Synchroshock

2/3/12: Onion

2012-02-04T06:42:00.001-08:00

Ever realize something that's always been subconscious to you? Call it a revelation, a broadened awareness, eureka; whatever. Last night, I realized I like onion. Like it very much, in fact, as some people do chocolate or a choice drug. Crisp, zesty, domineering -- that's the onion.

This occurred to me over a friend's email and a dinner salad, which had onion in it but only a minority, as to allow only a few choice bites of oniony goodness, the non-onion bites providing the contrast necessary for me to appreciate my bulbed, eye-watering ally. After several sans-onion bites, I came up with a nice, comma-shaped slice of it, and that's when it hit me, all at once: I like onion. Love it, maybe. So count me as an onion lover, even if it one day gets something of a Star of David on my window.

The epiphany, while grand, did not interrupt the reading of my friend's email (my friend trumps onion, it seems). And then, there it was, in the very next paragraph down: "And as a side note. I love onions." My chewing stopped.

Synchroshock.

Now, my immediate response to this was "peripheral reading," a syndrome I am quite familiar with. It happens all the time when I'm writing: I'll come up with a brilliant, original, perfectly fitting word, only realize I'd used it halfway up the page, or was reading it off a web browser tab or something across the room. We do this, involuntarily and subconsciously, and, besides being exploited endlessly by advertisers and propagandists, it is a constant source for synchronistic false-positives, since the "supernatural" inspirations come from a source beyond your conscious awareness.

Except, I was eating onion before it happened. In the salad, my oniony bite, the necessary ingredient for my realization and its "chance" reiteration. Peripheral reading does not manufacture salads and put them in your mouth, oniony or otherwise.

Update, 2/16:

This one happened again, almost exactly the same: me eating dinner while catching up on email, the email written by the same friend, except this time it involved broccoli. I'd just taken a big bite of the stuff when no sooner did I read, " I think I'll go eat some broccoli." There were no thoughts of admiration as I did so, but still ...

1/27/12: Actuarial

2012-01-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, "actuarial." Ever heard this word? I have, exactly once, as to be noted and defined in my word ledger, and not much else. But this isn't a ledger synchronicity.

It was on my mind when I awoke yesterday, very clearly and distinctly, in the space normally held by "breakfast" or "toilet." Actuarial, actuarial, I thought, and continued doing so off and on all day, haunted by the word's significant presence and improbable arrival. Short of remembering it had something to do with insurance, I knew nothing of the word.

However, yesterday came and went, and I had no further encounters with actuarial, despite looking all over for it as though I'd called it a name. It was this morning that I realized this, also upon waking, "no actuarial" now replacing "actuarial" and its predecessors, accompanied by a despising sense of disappointment. It might have been the name of a woman. I got out of bed, and the word wasted no time leaving my attentions.

Then, this evening, while reading a book immaterial to this occurrence, I came face to face with none other than"actuarial," in context to something even less relevant. Regardless, it was there. There were neither fireworks nor alarm bells upon its discovery.

(It bears mentioning: the word found me only when I'd ceased expecting it. And, also, the word's dictionary definition: "a person qualified to calculate commercial risks and probabilities involving uncertain future events" (the italics are mine).)

1/17/12: Mass Dissidence

2012-01-17T09:43:00.001-08:00

Find my bizarro short, "Jane", in Mass Dissidence, a new, dystopic anthology from Static Movement.

Link

1/10/12: She wore a wimple

2012-01-11T19:17:00.001-08:00

I've mentioned word synchronicities, right? When unlikely words pop up in unlikely ways within an unlikely period of time? This was a variation of that.

I went to the market yesterday, and my cashier wore a wimple. Yes, a wimple. A pretty young woman, with bedroom eyes, and hair dyed neon-red, a crafty smile. She looked in no way deserving of a wimple, yet it worked for her. Keep wearing your wimple, miss, if you're reading this.

So, I can now say I've been cashiered by a woman in a wimple. I checked it off my list of things to do before I die.

Now, this morning. While studying my ledger of words to learn, over breakfast, I came to "wimple," which caught my eye -- not so much because I'd just yesterday met the lovely, wimpled cashier, but because I'd written down the word and looked up its definition, as if I didn't know what a wimple was. Sometimes you just have to make sure, I guess. In any case, there it was, and I Just Happened to come across the entry the day after my exciting encounter with the cashier.

But that's not all, folks.

Tonight, while editing a novel of mine, I came across it again, "wimple," one of only maybe two or three times I've used the headwear in my writings.

(Another interesting point: I wasn't initially in Ms. Wimple's line at the grocery store, but while I was waiting, hers cleared and she waved me over. Destiny?)

1/4/12: Birkenstock

2012-01-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A:

The day before last, my father gave me a pair of shoes, randomly. I paid the shoes enough attention to see that they were too big, then promptly forgot them.

Exhibit B:

In my thousands of pages of writings, I have, a single time, referenced the shoe company, Birkenstock. And as it happened, I edited that reference yesterday morning, a novel of mine that is fresh from rejection (or, rather, non-reply -- is it a rejection when the publisher just ignores you?).

Closing argument:

Yesterday afternoon, after I'd finished editing my novel for the day, I happened to Notice the gifted pair of shoes that were too big for me. I felt oddly attracted to them then, especially the logo on the side of one, obscured by its positioning. The longer I looked, the more compelled I felt to see the shoe's logo, for no good reason, or even a bad one. I simply had to see the brand-logo on that shoe, or the world would end.

Reluctantly, I went and turned the shoe, and it was a Birkenstock. I have not had experience of anything Birkenstock since the last I'd edited my novel, months ago.

12/31/11: Kaleidotrope

2011-12-31T17:15:00.000-08:00

Find my bizarro novella, "The End of Owln's Malt", in the winter issue of Kaleidotrope, free.

Kaleidotrope link

12/25/11: Enter At Your Own Risk

2011-12-25T18:27:00.000-08:00

Find my Gothic short story, "Riottaba", in Enter At Your Own Risk, an anthology of such stories. (It came out a couple months ago and I was, somehow, uninformed.)

Amazon link

And here is a sci-fi story that was, also without my being informed, published on the Aphelion webzine, nearly a year ago.

The Sad

12/24/11: Mandorla

2011-12-24T18:58:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I read an unfamiliar word in a book I won't name: "mandorla". It stuck with me all day and then into the night, on my mind even as I went to bed. Mandorla, mandorla, my last thought before sleep.

This morning, I awoke and sat down to breakfast, one of my words-to-learn ledgers at wing. I opened to the page I had stopped at yesterday (which I had flipped to and bookmarked without reading), and one of the first words on it was "mandorla" -- undefined, as it were, it not being in the dictionary I had referenced after writing the word down (years ago, when I'd first started this particular ledger of new words).

I have not, to my recollection, heard this word except for when I first noted it and then yesterday, in the book I'm reading, approximately twelve hours before I would encounter it in my ledger.

And the clincher: I looked it up tonight, and was unsurprised to learn of it signifying the coincidence and interaction of opposing realities, of which I have recently been experiencing extensively.

12/23/11: Arcane

2011-12-23T09:35:00.001-08:00

Find my bizarro short, "The Delivery", in Arcane, a new weird/macabre anthology.

Amazon link

12/16/11: WTF?

2011-12-16T12:13:00.001-08:00

Find my bizarro short, "The Matador", in WTF?, a new anthology from Pink Narcissus.

Amazon link

12/5/11: Schlock Magazine

2011-12-05T08:11:00.001-08:00

Find my short-short, "On Killing Yourself", and many others in the new, apocalyptic issue of Schlock Magazine, for free.

Link

Also, find another post-apocalyptic short-short of mine, "Body Builders Here To Stay", in this month's issue of Jake's Monthly anthologies, for only $0.99.

Link

12/4/11: Nonlogic

2011-12-04T17:56:00.001-08:00

Exhibit A:

Yesterday, I was stopped in traffic behind a '90s green Chevy truck with a matching camper top, and a distinctively rusted bumper. I noticed this truck -- Noticed it, For Some Reason (enough to cement it in my memory, in any case). The truck was nowhere near my house.

Exhibit B:

This afternoon, my father happened to give me a newspaper clipping from The Charlotte Observer, detailing how a man accidentally threw away a prized ring and then, miraculously, located it in the dump, and after 30 minutes, no less, when the dump workers had, understandably, given him "zero chance of finding it."

Exhibit C:

While eating lunch, I read the newspaper clipping, which got me thinking about such incredibly unlikely happenings, which got me thinking about my own incredibly unlikely happenings, which got me thinking about how chance, it seems, is an illusion, since reality seems to operate on some nonlogical structure that we have yet to decipher -- a structure that seems to be intelligent, and will make itself known to those open to its possibility.

Just as I thought this, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye: a truck, passing by my house, outside my dining-room window. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of it, but it was enough to make out a chartreuse green, and a matching camper top, and a bumper with an infection of rust. My house is very secluded, by the way.

It brought a sense of, "Did I hear my name?"

12/3/11: Daily Flash 2012

2011-12-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

Daily Flash 2012: 366 Days of Flash Fiction is a new anthology from Pill Hill Press, which includes my flash piece, "The Noise".

Link

12/1/11: Pants

2011-12-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, before leaving home, I was struck with the distinct urge to change my pants. It was not a passing thought, but very pronounced, pressing, a do-or-die sensation. I would go so far as to call it a voice in my head, gentle and calm, but insistent. Yet, I had just changed my pants the day before.

So I didn't change my pants.

That afternoon, however, my attention was, by chance, drawn to the crotch of my blue jeans, which had, at some point between breakfast and lunch, become split up the crotch, awarding me a vagina of sorts. They were old pants, so their splitting didn't surprise me until later, when I remembered what had happened that morning.

Good thing I wasn't out of state, on business, alone, in my truck, and due to an appointment. (Notice my sarcasm.)

11/30/11: Local Heroes

2011-11-30T17:14:00.000-08:00

Find my short story, "Lucky", in Local Heroes, a new anthology from Static Movement.

Link

11/11/11: Pseudopod

2011-11-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

Read/hear my psychological-horror story, "War", at Pseudopod.

Link

11/8/11: Zero

2011-11-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

Find my story, "William", and a great bunch of others, in Zero from May December Publications, an anthology of zero-patient zombie stories.

Amazon link

11/7/11: Bad Memory

2011-11-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

I went on vacation last week, and when I got home, I had two pieces of mail: a check for some work I'd done, and a piece of junk mail from Allstate Insurance.

I opened the junk mail first, though I was thinking of the check, what (I thought) would be for $336.

Thus came synchronicity #1: The letter from Allstate informed me, in a shouting headline, that I could save up to $336 on my car insurance.

Synchronicity #2 came almost simultaneously: My mother, who thought I was opening my check, asked me how much I got -- funny, because, look here, the insurance letter I just opened says $336, the amount of the check you were asking about.

When I finally opened the check, however, was the funniest part: it wasn't for $336, but $366, thirty dollars more. And I knew this, actually, it's just, in the seconds before I opened the insurance letter, I misremembered it as $336, the exact amount announced inside.

It evoked Johnny Carson in a big feathery hat.

10/17/11: Title Goes Here

2011-10-17T16:30:00.001-07:00

Find my post-apocalyptic short story, "The Last Christmas", in issue #9 of Title Goes Here.

Link

10/14/11: Deja Vu

2011-10-17T09:55:00.001-07:00

My mother volunteered me to help one of her friends move. Okay. So I go and pick this guy up, along with a truckload of stuff, and then he directs me to his new place. As we turn from the highway, I comment on how the only time I've ever been down this road was, coincidentally, another time I was helping someone move, years previous.

As we creep down the road, I begin remembering more and more about the other time I'd been there, helping with a move-out rather than an -in, also for a parental acquaintance, also during the first spurt of fall.

We creep down the road, no, not this one, keep going.

When he at last said turn, and pointed me up a sloping drive way that I found familiar, I saw what was coming, and couldn't help but laugh, to the man's nonplus.

Sure enough, he stopped me at the very house I had years ago helped someone move from -- the very unit, in fact.

10/13/11: Lenticular Redounds

2011-10-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

I keep a ledger of interesting words to add to my vocabulary, which I read while eating, to maximize time. Today at lunch, I came across "redound" and "lenticular," and thought of how they were, by nature, two horrible words, and also how I had only seen them used once, in the novel I gleaned them from.

This afternoon, while reading, I came across both words, within an hour of lunch.

Thanks to just seeing them and reading the definitions, I understood their meaning.

10/9/11: Puppet Master

2011-10-13T16:31:00.001-07:00

In an email from a friend of mine, she mentioned, in passing, the movie The Puppet Master. I had never seen this movie, and had heard of it maybe once, twenty-odd years ago, when I was a small child.

The next morning, while I read a book -- which I never, ever do (reading by morning, since I typically have other things to do then) -- I came across a passage which referenced the movie The Puppet Master.

10/6/11: Publications

2011-10-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

My short story, "The Treasons", was featured in this month's issue of Something Wicked.

Read it for free

Also, find another of my stories, "The Dep Tank", in Look What I Found, from Norgus Press, an anthology of stories involving found objects.

Amazon link

9/23/11: Synovial

2011-09-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

You ever heard the word "synovial"? I hadn't, until yesterday, in an email from a friend of mine.

Within hours, I'd heard it again, from a phone conversation overheard at random.

It's a lubricating fluid resembling an egg. What this means, I don't know.

9/14/11: Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy

2011-09-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

Find my short story, "Chinked", in Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy, the latest anthology from May December -- and, also, "Candy Apple Red" by Rebecca Snow, my internet quasi-wife.

Amazon link

8/27/11: The Shadow of the Unknown

2011-08-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Find my short story, "Quietus", in The Shadow of the Unknown, a Lovecraftian/new weird anthology from Static Movement.

Link

8/16/11: Chivalry Is Dead

2011-08-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Pick up this brand-spanking-new Zombie anthology, Chivalry Is Dead, from May December, some good, tasteful folks. It includes my short story, "The Gift", amongst many others.

Amazon Link

7/31/11: Ask, and ye shall receive

2011-07-31T18:24:00.001-07:00

Was in town, driving, and thinking of how I could best transport a motorcycle using a pickup truck.

Seconds later, while I was stopped at a light, a pickup truck pulled next to me, two bikes upright in the back, strapped just so.

I studied them long enough to see how they were secured, then laughed loudly.

7/23/11: Publications

2011-07-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

Find my short story, "Roommates", in #222 of Children, Churches, and Daddies. It's also in a just-released anthology.

Children, Churches, and Daddies
Anthology

Also, find a bizarro short of mine, "Three Prophets", in Like Frozen Statues of Flesh, a bizarro anthology from Static Movement.

7/11/11: Metametrix, quality stool analysis

2011-07-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Internet searches are always interesting, the proverbial box of chocolates. You go searching for information about one thing, and it ends up leading to another, and that leads to another, etc, etc, until you have a thousand tangential Firefox windows open, miles from your original query. At least, that's how it always goes with me.

Today was no different.

This morning, I researched a popular supplement, alpha lipoic acid. Don't ask me how, but an hour after my original search, I was looking up a possible laboratory test for mercury poisoning ("alpha lipoic acid" -> "chelation" -> "mercury poisoning" -> "mercury poisoning symptoms" -> "mercury poisoning testing" -> "mercury poisoning hair test" -- a kind of math).

And that's how I came across a forum post advocating Metametrix laboratory testing.

Buried deep within Google's guts, the original forum post was asking a question in regard to a test for mercury poisoning, per my original search, but when I went to it, I came across a reply saying that Metametrix was a good, reliable source of hair- and stool tests for toxicity, viruses, parasites, etc. I took notice of this because my chiropractor had called about an hour before and told me to come pick up the stool test she'd ordered for me (I won't go into why I need such a thing, if you don't ask).

It crossed my mind that maybe I should reject my chiropractor's test and get one of the Metametrix jobs, since these tests are worthless coming from a subpar lab. But, alas, the test was already in.

My worry was in vain, however: when I went and picked up the test from my chiropractor, this afternoon, it was from Metametrix. Do a Google of your own and see how many testing services are out there.

7/4/11: Synchroshocked

2011-07-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

First, read my unlikely enlightenment on the smell of patchouli oil, namely how I was compelled, for no obvious reason, to visit my parents' vacation property in Myrtle Beach, SC, and was synchroshocked as a result.

That was nothing compared to my last trip there.

It started ten days ago, when it came up, arbitrarily, that the two parties that had both wanted to use the vacation property for the Fourth had, for separate reasons, opted out. As I heard that, The Voice spoke up: Why don't you go down there? it said from just left and center in my head, and I answered with the obvious: Because I have no reason, Voice, and it will cost money and take time and I will lose work and more money. But The Voice was incorrigible, and as I was still duking it out, trying to reason my way into staying home, my father said, "Hey, Aaron, why don't you go down to the beach this weekend?"

I knew then I was going to Myrtle Beach for the Fourth of July, for reasons unknown. I buckled my mental safety-belt.

Now, my first three days there, I had neither fun nor the synchronicities I was privately hoping for. Since I, as mentioned, had nothing to do and no one to go with, I literally sat around doing nothing with no one, except for three things, all of which I felt utterly compelled to do, against my better sense:

1) My first day there, I went to a flea market filled with things I didn't want to buy, where I happened across a Stephen King novel I hadn't read, Thinner. The novel takes place in a Connecticut town named Fairview.

2) Also, that same day, I went out to a pawnshop I didn't want to go to and bought several CD's on the cheap.

3) I was, on my third day there, compelled to go visit another store I didn't want to go to, which ended with me coming back to the vacation property and hearing "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters on the radio (and taking note of it for no particular reason).

Keep these three factoids in mind -- Exhibits A - C, if you will -- as they turned out to be the components of a bomb.

As I mentioned, my first three days in Myrtle Beach were very unthrilling, and in fact very unpleasant, because my thyroid acted up while I was there and I ended up not only having nothing to do, but feeling miserable while I didn't do them. So after three days there, of the planned five, I decided to return home, where I could at least be miserable while working and staying reasonably productive. On top of that, I was feeling stupid for having gone down at all, my inner skeptic getting a toehold and scolding me for following such a stupid whim. I accepted the scolding and then some, so much that I began questioning the trip.

My last thought before leaving the house was, I wish a synchronicity would happen to justify my coming down here. Within five minutes, my wish was fulfilled. By the end of the day, it was fulfilled three-fold.

Synchronicity #1:

It happened just after leaving the house, only minutes after I had yearned for the synchronicity that would justify my visit. I got in my truck and keyed the ignition, and just what happened to be on the radio but "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters. This would've been insignificant had it not been playing when I turned the truck off, the night before. As I mentioned in Exhibit C up above, I had taken particular note of this song before I killed my truck and got out, it for some reason getting my attention in that specific way these things do. What are the chances I would have gotten home with the song playing, and happened to leave just when the same radio station was playing it again? (It bears mentioning that I had planned on leaving that morning, of Monday the Fourth, but a long series of events saw me leaving that afternoon, instead, just in time to hear the song ...)

Synchronicity #2:

This one came about five minutes after the first. As I left the little neighborhood the vacation property sits in, contemplating the long drive to North Carolina ahead of me, I went to put on my headphones and listen to my MP3 player (on the radio, Foo Fighters had given way to music I didn't care for). The day prior, I had preloaded the MP3 player with the CD's I'd bought at the pawnshop, and was interested in hearing them on the drive home. Unfortunately, I never got to listen to them.

But let me back up.

On the way down to Myrtle Beach, while listening to the same MP3 player, I had come across the album American Standard by Seven Mary Three, which I had been listening to in the days preceding the trip. Upon seeing it on the playlist on the trip down, I'd thought absently, I won't be listening to that album while at the beach; but then, immediately, The Voice had answered: Oh yes you will. I remember pausing upon thinking that and hearing The Voice's answer, thinking in return, Oh no I won't, there's no way I'll end up listening to that played-out album yet again. But the voice had repeated: Oh yes you will. It was enough to give me pause and cement the occurrence in my mind.

Well, as I was sitting along the road on the afternoon of the Fourth, I remembered that little feud with my Voice as I turned on my MP3 player and scrolled through the playlist, to the first of the new CD's I'd loaded onto it the night before. I had time to think, Oh no I won't be listening to American Standard again, and then selected the first of the new CD's and pressed play. Afterward, however, there was no music, and I watched the MP3 player cycle through each of the new songs and albums, working through the playlist until it found ... (drum roll) ... Seven Mary Three, after which it played.

I knew at once what had happened, yet it dulled the Shock none: the new songs' format was incompatible with the MP3 player. Being forced to use my laptop instead of my desktop to copy and encode the audio files, I'd been forced to use lossless WMA format instead of FLAC, which I use for all my other audio (the Seven Mary Three album, for instance). As I know now (but didn't know when encoding the files ...), the Sansa Clip MP3 player does not play lossless WMA files, hence it skipped through them all instead of playing them -- right down to the album that The Voice had prophesied I would listen to while at the beach.

Surprisingly, I found myself in the mood to hear it again, and let it play.

But that's not all, folks! [Billy Mays smile]

Synchronicity #3:

There are several ways to get from Myrtle Beach, SC, to western North Carolina, the fastest of which involving Highway 9 and 601, as I've learned from experience. There is another, roundabout way I've gone -- read: took a wrong turn and been forced to follow -- and while coming home on the Fourth, I made sure to avoid the wrong turn, and therefore go the fast way. Despite my best efforts, however, I indeed took that wrong turn -- again.

I could've swore it was the right way, really, gun-to-the-head, stack-of-Bibles swear, but I was wrong, because the next thing I knew, I was going the wrong way, and had been doing so for so long it was actually faster to just go that other, roundabout way rather than double back and get back on track.

So I stayed on, and by consequence happened across the small town of Fairview, SC.

The same as in the Stephen King novel that I'd bought from the flea market I was compelled to go to for no good reason, and ended up reading half of while at the beach.

If I'd gone the right way, which I really, really, really tried to do (really), I would've missed it.

It was a one-two-three punch. My inner skeptic won't be walking right for a week.

6/22/11: This One Goes Out To Vincent Young

2011-06-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Young, I have no intention of invading your home and mutilating your wife with a beer bottle.

But let me back up.

I was yesterday compelled to visit Goodwill (which seems to feature in my synchronicities as of late), and after fighting it tooth and nail like a child does medicine, I complied, and bought The Great Gatsby for 75 cents, a book I had read in high school and retained not a word of. Coincidentally, I finished my current read on the same day. I vowed to start Gatsby the next day.

When today rolled around, as it has a habit of, I did my thing, and this morning had an odd surge of thoughts regarding a short story of mine, "Variations of Soullessness". This is where you come in, Mr. Young, as the protagonist's name mirrors your own, Vincent Young, chosen arbitrarily (my Vincent Young's wife is the one mutilated with the beer bottle, by the story's antagonist, but as I said, this in no way includes you, okay? Cool). From nowhere, the story popped into my head, for the first time since I'd last submitted it, a month prior. I felt around this some, found no reason why I should be thinking of this particular story of the dozens I've written, had time to wonder what the folks at Chizine thought of it, and let it go -- but not before it made a solid impression on me.

I at last got around to starting Gatsby this afternoon, approximately an hour or two since being harassed by thoughts of the Vincent Young-starring "Variations". As I sat down and opened the book, however, I didn't get past the first page, because behind the cover was a library stamp, a single borrower written within: Vincent Young.

6/10/11: And God said, Listen to Linda Perry

2011-06-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I happened to listen to 4 Non Blondes' one and only album, Bigger, Faster, Better, More, a classic, in my opinion. As I did so, I absently visited the 4 Non Blondes Wikipedia page, wondering what ever happened to the band. I noticed that Linda Perry, the lead singer, had moved on to a solo career.

I wouldn't mind a Linda Perry album, I thought then, as absently as I had researched the band. I went to bed. The sun arose. I awoke.

Fast forward to this afternoon. If asked, I would've said there's no way I would visit my local Goodwill today, but after a domino-line of different occurrences, I somehow ended up there.

There was a Linda Perry CD on the rack.

I bought it.

5/26/11: "Caffei-nation"

2011-05-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

Read my short story, "Caffei-nation", an offbeat commentary piece, at Ensorcelled.

4/12/11: "Pour L'Art"

2011-04-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Read my bizarro short-short, "Pour L'Art", in Quite Curious Literature, for free (or buy the damn thing, why don't you).

4/9/11: Storm Warning

2011-04-09T19:30:00.001-07:00

This morning, I wrote about a woman in a gym hearing one of those eeek-y storm warnings on the radio. This afternoon, approximately two hours later, I was in the gym, and in between songs on my MP3 player, I heard an eeek-y storm warning on the radio.

I'm still quite male, last I checked, but it was close enough.

3/19/11: "Supine"

2011-03-19T10:00:00.001-07:00

Read my horror short-short, "Supine", at The Fringe, for free.

Link

That's Good Jesus

2011-03-08T19:07:00.001-08:00

Goes good with a side of Buddha, I hear.

2/22/11: "To Manufacture Self-Destruction"

2011-02-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Read my bizarro short, "To Manufacture Self-Destruction", at Fangoria.com, as part of their Weird Words contest.

Link

2/9/11: No Time

2011-02-09T16:48:00.001-08:00

When I am editing a piece and stop, I write "Stopping place", so that I can search for "Stopping place" when I resume.

Tonight, as I opened a novel to edit, I for some reason thought of the Lou Reed song "There Is No Time", namely its chorus, which goes, "There is no time."

Several nanoseconds later, before the very slight reverb of Lou Reed's smoke-strangled post-Transformer voice had yet to leave the confines of my brain, I CTRL+F'ed and typed Stopping place and searched. Immediately beside this particular Stopping place were the words: "No time."

2/2/11: Macabre Cadaver

2011-02-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

Read my short story, "Thingmaker", for free at Macabrecadaver.com.

2/1/11: "The Psyche Corrupted"

2011-02-01T16:53:00.001-08:00

Read my short story, "One of Them", along with many other fine pieces in the psychological horror anthology The Psyche Corrupted.

Link

1/15/11: Sein and Werden

2011-01-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

Read my short story, "Song of the Impure: A Love Story", in the latest issue of Sein and Werden.

Link

1/13/11: Indigo Rising

2011-01-13T16:42:00.001-08:00

Read my short story, "Borrowed Time", at Indigo Rising.

http://www.indigorisingmagazine.com/

12/28/10: New anthology

2010-12-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

Check out Isolation, a new anthology from Post Mortem Press, including my short story "Insomnia". Five bucks on Amazon, you can't go wrong.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HD66TA

12/5/10: Sex and Murder

2010-12-05T19:20:00.001-08:00

Go check out my short story, "Him", at Sex and Murder Magazine. It's free.

Buy My Book

2010-11-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it's not really my book. Or remotely mine. But I do have a story in it, and it's the first one, if that counts for anything.

Rotting Tales, a zombie anthology from Pill Hill Press, a great bunch of folks who deserve your folding-green.

Buy on Amazon.com

11/8/10: I Tapped James Cameron's Head and All I Got Was This Blog Post

2010-11-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

It started two years ago, when I wrote my first novel.

It was supposed to be so grand. After conceiving, plotting, and outlining an epic series of eight novels that would make Atlas Shrugged look like a religious tract, I finally buckled down and wrote the first one, a sci-fi extravaganza called Other. It took four months of eight-hour days, along with approximately a gallon of my blood, sweat, and tears, and then I had it in first draft. Then I got distracted with the second novel in the series ... wrote 40,000 words of another, unrelated novel ... and got addicted to writing short fiction, which left Other sleeping on my hard drive for nearly two years. Until last month, when I decided to dust it off and develop it.

I looked over Other, and liked what I saw. It would need to be rewritten, obviously, which would require a solid month in itself, but I figured it would be worth the investment. If nothing else, the novel contained some technological demonstrations that I thought intriguing. And unique, I thought them very, very unique.

Then, two days ago, I went and saw Avatar, and now my beloved first novel is officially trunked.

If you're one of the ten-odd people who have read my blog, you would know that I don't watch many movies. Okay, none at all, except for one every so often, when I feel "led" to. These inspired movie outings have always resulted in something positive in one way or another -- and Avatar was no different, I suppose, considering it saved me a lot of embarrassment. You see, the showpiece of Other was a technology that allowed one to, among other things, control a surrogate body via a mind-machine interface, kind of like virtual reality made flesh. Kind of like Avatar.

Here's the knee-slapper, though: In my book, set in the year of 2195, society has become interspersed with these surrogate bodies, used primarily by the infirm and intensely agoraphobic. When I was writing the book, it took me a while to decide on a name for these robots, but eventually a really good one came to me: avatars.

Again: I wrote this two years ago, and thought it up years before that.

I considered going forward with the book anyway, in spite of it appearing as a blatant ripoff -- with a note, perhaps, at the start, explaining what I just outlined here. But ... nah.

10/2/10: Gwen Stefani Is Just A Girl

2010-10-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

Just this morning, I thought, offhand, that there had been a thirsty drought of synchronicity as of late (of ones that I could relate here, at least). That, however, was soon remedied.

The first ingredient came around three this afternoon, while I drank cheap coffee and loaded up my iPod knockoff with music, in preparation for cutting the day's grass. I settled on several albums, including Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, a classic. It had been years since I'd listened to it, long enough for it to shed its played-out status, and I looked forward to reopening the old grooves while I laid waste to the local greenery.

Ingredient number two came when I left for town and found smoke issuing from under my hood, so much a corny car commercial. My mechanic was a block away, so I zipped down there, watching my truck's temperature gauge climb angrily. Long story short, my radiator's cap had, mysteriously, come loose, and I only had to fill it back up. However, I had to wait an hour before doing so, for the engine to cool. As it happened, my gym shares a lot with my mechanic, so I went and worked out in the meantime, despite having no plans to do so today.

Ingredient number three came as I worked out, listening to Tragic Kingdom. By the time the album had progressed to the third track, "Just A Girl", I was pretty high on endorphins and my thoughts were growing long, and I remembered a Gwen Stefani interview I had read when I still read such crap. In it, "Just A Girl" was brought up, along with how it perpetually received play on the radio, how people wouldn't give it a rest, blah blah blah; and I thought, distantly, I have never heard "Just A Girl" on the radio. Then the next song came on and I forgot all about it.

The clincher came later in the afternoon. Again, I'll paraphrase: I had to be somewhere at five, but because of my freak radiator-cap incident and its stealing an hour from my schedule, I was forced to go early and wait for approximately ten minutes, in my truck. Bored, I by chance turned on the radio, something I very rarely do, and wouldn't have done today if not for my profaned schedule. I frequency-surfed for a while, listening to snatches of songs and skirting advertisements, and then came across a local college station that has a taste for '90s, playing the tail-end of "Just A Girl".

7/26/10: David Wong Fixes His Car at the End

2010-07-31T08:18:00.001-07:00

I recently bought John Dies at the End, by David Wong. Don't ask me why. I normally don't buy into hype, or allow myself to be exposed to it to begin with, but somehow I got bit by the hype monster, and purchased the book. I read it rabidly at first, then halfheartedly, finding it way too TV for my tastes. In a nut, the novel was a barrage of dick- and fart jokes, punctuated by some truly great writing. A strange combination. Even so, I endured all four-hundred-odd pages of the text, to find out the devilishly clever way Mr. Wong had John die at the end -- but John didn't die. The book is concluded with John alive and well, with an afterword in which the author mentions that he had originally published the book because he needed to fix his car, a fact that I took notice of for no reason I could ascribe at the time.

Anyway.

That night, with the bitterly droll aftertaste of John Dies at the End on my tongue, I went to eat dinner, and found that my dad had left a newspaper article for me to read. He does this, as a favor to those he knows, tearing out articles of interest and furtively leaving them in places they'll be found. So, I read this latest leaving as I ate my meal, and the first thing that jumped out at me was a picture of a jolly, jowly, white-haired chap, a Mr. Ken Follett, according to the caption. And then, above it, the headline: Need to fix car spurred Follett's writing career.

7/15/10: And God said, Listen to Michael Manring.

2010-07-17T08:02:00.001-07:00

I write, as you've probably inferred after reading this blog in any capacity. Unfortunately, I've yet to reach that Promised Land of Published Writer, and since the bills absolutely refuse to pay themselves, regardless of how much I ask, I work a part-time job cutting grass. It's not such a bad job. Sure, I have to wade dog feces and play garbage man picking up trash, and a week of bad weather can mean food from my mouth, but there are worse occupations to be had. Furthermore, the job jibes well with my burgeoning writing career: you can get a lot of thinking done over an afternoon of murdering grass. Walking in circles for hours on end ... the engine noise drowning the music of the world ... jockeying the mower like a bellwether dog ... the sun smiling on your toil ... the endorphins kissing your gray matter .... It's only natural that your mind retreat into itself. I've composed entire short stories in the space of a lawn, jotting notes like mad during my water breaks. And to think I get paid for it, with a nice chunk of exercise and a tan thrown in the bargain. Yes, I like cutting grass.

But enough about that. I only mention it as context for yesterday afternoon, when I was cutting one of my larger properties. As I sauntered over the rolling plot of grass, dodging landmines and scaring up characterization for a zombie story of mine, an odd thought occurred to me. Out of nowhere, I absently thought of a famous bass player I had just as absently read about some five or six years ago, when I still actively played the instrument. I could remember the man's face, the basses he promoted, his reputation as a virtuoso ... but I couldn't remember his name. I wrestled with it for a couple laps, but it ultimately escaped me. I thought little of it, though, considering I'd never listened to the guy's music, nor had any ascribable reason for thinking of him to begin with.

Fast forward to a couple hours later, after I'd finished my cutting for the day and gone to cash a paycheck that had come that day. After I got the cash, the rascally stuff proceeded to burn a hole in my pocket, and I decided to go relinquish a percentage on some new CD's, having just that morning noticed my lack of new music. I then proceeded to my local used-music watering hole and bee-lined for the M's, where I hoped to find a select CD. The one in question was not there, but I did find one that jumped out at me: Book of Flame by Michael Manring. I stood studying the album a moment, and it hit me that the bass virtuoso I'd thought of just hours previous was, in fact, Michael Manring.

So I bought the CD. I listened to it once today, and I found it mildly enjoyable, if a tad stale.

5/30/10: I Didn't Kill Dennis Hopper

2010-05-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

We've all seen the story/TV show/movie about the writer who magically finds that his stories come to life, with chaos ensuing. It's a ubiquitous fantasy of the writing class, it seems. Sure, I've had a couple similar ideas float across my gray matter, though I can't say I've ever tried to tackle the tired old plot. Not only does it break the writer-as-the-protagonist rule, but also the ridiculously-overused-scenario rule. Plus, I just don't like it. It seems like a fifth-rate Bentley Little story, or maybe something from Tales from the Crypt. But now I'm rambling.

Anyway, I wrote a short story in the first weeks of May, one of several. Without going into detail, the story's plot involved Dennis Hopper as being our nation's next actor/President, and that he was assassinated. Don't ask me why I chose Dennis Hopper as the unfortunate victim of my antagonist's machinations, he was just the first guy my mind pulled out of its hat. So I wrote it into the story. Except I didn't -- I referenced "President Hopper" throughout the piece, but I couldn't find a way to work in that it was Dennis Hopper without being expository.

Until last night, the 30th, when I was doing the story's final draft in preparation for submission. I wrote it in as a last-second idea, but I needed to look up a list of Mr. Hopper's movies to do so, which led me to his Wikipedia page. As I scanned the page, however, I by chance noticed that he was, surprisingly, deceased, after which I checked the day: May 29th, 2010. The very day before I cemented his fictional demise.

Some seriously freaky stuff, right there.

5/24/10: What's in a Name?

2010-05-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone seems to have a different take on conjuring names for fictional characters. Some writers take the passive approach, using whatever functional title that comes to mind; others make a science of it, correlating popular baby-names for the time period of their fiction, researching regional trends, commencing Pagan rituals, etc., etc. Me, I'm one of the former. It's not that I'm lazy or don't want to enrich my character with a fitting name, I just have faith in whatever my strange mind barfs up when the time comes. I rarely get a bum name, so I've come to stick with this non-process.

Today was no exception. I was finishing up a short piece I've been working on, and I needed a name. Raymond, the erudite name-creature in my head said, so I put it down. But then I needed a last name, and the creature went suspiciously silent. I pondered this a moment, during which I resorted to feeling around Raymond's character some. He was a doctor, I knew, as required by his role in my narrative, and then it hit me that he was Jewish, so I began swishing these attributes through my mind's mouth, seeing what taste it made -- and that's when his surname came to me, Scheinlind. Very Jewish, kind of doctor -- perfect. However, I wasn't sure if I was spelling it right, so I consulted Google, entering, simply, "scheinlind".

A page of results bearing the name came up, so I knew I'd hit the nail on my head. Before I closed out my browser and went back to work, though, I noticed something about the first hit on Google's list: it opened with an account of someone who'd "recently read a beautiful new translation of the Book of Job by Raymond Scheinlind."

If I happen to meet Raymond Scheinlind when I'm at the post office today, I'm going to run screaming (it's nothing personal, Mr. Scheinlind, you understand).

5/4-5/5/10: David Lynch

2010-05-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Did I say I'm not a fan of Hollywood? Well, I'm not, and though I typically avoid film and TV like the plague, every now and then I get the inkling to swallow some moving images, much as some people get the urge to severe a limb, or drink shoe polish. I get the itch irregularly, maybe every few months. Earlier this week, though, I got it two days in a row.

It's always magic when it happens, my movie itch, despite the unpleasantry that usually precede it. It goes like this, most of the time: I'll be going along, doing my starving-writer thing, free from the shackles of The Tube; and, suddenly, my inspiration will die. Just gone, yoinked like a plug. So then I'll get up, despondent, do whatever I have to do, and be left with a couple hours to kill. Over time, I've learned to recognize this as a divine cue to take in a film of some sort, and I always heed it, because I never finish the ingested movie without getting something from it (I've ripped of -- errr, come away with many writing ideas after watching these select movies).

Before I go into the pair of films I happened to stumble across, I should go into the book I was reading at the time, Mystery by Peter Straub. It was a decent read, though I'm not much of a mystery buff, but none of that matters: what does are two elements from the book, the blue rose and, much smaller within the story, the tenor sax. The blue rose is a running element in the text, a key part of the "mystery" and something that's never fully explained, symbolically, at least; while the tenor sax is just mentioned in passing, a little one-line scrap of atmosphere thrown in arbitrarily.

So.

Tuesday, May 4th. I woke up, ate, wrote for less than an hour, and -- poof! -- my inspiration farted out and I was left looking for a film to watch. I had no idea what I should watch, I own no movies, so I wracked my head for any possible movie that may serve my purposes, eventually settling on Lost Highway, for reasons I don't remember. I'd seen the Lynch film advertised when it came out in '97, but never watched it, even though I'd bought the soundtrack (seems like buying a leash without owning a dog, in retrospect). So I went out, rented the film, and watched it, and, having never experienced David Lynch, I was blown away, despite its incredibly disjointed and alienating narrative -- but, again, that's another post. What's important is that one of the film's main characters happened to play the tenor sax, as stated by said character near the start of the film. You may be thinking So what? but the thing is, I just happened to read the page of Mystery referencing the tenor sax barely an hour after watching Lost Highway. I can't remember the last time I saw mentioned the words tenor sax, unless you count mondegreening better sex. Neat, huh? Well, that's only half the story, though.

Now comes Wednesday, May 5th, yesterday, as of writing. I woke up, psyched to tear through a short story to make up for Tuesday's non-performance ... and the same thing happened, an hour of warming up then nothing. Soooo ... back to the untapped Lynch library, this time for Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me. Again, the film blew me away, for its sheer bizarrity and vignette-based narrative, if not its remarkable cinematography, but I'll cut to the chase: near the start of the film, you are introduced to a loose theme that runs through the length of the flick, something never explained or elaborated on -- the blue rose.

It's of note that I finished Mystery, a five-hundred-fifty page novel, on Tuesday afternoon.

Website Open

2010-05-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

I've opened my homepage, with a short story, "Big", and the first chapter of The End of Jack Cruz available, as of writing. Check it out.

9/30/08: Paul Newman

2010-04-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of Hollywood, as anyone who knows me is well aware. I severed my relationship with the film industry, along with TV and most established media, several years ago, and haven't looked back. That's another post, though. The point is, when I heard that Paul Newman had died back on September 28th of '08, it was entirely by chance.

And before you fire me an angry comment correcting the date of his death, yes, I know he died on the 26th, I just didn't hear about it until the 28th. But hearing about it at all was a feat, given my sequestered status. If I hear any news at all, it's typically in a roundabout way, so it's rare I'd receive word regarding something as trivial as an actor's death (not that anyone's demise is trivial, but you catch my drift). To be honest, I really don't remember the precise means by which I came across the news, but that's not really relevant, anyway. What is is that I got it at all, and what happened two days later.

First, let it be said that I know very little about Mr. Newman. I recall seeing him in several scattered films during my plugged-in childhood, but that's all -- which is to say, the man was by no means a fixture in my psychology, and when he passed in September of '08, I retained little more of him than a name and a vague face to go with it. In fact, when I received the news, I had to trawl my waters some to come up with even that, as I couldn't remember the last time I'd encountered anything relating to Paul Newman. So when I came across his name on September 30th, the second time in forty-eight hours, I smelled a hit.

At the time of Mr. Newman's passing, I had just taken up writing, and was therefore brushing up on my grammar, which was never my strong point to begin with. And what better way to sharpen my inner tongue than to partake in the myriad online grammar quizzes floating around the web? So I settled on one -- at random, of course, a fill-in-the-blanks-type thing spit out by Google -- and the subject of the screed was none other than one of Paul Newman's films. I haven't encountered Paul Newman since.

8/14/09: The Ayatollah

2010-04-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

The simile is invaluable, to me, at least. I use it liberally in my fiction; sure, there are plenty other effective means of conveyance, but I've found the simile to achieve that Holy Grail of Perfect Recognition in a way rarely matched by other mechanisms, and using the fewest words possible. It's a beautiful thing, a tight, well-executed simile, and I think most authors would agree. I think I'll name my first child "Like".

Last August, I finished up a novel set in the early '80s, and like most of my narratives, it was heavily conducive to simile. One such simile in the text involved Ayatollah Khomeini, neither the first nor the last in the history of literature, I'm sure. However, when I had the little brain-orgasm that gave birth to the prose, all I could think of was "the Ayatollah," his surname escaping me (the guy's not much of a news item these days). So I jumped on the good old interweb, a writer's vade mecum if there ever was one, and in ten seconds I had his name and anything else I'd want to know about the demonized icon.

Now, skip forward twenty-four hours. Within that time, a concatenation of chance events I won't bore you with saw me receive, for free, a non-working Maxtor hard drive. Having been a tech geek in another life, I decided to look up the drive's warranty, on the off chance that I may be able to get a new, eBayable drive for the cost of shipping. I went to Maxtor's website, and when I entered the drive's serial number, to perform the warranty check, I was met with one of those lovely security-word prompts that have become fashionable in the last few years. I had trouble reading the hallucinogenic globs, but I eventually discerned two words: "keeping khomeini".

Now, I don't know, exactly, how many words such a security script has to work with, but something tells me the odds were against encountering that one in particular, and within a day of the inception of my simile. It was like butter, as Mike Myers once said.

8/25/09: The Library, Part Deux

2010-04-27T15:47:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned previously the magical nature of my local library, as well as my habit to raid the fiction section and grab books at random. This incident was a repeat of that, loosely. Let me explain.

First, let it be known that I enjoy Stephen King. There. I said it. I like Stephen King. Very much. But please don't pen me as a fanboy, as in, someone who likes Stephen King because he's Stephen King, much in the way Bantam likes Dean Koontz. Sure, King is a good storyteller, with strong characterization and a nice, no-nonsense narrative that lets the story do its thing; but what draws me to him again and again is the humor laced throughout his writing. There's a charm to it, and that's something both unteachable and inimitable, and a barometer of true-to-the-heart writing, in my opinion.

Anyway.

I have eclectic reading tastes, but every few months or so, I'll get a hankering for some King, no different than a craving for salty foods. So, I've been working through the man's massive catalog that way, devouring a novel or two here and there in between exploring new authors. And near the end of August, I got one such hankering, so I hit up the library (it's not so much that I'm a cheap bastard -- which I am, admittedly -- but that Mr. King probably has enough folding-green to wipe the asses of a small nation). I browsed through their little contingency of King's work, and bemusedly chose Dolores Claiborne, its cover dominated by the cheery image of a morose woman staring down a well, presumably at you, mwahahaha. And though I knew I wanted some King, I chose this novel entirely at random, from about twenty possibles.

Here's a synopsis (and, again, my apologies for spoilers): The book is one big confessional from Ms. Claiborne, an underprivileged Mainer who justifiably murdered her husband during a solar eclipse. And now the part material to my incident: Tucked in the nitty, gritty, slang-ridden narrative, there's an incongruous scene in which Ms. Claiborne hears a woman's discarnate voice saying something or other, which is not explained in the novel.

So.

I read the book, which was satisfying, what I'd come to expect when opening a King novel; and then returned it a couple days later. Upon doing so, however, I found my appetite was not yet satisfied (it was King-sized, you could say, and, yes, I really just said that), so I checked out a second selection, Gerald's Game, this one, too, pulled at random from a pool of twenty or so King novels I haven't read. I'll skip right to the point, here: In Gerald's Game, you find out the source of the bizarre voice Dolores Claiborne hears in her only-loosely connected novel.

And I happened to get the two of them, back to back, without any foreknowledge of King's little Easter Egg. Now, the odds weren't quite as high as the hit I outlined in my "Big Tits" post, but I think the "coincidence" at least bears mentioning.

2/28/10: Spit

2010-04-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

You've gotta love those days when you go through your busy routine, doing your thing all over town, only to discover, afterward, you've had an eyebooger playing stowaway, or that a zit the size of Asia had materialized over your forehead. Especially nice are when such occasions include a significant other, or, worse, a potential. Oddly, these days have a habit of supplanting those that are supposed to be the exact opposite -- birthdays, graduations, vacations.

My contretemps occupied the last category: vacation day. It was the same vacation, in fact, in which the Almighty decided to enlighten me on the intricacies of patchouli. The morning of the twenty-eighth, as I readied myself for my impromptu and aimless beach getaway, a phrase popped into my head, as phrases have a way of doing, in my case: "Is just spit I wipe off my chin." It's a song lyric, actually, Skid Row, "Riot Act". Classic album, if you're into early-nineties metal.

Anyway.

The phrase looped through my cranium all morning as I slaved to my grind, and I thought both nothing and everything of it, a kind of listless zen. At one point -- an early point -- I remember blowing my nose, a nonevent. I went places, I saw people, I had face-to-face social contact; and then, my obligations done, I went home, intent on loading up my truck and hieing off on my halfcocked trip. I bee-lined for the bathroom beforehand, however, and after doing my necessaries, I stole a glance in the mirror. And what did I find clinging for dear life from the forest of stubble over my chin? Not spit, no, better: a little arachnid glob of snot, an apparent misfire when I'd blown into the Kleenex hours earlier.

It wasn't a direct hit, but it was uncannily close. And who's to say Sebastian Bach's said spit wasn't, in fact, mucus? The two can look remarkably similar ...

4/15/10: The Necessary Lies

2010-04-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

April fifteenth was an interesting day. First I had the taxi slap me like a pissed old lady, and then I got the phrase stuck in my head: "The necessary lies," over and over again. I had gone about cutting the lawn I'd set out for, basking in the warm afterglow of the preceding Experience, and that's when the words jumped in my head, dancing like the good folks of Soul Train. I didn't know what they meant, but I tolerated them, in the way I've learned to humor the oblique things that invade my headspace.

So.

I cut my grass, I went home, I took a shower. Nothing monumental there. And still the phrase is weaving through my thoughts, cryptic as ever. Then I lay down to read, ritual for me when the workday is done. I opened the novel I was entertaining at the time, Mortals by Normal Rush, and not three lines down did I come across the very three words that had infested my gray matter, terminating a sentence. I was dumbstruck.

Now, Logical Me was quick to point out that I could have subconsciously skimmed over the words earlier that day, when I took my postprandial reading-break. It's a phenomenon I'm well acquainted with, actually. I often run across it while editing my fiction: I'll often substitute a word, praising myself for my divine editor's eye, and then discover the very same word a paragraph or two down. Happens all the time. I've concluded we read into things much more than we consciously realize (which extends far beyond literal reading -- we know more than we know).

So.

I began siding with good old Logical Me, that necessary bastard ... but then stopped: I distinctly remembered reading the novel-page containing "the necessary lies" for an extremely brief amount of time. Already into my third five-minute grace-period for finding a good stopping place, I'd been in a hurry to finish up the preceding page and get out of the house, and I'd read no further than the end of the connecting sentence. Which was only two words, right at the top of the page, which I'd quickly devoured before slamming the book shut, having it open no more than a second. Superman couldn't have read the paragraph that fast, consciously or otherwise.

10/1/08: "I'd like you to meet somebody"

2010-04-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

I work out, at a local gym. No, I'm not bragging. It's just something I do, exercise, a necessary pill of life on earth. My favorite part is leaving the gym. That's always a good time of day for me, and on the October afternoon in question, I was in particularly good spirits. The weather was nice, I'd had a good workout, God was in His heaven. However, my exit from the gym was delayed a minute or so. There had been a man applying a vinyl graphic over the door, and he'd been accosted in conversation and didn't notice my needing to leave. Him and his friend chatted a moment -- probably not even a minute, more like thirty seconds, whatever -- and then Friend came inside, thereby allowing me through. The sign man apologized as I left, and I told him no problem, because it wasn't.

So.

I went on my way, merrily going about my errands and enjoying my hard-won endorphin buzz. First stop after the gym was the local UPS drop, to ship off a guitar (another pontifical favor for my un-eBayed friend). As it turned out, though, the shipping fee was more than I expected, hence I had to leave it and go foraging for cash. I returned to the drop a half-hour later, and when I arrived, guess who happened to be there, pasting a vinyl decal over the door? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Santa Claus.

7/21/09: eBay Priest

2010-04-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves eBay. Even people who don't use the internet or have an eBay account. Everyone with a feedback rating of over a hundred has a friend who fits this criteria, it's impossible not to, a Rule of the Universe, and said friend has no doubt recruited you to sell a thing or two for them over the years. Last year, my eBay-illiterate friend asked me to peddle a guitar for him, and I agreed, happy to. Besides his incentive of a commission, it bolstered my ego, made me feel like a priest playing go-between with him and God. Or something.

Anyway.

I sold the guitar, being the twelve-year eBay veteran that I am, and on the July morning in question, it came time for me to meet with my one-man flock so that we may engage in communion, aka me exchanging a check, less expenses and my cut, for the sold guitar. We were set to meet at 11:30 in the morning, but as I scrambled out of the house, only narrowly on time, I realized I hadn't double-checked the figures, so I begrudgingly stomped back inside and booted my computer. I feverishly totted the figures, and when I was done, Windows Calculator proclaimed the outstanding balance at $1,124.00, which was somehow disparate to my earlier figure by a good fifty bucks. Good thing I'd checked.

So.

I shuffled back to my truck, made-out check in hand, and when I key the ignition, what does the clock on the dashboard read? 11:24. I'd been inside, calculating the correct sum, for four minutes.

Sometime in '09: Big Tits

2010-04-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

The library is a magical place, for me at least. I rarely have any idea what I'm looking for when I go in, so I more often than not end up with a couple random books. And this undefined day in 2009 was no different: I walked in, and arbitrarily roulette-wheeled myself two books, Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker, and China Bride by Henry Luk. Well, that's not entirely true: China Bride was random, a result of it incidentally occupying the very end of a row, but the Clive Barker was a tad less so. I'd visited the C's in pursuit of another author whose name escapes me, and, disappointed, I happened upon the teeny collection of Barkers the library held, thus inspiring my selection.

Anyway.

I left with the two books, and started into them that afternoon, beginning with China Bride. The moderately short novel was the saga of a wealthy Hongkonger who imports his busty American wife to the region. The Hongkonger -- or Konger, if you will, I like the word, has a plosive feel to it -- becomes kidnapped, and adventure ensues. Long story short, his bride, from which the book's namesake is derived, winds up miraculously tagging along with the tactical unit sent to derail the Bad Guys, and the thrilling climax involves her exposing her massive chest to save Hubby's life, an uninspired though not unoriginal ending. (And I'm sorry to spoil the gripping denouement to any potential readers of the fantabulously unknown book, but it's central to my tale.) I finished the book in two days, and though unimpressed with the writing (English is not Mr. Luk's first language, so I have to cut him some slack), I enjoyed its naked portrayal of Hong Kong, a place I will most likely never set foot upon in my mortal life.

Anyway.

Next came Coldheart Canyon. I won't go into the premise of the book, as, being Clive Barker, it's more convoluted than is germane to the story at hand, but here's its relevant nugget: there is a female character in the book, with a prodigious chest, and the climax of the story involves -- drum roll -- her exposing her outsize mammaries to save the day.

Now, I don't know, exactly, how many books inhabit the adult fiction section of the Watauga County Public Library, but I have no doubt it's in the thousands. And though I'm miserable at math, it doesn't take an Einstein to grok the chances of choosing, at random, the two whose climaxes involve the utilitarian exposure of well-endowed women.

Make of it what you will.

3/2/10: Patchouli

2010-04-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

I write, therefore I keep a ledger of new words, which I populate throughout the day and then look up at night. One such word was patchouli, which came from some short story I read last fall. It's a plant, for those who don't know, as I didn't when I wrote it down, and it's used for a perfume. What does that tell you, though? I mean, if someone asks you what patchouli is, you can now look down your nose and tell them it's a plant that yields a fragrant perfume -- but how, exactly, does that perfume smell? Ah, we now meet the limitations of language. Sure, I could throw out a laundry list of adjectives describing the fragrance, but, ultimately, you'd never really know until you smelled it yourself. The nose knows, and more than we can cram into the clown-car vehicle of language, as it were.

This lacuna occurred to me a couple months after I made the maiden entry, in the ugly depths of February. I was studying my ledger, eating (I maximize), and as I happened across patchouli, I asked myself the same unanswerable question I just raised: But what does it smell like? The question arose idly amidst my study, like weeds in a garden, but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me, enough to stick with me the rest of the day. It didn't, however, hound me enough to go foraging for a sniff of the perfume, and eventually the question drifted into the cluttered mental locker into which all such minutiae must go.

Fast forward to later that week, around the 20th, I want to say -- the last leg of the month, in any case. I woke up one morning, and was instantly struck by a realization: I had to go to Myrtle Beach, SC, the first of the month, to my parents' vacation trailer. Illogical as it was, the thought came with the lightning-strike peremptory of all the other little God-bombs that pop into my head, and I knew resistance was futile. So I made the plans.

Luckily, this venture wouldn't cost much, thanks to my parents' pro bono policy regarding use of their trailer. I still had to dip into my savings, of course, but the trip wouldn't do them much harm. That said, though, the whole premise was awkward: I had no one to go with, no real reason to go, and nothing to do once I got there. All I had was the inscrutable and subjective inkling that I Go, which isn't too easy to explain. It seemed much ado about nothing, like I was dressing black-tie for a trip to McDonald's. However, I had submitted my first novel manuscript that week, just meeting the contest deadline, and I was celebrating that job done, inconsequential as such a contest entry was; so I used that as my excuse to take off to the beach for a week. It was still awkward, of course, but it was better than, "Cuz God said so. See yas."

Fast forward again, to March 2nd, my arrival at my parents' North Myrtle Beach vacation trailer. My trip from North Carolina to the coast had been uneventful, and though I still had no idea why the hell I was there at all, I was enjoying the outing, lonely as it was. I spent the day in the trailer, doing what acclimating there was to be done, and when night fell, bringing a chill (I may have been at the beach, but it was still winter, and a pugnacious one at that), it came time to find the controls for the trailer's heater.

I had been to the trailer before, a couple years ago when my parents had first made the much-toiled-for purchase, and I remembered the controls, a little coppery box sporting an -ometer of some flavor, being along a wall partitioning the two halves of the doublewide -- or so I thought. It wasn't there, so I ended up having to hunt for the thing. I covered every wall of the place, and no box, which led me to begin tearing through cupboards and cabinets and closets and every other potential hiding place, however unlikely. After exploring every square inch of the kitchen and master bathroom, I wound up in desperation opening the shutter of a shoebox-sized cubby I'd never noticed before, set into the wall a couple feet from where I thought the box should be (the box was behind a propped door, for what it's worth). The cubby had a collection of various this-and-thats, some batteries, some aspirin, an alien-looking plumbing doodad whose purpose escaped me -- along with two bottles, teeny caramel-colored glass bottles with white labels.

I took one out and read the label: Camphor, it said, and I discerned it as a thing for smelling, as used in aromatherapy. Bemusedly, I halted The Great Heater-Control Pursuit, unscrewed the childproof top, and took a whiff. It smelled good, so I replaced it in the cubby and removed its kindred bottle -- Oil of Patchouli, according to its label.

I laughed, loudly, and then opened the bottle. It, too, smelled good.

4/15/10: Taxi

2010-04-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

It was a sunny spring day, and I was in my truck, preparing to cut a beckoning plot of grass, when I settled on the song. Having just struggled into my lawnmower-man fatigues, I was shuffling through my battered MP3 player, trying to decide on the album I was least tired of, and that's when I noticed Muse's Black Holes and Revelations, a little nugget I hadn't listened to for nearly a year. However, for some reason that I would only later understand, I selected the song immediately preceding the Muse album, "Super Sex," by Morphine. I didn't feel like listening to it -- it's a good song, sure, a choice cut from the expired band -- but I felt that familiar old tickle in the back of my head, the one that says Do this and don't ask why. So, I did it.

I hit play, then at last got out and began unloading my mower, the legato instrumental intro to "Super Sex" in both ears. Cars zipped indifferently past over the two-lane road at my back, pelting me with ephemeral cushions of air as I gassed up and Mark Sandman readied his soupy monotone. There was a faint sense of prescience as I stood along the road, like watching a basketball player agonize over a foul shot; I knew I'd chosen the Morphine song for a reason, but I couldn't say why. It didn't take long for it to become apparent, however: The first word of the song is "taxi," spoken twice, and the very instant the first repetition boiled over my headphones, a van stormed into the driveway at my right, the no-frills magnetic sign on its driver's-side door advertising Boone Taxi.

My skin prickled.