A Thousand Pardons, I Was Most Revolting

I thought I would try something different today, in that I would write a completely frivolous post. I haven't done it quite sometime, and frankly the thought scares me.

Oh sure, I can do a post in which I play the part of an idiot emptying out a particular part of my brain for the general amusement of others.

Or, I can have a conversation with myself and become incredibly funny while doing it.

Or, even better, I can lecture about a particular topic and get my comeuppance in the end.

Sure I can elaborate about comparing myself to a comic book character, explain the phrase don't get your panties in a bunch or even how to talk trash in a PG-13 environment (this last link contains extremely foul language, reader discretion is strongly advised).

Or, I can attempt to explain why I came up with the most ridiculous title ever seen for a blog post. Like the title of this post, which I pulled from a cartoon I saw some twenty-five years ago or so. It was the most exciting part of the cartoon (which was about manners).

Or, I could give a review of the world's worst movie from the 1930's. This movie was so bad, that the only memorable line from the entire movie is a Mexican saying, "No, no senor. It is too dangerous!" I mean, this movie makes any bomb in the last twenty years look like Oscar winning material. Matter of fact, this will make a good stand alone post. Stay tuned for further details.

Or, I could write in cliches. That'll go over well, I betcha.

Or, I can give a demonstration on how I really deal with stupid people. How many of you out there in radio and t.v. land would love to see the real me in action? Even better, I can add a third part to the trinity of why certain people should never be left loose on a computer or let them come into contact with a telephone or cell phone.

Shoot, I could go on all day, inflicting random thoughts of nothingness on my good readers.

Instead, I'll just simply say (think Bob & Doug McKenzie), "Good day." and leave you with this tiny infinitesimal thought.

Contrary to public opinion, if you stick a piece of paper and a pen in front of someone, chances are that they'll not come up with something bright, but in fact, make Zero from Beetle Bailey look like a super genius.

When Girls Drink Too Much

1} We have absolutely no idea where our purse is.

2} We believe that dancing with our arms overhead and wiggling our butt while yelling, "WOO-HOO!!!" is truly the sexiest dance move around.

3} We've suddenly decided that we want to kick someones butt and honestly believe that we could do it too.

4} In our last trip to pee, we realize that we now look more like a homeless hooker than the goddess we were just four hours ago.

5} We start crying and telling everyone we see that we love them sooooooo much.

6} We get extremely excited and jump up and down every time a new song plays because, "OH MY GOD! I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!"

7} We've suddenly taken up smoking and become really good at it.

8} We've found a deeper/spiritual side to the geek sitting next to us.

9} We yell at the bartender, who we believe cheated us by giving us just lemonade, but that's just because we can no longer taste the vodka.

10} We think we are in bed, but our pillow feels strangely like the kitchen floor (or the mop?).

11} We fail to notice that the toilet lid's down when sit on it.

12} We take our shoes off because we believe it's their fault that we're having problems walking straight.

Me So Horny, Me Love You Long Time* (1)

*Full Metal Jacket or 2 Live Crew, your choice.

Now that I have your attention, please read the following announcement:

Please keep an open mind as you read this three part post. G the writer, is a separate entity from G the blogger, and thus sees the world in a radically different light. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Its now been about eight months since I decided to concentrate on a particular genre/theme, and for the most part it's been a positive experience. I'm learning through trial and error on when to lay it on and when to back off.

For those of you who may have entered this blog somewhat late in the game and thus have no idea what I'm talking about, the topic of choice is sex. I've been adding, to varying degrees, themes of sex and sensuality to my stories. For what it's worth, this is what I feel most comfortable in writing about and using in my stories.

I frequently poke fun and make jokes about myself quite a bit on this blog. But if you read between the lines, so to speak, you'll see quite a few small kernels of truth wedged within those self-deprecating posts of mine. Take the last post I wrote making fun of myself called, "I is Motivated". Near the end of the post, I have the stoner dude asking me why I always use sex as a weapon in my stories.

This, believe it or not, is an actual question that has been posed to me on and off for the past year, and until now, I haven't been able to come up with a decent and acceptable answer to it.

So I'm going to try with this three part series of posts, to give an honest answer to that question and hopefully not turn anyone off in the process.

My first attempts at writing were for the most part, abysmal failures. They were somewhat juvenile in nature, as I tried to find my way around the written word. Sure, I was a pretty funny guy, making up parodies to some well known songs or doing verbal spoofs of t.v. commercials, but I had problems translating that humor to the paper. Due to the nature of my childhood and teenage years, my humor became, and has permeated to this day, incredibly sharp and sarcastic. So I learned early on, not to inflict that kind of stuff on paper.

About a decade later, when circumstances got my creative juices flowing, I found that writing about sex and violence (though not necessarily sexual violence) were the easiest themes for me to write about. Since I didn't want to explore themes of violence with any kind of heaviness then (2005-08), I concentrated my talents on writing about sex.

After writing my first book Shades of Love, which explored the twin themes of sex and violence in a clunky way, and thus made a good story average (in hindsight, I should have done a better job of editing), I decided that with my next book (Betrayed!) that I should really take the time to learn how to meld graphic sex and a good story into something that wouldn't turn people off and make them think that I was writing pornography.

But how, you may ask?

Simple really--and I'll explain how in my next post

Holiday In The Sun

Continuing our countdown to a new beginning on Flashing Georgie's Shorts, the next story on deck was the direct result of a combination of getting an idea from an inanimate object, having a crappy day at work, and running amok with said story idea.

The inspiration to this story, was from a tee shirt I was wearing one particular summer day. It said simply World's Greatest Dad and had a picture of a guy all decked out in BBQ'ing gear. On this particular summer day, I was having a somewhat crappy day at work. And as I'm want to do from time to time, I started getting rid of my somewhat crappy day by writing a short story.

Somehow, that combination of having a crappy day and the tee-shirt that I was wearing, became the ultimate fix for the junkie writer in me. I took those three beginning paragraphs that I wrote at work, and by the time the weekend was finished, I had the entire three page story written (including going to Wikipedia and doing fifteen minutes worth of research for a particular character). And I think this is probably as close as I'm going to get to writing in this particular genre for the foreseeable future.

So as per custom, there are no teasers, just the customary link.

Click here for the full story

To Each Their Own

A few days ago (October 29th to be exact), I was doing my usual morning routine of catching up on my blog reading (down to 62 blogs and one e-zine) when I came across a fascinating post by Globalwrite on her blog called Rule of Three about self doubt. It was mostly about managing self doubt and not letting it ruin your writing and/or running your life.

I left a thoughtful comment, part of which said "That if my self doubt says my writing isn't good enough, I think about my blog and the visitors that I receive. Surely someone thinks my writing is good because they come back time and again to read what I post. I also think about that one story that impressed a publisher enough to take a chance on. No matter what, I still write. Either on the computer or by hand, as long as I'm putting words to paper/screen, there isn't nothing that can stop me."

Later that day, I ran into one of my favorite authors at work, who happened to be there that day as a vendor, selling her book along with arts & crafts with her friend. I asked her if she got my check and my book (which I sent along as a courtesy) and if she got a chance to read it. She said yes, and yes, she did get a chance to read it. She also gave me her opinion on it, of which she said that it really didn't appeal to her, which was as diplomatic as one can get when you're trying not to say something completely negative about a book but wanting to stay neutral about something that isn't your particular cup of tea.

I was about to thank her for it, when her friend pulled me over and gave me her unvarnished opinion of it. One of the sure fire ways of knowing that you're about to get hammered over something you wrote, is when an opinion starts off with "I'm no prude but...."

Well my friends, I got hammered by this person (who I do actually like), who told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of the book. After she got done offering her opinion about it, I said that I was sorry that you didn't like it. I also said a few other polite things about her opinion, then thanked her for it, and went to work. I also spent the day basically not hanging out there, like I usually do when this vendor comes by for a visit, simply because I'm such a hothead about criticism that I do have a tendency to shoot my mouth off.

I do want to say that the criticism from this person, is much different than the criticism from the jerk in the chat room. The criticism that she gave was sincere and heartfelt (not to mention that it hurt like hell), while the criticism from the jerk in the chat room is simply petty, has nothing to do with the first book anymore, and had become downright personal for the past month or so.

Here, self doubt immediately came into play as I spent the rest of the morning thinking about what she said about the book. I also spent part of the afternoon thinking about what she said and to a lesser degree, about my chosen genre. Now I will say that what she said did bother me to the point that I had to modify my plans for the afternoon. I'd planned on spending the afternoon at the library working on my other W.i.P (of which you'd read this excerpt of about three weeks ago), but after I got everything all set up, I proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes staring at a partially blank piece of paper trying to decided what I was going to write.

Frustrated over my lack of output, which was a direct result of what I heard this morning about my book (which I did warn the author that I toned down the sex and violence from the first book, so it wasn't like she was going to read it cold), I wound up making a trek to the mountain, where I was finally able to get a grip on my self doubt, and wrote a couple of pages of text.

Lesson learned was this: while I may be plagued with self doubt about my writing from time to time, letting it bother me to the point of paralysis is ultimately in the end, self destructive.

Shooting Suburbia: September '09

Yowza.

This past September, I decided to start taking random photos during my weekly walks around town. My original intention was to create a fourth blog in which to showcase my attempts at semi-good photography.

Instead, I decided to explore the Picasa Website to see what I could do with my pictures. I've seen other people use it with a certain degree of success, so I figure I would give it a try.

This is the first in what I hope to be semi-monthly series called, appropriately enough, "Shooting Suburbia."

For best results though, do the slide show presentation with about six to ten second delay.