Here I was all about to start a blog post called “That’s 2006, then,”
when I realized
I’d already done that
in 2004. Except it was called
“That’s 2004, then.” Because it was 2004 at the time. Not 2006.
One of the problems with writing all the time is I tend to unwittingly
repeat myself. For example, the other day I received an e-mail that
chilled my spine:
Please stop using the line “he’d never seen so many expensive
pairs of shoes in one place.” You have used it in all three novels,
and it has about outlived its utility.
Could I really be unintentionally inserting the same line into
all my books? That would be pretty embarrassing. And probably
sign of some kind of encroaching mental defect. Some kind of
new encroaching mental defect, I mean. So I went searching
through my manuscripts. Sure enough I found this in Jennifer
Government:
John had never been surrounded by so many good pairs of shoes.
… and this in Company:
It turns out to be a bar so stylish that it has dispensed with anything
as obvious as trying to look like a bar, and at at seven o’clock on a
Friday evening it is full of deep orange sunshine and more pairs
of expensive shoes than Jones has ever seen in one place.
But I couldn’t find anything similar in Syrup, thank God.
That’s only two out of three! I reckon that lets me off the hook.
And what about all the lines that aren’t the same? Nobody
writes in about those!
Anyway, that’s it from me for the year. Thanks so much to all you guys who
visit my site, and read my books, and validate my life. If it wasn’t
for you, I’d be broke, bitter, and spending most nights fighting
homeless guys for loose change. Well, I do that anyway, but it’s
a lifestyle choice.
Apparently some people go through life without regret. They
make mistakes, but chalk these up to experience and move
on. I would like to meet one of those people and shake them hard.
I’m the other type: one of those people who breaks into a cold
sweat at one a.m. because I just remembered the time in 1989 when I
asked this girl out and she thought I was joking, so I tried to
play along. In fact, now I think about it, that happened a couple of times.
I probably needed to rework my approach.
But the thing that really haunts me is that one particular person
has been present at nearly all of my greatest humiliations.
This is Elke, who I lived next door to when we were both babies. There
are lots of photos of us playing naked in the splash pool; our parents
joked that one day we’d get married; you know the deal.
Well, Elke grew up to be beautiful, smart, generous, and kind to
animals. And I’m quite sure she thinks I’m the biggest asshole
on the planet, because every time she’s seen me in the last twenty
years, I’ve been rude, drunk, committing a crime, insulting her
brother, or some combination of the above.
It’s eerie. I don’t think she’s inspiring me to these depths. She just
always happens to be there, staring at me in shock.
I swear, if I took off my pants, walked down the street,
beat up a nun, and mugged a homeless person, I would turn around
and there would be Elke. It’s like my life is a sitcom and she’s my running
gag. Only since I’m in it, it’s not that funny.
I understand that we all do dumb things now and again. What I don’t
get is why all of mine happen in front of this one person, whom I otherwise
never see. It’s a little disturbing to know there’s someone out
there with a perfectly rational basis for thinking I’m a scumbag.
I haven’t seen Elke for many years, which at least means that I haven’t
done anything seriously embarrassing since then. But one day I hope to run
into her again, so I can say, “Look, I know what you must think about me.
And I won’t try to change your mind. I just want to say I’m really
sorry.” Then I would probably barf on her dog.
The other day two people threatened to sue me. Admittedly, they were employees
of the same company. But still: two in 24 hours is a new record for me.
It’s also the first time I’ve been threatened by a company,
not an individual. But, like all the others, it was related to
NationStates,
the nation simulation web game I wrote.
To whom it may concern:
There is a “counrty” on your webite called “Allevia”. Allevia is a
TRADEMARKED name and may not be used on your website. You will be
receiving registered mail shortly from our legal councel here in
Switzerland. We advise that you remove the trademarked name from
your site without delay.
Sincerely,
N. Jackson
At first I thought this was a stunt by a NationStates player,
trying to get
the Allevia nation
into trouble—because players can be devious like that. But there is
a real Swiss company called Allevia,
so I wrote to them to ask if this was for real.
Before long I had a reply from Pierre Mainil-Varlet, MD, PhD, MBA,
Allevia’s Chief Operating Officer. Pierre confirmed it was genuine, and
if I didn’t scrub Allevia from NationStates, “a legal action will be started.”
Now I was confused. It’s not like Allevia is such a bad nation.
It’s a democracy, has excellent civil rights, low unemployment, and its
national animal was the Tufted Penguin. Those
are some cool birds. Sure, it’s a corporate bordello, but whose country
isn’t, these days? So I had trouble seeing what this company’s
problem was—other than the fact that
Google’s “allevia”
results listed someone who wasn’t them at number five.
I wrote to Pierre expressing my doubts:
Could you please explain why you believe the use of the Allevia name
by one of our players is illegal? To my eye it just looks like
coincidence—nothing about the account suggests the player is referring
to (or even aware of) your company. Should nationstates.net be in breach
of the law, then by all means we will comply, but I’m a little puzzled
about what law you think is being broken here.
Pierre fired back a very interesting reply. Before I reveal that, though,
here is a quiz. Imagine you discover an unrelated use of your company’s name
in an obscure online computer game. There’s nothing
offensive or damaging about it, but still, it bugs you that the internet
isn’t reserved solely for your marketing messages. What do you do?
Your options:
Ignore it, because it has nothing to do with you, and your time is better
spent doing whatever the hell it is that your company is supposed to do.
Write a polite letter explaining the situation, keeping in mind that in
many parts of the world, including all the relevant ones,
threatening legal action over a trademark without a genuine basis
is illegal and exposes your company to counter-action.
If you selected #3, you could be Allevia’s Chief Operating Officer.
Pierre agreed with me that it was “a total coincidence and not bad will from
the player.” And he further acknowledged that not only is “allevia” a common
Italian word, but it’s used by Estee Lauder to refer
to a fragrance. However, he claimed:
[We] own all other field of application including computer games and
softawre software. The situation would be the same if you would use the name
coca cola.. You would be place into difficulties
He also assured me again that this was a serious matter and Allevia
“will be consequent in our action,” which I took to mean something bad.
Around now I began to wonder if our player should sue Pierre. After all,
the player was running a respectable nation; he wouldn’t want to be confused
with a Swiss-based manufacturer of empty legal threats.
I was also tickled by Pierre’s use of the Coca-Cola example. I mean,
of all the companies to choose from, and all the people to try it on:
he chooses Coke, and the guy who wrote a novel set in that company
and had it published in ten countries.
I was a little tempted to fake up a letter from Coke, saying it had come
to their attention that Pierre had used their trademarked name in an email without
permission, and now they were going to sue. Because Pierre didn’t seem to
understand that trademark law prohibits people from passing themselves
off as you—not from talking about you, or using the same coincidental series
of letters in unrelated contexts.
But I didn’t do that. Pierre CCed his last email to a bunch of
people inside Allevia, presumably to impress upon them how decisively
he was taking care of business. Following that, I couldn’t get him to
write back to me, no matter how sneakily I encouraged him to say
something else outlandish. So I’m guessing someone on that CC list
knocked on his office door and had a gentle conversation with him about what the
hell he was doing.
Which makes it a happy ending, in my book. The great nation of Allevia survives,
its intelligent, well-educated citizens free to lead their lives unmolested
in their beautiful, progressive, somewhat economically fragile nation.
And, somewhere in Switzerland, a Chief Operating Officer grows a little
sadder, but perhaps also a little wiser.
Okay, look, I’m trying to keep low-key about this. I don’t want to make
it into a whole deal. But I just finished the first draft of my new
book, and OH MY GOD I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about this, because from experience I know
the moment I say, “This book I’m working on is going quite well,” that’s
the first moment of a week of black, empty wordlessness. You just can’t
tempt the gods like that. So I have been very good. I haven’t said
anything to anybody, even though I have desperately wanted to grab someone
and yell, “It’s the best book ever! It’s the best book ever!”
Now I should confess that I often become overly enamored with my own books
while I’m writing them. It’s a good thing, because if I saw them
objectively, these staggering, newborn first drafts, I’d probably be so
appalled that I wouldn’t be able to keep working on them. Blind love at
this point is a prerequisite.
And next, I’m sure I’m going to read this draft and discover the myriad
ways in which it’s not as wonderful as I thought. But that’s also a good
thing: just as I can’t write if I’m in a critical frame of mind, I can’t
edit unless I am. So I need to change modes. I need to give it some
tough love.
But before I do, I’m just going to say it: this has been
the best writing experience of my life.
I did two things differently this time. First, I had a
daily maximum word limit. I
probably broke this more times than I honored it, but still, I
think it was helpful. It was good to feel a little naughty when I
wrote 800 words in a day. And it was good to be able to leave it at
200 words when the scene needed more thought, rather than feeling like
I should push on with whatever I had at the time.
The second thing I did differently was refuse to plot. Well, I’ve always
done that; this time I actively tried to destroy my own plotting. Whenever
I realized I’d figured out what was going to happen next, I changed my mind.
My goal was to avoid any kind of cruise mode, where I feel that the story is ticking
along nicely and I don’t want to screw anything up, so I just let things play
out.
This time I deliberately kept messing things up. Sometimes
that meant I spent most of my writing time looking out the window trying
to figure out what would happen instead. And by the time I got to the
ending, all I knew was that it couldn’t possibly be what I’d originally
imagined.
I’m sure this helped my characters, because I constantly looked to them for
the next step instead of trying to nudge them down my pre-determined
path. And although I have a bunch of stuff I need to go back and insert
to make the stuff I only thought up later work, I think the plot that
grew out of this chaos is actually pretty good.
But most of all: oh man, it was such cool fun. I’ve had the best time.
(Note:
I know somebody’s going to ask about timelines, so: at a guess, I’ll
be ready to show this to my editor in maybe 6-12 months. If he decides
he wants to publish it, then add about 12 months before it would appear
on the shelves. I know, I know. Sorry.)
By now four thousand people have told me about
the shooting at the Playstation 3 launch.
Well, all right, it wasn’t four thousand.
It was sixteen. Fifteen, if you don’t count the guy who thought it was over
an XBox. (I love it when people remember everything about a marketing
promotion except the product. Just knowing that some marketing executive
signed off on a million-dollar campaign only to boost his competition
gives me a warm feeling inside.)
Not that I’m saying Sony deliberately engineered a stock shortage and
then hired an assassin to shoot someone in the stampede in order
to build up the hype. That would be unspeakably immoral. To
rip off the opening of Jennifer Government so blatantly, I mean.
I’m thinking about creating a special section on this site: “Stuff that
happened in real life that’s kind of like one of Max’s books.” That way I won’t
feel the need to salute each individual event: I can just add it to the list.
Then on cold, quiet nights when I’m feeling insecure, I can browse that list
and feel good about myself again. The best part is there need never be a list
of “Things that were predicted in one of Max’s books and, boy, was he off-base.”
Those things just haven’t come true yet.
Of course, it’s not that hard to predict advances in marketing. You just
imagine what you’d do if you wanted to sell something and had
absolutely no morals, self-respect,
or dignity. Wait six months, and bing! There it is.
A
reader named Richard e-mailed me about the new energy
drink “Cocaine.” He did this when it was still quite topical, but I’ve been
falling behind on my e-mail again, so I only just found out. In a few weeks
time I’m planning to find out how those mid-term elections are shaping up.
Anyway, my thought today isn’t about Cocaine specifically, because everything
about that product turns out to be exactly as you’d expect:
The inventor came up with the name at 1 a.m.
The name offended a bunch of people, who complained, which generated a lot
of publicity, which helped sales
It’s anyone’s guess what it tastes like, because the articles about it
and even the product’s own website
consider that an irrelevant side detail
The complaints, of course, were that the product glamorizes and legitimizes
the illegal drug cocaine. Just as obviously, the manufacturers were shocked that
anyone could imply there was some kind of connection between the drug cocaine
and their product, Cocaine. They wrote:
Well, we think that kids today are neither ignorant, nor uninformed. As a matter
of fact, we think that you are the brightest and most informed generation in the
history of the world. How else would you be able to navigate your way to our MySpace?
I was intrigued by how impressed these guys are with their customers. I mean,
they really think they’re clever. That seemed like an odd conclusion to reach
about people who buy sodas just because they have a funny name. And it occurred
to me that whenever I hear a company telling their customers how smart they
are, it seems they’re selling a stupid product.
Take cigarettes. I’m not saying you have to be stupid
to smoke. But it certainly helps if you have a poorly developed ability to
anticipate logical consequences. Yet it’s hard to find an industry more
deeply moved by their customers’ intellectual powers than tobacco.
If you ask Altria,*
smokers aren’t just customers, they’re proud warriors for freedom of choice, fighting
against nanny-government interference in our personal lives. In fact, you
probably don’t realize it, but many people smoke even though they hate it,
just to express their refusal to bow to the military-industrial complex.
Similar, sometimes companies implore you to
“make up your own mind.”
Their argument seems to be that if you’re smart, you’ll ignore the overwhelming body
of evidence that says their product is dangerous, and instead
reach an independent conclusion based on their promotional web site.
To test the apparent correlation between how smart companies
tell you they think you are and how stupid their product is,
I plugged the phrase “our customers are intelligent” into Google and noted
the top product categories to come up. If companies tended to say that
because they really did have smart customers, you might expect to see telescopes
and pocket protectors. If, on the other hand, companies tended
to tell their customers they were smart as a piece of transparent marketing,
you might see:
Shoes
Diamond engagement rings
Domain name hosting
Web site design
…which is what came up. That seems about right to me: two products that
are sold for an order of magnitude more than they cost to manufacture, a service
that offers the exact same thing as two thousand other companies, and a web site design
company that claims, “When Microsoft begged us to help them with their
website we were far too busy with other projects and had to turn them down.”
Although, to be fair, companies offering domain name hosting and web
site design come up no
matter what you put into Google. They’re just part of the landscape, like
insects, or Paris Hilton.
(* “Altria” used to be called Phillip Morris. According to its web site, the
company changed its name “to better clarify its identity as the owner of food and
tobacco companies that manage some of the world’s most successful brands.” That’s
good to know. I’d thought they did it just so people wouldn’t realize they were
the same pack of lying, murderous bastards.)
If you were wondering what that strange feeling you had recently
was—a sensation like some great evil in the world had suddenly
been put to rights—then I’m happy to explain: Company has
got itself an Australian publication date.
About time, I know. It’s very weird to be published overseas
but not at home. I wouldn’t mind if my book was completely ignored or
flayed by critics, so long as people could at least find it in
a bookshop. Well, I’d mind a little. No, you’re right, that would
suck. But having Company unavailable in my home country
really niggled at me this year. I’m very happy to be getting that
fixed.
In film news, I spoke to
Steve Pink
recently—he’s the guy writing the Company screenplay. I
gotta say, when the film rights sold to this book, I had no idea
how it could be a movie. I mean, it was barely a novel.
For me, it was more like colonic irrigation: by the end, I felt like I’d
flushed out everything I had left to say about corporate life. But
Steve described some scenes to me, and they sounded very
funny. So now I’m intrigued.
Apparently if this film gets made, Jen and I get to fly first class
to the premiere. Jen thinks this is the most exciting
thing ever. Not the movie. The chance to fly first class.
Last
night I sat down with Fin to read her a bedtime story, and she
did the most amazing thing. She reached for the book, but two of
her fingers were caught in her sleeve, so first she stretched her
arm straight out, popping her hand free, then took the book.
Maybe that doesn’t sound so amazing. But I was flabergasted.
It was so grown up.
When I first saw Fin, she was seven cells. I saw her on a TV
monitor, while Fin herself floated around inside an IVF doctor’s
syringe. For the month prior to that, she was in frozen storage
(and for this reason was called “Popsicle” during
most of the pregnancy). She was seven cells. And now
she can free her hand from her sleeve and climb stairs and
wave at trains and moo at pictures of cows.
She’s 14 months old today. I know they grow up fast. But: wow.
Now you know I hate blowing my own trumpet every time something happens
in the real world that’s straight out of one of my books. Well, maybe
“hate” is too strong a word. I mean, “enjoy on a deep, almost
sexual level.” Yeah. That’s more like it.
Anyway, I think this one is worth mentioning because it’s at the more extreme
end: it’s that thing in Jennifer Government where everyone takes
their surname from their employer. John Nike. Billy NRA. Violet ExxonMobil.
And so on.
There’s a historical precedent for this: in centuries past,
John Smith was the town blacksmith, Tim Baker really was a baker, and
Geoff Wang was… well, let’s not think. In the Jennifer
Government world, where a person’s job is the most important
thing about them, returning to that concept made
sense to me. Also, when I worked in sales, I’d get a call from “Michael
Jamieson” or whoever, and frantically think, “Jamieson, Jamieson… who
the hell is that?” It would have been so much simpler if he was “Michael
McDonald’s.”
Now, we’ve already seen
people selling
their surnames to corporations,
and even a particularly disturbing case of
parents auctioning naming rights to their baby.
But does it really count as a fulfilled prophesy when the people doing
the fulfilling are missing some essential part of their brain?
I dunno. I think that’s a little like saying, “I foresee a day when
people will smack themselves in the face with hammers for fun,” and then
claiming it came true because of my cousin Donny. Poor Donny. Well, you
pity his parents, mostly. But back to the issue. For me to feel
like I really nailed this one, it has to be done in all seriousness.
Nobody should even see anything wrong with it.
So here we are. Lately companies have been stampeding into
Second Life, a virtual reality
of the kind that everyone thought
the internet would be, before discovering it was just typing and
clicking on links. In Second Life, you create an avatar—a little person
to be—and run around… um, doing stuff. You know, like walking around…
or going shopping… or building a house. But without having to stand
up.
So. The news agency Reuters just
opened an office
there and assigned reporter Adam Pasick to the beat. So now there’s an
avatar that looks like Adam in Second Life, reporting on news.
Only what’s his name? Adam Reuters.
I’m reading a succession of crappy books. Not deliberately. That would
be weird. It just turned out this way: dud after dud. Every time I
crack open a new one, I hope that I’m about to get that feeling:
that moment when I realize, “Ooh, this is good.” But: nope. Nothing.
I’ve even started abandoning books before the end,
which I never used to do no matter how bad they were. (Instead, I
would complain to Jen every night until I finished, stopping to point
out particularly egregious passages. She prefers the new method.)
So it’s a good time to remember that I have read some
good books recently. Of course, when
I say “recently,” I mean “since I last updated
my list of favorite reads,”
i.e. in the last three years.
But if I can assume that you care about
my opinion, and aren’t here just because you googled for lonelygirl15,
then maybe you’re interested in my recommendations.
Here are some books that, if you stopped by my house and said, “Got
anything good to read?”, I would loan to you. I mean, once we had gotten past
the screaming and “how did you get in here” stage.
Corpsing (Toby Litt):
This was the first book of Toby’s I ever read, and I
loved it so much that I keep buying more of his, even though
all of those have turned out to be terrible. For me, Toby is that guy
you know is trouble but can’t keep away from, because maybe this time
it will be different; maybe he’ll treat you right. He never does. He’s
a bad, bad man.
The Baroque Cycle:
Quicksilver,
The Confusion, and
The System of the World (Neal Stephenson):
I adored these. Almost everybody I’ve recommended
them to has given up about 150 pages into the first book, saying, “Why
the hell did you think I’d like that?” It’s inexplicable. I think
all three books are amazing. If I had tried to write something like this, it would
have taken me about 40 years. In fact, it would have taken me that long just
to type them out, because they’re about 900 pages each.
A
Certain Chemistry (Mil Millington):
The British do excruciating better than anybody. Reading this was like
having my fingernails pulled out, only with more laughing. When I’d
finished I felt like I had been beaten around the head, but with love.
Because
of this I’m putting it ahead of
Things
My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, which is also very good and
possibly funnier.
The
Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger):
This one is a rough ride, too. Some of it is astonishingly beautiful,
some is unbearably tragic. I thought it dragged a little in the middle,
but still loved it.
Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon):
I’ve been reading some comics lately, and this one is gorgeous. Book
3 (“Torn”) is especially juicy. Joss Whedon is, of course, one of the greatest
human beings to ever walk the Earth, and he’s in great form here.
I obsessively read X-Men comics in high school and college, and
it’s very cool to return to these characters and see them handled so well.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon):
I have never heard anyone say anything bad about this book, ever.
So there’s no need for me to praise it. I’ll just say: they’re right.
The Men Who Stare At Goats (Jon Ronson) [non-fiction]:
This book started out as a light, ridiculous, funny read, then turned dark
and disturbing. I love that.
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (Robert Rankin):
It’s funny and it’s clever, but more than that it has a surprising and
truly wonderful
dynamic between the two main characters. Warm, snuggly, and gooey (in
a good way).
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell (Susanna Clarke):
I don’t usually read the backs of books until I’ve finished them, but
I snuck a look at this one early and discovered that it was Time
Magazine’s Book of the Year (2004). I wish I hadn’t
done that, because from that point onward all I could think was,
“Well, it’s good, but is it Book of the Year good?” So try not
to do that. It is an absorbing read: simultaneously rich and dry.
Watching Racehorses: A Guide to Betting on Behaviour (Geoffrey Hutson) [non-fiction]:
I don’t care about racehorses. I have no interest in betting on them. I
only read this book because Geoff is a neighbor. But it was genuinely
fascinating, very funny, and worth it for the section on clitoral
winking alone. (I know. Intriguing.)
Haunted (Chuck Palahniuk):
This is a bunch of short stories with a novel wrapped around it.
As with any short story collection, the quality varies, but some of the
ones in here scared the absolute crap out of me. So even though I wouldn’t
rate this as Chuck’s best, it was a good read. Incidentally,
I read a review of this in The Washington Post that was more like
a drive-by shooting, with several bullets aimed below the belt,
and noticed that Amazon.com chose
that one, that one, to put on their site. It was nice to see that
that doesn’t just happen to me.
The Beach (Alex Garland):
Yeah, it’s already on my old list. But I re-read it,
and ohhh, it’s so good.
Well, that was good timing. No sooner had I posted a blog about my
irrepressible zest for life than the rumblings began. At first I
just thought I was hungry. It was dinner time, so I popped down the
street and bought myself a hamburger and chips. It was good. It was
tasty. And a couple of hours later, it began an emergency evacuation.
I don’t remember having had gastro before. And I’m pretty sure that
I would remember this. This was the single most disgusting experience
of my life. That’s why I feel compelled to share it with you. Not
because I think you want to know. God, no. If you’ve got any sense
at all, you’ll walk away right now, sit in the corner, plug your
ears with your fingers, and shout, “La la la la!” until I’ve
stopped talking. No, this isn’t for your benefit; this is because
I went through such a colossal life-changing experience that I
need to talk about it to believe it really happened.
Not too long ago, I was talking to a friend about colonic
irrigation—long story—and she mentioned that the average person
carries around four pounds of compacted fecal matter. Yeah, sorry,
now you’ll never be able to not know that again, either. Well, on the
positive side, I am fairly confident that I am no longer one of those
people.
One thing I found particularly remarkable was how big my stomach
must be. I mean, just judging from the available evidence, I must
be usually carrying around a shopping bag’s worth of food and
associated juices in there. Well, mostly juices. But still. Unless it was
expanding on exit, I just don’t see how everything could fit.
Jen and Fin both got gastro as well, but less spectacularly. In
fact, Fin’s hardly seemed to bother her: she had a couple of yucks,
then got on with business. I suppose when you’re a baby,
fluids periodically rushing out of your body without your permission is just
part of your daily routine. No need to write a blog about it.
But me, I have a whole new appreciation for the human body. No, wait,
“appreciation” isn’t the right word. Fear. That’s what I meant. I’ve
been reminded that I’m not completely in charge of this thing; that,
under certain circumstances, something else is going to take over the
controls for a while. And that’s an alarming idea. Although, boy: what a
show!
This means I’m immature. At least, according to the world’s great
thinkers. If we’re to call ourselves mature, intelligent
adults, apparently we must each
come to terms with the things we cannot change in life, and one of
these is that it must inevitably end. If you refuse to accept this,
it’s a sign that you are still in a child-like state.
But come on. Isn’t the only reason that we die because we haven’t
got the technology right yet? I once heard an Australian scientist,
Dr. Kruszelnicki, say that the current generation was probably
going to be the last to die or the first to live forever. I
tell you what, if I miss the immortal generation by a few
years, I’ll be pissed.
I don’t get why more people aren’t upset about this. I mean,
I’ve read angry letters to the editor about cabbages. Where’s the
outrage about the inevitability of death?
Seriously, which offends you more: petrol
prices, or the idea that one day people will either burn your
body or bury it?
Okay, there’s the afterlife argument. I’m not convinced. First,
even if you buy the idea that after you die, you go to a better
place, that strikes me as a little too much like, “Hey guys,
let’s ditch this party; I heard that other one’s way better!”
I’m sorry, but I’m enjoying this party. I don’t want to travel
halfway across the city only to discover that all the cool people
already left or we got the address wrong or the driver decides it’s kind
of late so maybe we should just go home. “Let’s go to the other
party” never works, and I don’t see why it should start working
just because I’m dead.
Nope, I want to stay here. It’s not because I have a phobia about
death. Actually, I don’t see how you can have a phobia
about death, because a phobia is an “irrational fear,” and I
can’t think of anything more rational to be frightened of than
imminent nonexistence. But no, it’s not that I’m scared, exactly.
It’s that I think it stinks.
So lonelygirl15
turns out to be a fake. What looked like the intimate video diary of
a 16-year-old girl named Bree is actually “a new art form,”
courtesy of three L.A. filmmakers. And Bree is really a 19-year-old
actress from New Zealand named Jessica Rose.
Some of the thousands of fans who followed
her videos on YouTube
are upset. Some are angry—very angry. Some don’t see the problem. Some think the videos are more interesting now that they know they’re made up, and some feel like they lost a friend.
Me, I’m voting this a neat piece of marketing.
True, they’re not selling anything. That’s the good news: this didn’t turn
out to be an ad for acne cream or a movie. The creators
say:
We want you to know that we aren’t a big corporation. We are just like you. A few people who love good stories. We hope that you will join us in the continuing story of Lonelygirl15, and help us usher in an era of interactive storytelling where the line between “fan” and “star” has been removed, and dedicated fans like yourselves are paid for their efforts. This is an incredible time for the creator inside all of us.
It’s funny that people who created something so interesting could write something this dumb.
lonelygirl15 didn’t succeed because it told a compelling story. It succeeded because people thought it was real. Without the deception, there’s nothing special. The filmmakers knew this; they went to a lot of trouble to keep up the pretense, to the extent of posting personal replies, as Bree, to people who wrote in. They built fake relationships with fans. And now some of those fans feel like pauldonald:
the reason why im annoyed is because people are going to use this website to try to boost there acting career so now you cant trust anyone on youtube and i
do wish bree was real because i fell in love with the character. im not sure if i like jessica rose coz from the pics i have seen she seems like the total opposite of lonelygirl coz she seems like a easy party girl but even though this is fake im not mad at the person who made this even though it was a bit of a spit in the face.
This is what makes it marketing, not storytelling. Storytelling doesn’t abuse its audience. Without the bit at the start that says, “This is made up,” it’s not storytelling; it’s just lying.
Every fiction writer in history has probably been annoyed by how much more power a “true story” seems to have. But that’s the deal we make: we admit up front that our tale isn’t true, then we desperately try to make it as authentic as possible. Doing it the other way around—claiming to have a true story and filling it with fiction—that just pisses me off. Storytelling? A new art form? Give me a break. When you agree to the deal, then you can be storytellers. Until then, you’re marketers.
My daughter has a thing for buttons. She’s fascinated by them.
Especially buttons that light up or make a beep when you press
them—those can keep her occupied for ages—but keyboards
are fun, too. She seems to have a particular talent for finding
obscure functions or keypress combinations; she’s sent text
messages, made phone calls, and locked up my computer.
Now Fin has made a movie. She was playing with the mobile phone,
and it has a camera function, and somehow she recorded a short
video clip. I have no idea how.
I don’t want to hype it up too
much, because she is only 12 months old. But I don’t think I’m
exaggerating to say that it’s probably the most insightful, spiritual,
brilliant, and meaningful piece of cinema ever made. The ending…
well, I won’t spoil it. Judge for yourself.
If you’re not seeing the vid above, you can view it
here or
here.
My publisher just made a big mistake. They e-mailed me a list of the
places they’re thinking of sending me on my 2007 US book tour,
and I said, “How about I put this on my web site and ask what
people think?” And my publicist, Martin—I think he must be
new; it’s the only explanation—said, “Good idea.”
What Martin fails to realize is that I have just cleverly arranged
for everyone who will be upset that I’m not coming to their town
to be angry at him instead of me.
What Martin
should have done is what all my previous publicists did:
present the schedule only when it’s nailed down. That way I’m left
helplessly trying to explain to irate, neglected fans why I’m
visiting four cities on the west coast but none between L.A. and
New York.
Instead, what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a tentative
schedule. And the publisher wants to know what you think.
So go ahead! And remember: there’s no reason they couldn’t send me
to every town in America, if they cared enough!
Okay, that’s not true. I was exaggerating for comic effect. The
number of cities is probably fixed, due to financial
reasons and the fact that I’m not that famous. But if you’ve
got a good reason why they should send me to one place and not another,
post in the comments here and Martin will read it.
Here’s the list:
Boston
Chicago
Ann Arbor
Dallas
Austin
Denver/Boulder
San Francisco
Either Madison or Los Angeles
It is actually very cool for a publisher to do this. In fact, I’ve
never heard of one asking fans where they’d like an author to visit
before.
Update: Whoa! That’s a lot of comments. I
found out that Martin
is on vacation this week, so I guess he’ll come back to a nice surprise.
Wait, I mean, “violent argument.” That’s it.
In
the comments of my last blog, member Ralf observed that
there’s a German edition of Company coming out, and
they’ve posted the cover online. I’m glad I have people like
Ralf to tell me these things. He’s more up-to-date with what’s
happening in my career than I am. From now on I’ll get him to
write my blogs.
The German cover is very interesting, because I have absolutely no
idea what it means. Now, I’m used to foreign publishers making
inexplicable changes
that I can only hope make more sense in their native language and
culture. Especially if it’s the Germans, who are yet to publish
a book of mine with anything even vaguely resembling the original
title. (Syrup became “Fukk” and Jennifer Government
is “Logoland”.) Because “chefsache” does not, as you might assume,
mean “company.” It means “top priority case.”
My guess is that it must be common German management-speak, like “action
items” or “Let’s take this offline” or “We’ve outsourced your
job to India.” But the cover is more perplexing. I honestly
can’t figure it out. And I’m usually good at this kind of thing.
Once in high school I sat for an IQ test where they gave me sets of
cards with pictures on them, and I was asked to arrange them to make
logical stories. I scored lower on that test than anyone. My problem
was that I kept seeing logical stories that weren’t there:
I would arrange my cards in
a sequence that made perfect sense to me—that spun tales of pathos
and drama, of tragedy and triumph—and look proudly at the teacher
only to see her eyes flick down to the answer sheet, and return,
sympathetically, to meet mine.
After that, they wouldn’t let me near sharp objects.
But this one is a mystery to me. Is that guy exploding? Why? And
why is he wearing sunglasses? Help me out here: what do you
think this cover means?
At first I thought that people tattooing themselves with logos
might represent a cultural bottoming-out; a sign
that we had reached the flattest part of our ongoing subjugation
to corporations. But now I realize you can sink lower:
you can tattoo yourself with a stupid logo.
I guess it makes sense; if you’re the kind of person who thinks it’s
a good idea to imprint your body with a company’s logo, you’re
probably not that discerning about which logo you choose. Or about
anything, really. I offer into evidence the choice of Peter McBride,
who is the proud new owner of
a Polo pony logo
just above his left nipple.
Now, I don’t want to come right out and say that Pete is the low point
of human civilization—I mean, there was Hitler. But looking at that
photo… gee, it’s a tough call.
Apparently Pete made his choice while waiting in line at the tattoo parlor.
This reinforces my belief that it’s always a mistake to try to execute
a plan before you’ve thought of one. I mean, if Pete had woken
one morning and thought, “Yes, I want to create permament, physical
evidence that I’m so desperate to find an identity that I’m willing
to suck at the watery brand image run-off of P.R. companies and marketing
consultants,” that would be one thing. A disturbing thing, sure.
But at least you could admire the fact that he had a vision and
carried it out. But that is not what Pete did. Pete decided,
“I want to permanently mark my skin with… oh, whatever. I’ll
think of something when I get there.”
According to the article, logo tattoos are getting more popular.
And “requests range from Chanel and Gucci
to Windows and PlayStation.”
Chanel and Gucci I understand, even if
it’s a little like calling your daughter Porsche. But PlayStation?
If you’re getting a logo tattoo, don’t you perhaps want to avoid
products that will be obsolete this time next year?
And Windows! Windows, the McDonald’s
of technology! Why not just tattoo “I don’t know that much about computers”
on yourself? Any self-respecting computer geek who saw someone with
a Windows tattoo would fall about laughing. And then punch them in
the face. Which is really saying something, because we are not
a violent people.
At least the end of the article offers a glimmer of hope:
A tattoo artist who goes only by the name Ennis says
a man recently came in with a Lacoste crocodile on his
neck. “He wanted it off,” says Ennis. “He didn’t say why.
He just said get rid of it.”
It’s probably time for a big update on what the hell is going on
with some of projects I’ve mentioned in the past. On the one hand,
the reason I haven’t posted any news is because I have nothing
to report. But on the other, it’s probably annoying of me
to post some big announcement then go quiet for months about it.
So here’s the latest.
The Syrup Movie
There has been some good stuff happening, but I’m on strict
instructions not to talk about it. Essentially, the producers at
Fortress are trying to match the script I wrote with some
appropriately cool film-makers. At this stage I’m reasonably hopeful
that this is going to happen. Which means there is a non-zero
chance of seeing a good Syrup movie some time this decade.
I know! I’m excited too.
The Jennifer Government Movie
Section 8, the production company owned by George Clooney and Stephen
Soderbergh, recently
broke up,
and I got the film rights back. Clooney and
Grant Heslov have formed a new production company called Smoke House,
and it’s possible the project might re-form there. Or it might
not. If it doesn’t, there are some other good potential homes for
it. So while this film is about as far away from production
as ever, it has lots of potential.
The Company Movie
Nothing to report here yet; it’s very early in development.
My next novel
I’m working on a book. I would love to tell you how it’s going,
but I know if I do it will be the last coherent sentence I ever
write. I’m superstitious like that. But I am making plenty of
progress. I feel like this time I might end up doing much less
re-writing than usual. Of course, I always think that.
This is my top priority by far, and what I’m spending
most of my time on.
The Maximum Words strategy has
proved difficult to stick to. I keep cheating, like deliberately
not checking the word count when I know I’m over. Still, I think it’s
helping.
The sci-fi TV series
I wrote up a proposal, which I’m actually quite fond of. It
probably needs another polish or two and then my agent will see
if anyone but me likes it. This is a very long shot, since
it’s insanely hard to get a TV series up. I am not packing my
bags for LA just yet.
The Australian TV show with Wil Anderson
Hasn’t progress due to the enormous trouble Wil and I have
locating ourselves in the same city simultaneously. We have a good
concept, though, so I hope we can get something on paper this year.
Foreign editions of Company
I wish I had something to tell you. This bugs me like nothing else.
Project S
There’s something else I’m brewing up, but I’m not allowed to
talk about it. It would be one of the coolest things I’ve ever
done, though, so I’m seriously hoping it comes off. Yes, you
heard it here first!
And I think that’s it. Huh. That was kind of underwhelming.
But now you’re up to date! That’s got to be worth something, doesn’t
it?
(Language warning: Today’s blog contains profanity. And how! There’s
tons of it. Not from me; I’m quoting someone else. But if you prefer
your computer screens unsullied, you probably don’t want to scroll
any further down. Or, as another tactic, you could squint a
little and tilt your head to the left. Quotes are italicized, you see;
so you might not be able to quite make out the words. Of course,
you won’t make any sense of the blog, either. And you’ll look kind of
stupid. But it’s up to you. I’m just providing you with sufficient
information to make an informed choice.)
Today I stumbled upon
some
guy’s list of his favorite blogs. All right,
when I say “stumbled upon,” I mean I heard about
Google Blog Search,
and immediately typed in the subject I care about most,
i.e. me. Anyway, my site is on this list—which is not a ringing
endorsement so much as the anthropic principle in action. But here’s
what he said:
Max Barry. Author of several really good books. Seems to be one of the
few authors who really maintains a blog just for the joy of occasional
communication instead of promoting an agenda.
This pleased me very much. I do love that communication, and
while I can’t claim to be agenda-free—not with this many arch-enemies—I’m
very happy that, to one guy at least, that’s not what I’m here for.
A lot of my e-mail is indeed a joy. A lot is spam for Viagra and
hot stock picks, too, but I get more warm, funny, and fawning e-mail
than anyone really has a right to.
As an example, here’s one I
received a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t going to post it,
because whenever I do that quite a few people e-mail
me in a similar vein, presumably hoping I’ll post theirs, too. And in
this case, that would be scary. But in many ways it represents
everything that’s great fun about what I get to do here.
From Kale:
(FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK… say something witty…. FUUUUCK…. DID I
SPELL THAT WRITE? HE THINK IMSTOPID IF I DONT SPELL WRITE!!!!!!!)
Hey Maxeroooooney, ever read Everyone in Silico? Or Torture the Artist?
P.S. I want to marry Six…Is there anyway I can OFFICIALLY marry a
fictious character? Because if so…Im marrying that woman.
I don’t usually reply to my email (which is terrible,
I know), but I banged out a quick response
to this one:
Yes, no, and if you try that, I’m calling the cops.
Max.
Then Kale responded:
OMG YOU REPLIIIEDDDD!!! Ahaha…ahahah…
Your books, Mr.Barry, are incredible. I weep everytime I think on
them. When bystanders at the arcade I work at ask me whats wrong,
I just cry harder…FUCKING BEAUTIFUL…BRILLAINT…NO MORE WORDS.
…FUCK, I would love to meet and help ANY of your characters in
WHATEVER way they needed. Do me a favor…and im completely serious…
PLEASE…
PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE… name a character
Kale. NAME A CHARACTER KALE. KALE…It’s a rare name! It’s the name
of a vegetable. It’s hawain…it mean’s strong man. WADDAYASAY???
Just…ANY character at all!!!!! I know the use of “!!!” and “…”
can be annoying, but that;s just where im at in this point of my life.
Lots’a passion. Im a 21 year old man. I love your books. I love the
show Home Movies. I get depressed thinking about life. I have so many
questions. I enjoy Jerri Blank and The UCB. I love Lobo. They should
make him read Syrup when they UNCANCELL the series. Front cover. I
like OINK. Ever read that? JTHM was, at one point, the only thing i
ever cared about.
I’ve spilled my gut’s and I still have’nt said anything I wanted to
you…the man who’se stories make me happy. THANK YOU. THANK YOU,
THANK YOU THANK YOU, THANK YOU…
How awesome is that? I read something like that, I feel like a superhero.
Thanks, Kale. And to all of you who write to me or post on this site.
I mean, I don’t want to get too mushy here, but—aw, hell. Come here.
Yeah, that’s it. Thanks, guys.
You know what really bugs me? DVD players who think they know
better than me. You know what I’m talking about. You put in a
movie, you sit down, you press PLAY. Do you get your movie?
No: you get long seconds, maybe minutes, of swirling menu
graphics and copyright warnings. When you try to skip through this,
up flashes up a little red circle with a cross through
it, or the words “Operation Not Permitted,” or something similar.
“Not permitted”? Who is my DVD player to tell me what’s permitted?
It’s my player, isn’t it? When I say “Skip,” it should say, “How far?”
I mean, I’m not trying to break the law here. If I was, I could
understand my DVD player having some moral qualms. But I
just want to watch my movie.
(It’s the copyright notices that really annoy me. First, there’s something
nuts about a legally purchased movie forcing you to sit
through stern copyright lectures every single time you watch it,
while a pirated version helpfully jumps straight to the action.
Some DVDs even display copyright warnings in about two dozen
different languages, giving you ample time to digest the,
say, Swahili version, before leisurely moving on to Romanian. But
even the full-motion copyright notices are bad. Australia has one
with a pumping soundtrack and some crazy MTV-inspired camerawork—you
know, so the kids will pay attention—while on-screen some naughty
teenagers download movies. It takes them about four and a half seconds.
I tell you what, if it took four seconds, I’d be
doing it all the time. Especially if someone played a cool
song while I did it.)
Apparently we are rushing toward a future in which control of
technology is not handed over to us when we buy it, but retained by
the companies that originally made it. Your DVD player, your computer, and your
high-definition television seem to be on your
side, but they’re really sleeper agents, with secret loyalties
to their corporate masters.
There’s something called High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection
(HDCP) sneaking in everywhere, and the plan is this:
at first, it does nothing. But once it’s in enough homes,
along come movies and television broadcasts that only play on
HDCP-enabled equipment. Because that old non-HDCP television set
can’t be trusted, you see—it might be doing what you want,
instead of what the industry wants.
There seems to be no point at which an anti-piracy measure is deemed
to cause more trouble to legitimate customers than it’s worth. For
example, Australian commercial TV almost always run late, often
by as much as ten or fifteen minutes, and the reason, according to
one of the networks, is:
So millions of people are inconvenienced every day in order to make
it slightly harder for eight guys with beards to burn copies of
Battlestar Galactica.
I don’t have a DVD player any more. At least, not a typical one. I
built a computer with MythTV
and a DVD drive and hooked it up to my television. When I tell this puppy to
skip, it skips. Loyalty. That’s the thing.
As of last Monday,
Jen is back at work two days a week. One of those days, my mother
looks after Fin. The other day, I do.
Of course, since I have the kind of job that permits me to loll around
the house unshaven and wearing nothing but boxer shorts (although
not now, it’s winter; I’m not crazy), I already get to
spend more time with my daughter than most Dads. (Heh. “Dad.” Still
cool.) But I have discovered that when it’s just me and Fin, it’s
different; special in a way that’s almost magical.
This is how it works: I get up at 6:30am, make myself a coffee,
and start work. I have about 90 minutes to pound out some words
before Fin wakes. (Which isn’t that long. So I am writing Sunday
mornings, too, to make up for it.) Then that’s it: the rest of the day is just the two of us.
So far we have caught the train into
the city to look at comic books, walked along the river, visited
a mall, and stopped off at an aquarium to inspect some fish.
But where we go isn’t the point; the amazing part is just
having this incredible little girl all to myself.
I know I am probably about the ten billionth
person in history to feel like this, but it really is beautiful. It
feels like an honor.
Well, you must have heard the big news. The story, essentially,
is this: three people, one a Coca-Cola employee,
tried to sell Pepsi some of Coke’s secret recipes.
Pepsi called the Feds, and, because spreading a
person’s secrets is bad manners but spreading a corporation’s secrets
is illegal, those three people are now probably going to prison.
I have a couple of thoughts about this.
First, if I was Pepsi, I’d be a little insulted. I mean, what’s
the implication: that the only reason my cola tastes like that is
because I don’t know how to make it more like Coke? The hell with
that! If you ask me, Coke should be trying to buy
my secret recipes! I’ll tell you something for free,
mister: we here at Pepsi already know how to make Coke. Coke, that’s what we
scrape off the bottom of our vats and give away to pig farmers
and the homeless.
Second, if I was Coke, I’d be insulted, too. These guys were
offering up Coke’s newest product, which hasn’t even been
released yet, and for that they wanted $75,000. I bet that’s less than you
can win if you look under the right bottle cap of that
product, when it comes out. And not only that, but Pepsi wasn’t
interested. That’s got to be deflating. Those Coke developers
probably spent months, maybe years, creeping around and looking
over their shoulders for Pepsi spies. Then the recipe gets out,
Pepsi takes a look, and says, “Nah, we’re good, thanks.” How
is Coke meant to market that now? It could come up with the most
brilliant campaign in advertising history, and
all Pepsi needs to do is say, “Yeah, we got offered
that. Didn’t want it.”
The only good for either company is that it encourages
people to believe that colas are the result of secret, mystical
recipes, and not cough syrup plus sugar. (I mean, come on. What’s
all that advertising for? Because you’ve never heard of Coke or
Pepsi? I get very suspicious about products that need
to teach people why they like them. And food is the worst;
we already know that what we think of as “taste”
only bears a tenuous relationship to the chemical composition
of what we put in our mouths. Taste is mostly marketing. All you
need to do to prove that is try to feed a three-year-old.)
I recently discovered
Pandora, a web
site that acts like a radio station, only you’re calling in
all the time and saying whether you like or hate what they’re playing,
and the sweaty, desperate-to-please DJs rush to change
their playlist to keep you satisfied. I think you’ll agree
that the world would be a better place if more of it operated
on this kind of basis.
I’ve started using this while I’m writing: I fire up my web
browser, point it at Pandora, and let the tunes roll.
Not
only is it very good at serving up my kind of music,
but it also tells me what
kind of music that is: apparently I am big on synth bass
riffs, a highly synthetic sonority, repetitive song structure,
a tight kick sound, and prevalent use of groove. I don’t
even know that that means. But I like it.
Once you’ve trained up those sweaty virtual DJs, you can share
their work with other people. And that’s why I mention
it here: if you want to hear what I’m listening to while
writing, tune in here:
It’s still
a long way off, but preparations are being made for the release of
Company in paperback in the US. Here’s what I know: it’ll
probably be March 2007, published by Vintage, and sport
this nifty cover.
Publishers almost always change book covers from hardcover
to paperback; I don’t know why. Maybe they hope that
people with bad memories for titles will buy it twice. Jennifer
Government was an exception, but only because I managed to
convince them not to change it to
this.
I think the donut cover was great, but I like this new one, too.
It’s got a nice, dehumanizing note to it, and avoids showing anybody’s
face (which I really hate). Also—although of course this doesn’t influence
my feelings in any way—my name is kick-ass big.
There’s also talk of sending me on book tour in early April,
although exactly where won’t be decided for a while yet. (If you are
particularly keen to bring me to your city, it is apparently quite
effective to visit a local bookstore that hosts author events,
and tell them you want me. That is, that you want them to host me.
Then the bookstore tells my publisher they’re interested in having
me, and my publisher considers flying me in. This works for
authors besides me, of course, so if you wanted you could probably
arrange for all your favorite writers to be practically shipped
to your doorstep. Although it helps a lot if they are not too
famous.)
I wish I had news about publication outside the US—in Britain and
Australia in particular—but… I don’t. I really hope we can
fix that.
As you know, I’ve spent most of the last two months in Bedford, England.
No, you do. I mentioned it, like, just a few weeks ago. See, right
here. Well I don’t care if you
do get a lot of e-mail; I thought you’d care enough to remember. Well
I guess not. Well maybe you should. Fine. No, I said, fine! Don’t
take that; that was a present!
Anyway, I am now back home, but before I left, I decided to take a
few snaps of Bedford for you. Now, these aren’t of Bedford’s tourist
attractions. That’s because Bedford doesn’t have any. Instead I just
walked around the block. That was all I needed to capture the real
essence of Bedford, I think you’ll agree.
First, this car was parked outside the house. I took this photo because
it’s what every car in Bedford looks like. Actually, that’s not true;
some have more flags.
(Click for larger versions.)
The flags are because of the World Cup, by the way. Just in case you were thinking
there must be some really rabid nationalism going on in Bedford. I
mean, there could be, but the flags don’t prove it.
A few doors down was a youth social center with high walls and barred
windows. I’m not totally sure,
but I think this is the kind of center where the youths aren’t
actually permitted to leave. This was on the walls:
I spent some time trying to work out what “Coo-Var Anti-Climb Paint” actually
is. My first guess was that it’s really sticky, so when people try to climb
the fence they get stuck halfway up, and dangle there until the police come
and hose them off. But I touched the wall
and it didn’t seem sticky. It didn’t seem smooth, either, or smelly, or
anything else that might discourage climbing. But if I jumped really high I could
see a kind of black smear on the top of the wall, so I guessed that was it.
And when I touched it, it was sticky. But not that sticky. So
I’m still confused about what this product is meant to do.
Around the back of the block, I passed these helpfully labeled bins:
This raised a lot of questions for me. I was tempted to knock on the door
and ask the owner a few questions about exactly how he thought this anti-theft
protection scheme might work. He seemed to have some insights into the
criminal mind that were escaping me.
But that probably would have gotten me stabbed,
so I didn’t.
Note: After my previous Bedford blog, a friend wrote to tell me that Christopher Reeve used to live in
Bedford. This left me confused and bewildered. I kept asking myself:
Why? God, why? Then I discovered he lived
in Bedford, New York, and the world made sense again.
Dear Max:
I just happened to browse the site as I am with MY Space .Com.
Some how I came across your website.
One eye catcher is a segment titled: “Women in High Heels Smashing Things”
What is that all about? It turns me on. Tell me more of this story and more
information on it.
Right! I’m going to assume you’re being funny, Norman, because the
alternative is too disturbing. So this is the thing where I look up
what people are searching for when they
visit this site. It’s been a while since I last checked that, but once again
the list is a mix of the bizarre,
the terrifying, the unintentionally hilarious, and the unexpectedly profound.
Here’s a sample from the last two months:
ashley olsen worried and afraid of mary kate
hippos go berserk
how to make my cable modem lights stop blinking
what can i do to make myself more attractive to women?
defense against water balloons
how to write in elven symbol code
benefits of drinking pepsi max
sexiest pants in world of warcraft
what did teenager like back in the days
how tall are victoria s supermodels
what makes plaster casts start to smell?
fish talks crap splish splash
what happens to the hearing of whales when they get older
who does jennifer government look like
my sneakers are too small
i just want to talk not about anything someone
when was 479 days ago?
unshaven giant poodle pictures
is um a word
location of hookers in rochester ny
goosebumps anything to do with your heart
giant rabbit news england
the smurfs karl max
is it true that when you sneeze people are thinking about you
Some of these are hard to stop thinking about. I’m a little
tempted to search for footage of berserk hippos myself now.
Is “um” a word? And seriously, I’m in England at the
moment: should I be worried about a giant rabbit?
This site has a few links to Amazon.com, so people can buy my books online.
Amazon is pretty handy because it delivers to almost anywhere
in the world, even strange, backward countries where some of my books
would otherwise
be unavailable, like Britain, or Australia. Amazon also kicks me back about 6.5%
on the purchase price, which, if I have worked this out correctly, is actually more
than I make in royalties on some editions.
Amazon pays this percentage not just on the items I link to directly,
but also anything else a person picks up while they’re there. So if you
follow a link to Company and, on impulse, add a pair of
Haines Boxer Briefs to your shopping cart—as someone did—I get a
percentage of that, too. A percentage of the price, I mean. Not a
percentage of the briefs. Because that would be weird.
You see where I’m going with this. Obviously there is some fascination in
looking at exactly what people are buying along with their Jennifer
Governments and Syrups. (I can’t tell who bought any
particular item, of course. I’d need to be a government employee concerned
about terrorism to learn that. All I know is that someone did.)
It’s fascinating because people buy some really weird things.
Oh, most are logical enough. Serenity DVDs and Chuck Palahniuk
novels, for example; I can see why someone who’d been reading my site might
want to pick those up.
But sometimes… well, see for yourself.
This is what
somebody—I feel fairly confident it’s a single person—bought from Amazon via
my site recently:
Now you know what to do if a person wearing this approaches
you one dark night. That’s right: you say, “Hey, are you a Max Barry fan too?”
It could save your life.
Okay,
this is too funny not to mention. I offered to send some signed
books to Kurt Busiek—the writer who put Jennifer Government
in Clark Kent’s hands in Action Comics #838—and he kindly
sent me some of his stuff in return.
Included in the stack of goodies that arrived on
my doorstop was a signed copy of that issue—with
this modified cover.
As I mentioned, I’m not doing any publicity while I’m in England.
But I do intend to have a beer at
the Warrington Hotel
[Map]
at 2pm this Sunday the 28th. So if you’re in range, and you care, you
could come along.
I don’t really know how this will work, but I am imagining something like
this: you see a 6’2” guy with no hair speaking in an Australian accent,
wander over, and say, “Are you Max?” And I say, “Yes, yes I am. Who are you?”
And we take it from there. My only rule—and it’s a very strict one—is
that there shall be no mention
of the Ashes.
I won’t have any books to sell, but I’m happy to sign anything you
bring along. And I mean anything. Underwear, other people’s books, you
name it. I’m desperate for recognition.
By the way, I was originally thinking of inviting people to a pub in Bedford, but
realized I couldn’t live with the stain of that crime on my soul.
Update: Well that was great fun! Thanks to
those who turned up. I gotta say, it’s pretty damn cool to be able to
gather an instant mini-party of interesting people just by posting on
my blog.
Action Comics is the series that introduced Superman in 1938.
And now he’s reading my book.
This is possibly the greatest moment of my life.
Just before I left Australia, I noticed I had a couple of emails with odd
subject lines, like “Superman reads Jennifer Government.” But I had a
plane to catch and didn’t get around to reading these for a couple of
weeks. Then I was sure that it couldn’t be true, that maybe Clark
was reading a book that just looked a bit like one of mine if
you turned the page upside down and squinted, because… well,
it just couldn’t be. But if that was happening, a lot of people seemed
to be doing it.
So I emailed DC Comics, pausing only briefly to wipe the drool from my
keyboard, and soon had not only confirmation that this extraordinary
event had actually come to pass, but a fascinating (and flattering)
explanation as to how:
I’m glad you enjoyed the bit — I’m Kurt Busiek, co-writer of that
issue, and the guy who violated copyright on your book cover for my own
nefarious purposes. The idea, mostly, was that in the past, whenever
Clark mentions reading anything, he almost invariably mentions Dickens
or Austen or some other long-dead writer that the audience knows from
being forced to read them in high school lit class. Since Clark’s
supposed to be in his early thirties, I want him to come across like a
reasonably young guy, not like your college professor’s dad (and I say
that as a big Jane Austen fan; it ain’t the quality, it’s the image).
So I wanted Clark to be reading something current, interesting and
smart. Something that made him look like he’s part of this century and
knows what’s good.
I’m not ashamed to admit that this made me giggle like a schoolgirl
who just found the penis pictures in her biology textbook.
My new goal is to land a poster-sized copy, so I can frame it and
hang it somewhere conspicuous, like on the front of my house. I mean,
Superman! Superman!
I now believe that all girls want to marry horses. Not just little girls.
Grown women. In fact, it has become clear to me that every personality
flaw in a man, as perceived by a woman, is his failure to be more like
a horse.
This occurred to me last night, while I was reading a parenting manual
called Raising Girls. So far this book has been full of
advice so obvious that it’s simultaneously insulting that someone thinks
I need it, and alarming that some people might—advice such as, “try
to build her self-esteem,” and “understand that not all girls
like traditionally female toys,” and, “don’t have sex with her.”
Then I came to a section on how pre-pubescent girls tend
to love horses. As I read, I realized that it also perfectly
described the personality type that many women seem to want in a man:
Qualities that at first look like opposites—greatness, strength,
and speed versus submission and obedience—can be combined in
this powerful companion, which encourages the young rider to
try it out herself.
A girl thus learns that modes of behavior like empathy and
gentleness, in combination with their opposites—such as
assertiveness and exercising power—can work for the horse,
for herself on horseback, and for herself in everyday life.
—Quoted from “Developmental Crises in Girls,” by Dörte Stoll,
2002.
So that’s been the problem all along: horses making us blokes look
bad. All we need to do to make ourselves more attractive
to women in any given situation is think: “What would Black Beauty do?”
I would like to balance this theory out with a complementary one about
what men find attractive, but all I’ve got so far is that men want
women to be soccer balls, and I didn’t want to sully my site with
a gratuitous picture of Pamela Anderson.
I’m in England. Huh, when I say it like that, it’s as if I just breezed
halfway around the world during my lunch hour, instead of undergoing 30 hours of torture inside a
metal tube with an 8-month old baby and a planeload of people conspiring to
prevent her from sleeping.
Jen’s family live in England, and occasionally we fly over to visit them.
We usually stay for at least a month, and—since the purpose of the trip is
to spend time with them—visit absolutely no tourist attractions or
places of interest. We just hang out in Bedford.
For that reason, I have the general impression that all of England is a
barely habitable crap-hole full of people who look like they’re about to
stab you for your mobile phone, then use it to call their dealer.
Well, that’s not quite true; I have visited a few other places in England,
and with one exception (Milton Keynes, I’m looking at you) they have been
quite beautiful, or at least interestingly history-soaked. But Bedford
is neither. I am told that Bedford’s heyday was in the 1950s, when the
local brickworks was the town’s main employer, and you can tell this is
true because every single house is constructed in the exact same style
from the exact same red
brick. Other Bedford attractions include the River Ouse (pronounced
“ooze”), which is exactly as charming as it sounds and patrolled
by highly aggressive ducks, and… no, actually, that’s it.
Most English people I speak to are hazy on where, exactly, Bedford is.
The answer is you don’t care. I think you’re better off not knowing
how close you may be to Bedford. If, in your ignorance, you do happen
to stumble onto it, well, just hurry on before any of it gets on your
clothes.
I have no publicity plans while I’m in England; for some reason my British
publisher has always been reluctant to expose me to the public, like
a girlfriend embarrassed to introduce me to her parents. I know what
you’re thinking: at first I thought it was the hair, too. But no:
apparently you just don’t do bookstore events in this country unless you
are sufficiently famous. More sufficiently than me, I mean.
I’m not sure why, exactly. Maybe it’s considered bad manners.
The police just chased some guy down the street right outside my
window. I’m not kidding. Ah, Bedford.
For
the first time on this site, I’m about to plug a book that isn’t mine.
I know! I feel like I’m growing as a person. Here’s what happened:
I got sent this book pre-publication to see if I’d be interested in
providing a quote for the back of the book. Apparently the theory is that if
people see a quote by some author they’ve never heard of, they think,
“Hmm… someone that obscure must know what he’s talking about.”
I get sent quite a few books this way, which is good, because I don’t
have to pay for them, and bad, because I don’t get to choose them,
and they tend to suck. So I end up on the backs of very few books.
(If anyone has seen a book with “Meh, it kind of sucked. —Max
Barry, author of Company” on it, though, please let me know.)
Then I got sent a book that was so good I thought they must have confused
me with someone much more popular. Like maybe Jesus. This book rocked.
It was the funniest novel I’d ever read. It was so good that when I finished
reading it, I immediately read it again. And then a third time. It’s
currently my favorite novel.
The book is
Apathy
and Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan. It’s out in the US
today. If you like my stuff, I seriously recommend that you get this. And if you don’t
mind Chuck Palahniuk, either, a gaping hole in your life that you never
knew existed is about to be filled. Go buy it. Now.
(Disclosure: I met Paul earlier this
year, after I’d read his book. But he didn’t promise any sexual favors
in exchange for me pumping up his book. Really, he wouldn’t be moved on that.)
(Gahh! I wrote most of this blog, then got sick. It was
the usual. But I’m better now,
thanks for asking.)
Some people recommend that you write a certain number of words every day.
Well, not you, necessarily. Novelists. See, those of us who decided it was
a good idea to write a novel sometimes find that our key challenge has
become not drawing heart-breakingly realistic characters or identifying
our underlying unifying theme, but rather getting to the end of the
frickin’ thing before we die.
Novels are long. You probably don’t realize how long until you
write one. Occasionally I hear that someone read one of my books in
some ridiculous amount of time, like a single night, or half a day
while sipping coffee in Barnes & Noble, or while waiting in line at a movie,
and this is wonderful but also appalling, because people really shouldn’t
be allowed to digest a couple of years’ worth of my work that fast. They
should have to work at it, like I did. It’s only fair.
But the point is: if a writer isn’t careful (or if he is;
if he is too careful), he can find himself
with a reasonable amount of pages but no enthusiasm to write any more.
The minimum-number-of-words-per-day technique is meant to help.
It’s practiced by
successful authors and
advocated by admirable organizations,
and for many people, it clearly works.
But for me, it’s a disaster. I tried it in 1998, after I’d finished
Syrup but before I’d found a publisher. I was starting
a book called Paper Warfare, a fairly straight corporate thriller
about tobacco marketing, and I was very disciplined;
every day for weeks I pounded out my minimum 2,000 words. But it felt
wrong, because I knew that some days I was just banging
out words so I could close the goddamn word processor and go do
something else. The next day, I’d try to avoid looking at the words,
because if I did I would be so appalled that I would have to delete
them. This didn’t seem very efficient. And, more importantly, I wasn’t
enjoying it: writing had become a chore.
I made it all the way to the book’s climax—I even had the ending
plotted out—then realized it sucked. Not just a little. Not
in ways that could be fixed. The whole book really, really blew.
Since then, I’ve written exactly as many words per day as I feel like.
And that’s worked well, because when I’m having fun, I’m usually producing
good words. But for the book I’m working on now, I’m
trying something new: a maximum number of words per day.
I had something like this when I wrote Syrup, because
I wrote during my lunch breaks at Hewlett-Packard: I had one hour to eat,
write, and get back to pretending that I knew what SCSI interfaces were.
Often I would be forced to leave half-way through a
great scene, even though I was chafing to finish it. During the rest of
those days I would keep thinking about the book, and come up with little embellishments
and new ideas. Next lunch time, I would cram down my chicken sandwiches so
I could get to writing as soon as possible.
I think this is pretty close to the perfect state: unable to write quite
as much as I want to. So I’m seeing if I can create it artificially.
So far it’s been hard, because when I’m on a roll, I really don’t want to
stop. I find myself deliberately avoiding doing a word count, because I
know I’m probably already over. (I have set my maximum low: just 500 words
per day.) Stopping before I want to is frustrating. But then, that’s the
idea. I should finish each day a little frustrated.
You will know if this technique is working, because my blogs will become
much longer, as I seek outlets for my pent-up words. Yes. You will be my
hookers.
I mentioned this once or twice on my book tour, but for those who
weren’t there—you know, because you live in one of those areas that
my publisher hates—earlier this
year I had what I am pretty sure is my nerdiest moment ever.
I am quite proud of my nerdy accomplishments—I have created
a web game,
written a science-fiction novel,
and formed a religious opinion
about operating systems. I consider my nerdiness to be not
abnormal, but rather the way that everyone would be if only they
stopped and thought about it properly. But then I had this moment,
when even I thought, “Ooh, that’s pretty nerdy.”
Here’s what happened. Some time ago, I registered a domain name for my baby
girl:
finlaybarry.com. (That’s not the nerdy thing.) I thought this would
be a good way to share photos and news with relatives in
various parts of the world, and, when Fin was old enough,
she could use it for whatever she wanted. Maybe a blog, if by then
those weren’t so 2005.
I have already gotten Fin banging away on a keyboard, because I
want her to get used to the command line before I introduce her
to a GUI. Here is the first thing she ever wrote:
6fcv5jnnnnnnnnnnmmmmmmmmmmmmmjnj /bvyj,[k[ v
That’s not the nerdy thing.
The nerdy thing is that I thought—I actually stopped and
thought—“Hmm… before I name my next kid, I should check to
make sure the domain name is available.”
In
my novel Syrup, the hero comes up with an idea for a new
cola called “Fukk,” which comes in a jet black can. He sells the concept
to Coca-Cola (well, kind of), and the company releases it.
I’m hoping there will be a Syrup movie in the not-too-distant
future, but Coke is making me nervous by releasing products that are
increasingly like Fukk. The latest is “Blak.” It’s a black bottle, not
a can, but still: I’m becoming convinced that their plan is to creep
toward a Fukk-like product, then sue me for stealing their idea.
Incidentally, I visited the
Blak web site and noticed it has a
“Spread the Word” section. Coke is clearly excited about this,
because if you visit any of the other sections, you see a big
link back to “Spread the Word.” It turns out that Spreading the Word is
sending e-mails to your friends to tell them about Coca-Cola Blak.
I would be very interested to know if the number of people who use this
facility is greater than zero.
Some people were confused and disturbed by my blog about
“Rub-a-Dub-Dub.” They wanted to know if I was seriously upset about
a children’s book featuring a duck. To which the answer is: yes.
Yes, I was. In fact, every time I go into that bathroom and see
that little vinyl horror sitting in the corner, it bothers me all over again.
I can’t see inside its chewable pages, but I know that “Quack-a-doodle-do”
is lurking there. These sorts of things play on your mind.
Going crazy? No, I’ve always been like this. I’m just opening up.
In less confusing and disturbing news, Company is apparently
going great guns. My editor, Bill, e-mailed me:
COMPANY rolls on…another reprint.
This was very exciting, because I’ve never been reprinted in hardcover
before. (I have in paperback. Syrup is now up to its ninth
printing or something ridiculous. But according to my royalty statement,
it has still sold hardly any copies. The only explanation I can think of
is that the publisher is doing tiny print runs—like maybe ten books at a
time. This would make sense, since this is my ex-publisher, Penguin
Putnam, who dropped me like an envelope full of Anthrax
after Syrup failed to scale the bestseller
lists. If I were a little more bitter and vindictive, I would
cackle with glee every time they’re forced to reprint, and fire
off e-mails to everyone I ever worked with there saying, “How do you like
me now, huh? Huh? HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW??”)
Any reprint is terrific, because it means the book has done at least a
little better than the publisher expected. But that “another” in Bill’s
e-mail puzzled me. I queried him about it, thinking maybe—maybe—this
wasn’t the second printing at all; maybe, if I was really lucky,
it was the third. Bill replied:
4th, as a matter of fact.
Hot damn! Even if these are tiny print runs, that’s fantastic. Everyone
who bought a copy, I’m thinking of you right now. Not individually,
obviously. That would take too long. I’m imagining an amorphous,
book-buying blob. No, really. It’s the least I could do.
Company has also picked up a couple of great new reviews,
most notably in The Economist. What I especially liked about this one
is that it called me “a master of short sentences and the passive tense,”
and this outraged a group of linguists so much that they wrote
an
essay about it:
[T]he passive involves a voice contrast; it has
absolutely nothing in common with tense.
I am astonished, all over again, at how educated people can commit blunders
as extreme as this one in print, and editors don’t even notice.
Clearly you don’t want to mess with people whose idea of
a
funny joke
begins: “I was walking across campus with a friend and we came upon half
a dozen theoretical linguists committing unprovoked physical assault on
a defenseless prescriptivist…”
Update:
In the comments, Mark Liberman—one of those outraged linguists—points
out that this isn’t the first time my scribblings have caught their attention.
There is
this
article from 2004, in which Mark discusses Jennifer Government’s use
of “And yet.” It took me a while to work out whether I was being praised or
dissed—I think it’s praised—and the more I read of their web site, the
more stupid and uneducated I felt. To rectify this, I plan not to visit their site
again.
Join the Tubby Buddies for oodles of bath time fun! promised the blurb,
and that sounded like a good idea to me. So we gave it a road test: Jen
(in bath) narrating, Fin (also in bath) staring at it, grabbing at it,
and trying to chew its pages, and me sitting beside the bath and listening
with increasing horror.
“Rub-a-Dub-Dub,” it’s titled, by Nancy Parent (yes, really). And
the thing is, I wanted to like it. Really. The cover is a little
Disney-cute, sure, but it’s got bright colors and clear lines, and
that’s probably what the seven-month-old baby demographic
demands. Also, the book is made of soft vinyl. Not just the
cover: the whole thing. It’s not until you get a vinyl book in your
hands that you realize what a brilliant idea this is; indeed, that you begin
to wonder why all the world’s great tomes aren’t published like this. You
can spill things on it, roll it up, and if you were reading it in bed,
bunch it up and use it as a pillow.
Fin certainly made an effort to digest the story early, which Jen was required
to arrest so she could begin reading. It’s quite short, so let me
take you
through it line by line:
This is where I started to get uneasy. It’s a two page spread, one line
per page, and the first illustration is exactly the same as the cover with
two exceptions: first, the duck’s eyes are looking in a different direction,
and second, instead of being in a soapy bath, it appears to have drifted
out into the open seas. I mean, there are foaming waves and everything.
Which would be
an interesting plot twist, only it’s contradicted by the text, which
makes it clear this is still meant to be a tub. And that text!
Apparently this wasn’t a clever post-modern homage to the classic “Rub-a-dub
dub, three men in a tub” at all; it was just a rip-off. Once again, I thought
I caught the stench of Disney.
The facing illustration depicts a smiling tug boat, who is looking at the duck.
Or rather, he’s looking a little below the duck: their sight lines don’t quite match
up. But I was prepared to let this go, since technically they’re in two
separate illustrations. I presumed that Mr. Boat was the story’s protagonist,
since there didn’t seem to be anyone else around to be remarking on the
presence of ducks in his tub, but on this I was to be disappointed.
Now I started to get confused. The illustration shows the duck meeting a
very happy fish. There’s no sign of Mr. Boat, but I guess he must be
off-page somewhere, still narrating. Because otherwise this giant bath
must contain some
shadowy third party we haven’t yet met, and that’s a bit scary.
I wasn’t thrilled with “Splish-splash-splish”—that struck me as
something Nancy made up in a hurry to rhyme with “fish.” And the
characters still seem to be navigating the oceans, rather than a bath.
On top of that, even though this is a single illustration, the duck’s and
fish’s eyes don’t line up, which gave me a headache the more I looked at it.
I’m sorry—what? What? Is this some kind of duck-rooster hybrid?
Quack-a-WHAT? I was stunned. I’ve heard some strained
rhymes in my time, but this is clearly the worst. The only
possible excuse for something that excruciating is that Nancy is stuck in a
cubicle somewhere, forced to churn out about forty of these books a week.
(Later, I did an Amazon.com author search for “Nancy Parent” and got 342 results.
So I guess she is. But still. Hang your head, Nancy.)
That terrible line concluded the book. I was annoyed by the
unresolved mystery of whose tub this was in the first place, given that
the duck itself appeared to be delivering the final stanza—he’s
even looking directly at us—so this is either a brutal
point-of-view change, or earlier the duck was describing himself in
the third person. Either way, my head hurts.
But as sickened as I was, the target audience seemed impressed.
Fin’s reaction seemed to be: “A terrific book. I
couldn’t get enough of it (into my mouth).”
You know when you mean to call a friend, but you don’t get around to
it for a while, and suddenly it’s been so long that you can’t just
call up and say, “Hi! Anything happening?” You need to have something worth
saying; something that justifies you finally ending the absence.
You can’t just call up and blog about any old thing; you should blog
about something significant, so the friend thinks, “Huh, well, I
may have had to wait for a while, but at least that blog was worth it.”
You know?
Sorry about that. What I’ve been doing instead of blogging: mainly,
beavering away on my science-fiction TV series proposal. (Which is
so cool; I mean, it’s got mentally deranged artificial intelligences
and chicks with weird names and everything.) Now that’s done with—for
the moment; nothing I write is ever really done with,
I have discovered—I sit back and
wait for my agent to call up and tell me that the Sci-Fi channel wants
26 episodes and they’re already building the sets and did I want the characters
to have really big guns, or ridiculously big guns? That’s basically it.
But that’s beside the point. The point is that I’ve broken the ice; we’re
talking again, and now it won’t seem so weird if I blog about, say,
a children’s book about a duck that made me very angry. Or at least, no
weirder than you’re used to. Right? Okay. We have a deal. So… how
have you been? Anything happening?
I
have bought a lot of baby stuff. And I’ve noticed that many of
the babies on the packaging don’t look exactly picture-perfect. Which
is understandable, since
babies probably aren’t very co-operative on photo shoots. But
still, you’d expect the photographer to keep trying until they got one
where the kid looked as if he was enjoying himself,
wouldn’t you?
The makers of the Dohome inflatable play house clearly thought not.
On the side of the box is
this picture
in which one child is, at best, listless, and the other
is obviously thinking, “What a load of crap this thing is.”
But even better is the huge picture on the box’s front.
Check out
this baby
and tell me if that’s a child in the throes of joy and excitement.
That kid wants out.
I just wish I could see the pictures they rejected.
I made some progress on getting NationStates 2 underway.
I got invited to two festivals, one conference, two workplaces to give
talks, and asked to contribute writing to four different places.
Ordinarily any one of these would be so cool that I would scamper to
the keyboard and blog all about it. But there is just so much
cool. To anybody but me, I suspect it is a sickening amount
of cool. Plus I’m getting way more e-mails from readers than usual, including
many hilarious or scary ones that are also clearly worth blogging about.
B
Here I was all about to start a blog post called “That’s 2006, then,”
when I realized
I’d already done that
in 2004. Except it was called
“That’s 2004, then.” Because it was 2004 at the time. Not 2006.
A
reader named Richard e-mailed me about the new energy
drink “Cocaine.” He did this when it was still quite topical, but I’ve been
falling behind on my e-mail again, so I only just found out. In a few weeks
time I’m planning to find out how those mid-term elections are shaping up.
Last
night I sat down with Fin to read her a bedtime story, and she
did the most amazing thing. She reached for the book, but two of
her fingers were caught in her sleeve, so first she stretched her
arm straight out, popping her hand free, then took the book.
So 
As of last Monday,
Jen is back at work two days a week. One of those days, my mother
looks after Fin. The other day, I do.
In
my novel Syrup, the hero comes up with an idea for a new
cola called “Fukk,” which comes in a jet black can. He sells the concept
to Coca-Cola (well, kind of), and the company releases it.
I
have bought a lot of baby stuff. And I’ve noticed that many of
the babies on the packaging don’t look exactly picture-perfect. Which
is understandable, since
babies probably aren’t very co-operative on photo shoots. But
still, you’d expect the photographer to keep trying until they got one
where the kid looked as if he was enjoying himself,
wouldn’t you?
