Michael Rubens's Blog, page 7

Paul Brill!

Great song and video from awesome guy Paul Brill, who also did the music for the Joan Rivers documentary, A Piece of Work, among several other great films.

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This is, um, me. Speaking Esperanto.

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A Poem

Also old! From my defunct original blog! But very apropos right now, with the warming weather…

I’m going to take a tiny piece of wax, no larger than a grain of sand, and from it I will fashion an anvil.

Then I will cast it in the hardest steel.

I will then make a hammer, also vanishingly small, its wooden handle as thin as a thought.

Then I will use them both, miniature hammer and miniature anvil, to forge an exquisitely minute crowbar.



And then, dear mosquito who has been buzzing in our ears and biting us all night, I’m going to use that crowbar to break each and every one of your fucking kneecaps.



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Book Trailer!

That’s for my first book! And sort of old! But fun!

 

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New Book

Just got the advance reader copies for my second novel, Sons of the 613. It’s being published by Clarion Books this coming September.

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I have returned and my name is in large block letters.

So, I once had a blog that I launched along with the publication of my first novel, , and it was extensive and fascinating and full of incisive and insightful postings, and then something broke, and because I’m a) dumb, and b) dumb, I couldn’t fix it, and so all that brilliance vanished and world was a sadder place for it*.

And then tonight, after a year of wandering in the wilderness, occasionally logging on to my account to poke futilely at various settings and whatnot, I tried an entirely new tact known as Calling Customer Support, and a Man With An Accent fixed everything in somewhat more than four and somewhat less than seven minutes.

At one point during our short conversation he asked if the photo on the “about” page was, in fact, me. When I replied in the affirmative he offered that I sounded very different than I looked. Ah, I said, and then for some reason completely failed to follow up on that obvious opening and inquire what he thought I should look like, if not Receding Hairline Jew.

I think I was partially distracted from asking because at that very moment I had been trying to picture his appearance — I was having a hard time placing his accent, which  sounded like the product, or perhaps victim, of extensive accent reduction sessions. It struck me that the overall distance and deviation of his pronunciation from dull midwestern English hadn’t been so much reduced as shifted around, somewhat like squeezing a balloon, as if concentrating on shaping his diphthongs this way made him then mispronounce his long vowels that way. His voice also had a syrupy quality to it that  reminded me of Marvin the Martian, which can only make one feel happy, and other than puzzling me with his unplaceable accent, which of course wasn’t his fault**, he was extremely friendly and helpful and as I said fixed everything in no time, and if he felt any contempt for my technical incompetence he hid it perfectly. So thank you, Man With Accent in anonymous call center located somewhere else, you have helped me relaunch my blog. Perhaps we will speak again soon, when I f@#& something new up and need help.

* Sadder in the sense that I would tell people, hey, check out my blog, and they’d then do so, only to report back to me that my blog consisted of a page saying “no input file specified.” This at least made me sad.

** And we can pretty much guarantee that I don’t speak his native language at all, so who am I to comment?

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A poem.

I'm going to take a tiny piece of wax, no larger than a grain of sand, and from it I will fashion an anvil.

Then I will cast it in the hardest steel.

I will then make a hammer, also vanishingly small, its wooden handle as thin as a thought.

Then I will use them both, miniature hammer and anvil, and forge an exquisitely minute crowbar.

And then, dear mosquito who has been buzzing in our ears and biting us all night, I'm going to use that crowbar to break each and every one of your fucking kneecaps.

Robots teaching themselves to shoot arrows

Really? No one sees where this might lead?

The Sheriff of Yrnameer book trailer…SEQUEL!

The long-awaited sequel is finally here.

Topless Robot featuring Yrnameer book trailer!

Love Topless Robot, and not just because they were nice enough to feature my on their site.