robot lawn mower!

the wonders encountered merely by going for a walk.

finally, i have seen the future! and it's safety yellow! and it operates by itself!

now i might actually buy a house with a lawn.

the family was driving away while the lawn was being mowed. of course, they had trouble pulling out of their driveway because of all the people slowing down to check out the wicked awesome robot lawnmower.

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/

this wicked awesome robot future - let me say it again: WICKED AWESOME ROBOT FUTURE - is marred by the occasional insurrection. let us not forget the very real tragedy that befell a Danish municipal worker recently.

I encountered a toad in the dark, on the pathway of the apartment complex, waiting patiently for his one true love.

I did not know that right away, though. Before I knew anything at all about him, I conversed with him.

“mr. toad, what are you doing in the middle of the walkway in the dark where anyone who is not looking down might step on you.”

Mr. Toad gruffly replied, “’Tis a small price to pay, being stepped on, for all this warmth. Concrete holds so much heat in the night. It warms my cold blood like a hot stone. Until I can find my one, true love, I won’t have any other heat this cool night.”

“But, why not find a stone?” I said, “This is a dangerous place, with stiletto heels and dogs that have spent long hours cooped up in small apartments.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Toad, “That is exactly what I am doing right precisely here. You see, if a woman finds me and kisses me, I turn into an accountant.* As for the dogs, they might love me in their way. If a dog kisses me, I become an angel. An angel is a far better thing to be than a lonely toad.”

I agreed with the toad. I asked to take his picture. I told him I’d put it on the internet where all sorts of women and dogs might see him and fall in love.

*Upon kissing: frogs turn into princes; toads turn into accountants; snakes turn into thieves; lizards turn into insurance agents; rats turn into trash collectors; dogs turn into soldiers; cats, of course, turn into nothing at all for what else could they possibly desire to be?

baboons

feeling guilty for crap posts, and still too busy researching to fix this, i dug up an old short story i wrote in college, years and years ago.

it's not the kind of thing i'd send anywhere these days, and it's very simplistic compared to the labyrinths i'm bashing my skull against these days. still, i don't think it's too bad.

if you're lucky, one of these days i'll dig up this story called 'faithful dog'... remind me next time my posts start to stink.

(also, and in case you didn't know, baboons have always scared me.)


Baboons

1

The first time I saw baboons, they were in a zoo. They sat around, scratching themselves and waiting for their next meal. They didn’t look like much.

I pulled my mother’s hand.

I wanted to see those gigantic horses with so many weird spots.

We saw those dirty baboons first and I looked at them. We went to look at the giraffes and I was happy.

2

The second time I saw baboons, it was on TV. This nature show was about a drought in Africa. All these animals were drunk on fruit. The elephant was supposed to dig up the muddy, filthy water hiding under a riverbed.

Then, they showed this huge baboon, like a giant, snatching a baby gazelle, and tearing it to shreds with horrible teeth and powerful arms and blood everywhere.

The baboon licked its lips. The baboon looked up at the camera, chewing with an open mouth.

I looked from the television to my father, stoned out of his gourd and chewing a sandwich with this stupid grin on his face and his joint smoldering in an ashtray next to him, and I wondered if he would kill a little gazelle, too.

I knew what veal was by then, so I understood that these things had to happen sometimes.

My brothers were just little toddlers, and they had nightmares about the monkeys coming after them with human hands and animal teeth, in slow motion and they can’t run away.

3

When Santa Claus left me a small, stuffed baboon from the Lion King movie, I was very happy because I liked the movie, and the baboon character.

I didn’t take it with me when we went to Johannesburg.

4

My father came into our rooms with suitcases at three AM. We woke up to his naked back, shoving our clothes into the suitcases and tugging to keep his sweatpants up. My brothers from their bunk beds asked questions until my father barked at them to shut up, and then my brothers were crying.

I didn’t say anything. I just watched.

My mother talked about the passports from the hall.

We piled into the back seat of Mom’s car. She kept telling Dad to double-check the passports. He kept telling her to be quiet because she was scaring the kids.

We were scared, all right.

My mom bought tickets with three different credit cards. She had to use all of them to get me and my two brothers and my father and herself on a plane to Johannesburg, South Africa. We were still in our pajamas. Dad had put on a flannel shirt and a baseball cap, but he was wearing the same ratty sweatpants from our bedroom.

I sat next to my mother on the plane. We took turns braiding each other’s hair on the flight. My brothers watched cartoons in the aisle seats next to me with their headphones. The cartoons played right on the seat backs in front of them.

My mother explained how the weather was going to be really weird in South Africa because Chicago was in snowy autumn, but South Africa was in a hot summer.

We had to change flights once, but I don’t know where we were when we changed flights. Everything looked old and dirty and everyone was talking in weird languages, and they were all these different colors of skin.

We got off, got to our next flight, and kept on flying. My brothers kept whining and asking questions. My father kept telling them to shut up.

Then, we landed in Johannesburg.

5

I held my brothers’ hands in customs. They wiggled, and pretended like they were trying to escape from my electrical grip that kept shocking them and shocking them.

I played along because it kept them from crying. My father talked us through customs. My mother pushed a huge cart with all of our luggage, and I was in charge of my brothers.

My father rented a car. We went to a motel in the middle of nowhere.

My mother dragged me into the bathroom. She took off her shirt, and she had duct tape all over her body.

She told me that she needed me to help her get the tape off. I pulled at it, gently. She was patient. She held her hair up so I could get the tape from her back. She spread her legs so I could pull it off her thighs.

Plastic bags full of Euros hid beneath the tape. I asked her what these strange, colorful pieces of paper were, and she told me that the paper was money from a faraway place, and when dad got back, he’d be taking this money with him and trading it in for the money from where we were.

6

I saw a baboon from the motel window. I looked out from the window, and I saw this huge ape, bigger than me, ambling down the middle of the road.

I clapped my hands and pointed so my brothers would come over and see the big baboon like a pedestrian. My brothers had to jump up to see over the window ledge, and had to struggle to see the animal. They kept shouting about the monkey.

Then, they jumped around the room like they were monkeys.

Mom smoked duty-free cigars in a corner chair. She seemed to be watching the flies buzz around the room. The motel had windows, but the screens were all torn. Big black bars kept the bigger stuff out, but the bars didn't stop flies.

7

When dad got back, he took some of the money mom gave him. He didn’t want to change too much of the money all at once, because people would notice. He put three or four plastic bags in his pocket, and he pulled out two huge buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a six-pack of Coke from some grocery bags he had brought back. He told us to keep the food away from the windows so the baboons wouldn’t bust in and steal it.

Baboons did that in Johannesburg. They tore through screens, tugged open locked windows with brute force, and snatched the food in the window.

We never saw dad again.

My mom smoked until she ran out of cigars. Then, she just sat there. I asked her when dad was coming back. She shrugged. She put her head down on the armrest of the chair. She closed her eyes.

My brothers asked me if they could be monkeys when they grew up. I told them that was stupid. I told them to watch TV. They turned on the television, and that woke up my mother. She took the remote away from the boys. She surfed stations until she found a kid show.

I asked her if I could go walk around a little.

She told me to watch TV.

This cartoon was something I’d seen in America about a baboon and a weasel. The cartoon baboon didn’t look anything like a real baboon.

Real baboons were scary.

8

A couple hours later, mom got up. She said that she was going to go get some cigarettes and to see if she could find our father. She told us kids to stay right there.

My brothers and I said that we would.

After she was gone a while, I was bored and I was staring out the window.

I had opened the window because the air conditioner wasn’t really working, and I was leaning out of the torn screen and looking at the dusty streets of Africa.

I was watching barefoot people in dirty clothes walking up and down the street, riding bicycles, and driving tiny little cars and trucks that looked like someone smashed them around their four corners to make them smaller and taller than American trucks.

Behind me, my brothers were watching cartoons, and eating the leftover chicken. Flies were everywhere, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it so I just waved my hands in front of my face now and then.

After a while, the people in the street had all gotten where they were going, and now there was nothing in the streets but dust and dust and dust.

Then, there was another baboon. It had a dead cat hanging from its mouth.

The baboon loped along on its knuckles, with the dead cat dangling and swinging and little drips of blood falling down the body to the tail.

10

When mom got back, she had a carton of cigarettes, and a bag full of cheap lighters. She sat down and started smoking again. My brothers had fallen asleep, and it was just her and me sitting there.

I asked her when Dad was coming back, and she didn’t say anything. She just sat there, smoking, her eyes wrapped in purple, sleepless rings.

I asked her again.

She said that he’d be back soon.

I asked her when we’d go home.

She shrugged. She said that we could ask Dad when he got back.

10

When mom fell asleep, it was just me and my brothers bored to death, and kind of scared, and wondering where dad was. They were fighting over the remote, and I was sick of both of them, hiding in the bathtub.

I just sat there, with no water, and no soap.

I thought about all the baboons I had seen. They were so much bigger now that they weren’t in a zoo. They looked huge next to the little, cheap cars parked along the dirt streets.

Baboons belonged in the wild, or in a zoo.

And they were in the streets, and we were in this room with barred windows.

11

I got so sick of waiting. I just left. I stood up and decided that I was going to go find dad. I didn’t know where he was, and I didn’t care. I wanted to get out and find him, or find someone who knew him.

Mom didn’t stop me from leaving. She was fast asleep.

So I walked down the street, looked around.

I wondered if there was a bank somewhere he had gone to. I knew money usually had to do with banks. I figured I’d look around for banks and maybe I’d find him.

These streets were eerie. The sun was so hot, and so few people were in the street. Lone cars turned corners, and they floated in a haze of yellow dust. The buildings were sun-baked bricks, all cracked and dry.

I sweated like crazy.

I looked at all these buildings, wondered if I’d ever find a bank.

In an alley, I saw something moving, and I thought it was a dog. I saw something big and brown and it looked like a dog when jumping behind a can.

I looked closer. I wanted to see a dog. I walked towards the alley to see the dog.

It was a baboon. It wasn’t a male baboon, though. A baby hung from its breast. It wasn’t as big, or as scary. This mother was lifting the lids of cans and sniffing at the trash.

The mother had this stern face, eyes jammed together, and black skin with black eyes. It gazed furiously at me. The baby moved it’s tiny, brown head against her breast. If she had sat up on her haunches and stood up on two legs, she’d have been taller than me. And she cradled her child away from me as if I was going to run after her.

I wasn’t going to run after her.

We stared at each other.

We stared at each other forever. Then, she backed away gracefully. She was so quiet. She jumped over the fence at the back of the alley.

On the other side of this ratty wooden fence, other baboons congregated, with their monkey cries and prancing smacks and hands digging nimbly through each other’s back hair.

I pushed one of the trash cans over. I poured all the filthy, awful, stinking, hot trash out in a heap. I ran up to the fence. I threw that empty trash can with all my might into the group of monkeys.

I listened to them screaming. I saw them through the cracks of the fence jumping away from the trash can, and then jumping back and striking at it and denting the trash can.

I don’t know why I did that. It felt so good, that I did it again with another trash can, and then again. Then I threw heavier chunks of trash. Rotten fruit. Boxes of junk. An old belt.

Throwing that stuff felt so good.

for every warning label

for every warning label, someone had to explode themself in a ball of fire for doing something genuinely stupid.

i went on a quest for warning labels in my apartment. how can i injure myself without leaving on account of the rain?

this is my favorite warning label. in case you didn't know, the water heater can melt your hand!


i don't remember what this one was.


the kitchen table is a dangerous place. whatever you do, don't set fire to the cheap chinese chairs!


i knew shaving cream was macho because we use it on our rugged velcro faces. then, i knew it was even more macho because apparently its ::dangerous::...


oddly enough, the fire extinguisher has something resembling a warning label, but isn't in fact a warning label. still, it would be an alarming situation.



does anyone else think its weird that the fire extinguisher doesn't come with the "call the fire department" step?

anyway, it's all i got right now, folks. check in tomorrow, i might have some news. or the day after.

regardless, tomorrow i might put down the camera and actually write something interesting. i must have been pretty desperate to post an entire blog entry about warning labels.

writers with day jobs

i have a day job right now. i work in a very lowly post at an art museum.

when writers have day jobs, they are even harder to live with.

here is what my alarm clock looks like when i am waiting for my second pot of coffee and i’ve already been up and working a bit.


here is what the housekeeping becomes with two jobs.



i don’t know what those sunglasses are doing there, or how they got there. are they mine? i hope they’re mine. how long have they been there?

i live in a cloud of clothes and cat hair.

this sink has been clogged and slow for weeks. sometimes i pour bleach down it and it works for half a day.

that was two days’ remains of dinner. heat and eat.

where the heck did all those dishes come from?

my little houseguests, imprisoned here, continually plot their escape, because the only thing harder to live with than a writer is a writer with a day job.

please, buy my books. do it for the kitties that have nowhere else to go. they must live with my work-induced sub-par housekeeping.

what, you wanted something?

um...

well...

i can't think of anything, guys and dolls.

i'm a little busy in a mess mess mess of mad mad mad research.

remember me saying clerical matters preclude me from a regular post today?

i'm still in the middle of that.

why don't we all just go read a book and call it a night?

i recommend this one:

voicemail boxes, my mortal enemy!

telephones ought to be illegal for bachelors. especially voice mail. no single source of shame and misery and regret is as overwhelming as a young woman’s voicemail inbox.

perhaps upon engagement to some patient woman, a man is allowed to access merely the voicebox of the person good enough to take his hand. if she can stand his voicemails, she can stand anything. then, after the marriage, voicemail permissions are extended in full, with a subclause allowing the patient bride to revoke them at will.

exhilarated, and on the cusp of the end of a year of professional sacrifices, i made a phone call in search of a new friend. i need more friends. i do not have nearly enough.

i left a voicemail message somewhere between auctioneer and speaking in tongues. halfway through the message i was trying not to laugh because i realized i had entered some new dimension of shame and embarrassment. i thought i was doing so badly, that i should just go for it and achieve new heights of nonsensical, rambling zaniness.

if you’re going to blow it, blow it big, i say. make it memorable. make it the kind of babbling message that can open portals to new dimensions of shame and misery complete with shame elementals and embarrassment salamanders. make it so bad that a recording will be played at christmas parties year after year, and inspire a giant book about bad voicemails, that’s turned into a tv special on fox.

if you are the recipient of one of my continually horrendous voicemails, please feel free to post a word-by-word reproduction in the comments section… if you can even understand what i’m saying half the time.

if i could remember that last one well enough, or get access to a recording of it, i’d post my shame and misery immediately. if you can’t laugh at yourself, you don’t get to laugh at other people.

what i can remember is this:
i asked somebody’s mom and sister out on a date without actually meaning to do so. then, i babbled about the chinese unicorn being my favorite animal. then i said something about spamalot eight or nine times. then, i invited this poor, unsuspecting person to call me back at least three different times.

i’m not holding my breath, folks.

on a completely related note, i have forgotten my own voicemail password, and i haven’t had any clue how to access my voicemail box for about eight months. who knows what mysteries await inside the wires? perhaps i can find new heights of someone else’s shame?

what i do is this: i see that i have a missed call, and call them back.

i do this because i’m merciful.

sharon maas, a fellow author and friend, got her domain stolen

some cybersquatters yanked her old domain right out from under her, the thieving jackholes.

let's give her new website some google-juice so people googling her name will get he new website, 'kay?

http://www.sharonmaas.co.uk/

sea change

at my parents house, i opened the pantry in search of either chips or cookies.

i did not find people cookies. i did not find people chips.

i found dog cheese puffs. i found dog cookies.

man, times sure have changed around here.

images from grimm's maerchen, 1956

my sister - many years ago - gave me this amazing little book for christmas. i had it out because i was practicing my german, and realized other people might like to see some of the wicked cool pictures.

grimm's fairy tales in the original german, published in the mid 1950's, which she tracked down somewhere i don't even know where.

here are just a few humble snapshots of the gorgeous pen and ink work in this excellent little book.

may we all recieve gifts this awesome, and also give them.

simplicity

the mosquito - the fool - did not realize the paint was not truly skin. it landed on the luminous breast of the maiden, all aglow in the perfect spotlight. the mosquito - the fool - dug the needle into the craquelure veins, sucked the blood.

it wasn't blood. it was old canvas and dried oil paintings.

the mosquito - the fool - flew away believing in the painter's masterful strokes. she found her mate, and laid her eggs with the blood food from the painting in a small patch of water in the old, leaky roof.

for years, afterwards, these moths were everywhere. they had mosquito-like bodies - small and dainty and jagged angles - but they had the dusty puff and gorgeous wings of moths.

guests go home, and find moths hiding in their clothes.

hiding in their hair.

http://www.kimbellart.org/database/index.cfm?detail=yes&ID=AP%201985.03

clerical matters preclude me

clerical matters preclude me from a genuine update today.

here's an old picture i found hiding in the digital camera that i think is fantastic.

i was going to do something else, but then i saw this:

something new was added to my amazon.com page:

under Editorial Reviews:


Book Description
The debut of a brilliant new voice that will change the fantasy genre forever.

An intricate web of stories weave together to tell a tale of revenge, justice, ambition, and power. Zhan has been sent to find her grandfather, a man accused of killing not only Zhan's family, but every man, woman, and child in their village. What she finds is a shell of a man, and a web of deceit that will test the very foundations of a world she thought she understood.

A tale of revenge that grows into something more, Last Dragon is a literary fantasy novel in the tradition of Gene Wolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. J.M. McDermott brings the fantasy genre to new literary heights with a remarkable first novel that will leave critics and readers alike in stunned awe.

About the Author
J.M. McDermott graduated from the University of Houston in 2002 with a BA in Creative Writing. He resides in Arlington, Texas with an assortment of empty coffee cups, overflowing bookshelves, and crazy schemes.






Let me go on the record and state this very clearly: I DID NOT WRITE THAT! I wrote the biography. I did not write the book description. I don't want to call the guy a liar, but it would have never occurred to me to say my name in the same breath as Gene Wolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I'm trying to track down who wrote that. They deserve a cookie.

inclement weather so...

since it's raining cats and dogs, i thought i'd explore what my apartment looks like for a cat. i can't very well go for a walk out there.

here is a cat:



this cat hates me. he hides from me. all the time. here is what my apartment looks like to him:






my lovely apartment - and it is a lovely apartment - does not look so very lovely when i see it through a timid cat's eyes.