I have money, hear me espouse

A sea of green veggies await, grown by the tender fingers and wholly organic love of a local grower.

Oh. I’d love to get me some of that, you tell the local farmer at the market, only I would eat for three days if I spent my money here. Were I to spend my Andrew Jackson on prepackaged frozen stuff I could sustain the household for a week and a half. Can you cut me a deal? I’d love to eat healthier and support locals at the same time. 

Inside you feel the warmth to be had from such an act.

He doesn't look like it here, but author Nelson
Algren lived in and understood poverty.

If I did that, we’d go out of business, the white man with the perfectly manicured dreadlocks tells you with a nearly emoticon-perfect frown. But it’s worth a little more to eat healthier. You will feel better too, he adds, as if that is reason enough.

You could explain the meaning behind an Andrew Jackson. He wants it and some, that local grower, as we all do, but that Andrew Jackson is a meal ticket for a week and half. There are no other $20s to be had until that week and a half has passed. Unless of course the IRS, or the electric company, or your car insurance, child support recipient – unless of course you can convince them all that eating healthier is why you won’t be paying them in full this month. Maybe if the local grower won’t cut you a deal, the gas station up the street will.

Then come the shrugged shoulders as you walk away from the market. Why go to the sea of green veggies in the first place? Perhaps because it seems like a place where the poor would be embraced? Because you want to see your family eat healthier? Because so many espouse the dangers of Monsanto and bad diet? And here, amidst a sea of veggies, is salvation. Only you mustn’t suffer from financial bruises.

And so it is through that lens that the cash-strapped view those who rattle their verbal sabers – those with fixed income sources claim volunteerism is the best cure for depression, those who strum love songs for the GMO-free lifestyle from a debt free perch, shout endlessly against the ills wrought by mankind’s genetically-predisposed opinions. And their opinions, as it is with those who shiver at the thought of tighter gun control and Obamacare, are loud and so very convincing. But we aren’t all living in a house paid off in full, we aren’t all sipping Americanos at the coffee shop while writing superbly canned existential poetry - paid for by the same trust fund that bought you the $3 drink. It costs a lot to look like you come from the street after all. Nor are we all able to cash in a pension and tell others they should do what they love in life, regardless of money.

But those opinions on health and big corporations are important for so many reasons.  And they are commonly accepted as truth among the hipster crowd, just as religious truth is accepted among others. And the two will duke it out endlessly. When is it okay to call them both wrong? When is it okay to question the morals and cash-fueled existence of every American subculture – be they repubs, democs, gangsters, cowboys or trust fund babies?

Is it okay to tell an "earth mama" she has a pregnancy addiction after you get tired of hearing about how awesome it is they’ve further wrecked the population by having three or more liberal kids? Is it not cool to say that to the earth mama who loves her some Monsanto-free food, but okay to say it to the Mormon mom because she eats at KFC? Do they both live off the support of others? Their mom and dad perhaps, or someone further up the genealogical line who made the family’s money? Child support? Both? And do they take that money and look down their nose at those who won’t spend into their bill money for a sea of green veggies?

Both sides, donkeys and elephants, dreadlocks and Caesar cuts, lustfully embrace the root problem of supply and demand. It all costs. And only those who can afford to worry about it.

Writers such as Nelson Algren, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, John Steinbeck and others championed the voice of the poor, as did some of the Beat writers, some of whom struggled to survive, and many sit on the shelves of those who clamor from their lofty perches about government control, corruption and spiritual benediction. But would they be able to afford a wi-fi connection at their home? Would they shop GMO-free? Would they be able to afford the latest Apple product or a gas guzzling SUV?

Or would they understand the need to free the voices currently gargling under a sea of paycheck-to-paycheck poverty?

Read this blog if you want, but you don’t have to

A boot to the face can be more
fun than chatting it up with someone.

Many introverts would rather be kicked in the face than face social interaction.

That’s what it feels like to speak with others. A solid boot to the jaw is quicker. Boots are pretty good at keeping their mouths shut too. Far be it from them to say something lame about politics or religion.

It’s often said most writers are introverts. They prefer to tap out fictionalized social intercourse to face-to-face encounters. They prefer staring at a screen than looking into another person’s eyes. Speaking in public is like having your innards tied to the rear bumper of a Chevy pickup and dragged across 50 miles of hot asphalt. With my luck, the innards would be looped tightly around a rusting set of steel balls – quite popular among Arizona’s more discerning truck owners.

Authors, whether introverted or extroverted, have to look up from their own little worlds once in a while. They have to talk about their writing, whether to explain why they do it to their disapproving family members, or to their approving legion of readers. There’s marketing to be considered, employment to solidify, and none of it can be done by someone else until Oprah mentions your literary ass.

For intros, online self-promotion is a common form of marketing, especially when it comes to social media. Even the big names do it. They tweet, they blog, they post on Facebook and Google+, and many are wondering if it’s gone too far.

No one likes a beggar, especially an author that posts and posts, multiple times a day, about their own book – linking it to Amazon and thinking you will click “buy” and be thankful for it. Self-promotion can get boring, it can be frustrating and it can even swerve a reader away from buying anything from that author. Ever. Yet that’s what everyone is expected to do. It’s called “marketing.”

But try periodic posts, try responding to reader comments instead of ignoring them – at least when possible. Saying “thanks” is good once in a while. Find an original way to reach your readers. Don’t make the focus on sales so damn obvious. And act like a real person instead of a pretentious one. Only then can you celebrate the 15 books all your efforts will sell. Real sales only come from word of mouth of course, where people are actually impressed by what you write than you.

For an interesting peek into the bubble of author promotion on social media click here.

Intros are also being applauded for their secluded personalities these days, which is a trip. Books like “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” by Susan Cain, push how awesome hermits are. Business magazines have taken it a step further by suggesting employers hire intros over extros, as they believe they are hard workers that rarely talk back - all of which serves to segregate personality traits into two easy to swallow categories. It’s simply not true. Extros can be brilliant and hard working. Intros may be slow and so spacey they rarely get any real work done. And both can learn something from the other.

Only when intros learn how to stomach bits of outgoing-ness from extros will the introvert consider being a physical highlight among friends. Until then, many would rather kiss the bottom of a boot.

Youth are amazing and young and have energy

Adults with passion and conviction.

Older folk are just surprised they’re still alive half the time. There are times when the act of sucking in air comes as a shock - when middle-aged people question every sober, sane inch of their swollen body and go, “Wait, shouldn’t I be dead by now?”

At the very least we’ll wonder where the hell our sense of wonder bailed to.

These thoughts sat up and barked at me while I followed the scantily-clad protestors for the March 30 “Slutwalk Prescott.”

Slutwalk protestors dress this way to be ironic. They wear lingerie and bras, boxer shorts and whatnot, while asking “Is it okay to rape me now?” In contrast, some will wear multiple layers of clothing and proclaim snow parkas won’t stop a rapist. 

They were also, nearly all of them (save teachers, or the parents of protestors who were there) really young. I won’t say they were kids – I'd guess my daughter’s age or close for the most part. A teacher, who oversaw the event, but didn’t organize it, pointed out that being eighteen makes one an adult. Period. So they were adults, but still young, and getting their feet wet in the dandy world of protests, LGBT equality and free speech.

They savored every word; they shouted with youthful zeal and sat firmly at the top of their game, though I doubt they realized it.

And I felt like a weathered strip of flesh hung to rot on a forgotten fence. Where did my sense of righteousness go? Did I ever really have any sense? 

I’ve been around protests in the past, but even as a youngster I questioned the path of noble indignation as my friends dashed off with cardboard signs and a feeling they were about to make a huge fucking difference.

Just as I questioned the role of government, the police, my teachers and everyone else with an ounce of authority over my life - so did I also question the motives of those who rebelled against it all. Did Cat Stevens and Bob Marley just do their thing to cash in on sex? Were they “The Man” of a different persuasion? I used to tell people that in the 80s.

I wanted to raise my fist and shout out my angst. I wanted to see spittle fly angrily from my mouth, but did I really understand the motivation? Not in the slightest. I had the spit to spare, the boots, but I'd didn't understand what it truly meant to feel hungry.

Now that my 40s are stretching my skin down the aged path of anti-depressant-filled experience, I feel even lamer and hungrier. I still question everything, but now I’m tired more often than I am passionate. Protests are an American institution. But I have nothing more to offer society besides clever comparisons between a Wii and the Atari 2600 – a total classic. I don't even feel like arguing.

And what do those who have nothing to offer do?

They smoke cigarettes and write blogs.

Oh Claire! brings a well-deserved exclamation mark

'Oh Claire!' by Giulia Napoli
Global Jele Publishing Company

Giulia Napoli weaves a master tapestry of submission, lust and love in her latest novel, “Oh Claire!”

Arguably, her latest literary effort can be called a Cinderella story with a modern bend, as there are well-crafted scenes of tattooing and piercing that firmly plant this tale in the age of cell phones, social media and the super rich.

The novel's namesake, Claire, is an average American woman with an ambitious career. She quickly becomes the subject of ultimate submission, however, when she allows her lover and soul mate, Elliot, to take the seductive reins and steer her down a lusty path of wanton passion. Claire's submission is total when she agrees to become both blind and deaf, though only for a few days at the outset of the novel. Claire gives all control to Elliot for the promise of the pleasure to come, foregoing her career and most aspects of her life in the process.

While many might imagine a blindfold in an opening scene of surrender and ultimate trust, Napoli finds an intriguing alternative to the tried and true prop - and instead blinds her character for real, though only temporarily, near the beginning of the novel. While also serving as a unique vehicle to drive the story of Claire's submission to Elliot, the blindness also offered a chance for readers to explore Claire's sense of sexual arousal from the perspective of one with no eyes to see.

Napoli deftly explores the sensations of sex in her tasteful written words, finding the right tempo from the outset. Where other erotic novels can often feel clunky as the author works through the first few chapters to find their voice, she has no such difficulty, and has done her research in pinning the dainty details lacking in so many tales of submission that flood today's erotica markets. Descriptions of food, locales and sophisticated society read similar to the swanky prose found in Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels.

While the tale of a rich man granting the wishes, both sexually and financially, of a proper young beauty is a familiar story-telling device, partly thanks to EL James and others, Napoli brings a modern sense of education and intellectualism to her words – akin to Anais Nin penning pop lit – and gives Oh Claire! A well deserved exclamation mark.

The acidic move to historic Prescott, Ariz.

My new little place in Prescott, Ariz.

Damn is this hard.

For some, moving is a pristine act, full of cleansing and rebirth. For others it's all about covering your eyes and leaping blindly into the unknown - then feeling like you've been tugged and spun like a shoe in a washing machine.

A lot has to do with the amount of money you have when you're reborn. On the cheap end, moving can cost around $2,000. That's with having friends help you pack and box and schlep it all from one place to the other. The money is in the deposit and the first month's rent, the deposit for electricity and gas and other necessesities.  Not to mention the cost of gas in the car, getting food in the fridge and whatever the hell else.

Those like me, the ones who perch over their bank account like a hawk watching over a kill, feel a sense of dread in all that cash paid out just to have a new roof over your head. When cable and Internet asked for $350 to get basic TV channels and wifi, I just laughed and quietly hung up the phone. Poor folk do prepaid everything, prepaid cells, prepaid Internet, and do nothing that requires potential bad credit.

Then you get into the new place with a stomach full of acid, thanks to fear over the money you paid (or from the money you now owe), not to mention the new job that moved your ass there in the first place - it's usually a dream of better employment that makes one move.

And you can't sleep. New noises. Neighbors sharing a common wall and thumping around all night, old appliances that knock and jitter like angry robots, and odd smells from unfamiliar surroundings just serve to make that acid boil more.

There's nothing like being reborn into a maelstrom of sleep deprivation and dollar-sign debt. There's nothing like acting perky at a new job when you feel like a 40-year-old tree stump who wants nothing more than to hibernate until money is no longer a relevant member of American popularity.

But Prescott, Arizona, is far better than many towns in the state. History abounds here. Food choices abound. There are book stores like the Peregrine Book Company and there are famed authors in the 'hood like Alan Dean Foster. So I cleanse myself with those thoughts, waiting for the acid of my rebirth to evaporate in a month or two, so I can get a full night of fucking rest.

And my little place is cool.

'Chopping the head off the narcissistic monster' or 'Deleting FB'

This so describes how I feel.

All monster addictions fear the sharp ax.

And the monster of narcissistic behavior is not immune. I've taken the ax (albeit a virtual one) to my Facebook account this week after stewing over it like a child picking a toy at Target. It took far longer than it should have and in the end I realized I wanted to do it the whole time.

I felt jealousy on FB. I felt annoyance on FB. I felt neglected on FB. I felt picked on. I felt nothing. I felt stupid.

Rarely did I feel connected to friends. But I looked every day, multiple times a day, for a nugget of joy to savor like a hard-won speck of chocolate. I posted and posted and posted some more. And I would get a “like,” sometimes two, sometimes ten, to reward my inner narcissism. And it tasted so fucking good. 

Egos breed on FB, they propagate to a horrifying degree. No longer can sturdy connections be made there, only posters who want others to adore them. They take no time to build a social world. 

Like an elementary school playground, it's about “look at me. Please look at me."

Recently I met a writer who worked for Marvel Comics. Michael Gallagher penned the comic book (and soon-to-be a motion picture) Guardians of the Galaxy in the 90s. As we talked, in person, in the real world, I began to realize he rarely met anyone interested in his stories, in why he took the characters in the direction he did, or why Marvel Comics operated the way they did compared to how they do now. 

We began to talk about creativity and the disconnect many display toward anything educational, anything inspiring in the least - good or bad - that malaise will come, but only after scrolling through the latest kitten memes. 

Gallagher spoke of meeting the Hildebrandt brothers, once famous for their illustrations for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels and what a treasure that encounter was for him. No one came to see them besides him. No one remembered who they are, or no one cared. I spoke of meeting Dune authors Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert in Flagstaff. No one came to see them. No one gave a damn.

After meeting with Gallagher I posted images of the comics he signed for me on FB. Two clicked like. Nothing more. I realized then why no one cared. Today's world is for the narcissist. It's not about meeting someone who generally interests you. It's not about learning from them. It's about “look at me. Please look at me.”

And that is an addiction stronger than heroine. It takes an ax to chop that shit down. It takes a frantic moment, with a sweaty brow and an ass fattened from sitting in front of a computer, to stand up and hack it down.

Will anyone notice I am gone from there? Not for some time I imagine. Some will, but others will only begin to wonder why their “likes” have dropped off. When they stop posting their own egos and sharing someone's out-of-context quotes because “this so describes how I feel today,” then they will rise from their fugue long enough to notice. They'll mentally shrug, clicking the cranial “dislike,” then look for a new meme in line with their other first-world issues.

And my addiction will be forgotten.

Now for a cigarette and some bourbon.

Trickle down shoes

Foot garb is directly related to mental stability.

What a person has on their feet is, without question, very important.

While at work a person has to wear foot-garb matching whatever workload their employers trickle down for them to stress over. There's garb for thrilling careers where you stand all day, garb for thrilling meetings where you get fat all day and garb for thrilling bits of both, which is the kind of job where your legs hurt because you're still getting fat and having to hold it up once in a while. 

Black shoes, slip-on style, are my choice shoes for employment, but they don't work well when you have to walk down a trail to see a dead body - before writing a story about it on deadline back in the air conditioned office while gaining back the few pounds that evaporated on the hot corpse trail.

While at home, there are slippers to soothe the soul of the foot and make them forget all the constriction and pompousness of the office garb. There are socks, like a soft layer of feather-light warmth, and bare feet – all of which, smell notwithstanding, sing.

Foot garb equates directly to a person's trigger-happy mental state.

Soon I will be wearing green plaid slippers, drooling with interior wool, for much of the day. My black slip-on shoes with the hard plastic heels will be spit-cleaned and hidden from view, inserted carefully into a black area beneath my bed, where the light of day will not see them for some time. Those damn shoes deserve their prison. And my green plaid slippers deserve my feet.

Wool can tickle and soothe, heat and pamper any old foot. Nasty, yellowed nails, pretty enough to nibble, the interior of a slipper doesn't give a shit about appearances. It worries more about making everything alright. Where zippered vinyl is the Aries, wool is the Aquarius of zodiac foot apparel. With slippers on, everything be damned.

But the light of day continues to seek voids of blackness. As the sun moves across the contrailed sky, that light creeps silently toward those black slip-on office shoes. 

There's no way to avoid the trickle of money forever, they whisper.