Keith Blenman's Blog: This Worthless Life, page 14

Interstellar War 1050

 



I
have a lot of homework to do, so I don’t really have time to get into the full blown
opus of an entry that this should probably be. It’s been a while since I’ve
really gotten to write anything interesting in here, and for that I think I’m
suffering a little. BUT! Life isn’t without it’s little oddities and strange
moments. Take for example, my statistics class. Or as I like to think of it, that
thing I hate waking up for.



 



Not
that I mind a 10:00AM class. It’s just that the past twenty or so years of my
life have taught me that I’m definitely a night person. I can’t explain why. I
don’t fully understand myself. I work better at night. I write better at night.
I feel better about the world at night. Probably because, from where I’m
standing, everybody is asleep and therefore not quite as jerky as they are
while awake.



 



The
main problem with the class is simply that its two hours every morning of being
told how to use a calculator. And not even in any of those slick and stylish
ways that are great at parties and help everyone who takes the class get laid. Boring
ways. Statistical ways.



 



“If
you push this button, this button, and these two buttons, you will be able to
calculate the standard deviation. Here’s the equation for it, but don’t really
worry about it. It’s why man invented these four buttons.”



 



I
sit in the back corner of the class room, right up against the window. Just in
case of a campus wide revolution, when some private guerilla army decides to
liberate its fellow bored students, I want them to see my pitiful, puppy-like
face in the window and decide to free me first.



 



But,
you know, it’s just school. We can’t be interested in every last little thing
we’re required to learn. This class counts for my major and for that next
degree I just have to make my way through it and pay my dues. It’s only a few
months. It’s not the end of the world.



 



…I
tell myself every morning.



 



I
admit it. On slower days, I doodle in my notebook or write random lines or
story ideas. One day I caught myself writing out the lyrics to Odessa by Caribou.







 



As
we review previous material or exams I’ve taken to setting my iPod next to my
calculator and reading off my Kindle app. I recently started Lamb by Christopher Moore, but I’m
debating on holding off with the rest until I finish Sojourn by R.A. Salvatore and The
Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Next by Stieg Larsson.



 



So
many books. So little time.



 



Anyways,
I started to worry that I was the only one this bored during lecture. And
before any of you teachers out there try to jump down my throat for not paying
attention in class, screw anything you can say against me! The teacher sits at
his table, reads off the notes that I already have, and shows a projection of
his calculator, telling us what button to input. He’s just as bored as the rest
of us and we know it.



 



Need
proof?



 



There’s
this… I’m going to go with “socially awkward individual” who sits a couple of
seats ahead of me. Probably a nice kid, and I’m sure he knows all your favorite
anime, but it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t get out of the house much. He
can’t even weigh a hundred pounds, comes to class under the shadow of his
cowboy hat, and is always interrupting lecture to comment on how whatever
problem we’re working on to attempt to provoke discussion of whatever was on
the news the night before.



 



Including
the weather.



 



Among
other unrelated topics.



 



I
don’t blame the kid. He’s young. He doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. He’s
bored as hell like the rest of the class and it’s probably a little
overwhelming for him. He may have also recently discovered coffee and just isn’t
used to handling caffeine and sugar yet.



 



Although
I’m fairly certain that if I were to give him a pixie stick, he’d become
something similar to Gollum, screaming in the corner.



 



Anyways,
today he came prepared for class with a lump of clay.



 



Yes,
that’s what we’ve been building toward. The kid who sits ahead of me in statistics
has taken to shaping little clay figures and such on his desk during lecture.



 



Not
for another class. Not for any known purpose. The little man just seems to
think that it’s the thing to do.



 



For
example, today he was using his clay to resolve the long standing issue of
which is better: Star Wars or Star Trek?



 



Not
to get too political, but if I can weigh in my vote: If we’re talking about
previous works prior to the past fifteen years? Star Wars. Basing the argument on the more recent movies versus the
J.J Abrams Star Trek reboot? Stark Trek. Oh, dear god, Star Trek. George Lucas should’ve
retired and let somebody else take the prequel reigns.



 



Right,
Ridley?



 



Anyways,
the kid who was sitting ahead of me in class today was making little clay Star
Destroyers and little Clay Enterprises. And then among them a series of clay
arrows, triangles, and circles. I couldn’t say exactly what was going on, but I’m
pretty sure he was mapping out the battle. This ship goes that way. That one
goes the other. He seemed to be forming a little chess match between the two
classes of ship, plotting out exactly how the battle would go in his head.





 



And
after about twenty minutes, I started to wonder about it too.



 



“The
shields on Star Trek seem more
protective of those mentioned in Star
Wars, but doesn’t the Star Destroyer lug around a fuck ton of TIE fighters
and bombers? Is it Kirk or Picard at the helm? I wonder if Vader could somehow
fly his little TIE over to the Enterprise,
eject, land on the hull, look inside a window, and force choke the entire
bridge.”



 



…Yep.
Star Wars. No contest.



 



Anyways,
the real point of this story is that this kid just spent two hours crafting an
interstellar clay war on his desk and nobody, not even (or especially) the
teacher really said anything about it, or cared enough to suggest, “Hey, maybe
you should pay attention.” Not even a, “If you’re going to play with Play-doh
in my class, you can just leave.”



 



That’s
the kind of class I’m in.

A letter from a fan?

Hey everybody! I recently set up an author profile on Goodreads.com. And guess what! Surprise, surprise, within only a few weeks I received my very first fan letter in years. Aren't you all excited? From the random name and subject line, I was almost afraid to read it. What if it was a letter telling me my fiction sucked or simply that I could die repeatedly (conveniently like the protagonist of my series, Roadside Attraction, the first volume of which you can download and read for free here). But then again, what if it was a real live fan? What if he enjoys my work? What if he asks questions about my upcoming projects? Do I give him some spoilers or tease over plot points? Do I respond with a gracious "thank you" and say little else so as to come off like I'm sort of prestigious author and not a guy who blogs about dick and fart jokes on a weekly basis?



Well, curiosity finally won me over and I clicked on the little fan letter link. And low and behold, here's what the letter said:

Dear Keith
This email must come to you as a surprise, but I believe that it takes just a contact for people to become great friends and business partners.

My name is Mr.Mohammed Yasser , a Retired Financial Advisor. I was the personal Financial Advisor to the late Eng. P.C.Darius,referred to as My late Client'. He was a successful Businessman here in The United Kingdom but died in a car crash along with his immediate family on the 29th of October 2010. Shortly after his death I was directed by his Bank to locate any of his extended relatives whom shall be claimant / beneficiary of his £10,500,000.00 (Ten million five hundred thousand British Pounds Sterling) in Fixed Deposit Account with them. I tried searching but all such efforts were to no avail. I went as far as
seeking the assistance of the Embassy here in Togo in locating any of his extended relatives without any success.

Going by the law, Proceedings for forfeiture of this fund to the Government of the Togo will be initiated, if no Next of Kin comes forward to claim the fund by 7th of December 2012. With this in mind and Considering the amount of fund involved, I decided to
urgently search for a credible Person to partner with me in diverting this fund. It is on this issue that I am contacting you, since you have the same last name or surname with my late Client,that you may file an application with the "Trustee" Bank as an extended Family
Member of my late Client, so as to enable you claim this deposit in the capacity as the Next of Kin

To commence, the process of claim/transfer of this fund to your designated bank account, you need firstly signify your interest by contacting me via e-mail, and then I will furnish you with complete details on gaining your trust and confidence. Be rest assured that
there are no risks involved as all steps towards achieving this goal will be legally followed. Do note that I have in my custody, the original copies of the deposit documents needed to add credence to the claim. They were entrusted with me by my late Client days after making the fixed deposit. So you need not entertain any fears. Do note that successful transfer of the Fund to your nominated account can be achieved within 14 Banking days of signifying your interest.I require only a solemn confidentiality on this.

Please, include your Private and confidential Phone number (preferably Mobile) in your reply and always reply me to my private email address (mohyesser@ymail.com)

Yours Sincerely,

Mr.Mohammed Yasser

 

 Hrm.



Well, at least he seems hopeful that one of us has a successful future...

Here's a little micro-fiction

The Counter Clockwise Love Life of Philip 




The screwdriver came to rest on a dusty construction site floor. It had had its
use until it became involved in a brief, misguided affair with a belt sander. Having been dropped from a hand fastening the final touches of a drop ceiling, it met its love at a funny enough of an angle to make sparks fly. The screwdriver was swept off its handle,
spun a thousand different ways, and landed with its head contorted at a
puzzling angle. “What just happened and how did it bring me here?” it seemed to
ask as the workers laughed and swept it up with the rest of the garbage.

Something about the Holidays

Every Christmas my assorted Jewish and Muslim friends make a point to remind me how annoyed they are by the entire shopping season. How the holiday is so material and devoid of any meaning. Not surprisingly, all of my Christian friends agree.



At Thanksgiving somebody always points out how we slaughtered off all the Native Americans and how terrible we really are.



The weeks surrounding the Fourth of July are marked by everybody being annoyed at their neighbors shooting off fireworks at unreasonable hours, and how stupid and disrespectful people are. Surprisingly, nobody ever points out how the Declaration had been penned a few days prior and not signed for about month after the fact.



Easter is full of controversy. A steadfast reminder of how Christians manipulated pagans into their faith by adopting their practices of fertility based around the symbols of eggs and rabbits. We lost the orgies though, and for that I feel everybody should offended. Still, people run rampant with zombie Jesus jokes.



Around every President's Day I'm told how the people we're honoring were slave owners/fuckers.



Nobody plants trees on Arbor Day.



Cynicism and depression among the single on Valentine's Day is overwhelming. Most couples are nausiating, even in the way they get nausiated by other couples.



Whatever purpose St. Patrick's Day ever served was lost and the only meaning anybody finds in it is at the bottom of a glass.



Memorial Day, Veteren's Day, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day for most people are simply about not having to go to work. Sorry to those who should be honored, but it's true.



Halloween? Blood, guts, zombies, candy, and all the things that go bump in the night. A night for the unknown, death, hauntings, monsters, and generally everything that's blood soaked and terrible. And generally people are significantly less offended by this than Christmas.



I just find it interesting.

Some Masking Poetry

Gearing up creatively for Halloween, in tonight's poetry workshop the topic of masks was used as a prompt. For all you little poets out there, fresh from Tom and Campion, the idea is to write a poem/story/draw a picture/do whatever based on the sentence, "Tonight for Halloween I came disguised as myself."

I know. I know. There's easily a lot of cynicism there. But it's still a fun idea to explore. We all wear masks. We all show people sides of ourselves, or downplay various aspects of our identities. A mask can be a measure of safety and security. Or a tool to hide the evil, squid-baby beast within. Why do we wear these masks? Who do we wear them for? So for those of you from workshop, regular readers of the blog, or just random passersby on the Internet, there's your prompt. Show us all something creative based on the concept of masks. Feel free to post links, poems, fiction, images, and videos in the comments below.




As for myself, I tried my hand at a couple of poems. Here's the better one I liked.




The Mask










Is this thing on right?

Which way is supposed to be concave?

We can see each other through the eyes,

can’t we?

I’m not even sure if it’s one mask or a few.

Just a quick test.

Do you guys see a reclusive, paranoid, sad man in a quiet
cubicle

slouched toward his ever encroaching middle age

with an overwhelming stack of incomplete goals filed just
beneath

the inbox stuffed fat with extensive failures?

Or

do you see more of an easily amused, mild mannered lunatic that’s kicking
at the waves, rolling,

playing in the choppy waters of unreserved –whatever you
please- and splashing around

his own little world while sharing some of its undiluted foolishness with yours?

Hmm.

If I press the lips do they purse or bite down on
themselves?

I’ve had this on so long.

Stop staring until I find a way to wear it

so we both like what we see.

On eating candy in the face of adversity

First of all, just because I’ve
had the song in my head all day, I want you to hit play on the video below. You
don’t have to watch it. Just let the music play while you’re reading tonight’s
entry. I think you’ll agree, since we’re using a lot of pictures, some amount
of a soundtrack can be appreciated. And I promise, the lyrics and all that
stuff are appropriate.




So just click play.









Got it going?




Okay. Here’s the skinny. Well, a
dramatized and mostly fictitious version of the skinny. It was my mother’s
birthday last week. She turned… I’m just going to go with “twenty-eight. Again.”
And of course there were parties, laughter, and all sorts of merriment. Her
coworkers got her a cake. My brother made her a cake. And one of her friends
made her a cake. In the shape of a penis.




Why? I guess, why not?




For what it’s worth, I had not
been at that party. But to match the penis cake, there were little white
chocolate penis suckers for everybody. So many in fact, that Mom brought one
home in a ziploc baggy.




“If any of you boys want it. It’s
white chocolate. They’re really good!”




“Then you eat it!”




“Oh, no. One of you go ahead.”




…Yes, my brother’s and I all had
a good laugh at the little cock on a stick.




“No, no. Cultures go in from the
other side.”




But nobody ate it. All jokes
aside, there were silent, awkward glances around the room. For several days the
penis sat in its little baggy atop the microwave. It got moved and shifted
around along with the rest of the stuff in the general area. At one point our
kitten, Polaris, batted it onto the floor.




“Oh, darn! It hit the floor! I
guess somebody will have to throw it into the garba- Wow. It’s still safely in
that plastic baggy. …Why don’t we just throw it in the garbage?”




“Maybe somebody will eat it.”




“…I’m not putting a penis in my
mouth. You eat it.”




…No, no. I just had a big lunch.
Q’Doba.




“Wouldn’t you like some dessert?”




Pretty full, thank you.




“I bet it’s good if you dunk it
in milk.”




Really, I’m fine.




“It’s not gay. It’s just candy. It’s
white chocolate. You love white chocolate. Come on. Eat it. Put it in your
mouth. Now. Do it. Eat it. Slowly.”




I wouldn’t so much call this
homophobia (which is a stupid word) as much as it was affirming our
heterosexuality. It was unspoken. None of us had a conversation about it. But
every time somebody passed it or mentioned it, a certain sort of discomfort
filled the air. An unexplained awkwardness. Whatever it is that makes it funny
and cute for women to laugh over devouring candy dicks happens to be the same
thing that makes it mildly disturbing and terrible.




“Do we really live in the sort of
house where we just have penises setting out on the kitchen appliances?”




Things didn’t get weird until our
mother was walking through the kitchen a few days later and said, “Guys? Nobody
ate the penis!”




“You eat it!”




“Nah. Don’t want it.”




“Then throw it away!”




“Why waste some perfectly good
white chocolate? There are starving children in third world countries that never
get to eat penis pops!”




Oh, holy hell. Well now that we’ve
involved the starving masses, all of us are feeling guilty for NOT eating the
penis.




“Well, what if we just save it
until Halloween and then put in some kid’s bag. Then nobody has to eat it and
it’s not wasted food.”




You are not putting a candy cock
in a child’s Halloween bag!




“Fine! Where on the kid would YOU
rather put it?”




…Okay. Maybe three or four of
those words were actually stated. The point was simply that we found ourselves
in this situation where for no reason anybody was willing to throw the thing in
the garbage, and nobody was willing to eat it.




“It would make for a funny blog.”




…God damn it. It would make for a
funny blog.




But it’s not good enough to just
tell a bunch of penis jokes. How often does that happen around here? So instead,
I decided to give you guys a little documentary in pictures of the stupid penis
pop being devoured. Hopefully capturing all the unnecessary drama and
awkwardness that went with it being in our kitchen. 









...Yeah, I dunno either.

To quote a spider...

The kind of day I'm having, you ask?



Perhaps it's just the full moon, but I'm recalling a favored comic book of mine, Transmetropolitan. In it, rogue journalist Spider Jerusalem say something like, "I've decided against suicide in favor of killing off everyone else in the world."



That sounds about right.

Hrm.

You ever have a day where you're sad for no real reason? I'm hiding it well and am making a point to joke around and hear laughter. But it's just there. Sadness. Right behind my heart, if I had to pick a place. There's not a reason to be. There's no problem for me to resolve. Nothing happened that wouldn't any other day. And yet, there's nothing to be said and it's too deep to pick at and flake off. Just sadness.





Also, I have a couple of paper cuts. One on my palm. Don't know when I got it, so I've deemed it stigmata.



The other cut is on my opposite thumb.



It's just a cut.

Siren Night - A New Book Cover. Kinda.

Honestly, this is one of those four in the morning, waiting for laundry to finish so I can go to sleep.



I know. I know. Why not just get it in the morning?



For one, my sheets are in the dryer. Also, this is one of the first really cool nights of year. So being chilly all evening and then hopping into a toasty bed... Admit it. You're a little jealous right now.



Anyways, while awaiting my laundry I went ahead and republished Siren Night on the Kindle, complete with a brand new cover design. Well, slightly brand new. First off, here's a link on Amazon so you can download Siren Night.









And that said, how about a brief history of the book cover. Here's the original design:





 

 

It's not that there's anything wrong with this book cover (my shoddy art aside). Of all the Kindle pencil sketch covers that I did, this is probably my favorite. Well, either this one or Bartered Breath , which features a dog gnawing on the ankle bones of Death. Wanna see?

 

Too bad.

 



 

It's not a horrible image. The original idea behind this covers was one of simplicity. I'm an indy author. I wanted my ebooks to have an indy look to them. When the Kindle and this self publishing craze first started, all I had to work with was a black and white electronic ink screen. Which is cool. I like it. But given that the screen was only simple black and white, I wanted my cover images to be enhanced by the format. So this was the style I came up with. I know I'm not the best artist out there, but given my limitations and cirumstances, the simple imagery worked really well.

 

...It probably would've worked a lot better with a more talented artist, yes. But with people charging hundreds to something over a thousand dollars for book covers, I decided to stick with what I had. For ninety-nine cent short fiction, it'll do. And it's never really hindered sales as far as I can tell.

 

Now, I have a whole blog entry about my recently republished Where Dogs Sweat . I haven't finished writing it yet, but I'm about to repeat everything I wrote about the cover from that. Or at least sum it up. So when you see the story again a week from now, that's why. Basically, I asked a coworker, Edoichi Boura, if he'd be interested in designing a book cover for me based on a little story of mine that doesn't sell all that much. I'd seen some of his art and had a feeling he could pull something off that was better than my original cover...

 


And no surprises, he made something significantly better...










I should probably also point out that he makes comic books or something...

 

Anyways! So after I updated Where Dogs Sweat with his snazzy cover design, all of my other books looked kind of dumb by comparison. His had... well, shit. Edges. And all that other way better stuff.

 

...As a side note, my muse is designing the cover for my upcoming novella, Necromantica. I think I'm more exciting about sharing her image of the main characters than I am the story. It's just that awesome.

 

So after deciding I should probably start updating my other books cover art, I decided to begin with Siren Night. Obviously I'm not as gifted as Edoichi there, but there was a certain tone or style that I wanted for Roadside Attraction, so I thought I'd give the cover a second draft and see what I could come up with.

 

...Not much, really. I drew a few quick sketches of the main characters, Gus and Mille, walking down a road, toting their guns, and staring in dramatic directions. But none of it was working. Ot at least nothing felt as good as the sketch of them at the bar. So I started to play with the idea of adding color to it and seeing how it looked.

 

Before I could even boot up the computer, another idea came to mind. Given that the characters have such radically different perspectives of the world, why not make one of them color and leave the other black and white. It'd be symbolic of their relationship. So I started messing around with my bamboo tablet and come up with a few things. The first was just having Millie in Color and seeing how that looked. But whenever I looked at the picture it seemed as though all I was looking at was her. She washes out the rest of the image. Sticking with indy simplicity, I tried adding a couple small hints of color on Gus. His eternally bloodshot eye and the bottle in his hand. It was an improvement, but probably not enough of one.

 

 



 

 

From there, I was married to the idea of Gus staying black and white, so I did a few things to draw attention away from Millie.

 





 

 

 

Quick and sloppy solutions really. I liked the big red X, but suddenly it felt like an anime. I also worried "Is that too x-ie?" Should it be more of an upside down cross to work in the whole devil element of the series? The white and red were really working for me, but I also love the game Mirror's Edge and maybe that's why I was so into it. Eventually I told myself to draw over Gus and see if he looked any better in color.

 



 

 

I took a few days to think it over, eventually deciding to stick with the color. But a majority of the image was still empty white space. So I started doing things to play with the backround. First, obviously, I decided to see how it looked with the red against it.

 



 

The white and red were working, but I wanted some texture against all the white space. So I did the largest white brush my computer could handle (every stroke took several minutes to render). And although I knew the thumbnails wouldn't look all that great, I decided there was something nice about the full size picture having that extra bit of detail. It almost looked as though the image had been painted on a wall.

 

And yet... There was still something missing. What about the monsters? What about the violence? Somewhere in there I decided to try drawing the sirens as red outlines, but within a minute that sounded like a lot of work. So instead I started to play with different spattering brushes in Coral in an effort to make blood spatter. Just as a way of building up the violence and twisted nature of the story.

 

 

Naturally, while playing with all the different features to figure out how to do a little blood spray, I ended up redesigning the background entirely to look like a quasi-impressionist vagina.

 



 

 

Needless to say, the blood spatter wasn't working out. I stumbled onto the mild bit of sex in the story, but... Well.

 

I went back to the red stripe. There was something right about that. Something else in the white on white canvas. I started to think of ways to make the image look as though it had been painted on a wall. And then I dabbled again in blood spatter, resulting in what's probably the final book cover.

 


I actually wanted to do a bit more blood on the left, but as I was drawing all the little dots I started to question what I can and can't get away with on Amazon. So I did enough of a spray to stand out, but not so much that people would get pulled from the store. I think. I'm pretty sure. They do sell dildos, so whatever terms and standards they have, this didn't seem any worse than the blood spatter on Batman: Arkham City.



...Yes, I mentioned Batman because including his name gets me a lot more hits from Google searches and other stuff.



Anyways... Cover updated.