The Novelist Encounters An Abundance Of Veins

As a novelist, one of the more annoying things I’ve encountered lately is when a veiny, curly-haired lunk walks right up to me and says “How are WE doing?” And I’m thinking, hey man, I want nothing to do with your vascularity and loafers with no socks. I’m a novelist, pal, a lone wolf, not some guy who eats a ten ounce pile of barley and six hard-boiled eggs in a sitting. “WE aren’t doing anything, yo,”  I say to this throbby, pumpy dude. And right to his face. No fear at all.

Actually I just write about it here. Because that is what novelists do. We write. And cower in the presence of wide-veined men.

Official Rebranding Post

Well, we officially hit rock bottom with that last post. A Vikings recap that didn’t even tell the score of the game? On a Wednesday? After not blogging for like five months? Time to flip this thing over and tickle it (that’s a new phrase being rolled out as part of our rebranding).

I am a novelist now. That’s the reality. In the next few days or six months, I’ll slowly unzip and reveal the new format of this blog, which is going to be an insufferable plugging tool in which I mention something about my novel IN EVERY SINGLE POST. But hey, I am a novelist now. This is what we do, as far as I can tell from observing other novelists. Also, I’m shut in a room with the litter box, and I’m a little baked from the cat piss fumes. Whew! I want to open a window, but the AC is on and I’m not looking to cool off the whole neighborhood. I was talking about something. Monday I’ll be back for rebrand. Cat piss. I wrote a novel. Read it. It hasn’t been published.

My nostrils hurt.

Rebrand. It comes soon.

First Look: Harry Potter And The Cursed Child

Here is a review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Spoilers? Sure.

Now, from what I gather, sometime during the original series, Voldemort managed to impregnate Draco Malfoy, and is the true father of Scorpius. Due to the fact that Harry Potter was somewhat telepathically connected to Voldemort at that time, he’s kind of the dad too.

It is now the year 3030. Scorpius Malfoy and Albus Severus, Harry’s other son, are dating. And not just casually—they’ve both thought about who would be their groomsmen. Meanwhile, another one of Harry’s sons, James Sirius, is battling a pretty heavy heroin addiction. It is hinted that this has caused Ginny, Harry’s alcoholic wife, to elope with Dudley Dursley.

Then, in a breaking of the fourth wall, all of the characters suddenly realize that they are in a play, which itself has been novelized by two dudes who did not create the series which was the basis for the play that was turned into this book.

Here is a List of the Books I Read in 2015

Here is a list of the books I read in 2015.

Armstrong, Karen—Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time (2006)

Barrett, Deirdre—The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, And Athletes Use Dreams For Creative Problem-Solving—And How You Can Too (2001)

Bonnett, Alastair—Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies (2014)

Bowden, Mark—Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw (2001)

Bradbury, Ray—The Illustrated Man (1951)

Bryson, Bill—Notes From a Small Island (1995)

Bulgakov, Mikhail—The Master and Margarita (written from 1928-40, not published until 1967)

Chamovitz, Daniel—What A Plant Knows: A Field Guide To The Senses (2012)

Christie, Agatha—And Then There Were None (1939)

Cooper, Douglas—The Cubist Epoch (1970)

Danielewski, Mark Z.—House of Leaves (2000)

Didion, Joan—Play It As It Lays (1970)

Fernandez, Oscar—Everyday Calculus: Discovering the Hidden Math All Around Us (2014)

Funke, Cornelia—Inkheart (2003)

Gaiman, Neil—The Graveyard Book (2008)

Heath, Chip and Dan—Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2010)

Heinlein, Robert A.—The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Kaku, Michio—Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (1994)

Moore, Alan, and Lloyd, David—V For Vendetta (1988)

Ohle, David—Motorman (1972)

Percy, Walker—Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

Powers, Tim—On Stranger Tides (1988)

Pratchett, Terry—Thud! (2005)

Pynchon, Thomas—Inherent Vice (2009)

Stoker, Bram—Dracula (1897)

VanderMeer, Jeff—Annihilation (2014), Authority (2014), Acceptance (2014)

Walker, Barbara G.—The Secrets of the Tarot: Origins, History, and Symbolism (1994)

Watts, Peter—Echopraxia (2014)

My Cubist Epoch

After reading The Cubist Epoch by Douglas Cooper, I have decided to enter into a Cubist epoch of my own. While I do not possess the vision, creativity, or even paint necessary to complete a true Cubist work, I do have the desire to sarcastically mock the movement, much in the same way the book told me Marcel Duchamp did some 100 years ago.

So, I sat on my balcony, taking in the scene, wondering how Picasso and Braque would analyze and break down the space and figures before me. I opened a blank canvas in Microsoft Paint, and created the following tableau:

Behatted John Solicits Prostitute, by Michael Cedarwood. (2015) Microsoft Paint

We can see me up there on the balcony, some cubes, the titular Behatted John, and of course, the prostitute wanting to get in on that dollar sign above the man’s head.

Not a bad first try if you ask me.

Here Are The Books I Read In 2014.

This is a list of the books I read in the year 2014. I only read three pages from 50 Shades of Grey, which is why it is not listed here. See? I’m not hiding anything.

Burgundy, Ron—Let Me Off at the Top! My Classy Life & Other Musings (2013)

Camus, Albert—The Stranger (1942)

Chandler, Raymond—The High Window (1942)

Dick, Philip Kindred—The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Dixon, Chuck/Moench, Doug—Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Broken Bat (1993)

Egan, Jennifer—A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010)

Evans, Colin—The Casebook of Forensic Detection (2007)

Everett, Percival—Assumption (2011)

Frissell, Bob—Nothing In This Book Is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are (1994)

Taken from http://www.bobfrissell.com

Greene, Graham—The Third Man (1950)

Haldeman, Joe—The Forever War (1974)

Harris, Thomas A.—I’m OK—You’re OK (1967)

Heinlein, Robert A.—The Puppet Masters (1951)

Kafka, Franz—The Trial (1925)

Kakalios, James—The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics (2010)

Larsson, Stieg—The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played With Fire (2006), The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (2007)

Le Guin, Ursula K.—The Dispossessed (1974)

Moore, Alan—Batman: The Killing Joke (1988)

Petersen, Penny A.—Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront (2013)

Pynchon, Thomas—The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Bleeding Edge (2013)

Reed, Ishmael—Mumbo Jumbo (1972)

Rowling, J.K.—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

Slater, Lauren—Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (2004)

Stokes, Philip—Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers (2003)

Swartzwelder, John—The Time Machine Did It (2002)

Vonnegut, Kurt—Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Westlake, Donald E.—The Ax (1997)

Wilson, Robert Anton—Prometheus Rising (1983), Quantum Psychology (1990)

Wong, David—John Dies At The End (2009)

Yeager, Jeff—The Cheapskate Next Door (2010)

Lord Voldemort Originally Created By Ayn Rand To Be The Fountainhead Of Objectivism

Ayn Rand’s ideal man.

THE LITERARY COMMUNITY—J.K. Rowling recently confessed to plagiarizing a large portion of her Harry Potter series from a manuscript she discovered in Ayn Rand’s tomb, titled The Virtue of Voldemort. The nearly 8,000 page draft, unfinished at the time of Rand’s death in 1982, was to be the story of Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, a supremely talented individualistic wizard and the ultimate hero of Objectivist philosophy.

J.K. Rowling admitted that she raided Rand’s black marble tomb in search of the manuscript, a mythical book which until now was only rumored to exist, much in the same way Lord Voldemort acquired the Elder Wand from the white marble tomb of the deceased Albus Dumbledore.

According to Rowling, the original text portrayed Lord Voldemort as the protagonist, personifying the ideals of Objectivist philosophy, with Harry Potter cast as a communist degenerate who unselfishly took the lives and feelings of others into consideration during his time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Previous heroes of Objectivism include Howard Roark, a rapist; Henry Rearden, an adulterer; Ragnar Danneskjöld, a pirate who robbed the poor and gave back to the rich; and a variety of other grown human beings who acted like that one kid you knew growing up who would steal the ball and run off when the game didn’t go his way, ruining the fun for everyone.

After vilifying Voldemort, Rowling took other extensive creative liberties with Rand’s version of events, most notably flipping the main theme of the story around, and making a hero of Harry Potter.

A journal of handwritten notes by Rand, found with the newly discovered tome, highly contradict the spirit of Harry Potter we all know and love and dream about today:

Character sketch of Harry Potter, the half-blooded commie hypocrite asshole, by me, the greatest writer ever, Ayn Rand.

–Potter spends the first ten years of his life living, for free, off of pure generosity from the Dursleys, who owed him NOTHING, yet were kind enough to take him in after his parents dared defy the greatest wizard ever to live, Lord Voldemort. He then expects to be treated as an equal to their son, Dudley.

-Potter yearns to become an Auror, and one day work for the Ministry of Magic, an institution hell-bent on stifling innovators like Lord Voldemort, whose only crime is being unique and perfect and hot and sexy and powerful and I would let him do ANYTHING to me.

-Potter jacks a bank. This would be okay, but instead of stealing from lazy gross poor people who could stand to learn the value of not being lazy and gross and poor, he attempts to seize a goblet from the Lestranges, a wealthy family who were smart enough to be born of pure wizarding blood. Hell no you di’int, Harry.

-Potter shares a large amount of his gold to fund the poverty-stricken Weasley twins’ joke shop. Gold he acquired by winning a contest in which his rival was supposedly ‘murdered’ by Voldemort, conveniently leaving Potter as the victor. Gold that shouldn’t be shared, because no one should share anything with anyone because we all have our own crap to deal with and everyone should be selfish dicks and not help other people because only look out for yourself and no one else and I’m Ayn Rand and powerful men can bone anyone they want because they’re men and they’re powerful and that’s hot and what woman wouldn’t want to be boned by a powerful man and poor people are poor because they just can’t be as good as rich people and they never bothered to learn words like ‘opulent’ and ‘ostentatious’ like I did so I’m better than homeless people I really am because I’m Ayn Rand and everyone could be rich if they wanted but they suck too much at being selfish so only selfish people get to be happy.

The notes go on like this for hundreds of pages, Rowling reported.

Rowling omitted nearly all scenes involving He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, including a disturbing rant that Rand called in her notes ‘the greatest love tableau ever painted,’ which Rowling confirmed was a 75-page God-forsaken hellbroth of pent-up lust between Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge in which quote ‘Tom’s snaky, bone-white body stood quivering before her chubbiness, a chubbiness that suggested a life of indulgence, a life she deservedly took from the mouths of the looters and altruistic.’ (Editor’s note—that’s really how Rand wrote)

Truly disgusting stuff.

Lonely disciples of Rand, who have no friends, have criticized Rowling’s modified tale for reducing Voldemort to an incompetent hack who couldn’t even kill a baby, while normal people generally enjoy the story of Harry Potter.

 

 

Film Review—Atlas Shrugged, Part One

All the good directors and actors must have been on strike while this film was being made. It’s bad.

My Life—‘A Brilliant Cadenza’

The other night, while The Chick That Hangs Out At My Apartment Sometimes and I were sitting around, having a few beers, we decided to do something crazy. I got out a book that had just arrived in the mail. Within the pages sat a smorgasbord of moves and new ways of thinking that could be a lot of fun for a couple kids with a buzz on.

The book I’m referring to is My 60 Memorable Games, by Bobby Fischer.

It contains move by move notations of 60 matches handpicked by Fischer himself. Imagine being in the same room as Michelangelo wrote homoerotic poetry to Tommaso dei Cavalieri, or shaped a block of marble into the form of a nude man. Only on the rarest of occasions are we allowed to witness genius in action.

We chose a 1962 showdown between Fischer and Argentinian Julio Bolbochan. The match, titled in the book as ‘A Brilliant Cadenza,’ was immediately mistaken by me for ‘A Brilliant Credenza.’ My confusion was soon cleared up, as it was brought to my attention that a glorified cupboard had nothing to do with a chess game.

The whole point is this: when I write my autobiography, documenting the time I got my master’s degr—landed my dream jo—accomplished something, I am stealing A Brilliant Cadenza for the title of the book. Or I’ll use Brilliant Credenza, just to screw with people.

Predictions For The Outcome Of Harry Potter

I am now deep into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, book three of seven in the wildly popular series. I’ve stayed sheltered this long, having avoided the bombardment of hype surrounding the final book nearly seven years ago, as well as the film adaptations. I think I’ve got some of it figured out, though. Here are a few of my predictions for how the story arc will play out.

—Harry and Ron become so fed up with Professor Snape that they get him arrested for being a pedophile. How do they do that? I thought I’d never ask. In a genius ironic twist, the two boys use the knowledge they gain from the Potions class that Snape teaches, to concoct a Love Potion. They sneak it into Snape’s lunch, causing him to become hopelessly in love with those surrounding him, i.e., a bunch of young witches and wizards. Now, the magical lifestyle differs from that of Muggles in many ways, but I assume that pedophilia is frowned upon even in wizardry.

—Or maybe pedophilia is accepted in the wizarding world, which is why everyone hates Voldemort and his womanizing.

—Oh yeah, Harry and Ron get the Love Potion on themselves and start dating.

—A larger portion of the next book will be devoted to the Dursleys, where we find that their treatment of Harry is justified. Think about it: I’m not even finished with the third book, and Harry has already broken enough rules to justify expulsion from Hogwarts several times over, including illegal use of magic in the Dursley home. Rules are rules, Harry. Deal with them like the rest of us.

—Hermione is going to kill herself after graduation, when she comes to the realization that a degree in witchcraft is worthless. Her resume, citing arithmancy and transfiguration as her ‘special skills,’ will be used on job search websites as template of how not to get hired.

—I know Dumbledore dies, but not how. My guess is a coprophilia exploration gone wrong.

I can’t wait to find out how close I am on all these.