Boob Sucker

So this week I read something really original. It was called Fat Sucker, by Lotus Rose (definitely a pen name).

(Link)

Here's a description:
"Poor pudgy Tina...she's tried all kinds of diets that didn't work. But then one day she sees an infomercial about pills that absorb fat! She tries them and they prove to be remarkably effective...

Includes the bonus story, Noah's Ark Between 2 Buns, a story explaining the truth about hopping smiling chicken nuggets!"

Nah, I didn't read the bonus story, which I think is actually longer than the title story. I did, however, read up more on this Lotus character, because the story was... strange.

I thought it was a woman at first, but you have to check this guy out. Here's his picture:

Haha, okay it makes sense now. We have gone full nerd. That is seriously the picture he chose to represent himself. And I just can't let you miss out on his bio. I will bold the particularly hilarious part for you:

"Lotus Rose writes delightfully weird tales about young characters in strange situations. At times dark, silly, or bawdy, his writing owes much to such influences as Alice in Wonderland and Roald Dahl, Piers Anthony and Douglas Adams, and explores themes like disillusionment, and the corruption of innocence. If his books were movies, they'd likely be directed by Tim Burton. He often writes in a style that is a more edgy, "grown-up" version of children's literature interspersed with his poetry and songs.

Here's a short poem he wrote:"

I'll spare you the poem. I like that his list of favorite authors reveals he has read like two books ever. And yeah, if by children's literature you mean literature written by children. BOOM! ZING, KAPOW! The list of his other works includes "5 Tales of Erotic Horror" and "Malice in Wonderland."

At least he's not boring. That brings me to the story. It was interesting. I'm not saying it wasn't horribly written, because it was, but it was definitely unique, and had some funny moments.

My first impression was "This shit is hilarious." Not really because he meant it to be, but because of his descriptions. He can't think of other words to use so he just repeats his adjectives to hammer the point in. They read something like, "The pudgy girl was really pudgy. Her pudginess was at levels of pudgy." Dude, there's another word for pudgy in your title!

Well fine, it was still entertaining, her being stupid ('cause fat=stupid, DUH) and eating a whole thing of Slim Jim's after taking a diet pill then wondering why she gained weight and then going on a pill-eating rampage. I thought it was social commentary, but after reading a bit about this Lotus character I think it's just autobiographical.

Anyway, after that I got a little bored until I read this description and laughed out loud (brackets are my words): "The pain was the worst pain she had ever felt, [This description is genius! I can't wait to read more of your poetry.] times two. [My god, upping the ante from the worst to double the worst!?] She trembled, then she trembled more violently. [Fuck thesauruses!] Then she fell over into a floppy thud. Then she rolled up into a pudgy ball. [Hahaha!]" So you see, I can't tell if this guy is intentionally doing this or not, but it's funny.

Things get absurd when she actually loses a ton of weight and all the pills she took start literally attracting fat to her like a magnet and absorbing it. The story comes to an abrupt and hilarious end when (Spoiler) she confesses her love to her crush and in the following embrace he is sucked into her boobs. That's it.

Ratings:

Huh!?: 5 out of 5. What can I say, I have no idea what the hell is going on anymore. This story could probably make the Pope into a nihilist...

Lol.: 5 out of 5. This was really funny. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I think most of the parts that were supposed to be funny I didn't laugh at and most of the serious stuff I did laugh at. Including the dude's picture.

Pilled Out of His Mind Levels of English: 5 out of 5. This dude is on drugs. Five seconds around his writing and you feel it.

Overall: 2 out of 5. I thought that a teenage girl had written it, and I was gonna give her props for being so creative. But a grown man wearing a pink feather boa wrote this. Probably the same one he wears while DMing D&D games and his friends all hate it. No thank you sir!

Read what I wrote wearing nothing but a pink feather boa at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.

The Story That Ate My Week

This week (and last week) I read an English author, Thomas Murphy, writing about the American Civil War. What? Yeah. The story was called "The Vine That Ate The South" (Yeah, fine, let's just capitalize everything).

(Link)

You got rights for that picture, bro? Well you might think from the cover, the fact that it's about the Civil War, and the title being a reference to Kudzu (the vine that actually ate the South) that this is a non-fiction, historical account. You thought wrong. Did you really expect a British author to write a factual account of the Civil War? Here is the description:

"A story told from multiple perspectives of a fateful decision taken during the darkest days of the American Civil War. Including a cast of characters including President Abraham Lincoln, a mysterious war photographer and an ardent genius biologist; this alternate history sci-fi tale tackles the lengths good men will go to to prevent evil happening in the world."

Well my first impression of this story has to do exactly with that description. "Cast of characters" in a short story isn't a good thing. He had like a paragraph from one person's POV then went on to the next like some sort of fiction version of Debbie Does Dallas. I mean that his fiction whores around, not that Debbie Does Dallas was a true story, although it might have been, you never know. This schizophrenic switching of inner dialogue serves the much  needed purpose of letting us feel every step the painful experience of this guy trying to drag a story out of his ass after getting high and watching the History Channel and hearing them dramatically say, "the vine that ate the South" and thinking how like totally badass would it be if he wrote a story about a vine that literally was like scary as shit. It's pretty apparent that he got a couple words in and had no idea where to go next, so he decided to just throw in another character.

I think he kept watching the History Channel too, because this story reads like an equally uninspired special of theirs. He lists off things regularly that make it pretty apparent he looked at that Wikipedia page, which is actually probably the same method History Channel uses. On the upside he could probably submit this story to them and they'd pick it up immediately. This post seems to be veering in a certain direction, so let's just bring it back to how the story feels like a fucking awful, half-assed, fictional, shitty network tells history. It's just pretty dry and flavorless overall; it's like the scones of stories (take that British! HA! Your cooking is bad too and I forced a joke about it!) I mean, there's a war going on, but all the action is just referenced coldly like a bunch of old East India Company generals playing snooker and chatting about how to put down those Indian dogs. Alright, again there seems to be an agenda happening, let's get back to the story. Sorry.

This guy did a pretty good job at writing in American English, but the first time he said "realise" or "theatre" or whatever, I definitely noticed. And yeah, if you're British and writing a story set in America it definitely needs to be combed and put in American English. The same goes for knowing the history of the Civil War in order to write an alternate history. YES, it's tedious, especially if you're British, that's why I have no clue why this guy tried it. What's the point, man? But if you're gonna half-ass it also, that's like telling me you will tell me how many jelly beans are in that jar then counting like half of them and doubling your number for a stupidly educated guess. Now I'm pissed at you for making me wait while you counted all those damn beans.

That brings me to the actual story. It's an alternate history about a technology that killed civilians as well as armies. First, dude, that's not very original, you just got the time wrong, it's called World War II and the atom bomb. Second, you put all this effort in trying to make Lincoln look like he was noble and shit not knowing that civilians would die. But in the real history if you would have looked shit up beyond "union losses civil war" there was a guy called Sherman, and he like fucking invented killing civilians as a means to winning.

Rateses:

Badassery: 1.5 out of 5. Throbbing red vines didn't do it for me, but I'm not gonna judge. The part where people clawed at their throats until they bled was cool. Everything else was boring.

Points of View: 1 out of 5. So many POV changes. Damn, dude. And this will inevitably lead to slip-ups. Like when he thought of a cool description of a fat man walking in a funny way and put it in during the same man's point of view. What, is he having an out of body experience or something?

Ending: 5 out of 5. I knew he was gonna pull the "I'm going to Ford's Theater!" mindfuck or whatever you want to call it, but it was hilarious that his dramatic ending somehow made it though with Lincoln's wife calling him a woman. Literally: 'Mary, where can we be reached?' 'Fords' Theatre, Miss.' Oh yeah, and dude, quotation marks look like THIS: ""

Overall: 2 out of 5. I didn't hate reading actually, it was just almost completely a waste of time. I do appreciate him trying to put in the effort to not misrepresent my country though.

Submit your complaints to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.

Apology Post

I just want to tell all my super loyal followers that I'm sorry for not posting last week. It's Nanowrimo and that apparently means replace blogging with procrastination over writing a novel. But, I am going to post this week. Does that make up for it?

This week I read "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean" by Brian Martinez.

(Link)

Here's a descripty:

"A man walks into a bar, his hands smelling of bleach. All he wants is a drink and an alibi, but what he gets is an encounter with a loud, old man. As they talk he realizes they share a very personal and very dangerous link.

A short story for fans of Dark, edgy and Noir fiction."

I don't know why he capitalized Dark but other than that it sounds like an okay hook. I have to admit though, I have read like zero Noir fiction. That's why I liked this story. You read right: I liked this story.

The Noir thing might be too cliche for fans of the genre, but then again if you're a fan of the genre you are into that sort of thing. For me it read exactly like Noir sounds like it would. Everything is grungy, the dude has drinking and women problems, and everything is in black and white (except the blood).

This dude used a lot of stuff that sounds like it might be overused (again, if I read any Noir) but that I have personally never seen before. For example: "I grabbed a swig, phrased it like a question." That sounds so utterly Noir that it has to be stolen, right? Or how 'bout this: "I nodded to him because it was all I could think to say." Yeah, he's definitely walking the line between clever and forcing it, but I don't think he crosses that line too much.

Except with this line: "...putting blood in his spittle, which, by the way, is a word I hate. Probably why I use it so much." No, now you have broken the fourth wall, sir. That isn't Noir, that is just something you don't do unless it's that kind of story.

The ending of this thing wasn't great, but that's not really the point of reading something like this. It's more the ride along the way. The guy pretty much tells you what is going to happen in the description, it's how he gets there that's interesting.

And thus without a single joke in this post so far, let's go to ratings.

Noir: 5 out of 5. If I can know this story hits the Noir mark without any reference to the genre other than Prairie Home Companion, it's good enough for me. (That isn't to say PHC isn't a genius work of satire for our times. And that man's voice is SO smooth!)

Plot: 2 out of 5. "What!? But I thought you said you liked it." Shut up! I already told you the plot doesn't really matter since the voice was so good.

Depressing Events Having an Ironically Sort of Not Depressing Outcome: 3 out of 5. Of course it still had to be depressing and grungy and all Sin City and shit, but I can appreciate when there is a sort of blessing in disguise message or end result. But he did come close to breaking the fourth wall again pointing out that's what he had just done, so minus points there. See what I did though? Now you have to read it to find out what I'm talking about.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Yeah, like I said, I liked it. Sorry, I'll try to read something shittier next time so my post will be more entertaining.

Read something shitty right now at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.