40 Comments

(T)here it is.

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Hope they sent you her money.

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Only tangentially related but around a decade ago I started getting voicemails from strangers inquiring about free kittens. I eventually called one back and they advised someone had placed a flyer in a building lobby on the other side of the city and my number was on it. I always chalked it up to a typo. Anyway one of the voicemails was from a distraught, unhinged-sounding woman scolding me for giving away kittens because "people use them as food for snakes." Always felt there was a story there, a Palahniuk-esque one at that.

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Love this. Makes me think of a Dean Wesley Smith line that’s stuck with me— “Her smile could melt a window.”

Simple. But when I read it, I then imagined what a window would look like if it actually melted and now I can’t unforget that line.

From his Seeders Universe first book.

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I'm stealing that but gonna say "her smile could break a window."

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I have some visuals similar to that. Of rooms covered in sticky notes and someone getting like, WAAAAY too much weird snail mail. I've seen it in a few films. I can't remember if I had the idea after/before. But I like those images.

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Oh, man. And I cannot not mention the anonymous VHS tapes in David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY of the couple sleeping arriving quietly in the mail.

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It's so benign on the one hand and on the other it's like, how do we not know about this?

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Fuck! I want that number someday.....I'm jus saying lmfao. You or the Halsey bot's number will do.

Halsey, call me. I'll break my dating rule of not dating anything younger than what I've given birth to......

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I guess it's official. Halsey is my new "If you can meet one person dead or alive........ person. Her spirit is so much like Cobain to me."

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I can’t un-remember this advice. Nailed it.

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So true. When at times outside noise robs you of that sweet early morning sleep, It feels like the noise is right there at your face. Like, punching you. And if it's extremely loud, you could even suspect the noise is done on purpose, just to spite sleepers ( I say this cause we used to do it as teenagers, so sorry).

This scene in the tv show Louie, done by Louis CK, paints that experience better than anything I've seen, or read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvL6C0jprCw&ab_channel=AhmadMuhammad

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I’ve always quite liked the line “sweat on my back like a layer of frost” from Trainspotting.

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And when he's on the bus having to ride for like an hour to get to his shitty dealer and all he wants to do is die...It was epic.

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Chuck, I wonder if you would ever (maybe? someday?) consider doing a one-time, several-days-in-a-row workshop. Although it's, of course, not the same as getting to submit work and get feedback week after week--for those of us who can't realistically get to Portland every week, it would be incredible.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would jump at the chance to get in on something like that.

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Isn't that kind of what "est" did? Chuck has some experience with that.

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Hah! But when I did it -- in 1988 -- you couldn't leave the seminar room to urinate. People cried. It was wonderful. Lots of yelling. I was 26 and so sure I knew everything. Thank God something like that came along.

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I would love to. And it would take a lot of logistics.

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It would indeed.

If you ever decide you want to do it, I volunteer myself to help with that in any way I can.

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Thank you for sharing this. It's a great concept to keep in mind. But don't change the subject. You were on that lady's bank statements. Wanna explain all these purchases for inflatable kangaroos?

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A strange event. I've ordered so much stuff, that at one point Amazon sent me a password that the receiver would have to give. All my stuff goes to a UPS Store -- something Neil Gaiman taught me to do -- so the UPS Store had to have my password. The store thought it was a put-on, but it was an actual practice.

If Amazon starts to require passwords, I was among the first.

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Chuck,

Theo Von & Louis CK are also CHILDREN OF THE PORN

https://youtu.be/41DHmRZy28E?t=2874 (it's time stamped)

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That's fascinating. Generations prior to mine literally went on adventures to find porn. Your loss, or maybe my loss, cause even though I don't really relate fully, yet that pre internet porn 'Kempf' as I'd like to call it, provided legendary stories.

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Sounds spooky. One letter off from 'Mein Kempf'

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No not spooky, not at all. Here's what I meant: In the 80s and 90s, the Muslim world in North African countries ( Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Lybia) were changing socially. Societies have become more open to foreign cultures. That wave of cinemas, VHS, and later cassette tapes swept the younger generation who wanted to break free a bit. The issue remains, sex outside marriage is illegal. Back then it was a serious crime, now the law isn't enforced. So, porn back then filled that basic necessity. It's not a surprise that these countries have been among the top 10-15 consumers of porn for more than four decades. Pre-internet, it was hard to find Porn magazines or vids, they were sold underground.

An Egyptian movie called a Cultural Film, controversial at the time, documented those experiences. A group of 3, that eventually grew to be 15-20 teens, all from the same neighborhood, have a VHS tape but no VHS player. It's a comedy of situation, made more brilliant by the actors playing it dead serious, like it's life or death, like it's a world war 2 drama. What I meant by Kempf is simply that hilarious struggle.

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Oh yeah I can see that. But I'd be spooked in such an environment.

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I can't disagree. It's wild.

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Augen gift. "Eye poison."

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What you don't understand you can make mean anything. Diary by You?

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LOL. Last night I was watching a country blues band. I didn't particularly like them until the middle-aged singer talked about how he met his darling wife when he was shopping at the thrift store and he wrote a song about it. The last line of the song was "Let me take you shopping, Baby!" LOL Word.

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Dude, I just got home from Ubering and I got Intel on an underground Fight Club in Connecticut. I'm going to write something up tomorrow because I promised the person who told me about it that you would get a huge kick out of this. It's great shit.....

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"He looked like a frat boy who had eaten too many carbs"

I'm not exactly sure what that means but somehow I know what that means.

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When their face begins to look like fresh-baked bread. It's a form of tertiary baby fat. At Freightliner all these fledgling engineers would emerge from college. After a year of sitting at a desk...

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Speaking of which, Fight Club was on cable last night and it had some weird edits. I may not agree with it but editing out violence or sexual material has a long history. When the super blond guy was on the porch waiting, they edited out the "and you're too blond". Almost as if they are using a bad AI program or let a fully indoctrinated intern determine what needs to go.

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Well, it's a Disney movie now. Sigh.

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Yesterday, I had the very good fortune of picking up Lucca Gutti from Taft for a 45 minute trip. I couldn't believe my luck because one of the most famous books of all time was set there. I started taking about literature and it was too easy to tell them how I take writing lessons from the author of Fight Club.

Lucca's eyes widened in sheer amazement because there is an underground Fight Club at Taft and he quickly told me the star Lacrosse player is currently sitting out due to a broken collar bone from Fight Club and the injury may or may not fuck his plans to play at Princeton!!!

Lucca lives at Taft during the school year and jets around the world when he's not at school because his father owns a software company. He would be from San Francisco if he was allowed a normal childhood but as this as surprisingly well-adjusted kid said, there are advantages and disadvantages to both worlds.

Lucca, you really out to read the Catcher in the Rye. And hats off to your parents for managing to raise an unspoiled kid even though they can give you everything!

It was truly a pleasure to have met you.....

Chuck, I begged him for this information because I said you would really get a kick out of it so please give him a shout-out and make him the big man at Taft. I was really impressed with Lucca.

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Hah! The last time I read 'Catcher in the Rye' I was sitting out a party in Capri. A lot of wealthy and well-known people in a villa, and I locked myself in a far-off bedroom and read until the party broke up. It was less fun than it sounds. That's the glory of good books, I'd first read it at Columbia High in Burbank, WA, then I had the same experience 30 years later in Italy.

And never underestimate the power of a social model. I'll bet Jesus just said, "Let's play a game..." And blam, history changed.

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I used to have a copy of my very own...I'm very sure Lucca will read it now lmfao.....once I explained the connection to John Lennon his interest changed. Lucca doesn't want to be what his Dad wants him to be.....

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P.S. My tips were always good but they've more than doubled since meeting you..........so thanks because it's gonna help me continue to get to Story Nights in Manhattan.......this summer I plan to write my ass off , drive Uber for inspiration and cash.......and spend a lot of time in Maine with Maggie.

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