're writing for six people who know you well enough to be mostly immune to disappointment, and who also feel you have some sort of bizarre, god-like power over them, you can pretty much write whatever you want. Then you wake up one morning and you have a legitimate audience, spanning multiple continents, with expectations, no less. People, in other words, who actually exist, with curious minds, their actions - i.e. reading your blog - an effort to at least 'temporarily stave off the threat of meaninglessness.' Little do they realize.
They seek meaning, from you, of all people, despite your ill-disguised obsession with disparaging the concept at every opportunity.
"So what your saying is that you put all your energy into saying things you don't mean."
(This courtesy of my therapist, Dr. Suzie Suzuki, whom I'm hoping will be able to help me cope with the sudden predicament of having to be relevant, although I'm not entirely doubt-free.)
"No, I always say what I mean," I tell her. "But what I say often has no meaning."
"So we may infer that the statement 'I always say what I mean' is in fact meaningless."
"Hence my current dilemma."
( You're no doubt wondering why I would be seeing a Japanese therapist. The Japanese are notorious for not even believing in psychology. They prefer to see human behavior as a function of the influence of obscure nature spirits, residual samurai impulses and, oddly enough, cranial size. The Journal of Japanese Cognitive Research, to which Dr. Suzuki is a regular contributor, is actually a comic book depicting the zany exploits of precocious preteens whose amazing superpowers are frequently misdiagnosed as symptoms of early onset psychosis.)
"Perhaps your readers read in an effort to demean meaning, discredit it, as it were; they unconsciously seek out the negation of meaning, which conveniently coincides with your fairly facile efforts to hoodwink the blog-reading public with pseudo-philosophical claptrap."
"If only I could believe that."
"In any case, I should measure your head."
After determining that my westernized skull is far too small to contain a fully functioning adult brain - which I'm guessing is not a good thing - Suzuki informs me that I'm suffering from Retrograde Blogger Anxiety, or R. B. A., symptomatic of a more comprehensive and, needless to say, more debilitating Social Networking Phobia, or S. N. P.
"To put it in layman's terms, you have until now based your tenuous identity on a sort of solipsistic self-denial."
"Say what?"
"The comfort derived from an anonymous non-existence has been usurped, your counterfeit superhero status exposed."
"Are you getting this stuff straight from the comic book?"
"Are you suggesting it's not a valid source of therapeutic insight?"
"Just tell me what to do."
"It should be obvious. Face your fear, look the beast directly in the eyes, howl at the waxing moon, eat more tofu."
"Uh..."
"Okay, fine, I have no idea. But I am definitely going to start reading your stupid blog."
More on this later. Until then, Welcome New Readers, whoever you may be.....
Monday, June 24, 2013
Big Bad Moon On The Rise
*A baby girl in Sweden gazing at the night sky sees the Super Moon and assumes it' a giant breast bursting with yummy milk. But why can't she touch it? It seems so close. Tired of waiting, she eventually closes her eyes and the moon mysteriously disappears.
But does it really disappear? If, as modern physics teaches us, reality is almost exclusively a matter of perception, then a case can certainly be made for the one minute moon / the next minute no moon hypothesis. If at any given moment not a single person on Earth is looking at the moon, then in effect there is no moon. Which is why I myself make a point of looking at the moon at every opportunity. The consequences of a sudden moonless situation are simply too dire.
*A male reader writes in search of an answer to a fairly timeless question: Are all women insane, or is it only the women I get involved with?
The short answer: yes and yes. If we assume that all women are insane (and as men do we really have a choice here?), then any one of them you become involved with will also be by definition insane. Only an insane person wouldn't be able to see this. On the other hand, dear reader, if you yourself are insane, your ability to perceive insanity in others is virtually nil. So what you're probably asking is ... Why do I invariably drive all the women in my life insane, and once I have accomplished this, why do I invariably feel the need to complain endlessly about it?
*The moon may also be a factor:
Women are notoriously more psychically receptive to lunar emanations. A 1957 study, conducted by an all-male group of Presbyterian "social scientists," concluded that men should take whatever steps necessary to prevent their female counterparts from gazing directly at a full moon, particularly if it's Super-Sized. Symptoms may include a general increase in sensitivity, a desire to talk about the future, a disinclination to spend more than eight hours a day in the kitchen, a tendency to dress scantily, often to the exclusion of any and all undergarments, shameless displays of affection and, in extreme cases, a proclivity to actually initiate sexual activity.
Good Lord!
(note: this study was mostly discredited in the late 1960's, for all the obvious reasons; Professor Paula Gemstone Delaney, of Cornell University, concluding that if it were possible to harness all the energy men put into projecting their insecurities, idiocies and blatant insanities upon women, the nation's dependency on foreign oil could be eliminated in a matter of days.)
* News Headline: "A small cadre of narrow-minded, sexually-repressed, religious zealots with assault weapons murders a mixed group of Chinese and Uzbek tourists in northern Pakistan."
And I just have to wonder what members of the U.S. House of Representatives were doing in northern Pakistan in the first place? Was it a fact finding mission gone seriously awry? Was Michelle Bachman one of the ringleaders? Did she perhaps see the full moon rising, misinterpret it as a sign from God that the world's end was imminent and give the order to open fire? Will she somehow manage to blame the entire incident on Obamacare?
(Meanwhile, who knew there was such a thing as Uzbek tourists?)
* In the news 2: During recent riots in Turkey CNN had one of its reporters, Jane something-or-other, on the ground, in the midst of the action. They cut to Jane, who's standing in the middle of a large crowd of mildly agitated Turks. Only thing is, Jane is wearing a large, complex-looking, full-face gas mask. Seriously. Talk about being over-cautious and looking really stupid in the same breath. More absurd, however, CNN anchorperson what's-his-name starts asking her questions. Jane's answers, unfortunately, are rendered completely incoherent by the ridiculous mask.
"So Jane, what exactly is the situation on the ground there?"
"Mmk u luw suti wa okup ewoww. Cowee shuzzz vergg ptku."
"Are you seeing many casualties?"
"awa lep merzz cawaaj jup jip saaaap."
"Any sense of what the soldier's intentions may be?"
"Wuug la rura corbu mur falarx cowchu, mur mur mahgii rahlbb."
"Sounds slightly ominous."
"Bllob wip shazpi feelf."
"Indeed!"
"Ekte oou ledpof."
"Thanks, Jane. And you stay safe out there."
This actually happened, by the way, whereas this .......
*Back in the CNN studio:
"Did you understand anything Jane just said?"
"Not a word. I assumed she was attempting to speak Turkish."
"Or it could have been the moon."
"Right, the Super Moon, obviously having a deleterious effect on Jane's already fragile mental state."
"I'm pretty sure that theory was discredited."
"Mostly discredited. There's a difference."
"So if anyone asks ..."
"We definitely go with the moon excuse."
......... probably did not. Although ...
But does it really disappear? If, as modern physics teaches us, reality is almost exclusively a matter of perception, then a case can certainly be made for the one minute moon / the next minute no moon hypothesis. If at any given moment not a single person on Earth is looking at the moon, then in effect there is no moon. Which is why I myself make a point of looking at the moon at every opportunity. The consequences of a sudden moonless situation are simply too dire.
*A male reader writes in search of an answer to a fairly timeless question: Are all women insane, or is it only the women I get involved with?
The short answer: yes and yes. If we assume that all women are insane (and as men do we really have a choice here?), then any one of them you become involved with will also be by definition insane. Only an insane person wouldn't be able to see this. On the other hand, dear reader, if you yourself are insane, your ability to perceive insanity in others is virtually nil. So what you're probably asking is ... Why do I invariably drive all the women in my life insane, and once I have accomplished this, why do I invariably feel the need to complain endlessly about it?
*The moon may also be a factor:
Women are notoriously more psychically receptive to lunar emanations. A 1957 study, conducted by an all-male group of Presbyterian "social scientists," concluded that men should take whatever steps necessary to prevent their female counterparts from gazing directly at a full moon, particularly if it's Super-Sized. Symptoms may include a general increase in sensitivity, a desire to talk about the future, a disinclination to spend more than eight hours a day in the kitchen, a tendency to dress scantily, often to the exclusion of any and all undergarments, shameless displays of affection and, in extreme cases, a proclivity to actually initiate sexual activity.
Good Lord!
(note: this study was mostly discredited in the late 1960's, for all the obvious reasons; Professor Paula Gemstone Delaney, of Cornell University, concluding that if it were possible to harness all the energy men put into projecting their insecurities, idiocies and blatant insanities upon women, the nation's dependency on foreign oil could be eliminated in a matter of days.)
* News Headline: "A small cadre of narrow-minded, sexually-repressed, religious zealots with assault weapons murders a mixed group of Chinese and Uzbek tourists in northern Pakistan."
And I just have to wonder what members of the U.S. House of Representatives were doing in northern Pakistan in the first place? Was it a fact finding mission gone seriously awry? Was Michelle Bachman one of the ringleaders? Did she perhaps see the full moon rising, misinterpret it as a sign from God that the world's end was imminent and give the order to open fire? Will she somehow manage to blame the entire incident on Obamacare?
(Meanwhile, who knew there was such a thing as Uzbek tourists?)
* In the news 2: During recent riots in Turkey CNN had one of its reporters, Jane something-or-other, on the ground, in the midst of the action. They cut to Jane, who's standing in the middle of a large crowd of mildly agitated Turks. Only thing is, Jane is wearing a large, complex-looking, full-face gas mask. Seriously. Talk about being over-cautious and looking really stupid in the same breath. More absurd, however, CNN anchorperson what's-his-name starts asking her questions. Jane's answers, unfortunately, are rendered completely incoherent by the ridiculous mask.
"So Jane, what exactly is the situation on the ground there?"
"Mmk u luw suti wa okup ewoww. Cowee shuzzz vergg ptku."
"Are you seeing many casualties?"
"awa lep merzz cawaaj jup jip saaaap."
"Any sense of what the soldier's intentions may be?"
"Wuug la rura corbu mur falarx cowchu, mur mur mahgii rahlbb."
"Sounds slightly ominous."
"Bllob wip shazpi feelf."
"Indeed!"
"Ekte oou ledpof."
"Thanks, Jane. And you stay safe out there."
This actually happened, by the way, whereas this .......
*Back in the CNN studio:
"Did you understand anything Jane just said?"
"Not a word. I assumed she was attempting to speak Turkish."
"Or it could have been the moon."
"Right, the Super Moon, obviously having a deleterious effect on Jane's already fragile mental state."
"I'm pretty sure that theory was discredited."
"Mostly discredited. There's a difference."
"So if anyone asks ..."
"We definitely go with the moon excuse."
......... probably did not. Although ...
Friday, June 14, 2013
Query First, Absolutely No Attachments
How to write the perfect (okay, nearly perfect) fiction query.
Or why you have less than a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting this garbage published.
Type of book: Should precisely define and locate your book within the nearly infinite and mostly incomprehensible jungle of all other books. Example: Sort of a novel, I guess.
Title: Should be clever and catchy, if possible bearing little or no relation to the book's actual content. Example: Marilyn Monroe vs. The Humanoid Flesh Eaters Of Upstate New York
Genre: In fact, a trick question; while announcing the genre of your work is required, the vast majority of literary agents insist they do not represent "genre" fiction. Selecting a genre, therefore, is in effect the metaphorical equivalent of slitting your own wrists.
"Found your writing to be exciting, sexy and brilliantly unique, but unfortunately we don't do genre."
Basic rule of thumb: be as genre-vague as possible. Employing multiple genres, if possible to the point of absurdity, is a proven method of getting noticed.
Example: a speculative, quasi-erotic, dystopian, multicultural, urban, nanopunk, family saga
Story Outline (a.k.a. the irresistible hook)
Example:
Example:
"Maybe it's like passive smoke damage paranoia or something, who knows, but you're all of a sudden thinking you may not get eaten after all, all you got to do is keep smoking, except the city is turning fast into a ghost town, and in this dark day and age cigarettes just ain't that easy to find, so now you're like searching for smokes while at the same time ducking the cannibals, and then, lucky you, you run into this totally weird Born Again C girl, who latches on to you and would rather rip your arm off than let go, scared out of her head, but she won't stop whining, and you're like, why don't you just send up a flare or something, give the crazy ghoul people our exact G.P.S. coordinates, and by the way shut the fuck up, but that ain't going to happen, cause Jesus has like bailed on her big time and she knows it, so you're like, hey nutcase chick, calm down, have a smoke, and she starts like really freaking out, screaming cigarettes were conjured by the Devil himself, smoking is a sin against God, blah, blah, blah, and how she would rather be like torn to pieces by inhuman monsters than smoke a single cigarette, and you're like, fine, have it your way, cause that's pretty much what's going to happen, probably like really soon."
"Meanwhile, it's still day one in scary nightmare cannibal land, and you're like already really fucking exhausted."
Agent responses:
1: This is the absolute worst query I've ever read. In fact, it's so bad that, for sickeningly perverse reasons I can never hope to fully fathom, I actually want to read more. God forgive me.
2: Are you like fucking kidding me?
3: Will there be a sequel? I sincerely pray not, but will there?
4: Novels are rarely if ever written in the third person singular. There is a good reason for this.
5: Please send the manuscript in its entirety, so that we witches (sorry) agents can perform upon it a ritualistic burning.
6: This so blows. For the first time in my life I actually envy the illiterate.
7: Loved your query. Unfortunately, the market for experimental, postmodern, high-school-dropout, ironic horror/humor is virtually non-existent.
8: If by any chance you're actually Thomas Pynchon, please inform us immediately.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Dangling By A Linguistic Thread
One of the drawbacks (one of the many, actually) of living in a foreign country is that people sometimes talk to you. Shocking perhaps, but nonetheless true. No way around it, really. Even in a country where the indigenous inhabitants generally abhor outsiders, consider them overly provocative, prone to rash and unpredictable verbal outbursts. And it's usually the deep, existentially challenging sort of stuff they want to talk about - can you eat fermented soybeans? do all Americans carry guns?
And you're thinking, damn, I wish I had my gun with me right now.
Adopting an expression that conveys scary intensity, or some quasi-dangerous version of mental illness, doesn't much help either. Basically, people can't resist the urge to talk, even if it's to someone they consider the last person on Earth they'd care to speak with.
Namely me.
I've tried wearing a sign around my neck conveying in several languages that I definitely do not want to talk to anyone, about anything, under any circumstances. There's always some guy who has to walk up and talk about the sign.
"So, like, what's with the sign?"
I point to the sign.
"Yeah, right. So, like, what does it mean?"
"It means," I say through gritted teeth, "fuck off!"
"So you do want to talk."
"Only to insult you and your entire family. Is that your wife over there? She's not pretty, not even a little bit."
"Yeah, tell me about it. She can't cook either. You married? Does your wife wear a sign? I wish mine would wear one."
At which point I remove the sign and begin whacking him atop the head with it.
Due to a brain injury suffered in childhood my primary foreign language processing center tends to be erratic; it splutters, yawns, fades in and out on a misguided neuronal whim. Most people's F.L.P.C.'s resemble a smoothly functioning computer network manned by highly efficient, smiling nanobots; mine looks like a telephone switchboard from the 1950's, run by one tiny, demented leprechaun. So when I'm forced to listen to someone talking in one of these jargon-riddled lingos, a typical sentence comes through something like this:
word - word - void - word - void - void - word (maybe) - void - word - void - void - void - word
And that's on a good day. By the time I've weighed all the variables and pasted together a possible meaning the speaker has generally given up and stormed off in a repressed rage.
I occasionally have the opportunity of spending a brief amount of time in a rather small room with several Chinese people (I know, it sort of sounds like a punishment, and in a way it is). They generally pretty much ignore me, but just having to observe them interact amongst themselves can be disconcerting. Chinese is a fairly aggressive-sounding language, laced with no small amount of barking and spitting; combine this with the Chinese person's proclivity to stand very close to anyone he or she is speaking with and the whole thing starts feeling a bit like happy hour in the psycho ward.
Anyway, recently one of them broke protocol, got close enough to actually touch noses with me and commenced what I can only describe as an all-out linguistic assault, Cantonese style, complete with waterworks. Content, of course, was mostly elusive - the withered neurons in my foreign language center having immediately begun waving little white flags - but I definitely sensed a threat in progress; some sort of tirade perhaps on the corrupting influences of American culture, or possibly a not so subtle boast of emerging global Chinese superiority.
So I said, "Oh yeah? Well at least where I come from people don't eat dogs."
"Dog?" he said in English. "I like dog."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"You have dog?"
"Like I might give you that information."
"I love a puppy."
"You monster!"
Turns out that the guy keeps a Chocolate Lab as a pet and had merely come over to me to ask if I'd care for a cup of tea.
Not that sticking exclusively to one's native tongue ensures risk-free communication.
Recently I was foolish enough to attempt downloading the updated, 'new and improved' version of Skype, which surprisingly was simple enough, until the new version demanded my password.
My, uh ...
Password!
I have no idea.
Seriously?
What's the point of a secret password if it's so easy to remember?
Long story short, I had to open a new Skype account and choose a new password, which I can't exactly recall now, but that's neither here nor there. The only problem was that all the contact information from the original account had vanished. Okay, no big deal. I want to call my daughter, so all I have to do is go into the Skype phone book and find her name. Except that there are like a hundred Skype users with the same name. How is that even possible? I decide to go into 'Skype Help' and inquire.
How is that even possible? I ask.
Everything is possible with the new and improved version of Skype, Skype informs me.
What now?
Start calling numbers. You have nothing better to do, and who knows, you may get lucky.
Call 1:
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is your father."
Sustained silence.... "Look, just because my mother was stupid enough to marry you, like what, a month after my real father's bizarre death in that chicken coop, doesn't mean you're my father now."
"Well, I ..."
"And if you're calling to ask me to set you up again with one of my friends, just forget it."
"Uh ..."
"Pervert!"
Call 2:
"Hello?"
"Uh, hi. This is your Dad."
"What? Are you out?"
"Out?"
"Of prison. Ma said another five years. At least that's what she's hoping."
"Uh, I am out, but I'm chained to the, uh, chicken coop."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"And just so you know, Dad, I never believed you mugged all those old women."
Call 3:
"Hello?"
"Hello, it's Daddy."
"Oh, so that's your thing today."
"My ... thing?"
"The Daddy fantasy. Okay, Daddy, but I have to tell you that I've been a very bad girl."
"Well I hope it had nothing to do with the mugging of the elderly."
"Okay, look, the naughty little girl thing I get. But the elderly? No way!"
"But ..."
"Screw you, weirdo!"
And all of a sudden the void starts looking a lot more appealing....
And you're thinking, damn, I wish I had my gun with me right now.
Adopting an expression that conveys scary intensity, or some quasi-dangerous version of mental illness, doesn't much help either. Basically, people can't resist the urge to talk, even if it's to someone they consider the last person on Earth they'd care to speak with.
Namely me.
I've tried wearing a sign around my neck conveying in several languages that I definitely do not want to talk to anyone, about anything, under any circumstances. There's always some guy who has to walk up and talk about the sign.
"So, like, what's with the sign?"
I point to the sign.
"Yeah, right. So, like, what does it mean?"
"It means," I say through gritted teeth, "fuck off!"
"So you do want to talk."
"Only to insult you and your entire family. Is that your wife over there? She's not pretty, not even a little bit."
"Yeah, tell me about it. She can't cook either. You married? Does your wife wear a sign? I wish mine would wear one."
At which point I remove the sign and begin whacking him atop the head with it.
Due to a brain injury suffered in childhood my primary foreign language processing center tends to be erratic; it splutters, yawns, fades in and out on a misguided neuronal whim. Most people's F.L.P.C.'s resemble a smoothly functioning computer network manned by highly efficient, smiling nanobots; mine looks like a telephone switchboard from the 1950's, run by one tiny, demented leprechaun. So when I'm forced to listen to someone talking in one of these jargon-riddled lingos, a typical sentence comes through something like this:
word - word - void - word - void - void - word (maybe) - void - word - void - void - void - word
And that's on a good day. By the time I've weighed all the variables and pasted together a possible meaning the speaker has generally given up and stormed off in a repressed rage.
I occasionally have the opportunity of spending a brief amount of time in a rather small room with several Chinese people (I know, it sort of sounds like a punishment, and in a way it is). They generally pretty much ignore me, but just having to observe them interact amongst themselves can be disconcerting. Chinese is a fairly aggressive-sounding language, laced with no small amount of barking and spitting; combine this with the Chinese person's proclivity to stand very close to anyone he or she is speaking with and the whole thing starts feeling a bit like happy hour in the psycho ward.
Anyway, recently one of them broke protocol, got close enough to actually touch noses with me and commenced what I can only describe as an all-out linguistic assault, Cantonese style, complete with waterworks. Content, of course, was mostly elusive - the withered neurons in my foreign language center having immediately begun waving little white flags - but I definitely sensed a threat in progress; some sort of tirade perhaps on the corrupting influences of American culture, or possibly a not so subtle boast of emerging global Chinese superiority.
So I said, "Oh yeah? Well at least where I come from people don't eat dogs."
"Dog?" he said in English. "I like dog."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"You have dog?"
"Like I might give you that information."
"I love a puppy."
"You monster!"
Turns out that the guy keeps a Chocolate Lab as a pet and had merely come over to me to ask if I'd care for a cup of tea.
Not that sticking exclusively to one's native tongue ensures risk-free communication.
Recently I was foolish enough to attempt downloading the updated, 'new and improved' version of Skype, which surprisingly was simple enough, until the new version demanded my password.
My, uh ...
Password!
I have no idea.
Seriously?
What's the point of a secret password if it's so easy to remember?
Long story short, I had to open a new Skype account and choose a new password, which I can't exactly recall now, but that's neither here nor there. The only problem was that all the contact information from the original account had vanished. Okay, no big deal. I want to call my daughter, so all I have to do is go into the Skype phone book and find her name. Except that there are like a hundred Skype users with the same name. How is that even possible? I decide to go into 'Skype Help' and inquire.
How is that even possible? I ask.
Everything is possible with the new and improved version of Skype, Skype informs me.
What now?
Start calling numbers. You have nothing better to do, and who knows, you may get lucky.
Call 1:
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is your father."
Sustained silence.... "Look, just because my mother was stupid enough to marry you, like what, a month after my real father's bizarre death in that chicken coop, doesn't mean you're my father now."
"Well, I ..."
"And if you're calling to ask me to set you up again with one of my friends, just forget it."
"Uh ..."
"Pervert!"
Call 2:
"Hello?"
"Uh, hi. This is your Dad."
"What? Are you out?"
"Out?"
"Of prison. Ma said another five years. At least that's what she's hoping."
"Uh, I am out, but I'm chained to the, uh, chicken coop."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"And just so you know, Dad, I never believed you mugged all those old women."
Call 3:
"Hello?"
"Hello, it's Daddy."
"Oh, so that's your thing today."
"My ... thing?"
"The Daddy fantasy. Okay, Daddy, but I have to tell you that I've been a very bad girl."
"Well I hope it had nothing to do with the mugging of the elderly."
"Okay, look, the naughty little girl thing I get. But the elderly? No way!"
"But ..."
"Screw you, weirdo!"
And all of a sudden the void starts looking a lot more appealing....
Friday, May 17, 2013
Lost in the Lunatic's Library
So here's my list of ...
Books that should be read, but probably won't be, due to the fact that either they A) were never written, B) were written but never published, or a somewhat more remote possibility, C) were written and published, but in a parallel universe, rendering them for all intents and purposes inaccessible.
(The upside of parallel world publishing, by the way, is that a writer can pad his or her resume with a hefty list of books he or she has successfully published, at least in theory, without having to worry about some anally obnoxious fact checker proving him or her a blatant liar.)
One of my favorites: The Erotic Adventures Of A Quantum Mechanic.
Right off the bat we're drawn to the clever play on words in the title. The story follows a young man's path of sexual awakening in an indeterminate, irony-laden world. Think of sex on the subatomic level. Can the sexual urges of an electron be anything more than virtual? Is third party observation the key to a fully actualized sex life? Written in the first person, both narrator and reader are continually forced to confront the paradoxical intersection of imagination and reality. Is the imagination a function of reality, or vice versa? When, for example, the young Quantum is seduced by his best friend's older sister, can the reader attest beyond a reasonable doubt that the sex depicted is anything other than a quantum fantasy? And more to the point, does anyone, with the possible exception of Quantum himself, really care?
"He was lured by her savory softness, the sway of her firm female buttocks ascending the stairs, the highly stylized way in which she removed the stuffed animals from her bed. Fortunately, the Barbie doll on the bookcase was wearing sunglasses. Better, he thought, that there be no witnesses, but then again ..."
Best title ever for a novel: Lycanthropy For Flute & Oboe (already copyrighted, so don't get any ideas). Which begs the question, can the title of a novel be so good that the book should be published on the basis of it alone?
Read the title, loved it. Don't really give a crap on content. Could be a cookbook for paranoid schizophrenics for all I care. Let's move on this fast, before the vampires get wind of it.
Richard Rorty, the late American Pragmatist, said that it's the poets and novelists, rather than the philosophers, who have become the primary interpreters and re-inventors of modern/postmodern culture. How we say something, in other words, is often more important than what we say. So think before you speak ... no, wait a minute, don't think.
Still, one has to wonder if Rorty ever read anything by the madly prolific genius, David Foster Wallace.
Bringing to us to acclaimed novel, written and published, reputedly a bestseller, but nearly impossible to read: Infinite Jest. Compared to Wallace, Proust was the ultimate minimalist. Think of James Joyce on methamphetamine. This is a guy who could go 50 pages describing a single game of tennis; brilliantly, for sure, but the casual reader, overwhelmed in waves of magical, maniacal language, should not underestimate the potentially deleterious affects upon his or her own continued mental well being.
Hence our offer: This blog will pay a total of $1.00 to anyone who can read Infinite Jest within 3 months, without skipping any pages. To claim this reward the reader is obliged to submit a brief book report (maximum 1000 words) describing the various themes of the novel, providing examples of its metaphorical wit and subtle black humor, as well as taking a position (yea or nay) on the book's status as an postmodern masterpiece.
Finally, the book we're all looking forward to reading: The Big Baby Book Of Ingrid Mayflower.
Ingrid M, already being described as the cutest baby born thus far in the 21st. Century, lives in a pouch, chirps in English and Swedish and apparently spends a lot of time sleeping, during which, it is surmised, she is busy outlining the story of her weird and wonderful life to come.
Welcome to crazy planet Earth, little Ms. Mayflower.
Books that should be read, but probably won't be, due to the fact that either they A) were never written, B) were written but never published, or a somewhat more remote possibility, C) were written and published, but in a parallel universe, rendering them for all intents and purposes inaccessible.
(The upside of parallel world publishing, by the way, is that a writer can pad his or her resume with a hefty list of books he or she has successfully published, at least in theory, without having to worry about some anally obnoxious fact checker proving him or her a blatant liar.)
One of my favorites: The Erotic Adventures Of A Quantum Mechanic.
Right off the bat we're drawn to the clever play on words in the title. The story follows a young man's path of sexual awakening in an indeterminate, irony-laden world. Think of sex on the subatomic level. Can the sexual urges of an electron be anything more than virtual? Is third party observation the key to a fully actualized sex life? Written in the first person, both narrator and reader are continually forced to confront the paradoxical intersection of imagination and reality. Is the imagination a function of reality, or vice versa? When, for example, the young Quantum is seduced by his best friend's older sister, can the reader attest beyond a reasonable doubt that the sex depicted is anything other than a quantum fantasy? And more to the point, does anyone, with the possible exception of Quantum himself, really care?
"He was lured by her savory softness, the sway of her firm female buttocks ascending the stairs, the highly stylized way in which she removed the stuffed animals from her bed. Fortunately, the Barbie doll on the bookcase was wearing sunglasses. Better, he thought, that there be no witnesses, but then again ..."
Best title ever for a novel: Lycanthropy For Flute & Oboe (already copyrighted, so don't get any ideas). Which begs the question, can the title of a novel be so good that the book should be published on the basis of it alone?
Read the title, loved it. Don't really give a crap on content. Could be a cookbook for paranoid schizophrenics for all I care. Let's move on this fast, before the vampires get wind of it.
Richard Rorty, the late American Pragmatist, said that it's the poets and novelists, rather than the philosophers, who have become the primary interpreters and re-inventors of modern/postmodern culture. How we say something, in other words, is often more important than what we say. So think before you speak ... no, wait a minute, don't think.
Still, one has to wonder if Rorty ever read anything by the madly prolific genius, David Foster Wallace.
Bringing to us to acclaimed novel, written and published, reputedly a bestseller, but nearly impossible to read: Infinite Jest. Compared to Wallace, Proust was the ultimate minimalist. Think of James Joyce on methamphetamine. This is a guy who could go 50 pages describing a single game of tennis; brilliantly, for sure, but the casual reader, overwhelmed in waves of magical, maniacal language, should not underestimate the potentially deleterious affects upon his or her own continued mental well being.
Hence our offer: This blog will pay a total of $1.00 to anyone who can read Infinite Jest within 3 months, without skipping any pages. To claim this reward the reader is obliged to submit a brief book report (maximum 1000 words) describing the various themes of the novel, providing examples of its metaphorical wit and subtle black humor, as well as taking a position (yea or nay) on the book's status as an postmodern masterpiece.
Finally, the book we're all looking forward to reading: The Big Baby Book Of Ingrid Mayflower.
Ingrid M, already being described as the cutest baby born thus far in the 21st. Century, lives in a pouch, chirps in English and Swedish and apparently spends a lot of time sleeping, during which, it is surmised, she is busy outlining the story of her weird and wonderful life to come.
Welcome to crazy planet Earth, little Ms. Mayflower.
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