Shameless Filler.

Look, I am just going to be upfront with you: I applied to some MFA programs and so that means that people sitting on admissions committees all around the country may choose to come pursue this here blog to see what exactly I do with it. So I am going to be re-posting some stuff (mostly from last year) that I really like because it is an opportunity to put a little bit more of my writing in front of these people.

(This is when I shrug and make a Jim-from-The-Office face.)

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Dodging the Draft.

The piece below is a first draft an “Aesthetic Manifesto”. That was the assignment anyway. What you see below is not so much a first draft as it is a thinking-out of what I need to articulate in something called an “Aesthetic Manifesto”. The keen reader of this blog might notice how similar my academic writing has become to my blog writing.

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Instagram Whore.

Sorry that my writing blog has basically been a photo blog lately.

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The Inimitable Hodgman.

I think that for some odd reason today my brain must be set to John Hodgman because I have been writing odd little untrue factoids all morning. The ones below, silly as they are, are the few that are un-silly enough to even bother sharing with you. The Hodgman is inimitable, which must be why I’m failing so badly as a writer today.

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Ukraine.

I just happened to check my blog stats (which is something I do when I want to feel bad about myself) and this blog has started getting hits from Ukraine. The editors here at Standardkink would like to welcome all of our new readers in Ukraine and ask, “Don’t you people have like WAY better things to be doing right now?!”

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All The Same New/Old Stuff.

So hello all and a happy new year to you.

I am going to try to ease back into this whole blogging thing. I have been absent from it for awhile now. There are a lot of reasons for that, but mostly we will just put it down to discombobulation.

First, there has just been too much work lately. Too much. Just too much. God, so much work! Even when I wasn’t working 10 and 11 hour days, I was still coming back to my little apartment and collapsing into an exhausted little puddle November and December were especially bad and busy at work. It is amazing how much a stressful day can just sap all of the juice out of you. It used to be that sitting down here with my little computer was the haven when I hid from the stresses of life, but at some point this year that simply ceased being true.

Also – and this probably isn’t going to make much sense to most people – I think I have forgotten how to write. Not in the most literal sense. Not like some railroad spike went through my brain and I miraculously survived except that I can no longer compose sentences. More like I just haven’t been able to get into the place where one needs to be in order to compose poems about unicorn smuggling rings or to actually write a short story. One has got to be in the right head space to do that sort of thing and I just have not been able to locate it. For now, let’s just put it down to stress (stressing myself out is my one real superpower).

It would also be true that life has been strange for me personally for a little while now. I know that the life I have right now really is not the one that I want; it isn’t fulfilling and I can’t remember the last time that I woke up feeling even a little bit zesty. There just hasn’t been any verve in me lately. If I believed all of the commercials on television, I would probably have to assume that I need one of those testosterone pills or something. Sadly for both me and the companies out that which sell testosterone pills, I do not think that this funk can be pharmacologically cured. Though I was recently – sort of – offered cocaine. Though I’m not sure if the guy offering actually had any cocaine. He might have just been drunk. Let me tell you, I did not hang out in that bathroom long enough to find out!

Speaking of bathrooms, I recently made a trip back east for Christmas. Yes, I spent several days in snowy Connecticut, with some little bit of time spent in New York City. Among other things, I had a Norman Rockwell night with (most) of my family. Building a snowman out of freshly fallen snow and breaking my tailbone sledding with my brothers. I was all very American Gothic of us.

While I was out there I also found a little bit of time to run. It was a new experience for me running in real biting Winter cold, with snow falling lightly and little white flakes melting in my warm puffs on breath. There was an interesting thing that happened in my brain as cars shot by on the little country roads, the people inside of them would look out at me quizzically as if wondering, “What in the holy fuck is wrong with that guy?” Anyway, it made me smile. I like being a runner, even though I am still quite bad at it. If the measure of being something is doing something, then I was most certainly a runner. At least right then.

Also, I try not to talk about my family much open here – because I am the one who has chosen to air all of his problems on the internet, not them, and I try to remember that – but I was struck, once again, by how lucky I am to have such a great family. In the lottery of life, I totally scored big with my family Even the ones who I didn’t see for Christmas I saw upon returning to the West coast. Without gushing too much, I just want it to be known that I have a loving and supportive family and when the book is closed on me and talented therapists finaly figure out what the hell is wrong with me, I can assure you that it is not going to be unresolved childhood issues.

Let’s see … what else?

Even though I have not done any actual writing, I have been thinking quite a lot about writing and I recently figured out a big piece of something which had stumped me for quite some time in the novel I am perpetually working on. It is nice when a problem can be solved. So now that I have solved this gaping hole in the plot I should really sit down and – you know – write it.

All in good time though. I have refused to make any actual NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS, because that seems to me like the best way to guarantee failing at them. However I have quietly made some plans for myself. Some small and delicate promises. They are exactly what you would expect: I want to write more, but not just that. I want to DO SOMETHING with that writing. I haven’t had anything published in quite awhile and that is 100% due to the fact that I simply haven’t sent anything out in awhile. So it isn’t just about the writing, it is also about putting myself out there.

Also, I am simply at the point where I need to find a new job. I’m tired of the hours and the stress and the not-so-great-money-considering-the-hours-and-the-stress. At this point I feel as though my work ethic is being somewhat taken advantage of. Almost as if they go, “Hey who should we give this last-minute and impossible problem to?” and then it invariably lands on my desk about 6pm and they say, “It is suddenly your job to have this fixed by tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, we are all going home. TTFN!” I have been in the position several times recently where I had to INVENT ways to fix things. Not simple FIND ways, but literally invent them. It just seems to me like that shouldn’t be required of me. Sure, if I worked for the CIA or NASA or something then I would understand, but I don’t work for those places. I work in a totally normal office and all of these problems could be avoided through some better management. But alas, I have said too much. I don’t like to complain specifically since I use my real name on this here blog.

Finally, I am going to make a very real effort to become more fit, physically and emotionally and intellectually. I didn’t read enough last year, I didn’t write enough, I didn’t run enough or do enough pushups and I certainly wasn’t GOOD enough. I have had some passing moments in the last few months when I have felt like a man, not just an erstwhile thirty-something who is a grown-up because he has a job and pays his taxes. No, there were a few moments sprinkled into all the chaos when I felt like a man; like somebody who had it together. I would like to feel more of those moments. Most of them came with moments of clarity. I have offered a few real apologies to people who I really owed them to. I came clean about some things and it felt good. I have tried to be more honest, with myself and with others, and that felt good. Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on the hyper-ironic mockery of everything, but I also haven’t given up on hope and on joy and on the idea life is always a work in progress.

So there is all of that. I’m sure none of this means anything to you, but it is good for me to sit here and say all of this. I hope that your year is going well so far. I hope that you are healthy and happy and pure of heart and I hope you are looking forward to good things in the days and weeks and months ahead. If nothing else,  I hope that you are as thankful as I am that that whole Mayan Apocalypse thing didn’t pan out.

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James Bezerra on Google.

I recently discovered that my Google hold on the name “James Bezerra” has slipped a little bit since I have not posted in like two months. To which I would like to say:

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The Editors here at Standardkink Suggested.

Below is an old post. From almost a year ago. The Editors here at Standardkink suggested that I repost it because reading it always makes me feel better about Life, the Universe and Everything. And I always take the advice of the Editors here at Standardkink because they are very smart people.

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Baboons Can Read and The Robots Are Losing!

Out there in the ether of our culture I imagine that there are people having arguments about whether it will be the robots or the hyper-intelligent primates who take over the world (these are probably the same people who concern themselves with the inaccuracies of vampirism in “Twilight”). Well, if you’re keeping score, the primate people are now winning!

This is Dan. Dan is a Baboon. Read, Dan, Read





(The baboon in this picture is not one of the reading baboons featured in the article, but just look at how fricken’ cute it is!)

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Feed.

I was recently shown this very blog as it appears if you have it as a feed on a Mac, and I have to say, I was completely horrified! The man who designed the Standard Kink site and masked that look over to Blogger did a very good job and I have always been very pleased with the simple stylish work that he did. That being said, when you see this thing on a feed it looks like … well, just words on a white page! The horror!

It was scary because it means that there’s no ornamentation to the words! They’re just … WORDS!

And it was right then that I realized that I desperately needed to up my game.

Which, incidentally, scared me so much that I haven’t posted anything in awhile.

Sadly, upping one’s game is much easier said than done.

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Blogger's Guilt.

Sometimes I feel the odd tickle of blogger’s guilt when I check my ‘stats’ on Blogspot (I don’t do it often, but basically you can see your traffic and what particular posts got looked at today or this week or this month, etc). Well a lot of my posts here are nonsensical – no, it’s true! – and I know this and you know this, but today alone two different people ended up looking at a post I wrote like 6 months ago about how I had a dream that I was hiking with Nancy Reagan. And you just KNOW that both of those people left this blog shaking their heads and asking themselves, “What in the holy hell was THAT about?”

Also today five people have read a short play that I wrote about Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and Donald Trump’s hair all having lunch together.

And two poor souls (certainly accidentally) ended up looking at a post I once wrote about how the yellow submarine that the Beatle’s sang of would be just terrible for inserting Navy SEALs.

So, on behalf of all of the editors here at Standard Kink, I would just like to offer a hearty apology to anyone who has innocently stumbled onto this blog while looking for biographical information about Nancy Reagan or Donald Trump’s hair.

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Stuff You Have No Reason to Care About.

A list: Things that I am most certainly not, but might have enjoyed being if the circumstances of my life had been different somehow.

A botanist - I find plants fascinating! And weirdly soothing.

Someone who jogs – There is something about jogging that intrigues me. It has something to do with self-discipline and sustained physicality out in the world.

Someone who enjoys getting up early – The morning always seems like such a nice place when I am hauling myself off to bed.

A rock climber – I have known a couple of people who climb stuff for fun and it always seemed cool, sadly my lack of coordination, balance, eye-sight and my small hands have always prevented me from trying.

A gentleman caller – Not sure that this is really something that one can be anymore, or rather, no one would recognize you and call you a gentleman caller. In fact I’m pretty sure that is just means, “Hey this guy came by to see you because he’s trying to romance your clothes off,” but I think that we’re all so post-Post-Modern that we just say, “Hey this guy came by to see you because he’s trying to romance your clothes off.” Also, I realize now, that ‘gentleman caller’ is or was probably a ceremonial position in 1970s gay New York discos.

A glass-blower – I have always though that glass-blowing is badass, but please see above about coordination, balance, eye-sight, small hands. I mean, am I really the guy you know who you want handling molten glass around puppies and children and stuff?

One of those people who goes to Antarctica to extract ice ‘core samples’ – We all saw that one X-Files where the people doing this got some weird spore or something and it made them all want to kill themselves and/or eachother, well despite those dangers, I still think it would be fun to fly down there and land on an icerunway and live in an icelaboratory and sleep on an icebed and eat snowcones all the time while I am doing whatever science it is that I am doing down there.

A travel writer – I still hold out some small hope of getting to do something like this one day.

Someone who can dance – I would love to know how to dance, really dance. No, I do not watch Dancing With the Stars, but I did discover that there is a dance studio around the corner from my apartment. Sadly, I – unlike Steve Martin – do not have rhythm.

A starship captain – Yeah, I think that we all acknowledge that I would rock the socks off of this job.

Power Forward for the Washington Generals – Because why the hell not?

A radio DJ – I have always thought that I would be a perfect overnight DJ somewhere. I would get to say whatever I want (because no one is listening anyway) and play whatever I want (because no one is listening anyway) and I would get to have a cool DJ name like, “The Red Baron” or “The Commissar” or “The Midnight Music Magician”. Come to think of it, those would all be pretty good super-villain names too.

A Super-Villain – I think I have the chops for it.

A gardener – Like someone who has a garden and gardens herbs and tomatoes, not like someone who makes their living working illegally for Lou Dobbs.

Someone who owns and sails a sailboat – I think that this would be called a yachtsman, but that doesn’t seem like a dignified word to me, for some reason. Anyway, I like boats, in so much as I have been on a few, and I LOVE the insides of boats. Everything is so specifically designed and though-out and crammed together, but in an efficient way, it is like that demo 800 sq ft apartment in every IKEA, with the bed fitted into the bulkhead just so, that sort of thing. I occassionally even find myself thinking that the insides of RVs are cool for this reason too (RVs are not actually cool though, sorry).

A cartographer – I think that I like this because of the romance of maps, not so much because I find land surveying particularly interesting (I’m sure it probably is, I just don’t know enough about it, though I do recall liking “An Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain” and thinking that cartography seemed as charming as pre-solicitation-arrest Hugh Grant. Man, what was he thinking? The guy was dating Elizabeth Hurley when she was ELIZABETH HURLEY for christ sake!).

Gay – I would totally be gay except that I’m not attracted to men at all (sorry boys), but I do like theatre, bed and breakfasts, shopping with women, wine more than beer, Super Bowl commercials more than The Super Bowl, nice clothes, Madonna, George Michael, scented candles, and a nice bright scarf (sorry if it seems like I’m just rattling off blatantly and cartoonishly stereotypical qualities of homosexuality, no offense intended, but none of this stuff makes me Chuck Norris, you know what I'm saying?). Also, it should be pointed out, none of this makes me Metro, Metro is a totally different thing that involves a lot of product and looking in the mirror. If you have seen me lately, you know that I neither use product or look in the mirror.

A fencer – I totally want to learn how to fence! I think that it would be pretty fetch.

The guy at the Oxford English Dictionary who gets to decide what new words are included – I know that this is probably not the job of a single person, but fuck it, I want this ‘duck (‘duck’ is going to mean ‘job’ as soon as I get this job, I mean duck).

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My Query Letter.

So I have been thinking a lot about the things that I should be doing with my time. I have been thinking about all of the writing that I should be doing and about how much I wanted to have accomplished by this point in my life and about how very little of it I have actually gotten to.

One of the things that I should be doing is whoring out a little more – as a writer I mean. Why, what did you think I meant? – I should be submitting more and I should be stalking agents. Plainly, I should just be trying more.

In that vein of thought, I pulled up an old query letter for a novel that I wrote a million years ago. I am going to start toying with it again (the novel and the query letter), but read the below first draft of my query and tell me that this doesn’t sound like a book that you would like to read.

(BTW, a query letter is just a quick synopsis of you and your book that you send out to agents and publishers)


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DEAR AWESOME AGENT PERSON

Set in a world both strange and strangely contemporary, my novel Very Nearly Fabulous follows the kinetic Sober Anne as he cuts a violent path through a seedy metropolis, trying to understand the strange luck that plagues him.

Sober Anne is handicapped by more than an embarrassing name. He suffers from luck the way that others suffer from a disease. Things happen to him, some of them good, some of them bad and all of them bizarre. He survives car crashes, riots, and gangs of gun-toting self-styled vampires. He finds himself on a dark journey to discover the nature of his luck, seeking the advice of millionaire pornographers, quantum physicist call-girls, and a man so lucky that death itself can’t catch him. Along the way he is recruited by a sentient super computer to steal the funniest software known to man, and the job allows him to live out his darker urges. Very Nearly Fabulous has a sweet and eccentric center covered in a layer of delicious dark humor.

I am currently seeking representation for all manner of fiction work. Recently my short stories have been published in The American Drivel Review and Prick of The Spindle. I was a winner of the 1998 Young Playwrights Project and my work has been performed at the distinguished Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. I worked for two years as a staff writer for a small Pulitzer Publishing owned newspaper. I have a screenplay entitled Strange Angel currently in production with a small independent film production company in Los Angeles.

The completed novel Very Nearly Fabulous is 79,000 words and it is available upon request. I very much look forward to hearing from you and I thank you for your time.

Respectfully,
James Bezerra


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A New Short Story!

Below is a piece of writing from a little while ago (so it is kind of like I’m cheating by posting it, but what do you care? You haven’t read it before.) I always thought that it was kinda fun, in an end-of-civilization kind of way.

It is from the future!


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A Good Likeness, Me Thinks.

A couple of nights ago I did that reading at a cute little coffee shop called The Rumor Mill and it went very well (I think) and people seemed to enjoy it. After the reading I was outside talking to a couple of people and Joe (the owner of the coffee shop) led two men up to me and they gave me this.



Yeah, that’s right, that’s a sketch of me doing the reading!

This is one of the coolest things that anyone has ever given me! Look how thin they
made me!


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Now You Can Bother Me at Work!

So this is going to sound like the most lame thing ever, but I only recently figured out that people can leave, and have been leaving, comments on this blog. I swear to god, I thought that no one had ever read this thing (except my Mom, hi Mom!) and about a week ago I offhandedly mentioned in conversation that no one had ever emailed me or made a comment or anything and the people I was talking to were all like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Well come to find out that people HAVE left comments on stuff! Man, I am kinda dumb.

So first, I am so sorry if you have left a comment or something and I never replied or gushed over how happy I am that you are here and reading. I love you so much. Yes, you (I hope that doesn’t make our relationship awkward now).

Secondly, I am totally a jerk. And (obviously) quite dumb.

Thank you so much to the people who have written things. It means so much to me (this is the only gushing post I will ever write, BTW. We will shortly be returning to our regularly scheduled programming).

I have been reading over the comments (instead of doing important homework) and I feel so gratified and honored and stuff.

So anyway dear readers, thank you. I appreciate all five of you.

Oh! And I set it up so that if you leave a comment it goes straight to my phone, so now you can distract me at work throughout the day. Please do not abuse that power.


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How to Become Mayor of the Internet!

As you well know dear readers, I was recently rejected from the best of the best MFA Creative Writing programs in the country and now that I only cry about it in the mornings, I am trying to spend some of my time figuring out what I will do with myself once I graduate. One of the things I plan to do is to start using this blog the way that I originally intended, which is to say that I will post more writing on it and even figure out how to write stories specifically for it.

Now don’t worry! I will still post the sort of random and largely irrelevant crap that you come here for.

However, I have also been thinking about how to get more people to read this damn thing. As it is only my Mom reads it (hi Mom!) and that’s cool and all, but I need more people to read it and tell two friends and then those two friends will tell two friends and so forth and so on until I become president of the Internet. Or at least Mayor.

So I have been thinking a lot about what people like to read on blogs and after extensive and exhaustive research and analysis I have concluded that the only things people like to read about on blogs are: politics, tech, and babies (I have also discovered that people most like to look at: porn, cute animals, and porn).

Since I (sadly) do not have any porn or cute animals to offer you, I would like to announce that this blog will, henceforth, be concerned primarily with Walter my new Tea Party Robot Baby!!!



Walter has a built-in iPad, he has profoundly changed my life and my sense of the world and made me really understand love, and he hates Socialism with a fiery passion that borders on pathological self-delusion (though he does not have a clear understanding of what Socialism is exactly and thinks that it means giving public subsidies to pregnant, unmarried, drug-using illegal immigrants).

Sometimes, at night, when I hold Walter in my arms and listen to his 120 GB hard drive gently purr into sleep mode, I softly sing him songs about how much the Founding Fathers loved Jesus and Ronald Regan and guns.

I bet you’re gonna tell your fiends now!

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This cool picture of Walter was respectfully (please don’t sue me) lifted off the Flickr page The Finedon's Secret's which has a bunch of other cool stuff that I don’t entirely understand.