Bathroom Monologue: Indicators I Got Old This Year

-Put several items back in the grocery store in order to afford lettuce

-Began making my bed rather than just wrapping the sheets around myself when I got tired

-Marathon editing sessions began to hurt my eyes and vision;
concerned party said, “It looks like your mascara is running”

-Finally began giving up on bad books
rather than seeing every one through to the end

-Finally began giving away or selling
lots of books and other media I’m not using anymore

-Learned how to cook waffles for myself

-Spent a full weekend filing

-Calculated my LDL for the first time

True Stories of John: Friday the 13th

You don’t know me if you don’t know that I love Friday the 13^th. It is one of the few series in human history that is great without being good. It's marred by an undue reputation, for it's not a conservative vengeance trip. At its face-burning, bed-impaling best, it is the id eating itself, reveling in the things it punishes, and it stars the hardest working man in show business. I never imagined a hockey mask could so define Horror, and yet it has, doing for my generation what horns and a pitchfork did for the Medieval world.

So when Michael Bay said his Platinum Dunes would remake Friday the 13^th, I was excited. He couldn’t screw it up worse; it was already bombastic, prurient and downright dumb in every way his stuff was, only lacking the budget. He could just paste together the fun parts from a few of the movies and have a winner. Give me the hockey mask, machete and teens who should know better, and you’ll get this liberal pacifist’s money every time.

They set to release it on Friday the 13^th, 2009.  I looked forward to it throughout January, with such intensity that even friends who hated Horror were excited for me. Yet it was a rough period in my household, and the closer we got to that Friday, the less I thought I could justify the price of a ticket. As the sky grew orange and the shades of the trees around my house swelled, I resigned my dream. I’d just stay home and polish some short stories.

I was opening Microsoft Word when the power went out. My desk faced the windows; down the street and around the lake, every house had gone dark. My battery back-up beeped in protest as I stared outside. Dusk rushed in, turning the surrounding forest into a silhouette.

I saved everything on the computer, shut down and gathered candles. This was obnoxious, but hardly fate. I could sketch plots in my notebook and maybe finish reading the Poe’s Children anthology before bed. I was carrying the books down the stairs in search of a flashlight when I witnessed perhaps the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Light flickered through my front windows. I peered through the curtains and found headlights. Actually, I found a figure in those headlights. It was a large, stocky man in washed out coveralls, carrying an axe over his head. He was in the street, and I swear he was looking right at me.

It took me a few moments to realize it was a neighbor home from construction work. Ironically, I only realized this when he unpacked the chainsaw from his pickup truck.

But that was enough for me. I told God and Michael Bay that they had won, I told my family goodbye, and got in the damned car. I’d go to the stupid movie instead of sitting in the dark all night. I was laughing to myself when the radio buzzed on. The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” was playing.

I drove very fast.

Bathroom Monologue: No Thanks

“He could have thanked me.”

“He could have thrown his catheter at you.”

“I was holding the door for him!”

“To the stairs!”

“I was being polite!”

“He was in a wheelchair!”

“Well I couldn’t push the button for the elevator. You’d already done it.”

“That’s so far from the point that it hurts a little.”

“Was I supposed to hold his catheter?”

“No, you were supposed to leave him alone.”

“We’re just supposed to ignore the handicapped now? Way to be progressive.”

“Why don’t you go hold the door to the stairs for a while?”

“Are we leaving?”

“You are.”

What Makes You Put Books Down?

Yesterday I discussed my resolution to stop reading bad books midway if they don't improve, breaking my lifelong habit of finishing everything. It was wasting my time, keeping me from works I enjoyed, and maybe even making me some enemies. This leaves me with two questions for you, exalted audience:

1. Do you abandon books?

2. If so, how do you decide what to ditch?

Do you look for particular qualities in your Science Non-Fiction, your Horror, your Paranormal Gothic Romances or whatnot? I've noticed the most people ditching books for having too many typos early on. Sloppy writing, sluggish pacing, and generally being boring are other common complaints, but I don’t know if these are reliable, and they worry me for my genre.

Yesterday I mentioned how I find the first hundred pages of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones to be the dullest in the series. Excluding the prologue, they are a static period that introduces character upon character, where the biggest actions are riding and eating, and where most everyone stands around being discontented in some way until I just wanted to punch them. The book only hits its stride a few hundred pages later, where it becomes one of the best works of contemporary Fantasy I've yet read.

If I ditched all books because the openings were unappealing, I’d have missed out on some great late nights under the lamp. Right now I'm tearing through N.K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and I can't properly express how much better the second hundred pages are than the first. Once the double-soul stuff comes up? Yeine becomes much more interesting, as do the gods around her.

This concern for A Game of Thrones and Hundred Thousand Kingdoms extends to all Speculative Fiction. I really couldn't have figured that either book would improve as drastically as it did from what was laid out early on; their early periods are handled like typical setup periods. In all the contemporary SpecFic I’ve read since graduating college, fewer than ten novels hit the ground running. You know the typical start, don't you? Tell me if this sounds familiar:

The prologue doesn’t plug into the first chapter. World-building is overwhelmingly described more than it is depicted, you're told about characters rather than watching them behave, and there are inevitable hefty tumors of dialogue between people we don’t care about yet. We're supposed to care when authors set up conflicts, but because we're not really into the narrative yet, it feels more like consuming a documentary than an action flick. Exposition rules this zone, and unless that exposition is cleverly written or about something highly unusual for the genre (think Terry Pratchett, or Weiss & Hickman), it’s a chore to read.

You all know this stuff. This is the rite of passage into The Good Parts. Secondary World fiction particularly need you to set up the stage; once it’s set, the characters will (God willing) do cool stuff. And usually they do! While only ten books may have hit the ground running, many more turned out well.

Until I had this resolution, I unthinkingly put up with weak openings while simultaneously nodding at an industry that ranted about pacing and exposition. It’s either hypocrisy or paradox. I’m not sure which.

But this leaves me with the big question: what do you look for in your openings? Are you good at spying out which books will pan out well? What are your reliable indicators?

Broke My New Years Resolution

In November and December of last year several of my peers and professional authors beat me up over my reading habits. I finished everything I read, no matter how much I hated it. And for years I wrote reviews of all but five of the books I’d finished.

This was, they explained, “life-shorteningly dumb.”

The negative reviews potentially made those authors my enemies before I’d ever met them, and I’d wasted my time by completing books I didn’t enjoy. Sometimes I’d tried to study how novels were failing to better my understanding, but no matter the approach, I never actually got much out of analyzing a book that stunk. And because often I hesitated to read at all when the present book was bad, I slowed down my overall consumption.

Thus all I got was a lugubrious experience with the option of additional negative experiences some day should an author find the review and take it personally. There are nightmare stories of major authors whose careers were hampered not by authors, but the author’s vengeful agent or publisher. It’s something to think about the next time you bag on Dan Brown.

My 2011 resolution worked great: to write a damned novel. I’d gone too many years without a new one. If you’ve been following The Bathroom Monologues for long, you know I conquered that bastard. I’m drawing up skeletons for additional ones now.

So my 2012 resolution was to put some books down. If it didn’t show promise, insight or improve toward the end of the first hundred pages? Then give it back to the library, or lend it to a friend who might like it better, or just shelve it.

Also less of that secondary policy of mine: shelving a book over and over again, to give it another chance in six months, or when I was in the mood for Gothic Horror, or whatever caprice would inevitably strike.

With over a hundred unread books in my closet, shelves and hard drive, keeping old ones was bloating the list. Also, historically? Most of the books that didn’t appeal on the first go usually didn’t fare better on the third or fifth. I had to get the guts to fire some novels from my employment.

It’s April, and I’m uneasy about the policy. Outliers still haunt me. It wasn’t until my fifth reading that the brilliance of Animal Farm struck me. I stand by my belief than the first hundred pages of A Game of Thrones are the dullest in the whole series; what great characterization I’d have missed if I gave up on it there.

It’s April, and I’ve finished eleven books. I’ve discarded six others midway through and feel no guilt, because regret has been paved over by the good works that have taken up more of my free time. It’s better that I got to P.G. Wodehouse’s Mr. MullinerSpeaking and Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers sooner, or so I insist to myself when the outliers start a-haunting.

I’ve reneged on the resolution three times so far. One is obvious: for National Novel Reading Month, the activity devoted to catching up on classics, I slogged through all of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which led both to much personal groaning and much public scorn for my lack of taste. True to form, I reviewed it. I’m not afraid of Austen’s publishers, and probably not afraid enough of the damage this could do to my reputation. 

The best news is that in this period I’ve felt roughly equally bad reviewing what I disliked and ditching books that failed to impress. Why is this good news? Because if I can even convince myself of the parity, then I can make an easier dash for the exit on the next clunker.

Doubts and outliers still haunt me, though, and I’ll have some questions about your reading and unreading habits tomorrow.

Bathroom Monologue: A reader writes in that hippos aren’t herbivores and eat people

Hippopatmus Amphibius photo from BS Thurner Hof, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nilpferd_auftauchend_0505012_.jpg

“Hippopotami are mostly herbivores. They have been caught eating carrion and have killed enough people that they’ve at least swallowed a few on happenstance. But their intestines aren’t set up for breaking down meat: eating it makes them barf and go nuts. Like, worse-than-mating-season nuts.

“If you fed a hippo nothing but meat it would die from malnutrition, and in the mean time, go drunk-driver-except-the-driver-is-the-car levels of nuts. Please, take this as a writing prompt.

“Now, none of this is to say that hippos won’t absolutely ruin you. They’re territorial, cranky when horny, swim faster than you, run faster than you, have wonky vision issues, and are enormous. Carnivores have the reputation for murder, but a hippo will kill the heck out of you. Herbivores can still be dicks.”

John Wiswell Died on Easter

Easter is by far my least favorite holiday. Not for a gripe against Jesus, or about Christianity and Paganism, or that weak-willed whining of adults who as kids had the labor of twice a year dressing for church. It was on this holiday in 1981 that Dr. John Wiswell died, and that sort of a thing sticks with a John Wiswell.

I grew up hearing he was my guardian angel. I also grew up hearing he was an atheist. He was a sickly man who couldn’t get out of bed on his own, and he almost left my grandmother for another woman. They couldn’t have kids and adopted them to build a loving family, and he kept a harmful emotional distance from them. For most of my childhood he was a photo on my father’s desk that Dad wouldn’t talk about. My paternal grandfather managed to exist as a highly contradictory set of myths, myths that were retold and reappropriated every April.

All myths tied to the central Easter story. I spent most Easters at my grandmother’s; I’m told my birth saved her life, coming so shortly after the loss of her husband. That’s one of many things I heard from her, or my father on the drive to Maryland, or my mother on the drive back. That Easter story had a damnable habit of changing.

There’s a 1981 Easter dinner, my Mom and Dad sitting at John Wiswell’s dining table, John telling his son he wasn’t good enough for his wife. In some versions he was joking; years later, after my mother divorced him, more versions pitted John as serious. I remember one Easter Story where he was so excited over the prospect of a grandson, arguing over the best place for him to be born, though I also recall one about him spending that morning in the basement workshop, alone, refusing to tell anyone what he was doing. The most common is the 1981 Easter dinner where a family member came out as gay, and John was so visibly shaken that he went upstairs to lie down. In every version of the Easter story he went upstairs to lie down, and he never returned.

It was a heart attack that left my grandmother a widow for my entire lifetime. She’s looking at her 95^th birthday this summer. That’s one of the ways I mark my life: I’m the length of time that the sweet old lady has been without John Wiswell.

None of the John Wiswell Easters are necessarily true, but they combine to a very good primer on how people’s agendas define history. Even when I was too naïve to really doubt each contradictory tale, I understood they came because my father was particularly morose that weekend, or my grandmother felt particularly nostalgic, or from whatever was behind my aunt’s cloudy eyes. I appreciated and internalized all the myths.

Perhaps I internalized them too well. In recent years I’ve tended to fall very ill around Easter, and this mortality leads to inevitable morbidity. On a recent Easter, after having dinner with a wonderful lesbian couple, I actually had to excuse myself and go lie down. Staring at the plaster ceiling, uncertain if I could sit up, it was hard not to dwell on the myths of John Wiswell.

So around Easter I tend to fall ill, and I tend to grow grim. It’s not a gripe against Jesus, or my health, or even against any John Wiswell in particular. It is a long habit, no better than Samuel Clemens thinking he’d go out on the comet he rode in on. Actually, it’s worse – at least his was zany.

But contrary to a lot of secular thought, we don’t get to pick our myths. If this day means anything to you, then I wish your order of myths treats you well.

Bathroom Monologue: John's asked to talk someone’s husband into practicing the route to the hospital for when she gives birth

"Hey, there's an eight pound tumor shooting out of ____'s crotch. Do you really want to rely on a satellite telling you to turn left, or do you want check the drive once or twice? Because that's the situation, and the stakes are as steep as a placenta splattering off your windshield."

 (Actual names withheld because I don't want them to kill me)

Bathroom Monologue: In Sheep's Clothing Redux

Lobo stalked the herd for two hours. They were lazy things, like bleating clouds drifting across the field. He salivated, but couldn’t give in. If he attacked too soon, they’d scatter and he’d only get one of them. If he was smart, he could knick sheep from the periphery of the flock for days. Forget his pack and their rules. The life of a lone wolf was sexy.

He kept his muzzle down, hiding in the willows. One gamy sheep straggled from its herd, its dim face nuzzling the grass. Lobo panted. It was far from the most tempting of the flock, but Lobo was good for any meat.

It strayed further and further, almost straight to his hiding spot. Its head bobbed around, mouth never opening for a bite of grass. Lobo wondered if it was developmentally challenged. Then its head flopped back. Lobo stared in horror as the top of its head came to rest against its spine, as though a convulsion had broken its neck.

That wasn’t it. Instead, jutting from beneath the sheepskin, a grey wolf’s muzzle protruded. The sheep head and hide were a disguise, draped over a she-wolf. She bared her fangs at Lobo’s brush.

She growled at him. "You look like a bottle cap."

"What?"

"Screw off."

Lobo remained down. The she-wolf in sheep’s clothing padded up to his willows. He felt foolish now, seeing her shapely wolf’s legs protruding out from under the sheep hide.

“I see you, moron. This is my flock. Get out of here.”

“No way,” Lobo whispered. “You get out of here. You’ll spoil everything.”

She threatened, “I’ll cry wolf.”

“So you’ll be busted.”

“I’ll just put the mask back on. They’re not very bright.”

Lobo rubbed his nose in the dirt. He wasn’t good with inter-wolf conflict. It’s why he was trying the loner deal. “We can share. There’s enough sheep for both of us.”

“They’re not for eating.”

Lobo looked at the pudgy critters. Two of them ambled into each other and their fat deposits jiggled. “They look like they’re for eating.”

“Listen, once upon a time I thought that way. I dressed up like them to get in. But they’re really nice. They play games. We jump over fences to make kids fall asleep. Plus, sheep fur is harder to digest than you think.”

Lobo growled as low as possible, wanting to threaten her but not alert the others. The she-wolf was unmoved.

“Last warning,” she said. She jerked her head forward and the sheep mask fell back over her face. Its eyes were actually pebbles. Lobo couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. “Get out of here before I tell my friends on you.”

“Just you try it. Some day I’m going to eat you by accident.”

The she-wolf turned tail and ambled back into the fold. Sheep-walking didn’t look so hard, Lobo thought. All you needed was a costume and to trot around like you were drunk. After a moment, Lobo couldn’t even tell which was her. Wolves weren’t much brighter than sheep.

A particularly mouthwatering sheep emerged from the herd. He was bursting with meat, at least twenty times the size of his friends. Lobo had to bite his paw to prevent himself from pouncing the husky thing.

It ambled towards Lobo’s brush. The ground shook under its weight. Slowly, Lobo’s feast-enthusiasm turned to anxiety. There was something wrong with the giant sheep. Its legs were tree-stump thick and grey. Its hide was messy, almost like a patchwork of dozens of sheep-sheddings.

Lobo squinted. He wasn’t much of a thinker, but there was something off about the giant sheep’s head. It drooped straight down like there was no skull under it. Plus, he didn’t think there was a nose or mouth. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a sheet of paper with the word “FACE” written on it.

The giant sheep paused before Lobo’s brush. Lobo looked up and saw under the paper. Two massive nostrils glared back down at him, exhaling a gust of wind. The hippo in sheep’s clothing grunted.

“Baaaa.”

“Are… are you kidding me?”

“I’m a vegetarian, but I have a four foot mouth. You want to try this?”

Lobo whined up at the massive nostrils. He wormed away on the ground, head bowed, never getting back up to his paws. There had to be easier meals out there. Maybe he could eat the willows.

Bathroom Monologue: Nice Life, Ugly Poem

Life’s a character study,

full of short stories,

little of it novel,

all of it poetry (though poetry’s unpopular).

A genetic serial,
a historical fiction,

the unauthorized true story,

its binding invisible,

pages dog-eared only when lived by a dog.

Some editions issued in audio,

available in green paperback,

and quotable spare change;

the e-book’s cheaper, but it’s not the same as going outside.

If living the biography’s overwhelming,

crib notes will be made available via headstone.

Bathroom Monologue: When You Lose

“Kid, you’re in your first year, and he’s had eight decisions in his last nine matches. He’s taller by two inches and heavier by twenty-five pounds if he skipped breakfast. He’s never been choked out, and he’s only submitted once, and that was to the current champion. I don’t mean to douse your spirits when I say you’ll lose. You’ll lose. But you’re faster than him, and he leads with his right because his left elbow has bothered him in the last two matches. It won’t save you. Tonight, I’ll probably be taping ice packs to various parts of your body. But you can go out there and make a spectacle. Make people look at you. If you do something ludicrous, you’ll be replayed across Youtube and TV. It doesn’t matter if he shrugs off your spinning kung fu kick – in fact, if he knocks you out right after it, you’ll be a sensation. You never should have been put in this fight, but you can make sure everyone remembers you after it, and that’ll mean you keep your career.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Vampire Mirror

"Not polished silver and glass; this model features a liquid crystal screen with twelve discretely embedded micro-cameras registering heat, air patterns and ambient coloration. If you have crumbs in your beard or your mascara is running, all the better, for these are tangible and scannable clues as to how you look. Using processors that would make Steve Jobs blush and software typically reserved to FBI suspect sketching technology, it auto-fills details of the human body based on what’s most likely to be there. Is it real time? Not yet, for now it’s surreal time, but even our first-generation technology is sensitive enough for Dracula to floss using its reflection."

“Would you drink apple juice if you knew a sterilized cockroach had touched it?” –Everyone, paraphrasing Jonathan Haidt

One of the questions Jonathan Haidt asked people for his book, The Righteous Mind, was if they would drink a glass of apple juice if a sterilized cockroach had been dipped into it. Haidt explains that the cockroach has absolutely no disease or hazardous particles on it; it does not affect the juice in any tangible way. So would you sip?

The press’s response has largely been that this question belongs at a slumber party, not academic work, but it got me thinking. My snap reaction is that I wouldn’t, because that’s gross. As an adult I’m supposed to pretend I have deliberated responses, but I know and want to out snap-reaction thinking.

A few seconds later I thought about sitting at a table with some squeamish friends. I envisioned that all of these friends (not naming names) would refuse and squirm in their chairs. And my contrarian nature would seize on the harmlessness of the juice, compelling me to drink it just to tease them. Removed from the circumstances, I realize I’d gleefully haze my friends for the same inhibition that I’d otherwise have.

Then I thought of those times when I couldn’t afford food. Would I drink it then? You bet your food stamps I would.

Right now I have food in my house, but no fruit or juice. Might I supplement my vitamin intake tonight with this cockroach-touched juice? It’s quite possible, especially if it wasn’t apple juice. I don’t like apple juice.

Or if I’ve just read one of those reports about how juice is sugar-heavy without the digestible fiber to offset it? I’m a sucker for those, affecting my drinking choices for short periods of time afterward.

And what am I getting out of the deal? Does a doctor offer me five bucks to drink a glass of sterile-cockroach-touched juice? In that instance I think I wouldn’t, believing there’s no way a doctor would pay me money for something that didn’t have a secretly questionable chemical in it.

But if the doctors swore upon pain of litigation that the juice was clean? Then I’d probably take the fiver.

What about days when I’m feeling sicker, when the syndrome is heavier, and my thinking slows and I get generally cranky? I’d be much less receptive to the roach-juice, just as I’m less receptive to trying anything new in those periods.

Never mind the setting, circumstances or who made the offer (if Dick Cheney dipped it, you’re looking at a different outcome than if my germophobe sister did). I couldn’t help thinking about personal circumstances, things like mood or recent personal issues that could sway me in that case, and that do routinely sway my behavior. Had I not been in a receptive mood when I first heard about Haidt’s book, I probably wouldn’t have looked it up and have added it to my next buying list. I believe most human beings are arbitrary like me in these regards. We’re not randomly capricious, but we bring more into situations than absolutist answers account for.

You, dear reader, have factors that would influence how you’d respond to this post today as opposed to next week, and next month, and while you have the worst flu of your life, and right after you get the best hummer of your life. What mood are you in?

Bathroom Monologue: Miss Anthrope

They had the top half of a centaur, but fewer and clumsier legs. They were slower than sauropods, and kept getting trampled under them. They had neither the artistic nor scientific know-how of gremlins; the few golems they built were uninventive knock-offs. They had the sex drives of imps, without their carnal creativity. Their offerings in entertainment were few.

They were susceptible to influenza, tentacalia or vampirism. And they made woefully generic vampires, the only new trait being that some of the young ones sparkled. There was nothing special about their immune systems. Succubae and incubae could eat them by the bed-load. At best, they were junk food.

In many ways it was a two-eyed cyclops, lacking their size and strength, but including their gluttony and cruelty, and thereby leaving them socially unappealing.

Really, they were generous to let the humans live. It’s sheer luck they took over the world.

Bathroom Monologue: John’s Mass Effect 3 Ending *SPOILERS*

JACK in control of a biotic high school was hilarious, so why stop there? After not dying in the final battle because they played no visible part in it, Jack has to expand her school. She buys what used to be Manhattan for some shiny beads, since its previous owners are dead and can’t really prove who owned what anymore. She hires GRUNT as her new Gym teacher, TALI for Computer Education, and GARRUS of the grand calibrations for Mathematics. So subsidize their education system the kids manufacture the caustic Turian and Krogan food since, you’ll recall, those races are now stuck here and can’t eat anything we do. Menu options are divided into healthy “Paragon” and more expensive but more entertaining “Renegade” sections. McMordin’s soon spreads into the first post-apocalypse fast food chain, with trillions of enthusiastic customers, though the sign outside “ONE MILLION REAPERS GOT SERVED” never changes.

Bathroom Monologue: Almost Clever

Abner shouldered into the door and turned the heavy key in the knob’s lock. Then he threw the deadbolt above, and latched the sliding bolt above it. He kicked the doorstop down for additional resistance, wondering if he had time to install a bar like those old French castles used to have.

When he decided he didn’t have the time, he trudged into the living room and dragged out the heaviest chair he owned, wedging it under the doorknob. Abner surveyed the mess with approval for a few seconds before thinking better, and ran back into the living room and dragged out the chest of drawers, heaving the oak monstrosity up behind the chair just in case.

He leaned against the wall, panting and perspiring into the floral wallpaper. He rested his head against the security panel, fingers hitting the code to turn it on. Even with the syndicate after him, he’d never felt so safe as just then.

That’s when the bomb went off and took down his entire apartment complex. Mercifully, the explosion was so needlessly huge that Abner never had the moment to register that he was unsafe. He died feeling almost clever.

Mass Effect 3 Podcast

The new episode of Consumed is online, featuring myself, Nat Sylva and Max Cantor. This week's episode is explicitly and entirely devoted to discussing Mass Effect 3. There's a controversy around the ending, but we approach the game holistically, discussing:

-Squad choices and New Vs. Old characters
-Writing, and the game's problem with urgency in a crisis-plot
-Rushed development cycle and DLC
-The altered conversation system
-Multiplayer, and getting eaten alive in it
-The incredible ambition of the series overall
-And hey, that game has a beginning too.

Other topics beg not to be spoiled here. It's about as detailed a discussion of ME3 as you'll find on the internet. I don't think there was anything we all agreed upon.

You can download Spoiled: Mass Effect 3 here.

As a bonus, we included three editions of the podcast with three different endings. How different are they? That depends how different you thought Mass Effect's endings were.

Bathroom Monologue: LOBBYGAGGING (Proposed Neologism)

Many match-making programs feature a lobby system that puts partially-completed groups of users into a chat room while they wait for enough members to join. Most of my exposure to electronic lobbies are in videogames, waiting to fill up a team so we can go lose at Left 4 Dead. Yet in every game or other program in which I’ve ever been shunted into a lobby, there’s come at least one time when no one else joins no matter how long I wait or what settings I tweak. This has happened on game consoles, PCs and Macs, on indy games and blockbuster titles. You wait around until it’s obvious nothing will change, then start up a new lobby, which fills up shortly, and it becomes evident the previous lobby somehow fell out of priority in the system.

I feel like anyone who messes around on the internet has been stuck in such a spot. It’s destiny; no multi-user code is perfect. But a persistent problem that causes users to be stranded in a lobby, itself lagging while they are forced to lollygag, deserves a name. In fact, I think it deserves exactly one name.

Ladies and gentlemen, from henceforth please call this event “LOBBYGAGGING.”

We all win if this works out.

Bathroom Monologue: Gaia Man

The sun nudges his hips. Tides lap at his face and hips, tugging at him, sedimenting his hide, begging him to play. In youth, he liked nothing more than the waltz with the heavens across that spray. Now, he doesn’t have the will to get up.

He’s so tired. Just one hand feels like it weighs a billion tons, and his joints are locked in fossils and granite. When he tries to stir and put on a show for the elements, he finds his fissures are deeper than ever, shooting pains down the tectonic plates of his spine.

He collapses into the geography, simply unable to rise with this day, this year, this age. He’s been so tired for so long that he can’t remember the last time he really did something in the world, yet before he grew old, didn’t he do enough? Can’t those civilizations living on his hide figure it all out without him?

His legs are too vast to move, and it’s so warm beneath the grass and shores. It’ll be cold if he gets up. He’s earned the right to warmth. Even his eyelids, hanging sheets of shale, are so wizened he can’t tell if he’s opened them. He doesn’t ask to dream. He just wants to lie down and let the stupid humans do it for themselves for once.

True Stories of John 20: Naked and Bleeding in a Hotel

In September 2011 I shared a writing prompt based on real life. It was a sentence I spoke out loud in a hotel in Maryland:

"I've only been in this perfectly nice hotel for ten minutes and I'm already naked with blood on the floor."

I promised to tell the truth behind it if enough people wrote stories inspired by the line, or if everyone nailed Danielle La Paglia's birthday challenge. Well, last week you all nailed the latter. Now it's time for me to fess up.

It was the first day I realized just how old I am. I passed through a grand lobby with a complimentary piano, took the wide elevator by myself, and slid into an air-conditioned hotel room replete with HD television and a view of a busy metropolis - and my first thought was, "Joy, they've got an ironing board!"

There's no good way to confess that I ironed the sweat out of my clothing. It was a toiling sojourn in 100-degree weather and I only brought so many shirts. When I realized how easy it was to freshen up my button-down, my t-shirt followed, and then my underwear. Don't you judge me. We all do stupid things when we're alone, I just confess them, though I may also take them further than others.

If I loitered any longer my body would register that the travel was over and collapse, so I waddled into the bathroom to get shaving out of the way. I've got an Irish potato face, the pores begging to betray me on any stroke of a razor. This time my skin held up until the last swipe, at which point my chin opened up with what I still feel was unnecessary vigor.

I spun around and bent to get toilet paper to stop the bleeding, but the sudden motion just made it worse. My blood spattered onto this otherwise pristine beige floor. One drop hit my bare knee and gave me unwanted perspective about a naked fat man bleeding in his hotel. It got funnier when I smelled the iron burning my used underwear. It kept getting funnier all night, even after I got clothes on again.

Quality: Self-Pub Vs. Traditional-Pub

So, Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote a really long and strangely strawman-heavy argument that traditional publishing doesn’t guarantee quality. I like Rusch’s blog, and this was just one of many pieces defending the self-publishing market’s reputation at the expense of traditional publishing.

Honestly, I wanted to be on board with her. I know that there is quality work in the self-published market, and that there are some incredibly talented and hard-working freelance editors, and that many of the traditionally-published writers will be better off moving to self-publication, and most certainly there are publishing house editors that slack off.

But so much of Rusch’s diatribe (like many similar diatribes) was oversimplified or felt like deliberate untruth. She claimed to receive e-mails from traditional-publishing writers and editors who, “believe that only traditional publishing can guarantee that the reader will get a quality product.” How many of those e-mails actually espoused belief in that guarantee? I'm willing to bet very few, though I don't have the evidence since it's her inbox, not mine. No one in my inbox, and no one I can remember talking to, espoused this belief. I damned sure don’t believe traditional publishing guarantees quality work, and haven’t believed that since I was eleven and bought a bad traditionally published book at a school fair.

Now, I have run into many people who presumed it more likely that a traditionally-published book would be worthwhile than a self-published one. It seems like most of those people believed this based on experience with vanity publishing and the stuff that mucks the 99-cent zone on Amazon, though I didn’t keep a tally. There is definitely the cultural impression that your odds are better with a mainstream publisher’s book than with self-published book. That's a serious (and in several ways flawed) concern authors must deal with, but rarely gets a fair hearing.

Not everyone who works in traditional publishing thinks all their products are better than all the products in the self-publishing market, nor do all writers view it that way, nor have I ever heard anyone ever voice the opinion that, in Rusch’s words, "Amanda Hocking’s books [are] better because St. Martins Press published them." For such a long article, she created many unfortunate strawmen that only undermined the credibility of her argument, especially when what she was arguing towards could easily be oversimplified to "Any self-published books are just as good as any traditionally published books." Whether or not she believes this, it is something these arguments reduce to too often, and it is only invited by pre-emptively engaging in this sort of oversimplification.

I'm reading Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers right now. No self-published book I've read in the last fifteen months can touch it. In fact, most of those self-published books weren't worth finishing.

Does that mean all self-published books are crap? No.

Does it mean self-published books can't meet the high quality of the best traditionally-published books? No, and I'd sure hope not, as it's the avenue I'm considering.

But does it indicate that most self-published books don't meet the level of quality of high-end traditionally-published books? That's the sticking point Rusch failed to address rigorously, and in my experience, that ardent self-pubbers circle around in over-defense of their distribution model. This is the sticking point that, more than anything and despite the talent of many writers in the e-pub world, sustains the current stigma.

Have I read crappy traditionally-published books? Yes, too many. Too many not to laugh when traditionally published authors leave the big New York houses to self-publish. It’s a funny world.

Bathroom Monologue: Under the Tide

They looked at him funny when he came into work in his snorkel, his flippers slapping the polished tile floor. But you know what? They looked funny to him, all soggy, and airless, drowning without awareness that the whole city was underwater. After the manager took Dieter aside, he agreed to take the snorkel off when he was at his desk or in meetings with more than five people. He held his breath, occasionally sipping air from a bottle he hid in his jacket. His roommate thought buying a second fridge for all his empty water bottles (or to Dieter, full air-bottles) was ridiculous, but his roommate jerked it to cartoon porn, so he couldn’t argue about ridiculous. This whole city had crashed under tidal waves. It couldn’t judge him. He only tried not to judge it too harshly, the dead in denial, needing to snicker at his swim-floats straining over a winter coat. They needed it to cope.

Bathroom Monologue: They Call it ‘The Widow’

There are some footfalls up until 13:10 on the tape, at which point the guards seem to conclude their rounds. We identify two speakers, listed in documents as Guard 01 and Guard 02, numbered in order of their speech on the tape. All audible communication is transcribed below.

“Why do they call it ‘The Widow?’”

“You know guns shoot people, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Because you’ve got one there, and if you don’t know what it does, I want another partner.”

“You don’t call my gun ‘The Widow.’”

“Well this is top of the line, [NAME REDACTED]. It’s going to kill a lot more people than your little security side-arm. This is going to win the war, so this is the one you call ‘The Widow.’”

“But it’s still not a widow.”

“It makes widows.”

“Now if it was a ‘Widowmaker’…”

“Dude, ‘Widowmaker’ is played. There’s like, a thousand guns called ‘Widowmaker.’”

“But ‘Widow’ is inaccurate! That’s like saying, I don’t know, that women who lose their spouses are super-good at headshots. My mom raised me alone, and she’s really nice.”

“[NAME REDACTED]…”

“You like my mom. You came over for Christmas.”

“There are killer spiders called ‘widows,’ okay? It’s named for a [PROFANITY REDACTED] spider.”

“They didn’t call it ‘The Black Widow,’ and the gun doesn’t look like a spider. Plus, don’t those kill their mates? So does the gun kill anybody that works with you? Why would you make that?”

“You want me to [PROFANITY REDACTED] open the [BLASPHEMY REDACTED] case and show you that it looks like a spider? Because if that will shut you up—”

“Maybe the gun had a husband. Is the cartridge its husband? And like, does every new cartridge mean she got widowed?”

“Oh my [BLASPHEMY REDACTED], I’m opening it. If you say anything else about The Widow, I will take it out and shoot you with it.”

“Why are you so—”

At this point on the tape there is a loud bang followed by two consecutive thumps. It is presumed that The Widow was stolen at this time. Why the two guards were knocked unconscious instead of killed is subject to investigation, but Guard 01 believes the thief didn’t want to create any widows. Guard 02 refuses to talk to him anymore.

This Photo Is Lying

On Sunday we celebrated my grandfather and Danielle La Paglia's birthdays with a little game. There was a photo of how I write. Everyone was invited to guess what was untrue about it. The ladies and gentlemen of the jury nailed five deceits, including one I hadn't really thought of before.

I'd really rather write on the deck.

 
The Five Errors

1. I don't keep an OED that close to me. It's on my shelves a short walk away, and I consult it a little less often than Etymonline or simply googling a word.
-Guessed by Anonymous N, Helen Howell, Cathy Oliffe-Webster and Larry Kollar.

2. I do not type on a Mac Book. I don't even own one; I borrowed it for this photo since that seemed easier than lugging my PC into the bathroom. I really wanted that computer in the tub with me, though.
-Guessed by Michael Tate.

3. I do not write fully clothed. In fact that thing I wrote that time, that you found the most touching and thoughtful of my works, was probably done in a t-shirt and underwear. For decency, I'm wearing socks while writing this post.
-Guessed by Catherine Russell and Larry Kollar.

4. The most obvious, but I have to count it: I don't write in the bathroom. The Bathroom Monologues are an oral tradition; I type them up later. Approximately ten Bathroom Monologues have been scribbled on toilet paper or in the margins of an available New Yorker.
-Michael Tate, Richard Bon and Peter Newman.

5. Richard Bon split a perfect hair: "At least part of the time you probably have your eyes closed while you write." I can't fight that. I do blink, and static imagery betrays this. This supplants the stealth-error that I'm not actually writing. The Mac is only booting up.
-Guessed only by Richard Bon.



The One I Wish Was True

From Anonymous N: "John Wiswell does keep the dictionaries on hand; it's where, after battles unnumbered, he has managed to imprison all the words he will ever need. While he knows them all by name and never needs to open the pages, he does need to keep an eye on them so they don't cause trouble."

Three You Might Think Were Errors
1. Several people doubted the absence of coffee or liquor. I've actually never drunk alcohol and abhor coffee. All my absurdism comes from a lucid mind. If I have to, I'd rather have a hot cocoa with whipped cream.

2. I do actually smile when writing. In fact if I can trick myself into laughing, I usually take it as feeling I've done a good job. Typically I'm pretty self-critical.

3. That is my soap. It knows me better than it wishes it did.

Tips for Surviving a Dystopia

1. Oppress someone. Needless antagonism gives you a significantly greater chance of both surviving and thriving in polemic fiction. If there is a difference between the antagonists in Battle Royale and Hunger Games, it’s that the latter tweaked them to be even more capricious in their inhumanity – and it’s really popular. A good gig if you can get it. For maximum survival, step down to an assistant role right around when heroic rebellions emerge so that if they win, your replacement will be slain instead

2. Be a robot. These things only needed people to invent them; afterward they’re quite sufficient to thrive in dystopias where they carry out dreadful tasks on some humans either for other humans, or for kicks. The robot is the sparking, malfunctioning poster child of the amoral future. The “hulking killer” and “sad little” varieties have particularly good chances of hanging around after the fall of man. If you absolutely can't become a robot, then go befriend one as soon as possible. You're the first person to ever do that, aren't you? How novel.

3. Be a cockroach. Likely to thrive in most dystopias that aren’t one giant microwave. As vermin, infest the abode of the most wretched people you know. A survey of nearly every dystopia in existence shows that cloying bugs and vermin live long and fulfilling lives.

4. Be particularly wretched. Every day otherwise healthy men and women are dying for fill-in-the-blank tragic reasons, but you can do better. Where others abhor being tortured or abused, you should walk right into the meat grinder that is your contrived life.Get treated like a slave by your employer. Get sick without hope of medical assistance. Live in the poorest corner of the dirtiest slum in the most forgotten part of what should be a just nation. God willing, be an orphan. The more pathetic you can make your life, the greater chance you’ll have of being a literary example, and they always last longer.

5. Avoid miracles like they're the Plague. Have you found the only woman alive who can still get pregnant? Great. Now get the Hell away from her before being an accessory to her journey gets you killed. Her destiny is only good for her, and for the future of your planet after your book/movie/videogame ends. For the time being, all she can do for you is attract the attention of oppressors from Item #1.

6. Mutate. Evolution may take generations, but with one author’s poor knowledge of radiation, you can emerge from the apocalypse stronger and with new employment opportunities. Consider others who have similar mutations. Could you start a cult? How about a pack? If gathering seems hard, trying starting as an oppressed minority.

7. Reconsider the afterlife as a means of survival. Even the most fundamentalist hereafter can’t be any preachier than getting stuck in 1984.

Bathroom Monologue: One-Armed Immortal

I am the bastard you’ve been looking for. I’m the one-armed man, and I have six fingers on this one remaining hand. I’ve left many wives without husbands, sons without fathers, and daughters with surprises they won’t want to explain in polite settings. If you’ve come into this carnival for vengeance, I can assure you I’m the villain you want to slay. Even if I didn’t do what so outraged you, I’m guilty enough.

I’ve a crippled soul. Fossilized. Means the flesh won’t get any older, and if you ask Kitty, the spirit won’t get any more mature. I can’t die, save by five means. Until death, it means I’ve got what I’ve got and nothing more. No surgery can fix my busted arm. I’ll have to make do with righty, but I’m damn good with it. I can fence any two-handed man, or wield a scimitar, or throw a javelin. And the recreational things I can do with this one hand! Haha, just ask Kitty.

She’s glaring at me, but she’s charmed. Don’t worry yourself. You grow to enjoy her claws eventually.

The witch said only five things can kill me. I’ve figured out three of them, not that I’m sharing the list with you. Some things you want to keep to yourself. But the other two? They’re a surprise. Or, I guess, one will be a surprise and the other will be an eternal mystery. I know for certain that I can’t bleed out and I’ll never starve to death at sea. Some bedroom adventures leave me supposing I’m immune to asphyxia. I can’t die by the sword, but that’s no magic – that’s talent.

How do you get a fossilized soul? It’s gorgonic. A little more than a gorgon looking at you; she has to give you a specific look. I excel at getting women to give me certain looks. Again, just ask Kitty.

I liked her look so much that I kept that old hag’s head. It’s in this bag as a last resort. Lot of scum try to stick up a one-armed men, thinking he’s helpless on his own, or helpless because he’s got his trousers down in a brothel. You know, life. I let ‘em rifle through my things, open the bag, look inside, and the brothel gets a statue for the yard. I feel keeping her head is fair, given that she kept my arm.

Bathroom Monologue: My Kind of Priest

“Useless son of a mother-licking—”

“What bothers you, my son?”

“I’m not Catholic, padre.”

“Sorry. What bothers you, my nephew?”

“The bastard’s been riding me all day. I only missed one lug nut on his jeep and the sergeant’s making like I forgot to screw on his… listen, is it against your code to hear dirty words?”

“We have a policy about this which you might have heard. Turn the other cheek?”

“Both are already blistered, padre.”

“God gave you four, my nephew.”

“Ha! What kind of priest are you?”

“A new one, for starters. Only giving my first sermon this weekend.”

“What’s it about? I might come if the internet goes out again.”

“Not taking yourself too seriously.”

“Well I’m not, it’s just this sergeant--”

“Neither am I. It’s my topic. Thanks for helping me.”

“Where are you going? We were just getting started.”

“So am I. Now I’ve got to go write that sermon. If you get curious, tickets are free.”

“Come back! Buy me a beer and I’ll confess!”

John Writing in a Bath Tub, OR, Birthday Games

For about as long as I've known her, Danni has insisted that I write all my posts in the bath tub. On her special day, in the heart of her special month, I want to give her the best gift of all: being right.

Click for high definition embarrassment.

There you go. Photographic evidence that I edit in the tub. It's good that I have a window right there for natural light, but damn is it hard to hit backspace with a pruny pinky.

I'm actually away today, celebrating my grandfather's birthday. He does not wish to see me in any sort of tub. But because of the duality of celebrations, I'd like to extend a party game to all readers, no matter when you were born (or now pretend you were born).

The above picture misrepresents at least five things about how I write. There are doubtless more than five, but five in particular strike me. If the readers can guess all five, or some of the actual five and some other things more amusing than the actual five, then I'll post something even more embarrassing about myself than a photo with a Mac Book in the tub. Something about blood, nudity and a fresh hotel room.

You have until Thursday to guess. It's open to anyone, and everyone is allowed up to five guesses total. No one person has to get all five; you only need five points amongst everyone who plays.

Happy guessing, and happy birthday!

"Shark Cafe" is Abroad

This weekend my flash "Shark Cafe" is appearing over at Karen Berner's blog. Of all the absurdism I've ever written it might be the piece of which I'm most proud, because it never gives into how ridiculous a restaurant specializing in hot brewed shark is.

How do you brew shark? Is it immoral? What are the dangers of shark deficiency? All these questions and more are largely ignored at this link.

Bathroom Monologue: Drowning World Turtle

Nowadays it’s impossible to imagine the world without apocalypses. The imps built palaces in the sky to rule from above and were dashed by comets. The gremlins thought it was their turn, built automatons to do all the heavy lifting for their empire, and the autos turned on them. An electrical storm reduced the autos to blank statues, humanity thought it was finally their turn, and in the middle of a perfectly nice day reality ripped open the sauropods came back. It’s as natural as seasonal cycles. Yet if you consult the oral legends of the oldest races, the centaurs and the nine-legs, and the remaining records of the gremlins, you find common references to a First Apocalypse.

All land once floated on the back of a World Turtle, which swam either among the stars or in what today we call the oceans. A big son-of-a-something, and healthy, such that all the world’s plants grew from its shell. Since it was green, most of the flora were forests. Thick jungles that consumed lumbering beasts, toughening the sauropods and cyclopes, so that all life was hardy, ruled under the Four Gods.

And there were gods, captains of this Great Ship World Turtle. One would wander down to its slippery head and whisper, “I feel like inventing ‘East’ today. Find a new direction and name it that.” And it would comply, because turtles are prone to peer pressure.

So one day the Goddess of the Sky climbed down the World Turtle’s neck and whispered, “You notice that yellow thing up there that makes days possible? Swim over to that. I want to know what it’s like.”

Then she climbed up to the highest point on the World Turtle’s shell for the best view of the sun. But while she mounted, the God of the Depths climbed down the World Turtle’s neck. He whispered, “That nasty thing’s hot. How about we dive? See what’s under the waters of the world?”

Then he scampered off to the apex of the shell, expecting to get the best view of his desires. Yet as he ascended, the Goddess of Mystery rode the rivers between the plates of the World Turtle’s shell down to its ear. She cupped its beak and whispered, “Why did we ever start going forward? We never saw all of what was at the beginning of creation. Can’t you go backwards for just a few eons so I can see everything back there?”

To the World Turtle’s credit, it both began to dip under the waves while it about-faced, seeming to concede to two demands at once. Upturning so dumped a thousand sauropods into the surf and enraged the God of Boldness, who had been teaching them beach sports. He tumbled down the World Turtle’s slope, jabbing a javelin into its scalp to hold on.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he chastised. “We’re making headway. We might see where creation ends if you just kept the bearing. We need to find what else is out there.”

The Goddess of Mystery hadn’t yet departed, and so contested his virtue. Their argument whirled into a tempest, the ferocity of which was only split when the Goddess of Sky and God of the Depths coming roaring down at each other. The desires of the four were irreconcilable, and none were willing to go second. They argued for so long that some of the lesser critters had to develop free will just to go on living, and they would have kept going forever if the World Turtle hadn’t stopped. Its continental body drifted, listless, unable to obey so many commands.

The Four Gods quit its head, unable to argue the World Turtle into submission with three dissenters. After it became obvious none could coerce each other, they split separate ways. That’s why none of them had alibis.

Tragedy struck at dusk. Jungles suddenly wilted to nothingness. The continental shell cracked and powdered into soil. Countless species died from the sudden shock of our world being born. Mortals rushed to the great head and found it dangling under the tide. Someone had drowned the World Turtle.

There were only four capable of such feats, though no one saw which God did the deed. Sky accused Depth, Depth accused Mystery, Mystery suspected Boldness, and Boldness pointed fingers at them all. They dragged each other to Celestial Court and have spent all known history simultaneously arguing four homicide cases. It is very difficult to out-argue someone who is nigh-omniscient and exists outside time; more difficult still to reconcile four such people who are all intentionally playing obtuse for argument’s sake. Allegedly we’ll know when they reach a verdict, as they’ll restore order to this world – or it’ll be another apocalypse.

For the cyclopes, sauropods and other beings, it was a confounding dusk. There was all beloved life, drifting on a dead turtle, with no supervision from the Gods, and mildly curious how their fellow surviving life-forms tasted. It’s small wonder things went wrong after that.