stink or no stink

I guess I signed up for the Stink of the Month Club without realizing it. You know how those clubs advertise impossibly great deals then start sending you stuff you don't want, and you have to pay to ship the junk back, and they charge you anyway?

Well maybe it was the chunk of graveyard funk I ordered from that guy in Romania. But no, that was Romania. Doesn't matter.

I need to remember to read the addresses on the mail before opening it. This month's selection was "ammonia headache" and "tijuana toilet". Almost scalded my eyes opening that one. There was a brief memory of playing "the ammonia game" in high school chem class -- you know, the one where you put a little water in two beakers and an equal amount of ammonia in another, then find some freshman and tell him if he can figure out which beaker has peppermint schnapps he gets to drink it. They usually get grab the ammonia on the first whiff, and their eyebrows shoot right off their heads.

So I sent back the stink. It may have been funny in high school, but now I'm older and I'm not going to pay $9.95 for the dubious pleasure.

Though I did notice that next month's featured item is "rancid cranberry surprise"...

====

from a dream 1/26/06

Poetry Night Out

Just got back from a fun poetry event. About a dozen of us reading or work at a friendly coffeehouse down by Balboa Park (San Diego). There were some shy readers, I did my usual oddities in a hopefully enjoyable carefree way, and a few guys really performed their words. A good variety, from haiku to a guy with a hand puppet raccoon that tried to bite his head off.

I brought all new work (mostly poems), no repeats from last week. However, it's all new to almost everyone, since few people have ever seen my work, statistically speaking. Forgot to pitch my chapbooks (again!), sold nothing, but I did meet folks, and got some contact info.  I'm always trying to expand my network of people, increasing my chance of finding out about future events. Nice group. Sold enough stuff on eBay while I was down there ...

Some writing news:

"Fluency" (story) accepted at the "Musical Voices" issue of Sage of Consciousness
http://www.sageofcon.com

"Consumption" (story) accepted by the "Hungur 2" anthology
http://samsdotpublishing.com

Note from 2024: this was copied over from my AuthorsDen blog that I had forgotten about.  And both links are dead.
 

library falling

I was at the university library. They really packed the books in there. The shelves were jammed together so you'd have to turn sideways to go around corners. While they must have spent a fortune on the books, they only spent about a dollar fifty on the shelves. When I tripped over a hundred pound copy of The Fermius Guide to Extrasolar Diseases, and reached out my hands to stop my fall, I hit a shelf and could feel the vibrations. The particles inside the shelf were trying to decide if today was a good day for a paper disaster ...

The shelf went over an inch too far. The books slid back and dropped out the downside of the shelf, whispering as they headed toward total chaos. The wave of books and metal hit the next shelf, then another, and it was a devlishly glorious game of dominoes after that. When it was all over, there were some groans from underneath the ruins of the anthropology section, all kinds of pages flapping in the air -- trying to escape the carnage -- and I could only wait until the perfect comedy pause had ticked down before letting out a primal, "Doh!"

Open Mic

I went to an open mike event this evening. Was fun, once we all figured out the quirks of the microphone. Funny watching people try to use a mike -- some people spoke right into it, up close, and at the first big P the thing popped and shut down. Some bent over trying to placate it, which of course made it hard to read.

I usually start off with "Newspaper". I hope to have my "Afterlife 9" chapbook printed early this year. So I'll have the whole she-bang in hand, ready to do. Since those poems mostly started off as songs, I can just cue the music in my head and recite the words from memory. Though I do have to skip the instrumental bits. Anyway, it's a good icebreaker.

And I had "the Other secret house" for down-to-earth breaks. Plus the "something old, something new" printouts for the poetry reading that was rained out on New Year's Eve.

I wish I had brought my short skit "4th and Z". Seemed like the perfect crowd for that. TLR was there, we wrote a big nasty poem together a few months back, yet we both forgot to bring copies.

On the weird side, I sold my sample copy of my fractal art calendar. That's good. But when I went to reorder 4 more copies, all the regular shipping options were gone, and there was only Express Mail for 30 stinking dollars. I posted a bug report and was told that the shipping options are correct. Funny how people just don't believe their websites could ever do anything wrong. I paid $2.49 shipping the last time I ordered. So I know there were cheaper options, just a week & a half ago.

I continue trying to pull coherent stories out of a pal's dream blog. Not easy. Dreams are free to meander senselessly. A story should at least have the illusion of purpose or drive ...

 

Note from 2024: this was copied over from my AuthorsDen blog that I had forgotten about.

 

4th and Z (audio)

A quick comedy homage, in audio form.
Listen to it here.

I did the audio direction and editing, but only a minor voice role ("whoop whoop whoop").
To find out more about the voice talent, see
the Actors Playground.

New Sales & Oddities

Here are my latest sales ...

"drunk with life" (poem, with Terrie Leigh Relf) to appear in the anthology Bondage
http://samsdotpublishing.com

"time the illusion" (poem) to appear in Abyss & Apex (Jan 2006)

"fractal eXpressions 1" (2006 calendar) now available for $16.95 at deviantART.com.
13 eye-popping graphics!
http://www.deviantart.com/print/249746/

"first tree on the moon" (poem) accepted for The Martian Wave (Apr 2006)
http://samsdotpublishing.com

"turn up the heat" (poem) accepted for translation to Swedish for an upcoming project

bizarre new blog about cloud creatures:
http://cloudwabbits.blogspot.com

Got my copy of the Magazine of Speculative Poetry (v7 #3) with my poem in it. Very cool.

===

I sent out a lot of pieces in December. I got okayed to send works to the new Amazon Shorts program. You have to have at least one book already for sale on Amazon to qualify. It's a big deal, very high exposure. I sent two outrageous comedy stories in. It has been so long since I've felt vaguely nervous about a submission. Hope they like 'em! 

 Note from 2024: this was copied over from my AuthorsDen blog.  SamsDot publishing is no longer there.

2006, huh?

It's 2006 and there are no jet packs or flying go-karts. Then again, imagine those things in the hands of the typical commuter ... every ten seconds someone would crash into a hill or flame someone else's eyebrows off.

Flash Gordon would not be impressed. Just goes to show that sci-fi writers really ARE optimists, crediting us with these great advances. But in the real world the advances sneak up on us and the whole world changes with hardly anyone noticing.

Must ... avoid ... politics. The US Gov keeps getting more psychotic, doing everything we don't want them to do, making the whole world hate us. The news keeps us comfortably isolated. We're just little pawns. I do hope that the corporate-run cyberpunk world isn't the next big change to sneak up on us, but maybe we're already there and just don't hear about it. Damn. Things just don't add up the way they're reported.

Scratch that. Oh darn, the backspace is just too much of a hassle. Then I'd be playing along.

I'm still annoyed by the fantasy "Net" you see in movies. Where the internet is a pretty world of lights and zappy data, and you can walk around in it. At the moment, it's just a lot of disconnected text and pictures and stuff, with the potential to work wonders ... instead, we get victimized by dumb-ass spammers and our machines spend all day updating our virus definitions and spyware lists. I even have spammers attacking the guestbooks and order forms on my business websites. They just have to send me incoherent and obscene links to shit no halfway intelligent person would ever click on. But I'm trying to run a business! To survive, you know. It's insulting. They must think we're all stupid little marks just waiting to cough up money. Well, fuck them.

It's sad, trying to run an honest life, trying to do the right thing, knowing that there are people doing better than I am by being assholes and thieves.

Hmm. Not the Happy New Year I was thinking. But then again, it really isn't.

nose-thing and not-so-fast food

Had an odd dream last night, just a bunch of commercials for stupid products. The only one I can remember was Wal-Mart's new compendium of barely-useful information ... the Walmanac.

Every now and then I'll be eating dinner out, and a few booths away, a hostess is asking Neil Diamond what kind of veggies he wants on the side. He bursts into a chorus of "A yam, I said! A yam, I cried ..."

We went out for some steak tonight. Had that low-protein, low-iron feeling. Yum. So the Neil Diamond gag came to mind again. Nearby was a girl with the tiniest diamond I've ever seen, sticking in her nose. Of all places. Probably fake, but that doesn't matter. I just saw a nose with a shiny bit, and figured it was a booger. A fine investment there!

I've had a few meals in '05 where the service was just too darn slow. I mean, at first there's stuff to talk about, maybe a little cup of soup. After a while, it's "Okay, I'm ready to eat now." Which progresses to an urge to wave hands around or bang silverware - "Am I still here?" Finally, there's just a gut-wrenching "Now I'm hungry again, which is abnormal and has totally confused my system. Still, I see no signs of life in the tundra they call a kitchen ..."