Christmas Conspiracy Carol

(to the tune of "Let It Snow")

Oh the weather outside's ungodly,
And the pets are behaving oddly--
Now the sky is beginning to glow...
UFO! UFO! UFO!

All the weather balloons are popping
And my digital watch is stopping
Wonder if it's a friend or foe?
UFO! UFO! UFO!

[bridge]
If you happen to see strobe lights
Don't hang around to inspect 'em
Or an alien probe just might
Investigate your rectum!

There's a weird and unearthly humming;
Guess the aliens are coming!
Let's jump in the truck and go!
UFO! UFO! UFO!


Don't ask me where it comes from. I honestly don't know. :)

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Ho ho HO-LEE CRAP!

I see these every year, and they never fail to bring a sadistic smile to my face:

Scared of Santa Gallery

Containing many pictures of young children traumatized by their exposure to Jolly Ol' St. Nick.

This year Thea, our three-year-old, was similarly uncooperative when it came to getting a picture made with Santa. The photography told us that for some reason 3 seems to be the age where most kids freak out. At two they're trusting and easy-to-deal-with, at 4 they know enough about the Christmas deal to behave in Santa's lap, but at three...well, see for yourself.

To be fair, though, some of these guys are very scary.

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Things in My Notebook I Don't Remember Writing, #1

"Early on the beautiful people go off to
beautifully screw, and what's left is the
monsters."




Your guess is as good as mine.

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Insanity is Hereditary: or The Trials of Feeling Too Much

My son Will is at an age (eight years old a couple of weeks ago) where he's really, really driving his mother and me crazy.

Of course the more intelligent and headstrong a child is, the more efficiently he's able to get under a parent's skin, and Will has both those qualities in spades. His verbal skills are astounding, and I'm not just saying that as a proud parent. We taught him baby sign language early on, and so even when he was pre-verbal he was able to communicate his desires to us quite clearly. The signs for "more," "eat," and "drink" he quickly grasped, leading to sometimes maddening, sometimes hilarious arguments between two college-educated adults and a one-year-old. ("More." "No, honey, you've had enough Smarties from Mimi's purse." "More Eat." "We know you like them, but you need to drink your milk now." "More Eat...PLEASE." "..." "Well, maybe just a couple more...") Yes, we got regularly out-argued by a pre-verbal toddler--though in our defense, the cuteness factor was difficult to combat.

(My mom--"Mimi"--loves to tell about the first time she saw Will sign something where his intent was inarguably clear: we were sitting around visiting at my folks' house, and I was relaxing on the couch with a beer bottle in my hand. We'd been showing Will sign-language words for quite a while, and though he sometimes imitated us, it was never really definite whether he was trying to "talk" or just mimicking us. So Will, who was not yet walking confidently, as I remember, pulled himself up to a standing position on the couch right beside me, turned his big blue high-beams on me, and very carefully pointed to my beer and then made a lifting motion toward his mouth--"Drink." I was stunned--it was really his first definite sign, and I wanted to praise and clap and reward him for doing it..but obviously I couldn't give him a swig of the brew. Mom says the look on my face was priceless, and she guffawed and applauded for me. We ended up giving him apple juice, I think. After that, it was ON.)

Another great sign-language moment: we were at a Christmas party at my coworker's house, and Will was cruising around in their game room while we played pool. He was very interested in a kitty scratching post they had with a spring and a brightly-colored pompom on the top as a cat toy. When we noticed his fascination, I went over and crouched down beside him. "Hey, buddy," I said, "What are you looking at?" Without missing a beat, he waved his fingers under his nose, the sign for "Flower." My coworker was absolutely amazed--proof of what we'd already learned--that pre-verbal tots do, in fact, understand WAY more than they can communicate. Except, of course, that Will could.

My point is, even before he learned to speak, Will was a born communicator and, more than that, a debater. Once words entered his realm of expertise, his debating skills improved exponentially by the week. And since we never really baby-talked him, his vocabulary was also impressive for a child his age. So much so that at times it was difficult to remember that we were arguing with a toddler, and not with a much older child--a difficulty that continues to be a problem as he gets older.

So Will is very skilled verbally; add to that his innate willfulness (truly he is aptly named), and my parenting journey sometimes seems one debate after another--about why he should get more candy, why he needs more computer time, why Sesame Street shouldn't count against his TV time since it's educational, et cetera et cetera. And because he's so precise in his language, I have to be very clear in what I say to him. ("Dad, you said you thought I'd had enough whipped cream. You didn't say I definitely had to stop.")

(For some more of this type of stuff, check out this essay I wrote on my nameplate blog, which details how he cornered me into teaching him about cannibalism before I was quite ready to do so.)

He's also very talented and imaginative. He's musically talented: he got a toy set of drums for Christmas last year (Thanks a lot, Santa), and wore them out over the course of the next few months. (He's taking lessons now, improving every day, and for his birthday he got an actual full drum kit. So far we've only had one complaint from the neighbors.) He's spatially talented--his skill putting together Lego sets is matched only by his insatiable desire to do so, and he's always coming down with some new Bionicle or other that he's cobbled together from different pieces he had--many with multiple legs and weapons, in configurations I'm not sure the Lego folks even imagined--and all with their own back stories. He's written a few interesting short stories, at least one great image poem, and is also good at math and science and sports.

It's enough to make a fellow jealous.

Anyway, lately--because he's so smart and articulate--it seems he and I have been arguing nearly constantly. I'm either denying him a new Lego set because it's too expensive, demanding he put down the building toys and do his homework, forcing him away from the computer so I can check my e-mail, telling him he doesn't need caffeine before he goes to bed--sometimes I feel like I do nothing but bicker at him from the time I come home till he's in bed (after arguments about why he should be allowed to stay up, naturally). Tears, shouts, stomping off to his room, declarations of my inherent meanness--it wears me down, because I think back to those times when all we did was swing on the playground, throw rocks into the creek, and wrestle in the living room floor until something got broken. I wonder where that little guy went, and who this greedy, obsessive, contrarian grade-schooler is who took his place.

But even more lately--today, in fact--I think I realized why he tests me so, and why even the smallest denial gets met with such fierce combativeness. Of course part of it is that he's EIGHT. I get that. But another part is simply this: he can't turn it down.

What I mean is, he just FEELS things so much. There's no middle ground. When it's joy--a new Bionicle, or a trip to the skating rink, or a friend coming over to spend the night--you'd think he'd won the lottery, skipping and jumping and laughing and whistling like the world is the best party ever, and it's in his honor. And when it's bad--when the toy breaks, or he can't get something exactly the way he envisions it, or his dreams of Mountain Dew and marshmallows are shattered by a parental denial--it's like you ripped his heart out, and there is no bottom to his frustration or despair.

Probably this is common to all kids--I can only speak for my own, and Will is my first to reach this stage--but it can be unsettling, especially when your kid acts a lot older than he actually is. I keep thinking, "Why can't he just calm down and try to build that thing again?" Or "What's the big deal about me insisting that he clean up his toys before we have a story?" Or "Why am I suddenly Dracula just because I snuck (sneaked?) a Tootsie Roll out of his treat box?" Forgetting, of course, that these are questions only an adult would ask. To a kid, you might as well be querying in Portuguese. (Note: does not apply to Brazilian or Portuguese children.)

And there's something wonderful in the depth of his feeling. When he shows love, it's just the most beaming, beatific, purest distillation of emotion possible; it shines off his face like light, so strong you can feel its heat. When he laughs, there's no sarcasm, no ulterior purposes, nothing underneath that's not full of joy and happiness. And yes, when he cries, or shouts, or becomes afraid, there are no walls around him to fend off those negative feelings. It all comes rushing in like a wave, and then rushes back out from him toward you. It's devastating.

So that's my job--to be the wall, to be the protection against the bad stuff, but still to let the good stuff shine out. Thick, but transparent, like that Plexiglas at the shark tank that lets you walk underneath the man-eaters. (Which Will, by the way, just LOVES.)

It seems to me I used to feel things more strongly too--not just when I was a kid, but just a few years ago. I was more open, I let things in, I let them out. But I feel that in recent years I've been closing things off more, concentrating on not feeling. After all, you let things in, you set yourself up to be hurt, right? Disappointments can't affect you if you don't hope.

I don't know. Maybe a necessary part of adulthood is putting up protective layers around yourself, but lately I've been thinking they don't need to be quite so thick, or nearly so opaque. Nothing's safer than a lead-lined box buried in the foundation, but who wants to live in a space like that?

Anyway, Will's going to learn control. I'm going to keep telling him not to drink sodas before bed, forcing him to clean his room, not allowing him to drop $100 of birthday money on the Lego Mars Mission Alien Breeding Station or whatever. And he'll keep yelling, and crying, and arguing for all he's worth. For a while anyway. But he'll also keep whistling, keep drumming, keep laughing, keep hugging, and keep shining too. At least for a few more years.

In the mean time, I need someone to build me a better wall. Something with looser hinges and sliding panels that you can open up quick enough to see something wonderful before it passes out of sight. Something not quite as thick, made of stuff that's a little bit clearer, a little less speckled with dust--something that stays clean and transparent to let the sunlight in. Something maybe not quite so protective, but a lot easier to live in.

Luckily, I just happen to know a very talented builder.

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Great Expectations

Thea, our three-year-old, has quite an imagination. She plays by herself a lot, and often Sarah and I sneak in to listen to the imaginary conversations she's orchestrating between stuffed animals or, more hilariously, her brother's action figures. (Nothing like having Skeletor and a Toa Inika sit down to a tea party together, and part with a hug and a cheek-peck.)

She also sings all the time and is quite a songwriter--her lyrics flow stream-of-consciousness style over whatever she happens to notice as the beat goes on, leading to such timeless hits as "I'm a choo-choo train, and I live on the coffee table," "She said she would stand on her pillow, and not fall down," and my favorite, "Loving Can Be Fun," which is just that phrase repeated again and again and which I am quite certain could could totally be a top 40 dance hit.

So anyway, the other day before I left for work, Thea found a pink pipe-cleaner she and her mother had used in their crafts the day before, which was in the shape of a heart. Since she often likes to take on the persona of superheroes (usually Superman--and she will have none of this "Supergirl" nonsense, dammit!), she held the heart to her chest and announced to me in a very loud voice,

"I'm LOVE-WOMAN!"

"That's great," I replied, beaming. "So what do you do, Love-Woman?"

She gave me a stern look and declared, "I EXPECT LOVE!"

As well she should. Just thinking about that got me through the rest of the day.

But there's a postscript. When I came home from work, she was on the couch, her hands up in claw configurations, a monstrous look on her face. Hoping to change the game, I walked up and held out my arms.

"Love-Woman," I said, "I expect love!"

"Sowwy," she growled. "I'm a monsto. I don't have love."

"No love?" I frowned.

"No. Jus' a green little heart."

You know, I think I've known lots of people with green little hearts. And Thea got lots of love, whether she was expecting it or not.

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It's that time of year again...

Ladies and gentlemen, the winners of the World Beard and Mustache Championships!

I want to know what Jack Passion does for a living.

No, wait. I don't.

UPDATED: A Team USA member's photo diary of the event. Now with 7000% more facial hair!

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Friday Silliness

Oedipus, Oedipus,
Queer as a platypus,
Where do your troubles come from?
"Though I hate to be glib,
I cannot tell a fib--
like everyone else: from my Mum."

You, Oedipus, Oedipus,
went there instead of us,
murdered the murderous sphinx!
"But for hubristic sin,
My reward was a pin
and the loss of my sight--man, it stinks."

Oh Oedipus, Oedipus,
Your birth you were bred to cuss,
For riddling you took the first prize.
"But I'd trade my gold throne
for a life lived alone,
a good book, some good wine, and two eyes."

So, Oedipus, Oedipus,
to quote what you said to us,
what have you learned from your life?
"Just try not to be sad,
and be good to your dad,
and don't love your mom more than your wife."

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This year I decided to go as my favorite character from the Bible:



And here's a Halloween Party Pic of the whole fam damily.

From left: my Witch-ay Woman, Lucky Lucifer, Thea the Reluctant
Butterfly, and Darth William, Dark Sith of the Standridges.

Happy Pagan Festivities to everyone!

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Halloween: Top 5 Favoritest Costumes

I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday, for a variety of reasons. I love the candy, and usually come out the other side in a bit of diabetic distress due to my inability to keep from sampling. (Those peanut-butter taffy Mary Janes will be the death of me.) I love the ritual of trick or treating, the door-to-door demanding of sweets by adorably macabre youngsters that only the most curmudgeonly could deny. (If you sit inside with the porch light off and ignore the doorbell on Halloween night, I'm sorry to have to tell you this: you're a bad person.) I love the all-night horror movie marathons on TV and the outrageous scary flick DVD sales that leave me broke but happy.

I also love the fact that it's the last great Pagan Festival on the books. (That "All Saint's Eve" is not fooling anyone.) The ancient history, the cultural tradition, the idea that you can go out and have a blast without having to worry about your eternal soul or sinful nature. (Of course in recent years my youngsters have routinely brought back in their pumpkins at least one religious tract about the evils of the holiday and how God is watching you, clucking His tongue disapprovingly at all your devilish merriment. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to egg somebody back to the stone age--but I resist, praise Beelzebub.) Churches always speak out against it or have competing "Fall Festivals," but they're uniformly lame and not worth your kids' time. Get out there, get treating, and get scared, that's my motto.

But of course mostly I love the monsters. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and creatures. As a kid, picking out my Halloween costume was the most important decision I made all year. I was never one to be a Power Ranger or a Super Hero or something like that--for me Halloween was about the fright, and the one requirement of any costume was that IT HAD TO BE SCARY. Otherwise you might as well just be playing pretend in the back yard. I've lost the photos of most of my childhood costumes, which were largely of the plastic-tunic and rubber-band mask variety (Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon--all in a handy square box! God, I miss those), but in the past several years I've had some fairly good costumes, all in the name of refusing to grow up. So here I present to you my Top 5 Favoritest Halloween Costumes Evar--with pics!

(click the pics for larger images)

#5: Gore-Streaked Ghoul


This was my costume a couple years back at work. Even though it was just a rubber mask (with gore added post-purchase), gloves, and black clothes, I think the effect worked out pretty well--especially once I perfected my shambling, flesh-hungry, lunging walk. I stayed in character all day. And into the next day, too.


#4: Wednesday and Puggsley Addams



This was the first year back in Arkansas after our sojourn in Baton Rouge, and at the last minute Sarah and I decided to throw a Halloween party for all our friends. We didn't have costumes, but in a stroke of brilliant inspiration my lovely wife came up with this idea, which was not only something we could do with some clothes and makeup we had, but also a tandem costume! Double-score! I loved this, and you can see that at the time the Puggsley image fit my body type.


#3: Punkin


This is the earliest known picture of me on Halloween, and I love it. Though my costume is more conceptual here, you can see the joy and excitement in my chubby little face, even at such an early age. Tell me who makes the better jack-o-lantern: me, or the gourd? I rest my case.

#2: Hello, Nurse!


Another tandem costume, and also Sarah's idea, I think. I'm the mad surgeon, she's the psycho nurse. You can't see it here, but she had torn fishnets to go with that sultry, dangerous-looking, incredibly sexy outfit. I had bought the fake scrubs and put a bloody handprint and splashes on them, using Caro syrup and food coloring. If I ever host a Friday Night Frights style public access cable show, this is gonna be the look, with foaming beakers and electrical doohickeys in the background. And the Psycho Nurse as my cohort, naturally.

#1: The Hunchback of the Morgue



Okay, so at this time I didn't know about the incredible Paul Naschy and his film of the above-mentioned title, but this is nostalgia so that doesn't matter. This is my favorite costume EVER. I mean, just look at me. Just look at this freakin' costume, see how freakin' awesome I am. Very simple--one of my dad's shirts, a pillow strapped to my 8 or 9 year old torso with a couple of belts, hair teased out, Mom's blue eye shadow and some other makeup, and some plastic fangs. As soon as I looked in the mirror, I BECAME THE HUNCHBACK. I was SO into this costume, when my cousin Amber showed up to go trick-or-treating with us in our neighborhood, I came bounding out of the house like Quasimodo right at her, and she panicked and ran back to her Mom and Dad's Blazer, cowering in the back and screaming at the top of her little lungs. Thinking of the horror in that little fairy princess's eyes as she looked upon my grotesque visage, I can honestly say I don't know that I've ever been prouder of myself.

So there you have it, a little look into the psyche of a psycho. So tell me, anyone who's reading this: what are some of YOUR favorite Halloween costumes past?

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Blog-Type Thing: Top 5

You may have noticed, if you come here at all, that I haven't been writing much. I'd like to assure my concerned readers reader that I'm not just resting on the laurels I received courtesy FlamesRising.com and the esteemed Dr. Pus.

No, I AM in fact writing, just not on this blog. I may give more details on that as it becomes appropriate or feasible, but I find that too much talk about an ongoing project usually saps my will to continue it, so the less said there, the better. In fact, I may already have said too much. So hush.

Anyhow, I thought that since I have this space anyway, and as nature hates a void so does a blogger hate not posting or being posted to, I would turn this into an actual blog-type thing and try some impromptu irrelevant but hopefully entertaining auto-verbal hornswagglery.

In the absence of real inspiration, I'm stealing a page from John Cusack circa Hi Fidelity (Hi Yourself!) and doing a top 5 list. So here it is, a hopefully educational exploration for all the ladies out there who've wondered what it's like on the other side of the ceramic tile divider.

TOP 5 THINGS THAT BUG ME ABOUT PUBLIC MEN'S RESTROOMS

(Hint: Cleanliness isn't one of them. I'm a dude.)

5. The Urinal Slump of Despair

Women are lucky they don't have to deal with urinals. I know, they have other challenges to overcome that men are likewise spared, but really: standing in open space with your hose in your hand, expected to excrete in front of anyone who walks in, with (if you're lucky) only a square of metal half the size of your torso bolted to the wall to shield your unmentionables from sight. I guess it goes back to peeing against the back wall of the barn with the other field hands, or writing in the snow with your friends, two things everyone assumes happens but that I personally have never seen done. Why guys are expected to be willing, able, and even cheerful about pissing in front of each other is beyond me.

Anyway, every now and then you'll walk in on someone in this posture, which is simultaneously depressing and disgusting. The Slumper has both hands about his business, but has leaned forward over the urinal so that his forehead is almost (and on some occasions is actually) touching the wall in front of him, just over the flushing mechanism. Like he's just given up hope, overwhelmed by existential despair and enuii, a crumpled shell of a man trickling weakly into an uncaring bowl.

Really, whenever I see this, it brings me down for the whole day. Especially since such a slumper never, but NEVER straightens in the presence of others. So great is his despair. Sigh.

4. The Samson Stance

This is similar to the USoD. While perhaps stronger and more defiant, it's no less disgusting.

The Stander takes a similar posture to the Slumper, staring down at his junk while the magic happens, but keeps himself more or less upright by putting one palm flat against the tile by the flusher and pushing off. Like Samson trying to push down the walls of the Philistine Temple. While taking a leak.

I suspect that the area above the flusher is more sanitary than the area to the side of the bowl and below (though as the father of a seven-year-old boy, I can't be entirely sure), but I still think the best practice is to touch as little as possible while peeing in public. And really, do you need that extra support to keep you from toppling forward into the urinal? Is your balance so bad that the slightest tip forward will send you sprawling? Is it really that much trouble just to stand there?

I have--but only once--seen a variation of this stance wherein the Stander pushed BOTH palms to the wall, presumably more afraid of structural collapse than side-spatter. But he was a professor of writing, and thus required to be eccentric. I guess.

3. Cell Phone Chatter

This is happening more and more often as hands-free technology advances, and thus is becoming more and more irritating. Sometimes it's those little Star-Trek things on people's ears, like Urinating Uhurus. More often it's phone call line one, penis line two.

Again: is it seriously so difficult to wait until one of the two calls (call of phone vs. call of nature) is answered before attending to the other? I think in this situation, one of the two callers should be asked to hold.

Of course that's nothing compared to those who chatter away in the stalls--opening a jar, as David Sedaris might say--which is so embarassing I can't even stay in the room when it's happening. I imagine being both the caller and the callee, and either way it's awful.

I need a bumper sticker: Hang Up and Shit.


2. The Maleficent Miasma of Doom

Sometimes you walk in, and you just want to flee. It's like a solid wall of scent, so foul and thick you can literally taste it.

Ugh.

I feel like shouting at the closed stalls, "Jesus Christ! What are you people EATING that makes you SMELL LIKE THAT?" But of course to do that I'd have to take a deep breath, which is not happening unless I'm really about to asphyxiate. Anyway, whatever diet causes this mustard-gas level toxicant, it can't be healthy. I'm thinking Fast Food Nation missed an opportunity here to exploit an area everyone would relate to.

In fact, the whole public poop thing is problematic. I mean, I understand that people get caught short. I understand that sometimes the only option is to go into one of the three stalls and TCB. But again, I don't understand how or even why people expect others to be able to do this in front of an audience, however well concealed. If I'm in that kind of emergency, and find one or more of the stalls closed--well, I go back and suffer in silence until such time as I can get some privacy. And when I walk in and all THREE are occupied, and the air is besmudged with odor most foul, it's all I can do to retain consciousness long enough to turn and dash to the water fountain. How do they do it, and why? Dear God, WHY?


1. Small Talk

Dude. DUDE. Listen to me very carefully, for I shall say this only once:

I. DO. NOT. WANT. TO. TALK. RIGHT. NOW.

I'M. BUSY.

Does this ever happen to you, ladies? Does anyone ever try to strike up conversation while you're both going tinkle? Well in men's rooms it happens ALL THE TIME. I have a hard enough time in public as it is; I don't need the extra pressure of holding up one side of a discussion while draining the main vein.

As with most things that bug me, I can express my feelings toward this best in verse. From the Sonnet Project, #16, May 9, 2006:

Why do you have to talk to me while I
am standing at the urinal trying to pee?
I think unspoken bathroom courtesy
demands your silence, and averted eye.

Can this not wait? What urgent piece of news
could overrule such common etiquette?
Good Lord, man, concentrate! Or else you'll wet
your shirt tail, to say nothing of your shoes.

I do not mean offense--what I mean is,
Give me some peace! Look only toward your feet.
I do not wish to speak while I excrete!
I do not talk while holding my penis!

I cannot think of any situation
In which I'd mix my piss and conversation.

And there you have it. Feel free to discuss and list your own top 5 bathroom problems.

Or tell me to shut up and go back to posting only poetry. I'm good either way. I'm just glad I got this off my chest. :)

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Another Undead review...

And another rave!

Dr. Pus, the eccentric host of the zombie-centric podcast Library of the Living Dead, has been doing story-by-story reviews of the zombie anthologies, and this week in episode 29 he looked at my story, "Till the Lord Comes," from The Undead vol. 2: Skin & Bones.

The podcast is rather large--okay, HUGE, 111MB--but if you're interested and have broadband, he talks about my story at around the 31:47 mark and has some very nice things to say about my protagonist Timothy, the plot ("just an incredible take on the zombie genre...a creepy-as-hell tale"), and my madd writing skillz ("Standridge is absolutely wonderful...just a riveting story").

I could transcribe more, but I'm too modest. :)

Anyway, you can stream the 2-hour podcast at the above link, or download it and skip ahead to the 3-4 minutes about yours truly. Or you can send me an email and I'll burn you a cd.

Hey, if I don't promote myself, who will? :)

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I Know It's Wrong...

...but I find this absolutely frikkin' hilarious:

Peanuts, by Charles Bukowsi.

Good grief, indeed.

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Undead 3 is out and the first reviews are in

After what seems like years--wait a sec, it HAS been years! ;) --the zombie anthologies that accepted a couple of my stories are finally out from Permuted Press, marking the first time I have appeared in an honest to god, ISDN-numbered BOOK. Two of 'em, even! In case my legion of fans wants to get hold of several boxes to distribute as gifts to loved ones, here they are on Amazon:

The Undead vol. 2: Skin & Bones - Containing "Till the Lord Comes" by Scott Standridge
The Undead vol. 3: Flesh Feast - Containing "If You Believe" by Scott Standridge

Also, Flames Rising has posted a review of vol. 3, and while the reviewer doesn't mention author names, he does give a run-down of each story, separating them into Great/Good/Not Good categories, and I'm happy to say he puts "If You Believe" in the top division:

If You Believe: Let's face it, in an anthology about the undead you know - pretty much - what's going to happen in any given tale. Even so I don't want to spoil this one for you as it is a goody with a lot to say about childhood innocence (or lack thereof) and the dangers of religion. Even though this is more of a straight horror tale I felt it deserved a top-spot mention for just being so damn good.

Thank you sir, I'll take it! :) Nice to feel validated. Anyway, with Halloween coming up, what better treat than a horror anthology? Esp. one with Zombies? And me? Order yours today!

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And, If You're a Book Nerd Like Me...

Check THESE out.

Wow.

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Eclogue, of Sorts

Open me up and let what's outside in;
I can contain it. For today I feel
the bound'ry breaking down between what's real
and what's imagined. Yesterday my skin
fit tight; straight-jacketed, all bound and tied
like some madman enclosed by padded walls
I crouched in fear. But now that prison falls
away, and all the things I've left untried
cry out for doing. Let me gather wind
and leaf, grow florid, flowery, immense
with all Nature in my circumference--
abridge perimeters, abolish end.

Today's a day for limitless expanse,
unproven possibility, and dance.

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That'll Teach Me

The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the winners of its 2007 Poetry Contest, which this year called for sci-fi, horror, or fantasy sonnets.

It disappoints me to announce that Sonnet Boy is not among them.

A couple of faithful readers of my other blog, The Sonnet Project, told me about the contest and encouraged me to enter, which I enthusiastically did. I was even optimistic about my chances, as I felt some of my horror sonnets were definitely up to scratch, and after all, I had the cred, right?

Well, that'll teach me. :)

As often happens in cases like this, I found it difficult to read the winners with an open mind. They're fine sonnets all, and it's obvious that the judges' tastes, as you'd expect, leaned more heavily toward sci-fi than horror, the latter of which is my forte, if I have one.

And I know enough about editing to know that as much luck as skill goes into getting published/winning contests/etc.--a certain poem reaches a certain editor at just the right time, or hits just the right combo of personal preference and taste, whereas another just as skillfully put together somehow just fails to ring those bells. So while I'm disappointed that mine didn't win, place, show, or even get mentioned, I still maintain my belief in my own poems' quality, taking nothing away from the winners, which as I said were all quite good as well.

Magnanimous, no? :)

Anyway, I invite my readers (both of you) to have a look and tell me what you think.

Here are the SFPA Winners, and congratulations to them all.

And, in the interest of fairness, discussion, and because it's my damn blog and I'll whine if I want to, dammit!--here are my entries for comparison:

The Wendigo

Winter Dance

The Screams of Reason


Thanks to everyone for his/her/its encouragement.

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The JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes is TOMORROW!

If you've been waiting till the last minute to sponsor Scott "Sonnet Boy" Standridge in support of this good cause, well, HERE IT IS!

Click Here to Make a Donation Online!

And thanks to the very, very generous folks who've already sponsored me. You rock!

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Workadaydream

Since there's no help, come, let us pay the rent
and bury busy noses in our bills;
sign every check till all the money's spent,
forestall a month or so these mortal ills.

Let neither art nor poetry intrude
to draw attention off important stuff;
there's gas to buy, and medicines, and food,
for which these wages scarcely seem enough.

Now, when all the weeks and days and hours
that make a life are lived but to be sold,
each youthful dream a seed that never flowers,
and possible paths barred by gates of gold--

you might yet turn your pockets out, and find
ahead the roads you thought you'd left behind.

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Pocket Garden

Try this: before you go inside to sit
in air-conditioned quiet, pull one leaf
and stick it in your pocket, like a thief.
Tell no one. Make a mystery of it.

In meetings, secretly caress the veins,
trace sawtooth edges, chlorophyllic flesh,
and surreptitiously inhale the fresh
green scent from fingertips: black earth, new rains.

It's easy to get trapped in what is not
a part of us; separate from the world
outside, and silence what's in us that sings
of sunshine-heated rocks, and fingers curled
around moist leaves. Let's learn what we've forgot:
there have to be connections between things.

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Sponsor Me on the Walk to Cure Diabetes!

In the absence of poetry, a plea for cash. :)

As most folks who know me know, I've had type-1 diabetes since I was 17 years old. It sucks, a lot, for all kinds of financial, emotional, career and health-oriented reasons. But it's starting to look as though there might be hope--for the first time experts are seriously predicting we'll see an out-and-out cure in our lifetimes.

Anyway, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation funds an awful lot of research, and every year sponsors the Walk to Cure Diabetes. Most years I participate, as this is obviously a pet cause of mine.

If you can and would like to sponsor me in this walk--$5, $10, whatever you can afford--I'd be eternally grateful. Once I'm cured, I'll buy you a coke. :) You can donate online (it's easy!) by following the link below. Please do.

Sponsor Scott in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes!

Thanks.

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A Djarum Black, After Quite Some Time

The worst thing for you: static crack and hiss,
the orange-white blossom of a magic flame
to ring the rod in ash. It's just the same
as years ago, before it came to this.

Destruction tastes of licorice and clove,
familiar sweetness sitting on my lips
not quite forgotten. Inhalation slips
through sandalwood and memory. I strove

once to eradicate affected vice,
be clean in lung and mind, to mute the buzz
of nerves vibrating with expensive smoke.
But silence played like some forgotten joke,
and now, inspired, I guess I'll pay the price
for getting back to being who I was.

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Dying Alone in London

At MonkeyFilter, one of my internet haunts, someone posted this fascinating, affecting, and extremely well-written story from the Times of London online. Don't read unless you want to think about life, death, and the tragedy of modern anonymous existence.

Dying Alone in London: the Lonely Death of Andrew Smith.

In the absence of poetry, life.

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In the Absence of Poetry: a Game of Tag

GreenyFlower, whose blog is much better-written and -read than mine (deservedly so), has tagged her friends with a "getting to know you" questions game that I figured I may as well participate in until the block is lifted. The game is "4 things," in which the respondents give a list of four responses to various questions. Though my favorite version of this particular enterprise is still "I Have Never," what the hell. ;) Read 'em all on the jump.


Four jobs I have had or currently have:

1. Music Store Clerk--part time summers when I was in college, I'd run the register at the revered Boyd's Music Store in Little Rock. I used the downtime during the week to learn the rudiments of drumming and how to play "Crazy Train" on the mandolin.

2. Graduate Teaching Assistant--taught Freshman Comp and liked it pretty well. My students thought I was harsh but fair. I used to read a poem of the day at the beginning of class, and at the end of the semester often had students tell me it was a motivating factor for them to show up. Which was nice.

3. Systems Administrator for a Computer Network of Dentists--a self-declared "visionary" orthodontist hired me to do hardware and software support for his brainchild of a networked chain of interdisciplinary dental excellence. I spent most of my time driving to a periodontist or general dentist's office to "fix" a computer monitor that wasn't powered on. Learned through experience that dentists as a group are just as megalomaniacal and insecure about being respected ("I'm a DOCTOR, dammit!") as they are in caricatures of them.

4. Fiction Editor for a Horror Magazine--City Slab in Seattle. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I can do this from Little Rock. It's great to discover fun, scary fiction, but it's also great to discover stuff so amazingly bad I have to consciously keep my mouth closed while I read. I have a collection of such stuff. Ask me about it.


Four countries I have been to:

England, France, Italy, and Germany. All during my junior year abroad, which I spent at Cambridge. Love the Eurail.


Four places I would rather be right now:

England, France, Italy... No, just kidding.

1. Fayetteville, Arkansas--where I went to college, met my wife, had my first child, and looked forward to building a life. I love Little Rock, but if I'd had my druthers (thanks, Stephen), I would have stood up there.

2. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston--went there with my best buddy a couple of times while visiting him. Wonderful, for all the usual reasons.

3. With the Aforementioned Best Friend. I miss you, Mark.

4. Rome. 'Cause, you know.


Four foods I like to eat:

Chicken vindaloo. Tempura and Brown Noodles. Pesto. And every now and then, a big greasy cheeseburger.


Four heroes, past or present:

1. Jack Butler--a poet and novelist from Mississippi who spent a lot of time in Arkansas and who I met just at the time I decided I wanted to be a writer. Wonderful, wonderful poet, criminally under-read. His novel Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock was nominated for all the big prizes. It's been my honor to correspond with him in recent years, and he's one of four or five people who've read my novel.

2. Mary Vancura--my high school English teacher who pushed me to do a lot more than I would have done on my own, and remains a huge influence and friend. Wouldn't have gone to Europe without her help. Made me feel I was special when I really needed to feel that way and didn't. Now she's retired and travelling the world, enjoying life (I hope) in a way I hope to do, if not now, then one day.

3. Donald Harington--another criminally under-read writer from the South, his books are absolutely wonderful and magical and dense and funny and amazing. Do yourself a favor and go get some from the library, especially his Stay More books. Start with the earliest you can find and work your way up. You'll thank me.

4. Anybody with the courage to leap off a cliff into the unknown for the chance to do what they've always wanted, rather than staying on the edge out of fear and the desire for certainty.

*Sigh*


Four books I have read or am currently reading:

My most recent reads:

1. Memoirs of a Wolfman by Paul Naschy. 70s Spanish horror actor/screenwriter/director who made some of the most outrageous and fun b-movies I've ever seen. I love Paul Naschy. I love his movies, his enthusiasm, and his huge pectoral muscles. If you don't, we can't be friends.

2. McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (ed. Michael Chabon) Hit and miss, like any anthology. Made me realize that I used to think I loved Joyce Carol Oates's stories, and now I think that maybe I really don't.

3. The Ghastly One: the Sex-Gore Netherworld of Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough. Another filmmaker biography, this one much darker than Naschy's. Milligan was a playwright and artist around 42nd Street in NY and had a hand in starting the off-off-Broadway movement. Later he became a filmmaker, creating some truly strange and venom-filled flicks out of spit and tape. A really disturbed, horrible, and strangely fascinating figure, not the kind of guy you'd want to meet anywhere. McDonough's biography is so gripping that even if you've never seen a Milligan film, you'd be hard pressed to put it down.

4. Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess. I figured this would be dated as a Cold War spy novel, but I was gripped and entertained and made to think throughout. Sex, food, intrigue, philosophy, and a lot more sex. Great stuff. That Burgess, he was pretty good.

There you go, Greeny. Now you know. :)

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Block

Like a 10-ton cube of cement. I've been trying, but I got nothin'.

Never fails: make a big deal about starting something new, and then it fizzles into nothing. I should have kept my mouth shut.

Or stuck to sonnets.

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Lost

Maybe out there somewhere
there lies a path
overgrown now, weed-choked, stopped
by debris--a fallen log
astir with insect life,
its loosely clinging bark
atwitch
  like skin--
where once a person might
have turned aside and found
down rootbound valleys
hidden there among
the shadow leaves (whose negatives
are sunbeams)
             something
else.

The woods hide gold that is and isn't
sunshine,
show rending claws that are and
are not bears.
Some things are food and poison, some rain
and dew and blood.

Maybe there was a way
through then, although it didn't
seem so. A poke,
a prod might have revealed--what?
Dog-run, deer-trail, some parted sea
of weeds revealing tracks
beyond my understanding,
patterns I had not the skill
to name?

And maybe after miles, after bright orbs
of white and yellow dazzled me like
swamp gas, will-o-wisps,
for who knows what the cycles,
then
    or now, or when, or
soon,
I might have turned and recognized
a flower, called its name,
rhododendron, devil's trumpet, trillium,
felt suddenly unlost and therefore safe;

or else, aswim in plants evermore
strangers to me, no path, abandoned
by taxonomy, I sprint
a barefoot madman through clasping leaves--
green twigs caught in my hair, bugs crawling through
the dirty thatch of my gray hermit's beard,
be so unmade and deliriously free, I would
to joy and to oblivion
succumb.

It could be so.

For now, as lost here in these words
as any child forsaken in the wood,
gone feral, wolf-raised out of sheer neglect,
I find just tangled thoughts, a knotted string
around my hand, so difficult to trust.
What have I snared? What is it tugs and leads
me on around the next
leaf-shaded bend? Whose hand?
Or is it my own dumb animal soul
now bound here by some hidden hunter,
Time?

So many knots, and spoken promises
once breathed, that can no longer
be revised.

Walk far enough, and nothing will make sense.

A poke.
A prod.

Maybe it lies there still.

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on July 6, 2007

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Epigram

"This can't go on!" the rebel said.
But oh, it could. And so it did.

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on June 27, 2007

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The Awful Uncertainty of the Artist

Maybe this is it:

the depression/mental illness
that will finally make my work (and life)
meaningful
   saleable
        interesting.

But,
(oh God)

             ...what if it's not?

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on June 27, 2007

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Learning to Say Yes

Just tell them I accept. I'm getting tired
of blowing up balloons that sink like stones.
I'm ready now to loose those trailing strings
and watch their multicolored orbs disperse
to fall, sperm-like, out of a barren sky
toward who knows what airless lack of fruition.

I'm ready to accept, accept it all. I'll take
their golden chains, I'll gladly put them on. I'll wear
quite willingly the yoke, I'll pull the plow until
it sinks, until it wedges in the cracks where lack
of rain has broken, even here, the earth's own skin.
My hooves will throw up clouds of yellow smoke, the dust
made ghostly, powdered, like a broken shell.

I'll put on vestments like a village priest
who can't remember now when he believed,
when God flowed through his brain like liquid light
and haloed all creation through his eyes.
I'll stand up at the altar, say the words;
I'll swing the censer and cough on the scent,
Say prayers, baptize and bless, and listen while
the rain rattles the roof, the windows crack;
inside then, safe, I'll snuggle in my bed
all tired and drunk on sacramental wine.
I'll do it, I accept. Go tell them now.

I'll take it now, I will. I'll take the years,
impotent, yes, but sheltered, weak but safe.
I'll black the stars with ink until no light
can filter through, till all those colored dots
have disappeared. I cannot be accused.

I won't be shamed. I'll sow those borrowed fields
whose crops will feed me better than my own
however bitter they may be to reap.
I'll eat and give my thanks, although the grains
of sand wear down my teeth and make them blunt.

I'll swallow bitter bread and sour wine,
approximating ecstasy for show. I'll raise my voice
until, quavered by age and use, it will not
answer more. And even then I'll make the signs,
and croak the words of near-forgotten prayers
to children, widows, new-deflowered brides,
so strongly no one would ever suspect.
All of it, I accept. It would not do
to give those yet faithful a cause for doubt.

So tell them to prepare it. Let them spin
like hypnotists their gold watch on its chain
before my nose. I'll follow, I'll walk straight
for years--this I can do.
And will.

         I'll track it like the Magi's star
until that day when, palsied at the edge
of all, I miss my step--

and falling,
flailing,
snatch it from their hands.

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on June 14, 2007

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Because It's Probably True

If suddenly the room burst into flames
orange ivy climed the curtains
black clouds rolled up and out
and hair floating on waves of heat
crinkled, shrunk away

while everyone obliviously slunk
between table and chair
bedroom and bath
 beer tub snack bowl
("Nice party, what's this dip?")
while at their backs
a cataclysm
only I could (in this problem)
see--

It takes an effort of
imagination
to feel my arms go up
to see my jaw drop
to
(hypothetically)
  taste soot
        ozone
        methane
        new sweat
on my dry tongue
taking the breath with
which I'll shout:

"Hey! Fire!"

I've always been the quiet one.

Of course once if I edging toward the door
a dampened napkin pressed
 under my nose
saw that
no one
had noticed
(incredibly)
the
  blackening ceiling
  the cd player plastic bubbling
      like Yosemite mud
(I know, but just bear with me)
nothing except
     perhaps
some dizziness
and the fact that the softwhite sandwiches
suddenly
are toasted

then of course would I pop the lock
murmuring, as I stepped outside
to cool air
wet grass
green trees
that someone maybe ought to call somebody
and I've had a great time, thanks,
but by the way, some of you might think about

leaving

because it's getting late
and a work night
and the kitchen is on fire and
after all, no one wants to be an ash, hahaha--

But seriously.



I would do it.
If I had to.

But even in this dream it ends
like this:

everyone turning to stare
and smirk or frown or pucker their lips
and (even
       as their flesh
                      cooks off their bones

)

thinking

"Well. Someone
needs

attention."

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on May 11, 2007

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So here's the story...

From April 24, 2006 to April 23, 2007, I wrote 365 sonnets and posted them on my blog The Sonnet Project. It was a massive undertaking with mixed results, but at the end of it all I decided I wanted to keep writing poetry, something I hadn't done with any seriousness since high school. Having mastered, nay, even REDEFINED the sonnet form for a new generation*, I decided to try my hand at other poetic genres--blank verse, limericks, villanelles, and even the dreaded (by me) free verse. I wrote some and posted to the Sonnet Project, and my few readers seemed to like it all right.

But posting non-sonnet posts on the Sonnet Project bugged me for OCD-related reasons, so I decided I need a new blog for such stuff, not only to help in organization but to maintain the integrity of the Sonnet Project as a 365-day record of my journey through that form. (Pretentious enough yet?) And blogs being cheap, hence Defined By Negatives, aka The Further Adventures of Sonnet Boy.

In the next few posts I'll be moving the non-sonnet poetry over from the Project. As time goes on I'll probably also blog in a more traditional way if I find something to say or have some news to share, but mostly this will be a writing blog, a revising blog, a poetry and flash-fiction blog. Until I decide to do another volume of Sonnets, this will be the place.

So there you go. Welcome. Caveat Lector.




*Bwahahaha.

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