Here's Your Christmas Guilt

Since it's Christmas in a couple days, I read A Belt Buckle for Camilla by Tom Match.

(Link)

Description:

"Out of money and with no food for the Christmas table, Camilla's mom gets invited to dinner by a stranger. The only thing six-year-old Camilla wants for Christmas is a belt buckle, just like the kind her daddy wore before he died. Will her wish come true?"

Oh come on, obviously her wish will come true. You see the cover, you see the description and the title, do you even need to read the story? No, you don't. You can guess exactly what happens.

This is the typical poor person gets a Christmas miracle from Jesus story. The kind you can't criticize because if you do you're an asshole and you are trying to ruin white peoples' Christmas. Well, get ready to call me an asshole, because I'm going to criticize it.

Maybe I'm not giving this dude enough credit, because he ups the ante from just "poor family has a Christmas miracle" to "poor single mother loses her shitty job and her daughter asks for a gold belt buckle just like her dad used to wear (her dad who died. On CHRISTMAS EVE) and they have a Christmas miracle." Holy shit! If you don't like this story you are really heartless.

Well, they run into a lady who mysteriously knows Camilla's name and lives in their apartment building and invites them to dinner. At dinner they discover what Christmas is all about and the lady gives them gifts. On Christmas they open the gifts and the mother's is just a box full of hundred dollar bills, and guess what Camilla's gift is. That's right, a fucking Christmas miracle belt buckle.

You can probably guess where this is going. They go up to ask the lady what the fuck, and the landlord tells them nobody lives in that apartment.

Jesus.

Ratings:

Guilt Stars: 4.5 out of 5. That's how many stars this story has on Amazon, despite being completely predictable, a ripoff of every Fox News pundit's Christmas book ever sold, and being only seven pages in length. And it's obvious this isn't written from the heart or some bullshit like that, before you start getting all guilty too, because it is about a single mother and the author is a man who desperately plugs his "compassion website" at the end. Ridiculous. If you still think I'm an asshole, think about this. Would you be happy with me if I read this story and was inspired to half-assedly write a story about a kid who has his cancer and AIDS healed magically on Christmas because I could totally sell a million copies? Who is the REAL asshole here, Tom?

What the Fuck is- Oh, Someone is Talking? 5 out of 5. There are no quotation marks in this story. None. People just start talking, and it's not even separated from the paragraph or anything, and the main character sometimes even starts thinking to herself in the very same block of text. It's like some weird train of thought shit where someone is thinking everything people are saying or something. Here's an example, which I will put in fucking quotation marks so you know it's from the story, you're welcome.

"Hadry winked at Camilla. And this one, she added, is for you, my child. Camilla looked at me as if asking my permission to accept it. I nodded my approval."

Holy shit that's one paragraph just slammed in there. Fine, I understand what's going on, but generally we like to help the reader. Maybe he was just trying to add mystery because saying shit like "my child" is a fucking dead giveaway as to where this story is going.

Creepy Angel: 5 out of 5. Seriously, the most unrealistic thing about this story is the creepy lady that seems to somehow know their names and everything about them and randomly invites them over. If this was real life, it would raise legitimate suspicions. And when they get to her house she has them sing Christmas songs to her. Then she gives them a box of money? Where did the money come from? Can't find out, because she is mysteriously gone the next day. I would lock the door.

Overall: 1 out of 5. This story was totally shameless and uninspired. If you're still not convinced, I really don't hate Christmas or something. I seriously cried at the end of Ernest Saves Christmas. And a couple times in the middle.

If you would like to cry too, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Omigod I Posted Again!

Woah! I'm back! I know, I know, it's been like a month! Actually I would never have come back if it wasn't for all the people whining, "When are you going to do another review!? I need your words inside my eyes or I will die!" Yeah, fine. Here I am. I can't give you all the details, but let's just say I was in a submarine filming the world's deepest porn film. In more than one way, BOOM! So today I read How Jones Goes by Lawrence Dagstine.

(Link)

Description:

"In the late 21st century, overpopulation is a problem. There's also the problem with mental health. In one particularly unusual asylum, there is Dr. Born (psychiatric intern) and Dr. Bloch (sexologist). And then there's Jones. You have not met anyone like Jones. You see, it's not every day that patients claim they are from Mars. And it's not every day they come and go as they please. A short story filled with loads of satire (and lots of oddities that will make you shake your head) by speculative fiction author, Lawrence Dagstine."

Well, well, that wasn't a self-stroking appraisal at all, was it? Anyway, this review is easy, because I don't even have to do any work. You remember the movie K-PAX? Based on the book K-PAX? Yeah, this story was that, but without Kevin Spacey, and without a meaningful ending.

Done.

Alright I'll talk about it a little more. So at the end of this story the dude has an author biography, in which he is like, "I have been published like a MILLION times, I'm surprised you've never heard of me. You are probably a loser." So, I feel completely justified in saying, "Dude, your story was fucking SHIT!" If you have so many stories, why does it feel like I'm reading something a child wrote in crayon? Let's go to my old favorite fallback and look at the beginning of the story:

"If it's some rest you're wanting, some respite from the Sturm und Drang of life in these Americas at the dirty end of the 21st century, don't make the (my!) big mistake of acting crazy to get yourself put in a bin."

Fuck man, I know you're trying to be unique, but start off easy for the BEGINNING of the story, at least! I will give you a pass if you are trying to make an unreliable narrator by making us realize that this guy is really crazy and did not get himself put in a "bin" on purpose. But that's not the case, because if you are trying to do that it failed. Let's back up a second though.

"Sturm und Drang"? Man, I am a graduate student who regularly has to read German philosophy and literature and I have never fucking heard of that obscure late 1700's trend. Use something a little more accessible, shit. "These Americas"? Just trying to sound unique. "Dirty end of the 21st century"? Oh really? The future is dystopian? How original. And the parenthesis doesn't help the flow of the sentence at all (eat a dick) which is already confusing because what the fuck is a bin?

It's an insane asylum, and this guy gets himself put in one to get taken care of for free because it's the future and shit. Then he talks about all the people in the asylum that never fucking matter to the story just because that's how you write a story about a looney b- OH! "bin" like "looney bin!" Fuck, you would think it would be easier to just use a word that people actually fucking use.

Anyway, his friend says he's from Mars and says he is going back home and disappears at the end. The moral is- THERE IS NO FUCKING MORAL JUST WATCH K-PAX!

Ratings:

Are Those Grammatical Errors or is Your Writing Intentionally That Quirky? 5 out of 5. This is like way back in high school creative writing when a classmate was fucking obsessed with Chuck Palahniuk (SPELLED IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!). So this kid (you know who you are, and I know you're reading this!) always tried to write all edgy and shit like Chuck Palahniuk (SECOND TIME BOOM). Fine, but the only thing is I was like, "If those are the only books you read, and you try to write exactly like that all the time, you know who will always be better than you? CHUCK FUCKING PALAHNIUK!"

Suspension of Disbelief: ? out of 5. I actually don't know what to call this situation. It's like I don't believe the guy is crazy, so I just think that the ending was that his friend literally was a Martian and went into space. But I don't believe that's possible or anything, so basically... I guess I just believe this was badly written.

Originality: 0 out of 5. I tried to think of a more original category than this, but this story was just so stunningly derivative. Plus, I got to make that joke, so we'll call it even. The future setting of a collapsing America, the asylum setting taken from popular films, and the ending were just so...stupid! I'm sorry, I can't even think of anything more to say about it. I am fucking dumbstruck.

Overall: 1.5 out of 5. I wanted to stop reading this so bad. The long garden path sentences riddled with errors, the stupid elitist tone, the fact that the exhibition didn't stop and the plot didn't start until 3/4 of the way through... Fuck!

If you would also like to "Fuck!" go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.



I meant, like say, "Fuck!" please don't contact me for sex.