David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 247

I’m First For My Medicine, I’m First For Everything: The Return Of Paragraph Line

I’m double thrilled today. Not only is Paragraph Line back up and running again, my flash story “There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink…. ” is the first fiction of the relaunch!

“I’m first for my medicine, I’m first for everything.” – The Hamburger Dude, Nice Dreams

Paragraph Line is a great mag. I’ve had my fiction published there before and I was sad to see them go on hiatus, so I’m stoked to see them back up and running. More weirdness is coming soon, fiction as they used to do as well as a lot of other rants and various things they intend to dabble with. You’ll want to check it out.

Regardless, you’ll want to check out my story. It’s an odd one. Maybe I’ll tell you the story behind it sometime.

2013 in review

WordPress does a year in review for blogs. I thought I’d share that in lieu of an actual post today:

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 30,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Do We Really Need A New Year?

As we’re getting to the end of 2013 here, I want everyone to think about something…do we really need a new year? The time to think about this is now. If we hold off, it will be 2014 and it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

Personally, I don’t think we’ve gotten full use out of 2013. It was a pretty good year, but it seems like it’s got some more miles on it. I know this is a disposable culture and all, but perhaps this once we could just reuse 2013 instead of heading willy-nilly into 2014? Can we at least think about this.

Granted, not everything was that great in 2013…but do we have any guarantee that 2014 will be any better? No, we do not. 2014 could be a horrible year for all we know. Are we ready to give up on 2013 and face whatever 2014 has in store without even considering repeating 2013?

I just think it’s wasteful to give up on 2013 so easily just because a year has passed. I think we should at least consider the idea. If we do and still decide as a group to go on to a new year, well I guess that’s fine. I just think some consideration is merited.

Please Don’t Explain The Elf On A Shelf Thing To Me

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about something called the elf on a shelf recently. I have no idea what this is. However, I do know that I do not want to know. Do not explain what the elf on a shelf is to me.

I’m guessing that an elf on a shelf is some little stuffed elf you are supposed to stick on a shelf. At least, that’s what the name implies. I can condone nothing about this, presuming I’m correct. It sounds kitschy and possibly supportive of elf captivity. It can’t possibly be good.

I am not fond of kitsch. I am not fond of useless things to clutter up my house. Though I am not fond of elves, I do not support keeping them in captivity. I also do not generally like fad products, particularly useful ones.

Elves do not belong on shelves. Books belong on shelves. If you put an elf on a shelf, you lose valuable book space. Do not do this.

However, if other people want elves on shelves that’s fine…as long as they don’t make me participate. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Keep your elf stuff and explanations to yourself. Nothing good can possibly come from me finding out more about this.

What Is My Deal With Margaret Thatcher?

As I mentioned previously, my story “Kidnapping with Margaret Thatcher” is now available in Rooster Republic Press‘s flagship bizarro anthology Tall Tales with Short Cocks vol. 4 (on kindle, the print edition should be coming soon). I’m not going to tell you about the story, you’ll have to buy the anthology for that, but I thought I’d explain a little about my deal with Margaret Thatcher.

My story isn’t really about Margaret Thatcher.

In truth, I don’t really know that much about Margaret Thatcher. I was aware most of the time she was in power, but I just didn’t know that much about her. Some people I know loved her, and some absolutely hated her. I heard she did some really important things, and some really horrible things as well. I just don’t know. As I said, I just didn’t study her work very closely.

However, her presence was something I couldn’t ignore as I was growing up. Good, bad, or indifferent, she was iconic. Her existence, or a conceptual construct shaped like her formed from the various media stories, pictures, and other ripples from her actual life, had an impact on my daily consciousness. Thus, when she died, I noticed.

But, though her passing seemed significant to me, my lack of understanding about her, her work, and her life left me unaware how to feel. I avoid celebrating anytime anyone dies, so I at least wasn’t celebrating. I wasn’t really mourning either, though…other than how I’m saddened by the death of anyone. It just seemed like a landmark event and I didn’t know what to do with it.

As such, I wrote a bizarro story titled  “Kidnapping with Margaret Thatcher.” It isn’t really about Margaret Thatcher, more about how I interacted with the idea of her. It’s not a celebration of Thatcher, or a celebration she was gone either…more of a marking of the passing of an iconic figure who had some mix of good and evil, as I suppose most people do. I’ll not judge which was the predominant, as I don’t know enough to judge.

Regardless, it was a really odd thing, so of course I sent it to Rooster Republic Press. The rest you know, or will as soon as you pick up Tall Tales with Short Cocks vol. 4 (kindle).

I’m Not As Smart As I Think I Am

I sometimes think I’m smart. People sometimes act like I’m smart. Sometimes, I end up believing this myself. However, then something happens that makes me realize that I’m not as smart as I think I am.

For instance, I co-edit a book blog called Eleven and a Half Years of Books with Kimberly Campbell Moore. The central focus of this blog is for Kim and I to go through the books listed in  The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books by J. Peder Zane and review them. As such, I have to buy a lot of books.

Mind you, I already buy a lot of books. I often run out of space, and money. As such, when I picked my most recent batch, I picked a crap ton of books that should all be in the public domain. The idea was that I could get free ebook versions of these that I could read on my Kindle and not have to buy actual copies.

Sorry, Kim. I know you don’t have space or money to spare either, but this is what I did.

However, I failed to take something into account. Translations are separately copyrightable from the original work. Thus, even though many of the books I’d picked were no longer protected by copyright, the originals were in other languages (French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and so on). Many did not have translated versions that were available in free ebook form because they had only been translated into English within the period of copyright or had been recently retranslated into English and no one was going to bother putting out an ebook version of the older style translation.

Either way, no free ebooks for many of these. Thus, I not only had to read old books, I often had to pay for the privilege and figure out where to put the physical books.

I suppose that’s okay, given that I prefer physical books, but it thwarted my plan a bit…as well as taking up space and money I could have used on other authors I more intended to read. Either way, I didn’t think this through as completely as I should have. Hence, proof I’m not as smart as I think I am sometimes.

Possible Solutions For The Amazon Wage Dispute

I’ve been hearing that Amazon workers (mostly those in Germany but apparently in other areas as well) are upset about the wages that Amazon provides. In short, they want more and Amazon doesn’t want to give them that. Impasse? Not necessarily.

I mean, Amazon could try providing things other than money that might make their workers happy. I thought of some ideas:

- Free membership to Amazon Prime for employees. (Note, I don’t know if employees get this already. If so, nix this.)

- Free shipping on orders of $25 or more instead of the new $35 or more crap Amazon just recently put into effect. (Note, this probably is mutually exclusive with the Amazon Prime idea since I think you get free shipping all the time with Amazon Prime.)

- Free Amazon boxes for the employees to use at home. Can’t afford a place to live? At least you can make a shelter out of nicer Amazon boxes instead of having to depend on whatever condition boxes you can find.

- Amazon store credit. It’s kind of like extra money, but it costs the company less and is much more restrictive. For example, it can’t be used for rent or mortgages, college tuition, health care, or food and/or medicines not purchasable on Amazon.com.

- Free Amazon drone use for commuting. This could actually be a significant benefit given how much the average person spends on gas and parking or mass transit.

See? Amazon and their workers need to come together on this. Amazon may not want to pay more, and their workers may not be willing to work without more pay, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

What Do You Write?

I go to a lot of readings. Since I have Tattered Cover here in town, there’s a ton of authors that I get a chance to go and see. Usually, I try to hit at least one event a month. Sometimes (like when I wear my UNOmaha MFA shirt), it comes up that I’m a writer as well when I’m getting my book signed. Frequently I am then asked: “Oh, what do you write?” I’ve never been sure how to answer that.

I mean, are they asking fiction, poetry, plays, or something like that? Do they want to know if I write genre or literary fiction? Experimental? Does everyone else really only write one sort of thing?

Frankly, I write different things at different times. My novel in story form Bones Buried in the Dirt (including such example pieces as “The Virgin Mary Tree, “Boys Chase Girls,” and “The War“) can be thought of as realism focused on a child narrator. Other things I’ve written, such as “Polite Notes of the Dinnertime Neighborly Etiquette Apocalypse,” are weirder. Some things could be thought of as bizarro (like “Ideas: Where to Get Them and What to Do When They Won’t Leave“) and some as slipstream or whatever the heck you want to call it, whether with elements of sci-fi (such as “G-Men“), fantasy (such as “Counter Spring“), or magical realism (such as perhaps “The Unknowable Agenda of Ursines“).

Bottom line, how do you answer a question like What do you write? Words, I write words.

Can An Inside Joke Work In A Story?

I’ve wondered on several occasions whether or not an inside joke can work in a story. I worry about this sometimes, because sometimes my best stuff comes from inside jokes. It’s a shame to waste a good idea, but it isn’t any good if you just end up babbling to yourself because nobody gets it.

I ran across this again recently. You can check out my flash fiction piece “Regarding my Term Paper about the Dani tribe of Papua, New Guinea” over at Cease, Cows and see whether or not you think this works. I think it does, but that’s not necessarily a reason to believe anything.

This all started with a blog post of mine about sweet potato fries (I hate them). When this posted to Facebook, H L Nelson happened to make an odd comment regarding benefits of a high yam diet as evidenced in the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea. Immediately, I made up some random, untrue, and utterly unbelievable factoid about the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea with which to counter Nelson’s argument. This did not appear to bother Nelson.

I then noticed a post of Nelson’s own mentioning how she was having fun inserting random facts about the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea into conversations as a personal joke. The game was on. From then on, we would go back and forth with random made up tidbits about the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea on various posts. On my posts, her posts, and posts of random people.

I had to write a story based on this…on the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea. Well, not really about the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea…more about the misuse of them as we had been doing. I had to send it to Cease, Cows.

Of course, I worried that such a story would only end up funny to H L Nelson and myself. That would be fine and all, but there was no way Cease, Cows could publish it in such a case. Somehow, I had to build in all the fun stuff Nelson and I had been doing with the Dani Tribe of Papua, New Guinea without actually explaining it (which would be boring and suck all the life out). I had to convey the essence of what had amused Nelson and myself.

Anyway, that’s what I was trying to do. I sent it in and told Cease, Cows what I’d been doing, saying they could decide whether it worked outside of Nelson and my skulls. It must have, because they agreed to publish the story. Check out “Regarding my Term Paper about the Dani tribe of Papua, New Guinea” and see whether you think I got it or not.

I won’t be mad if you don’t agree, but remember that the Dani tribe of Papua, New Guinea have a long and established tradition of lying to people in order to protect their feelings.