bookfraud

It is too easy to make fun of all things 1970s — it’s kind of like making fun of someone who is fat or unattractive and is altogether a form of self-loathing.

However, in my search for public service announcements (or “PSAs,” as us connoisseurs call them), I came upon the following tragic piece of video from the 1970s, a real PSA (or, perhaps, a sex-ed film) about teenage boys’ favorite activity:

There are so many things patently false about this scene that it makes me see the light for striking television and film writers: often denigrated, disowned, and under-appreciated, these paragons of verisimilitude would never have stood for the travesty above. I mean, Ricky isn’t upset. His mother isn’t upset. He doesn’t reach for the closest sharp object and slash it across his throat.

Ricky’s mom counsels him that he needs to “control these feelings,” which is tantamount to saying, “Don’t be horny and don’t masturbate,” advice young men have ignored for as long as they have had penises.

If you really wanted to keep teenage boys from doing what comes naturally, a professional writer — like those on strike — would pen the following:

The scene: Ricky is lying in bed, hands under covers. His eyes are shut and his teeth are gritted.

RICKY (moaning): Oh, Mrs. Tasty, Oh, yes, Mrs. Tasty. I want you Mrs. Tasty, I want to take you now, Mrs. Tasty…

Outside, Ricky’s mother hears something from her 13-year-old son’s room. She turns the knob, but is surprised to see that it’s locked.

CLUELESS 70s MOM: Ricky, why are you saying your English teacher’s name over and over? What’s that about taking her someplace? What is going on in there? You never lock your door!

RICKY: GO THE HELL AWAY!

C7M: Well, I never!

Seconds later, Ricky’s mother returns with a key. She quickly opens the door and lets herself in.

C7M: Now, listen here, Eric Miles Bonert, you never talk to your Mother like that…oh my goodness, what are you doing?

RICKY: AAAAAAAAAAAH! GET THE HELL OUT NOW!!!!!!!

C7M: Oh, you’re masturbating!

RICKY (hiding under covers): SHUT UP AND GET THE HELL OUT!!!!!

C7M (thoughtfully): So that would explain why you go straight to your room for a “nap” every day after school! And all those yellow stains on your undershirts and your socks. I couldn’t figure that out for the life of me! Do you want me to get you something to clean up with, so you won’t ruin your clothes?

RICKY: I HATE YOU! GO AWAY!

C7M: Alright then, if you’re going to be that way to me, fine. But I don’t understand why you feel like you need to submit to your urges.Mother leaves. Dissolve to a long shot of her talking on the telephone.

C7M: Really? Well, I had no idea that what was happening. That’s good news. I’ll be sure and tell him.

Back in his room, Ricky is freaked out, and has masturbated six more times. His mother enters without knocking.

RICKY: Go away. I told you never to come in here without my permission! I’m 13 already!

C7M: Just listen here, Eric Miles. I really was ignorant about this — I had no idea that you were going through such things. I’m just glad that you did it in the privacy of your own room. What you did is perfectly normal — well, your father has a slightly different viewpoint–

RICKY: You told Dad? I don’t believe you did that!

C7M: It’s his right as a father to know, Ricky. He deserves to know. He’ll have a long talk with you when he gets home.

RICKY: What did he say? Did he say it’s just a normal part of puberty and adolescence, that he did the same thing I did, like five times a day?

C7M: No, I’m afraid he said “No son of mine is going to be a hairy-palmed pervert meat whacker! He’s going to military school!” But that’s just your Dad!

RICKY: I’m going to kill myself.

C7M: Now, I was afraid you’d be upset, so after I got off the phone with Dad, I called Mr. Cutler–

RICKY: You told my guidance counselor?

C7M: Only after Mrs. Tasty said I should talk to him. She sounded a little embarrassed that you were moaning her name while you were masturbating.

RICKY: Oh my God.

C7M: Don’t worry! I eventually spoke to Mr. Cutler. He didn’t want to talk about it except he said it was a normal part of adolescence.

RICKY: I don’t believe you called Mr. Cutter!

C7M: But Ricky, I also called Tommy Barnes…

RICKY: You WHAT? You called my best friend?

C7M: Now, don’t worry, Ricky, Tommy is a good friend and he proved it when I spoke to him. I asked if other boys masturbated–

RICKY: I’m going to kill every member of my family and then myself.

C7M: …and Tommy said, no, he didn’t masturbate. At least that’s what he said after he finished laughing.

RICKY: You’ve ruined my life.

C7M: Just listen, Ricky! Tommy was very nice. He said that although he didn’t do it himself, he would call all of your friends right away and ask them so you could discuss it in school tomorrow!

RICKY: I can’t go back to school. My life is over in the seventh grade…I’m going to die.

C7M: Now, why on earth would you say that?

(Fade).

Any teenage boy sees that, he’ll never bop the baloney again. Unless he’s in the shower, in the school bathroom alone, late at night in bed…

You see, in the hands of a savvy writer like myself — even one with no screenwriting experience like myself — a delicate, sensitive topic like whackin’ off is made real and addressed seriously. Writers are generally considered fungible, but we’re not.

Let’s end this ridiculous writers’ strike now, and write sex-ed films that actually frighten kids from touching themselves.

The reason is clear: about 592 million boys worldwide are masturbating at this very second. And unless we can scare the shit out of them, they’re not going to stop until every white T-shirt and pair of socks on this planet are ruined.

It’s more suicidal than bipolar Finnish sheep herders drunk on vodka and Kierkegaard! There’s less hope there than at an Ibsen festival! It’s feels bleaker than a conference of failed, embittered scribes who think Cormac McCarthy is optimistic and Dostoyevsky’s characters are the happiest folk in the universe!

Are we talking about Romney campaign workers, Ohio State fans, or the celebrity-du-jour-meltdown (of which the latest suffer’s name is banned from this space)? No! We’re talking about the mind of the writer! Specifically, Bookfraud’s mind!

There’s a lot of bizzare crap-ola going in this man’s brain — but really, can you blame him? Take a plague of bed bugs going on six months, throw in depression that won’t quit, a literary agent harder to pin down than mercury and a baby who at 3 a.m. sounds like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and you’ve got all the makings of a full-throttle mental breakdown!

To make matters worse, Bookfraud is writing about as often as a starving pit bull will ignore a raw T-bone, and what he does churn out is about as readable as Dan Brown in Sanskrit! And let me tell you, his brain is generating all of this mess — the negative thinking, the emotional meltdowns, the sudden urges to lick the sidewalk.

Bookfraud’s brain is not a pretty place to be these days, boys and girls, but I’m going to take you on a fully guided tour of the vast wasteland of his emotional state and the empty grottoes of his soul! Prepare for the most horrifying guided tour since Virgil led Dante through Hades!

Let’s start at the lower brain, the veritable “reptilian” state of the brain that controls heartbeat, breathing, and involuntary teenage boners. Bookfraud’s medulla is in bad shape — look at the Swiss-cheese like holes dotting its surface. It’s no wonder that he’s breathing like a 100-year-old stone accordion! And let’s hope that his blood pressure hasn’t skyrocketed to 500/1000!

Abandon all hope

Now, the midbrain. The midbrain links motor functions, eye and auditory control, and the power train a 1968 Dodge Dart. Thus, when Bookfraud sees an attractive femalian, his eyes bug out, his hands shake, and he starts hearing voices in his head — “Maybe you can do better, buddy! Maybe it’s a good time for a mid-life crisis after all, because there are so many hot 22-year-old blonde babes with enormous gazargons who want to sleep with you!”

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the hypothalamus, where sexual reproduction is regulated. You may want to hide your children’s eyes for this one. Wow! That’s ugly! It looks like it’s been unused for months — cobwebs everywhere! It’s rotting from the core! I wouldn’t show that to a medical student unless I wanted him or her to quit school that very day.

Next on the tour is the cerebellum. Motor functions are controlled here, and the pink, red, blue, orange, and black spots are why Bookfraud is constantly dropping things, breaking them, and turning into a 43-year-old ball of venomous bile that sets such a great example for his young son!

But let’s get to main course — the mass of grey matter you’re all familiar with, the cerebrum, which tastes great on toast, by the way, or in a taco. The cerebrum is broken up into four lobes, all of which have a different purpose. Let’s take a quick look at each in Bookfraud’s messed-up mind:

The Frontal Lobe: associated with reasoning, parts of speech, and problem solving, this part of Bookfraud’s brain looks about as active as a dead squirrel on a stick! He can’t reason, plan, solve problems like “What’s 2 plus 2?” or speak a coherent sentence without pulling out, one by one, each hair in his nostril.

The Parietal Lobe: regulates movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli; notice the miniscule, translucent insects crawling all through this lobe. They’re bed bugs! And that’s all Bookfraud can see these days — bed bugs in his bed, in his coffee, on his Speed Stick by Mennen! They’re everywhere!

It’s a metaphor

The Occipital Lobe: while this part of the cerebrum handles visual processing, watch what happens in Bookfraud’s occipital lobe when a naked woman starts firing a machine gun while taking a dump. Nothing! It’s a dead zone in here!

The Temporal Lobe: Now we’re talkin’! This area helps regulate speech and memory, which are kinda essential tools for a writer — but look at Bookfraud’s. It’s less appealing than three-day-old eggs at Shoney’s breakfast buffet! It’s going to replace the South Bronx as a symbol of urban decay — someone should spray paint “Bookfraud Thinks Nada” on it!

Look at all the abandoned neurons, the destroyed receptors. Just pitiful. Let’s get out of here before Bookfraud tries to write something again, or we could get run over by a neurological equivalent of a drunken driver!

Well, that’s it. We hope you’ve enjoyed the tour! If you want to see his brain completely meltdown like a bolt of steel thrown to the sun, come back next week — by then, he’ll have completely lost it!

However, I’ve just received some bad news. You’ll have to make new plans for this time slot next week: the scheduled tour of Bookfraud’s penis has been canceled for lack of interest.

Before I decided not to publish it, I had written a blog entry indicative of a man bereft of ideas: The Year in Review. Granted, it reviewed subject matter such as Chris “Leave Britney Alone!” Crocker (see below) and Dog Poop Girl (see above), which not only are stupid pop culture footnotes to the real business of 2007 like greed, death and destruction, but have no bearing on the world of writing fiction, which, in a galaxy far, far away, this blog was once dedicated to addressing.

I’ve written about four blog entries over the past four months (do the math), ostensibly because of the ongoing bed bug woes in my household. This ignores several inconvenient truths: one, I don’t fight bed bugs 24/7 (or 12/4, for that matter); and two, despite our bugs and Baby and stress and fights with Wife and lots of anguish, I still have time to play computer games or screw around online for trivial pursuits like Sudoku or important ones like porn.

Whether this poor production stems from fear or laziness, I will not speculate, but I will admit something to which I am loath to disclose: at times, I can be terribly, terrifyingly lazy. (Which makes good fodder for a blog entry in January, 2008: I resolve this year not to be a fat, stupid slug).

This is a deep-seated issue stemming from an abusive childhood. I probably read more than the average child, and was often stymied by certain verbiage in my books. When I would ask my father what a word meant — alight, cogitate, affectation – he always had the same damn answer: “Well, son, let’s ask a friend of mine — Mr. Webster. He has this book called ‘the dictionary.’” My father, thus being doubly didactic, would force me to actually look up the word in the dictionary. If that wasn’t abuse, I don’t know what was.

There were a couple of lessons to be learned here. My father not only wanted me to learn how to use the dictionary and expand my mind, but to learn to stop bugging the crap out of him to get definitions of stupid words. I got the latter but not the former, and it wasn’t until college that I could cogitate upon alighting an intellectual journey filled with affectation and pretension.

But I left Britney alone

Now, of those who know me well, you’re probably a bit surprised. You’re saying, “Why, all these years, I thought Bookfraud was the hardest working man alive! He just put me to shame. And it turns out he goofs off more than George Bush!”

Fear not, familiar fans and foes, fear not. There once was a time that I was the hardest workin’ man in no business. I had two jobs in college, and two jobs after college. When I got it down to one job, I came home every evening to write. I didn’t have a car, television or other distraction. If I were 15 years younger, I’d probably be more known in this space for my logorreah than my paucity of output.

But I’m 43, unpublished and unknown, and there are stretches in my life that I seriously contemplate not writing anything creative at all: no novel, no short stories, no blog, nada. For me to have considered this 15 years ago was unthinkable, like giving up breathing or sex.

There are many, many writers who manage prodigious output, and it is during times such as now that I turn to them for inspiration. George Sand wrote dozens of plays, novels, articles and other assorted works. Issac Asimov wrote, like, 500 books. Current belle du jour Steve Almond seems to appear on every shelf and Web site. And then there’s Joyce.

Sloth comes in many forms

Not James Joyce, but Ms. Joyce Carol Oates, who has written and published more in one month than most scribes could hope for in a lifetime. To say she is a graphomaniac is like saying that Proust was a hypochondriac (or Britney is a bad mother) — deny if you must, but the evidence is overwhelming.

So, to review – I’m not writing much, my default position is sloth derived from a false belief all of my time is spent eradicating bed bugs or fighting with Wife about them, and these very words that you are reading now represent the new Bookfraud, the line of demarcation, the declaration that yes! I will not watch TV or play computer games or spend my idle hours trolling the Internet for Cubs news or searching my scalp for invisible lice but perched before the keyboard, typing until the hour the crow flies and dies and my fingers bleed and my head rolls off my hunched shoulders, until my toes shrivel and hair turns the gray of a February afternoon in Chicago, until I decide I must stop, that the effort is futile, that my life cannot go on until I stop, these words that will be blazingly original and new and never done before, because writers condemned to 43 years of solitude do not have a second opportunity on earth.