Bullshit

Newsletters Are the New Black

Author: jsomers October 8, 2016 2 Comments

The mysterious and ever-changing formula for riches in the writing world apparently skews heavily towards newsletter signups. How this works, exactly, is mysterious to me. So far I’ve figured this much out:

Launch Newsletter
Lure people into signing up
????
Profit!

Still, I have a newsletter now, and to avoid the ignominy of having said newsletter descend into chaos and dormancy, to avoid having my writer peers point and laugh at me and whisper behind my back have you SEEN his newsletter? Poor fellow hasn’t sent one out in ages and has a tiny mailing list! I’m going to have to keep thumping it.

So, if you haven’t yet signed up for the Jeff Somers Rocks You Like an (Email) Hurricane newsletter, why should you?

It will make us best friends. Benefits of being my best friend include:
- always being able to stop by for a whiskey;
- free pass to pet any of my cats (you can even take one home if you like, we got plenty);
- right to refer to me as “my friend Jeff Somers” and to create and wear T-shirts, buttons, or other paraphernalia referring to me as such
You’ll get free short stories, essays about writing, and other content that no one else gets. This includes previously unpublished writing, early or alternate drafts of books, and other arcana.
I promise no spam, political rants, religious theorizing, or personal opinions that are not hilarious, about whiskey and baseball, or other harmlessly entertaining things. No one cares what I think about politics, and I am eternally grateful that this is so.
Ask Jeff Anything. I’ll answer any question you have, sometimes on this wee blog, sometimes via video on my YouTube channel, occasionally by showing up your door to drunkenly yell at you.
Free stuff! I’m planning to offer a giveaway with every newsletter. These will be determined randomly, usually in a panic moments before I have to send out the newsletter. The possible giveaways include:
- Signed books (likely you’ll be able to request which book)
- Rare print versions of eBook-only publications
- Random stuff from my pockets or desk drawers
- Cash, if I’m desperate enough for attention
For example, the next newsletter will be out in November, and I’ll be giving away five super-rare print copies of the Ustari Cycle novella The Stringer, which you can only buy as an eBook right now. Giveaways will be open to every subscriber, but you do have to subscribe to be in the running.

So! Why not join the Super Happy Best Friends with Jeff and Other Benefits Mailing List? I mean, if you can’t be bothered to click the DELETE button just four times a year, to hell with you.

So, pass it on. And send me questions. Or demands. I’m open to anything, really, as long as we get more signups. You can find the simple, easy signup link in the right-hand column of this blog, or here.

Cheers,

Jeff

Ask Jeff Anything, Bullshit, Fiction, Free Short Stories, More Shit I Gotta Do

The Many Ways My Wife Tries to Kill Me

Author: jsomers September 29, 2016 1 Comment

They Call Me Limoncello Jefe

As every married person knows, the main goal of your spouse will always be to kill you. This isn’t malicious—they married you, after all, so chances are they have some affection for you—it’s more of a game. A fun, sexy game.

Every spouse is different, so the Death Game takes on different forms. My wife, The Duchess, for example—I used to think she was trying to kill me by shocking my system with Homeric feats of shopping, but I was wrong. As our recent trip to Italy taught me, she is trying to kill me by taking me on long, innocent hikes through the wilderness. The Duchess claims that in the “wooing stage” of our relationship I offered to go hiking with her as a way of proving my ardor and manliness. This doesn’t sound like anything I would say or would be able to say convincingly, so I have trouble believing it ever happened.

A QUICK FLASHBACK

As some of you may recall, a few years ago The Duchess and I took a fateful trip to the White Mountains in Vermont to hike with some friends. It was a cold, cold day and some shit went down. You can read the full story here, but the TL;DR version is that my knees hurt, we became disoriented and lost in the woods, and The Duchess came thisclose to just leaving me to be eaten by a bear.

At the time, I thought this was just a result of my own frailness and The Duchess’ tendency to panic when bears are rumored to be nearby. But after our Italian avventura, I’m not so sure. I think she’d trying to kill me.

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HIKE ON VACATION

Now, there are many acceptable and fine things to do on a vacation. Drink heavily, for example, secure in the knowledge that you don’t have to wake up early (or at all), and that losing your pants and running through the streets shouting SONNO MACARONI! is perfectly acceptable, or at least tolerated. You can eat until you pass out, you can lay around a beach, shop, see museums—you get the idea. The one thing you’re not supposed to do is work, or exercise, because if you do you’re not on vacation, you’re working. Or exercising. I mean, this is obvious.

Not to The Duchess, who planned our trip to Italy based around the idea of hiking. A lot. In fact, she planned to Go Ham on this hiking thing.

Now, I am an Eagle Scout. What this means in practice is that 30 years ago I did a fair amount of hiking; the longest hike I know I survived was either the Jockey Hollow trail, which is like 7.5 miles, or the time at Cub Scout Summer Camp our camp counselor got us lost and we walked for like 10 hours, so let’s say 100 miles because that’s what it felt like). And I do walk a lot in my everyday life. So I figured, okay, a little hiking infused with red wine, cheese, and pasta, no biggie.

We went to the Cinque Terre area of Italy, which is 5 old villages in the cliffs off the Mediterranean, linked by ancient goat trails. The distances aren’t horrific: 2 miles, 2.5 miles at most. Some people hike through all five towns in one day, in fact.

I have no idea how, because the one thing they don’t tell you about is the stairs.

My GOD, the STAIRS. On our first full day, we set out from the town of Vernazza to the town of Corniglia, about 2.5 miles. It actually wasn’t so bad; the stairs are just carved out of the dirt and set with rocks, which means they’re wildly inconsistent in terms of height and ease of scalability and kind of rough on your feet. And my delicate butt muscles didn’t appreciate them, but I did them, and when we finished the round-trip in the morning we sat down for a delicious lunch of pasta and wine.

And then The Duchess announced we would now hike to Monterosso, in the other direction.

The Vernazza-Monterosso trail is actually shorter, but it nearly killed me because the first portion is all uphill and is all stairs. Stairs after stairs after stairs. Already tired from the morning, my lunch turned into a ball of lead, I was forcibly reminded that alcohol is a diuretic, and my legs transformed into blocks of wood. It’s not a hard hike necessarily, but the steps were killer and I’d already hiked 5-6 miles that day. Plus, there were no taverns along the way, and The Duchess kept up a punishing pace, frustrated because as the day went on the trails grew crowded.

At one point, I realized I was being passed by a variety of people:

European men in sandals and flip-flops who bounded up and down the trail like it was a mildly dull bit of everyday exercise
Old people using walking sticks
Pregnant ladies
Ladies with babies strapped to their chests
Everyone, basically

So, slightly humiliating. But as The Duchess bounded ahead I had flashbacks to the Vermont debacle and realized this was a long game plot to kill me. She wants me to have a heart attack and perish in the woods, be eaten by bears, and forgotten.

I survived. An hour later, we were seated at a bar in Monterosso and I felt that it was possible to keep on living. Like Popeye’s spinach, booze gives me strength. And now I know: Next time The Duchess plans a vacation that involves hiking, charge up the flasks. I’m gonna need ’em.

Bullshit, More Shit I Gotta Do

Allora Andiamo a Italia

Author: jsomers September 20, 2016 1 Comment

GIVE ME YOUR RED WINE. ALL OF IT.

So, as you read this I am either on a plane drinking heavily or in Italy drinking heavily. Or possibly in an airport lounge drinking heavily. Wherever: Drinkin’. Because that’s what one does on vacation when that someone is: Me.

I am a man of various odd rules and requirements that often defy explanation, and one of those rules is that when I travel to a foreign country I must at least attempt to learn a bit of the language. This is partially because of an urge to be respectful to other cultures, partially because tourists who can’t speak any English at all irritate me so I would be something of a hypocrite otherwise, and partially because I very much want to be able to shout help me I am being eaten by a horde of mice when in foreign land. Also: no I am not an agent of the CIA stop electrocuting my nipples or please do not take my reluctance to eat that as an insult.

So, I’ve been trying to learn a bit of Italian. My efforts have been slightly stymied by general incompetence. I’ve wanted to learn a second language for a long time, and I’ve frankly been kind of amazed that I could have grown up in Jersey City, New Jersey and not learned a licked of Spanish. This general feeling of Fail Shame has been pretty oppressive, and whenever I meet someone who speaks English as a second language my jealousy and sense of inferiority is pretty epic.

Because it’s not like I haven’t tried.

AGRICOLARUM ALARUM

I went to an all-boys Jesuit high school, so I took two years of Latin. Latin! Believe me, 14-year old Jeff couldn’t believe it either. Absolutely none of it stuck, of course; I was far too busy memorizing batting averages and masturbating to actually learn anything, which is the Basic Fail of all American education. If you ask me, school should start at age four, then take a break at twelve through, say, thirty, then pick up again. Under the Somers Plan we graduate at age forty, broken and ready to sit at a desk for the rest of our sad lives before being made into Soylent to sustain those who come after.

But I digress.

I also took two years of Spanish, which should have been great, but I left school speaking less Spanish than when I started school. As a high school freshman I had a large complement of curses and insults in Spanish, when I graduated I knew nothing. At one point a teacher tried to convince me that my name would be Gofredo in Spanish, which was confusing; isn’t your name just your name?

So, after four years of letting some kid named Ian do my Latin homework and responding ¡No es bueno! to every exam question, I somehow graduated, but with no usable language skills at all. I can only conclude that I was a pretty cute kid.

Tais-toi, Chien Américain!

The Duchess is determined to travel the world despite the fact that the world is a terrible place, and despite the fact that I do not want to travel at all. I don’t even want to leave the house. I am so in charge of my own destiny, in fact, that I have traveled to several foreign countries despite my oft-stated desire not to do so.

We went to France once, and I spent months trying to learn some French. I worked at it, man, and by the time we arrived in Paris I was confident I had the sort of pidgin French that Americans have been relying on for years. Here’s how every single interaction went:

JEFF: French french french french french.

FRENCH PERSON: <sigh> Want to speak English?

Every. Single. Time.

Now, no doubt my French was awful. No doubt their English was excellent. Still, I remain enraged by these interactions. What’s the point of the immense weight of privilege I drag around with me everywhere I go if I can’t insist on speaking my half-assed French whenever I wish, forcing the poor citizens of France to adapt to my feeble communication skills?

SImilarly, when we were in Florence a few years ago I made an initial attempt at Italian, and upon arrival at our hotel I proudly introduced myself to the owner in Italian, or at least I thought I did. He smiled broadly, and said “Very good! Now we will speak in English.”

Fuckers.

Bullshit

A Million Ways to Fail

Author: jsomers August 31, 2016 1 Comment

How I Feel Most Saturday Mornings.

One of the most awesome things about writing has to be the almost infinite chances it offers you to fail.

Even if we stick to the slim piece of reality that mortal minds can comprehend, we have quite a list:

First, you can fail to even start writing that idea you have. It’s a nice, clean failure, but a failure nonetheless.
Then, of course, you can fail to finish it. I estimate I’ve failed in this manner about 5,000 times. That’s a conservative estimate.
Or you can finish it and then fail to do anything with the raw material.
You can fail to heed feedback, advice, or proofreading marks.
You can fail to show it around or submit it or make any other attempt to sell the piece or at least have it be read.
You can submit it, and fail to sell it. And fail and fail and fail to sell it.
You can sell it, and then fail to, you know, sell it.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And the glorious future world we find ourselves in offers even more ways to fail, in terms of promotion and social media. So now you can not only fail to write something, or fail to finish something, or fail to sell it, but you can also fail to be interesting or clever enough on Twitter. The failure involved in writing just one novel is monumental.

And you wonder why writers drink and talk to cats. Well, why they drink more and talk back to cats, anyway.

The worst part, of course, is that most of the time this kind of failure is necessary in order to write anything and then get it out there. In one of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker books, he has a thing about people learning to fly in which he describes it as throwing yourself at the ground, then distracting yourself at the very last possible moment so that you forget to hit it. And that’s writing, sometimes, most times: Throwing yourself at a mountain of failure and then, somehow, distracting yourself from hitting it at the last possible moment and sailing over.

And how do I distract myself from Mount Failure? You guessed it: Whiskey. And cats.

BOOM

BOOK FORT FTW

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Writing

“The Stringer” is Out!

Author: jsomers August 1, 2016 0 Comments

The Stringer, The Ustari Cycle #3, is out — 99 cents for a great story that returns to the world of Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags.

A frequent question is, Hey Jeff, why is The Stringer number 3 in the series? This is confusing as hell and now I’ve spent my last dollar on ice cream instead of your book.

First of all, I get that: Ice Cream is goddamn delicious, bro. Second of it, here’s how the numbering in The Ustari Cycle works:

1 – Trickster

1 – We Are Not Good People

2 – Fixer

3 – The Stringer

4 – Last Best Day

5 – The Boom Bands

The reason We Are Not Good People is both 1 and 2 in the series is because it was originally going to be two separate books (Trickster and Fabricator), but was combined into one. And Fixer, although it’s officially numbered as #2, is a prequel that should probably be considered 0.5. And we’re blessed with a confusing series numbering system as a result. Yay!

Now go buy The Stringer. Also, We Are Not Good People is still just $1.99 for eBooks.

Bullshit

Writing: Watch Out for the Forgotten Character Detail

Author: jsomers July 25, 2016 0 Comments

POOOOOTTTTSSS

So, Roadies, the new show on Showtime from Cameron Crowe is proving to be a Master Class in How Not to Write in many ways. The show doesn’t lack some charm, and the world of a tour crew with a major band is kind of interesting to see, but it’s amazing how far Crowe—who once had a golden ear for dialogue—has fallen in recent years. When was the last time Cameron Crowe made something people talked about in a positive way?

Roadies is populated by likable actors, which is the only reason, really, it’s watchable. And every episode offers an object lesson in writing mistakes. The example we’ll pull comes from the pilot episode, which of course has to do a lot of work to introduce the premise, the characters, the setting, and the season-long conflicts and storylines. And Crowe makes a fundamental, if minor (but irritating) error when he introduces the Quirky Character Detail What is Forgotten Immediately and Never Mentioned Again. This is an error that a lot of writers make in their stories and novels, so it’s useful to take a gander.

I AM QUIRKY AND ADORABLE, DAMMIT

In Roadies, Imogen Poots plays Kelly Ann, who has a junior role with the roadie crew. She’s supposed to leave for school in the pilot, but of course is seduced by the love and sense of family she feels with her co-workers to eschew higher education in favor of an adventure on the road—fair enough, a believable if not particularly inspired bit of motivation. Poots is, of course, adorable, and she plays Kelly Ann with a bit of measured intelligence; her expressions of doubt and suspicion whenever someone tells her something do a lot to make her character at least seem interesting.

Now, creating and defining characters is hard. It’s very easy to reduce every character down to a trait, or an ethnicity. In fact, a lot of writers start off with little more than that, and add in the details later. And sometimes, in an effort to establish a character before you’ve done the hard work with dialog and action to define them, it’s common to attach weird little details.

Now, weird little details can be inspiring when they react with dialog and action. The way Heath Ledger licked his lips as The Joker in The Dark Knight was inspired; combined with his statements, actions, and appearance, it was a wonderful little tic that underscored his squirrely energy. But this goes wrong when it’s the only thing that differentiates a character—but it also goes wrong when you immediately forget all about that quirky trait after introducing it.

In the Roadies pilot, it is established that Kelly Ann eats off of other people’s plates, a mildly rude yet quirky (oh god quirky) little tic. It’s mentioned explicitly as a reason another character doesn’t like her, and then there is a moment when Kelly Ann does it in a very obvious and ostentatious way, to drive the point home.

It’s easy to imagine that Crowe, faced with a character he’d made blonde, beautiful, young, and smart, needed some way to make her seem, you know, interesting. So he gave her this totally innocuous trait, and made sure we noticed it. And then he completely forgets all about it and the behavior is never mentioned again in subsequent episodes. And that’s annoying. It’s a dumb detail, but if you’re going to go through the trouble of putting a flag on it and making certain we notice it as a way of making the character interesting, then you have to remember it. Otherwise it distracts.

So, when writing, keep that in mind: Giving your character a gonzo detail to give them shape and a memorable aspect is fine. Just don’t forget you did it when you start Chapter Two.

Bullshit, Someone Else's Writing

Man Baby

Author: jsomers July 21, 2016 1 Comment

Artist’s Rendering of the Author

When I was a young’un, I was never, you know, the Cool Kid. I didn’t exactly have a tragic childhood or anything, but I was definitely aware in grammar school that I was a pudgy, glasses-wearing mascot for a lot of kids. I had friends, this isn’t a tragedy or anything, but there it was.

I got invited to a birthday party one weekend. I don’t know about you, but when I was like nine or ten getting invited to a birthday party was like the Social Event of the Season. Making it onto some other kids’ elite list was thrilling, and I was excited. It was in the summer, there would be a pool, and it was like 1,000 degrees out. My Mother, naturally, insisted I wear Church Clothes. I was mortified, but Mom insisted. No child of hers was showing up at someone’s house in play clothes.

Cut to: Jeff, the only kid wearing long pants and a dress shirt and shoes, sweating profusely. I didn’t get invited to a lot of birthday parties. I can’t swear that was the reason why, but … that was the reason why. That and the cursing and the habit of breaking into liquor cabinets.

Anyway, I digress. Cut to 2016, and I am a middle-aged married man (MAMM) and my wife, The Duchess, and I make plans with another couple to have dinner at a fancy shmancy restaurant. And the following conversation occurs:

DUCHESS: You’re not wearing … well, I assume those are clothes.

ME: Why not? They’re street legal.

DUCHESS: This is a nice place. Don’t you have anything pressed?

ME: … I do not know what that word means.

Needless to say, The Duchess, much like my Mother thirty-five years before, insisted on Church Clothes. I registered my vehement protest, but if the evening was going to end with me drinking Scotch and ordering a $50 appetizer, Church Clothes it had to be.

We walk over to the other couple’s house, and when the other husband walks out, he is also wearing Church Clothes. We share A Significant Look and spend the trip to the restaurant grumbling. Naturally, we walk in and the place is packed with very comfortable and happy people wearing shorts, T-shirts, and the like. We each turn to our wives and glower darkly, and spend the rest of the evening drunkenly threatening to take off our pants right there in the dining room.

This of course leads to the inevitable moment when we do take off our pants and are chased out onto the street, where we call an Uber and

What’s my take-away from this? It could be

I really have no idea how to dress. There is much evidence that this might be the case, including three open indictments against me in several states, or
The Duchess learned her Rules of Polite Society in the 1970s Texas Hill Country, which is like the 1870s everywhere else, or
I need to burn all my clothes except what I’m wearing right now so as to have no other options (except that won’t work because a) The Duchess will just march me to The Gap for a shopping spree and b) that means I’ll be wearing Superman Underoos to all my fancy literary events), or
I am a Man Baby and need constant supervision.

Actually, I don’t need to know. Thank you for your time, please forget this ever happened.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

Smug Bastards Can Go Pound Sand

Author: jsomers July 13, 2016 0 Comments

OH NOES SMUG BASTARDS!

I’ve never been what you would call a “hip” person. Or cool. I’ve never had my finger on the pulse, as it were; I tumble along, more or less lost in my own thoughts (you folks I’ve walked past on the street while you shout my name to no effect know exactly what I mean) and only occasionally surface to note the things around me. I’m more or less one step from living in my own fantasy world, and the only thing keeping me rooted to reality is probably whiskey.

In short, I’m blissfully unaware of most things.

My memory is also famously awful; my brain lives in the present, bro, and the past melts away and the future has no meaning. The memories I do retain tend to be powerful enough to gain some traction on the smooth, wrinkle-less vastness of my brain. One of the memories I came still summon up dates back to when I was about ten or eleven years old, and I just started to become aware of my social status. Up until then my identity had been wrapped up in my grades and the fact that my teachers thought I was adorable, and the opinions of my fellow children never really mattered; in my neighborhood I could beat all the kids in a footrace and thus considered myself King of the Block.

But then something shifted, and I realized I wasn’t King of the Block, I was a pudgy, glasses-wearing nerd. And this troubled me, because who wants that? So I began an incompetent and lazy campaign to make myself seem cooler, and part of this campaign involved the classic Jeff Somers strategy of pretending to be very knowledgeable about things all the other kids considered cool. And so, when challenged by a bullying classmate to name my favorite rock band — because this was back when rock bands were still cool, you see, which if you carry the two and divide by pi will reveal just how fucking old I am — I said Led Zeppelin, because I had vaguely heard the name before. Unimpressed, the kid demanded I name a favorite song, and, my knowledge of rock music exhausted, I was humiliated.

Now, since that day I’ve rectified both my knowledge of Led Zeppelin (favorite song: Black Dog) and my need for approval (somewhat) and am happy in my slightly obtuse existence. I have accepted myself and my limitations, even though this means I don’t get a lot of stuff. Like Pokémon Go. I barely understand what it is and have no desire to play it.

But, to paraphrase Voltaire, I will die to defend your right to play it.

The Smug Bastards

You know them: The killjoys who can’t stop announcing what they refuse to enjoy, or don’t consider interesting, or are mystified by. It might be Pokémon, it might be Game of Thrones. It might be Star Wars or sports or whatever — the only defining characteristic of the Smug Bastard is that they don’t share your enjoyment of something, and they wish — oh god how they wish, they wish hard — to let you know this fact.

The classic example has always been and will ever be the Person Without a Television. These days you could update that to The Person Without Any Sort of Screen. These folks have been waddling about for decades, proudly announcing that they are certainly not stupid and lazy enough to waste their time watching programs. They prefer reading books, collecting stamps, listening to the opera or some other Smug Bastard Approved form of entertainment.

These days, with pop culture fragmenting, Smug Bastards, much like bedbugs, are proliferating. It’s easy to fall into the trap; someone says “Hey, I love that show!” concerning something you’ve never heard of, and a cursory investigation reveals a cartoon whose premise seems silly to you. So you dismiss it. Now, you’re not required to like or even know about anything in this world. If you choose not to partake, no worries. It’s when you decide you have to let the rest of us know, in awful, horrible detail why you don’t care for it that you become a Smug Bastard, living in the damp, dark creases of the Internet.

The Dark Creases

Resting. Smug. Bastard. Face.

The Internet, of course, is where most of the Smug Bastards thrive. The disconnect, the digital wall between you and everyone else — plus the other Smug Bastards who rally around you — makes it seem almost okay to shit all over someone else’s enjoyment. You meet Smug Bastards in real life, of course. People who will dismiss all of rap music, for example, as unworthy of their attention, or people who love and praise the worst movies made before 1970 but despise everything since. But it’s on the Internet where the Smug Bastards thrive, clogging up your Facebook feeds with smug declarations that what you enjoy is stupid, or less worthy.

Fuck ’em all.

I’m just as guilty of Smug Bastard Syndrome as anyone else. In fact, where some folks have a Resting Bitch Face I often have a Resting Smug Bastard Face, and my kneejerk reaction to just about, well, everything is bored, superior disinterest. But you know, at least I don’t post it on the Internet or walk around announcing it. When with my fellow humans, when something like Pokémon Go comes up, I smile and feign polite interest.

Because that’s what you do in a society.

So, to repeat: Fuck ’em all. Have a good day.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

Weekly Recap July 8, 2016

Author: jsomers July 8, 2016 0 Comments

So, another week over, and what have I don? Not that much, as it happens. Still, once you start one of these sorts of Blog things, you have to keep it up or everyone stands around laughs at you because you can’t maintain even the simplest of projects. So here I am, are you happy? Are you happy judging me for my inability to even do a simple recap post on a weekly basis?

Ahem. At any rate, here’s what y’all need to know happened in The World of Jeff Somers this past week, because life moves pretty fast:

1. We Are Not Good People is still $1.99 for the Kindle (and Nook, Kobo, etc) version, and will be until July 31st. Kirkus called the book an “insistently entertaining novel, Somers creates a world of seedy urban crime that develops into a violent epic.” It’s also a good way to be ready for The Stringer, dropping in August for just $0.99.

2. I wrote a thing (right below this thing!) about how I hate several things that other people go crazy for, especially parades. If you agree with me that these things are terrible, please comment and support me and maybe we can defeat the evil Parade and Fireworks Industry. UNITE!

3. I posted this photo of my cat Coco Chanel and an expertly photoshopped cover of The Stringer:

coco_wangp

4. I wrote several things for the Internet:

For the Sci Fi and Fantasy fan, a roundup of the best books coming over at Barnes and Noble.
Also over at B&N, I wrote about five writers who were very likely killed because of their books.
I wrote an article called Steal Little, Steal Big for the September 2016 issue of Writer’s Digest about getting inspiration from other people’s writing. The whole issue is great, you should read it if you have writing and publishing aspirations.

And that about covers the main points. Until next time, I will be drunk and pantsless.

Bullshit

On the Dark Side

Author: jsomers July 5, 2016 2 Comments

Can’t Tell if the Cop is a Costume or Not

Increasingly, we live in a world where shared, universal experiences are fewer and further between. Where once you could count on a few tens of millions of people watching a TV show with you—and often at precisely the same time—these days DVRs and streamed video means you can watch things literally years after they make their cultural splash, and even if you do watch them at the same time as just about everyone else, chances are a much smaller number of people are watching it with you.

Which leads to the most ridiculous of all ridiculous First World Problems: Trying to find a TV show everyone at a dinner or other gathering has watched completely in order to have something to discuss passionately. It’s a lot harder than it should be.

Cranky and Humorless

It also highlights one of my own problems: I hate many things that most people love.

As I ease on down into middle-aged crankiness, I am increasingly comfortable openly admitting to absolutely hating things I am expected, for some reason, to love. It’s like politics: Have you ever had a total stranger just suddenly start talking to you about their batshit political beliefs because they simply assume you’re one of them? Like, you’re chatting with a neighbor on the street and they suddenly unload a torrent of anti-Obama invective, and you’re standing there wondering what it is about your specific T-shirt and shorts combo that somehow projects I AM AN INSANE RACIST?

I feel that way when people discuss any of the following activities, which I am somehow weird for not enjoying:

Live music. Fuck concerts. I went to a lot of them when I was a kid because it was just what one did. I’ve always despised the experience, though. Crushed, shoved, expensive drinks, and music that sounds a millions times worse than the carefully recorded and engineered versions. These days I’d usually rather have my feet cut off than go to a concert.
Parades. Sweet baby jebus, parades. A slow, grinding assault on my time here on Earth, a parade is literally a way of measuring off how much of your life you’re wasting that day. Unless you’re in the parade, possibly carrying one of those batons that you pump up and down in the air while leading everyone. That’s a different story. And basically how I spend my Sundays, although so far no one has spontaneously followed me as I march around, which has surprised me.
Fireworks. Our country’s recent birthday reminded me just how boring and awful fireworks are. People who enjoy setting off fireworks are sociopaths, and people who enjoy watching fireworks are people who believe entertainment literally equals staring at bright shiny things for fucking hours.
Travel. The Duchess will burst into tears and punch you in the face if you ask her about my aversion to travel. The Duchess wants to go everywhere, even places where the local residents are getting into leaky boats and risking dangerous trips to escape from. I want to go nowhere. The idea that the future of mankind somehow hinges on broadening my understanding of other cultures is debatable, and travel is uncomfortable, exhausting, and just makes me really, really want to go home. Of course, since I am married to The Duchess, the travel continues, until I die, most likely while strapped into an economy seat heading god knows where.

It’s freeing to be old enough and mature enough to just admit I hate these things and not worry much whether it makes me weird, even if I suspect the world has a few more concerts, parades, and fireworks in store for me, because the world is cruel. In the mean time, if you see me marching up and down in full-on parade regalia, please do join me.

Bullshit