So...I made a thing...for the internets...

CLASSMATES (and Prof maybe) ASSEMBLE!

Step 1: Go Here: https://www.facebook.com/1985VintageGeek/posts/10153342916542018?pnref=story

Step 2: Make with the funny!

Step 3: Get in my book...not my belly!

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit!

Photo Post!

This is my current workspace (and Playspace). I decided not to pick up first to actually show how I keep my desk and not be all phony with a perfectly clean desk. Note, I know where everything is on the desk that I may need. Messy is a type of organized dammit.

 And this is a photo I took that I like very much. Can you tell what it is?

Why?

I opened my stats
a stat nerd you might say
in my tired haze
my classmates wave

the majority of views
and click-throughs
all arrive via a book
which is currently

exploding

but a small incongruity
stares at me from the bottom
of a list of sites
from which they were

referred to mine
a book exploding
sixteen plus times
and one from

google.co.uk

Everything I Know Up Until Now

I looked down and there was the son
I never had, his face reminding me of a katydid in spring,

young and full of spirit ready to pounce upon
the day in his blue jeans. We stood staring at each

other for a time in which we just studied each other
our faces and souls. In me there was no doubt

never pregnant but this boy was mine I crouched down and
took his hand, warm and small, in mine and said "I'm Annabelle."

In which I read and rate four poems...

These poems come from the 2015 Pushcart Prize Best of the small presses.

I order these by preference of would read again, to good god don't make me read it again.

1. Why we must support PBS by Bob Hicok

I really enjoyed this one because the absurdity of the imagery is astounding and makes sense since the narrator seems to be drifting off to sleep, lord knows I have heard some strange shit on TV while tired.

2. Rape Joke by Patricia Lockwood

Wow! This one, it hits like a semi, you want to laugh the entire way through because you can tell its better than remembering the suffering the narrator went through. This poem may have changed me just a bit.

3. John Clare by Michael Dickman

Woof! This one is long and full of intense images, the length kills it for me though. I may never get the image of kids kissing dogs full on the mouth out of my head any time soon.

4. "Too many pigeons to count and one dove" by Mary Szybist

Hate to put her at the bottom because I have met her and enjoy a lot of her poetry, but this one the form just kept derailing me. All I can tell you without looking again is that there are time stamps...and a poem too...but mostly I remember the time stamps.

(Note: Could not find an online version of Mary's poem...so I linked her profile instead...)

For Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is not the man who made me love writing, he is not the man who made me choose Science Fiction and Fantasy as my preferred genre to both read and write, but he is the man. He is the man who made me realize that sometimes a story can be so profoundly off the wall and still make you look at your own life in retrospect.

He is the man that turned a world into a disc, put it on the backs of four (used to be five) elephants, and then put THEM on the back of a giant turtle swimming throughout the cosmos. He did this, but still made you think about the issues facing Earth while reading about this world that was nothing like our own, yet somehow made us view ours differently.

He is the one who made me imagine a man in wet copper armor standing proudly on the top of a hill shouting at the top of his lungs that "ALL GODS ARE BASTARDS!" and being potentially struck by lightning.

He is the man who made me write, and not just the dark gritty SciFi and the High Fantasy stuff I thought was the best, he is the man who made me create sometimes ridiculous worlds, and fill them with characters who make you laugh and look inward all at once.

He is the man that I fought tooth and nail for a chance to go see in person.

I saw him, and in a brief moment of clarity he saw me, I never thought I would have a more memorable moment than when he answered my previously submitted question. Then I came home. Sir Pratchett suffers from Posterior Cortical Atrophy, as I learned from one of his documentaries it is a rare case of Alzheimers in which he can fill a cup with tea, place it on his counter, turn around, and when he turns back he doesn't see the cup anymore. It did not move, it is still there, he just literally no longer sees it. Because of this he no longer recognizes social cues, if you wave at him, he will not see it, it is one of the many reasons why he rarely saw fans at readings after his 'embuggerance' began to affect him.

I took photos that night, lots of photos to remember being in the presence of a master of writing.

Most photos were like this:

He is talking and looking at his assistant. But as I filtered through them to post them to my Facebook I found this one:

I may have just described his condition to you, but to me, I had learned everything I could about this man and his disease, so this photo floored me, like absolutely gobsmacked. A joke was said, I was laughing with the camera in front of my face taking pictures, and he saw me, he looked right at my camera, and I caught it.

Today I learned this man had to cancel an appearance in the UK at a convention because of his embuggerance has caught up with him. As a man who has adamantly refused to allow his disease to claim him, desiring only to accept death on his own terms, this can only mean one thing.

This man is getting ready to sit in his backyard on his own terms and greet death warmly with a handshake.

The day is coming when this man will no longer walk this Earth.

I do not look forward to this day.

I will never look forward to this day.

But I know it is coming and that is a comfort.

I will grieve for this man, harder than I would have thought, and it will affect me profoundly.

I suspect my future writings will include a man in all black, with a dry wit, and piercing eyes.