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.

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)

Friday Fun Facts – William Tell

It is said that on this date in 1307, William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head with a crossbow. Flash forward over 600 years later: William S. Burroughs, the writer, would attempt a similar stunt with a gun at a bar in Mexico City. Long story short, he ended up killing a woman named Joan Vollmer. True story.

Cities of the Red Night – William S. Burroughs

In the second edition of The Shlog (Sean Blog) Blook (Blog Book) Club (Club), I shall cover Cities of the Red Night (published 1981), the first installment in a trilogy by William S. Burroughs. I’m pretty sure no one is participating in this book club anyway, so I’ll make it quick.

To begin, this novel contains more erections per capita than anything else I have ever read. That being said, don’t let that scare you off – they’re only fictional erections, they’re not going to hurt you. Unless you let them. That’s just how Burroughs rolls. There is a lot going on in this book – piracy, international intrigue, time travel, and a lot of hangings. I finished it and wondered what the crap had just happened. So perhaps I’m not the best person to be giving a synopsis, but I will say that this novel is much more stimulating than the legal buffoonery that takes place in your average J-Grish (John Grisham) novel. So go ahead, give it a read.

Choose Your Own Blogventure

 In a nod to the popular Choose Your Own Adventure books, today I’m going to totally rip them off and do a little something I like to call “Choose Your Own Blogventure.” In order to differentiate this story from the Choose Your Own Adventure books, I’m not going to do like 50 different endings with varying degrees of success or failure. There will be a lot of different endings, but you will die in each and every one of them. Unless, of course, you make it all the way through to the one true ending, which will result in your character “winning” the story. So here goes:

The Back Story

You are a secret agent/pro athlete/doctor. I think it’s safe to say that you do all right with the ladies. Or if you are a female, you do all right with the menfolk. Or if you are homo/bi-sexual, you do all right in the lady/man department. I guess just imagine the genders in this story however you want to. That’s the beauty of fiction. Anyways, what matters is that you are a secret agent/pro athlete/doctor. You are sitting in your opulent office off of Beet Street in the fictional metropolis of Potato Town. <Editor’s note – I’ve got an intricate plot to focus on so I’m not going to stress my mind thinking of cool names for people and places. I’m doing this for free for pete’s sake.> So yeah, you’re in your office. And oh yeah, your name is Sir Esquire Figgypudding, so remember that. Back to the office. A mysterious millionaire saunters in, and after a lot of clichéd, boring, detective talk, it boils down to this: he wants you, Sir Figgypudding, to track down his hot, adulterous wife, who has mysteriously gone missing. Since it is the off-season of the particular sport that you play, and you are in between secret agent missions for the government, and you make your own hours at the hospital, and you’ve got a few days to kill before your birthday, you decide to take on the case.

The mysterious millionaire, who we will call M&M for now, because he is mysterious and also a millionaire, provides you with the following:

-$50,000 cash, with an additional $100,000 upon the safe return of the hot, adulterous wife. Being as successful as you are $100,000 is just peanuts to you. But you live for the rush, and the passion that you have for a good sleuthing session. And also, you love money.

-A butter knife. (Easy to conceal, but it can also bring the pain.)

-A cell phone with M&M’s encrypted number on it, as well as the hot, adulterous wife’s. And for fun, let’s also have the cell phone double as an explosive device.

-A blow up doll. (So you can use the carpool lane if need be.)

-A photo of his hot, adulterous wife.

-Protein bars. (In case you get hungry and need a snack.)

Well, let’s get this show on the road. M&M has handed you a crumpled receipt from Slappy’s Diner with instructions scribbled on the back. It appears as though your only lead is a bartender at Mr. Giggles’ Comedy Shop (The Shop) in downtown Potato Town where the hot, adulterous wife was believed to have last been seen. Do you:

Take a rickshaw (Potato Town uses rickshaws.) to the shop.

Walk to the club. (In all fairness it is a pretty nice day out.)