Category: Blog Post (from under The Bo Tree)

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Remembering the Pain

Even more so than kidney stones twelve years later, my peritonsillar abscess was the worst pain I’d ever experienced.

About twenty-five years ago, one of my tonsils died.

It became a lump of dead tissue, joined with the other, still living, tonsil only by their shared infection in and around my throat. In the middle of a Friday night, I looked in the mirror and they were touching. My airway was completely closed off.

My wife drove me to the emergency room, where I sat for the next six hours or so, until their ENT specialist could be reached (and, I speculate, sobered out, but I digress). When he arrived, that Saturday morning (looking a little bedraggled), he settled in and looked at my tonsils. He then told me it was an abscess and brought out a tool by which he intended to drain the puss out of the infected tonsils. For all the world, it looked like Toilet-Aid Tongs for Self-Wiping.

Tongs for the memories.

This was to be the first of those three surgeries that the doctor’s note mentioned. He was sitting on a little stool with wheels, while I was seated in one of those wide-metal based dentist’s chairs with the attached armature and lamp overhead. After warning me that it ‘might hurt a bit’, he then proceeded to reach into my throat with the tongs.

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NFTs: Assemblage for the 21st Century?

Once, when I was in my early adulthood, my girlfriend and I were in an artist’s gallery (that is to say, her dining room—she worked from home). And, in her gallery, what she displayed was something like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Hanging from her ceiling, at various heights, were mobiles of…well, let’s just say disparate objects. Okay, to describe it: For all the world, each of them looked roughly like the contents of someone’s kitchen junk drawer, super-glued together.

When we asked her how she got the idea for her ‘mobiles’, she corrected us. These weren’t “mobiles”, they were “Assemblage” (pronounced: ah-sem-BLAJ’).

Later, we, of course, had a lot of fun with that word. It became a shorthand for anything remotely pretentious. But, don’t get me wrong: as a former art major, I know that assemblage is a vital and important art form, with a lineage that goes back directly to Picasso.

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Jackie Chan was wrong: Everything is not Kung-Fu (or “Why I’m Not Really A Pantser and Neither are You”)

That was Mr. Han’s (Did you remember that was his name in the remake? I didn’t.) advice to Will Smith’s son. “Everything is Kung Fu”. But, I can tell you, that’s wrong. The correct answer is: Everything is Basketball. So, while the two teams I predicted to meet in the NBA Finals (The 76ers and my Jazz) last year are currently atop their conferences, I will use this time to unleash a hoops analogy to discuss the differences between the two “opposing” writing styles: Plotter vs. Pantser.

If you’re wondering which you are, you should do two things. There is a good, basic discussion HERE. First, you should read that. Then, second, you should read on. Because there’s a lot of both in either.

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Three-Chapter Reviews #1 (Superhero Prose)

Welcome to my first THREE-CHAPTER REVIEW, where I hope to answer that eternal question: “Should I keep reading this or not?” For an explanation of why I’m doing reviews of only three-chapters, refer to my previous post here.

This maiden voyage will have me comparing the first three chapters of the novel Soon, I Will Be Invincible to the first three chapters of the short-story Keely: A Steampunk Story (KaS). Both of these are in the SF/F: Superhero subgenre of prose fiction. And both had a lot to recommend them. It’s important to remember that, as prose stories based on the comic book medium, they are, by definition, pastiches. So while it is important to judge these on their own merits as prose works, I am also looking at whether or not they have anything new to say about the underlying comic tropes.

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One and Two-Star Book Reviews are a Paradox (If you’re Reading For Pleasure)

See, here. So, a thing occurred to me…I mean, a truly new thing. Seriously. I think I’ve invented it. And it will save me time and energy. And, best of all, it makes sense. Sort of.

The thing I realized about novels was—just like with a relationship—when you finish with one, you can never say that the time spent inside of it was wasted. Not truly. Not if you’re being honest with yourself.

I mean, you might have regrets, sure. But (and I have this on good authority from my therapist), fact is, you stayed with it, for however long you did, because it was providing something for you. Something you needed at that time. Girlfriend. Marriage. Living with your birth family as an adult. Taking care of elderly parents…you name it. The situation might not be ideal. It might even be dysfunctional. But, you stayed in it for a reason, even if only maybe to try and grow and escape it.

Switching back the analogy: So, you kept reading the friggin’ novel that you didn’t like. You even finished it. Maybe you hoped it would get better and it didn’t. But, even then, you learned something about yourself in the process. Or you worked your brain. Or, whatever. I don’t know why you did it. My point is: you had your reasons. Right?

This leads me to the paradox. So—follow me, now—that being the case, you should never really give a novel less than a 3-star review (that being average). Boom. There, I said it.

Here’s my reasoning. Let’s say that roughly 50% of the books you start are so bad you don’t finish them. And then you finish a book that is the worst, I mean WORST book you’ve ever finished. Well, that book is still median quality of all the books you’ve started.

Hence: Three stars.

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