"My husband bought me dinner, as always. I suppose that means I'm supposed to blow him, as always."

Men are slowly losing themselves.  Disintegrating.  Becoming unidentifiable lumps.  Completely fucking devoid of anything that calls itself manly, as viewable in this post by a blogger entitled “10 Things Guys Should Do and Often Don’t.”

I don’t pump iron until my face explodes.  I don’t chug beer until my bladder turns into a keg all its own.  I don’t rip trees out of the ground with my bare hands (though I wish I could) or bench-press cars.  I have maybe 3.2 libs [sic] of muscle because the rest of my body is brain, bone, Red Bull, and farts.  About the only manly thing I really do is cut wood for my Dad when his oldy-ass needs it.  I also watch football.  Other than that, though, I’m not your typical man.  But hell, when I was done reading that blog post, I had to pretty much wash all the pansy off me, because it kissed woman ass like nothing I’d ever read.

Let me really quick shake all the lack o’ manliness off myself.

If the aliens of manliness came down, they’d anal-probe the hell out of me just trying to find out how to make more of me.

When I masturbate I get women in the 1400s pregnant.

I once threw a plane that Amelia Earhart was in all the way around the world.

President Nixon almost got close to the source of my manliness but was impeached before he could figure it out that I can hit grand slams with my wiener.

I eat metal bars and shit out Alcatraz.

The Expendables was based off my life.

Mortal Kombat is a biographical story of my journey to my Mom’s egg.

The Holy Grail was my portable urinal in the times of Christ.

I named my unborn child Conan.

Jesus Christ, I’m awesome.

Look, ladies, I get it.  In the early 1900s, women’s suffrage became a worldwide issue.  Suddenly, women were getting the recognition they deserved.  They were given the opportunity to approach responsibilities that world society had never allowed them, and they pretty much lit that shit on fire and tore it up like real champs.  Women kicked ass and took names, and the past century has seen a growth in the female identity.  Women have come into their rightful place as hard-rocking citizens in the eyes of governments, societies, and progressive countries.

Yay for you.

I know it sounds bitter, but it’s crap like that post I linked that makes me recognize that dudes need to find out where they buried their balls in the kitty litter.  The author does make a good point about some things.  Men, hold the door for your women.  Men, hold your ladies when they need it and support them at the right time.   No means no and all that jazz.  But there are some things Mr. Super Chivalry suggests that just make me think he’s wrapped a little too tight around some girl’s finger…or he’s trying too goddamn hard to look like a really nice guy so he can get the opportunity to see a vagina or two.

Here are a few items on his list that I’d like to dissect.

“Brush your teeth,” he writes.  “Yes every day.  Women have a sense of smell, and the garlic you had at lunch doesn’t cut it.”  Bite my ass, dude.  For one, girls don’t all have spearmint flying out of their mouths in the morning.  Girl-breath can smell like they’ve just eaten a plate of rotten eggs and bean-farts.  My breath might not smell awesome, but girl-breath can stink like shit too.  How about both sexes brush their teeth?  And seriously?  What fucking guy reads this list and goes, “ORITE I SHUD PROLLY BRUSH MY TEETH BRO.”  NEWSFLASH.

And what, girls don’t like garlic?  My girlfriend’s Italian.  She is garlic.

“Pay,” he writes.  “If you can pay for dinner, do.  If it’s the first date, borrow the money from a friend.  If you get to a second date, tell her about the first date.  She will laugh – she won’t if you don’t pay on the first date (and there won’t be a second one).”  Sucks to come from your world, man.  Your wallet must be light, and all the women in it are likely pregnant housewives.  I get politeness.  I get inviting someone out and paying for their dinner.  But women work full-time too, and they shouldn’t be subject to any additional special deals that I don’t get.  If I pay for one dinner, her ass better get ready to pay for one in the future.  I don’t fall for this shit about how there won’t be a second one if I can’t pay.  What a shallow bitch.  If all she’s interested in is my money, then get that crap out of my face.

“Buy her nice things,” he says.  “Nice doesn’t mean expensive – just nice, thoughtful things.  Books are good.”  Books are good.  Books are not evil.  But guess what?  Men who buy their women random shit statistically have sex with young men on the side (statistic uncited because it exists in my brain).   Of course I’ll buy my lady some special things, but if I start coming home with presents and I never get any random happy presents, I’m going to start coming home with rocks in a bag or Styrofoam in her gas tank.

“Dump the t-shirt,” he suggests.  “Yes, that one.  The one you love.  She hates it.  No, you can’t keep it for sports, painting, or gardening.  She will know.” OHSHIT.  Woman Whisperer coming through.  Ladies, did you know you all hate my favorite t-shirt?  If a woman hates my favorite t-shirt, then she can go get hot coals shoveled into her asshole, because my favorite t-shirt is my favorite one for a reason.  Oh, guess what, guys.  You can’t have anything nice.  You have to adhere to the stereotypical shallow sense of a woman’s concept of fashion.  What a bunch of jerkoff advice.  Shit’s my t-shirt and if you’re not man enough to say, “Hey, I like this t-shirt and I’m going to continue wearing it,” then you’re going to spend your life going out late at night to buy ice cream and you’re going to wear one of those retarded baby-holders on your chest while your wife’s out drinking beer and getting her vagina filled.

You don’t like my favorite t-shirt?  Bag of bricks.  BAM.  If you’re the stereotypical woman, I’m the stereotypical man with a penchant for hitting stupid girls.

Sure, what I’ve said might sound harsh or chauvinistic, but here’s the rub:  Girls aren’t like cars or computers.  You can’t sink money into them and have a fantastic, romantic relationship.  Women don’t deserve special treatment just because they’re women.

Chivalry works in small amounts because anything more than that reduces the identity of the modern woman.  In that blogger’s world, where women all get nice things and never pay for dinner and get to wipe their ass with your favorite shirt, women are shallow, uninformed archetypes that have robotic, predictable opinions and don’t have separate ideas.  They are a collective hive-mind that can be woo’ed by shiny baubles and won over by tiny gifts.  Tell me what’s more chauvinistic than that and I’ll eat a whole baby.

I don’t hit women (though I wouldn’t be opposed to pushing in a girl’s face if she tries to hit me with a closed fist).  I open the door for girls, but I also highly appreciate it when a man or woman holds the door open for me.  I’ll pay for dinner when I can, but I also deserve a fine meal now and then, too.  I cook like a boss and clean like a fucking champ.  I respect my girlfriend, my mother, and the women in life likely more than the majority of men.  I’m pretty much an Italian mobster like that, only I don’t stink like spaghetti sauce or Super Mario Bros.

Respect the ladies in your life not just because they’re women, but because you love them.

I’ve written a poem to commemorate this moment, about Anne Bradstreet, a 17th-century Colonial American poet.  Audience, please silence your cell-phones and shove your cameras up your ass, take pictures of your inner colon, and send them to me.

________________________________________________

“Dear Mrs. Bradstreet,”

I have taken into consideration the works of your

contemporaries,

and were that I to give an award to my favorite,

I would likely give it to you.

In fact, your work is far superior

to many of your poetic successors.

Thank you for writing verse that isn’t equitable to absolute dogshit.

Your domestic skills were also rumored to be

as precise as those of your pen.

So, bitch, cook me dinner,

and iron my clothes.

But let’s say that I was somehow bestowed the manly power to completely reshape American culture for the better. What would I do? The fuck knows. I wouldn’t focus on homelessness or world peace, because that bullshit’s so passé it makes me want to puke tie-dye and flowers. No, instead, I’d probably start by relieving America of some of its most annoying trends…

…because here are six trends that I can’t stand worth shit, and Americans act like they’re the most clever goddamn things we’ve ever seen.

1) Stickfigure family portraits. How retarded is this. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen them before, the little stickfigure families on back windows, with the Mommy and Daddy and their annoying brats and maybe even the family dog immortalized in adhesive vinyl. I’d venture to say I don’t give a single slopswilling piss about how many members your family has in it and how well they all get along. What decals like this hide is an internal ugliness in any given family: it obfuscates the fact that Daddy sells his body like a homosexual Slip’N’Slide and Mommy pops multicolored hospital candy; it forges a sense of reality that doesn’t include the bruises on little Suzie’s face or the bedwetting and pet-burning that young Alfie does in practice to become America’s next serial killer.

Guess what, dickheads? Stickfigures are stupid. They’re the representation of a society that focuses more on brainpower and less on body mass and brutality. That’s the sure sign of a world bred to grow up as flimsy, unmuscular pussies. I say this because I weigh in at approximately 275 pounds of pure muscle from all the iron I pump and protein and children I devour. Get out of the way, losers. Muscle is here to crush your tits off, and stickfigures don’t belong. Your family sucks.

2) Girlpants with words across the ass. Holy shit, there are few other things that get me as furious as girls who wear hotpants that proclaim in huge, blocky letters some extremely shallow adjective that helps describe them. It’s disgusting. Not only does wearing tight-fitting sweatpants in public make you look like an unpolished turd of a human being, it gives me vertigo when you’re bouncing your sloppy ass down the road and I’m trying to figure out what your butthole is trying to tell the world. I don’t care if you’re STEAMY or SAUCY or HOT or SEXY or CRUNK or CANADIAN or LOVE or PINK or SHAKIN’ or F’ED IN THE B, you look as stupid as an elephant with a dictionary shoved up its ass.

What’s worse? When I’m standing around trying to tilt my head and figure out what your asscheeks say, I have to struggle against my internal inhibitors that keep me from looking at girls’ butts out of politeness. It’s not that I’m checking your ass out, whore, it’s that I’m trying to figure out what your asshole manifesto is making evident to the world, and I’m torn between confusion – I want to know what your pooper is trying to announce, but I also want to avoid getting beaten up by your equally shallow boyfriend for inadvertently admiring your asslumps.

3) Clothes with that pre-worn look. If I wanted to wear something that looked like shit, I’d go to Goodwill. Hell, I go to Goodwill all the time to do my wardrobe shopping. I can’t get enough of clothes that smell like old soup and asshole. I just can’t. But when I do, wouldn’t it be cool to go get clothes that actually look new, unblemished, and whole? Unfortunately, whenever I go into some new clothing store, I get a whole fuck-you-and-a-half thrown at my face, because buying new-looking clothes is so 1990s. Nowadays we wear jeans with permanent wrinkle-marks, bleached knees that make us look like we’ve been blowing dudes all day, and pant-hems with twists of denim hanging from the bottom. We wear shirts where the screen-printed logos have been professionally altered to look old, rubbed away, and overwashed. The result? We all look like a bunch of fucking bums.

I’m waiting for the day when not showering or choosing to not wash our balls becomes the whole new fashion statement. Then maybe extinction would be fashionable too and I could watch you all go down like Hot Pockets in a fatness contest.

4) “Shit [insert group of people here] Say” videos. Shit My Dad Says was a pretty big Internet sensation. Sometimes it made people laugh. Most of the time, though, I just thought of William Shatner riding horses and wearing his Starfleet uniform. Over the past few months a new explosion of videos that illustrate certain shit certain people say splattered shit-juice all over the Internet. At any given time on YouTube, you can look up things that are like, shit kids say, shit people say during the Super Bowl, shit people say while they’re drunk, shit gay people say, shit people in Los Angeles say, shit rednecks say, shit my ass says, shit high people say, shit people say before being executed, shit mute people say, and so on, and so on. You can find out all the shit humanity says. You can also be intensely bored.

The thing is, this actually isn’t a new trend. If we trace this horseshit back to right around when written language was being invented, we’ve been reading shit dead people say since the beginning of time. Fine literature, political diatribes, philosophy, science? It’s all shit dead people say. And most of the time it sucks. Time to strap your balls to a J.A.T.O. and rocket yourself out of time, dickweed.

5) Those stupid rubber bracelets. I hope Lance Armstrong falls off a cliff and gets eaten by rabid wolves. “Woo,” he says, “I’m famous because I do really well what kids across America do every day!” Congratulations, Lance. Apparently you’re strong enough to kill cancer. Diestrong.

6) Partisanship. Your Xbox 360 sucks. So does your computer. Your Playstation 3 is an asshole. Shove your liberalism and conservatism straight up your crapper. I don’t give a fuck if you like the Android or the iPhone. You all chew wieners. Pens are for pretentious buttpumpers and pencils are for primitive putzplinkers. Your favorite sport is a waste of time. Team Jacob is for all the little girls who got impregnated by a football player in middle school and Team Edward is for boners shaped like human beings. Meat tastes good and so do plants. God thinks you’re pathetic; Buddha thinks you’re pathetic; nothing thinks you’re nothing at all and nothing has any reason anyway. Whether or not you’re reading it on e-book or in physical form, your favorite author is probably an asshole. Star Wars has three shitty movies out of six; Star Trek has about eighteen shitty movies out of thirty-six. The glass is half-full and half-empty because that asshole over in the corner was thirsty. Children on those “Save a Child” commercials look like misshapen action figures, and if a single can of soup can help, then maybe Campbells should donate, because I’m tired of bringing that shit into my third-grade homeroom. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the exact same so I don’t know why you idiots are complaining. Some people masturbate left-handed, while others do it with their mouths.

People like trends. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten away from the trends that really mean something: slap-bracelets, fabric book-covers, Lisa Frank folders, Pogs, skateboarding, lemonade stands, having twins, sniffing glue, invisible markers, the Book Fair, Clifford the Big Red Asshole, Matchbox cars, Dale Earnhardt, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “If I could walk 5,000 miles, then I would walk 5,000 more,” Tweety Bird shirts, twisted tunes, Orbitz drink, breaking your friend’s trampoline and blaming it on his stupid bitch of a sister, world war, palette-swap ninjas, Walkmen….

I don’t know about anybody else, but do you guys miss the days of sneaking Nintendo games on the bus and trading them with your dumb friends? I do.

My friends were so dumb.

This week, I introduce you to friend, writer, and artist, Ozlem Yikici.

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  TRUST ME, I’M A DOCTOR

Ozlem Yikici

There’s an age-old adage – been around for centuries it seems – you know the one: “Trust me I’m a doctor.” We did.  We do.  We still do; no questions asked, just accepting what the doctor says, because the doctor knows best – right?  I mean, even when they’re wrong they’re right – fool-proof is the term they’d like to use (if they could – maybe they do; think about it, they put you in the place of a fool, the system’s foolproof – or is it?  Doctor knows best, right?!)

Clicking the image redirects to source.

Now, I’m not saying I’m clued up with all the goings-on in the medical field, nor am I breathing down on every mistake they make.  I’m a mere observer; I digest information, and having worked in social care as a support worker, I have been made aware of how the NHS (The National Health Service) and doctors plod along in the happy “umbrella” of health.  It seems everything boils back down to money! Not surprising huh?  Seeing practically all the lack of resources in this world are fundamentally due to that fact that there are some political ties, it’s not surprising that the funding for health services are creatively devised by these greedy few within the two sectors of medicine and politics.

I’m not here to talk politics, nope; however, the way the health service has been set-up here in the UK and possibly every other part of the world (let me know if I am wrong in my thinking), it seems to have moulded into a way to make money from people’s ill-health – perhaps they call them “ill-health schemes.”  (I urge you to read this Washington Post article about a similar topic.)

O.K., now you may think I’m being a wee bit harsh, but the past five years have taught me a lot when it comes down to health, medicine and doctors, G.P.s (General Practitioners) in particular.  Tell me what’s wrong with this scenario… (The following dialogue is based on true-life events adapted to work with this particular rant.)

“Doctor, I’d like to be referred to a dermatologist.”

“Let me prescribe you some antibiotics.”

“I’d rather see a dermatologist first before taking any medication; this has been a problem for some years now.”

“We have an in-house-doctor who specialises in skin conditions.  You need to see him first before we can refer you.”

Can you read between the lines?  No?  Let me break it down for you.  What the doctor is failing to tell us – and in essence, this is how they value our health and respect us as a person – how can I put this nicely…  Ermm…well, being blunt is the way to go: They don’t respect us at all.

Clicking the image redirects to source.

I have been informed that here in the U.K., general practitioners get paid for every prescription they write, but they get zilch for making a referral. It’s not surprising they instantly “diagnose,” A.K.A, “take-a-guess-at-what-the-ailment-is” (in effect, what they do is trial and error – I mean, we might as well take part in those clinical trials.  At least we can make money out of that and know it’s a “choice” we’ve made as opposed to the “choice” we are supposedly given.)

I digress; now where was I?

Their instant “diagnosis” allows them to prescribe medicine that “gets you better”…but does it really?  Have you seen the list of side-effects those tablets have?  Not only does the GP make money from issuing a prescription, they also offer you to voluntarily take on the possible side-effects which they casually refer to as being “minimal” — knowing full well that is highly unlikely as statistics go.

Can you run that by me once again…?  MINIMAL?  Who are they trying to kid?

As a brief example:  Here’s a list of side-effects common antibiotics have.

Imagine my doctor turned to you and said, “I’m recommending you to take tablet X (Tetracycline) as it will be beneficial in reducing blah-blah-blah.  Also you will have the opportunity to possibly experience a lovely array of the following side-effects.”  Should you dare question their judgement?  “That’s my professional opinion, trust me I’m a doctor,” they say, with a mocking smile.  Surely I must be mad, even insane, to accept such a chemical imbalance in my body.

But that’s what they want me to say.  If I don’t, it will go against the grain of the “billion dollar money-making industry” that it is.  Pharmaceutical drugs are like goldmines.  Doctors will issue the medication rather than send you to a specialist who could do a few tests, find out the underlining problem, and then prescribe you the correct medication.

If I was to take it one more step to the cynical end I could also add this to the mix:

Do doctors really want us to get better, or is their ulterior motive something more sinister?  I’ve heard that GPs are assigned practice methods, one for each different ethnic group.

Yep, you read correctly. If you happen to fall into a preferred ethnic group you, may just get the perfect service and best treatment.  If, however, you fall in the ethnic group that is not considered worth a grain of salt, expect to be piled with medication after medication without any real investigative tests.  The doctors always play the delaying game: “Just take these and see how you get on.  If that doesn’t work I have other candy –  I mean tablets – for you to try…”  The more you take, the more dependent you are, the more extra illnesses you gain as a result of the side-effects. All in all, it’s a fantastically-structured industry.

Here’s an example how one illness can be spurred on from some commonly used drugs.  The illness: Candida.

Ask your doctor about Candida.  They will look bemused and dismiss it as an illness not medically proven; I wonder if it has anything to do with certain antibiotics they prescribe…?

I won’t say anything more.  Just think and decide for yourself how trustworthy your doctor may be.  Are the tell-tale signs there?  Are they telling it to you straight as it should be, or are they playing the waiting game?

1. Waiting, just waiting for you to get better.
2. Waiting, just waiting (to make money – lots of it).
3. Waiting, just waiting until you are much much worse and hopefully fall off their lists – oops, did I just say that…

Cynically yours…. This is yikici signing out!

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BIO:  Öz / yikici: Creative from the word go; an artist at heart – writer, poet, photographer, blogger – above all, a human being trying to find a way in this world by keeping to morals, values, and ethics as a guide to do good. She is currently working on her first Y.A. novel, Becoming – Mystical Realisations.  Her progress, interests, thoughts, flash fiction stories, thought-provoking articles, and guest posts can be followed at http://www.yikici.co.uk, and on Twitter @ozlemyikici.

Interested in having your own post on rddenton.com?  Just send me an e-mail or a Tweet, ya dingus! 

Fortunately for you, this entry will be short — shorter, in fact, than War & Peace, which is an accomplishment all its own when we see how actively I like to have written diarrhea.  Currently — and over the next few weeks — I will be hard at work on a spur-of-the-moment short novel for Kazka Press’s flash novel call.  Regrettably, my limited brain power and my even more limited ability to focus on anything except throbbing man-bodies and episodes of Battlestar: Galactica has pigeon-holed me into barely even being able to blog while I write.

How does that work?  My brain can only allow me to write one thing at a time.  When I dig into a longer project, I can barely fathom the idea of blogging.  I don’t want to go off the handle about a bunch of dumb shit like I normally do here; I’m locked into novel mode, and any bit of my writing that isn’t expended on that project sometimes feels like an improper use of my time.  Yes, I think I may be crazy.  Thank God you’re all here to witness my slow descent into madness alongside me.

Hey, check out my writing online, or skip this paragraph with a well-deserved tl;dr:  In the meantime, you should pop over and check out my recently published story “Six Dollars” at Clever, an online quarterly magazine.  There are some other great pieces there to see as well.  Also, my seasonal story for Kazka Press — “The Replacement” — is still available for reading.  Leave a comment if you so desire, or Tweet your balls off about it.

Hey, much to your chagrin, I have more writing on the way, which is a damned upsetting thing for you to hear:  Coming within the next few weeks, Anobium will be publishing my short experimental story “Spiderblue Vacation.”  The print volume in which it’s included can be pre-ordered here.  Do it, or I’ll do a flying uppercut into the seat of your pants  Also, a short story about a spaceman who jerks off to Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, “The Extinctionists,” will be published (with art!) in the upcoming Kazka Press anthology, Bronies:  For the Love of Ponies, edited by L. Lambert Lawson.

Shit’s about to go down, and my friends Ozlem “Oz” Yikici and Keith Thompson are going to tell you what’s up.  Keep your eye out for the first Opinions and Assholes post, where I have guest bloggers come by and rant about things that piss them off, by Ozlem Yikici in the next few days.  A few weeks after, Keith Thompson of The Paraverse will be sliding by to talk a bunch of turds into your ear too.

There’s no need for random shit like this, but:  In the words of one of the world’s greatest bands The Immortals:  “Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat’s on today / Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat all the way / Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat’s here to stay, wooOooOOOOOOoo-ooooooh / Johnny Cage is not afraid to die!”

For all the amazing things the body is capable of – seeing, jumping, stroking out, lifting cars off babies as a great publicity stunt, surfing, being immune to the effects of alcohol while driving, lifting the middle finger exclusively from a balled fist, yawning, thinking, surfing, high-fiving your buddies, pooping (what, you’d think I’d leave it out?), watching John Leguizamo’s The Pest without vomiting, and surfing – there’s one place where the body just got too preoccupied with creating neuroscience that it got lazy as fuck and gave us something sub-par.

Feet suck.  Look at them.  Just take off your socks and look at them.  They look like a dead seal met a hand and fucked and had a dead-seal-hand baby in a gutter.  Who wants that crap?  There are plenty of other things the body could have adopted as its preferred form of bodily transportation:  monster truck wheels, tank treads, cybernetic gyrospheres, Nickelodeon Gak, Play-Doh feet, foot-sized meteors, etcetera.  Instead, we got stuck with these stupid pieces of shit.

I’ve been studying how stupid feet are for forty years.  You can pretty much call me the best thing that’s ever happened to anthropological podiatry.  I’ve got a Ph.D. in how much feet blow.  Open your ears and let me rap at you, dingus.

Behold!  Facts You Never Knew About Feet Because Feet Bore the Fuck Out of You!

TRUE FACT:  Feet are butthurt about how much humans hate them.  Regardless of whether or not we want them to, feet have feelings too.  As part of the human body that doesn’t have functions that actually make it special, feet feel left out.  That’s why when you do something stupid like step on a button or knock your toes into a table, it hurts like a bitch.  Feet have sensory magnifiers in them that immediately activate the minute we do something to the foot that it doesn’t like.  I actually perform surgeries that remove these sensory magnifiers, which makes stubbing your toe or stepping on stupid shit virtually impossible.  I’m the only person who does it in the whole universe.  Why?  Feet don’t trick me.

TRUE FACT:  Human feet are the weakest feet ever imagined.  Every creature has feet.  Unfortunately, humans just got stuck with the shittiest feet ever.  They’re such pieces of shit that we need shoes to protect them.  Shoes.  Open your whole brain up and think of this concept:  Our feet need artificial feet to even be functional.  Have you ever tried to run across a flat field without a pair of shoes?  It sucks a fat one.  Think about feet on other animals.  Cats have evolved to have jelly beans on their feet and they still have no problem marching around in the snow.  Dogs, too.  And look at snakes and fish.  They have invisible feet.  You ever seen those fish-with-feet logos on the back of cars that are all like “LOL DARWIIIIIIN”?  That’s a veiled expression of my invisible foot theory.  People who have those stickers really know the drill.  They know who’s right.

TRUE FACT:  Foot fetishists die early deaths.  It’s true.  There’s nothing more complicated than that.  They die, on average, forty-three years earlier than vomit fetishists, rubber fetishists, and mustache fetishists, so check your loners and clutch your boners, boys, because you’re gonna die.

TRUE FACT:  The foot was invented before the foot.  Back when measurement was first invented – sometime between the invention of planets and gravity – Sir Isaac Newton said, “It’d be fucking awesome to have a convenient measurement that would multiply itself 7,368 times to be a whole mile.”  At that time, humans were rolling around Earth on their sides because feet had not yet come to fruition.  Human bowling was a popular form of game entertainment and pigs-in-a-blanket were the world’s favorite snack.  But then Winston Churchill got so sick and tired of everything that he rushed along the foreman at the Foot Fabrication Factory and stuck us with these stupid things.  Isaac Newton, struggling to find anything good about twelve inches, said, “Fuck it,” drank himself into a stupor, played rock music, and headbanged so hard that his brain turned into mashed potatoes.  The government rejoiced.

Ever since that day, my penis – in a grand ceremony of impotence and disappointment – ushered in a new form of measurement called the millimeter.

TRUE FACT:  Toenails are a fantastic source of protein.  They are.  Eat’em, ya dummy.  They’re not really there for anything else.  Just make a toenail salad and crunch away.  It’s like a crouton only a fuckton better.

There are only a smattering of the many true facts that I’ve compiled over the years.  Unfortunately for you, the Internet itself has produced a limit on the amount of foot truth I can squeeze into a single post.  Today and everyday, there’s a universe-wide Internet Superweb Infrastructure Ultrahighway Thoroughfare ban on foot-related knowledge.  Regrettably, our American government is seeking to minimize the amount of foot-related content that can be accessed at any given time on the Internet, so it’s up to you to speak out.

Fuck feet.  Speak up.  Seek justice.  Then go surfing. 

After the death of a loved one, Lady Aurora of Cavalcata – the daughter of a popular military strategist – commits herself to an unlikely adventure that incubates doubts about her faith, her love of country, and her very purpose in the world.  The novel is less about the history, however, than it is the philosophy and the romance.  The philosophies of Descarte, Locke, and Socrates all make small cameos as Aurora discovers that the world around her is stranger, more violent, and more unforgiving than she could have ever imagined.

Zupko’s book is a philosophical fairy-tale – a political Rapunzel story – in which the fantastic is replaced by questions of the self and the world.

One of the most breathtaking aspects of Zupko’s book at first glance is its precision editing.  We would think that this shouldn’t even be mentioned – a book should naturally be free of spelling mistakes, grammatical issues, formatting problems, and so-forth – and the author reminds us that these are qualities we should expect even from independent releases.  The novel is masterfully formatted in its physical form and is almost entirely devoid of errors.  This allowed the most important contents of the book – the plot and the characters – to come alive without interruption.  Independent publishers and self-publishers would be foolish not to use Zupko’s book as an example of how a novel should be presented.

While Lady Aurora is an interesting and exciting character to follow, she is regrettably eclipsed by the complex characters stacked up around her.  The people with whom she comes in contact are varied, charismatic, and layered.  Storey – a young man from the opposing country Mitoch – is an ever-changing character who is equally sentimental, unpredictable, wise, and constantly growing.  Cashel, the villain, is frightening and manic, driven by a maddeningly simple principle:  the more killing that can be done, the more power to which one has access.  One of the novel’s most unsettling scenes comprises a torture overseen by Cashel himself, gritty in its details and disturbing for how blissful Cashel acts while it transpires.

Zupko’s writing knows its troughs and peaks.  Her use of detail and character insight is masterful, though it sometimes bogs down scenes that would otherwise be quickly paced (save for the end of the novel—the climax is speedy and exciting in both story and form, the way a good conclusion should be).  Her dialogue constantly moves the tale along, helping characters develop strong and unlikely relationships.  Zupko also uses time as a flexible tool, straying away from the clichéd flashback in favor of a non-consecutive storytelling form that leaps back and forth between many years without dissolving the novel’s tension.  Answers to readers’ questions appear at appropriate times.  The only drawback?  There are one or two revelations, particularly near the end of the novel, that feel less like pre-plotted twists and more like contrivances — a revelation is first revealed, and then a past scene is shown to support it.  The leapfrogging storytelling becomes more utilitarian toward the end of the novel, a means by which the whole story can wrap itself up into a neat, tight package…even if the reader knows that Zupko is intentionally doing just that.

Unlike many novels nowadays, The War Master’s Daughter is a one-and-done job – the conclusion and resolution give very little room for a sequel of any real importance.  Aurora’s story is told.  When the final page is done, readers are forced to leave the 16^th-century European fictional countries of Fairgos and Mitoch, which may leave some wanting to know more of the detailed world, its politics, its varying forms of faith, and its national relationships.  Zupko’s successful development of such a complex world merits one question:  If not through Aurora, will readers ever get the opportunity to return?  Zupko’s world seems rife with future storytelling possibilities.

The War Master’s Daughter is an extremely impressive debut novel.  It overflows with talent and storytelling ability.  It captures plenty of realism while incorporating just enough fiction.  While historical fiction fans may find less history than they expect and romance readers less bodice-ripping than they normally desire, Zupko’s book is certainly not bereft of value – it overflows with a story that stands strong on the heels of politics and philosophy.  It is a solid, satisfying piece of fiction that keeps a consistent tone and never wanders outside its realm of believability.

Elly Zupko’s The War Master’s Daughter can be purchased in both physical and e-published formats on the book’s official website, http://www.warmastersdaughter.com.

Then ask the writer what their biggest accomplishment in life is, and 90% of the time, I can almost guarantee you they’ll shrug their shoulders with fake humility and say, “I wrote a book.”

Some people in said group will go, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write but never did it,” and the writer will respond with something like, “It was a difficult process, but I got through it,” then he or she will give some witlessly transparent advice as if to help that other person sit down and write their masterpiece (“You just have to make a plan and stick with it”; “Write everyday, and read constantly!”). But you and I know that writer isn’t trying to be friendly or helpful – instead, they’re just trying to blow their own ego out of proportion. They’re trying to devour their fifteen seconds in the spotlight. They’re a writer. Best thing for us to do would be to pretty much suck their privates into hardness and recognize that they’re a higher form of human being, right?

Writers are the most self-absorbed, self-focused and downright selfish creatures that have ever lived, not unlike most other artists. They think their shit doesn’t stink. It doesn’t matter where in the process they are – whether they just finished the first draft of their book, or whether they’re about to go on an international book tour funded by some big New York publisher – they’re better than you, and goddamnit, they expect you to know it. Why?

Because according to so many writers, writing a book is the hardest thing you will ever do.

Yeah, right.

Whenever writers talk about how hard it was to write a book, or how long it took them, or even begin trying to pedestal the difficulty of the task, I want to lose my shit. I want to rip my hair out and elbow-drop a bunch of innocent children. I want to take one of those heavy schooldesk chairs and crack their teeth out with it. I want to take a leak in their vinegar and take a dump in their pillowcases. Why the fuck would I ever consider doing something that inhumane and downright hideous (except if I really had to go and that pillowcase was the only thing around)?

Because according to me, writing a book is easy as fuck and writers are lying if they say it’s hard.

Doing calculus while flying upside-down in a spaceship is hard. Holding your breath and swimming up the butthole of a giant squid is hard. Trying to turn your wiener inside-out and pull it out through your asshole, that’s hard. Learning how to shoot fireballs from your hands is pretty hard, too. Slowing yourself down out of terminal velocity with just the power of your mind is hard. Transforming from a human into a big Mack truck is hard. Writing a book isn’t hard. Anybody can do it. Everybody should do it. Whether it’s a piece of fiction or a story based off life experience, it’s easy.

There’s no special science to novel-writing. You can read every book on craft and still not write a book. You can never read a book on craft and write a thousand best-sellers. There’s no exact, specific way to write a book. You just do it. You sit down, you type, or you write. Maybe you plan it out, or maybe you don’t. All you need is enough time on your hands. That’s all – that’s the only definite, unchanging piece of the writing formula. Time. You need it. If you don’t have it, you won’t write a book. But guess what? You’ve got it. You’ve got it in the morning while you’re drinking coffee and watching Live! with Kelly. You’ve got it in the afternoon, before you cook dinner, while the kids are working on their homework.

Just like having a screaming baby fly out of your vagina, or getting a Master’s degree, or getting over a crippling addiction to whatever Walter White gave you, writing a book is something everybody has the opportunity to do. Sometimes it just takes drive or inclination; sometimes it takes plotting or planning. But most of the time, all it takes is fucking writing, and we’ve all been writing since we were stupid-ass kids with those sheets of paper that had room for a picture and all those dotted lines to write big letters on.

"Macolm, get your ass in here and write my book while I sell meth. Got it?"

Suggesting that writing is hard, difficult, or only something that special people can do? Hell, if you think about it like that, it sounds like writers are the master race. Heil, Writers! Let’s go have sex in a Viking graveyard and produce blond-haired, blue-eyed writer-babies and make the ideal race. It’s needless self-appreciation, the arrogant justification of one’s mere ability to make time to write.

Research is tedious. Editing is a pain-in-the-ass. Trying to publish takes diligence. Self-publishing takes the ability to be critical and take criticism. But nowhere, nowhere along that line, should we ever consider writing hard, inaccessible to others, or the result of some hidden supertalent. It’s not. It’s probably just the result of the fact that writers aren’t really good at anything else. It’s not because they read a whole bunch of books. Reading isn’t essential to writing (HOLY FUCK I JUST SAID THAT). Reading is essential to knowing how to write efficiently, sure, but you don’t have to read to just sit down and write. Reading is not a prerequisite. Going to school for writing is not required.

Everybody can write. We do it on a daily basis. We write e-mails, memos at work, love-letters to our beloveds, texts to our friends, eulogies for the dead, notes on the stall of a truck-stop shitter. The only different between those things and a book? A book takes longer. Big fucking deal. But it’s not hard. Not at all. It’s only as hard as you make it. Even if what you write ends up sitting in a desk drawer for five or ten years, like the manuscripts I have, you’ll still have done it. From there, it’s up to you what path you’ll take. But none of those paths are hard.

So go. Write a goddamn book. Mount ass in chair and do it. Believe in yourself. It’s the easiest thing you will ever do, and if you think otherwise, you’re dead-fucking-wrong.

You can’t do any good work if you’ve got an unclean desk.  I know it well enough from my job.  If you’ve got shit all over the place, how can you really expect to make any progress?  Now I’m not talking about those so-called clean or organized messes people talk about (sorry, guys, it’s bullshit, you’re just lazy tits), but instead about downright filth.  You know, plates with greasy pizza-triangles on your desk, stained panties from all the hookers you’ve bought, broken crack pipes, and a few stains whose origins are questionable (and just so happen to match those in your underwear).  What a shitty desk.  Who needs it?  Throw it to the sharks.  Clean that crap up.  Get your shit in order!

I did pretty much that, only with my online desk.  This website needed a bit of a kick in its clam.  Sure, the old layout was all mine, but it felt cluttered all to hell.  I couldn’t swing Stephen King’s dick (and believe me, I tried) without hitting some stupid frame or some pain-in-the-ass sidebar that didn’t do crap for me.  I would just look at the thing and get stressed out because there were sixteen-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventy-one panels to keep up-to-date on a daily basis.

I fiddly-farted around with some designs based around the original style, but it reminded me a black-and-white-colored armpit.  To make a long, boring, completely useless, and entirely uninteresting story about web-design, information reorganization, and wank-breaks really short, I Stone Cold Stunnered my old layout and started from scratch.  Now I feel like my online writing desk is a little cleaner, and it’s time to clutter it up with my usual array of cuss-words, repetitive curses, and rancid similes.

I made very little progress otherwise in any manner of writing this week, though the blog is my first step (first step to what?  Not being an asshole?).  Sans writing, I’ve been reading my face off and I’m enjoying every minute of it.  I had university work crammed so far into my ass it was coming out my mouth and punching me in the back of the eyeballs.  With that complete, I can focus primarily on work, writing, video games, and getting fatter and fatter by the minute.  I’m just taking one at a time.  I’m not a woman.  I can’t multitask worth piss.  (Read that as a compliment, ladies, and not as a crippling indictment of your clearly inferior ability to focus.  Look on the bright side, though.  What God didn’t give you in compartmentalization, he gave you in cooking prowess and baby-making capabilities.  I should know.  I’ve made like sixteen babies, and like all cool modern dads, I don’t pay child support on a-one of them, because that shit is so not gangsta.  I’m too busy sticking my nuts into light-sockets and souping up my car to NASA standards to jerk around with kids.  An entirely reliable source once told me they don’t stop throwing up until they’re twelve.)

As I once heard at Taco Bell from a very articulate young man:  “Fuck that baby.  If I heard that baby cryin’, I’d roll outside with my friends and be like, fuck that baby, leave that baby inside.”

"Now that was a nice workout."

BioWare’s games (not pictured above, mind you) are known for their multitudinous conversation selections. Conversations throughout the games – fully acted out by in-game characters in cut-scenes with entirely recorded dialogue – allow the plot to unfold as you make choices that better your chances of survival (or destruction). Some of their older games like the Star Wars franchise’s Knights of the Old Republic allowed for characters to fluctuate between Light or Dark side depending upon their choices. In essence, players write their own characters into the world, allowing them to develop an invisible sense of morality and code of honor (or dishonor) by which they function.

Needless to say, six months ago, I finally managed to get through the first two hours of Mass Effect. That turned into thirteen, then forty-some over the course of its sequel. I got hooked. I saved whole galaxies; I did great deeds and asked for no recompense; I punched a lady space-tabloid reporter in the face while shouting, “I’ve had enough of your disingenuous assertions”; I kicked a space-dog in the skull. I saved the galaxy and got some of my friends killed in the processes.

I realized that the Mass Effect games became one of my favorite series in gaming history. Why? Because everything I did mattered. The story is a skeleton filled by your every decision.  While the story is prewritten, the connect-the-dots of your conversations allow the world to really come alive. Not since Zork or Pirates Cove in the 80s has there been a game that’s combined writing so closely with interactive entertainment.

So when Katie said, “Hey, are you going to play Star Wars: The Old Republic with me? It’s a BioWare game,” I said, “Fuck yes,” even though I’m not as big into Star Wars as I am other things. Even though it’s a massive-multiplayer online game like World of Warcraft, there’s so much more to be invested in. Your character isn’t merely a colored template; he, she, or it is your every conversation decision, action, and choice.

This game has been consuming my last two weeks. I wanted to get some writing done. Instead, I’ve been smuggling arms across galaxies, flirting with alien girls, telling space-boyfriends that their space-girlfriends were killed in unfortunate garbage compactor accidents, launching whole engineering crews out of airlocks, saving children from starvation, engaging in ridiculous spaceship combat in asteroid fields, and generally causing galaxy-wide chaos as an agent of sort-of good. My friendly companion struggles with my self-serving ideas, but glows with appreciation at my deeply-buried desire to do good with an anarchist twist. He’s patient with me, because one minute I’ll tell him to lick a wampa’s butthole and the next I’ll be bribing him with oddly feminine gifts as if I’m trying to hint that he should wear dresses and squat on my groin.  He really likes jewelry — have I discovered his fetish?

But here’s the beauty of this game: That character I just described above? He’s not yours.  He’s mine. I make decisions for him off of a slowly growing mental list of inhibitions, fears, and desires that he develops during the game’s regular play. He won’t harm children but has no problem shooting back-stabbing women in the throat; the only person he’s ever done free work for has been a good-souled alien that he saved from an unfortunate circumstance. In fact, the best part is, you won’t ever exactly recreate how my character functions, because you’ll be driven to make different permutations of the thousands of decisions in the game. You’ll discover a history to that character that you never speak about, but that helps shape every time you click a conversation response.

It’s writing as an entirely game-based artform; it is, as writer and game-scholar Janet Murray describes, “agency” – the ability for a player to have control in the game world – at its absolute finest. I have complete control over the inspirations that drive my space smuggler. Even though he’s locked in a world where programming dictates the math of battles and conflict, I’ve got what feels like free reign to decide his fate as an architect of space-faring good or an unintentional agent of galaxy-wide evil.

So I’ve been writing, just not in the way I’ve expected.

While I’ve been crawling all over the Outer Rim, other good news has blossomed, however…

My flash fiction piece, “The Replacement,” has been published online at Kazka Press. Read it here and please, leave a comment or retweet it if you like it (or if you can’t fucking stand it). Additionally, a science-fiction short story of mine will be featured later this year in Kazka’s print and online Bronies: For the Love of Ponies anthology. Wonder how planet-hopping mercenaries can meet their greatest challenge yet all because of a copy of Black Beauty? Check back with me in spring to get your copy and learn how.

Anobium volume 2 is accepting pre-orders. This print journal includes my speculative fiction piece “Spiderblue Vacation,” and I’m honored to be able to be published alongside successful writers such as Patrick Somerville and others. Support independent presses – order your copy not just for my crap, but for the beautiful writing in it other than mine.

I wanted to extend a special thank-you to several awesome writing friends. First, to poet Louise Jaques, who was kind enough to mention me in her video reading of one of her poems. Hop on over to her blog, listen to it, and make friends – she was the first person who ever commented on my blog besides my girlfriend, and I’m so grateful for her friendship and support!

Also, check out Jamie Dement’s blog, who plugged my new story in Kazka. She’s an inspiring woman with so much to say. Slide on by, tell her hello, and see what she’s all about! She’s been published several times in the past and her stories are absolutely worth taking the time to read. You won’t regret doing so!

Finally, thanks to K.T. Hanna, whose #writemotivation tag on Twitter is growing more and more. I was supposed to put a motivation update in this post, but I’ve rambled on far too long and will compromise with a post in the next day or so dedicated solely to that! Don’t know what I’m talking about? Get off your ass and educate yourself, then!

Shit, what am I still doing around here? I’ve got bantha to herd and sith to slaughter! I hope your New Years treated you well enough that you didn’t wake up in a puddle of your own vomit, and if you did, I hope it at least tasted good.

University is finished.  I’ve got six months off before I start back at Towson University in the Masters in Humanities program.  I look forward to leaving behind the days of general education credits – mathematics and I have had a pretty sloppy split, despite the fact that our divorce was entirely amicable.  This means that for the next sixth months, I’ll have a life again (and I’ll get to watch with a certain amount of masochistic glee as Katie goes back to school full-time to suffer the lifelessness I just got over.  I’m extremely proud of her, but she won’t know that by the way I’ll laugh at her misfortune).

What will I be doing in the meantime?  I’ll be catching up on some much-needed writing, some much-needed gaming, and probably a great deal of much-needed staring at the wall with my privates squeezed in my fist.

This also means I’ll be blogging a little more regularly.  Fucking sucks for you, right?

In the meantime, a poem:

“We speak until the bar clears out”

We went to a Spanish dance club and / the guitars sounded like rubber / stretching us until we thought it was normal / to become one / and we’d wrap and wrap ourselves in each other / until the Flamenco was gone and you were a bird / and I was a punch-drunk trout / you’d got in your beak; / we speak until the bar clears out / while the castanets click like clamshells, / keeping beats on cold winter nights when / New York’s right outside and in here, / it’s Spain, and we’re an ocean apart from the world / like explorers without an aim, / finding jewels in one another, / squeezing each other’s hearts like sponges / until all we’re left with is fool’s gold; / it crumbles in our hands, / we find out the lands have already been explored, / and we don’t want the riches anymore / because like that organ in our ribcage they’ve been scoured / and diluted with water and softer minerals, / until it’s just a silt that crumbles into our bloodstream / and it’s not worth anything, / not valuable, / just malleable; the weak, gutted innards / of a punch-drunk trout / while you dance Flamenco, / a gypsy princess without a caravan, / the Spanish guitar always in your wildfire soul.