A Little Tenderness

Books and beer on tap as Chaucer's adds library

http://www.ourlondon.ca/community-story/6763748-books-and-beer-on-tap-as-chaucer-s-adds-library/

mr. rayner's hood

Updated Reviews

Selected Praise

During those moments that I feel inadequate as a writer, I like to glance over these reviews of my work. They're nearly all written by strangers, which makes their words feel more sincere. You can't trust family and friends when they compliment you; they nearly always ask you to help them move something heavy immediately after.

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 "Brimming with well-observed critiques of modern life, Victor of Circumstance has some laugh-out-loud moments and satire reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole."
~Mark A. Rayner, author of The Fridgularity
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Eerie, sad, dark, liberating, redemptive, all of it. Great story! There are so many good things going on with this one that I have to try to put them into a succinct fashion.

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Man, I got chills.

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This piece of art is absolutely phenomenal. Good. Freakin'. Job!

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Well done. (And you've just acquired a new fan!)

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Great piece

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I really loved the intensity that just exploded off the page

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The story is real and the subject matter is so relevant it's terrifying.

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I enjoyed this short story very much!

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You really nailed this one.

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A wonderful job. You get all A's from me. I have always enjoyed your stories. I look forward to the next one.

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You did an amazing job capturing a very difficult topic.

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wonderfully written.

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Wow! Bravo!

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...but one, like this one, comes along with the deep underlining theme of atonement and love and forgiveness that warms the heart and brings an awe of the author's talent.

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I can’t begin to explain the many different levels of excellence I find in this piece.

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This story had me bawling! I don’t like to cry but I loved this story. You did a great job in building sympathy for the main character and in slowly revealing his story.

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Great job!!

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The story has some truly heart rending scenes. The author very effectively, and at the right time, reveals to the readers what is driving the main character

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Wow. This is one of the best stories on here! There are so many important aspects of life described and you are drawn in to an amazing, realistic journey. I highly recommend this story and hope the author continues to write.

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This is a beautiful story. Beautiful, despite its horrors.

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You  clearly have the gift of observing and drawing on real life to write compelling stories with a very strong hand.

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Very Powerful

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I was strongly affected by this story. There were parts that brought tears to my eyes; parts that broke my heart; and parts that disturbed me. Good job!

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What a terrible, utterly realistic tale.

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The way you described things was painfully real. You did an excellent job capturing the hatred and the fear and the helpless feelings that surround that type of situation.

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let me say this about the story; it is superb

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truly a marvelous, gritty story, a well-described, sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, but always engaging story.

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Wow. This was a very, very good short story.

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I enjoy dark, alternative, and unique stories, so this was a good read for me.

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Great Storytelling - It comes through loud and clear that you're a gifted storyteller. I've reviewed literally hundreds of works and yours was one of only a handful where I turned the page, not because it was assigned to me, but because I was genuinely engrossed.

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I consider this a first class effort.

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This is a well written gritty dramatic piece

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Emotionally charged and well contrasted story

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the message in this story is beautiful. I think you really are a talented writer.

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This was a long short story, but I enjoyed every minute of it, well thought
out, and structured just so sweetly. a good story, very well told.

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This is a well written, fast paced read. The story that was told is a real tear jerker. The situation was real and the telling was real.

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I got comfortable with my special reading glasses a cup of tea and my comforter, and anticipated a great treat as the writer’s reputation preceded him.

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This was an excellent character study. The subtle, emerging portraits were especially well-written. Very good writing!

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Thank you for the opportunity to read this fine piece. The writing flowed easily and the word choice was quite pleasing.

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What a wonderful,wonderful slice of life. You've captured a mood and a moment here that is both moving and recognizable to anyone who has ever been in a difficult relationship. This is a very nice piece of work.

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stands out with the best I've read.  I find so well written that I'd like to strangle the author out of sheer jealousy!

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What a lovely and touching story. You did a wonderful job capturing the initial loneliness and hurt. I empathized with your character, there were times I even felt his pain. Your imagery was beautiful.

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Terrific. The setting is fantastic and worked well in this story.

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thoughtfully beautiful - I did truly enjoy this short story. It was beautifully descriptive, not only in actually describing things, but for the level of how the reader can feel this man's pain, pride, sense of accomplishment and regret.

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A really lovely story - The story kept me reading the whole way though

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very well done. Bravo!

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A nicely constructed, thought provoking, very enjoyable read.

A pleasure to read a piece that shows an apprecation for words, sentences, paragraphs and grammar. Beautifully done, thanks for a clear, bright, shining picture.

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Well, the end brought a tear to my eye, so it must be good! Very good read :)

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A fine effort at existentialist literature.

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What a touching story! The structure was superb as well. Great job!

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Good job - this story rocks. I love the word choices and how they are used.
There is no dull moment. Starting from paragraph one you know this is going to be good. You keep going and it keeps getting better. I totally ate this story up. Thank you for the great story.

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a neatly told story, quite impressive indeed

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Exceptional. There is something special about this short that certainly struck a chord with me. I’m sure there are others who will be touched by it. Your writing is punchy, colorful, and creative. The visuals are striking and carry a double meaning that’s apparent on first reading. Truly an enjoyable read.

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This story had such a great feel to it. The reader experiences a real empathy with the writer. well written clear and evocative. Well done thoroughly enjoyed it.

Stars and Other Monsters review

Title: Stars and Other Monsters

Author: Phronk

Publisher: Forest City Pulp

Release: (paperback and digital) Friday, 13 June, 2014

Official: fuckvampires.com
 

Available now at Amazon.

Let me say off the start that I despise vampire stories. I’ve enjoyed, perhaps, three of them over the years (Dracula, Salem’s Lot, Children of The Night), and been disappointed innumerable times. There is one thing worse than vampire stories, however, and that’s light-hearted and comical vampire stories. Stars and Other Monsters by Phronk is a light-hearted and comical vampire story. And, somehow, against all odds, I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it.

The story involves a wicked and slimy creature that prowls the night, seeking out unwitting victims. Is it necessarily evil, though? After all, it is merely trying to survive. It must surreptitiously stalk its prey, track it down, and take its picture so it can sell the photos to magazines — and then he meets a vampire. The reader is left to ponder if one is worse than the other: if they’re both degenerate parasites, or simply misunderstood by humans. Maybe they have more in common than either would have imagined, and maybe they are both more human than we think.

The vampire solicits the aid of the photographer (and his little dog, too) in her quest to find a film star with whom she’s become rather smitten. The photog decides to assist her, as not doing so would result in his gruesome death, and together they embark upon a journey up through the Western U.S. and Canada in search of her hunky obsession. The trials they encounter along the way are one thing; what they find at the climax of their adventure is quite another.

"Stars" never lets up. It steams ahead like a locomotive hell-bent on arriving straight to its destination, then switches tracks when you least expect it, resulting in a wickedly entertaining and surprising trip.

I was pleasantly surprised with this novel from start to finish. The sweet charm and morbidity, the grotesquerie and the laugh-out-loud surprises, they all mesh expertly to provide a thoroughly satisfying read. At no point does it drag, and it refuses to conform to conventions even while maintaining a comfortable literary familiarity, mostly. That's no small feat for any author.

If you enjoy vampire stories, you’ll love Stars and Other Monsters. If you hate vampire stories, you’ll still love it. Highly recommended. Also, the book jacket has laurel leaves on it, so you know it must be good.

Ensure Your Indignation Is Justified

I’ve been focusing on not letting things bug me. So it really bugs me now when things bug me.

Here’s what’s bugging me: unsubstantiated cases of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Battling these ugly warts has always been the right thing to do but now it’s also become the in thing to do. That in itself, I suppose, is a good thing. But it leads to ridiculous levels of political correctness, so much so that the facts of the matters are often completely overlooked in our rush to condemn a perceived offender.

It looks to me that it often starts with an opportunist eager to lead a lynch mob for no more legitimate reason than they want to lead. They see a situation where there’s a possibility to misinterpret someone’s innocent intent and contort it into a malicious deed. Once that’s accomplished, the mob slowly builds, then snowballs all over Twitter, and probably Facebook and whatever as well.

People don’t review the situation with an open mind. They don’t want to. They willfully ignore the facts that show the perception is wholly inaccurate because joining the mob and showing how they, too, are deeply offended by the situation shows off their moral character. But really, they’d show a hell of a lot more character if they examined the evidence – easily found evidence, usually right within the initial link – and asked themselves: is this really the situation I was told it was?

I bring this up now because it seems to be popping up more and more lately. Or maybe I’m just noticing it more. I don’t think so, though. I believe it’s a trend that is made convenient by Twitter. I believe Twitter is much more than a simple micro-blogging tool; it’s the evolution of the hivemind in its infancy, and as an infant, it’s prone to some pretty infantile behaviour.

A couple of examples of the trend I’m referring to:

Yesterday, I caught a retweet of the condemnation via Twitter of David Gilmour, a (former?) CBC personality who discussed the arts on his tv show. He’s also a distinguished author in his own right, and now a literature teacher at U of T. Here’s the article: http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2013/10/alice-munro-fans-tear-into-david-gilmour-following-nobel-prize-win.html

There’s nothing wrong with this piece. It’s just a neutral account of the reaction to how an interview with Gilmour related to the announcement of Alice Munro winning a Nobel prize. You’ll notice the tone of the tweets right away: smug, almost giddy. It was so glorious that Munro won the award right after Gilmour so viciously condemned female writers for being inferior and not worth reading. Oh, the brilliant timing! The thing is, he did NOTHING OF THE SORT. Doesn’t matter. The smug Twits take it as a fact that he did. So either they didn’t bother reading the interview, or they chose to stumble over the truth, and then picked themselves up and carried on as if nothing had happened (thanks for that one, Churchill). Either way, their indignation is wholly unjustified.

Recently, a similar uproar arose because a woman is playing a romantic game with her boyfriend that has to do with making sandwiches. The real situation was ignored then, too, and I watched the story as it morphed into one about The Worst Boyfriend On Earth, which didn’t even bother stating the facts. Why should it? They’d just go unnoticed en masse anyway so might as well leave them out and save valuable keystrokes.

There’s a commercial on the tv where a couple are shopping for something and a guy who is apparently a famous football player and reality show fixture shows up. The husband knows him from football. The wife knows him from the tv show. Neither are aware of his other job. Because husbands watch football and wives watch the other show - that's the joke. It’s not funny. It’s just a dumb commercial. But the producers are assuming stereotypical habits of both genders. Is there an uproar? I’ve no idea but I doubt it – unless Twitter sets its sights on it.

Yet, when someone at a local radio station harmlessly tweeted a similar joke about women not caring about football, there was a local little microcosm of an uproar about how ignorant the guy (or girl) was. People swore they’d never tune in to the station again, others responded with curse words and vile insults at the person, in caps no less. You'd think s/he had said women shouldn't be allowed to watch football.

In none of these situations did anyone disparage women in any way, yet in all cases there was an assumption that they did, and then the assumption was contorted into 'fact' that that they did. If this was once, I probably wouldn’t notice but it’s showing up a lot, the very same pattern.

Someone made a joke that women are less inclined to be good at reading maps than men. A stereotype for sure, but wholly innocuous. I happen to know the guy who said it has the utmost respect for women, yet he was cautioned that he’d “hear about that.”

I mentioned that I don’t like South Asian-style music, and was branded a racist. The inference, I guess, being that in order to not be a racist, I must like all styles of music.

And now my point!

There are so many actual cases of racism and sexism and homophobia out there that we need to contend with. It’s up to all of us to stand up and fight against it when we see it - and none of the three are hard to see at all. Sadly, they're all over the place. But when we become so politically correct that we shout sexist! racist! over every stupid little thing where they don’t even exist, then the genuine, ugly instances are just thrown in with the lot – and that only serves to lessen our capacity to fight them.

The next time you see an indignant tweet about a perceived slight to a race or gender or whatever, take the time to find out exactly what the truth of the matter is, then decide for yourself if it’s really worth condemning someone for. 

If we can eliminate the nonsense, the real assholes will be easier to find.

Peaks and Valleys

Many of us, clear on the fact that tomorrow will be a miserable experience due to our actions tonight, are choosing to indulge in alcohol because it contributes to pleasure at the moment. We’re willing to be devoid of happiness later for the benefits of feeling happy now.

Others, will not. They will choose to forgo present happiness to avoid unhappiness later. They will choose to not be happy now, knowing their friends are laughing and enjoying themselves, because the future unhappiness wouldn’t be worth it to them.

One married man will choose to spend an amazing night with a beautiful woman even while being fully cognizant that the later guilt will be torturous for him. Another will go home.

Morals, ids, and addictions aside, we all make decisions constantly on when and how much happiness we will trade for misery. We each have our own general range that we won’t usually surpass, within the grander scale, on which we differ widely from one another.

Some of us would consider a broken leg a reasonable price for experiencing the extraordinary high of skydiving.  Would you? Or is it not worth it?

I constantly hear that YOLO and if you don’t carpe that diem then your existence is being tragically wasted. This philosophy doesn’t seem to have any detractors and I’m not sure why. Why should it just be a ‘given’ that those who have the most exhilarating experiences are living “properly”, while those who forgo them are subjected to our pity and, often, our scorn? “To each his own” is another popular personal philosophy but if you believe that, then you can’t believe it’s a mistake for someone to not wish for exhilaration in their life.

‘Carpe diem’ reaches many us so profoundly, I believe, because we live lives of quiet desperation and fear going to the grave with the song still in us. But there are those of us who see our human lives as a shockingly brief and trivial micro-moment and harbour no particular anxieties about not accomplishing and experiencing things that will be soon forgotten in any case. Those who ensure their names survive the longest are likely the ones most horrified by the nature of life. And what does it matter? How is a king we remember a thousand later any better off than a nameless peasant who lived under his rule. One's as dead as the other. Was the negative stress of achieving such 'greatness' worth it for the king? Was the constant anxiety from which he likely suffered worth it? Or would he have been better off doing without it?

That lack of anxiety is the point of this piece.

Avoiding it, often means having less interesting outer experiences than others, but greatly reduced anxiety is worth that to some. So why should some people insist that the high anxiety they endure by working 75 hours every week in stressful jobs to supply the means of exciting adventures and really cool stuff, is something everyone should experience to consider their lives well-lived? Why, instead, is a well-lived life not one that had endured the least negative stress along the way?

Our aggressive approach to living, caused, I imagine, by our disappointment at not being immortal within this skin, is the Original Anxiety and all that stems from it is a sad comedy of perpetual little anxieties that never cease until - yep, death; the death that arrives whether you were anxious or not, whether or not you experienced adventures or had all the trendiest toys.

If this is all there is - if it turns out there's nothing but nothing after death - then basking in how wonderful it feels to be without negative stress just might be the best damn thing in all existence. Yet so many consciously choose to sacrifice that feeling in pursuit of worldly thrills and gains. To say they have 'lived.' How certain are they that they aren't making the error of the ages?

Take a moment to consider the possibility that long-lasting earthly contentedness is an experience not duplicated any where or when in whatever reality is. And then consider that you have a ridiculously short time to experience that treasure. And more often than not, you sacrifice it for something much less precious.

Is it really so “wrong” to limit your peaks in order to limit your valleys?

Consider chilling. Or don't. I'm cool either way.