micahsaul

Ok, so they’re not actually off brands. They are neither more nor less smelly or cancerous than Marlboros or Camels. But they just don’t quite have the same cachet as those two. This is not to say, of course, that they do not say as much about their smokers. Let’s examine:

Parliament is an odd brand. Many, many people smoke Parly lights, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone smoke a regular Parliament. Not sure what exactly that means.

The important thing about Parliament Light smokers is this: They are usually cute hipster girls with good fashion, good taste in music, and they are usually quitting smoking.

Gauloises are merely one of the many French and French-Canadian brands in vogue among the pretentious elite. Another common brand in this crowd is Export A. These are the sort of people that spend all day at the local cafe, playing Japanese Chess, writing in their Moleskine notebooks, and reading sprawling post-modern literature that everyone ahs heard of but no one ahs read like Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. Or maybe that was just me in 2002…

American Spirits… oh, where to begin? “My body is a temple. I want no unwelcome chemicals entering it.” Earth to hippy! You are fucking smoking. you are currently inhaling more chemicals than you have names for, and just because there’s none added does not make the fuckers good for you! If you like the taste of Spirits better, great! If you like the fact that it takes about five years to smoke a single American Spirit cigarette, awesome! But do not claim that you are smoking them because there are no additives. That’s like claiming organic bacon will somehow make you less fat, or natural rat poison is somehow more environmentally safe.

Menthols are for people that don’t like smoking but want to smoke. The menthol numbs the throat and makes you feel vaguely like you’ve been ass-raped in the mouth. Menthols are for frat boys, thugs, and anyone who likes to feel like they’ve been ass-raped in the mouth.

Obviously, I’m not a fan.

Cloves are also for people who don’t like smoking but want to smoke. The clove numbs the throat and makes you cough blood the next day. They are for theatre fags, goth teenagers, and your spinster aunt who is going through a mid-life crisis and goes to Death Guild to pick up theatre fags and goth teenagers. But hey, at least she’s not getting ass-raped in the mouth.

And finally, why Camel smokers should never date each other and should find a Parliament Light smoker:

As discussed in yesterday’s lecture, the Camel smoker is at heart a roamer, a wanderer, a nomad, a vagabond, call them what you will. They are rarely content to stay in one place, and almost always have a certain wanderlust to them. This does not lead to a stable relationship. When you put two of these people together, you can be sure that the relationship will be passionate, intense, and incredibly shortlived. Invariably, one or the other will feel the need to move on, sooner rather than later. The constant threat of dissolution can cause the couple to live every day like it’s their last together, which of course leads to great stories, incredible adventures, and mindblowing sex… but very soon it will be over, hearts will be broken, and even more cigarettes will be smoked.

The Parliament Light smoker, on the other hand, is groundedd. She is content to stay put, she likely has a decent job at a publishing company or a magazine or a non-profit, and, as mentioned, she is trying to quit smoking. She is not likely to hop on a Greyhound bus tomorrow for parts unknown. And this grounds the Camel smoker. The relationship is probably not as violently intense as the menage a Camel, but this is a good thing. Burning a candle on two ends and all that. The wanderlust may win out, of course, and the Camel smoker may eventually leave the Parliament Light smoker, but he will regret it for the rest of his life.

And that’s what you needed to know to write about smokers.

Blogged with Flock

…and they always fall in love with the girl that smokes Parliament Lights.

I smoke. I am occasionally embarrassed by this. I occasionally try to quit. The problem is, those little motherfuckers are delicious, and I will likely be a smoker for a while still. So, let’s talk branding.

It is rarely a good idea to include brand names in your writing. The girlfriend was talking about reading some chick-lit novel recently in which the protagonist was constantly saying things like: “This is Midnight Smoke eyeliner, by MAC. It’ll look really good with your pale skin…” etc. This is bad. For one, product placement can be really jarring if handled poorly, as is the case here. For two, it hopelessly dates the piece (as an example, how many brands in Blade Runner are still around? Pan-Am, really? I’m certainly not saying Blade Runner is a bad movie because of this, but having ads in the future for a company that has gone the way of Dinersaurs Cereal). For three, no seriously, who the fuck talks like that?!

However, I occasionally break this rule. Yes, I have been known to include name brands in my prose. But I am selective. Pringles are still reconstituted and extruded potato wafers, Pabst Blue Ribbon is cheap beer that won first place at a county fair. But my characters that smoke (meaning most of them) smoke Camels and Parly Lights and Gauloise.

Why is this? Why do I make the choice (and it is clearly a conscious one) to break my hard and fast, no brand name rule when it comes to smoking? The answer is simple: cigarette brand is characterization. What a person smokes does a lot to say what that person likes, dislikes, etc. In short, who they are.

A Couple Examples:

A Marlboro smoker sure does want to be a cowboy… only one problem: he ain’t. See, a Marlboro smoker is a Bud drinker, a Broncos fan, a McDonalds eater. There’s nothing really wrong with those things, but they’re not the cowboy thing to do. Cowboys were rebels, criminals, archetypal tricksters in the Coyote vein. Cowboys were not, are not, and never will be mainstream America. I should know. I smoke Camels.

Now, a Camel smoker just likes a good tasting cigarette that is easily available anywhere in the world. I’ve found my brand in Istanbul, Budapest, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and down the street at the corner store. Yeah, it’s mainstream. Yeah, it’s still an all-American brand. But Camel’s like the pre-2004 Red Sox. Always second best, always the outsider. That’s probably why Camel’s are smoked by all the real Cowboys I know; the hardcore kids, the bike messengers, the Southern punks, the New Orleans circus freaks… all Camel smokers.

The Camel vs. Marlboro debate is the same as the Red Sox vs. Yankees rivalry, the Mac vs. PC battle… it is a battle between two inherently disparate world views. And working that into fiction is perfectly acceptable.

COMING TOMORROW:
The lesser brands, including Parliaments, Kools, American Spirits, and the non-smoker cigarette: Cloves.

Also, why the Camel guy always falls for the Parliament girl, and should never date another Camel smoker.

Blogged with Flock

A week or so ago, I had dinner with my girlfriend, her family, and the family of her close friend. The father in said family happens to be a professor in the Stanford Creative Writing department, and we got to talk about writing: how to teach it, how to force yourself to do it, how to stay in practice when you’re no longer required to do it, etc. And I realized that it has now been several years since I finished a piece… poem, play, short story, anything. Thus:

My Resolution (which happens to have taken effect on the new year but is not, in fact, a capital letter New Years Resolution because said New Years Resolutions are destined to fail (see 2007s quit smoking resolution) and really, January 1 is such an arbitrary and occidental-centric milestone):

I, Micah Saul, do hereby swear to do the following three things every day of the following year:

1. Write at least two “observation journal” style entries per day in the newly purchased Moleskine 2008 Daily Planner.

2. Upon arriving home, regardless of how late it is or how tired I am, write for at least 20 minutes. This time need not be spent working on a project, but at least 20 minutes must be spent writing.

3. Update this blog with either the output of item 1, item 2, or a separate text unrelated to the previous two items. In addition, keep status updates on this blog, perhaps in a Twitter side-bar.

4. Invite all and sundry to taunt me mercilessly if any of the above three items are not performed everyday.

Until the sidebar is added, updates will go here:

1. Wrote two journal entries.
2. Spent 20 minutes composing this blog entry.
3. See item 2.
4. No taunting today!

Blogged with Flock

So, about 10 years ago I made a terrible new years resolution. Despite it’s terribleness, it is the one resolution I have ever stayed true to. The resolution was this:
I, Micah Saul, being of sound body and mind, will never leave a book unfinished once started.
See the issue here? Even if the book is god-awful, unreadable, etc. I must finish it. It’s bit me in the ass a few times. There are three books that I have not yet followed through with this plan on. I will finish them eventually, because I have to, but it hasn’t happened yet:

The first is The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. By all rights, this book should be awesome. Gibson and Sterling writing a steampunk novel. Turns out, it’s unreadable. I’ve attempted it twice, and have never got past the first 25 pages.

Next comes Trickster makes this world: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde. Again, should be awesome. Traces the trickster myth throughout history, from Apollo and Prometheus through to Legba and Brer Rabbit. But the logical leaps and ridiculous claims littering each page again make it unreadable.

And finally, we have Ulysses, by James Joyce. The greatest book of the 20th century. The masterwork of one of the English language’s greatest authors. And guess what. Completely incomprehensible. I am currently on my fouth attempt. And, I’ll admit, I’m getting it a little more than I did previously. Because I’m cheating. I’m reading The New Bloomsday Book with it, which is a line-by-line interpretation of the whole damn thing. I finish a chapter of Ulysses, then read a chapter of Bloomsday, back and forth, back and forth, ad infi-fucking-nitum.

Now, I’m a fiction guy. It’s what I read, it’s what I write. And difficult books don’t stop me, normally. Pynchon is my favorite damn author, for Christ’s sake. Gravity’s Rainbow is the best book I’ve ever read, and I remain one of three people I’ve known that finished that book. But Ulysses is still virtually unreadable.

All that said, it should probably come as no surprise that the other book I am currently reading is almost infinitely more readable and more enjoyable. Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications, by Patrick Lenz is the ideal starting point for people who, like me, have some basic understanding of programming but no actual experience, and want to get going with Ruby on Rails. From a crash course in OOP concepts and the MVC model (using examples from Knight Rider, no less) to building a non-trivial web app (in this case a clone of digg, called, a little too cleverly, shovell), the books guides you by the hand through the framework. The back of Thomas and Hansonn’s Agile Web Development With Rails has a little meter indicating required experience for using the book. It is almost entirely green, except for a tiny little sliver greyed out at the Beginner extreme. Lenz takes his reader through that grey area and firmly into the the green.

And that’s the difference between Lenz and Joyce. Actually, perhaps its the difference between modern fiction and technical writing. Technical writing is designed to help the reader find himself in the complex world of computers and engineering and technology. Modern fiction is designed to show the reader how lost he is in the complex world of persons, places, and things. I still love fiction, and despite what I said earlier, I do not hate Ulysses or Joyce, but the fact that I’m reading a programming guide for fun and a great work of fiction because I feel obligated to clearly shows a disconnect somewhere. Probably in me.

Blogged with Flock