Bathroom Monologue: Real Time Recipe

1. Buy two containers of sugar-free vanilla ice cream, because that was her favorite flavor back when she could eat ice cream with abandon. Sit them in the back seat for the half hour drive home from the store.

2. When you get home, grab a lidded pan. Tear out a long sheet of wax paper and line the bottom of the pan, leaving two ends of the sheet sticking out on the sides.

3. The ice cream has softened because ice cream is treacherous. Open one container and spoon it into the pan.

4. Take the sugar-free oreos a friend purchased specially online for this. Empty one package into the blender. Chop them up well.

5. Pour the oreos over the ice cream. Spread them out with a spoon to get it even.

6. Open the second ice cream container and spoon it over the oreo layer. Get it relatively smooth. Then loosely wrap the wax paper over it and seal the lid over that. Sealed, it won't absorb any flavors from the freezer. Stick it in the freezer to firm up until she gets here.

7. When she wants a dessert but is in the other room, remove the pan from the freezer. Remove the lid and turn it upside down over a large plate. Apply a little heat to the pan and it will slide out.

8. Peel off the wax paper. Take the rest of your sugar-free oreos and decorate the thing before she gets back. Quicker – she’s coming. You should probably stick some candles in there.

9. Your diabetic friend now has an ice cream cake for her birthday.

Bathroom Monologue: Dear Earth

Dear Earth,

Today we have the miracle of telling you that you are not alone. We cannot say if there is life in the rest of this universe, but there is life in others. You have at least 16,777,216 sister earths out there. We are one of them.

Hello.

The main difference between us is that you are one of 128 earths that does not have an Isayas or a comparable analog. That’s 128 out of 16,777,216 currently accessible parallel earths that have life on them at all.

Our comedians joke that you are an “evil” parallel earth full of mustached versions of us. Most of us don’t see you as an anomaly. You’re not so different from us. After all, in both our earths the mustache represents a mock-evil parallel universe self. And we are all made of stardust; we all evolved from single-celled organisms. We all have two eyes, ears and nostrils; we all have hair on our heads, and many have unwanted hair in other places. 16,777,214 of the earths share the same fascination with dinosaurs, aside from the two where humans co-existed with them and have some understandable prejudices. Like you, we had our caveman, hunter/gatherer and feudal periods. We have two hemispheres, a Europe, an Asia and an Australia. Jesus Christ is important in our Bibles as well. We even called our great leap forward ‘The Enlightenment,’ as your Europeans call theirs.

When you understand our similarities, perhaps you’ll understand how perplexing the absence of Isayas is from your earth. Isayas the Good Heretic was (in our world and most of the 16,777,216) an Islamic king who converted to Christianity. The conversion was loose, retaining his Persian identity and throne, and using his stations to merge the two mega-religions. Being a king during the height of Persia’s scientific exploration, he managed to advance industry in Asia Minor and West Europe. By improving life expectancy and quality of life, and eliminating most governmental and religious disputes by instituting his own intellectual product. Isayas used market forces to create a trans-continental empire across what you see as Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His theocrats used their Islamo-Christian amalgam to mediate with lesser superstitions like the Irish pagans. Within 500 years on nearly every earth, the Isayas kingdom openly traded and had influence in Southern Africa and Asia Proper.

As fond as we are of our culture, few here believe there is an ideal earth. None of our scientists have yet located one. Our own will never outlive its mistreatment of the Outlets – the Americas in your world. They were mistreated or annihilated on nearly every world where they were not the conquerors themselves. But for most earths this is the World War, where you have had least two. Your earth has substantially more governments and inter-governmental conflicts. With that openness of governments, Communism, Autocracy and general xenophobia is greatly exaggerated against the worlds where there is an Isayas- or Isayas-analog revolution.

Perhaps related, your earth also has atypically wide divides between religion, art and science. Like most earths, though, all three of those forces are tied closely to the fourth force of economics. It seems almost universal that where there is intelligent life that you can spread knowledge, belief and opinion through sales.

Our comedians joke that we should exploit that economic opening and treat you like Isayas treated the Pagans. Humor is very important to us – we call it the Seventh Estate. We’ve taken their advice and left one hundred million one-pill cures for HIV in crates along your Sub-Saharan Africa. These we offer to you for free. If you’d like more, we’d be happy to exchange with you.

Another similarity between our earths is that deserts spread. But there is a difference: only your Sahara is experiencing rapid desertification. On 8,388,608 earths, including our own, are nearly out of arable land. Frustrating as it is, we’ve developed inter-dimensional communication before effective terraforming or transplanetary travel. Talking to you is actually cheaper than flying to Venus or Mars, let alone making them habitable. The market moves in mysterious ways.

All 16,777,216 earths we’ve found so far have a nearby Venus and Mars. You’re one of the few that seems serious about living on them.

We hoped another earth would have a terraforming-rich culture, yet of the 16,777,216 examples, none is adept. Curiously, some of your 128 earths have the most advanced space stations. We research space by cheap drones, but you just went there again. While your earth lags behind most of the 128 in deep space travel, it seems your scientists have some of the keenest ideas for terraforming. Many of the 128 treat other planets like campsites, bringing what they need, destroying a little, and leaving their trash behind as they hop to the next. This isn’t sustainable, and 120 of these 128 earths are near or at extinction as a result. Sustainability is the essence of a good market. Many more seem headed for extinction.

So will you work with your transdimensional sisters? There are economic openings to exploit.

Sincerely,
Earth

Bathroom Monologue: A Comedy of Commerces

It began in the computer aisle. Seeing the unfortunate effectiveness of political attack ads, Apple launched its own attack ads at Microsoft computers. Apple’s Mac brand had long struggled to be relevant in the world of laptop and desktop computing. So naturally they hired a fat, sad man to announce “I’m a PC.” A more popular, attractive actor announced, “I’m a Mac.” They played out unfunny vignettes in which Mr. Mac was to appear superior to Mr. PC. By the end of the first year, you wondered if Mr. PC wouldn’t hang himself at the end of the next commercial.

Meanwhile Apple emerged as a powerhouse in handheld devices. No cell was as infamous as their iPhone. And so T-Mobile created its own series of attack ads featuring a pretty girl in a pink dress dismissing someone similar to Apple’s Mr. Mac. Pretty Pink Girl is apparently a T-Mobile. It was the same condescending cherry-picking of features as Mr. PC had once endured.

But Virgin Mobile didn’t appreciate that T-Mobile might be getting a boost off of their parody-parody. They commissioned their own ads, in which a couple of sexy club-goers represent Virgin Mobile customers. The T-Mobile Clubbers blast by her in a simulation of fun life, which apparently no other cell phone users get to have. In their parody-parody-parody, Pretty Pink Girl hates her saccharine existence. Mr. PC awkwardly mills around the club behind her in some form of vestigial insult.

Meanwhile, Apple, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile created one of the most antagonistic and unentertaining series of commercials in the world, rivaling the obnoxious natures of the political attack ads that inspired them. Old Spice dominated the entertaining commercial business thanks to the charismatic and shirtless Old Spice Guy. So they decided to defend commercial breaks by launching a series of attack ads where Old Spice Guy ceaselessly outwitted Mr. Mac, Pretty Pink Girl and the T-Mobile Clubbers.

Hearing that Old Spice Guy is vying to play Luke Cage in a Marvel Comics movie, Warner Brothers and DC Comics launched their attack ad. In this ad, Old Spice Guy was a dumpy only man in a towel, while Superman was ridiculously toned and witty. The advertisement accentuated how much cooler and edgier his Man of Steel movie would be than whatever they called Old Spice Guy’s thing. Mr. PC appeared in one ad to lend Old Spice Guy a straight razor, with the implication that these two mascots had taken up cutting themselves.

The Catholic Church took offense at Warner Brothers’ ad. This was not so much because of the suicide jokes, but because Superman is a nigh-omnipotent role model, and Catholics have their own brand of that product. So they did an ad where a dumpy man in a blue spandex costume announced, “I’m a DC.”

As to be expected, the second religion showed up in an ad a bunch of politicians jumped on it without checking what it was. It’s uncertain which Republican ran the first attack ad against the Catholic Church, but they probably didn’t know they were doing it. The first Democrat to attack the Republican’s attack ad probably did know what he was doing. It escalated to the point where Senators were paying for Superbowl ads to defend theology as glibly as humanly possible. It was the single unfunniest Superbowl ever. The NFL even took out an attack ad against its own advertiser’s attack ads, screened after the final play of the game. In it, a stuffy white man announced, “I’m a Republican.” Then a second stuffy white man announced, “I’m a Democrat.” Then Terry Tate tackled the crap out of both of them.

It was a debacle, but at least it got us Campaign Finance Reform for all attack ads. Suddenly Apple was sued for spending too much on “first degree being-annoying,” and several counts of “inciting further annoying bullshit.” It’s unclear how the laws will hold up in appellate courts. Rumor has it that lobbyists are raising funds to let the State Supreme Court’s dissenting opinion be broadcast in the form of a strawman attack ad.

Bathroom Monologue: 6000 Players at Level 0

“There was a complex equation for people’s levels in the game. It tabulated how many people you killed, how many times you killed each of them, modifying scores based on headshots and eviscerations, while also tabulating how often you healed a partner or sacrificed yourself, modifying scores based on speed and ludicrous valor. It followed your weapon usage, route varieties, team coordination, and even assigned a specific score for how many keywords you used in voice chat. To give players additional incentive, the sole programmer summed up the entire score, then multiplied it by your level number. It was poorly thought through, but he got his girlfriend at the time and was distracted. So distracted that he didn’t get any of the player e-mails that everyone started at Level 0, and thereby couldn’t level up. Whatever you scored wound up multiplied by 0. At the end of the year and the relationship, he logged in to find six thousand players still at Level 0. One player was at Level 999. That one player was Captain James Tiberius Kirk.”

Essay: Are People Designed to be Unhappy?

The television presents an interview with a mother in Syria. She claims to have lost two children to famine and national catastrophe. An infant appears almost lifeless in her arms. Existence is so brutal that they are living among terrorists who the mother believes could kill her at any time. But this is where the food is.

A few friends share a link on Facebook. It’s an interview with Darcus Howe in London, someone BBC’s Fiona Armstrong introduces as a broadcaster. He’s a black man with a vaguely Middle Eastern accent. To me, he looks very tired. He derides England’s police system for abusing the young. While he won’t explicitly condone the rioting and massive property damage, his vitriol is for the government that shot an armed young man.

Not five minutes later, I’m sent another video. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist I hold in high regard, rants on NASA’s budget cuts. He is in what looks like an expensive suit, sitting as one of three guests in an air conditioned studio with an audience that applauds at every pause he grants. To me, he looks very well groomed. He is irate that we aren’t going to the moon anymore. How dare we say it’s too expensive to afford “the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.”

I watch all three interviews in the same hour. They transpired in the same week. Lumped together, they are irreconcilable. My mind stretches for a simple explanation as to how someone like Dr. Tyson can be unhappy at all, let alone demand space travel when earth-children are starving. It seems insane that Dr. Tyson should say going to the moon is the sole source of hope against the backdrop of global emergencies. You can’t possibly think that Syrian mother or British broadcaster are dreaming of space travel tonight.

But if I’d only been reading astronomy and cosmology, how would I feel? Dr. Tyson and Mr. Howe don’t live in Syria. They see very little of it, and like most people on the planet, think very little of it. When it comes up it’s grave, but then it goes back down. They see and think as little of it as I do. It’s a damning epiphany.

In the next few hours I’m furious with my ISP for sending the wrong brand of router. I have to plug into it to access my high speed internet; there’s no wifi. That’s what preoccupies me. Something small that’s close preoccupies so much more easily than something enormous that’s distant. For Dr. Tyson, who spends so much time on the sky, the moon is closer than Syria.

Is it the condition of humans to always adjust to our circumstances and find something in them that displeases? Is that what makes millionaires go into debt over buying still more yachts? Is that what makes modern atheists compare themselves to African American civil rights pioneers? In their videos, Dr. Tyson appears absolutely as angry as Mr. Howe. I think back to Otakon in Maryland, and to the many miserable-looking people I saw in the hallways of a cartoon convention. And if I prowl Youtube, I’ll find tweens filming themselves in tears over their parents not buying them the latest Apple gadget. This is what preoccupies them.

It’s not a matter of seeking the thing that makes them unhappy. It seems as though people find these things on instinct. Was the evolutionary imperative to constantly seek out threats so strong that we have to be this way? It feels like it shouldn’t be. I’ve observed my behavior and modified for the positive before. But tomorrow, and next week, and next year, what will preoccupy me? How far away will the worst place in the world be?

Launching a Podcast

Consumed debuts this week. It's a podcast by three media consumers: myself, actor Nat Sylva and computer programmer Max Cantor. We're constantly reading, watching and playing, and gather to discuss what's stuck with us as we've consumed. After finding the proper mics, reliable recording programs and a ridiculously self-destructive pilot, we recorded our first proper episode. You can listen to it for free on the site.


My offerings are Harlan Ellison's Strange Wine and the Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood series. Max and Nat bring in Scrubs, the PC game Terraria, and two Westerns. Any feedback is welcome. Since comments aren't open on the Consumed site yet, feel free to comment here. We hope to record the second episode next week.

Download Consumed episode one.

Bathroom Monologue: Kamikaze Pilots Are Unethical

“Never had respect for them, and was always grateful they were on the other side. Not grateful for those that hit our carriers, but you’re never grateful for any loss of life. You’re grateful for less loss of life, and that’s what kamikazes promise you. See, to be a kamikaze you’ve got to be able to kill yourself. Right? That means losing the value on your own life, and that simply can’t be done without compromising your overall judgment. A pilot is a selfish animal that wants to fly safely above the fight. He doesn’t blow himself up sanely. The mindset can be linked to hallucinations and generally self-destructive behavior. The results are in our data: kamikazes are less likely to hit their target than modern missiles, and take up a whole aircraft with them. So a kamikaze is giving up the value of his own life and the value of his performance. He's breaking his ethical duties to the military and nation. A very good thing to have as an enemy, if you’re on guard. We always are, as we appreciate our lives. Will take theirs, too, if they’re so keen to get rid of them.”

Bathroom Monologue: And They're The Snappiest Dressers

Mine is the model family. My wife hasn't sagged a millimeter in twelve years. I can't remember a time when we weren't at the breakfast table, savoring that same toast. Maggie's always got a joke, one hand in the air for gesticulatory illustration. Our kids are always smiling. Every morning, midday and night, Bart is steadfast over his Math homework. You'd think Maggie's wisecracking would shake him, but he never complains. Nobody in this family complains. Some days it's trying to live with only three walls, and a third made of glass - but privacy's overrated when you've got such a family to show off.

Bathroom Monologue: Dear Child

Dear Child,

   The life you're going to lead is not what we wanted for you. Please, at least believe that your mother loved you with all her heart. I’ve only got this one letter to convince you.

   Your mother wanted children her whole life. She talked about having them on our first date. That sort of thing scared off most men – lucky me, for being patient. She kept legal pads all around the apartment jotting down names that were holy, professions of power, favorite colors and recipes you could share. You were going to be her life.

   Flora. Your mother’s name was Flora.

   Flora grew very sick. Complications arose with cysts in her ovaries. We were given the choice to abort you at a low percent chance of her survival, or risk birth and a lower percent chance of either of you surviving. She was hellbent for the latter until she came up with a third option.

   I didn't even believe in pacts and curses. She talked me into it, because as much as I was ready to love you, she was my life. In the middle of a night, she summoned this thing into a bedroom. It poured out of her eyes and she collapsed on the carpet, leaving me to make terms with the thing. I was just afraid for her life. I'd never even imagined this sort of thing, so I clung to just two things: that you both survive. It’s my fault. I should have paid more attention to his terms.

    You were born five weeks later. There was a lot of blood. I had to wait this infuriating distance from the operating room. I prayed. I prayed to the demon that she’d live. And she did. She even got to hold you. I wish you could remember that.

   Flora died of an infection two days later. The doctors didn’t know how to treat it; it hit her brain too fast. Her father pushed me to sue, thinking some of the equipment wasn't sterile.

   I was trying to make up my mind over what it was when the demon returned. He had followed the contract, you see? You both survived the birth, and now he wanted his payment. He claimed you.

   Hurt can make you do very stupid things. If you do anything in your life, don’t follow hurt to action. You need to understand that because there will be a lot of it in your life, and you can't let it make you foul up.

   I was in a world of it. I copied your mother's ritual in the middle of a night and summoned another demon. One that eats others. I gave her whatever she wanted to find and swallow him. She even let me watch. I enjoyed it until I threw up. The original demon, he cursed me. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to follow up on anything, and I don't rightly care if something comes for me tonight.

   My demon took its price. You. And I knew it. Somewhere inside my anger and bile, I knew you were what she'd take. But there was no saving you. There was only not letting him have you, even if it meant putting you in the hands of another.

   Your father is a very stupid man. I don't know what happens to you. If you grow up hating me, or wanting to kill me, I'll deserve it. Come in the middle of the night if you ever get free. But please, know that your mother loved you so much.

   Your father,

              Roderick

Notes to My Younger Self

Year One: Stop crying.

Year Two: You can't read. You're an idiot. This is normal for your age. But stop crying.

Year Three: All those things you like? Keep liking them. But could you get your parents to buy a second one of all of them, and put them in a box in the attic? Because that stuff will pay for college in twenty years.

Year Six: Crying in a department store didn't get you your way, did it? Jesus Christ.

Year Eight: It's convenient this is your favorite number. Have you put much thought into it? In a year, your favorite will be behind you. Let this soul-crushing revelation open your eyes to the terrors of temporal existence. Eight is going to leave you.

Year Nine: The children around you were born idiots. They didn't even know how to shit properly for years. Please, for all that is holy, ignore what they like and dislike. They are all still idiots. Whenever you hesitate over something, ask yourself, "Do I dislike this thing, or do I want the approval of people who dislike it?" The second answer is always wrong until it starts interfering with getting a job. You don't have to get a job for a long time.

Year Eleven: Do not read until after you're diagnosed with asthma. Okay. Ready? Ready? Good. Asthma is actually not fatal. All that crying? The adults thought you were an idiot because you are. Also, you grow up into a huge douchebag who enjoys his own errors. You've got a lot of amusement ahead of you.

Year Thirteen: Whatever you do, don't go to the doctor or hospital in November.

Year Fourteen: You did. It wasn't in your control. You actually didn't want to go, and that's going to stick in a fetid irrational part of your brain for the rest of your malpracticed life. You've got a lot of suffering ahead of you. Real suffering, not this trivia you've overreacted to so far. I want you to know it's entirely worth it. If I told you why, that'd ruin living. But I will advise to lighten up as soon as possible.

Year Fifteen: So that guy who wrote to you from the future last year seems like a lying asshole, right? Well he's not much of a liar. He is, however, someone you would absolutely hate. Horror of Horrors, he's convinced God isn't out to get you. He's way too cheery, helpful, almost shameless in the things he'll admit. Cartoons you won't tell your brother you watch? He goes to conventions about them.

Year Seventeen: You've got a lot on your hands. No bombs for you. Just, if you could read G.K. Chesterton and Shirley Jackson now, you'll be smarter.

Year Nineteen: Please leave your dorm room more often.

Year Twenty-One: Worst Valentine's Day ever, right? Wait, has that happened yet? Uh. Yeah, no, Lauren's great. She doesn't... wait, I'll be back in a year.

Year Twenty-Two: Did I screw up the time/space thing there? I don't know what I'm doing here. How about you write your past self? I'm kind of busy catching up on the novels we were always postponing.

Year Twenty-Three: Write more novels, you lazy tool.

5 Musicians Who Made Me a Better Writer

Music is the one art-form I’ve resisted learning much about. It’s part of a long-term personal study to test if ignorance really is bliss, but it’s also because purely unconscious reactions to music are so helpful to my writing process. If tracks can elicit or sustain strong emotions for me, I have a much easier time writing the related plots out. Today I’d like to share five musical influences that have made much of my current novel possible.

1. Hans Zimmer

When the six-armed homunculus stood atop the prison, swatting pteradactyls from the sky and out into the monsoon, Hans Zimmer was there.

Nobody does bombastic music quite like Zimmer. He’s so good at the “big” sounds that I just assume soundtracks like Lord of the Rings belong to him. But fine, he didn’t compose “Minas Morgul.” The Dark Knight and Inception soundtracks have stuck with me longer for writing anyway. I keenly remember sitting in the theatre for Inception and thinking, “I need this track. I can put this on and finish that vampire story as soon as I get home.” And a week later, it worked like a charm.

Along the way he’s also had temporary hits with me – soundtracks that helped for a few months. A League of Their Own, The Last Samurai, Sherlock Holmes and Pirates of the Caribbean all have their catchy bits. I’d do jumping jacks if Zimmer scored any film adaptation of my books. Partially because that would mean it’s a big budget movie and I might hit the bestsellers list thanks to it.

In case you’re wondering, the homunculus fight song was “The Dream is Collapsing.”

2. Igor Stravinsky and those other Amazing Old Fellas

I’m uncultured. I first heard Stravinsky mentioned on the now-defunct Games For Windows podcast, when Shawn Elliot asked if videogames would ever have their Igor Stravinsky, the game designer who was great at everything he tried.

“Bullshit,” I told my speakers.

Then I listened to Stravinsky’s work. While not every arrangement stirred me, he had an astounding batting record. I played his discography and discarded plot ideas. I composed arguments set to “Duo Concertant for Violin and Piano- IV. Gigue” – The way one beat of violins ends and another picks up/I can hear where one person stops and the other picks up in bickering.

And just like that, there was a chase scene to “Moderato alla breve” from Symphony in C. At least two dramatic reveals came from “Allegro moderato” from Symphony In E Flat.

He doesn’t have the one great theme that I keep going back to like other classical composers. Even in revisions, when I have to walk around thinking over a problem, I’ve gone to “In A Major, Op. 92- 2nd Movement- Allegretto” from Beethoven’s 7^th. I adore Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and am always trying to get fightscenes to work with it. Probably my all-time most inspiring song is Ode to Joy. I’m a sucker for the immutable greats. But Stravinsky’s work has somehow served as more versatile inspiration. I go to each symphony and movement less frequently, but the overall body is an inspirational toolkit.

3. Akira Yamaoka and Silent Hill

Akira Yamaoka is quite possibly the most talented sound designer I’ve ever witnessed. He composed the soundtracks for the Silent Hill videogames up until and including the Homecoming installment, and provided the score for the first Hollywood adaptation. He composed tracks to draw eeriness from a foggy screen, the somberness of sitting at the bedside of a dying lover, and terror from being chased by a giant wielding a meat cleaver. Part of his charm is an unmatched ear for ambient sound, and a similarly unmatched talent for blending it with traditional instruments, so that a guitar and the screeching of a steel door harmonize, as do static and a cello. Industrial sounds are as natural as any instruments, so that once you’re used to his style, there’s no novelty. This is just the way the music expresses itself.

Just as the Horror games benefitted from association with masterful music, the music has since taken on the benefits of association with that series. But I don’t write ripoffs of Silent Hill to this music. I summon it for frantic scenes, or ominous, or even serene ones. As creepy as Silent Hill gets, Yamaoka imbued it with some of the most tranquil songs I’ve ever heard to reaffirm places where you were safe. I’ve probably listened to the most hours of his music, both while writing and not.

My record is nine straight hours of one tiny track, “Silent Heaven,” looping as I wrote, went to bed, woke up the next morning and kept going to a breakthrough. Something in that track completely synched with this malicious disembodied voice I was writing into a character’s head. I’ve never had another experience like it. I presume the dorm mate downstairs hadn’t, either.

4. Ed Harrison

I have been trying to track this guy down. I think he’s got a tiny network on LinkedIn. He composed NeoTokyo, a soundtrack for an indy mod of Valve’s Half-Life. So he didn’t make a videogame soundtrack; he made the soundtrack for a fan-made spinoff. And it’s incredible. The music tops Bladerunner for noir and futurepunk feel. If he somehow reads this, please shake your own hand. You’ve got two, after all.

The album quickly became another toolbox for me. Songs latched onto and abetted particular instances of plot.

Walking the halls of the prison lost in thought? “Tachi.”

Encountering an alien creature larger than anything on this planet? “Out.”

Discovering the one room of people who not only need his help, but deserve it? “Beacon.”

Recently revising those scenes in the novel I’m left thinking, “It wouldn’t have come out this way without that song.”

5. God is an Astronaut

Being so uncultured, I don’t listen to many full albums. I just pull the songs I like and junk the rest. God is an Astronaut is a rare exception; I’ll pop in one full album and let it go. The music is so carefully constructed that the tracks move elegantly into one another, at least elegantly against each other. There’s nothing jarring about writing to All Is Violent, All Is Bright.

I sheepishly admit that if that album does go to a wildly different place at the end, I haven’t noticed. By the end I’ll have gone where I wanted in the prose. More times than with any other band or composer, I’ll finish a short story or chapter and realize the music ended a long time ago. God is an Astronaut delivers me into emotions that I can’t pull up on my own, but I can sustain. It’s like kite launching.

And if I surface from unfinished fiction, I’ve had great luck with hitting PLAY again and closing the deal. Enormous thanks to friend and podcastmate Max Cantor for introducing me to them.

So this is the music that’s meant the most to my writing in recent years. Please let me know what works for you. I'm always curious to expand my influences.

Bathroom Monologue: Law of Conservation of Magic, OR, Hotel Bathroom Monologue

"Science says energy cannot be created or destroyed, but science will do anything for money, including break the law. It will, for instance, determine which locales have the highest density of elfish genes in the human population. Demographics and genetics will narrow it further. Once you purchase the appropriate children, social science will help you break their spirits and breed them. Traditional magic will keep your tower invisible and unnoticed. Their spare energy will fuel the spell. The bulk of their energy, though? Yours at the click of a button, wherever and whenever you please. 4G grand wizardry, energy created, dispensed and crowd-sourced by modern science."

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.