Monday, December 06, 2004
Yesterday was actually quite productive. I got the cover done for "The Worm in My Mind's Eye" (thank you, Arvin), even though it entailed relearning a whole bunch of Adobe PageMaker that I'd forgotten, and I proofed the chapbook (with help from Spooky and Jennifer). I didn't exile the cardboard boxes, not all of them, but it still felt like a triumph. It made me hopeful that I was on the edge of a Useful Period. But, alas, I've spent most of today moping about feeling stunningly useless. I think the next thing we have to do is read aloud through the prologue of Daughter of Hounds, and I just wasn't up to that today. It's foggy and grey here, and my mind keeps wandering off to other places. I fear a post-move doldrum, which I must resist with every fiber of my being.
And I'm touchy, probably because not being able to get back to writing is aggravating me so much. This morning over breakfast, for example, I became quite unreasonaly annoyed at a Camel cigarettes ad in the new Creative Loafing. It touts some tarted-up floosy in a ridiculous green dress with white fur trim balanced on the toe of one ice skate, her right hand toying with the loose laces of her right skate, while the left hand holds aloft a smoldering Camel. She grins laciviously at us from beneath the brim of a furry white hat (matches the trim on the dress) than even Huggy Bear (the pimp, not the grrrl band wouldn't be caught dead wearing. No point analysing all the manipulative, subtle and not so subtle psychosexual cues that the marketing folks over at R. J. Reynolds are employing in this ad (which, by the way, is for the stomach-churning "limited time only" Winter MochaMint and Warm Winter Toffee flavoured cigarettes). Never mind that. What really annoyed me, aside from the awful dress and the silly hat and the precious little snowflake tattoo on the chick's right shoulder, was the slogan tucked into the lower right-hand corner of the ad: Pleasure to Burn. If you have read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (or even King's Firestater), the line should be familiar to you. And I can't say if Reynolds discovered it via coincidence or if they borrowed it straight from the book. Either way, I feel like they're using Bradbury to sell cigarettes to women who want to be slutty, poorly-dressed ice skaters, and that just sort of messes with my head.
Okay. Never mind.
To Charles Fort, With Love will include an original, brand-new 20,000-word novella. Which is cool and should serve as added incentive for you to preorder this book as soon as subpress begins taking preorders (this is another one that will probably sell out prior to publication). Only thing is, now I have to write a 20,000-word novella...
4:54 PM
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