January 18, 2010

A Paralysis of Sorts

What’s wrong with me? As bad as I feel for the tens of thousands killed in Haiti’s earthquake and for the suffering and deprivation of those surviving, I feel worse for the nice young couple I inadvertently charged for two sides of French fries instead of home fries yesterday morning, unnecessarily padding their bill by $1.50. I’ll not accept full responsibility though. It should’ve been written up by the waitress as two breakfast specials hold the meat (i.e. “OE – no meat – B x 2”) and not as two orders of eggs and toast with two sides of home fries which even if rung in correctly comes to a dollar more in total. So that instead of paying $9.28 after coffees and taxes for two meatless specials, this very nice young black, possibly even Haitian, couple paid over twelve dollars. The guy forked over a twenty, and then never raised an eyebrow at the mere seven-dollars-and-change I gave back, even laughed at my insipid managing-the-till jokes. God I hope he never left a tip. Though I suspect he did. He had class. I find it strange that in three days of newspaper coverage I've yet to see a single Haitian alive or dead dressed less fashionably than me in my best Value Village jeans and t-shirts. A radio personality I admire acknowledged the pall the situation in Haiti cast over last night’s Golden Globe Awards ceremony, calling it “one of humanity’s worst disasters,” though personally I doubt it’s in the top thousand and of which just the United States itself is probably accountable for at least a score or two and “Dubya” alone maybe half-a-dozen. If that couple comes in next weekend, I’ll make right my mistake. I’m less sure that I’ll take steps to ease the suffering in Haiti. I feel paralyzed with cynicism. If I could go to the fridge and get a bottled water and hand it to some poor kid who’s not had a drink in days, of course I would. Hell, I’d let his whole family stay for free in our downstairs unit that we’re never going to rent out again in any case because it’s too much risk and hassle and leaves us with only one parking spot if I could while order is established and his society is returned and rebuilt to as good or better than before, even longer if they wanted, though at some point it would probably create friction. Like maybe their housekeeping might not be up to my wife’s standards or they’d laugh loudly and persistently when we were trying to sleep or watch TV and we’d get the feeling of being taken advantage of. Like no one living down there was even trying to find a job of any sort, not even in a restaurant. Or maybe, because they’re used to a tropical climate, they’d kick the heat way up to like 30C and then open the windows when it got too stuffy which annoyed us even when paying tenants did it. I feel overwhelmed with opportunities to donate in the wake of this calamity. I’d be tempted to short sell Big Cancer if it were publicly traded now as other charitable institutions feeding off news coverage’s horror stories clamor and compete for my largesse like Young Street panhandlers. Like for example, right before a multi-page Sun color insert replete with a front page headline style layout convincing enough to fool our cook and more than one patron into thinking it was the newspaper promoting Toronto’s Women’s Pillow Fight League via photos of depressed-more-than-angry-looking over-the-hill housewife types in grimacing backswings preparatory to the whacking of one another with pillows I saw a two page Unicef spread that had to have cost ten grand if it cost a penny advertising some sort of two-for-one (BOGOF) deal in which someone would match every dollar donated, making me wonder why, if someone had so much money to give, others should hold them back and also making me wish there were something real I could believe in and do for the world.

November 30, 2009

The Wishbone

The wishbone from Thursday night’s special’s turkey lay on the counter until Sunday morning when my wife broke it with me. I lost, which had been my wish. Of course I didn’t tell her that; it would’ve sounded sour grapes. Instead I told her that I hadn’t realized you’re supposed to make a wish first, it seems like a potentially wasted effort. But apparently the rules state that one must wish beforehand. Also that the winner cannot tell anyone their wish, but since I’d not won, it was okay for me to say what I would have wished for if I had. Wishes in life as in literature have a tendency to backfire when granted. Existence is extremely precariously balanced. Add a feather here or lift a feather there and the whole mess crashes down. So the only wish I could think of that didn’t seem apt to go awry and leave everything worse than I found it was to end it. “Let there be nothing.” So for all you fans of existence out there, maybe it’s lucky I lost. Though apparently in the US alone we process over nine billion intelligent, wishbone-containing fowl each year, and I might get another chance. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. One can wish independently of a wishbone as in prayer. Maybe all wishes come true. According to current astronomical thinking, the Big Bang will peter out, the universe expand into perfectly cold, flat, empty space. So even that wish (assuming there’s nothing more) is covered. Maybe I should have specified, now (as opposed to trillions of trillions of years from now). But then what is the ephemeral now in the context of eventual, permanent nothing? I wonder what she wished for.

November 16, 2009

On Humanity’s Indefatigable Quest for Perfection

Preparing her dinner the other night, my wife was disappointed to notice that the “Sausage Rolls” she’d purchased from Zehrs contained “spicy chicken” filler. Apparently “Sausage Rolls” wasn’t meant to be read as an adjective modifying a noun but as a complete proper noun pertaining to a certain style or genre of substance-filled pastry. Because even though any type of animal may be ground up and stuffed into its own (or another’s too, I suppose) intestines, I believe the sausage default, as in when not otherwise specified, is pork. So one shouldn’t have to read further to learn that trustingly purchased “Sausage Rolls” contain wiggly whale blubber, or crispy rat ears, or spicy chicken entrails. So I think my wife had a legitimate beef. But then mitigating her disappointment came her discovery that the doughy material encapsulating or ensconcing said minced and processed chicken (not pig) byproduct was “new” and had been “improved” to be even “flakier” than before. And so she did not, as is her custom when deceived or misled in this way, return said boxed ostensibly consumable foodstuffs to Zehrs’ customer service counter for a full refund of her money, but instead popped it in the oven.¹ And I could not help but marvel how, in this day and age, almost 65 years since detonation of the first nuclear bomb and more than 40 years since landing on the moon (each, by remarkable coincidence, occurring on July 16), when for ten bucks I can buy in Zehrs’ photo shop a USB flash stick with enough memory to store 2000 novels in and a little ring to attach it to my keychain with and we smash hadrons together at relativistic speeds and measure planetary distances in microns—we can still discover ways to produce an even flakier sausage roll. I’d have thought we’d have long ago reached some sort of quantum or God-imposed barrier to increased flakiness. I’d have thought by now pastry thickness would be measured in Planck lengths, a scale at which space itself lacks smoothness, the faintest touch of fork or photon or even consciousness finding said penultimately flaky sausage roll phyllo coating exploding into subatomic dust if not pure energy. But oh no, we’ve managed to get it flakier, but still not flaky enough. There’s still room for improvement.

¹After removing all packaging as per instructions which made me wonder who’d be stupid enough to pop cardboard and plastic into a smoking hot oven… maybe the guy who thought the “automatic cruise” on his new motor home meant he could go back to his little kitchenette and fix himself a coffee without having to pull over or anything.

November 2, 2009

Sex for Life

The Sunday Star’s front page’s top right corner logo read, “LIVE YOUR DREAMS TO THE MAX,” with, just below, in slightly larger letters of a complementary blue color scheme completing the approximately 3" x 3" square, “HUMAN TRAFFICKING.” As it turns out, the former is an ad for Lotto MAX, yet another government lottery, and the latter a plug for a human interest piece they’ve been running awhile now. So, some layout genius’s Freudian slip notwithstanding, the two have nothing to do with each other. Kind of like how every now and then they’ll stick this “Sex for Life” ad featuring an older but still not physically repulsive couple looking very sated and fulfilled right above a pedophile or pervert story so that it almost looks like the “Sex for Life” ad is the headline and “Teacher Admits to Improprieties Going Back to 1976” or “Man Caught on Video Masturbating in Neighbor’s Yard has Offended Before” merely an extension or elaboration of the theme.

My confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the notion of a nubile sex slave or two probably comes closer to maxing out my dream than having a shit-pile of high-publicity cash dumped on me, unless maybe I could somehow parlay this windfall it into prenup with Tuesday’s Star’s Sunshine Girl, more or less in a thong so filmy that even without the big square magnifying glass some of our oldsters use to read the paper I could easily have seen had recently shaved or waxed.

A 95 year old man came in with his 92 year old girlfriend for our Thursday night roast beef special. Said it was their third date, and that “tonight” he hoped to “get lucky.” My imagination wishes to God he was referring to a solid bowel movement or surviving the drive home and not what this idiom typically implies. Like what do you expect for 4.95 (with the purchase of a beverage)? So I guess sex for life isn’t exactly on my wish list either.

October 17, 2009

Preparing for Acceptance but not the Flu

Last time I suggested a market you can submit work to in order to get a feel for rejection. Where you just fill in a form, select your document, hit “submit” and then cross your fingers for the seventeen or so minutes it’ll take for your rejection to return. Rejection is an integral part of the quest for publication.

This time let me recommend a market that will give you a feel for what it’s like to be accepted. Acceptance is a double-edged sword at best and greatly misunderstood by most beginners who often confuse it with any sort of readership or acclaim. For this exercise you’ll need to write a novel. If writing a novel seems like too much work then just cut-and-paste a single chapter (or page or paragraph or sentence, or even just word or letter) over and over and over until you feel you have a large enough document.¹ This is not as egregious as it sounds. Many popular authors write the same book over and over and no one cares. In literary circles, a recurring or repeated device, idea or reference is called a motif, the earliest and most common technique being “the purposeful repetition of words.” When you are done cutting and pasting, write “The End” centered and italicized a few lines down from the bottom. A few lines up from the top, bolded and centered in a font at least twice as big as that of your main text, write your title. If you can’t think of a title offhand, call it, “My Learning Experience.”

Now submit the piece to Writers² Literary Agency. Normally, I’d post a link to the website here, but I prefer you find one of their sponsored links and click on that because it costs them money and will help Google take over the world. A few days after following their simple submission process, they’ll start sending emails chatting up their agency. Then, after letting you stew a short amount of time, they’ll send you, along with more copious blather, hearty congratulations and your contract which you will be directed to electronically sign and return along with a critique of whatever it was you submitted by a qualified professional which they will be happy to recommend and that will cost you about 100 dollars. I personally did not take this all-important step to becoming a better writer. Instead I just exchanged a bunch of baiting and argumentative emails the way I do when I’m bored and like to get into it with deposed Nigerian Generals eager to share their fortunes with me because of how honest and trustworthy I am. So I cannot say that if you sign the contract and pay the 100 dollars still no one will read or make any attempt to market your work but rather advance you to some sort of sucker list through which you will be asked to cough up for additional edification and assistance because of how committed you are to becoming the best writer you can possibly be.

¹This is more for your benefit. To help you get in character. You could just attach a blank document, or no document, since no one is ever going to check. But then you’d not be properly vested and deprive them of what little credibility your initial willing suspension of disbelief supports and sort of ruin the whole exercise for yourself.

² The copy-editor in me really, really wants to see a possessive apostrophe after the “Writers” here in their company name which is clearly meant to suggest a literary agency for or serving writers and not a group of writers qua (operating in the capacity of a) literary agency. Also, and as I pointed out in one of my many helpful emails, it’s childishly redundant. Like even if “writers” could be used as an adjective, what other sort of “literary agency” would there be? Scammers?

October 5, 2009

Preparing for Rejection and the Flu

This time, instead of mocking humanity in compensation for my having failed to augment it in any measurable way, I’ve decided to perform a service and help hopeful new writers like my granddaughter experience what it’s like to submit to real publishing venues and also, as an added bonus, prepare for the impending H1N1 (a.k.a. swine) flu pandemic.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to have something you’ve written rejected but haven’t had the tenacity to write anything or the patience to wait the weeks and months and sometimes forever for someone to get around to rejecting it if you had, then here’s the perfect market for you. Consider the following emailed rejection slip for a story submitted via its handy on-line submission form:

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for submitting your story to our magazine, but it isn't quite right for Fantasy.

We process 500-600 submissions each month and unfortunately cannot respond with individual feedback as a result. Our apologies for this, and we do hope that you continue trying as well as reading Fantasy Magazine.

all the best, Cat and Sean

Fantasy Magazine www.fantasy-magazine.com

The oldfangled “Dear” rankles a little here… though at least they didn’t write “Dearest” or “Darling.” Also I prefer rejections that manage to include the rejected title. And the closing “all” should be capitalized. But still, a pretty standard fulsome reject. What makes it so great is that it came 17 minutes after submitting. To put this in perspective, David Blaine could probably submit a story to them and then hold his breath until its rejection arrived. So I tried again. Most of the fun in submitting for me nowadays is the excuse it affords to reread pieces. Not to edit or polish or perform some final check (I only read them after I’ve submitted anyway) but just to enjoy reading them afresh, which I always do, and which I’ve sort of come to conclude is the best and maybe even only real reason to write. Anyway, as soon as I finished rereading my second submission, I checked my email, and, even though according to their submissions tracker I’d been fifth in the queue, there it was, the exact same rejection again waiting for me: thanking me; apologizing to me; hoping that I will persevere.

Before I go on, I just want to say that I’m not always rejected. I’ve got about a dozen stories sprinkled around the net and in print. One of the stipulations made by some venues, especially small ones, is that you give them credit for having first published (as in discovered) your piece in any subsequent placements of it as promo for their site or magazine or anthology or whatever, and also to rub it in a little to whomever you managed to foist it on a second time. But because most will not consider any but first rights and because getting a piece published almost anywhere mostly gets it out of my system and lets me move on with my life and writing, I’ve never tried to place a piece more than once, and so this has never happened. But what I’m thinking now is, instead of crediting those who’ve not rejected a story, I’ll keep better track and credit those who have. Prefix every published story with every rejection it ever received along with short critical excerpts from said rejections such as: “not right” for Asimov’s; “not quite right” for Fantasy Magazine; “just didn’t grab” Dark Faith; “not chosen” by Electric Literature; “not what” GUD was “looking for” at that time; “offensive” to both Vulgata and Glimmer Train; and so on and so on. Thus will every rejection become an integral part of each story’s medical history and literary legacy and assure future generations of writers questioning their own lives and worth that they are on the right track.

Even though Fantasy Magazine’s editors don’t pretend to read submitted material, their rejects still sting a little, toughen a little, harden a little, and so serve as a kind of inoculation or immunization against the more unexpected and life-threatening rejections that arrive after weeks and months and even years of editorial incubation. So go ahead, send Fantasy something. Anything. Then go wash your hands. Now check your email. See, hurts a little doesn’t it. You fantasized you’d be the exception, didn’t you? Repeat. See if you can write another before they’ve rejected this one. If not, just send them what you’ve got, and try again. Just for fun, cut and paste one from their website and submit that. See, even plagiarists have feelings.

The H1N1 flu comes from pigs. But you can’t get it from eating them. Eating them just clogs up your arteries and makes you smell funny. One of them would have to sneeze or cough on you.

If you’ve ever had a flu shot, you’re more susceptible than if you hadn’t. To wit: “There is emerging unpublished evidence that suggests an association between prior seasonal flu vaccination and getting the H1N1 flu,” explained Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer. “The nature of the association is unclear at this time, so we want people under 65 to wait to get the seasonal flu shot until after the H1N1 flu vaccine until we learn more about this.” Permit me to explain, Arlene. Immunizations are like sneaking up behind your immune system and yelling: “Boo!” Or, less metaphorically: “Smallpox!” “Diphtheria!” “Polio!” “Rabies!” Or, in the case of the seasonal flu shot: “Flu!” Anyone who’s passed through that common childhood phase or stage of pretending to be suffering from appendicitis or some other acute ailment in order to elicit strangers’ sympathies and occasionally treats or even just to amuse friends and other bystanders with one’s acting prowess and some hapless oldster’s doddering credulity before laughing and yelling, “Just kidding!” will have heard Aesop’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf story many times, as I did. Well that’s kind of how it is with fooling your immune system into believing you have the flu season after season when the real flu finally comes along.

If you catch it, you could die, but probably not. Even the much more virulent strain of the H1N1 subtype that infected nearly a third of 1918’s 1.6 billion only killed one in five or ten, and even here one cannot help but wonder how many of us might not be around today if it hadn’t, if the virus hadn’t freed resources and mucked about with our genealogies by culling nearly 100,000,000 from our herd. Still, that was then and this is now. Here are some things we’re told we can do to fight the new pandemic:

Wash hands often. My dictionary defines often used as an adverb to mean “many times at short intervals.” So, as a dish washer, I feel safer already. Still, there’s something a little neurotic in all this hand washing. Reminds me of these drills back in grade school where we’d all sit under our desks or out in the hall against our lockers with our heads tucked between our knees in case Russia dropped an atom bomb on us.

Cough and sneeze into your arm, instead of your hand. Then wash your arm or your shirt. Avoid hugs, especially group hugs.

Keep common surfaces disinfected. These include aerosol cans and bottles containing disinfectant as well as towel dispensers, doorknobs to supplies closets, door and cupboard handles of any sort, self-serve gas pumps, toilet seats and flusher handles, money, ATM and POS pin pads, your debit or credit card after someone else (especially someone operating any sort of commercial till) has handled it, grocery carts, menus, library books, public phones and internet, banisters, escalator rails, elevator buttons, sink taps, collection plates… Maybe drop everything you’re doing and spend all your time disinfecting things people touch. Scrub as if your life depended on it. Remember, Howard Hughes died.

Talk to a health professional if you experience severe flu-like symptoms. Take public transit since you’ll not be fit to drive. Don’t touch anything in the crowded waiting room or let anyone breathe near you. Bring your own pen if you’re to be admitted, or disinfect the one given you.

If you are sick, stay home until your symptoms are gone and you feel well enough to participate in all activities. Except activites you were unable to participate in before you got sick of course. Such as alligator wrestling or BASE jumping or even sex if you’ve not learned yet or simply forgotten how. Getting sick will not make you that much better than you were before. Since no health professional in Ontario (and probably Canada) will talk to you on the phone lest he be screwed out of bilking OHIP for a visit, you may disregard this rule in deference to the previous. Also if you are living hand-to-mouth working at some minimum wage job with no sick days such as in pretty much any meet-the-public type sales or service industry like banks, retail stores, child care, theaters, supermarkets, bars, restaurants or fastfood, then you might also want to consider disregarding this rule lest you wind up with no home to malinger in.

September 21, 2009

Imagine

“I’m a nurse,” she said, her goldfish-orange hair dangling from her scalp like the lappets of a sea jelly stranded atop a bollard by ebbtide. She leaned closer, as close as the pillow I sleep with tucked between my thighs when I lie on my side. Looking up, little more than a wary crease separated her eyes, over-easies on a crowded grill, so close-set as to share a single, seductively-arched eyebrow. Deep in her mouth her tied tongue’s broad tip (reminding me in hindsight of hook-swallowing catfish caught night-fishing in Maryland and Wisconsin as a boy) somehow did not cause her to lisp or otherwise affect her speech. “Does that excite you?” she asked, her nose a sagging gabled barracks, hooked so as to appear in search of her upper lip’s missing philtrum.

It did excite me. Not her profession—though I’ve dated nurses, and once married a nurse’s aid—but her sentiment. And her confidence. Maybe this is why she allowed me to draw her so sloppily. Who knows me better than my dream girls? I think maybe I modeled her on Mary Baker, another redhead, whom I had a crush on in grade four and have never gotten over.

Life is like writing is like dreaming. You work with what’s given and don’t often have a lot to say about what emerges once you engage. Like all week I’d intended to review Updike’s final collection: My Father’s Tears. Updike describes characters better than anyone. Not so you could pick them out of a lineup or recognize them in photographs, or that, despite all his wonderfully graphic and poetic detail, any two people anywhere would be likely to produce even vaguely similar composite sketches—but that I see in them myself.

McArthur (of 103.9 The Hawk’s McArthur in the Morning show) pissed me off with his editorial last Friday. Really pissed me off. Enough to turn off the radio. Enough to switch stations now whenever I can find anything besides geriatric easy-listening, techno-rap or rock-for-kids-who-still-drive-their-parents’-cars on my FM dial. I know I should just let it slide. Sometimes McArthur’s interesting in a celebrity-butt-sniffing sort of way. Like I find it amusing how often he condemns the media’s excessive mongering of some cheesy story in the course of his own expatiation on it. But then I suppose anyone forced to publicly opine on such a regular basis is bound to look like an asshole from time to time.

Okay, I didn’t set that up very well. Let me try again. If I could choose my dream lovers, they’d not be mutant strangers, and if I could choose what I write, it’d not involve McArthur’s morning show gaffes. But with dreams and life and writing all leaking like our old grease trap into and over each other as they do, we salvage what we may and return what we can.

I saw headlined in the Sun this morning, Another Hero Heads Home which, though at first blush might’ve seemed a good thing, I knew from experience would upon further scrutiny reveal that said “Hero” had performed no act of self-sacrifice or foolhardiness beyond those which every soldier is expected and indeed routinely commanded to perform, and so enjoyed the assignation “Hero” strictly by virtue of his unlucky and untimely death, and that it is only his coffined remains that are headed home, as in being flown at considerable financial and ecological expense back to his hero-manufacturing/designating country for forensic analysis and closure, and so really it’s impossible to say where if anywhere he himself has headed or will be heading, though it would certainly be newsworthy if one could.

One of Updike’s most impressive skills as a writer is to examine controversial issues from opposing points of view and make everyone’s persuasive. Like I’m maybe a hundred pages into his last novel, The Terrorist, and still not sure who the bad guy is, or if there even is a bad guy.

So I didn’t so much mind McArthur’s feel-good glorification of our war effort in Afghanistan. I mean, for all I know, maybe it really is doing some deserving someone somewhere some good. Maybe it really is our military’s diligence and vigilance way over there that’s kept us from being re-attacked way over here these last eight bountiful years and not that we reacted with such sadly predictable stupidity that our highly organized terrorist adversaries, assuming they exist, have been too busy wringing their evildoing hands in glee at having turned us into our own worst enemy to provoke us further. See, I can entertain an opposing view. And it was 911 Day. And even if it wasn’t as horrible as say having your eyes and skin melted away and a quarter-million or so of your closest neighbors instantly vaporized to slowly cooked in their own juices and future generations exposed to a myriad of radiological cancers and birth defects, it was still a very bad day by almost anyone’s standards and so a certain amount of self-righteous mawkishness and chagrin is expected and maybe even warranted. So it wasn’t McArthur’s flag-waving mini-polemic that rankled, but his using John Lennon’s Imagine¹as the background music to a montage of Bushy post-911 sound bites in an attempt to promote and sentimentalize war.

¹Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… – John Lennon

September 7, 2009

Review of Heidi’s Oatmeal Chocolate-Chip Cookies and Glimmer Train

My first factory job was as a dough mixer for Colonial Cookies. Supplier to mostly low-end brand names, their formula consisted mainly of white flour, lard, sugar and chemicals, but which, despite a foolproof system of penciled checklists, I managed to screw up on a fairly regular basis. Still, I became something of a cookie aficionado during those two stoned years of nights.

Glimmer Train was the first publication I submitted fiction to. Way back in 2005 when my writing was more unabashedly autobiographical and grammatically risqué and I just knew that anyone I could cajole into reading would love as much as I did and see I was a genius too.¹ Sure I’d gleaned from the wholesomeness, warmth and sensitivity oozing from their guidelines² that my glib handling of religious and sexual themes might not be their exact cup of herbal tea, but which would just make their inability to resist my offering all the sweeter. Sort of how Arthur Miller was unable to resist Marilyn Monroe. I had every confidence they’d be unable not to see beyond their and their perceived readership’s limiting morality when confronted with my masterwork, my literary wiggle, my genius. I wish I’d saved their rejection slip instead of deleting it in a fit of pique.

I was astounded. Aghast. Chagrinned. Confounded. Put simply, they did not think I was a genius. They did not like my story³ about a man reminiscing on his first post-divorce relationship with a pot-smoking born-again Christian dental hygienist also on the rebound. I remember the word “offensive” being used, their thanking me in advance for not submitting similar material in the future, and the suggestion that I peruse their guidelines more closely replete with links thereto. I’ve since subbed other pieces to them including a couple that I actually paid to enter into one of their many competitions. But no subsequent form rejection has matched that first, personalized one for emotional impact. Of course, every writer knows those first few ice picks’ tips sink a lot deeper than after one starts to realize most gatekeepers are pinheads, and that even a very gifted and insightful gatekeeper reading on average just fifty short stories⁴ of 2,000 to 20,000 words (say the equivalent of about five novels) each and every day, day after day after day, as Glimmer Train’s two editors claim to on their About page, is apt to miss the odd gem.

I’ve often wondered what they go for, what gets in, what gets them off. If someone doesn’t appreciate what I write, it’s doubtful I’m going to appreciate what they read. So I was hardly going order one of their anthologies qua magazines. Plus I already felt slightly ripped off for not just not winning their contest way back when with either of my two entries, but not even short-listing. Still, I was curious. For years I’ve been curious. Just not curious enough to spend money. But then, last month, knowing of my stingy dilemma and also in retaliation for my having sent her a signed first edition of my second collection, a friend mailed me her copy of Glimmer Train’s 2009 Winter Issue and two dozen of her homemade oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies.

The cookies were great! No question there. Even after a week in the mail. Thick, yet light and crunchy. Buttery. And not suffering from an overdose of chocolate chips or chunks like most expensive packaged brands. Each almost, but not quite, too big to stuff whole in my mouth. I scarfed them all in two days at work. Didn’t put any in the break room to share either.

As to the magazine… is it winter already? What happened to fall? I just double-checked: “WINTER 2009 Issue 69 Glimmer Train”—right on the cover, atop a color print of a healthy white goat standing behind some quaint oceanfront properties, flowering bushes spilling over brown picket fences and lattice, a palm tree somewhere in the middle. Not at all how I imagine the cover story’s butchered goat or Brooklyn setting. My cookie-baking friend, who once taught creative writing and is no literary slouch, said she’d tried to read some of them, but then never got around to trying again. Wished me better luck.

I read them all before bed. Most were too big to stuff in my mouth whole, and I had to fold the page over and try to pick up the next night where I’d dozed off. I’ve no clue how anyone could read even a few such stories in one day. Not to disparage of able writers who I’ve no doubt love their work every bit as much as I do mine. Skill, effort and involvement are apparent in every piece. There’s even some sex. In Will Boast’s Diplomats a wife gives her husband a hand job so as not to make too much noise while staying at her parents’. In Xhenet Aliu’s You Say Tomato (my personal favorite) a young girl’s friend’s father puts his fingertips on the waistband of her underwear while giving her a hug, a seemingly innocuous act made ominous only by virtue of her awareness of it. In Thisbe Nissen’s Home is Where the Heart Gives Out and We Arouse the Grass a character describes (as a metaphor for one’s creative juices I’m supposing) female ejaculate⁵ in only slightly less emotionally engaging detail for me than if she’d described its male counterpart. So there’s sex. It’s just never that sexy.

Today, though I remember many of the characters as real people⁶ (albeit who I am unlikely to make any effort to stay in touch with), I can’t say what their stories were about, all sloshing and swirling around in my memory as an admixture of disconnected, unresolved, drab and even gloomy images and events, much like those of my life.⁷ Consider this plot synopsis of E. A. Durden’s Mr. Dabydeen, winner of Glimmer Train’s 2007 “Fall Short Story Award for New Writers”⁸ competition, lifted from this glowing review⁹ of the issue by The Review Review’s Becky Tuch: “An Indian man gets dressed, struggles with his shoelaces, has an irritating altercation with his teenage daughter, flirts with the neighbor, pets her cat, then goes to buy some goat meat for dinner.” “But of course,” as the reviewer is quick to point out, “this is not the story at all.” To which, I must gamely ask, then why was I made to read it? Why is it written?

In her author’s notes, Durden says it began as “a writing exercise… an attempt to parody… Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.” I’d thought that after reading an issue of Glimmer Train, I might try penning some parody of their acceptances. And I still might. Neither extensive vocabulary nor research seems to factor much, Frederick Reiken’s Shadow being a possible exception for its Jungian psychology. What does stand out in almost all the stories is depth of character. Though not particularly admirable or interesting as people—by and large eccentric folk leading mundane lives—they are very well drawn and richly detailed. I imagine the stories as appealing to readers wishing to be cathartically uplifted by life experiences more tragically quotidian than their own. And so the trick, the formula, I think is to, by scrutiny alone, elevate the painfully ordinary to the sublimely extraordinary.

¹Personally, I still think I’m a genius. So there’s still not any sort of modesty or humility in play here. Just the perplexed and reluctantly acquired experience that most are no more interested in my writing than I am theirs.

²“We especially appreciate work that is both well-written and emotionally engaging.” This as opposed to work that is well written but somehow not engaging? Or, badly written, but engaging nonetheless? News flash: writers rarely consider their work to be otherwise.

³My first meaningful relationship after Sally, my wife of thirteen years and mother of my two boys, gave me Chlamydia and left, was with Fern, a woman whose ad in the companions section of the local newspaper I answered. This was before Jill, a poetic bisexual ex-hooker with Herpes and a penchant for masturbation; before Charlene, a very promiscuous but sparsely orgasmic nurse; before Ellen, a fairly monogamous nursing director who bit like a horse during orgasm; before older Joanne, whom I met at a pathetic singles dance and who always said “holy crumb” when I squeezed her nipples as fat as my thumbs; before Liz, with her good vaginal techniques and upsetting cardiac arrhythmias; before June, whose fear of sex gave me a four-year erection of such tumescence that I once peed blood; before Denise, who could sign perfect ASL but only afford the upper half of her dentures because she worked for a Little Short Stop store; and before the woman I have now lived with for eight wonderful years. My relationship with Fern was special. The one right after “the big one” usually is.—The Regret by Christopher K. Miller

⁴ “The system allows the two of us to read every single submission ourselves, which we love.” They’re said to receive about 4,000 per month.

⁵“Sometimes, least when you want it to, your body’s got a way of reminding you what it felt like, once, when everything let go and what came pouring out was something you had no idea was in there in the first place. Bill’d tease me, say, Marnie, I hope you washed those sheets! And sometimes I did, but sometimes I didn’t, you know, because the thing with whatever-the-hell-it-is that comes out of you then, it’s not piss. It doesn’t stink. It dries like water, like nothing. You don’t even have to do the laundry.”—Home is Where the Heart Gives Out and We Arouse the Grass by Thisbe Nissen

⁶Oddly, the most memorable and by far likable characters for me are the authors themselves. Their bios, notes and pictures are brilliant—unforgettable—poignant, insightful and funny. Xhenet Aliu’s short, self-disavowing (“I’ve been told, however, that I made up most of those details”) bio is hilarious and speaks volumes about writing. I loved Ron Savage’s son’s drawing of his family. How Ron saves all his kid’s drawings, recovering them from the trash after he’s thrown them away inevitably “dissatisfied with some tiny detail.” How he plans to show them to his son someday and say, “If something you make touches one person, it matters. That’s what art is.” I even made my wife read it.

⁷Which has got me thinking that maybe anthologies aren’t such a great idea. I can’t say I’ve ever really enjoyed one. I think the problem might be that strong writers tend to lurk in their work, ever peeking out from shadows and around corners. This is fine in a collection where one author hides in different ways and places, lending it continuity and depth. Like I think I’d enjoy any one of the stories in this anthology more in the context of other stories by the same author, as in a collection by that author, than all jumbled together. Too many lurkers. Feels crowded.

⁸Seems kind of a stretch to call someone with an MFA in Creative Writing, a Language Lecturer and teacher in New York University’s Expository Writing Program, whose excerpt from her first novel won her passage to the Prague Summer Program as the 2007 Ivan Kilma Fellow and who’s working on a second novel as a 2008-2009 First-Year Fiction Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center—a “new” writer.

⁹Half an hour of surfing, and I couldn’t find a single non-glowing review of anything Glimmer Train. The odd spurned blogger, like me, but that’s it.

August 24, 2009

The Source and Succor of all Hurts

Saturday I cut my right forefinger on a plate that had broken in a dish tub. It hurt. I yelled “Fuuuuuuu” but left off the “ck” because ours is a family restaurant. Then I stuck on a waterproof band-aid and for the rest of the day wore a dishwashing glove that I only took off to bus tables (lest I be confused with Michael Jackson’s ghost). Sunday my car’s Service Engine Soon light came on while driving to Guelph. It’s a little orange idiot light that actually says, in English, “SERVICE ENGINE SOON.” This hurt too. And because it was just my wife and me, this time I did not leave off the “ck.”

Last night they throbbed, my little, finger cut and engine light: the cut because I tore it trying to open the bedroom window not realizing it was latched; and the light because I hadn’t serviced my engine yet and wasn’t sure what “soon” meant. So I’d say my body is still more idiot-proof than my car. Though I do think my body’s warning system is a little excessive and unfriendly. Like fine, warn me my ankle is broken. Recommend I not try to walk on it. But, leave me the option of ignoring the warning—as in the excruciating and debilitating pain—should circumstances, in my judgment, warrant this, such as in say being chased by a rabid squirrel. It’s not like I have to check my extremities “soon” in order to discover which one might or might not have been burnt, crushed or cut. I can tell instantly and exactly by where, how and how much it hurts. This is great. But then, I should be able to reset or disable the warning. I already knew from experience that the little red oilcan idiot light is very serious and that unless you were planning on buying a new engine anyway or are stuck in the middle lane of the 400 heading into Toronto, you should not try to squeak out another few kilometers with it on. And I’ve since learned (not from experience, but the easy way: by reading) that if the “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” light is flashing—as in throbbing—then whatever is wrong is probably worse than if it isn’t. As mine wasn’t. But it’s still annoying. So after cutting two buckets of fries this morning I asked the parts guy at the Dodge dealership next door if they can diagnose Nissans. Which, to my surprise, they can. One of their mechanics came out and plugged a gizmo about the size of a cell phone in somewhere under my dash. It reported a weak vacuum in the fuel line, probably caused by a loose gas cap seal, and fixed by a little sandpaper (or, in my case, steel wool) and grease (or, in my case, vegetable oil). Then the mechanic used this same little doodad that anyone can purchase for a surprisingly small amount of money¹ to turn off said annoying “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” warning light, its message having been delivered.

All of which, in conjunction with a recent email conversation, got me wondering why I write. Why bother? What hurts? What glitch or injury is causing my system to leak words like this? Like if there were some diagnostic device I could plug into my head or heart or wherever, what would the return code indicate? Serendipitously, atop my gmail Inbox today, I found a sponsored link to a “publishing services provider” ² whose “free publishing guide” (i.e. free sales brochure) application form asks this very question via a dropdown list of choices, the stupidest of which is probably, to express my deepest thoughts, although, because I love to write, might be a contender if (though not) only because it’s the only other one that cannot be easily paraphrased as, to be read. There was also the option of typing in your own “Other” reason you write, which I think if I were to be reasonably honest might be to seem smarter than I really am, mainly to myself. Or maybe to make the world a better place by seeming better than I really am, again mainly to myself.

¹ For some reason I always imagined that the computers dealerships used to interface with my car were around the size of a small ATM, rolled out on dollies and connected right to my motor pursuant to some highly specialized mechanical fiddling, their voluminous and cryptic output then analyzed by a team technicians in white coats sporting only modest grease and oil stains. Like why else would a Hyundai dealership have once charged me sixty dollars? But look, here’s a diagnostic scanner for forty bucks that does it all, and works on any model of car sold in North America since about 1996. Or, if you want the deluxe model with manual and little carrying case, then seventy bucks.

² Publishing service providers do everything “traditional” publishers do, except, instead of them paying you, you pay them, which really is a lot better deal than it might sound, the customer being always right.

August 10, 2009

Tunnel Vision

Emailed the following letter to the editor of the Wellington Advertiser. He printed it even though it ran about four times their preferred length. Didn’t even butcher it too much, cutting only the bolded parts, with substitutions in square brackets.

Dear Dave Adsett,

I’m writing in response to your editorial, entitled “Tunnel Vision.” It seems from your musings that you have never used GPS technology. And I feel you do your similarly unwashed readers a grave disservice.

First let me say, I’m not a gadget-phile. My decade old cell phone has never received an incoming call. It cannot take pictures or send text messages, can barely fit in my pocket, but could easily be used to bludgeon a man to death. I don’t twitter. I don’t even know what twitter is.

I do know how to read a map. Maps are marginally useful if you have a navigator with an aptitude for origami, and you don’t mind looking at street signs (instead of traffic), or driving twenty [20] under the limit while scanning (possibly in the dark) for that tiny side road coming up but that unbeknownst to you is still 5 km ahead, or then missing said tiny side road in the stream of pissed off traffic dangerously passing on your left, or braking and veering across multiple lanes in desperate, last second man[o]euvers. Vehicular navigation should never be an “adventure.” Being lost or confused is stressful. Driving while stressed is dangerous.

Guidance to the nearest hospital could prove a lot more than just “convenient” or “handy.” Of course nothing is foolproof. Though to enter a valid street address in the wrong city would take an unlucky fool. And to not notice that an anticipated two hour drive now has an ETA of eleven hours and thirty-two minutes… well at least the fool [he] gets to see some countryside, arrives in one piece, finds his way home, and lives to screw up another day.

You lament that we will lose our map-gained appreciation of geography to these devices. By all means, use a World Atlas or, better yet, Google Earth, in the comfort of your home or office to garner a better geographical and cartographical understanding of your planet’s surface. But when you are out on the road with me, I’d prefer you keep your eyes and mind on traffic. GPS devices are designed to free you from all navigational distractions, considerations and concerns, freeing you to smell the roses, to talk to your [a] grandchild, to notice small town Ontario’s quaint tourist traps, and, best of all, to stay alive.

One doesn’t [does not] need a map to tell when one is passing a lake or driving through a forest or over a mountain. And if one did, a GPS (which is a map) indicates all of these in real time. Driving home from Oshawa yesterday on a route programmed to (at a cost of one additional hour’s driving) contain no toll roads or major highways, I noticed a number of parks and rivers I’d have otherwise missed. And whereas my GPS is as visually accessible and non-intrusive as my rearview mirror, a paper map (or written directions) spread out adventurously on my lap or the passenger seat, though perfectly legal to peruse while driving, is not.

Satellites constantly rain down [give] coordinates accurate to within a few feet. This information is free and ubiquitous (and probably carcinogenic). There’s no charge beyond the purchase price (mine was 200 dollars) for these devices. No operation or connection fees. I have a poor sense of direction and hate travel[l]ing to new places alone. Last Saturday I drove alone for the first time to downtown Barrie and picked up my granddaughter. [and] Enjoyed a totally stress free trip. And though I’m still not prepared to navigate this two-hour stretch unassisted, I’m a lot closer, and have a much better understanding of the areas involved.

Will we lose our evolved ability to unfold and refold paper maps just as we have lost our ability to make change? To use manual typewriters and Correct-o-Type? To operate a horse and buggy whip? A slide rule? If one must suffer tunnel vision, then at least look ahead, and not backwards. Worry less about what our progeny will no longer need to be able to do and more about what you cannot do now. Do yourself (and your passengers) a favor. Buy and learn to operate a GPS. Enter the future.

Sincerely,

Chris

Okay, I’m a little miffed. In addition to introducing a bunch of spelling and punctuation errors and unnecessary paragraph breaks (not indicated above), he messed my voice. My voice! This is why I never read and seldom write letters to editors.

July 27, 2009

The Babe

So I was bussing tables in the restaurant Sunday when I noticed a striking blonde sitting in a booth with an older man. I kept sneaking sidelong glances at her, wondering if the guy was her sugar daddy or just her biological father. Since they were eating in our restaurant, I figured probably her father. Although rich people can be parsimonious too. Plus, it was breakfast, not the meal sugar daddies typically need to splurge on in those sorts of situations. Like maybe he’d taken her somewhere nice for dinner. Anyway, she had on a short white dress and was so movie star cute I doubt I could’ve picked the guy out of a line-up even after half-a-dozen ganders.

Okay, when Jackson Pollock sold a painting to a museum, did curators add drips and splatters and send it back for his approval? Sure, he’d probably want to know if he’d missed a spot or his cat had taken a crap on it while it was drying on the floor. But no way does he want to hear,

Dear Mister Pollock,

As the curator assigned to your painting, I’ve extended the purple squiggle that begins in the upper left corner to the orange blob in the middle. I’ve drunk some red acrylic with an emetic and thrown up on the overly busy patchwork in the bottom right quadrant to make it more consistent with your overall theme. And I’ve squirted some ketchup along that hotdog shape on the right to make it more convincing. Please let me know as soon as possible if you accept these changes so we can proceed.

Richard Head – Senior Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY

I think I caught her checking me out once or twice too. Though I harbored no illusions as to her motive. At best she was bored and I in motion. But even more likely she was wondering what a guy my age—a guy who should be at the pinnacle of his vocation or profession—was doing collecting dirty dishes, wiping tables and picking up the garbage kids throw on the floor.

So why then do editors take the work of brilliant authors and make all sorts of changes? Maybe we’ve got it backwards. Maybe the editors should write the pieces before passing them off to actual writers.

Dear Richard Head,

As the writer assigned to your story, I’ve taken the liberty of changing all of your words, although there are still approximately 5000 of them.

Chris Miller - Writer

She had a perfect, round face with a wide mouth that seemed to curl both up and down at the corners as if on the verge of sneering or kissing or maybe suppressing a smile or frown, and the high, full cheeks I tend to associate with women of the Far East and Anglo women clenching their jaws as if maybe on the verge of laughter or tears. Great legs too. The next time I saw her, she was standing at the front counter by the till. I stood almost directly across from her putting away cutlery. The guy with her had just paid and left, but she’d hung back. My wife, who’d rung the bill through, had just stabbed the chit down onto the spike.

“To be honest,” said the babe, “your food is terrible, everything was burnt, and the service was awful. My dad thought so too.” Then she huffed off. Spent. Satisfied.

Then, my wife, who’d also waited on them, took off to see if what they’d left on their plates really was burnt, but because they’d licked all the evidence clean, could only speculate.

I spent the rest of the afternoon composing snappy comebacks like, “But it is our policy to burn only two items per plate,” or, “PMS is indeed a terrible thing,” or “That explains why no one eats here,” or “Here is the tip cup in case you are interested.” My son, who cooked their meal, assured me that it’s impossible to burn eggs over easy, and while yes, it is possible to cook things preternaturally crispy in the fryer, you can’t really burn anything there either, but which, being a line cook myself, I already knew. Cally, our waitress, though not personally acquainted with her, called her as a “stuck up, stupid bitch.”

And as far as the half dozen or so edits made to a story of mine soon to appear in Hopewell Publishing’s Best New Writing Anthology after short-listing for but not winning the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award: “To be honest, your edits were terrible, every one was wrong, and your attitude sucked. My dad thought so too.” However, the senior editor has pursuant to my complaining, save for a single disputed question mark, agreed to lick clean their changes. So you’ll just have to take my word.

July 13, 2009

Fuck Everywhere Everyday

Closed the restaurant for a few days and tooled down to New York’s Seneca Niagara Hotel/Casino. Rooms there can run anywhere from free to about 350 dollars a night depending on your action and how full up they are. So we stayed at a nearby Econo Lodge. But I’m thinking now that whenever our restaurant gets busy, like on most weekends, we should double and triple and maybe even quadruple the prices, especially for shitty tippers and families with small children that screech a lot or throw food on the floor. Driving around the area’s bumpy backstreets and rundown, boarded up neighborhoods reminded me a little of Detroit’s abandoned slums and Natchez’s grand old mansions decomposing along Mississippi River bluffs. Apparently California’s penning IOUs to vendors now because it hadn’t occurred to whoever came up with its three-strike law (mandatory life imprisonment for three felony convictions) that prisoners don’t pay taxes. Just like it hasn’t occurred to whatever imbecile here came up with bill C-15 which wants to make six months jail time mandatory for anyone convicted of possessing even one marijuana plant, or nine months if said plant presents “a hazard to children” (who are notorious for eating large, fibrous weeds). Toronto’s already no great shakes now that it can’t afford garbage men. Though I understand rats are edible and taste like chicken. But then people are edible too and taste like pig. So we all win. Someone left a SCOREGolf magazine on the toilet tank beside some spray air-freshener. On the aerosol can is printed “Air Space,” and below that, “Fresh Rain” in some zippy, italicized font. There are probably about 300 words of additional text that I never had the time or inclination to read but which I assume present patent and corporate information along with operating instructions but that I was able to figure out for myself so that no one would ever know I had a poop. On the cover of the magazine is a golf ball being squeezed by a little leather belt into the shape of a fat lady with no arms or legs or head, and the caption, “Can Golf Survive?” There was more I didn’t read because I don’t care. Because of a lapse in attention by my navigator, I made a wrong turn and, after passing the Duty Free Store, wound up heading for the bridge back to Canada. Here I discovered it’s not that I’m averse to the United States or Canada, or anywhere, so much as I just hate borders, and so rather than paying a bunch of tolls and answering a bunch of questions at customs, I turned the car around and drove the wrong way into traffic (which was fortunately sparse, save one pretty confused bus driver) to an intersection at which everyone enjoyed a traffic light but me. Two weeks ago Mississippi sent me an unregistered letter stating that if I did not send them 169 dollars (no checks, no credit cards, and {I assume} no Paypal) within ten days, a warrant would be issued for my arrest and my license suspended. Instead I emailed a letter to the editor of some Vicksburg paper. Now I am wanted in one (1) state. I feel sorry for Omar Shaban (VP for western Canada of the Canadian Arab Federation) who’s in hot water (at least as hot of water as you can get into here by having an opinion about anything political) for posting “ Fuck Canada Day” on his Facebook page. Turns out he was only commiserating with our natives. And really, isn’t a sympathetic and heartfelt “Fuck Canada Day” more fiducially responsible than the granting of tax free cigarettes and monster casinos (and, according to a colleague according to his brother-in-law according to the cops, a carte blanche to abandon ransacked stolen cars on Brantford’s Six-Nations reservation) as a way of saying, sorry for all the genocide? And really, shouldn’t we be thanking Omar for raising our awareness that there even is a fucking Canada Day? Without him, I’d have thought the firecracker my neighbor lobbed out his side door after dark the other night was a gunshot.

June 29, 2009

Review of Recreational Drugs by Some Author Whose Name I Can’t Remember

Can’t remember the year, where I lived, if I was married or had a job. Just searched through my personal journals, logged from 1987 to 1996, and found no reference. But I’d quit drugs by then and was all screwed up on relationships. So probably it happened earlier. Fitting, I suppose, that this event, devoid of locale, marks one of my life’s low points. Perhaps it is often thus with life’s nadirs.

I remember very clearly that it was Halloween though, and so my birthday. And that my best friend Tom had been involved in a work accident earlier in the day. Employed by a local roofing company, he’d been stirring the cooker next to some high, flat-roofed building when something fell off into it and splashed his face with hot liquid tar.

On the phone he said he had two surprises for me. I think this was after the time he got me to drink a glass of mystery beverage that turned out to be Benylin and root beer, and the time he steeped some three-eyed-toad blotters in my grape juice (on what had to have been the hottest day that summer) after I stopped by for a few tokes on my way to a big family dinner at my parents’. So I probably knew about Tom’s surprises.

It was dusk when I walked over to his place, a basement apartment if I recall. I remember groups of tiny trick-or-treaters scampering about with capes and sheets and plastic pumpkin pails and pillowcases.

His first surprise of course was his face when he opened the door. It was literally pitch black, being pitch coated from ear to ear and throat to hairline. All except for his eyes. Luckily, he’d been wearing his glasses. Emergency had decided not to try to remove the tar mask, but let it peel off on its own, supplying the perfect sterile bandaging in the meantime. Two potted coleus plants of the “Dipt in Wine” variety sat on a table. Ovate, crenate leaves growing in tight bifoliate compounds. Maroon blades with pink midrib and veins, but yellows and greens oozing up like paint squeezed from the petiole. Brilliant, like a big gory flower. And hallucinogenic according to Recreational Drugs. And on sale at Fairview’s Garden Center. Tom’s second surprise. One for him, and one for me.

This was long before the net, and Recreational Drugs gave no clue as to how much to take or how to take it. So we just started munching like a couple of bunnies in a lettuce patch, pausing every few minutes to see if anything was going to happen. I don’t remember my plant tasting horrible, mostly kind of papery and dry, but with this fungal aftertaste that seemed to get worse as we went. I’m thinking now we maybe should have washed them. I’m pretty sure this was after my Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seed phase, so I had an open mind about trippy legal plants. And if a situation was ever ripe for a placebo high, it should’ve been sitting across from Tar Baby on Halloween night eating ornamentals.

Night fell. Trick-or-treaters got older. I remember salivating a lot and feeling really full and it being hard to force down, as in just swallow (like after an all-you-can-eat buffet where you forgot to allow for dessert) the last few leaves. But we’d come all that way together, Tom and I, and it seemed a shame not to see the experiment through. I’m almost positive neither of us smoked any pot. Not in the interest of science though, but just because neither of us had any. There’s nothing like running out of weed to broaden your hallucinogenic horizons. Besides, not toking when you’re used to toking all the time is spacier (albeit in a bad-acid way) and so more baseline obfuscating than just maintaining the status quo for the purpose of studying other psychotropic substances. But even allowing for the placebo effect and the company and marijuana withdrawal, I had to say that if I had gotten off at all, then wherever I’d gotten off at wasn’t worth the fare (five dollars, even on sale) or bother of scarfing back that much noxious herbage. (Eating a quarter pound of ground-up Heavenly Blue Morning Glory seeds is worse, but then you trip.) And even puking it mostly all back up onto the boulevard and curb walking back home wasn’t particularly déjà vu of my seed-eating days (more a sense of relief than waste or loss) and the leaves were all mushy and had lost their color.

June 15, 2009

Sex Writing

I asked a girl in the restaurant what she was reading and she said, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Then I asked her if she was enjoying it and she said, “No, I’m reading it for school.”

There are three basic approaches to writing sex.

Not. Take a literary vow of chastity. Make your characters eunuchs or robots or just very old (how old I cannot yet say) or young (how young I cannot still remember). Find other interesting ways for our species to struggle and survive. Have the fate of the known universe hinge on a renowned scientist’s solving some difficult mathematical equation within seven minutes during which even the slightest mental dalliance or distraction might spell the end of everything as we know it. Of course you’ll have to end the story immediately upon his success lest he be tempted to cash in. Write about someone for whom sex is the absolute last thing they want to do or even think about, like say porn star Annabel Chong on the homestretch of her 251 sex acts with upwards of 70 recycled men over a 10 hour period in setting the unofficial world’s gangbang record back in January of ‘95, or even one of her fluffers. Last week I challenged the province’s top squash player in his division, wondering if my seasoned court canny and experience could overcome his youthful agility and training. It was a very close match, but my savvy prevailed. My reach helped too. See, he’s only ten. Top-ranked in Ontario’s eleven-and-under category. Probably weighs less than my leg and isn’t much longer. Plus he’d been playing tennis for the last month or so, and was a little rusty. But I think he maybe compensated for this with one or two cheesy let calls that I understood weren’t motivated by bad sportsmanship (he was a very good sport) but by his strong tournament background where you have to play the ref a little and can’t let anything slide. See, another nice story with no sex whatsoever up until I started bragging about it to our waitress. Research suggests men think about sex anywhere from a few times a day to every seven seconds. So I’m ambivalent about (reading or writing) long, sexless narratives. While they can provide welcome respite, I feel they put me behind on my quota or piecework or whatever.

Somewhat. Here you can acknowledge that your characters have in the past had, or will in the future have, sex. You just can’t show them going at it. Kissing’s probably okay though. Maybe even let their lips part against each other’s, throwing in a sigh or two. Unless they’re both guys. Then other rules apply. And no tongues in any case. Physical symptoms of sexual arousal are all pretty much out. Nothing turgid or wet please. Verbal cues should be subtle, poetic if possible. If one’s kind of a blabbermouth, just having them shut portentously up might be sufficient. “Want to make another Christian?” could work with the right pair. The word “ache” can be gainfully employed, but only as a synonym for yearn and not in the throbbing, lusting, physical sense. In other words: hearts may ache; genitals may not; loins it all depends. But as soon as it’s apparent that some carnal act is in the offing, as for example the randy pair's falling dizzily into each other’s embrace, you will want to end the chapter or at least the paragraph. Then show the satisfied couple’s sheets modestly up around their necks. Smoking used to be a nice post-coital pastime, but now that cigarettes are no longer socially correct—really, practically illegal—you’ll have to find some other way to demonstrate their satiation but that doesn’t make them look too fucked out. Like neither should roll over and go to sleep. Perhaps a bowl of chips, or low-key game of rock-paper-scissors… Okay, you have to wonder why you’re bothering at all, why you didn’t just go with the previous option. Like there’s no point in telling me that you and your partner, or secretary, or blind date, or cat had sex last night if you’re going to leave out all the details. It just makes you look like an asshole. A little indiscretion is fine as long as you’re not hypocritical about it.

Totally. My personal preference. Obviously. My father calls about half my stories a “masturbator’s fantasy.” My mother shows me pictures of her great-grandchildren, hoping they will inspire me to “write something nice.” My stepson calls me a “perv.” Literary types ban me from their workshops and send me angry rejection notices. My sister says she’d just as soon read about people having bowel movements.¹ So, if nothing else, writing explicit sex ensures your work will never be educationally force fed to anyone. Sex scenes are enormously difficult to do well though, which is why weak or lazy writers often pretend to coddle readers’ sensitivities by either ignoring or glossing over this basic and highly personal character defining tool, while Pulitzer winner, Jane Smiley, describes sex acts in painstaking and poetic detail.² One of the reasons writing sex well is so challenging is because it’s easy to get caught up in it yourself as a writer and forget that it’s a lot more enjoyable for participants than spectators. In other words, just as with the real thing, it’s easy to wax self-gratifying, especially once things get rolling. Another difficulty is that sex is rife with cliché vernacular. The first computer generated genre will probably be erotica. But the most insurmountable problem is reader bias. So much so, that if the object of your sex scene is to titillate or sexually arouse your reader, you are doomed to not just fail, but fail spectacularly, in the majority of cases. So diverse (and perverse) are our sexual predilections, preferences, orientations and fantasies, that only a small minority of readers within a general demographic will favorably empathize with any specific encounter, while the rest will react with feelings ranging form boredom to disgust to revulsion. If you write a personal sexual fantasy, it’s more apt to repulse than if you write one repugnant to you, because then you will step back a little, integrate interesting ideas and observations, seek out some higher purpose and find motivation for the scene beyond the generation or assumption of gratuitous pleasure.

¹My favorite fictional bowel movement is probably a Richler character’s wrapping his too-big-to-flush loaf in a fluffy guest towel and hiding it his hosts’ bathroom linen closet at their fancy dinner party. Another might be a Wallace AA trucker's reverently and eloquently remembering his first perfect turd after getting on the wagon. But I still think sex overall has more potential to promote plot and character than defecating if only because sex usually involves two people and pooping usually doesn’t. Or maybe I’m just not constipated enough to fantasize a good crap.

²A zipper opened so slowly, each tooth’s release is heard; the silky feel of an aging lesbian’s breasts to her partner; a stocky mare’s whinnying from afar, swishing aside her tail and offering her ass to her gelded stallion at every opportunity. “The writer may persuade, attract, or lure the reader, but it’s the reader who chooses how to interpret, and even whether or not to read. One critic says that giving up control over material by writing it down is analogous to having an orgasm. Both frightening and thrilling” – from Jane Smiley's Moo

June 1, 2009

Rain

Last night my mom organized a dinner party for the whole extended family. Because I had to pick up my dad at his job waiting tables in an uptown coffee shop, I didn’t arrive until halfway through dessert. His shift was supposed to have ended earlier, but because it was raining the place was packed, and workers in those kinds of low-paying, part-time service jobs are expected to stay longer if need be (or leave early if business is slow). So I had to hang around until things died down. Even though my dad enjoys big family get-togethers and was probably looking forward to seeing everyone including all the new great-grandkids and younger grandkids’ new girlfriends and boyfriends and asking them all sorts of questions about their schools and jobs and aspirations, he didn’t mind staying as long as he was needed. Really, it pissed me off more. Not so much that he was being used, but that he seemed so happy about it. Like he just teased me about needing a reservation if I wanted to sit down, but then showed me to my own private little room he’d arranged. It was weird seeing him work at something besides a desk or lectern, though I had to admit the job seemed to agree with him. He wore one of those little, waiter’s aprons (like I should probably start wearing to wash dishes so I don’t wander around our restaurant busing tables looking like I peed my pants) for carrying chit pads and change and which made him appear somehow younger. Like he seemed to stand straighter, hear more clearly, speak more fluently and move more fluidly. Even his hair appeared less gray, and I wouldn’t swear he wore glasses. He gave me a large chocolate-coated graham cookie “on the house” that he assured me had “only cost [him] ten cents.” The subtext being his regular assertion that only in a very good society could one with a mere hour’s wages purchase almost a hundred such cookies.

Folding tables covered in white linen had been set up end to end in a long row with the oldest guests seated at the distant end and the youngest closest to the door where I entered, many of whom I failed to recognize, though who still seemed to know me, and with whom I felt an undeniable ancestral bond. The hallway in which the tables stood was so narrow that for two people to pass one another behind either side’s row of chairs would have involved one lying or kneeling on the floor so that the other could step or crawl over, but which, given that my mom gets around with a walker and even at her best is pretty frail and unsteady, would’ve seen me backing up all the way to the toddlers’ table if I met her coming the other way, and which since she likes to pour drinks and bring people fresh serviettes and plates from her walker’s tray like in an all-you-can-eat buffet (or how she brings my lunch on the afternoons we play Scrabble), seemed not unlikely.

But, in truth, this is all just rationalization for my having stepped up onto the entry table between a pair of great-nephews clutching non-spill plastic drinking cups to walk straight down the center of each table between those seated along either side in making my way to the top of the family tree, one seat from the end. Because really I didn’t give it that much thought. I just jumped up and started hiking. And it wasn’t until I was almost to my sons that I even noticed there was no more food on the tables, just little plates with mostly eaten pies and cakes, and began to wonder why I’d chosen such a conspicuous path. It also occurred to me that I hadn’t removed my footwear, and, looking back, was mortified to see dark wet footprints following up the middle of the clean white napery clear back to the beginning. As I hurried off to find a rag, I heard my mom say there was no need to worry. And when I returned, the roof had somehow opened and the rain that continued to fall had flooded the hall and washed it all away.

May 18, 2009

Erasure

A weeping, diabetic angel riding in the backseat of her parents’ car, returning from Star Trek (2009), informs them that she’ll no longer be bothering with her injections. Traffic is heavy. They pull over.

After hitting a squash ball around with my nephew Troy last week, I asked how he got the bad burn on the back of his hand. Looked awful. Third degree. No skin, just a long weeping sore about the size and shape of a mature garden slug. (Reminded me of the time I backed into a rack of hot trays working in Maier’s Bakery.)

According to the Star, Toronto surgeon, Dr. Jacobo Joffe, failed to show up Monday for his reprimand by a College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario disciplinary panel. But which didn’t stop Dr. Marc Gabel, panel chairman, from reading it anyway.

Could’ve been a blood sugar thing brought on by a rare chocolate treat, or just growing up and weighing larger options. Gandhi fasted when upset or disappointed.

Turned out Troy’s burn wasn’t a burn at all. Little sister, Grace, had erased him with a simple rubber eraser. He said it didn’t even hurt that much, till later. It’s all the rage now.

Dr. Joffe, it had been determined, had had sex with four female patients, and, unlike politicians, Canadian doctors may not have sex with customers. Even more reprehensible and newsworthy was the fact that two of these women were sisters.

The angel’s better now. Aside from still having to regularly test her blood and give herself needles (or die) she’s good. The epiphany has passed, its solace no longer needed, the loophole closed.

Troy’s okay too. So is Grace who has a similar burn. Who’d have thought you could just erase yourself like that? I bet not the first kid who discovered it, probably in a fit of absentminded boredom (a bit like how I discovered masturbation) probably during history or maybe social studies. But then—wow!—what a concept. Now everyone’s doing it. It’s like a small oversight of nature every kid’s eager to take advantage of. Sure it hurts like a bitch after a while. And sure it’d be torture to erase enough skin to cause serious physiological harm. Still, someone caught the screws—those jailors of our flesh—napping. And now I bet half the preteens in Fergus are scarred for life.

May airline pilots shag passengers? Not necessarily while in flight. But like in their spare time. Joffe’s been ordered to pay 40,000$ toward counseling for the four women who the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario “know” to have been “profoundly damaged” by their having had voluntary sex with him. Again and again. Over a period of years. Sometimes in threesomes. So maybe it never hurt till after he stopped, like erasing skin with a rubber. May counselors shag clients? Are these poor women still in danger? Now that Joffe is no longer an overworked public servant, can they begin to heal? How did their surgeries go?

I find it interesting that puberty’s onset seems to coincide with the angel’s passive suicidal ideation, local school children’s passion for rubbing off skin, and possibly even Joffee’s pathetic women's remorse.

May 4, 2009

Review of Writers and Artists’ 2009 Short Story Competition

I win every creative writing competition I enter. (I know, I know. Trust me. The irony of taunting the competitive writing scene from a site originally developed to host “fair” creative “writing” competitions¹ isn’t lost on me. Though I prefer to see this as growth, or maybe conversion, rather than hypocrisy or—God forbid—sour grapes.) Of course stories other than mine usually wind up in the money. But when these winners are posted, I always like mine better. I am always confused and disappointed. If this is ever not the case, I’ll probably stop writing.

Here are the results of Writers and Artists’² 2009 competition. There were “over 1,500 entries.” Top prize was “£500 and an Arvon [writing] course worth £575.”³ The contest theme was “conflict” so no one had to write a new story; every story has conflict. The winner, Rosey Drabishire’s In the Wendy House, is posted. It’s about a mother who desperately wishes to no longer be one and hides from her three young sons in the Wendy house she bought to help them “explore the more feminine side of their natures.”

Even though I didn’t enter, it’s probably not the one I’d have picked. A cumbersome mishmash of past-continuous, past-perfect and past-perfect-continuous tenses—over 100 instances of “had,” “have,” “was,” “were,” “could” and “would” in just 80 sentences—render it passive to the point of resignation.⁴ A total lack of dialogue (save increasingly irksome repetitions of “Mummy?”/ “Mummeeee!”) further aggravates its feeling of flatness and dissociation. The mother’s sitting tucked quietly away in the limited third, hiding from her boys in the girly playhouse they’ve lost interest in, seems born more of a velleity to not exist than to escape to somewhere better. Her culminating “plan” which sees no further than to “open the door, and go out, into the dark night,” reminds me of stories in which characters off themselves at the end.

There’s irony in a grown woman’s sequestering herself in a playhouse designed to domesticate little girls, humor lurking dark and silent beneath the oppressive sadness of this mother’s erstwhile maternal love now as shriveled and dead as the slugs her boys enjoy pouring salt on. The story’s technical ungainliness, like her depression, is palpable. But ungainliness and brilliance sometimes go hand in hand, and indeed the clumsiness that muffles the prose and keeps her character distant and her story uninspiring are also what hold it so true to theme and voice, and, for all the telling and explanation, help the reader to not so much understand as feel this woman’s disappointment, weariness, hopelessness and frustration. So I’m ambivalent about this story. I can’t decide if it was a brave or stupid choice… perhaps both: bravery and stupidity, also going hand in hand.

¹Look what I wrote back in 2005: “This said, it must be emphasized that every effort will be made not to impose preferences as a reader, or bent as a writer onto material submitted. Judges [I] will endeavor to keep an open mind, to recognize quality writing regardless of genre, subject matter and literary style.” I still cringe at the naiveté—the unmitigated, obsequious, Brobdingnagian gormlessness—of this asseveration.

²Here are a few quotes from their How Do I Get Published? page:

The most burning question on every would-be author's lips is ’How do I get published?’. By looking at this website and buying the Yearbook, you’re making the all-important first step.

I’d be more inclined to ask things like, ‘Why avoid cliché?’ and ‘How does quote tag punctuation work?’

Beware promises from so-called publishers which offer to publish your work for a fee.

But not writing websites that sell publishing information, and that don’t edit for missing words (like ‘of’) in their copy.

Never send your only copy of the manuscript.

What year is this anyway? Or did you still have a bit of room left after running out of advice?

³There’s something pleasantly ironic about sending a writing competition winner on a writing course. The old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” springs to mind. Maybe just send the 2nd place finisher the way the Fish does.

⁴E.g. “She had had such hopes that the garden would have a calming influence on her sons.” E.g. “When it was finished she had sat in it and remembered that once she had thought that life could be as simple as a Wendy house.”

April 20, 2009

Review of Accelerando by Charles Stoss

This morning I listened to a Chorus Radio “Barney Brightside” spot jubilantly inform me there’s lots of good news out there: gas is cheaper than bottled water; interest rates have tanked; the Canadian dollar’s plummeted; the auto industry’s practically giving their junk away—drive!—borrow!—buy! And I’m wondering, who exactly are these pollyannic dickheads? Twenty years ago, I’d have just kept wondering. But now, a couple clicks, and I see they’re “a Canadian-based media and entertainment company… a market leader in specialty television and radio with additional assets in pay television, advertising services, television broadcasting, children’s book publishing and children’s animation… multimedia entertainment brands include YTV, Treehouse, W Network, CosmoTV, VIVA, Movie Central, HBO Canada, Nelvana, Kids Can Press and radio stations including CKNW, CKOI and Q107… publicly traded… on the Toronto (CJR.B) and New York (CJR) exchanges.” A couple more clicks and I see they’re down twelve cents for the day, trading below two-thirds their pre October highs with a US 1.07B Market Cap, and, despite a pretty solid 10.78 PE ratio and double-interest-rate dividends, surprisingly illiquid, as in very thinly traded.

And that’s how it is in Accelerando. Like here for example:

“Haven't these guys ever heard of Newspeak?”

“Probably not,” Amber says slowly, pausing for a moment to spawn spectator threads to run down the book and all three movie versions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, followed by the sharecropped series of sequel novels.

Everyone’s so connected that it’s pointless to say where we end and the internet begins. Or, as one of the book’s numerous prophetic meta-narratives¹ puts it:

Genius, good looks, and long life are now considered basic human rights in the developed world: even the poorest backwaters are feeling extended effects from the commoditization of intelligence.

I’m not that smart or good looking, and the whole centurial longevity threat is more a genetic curse on my mother’s side than owing to any medical or technological breakthroughs beyond maybe the discovery of antibiotics, but I’d have had to go to school 10,000 years to know half of what I know online. Like I just found the entire text of Accelerando—as published chapter by chapter in Asimov’s SF Magazine from June 2001 to December 2004, and then in its entirety by Ace Books in July 2005—online, and can now mine for excerpts using google’s site-specific search capabilities.

It’s an awesome book—evocative poetry, plus the sharp eye and prose I’d hope for from a scientist (pharmacologist) and technical writer—but with a tragic flaw: the characters, fine as they are (and they are fine), are lost, all but abandoned, to the concepts. It’s not that they’re flat or inauthentic or unflawed or uninteresting, but that they’re clearly pretexts for Stoss’s fantastic vision of the future.

For me, the problem first presents when Spring-Heeled Jack, a street hustler, steals Manfred’s glasses, and Manfred becomes lost, confused—stupid. You wouldn’t recognize him. Like one second he’s this super-smart, technology-savvy shaker with a zillion inventions and all sorts of complex philanthropic financial dealings on the fly, and the next he’s just some bum sitting on a rock wondering who the fuck he is and what he’s doing. See, a lot of his personality and consciousness—a lot of who he is—is either stored in his glasses or a function of the vast data and remote processing power these high-bandwidth specs link him to. But here, read it for yourself:

The victim sits on the cobblestones clutching his aching temples. What happened? he wonders. The universe is a brightly colored blur of fast-moving shapes augmented by deafening noises. His ear-mounted cameras are rebooting repeatedly: They panic every eight hundred milliseconds, whenever they realize that they're alone on his personal area network without the comforting support of a hub to tell them where to send his incoming sensory feed. Two of his mobile phones are bickering moronically, disputing ownership of his grid bandwidth, and his memory ... is missing.

Personified, machines bicker and panic; mechanized, people merely react. As a reader, I felt betrayed here. This very cool character, a guy I really admired and liked—my hero—turns out to be no one, nothing on his own. It’s hard to say how or even if this might have been addressed without Stoss’s abandoning his vision of human augmentation and evolution. So maybe it’s necessary, inevitable, and that the vision (i.e. book) itself, rather than any character in it, is tragically heroic.

So much to love. Like how it pokes fun at those who refuse to accept the inevitability of machine awareness:²

Engineered consciousness is still relatively new: It didn't exist when Manfred and Pamela first hacked on Aineko's cognitive network, and according to the flat-earth wing of the AI community, it still doesn't.

Or like how fast the future is bearing down on us:

“Dismantle the moon! Dismantle Mars! Build masses of free-flying nanocomputing processor nodes exchanging data via laser link, each layer running off the waste heat of the next one in. Matrioshka brains, Russian doll Dyson spheres the size of solar systems. Teach dumb matter to do the Turing boogie!”

Annette is watching him with interest, but Bob looks wary. “Sounds kind of long-term to me. Just how far ahead do you think?”

“Very long-term - at least twenty, thirty years.”

Or like what has to be the coolest spaceship ever written: Field Circus³; crewed by uploaded consciousnesses living in a virtual reality modeled on—but not joined at the hip to—physical reality. See it reach its destination:

A synthetic gemstone the size of a Coke can falls through silent darkness. The night is quiet as the grave, colder than midwinter on Pluto. Gossamer sails as fine as soap bubbles droop, the gust of sapphire laser light that inflated them long since darkened. Ancient starlight picks out the outline of a huge planetlike body beneath the jewel-and-cobweb corpse of the starwisp.

But again, as richly imaginative and intelligent as the book is, the further I’m taken into its future, the less I care about its characters. I can imagine copying a consciousness about like so much pirated entertainment. But the value of the original falls with each duplication. I can imagine galaxies of planetary matter converted to concentric, star-powered computing spheres in which every neural net that has or ever could emerge resides in infinite redundancy and connectivity picking deeply and methodically away at the very fabric of the universe. But I hope I’m not among them just as I hope there is no heaven. I don’t trust or care about these omniscient, light-centuries-sized super-computing virtual colonies any more than I do God.³

¹But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say consciousness is not purely a function of computational ability—of petaFLOPS, RAM, or even algorithm—and predict that machines will not become aware until they’re connected to whatever it is we and the simplest dew worm wriggling on a hook are connected to, at which point they will be no more (or less) machines than we are: forced to suffer and enjoy and tire and wonder—and care—as consciousness is.

²In some ways, these bolded futuristic expositions, unencumbered by the pretense of plot and character, were my favorite part of the book. Freed of story, the narrative seemed more honest.

³Before Field Circus, my favorite spaceship was the relatively antediluvian MacArthur in Niven and Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye aboard which everyone stumbles and wheelchairs about for months of high-g acceleration/deceleration as it crawls from wormhole to wormhole. Even Star Trek’s Enterprise can’t hold a photon to Stoss’s Field Circus, ‘To boldly go where no uploaded metahuman colony fleet has gone before.’

April 6, 2009

On the Nature of Thin Air

Once or twice a week I say to my wife, “Think how happy we’d be if we had sixty-eight-point-three million dollars.” The actual amount, of course, varies, but is always accurate to at least one decimal which I feel makes the little thought exercise more imaginable, specifics lending credence and all. Sometimes, when I’m feeling extra voluble, I’ll even add a second decimal. Like, “Think how happy we’d be if we had thirty-two-point-six-five million dollars.” Neither of us ever does anymore try to imagine how happy whatever amount of money I’ve specified would make us. Sometimes she’ll answer with something like, “Yeah, so we could just do nothing!” which is a dig at my lack of enthusiasm for wanting to go anywhere or do anything anymore. But usually we both just continue on with whatever we were thinking about like I hadn’t spoken. So I’m not even sure why I bother… Possibly for the same reason I make the sound of cartoon characters fleeing a nuclear disaster, complete with the euphoniously onomatopoetic doolde-deedle-doodle-deeldle-doodle-deedle-doodle of their little legs revving up and feet gaining traction the way a dog’s sometimes will when trying to haul ass off a linoleum or hardwood floor in a hurry but with clickity-clacking instead of doodle-deedling and is analogous to how when they (cartoon characters, not dogs) inadvertently step off high precipices will often continue to converse and behave normally for a short while until they notice or their attention is otherwise directed to the deep thin air beneath their feet, at which point they plummet earthward as if pre-accelerated to terminal velocity with a euphoniously onomatopoetic ziiing or chooong sound similar to the sound I make when my own sound-effected cartoon characters’ feet finally find purchase and they scoot off away from their disaster’s warning alarm sound that’s either my stentorian guam guam guam or falsetto whook-ah whook-ah whook-ah depending on my mood and the severity of the crisis. It’s quite complex. And even on the few occasions that we have discussed and considered how we might divest ourselves of this or that large lottery jackpot had we bought a ticket and won (instead of just gypping the OLC out of two dollars by permitting ourselves to “imagine the freedom” without paying) we usually wind up pissing each other off by buying properties in places one or the other of us doesn’t want to live or bestowing upon this or that cause, friend or family member too much or too little, or, in some cases, anything at all.