Category: The Ramble (page 257 of 478)

Fuck you, Elf on the Shelf.

I know your game.

Oh, hey, sure, you’re just a little elf, precious and twee. Big eyes and long limbs and that jaunty fucking cap. Sitting there on the shelf, or the counter, or riding the dog like a mount into battle.

Harmless! Fun! Elfy!

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

You piece of shit.

Listen, I was already a little dubious of Santa. Big jolly white gent. Lives in total isolation at the extreme north — the very frozen nipple of the globe. He’s a madman with a workshop. He’s got a mythological workforce — perky elves and flying reindeer and, I dunno, probably a couple Yeti and maybe a Kardashian or three. And sure, sure, he’s a little over-interested in children, but hey, whatever. A lot of mythological beings are. Tooth Fairy, Boogeyman, Captain Kangaroo, Halloween Dave. (What, you guys don’t celebrate Halloween Dave in your part of the world? Halloween Dave, who rides in on a carriage made of rat bones and who throws honey-slick figs to all the girls and boys? Who smells like toffee and hides in your toilet tank? No? Whatever.)

At the end of the day, though, I knew that Santa was a good guy.

Or maybe even, one of the Good Guys.

He’s a pretty selfless dude, that Santa. He hides in his Fortress of Solitude all year around, manically and maniacally forging toys for all the little children. Dolls, horses, soldiers, robots, spaceships. (Point of trivia: a young Fedora-ed Santa Claus actually invented Minecraft. True story!) He gets nothing out of it. He’s old and fat. Then he spends one day of the year in some kind of peppermint-flavored nocturnal emission, just exploding toys all over the world. Going house to house, leaving toys. Sure, okay, it’s kind of a home invasion, but he rarely demands recompense outside a cookie and maybe a carrot for Rudolph (though one year I did find that a stash of pornography was conspicuously missing). And yeah, he kinda steals parenting thunder a little bit because it’s not Mom and Dad who got Little Billy that really nice bike, it was Santa WINK WINK.

But Santa? You could trust Santa.

And way back when, Santa had a counterpart. Old Saint Nick was a little like the God of Christmas, and he had his opposite, the Krampus. It was Krampus who worried about if kids were good or not. Santa just had a list. He didn’t make it. You were on it or you weren’t — it was the Krampus who showed up, shoved the naughty little kids in a bag and then, I dunno, ate them or fed them to the reindeer or something. (I’m a little fuzzy on the Krampus mythology.)

But over time, a whiff of the morality police crept into the Santa myth, didn’t it? It was no longer about a guy selflessly bringing joy to the world but suddenly a less-than-jolly jerk determining what kids trigger the proper morality clauses in order to get gifts instead of coal lumps. WHICH LIST ARE YOU ON, his voice booms. ARE YOU NAUGHTY. OR YOU ARE NICE.

And now?

Now?

We have Elf on the Shelf.

He is an elf, which you — the parent — name. The theoretical elf sits somewhere in your house, and you move him every night while the child is asleep in order to give the illusion that there is an actual holy shit elf moving around at night like some kind of goblin. The kid doesn’t know what the elf is up to. Stealing his breath, probably. Drinking Mommy and Daddy’s liquor, maybe. Probably some tricksy elf bullshit is my best guess. I mean, who can sleep comfortably when some long-limbed polar elf is gamboling about your house, climbing through the heating ducts, hiding in drain holes, licking all the candy canes hanging from the tree? I mean, god, do you see how he looks? Sitting there all prim and precious like he’s blissfully taking an elf dump on your human valuables? “I’m pooping on your jewelry!” he seems to be saying. Tee hee hee! Tickle tickle!

But that’s not the corker.

No, no, no. The corker is: the elf spies on your children.

That is his entire purpose.

He’s not here to make friends, this elf. He’s not on vacation. He’s not gonna help you with laundry or start the dishwasher. The elf actually says in the (originally self-published) book:

“I watch and report on all that you do! The word will get out if you broke a rule!”

Holy shit.

Hooooooly shit.

You guys? The Elf on the Shelf is Santa’s secret police. Santa literally puts him your home — as the story goes — so that said elf can gather data on your child and report this data back to Santa in order to determine your child’s moral fitness. Mortal fitness that then theoretically determines what presents your child is qualified to get.

I mean, at least the Krampus was different from Santa. He was Santa’s opposite — the Satanic adversary to Jolly Old Saint Nick. The Elf on the Shelf works for Santa. He is an agent of the North Pole. Promoted out of the workshop where he ruined his little elven fingers making iPhones and Bart Simpson t-shirts and allowed to out out into the wild. Into kid’s homes.

To spy. To surveil. To watch.

How amazingly perfect is that, though, in this modern American age? How fitting. We once thought our benevolent patron — Santa, America, to-may-to, to-mah-to — in his red, white and sometimes-blue was here to help us. That he was on our side. But now we know: the big man’s got an agenda. He has his secret police. He has his elven wiretap. Our children now live in a surveillance state that extends out and penetrates even this joyous holiday with its fiber optic microphones. Our authorities are not to be trusted. They’re always listening. They’re always judging. (What’s next? Police elves stabbing unarmed misfit toys with sharpened candy canes? Torture of insubordinate parents sanctioned by the Department of Holly Jolly Security and performed in various black site igloos around the globe? A secret team of workshop hobs using Santa-tech to spy on and dox their pixie girlfriends?)

Don’t do wrong, or we’ll know.

We can do wrong, the elves say. You’re the wrongdoers.

You can’t stop us. We are the bosses of you.

We’re here. We’re watching. We’re providing data to Big Santa.

Well, not in this house, you pajama-pants-clad, apple-cheeked little turdgoblin.

You will find no Elf on the Shelf in this home.

Screw you, Santa Surveillance State. Screw you.

*gives the Mockingjay gesture*

It’s that time again.

Got a writer in your life who you like enough to spend time and money on them?

PLEASE FOR ME TO HELP YOU.

It’s the 2014 edition of gifts for writers.

1. Chemex

Sometimes I like to pretend that ha ha ha I don’t really need my coffee to write ho ho ho that’s fine no really I can just have a cup of water, but the morning I try to write without coffee is either the morning I write like, 14 words (and 8 of them are “buh”), or it’s the morning I run out into the forest, stabbing woodland creatures with a pen. Either way: I needs my coffee, and smart money says that one of your favorite writers needs her coffee, too. As I’ve noted in the past, the Chemex makes coffee taste like coffee smells. It’s an elegant, easy way to brew coffee. (Though if you’re rolling around on a king-size mattress stuffed with cash, consider the DRAGON BREWER, which I’m pretty sure comes with its own hoard of gold. Or, at least, it costs one.)

2. A Coffee Subscription

Last year I said, “Hey, Tonx is a great coffee subscription,” and it was. It was so great, it got bought by Blue Bottle, whereupon it became a mediocre coffee subscription, so, yeah. Not doing that anymore. That said, other coffee subscriptions do exist. Royal Mile Coffee roasts helluva good beans regardless of whether you buy ’em as part of a subscription or bag by bag. Another friend recommends Klatch Coffee. Or, you can just hunt and kill other coffee drinkers for their blood, then harvest all of it in a sack, put a big pretty bow on it, and stick that sloshing red bag under the Christmas tree. Like a floppy beanbag full of liquified Santa.

3. A Special Writerly Coffee Mug Shut Up Yes I’m Shameless I Said Shut Up

Coffee should go in a coffee mug. Well, I mean, it should go into the writer’s mouth, but that’s its final destination, and really, isn’t life about the journey? What I’m saying is, the writer in your life needs some writerly mugs, and BOY HOWDY HEY LOOK I have a couple of those over there at the terribleminds merch store. Art Harder! Certified Penmonkey! Writer Juice! The Secret to Writing! No, I have no shame. That part of me was destroyed during The War.

4. A Writing Shed

The first year I did this list, I recommended you steal Neil Gaiman’s Magic Writing Gazebo, but obviously that’s impossible because that Neil, he needs it. You can try to take it from him but he’ll turn your eyes into buttons and your heart into a shrieking raven because that’s just the kind of power he possesses. Still, hey, a writer’s shed really is an option because now I have one! I call it the MYSTERY BOX, because inside the box will be created many mysteries. My friend, The Russian, calls it the “Write-Hole,” and occasionally I think of it as the “Murder Pit” because underneath the floor is — well, spoiler alert, a murder pit. And the attic is where I’ll keep one of my editors, Brian White. Anyway! Want the eternal servitude of your writer pal? Buy them a writing shed. Just don’t steal mine. I don’t have Gaiman’s magic, but I do have a murder pit.

5. Evernote Notebook

Behold: the Evernote Smart Notebook. Write into it. Use the Evernote app to snap photos of the pages which then become digitized as part of the Evernote app. The writer could use it to take notes, write drafts, sketch characters, or even design their very own murder pit (mine features walls lined with starveling squirrels, each clad in itty-bitty bondage gear). Or, you could just buy a regular notebook for said writer and said writer will curse you as the Luddite dullard that you are. Because technology is awesome, weirdo. GET ON BOARD THE ROBOT REVOLUTION.

6. This Sexy-Ass Livescribe Pen

Or, same idea, different angle: the Livescribe pen! All the shit you write down on paper also becomes digitized. Because magic. I mean, because technology. But technology is basically magic anyway. Which means using this pen makes you some kind of wizard.

7. Or Just Some Regular-Ass Pens

Fine, cheap-ass, just buy the author some pens. Real, non-fancy, non-digital, occasionally-stabby pens. Everybody has a preference for pens (and you are free to add your own favorites to the comment section below), but for my mileage, I like these little motherfuckers right here — Uni-Ball Signo Medium Gel Sticks, which is so absurd a title I’m pretty sure I just made up the name of some character or some smart drug in a new science-fiction novel. “Hey, Signo, you got those Medium Gel Sticks? I wanna get high and see cyber-ghosts, man. Call Livescribe and Chemex, tell them to get over here so we can get cyber–fucked up.” Anyway. You can buy those pens if you want. Or don’t. I don’t care. You’re in charge of your own fate, despite clear evidence that I should be the one making all the decisions for you.

8. Or How About Some Pencils You Goddamn Hipster

Oh, oh, fine. You’re one of those. “I don’t use pens. I use pencils. I cut them down from local artisanal pencil trees and I harvest the graphite by hand from a Park Slope graphite mine.” Okay, whatever, jerk. Just settle down. If you think the writer in your life would prefer some fancy pencils, well, here they are: Palomino Blackwing, 602.

9. Kidnap A Writer For A Plexiglass Inspiration Prison

I did once suggest that you kidnap Neil Gaiman as a gamboling muse-imp, but that really isn’t an option as his lawyers have suggested with this piece of paper called a “restraining order” (ha ha ha I violated your restraining order, suckers!). But hey, why not another author? For instance, I would make for excellent kidnapping, provided of course that someone takes me in, feeds me, bathes and combs the monsters out of my beard, massages my feet, tells me bedtime stories, pays me six figures a year. I’ll be some writer’s Muse Monkey. I’ll be a Personal Writing Coach. I’ll perch behind your writer pal’s monitor and yell at her any time she tweets instead of writing that book she’s supposed to be writing. I make an excellent gift. And I eat very little. By which I mean, I eat a lot. And drink a lot of coffee. And I’m fairly rude. I don’t really wipe my feet and I curse a lot. On second thought, I make a horrible gift.

10. Scrivener

Listen, I think Scrivener is just too much. I don’t get it. I tried cracking that nut and it was like, “HERE, TAKE 32 HOURS TO LEARN HOW TO USE THIS THING PROPERLY. ALSO, SCRIVENER IS AS UGLY AS A DONKEY COVERED IN WOOD PANELING.” I prefer the elegant simplicity of Word, and I like how Word sometimes just shits itself and loses my word count — it keeps things interesting, you know? Writers seek conflict, after all! Ha ha ha, weep. Anyway. Just the same, while I am personally too “old-man-get-off-my-lawn” about Scrivener, I know a lot of writers who utterly adore it, and so — why not nab a license for your Best Writer Pal? Actually, Scrivener 2 is now out, so hopefully we’ll find out what happened to Scrivener. Did he and Final Draft finally get together? Did he learn to breakdance to save the community center? Tune in.

11. Anti-Social

Once upon a time I recommended the software known as Freedom, which is a thing an author can use to artificially lock himself out of the Internet like an ascetic in order to get some fucking work done. Here, similar piece of software by the same company (though for my mileage these two products should be combined into one because c’mon): Anti-Social. Helps a writer block specific websites and social media services so that, again, said writer can get some fucking work done.

12. Actually Social

You know what’s a good present? Just go talk to a writer. Not while she’s writing — because that’s how you die. Never interrupt a writer while she’s writing. That’s like interrupting a grizzly bear during its meal. Just let it eat, man. Just let it eat. No! I mean, when that writer is done writing? Go talk to them. Be nice. Let them blab about their writer problems. Engage in conversation, communication. Most of the time we just sit in the dark, going blind like cave owls, our hands curled into arthritic typey-typey shapes. Ease us out of the grotto. Make us feel human again.

13. The Hemingwrite

The Hemingwrite! It looks like a word processor from 1991, and it kinda is, except it also syncs with cloud apps and has an epic battery life and has wi-fi and an e-ink screen and yet won’t tweet or update Facebook or look at adorable otter videos. It is as bare and spare as you can get.

14. Backup Battery

An external backup battery for phone or iPad has saved my writerly ass many a time. I’m sitting there trying to look at porn I mean write a story at a conference or convention and my phone starts to enter into death throes (mysteriously jumping from like, 12% to 0% in the space of four seconds), boom. Plug in, drain the little energon cube I carry around with me, and I’m back.

15. NatureBox Healthy Snacks

NatureBox — healthy snacks delivered monthly. Nuts and dried fruits and funny little seeds because basically you’re just a bird? I dunno. Point is, though, writers need good healthy proteins to keep their brain functioning during the writing process, and something like this is that. Plus I’m sure you get all kinds of crunchy foods like heritage grain enemas and freeze-dried bok choy injector needles or whatever. Shut up and eat right, hippie. You and your author buddies.

16. Or, Fuck Your Healthy Snacks, Just Have Ice Cream

After going mad eating like, chia seeds or gluten-free air-puffed acai-puffs, your writerly loved one may just need some goddamn ice cream. And hence, I suggest to you the finest ice cream ever crafted by man — seriously, this is the apotheosis of ice cream, this is the end of all ice cream, game over, man, game over — Jeni’s Pint Club. The first rule of Pint Club is that you eat all the pints by yourself in a closet so that you don’t have to share with anybody else.

17. A Great Writing Advice Book

So many good writing advice books out there. The classic is, of course, Stephen King’s On Writing. Or I might suggest Lawrence Block’s three-in-one package (featuring the Liar’s Bible). OH AND HEY MAYBE THERE’S THIS BOOK CALLED THE KICK-ASS WRITER BY SOME CHODEBAG THAT YOU COULD CHECK OUT IF YOU WANNA. (A recent review of the book features a favorite recommendation: “Chuck Wendig is like a bearded, potty-mouthed Scheherazade, except he’s not saving his own life from within the King’s chamber’s he’s saving your writing ass.” Thanks, Mary Beth Bass!)

18. Show Your Work

Not a writing advice book, but a creativity advice book — Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.

19. Just Some Weird Shit

Doesn’t matter what it is, but writers love weird, quirky stuff. “Hey, I got you this cat skeleton” will probably get you arrested unless you’re giving it to a writer. I suspect it’s that each curio, each artifact, is suggestive of story. Unique objects. Strange things. A serial killer’s typewriter! A sex toy Christmas ornament! A life-size Yeti pelt! Aim weird. Writers love weird.

20. A Writerly Shirt (Yes, Still Shameless)

T-shirts! For writers! Art Harder! Certified Penmonkey! *bangs tin bucket*

21. The Storymatic

A deck of 500+ cards, meant to tickle a writer’s story glands and force those organs to excrete hot, fresh narrative. Also cool but not yet released: Writer Emergency cards.

22. Things That Smell Like Books

Some writers are total book sniffers. They’re just junkies for the stuff. Sure, sure, e-readers are nice and all, but e-ink fails to exude that precious odor (which is really probably just the odor of a million dead mites and discarded human skin cells). So, help your junkie book-sniffer with this whole panoply of book-scented things. Perfumes! Candles! Sweat! Tears! A jar of dead mites! Okay, maybe not all of that. But definitely the first two things.

23. Ear Stuff

“Ear stuff” sounds like “butt stuff,” kinda, but that’s not what I mean. Wonky perv, you. What I mean is, above I covered the olfactory, so now it’s time to handle the aural side of a writer’s needs. Audible gift account? Sure. Pandora? Why not? Will you buy a recording of me yelling at writers to finish their shit? I can do that for you. I’m your huckleberry.

24. Physical Pleasure

For god’s sakes, people, writers need love, too. Strop up against us like cats. Rub us down with various lotions and oils. Attend to our erogenous zones! Failing all of that, might I suggest getting a writer a massage? A proper massage does wonders, given that most of us have the posture of a dead, curled-up beetle. Help us look and feel human again, willya?

25. A Beard

All writers have beards. Even the seemingly beardless are possessing of beards — our words hanging dense and heavy upon our chins, a carpet of tangled story like so many fibers and tentacles. As such: buy the writer in your life a beautiful yarn-beard. Luxuriant. Rich. Plump. And they can spray it with book-scented perfume, too.

Bonus: Cross-Stitch Profanity!

The wunderbar Liz Lincoln did for me an ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER cross-stitch to hang on the wall of my new writer’s shed, and she has an Etsy store. Further, I think she’ll take commissions, though I do not suspect those will get to your writer pal in time for Xmas.

So, right now, the Serial podcast is super-hot. And obviously, Night Vale before that.

(I listen occasionally to the latter, but haven’t yet checked out Serial.)

Just the same, seems a good time to re-ask the question: what podcasts do you listen to? What are they, why do you dig them? Are the above two podcasts part of a resurgence, or just two shining examples in an otherwise unexceptional field?

I demand your input.

INPUT. INPUT. JOHNNY FIVE IS ALIVE.

Whoa, sorry, 80s movie flashback.

Anyway: podcasts! Go!

So, this past Wednesday night, that ^^^^ happened.

(L to R — Erin Morgenstern, Some Jerk, Margaret Atwood, Neil Fucking Gaiman, Lev Grossman.)

Holy shit. I know, right?! Ahem. Yeah. So, I was invited to speak at the Happy Birthday, Margaret Atwood event at the 92Y, and to call it “surreal” is like suggesting the ocean is “damp,” or outer space is “chilly.” Upon arriving at the 92Y, I was ushered into the green room where Neil Gaiman (an unsurprisingly lovely person) was just… you know, sitting there? Chilling out? And then Lev shows up (he’s brilliant), and Erin after that (a good friend and an amazing writer), then finally the woman of the hour (the year, the decade, the century) appeared: Margaret Atwood.

She has great presence. She’s funny and wry and happy and yet, takes utterly no shit at all.

Erin did not make cakes with cake material but rather, she made cakes with words (75* of them, which is to say, *not 75 of them). Lev gave an arresting reading of The Handmaid’s Tale. I spoke of those things You Likely Did Not Know About Margaret Atwood, and also assured the audience that she was not my girlfriend. (You pesky gossips, all of you.) And Neil and Margaret had a conversation on stage that was billed as an interview but was far humbler and more comforting than that — it had that rare feeling of sitting in an adjacent room listening to two people just talk rather than sitting in an audience watching two people put on a show. Intimate, warm, curious, writerly. I was lucky to be there to see it, much less be a part of it. I mean, seriously, how privileged to be with such giants. Not literal giants, but literary ones. I tried very hard not to single-handedly diminish the literary legacies of all those attending.

I’m still not certain it actually happened.

My life is super weird, you guys.

Bonus: I got to hang after with some great friends, including my wife, my agent Stacia, my serial killer friend Dave, and awesome humans Eliza and Emma, both of whom flew in from Australia just to see the thing. (Plus, I got to meet Rita Meade from Book Riot, and frankly, anything and anybody associated with Book Riot is badass.)

Anyway, thanks to the 92Y, Random Penguinhaus, and Margaret for having me.

More pics:

The holidays are a fun time, yeah?

From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, a stretch of joyous merriment! Tinsel and blinky lights! Snow and elves and great meals and good cheer and magic all around.

Which sounds to me like a phenomenal recipe for horror.

The holidays are in fact ripe with horror — meat and candy, mythological creatures who spy on you, winter hellscapes, animated toys. So many options for terror!

And so, that is your job, this week. To write a flash fiction — let’s up the story length to 2000 words — where you write a holiday horror story. Theme it to this time of year and to the holidays nestled in over the next month, and have fun with it. You can be gory or reserved, you can aim for psychological horror or more mythic madness. Lovecraftian? Slasher tale? Ghost story?

YOUR MOVE.

Your story is due by next Friday, noon EST.

Post at your website and link back here.

Ho ho ho horror! On monster, on necromancer, on vomit, on cancer!

Ahem.

Oh! And this is also the time when I recommend the EROTIC HORROR CLASSIC —

Santa Steps Out.

By Robert Devereaux.

Now on Kindle.

It is seriously fucking amazing.

No, I’m not kidding.

The other day, Kevin Hearne and I announced the Nerdtivity Contest. It is, in short, a contest to make a nativity scene out of nerdy, geeky, or pop culturey toys.

It’s a fun contest!

Some folks are not entirely thrilled with the contest, believing it to be in some way anti-Christian.

And a couple folks have asked that we stop the contest.

So.

Here’s the deal.

We’re gonna keep the contest going. And here’s why:

We’re not attempting to denigrate anyone’s religion and we don’t think that placing geeky toys in a manger does any damage to one’s faith or one’s ability to practice that faith. We understand if you don’t want to participate! And, regrettably, we understand if for some reason you feel like this is a very good reason to stop reading this blog or our books. But we believe this does no harm to anyone’s religion (and strictly speaking, a nativity is just a birth scene — we’re not mocking Christianity, nor are we mocking any religion that has any kind of sacred birth at its center).

As a personal note, while it is never my goal to offend, I also don’t particularly mind offending people. I do mind hurting people, and that’s usually my metric for these kinds of things. Am I hurting anyone? Persecuting them? I like to think that’s not what’s happening here. (Further, my books are frequently pretty darn offensive. Hell, this blog is offensive on the daily.)

So: contest is still on!

*blows whistle*