Trump Administration Accomplishments

FUCKING NOTHING! 

Going public: a timeline of the Italian mayhem

Here's a timeline of the Italian mayhem:
I was contacted by Meridiano Zero/Marco Odoya in March of 2019. They wanted the rights to Zero Saints. They sent a standard contract: small advance and then 8% royalties for the first 1500 copies.
I asked around, visited their page, and talked to Italian publisher/editor Mauro Falciani, who vouched for Meridiano Zero.
The contract was signed, scanned, and sent on April 12, 2019. They notified receipt of the document. The advance was due at signing according to the contract. Failure to pay within a month of signing would mean breach of contract. I received no advance. I emailed them in May and July. My May email was ignored. In July they replied and said payment of the advance was scheduled for late August or early September.
I reached out again in November and asked Falciani to try to contact them as well. No dice.
I emailed them again during the first week of March. My email was once again ignored. Then I learned they had hired a translator. She hasn't given me permission to use her name, so I won't use it here. She translated the novel but never got paid for her work.
I emailed them again yesterday and said I was going public with this. No reply. Well, now I'm using my platform so no other writers have to deal with this bullshit.
The rights are mine because of contract violations. The novel has been translated. I would love to see it published in Italy and I would love to see the translator get paid for her work. If you know of any solid Italian crime/horror publishers, reach out.
Here's a personal note to publishers across the globe:
Don't fuck with writers. Respect the work of writers, translators, editors, and cover designers. Also, don't fuck with me and don't fuck with my money. I'm a high school teacher and sometimes the money I make from my writing is the difference between paying all my bills and having to pick which ones I'll pay. Be decent or get exposed. Have a nice day.

There's an abandoned shopping cart in my brain

You know those guys in action movies who sit down at a restaurant and then remember what everyone was wearing? Well, I'm that guy. I can't take on a dozen ninjas like those filmtastic badasses, but I try to never sit with my back to the door, pay attention to exits when I'm somewhere new, and constantly look at places and people. Sometimes it's for safety, but also because stories are everywhere. In any case, last week I left home and drove past a shopping cart stuffed with someone's life. You know what I'm talking about: clothes, food, and other assorted things that let you know the owner of the cart takes everything he or she owns wherever they go. At first, I didn't think anything about it. The homeless person could be somewhere else, maybe copping a fix or sleeping in a hidden shade or maybe taking a crap while the rest of the world went about its business. However, when I drove back, the cart was still there.

The next day when I went to the gym really early, the shopping cart was in the exact same spot. That was weird. Its presence set off a few alarms. Homeless folks don't stick around the middle of the street if there's no place to lay down or a busy intersection where they can get some moola. They also don't leave everything they own by the side of the road and walk off into the sunset. In any case, that afternoon I saw the cart in the same spot, untouched and cooking under the Texas sun.

The third day made it obvious: the owner of the cart was gone. The possibilities are many. They go from the awesome to the grim. One end of the spectrum could be they scratched the right ticket and won a ton of money. The other end is their body is now worm food in some gutter or abandoned house. That afternoon, however, there was a change. Someone took the two heavy coats that sat atop everything else in the cart. You know the kind I'm talking about; those coats some unlucky folks use when it's 25 degrees and keep using when it's 90 degrees. The point is the missing coats shifted my perspective. The developing narrative was no longer about the missing owner.

That afternoon, the bags of food were gone. A few other items followed. Every time I drove by, something else was missing. I never saw anyone taking anything and I doubt folks were jumping out of their cars to grab stuff from the car and take it home, so the disappearing things were probably going to other street denizens. That fucked me up. I've stolen toilet paper when things got rough and I've eaten my share of Ramen, but I've never had to take cans that had been cooking under the sun for days from an abandoned shopping cart by the side of the road. It made me think about that line about one man's garbage being another man's treasure.

The cart is still there. I walked past it yesterday and peeked inside. The only item left is a grimy black tarp. The rest is gone. Redistributed "wealth" or whatever you wanna call it. However, the story of the cart, whoever left it there, and the folks who came after and scavenged what was in it are now all in my head. They make me grateful in fucking rough times, and they are asking to be turned into part of a story. I'll do just that, but first I had to share this and tell you to keep your eyes open at all times because the streets operate on many levels, and missing or ignoring what goes down in one of those levels means you're not really seeing the whole picture. Stay awesome, lovely creatures.   

You NEVER pay to get published. Never.

There's a ridiculous anthology call making the rounds today. When I started doing this thing in English, I had a few bad experiences with anthologies and "editors" and learned a few lessons. If you're just starting out, here are some tips for you:

1. Unless you can buy food and pay rent with exposure, focus on paying anthologies. There are some situations (like charity anthologies) where this rule can be ignored.

2. Anyone who asks you to pay to be in a book is a douche. Tell those people to go die in a tire fire. You spent time and effort writing, and should be treated like so.
 
3. Covers matter. A publisher who doesn't get you a decent cover doesn't care about your book/story.
 
4. You should never pay for a cover, proofreading, formatting/layout, and editing. A real press takes care of all that for you.
 
5. If you read a submission call and find a handful of typos and misspelled words, forget about it and move on.
 
6. The only correct answer to an editor telling you that sometimes you have to "pay to play when starting out" is "Well, sometimes you gotta eat shit and die." Likewise, editors should help you make the story better, but changes have to go through you before the anthology comes out.
 
7. If you're in doubt, reach out to a pro. Ask questions. Folks who've been around the block a few times aren't fans of asshats taking advantage of those who are dying to see their name in print.
 
8. Remember that getting your work in a superb anthology is better than getting published in a dozen shitty ones.
 
9. Get a contract. Promises were made for religious stuff and to help dying folks go in peace.
 
10. A bunch of authors together in the same book = an anthology. A single author = a collection. Think twice before working with folks who get these mixed up. (Yeah, common usage beats dictionary any damn day.)

Binge reading graphic novels

So here's the thing: I never really got into comics other than Mortadelo y Filemón and despite reading across the board, never really became a fan of graphic novels. That being said, I've always recognized that there are true gems out there, so I've read a few graphic novels and memoirs here and there. A fe weeks ago, I was staying at David James Keaton's house and started reading Torso. I liked it. Then, last weekend, I decided to stop reading the dozen books I'm currently reading and binge read graphic stuff. I went to the Yarborough Library, where I wrote my dissertation and most of Hungry Darkness and Zero Saints, and picked up Steve Niles/Nat Jone's Giant Monster, Joe Casey/Steve Parkhouse's The Milkman Murders, Gilbert Hernandez's Julio's Day, Evie Wylde/Joe Sumner's Everything is Teeth, and Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches. I added two I owned to the pile: Corinne Maier/Anna Simon's Einstein and Jonathan Ames/Dean Haspiel's The Alcoholic. Between Saturday and Sunday, I devoured all seven. Here are my impressions:

 - Steve Niles/Nat Jones' Giant Monster: Short and violent, but kinda silly and very predictable. For fans of graphic stuff, Niles is a household name, so I'm guessing this is one of his weakest outings. Not much of a plot and too many cliches to be great. Verdict: 4/10.

- Joe Casey/Steve Parkhouse's The Milkman Murders. Smart, hyperviolent, and dark. I really dug it. They take suburbian households and expose their sometimes rotten core. I also really liked having a older mom as the (anti)hero. The intro sucked and kinda made Casey look like an ass. Verdict: 7.5/10.

- Gilbert Hernández's Julio's Day. Great concept. It packs an entire lifetime of 100 years into a graphic novel you can read in one sitting. It also deals with changing societal views of things like Mexicans and homosexuality without going too deep into it, which made it feel like an organic approach. Sad and full of death. Less characters would've been better, just like less focus on some scenes/themes. Bonus points for having an intro by the great Brian Evenson. Verdict: 7/10.

- Evie Wyld/Joe Sumner's Everything is Teeth. A heartfelt look at life and the passage of time...but with motherfucking sharks. Unique and gory. I liked how Wyld framed her childhood around one thing in order to make it very digestible. Verdict: 8/10.

-  Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches. A labor of love. Great art. Dark. Too disjointed for my taste. It's incredible that Tardi writes and illustrates his stuff. This was the longest and most text-heavy of all the books. I think Tardi is a novelist who just likes to illustrate. I'll definitely read more of his work, but this one was all over the place. Verdict: 6/10.

- Corinne Maier/Anna Simon's Einstein. Surprisingly well researched, honest, and fun. A great graphic biography. They weren't afraid to tackle his work, personal life, and even his flaws with equal wit and candor. Verdict: 9/10.

- Jonathan Ames/Dean Haspiel's The Alcoholic. I think all graphic novels (and this one is kinda of a memoir, too) should be like this. This is a superb/gritty/honest look at loss, ego, writing, addiction, and love. As funny and touching as it is sad and depressive. Probably my favorite of the seven. Verdict: 9/10.

So, the thing is that I planned on doing this for a weekend and moving on, but I had a blast. It was a strange break from my usual weekend reading, so I decided to do it three or four times this year. That will also (hopefully) help me read way more than 200 books this year. Don't worry, I'll be honest and tell you which were graphic novels/memoirs when I publish my list at the end of the year. In any case, the upcoming weekend looked mellow, so I went to the library again today (a different branch) and picked up Emily Carroll's Through the Woods, Alfred and Oliver Ka's Why I Killed Peter, Gilbert Hernández's Speak of the Devil, H.P. Lovecraft/N.J. Culbard's At the Mountains of Madness, Si Spurrier/P.J. Holden's Numbercruncher, Jacques Tardi/Benjamin Legrand/Dominique Grange's New York Mon Amour. If I read them all, I have more onmy bookshelves. Now tell me what are some of your favorites that you think I should check out. Happy reading.

Guide to writing your fifth novel

Guide to writing your fifth novel (yeah, it only works for the fifth one...and your mileage may vary):
1. Stand in the middle of the road in a strange part of town and scream "Everything's a construct!" at the top of your lungs.
2. Read amazing novels and get angry because you'll never be that good and maybe no one loves you.
3. Get inside your blood. Find the ghosts that ride your veins and fight them.
4. Pull your deepest fears outta the bottom drawer of your soul and staple them to your face with the sharpened bones of tiny birds.
5. Listen to your favorite music. Then listen to something impossibly darker. Listen to something new. Listen to something awful and scary. Listen to the ominous silence.
6. Eat tacos and ponder life without soy sauce.
7. Remind yourself of every fight, every accident, every dance with absolute fear, every instance in which a fucking gun made an unexpected appearance, every night spent pressing your tongue against the blood clots on the inside of your lips, every broken promise, every drop of anger, every death that crushed you, every spirit you've ever felt.
8. Punch a wall until your knuckles bleed. Lick the blood off your knuckles. Punch the wall some more. Remember no one owes you a thing. Smile. Pick up a gutter flower and put it in your hair.
9. Type as if the keyboard owed you money. When you hit a passage that means something, hold your breath.
10. Reply to the voices. Recognize aliens are real. They live in the closet and come out to watch you sleep sometimes. Scream at the moon. Understand that, if there is a hell, its fire is nothing compared to what you hide underneath your skin. Obsess about everything. Cry without shedding any tears. Finish the damn thing. Move on to the next one with a new set of neon scars.

In the Shower

There are three voices in my head that take turns narrating my life: Tom Waits, Sam Elliott, and Werner Herzog. Of those three, Herzog is usually the default voice. In any case, he inspired me to write some Werner Herzog erotica. The story won the 2016 Ultimate Bizarro Showdown, but I didnt get to read the whole thing because I'm an idiot and started cracking jokes as soon as I was in front of the microphone. So, here is the whole thing. Hope you love it. It's sexy and shit.

In the Shower: the first Werner Herzog erotica ever

In the shower, Johnny stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested. His mind was full of images of prison shankings, crying men, and big bulliesturning the asses of fresh inmates into entertainment centers. Then his girlfriend, Marie, pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the shower. 

“How you doing, sweetie?” she asked. 
“Thinking.”

"About what?” she asked, taking a step forward and pressing her perky breasts against his chest, her nipples digging ever so gently into his skin. 

“Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marie said, running her hand down his abdomen and twirling her fingers around his wild, unkempt bush of jet-black pubic hair, which always reminded him of a lost lumberjack found in an abandoned mine after six years in the wilderness, his psyche fractured, his ability to speak impaired by insanity, his teeth rotten into black stumps, his breath a fetid miasma combining the smells of fresh fecal matter from the bowels of an alcoholic truck driver and the decomposing flesh of a mangy possum. 

“Wanna have some fun in the shower and then get something to eat?” 

“I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.”

Marie grabbed a bar of soap and started lathering Johnny up. She worked her way down to his hardening member and took it in her soft, wet hands. After a while he shut his eyes, and Marie, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels and the other stroking him up and down. 

“You like that, baby?”

“Sure, but what are you trying to accomplish?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her hands suddenly less sure of themselves. 

“If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.”

Marie kept up what she was doing, gently squeezing Johnny’s balls, but a sliver of doubt had been wedged between her intent and herself. She felt a bit lost. 

“Why do you always say things like that, baby?”

“I know you don’t like to hear these things, but facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.”

Marie knew where this was going. The conversation that loomed in front of her was beast murdering the blossoming wetness between her legs. 

“You need to enjoy this moment, Johnny,” she said, punctuating her words with another gentle squeeze to his genitals. “Life is too short to be so sad and serious all the time!” 

“I need to have these conversations with you, Marie. The nothingness that surrounds us it too loud and only these thoughts make me feel a bit safer. You know civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness. You jerking me off won’t change that.” 

“I think you need help,” she whispered, her breath as hot as the steam from the shower. 

He reached down and roughly grabbed Marie between the legs. She felt his long, bony finger slip inside her womanhood. His thumb slid into the crack of her bottom and lifted her like a bowling ball or a six-pack. Nah, make that a feather. Yeah, that works better. Oh, wait, the fourth wall. Shit. Oh, man, this is so meta. Anyway, she blushed, her mind suddenly racing with phallic imagery. She felt his mancock stiffen further in her hands, it was long and impressive. Yeah, I said mancock. Single words. I’ll take all the awards right now, motherfuckers. 

“I believe the magic is happening, sweetie,” she said, breathing a little bit like Britney Spears on…basically every fucking song. 

“I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder,” he replied. 

“I need to feel your steely manhood like a thunderbolt of pleasures in the pink center of my being!” moaned Marie. 

Johnny penetrated her with his engorged member, leaned into side of her face, and asked her: “What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”

“Oh, tiny baby Jesus, please pleasure me with that wonderful cock of yours, my love!” Marie screamed. 

Johnny keep thrusting into her core and said: “Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.” 

Then, just as they were both about to climax, the fucking void swallowed them both and no one cried about it or thought about them ever again in this cruel, overturned piss pot of a world full of dying people, hungry children, and horrific crimes. But hey, at least they went out fucking, right? 

Friday Night

It's relatively early on a Friday night and I'm cruisin' around Austin taking swigs from a bottle of cheap wine after yet another job interview fiasco. All of us are a few bad decisions away from being winos, so keep your judging to a minimum, jack. Anyway, I'm out here looking for ghosts and answers, fishing for options and trying to find the corpse of opportunity in some fucking gutter. I'm out here because I'm too restless to stay home and too damn broke to go anywhere. As far as interstitial spaces go, this one is on the awful side of the spectrum.

I'm listening to Nighthawks at the Diner and thinking that folks like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen, who fucking died yesterday because Death sometimes makes horrible mistakes, made me want to write more than many famous authors ever did. "Yeah, I know, things are tough all over," says Tom. You got that fucking right, man.

I want to scream into void and punch a wall, but years of doing that have taught me that the result is a sore throat and busted knuckles. I can't afford pills or weed or a bottle of something better, so I have to inhale all this truth and deal with it without a single balm, without a bit of a filter, without a damn layer of merciful cushioning. Then I turn the radio a little louder and realize that politics and anger are noise that interrupt my usual mellow. They're like huge bees fucking up my picnic. I have a stack of novels at home and a whispering creek right outside my door. In my head I have a woman, a narrative, and a thirst for revolution. If I let them sing to me, something akin to a miracle could happen.

I look out the window and take in the city. There's a man dressed like Zorro at a bus stop. A few blocks later, a dude in a yellow wig is holding a flag and a "Vote for Bernie!" sign. At a red light on Burnet, I see an obese woman screaming at someone I can't see on the sidewalk. Just because I can't see whatever or whoever she's screaming at doesn't mean that he/she/it is not there. I find myself hoping she wins the argument. The light changes and once again, like a thousand times before, I fall in love with this city. Yeah, she has tried to kill me a few times, but true love is all about forgiveness.

Suddenly I accept it all. Tomorrow I will still be poor and the next book will still be waiting for me to write it and Trump will still be our next president despite our protests and there will still be a need for love and revolution and comprehension and empathy and people will still be upset about everything and arguing online and kids will go hungry in every country and someone will check out via a bullet to the brain and someone will kiss another human for the first time and a baby will be born and change a few lives the instant he or she appears and someone will listen to some of the songs that I keep in my head and the buzzing of a tattoo machine will turn blank skin into art and someone will devour delicious chicken tacos and someone will bleed and someone will say fuck as they twist open a bottle of aspirin and someone will get mad at a movie and someone will buy a book someone else wrote and someone will be in a car accident and and someone will have a great birthday and someone else will eat a piece of their cake and someone will look at a stranger in a public space and imagine a perfect future with them before swallowing it all and not saying a word and someone will be happy that it's Saturday and someone will drink alone in a dirty sofa and remember that thing that destroyed their life and someone will decide to go on a diet and someone will hug a loved one and someone will make an important phone call as butterflies fill their stomach with uncomfortable fluttering and someone will do their best to fight injustice and the world will be a little better because they gave a shit about it and someone will dream about taking a trip to Africa and someone will listen to Fela Kuti and someone will wake up next to a stranger an think fuuuuuuuuuuck before looking around for their shit and bailing and someone will project their insecurities on someone else and someone will hop on a plane with a rucksack full of dreams and someone will learn to forgive and someone will stab someone else for reasons that may or may not make the stabbing a righteous thing and someone will make their mom happy and someone will walk their dog and someone will peel an orange and smell its wonderful aroma and someone will put a gun in their mouth and then remove it without pulling the damn trigger and someone will see a child smile at a dog and someone will realize how fucking awesome it is to watch birds flying into the horizon and someone will dip their toes in the ocean and someone will remember an ex with nothing but love or hatred or respect or lust and someone will have a great conversation with a stranger and the world will keep spinning and I will keep living because that's the only thing we can do.

Then Tom sings and I listen and it all makes sense. You have to learn to love the world even when it's ugly and you don't understand it. You have to love the world as you stand up for what's right and stomp on the skulls of fucking Nazis. You have to love the anger you feel and the things that are wrong and you have to love your ability to fight for change.

I turn around in the parking lot of a grocery store and head back home as I sing along these words for you: 

"Nobody, nobody
Will love you the way that I could
Cause nobody, nobody's that strong
Cause nobody is that strong"

Saturday Morning Blood

-->

The phone rings. It's around 2:00am. I’d like to say the phone wakes me up, but it doesn’t. I’m up, watching some band whose name I ignore doing their thing on Austin City Limits. I’m back home for a few weeks because sometimes you move out and run out of money and nothing works out and then you’re broke and sad and drunk and empty and you have to come back home for a while with your tail between your legs and the best things about that is no rent and mom does your laundry and there’s food in the fridge and you have cable for a while.

Anyway, my brain jumps to terrible conclusions.

Someone died in a car crash.

The dude calling kidnapped a family member and wants ten million dollars.

Aliens are liquefying people in the streets with strange guns.

I have to get dressed and go identify my best friend’s mutilated corpse. 

Someone decided to take me up on an offer of being the muscle for some project...

I get up, walk to the wall mount thingy, and pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, put Maria on.”

Maria is my sister. Dudes like her. I say that to convey the fact that dudes calling and asking for her is not unheard of. Luckily, most of them call at regular hours.

It’s too late. Or too early. Pick one. I don’t care. The point is my brain is not working properly and depression is sort of hanging over me like those personal clouds that rain on a single character on cartoons. I'm trying to ignore all of it and, right before the call, was focusing on inventing names for the band I’d been listening to.

The Open Books

Boogie Wipes

Too Many Strings

Decorating Couplers

This Isn’t Your Band

Who Needs a Name?

The Toxic Organics

The Somewhatoriginals

Nothing Works

I go back to the call with only a third of my brain.

“Who’s calling?”

“That’s none of your business. Is Maria there or not?”

Haha.

The guy at the other end of the line has an attitude. My attitude is bigger. My attitude snaps my brain away from naming the band and gets to work. I realize I’m angry. 

“Listen, motherfucker, I asked you your name.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Maria’s brother and…”

“Well, Maria’s brother, put her on or I’m gonna pay you a visit tomorrow.”

I've seen too many fucking movies. I'm good at tough guy lines. Yeah, even when some have lead to me spitting out chunks of teeth. I drop a good line. 

“Nothing in this life would make me happier.”

The guy says something else that doesn’t register because anger tends to fill my ears with marching ants. He hangs up before I can reply to whatever it is he said.

The funny thing is my voice is nasal (a smart line got my nose busted and one side doesn't work properly since then) and somewhat high-pitched. I sound small. I’m not small. Well, I'm short, but not small. Anyway, I tell folks I suffer from Mike Tyson syndrome.  

A few hours later, I’m still awake. The sun is out. I'm still watching shit on TV that isn't registering. Then someone rings the doorbell. My sister’s in the shower. My mom’s in the kitchen. I can smell her cigarettes in my room. That means I have to get the door. I walk to the door wearing a ratty Bob Marley t-shirt and orange boxers with tiny blue whales on them and open the door.

The guy standing outside the door is about 6’3. He’s wearing blue shorts, a yellow shirt, and a shit-eating grin.

I’ve seen him around. He lives two blocks down. Biggest house in the neighborhood. Nicest cars parked outside, too. He’s three years younger than me, a year older than my sister.

I take a step toward him and obliterate that thing folks call personal space.

The grin disappears quickly.

I’m about 5’9, but I’ve been into bodybuilding/powerlifting for a while.

The guy is probably a buck sixty. I’m about 215.

“Are you…Maria’s brother?”

The voice tells me it’s definitely the guy from the phone.

“Yeah.”

“I’m…We…”

I pop him in the nose. It's a good punch, but didn't have everything I can throw behind it. 

The guy takes a step back, holds his nose. I see blood.

I grab his neck and push him back, away from the door. The guy’s defense tactic is to collapse on top of my arm.

I remove my appendage and hit him on the side of the head. He goes down.

I grab a leg and drag him out to the sidewalk.

He’s saying things, but I don’t pay attention.

I grab his yellow shirt, which now has a bit of blood on it, and yank him into somewhat of a sitting position using my left hand.

He lets go of his nose and grabs my wrist. I punch him again. This time around, I put a good dose of anger and weight behind it. Something cracks. More blood comes from his nose. I smile.

Then, surprisingly, I punch him again.

My fist smashes against the hand he was bringing up to his face. He screams.

Pop, pop. Two more. It feels really good.

The anger about the phone call is gone. I have no idea why I’m messing his face up this bad. Except I know why. I’m punching every rich asshole I’ve ever met. POP. I’m making my own frustrations bleed. I’m punching everyone who’s taller than me. POP. I’m punching the fact that I had to come back home broke and with my tail between my legs. I’m punching all my fucking class resentment. I'm punching my depression.

Then my sister and my mom are trying to pull me back, screaming things about not killing him.

I stop.

I look down at the guy. He’s gurgling blood, his eyes more white than anything else. He moans. I let him go and wipe my bloodied fist on my boxer shorts. As I do it, I look down at the tiny blue whales on my underwear. That's when I start laughing at the beauty of it all. You see, depression sucks and violence solves nothing, but sometimes life gives you small treats and you end up with a rich kid’s blood all over your knuckles and cackling like a madman on the sidewalk outside your parents’ house on a beautiful Saturday morning.

There’s Something About Tuesdays

After five months of unemployment and dancing at the edge of homelessness, I had started to think that no job could be too bad. Then I landed a gig in the insurance business. In order to survive, I’ve learned to rely on humor, and I was gonna need a lot of it to pull the gig off. You see, humor is the only thing between me and the dark void; the last thing keeping me from grabbing a pen and stabbing the idiots around me in the neck on a daily basis. Sadly, most people at that office didn’t share my sense of humor, and three particular Tuesdays before my time in the insurance business came to an end showed me just how different our humors were and how much my job sucked.

The first incident came at a time where cops killing unarmed folks and idiots saying All Lives Matter were sitting at the top of the list of things that made me angry. I was sitting there, blood boiling, when an obese lady flew into the office with glee plastered on her face and screamed “There’s free donuts in the break room!” In her heard, free donuts apparently deserve the same celebration as the cure for cancer, and as a donut lover, the news made my day. Ten minutes later, I heard the man who worked behind me say that he was happy because Tuesday isn’t Monday and that was good enough for him. I bit my tongue. Hard. That’s when I decided to go to the break room, grab a donut, and try to choke on it.

The donuts looked sadder than those toys with missing limbs you spot on dirty puddles on your way to the grocery store on days when you miss the bus. I grabbed one and prepared a cup of horrible coffee to go with it because, when it comes to suffering, I want it all. With my donut and shitty coffee in hand, I turned to return to my desk and saw there were two elderly white ladies looking at the donuts the way dogs in cartoons look at steaks. They peeled their bovine peepers from the donut box and looked up at me. Then they smiled that creepy fake smile most office people give each other regularly and sent me back to my angry place. I looked at them and said in a venomous voice “I have a coffee and a donut; all I need now is to shoot a few unarmed black folks and I’ll be a real cop.” Okay, it was not a joke, but someone else, someone like me, would have appreciated the humor in that comment. Not them. Their faces melted. Their smiles withered. Shock left its previous apartment and moved into their eyes. I left the break room, their traumatized eyes burning holes in my back.  

The following weeks I tried my best to keep my mouth shut, but silence feeds the existential dread that bubbles at my core, so a few mornings later, again on a Tuesday, I was cracking a few jokes in order to stay sane. Most of them were so wrapped in sarcasm that no one even looked at me. My sarcasm in that office was like a wounded bird, flying erratically over every head in that office and generally being ignored or making folks look uncomfortable. I decided to shut up, so I grabbed my phone and started scrolling through Facebook to kill the tedium and get angry at the amount of assholes who have internet access. That’s when I saw a GIF of Elmo sitting on a potty and dancing. The words “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime” were above him. The words “That’s why I poop on company time!” were below. I thought it was hilarious. I stood up, and did a little dance while singing the song. The look on the faces around me would make anyone think I’d just killed a baby by smashing its tiny, fragile head against my desk. I sat down and felt the suckage become a dense, cold tumor in the center of my soul. I don’t trust people who don’t enjoy a good poop joke.   

Then another week rolled around. I was pretending to read an email while thinking about the last time I went to Portland to hang out with friends. A joke someone told came to mind and I chuckled. The guy who sits in front of me asked me what I was thinking about. Then this happened:

Me: “Nothing, man, just remembered a joke.”

Him: “Must be a good one. Tell it.”

Me: “No, I’m not telling this joke at the officee. It’s really dirty.”

Him: “Come on, man, tell us the joke.”

The quiet woman from New Orleans who sits to my right was looking at me. She was smiling and nodding.

Me: “No, trust me, this is the most inappropriate, filthy, absolutely disgusting joke you’ve ever heard. I’m not telling it.”

Lady from New Orleans: “I like my jokes a little red, Gabino!”

Him: “See? We can handle it. Tell us the joke, man.”

Me: “I really shouldn’t. You can’t imagine…”

Him: “Tell us the damn joke, man!”

Me: “Okay.”

I took a deep breath and told the joke.

Me: “Last night I was going down on my grandma…”

No one chuckled. Two other people were looking at me. The lady from New Orleans looked like she had two shoes full of maggots.

Me: “…when I tasted horse semen…”

I heard a grunt. I think New Orleans lady gaged. The douche who had insisted I tell the joke looked three seconds away from crying.

Me: “…and I thought to myself ‘I wonder if that’s how she died.’”

No one laughed. They refused to look at me. For days. Bunch of fucking soulless bastards. That’s a funny joke right there. Anyway, my job sucked and I’m done telling jokes on Tuesdays.

Playing with Prisma (and a sort of gallery)

Here's something a lot of people don't know: I'm a photographer. Yeah, I've worked as a photojournalist for three different publications in two different countries, I've had my work in galleries and coffee shops (the hipster way, baby!), I had an agent for my photos for about two years (even sold a piece!), and once received a prize from the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña for my work. I learned everything about darkroom techniques from friends who could afford classes and finally embraced the digital age right before moving to Austin. The along came phones with cameras. 

Sure, I was skeptical at first and kinda hated the idea of everyone calling themselves a photographer (or phonetographer, depending on their level of tech nerdiness and command of new lingo). Then I realized that none of that matter and that new technology would bring about more cool images for everyone to enjoy because folks take their phones everywhere, phone cameras are now better than early digital SLRs, and filters and apps are readily available, which ultimately leads to image manipulation being something everyone can do at any time even if they've never touched a camera or heard about Photoshop. The first app/thingy I loved to play with that wasn't just straight filters was Dream Deeply. Sadly, it soon turned into a bunch of dog faces and the collective passion for it lasted a few days longer than the love for Ello (remember when y'all mufuckas said you were quitting Facebook and moving to Ello? Haha). Now we have Prisma, and what I'm seeing online is awesome: folks turning what they see into strange works of art. I've been playing with the app a lot lately and have learned a few things that could help you make your photos even better. Here are a few of those things I learned: 

1. Prisma tends to produce blocky images and their cropping isn't great, so keep that in mind and keep away from extreme close ups, especially is you want to later crop the image to fit elsewhere or to removed the Prisma logo. 

2. The whacky names tell you nothing about the filters, but after using it enough, you learn to guess more or less what a filter will to an image and can change it accordingly. For those filters that love color (Dreams, Ice Cream, Tokyo, etc.), consider saturating the color in another app or on your computer first. This will make everything more powerful on the final image. Also, remember that what the app gives you is not necessarily a final product. After I get something cool, I save it to my phone and either work on it further from there or send it to my computer to play around with it some more. 

3. Some filters kinda suck. Take the two images below. The are the same photo (glasses hanging from a rack at a bar). The one on top is still recognizable (Marcus D - Lone Wolf, which loves to fill in backgrounds), but the one at the bottom is just lines (Mondrian). I'm not saying it's not an interesting image, but most people who are playing with the app kinda want the end result to be something people will recognize. 

 

4. Some filters are really simple and predictable. Others give your surprising results. Here's what I've learned to far: Electric will soften lines and make everything blue. Roy will make this look like bad Warhol imitations. Mark has a somewhat impressionistic slant that can work really well with mellow colors (Raoul will do more or less the same except that it seems to toughen up lines and backgrounds a bit more). Urban makes everything black and white and makes images look like cubist interpretations of the Sin City aesthetic. Heisenberg, Curly Hair, and Light Summer Reading are slightly different variations of ink sketches or charcoal work, depending on what you feed them. 

5. The best way to confuse the app and get the results you want is by going with black and white. Except the three filters that make things monochromatic, most filters will try to "guess" what they're looking at and react accordingly. The image at the beginning of this post is originally black and white. I darkened the light a bit and the app started filling in spaces with purple. The image below is also black and white, and it was darker still, so the app decided to go with a different color. I'm still trying to figure it out, but black and white tones are reinterpreted depending on a few elements. Nice, isn't it?

6. Dreams seems to be one of the most popular filters, and I understand that. It reinforces lines, makes everything sharp, and boosts colors into strange (usually orange/yellowish/deep blues) combinations. It also works great with black and white because it "reads" it as either blur or orange/red. Dig this image of a tree, which I'm calling "Capillaries":

 

Okay, I'm done for now. Have fun with this thing and remember that your phone probably allows you to crop, saturate color, etc., and you can do all of it before and after in order to alter images. Oh, and I see everybody going with 100% on the filter every single time. Some images benefit from a little softening, so explore that by decreasing the filter percentage now and then. If you take some nudes, send them my way. You know, for the art and shit. 

I want to be there today

We were young and drunk and happy and the water in Amelia Island was cold but our hearts were full of fire. I want to be there today.

She wore a black leather jacket and an old gypsy woman told her she was going to have a daughter and her feet were bleeding from walking too much and Madrid was pure magic and museums and cockroaches at night. I want to be there today.

There was snow on the rooftops and poems written on the walls and folks who were packed with love milling around and the wind told me nothing really mattered that much. I want to be there today.

We gave the canoe a name and the ocean healed our wounds and the booze fueled our dreams and friendship was something tangible and the future was uncertain but far away and the immediacy of skin and sand made it less scary. I want to be there today.

Her minuscule apartment overlooked a gas station and there were cacti planted in an old, rusty grill and the beach was a few hundred feet away and tiny brown lizards were dancing on the walls and only music and new love mattered. I want to be there today.

The fridge was empty and the raindrops pummeling the window were a thousand tiny demons trying to get in and devour me and the live-in manager was screaming while high on pain meds and ignorance and lukewarm Jamaican beer and the heater was busted and it was 38 degrees inside but I had a few novels and a new obsession with Everett Ruess and my guitar and an old laptop and time in front of me. I want to be there today.

That park in West Palm Beach where we slept two nights while Willie struggled with dry contact lenses. That muddy river in Guánica where dark shapes crisscrossed underneath the kayak. That beach in Costa Rica where the rocks were covered with promises. That ledge in El Yunque that we used as an umbrella when the rain was the end of the world and we saw black snails the size of plates. That juke joint in East Austin where the ghosts turned into funk. I want to be there and there and there. I want to be there today.

2015 in books: quality reigned and quantity sucked

As I said before, 2015 was a bad in year in terms of reading and reviewing. Between looking for work, dealing with the problems that come from having no income, the new gig, the two books, gym, life, and the rest of it, I didn't get even close to 200 books. Sadly, it was also the first since 2013 that I haven't cracked at least 120 books. In any case, I managed to tackle some monsters (Sattin, Ligotti, and VanderMeer, for example) and read some truly outstanding novels. I also started reading some great stuff and never finished it, so the 20 books or so that are in various stages shall be restarted this year. Yeah, I'm going to try to read 200 books in 2016. I even got the Goodreads app thingy so I can keep track. More about that later. Here's what I finished in 2015 in no particular order.

 

1. Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson

2. Asura Girl by Otaro Maijo
3. The Lost Level by Brian Keene
4. First Yeah Healthy by Michael DeForge

5. Find Me by Laura van den Berg

6. Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero
7. Satanas by Mario Mendoza

8. Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty by Brian Alan Ellis

9. Area X by Jeff VanderMeer  
10. Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe

11. Naked Friends by Justin Grimbol

12. The Afflictions by Vikram Paralkar

13. Winterswim by Ryan W. Bradley

14. Worm by Anthony Neil Smith 

15. Mercy House by Adam Cesare

16. Today I Am A Book by xTx

17. How to Pose for Hustler by Andrea Kneeland

18. Visions by Troy James Weaver

19. Live Bait by Cameron Pierce

20. Revenge is a Redhead by Phil Beloin Jr.

21. Dodgeball High by Bradley Sanders

22. Jigsaw Youth by Tiffany Scandal

23. Black Gum by J David Osborne

24. GYO by Junji Ito

25. Morte by Robert Repino

26. The Abortion by Richard Brautigan

27. Goodbye to the Nervous Apprehension by Michael Heald

28. F-250 by Bud Smith

29. The Children of Old Leech edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele

30. SNAFU: Heroes by various

31. Exponential by Adam Cesare

32. My Documents by Alejandro Zambra

33. Ocean Beach by Frank Cassese

34. Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vida

35. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

36. The Silence by Tim Lebbon

37. i want love so great by Calvero

38. New Yorked by Rob Hart

39. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

40. Arafat Mountain by Mike Kleine

41. Witchita Stories by Troy James Weaver

42. Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich
43. The Up-Down by Barry Gifford
44. Sanctuary by Ken Bruen
45. New Yorked by Rob Hart
46. Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
47. The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell
48. Get It While You Can by Nick Jaina
49. Paradise Sky by Joe Lansdale
50. Stealing Propeller Hats From The Dead by David James Keaton 

51. Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti 

52. Boiled Americans by Michael Allen Rose

53. Everything Used to Work by Robert Spencer
54. Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas by David Bowles
55. Tables Without Chairs #1 by Bud Smith and Brian Alan Ellis
56. Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco
57. No Moon by Julie Reverb

58. Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
59. Desolation of Avenues Untold by Brandon Hobson
60. The Paper Man by Gallagher Lawson
61. Haints Stay by Colin Winnette
62. OG Dad by Jerry Stahl
63. White Crocodile by K.T. Medina
64. Strange Animals by Chad Kultgen
65. Where Bears Roam the Streets by Jeff Parker
66. Skinner by David Bernstein 

67. The Incoming Tide by Cameron Pierce
68. Sucker June by Sean Kilpatrick 

69. The Cult of Loretta by Kevin Maloney 

70. The Revelator by Robert Kloss
71. Outdancing the Universe by Lauren Gilmore
72. Bad Sex by Clancy Martin
73. Safe Inside the Violence by Christopher Irvin
74. The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura
75. Martin and John by Dale Peck

76. Killing Auntie by Andrzej Bursa
77. A Negro and an Ofay by Danny Gardner
78. Gestapo Mars by Victor Gischler

79. Mercy House by Adam Cesare 

80. The New York Stories by Ben Tanzer

82. The Lost Treasures of R&B by Nelson George
83. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems by Langston Hughes

84. The Silent End by Samuel Sattin
85. The Strangest by Michael J. Seidlinger
86. The Last Weekend by Nick Mamatas

I also read about a dozen graphic novels and three or four books for children every night. Those are awesome. Happy reading, lovely creatures. 

Buscapié: ¿Prensa?

Si fuese fanático de las teorías de conspiración, diría que el Buscapié de hoy no salió en versión digital porque siniestras figuras no desean que mis palabras sean leídas por más personas. En fin, aquí se los dejo. Compártanlo para que el mundo sepa...

¿Prensa?

Cuando se publicó mi primer libro me comuniqué con la prensa del país. La mayoría no me contestó. Los pocos que lo hicieron me informaron que en Puerto Rico no se escribe sobre libros. La experiencia me dejó con mal sabor de boca, una comprensión profunda de las frustraciones de la clase artística del país y una acidez poco profesional para todo con lo que respecte a la cobertura del quehacer cultural de mi isla.

Cuando se publicó mi segundo libro no me molesté en avisarle a nadie. Era un tributo a las novelas “pulp” que devoré ávidamente durante mis años de escuela superior y un guiño al impacto cultural de novelas/películas como Jaws. La casa editorial se encargó de todo.

El 31 de Octubre de este año se publicó Zero Saints, mi tercera novela. Es la primera novela de crimen publicada en espanglish por la editorial Broken River Books. Recibió halagos de Jerry Stahl. Fue nombrada una de las mejores diez novelas del año por la revista Cultured Vultures y una de las 50 mejores novelas del año por la revista Entropy. Esta semana estoy estudiando una propuesta de una compañía de cine independiente. Y en mi país no la ha leído nadie. Lo más triste del asunto no es eso, si no que no me importa.

Me gustaba, de una manera retorcida que algún psicólogo podría explicar mejor que yo, la ira que me invadía antes. Me importaba. Me dolía. Ahora siento mi escritura boricua (en la novela hay un reggaetonero, por ejemplo), pero a la vez retirada, ajena, independiente, expatriada. Veo a mis compatriotas: poetas laureados en América Latina, cineastas proyectando en Europa, músicos haciendo bailar pies en otros suelos y escritores compartiendo sus letras con lectores de otros países y ya no me interesa que Puerto Rico no participe del proceso. Esa indiferencia me fastidia más que la indignación anterior. Quiero esa furia de vuelta porque la apatía me hace sentir que dejo triunfar al antiintelectualismo.

The Cinematic Haters Ball: The Human Centipede 3

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Saying I watched The Human Centipede 3 is inaccurate. What should be said is that I tortured my eyeballs and polluted my brain for an hour and a half without any goddamn reason to. Now I want to grab Tom Six by the ankles and smack him against the wall until both legs become detached from the rest of the pulpy, untalented mess. Just…fuck.

I’d usually bother with something akin to a synopsis, but this abysmal piece of whale shit doesn’t even deserve that and comes as close to having a plot as Donald Trump comes to sounding like a rational human. This painfully shot, ridiculously overacted, unfunny waste of time took about ten minutes to climb to the top of the list of the worst movies I’ve seen this year, and then kept climbing like a young alpinist bent on summiting Everest on the only good weather day of the year.

The problem with communicating how truly awful this movie is stems from the fact that horror movies can be nauseating, vile, foul, disgusting, dreadful, sickening, ghastly, horrific, and repugnant while still being good movies. Not this one. This is a dreadful thing that shouldn’t have been seen by anyone not being subjected to systematic torture for crimes against children. The fact that the best acting in the film comes from a lady who used to do porn should’ve been a sign, but no one paid attention and they released it. They shouldn’t remain unpunished for this atrocious act. This odious collection of utter garbage is the cinematic equivalent of sitting on a red ant hill with you ass covered in honey while fellating a cactus, and someone should be in jail for making it.

Fuck it, I’m done with any attempt at analyzing something that was less interesting to look at than a stagnant puddle. Instead, I’ll give you a series of lines that I’m 100% were uttered in the set of this thing at least once:

1.     “What? No, I don’t know what a script is.”

2.     “There are no lines. Just tell Dieter Laser to yell incoherently for a few minutes.”

3.     “No, no, no. We’re not going for scary, smart or funny; we just want this shit to be as obnoxious as possible.”

4.     “Yes, this is edgy as fuck, dude!”

5.     “This seems like a perfect idea…on acid.”

Okay, I’m done with this thing. On a scale from 1 to 10, this was a solid “I’d rather chew on putrid meat while getting tasered than watch three minutes of this dreadful chunk of cinematic refuse.”

The Cinematic Haters Ball: Mad Max: Fury Road

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Listen, I know how things become incredibly popular. First, some idiots get together and start saying something’s really cool and then everyone jumps on that wagon because we’re sick, lonely creatures obsessed with fitting in and no one wants to be left out. That’s how awful wastes of time like The Cabin in the Woods become “genius” movies and the reason why someone like Stephenie Meyer ends up being one of the most successful authors in history.  It’s also how Mad Max: Fury Road ends up being called the best fucking movie since the coalescing of stardust.

Yeah, I sat down and watched the movie. As usual, the overhypers had me expecting a cinematic experience that would make me forget all previous cinematic experiences. In the end, while fast and entertaining, I ended up watching a film full of weird cars and a plot thinner than rolling paper. Basically, a renegade driver tries to save the shampoo commercial models a bad guy on life support keeps in his cave castle for reproductive purposes. It also has the guy from Powder playing a few weak metal riffs on a guitar that’s also a flamethrower, but whatever.

Mad Max: Fury Road is far from boring, but there are so many mistakes and inconsistencies that anyone calling this movie “the best movie ever” deserves a slow, painful death. Let me break down some of them in order to illuminate your Adam-Sandler-loving ass:

1.     These motherfuckers drive for a million miles and we don’t see a single shrub or tree. Then their truck gets stuck in the mud and the last tree on earth is a few feet away and ready to save the day. Get outta here with that bullshit.

2.     Just like there is no flora, there is no fauna. The world is a desert. However, after an explosion, we see some birds. Please refer to the last sentence in the previous entry.

3.     I used to help a neighbor of mine with his cars back in the day. We had to use a special soap made with all kinds of chemicals and sand to get the grease off our fingers. In this movie, Furiosa paints her entire forehead twice with a fingertip full of grease and then has a clean-ish face next morning.

4.     Just like that disappearing grease bullshit, Powder’s cousin paints his mouth and teeth with silver spray paint twice, and that also magically disappears. 

5.     Are we supposed to think that you can climb into the motor of a moving truck, tie a fucking hose, and everything is fine for another million miles?

6.     Powder’s cousin is apparently dying at the beginning of the movie, but then he turns into a hero, runs back and forth through the desert, and never seems to be in pain.

7.     From standing up and jumping around on moving vehicles to Cirque du Soleil employees doing weird things on moving poles attached to cars, this movie is designed to make anyone remotely familiar with the laws of physics or the concept of inertia cry their eyes out.

8.     The movie is titled Mad Max: Fury Road and Charlize Theron’s character is furious…and her name is Furiosa. How long did it take y’all to come up with that one?

9.     People in this movie talk like most millenials spell on Twitter.

10. I thought the movie had a bit of a female empowerment kinda thing going, which was great, but y’all had to put the shampoo models in a wet t-shirt scene in the middle of the desert, didn’t you, you dirty animals?

11. There was a serious lack of busted tires in this movie. Apparently any juiced old truck can win the Dakar rally.

12. How did the removable arm with no cables work? If it was telepathically operated and they didn’t tell us, they suck.

13. Did most critics just kinda missed the fact that this film is a two-hour long chase and not much more? Did the cool touches the director threw in there made everyone skip over the fact that there’s basically one emotional character and the rest are just folks trying to escape? Of everything folks believe in across the globe, are we supposed to just accept that only Norse mythology survived the apocalypse and every white, bald dude dreams of Valhalla? You guys make me want to punch babies in the face.

14. If they have the technology to keep people alive and make cars immortal, why the fuck are they running around with guns that look like they were pulled out of a bad steampunk novel?

15. The truck is full of “guzzline,” but Max can clean his face with milk because fuck everything and fuck lazy viewers, right? Hooray for Hollywood! I guess it works because he grabs a red container, walks 27 miles, sets off an explosion, and comes back, and all of that takes him about 11 seconds.

Okay, I won’t waste any more time picking this thing apart. I’m done. This is fine entertainment if you don’t want to overanalyze what you’re watching, but its success is less due to its merits and more due to the fact that we’re used to Hollywood shitting in our mouths and then asking us to applaud what they just did. Call me Furioso. Have a horrible day.