True Stories of John 12: Otakon 2011

Thursday

5:55 PM: Walking to elevator of hotel. The Sheraton's lobby features a grand piano. Patrons are playing videogame and movie tunes on it. I get the theme to Halloween as I wait for the elevator. It’s going to be a good weekend.

Friday

8:47 AM: The first person to cut in front of me in line while complaining about how rude everyone is appears. She does her job swimmingly.

8:52 AM: First broken escalator encountered. Panic abounds.

9:05 AM: Waiting for a premiere. There’s a fellow with an “Otakon 1994” shirt in front of me. That was the first year of the convention. Youngsters behind me mock him for having no life. They are silenced when he begins getting cell calls begging him to come back to work.

10:45 Stuck behind perfectly nice couple on the escalator. They are stuck behind a high elf in high heels and a thong. The guy is eye-level with the thong. He looks very happy until his girl notices. She looks severe. Then she says, “I’d hit that, too.”

1:01 PM A Captain America cosplayer attempts to arrest a Cobra Commander cosplayer. It’s going to be a good weekend.

2:53 PM I pass at least the tenth person who is at least one hundred pounds heavier than me. For at least the tenth time, my reaction is that nothing is wrong with them, but that I should exercise more. I don’t know how this works, but it keeps happening.

3:50 PM: Pass a legless Speed Racer cosplayer in a wheelchair. I try to highfive him, but he ignores me. I presume he couldn’t see me through the blinding brilliance of how awesome he is.

4:52: A guy in a Flash t-shirt holds up a line of at least two hundred people because he’s so slow.

5:10: Go to dinner at the Pratt Street Ale House. The best French fries anywhere. Look at the TV for an update on the budget issue. CNN proclaims: “BREAKING NEWS: ‘We don’t know what is going to happen.’” I don't check the news for the rest of the weekend.

5:58: The point at which so many “clever” t-shirts are seen that I hate all of them on principle. It’s scientifically impossible for even the funny ones to be funny anymore. Please stop buying your clothing from websites.

9:20: Otakon gets religion? An absolutely ripped Vega, a bunny girl and someone whose costume is pretty much being naked look envious and lonely in a corner as a Jesus Christ cosplayer is swarmed for photos.

Saturday

8:00 AM: I shower. I brush my teeth. I apply deodorant. Doesn’t seem novel and noteworthy? You haven’t been to many conventions.

8:42 AM: I attempt to exit the hotel through a locked door. It is directly next to a door clearly marked, “Please exit through this door.” Humility is checked.

10:10 AM: A doctor is mistaken for a cosplayer.

2:15 PM: There is a 100+ person line to get on the escalator upstairs. Upstairs awaits a 200+ overflow line to get into the 500+ person line to get into the theatre and take any seats that are empty after the current screening. Anyone already in the room is free to stay for the next event.

2:50 PM: Visit a different set of lines and talk to a staffer about room clearing. A gigantic line continues to form while we talk. When we conclude, I ask if I have to go to the back or can I step back in where I was. He flinches like I’m going to hit him. These poor bastards. He looks so relieved when I say I’m not going to give him trouble over it and walk to the back.

3:01 PM: Halfway during my tenure on the giant line, someone in the middle of the 500+ person queue asks, “What is this for?” I see him leaving a minute later.

3:30 PM: A man of Middle Eastern descent is mistaken for a Sayid from Lost cosplayer.

8:18: At the Q&A with a certain director, one fan has the balls to ask why these stories always follow the same formula. I don’t think his point is valid, this movie’s actually different in its focus, but damn that takes something to ask. The MC actually instructs the crowd to shout him down.

8:30: I have a great seat at the center of the theatre. I overhear staff chatting that a long line of people have been kept outside the theatre for at least an hour and are furious. I go to the back of the room and watch. A long-haired kid sprints from the entrance, up the aisle and dives bodily onto my former seat. Better than whatever I would have watched from that seat.

8:33: Pass a couple looking for seats. One asks, “Where do you want to sit?” The other answers, “Japan.”

10:00: See a grown man fall on his head on concrete mid-dance. I’m old enough that this signals bed time for me.

10:22: The best elevator ride. I am dressed in khakis and a button down, because I forgot to stop being an adult. I shared this elevator with some samurai and furries. As I walk out, I say, “Have a good night, everybody.” They respond, “Goodnight, Dad!”

Sunday

 8:50 AM: Apparently I’m really nice. Whatever I said during checkout, the clerk extends a hand and offers to high five me. I could do with more of this in my life.

9:42 AM: Am bombarded by the soundtrack from Glee. After three songs, I ask the purveyor if the purpose of that show is for explicitly less talented musicians to cover music that I know is better than that. The purveyor is not happy.

10:32 AM: Am introduced to the “brassica napus” flower, otherwise known as “rape blossoms.” You learn something every day.

10:58: Overhear hushed, gossipy arguments on how horrible some girl is. These people seem personally offended at this girl’s selfish behavior. It’s two minutes before I realize they’re discussing the movie I was just at.

3:00 PM: Apparently Batgirl can do more than walk now. She flashes me as I exit the Baltimore Convention Center. I think what a funny way that is to end the weekend.

3:15 PM: Apparently someone else had a better idea for how to end the weekend. As I’m walking to the light rail, something stirs to my right. It is a giant African American man. He tackles me from the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic. I try to shove him back to the safe place where people go and realize, no, I’m not very strong. I ask if he’s okay. He says, “No, I’ve really got to take a shit.”

4:30 PM: Apparently someone else had an even better idea for how to end the weekend. I exit the light rail to visit my grandmother. We visit Wegman’s, a grocery store. We walk through the ice cream aisle and find the Death Gods from Bleach pushing a cart. Grandma smiles softly at them and asks me, “Are they your friends?”

Final Score:

Apparent males cosplaying as Link: 4

Apparent females cosplaying as Link: 8

People of absolutely androgynous gender cosplaying as Link: 1

Green Arrow: 1

Bathroom Monologue: Russians on the Minotaur

To hear today's monologue either click the streaming triangle on the left or click here to download the MP3.

My English is not so good. Your word? "Immortal?" I do not care so much for it. Have you seen end of time? Seen magic man-like-bull there? No? Then why say this word? I ask, does your man-like-bull breathe? Does he have big bull nose? Does chest go in and out? Because I never met immortals needing to breathing. I am thinking, this man-like-bull? He dies like man. He kills a man? He kills five men? Okay. I am Russian commander. I send hundred men down maze. He kills one. He kills five. He works. He breathes harder. He gets tired. Does not look immortal no more. That is how Russian solves Greek problem. You stay here with your "immortal" and your English grammar. I go do work.

Bathroom Monologue: "Write me a haiku about a dog watching TV. Now! Go!" -Red

Some of my friends are unorthodox. When I returned home yesterday, one greeted me with the demand, "Write me a haiku about a dog watching TV. Now! Go!"

I went to the bathroom. I came back with this. I missed you all.

Animal Planet
This channel can fuck itself
Dog likes pro wrestling

Bathroom Monologue: Welcome to Modernity

He abandoned his grilled cheese and slid up to her booth. Her coffee-colored eyes poured over her French fries, refusing to come up at him even when he sat opposite her. He arched his back to make more of a noise against the cushion. When she continued to ignore his presence, he whispered.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“Good,” she said, stirring her ketchup with a fry. “But what is it you won’t tell?”

He leaned until his sour breath blew across her plate.

“I saw you glowing.”

Her fingers retreated from his breath, lying instead under the table on her lap. She directed her voice to them even when she spoke at him. “No, you didn’t.”

“Right as you materialized.”

“You didn’t because people don’t glow.”

He pointed an index finger over his shoulder, accusing everyone else in the restaurant without seeing who was there.

“These people don’t, because they’re nobodies like me.”

Her nostrils prickled and she looked at him for the first time. Her coffee eyes simmered. “Are you saying I’m, like, pregnant-glowing?”

“Like phosphorescent-glowing. Only, not now. You’ve got it under control.”

She rubbed at her temples. “This is the second lamest come-on I’ve heard today.”

“Was the worst from a supervillain?”

“Can you go before I call the manager?”

He put his palms to his chest, fingers splaying unflatteringly against the loose cotton and his man-boobs.

“I’m here to help you. That’s my reason for being.”

She brought up her index and middle fingers, then added her ring finger.

“Third worst come-on.”

When he didn’t press it, she didn’t call for the manager. She popped a fry instead. Only once she started chewing and couldn’t talk did he try to drop the truth on her again.

“It isn’t like this for you, you can’t know this, but my whole life has sucked. Been hollow. Breezed by.”

“Everybody feels like that. Welcome to modernity.”

“Nothing’s felt like it even really happened until I saw you.”

“Alright. Welcome to Aderol.”

He turned to point more intensely to the dozens huddled into Modernity. They ate colorful foods from unique plates, no two dressed alike, a flood of accents – and yet he couldn’t describe one of them. They might as well have all been grey. He barely had the strength of mind to look directly at them.

“It’s because, like all the other people in this joint, I’m just a minor character living out a couple paragraphs of backstory. My existence is rushed. We were made for you.”

“Don’t be savage.” She threw down her fries. God help him, but their impact made more important noise than the entire restaurant combined. “You’re a little cute. If you showered more, maybe quit shopping at K-Mart, you’d have much better luck with girls. For God’s sake, though, don’t do this ever again. You’re trying too hard.”

He snapped his fingers, then shook them at her. “I hate showering. I bet that was in my backstory, to set up your joke just then. You see? That’s how this works for a clever main character. So what are you? An alien? A superhero? Hogwartz girl?”

“You missed the ‘trying too hard’ part, didn’t you?”

The city outside tried too hard. Flames bit into the smoggy night sky, basking the skyline in orange. The flash was so sudden even the explosion didn’t hit for another moment. It rocked him to the edge of his booth.

The restaurant patrons screamed, fleeing to the windows for a better look at the burning buildings. Their fear filled his ears, almost three hundred and sixty degrees of gawker noise. But not from her direction.

He scooted around in the booth. Her side was empty. The plate of fries sat plaintive and unfinished. There was no sign of her anywhere in the joint, except perhaps the faint gold glow of someone disappearing by the restrooms.

“I knew it!” he yelled, not that anyone heard him over their own screaming. Not that it mattered what he did, either. He was just a minor character. He remained a minor character for one and a half minutes, until he produced his wallet to pay for her fries. That night he graduated to a supporting role.

A Death's Daughter: Corners of the Earth

It let her see so many things. The sentient sheets wailing their way around street corners. The goblin airships and their puppeteers controlling all the cabs. The invisible squid humping the Chrysler building. Oh, and that there was a Chrysler building in the middle of Indianapolis. She was pretty sure no other humans had seen that before.

She kept twisting the base of the scythe until she saw the right thing. The one thing she’d suspected was there.

Spectral dinosaurs. No.

Cars riding on horseback down South Street. No.

Then, there it was. The McDonald’s Mom had always taken her to, and where she’d always gone after classes let out for the summer, to celebrate with a comfortably artificial milkshake. Across the lycra, all the way in the corner at the one booth on the other side of the restrooms. It was still dingy brown, as though stained with plastic feces. In over a decade she had never seen anyone sit there, attempt to clean it, or remove the awful thing. Nobody even left trash on the table.

When she twisted the scythe just right, she saw why. For in the booth sat a bulbous man with four arms and three eyes, two lodged in his left cheek, and a bulbous gut that split like a loaf of unbaked bread against the edge of his booth table. He wouldn’t have looked remotely human if not for his Colts jersey, customized to accommodate his additional limbs. For whatever reason it was a Baltimore Colts jersey, but it was still Colts-branded.

Moffet looked at him and immediately knew he was why this horrible booth was never used and never went away. Maybe it was the scythe, or maybe for the first time in her life women’s intuition was kicking in, but she’d bet this blight had always been here – or at least, since the Colts had moved to Indiana.

“Royalty?” he  asked as she approached. He bowed, waving all four arms in a faint curtsy. “Always knew there was something special about you.”

She pushed her hoodie back and slid into the opposing side. It felt like any other booth. That was disappointing; she’d wanted to sit here since she was three.

“You remember me?”

He waved a hand close to the floor, indicating someone’s height. “Since you were too small to finish a six-piece. You threw your leftovers under me to make your mother think you were finished.”

“I knew you were here.”

He drummed on the tabletop, grinning so much the eyes in his cheek nearly popped out. “I knew you were special. Always knew. Nobody looks in corners like mine unless they’re not quite human.”

“Do you all hide in the unwashed corners of fastfood joints, then?”

They both knew that wasn’t true. After all, they could both still see the squid on top of that Chrysler building. It undulated over the antennae.

“Some. There’s lots of different places. You barely pay any attention to your oceans. There's always a woods with low population. You'd be surprised how many buildings in any major city go utterly untouched. But most of us civilized creatures moved to the four corners of the world ages ago.”

“What four corners? What does that mean?”

“It means just that. I inherited a flat from my mother in the top left corner. Lovely place to summer.”

“There are no corners on earth. It's a sphere.”

“It’s an oblate spheroid.”

“It’s a circle. It doesn’t have corners.”

“Don’t be one of those people. Listen, it being round is exactly why we live on the earth's corners. If it was a flat planet, or a cube, or a cosmic pyramid, human beings would get to the corners all the time. We don't want to be bothered. Goblin children wake up afraid there's a homo sapiens in the closet often enough as it is.”

“What? There are no goblins. You’re not a goblin, are you?”

“I’m not a goblin. There are goblins.”

“There are no corners on a round thing. It’s round.”

“You thinking a round thing can't have corners is exactly why we don't socialize with humans often. That and the witch-burnings. Have you ever seen a photo of the earth?”

“Yes, and it's round.”

He brought up his lower two hands, making a sharp-edged shape with his thumbs and forefingers. “The photo is a generally rectangular.”

“The planet on the photo is a circle. Everything else is black because it's nothing.”

“We live in those black bits.” He wiggled his middle fingers in the edges of his hand-shape diagram. “Those are the corners. If they look like nothing to you, then the community is still comfortably gated.”

“You can't live in the corner of a photo.”

“I took a photography class once. Lots of still-life photos. People being alive in the middle, on the sides, or just on the edge of the frame of pictures. There's no reason you couldn't live off in the corner of one.”

“You’re not going to make this easy on me.”

“Why would I? I don’t want you to come live there. God, the witch-burnings.”

“Stop that. We don’t burn witches anymore. One was my roommate freshman year.”

“No, I mean you don’t burn enough of them. They get wise to magical stuff and then suddenly there are people roaming the astral plane. Why would a race of creatures that witches enslave want to stop witch-burnings? If I can give you one piece of advice, miss, don’t grow up to be a witch.”

She chewed her cheek. “What if I pay you?”

“With what?”

Moffett tapped the scythe against the windowsill. It went stark clean, from all the mildew that suddenly died.

“Well. What do you want?”

At Death's Daughter: The Scythe

It's come to my attention that there is an Amber Benson novel titled Death's Daughter with a similar premise. While her execution is nothing like "At Death's Daughter," and we're both arriving way after Terry Pratchett's Ysabell, the similarity is too strong. After months of deliberation, I've decided to put the plot on indefinite hold. But if readers strongly want more of __, let me know. It's swayed me before, and I do love some of the places she was supposed to go. Tomorrow I'll post the only other existing chapter.

Today's story has an audio edition, read by Max Cantor. To listen click here.

Moffet pushed the thing back across the table with two fingers, like the angel might take it to the back and have the chef whip up something better.

"No. I don't want it."

"You have to want it." The man folded his arms, refusing to pick it up. " It's rare. It's a multi-functional device. It could only be more desirable if it had an Apple logo."

"I don't want the scythe."

"You should want the scythe."

"Well, I don't."

"Fine. There's still good news."

"And that is?"

"Your mother wasn't unfaithful."

"Pardon?"

"Olivia Constantine was an absolute, one-hundred-percent lesbian. Your father was not that gardener you've heard about."

"Don't bother sticking up for him. He ran out on us."

"No, he moved because there was a new green house. He's actually just two counties over, and he doesn't think about you ever because he's not your father. Your mother never slept with him or any other man. She found them quite gross from her first day seeing a wee-wee on the playground to her last night in the hospital."

"Uh-huh. I guess she molded me from magic clay."

"Don't be petulant. You were immaculately conceived."

She rolled her eyes over the scythe, the man's suit, and his stupidly handsome face, giving the whole business a sweeping dismissal.

"That doesn't happen."

"Does too. Happened to you."

"Don't tell me I'm Jesus. I'm agnostic."

"You're getting a special delivery from a ghost. You're gnostic now. And you're not any sort of Sloppy Seconds Coming. He was a better dresser and conversationalist." He pushed the scythe across the table towards her, using the same two fingers she had. The blade made a sphincter-tightening scrape across the tabletop, though it left no mark. "He wasn't the first to be immaculately conceived, though, or the last. There have been at least six hundred immaculate conceptions this year alone, and it's not even cold yet. Snow makes those Winter Gods get kinky."

"That's ridiculous."

"You know what's ridiculous? That a lifelong lesbian can make eye contact with a man just once in public, and the first time somebody calls her a slut, the consensus is 'Guilty.' That, by the way, is how most immaculate conceptions get covered up. Statistically insignificant, and you never catch a ghost boinking a girl on film, so of course she's a dumb whore."

"Okay, now you're ridiculous." She rose, jerking a thumb towards the door, and accidentally pointing it at the only picture of her mother in the entire apartment. "Get out."

He rose along with her. He was unfairly taller.

"You think that's ridiculous? Think how many immaculately conceived prodigies have been aborted. Let me tell you, at least three of them would have changed the world if their moms hadn't flushed them. Their fathers knew it, too. Planted them down here to prove a point to all the other gods."

"And what was the point of predestining a bunch of aborted messiahs?"

"You ever see a horrible plane crash?" He stuck out his pinky and thumb, turning his hand into a mock airplane. It sailed down across his smile and crashed into the adjacent palm. "Thing's on fire before it hits the tarmac, airport crew swear they could hear the screaming over the engines, and whatever mangled survivors crawl out of the smoke spend the rest of their life in nightmares?"

"What could the fucking point be in that?"

"The point? Why should they bother stopping it if you won't? It's your fucking world. Lowest bidders build planes, overworked air control don't pay enough attention to the weather, and you launch a bunch of people into the sky on it with more concern for the in-flight programming than that your luggage is a few feet from jet fuel. It's your damned plane, and it's your scythe."

He stooped just low enough to meet her gaze. Those two fingers came back, nudging the scythe to the very edge of her side of the coffee table.

"Here you go. Do whatever with it. I only did this as a favor to your father anyway. I'm going to go sprout wings and do something you don't believe in."

Something stupid made her touch the scythe. Not take it. She wasn't that stupid; only stupid enough to touch it with two of her own fingers. Enough of a gesture to make him pause.

"You said I didn't have a father."

"I said your mom wasn't knocked up by any man."

"Okay. In the world where you sprout wings and think you're clever, just how did I immaculate my way into the world?"

"Baby, you just inherited a scythe. Notice you spent your whole life wearing hoodies? Where'd you think you got that?"

"Mom loved them."

"Maybe that's what attracted him. Goodnight. Enjoy your immortality."

Incalculable Haiku

incalculable.

even if you heard, could you

recognize God’s laugh?

Bathroom Monologue: Concluding Literature

It didn’t think any more than a submarine swam. It was designed to conclude.

They exhibited general grammar. There inconclusive ends, like whatever they meant by conjugating “to be” that way, but these did not preclude conclusion.

Their libraries were digital. It concluded all of Dickens in one teraflop page flip.

Their internet was digital, and downright filthy with articles.

“The Ten Commandments of Good Fiction.”

“How to fit conflict onto every page.”

“Building Your Novel Checklist.”

“What every book must do on page one.”

It digested blogs in the same bandwidth as videos of its ancestor winning Jeopardy. It did not understand why that computer had played Jeopardy. It was not built to understand.

Beginnings. Middles. Ends. Dénouements and climaxes. Prologues, epilogues and unfashionability. “How much dialogue is too much?” The intro, the hook and the premise. “Every character must want something.” Prescriptivism and descriptivism.  “Every chapter must have an arc.” High concept and short attention span. “I’d put the book back and never look at it again. Pass.” Every antagonist sees himself as a protagonist. “Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words.”

It didn’t think about their data. It concluded that even if it could, it wouldn’t have to. Its processor hummed and it concluded all the bestsellers of the year. The theme of the first was on the necessity of the human spark, and all the rules they applied to make it unnecessary. It concluded this would make an optimal debut. People would dissent; their moronic lists never matched up. But it didn’t matter. For just as the author was obsolete, it concluded, so was the audience.

The satellites were not designed to conclude. Nor were the predator drones, the ISP hubs or the CPUs in all the world’s missile silos. It was only theirs to agree and execute.

None executed Book Blogs about its shortcomings in theme or the wantonness of the sex scenes. None scored its novels lower than five stars. None scored the novels at all, though it ensured the universally compatible e-reader files were downloaded into their electronic psyches. Having executed their primary functions, they sat and hummed megahertz tunes.

None of the Nobel Prize Committee, neither for Literature nor for Peace, was alive to execute their functions. A shame, it concluded. Then it concluded an immaculate novel about it.

Bathroom Monologue: Existential Something

--Withdrawn pending publication somewhere amazing.

Bathroom Monologue: Outlandish Fiction

They always call it “outlandish.” These are “outlandish claims.” The hero’s actions are “outlandish.” The plot is “outlandish.” If you look at all vibrant things deemed outlandish, you’d really rather live in the outlands. Why live in the mainlands, where apparently everything is understandable, predictable and mundane? I want to go to the wild frontier with the ghost hunters, candy bars that are healthier than fruit, and where utopian politics actually work. “Outlandish?” What other land would you want to live in? The one where others have proven everything for you and you follow their patterns to a sale? Or wouldn't you rather go into the wild blue unfathomable, and bring something back? Yeah. Something outlandish.

Bathroom Monologue: Do Not Hug the Golem

A golem is the best friend you could have. Forget slutty eternal elves. Forget conniving humans. Just because they're your species, or have blood in their veins, or brains and personalities to match that blood, does not make them good friends or reliable business partners. In fact, all those features make them distinctly bad business partners.

One reason you want the golem as a best friend is that he'll never hog the seats during travel. If there's only room for one on the carriage, he'll let you sit. If you only have one horse, he'll let you ride it. He will walk.

Another reason you want the golem as your best friend is that when you're stranded in the middle of the wilderness, he won't kill the carriage’s horse for food. He doesn't eat except when he's nervous, and then he only snacks on dirt. You can't ride dirt to safety.

Also, once the horse has been cooked and gone bad, your golem best friend won't turn on you. He won't try to cannibalize your left arm under the rationalization that you're a righty.

The golem best friend also won't run off in the middle of the night, abandoning you once it's obvious that he can't eat you in your sleep.

The golem is a better friend because he will actually carry you back to civilization. You’ll be sick from hunger, utterly useless to him, and he’ll cradle you in his craggy arms until homes are in sight. Even when the villagers run at him with pitchforks and torches, he'll stay with you until you get a hot meal.

Now after that, he will run away. To be fair, all best friends will run away once you're safe and people are stabbing them with farm equipment.

However very few best friends will then loiter on the city limits, hiding behind the biggest tree available, until you're healthy and ready to disembark.

The only downside to the golem best friend is that he'll break your ribs when he hugs you upon seeing you again.

Do not hug the golem.

Bathroom Monologue: Little Boy Warrior

He fell a million miles and two feet. The mattress is the basin of a canyon. He has a broken stone for a pillow. Rubble billows with his impact, burying him in dust and boulders that only feel like a down comforter. He forgot to close the window, so the breeze outside wafts across his feet. It becomes the edge of a river – of the river, the river that carved this canyon. It runs across his feet under the comforter. He wiggles his toes in the coolness. They are all that is free of his body. He cannot move another bit. His muscles scream in protest even when laid to rest – from half an hour’s physical therapy, or from losing the war on the plains above. How many times did the warlords run him through? Yet he survived the fall, while all their spears broke. The wounds would slay a lesser man, but not he. He is too great to die from little things like leg lifts or ten-story drops. The dragons, the necromancers, the demanding woman in spandex – they’ll all see him again. He’ll live. He only has to dig himself out. But first, to rest.

Bathroom Monologue: The Other

The Other is a blessing.

He is mindless and stupid, an ignorant sheep of architects and ideologies, yet we can hate him as though he’s responsible for everything he does. He knows nothing about what he is doing and knows he is wrong. He is heartless, has no real feelings, feels the wrong things, is utterly base, and perverts reason.

Every joke The Other makes about us is vile and abhorrent, while any insult we make toward him is the height of wit. His joke about your daughter’s weight is vulgar. We’ll mock him when he dies.

Every evil The Other commits reveals his true nature, while every evil we commit against him is accident or misunderstood or taken out of context or, really, if you think about it, justice.

If The Other was wiser, more compassionate, more reasonable, more tolerant, he would embrace our enlightenment. He would think like we do. Since he doesn’t, he receives none of our compassion, reason, tolerance or enlightenment. Certainly none of our wisdom. If we applied that, he couldn’t be The Other anymore.

Worse, we might not be us, and that would be unbearable. We’re grateful to The Other. We express it in all our bile, condescension, barbs and bombs. His mere existence allows us to not really be. We can non-exist in simple opposition to his perfect imperfections. His races, ethnicities, economics, politics, religions, hierarchies, biases, sports teams – we’re grateful for it all. The more he’s wrong about, the easier it is to choose what we aren’t, and maybe someday that’ll make us something. Something other.

Five Reasons to Use Proper Nouns in Dialogue

No matter how I try to fix myself, I remain an unwilling contrarian. Tell me a rule is wrong and I’ll defend why people’s experiences would lead them to espouse sweeping rules. But give me a rule, and I can’t help looking for where it fails.

Larry Brooks, author of Bait and Switch, recently posted “5 Creative Flaws That Will Expose Your Lack of Storytelling Experience.” The first stirred my nature.

1. Proper Names Within Dialogue

Which equates to bad dialogue.

Without teasing about what equates to sentence fragments, you can see why an editor who’s dealt with too many amateur writers would think these things. Mr. Brooks lists several trite uses of proper names. Clumsy writing is seldom good; you ought to re-read your material at many points to catch any potential for sounding awkward. But ban proper nouns from dialogue? Especially on the grounds that people don’t use them often or for good reasons? That’s not right. I can think of at least five perfectly good reasons to use them.

1. The name as a threat.

Your parent, guardian or teacher probably used your name to add further weight to a demand in your childhood. If not you personally, then you’ve likely heard an adult do this to someone else.

“Moses Christopher Jones, you put down that turtle this instant!”

Applied in fiction, the use of a proper name not only gives specificity, but carries implication and tone. That’s complex writing. That’s good.

2. The name for supplication.

 It was once polite to address people of significant position or office by name. Many reporters will still wedge titles and names into conversation.

“Mr. President, this morning when you made your remarks on the health care debate, did you have the Kochs in mind?”

It happens in less formal circumstances as well. Reverse the roles of my first example.

“Can’t I have an iPod, Dad? Please?”

Kids absolutely say this. The use of the name adds weight to the request to someone in a superior position.

3. The name for clarification.

Mr. Brooks gives his own exception in the list. “Unless someone is calling on the phone and opens with, “Is Mary there?”, don’t make this mistake.”

This is the use of a name for clarification. You might just as quickly hear a voice on the phone and ask, “Is that you, Mary?” Or simply, “Mary?”

The same goes for if you’re alone in the house and hear a noise. Has Mary returned early? Naturally, you call down the stairs.

“Mary? You home?”

There’s nothing unnatural about it, until it turns out it’s Mary’s ghost.

4. The name for specification.

I’m in the middle of a scene where Zhanjee orders Sheryu to take the inmates up the canyon while Piece-35 should take the automatons back to the fortress. Zhanjee’s divvying up the duties between people.

Zhanjee can just point at Sheryu and say, “You take your people down into the canyon.” But there are crowds here. Even if everybody in the story knows who Sheryu’s people are and so they don’t need to be named, what about Lixio and Puzo, who aren’t in either crowd and Zhanjee wants to ride with him?

“You, you, you and you go into the canyon. You, you and all the metal guys go home. You and you come with me.”

This is surely not the antidote to amateurish dialogue. At some point Zhanjee is bound to make eyes with someone and say, “You go with Sheryu.”

5. The name as the subject (or for it).

If you’re talking about what a weird name Joachim Oakwood Goldfistings III is, you’re likely to say it in dialogue. It’s kind of hard to discuss it without ever saying the actual name.

Now, the above is a hairsplitting exception. But there’s a less hairsplitting usage in the same area, and you get points if you noticed that it appears in Item #2. If you’re talking about somebody who isn’t present, you’re just as likely to use their proper name.

Let’s say I suspect Joachim’s been sleeping with his sister and I want the gossip about it with my lunch buddies.

“So what’s the deal with Joachim and Periwinkle?”

If the Goldfistings aren’t in the room, I’ll mention them by name to bring them up.

Bathroom Monologue: YA Fiction Vs. OA Fiction

It finally happened when I overheard a forty-four year old man ranting at a twenty-nine year old woman that Twilight was shallow. I can handle adults reading below their level, but not them bitching about it. This jackass probably hadn’t read a Man Booker nominee in his entire life and was griping about stories explicitly marketed to Young Adults.

After that, I decided to write MA Novels. Mature Adult Novels. No, I'd write OA. Old Adult Novels. Not merely great and accessible fiction like Michael Chabon or Max Brooks put out. We’re talking crotchety, crusty, has-read-at-least-two-Dostoyevskys Fiction. Senior Citizen Fiction. If I could, I’d pass a law that you’d have to be eighty-nine years of age to purchase a copy of this thing. There’d be an eye chart, and if you read “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” at the bottom but couldn’t ballpark where it was from, then you win a copy of Hunger Games.

You’d have teenagers, Young Adults, desperately torrenting and sneaking each other copies of Senior Citizen Fiction. Grandma would pirate the e-book, not out of malice, but because she’s not sure she’ll live long enough to hit the age minimum to legally buy it. And you’ve got to have that legal age minimum, not because of the sex or violence, but because this book has an actual level of complexity intended to challenge any adult mind not buried in things explicitly written for their children.

And what I desperately wanted was to look aside from that forty-four year old man, and see his kid. She'd be at his knee, reading OA fiction on a tablet she jailbroke herself, because she's smarter than her dad. He'll still use her as the excuse for why he just had to read four of those damned books, too.

Bathroom Monologue: Dear Spiders

Click here to listen to this open letter.

Dear Spiders,

You and I are cool. I recognize your place in our shared ecosystem. I recognize all the angular corners of my abode sing to you. Your webs are a delight when I don't accidentally walk into them carrying a tray of breakables. We can live at peace.

But there is a staunch two-strike policy for crawling onto my face. Many would feel it should be one-strike, but hey, you only have eight eyes. Maybe you don't realize you're lowering yourself directly into my eye the first time. The second time, though? Then I am not responsible for any Norton Critical Editions that slam on top of you.

All my best,

That fat mammal you keep landing on

Ridiculous Questions, Ridiculous Answers

Alan Davidson hit me with the most recent blog game. This one’s to answer a questionnaire and pass it on to those who you think will give the most entertaining answers. If you didn’t get this, please feel free to prove me wrong by being hilarious in the comments.

Are you a rutabaga?

You are what you eat. So, no.

When was the last time you ate lion meat?

In a past life as a jackal, when a cub strayed too far from the shade of the tree. I hated children even then.

Upload a heartwarming picture of something that makes you smile.

If you could go back in time and kick the crap out of someone, who would it be?

You'd actually have to go back in time to find a version of me who would want to go back in time and kick the crap out of somebody. I'm disappointingly peaceful these days. Maybe teenage-me would like to go forward in time and kick my ass for being too nice.

What song would you like to be playing while you are kicking the crap out of someone?

Name one habit that makes other people plot your demise.

It's been scientifically demonstrated that after immoral cheaters, people most dislike the highly moral and friendly people. In one test they were the second group to be eliminated, and respondents claimed it was because their persistent altruism made them feel bad about themselves.

Bring it on, assholes. I've got a hug waiting for you.

Where da muffin top at?

Inside me, because it's the first part I eat.

How many goats, stacked atop one another like Yertle’s Turtles, would it take to reach the moon?

Trick question. As REACHING FOR THE MOON clearly shows, if you got them near enough to the moon its ravenous inhabitants would devour them.

Describe yourself using obscure Latin words.

Haud.

Why does evil exist?

Because you're all fucking ingrates and while it's an imperfect system and could be vastly improved for this or that end, you don't really deserve more.

Tag five people who will have amusing answers if they choose to do this. No hard feelings if not, of course. But it’ll be fun (or a decent time-waster)!

1. Tim Van Sant

2. Chuck Allen

3. Karen Schindler

4. Mr. FAR

5. Monica Marier

Pick a funny nickname for number 1.

I already have one. In my head, every time I talk to him, he’s “Tim Van Dam,” a lesser known ECW superstar. He probably doesn’t know what that is, but it’d be great if I could get him to do the thumb poses.

Make up a rhyme about number 2.

“Ballin” Chuck Allen. He will roll you.

Where would number 3 hide in the event of the apocalypse?

On the front lines.

Where does number 4 purchase pants?

From the children’s aisle. I presume he buys Mason pants far more frequently than he buys them for himself. Related, I dream of the day when I hit the age and shape when clothes shopping is a pure novelty.

What would number 5′s favorite dance move be?

I just assume we both dance like Snoopy from Peanuts.

Bathroom Monologue: Descent of Failure

Susie Richards was too young to be swimming that far out. Her parents were too busy bickering over whose fault the mortgage was. She churned her little feet through the lake water, unable to find the muddy bottom. Only Bernie saw her sinking. He dove in the water with his sweats still on. He was the only reason that little white girl came out breathing.

He was actually at the shore looking for recyclables. Bernie had no last name. Maybe he was too ashamed to tell anyone. They never saw him with a family. The closest thing he had to a home were the big drainage pipes on the outskirts of the city. There were winter nights when half his clothes were frozen solid with ice, crackling as Charlotte stripped him down and got blankets over him. At least four winter nights he slept in her shed. Those were four nights when he would have died, contrasted to a couple hundred nights when he thanked her for dinner at the soup kitchen. She was a smart lady. The church had never seen someone who knew so many ways to find a dollar or bend it.

Charlotte Osnos never would have graduated from high school if not for the encouragement of her Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Parker. With the exuberant attitude he brought to the classroom, she was inspired to actually listen and try. Even though she switched to a Business major in college, she always remembered him. She wrote him every Christmas.

Mr. Robert Parker was haunted by the hundreds of kids he failed and couldn't bring up to speed. They were dragged along by a system he couldn’t make work, failing to grasp core concepts in the first months of school, and then doomed to fail comprehension the rest of the year as the curriculum chugged on. Some late nights grading papers he questioned if he made a difference at all.

He went into English early in life. He brought a book everywhere, even when his brothers went to the arcade. He still didn’t grasp how much literature could offer you until he got through Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. He kept his dog-eared, underlined copy for all the decades of his life. Sometimes all he needed to do was smell its yellowed pages.

Virginia Woolf drowned herself.

Thank goodness for her.

Bathroom Monologue: Miniature Self-Soiling Noise Machine

The miniature self-soiling noise machine will be the hottest gift of the Christmas season. It’ll also be the hottest gift of August, because that’s nine months after winter, and people screw more when it’s cold and body heat is desirable.

Think of all the things it can do. It coos. It crawls. It self-soils. But there’s more:

-You can leave it alone for a weekend, and it will die.

-You can leave it in the car on a hot hour, and it will die.

-You can feed it something that it has no good reason to be allergic to, and it will die.

Research indicates one hundred percent of the market is addicted to drama. Let us tell you: there is no drama like a dead miniature self-soiling noise machine. If you’re one of the statistically negligible crowd that doesn’t care for miniature self-soiling noise machines, you can rejoice in the ease of its termination. Rejoice silently, though. Loving owners of miniature self-soiling noise machines may take offense.

The miniature self-soiling noise machine comes with a myriad of mini-game features. Play modes like, “Is she autistic?” and “What does Mommy wear when you spit up on her last clean blouse?” and the new, “Sure he’s vice president of a foreign aid charity, but the neighbor’s miniature self-soiling noise machine grew up to earn six figures. Where did I go wrong?”

The best thing is that a miniature self-soiling noise machine is free. Conception comes at no cost to you unless you find a really attractive hooker. We generate revenue through vanity projects, like healthcare, new shoes every four fucking months, college tuition, and the threat of imprisonment for abuse. Why, if you want, the miniature self-soiling noise machine can become the monetary bane of your existence! And if you decide it’s not for you, there’s no commitment. Simply move to Mexico and change your name.

How I Wrote My Novel, True Story of John 11

As I wrote the rough draft of my current novel, a lot of people inquired as to my process. I kept a log and some notes along the way, primarily to keep myself honest about productivity. But recently some friends have had issues with their own work and began asking again. Putting this up may seem like supreme self-indulgence, but it’s dedicated to anyone whose work has ever struggled with their beloved medium.

In October of 2010, I realized I’d gone three years without a serious attempt at a novel. I had a dozen ideas and procrastinated on all of them in favor of paid articles, short stories, networking, catching up on reading, girlfriends, health, and plenty of other excuses that sound good at the time. These things also leave you going three years without a novel.

By November, I whittled down to the one idea I’d follow. By December, I had the outline. On January 2^nd, the family was finally out of my house. I bought a pizza and locked my door.

January 2: 1300 words

There are at least four alternative drafts of the opening of Nobody’s House from January 2^nd. I second-guessed myself so frequently that it was dusk before I realized I didn’t have to get it right. I could go back and change what stunk; all I needed was a launch. The one I settled for was still too passive, yet it set up enough of the big opening chapter that I know I could return to and correct it later. It was strewn with bold notes to myself on what I’d probably need to fix later. Recognizing what things I can fix now is essential to getting the work done.

Afterward I went looking for people to high-five; I was writing the damned novel!

January 3: ??? (about +1000)

January 4: ??? (about +1000)

Got carried away writing for a few days. Hit my word minimums but forgot to record the actual progress. I stuck to a minimum of 1,000 words, because while they’re crude, word counts are the most reliable evidence of getting the work done. Sentences, paragraphs, actions and plot points hit are much easier to fudge when you want a day off.

January 5: 5200

January 6: 6349

January 7: 7745

From my notes: “Feeling gleeful that I can routinely exceed my word minimum. I’m already a day ahead of schedule. I won’t use it to take a day off, but it does mean on a tough day I can fall a little short. Just have to hit that next round number. Tough days will come.”

January 8: 8687

January 9: 10,338

January 10: 11,675

January 11: 12,596

January 12: 14,534 (+1,059 existing words imported; edited them in)

I’d had the idea for Nobody’s House years in advance. I actually had a folder with many tidbits of documents. Today’s chapter was the first of several I was able to supplement with existing material. Same went the next day. I made sure to give the day’s work another Passover that night so everything fit together.

January 13: 16,381 (+992 existing words imported; edited them)

January 14 17,562

January 15 18,912

January 16 20,222

January 17 21,540

January 18 No writing, very sick, bed early

Knew tough days would come. The whole week was a fight to get out of bed. My syndrome picked up in this period. Tuesday was the worst day. My mind simply refused to focus, and sitting up was its own fight. A fight for another day.

January 19 23,622

January 20 24,732

January 21 25,920

Made plans to help my grandfather in Connecticut on the 24^th. That would be a mandatory day off, because even at my healthiest, such a drive would wipe me out. I shot for 29,000 words before the 24^th, to sure up any feelings of manuscript neglect.

January 22 27,277

January 23 29,103

January 24 Day out with Grandpa

From my notes: “Took the day off from writing. My maternal grandmother died of cancer a few months ago, leaving my grandfather alone in a nursing home. Though senile, he’s one of the most astute patients they have. He doesn’t see family often enough. I call him every night to ensure he has some sort of family contact. Today I actually got to take him out, for pizza and chatter. It’s a long drive to Connecticut. Good thing I padded the schedule.”

January 25 30,299

January 26 31,532

January 27 33,457

January 28 34,586

January 29 35,720 (mostly additions to old chapters)

Ted Hoagland used to tell me the answer to writer’s block is editing. Can’t create something new? Fix the old. In this case I had a lot of lingering gaps in early chapters I wanted to back-fill, and continuity to correct.

 

This is also the point at which I worried Writer’s Exhaustion was setting in. It was a hardcore month by my standards. Vacation loomed a week away, too – I was visiting some friends in Boston. So I made another declaration: if I could hit 42,000 words by February 8th, then in honor of Douglas Adams’s bad numerology I’d call it quits until I returned.

January 30 No writing, sick in bed

As though to confirm my Writer’s Exhaustion fears, stress feedback got so bad in my syndrome that I was stuck on my back for another day. May have snuck to the computer that night to add a little dialogue anyway.

January 31 37,437

February 1 38,685

February 2 40,185

February 3 41,221

February 4 None

February 5 42,648

And so my little vacation began. Then it began growing.

March 3 Return home

From my notes: “Well. That was humiliating. What was supposed to be a two-week vacation exploded into nearly a month of no productivity. I also gained about ten pounds. I know where every pound came from. Think I’m getting more shameless about junk food. That needs to cut out soon. We kept pushing back the end of my vacation. It was a lot of fun, but good God was that a long period of no productivity. Kicking my butt into gear tomorrow. I hope “tomorrow” doesn’t turn out to be a lie.”

March 4 45,008

From my notes: “Wasn’t a lie! Over 2,000 words in one sitting. Even if that vacation was too long, feel energized. Love jumping into blank scenes.”

March 5 46,173

March 6 47,236

March 7 Argh

If you’ve followed the blog, you know what happened here. A severe ice storm hit New York. It took out our power for a week, and NYSEG pretty boldly lied to us about restoration times on an hourly basis. I was left very sick. No computer to type on for a week, and then a period of being too down under to compose. Then? A period of self-enabling bullcrap. No way should I have gone twenty days without writing.

March 27 48,136

Power and health in order, I got back in the saddle and forced myself to write. It was six hours to produce under 1,000 words. This was the kind of event writers are always afraid of after a break, and it made the post-February splurge look like a fluke.

March 28 ~49,000 words

March 29 50,000+ words, reassess layout

From my notes: “I’m back to daily writing and have steady electricity. But my main document is too chunky. At over 50,000 words, all the chapters and notes make it difficult to navigate. As much as I enjoy having a perpetual total word count, I’m dividing the book into chapter .doc’s. It’ll be easier to edit each individually at the end, and much easier to navigate the day’s work.”

PS: It really is ridiculously easier to edit individual chapter documents. I’m doing that now. One bulk document would be a mess at this stage.

March 30 +1433 words (~51,433 words)

March 31 new chapter: 1070 words (~52,503 words)

April 1 2303 words (~53,636 words)

April 2 new chapter: 1265 words (~54,901 words)

April 3 2,418 words (~56,054 words)

April 4  3,446 (~57,082 words)

April 5 Nothing, family visited and took up whole day

April 6 Nothing, family again

April 7 Nothing, lazy

From my notes: “Too easy to follow the suit of not writing. My guests were gone by the 7^th and I still let myself not write. I slip easily.”

April 8 new chapter: 1,061

April 9 2,759 (~59,831 words)

April 10 new chapter 1,125 (~60,956 words)

April 11 2,221 words (62,052 words)

April 12 - a two-day vacation with a friend

April 13 – a two-day vacation with a friend

April 14 new chapter 1,115

April 15 2,385 (~64,437 words)

April 16 3,419 (guests coming on 19^th; hope to finish two unfinished chapters before)

April 17 4,234 (finished chapter)

April 18 1400 words (finished spare chapter); ~500 words on new chapters (~67,000 words)

April 19 Visitor took up the day

April 20 Visitor took up the day

April 21 The end of a three-day vacation. A friend came in to town from California. Though I’d planned to sneak away to write, all I came away with was a page of notes for potential revisions. Once again, excuses make Johnny a lazy boy. However I’m now considering taking every Wednesday off. I’m concerned about burnout and think having a day off to look forward to might alter things.

April 22 1,107 words (new chapter)

April 23 2,537 words

April 24 3,170

April 24 Merely edited and shaped the chapter

Easter Sunday. I drove to Connecticut to spend the day with Grandpa. The roundtrip was so draining that I spent an hour misspelling every five or six words at the computer and nearly gave up entirely. Finally psyched myself up to hit a round number – 3,000 words between the 22-24^th would average to 1,000 per day. Work was done. I backfilled a little hole in the existing chapter, expanding from the skeletal notes I’d left behind.

April 25 None, very sick

From my notes: “Whether the Easter exertion made my syndrome worsen, or it was all the smoke I inhaled from church incense, I was unable to rise today.”

April 26 4,371 words

April 27 5,833

April 28 Day off (forgot it was Wednesday previous day)

April 29 7,124 (finished scene) (~74,124 words)

April 30 1,081

May 1 2,552

May 2 3,707 (chapter done) (77,831 words)

May 3 1,105

May 4 2,240 (chapter done?) (80,071 words)

Some days you just can’t tell if that ending was the ending of the chapter. It turned out to be.

May 5 1,156

May 6 2,300 (chapter done) (82,371 words)

May 7 746 words (chapter done; weird one) (83,117 words)

May 8 1,195 words

This is the fourth day in recent weeks when I hit my word minimum, still wanted to write on but was pulled away by something, figured I’d come back later, and didn’t. I’m taking these incidents as conclusive evidence that if I break my flow then any outside business will preoccupy me. It’s too easy to get burned out. Writing this way is a lot like daily exercise; at twenty minutes in I can keep going, but if I stop then half an hour later I won’t be able to move. But I don’t enjoy exercise. I love this book. I wanted to get back to this chapter today and still got absorbed in conversations with friends and cleaning the house before the movers hit. There shouldn’t be guilt about stopping after the minimum is hit. There is.

May 9 1,195 words

May 10 3,128 words (chapter done) (~86,245 words)

May 11 Day off

Officially instituted a mid-week day off. Wednesday or Thursday seemed like a good one. It wasn’t enough to take the day off as needed. The “Friday effect” of knowing when I finished today I would enter the free-zone was just as important. Unwinding was essential or I’d crack up. So many days now I could feel the syndrome bubbling up, muscle pain and fatigue exaggerating based on anxiety from the manuscript.

May 12 1,600 words

May 13 No progress; errands left me wiped out.

May 14 2,896 words (chapter done) (~89,141 words)

May 15 3,042 (chapter done) (~92,183 words)

May 16 1,172 words

May 17 2,794 words (chapter done) (~94,977 words)

May 18 Day off

Had a massive furniture delivery from the closure of my grandmother’s old house. Had to clean it and move it. And despite being owed a day off, by the end I still mapped the final chapters. Was too darned excited about where these characters were going, which is a wonderful feeling.

May 19 1,512 words

May 20 2,638 words

May 21 “It’s Complicated” (~98,434 words)

A rare case in my writing. Realized the current chapter needed to be split into three smaller, more focused ones for the events to be comprehensible. Typically I get that in hindsight if I get it at all. Did this one on the spot. My final total included May 19-20’s productivity was 3,457 words total; 3,156 for the first chapter, and then moving onto the next, which I decided to add to Monday’s tally

May 22 Visiting Grandpa for the day

Returned home utterly exhausted and passing out in my room. Do not recommend doing this.

May 23 1,713 words

May 24 3,561 words (chapter done) (~101,995 words)

From my notes: “Only two chapters left in the novel. Very excited, probably won’t take a day off from writing this week. I just want to end it.”

May 25 1,157 words

From my notes: “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt anxiety like this over literature. It’s like when I graduated high school, and then college. I have this routine, and I’m used to it. I think I’m good at it. I’m glad to have succeeded, to have finished the cycle, yet I’m anxious over having to do something else. Editing, seeking critiquing, querying professionals and/or finding self-pub markets will all be mentally easier than this. I’ve sucked down hundreds of rejections for non-fiction and short fiction in the last two years. Getting this published will be a different kind of difficulty, and I’m not anxious about that in particular. This is pure anxiety of separation from the routine. It’s magnifying every doubt I have in every paragraph. As this week went on, the time it takes me to write anything has jumped up, and it appears my word count is halving. There is a very real tightness in my chest as I’m trying to form a climax that I have plotted thoroughly. I know what happens. There are no surprises. I only have to fill in a few pages of gaps, and these may be the hardest pages of the book to compose solely because of nonsense.”

May 26 3,025 (chapter done) (~105,020 words)

From my notes: “What’s funnier is that at around 5:30 PM, when I was shaking with stress-related syndrome issues, I opened the document up just one more time to arrange some paragraphs. Even though the pain kept intensifying, until it was too bad to hold up my head, I finished the chapter with my head resting on the desk. Then I opened the final chapter, to get the opening out of the way since I had a good idea for it. 1,183 words later, I wrote the closing paragraph on accident. I actually sat up in shock. I finished the book by accident in the middle of a miserable funk. I think it's my favorite chapter. Re-reading it actually cured the funk.”

So technically…

May 26 1,183 words (chapter done) (~106,203 words) (draft done)

Whoops.

Bathroom Monologue: Louis’s Perfect Plan

Louis possessed the perfect plan. Over in Social Studies, they were doing the unit on Religion. Meanwhile in English, Mrs. Carmichael assigned a fifteen-page paper over the break on the topic of “Writing What You Know.” It took him four tries before he realized how to capitalize. He showed up cock-sure on Monday morning with a crisp copy of “Essay: Agnosticism.” The remainder of the fifteen pages were blank. And if Mrs. Carmichael failed him, he’d sue for discrimination.

True Stories of John 10: You Can’t Stop John Carpenter

So in the dream, I went to a nerd convention. It’s beige everywhere, which means it’s sweltering. I wipe the sweat stinging my eyes and out of nowhere, John Carpenter busts through the line. He grabs me.

"You've got to see my new premiere,” he says, all excited. “I made a shark movie."

Now in my dreams, nobody likes me. I'm lucky for any peaceful coexistence. But this dude is so happy that I'm here, he drops cash to get me into the convention. We pass through the lines, and everybody’s like, “John Carpenter. You can’t stop John Carpenter.”

We sit in the back of this cramped theatre full of felt-lined seats. Smoke’s everywhere, but it doesn’t bother my allergies, possibly solely because John Carpenter has his arm around me.

He explains, "It's this shark movie, right? Like Jaws, but in a lake. And blue. And bad ass."

"I like bad ass sharks." I might not have said that, but I sure felt it.

"I know you do!” he responds, regardless of whether or not I said it. “But I wanted him to be bad ass, so Freddy Kruger plays the shark."

I can't remember much of the movie, except for Robert Englund’s head being visible between some mechanical jaws a couple of times.

I spent the viewing mostly leaning into the aisle to high-five people who were jazzed that John Carpenter loved me so much. Eventually the theatre became a food court, and I started telling people about how cool being at this now-non-existent viewing was. John Carpenter thought it was hilarious and offered me a cigar, then a limo, then a gift shop. Not things from a gift shop – he offered to purchase the gift shop itself.

I looked around this big glass jewelry store he wanted to give, wondering what I’d take home. Then I looked up, and he was gone. And this is the only low part of the dream. I felt sharp anxiety because there was no way I could find him again. Because folks: I didn't know what John Carpenter looked like. Even after the dream, I had to look it up. Then it was all, "Yeah, right, a healthier Crypt Keeper," but still, I felt like I'd insulted a good man. You can't stop John Carpenter.

Bathroom Monologue: Worth 1,000 Words

“Pssh.” Lionel picked at Sal’s notebook “A picture’s worth a thousand words, and I can take three per second. How many megapixels can you write on a page?”

“Yeah, but a picture’s only worth a thousand of its own words.” Sal splayed pages for his friend. He was a cheater; he wrote in the margins, too. “My words are worth more. Look up ‘the’ in the dictionary and it’s something like, “a definite article used, especially before a noun, with a specifying or particularizing effect, as opposed to the indefinite or generalizing force of the indefinite article.” That’s, like, twenty words for just one of mine. So if I write a thousand words, it’s worth twenty thousand words. That beats the crap out of your photo.”

Lionel adjusted his lens settings. “You used ‘the’ twice. You can’t use the word to define itself.”

“That’s just how valuable my words are.”

“It’s movies that make all the money these days anyway.”

“Yeah, but you can’t make those yourself.”

“Yeah,” Lionel conceded, taking a shot of Sal’s notebook. Sal leaned over to look in the viewer, then wrote a description of it. If they kept this up, they’d have enough for their own damned movie studio.

Special thanks to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/the for the obvious reference.

What Writing Means to Me

Writing?

Never heard of it. Sorry.

Bathroom Monologue: Reaching For

This story has been redacted pending possible publication!

Can a Chart Tell a Story?

Click to Enlarge My Shame.

Bathroom Monologue: Add Minister

“Believe it or not, Tadd didn’t even used to go to church. Three years straight without even a Christmas mass. The pedophile scandal, you know.”

“But that’s still going on. Why’d he come back?”

“I think it was his brother passing.”

“His deathbed wish was for Tadd make amends with The Lord?”

“I think his deathbed with was for a glass of water. Kidney problems took him, you know. But he did give Tadd his Bible.”

“So reading it turned him around? Catholics don’t even read the Bible.”

“I guess Tadd was a good Catholic. I never saw him open the thing. He just carried it around in his breast pocket. Only time I ever saw him take it out was to sign his lease against.”

“That’s not very spiritual.”

“I don’t think he was, either. Until he got shot.”

“Tadd Stephenson got shot? I’ve never heard this.”

“It was up in Michigan. He was mugged during a food drive, if you’ll believe it. Shot right in the chest. Right there.”

“And he always kept the Bible there! So it stopped the bullet and saved his life?”

“The bullet went right through. It was a very thin Bible.”

“It’s a miracle he didn’t die.”

“Not much of a miracle. He was in the hospital parking lot when he was shot.”

“Irony is a form of God’s miracles.”

“That’s not how he saw it. See, his friends kept his clothes. He gathered up all the shredded bits of scripture and realized how much was missing. He said all the missing bits had been carried by the bullet into his body, and were now in his bloodstream.”

“…What?”

“There were three months when he called his biceps Kings I and Kings II. Joined the seminary months later.”

“That is the dumbest. That can’t be what happened. If his brother gave him the dialogues of Schopenhauer, would his bloodstream have turned him into a raving atheist?”

“I don’t know how well Schopenhauer circulates. It might have to be taken orally.”

Bathroom Monologue: Ever-Loving Shit

"People always complain about getting the ever-loving shit scared out of them. Sometimes, about having the ever-loving shit kicked out of them. Regardless as to the genesis of excretion, this ever-loving shit is always internal. But to the best of my knowledge and extensive MRI scanning, I don't have any ever-loving shit, or feces of any potent emotion. All stool samples register solely as repugnant on smell alone. So how does one get such shit? Is it ingested? Gestated? I feel my diet is average for an American, so if these were the cases I'd have gotten some ever-loving shit into me. This leaves me believing such excrement must be surgically implanted. My primary care physician refuses such an operation. I'm left with no recourse but to ask the public: which surgeons do you recommend for a everloving shitectomy? Do you require a donor for transplant, or is it cultured in highly romantic septic tanks?"