Touched by Oprah

Is there no mortal anywhere who can stand against the undiluted power of Oprah? This is the end days, folks, because even Denis (fucking) Leary is like a deer in the headlights of that woman.

Forget Jesus Christ. Oprah's bigger than Elvis and the Beatles combined.

DIY

I went nuts a week ago and sort of self-published myself, I guess. It's just a tiny anthology of three of my best short stories to date. It's called Trailer Trash Confessional and I'm mailing copies of it out to a few friends. I went to Elliott Bay Book Co. on Friday and left a copy with them (I actually wanted to leave more but they wouldn't let me). They do allow self-published 'zines and poetry chapbooks on their shelves. I'm guessing if I go back later this week, they'll let me leave more. I'm expecting zero return on my investment so I'm hoping they'll set these out marked FREE or nobody will read them.



I went by Hugo House too and unloaded a half dozen on them. Don't know if anybody will read them before they disappear into their 'zine archive ... which I'm pretty sure nobody reads.

I hope they aren't too depressing.

The first short story is typical coming-of-age, sorta Tobias Wolff meets Mark Twain meets ... Pink Floyd. (Not that my writing even approaches that level!) The third short story is hopefully the most humorous. It's written in a very sarcastic, kind of Christina Ricci in The Opposite of Sex narrative voice.

But the middle short story may rattle some cages. It's a work of fiction but I'm wondering if people will read more into it than they should? I can't emphasize enough that it is fiction, NOT autobiographical but it is very loosely based on a teenage girl I knew years ago who did go through a similar horrific experience.

To the best of my knowledge, she is now married (to a man), doing well and living some where in a suburb of Las Vegas.

I would have liked to have included some sci-fi/fantasy short stories but none of them are complete. I've had the first 50 pages of Dark Engines kicking around my harddrive forever and also the first 112 pages of Life Among the Dead but none of my sci-fi stories come in under 100 pages. I'm incapable of writing sci-fi without a cast of thousands and about fifteen different plot threads. It's enough to give Frank Herbert a headache.

The Two Americas

Was over at Alternet.org when I saw these, gripping photos by Brenda Ann Kenneally. She is a member of the National Press Photographers Assoc. and has won several awards for her gritty pictures of New York's working poor.

Note to the 'Mad Men' of advertising: DUH !

Sexxxy ... um, actually no.

Obama getting the electoral college by a landslide gives me hope for humanity ... but then I read articles like this and I slide back to my original stance of the glass being half empty (and the waiter that's supposed to refill it is a retard). Here's the skimmed tidbit:

Steamy Magazines Make Men Feel as Bad As Women
Guys who check out the sexy female models in so-called lad magazines such as Maxim have more body-image problems than their pals, a new study finds.

Sorry for sounding like an eighth grader but DUH ! Thanks for catching up special ed. But the researchers (and the accompanying journalists) reported an even more startling discovery.

Does Sex Really Sell? Perhaps Not to Women
... He added that the results also illuminate a gap between the male executives who are marketing the magazines and the consumers.

TRIPLE DUH ! Sorry ad execs, the 'Girls Gone Wild' myth boat has left the dock! Sometimes the feminist backlash crap just makes me wanna beat my head against the monitor.

Lake of Fire ...

... is amazing and easily the best documentary I've seen in a while. Tony Kaye does an astonishing job meticulously interviewing just about every single high-profile person in the 'war' on abortion. It doesn't let anyone off the hook but his layered documentary slowly eases the viewer into some of the deeper and more abstract questions as to WHY some people blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors.



If you buy only one documentary on DVD, buy this one.