Big Freshwater Gulp

frogsauce

 

As a blog post, more than a barchive, today, I’ll admit that I’m in the process (once again) of trying to secure an agent—a literary agent. Are frog’s feet lucky like rabbit’s feet? Frog legs should be lucky. What could be more lucky than a fish that grew legs?

Anyway, whatever science fiction superstition you can throw my way, please do it. I’m going to put my novels out again to see if someone can help me sell them to a publisher.

If that doesn’t work—if I get a load of rejections again—I’ll default to plan B and start pushing my screenplays through the various screenplay inlets (yes, that again too). Then we’ll have to use a different sort of superstition.

Sci-fi superstition could be like: repeat, “Beam me up Scotty,” while spinning around three times and alternately opening and closing a flip phone. Or maybe whisper, “It’s full of stars,” while banging on a black monolith with a bone. Or maybe shouting, “Moh-ah-deeb!” on the beach while crossing your fingers in front of you and doing a squat.

Whatever works. (A really professional Query Letter? No, that can’t be it. Don’t be silly.)

Screenwriter’s superstitions are easy. You just do the sci-fi superstitions only backwards, on the 13th day of the month, with every TV in your house playing something with Steven Spielberg’s or Alfred Hitchcock’s or Clint Eastwood’s influence on it.

Street Quotes

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Words overheard in public places:

 

Girl: Don’t you know what you did?

Boy: No. What was it?

Girl: If you don’t know, then I’m not telling you.

Boy: Then don’t be surprised when it happens again.

 

“You know, that thing on the thing.” —A man talking to his obviously confused companion.

 

“We’ve crossed the vast expanse.” —C. C.

 

“If I am what I eat, then I’m unhealthy and ready in two minutes.” —Jesse Crump

 

“I miss the old days, when I could insult people in person.” —A man at the 7-11, with cell phone in hand.

 

Old man (at Target): I have to go to the store.

Old woman: The store?

Old man: I mean the bank.

Old woman: This is why we don’t have any money.

 

A boy, hollering up at a girl driving a large and lifted diesel truck: “Nice bus!”

 

What I like about these street quotes is that you can give people their due—if you find out their name. Everyday people should be quoted more often than they are, and so-called famous people should be quoted less often. That’s only my opinion though, so go ahead and form your own opinion. And make your own quotes. I think it’s even perfectly fine to quote yourself. If you say something that’s worth repeating, go ahead and give yourself the line. But if you hear someone else say something clever or funny, you for sure better acknowledge them. Don’t steal other people’s stuff. That’s about as cool as dropping a road kill on the refreshment table.

Anyway, I write things down all the time, so when I hear someone say something interesting, I collect their quotes. I’m sure I’ll have more of these in the future.

Recently Read: Tom Hanks

Meticuloso5I started out liking Tom Hanks’ stories in his book titled Uncommon Type. His writing has an easy flow to it. If he enjoys writing, then it shows in his work. If he doesn’t, then he could quit and go back to acting.

His short stories (so far, I’m still reading) have a witty, humanity-conscious style that let’s you read through with little effort. His style is fairly accurate in its study of humans. Like most writers who write, Tom Hanks seems to be a people watcher. He has studied the human condition and reported it well. You’ll learn to see your fellow humans as if through the eyes of Hanks.

Where it fell apart for me, was when I noticed that the stories were going nowhere. I could skip whole sections and still get the same feeling from his writing. It’s writing for the sake of writing. (Like some ‘blogs.) When you read such stuff, it doesn’t really matter how much of it you read; you can miss a few lines, and not really lose the story line. The plot meanders.

In the first story, he manages to write about sex without using any words that start with the letter f, or going into unnecessary detail. A lesson that many beginning writers need to learn. (Of course, then he uses the infamous word that starts with the letter f in another way. So if you’re looking for stories without that word, this is not for you.)

I’d give Uncommon Type a fairly high rating on two points. First because you, like me, will probably pick up the book and think, “Tom Hanks wrote a book? Tom Hanks, the actor?” But then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that he can write pretty well. Second, because he has a love of life that is optimistic. I choose optimism over pessimism any day of the week.

I read another book recently by an author whose name starts with b. She wrote an awful book about elephants that doesn’t need to be mentioned by name any more than it needs to be read by anyone, ever. I couldn’t even finish it, it was so putrid. Reading it was like drinking from a puddle that a thirsty dog would avoid. It was like discarded carrion. It was like the stench of an outhouse visited by polecats.

In contrast: Tom Hanks’ book Uncommon Type was like Heaven after that hellacious book about elephants.

Frog Sauce

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It’s kind of like trying to imagine your own death. You can’t do it. No matter how many deaths you may have seen. Plants. Insects. Animals. Humans.

Even if you’ve witnessed the demise of other humans, you’ll be disarmed to try to imagine your own. You’ll suddenly find yourself out of imagination ammunition. You’ll be impeded by your subjective minutiae—every emotion, sensation, determination, and mental construct—we try to inject them in the scenario, ’til the scenario breaks down.

I call it Frog Sauce. Frog secretion is real enough. Its essence is to cause hallucinations in whatever animal comes in contact with it. It’s that natural defense that certain tree frogs have that coats their skin—and to which the frog itself is somehow immune. Lots of questions should immediately pop into your head. Does that happen for you? When I hear some cooly info about some living organism or scientific fact (and even “scientific facts” hee-hee-ha-ha-ho-ho…foo!), I suddenly have a head full of questions. The questions that come to my mind on this one:

Does the frog even know that he is a four-legged drug pusher?

Does the frog ever affect other frogs?

When the frogs are born, do they have this natural defense, or does the process take time? Are younger frogs more potent? Are older frogs impotent? Are pollywogs hyperactive?

Do any other self-destructive animals besides humans ever lick the frog on purpose?

Why do I trip about frogs when I only mean Frog Sauce metaphorically?

 

The “frog sauce” is not the defense, but the idea. That’s why it’s Frog Sauce. It’s all those things that we title and align and robustly define within our minds. It’s all those things so defined that they still elude us. We think we know so much about some distant thing, only to find we’ve been covered in it our whole life.

There’s a mathematical formula for Frog Sauce. It goes a little like this:

For every [ngleekh] there is an unequal, yet necessary [horkh].

 

Read that however you want, because my Frog Sauce is definitely not the same as yours.

 

How To: Debate with Humor

peekholesI tell this joke a lot. It never really happened, but I tell the joke so much, I think people might get the idea that it really went down the way I tell it.

So I was walking down the street and I see this friend of mine coming the other way. This friend of mine told me a long time ago he’s an atheist. We waved at each other and walked up to each other as if to talk, but when he got close enough, I kicked him in the shin really hard. He lurched away shocked and screamed, “Oh my God! What’d you do that for?” So I pointed my finger at him and said, “Ha! I caught you.”

The point of the joke is that even a self-professed atheist will often use the name “God” or “Jesus” in their everyday speech. And the question begged seems to be: Don’t they see the contradiction?

In reality, I have one friend that I know is a confessed atheist. He really does claim to not believe in God, and it takes all of my will-power to not ask him about the specifics of the god he doesn’t believe in. I’m really trying hard not to entrap him like that, because if your friend the “a-the-ist” starts defining God, or any god, you’ve got your friend in that predicament of listing attributes he should have already denied.

Despite my efforts of curbing my prankster self, there is very little wrong with debating people through your sense of humor. Case in point: my “agnostic” friend.

In the real world, I also have an agnostic friend. She has a more cyclic belief system. She says she believes that no one can know God–“if there is one.” Sometimes you can visibly see her facial expression change as she believes in God and then disbelieves. I don’t think it’s funny at all, or rather, I don’t make fun of her about it, but she laughs it off. Could she take on a debate with humor? Absolutely. And I think that makes a world of difference. If you can discuss a subject with someone, and you can both have fun with it, then you’ll both be winners at the end, even though debates are supposed to end with one winner and one loser.

Keeping with the theistic/atheistic theme here, I like to point out to atheists that the word a-the-ist can be broken down exactly like that. The T-H-E in the middle of that word means god (from Greek the or theos, meaning: god). So it’s kind of ironic, and definitely contradictory, that a person who doesn’t believe in a god of any kind would place a reminder of God right in the middle of their chosen name. Even better, the end of the word, the I-S-T part, means a person who adheres to a belief system. So even though the atheist believes there is no god, the atheist still has a belief system, a creed.

I know quite a few more jokes about atheists, and a few about God-fearing folk as well, but I think I’ll share those some other time. For this barchive, I want to end with a quote from Oscar Wilde:

“The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else…”

I’m not even sure he said that in seriousness or facetiousness, but it does seem like people* these days are cultivating that feeling, aren’t they?

 

*Especially me.