What the Fuck is Going on in Ecuador?!

So apparently there is some kind of labor dispute going on with the police down there and the President. The Police basically rioted and chased the President into a hospital and then shot tear gas into it and so the Ecuadorian military had to show up to rescue him.

WTF?

Read it up HERE at the BBC.

Hip Hop History.

So I know you’re seeing this everywhere today, but it is actually kind of cool, sort of a chronological history of hip hop I guess (skip the beginning, it starts about 65 seconds in).




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Frightened Fat Kid Inherits North Korea.

I know that you are in the loop and up on your current events, so I don’t have to tell you that recently it has seemed like the government in North Korea is maneuvering to establish Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un as the clear successor to his father.

Since the government of North Korea is all old-school Stalinist and still more secretive than M. Night Shymalan wants you to be about the end of his “movies”, no one actually knows who the hell Kim Jong Un is or what the hell he looks like or what makes him so qualified to run the world’s most batshit insane dictatorship. This goes for North Koreans too, they are all like, “I’m too busy starving to really care much at this point.”

So those ever-subtle style-makers up there in Pyongyang figured out how to make it super clear who will lead them into the future. Here is what they did: they let him go out in public.

That’s right. They allowed him to be seen.

Here is a picture from a recent North Korean rally, he’s the kid on the left.





Ha!

That was a joke. Seriously though, here you go, he’s the kid on the left.





Ha!

You fell for it again!

Seriously though this time; he is the kid on the left.






So there he is. Cower in fear world!

This poor guy has a lot to live up to. His father (the guy on the far right who looks like Mrs. Kim from The Gilmore Girls) is simply out of his mind in a way that only absolute power can make you.

You know what I really want to know though? How come the guy in the middle of that last picture isn’t the guy in charge? His hat is big and that probably makes him qualified. That Kim Jung Un is lucky that Dr. Seuss didn’t overthrow Korea and install a Communist government back in the day because if he had then – I suspect – political power would be determined entirely by the size of one’s hat (this is how the Catholic Church has always done it) and Kim Jong Um would be out on his ass.


HERE is an actual article about what's going on up there in the North.

(BTW, I bitch and moan a lot, but I understand that if I lived in North Korea and posted this blog entry, I would probably go to jail, or worse. GBA.)

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Places I Have Fought.

Places Where My Ex Girlfriend and I Got in a Fight About One Thing or Another: An Entirely Non-Comprehensive List.

Many of these were my fault. A lot of them were not.


Sea-Tac Airport

New York City (general)

Central Park (specifically)

Bronxville, NY

San Luis Obispo

San Diego (primarily in The Gas Lamp and Downtown, but also Hotel Circle)

Newhall, CA

My last apartment

My studio apartment

In the street outside my studio apartment

The room I rented in Echo Park

In the street outside the room I rented in Echo Park

Universal CityWalk (I totally deserved that one)

Fresno, CA

My parent’s house

Her best friend’s house

IKEA

The Chevy’s Fresh Mex across the street from IKEA

Utah



(I’m making an effort to remember both the good and the bad. I’m told that that’s healthy.)


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All I Don't Need.

I had to turn the television off just now because my roommate Azalea (still test driving blog names for her) is currently recording both Grey’s Anatomy and CSI, so I can’t change the channel. She isn’t home, BTW.

But whatever. I don’t need the television. I don’t need anything. I don’t need any of this stuff. I don’t need you. I don’t need anything ... And that's the only thing I need is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray... And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.


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Israel: "Um . . . I May Have Given You a Virus."

As always, the Israelis prove that they, in fact, are the badasses that Americans always think they are.

A computer virus seems to be targeting Iran’s nuclear program and it does it while making reference to The Book of Esther. How cool is that?

Of course the Israelis are all like, “We don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout Willis!” But you and I know better.

Read all about it here.

Also, how cool is it that they have a secret group called Unit 8200? I want to work for Unit 8200.


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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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