What does one reflect about in these corona-times?
Well, first off, fuck China. As if Birdflu, SARS, H7N9, etc., is not enough. Now they’ve taken away our plans and pursuits; our daily routines and jobs; and have placed people around the world in body bags, urns, and six feet down the dirt.
That’s right, I said it.
I mean, why the fuck would you drink bat soup or eat a motherfucking pangolin? Have you seen these things? I mean, look at this animal.
So how did it all start?
Well, it started out just like any disease, just like any obsession—with a headache and a heartache. It happened when I saw my whole life ahead of me, cliched and predictable like a bad novel. And like bones grinding the nerves away, the closer it got the more paralyzed I felt. I became afraid. Then somewhere along the way I found an escape. Eventually I began to do it little by little, just enough to get me by. And the next thing you know I was already long gone.
Was it hard the first time?
It’s always hard the first time because everything’s new, everything’s speculation. That’s why—good or bad—there’s nothing like the first time. After that, what you have to look forward to is the last time. But there’s no way of knowing when the last time will be, that’s why I try to do everything as though it is my last.
Do you have a preferred method of execution? What’s your inspiration?
Everybody does what works for them. I personally have no attachments to any “method.” I do what works. Sometimes it’s necessary to use tact and wit, sometimes with an axe and a sickle, sometimes with poison and charm. You have to remember, the weightlessness of imagination is the only thing exempt from the gravity of life. Other times I sit in the toilet, meditating and feeling my testicles for signs.
How many victims have you had? (more…)
“Oh shit this is really happening!”
So this happened last weekend—my very first table, my first ever “con” (is that how you say it?). Granted I’ve never been to a convention before and my very first one was tabling and promoting my book—in other words I really had no idea what to expect or what to do! Luckily I had angels to guide me and help me get out of my dungeon and be a social butterfly for at least three days.
Not gonna lie. Thinking it was a comic book convention (and not a novel convention—do we even have those?), I was really only expecting to sell maybe 2 or 3 books if I was lucky. But alas, to my surprise, I sold almost all my inventory.
Imagine that!
So thank you for all your support—both old and new—and I promise I won’t disappoint (if I do you can always firebomb my place, I don’t give a shit I got renter’s insurance). (more…)
Writing is like spending time on the cross, when you die painfully every moment; other times it’s like the resurrection, when you feel fresh and alive and brand-spanking-new. (more…)
The imagery that surrounds us today are all worn-out, played-out, out of touch. It feels the same every time—every visual, every texture, every sound—to the point that we don’t even blink anymore. We just go through the motions because we know exactly what to expect.
And we start loathing it and we stop caring.
Today whether you go to the movies, you listen to the radio, you turn on the TV, or turn to speak to the person next to you, it seems like they are all saying the same thing—the same stale and sterile, tried and tested, mass produced and mass consumed opinions.
Twenty-first century media might have brought light to the world, but it doesn’t bring fire. Cautious objectivity is the job of machines and scientists, but we are a different animal. Light may illuminate. It may even bring peace, clarity, enlightenment; but light doesn’t bring fire. Fire is different. Fire burns. Fire is passion. And just like the fate of the rebel Titan, Prometheus, fire is something that is forbidden and something you can get punished for. Simply put, fire is truth because fire is risk. (more…)
I hate weakness because I hate pity; I hate strength because I never have enough; I hate popups that ask you to sign up without moisturizing sweet talk or foreplay; and I hate x-ray procedures where they put a bib on your balls and expect you to “just relax.”
If I lose a testicle, doc, I’ll be waiting for you outside with a big knife!
I hate cross contaminating depression; I hate the linear regularity of meaningless routine; I hate traffic jams, rubberneckers, and slow-ass drivers who insist on driving on the left-goddamn-lanes.
May they all get bone cancer!
I hate baristas who automatically assume I need syrup in my coffee when the default should always be black; I hate the Kaiser Permanente bitch who comes on the radio, deluding perishing old people by telling them to “thrive;” I hate fundamentalists, fatalists, feminists, atheists and any other -ists that have sacred words and ideas that cannot be questoned, scrutinized, mocked, joked about or attacked; but most of all I hate people
who
write like this
because they think it’s
poetry, where in
fact it’s just a
pile of pretentious
shit.
Go suck on a fat baby’s balls, you bastard! (more…)
You thought you had it. Last time you did. Now you got nothing—just booze and chocolate and that asphyxiated worry clutching at your throat.
What the hell happened?
You were on a roll. You had invoked the muse. You had the ever-glitter of fire, gamma and lightning of insight, and the opal and tourmaline of imagination. But now, like cutting a candle’s wick, you suddenly find yourself sitting in the dark. (more…)
In a deck of cards the Jester is the only card without a rank or suit. He does not kneel to the King of Diamonds, serve the Queen of Hearts, nor answer to the Jack of Clubs. And even though he cannot brandish the Ace of Spades, he is nevertheless included in the set without purpose or utility—he is only there to cause distraction and discord.
In creation myths, the Trickster is also an anomaly. Neither good nor evil, he is both carnal and divine at the same time. Loyal only to his pleasures, this mischievous entity is nonetheless capable of good deeds and celestial engineering through a state of chaos.
This brings us to the most famous and modern incarnation of this creature, that is the Batman’s Joker. The Joker is unlike other super villains in that he is a killer without a pattern. This is why the Joker is Batman’s arch-nemesis, because he cannot be defined and he goes after your friends and family, where it hurts, i.e. the balls. Madness and chaos are his state of only normalcy. And in a way, although most of us are not lethal sociopaths, writers also thrive in such an extreme state. (more…)
“Declaring intent is not execution.” —Mark Twight
The other day I found myself bitching again. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time, but I knew something was wrong. A girl that I was trying to seduce was not responding to my advances. Try as I may, the pimp juice just wasn’t working. But that is the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. The girl was trying to tell me something, but she was trying to be nice to spare my ego. Nevertheless her actions spoke loud and clear.
Why are you acting like a little bitch? (more…)
Death by monotony. Death by theories and statistical wisdom. I.e. death without a trace.
You feel it coming that’s why you search the internet, scour for articles, watch the videos. Maybe even pay to watch someone in a panel or on the podium, hoping that their words will somehow stain you a little longer, seep into your life a little better, into your abilities, activities.
A month-old into the new year and a lot of people are still “motivated.” But just as water and food, this mental and emotional diet, if not nourished, will deplete. And this is why people will always wonder why they are always starving, deprived and depressed.
Online clickbait “secrets” will often try to sell you on some sort of system, “a way of thinking,” that will change your life. But this is only true if you have accepted the true necessary equation of “the secret,” prioritizing a way of doing instead of the passive, a way of thinking.
Blood + Sweat + Time = Chance (more…)
R.G. Tamaki 