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So, here it is, I Like Turtles: 54 flash fictions and prose poems, penned between 2008 and 2014. Pretty much everything I did in that time, except that ones I lost foolishly when I was writing several flash pieces per week over at The New Absurdist. I didn't have any back ups of a lot of stories I did there (ALWAYS back up your stuff in several formats, kids! Even if you don't think it is going to be important at the time). Here is a short list of what I lost:

Street Occurances
A Chance Encounter You Want to Avoid
Something about Carter
Face of a Dictator
Is There Pork in the Wall!
Dinner with the Duke
Habble de Goid
Unlike a Knife Thrower
Outsider Art
Tuesday Before
Hello, Chauntecleer
A Letter to Elicit Enthusiasm from Our Youth
Everything in Threes
The Next Voice I Hear
Shards of Sanity
Harper Menace Makes It Look So Easy
Touching
Leavening
Chalky's Neighborhood Illnesses
This Is What You Do When You Meet a Celebrity
Philosophy of King
Grandpa is:
My Blind Date
Morris's Book
My Life's Work
For Some Reason
Excuses
The Solution to a Cozy Mystery
Past Time for Pastimes
The Temper Tantrum
Another Story by Christy Leigh S...
How to Cook My Food
Ben's Occupation
Mama Don't 'Llow (Video Game Jokez!)
Crap, This Blind Man Passed Away Right in Front of Me!
This is Your Kid� On Television
Preparations for a Scary Party
Sleeping Through Space
The Porn Miners
The Shot Nazi
Ten Dollar Night
The Gull Who Had Lettuce
Sister Seagull
Screenplay Notes by Cleamont Malvern
Karma Poetry
Familial Lore
Chess with the Mailer Daemon
Your Fire Will Burn


Now, probably only half of those are stories I really think were worth saving, but that's a SHITLOAD of loss that could have be prevented by simply emailing myself copies of the stories. (A few of these I had backed up onto an ex's computer while I was living with her, but we don't talk, and I doubt she'd give them to even if they haven't already been deleted).

So, I lament the loss of these tales, but I celebrate the collecting of 54 others. I think I Like Turtles serves as a good survey of the many modes of my experimentalism and serves as a tribute to my biggest influences, namely Franz Kafka, Donald Barthelme, Eugène Ionesco, Lord Dunsany, Kelly Link, Lewis Carroll, Italo Calvino, Brian Evenson, Ray Fracalossy, D. Harlan Wilson, Daniil Kharms, Paul Bowles, Leonora Carrington, Jorge Luis Borges, Monty Python, and stuff like Liquid Television and Adult Swim.

And here it is, the actual TOC. You ready?

When Television Ends
The Advantages of Smelling Bacon at the Moment of Death
A Phone Call from Ionesco, Act I
Funereal Disease
The Marvelous Marble Midget and the Mites
The World Wasn't the World Anymore
Make a Better Brody
The Rape Cake
Brain Harvest
Grape Will Be Fine
Holy Olivia Orphanage
A Restroom Incident Amidst Gripping Conversation
His Blind Friend Daniel
Leg Shopping
Astounding Adventures of Cyril Bright Chp. XI: A Place Beauteous of Which I Dare Not Speak
Look-Alike
A Phone Call From Ionesco, Act II
Diff'rent Strokes Fan Fic #1: The Look-Alikes
Band of Bass
The Weeping Consort
Getting Plugged In
The Special Doctor
Hell Block
Wet Land
The Missing Edge
Cop Boxer
Transsexual Meth Addicts with Marshmallow Eyes
It Happened by Mistake
The Tortoise in the Hair
Astounding Adventures of Cyril Bright Chp. XXIII: A Meeting with the Chancellor of Mysteria
The Russians
James Franco v. Shia LaBeouf
The Fellow on the Balcony
A Public Luncheon
Life (The Car Model, Not the Thing You Live)
The Trouble with the Bleeding Hearts
Sorcerer or Genius
Where Babies Come From
Fat Cat
The New Absurdist
Poor November
Astounding Adventures of Cyril Bright: Chp. XXXXII: A Change of the Lighting and of Fortune Also
Blood Poison
Last Night with the Marvel
What It Means to Mow
Bad Days
Geordio’s Rooster Flock
Sweat Bees
This Year’s Exhibition
Barbarus Hellstorm
Window in the Wife
Writing in Tongues
A Phone Call from Ionesco, Act III
A Vision of the Future

Last night I was watching an episode of Off the Air, an Adult Swim show that pieces together short segments of mostly non-verbal videos. It's psychedelic and absurd. My brother says to me, "Why are you watching this drug shit when you aren't on drugs? It's made for people who are really high or on hallucinogens."

Many of you don't know me well, so I'll state now that I've never been a very big drug user. I've had a few experiences, but basically, I'm not a drug guy.

So what's the appeal of psychedelia to the non-drug mind? First, we'll need a definition of the term "psychedelic art." And the problem is that there are at least two in common use.

1. Art, either visual or sonic, made to be experienced while on drugs that incorporates elements that are intended to appeal to the brain while on drugs. Think black light posters and trance music.

2. Art, either visual or sonic, made to evoke the experiences of the mind while in a drug-state, and which generally attempts to recreate the illusions, hallucinations, and delusions associated with psychedelic states.

Stuff that fits definition number 1, I don't particularly have much use for because I'm not very often on drugs to be able to enjoy it, and these things are not made to appeal to the non-drug mind. Stuff that fits number 2, I have A LOT of use for.

But, you devil's-advocate to me, how can the non-drug mind appreciate stuff that intends to replicate psychedelic drug effects? This is fairly easy to answer, even though it is frequently misunderstood. All of the weirdness that drugs bring out are already in the workings of the mind. When you are on a psychedelic drug it makes your brain less able to filer the information it is getting in the "normal" ways it wants to perceive things. But you are, at any point in your sober life, capable of seeing an object and mistaking it for something else, seeing a random pattern and having your mind turn into something concrete (like a face), hearing a word and having it turned into some other concept in your brain. Circuits get confused of their own accord. You know what that's like even without ever touching any mind-altering drugs.

Your brain is full of weirdness all the time. But it is usually capable of realizing how weird that weird stuff is, and discarding it in favor of useful information that will help you pay your bills, stay out of fights you can't win, and generally survive and stuff.

For an even better example of how fucked your brain is, take your dreams. Your brain is creating and warping alternate realities ALL THE TIME. Drugs just intensify this natural ability, or they block out some aspects of the big picture so you focus on things in a way you normally would not. And THIS is the purpose of psychedelic art (2): to tap into that alternate consciousness that is always with you.

Now, certainly using hallucinogens, deleriants, and dissociatives can give you very interesting experiences that you might never have without their use. And people who had at least a few psychedelic experiences are more capable of producing psychedelic art, and are likely likely to enjoy it. But psychedelic art (2) is a means by which someone with that drugged-out wisdom can transmit their experiences to those who wish to learn how to tap into an alternate sort of consciousness.

I love psychedelic music. I love Off the Air. These things allow me to use my brain in a way I wouldn't normally be using it. And this is a very valuable tool of the surrealist, if you ask me. This is why I don't see the continuum of weirdness as easily divisible into discreet categories like Absurd, Surreal, Irreal, or Psychedelic. When done well these things are compliment one another and form a seamless tapestry of the bizarre.

Pre-con Gwar show:


Kevin L. Donihe, Vince Kramer, and me.

The start of the Con:



John Skipp, Cody Goodfellow, Michael Kazepis, and me.



Mid con madness:


Brian Allen Carr hugs me tight as Jeremy Robert Johnson's disembodied head emerges from his beer.

Ultimate Bizarro Showdown:


Karl A. Fischer, Laura Lee Bahr, Douglas Hackle, The Scream, and Danger Slater assist me in my performance by singing the chorus of Ratt's "Round and Round" with me.



Post-con space drinks:


J. David Osborne, Michael Allen Rose, Sauda Namir, me, and Vince Kramer.

I had the opportunity to take part in an event hosted by Raw Dog Screaming Press in Baltimore, MD on Oct. 24. It was a Bizarro Halloween event, primarily to honor the 20th anniversary re-release of Michael A. Arnzen's Grave Markings. Also reading were K. Ceres Wright, J. L. Gribble, B. E. Burkhead, and Nathan Rosen. Great bunch of people. Lot's of fun weirdness was had that night, I tell you.

Here's my reading from my work in progress The Haunted Monster.

I've finally broken free of genre fiction all together. So of course, I'm starting my own genre. It's called Trumpet Rock.

FAQ: What is Trumpet Rock?

Trumpet Rock is a genre of literature that doesn't give a fuck what you think about it. It doesn't even want you to read it. It's happy just existing on someone's hard drive, never to even be blogged or self-published. If it thought you were good enough to read it, it would be all brash and in your face, like Trumpet Rock, but since you are too much of a pussy you'll just have to guess what it's like. Fuck you for even wondering, you turd. You make me sick.

For those who don't know, I'm a Marylander. I've lived right outside of Baltimore all my life.

So, we've had at least two popular cop shows set in Baltimore. Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire. Both of these were decent shows, with the Wire being significantly better than Homicide by virtue of having a much higher budget and HBO format.

Interestingly, Homicide featured characters with the Baltimore accent not at all, and The Wire just barely. The Wire at least coached all the actors to not say Bal-tee-more, with varying degrees of success. Robert F. Chew who played Proposition Joe had an authentic accent as a long time resident of Baltimore. And the older gray haired guy who oversaw the briefings had an authentic accent, but he wasn't a very major character, so much so that I can't even google up who that actor is or whether he's really from Baltimore or not.

So, it's surprising that Kathy Bates decided to use a Baltimore accent for her bearded lady character in American Horror Story: Freak Show. Upsettingly, she does a horrible job of it. But the fact is that even if she would have nailed it, people still wouldn't know what kind of accent it was supposed to be. Baltimorean is the accent that no one in the country knows where it's from. It's really not represented in film (save some John Waters) or television at all. I saw people guessing that she was supposed to be from Wisconsin or Philly (which is really not THAT far off, but still not really close). My mother, who has lived her whole life in Maryland, thought she was supposed to be doing an English accent (and this is also not far off - the Chesapeake accents are very closely tied to West Country English).

Kathy Bates, I love you, but your accent is distractingly bad.

I was shocked earlier today to discover that I was not off work tomorrow, but off Thursday. That sent my whole week into a spiral of having no idea what I'm going to do with myself even more so than usual.

But then Jeremy Maddux posted something about "weird for the sake of weird" on facebook.

"Weird for the sake of weird" is a completely meaningless criticism. It is the kind of thing that people say who do not want their expectations violated, have little or no imagination, or who think they are better than you because they have perfected the dosage ratio of weirdness-to-normalcy.

It is the kind of thing people say who go to school for a very long time to learn how to write just like everybody else in order to sell 10 copies of a book that all their friends give high marks in literary journals, but that the unwashed masses will never even hear of, let alone pick up and read.

It is the kind of thing that pop writers you'll find on the shelves at your local supermarket tend to say about work that scares them with its ambitious disregard for formula or "reader expectation."

It is the kind of thing that people insecure in their intelligence say about stories they don't get.

But weird for the sake of weird is no less worthy, enjoyable, or artful an endeavor than "funny for the sake of funny," "romantic for the sake of romantic," "cowboy for the sake of Western," or "teenage dystopian romance for the sake of pissing off Jeff Burk."

It takes only a cursory glance at the history of anti-realist movements in the arts to see that "weird for the sake of weird" is basically a staple. From the Surrealists to the Cubists to the Decadents to dada to the Freak Scene to the Futurists to the Czech New Wave to the Theater of the Absurd to OBERIU to No Wave to the Aktionists. They all wanted to do something weird.

Why could this possibly be? Why would anyone want to be weird at all? Probably because artists tend to want to confront their audience with things that make them uncomfortable, to challenge conventional modes of thinking, to defy ever more inbred expectations of what can be accomplished in paint, on film, or in print.

Think about this for a second: Everyone who is likely reading this blog grew up in an era when genres ruled--and it is only getting worse (see: Zombie and Vampire as GENRES). You know what you are getting with Horror, Science Fiction, Action, Fantasy, Crime, Romance, Thriller, Mystery, and Literature. When these genre lines blur, it is usually in self-conscious, highly controlled doses that lend to easy marketing. But what the new generation of weirdos want to do is to rebel against those ingrained engrams of what has come before, what has been shoved down their throats, what is considered safe and marketable under conventional models. This can't be accomplished by a simple juxtaposition of Sci-Fi tropes on top of a hard-boiled Crime plot. There are still rules there and still genre expectations to be met. And while genres and simple cross-genre works are all fine and good, they are, without a doubt, limiting. Just scan the shelves of your local Borders and tell me how many books are likely not to be rehashed crap you can guess the end of based only on looking at the back of the book description.

Weird for the sake of weird is really the only place left for (in)sane people to get anything outside the mainstream box. It's the only means to shock the sleeping mind back to life, like that inner monkey that Peter Gabriel warned us about so many decades ago.

Get out there and do your weird thing in the way that only you can. Don't listen to idiots who think all writing succeeds or fails on the same scale.

I'm totally dragging my feet putting together this flash fiction collection, so to tide everyone over, here is

Barbarus Hellstorm

A: Hey, I'm working on my screenplay. It's my best idea yet.

B: Oh, really? I'm skeptical.

A: Why skeptical?

B: On second thought, I'm not skeptical, because it wouldn't be hard to beat all your other ideas.

A: My timing was just off. Anyway, my "Birthstone" idea is basically what they made into that movie Changeling.

B: A) That was based on real events and they happened before your "Birthstone" idea. B) It wasn't a very good movie.

A: So do you want to know my new screenplay idea or not?

B: While I drink my coffee, I will indulge you. Fire away.

A: Okay, it's a sequel to Braveheart called "Braveheart II: Barbarus Hellstorm."

B: Wallace dies at the end of the first one.

A: Yeah, but his spirit doesn't die.

B: Ghost story?

A: Allow me to continue. The year is 2011. A young Scot played by, let's say, Russell Crowe--

B: Who is Australian.

A: Yes, just like Mel Gibson.

B: Who is an American who lived in Australia for many years.

A: Anyway, the point is this young Scot--

B: Russell Crowe, not all that young, either.

A: Younger than Gibson.

B: Not by much.

A: Not important. Forget about Crowe a minute. This young Scot believes he's possessed by the spirit of William Wallace, and he goes on a rampage killing all these English guys whose ancestors fought Wallace in the first movie.

B: Is this told from the viewpoint of the crazy Scot or is it a mystery?

A: Both. It's from his viewpoint, and you don't know if he's really possessed or not. I kinda leave that open to interpretation.

B: So, basically, this has nothing to do with Braveheart.

A: It's a sequel. It's Mel Gibson's ghost.

B: William Wallace's.

A: Yeah, that's what I meant, of course.

B: So why is it called "Barbarus Hellstorm?"

A: That's what the young Scot starts to call himself.

B: The guy who believes he's a reincarnation of Wallace calls himself "Barbarus Hellstorm?"

A: Not a reincarnation. He thinks he's possessed.

B: Why Barbarus Hellstorm?

A: Sounds awesome doesn't it? It's a name he gives himself because he's a killer, like that guy in the Bible.

B: What guy in the Bible?

A: Barbarus.

B: There's a Barnabas and a Barabbas.

A: Which one was the killer?

B: Barabbas.

A: Barbarus sounds better.

B: Hey! I have an idea for you. Why not make the guy possessed by both the spirits of Barnabas and Barabbas? The year is still 2011. He's still a young Scot, but he goes around murdering Roman Catholics and telling them the truth of the Gospel along the way. And he calls himself Barbarus Hellstorm, because he's God's judgement on Earth.

A: Wow! That's not bad. I wonder if I can get Mel Gibson for the lead.

B: Why Gibson?

A: It's going to be really hard to sell it as a sequel to Braveheart without him.

S. J. RES. 19

``Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political
equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral
process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits
on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to
influence elections.
``Section 2. Congress and the States shall have power to implement
and enforce this article by appropriate legislation, and may
distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other
artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such
entities from spending money to influence elections.
``Section 3. Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant
Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the
press.''.

Translation: The sitting government gets to decide how much money their opposition for re-election gets to spend. How could this possibly go wrong? I mean, the word "reasonable" is right in there.