The Wisdom of "The Exorcist song": a Halloween Meditation

The Wisdom of "the Exorcist song":

A Halloween Meditation

Tubular Bells, minute one

In honor of Halloween, I’d like to invite you to listen to the first 30 seconds of this song, “Tubular Bells”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LEWkwvaNcs

Now pause the song. I’m sure you recognize it—most people know it as “That Creepy Song from the Movie ‘The Exorcist’”. Go ahead, listen to another thirty seconds.

What feelings does the song evoke? Most of us associate this music with the same feelings that we associate with horror movies in general. Fear, darkness, terror. Hopelessness. We think of the pure, unadulterated horror that people feel when they watch a good, scary movie like “The Exorcist”. The sort of fear that, back when the movie originally came out 40 years ago, caused people to pass out, or vomit into the movie theater trash cans.

De Hawái a Escocia: Los Menehune y las Hadas

En Busca de los Chaneques

De Hawái a Escocia: Los Menehune y las Hadas

Up the airy mountain

Down the rushy glen

We dare not go a-hunting

For fear of little men…

                -verso popular de Irlanda

[TRADUCCIÓN: “No nos atreveremos a ir a cazar ni al alto cerro árido ni a la cañada cenagosa, por el temor que les tenemos a los hombres pequeños.”]

Los antiguos campesinos de Irlanda y Escocia hablaban de las “hadas” que habitaban los bosques y las montañas del campo remoto. Y no se trataba de muñequitas como la “Campanita” de las caricaturas de Disney—las hadas del folclor celta no eran angelitas con alas y una varita mágica. Eran personajes mucho más parecidos a los chaneques de México.

Se decía que las hadas—los fairies, en inglés, también conocidos como “the good folk”, la gente buena—vivían en las cuevas y las montañas, lejos de los asentamientos de los seres humanos. De vez en cuando, la gente veía a las hadas entrando y saliendo de las montañas. Se decía que las hadas eran personas de baja estatura, con ropas extrañas y anticuadas. A veces aparecían en el campo de noche, entre los árboles. Se decía que tenían poderosas capacidades mágicas. Estos misteriosos fairies podían hacerles favores a las personas que les caían bien—pero también eran capaces de hacer mucha maldad.

* * * *

A Trolling Observed

Being a full analysis of my conversation with Anna Snow, erotic novelist

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
                       Charles Darwin

What follows is a full transcription of a recent online “conversation” between Anna Snow, an erotic novelist, and Yours Truly. Some would describe the following exchange as a beautiful illustration of how much reading comprehension—and communication in general—has declined in this post-literate generation of ours. Others would simply describe my responses as good, old fashioned internet “trolling”.

You be the judge.

If you’d like to sidestep my commentary and just read the back-and-forth exchange, please feel free to scroll down to the bottom, where I’ve pasted all the links in chronological order.

Enter at your own risk.

Act 1: My initial article

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/love-in-the-21st-century-by-david-j-schmidt/

It all began with an article I wrote for a website, “Reader’s Entertainment”, back in March 2013. I was promoting my book, “Pirates of the Danube”, a light-hearted satire of romance, erotica, and bad writing in general.

The gist of my satirical article, in a nutshell, is:

A.) I am disturbed that books like “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” have normalized abusive relationship dynamics. These stories set a poor example for the young ladies who are reading them.

B.) I am even more offended, however, that these books have normalized bad writing.

I published the sarcastic little essay and left the country for a couple months. Upon returning, I checked up on my article to see if anybody had actually read it. I was surprised to find the following comment:

“I read this post and am quite frankly disgusted. There’s so much I’d like to address that it won’t all fit in a comment. Therefore, a rebuttal written by me will be posted tomorrow morning.”

This confused me. What could there possibly be in this essay that would “disgust” someone? Why would anyone be offended by this harmless little rant? And why would she use the active voice in most of her comments, but suddenly switch to the passive voice for the last sentence?

I was criticizing bad writing, using Twilight and Fifty Shades as examples. And I was criticizing the powerless depictions of women in these stories. Who would be offended by that?

Furthermore, I frankly couldn’t see where my farcical article was making any concrete arguments or statements, per se—other than the general argument that “bad writing and bad relationships are, well, bad”. So how could a “rebuttal” be written to an essay which does not contain arguments in the first place?

My curiosity piqued, I looked up Anna Snow—a self-proclaimed erotica-romance novelist, also known by her nom-de-plume “Chastity Bush”—and found the following essay…

Act 2: Anna Snow’s “Rebuttal”

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/anna-snow-offers-a-rebuttal-to-david-j-schmidts-love-in-the-21st-century/

I won’t go to the trouble of dissecting the “rebuttal”—I think it is quite self-explanatory, in and of itself. The most ironic thing about Anna Snow’s response, in my opinion, is that it fully proved the point I was trying to make—literacy and reading comprehension are at an all-time low.  

I don’t mean “lack of reading comprehension” in the sense that Ms. Snow merely misunderstood some point that I was trying to make, or was not able to grasp the overall tongue-in-cheek tone of the essay. I mean a basic inability to comprehend a sentence, if it contains more than one clause. Ms. Snow apparently misunderstood basic sentences in my satirical article, clinging to individual phrases and surgically removing them from their context—and then writing outraged responses to these free-floating phrases.

Now, my inner curmudgeon would like to blame all of this on new technology: on institutions like “Twitter”, which are teaching people to think in short, 140 character blips, decreasing the ability to digest complex thoughts. Indeed, youth today appear to be fully losing the capacity to comprehend and analyze longer passages of text. Orwell’s creators of the “Newspeak” language would be proud.

But I can’t blame it all on Facebook and Twitter. Fact is, this sort of thinking has been around a lot longer than the internet has. In fact, Anna Snow’s angry response to my light-hearted article reminded me of a religious Fundamentalist. Fundamentalists have long made a habit out of taking short fragments of verses from the Torah, Bible or Koran, and creating entire doctrines out of them, with no regard for the context in which the verses were written.

The content of her “rebuttal” is evidence enough of this, so there is no need to reproduce the text here.

Act 3: My Re-Rebuttal

Once I stumbled upon this “rebuttal”, I realized—after enjoying a healthy laugh, then eating a nice sandwich—that I could do one of three things:

a.) Write a serious response to Anna Snow’s essay, pointing out the obvious: that she is responding to points I never made, that she is taking a satirical essay seriously, that she simply failed to understand the meaning of several sentences.

This option bored me, so I tabled it.

b.) Ignore the issue entirely, and get on with my life.

This would have probably been the most adult, mature response. So I ruled that one out right away.

c.) Rather than state the obvious and explain why Ms. Snow’s “rebuttal” makes no sense, I could illustrate this point by writing an equally ridiculous rebuttal—a “re-rebuttal”—chock full of irony and sarcasm.  

This is the option I chose.

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/an-erotic-novelist-in-anguish-a-re-rebuttal-to-anna-snows-rebuttal/

I endeavored to write an article so obviously sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek, I felt sure that Ms. Snow would understand that this is all a big joke. I wrote as a person indignant and outraged—and fully clueless. I responded to Ms. Snow’s bizarre claim that I am a “prude” by saying that I have campaigned to outlaw nocturnal emissions, but I can’t see how that makes me a prude. I responded to her claim that I am “ungentlemanly” by explaining that I have been on a total of four dates in my life, all of which took place at KFC. And so forth. I claimed that I was a “licensed phrenologist”, for God’s sake.

I felt sure that Ms. Snow would either (a) realize that I was being ironic, and laugh it off, or (b) realize I was being ironic, not find my particular sense of humor to be funny, and walk away from it.

Nothing could have prepared me for Option (c): She took it seriously.

Act 4: Anna Snow’s Re-Re-Rebuttal

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/anna-snow-replies-to-david-j-schmidt/

At this point in the conversation, I became seriously confused. Was it really possible that anybody would be able to miss all the sarcasm? Apparently so—Ms. Snow responded to each one of my ludicrous statements as if I were making them in all seriousness. She responded to my tongue-in-cheek description of a “perfect date”, not by saying “ha ha, that’s funny” or by saying “whatever, your jokes aren’t funny”, but rather, by saying:

“I’m not even going to dignify this portion of Mr. Schmidt’s rebuttal with a response as it clearly speaks for itself. Any sane woman or man would see this and run for the hills.”

I didn’t have the heart to contact her and inform her that responding to something does, in fact, constitute “dignifying it with a response”. I was too shocked by the sheer fact that she thought I was being serious.

When I claimed that I had advanced degrees in the defunct pseudosciences of phrenology and eugenics, Anna Snow responded:

“Go ahead Mr. Schmidt, wave your education proudly, you should, but your degrees in Phrenology and Eugenics doesn’t [sic] cover [sic] the fact that you really know nothing about erotica and all it entails. You wrote this “poor me” post without confronting [sic] the original topic.”

I was baffled, punch drunk. Could she still not see that I was joking?

A friend of mine suggested one explanation: “Is it possible, David, that she is the one trolling you here? Maybe this is all an act!” I began to seriously entertain the possibility. Was she taking me for a ride?

If so, her portrayal of the “clueless persona” was spot on, making this an act of genius. Ms. Snow’s essays rang with the tone of authenticity—she really did appear to be taking me seriously, with no sense of sarcasm or irony. Ms. Snow’s articles, however, were not entertaining in a satirical way. If she was playing a fictional role here, it was not for the purpose of humor or entertainment. This would be closer to the work a postmodern performance artist, like Yves Klein or Allan Kaprow, and their famous “happenings”. These artists would depict a mundane action—like washing a car, or standing on a corner—with no commentary or alteration, for the sheer purpose of depicting it.

Or perhaps, if Anna Snow was doing this all for diversion, it was more akin to the dark genius of The Joker from “Batman: the Dark Knight”—one who stirs up chaos, with brilliant skill and attention to detail, for the sheer purpose of creating havoc.

I was prepared to believe this version—but I needed another test run of the experiment. So I put out another feeler.

Act 5: My Conciliatory Letter

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/david-j-schmidt-extends-a-sensual-olive-branch-to-anna-snow/

I wrote one final letter. In this one—keeping with the character of a clueless, wannabe author—I proposed to Anna Snow that we collaborate on a joint production. I proposed several erotic novels we could write together, each one more ridiculous than the next. Again, I hoped that Ms. Snow would finally realize I was playing a character, that I was being satirical, and would drop the whole thing.

Instead, Anna Snow responded with a vitriolic series of comments, which appear at the bottom of the published article. She felt that I was mocking the entire genre of romance-erotica, and responded with all the fury and rage of an offended religious Fundamentalist. Ms. Snow enlisted the help of her friends to post comment after comment on this webpage, defending the Church of Erotica from my blasphemous irreverence.

The tone of the comments was overtly hostile:

“As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Schmidt doesn’t even exist and my correspondence with him on this blog and anywhere else is at an end.” [Anna Snow]

“…go ahead, continue to make yourself look like the a** you are…” [Anna Snow, after writing four additional comments following the above-cited comment]

“You can take the olive branch that you extended to Anna Snow, and shove it where the sun don’t shine!” [other commentator]

“Whomever [sic] you are, you are a pig! Don’t let that olive branch blind you when you stick it up your nose and into your brainless cavity!” [additional friend of Anna Snow]

In addition, Ms. Snow’s friends appeared to be equally incapable of detecting sarcasm:

“Your photo, BTW, is awful! You look like a sleazy, greasy pimp […] SO NOT SEXY!!!”

“And your bio?…Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – that would mean you died when you were a baby.”

“Mr. Schmidt someone should have told you how unflattering that photo is of you.”

As most online interactions eventually tend to do, this had devolved into a unilateral “flame war”—a cacophony of voices shouting, hurling epithets and personal insults, a pile of sweaty people full of anger and outrage.

At this point, I realized it was time to lay the whole thing to rest. The tone of Ms. Stone and her friends had grown truly hostile and angry, and I have no interest in receiving packages in the mail with dead animals in them, because I don’t know where I would store the dead animals, and the U.S. Postal Service is already overstretched as it is.

So I followed the Beatles’ advice, and let it be.

* * * *

Thus ends one great adventure in online miscommunication.

I wish Anna Snow all the very best in the future, and must move on with my life…still, I am baffled by the entire thing. I want to believe the “evil genius” theory: the idea that Anna Snow has created an online persona—indeed, a series of personae, playing her and her friends—for the sheer purpose of playing the role of the “erotica writer who doesn’t get sarcasm”. Is she a character actor, in the vein of Andy Kaufman, playing a series of personages—with the difference being that hers are played totally straight, not comically?

It’s a stretch, but it’s better than the alternative. I hate to think that we live in a world where reading comprehension is that low—where there are truly dozens, hundreds or thousands of people out there who can read an essay like mine and not catch onto the sarcasm.

It’s a terrifying thought.

-David

THE POSTS, IN ORDER:

PART I

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/love-in-the-21st-century-by-david-j-schmidt/

PART II

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/anna-snow-offers-a-rebuttal-to-david-j-schmidts-love-in-the-21st-century/

PART III

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/an-erotic-novelist-in-anguish-a-re-rebuttal-to-anna-snows-rebuttal/

PART IV

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/anna-snow-replies-to-david-j-schmidt/

PART V

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/david-j-schmidt-extends-a-sensual-olive-branch-to-anna-snow/

Diálogo en Náhuatl

Se ha estudiado, de manera extensiva, la incorporación de palabras de lengua náhuatl en el castellano que se habla en México hoy en día. Tan extensivo es este sincretismo lingüístico que el ciudadano contemporáneo podría sorprenderse, al ver que puede entender una conversación entera en dicha lengua indígena.

Veamos, pues…

JUAN:             Ahuacha lachamacatl!

PEDRO:          Cualli?

JUAN:             Viexatl, cualli tenelli tetotli.

PEDRO:          Ah. Lanetza kellos zontli tetotli grandotli.

JUAN:             Invitahuah chamacatl in botanatl—cacahuatl, chayotl, ahuacatl, epazotl, camotl, tomatli. Luegotl, invitahuah pulqui, tequilli. Dizpueztli, invitahua chamacatl in vergotl.

PEDRO:          Noh zeaztli mamotl.

JUAN:             Perohtli miralli, eztahuah buenotl!

PEDRO:          Xatoi ligadotl, cabrontli. Viexatl tengoztli xa, mihui noviatl Xochitl.

JUAN:             Perohtli xa sabeztiuh ke Xochitl ahuoralli andaztla in Spaniatitlán, andaztla di mochilaztl.

PEDRO:          Noh importaztli. Xioh zontli fielotl.

JUAN:             Ereztli putotl. Dezprexiatl oportunidatl por mamantliuh tetotli buenotl, compahuac. Noh chingueztli.

PEDRO:          Ih porkehuacan noh chingaztli chamacotl buenotl tiuh meztmiuh?

JUAN:             Pueztli…miedozotl soytli. Tetontli miuh intimidatl.

PEDRO:          Ti pazaztl di lanzatl, cabrozontli.

Horrifying

Easily the scariest thing I saw at Comic-Con this year.

A unified theoretical approach to "Tourette's Guy"

Some years ago, the phenomenon of “Tourette’s Guy” took the internet by storm. While his popularity cannot be exaggerated—Tourette’s Guy’s emblematic catch phrases have rapidly become part and parcel of the popular lexicon, including such phrases as “Fuck salt”, “Bob Saget!” and “Asshole!” —few have bothered to offer a comprehensive theoretical interpretation of this cultural icon.

In the interest of applying the same systematic approach as has been used for scientific hypotheses, psychological theory and Biblical exegesis, I offer here a holistic analysis of Tourette’s Guy, attempting to unify several disparate and apparently contradictory statements made by said Guy.

Extracockal approach to the penis

Concerning penile references and the broader category of penile miscellany in general, the position of Tourette’s Guy can best be described as extracockal—focused nearly exclusively on the dick of the Other, to the exclusion of Tourette’s Guy’s own dick.

Los Chaneques de Hawái y la “Teoría Menehune”

“Hace muchos años, mi tía Leilani vivía con mi abuela en un pueblo chiquito, en la isla de Kaua’i. La casa estaba a la orilla de la aldea, rodeada por palmeras, piñales y mangonales. Mi tía era apenas una niña en aquel entonces. Ella dormía en la habitación que estaba ubicada en la esquina de la casa que se colindaba con los piñales.

“Mi tía Leilani amaneció un día y, al querer bajarse de la cama, se dio cuenta que estaba acostada en el piso. La siguiente noche volvieron a acostarla en la cama, y volvió a despertarse en en el piso. Esto sucedió varias veces. Después de unas semanas, mi tía Leilani empezó a soñar con una mujer espectral que la bajaba de la cama. Tenía mucho miedo y se quejaba con mi abuela; decía que le daba miedo dormir en ese cuarto. Para saber por qué Leilani soñaba con esa mujer y por qué siempre amanecía en el piso, mi abuela fue con una de las sabias abuelas del pueblo—con doña Anuhea. La anciana fue a inspeccionar la casa. Al salir hacia los piñales, se fijó en un muro de piedra muy antiguo que atravesaba el piñal. ‘Me consta lo que sucede aquí,’ le dijo doña Anuhea a mi abuela. ‘Es que por aquí pasa el sendero de los menehune, los duendes del bosque.’ Doña Anuhea le explicó a mi abuela que el sendero de estos seres mágicos pasaba por el piñal y atravesaba la esquina de la casa. Suponía que la mujer espectral era un espíritu de los antepasados, que la mujer siempre bajaba a Leilani de la cama para que no tuviera problemas con los menehune ni los estorbaba durante sus travesías nocturnas. A partir de la consulta con la anciana, mi tía dejó de dormir en ese cuarto y se acabaron los problemas.

“Muchos no creyeron el relato de doña Anuhea, ni querían creer lo que decía mi tía Leilani. Pero después de varios años, hicieron unas obras de construcción y excavaron el suelo debajo del cuarto infame. Los obreros descubrieron los huesos de una mujer—se dice que era ella la que siempre bajaba a Leilani de la cama. Desde aquel entonces, mis familiares aprendieron a tenerles mucho respecto a los antepasados y a los menehune también…”

-Relato de Mahina, muchacha hawaiana, de la Isla de Kaua’i, Hawái

En las islas de Hawái—archipiélago tropical en medio del océano pacífico—existen muchos relatos acerca de los “menehune”. Estos seres diminutos son muy parecidos a los chaneques o duendes. Son seres del bosque y de la noche. Tienen poderes sobrenaturales: pueden hacerse invisibles, pueden transformarse, atravesar muros y paredes (como vimos en el relato anterior), y realizar encantos y maldiciones. Tal y como los chaneques y los duendes de varias culturas del mundo, se dice que los menehune son capaces de cometer muchas travesuras—pero también pueden hacerles favores a los seres humanos.

I am interviewed by a fellow blogger

Brook Syers has published his interview with me on his blog, available here:

http://brooksyers.blogspot.com/p/author-interviews.html

Here's a sneak preview of the interview:

Tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?

I am an author and wildly successful nudist living in San Diego, California. My romantic novels have been described by literary critics as “‘The Notebook’ meets ‘Cannibal Holocaust’”.

In 2004, I was granted knighthood by the Basque Republic, becoming Sir David J. Schmidt for the following three years. (The title was stripped from me by the United Nations Council on Fallacious Royal Families in 2007.) After I was elected to the San Diego City Council in 2008, I spent my single term in office lobbying extensively for punctuation reform, pushing to have the period officially replaced with the obsolete, whimsical punctuation mark of the “fleur-de-lis”. In addition to these accomplishments, I also founded the yearly charitable event, “Race for a Cure to Spontaneous Human Combustion”.

I have been devoting an increasing amount of time to writing and research, ever since my physician informed me that I suffer from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

What made you want to become a writer?

In all seriousness, our increasingly illiterate society inspired me to do so.

More precisely, the recent explosion of bad writing is what inspired my two recently published parody novels. I’ve been freelancing for more than ten years, but my most recent satirical projects—Pirates of the Danube and The Baron Rides Again—were written as a direct reaction to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon.

A friend of mine was reading the Fifty Shades trilogy last summer, and she brought one of the books out at a party. I took a look at it, and just found it to be spectacularly bad. Not just artless storytelling or dimensionless characters, but criminally bad writing. I felt like it was assaulting all of my senses, like every page of this book was carpet-bombing my brain with grammatical errors. And then my friend told me these books had become extremely popular.  

I am not offended by the fact that an erotica novel is popular. I am not shocked by the content matter of Fifty Shades, or the fact that the books deal with sadomasochism and bondage. Heck, I wasn’t even shocked when my parish priest told me he was into sadomasochism. (Although I was perplexed that he chose to tell me while I was in the middle of my confession.) I’m an open-minded fellow. What offends me, though, is the fact that such a poorly written book can become popular. The book doesn’t read like an erotic tale of any sort—it feels like a third grader took a break from reading Hop on Pop and sat down to write a story about “people making boom boom”.

This was the birth of Pirates of the Danube. I endeavored to jump on the bandwagon, and write the most ridiculous and anachronistic romance-erotica tale imaginable....

TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE.

My book is banned in the Middle East

A friend who is living in the Middle East and attempted to download my book, Pirates of the Danube, during the free e-book giveaway, sent this to me.
Click the image to see it in full size:

Check out the message in green on the right side of the screen.

Apparently, I've joined the proud annals of banned books. I can only imagine that, someday in the near future, people will be smuggling bootleg copies of this book in their underpants across borders, as Soviet citizens used to do with the Bible.

Just bad enough to not be good

Pop Literature in the 21st Century


[NOTE: This was originally posted on the blog, "Are We There Yet?" To see the original blog post, please visit this link:]
http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/2013/03/just-bad-enough-to-not-be-good.html

* * * *

“Hikaru kumo o tsukinuke furai a wei.”

-Japanese folk saying. Translation: “Rice must be cooked just right—neither too hard nor too soft. This is the manifestation of perfection.”

I’ll be frank with you, dear reader—I am an avid collector of bad literature.

I am a literary crap enthusiast. Like the young Joseph Smith in upstate New York, I take my proverbial shovel in hand and head out into the woods, searching for those golden tablets of text that are a cut above the rest. There is a unique quality to exceptionally bad writing: if it crosses a certain threshold, it suddenly becomes immensely fun to read. I feel that the scale of “good to bad writing” is not a continuum; rather, it is horseshoe shaped, with good and bad nearly meeting at the bottom. Some books are so bad that they are able to jump that synapse and cross over into Awesome Territory.

One such book was a little gem I stumbled upon last year titled “Leave the Wine Glass Lay”. A friend of mine met the author in person—he came to her unannounced, like the Angel Moroni, to tell her about his literary opus. The author assured my friend, with a self-important air about him, that his book would be “the next big thing”. She went online and checked the book’s description on Amazon—and then immediately sent me an e-mail marked urgent, with a link and the comment, “you have to buy this book”.

As soon as I read the Amazon synopsis of “Leave the Wine Glass Lay”, I knew that I had struck gold.

Three things stuck out to me:

1. The modifier “all kinds of” is used twice in the first paragraph of the description. The main character, a powerful wizard, has “all kinds of magical powers” and encounters “all kinds of characters”.

2. By the second paragraph, we already have a full fledged cluster-eff of pronouns.

“He befriends a 10-yr-old child, Laden, who finds the Evil Wine Glass at the seashore and invites him and his family to dinner along with his friends.”

Whose family? Whose friends? Which he is who? Zuh?

3. The author went to the trouble of writing a quote of recommendation for himself. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anybody to attribute this quote to. All we have, at the end of the book’s description, is this:

“This story is unlike any other and author Jackie O Brien is truly unique by writing this story.”

I should note: that quote is also on the back cover of the book itself. In the print version, however, the author was nice enough to add some quotation marks—but still no person to whom the compliment is attributed. The punctuation itself appears to beg of us, “Come on, guys, honest, somebody said that. Look—there’s punctuation marks around it!”

That’s right, dear reader—I purchased this book.

And it was worth every penny. It truly was so bad that it became amazing. Where to begin? Well, how about at the beginning. Seriously, the first sentence of the book already has major verb tense confusion:

“I am the wizard Translucence and the year was 1503.”

The punctuation is devil-may-care and haphazard, as are the spelling and grammar. “Its” and “it’s” are used interchangeably, as are “they’re”, “there” and “their”. At several points throughout the book, the author appears to have forgotten what he’d already said—or lost the ability to scroll up on his word processor—and inserts sudden interjections like, “oh, but did I mention”, and “oh, I forgot to say such-and-such”. Some words are inexplicably capitalized, only to be written lowercase later in the text.

The descriptive language is just as avant garde in nature. This is one of my favorite quotes:

"Another enchantment, I instantly thought as the veins on my neck puffed in horror."

I have no idea what “neck veins puffing in horror” looks like, but I imagine something akin to a bullfrog when threatened.

And the story itself. Oh, dear, sweet Lord, the story. It jumps around, introducing plot developments suddenly and without warning. The entire thing appears to have been written in one sitting, the author overcome with the white heat of drunken inspiration. “Leave the Wine Glass Lay” truly jumps the gap between good and bad, moving with Nietzschean boldness into that netherworld beyond good and evil.

But oh, did I mention that “Leave the Wine Glass Lay” wasn’t the initial book I came here to discuss, dear reader? No, the book that truly makes my neck veins puff up in horror is none other than “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

* * * *

The above-quoted Japanese proverb illustrates the ideal of perfection—something that walks that delicate balance between hard and soft, undercooked and overcooked—in Japanese culture. It is my opinion that the same principle applies to something that is of poor quality. For writing to be truly bad, it can’t be overly bad, like Jackie O Brien’s book of wizardly adventures. His book is too bad to really even be considered bad, in my opinion. Nay, I believe that truly bad writing must be just bad enough to frustrate the reader without amusing him/her.

Enter “Fifty Shades of Grey”, stage left.

The most infuriating thing about the entire “Fifty Shades” trilogy is that it walks that delicate, Japanese line of balance and equilibrium. It is not nearly good enough to be worth reading. However, it is not quite bad enough to be entertaining. “Fifty Shades” is just bad enough to be truly bad writing—drab, poorly constructed, unsophisticated. Its badness is, well—grey.

I am reminded of M. Scott Peck’s description of evil as “gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring”. [People of the Lie, p. 264.] And of C. S. Lewis’s depiction of Hell as a gray, drizzly English city with nothing particularly interesting about it. True evil is not exciting or interesting—it is uncreative and pedestrian.

Perhaps more infuriating than its mundane badness, however, is the fact that people pay money for “Fifty Shades”. At least “Leave the Wine Glass Lay” has been left “laying” on the shelf. E. L. James’s erotica stories have become a cultural phenomenon, sparking a mini-industry of merchandise, knock-offs, parodies, late night talk show references, and even involving the participation of Gilbert Gottfried.

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them. 

I decided to climb on board the sticky, dubiously-stained bandwagon of the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon and write a satirical work of my own. My book, “Pirates of the Danube”, is not a direct parody of the S & M trilogy per se, however; rather, it is an homage to an entire genre of rambling romance-erotica tales. It is part “Fifty Shades”, part Harlequin romance, part “Leave the Wine Glass Lay”, and 100% awesome.

And it will be available for free this weekend. See here for details.

-David J. Schmidt

*One note on the Japanese proverb quoted above:

I wasn’t able to find the actual folk proverb, so I just inserted a quote from the opening credits to the Japanese cartoon Dragonball Z instead. But I swear, that proverb about properly cooked rice exists somewhere in Japan—a real Japanese man told it to me once, while he shared a bottle of vodka with me in southern Russia. But that’s a different story for a different time.

Please check out the blog "are we there yet", where this was originally published. You shan't regret it.

http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ 

Rape in the Congo

Love in the 21st Century

[This blog was also published on Jo Bryant's blog, and on "Reader's Entertainment". To see the guest posts, click the links below:]

http://jobryantnz.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/rape-in-the-congo-love-in-the-21st-century/

http://www.readersentertainment.com/blog/2013/love-in-the-21st-century-by-david-j-schmidt/

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I open up my e-mail inbox one morning to find that the first message on the list bears the following title:

“THIS MONDAY—RAPE IN THE CONGO!”

Of course, after I open the e-mail, I realize that it comes from an activist group that is inviting me to a special event where they will screen a documentary about some humanitarian crisis in Africa.

But the first thought that came to my head, when I saw that email, was this:

Who can afford a plane ticket to the Congo in this economy? Much less stomach all the raping?

I blame “Fifty Shades of Grey” for this.

In part, I hold the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon responsible because, in this day and age, violent sex is on everybody’s minds. It’s all the vogue. It seems that no matter where we turn lately, bruises are the coolest new thing to wear. Bella wakes up after her wedding night with Edward Cullen to find her body bruised and sore, and she is filled with love for her new husband. Anastasia meets a man who tells her he wants to put metal projectiles inside of her, and she instantly falls for him. “You had me at ‘projectiles’,” she says.

It used to be, the violence was at least kept subtle and implicit in films and books. You watch one of these old black and white movies from the 1940’s, and sure, the men do a lot of tough talking, but they keep it classy for the most part. I recently watched “Double Indemnity”, a film noir from 1944. Sure, the main character is always pulling women around by the upper arm to get them to go along with him, as if they had no sense of agency of their own, or were incapable of responding to a simple, verbal “hey, come over here please”. Sure, the lead male has a habit of fiercely shaking his love interest by the shoulders as a prelude to kissing her.

But at least nobody is waking up with bruises in the morning, or having metal balls put inside their nether-regions.

In the 21^st Century, on the other hand, we have Twilight and Fifty Shades.

We have Edward Cullen, a husband who is “special” and “magical” and sparkles in the sunlight—and, because he is special and magical and sparkly, his wife is forced to cut off all contact with her friends and family once she marries him. Because nothing says “loving relationship” like a man who won’t let you call your dad on the phone.

We have Christian Grey, who makes you sign a contract regulating when you can touch yourself, who monitors what you eat meticulously.

All that’s missing is for Christian Grey and Edward Cullen to sex their respective lovers to the tune of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” like Julia Roberts’ evil husband in “Sleeping with the Enemy”.

But this isn’t the only problem I blame on the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon.

I also hold “Fifty Shades” and its kin responsible for my confusion. My misunderstanding of the aforementioned email—and the vagueness of the email’s title itself—are the direct result of these books, as they have normalized imprecise language. More than the bizarre sexual practices, the poor syntax is, perhaps, the most disturbing thing about the whole “Fifty Shades” series.

The Congo isn’t the only thing being raped these days—the entire English language takes a beating when something like “Fifty Shades” becomes popularized.

Every time Christian Grey says a phrase like “thank fuck”—as if Fuck were some commonly accepted deity to whom we offer thanks and praise—I feel as if King Leopold of Belgium is marching his troops into the pristine wilderness of the English language, rampaging through the countryside and mining the soil of our language for blood diamonds.

Every time E. L. James carpet bombs her narrative with ubiquitous ellipses, raining down a maelstrom of fire on the punctuation, I feel the English language shrivel up and die inside.

Every time her main character says “oh my”; with every non sequitur in the plot development, with every nonsensical metaphor and simile, the defenseless English language is ravaged like a nation being colonized.

In the face of such devastation, I did the only thing any sensible person would do—I launched a counterattack, via parody. My novella, “Pirates of the Danube”, is a work of comic farce which satirizes the entire lot of barely-legible erotic and romance stories which have taken us by storm. It is humanity’s last stand, in the face of almost certain literary demise.

And it will be free this weekend.

* * * *

"Pirates of the Danube" will be free for download on Kindle this weekend, March 23 and 24. See the book in the Kindle store for details. 

Now please, do yourself a favor and go check out Jo Bryant's lovely blog. She is awesome, and she is an Aussie - Kiwi, making her exponentially more awesome.

And feel free to check out Reader's Entertainment for more book-related juiciness. 

Ghost Hunting: Slave Graveyard in Georgia

We pull up in front of a small Baptist church off the main road, just outside of Athens, Georgia. My brother leads us through some thick brush into the woods behind the parking lot. At the edge of the woods, there are a couple of modern gravestones.

We walk further into the woods. The last light of twilight is on the horizon.

Standing amidst the dark trees, we notice nothing out of the ordinary…at first. If you take a closer look at the ground, however, you will see them.

The graves. Where the slaves were buried.

They are barely recognizable—shallow depressions in the earth, just the size of a human body. All these years later, the earth still sinks down over the final resting places of these people. An unmarked flat stone has been placed at the head of each grave, the only manmade marker the tombs have received.

As we stand amidst the ancient stones and cold pine trees, my brother explains how he found out about the slave graveyard.

Third Farewell Letter to the Pope

One last letter to Pope Benedict before he leaves the Vatican...

February 28, 2013

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI

Apostolic Palace

00120 Vatican City

Most Holy Father:

I’m sorry to bother you again. Before you leave office, though, I want to get your opinion on a matter which has been weighing heavy on my soul. I have been in a major crisis of conscience regarding my subscription to Playboy magazine, and I would like your Papal input on the subject.

The thing is this—I subscribe to Playboy primarily for the articles.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t find women attractive, or that I’m “light in the loafers”, to borrow a phrase from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Oh, no, Holy Father—I’m all man.

It’s just that most of the time, the editors of this fine magazine simply don’t select models who are of my particular taste. Take the current February – March 2013 issue, for instance. The only major nude photo spreads are (1) the Playmate of the Month, and (2) a special pictorial devoted to lingerie. Now this particular Playmate, although pretty enough, is just too busty for my liking. I realize, of course, how ironic it is for a man to purchase a Playboy magazine and then complain about finding a busty woman therein. Sort of like going to a water park and complaining about getting wet, I suppose. But what can I say—I try to live in a Biblical manner. Last time I checked, my Bible quotes Song of Solomon as saying, “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit.” (Verse 7:7) An average cluster of palm fruit weighs approximately 350 grams—a modest handful, and a far cry from the ridiculous D-cups which “Candi” is sporting in this month’s issue of Playboy.

To add insult to injury, the only other full spread of photos was a series devoted to lingerie. Lingerie. Seriously, Your Holiness, do you think I pay $5.99 for an issue of Playboy magazine to see lingerie? Why would I do that, when I can send away for a Victoria’s Secret catalogue for free, just by emailing them and telling them I am a woman named “Davida Schmidt”, and now I’m getting credit card offers for “Davida” in the mail as well and I’m thinking of applying for one, because—honestly, in this economy—who can afford to not commit credit fraud?

As if that weren’t enough, Holy Father, the myopic editors of Playboy have insisted, during the past few decades, on giving a disproportionate amount of attention to top-heavy blondes, to the exclusion of other physiognomies. I assume this is related to the personal preferences of Mr. Heffner. I don’t know if Your Holiness was ever unfortunate enough to see the reality TV show, “The Girls Next Door”, but if you do—you’ll notice that all three of Hef’s “girlfriends” look exactly alike. I feel it’s safe to assume that you will share in my outrage, given the Church’s firm stance against human cloning. I feel, in addition, that the lopsided representation of blonde, white females in the magazine is a slap in the face of the beautiful diversity inherent in creation. (Genesis 1:31)

However, the reason for my crisis of conscience is this—I fear that, by not giving proper attention to the photographic content of the magazine, I may be disrespecting the hard work of the models. As the Church specified in Mater et Magistra, n. 34, the right to work is a fundamental right. Your predecessor, John Paul II, further emphasised the dignity of all work in Laborem Exercens, Part IV. I fear that, by purchasing Playboy magazine primarily for its literary content, I may be in violation of the Social Doctrine of the Church by failing to adequately appreciate the contribution of the models’ work to this publication.

Is this wrong, Holy Father, to purchase a magazine exclusively for one element of said publication? Should I cancel my Playboy subscription if I am not going to give sufficient attention to the photographs therein? Shall I stick solely with my current New Yorker subscription? I’ll admit, there are parts of the New Yorker that I never pay attention to, either—the “what’s going on in New York” section at the beginning of every issue, and the Financial News section. But come on, Your Holiness—I cannot imagine a more boring thing to read in all of creation (including the original Dead Sea Scrolls). Why, God Himself wouldn’t have the patience to slog through one of those East Coast economists’ treatises on the recession.

I look forward to receiving your guidance on this Playboy issue. If Your Holiness feels it best that I give equal attention to every section of the magazine, I promise to do so, on my honor. As former principal of Brigham Young University, Karl G. Maeser, said, “stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of the circle? No. Never! I’d die first!” It is my sole interest to do right by Your Holiness, by Mother Church, and by the hard-working young ladies who model for Playboy magazine.

I wish you all the best in the future and on the golf course,

David Schmidt

P.S. I heard on the news that the brown leather shoes you will be wearing from now on were given to you in the city of León, Guanajuato, Mexico. I went there for Christmas vacation a year ago. Isn’t it great? By the way, you didn’t happen to find a set of car keys with a bottle opener on them while you were in León, did you? I was pretty drunk most of the week—my girlfriend had just left me—so I think I misplaced the keys in a moment of inebriated grief.