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Thank You, Traditional Publishers, For Your Heartlessness

3/21/2014

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PictureHey, you, with your "manuscript..."
Yesterday I learned that, out of 82 submissions, I was not a finalist for the short story section of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition. I've had some success with the competition before and I'd had high hopes.

I read the letter of sad, sad condolences. I skimmed the adjudication -- I deflated some. Especially as the prize was $1000 and the idea of being a starving artist has become a little too literal of late.

The next morning I sat down with my tea, pulled the staples out of my submission, and read the story for the first time since I sent it out two months ago.

Crazy thought: I liked it.

It did some good, like, things, with, like, you know, words and stuff -- and pacing, action, image, and so on. Having held myself to the uncaring fires of self-publishing only to have found myself wanting, I was pleased with how it was apparent I had shaped and tempered to be able to write with purpose. It was a story I could be proud of.

In the end, the only conclusion was: There were four stories they liked better than mine.

And I was okay with that.

But why does it feel like an accomplishment that I can feel that way?

I think traditional authors have an advantage over self-publishers when it comes to rejection. It's easier to be toughened and scored by traditional publishing, and this scouring ends up being beneficial in the long run.

Sending away a piece to a traditional publisher, or a contest, they will  tell you, "No, we don't want you." They might as well just send back pictures of a brick wall. Run into this again and again and eventually it becomes routine. If you're lucky, they'll even tell you what your problems are, and be overly mean about it.

Self-publishing doesn't have this in-built kindness by being callous. Self-publishing, there's always an out. No, my piece is fine, I'm just bad at marketing. Or ... my genre isn't popular. My genre isn't selling right now. My promo wasn't arranged right. My cover isn't as good as it could be. My font needs to be bigger. I need a better web page...

There are an infinite number of ways to not cope with the idea that maybe your story just isn't as good as three or four other stories.

I never thought I'd say this, especially after months of silence, never to receive word about manuscripts that I'VE HAD SOLICITED -- that's just cruel -- that dread in the belly that all this talent and time has gone to waste ... but maybe those cold-hearted, harpy-clawed, vicious sons of bitches have actually done me a favor.
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The Cold Writer's Block of Winter

1/17/2014

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My production has been down lately, and this is why.

Well, I don't know what the weather is like where you live, but in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, renown for having the most precipitation in the Atlantic provinces, snow is how it goes. This year with an exclamation point.

But I'm still not going to use an exclamation point for emphasis there. You sound crazy when you use exclamation points!

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The first snowfalls were a source of amusement. There's two steps down here.
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I took to the snow stubbornly, the flab of fall sure to slough off.

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This is one of the first storms. It snowed for two days, and then I methodically went after the white stuff with aplomb. Two hours later my neighbor across the road rescued me with his snowblower. I didn't mind.


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Most of the time, I never think about living on an island, Newfoundland being the 16th largest island in the world.
Then we have poor weather, followed by unseasonal cold, and a failure at the provincial power hub resulting in rolling blackouts, and when I finally get up to the grocery store, this is what's left of the meat section without the ferries being able to cross.



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Meanwhile ... new tenants were coming to live in the apartment downstairs, and it was up to me to shovel their driveway before they arrived
.
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At the end of the first day, and 10cm of snow still falling ...

They make kind of a creepy flipbook.

But it had to be done ...

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It was made more difficult by the guy my neighbor hires to do his driveway snow-blowing his snow up into this driveway, EVEN AS I WAS SHOVELING IT. I flagged him down and told him to stop. He said, "Nobody parks there."

And then made more difficult when I got to where the industrial snowblower had widened the streets and had piled the snow at the end. That's why it looks like a huge piece of cake there. It was solid ice, and peeled away like flakes of glass.

Feeling bad for his hired man's complicity in my labor, my elderly neighbor offered me the use of his snowblower, but it only would have chopped itself to pieces on the ice.

Until finally ...

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Grocery bags for scale.

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A buddy came over and helped me move the last ton or so.

And that's winter, my writer's block.

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They Don't Make Intros the Way They Used to

4/3/2013

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Lately, I've been reading a great book called Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt, which, in part, discusses how books were preserved down through the ages after the fall of the Roman Empire by monks right across western Europe.

During the Renaissance, due to "light-fingered Italian Humanists," ancient tomes would often go missing. Books were then on occasion 'guarded' with a curse in the preface.

I'm launching a book shortly, and I thought this would be an absolutely fabulous insert for the beginning.

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner ... let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

It also probably wouldn't be a bad idea to tack the same sorta greeting over my own bookshelf.
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Not Your Average Writing Advice

2/18/2013

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It's usually a good idea to pander to your strengths in whatever you do. And I feel that, as a writer AND an editor, I have some pretty cogent things to say about how to get things done with writing. I see the same kinds of mistakes all the time.
Like ya, know. Whatever.

So I made this:
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Of course, if I'm trying to help out with site traffic, who's this for: other writers, the very people to whom I already have a surfeit of access. Go on my twitter account and they're always there, yelling at me to take their free books and then never read them so they can feel good about meaningless numbers on their Amazon pages.

Still. I like it. And because I'm like a four year old who always wants to show you what he's made, even if it's a mud pie that he wants you to eat, here it is: I made this.

Take my mud pie, internet. Take my filthy mud pie and you like it.
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Question: Why? Answer: Cave Man

2/5/2013

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They're out there.
Picture this if you will. A chilling scenario which reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book:

You're seated at a fire with as many as eight or nine other people. You're scared, you're restless, you're tired. At your feet, and within easy reach, each of you has a weapon: sticks with crudely-hafted stone blades, or sharp hand-axes with serrated edges.

Behind you, beyond the furthest reaches of the light, monsters slide through the darkness. Picture fangs the length of your fingers,  claws like knives; they're as quick as regret and as quiet as cold. Only the fire keeps them from dashing in and snatching you away at will. You try to forget they're there and enjoy yourself, but sometimes you catch brief glimpses of oval eyes glittering in the light.

To find out your fate, turn 600,000 pages to the future.

The people in this scenario didn't really have much of a choice, because this isn't fiction, this is history. This is the beginning of culture, the beginning of what makes us human. This is page one, the beginning of you.

Our ancestors gathered around campfires like these nightly, while real monsters watched. Back then, claws and fangs didn't fear us like they do today. We were soft and slow and blind at night. So why should they?

The other day I was asked to give a quick blurb about stories. Stories: what are they? Having degrees in English and Anthropology, I'm always like that guy who only has a hammer: to him, everything looks like a nail -- ask me a question and all my answers come back 'caveman.'

(Okay, not 'cave man,' that's an outdated and always-has-been inaccurate term, but you know what I mean.)

Because, hey, the answers for most questions do involve cavemen if you wish to be properly thorough. So what if 600,000 years have passed since the campfire. Inside we're still the same. Except now we have more stuff. 

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I need to use this more often.
We have our scenario. Campfire. Monsters. Weapons. Now add: Stories.

While we were making all our great stuff, concurrently we were sculpting ourselves through our stories, and this process began in the safety and comfort of the flickering firelight, the birthplace of all culture.

Because any of the people sitting there in the light who didn't physically have the propensity for storytelling, or for  listening to stories, probably wouldn't be your neighbor, or anyone's neighbor, much longer.

Scenario within the scenario: Bob the Caveman was out that day and ran into a spot of trouble. In fact Bob was attacked by a gyro-slug, the huge imaginary prehistoric slug the size of a bear. Ferocious, were gyro-slugs, famous for having two spinning antennae atop their heads which they would use to commit acts of unparalleled aerial predation upon poor bipedalists stuck to the ground by their feet.

Page one is a strange and scary place.

Normally, meeting a gyro-slug would mean certain death for poor Bob, but this day Bob evades its first assault, the slug crashes to the ground, and quite by sheer dumb luck, lands near the salt lick which Bob had been quarrying, and melts with many unpleasant raspberry noises into a pile of gyro-slug mush.

Bob is ecstatic, and fortunately for everybody around the fire, Bob is a good storyteller. He arranges his thoughts about the incident in an orderly and rational fashion, using compelling details about the event, and is skillful at providing emotional cues about how he felt at the time to which his audience can relate. Finally, he brings the tale to a satisfying crescendo. Everybody sighs. Denouement. Good ol' Bob. What would we do without him. For a few moments, the monsters sliding through the darkness are forgotten.

Here's where I need another graphic: WHERE I ACTUALLY REALLY, REALLY COME TO A POINT.
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Instead I'll creep you out with this. Aptly creepy.
REALLY. FOR TRUE.

Half the people around the campfire don't have the physical propensity for storytelling, or for the rational organization of information that Bob possesses. But just for the sake of simplifying a ridiculous scenario, let's say that one of them is very, very poor at it, even while being wonderfully bright in every other respect. From Bob's story he fails to take away -- with any serious retention -- the location of where Bob was attacked, where Bob found salt, or how he evaded certain death. The rest of the group begins carrying salt with them wherever they go. When attacked by gyro-slugs in the future, suddenly they are the victors, until the terrible squishy predators learn to fear humans.

But not before they fall upon our hapless outlier -- saltless -- and lacking the genetic predisposition for storytelling, removing him from the gene pool.

This example is a bit extreme, of course -- Gyro Slugs were only two-thirds the size of what I've described -- but, in essence, the propensity for storytelling allows for the greater diffusion and retention of facts and ideas. Those with the best ideas and communication skills were the best suited to survive and pass on their life-saving storytelling acuity to successive generations.

Especially since what our unlucky outlier lacked most from that fireside meeting was the sense of growing closeness and comaraderie with the rest of the band, the buddings of cultural identity, without which, we could hardly call ourselves human.

And if you question in your mind whether unconscious keys like this really could have been passed down through the ages, ask yourself why people have an intrinsic fear of the dark, or why so many find fire so immediately comforting.

A mere 600,000 pages later, we still crave stories that involve danger, triumph, and reward, even though we no longer have to face these things on a daily basis. Now we crave them because we love them.

So, tonight, as I Lord of the Rings myself to sleep, I'll take a moment to remember page one and my predecessors who listened.

And I'll remember to bring a small bit of salt in my pockets tomorrow when I go to the store.

Just in case.



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January 16th, 2013

1/16/2013

6 Comments

 
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Thought-Bubble about Lovecraft

12/23/2012

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Click pic for a cool blog of ol' squidface pics.
A thought-bubble, as the title says, about Lovecraft, of the H.P. kind.

It's probably important to put the H.P. there if googling that.

Today, I was wondering if the phrase 'something seems fishy' had something to do with H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read his The Shadow of Innsmouth.  Essentially, everybody in that town were relatives to some sort of underwater ... frog ... men ... who worshiped some ... ya know ... elder god or something.

So ... I wondered if saying something seemed 'fishy' about a person, implied that there was an aspect about them which seemed a little off, like they had risen from the depths of the ocean to breed with our women and begin a race of ... well ... not supermen ... but severely strange-looking recluse weirdos who don't like to go out and quake behind shuttered-up windows and who probably have slightly translucent toes.

Because that'll show the normals.

But then I figured nawww. Probably just means that fish stink when they rot, and people find that suspicious.

I do think it would be great to turn that around, however. If I were, say, out buying fish which were perhaps  a day past its hypothetical due date, and had a (shockingly) fishy scent about it, I could complain to the manager: Hey! 'Scuse me. Phew! This fish smells a bit like it worships an elder god ... see? I want a discount.

I also wondered if fans of Lovecraft dressed up like godlike squid monsters to attend a convention called Necro-comic-con.  But try not to think about that. You're better off.

Merry Christmas.

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The Unsung Backbone

9/29/2012

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Now that I've conjured up a strange image of a singing backbone, or at least of a song about a backbone, potentially one that is singing, I won't take long to come to the point -- unlike most of my other blog posts.

As I suggest on my Ocean's Edge page, often it's useful to search for certain key words in your work and try to replace them with more descriptive phrases. I single out the term 'something' as an example. But it's also important to try to pin down your pet words, your go-to words, your bosom buddies of diction.
Often, with your pet words, you don't realize you're using them so frequently until somebody points them out, and then alakazam! they fade into existence like an image from one of those Magic Eye pictures.

I've used the word 'schooner' 141 times.

Maybe I should change them all to 'sailboat?'


Either way, that's not what this post is about.

Today, while searching for a few of my own pet words, I strayed from the set course and searched for 'the's. Yes, the word 'the.'

A LOT came up. Obviously, I was expecting a lot, but as I hadn't really thought it through, the volume came as a bit of a surprise.

Let's see, in Systematic Rube a non-fiction piece of 101,503 words, there's 8264 'the's. That's like ... 8% of my words.
To do so, using Microsoft Word, select CTRL F to bring up the Find/ Replace and input the word you wish to find. Then, on the bottom, where it says Reading Highlight, select the arrow and choose Highlight All. It will then tell you how many times you've used that word in your piece.
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I hummed, figuring that certainly this absurd number of 'the's were due to the free-flowing nature of the piece. I was just sprinkling words everywhere, a dash here, a jigger there. It was a crazy time. I can't be blamed for anything I may or may not have done. Surely, my more polished and uppity novel, Raw Flesh in the Rising would have much fewer.

In Raw Flesh in the Rising, at a 113,604 words, I find 10,396 instances of 'the.' That's just under 10% of my words. The 'the' quotient is high.
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I know that I'm catching all the similar words like 'there' and 'their' and 'they're,' but it seems to me it's all the same family -- cousins and brothers, and that strange cousin, 'other.'

And, in truth, I don't know if it means anything. More than likely: Absolutely Not. I Am Just Rambling. 

But, if anything, it does impart the rather large importance of such a little word. It's the opening act for most nouns, warming up the audience.

In general, it's fun to dig into a familiar piece and see it from another angle.
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Doesn't Get Out Much III

9/16/2012

2 Comments

 
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Objects in picture may not actually be in the cold grip of winter.
Originally, I had intended this post to go in a different direction, but once underway, it essentially ran on a parallel track to my previous entries about leaving the house and having large and melodious thoughts descend upon me.

I guess it's all the trees around here.

All week I've been editing and writing, writing and editing. After a few days, the mental body is bled white of attention and needs repose, inaction.

So, as usual, I concocted an excuse and hopped in the car. It was more about driving on a sunny Saturday afternoon listening to the Pixies loudly than about shopping.

See HERE for the excuse -- holy horsepills.  I'm keeping them as noseplugs.

Hopefully the same company doesn't manufacture suppositories.

My town is small, and it didn't take me long to get where I was going. Never even got to Monkey Gone to Heaven.

At the bookstore, after having been browsing for only a few minutes, I looked up and thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

At home, I edit books all week. Then, when I have the time, I write for myself. After that I flirt with twitter and bat my eyelashes at people in writing forums, visit Goodreads, write emails.... Words and books. Books and words. Editing and writing. Writing and editing. Paper dolls of ideas hooked together page to page.

Then when I need to get away from it all, I go to the expletive bookstore....

Up one rabbit hole and down another.

So I got out of there and went to another bookstore.

It amuses me that the little corner book shop that sells magazines and local literature has a rotating rack of 50 Shades of Gray. The rest of the shop is quaint, family-oriented. Right next to the spindle of erotica is a huge display of spritely stuffed animals.

I caught the eye of a kid right after I caught him on his tip-toes to sneak a better look at the plastic-wrapped magazines on the top shelf. A grin there. He scurried off.

Used to be that I'd come home from university and I'd be able to tell who was also coming home from away by what they were wearing.  It was easy. People in my town were about five years behind the popular fashion trends of the rest of the country.

Today, I realized this was no longer the case, and I lamented that the outside world had found us, that we'd greedily snatched up all the shiny beads we could carry. After all, isolation breeds diversity, identity.

Quick on the heels of that thought I realized that I've been in the province going on five years. Maybe it was still the case that we were behind the rest of the country, and I was now five years out of date myself....

A bit of a gangly hope, that one.

Fleeing the mall, I saw a sign in the parking lot that read "Reserved Parking," with an arrow pointing down a lane. I followed the arrow and, when I got to the back, was very amused to see that the reserved parking was a large unpaved square, dusty and rutted.
It's been said that it's great that I can make money doing something I love - sorta - and, obviously, gravitating towards books in public when I'm trying to escape books at home gives credence to this point. But, to make a fine distinction about it, I would have to compare it to a doctor who's always been a fan of the human form. It might be what he loves, but most of the time he only sees the human form when something's terribly wrong with it. He then has to cut it open and try not to lose his wristwatch inside.
I went to the grocery store.  A woman pulled up by the entrance and, without getting out of her big truck, asked me if I knew what time the store closed.  I walked over and checked the time on the door for her. Had she been waiting for someone to come along so she could drive up?

The avacados in the grocery store were actually not rotten unlike the store downtown where fruit flies flitter nonchalantly around the bin. My people are not known for their great love of strange fruits and vegetables. But roll a potato through a crowded room and watch as fights break out.

Strolling near the frozen meats, I decided that I was now old.  I had a new benchmark for comparison.

With school having started, there's many young people around, and I can no longer distinguish between kids of college age and kids in junior high. Sometimes when I go out for gentlemanly libations and get dragged to sports bars and dance clubs, I think the young folk I see with their beers and umbrella drinks would look more appropriate holding Pokemons and Barbies.

I passed a blonde girl of perhaps eighteen, shopping with her cell phone to her ear. I thought, Typical.

Bear with me. I'm building to some semblance of a point.

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I predict this shall have relevancy in the near future.

In line for the express cashier, the line wasn't moving, very expressly not moving. A kerfuffle was afoot about the price of an item. Calls were being made for the secret knowledge of special grocery sages, the cashier's face a tapestry of ignorance and apology.

I drifted back and forth to find an express-er cashier, and finding none, floated back to the line I'd left to find two young gentlemen had supplanted my place in line. Fine. That's fine. I left. All is fair.

I couldn't tell how old those guys were either, but for one of them, at least, I could tell his future.

In five years time, young man, you shall become bloated with beer, sodas, and bad eating habits. To hide your baby face -- like the baby head from Toy Story with the crab legs and cyborg eye -- atop your man's body -- and really he did look like he'd attached the Gerber Baby's head to a grown man's body, I can't emphasize that enough -- you will grow a goatee, and wear a silver chain around your neck as a sign of your ascension into manhood. You will then wear your shirt-neck open so everybody may gaze upon it and marvel.

So it is written....

Then an employee was ahead of me in line, apparently taking her break, and joking with our cashier, lingering for laughter. 

Then the same girl who had been talking on her cell phone five minutes earlier got in line behind me, still talking on her cell phone. And I thought, Typical.

I suspect I'll be using this graphic a lot.
I suspect I'll be using this graphic a lot.

I found I was a little mad at the cashiers and their fraternizing, and at the girl behind me talking on her phone. Why can't you take that thing away from your head for five minutes?

And then, for the second time, I thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

Firstly, I was vexing towards this girl on her cell phone. Meanwhile, the entire day I'd been slicing snapshots out of life, mentally saving them, sifting and sorting them, and adding clever captioning and dialogue, meaning to feed them to twitter or blogs or forums -- or merely to the moving scrapbook that is any piece of literature.

In fact, I couldn't go twelve seconds -- to choose an arbitrary number -- without picking up people by their lapels, shaking them to see if any interesting words would fall out, and placing them gently into my artistic picnic basket for later.

For you tech geeks, think of that as my rudimentary meatspace sandbox. Human 1.0.

Though I was not physically connected to my vices and devices, I nonetheless was carrying them with me. My proclivities had become as much as part of the functionality of the software as the actual written code.

Annoying girl with the cell phone, you and I are one.

Secondly, I had ire for the people ahead of me in line, as if they didn't have enough problems with having to wear beige uniforms all day.

I guess, almost as a bi-product of my first point: with technology, we're used to being able to control our worlds -- or at least the perception of our worlds -- in ways we were never able before. This applies doubly for those heavily invested in social media.

If I want to be amused, if I want to be maudlin, if I want ... anything -- or if I want the things that bother me -- politicians, rocks stars, advertisements -- if I want them to cease, I can make them stop existing in my immediate cone of attention.

Going out in the world, this no longer applies, and frustration is the response that gets triggered when immediacy is not allowed. One has to actually put up with what is happening in the functional, physical world of interacting people made of squishy bits, teeth, bones, and toenails.

Take a deep breath there.

Often, I think brains need enemas, or at least an accessible and safe RESET button.

I let the cell phone girl continue her so-very-important conversation. I laughed along with the socially apt cashier. This new-model monkey then went home to dinner.


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Tesla 

9/10/2012

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Melt before his electric gaze
It must have been difficult for a genius of Tesla's calibre to live in the latter half of the 1800s, when scientific quackery was rampant.  Electricity -- and pretty much any form of new-fangled thingamajiggery -- came to be peddled by the worst charlatans to a poorly educated public for every sort of miracle cure.

Take any sort of device, add ELECTRIC to the name, and VOILA -- snake oil.

Personally, I'm glad we live in an enlightened age.  Just this morning I arranged for a Nigerian Prince to forward me some money so I could pay for the penis enlargement pills that an Assertifed Doktor of Medicinal Stuff sent specifically to my 'Electronic Commerce' email.

Some people are marvelous. Never even had to leave the house. I could keep working at home.

This train of thought sponsored by The Oatmeal's article on Nikolai Tesla, to be found HERE, or even at this link:  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Beginning when I watched the Simpson's episode in which Homer is obsessed -- and might I add, a little bit titillated -- by the douchebaggery of Thomas Edison.

THIS, of course, I now realize, would be much more preferable. Also, more hilarious.

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Created is Realer

9/3/2012

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A bit of a continuation for Doesn’t Get Out Much ...

... born of brief reliefs from the heat as the fan panders by, energy spurts of teeth-rotting tea in dark-roomed afternoons, of lots of eye rhyme and incandescent slurs against the neighbor children doing their devil-worship beneath my window.

I believe I am jealous of the technical prowess of the latest writer I’ve discovered, slapping back the only way I know how -- by eating chocolate and typing.

That'll learn 'em.

A bit of background and then thoughts on the clichés of writing, maybe art. Though there are many, I’ll stick to the applicable -- with many asides, as much meat stocked on the perimeter of the plate as the middle.

As stated in my previous Doesn’t Get Out Much, I work from home. People give me their apple slices of life; I chew them over and regurgitate. We call that freelance copy-editing.

When I’m done editing for the day, I meander to the edge of the white space at the bottom of this page -- and every page like it -- and hang from the last loops and whorls of the a's and q's, the rare bottom bars of the z's, stretching them down as far as I can.

I’ve been remarkably successful at this of late, discovering how much easier it is to unroll a regular story of woes than a literary work with themes. It goes quickly.


Literary stories, they sneer -- Boring garbage! Maybe. But not as easy to write. Layers, my friends, layers, interconnected like a cat’s cradle. Pinch the wrong damn strings and it all unfurls into a useless yarn.
Eat my puns, better technical writer.


I work as much as I can. Forget the sunlight, I have my monitor's pale glow; scritching on paper for the wind in the trees; a nice earth-tone beige colour, my desk. At heart, it makes me happy.

Yet I know it’s not healthy. It's more a life for a pupa than a person. 

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The fact that I’m now behind a keyboard again casts doubt on the existence of any of this. Only a silver and gold chocolate bar wrapper remains - the clacking of the keyboard over everything else.
In fact, I left my house this evening, needing supplies to feed my keyboard, and I was no beautiful butterfly emerging from a cocoon. More like a mole blinking in the sunlight after a long hibernation.

Strolling to the store, nothing seemed real to me -- not the leather-clad lady with her bare midriff and peanut-shaped body buying cigarettes -- not the wobbly trees of Bannerman park -- not the August cool-down of the evenings on my arms. I could have closed my eyes and forgotten it all.

It is a cliché of art that the artist gets so wrapped up in their created work that the created work seems more real than the world -- enough bad science fiction has played with the concept that I mentally throw popcorn at the idea when it pops up.

And, initially, I laughed at myself. I certainly didn't want to stumble myself by giving that cliche any leeway.

But ...
(A bit of a digression)

... being an all-encompassed creature inside your artistic cocoon is almost what a writer has to be these days. One cannot just write. It’s not as simple as that. One has to make content, writing’s slut cousin.
When I used to merely write – often only with the simple goal of being able to esteem myself a writer one day – the good ol' days -- the naive ol' days -- I used to happily close my writing sessions with finality – DONE.

Laptop shut with a satisfying click, there was a succinct severing of ties. The next morning, I’d pick up where I left off.

These days, being done with writing for the day means the start of making content. No fulfilling click signalling a return to the world.

Not as simple as the mere act of writing. I can do math; that doesn’t make me a mathematician.
Flirt with twitter. Sidle up to forum users and slip them my room card. Share contacts, measurements -- you show me yours I’ll show you mine. Play footsy with my emails. Freshen up in Photoshop. Try to smell nice for Google Analytics.

Content.

This is the puzzling cycle of pablum prescribed to fledgling writers these days. More-experienced writers, perhaps as a joke, slip them a piece of paper with instructions: ‘How to be a writer: Step One: make content. Step Two: Rejoice in the success of your content.'

Unfortunately, the majority of content makers misconstrue these instructions as Outdo even the most vexing spambots in the proliferation of your content! Really belt it out there! Loud and proud!

Usually, the recipients of a content-maker’s devotions to his promotions are other content-makers, which then leads to reciprocation, and escalation, until it’s all stirring together in a whirligig of droning voices and canned laughter, like the soundtrack to an old Hitchcock movie.

Any reader who accidentally gets sucked into the maelstrom swears never to go anywhere near it ever again….

End of Digression

Of course, I must point out that I am the worst kind of hypocrite. Because what’s the first thing I’m going to do once I’ve applied the spit-polish to this piece? That’s right, I’m going to post it. I’m going to make it into content. And I’ll be content if someone were to read it.

Marvel at my perspicacity and ironic outrage.


Back to the cliché of the created world seeming more real than the real world.

Actually, I’m going to go with the ungrammatical word, ‘realer,’ here. Because it’s not my supposition that the real world seems irreal to the artist. It’s that the created world seems real-er.

Walking back from the store, not allowing myself to accept the cliché that a construct of my mind could seem realer than what I was actually seeing, perhaps I laughed a little too quickly. Often, I aim for the median course when the sacrifice of aiming high without a safety net (Being in the arts, actually doing art) gets to feel costly on a relatable level (No money, aging without palpable success).

Because, not long after, I had a very interesting moment.

It was but a pip, a tenth of a second. Crossing the road, I looked down the street. The row houses were colourful and interesting, every postcard of Newfoundland that’s not a whale or a puffin exemplified.  I saw them lined up like drunken friends leaning against one another, and I recreated them.
By that, I mean, in my head I took a snapshot of them, only briefly, and I then brought that snapshot very near to me and I explored it. In a flash, I crawled all over the outsides of those buildings, feeling the gritty splintering of the wood, the bumps and the striations. I flew through the houses, circling the occupants like an intruding wasp, then shrank myself down to ant-size and stared up at the houses, like monoliths, getting in close to see the chips in the paint on their front doors, grass growing up through cracks in the concrete.
Picture
Not figments of your imagination
None of this will I ever do with the real houses.

In that moment, the houses I had created with my snapshot were realer for me than the houses that existed in the world.

I don’t know who lives in the real houses, but if I want a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses to live in my created snapshot house, until I actually go and ring the doorbell for myself and the real-life tenants answer the door to become a part of my external reality, that’s who lives there.

Similarly, the landscapes I've created recently with my shut-in literary splurging -- and which consume most of my mental idling -- have this sort of invaded property about them. I can concoct histories for every stone, consecrate closets and cupboards with meaning, switch the semblance of rooms in an instant.

The people that inhabit them, I can crawl inside their ears if I want, or tell you what they had for breakfast.

When they were nine.

I have no external wireframe for the reality houses, but possess a solid blueprint of the fantasy down to a cellular level. The created is realer than the blank.


Most clichés are true to some extent. Applicable to real life. Many of them, we reject only because past popular movements have denounced them. That doesn’t make them false.

The irony is, I'm denying my own perceptions because I’m adhering to a structure of behavior that our current culture says is preferable ...

... when, as people, we make the constructs of our heads realer to us than what we see in the world all the time.

Ask any daydreamer. Any political idealist. Any naïve mother. Ask any racist.

I’m just making a home inside mine, and inviting people over for popcorn.
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Doesn't Get Out Much

8/19/2012

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Rather than give this post a title like “The Write Way,” or “The Write of Way,” or “The Write Stuff,” as if being a quirky shut-in was some sort of professional by-product – even to be elevated as a symptom of the creative mind – I figured I’d be honest about it.
I don’t get out as often as I’d like these days. I edit for people. Usually, I wish I were writing. Then I work on my own stuff. Usually, I wish I were writing then too.

For a sidebar, see the side bar.

 I move from computer to computer, desk to bed and back, often with an olly olly oxen free of paper and pencil in between. Being a quirky shut-in is not a holy kafkaesque condition . Often it’s a result of guilt and determination: if, distracted by the million shiny voices pumped into my cell via the magic dust of technology, I fail to get as much work done as I’d like, I feel the guilt of a day wasted, and so remain tethered to the area, stubbornly adhering to the outdated theory that if one puts Artist and Medium in close proximity, something called Art will eventually be made.

I think zookeepers use the same methodology with pandas.

The determination part of that equation comes when I vehemently try to make the previous statement true, despite frequent failures.

When I do escape my chairs, I want to run. I want to exercise.
It may be a cliché, but it seems to me that writing happens very similarly as to how parents have described their baby’s poops to me: you’re either ready for it or you’re not; often it’s interesting what you see in there; generally, you don’t know where it came from;  sometimes it just fills up what you're using to keep it in, making a mess; it's when you're not ready for it that it's messiest, and then that it goes everywhere.
I’ve heard it said that running is great for writing, it allows time for contemplation, planning.

I disagree.

Running reminds me that I am a robot made of meat and slime. If I have neglected my slime, it hates me.

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Pulling the view three hundred feet into the air like Google maps.
I run at Quidi Vidi lake, a fifteen minute walk from my house. I began by the statue, dedicated to the people of the city in 2005, of a man rowing a boat, called ‘The Rower.’

A word of extrapolation here.

Quidi Vidi lake is in storied St. John’s, Newfoundland, home to the St. John’s Regatta, the oldest continuous sporting event (rowing) in North America. Also the only municipal holiday in North America that depends on the weather and changes dates. Townies – as the citizens of St. John’s are called, living in the only city in the province – play Regatta Roulette every August. Go out drinking the night before the scheduled holiday. Stay out late. If it rains the next day, strap on the shackles and head to work; if it’s sunny, you win Regatta Roulette, tie on a pillow.

In a city surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, five of the six chambers are loaded.
Five hundred meters from the edge of the lake is a small harbour onto the Atlantic Ocean. Also known as the Quidi Vidi Battery. Head on down to see graffiti on authentic cannons. Feel safe knowing that if the French ever attack by sea again, no problem, we got you covered.

But don’t worry, it's been at least ten years since they last attacked, and then they only sent one chain-smoker with a ferocious scowl. Frenchie, we called him. He was a ferocious one, Frenchie. The battle was mightily fought.

A girl of about fourteen was sitting one of the benches facing the lake, her feet drawn up, her head tucked down into her hoody. I was a Tortured Soul™ when I was a teenager, and didn’t really think much of it.

I won’t say much about the run itself other than it was satisfying and heroic. In my head I picture myself as a tanned Adonis holding his head high. In reality ... ever watch a Bassett Hound running towards you at full gallop?
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Picture unrelated.
Speaking of dogs, I’ve learned that when approaching a person with a dog, you can always look at the dog instead of the person to avoid awkwardness. Maybe even smile at the dog. That’s a tip for the other quirky shut-ins out there. The first one’s free.

Get out of my way ... damn slow people.

That great moment came when I reached the point where I knew I couldn’t fail. Arms raised like Rocky.

In my head.

Twenty minutes after I’d struck out, I flapped past the statue of The Rower again. I even ran on an extra twenty or thirty feet for good measure. My slime was satisfied.

It’s true what they say, the eye of the tiger is the thrill of the fight.

I scattered the lake’s ducks and pigeons and seagulls before me near the boat launch.

I had the guts, I got the glory, I went the distance, I didn’t wanna stop.

Just a man and his will to survive.

The girl was still there on the bench, her head tucked into an arm, peeking out when people passed, or lingered. Right about here is where I began to be beleaguered by my brain soaking up the landscape like a dry sponge. Sorry, but almost everything to this point has been opening credits and popcorn.

Past the point of ironically awesome and back to plain awesome again.
Right next to the lake sits a grocery store, a fancy one too, with escalators for the shopping carts and butlers for the potatoes. The week before I had gone in while still sweating like a pack mule and had left a stink-trail around the apples and avocados which hastened their ripening sharply. I didn’t want to do that again. It's hard to maintain a three foot barrier between yourself and everybody else in public while not looking like a maniac. 

I lingered by the ducks, and walked a ways around the pond, hanging over the rail of the bridge where the shallow rivermouth feeds brown water out into the deep. In the cold of the spring, my girlfriend and I would stand there whenever we brought bread. The ducks would come very close. She loved watching them, and I loved watching her be happy. I decided that I should come back soon with the heels of the loaves I had tucked away in my cupboards.

At heart, another excuse to get out of the house.

That’s when I realized, I really need to get back to my girlfriend.

I’m only thirty-four, and was already contemplating living like an old widower. All my life I’ve been secretly watching old men wandering through towns in afternoons, seemingly very interested in the dust of the gutters or the tacky frames of doorways. I’ve always thought them the saddest people in the land, sure that nobody but me was watching them.

Suddenly, I was contemplating early emulation, and realized how easy it is to fall into routines and escapism. Tired of seeing the inside of their homes, the feeble companionship of their TVs and radios, the old codgers went out into the world to feed themselves with different thoughts before they returned to their little kingdoms of boredom, happy to have seen the little flapping feet of the ducklings, the wary side-eyed glances from the mother-ducks. 
Without even thinking about it, I was achieving the same ends by sequestering myself at home so I could cultivate and till the fertile fields of own mind. Isn’t that the ironical part about making literature? The old adage says: Write what you know! And also, in the same breath: Experience! Capital E there. You need to have things to write about. Go see things.

But, almost by necessity, writing is a practice which requires quiet and concentration, the orderly arrangement of thoughts, weeks and months of self-absorption and the fostering of embryonic ideas. No wonder so many writers write books about being writers. Right?

On second thought, perhaps I should have entitled this piece, “The Write Way.”

Of course, nothing indicates that those old guys I used to watch hadn’t had amazing lives either. That’s another sad fact, only realized as I loitered on the bridge, deciding to never again feed the ducks. Who knows what those men had lost.
I always picture a peppy cheerleader saying that. You can’t just jump right in and write without getting out to find the right things to write about, right? Unless you're religious and can write about rites. That’s the right shut-in sorta shindig. Of course, to be successful, you’d have to write about the right rites, amirite?
There used to be a lot more of them right after the fishery collapsed.

Either way, Boy, I can’t wait to see the missus again.

Notice that I spelled ‘a lot’ as two words. That’s how you know I’m a writer. I got the inside tract. Also, I’m clever with homonyms.

I didn’t want to think about the old men, and wandered closer to the shore. Another mother duck had ducklings held close, all of them with their heads tucked beneath their downy wings. She, too, eyed me warily, before nuzzling her head back beneath her wing. I stood there for five minutes, feeling the cool breeze sucking the moisture out of my armpits. My cotton shirt was damp and droopy. Sexy, very sexy.
Picture
Then a small cadre of juvenile ducks, probably the same guys as here in this four-month-old photograph, with no fear charged out of the water and right up near my feet, all of them watching me while trying not to look like they were watching me. Very cagey and cool, ducks. Comes from having their eyes near the sides of their heads. Popcorn kernels had been left on the park bench next to me, and I flicked them off onto the ground. The ducklings pounced on them quickly. Deciding, then, that I was a bust, they charged helter-skelter over to a nice lesbian couple twenty feet away. At the sight of twelve ducklings charging at them like paparazzi, I heard them say, Oh my god, how cute.

I’m not even going to try to describe the sound that twelve ducklings make when they charge down a walkway in unison. I don’t get out enough for that.

Right about here is where I realized I was a terrible person.

I looked across the way to see that the fourteen year old girl was still there with her head tucked down into her jacket. I also saw – though I rarely notice them, intent as I usually am on the lake – that she was sitting directly by the property boundary between the big Catholic graveyard and the walls of the provincial prison. I tagged that as interesting in a thematic sort of way.

Quick on the heels of that revelation, I had to contemplate the idea that I had passed that girl – not once – but twice, and it had never occurred to me to ask her if she was okay.

We don’t have much homelessness in our city, so that’s not a frontline thought, but for all I knew, she was hurt, or simply unhappy, and a hello might have helped. Hell, even if she were a Tortured Soul™, and was fishing for somebody to do just that, to inquire about her soul, there’d have been no harm in it.

That’s when I wished my girlfriend was around again. She’s unafraid to approach strangers and be kind.

Men around my age simply do not approach teenage girls. To do so is a breach of some kind of quiet code.

Then I thought, Well, fuck what other people think, I should be doing the right thing. I think we’re too careless and uncaring to people these days, and I try to generally spread common sense and kind words wherever I go, at the very least checking my own hostile tongues whenever they rise. To do so online in an anonymous fashion while shying away from it in the real world seems a fine line of hypocrisy.

But then I swung back the other way again. Nope. Grown men my age don’t approach young girls in public. That’s a fine line that’s drawn in our minds. If I were to walk up to her and inquire about the blackness of her soul, or to see if she had been in a fight or something – even if nobody else in the area saw – it’s likely that she herself would have thought I was a creep. No credit for not being a monster there.

We have a fear of lone men these days. We can’t be cowboys or saviours anymore, only dark menaces with dank basements in our souls. Even an act that, on the outside, appears to be as benevolent as flowers on a sunny day, is perceived as actually hiding a bubbling cauldron of base desires.

Women were allowed to approach her, I decided. Older women, especially. Older men were allowed, but would still merit being watched closely in case the basement door looked like opening.

I watched from afar, at least a hundred meters away across the lake. Anybody seeing me probably assumed I was leering at her. I wondered how many people, like me, would pass her by, and, in fact, I felt better when a lady leaned over her after only twenty or thirty seconds.  

Proud of my victorious stink, if not my own humanity, I went to the store feeling that not all was lost with humanity in general, or at least the specific humanity in my neighborhood.

Cheeze was on sale, and I decided to experience what it would be like to buy two.

(Spoiler: It was awesome.)

I don't have a snappy ending, so  I'll deliberately ruin my walk away into the sunset.

Oh man, did you see what I did there with the ducklings, their heads tucked under their wings, and then the girl doing the same thing too? 

Totally a writer.


Absolutely related.
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Tendrils and Jellies

8/9/2012

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Every so often, when reading a book, I'll come across a line or a smashing together of words that makes me screech to a halt out of appreciation and jealousy. Currently, I'm reading Easy to Like, by fellow Newfoundlander, Edward Riche.

Elliot, the newly appointed head of the CBC, sees a lovely lilt of boob peeking out at him from across a crowded table. Upon seeing it,

" ... He was buzzing in the sex-crime tendrils and jellies."

Had to share that.
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Guilty Steaks

8/8/2012

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Tonight I was digging through the *junk drawer* in my room, actually a rubbermaid container still loaded down with the outlier pieces of my last move and whatever bric a brac resisted my attempts to place it fittingly around the room at any given time. In the bottom, amidst the accumulated dust, the precious lost paper clips which could have proved useful so many times, and many escaped batteries, potentially dead, I found the guitar pick pictured below. Across the top, in perfect typewriter talk, it says 'Guilty steak ...' and below that: 'pearls in the sand.'
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I plucked it out of the dust, blew it off,  and pocketed it as personal archaeology. It stems from a period a couple years back when I was editing my novel, Raw Flesh in the Rising, about a sailor wrongfully exiled to the infamous leper colony on the Hawaiian Kalaupapa peninsula.  I don't recall why I was printing those particular pages - perhaps so I could expunge the sentence at hand in a fiery ritual - I only recall that the page came out of my old Canon with a pick-shaped hole in the text. When I dug around, there it was, the proverbial monkeywrench in the works. I like to think that it was trying to tell me something, seeing that the paragraph stamped on the pick is perhaps the worst I wrote in the entire book.


Judge for yourself:

Then, terribly, his hands were anvils again. The men, leering still, grinning still, even up to the moment Eric, worked into a spitting frustrated rage, hit them, their skulls were like eggshells. They burst apart like greasy tomatoes. Guilty steaks littered the ground, and the half-shattered grins of the men glinted like strings of pearls in the sand. In his sleep, legs wheeling, Eric groaned.

Makes me flinch to read it. Portraying dreams in entertainment should be outlawed.

In my defense, the piece underwent a good flaying for defying good sense, order, and taste, and in the final tally was convinced to read like this:

The two together then receded like rocks sunk into the sea, white shards shrinking, until both became as dead and distant to him as the moon; and though he found again that he could speak, too late, he had nothing to say. Half-shattered grins glinted like strings of pearls in the sand and, in his sleep, legs wheeling, Eric’s groans wandered unheeded amongst the broken pillars of the trampled grass.

At first I thought it was unlucky that the pick had been tattooed with one of the worst lines of my piece. I thought perhaps a sequel to the previous fiery ritual was in order. In the end, however, I erred on the side of good ol' fashioned hands-in-pockets deterrence. I figured I'd let it serve as a reminder that not everything shoots out of my fingertips as gems. Usually, it takes time, perseverence, and polishing.

Of course, the next time I get in a literary huff, into the fire it goes.


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When I Leave the House

8/7/2012

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Picture
I'm ravenously hungry. I've been writing a query letter for six hours. Finally the roar of my brain stops and my stomach is raving mad, shaking its fist at me. It's piss-pouring rain. I have no food in the house.

I go downstairs and cut off a hunk of stale beer bread with cheeze so I won't deflate into a shrunken nothingness and fall into the gutter on my way to the grocery store. I'd hate for someone to find me lying there the next day dirty and wet like one of those discarded gloves that seem to grow from roadside gravel.

There's rain, there's splashing cars and wet pant’s cuffs, but hey, I get there and perogies are on sale 2 for 1 so it's all worth it. Mmmm perogies.

It's often said that you should never shop for groceries when you're hungry. Normally the old adage rings true. But there's another adage that says Man cannot live on bread alone, and a bit of bread was all I was running on. I was in no danger of buying too many groceries. Even if I could fit them all into my shared fridge (that's another story), my hunger had rendered me desperate far and beyond the point of caring about what old wives say. I got what groceries I needed and geared up to get out.

Everybody has a mundane superpower. Mine is the ability to get drinks quick at any bar regardless of how crowded the bar is. For me the gaps in the gabbering girls and guys in tight shirts open like magic (that sounds spurious but I'm sticking with it. The magic works at concerts too). At the time I realized this I was giddy with power. It was only slowly that I came to also realize that every superpower, even the mundane ones, comes with a price.

If with great power comes great responsibility, then with minor power comes, well, minor annoyances. I'm superman at the bar. Give me all your liquor money, citizen, and stand back. But never, ever, pick the same line as me at the supermarket.

I go to the line with only one man with one basket. He's wearing a cap and a grubby jacket, grubby jeans. He's a grubby guy. When I moved downtown I was concerned I wouldn't have any fun at the supermarket anymore because I wasn't haunting the aisles at 2 AM. Fortunately, it turns out I don't have to worry.

The grubby guy put his basket on the conveyer, and as it moved forward towards the cashier he'd slide it back towards me. Two times he does this. The cashier rings the grubby purchases through, the grubby basket is conveyed towards the front, the grubby guy pushes it towards the back. I can't put my own purchases down because I'm feeling the barrier of politeness; his basket is there. My own is getting heavy.

Finally the cashier, seeing the traveling basket is empty, stashes it behind the counter, sliding the bar to separate the groceries down my way. I began putting my groceries onto the counter. The grubby man, having lost his grubby basket that was acting as a buffer, begins picking up my groceries and placing them at the back of the conveyer.

I stop. I don't like anybody touching my groceries. That's taboo. A taboo I heartily endorse. Although it seems a dotted line that gets broken fairly often (ask me about the old man who purposefully squished my cake). Mostly I'm shocked this guy is picking up my groceries and moving them as if he has some sort of demilitarized zone lined out near the front of the conveyer that my food is violating.

The conveyer, of course, works on a sensor. An item places on the conveyer will move up until another sensor stops it. It's not going to stop while there's items on the belt. Seeing the guy was obviously not going to stop, the cashier halts the belt. This time when the grubby guy manhandles my groceries, they stay where he wants. Neither I nor the cashier are impressed by this grubby man's attempt at perpetual motion.

The worst is over, I think. Problem solved. Our hero may return home happy with his spicy pizza.

No so.

The grubby man whips out his pen and a cheque. I look up at his tally on the blue screen. Twenty-three dollars worth of cat food, wieners, and crystal lite. It's like an odd kind of poetry seeing the same items repeated on the supermarket screens.

Crystal Lite - 250g -                          99c

Crystal Lite - 250g -                          99c

Wieners

Wieners

Yes, a glimpse into my world.

The cashier can't cash the cheque for the grubby man. She doesn't have the authority. She has to go check in with her supervisor in regards to the cheque. She leaves.

The grubby man seems nervous. He steps five feet away from where I am and begins pacing, pacing, his hands behind his back, pacing. It's over five minutes the cashier is gone verifying the veracity of the legal paper exchange and he paces all the while. Pacing.

When the cashier comes back she brings with her a sympathetic look for me as if to say sorry. Me with my meager groceries spread out on the conveyer belt, excluding the demilitarized zone near the front. Waiting. I don't look at her, though I saw. In truth, I don't mind. I've been in my room all day writing damnable dull query letters. Compared to that a good jab with a sharp stick would be preferable. I'm actually kind of amused. I'm already seeing the words 'I'm ravenously hungry. I've been writing a query letter for six hours' in my head.

She asks the grubby man for more pieces of identification, which he promptly whips out. Identifying himself is probably his mundane super power. Probably a pretty useful one seeing how grubby he is. The cashier shoots me another sympathetic look, having not caught my eye yet, and leaves again.

This time, instead of pacing, the grubby man begins to study my purchases. He never looks at me. Never once does he acknowledge that I exist. He's as leisurely as if he's pawing through the apple bin, leaving grubby bits over every Granny Red that he touches. He picks up my tuna and reads the label. It doesn't captivate him so he picks up my green bananas. They are very green. Green doesn't meet up with his measure. He puts them down and returns to his pacing, pacing.

Five minutes more goes by and the cashier returns. The grubby man's project of twenty three dollars has been approved. Proud new owner of twenty three dollars worth of cat food, crystal lite, and wieners, the grubby man picks up his bags and goes. Real life continues.

My own purchases had no duplicates, no poetry. Green bananas, spicy chicken pizza, tomato ... just doesn't have the same ring.

On the way home it was still raining. All the pretty girls had their hoods up and their pretty eyes shone out of dark cloth tunnels.

Who am I kidding? Pretty girls don't walk, especially in the rain. Who knows what monstrosities were hiding inside the mouths of those hoods?

Oh wait. I did have a duplicate.

Perogies.

Perogies.

2 for 1.

Mmmm.

So worth it.

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Bad Ideas for Dating

7/20/2012

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1:  On the first date, try to impress a girl by telling her you can bend spoons with your mind.

2:  Invent a language of your own. Decide that the first girl to decipher it will be The One.
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Barbers

7/20/2012

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Sometimes it seems very incongruous that we check the credentials of every author we read, but going to the barber, we just sit down in the chair and say, "Sure, define how I look for the next six weeks...."
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    L.S. Burton
    PictureFarewell, third person bio.




    Lee Burton doesn't have cats or kids, but he does have a lot of books, a couple of mugs he thinks are really fantastic, and a good pair of shoes which haven't fallen apart yet despite his best efforts to murder them with kilometers.

    Burton has written almost six books. Almost six as some are still scantily clad in their respective drawers. Each of them had their own goals and were written differently, and he is very fond of them all -- except perhaps for his first attempt at a novel, which remains a travesty.  That one he keeps locked in a dark basement and feeds it fish heads.

    In 2011, Burton won the Percy Janes Award for Best Unpublished First Novel in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition for his novel Raw Flesh in the Rising.

    And just recently, in the fall of 2013, Burton published his first science-fiction novel, THIS LAND, about which he boasts constantly.

    Available at Amazon

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