She’s encouraging me to buy half the stuff that she buys…. pencils and highlighters and chocolate and baskets and stuff.
“But it’s free delivery,” says the Fox. “And at competitive prices!”
I’m into her for 100Kc already. It’s all terribly fun. I have pencils coming out the yin-yang here … and all I use are pens!
What’s that definition of a good salesman? Able to sell sand to an Arab. Asia sells pencils to a computer-ite.
I have only two “visits” today, and then have the later morning and all the afternoon & eve for writing (press release for WHAT BEAUTY), reading (still working on Bellow’s “Augie March”), more writing (notes from Max the Blind Guy), and rest (red wine, chocolate, and my wife’s sumptuous lips).
It’s bitterly cold today, but my attitude is like a ripened Florida orange. The heat will have to come from the fireplace and, perhaps, a hot jacuzzi bath (with the new scented bubblebath — citrus & spice).
I had been resurgent with my good eating habits, wanting to drop a couple kilos to get down below 175 lbs. But winter has finally come to Prague, and I’m fucking freezing.
So Plan B is now in progress: eat more to put on that layer of suet to insulate the body.
Peanuts and cheese are a favorite. Red wine and dark chocolate go well together. Birdbath-size bowls of lentil soup help, too.
My refrain to my thin, gorgeous wife has been, “Why can’t we just get fat?” (she has no fear of that; O to be a thirty-yr-old and burn calories like a hamster on a treadmill!)
This making a living thing is really getting in the way of writing/publishing/marketing my books. But lest I sound bitchy, I have a lot of built-in time to do things. It’s just that there are so many things I need to do, that a To Do List is not sufficient.
I need an assistant.
Perhaps I can find a English-speaking Czech who wants to intern as a publishing publicist. Then I can have help researching proper review mags & newspapers & on-line sites to send WHAT BEAUTY. That’s a start. And then there are the calls I need to make to the USA to drum up radio interviews, feature stories in art mags and NY papers (a good novel about art & NYC has to gain some ground; or perhaps tie in with another story).
See, this is the kind of stuff I think up, but need arms and legs and fingers and brain to make happen.
Meanwhile, the new novel is getting started in my head.
Oh, and Asia is doing just fine; bopping around the now-frozen Prague on her power walks. Life is grand.
I figured out how to get a great feed through the NFL site. Since I’ve paid the admission price for the post-season feeds in HD, I wanted to see the games w/o a hitch in the screen. You see, my computer is a bit out of date; still fast, but not comparable to what’s available or to the tech that’s being used by the pros.
Anyway, I was getting herky-jerky feeds, with a minor ripple in the video every 6 secs or so. Annoying, but watchable, and you can get used to it. But I wanted better. So I emptied my caches (download streaming cache, and the Mozilla cache), cleaned up my hard drive, ran a disk permissions utility fix, and then rebooted the internet (unplugged both router and other thingy I don’t even know what it’s for).
Now the video comes in crisp, HD quality, and no video hitches. Perfect for the 4 games I watched yesterday and today.
I say, Y’day & T’day because I don’t watch the games live, but as archived feeds. This saves me time; the archived games take but 2hrs to watch, commercial free. Just as well, the Euro-USA time diff demands I need to watch the late game at 9 or 10 o’clock. With the archived feeds, I can get up on Sunday morning and watch the first game, then have lunch or work out or take a walk with Asia, and come back for the second game. On Monday morning, I wake at 5.30 to catch the first (Sunday) game, go teach a class, and return for the second game.
Some of you might suggest that I’ll learn of the score before I have time to watch the game. This is nearly impossible. Firstly, Czech’s don’t watch NFL football, and its late game doesn’t make the newspapers or whatever. Secondly, I make sure I don’t go on the web and “accidentaly” learn the scores. Foolproof, or nearly so.
For the Superbowl, I’m going to get a good night’s sleep, then wake up and watch a commercial-free game. Six a.m. start? No problem: I’ll crack a beer and pop some corn w/real melted butter. Beats the hell out of standing in line at the stadium to pee or get a $12 beer, or missing the multi-angled replays.
I only just signed up with Twitter today: @bibliogrind ….
My first “tweets” went to a poet in brooklyn, ny (she likes Norman Rush’s “Mating”; a literary fiction society; my Chamonix mate, Chris’s “Living Websites” blog (as a thanks for promoting THE VILLAGE WIT); and to Alfred A. Knopf publishers (“Yes, writers need to tweet to show what human lies behind the written word, the characters, the wonderful lies&makebelieve”) ….
The word “tweet” reminds me of Tweetie Bird from the Warner Bros. Loony Toons shorts of the ’60s-’70s. It fits, though, because at a mere 140 characters, any message is the sound of bird in a cage.
Short messages — or super-short-short short stories — also remind me of the anecdote by Ernest Hemingway, who said the saddest story he ever heard was the six words he read in a newspaper’s classified ads: “For Sale, baby shoes. Never used.” A factual story or not, Hem summed up devastating emotional pain in 33 words.
It’s more like spring in Prague, and far away from the winter wonderland I had expected (and dreaded). No worries though; I’ll take blue skies and 45-degrees all Jan & Feb.
Meanwhile, the idiots at the Czech national health insurance have inexplicably denied my application. Turns out having marriage rights to an EU citizen means little in this fucked up country. Ironically, what I pay in a private policy is cheaper than what I’d pay for Czech’s shitty NHS; and I’ll get better service, too!
I’m immersed in marketing “Mark Beyer : author” as a brand. This sets up better coverage for THE VILLAGE WIT novel; the upcoming WHAT BEAUTY novel; and all work in the future. I’ve recently learned that trad pub houses are now offering as little as $5k advanced, with no mrktg budget, and demanding rights to this, that & the other to basically own the author and his work for perpetuity. Yes, they are running scared, and like all tyrants, they’re fighting to the death.
Meanwhile, WHAT BEAUTY is with SleepyGirl Solutions and Lia, whose design will be ready in a month or so. And me? I’m thinking ahead, to the next novel: Max the Blind Guy
Good tidings to all.
AsiaMark feasted on shrimp scampi, sauteed asparagus, mushrooms w/dill, a crispy salad, and warmed bread. Champagne to start, with a toast to love, prosperity, gentle moves, and longevity of life and creative thought; in the new year and beyond.
But before all of this, I cooked: the mushrooms in olive oil and dill; hot-sauteed asparagus w/hints of salt & pepper; and garlic fried in oil then shrimped dropped on top for a fast sear before getting to the table. Asia fixed up the salads, and a nicoise dressing. What fun!
The fireworks had already begun across town, and we could hear window knockers from time to time. We listened to some music, a mellow Spanish guitar. With food on the table, we began to eat with purpose.
Odd, how cooking can take long, but eating is a little-piggy-in-the-trough episode. We finished with some chocolate (me, dark; Asia, milk) and a few gingerbread cookies. Now nicely fattened, we made a clean up, and then a repast to the movie theater area of the house, where we watched a scintillating drama, “Shrink” … about a psychiatrist in free-fall, staring Kevin Spacey. Highly recommended by Mr Rabbit & The Foxling.
We paused the late-rr movie to toast the NewYear; watched the bells and fireworks on TV from Copenhagen (of all places), and then saw some bright pops in the night sky down our block coming from the park. Not much, this year; it was sleeting.
After midnight, we got to talk with Matt & Jen, out in Utah, then it was onto finishing the movie (Good Will Hunting). We went to bed, woke around 10am., and now leading a nice lazy (but proto-productive) day.
Good wishes to all! May your hangovers be cured by the hair of the dog!
Deception by Philip Roth
An affair unfolds. Dialogue. Man & Woman, both married. She can’t let the husband go, and she can’t stop him from cheating. He is bored, adventuresome where his wife is not. They meet and talk, about what it is doing for them, why sex is one of the answers (or at least a diversion), and what it all means. Roth tells this intriguing story of love — and marriage’s remedy — through 95% dialogue. It’s a wonderful story, furiously delivered and ended on a note of … deception.
A Way in the World by V.S. Naipaul
A writer has traveled back and forth from his homeland to the lands of his ancestors, the ancestors of other island inhabitants, and the antecedents of colonial power. Along the way, he finds stories that had been hidden, or suppressed, or nearly forgotten, or plainly kept for personal memory. Naipaul has used his life, and the life & history of Trinidad, as the springboard for most of his life’s work. We learn history here, but more so the stories of lives that have helped form history as we hadn’t heard it before.
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
On a getaway holiday to a famous island (unnamed, but, eventually, obvious), a man and a woman meet strangers who befriend them for no apparent reason. The holiday is, at various times, slow, busy, drunken, sober, hot, chilled, light, dark, crowded, and deserted. In this world of holiday fantasy, anything seems likely to happen. And then happen it does. McEwan used such sparse space to create a language and image explosion as to keep you guessing, make you want, and then ask for more.
We went to Tesco to shop for our New Year’s dinner and celebration. Then we stumbled into Tchibo to look at the coffee makers … again. We’d decided to wait for the Cafissimo to go on sale again, but then we realized that the difference between the tradition and deluxe models was one of color … and 500Kc. This is what did it (and, of course, the sudden surge of the USD against the Krona 
)
The coffee packets come in different strengths and flavors: espresso; crema; decaf; rich bean. And this puppy makes a good batch of milk froth, too! A very intuitive machine, easy to use, no fucking around; computerized and set to make the ideal cup of joe.
We also bought four cartons of coffee packets … and got three free!
All told, this has been one very successful Christmas-present-money purchase. Thanks Mom & Dad!!
Yeah … and right now I’m flying on caffeine.
AsiaWife with first cup of NEW COFFEE
