Cool Yule 2024!

  

And we're almost through 2024.  It doesn't seem that long ago we were counting down to it, does it?  Well, I wish you a cool Yule from this longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  Curl up with a good book (might I suggest The Front Yard War?) or jam some tunes (might I suggest Gang Of Foreigner?), but whatever you do, I hope you have a good time and take that fun into 2025!  See you next year!

First The Front Yard War Review!

 

Years ago, I took pictures of Crazy Carl Robinson's lawn when he was living in Iowa, USA.  I stopped by to see him soon after I had given a paper on the symbolism of the front yard at the popular culture conference in Chicago.  I think I was planning at the time to expand the paper into a larger work, though I didn't know then that it would be a novel.  Anyway, the pictures have waited patiently for over a decade now, so it seems fitting to finally use one to illustrate the first review of The Front Yard War (available as an ebook--PDF or EPUB--from me directly for $5--PayPal wredfright AT yahoo DOTT com-- and on Amazon; the print version is coming probably early next year--until then you can always print out the PDF, probably cheaper anyway--more ebook retailers will also be coming next year) since the first reviewer is Carl!  I like this photo in particular because of the way the dandelions were growing sideways out of the bricks.  Carl was renting then, if I remember correctly, so he wasn't in charge of the landscaping.  That would be the responsibility of his landlord, and he must have been a cool landlord at least as far as the dandelions were concerned.  Usually, just from walking down a street, you can tell the good folks from the lawns that have dandelions on them.  Probably not 100% true, but it's a good rule of thumb to go by in when you don't have much other data to draw upon.  Anyway, I'm delighted that Carl is the first one to review the new novel.  He and King Karl Wenclas--oddly enough, they have the same sounding first name--are probably the two best living literary critics, albeit unconventional ones, in America.  And though Carl may be slightly biased since I've known him for so long, but as you can tell from the review, he doesn't hold much back, so if he thought it sucked, we'd know.  Here's the review.  Thanks, Carl!  Check out his own books as well.  They're great!:

THE-MAMA’S-BOY-WHO-TAKES-CARE-OF-HIS-ELDERLY/DEMENTED-MOTHER-WHO-NEEDS-A-$7400-FERRIS-LAWNMOWER-TO-SIGNIFY-SOMETHING-TO-SOMEBODY-SOMEWHERE (AKA: A REVIEW OF WRED FRIGHT’S “YARD”)

full disclosure: i paid $7400 for a no-turn ferris riding lawnmower last spring…..my dad passed away 2 years ago and i was obliged to move home to take care of my 84-year-old mother….i have 6.5 acres of grass to cut and the rats chewed the fuel line on my dad’s 1984 wheelhorse……before his death, my dad had been paying our redneck neighbor (who-tells-every-male-that-his-son-has-a-giant-cock) $1500 a season to cut our grass…..if you’re curious, my redneck neighbor has a yard the size of a matchbook (which he could cut with a push mower in 45 minutes) yet his lawnmower costs $9300….2 carpetbagging lesbians from dc just moved in next door and they use a lawn service to cut their grass---and if my dad paid $1500 a season, i bet they pay $4500…..my high school is across the street and every country fuck driving down the road could tell you if i accidentally ran over a begonia in may…..my mom has sundowners and dementia and she wasn’t necessarily sane in 2000….she punches me in the face every 3-4 days, she calls her sisters and threatens suicide every 3-4 days and sometimes she hallucinates that i’m an evil female nurse…..in 2024, i’m down to signifying my identity as a human being on social media---and yes, there’s a picture of me in a straw hat next to the $7400 ferris…..i’d love to online-signify that I have a beautiful wife and a red, chubby-cheeked daughter…..i’d love to signify that i’m teaching at uva and turning down invitations to sorority parties…..i’d love to signify that i’m 57 and still going to football games and music festivals, but i spend my days inside the mental institution listening to my mother threaten to call 911 if i open a blind or leave pee in the toilet…..i don’t want to signify the social status attached to owning a $7400 lawn mower, but it doesn’t feel like i have anything else going on in 2024-----and i think that’s part of wred fright’s point in “yard”…..and if you want an official statement on my yard, i would like it to be green and full of bumblebees and groundhogs……and assuming my mother passes before i do (and spots in my head are more stroke-numb every day), i don’t plan on building any gazebos in the shape of my profile---my yard would be: groundhogs, bumblebees and me (if i were free)

i must confess that i’m not really in the mood to write a book review of “yard” right now, but i’m pleased that wred fright has retained the title of comic strip superhero for the working class….i’m the kind of asshole who reads the last page of a book first and i think wred fright’s afterword serves as a fine introduction to the overall meaning of his novel…..does your yard really belong to you?----it does in the sense that your social media page belongs to you…..at one point, wred fright compares the “american mania for lawns” to estates in great britain and i think that’s as good a place as any to begin to understand wred fright’s message for us…..in many respects, “yard” is more of a cultural read of america/americans than it is of our respective yards….do you notice the pink flamingos in the-creep-down-the-street’s yard?---wred fright does…..do you feel sorry for the-old-man-who-wonders-if-this-will-be-his-last-summer?----wred fright does……do you wave at the-kia-driving-bitch and the-woman-who-doesn’t-want-to-be-a-cougar when they drive through the neighborhood?----wred fright doesn’t want to, but he’s horny, so he does….wred fright can also predict how well-manicured a-woman-who-eats-cookies-on-the-toilet’s lawn will be and he knows how many days it’ll take the city of cleveland to give you a ticket for length of your weeds (per the parma township rulebook)…..wred fright knows the date/time of when rand paul fought with his neighbor over lawn care and he could write a dissertation (with 101 citations) of every time republicans and democrats went to battle over lawn care pesticides in sweet home mogadore

in a review of wred fright’s work during the bush administration, i described wred fright as a “comic strip character making his way through the wasteland of modern america”…..in a review during the obama years, i compared wred fright to fred armisen in a “portlandia” skit entitled “early onset grumpiness”……well, our loveable grumblebunny continues to fight the good fight during the terror that has been the joe biden administration (which in retrospect, might be the worst of all)……i used to assume that wred fright erred on the side of being a democrat, but now i realize that wred fright is fair/balanced in his criticism of all things (and yes, i realize that the buzz words, “fair” and “balanced” used to be associated with fox news, but kids in 2024 don’t even know what fox news or cable tv is)….you could call wred fright an old (working class) punk, but i truly believe that his perspective is as fair and balanced as that of any writer that i have ever encountered....in his most recent novel, wred fright’s critique of american lawn care comes across as a light/breezy satire of america’s obsession with all things “yard”……wred fright doesn’t pull any punches and his treatment of modern treehuggers is as valid as his treatment of trust fund babies is as valid of his treatment of a divorced couple waging suburban war over who cuts the grass in the wife’s front yard…..more importantly, wred fright isn’t mean/nasty in his depiction of the yards and/or mindsets of his friend and neighbors…wred fright (as grumblebunny) is simply going for a walk through the neighborhood and describing what he sees……his satire remind me of the work of “bloom county” creator, berkeley breathed----and seeing things through the eyes of wred fright in 2024 is comparable to seeing things from the perspective of opus-the-penguin in 1984……opus is simply telling us the truth as he sees it, but opus is never heavy-handed and the characters he meets never seem unredeemable (except maybe in a cartoon way)…..i’d like to write more, but my mom’s 2 favorite hobbies in 2024 = 1) drowning stink bugs in the toilet and 2) driving around making fun of poor peoples’ yards----and c rob gets kinda excited when 6-7 cars-on-blocks in someone’s yard pisses her off…..would cutter john pay $7400 for a riding lawn mower?----no, but steve dallas might----bill-the-cat too----and under a cartoon microscope, lawn care in ronald reagan’s america doesn’t seem all that different from lawn care in sleepy joe biden’s america…..

Agree with Crazy Carl?  Disagree?  Read the novel and write your own review!

The Front Yard War Available On Kindle!

I'll be sharing some cool photos I took for the lawn research project as I post about The Front Yard War.  This one is from my old neighborhood in University Heights, Ohio USA.  You can see the snow on the sidewalk.  On that block, there might have been three people who shoveled the sidewalk when it snowed.  I was one of them.  This is looking east down the block from my shoveled sidewalk, and it looks like an iceberg as far as one can see.  This was in a neighborhood where there was a bunch of people who walked to their religious services as that was their belief.  They didn't shovel either, so they were as lazy as most of the rest of the block, but then they'd have to walk dressed mainly in black at night in the street, which wasn't too safe.  Now what does this have to do with lawns?

Well, those same people who are too lazy to shovel the sidewalk, so their neighbors don't have to walk in the street at night dressed in black will call the city to complain if someone doesn't cut their grass, and they'll tell you that's because they care about the neighborhood.

Well, they might fool themselves, but they can't fool me.  If you actually cared about the neighborhood and your neighbors, you'd break out the snow shovel in the winter and not be whining to the mayor in the summer about your neighbor's lawn just because it didn't live up to your dubious aesthetic ideals about landscaping. 

So if you want some laughs about the American yard, then please read The Front Yard War.  In addition to being available from me directly for $5 for the PDF or EPUB ebook (PayPal me at wredfright AT yahoo DOTT com), it is now available from Amazon for Kindle.  I make it available there because some folks don't want to order directly from me (maybe they're shy or more likely they just don't want to have to wait up to 24 hours to get their ebook--I send them manually via email--when Amazon will beam it immediately to your Kindle or whatnot).  Plus at one point at least Kindle users had trouble uploading an EPUB to the tablet.  They could upload the PDF, but it was always kind of a pain on the Kindle.  I don't know if that's still the case, but it's not much work to just reformat another version of the EPUB for Kindle on Sigil, which is what I use to code the EPUBs (thanks, Sigil!  Awesome as always!).  Basically, I just have to upload a separate cover for Kindle, which is pretty easy.  Kindle in general is pretty easy to publish on.  I'm not sure how widely used it still is, but as long as it's easy to do, I'll keep doing it, though I prefer the independent EPUB one can just download onto a phone or whatnot.

Anyway, this book's good, so if you're complaining about what's on tv or the state of American literature or you're just bored, then please give it a shot.  I think you'll have a good time reading.  You can even read the first chapter or so through the sample on the Amazon page.  If you like it, buy the damn thing and finish the novel!  While you're doing that, I'll be working on the print version . . .

The Front Yard War Is Out!

The picture is what started the new novel.  I arrived home one night to find this little doorhanger curled up in the screen door handle and was aghast.  The city was wasting my tax money to nag me about cutting the grass!  What gives?!  I was planning on cutting the grass anyway, so that was the end of the matter (aside from calling the mayor to give her an earful), but it got me interested in the yard.  The result over a decade later is the novel The Front Yard War.  I write them so I can read them, and I enjoyed reading it.  Maybe you will as well.  It's vulgar, irreverent, thought-provoking, and funny.  It may even be controversial.  It was interesting taking what might have been an academic book and turning it into a novel.  I guess I would describe it as P. G. Wodehouse meets Edward Abbey just for a somewhat frame of reference, but, with luck, it should be its own original self.  As with most of the novels I've written, it has a different form from most novels.  The story is the most important aspect as a novel is ultimately just a long story, but the formal aspect can enhance the story if done well, and it's done well here, though the other readers will be the judges of that as well.  It will eventually have a print version (maybe even more than one since SmashBooks seem to be getting into print on demand as well) and a Kindle version and a Google Books version, and blah blah blah multiple ebook versions.  I will get those all up and running in coming weeks, and then make a permanent page on the blog for it like I have for the other novels and add to the list of novels on the Library page.  For now though, it is available only directly from me.  It's $5, though you can still try to woo a review copy from me (reviews, like readers, are hard to come by these days, doubly so for independent writers).  Just PayPal me at wredfright AT yahoo DOTT Com (if you're human, then you should be able to figure out that email address--if you're not human and somehow still reading this blog, then just use your big A.I. brain to conjure up some cash and get it to me somehow I guess) and let me know if you want the PDF version or the EPUB version (for maximum convenience, you can even use the begging bowl link on the sidebar if you're reading the web version of this blog).  I coded and tested them both myself, so they should both work great, but if you do have any issues, then just give me a yell.  I can even tell you how to upload the novel onto your phone if you need a hand (I enjoyed reading it on the cell phone a chapter a day, which is how I tend to read most ebooks).  Thanks to Sigil and Libre Office Writer for the compositional tools.  Keep in mind, I'll be emailing it to you manually, so please give me 24 hours or so after payment to get it to you; there's no A.I. Bot zipping it out automatically.  If you want that, then please wait for it to land at the ebook retailers.  If you don't like PayPal and just want to mail me $5 or something, then email me, and we'll figure something out.  I'll be hyping the novel due to excitement for the next few months, so I'll let you know when the other versions are available, but if you've been waiting to read it, then now's your chance at last.  It is done and looking for readers!

Comic: Liars Across America

Despite most consumers thinking people who work in sales are liars, there's an old saying in sales that "buyers are liars", so apparently the distrust goes both ways.  This cartoon looks at many of the creative or not so creative lies customers tell sales professionals.  To read the comic, I suggest clicking on the image and making it full screen.  You could also download it after you click on it for the primo view, I suppose.  I've also loaded the panels individually below if you like scrolling down (it works either way).

For more fun (albeit words, not pictures), read one of my novels, such as the latest, Fast Guy Slows Down!  Or if you want to wait (but why would you want to?!), the new one comes out next week.