opening up

http://www.arianaosborne.com/?p=639

POD: If You’re Not Warren Ellis

Oh, I spent some time trying to craft the single most condescending post title I could think of, yes.  I also considered “for the common man” and “little guy” and — my personal favorite abandoned only because it was a touch too long — “for all those losers who really have no right even trying.”

Turns out, I only had to hit up the internet comments buzzing around the release of Shivering Sands to find the most patronizing qualifier.  Because all sorts of people, it turns out, would just love to try out POD, except they just “aren’t Warren Ellis.”

If you haven’t guessed yet, this post is going to be a little bit mean.  But, see above: people were asking for it.

So, okay, yes — let’s go ahead and talk about this terrifying and insurmountable hurdle to publishing/creating/selling through an online Print on Demand service: Let’s brainstorm and try to find some solution to our pitiful state of not being Ellis.  We can do it together, I think, if we try really hard — we can shut our leaking cry-holes for a second and consider a kinder world, with possibilities even for us.

All right.  Here we go.

We have already, I assume, ruled out the possibility of going back in time to before Warren started his writing career and attempting to become Warren Ellis before he can get there.  Time travel is, after all, fiddly business.  And, frankly, if any of us had already built a time machine, I’d imagine that using it to get a book published wouldn’t be our top priority.  Except maybe for you, over there  in the back — I see you’d like to make a DINOSAUR PHOTOS coffee-table book, so yeah, you’re going to need to work on a time machine.  And best of luck to you, I’m ready to buy your book if you’re not torn apart by raptors on your way back to the console.

But the rest of us are going to have to think outside the temporal displacement box, bah.

Well, there’s the fake it ’til we make it option, I suppose — which I’d certainly usually advocate… except I’ve been modding Warren’s forums for a lot of years now, and I gotta tell you: there’s few things that annoy me more than people putting on a lo-fi Ellis-lite persona to get attention.  In fact, it’s one of those things that makes me hit the ignore/ban button faster than almost anything — and I’ve got a pretty high internet-nutter tolerance, so that might just end up losing you those imaginary book sales you haven’t even made yet.

Oh this is just looking hopeless, isn’t it?  I mean, clearly the steps to POD success are as follows:

1. Be Warren Ellis
2. Have a hugenormous audience
3. Sell them all your book
4. Profit

But what, oh what can we do if we’re not Warren Ellis?

…

… no.  That… that couldn’t work.

It’s too crazy.  I don’t even want to say it.

What if, what if step one is… be [your name here]?

I mean, that’s just crazy-talk, innit?  I mean„ there’s a long list we haven’t exhausted yet.  I mean, we could try being Wil Wheaton, or Jamais Cascio, or Lee Barnett, or our next-door neighbors, or that guy at the bus stop.  Surely we’re not to the point of desperation that leads to trying to make a go of it ourselves.

Except…

What if the steps were:

1. Be [your name here]
2. Write a bloody book instead of whining about what you’ll do with it when you’re done
3. Get an audience
4. Profit

Now, I know that mixing up steps 2 and 3 like that just FLIES in the face of internet logic, but I might be on to something here.  Because now we’re talking about a fantastic world where, when you introduce yourself to people, you can actually say you’re a writer — and be telling the truth — instead of your usual “And I’ve got a bunch of clever ideas I’m going to write someday as soon as I get an agent and/or wake up one morning in an alternate reality where I’m Warren Ellis.”

How mad is THAT?  I mean, the possibilities get really wild after that!  When people ask you what your book’s about, you can actually tell them, instead of hinting about how you don’t really want to get into it because they might steal your idea!  And then, OH MY GOD, you could — oh this is incredible — you could direct them to the site where your book is ready to be printed and mailed off!  Do you realize what this means? They might buy your book!  This could… my god this could actually work!!

Yes, I am the biggest bitch you’re going to read today.

I’m also right. And if one person reading this finally got the shake they need to stop talking and start doing, then the massive traffic drop-off I’m going to get now is completely worth it.

And if one person did finally get it, you should come back tomorrow when I’m going to have some not-so-bitchy advice about the POD system I’ve picked up in the past little while.  Because if you’re going to actually use it instead of making excuses, then I’ve got time for you.

Things Said on a Saturday

trixiebedlam:

In the late afternoon, on her way home from the laundromat with a 17-pound bag of clean materials balanced atop her shoulder and against the left side of her neck, Molly spoke to another person for the first time that day. It was Saturday and the person was a boy of perhaps 10, who veered into her immediate path skirting a playful jab from another boy to her right. Their roughhousing forced her to perform a rapid reconnoiter of the sidewalk, a feat made precarious by the ungainly bag of laundry skewing her balance. What Molly said was, “Watch it, kid.”

Prior to that, Molly had participated in two nonverbal exchanges this Saturday. First, in the morning as she purchased a carton of apple juice at the deli, she acknowledged the return of proper change with a nod to the man behind the counter. He knew her, inasmuch as he was aware that she frequented his deli on a near-daily basis, but they had never addressed a word to each other, and her nod went unreturned. The second interaction was an hour later, with a man on the street who expressed his appreciation for her physical appearance by giving her a lengthy once-over and muttering, “Beautiful, beautiful,” as they passed on the sidewalk. Molly had responded with a noise in her throat, intended to communicate disgust for this man and his actions.

When Molly got home, she deposited the bag of laundry onto her unmade bed and looked around for an excuse not to put it away immediately. She went into the living room, turned on the light in the fishtank, and made fish faces at the tank’s sole occupant. There had been two fish until recently. Buddy – smaller, gold-and-black, and though she tried not to think in those terms, Molly’s favorite – had slowly died over the course of the last week from a swim bladder infection that caused him to float inevitably upside-down, despite his fervent efforts to remain upright. The remaining fish, Princess – larger, orange-and-white, and somehow devoid of the personality Molly had seen in Buddy – seemed healthy enough, but now Molly felt mild apprehension whenever she approached the tank. Molly had often talked to Buddy, but she’d only spoken once to Princess, two days ago. She had said, “Stop it!” when she’d found Princess nibbling at Buddy’s dead body. She had shouted it. She said nothing to Princess today.

Molly went into her office to check her e-mail. While she did this, she had a conversation via Instant Messenger with her mother, during which she communicated her decision to accept a counter-offer from her current place of employment rather than taking a job at a new agency that had been courting her. Her mother volunteered advice on the subject, which Molly ostensibly considered but privately discounted as coming from a limited viewpoint, as her mother had worked as the bookkeeper for her father’s business for the last 30 years and never been courted by an agency of any kind. She also conveyed the occurrence, but not the details, of a first date over drinks with an actor named Michael, which had taken place four days prior. At the end of the date, the actor had asked to see her this weekend. Molly had said, “That sounds nice.” She had meant it. She was reluctant to view his pursuit of a second date as a romantic success, but passed the information on to her mother to act as a preemptive strike against any inquiries as to the status of her “love life.” It was a status that Molly had trouble evaluating on her own, let alone to others, particularly her mother. At the conclusion of their silent conversation, Molly replied to her mother’s farewell declaration of love by pressing the ‘X’ and ‘O’ keys several times in succession, and signed out of Instant Messenger.

She returned to her bedroom, where she put away the laundry, setting aside clean sheets and several pieces of the outfit she intended to wear when she went out with Michael the actor that night. From the small, gilded shopping bag set on the vanity, she produced three new pairs of underwear, purchased at a lingerie store three days ago. At the time of her purchase, the woman who rang her up had said, “For someone special?” and though Molly had declined to reply, the way she blushed made her fully aware that she liked Michael the actor. Now she selected the one that was light pink with black ribbon highlights, and removed the tags before placing it with the rest of the date outfit, laid out on a tiny pink chair that was uncomfortable for sitting, but an aesthetically pleasing place to lay clothing out, or discard it upon removal. Then Molly put fresh sheets on the bed. She did this without consciously recognizing that she planned to sleep with Michael the actor at the end of their date tonight. Yesterday she’d said to a friend that she had, “A feeling about this one.”

The plan was for Michael the actor to call her around five in the evening. When Molly hadn’t heard from him by six, she began to feel anxious. Her date outfit was donned, and she had been sitting on the edge of her neatly-made bed, using the vanity mirror to make minute adjustments to her hair and make-up. Now regarding her own appearance, ready for a date who was not calling, made her feel sad and foolish. Molly stood abruptly, and moved to sit in the armchair in the living room. She left the phone on the table, to create distance that would prevent her from answering too quickly, and watched Princess circle the perimeter of the fishtank. She smoothed her skirt over her legs and tried to sit as straight and still as she possibly could.

At seven-thirty the phone rang. She had felt it was bad luck to add Michael the actor to her Caller Identification so soon, but she recognized it was him by the number. She answered on the third ring, and in a way that she intended to betray neither hope nor irritation, said “Hello.” “Hello, Molly,” said Michael the actor. “Hello,” she repeated, implying that she did not know the identity of the caller because he was not yet included in her Caller Identification. “This is Michael,” the caller said. “Hello, Michael,” said Molly, a little unevenly because a feeling in her stomach told her what was coming next. “I meant to call sooner,” said Michael, and Molly didn’t know how to respond to that, so she simply said, “Oh.” It must have sounded skeptical to Michael because he said, “No, I really mean that – I did mean to call earlier. I know I said I’d call, and I meant it. I had a really nice time with you when we were out together. I mean, a really nice time.” He sounded sincere, but not in a way that made the feeling in Molly’s stomach improve. She sat back down in the armchair, and smoothed her skirt over her legs again. He seemed to be waiting for her to respond, so she said, “Thanks. I did too,” and she meant it, but not the way she had meant it when she had said it would be nice to go out with him tonight. Michael said, “I didn’t call when I said I would because, the thing is, and I mean – I did have a really great time with you – there’s this old girlfriend of mine who has sort of come back into the picture, and we have a lot of history, you know how it is.” Here he paused to allow Molly to say that she did know how it was, and she did know – she had known for perhaps a quarter of an hour before she picked up the phone - but she didn’t say so. She didn’t say anything, so Michael continued, “And I knew it would be, I mean – God, awkward, just like this – but I wanted to call because I really did like you, and I didn’t want to not-call. So I guess that’s what I called to say, that I’m not going to call.” He laughed in way that expressed how much he regretted calling.

When it was clear that he wasn’t going to say anything else, Molly said, “Well, that was very responsible of you, Michael. Is there anything else you’d like to let me know?” She tried to say it without intimating her feeling that the biggest problem with actors was their need for useless dramatics. Without intimating any of her feelings, she tried to say it as neutrally as possible, but a note of sarcasm or injury must have crept into her tone because Michael drew a deep breath as though to explain some more, and Molly, not wishing to hear the words, “like you”, “good time”, “you know”, or “I mean” again, quickly said, “Take care, Michael,” and hung up the call without waiting for his reply. Molly sat very still in the armchair, her feet planted delicately but deliberately on the floor. She looked at the fishtank and said to Princess, “Why does this always happen?”

Princess, if she could have spoken, would have said that she didn’t know why, but that for several days she had felt something was wrong. That despite her efforts to maintain her position in the water, she was constantly and inextricably drawn upside-down towards the surface.

Replicant

trixiebedlam:

My boyfriend took two weeks off to go home for Christmas, while my commitments and the still-fledgling state of our involvement kept me city-bound. It was the first prolonged separation of the relationship and I was a little nervous about it - the visit home had sometimes marked the end of affairs in the past.

He called to let me know his plane landed, as we’d agreed, but after that I didn’t hear from him at all. My concern grew as the days since I’d heard from him stretched to a week. When I finally called to check on him, he replied shortly by text message. For the duration of the two weeks I didn’t hear from him, and my distress and confusion increased as he made no effort to contact or console me. He finally got in touch with me upon his return, and rather stiffly asked me to meet him for a drink the following day. By now I had understandable reservations about his level of commitment, but I pushed them aside and agreed to the date. I had missed him, after all.

He stood as I entered the bar, and even in my relief at seeing his face, I felt that something had changed about him. Once I sat down it became clear very quickly that I was dealing with a robot replacement. I made no immediate attempt to reveal this imposter – though governed by rigid protocol, robots can be unpredictably violent when challenged. Instead, I tried to raise the issue of our spate of non-communication to assess, if possible, whether or not my boyfriend was still alive somewhere. The replacement was tight-lipped on the subject, merely stating that the trip had been “hectic” and, “You know how it is with family.”

When it became clear that the indirect approach wasn’t getting me anywhere, I tried another tactic. “Where do you see this going?” I asked. I was closing in on the grim conclusion that my boyfriend was far beyond help or harm at this point, and my thoughts had turned to my own safety.

“Let’s go for a walk,” it said. I felt my plan backfiring, but saw no way of exiting the situation, graceful or otherwise. I resolved to stick to well-lit, busy streets and hoped the opportunity to escape would arise.

“I see things getting very serious with us,” the robot said, as we stepped outside into the frigid January evening. “Neither of us are getting any younger, and I think the time is right for us to take steps forward.” I froze mid-step; not only had the mechanical fiend killed my boyfriend, now it wanted to use me in a sick attempt to populate the planet with human/cyborgs. “What’s wrong?” it said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“It’s just that you’ve been a little cold lately,” I faltered, mind racing. All those night classes I’d taken on the subject of robot detection and elimination, and now when it counted I couldn’t remember a single evasive maneuver.

“It’s time to get serious, Ellen,” the machine repeated. “It can’t always be romantic. We have to think about our functions, our responsibilities.” He knelt down in the snow and opened a small, black box. “Here, I have bought you a diamond, in accordance with social protocol.”

I ran for it. I knew it was stupid - practically the first thing they teach you in these classes is that you’re not going to outrun a robot, and it’s a waste of energy to even try. It caught up with me easily, slamming into me from behind and bringing me to ground beneath it. I kicked and tried to scream, but was muffled by the snowbank it was pressing me deeper into. My extremities were already starting to go numb, but I could still feel it uncurling my clenched left hand, trying to force the ring onto my finger.

“Just stop struggling,” it said. “Just stop struggling.”

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/one-hundred-things-restaurant-staffers-should-never-do-part-one/

100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do

By Bruce Buschel

1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.

2. Do not make a singleton feel bad. Do not say, “Are you waiting for someone?” Ask for a reservation. Ask if he or she would like to sit at the bar.

3. Never refuse to seat three guests because a fourth has not yet arrived.

4. If a table is not ready within a reasonable length of time, offer a free drink and/or amuse-bouche. The guests may be tired and hungry and thirsty, and they did everything right.

5. Tables should be level without anyone asking. Fix it before guests are seated.

6. Do not lead the witness with, “Bottled water or just tap?” Both are fine. Remain neutral.

7. Do not announce your name. No jokes, no flirting, no cuteness.

8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason. Especially not to recite specials. Wait for the right moment.

9. Do not recite the specials too fast or robotically or dramatically. It is not a soliloquy. This is not an audition.

10. Do not inject your personal favorites when explaining the specials.

11. Do not hustle the lobsters. That is, do not say, “We only have two lobsters left.” Even if there are only two lobsters left.

12. Do not touch the rim of a water glass. Or any other glass.

13. Handle wine glasses by their stems and silverware by the handles.

14. When you ask, “How’s everything?” or “How was the meal?” listen to the answer and fix whatever is not right.

15. Never say “I don’t know” to any question without following with, “I’ll find out.”

16. If someone requests more sauce or gravy or cheese, bring a side dish of same. No pouring. Let them help themselves.

17. Do not take an empty plate from one guest while others are still eating the same course. Wait, wait, wait.

18. Know before approaching a table who has ordered what. Do not ask, “Who’s having the shrimp?”

19. Offer guests butter and/or olive oil with their bread.

20. Never refuse to substitute one vegetable for another.

21. Never serve anything that looks creepy or runny or wrong.

22. If someone is unsure about a wine choice, help him. That might mean sending someone else to the table or offering a taste or two.

23. If someone likes a wine, steam the label off the bottle and give it to the guest with the bill. It has the year, the vintner, the importer, etc.

24. Never use the same glass for a second drink.

25. Make sure the glasses are clean. Inspect them before placing them on the table.

26. Never assume people want their white wine in an ice bucket. Inquire.

27. For red wine, ask if the guests want to pour their own or prefer the waiter to pour.

28. Do not put your hands all over the spout of a wine bottle while removing the cork.

29. Do not pop a champagne cork. Remove it quietly, gracefully. The less noise the better.

30. Never let the wine bottle touch the glass into which you are pouring. No one wants to drink the dust or dirt from the bottle.

31. Never remove a plate full of food without asking what went wrong. Obviously, something went wrong.

32. Never touch a customer. No excuses. Do not do it. Do not brush them, move them, wipe them or dust them.

33. Do not bang into chairs or tables when passing by.

34. Do not have a personal conversation with another server within earshot of customers.

35. Do not eat or drink in plain view of guests.

36. Never reek from perfume or cigarettes. People want to smell the food and beverage.

37. Do not drink alcohol on the job, even if invited by the guests. “Not when I’m on duty” will suffice.

38.Do not call a guy a “dude.”

39. Do not call a woman “lady.”

40. Never say, “Good choice,” implying that other choices are bad.

41. Saying, “No problem” is a problem. It has a tone of insincerity or sarcasm. “My pleasure” or “You’re welcome” will do.

42. Do not compliment a guest’s attire or hairdo or makeup. You are insulting someone else.

43. Never mention what your favorite dessert is. It’s irrelevant.

44. Do not discuss your own eating habits, be you vegan or lactose intolerant or diabetic.

45. Do not curse, no matter how young or hip the guests.

46. Never acknowledge any one guest over and above any other. All guests are equal.

47. Do not gossip about co-workers or guests within earshot of guests.

48. Do not ask what someone is eating or drinking when they ask for more; remember or consult the order.

49. Never mention the tip, unless asked.

50. Do not turn on the charm when it’s tip time. Be consistent throughout.

51. If there is a service charge, alert your guests when you present the bill. It’s not a secret or a trick.

52. Know your menu inside and out. If you serve Balsam Farm candy-striped beets, know something about Balsam Farm and candy-striped beets.

53. Do not let guests double-order unintentionally; remind the guest who orders ratatouille that zucchini comes with the entree.

54. If there is a prix fixe, let guests know about it. Do not force anyone to ask for the “special” menu.

55. Do not serve an amuse-bouche without detailing the ingredients. Allergies are a serious matter; peanut oil can kill. (This would also be a good time to ask if anyone has any allergies.)

56. Do not ignore a table because it is not your table. Stop, look, listen, lend a hand. (Whether tips are pooled or not.)

57. Bring the pepper mill with the appetizer. Do not make people wait or beg for a condiment.

58. Do not bring judgment with the ketchup. Or mustard. Or hot sauce. Or whatever condiment is requested.

59. Do not leave place settings that are not being used.

60. Bring all the appetizers at the same time, or do not bring the appetizers. Same with entrees and desserts.

61. Do not stand behind someone who is ordering. Make eye contact. Thank him or her.

62. Do not fill the water glass every two minutes, or after each sip. You’ll make people nervous.

62(a). Do not let a glass sit empty for too long.

63. Never blame the chef or the busboy or the hostess or the weather for anything that goes wrong. Just make it right.

64. Specials, spoken and printed, should always have prices.

65. Always remove used silverware and replace it with new.

66. Do not return to the guest anything that falls on the floor — be it napkin, spoon, menu or soy sauce.

67. Never stack the plates on the table. They make a racket. Shhhhhh.

68. Do not reach across one guest to serve another.

69. If a guest is having trouble making a decision, help out. If someone wants to know your life story, keep it short. If someone wants to meet the chef, make an effort.

70. Never deliver a hot plate without warning the guest. And never ask a guest to pass along that hot plate.

71. Do not race around the dining room as if there is a fire in the kitchen or a medical emergency. (Unless there is a fire in the kitchen or a medical emergency.)

72. Do not serve salad on a freezing cold plate; it usually advertises the fact that it has not been freshly prepared.

73. Do not bring soup without a spoon. Few things are more frustrating than a bowl of hot soup with no spoon.

74. Let the guests know the restaurant is out of something before the guests read the menu and order the missing dish.

75. Do not ask if someone is finished when others are still eating that course.

76. Do not ask if a guest is finished the very second the guest is finished. Let guests digest, savor, reflect.

77. Do not disappear.

78. Do not ask, “Are you still working on that?” Dining is not work — until questions like this are asked.

79. When someone orders a drink “straight up,” determine if he wants it “neat” — right out of the bottle — or chilled. Up is up, but “straight up” is debatable.

80. Never insist that a guest settle up at the bar before sitting down; transfer the tab.

81. Know what the bar has in stock before each meal.

82. If you drip or spill something, clean it up, replace it, offer to pay for whatever damage you may have caused. Refrain from touching the wet spots on the guest.

83. Ask if your guest wants his coffee with dessert or after. Same with an after-dinner drink.

84. Do not refill a coffee cup compulsively. Ask if the guest desires a refill.

84(a). Do not let an empty coffee cup sit too long before asking if a refill is desired.

85. Never bring a check until someone asks for it. Then give it to the person who asked for it.

86. If a few people signal for the check, find a neutral place on the table to leave it.

87. Do not stop your excellent service after the check is presented or paid.

88. Do not ask if a guest needs change. Just bring the change.

89. Never patronize a guest who has a complaint or suggestion; listen, take it seriously, address it.

90. If someone is getting agitated or effusive on a cellphone, politely suggest he keep it down or move away from other guests.

91. If someone complains about the music, do something about it, without upsetting the ambiance. (The music is not for the staff — it’s for the customers.)

92. Never play a radio station with commercials or news or talking of any kind.

93. Do not play brass — no brassy Broadway songs, brass bands, marching bands, or big bands that feature brass, except a muted flugelhorn.

94. Do not play an entire CD of any artist. If someone doesn’t like Frightened Rabbit or Michael Bublé, you have just ruined a meal.

95. Never hover long enough to make people feel they are being watched or hurried, especially when they are figuring out the tip or signing for the check.

96. Do not say anything after a tip — be it good, bad, indifferent — except, “Thank you very much.”

97. If a guest goes gaga over a particular dish, get the recipe for him or her.

98. Do not wear too much makeup or jewelry. You know you have too much jewelry when it jingles and/or draws comments.

99. Do not show frustration. Your only mission is to serve. Be patient. It is not easy.

100. Guests, like servers, come in all packages. Show a “good table” your appreciation with a free glass of port, a plate of biscotti or something else management approves.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/10/27/do-anything-022-by-warren-ellis/

From up here, maybe we can see what we’ve been talking about this whole time. A world that, from up here, looks like Jack Kirby’s Ego The Living Planet, but instead of its face being a wizened old man, it does of course strongly resemble the robot head of Jack Kirby.

Our parachute opens, billowing, capturing the air of comics and slowly bringing us back to this strange earth. From up here, we get the overview, and descend and decelerate into the details.

From up here, you can only see the geographical details of Jack Kirby’s face. There’s no sense of what weather cut those features into the topography, those lines and trenches and pits.

Since I began writing this, other comics creators have come to me with stories of Jack. Jack the angry man, Jack the wall-puncher, Jack the bitter man, Jack the betrayed. Jack the furious, who never raised a hand to anyone but never left any building he resided in without the pockmark of fist-shaped holes, they say. He was all these things, people tell me. And there’s the thing that is mentioned without being mentioned, if you see what I mean: Jack the killer. When we write that Jack went to war, and Jack was in the field of combat, what we mean is that Jack took a gun and killed people he didn’t know. We make it a small thing, a historical footnote. Particularly us, me, my generation and the generations around mine who’ve lived in what we call “peacetime.” We’ve never been conscripted, we’ve never had to fight a war, particularly not a world war against an evil we have since defused through parody, an enemy safely consigned to a past by defeat and death.

My grandad, my mother’s father, would never talk about the war. Neither would my nan, his wife. Their marriage was forty years of painful, bruised, borderline tolerance. My dad once told me that Nan had said to him, just the once, that Grandad hadn’t come back from the war the same man who left for it. His was one of those cliched changes that becomes a cliche precisely because it’s true so often. Even I, as a kid, could see a fundamental difference between the innocent-eyed, open-faced man of his wedding photo with the gimlet-eyed man in the spiv’s fur coat who I grew up with. And loved. Crazy bitter lying bastard though he was. He wasn’t the same man. He had killed.

And so had Jack Kirby. He had killed the soldiers of a foe that we now forget was this vast and surreal thing. Even their flags were the size of office buildings, and bore only an alien-looking, jagged black symbol upon them. It’s worth watching Leni Riefenstahl’s TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, to grasp exactly how strange Nazi Germany was. My daughter’s great-Nana was German, and she’d speak sometimes of those days in Germany, when Hitler arriving in your German town was the cause of utter hysteria, people losing control to the extent of pissing themselves or (also recalled by sf writer Algis Budrys, who also worked on the comics magazine HELP!) having seizures and literally shitting themselves.

Just from the single sheer presence of a man built up by art as much as politics: a man whose very appearance caused body-wrenching awe and fear, this ultimate villain, this enemy of life who had no compunction about stamping out Jacob Kurtzberg’s life along with that of his entire race.

Someone said to me, during the writing of this book, how does Jack Kirby go from the kid from the Lower East Side — and here’s Kirby –

“It was on the lower east side of New York, and what I mean by active is that anything could happen. There was usually a fight – some guy would come up from the next block and you would fight. If you knocked him out, you and the guys would lay him out near his mother’s door and vice versa. There were a lot of street fights, but we never used weapons of any kind, just our fists.”

– how does Jack Kirby go from the kid from the Lower East Side to the guy who moved inexorably towards drawing nothing but angels and gods? And yet, here’s Kirby’s Fourth World, featuring Orion, whose ordinary placid human face is a facade of technology hiding a shorter, stockier man who is nothing but fury, an angry man who can kill. And whose ultimate villain, the enemy of life, the actual Dark Side of humanity is a figure of awe and religious terror. The key Fourth World story is “The Glory Boat,” from NEW GODS. It is, in Kirby’s typically blunt, slightly clumsy and off-kilter way as a writer, a rumination on the concepts of heroism, pacifism and sacrifice. It is perhaps notable that someone therein dies as a faceless soldier.

Jack Kirby wrote about angels and gods and vast machines because, from the parachute view from up here and from the view down there in the trenches, it was the only way to make sense of the vast and towering and terrible things that surrounded him.

Today is Ashley’s birthday.
She’s older than she’s ever been.

And it’s as if she’s crossed over a border. The one where, suddenly, you step across the line and, although you’re older numerically, you hold the bad things less and the good things harder. It’s amazing how that happens. You get older and then you start getting younger.

— http://www.theingoing.com/2009/10/today-is-ashleys-birthday.html?zx=4d2cfde703328069

There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries & they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die.

— Charles Bukowski (via lafave) (via smut-to-go)

It’s easy to criticize. It’s easy to kind of stand on the sideline and criticize a person’s blood, sweat, and toil. Anyone who says that, I feel bad for them because they’ve never given of themselves so much and cared about something so much that not getting it broke them.

—

On people calling him a coward for running from the Octagon after his last loss:

http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_3722.shtml

http://www.mensjournal.com/you-get-old-2

For any man who has led a vibrant, robust life, the realities of aging can be humbling. But as the author has discovered, coming to terms with that is one of life’s great empowerments.

By Pat Jordan

You get old, life gets small. Not meager, pinched, just small. You don’t buy groceries for a week anymore — two hours in the Publix, drenched with purpose, a grocery list that unrolls like the Dead Sea scrolls.

You get old, you shop every day, your list written on the inside cover of a matchbook. Two pork chops, a can of La Sueur peas, four corns (two for tomorrow), two rolls of toilet paper.

You never buy mangoes, avocados, grapefruits, or key limes. You just go into your backyard and pick them off your tree. When you were young, your Uncle Ben retired to Sarasota and immediately sent you oranges from his tree. You thought, How sad. Now that you’re old, you send mangoes, avocados, grapefruits, and key limes to your friends. You enclose a note, very serious, explaining that key limes are not ripe when they’re green. “You must wait until they turn yellow!” you write. You get old, you become an expert on fruit.

You get old, people don’t notice you. You sit at a bar, sipping your Jim Beam Black, neat now, no water, no ice, when a pretty woman in her 40s sits next to you. You smile at her, say hi. She looks at you and through you around the bar.

You get old, young guys don’t get pissed off anymore that you’re lifting heavier weight than they are on the preacher-curl bench. Now they say, “You sure that weight isn’t too heavy for you, sir?” They used to call you Mack. When you were younger you would have said, “Mind your own goddamned business!” Now you say, “Thanks, guy, I think I can handle it.”

You get old, you lose your anger. It takes too much energy to be angry when you’re old. You have more important things to do with your waning energy, so you hoard it like a dwindling resource.

You get old, it’s not always about you. You no longer wait for an opening in a conversation to talk about yourself, your dreams, your accomplishments. It becomes second nature to draw other people into talking about their lives. You’re no longer the life of the party, making people laugh. You no longer have that neurotic compulsion to be known. Why should you? You get old, you know yourself.

You get old, you need less. Less food, less booze, less sex, less sleep. One Jim Beam Black after dinner, savored, so that it lasts until you fall asleep.

You get old, you wake at 4 am as if to catch every moment of your fading days. You struggle out of bed, let the dogs out, make coffee, light a cigar, then go out the front door for your newspapers. You sit on the front steps, sipping your coffee, smoking your cigar in the darkness until Jean Pierre, the Haitian paper deliverer, as black as a purple plum, pulls up in his Toyota. He sees you and gets out of the car. “Sorry, cher, da be late today,” he says, handing you the papers. “No problem, Jean Pierre.”

You get old, you eat dinner at 4 pm, with your wife. You talk about the day, then save half of each of your pork chops, wrapped in Saran wrap, for tomorrow’s dinner. Your refrigerator is stocked with leftovers. Susie wants to throw them out in a day or two, but you stop her, turn the wilting asparagus, the sautéed mushrooms, a few grape tomatoes into a lovely frittata for dinner. You get old, you hate to waste things.

You get old, you see your wife in her tight T-shirt with the words ‘It’s Not Pretty Being Easy’ scripted across her breasts, and you get an idea. But it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, so you file it away for future reference. When you were young, you’d put that idea into action anytime, anyplace. Now you talk about it with her, make plans for sex. She puts on her silk negligee before she gets in bed. Then you both begin watching Ballykissangel, getting so caught up in it (will Father Peter leave the priesthood and marry Assumpta?) that the next thing you know you’re waking up at 4 am.

You get old, your dogs get old too. It never dawned on you, when you got them, all six, one year after another, that they’d all get old, one year after another, and then die. Now they’re between 10 and 16 years old. Their lives are bounded by food and sleep and all the pills they take, which are lined up on the kitchen counter with yours. Glucosamine and chondroitin for their arthritic joints. Carprofen for their dislocated knees. You see them limping and press their knees back into place. They glance back at you with gratitude. You give them phenobarbital to forestall their epileptic seizures. Ciproflaxacin for their rheumy coughs and sneezes. They wake in the morning with you and begin to wheeze, sneeze, cough, like old men, like you. They have their good days and bad days, like you. You just try to keep them alive for a few more months, then a few months after that. And when they begin to die before your eyes, you feed them water and baby food through a big plastic syringe at first, and then fluids subcutaneously with a needle before that final visit to the vet.

You get old, you set goals for yourself that seem meaningless to others. Not to you. They are proof that you’re not that old. Your wife asks you to “call the man” to break up the old sidewalk in the backyard so she can plant liriope. You tell her you’ll do it yourself. She says, “Don’t be foolish.” You get the sledgehammer and begin whacking at the sidewalk in the summer heat like Cool Hand Luke. Then you wheelbarrow the broken pieces of concrete out to the front swale for the garbageman. Two days later, you can’t get out of bed.

You get old, your strength and stamina go. You mow the lawn, then lie down. Your wife comes home with ten 40-pound bags of mulch. You carry them into the backyard, then lie down. You get old, you can’t do everything in one day — wash the car, mow the lawn, shop for groceries, go to the gym, get a haircut. So you plan out your day like Eisenhower planning D-day. Two things, maybe three, one day, then two more the next.

You get old, you become abstemious. You never buy clothes for yourself anymore. You wear your faded Hawaiian shirts until they’re so threadbare they’re like filmy curtains. You trim little threads with a scissors. One day your wife throws one out. You moan, “But that was my favorite shirt!” She says, “Hoarding is a sign of old age.” You sulk like a child the rest of the day.

You get old, you get your hair cut at Supercuts, $12 for seniors, and then let it grow for two months until it’s curling over your ears and you look like a French diplomat. You were young, you went to a fancy salon, where the pretty blonde massaged your shoulders while cutting your hair, for $65 and a $20 tip. You get old, your wife says, “You’re not going out like that!” You say, “What?” You are wearing a ripped and paint-splattered University of Miami Hurricanes T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops. You haven’t trimmed your beard in days. You look like Jeremiah Johnson, if he lived in South Florida.

You used to wear $200 Tommy Bahama island shirts and $2,000 ostrich-skin cowboy boots when you went out. Your wife wore spandex minidresses and six-inch pumps. You looked like a successful drug smuggler with a high-priced hooker. You get old, you sell your cowboy boots to a thrift shop for $50 and buy the dogs new collars. You get old, your looks go. You don’t care.

You were handsome once, like a Greek god, with curly black locks and luxuriant chest hair. You still are, in your mind’s eye, even if your hair is so white you look like a ghost in photographs. You look at that photograph of an old man, and say out loud, “Jeez, I look like an old man!” Your friends call back, “You are an old man.” A young friend of your wife’s, maybe 35, picks up a photograph of you when you were 38 off the fireplace mantel. “Wow,” she says. “You were hot once.” You resist the urge to tell her, “I still am.”

You get old, small things give you pleasure that were once an annoyance. Throwing out the garbage, you meet a neighbor walking his dog. You pet his dog, pass the time. The mailman stops at your mailbox. He talks to you about his Brazilian girlfriend, then hands you the mail. Bills, a check, and — eureka! — four movies from Netflix.

You get old, you realize order is freedom. You do your job more professionally, no longer on the fly. You get a magazine assignment — go down 1,500 feet into a coal mine in Virginia, climb a mountain in Haiti — and you prepare for it. You do heavier squats the days before you leave. You fly out the night before your interview so that you will have time to settle yourself, prepare. You get old, you check into a no-tell motel close to the thruway ramp so you have easy access to anyplace you have to go. When you were young you stayed at the best hotels, with pissing Cupid fountains in the lobby and businesswomen on the make in the bar. The first thing you did after you checked in was change your clothes and hit the bar with your barroom smile. Now you go to Denny’s for a snack. Then you go back to the hotel and put your clothes in the dresser drawers and lay out all your notes on the desk so you can review them the next morning before your interview.

You get old, you realize your job these past 40 years was God’s gift. When you were young, you thought you were God’s gift.

You get old, you forget things, not because your mind is going, but because your memory box is filled. A name comes up and you find yourself mentally flipping through all those thousands of slides, trying to place the name with a face or an event. You forget trivial things — where you put the car keys, your glasses — because your mind is filled with more important things. Is the gate in the backyard secured so the dogs won’t get out into the street and get hit by a car? You never forget that.

You get old, you scream at your wife. Not in anger, but because your hearing’s going. “What?” you scream. She looks exasperated. She says loudly, “I said….” You now see the world in a faint haze, like it’s covered with a gauzy film. “Pollen,” you say. Your wife says, “You need stronger glasses.” You refuse to admit that. So you call the Comcast TV repairman once a week. He arrives, a young black kid. “The picture’s blurry,” you say. “And the sound, I have to jack it way up to hear.” He fiddles with the remote, then says, “The picture’s fine. The sound, too. Maybe you need glasses.” You stop calling the Comcast repairman.

You get old, you sell your 1989 Taurus SHO with the five-speed, short-throw shifter, the Recaro racing seats, lowered suspension, rear spoiler, 19-inch mag wheels. You buy a Lincoln LS8, with leather, a wood-trimmed dash, automatic.

You get old, you read the obits. You call out to your wife, “Jeez, Isaac Hayes died! He was an old man, I guess.” Your wife calls back, “About the same age as you.”

You get old, your friends are old too. Old ladies, mostly. Why not? You’re an old man. Betsy, 59, Ina, 65, Julia, 76, Helen, 78. You drive Helen to work when her ride is late. You drive Betsy to the airport at 7 am for a flight to visit her sister. Later, your friend John, 58, knocks on your door. He’s going to visit friends in Wisconsin. Will you feed his cats while he’s gone? Sure, why not?

You get old, your dreams constrict. You no longer expect fame and fortune, your face on the cover ofTime. You no longer expect to write the Great American Novel, 859 pages. Your writing gets small. Fewer words. But cleaner, you hope. More nuance, less obvious. Subtle, you like to think. Like your life. Small essays about getting old. They please you just as much as if you wrote War and Peace.

You get old, you cry more. Not over your lost dreams, your sins, your old age, your impending death. You cry for others. You cry when Assumpta dies too young, at 30, in Ballykissangel. You cry at the sight of our soldiers in camouflage walking through airports on their way to Iraq. You cry at the sight of abused dogs and cats staring at you from the pages of newspapers. You cry when Betsy tells you she has inoperable cancer and she’ll never see 60.

You cry for everyone but yourself because you have lived a wonderful life, and you wish that every person, every pet, could live such a life too. When you were young, you cried only for yourself.

Curating Isn't As Precious As Creating

claytoncubitt:

Theremina (Mer) is right:

“Make a painting, make a dress, make music, make a novella, make love to the camera, make a new flavor of beer, make a wild rumpus in the middle of the woods. Make a mess! Make something merely for the sake of making it. Make without any thought to an audience. Make without any anticipation of validation or gratification from an outside source. Make for no reason at all except the sheer bliss of the process itself.
Make something beautiful by yourself, for yourself, and then, for fuck’s sake, don’t blog about it.
Just this once.
Myopic, sure. But also a lesson in self-sustenance. Because if we all turn away from this big, hot communal hall of scrying mirrors for a bit, and focus inward instead, upon the true, white spark that sits in everyone’s belly, maybe we won’t feel so hollow and lonely and dependent on energy from outside sources. Perhaps, in tapping back into that source, we won’t resort to the most base and vestigial pecking order instincts, or feel the need to cling, white-knuckled, to the exclusive, ego-tainted ownership of something that could never possibly be owned by any one person, or group of people:
Grace.”