Category: The Ramble (page 139 of 479)

Why yes, it is that time of the year again. That time when you, a person who has a Precious Penmonkey in their lives, wonders aloud, “What the fuck do I buy for a writer? Do they need food pellets? Are they powered by bees? Do I just throw notebooks and pens at them until they write a masterpiece? WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE.”

And here is where I appear out of the earth — like a ghost except made of lava because how cool is a lavaghost? — and give you some much-needed help. Here are some gift options for the Precious Penmonkey in your life. In your house. Possibly even in your heating ducts.

(For previous year lists –>)

(Gifts for Writers 2016)

(Gifts for Writers 2015)

(Gifts for Writers 2014)

Yep, I’m Going To Be Giddily Shameless

I wrote a book. It’s called Damn Fine Story. It’s not about writing, per se, but it is about storytelling — how to frame and shape your narrative, how to let characters lead the way, how to use metaphor and theme, and so forth. It also explains how my father lost his pinky finger and it talks a lot about Star Wars and Die Hard and, hey, you know what, just stop here and buy it. Buy it for your writer pal. It isn’t a one-stop shop for easy answers, but it hopefully will challenge them to look at their stories in a new way. Grab it in print or ebook. For a bonus round, check out my bundle of writing-related e-books here. THANK YOU FOR ENDURING MY SHAMELESS FROTHING. Please reward yourself with a cookie.

White Noise Machine

In case you haven’t noticed, 2017 is a year of shenanigans — it is the Epoch of Deepest Dipshittery, the Timeline of Wonky Whatfuckery. It’s an endless barrage of nonsense coming at you from all angles. The news alone is like being covered in biting ants, always, eternally, impossibly. It’s ants and ants and more ants. This is legitimately difficult for us word-wrangling writerfolk, because we will lose ourselves to the crawling and the biting. And so, we need distractions. One distraction that’s been helpful for me both in writing and in sleeping? Blissful white noise. You can use various apps or white noise albums, but a white noise machine makes a nice gift for underneath the Holiday-Neutral Joy-Shrub of choice. If want something that plugs into the wall, the Red Rooster machine is nice. If you’d prefer something with a bunch more sounds and powered by USB, this Pictek model is handy. Or you can just stand over them and go WHOOSH SHHHH FSSHHHH HOOOOOOFFFSSSSSHHH all night long, I don’t care, you do you.

Noise-Canceling Headphones

I’ve recommended good headphones before, but it behooves (as above) offering ones that CANCEL OUT THE ENDLESS NOISE OF THE STUPIDEST TIMELINE IN WHICH WE CURRENTLY EXIST. No headphones will drown them out permanently, but good ones can offer a pleasant escape temporarily for your favorite penmonkey, either while writing or while on a plane (as many of us travel semi-frequently). If you want something kinda luxe, these Sennheiser bluetooth muffs are pretty rad — though a less-expensive Sony wired version (noise isolating) can work, too. Good headphones are like a cabinet that opens to aural Narnia. Except watch out for the satyrs and their pyramid schemes.

Motherfucking Ice Cream, Motherfucker

I recommend ice cream every year, but in 2017 I have to recommend it with greater emphasis because it is entirely possible that the existence of ice cream is literally the last thing keeping us from sliding into the void. I will note, with epic delight, that Jenis Ice Cream now offers a Pint Club program, and as you know, the First Rule of Pint Club is shut up and eat the ice cream for tomorrow, we may die. I mean, you can now subscribe to ice cream. No greater subscription exists, not porn, not National Geographic, not anything. Salt and Straw also offers seasonal pint subscriptions, btw, and their ice cream is also sublime.

Washington Post Subscription

Speaking of subscriptions, paying writers is always a good thing, and if I can change my earlier statement, it is ice cream and good journalism that’s stopping us from sliding into the void, so feel free to get the writer in your life the gift of good journalism. Though it does expose them to more news, so maybe also pair it with some ice cream or whiskey just in case. I recommend WaPo for your subscription.

Authorial Bug-Out-Bag

I initially was going to put this on here as a joke, but I actually kinda like it, so fuck it, here we are. If the Shit Hits The Fan and the End Times arrive, we should have a bag full of necessary goods like a crossbow and ice cream and like, I dunno, a hatchet? A laser pistol? I haven’t thought this through. But writers will also want a bag full of necessarily writing gear, like pens and paper and such. Throw together a literary bug-out-bag to get them out the door. Check out this cool Sendak Artist writer gear roll-up — it’s expensive but purty. I travel with a Tom Bihn bag and love it, too. Point is, get a bag, fill it with writer essentials like a cool pen you can use to maybe kill a guy and a kick-ass notebook made from actual stone, or maybe this pen that needs no ink, maybe a handgun that shoots words onto paper *receives note* okay that’s not a thing. But you can put some good slavery-free chocolate in there, too. And a probably-sadly-not-bulletproof flask. A couple good books. Some hallucinogenic mushrooms. Whatever. Get creative.

Old-School Writing Devices

Once again, old-school word processors are all-the-rage, so check out the Freewrite or the King Jim Pomera DM100, or hell, a portable typewriter, nothing electronic about it. Hell, buy a rock and some rock chisels. Get those penmonkeys to write like it was in the old days: CARVED INTO THE BEDROCK ITSELF.

Speaking Of Old School

Pencil cases, man. It’s a thing. A new, cool pencil case can go in that bug-out-bag, or maybe it’s just where your favorite writer now stores their weed ha ha I mean pencils, shut up, who said weed. LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE CORGI PENCIL CASE, OMG. Or a waxed canvas pencil case for the bug-out-bag. Or, back to Peg and Awl: this scribbler’s pouch.

New-School

Authors may be in need of a nice portable keyboard — and here is one that folds up nice and neat, like an envelope made of infinite stories.

Authorial Puppets

If you’ve ever wanted to stick your finger up the ass of a famous, classical writer, well, these author finger puppets will give your penmonkey pal all the jollies. That’s right, James Joyce, I’m going to make you pay for Finnegan’s Wake. As a sidenote, you cannot stick your finger up my ass. At least not without buying me a fancy gin drink first.

Bookish Candles

Normally I try to avoid this type of writer kitsch, but my pal, BESTSELLING AUTHOR, KEVIN HEARNE, recommends these geeky bookish candles from Frostbeard Studio, so here I am, passing along that recommendation. This one just smells like Old Books, apparently. Maybe eventually they’ll make one called Impostor Syndrome and we can all breathe in its heady fumes.

Storytelling Games

I am a fan of anything that juices the ol’ story-glands, so to speak, so storytelling games earn my delight in that regard. Tall Tales is fun for your family. Dixit has a Balderdashian vibe to it. We are fans of Kodama here at the ol’ Wendighaus, fun because a story grows out of how you build a tree. Someone recommended Story Slam to me recently, too.

Or, Fuck It, Just Buy Them Some D&D, Man

It’s got Dungeons, it’s got Dragons, c’mon. More seriously, buy the writer in your life an RPG. First, it helps them understand story in different ways. Second, they get to play with dice, mmm, dice, precious fate-twisting dice. Third, it forces them to make friends. YAY FOR NEW FRANDOS.

Zinc Lozenges

Wait, did I just say zinc lozenges? I did. There is some evidence that zinc lozenges can help not stave off a cold, but rather, shorten a cold’s duration, and given that writers are of frail constitution and travel frequently — which puts them in contact with the rhinovirus-slathered hordes. I take Cold-Eeze with me wherever I go. I mean, not literally wherever. I’m not wandering into the men’s room with a backpack full of Cold-Eeze or anything, relax.

Weirdo Reference Books

I am nothing if not a fan of books that teach me weird stuff, and so I will recommend a few here, in the hopes you the penmonkey in your cellar also appreciates it. Atlas Obscura? Yes, please. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve And/Or Ruin Everything? Indeed. The Wasp That Brainwashed The Caterpillar? What delight! Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, And The Deep Origins Of Consciousness? Super-great! (I prefer these books in physical format, hence the Indiebound links, but if you want e-book, you know where to look.)

Art Harder, Motherfucker (Mug)

Shameless again, but hey! A mug! With profanity on it! It says ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER, because why wouldn’t it? You can also get it without the profanity, if you truly must. (Ugh.)

Writer Subscription Boxes

Yes, there is a box where you can subscribe to pens and ink and stationary and the like. Or there’s the Meraki Literary Box, whatever the hell that is. I assume they just give you fingerbones of canonical writers, like, a bit of Chaucer here, a pinky from Mary Shelley, whatever. Or for additional mystery, there exists the Mysterious Package Company…

Speaking Of Pens

Your penmonkey pal will need a place to put ’em. Try this!

Or If You Like To Get Wood

These “mistake sticks” from Offerman Wood Shop are handy. Bonus: a wooden handmade holder for your mistake sticks!

And That’s All She Wrote

Merry Neutral Holiday to you and the penmonkey in your life. If you’ve got other cool gift ideas for us silly writer-types, drop ’em in the comments below. *waves* *gets in a rocket-powered sleigh* *reindeer are sucked into the engine and turned into reindeer chum* *blasts off on a tide of fire, blood and antler dust, all of which rain down upon you* HO HO WHA HA HA HA

Sometimes, there comes a time when authors tweet. Sometimes, those authors are Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig. Sometimes, someone collects those tweets into a big pile of tweets — or whatever the collective noun is for tweets, a tortle of tweets or a twibble or a twain maybe — and then that someone puts them here at this blog where you can read them. So read them, already.

The Dating World Is Complicated, Part Two

Sometimes, there comes a time when authors tweet. Sometimes, those authors are Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig. Sometimes, someone collects those tweets into a big pile of tweets — or whatever the collective noun is for tweets, a tortle of tweets or a twibble or a twain maybe — and then that someone puts them here at this blog where you can read them. So read them, already.

The Maze And The Magic Cupboard

Sometimes, there comes a time when authors tweet. Sometimes, those authors are Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig. Sometimes, someone collects those tweets into a big pile of tweets — or whatever the collective noun is for tweets, a tortle of tweets or a twibble or a twain maybe — and then that someone puts them here at this blog where you can read them. So read them, already.

A Review Of The 2017 Film, Baby Driver

Sometimes, there comes a time when authors tweet. Sometimes, those authors are Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig. Sometimes, someone collects those tweets into a big pile of tweets — or whatever the collective noun is for tweets, a tortle of tweets or a twibble or a twain maybe — and then that someone puts them here at this blog where you can read them. So read them, already.

The Dating World is Complicated, Part One

K.C. Alexander wrote a helluva book with Necrotech, and now she’s back with a sequel that, I expect, will probably break your nose with a hard high-kick and make you like it. Here she is, talking about Generous Orthodoxy, and how that relates to — well, gender, and religion, and progress and — I’ll just let you read it.

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Do I have your attention now?

Let’s be honest: if I am here on Terribleminds, most readers don’t need me to grab ‘em by the neck and shake the stupid out. Nevertheless, I can only hope that this will reach the greymatter of those who need to hear it—or their callused skulls, anyway.

To make this easy as possible, I’ll save everyone the trouble of looking it up (or explaining it to everyone for me). The following is (one of several) definitions, spoken by Malcolm Gladwell on his podcast, Revisionist History.

“That phrase, Generous Orthodoxy, comes from a theologian named Hans Frei. It’s an oxymoron, of course. To be orthodox is to be committed to tradition. To be generous, as Frei defines it, is to be open to change. But Frei thought the best way to live our lives was to find the middle ground because orthodoxy without generosity leads to blindness and generosity without orthodoxy is shallow and empty.”

Some claim orthodoxy applies only to religion. If so, this post is for you. And if you, like me, believe that orthodoxy refers to all and any traditions, this post is also for you.

In short: pay a-fucking-ttention. Because change is upon us, and you can either embrace generosity or you can continue down the path of social warfare—where we will grind the hidebound into the dirt with spiked boots. And probably defecate thereabouts, too. Because naturally.

(I’d like to point out that my website does say that I am a struggling Buddhist.)

Okay, so having thoroughly buried the lede, here we are: at the crossroads of hatred and acceptance, intolerance and change. Where the orthodox views of generations before have come full circle and the generosity of modern generations is met with disgust, denial, scorn and violence.

I’m genderqueer. I’ve mentioned this before, but for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it means that on the spectrum of male to female, I fall somewhere in between. And I like it that way. Even so, I have in my life people who love me, but who do not understand, accept or even tolerate this facet of my world. It defies centuries of tradition, rejects the concept of the gender roles our world believes in, and they feel that it forces change upon those who have never known (or felt) anything like it before.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Generous Orthodoxy? A simpleminded question with a so-simple-people-can’t-grasp-it answer:

It means that one can remain within their orthodoxy (male and female is a Thing™ and it remains in this world) while also embracing generosity (there are people who do not feel male or female, or perhaps feel both, and this does not affect my belief in male/female as a whole, but I can respect them and call them what they wish anyway).

When it comes to religion, of course, it can get so much more complicated. I do recommend you check out “Generous Orthodoxy” on Gladwell’s podcast. It’s a deeply emotional and passionately intellectual view at this concept, using real people, places and events.

Anyway, in terms of the gender binary, in terms of trans folx, in terms of gay and lesbian, in terms of other religions, all the skin colors, other languages, all the peoples, my point here is that we cunting well exist and the choices you make from here boil down to only a few.

Change is Inevitable

Everything changes. Everything. Tradition, for all it has existed for millennia, has never not changed. The way Germans celebrate Christmas is vastly different from a hundred years ago. The way we treat Halloween has changed wildly over the generations.

The way we mind the house, raise our kids, even the way we care for our bodies and attend church has changed. (Used to be tradition that one bathed only on special days, or that whole families share one bath, one at a time. Fucking hell, right? We changed that happily, didn’t we?)

So, why not embrace those changes, a little at a time from generation to generation, and retain that orthodoxy as well? It’s, after all, only a matter of time before your bigoted, hate-filled ass is left to rot. Why not ensure that your world is as wide and cultured and educated as possible instead?

Take It to the Grave

Do you like…arguments? I bet you do, I bet you do! Say no more, man, say no more… A rock’s as good as a brick in a window.

Which you may or may not know already, but if you’re going to take your intolerance and inability to accept change to the grave, you deserve it.

The thing about the world is this: those who do not embrace change are doomed to bitterness and suffering, forever bemoaning the loss of others’ respect, attention and love. (Whyyyyyyyy, you will whine to the nursing home caretaker who doesn’t give two shits and a used condom about you.)

This consequence may not happen immediately, and you’ll do a lot of damage on your way down (yay, you), but it will happen. Even a beloved grandmother is often avoided between holidays because her “well-meaning” racism causes discomfort.

And if we’re not lucky enough to have a “well-meaning” racist in our family, but a rabid and intolerant bigot whose prejudice and politics demean and invalidate us, then we sure as hell aren’t gonna go out of our way to visit, right?

This goes for everybody under the age of dead, too. Sure, you have all your racist, bigoted, intolerant troll-friends, but Jesus monkeytits, is that the life you want to live? Drowning in a cesspit of anger, violence, self-loathing and invisible “points” nobody else is keeping track of? Winning the game of troll is kind of like winning a one-way trip into the Bog of Eternal Stench—no matter how you spin it, you still come out smelling like an asshole.

Live and Let Live (or Don’t Stick Your Nose in Other People’s Business and Nobody Else Will Get All Up In Your Ass)

Okay, so say you just can’t accept that trans is a thing. Say you just don’t believe in lesbians being allowed to marry. Say you refuse to admit that the person over there with the brown skin probably isn’t a sanctified woman-beater.

Say you believe women belong in the kitchen.

Fine. I get that. Well, no, I don’t get it, and I don’t respect it, but I can and will leave you alone if you leave me alone. I’ll let you live your tiny-minded little narrow life while I live my expansive (and yes, bitter because fuck you) and open-minded life, and may our paths never cross.

And if they do—say at the crossroads of hatred and acceptance, intolerance and change—I will meet your eyes so that you know that I exist and so that I acknowledge that you exist, and then I will turn left onto Change Boulevard while you ride that assbike of yours right up Hatred Lane.

Here’s the thing that I cannot understand but do accept: I will never, ever change your view of the world. But here’s something maybe you can accept, too: your view of the world doesn’t have to change in order for you to live the life you choose.

Unless, of course, your chosen life includes active or passive involvement in lynchings, beatings, shootings, hate-preaching, deliberate acts of bigotry and proselytizing about the glories of the good ol’ days (y’know, when eugenics was a thing and we were interring hundreds of thousands of our own country’s people because stupid fucking assholes decided that was the perfect chance to be racist af to a different class of non-whites).

But I digress.

In the end, these three choices are the root of every semantic and pedantic version out there: generosity within your orthodoxy, orthodoxy without generosity, or merely staying in your lane where you are most comfortable.

There’s a trick choice in there. Can you spot it?

(Hint: staying in your lane is just fine, but you can bet that beloved asshole of yours that we’ll be in there, too. Kissing our queers. Succeeding in our black and brown skins. Majoring in liberal arts and marine biology and something other than math with our various Eastern- and South- and Euro-Asian features. And cracking that glass ceiling with our female-minded fury.)

I guess what I’m saying is this:

Don’t start none, won’t be none. But in the meantime, maybe give a real hard thought about where you want to be in ten years. Do you want to be the one riding the wave of progress (and all the riches that come with it)? Or the one drowning in the wave of violence you, with your undying need to feel superior, brought upon yourself.

I mean, if you ask me, I figure getting stomped by the tides of change, and the people that come with it, is one hell of a fast-track to losing your shirt. And your dignity.

And your money.

So make your choice.

We’re gonna live, a happy mix of orthodoxy and generosity, and at this point, you can do the same… or you can sink into the bog. I hear drowning in a bog is the perfect way to remain unchanging; each limb, each bone, hair and teeth untouched by time. Forever alone. And long forgotten.

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K.C. Alexander is the author of Necrotech and Nanoshock (out now!)—profane transhumanist bloodbaths that take no prisoners and name no corpses. And she does not tolerate shit, but in the most infuriating way possible.

K.C. Alexander: Website | Twitter

Nanoshock: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N