humorevolution

Hayward's Not Quite Dead Yet

No, I wasn't kidnapped by maurading time share salesmen and held captive in some dreary Holiday Inn conference room until I bought into a condo. I've been busy writing and attending Book Expo America in Manhattan. I've written several posts, but not posted them, so I'll backdate them soon.

One of the more interesting highlights of BEA was to meet Kim Peek, who is the original Rainman, after whom Dustin Hoffman's character from the movie of the same name was written. Kim is a savant, and can tell anyone, without hesitation, both the day of the week they are born and the day they will reach retirement age or reached retirement age. I told him my birthday, and he immediately replied "Wednesday" (true) and then gave a date for my retirement (ha, ha, if I'm lucky! I actually have no plans to ever "retire" as such).

When he saw from my press badge that I was from Monterey, he said, "When I think of Monterey, I think of this..." He then grabbed my head between his palms and began to firmly but gently shake it from side to side while chanting "MRI..MRI...MRI..." Now, if you don't know, Kim is brilliant in that he retains almost all information he reads, and can process mathematic problems like a computer, however, he is developmentally disabled, and lacks many social skills. I've worked with developmentally disabled folks, and this doesn't bother me, but the people accompanying him became a bit alarmed and began to pry his hands from my head. I was laughing, thinking to myself, "Wow, the Rainman's shaking my head and chanting MRI! Wonder what MRI means?"

Turns out, after Kim let go of my head and I had a chat with his wonderful father, Fran, that Kim had been flown to Monterey for a twelve hour MRI scan. Naturally, so much magnetic resonance left a rather unpleasant memory for him.

I had met a savant once before, while working in a convalescent hospital about 25 years ago. I had just gotten pregnant, and let my coworkers know. One of my jobs was to pass out cigarettes and cigars to patients twice a day (yes, indeed, things have changed). A man called Donald, with thick glasses and a perpetually soggy cigar that refused to stay lit with all the drool, walked up and muttered, "I hear you're going to have a baby?" I said yes, and he asked "When's the baby due?" I gave him the date, and without hesitating he said "That's 7 months, 25 days, 13 hours and 22 minutes from now." It was such an extraordinary thing for Donald to say, so I had him repeat it, and I noted these numbers on my cigarette checklist, as well as the time (Donald hadn't looked at a clock or watch when he said this). Later, upon checking, I found Donald's calculation was spot on. Up until then, nobody had known he was a savant. And even though I thought someone should have taken notice, mostly those in charge of his care, didn't care. To them, he was just a slobbering old man whose mutterings and piles of illegible scribbles (he liked to write) were of no consequence. And subsequently, they weren't.

It has made me wonder how many unknown savants are locked away in facilities.

Meanwhile, an article titled Our Bodies, Our Cells just got published on the WIP, and I'm working on another article about women gamers.

Writerly Me

Guerrilla Girls: Protesting the Art World With a Primate Punch, Part II is up today. Part I was yesterday.

I have a bit of post-publishing depression, and the only thing to cure it is to write something else. Plenty of  writing work on my plate, really, but now, I must prepare for the first ever Las Lomas Literary Ladies Linner, which I organized to bring together the females involved in the communication arts. Today's rain is supposed to move along to Los Angeles, and with any luck, after our luscious linner the Lit Ladies shall frolic in the lush hills of Las Lomas (insert slo-mo film of a gaggle of gals in diaphanous dress bounding lightly through flower-speckled meadows).

Luddite Tech

Down the road a piece, some nitwits were taking out a tree today and took out four power poles instead...and our electricity too. I was just getting ready to send out my article for the WIP but hadn't quite got there. And stupid me, I forgot that I have a laptop and can use it with or without power, as long as I have battery. Why did I forget? Because I broke the screen on this Mac 2 weeks after getting it, and when I found Apple wanted nearly the full cost of a new computer to replace the screen, I gave them the bird and bought a nice 17 inch external for one third the price, which I used for a year and a half before finally finding another reputable shop who would replace the screen at a reasonable cost just two months ago. And, in the interim  I essentially didn't have a laptop and so forgot it was one. I had used it as a desktop for so long, it just slipped my mind, until my husband reminded me. See, I can be a nitwit too, even with all those fancy-schmancy words I use.

So, tonight, no television, which is nice, in a way. Battery power is at 62 percent, candles are lit, frogs are croaking, husband and cat sleeping and I am reading the real estate blogs, where the Great Decline is just started. But don't get me started on Real Estate, I'll be up all night.

Either Thursday or Friday the WIP will be publishing my piece on the Guerrilla Girls.

Farewell to a Favorite Hoosier

I dedicate this post to Kurt Vonnegut, who, in my teens, inspired me to be as nutty and authentic as I could muster. Like my father, he was an Indiana Hoosier, with the gift of plain speech slurried with a heavy portion of irony and tongue in cheek. I shall not blather at length in a syrupy, cloying fashion about how sad it is his passing. For him, as with most of us, passing is a happy thing. Don't ask me how I am sure of this unless you are prepared for the woo-woo story. Let me just leave you with some KV quotes which pretty much sum up his unique essence of spirit.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

–––Thanks for sharing your wacky self with the rest of us, Mr. V. And thanks for absolving my guilt about my personal anathema for semicolons. Dashes do a far better job, with more panache.

Novel Opening

‘star.dust n (1927) : a feeling or impression of romance, magic, or ethereality
- Webster's 9th Collegiate Dictionary

                                                                              

        The small, failing, Oklahoma farm was founded on a mistake––one single, stupid, human oversight. Consequently, the all-knowing Cosmos was untroubled by the deep wall of storm cloud that soldiered up from the south to menace the semi-decrepit farmhouse and the wilting lovers within who'd once called it their happy home. Misery must be ended in the out-of-sync hammering of their two broken hearts.

                                                      * * *

    When he felt the spatter of rain, Bob Starr looked up and spotted the nub of a cyclone as it spun out from a thick ceiling of cloud. Soon, a long, serpentine limb dipped and reached for the earth and began to snake across the horizon, gyrating just like a carnival tent dancer he’d lusted after, way back in 1918. Undulating over his fields, her heels kicked up a wide skirt ruffle of dust and debris––some of it fencing, some of it shed roofs, but mostly, just a whole lot of peanuts.
    Scanning the rows of nutty legumes that shuddered small and pathetic in the wind, Bob threw down his hoe in disgust. These peanuts should have made him rich, a Peanut King, according to the newspaper advertisement that sparked his farming career. Instead, over the years, his lowly subjects enslaved their would-be monarch and kept him a pauper.
    “Hornswogglers!” Bob spat. The peanuts, defenseless against this charge, only trembled abjectly at his feet.      
    Bob spied a feeble peanut that, like himself, was losing its struggle to grow, and felt humiliated by the sight of it. This Tornado Dancer, on the other hand, had power, potency and vigor––everything these measly peanuts had stripped from him. Inspired by her tempestuous nature, Bob leapt on top of the hapless plant and danced a feisty flamenco, scattering green leafy bits into the dirt with tar-patched boots. "Kick hell out of them peanuts!” he cheered. For a moment there was a hint of joy and he felt almost alive.
    The Dancer seemed to spot Bob’s happy trampling and altered her course to join him. Watching her spin, dangerous and wild, Bob was reminded of those lazy-hipped, free-spirited gals from younger days that sauntered by to give a look that said pleasure was his for the picking. Snapping his fingers, he shouted Olé!––a  cry that was lost on the great wind. With one final fancy turn, he tripped, and went down for a faceful of dirt. He did not bother to get up.
    Lying across the crushed plants, Bob watched as the tornado came straight for him, his head running hot as he felt her desire to snag him up and pull him deep within her. Horrific and gorgeous, a towering birth passage in reverse, she could release him from this slow execution by backbreaking boredom that was his farmer’s life in Peanut, Oklahoma.
    An idea! He would put Destiny to the test. If he was truly meant for something bigger than peanuts, then the cyclone would spare him. But if his life’s only purpose was as a piddling cog in The Peanut Machine, then he’d rather be done with the whole damn thing right now.
    “Come on and get me!” Bob waved the Dancer in, his voice buried in the roar. “Ain’t much left no how.”
    The Dancer swirled to do his bidding as swarms of peanuts met their demise. Pulling himself to his feet, Bob shut his eyes and prepared to give himself up to the whims of Nature, and hoped his wife had paid the insurance man.

Romance, OK

Is what I'm working on now. A stand-alone story & novel chapter, about 7k words. Here's the 650 word opening.

                                                ROMANCE, OK.
                                           An American Fairytale

    Roy J. Parbo had wrestled no bulls, nor beat a man senseless in a bar brabble. No war hero, young Roy never served his country; his enlistment papers stamped 4-F because of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever that left him with a sensitive ticker. But Roy J. Parbo held the title of Toughest Man in Town, because for thirteen solid years he did what no other Oklahoman would do on a bet––he delivered the Romance mail.
    Romance, Oklahoma. Whoever named the tiny climate-cursed hamlet must’ve hoped a sentimental moniker would change the place, but no such luck, for Romance was the spot where bad weather took a holiday. Every freezing, butt-numbing gale that blew from the north and each sweltering, head-mopping, tropical storm that slogged up from the south, and all the hammering hailstorms and desiccating droughts and sleety ices and rains of toads and whirling dusty haboobs that passed nearby all made sure to visit Romance. Tornadoes held annual conventions there. Dregs of hurricanes, weary from long ocean crossings, settled over Romance to wring themselves dry as they churned up mudslides and drowned man and beast before blithely evaporating into the blue across the county line. Folks said the only weathery thing to escape Romance was a rainbow.
    The perpetual storms that beat hell out of Romance left it homely enough to curdle milk. Trees, gnarled and scraggly with ratty, splotched leaves struggled fruitlessly year to year. Roses, nary a petal to their name, bowed heavy with blooms of massive thorns and lurked sinister near crabgrass lawns. Blistered-skin buildings with scrap-tin scalps stood so unperpendicular to their foundations that handymen laughed and threw away their levels. Fences wavered like laundry on a line and rarely stood long enough to keep anything fenced. Signs were faded ghosts of advertisement that hung groaning and creaking from rusty chains. Streets, pockmarked like the moon with perfunctory asphalt patches, were a rough ride, even on the best suspension. Barnyard animals shuffled listless and dull, bespeckled with bald spots where mighty winds had carried off fur and feather. Dogs skulked with out-of-service tails, and cats purred with a malevolent growl. Even the Romance Baptist Church was not spared––its metal cross blown over so that it leaned forty-five degrees to the left of the roof peak, the icon of Christ now an ungodly X that hovered precariously above the congregation.
    The Romancers, understandably, did not live up to their name either. The weather bullied most into a scurrilous, curmudgeonly lot, and were generally considered unfit companions for any reasonable person. Their town was known as a haven for those dedicated to a life of misery and complaint. Well-meaning relatives from temperate states such as California and Maryland would sometimes invite their unfortunate Oklahoma kin to visit, hoping a sunny environment might sweeten-up their spirits and salty speech. But Romancers were nervous in these foreign worlds. Drop a Romancer into a pleasant seventy-two degree day surrounded by petaled roses, wag-tailed dogs and giggling children and a dark unease would soon creep in. A few days of chirping birdies and badminton and Romancers were overcome with a debilitating, speechless depression that replaced the usual piss and moan that kept them sprightly and alive. Begging off with feigned attacks of pernicious chilblains and such, they’d scuttle safely home. These charity vacations were a veritable flop on flat water.
    This cockeyed nature of Romance gave it a rare insulation not commonly found beyond places like the Gobi Desert or Finland. Capitalistic reasons aside, few folks outside Romance ever wanted in, and Romancers had little motivation to leave. This meant little trade in new genetic material for the town’s marriageable population and sparse pickins’ where physical affection was concerned. At milking and feeding time, cows kept a watchful eye and a tucked tail.

Stardust Soup to Nuts

Writing a 100,000 word novel is a lot of work. Writing a novel set in the 1940's means even more work, because, even when the location is fictional (mine is––there is not, nor has there ever been, to my knowledge, a Peanut, Oklahoma) there are plenty of things to research. I made of list of things I've researched, and I'm sure it's only partial, but it's so diverse I just had to share it.

Drive-in history, tornados, peanuts, curanderos, history of Oklahoma, black tank battalions in WWII, black eyes & broken noses, female German spies, WWII rationing, Jedburghs (3-man teams that parachuted into France to train the resistance), Jack Daniel's, yams, bootleggers, vintage cars, cemetaries of Austin, Texas, donkey carts, chamber pots, badgers, battle fatigue, constipation, letters from Adjutant General re: dead and MIA soldiers, Following from the 1940's: candy, soda pop, music, movies, fashion, appliances, Nazi methamphetamine use and addiction, sulphide marbles, Western Union Telegrams, WWII timelines and general info, Slinkys, charm bracelets and turn of the century nostrums.

Fubsy

I promised to explain the meaning of fubsy. Here it is.

fubsy \ adj [obs. E fubs (chubby person) ] (1780) : being chubby and somewhat squat.

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

I have used fubsy in the following sentence. About half of my readers have objected to this obscure yet descriptive word, but some change their mind. What's your vote?

"Wesley Peterson was the only Grover Springs resident to fully witness this vandalism. A fubsy thirteen-year-old with myopic brown eyes and mud-colored hair, Wes spotted the cyclone while walking home from his hideout on Wiggle Creek, where he played secret serenades for a herd of dairy cows."

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

And if I don’t stop eating buttered toast with marmalade and get out of this studio and move my behind it will be;

HAY GOING FAT from CHOW!

Which may be appropriate, seeing as it’s the Year of the Pig.

Chinese New Year, or, Asian Spring Festival is rife with superstition and activity. There are special foods to eat for good luck, prohibitions against swearing (d#$% it!) and saying the number that falls between 3 and 5 out loud, because this number, in Chinese, also sounds like the word for death.
Festivities go on for two weeks. It’s considered everybody’s birthday, but better to light 8 candles on the cake, since 8 is the number for money luck.

Cleaning everything is supposed to be done in advance (they often start one month prior) and new shoes, haircut and attitude are in order. I am woefully behind in my New Year’s cleaning, but I intend to get to that today, because I’ve got some old scripts to find and mine for material for the television show I’m developing for Floriani Productions. All auspices point to success.

And now, I’ll read to you a wish for your New Year from this ancient text sent to me by my centenarian pen-pal in Beijing.

May Cranes of Prosperity Bless You With Turds of Pure Gold

Or something like that. My Chinese is a little rusty.

Stardust Wins!

Well, bits of Stardust are now Award Winning, and it ain't even done yet–still doing minor polish and tucking in loose threads.

I submitted two pieces to the Monterey County Weekly (I've heard that Clint Eastwood reads this cover to cover) and Whaddya Know? Both pieces won! Will Work For Candy took First Place and $101 to boot. Without Just Clause took an Honorable Mention. Stories had to be no longer than 101 words, and both of mine are exactly 101 words. Count 'em!

For those who don't want to use the above hyperlinks, here they are:

Will Work For Candy

The aged and splintery wooden boardwalk in front of Gunny’s Mercantile was a minefield of rot and danger. After several ladies twisted their ankles falling through the decayed sections, Gunny paid a kid named Hector three chocolate bars to paint red circles around the cankerous boards to warn the unwary. Upon completion, Hector convinced Gunny he also needed a sign, and negotiated for another three candy bars to do the job. He finished his masterpiece just before doubling over with stomach ache. The sign screamed from the Mercantile wall in drippy, red letters:

STEY OFF THE RED PARTS! THAY ARE DANGJERUS!

Without Just Clause

There was no small offense committed against the English language that did not go unpunished by Mrs. Skooms. For years she’d lurked over nervous, squirming children––ruler in hand––her gray, unwashed hair pulled into a knot so severe that it slitted her eyes like a Mongolian wolf. Mrs. Skooms had effectively beat writing out of hundreds of students over the course of her career as a third grade teacher, and caused irreparable damage to countless knuckles to boot. And for this, they honored her with a gold pendant watch and a lovely gardenia corsage when she retired.

Why humorevolution?

Humorevolution was the name that spontaneously sprang from the dark recesses of my cavernous mind when pondering what to call my blog. Why humorevolution, with one "r"?. I suppose I've always felt that a sense of humor is important to evolution.

I also have an internal revolution against the lugubrious, dour souls and mirthless institutions.

Click on the humorevolution pic to see my sketch of the evolution of humor, done about circa 1984.