Changing Streams in the Middle of a (Dead) Horse

Maybe it’s just my own demented perception (actually, it would pretty much have to be, wunnit?) but it seems that when it comes to Ideas, only two possible states can exist:

1. I have more boffo literary concepts than my little brain and fingers can possibly transform into reality, or,

2. I’m beating a half-dead sack-of-shit horse — forget about the track, I’m just shooting for the truck to the glue factory.

I just realized that they both have the same result: nothing gets accomplished. In the first case, when I hit a snag I change horses in the middle of my stream-of-consciousness (to keep the horsey analogy going, cute!)  In the second case, well, a sack of shit is a sack of shit.

I’ve been jumping between 2-3 different projects, thinking about edits to older pieces and brainstorming on some interesting new markets/projects that have opened up.

I forget that I have the attention span of a moth and the time-management skills of a lemur.

FOCUS, Horace. FOOOCCCUUUSSSS!!

FOCUS. FOOOCUUUSSSSS.

Look! A Story!

I decided to put up a flash story I wrote a while back as a page on this blog.

Yeah, sure, now nobody will ever publish it because it’s on the web, but I submitted the story to a few places and it was rejected so it must suck.

Anyway, it’s called A Common Phobia and it’s now out there for all the world to crap on.  It’s not really horror, just creepor.

Chapped!

Got some good news on the writing front. My story, “Smoked,” was accepted by Bucket ‘O’ Guts Press for publication in 2010 as a chapbook.

I’m psyched. This will be the first a story of mine will be out there all by itself, naked, exposed for all to ridicule. Nate Lambert, the editor, called the story “fucked.” High praise indeed from Mr. Natty Dread himself.

B’O'G is a new outfit, but they’ve started strong with their first title, Catherine J. Gardner’s “The Bitter Aftertaste of Olive Lemon.” Ms. Gardner has a talent for creating nightmare worlds inhabited by characters unsure of their place in the world. Are they part of the dream, or part of the dreamer? Or something worse? Thoughtful and frightening, without a single bucketload of entrails to be found. Gland fans needn’t worry, Ms. Gardner adds tasty dollop of her classy (if twisted) brain to the mix.

My story? All I can say is that Nate better empty out his fucking trough. It’s gonna be a messy ride.

What light through yonder rectum breaks…

Just what the world needs, another post from a middle-aged asshole about his middle-aged asshole.

It’s kind of sad when you realize that the most interesting thing in your life, the only thing you can think to write about is a diagnostic procedure.

(Fuck it. Who am I kidding? Things shoved up butts is pure comedy. The Law of Rectal Penetration states that the size of the laugh is proportional to the size of the object. However, this only applies to inanimate objects; refer to local Sodomy laws for biological guidance.)

So, I drank the salty sea of laxatives, felt the earth move under my shirt, rode the hot spluttering butt-bronco.

Next morning, hungry and caffeineless, I sat in the waiting room awaiting the call.

Didn’t take long.

Cowering naked beneath the scratchy white blanket, I couldn’t help but think about the plumber I called a few Thanksgivings ago to snake my drain (“you gotcherself a serious tree root issue here, friend”) as I was interrogated, calibrated and finally anesthetized.

That was it.

My poop chute was immaculate. Really, the doc complimented me on my thorough cleanout. Maybe I should rent it out as a hamster theme park. Until then,

Habitrails to you!
’til we meeeet aaaa-gain!

I’m on Facebook. Deal with it.

And no, I’m not going to create a goddamn link. Just go to there and do a search. It’s not that hard.

No, I’m not in a bad mood. I just want to write like a goddamn bastard. Or, to steal some intentionally misspelled words, a gaddamn basterd.

Took son to his first Taekwondo test, for his yellow belt. He was awesome. Did his forms, sparred really well and broke a board with his fist. Woo!!!

Can’t say enough nice things about the people that run this place, South Miami Taekwondo. A real community, there were whole families — mom, dad and the kids — on the mat sparring today. I have no problem with slamming Miami for being a huge soul-less carpet of sprawl, but sometimes you need to point out the un-fucked up.

Once in a while.

Slowhand

Slowhand. An excellent thing to remember during sex, and a decent Eric Clapton record.

Slowhand is not a good thing if you’re a writer. Not that there’s anything wrong with my hands.

Have any of you noticed that time is is short supply? There’s a severe time shortage out there, but it hasn’t been in the news, because THE GOVERNMENT IS SUPPRESSING THE STORY!!! If the Truth slipped out and people learned that they only have nine shopping days untIl Xmas, there’d be total mayhem

Something like this happened back when they foisted the Gregorian calendar on an unsuspecting public and — poof! — 11 days vanished.

Don’t know what the game is here, but I suspect a cabal of retailers trying to get out of paying overtime.

I blame Walmart!

All App-ologies

Testing the WordPress app I just put on my iPod.

I apologize to my adoring fan base for not tranmitting the angsty bleatings of my tortured writer’s soul on a more regular basis. Maybe that’ll change if I start using this app on a semi-regular basis.

Now if they just had an app to generate content, I’d be one prolific son of a bitch.

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From Utah, With Love

Well, hell.

Been about a month since I updated this here blog. Twitter is so much less hassle, and is SO much more copacetic to my short attention span.  El Bloggo just doesn’t fit into my awesome fast-moving techno lifestyle.

Blogs are SO 2005-ish. I mean. Really. They have that smell.

In the interest of furthering my goal of total web pimpination, however, I shall now provide you with brief dispatches from my glamorous trans-global jet-setter lifestyle.

Destination: Utah.

Contrary to anticipatory trepidations, I was not forced to sell my wife to the Cult of Mormon in order to enter. Instead, we (me, wife, son) were strapped into a Hyundai Sonata and forced to drive to ridiculously beautiful natural landscapes.  Specifically, Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.  At each of these collections of holes and/or rocks, I felt a strange compulsion to hike until my legs fell off and snap pictures until my index finger was worn to a stub. Also rode a horse, went over rapids in a rubber boat and discovered, while pinned down in a trench by withering crossfire from two guys named Travis, the subtle taste sensation of the elusive Yellow Paintball.

Of course, all this was prelude to the main event.

We cashed in a bunch of miles and flew first class (natch!) and on the return flight from Vegas, I sat in 3C. I had just gotten comfortable when a small young twentyish blond female zipped into 3D before I could get up to let her in.  After a while, she mumbled something like, “uh, looks like the cabin door’s still open… think I’ll go to the lavatory…”

“Go for it,” I said in my suave jetsetterando tone.

She obeyed.

While she was gone, I couldn’t help but notice that she left her boarding pass sitting on the spacious first class armrest.  The name:  Anna Kournikova.

That’s right, kids: I let Anna Kournikova go to the bathroom. 

With great power comes great responsibility, and I kept my cool. Okay, I sniffed my pits. After a week of Utah, you can’t be too careful. Otherwise, I gave no outward sign of recognition when she returned and fiddled with her phone for a while. Soon, it was belts on. She yanked an enormous white pillow out of her bag, slipped on a blindfold, pulled her hood over her head and went to sleep.  Really.  Except for the rock on her left hand worth that was worth more than my house, she looked like just another hibernating nun.

When we set down in Miami, I made a witty comment about the torrential rain. She didn’t say anything.

But that’s just how we roll in the first class cabin.  Subtlety and discretion at 35,000 feet.

Yep. It’s MINE!

Behold! I have been immortalized in circular suburban geography!

View Larger Map

I think I want to be buried there.

Take me down
To HJ park
Dump me in a shallow grave
‘tween the sliding board and swingset
That I may watch the girlies’ bums hear the children play

Wednesday Bloody Wednesday

This morning, my tires slipped on the blood on the parking lot ramp. You can’t cut without somebody bleeding, and yesterday the axe fell hard.

I don’t blog about work much, but it was a hard day, although not as hard for me as it was for six former coworkers.

I work(ed) for a small family owned business with 25 employees. Been in the same location for over 20 years. I’ve worked there for 15 but there were eight with even longer tenure.

And then there were four.

Us programmers were deemed necessary, although two recent hires were also let go.

It made business sense — the victims were all in areas that the Big Company has covered — hardware and documentation. Doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

The silver lining is the benefits: major improvement. The savings on health care will be like a modest raise and my vacation days have effectively been doubled. I really look forward to a going somewhere for more than one week.

I just wish my former coworkers were paid for their time off.