The fine art of doing nothing

Bob Bienpensant: The art of doing nothing

Public transport hazards

"This guy should read Michael Ampersant's outrageouos new novel Green Eyes

Green Eyes --- Neologism update

Armani minimum (n.phr.) Giorgio Armani's tumescence when he wears his Armani jeans. Usage (Green Eyes, Ch. 30): "Any hint of tumescence is stylishly kept to the Armani minimum."
dead-wife (n.) A female spouse, now deceased. Usage: "Alice had an affair with his dead-wife." Discouraged, cruel.
i-ding (n.) (i) Collective name for Ipads, Iphones, and similar devices. Usage (Green Eyes, Ch. 27): "He flips his I-ding, sends a text message to Google." (ii) The penis of compulsive app-users. Usage: "This I-man showed me his I-ding, but I wasn't i-impressed."
i-impressed (adv.) The state of being impressed by an I-thing or its doings. Usage: "This I-man showed me his I-ding, but I wasn't i-impressed." Awkward, won't fly (sounds like one of the lesser Urban Dictionary inventions).

Warm bodies (review) (reblogged)

Lokfire from Hollywood Hates Me writes:

So I saw Warm Bodies (the book) laying on the table at the bookstore. I picked it up and perused the back cover.

I'd've perused the front cover, but it was kind of off-putting

A zombie romance? Man, I liked zombies before they were cool. (I kind of hate myself.)  Warm Bodies, a zombie romance, has been made into a movie. Apparently, it's something like a parody of Twilight, which seems silly to me, because why bother to parody something that's already a parody of writing to begin with?

Seriously, though, it just seems like all you'd need to do is point at Twilight and laugh

Goood evening!

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It doesn't matter what you wear... for as long as you keep reading  Michael Ampersant's Green Eyes

(Artwork by EthanMaxx)

"He said I would find the copy of Michael Ampersant's outrageous new novel Green Eyes in the top drawer."

(Artwork by Michael Breyette)

Green Eyes --- Chapter 34 (teaser)

So, there we are, from left to right, Maurice, Alice, John, Alex, and the legal suit. Alice is angry, you can practically see her fist clenched in her white-coat pocket, but we're all adults, so she is making the honors and presents us to Trevor Howard, the Assistant DA, who has been so kind to come all the way from Waycross to listen to our case. Attempts are being made to shake hands across laps, it would be awkward to get up again. Alex has a last name, Iglesias, which I learn on this occasion (come to think of it, the black hair, the eyebrows, the warm-colored skin, it must have been his mother then, the eyes, Irish?).

Maurice’s IC gear is going quiet, I wonder whether there’s a tumescence meter as well. "Apologies for us being late," Alex says. He owns the room, I don't know how he does it with this depression on his shoulders—he doesn’t know it either, I guess (that’s how he does it). Alice explains the reason for our presence, we're indirect witnesses, she explains.

Hair by Brad Pitt (no kidding)

Rave reviews for the new, and improved writer

Michael &[sic], author of the novel Green Eyes

Oh yes Mike....looks fabbo!!! --- Jenni B.
Very good --- Sacha did this? --- Glenn Ch.
Wow, wonderful......never looked so good....and just look at that hair....!! --- Pauline J.
Bravo, tu as rajeuni de 20 ans au moins !... --- Anne-Marie B.
Hi Mike, I just wanted to close my labtop and discovered your photo! You look 20 years younger. Did you go to the hairdresser? Congratulation. Keep it like that and you will be very succesful. --- Christine B.
Interesting picture, really! The next step: the red carpet in Cannes ? --- Hans E.
You Look Great! I love the Sting Dew (haircut). --- Perry LaP.
Attractive elusive Author this Michael Ampersant!! --- Maud S.
Je sais que l'on ne s'est pas vus depuis un moment mais je ne t'avais pas reconnu. Bon crois en mon avis en femme avisée je te trouve très beau. --- Annie T.

Green Eyes --- Chapter 18: Agatha Christie

Previously, Alex ("Green Eyes") offered to give us a ride, we took him upstairs for the same, we did it, and somehow we fell asleep. 

One two three, infinity (I’ll explain later). My ass.

Alex has already left his perch as a grand horizontal when I wake up. Better even, or worse, the sheer fact that I could fall asleep testified to his untimely departure, since nobody, not even straight people, would be able to do so with the Green Eyes on top of them. And I did sleep, because I have my usual morning glory, and I am alone, as outlined already, no external stimuli present, only my sleep, and sweet dreams perhaps that I don't remember. I'm too old for spontaneous erections, it's either sexual or it's sleep (not quite true, I remember now, I had one just yesterday, but still).

Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep, and sometimes I don't know whether I did actually fall asleep before waking up in the middle of the night, but then I feel my boner, and know I slept, realizing that my sleeping is better than feared, and thus comforted fall asleep again (only to wake up at a later time with another boner (I think I should stop now)).

(It is what you think it is)

Alex is gone, at least he is not the cause of my erection, and my bed is otherwise empty. Where is Alex? Perhaps he's brewing coffee in the kitchen. I get up, and my pendulous organ—I had learned the term "pendulous organ" from Alex only hours earlier—my organ was still not very pendulous on the way to the kitchen, the place where Alex was not brewing coffee.

My world falls apart, and only the second or third time in 24 hours. Through the haze of my upcoming tears I look around. There's a sheet of paper on the kitchen table, a location where experienced tricks in my days—in the days I still brought tricks home—used to leave their goodbye messages when they had been brought up well-enough to signal goodbye before leaving—after getting up as quietly as possible, hoping to undisturb my sleep, getting dressed quietly, not using the bathroom in order to avoid noises, finding some reusable sheet of paper, and a pen, and then writing in very readable hands, usually, like, like drawing a Valentine heart, signed "M," or perhaps even signed "Michael," or, in extreme cases, writing a grammatically well-formed sentence along the lines of "Sorry that I have to leave early, Michael." Sometimes even the word love was used, carelessly, perhaps, but carefully written, since most tricks live near the literacy threshold, rarely write anything, whence their writing hand is unblemished by later excesses.

Where was I? Yes, In the place where experienced, well-brought-up tricks would leave their messages (Mother: “Michael, there is another thing that you should never forget, your exit should always be graceful, and should it happen that genetic destiny strikes and you end up as a loose homosexual, so loose that his nights are spent as one night stands in the company of other loose men, even then your exit should always be proper and good-byed”), in said place I find a re-used sheet of paper with the not-so-readable words "Dear John, I had to go, I love you, Alex," and a little Valentine heart drawn under the text (he could have encircled the text with the Valentine heart, it would have been prettier, but he didn't).

No home number, address, email, homepage link, twitter, tweet, something. Alex was gone.

Now, the situation isn’t completely hopeless, at least in the technical sense that I know where he works, so I could try to retrieve him by calling the hospital and ask for Alex, the alpha-god paramedic, (“Alexander, you know, I don't know his last name, the paramedic with the green eyes”) and it’s anyone’s guess what the result would be. Perhaps he is a medical secret, (“We cannot divulge the names or other coordinates of our staff, by law”), or not a medical secret (“You're not the first person asking for Alex in this way, you know”). Or I could, in anticipation of such answers avoid any contact by telephone and position myself around dawn near the staff entrance of the hospital, waiting for Alex like fans wait at the bühnenausgang of Wagner's opera burgh in Bayreuth for a famous singer, and ask for an autograph when the alpha-god finally appears.

There are other possibilities as well, think hospital email etc. Let’s do some hand-waving here (an expression I have yet to learn from Alex), you get the gist. Email, stop. Internet, Google. You know, I can't think in panic, so I type "Alex" in Google's main search window of my computer, today enhanced for unclear reasons by a Sherlock Holmes motif. Only more than one billion answers. Without thinking I click on the first link, which connects me to ALEX, the Alabama Learning Exchange. Good, I think, that's in the South. But not in Georgia, I realize, then my thinking stops again since the terrible truth strikes again, that I have lost the Green Eyes to a hopeless, lonesome future in confirmed bachelor county, GA, USA.

I would normally make coffee once detumescence (what a useful word) has com-menced, but don’t feel like it. Instead, I get my thoughts together and start a systematic search for "Alex," the "paramedic" of the "Memorial Baptist Hospital" in "Georgia Beach," in “Glynn county,” "GA," "US," which yields nothing. A hospital is not a university, they won't list all their staff in unreadable, smallish fonts, even people who died 20 years ago of disappearance, like Alex had died of disappearance, this morning, between eight and ten o'clock.

I read the message again. "Dear John, I had to go, I love you, Alex." Nothing, nothing in this message would speak of the future. There are no undertones, no overtones, the message is as neutral as his green eyes were (used to be) when his own studied ambivalence was undecided about a course of action. In the meager space of a few hours I had seen this neutrality more than a few times already, if his eyes talked, something was at hand, and there was nothing of the surreptitious eye language that tends to accompany the meaning-challenged behavior of people who have nothing to say, eyes too open, eyes too small, eyes winking, squinting, and so on.

A message as neutral as his eyes. Why didn't he say anything about a date tomorrow, or on Saturday, or the Blue Moon, or the beach. Why did he "have" to go. He was sleeping next to me, or on top of me, or whatever, his next shift starting, what, possibly at 10 PM or later. Why did he have to "go?" Why did he "love you," why did he "I love you," if he loved me, he would not be gone but embrace me tenderly while sticking his penis into my ass, a routine that we had practice already once, although, during our earlier cruisin' encounter, he had refrained from the poignant anatomical commentary that accompanied his later work.

"I love your work," he could have written, if I’d only shown him my blog. I mean the blog I talked about earlier, about everything and nothing, even the gay condition, perhaps he would have liked it (although I have no followers), and decided that he cannot ditch a person that's not only 'OK, gym-wise,' as he had said during foreplay, but also OK blog-wise, and he would now put his penis into my ass, or at least leave his number, and everything would be all-right.

There is a movement now in trendy USA, of which even I am aware, to replace the words "blogger," "blogging," etc. by better, nicer words, and if such words are ever found, I would not only be a good blogger, I would also be a good nicer word, and Alex would be sure to stay, but he's already gone.

I stare at the Sherlock-Homes-themed Google search window and realize that there is no deerstalker. It not about Holmes at all. It honors Agatha Christie, perhaps her thousandth birthday, and her biography comes to mind, how she had married this racing pilot, much handsomer than plain Agatha herself, and how the relationship had soured, and how she, famous already, had suddenly disappeared, gone, futsch, with search and rescue teams (S&R) in hot pursuit, until she had suddenly and without prior warning reappeared in some country inn, and never returned to her handsomer husband, and later marry a handsomer archaeologist, 14 years her junior, and they would write books together in the sense that when she would write a book he would take time away from his other obligations and also write a book, in the room next to hers.

This is the future that Alex and I deserve. He an accomplished sexologist with a lucrative clinic next door, I an accomplished nicer word behind my laptop, and we would happily live ever after, and he pays the bills.

Go here for more.

Green Eyes --- Part II (teaser)

You want to know how the Green Eyes are going to continue? Will John and Alex settle into a comfortable relationship? Will there be strife? Connubial boredom? Bliss? There will be a happy ending of Part I, OK, but what's next? 

Well, one thing that's for sure, the statue of Peggy Noonan will be repaired. Peggy Noonan what? Yes, her, the famous Wall Street Journal columnist. She's going to appear in Chapter whatever, we lost count, in Chapter 33 ("The Doorbell Rings"), where John and Alex will make a pivotal walk along the beach; Alex will talk about his depression, for the first time, and they are going to have sex, in the dunes, yet again, but before we arrive at the beach we actually have to get there:

We've arrived at the head of Beach Avenue, which ends right on the beach. There are no free parking spaces left, despite the early hour. We circle around the gigantic statue of Peggy Noonan, the famous columnist, a gift of the Republican Club to its hometown, and find a space right in front of the Tourist Office hundred yards up the road. I explain about Maurice, the exchange with Torquay, his ambitions as a playwright. "How long is it," he [Alex] says, "that we met, three days?" I have to count. We walk back to the beach, past the Noonan statue, which, in its better days, had an endless voice loop about George DoubleYou, him of the Freedom Fries, taken from one of her famous columns, educating tourists and natives about the 43rd president (“Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man”), but some mechanical failure had silenced the sculpture quite some time ago, and the repair work had been delayed for unclear reasons.

Peggy Noonan statue in Georgia Beach

We’ve rounded the corner of Nick’s restaurant and are heading south on the beach. A long stretch of crystal-white sand extends past Dewey Beach and runs for more than five miles along the outer banks to the northern mouth of Simons River. It’s surely one of the finest beaches of the East Coast. The sea breeze is picking up already—the land of Georgia heating up, the warming air rising, cooler air hastening in from the sea in replacement. We're walking past the gay beach section, which is still empty. This is where we met, in the no-man's land between the beach and the dunes of the cruising area. I want to say something about the dunes, then think better of it. He, too, casts a furtive glance at the location of our first encounter.

Aquarius (Jezza Smilez)

The second inauguration --- reblogged (Ross Douthat)

We usually don't do this, but a friend from Baltimore sent this real nice gif-picture, and we need a pretext to post it, and Ross Douthat writes well, so here it is ...

... and here's Douthat's NYT piece reblogged:


My fellow Americans, I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed.

[long pause]

Hey, no, just kidding: That’s from George W. Bush’s second inaugural. I just wanted to see if you could tell the difference.

I’m going to keep this brief, because we’re all cold and there’s always a chance that the House Republicans might start imitating the Donner Party if we stay out here too long.

[broad wink at Eric Cantor]

You already know how the better angels of our nature are going to make hope and history rhyme, and all the usual fluff. So I’ll skip that part. But before my second term gets under way, I do have a few people from the last four years I want to acknowledge.

First, my dear friends in the press and on the professional left (but I repeat myself). It’s so nice to have you back on the bandwagon, guys! I’ve been surfing the Interwebs, reading the tweets, and it feels like old times. The Obama realignment is all the rage again. The thrill is back on MSNBC. Newsweek’s comparing me to Jesus. All I need is a will.i.am video to really take me back.

Freedom Fries --- Chapter 2: "The President is on the line for you!" (Part 2)

Previously, there have been hints that George W. Bush may experience a change of heart in retirement, that Samuel Fisher, founder and CEO of the Lynx (LYNX) network, is concerned about the ratings, and that George Lukacs, the charismatic hedge-fund titan, can't handle fair-and-balanced news. We've also learned that John Yoo, professor of constitutional law at Berkeley University and author of the infamous torture memos of the Bush era, is in some kind of trouble. Change of scene, and scenery: meet Alberrt, a young polymath prodigy in the employ of the Fisher Laboratories, LYNX's research arm, who's soon going to fiddle with the electronic copy of President Obama's birth certificate stored on the server of the Hawaii Department of Health---or is he?

Sangre de Christos mountains

A lab with a view. The pay is good, the canteen is okay, the other guys are usually okay, and the vista of Sangre de Cristos is an extra. Commuting is difficult, almost 40 miles, but it is a nice ride through the mesa, and the Mexican chicks in the retro bars of Santa Fe are always happy to have him back when he returns late from work. Joe always returns late from work since he has nothing else to do. He is supposed to assist Alberrt, the resident whiz kid, but Alberrt never asks for assistance, hiding instead under his head gear and doing his whiz-kid stuff. So Joe hangs around while Alberrt works late into the night — if it is work; it is possibly more some kind of therapy. Having nothing else to do, Joe play the role of a body guard, and he makes sure he looks the part with his shaved scalp.

Alberrt, with his slender body, beautiful mulatto face, short, cropped, light hair is sitting at his desk, the head gear in place, the green eyes fixed on the screen. A virgin version of Tiger Woods, sort of. Joe is bored. Everybody else has left. Joe takes the remote control of the Walkera model helicopter that the lab has ordered for unclear reasons — reasons are never clear at the Fisher labs — and decides to practice. He starts the rotor, has the thing lift off, and hover below the ceiling. It can go up and down. It can go fast. And it can make tight turns, which it does around Alberrt’s head. It can also touch down, which it does on Alberrt’s desk. The model is practically as large as a real chopper. Alberrt ignores it.

Joe crosses the out-sized room and puts his arm on Alberrt’s shoulder. “Man,” he said. Alberrt reacts to Joe’s touch, he is apparently in a good mood. “What are you doing?” Alberrt lowers his head gear. “Skinhead,” he says, “I’m into the computer of the State of Hawaii Department of Health. With System’s Administrator privileges.”

Joe looks at a large green sheet displayed on Alberrt’s screen. It says “Certificate of Live Birth” at the top, above what looks like the seal of the State of Hawaii. To the left, under “Child’s name” it says “BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II.” According to the certificate, he was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The mother’s maiden name is given as “Stanley Ann Dunham,” race “Caucasian,”, the father’s name as “Barack Hussein Obama,” race “African.” He was apparently born at 7:24 pm on the Island of Oahu. The sex is male.

"We'll find your copy of Michael Ampersant's outrageous new novel Green Eyes, it must be somewhere. Don't worry!"

(Artwork by Steve Walker)

Is the pope gay?

That's the question that keeps us erotic writers up at night. And the answer is....

Georg Gänswein is the Camerlengo (chamberlain) of Pople Benedict XV (or XVII? --- who cares)

The camerlengo does all sort of things, like, like declaring the pope officially dead when the pope dies.

Fucking three-ways --- reblogged

The mysterious Mr. E. (the ex-pat in Thailand with this impossible secretary) writes on his blog 50 Shady Gays:

One of my favourite restaurants back in east London was “Les trois Garcons.” I was lucky enough to eat there several times, and I often wonder what it was that made me love it so much. Was it the richness of the food, the opulence of the design (I’ve always had a soft spot for stuffed animals wearing tiaras) or the slightly too cool for school staff? No. it was the fact that you sit in the uber-camp lounge of a big gay 3 way. You’re basically the filling in the physical manifestation of their spit roast.

It isn’t the fantasy of a perpetual daisy chain that enthralls me; I betray my working class roots here, but it’s the peculiarities of the day to day life that I find fascinating. How does it work? Do they nag in stereo? Will their collective mid life crisis result in an ever expanding wardrobe of inappropriately tight disco wear? Perhaps a 3 way would be more stable than a less conventional twosome, who knows? Perhaps I was looking for answers to my own inability to connect in a relationship?

Miguel Angel Reyes

I recently met 3 men in Bangkok who had been in a relationship for over a year.

They were from Moscow and they were painfully trendy and undeniably cute. They wore skimpy white shorts and tight T shirts. For some reason they had all decided to wear matching Mr Spock/elf ears – which contrived to make them appear all the more fabulous. They swaggered through the club, seemingly oblivious to all the attention, in a way that only beautiful men in their twenties can; consumed with the solemnities of their love. I got talking to Alex (the one with the glasses) who spoke English, he told me the history of their relationship and I was – how can I say – both fascinated and horrified. It was just so full on, heightened no doubt by the fact that they were all high. DJ station had closed, and while Alex recounted their passionately mental love story, the cleaning lady waddled past, moping up stale homo-piss from the toilet floor beneath our feet: “Sawadeeeee KaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Handsheets for the erotic writer (4) --- Getting religious about it

(God moves in mysterious ways, doesn't he?):

Apple (Computers) --- reblogged, consolidated

Here are our Apple posts concatenated into one story (finally) (this is modern writing, so we start asynchronously):

Act II. Somewhere in 1978 or 79, the Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorff opened a new sales corner on its 4th floor, mysteriously named "huiscomputers," which featured a new product, the Apple II home computer. At that time most people, including myself, would conceive of computers as "electronic brains" (Germans called them "Elektronengehirne" before they called them "computers" before they called them "Rechner"), all built by IBM, all infinitely expensive, large, and remote.

Standard IBM Hollerith punch card

Act I. My first contact with computers had been in 1972, when I took an algebra class at the Free University of Berlin and was tasked to program matrix inversions and some such in Algol68, the programming language du jour. This was done by (1) punching Hollerith cards in the right places, on special machines located in the university's computing center, then (2) placing the cards in the intray located in the hallway outside the main operating room where the computer was located (there was only one computer), (3) waiting for an operator to appear to empty the intray (he would open a wing door, and allow you a glimpse at the electronic brain, humming and chugging along in fluorescent light, tape decks clicking back and forth), (4) then waiting another hour or so for the operator to reappear with the "output," --- folded stacks of paper in a very large format, the name of the "job" (no pun intended) printed in very large letters on the first page. If your stack was very thin (as it usually was) this could mean only one thing: something had gone wrong. You would (5) try to find the error, or try to find some help to find the error, (6) correct it, (7) resubmit your job, and repeat the correction loop as appropriate. Usually, it would take only a few days  until a program of a few lines of code would finally run properly. 

IBM mainframe, system 360 (1964 - 78)

Act II, cont'd.  So far so good. Back to the department store. What could you do with a home computer, I asked the sales person. Well, he said, you could store cooking recipes and call them up when needed. I didn't buy the Apple II.

Nazi-style

We didn't really have the scoop but were posting on Gangnam-style back in August when its YouTube tally was a tiny 27 million or so (now more than 1 billion), encouraged by the excessive oriental wisdom of our partner, the certain Chang Man Yoon. And we have been posting the Hitler parodies since years, right? So, here goes: 






What else? A suitable quote from the Green Eyes of course, from Chapter 32, The humble worm C. Elegans, the only Nazi reference in the book, by the way: 

Something has changed in that man [John's father], the tide went out, including Boston harbor, and the muddy ground of the nation is packed with naked clowns, wrapped in the flag, whose sole point is that they are angry, angry --- that's how tyrants justify blanket executions --- but their anger is not the point here, they are insulted by a black president who dares to provoke their racism, that’s it. I recall some chain email that Nick passed on last year, with a bunch of Anti-Obama cartoons, plus some language about real Americans, real Americans, and accompanied by the complaint that the nation is under siege because all these cartoons couldn't be published in the US, and when you looked closer, you could easily see that most of them were by American artists and had been published in the Washington Times, the New York Post, or the Times-Picayune, that's how they operate, claiming the high grounds of patriotism and victimhood, supported by nothing but lies and ignorance, assuming that the rest of the world is even more stupid than they are, it's exactly, EXACTLY the way the NAZIS operated on their march to power.

And while we are at it, lets contemplate a chain-mailed "joke" originating from a certain Henning and received today:

For Immediate Release: 


Effective Jan 1, 2013, aspirin will be heavily taxed under Obamacare. The only explanation given was that they are white and they work. No other reason was given, but I thought you'd want to know about it.

Funny? Yeah, right, this is funny only if there's in fact some truth to the prejudice that (1) Obama despises the white race and (2) blacks are lazy. Any evidence, anybody? That's why Obama's mother was white, right? That's why he is from Kenya, right? That's why blacks were imported as slaves, right, because they don't work. From Kenya. Right? 

Very funny. So we complain to Dirk, who sent us this "joke." Dirk mumbles something of political incorrectness in reply. Well, Dirk, political incorrectness is a derived term, derived from its antonym, political correctness (PC). PC was an attitude to language, invented sometime in the late '70s, suggesting or dictating the avoidance of verbiage supposedly hurtful to minorities, so dwarfs became "vertically challenged individuals," blacks became "Afro-Americans," and Harvard professors edited the word "nigger" out of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." That's PC. Political Incorrectness, thats pointing out the absurdities of PC. Political incorrectness neither implies nor condones  the stupid, debased racism of Henning's "joke." Dirk. So, let's be politically incorrect again. And please tell Henning.