The Road Not Taken--Rocket Man

Hair of the dog.

The vodka is fighting the tomato juice, but it does the trick, and I mitigate the vagaries of selling popcorn at the Kane County Fair with ten screaming Cub Scouts, Bloody Mary firmly in hand, shades firmly affixed. The margaritas from the night before are a headache I’d rather be doing without, but osmosis and a little old-fashioned self medicating has gotten me to the point where I can drive Cub Scouts and be the charming father of two, husband of one. But I have to make a decision. We are constantly presented with rules that we can either choose to follow or break. Does one go through the unmanned toll? Does one pay for the case of water in the bottom of the shopping cart that no one sees? They are small, middle class rules, but rules all the same. My choice is simple. Do I take the time to hang a big looping U-turn and return to the highway for the Dairy Queen I missed … or do I cut into the McDonald’s parking lot and plow across an excavated field of old pipes and earth movers, past the surveyor posts flapping like markers of the road not taken?These are the choices of our lives now. The big choices are mostly behind us by middle age, and we are reduced to schoolboys trying to whisper when the teacher’s back is turned.
What the hell.

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

Pulp Memories

Bookstores are overrun with stock. Much like the housing industry. Lot of supply and little demand. At least for the pulpy things on the shelves. The digital revolution swept through music and left us with the IPOD and ninety nine cent songs and a lot of CD's that resemble the eight tracks of old. Shoot a song into the IPOD and move on. What are those stores with the guitars on the signs and what are they selling? CD's have crashed in sales and the industry is still adjusting to the modality of the listener who picks one song at a time. The pendulum swung from the artist and record company dumping songs no one wanted with a couple of hits to the consumer who samples many and buys few. Now it is the publishing industries turn. But I like books! Doesn't matter. Economics rule. The fact is people are going to go with what is accessible, convenient and cheap. I just received a letter from one of my publishers asking for the electronic rights of my early novels. Seems they forgot to buy those when I published my first and second novel. Opps. Now they know what the public is finding out: books are toast. They will still be around the way CDs are still around, but people will buy them less and less. It is not a war against the book persay, but a war against the manufacturing ethos of the twentieth century. Make it and they will come. Mass produce it and they will come. Guess what? They aren't coming anymore. Not for cars, houses, CD's, and now books. Cyber empowerment has thrown the brick and mortar economy into the dust in more ways than one. One could even make an argument that derivatives and mortgage backs would never have been possible without the cyber-distance between buyer and seller. No matter, the very elements that made my publisher send me a letter, collecting digital rights on a ten year old book are the same elements that will wipe out the way people read. If capitalism is anything it is unfeeling. It morphs to the most economical model without a glance backward. Who cares if people want to read with a paper binding...economics dictates a downloadable product that can hold thousands of books for half the price. Tissy is the word for the publishing industry right now. Authors now have a chance to reclaim their books and sell the electronic version themselves. The days of the arbiters of literary taste have been bled down to the Lowest Common Denominator for good or bad. If people like it then it will sell regardless what the New York Times or other cannons of literary knowledge decree. Democracy demands an accounting by the individual and it keeps doing that nasty thing of morphing into the next evolution. Me, I now own the digital rights to all of my books. I'd say I own the future.

A GD Insurance Salesman

The sky is falling. AIG COULD TANK! The government is tossing in another thirty billion but the chairman says that is a pittance. He reckons (folksy) that it would probably take about 300 billion to keep them afloat. Just a mere three hundred billion and even then he doesn't know if that is enough. So right now every man woman and child is on the hook for fourteen hundred bucks on the AIG Bailout. In other words we own AIG. My mother in law reeled in horror when I said I was going to earn some extra money by selling insurance: "A Goddamn insurance salesman," she fumed. Well that says it all doesn't it. You know those guys who bet against you. When you die they might pay off. When you get sick they don't pay off. When you get a ticket your rates go up. When you go to the doctor your rates go up or if something is wrong or they drop you. Or your kid goes to the doctor and they claim a preexisting condition from five years before and so we aren't going to pay for the treatment thank you very much. They are the same guys that debit your account every month for insurance that does NOTHING. If your house burns down, if your car crashes, if you get sick, if you die, if someone sues you, if lightning strikes...if, if, if, if, if...then they may or may not payoff. And if there is a loophole they will find it. I'm sorry that insurance only covered you if you the car hit you but you caused the accident. SORRY. Oh and by the way, we dropped you. Oh, you didn't go to traffic school and now you have a ticket. SORRY. We just doubled your rates and it doesn't matter that you had a perfect driving record--We need more money to insure your sorry ass OR ELSE! Else? That's right pal, you will be UNINSURED. Oh, you mean like the millions of people who can't get health insurance. Oh right. THOSE PEOPLE. By all means insure me, let's see, I'll take an umbrella policy, a life insurance policy, a health policy, a homeowners policy, a car insurance policy, and throw in a renter policy just to be on the safe side. THANK GOD I AM INSURED! Oh, by the way, you know all that money you have been giving us for twenty years--WE LOST IT! Whoops. Threw it away on derivatives. And here's the kicker. The CEO of forty years is now suing us! The nerve of this guy. He says we didn't tell him we were broke when he cashed out and became our biggest shareholder. Hey, you FD up pal...you TRUSTED US. Sucker. They say one is born every minute. But ..listen....ha ha...we need three hundred billion just to stay afloat because if you let us go baby then we all go! KABOOM. Game over! So don't even think about the way we have ripped you off for years because if we go then the economy is TOAST. So...now you are all stockholders. That's right. We are all in this boat together and we sink or swim. So there you have it, now whose the Goddamn insurance salesman? Huh?