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Books, Boobs, and Boardgames... THE PODCAST

On Books: The Terrible Thing That Happens by Carlton Mellick III

I love a good post-apocalyptic novel; I really do. Technically this book is more of a novella than a novel, but damn. It's just so BIZARRE. And dark. And sssoooooo creative. And violent. And crude. 

So, in short, all of my favorite things.

I'd never heard of Carlton Mellick III before, but the poor bastard's officially been added to my list of authors I'll stalk badly and I've only read ONE of this books. Although, on second thought, maybe I should be a bit more careful stalking this particular author given the titles of some of his other books:

• Satan Burger
• The Haunted Vagina
• The Baby Jesus Butt Plug
• Zombies and Shit
• Adolf in Wonderland

Eh. I stalked Palahniuk and he writes happily about serial killers, so I think I'll be okay. Maybe. Anyway, if I survive our inevitable encounter I've got Punk Land on my shelf right now and Satan Burger in my Amazon cart, so I'll probably post a review here when I read them. This guy's writing style and choice of subject matter are so unique I just cannot wait to get more.

I can only imagine how twisted and bizarre these other books are after picking up The Terrible Thing That Happens. Even the freaking Introduction was fun to read, and before I even noticed I'd blasted through the whole novella. Somehow this magnificent mutant of a human created an insane, inexplicable, totally bizarre world, populated it with some of the most insane, repulsive, and grotesque monsters, then threw in an inexplicable regenerating grocery store/mass murder crime scene, and not once did I put the book down in disbelief. Somehow. Somehow. This guy makes you buy into all of this crazy shit and just accept it. And that ending man. OUCH. Heartbreakingly believable (in the context I suppose). 

Before you go grab all the guy's stuff though, as you might have assumed from the title list above, this book isn't for everybody. I mean there's definitely a bit about jerking off into a tin can to make mutant babies. It's not super graphic or anything, at least about the sex stuff, but if that's gonna squick you out maybe go read Moby Dick or something. Plus there's parts where people get exploded and apparently that's also hard for normal people to read. 

If you've read John Dies at the End or The Unnoticables, or you've got an affinity for Tank Girl comics or Mad Max, you're going to ADORE this book. If you prefer Victorian Lit to gritty, innovative, postmodern fiction, we're probably not friends and that's okay. 

In other news, Nick Harkaway, author of The Gone Away World (one of my favorite books OF ALL TIME - I should really write about it here cuz HOW HAVE I NOT), Angelmaker, and Tigerman (all GREAT go read them) just announced the publication date of his new book: Gnomon. I'm so goddamn excited.

Repeal and Replace and I Need A Better Title Also Trump is a Butt

Part of the reason this blog got abandoned is because I would start a writing project, get most of it done, take a break with the full intention of coming back and fixing it, but never actually following through. So basically I’m a flake and can’t finish stuff. To avoid this, I’ll be skipping the part where I take a break and come back, so you can expect to see pretty awful raw shtuff here that gets fixed whenever. Or never. Exhibit A: the crappy title. There’s a chance I'll fix it later, but it exists and that’s the important part.

MOVING ON.

I’ve got political opinions. I avoided posting them here previously because The Internet (or at least my interpretation of it) said that when writing a blog I should pick a couple things to write about and stick to them. My opinions didn’t always involve books, boobs, or boardgames, so instead of putting them here I just got drunk and yelled them at Fiancé. I think he’ll approve of me yelling them at an uncaring Internet instead so babe, this one’s for you. Anyway I’ve got boobs, so I’ll just say that qualifies. Also I’m in charge here.

First off lemme just say that I think President Elect Donald Buttfucking Trump is a repulsive morally bankrupt hatred-guzzling cock trumpet. For my entire life I’ve devoutly held the belief that, as an American patriot, the elected leader of our fair nation deserves respect regardless of my personal opinions of the guy. I criticized Bush’s actions but intentionally and devoutly avoided personal attacks on his character; I did the same with Clinton and Obama. Trump is literally throwing me into a personal quandary of self-doubt over what being a patriot actually means and whether or not I am one. Anyway. More on that later.

I’m here to talk about the movement to “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare, or The Affordable Care Act if you want to get pedantic. With a majority in Congress and an upcoming Trump presidency, the Republican Party will soon have the support it needs to carry out their long-touted threats on repealing the plan. The problem they’re running into isn’t so much the repeal part, but the replace part. I’m mildly obsessed with politics these days, so let's talk about what in the sam hill this is all about.

For Trump himself, I don’t believe replacing Obamacare was ever a huge priority during his campaign. Sure, during his speeches he said he was going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific,” but Trump’s platform seemed to be mostly based on improving national infrastructure, lowering unemployment, reforming immigration laws, and cutting back on government interference in private markets, thereby improving the American healthcare system indirectly. Cuz trickle-down economics folks. According to his campaign website:

By following free market principles and working together to create sound public policy that will broaden healthcare access, make healthcare more affordable and improve the quality of the care available to all Americans.

Looking past the cringe-worthy lack of proofreading, this statement appears to imply that whatever this “terrific” alternative is, they haven’t fleshed it out. Sure, there’s a list of 7 mostly vague ideas on reform following this grammatical train-wreck, but the entire piece is capped off with “The best social program has always been a job” and some gibberish about those goddamn Mexicans. Who the fuck knew those bastards were so ingenious and powerful that they’re actually to blame for everything.

So if Trump isn’t the one coming up with the replacement plan, who is? Fucking everybody. Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House) came up with “Obamacare Lite,” Tom Price (Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services head) has been crafting a replacement plan for years, Mike Pence has weighed in, along with a rabble of other lawmakers. The only thing every ACA nay-sayer seems to agree on is that it needs to go but definitely notrightnow and definitely not without a replacement. The ACA caused an undeniable rise in premiums and costs to the already insured, which the ACA repealers would like to alleviate, but in the end 16 million people are now insured under the act, many of them for the first time. At least the heartless bastards are sensible enough to realize that these 16 million people won’t like them very much if they get lobbed out the front door of the insurance market headfirst like a drunk out of a cartoon bar. It’s starting to look like the “Repeal and Replace” program is shaping up to be more of a “Repeal and Delay” program, particularly since they’ve openly stated that the repeal process will begin in January and end whenever but probably nowhere near those mid-term elections, which I find pretty hilarious since the ACA’s been around for over five years now. How come y’all haven’t figured this out by now? You were okay with the system when it was broken but now that we know how important universal coverage is you’ve gotta get the rest sorted? Got it.

This is what I find so fascinating about the whole thing. Like it or not, the ACA made such a profound impact on the way our nation approaches health insurance that simply pretending it never existed isn’t an option anymore. Now, ACA repeal-replacers are faced with the challenge of having their cake and eating it too. Dumbest cliché ever, by the way. Who just has a cake? Cakes are for eating. If you need a non-eating/having-only cake, make a really gross kale one so you don’t want to eat it. Which maybe isn’t such a bad idea since your diabeetus medication ain’t gettin’ any cheaper under ButtTrump.

At any rate, mandating insurance for all Americans, outlawing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and those troublesome hikes in premiums are the cake bits that generated the funding pool necessary to make these plans available to many of the people who enrolled, and those resources are precisely what many of these lawmakers seek to repeal. How exactly is this replacement plan going to fund itself?

I mean, it’s not inconceivable that there’s a better way to go about making universal health insurance a reality. I read the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act;” it’s like A BAJILLION PAGES LONG. OK, technically it’s only 906 pages and I’m still not sure what spasm of masochism inspired me to actually read the damn thing, since I know jack about legal-eze and had to have smarter people explain it to me anyway and that’s not even the whole thing, but I read enough to know that it’s far from perfect. Just the fact that it’s so long speaks to it’s inefficiencies, but let’s not forget that the reason it’s so convoluted and complex to begin with. The ACA was designed to fix an extraordinarily long-running and complex problem, namely that healthcare and prescription costs in this country are ridiculous and lots of people just can’t afford basic healthcare.  While universal insurance helps alleviate the financial burden of participating in this inflated system, it doesn’t actually address all the underlying factors that caused everything to be so expensive in the first place.  I’m curious to see how a party that religiously touts the power of the free market tackles the fact that an unregulated healthcare industry is precisely what got them in this pickle to begin with.

I wish I could say I’ve got confidence in the incoming administration to navigate this endeavor with grace, reaching across the aisle for the betterment of us Americans and honest long-term reform of a broken healthcare system, but the rhetoric I’m picking up doesn’t give me much hope. None of these repeal-replacers seem to be talking about how to stop the constantly ballooning costs of prescription drugs in our country, or why MRI costs about $1080 in the US and $280 in France, or why half a million Americans with mental illness have exactly zero access to help. And yes, I understand that Obamacare didn’t fix these problems completely either, but at least it addressed them at an unprecedented scale. It sounds an awful lot like the reason the “replace” bit got tacked on the end of this repeal frenzy is because Obamacare is actually working. And why trash the whole thing when it clearly has some upsides? Because it was a Democrat’s idea? It’s got Obama’s name on it? That’s childish, boys. The only replacement I foresee is Obamacare is getting swapped out with a privatized shit show that leaves the politicians who put it in place with enough popular support to win themselves another election, while simultaneously maintaining a system of ballooning healthcare costs that gives exactly zero shits about the poor people who apparently want this system to continue running them right the fuck over.  Then again who knows; maybe they’ll all finally play nice in the same sandbox now that they’ve kicked the other kids out and can get something done. I mean, at least they don’t have themselves standing in their way like the legislators who drafted Obamacare.

There’s a pile of rich white guys in power again ladies and gentlemen, and if you think they give a single solitary fuck if you can afford your band-aids if it means giving up their fat, fat pharmaceutical paychecks you’ve got another think coming.

Time Capsule Camera (fiction/short story)

Greg loved the smell of photo developing chemicals. Even the sharp vinegar smell of the stop-bath gave him nostalgic shivers as he hovered over the plastic pan in his dark room. Dark room really was a generous term for it, since in reality it was just a converted basement closet, but it was one of the only places in the house that remained his and his alone. Veronica hated the smell he loved so much, and her ever growing suit collection claimed pretty much every other unused corner in the place, so the basement was where he set up his little shop.

An avid analogue photographer, Greg had lately been experimenting with vintage, sometimes slightly busted cameras. Veronica called it “Lame-O-graphy,” mocking him with the term that was so trendy a couple years ago, then bought a DSLR and told him to grow up. Whatever. Greg was excited to see what kind of photos his new acquisition would produce. He wasn’t even sure what model the thing was, but he’d found it lying on the ground by a pawn shop dumpster and couldn’t resist.

As pictures started to form, Greg’s brow furrowed. The images appearing were so foreign that if he hadn’t put the film in the camera and taken it out himself he wouldn’t have believed them. There was a mild distortion in the images, but when had he taken a picture of a freakin’ birdbath? Who the hell even HAS birdbaths anymore?

Racking his brain, he started compiling a list of the photos he’d taken. It had been a couple of weeks ago, but not that long. Let’s see… There were a couple shots of the flowers in the yard, a few of the flowers in the neighbor’s yard. Then he’d gone for his usual Sunday walk around the nearby park and took some photos of kids playing, then several more when he got home. He’d been entranced by the way the fading light cast shadows all over the kitchen, but that was pretty much the end of the roll. Weird.

One by one the photos went in the bath and one by one they developed, showing confusing but somehow familiar images.

After the birdbath came pictures of grubby grass, dirt, some rocks, then a little foot-tall shrub. Squinting closely Greg recognized a… A rhododendron? Those things take OVER. He’d know; he’d planted several about that size a while back and then fought them for years until he finally ripped them all out in a rage. Next came a scene he recognized but his brain tripped over the results. Greg rubbed his fists hard into his eyes and looked again; the scene was still there. His hands shook far more than necessary to remove the fixer as he held up the photo. It was the park alright, but instead of the plastic play structure covered in laughing children it was the open grassy clearing that used to be there, years and years ago. Even more confusingly he could see Veronica clearly, but she was so young! Her hair was still long and its natural dark blonde color, beautifully framing her face as she glanced back at him with laughter and love in her eyes, their golden retriever leaping up alongside her. The golden retriever that had died of old age five years ago.

Greg reeled. He remembered that afternoon. It had to be what, ten years ago? Back when Veronica laughed more, talked to him more, went with him on his Sunday walks. Back when he was still allowed to call her “Ronnie,” and the worst they’d argue over was who had to pick up Shadow’s poop in the morning and who had to do the dishes. Still shaking, Greg began rushing to develop the remaining photos. There were more of Veronica playing with Shadow in the park. God she was so beautiful.  He stared at her smile as the photos from his kitchen began their slow travels through the developer. Greg held his breath, trying to avert his eyes as the photos began their finishing bath, but pictures emerged.

The same sun and shadows played across the cabinets, but the appliances were different. The stainless steel fridge was gone, the microwave was smaller and cheaper. The espresso machine was a plastic Mr. Coffee and right in the middle of everything was Veronica. She leaned back on the counter blowing steam off her old Looney Tunes mug, a smile playing at the corners of her lips and across her eyes. He lingered over this photo, smiling as he remembered how upset she’d been when he’d accidentally broken that mug in the sink.

Glancing over at the next photo in the bath, Greg inhaled sharply. There he was. Grubby Nirvana t-shirt, the silver hair at his temples gone, caught in the act of pausing while filling his own mug from the Mr. Coffee to lean over and plant a kiss on his beautiful wife’s shoulder. When the next photo emerged he saw only his own back, as his younger self had just enveloped his wife in an embrace and a deep, deep kiss.

Greg felt a resonating pang of nostalgia; had they really been so happy and young and in love once? Had kisses ever been anything other than the perfunctory peck on the way out the door? Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as his heart swelled with these fond, beautiful memories. He couldn’t wait to show Veronica. Maybe this would be the spark they’d been missing for years.

The last photo sat in the developer, but he barely glanced at it as he studied all the hanging pictures that showcased how beautiful his marriage had once been. When he finally brought his attention back to the bath, he was a bit confused. The images coming through weren’t of their old kitchen; this was their old bedroom. Then he remembered. When he’d grabbed the camera off the dresser to develop the film that afternoon there’d been one photo left, so he’d snapped a quick one in their bedroom on his way downstairs, just to finish the roll. Greg leaned forward in anticipation. Veronica lay naked on the bed, resplendent with her familiar post-sex glow and a cigarette in her hand, covers bunched up around her young, shapely long legs. Greg stared, growing lust tickling at his senses, when a stunning realization drove an ice pick straight into the base of his stomach.

There was a figure lying in the bed next to her, naked and smiling while propped up on an elbow, and it was not him.

Content Going Forward... CUZ FORWARD IS GOOD

Since I haven't done shite on here in ages, I've decided to just make this a crapshoot of writing projects. I'll still put up the occasional book review or boardgame review, and I'm still working on some projects that fall under the "boobs" category, but otherwise you can expect to see all manner of random stuff going forward.

I mean short stories. Maybe journal-type ramblings. Interviews, perchance. THERE'S NO TELLING WHERE THIS MIGHT LEAD.

So. Hold onto your butts.

Orlando, Hatred, and Bloodshed

This has nothing to do with books, boobs, or boardgames.

Our country has mass shootings regularly. VICE magazine has been chronicling them. At a certain point, I became numb to the stories of people dying for nothing at all, beyond some crazy person with a gun and a bone to pick walking into a crowded area and making complete strangers pay for whatever crazed, hurtful, personal vendetta they have. As fucked up as it sounds, I just accepted it as a flaw of my country and figured we'd get it right eventually.

On Sunday, June 12th, at 2 in the morning, we witnessed the most horrifying mass murder of our country's modern history. As the gay club Pulse in Orlando Florida was preparing to close, as the bartenders stopped serving drinks and bar backs cleaned tables and got ready to shoo everyone out for the night, one man leveled a semi-automatic weapon at the 320 people in the club and began wreaking the most horrific bloodbath we've ever seen.

The Columbine High School massacre taught me what grief and helplessness and bitter anger meant in my formative years. Sandy Hook made me sick inside; it still does. The Virginia Tech shooting made me question everything I knew about humans and their ability for violence. I read the news; this has become a fucked up commonplace occurrence.

Something is broken in this country I love. I used to be the person yelling the oft accepted line, "Make guns illegal and only lawbreakers will have them!" The scariest part about this is that Omar Mateen, with a history of violence, abuse, and a brief stint on the FBI's watch list, bought his assault rifles and ammunition completely legally.

This time, after all the shootings I've watched and cried over, I openly wept. At my desk, in my bed, sitting on my couch trying to watch movies, I bawled and my heart broke. I lost the ability to think of much outside the moment when I heard that 1/3 of a club was slaughtered. I'm scared to go to the Solstice Parade in Fremont this weekend, or even the Pride Parade that is one of my city's crowning achievements and a source of joy and exuberance every year. I love gay safe places in Seattle like Pony, or R Place, or Neighbors. My thoughts are laced with this crippling fear that this can happen anywhere, at any time, for no fucking reason at all. And the worst part? I'm not wrong in being scared.

This was a hate crime. A hate crime against a group of people that already know what it's like to be beaten, raped, publicly ridiculed and discriminated against on a daily basis. This man may have cried "ISIS" but his agenda of hatred and violence is purely American. I don't know how to go about my life anymore.

The thing is, I understand hate. I've hated. I hate the men that beat one of my best friends at his front door for no other reason than they thought he was a "fag." I hate the man who took my best friend from me because of his addiction. I hate the men that convinced a beautiful woman that she wasn't worth anything beyond her drive for the next hit. I can't say killing wouldn't be on my mind if I met these men again, and I struggle with this every day. But this? This blind hatred that didn't care who died at all? I don't understand. I almost wish I could.

I'd give up on humanity, give up on the United States of America, if not for the few people that still give me hope.

Edward Sotomayor Jr. died from being shot in the back while he pushed his lover to safety through a back door. Joshua McGill, while fleeing from the club, saw a wounded man, took his and a bystander's shirt to use as bandages, and bearhugged the bleeding man in the back of a cop car until they reached the hospital. DJ Ray Rivera helped a woman escape from behind his DJ station after the shooting started.

I cling to these stories. I cling to the idea that there is still goodness in this world. I weep for those that believed this and were proven wrong. I need to know that there is something, anything, fucking anything I can do to stop this from happening again. I hear people saying, "This is why we need guns" and I weep again.

No one should have this power over me and my fellow Americans. No one at all.

On Books: Water Music by T.C. Boyle (also I stalk authors)

I’ve never been much good around celebrities. Upon meeting Ryan Benjamin, comic book artist for Batman Beyond, at Emerald City Comic Con a few years ago I practically climbed into his booth while frothing at the mouth. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that when I met the author of My Favorite Book of All Time, I was a smidge less than smooth.

 My favorite book of all time is Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle. 

 Before I tell you how I stalked this man through the streets of Seattle, finally ambushing him in a dark alley, I should tell you a little bit about My Favorite Book of All Time.

 Set in the eighteenth century, Water Music is a historical-ish fiction detailing the first white man’s travels to the Niger River in Africa. This man would be Mungo Park, one of the book’s two main characters. Boyle got his mitts on Park’s publication, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed Under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, 
[... seventeen pages of descriptors because eighteenth century], and refashioned it into a profoundly visual, vivid, often raunchy portrayal of the explorer’s journey loosely based on his writings. Mungo Park, a genteel surgeon from Scotland, and Ned Rise, a shifty whore-mongering con man from the grungy streets of London, skirt death over and over again until finally meeting in the most unlikely of places: pre-Western influenced Nigeria. Ned Rise totally isn’t real, but there’s enough truth and solid research peppered throughout the book to make you second guess practically everything. This book smacks of the gritty action novel, and is still a subtle mockery of traditional 18th century writing style. That might be why I love it so much. This novel will make you laugh, cry, and nauseated all within a few pages, but still has enough literary depth to really sink your teeth into. 

 So. Now that I’ve gushed about My Favorite Book of All Time a bit (and trust me, I’m being mercifully brief), you might understand why my friend Savannah and I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading to promote his (at the time) new book T. C. Boyle Stories II at the Seattle Central Library. I sat enraptured through the whole thing. Finally, the reading over, a line formed to buy the new book and get it signed. I abhor lines, but for the right author I'll do it. I joined the herd, purchased the book, and then confused the hell out of him when I gleefully presented my clearly very worn copy of his first book, Water Music. That probably should have been his first clue that I was bonkers. Anyway there were a million people behind me and most of them were staring and lines make me stressed so I blurted out something stupid, gathered up my suddenly embarrassingly ratty book, and fled.

 Once outside I smoked a cigarette, gathered my wits, and informed Savannah that NO. We CANNOT go home now. Not like this. I HAVE QUESTIONS DAMMIT. The library was almost closed, so with some quick sleuthing I figured out what door he'd most likely exit through. My friend was such a good sport. We hung out in that alley and chain-smoked until finally, ages later, the frizzy-haired leather-clad punk genius emerged with his beautiful wife on his arm. Bursting from the shadows much more alarmingly than I intended, the man immediately shielded his wife from me. That should have dampened my enthusiasm, but it did no such thing. I began happily rambling about the papers I'd written on his book as both travel writing and postmodern historical fiction, how much I loved that he clearly was making fun of 18th century literature, blah-blah-blah-fangirl, and fortunately he began looking less scared and more interested. After I finally slowed down and let the man speak, he pointed out that Water Music really was more a picaresque novel than anything (holy crap how did I not notice that before), and that it was partially inspired by his studies in British lit. He mentioned how he was happy somebody wanted to talk about a book that wasn't World's End (OH but I love that book too), then we moved on to how much we both love Don DeLillo. He really was far more generous with his time than he should have been.

I glowed. 

(It's not just the crappy photo.)