David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 159

Toilet Paper Oddity

My wife and I were recently traveling and stayed at a hotel. It took me a while to notice, but I realized at some point that the bathroom had two different toilet paper rolls:

I imagined the hotel was anticipating severe digestive distress, foreseeing a time when you might need to grab for toilet paper with both hands. I shared this on Facebook and several other theories were put forth: one for over the roll people and one for the heretical under the roll people, individual toilet paper rolls for germaphobes, and so on.

I doubt any of these are the real explanation. It probably goes something more to realizing the original didn’t meet building codes and adding the new (closer one) without removing the old, choosing to stock both.  Regardless, it made me think of my story “A Brief Account of the Great Toilet Paper War of 2012” from Not Quite so Stories, so I thought I’d share here.

It’s Amazing How Much Pop Culture We Can Pick Up Unintentionally

It’s amazing how much of pop culture we can pick up without really trying. I saw a meme going around Facebook today and I found it hysterical. However, it involved knowing information about Game of Thrones. I don’t watch Game of Thrones. Never seen an episode, and I only read one of the books. It’s possible that one book was enough, but it doesn’t really seem like it given the joke. More was necessary.

However, despite not watching any episodes of the shown and not reading any more of the books, some things you just pick up from other people who did watch and/or read. People talk, often, and some things you just pick up. It’s interesting how much of pop culture you can pick up in that way, without actual sufficient exposure to the original source material.

In this case, I’ve picked up enough to think this is extremely funny:

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Literary Wanderlust Newsletter “Not Quite so Stories” Ebook Giveaway!

Fun news! My publisher, Literary Wanderlust, has decided to give away some free ebook copies of Not Quite so Stories! All you have to do is sign up for their newsletter between now and September 30 to be entered.

Once per month, they’re going to randomly pick an email from people who have signed up to receive their newsletter via email.  They’ll then send that lucky person a code that can be used to claim a free ebook copy of Not Quite so Stories. It’s an epub through Ganxy too, so it will work with any reader device, reader program, or reader app you have. Kindle not necessarily required.

So why not sign up? I did quite a while ago.

 

Can’t Figure Out Which Of These Two Songs To Think Of

My wife and I went down to Sante Fe and Taos over this Memorial Day weekend. I kept wondering which of these two songs I should have running through my head the whole time we were down there:

I couldn’t decide which.

I’ve got nothing for Taos.

Goodbye, Tom

Goodbye, Tom.

You were a giant and will be missed.

My Published Stories Accessible Online

A while back, I posted a list of my published stories. I realized that was a while ago and decided I could get out of having to come up with a new post if I did an updated list. Here you go (again, the ones currently accessible online):

“Jesse’s Damn Bacon” published March 24, 2016 at Cheeseburger Nebula.

“No Way to Run a Railroad” published April 20, 2016 in issue 24 of Literary Orphans.

“Exxon Stole my Oatmeal” published May 15, 2016 in Issue V, Volume VII of Connotation Press.

“Polident Commercials for Indentured Servitude” published May 15, 2016 in Issue V, Volume VII of Connotation Press.

“Deliberately Missing Henry Kissinger” published May 15, 2016 in Issue V, Volume VII of Connotation Press.

“Marc Summers Instigated the Bloods and Crips War so He Deserves Everything He Gets” published March 23, 2016 as part of the suit theme at Pure Slush.

“Hernández de Biedma Owes Me a Weekend” published May 4, 2016 in the Spring Quarterly – (Spring 2016 / 16.4) of Blue Five Notebook.

“Lunchtime Doubly So” published July 1, 2015 in the 38th issue (Vol. 10, No. 2) of Wilderness House Literary Review.

“Hollidays Gone Wrong” (no, that isn’t a typo) published March 22, 2015 Bartleby Snopes.

“To Kill a Mokkingbird II – Kill Harder by Ahrrper Leeeeee” published February 5, 2015 in Cease, Cows. Thanks to Jon Konrath for letting me use the title and inspiring the story.

“The Philosophical Problem of Original Jam” published July 16, 2015 in Apocrypha and Abstractions.

“The Declaration of Insufficiency: Getting Quality Work Out of ‘The Jeff’” published in issue 20 (December 2, 2014) of Hobo Pancakes.

“Somebody Misplaced Montana” published in issue 17 (September 2014)  of Used Gravitrons.

“And Now a Word From Our Sponsor” published August 15, 2014 in Paragraph Line.

“In Pursuit of Art: Drinking NyQuil at Pharmacies” published May 23, 2014 at Paragraph Line.

“I contemplate the humble potato” published April 14, 2014 at Cease, Cows.

“There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” published January 3, 2014 in Paragraph Line.

“Regarding my Term Paper about the Dani tribe of Papua, New Guinea” published December 20, 2013 in Cease, Cows.

“Trying to Explain” published November 22, 2013 over at This Zine Will Change Your Life.

“The Things We’re Made Of” published November 18, 2013 as part of Sundog Lit‘s special “A Fight Between Friends: Texts Inspired By Michael Seidlinger’s The Laughter of Strangers” series.

“Turndown Service” published in the Spring 2014 issue of The Writing Disorder.

“Home Improvement” published in issue #4 of C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag.

“Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! Monkey!” published in Vol. 8, no. 2 of Wilderness House Literary Review.

“Happy Trails” published June 10, 2013 in Martian Lit.

“Changes for the Château” published in Issue 4 (May 2013) of Swamp Biscuits and Tea.

“The Des Moines Kabuki Dinner Theatre” published June 4, 2013 in Bartleby Snopes (story of the month winner for 2013). Subsequently included in issue 10 of the magazine (available here in print or here as a pdf).

“Cents of Wonder Rhymes With Orange” published March 2013 in issue no. 7 of Thrice Fiction (pdf copy of issue available here).

“The Unknowable Agenda of Ursines” published October 16, 2012 in issue 43 of “Crack the Spine,” page 6.

“Donkeys Live a Long Time. None of You Has Ever Seen Ethel Merman.” (second story on the page) published in issue 11 of Hobo Pancakes. Subsequently featured on episode 25 of Nathaniel Tower’s Cold Reads.

“Ideas: Where to Get Them and What to Do When They Won’t Leave” published July 9, 2012, in Paragraph Line.

“G-Men” published in the Summer 2012 issue of JMWW.

“The War” published in the Winter 2012 issue of The Writing Disorder. Also published in The Writing Disorder presents The Best Fiction and Nonfiction of 2012.

“Counter Spring” published in Volume 6 of Interrobang?! Magazine. Republished May 28, 2015 over at The Dead Market Writings.

“Context Driven” published in the Spring 2012 issue of The Zodiac Review.

“Domestic Ties” published in August 30, 2011 in Atticus Review.  Also published in the anthology Get Lit, Round 1: Short Fiction.

“Polite Notes of the Dinnertime Neighborly Etiquette Apocalypse” published August 15, 2011 in Brave Blue Mice. Also read as part of InDigest Magazine‘s The Last Reading on Earth, Ever: A Marathon Reading of Apocalyptic Writing (direct link to mine). Republished May 28, 2015 over at The Dead Market Writings.

“Boys Chase Girls” published in issue #3 of Split Quarterly.

“Stranger” published in issue #2 of C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag.

“The Virgin Mary Tree” published (live 5/20/2011) in the spring 2011 online edition of Grey Sparrow, also published in the Fall 2011, issue 8, print edition.

(I think I am clever, apparently, getting out of having to come up with a new post for today.)

More Morals

I talked yesterday about how I used to crave oatmeal as a kid when I couldn’t have any due to allergies, but because utterly bored with oatmeal (just typed that as “email” and then corrected it, thought you should know) when the allergy went away and I could eat all I wanted. I was thinking more about that, and decided fishing was similar.

Now, I wasn’t allergic to fishing by any means. However, when I was a kid, I was obsessed about the idea of going fishing. I bought a fishing pole, a tackle box, and all that. I even drooled over the ads for the Pocket Fisherman (god only knows why). However, I never went fishing. My parents hated fishing and never wanted to take me.

Now I couldn’t care less about fishing.

Did I finally get the opportunity and fish too much to the point I wasn’t interested any more? Did I lose interest once I could do it? No, I only tried it a couple times that I can remember…and I was utterly bored each time.

The first time, I didn’t catch anything. Just caught my line on some inanimate junk in the water once or twice. I fished from a dock up in Bellingham a couple times and caught the same bullhead over and over before tossing him back. Then I fished one more time where I only caught my line on some inanimate junk in the water once or twice. That’s all the fishing I ever did…and suddenly I wasn’t interested at all in it any more.

I don’t think I outgrew an interest in fishing. I just think I was never really interested in fishing and didn’t understand that until I tried it out and found out what fishing really was.

Some people really dig fishing. I do not.

A Moral?

When I was a kid, I was allergic to oats. As such, I couldn’t have oatmeal. Not with butter, maple syrup, or anything. As such, I craved oatmeal terribly:

However, I wasn’t allowed to have it (same with Cream of Wheat). I had to have rice cereal instead. Even with butter and maple syrup, I hated it:

I snuck my way into getting oatmeal whenever I could.

However, around about the time when I was thirteen or so, my oat allergy went away. Thus, I could have oatmeal whenever I wanted. I had it quite a bit. Eventually, I didn’t want oatmeal anymore. Now it seems completely boring and I generally avoid it.

Perhaps there’s a moral of some kind here. However, I also had the same thing with pancakes…and I still crave those.

This Might Not Work Out So Good

We’ve all heard by now that the fast food industry has responded to the push for a higher minimum wage by starting to roll out self-orderkiosks. Now, without getting into the debate behind whether or not we should have a higher minimum wage, whether or not self-order kiosks will push workers into more skilled occupations, whether or not the kiosks were on their way anyway (and without any mention of the old automats regardless), and so on, I did want to make one comment:

So…we’ll see how well this works for fast food. Personally, based on my experiences at the supermarket alone, I’m probably heading for the line with the cashier if there is one.

Why Do I Like Spray Cheese?

Why do I like spray cheese so much? I don’t think the stuff can even legally really be called cheese (hint: the fact that it doesn’t really need to be refrigerated is a big clue that it only resembles cheese in a vague manner). I love cheese, and will hang out for hours in the Whole Foods cheese section pretending I don’t know what various cheeses are while deciding to the point that I eat an entire meal of free cheese samples and then walk off without buying anything. So why spray cheese then?

Shouldn’t loving actual cheese mean that I’d be horrified by this stuff? I am, but I still love it. I haven’t had it in years, but I still have extremely fond memories of this “food.” Road trips in the car as a kid eating spray cheese on crackers, eating spray cheese straight from the can, all that. Maybe it’s the nostalgia. Maybe it’s just tasty, despite how little it is like anything human beings should eat.

Regardless, I want some now.