REB #17: “In this case, kill Marlon. He gets on my tits.”

– Liam Hammond, a poster on the Aaron’s Story blog

According to Urban Dictionary, the phrase “gets on my tits,” which I’d never heard until today, is (1) a “verb used to signify a singular subject that bothers you” or (2) a “verb to describe someone who pisses you off.” It can also be used in the plural (“get on my tits”). The (singular) example sentence is the following: “Senseless violence really gets on my tits.”

Aside from the fact that user “ejito” of Urban Dictionary is technically wrong – it’s a verb phrase, not a verb, and may even have other names as well – I find his/her definition rather intoxicating. It uses the word “tits” in a way that not only evokes the proper mood, tone, and branding of a website called Urban Dictionary but also reminds me that there is a big world out there, with tons and tons of languages, idioms, and slang words/phrases.

Before today, I never would have thought to say or write something like, “He really gets on my tits” – or, to push the definition to its limits, “Geez, would you get off my tits already?” Maybe that’s because I don’t have any literal tits to get on (unlike Michael Moore, apparently), but it’s also because I didn’t grow up with that particular phrase. One reason I love traveling is that I get to see how people talk in different parts of the U.S. and the world. I suppose, in this case, the Internet rendered traveling unnecessary. I was able to sit in the comfort of my own home, on my bed, and read all about how to get on someone’s tits, and then write about it, properly.

Today, I’m a happy writer.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #16: “With the advent of ebook self-publishing and the democratization of distribution … the power of publishing is shifting away from publishers and into the hands of authors and readers where it belongs.”

– Mark Coker interview

Mark Coker, Founder and CEO of Smashwords

Yesterday, I found this interview with Mark Coker, Founder and CEO of the electronic publishing company Smashwords. In it, he describes the changing nature of the publishing industry, highlighting his role and understandably praising his own brand of electronic self-publishing. Thisis marketing 101 after all: you do an interview to raise awareness for your product/service, so why not “talk it up”?

Anyway, I love technology. Outside of books and real-life people, my computer and TV are my best friends. However, I’m apprehensive about this shift toward electronic reading. I already do a lot of my news reading online because of all the blogs and Twitter accounts that I follow. So will I want to sit on my futon this winter, next to a roaring fireplace, and cuddle up with a good…LCD-type screen? An iPad, for instance?

Hell no!

But while I love the tactile sensation of having a book in my hands, turning its pages, flipping quickly to a favorite passage, etc., I cannot deny the convenience that electronic publishing affords the reader (we’ll leave the writer out of the equation for now). The simple fact of the matter is that I’m running out of space for books. When I moved to Baltimore in August 2009, I brought with me a small, 3-shelf bookcase and well over 300 books; I quickly bought two 5-shelf bookcases to accomodate the books, as well as my collection of DVDs. Then in late August 2010, I moved from Bolton Hill to Downtown, where my room is actually a little smaller anyway, so it wasn’t too distressing that one of my large shelves collapsed before I even tried to move it. I’m down to a 3-shelfer and a 5-shelfer. As such, many of my books are now stored and, yes, inventoried in boxes in the downstairs closet. I hate that; my books want to be out of the closet, with me, but alas, they aren’t.

With an e-reader, I still wouldn’t be able to display my books – they’d still be in the invisible “closet” of my e-reader’s storage mechanism – but at least I would have room for them. I guess that’s the tradeoff. I can have more books with an e-reader, I can have them almost instantly, and I can have them cheaper in most instances. But they aren’t books. They’re texts, yes, but they aren’t books, per se.

So why, as a writer, would/should I consider using a service like Smashwords? For one thing, Smashwords itself is free. They only take a 15% bite out of the writer’s royalties, when he/she makes money, which is a far cry from the 50-75% that most traditional publishers take. From an economical standpoint, the advantage is clear: if you (self-)publish electronically with Smashwords, you stand to make a lot more money for your work. There’s also the fact that you don’t have to wade through a sea of rejection letters from publishers, because you, my friend, are self-publishing. For “free.” That’s unheard of, isn’t it? We’re talking about guaranteed publication, here, with 85% royalties and coverage on most of the e-book stores out there (even Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble’s e-book store are included; I don’t think Amazon is one of them, though – not yet, anyway).

That sounds like a sweet deal, and I’ll probably seriously consider it for book-length works because at least I can get my name and my writing out there. But at the end of this M.F.A. program, when I publish my book of short stories, I still want to see my awesome book cover design on a tangible, traditional book in a brick-and-mortar store. And I want the prestige that comes with having my book hand-picked for publication.

Is that so much to ask?

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #11: “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

– Douglas Adams

Finally, the design of my website!

Although I may be going back to the dark ages of computing by using frames on my website (because, let’s face it, not many websites seem to use frames these days), I think it’s the best possible design choice for me. Maybe I’ll change my mind, but as of right now—considering everything I want on my site, how I want it to act, and so on—frames is the way to go, and I’ll explain why.

First of all, I’ve already started playing with Dreamweaver, and from my experience so far, it is not nearly as easy to use as the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite. There are bugs and inconsistencies that don’t exist in the other applications, but I won’t go into that right now. One good thing about Dreamweaver is that it offers several nice templates to use when starting to build your website (if you can figure out how to use them). I went through a few before I decided to try the three-frame approach.

For those of you who don’t already know, frames is basically a way of embedding more than one web page into a single window. In my case, I would have three frames (i.e., web pages) that would make up any given page of my website. The frame at the top will just be the header; there won’t be a scrollbar, nor will there be any division lines between the header frame and the frame for the main text. It will be fluid. The viewer will only see a difference when he or she scrolls through the text of the main frame (which, obviously, will have a scroll bar, assuming the content is long enough to need one), because the header will always be visible. That’s a boon, actually, because it means the viewer will always be able to click the header to return to the main page, without having to scroll back to the top. This is the equivalent of using freeze panes in Microsoft Excel, if that helps you any.

The bottom frame will contain the menu, the navigation for the site. This will be a simple row of mostly text-based “icons,” created in PhotoShop, that will take the viewer from page to page. The potential hyptertext story, for example, would be one menu choice. The story would appear as its own page, in the main frame of the site. Again, the only scrollbar would be for this middle/main frame, where the content is. So, when the content gets long enough to need a scrollbar, one will appear; otherwise, the interface will be very simple.

This is probably really confusing for people who have never built a website before and/or who don’t know what frames looks like. So, I’ll end this post with a screenshot from a design I’ve been working on. Click on it to make it bigger.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #10: “Navigation is power of a limited sort – it enables us to manage the immensity of the media torrent.”

– Todd Gitlin

Next up, if you haven’t already guessed: the navigation of my website.

As Vinny mentions on his navigation post, simplicity is key. I’ve thought a lot about different navigation methods, and I keep coming back to two time-tested ideas: (1) a horizontal header with a horizontal navigation bar underneath it, right along the top of the page or (2) a horizontal header at the top and a vertical navigation bar on the left. Some web designers choose to put the navigation bar on the right (or they utilize a left and right design). I’m not considering that at this point because I prefer the left side. Perhaps that decision is subconsciously linked to politics; more likely, it’s because I was raised in a country that reads from left to right.

However, as I was brainstorming, I decided to go out on a limb: I want to try putting my navigation bar on the bottom of the site. It’s a risky move, in a way, but it’s also a very familiar paradigm for the average computer user, who has to use a “start” menu or a dock of icons (both of which are at the bottom of the screen, by default) to launch his or her applications. I want my website to be easy to use, and I think that having the navigation bar on the bottom is just as easy as having it on the top—but it’s just different enough to be mildly refreshing and interesting, while still providing that sense of familiarity we’ve been discussing. If I do end up deciding on this design, I’ll want my navigation bar to look similar to a computer dock, so I’ll be creating buttons that remind the user of icons. In fact, I’ve already made a few in PhotoShop. In any case, these buttons will allow the user to move comfortably from page to page.

The biggest departure from this will/would be the hypertext story that I may or may not create (I just need time), because the links to navigate the story would be in the story itself, not on a menu. Seemingly random words would take the reader to a new experience, a new definition, a new page. The choices the reader makes would affect the story’s message, perhaps its actual outcome. Of course, this is all assuming I can come up with the right story concept.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #9: “Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.”

– On Writing by Stephen King

This week, we’re writing about our author/artist websites, which we will be designing and potentially publishing over the course of the next month. First up: the content of my site.

I’ve had a blog for almost a year now, one that I’ve actually managed to update on a fairly regular basis. I’ve tried to start blogs before but have never stuck with them. That said, since I’ve already got a blog started, I would like to try to incorporate it in some way. But that topic is better suited for my forthcoming posts on navigation and design, so I’ll go into more detail in the next two posts.

On this blog, I do have an “about me” page, a résumé page, a favorites page (favorite books, movies, and TV shows), and even a page to post completed/published stories, books, videos, and other projects (which I’ve done nothing with, as of yet). I’m trying to think of the best way to integrate all this information into the new website or if I even want to; I’m not sure just yet. My best bet may be to keep it on the blog and use the website for something else.

In any case, I’ve already started playing with Dreamweaver—and even tried out a couple of designs—but right now, my favorite design uses the controversial frames method, with a header on the top, a menu on the bottom, and the content in the middle (again, more to come on design and navigation in a future post). If that’s confusing, I’ll try to explain: these are all in the same browser window but are in separate “frames” (kind of like picture-in-picture for the Internet).

The content that appears in the middle frame, so far, consists of a page on which I can list my published works, an about me page, and even my entire blog (with the header and menu intact, in their respective frames, which doesn’t look great with the blog design but could be worse). I’m struggling to come up with more content for the middle frame of the home page, though, the one the reader sees first. As I said in a comment on Mike’s blog, I would also like to include a hypertext narrative of some kind (and maybe some other stories that I’ve written), but that will take a lot of time and effort to (1) write and (2) implement correctly; I suppose it’s something that will evolve over time, even if I have to work on it beyond the deadline for class.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #8: “Can you hear me now? Good.”

– Verizon ad campaign

At work today, I ran across an old phone stall (not a booth but a stall) that’s no longer in use, because Verizon and U.B. decided that our campus pay phones were too underutilized and that we couldn’t justify keeping them.

The phone and phone book (but not its cover) were both gone from the stall, and this sight inspired me to write a rough draft of a short short, which came to 183 words. But anyway, this thing, this stall, was just so

MT

That old pay phone stall is unoccupied, these days, just a black rectangular outline that used to say “Verizon” somewhere. The plastic case that previously held a phone book now hangs empty MT. Passersby think maybe it’s all a result of Baltimore theft, but I know the truth. Of economic woes and phone line underuse but mostly technological advancements. The pay phone is extinct and out-styled; the cellular mobile phone cell phone smartphone reigns supreme.

Just last year, though, I saw this dreaded-out guy, tangling long, messy locks around bony, brown fingers and speaking casually and playfully on the phone that’s not there anymore, as if unaware that oral aural conversation was going out of style.

Even then, we were headed toward this, the golden age of Twitter and texting txtng, where people actually know what SMS and MMS mean. And can’t live without them, either one.

The emptiness is upon us the MTness is upon us. Conversations of 160 characters 140 characters. And we’re so stupid; we just keep spilling nonsense.

“Bring us more, make it shorter!”

“Bring us shorter!”

“Shorter”

“Shrtr”

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

Roger’s E-Pub Blog in Syndication

As I might have said before, I’m taking the graduate level Electronic Publishing course at the University of Baltimore this fall, and one of my assignments is to keep a blog. Which means starting a new one, on Blogspot/Blogger. Mine can be found here, but I think I will go ahead and syndicate each entry to this WordPress blog as well. I’m also taking Typography, and I might have some things to say about that as well, but they won’t be assigned. So, expect several publishing-, typography-, and literature-oriented blog posts in the coming months (my God: do those commas really even belong there?), but these will be in addition to my regular blog posts and my Twit TV entries. As always, I will tag these school-related entries with University of Baltimore, Education, MFA, and Baltimore, to denote the period in my life in which I am writing these entries. I may need to clean out my tags soon.

Anyway, I also expect to make a decision, in the next week or two, on which shows I’ll be tweeting/blogging about this fall for Twit TV, so stay tuned for that. See you again soon!

Announcing Twit TV?

With the official fall 2010 TV season just around the corner (FYI, some shows will start up in less than a month), I would like to try an experiment: I’ve been wanting to force myself to write/blog more often anyway, so one of my ideas is to start a regular section/tag of this blog called Twit TV in which I would weigh my favorite new show pilots (we’ll call these the “freshman shows,” since most people in the TV industry do anyway), choose one to follow for the whole season (or at least to the end of its run, if it happens to get canceled), and review/respond to each episode, highlighting my favorite and least favorite (if there are any) moments and why I like/dislike them. And so on.

I would also like to choose a veteran show to follow (one of which I’m already a dedicated viewer, anticipating the season premier), perhaps for comparison/contrast reasons, but whether I do that or not really depends on the shows I choose. They may not mesh well enough.

In any case, the meat of this idea is that I will be tweeting (via my personal account, RogerMarket) initial gut reactions as they happen while watching both shows (freshman and veteran)—hence the clever or not so clever “Twit” part of this blog series’ name—and other Twitter users can follow along and respond to my tweets as well as those of others, in addition to responding here on this blog, although I do get a lot of spam comments. I don’t accept spam comments, so if you do respond, make sure it pertains to the blog entry and the show, and if it does, I’ll accept it, unless, of course, I see a reason not to do so. Also, be advised that I can’t watch every show when it airs because I have class some nights, so the tweets may come a day or two late; I’ll try to write the blogs within a week, maybe less. This may be a huge commitment for an M.F.A. student at the University of Baltimore to make, but I’m going to try my best to do it.

By the way, if the freshman show I choose happens to be canceled early in the season, I may choose another freshman to continue the Twit TV series, or I may just choose another veteran show to follow and just have two; I haven’t decided yet. Suggestions?

Now, here are the shows I’m considering.

For freshman shows, I am interested in Lonestar (FOX), No Ordinary Family (ABC), Raising Hope (FOX), Undercovers (NBC), and Nikita (The CW). Nothing on CBS interests me. Out of these five, I’m most excited about Lonestar and No Ordinary Family (I’ve seen the pilot of the latter, and it’s pretty good; I’ve heard great things about Lonestar). Any thoughts on which freshman show I should pick?

For veteran shows, I am thinking about doing the tenth and final season of Smallville (The CW), the second season of Parenthood (NBC), the second season of Life Unexpected (The CW), or possibly the second season of The Vampire Diaries (The CW). As of this moment, I’m torn between Smallville and Parenthood. Any thoughts on which veteran show I should pick? Is anyone even reading this? Does anyone care?

I know that’s a lot of CW shows, but I don’t even want to think about tackling the monster that is Glee (FOX), a lot of my shows were canceled last season, and if I did The Office (NBC), I’m afraid it would be unenjoyable for all involved, as I’ve become quite disillusioned with that quickly declining show and would probably not find much to like anymore. I really didn’t like last season. Beyond that, the other bloggable shows that I watch are on cable and have irregular seasons (e.g., Mad Men, True Blood, Dexter, and Spartacus: Blood and Sand), so I couldn’t really blog about those. Maybe I could do one of them as a bonus at some point—next summer? We’ll see.

P.S. I’d like to do a book version of this series at some point, just at my own leisure.

“Mooching,” or “Excuse Me”

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted! I got into a bit of a frenzy with finding a place to live, and I’m only just now sorting it all out. I’ve got most of my stuff moved now, and I’m moving the rest, hopefully, by Monday. And classes start up the 30th. This semester, I’m taking Electronic Publishing and Typographic Form & Function. There won’t be as much writing this semester, perhaps the entire school year, so I might try to post more writing on here. This will have to do for today: an on-the-fly (re: hardly edited) piece inspired by my recent excursions from Bolton Hill/Mount Vernon to Downtown, on the free Charm City Circulator. Moving stuff a little at a time. This has been my life for the past two days. Work, eat, pack, move, pack, sleep. Repeat. I don’t expect tomorrow to be any different. Luckily, a friend said she’d help me on Saturday, so we can use her car instead of a bus. Which means I can get almost everything moved. 😉

In any case, without further ado, here’s a quick draft of a potential story I’m tentatively titling

“Mooching,” or perhaps “Excuse Me“

Raindrops in your hair. But the sky’s mostly blue. How can that be? Rain drops in your hair.

Out of the blue, it comes, the inevitable question you’ve been expecting yet not expecting, because who would? “Excuse me—sorry to bother you, but you wouldn’t happen to have an extra cigarette, cell phone, car, dime, or toothbrush, would you?”

You don’t stop. You’ve been practicing.

“Sorry, no,” you say, and continue to walk away. But you know it’s there; it’s all there. Deep in the recesses of your right pants pocket. You chuckle. Pants are underwear in the U.K.

But it’s all there. A lone cigarette tucked into the bristles of a dark, yellowed toothbrush, scrubbing germs and old toothpaste residue into your iPhone’s beautiful multitouch screen, a dime jingling against the metal of your ever-shrinking car—clack, cling, clack. Your baby. Your pride and joy. One day, it’s going to disappear completely and you’ll have to get a new one, but today is not that day.

No. Today, you’re on a mission to find cheap parking—street parking. You hope that dime will be enough to get you started. You don’t usually carry change. Clack-cling, clack. It’s 4:46 on a Thursday afternoon. Clack, cling-clack. As you walk, walk, walk down the sidewalk, you clack, cling, clack. The dime.

If they want cigarettes, why don’t they find a job and buy some? Second thought, you doubt they could afford the cigarettes and the toothbrush, so maybe just the toothbrush. Just don’t smoke. Simple.

You don’t smoke; you’re allergic to the poison. Aren’t most people?

“Excuse me,” they almost always manage to say. That gets you every time. You chuckle; you’re a chuckler. At least they’re polite about the mooching.

You walk.

Walk.

And there it is. The perfect spot. The rain drops away instantly, vanishes as the sun quickly peeks out of wet, metallic clouds for the first time since yesterday. Rays shine on the spot, highlighting it. Bookmarking it for you automatically, like a 3G Kindle. It’s your spot. You look. As you suspected: it has your name on it. Right on the curb. You walk up to the meter: a dollar. Minimum.

But that’s not right. It’s never been that high…has it? You don’t know.

What to do now? Take the car with you. You always take it with you. In your pocket, like a match box. But you don’t even smoke.

A blonde is walking toward you, on a cell phone, and you look up. You look him up—and down. Gucci. He’ll have 90 cents.

“Excuse me,” you say, without thinking, “sorry to bother you man, but—”

He doesn’t look. He doesn’t stop.

The End Is Nigh

My first year of graduate classes at the University of Baltimore is almost over. This semester, I’ve been taking a class called Experimental Forms, in which we read experimental works of fiction and write experimentally, based on these readings, as well as a workshop in screenwriting and my second graduate-level workshop in fiction (I’d only taken a single undergrad workshop before I came here, to a grad program). Last semester, I took my first graduate fiction workshop and a class called Creativity: Ways of Seeing. All of these, except Screenwriting, are required for my degree. Screenwriting is just an elective—it’s the icing on the cake, considering that I want to write movies and/or for television.

Since late last week, I’ve managed to write three short stories and a reader’s response essay, but I still feel a little overwhelmed by what I have left. In retrospect, it was not a good idea to take three grad-level writing classes in one semester. Anyway, by next Monday at midnight, I have to have my screenplay and treatment finished/revised and turned in. Monday is also the due date for my final experimental piece, but that is one of the short stories that I’ve written in the last few days; I just need to edit, and it will be good to go. Furthermore, my professor said we don’t have to turn it in on Monday, since we won’t be meeting for class; that means I’ll turn it in on Wednesday, which is when the rest of my final projects are due (for Fiction). For that class, I have to put together a portfolio of everything I’ve written this semester, including any revisions, and then I have to write a reader’s response to a short story from our class’s anthology. I’ve already done that, but I’ll still need to find time to edit before next Wednesday. It’s based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s incredibly touching “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”

For now, I’m mostly/only worried about my screenplay. It’s not done, for one thing, but I also don’t feel it is up to par on a line level. So I have to finish the storyline and do at least one revised draft of the entire thing, if I can manage that.

I can’t wait for this semester to be over. But then, that breaks open a whole new problem: I need a job so I can afford to stay in Baltimore. I will almost have enough to cover my fixed expenses for two months—almost. But I wouldn’t be able to spend any more money than that, and that’s just not going to work. So I need to make up for those extra expenses, and then pay all my expenses for August. It’s not a ton of money, in the grand scheme of things, but for a poor graduate student in Baltimore, it’s still a lot.

I just hope there are jobs to be had. In the meantime, I’m seriously considering ChaCha, but I don’t think that will really help that much, and even then, it will only help at all if I can pass all the required tests and get “hired.” I can’t believe I’m actually considering this, but I may end up having to go to the nearest Burger King or something. Since I worked for Burger King for 4 years, under both terrible and amazing management, you should consider that a sign of desperation.

It wouldn’t be so bad. Would it? If I’m making money, who cares what kind of crappy job it is?

Which reminds me, I need to find out if taking a graduate assistantship would affect my loan eligibility in any way because there’s a chance I could end up with a (bad but still paying) assistantship next year.