Month: May 2015

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NaBloPoMo Day 5: Your Style

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: What is your favourite angle for being photographed? Head-on? Slightly above, below, to the side?

I don’t like being photographed. Hate the way I look when I smile. See photos of myself and think, good God, is that what I look like? How come no one told me? How are people not falling down in hysterical, terrified laughter every time they see me?

Very arrogant.

I’m sure, 90% of the time, no one notices me at all. That’s not self-deprecation, that’s just logic. Heck, it’s probably more like 99%. And that other 1%, I can’t possibly know what standards are in any other mind. It’s silly to assume I can understand an entire lifetime of context that a person brings to whatever they view.

That said, I still don’t like being photographed. So I have no real answer for what my favorite angle is, although: I do like a good selfie. And for those, in the mirror, I’m usually going head on.

My wife tells me that people should always be photographed from slightly above, to hide multiple chins. Ariana Grand, I’m told, always demands being photographed from only the left. Old west cowboys (the actors who portrayed them, at least) were always photographed from below to show how huge and manly they were.

So you can see my dilemma. I don’t think I’m photogenic, I want to hide my chins, maintain my pop starlet style, and show off my machismo. Talk about existential angst, sheesh!

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Your Style

Took a WFH day. Getting chores done too. Shame is for sissies.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on

My style is: throw on clothes. Tend towards gray. I like looking stylish, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who doesn’t care. But once I’ve tried, and failed— then I don’t care.

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A Football Makes a Lousy Briefcase

Postaday for May 4th: Coming To a Bookshelf Near You. Write a summary of the book you’ve always wanted to write for the back cover of its dust jacket.

In a novel of slapstick mayhem and unrelenting self-contradiction, a robotic assassin makes chaos out of hubris and peanut butter out of chaos. The crunchy kind.

Chris Hutchins is just a lousy GS-11. He occupies that lonely every-man’s land on the edge of the spy world, close enough to look in, but bolted firmly on the wrong side of the bullet-proof plexiglass.

Lancaster is the ultimate assassin, spy, evil genius, oxford comma connoisseur, and cowboy aficionado, all wrapped up into one metal-alloy skeleton. His mission: he could tell you, but then he’d have to kill you. Come to think of it, he doesn’t have to tell you anything, since he’s going to kill you anyway.

When a series of increasingly ridiculous assassinations force the spy community to put their differences aside and take action, the metaphors start to fly like broken china in a shop run by bulls. Or something. Surfing the edge of the sea foam on the waves of Lancaster’s dastardly plan, Chris has only one hope—that the author will stay drunk enough, long enough, to focus on the plot and stop toying with the fourth wall so much.

Drawing from the very tropes that prop up almost 90% of all spy fiction, and unabashedly stealing from the originality of the other ten percent, this is, if not a hilarious novel, at least a hilarious attempt at one.

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NaBloPoMo Day 4: Your Energy

Today’s NaBloPoMO Prompt: Do you think one side of your face photographs better than another?

Glib Answer: I tend to put the viewfinder up to my right eye more often than my left eye, so I guess I should say yes.

Actual Answer: my right ear is missing a fold in the cartilage, and I have a small blemish on my cheek just to the right of my nose. But when I smile, you can see that my left lateral incisor is recessed, which in high-contrast photos can look like it’s missing altogether. So it all depends on lighting, angle, and sartorial influences.

Today’s NaBloPoMO Photo Prompt: Your Energy

Got a #PR for “Half Marathon with a Leg Cramp.” #running #MercerIslandHalf

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on


I get my energy from running. (Mostly I get it from the music I listen to when I’m running). Also, when I’m done running, I have no energy left. So I guess it’s a bit of an oxymoron, the whole running energy thing. Suffice it to say that when I am running, I feel energized, and that’s the very in-the-moment type of thing that grounds me. (Except when I have wicked leg cramps).

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Intricate (Photo of the Day)

intricate

My contribution to the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: Intricate. I added a little bit of tilt-shift in post-processing to emphasize the intricacy of the boats massed together in this marina. Down within the marina proper, any one boat is massive, a world unto itself. But from above, all those masts and cranes and prows can be nearly overwhelming. Intricacy is a matter of perspective.

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The Only Flip-Flops I Got Are On My Feet

Postaday for May 3rd. Flip Flop Think of a topic or issue about which you’ve switched your opinion. Why the change?

Over the course of my life I’ve changed my life a lot. I suppose everyone has. “All I know is that I know nothing.” Maybe that’s where wisdom comes from: being wrong a lot. Not that I think I’m right, now. Well, I mean, of course I think I’m right, now. No one thinks “what I think is wrong and I’m not going to bother thinking what’s write.” Then again, I’m pretty sure this opening paragraph is pretty bad… ah, but that’s laziness when I say I’m not going to bother to fix it.

I’ll admit, I’m having trouble thinking of a topic that I’ve switched my opinion on, at least that’s interesting to write about. Interesting to me, I mean. Maybe this one: When I was a kid they showed us some films in grade school to convince us to never drink or do drugs. And they worked! I was a teetotaler until I was 29. In my 20s I convinced myself that the problem wasn’t the alcohol itself, but the culture, the way youth seemed to almost worship inebriation. Young wannabe priest communing with Bacchus. Then one day I realized I was fetishizing NOT drinking, so I decided, meh, bottom’s up. Got drunk, for the first time, with three scantily clad young ladies. Body shots were involved. True story. Now I’m a regular alcohol aficionado.

But I draw the line there. (Also, I don’t drink with scantily clad females anymore). No drugs. Weed is legal in this state, but my wife works for the federal government, so for her it’s still off limits. I have no problem with also abstaining. For her sake. (Not sure what I can tell you about the future though, when she retires.)

Can’t think of anything interesting, though, in the ol’ flip-flop department. And you know what? It’s stalling me, keeping me from writing about something else. I just spent five minutes browsing Reddit, looking for inspiration. So here: on the topic of having changed my mind about something, I have changed my mind from “I can write about that” to “I cannot write about that.’

When in doubt, go meta.

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A Bit of Free Writing

Fathom is a good word. For example: I cannot fathom why the people who park at the Broadview branch of the Seattle Public Library have such a difficult time sticking it between the lines. I wonder if people who drive like that, who care so little for other people, who think only, obviously, of themselves, would ever use the word Fathom. Is it too intellectual for them. Ostensibly they possess a modicum of intelligence: they’re at the library, after all.

But have you seen some of the vehicles. There’s an inexorable association between IQ and income, isn’t there. Not that your average BMW driver is a genius. Indeed, most them are assholes too. Maybe’s it’s an extreme thing: expensive car, park like a jerk so no one dings your doors. Old jalopy: swerve into the space without paying attention to where your tires land.

Come to think of it, perhaps I should eschew the notion that there’s any chance these idiots are smart just because they’d rather get the latest David Baldacci for free than pay for the e-reader edition on their Kindle Fires.

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure, myself, why fathom, a unit of nautical measurement, can be used as a synonym for a thought process. It’s a metaphor, I suppose; one attempts to “plumb the depths of thought.” Or something. But what about that word, “plumb?” And just why are thoughts said to be “deep,” in the first place? As far as I know, if water is deep, light ceases top penetrate it. The deeper the thought, the darker, the murkier.

Forces of nature, is how I reconcile my angst when I see these terrible drives. That’s a bit of synecdoche there (or metonymy; I always get the two confused). I don’t actually see the actual drivers, I just see their terrible cars and their terrible parking jobs. I don’t ever see the wind that blows down the trees, either, just the crushed houses. But I can’t take the wind personally, and certain those awful people in their awful beaters didn’t park like that for my sake.

Maybe I should thank them, though, the way one thanks God. One claims that The Lord works in mysterious ways, and that can be a meditation on finding the Good in tragedy. Look, I know someone’s parking like a total fuckwit is not much a tragedy, but if I can something out it, like, a little self-examination and some pleasure around thinking of a nice word like “fathom,” well, that’s better than the alternative.

Besides, I don’t carry a knife with me, as the alternative, slashing tires, is rather illegal, I’m told.

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NaPloBoMo Day 3: Your Feelings

#Run until your wool hat leaves marks on your head.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on

I don’t know what my feelings are. I feel like maybe doing only Instagram photos for NaPloBoMo could is a good thing. I feel like I should discuss running more often. I feel like sometimes what we feel is a manifestation of the clothes we force ourselves to wear, the friction that inevitably ensues. The difference between want and need. Emotions, we’re learning, are associated with a mental body map. And everyone (EVERYONE) suffers from some degree of body dysmorphia.

I go for a run. I sweat. It gets in my eyes. Next time, I wear a hat to keep the sweat out of my eyes. I take it off and it’s left marks on my forehead. I look crazy. I look angry. Therefore, I must be. I’m crazy to think that running is going to anything to improve my body. I’m angry because I know this and run anyway.

Thankfully, I love to run. I love to blast loud music in my tinnitus-stained ears. I love it when my body is so immersed in synchronizing rhythm and carbohydrate oxidization that my brain checks out completely. The body map disappears and with it, feeling.

I want to run, I need to run. That’s synchronicity, the best feeling.

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Review: The Last Word

The Last Word
The Last Word by Lisa Lutz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Last book in the Spellman series, and it feels like it. You have to decide for yourself if that speaks ill or not. Personally, I don’t think it does, but then, I waded through all six Spellman documents without much break in between. I can imagine that reading one novel a year from 2007 through 2013 (with a break in 2011 for a stand-alone novel) would leave one wanting more out of number six. And it was only after publication that subsequent editions of number six were subtitled “The Next Generation” which, too, I think, set some unrealized expectations.

The theme throughout has been farcical dysfunction, and how Izzy is a reformed-screw-up. Here in number six, she’s fully adult, and screwing that up too, but it’s inexperience, not selfish indifference, that fuels the chaos. Thankfully, a tragedy of sorts brings the family back to being on the same team, and everything works out. This is what I mean when I say it feels like a final novel. A couple of dangling threads get tied up a bit too neat, and while I want to lambast Lutz for laziness, I’m going to instead forgive her the desire to just move one.

As a person who likes to write, I have a lot of respect for all of the various plot lines that Lisa Lutz manages to weave together. Dozens of different stories intertwining, some of them tied together, and some of them disparate. But for all of that, the Spellman novels were usually more about character than anything else. And let’s face it: everyone’s a foil for Izzy. So too in 6, the final foil, if you want.

As I’ve said in previous Spellman doc reviews, I don’t know who would read a review for this novel—if you’ve read one through five, I can’t imagine you’d look for a reason to read six. You’d just read it. Nor can I imagine someone wanting to check-up on the series’ worthiness before diving in. You decided if the first one is right for you, and if it is, so are the other five.

But for what it’s worth: Six is a nice finish. A little bit slower, a little bid sadder, a wee bit nostalgic, but ultimately, a nice smile and satisfaction at a series well-read.

View all my reviews

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I Can’t Even Think of what I’ve Been Doing Lately

Please note: this entry uses graphic language and disturbing imagery.

Postaday for May 2nd. Beyond the Pale. When was the last time you did something completely new and out of your element? How was it? Will you do it again?

fiction by Jason Edwards

I can’t even think of what I’ve been doing lately. Going to work, coming home, fixing the broken step out front, spending my weekends with the AM radio and the ball game , drinking beer, sleeping, eating Mexican food, reading novels, mowing the lawn, browsing the internet, stalking ex-girlfriends, stealing money from my wife’s purse, pouring gasoline in her flowerbeds, watching old TV on latenight cable, walking off my diabetes, listening to old recordss, setting a few plants on fire, lying about doing the weeding, lying about mowing the lawn, lying about not touching my wife’s purse, letting her blame some of the kids at church, encouraging her to tell the pastor by saying I didn’t think she should, since she never does what I suggest, singing hymn 193 with an Irish accent to see if anyone would notice, gently working my way up the pews week by week until we’re sitting in the row across the aisle from Hal and Lisa, timing my glance to the right so that I can look at Lisa’s legs when she stands, memorizing the large mark just above her knee that looks like Madagascar, looking up Madagascar on the internet, code-naming my porn folder Madagascar, waiting for my wife to go to sleep and then sneaking down to the liquor cabinet to take a few belts of a cheap vodka, masturbating furiously, walking outside in my robe, taking a leak on the side of my wife’s car, trying to figure out how to blame the neighbors if I managed to burn all of her gardenias, wondering if there’s any point in blaming the neighbors, mentally calculating how many anti-histamines I’d have to sneak into her nightly glass of wine to get her to sleep deeply enough that I could get into her car and drive it to the church and break a few windows and take a dump on the hood and fuck it the front seat too and then call the police and tell them it was the same kids who stole out of her purse and then walk home in the dark and stop in at a bar and get into a fight and really go to town on some faggot and maybe break a knuckle or two and get aids and get kicked off my insurance and waste away in the hospital and ask my wife to pull the plug and then when she agrees too quickly justify in my heart hiring some thug to murder her and then have a miraculous recovery  and bury my poor wife and wallow in the casseroles and sympathy pussy since it wasn’t really aids and give some of the bitches in this stupid fucking neighborhood the aids cause I lied and it was and hope they pass it on to their husbands and their kids and their dogs and their fucking goldfish.

Ordinary shit. Gosh, the last time I did something completely new… I bought a hat, a trilby. Makes me look like an asshole but I wear it anyway.

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NaBloPoMo Day 2: Your Passion

When you’re in love with a beautiful woman… you watch your friends…

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on

I’m 43. I don’t know if I have any passions. Or if I do, I have lots of little ones. Beer is one. I really like beer. Am an I alcoholic? Well, I’m certainly trying to be one. It’s tough though… I like beer, but I can’t drink it every day. Maybe one or two a week. Of course there’s Tuesdays, when I hang out with friends at a bar. I can manage two beers then, usually.

We sit at a table and they order food (I usually cook something with the wife before I give her a night to herself in the house) and we talk about the stupidest things. And we laugh. The waitstaff know us. We’re good tippers. The owner knows us. He bring exotic beer samples.

I tend towards the Pale Ales, although I’ll down an IPA if I’m in the mood. I used to be strictly Lagers and Pilsners, but too few breweries get them right. But the ones that do? I’ll have three or four, please! Often I’ll go with a Brown Ale, and if I’m hanging with an enthusiast, I’ll share a Porter or a Stout. I even know how to drink sours and saisons: let ’em get warm.

I like beer after a long run (or a short run, I won’t lie). While the ball game’s on the radio and I’m burning something on the grill. In between mowing the front yard and the backyard. A beer during Christmas dinner is nice. My wife and I like to vacation in tropical places, and a tall frosty glass in a little place with a deck by the beach… it can make up for a whole year of heart ache.

Can’t really drink beer when I’m playing video games (I forget and the beer gets warm) or when I’m reading a book (I got idle hands and I drink the darn thing too fast) or if I’m at the computer doing some writing (I’ll lose my train of through If I get dragged to the bathroom too often). So, beer’s not my only passion.

But it’s one of them. And it’s Mariners at Astros in 10 minutes. Perfect timing!