random enumerations

Greetings in the name of his Majesty, Emperor Hailie Selassie I! Jah! Rastafari! & I say that, in spite of not having sailed a submarine for a couple of months now, not since the birth of "Trinities"--or sharing this religious belief of the holy U-boat, or any religion at all; with my paranoid schizophrenia, it's best to stay away from religion, for whatever it eats, it hates. Yet I find myself strangely attracted to the Cult of the Dyer, perhaps because of the deluxe & delightful Bumble Bee Girl. It's good for her, & whatever the reasons for religion's existence may be, it is adaptive, & something we do because we are human, & screw the Limousine Liberal, opiates are good for people.

Yesterday, the Perky Pam Layout was closed, because Cheri was gone, so I re-made/re-modeled "Trinities" in the morning. We met Kathy at the Soup Kitchen, then she came over here to clean our dream home. We watched a couple episodes of Buffy, then Trish went to have her hair trimmed. When Kathy finished, we watched our new Shania Twain DVD, & then she had to split, because she had no time to waste. After supper--fish sticks & tater tots--I worked on "Trinities" some more. My intention is to submit it to Critters (www.critique.org) by Wednesday, in time to do an MPC (Most Preductive Critter) Award, so I can have it reviewed immediately, & off in the mail back to Analog shortly. aburt is going out of town in June for a month, so if I wanna do this thing, I hafta do it fast.

Critters, for those of you not familiar with it, is the online science fiction, fantasy, & horror writers' workshop of which I'm a member. I'd highly recommend it to anyone thinking of becoming a science fiction author, especially a pro writer. The workshop is, of course, of most benefit to people who write "formula" literature; someone like myself, who actually does boldly go where Nobodaddy has gone before, usually receives bad advice from the group. Their advice on The Mind-Warp Era was so bad I had aburt yank the remaining chapters from the queue, & I finally resorted to POD just to see it in print. Which may have been a mistake; books are expensive & sales are poor.

However, Ted Grosch has just emailed me last night, concerning a proposed parallel document, The Bio-Psych Wars, still about W.C. "Lead" Leadbeater, but done within the confines of the SF genre, even, if possible, the hard science sub-genre. This means figuring out how the monad & Bender Shaft both work. You can still buy the original at www.iUniverse.com or www.amazon.com, but the re-make/re-model, difficult though doing it might be, we want to submit to Analog as a potential serial. OK, if it doesn't sell there, we send the book off to all the familiar genre publishers, but the benchmark I am pressing for is publication in that magazine.

The Perky Pam Layout will be open today--oh, yummy, lunch without a bowl of soup!--& the mighty Insect Slayer & I will be going shortly, even though I should probably stay home & rework "Trinities". It's approaching the point of being "done", though, so I'll look at it tonight once more (probably without inviting Jeffer Auss over), then reformat the thing to Critters format & save it as a text file, so I can email it. I only have one day to do this in, as the new batch of stories at Critters comes out every Wednesday, & that day I'm being TAed by Carmen, as she's going to a rock-&-roll concert--the Egos, I believe--Thursday & Friday. Fred is coming over this afternoon to teach Trish guitar, so I only have a day, perhaps even 1/2 a day, to goof off once "Trinities" is sent off, then I have to start writing critiques. Same deal as last time (23 crits): start with the SF stories, move on to F, then do H as a last resort.

& so it goes. (I am really Curt Vague-&-Nuts. I wrote Venus on the Half-Shell, but lost all the buckadingdongs in the lawsuit.)

Biggolith

Today, the Mighty Insect Slayer & I woke up around 8:00; Sunday morning, day is dawning--after a hard night's work for her & a surprise birthday party for her the day before; thanks, Ed & Denise, for the scrumptious cake. So we went to Church, & the place was packed, because it was a combination First Communion/Confirmation thingy. We headed on out as soon as Communion was over, walked like a car to our dream home, & then Biggolith, the dread Blanket-man, picked us up in his batmobile for a large meal at his house. What can I say? As usual, the two of them, Dave & his wife Karen, started in with all their nutty paranoid ideas; then we watched "The Omega Code II", which is a nutty paranoid movie, & Karen wouldn't shut up during it, so we finally headed for home on the excuse that Trish needed to take her meds--which, I'm telling you, is something those two need to do.

Happy birthday, Mighty Insect Slayer (aka "Bumble Bee Girl"

Today is the birthday of the woman I love, even more than life itself, even more than God and Sisyphus taken together, the eternal Dyad of struggle & salvation -- for the only thing beyond God is Sisyphus, & She waits in silent dawn & explosive twilight to receive him, even as Her avatar Dyes.

Yes, today is Trish's birthday. She was born on May 21, 1967, the Summer of Love. Peace. Love. Drug. Unfortunately, I haven't found a gift for her yet. I could go to Sally Ann's -- the Army's up the road -- to buy her another teddy bear, but that's kinda lame cuz she has so many already. I was also trying to surprise her with a party, but Kathy was out of town yesterday, along with Trish, for their appointment with Doc Larocque, I have yet to contact Colleen (the Noncorean one), & why is it that I have so many Invisible girlfriends when I wasn't able to find one in the City of Night, not even the archetypal Vadisystem?

Sure, if I ever showed up at a class reunion with Trish, that dread Vadisystem, the Invisible Lampshade, would call her a dog. So what does he do? Screw VD & Karen Relationships. Screw them both, anyway. Love is something the dire Lampshade doesn't understand; he's more shallow than Hell & can go there.

Yesterday, Trish was in Great Falls (the Fargo of the Invisible landscape), to visit Doc Larocque, who took her off Zyprexa, not to be scoobified (screw dem Scoobies), but because she may not need it anymore -- besides, it's near-impossible to lose weight on Zyprexa & most people gain. It was originally invented as a modification of the Clozaril molecule, intended to eliminate the side-effects -- loss of white cells, potentially resulting in death (the state & not the Substance), & therefore requiring an expensive weekly blood test, which insurance companies hate.

She went to Electric City the night before; early evening, actually. Karen the Kaseworker (no relation to Relationships) drove up in her batmobile around 5:00, along with Kathy; both of them had appointments Thursday. I stayed up for awhile after they left, doing what, I don't remember, save that I think I watched a movie on TV, as I recollect going to bed before 10:00, when some movie I was watching on TV ended. Woke up later than usual for me -- almost 9:00, so last night I cut it down to one sleeping pill & got up at 6:00 this morning, sleep being the primary indicator of where I am in the manic-depressive continuum. Having awakened, I did my internet thingy more briefly than usual -- I didn't even read all the science news on CNN.com -- & went to the Perky Pam Layout for lunch, a good place to blow your diet. I had a food stamp appointment at 1:30 -- among the many reasons I didn't go to Electric with the mighty Insect Slayer -- so I stopped in at the library, to try to find Muhammad Ali's address. Since he's a character in my hot book, The Mind-Warp Era, (under pen name W.C. Leadbeater & available from ), I want to send him an autographed copy, so that it might become a best seller among the ghetto defendants. I ran into Sharon, not the Sharalike one, but my best friend's girl, & she said hi, then I went to El Taco Loco to sit around & sip Diet Coke & Pepsi (they have both) until it was time for my appointment. Unfortunately, they're cutting our food stamps back to 10 buckadingdongs a month.

Anyway, after that I went home & watched my Yes DVD until 3:00, when I went out onto the porch to wait for the Bumble Bee Girl. Karen drove up in a white car. Trish then went down in the basement to veg out to alternative. When she went to work I went online, wasted some time on ICQ, then went to work on the Invisible Hog. What can I say about the Hog? The Hog is super Kool. He'll surely be a big hit with all the kids in the comic book stores.

Then Carmen picked me up to do her TA thing & to pick Trish up from McRonald's, where she had a fish sandwich, not a Bozo Burger. Once home, we watched the Shania Twain DVD Trish had bought in Electric; we decided to wait until today to watch Barb Wire; innocence raped with napalm fire -- at least, that's the story behind Alfalfa High & the NORML guys who lived there, especially including the Vadisystems.

So, right now, she's in the shower, in order to prepare us to see Joe (Nobodaddy calls him by his last name). I think I'll treat her to lunch at the Rock-&-Roll Restaurant as a birthday gift. Better than Bozo Burgers & comes with natural fries.

So that's it for today's post & see you tomorrow.

The Loneliness of the All

So, my daily blog, when I should be working on Ted's story. God & this hard science stuff is hard to write, I'd rather just be 2 old 2 rock-&-roll & 2 Jung to die--but I lack a magic flute. Or an atomic bong.

The Loneliness hasn't hit yet, the same way I didn't know the Music was my only friend until the End &/or when I met Timothy Leary. Mostly, it'll sink in about the time Bumble Bee Girl usually returns from work--she's in the Fargo of the Invisible Landscape today, along with Karen & Kathy, for her visit to the psychiatrist there tomorrow; I mean, there are no Invisible psychiatrists.

I hope Doc Larocque can discover what the problem is. Since her seizure, Trish has been acting differently, & the exit summary from the Invisible Hospital said she had some brain lesions. Or maybe she just needs more Zyprexa.

Wish I had a real atomic submarine. I'll have to talk to NJ Weedman about that--I'm planning to use him in my comic book. Harlan Ellison is going to love it, as he's also 2 old to rock-&-roll: everything he done was Yesterday, & I'd rather remain living in the past.

Nicotine-free Jim
PS: Still Nicotine-free after all these years.

don't touch me, I'm a real live wire

Can't sleep cuz my bed's on fire... woke up at 4:34 last night, couldn't return to sleep. My mood is shifting. Down, down, down. Die, die, die, literally die. God & I'll be glad the next time Perky Pam puts a spike into my vein. Haldol: it's my wife & it's my life...

bummed out

Well, I just got onto sfwa.org, the homepage of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, & looked up iUniverse in their section about POD. Turns out the average iUniverse title only sells 150 copies; mine at 6 doesn't even come close. The main problem is, I'm a good writer, but I just can't handle the business end of things, & though I try to be a science fiction writer, most of my stuff is of more interest to lit-crit types than it is to editors who run magazines featuring demons & wizards on the covers. So Heidi Hollis talked them up to me at MisCon 3 years ago; she's the author of a popular book on UFOs. It worked for her because there are always people who read UFO books; books by & about insane science fiction authors go unread because, beyond NAMI, there's no market for them. So I've been feeling down since then; guess I should've checked out the SFWA page in the first place. My wife, mighty insect-slayer she, is watching her Battlestar Galactica DVD as I type this; I got bored & decided to amuse myself by typing something on the computer. If there's anyone out there reading this, buy my book (yeah, right!) & remember--all my highs are invisible.

random enumerations

Hoody, hoody, hoo, as Hoppy Harrington would say,

Yeah, & I'm still trying to be the world's greatest living science fiction author & better than the dead ones. It's hard, though (& I'm not talking about my Philip K. Fantasy here)--I've been at it 25 years or more, & a pro sale to an SF magazine yet eludes me. Sure, The Mind-Warp Era was published, but that was POD, & has barely sold. Ever since I was a Jung lad (though my Rootboy is the Savage Id) I dreamed of making my living tormenting my typewriter; ever since that A+ in an English class in the Invisible High (& all my highs are invisible). So when I went to the City of Night for college, I signed up in an interdisciplinary program, in order to study the genre. Guess what? The first thing I did, I got a Shakespeare comparison for. Then I tried to submit it to some of these magazines: form letter after form letter; The Tome finally published it--at 1/4 cent a word, & never sent me the check--though editor David Niall Wilson says he fondly remembers it as an example of "what [he] calls the truly surreal".

The original story, like the original Masters (yes, they gave me money to come back to grad school) was created exclusively while sailing the darkened seas in a great big submarine (you have to read the book to figure that one out). So there was the inevitable burnout; I wound up sailing the Bobo Boat after VADIS' boy-fiends deliberately conned me into drinking a bottle of vodka on top of 4 hits of acid--realistically, you can con a person on acid into doing just about anything; Rachel be damned. So basically, it was a fraternity setup, & what kind of girl (but she was a boy-chick) lives in a fraternity house? Alfalfa High, the Drug Fraternity.

Yes, there have been lucid intervals. Yes, the editor of Asimov's used to love my stuff, with his usual caveat, "it isn't right for us"--unfortunately, he left the magazine & took his love of my Dick imitation with him. So here I sit with a story his replacement rejected, & I was pretty upset about it over the weekend--not the rejection itself, but rejection in the form of a form letter; I mean, I'm sick & tired of being treated like an amateur, after a major institution gave me Special Honors for it--& buckadingdongs to continue my education. When I reread it last night, though, it became obvious from the creases that Sheila Williams had only read the first 2 pages--I'd committed the same kind of mistake as submitting a Heavy Metal song to a country station. (I'm a Heavy Metal addict from the planet Uranus.) So mostly it's a matter of, when are they going to legalize submarines for medical purposes? Once I have my U-boat, reclaiming my former glory should be no problem. Though I'm thru with submarine sandwiches (Scooby-doobie material interlaced with reactor fuel); I mean, the risk of cancer isn't worth it.

Mostly, I'm just going to send the story on. That's all I can do. No matter how futile it might seem. & all you girls with your sweet talk, you can all go take a walk--save for the most beautiful one of all, Bumble Bee Girl.

That's it for now. See you tomorrow.

The Mind-Warp Era

Have you checked out The Mind-Warp Erayet? The book that breaks all barricades, hard-driven & stretching the rules of language? Consider the true Rootboy covered with slime--he travels the murky waters of the collective unconscious, the penisnake who calls himself "the Savage Id", blithely unaware of Reality--& when he ignores it, it goes away.