The Grumpy Owl

Tags: Cee Lo Green, FUCK YOU

Tags: duke of earl, gene chandler

Like any community of malcontents and weirdos, writers have certain quirks in common.  One of these is the trunk. While it might look like someone just sits down and writes a novel, the process is much sloppier than that. Stories are started and abandoned. Some are finished but remain awful. There are pages of notes, half-thoughts, outlines of things that never went anywhere, letters to people one has not seen in twenty years, sometimes letters back from them, decent stories that still need work, things that could not sell, snippets of poetry and prose, rants, ramblings and drugged, up, delusional twitter feeds from some subconscious hellscape.  Every completed novel, the good, bad and the ugly, stands atop a mountain of corpse-words and that mountain is put in the trunk.

It’s probably not a coincidence that a trunk looks like a coffin.

Then again, coffins sometimes look like fish.

My trunk is not actually a trunk at all.  It’s a big old clothes drier that was in my apartment when I got here.  Now it’s packed tight with paper.

While every writer has their trunk, every writer relates differently to it.  Stephen King took parts of his and made it into the Bachman Books.  Naked Lunch was edited together from parts of Burroughs’s trunk.  I seem to recall some poet throwing theirs overboard while at sea.  I never even look in mine.  I have a seperate space for things I can look at.  Those things don’t require anything as large as a trunk.

My trunk terrifies me.

Just sitting here, thinking about it, shrinks my lungs. There’s a lot of very bad writing in that drier.  A lot of very bad writing that I, knowing nothing, once thought was very good writing.  The bad prose is, perhaps, forgivable. The confidence with which I wrote it, not so much. When I was a child I was told that looking directly at the sun would cause blindness. Like Santa Claus, God and dentistry, that turned out to be bullshit. But I know that looking in that trunk would cause a fit of self doubt leading directly to block. That’s how bright my humiliation is.

I never had any natural talent but I can’t even begin to fathom what I was doing with some of that crap.  Thinking most of it was bad enough.  Actually going to the trouble of writing it down and thinking it was good enough to ever be read by anyone? The stark ratio of shit to quality that I produce?  That’s enough to turn one off the whole enterprise.

And I would quit if I could – Santa-God-Dentist knows, I have tried.

But our virtue and our vice often comes from the same thing.  Once I make up my mind about something, I’m willing to see it right through to the bitter end.  When smarter men would give up and stay down, I keep getting up.  Though this is often portrayed as virtue, it’s a dangerous one.  It’s sent me on benders, got me kicked in the face and kept me in relationships much longer than was good for anyone.  I play to extinction.  I know this about myself. It’s not as romantic as it may sound.  I’ve spent the last few years trying to learn failure.

Giving up can be very good for you.

I was a child when I decided to be a fiction writer.  I had no idea what that meant.  I knew it meant writing stories so I dedicated myself to that.  As far as the sort of life writers led, what they did on their spare time or how they made a living, I was completely clueless.  I wasn’t raised around professors, scientists or authors.  Quite a few writers were.  Insofar as I’ve ever been jealous of another person’s upbringing, I’m jealous of that. It might have saved me a great deal of trouble. But I also know this – It would’ve ruined me.

Because, when I started reviewing books and saw what most writers actually do, I knew that wasn’t for me.

Not knowing any of that or having the sense to figure it out and quit while I was ahead, I taught myself how to write. I cannot ever recall getting any advice or anything remotely approximating an education from my school teachers. I was never even taught the formal rules of grammar and punctuation. To this day, I have no idea what they are and navigate by feel. What I did get from these people was encouragement. This was the last thing I needed.

I didn’t even know what books I should be reading. I’d find an author I liked, find out what authors they liked (if I could – this was pre-internet) read those authors and try to find out who they liked and read that.  This was a path that took me from 80s horror to science fiction, to the beats, to the lost generation, back into Victorian novels and French Romanticism, then, eventually, to Homer. I stole everything I could from these folks. Usually breaking it on my way out the back door.

At about age 18 or 19 –I’d already quit school and moved to Toronto- I came into a copy of William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well.”  Although this is a guide to writing non-fiction, it was the first book I’d ever read that imparted sensible advice on building a sentence. It emphasized clarity. From there, it was on to “The Elements of Style.”  This remains my most treasured reference book.  I prefer it to the dictionary and I really like the dictionary. Those two books taught me how to write. They gave me new eyes.

It made me look at my previous work how my first bespoke suit made me look at my previous clothes.

Having learned as much as I could on my own, I decided it was time to try attended Humber school for Writers where I had the privilege of being taught for a week by Robert J. Sawyer.  It was the first time that I’d learned anything about writing from another human being and I learned quite a bit.  I learned the names of some things that I had figured out for myself and gained a much better understanding of the rules governing them.  It made quite a bit clear.  He did say, however, that I was “a writer of enormous talent” and I thought of all those late nights and long hours  trying to figure out how a sentence worked and shuddered.  In spite of this, if you -for some damn reason- aspire to be a writer, I’d recommend him highly.  The Humber School for writers, not so much.

My trunk is full of stuff I wrote before knowing any rules and the stuff I wrote while trying to apply them.  While I understood and agreed with the principles, there’s a pretty big gulf between knowing something and being able to do it.  I know how to throw a curve-ball but I sure can’t throw a curve-ball.  Shit, I know how to throw a knuckleball and I probably couldn’t even get one of those out of my hand let alone reach the plate with it.  And most of my trunk is written with the sort of arrogance that one only ever finds in the truly ignorant.

It came easy.  Shit usually does.

Looking at my trunk makes me feel like a pitcher watching a highlight reel of his very worst moments from little league on.  You might be able to say in some cold objective voice: “Look how far you’ve come! You can actually throw a strike now!” You might even be right.  But it’s not a cold objective thing and, holy shit, it is not the sort of thing anyone needs to be thinking about right before they take the mound.  If you look at a pitcher, when things start to go real bad, you can see that movie playing in their eyes.

The greats can battle through that.  They can ignore it.  Everyone else carries it with them and reenacts it.

As far as I go, I find it hard enough to face every blank page and the failure, fuck-ups and embarrassments it represents, without waking up every single day with a drier full of them at the head of my bed.  I’m gonna throw all that old writing out.  If I ever need to mine stories or ideas out of my trunk, I’ve made a  bigger mistake than could ever be found within it.  Because, even worse than the prose is the man who wrote it.  And I’m always going to have to face him.  When things go bad, when I’m stuck and whenever I’m gripped by doubt, I’ll see that man.  i’ll be goddamned if I ever depend on him for anything and I sure don’t need an altar to the bastard.

The mirror is a tombstone that always looks backwards and the mirror is enough.

Tags: memories, the trunk, writing

There’s some debate about whether the Christian Dior ad campaign Shanghai Dreamers is racist.  It depicts tall white models against a background of “identical maoist robots.”  I don’t really understand the debate.  Of course it’s racist.

Most advertising is.

When it’s not out-rightly racist, sexist, classist, ageist and/or homophobic it often implies it. The industry is based on making people feel bad about some normal human thing then selling them the solution to their imaginary problem.  On the occasions when it’s not doing that  it’s pretending that you’ll stand out from the crowd or become part of some fabled elite if you just buy this product that everyone else is now buying to do the same.  As if shoes were ever a substitute for a soul.

pic nicked from here

Most who point out the normality of this brand of nonsense seek to excuse Christian Dior.  I don’t.

Nor do I take any refuge in that tired old cliché about “fashion being fantasy not reality.”  Racism is also fantasy.  Something  being fantasy does not absolve it from criticism. (Am I going to be able to say to book critics: “You can’t say bad things abut my book because it’s fiction not reality?”)   A fantasy must be judged on its quality.

And this is not exactly Borges.

It relies on the grossest and most vulgar form of characterization, the racial stereotype, is dreary to look at and has no aim higher than selling you a jumper or whatever Dior makes anyway.    It’s fantasy of owning a product making you superior to the masses.  That’s reprehensible whether or not racism is invoked.  That people are accustomed to this crap is not a point in favour of Dior but a point against us all.  With fantasies like this, we can hardly expect much improvement in reality.

On the other hand, it did start a conversation about orientalism . . .

Tags: advert, advertising, christian dior, orientalism, racism, racist

Back in 2007, I sold a very short story to Space Squid.  They got my name wrong, calling me Ryan C. Thomas.  (A previous contributor.) I pointed out the error out and, by way of apology, they interviewed the pair of us in their next issue.  All that aside, I’ve always felt friendly to Space Squid.

Their zine is one of the only places I’ve published short fiction and it’s the only magazine I’ve ever put a concerted effort to get into. They struck me as an exciting bunch, twisted in the right way and doing the right sort of things – so much better than the boring behemoths of SF publishing.  They wanted sci-fi.     Not SF, not science fiction but good ole SCI-FI!!! I like sci-fi.  It’s got a bad rap from people who take shit a little too serious.  Space Squid was low brow by high quality.

And it’s amazing shit.

Now they’re up to something new – printing their zine not on paper but on clay tablets.   I could explain but I’m gonna let them do that via their press release.  Because it’s funny.

Press Release — Sci-Fi Mag Prints on Clay Tablets
Wed Aug 18, 2010 2:16 pm

For Public Release: 8/25/10

Contact: Matthew Bey, Publisher and Communications Director, Space Squid
email: squishy-at-spacesquid-dot-com

Literary Magazine to Print on Dead Media — Clay Tablets

As digital media threatens traditional print periodicals with economic and cultural obsolescence, some magazines are returning to their ancient roots. Austin-based science fiction and humor magazine Space Squid will print its ninth issue on clay tablets.

“Print is dead,” says Space Squid design editor Steve Wilson. “So there’s no reason not to print on the deadest media available. There isn’t much difference between dead media and really, really dead media.”

Faced with steep printing costs and the bulk of their readership downloading the online PDF of the magazine, the editors of Space Squid made the decision to return to clay tablets. Space Squid communications editor Matthew Bey says, “Given the choice between printing 2000 paper copies that won’t last ten years, or thirty copies that can last six thousand years, it’s an easy choice to make.”

“Sometimes archaic media just works better,” says Space Squid art editor David Chang. “In some respects, clay is a superior recording medium. It has more warmth and depth of tone than paper.”

The clay tablets are unfired as was common practice in Sumeria. Like their historical antecedents they are dried in the sun, giving them a startling durability. “Practically speaking, these tablets could last until the end of the world itself,” says Chang. “Unless someone drops them.”

The Space Squid clay tablet is the first major cultural application of clay tablets since the collapse of Egyptian colonialism in the first century A.D. The tablets are printed using a unique technology that allows multiple impressions of the same text, despite recording on a medium that pre-dates Gutenberg by thousands of years.

Says Bey, “If the Sumerians had been as clever as Space Squid and developed a similar clay-printing technology, they would have sparked the enlightenment era a thousand years before the birth of Christ.”

The clay tablet issue contains most of the content familiar to readers of the paper version of Space Squid. Side one has a seal-imprint with the image of a squid and the name “Space Squid” in phonetic cuneiform. The rest of the front-face features a short story by Kevin Brown titled “Hunting Bigfoot,” hand-lettered in the English alphabet using a wedged stylus in the same manner as the Sumerian scribes. The back side contains an off-color joke and advertisements for the Drabblecast podcast, the movie Bikini Bloodbath, illustrator David Johnston, Krakatoa Shirts, and a live performance of the graphic novel Intergalactic Nemesis.

Space Squid will print less than 15 clay tablets. Only five tablets will go up for auction at the Armadillocon art show, open to members of the Armadillocon science fiction convention. One tablet will go up for sale on eBay. The remaining tablets are reserved for private collections.

Space Squid, which is known for printing edgy and often humorous fiction, has a history of pushing boundaries. In 2009 Space Squid staff experimented with zombie-killing techniques, using actual weapons and actual heads, posting their scientific results on Youtube.

A digital PDF of Space Squid issue 9, with far more content, will be available at spacesquid.com.

For more information:
Space Squid:
http://www.spacesquid.com/

Video of clay tablet printing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gg6oNMB6Fg

Photos of clay tablet printing:
http://www.revolutionsf.com/bb/weblog_entry.php?e=2539

Armadillocon:
http://www.armadillocon.org/

Zombie head bashing experiment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSd7SbO9I8U

Tags: clay tablets, cuneiform, ryan c thomas, Ryan Oakley, sci fi, science fiction, space squid

Tags: Canadian idol, Khuram Sher, terrorist

Tags: baseball, baseball boogie, dodgers

Subway, Lifeblood

“As a kid growing up in the eightees’ who naturally gravitated towards GrandMaster Flash, The RockSteady Crew and writing graffiti, I always had an affinity for the New York City subway during the late 70′ and early 80’s. It represented the blood-filled arteries of a city pumping with organic, authentic, city-brewed culture. It was covered with tags and pieces while filled with people of every size, shape, age and color. It was reckless and untamed and most importantly, it was New York City.”

Tags: lifeblood, new york city, new york subway, nyc, photography, subway

Tags: george washington, song

Small Town Noir

“The mug shots on this site were all taken in New Castle, Pennsylvania, between 1930 and 1959, and were rescued from the trash when the town’s police department threw them out. The information that has been used to reconstruct the stories behind the pictures comes mostly from old copies of the local paper, the New Castle News.”

Tags: mugshots, small town noir

Click To Play

Time: 28 minutes.

The Robot Choir sings classic blues songs.  The above picture is by Drew Falchetta.

Track Listing.

Hellhound on My Trail: Robert Johnson

Hateful Blues: Bessie Smith

Stack O’ Lee Blues: Mississippi John Hurt

Rollin’ and Tumblin’: Junior Wells and Buddy Guy

Strange Love: Slim Harpo

Hoochie Coochie Man: Jimi Hendrix

I Just Wanna Make Love to You: Muddy Waters

In New Orleans (House of the Rising Sun): Leadbelly

Tags: podcast, robot blues, the robot choir

Tags: france, hip hop, mario, nintendo, undercover, world hip hop championships 2009

Tags: Alexyss K. Tylor, common bitch, vagina power

Tags: Alexyss K. Tylor, dick and nuts, dicks, educated skeletons, pussies, quivering

I wrote a guest editorial for Auxiliary Magazine.  You can download the pdf here.  I did not write my bio and I’m not taking any responsibility for that.

Auxiliary is an alternative fashion, music and lifestyle magazine - available online and in print– and I was asked to do something that related to alt culture.  I don’t really know what alt culture is or where I fit into it.  Am I an alternative?  I doubt it.  I did drop out of high-school instead of riding the office train to retirement at sixty five but, far as I can tell, I never had alternative to being myself.  Most of the important decisions I made turned out to be irreversible before I knew they were important.  I suspect most people are in the same boat.

Not really sure what to write, cognizant that people only listen to me because I dress well and determined to give the public what they want, I wrote an editorial comparing alt culture to the dandy. Seemed apt.  And, if not, at least it’s some bullshit I can stand behind.  Or in front of.  I do have a book to promote, ya know.

I don’t read many magazines but Auxiliary seems decent, which is a shame.  I prefer indecent publications like American Conservative or anything else that includes splayed vaginas like Pat Buchanan.  But Auxiliary lacks nudity and remains suspiciously quiet on the state of the American family and illegal immigration.

I suspect “alt” is just a codeword for secret homosexual, communist Illuminati agenda.

Aside from myself, you’ll find a lot of pictures.  If, for some reason you prefer reading to gawking at (clothed!?) goth girls, there’s Clint Catalyst, Nina Flowers, industrial band Android Lust and Andy Deane as well as an interview with Michael Swaim of little known humor site Cracked.com.

Anyway, go have a look.  Enjoy or don’t.  I’m not going to tell you how to live your fucking life.

Tags: alt culture, auxiliary magazine, editorial, grumpy owl, Ryan Oakley