Bullshit

Monday is Guitar Day

Author: December 13, 2010 0 Comments

Epiphone Les Paul CustomYou might think what with writing incredible novels, putting out my own biannual zine, and doing costumed Superhero work at night (I am, it can now be revealed, the Pork Avenger), I wouldn’t have time for other pursuits. Yet I sit at home in my cave-like office and actually compose and record songs on my wee guitars. That’s right! It’s time for moar geetar music from Your Humble Author. Download them and weep:

Song320
Song322
Song324
Song325
Song327
Song329
Song333
Song334
Song335
Song337
Song338
Song342
Song344

The usual disclaimer: 1. I admit these are not great music; 2. I claim copyright anyway, so there; 3. No, I cannot do anything about the general quality of the mix, as I am incompetent.

Bullshit, gee-tar

Tuesday is Guitar Day

Author: September 28, 2010 0 Comments

The Voices in My Head Demand that I post the most recent songs I’ve recorded with my shovel-like hands and, er, my guitar. Plus drum loops. And a distinct lack of shame. So, without further ado or any chance for y’all to protest or talk me out of it, here’s the latest batch:

Song303: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song303.mp3

Song304: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song304.mp3

Song306: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song306.mp3

Song307: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song307.mp3

Song309: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song309.mp3

Song310: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song310.mp3

Song311: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song311.mp3

Song315: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song315.mp3

Song316: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song316.mp3

Song317: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song317.mp3

Song318: http://www.jeffreysomers.com/blather/song318.mp3

The usual disclaimer: 1. I admit these are not great music; 2. I claim copyright anyway, so there; 3. No, I cannot do anything about the general quality of the mix, as I am incompetent.

Bullshit, gee-tar

4 Reasons “Terminator Salvation” Made Jeff Angry

Author: August 9, 2010

As happens more and more often these days, I did not see Terminator: Salvation in theaters. First of all, it didn’t last as long as I thought it would – it wasn’t as big a hit as I’d expected it to be – and second of all there was something in the trailers and advertisements that made it seem flat to me, lifeless. So I waited a year and recently caught it on pay per view, and man, am I glad I did. This movie was one of those odd films that isn’t exactly bad so much as it quite simply made me angry. Spoilers ho, but here are the 4 reasons this movie made me really mad:

ONE: THIS MOVIE SHAT ALL OVER ONE OF THE COOLEST SF MOVIES OF ALL TIME. Now, sure, Terminator 3: Rise of the Ridiculous shat all over it too, but for some reason that didn’t incense me. T3 was simply a bad movie – it was still kind of fun watching Arnie doing his Terminator schtick, and it tried to honor its heritage. Salvation treats the terminator mythos as a collection of props to blow up, a collection of one-liners to spray at the nerds in the audience for gut fist-pumps, and a vehicle for Christian Bale’s increasingly creepy Action Man Persona/Voice. There’s absolutely no attempt to match the previous movies for tone, atmosphere, or even vision of the future. They namecheck the famous lines, the occasional detail (You Could be Mine, e.g.) but the movie is a sterile, underconceived horror.

TWO: THE WHOLE PLOT IS JUST A COLLECTION OF SET PIECES. Seriously, the kind of ridiculous story takes up about four or five minutes of screen time; the rest is just a collection of action sequences stitched together. Every time there’s a quiet moment with people talking, Skynet robots show up in awesome scale to kill and hunt, and the next ten minutes is just running and screaming – the best part being the screamed exposition as characters flee the huge Terminators, spouting definitions and explanations. This is even lampshaded when they introduce a seemingly interesting old woman as a character; She appears to be at least partially leading a group of desperate human survivors who have made an old gas station their HQ, complete with fresh fucking vegetables stored in the basement. Sure, why not. Still, the old woman, and her apparent authority with these desperadoes, is at least interesting. Who is she? How come these well-armed people listen to her at all?

Guess what? You never find out! A damn thing about her! Moments after she’s introduced, she’s scooped up by a Terminator and a mindless action sequence ensues. You see her again, in a weird twist, but nothing is ever explained about her. I mean, shit, if the whole encounter was just an excuse to calm the audience down so they jump when the hella-huge Terminator shows up, why even bother with the interesting details? Just put your standard-issue Mad Max type in charge, and leave it at that.

The whole damn movie is like that. Thirty seconds of plot and then … HOLY CRAP, TERMINATORS! RUN RUN RUN!

THREE: WHAT PLOT THERE IS STANKS. Now, you might think a movie where the entire premise has been explained in detail in prior movies would be a snap to plot out. And you would be right. Somehow, they fucked this one up. The whole plot is basically a scheme by Skynet to lure John Connor to his doom in the most elaborate and insane way possible. Granted, the crux of all the Terminator films has been Skynet’s inability to defeat Connor and ultimately the whole human race, driving it to elaborate schemes. Sending a robot back in time to kill his mother is, in fact, a ridiculously elaborate scheme – but it does have a certain directness once you fudge the whole time-travel thing: Terminator goes back (in time) to murder Connor (remotely, by murdering his mother before she can birth him). This scheme involves time-travel in a much flimsier way, and yet is so indirect and convoluted it’s a wonder a machine with a brain the size of the universe thought it might work.

The one thing I think of that makes it even possible is that Skynet, with infinite resources and clock speeds to plot, simply launches every plan it conceives that has a 1% chance of working or better. This would explain a lot, actually – Skynet is launching hundreds, thousands of convoluted bullshit plots against humanity every second. We’re just watching the tiny percentage that worked for whatever reason.

Anyways, even if you’re willing to swallow the ridiculous premise and twist of the film, once Connor is, in fact, trapped by this plot, what does Skynet do? Send a thousand robots to kill him? Fill the whole complex with poison gas? Nuke its own complex simply to destroy its human nemesis? You’re watching a better movie. It instead allows him to run around free long enough to set all the human prisoners free and hook up with allies. Then, when Skynet says, oh yeah, him, I ought to kill him, it sends exactly one Terminator after him. Without a weapon. Sweet fucking lord.

4. The ending. Sweet god in heaven, the ending. A heart transplant. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME.

I’ve read that the original ending had Connor die, and the cyborg Terminator Marcus being re-skinned with Connor’s visage to take over his legacy, and that there was outrage and horror and the filmmakers changed their minds. That other ending, if true, isn’t perfect, but it does have a certain appeal to me – the irony of humanity being saved, in the end, not by the screwup kid we met in Terminator 2, but by a Terminator, confirming that the Terminators were the heroes of the series all along. Kind of neat. Instead, we get an in the field heart transplant. Oh. My. God.

All right, after that, I ought to admit one thing I truly liked: Arnold’s cameo. Sure, the timeline is a bit muddled by now, and, yes, the whole idea of building bulky, slow humanoid robots to hunt down people is a little weird when you can build incredibly fast, deadly motorcycle terminators by the score, but seeing Arnie’s 1984 face and body going implacably after John Connor was pretty fricking cool.

Except … uh oh … that makes me think of …

5. THEY EVEN SCREW THAT UP, because there was absolutely no play on the fact that the man running for his life from Arnie in these scenes has seen this Terminator model before. That ought to be a fucking mind-screw – decades after you learned you mother wasn’t crazy to predict the end of the world, after Arnold shows up several times during your life to save you, after you bonded with the machine as a fucking father figure, then here he is again, perfect, new, and trying to murder you. There’s no implication whatsoever that Connor remembers a damn thing. It’s solely in there for the audience.

Whew. I’m exhausted. This movie made me want to destroy things. Thank you.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Someone Else's Writing

Ask Jeff Anything

Author: July 16, 2010

I’ve got an idea: It’s simple but could be fun. I get questions via email on a pretty regular basis, ranging from the sedate and expected (When’s the next book coming out, aren’t those bastards at Orbit going to have a trade size of The Terminal State) to the disturbing (Would you mind sitting in the other chair I can’t get my telescope that far to the left, or Is that really you speaking to me in my dreams telling me to burn down Citi Field?) I try to answer every question as promptly as possible, but I am a busy man, if complaining now counts as an activity you can be busy with.

So, let’s do a weekly question thing, where anyone who wants to can send me a question, and I will post a brief video to answer it. I’ll attempt to do this once a week, but lord knows once I get busy with drinking and sleeping and hunting the grounds for my lost trousers, time slips away fast, so no guarantees. What I do guarantee is that no question shall be ducked. Ask me anything. You may not like the answer, but that ain’t my problem.

Send all questions to mreditor@innerswine.com.

BAM!, Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Videos

Friday Miscellania

Author: July 9, 2010

Ah yes, the half-assed, cobbled together post on Friday afternoon! A Somers tradition, whether you realize it or not. En garde!

  • First off: A reminder that I am damn well giving away books over at Good Reads. You should join GR and sign up for it. 15 copies, signed, are up for grabs!
  • Second: My readers are the best readers in the world. Here’s Avery Cates by Aidan Min:

Avery Cates by Aidan Min

And that’s it for today. I have a busy weekend of whisky consumption, baseball games, and naps to get going on. No, actually, I’m hella busy this weekend (and I support the effort to have huge numbers in math prefixed “Hella-“)

Bullshit

we are all part of the same compost pile

Author: June 8, 2010

Dawn. Of. The. Motherfucking. Dead.Everyone likes a good end-of-the-world scenario. Ever notice how many SF stories have this as a component – either as the main crux of the story, or as a historical backdrop? Disease comes along, destroys the world, except for our main characters. War comes along, destroys the world, except for our main characters. Zombies come along … vampires come along … superintelligent lizards … you get the idea.

Part of the appeal of such stories is people’s tendency, when imagining such scenarios, to imagine that they themselves will be the main character. In other words, we all seem to assume that when a disaster wipes out 99.9% of the world, we will somehow survive. Because we’re special.

Of course, the stipulation that there would be survivors at all is kind of dubious, albeit admittedly necessary for narrative purposes unless you’re going to Watership Down your apocalyptic story. I mean, vampires come and devour the earth until nothing’s left, how in the world would a few spunky folks escape doom? Part of it is that we all like to imagine we’re smart/lucky/special enough to be survivors, so it just makes sense to us. This is the same appeal that Doomsday Cults have, the belief that you are special enough to witness the end of the world. Forget it, bub: You will witness everything get incrementally worse, just like your ancestors and just like your descendants. No one is special enough to preside over the end of everything.

To be fair, of course, many of these sorts of films could be showing us the final moment of the most resilient survivors – in short, the end of the end. In other words, not a story about some Very Special People who are somehow spared by the universe, but rather the final moments of people who are just as unlucky as the rest of us.

Usually, though, it’s pretty clear the characters in these stories are meant to be Special, and it appeals to us, because we all think that just because The Rapture has failed to happen to for thousands of years, it’s no reason to think WE aren’t important and special enough to be alive when it actually happens. When, in fact, the chances are pretty frickin’ slim. But that’s the appeal: Imagining yourself in that scenario, comparing your theories on how to survive with what the author serves up. I’ve actually imagined myself in Zombie Apocalypses, and wondered what the best strategy would be. In real life, of course, I’d probably be discovered crouching in my crawlspace, slathered in barbecue sauce via a series of events so improbable you wouldn’t believe them even if I explained them in detail, and there would be much Zombie feasting and rejoicing. But it’s fun to imagine what if I was a Type-A personality who reacted well to crisis and apocalypse. I so would not make the mistakes people make in movies. I’d make different, equally disastrous mistakes, yes, but … still.

This is one reason I have an unreasoning affection for the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead: There is a pretty strong implication that the characters in the film are, in fact, the last people alive in the world, or at least their hemisphere. The doom that the credits sequence spells out for them elevates the movie from mediocre horror movie to something I still watch when it pops up on cable – the idea that after all their struggles, these characters are doomed, and none of their efforts will count for anything is a powerful ending, and one that feels a lot more real. Real for a Zombie Apocalypse, that is.

I myself am convinced of my own fleeting meaninglessness in life, and know that if the world ended tomorrow it would more than likely happen so fast and completely I wouldn’t even be aware of it. one second I’d be eating french fries and humming to myself, the next I’d be dissolved into my component molecules, no survival skilz needed.

Sometimes it’s restful to acknowledge your insignificance.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

Literary Upstart Recap

Author: May 18, 2010

UPDATE: They posted a short slideshow of pics from last night. I am here. That’s me dressed in my Super Cool Author costume, reading my story Rust on the Tongue.

Short version: I did not win. Medium version: I had a great time, got a little drunk, got to see my agent and her lovely, not-yet-ground-down-by-lit-life assistant, and did not win.

Long version: The Duchess and I arrived at The Slipper Room at about 6:50pm, and there was already a long line of people waiting to get in, which is always a good sign when anything resembling a literary reading is going on. But I’ve done readings in bars before, and I know how it goes: The majority of the people are a) lured in by the drinks specials or b) there as friends of some other writer. You end up shouting over the belligerent drunks until, being slightly and belligerently drunk yourself, you crowd-surf, throwing punches and curses until you find yourself staring up at the sky lying in a puddle of your own urine and blood out back by the dumpster.

Luckily, I had The Duchess with me, which meant my own physical danger was lessened. She’s a formidable woman.

We opted to have a slice of pizza beforehand, mainly because I’d been talking about whiskey the whole walk over and The Duchess was getting nervous about managing me later, and wanted food in my stomach. While we were eating, one of our neighbors from Hoboken walked in. I stared at him and he stared at me; neighbors so rarely show up in your real life it’s strange when you run into them. It was a bit awkward. Made worse when we found out one of his friends was reading as well, and he was there to support him. We made conversation for a bit and then he backed out of the restaurant and made for the bar. Now whenever I see him around the block we will have to made awkward conversation about running into each other at Literary Upstart. I may have to move away.

Inside the bar, there was a roiling crowd already. $1 beers will stir up some passion. I introduced myself to the MC and he explained the basic process: Five of us would read our stories, and we’d remain on stage while the other read. Then there would be an intermission, then trivia, then we would all assemble on stage again to have our stories critiqued by the judges and then a winner would be announced. This sounded horrible. Critiqued on stage while I had to stand there, grinning? I am not a brave man. I started ordering whiskies. Normally, I like to go in the middle of a pack of readings. Gives me time to get drunk, to judge to mood of the room, to chant internally superstar in an effort to convince myself that I am, indeed, a superstar. I had barely finished three double Jamesons, neat, when I was announced as the first reader of the evening. Staggering up to the microphone, I had one of those moments where you feel like you’ve swallowed something awful and large: I was sweating, out of breath, nervous. I still read pretty, well, I think. At any rate, I did not pass out, vomit, or have my pants fall down with some ridiculous cartoon whistle in the background, and these are all good things.

The other readers did well, too, although only one story really grabbed me and made me jealous.  One of the authors was visibly shaking as they read, and I thanked Jamesons for sparing me that.

During the intermission, I had a few more drinks and told the other authors they were geniuses. They told me I was a genius too. Except one, who just nodded, accepting the compliment as their due. I started to get angry, then wished I had that kind of crazy confidence, and got depressed. The Duchess sent me to the bathrooms so as not to cry in front of all the hipsters.

The bathrooms in The Slipper Room are amazing. As long as your definition of amazing includes mold, damp, narrow bathrooms you cannot turn around in with locks on the doors which are theoretical at best. The toilet seats were always down, forcing me to touch what appeared to be the filthiest surface in the universe. If I die of some alien flesh-eating bacteria tomorrow, you will know why, and avenge me. While I was using one bathroom, a girl walked in on a guy using the one next to me, and there was such a flurry of screaming and activity I wondered what in the world he’d been doing in there. Another bathroom had no sink, and various people had scrawled sink-related graffitti, like dude, where is the sink? and seriously, what happened to the sink? The Duchess, upon hearing this, wondered who brought Sharpies into the bathroom with them.

The trivia portion of the evening was drowned out by drunken conversation. This is what happens in bars. When the friends of the event organizers try to shout down the people who just came out for a few drinks and some conversation, I wonder if they’ve ever been in a bar before, and if shouting down loud drunken people has ever, in the history of booze, worked. I suspect the answer is no, and it did not work that night either.

Back on stage, I had to stand and listen to the judges’ critique of my story. They were gentle and humorous. At one point the mood of the story was compared to Kafka, and my agent, bless her, suddenly howled in laughter as if this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. I pretended to be outraged, but my agent is wise to my tricks and simply ridiculed me more, which is really how I need to be handled.

I didn’t win.

As we got ready to leave, people came up to me to tell me they really liked my story. While waiting in line for the bathroom again downstairs a guy slapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d been great, and asked if I knew I was going to be critiqued like that. He seemed like someone who’d come to get drunk on a Monday night and accidentally attended a literary reading, but had enjoyed himself. Strangely enough, so had I.

Bullshit, More Shit I Gotta Do

Watching Technology Pass You By

Author: April 16, 2010

Y’know, since 1986 I’ve submitted 1167 short stories. Believe it: One thousand, one hundred, sixty-seven short stories. I was just preparing five more to go out today and discovered that four of the five markets I’m submitting to require paper submissions. Which means I have to print out a copy of the story, print out a cover letter, get a manila envelope for the whole enchilada and a regular #10 with stamp for the SASE. The waste of paper and time is immense.

John Scalzi, god bless ‘im, has stated categorically on his site that he doesn’t mess with paper submissions any more, and in spirit I agree: This is frickin’ 2010. The excuses and explanations as to why a magazine doesn’t accept email subs are ludicrous, and fall into one basic category when you parse them closely enough: The editors of these magazines simply do not like email submissions. They may gas on and on about printing costs (unnecessary) how difficult it is to read on screen (2000 words? Really, Mr. Magoo?) and, unbelievably, how difficult it is to share an electronic sub with other editors. Yes, you read that right: An electronic file is more difficult to pass on to readers than a pile of paper.

So, as I’m getting paper cuts and searching for stamps, I’m grousing and thinking how I would have been done with my subs an hour ago if I could have simply typed up a cover email, attached a file, and clicked send. Grouse, grouse, grouse. Mmmmn, Famous Grouse is damn fine whiskey . . .  But I’m still doing it, because I still dream of selling short stories. There’s a glamour to it as far as I’m concerned. Certainly no money, but whenever I sell a short story I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald for a moment. Plus, I’ve got a lot of stories. I write them constantly, for my own satisfaction, and once they’re done some of them stay with me and I decide to try and do something with them. No use in leaving them in notebooks for the Alien Archaeologists of the future to discover and puzzle over.

I’m not exactly George Jetson with the technology, either. Not only do I not have a smartphone of any kind, I don’t even own a cell phone for personal use.  A lot of new thingies leave me cold and I’m fairly slow to get on the various bandwagons that our glorious computer companies trot out every year – but let’s be serious. Email was invented seven hundred years ago. If you’re worried about attachments, let us paste plain text in. For god’s sake, it is the twenty-first century. We may not have transporters and replicators, but by god we have electronic mail.

Enough ranting. I’m still mailing the subs when I have to. I’m just amazed. A few years ago I managed 107 submissions in one year, and that was when I was still typing everything on a manual typewriter and making photocopies to send everywhere, believe it or not. The thought of doing that many paper subs today makes me feel sleepy and irritated, so every time I find a new story market that takes email subs, I rejoice. As should you.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing

Like Immortality: I Suck at Correspondence

Author: March 31, 2010

“A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend?” — Emily Dickinson
The aging process is an adventure! Who knows where it will lead you...

The aging process is an adventure! Who knows where it will lead you...

The aging process takes us in unexpected directions, doesn’t it? It’s always disturbing. You’d like to think you’re an eternal creature, a permanent existence, when not only is it a fact that someday—relatively soon, friend—you won’t be here any more, but you’re not even unchanging. You wake up every day a little more eroded, a little more educated—changed. Unfortunately, our self-image does not always change accordingly, resulting in people like me who still see themselves as they were when eighteen—svelte, optimistic, able to handle their liquor—instead of how we are—bloated, ruined, and suffering permanent yellowed skin from debilitating liver damage.

Time is indeed a harsh mistress.

There are plenty of examples of time’s softly scrubbing fingers I could offer: My taste in booze, my aching back, the fact that I’d rather shove pins under my fingernails than go out to a movie these days. These all seem subtle to me, however, and easily ignored. One aspect of my changing existence that always strikes me these days is the fact that I now suck, totally suck, at correspondence. This is not simply bragging about my misanthropic tendencies, my friends—when the phone rings, I glance at it in annoyance and let the machine pick up, and then fail to respond. When an email arrives, it sits in my inbox for weeks, ignored and threatening. I haven’t written a letter in years. People often write me through my zine or this blog, and even if they send me emotional, interesting letters or gifts, the most anyone ever gets back is a curt note thanking them for their interest. If I am drinking while stuffing envelopes, they get incoherent threats that if they don’t stop assaulting my bunnies, I will fertilize their lawn. Or something.

In short, I completely suck at correspondence.

(more…)

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, The Inner Swine