Epilogue to my Next unwritten Novel!

Portrait of a Writer as a Writer by A. Riter (from Data Rot & Other Absurdities by A.D. Ram)

Must break through same old, same old blocks I broke through all those times before and again and before. Trouble is, they uncrumble, regravel, restack lickity split soon as I’m gone. I fear they may, with enough rest, rejuvinate, re-enforce. Seems that way every time I try again and then again the next time and the time after and so on until I quit pretending I’m a writer, even a pretend writer. The next time yet recedes further and further, though, ‘til I’m actually acting on nothing more than the maintenance of hopes. Daydreams. Bullshit. Pretentions. All I got. I’m out.

I’m in. Tonight I’m relaxing to Songs in the Key of Life. Appropriately so, recalling that I’ve never finished anything I’ve ever started, let alone all those things I’ve striven to set out to start at some point when I get the time or energy or can just get my head straight, ya know, I’ve never listened to this album all the way to the end. At some point my mind just wanders and I lose interest in what had been maybe ten minutes prior THE Great-est Album I have ever heard! The White Album I can handles, Sign ‘o’ The Times, London Calling and every other double album I’ve ever heard plus Sandanista, alldebuv I can sit through in one sitting, but Songs in the Key of Life frustrates, fights back. Or I fight myself (dispassionate). I lose track of myself, maybe, and if so I find it not so great an experience just to get to If It’s Magic. Being lost that is, in a mundane-sitting-at-my-computer-desk kind of way.

I fight myself. Continuously (Continually?). It’s the only form of combat I’ve fought. I wish I had something better to fight, perhaps…someone, something to fight for? I used to have ideals but as haggard a 24 year old as I am, you can understand why I’ve set that part of my life aside. To be unironic for a moment, I’m too old for myself, for my age. I can honestly say that the best years of my life are behind me. The path I’ve set for myself here on in….hardly a path at all (I’m gesturing here, sort of a slow motion snap of the finger, arm extending, with a face that’s very knowing and scrunched). Not even a slide or a swing or a trucker’s route with its routines and unionized benefits. I’ve no aim for myself and it shows. Eh, then again I’ve gotten myself this far without any milestone in mind. I’ve wandered into a comfortable bit of property, what say you?

Anyway, short stories. Novels didn’t work out because I had too many ill-fitting ideas and too little patience to bend and mend them into cohesive shapes. Too little time, too, considering how little free-time I had when I had a job. Thankfully, that part of my life is behind me for the non.

And…short stories. Contusion is playing right now, so my typestrokes are syncopated. Wonder if that’s decipherable from reading. Like, does my personal sense of rhythm affect my writing, or does my writing communicate a personal sense of rhythm? Could a future specialist in arcane literary analysis develop a method for deducing (inducing?) a writer’s soundtrack? Hypothetically. It’s a good question. Really. Oh well, enough of that. Sir Duke!

Because it’s not deduction, it’s induction.
I have a groove, but am I truly in the groove? Let’s see:

Story #1 11/3/09 16:10 Horizon Fallen (I just like this title.)

I’ve known Jerry B. for a few years now. We used to work together at Knott’s Berry Farm that summer I couldn’t find a better job and he didn’t know what else to do with his free time. I ended up staying stuck there long after he returned to school but we stayed good friends. Not great friends but it was clear he wasn’t capable of making a great friend. Too lost in his own thoughts. Too guarded. A bit stressed beyond what’s healthy, or at least that’s how I saw him. He was never happy there, but as I learned over the next few years he was never any happier anywhere else. So when I brought my new dog along with me for a coffee shop visit I wasn’t surprised by his active disinterest. I was surprised by the story he ended up telling me.
Understand, he didn’t straight-out hand me this story at the sight of Chuckles (pertinent info: that’s the dog). No, we spent a good ten minutes and a couple of Mochas (a good 12 bucks) talking aimlessly and jaggedly, properly casually about the usual: Work, sports, music. The usual, the boring, the same-ol’. It wasn’t until a proper segue had been reached that Jerry B. broached the subject of dogs. I think I’d said something about the way Chuckles barks at most strangers, to which Jerry replied:
It’s not rough on the throat at all, you know. I was a dog once.
Me: ?
Him: For almost a year. Not quite a year. Still had my summer to look forward to. I was amazed I got to be a human again, but after being a dog everything is pretty amazing. (Pause) (Sip of Mocha) Makes you appreciate everything, and I mean everything. Not that I’d recommend it as some kind of soul journey or boot camp for your, um, appreciation of everything. Point is, it was a mistake that I would gladly repeat. In theory at least. Hrm. (Pause in which he should have noted my apoplexy and fully unhinged jaw yet didn’t) No, everything about it was painful actually, but appreciating what you’ve got is a good thing. Shouldn’t just be reserved to a moral for children’s bedtime stories. It always strikes me as innappropriate to dismiss those platitudes, even if we always ignore them.
Me: Uh-huh, so…You took a year off from school, decided to see the sights as a dog. Do I got that right?
Him: Heh, no. Um. It so turned out that yes, I missed a year of school and nothing more. But it wasn’t planned that way of course.
Me: (laught at finally getting the joke. Tell myself I need more sleep, damn dog keeps barking me up)
Him: (totally not joking)

It proved surprisingly difficult to drag the full story out of him, as if I was asking him about his first trip to kindergarten my god who would care about that but let’s see if I can remember anything noteworthy if you’re reading still – but here’s what I finally learned:

Jerry B. was a lonely boy.

It’s tomorrow night now, and…sorry, this is me, the author. It’s tomorrow night and I haven’t been writing (you knew?) but I wanted to jot down a couple of story ideas:

A Supervillian (in the most graphic and novel sense of the term) travels back to the misty, murky era when aquatic creatures were developing amphibian abilities, so that he can proceed to stomp out any fish he sees dare to crawl. But instead he sees God kicking back with Jesus and Adam. I….have no idea what to do with this.

A boy discovers that beyond death lies…a gameshow. I think this belongs with my suicide stories.

Suicide Stories? Oh, haven’t I told you. I want to develop a short story collection based around the motif of suicide. That’s it. No overarching themes, just a collection of tales about people offing themselves or attempting such. My latest grand idea involves devoting a subsection of my first book to Suicide Stories. The table of contents will list a series of stories and novellas and then *bam* an indented subsection labes Suicide Stories before reverting back to normal indentation and normal format. It’s my greatest idea yet!

Jerry B. was a bony child, gaunt of limb and loose of mouth. He was an annoyance, pestering everyone with his very self. Loathsome for a little kid. I’m sorry, that’s cruel. I think he’s a swell dude, but that’s how Jerry B. described himself. Loathsome. It’s his story, he can be loathsome. Anyway, his next-door neighbor in grade school was a raven haired beauty (not cutie, but a beauty well beyond her age. I…would rather not have written that. As always, blame Jerry.) named Astoria. They were friends from time to time, but by the time they reached 9th grade they were barely on a first name basis. It goes without saying that he loved her. He dreamed of her. He thought only of her and so forth. He wrote poetry. Horrible poetry, some of which he gave to me. He wants me to include some of this “poetry”. I shan’t.
Jerry B. met Satan. It happens. This was in college, his second year. He asked Satan a favor. He asked to be near Astoria. He asked to be part of her life again. Satan granted Jerry’s wish.
Jerry described in vivid detail the passageways he passed on his way to re-birth, but I’ll pretend he awoke as a puppy, pre-born. Her doggy had puppies, he was a puppy. This was his life for the better part of a year. That’s kind of the end of that story.

The worst moment is when someone laughs at your style or grooming decisions thinking you were joking, but you weren’t. Anyway…

Oh delightful. I’ve been wiling away my time with this browser game where you have to design plain spheres with a restrictive set of tools to duplicate certain patterns. I just beat the game and I’m treated to the image of a man’s balls. De-lightful. Listening to Sly Stone now, by the way. Deepest of funk. Okay, that thing about the balls wasn’t true. But could you imagine! You win!! A Winner is you!! Cue wav. fanfare and some dancing sprite and Gdamn – virtual face full of balls. It’d be the screamer for a new generation.

So the reporter lady, nose ever so hard, cute little head skeptical of any story here, none her aforementioned ever so experienced nose can sniff out, she’s waiting in the the scientiests cold laboratory. That’s pronounced la-BOR-a-tory. That’s how he pronounces it when he bids her welcome. She knows him, knows his type, wonder what madness reigns in his brilliant mind but she’s mostly just bored and wishes she had brought a dime to buy a soda pop at the nearest pharmacy because Lord knows she needed some caffeine. Some coke too, but she’s taking a break from that for reasons that are irrelevant to this story. So…and this is all in black and white of course…. he tells her that, and he puts out all the stops with his announcement, totally milking the stereotype he’s long adopted for theatrical purposes, he tells her that He’s Discovered an alien invasion. He rises on his tippytoes and leans over her as he begins but falls back to earth as his voice falls to a whisper. Aliens are among us, he continues, they’ve been here for years it would seem. He’s suspected, of course, who hasn’t, but now the evidence is indisputable. She’s got a story! Awesome. He directs her to a table a with practiced motion pulls free a white sheet draped over an almost empty aquarium. Sorry for the dramatic approach, I’m as much a showman as a scientist and I realize that a layman would never feel the same level of ebulliance when confronted with pure science that I do so I put on a show but the point is those are they. Those right there, he repeats, ignoring her frustrated glare and pointing at the potato bugs as if she hadn’t yet noticed that they were there instead of, oh, I dunno, a flippery gilled televised-autopsy waiting to happen which would actually draw in readers. Potato bugs. They’re ugly, she admits to him. That they are, he agrees, and also extraterrestrial. Clearly who can’t percieve the implications and the possibilities. No, no I can’t but I’ll get your story in the paper. You…you gonna maybe try to get this published in a scientific journal, get it peer-reviewed …maybe? No, heavens no, this is too important.
Twelve miles away Superman flies freely. This is truly the best of all worlds.

I’d like to be an expert on narrative theory. That’s something I’m working on. My main contribution to discourse will be the pronouncement that any subject matter can be understood as a narrative. I’ll illustrate this with the locked room puzzle, a genre of free and simple games you can play on your browser. Great art, but more importantly great narrative can be read in these games. I’ll just be expanding on Derrida. That’d be cool. I’ll keep you updated with progress and such.

I’m going to post all of this on horsefuckers.com. That’s going to be my site. I’ll keep you updated on that too.

You are in a locked room. Oh, wait.

So the idea is dogs and cats are humans who wished poorly. Oh wait. One more time.

Jerry B. tells me that all dogs and cats are humans who wished poorly. I kind of believe him. I had a dog once who would always tried to kiss me on the lips, as far as that’s possible with a dog. How could a dog learn that kind of behavior? On the other hand, I think Jerry B. is kind of crazy. But why would he lie? These are important questions I will never submit to Jerry B. I’ll tell you this much. He still internet stalks this poor girl. Whether he was her puppy or not, I don’t care how close they were, that’s wrong, or in the very least problematic. Don’t tell Jerry B. I said that, though.

Now….You are in a locked room. You don’t know how you got here. You don’t even remember your name, not that you notice. You don’t know how long you’ve been unconscious. You don’t know why this seems so familiar. The walls are blue, the furniture is green, it’s all so plain, but everything about it, on closer examination, is insane.


From DATA Rot:

I can’t recall. I used to…have a better grasp. Sometimes, when it occurs to me to care, I wonder about my mom and dad. And didn’t I have a sister. I used to have plans.

One of these days I’m going to upload this all onto my xanga so you can read this. I haven’t updated that thing in something close to a year. Shoot. That’s depressing. Not that it matters to anyone but myself, but I wasn’t hoping to use that as a writing journal. At least a post a day, just so I would be writing something, anything. That never did happen.

Before I signed up for a xanga account I was on myspace. For whatever reason I managed to eke out a post a week or so. I had more drama in my life back then, I guess. Yeah, yeah I did.

People, gimme something to care about again. That’s what Data Rot is all about. I can’t give a damn anymore and I don’t know who to blame more, you or me. All I know is I’ve found peace in the shallowest of existences. That’s my rot. Aye, the very rub. All I crave is what I’ve ever craved, data and escapism. But I used to have other desires as well, didn’t I? I can barely remember what that was like, but I can feel the lack, even though I never felt the departure. Data Rot is about me, wandering without home or nurture in a lonesome crowded world with only my comics and computer games to keep me sane. If sane is what you would call it. Data Rot is the keystone of the collection. It’s the springboard for the themes of the collection, about humanity or what we pretend it to be - if I may get pretentious for just a moment, give me that moment - What we wish it to be. Maybe, what it once was. Something I’ve never known. Something that maybe never existed. We always make these assumptions about the past and the psychology of its denizens but we have no yardstick. Maybe humanity’s always been adrift, each island butting against each other with nary a sense of belonging. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I need more sleep.

This may or may not be important but I’ve gone without sleep for 47 hours. If hallucinations are in my near future, know that I’m prepared. I’ve gone longer without sleep and I plan to challenge myself to go longer still in the future. It’s one of my things. First got into the habit when I was a young teen listening to Loveline, Rodney on the Roq and the live performances showcase that followed on KROQ until Kevin & Bean unceremoniously shunted off the yesterday. I rarely made it all the way through, but every Sunday night I tried.

Let me get off track for a second before I forget: the author of Lord of the Flies tried to rape a girl once, then justified himself by pointing out as politely and English as possible that she was, and I quote (thus the quotes) “sexy as an ape”. Let that settle in.

In the future mad villians will be able to manipulate personality, electronically or surgically or perhaps chemically, but with a dire precision. Phineas Gage as instruction manual, his condition the rosetta stone for dissecting (literally) the neuronal substrata of the human condition. And, as far as the good guys can tell, this kind of mental deconstruction is irreversible. Fuck, I depressed myself. Have Ridley Scott film that. I’ll star.

Sly Stone’s “Just Like a Baby” is giving me shivers. Honest to God shivers. I don’t know where my head is at anymore.

Sorry, got distracted. It’s a few days from then. Dog’s wearing a hooker’s feaux leather jacket. I question the moral fibre of this household.

Listening: Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all back home. I wonder, should I ever upload this, should I make use of those “Y is listening to X. Y is in a Z mood” option or just upload this verbatim. Not that I’m going to upload this, mind you. No need to get your hopes up.

Should I upload this? I get the feeling I’m beyond that now, gone too far, a helium balloon floating too deep into the stratosphere to be tied to a bike handle. I’ll have other balloons, or be other balloons. This metaphor…it could use some work. Better call a writer.

Drawing conclusions on the wall. No success like failure. What was I doing again? Guys, I’m losing focus.

I did get some sleep, but that’s not helping, not helping at all. It made the feeling I’m feeling worse, like my anxieties and the whatever it is kind of nerve excitation that gives me these palpitations got plenty of rest, while I just laid myself out the passive victim. Like I fed the fire and I’m down to embers.

Ignore me, if you haven’t been doing that all along. Where should I continue at? I’ve got a more than a few tabs open, now don’t I? Jerry B. and his nonsense. The overview of the overexted plot of Data Rot, the novel of my dreams. The Invasion of the Potato Bugs. There is that other big story, besides Data Rot itself, that should take up a bulk of my writings – the Knott’s story. I’m just so unsure of how to frame that story, and I get antsy when I start writing about Knott’s outside the context of that frame. I’ve got one chance at this, I need to get it right.

I wonder, after all these deliberations and hesitations, would I be best off just starting and never stopping, no self editing mid sentence, no going back a few pages to make some new observations, deletions, or wholesale revisions. Start on page one, stop on page last, then worry about making the damn thing readable. I wonder if that wouldn’t be the best tact I could take given my unwillingness to finish what I start. If I don’t ever stop I won’t ever be able to forget to restart. Kerouac did it. On speed, but still.

Maybe….yes. I’ll start at the beginning.
It was a cold and lonely october morning when….(turn to page 1)





Ha Ha, no. Did we confuse ourselves with The Outsiders there? Just for a second. Where were we then. Oh, hello the royal We. Where did we come from then? Well..I dunno…ohwhy not. Where were we then. Oh yes, I have no idea. (Taps fingers, hums Mr. Tambourine Man, wishes this whole thing was finished and published already).

Shit, I just realized what’s going to happen. I’m going to totally finish this thing, I mean finish the hell out of this novel length collection of thematically connected stories and then BAM! Gonna get shot dead. I picture myself walking down the cartoonishly proportioned street with a big stack of pages in hand and then some black-clad assailant just shoots me dead right there, leaving me only time enough for me to gulp and quietly curse God one last time. It’s pretty much fated to happen.

Now I’m listening to Sweetheart of the Radio. No, no I’m not in a country mood after my very frightful premonition. I wrote that, like, 3 hours ago. I’ve gone and left you all behind with my time travails once again. Point being: I love Gram Parsons as much as once could love a desert corpse.

Shit, I meant “we”. All of that is “we” verb objects. Tell me if I forget again.