Well, you may have noticed I don’t post that often and if I do, the posts are kinda thin. To be honest, I’m sorta burnt out on blogging.
Putting hard work into something that seems so disposable to most people can be taxing on your motivational sub-cortex. I get about 500 hits a day on this site, but most of them seem to be from people searching Google images to find pictures of Alf or a Samoyed.
In response to this, I’ve taken a giant step backwards into the world of PRINT JOURNALISM!
I now publish my own newsletter/zine/magazine/periodical called “Skizzleplex“. Astute readers will recognize that I posted a blog with that name a while back, but basically it’s just a name I liked and had bought a domain for, so I decided to call my newsletter that.
Anyway, you might be asking what Skizzleplex is? It’s basically a short “comedy” newsletter that’s about 7 to 8 pages long. It consists of short stories (the kind I would normally put on here), clip art of dubiously trademarked sources and random stuff. I also, occasionally, feature a guest writer like John Marshall (the Chris Rock Show) and Kyle McCulloch (South Park).
I have to admit that it has invigorated me. I feel like I did when I started this blog. So I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m burnt out on this too.
Now you might ask yourself, “How do I get Skizzleplex?” Well, it’s easy.
You can send Skizzleplex an email at skizzleplex (at) yahoo (dot) com and request a copy.
At this point, you might be seeing the huge flaw in my plan. Namely: this costs me a lot of money. But that’s kind of the point.
You see, I’ve come to realize that the biggest benefit of a blog being so free and so easy, is that the majority of people don’t feel like investing that much into reading it, with a few notable exceptions. You know who you are and I thank you for your support.
On the other hand, paper costs money. Printing costs money. People recognize this and suddenly your writing becomes worth something. Maybe not enough to pay actual money for, but enough to invest some time and effort into actually reading.
And the biggest expense turns out to be actually mailing this crap out to people.
So, if you have access to a printer and want to save me some money, you can let me know that and then I will send you a .pdf copy through your email. It will print out exactly like the ones that I send hard copies of and it works on any computer in the world, there is no special software involved. Well, maybe it won’t work on Windows ME or something, I don’t know, but grow up.
If you don’t have access to a printer or you’re a jerk and just feel like sticking it to me, that’s fine. I will mail you a hard copy through the good ol’ (not really) USPS.
Below, I’ve attached a story from my latest issue, so you can see the kind of things I’m writing and sending out to people all in the name of anachronism. And remember, if you like what you see, you can always friend Skizzleplex on Facebook. Plus, if you’re really a tool and don’t want me even having your email address, you can always wait it out until I put the old issue up on the Skizzleplex Archive.
So that should about cover it! Hopefully, I will be hearing from you soon because you want to sign up to receive (the .pdf) of Skizzleplex!
Story Corner
My dad doesnʼt trust the government, so when I was a kid, we never had trash service. He got in this big fight with the town, because they said it was a rule that everybody had to have the sanitation department dispose of their refuse. His answer to this was to just stop paying taxes. Eventually, they worked it out and then the garbage men would just skip our house. In addition, he said he didn’t want any goddam Gypsies picking through our stuff, so we also couldnʼt just take it ourselves to the dump. So every week, me and my dad would take our trash and we would go out in the van, late at night. We’d find a lonely stretch of interstate and it was my job to push the garbage through the hole in the floor of the van that my dad cut out. I had to gingerly dump out the contents, a little bit at a time. It would take hours! Iʼd always be real tired the next day at school. My dad said it was the original form of recycling because the other cars would run over the cans and stuff and then everything would get pushed to the side where they had people come by and clean it up every once in a while. He said thatʼs what taxes were for. I didnʼt dare point out that he wasnʼt even paying taxes at the time, cuz he kinda had a short fuse. One time I asked why we couldnʼt just take the bags and ditch them on the side of the road somewhere. He got real mad and yelled at me and was like, “What are we, animals?” And that was the best summer ever!








I’m not going to read your script either.
January 10, 2010 · 3 Comments
But I’m not going to be a dick about it..
When this article came out, a while back, there was something about it that didn’t seem right to me.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php
I see where the guy’s coming from. I see that it’s at least partly tongue-in-cheek and I think he raises some valid points. I originally thought what bothered me was that the guy was arrogant, or that the people commenting on it seemed to split into two equally obnoxious categories: the “fine, fuck you, your movies suck anyway!” camp and the “right on, fellow professional writer, I hate when unprofessional writers do that to me too, because, like you, I am also a professional writer, did I mention that?” camp.
But after someone re-sent it to me last night and it stewed around in my brain a little longer, I think I finally figured it out.
It’s completely wrong.
If you’re too lazy to go and read the original, I think this sums it up pretty well:
“I will not read your fucking script.
…
If that seems unfair, I’ll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.”
So basically, he’s a professional writer, he makes a lot of money, he’s worked really hard to get to this point, etc., etc. Therefore, it’s unfair of you to expect him to give you all the benefit of his hard work for free. Also, he operates under the assumption that because you don’t know the etiquette of the situation, that probably means your script is terrible and will be a huge waste of time, but that’s not exactly spelled out.
Now, maybe you’re quicker than I am and you’ve already spotted the problem here. If not, I’ll lay it out for you.
This analogy is 100% wrong. He’s a writer. Not a reader. He’s not being asked to write anybody’s script, he’s just being asked to read it.
Nobody’s saying, “Hey, famous photographer, take my picture for me!”, they’re saying, “Hey, I just took this picture and I think it’s pretty good but you do this for a living and I was wondering if you would look at it and tell me what you think.”
That’s a pretty big difference, don’t you think?
Look, nobody wants to be put in an awkward situation and people resent being made to feel like they “owe it to someone” to help out, but the truth is, this isn’t that big of a deal.
Just say no. Or say yes and then lie about it later. How hard was that?
I’d like to give this guy a pass on this, but he keeps coming back to say the same thing over and over:
“You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it’s not a huge imposition. It’s not your choice to make. This needs to be clear–when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you’re not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you’re asking them to give you–gratis–the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.”
Again. Wrong. It is different. “Hey man, I just painted my living room, if you could come over and take a look at it later, that would be awesome, I really respect your opinion!”
See, in that light, the other guy doesn’t seem like such a dick, does he?
Now, there’s something worse here that he could be bitching about and he spends some time dancing around it, but doesn’t actually come out and say, which is that these people usually don’t just want your input, they want you to do all the work for them.
But why would you address that? Everybody knows that’s a ridiculous thing to expect from someone and there’s no country in the world with a social contract that would demand such a thing. Not even one of those countries where you get a free goat every time you come over to borrow some sugar. Those people are crazy, so there’s no need to write that article.
Writing isn’t easy. It is a skill. Not everybody can do it. These are the valid points I mentioned earlier. But when you start throwing around “these are the rules and all professional writers know them” you start to sound like a community college writing teacher or something. Or one of those “script doctors” who advertise in the back of literary magazines.
Also, this:
“It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.
(By the way, here’s a simple way to find out if you’re a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)”
Well, I guess I just disqualified myself from being a writer!
While writers may also be readers, apparently one thing they don’t have to be is logicians, because structurally, these stipulations are on pretty shaky grounds.
Seriously though, just say no. You don’t have to go and write a whole article and throw around the term “professional” six times (yes, I counted), just because some guy you barely know told your friends you pulled a dick move.
Just say no.
Or “Oh man, I’d love to, but I’m really swamped right now,” even though you’re actually just sitting in your room in your underpants, writing out responses to blogs that were published 4 months ago.
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