Michael Noe's Blog, page 26

Apartment Hunting

      Once upon a time my blog was a great guide for men who suddenly found themselves single. I was a work in progress that not only had to juggle living alone but weekend visits with his kids. After the fire though everything went to hell and the shit that made my blogs so much fun was gone. If you manage to read those blogs you’ll see a guy who was just surviving and blogging about it. I was able to turn the shit that bugged me into blogs. That was my way of dealing with all of the changes I was going through. I was able to be honest and admit that I had no fucking clue what I was doing and I still don’t. Three years ago my wife didn’t want to be married to me anymore and that sucked but I was able to take a step back and become someone that I never thought I could be. Independent. It was important for me to prove people wrong. I don’t care what people think usually, but after my wife and I split up I knew that I couldn’t give up because then all those people would have been right. I can’t exist on my own. So I was forced to look at myself and see what I needed to do be a better person.

     Now two years after a house fire I feel that same feeling of both fear and excitement. I have to find a place to live and not lose my mind in the process. I’m a very private person, yeah I know why the fuck am I blogging? It’s cheaper than therapy? I know that I can’t live in a complex full of people. I’ll be honest and admit that I am not a people person. You put me in a crowded room and I am screaming on the inside to go home. I can plaster on a fake smile and schmooze all fucking day but I’m not listening to you. I may pretend to give a shit but odds are I’m thinking about what I had for lunch or not even thinking at all. I just let my mind drift until it becomes like the white noise on a television. That brings me to the place I looked at today. There were apartments every fucking where and no privacy at all. None. There are people everywhere and do you know what that means? People are all in your shit. You can’t live in a place like that without everyone knowing about what you’re doing.  In my situation I can’t have a bunch of gossip floating around, Gossip is a motherfucker that serves no purpose in life after a certain age. I don’t partake in the shit because it’s harmful and at some point the edges between fact and fiction become blurred. In complexes like that gossip Is a way of passing the time between loads of laundry or a trip to the mailbox.

     I find nosey people amusing because they usually lead such dull and miserable lives that they become absorbed in everyone else’s. The way the apartments are set up is crazy. if there’s a fire you’re fucked. You may as well kiss your ass goodbye. I also saw my neighbors or at least the few that were out and holy crap on a cracker! I have nothing against white trash folks but here I’m surrounded . I have a weakness for hillbilly hot women, I can’t help it. You show me a chick in sweatpants and a wife beater and my dick gets hard. Imagine me in the summer if I lived there? If I decide to date I know that i would date an intelligent woman that is not hillbilly hot so there’s the temptation of having sex with a hillbilly hot neighbor while my intelligent girlfriend is at home wondering what I’m doing. With that many units I wondered what the neighbors were actually like. Were there any serial killers?  I don’t mean to say I plan on dating a chick that’s smart and looks like Quasimodo or anything but I’m just attracted to different things. If she’s smart and speaks well I will kiss her goddamn feet. I don’t care what she looks like. Not important. If she’s into all the fucked up shit I’m into that’s all that matters to me. I would rather have a woman that can talk to me and keep me challenged

      The apartment itself was actually smaller than I thought it would be. The only place for my insane collection of books would be in my bedroom. The kids of course would grow bored inside due to the lack of space and would eventually want to run around outside. The selling point for me was the lake. As I walked through the place I saw it through the eyes of my eleven year old twins. Forget my wish list because it doesn’t matter. All I kept thinking was: Are they going to be happy here? They are going to be here every other weekend so if they hate it then what do I do? I can’t move. I thought about it hard as I looked in the kitchen and checked out the shower. I saw the second bedroom and thought that maybe all three of us could make it work. In the end I decided to keep my options open to see what else was available. It was a situation where I had to simmer down and control the excitement. I needed to see the apartment full and when I say full I mean three kids an ex-wife, a best friend and her two kids and then just random people dropping by. I have a lot of books and dvds so factor all of that in and your space gets even smaller.

      Apartment hunting is serious business. Once you sign that lease you are fucked. Nothing will allow you to escape. If your neighbors drink and beat the shit out of each other you are fucked. All you can do is pray that one of them dies, or at the very least stops fighting long enough to have angry sex and then then during the angry sex one of them dies. At some point even the happiest couple grow to loath on another. It’s evilution or some bullshit. There are a lot of factors that can ruin an apartment and a lease could turn into a jail sentence. There is no perfect home just a nice quiet place live without asshole neighbors fucking life up for the normal people. There are tons of horror stories, tons of stories that involve fat, sweaty naked guys shaking their penis at you for no reason at all. What possesses a person to shake their penis at strangers? Do you wake up one morning and decide fuck it today my penis wants to say hello to everyone. True story, I lived in Summit Lake apartments and there was a guy that would actually look into women’s apartments and beat off. No shit, and I couldn’t imagine doing that. That takes balls,.

    

     I have only shaken my penis at women I know and even then I have their permission. Does anyone want to go look at apartments with me? You can randomly ask what I’m thinking and I’ll say: I wonder if there are ghosts? Do you think anyone died in here? There are so many random thoughts that go through my head I almost start laughing because most of them are just insane and make no sense at all. It’s just part of what makes me who I am I guess. There’s no fixing it, or ignoring it. I’ve tried several times. I can’t even imagine shit like what the room could like after I move in. All I see is are empty rooms and a toilet just waiting for me to drop a deuce in it. Did I go to far with that one? The toilet is important because you may want to have sex on it and what happens when you break it? What kind of cover story would work? That would be some intense fucking to break a toilet wouldn’t it?

     The quest to find the new man cave is on and I think I found “home” today. This place was perfect. Quiet neighborhood, plenty of space and I know that the twins will be happy there. Now once I actually move are you fuckers ready for blogs about me realigning and adjusting to life on my own? The fun part is that I’m brutally honest and have no problems expressing myself. If you write a blog you have to be somewhat honest. Essentially, in the beginning I wanted to reach out to people who were just like me. Just breathing and moving from one day to the next. Do people relate to that? I have no idea but I wonder sometimes. Doesn’t everyone? What the hell am I headed for? I have no idea but I’m taking you with me. The adventure of it sounds intriguing doesn’t it? Random neighborhoods full of hillbilly hotchicks and maybe an occasional cousin Skeeter. The thing I’m excited about is the ability to delve back into the kind of blogs that were fun and showed just how clueless I really am about some shit. 

Moving Day?

     After almost two years I am finally moving out of my mom’s house. I should in all honesty wait longer but I know me. If I don’t take the opportunity now I will just wait longer and the month will turn into another year. I thought about moving maybe three days ago and looked at a couple of places on the interweb. The idea was to just look and see what was out there in my price range. I figured in a couple pay periods I should be ready but I got a call that made it not only easy but possible to actually hold an apartment until I could come up with a security deposit. Sometimes things like that just happen for me. I never plan it or anything it just kind of happens.

   Is it where I wanted to move? No, but if you live with, or remember living with your parents you know that you get really fucking comfortable and keep giving yourself reasons to stay. As a kid we all remember living at home. It was great and it was also like hell on earth. You never have any privacy and if you shit there’s always the risk of someone walking in on you. That’s distracting as hell and when I shit I play a lot of Farm Saga Heroes. I have to concentrate and be relaxed. I can’t have my mom walking in on me while I’m dropping a duece.  Wanna talk about awkward? It’s down right sad.

     Back to the original topic and that’s the location. It isn’t where I wanted to be initially but I sign a year lease and can move again when I have more money and can upgrade. The more I think about it the more I see this as a step in the right direction. I can afford the rent and can as time goes on also buy furniture. I can’t afford storage so even if I wanted to buy furniture I have nowhere to put it. The main thing is that I will regain my privacy. That means a lot to me. I miss having the option of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich naked, or shitting with the door open. God I miss the freedom of shitting with the door open. A location really doesn’t mean anything to me unless I live somewhere that’s unsafe and gunshots are just part of the charm of the neighborhood,

    Moving out is the one thing I have been wanting to do for a very long time but I guess I lacked the balls. Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk to women when you live with your mom and step-dad? They look at you as if you’re a freak. When I’m able to explain about the fire and the lack of funds to move they get it but without explaining it I look like some kind of social loser that refuses to grow up. When a woman wants to fuck you she doesn’t want to sneak past your mom’s bedroom and if she wants to stay overnight your mother knows what you’re doing. You can fuck as quietly as possible but if a woman spends the night there’s going to be some fucking going on. A woman already feels as if she’s competing with your mom so you shouldn’t really have to compete with her. Chicks shouldn’t have to deal with that shit and it’s not fair to ask them to.

     So I guess the question is what took me so damn long? Lack of funds and the safety net of being at home. It’s safe and you don’t have to be responsible. I reached a point though where I needed to have my own space, a place that was mine. I have boxes of books that are scattered everywhere because I don’t have anywhere to put them. It’s become a chance to prove to people that I can actually do this and survive. People seem to think that I can’t move out. I have it too easy an they’re right. That’s exactly why I have to move out. I need to prove to myself that I can do it. I may also want to have sex again and I would like to do it in my own place. Random sex that happens anywhere. You kick open the door and just start fucking. People do that shit and here I am not getting laid at all because I’m too fucking embarrassed to ask women out. I hate that look of revulsion and pity. It’s almost as bad as the walk of shame.

     What it really boils down to is regaining my manhood and dignity. I want to feel as if I have accomplished the one thing that no one thought I would accomplish. Of course, in a an apartment complex you always have the risk of having neighbors that want to be your friend and occasionally pop in just to see how you are. There are a lot of risks and I figure just moving in is enough for now. I used to have a lot of random shit to blog about but now? i got nothing. If this move actually happens imagine the shit I could come up with! Hillbilly hot neighbors, nights of drunken stupidity. After Tuesday this could be a new beginning for me. In closing I have to admit that I have always wanted to fuck a random chick in a laundromat. I fluff she folds or maybe I can put her through the spin cycle. I have been unhappy for a very long time so maybe, just maybe I can find my smile again.

Read An E-book Week

     I had no idea that it was read an e-book week and in all fairness do we really need this? I’m the kind of guy that promotes literacy and hate it when I get texts from people appear as if they’ve allowed a toddler to take over their cellphone. If I give a girl my number and I get a text with words missing or misspelled it drives me bat shit crazy and yes, I lose interest. Is that shallow? I am attracted to women that can speak, and carry a conversation. Nothing bothers me more than a woman who is unintelligent. If all she watches are reality shows or sends me a text with just letters I start to lose interest. I have dated women who can’t read and I felt as if I was drowning. I get that a lot of people don’t read the types of books that I read but there are other books. There are other genres, other topics that I have read about so it’s not like I can’t talk to people and I want a woman that has an opinion about something other than television. There is nothing hotter than a smart chick. I will use the phone number as a test. If I give a text from a woman that looks like her three year old wrote it I knock off some points. We start at ten and work our way down. Am I being unfair? Perhaps I am but to me a smart and intelligent woman is sexy. If a chick wears glasses I’ll admit that I’m turned on by that. Any woman can do slutty but not many chicks can pull of smart.

     This whole read an e-book week is an interesting idea and I can understand the reluctance to dive balls deep into the digital format. There’s the smell of old books that really appeals to me and you of course don’t get that with the e-book. The downside of course is the price of ebooks. Popular Kindle titles are still really expensive but I guess people are still buying them. What really drew me in was the convenience. If you read a lot the e-book is ideal and you can take a hundred books with you where you go. As an avid reader I always take  a book with me but if the book sucks then what? I went digital three years ago and I have no problem switching between physical and digital copies of books. There are quite a few purists that see the digital book as the spawn of Satan and I don’t get it, i just don’t get it. It has actually made reading a lot easier and I swear as a fan of all books I don’t gave a damn if you read a digital copy or a physical copy as long as people are reading. Somehow people forget that point though.

    

     I like Read an e-book week and here’s why. Discounted Kindle titles. Purely selfish reasons but shit I like that a lot of really cool titles are being marked down to like a buck ninety-nine. Who wouldn’t celebrate the hell out of that? Publishers want readers so they cut prices. Simple economics and a lot of great books are now affordable. Fuck the idea that less an less people are reading, but we have to get them to buy Kindles and Nooks, and what the hell else is there? There is a digital book war people and we as consumers are in the shit. Why did I choose Kindle over Nook anyway? I already had an Amazon account and hadn’t even heard of Nook until a year later but I do read in different formats. I have been asked to review books and they send whatever’s available so you have to adapt. I have a lot of ebooks and a lot of them were freebies but I have I made amends and bought a lot of Kindle titles. Of course now that it’s Read an Ebook week I plan on spending a lot more. I need to do my part to spread the word damnit! This is the time where they dress the digital books up in slutty outfits and publishers pray that you embrace the digital format.

     The book snobs will of course attack and defend the traditional books honor as if she’s suddenly a drunken whore. Those of us who read ebooks will be called traitors but it’s okay. I’ve been called lots of things and a traitor isn’t so bad. Tradition is a sacred thing but again, as long as people are reading who gives a fuck. I embrace both formats and I will continue to do so until I can no longer read. I support this Read an Ebook Week and check this shit out

     I am totally on board and will pass on as many freebies and discounted titles as I possibly can and to prove that I do in fact read e-books I will now take a screen shot of my Kindle app.

                                                                                                        

     I am into this whole week of read an e-book and have already started. I actually started ahead of everyone so I apologize. If you want some cool book ideas look me up on Goodreads the link is here https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14717322-michael but if you’re easily offended maybe you should stay away. Read an e-book this week and check out http://www.smashwords.com for some cool stuffs as well as Amazon or wherever else  e-books are sold.

How I Discovered Bizarro And Splatterpunk

      If anyone has seen me on Facebook you’ll notice that I read a lot of crazy shit. I promote a lot of authors, websites, and even t-shirt designers. I get absolutely dick in return and a lot of people are scratching their heads trying to figure out why I would do this. A lot of what I read and even wear are from indie companies. These guys put out high quality shit and do so because they, like me love a certain genre of fiction. I had no idea when I stumbled onto the bizarro genre that there were so many cool people involved. I don’t just mean the fans I mean the authors themselves.The writers that create these books are by far some of the coolest people I have ever encountered so it makes sense that I would read their books and promote them. If you like something why the fuck wouldn’t you support it? To answer the question I don’t do this to get free shit. I do it so more people will discover it and become fans.

      How did I discover bizarro anyway? It was actually by accident. Three years ago I had just gotten a tablet and loaded up the Kindle app but had nothing to read so I went searching for free books just to see if I would like the digital format. I found this website that threw out free titles and lo and behold I saw Bradley Sands’ Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy and figured it was free so why not check it out. As I began reading something just clicked. This was some really absurd shit and I loved it. I think at the time I was looking for something new anyway and this just fit somehow. From there I read They Had Goat Heads By D. Harlan Wilson and this was even more bizarre and absurd but at that point I was hooked and knew that I had found a genre that fit my personality. I was growing bored with a lot of what I was reading at that point and bizarro fiction made reading fun again. That was something that had been missing for a long time.

       I think everyone reaches that point where they grow tired of playing it safe, they grow tired of reading the same authors over and over. A lot of the mainstream writers I had once supported weren’t really doing anything interesting anymore. Horror had gone underground and Stephen King was no longer writing anything decent. I had no idea that Kurt Vonnegut wrote bizarro and who knows, maybe that was the beginning for me. When I read Breakfast Of Champions I can see the influence that Vonnegut had on the bizarro genre and it stands up pretty well next to The Traveling Dildo Salesman. I didn’t see the disconnect I was encountering with mainstream fiction and when it happened I was quite surprised by it. When I got my first tablet the Kindle opened up a variety of possibilities and I no longer had to play it safe. The e-books were much cheaper too so I was suddenly able to discover even more authors.

       Bizarro about breaking the rules and being different. When I first discovered bizarro my wife and I had just separated and I was totally lost. I didn’t know who I was and bizarro was a good release for all the confusion I was facing. When you’ve been married for thirteen years and find yourself single and living alone it really messes with your head. I had no idea who I was, and I was broken. It was a time of transition and I wasn’t even sure how I was going to make it on my own. I never had to but being a single guy wasn’t something I was adapting too as easily or as quickly as I had hoped. When a relationship breaks up does anyone ever recover quickly? I needed a distraction or at the very least something that I could call my own.

     The splatterpunk genre was a natural progression for me. I cut my teeth on classic horror so when I discovered that there was something harder and edgier out there I was in. I read The Light At The End when I was younger but I didn’t realize how important that book was. I have it on my Kindle because I can’t remember what it was about. Richard Laymon was the true intro to splatterpunk and The Stake is still a book I still have mad respect for because at that time I was still into traditional horror. When I discovered bizarro I also delved into the splatterpunk genre. I was able to buy more books and scour the net for clues on what splatterpunk was and to see what I had missed out on. Keep in mind that a lot of these books were out of print so I was clutching at straws and hoping that I could find some of these books. I also discovered new guys like Shane McKenzie and Wrath James White. These were writers that were in a class all their own. These books were all about pushing the envelope as far as it would go and sometimes it was totally destroyed.

     The thing I love about splatterpunk is that these are stories based on shit that could actually happen to you. The monsters weren’t made up, they were your neighbors or even your husband. You could be in the woods being hunted by some psycho crazed hillbillies. They made their monsters human and that changed the landscape of horror. Sure, it was violent and even graphic but these were the darker sides of human nature that I couldn’t explore on my own. I could but I would have to be a total whack job to do so. This past year has seen a massive influx of great titles as well as great publishers. I have finally gotten a collection that I’m quite proud of and thanks to Facebook and the internet I can find the titles I want without getting dressed.

     Lastly, I was thinking about this the other day and I realized that if I had still been married would I have rediscovered splatterpunk or even discovered bizarro fiction? The answer is probably not. Every marriage is a democracy and remember it was the tablet that got all this rolling so I doubt very much that she would have allowed me to get a tablet because I wasn’t working and she was. We had three kids and a tablet isn’t something that a wife would allow her husband to buy when you have all these other expenses. On top of that I have spent a lot of money on books. When my house caught fire I had always wanted to have a book collection I could be proud of and I have done exactly that. I have hit every Goodwill I can, every thrift store and have even supported a Kickstarter campaign just to beef up my collection. I work my ass off and buy books. It could be smack or heroin.

     So I guess to close this out I should throw out some links so you can explore these genres on your own. I can’t list all the publishers I support but hit up amazon and type in Bizarro fiction and that will get you started.

     Bizarro Authors

Jordan Krall, Jimmy Pudge, Danger Slater, Cameron Pierce, http://www.strangehousebooks.com, Rooster Republic Press, Eraserhead Press, Carlton Mellick III, CV Hunt, Anderson Prunty, Vincenzo Bilof, Dynatox Ministries which specializes in limited edition chapbooks, Grindhouse Press

     Splatterpunk Authors and publishers

Deadite Press, Dark Regions Press, Wrath James White, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, Morbid Books, Charlee Jacob, Shane McKenzie, Brian Keene, and again for splatterpunk titles just go into Amazon and type in either splatterpunk or extreme horror, and you should also look up William Malmborg and Brian Smith.

     This is why people no longer ask what I’m reading. You never know but at least when you do ask I’ll have something interesting to talk about.