Dissin' My Girl

So ABC, in all of their marketing goodness, have decided to replay the last two episodes of Lost on Saturday beginning at 8/7 Central. Someone up there (the head of entertainment at ABC most likely) is looking out for me. :)

I've been feeling a little better lately; I'm being kind of dogged about getting more/better sleep and I've been talking to one or two people about the situation. Things look better in the short-term, but I'm wary of saying "problem solved." We'll see how things happen over time. I'm...guardedly optimistic.

Yesterday at the Bookshop there was pretty much no work to do except lazy busy-work. I had to mylar (you know when dust jackets are covered in that shiny clear plastic? Yeah, that's me!) and repair dust jackets, but someone had already done that for me. More than likely, it was H., because she can get kind of manic when she's at work. Oddly enough, her work life is a lot less stressful than her home life. More on that later, perhaps.

Anyway, this girl comes up whom I've recognized before, and she grabs one of the tiny books we have on the table and starts reading. After an hour or two of this she comes up and asks me a few questions. Eventually we get around to discussing Baltimore; I was raised there, she spent some time in Americorps there. We start reminiscing about downtown, I share my best mugging story, we kind of hit it off.

We talk a little bit about religion. She goes to the Christian Fellowship a little ways off from Dickson St., but she doesn't consider herself of any particular denomination. She believes in the Bible whole-heartedly and thinks it's pretty much the only right way to work out salvation. All right, cool. I tell her about what attracts me to the mystical aspects of religion and spirituality; the personally-forged path, the deeper understanding of what it means to commune with the Divine, the constant balance between faith and doubt that must be maintained. I don't think she trucks with that kind of nonsense, but we didn't really get into a good debate about it because she backed off and changed the subject. I don't want to sound egotistical but I think the whole conversation just got too...strong for her.

We talk a little bit about nudity. I spent some time one summer with a couple of furs who were pretty much nudists and she sounds kind of shocked and dismayed. ;) There was a book that featured female nudity and she flipped out a bit. It was really endearing, in a way. :) Still...wow, there was this whole other side of myself that I didn't present because I didn't think she would take it well. I'm not very good at judging these things but I *think* she was flirting with me. She wants to be friends, anyway, so there'll be time to tell her all about my sinful ways, I guess. <:) Anyway, she invited herself along to me and Odis' weekly sitdowns on Thursday nights. When Odis came in to pick me up he did his usual "Let's offend the new guy!" routine of introducing himself, with a side of pimping his art and craft in for good measure. I knew she was embarrassed and a little offended, but she worked hard not to show it, *especially* since I *warned* her he was going to do exactly that. We parted ways when the store closed and she made the suggestion that we should hang out. I gave her my number so she could call, and only this morning did I realize that it was probably a bad thing to do. :P We'll see how *that* works out. (Tube, get me that thing so she'll uh, know I'm spoken for. (And yes, I *do* plan on telling her next time we meet.)) Also got a bit of writing in yesterday. I like the situation, but I don't know where it's going to go. It's pretty much a shrinking story featuring me and a friend, but I decided to cut me out because I've gotten increasingly uncomfortable with inserting myself into my own fiction. It just strikes me as egotistical and lame. There are a *lot* of people who do that with their own stories, and it works fine for them, don't get me wrong, but I just don't wanna go out like that. I get the feeling people are going to hate me anyways. Just when you think you've righted yourself, life has this sickeningly accurate way of throwing more shit to knock you for a loop. Ah, figured that out, have you, well, how about THIS??!? Mwahahahahahahahahahah!! Bastard.

Bust Up

Hmm, I knew this would happen. :)

My claim that self-insertion fiction (thanks for the name) strikes me as arrogant and lame certainly holds true...for certain specific works. But the more I thought about it, the more I could peg a few bits of self-insertion fiction that worked really, really well, and that I actually really love.

+ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Timequake, Breakfast of Champions)
+ "Charlie Kaufman" (Adaptation)
+ Harvey Pekar (American Splendor)
and of course
+ Sue Deer.

A lot of these are either more-or-less autobiographical stories tweaked a little to make it interesting (like Doemain of Our Own) or are more-or-less anecdotes told in a way that the author becomes just another character, as hopelessly lost in the situation as every other. "Charlie Kaufman" in Adaptation fills the same role John Malkovitch does in Being John Malkovitch, with the only difference being Malkovitch didn't write his own movie. :)

But for every really interesting bit of self-insertion you get the Kevin Costners, William Shatners, and Johnathan Frakes, where the authors make up very thinly-disguised idealized selves and have them romp around a universe where they're all-powerful and/or revered and/or the only flawless thing in a crazy mixed up world, and that's vomit-worthy. In fact, I couldn't even get into Good Will Hunting because Matt Damon had the faint stench of Costnerism all over him. A lot of self-insertion fiction, "amateur" AND professional, turns out to be nothing more than one-dimensional love-letters to yourself, and that's precisely the kind I want to avoid.

If doing self-insertion fiction, I would have to be brutally unflinchingly honest, and my ego isn't *that* eradicated that I wouldn't be tempted to embellish a little. ;) Hopefully, that's good clarification.