Poem: Adulthood Manual

Whenever I buy a new appliance,
even for a blender, there is always
an instruction manual.  But when I turned
twenty-one, no one gave me a manual
for adulthood, and I would have liked one.
It could have saved me a blunder or two.

So I would like to propose not a toast,
but a book, even a pamphlet, some guide,
passed out with the first legal purchase of
alcohol, which says, “Congratulations
on turning twenty-one!  Here is how to
be an adult beyond beer, wine, liquor:
Take responsibility.
Do not cause messes.
If you do, clean them up.
Drive courteously, and be polite in other matters as well.
Use a turn signal.
Do not talk on the cell phone while steering.
Vote, but do not stop there.
Participate in politics.
Think.
Then think again.
Ask why a lot, particularly when money is involved, and especially for taxes.
When you hear the phrase "national security," guard your wallet.
Pay your bills, but do not run up too many in the first place.
Only go into debt when you have to, such as for a car, a house, an education, something that will ultimately make you money.
Learn to do the math for your own personal economy; a three dollar coffee every morning five times a week for fifty-two weeks equals the vacation that year that you could have had if you had not frittered it away by not connecting the dots and not crunching the numbers.
Keep childhood alive, especially in your children, if you have any.
Continue to play, dream, and ask questions.
Wonder what your teenage self would think of you now.
Adjust accordingly, if you think you have grown in the wrong direction.
Be nice to animals, and you will find that they usually return the favor.
You are probably going to fall in love, so be careful whom you fall in love with.
Be even more careful whom you marry.
Be really, really careful whom you take the chance of having children with.
Your body will fail you.
Your parents will fail you.
Do not fail them; take care of your loved ones; they are impossible to replace.
So are you, so unless the technology that enables us to download our souls into new cloned bodies comes around really quickly, you are going to die.
Go back to the earth naturally.
God or whatever deity you believe in, or do not believe in, will take care of the rest.
Do not spend too much on weddings or funerals.
Drink responsibly, even at weddings and funerals.
Work hard and take care of what you have.
When you tire of a thing, find it a good home, or get it recycled at least.
Do not waste energy, especially your own.
Follow the money when trying to understand the behavior of others.
Do not take a job unless you can figure out how they make money off you.
Remember you might make money at work, but your boss usually makes more money from you.
If you are ever unemployed, work forty hours a week getting a job or starting a business and you will soon not be unemployed.
Do not work more than forty hours a week.  It is seldom worth it, and you could die at any time.  Tell the boss you need help, even if you are the boss, and go have some fun.
Take care of your health.
Take care in general.
If you want to be smart:  read, read, read, think, think, think, write write, write.
Want to be smart.
Better yet, be wise.
Seek wisdom, peace, and love in all you do
Everyone is in pain.
Do not be a jerk and share yours around.
If your lover leaves you, let her or him go
If you get fired, move on; it is usually for the best in the long run.
If you fail, get back up.
Question authority, and don't accept the first answer given automatically.
Know that you cannot do everything, but you can probably do just about anything you want to if you set your mind to it.
Try to leave the world in better shape than you received it.
Treat others as you would like to be treated, unless you are a masochist, in which case treat them much, much better than you like to be treated.
Your right to extend your arm ends where my nose begins.
Let others be free; do not try to control them if they are not harming anyone else.
Even if they are harming themselves and you want to step in, make sure you do not make things worse; sometimes you have to let things, and people, go.
If you want peace, fight for justice, but fight nicely as violence usually creates more problems.
Do not be afraid to get sued, get fired, or get laughed at; always do the right thing, but make sure you know what that is.
And no matter how tough life gets, it is usually more interesting than just being part of a uniform endless pool of energy, which is probably the chief alternative to this.
Do not take things so seriously; it is only life.
If you cannot laugh once in a while, then you will make a lousy meal for the worms at the end.
Do try to be tasty.”

Okay, life is probably too complex
for an instruction manual, but I still
think this is a much better idea
than doing twenty-one shots, and though you
might want more troubleshooting tips, you are
on your own.  Figure it out.  Make it up.
That is adulthood.  Welcome to the club.

More cleaning out the closet here.  This poem is adapted from a speech I had to give at a turning 21 dinner at a college I worked at.  It dates from 2007 or so.  For more recent writing by me, albeit much less preachy, click here.

drinkdrankdrunk Returns!

A couple of decades ago, I did a zine called drinkdrankdrunk.  It was a lot of fun.  I published 3 print issues, then did a fourth and final issue online.  A few years after that, I coedited a blog called Underground Literary Adventures for the Underground Literary Alliance.

It was also a lot of fun, and, as with drinkdrankdrunk, I got to publish a lot of great authors.  In fact, you can check that blog out here.  I have published a few authors on this blog now and then over the years, but I'd like to make it a more regular feature.  I've had trouble finding some good reading on the Web lately.  The Web used to be the world's greatest newsstand, but now it seems to be suffering from everything from paywalls to clickbait. 

In short, I need something to better to read online, so it looks like I am going to have to do it myself.  Therefore, I'm bringing back the drinkdrankdrunk name for the category of blog posts featuring other authors.  In spirit, it will be a lot like the old Underground Literary Adventures blog.  In fact, I might even be running some stuff from old ULAers.  Right now, I have some stuff scheduled from Food Fortunata of Sockeye (I like his low budget surrealism) and a mysterious person known as The Midnight Rider.  I am also hoping to get some stuff from The Derz, Christopher Johnston, and a few others in the coming weeks.  I hope to make this a regular feature of the blog and provide some good reading for other readers who also find most of the current crop of online literary magazines and zines a snore.  Right now, I'm pretty much down to reading New Pop Lit for my lit fix.  Nobody else seems to be bringing it.  Even The Red Fez has been boring lately; with luck, they'll snap out of their slump.

If you need something to read at the moment and can't wait for drinkdrankdrunk to return, then check out my latest novel here!

Poem: November

A once grand pumpkin

Rots on a stump two doors down

Each day less remains

This orphan haiku is from 2008.  It's older than the pumpkin picture which is only from 2009.  Yeah, I know it's spring, but the dang poem already waited almost 12 years already.  Sorry, poem!  More recent writing by me can be found here.

What Wred's Reading: Fanzines: The DIY Revolution by Teal Triggs

I get cited in this book, so, of course, I like it.  This is yet another reread since all the bookstores and libraries are still closed (there's always mail order, but my ebook reading is currently satisfying my appetite for new material, so for print, it's been the rereading that I was planning on doing anyway).  This book is mainly an exhibit of zine covers.  For that alone, it's a fun read.  It also has chapters that discuss the history of zines.  They tend to be U.K.centric, which makes sense since that's where Triggs lives.  It came out ten years after the mainstream zine book boom, and seeing as those books didn't sell well, I doubt this did either, so it might end up being the last mass market book on zines.  Some scholars will no doubt write about zines in the future, but that'll be probably about it, as the heyday of zines has passed.  This book clearly was intended for the coffeetable, and it does indeed look great.  At one point, it probably was on my coffeetable.  From what I gather online from reviews, it looks like many readers were upset at Triggs because there were no articles reprinted from zines, except incidentally in the photos, but that's not what the book is.  People were also mad that she didn't ask for permissions before taking pictures of the zines, but it's basically someone taking pictures of their zine collection, so it falls into the fair use doctrine of copyrighted materials in the USA at least.  Triggs is a graphic design professor, so it makes sense that she is more interested in the visual aesthetics of zines than the actual content.  So, if you take this book as what it is and not as what it is not, you'll like it.  It's like having a zine collection in one handy package.  For old zinesters, it's definitely a trip down Memory Lane.  There are quite a few zines in here that I read.

If you want to read the content of a zine, then check out my novel, The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, which was originally published as a zine.

Poem: The Empress Needs A Day Off

Tarot Card Empress has stars in her hair
Strawberries on gown, world at her feet.
Behind her is summer:  sun, trees, stream, wheat.
Scepter is up though as if to beware.

She sits on her heart, and her worries beat.
Ruling is no gentle ride on a mare.
Serene pillows prop her back, and her stare
Takes you in, as you wonder why you meet.

If you could reach her, you would brush her hair,
Shake out those stars, they give off too much heat.
Not yet winter, so why so bittersweet?
Fall beckons, and over may be the fair,

A throne is not a comfortable seat,
Life is hard to read, harder to repair,
Still, toss the crown, run through wheat without care,
And find stars in the sky, the night a treat.

I found this old poem (2011?) in a folder.  I checked, and it had never been published anywhere, so I'm posting it here.  If you want more of my writing, then check out my latest novel here!  A reader just told me today that it made her laugh out loud regularly.  Yes, it's a comedy, so that's a good thing . . .

I Thought The Primary Was When Candidates Were Endorsed?

The primary election in Ohio was extended.

Don't get me started on that.

OK, I will get started on that.  I was supposed to work as a pollworker, you know doing my democratic duty and getting a bit of dosh.  It's a brutal day.  I work from 6 in the morning until 8 at night or something.  Plus I have to set up the night before and go to a training session a week before.  As if that isn't bad enough, this year, the governor was panicking about COVID-19 and decided at the last minute to cancel the election.  So the day before the election was this back and forth as public officials figured out what they were going to do.  Keep in mind, I have to go to bed early, so I can get up in the middle of the night to get ready to work the polls.  At first, it seemed a done deal the election was going to be postponed.  I was told by the Board Of Elections that the evening setup was canceled.  Then, I saw on the tv news that a judge had struck down the governor's order.  At that point, I headed to bed.  I was brushing my teeth, when the Board Of Elections called to say I had to report at 5 a.m. now, even earlier than usual (presumably because we still had to set things up).  I think I woke up somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m., got ready, and headed over to the polling place.

Of course, no one was there.  At that point, I remembered that the robocall from the Board said something about calling them in the morning.  So I called, and, of course, found out that the politicians had figured out some other way of postponing the election (they declared in-person voting to be a public health threat or something).

Great!  I wish they had told me that before I had to set my alarm for the wee hours of the morning.  No one is even entirely sure this is all legal, but one can't turn back time, so now they decided the election will be held by absentee ballot only, which sucks because Ohio has this goofy system of voter registration to prevent basically nonexistent voter fraud (well, it exists in the minds of Republican politicians who would never get elected anywhere if most people voted, but that's not the same thing as reality).  I had to request a ballot, filling out a form asking for my ID, and then buy a stamp to mail it.  Then, I get the ballot (fortunately, the return is postagepaid) and I have to again fill in my ID information.  Why do I need to fill in the same info twice?  Just put it on the ballot bit if one is worried about that.  That would suffice to guard against the almost nonexistent voter fraud.  Clearly, the system is designed to frustrate people enough that they won't vote, and though I am not a fan of encouraging stupid people to vote (generally, they vote stupidly), neither am I a fan of making voting extra-difficult just to be a creep.

Anyway, enough digression, so I receive this postcard in the mail today because the election is being extended.  The postcard tries to tell me which Democrats to vote for (currently, I am a registered Democrat because it is basically one-party rule where I live locally, so if I want more of a say in local elections I need to officially be a Democrat--some of the local Democrats are about as creepy though as most of the state and national Republicans are).

Pardon me, I thought the primary election was what endorsed Democrats.  I don't know what this thing is, other than party bosses trying to steer wins to favored candidates.  I'll try to contact the state party who sent it out though and see what they say, just to be fair.  If they respond, I'll post about this again.

Since I seem to be channeling the ghost of Andy Rooney anyway here and complaining, I might as well note the absurdity of taxpayers paying for partisan primary elections in the first place.  I suppose the argument would be that this guarantees fair elections, but the parties are essentially private institutions.  On this ballot, there was only one issue, which could have waited until the general election.  It looks more like the parties conspired together to pass on the costs of their primary elections to the general public, who should only be concerned that the general election is fair; let the parties figure out their internal dynamics on their own dime.

The other creepy thing on this card is how many races are uncontested.  Now, of course, there will be candidates from other parties in the general election for these positions, but it's still sad that such a lack of choice exists in a democracy.  I have written about this before and concluded that it was not a good idea.  In any case, it goes a long way to explain why our officials make such dumb decisions and waste so much tax money.

I would humbly suggest that the Ohio Democratic Party stop this practice of trying to sway the primary voters and just let the primary voters decide whom to endorse, but I suspect that's a waste of time (though I have time to waste , so I may do it anyway).  After all, this is a state party that regularly gets their clocks cleaned by neaderthallike Republican candidates, so that it's basically one party rule statewide, so clearly this is a group that makes dumb decisions to begin with.

But there's always hope.

Right?

For some other folks who make questionable decisions, please read my latest novel.

What Wred's Reading: The Best Of Impetus

I have been rereading some old books lately, not only because all the libraries are closed, but also because I am getting older and do not want to move as much stuff as I did during my last move.  It has been a fun trip down the proverbial Memory Lane.  This book I picked up at Cat's Impetuous Books, probably the coolest bookstore I have ever been to.  It was a small store located in an alley in Kent, Ohio USA, and the proprietor, Cheryl Townsend, stocked the coolest stuff, from zines to classic literature.  She even had a store cat named Bukowski.  This book was her collection of the first ten years of her underground poetry zine Impetus.  It has a lot of cool poets in it including Charles Bukowski, Ron Androla, Sherman Alexie, Lyn Lifshin, Pat McKinnon, Kurt Nimmo, Hal Sirowitz, and Alfred Vitale.  It doesn't have any poetry from Cheryl herself, which is too bad because her stuff was really good also, but I suppose she felt that editing the zine/book was enough.

One really cool aspect of the bookstore was that she held a lot of readings there, so I was able to hear many of these poets read in person.  They were, in general, a wild bunch.  Many are deceased now or quite old (some were middle-aged then, and the book came out a quarter century ago).  American literature seems a lot tamer since these folks passed through.  Unfortunately, the bookstore is long gone as well.  The city of Kent and Kent State University were hellbent on turning the entire city into an outdoor shopping mall (you know, one of those fake towns that pretend to be the real downtowns the big box stores killed off), and the building was torn down to build a hotel or something else that wouldn't survive without heavy tax subsidies.  Frankly, Kent is creepy to walk around in now, like some sort of zombie town that replaced the real town ("Oh, there's a Speedway where the punk bands used to live.  Oh, look it's Starbucks now instead of Brady's Cafe, so I can pay twice as much for a coffee."), but I suppose the students still find some ways to have fun.

Anyway, in this book, the 1980s/1990s underground American poetry scene still lives, so that's some solace for those of us who can't afford to buy a condo where the Mantis Art Gallery was.

Also, you can get a feel for that era in this novel of mine.

New Thirsty Bear & Hungry Snake Comic: Coronavirus Edition!

For this The Thirsty Bear And The Hungry Snake comic, I have returned to the photos.  As you can tell from the comic, the Snake apparently doesn't follow the news much these days.  With luck, COVID-19 will soon be a memory along the lines of the Y2K Bug and SARS and this comic won't make as much sense as it does now.  To make each panel bigger, please click on it.

For more hilarity (though fewer bears and snakes), read my latest novel!