James Bond Is Dead

I've been reading a lot of spy fiction recently (currently "Agents of Treachery", edited by Otto Penzler), and all I've learned is that James Bond was an asshole. Do you notice that he never follows anybody or does any real surveillance? Or that he never runs agents or in any way tries to actually gather intelligence? Why is that? All he does is go lightly, nay, casually, undercover. Even then, it's no big stretch: all his cover identities are suave, well-dressed, playboy types. The villains always figure out who he is fairly quickly. "Hmm, a well-dressed Brit who enjoys baccarat and shaken martinis. Somebody run that data...Oh, James Bond, you say? Yes, I thought he looked familiar." What a dick.

But maybe I'm being too hard on the old boy. In the last couple of weeks, I've tried out a few of the techniques myself that these operatives and field agents put so much stock by. You know what? It's fucking impossible! Let me share with you just exactly how I failed Tradecraft 101:

1. Following People

Following people on foot through the downtown area of a major metropolitan city is fairly easy. I tailed my subject for ten blocks and he never once looked behind him. But then he went into an office building with a security guard at every one of its three entrances. And I lost him.

Following people by car turned out to be just as successful. On a busy street, I stayed a few cars behind my subject for a couple of miles. Then he turned off the busy street onto a residential street and I was the only other car behind him. After two very slow turns, I think he figured it out.

2. Being Followed

In the books, the operatives like to turn to one another and say, "I think we picked up a tail." They also enjoy saying, "I felt like I was being tailed, so I flushed them out into the open and then shook them off." Oh, you felt like you were being followed? And what exactly does that feel like? Let me tell you: I couldn't spot a tail unless every time I turned around or looked in one of those convenient slanted store windows, there was a seven foot tall man dressed all in black walking RIGHT BEHIND ME. I've tried walking around my apartment and noticing who was directly behind me and it's impossible. If someone was tailing me, all they would have to do is stay a block back and I wouldn't spot them.

If anyone doesn't feel like walking, don't worry - I'm much easier to follow while driving. I tried counting cars (Leonard Chang, "Over the Shoulder") and almost had an accident. Again, if that seven foot tall guy is driving a bright red Humvee, I'll probably spot him. Short of that, I could have S.P.E.C.T.R.E., the NKVD, and Ernst Fucking Blofeld behind me and I would never know.


Maybe next week I'll try going undercover (with my lousy poker face) or "turning an asset" (given that I can barely convince people to do things they actually want to do). I don't hold out high hopes for a successful mission. I think I'm better suited to the anonymous spy support team which hovers in the background and does the heavy research.

Besides, I've given up martinis.

Adventures in Domesticity

Yesterday was one of those days which I can look back at and say without any doubt, "dammit - we got something DONE!" I felt like Hannibal after a battle, surveying the destruction and savoring the victory. No, not the general, the colonel. He led the A-Team? No? Nothing? Okay, moving on.

Four months ago (Four?! Allah preserve us!), we moved out of our apartment and office and into a house two hours away from civilization. Then we waited for the cover of night and quietly skulked away, leaving a garage full of chaos, insanity, and boxes of old clothes. Well, yesterday, we opened that garage and brought order and rationality to what was once thought lost forever.

In the space of a two car garage, we had stacked and piled boxes and boxes of samples, inventory, shelves built and unbuilt, rolls of fabric, banker boxes full of bidness, and various tools, tables, and chairs. In short, we had a shitload of shit.

Add to that my father-in-law's collection of old boxes, papers, and mystery packages. He has a slight hoarding problem and yesterday was very hard on the poor guy. I pulled a lot of his stuff out of the garage with the other stuff destined for the dump, but he slowly brought it back inside piece by piece when he thought no one was looking. Apparently, although he agreed to throw it away, he never intended to follow through on that agreement. Silly me, I figured broken cardboard boxes were useless and could be thrown out.

After four hours we got everything squared away and I felt a physical sense of relief. Like I could breathe suddenly. It made it all worth it. And by it I mean scrubbing the piles of rat poop and rat-urine soaked nesting out of the corners. We also ran into a two foot long California King Snake sleeping in a box of extension cords (which made me wonder if it was looking for a snake sex doll...I kept that thought to myself though). Everybody flipped out, but I surprised myself by picking up the box, dumping it on the grass, and then driving the snake away by beating on the ground next to it with a four iron. The snake was actually quite beautiful. Kings are vicious (they eat other snakes, which is how they got their name), but they're not poisonous. I didn't get a picture, but here's a reference:




We're supposed to hit the living room today. I wonder what will jump out at us in there?

"You want to know what I do? None of your f*cking business!"

Hey, whoa. Sorry about that. Kinda amped-up today. But what else is new? I believe it was Goethe who said, "Never hurry, never rest". He pointedly did not say, "Hurry hurry, never rest, get up now you lazy bastard." No, he was not that kind of guy. I need to relax, dammit!

All of this to say, I'm busy. Very busy. Too busy, in fact, to finish this sent...

What? Oh yes, busy. I had something else I was going to say, but I put my words down on my desk and can't find them. I believe it was Ozzy Osbourne who said, "We're going off the rails on the Crazy Train." You will notice he did not say "I" but "We" are going off the rails. We're in this together - ahhh, at last no longer alone.

Okay, this is it. Really gotta go. I believe it was Alexie Sherman who said, "Every word on your blog is a word not in your book." As any fool can plainly see (insert appropriate answer here), there are already enough words on this blog today to make a an introductory paragraph in a chapter of my book.

A very boring paragraph which would only have to be edited out later. I'm just sayin'.

Adios!

Happy Birthday, Mr Moose - Now Back to Work!

Hey everybody! I'm thirty-freaking-six years old today!!!! Or if you prefer, one score and sixteen.

According to my birth certificate, I was born at four a.m. on a cold Ohio morning. What was that day like, I wonder. Did my parents stay up the rest of the day? When did they go to sleep? Did I spend my first night at the hospital or did I go home? Where were my brothers during this important event? When did I meet them?

How different it is thirty-six years later: I was fast asleep at four a.m. today and dreaming of pleasant things. I will spend the morning writing and the day working in the office (deadlines loom like storm clouds). I won't have time to celebrate until the weekend, although last night my wife took me to see "Inception" and it was the most awesome movie I have seen in quite some time.

So, once again, thank you mother and father for giving me the chance to come here and see what this place is all about. Rock on, the botha ya's.

(Hmm? Oh, yes, well, on the whole, it's a very strange but intriguing place and while not always enjoyable, it's certainly always interesting...)

This Conversation Is Over

There are no more words in the word barrel.
There is no more hope on the hope-on-a-rope.
There is no more air in this tiny tiny room.
There is no where left to hide from the big giant mirror.
There is no more room in my luggage for all my baggage.
There are no more cracks in the wall to squeeze through.
There are no clouds overhead to explain the rainy day.
There is no poem like the one in my head.
There is no changing your mind because there is no hole in your head to get it out. There is no way to explain.
There is no reason to.
There is no Dana, there is only Zuul.

Narrative File Compression: Negative Scalability of the Word

I don't have much time to write these days, as the Beasts are at the gates, so I find myself scribbling (yes, actually scribbling) notes to myself all day long. Sometimes they make it to the notebook, more often they end up on the backs of receipts or folded up index cards. It makes me think of Sam Shepard writing plays on the dashboard of his car as he drove across country. He said it forced him to write meaningful dialogue because he could only dash out three or four words at a time. Unfortunately for me, I wear cargo pants and can stuff my pockets full of blathering notes. But the notes themselves do tend to be boiled down to key ideas. Maybe I should just write stories that can fit on index cards (I wonder if that's how Amy Hempel starting writing). One paragraph stories, or even one sentence stories.

Of course, I would have to contend with Hemingway's famous (and a favorite of my father's) six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Did you know that Gertrude Stein set out to beat him and wrote a four word story? "She stayed away longer." It's evocative, but in a much more subtle way than Hem's. That means I'd have to do it in three or less. Pretty tough. See, the great thing about the baby shoes story is the immediate arrival upon reading it of the entire life of a relationship. I tried for a few minutes this morning but all I got was: "Fatally, he'd misunderstood." Misunderstood who (whom??)? There is no arrival of the story.

I could try for a two word story, but I'll need some more time. I don't know what the standard for this one is. Maybe, "Jesus wept." Although, for this story to be powerful, you have to know who Jesus is. If you don't, you'd think, "Who is this Hay-zeus fellow, and why is he weeping? Ah, those passionate Latins!" Humbert Humbert's summation of his mother's death is a good one - "Picnic. Lightning." - but you still need the backstory to get it.

As for one word stories, all words are one word stories, so it's just a matter of placement:

"There..."

Or something like that. Maybe "Nevermore!" is the standard here.

I completely skipped the option of a five word story. There's a twitter site devoted to this (find it yourself, hyperlink junky). I liked this entry:

"Intro. Crisis! Tension!! CLIMAX!!! Denouement."

But I have to say my favorite was, "And then we had sex." That's the ending of a lot of stories guys tell each other. It takes the place of saying "the end". So to end this nonsensical entry:

And then I wrote books.

Heard in a Dream

"Stand up like a man and lie like a rug!"