Sudden St.

Texas Bound

On my last night at my parents' house, I discovered my mom has a pretty impressive collection of old books, including a first printing of Zane Grey's The Lone Star Ranger (1915).

City Lights Books

Despite the aggravation and stress caused by recent bookstore experiences, I am quite happy. Why? Because, once again, my chapbooks can be found on the shelves of City Lights in San Francisco. Thanks Erik. Say Hi to Lawrence for me.

They're In!

The new chapbooks are finally finished!
And, I must say, it's quite the elevation of the culture bar, at least for myself. While I do have copies, I will be in San Francisco until September, so you can snag your copy at BookPeople, which of course rests at the interesection of 6th & Lamar.

The Down-Side-Up:
While on the BP note, there have been some troubling events: It seems the former business accounts manager has moved on, and her replacement is a bit less cordial than his predecessor. More so, he has intimated a lack of confidence in my ability to sell my novel, The Bow Tie Gang, through his store. This is very troubling. First, I know this simply isn't so-- the book sells well -- in stores that have it in stock. Second, I have continually steered potential readers to BP instead of amazon.com, because I fully believe in supporting a culture that supports local & independent consumerism (at least, vs. the alternative) and I always felt it went without saying that BookPeople does too. We'll see. I am but a minor cog.

In the meantime, I beseech you, if you've been curious or meaning to buy my book, please visit BookPeople soon. My new colleague should know that while minor authors like myself represent a negligible figure on the profit margin of a large store, we produce more than our share of the value of an independent voice. Our culture may be dominated by artistic and economic behemoths, but they don't define it.

And always, thank you for spending your money on something I made.

I feel like I'm 12

I am in the midst of cataloging, re-bagging, pricing, and re-carding my old comic books, which came to Austin along with my sister. This is actually as lame as it sounds. My only consolation is that now Roo is going to have to do it too.

On the other hand, I'm looking at all these old, acid-absorbed sheets of card stock and I am thinking: Get back into stencil art.

Wailing Wall

"Greetings for the Kremlin from Kolyma!" (a prison)

"Karly Marly and the Lighthouse of Communism"

"Take out stool pigeons and traitors!" The acronym 'MIR' spells the word for Peace and stands for 'Shooting Will Reform Me'.

Read My Lips

For the next Holocaust, we will see the Moral Majority exterminating porn stars, proprietors and producers of pornography, and other such 'filth' mongers, after they work their tanned and waxed asses to death in camps, where they will probably be put to the task of making ankle-length skirts and bicycle helmets for pre-teens. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's what's going to happen. It all came to me in a vision. They will try to purge the world of what they see as the ultimate evil, at least within our own borders. And it will ultimately fail, just like the last such attempt in another continent, Thank God. The downside, of course, will be that in another fifty years, our children, instead of being taught that National Socialism is bad, and that they really should be respectful of Jews and Gypsies and other former victims, they will be instructed on how having sex for money in front of a camera with three strange dudes who keep giving you pills is not really such a bad thing. Some call it a career, and not a bad one at that. Then, years later, Al Gore's 'tipping point' will finally be passed, and there will actually be more people appearing in porn than people paying to watch it (or surfing through free thirty second clips at Pinkworld)-- right now I think our team is up by six. Anyway, after third grade, our grandchildren will actually have to perform fellatio while reciting the pledge of allegiance, and Aurora Snow's visage will grace the newly minted $300 bill. The pendulum swings both ways. Like my parents.

Gayness

The gist of a conversation I had with my good friend Greg, some months back:

It may be true that the best stories may be the ones most uncomfortable to write. It may, it might. Personally, the scenes in movies that most make me cringe are the ones that truthfully portray something uncomfortable. What this means, for our culture, or my hang-ups, that truth be inextricable from discomfort, well, I dare not spelunk too deeply. However, the result, in this case, is that what was to be a mild-mannered story of a couple of young lesbians, became something else entirely.

Read my Latest Masterpiece, Negative Space: Download negative_space.doc

(Sigh.)

72 Hours

I don't know if I'm going to do it this year. However, if I change my mind, and you're interested, I think they have group rates.

We Get Letters

I know, I know: There's no such thing as a good rejection letter. But some come closer than others.

.... dis·cur·sive  (d-skûrsv)
adj.

1. Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling.
2. Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition.

O.K., I think I get it now.

Is it just me, or has the truth been before us, each of us, from the start?

A. The reason you must read widely and study your craft is so you can recognize, understand, and ultimately reproduce good writing. Good writing follows the same general rules of form and content, and always has. There is nothing in its design that will allow fundamental change.

B. A great work, one that is both viscerally delightful and technically masterful contains a combination of two insanely subtle and simple elements, namely the ability to do A. (ie, write a good, traditional story by good, traditional form), while simultaneously injecting both form and content with something brand new and hopefully revolutionary, keeping mind, of course, not to upset the balance in the original design.

So, there's my theory for today: Perfection is an elusive zenith between two static points: 1. adventurous but failed, masturbatory experimentation, and 2. boring, quotidian, predictable hackneyed prose, where the plan is so ham-fisted, you can see it coming  a mile off.