I get email

Hello. I don't normally write people to show my appreciation but I read some of your work online and was beyond entertained and impressed by both your writing style and the subject matter. Your piece on trigger warnings was great, I know it was only a small story but I find it fascinating when such a story can have the obvious effect it seemed to get when at the same time it is sort of pointing out the obvious that either know one wanted to say or know one had been able to successfully voice in the past.

In any case I enjoyed it and for some reason felt that it would be nice to communicate that to you. If you have a list of people to inform once your novel is ready please add me to it as the short description I read it sounds like a compelling crime novel.

Hope you have a great new year and see more success at your writing.

Regards,

[Redacted]

[Image]

How to manscape

My latest STUPID ADVICE column for Playboy's The Smoking Jacket is online: "The Art of Manscaping."

Speaking for women, or at least this woman, we don’t understand why you would want to place a sharp object near your penis. This just seems unwise. For a wide variety of reasons. We love you, but if you accidentally hack off your phallus with a razor, we may have to seek out romantic relations elsewhere. That is how we roll.

[Read it]

Self-portrait with ribs

Ever since I got this email, I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, I have thought of other things, but my brain keeps going back to it, worrying it like a bone.

I'm not sure what the guy meant in his email, but I took it to mean: "You're boring." Or something to that effect. But that's not really what he said, or meant. But sometimes it feels like that. Basically, he was saying my blogs were one way when I was writing about porn and sex, and another way when I started doing what has come after, and I have no idea what that is. What comes after.

So, in a way, I am bored. Bored out of my mind. When I have tried explaining the situation to other people, I have said stuff like, "It's like being a crack addict, and then not, and it's like, what, this is supposed to be fun, not being high on crack?" Only writing about porn was my little white rock. And the problem with little white rocks is that they aren't good for you. So you have to find something else. It's like I'm sober. And, man, is sober fucking boring.

But I did know that the only reason his email was sticking in my head was because he was right. I felt bored with blogging, and I feel bored with a lot of other shit, too, and I need to feel unbored. Because boredom is a choice. It is not a terminal illness. And I want this year, this life, this existence to be different.

So, thanks, guy who wrote email.

I am trying to do things that don't bore me. Things that are not the same, that are different, that are better. I get a lot of motivation from Penelope Trunk, who blogs like an assassin takes out people. Here: She smashed a lamp over her head.

OK, I've smashed my head into a cabinet, but, you know what? I didn't blog about it.

Oh, wait. Maybe I did.

It's like that stupid thing written on a wall near where I live. Do something every day that scares you. I'll do that.

A review of my short story collection: You're a Bad Man, Aren't You?

YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? by Susannah Breslin -- I first discovered writer Susannah Breslin through a post Warren Ellis made years ago, when she ran her THE REVERSE COWGIRL blog, and I've been a fan since. This year I sound this small collection of her short fiction and it cemented why I became a fan of hers: her language. YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is the various ways in which men are, well, bad. Whether it is the mand who ushers a midget into porn superstardom, the man who really just hates everyone and everything (the title story), the man who wonders about eating a woman, or the man prone to fornophilia. Breslin's words cut right to it, no time for niceties, and it is evident not just in her journalism nor blog writing, it's more than clear here. And that's what draws me the most to her writing, to her bits of fiction in YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? she doesn't fuck around, plain and simple. Reminds me of my initial reads of Chuck Palahniuk. And, all through this, because of her stories, I don't get the idea that Breslin doesn't like men, quite the opposite: I think she loves them, but is not naive to the social failures most of us are. If you're a man, or know a man, read this book and it'll show you maybe ought to know less men.

-- Javier Chavez Loeza

New Year's resolution

I was talking to my shrink today. I've been pretty stressed lately. Mostly, I was OK, until, like, late last week, and then not so much. I'm worried about some work stuff, and wonder why I got tired of doing freelance work for what amounted to, like, 50 cents, and feel like I should be out there doing something, like taking photographs or whatever, just anything, mostly at this point, and some days working on my novel feels like smashing my head into a brick wall, only the wall is virtual and the bricks are the alphabet, and there's other stuff, like, stuff I won't go into here. Usually, I've got a handle on it. Lately, no.

In any case, we talked for a while, and nothing was really helping, mostly because I thought everything he was saying was stupid or something I'd heard already. Obviously, this has no bearing on his ... talents as a shrink. He is really full of himself, so I don't have to worry about hurting his feelings or anything. But I spend so much time overanalyzing myself that therapy can seem redundant.

Eventually, he started rambling on about this really difficult time he went through in his life, and in the process of making some other point, he said something like, "It is physiologically impossible to be anxious and exhausted at the same time." He had exercised himself into being unable to be a spaz anymore. I was like, Hm.

For the past few months, I've been taking these long walks. A couple miles. Seeing as I'm someone who given a choice between "not move" and "move," I will chose "not move" every time, this was a lot of walking for me. So, he was like, "Well, walk further!" Or farther. Whatever.

And I did. Today I doubled my mileage. So, like, 4.4 miles according to my iPhone, although it was probably longer than that, since I was meandering all over the place, and I'm just using the map function. It was cold, crisp, and I had to put my hood on near the end, and half the time I had to pee, but it was good. Now, my legs are tired. But I'm also too tired to worry anymore.

My New Year's resolution is: Think less. I am working on that.