Bathroom Monologue: R.R. Crossing

Looking through a windshield and a hundred windows rushing by, moving too rapidly to make out any faces. You look for a girl who isn’t looking for you anymore, and catch a glance at someone with her hair color staring at something in her hands. Her phone? Then the train carries her to her Full Ride. Red lights cease flashing and the bars come up. You are now safe to cross the railroad and drive to a permanently quieter house.

Maybe she was on her phone. Maybe she’ll have left a message. Maybe she’s calling you right now while she travels several hundred miles an hour towards dorm rooms, late nights and the lies of boys becoming men.

You check your cell just in case. No message, no hum of the vibration setting.

You press the gas pedal and roll across the tracks. Time to go put the things she missed in boxes. Time enough to catch the news. It would be nice for Lester Holt to announce, “Bright young woman’s train arrives safely. World welcomes her. Promises to retain virginity until Nobel is won.”

What twit said you couldn’t go home again? Didn’t he have a mother who had to? You wonder if he went to university.

Bathroom Monologue: Multi-Function Books

Physical books are unfavorable items. Chapters lack ringtones, you have to turn all those pages, and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse comes with no free flashlight app. Telling a story, developing new characters and plot devices, commentary on society and the world – "Meh," says the market. "These are single-function devices. I don't want a book that’s only always Shakespeare."

Hark, I beg you. It may only be The Norton Shakespeare, restricted to the same words on the same pages no matter how many times you scroll over them with your fingers. But observe. It can be placed in front of a door to keep the thing open. Somebody annoyed about the door always being open? With its convenient heft, The Norton Shakespeare makes a convenient bludgeon to resolve most any argument. You may even pick up a few insults from the book’s “single-function” as you discover its new functions. Should you be ousted from the apartment complex for unruly behavior, your can tear up the book and line your clothing with its crumpled pages. As you shudder in the evening chill, you can peek at whatever pages emerge from the fraying ends of your jacket. They are often inspirational, or at least so vacuous you can infer whatever you want into them, making certain whatever you read is uncannily germane to your circumstances. You can’t line your coat with iPhones. Those are the really restrictive devices.

Bathroom Monologues: Ism

Like all religions, Humanism struggled to appeal to new generations. The next generation just so happened to be killer robots.

Reading While Writing

By Mendhak [민다ᄏ] [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I read capriciously. Some times I want Horror, others long Fantasy, or I’ll binge on history or pop science or anything that makes me laugh. I’m a terrible consumer of books, perpetually borrowing and purchasing more than I’ll read. I had copies of Good Omens and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for eight years before actually finishing them. Upon recent reflection, I realized nothing’s gotten in the way of my reading more than writing.

Reading consistently is nigh impossible when I’m working at high volumes, plugging into a novel daily or spurting out short stories every week. I have anecdotal confirmation from other writers in multiple fields that it’s the same for them. You spend so much time producing and criticizing words that your enthusiasm or energy is spent. I write “or energy” because there are times when I hanker for that new Stephen King. Then I pick it up and even his mastery of voice can’t get me through two pages. My mind won’t go. It’s irksome to realize that you are still able to watch a movie, play videogames or have a night with your significant other. More irksome when your significant other finds out you think that's bad.

I ran into a new complication while composing my next novel. When I did read, I was reading less useful things. Yes, Cobra II was an important report – but shouldn’t I be catching up on fiction? Fiction in my genres? Or all those classics that I bought and swore I’d go through? Laurence Sterne can’t read himself. He’s dead.

Triage of reading while in heavy-production periods was too difficult. I could take in a superhero trade paperback, but not Walter Isaacson's Einstein. Simply to get through my pile, I had to cave and let myself read whatever my mind could grab onto. A grown writer was excusing himself, “At least he’s reading.”

If I couldn’t curate individual reading order, I had to triage what was available. My old formula had been to read:

1. One contemporary Speculative Fiction book (since Horror and Fantasy are my primary wheelhouses).

2. One important Speculative Fiction book over ten years old.

3. One piece of classic fiction literature.

4. One book of non-fiction of any stripe I pleased.

5. One trade comic book or miscellaneous publication over one hundred pages.

All in about that order. The first two covered my primary industry, then I plugged into my passions for older books, the style of which always left me ready for thoughtful non-fiction, before closing with comics. Comics are the easiest thing to read – I’ve had English teachers who said they weren’t reading at all. My whole scheme worked so well before I began working so well.

I examined the formula for my new habit. Now I’d only borrow or purchase books like this:

1. Does it have three or more recommendations from friends, peers and/or critics you trust? Should you trust them – have they steered you incorrectly before?

2. Is it popular? Is it selling fast? You need to know more about the marketplace. Remember how embarrassing it was when you thought Toni Morrison was a guy?

3. Is it important Speculative Fiction? You can always know more about the history there.

4. Is it a classic? Is it at least really old? How cheap can we get this thing for? If it’s not in the library or very inexpensive, come back in three months and ask me again.

5. Non-fiction, you say? Is it that fascinating? Wait six months, then ask me again.

6. Is it in the twenty-five cent bin? Okay, you can have it.

That last is why I read four Greek tragedies in a row. Thanks, thrift stores.

The new checklist of priorities made sure I only had specific books available. If I am going to read capriciously, it’ll be from a thoughtful selection. It’s akin to shopping when you’re full, so the wiser choices will be in your cupboard. Sometimes that leaves me scanning the shelves for literary Oreos, but you can only eat what you've got.

If you regard my Goodreads scroll for the last two months, you’ll see that those literary Oreos have still popped in. Comics are allowed in, in moderation. Even the Persepolis and Bone-type comics are easier reading, I respect them as an art-form, and hey. “At least he’s reading.”

Bathroom Monologue: The President is a Foreigner

To listen to the president's address either click the triangle on the left or click this text.

Some of my fellow Americans are concerned that my birth certificate brings my citizenship into question. They fear that a foreigner has usurped the laws and will of our great nation to subvert its government. I can promise to you that I was indeed born on American soil, but I will also confess that the birth certificate you’ve seen is fraudulent.

You see, I was born in Kenya and when I come from, they do not issue birth certificates anymore. Some Americans may be concerned that Kenya is not a state in the present union. To those I say: it will never be. It’s a commonwealth. It was admitted to our great union in twenty-two-eighty-three when we finally gave up that “protectorate” nonsense. That was the same year that Puerto Rico, Turkey and Venus joined the U.S.

I was born three years later at Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Mombasa, which was firm U.S. soil. In a field trip to the second Dark Ages I fell in love with this rustic, primitive way of life and decided to remain. Manipulating politics with decades of foresight just seemed like the thing to do. This way I could quash burgeoning time traveling projects and prevent any further competition from my own future, leaving this present my own pseudo-democratic playground. Evil? Possibly. But I have done it all as a citizen of the United States of America.

Worst Convention Story at Geektress

Earlier this week I posted my "Worst Convention Experience" story. I've since recorded and sent it to the fine women of Geektress, who included it in their rundown of conventions-gone-wrong stories. The podcast includes tales of inept security, late staff, tornadoes, and of course one fat kid stalking a perfectly nice Maryland couple. You can listen to my oppressive male voice defiling their otherwise feminine utopia by clicking here.

Bathroom Monologue: The Real Sword of Damocles

So there was this Greek suck-up named Damocles who got a free lunch at Dionysius the 2^nd’s barbecue. Damocles saw all the food, cooks, concubines and other assorted suck-ups, and praised Dionysius’s job. Who wouldn’t want this?

Thinking to show Damocles and the court that it’s hard on the streets for a pimp, Dionysius offered to switch places. He’d be the professional hustler suck-up for a day, and Damocles would rule.

As he stepped down from the throne, he told the guards to leave a sword hanging around to remind Damocles of the responsibilities of office. It was going to be a metaphor or something.

But the second the new ruler Damocles stepped up, he told the courters to cut that crap down. When they got the sword down, he ordered one of them to follow Dionysius around with it. He ordered them to behead the bastard if they could catch him, since that way he could keep these sweet digs. And if they didn’t, well Damocles would get the heck out of Greece. If Dionysius was psychotic enough to leave swords floating over the seat he’d just offered, it wasn’t safe around here.

So the armed courtier stalked Dionysius around his own palace until sunset. He’s hiding behind vases and under the skirts of third-rate hookers, forced to realize if anybody replaces him they could be madmen and the whole territory will go rotten. Look how little time it took Damocles to go bloodthirsty? Playwrights hammed this stuff up something fierce as the great example of politicians fearing that their replacements are going to be incompetent, malicious or worse. I think it’s Cicero that said, "Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?"

So the sun sets. Damocles is off the throne and already at the docks with the biggest boat he could “commandeer” as temporary ruler, loaded with gold and ladies. He sets sail before comeuppance can come up. Dionysius resumes the throne and his whole regime goes mad tyrannical, to make sure that only his competent self ever rules this poor world.

That’s how I heard it.