Twits

Keep two eyes out for upcoming twit-fic from me. I've got a story at @thaumatrope on May 31st and my first ever story at @nanoism on June 1st.

My daughter went to her first nighttime dance tonight. They called it a prom (even though it was eighth grade) and dressed up. Her mother and I had to convince our little anti-social butterfly to go. She ended up having a great time.

Almost done tagging everything. I'll let you know.

Maybes And Might Bes

I'm finishing up a flash fiction story called A Body is for Driving though I may change the title. I'm also still fooling around with chapters eleven and twelve of TIWOTAM. And I want ice cream.

Not much else is going on. I'll be on The Sofanauts in about a week and a half. I may be on Aural Delights next week with Fiction Crawler 7.

Also, I'm working on getting all my posts tagged here because there is a small but ferocious group of people following me who are only interested in the flash fiction I used to post here. So when I get that done, I'll let everyone know, then they can just search for the flash fiction tag and all of that will come up. I think I have over two hundred pieces of flash tucked away here. Golly!

Lavie Tidhar On The Sofa

This week StarShipSofa is pleased to present Aural Delights no. 86 a day early. Blast off!

Aural Delights No 86 Lavie Tidhar

Poetry: E7 by Curtis Hilgenberg

Fact Article: Extreme Geek by Cory Doctorow

Main Fiction: Transylvanian Mission by Lavie Tidhar

Fact Article: Survivors by The English Assassin

Narrators: Julie Davis

Paul Caggige

JJ Campanella

www.starshipsofa.com

Young Fellow My Lad

Today is Memorial Day in the states, when we honor our fallen warriors. My dad used to recite bits of this poem to me. My dad's still around, he just doesn't recite bits of this poem to me anymore. It always brings tears to my eyes. Even when I was a kid. Even when I read it just now.

Young Fellow My Lad

"Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad,
On this glittering morn of May?"
"I'm going to join the Colours, Dad;
They're looking for men, they say."
"But you're only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad;
You aren't obliged to go."
"I'm seventeen and a quarter, Dad,
And ever so strong, you know."

"So you're off to France, Young Fellow My Lad,
And you're looking so fit and bright."
"I'm terribly sorry to leave you, Dad,
But I feel that I'm doing right."
"God bless you and keep you, Young Fellow My Lad,
You're all of my life, you know."
"Don't worry. I'll soon be back, dear Dad,
And I'm awfully proud to go."

"Why don't you write, Young Fellow My Lad?
I watch for the post each day;
And I miss you so, and I'm awfully sad,
And it's months since you went away.
And I've had the fire in the parlour lit,
And I'm keeping it burning bright
Till my boy comes home; and here I sit
Into the quiet night.

"What is the matter, Young Fellow My Lad?
No letter again to-day.
Why did the postman look so sad,
And sigh as he turned away?
I hear them tell that we've gained new ground,
But a terrible price we've paid:
God grant, my boy, that you're safe and sound;
But oh I'm afraid, afraid."

"They've told me the truth, Young Fellow My Lad:
You'll never come back again:
(Oh God! the dreams and the dreams I've had,
and the hopes I've nursed in vain!)
For you passed in the night, Young Fellow My Lad,
And you proved in the cruel test
Of the screaming shell and the battle hell
That my boy was one of the best.
"So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad,
In the gleam of the evening star,
In the wood-note wild and the laugh of the child,
In all sweet things that are.
And you'll never die, my wonderful boy,
While life is noble and true;
For all our beauty and hope and joy
We will owe to our lads like you."

-Robert W. Service

A Bunch Of Things

Welcome new follower and fellow Twit, Meika! The army grows. Meika's a sculptor from Tasmania. Yes, that's a real place, Americans. If you follow him on Twitter (@meika) you know that he has a strange fondness for wallaby dung (no, really).

Here's some great music you can listen to online at NPR.org, probably for a limited time. It's a collaboration between Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and David Lynch with lots of nifty guests like Iggy Pop and Frank Black among others. David Lynch sings! It's called Dark Night of the Soul. Just click the title, you'll get there. My favorite track is Star Eyes. Cool stuff!

Sent out story 111 yesterday, The Circle of Life. I took another stab at the novel (The Inner Workings of the Artificial Mind) today, reworking chapter 11 which was a confusing mess. I think I originally wrote it twice, with two different foci in mind and today I mashed it all together into one narrative string. I want to go back to it and reread it in a couple of days to make sure it doesn't completely suck, but it's done for today.

Also, I'm digging around in my head for a flash fiction idea for this contest. You writers out there may want to take a crack at it yourselves. There's money to be had! Yay, money! Not that I'm a whore, or anything. We prefer to call ourselves Ladies of the Night.

A nifty Sofanauts this week. Amy's on with Tony, Jeremy and Paul Raven. They talk Orson Scott Card, Star Trek, mundane science fiction and other geeky things.

That's all for now. Tomorrow, I'll post a poem for Memorial Day. Not my poetry, but some good stuff by a dead guy. You look at all the poetry out there and most of the good stuff seems to be written by dead people. Discrimination? You decide.

The Mangoes Are Coming! The Mangoes Are Coming!

The bounty of my yard. If the sausage trees that Adam West tried to grow in Family Guy actually existed, they might look something like this. These aren't actually sausages, or dog poo, but tamarinds. The former wife makes tamarind balls with them, mixing them with sugar and something else. They're her version of junk food.




We've got two coconut trees in the front yard donated long ago by my father-in-law. He assured us they'd only grow to about six feet. Maybe those are Trinidadian feet, because the mother-fuckers got to something like twenty feet tall. This one is hella laden, though they've still got some maturing to do. As Merv said, I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.




The cashews have yet to come in. They're still flowersin' as the former wife would say. Lazy cashews!




And finally, we've had a couple of mango trees in the backyard for something like ten years and the bastards haven't done a thing for us. Now for the first time, we've got hot mango action happening back there. The stupid camera decided to focus on the trunk rather than the fruit, but the fruit doesn't look too bad. Soon it will be mango party time.

Read Me

Here's the link for Purgatory is for Pencils: http://everydayweirdness.com/e/20090522/ Enjoy!

I'm not shilling books or anything, but I want to turn you guys on to some fun looking stuff that's come into the store in the past couple of days:

The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson

I love this quote from the back cover:

“Holly Robinson reveals a fascinating, untold chapter in the history of the Mongolian gerbil in the United State as she brings us back to a time before play dates, bike helmets, or other adult meddling in private childhood affairs and tells with vivid clarity of growing up in America in the 60s - 70s, all the while struggling to hide a terrible family secret–the barns in the backyard house 9000 gerbils.” –Donna Anastasi, President of the American Gerbil Society and author of The Complete Guide to Gerbil Care

Tiny Titans Vol. 2: Adventures in Awesomeness

by Art Baltazar and Franco

The art in this book rocks. It's exactly the style you see on the cover throughout the book.






Creative Cursing: A Mix 'n' Match Profanity Generator by Sarah Royal and Jillian Panarese

This book is AWESOME! This is the one that I'm showing to all my fellow employees. Truly a spiral bound good time.

The Eleven Percent Solution

I finally sent out Gray Holes, so that story is now number 110. I am now eleven percent of the way toward my goal. Make way! Make way!

My story, Purgatory is for Pencils should be up at Everyday Weirdness tomorrow. I'll post the link then.

StarShipSofa - Aural Delights No. 85

The new Sofer's here! The new Sofer's here!



This week, StarShipSofa is pleased to present Aural Delights no. 85. Blast off!

Aural Delights No 85 Jeremiah Talbot

Editorial: The Sofanauts by Tony C Smith

Fact: Comic Book Outsiders

Main Fiction: Culture Activistv by Jeremiah Talbot

Fact: Science News by JJ Campanella

Narrators: Ray Sizemore

www.starshipsofa.com

Crappy

That didn't take long, did it? Actually, I'm just super-tired from a couple nights of little sleep and I also have a bit of a cold, probably caught from my daughter and probably because my resistance is low. Good news is that I have tomorrow off and I'm crashing early tonight.

Happy

Gaa! Already blew the once a day thing! If only I'd posted an hour and a half ago.

The big news is I'm happy! That doesn't usually happen, but I'm not usually this productive. In the last few days I finished a new story called Gray Holes (though it doesn't earn its number till I send it out), wrote a story for my boss to make her boss happy (and I had a blast writing it), got started on helping the daughter with her eighth grade graduation speech, and wrote, recorded and sent out Fiction Crawler 7.

Creation makes me feel good.

Hope I keep it up.

Sorry, Bloggie

Sorry, Blog, I don't know why I've ignored you for the past week. I'll post short things and try to get back back to a daily routine.

I think that if Republican politicians keep pissing in their pants when they offend the far right loons in their party, they're going to wind up with two separate parties. There are a lot of sane Republicans who want no part of that crazy bullshit.

Mom

Yesterday I wrote two twitfics called A Couple of Three Packs (106) and One Wheel (107). Today I wrote two pieces of flash fiction, Disease Control (108) and The Wind in His Helmet (109).

Today was Mother's Day here in the states. I bought the former wife some flowers and a card and breakfast. I usually wish her mom a happy one as well, but she's somewhere in Trinidad this month and not as available as she usually is.

My own mom died some seventeen years ago from colon cancer. She was fifty-nine years old. She was a good person. Mom had food for anyone who dropped by the house. She didn't like it when one person won everything on Wheel of Fortune. She wanted everyone to win something. She stretched a dollar till it wept to feed a family of seven fattish people. She was the ninth child of Portuguese immigrants. Her father died three months before she was born. When she was a girl she ran with the Girl Scouts for a while and loved it, but she had to drop out when it was time to buy uniforms because the family couldn't afford one.

She was the first person in her family to graduate high school and she worked as as a secretary to a coroner, hovering near the dead as she took shorthand during examinations. She met my Dad at the hospital where she worked. He was a veteran of World War II who had knocked around a bit and was a baker's assistant at the hospital. My uncle introduced them. She saw five kids into adulthood and put up with more crap from all of us (Dad included) than anyone should be asked to. She was very happy about the move to Florida after fifty-four years in New England. She had a pool, she had sunshine.

She brought her sister down to live with them, when her sister could no longer take care of herself. My Aunt Elsie had kidney problems, was on dialysis for years and apparently the medicine she was taking was shrinking her brain. That's what I was told anyway. The result was something very much like Alzheimer's. And mom helped Elsie, took her out, fed her, bathed her when it became necessary, until very close to the end of Elsie's life. It took a lot out of my mom.

Mom had medical issues that I wasn't told about. She beat cancer once, sick from chemotherapy. About a year and a half later it found her again. Her stomach became enormous, she looked pregnant. She wanted to die at home. A hospital bed was set up in my parents' bedroom and my dad took care of her, saw to her every need as she had seen to Elsie's. Mom fell in love with dad for a second time. Just days after my sisters went back home after saying their goodbyes, Mom let go of the struggle. The last time I saw her she was breathing very short and shallow breaths. She was aided by an oxygen tank. I asked her how she was and she said, "Not very good." We talked for a few minutes and I kissed her and told her I loved her which is something I didn't say very often. She died early the next morning after staying up all night talking to my father. My eyes have gotten all wet writing this.

She was born Laura Katherine Nobriga and died at a much too young fifty-nine years old. She loved romance novels and horror movies and loved to sing out loud even though I told her what a bad singer she was all the time. Needless to say I was not a model son, but I loved her and now that I'm a dad I understand that she would have loved me no matter how big a wiener I was. Mom's are great for that.

105

Finished 105 yesterday, a little something called CITY1.

Denise Moody-Tackley

It took the daughter to the library yesterday and we enjoyed an unexpected treat: Art by Denise Moody-Tackley. She makes wedding dresses using the trappings of domestic life. And trappings is the appropriate word here. We saw gowns made from copper dish-scrubbing pads, mop-heads, safety pins, bedding, garbage bags and divorce papers. You can find a few photos of her work here, here and here. If you live near me, you can see her work at the St. Lucie County/IRSC/FAU library in St. Lucie West. I don't know how long her work will be there.

States the artist:

Examining how stereotypical views of women are constructed from the responsibilities of everyday life is the starting point of my work. For years I have been confronted with gender issues, boundary concerns, class differences, and the interpretation of the feminine identity. With the help of everyday objects that are inherent to a woman's life I create puns, wry and biting remarks about traditional women's roles.With safety pins, garbage bags, mops, doormats, and a myriad of seemingly insignificant objects, I build women's garments to question accepted notions of female identity. Long, flowing, traditional wedding dresses twist the idea of women's fashion and the ascribed roles they carry. What is believed and passed on moves from the internal to the external, clear markings and identifiers of expected women's knowledge worn like a badge, like a uniform.

Gettin' Cocked At The Bookstore!

I had to bounce a drunk yesterday. Not something that happens everyday at a bookstore. This guy spilled a bottle all over the floor in our cafe and it was red wine. One of our cafe ladies cleaned it up. One of my boss ladies points the guy out to me, day-glo green shirt and big sunglasses. She's a softie, so I guess that's why she didn't throw him out. Later another employee tells me someone left a trail of puke on the way to the bathroom. Gee, I wonder who that could be? I mop up purple, wine-smelling vomit from the tiles and the carpet and this woman comes up to me complaining that this drunk guy pulled up a chair in the cafe and started hanging with her son (the kid looked to be about fifteen). I explained that I was cleaning up his vomit right in front of her and if the guy was still in the store I was going to toss him. I go into the bathroom and the guy has his sunglasses off. He looks totally fried.

I said, "Hey, man, you gotta hit the road. Customers are complaining about you and we're having to clean up after you. It's time to head out the door."

He said, "Am I that bad?"

I said, "Yeah."

I followed him to the exit and he said, "Sorry." Then I went back to the men's room to clean more purple vomit off of the floor and urinal.

Who's up for a glamorous career in retail?

For The Love of Keely

Check out my cyberpunk story, For the Love of Ceelie at Fusion Fragment:
http://www.apodispublishing.com/fusion/pages/09_ceelie.htm

Are they shortening days now? Seems so. I did inventory at another store last night. After a long drive home and picking up the dog from the former wife's house and basically screwing around online, I got to sleep around 5:30 this morning. That'll foul up your day. My day off doesn't seem off enough. Or enough off.

A six part Alan Moore interview at Newsarama. Sorry I had to post it like this, but they don't seem to have links to all six parts until you reach part six:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040924-Moore1910.html
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040927-Moore2.html
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040928-Moore3.html
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040929-Moore4.html
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040930-Moore5.html
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/050901-Moore6.html

What a shame the solo's cut on this next one. I love you Keely. Louis fuckin' swings!