Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Cyberdyne ID tag

I've got all kinds of free time lately. I wonder why that is? There's this backlog of ideas to execute. This is the horrific ID tag cyberdyne gave me. It's the last smile I ever had in that building.

Look at that logo. Good lord. Could it be any more of a rip off of the Japanese rising sun flag? No. But it's supposed to be an approximation of one of the pieces that fit in the cell towers. The other picture is the Japanese flag. They are almost identical. But the CEO is Chinese. So what gives? Ha, and to think I was considering going to China as a trainee. I wouldn't last ten minutes in that place. I'm telling you that we didn't win the second world war. Or if we did then it made no difference. Think about it. When is it that you win a major war and 40 years later the two countries you defeated have totally implanted themselves in your economy and you have people going hungry because they lost a job that went to the country you forced to surrender? What happened? Are there American Flags all over ID tags in Japan? OR China? Where am I? If the Germans take Britain you think there would be kids from Berlin losing their jobs because Braun opened a factory in Leeds? Oh, there's be a factory all right, but it would be surrounded by barbed wire fence and minimum wage would be a fantasy.

Did Americans die so I could go to work for the Japanese at minimum wage? Well fuck. We might as well have skipped Dday and let them win. Save the ammunition. They got my ass in the end. We get to say Hitler was evil and the Germans get to import expensive beer and cars. That shit should be free for eternity. Why? Go look at Arlington. Instead, I get to wear a Japanese flag on my shirt as I get fired and the Chinese completely dominate the manufacturing world. Who says Communism doesn't work? They must be laughing their asses off.
What a disaster. Russia gets to expand and then race us to bankruptcy building doomsday machines. The middle east gets divided into assholes and assholes who hate assholes. And America gets an interstate freeway so we can all visit the grand canyon before Mexico takes it back. My high school history teachers must've gotten their degrees from the back of a cereal box.
Or maybe they were all Chinese spies. They just TOLD us we won the war. TO make us happy. Really, America is just a slave compound and they have us all fooled. That's the way it feels. You see how fast Cyberdyne got rid of me? Because I didn't bow low enough. The food dispensers were filled with udon noodles at $3 a pop. Question authority.

blog to print

I see an option to print my blog in a few easy steps. I click on it. For $15 I'll publish Memorabilia myself. No need for New York hot shots. But, wait. Memorabilia would cost...$180 to print and bind. Uh. $180? Any takers? Place your orders now! Of course, that means I don't make a penny. That's just what it costs to produce. If I added $10 then the cost would be almost $200 for one copy. I can hear you say that I should just delete...oh...500 pages. And like Mozart said to the critical Prince. "Which notes should I remove? Just point them out to me and I'll take them out. No problem."
I wanted to reconstruct 1980-1991. That took 1000 pages and around 300,000 words. It took 11 years to write. Not only would it be a full time job for months to delete 500 pages but the story still has to make sense. What if I took out 1983? Do I really need 1983? Yes I do.
So that's where we stand. It's not getting published as it is and I'm not deleting any of it.

Query Letters

My brother is throwing me some Christmas crumbs and thought I should send some queries to agencies to get my aforementioned novel (unpublishable) Memorabilia some air time. This is the most polite letter I could write...Let's keep our fingers crossed....


Oggy Bleacher
Group Home #26
Laconia, NH 03246
homelessloser@gmail.com
Big Shot Agent
BIG FUCKING AGENCY
Madison Ave
New York, NY 10010
Mr. Big Shot,
Once upon a time the Boston Red Sox were a bunch of losers. For 68 years they knocked on destiny’s door and heard only the awful echo of someone who sounded like George Steinbrenner say, “Nobody’s home.” On October 25th, 1986 the Red Sox peeked through the key hole and could actually see inside. The dusty, cobweb-covered door even opened an inch. I know this because I was 15 years old, standing outside the door and I managed to squeeze my fingers through the crack even as Wade Boggs and Jim Rice were shaking their heads with a not-until-the-last-out kind of look. I ignored them. My face, Mr. Big Shot, was one of pure joy. I was there! We were going to win! This would be the answer to all my dreams! One more strike to Ray Knight. One more out…one more… and…wait…oh my god…what the fuck is happening? NO! NO! NO! The door slammed shut but I didn’t get my fingers out in time. I DIDN’T GET MY FINGERS OUT!
Fingerless, friendless, homeless, bitter, I managed to write a book called You Broke My Heart You Worthless Motherfucking Losers. No, I’m kidding. The book is called Memorabilia. But God must be a football fan because the year I finished the book, 2004, was, incredibly, the year the Red Sox not only opened the door, they kicked the fucker down and bulldozed the entire building along with Yankee Stadium and those supreme chokers the ’04 Yankees. They did it again in 2007. 1986 became a footnote, the baseball equivalent to a quarterback fumble that the quarterback himself recovers. BUT WHAT ABOUT MY FINGERS? I hadn’t even received rejection slips from my first round of queries and the Sox are already talking about repeat championships. Ah! It takes 86 years to win the big game and they have to do it the SAME YEAR I FINISH MY BOOK? ARE YOU KIDDING? So I’ve now been in a 6 year tailspin to rival the original funk of ’86-‘03. This can’t go on much longer. Needless to say, Memorabilia is still up for grabs.
Mr. Big Shot, I’m a reasonable man but my patience has worn thin. Memorabilia is finished. It’s done. Like Confederacy of Dunces, or Slaughterhouse Five it’s a completely insane tome of surreal literary architecture, assembled brick by brick, memory by memory over 11 years. I read it now and can honestly say it has no equal in sheer farcical bedlam. It’s a time warp. It’s a ten hour Roger Waters song performed by the Bee Gees. It’s a mosaic of tiny pictures of Papa Smurf that looks like Ronald Reagan’s asshole when you stand back about 10 yards. Does it need an editor? Hell, yes. Am I going to edit it? Hell, no. I’m busy writing screenplays that won’t get produced. I even wrote a biopic about Henry David Thoreau. It got optioned for a cup of coffee and when the cup went dry I naturally moved to Mexico. I’m sure it’s in production in Hungary right now and I’ll be credited as a hairdresser. Such is life. Another story I wrote was so good it took 5 years to get published. It’s in an anthology of bitter Los Angeles writers called Sleeping with Snakes, (not to be confused with that terrible movie with Julia Roberts called Sleeping with the Enemy. (I could totally see that dénouement coming.))
Is the world ready for Memorabilia? Well, one writer I respect just said I “make Robert Frost look bitten and forever shy.” That’s true. Robert Frost will become the ’86 Sox equivalent to my ’04 Sox lexicon ballet. One day, Frost fans will flock to my grave with their handwritten poems and Rick Springfield perms. Frost who? Kerouac who? Bleacher is the name that will bring their blood to boil.
Memorabilia is about music and baseball and fanaticism and self destructive behavior and Xanadu. You wanna read something that makes you laugh? Call me. I’ll send you the first 30 chapters…for free! After that we’ll have to talk business. Or you can go fuck yourself. I don't care either way, you New York snob. I only wrote this letter to get my brother to stop bothering me. Otherwise, I wouldn't cross the street to piss on you.
Oggy Bleacher
Laconia, NH

De niro

I've always wanted to know how to get screenshots of my favorite scenes so I could make t shirts out of them. I got Deer Hunter from the library the other night, totally unrelated to my getting fired. I recall the stare I gave the old woman in the assembly line. Was it like De niro or not? This was research related. The scene was the famous Russian roulette scene in the prisoner camp. De Niro is at the top of his game here. Walken too plays his role to perfection. I especially like the part where Walken (Nick) looks at the gun and just shakes his head. "No. No more." Then he shrugs his shoulder and emphasizes it with that famous rising Walken accent, stressing syllables where no one else would stress them. . "No moah." Like the guards don't get it. He's serious. He doesn't want to play anymore.




I love it. This wasn't exactly like the look I gave the lady at Cyberdyne. But it's how I felt. to get the screenshot you just play the movie and hit printscreen. then paste the clip into a jpg editing software like paint. then cut out the part you want (since the movie playing software will be in the picture too) then save. Bring it down to your local tattoo shop and get this inked on your back. Call yourself a man.


In fact, let's have a contest to see who can take a picture of themselves with nearly as much hate in their eyes. This is a look that can get you into movies. Here's my submission... You actually have to be thinking hateful thoughts to get a good picture. And De niro had to do it for take after take. Excellent! The lack of make up doesn't help but it's ok. Doesn't make you want to piss your pants. But it turns out it was exactly good enough to get fired...
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.