Ask the Author: Tentatively, A Convenience
Answered Questions (14)
Tentatively, A Convenience
Thank you for your question. I appreciate the sincerity of it. I don't think that your characterizing me as praising "dudes like wakefield without thinking about how anti-vax rhetoric perpetuates negative stereotypes about autism" is in any way fair or accurate about my actual opinions. The best I can do is recommend that you read my book "THE SCIENCE (volume 1)" in which I review 3 books on autism: Elizabeth Fein's "Living on the Spectrum", Andrew J. Wakefield's "Callous Disregard", & Paul A. Offit's "Autism's False Prophets". Of those 3 books, my sympathies are closest to Fein's. I have mixed feelings about Wakefield but feel that there's a heavy propaganda campaign against him. Offit is the one I'm least in agreement with. I explain all 3 of my reactions in detail.
Tentatively, A Convenience
Always.. although I prefer the term "Usic", often spelled "(M)Usic". I just gave an UNCERT at AfterMAF in Roanoke, VA, on Saturday, June 24, 2023. Here's a movie from that:
on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/KEsHcP4VPak
on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/not-so-st...
A more straight-forward document of the UNCERT was shot by Ralph Eaton, one of the founders & organizers of AfterMAF & is on his YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/lBouMiKvf6A
on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/KEsHcP4VPak
on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/not-so-st...
A more straight-forward document of the UNCERT was shot by Ralph Eaton, one of the founders & organizers of AfterMAF & is on his YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/lBouMiKvf6A
Tentatively, A Convenience
Hi Joshua, Thanks for writing. I'm glad you like my review of Daniel Higgs's "The Doomsday Bonnet". I just reread the review & I like it too. I'm not sure I understand your question, tho. "Would you be willing to review Bonnet on your site?" Having already reviewed it on Goodreads, wch is the main place where I post my reviews, I'm not sure wch site of mine you're suggesting that I also review it on. Excuse me if I'm misunderstanding, perhaps you can clarify. Given yr interest in Daniel, perhaps you'd enjoy this movie I made of a concert we gave together:
258. "history in the making."
- a quasi-documentary of a November 19, 2005 gig at Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh, us@
- starring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE + Michael Evans + Fabio Roberti + Daniel Higgs
- mini-DV camera: Greg Pierce
- event organized & movie edited & otherwise manipulated by: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- using excerpts from 240. "booed usic" & from Fabio Roberti's "UNIVAC PRESENTS: "AVANT-GARDE SHOWCASE"
- various & mini-DV -> DVD
- 24:55
- november, '05
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Db1SXIFd4AI
258. "history in the making."
- a quasi-documentary of a November 19, 2005 gig at Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh, us@
- starring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE + Michael Evans + Fabio Roberti + Daniel Higgs
- mini-DV camera: Greg Pierce
- event organized & movie edited & otherwise manipulated by: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- using excerpts from 240. "booed usic" & from Fabio Roberti's "UNIVAC PRESENTS: "AVANT-GARDE SHOWCASE"
- various & mini-DV -> DVD
- 24:55
- november, '05
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Db1SXIFd4AI
Tentatively, A Convenience
It seems more probable that we both have some idea of what's going on & that our respective ideas along those lines overlap in places that we're unable to confirm with the currently available data.
Tentatively, A Convenience
It's not clear to me whether you're:
1. Asking me if it's ok with me whether you ask me a question (it is).
2. Creating a paradox of sorts by asking a question about asking a question.
3. etc.
1. Asking me if it's ok with me whether you ask me a question (it is).
2. Creating a paradox of sorts by asking a question about asking a question.
3. etc.
Tentatively, A Convenience
I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're reading this work in translation & that you're, therefore, looking for European work translated into English. Since experimental work is often difficult to translate I take it for granted that decades might go by until an English translation is available, if ever.
The 1st work that I think of is Arno Schmidt's "Bottom's Dream". As you can see in the Wikipedia entry below, it was written from 1963-1970 &, therefore, doesn't really qualify as more recent work, but the English translation dates from 2016 - which makes it 'recent' for English readers.
"Bottom's Dream (German: Zettel’s Traum or ZETTEL’S TRAUM as the author wrote the title) is a novel published in 1970 by West German author Arno Schmidt. Schmidt began writing the novel in December 1963 while he and Hans Wollschläger began to translate the works of Edgar Allan Poe into German.[1] The novel was inspired by James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake, particularly Schmidt's use of columns (his "SpaltenTechnik"), which Schmidt claimed was borrowed from the Wake.
"The gargantuan novel was published in folio format with 1,334 pages. The story is told mostly in three shifting columns, presenting the text in the form of notes, collages, and typewritten pages. The 2016 English translation by John E. Woods has 1,496 pages and weighs over 13 pounds (5.9 kg)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom%...
That's published by Dalkey Archive & because it's such a massive project it's very expensive (&, maybe, currently difficult to get). Dalkey, in general, publishes newer European work that some may consider to be experimental.
If by literature you include poetry, you might want to go online to look at this: http://code-poetry.com . This is where things become much more experimental & much more contemporary but it might not be what you're looking for.
The 1st work that I think of is Arno Schmidt's "Bottom's Dream". As you can see in the Wikipedia entry below, it was written from 1963-1970 &, therefore, doesn't really qualify as more recent work, but the English translation dates from 2016 - which makes it 'recent' for English readers.
"Bottom's Dream (German: Zettel’s Traum or ZETTEL’S TRAUM as the author wrote the title) is a novel published in 1970 by West German author Arno Schmidt. Schmidt began writing the novel in December 1963 while he and Hans Wollschläger began to translate the works of Edgar Allan Poe into German.[1] The novel was inspired by James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake, particularly Schmidt's use of columns (his "SpaltenTechnik"), which Schmidt claimed was borrowed from the Wake.
"The gargantuan novel was published in folio format with 1,334 pages. The story is told mostly in three shifting columns, presenting the text in the form of notes, collages, and typewritten pages. The 2016 English translation by John E. Woods has 1,496 pages and weighs over 13 pounds (5.9 kg)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom%...
That's published by Dalkey Archive & because it's such a massive project it's very expensive (&, maybe, currently difficult to get). Dalkey, in general, publishes newer European work that some may consider to be experimental.
If by literature you include poetry, you might want to go online to look at this: http://code-poetry.com . This is where things become much more experimental & much more contemporary but it might not be what you're looking for.
Tentatively, A Convenience
I take it that I wrote that in my review of B. Traven's "The Cotton-Pickers". I don't recall having any basis for that whatsoever. I don't have time to reread my review at the moment but most likely I just thought that it was an interesting idea — perhaps just spinning off from the similarity between C+raven & T+raven & A & B — added to the obvious mysteriousness of both of their lives, etc..
Tentatively, A Convenience
I go to the Emergency Room. I get the bill.
Tentatively, A Convenience
Hi John, It's always a pleasure to reply to you. Thank you for writing.
I've answered the questions about my name, "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE", many times in the 42 years that I've been using it so instead of providing you with a new answer I'll direct you to a relevant movie online: https://youtu.be/tHnJvf0z4I4 .
As for "BalTimOre"? I lived in Baltimore County & Baltimore City for a combined total of almost 41 years. In 1980, I started using the name "Tim Ore". Once I did this, it should've become obvious to everyone that the name of the city (& the county too) was a sex ad for myself: Ball (fuck) Tim Ore. "BalTimOre" was intended to call attention to this sometimes neglected fact.
I did get brass plaques made to put on the bedroom doors of rooms where I’d spent some quality time that indicated that "Tim Ore Slept Here". That seemed at least as significant as "George Washington may've touched the corner post of this bed once (or at least knew someone who did)" or "This hair is from a deranged cult zombie that some person with sinister ulterior motives has declared a saint & is now said to have healing powers".
I've answered the questions about my name, "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE", many times in the 42 years that I've been using it so instead of providing you with a new answer I'll direct you to a relevant movie online: https://youtu.be/tHnJvf0z4I4 .
As for "BalTimOre"? I lived in Baltimore County & Baltimore City for a combined total of almost 41 years. In 1980, I started using the name "Tim Ore". Once I did this, it should've become obvious to everyone that the name of the city (& the county too) was a sex ad for myself: Ball (fuck) Tim Ore. "BalTimOre" was intended to call attention to this sometimes neglected fact.
I did get brass plaques made to put on the bedroom doors of rooms where I’d spent some quality time that indicated that "Tim Ore Slept Here". That seemed at least as significant as "George Washington may've touched the corner post of this bed once (or at least knew someone who did)" or "This hair is from a deranged cult zombie that some person with sinister ulterior motives has declared a saint & is now said to have healing powers".
Tentatively, A Convenience
That's an interesting question. If I were to think about it longer, I might think of an answer replete with human drama & intrigue. Instead, I'll go with the 1st story that occurs to me:
In the early 1980s, I often took people into the roughly 2.5 mile long train tunnel that runs between the Maryland Institute College of Art's "Station Bullding", a former train station, to "Camden Yards", an industrial area that had not yet been converted into a sports stadium.
Near the southern, Camden Yards, end of the tunnel there was a group of what was then fairly new concrete-walled rooms that served ventilation purposes for the train tunnel. On the east side of the tunnel there was a rectangular hole in the tunnel wall that opened into this group of rooms. The hole started perhaps 6 or 7 feet off the tunnel floor. It was perhaps 15 feet wide & 6 feet high. This hole led into a stark room. To the right of the hole was a large grill that covered an industrial sized fan. Past the fan was a door leading to a hallway. Parallel to the hallway was the enclosure that contained the fan. At the fan enclosure's other end was another room that the hallway also opened into. This room had another grill as its 'ceiling', a grill that was located in a medium strip surrounded on either side by a busy highway at ground level. The fan was intended to be activated whenever a train went through. The idea was that the fan would help ventilate train fumes to the outer air. There was one other hallway/room on the other side of the fan enclosure from the hallway already mentioned & from the final venting room. This housed various control panels. Even though the whole installation was only a few years old it, apparently, no longer worked.
I used this area a fair amount because I found it a fantastic environment. One of the movies I made there is called "Tunnel T.Ore & Tiger" & can be witnessed on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/160516148 . Aside from graffiti. my friends & I didn't alter the space, we never vandalised the equipment, e.g..
One day there had been a substantial thunder-storm. It might've been shortly after this storm ended that I took 3 friends of mine into the tunnel & into this group of rooms. My friends, if I remember correctly, were George & Cheryl & Claire. We had all eaten consciousness-expanding mushrooms. George & Cheryl & I had walked through the hallway from the room that vented to the outdoors into the room that vented from the tunnel. Claire was right behind us. Apparently, the concrete floor was somewhat slanted because there was a pool of water accumulated, maybe 3 inches deep, at the end of the room that we went into.
As the 3 of us entered the room we looked in the direction of where the fan was & saw what appeared to be a form of electricity or lightning moving in what appeared to be perfectly geometrical dashes from the ceiling & then making a seemingly exact right angle turn - back & forth. The 3 of us stared, shocked, & didn't say anything. The room was otherwise extremely dark.
After what was presumably less than a minute of this one or the other of us broke the silence to exclaim something to the effect of: "Do you see that lightning?!" At this point, the geometrical dashes of lightning made another right-angle turn in the direction of the vent hole into the tunnel & turned left to go into the tunnel in the direction of Camden Yards. We clambered up onto the vent wall & caught a glimpse of it rapidly disappearing from our sight - going in a straight line made up of dashes.
As I recall, it was at this point that Claire entered the room. As such, it seemed to me that she couldn't have seen the electricity. She later claimed, however, that she, too, had seen it.
We very excitedly compared what we'd seen & all agreed that we'd seen the same thing. I, at least, had had the hypothesis that the lightning, or geometrical electricity, had been following pipes leading down from the ceiling. However, by whatever light we could muster, perhaps a lighter, we saw that there were no pipes extruding from the ceiling that the electricity could have followed where I expected them. There was, however, a pipe IN the ceiling - presumably venting to the ground level air, but maybe not. That was, apparently, where the geometrical lightning had originated from. Its further passage in dashes & straight lines had no other visible sign of a channel to direct it.
Our collective impression was that whatever we had seen had been intelligent & that we had startled it with our noise - scaring it away.
In the early 1980s, I often took people into the roughly 2.5 mile long train tunnel that runs between the Maryland Institute College of Art's "Station Bullding", a former train station, to "Camden Yards", an industrial area that had not yet been converted into a sports stadium.
Near the southern, Camden Yards, end of the tunnel there was a group of what was then fairly new concrete-walled rooms that served ventilation purposes for the train tunnel. On the east side of the tunnel there was a rectangular hole in the tunnel wall that opened into this group of rooms. The hole started perhaps 6 or 7 feet off the tunnel floor. It was perhaps 15 feet wide & 6 feet high. This hole led into a stark room. To the right of the hole was a large grill that covered an industrial sized fan. Past the fan was a door leading to a hallway. Parallel to the hallway was the enclosure that contained the fan. At the fan enclosure's other end was another room that the hallway also opened into. This room had another grill as its 'ceiling', a grill that was located in a medium strip surrounded on either side by a busy highway at ground level. The fan was intended to be activated whenever a train went through. The idea was that the fan would help ventilate train fumes to the outer air. There was one other hallway/room on the other side of the fan enclosure from the hallway already mentioned & from the final venting room. This housed various control panels. Even though the whole installation was only a few years old it, apparently, no longer worked.
I used this area a fair amount because I found it a fantastic environment. One of the movies I made there is called "Tunnel T.Ore & Tiger" & can be witnessed on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/160516148 . Aside from graffiti. my friends & I didn't alter the space, we never vandalised the equipment, e.g..
One day there had been a substantial thunder-storm. It might've been shortly after this storm ended that I took 3 friends of mine into the tunnel & into this group of rooms. My friends, if I remember correctly, were George & Cheryl & Claire. We had all eaten consciousness-expanding mushrooms. George & Cheryl & I had walked through the hallway from the room that vented to the outdoors into the room that vented from the tunnel. Claire was right behind us. Apparently, the concrete floor was somewhat slanted because there was a pool of water accumulated, maybe 3 inches deep, at the end of the room that we went into.
As the 3 of us entered the room we looked in the direction of where the fan was & saw what appeared to be a form of electricity or lightning moving in what appeared to be perfectly geometrical dashes from the ceiling & then making a seemingly exact right angle turn - back & forth. The 3 of us stared, shocked, & didn't say anything. The room was otherwise extremely dark.
After what was presumably less than a minute of this one or the other of us broke the silence to exclaim something to the effect of: "Do you see that lightning?!" At this point, the geometrical dashes of lightning made another right-angle turn in the direction of the vent hole into the tunnel & turned left to go into the tunnel in the direction of Camden Yards. We clambered up onto the vent wall & caught a glimpse of it rapidly disappearing from our sight - going in a straight line made up of dashes.
As I recall, it was at this point that Claire entered the room. As such, it seemed to me that she couldn't have seen the electricity. She later claimed, however, that she, too, had seen it.
We very excitedly compared what we'd seen & all agreed that we'd seen the same thing. I, at least, had had the hypothesis that the lightning, or geometrical electricity, had been following pipes leading down from the ceiling. However, by whatever light we could muster, perhaps a lighter, we saw that there were no pipes extruding from the ceiling that the electricity could have followed where I expected them. There was, however, a pipe IN the ceiling - presumably venting to the ground level air, but maybe not. That was, apparently, where the geometrical lightning had originated from. Its further passage in dashes & straight lines had no other visible sign of a channel to direct it.
Our collective impression was that whatever we had seen had been intelligent & that we had startled it with our noise - scaring it away.
Tentatively, A Convenience
As far as I 'know', most of these questions have been created by Goodreads staff to stimulate the 'Goodreads authors' to make public statements that may be of interest to people ON Goodreads. That's all well & good. The questions are generic & more or less irrelevant to my actual praxis but that's ok. I aim to please. SO, how DO I deal with writer's block?
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end.
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end.
Tentatively, A Convenience
Dashiell Hammett's Nick & Nora Charles. This question stimulated such an immediate answer that I find it somewhat suspect. I feel like I should be going for a wittier, more surprising result.. but, no, I'm going to be very straightforward here. I'm a flaming heterosexual. A couple who have witty banter all day long, who have a fun life (I don't recall explicit sex in Hammett but there's plenty of it in my fiction), & who get into adventures together that they ultimately escape unscathed from is ideal. They're also fictional. Still, my own life could be said to've been stranger than fiction on many an occasion so.. who knows?
Tentatively, A Convenience
Well, this isn't exactly about my most recent book ("tENTATIVELY, aN iNTERVIEW" in collaboration with Alan Davies) but it's the closest I can get at the moment. That age-old question of "Where did you get the idea"? can be answered by almost all creative people who're willing to be honest with a simple answer: from a series of books called "Ideas for _____s" - in this case "Ideas for Writers". I have one called "Ideas for Filmmakers" & one called "Ideas for Musicians" too. They're all pretty much the same with a few minor variations. I should clarify: they're not exactly books, they're things that display on my iTab, they're kindof expensive but the subscription's worth it because it keeps me ahead of the pack, so to speak, ahead of the wolves at my door. Unfortunately, I can't really afford to pay for a good iTab at the same time so I can't always read the microprint.
Anyway, just to give an example. I'm sitting here, alone, as usual, my inflatable amanuensis doll that answered to the name of Samuel Beckett deflated a while back & since then I haven't had any friends at all. SO, I'm trying to think: what can I write? I just look at the iTab "Ideas for Writers" & I see that zombies are in right now so I think "COOL, that's something different that I wouldn't have thought of on my own!" so I decide to make it a zombie story.
Well, lest you think that I'm lazy and that I'd just sit back on my haunches & knock back a six-pack after such an inspired moment, I THEN consult the iTab again & see that if I really want to corner a niche market I should make it targeted to an audience-in-search-of-'their'-writers so I decide to make it a queer youth novel, at least a little - not too much because I want to keep it outside of the rating system so I don't have any problems there.
Now I'm on a roll! A few more checks in the iTab & I've got the opening scene: two girls in a bedroom messing around, nothing too x-rated, just some exploratory kissing, maybe a little petting, again, not too much. The annoying little brother has been pounding his pud in the next room, he can hear everything so he knows what's going on. Now I don't explicitly say that's what he's been doing, it's implied, right? "Ideas for Writers" teaches you how to be subtle. SO, he bursts into his sister's room, his pajama fly is open, he's got the door-knocker in his hand, the sister & her friend see that he's a zombie so she blows his head off with a handy gun (every American home should have at least one in every room).
This is where I start to get really original: usually zombies get killed when their head gets blown off, right? In this case the brother keeps right on coming, he can't see anymore but it's ok, it's a small room, the bed's on the right, the school-desk's on the left & the window's straight ahead so it doesn't matter if he can't see anymore. I admit, I started to get lost here, I mean his door-knocker wants to "ring that bell-el-el-el-el-el-el" right but I can't let that happen, I've got to curb that heat-seeking missile.
Eureka! A VAMPIRE comes in the window at that very moment (I'm not making this shit up, it's all in the "Ideas for Writers" iTab) & starts sucking on the boy's neck-stump. It's like winning the lottery for the vampire. In no time at all, the boy's body is drained 'til he's little more than one of those party-whistles where you blow it & a tongue of rolled paper shoots out & then retracts again - you know what I mean? BUT HE'S STILL ALIVE! (Every time I start a sentence with "But" or use an ampersand or whatever a red line appears under it, the "Ideas for Writers" spellcheck doesn't like it at all but I can't help myself I'm so excited!) Nothing can kill this kid.
The girls have been watching all this, admittedly fascinated & a bit turned on, but, then, the vampire turns to look at them & she's got a weird look in her eye & they know what that means so they each take a nail-studded baseball bat that's there in case they run out of ammo & they each take a swing but the vampire's too smart for that & jumps out the window just in time & the bat hits the brother in what's left of his stomach instead &, & here's the shocker, his head pops out of his neck, he was only fooling, he's ok, & everybody hugs each other & we're back to being family-friendly.
I REALLY don't know where to go from here, I'm even more stumped than the brother (get it?!) so I consult the well-spring & find that making it a dream justifies anything so that gets me off the ratings hook a little. The sister wakes up, it turns out that she's fallen asleep in class, she's in school & a nun has awoken her by whapping a ruler across her knuckles. I got that from the iTab too - nice touch, eh?! See why the subscription's worth it?!
There's something weird about the nun. The reader doesn't know this yet, I just drop some hints, but the nun's actually a guy in drag who's in school as an undercover cop trying to catch some grafittists who've been carving a post-horn symbol in the ceilings & the cop can't even figure out how they get up there, he's just got to know. But that's not the only weird thing, the girl's starting to figure out that he's actually a guy because there's this protuberance at about three feet in the front of the nun's habit.
In other words, all is not as it seems - you don't want to make it too obvious for the reader. When the girl gets woken up, she knocks her iTool on the ground & when she leans over to pick it up in her Catholic School mini-skirt uniform her thong strap breaks & her woo-haa is exposed to the 'nun' who just happens to be bending over at the same time to help her pick up the thingie &, wouldn't you know it?, that nylon-wrapped protuberance slips right into the Garden of Eden!!
At this point, I'm a bit tipsy & I look at my "Ideas for Writers" & see that I've accidentally opened the ADULT version but there's no turning back now because I've lost track of where I am anyway. Well, the girl, the sister, right?, not the 'nun' sister, but the zombie-boy-in-the-dream's sister gets pretty excited by all this & that's when, to quote Dr. John Money, she gets derailed from her love-track. She's a goner. Nothing is EVER going to turn her on like this again, she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to reinstantiate but there's no hope for her, this was a one-of-a-kind experience. OR SO IT SEEMS!!
Fortunately for her, the undercover cop is actually her own age (within a year or two) so the story's in the clear there, & the reason why this particular cop specializes in nun-drag is NOT because he's one of the Sisters of Perpetual Motion, or whatever they're called, but because he has a physical abnormality that makes his crotch two feet above the ground & his heart at about three feet while his head is still at about the normal height.
Here's where the "Ideas for Writers" really gave me a kick: The protuberance, which everyone has been thinking is the member of the family who hangs onto the family jewels is ACTUALLY a stake that was driven through his unusual person's heart! The thing is: HE CAN'T TAKE THE STAKE OUT HIMSELF, that's against the rules, & he's too embarrassed to ask for help. WELLLLLL (another red underline), the stake gets caught in the honey pot & when the girl stands up it pops out of his chest & the wound immediately heals. BOY, is he grateful!
I barely need to tell you what happens after that, the story just sortof writes itself. The boy is actually some sort of super-powered shape-shifter who was elongating when the stake was driven in by a bad guy who was trying, of course, to kill him. The result was that he didn't get killed but he got stuck in this shape, right? & he's been an undercover cop in nun drag ever since. That's kinda harsh for such a young guy - even if he is precocious. That's made him more sensitive.
Once the stake's out, he remembers that HE's the grafittist & that his elongo powers have enabled him to carve into the ceiling with his titanium-hard fingernails. Everything fits together, he & the girl fall in love, his special powers make reinstantiation possible after all & they live happily ever after. That's just the 1st chapter, I've been misleading the reader, the real hero of the story is the writer but I'm too drunk now to read the "Ideas for Writers" anymore so I have to stop for now. Does that answer your question?!
Anyway, just to give an example. I'm sitting here, alone, as usual, my inflatable amanuensis doll that answered to the name of Samuel Beckett deflated a while back & since then I haven't had any friends at all. SO, I'm trying to think: what can I write? I just look at the iTab "Ideas for Writers" & I see that zombies are in right now so I think "COOL, that's something different that I wouldn't have thought of on my own!" so I decide to make it a zombie story.
Well, lest you think that I'm lazy and that I'd just sit back on my haunches & knock back a six-pack after such an inspired moment, I THEN consult the iTab again & see that if I really want to corner a niche market I should make it targeted to an audience-in-search-of-'their'-writers so I decide to make it a queer youth novel, at least a little - not too much because I want to keep it outside of the rating system so I don't have any problems there.
Now I'm on a roll! A few more checks in the iTab & I've got the opening scene: two girls in a bedroom messing around, nothing too x-rated, just some exploratory kissing, maybe a little petting, again, not too much. The annoying little brother has been pounding his pud in the next room, he can hear everything so he knows what's going on. Now I don't explicitly say that's what he's been doing, it's implied, right? "Ideas for Writers" teaches you how to be subtle. SO, he bursts into his sister's room, his pajama fly is open, he's got the door-knocker in his hand, the sister & her friend see that he's a zombie so she blows his head off with a handy gun (every American home should have at least one in every room).
This is where I start to get really original: usually zombies get killed when their head gets blown off, right? In this case the brother keeps right on coming, he can't see anymore but it's ok, it's a small room, the bed's on the right, the school-desk's on the left & the window's straight ahead so it doesn't matter if he can't see anymore. I admit, I started to get lost here, I mean his door-knocker wants to "ring that bell-el-el-el-el-el-el" right but I can't let that happen, I've got to curb that heat-seeking missile.
Eureka! A VAMPIRE comes in the window at that very moment (I'm not making this shit up, it's all in the "Ideas for Writers" iTab) & starts sucking on the boy's neck-stump. It's like winning the lottery for the vampire. In no time at all, the boy's body is drained 'til he's little more than one of those party-whistles where you blow it & a tongue of rolled paper shoots out & then retracts again - you know what I mean? BUT HE'S STILL ALIVE! (Every time I start a sentence with "But" or use an ampersand or whatever a red line appears under it, the "Ideas for Writers" spellcheck doesn't like it at all but I can't help myself I'm so excited!) Nothing can kill this kid.
The girls have been watching all this, admittedly fascinated & a bit turned on, but, then, the vampire turns to look at them & she's got a weird look in her eye & they know what that means so they each take a nail-studded baseball bat that's there in case they run out of ammo & they each take a swing but the vampire's too smart for that & jumps out the window just in time & the bat hits the brother in what's left of his stomach instead &, & here's the shocker, his head pops out of his neck, he was only fooling, he's ok, & everybody hugs each other & we're back to being family-friendly.
I REALLY don't know where to go from here, I'm even more stumped than the brother (get it?!) so I consult the well-spring & find that making it a dream justifies anything so that gets me off the ratings hook a little. The sister wakes up, it turns out that she's fallen asleep in class, she's in school & a nun has awoken her by whapping a ruler across her knuckles. I got that from the iTab too - nice touch, eh?! See why the subscription's worth it?!
There's something weird about the nun. The reader doesn't know this yet, I just drop some hints, but the nun's actually a guy in drag who's in school as an undercover cop trying to catch some grafittists who've been carving a post-horn symbol in the ceilings & the cop can't even figure out how they get up there, he's just got to know. But that's not the only weird thing, the girl's starting to figure out that he's actually a guy because there's this protuberance at about three feet in the front of the nun's habit.
In other words, all is not as it seems - you don't want to make it too obvious for the reader. When the girl gets woken up, she knocks her iTool on the ground & when she leans over to pick it up in her Catholic School mini-skirt uniform her thong strap breaks & her woo-haa is exposed to the 'nun' who just happens to be bending over at the same time to help her pick up the thingie &, wouldn't you know it?, that nylon-wrapped protuberance slips right into the Garden of Eden!!
At this point, I'm a bit tipsy & I look at my "Ideas for Writers" & see that I've accidentally opened the ADULT version but there's no turning back now because I've lost track of where I am anyway. Well, the girl, the sister, right?, not the 'nun' sister, but the zombie-boy-in-the-dream's sister gets pretty excited by all this & that's when, to quote Dr. John Money, she gets derailed from her love-track. She's a goner. Nothing is EVER going to turn her on like this again, she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to reinstantiate but there's no hope for her, this was a one-of-a-kind experience. OR SO IT SEEMS!!
Fortunately for her, the undercover cop is actually her own age (within a year or two) so the story's in the clear there, & the reason why this particular cop specializes in nun-drag is NOT because he's one of the Sisters of Perpetual Motion, or whatever they're called, but because he has a physical abnormality that makes his crotch two feet above the ground & his heart at about three feet while his head is still at about the normal height.
Here's where the "Ideas for Writers" really gave me a kick: The protuberance, which everyone has been thinking is the member of the family who hangs onto the family jewels is ACTUALLY a stake that was driven through his unusual person's heart! The thing is: HE CAN'T TAKE THE STAKE OUT HIMSELF, that's against the rules, & he's too embarrassed to ask for help. WELLLLLL (another red underline), the stake gets caught in the honey pot & when the girl stands up it pops out of his chest & the wound immediately heals. BOY, is he grateful!
I barely need to tell you what happens after that, the story just sortof writes itself. The boy is actually some sort of super-powered shape-shifter who was elongating when the stake was driven in by a bad guy who was trying, of course, to kill him. The result was that he didn't get killed but he got stuck in this shape, right? & he's been an undercover cop in nun drag ever since. That's kinda harsh for such a young guy - even if he is precocious. That's made him more sensitive.
Once the stake's out, he remembers that HE's the grafittist & that his elongo powers have enabled him to carve into the ceiling with his titanium-hard fingernails. Everything fits together, he & the girl fall in love, his special powers make reinstantiation possible after all & they live happily ever after. That's just the 1st chapter, I've been misleading the reader, the real hero of the story is the writer but I'm too drunk now to read the "Ideas for Writers" anymore so I have to stop for now. Does that answer your question?!
Tentatively, A Convenience
“The Meaning of Life”
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
October 6, 2016
Wow! I’ve actually been asked a question on GoodReads after writing here for 9 years. Thank you! The question is “What is the meaning of life?” The questioner, John, spelled all the words in their usual manner & followed conventional grammar. As such, he left me little obvious room for responding to the question as if it were in several discrete parts: What is the? What is the meaning? What is the meaning of? etc.. John has “liked” my verbose criticism of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans so he’s obviously open to wordplay.
Given that I’ve always found the question “What is the meaning of life?” to be an absolutely ludicrous pseudo-profundity, I find it hard to believe that any intelligent person would ask it seriously. Therefore, I suspect John of asking me this as a way of challenging my abilities to come up with a good punchline. But, 1st, why am I critical of the question? Generally, I’m critical of it because its usual implication is that there’s a central purpose to life such as ‘Life only has meaning through serving God’s will' or “Life only has meaning gleaned through repeated witnessings of Monty Python’s movie entitled “The Meaning of Life”'.
Apparently, even defining “life” to produce a meaning for it as a word is problematic:
“Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids or potential artificial life as living. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved.
“The definition of life is controversial. The current definition[according to whom?] is that organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. However, many other biological definitions have been proposed, and there are also some borderline cases, such as viruses. Biophysicists have also proposed some definitions, many being based on chemical systems. There are also some living systems theories, such as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that the Earth is alive; the former first developed by James Grier Miller. Another one is that life is the property of ecological systems, and yet another is the complex systems biology, a branch or subfield of mathematical biology. Some other systemic definitions includes the theory involving the darwinian dynamic, and the operator theory. However, throughout history, there have been many other theories and definitions about life such as materialism, the belief that everything is made out of matter and that life is merely a complex form of it; hylomorphism, the belief that all things are a combination of matter and form, and the form of a living thing is its soul; spontaneous generation, the belief that life repeatedly emerge[s] from non-life; and vitalism, a discredited scientific hypothesis that living organisms possess a "life force" or "vital spark". Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. Life on Earth arose 3.8–4.1 billion years ago. It is widely accepted that current life on Earth descended from an RNA world, but RNA based life may not have been the first. The mechanism by which life began on Earth is unknown, although many hypotheses have been formulated, most based on the Miller–Urey experiment. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
I tend to think that everything is “alive” in the hylozoistic sense. I don’t however, think of things as having “souls” or “spirits” - including humans. I think of us more as being temporary arrangements of matter that produce characteristics dependent on the nature of the conglomerate. Some arrangements of matter produce energy flows that produce consciousness. I have no method for determining whether some forms of matter have what I would recognize as consciousness or not. As such, I tend to think of matter that doesn’t appear to me to have consciousness or the ability to move independently of forces outside of itself as being “inanimate” but not necessarily not alive - stones, for example.
Since I’ve found that the more consciousness a thing has the higher my likelihood of interfacing with it on a satisfactory level is, the purpose of my life has often tended to be to seek out such positive interactions & to avoid the ones where humans of apparently lower degrees of consciousness propel objects of apparent inanimateness at me - such as stones or bullets. Thus, the meaning of life, in the sense of ‘purpose’, might be to “dodge the bullet”. Otherwise, I think that life is meaningless - which I have no problem with whatsoever given that I can still enjoy the heck out of it anyway. In fact, I’m not sure that a Meaning of Life might not just ruin the whole business for me by oversimplifying things.
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
October 6, 2016
Wow! I’ve actually been asked a question on GoodReads after writing here for 9 years. Thank you! The question is “What is the meaning of life?” The questioner, John, spelled all the words in their usual manner & followed conventional grammar. As such, he left me little obvious room for responding to the question as if it were in several discrete parts: What is the? What is the meaning? What is the meaning of? etc.. John has “liked” my verbose criticism of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans so he’s obviously open to wordplay.
Given that I’ve always found the question “What is the meaning of life?” to be an absolutely ludicrous pseudo-profundity, I find it hard to believe that any intelligent person would ask it seriously. Therefore, I suspect John of asking me this as a way of challenging my abilities to come up with a good punchline. But, 1st, why am I critical of the question? Generally, I’m critical of it because its usual implication is that there’s a central purpose to life such as ‘Life only has meaning through serving God’s will' or “Life only has meaning gleaned through repeated witnessings of Monty Python’s movie entitled “The Meaning of Life”'.
Apparently, even defining “life” to produce a meaning for it as a word is problematic:
“Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids or potential artificial life as living. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved.
“The definition of life is controversial. The current definition[according to whom?] is that organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. However, many other biological definitions have been proposed, and there are also some borderline cases, such as viruses. Biophysicists have also proposed some definitions, many being based on chemical systems. There are also some living systems theories, such as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that the Earth is alive; the former first developed by James Grier Miller. Another one is that life is the property of ecological systems, and yet another is the complex systems biology, a branch or subfield of mathematical biology. Some other systemic definitions includes the theory involving the darwinian dynamic, and the operator theory. However, throughout history, there have been many other theories and definitions about life such as materialism, the belief that everything is made out of matter and that life is merely a complex form of it; hylomorphism, the belief that all things are a combination of matter and form, and the form of a living thing is its soul; spontaneous generation, the belief that life repeatedly emerge[s] from non-life; and vitalism, a discredited scientific hypothesis that living organisms possess a "life force" or "vital spark". Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. Life on Earth arose 3.8–4.1 billion years ago. It is widely accepted that current life on Earth descended from an RNA world, but RNA based life may not have been the first. The mechanism by which life began on Earth is unknown, although many hypotheses have been formulated, most based on the Miller–Urey experiment. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
I tend to think that everything is “alive” in the hylozoistic sense. I don’t however, think of things as having “souls” or “spirits” - including humans. I think of us more as being temporary arrangements of matter that produce characteristics dependent on the nature of the conglomerate. Some arrangements of matter produce energy flows that produce consciousness. I have no method for determining whether some forms of matter have what I would recognize as consciousness or not. As such, I tend to think of matter that doesn’t appear to me to have consciousness or the ability to move independently of forces outside of itself as being “inanimate” but not necessarily not alive - stones, for example.
Since I’ve found that the more consciousness a thing has the higher my likelihood of interfacing with it on a satisfactory level is, the purpose of my life has often tended to be to seek out such positive interactions & to avoid the ones where humans of apparently lower degrees of consciousness propel objects of apparent inanimateness at me - such as stones or bullets. Thus, the meaning of life, in the sense of ‘purpose’, might be to “dodge the bullet”. Otherwise, I think that life is meaningless - which I have no problem with whatsoever given that I can still enjoy the heck out of it anyway. In fact, I’m not sure that a Meaning of Life might not just ruin the whole business for me by oversimplifying things.
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