Days of Living Aimlessly

New Novel in Works

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 13:29:00 +0000

I'm working on a new novel: tentative title is Best Served Cold. It's about a couple of homeless guys who attempt an elaborate revenge on a hedge fund manager who purposely tripped one of them in a coffee shop.

As you would expect if you have read my stuff before, things come off the tracks in bizarre and wondrous ways. There is a Colombian drug cartel, a task force of bent cops, a reality TV show featuring the divorcees of South Beach, a Colombian assassin who loves romance novels, and a self-styled witch from Trinidad and Tobago. Explained in the process: a more hopeful solution to homelessness, how reality TV leaves its viewers stewing in their own depravity, why it's a bad idea to see too many women at the same time, and how to practice detachment and self-denial in the midst of plenty. Think of it as a kind of modern take on the Book of Job without all those long-winded and judgmental friends . . . and maybe a few more vulgarities 'cause, you know, profanity is my second language.

I decided to use NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to jump start productivity, and two weeks in, I've already accumulated over 43 thousand words, some of which are pretty funny, or at least it seems so to me. With a little luck the first draft should be finished mid-December. Another month should do for edits and proof-reading and yield a clean beta-test version. Anyone interested in being a beta reader, let me know here in the comments, or via e-mail and I'll put you on the list.

I imagine every author uses beta readers a little differently, so here is an of what I'd be looking for. I provide you with an e-pub or mobi file of the book. (I may be able to do other formats, including hard print. We'll see.) You read the book and send me feedback about what you liked, what didn't work for you, what you might like to see added or deleted or rearranged or whatever. It's kind of like a focus group.

I use your comments and suggestions to do the final rewrite and then publish. You get a free signed copy of the finished work, and if you give me something that saves my authorly ass from embarrasment or poverty, I'll even mention you in the forward. That's as good a deal as I can make.

The aim is to make the book as engaging and entertaining as possible for my readers, enabling me to sell a lot of books and ultimately to buy the Cadillac I covet. Thanks for your interest in my work.

A Little Rhyming Philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 22:22:00 +0000

with apologies to Jonathan Swift and Augustus De Morgan

You Know It's True!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 18:32:00 +0000

Drug Test the Rich?

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 16:51:00 +0000

I keep seeing a post or posts on Facebook and Twitter supporting drug testing of welfare recipients as a prerequisite to their receiving any money. At first blush, this seems an entirely reasonable position to take. No one in their right mind wants to see tax dollars used to support a drug or alcohol habit, and requiring testing would, if this were the only issue, be a reasonable and viable way to prevent that happening. Unfortunately, the mere use of drugs and alcohol by people on welfare is not the only issue involved. It is not even the most important one.

So far, in virtually every state that such laws have been enacted, the cost to the state of the drug testing has exceeded the amount of money saved by denying benefits to those who tested positive. The reason? You have to test everyone, but the percentage of welfare applicants testing positive for drug use is actually less than the national average for all citizens. In other words, we are spending money to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

We do this a lot—usually at the behest of a Republican ideologue who is busy spending our money needlessly when he is not otherwise engaged in accusing the Democrats of spending our money needlessly. The upshot is that we deny benefits and assistance to people who actually could use it in order to provide a windfall to people who were already doing pretty well for themselves.

In the case of drug testing welfare applicants, the only people to benefit from these laws are the labs who provide the testing. In Florida, one of the primary labs providing such testing is owned by the wife of the governor. Pretty sure she doesn't need the money to feed her children, so—you know—FAIL!

I wonder how the folks who support this kind of draconian legislation think that it will work. The irony is that it only works at all if you stop thinking before your thinking comes to a kind of logical conclusion. I imagine it would actually look something like this:

If you take away a crack whore's welfare money, she will not stop buying crack. What she will actually stop buying is food for her children because, you know—crack helps you get through times of no money better than money helps you get through times of no crack, and being stoned makes it easier to tolerate the crying of hungry babies, whereas withdrawal from crack will make you want to throw your well-fed babies out the window.
When the crack babies begin to starve, they will be taken away from their mothers and placed in shelters and foster homes where the burden of feeding them will fall on different programs from the ones that were feeding them before. The cost of feeding them will not change very much, although if it does change it will probably go up because shelters and foster homes cost more than actual parents. When you look at the crack babies' former program expenditures, however, it will appear as though there have been some savings even though there has only been a transfer of costs from one program to another.
Notwithstanding that there are no actual savings, the apparent savings will be transferred to rich people in the form of tax cuts in the sincere, if misguided, hope that they will use the money to create jobs for the rest of us.
The wealthy, who have already created all the jobs they plan to—none, will actually use the money to buy champagne, cocaine, and prostitutes. (If you think about it, this is the fairest possible outcome. I mean why should poor people get to luxuriate in the care-free indulgences of addiction, when that kind of happy leisure ought to be reserved for the rich who truly deserve it?)
And so we come full circle. The effect of our enlightened new laws will be:
1. slight increase in the cost of feeding crack babies as foster homes and shelters get more money to feed children than do their parents
2. reduced tax revenues and increasing deficits because the wealthy are contributing less and the poor are costing more
3. increased demand for and therefore higher prices for drugs because the rich don't care how much they pay for coke if the money is coming from poor children
4. increase in crime rates to pay for higher priced drugs because you still gotta smoke that shit no matter what it costs

So maybe it wouldn't look just like that, but I bet I'm closer to reality than you are. All I'm saying is you have to think about this stuff before you spout it on Facebook because there are a lot of people there who will take what you say at face value if the first sentence makes even a little sense. Why? Because that's almost always as far as they are going to read.

A surprisingly simple solution to homelessness: provide housing!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 30 May 2015 17:18:00 +0000

When I first saw this picture, I had to wonder how many people have
looked at it and decided the dude doesn't deserve an apartment
if he can't keep it cleaner.

This is a great and thought-provoking article on a saner and more compassionate approach to homelessness. If you've got some extra time, follow the link in the article to the Malcolm Gladwell piece from New Yorker on "Million-Dollar Murray." It's another eye-opener made doubly relevant in that it also points up the extreme high costs to society of a health care system that doesn't provide preventive and maintenance medical care options for those who can't afford it on their own. If you think those costs go away if they are not born by the government (taxpayers) in some systemic way, you are sorely mistaken.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah

My Super Power

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 15 May 2015 15:47:00 +0000

My wife pointed out the other day that I have a real talent for rationalizing procrastination. She said it's my super power. She may be correct as I think I have yet to actually use it.

Kofia Kat

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 14:52:00 +0000

He only looks this serene when his next meal is in sight.

Panamabra - cool venom!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 00:49:00 +0000

Mongoose, my ass!

The Sheikh

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 21:21:00 +0000

Not Rudolph Valentino perhaps, but imposing and handsome nonetheless!
. . . and way more manly.

Shemagh Kat

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 16:42:00 +0000

I love this little guy!

Meerkat in Shemagh - looks like vigilance.

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 17:44:00 +0000

. . . and occasionally he rhymes.

Sticky Fingers and a Stiff Upper Lip

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 17:27:00 +0000

nothing exudes confidence like a monocle and bowler!

Not Your Hogwarts Owl

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 17:46:00 +0000

wiseass owl with attitude to spare

Oh, for an Opposable Thumb

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 15:34:00 +0000

with an opposable thumb he could sip a martini too.

Fedora Bob

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 19:49:00 +0000

as if he weren't cool enough already!

Without Remorse

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 18:24:00 +0000

Animated Book Cover?!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:33:00 +0000

These have been around for a while. I just figured out how to do them for my own covers. Now it's time for Amazon et al to accommodate these animated GIFs for ebooks on their sites.

A Short Monologue on Writing Dialog

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:51:00 +0000

Oh, yes indeed we do!

I worked with a really great editor at Wag's Revue several years ago while prepping my short story, “Mourning Jimmy Crooks,” for publication there. We had a lengthy discussion about dialog in which he told me that sometimes it is useful to write dialog as if the parties to the conversation are not talking to one another. In other words, no one is responding to what the others are saying. He seemed to think that this was a good way to end up with realistic dialog, even if the process seemed somewhat counter-intuitive.

At first I thought this quite odd. Logical flow, give and take, is the whole point of dialog after all, and the best practitioners of written dialog in my experience, Elmore Leonard in virtually everything he wrote and George V. Higgins in TheFriends of Eddie Coyle, didn't write like that. Then I got to thinking about many actual conversations I have had in my 65 years on the planet. Yeah, I know. You too, right?

What the editor had suggested is in fact an excellent way to portray realism. It is the way people actually talk to one another. In any event, it is the way that people talk to me. I've always thought of it as a problem, but maybe, just maybe, it's not my problem alone.

One of the reasons I took up writing was so that I would be able to express a complete thought before someone hijacked the exchange to take it in a different direction. When I talk, hardly anyone pays any attention to what I have to say. What they do instead, while I am weaving conversational brilliance all around them, is to work out what they want to say next. When they have got it firmly in their minds, they just jump in wherever I may be to tell me what they think about whatever it is that they just thought. I don't really need to be there except for people to be able to say things later like, “I had a really great talk with Jonah the other day. He seems really smart . . . and nice too. Don't remember what he said, but I told him . . .”

Here is an example of what I'm talking about from a recent dinner party at our house. Feel free to jump in anytime.

Me: I watched Gotham on TV the other night. I thought it was pretty good, but it's been getting panned all over the Web.

Wife: There sure are a lot of shows based on comic books lately.

Adult Son's GF: My favorite is Iron Man. I just love Robert Downey, Jr.

Granddaughter: I'm getting a new tattoo to fill in this empty space on my side. I'm thinking Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones because, you know, she's got dragons! No, wait . . . dragons. That's it. I'm gonna get a dragon. I'll be that other girl with the dragon tattoo.

Sister1: I found these shoes on sale at Steinmart last week. Aren't they cute?

Granddaughter: Maybe a direwolf would be better than a dragon. I don't know. It's so hard to decide. The girl with the direwolf tattoo?

Wife: This mango key lime pie is wonderful, isn't it?

Adult Son: Speaking of Iron Man, can you all get the ESPN coverage of the Honolulu Triathalon?

Adult Son's GF: I'm trying to find a good recipe for flan.

Bean (my greyhound): Rrr. Rrrr. Mmmh? [translation—is it time to feed the dog yet?]

Me: I just don't think Gotham is that bad. I think it's the best Batman derivative . . .

Brother: I think everyone's interested in comic book style entertainment because Obama has screwed the country up so bad it's gonna take a modern day superhero to fix things. People just wanna get back to good old fashioned good versus evil because, you know, Obama is evil and we need to believe there's some good out there.

Bean: Rrr. Rrrr. Wooo. [Some dinner would be good.]

Sister2: Did you all see where somebody hacked naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence off of the iCloud? What a nightmare for that poor girl. She had to tell her dad about it and everything.

Sister1: She's so cute. I wonder where she gets her shoes.

Me: . . . that ever made it onto TV. Sure, it's not . . .

Brother: I blame Obama for that too.

Adult Son: Wait . . . what?

Bean: Rrr. Rrrr. Argh? [Hey, did you guys know it's Talk Like a Pirate Day?]

10 Surefire Ways to Carve Time out of Your Busy Life to Write

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:52:00 +0000

Note: results may differ depending on placement in the election cycle.

It's hard to find time in a busy life to write. If you've got a job and children and a spouse who doesn't pull their own weight, the odds of you cracking the best seller lists are slim to none - unless of course you know some tricks and life hacks to carve out the time you need to practice your craft. Here are ten that work for me. Please note: I don't have a job or children at home or a spouse who doesn't pull her weight, so I probably don't have to find as much time as those of you who do. Still, I'm occasionally challenged by my schedule and have difficulty making my planned daily word count. So, admittedly, these may be more tailored to my lifestyle than yours, but my guess is that they apply to more of us than they ought. If you recognize yourself, take heart. You are not alone.

Write every day. Pick a time to write and a word count goal. Make a schedule and stick to it.
Get off of Facebook.
If you have trouble staying off of Facebook, turn off you computer and write with a pen and paper until you reach your goal.
Seriously, get the hell off of Facebook.
Tweeting about getting off of Facebook does not count. If you think it does, you need to get off of Twitter as well.
If your pen runs out of ink, refill it. If your pencil gets dull, sharpen it. Do not Tweet or update your Facebook status about your ink and pencil lead deficits. What you have is an attention deficit and you need to get right off of Facebook.
No one on LinkedIn cares that you are not feeding your Facebook or Twitter Jones. If you think they are, get off of LinkedIn. Stay off of Facebook and Twitter. Honestly. I can't stress this enough.
Ditto Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. If my use of the word 'ditto' just made you nostalgic for Ronald Reagan or furious about Barack Obama, then you need to quit listening to Rush Limbaugh too. Turn off the radio. Get off of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. Do it now.
Did I mention that you need to get off of Facebook? You really do. I think this is crucial.
Of course none of this will be very effective unless you actually get off of Facebook. Of all the advice I could give you about finding time to write, I think that one is probably the most important.

If you want to know more tricks, hacks, and secrets to a productive writing life, you should friend me on Facebook and like my page.

https://www.facebook.com/AimlessJonah

Book Cover Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 17:22:00 +0000

I submitted the cover of Speedster to the cover contest at Joel Friedlander's website, The Book Designer, last month. I thought I would get some useful feedback, maybe some praise, and possibly some free publicity that would result in a few more sales. Judging by Joel's comments (below) my cover was not nearly so good as I imagined. That got me to thinking that the cover might be part of my problem. It's a well established fact by now that, in spite of the old saw that you can't, readers judge a book by its cover—especially the readers of ebooks. If that cover is confusing, inscrutable, and illegible, as Joel says mine is, it doesn't have much hope of attracting attention.

Jonah Gibson submitted Speedster designed by Jonah Gibson. “I had this photo of an Auburn Boattail Speedster that I took at a car show several years ago. I’d already excised the car and created a poster. When I finished the book, it seemed only natural to use the poster as a cover. It all just kind of fell into place.”

JF: An odd background choice, a car that appears to be flying, and typography that’s inscrutable and in some cases illegible

Legible, scrutable,
grounded, and red.
Is this enough? IDK!

Taking that thought to heart I have redesigned the cover for Speedster. Here is the new one.

I think it's better, at least insofar as it addresses Joel's misgivings about the old one. On the other hand, I clearly don't know a good cover from a mediocre one since I was pretty jazzed about my first effort. Maybe you can tell me how I did by leaving a comment. Or maybe this whole subject just bores you to tears, in which case I apologize for taking up your time and your bandwidth. Either way, if you got this far, thanks for listening.

Buy This Pen

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 17:41:00 +0000

I watched The Wolf of Wall Street last night. I thought it was pretty entertaining, and I was thinking, “I sure am glad people like Jordan Belfort are completely bereft of any moral fiber so I can sit in the comfort of my living room and watch them consume huge quantities of drugs, float (and sink) huge boats, and cavort with naked bimbos.” It is satisfying somehow to participate vicariously in their decadence and spiritual bankruptcy without having to endure any consequences myself. The only troubling thing about Belfort's deal is that he didn't have to suffer any consequences either—not real ones at any rate.

If you listen to Belfort lament his life today you will hear him say that he lost everything, that he spent time in prison, that he is reformed to the extent that he is not committing any actual crimes anymore, and that he now gives as much as he receives. Really?

His brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont, is said to have bilked investors out of $200 Million. Even though Belfort claims that 90% of what they did was legal, and likely it was, there is little doubt that their sales tactics were sleazy and reprehensible. Whatever he thinks he 'lost' was never really his in the first place. He took it from someone else. Just because the people he took it from should have been better informed or exercised more care in their investment strategies does not mean that Belfort earned or deserved the wealth he accumulated before he lost it.

He spent seven or eight years snorting cocaine, popping quaaludes, drinking to excess, and chasing strippers, hookers, and loose women of every ilk. He committed multiple financial crimes and tried to cover it up. He hid his money overseas. He accumulated something north of $100 Million, and yet was sentenced to only 4 years in jail of which he only served 22 months. So time in prison? Negligible and certainly not commensurate with his offenses. Of course Jordan Belfort was rich and white and married to a model when he got caught, so he got a pass. He ratted out his co-conspirators for a reduced sentence. If he'd been a person of color, he would probably still be rotting in a cell, and no one would have made a movie celebrating his immense good fortune.

Reformed? The extent of his rehabilitation is measured by the fact that he is still trading on his notoriety. He made another $100 Million last year teaching people his proven sales techniques—ostensibly the same ones he used to bilk his investors except now he claims that they are ethical. So there's nothing wrong in his mind with the techniques. His only problem was using the techniques to sell stuff that had no value. Now he's using his sales techniques to sell sales techniques. I would argue that these too have no value. Here's why.

In a couple of places in the film we see Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Belfort, hand someone a pen and tell them to sell it to him. “Sell me this pen,” he says, and they sputter and hem and haw until he takes the pen away and gives it to someone else. “Sell me this pen.”

I kept wondering what I would do if he handed me a pen to sell him. I'm not a natural sales person. I'm not a big talker. I'm not glib or persuasive. In fact I'm uncomfortable with the notion of talking someone into buying something that I know they don't need. I don't think sales people add value.

Order takers do. Order takers enable the flow of commerce. They provide a necessary link between makers and users, creation and desire, supply and demand. Sales people on the other hand try to create demand where there is none. They try to inflame desire when there is no real satisfaction. Because I believe this, I suck at sales. But . . . even though I suck at sales, I know how to sell you a pen. I know exactly what to say to Jordan Belfort if he ever hands me a pen and tells me to sell it to him.

I would say this: “I know what you're thinking. Not just that. I know what you think you're thinking as well as what you're really thinking. What you think you're thinking is this—you don't need this pen. This pen is too fancy. It costs too much. This beautiful pen has no more utility than a 19 cent Bic, but it costs 500 times as much. This pen—this particular beautiful, luxurious, expensive fine writing instrument—is a waste of money, and even if you were to buy it, you would probably just lose it.

“But, like I said, that's only what you think you're thinking. None of that has anything to do with the actual pen. All that stuff you think you're thinking has to do with you. What you're really thinking—the thing that really bothers you about buying this pen—is that you don't think you deserve it. You think this pen's too good for you. No, that's not it either, not exactly. You think that you're not good enough for this pen. The emphasis is on you.

“You need to change that way of thinking. You need to embrace the fact that you deserve this pen. You need to believe that you're good enough for it, and you know why? Because it's true. That's why. You are good enough. The only thing preventing you from buying this pen is you. Get out of your own way. Believe in yourself. Liberate your own potential. Be everything you can be. A good place to start would be to buy this pen. You know you want to. Come on. Just do it. Just be you. Just buy this pen.”

Now, I'm pretty sure that that little spiel would get Jordan Belfort's attention. It certainly beats the pants off false starts and hemming and hawing. What I don't know—the pudding where the proof is—would that spiel induce anyone to buy an expensive pen, or is it just a clever thing to say in a room full of people who think they want to excel at sales so they can drive Lamborghinis and sleep with models? You see, even knowing what to say doesn't mean you're not going to suck at sales.

Living the Calamitous Life

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 17:01:00 +0000

We all rely on personal anecdotal evidence, probably more than is good for us, to develop and fine-tune our respective world views. I am no exception in this. For instance, I have learned, over many years and many events, that whenever I accumulate a little extra money something bad is about to happen. Some essential device is going to break. Someone is going to get sick. Some force of nature is going to wreak havoc with my life or that of someone close to me, and almost always this cataclysmic event is going to end up costing me all the money that I have accumulated.

I am forced to conclude then that all of my problems have their root in too much money because almost all of my problems are solved by parting with the amount of money that would otherwise have been considered surplus. Even more amazing perhaps is that the amount of money that constitutes 'too much' at a given time has diminished over time. When in years gone by I might have had to accumulate several thousand dollars of surplus before some untoward event befell me or my family, now I can look forward to a minor catastrophe if I find an extra $20 under some scraps of paper on my desk.

In fact the powers of the universe are so finely attuned to my fortunes that calamities have begun to queue up in advance of my actually having any spare cash. Currently I have two cars in need of repair, one so that I can sell it for some ready cash and to save money on car insurance. When this happens I can be pretty sure that the other car will require all of that new currency to stay on the road. In addition I have a dog with a dodgy eye and chronic stomach troubles, a home air conditioner that seems to be on its last legs, a computer that takes several hours to reboot, a yard full of fire ant mounds, and a life insurance premium due that I can't afford to pay. That last is a mixed blessing as when the coverage finally lapses I will, for the first time in a decade, be worth more alive than I am dead—or maybe it should be worth even less dead than I am alive.

I am hopeful, given the way things have worked out until now, that all these mishaps waiting to happen will be somehow avoided. My guess is that I will get an infusion of capital that is just sufficient to cover the expenses, but no more. Notwithstanding it will all be gone shortly after it arrives, it's still kind of comforting to know that a massive funding is headed my way. I tell you though, living like this is not for the faint of heart nor those of little faith. Even so, who wouldn't wish it were otherwise? I for one could use a little breathing room.

How Marriage is Like a Pizza

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:55:00 +0000

Go out of your way to get the best!

I just read a Facebook post from an old friend of mine about her upcoming 45^th wedding anniversary. In the interest of full disclosure, I will mention here that by 'old friend' I mean we dated and she was not one of the legions of women who ever stood me up. What was most notable about the post to me was that many of her friends and acquaintances (who are also friends and acquaintances of mine) mentioned in the comments that they were approaching or had just passed similar milestones. It seems that the people I grew up with have a remarkable capacity for staying married—testament, I believe, to the values and moral sensibilities that are part and parcel of life in small, homogeneous communities.

I myself have only been married for 31 years. The comparative shortfall is due primarily to the fact that it took me a good 15 years longer than the rest of my friends to outgrow the personality defects and social shortcomings that prevented the opposite sex from finding me as fascinating as I thought they should. I'm pretty sure in retrospect that I was an insufferable lout until I learned around age 27 to suppress my ignorance and base inclinations in favor of actually listening to what people had to say.

It's probably a good thing it took me that long to get a clue. In the end I pretty much lucked out in the marriage department—as has been pointed out to me numerous times—and I have my early romantic incompetence to thank for this. In business it's location, location, location, but I think in love it's rather timing, timing, timing . . . and maybe a little hard work.

A friend of mine from my days in public accounting practice used to say, “You marry the person you're dating when you decide it's time to get married.” He was a comedic philosopher, so I don't know if there's any actual merit to his pronouncement. It is probably true for a lot of people.

I'm thinking here of the great mass of unhappy spouses living in misery and regret and not the people I grew up with who seem to be almost universally happy with their choices and their circumstances. It was almost certainly true in my philosopher friend's case. After all he's the one who said it. Shortly after he said it, he got the short end of one of the most acrimonious divorces I've ever witnessed.

If you insist on delivery, it just
might blow up in your face.

I shouldn't have been surprised. He also once said, “The worst pizza in the world delivered to your door is better than the best pizza in the world you have to go out for.” Obviously he hated to go out, and he was willing to suffer and to subject his family to some truly appalling pizza not to go out. That's just the kind of attitude, over time, that gets you into divorce court. In the end I think staying married means doing the best you can by the people you love, even if that means you have to go out for pizza when you'd rather sit at home sipping martinis.

It's the little things that add up, eventually, to 45 years of good living. All the best to those who are willing to try. Like Red Green used to say, “We're all in this together. I'm pulling for you.”

Stood Up! Shot Down!

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 16:45:00 +0000

Prospective Book Cover

I've been stood up more than my fair share of times. By that I mean that I'm often left wondering what happened to people with whom I've made a social contract when it comes time for them to deliver according to the intentions they've expressed. It happens almost as frequently as getting interrupted in conversation, about which I have written here. It happened again this week, not in the usual sense of the term 'stood up' of course because I no longer arrange dates with women I meet. My wife frowns on the practice.

This all started when I was in high school more than half a century ago. I arranged a date with a cute little slip of a blond from the neighboring village of St. Henry, Ohio. I had in common with the girl, whose name is long lost to history, that we were both Catholic and we both played saxophone in our respective high-school marching bands. It was my first bona-fide date in the sense that I'd manned up through my own force of will, asked her out in a straightforward manner without the usual teenage machinations and guile, and she had accepted in spite of already knowing what I looked like, an obvious fact to me since I was standing in front of her when she said yes. It was a pretty satisfying experience for me up to this point.

Imagine my surprise then, when I showed up on her doorstep two evenings later only to be informed by her dad that she was “out on a date.” Apparently she had got a better offer in the interim. I was a little cheesed, but I didn't have a lot of experience against which to weigh and evaluate the outcome so I just moved on. One of the great attributes of the teen years is resilience in the face of truly devastating emotional setbacks.

Some time later I met Dee Phister. We worked together at a motor hotel in Columbus, Ohio. She was another blond slip of a thing with a pixie haircut and an engaging sense of humor. I liked her a lot, but I waited a good long time before I asked her out. I wanted to know her well enough, and she me, that there wouldn't be any surprises. I still remember her name because she surprised me . . . twice. The first time (shame on her) I got the news from her dad. Was a pattern emerging? “Out on a date,” he said . . . so yes, I imagine so. The second time (shame on me) the news came from a roommate at her new apartment near the university campus. The explanation was in two parts: “Out on a date,” and “Got back together with her old boyfriend.” Oh well.

About this time I quit asking women out on dates. It didn't seem to me that there was any future in it . . . at least not for me. Whenever a woman agreed to go out with me, she would use the occasion to leverage herself into a better situation with someone else. Or so it seemed. I mean this kind of thing happened a lot. I'm just hitting the high points here.

When I quit asking women out on dates they found new ways to frustrate my romantic sensibilities. I remember one in particular, yet another blond slip of a thing. She ran in some of the same circles as I in Tampa, Florida. I didn't know her so much as know of her. I saw her frequently at our local watering hole, TGI Fridays. I don't remember her name either, but she was originally from Powderville, South Carolina, and she had a voice as thick and sweet as magnolia sap on a late Spring morning. She also had a reputation for being elusive quarry. Many brave young men had attempted to woo her, but she wasn't having any. She never went out with anyone I knew at the time. Then one night she confided in a friend of mine (a friend who eventually became my wife I should point out) that she thought I just might be the balm in her breeze.

Armed with this superior intelligence, I approached her a few days later. All I had to say was, “hello.” She turned away abruptly without so much as a nod to my presence. The balm in her breeze had apparently turned into the bitter in her lemon.

So much for confidence born of secret admissions. So much for the logical progression of time. I'm sure in retrospect that I'm better off things went the way they did, but at the time it was a curious turn of events that left me wondering if there was ever any sense to be made of my universe. I did the only thing I think made any sense in the circumstances. I quit pursuing blonds altogether. I don't know if hair color was the crux of my problem, but I do know that for me at least, brunettes have been much more likely to act as I think they ought.

So now, decades later, even though I don't date or hang with women with an eye to romantic involvement, the universe still doesn't make much sense to me. A fellow I don't know contacted a friend of mine on Facebook to ask if she would be interested in doing the artwork for a cover for his new book. She wasn't, but she suggested that he contact me. He did. He friended me on Facebook and sent me a direct message. He said he had just finished the novel and “needed a cover badly.” He described what he was looking for in some detail, and I decided that I could do it. I thought we were on our way to a fine artistic partnership. I was excited about the prospect of starting a portfolio of book covers and marketing myself as a cover artist/designer, something I have thought that I might be good at. (I offer my cover for Speedster as evidence.)

But now the fellow has seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. I have thus far sent him three Facebook direct messages, posted on his timeline once, and sent him an email. He left me a phone number, which I would gladly call, but it has too many digits and I don't know which one to leave out. He has failed to respond to any of my missives. I would just chalk this up to another flake in the crusty pie shell of my world, but I've already made his book cover. You can see it in first draft form at the top of this post. I think it's really pretty good. I think he'll think so too, but I don't have any idea what happened to him. Probably, in the interim, he thinks he got a better offer. I wonder if he's blond.

Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Jonah Gibson) — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:32:00 +0000

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