S. Michael Wilson's Blog, page 3

But Say a Man Does Know

Cover of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter"But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it." 


Jake Blount - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter , Carson McCullers
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Co-workers Suck

Image via Wikipedia
"You forgot to check the phone number on the order against the one in the system. The one on the order is the client's new home number."

Oh! My mistake, I must have overlooked that. Thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to keep an eye on that sort of thing when I'm processing invoices. Constructive criticism is important, especially when it leads to preventing future errors.

"If the invoice went out with the old number, and they tried to call the customer from the road tomorrow, they wouldn't be able to get a hold of them."

Is that what happens when someone calls a wrong number? And here I was living under the assumption that if someone dialed an old number, it somehow magically connected through to the person you were trying to reach in some cosmic karma version of call forwarding. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't taken the time to explain how the old phone number becomes noneffective when someone changes it to a new number. Granted, years down the road, with some worldly experience and accumulated wisdom under my belt, I might have eventually come to understand this universal truth on my own. But thankfully, you devoted the extra time, not to mention the precious live-giving breath afforded by your very lungs, to impart this wisdom unto me, increasing my knowledge, and making me a better person overall.

I mean, really? Is there any reason you couldn't simply stop talking after your mouth had already finished delivering all of the useful information it had to offer? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being treated like fourth-grader with a learning disorder and having the common-sense aspects of cause and effect explained to me like I'm a complete moron because I overlooked a piece of information. It not only makes me feel appreciated, but helps the workday just whiz right along. However, in the future, when you feel the compulsion to talk to a fellow employee in the same manner you no doubt talk to your children, you might want to take a second to consider the scope of your planned monologue, mentally edit the length of your professional discourse, and make a conscious effort to stop fucking talking once all necessary words have left your mouth.
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In It To Lose It

Image via WikipediaOne of my newly acquired coworkers approached me a couple of days ago and asked it I wanted to chip in for the company Lottery tickets. Apparently, a majority of the people where I work (including the owner, if that tells you anything) create a Lottery pool when ever the Mega Millions jackpot climbs over $300 Million. I guess they figure chump change like $200 Million isn't worth the effort.

I am not a gambler. I enjoy games and healthy competition, and the occasional wager between friends can be fun and challenging. But as soon as gambling is orchestrated and controlled by an organization with the direct intent of making money, it becomes a situation in which you are being asked to dedicate yourself financially to a system that has been specifically orchestrated to ensure your failure in the majority of possible outcomes. Much like borrowing or investing money with banks these days, you're screwed the minute you open your wallet.

This isn't a position I take on any kind of logically superior level. I am purely adverse to gambling from emotional standpoint: like many people, I don't like to lose. I'm not obsessive about it; I don't fly into a rage when a scrabble partners plays Quartzy on a Triple Word score or cheat at miniature golf. But to me, gambling has always felt like defeat without any real promise of success. I've patronized a few casinos in my day, and the stench of desperation and hopeless persistence is always overwhelming. I can almost see the pleasure in some of it - Slot machines, for example, have evolved to the point where they are merely arcade games for unimaginative adults. Of course, as a kid, I could milk a couple of hours at the arcade out of a measly $5; the same amount of time hanging out at even the nickel slots can cost you the same as a month's worth of groceries ("What do you mean, seventy-five lines? Why did one turn on a nickel slot just cost me $3.75?). During my last trip to the local Sands Casino, I paid a brief visit to the High Roller Slots Area, just to see what people willing to take a $500 pull on a one-armed bandit look like. Frighteningly enough, they look just like you and me, just with nicer clothing.

As if that isn't bad enough, anything above slots descends into the bizarre realm of casual and somewhat civilized thuggery. Those slightly jovial people with the intense stares at the $10 blackjack table might seem innocent enough, but all it takes is ten or twelve hands for you to realize that the middle-aged mother of three (celebrating her third honeymoon) on your right and the overworked insurance salesman (in town for yet another trade show) on your left are both more than willing to shove the plastic straw from their complimentary drink in your eye if you mistakenly hit when you aren't "supposed" to and inadvertently take "their" card. Desperation can make people behave irrationally, but those who actively seek out desperation are a dangerous breed all their own. The twisted souls populating the Keno and Roulette tables are the most unstable of the bunch, and should be approached with extreme cation. The person who willingly places bets on a game in which they are fully aware that odds are firmly against them, only to become angry or disappointed when the law of averages declares them losers, is an unpredictable creature that demands equal amount of pity and respect, but only at a safe distance.

Of course, we aren't talking about table games or slot machines. My coworkers would simply like me to chip in on buying lottery tickets so as to increase their chance of beating the three-million-to-one odds against them by a fraction of a percent. It's all in good fun, but my natural inclination is to politely decline. Even when in good company, I still cannot find the joy in purposely setting myself up for yet another loss.

Then a frightening possibility occurs to me: what if they win? What if I politely decline to join in their office lottery pool, only to have my coworkers strike the jackpot. It would just be my luck to end up in an empty office on a Monday morning with everyone having called out sick to celebrate, with them mulling over stock portfolios while I process payroll for a bunch of nouveau riche, soon to be ex-coworkers.

So, I chipped in three dollars. Because the only thing worse than losing is being the only loser in the building.

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Homeschooling: America's Biggest Joke

Image by Gage Skidmore via FlickrRon Paul and Michelle Bachmann, two of the Tea Party's hopeful (yet decidedly doubtful) 2012 Presidential hopefuls picked up the anti-public schools baton lobbed by ambitious GOP trend-setters like Chris Christie and Scott Walker over the past month. But unwilling to do anything half-assed (except draw logical conclusions or research historical facts, perhaps), Bachmann and Paul shot right past those evil unions and greedy teachers, and instead attacked the institution of government funded public education as a whole. Needless to say, their arguments come across as less than coherent.

Ron Paul, claiming that the government was seeking nothing less than "absolute control" over the "indoctrination" of children, adjusted his tinfoil hat and stated that "the public school system now is a propaganda machine. They start with our kids even in kindergarten, teaching them about family values, sexual education, gun rights, environmentalism - and they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American."

At first, one might pause to wonder what exactly Ron Paul has against teaching children about things like family values and the environment. This involves some reading between the lines, facilitated by the fact that Paul and Bachmann were speaking at a homeschooling rally (whatever that is), which is undoubtedly comprised of a majority of Far-Right paranoids concerned with shielding their children from what they consider 'Wrong' thinking. With this in mind, it now becomes understood that when Paul accuses public schools of teaching children 'Family Values', he is really accusing them of teaching kids that homosexuality isn't a crime against God and society. 'Sex Education' translates to 'Birth Control & Abortions as Viable Options', 'Gun Rights' become 'Guns are Dangerous and Should Be Restricted', and 'Environmentalism' as 'Regulating Polluting Corporations and Reducing Consumerism'. In the right-wing mind, all of these are inherently evil forms of juvenile brainwashing.

Am I being unreasonable here? After all, shouldn't parents be expected to show concern that their children are being exposed to belief systems to which they don't subscribe? Yes, that would be a fair assumption. However, these groups that yank their children out of formal education to save them from hearing about condoms and global warming are the same ones that want students to be openly led in prayer, and balk when religious symbols is stripped from holiday celebrations out of concern for those of other religious persuasions. Paul doesn't mention evolution in his laundry list of educational sins against our children, but if he did it would have garnered just as much applause. Most of these rabid homeschooling proponents are against any kind of indoctrination other than that which follows their own firmly held beliefs. If the schools were spreading propaganda that called gay marriage an abomination, sex a dirty shameful act, and gun ownership a patriotic necessity in case of a Communist attack, you wouldn't be hearing a peep out of these people. Do I have any direct evidence that this crowd falls into such a category? No, but I have just as much proof as they do that God exists, so who are you to judge?

Bachmann followed up Paul's fearmongering against formal education by claiming that homeschooling is the "essence" of freedom and liberty. Actually, homeschooling is the essence of being an isolated frontiersman with no real connection to society. She went on to croon "It's about knowing our children better than the state knows our children," she said. Which is endearing sentiment that moves me to wonder why the government feels the need to interfere with our children when it comes to the consumption of alcohol or tobacco? Don't parents know better than the state whether or not their children are mentally and emotionally mature enough to smoke or drink? And what about laws against child abuse and endangerment? Aren't parents are the ultimate judges of how much physical and mental assaults their children can take before punishment crosses over into abuse? Talk about the Nanny State.

"It is not up to a bureaucrat to decide what is best for your children," Bachmann said. "I am so tired of the establishment telling us that they know best. We know best." Except when it comes to physics, perhaps. Maybe algebraic equations. Or, in the case of Bachmann, American History. Come to think of it, her argument that the act of pumping out a couple of children suddenly endows the parents with an accurate and infallible concept of what is 'Best' is a little more than dubious. Sure they might all want the best (and even that claim is a tad dubious), but does every parent actually know what is best for their children? What about all of those parents who bought trampolines for their kids, or left guns unattended in nightstands to be played with, or told them that being popular is the most important thing in the world. I'm sure Billy Ray Cyrus wanted all of the best for his little Hannah Montana. But did he actually know what was best for Miley? I rest my case.

Bachmann's a favorite at these events because she has homeschooled all five of her own children, a fact that is somewhat frightening when you consider the number of historical inaccuracies and illogical statements attributable to her in just the past couple of years. We can only be thankful that the government intervened and prevented her from subjecting her twenty-three foster children to a similar fate.

Despite claims to the contrary, the majority of the homeschooling movement boils down to parents afraid of Non-Christian influences swaying their children's world view, so it is no surprise that the master of ceremonies was Justin LaVan of the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, who stated that homeschooling was a way get children "talking about our Creator - our rights that came from our Creator, acknowledging that and giving him the glory, folks."

So, where do I get off calling homeschooling a joke? Surely, there must be examples of homeschooled kids who were not raised by religious zealots fearing heathen influences would turn their children into Gay Hippie Atheist Democrats. I can't possibly be dismissive of an entire movement simply because of the religious undertones of their overall message of wanting greater control over their children's education?

You bet your ass I can. The IQ of the average American currently hovers around 95%, give or take a few. Taking in consideration that this means half of the US population is actually (through statistical reasoning) dumber than that, what would you consider the ideal IQ of your average teacher? Would you want your child educated by someone with a merely average intellect? Or would you prefer someone a tad smarter than the average bear?

I know this might sound rather elitist to some people, but i'ts hard to put a ribbon on the ugly truth: rational people don't just want their children to grow up to be average. The want them to be exceptional, to be superior, or to put it more bluntly, to be smarter than their parents. The idea that a parent knows what's best for their children in an educational environment is a self-important position that drastically restricts the growth potential of that household's progeny. To claim that you, and you alone, should be the basis for your child's education is to insist that you are more qualified than all others to communicate the accumulation of modern civilization's knowledge into your kid's soft little skull. That, my friends, is hubris on a grand scale.

But shouldn't parents be able to shape and mold their children's beliefs and world views according to their own moral and spiritual compass? Damn straight they should, and nobody is doing a thing to stop them. The schools only have their children for a limited number of hours a day and days of the year. The rest of the time can be easily be spent talking to your children, counseling them and helping them shape the knowledge they acquire and force it into whatever spiritual or philosophical pigeon-hole you wish.

The reason the homeschooling movement in America is a joke is because the entire argument for it is based on a convenient lie. Homeschooling parents aren't afraid of negative influences on their children's impressionable young minds. They are afraid that the child, after accumulating facts and weighing evidence beyond the scope of the their parents' knowledge, will grow up to someday tell them that they are wrong. And if there is one thing that the collective psyche of the average person can't handle, it is being told that they might actually be wrong. And by their children, no less? Why, that's downright un-American.
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What's Wrong With Crust?

Image via WikipediaI don't understand what appears to me to be a universal aversion to crust. From mothers who will force their children to eat Asparagus and Cauliflower yet willingly cut the crust off of their PB&J, to grown adults fingering past those first couple of slices in the bread bag and eventually throwing it away with the heels still inside, there seems to be some twisted bias against what is still a perfectly edible piece of bread. What is it about this completely illogical aversion to the slightly hardened edges of sliced bread that has it so deeply ingrained in our society's psyche? What is even more confusing is that this prejudice does not extend itself to other types of bread. Firmer, tougher crusts other specialty breads are eagerly devoured without a thought, yet the square sandwich loaf is continually taught to be ashamed of its protective outer shell. I don't know why this bugs me, but it does, and I can often be found making a sandwich out of the neglected heels in the bottom of the bread bag out of protest.
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The Hills Are Alive... RUN!!!

The bell tolls for me afterward, I suppose. Tonight I drive down to Princeton to meet Dead Wrong, Corey Sloan, and the rest of the undead cast and crew of  Zombie Etiquette , the corpse-driven talk show based out of  Princeton, New Jersey. Usually, preparations for a television interview normally consist of worrying what to wear and remembering not to look at the camera. In this case, the question is whether or not to go armed with enough firepower to take down a swarm of man-eating ghouls.

Don't get me wrong; I have no doubt that I was invited on to be asked about my latest book, Performed by Lugosi , and my role as a writer and film commentator. The show has had some great artists and stars on in the past, and most of them have actually been seen again, so the mortality rate of  the show's guests is actually quite low. For example, the line up for the show I'll be taping next Friday includes controversial singer, songwriter, and comedienne Jessica Delfino , actress/writer

But then again, I still have my concerns. How long can you remain in a room full of flesh-eating zombies before they start to lose their composure? Has the show's lack of on-screen guest eviscerations merely been a barely maintained safety record just begging to be broken? At what point do the par cans and tungsten stop being mere lighting and start acting as the heat lamps at a hot buffet?

Hence my dilemma. Do I stroll into a studio filled living dead fiends armed with nothing more than a smile and good intentions, or do I march in with fire axe in hand and risk committing a major faux pas? I'll most likely settle on the former; it's probably hard to interview someone while they cradle a shotgun and glare suspiciously. But I'll be sure to send updates to my Facebook and Twitter feeds to keep you up to date on my safety status. Of course, my last words on Earth might end up being a poorly spelled tweet about being barricaded in the green room, but I guess that's a risk I'll have to take. Wish me luck.
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Errata, by Charles Simic

                                          Image via Wikipedia 
Where it says snow
read teeth-marks of a virgin 
Where it says knife read 
you passed through my bones 
like a police-whistle 
Where it says table read horse 
Where it says horse read my migrant's bundle 
Apples are to remain apples 
Each time a hat appears 
think of Isaac Newton 
reading the Old Testament 
Remove all periods 
They are scars made by words 
I couldn't bring myself to say  
Put a finger over each sunrise 
it will blind you otherwise 
That damn ant is still stirring 
Will there be time left to list 
all errors to replace 
all hands guns owls plates 
all cigars ponds woods and reach 
that beer-bottle my greatest mistake 
the word I allowed to be written 
when I should have shouted 
her name 


errata - Charles Simic





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Interview with John Dimes, author of There Are No Bad Movies!

Moviesucktastic Update: the latest episode of our film review podcast, my co-host Joey and I were lucky enough to interview artist / actor / singer / writer John Dimes. John Dimes is known to many as the (first and only, according to his website) African-American Horror Host Dr. Sarcofiguy, and can often be found at horror conventions and other such film events [...]

Short Story Saturday: The Unavoidable Dilemma of Chauncey P. Simm

The Unavoidable Dilemma of Chauncey P. Simmby S. Michael Wilson 
          "Squeaky Cheese."
            Those were the words she spoke to me before she walked out of my life forever.            She stood framed in the splintered doorway of our spacious loft apartment, her full lips stained and puffy from an excess of pistachio nuts. I knelt in the far corner, the random fragments of my Berlin Wall Commemorative Beer Stein clutched in disbelieving hands. Her glare traveled across the room like a retired postal worker on a three day excursion through Fort Lauderdale, pausing momentarily near the singed potted palm for directions to the pitiful loser, then parking a few inches from my tear stained face and delivering her scorn through a passenger door window cracked open enough to let the contempt out and keep the air conditioning in.            There was a pause during which I was meant to do or say something, but my copy of the event's script had accidentally made it into the washing machine with my Day-Glo Buddhist robes, the words running together so that all I knew for sure was that I was supposed to do something with a 'P' and an 'E' in it.            The moment passed, lost like a child in Sears, and before I knew what had happened, she spoke those fateful words.            "Squeaky cheese," she said.             Then the door slammed shut, and I could hear her turn on her heels and stalk away huffily. I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat like an olive laced toothpick. That was it. She was gone.            I was at a loss for what to do. I was beside myself with grief, and neither of us was sure what came next. It was almost impossible to imagine a world without her, and now it was the only world I could afford admission to without a student discount.            Where had it all gone wrong? Had it ever gone right? Maybe it had all gone wrong before to such an extent that we assumed it was going right, so that when it all finally went right, it seemed so wrong.             Philosophical quandaries never fail to give me an earache, and so I staggered to the throne of woodland animal skulls she had constructed as a young Girl Scout to earn her False Idols Merit Badge. A seat of polished rabbit skulls cushioned me as I attempted to relieve my broken heart and impaired equilibrium. I gripped the squirrel spine armrest as the room spun around me like a goldfish bowl in a centrifuge and thought back to the time when it all began.            We first met in that magical time known as spring, two free spirits haunting the city of apples. Our paths crossed somewhere in central park. I was busy building tongue depressor profiles of famous dead Russian authors; she was lighting cigarettes and feeding them to pigeons. A smoldering bird set my wooden likeness of Nabokov aflame, and I pursued her across the park with the full intention of avenging poor Vladimir. My vengeful rage was cut short, however, as her stunning beauty and a vicious blow to the larynx stopped me in my tracks.            She was part Bruce Lee, part Florence Nightingale, and promptly nursed me back to health after thoroughly kicking my ass. I regained consciousness with a flutter in my heart, helped along with her flawless CPR. I felt a love for her, swelling within me like a bruised kidney, that almost matched the pity in her eyes.            We shared ourselves with one another right there in the bushes as she cradled my head and checked for spinal injuries. It seemed we were kindred souls, haunted by similar passions. She explained that her smoking pigeons were an anarchic attempt at performance art meant to illustrate the similarities between lung cancer and the avian flu. I confessed that I was cursed with an abundance of tongue depressors. We spent the rest of the afternoon asking probing questions of one another and evading park security. Our newfound affections and mutual curiosity had surpassed the restraints that shyness and no trespassing signs usually afford one in mixed company.            Our backgrounds were as similar as mismatched footwear. She was a fractured debutante from a Midwestern town best left nameless. Struck mute at an early age by the sheer beauty inherent in her inability to exist in two places at once, she ran away from home under the darkness of the yuletide season, vowing never to exist in the same place once. Owing to a severe lack of traveling circuses in the immediate area, she ending up fleeing the only hometown she had ever known on a Cincinnati Book Mobile gone rogue. Her next three years were spent like a gypsy in a library, never staying in the same place too long, never reading the same book twice. Her journey ended as most often do, abruptly at a partially hidden Stop sign and a jackknifed ice cream truck. Armed with the Hobo equivalent of a PHD in world studies, she had since spent her waking hours hitchhiking and spreading global awareness through pointless acts of obscure social disobedience.            I, on the other hand, had been born in a coma, only to be awakened at the age of seven by a monstrous thunderclap that split the heavens and set off every car alarm in three surrounding counties. Tutored endlessly until the age of awareness to catch me up with the rest of those sharing my birthday, I was released unto the world at the age of seventeen a well educated social recluse and societal misfit. Having read the collected works of Ayn Rand and misunderstanding all of it, I formed a religious and political belief system that even I did not fully understand, and was therefore forced to excommunicate myself, thus furthering along my complete alienation. I was on the verge of emotional bankruptcy when my parents finally came to my rescue and died from asphyxiation in a bizarre hang gliding accident, leaving me utterly alone yet completely self-sufficient, and owner of the world's second largest Ping-Pong table, currently on display in Minnesota.            Our life stories were so alike it was downright eerie, and there was a brief moment in which each assumed the other was a doppelganger intent on stealing their soul. The scuffle that followed our confused misunderstanding cemented our relationship and left me recuperating in intensive care for several weeks. She would come to visit me every other day, scaling out onto the ledge and blowing kisses at me through the windows, even though visiting hours were still in effect. By the time my recuperation was complete we had gained a devotional fascination for one another that bordered on stalking.            It was not long after my physical therapy that we made a home for ourselves in small seven-bedroom apartment overlooking the first eighteen floors of a Styrofoam recycling plant. My new eternal life partner, having spent half of her life a transient, had accumulated more possessions than a convention center full of comic book collectors, and it took several months for us to contact the several storage facilities she had rented across the country and have her stuff shipped to her new home. We spent the intervening time between UPS deliveries eating Chinese Takeout and playing a bizarre hybrid of Monopoly and Pente I had once created in the throes of an Absinthe binge. Three years later, we had yet to finish the game. I was ahead by three.            The years had flown by like big blurry things whizzing past opened windows, and it seemed like only yesterday that she had walked out of my life forever, despite it having happened only ten minutes ago.            Once again, the question circled my head like an airborne badger. Where had it all gone wrong? Was the answer hidden somewhere in her parting words? Perhaps it was a coded phrase meant to scratch at the walls of my subconscious until it drew blood and left a nasty scar. What could it mean? Was she comparing our love to a dairy treat both noisy and binding, our passionate affair reduced to nothing more that a case of high pitched constipation? Maybe she was drawing a comparison between mice and cheese, alluding to dual roles unwittingly played out by us to the bitter end. However, if so, who had filled each role? Had I been the cheese, or the whining mouse? If I embodied the former, I was hazardously miscast as overripe Gouda, and if I was to be the latter, then my tail was much too wide. Perhaps I was wrong on all counts, and she was simply reading from an equally water logged script, as clueless as myself as to what our motivation was, and why the director had walked off the set in a huff.            I scratched my ankle on a protruding beaver tooth and considered the possibility that she was attempting to compare the waning of our relationship to a Holy Rodent bespoken of in the missing gospel of Doogles. The door suddenly cracked open, and her face peeked around the corner like a ray of sunshine trying to make its way to the bathroom without being noticed. She scanned the room for my whereabouts like a reluctant warden, found me curled upon her childhood's throne, and gave me a rueful wink.            "The hardware store is closed on Tuesdays," she whispered before closing the door with a mischievous grin.            It suddenly occurred to me that I had never asked her name.

Is it rude to take a chainsaw to an interview?

Roughly a week remains until my scheduled interview with Dead Wrong, Corey Sloan, and the rest of the undead cast and crew of Zombie Etiquette, the corpse-driven talk show based out of  Princeton, New Jersey. Usually, preparations for a television interview normally consist of worrying what to wear and remembering not to look at the camera. In this [...]