Nick Mamatas' Journal

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2012
You know, I'm not even going to review this movie. Heck, I won't even explain why I went to go see it. Sure, I had plenty of little jokes planned: Los Angeles, destroyed! Las Vegas, destroyed! Washington DC, destroyed! ...and nothing of value was lost. Well, that was one. There wasn't much to work with, really.

(Aside: Did I mention I met Sam Hamm a couple of weeks ago? Well, I did. He says he reads this blog. I was planning on addressing him personally, to ask him to take to the streets of LA with a machine gun and kill everyone he sees because 2012 was so awful.)

But really, I'm just going to say one thing. Here's how the world ends.

"This time, the neutrinos have mutated."

Friday Quick Notes

A year of Poe bicentennial profiteering (January, April—I have no idea where they got that thumbnail, btw, or that the article was even online till just now) is complete with the release of Weird Tales #354, which includes my essay "Tell-Tale Homes", on Poe's frequent moves up and down the East Coast. Amusingly, to me anyway, this essay was written first and then after months of hearing nothing, cannibalized for the other pieces. Then, right before WFC, I heard that the special Poe issue —which contains Poe essays by Alethea Kontis, Cherie Priest, and others—was ready for the printer. Ah well. Poe would be proud! Non-fiction often involves writing the same piece over and over again. Contracts even have clauses keeping a writer from publishing a similar piece for 30-90 days. (Notice how cleverly spaced out my Poe essays were!) D.G.K. Goldberg's favorite story was of a travel writer friend who never left the house; he just kept writing about the local hotels and sites and restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham area where he lived.

Anyway, check it out.

Lesse—the publishing world was abuzz this week with Harlequin (aka "Big Pink") and their foray into vanity publishing.

nick_kaufmann has the deets:

http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com/552336.html (we write a novel in the comments!)
http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com/552661.html (goin' Hollywood!)
http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com/553435.html (Romance Writers of America strikes back!)
http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com/553566.html (Harlequin acts all hurt 'n stuff *snif snif*)

Harlequin has always been horribly exploitive. Even their sales model is predicated on reducing the author of an insignificant production input, and selling instead an explicitly homogeneous reading experience where nothing will ever ever change, be different, or go wrong. Also, they keep ripping off my life story:

Cover of Powerful Greek, Unworldly Wife

We will certainly see more attempts to monetize the slush pile as more corporate types take a look at all the mail coming in and say to themselves, "Oh man, if only there was money in all these envelopes! Wait, I've got it!" Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the lives of the people and all that.

I just took a pill that contains herring, anchovy, mackerel, sardine, and salmon, and yet I don't feel full. Damn you, Trader Joe's!

Guess what isn't microwave safe? That's right—plastic plates from the dollar store!

Finally, we'd like to congratulate the forces of evil for winning Project Runway. Take that, you goody two-shoeses!

Happy Thankswrecking!
The Cake Wrecks lady didn't take my last picture, so I'll just offer these two holiday-themed cake wrecks to the public at large. Note: both are cupcake cakes!

Here's the traditional Thanksgiving prairie dog emerging out of the shimmering rainbow vortex of light that leads to a dimension otherwise only accessible via LSD:

And here's a prolapsed rectum, typical of Thanksgiving given American eating habits:

Enjoy!

Everyone excited about the awesome new Twilight saga movie?
Me, I'm Team Lipbite all the way!

Also, why is a novel series about three people spending fewer than ten years in a dumpy little town a "saga" anyway?

Help us to help you
We're writing a romance novel here in the comments of this post.

We'd like to finish by the end of the day. Feel free to chime in. And bring in some sexy vampires.

Tuesday quick notes
1. Quote of the day: "I am, by any measure, a sci-fi head." — Mumia Abu-Jamal.

2. This made me laugh—amazon.com's busiest reader reviewer Harriet Klausner reviewed Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper. Guess what? She liked it! Who knew she had it in her.

3. Obama to create jobs and close the torture gap with other countries by relocating Gitmo prisoners to Illinois. Hope and change, baby.

Camberville locals: Save Lorem Ipsum
One of my favorite bookstores in Cambridge, the used bookstore Lorem Ipsum on Inman Square, is in danger of closing. They write:

For the past 6 years, our small independent bookstore in Inman Square, Cambridge has been a place for books, community, and innovation. We now face a difficult hurdle in a difficult industry in a difficult economy: the store must move—or close. Luckily, we found a better space (more books! room for events!) but we need the funds to make it happen. Maybe you've sold books when you've had a cash crunch — well, that's exactly what we're looking to do now, only on a bit bigger scale:

-=> Ten days. Five thousand books.

That's right -- selling five thousand books in our inventory (of 19,000) will raise the cash we need to fund the move, hire staff, and set up bigger and better than before in a new location a few blocks away. (Don't worry, still in Inman Square area, and we'll bring the Chicken Machine with us.)

Here's how it works:

Buy certificates online via Google Checkout in handy $10 amounts. Starting December 1, redeem each certificate for any book (priced at $20 or less -- see what an awesome deal this is?) at the store or online.

Do it here.

What's good
The Balkan Vulcan DJ shift on Pirate Cat Radio.

Current Mood: home-y

Cafe notes
A "dessert café" opened by my workplace. The little treats are tasty if a bit overpriced for their size, and the fancy ice cream is intriguing. I don't drink coffee, so don't know what it's like, but co-workers tell me it's good.

Here's why the café will soon be going out of business anyway.

1. "Speed v. ambiance"—for a place like this you either have to offer fast service or a nice place to hang out. This café has selected neither speed nor ambiance. The service is slow primarily because the husband-wife team running the show designed the café improperly. The back of the house is too large and thus there are no front displays except for some sample dishes placed on the same counter under which the garbage is kept. Nor is there a useful shelving in the back for finished goods to be kept without exposing the goods to open air. So whenever someone orders a dessert item the server has to go to the back, open one or more large plastic tubs, pick out the items with a pair of tongs, and then place them either on a plate or in a bag. This slows service immensely—not only does the dessert orderer have to wait, so too does anyone ordering anything else as the counter is left unattended.

Ambience is ruined due to the excessive shouting and barking. Not angry stuff, but shilling. The café offers free samples but has no place to sit them, so often one person is fulfilling all the orders while the other is holding a plate and describing the sample and jamming the plate up under people's chins. The place is small enough that this leads to the other staffer often repeating herself or asking the customer to do so. So both staffers, husband and wife, end up shouting a bit in order to be friendly. This drives people out of the store.

2. Lapses in service generalship: I've ordered things and have been interrupted mid-order to be offered a sample of something else. I've been handed frosted cupcakes in a paper sack, meaning that I end up with some naked cupcakes and a sack full of frosting. The place is cash-only. I was told three times just now about a flyer I'd already taken—on Monday if I buy something at the café I can get a price break for some stuff at the Verizon store next door. Sounds good except I was quizzed so thoroughly on the flyer, my possession of a copy, and the nature of the deal, that I don't want to go to either store.

3. The owners are clearly terrified of people. They just are. The wife does most of the front of the house stuff, and she by turns mutters and shouts. Her eyes dart constantly to avoid making eye contact. The husband is the pastry chef and if there is anyone who should be neither seen nor heard it's a guy who just sank $200,000 into his ice cream-making hobby during a recession.

4. Bad location. Two blocks in-city from Fisherman's Wharf, which is full of touristy chain sweets and crap. They're too upmarket for their location, and too far from the traffic anyway.

5. Prices are too high. Waddling tourists and workers on their lunch breaks buy by the pound, not by units of exquisiteness per bite. Sure, peanut butter in a red velvet cupcake is a good idea for a bite-sized treat, but at $2.25?

6. The tip jar is marked "Baby Fund." It just strikes the wrong note—this mom-and-pop place doesn't read at all like a mom-and-pop place except for the tip jar.

7. Inadequate seating: a counter and a four-top. No place to leave papers or magazines, no place to sit if you happen to have a bag or knapsack with you (as 90 percent of the passing trade—wharf tourists—have),and the countertop is too small for any but pocket-sized paperbacks and tiny palmtop computers.

8. They keep the door open and a sandwich board outside the door. This actually BLOCKS people from coming in, rather than inviting them in. One physically has to snake around in order to enter if approaching from the wrong side of the street.

So anyway, if you want peanut butter red velvet cake, you'd better stop by the joint NOW as it isn't long for this world.

Census follies
Those who cannot get access to LJ at their job often Gchat me their observations of life. Here you are!

teratologist: A loud person in the office behind me is confused by the fact that census people are legally allowed to stop by your house and that this does not constitute "stalking" or even an unusual situation.
She's asking her interlocutor "What do I do?" You answer the nice census lady's questions, numbnuts.
She's been going on about this for over fifteen minutes now.

teratologist: There's three people in the office and they're all engaged in an epic struggle to figure out what the hell the census is! Using the vast powers of the internet!
All us rednecks knew what the census was! It was the people who came by who weren't the JWs!
I'm out of exclamation points and despair.

teratologist: She threw out the questionnaire!
What the fuck is this unnatural bubble-like Manhattanite existence bullshit?

teratologist: Ok, so with a crack team of five people and google, they talked this girl into calling the poor census taker back and complaining about it being "invasive".

teratologist: One of the people was her lawyer.
Shit.

teratologist: "I understand you have a job to do, but get a better job where you don't have to invade people's privacy!"

America safe once again!
And as happened right after 9/11, Greeks are just a leeetle bit too swarthy for some:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

I could see the poor guy's confusion, especially after Fort Hood. I mean that guy Hasan was wearing a thick beard and a black robe when he was supposed to have opened fire on all those soldiers, right?

No wait, he was clean-shaven and in military dress! My God, terrorists are dressing just like soldiers now! Be on the look out, tire irons ready, for anyone with no beard and some sort of green uniform! (Be careful though, these people tend to be armed and somewhat unpredictable.)

On the plus side, Marakis forgave his attacker, citing the Bible. And it's true; if you ever just want to totally wale on a priest for an hour or two, pick a Greek one. Watch out for the little old ladies of the Philoptochos Society though. They don't play, and they always roll at least nine deep.

What's the point of that story?
I hope my specific examples below don't come off as picking on people. (No really! Really!!)

The question in the subject header came up twice yesterday about different stories ("Guts" and "A&P") and also came up last week. I described the events of Stephen King's New Yorker story Premium Harmony to

la_nausicaa and she asked what the point of that story could actually be. (That said, she liked "Guts", but then she read that one and only heard about "Premium Harmony.") She's also a school psychologist in training and said to me over email, "but it is interesting. do you have any idea how ashamed most kids are about masturbating. this totally normalizes that. it is like a public health advertisement: masturbating is normal and ok. just be careful, li'l dude," when I wondered if assigning "Guts" would just accelerate the usual gossip and rumors about a teacher's personal life that is such valuable currency to students.

And then there was the Escape Pod podcast of my novelette The Uncanny Valley and the now-traditional searching for and failing to find the point common to the listener forums for that site, and when a friend proofread my story forthcoming in Phantom (yeah yeah, it's been forthcoming for a while but this time it really really is coming out next week, so I'm told) she concluded her queries and requests for changes with, "Well, that was utterly pointless."

So, you know, I'm curious about this idea of what the point of stories should be. At first I was wondering if "What's the point of that story?" is just another way of saying, "I was grossed out!" but as we've seen stories like "A&P" are called pointless, and some people who ask after the point of Gross Story #1 like Gross Story #2 just fine. I wondered if confusion was also an issue—someone who finds a story confusing may suspect that there is a point that they just happened to miss (and that it's the story's fault). But then again "A&P" isn't confusing. It isn't even all that boring. I kinda liked it when I was first assigned it, though any drama it had has long since been sucked out of me by repeated assignments.

(Aside, I was thanked last weekend at WFC for "That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" because at least one person interpreted the story as the first new thing to be said about "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" in a loooong time.)

Of course, plenty of people find "A&P" boring and feel it is plotless, which also ties into the idea of confusing stories (whose plots cannot be followed) being pointless.

So sometimes a pointless story is a story that grosses out the reader, confuses the reader, or bores the reader. Each seems to be a burden. There's an expectation of enjoyment (and I presume enlightenment given the search for a "point") that is crushed somehow.

So what kind of points do stories with points have? Do people pick up a magazine or a collection and think to themselves, "Oh boy, am I gonna get a brain full of points tonight, baby!" Is a point something even sought after or only missed when it appears to be gone? Do writers sit down with a point to prove when they write a story...and don't many people object to being "preached" to? Of course, in that last case people often don't feel preached to if they already agree with the writer's point, but even that isn't universal. A libertarian acquaintance of mine told me that he can't read L. Niel Smith at all these days because the deck is so obviously stacked in favor of libertarianism that the political explorations aren't sophisticated enough for him. "I find myself arguing against my own politics!" he said, and then he described throwing a book across the room.

(That's another thing I still wonder about. I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but I did ask a few years ago if people really do that and as it turns out, people do! One day I'm going to start doing that with pizza slices I don't like. California will never be the same!)

So what do you all think? What's the point of stories? Can you think of some stories that have made good points, or that are good and pointless? Let the world know!

Let a million intestines be chewed through
A popular high school English teacher has been suspended after assigning his 11th-grade students a short story about masturbation by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. Greg Van Voorhis, 30, issued copies of "Guts" — which details three increasingly catastrophic masturbation attempts by teenagers with props including a carrot, a candle, and the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool — to about about 100 students gearing up for the English Regents exam.

Many of the comments surrounding this news story seem to take it on faith that "Guts" is about masturbation and that of course kids masturbate, so what's the big deal? This is how you can tell who has read the story and who has not!

Of course, Guts is a story about masturbation in the same way American Psycho is about investment banking or Hogg is about the trucking industry. Yeah, the stuff's in there, but...

All that said, "Guts" is free online (see link), has been reprinted in a Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and a number of other places, so it's not like the story is otherwise locked away.

Plus, it's better than "A&P."

Read before deletion
http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/13372

RaceFail comes to horror as someone (a troll himself, most often) noted that a black person told him that horror seemed like a "white genre."

Some tidbits, as stuff there gets locked/deleted fairly often:

The Horror Drunx are female friendly because all HORROR DRUNX are created equal. I guess what I am trying to say is, things are changing for the better in horror nowadys compared to like ten years ago.

...

I say down with that anime genre too. It's just such an Asian game, an Asian genre.

Also, if that person exists and that conversation really took place, I think you should be ashamed regardless of posing such an ignorant question designed to once again get an argument going here (what was one of your last posts? Oh that's right pedophilia).

...

You claim to love this genre so much, why didn't you defend it when/if he said that? You posted here asking that question as if you yourself were unsure about it, so can you at least tell me if you think one country and one group should qualify to deem the entire genre racist were that true? Did YOU even think it over and how ignorant that statement is and to call him out on it?

That's like saying there aren't a lot of black chefs in Italian restaurants, then Italian food must be gay.

...

Know what's unrealistic about black people in horror?

Them being in horror.

They have the common sense to get the fuck out of there when shit gets weird.

True story: Our barracks was haunted. Badly haunted. One night, during the Christmas season, the shit started again. The noises, the fog in the hallways, condensation on the walls, lights buzzing and flickering, weird noses coming from the ventilation, shit like that.

...

Out of curiousity, what is the racial-equality genre?

...

To be honest, I think your friend is a racist.

I can't see an editor picking up a manuscript and by reading it say this was written by a non white author. As to stories, personally I have had as protagonists; African Bushmen, Wakamba bowmen, Masai, and a New York Zombie master - just to name a few. I think it is not a difficult thing to find other races in our fiction.

It does get a bit tiring to here people are still getting so nitpicky on the subject of our differences.

...

Well, first off, I don't think 10% of the population is gay. I'm gay, so I do have a horse in the race, so to speak. If you ask people to self-identify their sexual orientation, about 2% say they are homosexual. Of course, that is a bit underrepresented, so let's go with 5%. Now, I don't know the sexual orientation of most horror writers, but I do know the following are gay men:

...

With that in mind, I say the following: I find it very hard to believe that a white publisher would read a story from either A) a black writer or B) a story/novel featuring a predominately black cast of characters, and say to themselves, "This shit will never sell. PASS."

...

[BONUS LOL from the guy who wrote about Bushman and zombie masters!]:

Y'know I am reading all this and the question comes to mind, "Do we have to have equal statistics on Everything?" Think about it. There are cultural differences that may or may not affect the partisipation of a group in a particular activity. Because they don't, doesn't mean the activity is Racist; or that we should strive to artificially balance things.

Last night I attended a Belly Dancing event. Surprise! there were no male dancers. More than half the audience was female. Should we invite a troop of cross-dressers to every event to even things up?

PC can hit the point of ridiculous.

...

Regarding some of what Wrath was saying, I've had some publishers who don't want to publish my stuff with gay main characters because they feel it limits their ability to sell to audiences that are uncomfortable with this. I don't consider this homophobic, it is just business.

...

Does it really matter if characters are black white or whatever? You can't *see* them anyway, so they can be whatever friggin' color you want; just adjust the knobs in your head.

...

Anyone missing a leather jacket?
I seem to have acquired an extra one, possibly from the World Fantasy Convention.

It contained some Claritan gelcaps, and a green frequent buyer card from the San Francisco Soup Company with one stamp.

Are we all excited for tomorrow night's fights? (Free Idea Friday edition)
Strikeforce is going to have a MMA show on CBS tomorrow. The main event looks to get pretty interesting—Fedor vs. Brett Rogers. This could mean a lot to the #2 MMA promotion in the country, though the product needs to be slicked up a bit. The UFC, for example, will use subtitles for many of their pay-per-views, like "Ill Will" or "Bedlam" or "The Comeback." Strikeforce doesn't really differentiate their shows in such a way. Too bad too, as the main event is rich with thematic possibilities.

Strikeforce on CBS: Four-Dollar Haircut Night

This will end in LOLs
Any designers out there looking for a job? Check this "ad" out from our design mavens at Realms of Fantasy:

Applicants should include "references and links to your work. We are looking for someone that can hand in the finished layout and design in seven days from when they receive all materials. If you're the kind of person who needs extensions or is uncertain whether you could handle this sort of deadline, don't bother applying. Being late with the work is not an option. We would like to hire someone who is willing to maintain the current look of the magazine. Some creative tweaks are acceptable, but we are not looking for any kind of radical redesigns. Writers are often told to read a magazine before submitting to it. If you're interested in this position, you would be wise to purchase a copy of the latest issue and flip through it with an eye toward its layout and design."

Could be a good gig. I'd recommend to those with an online portfolio arbitrarily putting the words HARRY POTTER on all your stuff.

Stupid flu
I've got the stupid flu now. And I had things to do this evening!

You can make me feel better by going here: http://www.haikasoru.com/

And leave a comment or two on one of the recent entries. Then I can pretend I'm working by approving them.

Thanks.

New, for illiterates!
My novelette The Uncanny Valley is now live on the audio magazine Escape Pod. This is the immediate post-Singularity murder mystery, originally published in an issue of Polyphony and is now available in You Might Sleep... You know, for those who want to think about the story while on the commode, but who don't want to worry about possibly dropping their iPod.

Having a story published in one of the Escape Artists magazines is always great fun, as the regulars on the forum like to flip out constantly over the communiqués from the Reds they spot in their morning bowls of Alpha-Bits. And since this one actually is full of propaganda, and untranslated German, and Freudian stuff too, reactions should be fun to watch.