Outsider Writers Has Excerpt of Blog Love Omega Glee Up!

The Outsider Writers Collective has two excerpts from my novel Blog Love Omega Glee up currently. I chose them using a random number generator out of the finished chapters at that time since I had trouble choosing them consciously. As Pat King, who posted the excerpts, noted, that was very surrealist of me, and sometimes I do enjoy being surreal. You can read the entire novel so far on this very blog too, of course.

Blog Love Omega Glee: The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans (3 May 2012)

Jake checks his email before work and finds an invitation to join an organization called "The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans". The email reads:

"Are you tired of being treated like a mark, a rube, a sucker, or a loser just because you like professional wrestling? Are you tired of wrestling promoters recycling storylines again and again that weren't even good the first time around? Are you tired of wrestlers who are over already but despite their popularity insist on making upcoming wrestlers job to them in humiliating losses instead of building up new talent? Are you tired of a greedy corporation trademarking every clever wrestling name and gimmick in sight so that the creativity has drained out of wrestling and every wrestler wrestles under her or his real name and never comes up with an innovative character because they're afraid their hard work and ideas will get stripped from them forever by corporate conniving? Are you tired of being looked upon as an idiot just because you like professional wrestling, the smartest sport on the planet, so smart that it knows 'sports' are stupid, so it makes fun of competition while still providing the action you crave deeply ingrained in the reptilian recesses of your brain, indeed guaranteeing thrills by choreographing excitement, while still allowing the artists room to improvise like jazz masters aiming for a masterpiece by midnight? Do you like your gymnastics and ballet violent? Would you like to see the wrestlers not treated like pieces of meat and instead be given health care, reasonable time off to recover from injuries, and a pension plan? Are you tired of the image of wrestling fans as people without lives living in their parents' basements, or toothless cretins channeling their miserable lives into soap operas of extreme masculinity and femininity, and venting their impotent rage by homophobicly chanting 'faggot' at the bad guy? Are you tired of an industry that remains locked in its carnival huckster past, afraid to recognize its status as an art form because of the terror that it will lose an extra dollar if it no longer dumbs things down to the lowest common denominator? If so, then join us because alone we're just howls in the Internet wilderness but together we can be a force for change in professional wrestling. Together we can demand higher-quality product. Together we can demand respect for the art form. Jazz was once considered trash. Comic books once were trash. Now it is time for professional wrestling, another underappreciated American art form, to be studied by scholars and treated with the respect it deserves. Great angles and matches should be hailed as the works of art they are. You know you appreciate them. But you are not crazy. You are not alone. Not once you have joined The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans (TLOIWF for short--by the way, if anyone can think of a better acronym, please let us know). You know you have exquisite taste in sports entertainment. We know you have exquisite taste in sports entertainment. Hell, just liking professional wrestling proves that you have exquisite taste in general. So let the world know by joining The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans. United we can change the industry and its image. Make the people who chatter insipidly about what scripted show was on television last night or the big game around the company coffee pot in the morning jealous when they hear you discuss the intricacies of backstage politics or ACL injuries in an endeavor that combines scripts and sports and features actors who are also athletes. Can your Oscarwinning actor get bulldogged through a table and still remember lines? Can your SuperBowl MVP athlete give a speech while being punched in the head repeatedly? Well, ours can! Bodyslam your boss (figuratively) when you explain who has the heat in the latest feud. Put your friends in the figure four leglock (figuratively) when you speak kayfabe. Put life in a headlock (literally) and squeeze it until it submits to you, the intelligent wrestling fan! They will all be amazed once you come out of the closet as a wrestling fan. Amazed! We're like MENSA on steroids. Um, forget the steroids mention . . . we're like MENSA with attitude! Attitude! Join The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans today!"

Jake clicks on the link and finds that it costs $99 a year to join and the organization is run by a subsidiary of Whirligig Whizbang World Wide Wrestling Works (WWWWWW), the huge wrestling company that runs the Grapple Groove tv show, and basically all you get for your money is a certificate and listed in an online directory.

Jake doesn't join. He's not smart enough to be that dumb.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: The Ghost In The Vending Machine (2 May 2012)

In the Oval Office, the air smells slightly like rotting meat. To counteract this, anyone who works there piles on the perfume, the cologne, the garlic on their breakfast, whatever it takes to crowd out the smell with another smell at least slightly less repulsive. As Louis Carson Fir limps into the office, Dick swivels around and sniffs the air, "What the hell are you wearing, Fir?"

"It's a new cologne that mixes pheromones with ground-up deer penis. It drives the ladies wild."

"It smells more like it drives the ladies away, but I'll take your word for it," Dick says, wheeling around to move his large soft drink vending machine body, painted so as to resemble the traditional presidential suit and tie outfit, from behind the desk, "So, I hear all went well on your trip to the Buckeye state?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you want a Poke?"

"Sure, sir."

Dick uses one of his noodly vacuum cleaner arm appendages and presses on the painted American flag pin on the top left of his, um, chest. A series of clunks are heard from inside Dick, and the appendage reaches under his um, tie about where his , um, fly would be and pulls out an ice cold can of Poca-Cola. The appendage hands, um, gives it to Fir, who takes it and opens it up, "Ahhhhhhh! Thanks, sir."

"You're welcome. I still have one occasionally myself. The sugar water tastes great, but of course just pours out into a drain beneath my head," Dick sighs, "Some days I miss the rest of my body. At least I still have my head. That's the problem though. It's just meat. The doctors don't know how much longer they really can keep it from rotting away entirely. And, with summer here, it's only going to get worse, particularly at those outside campaign events. That's why the White House smells like a whorehouse with all the perfume lately. Ha! You'd think Clinton was still working here--don't tell the vice-president I said that; she's still thinks I'm the reason Polipo beat her so easily in the Democratic primaries. Anyway, the doctors say my new body will be ready soon, but it won't have any meat at all, if it even works, and I don't think the public is going to respond well to the first posthuman president. That's the future though. We're all going to have to be transhuman to survive. This planet's ruined. The only hope of survival is to just pick the worthy--and the worthy will be whomever gives me enough money--and give them artificial bodies so we can live forever in space. 'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' I'll make Jefferson proud. The final frontier is death, and we're going to beat it now too. Well, those of us who deserve it, and have the money. The rest of this ungrateful populace can fuck off and die. There's only two principles in politics I believe in, and they're the bedrock of our Republican party: 1) Rich people do enough for society as it is so they shouldn't have to pay any taxes, and 2) When they need to, the rich should be allowed to loot the public treasury. I don't know why the rest of society can't agree with this, but they don't, which is why we have to make up such ridiculous arguments and falsehoods to cover and disguise these principles at work. So I need to win this election to make things come together."

"Well, sir, I think I have a partial solution to that problem at least. Poorpeople's agreed to your proposal of putting both of you on the presidential ticket. There's just one problem. He wants you to be the V.P."

"Even after that Pennsylvania debacle, and the primaries yesterday where I beat him? That little senator from Ohio's got some big balls," Dick pauses and sighs, "I do miss my balls."

"Ahem, well, the Pennsylvania situation did freak him out a bit sir. Especially when he kept hearing your voice in his head telling him to 'Stick with Dick.' He said it was worse than any song lyric and melody that ever got stuck in his head and just kept repeating and repeating."

"Heh, heh, heh, that worked pretty well, didn't it? I don't think we can do it again though, after all those people killed themselves just to get the voices out of their heads. The press has been hounding me enough about it as is. They ought to thank me. I'd like to take credit for it. Those people were weak, and we Americans need to be strong because what's coming is brutal. You don't want some weak link in a chain falling apart at a crucial moment. At least Poorpeople didn't kill himself. I hate to admit it, but we need him now. Polipo's got quite a lead built up already in the general election, and we can't let him build up any more momentum, while I'm still grinding it out with Poorpeople for the nomination. If only I could convince Polipo to throw the election, but my people working on that say he's drunk on his own ego, and we can't dig up any good dirt on him that would convince him to sober up. So we need Poorpeople on board. Otherwise, I don't think there's any way to squeeze out a victory. The public's already too paranoid about stolen elections so our options there are more limited this time, and I can't cancel the election again. My advisors say the riots would be too disruptive to business. And business is what I'm all about. I am a vending machine. I am literally capitalism. By the way, you owe me a dollar for that Poke, Fir."

Fir coughs, then digs in his pocket and pulls out a bill, "Where do I put it, sir?"

"There's a slot underneath the left pocket."

Fir slides the bill there. A whir is heard but the bill gets spit back out. Fir tries again. More whir. The bill goes in and out. "Damn it, Fir, quit messing about! We have business to take care of!"

Dick's left appendage shoots out and vacuums up the bill out of Fir's hand, "There! That's good enough! Now let's figure out what to do about Poorpeople!"

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Go Metric 22 Has An Excerpt of Blog Love Omega Glee

#22, the latest issue of Go Metric zine is out. As usual, editor Mike Faloon's done a nice job of collecting an assortment of popular cultural oddities for your reading pleasure. Read about Dick Cheney as a boy detective, why Iron Maiden rocks harder than emo and indie rockers, a dissection of The Wrestling Album, nutty cartoons, and a tasty hunk of literary fiction including the first five chapters of my Blog Love Omega Glee, marking the first time the novel has appeared publicly in printed form. About the only thing I didn't like about the issue was the analysis of Plastic Man and Mr. Fantastic, but that was only because I wanted to see The Elongated Man thrown into the discussion of stretchable superheroes as well!

Blog Love Omega Glee: A Coffeehouse Conversation About Whether Or Not The Apocalypse Is Covered Under Homeowners Insurance (1 May 2012)

A blissful couple of weeks reigned at Caffeine Eden while Tom and Larry weren't on speaking terms. Each would stake out a different corner, and hide behind their respective newspapers. They'd try to strike up conversations about current events with other patrons of the coffeehouse, but with little success. So like gravity drawing a ball thrown up in the air back down to Earth, they have come back together, a bit grudgingly, but together. After all, no one else would talk with them. As sweet as it was to have peace and quiet, it was bittersweet since the obvious loneliness of the pair of old men made even Jake feel a bit sad. So as he sits today suffering through one of their inane conversations he tries to keep that in mind, and be kind.

"Did you ever worry about whether or not you were the AntiChrist?" Tom says, taking a sip of coffee.

"Uh . . . no," Larry replies, looking up from his copy of The Cleaveland Advertiser.

"Hmmph!" Tom says.

Larry sets his newspaper down, "That reminds me though, you know that great die-off we were talking about the other day, where like most of the human population is going to, well, die off as the apocalypse starts?"

Tom nods, "Uh huh."

"Well, is the apocalypse going to be covered under my homeowners insurance?"

"I would think so. Did you check the fine print?"

"Well, it's just that it's an act of God, right? So the insurance company wouldn't have to pay since you can't sue God. Sovereign immunity or something."

"No, it's not an act of God. It's an act of the devil, so it would be covered. Unless the devil gets a good corporate lawyer--I'm sure he's got lots of those--and the devil's advocate argues that God put the devil up to it so the devil should not be liable. Of course, the insurance company probably has some good lawyers too, so it could go either way."

"My insurance company is going to collect from Satan?"

"As long as you get paid, who cares whom they collect from? That's the cost of doing business. They've calculated all that stuff out and priced your premium based on the odds."

"Wait! If it's the apocalypse, then how can I collect? Won't my insurance company be destroyed too?"

Jake hears a loud growl, and then the shriek of a chair backing up sharply across the floor. A man with a red goatee, who had been sitting in a corner having a whispered conversation with another businessman, gets up and limps over to Tom and Larry's table. "Gentlemen," he says, "My name is Louis Carson Fir and I'm trying to conduct a business meeting. Could you please keep it down?"

Tom and Larry look at one another. "But aren't you worried about the apocalypse?" Larry says.

"The apocalypse happens everyday to somebody somewhere," Fir says.

"That's not what it says in The Bible," Larry says, digging out his copy, which he lays down on the table and flips through to get to The Book of Revelation, "It starts with a horse or a lamb or something."

"Hilarious, the old stories are the good ones," Fir says, pulling up a chair, "Look if you want to know the meaning of life or whatever, please let me break it down for you. There's a big blob of nothing."

Fir picks up Tom's coffee cup and spills some coffee out of it.

"Hey!" Tom says.

"Don't worry, it's sacrificed for a good cause," Fir says, "So say this coffee is everything there is. Eventually, the coffee gets bored being just coffee so it becomes a bunch of different things, which eventually adds up to us, the world, whatever. After it's done splitting up into lots of different things, it gets bored with that too, so it starts working its way back to being a big blob of coffee again. This goes on and on throughout eternity. Just enjoy the ride, and don't worry about anything as we're all the same thing."

"We're all hazelnut coffee?" Larry says, "I wish we were French vanilla. I like that better."

Jake wonders if the Milky Way is where the cream got added.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: A Drink In A Dive And A Dive In A Drink (30 April 2012)

The drinking establishment known as The Pirate Punch Bowl derives its name from two sources: 1) the fiendish concoction which is the house specialty, composed of pouring all the drinks from last night that patrons have not finished to the last drop into a single container, shaking it up, and serving it as the cheapest glug on the drink menu the next day, and 2) the bar brawls that serve nightly as the evening's entertainment. If you're drinking here at this ramshackle bar where the river meets the lake in Cleaveland, then you're either aggressive, broke, cheap, drunk already, evil, foreign, groggy, hostile, incontinent, jaded, kamikaze, lost, mad, nasty, odd, perplexed, quidnuncy, ready to rumble, suicidal, thrifty, university-enrolled, violent, weird, X-rated, yackety-yakky, zealous, or any combination thereof.

Of course, this is Louis Carson Fir's favorite bar in town. Giving an occasional tug at the end of his red goatee, he sits at the bar sipping a scotch and smoking a cigar. Ohio banned smoking in bars years ago, but the memo never reached the Punch Bowl. Even the cops and health department officials light up when they're here. Alongside the smoke, an unspoken agreement hovers in the air that if you're here, there are probably more pressing worries to your health than a future case of cancer or lung disease.

The lump on the bar stool next to Fir stirs. A middle-aged white man with tousled blonde hair looks up, and sticks out a glass in the direction of the bartender, Nobeard, an elderly black woman who wears an eyepatch over her right eye. She grabs a bottle of rum and pours it in the man's glass. Sailwing the parrot, who flies freely throughout the Bowl, occasionally shitting on patrons, lands on the bartender's right shoulder, and squawks, "He's Dee-runk! Tee-Rashed! Let's make him walk the plank!"

The man throws back the rum, shudders, and puts his head and shoulders back on the bar. Fir watches the scene with amusement, and returns to his scotch. "What's the point?" a voice says.

Fir looks around for the source. The lump next to him has stirred again, stares at Fir, and says, "I ask you, sir, what's the point?"

"The point of what?" Fir says, throwing his left hand up with a flourish to emphasize the question mark on the "what".

The lump rotates around on his stool and spreads his arms, taking in the scene of the barscape: players of darts (one dart currently sticking in the ear of a nonplaying patron), the pooling at the pool table, the crowd gathered around the jukebox picking new selections, the dancing drunks, the solitary drinkers skulking in the corners, the woman throwing her date through a window, and the rest of the panorama of The Pirate Punch Bowl.

Fir looks at it and turns back around to the bar, winking at the bartender to indicate he'd like another scotch, "It's a bar. The point is to get drunk enough to try to get laid, or to try to forget, or whatever you want to do."

The man turns back around and waves his arms, "No, no, not the bar. Everything. Life. The world. The universe."

Fir raises his left eyebrow, "You must be kidding me. This isn't a fucking philosophy class in college."

The man slams his right fist on the bar. Nobeard shoots him a glance, but grabs a broom and dustpan and wanders off to address the broken window. "But I want to know! If there's no point, then I might as well take a walk up the bridge, dive off the middle, and end it right now," the man yelps.

"If I tell you there's no point, can I watch when you do it? I'd like to film it and put it on the Internet," Fir says, digging out his cell phone from one of his many pockets.

"But what's the point of even doing that! What's the meaning?" the man yells.

"All right, all right, calm down, I like to watch the scene here; I don't want to be the scene here," Fir shushes the man who simmers down, then Fir continues, putting his cell phone away, "There doesn't have to be a meaning. Things are their own meaning and their own reward. Life is its own reward. For instance, I'm here to craft a deal between two rival candidates so that joined together we can be victorious. The joy of crushing my political enemies is what gets me up in the morning. It doesn't need any larger significance beyond that."

"But what's the point in the larger scheme of things? What does it matter?"

"'What's the point?' 'What's the point?' You're sounding like a damned parrot. The point is it's fun. I like to breathe, I like to eat, I like to drink, I like to piss, I like to shit, I like to fuck, I like to work, I like to do all these things, they're their own rewards, their own meanings. They don't need any larger significance. And you're thinking of throwing all that away just so because you think they need more meaning? Your problem is you're afraid to live. That's why you can't understand their meaning, and appreciate it. You're just a selfish little shit who wants to throw his life away just because things aren't matching your expectations. At least become a monk or something and serve others. Along those lines, we do need some volunteers for the remaining primaries. But back to the main point. I think you're afraid to live, that's why you want to die. Why I bet you've never taken off your clothes and run naked through a bar screaming, just happy to be alive? Well, have you?"

The man shakes his head, "No, no."

He looks at Fir, "Do you really think that would help things? I mean my wife wants to divorce me. I'm always traveling and I never see my kids. I think I'm about to get laid off. Things really, really suck right now. I might as well just end it all. It'll be merciful. I mean my life has to end sometime, so why not now before things get even more painful. I always knew it would end," the man sighs, then continues, "I just didn't know it would end up in Cleaveland.""

"Don't give up. Relish the challenges. They give us a reason to live. But you've got to fight. It's a brutal world, and it'll eat you alive if you let it, so you eat it instead.," Fir says as he scoops up a few peanuts from the bar's nutbowl that he'd been hoarding.

Fir chews and nods at the man, and then suddenly Fir slams his left palm on the table and says, "Fight!"

Joining in, the man slams his hand on the table, "Fight!"

Fir and the man slam their hands down in unison, speeding up a chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Onlookers onlook as the man shakes his head, stands up, and starts taking off his clothing. People start hooting and applauding. With just his pants on, he poses down like a professional wrestler, flexing his flabby arms and flabby stomach. People laugh. Sailwing lands on the bar and squawks, "Fuck me. I need a drink."

Fir pushes over a glass of another patron, who's occupied watching the man strip. Sailwing dips his beak, takes a drink, and says, "Thank you, Saint Fuck, now where's the good stuff?"

The man tears off his pants and underwear and the crowd cheers, he runs through the bar, building up speed, until Nobeard punches him in the face, and he collapses on the floor.

The bar is silent except for the jukebox which plays an old sea shanty.

"Aaarrgh! There's broken glass over here, matey! You don't want to get hurt. And anyway," Nobeard raises her voice, "You all know there ain't no fighting until after ten, and it's only . . . " she looks at her watch, "9:fucking58!"

Things return back to normal and people step around the naked man lying on the floor. The parrot flies over and poops on him before landing back on Nobeard's right shoulder, as she sweeps up the broken glass. Fir leans over the bar and pours himself another drink, his last for he has to get up early in the morning and crush his political enemies. He breathes deeply, and thinks, "Life is sweet."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.