We're on this ship. And we're tweens.

She is 13. I am 12. She has tits. I have a boner.

Oh, oh, oh... it's on.

In deep space no one can hear you scream, because the windows are always closed and my parents are douchebags.

Yeah, that's my dad, the one with the joystick in his hands. He holds it like he's gay. The ship's been on auto-pilot for 35 years, but somehow he thinks he has to hold onto the joystick.

My Mom knows better.

"Well Timmy, any luck?"

Mom has tasked me with finding her a date to the Moon Ball. We can't make official ship-to-ship communications, so I have to use my Mind Projection ability.

Freaking. Annoying.

"No, not yet."

There was a man on a sun scooper docked at Mercury who expressed interest after I beamed him Mom's measurements.

There was another man, an augmented miner who owned a string of asteroids, who told me he was sick of his wife and would love to get with someone like my Mom.

Yeah, I know: ewl, gross. Not to mention: if Mom so much as touches them, our entire school of pods get fished out of the sky and melted down for some younger race's raw material needs.

But Becky B., with the tits, she is someone one could risk an interplantery alliance copulating with. And she only lives one pod back.

Our ship is a string of six pods, with ours in the front. We got there by luck when Dad ran down the gangplank first at the launch party.

That's what the government did: they made the ships, then let people beat the shit out of each other to climb aboard and off the teeming Planet Earth.

Dad and Mom didn't even know each other; they were simply first to the pod. Then they had Steve, and Jennie, and Brenda, and Todd, and Larry, and me.

It was Becky's dad who tackled my dad at the knees on the gangplank and give him the limp he's had for my entire life.

Becky's dad was actually copulating with Mom at the time of the launch party: when the alarm bells rang in the spaceport villages, he was just pulling his dick out of her, a long string of cum connecting him to her like a lonely astronaut's space umbilical.

It was the last time they would fuck.

But now it looks like me and Becky are going to get our chance.

"I'll make a deal with you Timmy."

She was putting on her glow boots and looking out the window at a sea of other pods floating in blank, black, bleak outer space.

"I'll put in a good word with Becky's father, if you can arrange a meeting between the Mercury man and me."

"The Mercury man?"

"Yes, the sun scooper. I like a man with a good tan: your father is ungodly pale."

Not to mention gay.

"It's a deal."

I could already feel Becky's tits floating in my hands in zero-G.

In preparation for National Novel Writing Month in November, I've decided to write an entire other 50,000-word novel in the month of October. To kick things off, I took a room at the Hyatt in a suitably Ballardian section of town last night: the Denver Tech Center. Being as it was the final day of September, I treated myself to a good meal, had a few drinks and a nice walk, and then got down to the business of writing just after 1am. This was capped by an inability to sleep, along with an HBO double feature of Willem Dafoe's 1991 star turn in White Sands, followed by B.B. Thornton's football movie Friday Night Lights (soundtracked by instrumental indie greats Explosions in the Sky). The ending of this latter is particularly touching, and had me weeping into my keyboard at 6am when I was struck with new ideas for the novel-in-progress.

The status so far, as of day one: 2,328 words (out of 50,000)

Word count: 4,077 (out of 50,000)

Today I made a rough diagram of the plot, available in PDF form here. As No Plot?, No Problem! advises, this is only meant to be a rough guideline, like a map used while exploring a new continent. What's important is to keep it in mind while keeping open to new developments, plot twists, and surprise character cameos. We'll see....

In other news, please read this post by Delia, concerning smog in LA and dyspnea. Sad, but a good read.

Word count: 5,948 (out of 50,000)

What started as a novel about heartbreak has moved into a decidedly weirder direction. Excerpt:

The Assimalists were the loudest band in Buffalo for that entire summer. Their singer was a short, stocky Asian woman who screamed 4-syllable words she’d learned in an MFA program and kicked size-4 dents in speaker monitors in bars across town. Their guitar player didn’t so much play his guitar as he survived it: it was held directly in front of a 600-watt amp for the duration of each show, with tonal variation achieved solely through the creative use of his eighteen foot pedals and the subtle gyration of his hips.

They were blessedly without a drummer.

There are nights when it seems perfectly reasonable to be alone, i.e. tonight. It's 12:30 in the morning, and the Grateful Dead theme bar is six blocks away. You have two choices: sleep alone, or drink alone. The latter is but $5 bucks and a 10-minute walk away, hence: yes.

There is a certain interior monologue which can only be continued sans companions, who would complicate any attempt to pull out a notebook and write at the bar until closing time. People can be an exhausting drag, this much is certain. But they also need to be included in one's field of awareness , which justifies this evening's alchoholic bout of voyeurism.

There are the Deadhead teens stomping along to "Mexicali Blues" to your left at the bar. There is the hairdresser who works at a place called The Matrix and thinks the two tall 30-something gentlemen by the video poker are brothers. Goths occupy the table behind you, and a person with cleavage is playing pool by a tall guy with braces in the back of the establishment.

And then there is the bouncer: a wool-wearing planet with a plastic black fang through his nose, he seems overly jovial to inspect your ID card on this, a Tuesday evening.

The walk home is uneventful: things rattle and branches blow, and three cars pass on their way to unknown destinations far into the night. As you near the last block of journeying, a man with a cane clinks nervously 200 feet away. You dash into the foyeur, pound the digi-code and are home at last to write

this post.

... is not a good idea. So there I was, 6:30 in the evening with a post-work double screwdriver to my name and a very large improv teacher barking orders in my direction. I froze, I stumbled, I muttered, I did everything but improvise. Let that be a lesson: always make it a single, at least until after class....

Word count: 7,854 (out of 50,000)

Let's face it; things aren't going so well. I have a plot outline, and a map, and a philosophical agenda, but no juice. The characters refuse to become what I had settled on them becoming. Big Dick, the protagonist, is not so much a philosophical terrorist as a rich kid douchebag from the suburbs. His roommate/housekeeper, Shelly, has given up on cutting and burning herself, and is becoming something of a female mystic. And the ex-girlfriend, Dick's nemesis, is barely even one-dimensional. They're all on the page, but none of them feel impelled to do anything. They carry on their pre-planned (by me) roles half-heartedly, and seem to have more urgent issues to attend to, if I would only let them get back to them. 

No Plot, No Problem! warned me to expect this very thing, but I haughtily denied it would happen to me, Paul Salamone, Prince Amongst Writers. But it is, and for once, I'm going to go with it: if there's one thing I've learned in improv, it's the faith to just "go with" a scene, to serve the scene (or in this case the novel) and not your ego (read: not your post-humanist philosophical agenda).

Trust. It's a doozie.

10,000! And that's all I'm sayin'...

Word count: 14,069 / 50,000

Yesterday I flaked and wrote not a wink. Today I redoubled my efforts and took things in a decidedly weird direction, deviating far from the initial plot map. Which seems like a good thing (fingers crossed). Excerpt:

The D.B. Group were officed in a narrow slot of a building just off of the mall. When I arrived in black stockings, a black skirt, and a white blouse, the guy at the front desk looked me up from head to two, smirked, typed something into his computer, and stood up to give me a sheet of paper.

“Fill this out,” he said.

“Do you have a pen?” I asked.

“No.”

I dug past a tampon and a hip-hop flier to find an old Bic drowning in lint at the bottom of my red plaid purse.

“Can I write on the desk?”

He’d given me no clipboard, and there was nothing else resembling a flat surface in the tiny reception area, if that’s what it was.

“Use the wall.”

This is it: the cusp of 30. Two months from my actual birthday, I've discovered I am thoroughly bored with being in my 20s--and not a moment too soon. If I could modify my memory to jump from age 19 to age 30, I would do so. What best characterized this unhappy third decade was the waiting: waiting to make my move on a girl, waiting until conditions are perfect to quit a job, waiting to utilize my best gifts when I've known for years what it is I do (writing). Waiting, waiting, and more waiting.

There's a reason the best rock stars die before the age of thirty: because they refuse to wait. To live their gifts with the energy of a twentysomething is to live at the absolute edge of existence, where no pain can touch your soul and every step is a burning footprint through history, through time.

The rest of us, though, have waited. Are waiting. Will wait. For... ?

I'm done waiting. With the libidnous embers now on wane, it's time to get on with the cool, reserved process of making a difference. One grows far too machine-like and simplified to dally with drinking establishments, go-nowhere events, makeshift relationships. One can't be bothered with things like dating or flirtation when entire new worlds of dating and flirtation are in need of creation. The twenties are spent with "living". The thirties are spent on Life.

What a building! Read my review of it here on POLYSEMY.

15,757 out of 50,000 words.

Suggested reading for all writers, would-be novelists included: The War of Art.

17,512 / 50,000 words, among them: "His little penis I would use to keep my own Warmth ablaze, it was but a hose to water the garden of flames I could feel emanating from my belly."

Don't ask.

[From my summer '05 travel journal:]

When you can take the whole earth in at one glance, a shift in perspective becomes eminent. The mountains are a rigid inverted sea. Rivers and streambeds become sunken blood vessels and empty wet nerves. Ruler-straight roads run through roughshod terrain like surgical scalpels. Low-hanging clouds are like so much arm-hair, virtually indistinguishable from the actual earth surface (which itself has no hard "beginning" line, a grassy concrete housing development toad stool atmosphere). We are God's cattle, herding ourselves for His amusement.

I don't know what I'm writing about, and that's ok. The rage which drove the initial vision endures, mutates, changing the landscape of the narrative without ever losing its boiling heat. And beneath it, the writer listens to Magik Markers, sips his coffee, smells the wool of his forearms, and knuckles down, down, down...

19,581/50,000

Big ups to my new friend Tara for letting me holler at her about the inner workings of my novel over coffee the other day. I never know if I'm boring people when they ask how my writing goes, but they ask, so I guess it's fine. I just better have something to show for it when this madness is all over, and not just a doorstop made of inkjet prints.

21,627 / 50,000

Day 12 was spent working and hanging out with the fellas during our weekly "Man Night" discussion group, RONS-a-thon, and pub crawl. I skipped writing, but it's ok because I was ahead.

Day 13 found me back in the saddle with an extended session at a Borders books in Broomfield. A day or two away from the midway point, a sort of narrative thrust is emerging, albeit the set pieces surrounding it are but skeleton sketches at this point. I've found it useful to compare the process of novel writing to the technique I used during my time as an experimental draughtsman with a tendency towards large, abstract expressionist drawings. Namely, starting with a large improvised composition to get the overall structure down, followed by a bearing down with detail, color, and texture in each session. Good stuff.

23,474 / 50,000

27,392 / 50,000

I feel like I'm weighing-in for a wrestling match at this point....

My buddy Nate from the Boulder basement music scene has finally launched his e-zine Rubber Stamp, featuring this weird techno-erotic piece by yours truly. Enjoy...

I believe it is important to festishize Houellebecq before one can move beyond him. He is, in my opinion, one of the most unflinchingly honest writers in existence today. From "To Stay Alive: A Method":

You cannot love the truth and the world. But you have already chosen. The problem now is to adhere to this choice. I urge you to keep up your courage. Not that you have the least cause for hope. On the contrary, know that you will be very alone. Most people come to terms with life, or else they die. You are living suicides.

As you approach the truth, your solitude will increase. The edifice is splendid, but deserted. You are walking through empty halls, which send back to you the echo of your footsteps. The atmosphere is limpid and invariable; the objects seem turned to statues. At times you begin to weep, so cruel is the clarity of your vision. You would love to turn back, into the fog of ignorance, but ultimately you know that it is already too late.

I am worlds away from knowing two things about fashion, but even a total couture ignoramus can spot these most obvious of current clothing currents. For good or for ill, what people seem to be wearing today:

Giant Sunglasses
Bugs, gnats, and stuck-up rich chicks have yet another thing in common: giant, indifferent eyepieces, whether of the Prada or compound eye sort. When half your face is covered up with tinted plastic and glass, oh ladies, it makes it really hard to believe that the part being covered up is anything but hideous and pockmark-encrusted. Which is to say: I am ticking down the minutes for this trend to end.

Skulls
When did pirates capture the imagination of hipsters and ghetto denizens alike? Was it that interminable Johnny Depp franchise? The skull and crossbones, once limited to the helmets of certain Tampa-area sports organizations, are now being driven into the ground (pun intended) by their appearance on every hairclip, cummerbund, sheer shirt, tight pant leg, backpack, and laptop sleeve this side of South Williamsburg. Yeah, death: so bad-ass. I'm waiting for the Happy Meal.

Designer Jeans
I saw a special on eXtra two years ago covering the fact that men were starting to buy women's jeans. Flash forward, and there is no need: jeans have been fetishized by collectors the way people once pined for rare vinyl, which makes me wonder: are Big Denim and the music industry in cahoots? Light blue, striated nightmares with cryptic back-pocket stitching: makes you wish for Dockers to make a comeback, does it not?

Slim Jeans
Ah, emo. Lead it to the black-clad depressives to supplant the frighteningly giant baggie jeans of the previous generation of black-clad depressives (read: goth and nu-metal kids) with their exact opposite: jeans that look like they were spray-painted on, so tight you fear these depressives will never squeeze off a seed into the next generation. Which, in retrospect, might not be such a bad thing ;)

Solid Colors
The days of the faux spray-painted distressed assymetrical PoMo-Victorian designer T-shirt are numbered: enter American Apparel and the solid minimal look. Really, it couldn't happen sooner: when every frat boy looks like he's buying custom duds from the art major down the hall, it's only a matter of time before the actual art kids start donning themselves in impenetably nondescript solids.

Tasteless outdoor wear
The Boulder staple has merged with yoga togs to create the unholy mark of the daytime coffee shop class: the mismatched pile of bright-colored rain-wicking lycra horribleness that is the inactive class of "active wear". Whoa to us who forget the days when outdoors men wore naught but animal hides and anger.

Vintage Nikes
Can anything really be vintage if it was recreated in 2006 for the express purpose of being sold as "vintage"? Shouldn't only like 5 people in the world own vintage shoes, and should not said vintage shoes also be dirty, stink to high hell, and make the wearer's feet cramp up and squirt blood inside? Just a question.


Fashion: inane, yes. Dull: never.

I don't know what's going on, but at the 31,054 word mark, my characters have decided that their main narrative arc is over, they've learned all they've needed to learn and had all the epiphanies they've needed to have, and now I must go back and fill in all the details. Or forge ahead, force them to do something else, and see where it takes me.

Never a dull moment in the penman's world...

Ouch! This is too close for comfort. Quote:

Most disturbing was the discovery that some people hid their Internet surfing, or went online to cure foul moods in ways that mirrored alcoholics using booze, according to the study's lead author, Elias Aboujaoude.

"In a sense, they're using the Internet to self-medicate," Aboujaoude said. "And obviously something is wrong when people go out of their way to hide their Internet activity."

Damn you Neal Stephenson, and your ambitiously amazing Baroque Cycle! Three books, 800 pages each, and I've finally polished off the middle volume, The Confusion, filled with pirates and romance and political subterfuge and smallpox and everything else. I think I need to take a year off from reading now, just to get my life back in order. I hear some soiled dishes calling....

Forgiveness has been a long time coming, but it seems more possible every day.

When you've been wronged you close down and give yourself a free pass to hate someone else: a necessary step for disentanglement. But at a certain point, the desire to understand outweighs the desire to inflict a countervailing amount of pain. Unfortunately, with the other person now vacant from one's life, this has to be a reconstructive process performed in one's own head. Writing stories helps.

In my own fictive re-working of the events which transpired and the forgiveness-inspiring elements which existed, I've found in myself the very same weakness which I accused the other (rightly) of possessing. Namely, a dishonesty in confronting the animal aspects of being human, i.e. those biological sub-components which tend towards the preference of situations and experiences which aid to the healthy perpetuation of one's own genes which, on further inspection, is plainly idiotic.

Woe be unto those who would resist the post-human turn of excising those parts of ourselves which tie us to the blood and the biosphere, to the idiot monkey membrane of green things passing judgement and spreading suffering everywhere they go: heartbreak is the natural fallout of those who lack the introspective capacity, and the ability to act upon it when the genes are screaming NO!

Which means, the ex-girlfriend character in my novel has decided (in opposition to the actual person, who is long gone) to force herself to love the person she does not love. She loves him intellectually, but not biologically (what we confuse as the "feeling of being in love"), and, in direct conflict with her own genetic programming, decides to commit to the abstract ideal of loving him for the sake of love, "because there aren't enough connections in this monistic world" as she excuses it.

Bearing fruit, or not bearing fruit, the answer is the same: our future lives exist in outer blank dark space, where we are free to love everyone and everything without fear of death, dismemberment, or the end of reproduction.

Death to the biosphere and its narrow simulacra of "love": all power to minds expanding infinitely and hearts flood-flowing forever.

I'm just over the 33k mark, which is but a third of the 100k goal I have for these two months. The quantity isn't the problem, it's the coherence.

For more on this and previous novel writing attempts, see my latest post to the NaNoWriMo pod.

If you want to join said pod, moderated by yours truly, click here.

If atheist society prostrates itself before the alter of materialism, then Friday night is certainly its holy day of obligation. For it is verily the mainstream of America that works and schools itself from Monday morning through Friday afternoon, at which point it must lay down all rote tasks and field work to continue the Pursuit of Pleasure which is every ego-materialist's duty in the "greed is good" economy.

To decline attendance at the holy cathedrals lining the streets of the night club district on a Friday night is to commit the foulest of blasphemies, punishable by guilt, loneliness, and an early death.

"What do you mean you're not going out -- it's Friday night!"

Thus chants the true believer when a heretic makes his or her presence known. Heretics favor sobriety. Heretics favor solitude. Heretics stay indoors, keep quiet and to themselves, and wait for the resumption of the work week.

For that is when they can go to the bars in peace.

Nate Ragolia's ezine The Rubber Stamp is continuing to grow. Check out the latest entry from me entitled "These Streets Are Cracked and Broken", a bit of fiction inspired by the fact that I no longer live in Buffalo. Also check out my younger brother Chris's fiction entry, "The Last Light in the City". Kick ass!

33,484 / 50,000

8 days left, not worried about meeting the word count. Spent 5 hours on Saturday going through everything written so far and making notes on ways of attaining coherence. Some features and themes of the current text:

• Cold, dispassionate sex
• a survey of modern architecture in Denver
• esoteric tourism
• memorials to dead rappers
• Russians, architectural genius of
• fat rich kid with no personal hygiene
• plenty of meetings at coffee shops
• hexagons
• near-fatal emergency airplane landings
• the idealism of college grads

All of which is to say, I have NO IDEA how this is going to turn out. Which I guess is the point....

My antipathy towards all things marijuana continues a year and half later from this initial post. I simply do not understand the appeal of a drug which leads to such an inane stupor of snacking and sitcoms. If alchohol is all about destroying your inhibitions, then weed is certainly all about destroying your ambitions, allowing you to set your standards no higher than couch-based hand sports and other modes of self-dissolution.

Am I in favor of legalisation? Quite the contrary: I am in favor of an artificial microbial infection which would spread throughout the world's marijuana supplies, rendering all psychoactive components of the otherwise useful plant completely inert. Only then would the hippies rise up as one and actually accomplish something of political import. Until then, it's Adult Swim for miles and miles....