A Thousand Yard Stare

Big Boy, No Lulzcat.

"The Guardian Angel"

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My poem, "The Guardian Angel," appears in the Feb. 2008 edition of Conceit Magazine. Perry Terrell edits this journal. Check them out!


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“Some say depression among the poor shows up instantly as fat.”

There are few quotes I remember quite handedly. This little gem was buried deep within a Barry Hannah story that I both cannot recall the title (or ever finishing) from High Lonesome.

I just remember reading it and laughing my rear off at its truthfulness.


A few new and exciting things are coming up soon.

Possibly.

Really, I'm trying to be optimistic.

I am.


I've even cleaned up my language here; and even if I'm slipping here and there and everywhere, I'm just trying to be on my best behavior for any possible HR folks who could be lurking.

March is the key to all.
Not the Ides, mind you (though really, who knows about them ides), but siersly--March is looming as the all important stepping stone.

March could be big.
It could be small.
It could be it.

I retrieved some flint this weekend,
fired up something anyway.

I've got to get my S straight though.
Time to live up to my own advice.
Gotta do it sometime before everything about me is past tense.


Soon.

D.N.R. - The Script

It's dead.

It died months ago, but I only got word last week.

There was no fire. No spark. No point(?)

No, there was a point, a plot, a theme--
but I foxtrotted it all to a land down under.

So, I guess I'll try to get another spark going.
Set something ablaze.
That would be neat.

I think it's the push toward publishing
that destroyed the energy.

It makes me too self-conscious
(even more so than the chronic self-consciousness I already suffer from)
and it makes my work wither.

I think that's why I turned back to more speculative stuff.
I like just letting that creativity flow through
the ghosts and ghouls and homicidal madmen.


I just need to go back into that hole from once I came
and find the flint.

I need to go back to how it was when I began this trip.



I write to entertain.

Some expect there to be this great point to everything for everybody.
I like to think there are little points for somebody that could mean
nothing to other bodies.

I'd rather make a subtle point and entertain
than shout my point and breed disdain.


And if I can't entertain myself,
well hell,
then this will be too much like work.

Review: John Rambo (2008)

Holy %$#@!


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The Script & Work & What?

The script is dying. Got to about the third act--about the third-- and kind of see the corner I've drawn my characters into. Who the heck is going to go rah-rah as the hero limps to vengeance with a variety of injuries and more importantly, who is going to believe it? I think I'm going to step back and approach this from an 80s-ish kind of way. B-Movie it into greatness.

I guess I'll try to fight that temptation off and try to suffer through it.

Who knows, maybe by a re-write it'll all come back to sense. I'm already cringing at half the dialogue--it's not even funny.

I think I'm gonna use the rest of this week to tear through the final thirty pages and see what's what. I don't even have a clue how far I'm into it, either. There's definitely a fifteen minute beginning, some development, some more development, even further development, some action, some lengthy discussions about this and that and other crap. And I'm about at the last straw, point of no return, I'm gonna get you, sucker, kind of marker. So, again, who knows?

This is why I don't like my new style, but it does help me focus on the problems as I type up the print. As I go to copy? What am I trying to say?

But at what point will the audience scoff. Unless he's a superhero, which Billy's not, he can barely deal with his 70-year-old folks-in-laws, his probable injuries can't just be shooed away.

Oh, but can they?

I guess I'll just make up for it with blood and boobies as anyone else would, until this gets sorted out.


Speaking of boobies and blood:

Thanks for the various google searches that have found my little home.

But seriously, while Jennifer Tilly has kept me afloat, what the hell is up with folks searching for the Death Wish II rape scenes? I know it's a brand-new world, or whatever, but siersly, you folks disturb the S out of me. It makes me want to take my review down.

Speakin'awhich:

Reviews may make a comeback. Like once in a while or something.

I don't know.



I might also follow through on doing the novella concerning my Gatlinburg/Sevierville Characters soon. I've had Music Wilkerson sitting in a fertility clinic for months now, just waiting to be asked if he knows what he wants.

Do we ever?

Increasingly, I don't.

Anyway.


I'll be around here and there.

The months approaching are cloudy, but we'll see.



I have new stuff coming out soon and some stuff still out waiting for judgment.

Here's to 2008!


Sooner, folks.

Rejection and the Fugitive Mind

Some hopeful rejections came in this month.
One stated that I'd made it to the final round
at a print biggie (to me, probably not the Stove-Top Shirts),
and got past the first rounds at a digital biggie
(ditto, but even less so, I think. I mean, they're pretty big on the digital side).
Plus, I got a cool non-form rejection from a journal in
Carolina that opened my eyes on a poem
I've been circulating for years.
The kind remarks and time that went in to it
really made my day. And they will help the piece.
Thanks.

It really makes me want to get back to work resubmitting;
but first things first,
I need to clear the cobwebs and revise like mad.
Especially now that I'm in a lull.
Get my crap in gear,
do a 30::30 in March,
and be ready to purge my files
back into the hands of strangers,
ready to receive the trickle of "thanks, but regrets"
to see that shimmer of "liked to accept x if x's still available."

This is the goal. This is the work.



And finding a job.

Oh, yeah...

that, too. that, too.