Wherein I Am Revealed To Be A Big Stoopidhead

See that church in my last post? That wasn't my church. I told you my sister, Deb, could explain more. She did. Also, she's actually seven years younger than me rather than eleven years older. I guess I had forgotten that as well.

Here's the deal: I looked up Plainfield, Connecticut Congregational Church online. Why? Because Plainfield is the name of the town it was in. Sounds sensible so far, yes? Okay, except the town is split into four parts. One of those parts is also named Plainfield. My old church was in the part called Central Village and there was another Congregational church in Plainfield. Why a town of 14,000 people needs two Congregational churches is beyond me, but there you go. I'm not the only one to make this mistake. Those National Registry people obviously thought I went to that other church as well.

Now here's the really embarrassing part. First off, the following pictures are from Jerry Dougherty's Connecticut on Fokti.com Check out the other pics in that album if you want to see my childhood stomping grounds. All right, here's a photo of my real church, taken from the same angle as the other one.



I know what you're saying. You're saying, "What are you, fucking high? This church doesn't look anything like that other church!"

And to that I say, "Well, it does, in that it's boxy with a big pointy thing on top."

So I'm an idiot. But the mystery of the Grange is solved. It is sitting there next to the church where it's supposed to be. Here's a picture of the Grange from the same site.

That Old Time Religion

Thanks to Church, Diane and Grant for leaving comments. As for the rest of you, I'd like to hear from you too. Please leave me some comments. If you have nothing else to say, at least tell me how dreamy I am.

Portrait of the Artist as a young man:

Thou Shalt Bask In Our Cuteness!

This is in a card on the back of which is written in (royal) purple felt tip marker, "Ye Olde Country Fair!" and then below that, "June 8, 1974."

Which would have put me at all of five years old. Man I wish I had a body like that today, never mind the hair. You can't fully appreciate my cuteness here, I seem kind of goonie looking. As I remember, this was at a church thing, back when we were foaming-at-the-mouth Congregationalists. Actually, if you know any Congregationalists, you'll know that they never foam at the mouth and if they ever began to do such a thing, they would certainly have a napkin at the ready. My membership in the church at this time brought the age of the average member down to about eighty-seven years old.

Edit: This stuff in the upcoming paragraph and photo is just plain wrong. Read it and then check the post after it for the real deal: http://theonethousand.blogspot.com/2009/01/wherein-i-am-revealed-to-be-big.html

I just found an old timey (1940) picture of my actual church online. Apparently the building is part of the United States National Register of Historic Places (they must have found out I used to hang out there). So here's my old church in Plainfield, Connecticut, looking like the classic old New England building that it is. Built in 1816, Architected by Ithiel Town (Yes, that's a guy's name).

And if Ye Olde Country Fair! wasn't a church thing, it was a Grange thing. The Grange was right next to our church, so close I thought it was owned by the church. Is it that white building all the way in the right corner? Thats where I remember it being, but I don't remember it looking like that. All the church members seemed to be Grange members as well, so until a couple of months ago, I thought the Grange was a strictly Congregationalist organization. Thank you Wikipedia, because you know everything.

If my sister, Deb, reads this blog (and I'm pretty sure she doesn't), she could explain everything. Perhaps in the comments! She not only is eleven years older than me with a better memory, but she still lives up there.

Those of you who know me well can understand why I had to leave the church. I'm as anti-social as society allows me to be and if there's one thing those Congregationalists do, it's congregate.

I don't cotton to that.

Sofa Mi Ra Do

This week StarShipSofa is pleased to present Aural Delights No. 61. That looks hot!

Aural Delights No 61 Ken MacLeod

Editorial: The Sofa's Gadgets by Tony C Smith

Poem: Our Fallen Do Not Fall by Ann K Schwader, blog

Flash Fiction: The War At Home by Lewis Shiner

Fact: Science News by Jim Campanella

Main Fiction: Jesus Christ Reanimator by Ken MacLeod

Fact: The Sofa Art Cover by Skeet

New Titles: David Williams Mirrored Heavens

Narrators: Diane Severson, Matthew Wayne Selznick, Fred Himebaugh

www.starshipsofa.com

The International Silver String Submarine Band!

Late breaking news: My story, The Golem, has been picked up by Everyday Weirdness and will run on their site on January 30th, 2009.

In celebration, I have retained the services of the preeminent musical group of the last century. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you The International Silver String Submarine Band!

Son-Of-A-Who-Cut-Your-Naval-String!

Loads of random shit (literally) and colons (but not the shitty kind):

The former wife, my daughter and I took their pug for a walk today. You wouldn't believe how much poo can be kept inside of a dog that small. It was like Christmas day with a new Play-Doh Fun Factory.



Today io9 has this headline:
You'll Never Guess Which Mutant Plays A Key Role In Wolverine!
I'm going to say . . . um . . . Wolverine?

I took the daughter to the library today and grabbed A Clockwork Orange for myself. Saw the movie when I was a teen, but never read the book. I just read a few pages into it at the library. I'd often heard about the language thing, but didn't realize it was so thick. This might require a second read. Here's something embarrassing: When I read William Golding's The Inheritors, large chunks of it went right over my head even though the language is quite simple. It's told from the point of view of one of the slowest of a small group of Neanderthals as they encounter their first Cro-Magnons. It's a hell of a time to figure out what the protagonist is seeing as he describes technology beyond his ken using his limited vocabulary. He sees boats as trees and oars as leaves and so on. That's a second-reader to be sure, but I haven't yet jumped into its second reading.

Just a reminder: This is the last chance you'll have to read this sentence for the first time. See. Told you. Next time you'll listen to me.

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book won the Newbery Award today. Son-of-a-who-cut-your-naval-string! (That's a Trinidadian expression, of course. You people need to get out more.) Congrats to him!

Truth in advertising: The Hanes Beefy-T should really be called the Hanes Fatty-T. And by the way, if it really was the Beefy-T, these would not be the models for it. I mean, one guy is actually dressed like Gilligan. Nobody thinks, "Look at that Gilligan. God, but he's beefy!"

And I'm spent.

Black Dynamite

Edit: The first video's been pulled. This one is pretty much identical:

BookaBurgerSporkaMania!

Aww, yeah, my psychiatrist just diagnosed me with an acute case of Bookmania! Another one put to bed, a long-ass thirteen hour day. The store smells of poo-gas and this time it wasn't me, it was some kind of sewage problem. Camillio treated me to an ass-kicking cheeseburger at Longhorn Steakhouse. I'm still on the search for Shorthorn Vealhouse. I went in there, sat down and went totally fucking cookie monster on that burger. When it was all said and well-done I think I had some ketchup on my forehead.

The boy called me on the way home and wanted the new Angry Whopper from Burger King. I was talking to the former wife on the cellphone when I ordered the Angry Whopper. The guy said it was $4.57. I said, "It better be pissed for $4.57!" (For my foreign friends, in America, pissed means really angry, not really drunk).
So the guy at the counter said, "What?"
And I said, "I said it better be pissed for $4.57!"
And then the former wife said, "What? It better be what?"
And I said, "Pissed."
And she said, "Why?"
And I said, "Because it's the Angry Whopper," and by this time I was just wishing that the joke would finally be over so I could go home and think about my regrets.
The boy said it was the best Whopper he's ever had, possibly because he didn't have to hear that joke four times. (For my foreign friends, in America, we really do eat nothing but burgers.)

New Stuff! My latest story, "A Spork in the Road," is available for your optic digestion in issue #128 of Antipodean SF. Check it out. Now, for some reason every instance of a hyphen in the story was replaced by a question mark, which makes the story seem even more confusing and surreal than it was meant to be. You'll notice the divorce and my shitty life was on my mind when I wrote it. Click on my name for a special bio. Enjoy!

Bookmania!

Doing Bookmania at the Blake Library in Stuart, Florida this weekend. That's a deal where about thirty different authors all converge on the library, talk about their books, we sell their books and they sign their books and everyone is happy. Tonight my boss told James Swain that when she started in the book biz a couple years back, an author came into the store and my boss sat her down to sign some books, then brought her two stacks of another author's book. Swain seemed to enjoy the story and had a couple of his own. Then my boss hands Swain a book and asks him to sign it for her. It was someone else's book. Apparently she thought she'd been talking to James Reese the whole time. Later, she almost walked up a third guy to apologize, who, to the best of my knowledge, had not written anything at all.

My boss reads this blog, so I don't want to mention her name (Camille), because she's probably plenty embarrassed as it is (Delgado), but it was a fun story, so I thought I'd relate it.

Also, Debbie Macomber gave me some lovely recipe cards.

Fluffiness

I've been asking around about what I should do with my story "Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range." It was originally published at Chiaroscuro and archived there for about fifteen months, but then was nowhere to be found for the general public. I've decided to post it here (scroll down a bit and you'll see it) and then link to that post over in the sidebar under READ MY STORIES. This is what I wanted, to be able to point people to this story so they can read it online at anytime because it's one of my favorites.

If you haven't read it yet, please do. I hope you enjoy it.

Fluff And Buttons On The Teddy Bear Range

Update: Although this used to be the full version of the story, I've since published it as an e-book. The beginning is still here to give you a taste of the story. The link to the full version from Amazon is at the end of this post.

This story originally appeared in issue #32 of Chiaroscuro

FLUFF AND BUTTONS ON THE TEDDY BEAR RANGE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Death comes swiftly on the teddy bear range when the night devils' silhouettes mar the purpling sky. I shiver in the chill nightfall. Muffin turns his back to me, lights a cigarette as if to ward off the darkness.

"Get the little ones inside," I say. "We're burning the fires bright tonight."

At our feet, the wind blew in a piece of red yarn tangled in a few strands of yellow fur. After a quiet couple of weeks the bastards are feeding again.

I do the perimeter, spreading the word among the fire keepers, then go around to the quartermaster's and tell the boys they'll be hauling out three extra cords of wood tonight. Night's coming on and I can see my breath on the air on the way back. The husk of a long dead grasshopper clings to my fur. I scrape him off on a nearby bale of hay. There's only room for the living here.

Light from within leads me back to the mess tent. By long habit, my eyes zero in on Froo Froo standing in line before I even get inside. She doesn't look a day older, breathtaking in her combat gear.

"Froo," I say, cutting alongside. "Hey, Froo."

She looks up from the pale, dried beans that Cookie dumps on her tray. "Oh. Hi, Jack," is all I get before she starts eying the beer. She showed the beans more love.

"Been a while," I say. "You back in Kojo to stay?"

"I'm passing through on border patrol." She grabs a glass of Kojo's Own Brew and I motion to Lefty behind the table to hand me one of my own. The little grunt behind Froo gives me the stinkeye but he's not about to start up. I turn my attention back to her.

"I was thinking about you the other day."

"Mm," she says.

"How long you going to be here?" I imagine the blue ribbon hidden beneath the red plaid hunting cap she wears. I know it's there; it's sewn into her head.

###

Here's where the blatant money-grab comes in! If you'd like to read the rest of the story, as well as alternate versions and the making of Fluff and Buttons, grab the e-book here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HAR5CTU

Fiction Crawler 4 On The Sofa

Aural Delights No 60 Gene Wolfe

Editorial: Tony C Smith

Poem: On Any Given Midnight by Ann K Schwader , Blog

Beardie Book Review: Sean Keogh

Fact: Fiction Crawler 4 by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Main Fiction: The Vampire Kiss by Gene Wolfe

Narrators: Diane Severson, Larry Santoro

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at audiblepodcast.com/sofa

Links to Fiction Crawler stories:

Lostronaut by Jonathan Lethem
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/11/17/081117fi_fiction_lethem?currentPage=all

The Algorithm by Tim Akers
http://transmissionsfrombeyond.com/2008/08/transmission1/

The Gospel According to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges
http://downloads.newyorker.com/mp3/fiction/071015_fiction_theroux.mp3

The Gambler by Paolo Bacigalupi
http://pyrsamples.blogspot.com/2008/11/fast-forward-2-paolo-bacigalupis.html

Six from Downtown by Dean Francis Alfar
http://philippinespeculativefiction.com/alfar.html

Linkworlds by Will McIntosh
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20080317/linkworlds-f.shtml

Linky Links

Love this Scalzi blog post: Open Letter to the Scraggly-Bearded Dude in the Concert Tee Who Stood in Front of Me in the Line for the Airplane Yesterday

From the "How the fuck is this news?" department: Obama Breaks Bush Jacket Rule In Oval Office Way to go, HuffPo.

I had this memorized when I was a wee one: The Cruel Shoes

Found on grinding.be: Naked Doll People!

My Two Cents

I'm not expecting miracles from the new president. At the very least, the fact that our administration won't be actively fucking up the country even more on a daily basis is a huge improvement. I'm already satisfied. Anything after this is gravy.

One thing that I thought was wonderful was that a modern American president mentioned non-believers as a part of this country, rather than an evil that must be destroyed. We've got some change already.

Ding Dong!

Wicked witch is dead! -