Category: Words Words Words

One year ago, I released a short e-book featuring amusements, monsters… ghosts… like it says on the cover. A cover I thought looked delightfully retro when I designed it, looking like a library book that had lost its dust jacket, but in hindsight the design does not sell the wonders within at all. You can’t even see the high-resolution book texture behind the faux-stamped yellow text when it’s shrunk down to thumbnail size.

Anyway. For the 1 year anniversary, I’m offering the book for free for the limited time period of “forever.” This is a savings of 0% off the original price.

Mostly, this is just a reminder to myself that I should have made progress on something new in the last year. What the heck have I been doing?

Picture, if you will, a campfire. Symmetrical logs, artfully arranged, all about the same size, which might seem odd if you think about it for too long, because if you look away from the campfire, there aren’t any trees around for miles. Just stands of cactus plants. Tufts of wild grass taller than a man on a horse. There are also men on horses, and men near horses, and horses on their own, all gathered around a camp fire as night approaches.

Out there in the darkness, beyond the ring of campfire light, are cows, occasionally lowing, milling about. It’s a mostly quiet night, except for those cows. Creaking metal from somewhere… oh, it’s the bean pot! A pot of beans suspended over the fire from a tripod!

We’re in the Wild West somewhere. One of those big flat states in the US.

From the way the conversations are going, we’re just in time for the post meal story telling. These men have got story themes for every night of the week when they’re out on the “range,” which is what they call this depopulated stretch of land they’re passing through.
The man with the largest beard clears his throat. “All right, men, it’s Tuesday, and you all know what that means.” There’s a general murmuring of assent.

“It’s Ghosty Story Tuesday, so anyone who’s got a good spooky story’s gonna wanna get themselves our prime story-telling seats by the fire. And everyone else, hurry up and wash out your cups and get them put away, because we don’t want to hear any mid-story clanking… unless it’s relevant to the story, because we all remember that time Elmer told that story about the ghost with the chains and how he used some cups to supplement the tale. That’s all right. But it was purposeful, too.”

A man wearing a Stetson hat cracks his knuckles, his wrists bearing two differently patterned handkerchiefs. “Reckon I’ll go first,” he says.

There’s a general murmuring of assent, and a “Go ahead, Patrick.”

Patrick, with a grand gesture, begins his tale.

—
There was once a guy who was in charge of getting a whole herd of cows from Kansas City down to Amarillo because there was going to be a big cow sale and the guy who owned these cows, Mr. Eldridge, wanted to sell them there. So Eldridge hires this guy, who went by the name of Erik Guitar. That wasn’t a family name, “Guitar.” Just a nickname. Guy probably owned a guitar once. Didn’t have it with him when he got the job. Anyway.

So he gets on his horse and with the cows heads out from Kansas City and on his first night camping, right when he’s trying to bed down, this cow comes up to him. And it talks.

“Erik Guitar,” said this cow. “You should not have taken this job.”

Erik, though, he knew more about the state of his finances. He knew he had to take this job. But even more important than that, he knew cows didn’t talk.

“Cows don’t talk,” Erik said.

“Dead cows talk,” said the cow.

Now… this was new. Erik, to the best of his knowledge, had never talked to a dead cow before. “So how is it that I can–”

OH GOD DAMN IT, PATRICK.

—
A cowboy with a well-waxed moustache, handle-bar shaped, with one handle slightly bigger than the other, seemed agitated. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Patrick, but this story sounds a lot like the last story you told, where the cowboy was dead the whole time and he didn’t even know it.”

Patrick frowned at the ground. “This is a different story, Eustace.”

“So you’re telling me,” said the asymmetrically-moustached cowboy named Eustace, “that this cowboy who’s talking to a cow in your story is 100% definitely alive?”

“Ayup,” said Patrick. “At least… so far!”

And at that, all the other cowboys leaned in and Patrick continued his story. But I’m going to save us all some trouble and skip ahead, because Patrick wasn’t telling the truth. About 20 minutes later, after the story involved a quest to bury the bones of a troubled cow, plus a mad horse chase through a flooding canyon, he did say that the cowboy was dead the whole time, sort of, but as this was a universe where life wasn’t even a concept, and everything was composed of a kind of spiritual energy that his fellow cowboys might recognize as “dead,” in the universe of his story, it’s… it’s convoluted. The other cowboys mostly shouted him down when he tried to explain the big twist.

The horse chase through the flooding canyon was fun, though. Maybe we shouldn’t have skipped that part. Too late now. So yeah, the cowboy was dead the whole time and that’s why he could talk to the dead cow. And all the other cows were dead the whole time. And Kansas City was a cemetery. Something like that.

In front of an outdoor canvas tent, a trio of bears wearing party hats share an awkward moment facing three older gentlemen who are dressed in lederhosen and holding steins. We can see the tail end of a banner with the letters “…r Fest.”

One of the two bears behind the lead bear is leaning to its companion, making air quotes with its massive claws, murmuring “Watch him blame this on AutoCorrect.”

Last week, after a post-work dinner with colleagues, I split from the party because I spotted a book store across the street promising from its window “a vortex of books”.

The shop owner was a super nice guy, so I figured– even though I have enough books piled up to make it through a snowed-in Russia-in-the-1900s-style winter– I’d ask him to recommend some local writers.

Sure, my usual preference is for books where at some point, at least once, a gun will be pointed at someone. Maybe a pistol, maybe a laser gun.

Instead, I got a novella published locally by a guy who ran a successful zine for years and teaches at a local community college. It’s the story of a heavyset married guy who ends up on a cross-country trip with a flaky pregnant girl. He spends a lot of time thinking about his son, who he recently found out exists, because the girl he knocked up never told him that she kept the child. The tone is “mildly amusing” and “discover the wonders of life” in equal parts.

And it was fine, it was fine. It had a rough start.

I was almost thrown out right at the end of the first chapter, which includes this bit:

Sonny felt his belly groan and worried about his own bowels. It had been almost two days since his last movement. As he waited, he looked at the sky, afire in reds and yellows, and wondered how he’d managed to find himself on the Interstate 80 west of Toledo. He knew that stories always have antecedents, that stories are the sublimations of desires and regret.

Did he? Did he know that stories always have antecedents? Fuck off. That’s page 3. Who thinks like that? MFA writers, mostly. Before their peers tell them to knock it off. Is this main character a writer?

Nope. Guidance counselor.

Then, over the course of the rest of the 100 page book, I came across 5 typos. Easy stuff, like spelling “soldier” as “solider.” As if the tiny publishing press has no editors. Maybe they don’t.

I thought about writing on Goodreads about how this book was so-so, and lost points for sloppy editing, so my final thought was “this was sure a book” but then I thought… the world doesn’t need to know this. And authors read their reviews and it’s not his fault he was let down.

Life is wonderful. Literature is illuminating. Stories are magic.

When I visited Europe, I made the mistake of thinking the woods at night were a relaxing place to gather my thoughts. It was the mist-shrouded gloom of those woods that allowed a therza (as the locals call them) to sneak up and bite me on the leg.

Had I been more vigilant about vaccinations, at worst I would have had to have worn a bandage for awhile, but eventually I would heal up and forget about it.

But that was not the case. Because of my lack of planning, since that time, when the moon is full, I find myself transforming into a therza myself. I try to plan around it, to make sure I’m indoors and secured when it happens. I take a name-brand anti-therza medication. And, in case the worst happens, I have my legal documents on hand to guide my living relations.

You can picture me, in fact. Seated in a chair, grimacing. The moon peeking out from clouds. The only two things I need to get me through gripped in my sweating hands:

Were-therza will. Therza-Away™.

CRIMINAL ASSOCIATE: ARE YOU WEARING A FRICKIN’ WIRE?

ME: I prefer to think of it as “very targeted, unobtrusive podcasting.”

—

CRIMINAL ASSOCIATE: Are you live-tweeting us murdering you, you snitch?

ME: No. [drops phone in wet concrete around feet]

—

TRIVIA (continuity error): Character “ME” drops phone but without phone, tweet wouldn’t exist. [ Like | Report ]

A SKETCH

Swedish action hero Dolph Lundgren walks into the human-sized entrance on the side of a large machine. There’s a rumbling sound, then a dolphin flops out the egress on the opposite side of the machine.

Camera zooms in on a label on the side of the machine that reads: De-Lundgr-Izer

On the way into work this morning, I picked up some donuts from Donut Savant for my colleagues in the office. I also decided to treat myself to a mug, because I liked the shape and heft of it and the brand had won me over with their consistently amazing deep-fried and sugared product line.

While preparing some coffee in the office’s kitchen, a work colleague asked if I was the one who had brought in the donuts. “That depends,” I said, “on your feelings about the donuts. If you’re happy they’re here, then yes, I take credit. If you’re going to say ‘Oh, I’m on a diet, why did you bring them’ then I don’t know anything about it.”

And then, I attempted a joke that completely failed.

I turned to my colleague, mug in hand, and said “Of course, there’s always the chance you could Keyser Soze out the situation” and gave the mug a little waggle.

A small reference to the conclusion of The Usual Suspects. You understand.

I didn’t see any comprehension of the joke. Maybe he didn’t see the mug. I waggled it again. Nothing. The conversation moves on.

Hours pass.

And I realize that my new mug has a logo only on the side that was facing me. So he’d have no idea why I was waggling my mug and indicating that a proper detective might be able to figure out who brought the donuts.

I explained this to him later, as I was interested in the joke’s failure and my eventually solving of the reason why it failed, and he told me that it wouldn’t have helped, as his brain was refusing to serve up who “Keyser Soze” was, and he was trying to recall if he knew a politician by that name, so…

Failure after failure.

I dunno. I found it interesting.