sooo... ummm... yep

SO yeah, BUSY BUSY BUSY! Its the first tomorrow and that means MONIES! and thanks to my cooling assistance its MOAR MONIES! but due to saving up for my move its LESS MONIES! :(
 But anywho, good times! I went to my brothers yard sale and made NO MONIES! but that's ok cause I probably got SUN STROKE! cause today my body aches like a cheap hooker the day after turning tricks for the local sports team and/or college. 

So yeah, by some miracle I managed not to get sunburn! woot? I guess... I GOT SWORDS! Two of them, the a lotr replica orc thingy cleaver/sword MONSTER and a claymore :)

GOOD TIMES!

oh and please excuse this photo of a koala...

A Visit from my Brother and his Fiance

Sitting alone working out the kinks on this, my brand-spanking new blog, when there is a knock on my door.  It was light and hesitant the way a child knocks when he expects his parents are busy but REALLY has to get their attention cause the kitchen sink is stopped up with play-dough and is flooding the entire house.  I peer, just as hesitantly, out through the blinds and see my Brother and his Fiance standing there on my stoop.  I answer the door and they come in, sit down on my couch, and we talk.

Small talk, conversation about our lives and how things are going, I tell them about the progress on my book, they tell me about how there tattoo equipment is out of commission until they can replace a few parts.  All the while my cat Mojo sits in his fiance's lap enjoying the brief bit of company. 

"So you should tell him about the call..." Fiance whispers.

"Oh... right..." My brother says, "We don't have Hepatitis C."

This was something that had been on my mind as of late, seeing that I had received several tattoos at the hands of both my brother and his Fiance and the prospect of dying for their lack of proper sterilization equipment seemed both grim and grossly unfair. 

"Well... That's good, I'm sure you're relieved."  I say with a smile that is all too forced.

All the while I'm thinking 'Damn you you bastard for making me think my arms were going to ROT OFF at any moment!'

"Yeah we were just bored, we wanted to prove to Ned that we aren't just bears in a cave." Fiance adds to the conversation at random.

"Bears in a cave?"

"Yeah, like we don't have people over much..."

And without thinking I say... "Yeah you guys don't have me up anymore..."

Fiance took offense to this and I could hear her objection in her voice...

"We'll I'm sorry but there isn't much to do, we just watch movies and sit around."

If only she knew... THAT combined with being able to see my brother every so often is ALL it would take for me to be at ease about the situation.  Hell I'd LOVE to go up there and shoot the shit for a couple hours, even if it meant having nothing more to do than that.

A moment later they excused themselves and we said our goodbyes, and once more I took a seat at my computer with nothing more to do but type endlessly away at it till exhaustion overtook me...

NECKLACES!

My ever crowded display board :)

8 Months

Eight months ago I sat down to type out what would be the first rough chapter of a hundred and twenty page manuscript, and since then not much has changed.  I worked diligently through the classes I took, both on non-fiction writing and poetry, regardless of the harsh times that came between now and then.  Now it is finished, the final revisions have been made, edited, and stamped with approval from my editor and I'm at a loss at how to proceed.

Somewhat prematurely I sent off copies of my query letter to several literary agents, and already I've received my first rejection letter.  Thankfully it was written in a polite and supportive tone.  As of now I'm waiting to hear back from five different agencies, all hand picked from my writers market for their interest in memoirs, acceptance of simultaneous submissions, and ease of contact (most of them accept online submissions).  I have a sucidal urge to send a letter to every agency in the book, one I must quell if I hope to ever get published.  I have to take this, as I have been through this whole process, one step at a time.

It's been such a quiet day today, I've neither gone anywhere nor had company.  The phone has hardly rung all day.  I spent most of it sitting around reflecting and watching old episodes of X-Files on netflix instant viewing.  But oh, how I've wanted that phone to ring... to share this moment with someone other than my dutiful yet accepting mother.  She gave me congratulations and then was off to enjoy her evening alone, something I'd normally enjoy myself, but not tonight... I want company, I want the walls to vibrate with our revelries and the night to sing my praises.  But here I am, sitting alone typing away at a blog that likely no one will read. 

My book will be different, it WILL be published, and consequently WILL be read.  I'm ready for people to see now, to know my life as only I could tell it.  So many nights I sat here working on that damned book, writing, revising, waiting to hear back from my editor, always working on it or thinking of working on it.  It's done now, and all I can do is wait. tick tock tick tock...

A Letter from my Editor

Zack,

I looked over the revised manuscript and am very happy with the changes/additions you've made. The additional chapters, in particular Cybernetic Organism, really add a lot the the original text. I haven't left you any additional comments on the right side like I did before, because I feel like it is solid where it stands. I simply made some more grammatical/punctuation changes.

I'm not saying this is a totally complete piece, but it's at a point now where you can present it to potential distributors, and they'll take you seriously. I'd encourage you to take the next step. Come up with a query letter, an abstract of what your memoir is, what it stands for and why it's important/unique. Tell potential publishers why your piece is different from others and how it will impact readers.

I'd be more than happy to take a look at your query letter when you've got it done up, if you'd like. Good luck from this point forward! I've really enjoyed reading your manuscript.I've got a great deal of respect for you and am sure you can make this manuscript happen.

Fill me in as you progress!

Spencer

Four am on Yahoo Chats

There is a rhythm to seeking comfort in the dark, to casting ones line among the endless drifting tides of the internet in hopes that you'll get a bite.  Open room, enter captcha, check... check... check... new room... enter captcha... check... check... check...

wash, rinse, repeat...

Some faces are new, some wandering strangers, all of them lonely and without purpose.  Even the ones that want nothing more than that paltry squirt at the end of a cam session are just looking to connect.  Eye to Eye for a moment, even if obscured by lust and anonymity. 

The bots wander the rooms, leaving and coming at programmed intervals, almost like ghosts... the digital souls of those who can never leave, never find that company they seek. 

At four am most of America is asleep, if your lucky you'll catch someone from the west coast staying up out of desperation, but even that is rare.  Whats left to choose from is the arabs and the asians: the phillipinos, pakastanis, indians, iraqis... all just looking for a moments trust, to get lost in the ether and find that hand looking to pull you up. 

At four am there are no saviors, no devils, we're all damned if only by self-imposed guilt.  The desperation that comes when all others slumber.  The rooms are hollowed out, hardly anyone speaks openly, everyone just waits for that DING that says someone noticed them, that someone wants them. 

Asl? 26 m usa, you? M too, bye... onward and downward and under it all they just want a hand to reach down and pull them up...  but it never comes, trust me I've been doing this for over ten years....

it...

never...

comes...

The Naptime Sex-Slide

My dreams range from the completely horrific to the uncomfortably erotic, this was a combination of the two... Unsettling and yet hawt in ways I don't conceive of in my waking life.  It came to me during a late afternoon nap, and as soon as I drifted off it was already in full swing, as if I were dropped into a scenario that was constantly being played out behind my eyes.  I was in was appeared to be a cross between a seventies club and a nineties lazer tag arena, lit with rope lights, black lights, and strobe lights, only the entire place was one long hallway.  This would have been disorienting enough, but the whole shebang was tilted at a ninety degree angle and the floor was impossibly slick.  I was sliding through this surreal flashing disco with an odd assortment of people, all laughing and seeming to enjoy the constant downward descent.  For a moment the degree of the floor plateaued and I found myself on a gondola being carried down along the floor.  In its center stood an elaborate soft serve ice cream fountain that looked like a circular Technicolor utter, with each teet secreting a different flavor.

As is normal with my dreams, Elizabeth was there, serving herself up some soft serve.  She wanted a certain flavor, but its nipple had been drained dry.  I emptied out one of the other nipples into a large glass and hopped on an inter-tube to continue my descent. From behind me a large woman collided with my tube and asked if she could have some of my icecream, which at that moment was nestled between my legs.  Without asking for permission, she passed over the delicious ice cream and went to town on my john thomas instead.  Unnerved by her forwardness I pushed her away and continued sliding down. 

Finally the floor evened out, and the dream space became an fun house maze, still illuminated by mostly purple light.  I came into a small room with a bar at one end and a woman there explained to me that I was part of an experiment, that I had been drugged with a cocktail of hallucinogens and Viagra.  This isn't the first time I've dreamed of being dosed, so I went along with it.  We began to "go at it" when the back wall of the room collapsed outward into a wall of dark water and we were sucked into it in an instant all around us swam sharks in the twilight lit waters of some exotic sea.  We never stopped, I simply awoke to the sound of my phone ringing, once, twice, and then no more...

The tiny illuminated screen displayed NEW MESSAGES...

Pancakes and Hemp Necklaces

There is a peace in tying a million tiny little knots as one would find if they ever found themselves in the exciting and intoxicating world of HEMP JEWELRY!  Waking up today I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my necklaces and medicine bags, crafted with the FINEST hemp, leather, and bone, would not only SELL but sell at the prices I had given them.  I had just the previous day placed them on craigslist, again KNOWING that I would make lots and lots of money simply by virtue of lots and lots of tiny little knots.  My inbox was, of course, empty... empty like the void in my heart that made me want to make stupid little hemp necklaces in the first place.  EMPTY!

BUT! I had other pressing issues, I had been forced to smoking loose tobacco from a pipe, and not just ANY pipe but a BOWL purchased for me in an ill advised manner when I told my brother "hey I'd like to have something to smoke this herbal smoking blend out of" and HEARD "I wanna GET HIGGGHHHH so HIIIIGGGHHHH!"  So you of course see my problem, my pickle, a bowl is expertly crafted for the consumption of MARIJUANA (don't let the convenient store clerk tell you otherwise...) and as such has a very tiny little bowl for whatever it is your smoking out of it.  A tobacco connoisseur knows that a relatively sizable bowl is needed for proper smoke-age.

So there I was, trying desperately to get a hit off this little pot-pipe, when my mother called and offered to bring me by some food.  I of course asked her to bring by rolling papers, and not the "extra wide" papers (those are for JOINTS! damn you hippie mother!) but plain old regular sized top rolling papers, with a hundred leaves, in the little yellow envelope.  She of course, after giving me "the look" by way of telephone (something difficult but not impossible to manage) and told me she'd be on her way shortly.

She arrived within the hour, bringing with her two boxes of pancake mix, eggs, milk, and two cases of Fanta in both "organge" and "grape", which proclaims BOTH that they contain 100% natural flavors AND absolutely NO JUICE.  As to what natural substance is in Fanta, the world may never want to know...

Along with the pancake mixes (both bisquick and all natural wheat mix) she brought a pack of top rolling papers, an electric fan, and a cloth display board for my booming hemp necklace business.  And so the day came full circle, and I spent the next several hours tying little tiny knots.... THE END!