Checkmate?

As I continue on my journey of discovery regarding self-publishing, and self-promotion, I am again reminded that I would have been wiser to write for my target audience, rather than find one after the fact.

What did I know? I only wrote because I was compelled to write. 

Perhaps you have experienced the same frustration as I have in trying to identify or pick some choice or another according to one of several drop-down boxes, only to realize that none of your choices really seemed to match the available choices.

In trying to identify my ‘target audience’ I came up with several headings that tried to identify some of the subjects covered within this novel.

• Enhanced and Fortified Non-Fiction
• Literotica for Science Geeks
• Romance in the New World Order
• Metaphysical Action-Adventure
• Self-Determinism
• Rugged Individualism
• The Apocalypso
• Dystopia
• Polyamory
• Quantum Theory
• Transmogrification
• Irreverent Observations on Politics, Religion, Societal Norms, The Modern Zeitgeist, etc.
• What would you do after you realized that you had traded your life for money and your instincts for reason?
• The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
• Telepathy
• Crossing the Abyss
• Cyber-Holocaust

Perhaps you can sense my frustration. Perhaps you have experienced it for yourself.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

Time Zoned Out

 

Last Sunday after I poured myself a cup of coffee, I sat down to wait for the drugs to take effect.

I remembered we were supposed to set the clocks ahead one hour last night to adjust for daylight savings time, which officially changed at three AM.

For no real reason other than synchronicity, I suddenly imagined a test question not unlike many we have struggled with over the years, except that it tests a different sort of knowledge than SAT’s or ASVAB’s.

Although the math is elementary, it is a very tricky question (unless you have ever lived in Terre Haute, for instance).

For what it is worth, here is the conundrum:

A man who lives in Terre Haute, Indiana decides to travel to Chicago for the weekend.

He leaves at five PM Eastern Standard time.

The trip from door to door takes approximately four hours. His watch reads Friday, nine PM when he arrives.

Because the “Illiana’” border is the dividing line between the Eastern and Central time zones, he notices that local time is an hour earlier than his watch indicates.

Because he will be there all weekend, he decides to set his watch to Central Standard time.

On Saturday, at eleven o’clock PM Central Standard time, he departs Chicago to go back to Terre Haute.

After the crosses the border, he remembers to re-set his watch ahead one hour to adjust back to Eastern Standard time.

On the way home he listens to WGN, Chicago.

At three AM Central Standard time, the announcer reminds his listeners to set their clocks ahead one hour, as this is the official  time for changes from Standard to Daylight savings.

When he left Terre Haute on Friday, he was on Eastern Standard time.

When he arrived in Chicago, he adjusted his watch back one hour to adjust for Central Standard time.

On the way home, at approximately one AM Central Standard time, he remembered to set his watch ahead one hour to adjust back to Eastern Standard time, but two hours later, he was reminded to adjust his time ahead one hour to adjust for Daylight Savings time, which he does.

(This is were it starts to get tricky.)

When he arrives back in Terre Haute, his watch now reads five AM.

He stops to get breakfast at a truck stop just off Highway 41, and discovers that the clock above the grill reads four AM.

He assumes that the establishment has just neglected to set the clock to adjust for Daylight Savings time, but he is wrong; the official time in Terre Haute is in fact four AM.

The announcer in Chicago correctly announced at three AM Central time to adjust for Daylight Savings.

Granted, at three AM Central Standard time, it was in fact two AM Eastern Standard time, but that factor would not affect the eventual outcome of the time in either zone.

(After all, most people set their clocks ahead  an hour before they go to bed, but even if you waited until you got up, the worst thing that would happen might be that you missed church, which may be why they do it on Sunday.)

This is what we know:

The return trip took four hours, just like it did on Friday.

He had correctly remembered to re-set his watch ahead one hour shortly after he re-entered the Eastern time zone, and later followed the radio announcer’s correct instructions to move the time ahead an hour to adjust for Daylight Savings time.

Why was he wrong?

What was his error?

What is that awful smell?

Now I realize that it is highly unlikely that even one hundred people might read this post, but if you just did, and can figure out this problem, please respond.

Thanks.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

03/17/2017

The “Blah-Blah-Blah’s” of Blogging

 

I am neither a snob nor an elitist when it comes to Art in any form, including the written word.
Years ago for instance,”serious writers” did not consider either journalism or eroticism to be literature.
Even Graffiti (as evidenced by, for instance the works of Banksy, or Jean-Michel Basquiat) presents us with an opportunity to experience insight, truth, or beauty.
Blogging is perhaps the newest form of literary verbal expression.
I admit that I am not much of a blogger.
Blogging requires a commitment to regular maintenance including reading and responding to the blog’s of others in order to build up a following.
I however lack even the discipline or commitment to pursue electronic publishing, in spite of the fact that it is undoubtedly my only hope for widespread dispersal of my work.
Blogging for me is like committing myself to a hundred pen-pals with the very best of intentions, and we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions and charted by unrealistic ideals, so if you are reading this, please consider it as a formal public apology for being so selfish.
My primary interest in blogging came initially as a vehicle to present my first novel, Dancing in Dreamland to more than the few people that I could coerce into reading a dog-eared home computer generated copy in the hope of getting some constructive criticism from the few friends I had that understood the concept of reading for pleasure.
Although Blogging involves Writing, Writing is not necessarily Blogging.
Aside from a few semi-erotic fantasies of being discovered or even developing a cottage industry from the sale of my work, I have never considered or pursued a job or career as a writer.
Years ago, trying to make a commercial success in Music only resulted in turning it into a job, prompting me to ask “I wonder what a call-girl does on her night off…just for fun?”
(Incidentally, I already knew…even then it was an entirely a rhetorical question…but that is another story for another time.)
It takes a very special kind of person with talents beyond my ken to turn something they love to do into money.
As I have said many times before “I write for the same reason an alcoholic drinks.”
That being said, I wish to publicly apologize to the numerous persons whom I follow for being so lax in acknowledging or commenting upon their work.
I know that there are many out there that “like” a post without ever reading it, just to churn up their numbers and generate the traffic I call “the blah-blah-blah’s of blogging”.
By not being more selective, I now have hundreds of people whom I “follow” whom I fully intended to read until it has reached the point where it has become very difficult to even locate the people who really get me jazzed within my reader, let alone comment to them.
Comments get my attention; they provoke dialogue and imply a commitment to the material presented and an exchange of ideas, and I have been notoriously reticent in writing things like thank-you letters or responding to correspondence in general for most of my life.
A very few readers contacted me during my convalescence, finding my lack of activity here to be conspicuous in its absence and I love you for that; it has nothing to do with blogging, but you know who you are, and thank-you.
It is as if I have been living in the eye of a hurricane; even when it is calm in the center, I seem to be surrounded by a whirlwind of turmoil and controversy…“the same as it ever was…”
I write because I am compelled to do so; although it is a choice, I am driven by my nature to follow it (although my judgement as far as the choices I have made in my life is so notoriously shitty that it borders on the tragi-comic).
I just don’t know any better, and probably wouldn’t do it any differently, except by the benefit of hindsight and compassion for those I have hurt..
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei….

 

 

Namasté
नमस्ते
Chazz Vincent
09/06/2016

Tell Me Something about Yourself…

Tell Me Something about Yourself…

I want to compile a survey of what words each of us consider our term of choice for our own (semi)private parts.

Some time back, I collaborated on a post called “His Penis, Her Vagina” to explore how difficult it is to write “Literotica” without excessive repetition.

Part two of the survey would be to compile a list of your favorite word(s) to describe the naughty parts of the opposite sex.

If more than two people respond, I will post the results.

If you wish to be identified as to your choices, I will post that also.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

 

The Snowball Fight

The Snowball Fight

I love porn, but I don’t watch it very often anymore. I have almost never paid to watch it, and it has been years since I purchased any of it, yet it comes to me like a long-lost lover whom I am obligated to give witness without having sought her in the first place.
I am no expert on porn either. I used to know the names of most of the male and female leads who were distributed by Cal Vista during the seventies and eighties, but that’s about it. No addiction to porn
Imagine…there I am, minding my own business…more addicted to my own imagination than anything, when along comes “The Beautiful People”….
I used to know one of them. I met her a while after she tried to quit the business, or the business quit her…I’m not really sure which came first. She rolled right up to the door of my E.R. on a motorcycle she had designed and painted herself. Her back was covered in the most beautiful monochrome single-needle cholo style Tree of Life I had ever seen and she had driven to my hospital with one leg in a cast up to her hip and one crutch.
In the rain.
She was a bit disheartened when she realized I did not recognize her, but she only fucked for love or sport by the late eighties, and my ignorance made me an enigma to her.
The business had already changed at least once on her since she got her start, and she had the good sense to get out while she still had money in the bank and her house paid for. Fame is a fickle mistress and trends are like breezes on the beach.
Because I own a computer and possess a preternatural level of curiosity about Things Carnal I have noticed numerous subtle and unsubtle changes in the Industry and what it produces in terms of what and how and upon whom it chooses to focuses its lens.
I know it has been seen with more prevalence over the past several years, but I for one still feel a little uncomfortable watching the scenes where the actors and actresses spit onto either each other’s genitalia, or even into each other’s mouths.
I am not squeamish about “The Dark Kiss” (anilingus), nor do I shrink about swallowing, or even “Snowballing” (the reciprocated kiss), but even just the idea of being spat upon anywhere on my body set my comfort zone out of whack…until I thought up a script for a porno I would love to make with just the right players (no actors allowed; ‘ya gotta be a believer) just to enjoy the experience.
The film would be called “The Snowball Fight” because instead of simply passing the semen from mouth to mouth during a deep kiss, they would spit for at least several inches, or perhaps even several feet at the open mouth of the intended recipient. Of course, sometimes they will miss…but that’s just part of the fun.
But the object would be to conduct it like a Frisbee toss and catch, where the recipients sometimes make amazing efforts of skill and dedication resulting in saves that would make any major-league outfielder envious.
As a result, say for instance Lady A. blows Mister D. only to spit it across several feet to the open mouth of Lady S. before she transfers it into the mouth of say, Mister A who deposits it into the snatch of Lady S. (for safekeeping inside the goal-net).
Mister D. then goes down on Lady A. who has a great big surprise for him waiting inside her goal-net, courtesy of Mister A. whereupon Lady X. enters and gets on all fours so that Misters D. and A. can spit snowballs onto Lady X’s buttocks as Mister V. ravages her from behind, attempting to help push the spewed conglomerate of their combined viscous offerings back into the snatch of Lady X. while Lady S. lies on her back as she licks Lady X. impaled upon Mister V.’s viande.
Eventually, this could be shot along the lines of a Japanese bukkake film as Lady S., or even her designate, Lady A. could eventually receive the entire avalanche (“snowballs”) in a tsunami of viscous body fluids.
Oh, and BTW: No intention is made or implied as to the identity of any of the proposed players in the imaginary script.
If you prefer, you can go all Reservoir Dogs on it and call Lady A. Lady Red, and Lady S. could be Lady Yellow, and Mister A could be Mister Pink (he won’t like it any better than Steve Buscemi’s character did), Mister D. could be Mister White and Lady X. could be Lady Blue, and Mister V. would probably want to be Mister Black.
Upon reflection, it may be somewhat difficult to locate six really close intimate friends who are all into the same thing like this, unless they were all in a really silly mood, so as not to give it that edgy-nasty hard-core mood that was created in the films that I did see that contained elements of the above-proposed scenario. Maybe there are amateurs out there somewhere who are up to the task.
Or Maybe that’s just me.

A Funny Thing happened to me on the way to my Blog

A Funny Thing happened to me on the way to my Blog
I recently read a comment by one of our fellow bloggers that acknowledged the conflict we often face between our imagined obligations to feed this wood-chipper of words and ideas more material against the demands of our everyday lives.
Ah Duality! All is one, even when we don’t possess the eyes to recognize it.
Without all the stuff that keeps us too busy to write, we would have nothing to inspire us. So for that reason I have tried of late to make better choices about what stuff I allow to make me too busy to write. I’m at least twenty years behind schedule to attempt to do any justice to my life so far.
Too often, we act like teenagers who treat every incursion into the never-ending video gaming, texting reality show of their lives as if it was an interruption of our entitled play time.
Then again, it all depends on why you write….
I had just settled in to try to keep up with the story of my latest novel that is unfolding in my head faster than I can chronicle it when there was a knock at my door….
Unfortunately, it was not Ed McMahon…of course it wasn’t…he’s been dead for some time now. If it had been, that would mean that either I was also dead, or that I was dreaming. ..
Once, during a dream I smoked a joint with Sam Kinison shortly after he died. I suddenly realized the dilemma, and asked him how he was. He said he was fine, considering he had just gotten married again….
Instead it was Captain Mike and he was either trying to tell me about Wahoo hitting Ballyhoo in one hundred and sixty feet of water, or giant bull dolphins (Mahi, not Flipper) hanging out under the weed line six miles off shore.
Sometimes when he mixes the rum and the methadone it becomes very difficult to interpret his rants.
The really exciting/scary part is that in either case, he wants me to go with him. It is exciting because he has a very large fishing boat that he sometimes uses to make a considerable sum of money, which allows him to pay his chosen “first mate” more money than I make in a week to go fishing on my day off. I love to fish.
It is scary because in the twenty-five years I have known him, he has shown absolutely no regard for his own personal safety. He is Captain Ahab, The Ancient Mariner, The Old Man and the Sea, and Captains Bly and Queeg trapped in the body and brain of Gary Busey.
I have known him since he was an EMT-driver for the municipal emergency medical rescue service for which I worked many years ago as a paramedic.
He has the constitution of a cockroach and there are more than a few of us who believe it may be impossible to kill him. He frequently puts himself in predicaments that normal humans would never survive. That is where our friendship started…getting him out of trouble and managing to keep us both alive.
I could fill a whole book of short stories about his predilection for chaos. Maybe someday I will.
I also know that on more than one occasion, upon having participated in one of his hare-brained schemes surviving by margins as thin as half a coat of paint the sheer exhilaration of the experience often provoked me with an almost uncontrollable desire to summons the superhuman strength it would take to strangle the last breath from his body.
It has not been an easy friendship, and now shows no signs of getting any easier.
And yet somewhere, out of his considerable body of quirks, addictions, and proclivities for self-destructive urges there lurks a sort of creature that has never been seen in the light of day that hides inside his brain to prompt him to follow his preternatural ability to find and capture fish of every type and size. Shellfish, crab, and every sort of scaly, finny denizen of the great blue alike are the objects of his desire, and none are immune.
Women love him, fish fear him.
For him, the wind is never too high, or the water too rough. On one occasion, he piloted his craft back to dock with no wheelhouse or bridge left, sitting on a milk crate with the wheel trapped between his knees.
When the wheels of insanity are spinning inside his head he has talked me into participating in far too many adventures that involved multiple felonies and serious risk to life and limb.
We were at our best when we were taking huge risks to rescue patients without much serious regard for our own safety. The county for which we worked eventually made us sign a “hold harmless” form in case we got killed or injured doing any number of things such as going into the water before back-up arrived.
I always believed that when I was doing the right thing, or fighting the good fight, that I was somehow “protected”…maybe even invincible. But the rest of the time we were just a couple of red-ass fools who should have known better, but didn’t act like it.
Mike drove us down Blimp Road one night when we inducted yet another woman into the “Code Three Club” (think of the “Mile High Club” except in an ambulance with lights and sirens). She was a videographer tasked with following an EMS unit for twenty-four hours for a documentary she was going to make.
(I later married that last inductee….)
There are times when I miss those days, but today was not one of them.
I had cranked up the word processor to get rid of some nervous energy I was feeling in anticipation of a visit from a fellow blogger whom I was most anxious to meet. I had no idea what she looked like, but she has the spirit of an angel.
She is still a neophyte; quite full of passion and idealism. She is probably the most unabashedly avid/rabid fan I will ever have the good fortune to encounter, and she has a certain way with words that inspires me at times.
She lived a few hours away, but was surprisingly enthusiastic about taking the drive.
Of course, she is married…I have been lead to believe it is a very open relationship, but as a gentleman I am also inclined to believe it would no doubt be best to keep her identity “on the down low” at least until she chooses to break radio silence of her own volition.
I know of but a few things that exceed Mike’s rapacious appetite to kill fish or risk his life, those being Drugs, alcohol, and intimate contact with the opposite sex.
Suki was as anxious as I to meet the mystery blogger and was in no mood to put up with Captain Mike’s nonsense. He adored Suki and tended to be a bit of a lecherous pest around her no matter how hard he tried to mind his manners.
When he is drunk he reminds me of one of those poodles you just can’t shake off your leg when you go visit your aunt.
We were unsure what to do with Mike. I wasn’t even sure we had enough booze in the house to wait for him to pass out, and I had no intention today of all days to go out to sea in a boat.
This does not happen often, so make careful note of the above statement.
As luck would have it, suddenly Peppermint Patty had come knocking on our door to ask to borrow a pack of cigarettes.
There is a term in the Florida Keys called “Conch Borrowing;” there are a number of interesting aspects to it, but one of the most important is that it does not generally involve the obligation to give the borrowed item back which is just as well because once she borrows a pack, she does not generally come back until enough time has lapsed that she can pretend to have forgotten about the first pack.
As medically non-compliant schizophrenics go, she can be fairly interesting company, depending on how bored you really are…especially if you are interested in seeing any of the adult films in which she starred over twenty years ago….In just the right light, you can almost see the resemblance…and the tattoos are in fact, identical…and she loves to spread her talents amongst her fans.
Captain Mike, for all his flaws and scars has one characteristic that has made him a pussy-magnet, even now. He has the most disarmingly bright ice-blue eyes I have ever seen, and few women are immune to his “School-Boy Heart” charm and his skinny body-language that is half Jimmy Stewart, half Michael Fredericks.
Patty’s eyes met Mike’s. With the morning light behind her as she stood in the doorway of our trailer, you could see right through her dress and it was obvious that she was not wearing anything under it.
Little details like that never went unnoticed by Captain Mike (…and he had plenty of cigarettes).
Patty then asked Suki if she had ever seen her do DP before as she shifted her gaze back and forth between Mike and myself until Suki reminded her that she had (it was a lie, but Patty was much too crazy to realize it).
With that, I gave Mike a bottle of Bacardi Select Rum and suggested they take the party over to Patty’s trailer where they could see the ocean from her bedroom window.
Even Patty knew that was a lie, but she just winked at me and smiled. (She had once told me that if I held my ear to her snatch that I could hear the ocean, but I never tried to find out if it was really true.)
As they strolled arm in arm back to Peppermint Patty’s trailer, I could hear Captain Mike telling her how Jimmy Buffet had written the song “Jamaica Mistaka” about him and how he had once flown a small private plane between two pilings on the Seven-Mile bridge, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be showing Mike the first anal video she ever shot with Ron Jeremy.
We were still laughing about it when my friend the lady blogger drove up. She and Suki had talked several times before on the phone, and it was heartwarming to see just how well two ladies who had never met before could strike up a friendship.
I later learned that they had been “pen-pals” for over a month and I really think Suki was as enthusiastic about meeting Ms. A. as I was.
Suki had already plugged in the vaporizer and now promised to show our new friend her collection of Japanese Pillow-books while I called a nearby restaurant to order Tai take-out.
But the real reason I didn’t get any writing done that day was because of what I discovered when I returned with the food….
As much of a confirmed pervert and connoisseur of (nearly) all things carnal as I am, there is a strong streak of Southern Gentleman that runs deeply through my character that prevents me from going into the details of what ensued that afternoon, that evening and for most of Saturday morning…
Nah! I’m just bullshitting you…They just made me promise to let them tell you about it in their own blogs in the next few days, and I am, if nothing else, a man of my word….
…And that, dear friends is the reason I did not have my homework ready for Monday morning…no, the dog did not eat it…no schedule conflicts with graduation ceremonies or final exams. No car trouble. No issues with the Police. I did not have technical problems with my computer, nor did I suffer from some mysterious malady.
And if anyone else has any excuses for why they have not been writing, I hope your reasons were at least as good…and if you have, please honey! I want to hear all the details.
PS: Look for the rest of the story to appear soon in two blogs I hope you have the good fortune to read in the near future.

The Iron Dragon Voice Recognition Project

 

Recently I began attempting to utilize the speech recognition function of my computer to dictate text.

Daily (w)rite had just posted the A to Z Challenge: Flash Fiction, which included a photograph and a prompt “Lately he had been feeling…”.

This is completely new ground for me, and I was fascinated.

I decided to attempt the project using the Speech Recognition function of my computer.

Behold the results; a story within a story, it would seem…or…you be the judge….

Here is the artwork, by Joseph W. Richardson: (with the prompt: …”lately, he had been feeling…”)

This is the Iron Dragon Project result:

*****

True on and all,

Too true II be true.

This is going to be eight to two attached

and the howl for the old ones who weren’t.

Iron dragons can be humans

who buy in bulk and buy one another.

Lately he’d been feeling

like an imaginary dinosaur

so out of date that he couldn’t even scare

a five-year old girl.

(Let’s face it…

after Pixar,

how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm

after they’ve seen

Monsters Inc.?)

Thank you.

***

And you and you might be wrong

if you were among the one

that will allow them believe

this can be done to learn more than one,

or the dragon in the garden may be a man…

is he our own only hope

that can help our town?

Take anything on the day

and it still leaves us poor

and unrecognizable

to my original text

(which is pretty good for a Mayan.)

***

Tensions thee into my mission

and an avid listen

to become one with the machine

which

in their words

might become a bump on a node

in their worlds;

a bogey on the radar

or give a madman time to ship,

were she to tell it all.

***

Dick you.

(that was thank-you, btw)

…mad that really only you

have been equally

compensated

and that early on

you’re more on the money

on the back F.U.N. and Y

(“funny”)

than all the rest

that ever were.

***

And so it goes from where it ends.

Hula room deliveries

and buried on an

old fairgrounds

captured

in a faded photograph.

You don’t know how

to interpret the butt of a joke,

meaning something early on

that makes

me so horney….

And let’s let poor

caveman UG alone,

(let alone the UG woman)

and the older elder too

and that old lady who

laughed

when laugh launched luna.

***

Run one thing on

to

try something on

fun fun fun

as a loan on laughter

in a letter that said

fun is dead

and you can’t play on

fun fun fun alone,

but the challenge to him was that this

…this the…

…this Italian leather dealer

in each letter on a letter

adds up.

…the AIM’s not even close…

but this

intention

could have made a difference,

(…but it didn’t.)

***

I’m not having loved all of this and more.

I’m not loving this.

If you would treat me

as an acute writers group

…maybe God already knew…

if so,

then dial me

but

you have no clue.

No one meant that as a car wreck, children.

No…

I was saying that was a correct assumption…

And by her now this is goodbye for now…

Logo and you finally

get right question.

Goodbye?

(Something there is that does not love auto-correct dictation)

PS: with team Damyani’s permission, I intend to reblog her original post, which I found to be quite a hoot in its own (w)right(e).

 

Age-Defining Expressions

Age-Defining Expressions

I talk to people on the telephone almost every day. I never see their faces. I never see their homes. But in less than a minute, I could tell you more about them than they probably know about themselves.

I recently began to realize how quickly and definitively we date ourselves by the words and expressions we use.

The following is a list of words and phrases that are rarely used by anyone other than octogenarians, unless you still live in the same county in which your grandparents were born, and have rarely traveled more than fifty miles from where you live.

• scallywag
• bamboozle
• finagle
• smarty-pants (or the Yiddish variant: “Mr. Schmarty-Pants”)
• feisty
• frazzled
• discombobulated
• rapscallion
• Carpet-bagger (but not tea-bagger, or carpet-muncher)
• hoodwinked
• spry
• reprobate
• peckerwood
• pecker
• you ‘uns
• colored
• schnockered
• spring chicken
• anywhoo
• horse feathers
• bushwhacker
• tallywacker
• hankering
• negro
• do lolly
• thing-a-ma-jig
• naysayer
• flimflam
• charlatan
• a rat’s patootie
• hornswoggle
• snake-oil salesman
• tarnation
• dad-gum
• dad-burned
• dagnabbit
• court-and-woo
• okeydokey
• la-tee-dah
• fixin’ to (or the African-American rural version: “fin-to”)
• harrumph
• golly
• gosh-all-mighty
• gumption
• get-up-and-go
• curmudgeon
• ballyhooed
• factotum
• outlandish
• shanghaied
• gall-darned
• loopy
• be-Jesus
• bent over a barrel
• corn-holed
• corny
• sacrosanct
• bedraggled
• fiddle-faddle
• a fiddler’s fuck

And you are probably a “Baby-boomer” if you use words or expressions like:

• far-out
• hey, man…
• gnarley
• spaced-out
• what a trip
• head-trip
• power trip
• laid back
• peace (as a greeting or a farewell), rather than Peace Out as a farewell
• balled or ballin’ (engage in sex)
• military-industrial complex
• the man
• pig (a policeman)
• cop-out
• rip-off
• riffs or riffin’ (originally a guitar solo, but later to express oneself verbally)
• cop (to obtain, usually in reference to drugs)
• groovy
• good vibes (not Lionel Hampton)
• bad vibes (definitely not Lionel Hampton)
• heavy (no reference to weight)
• acid (no relation to Ph)
• mama (as in reference to your “old lady”  but not your mother)
• old lady (see above)
• old man (you get the idea)
• one mother of a…(fill in the blank)
• the powers that be
• the power structure
• bogart
• roach
• roach clip
• “Dave’s not here…”
• tasty
• tripping (on drugs)
• tripped out
• tripping over….
• trippy
• bummer
• bummed out
• My Axe (i.e. your guitar)
• turkey (as an insult, or to set fire to the last part of the roach while it is held in the roach clip so as to inhale the very last of it)
• the feds or the federales (somewhat still in use)
• I’m Hip
• square (no reference to geometry)
• capitalist
• brother, or ‘bro (but no relation to you)
• sister (also no relation)
• spare change
• happening
• macramé
• macrobiotic
• solidarity
• solid
• freaked out
• freaky
• keep on keepin’ on
• keep on truckin’
• head (acid head, a person who gets high in general, Dead Head, etc.)
• pad (one’s domicile)
• feed your head
• crash (to sleep over, or to “come down” from your high)
• shoot (inject drugs)
• needle freak
• shooting gallery (place where needle freaks shoot up)
• funk or funky
• afro  or ‘fro (as a hair style)
• ‘fro comb (very widely-spaced teeth with a long handle, sometimes an angel-food cake cutter was used)
• rock on
• burn-out

Admittedly, I rarely hear a few of these expressions in the course of conversation, especially on the telephone, and I suppose I got a little carried away, but every once in a while I feel like I’m either in the middle of a Cheech and Chong movie or talking to a modern-day Rip Van Winkle who overslept the day after Woodstock, and just woke up to answer the phone.

In another twenty years, this will be the jargon of the new octogenarians.

 

 

A Cabin in the Woods

A Cabin in the Woods

Perhaps some of you may have noticed that I have not posted any new material in almost three weeks…then again, maybe not, but to me it has been an eternity.

December 29^th, the day before my mother died, I was served an eviction notice giving me fifteen days to vacate. The eviction was not much of a surprise.

For the last seven years the owner has refused to pay for any upkeep on the premises (which were greatly overpriced) and my payments for rent have admittedly been sporadic and short. I am not good with money.

Any normal person would not have stayed so long, but then again, I did not consider my current occupation to be anything more than the likes of a summer job, and I have been at it for almost nine years. It’s as if I fell down the rabbit hole and can’t find my way back out. If you can’t find something at least as good as what you were doing, what’s the difference?

At least I’m still in Florida. I came here in 1972, and left it for three long, cold, terrible years and couldn’t return fast enough once I had the chance.

Although the housing market tanked here just like everywhere else, and empty, foreclosed homes are on every block, none of them are for rent because the banks who now own them would rather keep them empty to artificially elevate the prices of rental property (presumably in collusion with realtors’ associations) leaving us with neighborhood after neighborhood of blocks filled with empty houses, which should have resulted in a renter’s paradise, if in fact supply and demand had anything to do with market prices.

Two months ago, my Nissan 300ZX had to be parked due to having two injectors fail and I have been unable to repair it immediately, leaving me to rely on my 1987 Toyota 4WD pickup truck exclusively, including my anticipated move.

Last Friday night, my truck spun a cam bearing, leaving me stranded until I could borrow a car to get home long enough to hire two men with a truck and a trailer to help me complete my move, including putting many items into a 10X10 storage room.

This includes my automotive tools, enough power tools to run a machine shop, a compressor and air tools, including paint sprayers, a ten kilowatt electric generator, a TIG welder, an eight-foot work bench, a world-class amateur radio station, a forty-foot antenna tower, a six-element tri-band horizontal antenna, and a half-wave vertical antenna.

My books, the stereos, a television, my last electric guitar, two amplifiers, and more firearms than I can fit into the safe that houses most of them are already safely tucked away in my new home, which is so small that I had to leave or give away most of the furniture.

I do not plan on keeping anything in storage for more than two months if I cannot find a way to make space for it in my new abode, a double-wide trailer. There is no garage or car port.

My first thought was “I sure hope this is bottom….”

But wait! There’s more….

I had my telephone service scheduled to be transferred last Monday. The telephone company installer could not find the address, which is not even listed on Google Earth.

Although they claimed to have the service turned on, the inside outlets had no signal, leaving me to trace the wiring from the pedestal myself, or wait until January 29^th for repair service to locate the problem.  Today, Friday, I finally connected my telephone.

Everywhere I have ever lived seems to have a north county line full of radio and television antenna towers and desolate residences such as mine…I just never bothered to consider living there.

There seem to be two paradigms for trailer parks. One is for fifty-something plus only residents. Many of them are very respectable, upscale retirement-age communities that want nothing to do with the likes of either my pit-bull dog or me.

The other ones are teeming with life, no matter how sordid, where a single stray gunshot may pass through four residences in nanoseconds unless it lodges itself in something more substantial, presumably including a body or two. They are hotbeds of adultery, alcoholism, violence, drugs, perversion, and tall tales of dangerous lives lived without regard to consequences.

Legend has it that Original Sin was spawned in such a place many eons ago in Azerbaijan on the outskirts of Tabriz, long before aluminum was discovered.

But there is a downside…although I love intrigue and liaisons of mind and body far outside the norms of nominally civilized, domesticated minds, I need solace to write, and the sort of trailer parks that would welcome me are not likely to provide it.

I don’t need any more ideas for stories of craziness and depravity…living them in real time has already been responsible for too many years’ delay in writing what I already know.

This tiny grotto is unlike either of these types of places. It was formerly as lawless and dangerous as any Wild West gold rush town, but while the new owners ran out the really dangerous degenerates there is no danger of it ever becoming too respectable for the likes of me. It is run-down and squalid, but quiet.

And as it turns out, I really already love the place. For the first time in more years than I can recall, there is almost no ambient noise…at least nothing chronic or continuous. I rarely hear the noise of the closest highway, even though it is a major thoroughfare.

Ever since my arrival, I have felt more as if I was in a campground, rather than a trailer park, and this is my cabin in the woods.

For the last three weeks, every day started early with endless lists of required activities that demanded my attention until later than I cared to be awake leaving me even less time to sleep to prepare for my next ten-hour day at work from Monday through Thursday as a telemarketer.

Despite loss, distraction and dislocation, my sales figures continue to exceed not only my quotas, but also my own expectations. I dread and despise the prospect of going in, but once I am there, within the hour I find myself fully engaged, consumed and challenged.

Somehow it all just happens, almost as if it is something beyond my control once I set it in motion. I have learned to repeat entire paragraphs of dialogue without conscious effort, inputting data into several semi-independent programs on separate screens as I type notes related to the call that have no direct bearing to the words I am speaking as I type.

When I am in my zone, I am part radio talk show host, part snake oil salesman, and part chameleon, ingratiating myself to them with charm and witty repartee so as to practice home invasion by way of the telephone.

Although drugs are involved, I do not sell drugs; I simply sell home delivery of the drugs they already take. As such, I am an agent of the Evil Empire that is ruining prescription drug insurance in America, but at least it beats a gun and a ski mask, although sometimes not by much, and it is a far cry from raising the dead and transporting the sick and injured.

For the time being, it is my deep cover for the inside research necessary to write The Home for Wayward Souls and The Talking Monkeys.

Tonight I resume a love affair with my word processor, the internet, and this brain that is wired to my soul in a ménage a trois of abduction, seduction, and provocation.

I started blogging in an attempt to promote my books and other writings, only to discover the delicious nakedness of exposing my true nature and intellectual flights of fantasy to other writers who have become my muses and co-conspirators full of enthusiasm and encouragement.

I have missed you more than you probably know, although I hope you already know who you are.

This forced hiatus has taught me how much I need the push and pull and ebb and flow of ideas, energies and images we share like sex between lovers.

We are lovers of words using our craft to become lovers through words, even when there is no specific reference to sex at all…although those times are probably fewer than I might be inclined to acknowledge.

This is what separates blogging from writing. Posts like this are part of the running dialogue I maintain with my fellow writers, and the posts that are becoming the body of my current novel make up the rest of what I send out, but in either case, it is you, my fellow writers who provide the feedback that is immediate and conversational in a way that solitary writing lacks.

Just as the moon draws the tides as we draw down the moon, this life that flows between us connects us as we connect with the One.

If all things return to the One, to where does the One return?

 

This Theater of the Mind

WARNING: ADULT CONTENT

This Theater of the Mind

All the world’s is a stage…(that we’re going through)…and we are all players in this Theater of the Mind….

I was wondering the other day if people ever choose their religions by what sins they would be committing when they do commit them?

I suppose that if a man (or woman) can choose their own poison, they should also be allowed to choose their own punishment….

(Imagine, in my perfect world, a guy goes to confession… he says to the priest “Father, forgive me…I masturbated five times a day last week.”, What should I do as an act of contrition? whereupon the priest says…”Look…here’s One Hundred Dollars…go downtown and pick up a Catholic hooker named Rose Flannigan…you’ll recognize her right away…she’s a ginger with freckles and carrot-top red hair…and take her to dinner, and treat her really nicely before you fuck her…it will do you both a world of good…she needs the money and the validation, and you need to get out more.”)

I mean, virtually any life any of us chooses to live is essentially an acceptance of certain codified rules and laws that determine what a priori assumptions and conditions must be present to support one view of reality, and almost all of it seems to be someone else’s invention…like gown-ups playing children in adult clothes, only with less imagination.

Whether you are a Hell’s Angel or an investment banker, your mode of dress and behaviors are rather rigidly pre-determined if you desire safe passage through the realms of either.

This is what separates cannibal headhunters from family court attorneys, even though on the surface, many of their behaviors are remarkably similar, but ah! I digress….

What concerns me the most is why most Western religions hate sex so much, worship virginity, preach abstinence, and generally eschew Fun? Why are we so quick to condemn behaviors that naturally satisfy our most basic needs and desires?

What would our world be like if there was such a thing as an Episcopal temple prostitute? Why not “Whores of Mensa”?

Who says? Under what authority? Your God, or mine?

Similarly, Kink/Fet, LGBTG, and Polyamorous “Communities” all seem to need rules, guidelines, bi-laws, charters, sanctions, and their own newspapers and magazines, issuing statements, pronouncements and whitepapers to tell people the difference between right and wrong, or appropriate vs. inappropriate for that particular group’s members so that they know how to behave.

I italicized “Communities” because it is odd that although we do so much to separate “Us” from those “Not like Us” economically, racially, and culturally, there is not generally a “Gay Town” or “Swingers Corners”, or even concepts like “The Understated Elegance of Bondage Manors…(a very well-disciplined community)”.

Nudist colonies are the notable exception. It might be nice to live in a gated community that was inhabited only by fellow perverts of a similar stripe, for instance, but then again….

There is a decided lack of diversity in each of the “Alternative Lifestyles” to the point that there is a great deal of bashing of transgender and bisexual individuals within the Gay/Lesbian communities, for instance.

Why learn to think outside one box only to crawl back into another one?

I enjoy the company of just about every type of pervert that exists, but it seems like I end up moving from one circle to another with very little overlap or congruency. Most people seem to need concentricity just to feel validated.

After a few years pursuing any style of living, you start to resemble others of a similar persuasion, whether it be hairstyles, humor, tattoos, scars, or attitude and demeanor, and after a while you can tell who is who even when we’re naked.

I prefer the adventure of experimentation. Why do I have to join your union or wear your flag just to get naked with you? Sometimes I like the top, other times, perhaps the bottom…I love the smell of leather in the evening…whether it’s in my hand, or against my skin…and although I prefer the feather to the actual live chicken, I try to keep my mind, and my options open….

I figure you ought to try anything at least three times, just to make sure you got it right before you make a judgment about it.

Are there any other Eclectic Omnivores out there? What about Sexually Deviant Scientists? Pervert Philosophers? Free-lance reporters for International Pornographic? Or even Dr. Satan’s All-Volunteer Human Meat-Puppet Show? (It’s hilarious!)

How about an Actor’s Guild for the Theater of the Mind? There’s one union to whom I might consider paying dues….

Feel free to ring me up.