TrickyBuddha Studios

Speaking of post-apocalyptic and waking up when the bombs hit (see yesterday’s post), I read a great story in the Bizarro Starter Kit from Jeremy Robert Johnson called Extinction Journals that’s exactly that (waking up when the bombs hit).

In the opening scene, the main character is wearing a suit with cockroaches threaded into it — a suit he built specifically for protection against the story’s just completed nuclear destruction of the world. And the suit is feeding on the President of the United States (who had been wearing a suit made with Twinkies).

Why cockroaches (and Twinkies)? The thought was that if the worst was to happen, you’d want to surround yourself with the stuff that would survive a nuclear war. Both of them survived, at least until the cockroaches ate through the Twinkies to get to the President. Later in the story, the main character meets a woman wearing ants (and nothing else), a man wearing other people’s skin as an outfit, a man wearing Styrofoam, and the manifestation of the concept of the Rapture. It may sound weird (which, as a “bizarro” title, may be stating the obvious), but the story really didn’t come across as weird to me. The idea of wearing a cockroach suit and melding with the little insects really comes off quite naturally within the story. Loved it.

Prior to that, I read a funny-and-sometimes-thought-provoking (horror?) story by CM3 called the Baby Jesus Butt Plug. The story revolves around a world filled with clones, an evil baby, and zombies. And before that I read a few short stories by D. Harlan Wilson. I enjoyed each of them a good bit, but I think the most memorable one, to me, was Hairware, Inc. — where a guy sold facial hair as pets. Right now, I’m reading a story that I find interesting, conceptually, as well as section-by-section, but for whatever reason it’s not doing much for me. It’s called the Greatest Fucking Moment in Sports by Kevin L. Donihe and I’ve been grinding through it while finishing off Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (which I finished last night!). It’s about the world’s best bicycle racer on his last run — and his overwhelming love for bugs.

Anyway, it’s a good collection so far. But right after I got the books I got hooked into a bunch of games and kind of lost focus. The reading has been slow-going in my distracted state but it’s still enjoyable. I’m looking forward to getting back into it and also editing up a story for submission.

A while back I posted the question “Am I a Commie?” not to create a yes/no scenario, but rather to propel a journey of self-discovery (magical, of course). That’s where the title above originates.

I’ve been reading a bit today on some of the “experimental” genres of fiction writing thanks to discovering a small group of publishers (with such awesome names as Eraserhead Press, Afterbirth Books, and Raw Dog Screaming Press). And while I feel like things on the classification front are moving, the details of these sub-sub-genres are more confusing than anything.

Some of it does make sense to me. For example, Carlton Mellick III posts that with classical surrealism, using the practice of automatic writing, we’re left with a product that resembles a dream. Written words mirror the subconscious. That is, I write every word that pops up in my head as it pops up. I had a writing course in high school that did this exactly (you probably did, too!). We were given 30 minutes or so to write something — without thinking about the rules of writing. And I loved it.

In fact, this is where it all started. This is where I wrote my first anything (outside of earlier efforts to use a similar thought process to create bad poetry and bad rock-song lyrics). I found it very easy to lose myself in the process, and reading back what I had written was enjoyably strange because I didn’t understand where any of it came from. (I think I’ve saved those old journals, but they’re with my dad. I should track them down.) It’s similar to how I write today (though I like to think I’ve evolved and refined the process substantially), and probably explains why I later fell in love with filmmakers like David Lynch and, specifically, the Salvador Dali/Luis Buñuel movie Un chien andalou.

But then Mellick dives into other classifications (like Irrealism and Bizarro) and that’s where he loses me. The stuff is hard to explain, so I’m not blaming him. And a lot of it strikes me as saying that this writing is like that writing, which is where that other writing over there comes from. If you don’t have a starting point, comparative language isn’t helpful. Finding free, on-line versions of their cited sources has been a little tricky, too; of course, I don’t want to buy a few dozen bad stories because I hope there might be some helpful connection in one of them, but I may, after a little more research, go in that direction.

All in all, at this point, I think figuring out some of these basics might be besides the point. I feel like finding this group has been the first step. They’ve been there and understand this. It gives me a point to jump from and figure this stuff out. I’ve been digging through their suggested resources. Once I finish that off, I’ll try posting at their forum to see what I can learn.