Today, a trio of fiction-related questions. Answer one. Answer all three. Or hedge your bets, go for two.

One: What’s missing in fiction today? What don’t you see in books and on bookshelves that you want? The fiction market in a way feels very much like the world of television — it seems more homogenized. Much as television is about cop shows and doctor shows, bookshelves seem overly stuffed with detective books and young adult novels. What do you want to see more of? Anything at all. Genres, literary conventions, character types, time periods, authors who haven’t written in a while, etc.etc.etc. To you, what’s missing? (My answer for this? First, I miss horror. Good horror. I feel like as a genre, it’s bled out to the edges. For the record, I never considered horror a gutter genre, and I thought it was capable of expressing some very powerful things about the human condition and the fears we bring to the table.)

Two: Best bit of writing advice you’ve ever received? From anyone. One piece of advice that you hold close to your body on cold nights, a warm moppet to get you through till morning. (Me, I feel like the best bit I ever received was from my college writing professor, Mike Kobre. You’ve heard me spout it here often enough — roughly said, it’s that in life we avoid conflict, but in fiction we strive for conflict. Fiction is nothing without conflict. It’s why we read.)

Three: In all the books you’ve read — who is your favorite character? (I’m going to have to noodle this one. I’ll toss my answer into the comments a little later today.)

And there you go.

Chew on that, blog donkeys.

(“Blog donkeys?”)

(Shut up.)

They were fairly good rejections, if you can say such a thing. A bad rejection would of course be, “This goofy fuckwad is literary poison; his vile prose caused me to void my bowels all over the neighbor’s cat. And my neighbors are litigious.”

These rejections were mixed, but generally positive — they like my voice, like my writing, even like the book (?!), want to see my future work, but this book might not be “for them.”

That’s okay.

I mean, it wasn’t okay at first. At first, I kind of wanted to drown myself in a dirty bucket.

And then jump in front of a garbage truck.

And finish it off with an Everything bagel, where “Everything” is just short-hand for “bird flu.”

I got over it, though.

I mean, here’s the thing. When it comes to rejections, you can pretty much go one of two ways.

The one way is abject despair. You take the rejection as a sign from the gods that you’re pretty much an asshole — a lesson that the world would be better off with you as a janitor, a speed-bump, a heroin mule.

The other way is you pick yourself up out of the dust, pull the arrow of your chest (yes, this will be painful, try not to cry about it), stuff some clods of clay into the wound, and run headlong back into battle.

Remember: you fail until you succeed. That’s how life is. Life is a game of inches — progress gained in sometimes agonizing increments. Sure, sometimes you make a big leap forward or slide a little backward, but fuck it, what else are you going to do? Tuesday didn’t go well; are you going to stab yourself in the temple with an icepick just so you don’t have to see Wednesday?

Writing sometimes feels like a miserable, masochistic career choice, but it also has dizzying highs that really can’t be ignored. Plus, you do it because you can’t do anything else. Frankly, I’ve painted my talentless self into a corner over here: I have one talent, and one talent only: juggling infants writing.

What the hell else am I going to do?

You come out the other side of rejection and, if you’re the real deal, I think it starts to go beyond despair and it moves toward happy, ardent rage — a kind of wide-eyed tooth-baring zeal. Suddenly, you come to realize that these rejections aren’t badges of shame, but rather, motherfucking battle scars. It’s some Viking shit. Your rejections are proof that you’re not just talking the talk, but you’re walking the walk.

Hell, you’re crawling through trenches.

You’re stabbing guys in the neck with your pen.

With your mighty manuscript you’re batting screeching Valkyries into the mud and smashing their heads with your laptop.

You know what makes a real writer? Rejections, that’s what. That’s what separates the talkers from the doers — guys who staple rejections to their chest and wade into the fray with those very same rejections as their armor, well, they’re the ones fighting the battles to win the war. Everybody else is just pretending.

So, that’s the realization you need to come to with rejections.

Badges of honor.

Battle-scars.

Proof that you’re doing shit.

Yes, you need to learn from rejection. You just keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, well, that’s textbook crazy. Or dictionary stupid.

But you learn.

You move forward.

You stab, boot, kick, and bellow your barbaric yawp.

That’s what I’m going to do.

Right after I finish eating this bird flu bagel.

I am forever in search of tips and tricks to keep me walking the balance beam during the course of writing a big project, especially a novel. I forgot how daunting a process this is — and I say this after having completed it like, six other times now. You get halfway through and you start wondering: how did I get naked? Why am I wearing a cardboard box on my head? Is that an emu? Why is it so angry?

Basically, it’s madness. It’s chimps on a chandelier. It’s moonshine in the water cooler.

So I had this idea, and I’m going to try it, just to see what it does for me.

For my protagonist — just to start — I’m going to write down six things I want to keep in mind as I write. Why six? Fuck, I dunno. Arbitrary numbers for the win. Could be five. Could be seven. More or less and I think you’re muddying the waters, but what do I know? I’m just a wordsmithing prole.

I’ll call these “trigger words.”

I might write down:

Haunted.

Daddy issues.

Magic hat.

Blind in one eye.

Hoary vengeance.

Just so, when I’m going from chapter to chapter, I know to keep my eye on the prize, so to speak. In the middle of a chapter, when the chimp is throwing shoes at my head and my mouth tastes of wormwood, I can blink through the shrooming haze and say, “Yes! I mustn’t forget about Daddy Issues!” And then I vomit in a sand pail and wade back into the narrative fray.

See, you could do these trigger words for a whole lot of things. Other characters. A setting. Six thematic trigger words. Whatever. The world is your enchilada. Take a bite.

What I’m saying is, in the new house, I need a motherfucking whiteboard. A big motherfucker. And maybe a corkboard, too. And possibly a robot butler.

Anyway.

So.

You. Your turn.

What do you do in the midst of a project to keep focus?

What is the rope to which you cling? Tips? Tricks?

I Know, I Know, It Says “Shotguns”

An astute reader (who shall remain nameless cough cough Rob Spidle) said something along the lines of, “Hey, dipshit, that image you keep including with your image is from a revolver, not a shotgun. DURRRR.” Then he threw a cat at my head, which was rude to me, and rude to the cat.

Still, yes, Rob had a point.

That image:

…is not of a shotgun.

I am not a guntard, I just chose that image because, well, I thought it didn’t suck. I’ve tried taking good photos (closeup and/or macro) of shotguns, and it just hasn’t come out right. Going to keep on experimenting, but for now, the above picture is of a trigger guard…

Aaaaaand, no, it’s not of a shotgun, either. It’s actually a Pedersoli muzzleloader, so, y’know. But you wouldn’t really know that by looking at it, as opposed to, say, looking at the cylinder of a revolver.

Anyway.

Just thought I’d clear that up.

No, I’m not an idiot.

… wait, yes, I am, just not about that.

Justin Cronin’s The Passage

I’m just starting up The Passage.

I have to tell you, the opening of the book is not how I’d suggest starting a novel, but goddamnit if it doesn’t work. For a novel that’s about the horror and the end times and the vampire-monsters, the opening is very mundane, very character-based, and on a technical read, a little slow. But fuck it, it doesn’t matter, it’s a really nice clean open. It focuses right on the characters, and it moves right into the fast-moving waters of human tragedy without a hint of the supernatural horror that is sure to come. Further, the guy writes like, giant honking paragraphs and sentences that sort of… amble on.

Again, not things I recommend, and yet, things that work in his hands.

Proof positive that you have to find the rules that work for you, and discard the rest. I’ve long held the notion that writing advice is valuable, not because each piece is a critical component to be plugged into your repertoire, but rather that each piece is something you bring up for consideration — and, by thinking about these things, by making decisions about how you’ll handle things, you become a better writer.

Or, if not better, at least a self-aware writer. A writer who knows how to duplicate the good and steer clear of the bad — at least, in terms of grammar, spelling, characterization, story, and so forth. It won’t help you steer clear of that tequila bottle. Or that bottle of candy-coated Percocet. Or all that illicit puppet sex.

PUPPET SEX.

What were we talking about?

Right. Book.

So, the novel’s good so far. But I’m only 30-40 pages in. Which leads to…

Cold Molasses Drip

I’m a slow reader these days, which kills me — but my time to read is minimal. I carve out a little portion of the day to read, but that’s sandwiched between all the other stuff. I could read at night, but reading at night puts me to sleep in about, ohhh, 15 minutes, so 20 pages later I’m snoozing. I could read in the evening, but that’s time spent with the wife. And the one sad fact about books is, when you read a book you’re ultimately alone. Unless of course you read to your kids. I don’t have kids yet. I have dogs. And whenever I read to them they just look irritated. Then they poison the air with toxic gas and waddle off. What jerks..

Anybody else have this “slow reader” problem? Am I alone? I know some of you churn through books. How do you manage in your adult lives? Second, unrelated question: how do you manage in your adult diapers?

Uhhh. No reason.

*gently nudges box of Depends under the desk*

Burn Notice Is Fucking Awesome Shut Up No You Shut Up

This is not a robust update, but:

Burn Notice is pretty great.

I’ll have a rant about the release schedule later in the week, but for now I’ll simply say that we got through the 3rd season, and it’s a corker. Just ass-kicking all the way through. Big recommendation.

That is all.

New Inception Theories (Spoilers)

So, two new elements have come into play, re: deciphering the Inception narrative puzzle.

The first is, the Hans Zimmer score (the recognizable one: BRUMMMM) is actually just the Edith Piaf song slowed down, which is fucking awesome, because in the same way that rain in the real world affects the dream, the music in the real world affects the dream and the score which means it’s affecting us. The audience. Which is batshit. Total meta-weirdness. Oh, the video:

The second is this whole wedding ring theory, which shows that Cobb wears the ring when he’s in the dream but not in reality so, at the end he’s not wearing the ring, so…?

In a weird way, the Hans Zimmer score is the audience’s totem.

The ring is Cobb’s real totem, not the spinning top.

Fascinating shit.

For all my criticisms of the film’s story, I have to say: I can’t help but noodle it.

Well played, Nolan brothers, well played.

Wendighaus 2.0 Updates

Just as an FYI, I asked you questions, and you answered, and that was awesome.

Went ahead and made some choices.

Cookware, I settled on, well, not All-Clad. It was just too darn expensive. The set was in our price range, but the set also had pieces I didn’t really want. The individual pieces were super-pricey. Plus, then you have the complexity that buying online might net you a China-made All-Clad starter pan as opposed to the USA-made cookware. Which is not good eats.

So, instead went with the Marcus Samuelsson 10-piece set, which is a well-reviewed multi-clad stainless on par with the All-Clad but inexpensive because it’s discontinued. Even still: lifetime warranty and US-made.

For a grill, I waver between the Big Green Egg and a Weber Genesis E-320. Neither are cheap, which means I might waver myself right into a cheaper alternative, but time will tell.

The Keys To The Clubhouse

As noted yesterday, I could kindly use five bloggers to hop on board the terribleminds train and kick up some crazy word count for me while I move into the Wendighaus 2.0.

You threw your hats into the ring, and I picked names out of a hat. Maybe the same hat. I dunno. It was a Fez. With sequins. It was filled with monkey droppings. Is it yours? (I know it isn’t Doyce’s — his is velvety and dispenses both Skittles and Rogaine.)

Anyway, here are the five seven unlucky lucky folks!

Andrea Phillips!

Doyce Testerman!

Chris Simmons!

Maggie Carroll!

Dan O’Shea!

Matt McFarland!

Kate Horsley!

Wait — seven? Mmm, yeah. First, just in case anybody is unable to do it in the end, then I have backups, and further, it’s not impossible that I won’t have blog-ready ‘Net access until Monday, so seven posts means I’m covered either way. That work for you crazy kids?

If you need topics, I can supply ‘em, but feel free to do your own thing, too.

For the record, you peeps who did blog posts before, I took your names back out of the hat.

So, if you cats and kittens are down with it, I’ll need blog posts (of ~500-1000 words, but don’t feel married to that word count) by August 6th. Preferably early in the day so I can get ‘em lined up and plugged in.

You can send them to me at chuckwendig [at] terribleminds [dot] com.

Earlier guest posts can be found right here.

Any questions?

(Oh, and no links for today — too busy-busy.)

]]> http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2010/07/28/painting-with-shotguns-xlvi/feed/ 29 http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2010/07/27/who-wants-a-fat-meaty-hunk-of-terribleminds/ http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2010/07/27/who-wants-a-fat-meaty-hunk-of-terribleminds/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:01:00 +0000 terribleminds http://terribleminds.com/ramble/?p=5338 Chaos descends on Der Wendighaus.

It isn’t here yet.

For now, it’s a distant storm, turbid and muddy. Lightning crackles betwixt distant clouds. Winds keen and howl. A pegasus rides a hot updraft, shooting lasers from its eyes, spraying acid from its teats.

I dunno.

What’s gonna happen is, come Monday, August 9th, my week is probably going to go to hell. We move out of this house on Tuesday and into the new house on Wednesday, and it looks like Internet (FiOS) won’t arrive until Thursday at the earliest, so it’s a good bet that my bloggery will go dark during that week. And nobody wants that. And by “nobody,” I mean, “just me,” since most of you poor bastards would probably welcome the respite.

Too damn bad.

I shan’t let this bulwark of bloggerel and bloviation go dark! Nay! Fie! Forsooth! For naught! And other words and exclamations! Pbbt!

The only way I can ensure that radio silence does not descend upon this site is by turning over the keys to you crazy loons. I did this before when hop-skipping off to the Sundance Labs, and the results were troubling. I had to pull someone’s panties out of the garbage disposal. A syphilitic possum lay dormant under the couch. Someone threw up blood and Tic-Tacs in the fridge. It was a bad week. But hey, we all made it through, and with only a few tightening turns of the Allen wrench (this blog, after all, was purchased at Ikea, home of the Allen wrench), I once again got her ship-shape. Or tip-top. Or ship-top and tip-shape.

Heck, you’ve probably already noticed that I’ve been a little quieter than usual — fewer comments, fewer tweets. It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s just — well. Chaos looms. Looms.

So.

During that week, I could use five blog entries. Sure, sure, I could write ‘em myself. But I’m lazy charitable. I’d like to overestimate explain the potential exposure you could get. This place gets at least at least 10000 1000 500 15 views a day. That’s some exciting shit.

Okay, it’s probably not that exciting.

But, I’d appreciate you doing me the favor.

Anybody up for the task of writing one of the five?

Say, 500 to 1000 words?

Write whatever you damn well please. Flash fiction. Angry ranty-ravy bloggery. An ode to your most private parts thoughts. It’s on you. Hop on into the comments, let me know if you want a slicey-slice of this mangy majestic beast. If I get more than five people, well, I might take more, or maybe I’ll pick names out of a hat or divine the choices from a handful of pigeon guts.

I’d need the post by Friday the 6th of August.

Who’s in?

But should it matter to me, the writer? Should your voice matter to you?

Shit, I don’t know.

I don’t know that I could identify my own voice, and I’m trying to ascertain the value in picking apart those things that identify my so-called voice. What characteristics go in there? (Profanity, I guess. Or, excuse me: profanity, motherfuckers.) On the one hand, I think it’d be interesting to pull it apart, see what elements comprise one’s voice for good or for ill. Maybe even allow some course correct.

Then again, if voice is something really unique to the author, then it is in that way like a fingerprint, a kind of authorial DNA trapped in the amber of your language. By cutting it apart and prying it betwixt your mental fingers, are you damaging it? Or, at the least, do you or could you become paranoid about it? Obsessed with its sound, its movement, its tempo? Would it be suddenly like hearing your voice back on a recording? “Christ, I sound nasal. Is that me? That doesn’t sound like me. That sounds like some jerkoff. I hate this guy. I hate his voice. Is someone pinching his nostrils shut? What a dickhole.”

So, I put the question to you:

Of what value is the authorial voice? Your own, and the voice of other writers and storytellers.

Do you know the sound of your own storytelling voice? Do you know what elements go into it, what components help to define it?

Is it a fool’s errand?

Inception is many things to many people: a straightforward thriller, a happy ending, a con-game on the lead character, a con-game on the audience, a metaphor for filmmaking –

But as with any dream, you can fall deeper.

Each new way of seeing the film is like one of the phantasmagoric layers in the film itself: go deeper and time distorts, and abstraction becomes the rule of the day.

Here’s an abstraction, then: Inception is a metaphor for storytelling.

To be frank, I’m not going to go chopping that apart to see all the fiddly bits, but what I do know is that Inception has a lot to teach writers and storytellers. I don’t mean that the way the film was written or made has lessons, though that’s likely true — no, what I mean to suggest is that the nature of Inception’s story, and in particular the rules about dreams and dream architecture, can help inform the way you tell stories.

So that’s what we’re doing here today.

You want to know what you, as a writer, as a storyteller, can learn from watching the tangled Gordian-knot-plot of the film unfold? Then read on.

(Light spoiler warnings, of course. Just about the rules and laws of the land.)

One: Convince Them That This Is Not A Dream

The first goal of the Cobb’s team in Inception is that they must convince the dreamer that this is not a dream. This, then, is your first goal as a storyteller: to convince the audience that it is not a story.

They must become lost in the world you build, in the tale you tell. An audience who is hyper-aware of the storyness of your story is then hyper-aware of all the mis-steps you make, of all of the paths you take, of all the predictions possible. The audience isn’t lost. You want them lost. You want them forgetting that what they’re doing is reading a book, watching a movie, playing a game.

How do you do that? Well, perhaps Inception tells us.

Two: Control The Audience With An Unseen Hand

Cobb knows the deal: to get what you want from the dream, you have to control the dreamer. It gets mixed up in terms of storytelling, but the gist remains the same: if the audience is going to get what they want from the story, then the storyteller must control the audience.

Cobb’s team members each possess a role, and in a way, you as storyteller must assume some of these roles, too. You create characters as The Forger. You create worlds as the Architect. As the Extractor, you go even deeper, creating themes and moods and meanings and metaphors — the Extractor’s job builds in those details that bind it all together. (I could even get goofy here and suggest that the Point Man and the Tourist are best represented by an agent and editor, respectively — but you could also argue that it’s your job to edit your own material as a stranger to it, as someone cautious and pragmatic.)

And you must do all this with an unseen hand.

The audience doesn’t want to know it’s being herded.

This is especially true of storytelling in game design: players must get from Point A to Point B, but they do not want to feel your hand urging them forth. And yet, that hand must be there. As they convince Fischer that the inception was his idea, not theirs, so you must convince the audience that what they get from it is born from their own minds, not from yours. They go to Point B by their own inclination… or so they think.

Three: Remember, The Subconscious Fills In Details

My favorite of all the rules is this one, because it allows you as the storyteller to relax, to let go of control. In Inception, they build dream-worlds, but they do not populate those worlds with details they don’t need, and the reason they do this is because the dreamer brings a boatload of that to the table.

Same thing works with storytelling.

You do not need to describe everything.

What you do not bring, the reader will.

The reader will envision the crowds if you tell them they are there. The reader will envision the flowers on the table, the fixtures on the wall, the plane flying overhead.

Your job is only to provide those most critical details, those details that are crucial to the con or key to the theme or mood — let the audience do the heavy lifting. They will. They want to.

Hell, they need to. We see patterns where they do not exist. We fill in gaps with details. It’s part of our nature as human beings. You, as storyteller, can use this. Let the audience mind the gap.

Four: Beware — The Projections Will Rebel

In the film, if you violate the dream, the dreamer — via his subconscious projections — becomes aware of the false nature and slowly rebels. The projections amass, violent and mindless as a horde of zombies.

Once more, a lesson to be learned for the storyteller: if your architecture is false, if you break the rules and conventions you’ve put into place, if you change too much (a character no longer acts like a character, for instance), then the audience becomes aware of your callous storytelling machinations — they see the pulleys and curtains and Deus Ex Machinas descending from ropes. This too speaks very much to the need for authenticity: authenticity to the genre, to your own rules, to your own story, characters, to your own voice. Betray that authenticity and you betray the audience.

And when this happens, the audience rebels.

Worst case scenario, they rebel by turning off the movie, quitting the game, or putting the book down on the nightstand — never again picking it up.

Five: The Truth About Inception Is An Old Law, Indeed

An inception only works if you convince the dreamer it was his own idea. And the way you do this is by trickery, and that trickery means you orchestrate a con around the target. In storytelling terms, this moves into familiar advice: show, don’t tell. You cannot tell the dreamer the idea of inception and have it take hold: but if you show them a path and let them take it, the idea becomes their own and then like a plant it grows roots. (Deep roots, if you’re a truly gifted storyteller.)

It’s critical advice for storytelling: you tell the audience something, they’re aware that it amounts to instructions, and the audience isn’t fond of instructions. Think of every reader, player, and watcher as someone suffering from Oppositional Defiant Disorder: they buck authority and don’t like being told what to do. And so the best storytellers show: they paint the picture with a distant hand.

Too many writers tell us things. It feels false. It feels forever like their idea, not yours.

But let the audience own the idea, and now your story is their story.

(That, too, is a good lesson for game design and transmedia experiences — show them the way, but do not tell it to them. Allow them to claim ownership over the story and the world.)

Six: Find Your Minotaur In The Maze

Final lesson:

We all have a Mal in the dream, a minotaur in the maze.

Meaning, we each have demons that haunt the halls of our storytelling architecture — sometimes we can turn these demons to good use, especially if they are demons made of our own fears and foibles. Because we as writers can use our fears and frailties and make something powerful of them. But sometimes the demons are not so useful: they are our crutches, our darlings, our worst inclinations during the telling of a story. They are demons of over-confidence and laziness, of stung ego and damaged esteem.

The one thing that is certain is that, like with Cobb in Inception, we better become aware of our maze-bound minotaurs lest we keep running into them again and again without warning or understanding. Every time we write we will fall into the same traps because we are not self-aware. But once we see the nature of what lurks in our story-built buildings and what walks our narrative alleys, we can deal with it.

We can either use it by turning it to our benefit.

Or we can kill the beast by running a sword through its heart.

I said something along the lines of “Blah blah blah, good writers should be widely read within the halls of the Classics.” And then I probably did a merry little jig or said something profane.

Today, I say something along the lines of, “Blah blah blah, good writers better know good poetry from a hole in the ground.” And then I’ll probably do cartwheels or throw up on myself.

Poetry.

I admittedly have a mixed reaction to poetry, and that, frankly, is not poetry’s fault. Rather, it’s the fault of high school (and to a lesser degree, college), where those studying poetry are confronted by two factors:

One, students insist — and many teachers agree — that poetry is “up for interpretation.” This is true, as all things are up for interpretation, but it does not mean, as they seem to intend it, that in an academic environment you’re supposed to “get what you want” out of it. Poetry is not a mirror. We are not meant to see ourselves in every poem. We are meant to see the author and his experience, not our experience as a reader. A poem means something. The poet did not compose it as a generic tabula rasa so that you could come along with your smelly markers and write whatever you want in that wide gulf of blank space.

No, a poet had intent. Your job is to orbit that intent, to see what the poet was trying to tell you, not what you want to hear. Again, academically, at least. What you do in the comfort of your own home is your own business. Up to and including a ribald bout of cackling Onanism.

Two, students are further confronted with the poetry of… other students. Which is, 95% of the time, total fucking pants. It’s not their fault, really. Teenagers up and down the pike are deeply solipsistic and Narcissistic and it’s hard for them to look beyond their own admittedly meager frame of existence and provide something that is lyrical, powerful, insightful. Unfortunately, it tends to set a very low bar for poetry at that age and helps confirm the idea that poetry is a bunch of whiny emo piffle.

It’s not true. Poetry is a beautiful thing in the hands of a master or mistress of the form.

And so, I say to you:

Read poetry to find those masters and mistresses. Poetry in fiction writing isn’t really proper — you’ll lean perhaps too far toward the purple — but that doesn’t mean you should eschew poetic language. My made-up ratio is 90/10 — I reserve a good 10% of my manuscript for truly poetic conventions, where I unclip the leash from the collar and let the word-beast run for a little while.

So, poetry will help you in your writing.

Further, good poetry tells stories.

It isn’t overly drawn-out language.

Poetry itself needn’t be purple.

Thus shall we now discuss poetry.

Get on down in the comments. Things I’d love to hear from you, if you’re willing to share: favorite poems? Favorite poets? Poems you dislike? Forms you love, forms you don’t? Further, poetry is one of those forms you can find free on the Internet and in apps — for instance, the Poetry Foundation’s “Poetry Tool” (pretty cool, check it) also has a free iPhone app. Mystery is, I can’t find the app mentioned on their page — and trust me, the app is cooler because you can spin the wheel for mood or topic, or just shake the phone for a random poem. So, if you know good poetic resources — free ones — shoot ‘em in comments, too.

If you please.

I’ll add my two cents later on — for now, other writing beckons.

Then we went to get Rita’s Water Ice.

This is when the eventful portion of the night began.

Part One

First, at Rita’s, some scraggly meth-hungry hillfolk brought their little rat-tail children to pow-wow by the trashcans while we’re in line. Meanwhile, an old very heavy lady wheeled up in her Jazzy motorized chair and then scooted her cart up to the one child and pointed to a ring of New Orleans-style beads around his neck. She commented that they were lovely beads, then asked him:

“Did your mother do what I think she did to get those beads?”

Meaning, of course, “Did your whore mother show her titties to get you those beads?”

Alternate variation: “Nice Buzz Lightyear toy. Did your mother take it in the face for that? Did she get tag-teamed by two well-hung gentleman on a gym mat? Did she schtup a donkey in Tijuana?”

Part Two

After Rita’s, we wanted to swing by a store or two and look at grills.

On the way, we passed by a Rite-Aid.

As we passed, two cop cars were flying into the parking lot, lights and sirens a-whirl.

Two cops were already rushing out, guns drawn, yelling at someone.

One of the cops was a plainclothes.

We kept driving.

Part Three

On the way home, with lightning crackling in the distance, I drove by and veered away from some kind of road-killed critter.

And then I thought, dang, that animal looked weird.

Like, it had kind of an Ewok face.

And it was the size of a child’s doll, so I thought — y’know, I bet that was a doll.

Still, its little face was kind of haunting.

So, I spun the car around and tried to get a good look from the other direction. No luck. Went to the end of the street, turned around again, and came back for one more curious pass.

The creature was now sitting up.

About, well, in Smurf terms, three apples high.

I figured, fucking Hell, that’s weird. So I stopped, put on my four ways and got out.

Lo and behold: a little owl. Red-headed. Surrounded by some (of its?) feathers.

I thought, hey, this owl’s probably dead. Or dying. He must’ve gotten hit by a car. Except then I started wondering, how the shit does someone drive over an owl? It’s not like owls are known for just… chilling out on the ground. “Hey, whassup. I’m an owl. Suck my dick.”

Still, though, he was sitting up. He wasn’t before.

I stomped my foot next to him just to get a reaction, and he kind of did this quiver-headed bug eyed look in my general direction. So he was certainly alive. I then tapped him in the head, deeply certain that this was the stupidest thing a man could do — I was surely hitting its Claw My Goddamn Eyes out button, and next thing I know he’d have a Kung Fu grip on my cornea.

But no, again, I got the bug-eyed freak-stare.

The wife was out of the car, asking me what’s up — I mean, we were standing in the middle of the road and everything. (Some cars did pass us by, and didn’t give one whit that I was there with my flashers on using my cell phone as some kind of flashlight. Thanks, fuckfaces.)

New plan, I thought. I grabbed the owl delicately by the scruff of the neck. He kicked and his wings went a little wild, but the one didn’t seem to work so well. I deposited him on the side of the road just beyond the guardrail — in the weeds preceding some woods.

Then I got back in the car and the wife (wisely) wanted to make sure the owl was actually okay, because, I dunno, we would play Owl Doctors or Owl Transport System or something.

Pulled over, got back out, found the owl again in the light.

He was just sitting there.

I figured, okay, he’s hit. Those feathers, the wing, this is telling me something — the owl took a bounce and, shit, maybe he’s going to die. So I keep using my iPhone light to look him over, and he’s kind of watching me and following the light and doing this cute little blinky thing. I finally return the light to him and I guess that was just irritating enough because –

Well, he got up and took flight. He flew straight, then up into the woods, and then he was gone.

Way I see it, we irritated an owl just enough to keep him alive.

Go us.

Now I probably am Ground Zero for some kind of dangerous Owl Flu.

Good times.

Sexy-Time Salad

Been a while since I slapped you in the mouth with a hot tasty recipe, right? Right. Thus, it’s time. Except this recipe ain’t hot in the temperature sense. It’s cool. Chill. But it’s hot like sexy. It’s hot like fishnet stockings. It’s hot like that scene in Ghost with the wheel of clay. Yeah. Nnnggh. Swoon.

Anyway. This is based off a number of recipes, one of them being Eric Ripert’s Papaya Salad from (of all places) Entertainment Weekly magazine. But I like to put a whole lot more in there.

I will preface this with the overarching instruction:

PUT ALL THIS SHIT IN A BOWL AND MIX IT THE FUCK AROUND.

Okay? Okay. Let’s do this.

Take a large green papaya, then peel it, deseed it, and before you slice it into a matchstick cut, marvel at the way it looks like a Georgia O’Keefe painting. Which is to say, like a vagooha.

Then, one ripe-ass motherfucking mango, preferably the King Of Mangoes, the Champagne Mango. If you want to watch some goofy douche cut a mango, here it is. But that’s not sexy. And I assure you, cutting a mango should be sexy. You want to get your fingers up in there. Get ‘em sticky. Then rip it apart in a fit of roaring anger! And throw it on the floor and kick a dent in your fridge!

Wait, that last part isn’t sexy.

Uhhh. Just scoop it out and cut it into slices. Lick the juices from your fingers if you like.

Last and final fruit: the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the Garden of Eden, the apple. (Shut up, I know the fruit of the Garden was probably a pomegranate — or maybe even some kind of mysterious Jesus Fruit.) Peel it, get it into thin slicey-slivers. (Also: Jesus Fruit is the name of my new band.)

Peel a small carrot. Another matchstick (or, if you’re froofy-toity, Julienne) cut.

Two small cucumbers, de-seeded. Run them through your Mandoline, or, if you’re like me and are certain the Mandoline will try to eat your fingers (one millimeter at a time), just use your chef’s knife to slice ‘em as papery as you’re capable of getting them.

Two scallions. Slicey slice, thin little scallion sphincters.

Cilantro. A fist full. Dice it up nice.

A knob of ginger: mince it, or grate it up. And by “knob,” I either mean, measure it against the head of your robust man-spire, or compare it to one of the knobs on your cabinets. That’s up to you, sweet babies.

Two tablespoons of agave syrup — or, if you’re not a millionaire and don’t have agave syrup, just go with two TBsp of straight-up granulated sugar.

Two tablespoons of rice wine vinegar.

Two tablespoons of fish sauce.

One teaspoon dark sesame oil.

One teaspoon mirin.

A sprinkling of salt.

A smack of crack black pepper.

One lime (or two if they’re small), cut it, squeeze out all the juice.

Again, to reiterate the earlier instruction:

PUT ALL THIS SHIT IN A BOWL AND MIX IT THE FUCK AROUND.

When that’s done, crumble some crushed peanuts on top of the portioned out, er, portions.

Let it marinate for as long as you care to. I say an hour.

That is a sexy-time salad.

For maximum sexiness, make it in the nude.

With nothing on but a medieval plague mask and a giraffe’s tail butt plug.

(Don’t forget the strobe lights.)

Search Term Bingo (Now With Added Civility)

Time, once again, for another profound round of Search Term Bingo. This time, I tried to choose stuff that wasn’t precisely… y’know, profane. A difficult task, I assure you. Still, here goes! Ready to play? Woooo!

extreme strangling

Is there some other kind of strangling I’m not aware of? This feels redundant to me. Like “wet ocean” or “racist Tea Party member.” Can you strangle someone gently? Surely that’s ineffective. I mean, if you’re going to go to the effort of strangling, you best get serious. Go extreme or go home. Or, rather, EXXXTR3M3 STRANGLING!!!1!! OMG!!1 *fart noise*

why do some people think beards are dirt

Because some people are confused and believe that hobos — who can only grow dirt beards — are human beings. Hobos are not humans and should not be treated as such. Our beards are real. They are not the same as a hobo dirt beard, which as noted, is just a beard made out of dirt. Dirty dirt. Ptoo. Foul hobos. Begone from this plane! Thou shalt not pass!

damn Linda’s list

Yeah. Damn it right in the ass. Linda doesn’t know shit about shit. Linda’s all over there, putting things in order. Making her list. Of stuff. Whatever. Whatever! You know what I say? I say damn Linda’s list. Stupid goddamn Linda and her lists.

what does it mean when ypy feep dizzy

I don’t know, but I really hope that somewhere “Ypy Feep Dizzy” is some kind of magical word. Like, you whisper it into the knot of an oaktree and it opens up and yields to you a ripe bounty of elf-made cookies. And the little elf assholes are scurrying around like ants with ant eggs after you kick over the ant hill, and you’re all like, “Ha ha ha, stupid tree elfs! I eat your cookies, then I eat you!”

how to write drunk dialogue

Just use a lot of “*hic* and *vomit.*

So, like:

“Hey, then I says to the broad — *hic!* — you shut your whore mouth and — *vomit* — damn that Linda’s list, damn it right in the — *poops pants, falls asleep* ZZZzzzz.”

That’s how you write some drunk dialogue.

attacked by a pack of marmots

Then what are you doing on the Internet? Those things carry the bubonic plague. I’m not fucking around. Marmots are plague-bearing bastards. It doesn’t matter how cute they are…

Wait, what’s this…?

Oh, hell with it. If they have the plague, so what? So cute. So cute. Gimme that gingerbread cookie, marmot. Give me a sugary taste of crunchy plague germs. Mmmm. Nom nom nom.

how to rewrite your brain settings

Car battery. Wires. Hooked to your nuts. Or “lady parts” if you have those. Bzzt. Enjoy.

writing is like having a baby

It’s probably not.

meez why doesnt my double punch work

Because you didn’t do the combo right. Asshole. (Meez?)

jesus spelled backwards bacon

This is technically incorrect: Jesus spelled backwards is Sausage (er, Susej). But spiritually, yes. This is accurate. Jesus spelled backwards is bacon. It’s in the Bible. Like, all over the place.

urinals for sale with spiders on them

This is alarmingly specific. Are you trying to terrify the males of our species? Because, man, newsflash: spiders near my junk is not what the Pee-Pee Doctor ordered. I’m getting the shivers just thinking about it. Some spider doing a little tap-dance on the head of my One-Up Mushroom? No. No! No.

what to do when you publicly wet yourself

Own it. Just own it. Do a dance. Point to it. Try to convince others that it’s a fierce trend and they should do it, too. Rub it on them. Wave its ammonia fragrance at passersby.

beard trimmings as a squirrel repellent

No. Don’t you dare do that. You know what will happen, right? One of two things. First, the squirrel will glue those beard trimmings to its face with pigeon’s blood and then gain the power to walk amongst us as if human. Or two, it will eat the beard trimmings and gain a measure of our earthly power. Plus, you give the squirrel access to your bank account. Which means that squirrel will start racking up squirrel porn.

clawfoot tub hobo

The deadliest hobo known to man.

is it ok to let my son suck on my feet?

Yes, as long as you don’t mind if your son gets some kind of irreparable tooth fungus. I mean, Jesus, dude. Get your feet out of your kid’s fucking mouth. That is nas-tay. You should be dragged behind a horse.

im a little man and would like a beard

The measure of a man is in his beard, my good sir. Abraham Lincoln said that. If Abraham Lincoln is actually me. Which he is. I did not die that night at the theater. I lived on, saved by a bolt of lightning from Ben Franklin’s magic kite, powered by a tribe of seven angry ghosts!

fun ways to keep your man engaged during sex

Two words: squeaky toys.

epic tits won’t clean

WELL TELL EPIC TITS TO GET SCRUBBING BECAUSE THAT HUNGARIAN GOULASH I SPILLED ON THE LINOLEUM ISN’T GOING TO GODDAMN JOLLY WELL CLEAN ITSELF.

A Tiny Itty-Bitty Thank You

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you who cheered my ass up the other day with helpful ideas and all that what-nottery. You’re all lovely people. Just don’t get a big head about it. Narcissists.

The Internet Is A Series Of Links, And Also, Squirrel Porn

I give you links.

You want to know how my writing partner and I handle story? Lance gives me a shout-out over at Filmmaker Magazine in his “Culture Hacker” column. Story is king, folks. Check it out right here.

The absolutely funniest shit you will read this week is from screenwriter Josh Friedman’s blog. This entry — SLEDGEHAMMER AND WHORE — is… it’s really fucking sublime. I saw this float around earlier in the week and it continues to whirl about. You need that.

Yes, yes there will be an Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon spin-off. Count me in.

Frank Bill’s novel DONNYBROOK is now scheduled for publication thanks to Uber-Agent Stacia Decker. Congrats to Frank — I was fortunate enough to read it already, and man, Frank Bill ain’t right in the head in all the bed ways. It’s a raw, dirty, kick-ass book and it deserves your attention.

Dan O’Shea draws dirty scribbles in the margins of his new online notebook.

That is all.