Saturday, June 26, 2010

Bad Guys, Good Guys

Alright, so we have, for villains, the Afro-Alinsky Alliance, which, in order to bring about a secular/progessive (poor Bill O'Reillyk, his little term never really gained ground with the conservatives because it had too many syllables- "HITLER!!! FASCISM!!!" is much more succinct) New World Order, have instituted a breeding program, much like the Bene Gesserit in Frank Herbert's Dune novels. The final product of this nefarious plot is a charismatic, smooth-talking usurper, the son of Robert Mugabe and Jane Fonda- born in Kenya, but snuck into the soft white-sand underbelly of the USA- the Peoples' Republic of Hawaii, much as a cuckoo infiltrates the nest of another bird in order to foist its young on the unsuspecting victim.

Ranged against this usurper is a group know as the Pee Tardy, because it is composed mainly of old men who have problems micturating. Perhaps it's a buildup of nitrogenous wastes in their brain tissues that drive them to wrathful displays, perhaps it's just the fact that the occupant of the White House ain't a White Guy. The motto of the Pee Tardy group is "We surround them, like a swollen prostate surrounds a urethra."

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A Confession

I have to admit, I really enjoy being able to write mind-bogglingly bad prose. I am usually a grammar pedant, and I love a well-honed turn of phrase, but this piss-poor writing is a hoot.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Like Dough, a Hero Shall Rise

Most thrillers, especially those written by narcissistic sociopaths, feature a character best described as a Mary Sue, a thinly-veiled representation of what the author could have been, if only (s)he had stuck to that regimen of push-ups or paid more attention in school. In this little exercise of mine, the hero would enter the stage in like fashion:

Hard-hitting investigative journamalist Ben Gleck read the anonymous memo in consternation. An observer peering into his studio would first notice hair the color of an opossum's pelt, cut in a style out of fashion by fifty years, crowning a roundish head, with a strangely ageless face, miraculously unlined by a beseiged nation's cares and displaying the pudgy petulance of a defiant fourth grader. Although his body displayed the pulpy softness of sedentary middle-age, or perhaps of middle-aged sedentism, he displayed the strength and muscular control of that other pulpy and amorphous creature, the mighty octopus. Years of boozing and drug abuse had killed off all of the weakest cells in his body- the fires of addiction and irresponsibility had refined the ore of his corpus into steel- a pale, flabby steel, but steel nonetheless. His dimple-knuckled hands, the color and texture of Wonder Bread, although he had never done any physical work in his life, had gained the tenacious, gripsome strength of bear traps, through his recent handling of chalk for five hours each week. While uneducated, he had honed his intellect into a ball-bearing keenness by reading the works of racialists and Nazi apologists in a cursory fashion. He was reading on this night as well, reading a memo which was to change his life forever:

AMERICA IS IN DANGER!!! YOUR ARE ONLY HOPE. SOCIALEST NEGRITUDE AND ALINKSYISM ARE IMININT!!! MEET ME IN ST LOUIE!

Ben pursed his lips, then muttered under his breath, "It's the day I always feared... it's the repeal of the republic and the onset of oligarhy."

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Author's Note: On Teased Panthers, and the Like

Sadly, No peanut gallery member and newly minted Simply Left Behind coblogger TruculentandUnreliable wrote the following about the infamous "panther teasing" scene in the work being satirized on this blog:

So, what I don’t get is why the lady just didn’t sleep on the dude’s couch like a normal person. This would greatly reduce the likelihood of panther-teasing.

In the world of modern genre-fiction (especially thrillers), the male protagonist has to be a hypersexual hetero hero- there's no room for a girly-boy or an ansexual introvert in a whiz-bang (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) adrenaline fest. The problem Beck and his ghost writer face in this situation is his audience's superficial (and possibly hypocritical) social conservatism. They must navigate the strait between genre convention and audience expectation. This is the same dilemma faced by authors of Christian romance novels. In the case of our "teased panther", the authors must show that he is a sexual volcano, barely tamped down by his pure moral character. At best, if his houseguest were to sleep on the couch, the friction between temptation and moral rectitude would be shunted off to the side, robbing the authors of an opportunity to hammer home a none-too-subtle point. At worst, relegation to the couch, and the resultant lack of sexual tension could imply that the male protagonist is eun or queer.*

The protagonist is much like Ray Davies' David Watts: "And all the girls in the neighborhood try to go out with David Watts, they try their best but can't succeed, for he is of pure and noble breed." Of course, while Ray Davies is playing the whole thing for laughs, Beck has to display his typical sham sincerity. His hero has to evince a paradoxically prurient prudery, best described as machastemo.

* They lyrics websites render this as "lewd or queer", but I'll stick to my teenage misinterpretation of a song first heard on vinyl.

Opening Sentence, Continued

Still working on the opening sentence here, please bear with me:

A screaming comes across the studio.

It was a bright, cold day in April, and the muezzin was sounding the call to prayer.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human blackboard to correlate all its contents.

Who is Cleon Skousen?

All Progressivism is divided into three parts, one of which the East Coast Elites
inhabit, the Loony Left-Coasters another, those who in their own language are
called Brothers, in ours Thugs, the third.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Opening Sentence

Any novel worth a hill of beans needs a punchy opening sentence, to draw the reader in immediately, and let them know that it's time to buckle their safety harness, because a hell of a ride awaits them. So far, I am torn between the following openers:

The sky above the port was the color of a teased panther, pent in an inadequate cage.

It was the most fascist of times, it was the most socialist of times.

Call me Cleon.

When in April the tax man comes
To carry off ungodly sums.

Freedom died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, the usurper was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover Marx.

Introduction to the Project

Reading accounts of Glenn Beck's forthcoming novel, I have decided to jump the gun on a project to ghost write his second novel. The working title of said project is The Five Thousand Year Creep, and it will detail the efforts of a leftist group, the Afro-Alinsky Alliance, to undermine decent American society, which is based on the philosophy of a Bircher slavery apologist. While I have the ending of the book in mind, the plot development is up in the air, and the writing of this work will take place in this public milieu.