EPIC RANT || This thing some religious people do ….

Harsh language, and sexual situations are mention discretion is advised

My nephew inspired this post. Actually his full of shit diapers that I got out of changing due to some clever politicking on my part did. You see there is one thing that has always bothered the fuck out of me, and that is religious people who read nothing but their religious texts and look condescendingly on everything that isn’t the idyllic religious world they envision

Before you say anything please realize I am for religious freedom. I think you can worship and praise whatever you want to, but I do believe this blinkered close-minded absconding from the world around us is about a helpful to progress, or building a better tomorrow as a new Ke$ha song; it is as useful as paper-cuts on your anus right before a salt water enema appointment. (It’s a new celebrity fad)

I don’t mean to get get off on a rant here, but religious text are quite lacking. For instance in the bible there was no formula for penicillin or the sulfa drug which combined, saved more lives than either the Islamic Conquests or the Christian Crusades. There is nothing in the Qu’ran about dismantling post-colonial systems of oppression, stopping international spying and abuses of privacy. It may come as shock but the world has changed a lot from the one depicted in the recorded oral histories, and antediluvian traditions  that inform many religious texts.

Practical Examples

in your own world

Jerking off or the more anachronistic term for it: onanism, is considered a sin in the Bible. Onan prodded his inner Protestant and when he his ronin, throat-yogurt hit the ground God killed him with a thunder-bolt. Yet, tell me this, if you’ve never rubbed/pounded/slapped/DJ’d (I don’t know what you do) a couple out even with extremely pressing deadlines how will you ever understand our political process and those jerk-offs in Congress. Furthermore, coveting thy neighbors ass has a totally new meaning now, with the advent of 24 hour gyms and yoga pants. Bottomline: How can you participate in a world that you do nothing to understand?

Off the Deep End

Before I go any further, I also think we should avoid buying into the idea that the West has it right and that we can save the East/Third World. We actively plunge the world into a chaos we have create and expect congratulations when we, a few years later we bring together has-been celebrities and musicians to raise money for a cause that we sincerely don’t think much about. Our democracy is kind effete, if you take into consideration voter suppression, the egregious lack of a strong public education, the ever-widening inequality gap, the involvement of corporate money in our elections etc. We are a work in progress.

No Dialogue with the Past

But that’s not the point. I ran into someone who wants to write poetry in English but refuses to read poetry or any form of literature other than their own religious texts. I do not know how one can expect to perfect one’s craft without ever learning from what other before have done.

He will never read Walt Whitman because Wally may have sucked a dick or two in his life. To this ass-clown (the guy I was talking too) reading the poetry of anyone who isn’t of high morals is supporting whatever “vile activity they are part of”. He hasn’t read Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, TS Eliot, Faulkner Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Borges, or most anyone else.

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I wanted to get him an illustrated version of the Marquis de Sade‘s book: Histoire de Juliette ou les Prospérités du vice, or maybe Jean Genet‘s Querelle de Brest, and let him in on how many shades of meaning smuggling can take, and not just in a naval town in Brest France.

Ultimately to each his own.

Maybe it’s my fault because I have never been religious. Maybe all that pre-marital sex in the early 2000’s really ruined my chances for understanding the rules about how I should stay away from women on their periods, how I shouldn’t eat bacon or get rounded haircuts, or why hanging out with guys that worship Baal is a bad idea?

Let me wrap it up, which is also a sin t0o it seems; what ever makes you happy makes you happy. If

• your idea of a good time is a Sunday afternoon at an all the dick you can eat buffet, all the more power to you. I think you should be able to vote, make equal pay, and not have anyone limit your freedom.
• you want to have your hand so far up in a bird that you have to put shiny buckles on your hat and shoes like the pilgrims on Thanksgiving then go for it you don’t even have to wear a napkin around your neck. You do not have to live your live according to another persons ideology.
• you want to live your life according to the dictates of a book or a series of books, codified oral tradition, or shungas  from the 1300’s depicting scenes egregious penetrations, or Japanese octopus porn then you have every right to do so! All the more power to you

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But you have to realized that many other people do not share your vision of how things should be. You may have to start to venture outside the never never land of your creation where surprisingly enough many societies have continued on in time developing new world views that can affects your life in a very serious ways. Oh and if you wanna be a career writer or poet and never read an literature you’re full of shit.

yeah that it

rant ended

 

A Satirical look at 2013′s Major Events|| Miley Cyrus

Where do I even start with Miley Cyrus?

My mother told me once that if you have nothing nice to say then to shut up. She also told me I was going to marry a nice Haitian girl but that didn’t fucking happen. So then Ms Miley Cyrus…

2013 Miley Cyrus’ Year

But beyond her ballsy fashion choices and controversial performances and statements, you have to remember that Miley successfully reinvented herself with a successful new album and a whole new look. So kudos to her for dominating a very busy 2013!

Aside from that the fact that we feel dirty after watching, what do Miley Cyrus and a woman in a bukkake film have in common? – Although she is plastered all over the news media headlines, she is still empty inside at the end of the day.

That’s mean of me to say. Basically if I can put away my sarcasm and cynicism for a bit, I have always felt that if someone has real talent they do not have to resort to cheap gimmicks and sensational antics  to court, and face-fuck the public into paying attention to them.

Was there a different way of letting the public know that she doesn’t want to be seen as the wholesome Disney personage she used to pretend to be? She could have:

1. Read a Book/Gone to College
2. Hung out/Dated/Partied with Lindsay Lohan
3. Put out a really good acoustic album

But I do not hold her completely responsible for her decent into licentious, tongue-out shenanigans. The public is part to blame. The public has an insatiable urge to see and ridicule another person’s, depravity. It’s always better when that other person is a celebrity. There is this tide of schadenfreude that ebbs throughout our society.

Why else would Miley go from Disney Wholesome to the Whore of Babylon riding into our living rooms on the back of the 7 headed beast that is mass media today? I think this is setting a bad example for young girls. Basically to be worthy of attention one has to sell oneself as a hyper-sexualized being incapable of functioning i.e a passive recipient, or in other words a walking orifice.

Just my thought

Dave

Another Perspective on Talent – Now You Have No Excuse !

One of the tell-tale signs of someone who has talent is their insistent wondering about whether or not they have talent. They let themselves fall into vicious cycle of self doubt and not surprisingly will fight you quite aggressively when you compliment their work. I have two – three people in mind as I write this and they know exactly who they are. I am going to share with you certain conclusions, I have come to concerning talent.

Concerning Talent

In our society, where everything is either, pre-made, instant, or ready to use out of the package we have no more a sense of the time it takes for mastery of any subject. My paternal grandfather was for part of his life a tailor. One day you should try to talk to a tailor about cloth ask how long it took them to learn to cut the cloth properly and do all the things we take for granted.

John Banville who has won the Man Booker Award and been shortlist for the Nobel Prize had this to say:

INTERVIEWER

What attracted you to novel writing?

BANVILLE

Language. Words. The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language, and this was as true then as it is now. I also had that wonderful conviction that writers have at the beginning that the possibilities are infinite. I didn’t realize just how difficult it was going to be. I thought that within five or six years I would be a fully fledged writer. Here I am now, at the age of sixty-two, still diligently practicing. But I loved, and still love, the craft. I am a graphomaniac. I cannot not write. If I find myself with a spare forty-five minutes at the end of my working day, I will turn to adding a few sentences to something. One of the reasons I love doing journalism—that is, reviews and literary articles—is that I can do it quickly. It gives me a craftsman’s pleasure. Fiction doesn’t do that. Fiction is just a constant torment, and an embarrassment. I loathe my fiction. I have a fantasy when I’m passing a bookstore that I could click my fingers and all my books would go blank, so that I could start again and get them right.

Over three decades worth of practice, and he is still learning. That a powerful fucking statement. To become a master at anything it takes a lifetime. There are no short cuts, no quick fixes.  There will be times when you will doubt  yourself like with everything there will be times where you are ecstatic because your genius and unique vision of the world shines through whatever you have dedicated yourself to. That’s normal and the way it is. The question is are you ready and willing to put in the time necessary ?

We have issues being selfish.  If you read Banville’s remark above, you can see writing is something he loves. Like with anything we love we have to dedicate a significant portion of our time to it. We have to be grounded in the fact that we do it because we fucking love it. if you are drawn to the true sense to writing or sculpting or basket weaving -whatever it is because there is something about the process about the craft you love. There is nothing wrong with being selfish, provide no one is getting hurt, and u are not neglecting your responsibilities. To love something is to sacrifice for it. Are You selfish enough to make that sacrifice. Maybe it means getting 2 hours less of sleep 5 nights a week that’s 14 hours a week 728 a year honing your craft. can you invest your time, in yourself, doing something you love? Many people cannot.

BANVILLE

I’m trying to be honest here. I’m not going to pose as a caring novelist. Art is a hard business. It’s a matter of sentiment, but not sentimentality. I do it for myself. The coincidence is that what I do for myself chimes sometimes with the experiences and emotions and desires of other people. This is a kind of miracle, but I don’t intend for it to happen—it just does. Art is like sex: when you’re doing it, nothing else matters. Away from his desk the novelist can care deeply about the social, political, moral aspects of what he is writing but when he sits down to write, all those concerns fall away and nothing matters except the putting down of one carefully chosen word after another carefully chosen word, until a sentence is finished, then a paragraph, then a page, then a chapter, then a book. When I’m working I don’t care about anything, not even myself. All my concentration is directed towards the making of the thing on the page. The rest is just stuff—even though it is the stuff of life.

It’s not a competition against anyone. It can’t be. We are all so different. We each have to do the best we can in what we love to do.

Just my thoughts. 

MrMary

 

An Acquaintance is Creating a Comic Book featuring a black main character & needs feedback

The Scenario

My acquaintance describes herself as a twenty-something white girl from the states and also a (very un-famous!) comic artist currently in the production stages of a new comic. Concerning the comic book, it’s crime/drama featuring a female lead police officer, with a dash of the paranormal. It’ll be a mixture of science-fiction and mystery. The closest thing to compare to it would be the X-FIles. Here are her words:

“This is a story that I’ve been working on for ages and I’m very excited about it. I desperately want to turn out something worth reading. I’ve been doing some research for a while but I still have some major reservations about writing a black female main character. I guess my biggest concern of all is that people will find the story mishandled or offensive.

So, assuming you like science fiction, crime-dramas, and comics in general, I would love you forever if you could answer a few questions:

1. Should I even make the attempt?
2. I know that people in the entertainment industry constantly fetishize people of color, or butcher the story in the attempt, or parody the culture, or any number of horrible things and my biggest fear with this project is that I’m going to stumble into that myself. 
3. So what are some things I should absolutely avoid doing (if any)? 
4. What are some things you’d like to see in a police drama involving a female lead?
5. Is there any topic that shouldn’t be handled by me? 
6. Are there any resources that you think I as a writer would find helpful? (I’m always looking for more blogs.)

And because I have nowhere else to put this, I guess I’ll just tack this on at the end:

I just want to tell a riveting sci-fi story. I want to entertain my readers and write believable characters. The main character is from Bermuda, her ethnicity isn’t an arbitrary choice made by me in an attempt to look edgy by writing outside my comfort zone.

My Sugggestions

I loved collecting comic books back in the day. These are my suggestions:

1. No slang or Ebonics  – I think this would be very hard to pull off without offending. Regional dialectical talk is one thing Ebonics is tough to do well. Uhm no twerking I would say but maybe sci-fi and twerking go together.
2. I think the character should be fully developed as any other character – a developed back story, modern day aspirations which are reflective of her unique identity and someone from Bermuda. I think it is important to  show some snippets of the difficulties faced by a black women but these should be the sides  and her personal development as she encounters life’s difficulties should be the main course.
3. I think the humanity of the character should be early established. I feel this from a writing perspective because it sort of would serve as a safe guard in a way from unknowingly perpetuating stereotypes.
4. I would say stay as far away from stereotypical depiction that were used in the past to portray negros: nappy hair , big lips, etc

There is a NY Times article called : Still Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible

First a bit of context: Throughout the early decades of the post-civil-rights era black people tended to view their image in media, particularly in movies, through a prism of “positive” or “negative.” These simplistic terms served a kind of Rorschach test of images that could make black folks comfortable or uncomfortable. Denzel Washington as a strong-willed, heroic Union soldier in “Glory”(1989) was considered positive. Denzel Washington as a crooked Los Angeles cop in “Training Day” (2001) was negative. He won Oscars for both, but his corrupt cop was polarizing, since it implicated black treachery, with white indifference, in urban crime.

I think character complexity will be very important with that said. Anyways that is all I got at the moment. Anyone one has more to say please leave a comment.

Some thing I read that could be interesting:  The Perceived Realism of African American Portrayals on Television

 

Talking Craft With MrMary: The Reality of Rejection Letter

One of the most important experiences of being a writer is rejection. I have gotten rejected recently from  some pretty good journals but  it wasn’t a flat out rejection. Take a look:

Rejection # 1

This is a popular and really good poetry magazine and it would be a dream for me to be published here.

Dear David,

Thank you for your submission!

We enjoyed the voice in your poems; in particular we enjoyed: Charles, however, they are not what we are seeking for inclusion in [name hidden] We very much look forward to reading more from you in the future and encourage you to try us again.

Please feel free to submit again, we only ask that you wait at least three months before re-submitting.

Regards,

Editor in Chief

Rejection 2

This is a great publication, it is not as “high-ranking” as the one above but still a great  publication

We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to read your work. At this time we’re going to release the work for publication elsewhere. Best of luck to you and keep submitting!

You need to check the poem below for the line with two city names I think “start” needs to be plural. I liked the poem but not quite right – do try us again in the future.

Editor

Some Thoughts:

I think it takes a bit of time to get used to rejection letters.  After all when one is a writer one has to spend a lot of time honing one’s skills and  this happens usually in the ambiance of an action packed workday filled with a ton of responsibilities. I think rejection letter are important because they, for me at least, teach the writer/poet/story-teller:

1. 1. How to become better at selecting the appropriate genre and niche for one’s writing. For me I have spent the last year working on making my verse technically sound and I can see the difference
2. 2. How to write in such a way as to make your work accessible to others,
3. 3 How to proofread and edit your own work, etc

My plan still is the same, it is to  publish in as many magazines ad publications as I can. (I have a targeted amount of publications in mind I would like to achieve. Then I will go on to create a chapbook or two and then finally hopefully then publish ad actual collection traditionally.

Every great writer or poet has had to deal with rejection. I felt that the sooner I was able to not take it so personally the sooner I was able to benefit from them and work to improve my craft

I just thought I would share

MrMary