I Am Jack's Peanut Gallery

I take issue with a great deal of what JA Koranth says. He’s the author of books I’ve never read, staring a hard-bitten female police detective with the very…intriguing name of “Jack” Daniels.

A Freudian psychologist would have a field day with Mr. Koranth and that handful of facts, but this particular wordslinger is not slouch, True Believer. No, he’s just completed a 50 day, continental book tour on his own frickin’ dime. Beat that shit with a stick, homes. What we have here is a king of self-promotion.

The details of said book tour are available to those of us who work during the day on Mr. Koranth’s (award winning) blog, which certainly puts this one to shame. Even if it begins by revealing one of my issues.

(The Scene: Our Hero is introducing himself to the poor schmuck behind the Customer Service counter at your local Corporation Bookstore)

JA: Hi. My name is JA Konrath, and I'm a Hyperion author on a national tour promoting my third hardcover, RUSTY NAIL. Thanks for carrying my books.

Bookseller: Thanks for coming by. Would you like to speak to a manager?

JA: If one is available, I'd love to say hello.

Did you catch it? Were you a faithful reader you would know me well enough by now to know exactly what in the above makes my spider-sense tingle.

Hyperion is a moon of Saturn known for is spongy, pocked-marked surface, a painting by Friedrich Hölderlin (above, left) and (among other things) a book publishing division of the Disney Corporation, founded in 1991. Their sparse website proudly reminds me they have published John Stossel’s Myths Lies and Outright Stupidity. Not surprising, considering Disney’s ownership of ABC and, thus, John.

“Jack” Daniels, as well. Or, at present, her first three adventures. Number four is on the way. We’ll see how Mr. Koranth does, or how long he self-identifies with such a massive corporate edifice.

Thankfully, Mr. Koranth consistently chalks his success right up to his own Herculean efforts, which are well worth close study by all who are serious about the business of twenty-first century writing. As with so much else, working your ass off appears to lead to success. I read his blog with the feeling I am listening to a wizened Kung Fu master, despite JA’s relative youth. You’re not old until they begin to print your full name on your books.

Hell Box

That’s right. I have a blog, don’t I?

That title has nothing to do with what follows. Nothing at all.

Thursday is my Friday. I celebrated by finishing a short story. Not only had the scope, shape, and content of the piece bedeviled me for (far too many) months, but I’d all but given up hope of finishing it. Which sucked, considering its thematic elements were largely drawn from my life. (Aren’t they all?) I’d thought that this would at least be fertile territory in a desert of tedious, time wasting boredom.

I was right, but it took a third reading to see that. Not only was my original idea strong enough to support an entire story, I uncovered at least two more really good nuggets inside the whinny drivel…all of which I cut out.

Well, almost.

But you’ll never know, will you? Not unless you ask.

You know the best part? From an absurdly nerdy, writer-perspective? I did it all in under five thousand words. One hundred eighty-nine to spare means a lot when you’re thinking in column inches.

Nothin’s gonna stop me now.

(You can’t see it, but I wrote that with a self-contemptuous smirk on my face. )

Snappy Titles Don't Come Up With Themselves

There’s a car alarm going on outside and right now, instead of writing, I’m cursing the Devil Child who created it. It’s not one of those wailing, Emergency Siren models so favored by the yuppies of NoLo or the salesmen at CarToys. That I could tune out with a minimum of headache thanks to my two years of living beside a semi-major suburban highway. But the makers of this….monstrous thing felt the need to supplement the standard alarm blare with automated horn honking. Instead of a cool, rhythmic wee-oo-wee-oo my ears are under assault by intermittent, attention-shattering blasts of honk-honk, woo-wee-oo, HONK-HONK.

It’s enough to drive a man to road rage.

By God, I love this town. Even if it is a toxic, sprawling, concrete stain on what was once one of the most beautiful strips of land in the hemisphere. If you believe Lewis and Clark. Even if its lights block out 94% of the northern stars and its sounds consistently break my concentration.

And that’s about how I’ve felt these last few days: conflicted, scattered. A little broken. Every night I crawl home from my Job hungry and enraged, eat a sandwich, and mutter to myself about all the things I should be doing. “You should work out, or you’ll just get fat again. Lazy bastard.” “You should run that dishwasher before your roommate starts to hate you. Again. Lazy bastard.” “You should shower. You smell like boy. And for goddsakes you should write.”

Then I don’t. And that’s the issue.

Or (and here’s where the conflicted comes in again) I get more specific. “You should write, but not the damn blog. Bloging is to writing what crack is to the dedicated coke fiend. It’s a quick rush, soon dissipated, leaving that hollow, used feeling in your gut. I and I both know this feeling. It’s brought on by the fact that I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing.

Blog entry notwithstanding.

Because these things aren’t built to withstand a stiff wind. It certainly won’t free me from the evils of the dreaded Real Job. I fear this blog will only choke my already-idling creative engine, making tonight (ostensibly my night off) a complete waste…in my eyes, if no one else’s.

Since I have the house to myself, mine are the only eyes that really count. And maybe I’m setting myself up for failure with my abysmally high standards. Maybe I enjoy failing, as it gives me license for these bouts of self-flagellation. As if I need license. Or permission.

Maybe I’ve just been reading too many Batman comics.

I’ve built a great deal of my personal philosophy out of the Dark Knight’s adventures…which is probably my mistake, right there. I know he’d look upon that admission with nothing but contempt. Maybe a spark of pitying humor would flare up under that black sigil on his chest…but probably not. If there’s someone with an odder sense of humor than Bruce Wayne I’ve yet to meet him…in real life, or fiction.

I’m about a third of the way through No Man’s Land, the Gotham Knight’s year-long super-frickin’-mega-crossover-event series that near-every Gotham City-related title for most of 1999. I missed whole swaths of the series in its original run, but at long last it is mine, mine all mine, to enjoy.

And enjoying it I am. Mystery writer Greg Ruka’s prose adaptation of the saga, while good, left much to be desired. It benefited from a consistent narrative voice while simultaneously suffering from selective focus. Example: most of Batman’s dealings with Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Clayface, the Scarecrow and Mr. Freeze were referred to only in passing, if they were mentioned at all. The same hold true for the adventures of what Dr. Leslie Thompkins’ calls “Bruce’s disciples.” Nightwing, Robin (#3), the Huntress, and the Spoiler are all put through the ringer in this exodus and most of their adventures were sacrificed on (I assume) the Alter of Space Considerations. What publishing house in their right mind would want to publish a thousand-plus-page long hardcover about a bunch of damned superheroes?

Warner Books, that’s who…but that’s beside the point. Even DC’s trade paperback division felt it necessary to split the series into multiple volumes. The only way to get the whole thing in one glorious swath is to illegally download it from the internet…something I would certainly never advocate…even if the artists and corporations involved hadn’t already been paid.

After all, I plan to be paid handsomely for the verbiage I crank out. Someday. Even if it means Emperor Shumate will be forced to come and kill me. At least I’ll finally get to see the man and shake his hand, face-to-face.

Back to it, then. To the Work, as Stephen King once called it. With God’s help I’ll beat this terrible affliction of ennui. Think I’ll pour a nice tall one of lemonade, shoot it through with Jose Cuervo Especial, and finish a shot story.

Finally.

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Tag yourself: Personal: Writing: Fiction: Short Stories: Drinking: Authorial Bitching: Batman: No Man's Land: Portland

News from the War

I can remember a time when the The Daily Show didn’t bother to cover mid-term elections. I can remember a time (2002, an absolutely evil year if ever there was one) when I didn’t bother to vote in them.
So much has happened since. It’s hard to believe things move so fast. Already its August and November is staring us in the face. The ground troops are mobilized and frothing. The money machine is humming along quite nicely. The Democrats are outspending Republican’s by a fair and definite margin. What’s more, a “liberal,” anti-war Democrat has defeated a warmongering, “centrist” (that is, conservative) in that national heart of hearts, their stalwart of strongholds, the good state of Connecticut.
By now, if you have the package of premium TV channels I still insist on calling “cable”, you’ve heard of Ned Lamont. Had he not defeated former Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Liberman I (and most of you, I imagine) would regard him with little more than a shrug. “Ho-hum,” I’d think, “another millionaire running for office. And, oh, look at all the funny little ground troops, believing that somehow this will change something. Make things ‘better’.”
The Great Hope of this Indecision 2006—which seems to have become a foregone conclusion inside TV Land’s puditocracy—is that Democrats will capture one, perhaps both, seats of Congress, forcing Our Glorious Leader into a final corner of accountability. Some howl at this possibility, and speak the dreaded I-word, not heard since the reign of our First Black President, Bill Clinton.
As if the Decider will voluntarily give up all the power he has gathered unto himself. As if Uncle Dick will let him. I’m sure the Vice President will shoot him the face before that comes to pass. Why would an Executive branch dedicated to the proposition that the President can do whatever the hell he wants to do whenever he wants to, cede that power in the face of an opposition Legislature? When it has done nothing but snub, glad-hand, and deride that very same Legislature for years? When it has stacked the Judicial in its favor?
Hard as it is for me to believe, there are those who still think Our Glorious Leader (and his Crew) will voluntarily surrender power.
I wonder if these people (you people) have heard: we’re a nation at War. A War that could last forever. Even if Bush does life the crown from off his head he’ll only pass it to another. Dick is too hated, so it’ll have to be Condi. George could be her Vice President, as Bill could—and probably should—be Hillary’s.
That would be a hell of a fight to see. Dubya’s own littel Waterloo. What is to be his triumphant return will send him fleeing, tears in his eyes, a death wish on his lips, from the battlefield.
There. Right there. Did you see it?
“Battlefield.”
That’s the thing about politics. It can be as dangerous a drug as E. It can provide the illusion of actual victory. Vicarious participation in a seemingly life-or-death conflict. The only life-or-death conflict that really matters.
I’m talking about the Eternal Battle Between Good and Evil. The very War Our Glorious Leader believes we are fighting. His absolutism prevents him from understanding that “good” and “evil” are words, subject to interpretation by humans. Big part of the problem, right there. His chosen profession prevents him (and every other politican) from realizing, or even understanding, how I feel about electoral politics.
Party primary’s, in particular, are an especial bore. They are the boring, pre-game shows of the political season. They, and all elections, function on the premise that elections actually matter. That they will really make a difference.
But victories only happen in wars. With a truce holding between Israel and Lebanon—despite the two hundred rockets Hezbollah fired over the border, despite the “bold” statements of Israel’s leaders that basically amount to, “Cease fire? What cease fire?”—there’s only one war left on the planet that we (as a nation) really care about. And it ain’t Afghanistan.
As in years past, American’s find themselves half a planet away from the real war, seduced by the false war at home, the puppet show of Politics.
I know I’m not offering anything original or terribly constructive. My hobbies, for the most part, revolve around destruction. I could never encourage, condone or authorize the use of violence against the government of the United States George W. Bush. That would net me a fast, one-way trip to the sunny side of Cuba. I can only remind you, the People, that there is a surefire way to bring the war home…if that’s what you really want.
Your past records of voter participation say otherwise. As do mine. Hopefully we'll both defy expectations.

Cubefarm, Act One

For a moment there I almost gave in. For I moment I promised myself not to write about my job.

Here’s something about my job. On slow days I turn Google News on random and read until my eyes cross. In the midst of the media haze I see signs that bloggers (one “g” or two…damnit) are quickly and serupticiously getting their buds nipped by employers for blogging on the job…or even about the job. Writers from London to Amityville to En-Why-Cee face termination, suspension or (horror of horrors) the dreaded Non-Disclosure Agreement, all for doing what the Great Author of Us All merely commanded us to do…speak.

There’s not a law in the world that says corporations can’t force their employees to into silence. Whole books of law explicitly state that this is exactly what corporations have the right to do whensoever they judges their “best interest” are served. Their “best interests” in all cases being self-aggrandizement, expansion of power, of control, whatever the current phraseology (“maximizing capital dividends for Q3, fiscal 2006”) might be.

I admit, these stories scarred me. They fucked me up something awful because I need(ed) this job to survive. Currently dominate visions of Western culture hold that one must pay to exist. All goods and services (from the water you drink to the food you eat to the land on which you exist) are available for exchanged thanks to a magically fictitious substance we call “money”, a handy substitute for power. For control.

Humans, for most of their recorded history, have imbued rare and beautiful stones with the properties of this magically fictitious substance. This practice allowed for some spectacular art and architecture, but could easily grow cumbersome for the unwary rich man. The old saying, “You really can’t take it with you,” means a lot more when it is a royal treasury, you are the king and you are trying to sneak out the back of your summer house in a summer house in a southern province with all your gold and a raving mob of half-starved peasants breaking in the front.

But I digress. I admit, for a moment I was afraid to write about my job. I admit, for a moment there, they had me good and afraid. I apologize for the lapse. As a gesture of miea culpa, I present the first in our Within The Empire’s god-only-knows-how-many-part series:



Cubefarm. Act one.

I’ll tell you what’s good about my job.

The piece of paper thumb-tacked to my cube calls me a Customer Service Specialist. I work for a large software company I will not name (thank god it isn’t Microsoft…I don’t want to live in India), base in the suburban development zone to the west of My Fair City.

Politicians call it “the Silicon Forrest,” an evil term for what was once a beautiful forest. Three of them actually. Pine, spruce, aspen and firs climbed down the Rocky Mountains, crashing into an unbroken swath of sequoa, oak, redwood, sorrel, maple and ferns that marched all the way over the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition led by Lewis and Clark trudged through this land two hundred years ago, riding the major rivers down hill after so many months of no where to go but up. By this point they were so desperate to taste something other than fish that they traded salmon to the locals for dogs, which were summarily slaughtered for their meat.

Now trans-national corporations (Nike being top dog) mow the forest down to build golf courses, housing developments, cul-de-sacs, and the root of all Evil, the dreaded “office parks” (another evil phrase that means, “a sprawling, monolithic building composed for right angles and glass and steel, surrounded by acres of parking lot).

My job’s “office park” borders what I’ll charitably describe as “the wetland.” Three large pipes allow brown water to flow beneath a highway over pass. It creates a swamp of cattails, wild barley and crabgrass. The English Ivy my job’s landscapers planted for easy clipping have migrated across the parking lot, and are slowly encroaching. A train track runs beside this place. I’ve never seen a train go by. A flock of ducks lives in the slow moving, murky water. They never seem to do much, either. Most are content to dip their heads below the surface, float along, and clean themselves. In the morning some waddle up into the parking lot and sit in the sun. There droppings stretch across six parking spaces. I’ve come in and nine a.m. to find several with their heads beneath their wings, taking early morning naps. They are either brave, or hopelessly cowed, so trusting of humans they’re doomed to be the first to die should anything happen to our country’s industrial agriculture (another piece of America totally dependent on oil).

There is one Canadian goose living the swamp behind my job. His/her left wing is, or was at some point broken. It juts, curving and hooked, from the goose’s side, immobile, inflexible. S/he obviously will never fly again and seems to be at peace with that. How can you tell, unless you’re Dr. Dolittle? In any case, s/he’s made a life for hishself, waddling up the hill with the ducks, honking at the human gawkers, giving them one beady, yellow eye. The goose is not cowed. S/he will not go down without a fight…or a good running away, at least. A few good pecks, maybe. A few slaps with his/her one good wing before someone…well…

(Incidentally, how come “choking the chickens” gets to be a commonly used euphemism pounding your pud, but no one ever calls it “strangling the goose”?)

Tomorrow (yeah, right, and Joe Lieberman will get beaten in a primary…oh, wait…): I’ll tell you what’s bad about my job.

Tag yourself: Job, The:Ducks:Wage Slavery

Cellophane

There’s very little to say. All things considered, I’d rather drive nails into my eyes than write a lick of descriptive prose about the many, niggling annoyances that weight down my so-called Real Life and keep me from writing anything…descriptive or no. Since Wednesday, at least.

This Wednesday was a bitch for no particular reason I can name. I would’ve mentioned this in real time if I’d had anything worthwhile to say about it…beyond, “Today was a stone-cold bitch,” that is. Bad form, that. Vague, profane, and not at inspiring. That’s the kind of blog entry stoned teenagers would write before going on to complain about that damn girl in the front row who never says more than five words to them at a time.

I could launch into similar complaints, which similar net results (i.e., zero). Because life really can be high school at times. Or, to be more accurate, high school has grown into a toxic mimic of our lives. Ten years ago I was the maligned freak in the back of the class, alternatively annoying my fellows (with my inept attempts at socialization) or frightening them (with same).

Flashback to my deepest childhood. I’m watching television, because that’s what I did. Fox’s long-missed X-men cartoon series, to be exact. Much better than the movies. On my screen the mutant time-traveler Bishop falls through a temporal portal into his own, dystopian waste of a future. New York city is a ruined no man’s land of shattered buildings, twenty foot tall Sentinels and mutant concentration camps. “I’m back in the future,” Bishop says (odd, considering this is supposed to be his present). His voice is thick with loss, regret and shame as he realizes, “Nothing’s changed. It’s all just like I remember it.”

There’s a lot of pathos in that line…especially when you consider that, under any other circumstances, the line would be paradoxically silly. Witness the fact that a decade later it’s still playing through my head. Bishop’s line is the plaintive cry of a man who’s done everything he could to better his own world…and found out he’s made little-to-no real difference.

That’s how I feel. That’s how I’ve felt (I should say) for going on a month now. It’s what keeps me from writing. My feelings on work, school, relationships (or lack thereof) are all combined and summed up in that haunting phrase. “Nothing’s changed. It’s all just like I remember it.”

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