Okay, so you want to write for Thought Catalog. Great! Wanting to write is half the battle! Of course, lots of things are half the battle. Not wanting to write is also half the battle. Let's not win the battle and lose the war here.
1. What's your relationship with lists? You're going to have to get over any childhood trauma involving cataloging. It doesn't matter if your mom forced you to list your favorite toys just so she could burn numbers one through five, and leave you only with number 38 that fucked up doll you inherited from you sister. Start making some goddamned lists. Ideally, make them in the 3-100 range. Shoot for some key numbers 3,5,10,15, 20, 50, 69, or 100. If you want to be edgy you can do an odd number like 57 or 33, but don't get too cute with it.
2. Choosing a topic. Look deep within yourself or the internet for some inspiration. Pick something that is personal to you or something inventive. Nothing, huh? How about something topical or controversial instead? Race! Now that's a hot button issue. But why limit yourself? Best to paint with broad strokes. Gender! That's the stuff. Now you can be assured that your writing will reach the hearts, minds, egos, and tumblrs of at least 50% of the population. Maybe more if you do your job right.
3. Filling out your list. You have your topic, now get ready to stretch it far beyond it's scope. A good rule of thumb is that only 1/3 of the list really needs to respond to your theme. The longer the list the more leeway you have. Reach for marginal points or things that are tangentially related. Split a single item into two similar ones to to beef up your catalog (see: 1). Add a funny but unrelated point to distract people, a picture of a cat or an inappropriate Vine. Don't think too hard about how to order your list. It doesn't matter. If worse comes to worst, don't sweat it. You can always become a staff writer for Jezebel.
4. Giving your work a title. This one is more important than it might seem. Most of the people who are going to want to read your piece won't even bother. You shouldn't mind, though. You're in it for the clicks. All you have to do is lead them their or better yet drag them screaming. Think of your piece as a radiator, the reader as someone you kidnapped, and your title as the chains to bind them. Use simple, visceral, and gripping words to grab peoples attention like sex, drugs, farts, turnt, EDM, fails, hentai, John Mayer, etc. Employ adjectives that heighten the sense of expectation and add some mystery to your list like wild, unbelievable, _______-blowing, unfortunate, uncommon, reprehensible, millenial, tripadelic, sucky. If all goes according to plan you'll have a title people will be too horrified to look away from, for example "13 Insane Ways the Birth Orgasm is Better Than Any Human Penis" or "50 Helpful Suggestions My Dad Gave Me About Suicide".
5. Coming to terms with people hating you. You've really done it this time. You got your work published. Congratulations. Now brace yourself for the ignominy. In all likelihood your work was so offensive, disgusting, and/or stupid that you're reputation and dignity are going to take a significant hit. Be prepared to lose some friends, perhaps even a family member or a household pet. Expect complete strangers to avoid your gaze and hiss at you. Don't be surprised if you find a subreddit dedicated to deriding and harassing you. Settle in for the long haul because this could haunt you for the rest of your life. You should be okay, though. I mean, they're just haters, right?
Friday, August 29, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
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Monday, August 18, 2014
War & Peace & Other Things Too
Friday nights are largely the same for us. Stumbling through the same clubs and piss niches, using tired, formulas to calibrate the near ideal, near identical high with the same drugs. Same expectations of music, strange experiences, beautiful women. Same dude who pulls a blunt from his sock and offers you a hit. The night leaving you warm, but knowing the same journey home will make you cold. Same realization you were cold to start with. Same. So when we left that night in search of another cooler, more happening, less throwing-my-friend-out-for-being-too-drunk club I felt the same as I always did.
Mark had met some girl that night. Met is a strong word. He had fallen into her unlocked bathroom stall and then they started making out on the checkered floor. That is an unbreakable bond and tonight they were proving that the power of love could topple mountains, specifically the mountains of utter incoherence and lack of motor skills. They have some beautiful vistas, by the way. The girl, Mona, complained of a raging drunk hunger and Mark championed her cause. He rallied us all, Cutler, Tobias, Jill, Mona, and myself, to an intersection with three bodegas, one on each corner. After much debate, It was decided that the bodega on the South East corner was the best for its better chip selection and rumors of having Orangina.
We pilfered the store for our respective snack fantasies. Tobias seethed at the owner for not having Nerds Rope. He tried to suggest other rope like candy options to my friend to no avail. "Cowtails?! You fucking animal!" Loaded with several bags of chips I stared into the drink freezer. An Orangina shaped silhouette waited in its depths. I opened the door and reached into the blackness, only to have it snatched away. A dark figure had been waiting and bolted with my bottle. Were I in anyway sober, I might have been more disturbed by this, but instead I felt the all too familiar drunk rage of a toddler. I threw my money on the counter and stormed outside to wait for my friends.
Alternating fistfuls of different chips, I noticed something new and strange. Outside the bodega was one of those quarter rides for children, a sort of miniature mechanical bull but without the whale tails and puke stained safety cushions that accompany it in a bar setting. Upon closer inspection, it was not a bull at all but a duck. A white feathered, yellow billed duck wearing a colonial three cornered hat. I mused at this choice. Why such a blatant and peculiar anachronism? Perhaps it was a cast-off from a Crucible themed amusement park? I did not know and was further overcome by a sense that I had been unPC. What if the hat was part of the duck's cultural heritage? No doubt he had been oppressed in his life. I would never be able to understand his hardships. Ohh god, I was assuming the duck was a man. Better just to apologize and shut the fuck up.
My friends poured out of the bodega and interrupted me saying "please don't post this on tumblr." Perplexed at my contrition to this mechanical beast, they stood around me blinking. Artfully I played it off like I was mad at the ride for stealing my money. Mark, ever the champion of people's whims, insisted he would make the duck pay. "Either you're getting a ride out of this thing or I'm going to bore a hole into it so you can fuck it." I told him to leave the duck alone, that it had had enough mistreatment for one night, but Mark was not one to be dissuaded. Tobias, Jill, Mona, and Cutler applauded as Matt mounted the machine and kicked it's flanks as if it were a horse. The duck resisted his advances. Then he resorted to pecuniary lubrication, dropping a quarter into the change slot. The duck acknowledged the transaction with a piercing jingle, a tune somewhere between obnoxious door bell and a child's shriek or laugh (it's really impossible to tell between the two).
Either baby crazy from the sound or jealous that the duck was taking her man's attention, Mona bounded over to the machine and jumped on clutching Mark's barrel chest for balance. In turn, the machine began to rock slowly back and forth. "This is worse than fucking a fat guy" Mona blurted. "Hey!" an obviously body conscious Mark responded. The pace of the duck's swaying quickened and a strange color emanated from the ride. A brownish almost areola like aura billowed out from the head of the duck and quickly encapsulated the lovers. Before the rest of us could react the aura morphed from transparent to opaque, in effect creating a spherical nipple around our friends and the ride. We rushed over to the pyramid and pounded it's dense, yet fleshy exterior. Cutler recoiled from the tactile sensation. Jill, barred the fuck out from enough Xanax to quell a Walmart shopping riot, hugged the pyramid and pressed her face into it. The equivocating effete that I am alternated between throwing ineffectual punches and hurling lame jokes at it. "You call yourself a pyramid?!" I had no idea where I was going with that one. The pyramid began to quiver violently and then collapsed in upon itself, shrinking to a tiny dot and vanishing all together. My friends were gone. The machine remained. Duckus ex machina.
Aghast by the disappearance, we encircled the machine and prodded it as if it were a dead body. Nothing happened. It starred back at us with it's black, bread-lusting eyes. Tobias enjoined us to panic and wild speculation. Was it some kind of sentient entity with charnel machinations for its riders? Perhaps it was a gateway to another world? Mark had always been a bit off, what if he were some kind of magician? What if we were all just THAT fucked up and they had slipped away unnoticed to bone? There was only one way to know. Someone had to ride that dastardly duck and hard. I volunteered. I had always had a thing for ducks from Daffy to Donald and Darkwing. I also had the least to live for. I gave a eulogy for myself and parceled out my belongings to the attending host. Cutler would get my cat. Jill my prized Emperor VHS, a rare black metal relic. Tobias would get my books and Steam account. Burn everything else. Doing my best John Wayne impersonation I saddled up the duck and moseyed on to a near certain death, my chips still in hand.
Pocket. Quarter. Slot. Slide. Clink. The duck swayed forward and back. The tune played. I laughed. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I wasn't about to be obliterated. Also, how could anyone enjoy this ride? "Kids suck!" I affirmed to my friends before being swallowed up by the large brown triangle. The interior was filled with a sour fluid and I big gulped a lung full trying to breath. I reached out to my friends, but the shape turned fully opaque. Floating up to the middle of the pyramid off the saddle of the duck, I thought about the Orangina and the girl who I had tried to dance with that night. I thought I was polite, but she was obviously very creeped out. It was probably for the best that I was drowning in this brown sauce. Flush the pain away. The pyramid began to shrink and the pressure was unbearable. I blacked out.
I awoke in a field tilled by war. Robotic and organic limbs rose up from the soil intertwined like grape vines. Enough to supply every sorority house in America with a years worth of Franzia. Probably a red vintage, but what do I know. I sat and surveyed the slaughter noshing on my chips. The horizon flashed with strange neon colors and the earth shook. I marched among the dead, following the waning light of the horizon. Out of the carnage rang a husky death rattle and I paused to find its source. There heaped among the bodies was Mona, though much older, more robotic, and gored up than I remembered. "You look better without all that blush on your lower intestine" I said. She laughed. "Where the fuck am I, by the way?". Blood dribbled from the side of her mouth. "Of course. How rude of me." I offered her my chips, but she declined with a shake of her hand. "We're on Trewegttie. A planet in another dimension that has been ravaged by war since time immemorial." I gasped. I had eaten all my chips.
"Where's Mark?" I asked foolishly. Mona chocked back a tear. "Those bastards, they killed him. We've been fighting against them for years. He was the love of my life." I knelt down and held her hand. She smiled back at me. "You must avenge us!" I cringed. "Uhhh, I hardly know you and Mark's more of an acquaintance than a friend. I would feel a bit uncomfortable avenging y'all. I could give a solid eulogy, though. Also, do you know a way out of here?" Mona laughed like I was complete fool. "Don't you see! They brought us here. They won't just let you go back." Now I was the one doing the laughing. "Listen," I said "I can entertain your whole we're on a different planet theory simply because I'm standing on what appears to be cyberpunk Gettysburg. I mean, there's a gigantic robotic arm crawling across the battlefield and strangling anyone left alive. It's plausible. I'll bite. But what fucking purpose could they have for me?" She looked at me like an old girlfriend who thought my idiocy was cute. "The Orangina. That's how they lure people. They want us to end this forever war."
I started laughing hysterically, loud enough that a dying woman asked me to keep it the fuck down. I gazed at Mona. "Okay so they need a 130 lbs. white dude with a bald spot and several moles he really needs to get checked out to end this conflict for them? Maybe there's a reason why these people have been at war for so long. I mean, if their solution to the problem is importing turds (me) not much is going to change." "Regardless, you are here now. There's no going back." I kicked at the dirt like a grumpy toddler. "Well, what the fuck should I do now?" Mona reached into a satchel by her side. She groaned from the pain and picked out a small cube. With flat palm she offered it to me. "Take this. It will tell you about the land. Find a woman named Ftupled. She is a leader here. Tell her you are from our dimension and that you know me." I took the cube. "Cool. Thanks. I guess I'll get out of your hair now." Mona howled in pain. "Wait! Do this one last thing for me." She pointed to her bag. "There is a small disc within. Give it to me." I hesitated. "You just like a second ago reached into that very same bag yourself." "Fuck you! I'm dying!"
"Alright fine." I walked over and pulled the disc from the bag. I handed it to her. "Now go. End this senseless violence." Mona aligned the disc with a small slot on her cybernetic leg. It slid in. She convulsed, almost resonated, for several seconds before collapsing into death.
Armed with a small geometric shape and a total ignorance of everything around me, I continued my journey across the gory moors. After sometime I noticed a man walking in the distance. He seemed to be scavenging the battle fields, stopping every now and then to bend down. Without knowing where I was supposed to go and having lived a year among the freegans, I decided to approach. The man did not stop his search, even though I stood within fifty feet of him. He wore long blue robes and large metallic backpack he sported with only one strap on, the cool kid way. I watched as he stooped down and attached a cable to a robotic head lying on the ground. The head moaned in a creepy way and then powered down. I was disconcerted to say the least. "Did you just make that robot cum?" I asked. "If by cumming you mean transferring his intelligence into a hard drive, then yes?" Good lord, for all intents and purposes this man was a pretentious, LARPing, peripatetic hooker with a robot fetish and a savior complex. This world deserved to burn. I waved goodbye and spun on my heel to leave, but he ran after me. "Excuse me. I can't help but notice that you seem to be a little lost." I admitted that I probably couldn't be more disoriented even if I were butt chugging LSD. He laughed and told me I reminded him of a certain journalist in his world's history who was known for taking copious amounts of drugs. Flattered by these visions of Hunter S. Thompson, I agreed to follow this man wherever he may go.
Coincidentally, this was the right choice. Dch, the man who was leading me, was a robo healer traveling around this war torn land and helping sentient machines fix themselves. He told me an anecdote about a woebegone android to whom he suggested the philosopher Klaaat (apparently this world's equivalent of Kierkegaard). Turns out ceaseless war is bad for morale and almost everyone on this world is depressed about it. He spoke of this world's history. How there were two major schools of thought about how the war began. One side proposed that a lusty cam boy pitted two world leaders against one another in a game of one-upmanship that eventually turned violent. The other stated that it was a candy pop music video shoot gone wrong behind all of this. I didn't know what to think, nor did I really care, but the preponderance of discarded lollipop sticks made me think those candy pop folks were on to something. Following several days of hiking we made it to the border of a bombed out metropolis.
Dch brought me to the headquarters of Ftupled within the city. I was led through by a minor procession befitting of a popular local radio talk show host. Ftupled held her court in a large pool which I prostrated before. I told her my story, about the duck, Mona, Dch, and I gave her the cube. The room erupted in hushed yet feverish speculation. Ftupled raised her arm and her court went silent. "So, stranger, can you help us? Have you a way to end this war?" I stroked my chin vigorously. "Well, I've got a couple of ideas." I pulled out a notepad I had been keeping and opened it up. "Would it be possible to kill all of them? I mean win." The room hissed and booed. Ftupled shook her head. "It is a stalemate. No side has enjoyed a meaningful advantage in hundreds of years." I crossed off "win the war" from my list. "Okay, well how about peace?" Everyone in the room looked around quizzically at one another. "You know, not fighting." Ftupled stood up from the pool and approached me with a solemn saunter. Taking my head in her hands she pulled my face into her breasts and kissed the top of my forehead. Her court began crying and cheering. I wrested my self from the motor boating/water boarding and gasped for breath. I gazed at my notebook and put a check mark next to "peace". Sirens and exclamations of joy could be heard resounding through the city. "Fucking idiots" I whispered under my breath.
Mark had met some girl that night. Met is a strong word. He had fallen into her unlocked bathroom stall and then they started making out on the checkered floor. That is an unbreakable bond and tonight they were proving that the power of love could topple mountains, specifically the mountains of utter incoherence and lack of motor skills. They have some beautiful vistas, by the way. The girl, Mona, complained of a raging drunk hunger and Mark championed her cause. He rallied us all, Cutler, Tobias, Jill, Mona, and myself, to an intersection with three bodegas, one on each corner. After much debate, It was decided that the bodega on the South East corner was the best for its better chip selection and rumors of having Orangina.
We pilfered the store for our respective snack fantasies. Tobias seethed at the owner for not having Nerds Rope. He tried to suggest other rope like candy options to my friend to no avail. "Cowtails?! You fucking animal!" Loaded with several bags of chips I stared into the drink freezer. An Orangina shaped silhouette waited in its depths. I opened the door and reached into the blackness, only to have it snatched away. A dark figure had been waiting and bolted with my bottle. Were I in anyway sober, I might have been more disturbed by this, but instead I felt the all too familiar drunk rage of a toddler. I threw my money on the counter and stormed outside to wait for my friends.
Alternating fistfuls of different chips, I noticed something new and strange. Outside the bodega was one of those quarter rides for children, a sort of miniature mechanical bull but without the whale tails and puke stained safety cushions that accompany it in a bar setting. Upon closer inspection, it was not a bull at all but a duck. A white feathered, yellow billed duck wearing a colonial three cornered hat. I mused at this choice. Why such a blatant and peculiar anachronism? Perhaps it was a cast-off from a Crucible themed amusement park? I did not know and was further overcome by a sense that I had been unPC. What if the hat was part of the duck's cultural heritage? No doubt he had been oppressed in his life. I would never be able to understand his hardships. Ohh god, I was assuming the duck was a man. Better just to apologize and shut the fuck up.
My friends poured out of the bodega and interrupted me saying "please don't post this on tumblr." Perplexed at my contrition to this mechanical beast, they stood around me blinking. Artfully I played it off like I was mad at the ride for stealing my money. Mark, ever the champion of people's whims, insisted he would make the duck pay. "Either you're getting a ride out of this thing or I'm going to bore a hole into it so you can fuck it." I told him to leave the duck alone, that it had had enough mistreatment for one night, but Mark was not one to be dissuaded. Tobias, Jill, Mona, and Cutler applauded as Matt mounted the machine and kicked it's flanks as if it were a horse. The duck resisted his advances. Then he resorted to pecuniary lubrication, dropping a quarter into the change slot. The duck acknowledged the transaction with a piercing jingle, a tune somewhere between obnoxious door bell and a child's shriek or laugh (it's really impossible to tell between the two).
Either baby crazy from the sound or jealous that the duck was taking her man's attention, Mona bounded over to the machine and jumped on clutching Mark's barrel chest for balance. In turn, the machine began to rock slowly back and forth. "This is worse than fucking a fat guy" Mona blurted. "Hey!" an obviously body conscious Mark responded. The pace of the duck's swaying quickened and a strange color emanated from the ride. A brownish almost areola like aura billowed out from the head of the duck and quickly encapsulated the lovers. Before the rest of us could react the aura morphed from transparent to opaque, in effect creating a spherical nipple around our friends and the ride. We rushed over to the pyramid and pounded it's dense, yet fleshy exterior. Cutler recoiled from the tactile sensation. Jill, barred the fuck out from enough Xanax to quell a Walmart shopping riot, hugged the pyramid and pressed her face into it. The equivocating effete that I am alternated between throwing ineffectual punches and hurling lame jokes at it. "You call yourself a pyramid?!" I had no idea where I was going with that one. The pyramid began to quiver violently and then collapsed in upon itself, shrinking to a tiny dot and vanishing all together. My friends were gone. The machine remained. Duckus ex machina.
Aghast by the disappearance, we encircled the machine and prodded it as if it were a dead body. Nothing happened. It starred back at us with it's black, bread-lusting eyes. Tobias enjoined us to panic and wild speculation. Was it some kind of sentient entity with charnel machinations for its riders? Perhaps it was a gateway to another world? Mark had always been a bit off, what if he were some kind of magician? What if we were all just THAT fucked up and they had slipped away unnoticed to bone? There was only one way to know. Someone had to ride that dastardly duck and hard. I volunteered. I had always had a thing for ducks from Daffy to Donald and Darkwing. I also had the least to live for. I gave a eulogy for myself and parceled out my belongings to the attending host. Cutler would get my cat. Jill my prized Emperor VHS, a rare black metal relic. Tobias would get my books and Steam account. Burn everything else. Doing my best John Wayne impersonation I saddled up the duck and moseyed on to a near certain death, my chips still in hand.
Pocket. Quarter. Slot. Slide. Clink. The duck swayed forward and back. The tune played. I laughed. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I wasn't about to be obliterated. Also, how could anyone enjoy this ride? "Kids suck!" I affirmed to my friends before being swallowed up by the large brown triangle. The interior was filled with a sour fluid and I big gulped a lung full trying to breath. I reached out to my friends, but the shape turned fully opaque. Floating up to the middle of the pyramid off the saddle of the duck, I thought about the Orangina and the girl who I had tried to dance with that night. I thought I was polite, but she was obviously very creeped out. It was probably for the best that I was drowning in this brown sauce. Flush the pain away. The pyramid began to shrink and the pressure was unbearable. I blacked out.
I awoke in a field tilled by war. Robotic and organic limbs rose up from the soil intertwined like grape vines. Enough to supply every sorority house in America with a years worth of Franzia. Probably a red vintage, but what do I know. I sat and surveyed the slaughter noshing on my chips. The horizon flashed with strange neon colors and the earth shook. I marched among the dead, following the waning light of the horizon. Out of the carnage rang a husky death rattle and I paused to find its source. There heaped among the bodies was Mona, though much older, more robotic, and gored up than I remembered. "You look better without all that blush on your lower intestine" I said. She laughed. "Where the fuck am I, by the way?". Blood dribbled from the side of her mouth. "Of course. How rude of me." I offered her my chips, but she declined with a shake of her hand. "We're on Trewegttie. A planet in another dimension that has been ravaged by war since time immemorial." I gasped. I had eaten all my chips.
"Where's Mark?" I asked foolishly. Mona chocked back a tear. "Those bastards, they killed him. We've been fighting against them for years. He was the love of my life." I knelt down and held her hand. She smiled back at me. "You must avenge us!" I cringed. "Uhhh, I hardly know you and Mark's more of an acquaintance than a friend. I would feel a bit uncomfortable avenging y'all. I could give a solid eulogy, though. Also, do you know a way out of here?" Mona laughed like I was complete fool. "Don't you see! They brought us here. They won't just let you go back." Now I was the one doing the laughing. "Listen," I said "I can entertain your whole we're on a different planet theory simply because I'm standing on what appears to be cyberpunk Gettysburg. I mean, there's a gigantic robotic arm crawling across the battlefield and strangling anyone left alive. It's plausible. I'll bite. But what fucking purpose could they have for me?" She looked at me like an old girlfriend who thought my idiocy was cute. "The Orangina. That's how they lure people. They want us to end this forever war."
I started laughing hysterically, loud enough that a dying woman asked me to keep it the fuck down. I gazed at Mona. "Okay so they need a 130 lbs. white dude with a bald spot and several moles he really needs to get checked out to end this conflict for them? Maybe there's a reason why these people have been at war for so long. I mean, if their solution to the problem is importing turds (me) not much is going to change." "Regardless, you are here now. There's no going back." I kicked at the dirt like a grumpy toddler. "Well, what the fuck should I do now?" Mona reached into a satchel by her side. She groaned from the pain and picked out a small cube. With flat palm she offered it to me. "Take this. It will tell you about the land. Find a woman named Ftupled. She is a leader here. Tell her you are from our dimension and that you know me." I took the cube. "Cool. Thanks. I guess I'll get out of your hair now." Mona howled in pain. "Wait! Do this one last thing for me." She pointed to her bag. "There is a small disc within. Give it to me." I hesitated. "You just like a second ago reached into that very same bag yourself." "Fuck you! I'm dying!"
"Alright fine." I walked over and pulled the disc from the bag. I handed it to her. "Now go. End this senseless violence." Mona aligned the disc with a small slot on her cybernetic leg. It slid in. She convulsed, almost resonated, for several seconds before collapsing into death.
Armed with a small geometric shape and a total ignorance of everything around me, I continued my journey across the gory moors. After sometime I noticed a man walking in the distance. He seemed to be scavenging the battle fields, stopping every now and then to bend down. Without knowing where I was supposed to go and having lived a year among the freegans, I decided to approach. The man did not stop his search, even though I stood within fifty feet of him. He wore long blue robes and large metallic backpack he sported with only one strap on, the cool kid way. I watched as he stooped down and attached a cable to a robotic head lying on the ground. The head moaned in a creepy way and then powered down. I was disconcerted to say the least. "Did you just make that robot cum?" I asked. "If by cumming you mean transferring his intelligence into a hard drive, then yes?" Good lord, for all intents and purposes this man was a pretentious, LARPing, peripatetic hooker with a robot fetish and a savior complex. This world deserved to burn. I waved goodbye and spun on my heel to leave, but he ran after me. "Excuse me. I can't help but notice that you seem to be a little lost." I admitted that I probably couldn't be more disoriented even if I were butt chugging LSD. He laughed and told me I reminded him of a certain journalist in his world's history who was known for taking copious amounts of drugs. Flattered by these visions of Hunter S. Thompson, I agreed to follow this man wherever he may go.
Coincidentally, this was the right choice. Dch, the man who was leading me, was a robo healer traveling around this war torn land and helping sentient machines fix themselves. He told me an anecdote about a woebegone android to whom he suggested the philosopher Klaaat (apparently this world's equivalent of Kierkegaard). Turns out ceaseless war is bad for morale and almost everyone on this world is depressed about it. He spoke of this world's history. How there were two major schools of thought about how the war began. One side proposed that a lusty cam boy pitted two world leaders against one another in a game of one-upmanship that eventually turned violent. The other stated that it was a candy pop music video shoot gone wrong behind all of this. I didn't know what to think, nor did I really care, but the preponderance of discarded lollipop sticks made me think those candy pop folks were on to something. Following several days of hiking we made it to the border of a bombed out metropolis.
Dch brought me to the headquarters of Ftupled within the city. I was led through by a minor procession befitting of a popular local radio talk show host. Ftupled held her court in a large pool which I prostrated before. I told her my story, about the duck, Mona, Dch, and I gave her the cube. The room erupted in hushed yet feverish speculation. Ftupled raised her arm and her court went silent. "So, stranger, can you help us? Have you a way to end this war?" I stroked my chin vigorously. "Well, I've got a couple of ideas." I pulled out a notepad I had been keeping and opened it up. "Would it be possible to kill all of them? I mean win." The room hissed and booed. Ftupled shook her head. "It is a stalemate. No side has enjoyed a meaningful advantage in hundreds of years." I crossed off "win the war" from my list. "Okay, well how about peace?" Everyone in the room looked around quizzically at one another. "You know, not fighting." Ftupled stood up from the pool and approached me with a solemn saunter. Taking my head in her hands she pulled my face into her breasts and kissed the top of my forehead. Her court began crying and cheering. I wrested my self from the motor boating/water boarding and gasped for breath. I gazed at my notebook and put a check mark next to "peace". Sirens and exclamations of joy could be heard resounding through the city. "Fucking idiots" I whispered under my breath.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Clogs from the Underground
I've been cobbling it all together since the beginning. Filling the gaps with whatever I could. Flipping and flopping in loss. Booted to despair. Pumped to near the climax of agony. I'm not trying to be existential, by the way. I'm a cobbler. A cobbler of high fashion women's shoes for the internet. That is to say, the shoes I make are utterly unwearable. At best they induce a stress position that slowly subjugates the will and the body of the wearer to the shoe. At worst they are fatal. I have seen my shoes used as implements of torture, weapons of war, even as scenery in snuff films. Slobodan Milošević once sent a very thoughtful missive thanking me for a particular pair of loafers about which he said (and I quote) "If these puppies had been around in Roman times, you could bet your keister they wouldn't have bothered crucifying anybody!" The thought of my footwear being used as the predominant method of capital punishment in any time period is enough to make me blush. But Roman times?! It would have made the Passion of Christ look like a glamorous runway show! Say what you will about old Slobodan, but he sure knows how to pay a girl a compliment.
Now cobbling treacherous fashion isn't all fun and games. My clientele (mostly psychotic, drug-addled fashionistas and murderous warlords) can, on occasion, make terrible board game partners. Just try telling the partly mutated, fanatic religious leader of a platform wearing paramilitary group that she has to pay for her second child's college fund in The Game of Life. I can't say for certain that things would turn out the same way they did for me, but in all likelihood she's going crash her 2003 leased station wagon right into the crotch of a nearby Canadian drug kingpin. Despite the clear and present danger I face everyday with clients, I still seem to eek out a good time. It's my employees that give me a real headache! No matter what it is, from testing my explosive, high couture landmine wingtips to guiding customers through my 10,000 strobe light flagship store, they always seem to find a way to complain. Human rights violations this, war crimes that. It's like a broken record, but that record is a spoken word version of Mein Kampf. In a fit of rage I once fired all of my employees and replaced them with a troupe of pulchritudinous pool boys. My business suffered immensely, but the erotic haze created by the smell of chlorine and the sight of the first ever Cabana Boy Con was well worth the monetary misstep.
When people ask me about how I come up with my perilous vogue, I laugh. As if inspiration were some routine like masturbating when your parents go take the dog for a walk. It comes to me in spurts. Sometimes I'm watching a movie and I think "Hey, this alien would look way more menacing in stilettos, but how on earth could I find a way to fit all fourteen of its toes in a pair?" Other times it's an overheard conversation. Why just the other day I was on a bus and heard this redneck couple being effusive toward their seven year old for trying to incite a race war at school. It occurred to me that they would look far more chic if they bound, perhaps even imprisoned. So I came up with a little straight jacket meets Teva sandals ensemble for them. Corsets have always been a muse to me and it is my firm belief that fashion is overly fixated on binding the gut and not so much other, eminently shackle-able parts of the body. What about the face, I always say. If I have one fashion prediction it is that in the next twenty years face corsets will replace white as our post labor day prohibition.
Footwear is more than just a career for me it's a philosophy. The funny thing is, though, I hate feet! In my design, I do as much as I can to punish them. And not like "slave" punish, more like righteous-vengeance-on-a-corrupt-cop punish. For me the gate to hell is a steaming, gaping Croc filled with the an eternity of lost soles. With all this more or less articulated in my mind I decided "this is going to be my life!" and I haven't looked back or down since.
Now cobbling treacherous fashion isn't all fun and games. My clientele (mostly psychotic, drug-addled fashionistas and murderous warlords) can, on occasion, make terrible board game partners. Just try telling the partly mutated, fanatic religious leader of a platform wearing paramilitary group that she has to pay for her second child's college fund in The Game of Life. I can't say for certain that things would turn out the same way they did for me, but in all likelihood she's going crash her 2003 leased station wagon right into the crotch of a nearby Canadian drug kingpin. Despite the clear and present danger I face everyday with clients, I still seem to eek out a good time. It's my employees that give me a real headache! No matter what it is, from testing my explosive, high couture landmine wingtips to guiding customers through my 10,000 strobe light flagship store, they always seem to find a way to complain. Human rights violations this, war crimes that. It's like a broken record, but that record is a spoken word version of Mein Kampf. In a fit of rage I once fired all of my employees and replaced them with a troupe of pulchritudinous pool boys. My business suffered immensely, but the erotic haze created by the smell of chlorine and the sight of the first ever Cabana Boy Con was well worth the monetary misstep.
When people ask me about how I come up with my perilous vogue, I laugh. As if inspiration were some routine like masturbating when your parents go take the dog for a walk. It comes to me in spurts. Sometimes I'm watching a movie and I think "Hey, this alien would look way more menacing in stilettos, but how on earth could I find a way to fit all fourteen of its toes in a pair?" Other times it's an overheard conversation. Why just the other day I was on a bus and heard this redneck couple being effusive toward their seven year old for trying to incite a race war at school. It occurred to me that they would look far more chic if they bound, perhaps even imprisoned. So I came up with a little straight jacket meets Teva sandals ensemble for them. Corsets have always been a muse to me and it is my firm belief that fashion is overly fixated on binding the gut and not so much other, eminently shackle-able parts of the body. What about the face, I always say. If I have one fashion prediction it is that in the next twenty years face corsets will replace white as our post labor day prohibition.
Footwear is more than just a career for me it's a philosophy. The funny thing is, though, I hate feet! In my design, I do as much as I can to punish them. And not like "slave" punish, more like righteous-vengeance-on-a-corrupt-cop punish. For me the gate to hell is a steaming, gaping Croc filled with the an eternity of lost soles. With all this more or less articulated in my mind I decided "this is going to be my life!" and I haven't looked back or down since.
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