Jake and Elwood Get the Band Back Together

Behold! The blog rises, phoenix-like,from the ashes of neglect.

Actually, it’s more like punting a burning Thanksgiving turkey. Still dead when it hits the ground.

My main excuse for putting the electrodes on this corpse is that I have some stories that will be published over the next few months, and I need to do a little promotion. Or as we call it in the literary world, shameless self-pimpulation and ego–basting..

My last post was on Groundhog’s day. Sadly, this is a representative slice of my prose production, In technical terms, I haven’t written Jack Shit. But I seem to be on a winning streak, I’ve already completed a few grocery lists and they both got good reviews.

More details on my upcoming pubs to come, as well as some fascinating glimpses into my demented psyche are soon to follow..

Groundhog Day: Brain-eating Marmots from Hell!

How appropriate that I would choose this uniquely American day that combines rodent worship, annual resurrection and primitive weather forecasting to update this blog.

Months have passed, and my brain is crammed with more crap than a groundhog burrow. I usually store the good material in my cheeks… but it all came out when I changed my underwear back in October.  Need to stop doing that.

What’s been happening? In literary terms, meet my co-writer, Jack Shit.  Jack has helped me build up a three-month net word count of -19,703.  I submitted a few stories, and one, a reprint, was picked up for an ebook anthology (more later.)

In real life, a lot more action, none of it particularly interesting or pleasant.  Some of it was downright gruesome. Ms. James had surgery for her torn right rotator cuff before Christmas. The surgery was no big deal, but the therapy? Holy fucking Christ on a Kawasaki. If Cheney and Co. really wanted to torture somebody, send them in for shoulder rehab.

Imagine having your arm twisted around your back. Hard. Now imagine if your back was in another room. Insert screaming here.

Then she developed a frozen shoulder… so the doc put her under again for a “manipulation” to bust it loose. Based on the bruises, I think crowbars were involved.

She’s doing better, just getting back to work this week.

Enough medical-themed gayety and tales of middle-aged disintegration for now.

I mean, fur gnaw.

Wake me up when this post is over

I was going to make a post about posting to my blog, but it seemed like an incestuous relationship. The results would probably be stupid and have a low forehead, so I’m pulling out.

So, this is not a post about posting in my blog. I won’t belabor the fact that I’m sitting in a hanging chair on our patio, barefoot with the sun beating down on my keyboard, leaves of the mango tree reflecting in the surface of the pool, lizards sunning lazily etc. etc.

Shit.  Now I’m dozing off.  Fuck it.

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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