March was a little ridiculous, but I’m looking forward to April as a sort of reprieve. I only have one reading on the docket, and it’s one that I’m really excited about. On Friday night, I’ll be a part of Chris Bower’s Fuck Storms: Imaginary Weather Phenomena, featuring stories/poems/monsoons inspired by made-up weather (I wrote a couple of “fact-sheets” for Miyagi’s Revenge and Suddenly Everything Turns to Glass). I had been working on a story about a guy who gets swept up into a tornado, only to discover an entire town living inside that tornado, but I think that’s been abandoned for something stranger. The show’s at a bar I’ve never heard of, Ray’s, at 3049 N. Kimball Ave. Here’s an awesome image by Susie Kirkwood to entice you:
As many have said before, the function of a black president in film and TV has largely been used to signify some sort of alternate reality. It often shows up in various forms of science-fiction or fantasy, whether we’re talking about The Fifth Element or O Presidente Negro. Now, if Obama wins, I’m guessing that we’ll have to see science fiction turn to gay presidents for their alt-universe qualities. I look forward to it.
But to my mind, an impending Obama win (yes, I believe he’s going to win, and anyone who knows how deeply suspicious I am of jinxes, knows this is a big step for me to admit this), isn’t the most incredible sci-fi fantasy come to life. Nope. It’s hologram reporters! On CNN! CNN is actually going to have their field reporters appear as holograms in their studios. Obi-wan will apparently be reporting from Colorado polling places:
A couple years ago, I wrote a story for The Dollar Store called “Eight Permutations on the Binoculars of Power.” It was sort of a funny little piece that takes eight vignettes featuring binoculars and lines them up 1 through 8, then finishes them off 8 through 1. I ended up publishing it as a featherproof mini-book, originally in dearly departed Resonance. It didn’t fit quite right into the main text of Hiding Out so I decided to make it one of the hidden stories (originally, I thought it might run one line at a time, at the bottom of each page). I thought that was probably about as much life as I could expect from the little guy.
But today, I received an email from a guy named Brady Russell, a writer in Philadelphia who downloaded and read a bunch of minis on a train ride to Washington, D.C. (This is what the minis are for, people!). He read and liked Eight Permutations, and wrote his own version, called “8 Permutations on the Electric Screwdriver of Power.” He then challenged his buddies to write one, using the form, and one of his pals has already followed suit.
Russell sort of jokingly claims that the 1 through 8, 8 through 1 style could eventually be called “a messinger.” And considering the amount of stupid stunts I’ve pulled in my time—i.e. ramming a snow sled into a moving vehicle, getting my head stuck in a fence—I wholeheartedly support this, before I do something else that warrants the title. Regardless, it’s fun to see people get into it.
Here’s the original pdf, downloadable off the mothership:
