THANKS

Today I want to offer a sincere THANKS to everyone who read/liked/shared/tweeted/mentioned in passing/whatever/whatever/whatever The Tom Batten Show this month. We did it!

Thanks. The idea here was to come up with something new every day for one month, partially as an exercise, partially…well, coming up with this silly stuff might seem like a weird way to try and get myself back to normal, but it’s where I decided to start. And if you read/liked/shared/tweeted/mentioned in passing/whatever/whatever/whatever, you helped make that happen.

I don’t know if I’m going to make a point of posting something new every day moving forward, I’m thinking maybe just twice a week. Although, my employment status is about to drop off…so maybe more? Maybe I’ll end up posting new stuff every six minutes.  We’ll see? 

All right. Now I promise to never be sincere again.

T

Nov. 30: YOLO

Hello, my name is Dr. Ronald Tremain, and this year I’m thankful for YOLO (You Only Live Once). I don’t know who coined this wonderful phrase, but if you know and you can tell me, I’d like to send them a Christmas card, because in the last 18 months I’ve seen a 78% rise in profits off YOLO related injuries alone. We’re talking broken bones, we’re talking alcohol poisoning, we’re talking STD’s. Mostly STD’s, to tell you the truth.

The great thing about YOLO is that it’s such a catchy and compact little phrase, you hear it and flash on your mortality without thinking for a second about the consequences, or if you’re physically up for whatever it is you’re doing. This one guy, 47-year old father of three, came into my office just last week with two broken legs. Skateboarding accident. This guy weighed 250 pounds, and he hopped on his kid’s skateboard and launched himself down a half-pipe because he saw a t-shirt that reminded him he was going to die. I actually wrote ‘Ka-ching’ on his chart and then scratched it out, because I was afraid he’d see it and get all lawyered up.

Or how about the 36-year old mother of two who came in after snapping an ankle skydiving? Or the 29-year old graduate student who presented with severe dehydration after trying ecstasy for the first time? Or the many, many people I’ve treated for injuries relating to the mishandling of fireworks? Or again, all the STD’s?

The great things about these YOLO cases is that they’re relatively easy to treat. Honestly, the hardest thing about treating these people is not letting them see the dollar signs flashing in my eyes.

It probably says something about our culture that when we hear YOLO we aren’t inspired to feed the homeless or donate money to flood relief, instead we fling ourselves off something tall or go home with someone sketchy. I’m not going to examine that too much, though. Mostly because the majority of my off-hours these days are taken up by my new boat. I had a boat, now I have two. And my new boat is fucking enormous.

YOLO is a fad, of course, and fads are short lived. I’m very aware of that. So listen to this great idea I’ve come up with—I’m going to print up 10,000 wrist bands with YOLO written on one side and my office’s phone number and address on the other. And I’m going to distribute them on college campuses, at bars, NASCAR races, the food court at the mall; anywhere ennui meets high-risk behavior. I was thinking of having some condoms made with YOLO on the packaging, too, but distributing condoms could actually hurt my business.

Does treating all these YOLO cases make me reflect on my own mortality? Of course it does. Do I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, worrying that time spent sleeping is wasted time, when ultimately my lifetime is finite? No more than I did before. Has this YOLO thing hurt my marriage? You bet. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that while You Only Live Once, there’s plenty of fish in the sea, and when you have two boats the fish are easy to find.

Nov 29: Ghost Story

Harry was in the coma for eleven months, and when he woke up he could see ghosts. They were everywhere, and more, they were constantly fucking. Floating through the air, in pairs, in groups, totally debauched—every imaginable kink was represented, and there were no boundaries. Why would there be? They were already dead, they deserved to have some fun. Harry was horrified. The most difficult part was explaining that we all saw them, too, and that we had learned to look the other way. For us, it was no big deal. We’d had eleven months to get used to it.

Nov. 28: Grammar Nazi

I guess I should just come out and admit it: I’m a real Grammar Nazi. I know, I know. Annoying. But I can’t help it! When I get an e-mail from someone and the commas are all over the place, when I see someone using ‘your’ when they should be using ‘you’re,’ I just get so angry. Really, they should round up all these grammar offenders and ship them off to labor camps, subject them to dehumanizing conditions, and finally execute them with poison gas and dump their bodies in a mass grave.

Is this an urge I’m happy to have? No. Of course not. But then, there is something to be said for upholding certain standards. Someone has to look out for grammar, especially in this age of breezy on-the-go texting and emoticons. If we’re not careful, if we don’t protect grammar from those who would ignore or subvert it, we’ll be reduced to gibbering human garbage indicating our wants and desires by grimacing and pointing with sticks within fifty years.

Grammar rules weren’t created arbitrarily. We have grammar so that communication is standardized, so that we can communicate with one another effectively. Imagine a world where everyone adheres to grammar rules, imagine a world of perfect grammar purity. I think about it all the time. As far as I’m concerned, if camps are what we need to achieve that purity, then camps is what we’ll have. You know?

Gosh, this whole thing probably makes me sound like such a nut. Right now you must be thinking I’m some total lunatic. Trust me when I say I’ve thought about this, and that the camps idea really came as a last resort. At first I thought what might be good is if we were to start with sanctions of some kind, maybe making known grammar offenders wear a mark or a sign, so that regular people would know to avoid them. Maybe there could even be a rule that said grammar offenders could only do business with or marry amongst their own kind, so that they could go on garbling the language without bothering the rest of us. The problem with this plan, though, is that these people are so out of control, so untrustworthy, that they probably wouldn’t abide by the rules. They probably wouldn’t  even understand the rules, because the rules would be presented to them in proper English!

So yeah, much as I hate to admit it, we will probably end up needing those camps. Hard labor until they’re too worn out to be of use, and then a peaceful death by poison gas. Painless, that’s important. We can’t just line them up and shoot them; they are still human beings, after all. I’m a Grammar Nazi, not a Grammar Khmer Rouge. Those people were just savages, hacking each other up with machetes. Horrible.

Yes, it’s sad. And it wouldn’t be a popular policy, at least not at first. But you know, I think once people get used to the idea? Once people get a chance to enjoy a more ordered world, where commas and periods are properly placed, where verb tenses stay nice and consistent? I wouldn’t be surprised if people end up looking at me like some kind of hero.

Nov. 27 Advice on Writing a Story

Frustrated by your lack of wealth and prestige? Looking for a hobby that makes you seem layered? Stark, raving mad? There are plenty of reasons for writing a story, but strangely there’s also a real lack of practical advice on churning out a good one. Well, now there’s this. I hope you find the following as inspiring as I used to find things before Edward Snowden revealed the true face of modern American life and soured me on everything, forever.

Genre

The Modern Language Association defines genre as ‘a set of unbreakable conventions designed to let your reader know if they’ll like your story without having to read it.’ When choosing a genre, base your decision on what you are hoping your story will accomplish. If you want the widest possible audience, choose Fan Fiction. If you want rabid fans who are either obnoxiously loud or suspiciously quiet, choose Science Fiction. If you want to make money, choose Erotica. If you don’t care about money and want the smallest but most self-important audience, choose Literary Fiction. Make sure you choose carefully, though—the genre you select for your first story is the one you will be stuck with for the rest of your writing life.

Theme

There’s no single element in a story more important than theme. This is the underlying message of your story. The earliest recorded theme in a story was found in cave paintings in Southern France and has been identified by researchers as ‘I killed the thing no one else could kill and now deserve sexual gratification.’ Some themes are universal regardless of genre, such as ‘I thought you were the alien but now it seems I am the alien,’ and ‘I was planning to fuck but am instead being fucked.’ Others are more closely tied to genre, for example ‘My psychic abilities make me an ideal ruler’ is strictly tied to Science Fiction; ‘You hurt me more than you know but now you will know from reading this’ only works for Literary Fiction. After selecting a theme you must make sure that every single decision you make while writing reinforces that theme so there can be no ambiguity in your readers mind. Ambiguity is a story killer—people read so someone will tell them what to think, so don’t be afraid to be clear. If you find yourself approaching the end of your story and aren’t sure your theme is coming across strongly enough, consider inserting a character who is either very young or very old and having them speak your theme aloud.

Character

The main character in your story, regardless of any other factor, is already someone you know very well—you! The secret is in distorting the details of your real life so that they fit your chosen genre and theme. For example, if you are writing Fan Fiction and your theme is ‘Hermione repays my kindness with sexual abandon’ you will have to grant yourself increased medical knowledge so you can better help Hermione when you find her wandering the forest moon Endor with a sprained ankle. If you are writing Literary Fiction and your theme is ‘I feel things very deeply because I am an artist with a broken heart,’ consider switching things around so your character is in their second year of graduate school instead of their first and it’s your mother you can’t relate to instead of your father.

If your story involves secondary characters, assign each of them a physical quirk so your readers can tell them apart easily. Popular physical quirks include limps, missing eyes or fingers and cleft palates, but feel free to get creative.

Plot

This is the shit that happens during your story. You can make this up as you go along, or if you get stuck, steal the broad strokes from The Odyssey.

Setting

There are some who would have you believe that the setting of your story is the most important element, but these people are wrong. Consider: almost all of Raymond Carver’s stories took place in Atlantis before maverick editor Gordon Lish made him change them. Decide if your story takes place inside or outside and move on.

Style

Some would have you believe that Style is something so that can only be developed over time, that you need to do a lot of writing before you develop a strong, distinctive voice. These people are lying, and are probably rival writers feeding you misinformation to discourage future competition. Style is simply based on your comprehension of vocabulary and grammar rules. Famed author Cormac McCarthy, for example, is known for having a distinctive style, but in fact the way he writes is due entirely to his suffering from severe dyslexia and being forced to dictate all of his novels into a broken phonograph due to tender fingertips and crippling technophobia. You’re stuck with who you are, folks, so you might as well enjoy it.

That should be plenty to get you started on your literary career, so why don’t you stop consuming and start producing. Good luck, and by way of inspiration heed the words of the great Joan Didion, who said, “I just start typing and quit when I get sleepy!”