Believable Lies

Back from The Dead

2011-03-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

I started this blog a couple years ago to have a place to say the things I needed to say about life in America. Then I learned about self-publishing and social networking and all the cool things I am incapable of doing. I marketed my book of short stories under the same title, devoted myself to selling what cannot be sold, and pretty much let the Devil has his way with me in cyberspace.

No mas. No more.

Believable Lies is a blog about all the crap we hear everyday. It has a point of view. For example, I think the USA should kill Gaddafhi, his sons too, before they murder thousands of innocent rebels. Ronny Reagan would have done it by now. I'm not a conservative, I'm a Democrat, a liberal like back in the Kennedy days. But if Beyonce is giving back a million dollars for performing for this murderer, then we should give back too. Admit our mistakes in ever supporting him, drop a smart bomb down his chimney, and save thousands of lives.

Believable Lies Featured at Indie Books Blog

2010-09-30T09:45:00.002-04:00

Scott Nicholson interviewed me a few months ago and we discussed Believable Lies. Take a look.

http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/

Welcome, Earthlings

2010-09-25T08:17:00.001-04:00

I've been busy. I never have time to do all the things I want to do, so I waste time doing things I don't want to do, and have a constant though mild case of despair right behind my eyes like a hangover. I'm wondering how I get so distracted. All I can come up with is, I have too much free time on my hands. When you're as poorly organized as me, that's a bad thing. I would be good in some totalitarian country, mindlessly following orders. Standing at a conveyor belt, adding one screw to each of the two million widgets that roll by, the same repetitive behavior for hours and hours, then give me a piece of bread and a beer and send me to The Combine. I have such simple goals.

I need to get back to writing. Now that I'm convinced I will never have more than five thousand thirty-two readers, I must concentrate on giving them something worthwhile, an entertainment to justify the effort. At one point I was going to write a memoir, but even the word gives me a headache, memoir, ouchie ouch, I can't do it. It's all I can do to shut out my past as it is. Forcing myself to write it down, dear God. Fiction is my calling, more believable lies.

Believable Lies now in Paperback at Amazon.com

2010-09-12T23:05:00.000-04:00

The long awaited paperback version of Believable Lies is now available at Amazon.com for just $8.99.
Many friends have asked for a print copy, and I'm glad to offer it. Schools and libraries can use your standard Amazon discount.

Book stores wanting to offer Believable Lies for sale, please contact me directly via email or Facebook, and I'll take care of it personally.

The cover is another great design from Mark Goldberg at Mark's Covers. See his ad at this blog and get in touch.

Believable Lies Now Available at Smashwords.com

2010-08-29T23:17:00.000-04:00

Smashwords offers Believable Lies for $2.99 in several different formats. If you have the Apple iPad or iPhone, download the ePub format for Stanza, a free eReader app from Apple.
If you want to read on your PC, use the RTF (Rich Text Format) and read it in Word, or the PDF format and read it in Adobe Reader.
You'll see the LRF format for the Sony Reader, and Palm formats are there as well. The other major format standard .mobi is there for Kindle and other devices.

Take a look at the huge selection of titles. I started a new blog, Smashwords Books Reviewed, to help find authors of merit and new exciting things to read.

Kindle Author--- I'm Interviewed by David Wisehart

2010-08-23T08:26:00.002-04:00

David Wisehart asked some great questions on writing Believable Lies for his blog, Kindle Author.

http://kindle-author.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-neil-crabtree.html

DAVID WISEHART: What can you tell me about your story collection, Believable Lies?

NEIL CRABTREE: Believable Lies is made up of stories written since 2004, when I discovered online journals would not only accept submissions, but respond in days. I wanted to create situations or scenes where the people I have known, and the people I have been, get a chance to interact. Over the years, these stories have appeared at Verbsap.com (now defunct), BewilderingStories.com, and DenverSyntax.com, and I thank those editors in my Amazon product description. I also have had the tremendous good luck to participate in an ongoing writers workshop in Miami, where author and FIU creative writing professor John Dufresne has had his Friday Night Writers meeting every two weeks for the last fifteen years. The rules are simple: you want to contribute, you read and critique everyone else’s contribution, as honestly and fairly as you can. So each of my stories got a thorough vetting, not only from John but from twenty other readers, before I even sent them out.

DAVID WISEHART: How much of these stories is based on lived experience, and how much is pure invention?

NEIL CRABTREE: There’s a lot of me, and friends from over the years, in each story. In "Live Band Tonight," the first story, the musicians have an argument about the Bryllcreem Conspiracy. This came up in a discussion while getting loaded thirty years ago, with rock drummer Jeff Bailey in Tampa, who explained that John Kennedy invented dry hair and that the greasers had him assassinated. Jeff passed away nearly a dozen years ago, but his brother Bernard reminded us all of his birthday in August. To celebrate the event, we shared the story, and agreed we could hear Jeff and the rest of us in the dialogue.

DAVID WISEHART: What is the appeal for you of short fiction, as opposed to novels?

NEIL CRABTREE: Good question. I’ve been writing a novel for way too many years, and the short stories were great to take me outside that framework. Also, in a writers group, it seemed like those submitting novel chapters had a shield, since whatever came up in the group critique could be excused as straightened out in the coming chapter. I wanted pieces that would stand or fall on their own merit. Luckily, even those that fell flat could be revised and rewritten, once the sting of criticism wore off, and I could see what the reader was talking about.

DAVID WISEHART: Who do you imagine is your ideal reader?

NEIL CRABTREE: For me, an open mind is the key. My stories are not poignant; they may even be anti-poignant. What I have learned, growing up in the 20th century, is that much of what is available to read is really just a TV show on paper. Literature should be different. People should say things you don’t expect them to say. My reader should know what it’s like to get high, to love and lose, to wonder how much longer he or she will be alive. I don’t know any vampires. The people I’ve known and loved have all experienced life the same way. Parents die, kids get sick, accidents happen, but there’s also friendship and family and being brave when your time comes.

DAVID WISEHART: What was your journey as a writer?

NEIL CRABTREE: I started college in 1968. There were only a few Creative Writing programs in the country then, maybe Stanford and Iowa, and a lot of other things were going on. I’ve always written, but it really wasn’t until the 1990s that I realized that writers worked at their craft like electricians worked at theirs, putting in man-hours doing the job over and over until you got it right. I found a book called Deal To Die For by Les Standiford in my local grocery store. On the back cover, I read that Les teaches Creative Writing at FIU in north Miami. He was a real person, not some Hollywood invention. So I drove over and introduced myself, and he suggested I audit a course and see if I liked it. And for less than $200, I got a class in Creative Writing by one of the best narrative writers I’d ever read. He’s also one of the warmest human beings you’ll ever meet. But he doesn’t let anyone slide when it comes to writing. If you half-ass it, he’ll eat you up.

DAVID WISEHART: What is your writing process?

NEIL CRABTREE: I do a lot of writing in my head before I ever sit down. Driving is particularly good for this, since you can be alone and bored for hours at a time. What I try to get is a scene, a character in a scene, then see what I might hear or say in that situation. Once I’ve got that, I sit down and do a draft and try to capture as much as I can. When I was young and stupid, I’d be so excited I’d send off that first draft to whoever I thought might read it, like, look here, a work of genius. Then the next day I’d see the misspelling and the poor sentence structure and I’d contact everyone and ask them to discard what I’d sent without opening. Now, old and stupid, I sit and go back a couple days later, and find ways to make things better.

DAVID WISEHART: You received feedback from author John Dufresne. What was that process like?

NEIL CRABTREE: John Dufresne is an incredible human being. A couple years ago, when he was one of the three judges for the PEN/Faulkner Award that was given to Phillip Roth for Everyman, he had to read 400 books in a year. In addition to teaching, writing, grading papers, and conducting Friday Night Writers. What strikes you when you talk to John, he remembers all 400 books, and the student papers, and the FNW submissions. John writes beautifully, he actually takes control of you as a reader. And in his feedback, he makes suggestions on how a writer can do the same thing. Character and dialogue have to be credible. His new book on Writing Your First Novel is titled Is Life Like This? I’ve never seen anyone who gives as much of himself as John.

DAVID WISEHART: What authors most inspire you?

NEIL CRABTREE: In addition to John Dufresne and Les Standiford, I re-read Walker Percy often. My upcoming novel is closer to The Thanatos Syndrome than to The Overlook. I admire Michael Connelly, James W. Hall, and Martin Cruz Smith. Recently, I’ve been enjoying David Foster Wallace and I’m very happy to see his friend Jonathan Franzen getting recognized as the serious writer he is. Jonathan Lethem is very good, and I’ve been blown away by books by Roberto Bolanos. In high school, the short stories of Joyce, Faulkner, and Hemingway elevated my reading.

DAVID WISEHART: How did you create your cover?

NEIL CRABTREE: I googled public domain art, then narrowed the search to lies or liars. The painting is Paul Gauguin from 1889, Eve Don’t Listen To The Liar. My friend Mark Goldberg then applied the magic touch and produced a fine looking cover.

DAVID WISEHART: How have you marketed and promoted your work?

NEIL CRABTREE: I have joined discussions and author groups and emailed friends, but I’m not really much good at this. J.A.Konrath inspires me with his blog and his determination to break from the BigWigs in NYC. This is something I wanted to learn about. Fortunately, the process is fascinating. I have three blogs now, http://believablelies.blogspot.com, http://neilsreaders.blogspot.com, and http://neilcrabbooks.blogspot.com. When I introduce Rooster (my comic thriller) next month, I’ll do more sites for the book and for the DooMee device, technology’s answer to Viagra.

DAVID WISEHART: Why publish on Kindle?

NEIL CRABTREE: I have three books I need to get out to readers. The get-an-agent process is harder than ever, and then, you read someone like Brad Morrison, and you see that even with a great agent like Irene Goodman, there’s no guarantee your book will be bought. I just don’t have years to spend waiting for complete strangers to tell me to write about teenage vampires. Kindle is clean, easy, and immediate. I would like a better way to upgrade what I post. I’ve put in hyperlinks from the Table of Contents to the individual stories, and I’m not sure DTP is allowing the upgrade. I’m sending you the upgraded text as a .doc so you can view it this way. But DTP has answered every question I had so far. I think as more and more they allow uploads of epub formats, the easier it will be.

DAVID WISEHART: What advice would you give to a first-time author thinking of publishing on Kindle?

NEIL CRABTREE: Produce the best product you can. Have readers check it over and over, and then go through and see if you can cut another 10% out. Then get a good cover. Get help getting the formatting correct. And read as much as you can in the different Kindle readers groups and writers forums. Read David Wisehart’s interviews. And don’t give up on print altogether. You might really be the Next Big Thing. Query at least twenty agents before going direct.

DAVID WISEHART: Thanks, and best of luck on your books.

Excerpts from Stories in Believable Lies

2010-08-13T22:59:00.001-04:00

"Katy could dish it out as well as take it, that much was clear. I knew I probably should yank open the door and start kicking some ass, but what was the point? Hey. Take your Johnson out of my woman. Sure. While I was trying to think of something, I became aware of what The Voice wanted me to do. "

from Live Band Tonight

"My father had two Purple Heart medals and a Silver Star we kept on display in the living room. The story of the price he had to pay to get those medals had many variations, but they all came back to the scars on his ribs and thighs and the wide open drugged-out eyes he carried around in his head everyday. I’d turned seventeen in November and had been hearing about the wonderful benefits of enlisting right out of high school for months now, from the poster boy for service in our nation’s armed forces. The peacetime Army is different, he said, and I didn’t even bother pointing out that we were at war in the same place he earned his medals twenty years ago, and may be there forever. "
from My First Handgun

John Dufresne Recommends Believable Lies

2010-08-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

“The stories in Neil Crabtree’s debut story collection Believable Lies are bold, risky, and wildly entertaining. Trust me—you’re going to be carried away to a more vivid and compelling world than the one you’re living in. You’ll be laughing so hard you won’t realize you’re crying. No one should be this good, or this funny, the first time out. Neil’s genius is his ability to uncover the sadness that underlies the comic and the grandeur just below the surface of our sorry lives”. —John Dufresne, author of Requiem, MASS., Is Life Like This? and Johnny Too Bad, from W.W.Norton, NY.

Believable Lies---Short Stories by Neil Crabtree now at Amazon.com

2010-07-30T08:29:00.001-04:00

Believable Lies is a collection of stories written about people born and raised in the 20th century, and, like this writer’s life, follow a progression from hippie days through working for a living then facing getting older and its situations. But like life, the characters find the absurd more likely than the rational, and humor in unlikely scenarios of love, loss and separation.

The stories run from the 1970s through tomorrow, and offer a view how those raised in the second half of the 20th century have found ways to cope in a changed world. There are rock musicians, drug dealers, hit men and salesmen and private eyes, lovers and con men and teachers, Sirens and cougars and mamas, all with something to say about the way things go down in their lives. Nineteen stories in all, sixteen in a cycle of youth through midlife then aging, two experimental narratives, and a coda, "Papa's Girl" to revisit a theme.

Over the years I have had the good fortune to work with writers and editors who believe in concise expression and entertaining the reader. I thank John Dufresne, author of Requiem Mass, Louisiana Power & Light, and Is Life Like This? for reading and offering editorial comment on the stories. His Friday Night Writers workshops, given freely on his own time, and all the great writers and readers there, helped me learn that it does matter how we write and read, and share our visions of the crazy world we live in.

Some of the stories have appeared in online journals and have their own following. “Papa’s Girl” will appear in American Fiction: Volume 11, 2010, from New Rivers Press as "My Yard." Thank you Kristen Tsetsi, writer and editor.

I also thank Laurie Seidler for her help and encouragement as editor of Verbsap.com, and publishing my first story online, “Live Band Tonight” which opens this collection. Live Band has been a favorite of readers, featuring sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and the Bryllcreem Conspiracy.

Don Webb and his crew featured some of my futuristic stories at BewilderingStories.com and I am grateful “Land of Opportunity” had a chance to look at Early Termination for seniors before the conservatives found it in health care reform.

Jonathan Binx at DenverSyntax.com ran “Murphy Contemplates Celibacy” and gave me a tremendous boost by seeing the humor in a machine that changes sh*t to gold, and the cultural implications of augmentations. The collected version of this twice-told story is “Man and Machine” here, and readers get a peak at what it is to be Graytly enlarged.

“Smuggling Days” is from my novel, Rooster: The Big Kaboom, and tells about two gringos in the Colombian mountains, chased by a colonel and soldiers looking for their payoff. I’m accepting agent queries at this time on both Rooster novels.

The cover art is Paul Gauguin’s Eve, Don’t Listen To The Liar, and the graphic cover is by Mark Goldberg, of Mark’s Copy in Miami, http://www.markscopy.com/. Thanks, Mark. Now let's do Rooster.

EBooks with Kindle for PC

2010-07-22T11:11:00.002-04:00

If you have one of Amazon.com's eBook reader, you already know about the Kindle's incredible library of books and magazines, available anywhere in the civilized world, via the built-in 3G internet connection. But you can enjoy Kindle books even if you don't have a Kindle. Amazon gives you a free download of Kindle For PC for computers with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

This is terrific. I've downloaded a couple free eBooks, and found others I like for as little as $.99, and books by friends for $2.99. Try it out.

My short story collection is ready, Believable Lies is the title. I will be publishing it for Kindle. So get yourselves ready, friends and neighbors. More news to follow.

The Closing of the American Mind, Part 2

2010-07-17T08:27:00.002-04:00

There are more laws, rules and guidelines regarding content in Amercian fiction than ever before, and I think this is a bad thing. The public domain laws now, for one thing, protect corporations rather than individual artists. A good example is the fight over Superman between the Siegel family and Sony. Google copyright superman and see all the history of this war, and get this news: http://www.deadline.com/2010/05/shocker-warner-bros-now-suing-superman-rights-lawyer/

The reasonable protection of products and brand names takes a peculiar twist when it comes to literature. In non-fiction, you can say a well known company like McDonalds sucks and their food makes you fat and they target children with unhealthy snacks packaged with toys and movie promos. But you can't say that in fiction anymore (!). You can say it, but your fictional character cannot. Request author guidelines from any publisher or literary agent or look online and you'll see this is the case. That's how celebrities and politicos get slammed in so-called bio-dramas, that purport, for example, a film about an affair between Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe may even have love scenes, though no one could know what these two said or did. But you can't do that in fiction anymore. The publisher will not allow it. Only in non-fiction. Which is extremely weird. You can tell believable lies in non-fiction, but cannot tell believable lies in fiction. Doesn't that seem strange?

Where this impacts culture is this: we are immersed in media, in advertising, in comic book characters and TV shows and movies, we are immersed in the electronic images of Superman and McDonalds and Dora the Explorer and Mickey Mouse like we have been dunked in a pool and cannot quite touch the bottom. Our literature needs to portray this, and portray it accurately. Not to have that freedom of expression forces an image of our American life that is inaccurate and not true. Censorship takes many forms. The Supreme Court may allow f-bombs on broadcast TV now, but try to write a story featuring Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, and see how fast you end up in litigation.

Reality Checker

2010-06-29T08:29:00.003-04:00

South Africa looks like the place to be. The World Cup has been fantastic so far. Brazil and Argentina seem to be the teams to beat, though Germany's passing attack against England was something to see. Today Spain and Portugal play in another grudge match.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/columns/story/_/id/5335569/ce/us/spain-portugal-preview?cc=5901&ver=us

82 year old grandmother debuts novel, 3 book contract.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7857750/Grandmother-lands-book-deal-for-debut-novel-aged-82.html

Michelangelo hid brain stem in chapel painting, God only knows why. There's bound to be a Dan Brown book about it soon.
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/28/michelangelo-hid-brainstem-in-sistine-chapel-study-says/?hpt=C2

Scandal envelopes sumo wrestling in Japan:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/28/japan.sumo.wresling/index.html

Tampa teacher gets 10 years for sex with students. Tampa is like the HotSpot of Cougarville USA for teachers getting it on with boys in their care. Doesn't say much for Tampa legal-age guys, except they seem to know to avoid these skanks.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/28/florida.teacher.sentenced/index.html

21st Century: The Age of Paradox

2010-06-16T21:13:00.002-04:00

What I love about blogging versus Facebook comments: almost nobody will read what I blog. Now that I have an engine to reach the world, the world has the democratic option not to read a word I write. And that's fine with me. We're all alone, no matter what you hear. Facebook is a great way for lonely people to reach out to people they actually know, and send a kindness, a birthday wish, an old photograph, a meet me at the bar later message.

But in blogging, not commercial blogging so journalists can commute, but actual private people venting their ideas and all the B.S. that goes with them, you get a chance to say something the masses may not agree with, something that may not make you any money, but still needs to be said.

We used to call that Art but this is not Art, nothing like it. Art is something that happens in New York City or Paris or London, and gets passed around by the 500 Club, the 500 critics or other influences who shape media content for the masses, not the Bradgelina masses but worse, the masses who read a lot and hope no one is actually filtering their perception of the work of artists available to them, though they do whatever the 500 tell them. It's like ancient Greece, Athens, the Age of Pericles. We have free choices, as long as it's black and white and read all over.

David Lipsky's Roadtrip with DFW

2010-06-15T08:31:00.002-04:00

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is now available, a 5 day man-to-man interview/tape/roadtrip of David Lipsky, sent by Rolling Stone, travelling with David Foster Wallace at the end of the Infinite Jest booktour in 1996. You should go buy it and read it. I got my copy at Books&Books in Coral Gables, and that's something you should do also, buy the book from an independent bookseller, while there's still some left.

Catch up on why you should read about DFW here, at The Howling Fantods:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/

and David Foster Wallace may have written the best 9/11 story, "The Suffering Channel" which appears in his Oblivion collection. Check that out when you get a chance.

Read it and get back to me.

Husky Habits

2010-06-13T08:20:00.002-04:00

My dog is mad because I didn't bring him a plain bagel from Panera. I bought Cinnamon Crunch, Jalapeno Cheddar and one French Toast but I don't like giving him the different flavors. He's weird enough as it is. Luckily, I still had some French bread left, and cut him some chunks off the loaf. He prefers crusty baguette bread I get in skinny loaves, he eats them like bones, but day-old French bread will do when I'm out. Huskies are mostly vegetarians. He can eat French fries but burgers make him hurl. Fried fish is okay, if it's not to spicy. But no beef, no pork. And rice and beans make him fart. Right now he's carrying a basketball around in his mouth, waiting for me to take it from him. I think he's ready to stud.

Every morning he wakes us up. The only problem is he can't tell weekends from workdays, it's not in his doggie Contact Management Software. So he gets us up early on Saturdays and Sundays, sticking his big hairy face right in mine or my wife's until he gets results. Then he brings his rawhide bone and puts it on the pillow beside me. Takes some getting used to, I'll tell you. He likes to walk and play for a while as we breakfast and get ready, then he waits for us to leave, so he can sleep the hot part of the day away. He's disappointed if we stay, but willing to work with us. Apache, you big ol' werewolf. Get down. Get down.

Me, and Frank Bascombe and Binx Bolling

2010-06-08T08:44:00.004-04:00

I put off reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford for years, though it has always been recommended and enjoyed great reviews. Last year I read an interview with RF in P&W and he acknowledged his admiration for Walker Percy and the insight he gained reading The Moviegoer.
http://205.188.238.181/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1951945_1952687,00.html

http://205.188.238.181/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1951943_1952566,00.html

This squared things for me, because I cannot read narrator Frank Bascombe telling his story without hearing ol' Binx Bolling. The beginning chapters, where Frank and new girlfriend Vicki are off to Detroit, sounds a lot like Binx and Sharon Kincaid on a cruise in his little MG along the Gulf Coast highway in La.

But Ford establishes his own voice and the character comes into focus before too long. Southern writers in the last half of the 20th century all have to overcome the voice of William Faulkner, who I have mixed feelings about.

I love his short stories but cannot read The Sound and The Fury without thinking I have something else I need to be doing. I think it's because, when I was a kid, they made a movie of TS&F, with Yul Brynner and Joanne Woodward, and the lurid previews (hinting of incest, sex and violence) combined with the King of Siam as a Mississippi gentleman turned me off in some central nest of ganglia inbred in Southerners and located beneath the hypothalmus.

Things To Do

2010-06-06T08:12:00.002-04:00

Read Jonathan Franzen's essay on reading Christina Stead in the Sunday NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Franzen-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema1

Listen to Don Was' production of the new Mitch Ryder album at Village Records:
http://villagerecords.com/

Get your CPR certificate:
http://www.cprtoday.com/

Make fried lasagna:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/deep-fried-lasagna-recipe/index.html

Collect tar balls:
http://cnmnewsnetwork.com/118524/oil-spill-pensacola-florida-balls-of-tar-and-sugar-sand-beaches/

New Beginning

2010-06-05T11:15:00.004-04:00

Whenever I can't stand real life, or rather, news about real life, I submerge in fiction. If I don't have any I want to read, I write some. I have an idea for a novel, and have this beginning:

Homes And Waston

If, fifteen years ago, you’d told me my father would now be living in my house with me, my wife and daughter, I would not have believed it. I probably would have stopped speaking to you altogether, no matter how close we’d once been. Something so weird is not possible.

If you’d told me, fifteen years ago, men would deliberately fly not one, but two, jumbo jets into the Twin Towers and kill thousands of people, including themselves, I would not have believed you either. I would tell you, stop watch shows about Nostradamus, and lay off the sinsemilla when you do. But what is real is what actually happens, and what you think before or after is merely a contraction, like a knot in your muscle when someone gives you a charley horse, or that pain in your side when you run too fast, only this time in your brain, and in that never-ending story you call your life.

My father did a good job raising us for a while, me and my sister, or at least he avoided opportunities to screw us up in any major way, by simply not being around very much. My mother did homework and took us to baseball practice or ballet or Chucky Cheese, all the extra effort things kids generate, while my father worked as an investigative reporter. And, as we found out later, carried on a series of romantic adventures with strange women in different cities and even different countries, once with a woman who did not even speak English.

I was sixteen when my parents divorced, my sister thirteen and at that stage of life where everything is a trauma to be shared with friends and classmates and even the school psychologist. Mayra milked it for all she could. I suppose we all did, even Dad and Mom, since the day-to-day routine for all of us had reached that stage of boredom where goals and ambition can’t stay in your consciousness anymore than a dream you had a year ago, a big deal at the time now replaced by catchy tunes and email. Somehow the divorce made things interesting again.

For me, it made my life easier. I got a car out of the deal, a convertible Mustang no less, that Dad surrendered in the divorce settlement, with the mandate I had to drive Mayra wherever she needed to go so Mom could pursue the graduate degree she had abandoned, when pregnant for the second time, at the urging of my footloose father. His reasons seemed selfless then, but later proved to be more of his strategy of isolating his family into one easily controllable zone, leaving him free to explore the new and possibly dangerous sexual wilderness.

He'd always been a clever man, the guy people are talking about when they say too smart for his own good, and he’d be the first to tell you things just came so easily for him he’d always felt like a cheater, even as a kid.

What he failed to understand was how lucky he’d been, not blessed or anything suggesting Divine interventions on his behalf, but randomly influenced in a benign way, the kind of man who won drawings for televisions without making a purchase, got promoted over better personnel and never felt humbled, could tell lies to his family and friends and not get caught.
(to be continued)

The End of Everything

2010-05-30T07:48:00.002-04:00

The worst case scenario seems to be pushing to the forefront in the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. There is the possibility that nothing can stop the powerful flow of thousands of gallons of oil into the water, not now, not next year, not ever. It may be the case the oil will flow until the oilbed itself runs dry. Imagine that. What will the Gulf of Mexico look like after a year of unstoppable pollution?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/29/us.gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37413783/ns/gulf_oil_spill/

For everyone who wants smaller government, a tea party in place of control of insurance coverage, take a good hard look. Here is a case where the government allowed the oil companies to regulate themselves, and felt comfortable for years that Big Business would clean up its own mess. It turns out Big Oil can't clean it's mess. Where are all those commmercials with the sharp blonde lady telling us how good oil companies are for the environment?

It turns out we need government to regulate every enterprise where profits for a few jeopardize the welfare of many. I'm sick of hearing about Conservative common sense while being constantly confronted by evidence to the contrary. The big banks nearly precipitated a global Depression. The insurance companies deny coverage to those suffering illnesses. Credit card companies raise rates during the worst economic crisis in years. And oil companies have no way to plug the worst oil spill into our waters in history. It seems to me the common sense approach would be to protect the people of this country, and the world, from capitalism run amok. Try to remember the fight it took to keep children out of the coal mines, or to get an 8 hour work day, or decent wages. Big business did not offer any of these things. The American working people fought in the streets and factories and mines for these basic decent standards. Re-writing history books does not change the past. It changes the intelligence of those trying to living in the present.

Home Remedy

2010-05-19T11:01:00.002-04:00

I'm trying a home remedy I found at several websites, recommending drinking 2 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV, for hip homeopaths) in 8 ounces of warm water 3 times a day to help with sinusitis or sinus infection. Yesterday was the first day, and I did notice some difference. Now on day 2, I'm gagging some down as I write. Another website recommended eating habanero peppers right out of the jar. I'll stick to ACV right now.

The great thing with home remedies is this: you don't get all those terrifying Side Effect warnings that you hear on TV for prescription drugs. Like: "Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, heart attack or blindness, and may be a sign something is terribly wrong," or "Do not take Levitra if you have a history of howling fantods, as this may result in kidney failure, beshitting thyself, snot rockets, rhoids big as grapefruit, or an erection lasting more than four hours. If this happens, call your physician immediately."

I always wondered how they came up with the 4 hour limit on erections. Does that mean 3 and a half hours are okay? I would think you'd have screwed everything that moves in that time frame but suppose you're way out of town? Suppose it takes forty-five minutes to get somewhere you can find someone or something to screw. Does the 4 hour limit include drive time? Would I get, for example, 4 hours and 45 minutes since it took extra time before I could put my erection to use? And what kind of volunteers did they use for these results? Did some go 6 hours and other only 2 and half, so they average it out? I know I'd wait till the last possible minute before I'd be calling any clinic anywhere.

Blogging Vs. Facebook

2010-05-18T08:51:00.002-04:00

It's amazing that I can write a blog for years and remain obscure, nearly visible to those I'd like to have reading Believable Lies. Then start messing around with Facebook and find people from every part of my long adventurous life, and add them as Friends, and see pictures of their homes and families and friends, and share little 420 word News of my life now and then. Facebook is great for LCD communication. Blogging is great for expression that will go largely unseen or unread, unless you add some hot items like American Idol results or Tiger's Mistress or any of the other cultural red herrings that keep people from finding the clues. Other comments:
http://kristielynnnicole.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-vs-facebook-addicts.html

Granddaughter Aliyah, in Kindergarten, had to pick 1 book from the school library to read to the class today. Her choice:"5 Little Gefilte Fish" and you should have heard her mom trying to help her with "Oy Vez" and "Tuches" and "Mensch" and it made me realize, her generation grew up on Martin Lawrence and Dave Chappelle and Jamie Foxx DVDs, while I had Don Rickles, Joey Bishop, Shelly Berman and Woody Allen on TV all the time and learned all these Jewish words. Aliyah has Dora The Explorer and Go Diego and is learning to assimilate Spanish. It is a generational-media thing, as real as Icelandic ash.
http://www.horowitzdave.com/fiveLittle.htm

Read The Broom of the System last week, and now 200 pages into From Here To Eternity. Amazing novels, completely different in style, message and time-reference. James Jones once taught Creative Writing at FIU in the 1970s. His war trilogy is so different from his "modern life"
work critics argued if it was the same writer. And DFW, what a genius. Broom of the System was one thesis he wrote that last year at Amherst. His other, written at the same time, was in mathematics. He graduated with a double major. Then checked himself into a Psych hospital and put himself on Suicide Watch as his books became successful. Someday the bio-chemical malfunction that killed him will be identified and treated. He did not kill himself for philosophic reasons. Anymore than a heroin addict keeps shooting up because he likes screwing up every day.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/wallace-r-broom.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Here_to_Eternity_(novel)

Tom Russell recommends Willy Vlautin both as novelist (The Motel Life) and musician (Richmond Fontaine). Check it out at Notes From The Borderland, Tom's blog:
http://russelltom.blogspot.com/
And Willy Vlautin's website:
http://www.willyvlautin.com/index.php

Happy Mothers Day

2010-05-09T08:08:00.003-04:00

Let's all get up and dance to a songThat was a hit before your mother was born.Though she was born a long, long time agoYour mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (...know.)Sing it again.Let's all get up and dance to a songThat was a hit before your mother was born.Though she was born a long, long time agoYour mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (...know.)Lift up your hearts and sing me a songThat was a hit before your mother was born.Though she was born a long, long time agoYour mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (Aaaah.)Your mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (Aaaah.)Sing it again.Da-da-da-da...Though she was born a long, long time agoYour mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (Know-)Your mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (Know-)Your mother should know (Your mother should...)Your mother should know (Know-)
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Your-Mother-Should-Know-lyrics-The-Beatles/C0D2D62B519D6C7348256BC2001433C9

Or if you prefer, ladies and gents, The Beatles!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R780p_NSq8

Books For Grown-Ups

2010-04-27T08:59:00.002-04:00

As I read different industry guidelines on genre, it seems to me that one is missing: Books For Grown-Ups. For every Young Adult, there is an Old Adult providing the money or credit card for the book. Vampires, we've had vampires, Lestat and all. Now we're ready for something else.

Get this: the AARP recently held their Ninth Annual Movies For Grown-ups Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, featuring Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Juliette Lewis and more, and the AARP Magazine's 30 million readers got to see pictures of the whole shebang in this month's issue.
http://www.aarp.org/leisure/entertainment/articles/movies_for_grownups_gala.html

I have my first novel, Rooster, under consideration at a major literary agency, and the second,
Rooster: Not Dead Yet, growing on my hard drive. My story collection, Believable Lies, I entered in the AWP Writers Contest, but will probably have to shop to a small or academic press. These are all Books For Grown-Ups.

I actually have a goal to be featured in the AARP Magazine, as an author offering books for people who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century. I think the changes we went through offer guidance for every generation, and that the insight we've acquired counts for something, something that won't be found on DVDs or video games. My peers enjoy my writing, but so do my kids and their friends, in their mid-twenties. I want to create an entertainment that shows what kind of people I've known, something that my granddaughter can read and enjoy after I'm gone. But there's a lot of work to do before I go. And a lot of good luck needed. Cross your fingers.

Walker Percy

2010-04-23T08:57:00.003-04:00

In 1987, I read a book review in the St. Pete Times that featured this quote from Walker Percy's
The Moviegoer, and I have been encouraging others to read him since then:

"...Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies--my only talent--smelling merde in every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall---on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire." (p.228)

Now some fine videos have shown up on YouTube, including this trailer for a documentary featuring writers commenting on Percy, like Richard Ford, who readily acknowledges Percy's influence on his novels, particularly The Sportswriter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4DEswJYrsg

Word For The Day

2010-04-18T10:18:00.002-04:00

Hope: (Wiki Hope)

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.[1]
In a religious context, it is not considered as a physical emotion but as a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism. The term false hope refers to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment." Emily Dickinson wrote in a poem that "'Hope' is the thing with feathers-- / That perches in the soul--." Ernst Bloch in "Principle of Hope" (1986) traces the human search for a wide range of utopias. Bloch locates utopian projects not only in the social and political realms of the well-known utopian theorists (Marx, Hegel, Lenin) but also in a multiplicity of technical, architectural, geographical utopias, and in multiple works of art (opera, literature, music, dance, film). For Bloch hope permeates everyday life and it is present in countless aspects of popular culture phenomenon such as jokes, fairy tales, fashion or images of death. In his view Hope remains in the present as an open setting of latency and tendencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope

Monday in Miami

2010-04-12T09:21:00.002-04:00

I went to take Aliyah to school but the teachers are all calling in sick to protest the stupid legislation introduced by conservative airholes who know nothing about education but a lot about choking off progress. The teachers parking lot was still locked and all the parents and kids were being sent to the cafeteria. The security guard explaining all this did not speak English. Welcome to Miami. I took Aliyah back home to watch Sid The Science Kid.

Last night, I used Facebook to find sites of people I don't see much anymore. Bernard in Tampa had 164 Friends, and I recognized several. Hi! to Penni in Alaska. I'm still working on the utility of all this but this was encouraging. I have to get more photos, of myself and my family. out of our digital cameras. Duh.

Refusing to put myself as bilingual is keeping me out of work here. At a certain point, I actually feel discriminated against. I don't want to speak Spanish 8 hours a day. I'm busy writing Part One of my second novel, and have hopes for both. My short story collection is at a contest, but may get farmed out to a repuatble small press for consideration. This is how I find myself, in that foggy identity, where I think of myself as a writer, and the world finds me as a common laborer who refuses to work. If I thought of myself as Napolean, I'd be easier to understand.

Check Off

2010-04-09T08:37:00.004-04:00

The last paragraph of "Neighbors" in the collection Ward No. 6 And Other Stories, in the inexpensive Barnes&Noble Classic series:

"From Koltovitch's copse and garden there came a strong fragrant scent of lillies of the valley and honey-laden flowers. Pyotr Mihalitch rode along the bank of the pond and looked mournfully into the water. And thinking about his life, he came to the conclusion he had never said or acted upon what he really thought, and other people had repaid him in the same way. And so the whole of life seemed to him as dark as this water in which the night sky was reflected and water-weeds grew in a tangle. And it seemed to him that nothing could ever set it right."

Note how the master story teller makes the particular situation of Mihalitch become a universal condition. And also how, in the good old days, you could use an adverb, now almost universally banned, and say "looked mournfully" with no embarassment, and a reinforcement of the funereal atmosphere.

Here's a link to free downloads of Checkov's stories and plays, all public domain:

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/checkov.htm

Buttocks and Peetocks

2010-04-05T09:05:00.003-04:00

My granddaughter complained the dog was sniffing her buttocks. And her peetocks. And so she revived language in our house. Words now say something again. Everyday it takes something new, so you can hear again. Words do get used up. How are you? is a great conversation killer.

Unless you have a neighbor like mine. For three years, I have always tried to avoid her, because she starts babbling away about her sinuses even though I don't even know her name. Now she has a little boy and takes him to ride his little bike. I was outside washing cars and playing with the hose with Aliyah when she showed up. Within two sentences she began telling us about her sinus condition, even though the boy clearly wanted to go home and have a popsicle. My daughter Dianne had just come outside and she couldn't help but laugh, since I have told her this curious trait of this woman, and it seems so unbelievable. And here was proof, sinuses and maybe an ear infection, blah blah blah, complete indifference to context or company. Does this lady have any words left in her? Can anyone in her house hear her? How drunk do you have to be to make a baby with someone like that?

Easter Poem, 2010 Revision

2010-04-02T13:27:00.002-04:00

Every Easter I post my poem, in its current revision. I like this year's model.

Easter

For us redemption
Is not rolling the stone

In a park
We hide colored eggs
Eat chocolate bunnies and Peeps.
Climbing the monkey bars
Goes our hope, our joy.

I won't spoil her play
With talk of crucifixion
Thorns for a crown.
Give flowers instead
A plastic shovel to dig in the sand
No hammer no nails
Just a bright red bucket
The reckless fun of bare feet
Touching lightly reborn earth

Blogger Under Attack

2010-03-31T10:20:00.003-04:00

It seems Blogger is under attack. Recently I have not been able to post music videos. I mean, I post them then they get replaced by some weird Goth heavy metal videos I did not select. And now I keep getting comments in Chinese that I am sure are full of malicious content. Granted, I do not read Chinese, but I don't write in Chinese either. And this morning the link displayed a different security authentication, as though the original had been spoofed. Bloggers beware!
Check your site regularly. If spoofed, someone can use your blog to display malicious conent, ads, porn, and God knows what else.

My Six-Pack Abs Are Now A Case and A Half

2010-03-27T11:56:00.003-04:00

Something happened. My six-pack abs more closely resemble a party keg, bulging out full of fizz and foam. Anyone wanting to learn how to get Case-And-A-Half Abs can send me $20.00 in unmarked bills, or an 18-pack of BudLite, whichever is easier. Please include $7.00 for handling, and ice. The instructions are easy to read and simple to follow, and require no special equipment, only a cooler and a place to pee.

And what was the big deal about the US Census? I received emails from right-wingers warning about "Uncle Sugar" spying on everyone. The form has 10 questions, tough ones like "How many people live in your house?" and "What color are they?" and an explanation not to include those family members incarcerated or in a loony bin. We are proud of our Eskimo heritage here, and have no problem counting everyone in the igloo. Uncle Charlie froze last year, and I have a question about counting him, or waiting to see what condition he's in when he thaws out.

In the future, Believable Lies will feature more exercise and toning tips, including Sit Your Fat Ass Down, and If You're Going To The Kitchen. Prices will vary according to size and how many bottles are left in the cooler.

Happy Days

2010-03-26T09:05:00.005-04:00

America is now the last industrialized nation to offer universal healthcare to its citizens. This historic modernization, catching us up with changes the rest of the world made in the 1950's, is threatened by the far Right. I can't wait until November, and a chance to vote the rest of these people out of office. I want to hear them defend the position that unregulated insurance companies, making billions of dollars in profits off human sickness and death, are better for the citizens of the United States than reforms that guarantee these same companies must offer coverage whether you have a pre-existing illness, have already had several expensive procedures, or have just lost your job, or had your spouse die. The days of miracle and wonder continue.

In related news, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today. Great joy in Mudville!

Faced with Facebook

2010-03-24T08:55:00.003-04:00

Facebook seems a place to put frivolous notes and comments, like 'I got my head shaved!' or 'The cat had puppies!' Now by hooking up with Paper Rats, I get political news from complete strangers, who have their own agendas. Okay. And I have Friends I never knew I had, which is okay too. But I can't think of anything to put there that has the kind of tone that everyone but me uses. 'Great Scot!' Maybe I'm a twit, and should be doing Twitter. Or a dork, and should be using Dorkwork. I still don't text on my phone, I talk on it, but do a shitload of emails. Does that count? I'm going to have my daughter take over my communication with the cyberworld. Or my granddaughter. I'll be in the backyard, with the cooler and the grill, listening to the clouds.

Good News, Sort Of

2010-03-22T09:14:00.003-04:00

The House passed the healthcare reform bill, and now the GOP will work diligently to screw it up. What form efforts to derail universal healthcare for all Americans will take depends on how many billions of dollars in lobbying funds become available to "conservative" interests. With the insurance companies making record profits and raising consumer rates hundreds of dollars per month, the war chest might be substantial. The same amount, spent in any metropolitan community, would guarantee healthcare for every man, woman and child there for years. 'Profits before people' is the natural result of the public interest being for sale.

In related news, studies show a big butt might be healthy for you.
http://goodnews.msnbc.msn.com/?section=goodnewsfeeds&dataId=23598465&source=msneditorial&GT1=25064

The Lost World

2010-03-18T08:39:00.002-04:00

A 15 year old boy attacked, beat and stomped with steel toe boots a 14 year old girl at a Deerfield Beach middle school. The girl is in critical condition. Students watched but did nothing to stop the attack. A teacher had to save the girl from being killed in front of the crowd.
http://cbs4.com/local/Deerfield.Middle.School.2.1569627.html

Cornell University student suicides have created a mental health crisis. Four students killed themselves last semester and two more in the last two months.
"The national average is 7.29 suicides per year for every 100,000 students, said Paula Clayton, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. That means Cornell, with 19,639 students, should average fewer than two suicides a year."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/18/cornell.suicides/index.html?hpt=T2

Credit for kids: Kwedit teaches young 'uns about buying things you don't have enough money for.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1971324,00.html

It's not just kids. I'm losing friends my age, because of politics. The more benefits they personally get from liberal federal programs, the more they seem opposed to liberal federal programs. If this is a Tea Party, I'm the Cheshire Cat. I have trouble understanding people whose medical care, paid for by federal assistance and not private medical insurance, are opposed to national health care.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1964903,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1971324,00.html

St. Paddy's Day, Is It?

2010-03-17T09:22:00.004-04:00

"...How To Understand the Deaf, Should Ladies learn Music or Mathematics? Glory be to Saint Patrick! What is to be found in a Dustheap?..." Finnegans Wake, p.307, the children's lessons.

The Dubliners sing "Whiskey In The Jar"--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46EXY4oP1Do

So does Metallica, Live in Dublin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZDhnRo8YvQ&feature=related

Peter Paul and Mary featured the song as "Gilgarra Mountain" on A Song Will Rise, with these lyrics, if you'd like to saing aloong:

As I was a goin' over Gilgarra Mountain
I spied Colonel Farrell and his money he was countin'
First I drew me pistols, and then I drew me rapier, sayin'
"Stand and deliver for I am your bold deceiver"

Refrain:
Mush-a-ring-um duram da
Whack fol the daddy o
Whack fol the daddy o
There's whiskey in the jar.

He counted out his money and it made a pretty penny
I put in me pocket to take home to darlin' Jenny
She sighed and swore she loved me
And never would deceive me
But the devil take the women for they always lie so easy
(Refrain)

I went into me chamber all for to take a slumber
To dream of gold and girls and o'course it was no wonder
Me Jenny took me charges and she filled them up with water
Called on Colonel Farrell to get ready for the slaughter
(Refrain)

Next mornin' early before I rose to travel
A' came a band o' footmen and likewise Colonel Farrell
I goes to draw me pistol for she'd stole away me rapier
But a prisoner I was taken, I couldn't shoot the water
(Refrain)

They put me into jail with the judge all a-writin'
For robbin' Colonel Farrell on Gilgarra Mountain
But they didn't take me fists so I knocked the jailer down
And bid a farewell to this tight-fisted town
(Refrain)

I'd like to find me brother, the one that's in the army
I don't know where he's stationed, in Cork or in Killarney
Together we'd go roamin'o'er the mountains of Kilkenny
And I swear he'd treat me fairer than me darlin' sportin' Jenny
(Refrain)

There's some takes delight in the carriages and rollin'
And some takes delight in the hurley or the bollin'
But I takes delight in the juice of the barley
Courtin' pretty maids in the mornin' oh so early
(Refrain)

SONGBOOKS:Deluxe Anthology Songbook

Across the River and Into Daylight Savings

2010-03-14T09:50:00.004-04:00

I'm having toast with my Husky, Apache. He prefers French bread with its chewy crust but will eat Cuban bread or hamburger rolls if you toast them. We've had our walk and he's chased the ducks away but I can't take the harness off him and let him run the field like he used to. Always he came back after three circles and I put the leash back on and things were fine but one day he decided to just keep going. He passed me at full gallop and ran through the streets, around the block and into a man's house. Now he must walk when I walk, and the harness stays on.

I'm reading Hemingway's least favorite novel, Across The River And Into The Trees, published in 1950, to mostly negative reviews. Only John O'Hara defended him, and made the point win-or-lose, this was still Hemingway, and so better than most: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-river.html
O'Hara also attacked The New Yorker (Eustace Tilley) for Lillian Ross' "Portrait of Hemingway" where his drinking and bullying were the main points of the article.

By 1950, Hemingway was still angry with Martha Gellhorn for leaving him during World War II, and there are mentions in this novel of his bad decisions and "also brutality" costing him his past loves. The drunken parties and bragging and fighting he became ridiculed for were mostly post-Martha, and his next wife Mary got the chore of baby-sitting him and trying to keep him out of trouble.

Once he got to Cuba, and the finca he and Martha had purchased that he now had sole possession of, he invented the Papa Doble, a double strength daiquiri with no sugar so the hangovers would not be so bad. A.E. Hotchner was amazed to find verification for Hemingway's claim of drinking 16 of them in one night, a boast only a true alcoholic would think impressive.

The writing sounds like he was drunk as he banged away on the typewriter. Sure, the book was first a serial he did for Cosmopolitan, before it became a sexy woman's fashion guide. But what I notice is that the story is practically all interior monologue, as the narrator moves around Italy, around Venice. It's like, hell it worked for Joyce, I'm giving it a shot. But the Colonel's interior monologue is mostly slams against men not as brave as himself, which seems to be everyone in the world, except his maitre'd at the hotel, and against writers and politicians and even George Patton.

Bad books reveal more about authors than good ones. I don't think Hemingway ever really recovered from losing Martha Gellhorn, and growing old with the notion she was more a war-lover than he. The Old Man and The Sea, his last major work, had already been through several drafts in the 1930's, when he and Gellhorn lived at the finca in Cuba.

Whoa. ADDENDUM:
from page 195-197, Hemingway slams Gellhorn directly.

"She had more ambition than Napolean and about the talent of the average High School Valedictorian." p.195 (the Colonel in response to his lover's inquiry, "You mean she went away, from ambition, when you only went away from duty?"---Hemingway glossing over his drunken anti-submarine cruises in the Gulf Stream)

"She is too conceited ever to be sad, and she married one to advance herself in Army circles(sic:literary circles), and have better contacts for what she considered her profession, or her art. She was a journalist." p.196

"I told her things once and she wrote about them. But that was in another country and besides the wench is dead...But she doesn't know it yet." p. 196

Martha Gellhorn left Hemingway in 1944, really. She went to report WWII. Using his contacts, Hemingway got on a flight of reporters but told Gellhorn no women were allowed. There were women on the flight. Hemingway lied. Gellhorn took a slow and dangerous cruise ona freight ship.

Papa was a mean drunk, and never admitted the truth. Gellhorn refused to speak to anyone who referred to her as "Mrs. Hemingway." What a couple.

Scott Turow at FIU

2010-03-12T09:01:00.004-05:00

I went to see Scott Turow last night at Florida International University, where he won the Creative Writing Program's first Lawrence Sanders Award for Excellence. What a terrific speaker he turned out to be! He read from several of his works, including the prologue to Presumed Innocent, where Rusty Sabich goes over his opening remarks to juries in trials he prosecutes, including pointing at the accused, "... always point. If you don't have the courage to point at the accused, the jury won't have the courage to convict," he'd been taught.

Later in the evening he read from his latest book, Innocent, the sequel to PI he swore he'd never write. Sabich's son Nat is the narrator of this prologue, describing a man sitting in a room, a dead woman in the bed behind him. The man is his father; the woman his mother. The audience applauded not only the terrific narration, but the well-crafted sentences and phrases, ending with the description of all the things his father did and all the things he told the police when he finally called 22 hours later. "But he never mentioned the girl," the prologue ends. Brilliant! We were all hooked.

When asked how long it took him to get a publishing success, Turow told us 20 years. He'd been a Fellow at the Creative Writing Program at Stanford, one of the most prestigious in the country, but had no success, finally leaving to go to Harvard Law School and become a lawyer. He described how moving into law gave him the insight and drive he wanted in his writing. Turow also spoke briefly about the film of Presumed Innocent, and his satisfaction with the effort of Sydney Pollack and Alan Pakula to remain true to the novel.

Turow had travelled far to get to Miami, and was a bit under the weather with a "bronchial crud" he said was common to people from Chicago. Yet we could see that only a very dedicated person would travel sick to address a hundred people in a ceremony with no trophy or plaque, and a check that was yet to be written as his prize. Several mentions of his friend Dave Barry and wife Michelle Kaufman, in attendance and in good spirits, let you know where comfort would be found this trip.

Les Standiford, Director of the Creative Writing Program at FIU, played Master of Ceremonies, and with his smile and remarks got a room full of readers and writers to bond together in appreciation of a man who writes literary novels in thriller form, ---without using an outline, Turow commented, when a student said his professors tell him to outline, outline, outline to plot a story, ---and who opened two of his biggest books with prologues, though prologues are discouraged as well.

Standiford has a new book coming out soon, Bringing Adam Home, about the tremendous effort it took to recover the mutilated body of young Adam Walsh, after he'd been kidnapped and killed while shopping with his family at a Hollywood Florida mall. Anyone who reads Les Standiford knows the precision and skill he brings to narrative. His wife Kimberley spoke with us after, as good and gracious lady as I've ever met, and we laughed remembering my poor efforts to help Les with his website and blog.

Dan Wakefield, who also teaches in the program, told me he has been commissioned to edit a book of the Letters of Kurt Vonnegut, a friend of his from way way back. I encountered both Wakefield and Vonnegut first when young and allowed to have Playboy every month. Wakefield's famous work, Going All The Way , was an inspiration and laugh for young men everywhere, and Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House" such a brilliant funny story a lot of readers said, damn, who is this guy? and started reading everything the man wrote.

What I took away from the evening was more than inspiration. I go to these events and meet these hard-working writers so dedicated to a demanding craft, and I learn something about people. I learn, you can just feel it, that these are men and women who thank God everyday for the talent they have been given, and use it wisely, to say those universal things in every heart.

Rooster and Hamlet:Things to Come

2010-03-11T08:50:00.002-05:00

The story of Hamlet was old by the time Shakespeare wrote his version. There are resources like Project Gutenberg that feature the work of Saxo Grammaticus (1150-1220 AD)giving a mythic history of the Danes, including the Ur-Hamlet legend, an oral history of Amleth: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1150/1150-h/1150-h.htm
and a quick Wiki reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxo_Grammaticus
and recently a wonderful retelling of the story by John Updike in Gertrude and Claudius (Knopf, 2000) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_and_Claudius.

In my second Rooster novel, we'll see Hamlet again, though the 21st century retelling differs from all others: Rooster, unwilling to take prescription medications for depression, is at a psychologist's office. He encounters the son of recently deceased Reggie Dupree (Rooster was with Reggie when he OD'd) who explains he's there because his father's ghost keeps appearing and telling him to avenge his murder. Rooster tells Dana (the son) that he recalls that happening in high school Lit and the young man says no, look here. He pulls out his iPhone and brings up a YouTube video of his father. Reggie sits behind the desk in an office, but in front of him are not business papers but a mirror with lines of white powder and a straw. Reggie says that if you're seeing the video, he's been murdered by his own brother, and that justice demands he be avenged. Then Reggie snorts two huge lines, leans back, and falls arse over elbows backwards out of the chair. The video is one of the most popular on YouTube, and now other people have begun making their versions and posting them.

In the novel, Rooster becomes involved with Dana's efforts to solve his father's murder, as well as becoming involved with the lovely psychologist, who is being threatened over her testimony in a case of multi-million dollar Medicare fraud. This second novel comes easier now that I've established voice and character backstories, and I want to rough draft process over so I can get down to something my preview readers can take a look at.

Where in the first book, Rooster deals with his inescapable past and the mechanization of sex in 21st century culture, in a thriller format, the second Rooster takes on social responsibilty, health care and the tremendous fear of Socialism by people who know next to nothing about it. And opens with a murder, has a couple shoot-outs, and a climax that keeps those pages turning all night long.

Synopsis 1, Synapses 0

2010-03-05T14:18:00.002-05:00

Lucky man that I am, a well-established literary agent requested the first part of my novel and a synopsis. No problem, I assured her. And then I sat down to write the synopsis of a 240 page book and, to be safe, decided to check the Internet for tips. There's a lot of good advice out there. Check it out:
http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Crafting+A+Novel+Synopsis.aspx

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/08/how-to-write-synopsis.html

http://www.farrisliterary.com/tips%20for%20writers.htm#Synopsis

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/

The important thing is to choose one style and go with it. I workked five hours straight, ended up with 9 single-spaced pages (okay in half the guidelines) then forgot to put in page numbers and headers. This I discovered after I sent the email. OOOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhh.

Sleuthfest Saturday

2010-02-28T08:12:00.003-05:00

The Mystery Writers of America, Florida Chapter, held its annual Sleuthfest literay convention this week at the Hilton in Deerfield Beach.
http://www.mwaflorida.org/sleuthfest.htm
Saturday I got there in time for the 11AM seminar on How To Get An Agent, moderated by Neil Plakcy, featuring authors and agents talking about the business end of writing and publishing. Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency and Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management charmed and disarmed a crowd of writers seeking representation, showing a different image than what comes across in trade mags and internet advice on dealing with the ivory tower. Warm, human, funny, these were not traits I expected to see. I expected a cross between Glenn Close and the Red Queen, giving out rules like facial blows. The opposite was true. By humanizing the process, explaining the wherefores and the whys, these ladies let us all know that this is an industry, that they make their livings finding new writers and getting them published, and that once the process has begun they fight for their clients. I could not have been more surprised. Somehow I expected to get rejected just sitting there.

Later in the day, I had 10 minutes to pitch agent and company co-founder of Folio Literary Management LLC Paige Wheeler. By the time of my appointment, I realized two important things: drinking with the guys the night before may not have been the right preparation, and that a three sentence summary of a novel I've worked on for so long was not to found in forebrain, midbrain, cerebellum, or that long oblongata thing down your neck. In sales all my life and a natural gabber, I felt struck dumb. But fortunately for me, Miss Wheeler was more than gracious, and had been through this hundreds of times, and she was able to slow me down and get me on track and relax me back into coherency. It turned out we were both from Richmond Virginia and knew the landmarks and schools (She went to Marymount, I went to VCU) and then she told me to send her two chapters and a synopsis and mark it Requested Material.
That's as good as it gets, I'm told. No one hands you a book contract and a check after a ten-minute interview, apparently. I'm surprised I wasn't remanded to some kind of Literary Speech therapist.

Let me say this: the people I met Saturday were incredibly nice, open for conversation, shared experiences, having a laugh or two. Stephen J. Cannell's talk at the luncheon was one of the best, no, The Best, I've ever heard. This highly successful author and producer and Hollywood big-wig described himself as "the least likely person to have a writing career" due to an undiagnosed case of dyslexia that prevented him from reading at normal levels and retaining information. He flunked the first, fourth and tenth grades, had trouble in college and in business with his father.
His first interview with a Hollywood agent after writing six and seven hours a day for years, the agent told him to give up, he'd never be successful in the film industry. Later, when Cannell had his own production house and was making six TV shows a season, this same agent came to him looking for work for his clients. Cannell accepted his apology for what had happened years earlier, but warned him that "one thing he could never do again was to step on someone's dream." The bio made a great story, and he proved to be open and considerate and made himself available for questions and conversation.

So later in the day, in the bar with friends, it dawned on me there's a gap between Writers Digest Important Writer Information and a handshake and a smile. The human element available at a conference like Sleuthfest is worth all the How-to books out there. If you have any interest in writing professionally, find a writers conference like this in your area. Or come on down to Florida next year. There is nothing more encouraging than honest people working toward a common goal, sharing a common dream.

Tiger, Shut Up and Act Like A Man

2010-02-21T10:40:00.002-05:00

"Though the danger on the rocks has clearly passed
Still I remain tied to the mast..."
Steely Dan

Tiger Woods has proven an embarassment to men everywhere. After hearing his latest whining apology, I put on my Nikes and drove my Buick into the lake, throwing in my Tag Heuer watch for good measure. What will it take to get him to shut up and act like a man?

The worst thing he did was find himself with opportunities to have wild sex with a lot of very attractive and naughty women, and take advantage of the situation. Being rich and famous, it goes with the territory. So why apologize?

I don't feel let down as a fan by him getting laid. I EXPECT a rich famous and healthy young man to get laid. I feel let down as a fan by him whining over and over like he has committed some terrible sin. He didn't kill anyone or molest a child or cheat at golf or run a red light or rob a bank. He got laid. Sure, he cheated on his wife. But realistically, he cheated on his first wife. This guy will have four, five or more wives before he's 70, count on it. He will cheat on all of them. We all know it.

The thing is, we don't want to know it. If he'd quit hiding and going to sex clinics and acting like a complete whimp, we could forget the whole thing. If he'd just say, "Yeah, I get laid a lot. So what?" The world and golf and the Tiger Woods marketing machine would go on and on and on.
If Tiger divorces this wife or she him, which is more likely, he's still richer than any one man could want. Tell her bye-bye and get on with it.

No more tearful whining, no more mea culpa, mea culpa. Admit that you like getting laid with attractive women of dubious character and go hit a few balls on the driving range. Have a beer with the guys. Hiding out with some guilt-trip shrink won't help you. Go get some buffalo wings and a pitcher. Hit on the waitress, if you like. Enjoy being rich and famous, for Christ's sakes. How hard can that be?

Lifetime Piling Up

2010-02-13T09:21:00.003-05:00

I went to John Dufresne's reading and signing last night, in Coral Gables, where a good crowd braved terrible weather to get to Books&Books, the last of the great independent bookstores. B&B now has a fine restaurant and wine list, which is a lot nicer than drinking coffee at night.
The book, Is Life Like This? is a guide to writing a first draft of that novel you keep saying you're writing, in six months, following a 26 week schedule to monitor productivity and foster creativity.
http://www.johndufresne.com/

I now have two (2) complete manuscripts, one novel (Rooster's Sex Machine) and one story collection (Believable Lies). I will be looking for representation on both, and networking (which I dread) and writing query letters. I also will be attending Sleuthfest, an event by the Mystery Writers of America, Florida Chapter, later this month.
http://www.mwaflorida.org/sleuthfest.htm

"I can feel my lifetime piling up
I can see the days turn into nights
I can see the people on the streets
Open those windows up"
----Talking Heads

Hope for the Best

2010-02-10T09:03:00.002-05:00

I feel like a pilot in a propeller plane that has just gone into a mid-air stall. Getting the engine going again is a top priority, but at the same time I have to consider how to glide over a long distance for a short period of time. I have to look for a good place to ditch if the plane will crash, and I must consider how I haven't checked my parachute in months, if ever.

Without the forward thrust, the weight of the plane itself makes itself felt throughout my body, like I just gained 3000 pounds. 32 feet per second per second is the rate of acceleration for falling bodies, I recall. It's so quiet, with no engine. Except for my screaming. I need to do something.

Having completed a novel, I now face the situation that I must get a literary agent. The process is excruciating, and involves getting rejected as an author over and over again by people who have not read my work. Google "query letters" and see how many rules and guidelines and suggestions and reasons for rejection there are. And now, publishers aren't looking for new writers anymore, they'd rather just stop the process and go with what they have, and milk it for all its worth. They are losing money big time, and Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com basically control the market, and who reads anymore anyway?

Yet I am able to find something good to read every time I go shop a book store. There are so many authors I just haven't had time to get to, so I continue buying and reading and you'd think I was going through the library at Alexandria trying to find the real secrets of alchemy before the Romans burn the place down. There's something great in a lot of books. There's a lot of books that do and say nothing. They are all products of those few people who have made it into The Club.

The Club is the set of people who have actually had their books published. The Club is snobbish and exclusive yet completely unprejudiced. Get published and you're in; don't get published and you can write twenty books and you're still out. I want into The Club in the worst way.

So, I will look forward to the mailbox full of rejection slips, the Inbox with the thanks-but-no- thanks notices. I will hope for the best. Somehow my novel will be on a shelf in a bookstore somewhere soon , with titillating little blurbs on the cover. I will do a reading, a signing.

Then, once I'm in The Club, I can get over this vain and distracting nonsense, and start writing seriously. I can pull the plane out of the stall. I can stop screaming. That's the difference between flying and falling.

You don't scream as much.

The Whitest White

2010-02-07T09:10:00.002-05:00

Sarah Palin and Tea Parties go together well, a speaker with no ideas addressing a group with no solutions, and enjoying rich media coverage for inane remarks.

"How's that hopey changey thing working out for you?" is Palin's zinger, making her sound more like Tina Fey than ever, an actual parody of herself. What I have never heard from Palin or any Tea Partiers is what they will do if things go against them, like getting laid off and finding out you have a skin cancer that needs treatment. What will you do when your children are no longer under your medical insurance coverage because they are not full-time students and are over 18? Suppose your daughter has a chronic bronchial condition? Your son is injured in an accident?

What I see are rooms full of overweight white people, cheering on a dynamic lady who looks like she'd be tons of fun with a couple drinks in her. I do not see a black, red, or yellow face anywhere. The whole thing reminds me of Homeowners Association meetings, where the board sits around and discusses raising the fine for not rolling up your garden hose. And when a hurricane hits, they all step down, quit, disappear.

Early Termination

2010-02-04T09:10:00.002-05:00

I never understood why the Death Watch for senior citizens got such bad press during the election. How long do you have to live before you're in control of (your)life and (your)death? Martha Gellhorn committed suicide at 90. She had a full, rich, adventurous life. You'd think a couple more years either way wouldn't matter. But she had gone blind, and this independent woman could not bear the handicap.

I wrote a story that appears at BewilderingStories.com about Early Termination, a new option from the government after the collapse of Social Security. No, I didn't start the Death Watch rumors.

In college, we called this the Silver Bullet theory. This basically said that at the end of our days, we should have the option of a Silver Bullet, like in the werewolf movies. Sitting in a nursing home, abandoned by family and friends, doped into a vegetative senility, put to bed before you want and awakened like a jailhouse prisoner, fed Godawful mush, denied cigarettes and booze and any kind of stimulation, no thanks. Give me a Silver Bullet any day. Read the story , entitled "Land of Opportunity," here: http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue271/land_opportunity.html

Incredible Woman

2010-02-01T09:42:00.003-05:00

I'm reading Caroline Moorehead's biography of Martha Gellhorn (Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life, Henry Holt and Company, New York) and it is one of the most fascinating stories I've ever encountered. Gellhorn, while still in her twenties, covered the poverty caused by the Great Depression for Harry Hopkins and the Roosevelts, who wanted first-hand knowledge of what was happening in America. She became a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and actually lived at the White House from time to time, as did other writers and international visitors. During the Spanish Civil War, she lived at the Hotel Florida in Madrid and became involved with Ernest Hemingway. Their love story during the war and explosions and rise of fascism is well told by Moorehead. Gellhorn eventually became the 3rd Mrs. Hemingway, a title she rejected later in life, never wanting to be hidden in his gigantic shadow.

PBS quotes one of her pieces, written during the shelling of Madrid:

www.pbs.org/.../reporters/gellhorn/madrid.html

"So now the square is empty, though people are leaning close against the houses around it, and the shells are falling so fast that there is almost no time between them to hear them coming, only the steady roaring as they land on the granite cobblestones.

Then for a moment it stops. An old woman, with a shawl over her shoulders, holding a terrified thin little boy by the hand, runs out into the square. You know what she is thinking: she is thinking she must get the child home, you are always safer in your own place, with the things you know. Somehow you do not believe you can get killed when you are sitting in your own parlor, you never think that.

She is in the middle of the square when the next one comes.
A small piece of twisted steel, hot and very sharp, sprays off from the shell; it takes the little boy in the throat. The old woman stands there, holding the hand of the dead child, looking at him stupidly, not saying anything, and men run out toward her to carry the child. At their left, at the side of the square, is a huge brilliant sign which says: GET OUT OF MADRID."

Martha was 28 when she witnessed that scene and wrote about it.

Barbie and Ken in 2012

2010-01-20T09:12:00.002-05:00

Scott Brown's election as Senator in MASS, despite a lack of credentials or experience though he has posed nude, shows that yes, white Americans can turn out in force. A Palin/Brown ticket in 2012 would give the American people a chance to vote for Barbie and Ken, without having to buy new action figures. As a voter, interviewed coming from the polling station said, "I don't like this health care thing. I don't know much about it, but I've heard it's bad. So I voted for Brown."

There's an online game called Tiger's Trangressions. In it, you use your mouse to help Tiger knock down his mistresses with golf shots before she can reach the TV news van. Click here to go to Ho #1.
http://www.atom.com/fun_games/tiger_woods_defense/?xrs=eml_121709

The Moving Hand Writes

2010-01-18T08:29:00.002-05:00

My own handwriting seems ugly to me, and I have trouble writing drafts of stories in longhand because of it. The computer gives me the illusion of deniability, but writing in my own hand is personally condemning, like there's no getting out of this one. I know much better writers, professionals with years of experience and books that line shelves published under their names, who write all their first drafts by hand. I can't do it. The scrawl seems like something excreted, and some Freudian-Norman O. Brown thing kicks in, and I want to hide what's been produced, like a booger or poo. Weird, right? Something traumatic must have happened, like the notebooks I once kept must have been found and read aloud to an unintended audience, and some generous amount of shame produced. But I remember no specific incident. Blocking it, or denial, seems likely. I don't trust memory much to start out with. We remember what we want.

Yet I don't mind producing this poo for all to see. There's a distance between me and it, a machine in between, and the machine might be doing this while I sleep for all you know. Mechanically produced poo, like the plastic doggies for sale during Christmas, that do number one and number two when you push their little buttons.

What a gross monologue. But much of the news that comes uninvited into my home seems the same. Earthquake victims reaching to the camera as tons of debris crush their legs, horses slaughtered while alive for sausage meat, children who disappear only to be found dead days later, supposedly Christian men like Pat Robertson saying Haiti made a deal with the Devil and was cursed, rather than mention the population dragged from Africa in chains by Christian slavers, and made to stay there against their wills. The mechanical poo seems endless, feeding on itself, and now available on 500 channels, the internet, iPods, Twits, and blogs like this one.

Communication

2010-01-12T08:54:00.002-05:00

I found this in the Preface to Douglas Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop. Hofstadter is the author of Godel Escher Bach, and Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University. His books are all published by Basic Books and available everywhere.

"And one of my firmest conclusions is that we always think by seeking and drawing parallels to things we know from our past, and that we therefore communicate best when we exploit examples, analogies, and metaphors galore, when we avoid abstract generalities, when we use very down-to-earth, concrete, and simple language, and when we talk directly about our own experiences." (p.xv)

What is the book about? Try this from the jacket blurb:

Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? If it can, then how can we understand this baffling emergence?

2010: The Year The Martians Arrive

2010-01-01T11:04:00.003-05:00

A great thing about starting a new decade is the opportunity to contemplate how close we are to all the weird events predicted in science fiction during the 20th Century. We're in the brave new world, and 1984 has come and gone, and 2001's odyssey is now 2010's sequel. The future is now a couple weekends away. This is the year the Martians arrive.

I have always wondered if Mars, once exactly as far from the sun as the Earth is now, once had an entire evolutionary history identical or at least highly similar to our own. As the planet's orbit expanded and Mars moved further out in its ellipse, it became colder and lost its atmosphere.

We're talking millions of years here. The people of Mars migrated here and set up those big monolith things to influence monkey DNA, and create the human race. The Martians aren't flesh and blood beings but electromagnetic fields, and live in the chromosomatic structure we carry around. We have the illusion of being independent, but a nagging sense of predetermination. Occasionally our Martianness emerges, and we are diagnosed as crazy. But there's still a recognition, a familiarity with the behavior, the bizarre language, that allows a glimpse at our dual natures.

Woooooooo. Happy New Year, Martian brothers and sisters!

12 x 5= 60

2009-12-30T08:52:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I turned 60, the oldest I've ever been. Capricorns have weird birthdays, so close to Christmas the money's been spent and the New Year for everybody is a bigger deal than the new year for just you. Which is the way I like things. I bought my granddaughter a Zhu-Zhu pet to celebrate, a little Chinese mechanical hamster that moves and talks and chatters.

My kids were here, my brother and brothers-in-law, my wife, sister-in-law, son's new girlfriend. We brought in chicken wings and fried onion strings from Flanigans, and us guys drank beer and watched the Hurricanes get overpowered by a good Wisconsin Badgers team, and nobody got in trouble or gave me novelty old-timer gifts like a box of Depends or a walker.

Aliyah had a friend visiting that's every bit as loud and obnoxious as her, so we got a box of sparklers and took the girls outside and let them handle sticks of burning magnesium and write their names in the cool night air. My sister MaryAnne called from St Pete and made me laugh as we contemplated what geriatric supplies I would be needing soon. If I had known turning sixty was so family-friendly I would have done it long ago.

I don't actually feel old. There's a lot of things I need to get done and started projects to finish and books to be read and work, work, work I want to do. Like DFW says in Oblivion, life is time in a flash of knowing, a continous moment where we are ten and twenty and thirty etc all at once, and are only hard-wired to see the present and a little of the future and a little of the past as we stare at this long string of events from so close our eyes cross analyzing the small section we're aware of.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

2009-12-28T09:51:00.002-05:00

Last night I watched the Colts-Jets game, right up to where the Colts pulled their starters and laid down and gave the game to the Jets. None of the players looked comfortable, beinmg booed at home when they could have been setting a new NFL record. The tactic of resting players for the playoffs sounds logical but morally vacant. You could see it on the face of Peyton Manning as he "was only following orders."

A good way to tell right from wrong is to think of the working people who paid hard earned money to take their kids to the game to watch their favorite players, millionaires all, stand around as a mediocre Jets team steamrolled the subs and beat the Colts for the first loss in 24 games. In this economy, is that sportsmanship?

What about delivering on the product you sell?

Greetings From The Baker

2009-12-26T09:50:00.002-05:00

If you're prone to depression, and the season has worn down what little spirit you had coming out of Thanksgiving, and your home team has lost two easily winnable games by throwing the ball to opposing players rather than your own less-than-capable receivers, and you have little or no money and your friends list has gotten so small a mouse carried it away and people keep telling you to cheer up as they ask you to do something only a complete idler would be interested in doing, you might want to teach yourself baking.

Today's project: Buttermilk Biscuits. Go gather your acute and chronic cellmates, and meet me back here in an hour.

Coming Christmas

2009-12-22T08:02:00.003-05:00

While having toast with Apache, I realize I haven't done any Christmas shopping, with 2 days to go. People who know me know this SOP. I hate shopping anyway, and hate Christmas shopping worst of all, since the overwhelming favorite holiday feeling seems to be rudeness. Try to park anywhere near a popular mall. Feel the Christmas cheer? Right.

I mean to do the food shopping. In recent years, since my granddaughter's birth, I have stopped going to the Miami traditional Eve party, a massive family and friend get-together at someone else's house, where we would all meet around 9PM and drink and eat a lot and listen to salsa music and wait to see who started fighting with who first, and told the kids to go upstairs or outside or in another room, like the kids were in the way of the Christmas Eve celebration. No mas. Can't, won't, don't.

Everyone now has Christmas at their own houses. But I cook a ton of food, and anyone who wants to come is welcome and will get wined and dined and loved. But I won't be doing the merange or lambada, and would rather hear Hannah Montana than Celia Cruz. I'm old, I guess. Truly festive people avoid me like the plague, as the cliche goes. They still have a great time, hell, maybe a better time, doing what they like, without Mr. Grinch. I'm busy putting together doll houses and scooters. I see nothing wrong with being asleep by midnight, in my bed, rather than awake until 5AM, and finding myself sound asleep behind the wheel of my car going 60 down the sidewalk.

The trick this year is: vegetarian. I still want ham and turkey, but my son's a true vegger, and so side dishes I'll be cooking will be Butternut Squash Lasagna, Paula Deen's Cheesys Mac and Cheese, various breads and rolls, something with beans, a kind of potato thing, fish that doesn't stink up the house. Dave has a Smithfield ham, a salty cured ham from our Virginia roots, and sliced really thin and served on a homemade roll there's not much can beat it. I'm thinking of getting a Red Snapper from one of the fishing boats, and serving it cooked whole in all its colorful fishness, and you cut some filet off one side until gone, then turn it over. With red and yellow peppers and lemon slices. Sangria with fruit floating around. A lot of trouble but possible.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, here and all over the world.

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-20T07:57:00.002-05:00

Are Panera Bread's Cinnamon Crunch bagels, with the hazelnut cream cheese on top, the best ever? Right out of the toaster oven, a fresh tub of hcc, the crunches of cinnamon and sugar shiny and glazed, OMG. Simple things make a trip to the store worth it, while the family sleeps and the dog eats his French bread.

Apache prefers Sourdough French in the loaf because of the thick crust but the endpieces off a French loaf are good too. I discovered his affinity for toast by accident. Huskies are vegetarians to a large extent. He likes Romaine lettuce, the bottom crunchy parts. And last night the dog got his favorite pizza crusts, the leftovers from Marino's Pizza, Miami's best pizza by far. He's one pizza loving dog, though no cheese or pepperoni, and he's not big on black olives either.

There's a fresh DFW story in The New Yorker December 14 issue, "All That." You can link through their site or through Howling Fantods: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/

Friend Isabel sent pictures of NoVa and DC under a foot of snow. So much snow sounds like a disaster on TV but is a delight in real life. As humans, we're always pulling for Mother Nature to disrupt The Machine we live in, and here's proof that we're really not that big a deal in big scheme of things. The jumbo jets line the runways while we're outside sliding down snowy hills on cardboard boxes. Ho ho ho.

Eye of the Tiger

2009-12-14T08:50:00.003-05:00

Poor Tiger Woods. He goes from being the richest athlete in history to being the next-richest athlete in history, dropped by AccentureLCM as front man, as though that actually made a difference in real life. And all because he thought the women he slept with actually cared about him, and wanted to nurture him secretly, away from the media and his wife. What a mo-roon.

He's not even any good at cheating. Calling the one bimbo and leaving a message on her recorder to be careful his wife would be calling, shows a man who does not have the moxie to realize someone may not actually give a damn if he gets in trouble or not. We're on the back nine now, as women are coming out from cocktail lounges around the country and sharing with tabloid journalists the intimate details of their Night of the Tiger.

And where did all the unhappy Tiger photos come from? Up until now all we saw were shots of a smiling winner, sharing his wonderfulness with the polo shirt masses. Now a decade of grimacing, constipated looking Tiger photos has emerged and replaced the winner with the whiner.

It makes you glad you didn't earn a billion dollars knocking a little white ball around, doesn't it?

There's a website that seems to be 100% Tiger Bad News, 24/7:
http://news.lalate.com/2009/12/14/tiger-woods-alleged-mistresses-update-rachel-uchitel-no-playboy-but-still-with-tiger-report/

It's amazing when someone goes from being reported on in the media to actually becoming a media event, incapable of moving in public without unwanted coverage. What was the deal about the American Indians believing a photograph stole the soul of the one getting his picture taken?
What happens to someone when he is absorbed by the Media Blob, trapped in the gelatinous membrane of grocery store magazines and Insider shows?

Do you think he longs for the days of standing in the early morning quiet, addressing a golf ball, checking down the dew-covered fairway for the position of the sand traps and the pin?

Lyle Lovett, Cowboy Lyrics, "This Old Porch"

2009-12-10T09:45:00.005-05:00

This old porch is like a big old red and white Hereford bull
Standing under a mesquite tree
Out in Agua Dulce
And he just keeps on playing hide and seek
With that hot August sun
Just a-sweatin' and a-pantin'
Cause his work is never done

And this old porch is like a steaming, greasy plate of enchiladas
With lots of cheese and onions
And a guacamole salad
And you can get'em down at the Lasalle Hotel
In old downtown
With iced tea and a waitress
And she will smile every time

And this old porch is the Palace walk-in
On the main street of Texas
That's never seen the day
Of G and R and Xs
With that '62 poster
That's almost faded down
And a screen without a picture
Since Giant came to town

And this old porch is like a weathered, gray-haired
seventy years of Texas
Who's doing all he can
Not to give in to the city
And he always takes the rent late
So long as I run his cattle
And he picks me up at dinnertime
And I listen to him rattle

He says the Brazos still runs muddy
Just like she's run all along
And there ain't never been no cane to grind
The cotton's all but gone
And you know this brand new Chevrolet
Hell it was something back in '60
But now there won't nobody listen to him
'Cause they all think he's crazy

And this old porch is just a long time
Of waiting and forgetting
And remembering the coming back
And not crying about the leaving
And remembering the falling down
And the laughter of the curse of luck
From all of those passersby
Who said we'd never get back up

This old porch is just a long time
Of waiting and forgetting
And remembering the coming back
And not crying about the leaving
And remembering the falling down
And the laughter of the curse of luck
From all of those sons-of-bitches
Who said we'd never get back up

------Lyle Lovett/Robert Earl Keen

YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbb3VtT3zYs

Yellow Brick Road

2009-12-07T08:52:00.003-05:00

"Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
Where the dogs of society howl
Can't land me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plow..."

I always liked that song, for its sentiment and its absurdity---try to picture fops like Elton John or Bernie Taupin going back to their plows---though of course the real rocker on that double album was "Funeral For A Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding." I can still hear Mike Reeger singing, while playing bass on the organ with one hand and piano with the other, in hippie bars full of beer stink and pot smoke, as our version of Tampa nightlife passed blurrily before our eyes.

Going back---Get back to where you once belonged---was a recurrent theme for hippies. We knew somewhere we'd lost the trail and were not only on the Road Less Travelled but maybe on a forgotten pathway right into the heart of darkness, This is the end, beautiful friend--- Coppola knew Jim Morrison and picked "The End" as we got to the assasination of Colonel Kurtz, Martin Steen's painted head coming slowly out of the water as the music begins---and our beloved media provided sound and pictures as we stumbled along.

"Take me back
Carry me back
Down to Gasoline Alley
Where I started from"

So I'm maybe full circle now. I bought active dry yeast and King Arthur Flour, and I've been making fresh bread and rolls and pizza dough, successfully, I might add, and doing it without a machine to do the kneading and stretching. Family and friends love it, and the house smells like a delightful yesterday that may never have happened, an archetypal yesterday from frontier days when Mr. Electricity was not our friend.

"Oh the snow fell without a break
Buffalo died in the frozen fields you know
Through the coldest winter in almost fourteen years
I couldn't believe you kept a smile"

Coldest winter in almost fourteen years could never, never change your mind. Ah, the hippies were a hardy group, making up songs and destroying Holiday Inn rooms. There's something nice about a return to the old ways. I remember when I wrote only for myself, and enjoyed it as much as singing in the shower. That's another thing I will return to.

"Back to the cabin down in the woods,
Back to the horney-backed toad.
I finally found my future lies
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road"

Yard Sale

2009-12-06T08:25:00.002-05:00

My daughter Dianne put together a Yard Sale, with our old stuff and donations from her boyfriend and his mother, and then my brother and sister-in-law. She printed fliers, and she and Aliyah went around posting them. She placed ads on the internet.

Saturday came with a major threat of rain. Brother Dave and I moved tables outside and a surpising amount of boxes marked Mens Pants or Kids Books or Toys. My wife and daughter had put price tags on everything the night before, while Aliyah and I watched iCarly reruns. To complete the display, Dave hung lines of rope between trees for the hanging garments. Five minutes after we started, cars began pulling up. Aliyah and my daughter are fluent in Spanish, so they were in charge of sales. Dave and I took over the refreshments, and grunt work.

Rain came three different times, so we had to move everything inside, wait, then move back out three times, a bigger hassle then you'd think. By the end of the day we had people actually inside my house, going through boxes and the china and crystal on the dining table. Our neighbor brought her visiting niece, so Aliyah had someone her age to play with. Dianne made over a hundred dollars, on a day when the weathermen predicted we'd be rained out.

I'm a great admirer of the drive and tenacity of women, particularly my women. There's three women, three generations of women in my house, and I have learned to pretty much do whatever they tell me, and things usually work out. Sometimes I have to massage the formula, or apply brawn where brains have run their course, or bring in outside jaws when they've bitten off too much plug. But it works out. A good household takes work and trust and consideration of what others have to say. Then just go ahead and do what you're told, if you're a guy.

Amazing Stories

2009-12-04T08:31:00.003-05:00

Two stories caught my eye this morning:

Homeless brothers inherit $6.6 Billion from long-lost relative.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34264774/ns/world_news-wonderful_world/?GT1=43001
These guys were living in a cave outside Budapest, barely surviving.
True and yet gaa-gaa.

and,

Flu test wrong, girl almost dies.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/12/03/h1n1.kids.dangers/index.html
It turns out the rapid flu test for H1N1 used in most doctor's offices is accurate only 50% of the time, no better than tossing a coin. In Georgia they don't even use it anymore, since it is so unreliable. If any loved one gets sick, look to the symptoms and how the doctor makes his diagnosis. He may be wrong, and put you and yours at risk. This 9 year old nearly died before getting the proper treatment.

Black Friday

2009-11-27T09:05:00.002-05:00

Another year, another Black Friday. On the news the frenzied shoppers look like actresses hired by the large retailers and shopping malls, to help create the misguided desire for clothes made in India and shiny objects from China and plastic baby dolls that do pee-pee and poo-poo. Enough already. Go film the long line at the unemployment office, or read aloud the employment application for the chance to make $7.65 an hour on your feet all day catering to the hostile general public returning the useless crap they bought just the day before. It's Black Friday all right. The retailers would love to call it Good Friday, but that one's been taken, but the one sent to Save The Holiday Season, when the general public took their complaints out on him with all his preachifying ways.

In Jupiter, the town not the planet, a man went outside during the Thanksgiving feast and got a handgun and came in blasting away, killing 4 people, including his two 33 year old sisters and a six year old girl allowed to attend the late night (10 PM) party. He is on the run today, looking for the entrance to Hell.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1353760.html

Further proof the Muslims are not worth saving (or that Muslim women desperately need saving from this male-chauvinist religion): A 16 year old Sudanese girl is lashed 50 times because her knee length skirt is "indecent." I think it's time someone goes to court to show Muslims do not really have a religion, defended by the US Constitution. The Muslim faith is a socio-political movement and no different than Fascism or Communism or the head-hunting rituals of the wild tribes of Borneo. Muslimism is institutionalized oppression, offensive to all civilized people, and has nothing to do with anything our forefathers considered when creating freedom of religion. God is not telling these people to whip teenage girls for wearing knee-length skirts. We need to fear and be prepared to fight anyone who is told by God (directly) to do anything.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34170961/ns/world_news-africa

And from our Wonderful World reporter, Baby Is Saved From Washing Machine:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13282721/ns/world_news-wonderful_world

Hemingway and Media

2009-11-25T09:15:00.002-05:00

"Ay," he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
------------------The Old Man and The Sea, page 107.

Read Hemingway again, and feel the hard work he put into every sentence. Joyce Carol Oates in her Uncensored: Views and Reviews had an essay on Hemingway and I enjoyed reading it, and Oates's steadfast defense of the most influential literary writer of the 20th century. What is striking, when you go back and read Hemingway again, is his universality, particularly in the major works. He didn't write terse, concise prose simply to be different. He wrote language that was easy to translate into Spanish or French or Italian or even Swedish, which should be considered, because it is possible to actually try to win a Nobel Prize.

The major novels do not deal, as modern American novels do, with Life in America or the American Experience or, these days more and more, Technology and the Urban Suburban. The novels take place in Europe, in France and Spain and Italy and in little local Spain, pre-Castro Cuba.

Cormac McCarthy is the active writer I think of as carrying on the Hemingway tradition. As Jennifer Egan pointed out in her review of The Road, the novel in several places has direct references to Hemingway, like the trout in the stream in "Big Two-Hearted River" now only a faded memory for the father trying to save his son from cannibals. Perhaps Mr. McCarthy will win a Nobel Prize as well.

His body of work is certainly deserving. Critics and academics like to promote Philip Roth, master craftsman that he is. I have always found Roth's books claustrophobic, like I'm having to read over his shoulder or something. And books about New York are great for publishers and critics and industry people in NYC. But I don't know that they read the same in Tampa or Phoenix or Des Moines.

But Hemingway can be read anywhere in the world, in any language. That is quite an accomplishment for anyone.

Back at my Post

2009-11-24T09:32:00.002-05:00

Good health should not be taken for granted. Spend a week sick and you'll know this simple fact again. Yuck. The old mind-body duality produces a lot of disgust at blowing your nose then looking at the awful production in the tissue for some new diagnostic sign. Thank heaven for antibiotics! But what a waste of time.

TheHowlingFantods.com now offers some terrific DFW Web publications previously not available.http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/web-publications.html

Check out the interview between DFW and Gus Van Sant, and its discussion of Van Sant's film, Good Will Hunting, and its great script by the rookies Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/dazed.html

Also, "Consider The Lobster" and all the Harper's short pieces are available:
http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

I'm getting a lot of ananymous posts about the PIZZA HUT/ COMPLETE SAVINGS SCAM. I need to feature this somehow, but people seem better able to find it and comment than I am.

It seems to me that lit written for Kindles and similar devices should have a new format and approach. I'll be posting on what I find. To me, the format should be that of Jerzy Kozinski's Steps, a series of short pieces that add up to one coherent total by thematic unity. Another approach, a la DFW, would be to have numerous cross-references via hyperlink, to extend argument in all the directions that occur. You can add video, audio, history, Wiki, whatever. Believe it or not, there are more people interested in this than just me. We're talking the future of literature, at least fiction. Novels, etc. Imagine a Finnegans Wake with hyperlinks to the different puns and referentials, with Irish pub music and limericks. Anything can happen. And will.

Bewildering Stories

2009-11-16T08:13:00.003-05:00

My story "While Researching A Horror Story" leads off Issue 361 of Bewildering Stories so go to:
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/ and take a look. Bewildering Stories has been offering exciting sci-fi, horror and fantasy to web readers for years. Its weekly edition is a reminder of the great print pulps of the past.
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue361/researching_horror1.html

I saw Jonathan Lethem yesterday at the Miami Bookfair read a very funny section of his new novel, Chronic City. In it, eagles have made a nest on the window ledge of Richard's Manhatten apartment, and the death throes of the squirrels and rodents the birds eat are driving him crazy. But the eco-activists won't let him chase the birds away. Great stuff, and Lethem, is a dapper little guy now coming into more general recognition as a writer of merit. In the Q&A, I asked him about a movie deal I'd read about for his novel Motherless Brooklyn, with Edward Norton as Lionel Esrog, the orphaned detective with Tourette's Syndrome, trying to find the killer of his mentor. Lethem said he doesn't actually know what's up, but that he got and cashed the check from the studio like five years ago, and if they want to buy anything else and not produce it, he'd be happy to work with them.
http://www.miamibookfair.com/events/jonathan_lethem_on_emchronic_city_emben_.aspx

The Taste of Lemonade

2009-11-12T09:29:00.002-05:00

I am coming out of a funk and have a lot of things to do I've put off. My funk is related to depression or more likely malaise, a general feeling of nothing being worthwhile. Crazy bastard that I am, I draw the funk out as long as I can, savoring bad spirits like a wino does cheap wine.

I think I do that because I trust my feelings. If things seem not to be worthwhile, maybe they're not. Or my relation to the things anyway. What usually happens is I finally develop some physical symptoms, Illness As Metaphor as Susan Sontag wrote, and lay in bed ill, then gradually make changes in my diet or routine or sleeping pattern until I recover. A feeling of wellness comes to me then, not just no longer being sick, but the physicality of wellness itself, the joy of being healthy, awake, alert.

So I'm back. For months I could not write anything, an example of the funk. Even blogging seemed futile, communication seeming easier with Trafalmadorians than earthlings, and I just stopped. Now I feel like the good people of Trafalmador have sent a psychic note of appreciation and I can continue our correspondence with renewed vigor.

I want to thank Michael Gavaghen for his encouragement not only to continue revising my manuscript of my novel The Barricades of Heaven but to also establish a weekly procedure of sending out query letters to get an agent to promote the work to publishing houses. I made light of his note and basically said my book was a lemon and New York was the Big Lemon rather than the Big Apple. But now, going back into the manuscript, to prepare a second sub for FNW I should have done months ago, I find I can see the words plainly again, I can hear their cadence.
It's fun to read, and fun to work on, though just a month ago I would have sworn it to be cursed, and the source of my despair. The lemonade is delicious.

I always have trouble writing a synopsis. Today I will have to get one done, at least one that covers pages 1-27 subbed to FNW that will come up tomorrow or the next meeting. I would rather talk about themes.

In my book, technology has come up with its own alternative to Viagra, the DooMee device, which attaches to any computer with a USB or Firewire port.

There is also the related theme of augmentations, both breast and, in a new light, penis augmentation. While people have commented on the comic nature of these things, I'm quite serious. I think people are too easily surrendering their basic nature to technology, as though becoming an android is somehow superior to being a human being. The media overload has us wanting to merge with the machines. Children set other kids on fire and feel no remorse. A man goers on a rampage at an Army base and shoots fifty people and feels justified. This is what happens in an android culture. Is this really what we want?

In a related note, as Brian Williams likes to say, last night at the Miami Bookfair, author Richard Powers read from his latest novel, where scientist have found a gene for happiness.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/1328949.html

Next week my story "While Researching A Horror Story" appears at Bewilderingstories.com. This was re-written after the original, "The Haunted House", was mauled at Friday Night Writers last year. But harsh feedback is much better than praise, and shows all the weak spots to be fixed. Haunted House had plenty of weak spots. As John Dufresne pointed out, I had managed to write a horror story that was not scary. So I made changes, and cut over 7 pages, and subbed it. The editors at Bewilderingstories.com had some changes they suggested to make the story stronger. So now we have a readable product, ona story I started 10 years ago.
Check out the current issue and then next week see Issue 361 at http://www.bewilderingstories.com

Ah, smell the lemons. Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat. Remember Trini Lopez. I'll try to post a video. But some hackers or somebody seem to override the Google/YouTube feed for Blogger.com

Fun with Words and Numbers

2009-11-06T08:55:00.002-05:00

I can add two great bargain books to my collection, Michael Connelly's The Overlook and James W. Hall's Magic City, each purchased for $1.00 at my used bookstore. Both feature enduring heroes, Harry Bosch, and Thorne, hardened individuals doing the right thing in a world determined to go wrong. Both start with murders, then really get cranking. I read 100 pages of Connelly last night, and will finish both this week(end). Dr. Hall taught at the FIU Creative Writing program for years, and is not only a fine writer but a wonderful person, always with a smile at life's rich pageant. He retired this year, and has a website and blog that offer insight and perspective.

The book I finished yesterday, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is one of those extraordinary novels that combine the best of classic storytelling like Dickens with a modern perspective on writing and reading and how those two activities can actually change lives. It is one of the best books I've read in a while. I paid $16.00 for the trade paperback, and would do so again if I need a gift for a friend who reads.

What else? I'm listening to Pandora while I write, switching to my SteelyDan station, for attitude.

"Out the corner of my eye
I saw you in Rudy's
You were very high"

Or now

"So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and wave goodbye
I'll make it this time
I'm ready to cross that fine line"

I find myself wondering this morning why the US Army would train a Lebanese Muslim and not suspect he might have a serious problem going to where we are at war with Muslims. Nothing explains or justifies what this crazy murderer did. It just seems like the Army really might want to consider not arming Muslims, then upsetting them. I could be wrong, but it just seems better security that way.

I have an email from Michael Gavaghen, encouraging me to keep writing and sending out query letters. Michael worked for years, collecting rejections until he found, after all this effort, someone who would actually read his novel, and try to promote it. He recommends I send out 20 query letters a day, then 20 more. Michael is strong, like bull. His words carry much iron. Him good friend to Indian. Indian has misplaced his pipe. There is firewater in the wikiyah, that tent thing over there. While you're up, get us a couple cold ones.

Bargain Books

2009-10-29T15:09:00.003-04:00

Since I'm getting over the writing thing, I'm reading a lot more. But I can't stand paying retail for a book, except as a last resort. Even books by people I know (though I would be glad to give the author five bucks or whatever royalty might be approriate). But there are thousands, maybe millions, of good books out there, looking for readers like me, who paid $3.95 for Samuel Beckett's Three Novels forty years ago, and see no sense in paying more than that now.

Recent bargains include:

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, $1.00. This was the hardback version as well. I gave it to David Norman, since I already had the paperback.

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, $1.00. hardback. The best of the World War II novels.

Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature by Lewis Dabney, $4.98 in the Barnes&Noble clearance rack. The greatest critic of 20th century literature, Wilson knew and worked with everyone, Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W.H. Auden, Nabokov, T.S. Eliot. His Axel's Castle introduced American readers to Joyce and Proust. Incredible life story.

Uncensored: Essays by Joyce Carol Oates, $4.98 also in the B&N clearance. Essays and reviews on writers and writing. I like her better than Harold Bloom, with his obsession with Wm. Shakespeare.

You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem, $1.00 in paperback. Lethem's California novel of an indie band. Lethem is in The New Yorker, the NY Times Book Review, and on the cover of Poets&Writers, which is the marketing equivalent of being on fire.

I'd recommend all these books to serious readers, even at retail price. But at my price, they read better.

COMPLETE SAVINGS SCAM REDUX

2009-10-27T08:45:00.002-04:00

I keep getting comments by people ripped off in the SHOPPERS DISCOUNT/ COMPLETE SAVINGS scam. Briefly, what happens is, you go to a retail website, like www.pizzahut.com, and order a product. A pop-up tells you about a $5 discount for answering a survey. What it doesn't tell you is your credit card info will be forwarded to a 3rd party, COMPLETE SAVINGS or SHOPPERS DISCOUNT, and $12 amonth will start disappearing from your account. So far, I have complaints about many retailers. here is the link to the original post: http://believablelies.blogspot.com/2009/06/pizza-hut-complete-savings-scam.html
A lawyer has offered assistance in a class-action lawsuit. Please read the comments and judge for yourself. I did hear back from COMPLETE SAVINGS, and posted the letter they sent me, offering a complete refund. Please read that as well. Be warned: this company did over $700 million dollars in business last year, so the $12 a month adds up quickly when applied to the millions of online shoppers.

Friday Oct 22

2009-10-23T08:26:00.002-04:00

Soupy Sales has died. He was one of the most innovative of live TV hosts, using cheap props and slapstick to create comedy for kids and grown-ups. His bits with White Fang, a huge dog we only saw as a sock-like paw sticking through a door, were hilarious, spontaneous, inspirational.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33442972/?gt1=43001

Strange Feeling

2009-10-18T08:13:00.003-04:00

The temperature went from 94 on Thursday to 57 this morning, and it's great. I took our Husky out and let him run around in the field, a joyous exercise today instead of a prelude to heat exhaustion. Our windows are open for the first time in months, and a cool breeze from the North feels a hundred times better than a blast of air conditioning. October here set records for high temperatures, whole weeks averaging over 90 during the day, while the stores have displays of sweaters and overcoats. Now a cup of coffee out on the patio seems like something strangely overdue.

I'm covered in what are supposedly wash-off tattoos of Mickey and Tinkerbell in Halloween gear. My granddaughter treated my brother and I to a free tattoo session last night, and we bought her cans of Silly String for a mock-war with us and the dog and the furniture. She won. And I carved our 3rd jack-o-lantern, getting better at it as I go. It's a shame Halloween has become a chance for the psychos in your neighborhood to poison your kids. We end up trick-or-treating at the malls.

Obama To Umpire World Series

2009-10-12T07:56:00.002-04:00

ESPN baseball analyst Heywood Jablomi reports the President Barrack Obama will be the umpire calling strikes and balls behind home plate for the entire World Series. Players and managers alike greeted the news with enthusiam, citing Obama's record of fairness and equanimity. Meanwhile, Republican pundits are already on the attack, warning of "an ongoing Socialist diatribe with opposing batters and catchers, and a liberal strike-zone like nothing seen before."

You're Not Wasting Time After All

2009-10-02T08:42:00.002-04:00

"You have to get over the notion that you are wasting your time by sitting and writing, by thinking and feeling frustrated at what you've written, and staring out the window and doodling and closing your eyes and seeing these made-up people and imagining their lives. You are doing your job even if those who peek into your writing room and see you gazing off into space think you are squandering your life--they can't see what you see."
---------John Dufresne, in his new book, Is Life Like This? A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months, coming out in February from W.W. Norton. Quoted from Bernadette Geyer's blog, http://bernadettegeyer.blogspot.com/2009/09/quote-of-day.html

and from John himself at the Friday Night Writers meeting 9/25/09. He also said he has never written a completed novel in six months, but the book is designed to show how to get a completed draft in six months and avoid all the excuses for not doing it that arise. The quote cuts right to the heart of the matter for anyone who has ever tried to write and run a busy household.

Juanes in Cuba

2009-09-21T08:43:00.003-04:00

Colombian singing star Juanes performed a free live concert in Havana Cuba yesterday for a crowd estimated at 1.1 million people. 'Art triumphs over tyranny' should be the cheer in Miami today. It is, for the young people.

But the old Mustache Pete Cubans were out yesterday, throwing Juanes CDs into Calle Ocho in Little Havana in Miami and ran over them with a steamroller. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called the concert a "triumph for the Cuban regime" because Juanes did not cite a list of human rights violations during the show. Only the old farts believe her, as they watched more done in one day to end the dictatorship than their failed policies have accomplished in 50 years.
http://www.miamiherald.com/213/story/1243567.html

The times they are a-changin down south. What will break the old right wing Miami Cuban power base will be when the Castro regime falls during Obama's administration. Nixon and Kissinger opened up Russia and China by offering what they wanted, Levis and Pepsi-Cola. The same will work in Cuba. Many Americans believe that these Miami Cubans don't want change at all. Big frogs in a little pond become little frogs in a big pond. And you can hear the croaking loud, loud, loud today.

Bestselling

2009-09-17T09:54:00.003-04:00

Time magazine this week features a funny and insightful article by David Von Drehle on Glenn Beck, including Stephen King's description of Beck as "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother." Read it online: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1924348,00.html

It also shows that Glenn Beck is one of America's bestselling authors, and has had Top Ten NY Times bestsellers in both nonfiction and fiction, though with Beck I'm not sure how you tell the two apart.

Dan Brown continues to mine the publicity gold vein. His new book is a Number One before it's even released, and Hollywood bound as well it seems. Both of Brown's previous bestsellers, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons read like first drafts from small town writers conferences. To me this is encouraging. I like small town writers conferences.

When The Tea Party's Over

2009-09-16T08:59:00.002-04:00

How the celebrants are being duped by the private insurance companies:

http://www.slate.com/id/2228458/?from=rss

The healthy majority insured account for only 3% of total health care costs. And now their rates just went up, and they get less coverage than before. Hey, let's go out and protest healthcare reform. We like getting ripped off.

Sand in the Vaseline

2009-09-12T09:08:00.004-04:00

I loaned a friend the Talking Heads greatest hits collection, and she told me Disc 2 is now her workout music of choice. Heads made intelligent dance music, with David Byrne's unique perspective, and driving beats to keep everyone on the floor at CBGB. Like "Life During Wartime" one of a series of songs about a Second Civil War:

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites,
out by the highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstore,
lived in the ghetto,
I've lived all over this town
This ain't no party,
this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing,
or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now
http://www.elyrics.net/read/t/talking-heads-lyrics/life-during-wartime-(live)-lyrics.html

Or my favorite, "Love For Sale"

I was born in a house with the television always on
Guess I grew up too fast
And I forgot my name
We're in cities at night and we got time on our hands.
So leave the driving to us
And it's the real thing.
And you're rolling
In the blender
With me.
And I can love you
Like a colorTV.
Now love is here
C'mon and try it
I got love for sale
Got love for sale
And now love is here
C'mon and try it
Got love for sale,
Got love for sale.

"And I can love you like a color TV"----who else would say that?

Anyone needing a healthy dose of fun can check out the Jonathan Demme documentary of Talking Heads live, Stop Making Sense

Friday 9/11

2009-09-11T08:59:00.002-04:00

Believable Lies will observe a moment of silence to honor the memory of those lost on 9/11.

Believable Lies will observe a day of silence to honor the thousands of brave men and women lost as we try to make sure it never happens again.

Why We've Lost That Lovin' Feeling; Obama and 24

2009-09-07T08:30:00.004-04:00

The Obama staff seems at a loss as they try to explain the drop in popularity of the new president. They should step back, and take a look from outside, or at least pay more attention to Believable Lies.

The one thing that has pushed America back toward the Right is the constant talk of prosecution of Bush/Cheney Admin members and CIA operatives for torturing 9/11 suspects. We don't want to punish anyone for brutality to terrorists. Jack Bauer tortured terrorists right in our living rooms for years following 9/11, and we're damn glad he did. This should be a joke but it isn't. A popular Top Ten show had Keifer Sutherland using electrodes, pliers, pistols,garrots, and knives on suspected terrorists in an effort to stop their latest attack. We cheered him on as we watched. I did anyway. What America wanted more than anything and still does want more than anything is a sense of something being done about these murderous fanatics.

To have a black Attorney General talk about going after Dick Cheney for authorizing waterboarding and other extreme measures is the BIGGEST BLUNDER OF OBAMA'S CAREER. Most Americans would be happy to see Mr. Cheney retired with a medal, rather than an indictment. The Republicans await gleefully the charges to be brought. The Obama administration would be brought down almost immediately.

You can't have a President with an Arab sounding name prosecuting former Presidents who went after Arab terrorists. Whoever does the PR for Obama should be fired for not noticing so obvious a fact. And when you have black admin people going after 9/11 admin people, you put the whole effort on a racist level.

Obama had the option of stopping this and he missed his opportunity. It's killing Healthcare Reform and making pinheads like Glenn Beck look like patriots. Barack and Michele need to go to Netflix and get DVDs of 24, complete seasons. Quite honestly, if Jack Bauer had been portrayed by Will Smith instead of Keifer Sutherland, none of this would be going on. And note:
two of the Presidents on 24 were black men, who authorized extreme measures to stop the terrorists.

Descartes In Reverse

2009-09-05T16:25:00.003-04:00

After Descartes, philosophy adapted itself to Isaac Newton's mechanical universe, and the mind-body duality became what is referred to as "the ghost in the machine" with the body being the machine subject to physical laws and the mind a spirit entrapped within this meat robot.

These days, the reverse is more acceptable. The mind is the machine, a computer run by neurons and protein, constantly processing the data collected by the animate entity it finds itself embedded in. The body is like a ghost to the computer, as foreign and hard to understand as uranium. Does the mind ever understand having multiple sclerosis or cancer of the colon or any of the other fleshy horrors that attack without remorse? Does the mind understand death, or passion, or even the difference between Self and Others? Or am I an Other after all, outside the binary logic of the machine sending Tweets about a life story I hardly recognize?

Does Art matter? What does Art reveal about ghosts and machines? Why do so many artists choose suicide as their final expression? The point I make: there's a connection. The relation of the Self to the outer world, to Others, carries with it the potential to change the biochemical neurological structure of the body. A crack addict's brain chemistry is changed by the drug AND by the behavior. A smoker's body is changed by smoking. Does despair change the body? Of course it does. DFW had lost over sixty pounds of body weight before he hung himself.

It seems like understanding more about ghosts and machines is a desirable goal for Art.

The Rise of Fascism

2009-09-05T09:26:00.002-04:00

In Florida, we are seeing the fringe elements of the Right coagulate into one Fascist clot. GOP head Jim Greer does not want Florida children "to listen to Obama's socialist ideaologies" and of course, students of history will recall the same type argument being made by Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 30s. http://cbs4.com/local/florida.gop.indoctrinate.2.1165839.html

The Conservatives have disrupted Town hall meetings on healthcare reform, the fear of socialism being their motivation, as though having a public healthcare option that would help those who cannot get coverage from private insurers would lead us to communes and gulags. I cannot coverage from Aetna or Blue Cross to get follow up treatment for the melanoma I had removed two years ago. It's a pre-existing condition, one that Aetna insurance covered during the diagnosis and treatment. Now that I no longer have that job and could not afford Cobra coverage, the Conservatives have a health alternative for me: to die, from a treatable condition, because that way our American way of life will be preserved.

Give me a break, people.
The fearmongers and brown shirts need to understand, this is a matter of life and death for many Americans. And we're not going down without a fight. The Revolution talk of the 60s makes more sense now than before, except we're in power. Watch out for assassins and other patriots, looking to be on talk radio for five minutes. Beware of people who don't want their children to hear what the President of the United States has to say.

Hump Day

2009-08-26T09:06:00.004-04:00

Ted Kennedy passed away last night at 77 years of age, probably amazed the world let him go on so long when his brothers were taken so young. Senator Kennedy was never ashamed of the word Liberal, and understood better than any living American the rich history and tradition behind that term. It remains to be seen what the rest of this century brings us, and how we handle basic Liberal causes as defined by John Stuart Mill and others, to feed the hungry, shelter the poor, heal the sick, and treat all men and women (women were the first great cause of Liberals) with respect.

AARP is featuring 6 word memoirs, promoted by Larry Smith, editor of Not Quite What I was Planning:Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial, 2008). see
aarpmagazine.org/6wordmemoirs. The ones I read are more like advertising catch phrases than haiku, but are a better way to waste time than Suduko.

Wikipedia is changing its policy on contributions, and rejecting lies and personal opinions in favor of opinions and personal lies. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8222397.stm

Time magazine: What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1918352,00.html

Back to School

2009-08-24T09:06:00.002-04:00

Is there anything braver than a 5-year old going to public school for the first time? Not in my experience. You get through traffic to the overcrowded school for Opening Day and kids are screaming and crying for their mommies. Our little trooper Aliyah in her plaid uniform looks like such a big girl. She's been going to daycare since she was 3 so she's handling it and offering to help others. I've been babysitting her during the summer break. Anyone who thinks that's not a full-time job has never done it, or at least done it right. I pick her up at 2, and then we'll hear all about the first day.

Time magazine has a list of the 50 Top Websites for the year. Some I did not know about are really interesting. At Supercook.com, you type in a list of what you have in your fridge, and it tells you what recipes you can make with those ingredients. I keep getting beer cheese soup, so it shows my shopping needs.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1918031,00.html

Return of Joe McCarthy

2009-08-21T09:05:00.002-04:00

There has not been such a deliberate attempt to spread lies and fear in the USA since the Blacklist days in the 1950s, where conservative white people rose up to find the Communists every place they disagreed. The insurance companies seem to be the ones financing the smear campaign, which sounds suspicious in itself, if you think about it. I remember as a kid seeing ads in movie theatres against PayTV, and how it would destroy our freedom of information. Sarah Palin has resigned as Governor of Alaska, to help guide fellow Americans into a complete misunderstanding of The Public Option. Her brief sojourn as an elected official, approved as presidential material by people who should know better, has proven to be qualification enough to render judgments on Death Panels and Socialism. What is shocking is that so many Americans are fighting to keep health insurance through employers who will lay them off in a heartbeat to adjust the bottom line, and where 50,000 losing their jobs help the stock price to raise 13%.

Surrounded

2009-08-20T10:32:00.002-04:00

We're coming up on our 28th wedding anniversary this weekend. Not bad for folks who couldn't maintain serious relationships, I guess. The trick is to not take it seriously. And stay busy. Time flies by. I'll wait until our 30th anniversary before I'm sure this thing's going to work out.

I'm supposed to rent a truck and move a big heavy dresser and long awkward sofa to mys on's house. I've recruited my brother Dave, who makes a good point. What are these women going to do when we're 70? I'm going to be 60 this year, and he's a couple years younger. But I watched him carry two five-gallon jugs of water, one in each hand, as we unloaded the van after a trip to BJ's. Maybe we'll be doing this 10 years from now. I'm cool with that.

I'm tired of getting stupid emails from old Republicans on Medicaid telling me why they're against public health reform. And the guys at the town hall, worrying what will happen to their insurance at work should start worrying what they will do when they get laid off. I appreciate the fact that morons can speak their minds but I'd just as soon they keep it among themselves, maybe move to Alaska or somewhere farther down the line.

Days of Miracle and Wonder

2009-08-15T10:18:00.003-04:00

I was helping John Dufresne fix his Sony Vaio all-in-one gorgeous LCD/TV/computer, and got his crashed hard drive out and took it to my friends at Arco/ Data Protection Solutions. While they were working on it, John and his wife Cindy bought a Mac, the drop-dead gorgeous Mac all in one that does everything but fly around the room, which is an option you can buy at The Apple Store. They, the Dufresnes, asked if I would like to have the Sony, see if I could fix it. I was stunned.

John and I had worked a couple hours getting the screws out to remove the back cover, so with their help, I loaded the computer in several pieces in the back of my van. Later I was able to bring them the drive from the Sony, with all the data alive and well, as far as we could see, in an EzBackup SATA drive enclosure, that can plug in to any USB port.

I thank John and Cindy for their generous gift, which I'm refurbing and setting up for my daughter Dianne and her daughter Aliyah. When I got the back cover on last night, I had eight screws left over. A bad sign. The computer ran then turned itself off after a minute or too. This morning it's working;I'm using it now. The cover is off the back. After I do a screw-to-hole count I'll try remounting the back panel. For now, I'm sitting here in amazement.

Other wonders: Tropical Storm Ana has formed in the Atlantic and is heading here. We have agreed that if it has anything near the intensity of my ex-sister-in-law Ana, we will be leaving soon for the Rockies.

Returning Sunshine, Bright Future

2009-08-11T09:09:00.003-04:00

Nancy Grace has written a novel that will be a bestseller or is a bestseller or something.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/08/10/nancy.grace.novel/index.html
Read an excerpt here, and then find an abandoned copy in the Delta terminal at your local airport.http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/10/nancy.grace.prologue/index.html

Touchy, touchy: Hillary seems uptight about recent Bill Clinton success, snaps at poor African student. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/10/clinton.translation/index.html

Muslim punk bands. Sounds weird, right?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/11/generation.islam.punk.rock/index.html

Now you tell us: new GM 'Volt' will get 230 MPG.
http://cbs4.com/national/chevy.volt.mileage.2.1123052.html

New Miserable Experience

2009-08-10T10:08:00.003-04:00

News from the planet of the apes:

Women duped by diaper wearing Craiglist dude. She changed grown man's diapers and bottle-fed him then became suspicious when the payments were late.
http://cbs4.com/local/janet.schulte.melbourne.2.1121186.html

Someone is killing horses in South Florida--for the meat?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/10/horses.slaughtered/index.html

Your dog may be smarter than your kid.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/08/07/smart.dogs/index.html

Skinny Jeans Workout tones so members can button their jeans.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/10/skinny.jeans.workout/index.html

Mommy Bloggers vow to end ethical conflicts.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/10/mommy.bloggers.ethics/index.html

Zombies give life to our economic blues.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/08/06/zombie.film/index.html

Mechanics

2009-08-08T08:38:00.002-04:00

I read a DFW interview where he stated he "was a five draft man." When writing, he wrote five drafts before he sent it to his editor, revising and polishing the first two in his handwritten notebooks, then the others typed or processsed so he could get a feel of how they appeared in print. This seems like good advice, for non-certified writers like myself, trying to learn the craft by reading and paying attention to the considerate advice from published authors.

I'm printing the 242 pages of Rooster today, so I can go through line-by-line and edit the work down another twenty pages. I would say this is the fourth draft I've actually completed and printed. The other three were written in third-person POV, and somehow got sidetracked into some pseudo-literary bullshite that bogged the story down. I couldn't decide if I was telling Rooster's story or my own, so I told both, to disasterous effect. Still, making the Top 100 in the Amazon.com Breakout Novel contest was tremendously encouraging, and the scathing review by a rep from Publishers Weekly (posted here at BL and in the archives) was direct and fairly accurate and a much-needed kick in the pants. It's amazing how much I learn from negative feedback, after the indignation wears off and I make an effort to see how someone could say something so awful.

I need draft five completed by summers end. I am very close. And I have to do the same for my short story collection, Believable Lies, and have that done by mid-October. But that's mostly cutting and pasting and re-reading. Having two complete manuscripts in hand for the writers conference at Hutchinson Island in October seems like a good plan. These are the mechanics I'm using these days. Or is it mechanix? You get the idea.

The Biology of Evil

2009-08-06T09:43:00.002-04:00

The development of a Biology of Mind as a branch of science has done much to help us understand how learning functions at a subcellular level. Google Biology of Mind and you'll see some of the fantastic work that has been done. There is proof that both short-term and long-term learning are accomplished by physical changes in our neurological infrastructure. The way the neurons bind, the way certain chemicals are blocked or enhanced in movement, the influence of repeated stimulus-response over a long period of time are measurable and are the biological foundations of learning.

It seems to me that we might, in the near future, find a way to discover the biological foundation of evil, or of those behaviors that are destructive not only to an organism but also to its species as well. When you think of Darwinism, you think of the survival of the species through adaptive changes in its biology. Suppose there is a reverse-Darwinism, where the adaptive changes result in destruction and harm? Mathematically, this option has a high probability, when you start considering millions and millions of organisms over extended periods of time.

Suppose an individual with a weirdly developed personality could actually condition himself to further his weirdness. Suppose that by obsessive behavior, enhanced by making videos and computer notes about himself he could actually condition, could actually change his biological nature ever so slightly. and eliminate the self-preservation instinct. He might even eliminate the fundamental instinct common in all living things (undamaged living things), that of preservation of the species, and decide to destroy future possible "mates" as well as himself.

The information coming out about George Sodini encourages this type of speculation. All of a sudden we have repeated incidents of mass killings ending in the suicide of the shooter. Why does the suicide have to kill others first? There is something other than clinical depression at work here. In the case of Sodini, the diary and tapes point to an objectification of self; he becomes an object among other objects rather than a self among others.He watches videos of himself making plans for murder. He reinforces his most negative impulses. And I'll bet over a period of time he influenced his own biology, the same way an addict influences his own biology, to build his object-self, a robot in a man's body, with only a perverted instinct to drive him.

New Opening to Rooster

2009-08-04T10:58:00.001-04:00

Where things start and where things end are indefinite points of time, blurred by fading memory, incomplete information, personal prejudice, and denial. I will tell you this happened, then that, then after that this also happened, and make a story that seems to define the series of events I am best known for. The story may or may not agree with what you have been told by other more “objective” reporters. I’ll do my best, at any rate, to tell the truth as I remember it, though there is a certain reluctance on my part. In fact, I am sorely tempted to simply lie, to entertain you in riotous fashion as we examine my dirty life and times, and talk of money and sex and murder. Sitting at my laptop, drinking cold beer in the shade of a patio umbrella, looking back seems so much easier than late at night, alone in the darkness, when what happened will not let me sleep.
Memories are like shallow graves. They’re best approached in the daylight. Because the more you dig, the more gruesome the discovery.

Our American Dream

2009-08-04T09:18:00.005-04:00

Lottery Winner Loses $500,000 ticket on way to cash it in.
http://cbs4.com/local/lottery.winner.500.2.1111773.html
"Now, the 69-year-old retiree from Palm Beach county is hoping someone will find it and return it. The Good Samaritan, he said, would receive a cash reward."
This fellow seems completely unfamiliar with human beings. Also, he neglected to sign the ticket. So whoever finds it can cash it, no questions asked. Since the retiree can't prove it's his. Duh. I feel for the guy but God's will seems to be a major force in his life.

Family lives alone in 32 story high rise. And not by choice.
http://cbs4.com/local/family.lives.alone.2.1111989.html

Parishioners pray for help to keep churches open. Maybe a priest will find the lost lottery ticket.
http://cbs4.com/local/catholic.church.churches.2.1111462.html
Wouldn't that be a hot topic in Ethics 101?

Kill Granny campaign alarms seniors. Republicans claim Obama wants to euthanize the elderly.
I predicted this in my story, "Land of Opportunity" at Bewilderingstories.com. Only I called it Early Termination, where you get paid for opting out of life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32247482/ns/politics/

On With The Show

2009-08-01T09:47:00.003-04:00

Had a terrific time last night, with different friends from FNW meeting for drinks and thinks. I'm trying to decide whether to lay out the money for a writer's conference in October sponsored by FIU at Hutchinson's Island, or save and go to Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College in St. Pete in January. Doing both is not out of the question either. Now as my manuscripts are shaping up, I want to meet some live bodies in the publishing/editing/bookselling business, and see what I can make happen. Doing it by mail sucks, the query letters sound stupid and should be written by an agency, an agent to get me an agent, that's how awful it is. But I do good with live folks, and can at least say I tried hard. Not getting published because my query letters suck would be some kind of literary disgrace, demanding I commit seppuku on the steps of the public library. I can live with not getting published because my writing sucks, that's the nature of the business. But to not get published with no one reading my writing would make me wish I had been born a frog.

Non-popular artists

2009-07-28T09:44:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to musicians who have trouble getting their records into mass merchants like Best Buy or Barnes&Noble. These include personal favorite Tom Russell, and by using Pandora.com and creating a Tom Russell station, the site goes out and finds similar artists like Guy Clark, James McMurty, Casey Neill, John Hiatt, Josh Ritter, Joe Ely, Dave Alvin, Townes Van Zandt, Doug Sahm, Kinky Friedman, Steve Earle, even Lyle Lovett, who does get records placed. These are some of the best songwriters I've ever heard. Most of these alternative western singers have their distribution through Village Records. The link is somewhere on the blog side bar. Casey Neill has a particularly haunting song called Radio Montana on his CD Memory Against Forgetting, and I'll be buying that today.

The same is true of all types of art. Van Gogh was not popular in his own time. William Gaddis got horrible reviews for The Recognitions. There are numerous examples. I find this encouraging, since my goal in life is non-popular art, the stuff so cool it takes the average world years to catch up.

Question of Balance

2009-07-25T10:03:00.003-04:00

Did Tony really ditch Jess at IHOP?
http://wonderwall.msn.com/music/just-wondering-did-tony-romo-abandon-jessica-simpson-at-ihop-1518699.story/?gt1=28135

Legal pot in Cal?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/24/california.marijuana/index.html

Zombies, fans converge on Comic Con
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/07/24/comic.con.irpt/index.html

Salon Waxing dangers: An I-Team Investigation
http://cbs4.com/iteam/salon.waxing.dangers.2.1095055.html

Robots built to play baseball
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9847168/Japan-creates-baseball-playing-robots

10 Worst foods to eat while driving, texting:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/InsureYourCarDyn.aspx?cp-documentid=20858072

Long Live The King

2009-07-22T08:33:00.003-04:00

Stephen King has a new short story, featured on the cover of Esquire, painted on model Bar Rafaeli. That's actually the best part of the story, but he's the Kingmeister, best selling writer in history. I was just surprised reading it to find that it was so...average. The story is a kind of Faustian melodrama of ugly people doing ugly things. If today's news was not so filled with horrible things done to children, the impact might have been stronger; or if the ending wasn't so predictable.

For a gifted writer, especially someone with such a talent for horror, the 21st century must be like purgatory, where one's imagination cannot keep up with images floating by in cyberspace. King has written some of the best stories ever to be published in Esquire, like Children of the Corn, and a great scary tale published 1968 or so, when Esquire was a big slick, and had this great issue on Violence.

Stephen King is like our modern Ernest Hemingway, telling the world how to write and then slamming Stephenie Meyer,the author of Twilight, the kids' favorite vampires, when poor Stephenie probably was named after him, in some bizarre writer's consecration ritual.
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction/stephen-king-morality-0709
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29001524

Notes

2009-07-18T09:47:00.003-04:00

The passing of Walter Cronkite will not get the coverage Michael Jackson got, but hopefully it will be close. The tapes can speak for themselves, but younger broadcasters will eulogize "the most trusted man in America" and give us some insights into working with such a man. He was the real deal.

James McMurty, son of Larry, is one hell of a rocker, in a country way. 'Childish Things' is terrific.

If you're reading The Recognitions, I recommend A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren as a companion piece. You might enjoy knowing more about the hundreds of historic figures mentioned and what they actually did to compound any of the various frauds cited.

Follow Up

2009-07-11T09:01:00.003-04:00

Note: I have received the additional 6 credits mentioned in the WebLoyalty letter posted last. That makes $96.00 returned in the last week, money that had been charged to our account $12.00 at a time by COMPLETE SAVINGS and SHOPPERS DISCOUNT. Their customer service lady is true to her word, and that's why I'm glad I posted her letter. I also cancelled our credit card and obtained a new one, as a precaution against further charges, computer errors, or whatever else might happen.

Steve Raichlen is the best of all the TV grilling chefs. His recipes are simple and demonstrated step by step on his PBS show. If you like cooking outdoors, he's the man. Even things like salmon, which we want to eat more of for the Omegas, etc., are made in tasty new recipes that kill the fishy stink kids object to and add new flavors. I like the mustard and brown sugar topping for salmon filets on cedar planks. Even people who don't like salmon ask for seconds.
http://charlotteblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/friday-june-26-grilling-with-pbs-steven-raichlen/

Military Couple Denied Trip Over Passport Problem:
he didn't have time to get a passport since he was in Iraq. What's wrong with this picture?
http://cbs4.com/local/military.couple.vacation.2.1081578.html

Response from Complete Savings/Shoppers Discount

2009-07-08T11:20:00.002-04:00

Dear Neil:

We recently read the comments you posted on your blog, https://believablelies.blogspot.com, about our membership programs, Complete Savings and Shopper Discounts & Rewards and we'd like to take the opportunity to try to address the concern you expressed in your comments.

We checked our records and found that your Complete Savings membership was cancelled on July 1, 2009. This membership was enrolled with your name, Neil Crabtree. There were two monthly membership charges for this membership. At the time of the cancellation of this membership a refund for both of these charges was processed. These refunds should appear as credits in your account. You will not be billed again for this membership.

We also found a Shopper Discounts & Rewards membership enrolled with the same credit card number used to enroll the Complete Saving membership. The Shopper Discounts & Rewards membership was enrolled with the name Annmarie xxxxxx. This membership was still active, so we cancelled it today. There were ten monthly membership charges that we processed for this membership. Today we processed a refund of the 6 most recent monthly membership charges. These refunds should appear shortly as credits in your account depending upon how frequently your credit card issuer posts transactions. You will not be billed again for this membership.

Here is how each of these memberships was enrolled:

Shopper Discounts & Rewards Membership:

Our records show that on August 12, 2009 when Annmarie completed an online transaction at www.domestications.com, she enrolled in Shopper Discounts & Rewards by clicking on a $10 cash back award and then entering her email address twice and then clicking the "YES" button on the enrollment form. Directly above the section for entering email addresses, the text advised her that she was authorizing the secure transfer of her name, address and credit or debit card information to Shopper Discounts & Rewards for billing and benefit processing. We've attached a copy of this page for your review. Immediately after accepting the membership offer she was presented with a membership acknowledgement page. Within 10 minutes of the enrollment, a membership confirmation email with details on how to use the membership was sent to her email address. We sent seventeen more more emails to her email address from August 12, 2009 through July 8, 2009 with details of the membership. The one that was sent to her on August 20, 2009 advised her that her 30-day free trial period was ending in 14 days and that she would be charged if she did not cancel the membership before the trial ended.

Complete Savings Membership:

Our records show that on April 29, 2009, when you completed an online transaction at www.pizzahut.com you enrolled in Complete Savings by clicking on a $10 cash back award and then entering your email address twice and then clicking the "YES" button on the enrollment form. The email address you entered was xxxxxx@hotmail.com. Directly above the section for entering email addresses, the text advised you that you were authorizing the secure transfer of your name, address and credit or debit card information to Complete Savings for billing and benefit processing. We've attached a copy of this page for your review. Immediately after accepting the membership offer you were presented with a membership acknowledgement page. Within 10 minutes of the enrollment, a membership confirmation email with details on how to use the membership was sent to your email address. We sent seven more more emails to your email address from April 29, 2009 through June 28, 2009 with details of the membership. The one that was sent to you on May 16, 2009 advised you that your 30-day free trial period was ending in 14 days and that you would be charged if you did not cancel the membership before the trial ended.

There are four remaining charges on the Shopper Discounts & Rewards membership. We provide more than six months of refunds only if a consumer believes charges relating to Shopper Discounts & Rewards are the result of unauthorized activity on their credit/debit card or PayPal account. If, after reviewing the information above, you believe certain account activity was unauthorized, you may request an additional refund by completing the affidavit available by clicking here and returning it to us via mail to Shopper Discounts & Rewards, P.O. Box 855, Shelton CT 06484 within 30 days of receiving this email. To assist you in completing your affidavit, the membership number for the Shopper Discounts is xxxxxx. We will review your request and respond by email with our determination within thirty days of our receipt of all required information and documentation from you.

We hope this helps to clarify how the memberships were enrolled and how we obtained authorization to charge the monthly membership charges to your credit card. If you have questions regarding this matter or suggestions for improving our service, please contact us at consumeraffairs@webloyalty.com.
Regards,
Mary O'Reilly
Webloyalty Consumer Affairs
Complete Savings

Cars.gov

2009-07-07T10:14:00.003-04:00

The Car Allowance funding went into effect July 1st, and more Americans will get screwed out of that money than ever before. I have a 1998 Dodge Caravan with airconditioning (it's 95 outside right now) and the fueleconomy.gov website told me last month I got 19 MPG Combined, 1 more than MPG than the qualifier of 18. That's bullshit. The car has never gotten that kind of mileage, and especially not here in Miami, where city driving is bumper-to-bumper half the day.
This month the same Fueleconomy.gov website says my van now gets 20 MPG, picking up an extra mile somewhere, while sitting in the driveway. So I can't get the Car Allowance.

But I can't get a bank loan either, from banks bailed out by tax payer dollars. The credit policy is so much stricter than last year, we can't qualify. So we're screwed either way.

I personally am becoming very disenchanted with the People magazine president. Not just this car crap, I'll always have a car. But Mr. Obama and his wife are on the news every day for celebrity buzz items that have nothing to do with substantial change in healthcare or education or even providing jobs. I even got an email from The White House (since I signed up for it) telling me to Roll Up My Sleeves. The context is that I can volunteer to work for nothing in some God-forsaken hellhole, while the White House takes credit for it. Uh, no thanks, Mr. President. I'll be out trying to find a shyster to get me a high-interest car loan.