Friends

There was a buddy in Bloomington that was supposed to get his Phd. before I had written three books. I haven't talked to him in forty years. I hope he did get it. I've written three, but have only published one. There was a couple we both knew then- the husband was working towards his Masters in Medieval French (of all things) and my buddy and I both fooled around with his wife- not so good to do if you are friends with someone. I split. My buddy ran away with said wife but she went back to her husband eventually.

There was a guy I knew in High School that I let off the hook by telling him I was a liar (he hated liars, and told me he could no longer trust me) but I lied. -The real truth was that his girl friend and I hated each other.

There was a guy in New Orleans, but I outgrew being used so I cut him off (after 20 years).

There was a TV writer out here in LA that I had imagined myself growing old with and sitting out on the Palisades in Santa Monica in folding chairs as old men, but at one point it became apparent to me that he did not consider me an equal.

People come and go from your life for a variety of reasons. These days I'm trying to hold on to people, but god, how some of them are growing old and crusty.

Are friends really just a matter of convenience?

For me Facebook is turning into those Christmas Cards you get every year from people you will probably never see again. What does it mean to have 450 friends? It nice to see how people turned out, I suppose. The kids that used it first aren't too interested to see how others turned out, they are busy trying to get their lives going.

Happy new year if you ever knew me at all

Wanta come on a journey with me?

I can't find a picture of what I dreamed last night. It was a sort of  Iron Man Mask, but it was the real person's face turned into a shell. Hard to explain. Bill was a buyer for USC for 30-40 years. He worked for me about a year or so. He bought the things nobody cared about- frogs for biology, dental x-ray film- there is this gray area where you can buy x-ray film from Hong Kong for nothing. Anyway, I have in my imagination, Bill, widowed, in love with a food service cashier that he will never have because he has Parkinson's (just like ole Pres Sample) and his body doesn't work any more. Anyway, he's angry. I want to find hell and heaven in this. I don't know yet if the anger is hell or heaven. I want to find heaven and hell.

This is a new novel, if you don't know me. I have whole scenes in my head already. I find I can't work any other way. I'll try to put up an outline and you can tell me if it makes any god sense. Its gonna be a Flaubert Novel about the USC farming out of the janitors and food service workers. I did my thing down there for about 5 years. Now they will have to pay. Let's see how much I can stir up.

No pictures tonight. Sorry/

The Wonderful Huntington Library

The very nice lady at the Huntington Library just emailed me back today to let me know that I don't have to worry about including three letters and a reproduction of a drawing and a poem from a fourth letter that are in their collections of unpublished manuscripts, in my new novel. I discovered late in the game that they had a collection of letters that Joe Strong and his wife wrote to their friend Charlie Stoddard from Samoa about the time that my novel takes place. (The novel is Joe's diary from the period) Charlie's claim to fame:

In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and from there wrote his Idyls — letters which he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. "They are," as William Dean Howells said, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean." He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and gave his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights. - from Wikipedia. He beat Gauguin and John La Farge and R L Stevenson and London out there.

Anyhow, he kept Joe's letters and Joe's wife, Belle's. Great stuff, as I've mentioned earlier.

Joe was certainly worth the journey. The letters only confirmed what I guess I knew all along - that I knew the man and was a kindred soul. How does one find one's friend in a life that ended 53 years before you were born?

I've also written the University of Delaware: they have the photograph collection of George Handy Bates which has a couple of shots of Fa'apio and one of her father, the lady I've fictionalized as Joe's lover. I was led there by a biographer of Joe's who hasn't finished his biography. The guy will hunt me down and shoot me for my gross inaccuracies. Ah well, as a friend of mine says: "It's only a novel."

Elephants and Banjos

Just finished the last book I had picked up on my journey to East Africa. Published in '91, its a dismal reporting of the state of the wildlife left on the continent. Its really a collection of long articles he wrote from the late 70s to the late 80s. I'm assuming the preservation efforts are struggling even more now. According to this, the elephant and rhino populations have been decimated. Most of the governments and police were corrupt, the local societies he encountered were threadbare and ravaged and mistreated by their own governments. We again spend a good portion of the book at the end flying over the jungle and savanna landscapes. This book gives you a real sense of how dangerous flying in small planes there can be. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Bela Fleck's "Throw Down Your Heart" which is his latest CD where he covered the same areas that Matthiessen did, but covered it last year looking for the roots of the banjo and playing with a great cross section of African musicians. There is a documentary on Pay-Per-View on Time Warner of his trip, its probably available through other cable sources. I guess I want to find out more about the current preservation efforts there now. Fleck's music is certainly more cheering.

http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/

Home

Christmas Eve and your thoughts turn to home and memories of childhood and freezing your rear end off trying to deliver newspapers in this shhhh.. I just spent my afternoon practicing my banjo out on my back deck in the sunshine with the birds singing along and the growl of my neighbor's hedger. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to every one. Life can be good.

The Night Before Christmas

Every Christmas eve, we read the poem. The kids are 21 and 16, but we still do it. Another few Christmases and we may not be together at this time of year. I suppose she and I will read it to the dog. Anyhow, click on the title of this post to take yourself to a wonderful collection of old books and their illustrations.

I'm a sucker for the illustrated.

One of the best Christmas presents I ever received was a nice leather bound copy of "A Chronicle of Friendships 1873-1900" by Will H. Low, 1908 with photos and art by its author. Great read, he was a painter and illustrator and friends with Robert Louis Stevenson and John Singer Sargent and of course the Gilders (see my website) An all around happy guy.

                                              Will as painted by himself.

Christmas And Home

Its Christmas time and I've put in my last day in the office (and what a frustrating day it was, indeed) until the 4th of January. Left an hour early. I was sure I would blow up at someone if I stayed. People are idiots and people who work are bigger idiots. The real question of our existence should be: Why is it that the older a person gets, the greater the desire to be the resident expert in charge of one's own little yard? God forbid I say 'Aw, come on.' to someone. Anyhow, the kids are home, and the kids' friends appear magically. We have the three amigos in my house- really the three caballeros. My son and his two buddies that went briefly to high school together and were in the metal band together. And still hook up. I like these guys. I remember hanging out and drinking and being goofy with a couple of guys in New Orleans and we were writers and we were (twenty something) and the world was a great place to be and we had futures. 'The difference between then and now, was that we believed' to paraphrase Nancy Griffith. God forbid I grow old with the rest of you. I'll never be the expert of my little garden. I'm going to be playing my banjo on Venice Beach Boardwalk. Come visit me. I'll be the guy that's 6'7" with the long ponytail.

More Things

I grew up in a pretty much illerate family. There was a World Book Encyclopedia, a copy of Owen Wister's "The Virginian," maybe a copy of a Zane Grey novel, and the Merck Index. Our basement had a few old textbooks in a box. I grew up on comic books. They used buy three every week when they went to the grocery, one for each of us kids. I soon owned all three. My grandparents house around the corner wasn't much better, but they had a basement full of the last twenty years of Saturday Evening Post, and Look, and Life, and Popular Mechanics magazines, because they never threw anything away. In third or fourth grade, I had checked this book out of our little elementary school library and had it in my desk and proceeded to spill paint all over my desk and it. They made my parents buy it. It was still readable, but had big paint splotches on the cover and on some of the pages. This was the first book I ever owned. I hope it is still wandering around out there in some thrift store, or is in somebody's box in an attic. I just shipped off a Chinese novel to a friend in Florida not too long ago, that someone had obviously dropped in the bath while reading there. It was still readable, though a bit water marked. We need to take care of our wounded or disabled friends.

Sad Things

Mrs. Hitchox, who I mentioned earlier, was bedridden and nearly blind and lived in her hotel room in Monterey. When I married in '78, we had the reception at the hotel where I worked (the price was right) and it ended early and we had a lot of cake left, so my wife and I called her and took her a piece of cake and some punch. She was embarrassed and wanted badly to give us something in return, so she gave us her cream and sugar set she was using. It wasn't fancy, but I kept them for years, long after she died and I got divorced. Some where along the way, with a new marriage and children, the set became part of the play tea party set and then part of the sand box toy set and then as the kids finally out grew all of that sort of stuff, I think they went into the trash.

There's a cup on my bookshelf that was given me by my second wife and I drank coffee out of it throughout twenty years of nights writing and finally it was broken and I tried gluing it back together, but it no longer holds liquid. I tried using it as a pencil cup and just put it up as a thing to take up space, like my son's stuffed Tigger and a water bottle from a Boy Scout Camp.

NOT SO SAD THINGS

Found a straw hat in the lost & found at the hotel in Monterey in 1977. It fit. I debated about taking it and finally I did just before I quit to go to San Francisco. I told everyone it was my Salinas hat. It had a red bandanna. I think I'm on my 15th hat now with the same red bandanna. I keep destroying them. I wear 'em backpacking and camping and any other time it seems right- like the yearly AIDs walk we have in LA.

How To Write -1993

Someone sent this to me. I guess they kept it- I posted in to a listserv newsgroup in '93

How To Write:

1. Sit down every day and write something
2. Outline
3. Know Act structure
4. Know Sentence and Paragraph structure
5. Know Meter and how it works
6. Read everything in the world
7. Throw in everything in your heart including the kitchen sink
8. Get and accept criticism from everyone
9. Rewrite until you make yourself physically sick
10. Do not make excuses, do not justify anything
11. Write only what you know
12. Realize there must be drama, reality can only be caught in essence
13. Never repeat yourself
14. Learn how to communicate
15. Realize all of it is art, some of it more equal than others
16. Finish what you start
17. Realize that there are tens of thousands of people out there that write and think they do not have to do any of the above. Be polite to them.

Odd Jobs: Peas and Nelson Algren

I was reminded that I left one off. In Logan every year the crops come in and all the folks go work for the Del Monte cannery (or at least they did in 1972) Its seasonal work, you work until the crop is processed and then you don't work again until the next crop. No Union, no benefits, no nothing. It seems they did give you a meal if you worked an eight hour shift. I started on the loading dock for the hybrid carrots. I think it was evening shift or graveyard shift because it was dark. My job was to push all of the carrots dumped on the loading dock into a shoot that went to the cooker. Steam rose continually from the hole so all night long you worked in a thick carrot fog. I guess I did a good job. I then was put in the corn barn. There were all these women at husking and cutting the corn off the ear stations and I would do a big cycle through the area, moving on all the husks and cobs that didn't make it out through the mechanized things. I had to crawl in and around conveyor belts and big refuse screws that drew things outside. When it rained they passed out raincoats because the building leaked and you would get all wet from the rain coming in through the roof. I had a paperback copy of:

in my back pocket and it pretty much got ruined in the wet and watery corn processing. My foreman made a point of coming over to tell me that he better not catch me reading on the job, and I assured him it was only for lunch time. Then, Since I didn't get caught reading on the job and I did good, they moved me to the pea run. That was more hit and miss when you worked.

Pea Machine

You came in at the end of the pea run and put on a rubber suit and they handed you a high pressure hose and you were to clean up all the pea mush on the machines and the floor and the windows and everything within a twenty foot radius. After a particularly long hard pea run, the pea mush could be crusted and several inches thick. They called me to come in one day I wasn't scheduled and I said I could but that I had a class at school and had to leave at a certain time. They said fine. We weren't done but it was time for me to leave and the foreman who I had made the agreement with asked me where I was going. I said to class. He told me if I left then I would never work for Del Monte again. Guess what?

It took me months for to get back to where I could eat carrots and corn and peas. The smell would make me sick. In March, I gave up on school and my young wife and Utah and drove an old beat-up Studebaker back to Indiana.

Odd Jobs- We will get back to literature now

In Monterey, at the end of my shift as a bellman, I went back to the front desk to clock out and hang up the monkey suit, and the night auditor (the guy that works the midnight shift and does all the hotel customer accounting so it will be ready when you check out in the morning) was sitting there reading "Light In August" by Bill Faulkner. I said "How's Lena Grove these days?' Eventually, when the guy decided to leave to go back to school, he taught me how to be an accountant. And I became a hotel Night Auditor for a long time and a real day time accountant later. The paper I've handled. The women I've worked for who have handed me the paper.

Lena Grove:

                        Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill behind her, Lena thinks, ‘I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. A fur piece.’ Thinking  although I have not been quite a month on the road I am already in Mississippi, further from home then I have ever been before. I am now further from Doane’s Mill than I have been since I was twelve years old.

                        She had never even been to Doane’s Mill until after her father and mother died, although six or eight times a year she went to town on Saturday, in the wagon, in a mailorder dress and her bare feet flat in the wagon bed and her shoes wrapped in a piece of paper beside her on the seat. She would put on the shoes just before the wagon reached town. After she got to be a big girl she would ask her father to stop the wagon at the edge of town and she would get down and walk. She would not tell her father why she wanted to walk instead of riding. He thought that it was because of the smooth streets, the sidewalks. But it was because she believed that the people who saw her and whom she passed on foot would believe that she lived in the town too.

                        When she was twelve years old her father and mother died in the same summer, in a log house of three rooms and a hall, without screens, in a room lighted by a bugswirled kerosene lamp, the naked floor worn smooth as old silver by naked feet. She was youngest living child. Her mother died first. She said, “Take care of paw.” Lena did so. Then one day her father said, “You go to Doane’s Mill with McKinley. You get ready to go, be ready when he comes.” Then he died. McKinley, the brother, arrived in a wagon. They buried the father in a grove behind a country church on afternoon, with a pine headstone. The next morning she departed forever, though it is possible that she did not know this at the time, in the wagon with McKinley, for Doane’s Mill. The wagon was borrowed and the brother had promised to return it by nightfall.

Odd Jobs/ Working my way in the hotel world

Did you ever wonder what it's like to dress up in a silly outfit and try to do manual labor? These things were hot and sweaty even in the winter. Also, imagine if you will, a 6'7" Bellman. It was expected that I could carry many  bags at once, which I could. No one messed with me, and I was always very polite. Even when the European Royalty Bus Tour came through Monterey. They were retired princes and princesses and a few retired dukes thrown in and they tipped nickels and dimes. Even in '77 nickels and dimes were insulting. We were a partial residential hotel and so there were retired folk who lived in the hotel because their family didn't want them or they had outlived their family.  There was an eighty year old woman who come down to the lobby every Friday night all dressed up and sit, waiting for her mother to come pick her up. At ten o'clock she would go back up to her room. Mrs. Hitchox was bedridden and blind. I took her dinner every night. She had outlived her children and husband and there were no grandchildren. She had been in Moscow during the Russian Revolution. Her father was with the American Embassy. At 14, she was being courted by a very rich Russian Prince, but her family felt she was too young. When the revolution came, they had to leave and her family took the rail to China. Years later, in college in NYC, she found her Russian Prince driving a taxi cab one night.

You learn to hate the sound this thing makes.

One morning while I was still a houseman, I was striping beds and out plops a wallet stuffed with hundreds and a whole bunch of traveler checks besides. I was idealistic then. I knew if I counted it, I'd be tempted to keep the cash at least. I took it straight away down and turned it in to the manager. It turned out there was a thousand in cash and about another 2 in checks. It belonged to a cab driver from NYC who had hidden it because he had a hooker up to the room and didn't want to be ripped off. No reward, but the management decided I could be trusted, so they promoted me to being a bellman and promoted me again later.

My Beloved Publisher- A Response!

Dan,

Thank you for your e-mail and your question. The answer is that what you
are receiving for the one-hour with iUniverse is more than just the
opportunity to sign books. You will be featured in a well-known and
respected publishers' booth that is professionally staffed and designed,
with our staff not only providing you materials, but working the crowd
to get people to come have you sign their books. If you did that
yourself, with the booth, books, materials, press release and
distribution, fair tickets and banners, that cost would run around
$3,000. And you would be a one-person staff. I think the professionalism
and added credibility of being associated with iUniverse would be worth
the additional $1,000

I would be happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

Thanks,

Stephen Edds
Marketing Consultant
iUniverse
800-288-4677, ext. 5530
stephen.edds@iuniverse.com
 
Hmm, Let's see... $4,000.00 x 16 (the number of authors they are planning to book throughout the two days, I would guess) =$64,000.00.
For their professional booth. The hosts wear ties?  This ain't bad, I should start a vanity press and say I'm a professional. You want to know why I think iUniverse relocated to Bloomington- because its a liberal arts school. Just think about who you are paying to have your book edited by "Professionals."  When I was in Bloomington, working my way through school in 1970-71, I was making $1.75 an hour as a "Professional"

Odd Jobs- Forgot One

I was given an entire little town a few miles from Logan, Utah as my territory. This was the day job in between classes at Utah State. So I would wander the streets with my little kit and knock on doors. There were a lot of housewives in those days. I'd compliment them on their looks or how wonderful their house looked. I sold a case of wood cleaner/ polish by telling a lady how wonderful her woodwork was. There was a retired couple who who sit out at a table in their driveway and drink lemonade. They always gave me some and had me sit and do my speel. They bought very little- I think I was the afternoon entertainment. I'd go to the town square and eat my lunch under a big tree and talk to a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair who hung around there. After a couple of months, I realized the money I was making from the sales just covered my gas to get there and back and my lunch. So it was a bit of a waste of time, but it was a slow and peaceful little town that was quite pretty. It was basic 101 of sales. 

My Beloved Publisher

I looked on their Web Site to see the cost for this. $4,000.00 (or rather $3,999.00) so I wrote them an email back, asking if I can buy a entire booth for two days for $1,200.00 why would I want to buy an hour from them at three times the cost. They've not responded. If the rest of the world hasn't noticed, Xlibrus and iUniverse have the same address now, maybe they did all along and I just didn't notice. Bloomington Indiana - my home town. I had asked them in the first spring after I published with them if I could pay them to nominate me to the National Book Award. It took them a month to get back and tell me no. I guess that was just too crass, even for a vanity press who over charges for a book signing Present your book to more than 130,000 book lovers. Dan, Interact with thousands of publishers, agents, readers, bookstore buyers, librarians and media from all around the world at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. For the 2010 festival, a limited number of iUniverse authors will have an exclusive opportunity to participate in one of two book signing packages. With more than 130,000 book enthusiasts and professionals expected to attend, call us today and you can become part of the largest and most prestigious book festival in the United States. Choose from two iUniverse book signing packages at the LA Times Festival of Books: One-Hour Book Signing  You will have 75 copies of your book, as well as customized bookmarks and flyers to sign and give away for promotion One-Hour Book Signing and Author Video  Along with your book signing, give your audience a professionally produced look inside your story with a personalized Author Video filmed after your signing Call 1.800.AUTHORS today and we'll help you determine which book signing option will best fit your promotional goals for your book. Space is limited and expected to fill up quickly. Regards, Your iUniverse Marketing Consultants marketingservices@iuniverse.com 1.800.AUTHORS P.S. The 2010 LA Times Festival of Books will be held on the UCLA campus grounds on April 24 & 25. Find out more about the iUniverse LA Times  Book Signing options on our Web site. *Your title must be live in order to purchase a Book Signing at the LA Times Festival of Books.  Books in production are not eligible.

Odd Jobs: Unmade Beds

Ever wonder what really happens in that hotel room when you leave to go to your conference or go to meet a client? Of course not. Who gives a... The sweet Hispanic maid will take care of everything. I think they do now. But in 1976, there was the houseman. I had a canvas cart on wheels that could hold a lot. I would streak down a hall, jump into a room, throw all the wet towels from the bathroom into the middle of the bed, hank the linen up from the corners of the bed- (leaving the blanket and bedspread of course) and throw the whole bundle into the cart. I could strip 20-25 rooms in a half hour. (well, maybe not that quick) then the sweet little maid would come along and make the room up and clean. Think about it, next time you check in, throw yourself on the made-up bed. That bedspread probably hasn't been washed in a month, nor has the blanket on the bed. But you don't want to know that. The rest of the day for the houseman back then was vacuuming hallways, washing windows, cleaning lobbies and ashtrays, hauling garbage, stocking linen closets, etc etc. If you were in Monterey in 1976, you would go out with the other houseman at lunch and smoke a doobie and you would sail through vacuuming that hallway. Someone had to come and get me one afternoon, I was having so much fun.

Odd Jobs 9 (which I skipped)

The above is a cover from a children's book that I've not read, but we should all be heroes in our other life, right? The first day I went job hunting in New Orleans, the first place I walked into and applied for a job, they hired me. I thought I wanted to be a printer. Cary hired me because I was in his shop one day and were talking and he had worked as one when he first came to New Orleans ten years earlier. I didn't date much at first because your hands and fingers turn black and it doesn't wash off and I was embarrassed. Melissa didn't mind though. The following is from Chapter two of my unpublished novel: "Come To The Edge Of Them"

  "The pressman smiled sweetly as he punched the button to start the press. When David and his boss split up to make the trial run, Mel chose to follow David to the rear of the machine. They stood side by side and peered through the window at the moving belts which were empty as yet.

      "There's nothing wrong with being ignorant," Mel said.

      "What makes you think either one of us wants to listen to you?"

      "I know better then just getting on and getting off. A girl gave me this book. It's called the Karmasutra. Its got all these pictures of fancy stuff you can try."

      "I can't hear you," David said loudly, half-heartedly hoping the other boy would believe him.

      Several printed sheets appeared and floated down to the board. The press was shut off again.

      "What I was saying-"

      David jumped on the platform to get away from him. He wiped the top rubber roller clean by jogging it forward with the on button. The pressman passed while he was down on his haunches doing the bottom. Between the chugs of the press, he listened, expecting to hear his boss tell Mel to get lost, but they weren't even talking. His boss soon joined him on the platform to adjust the ink again. Mel had followed him.

      "I'll bet you know all about taking care of your wife," Mel said.

      "I'm not saying I don't know how," the pressman said.

      "I'll bet you like eating pussy. Maybe even sometimes when she's on the rag."

      "That's sick," David said.

      His boss glanced up at him.

      "You don't like a little ketchup on your hamburger?" he asked, grinning.

      "Both of you are sick. Its disgusting--" David stopped himself. They were getting a kick out of his queasiness. All right then, the joke was on him. He went around to retrieve his sponge from the water pail. He wanted to ignore them, but they were still grinning at him. His face was getting hotter and hotter. If they didn't quit soon he was going to do something.

      "We should leave old David alone," the pressman said. "You're in the way here."

      Mel thrust his hands into his pockets and ambled back to the platform of his own machine. Wetting down the plates, David started the press again. He went to the back end to await the sample sheets. After four or five had come through, the run was tripped off, and he returned to clean the rollers. He glanced at Mel and found the other helper smiling broadly at him, licking his lips and rubbing his large belly.

      "You re-chewing your breakfast?" David yelled at him.

      "Thinking about everything you can put ketchup on! Hot dogs. French fries!" He began licking his fingers.

      "You got a problem, kid?" The pressman shouted from the back of the press.

      Mel frowned and turned away from them.

      "Now we've hurt old Mel's feelings," the pressman said when he joined David on the platform. "You shouldn't let him get to you. He's just kidding around."

      David didn't answer.

      The man adjusted the ink flow keys and pulled an allen wrench from his hip pocket. He crouched down to twist the offset plates.

      "Anyway, there's a certain amount of truth in what he says. Everybody like some kind of ketchup on their hamburger." He looked up, grinning.

      "You're getting your rocks off, aren't you," David said.

      "Lighten up, kiddo."

      "I got my rights." David was trembling.

      "Wipe down those plates and wring the sponge out over your head while you're at it."

      David angrily finished the plates and threw his sponge at the bucket. Water splashed out on to the floor. The puddle was going to be a hazard in reaching the rear of the press, but he refused to clean it up. The son-of-a-bitch couldn't slip and fall down anyway. The press ran again, and when the man came back, he deftly sidestepped the problem, just as David thought he would. The makeready runs continued, the hopping up on the press, the cleanings, the adjustments, and then the hopping down to either end and the momentary rush of rollers. And then the hopping up again. They worked without speaking, both ignoring and avoiding the puddle as if it was a necessary part of getting the job done. Finally, worn down by the endless repetition of his chores, David grabbed some rags to sop up the spill.

      "You want to clean up--" his boss started to say, looking up from the latest printed sheet."

                                                                                           Printer's Devils from the 50s

Odd Jobs 10

                                Cary Beckham’s Bookshop And Why I loved It.( 1973-4)

            It was the desk. An antique dark brown student desk that Cary had bought at an antique auction. It was slanted so you couldn’t lay anything on it to stay. It was too low for the stool behind it where I sat so it was impossible to write on. And you couldn’t prop your feet up. It couldn’t be used for display. Yet I sat behind it for a good year pretending it was the official counter for the bookstore. I sat there and read and read and read, in between customers; and after I had alphabetized the entire stock in the store, within their subject category of course. It was a rare and used bookstore in the Irish Channel in New Orleans (not the one above, sadly). For St. Patrick’s day, I found all the green books in the store and displayed them in the front window. For Valentine’s Day, it was all the red books. Cary brought me business cards that had my name on them as the Manager. Cary brought me cookies and milk in the afternoon. We played classical guitar music on the stereo all day long. And… it was the partial set of Balzac that I carried home one night, it was the used paperback copy of “Omensetter’s Luck” by Gass, it was “The Alexandra Quartet”, it was Stephen Jones’ “Drifting” which I still have thirty years later and has spawned a entire bookshelf of personal narratives about river travel, it was a signed first edition of Faulkner I couldn’t afford and “The Haunted Bookshop.” It was James Agee. And it was the old men that would meet in the store and chat in English which would slide into Spanish which would slide into French. It was having tea with Lamont who wrote like Thomas Wolfe then. It was Jan who came to steal my glasses to get them repaired while I sat there blind for two hours. It was Ralph that came to discuss how much money I needed to live on if I agreed to ghostwrite Hazel Guggenheim’s autobiography. It was the feather duster and the dusty stacks of books in attics at estate sales. It was the sun in the window and the Cuban sandwiches I would make a dash for across the street. It was the little worn rose colored copy of “Evangeline” that no one else in the world cared about. It was fun.  

Odd Jobs 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8

I worked in restaurants from age 14 to age 21. Started out as a Car Hop (sans roller skates and skirt) and worked my way up to Soda Jerk, then Fry Cook, then Janitor, back to Fry Cook, then Assistant Manager, then dishwasher, then Fry Cook again. I left my home town at 21 swearing never to ever work in the industry again. Except for one weekend in the French Quarter for extra money and one weekend at a Fafalel Booth "At A Taste OF LA" in the 80s I've pretty much escaped. Its nice to see the same old shxx still goes on. I can still break an egg with one hand and still have the scar on my finger from trying to juggle knives.

Fry-Cook Disciplined

LINCOLN, NE—Controversy engulfed the fast-food industry Monday with the decision by Denny's to formally discipline Lincoln-area fry cook Raymond Ortiz for an alleged scheduling-policy violation.

Embattled fry cook Raymond Ortiz.

According to Denny's director of public relations Donald Bleiden, Ortiz committed his third major violation in less than 60 days when, on July 20, he failed to arrive on time for his scheduled shift at Denny's Store #794 at Highway 23 and Pflaum Road, showing up more than 27 minutes late after being personally telephoned by the assistant manager on duty.

Company policy, Bleiden explained, "dictates in no uncertain terms" that such a violation will result in a written warning, to be permanently included in Ortiz's personnel file, as well as "punitive reductions in preferred-scheduling privileges over the course of the subsequent four weeks." Ortiz will also have a demerit added to his six-month evaluation form.

Though the embattled Ortiz has accepted the disciplinary action upon advice from counsel, he vehemently maintains his innocence.

"I was totally cleared of having to work that weekend," Ortiz said. "I totally switched with Gus a full week before, so I could have off to go to my friend Doug's barbecue at his dad's cabin. I even worked the extra shift I traded for already, but that fucker Gus just blew it off and took off to go rock-climbing or some shit without even telling his roommates where he'd be."

Said Ortiz attorney Blake Whitcomb: "It is Gus who should face these charges, not my client."
Denny's officials insist that Ortiz's shift-trade was invalid, explaining that employees are not allowed to switch schedules without prior approval by a manager or assistant manager. The Ortiz camp claims the trade was approved by assistant manager Darryl Klembroke, who failed to enter it into the shift log and is, therefore, responsible for the shift change not being recorded on the official schedule.
The situation was further complicated Tuesday when Klembroke, a key figure in the dispute, unexpectedly quit without notice. Allegedly telling the entire day crew to "go fuck yourselves" and declaring that he hopes to "never see the inside of another cocksucking Denny's again as long as I fucking live," Klembroke is believed to have moved to Cleveland, where his sister lives. He left no forwarding address or phone number, and is unwilling to confirm or deny Ortiz's story.

"I had that shift covered, dammit," said Ortiz with a defeated sigh. "I reminded that bastard Klembroke to change it on the official schedule three fucking times, and he never fucking did it. Now, I get the blame."
Added Ortiz: "This whole place is bullshit. I oughta just go back to Arby's where I was appreciated."
Despite the questions surrounding the disciplinary action, many are lauding the "get-tough" stance adopted by Denny's, a chain some food-service-industry observers say has been "soft on insubordination" for far too long.
"It's about time somebody in the Denny's corporate-leadership hierarchy did something to address this worsening problem," said Frank Hobart, a longtime advocate of stiffer penalties for fast-food employees who violate company policy. "The recent annals of fast food are a veritable Ledger Of Shame, rife with examples of unconscionable disregard for proper procedure. Sadly, the vast percentage of these incidents go unpunished by managers and assistant managers at the regional level who are, unfortunately, more concerned with 'not rocking the boat' than with maintaining proper kitchen-team discipline."

Decrying many crew chiefs' unwillingness to enforce even the most basic of regulations, Hobart added, "Sadly, nowadays, even an adage as time-honored as, 'If there's time to lean, there's time to clean' has become just so much empty rhetoric."

Other, equally adamant voices disagree, however, saying that what is happening to Ortiz is nothing short of a miscarriage of justice.

"Sure, he can still try to get the disciplinary action removed from his file, but the Denny's appeal process is notoriously slow and inefficient," said Thom Winningham, chairman of Citizens For Ortiz, a national legal-defense fund dedicated to aiding the fry cook. "My heart goes out to the workers on America's fast-food front lines. Our boys in uniform face blistering heat, incompetent middle management and worse in their efforts to provide the rest of us with a fast, tasty, affordable meal. And, in most cases, they barely get minimum wage. In our society, it's always the ones who have never flipped a burger in their lives who are the first to complain that they could do it so much better. I say Ortiz's tragedy is our own."

Odd Jobs 2

I worked for three weeks as a temporary garbage man. It was good money as I recall, but long ago $1.85 an hour was considered good money for blue collar kid work. I worked the back end with this guy that had been a garbage man all of his life. I don't remember his name, but after every stop and load, he'd holler to his partner the driver, "OK Teal, go ahead!" The driver's name was Teal. The guy I was on the back with waved at every kid in every window. I lost my first wedding ring in the back of the truck, it slipped off and was gone. There was nothing to be done. I lost the second one in the Pacific Ocean, it just slipped off and was gone. The one I have now, I still have.

Odd Jobs

In 1971 I (got married) loaded up a pick-up truck and a U-Haul trailer and drive to Logan Utah and tried to work and continue college there. Working in Logan wasn't easy. I had to get whatever I could find. My wife was supposed to go to work for the Logan Park & Recreation Dept., but she hadn't finished her degree at IU so they couldn't hire her. She worked as a waitress. I went from thing to thing to make money. One of the jobs was to go to the slaughterhouse and stand beside these guys and watch for unborn calves. They would slide it over to me still in the sack. I would extract it and then cut its artery and collect its blood. (Because it wasn't born yet there were no little germs and such in its blood and they used it at Utah State for lab work and growing things. (Just the white blood cells.) I had to go separate the white from the red in a centrifuge. There are techniques for extracting blood from little critters that have never seen the light of day, but I won't get too graphic here. I don't think I did a wonderful job. I think I kept contaminating the blood cells. The smell of the place was what bothered me the most.

The Guys

This is an old picture. Four of the guys here have gotten their Eagle and are about to go to college or are in college. My son had gotten his about a year and a half before this picture which explains why he and I weren't in it. Still do stuff. Went last night and did a class for them for the Personal Fitness Merit Badge. I went camping with them a bit last year when we had a empty house. Probably go again when the house is empty again. I invite them all to go backpacking with me. Some of 'em came last year. I didn't get to do it when I was a kid because all the fathers in my troop quit and the troop was disbanded. I've had a great time watching my kid do it. I participated in almost everything they did for a good 5 years. Before my involvement and my involvement with basketball, I hadn't hung out with other men very much, except for my writer buddies. Most of the other people in my life were women. Guys can be good people. I've grown kind of fond of them.

Being Bossy

Ever had one of those days? I had an employee tell me I was full of you know what for asking him to scan 18 pages a week, so they would appear in a virtual file for us. I've always believed that bosses had the right to be the biggest idiots in the world. Why should I be any different? I once got into an argument over the phone with a expresso machine repair man about repairing a machine for my work. He was Italian and I was suddenly in this cultural behavior argument where the voices go up and up and there are hand gestures, etc. and being the adult that I am I realized I could just lower my voice and he would respond in kind. It works. We got the expresso machine repaired so my idiot bosses could have their cappuccino in the morning. I lowered my voice with this said employee and I offered him the choice to think about his reaction to my request. A thousand years ago when I was a security guard and a bouncer, I was told by someone so much wiser than me to never never ever block the culprit's access to the door. Sound advice, but before I gave said employee access, I removed it. Its all about power. I once stood a minute too long in a doorway blocking a VP because he was being a you know what. If you are six seven you can can do this stuff.
Said employee will be there at the pearly gates with all those other people I've been mean to in my life, and I'll have to explain why I was a boss.

More Books I've Never Finished

There was a book I started to write in high school that was about a hobo-ish folksinger who had ESP and could manipulate his audience and those around him and ended up in my home town where he found a girl who had the same gift but she thought she was mad and was being treated for hearing voices. There was an evil father trying to track him down to turn the kid's powers to some money making scheme. I think I wrote about 100 hand written pages before letting it die a natural death. I don't remember if I still have a copy.

It became a novel I did write called "Landmarks" which was written, but very badly. I only submitted it once and was told it would need major rewriting to be publishable. ("Landmarks" was written in long hand and I paid a typist to type it up.) "Landmarks" was about a draft resister returning from Canada to kill his father.

The was another 100,000 word novel "The Lone Seeker" about a alcoholic pressman in New Orleans and his friends and robbing a bookie and getting in trouble. I never rewrote it. I worked on it during the first 3 years of my marriage to Cynthia. It barely had a plot- both the marriage and the novel.

There was a stage play about a girl in a low rent apartment in LA who has the murder weapon from a killing in the building and is seduced by the murderer is his attempt to get it back. It has a couple of different names and was never finished.

There was a three part thing that had no title (Head, Heart & Soul) -something like that about a threesome in Louisiana where the woman is dying from a heart condition and the two men want to kill each other. My first writers' group in LA pretty much tore it to ribbons. Too stream of consciousness, I suppose.

There was about 10-15 short stories that I wrote in New Orleans that were supposed to fit together like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"- I was going to call it "Flies" Most of them didn't work, and most were never rewritten.

There are a few things that are not published that are finished, so we can't count them.

I had a meeting with an agent that I was connected with from the USC MPW program (this was '94) who asked me why I wanted to change careers at my age. I couldn't answer her.

      

Books I Never Finished

I seldom Do Not finish reading a book, but there are exceptions
"The Godfather" was unreadable, I was embarrassed by the stupidity of the main character in "The Idiot", I lost track of the characters in "Gravity's Rainbow", I lost "All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers" and "Sister Carrie" before I could finish them and "The Naked And The Dead" read like Mailer was writing about cartoon characters.

.

And this one just seemed like a lot words and no point and I didn't care enough to keep reading. Sister Carrie might be worth trying to read it again. Life is short. I have stuck it out with a lot of whales that may not have deserved the attention and muddled through enough bad writing to last a life time.

How It Feels

Finished the basic final draft last night. Still will tweek a bit and maybe redo a drawing. Think I might creat a bibliography of the real sources and one for the imaginary sources and label them as such. Three years of work. The chances are slim of getting it looked at, and probably worse for getting it published. Before I self-published the last book, I mailed out 120 query letters to Literary Agents and received one hand written response saying he liked my letter, but wasn't interested. Now the Agents don't even repond. And there are few publishers that will look at anything. Everyone I know thinks I'm good. So what is the problem?

I guess it doesn't matter.

No More Grew Some Pictures- Promise

How about the most horrible scenes in literature?

1. Maldoror: Where he murders the little girl in the park and cuts her up.
2. Confessions of Nat Turner: Where Turner kills the daughter of the white family

3. Salammbo: Some of the torture descriptions are pretty graphic- what they did to their enemies

The Real Dark Side

So,

You Google "Dark" and you get this:

Dark Side of the Net®

25 Oct 2009 ... Extensive link directory for dark art, literature, movies, music, news and community.
www.darklinks.com/ - Cached - Similar

 

which when you click on it - gives you this:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

---

Apache/2.0.54 (Unix) mod_perl/1.99_09 Perl/v5.8.0 mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7l DAV/2 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/4.4.0 mod_gzip/2.0.26.1a Server at www.darklinks.com Port 80

 

Goggle is so obviously not ready for us.

 

But Snakes / Legs can find this.

Perversity will find a way.

 

 

 

Lautreamont

The little young guy with Freud and Rand and Buckley was Lautreamont.

Lautréamont died at the age of 24 on November 24, 1870, at 8:00 am in his hotel. On his death certificate "no further information" was given. Since many were afraid of epidemics while Paris was besieged, Ducasse was buried the next day after a service in Notre Dame de Lorette in a provisional grave at the Cemetière du Nord. During January 1871, his body was put into another grave elsewhere.
In his Poésies Lautréamont announced: "I will leave no memoirs", and as such, the life of the creator of the "Les Chants de Maldoror" remains for the most part unknown.

Les Chants de Maldoror

Les Chants de Maldoror is based on a character called Maldoror, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken God and mankind. The book combines a violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery.
The critic Alex De Jonge writes, "Lautreamont forces his readers to stop taking their world for granted. He shatters the complacent acceptance of the reality proposed by their cultural traditions and make them see that reality for what it is: an unreal nightmare all the more hair-raising because the sleeper believes he is awake."
There is a wealth of Lautréamont criticism, interpretation and analysis in French (including an esteemed biography by Jean-Jacques Lefrère), but little in English.
Lautréamont's writing has many bizarre scenes, vivid imagery and drastic shifts in tone and style. There is much "black humor"; De Jonge argues that Maldoror reads like "a sustained sick joke."

The other two were Mohammed and ole JC