Twenty Two Faces
One of my favorite things to do is browse the one-star reviews of a book I’m interested in. You’ll get the bare truth amongst those cynics and critics. I do this with any book I intend on buying. I’ll even do it out of boredom when I plan on buying a movie I love. I want to see what people really thought of the movie. I want to see how wrong people are about a movie I love. In fact, it was reading these one-star reviews that inspired my blog. Anyrank, with books, I’ll rarely read more than one five-star review, I’m more interested in what’s wrong with the book. Twenty-two Faces is an interesting study in this area. There are more one-star reviews than five-star reviews. Allow me to elaborate why.
Judy Byington’s story is a misexecuted mess. This is bound to happen when one is penning a tale of Satanic Ritual Abuse, also known by it’s more proper **cough cough bullshit** term Dissociative Identity Disorder. I refuse to Google “satanic ritual abuse” because firstly, it’s stupid, and secondly, I don’t want to invite any evil spirits to split my personality. Man, where to begin with this…
I’m not attempting to downgrade mental illness in the least. It’s real, it’s obvious. And I do think that people can “shut down” and black out and not remember what they said or did, like in the hit film Fight Club or like how my girlfriend used to sleepwalk. That concept seems real to me. It just becomes a problem when it’s used to umbrella criminal activity or to make excuses for shitty, spoiled bad behavior. Jodi Arias, anyone?
Every girl who doesn’t care to control her emotions is bipolar.
He’s socially awkward, guess he’s autistic.
That one’s a spoiled little shit kid. ADHD.
Shove some pharmaceuticals down your throats. Don’t work through any problems, just label them and don’t take any responsibility. Just band-aid everything. It’s just like Roseanne Barr said in her sitcom, calling alcoholism a disease is just a way to excuse your bad behavior and take the responsibility off of yourself. Then you can do whatever the hell you want, right? Didn’t she claim to have multiple personalities too? SATAN.
Anybarr, on to Byington’s silly tale of satanic sex cults and the fact that if you play Stairway to Heaven backwards, it’s really Escalator to Hell. Boogity boogity! It starts off with a disclaimer that isn’t really a disclaimer at all. It serves only to make the reader think that this ritual abuse stuff really happens regularly and it’s problem enough that education needs to be spread about it. Also, apparently someone named Virginia Louise Hill is the only living survivor of these satanic death cults and ritual abuse. I’m assuming Virginia Hill is an alter of the subject of this novel, Jenny Hill. That’s right, alter. Not altar, like the ones you sacrifice babies to the devil on. SATAN. Alters as in alternate personalities. Jenny Hill has twenty two of them. This is what I’ve gathered so far. Let’s stop for a minute though. I want to talk about something serious. Well, not really.
All of this Dissociative Identity Disorder stuff came into popular view after the book and TV movie Sybil was released. Sybil was the story…..of Sybil. She had sixteen personalities brought on by wicked child abuse. Now, I understand deep emotional problems brought on by abuse. It causes severe damage. But you’re not creating a separate personality for every facet of your emotions. It’s silly, it’s histrionics. And guess what? After Sybil was released, DID/Satan Abuse diagnoses skyrocketed. Mass hysteria, anyone? Well, it turns out that Sybil’s story was fraudulent from the beginning. See where I’m going with this? The case that started the recent uprise in multiple personalities was fake. The very root of this stupid diagnosis wasn’t even real.
In the words of the immortal Elaine Benis from the hit NBC sitcom Seinfeld: “Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.”
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with lazy psychiatrists and lazy diagnoses. And SATAN.
Anyfake, after the ridiculous and confusing disclaimer, we’re given a poem. Ah, the poem. I’ll spare you the poem, except for the last line:
A sacred creature known as ME.
Even though DID is kind of bullshit, this still could have at least been a good read. But it’s not. There’s a long “foreword” by a “doctor” that mentions something about Nazis and human sacrifices and the church that the Waco cult came from. This is all fringey, right-wing hapablap.
And then there’s the chart. Yes! A chart. Maybe I’m wrong and Satanic Personality Disorder is real! Hmm nope. The chart is confusing and not explained at all, a theme you’ll notice throughout the book. There’s Alter Jason (try not to laugh), who looks like Paul. Alter Paul? Nope, not Alter Paul. Just Paul. Who the fuck is Paul?!? Are we readers really expected to reference back and forth to this ridiculous chart through the whole book? Anychart, the chart. Alter Jason was formed from Head Alter Angelic. Jason makes all body muscles (those are the best kind of muscles) twitch, is a mute male, and likes to go to the movies and is really down to earth and loves the outdoors. Hey, is there a dating site for the mentally ill?? If not, there really should be. So Head Alter Angelic is named “Alpha” by Old Man, who may or may not be a pedophile. We can’t forget Alters The Evil One and The Dark One. One of them lays prone and the other one has black eyes. Then there’s Head Alter JJ. Fuck me. I think you get the point. The whole book is like this. Absolutely ridiculous and histrionic.
Both the subject and the author of this tripe suffer from an illness commonly known as “bat-shit crazy”. This novel is marketed as true crime but it’s full of so much confusion and insanity that it’s misleading everyone and it’s attempting to bring back the good ol’ Satanic Panic from the 80s. I grew up in a relatively religious household. The New World Order was always in danger of forming and the Antichrist would anyday rise to power, if he hadn’t already. Even the Ninja Turtles were Satanic. The Smurfs were a cult. That’s the 80s. Everyone was scared of everything. I even cowered in bed at night sometimes, scared that the KKK would come for me because I was a little bit Jewish. Thanks, Mom!
Man, the blog is really a mess this week. I blame my alters for that. Jerks. SATAN. Let me get to the text now. It begins from the point of view of Jenny Hunt as a five year old. I hate it when that happens.
She has aqua-turquoise eyes. That’s the same color, stupid.
She has a voluminous crop of freckles. Let’s stop here. Voluminous. Do you know what that means? Let’s look at the formula for calculating volume first. We’ll use a cube, the easiest one:
Length × width × height. Yes, class, that’s three dimensions. 3D. It takes up space in….space.
Next, how about a definition of voluminous:
Filling or sufficient to fill a volume or volumes. A face isn’t a volume, unfortunately. Someone has watched one too many Maybelline commercials. Maybe she’s born with it? Nope, she’s faking it.
A blank look appeared those portals as she placed left forefinger in her mouth while using the right to replenish her sugar, then poured spoonful after spoonful over Frosted Flakes , thinking, I must be dumb. Don’t trust nobody and can’t never figure out why.
Portals? You mean her eyes? Really.
What sugar??
And she placed left forefinger??
These are really basic grammatical errors, people.
The rest of the preview is just sloppy explications and physical descriptions so I’ll pull my info from elsewhere. From SATAN.
What?!?
This is more like those Ring movies or The Grudge. Remember those? So does Byington. Ah, Judy Byington. How about a little more on (moron) her?
Judy Byington, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., ret, has dedicated her life to humanizing and raising public awareness about the little known effects of ritual abuse and mind-control programming that tragically cause formation of multiple personalities in children.
Oh shit, she’s a MSWLCSW! Better back off a little bit. She knows what she’s talking about for sure.
I produced this, my first book, in a most complicated manner: by beginning the writing not only from five year-old Jenny Hill’s point of view, but from that of her various and different-aged alter personalities. Plus, there were other complications inherent in Jenny’s life: most of her multiple personalities were formed by the “Green Method” of mind-control that came out of Nazi Germany and referred to as Satanic Ritual Abuse (words that professionals refuse to utter, calling the diagnosis Dissociate Identity Disorder or the former Multiple Personality Disorder), plus she was not alone in her victimization through brainwashing that produced repressed memories from childhood of rape, torture and murder. Ritual abuse across the nation that no one, not even my family or closest friends and neighbors, seemed to believe happened.
I’ll paraphrase: She’s a shitty writer.
As a single parent to five teenagers I was convinced it did. And, was rampant in our society. In my thirty-two years of working as a therapist, supervisor of Alberta Mental Health, Director of the Provo Family Counseling Center, Utah Child Welfare worker and experience in running certain information to the Utah Attorney General Office of Special Investigations, I had many a client who couldn’t remember their childhood. In the safe environment of therapy, away from perpetrators, these dissociated women brought forth repressed memories of unbelievable abuse during childhood. Often the recall started in bits and pieces of nightmares, that were more and more detailed as memories came to the surface. Other times something as simple as a red flashing traffic light, or a man in black clothing, would bring up torture long buried in their past.
Right. Satanic sacrifice is so rampant that it’s splitting personalities all over the fuckin world. Remember, bat-shit crazy.
I first met Jenny through a FBI agent. The very day she contacted the Provo FBI office searching for parents of a girl that at age six, she was made to witness the murder, I phoned and talked with the same man. Several ritual abuse survivors had described their blood-chilling stories, plus by then I had traced a bloody trail of satanic cult cases throughout Utah.
There we have it. The FBI. Tracing bloody trails. SATAN.
There’s this, from chapter two:
A five-year old shouldn’t feel alone and decrepit. Jenny did. But so many of her emotions were compartmentalized that she was unaware of those feelings, except for fear, Wish I had someone to talk to. Feel scared all the time. Keep think’n big people are gonna hurt me, or take me away. Jenny thought, while her Head Alter J.J. thought back in disgust, Jen, quit thinking about that rubbish. Why not wrap our mind about what I’m thinking for a change?
Please hold your laughter. That’s very rude.
What a mess. Someone should really put a stop to this lady. I know Ronald Reagan was evil and he shut down tons of mental hospitals and unleashed crazies all over the streets. I know child abuse is real and awful and statistics show that everyone knows at least one person who was molested. But I think we need to draw the line at Satanic sacrifices and gang rapes. Sensationalism and mass hysteria are no good for anyone.
SATAN
The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend)
You know that one female friend you have? The one who’s always scowling? The one who’s probably fat? The one who’s never happy about anything? Ever? The one who thinks she’s making clever commentary but really she’s just bitching and complaining about something inane and pointless and it’s really just a metaphor for a lack of attention devoted to her vagina? That female friend? That’s Bianca, Our Protagonist from the hit novel “DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend”. Yeah yeah, we’ve all got one.
Have you ever been to one of those coke parties? No no, not the ones where you’re palming your stash in your pocket in the cold garage at 4am because you know half the party has run out of their supply and they’re talking to each other about relationships and movies and trying to find out who still has coke and people who ignored you and wrote you off at the beginning of the party have now become your best of friends because you still have coke and you’re so geeked out that you can’t even form words so you’re listening to MGMT because they help take the edge off and you keep sipping beer, even though it does nothing on account of all the cocaine you’ve done to yourself and your nose is running but it’s dry at the same time and there’s that hot redhead who’s “never really done this before” but there’s nothing you can really say to her and you need to take a shit and it’s the good coke that’s cut with diesel fuel so you go to the bathroom to do some more and not take a shit.
Not that kind of coke party. A Coke party. Like the drink. Well, let me tell you. They are WI-LD. That’s two syllables, that’s how you say it. Anycoke, the Coca Cola party. No really, the first part of the book is set in a bar-turned-teenage-lounge called The Nest and the “bartender” only serves Coke products. Laced with GHB? Nope, just Coke products. Rum and Coke? Nope. Just Coke products. Oh shit! These kids are all hopped up on Cherry Coke and caffeine! Sounds like a fuckin’ P-R-T-Y party!
Bianca is probably a library assistant at the high school, she’s such a curmudgeon bitch. Her friends were shaking their asses like dancers in a rap video, and that’s about it. They weren’t making out with anyone or getting fingerbanged back by the Golden Tee game, which I assume is what happens at teen parties. They were just dancing, as girls do. I wouldn’t know though, I only party at gay bars and naval bases. Basically Bianca is one of those girls. You know, those girls. A cockblocker, a cuntblocker, whatevs. Cherry Coke bitch. What’s her problem, anyway? Let’s delve deeper into the text and attempt to decipher it, shall we?
Bianca hates The Nest because it makes her friends act like idiots. Well, anyone partying at a teen club is probably an idiot when there are real parties that have, you know, alcohol. She’s just sitting there being a bitch when her friends join her. One is stupid and annoying and the other one has apparently wet herself because Harrison Carlyle (what a name **SWOON**) slapped her or something, I don’t know. This is just another closet-misogynist tale written by someone who doesn’t know shit about people. Anyslap, Bianca is a negative bitch to her friends and she has an edgy blonde pixie cut. I.e. she’s a lesbian. Well, that explains the curmudgeon. Have you ever met a nice lesbian? Me neither.
Next, Wesley. Fucking. Rush. approaches her and she despises him even though the conversation they have is boring and tame and stilted. What an asshole, how dare he encroach on her dry teen vagina?? I bet there’s a porn of that. Someone should Google it.
What do you want, I demanded, not even bothering to be polite.
Oooohhh, she’s not even being polite. Then there’s:
Leave me alone, I hissed through clenched teeth, Go try your charming act on some tramp with low self-esteem.
That’s a case of the pot calling the belly fat.
This is a study in the JD Salinger school of writing a whiny, wholly unlikeable character. This can work if done right. Just ask Lena Dunham or Larry David. Kody Keplinger sucks at it though. Then it’s time to leave the faggoty teen club and go get statutorily raped at a college party with “college boys” (and dicks) but only if Bianca’s friends take her out for ice cream afterwards. “Two scoops”. Lying bitch, you know it’s four scoops.
Ugh, this is a long, long preview. You can practically read the whole thing just on Amazon without even buying it. Please don’t.
I think you can gather where the story goes from here. Bianca hates Wesley. Fucking. Rush for no reason but by the end of the book, they’re totally banging on a reg basis. Just like every bullshit rom-com in existence. I’ll spare you the rest of the preview but you’re in for a treat. I’m going to browse through the rest of it because I heard there were sex scenes galore. No alcohol or drugs though. Instead of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it’s dry-humping, ice cream, and Coke Zero. Just kidding, Bianca would never touch something without sugar. LOL what a duff.
Anyduff, lemme go look for this sex…
LOL I found this first…
Pour me another one, Joe.
I’m cutting you off.
It’s Cherry Coke.
Which can be just as dangerous as whiskey.
And then he calls her fat. Hahahaha. Dumb duff.
The sex…
Nothing yet, just some heavy petting, which Bianca the Bitch swats away.
Therrrre it is, page 66 and 67. Written like a true teenaged…Author of 50 Shades of Grey. I don’t know her name… But Bianca and Wesley. Fucking. Rush. do it. Also, Bianca’s auburn hair fell all around them, even though it was an edgy pixie cut at the beginning of the book. There’s nothing too saucy, just “we had sex” and some removal of clothes and jiggling of Cherry Coke-infused belly fat.
Girls, please stop doing this to yourselves.
Wanted (Volume1)
I’ll give you guys some credit, it took me a little while to find a book terrible enough to review this week. Everything else I read was merely mediocre. Nothing remarkable, nothing too awful. Until I ran a “best indie books” search on Goodreads. Shit, I could pull all of my reviews from these lists alone.
And now………
Two sentences later……………………………..
The review……………………….
I’ll have to give some more credit, I guess. This time to Kelly Elliott. Her book has a pretty cover. A dress/shorts and cowboy boots always works for me. Always. I’d make Ellie keep the boots on for sure. If you know what I’m talking about.
Wait a tic………..
Ellie is the protagonist. Kelly Elliott is the author. They are one and the same!
I can’t breathe……….OH MY GOD! Why?
Here’s a way to enjoy this trash if you were dumb enough to spend money on it. And it looks to me like a lot of people are dumb enough to buy it, the book sits at a 56,000 ranking on Amazon. Not bad, really. Anywank, how to enjoy this trash. The prologue is about Kelly when she was seven. Sorry, Ellie. So just read the rest of the book in Ellie’s seven year old baby voice. Like these really annoying girls who used to work with me would do. There’s nothing more unattractive than women speaking in a baby voice, by the way. Except for Ellie, maybe. She’ll never be wanted by anyone! Her mother said so when she was seven and it stuck, goshdarnit!
As I mentioned before, the prologue is about Ellie when she was seven and you guessed it, the prologue is written in Ellie’s seven year old voice, “mommys” and all. I don’t even know professional authors who’d try something like that so when a shitty fraud author tries it, it’s just embarrassing.
Here are some examples…………….
Mommy was still talking funny. Did she not want me anymore?
This is how she acts when she drinks the bad stuff that Jefferson calls beer.
Please want me mommy!
I had a funny feeling in my chest and tummy.
Why was it so hard for me to breathe?
I know why! She must have read something she wrote. Because I feel exactly the same way right now! Man I love exclamation points and Kelly Elliott doesn’t disappoint me.
Next we jump nine years to the future and Ellie is in high school. The rest of the book, or at least the preview, is written like a high school girl’s journal, tons of f-words and all. Lots of matter of fact stuff too, like “I did this. She did that. I did this. He said that. She did this. I wanted to just scream out WHY?” ad nauseum and without contractions. Some people just need contractions.
Let us jump ahead two years again……………….
Kellie Elliot loves her ellipses, that is for sure.
After a long and pointless exposition of Ellie’s brother, our protagonist catches her boyfriend Ryan balls deep inside of Jessica Harris behind the stage in the auditorium. THE AUDITORIUM WHERE HE HAD JUST TEXTED ELLIE TO MEET HIM AT. Then Ryan looked up at her with a stunned look on his face. How could he explain having sex with the one girl who hated Ellie’s guts? How could he explain how he texted her to meet him at the auditorium but when she went there, he was fucking Jessica fucking Harris and THEN he was surprised to see her (Ellie)? I can explain. It’s what the French call “Le Plot Hole”.
Now that I think about it, this whole story reminds me of an episode of Snapped I was roped into watching recently, except without the hot girls murdering each other.
Next is a passage that made me feel embarrassed that Kelly Elliott would actually put it out there for the world to see. First there’s dialogue like “It’s (ellipses) it’s Ryan. I saw him having sex with (ellipses) with (ellipses) Je (ellipses) Jess (ellipses) Jessi (ellipses)” and “Holy hell’s bells (ellipses) Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (ellipses) that dirty son of a bitch cock-sucking motherfucker! I’m going to cut his balls off and (ellipses)”, which came from Ellie’s best friend Arianna, who had hauntingly beautiful eyes and rattled on and off about things, apparently. And she curses when she’s angry. Don’t make her angry! (ellipses)
I’m sorry but I don’t have the energy to transcribe the next part of the preview, which is Ryan explaining himself to Ellie with plenty of curse words peppered in, that way you know this is an edgy beginning to an edgy teen series. See, it’s only volume 1! Another series they’ll make a movie out of! Another series that puts the women’s movement back thirty years! Another series that perpetuates the “girls love bad boys” lie. Fucking SCORE.
I’ll let Ellie end this one for me (ellipses)
Oh my God, I think I just threw up in my mouth.
On Twitter
Hmm. I was this close to abandoning this blog. I became bored after only six or seven entries. The other day, I wasn’t even bothered enough to enter the password to sign in to my account here. Things were hopeless, pointless. Why spend my time reading shit writing? My time is worth more than that. Well, I don’t have an answer for that question. But I still feel needed.
A quick glance at Twitter shows me that there is still support (and hatred) for me. The bad writers and losers I’m after all rely on Twitter because no agent will take their shit work unless they already have a following. True artists, true writers, don’t need a following. Their work will speak for itself. To me, Twitter is a game, a waste of time. True, I may only currently have 33 followers but I check that insipid, dumb website maybe twice a month, tops. The views on my blog far exceed any Twitter followers. So I’m doing something right and I’m not going to quit. It was a nice hiatus though.
Year of the Cat
Carroll Bryant is a boy. Just throwing that out there. Like it’s difficult to tell from his bland, asshole protagonist. He’s a maverick. A rogue. A ne’er-do-well. I can’t wait for his physical description, our protagonist. I hope he’s dashing and rough-cut and he needs to shave and he needs a drink and he rolls his eyes at convention. Please please please, MR. Bryant.
Our Protagonist springs up in bed and sweat Was Pouring all over his face. He had seen the ghost of the wind. An angel from hell. That’s all she is. She would be his down fall [sic], his heart beware. Love interest? For Our grey Protagonist? Is he bad? Is he good? Black? White? I don’t know but I do know one thing. He’s a detective. The whole first part explains that to us. Our Protagonist remembers the day he was called into the captain’s office. Just the day. That’s the day he remembers. The day. The captain hands him a scowl and transfers him. Oh boy, Our Protagonist looks more and more like a ne’er-do-well by each paragraph!
Anysweat, back to springing up in bed. Oh wait, next thing Our Protagonist knew, he was standing outside the airport. Forget about that ghost he saw, the ghost of the wind. Let’s just skip ahead like any poor writer would do. Then let’s have some filler about two cabbies arguing over who gets to drive Our Protagonist around, a passage that serves no purpose except to bore the shit out of the reader and fill some space, much like this sentences is doing, the sentence you are reading.
And then:
So this is it? This is where I spend the next ions of my life…
Ions? This is where Our Protagonist spends the next atoms or molecules with net electric charges due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons of his life? Do you think the author means eons? Fuck it, let’s just skip ahead again.
This time Our Protagonist finds himself in front of a building that looks more like a bordello than a police station. A detective with teleportation powers. This book might not be so bad after all. You just wrote yourself into a boring corner? Teleport. Works every time.
“Do I look like I know what the hell you are saying?” I quizzed in my normal how do you do tone.
YES. A how do you do tone! I knew Our Protagonist had a devil-may-care attitude. I bet he gets sex and gets beaten up and SOLVES THE CASE. He better with that attitude.
He quickly snapped his fingers.
Don’t you hate it when people take their time when they snap their fingers? I know I do.
My soured speech spilled onto the floor.
I’m done.
No wait, I’ll finish, sorry.
Before I knew it, I walked a couple of blocks.
So it’s random moments of amnesia, not teleportation. Damn it.
And now… The climax of this Amazon preview. The Love Interest.
She appeared out of nowhere [Just like Our Protagonist!], dancing like a gypsy making love to imaginary things[I'm sorry, what?!?], prancing and frolicking like a Monet painting in the morning [That's what Monets do in the morning?], wearing a green silk dress, barefooted. Her long black hair was flowing in the summer wind. My heart was no longer its own. My mind went blank. My limbs felt like spaghetti.
Are you sure you shouldn’t be writing shitty fantasy instead, MR. Bryant? That was a lot of similes, wasn’t it. We have gypsies, paintings, imaginary things, pasta. I think this is the ghost from the beginning of the book.That would make sense, right? Mercifully, this preview is short and so is the book. It’s only 138 pages of hell.
Finally, let’s take a look at the cover. Remember, this is a book about a detective…
I don’t know about you guys, but my limbs feel like rigatoni right now. My heart isn’t even its own!
I’ll let Our Protagonist conclude this for me.
Seriously I had to think for a moment. “What the hell?”
John Dies at the End
Please stop recommending this book to me, I mean it. More and more it seems like my friends don’t have a grasp on what I consider a good read. This is another buzzed-about subversive novel that’s supposed to be comedy but instead, it just falls into pointless absurdity. I can’t tell much by the preview (thank God pages 32-324 aren’t included in the preview) but it seems like there’s this other dimension and monster doppelgangers replace humans or something. It’s a mess and not in a good way. And what kind of epilogue goes on for 35 brain-deadening pages? All filler no killer.
This is one of those books that should have just been a screenplay instead. Even then, it would just be one of those “cult” films that only your weird, former acid-fried friends would be into. The one he pulls out from his DVD shelf every time you’re picking out a movie. The gratuitous one. I’m all about gratuity if it’s done well but it never is. See: John Dies at the End. Which is being made into a movie.
The beginning goes on and on and rambles about fuck-all in paragraphs that serve no purpose other than to convince us that it’s a funny story. That and the narrator is some sort of psychic who parties a lot or something. Much like every book written by Some Dude in the past ten years, said narrator wakes up in a drunken/drug-induced stupor. Then he has to excruciatingly explain to us what’s going on. This usually takes pages but hey, at least if the author crams enough bullshit into it, he’ll have a whole novel instead of an idea for one. Then he gets published. Yay…
The guy who wrote this crap was a writer for Cracked Magazine or some other pointless, unfunny rag. This novel started off as a silly ghost story but idiots wanted more and what idiots want, idiots get. We’re told at the beginning and the end (where hopefully John Dies) that this was all being narrated to a reporter, which writes off the fact that it’s shitty writing and bad syntax. There might as well had been a disclaimer about it at the beginning. “I’m a shitty writer so I’m just gonna get away with it by using this shitty writing device.”
Anybeast, the writing. How many times do we need to be told about the narrator’s stomach? It clenches, it gets symbolically punched, it clenches. It’s like every writer only knows how to describe any negative feeling by showing us its effect on the stomach. Because we can all relate to that.
Then people randomly turn into monsters or terrifying things like a gaggle of snakes. A murder of snakes. Whatever it is you call a group of snakes. I never know anymore.
Then there’s a lot of “I looked and saw” or “I turned and saw” or “I seent and saw”. But remember, this is because this story is being told to a reporter. That way the Writer doesn’t have to Write.
Then there’s a meat monster. What’s going on?!? Anything goes! And the rules are…There ARE no rules!!
“the ham whizzing through the air like a Randy Johnson football” is an actual line from the book.
“the meatstrocity screamed” is another one.
“We meat again” is spoken by the meat monster.
I. Hate. Bizarro.
This is all before chapter one, by the way.
Anymeat, this story takes place, once again, in the Midwest. Because that’s more cool than LA or New York. The fucking Midwest. It’s a town that’s actually a portal to hell. Kansas City, maybe? Branson? Little Rock? We’re never told. Then there’s some strange and hard to follow scene that’s in a back yard (I think) and there’s a Jamaican (I think) and he’s a psychic too (I think). And our narrator is just so out of it and as confused as we are. Ain’t it cute? The centipede was in his stomach the whole time! Of course. We find this out because the narrator’s stomach clenched again and he vomited.
Which finally brings us to the 35 page epilogue that doesn’t explain shit. Or maybe it overexplains shit? I don’t know. It’s all shit to me. And we all know people will always love shit.
Edit: Here is the plot, as transcribed by the perpetually-writing slaves at Wikipedia:
The main characters, John and Dave, are friends from an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States.
The story opens as Dave is discussing the unusual events he has experienced with a reporter named Arnie. The first story opens as Dave goes to help John’s band play at a local party, just outside of town at a lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog, and meets a strange Jamaican person dealing a drug called “Soy Sauce.” After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to take John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of “Big Jim” Sullivan and his sister Amy, trying to return Molly to its owner. Amy tells Dave that she’s afraid that Jim is dead, and he didn’t come home after the party. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to put the whole episode behind them, the two go to work at the local video store.
At work, Dave accidentally cuts himself on the syringe that contained John’s dose of the Soy Sauce and begins having unusual experiences as well. Dave and John are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John mysteriously collapses and is taken to the hospital. Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the pseudo-Jamaican’s trailer. Dave finds the fake Jamaican’s stash of ‘Soy Sauce’, but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. However, due to a miraculous occurrence, he survives relatively unharmed. Molly rescues him from the burning trailer and leads him to John’s comatose body, which has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from.
The second major incident Dave explains to Arnie happened a year later. Dave and John are called in to help investigate a strange death apparently caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed in the form of a sports reporter, Danny Wexler, who has been possessed by a shadowy entity, likely after taking Soy Sauce. With the help of Wexler’s girlfriend, Krissy, John and Dave have a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and are led on a video-game inspired chase through the abandoned mall, where they have a stand off with the entity that has taken Wexler. There the evil possesses Dave, but it is ultimately defeated.
The third story starts the next summer as Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy’s disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and peeking into his tool shed and seeing what appears to be a dead body, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave has to come to terms with how his paranormal encounters have irreversibly affected him.
Out of Touch
Before I begin my little blog here, I just want to get one thing out of the way.
This is me prioritizing.
This is writer-speak for “a disclaimer”.
The only reason I want to read the rest of Brenden Teatz’s Breakthrough Ripoff Porn of a Novel is to see how bad it really is. It’s kind of like watching Here Comes Honey BooBoo or something with Snooki in it. You hate yourself (and whoever you’re watching) but you want to hear whatever dumb shit Snooki says or see whatever nasty nasty thing comes out of or goes into one of the Honey Booboo peoples’ bodies.
This is TV Producer-speak for “train wreck”.
But before I begin, for those of you just tuning in, you might want to go do something else instead. This is disaffected cynic-speak for “I have something better to do. I have anything better to do than read Out of Touch”. Is this thing on? Are you still reading? In case you’re a dumbfuck, this is me talking down to you. Much like Tweetz does throughout said novel.
But let’s disconnect from the writing and have a Sentence By Itself first.
Here, too, is another Sentence By Itself.
This is pretentious lit-fag speak for “post-post modern”.
I’m having a little too much fun with all of these platitudes and condescensions (Tautz does them so well in Out of Touch) so I’ll get on with my review.
But first, let’s go back. This is the “before” picture. Because at some point in everyone’s lives, they are a before and after picture.
Once there was an author. Let’s call him chuckpalahniuk. chuckpalahniuk was at one time a literary maverick. chuckpalahniuk had a style that was all his own. chuckpalahniuk pushed boundaries and shirked literary merit to write some refreshing and progressive reads such as the seminal Fight Club, its fantastic followup Survivor, the instant classic Choke, and the manic and enjoyable Invisible Monsters. chuckpalahniuk had a unique, casual voice that struck a chord with a new generation of readers. chuckpalahniuk was relevant for a time. I’ve been a reader my whole life and I was getting tired of the same old crap everywhere I turned. chuckpalahniuk got me reading again.
Then chuckpalahniuk got cocky. chuckpalahniuk fell under the artist curse of “I made a classic so now I can experiment with my “art” and do whatever the hell I want and people will buy it. See also: The Strokes, Saw movies, Radiohead, U2, several other bands and directors. All of a sudden, chuckpalahniuk sucked. That’s not the unfortunate part, however. The unfortunate part is that chuckpalahniuk’s writing was so casual, every numbnuts hipster with a pack of Parliaments and a lack of adequate fatherhood from Portlandia to Massachusetts thought that they too were writers.
They came in troves, these chuckpalahniuk clones. Each one was a copy of a copy of a copy, the next more degenerate and untalented than the last. A big contributor to this influx of shit writing was chuckpalahniuk’s then workshop, which taught its denizens how to Write Like Chuck. Enter Brondon Totz. I don’t know the man personally but I’m assuming that the first draft of Out of Touch was nothing like the “published” version, rewritten after Tootz discovered chuckpalahniuk’s workshop.
This is offended phony hack-speak for “This guy really does his homework”.
For those of you just unsticking your balls from your leg, I’ll continue with my review.
Synopsis time!
That’s exclamation point-speak for “exclamation point”.
Man, now I see why Twatz does that so much, it’s pretty fun. Anyspelunk, Out of Touch is about this dude named Aidin. He likes to part and debauch. He’s a “club-god”, whatever the hell that is. I don’t know why anyone over twenty three would want to be in a club anyway, much less become a “club-god”, which is probably similar to having a vast collection of STDs. Welcome to 2013, where clubs are fuckin’ lame. It seems to me that Tetzuo’s only grasp of nightlife is what he sees in the city that always sleeps, Kansas City. I think the novel is actually set there too. In the words of my girlfriend’s dad: “How unfortunate”.
Okay, damnit. The twist here is that Aidin can’t feel anything. Now, we’re never told exactly how much of anything Aidin can’t feel because he can’t feel himself getting full when he eats or gets his ass kicked but he is apparently addicted to the taste. So whatever this weird “Out of Touch” thing is, it doesn’t affect his tongue. How unfortunate. Wait, get it?? The novel is called Out of Touch because the protagonist is numb and the theme of the novel is probably that the protagonist becomes “out of touch”. Dang. I might be wrong about Browndong Tightazz.
The beginning of the novel (after the douchey part in italics that was added in after Tinkz read chuckpalahniuk) introduces us to Aidin’s therapist, Dr. Paradies, who I can only assume DIES near the end. Also, SPOILER ALERT. Dr. Paradies is Aidin’s mom. You can see it yourself in the Amazon preview because some idiot put the epilogue in the preview.
Anycrunch, this is where we’re first inundated with “doctor-speak” and “This is me” and “In case you’re just tuning in” and more chuckpalahniuk ripoffs like Aidin tonguing a wound in his mouth (Fight Club). Then Aidin “can’t feel a damn thing” but waits for the taste of copper (that’s a show-don’t-telling of blood) when he needs to stop tonguing the wound. There’s that magical tongue. This novel should have been about a magical tongue inztead.
Then Tonzils bafflez the reader by zharing zome ztrange bitz of wizdom. Like anytime you see someone who’s handicapped, there’s always this little part of you that has doubt. WOW. Such insight into the human condition, Brandon Tietz. That drooling cripple who’s always smiling and grunting is surely a fraud, you insignificant, reprehensible douche. The part of you that has doubt, Mr. Tietz, isn’t a small part at all. It’s a giant part. And it’s your douchiness. I’m talking to YOU, not the proverbial you that’s us, the unfortunate readers. People don’t need to see evidence, you asshole. That’s not why blind people have seeing eye dogs and that’s not why deaf people have sign language, you rabid cunt. Those things aren’t “proof objects”. Christ, Tietz, you. are. a. royal. douche.
I’m judging from the epilogue in the preview that Aidin has become some sort of government tool who does their dirty work or something, like Tightz is setting up for some sort of bastardized superhero serialized nonsense. It’s so dumb, you guys. Don’t bother with it, really. I had more to say but I’ve only grown angrier and angrier at Tietz while writing this one.
This is me telling you to retire, Tietz. This is writer-speak for “fuck right off”. Your book suckz. You, sir, are
…wait for it…
…This is you waiting for it…
…That’s waiting room-speak for…
..wait for it…
Out of Touch.
The Raie’Chaelia
There are a few issues this week but I’ll get to them after I get done with Miss Melissa Douthit’s Epic Work of Fantasy, The Rachel’Leah. It’s a series, you see. If it’s a series, then someone’ll make it into movies, correct? JUST LIKE HARRY POTTER AND THE HUNGER GAMES. What a sad sad philosophy to have. Anysplat, enough bullying, on to the novel.
I’m not even sure where to start here. The entire fantasy genre is rife with world-builders and unpronounceable names. It’s a bit too easy to me. Anyone can create fake races and magical creatures and give them crazy names with apostrophes and umlauts. Draw a map! Great idea too! There shall be kingdoms and dragonslayers and elements not found in our current realm! Hurrah for LARPing and World of Warcraft! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Okay okay my bullying is out of control, I’m sorry. I’ll just start with the preface of Doutshit’s Epic Work of Fantasy. Yes, there’s a preface. Is there a non-pretentious self-publisher? Hello? Anypoop, the aforementioned forthcoming preface. Our brave “author” informs us in the foreword (shit, I forgot to mention that there’s a foreword first, THEN the preface) that this is a work of fiction, fabricated from the “author”‘s imagination. Well no shit, Murloc. It’s a fantasy. I’m pretty sure there’s nobody named Chalice, who’s greatly offended that Doumshit may be writing about her in her Epic Work of Fantasy. That’s right, our main character’s name is Chalice. It’s ancient Greek for “really big cup”. That’s a bummer, I’m writing a fantasy too and now I have to change Tulip Glass’s name to something else.
Damn you, preface. I’m so busy bitching that I haven’t even talked about you yet. So this guy died and he was a big-time fantasy writer or something. Brandon Sanderson took over his book series and I’ve actually heard of him. I’ve learned a lot from his Podcast. Anysplooge, that’s why our brave “author” decided she could be an “author”. Now, her “first novel has been ‘published’”. BY HERSELF.
In the words of my brother, who isn’t much of a reader and knows nothing about the publishing industry: “That doesn’t count.” There. I said it.
Oh good! A prologue is next! So it’s Forward, Preface, Prologue, then the Epic Work of Fantasy. Somehow I think there’s a step missing here. Ah yes, Editing. That should go first.
The Raeiou’Cholula is 325 pages long when it could have easily been 200 pages long and I’ll tell you why. The descriptions. Dear heavenly Jesuses (Get it? That’s a Game of Thrones reference because everyone in that universe says “Dear gods or Oh my gods” instead of Oh my god. That’s how you know it’s a fantasy.) the descriptions go overboard in this book. Examples? I thought you’d never ask. And you didn’t, so here are some examples.
Waves pounded the shoreline, spraying mist into the wind that stirred white sands glittering in the moonlight. A dark ship with dark sails, anchored in the reef, swayed with the movement of the water and the wind.
Is it just me, or does something else need to be pounded like that shoreline? If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the answer is “yes” and the thing that needs to be pounded is Melissa Douthit’s vagina. Hey-oooooo. Amirite?? Damn my foul bullying. On to some more descriptions.
It was a magnificent storm that was approaching.
WAS it, brave “author”? WAS it? This brings me to an important point. If her book was properly edited or even workshopped, she would have known this. That sentence is a limp, boring failure. It starts off “It was”, first of all. Then comes the second half of the sentence. “Was approaching”. K-SNORRRRRRRRRE. I learned a long time ago to eliminate “ing” words from my writing. If anything, putting “ing” words in your writing confuses the tense. And while you’re at it, get rid of the word “was”, especially anywhere near the beginning of a sentence. Melissa is basically redundantly telling us in this sentence that she’d just described a storm at sea. That’s all fine and good but to make it even MORE annoying, she bogged down the sentence with was’s and ing words. Try this instead:
A magnificent, black storm approached.
There. Efficient. Effective. Effervescent. MORE.
A man in black stood just above him facing the front of a ring of spectators who were lingering in the shadows. The man in black was tall and broad, with thick black hair that was sleeked back from his brow and reached just under his ears. His dark eyebrows slanted menacingly and his thin mustache curled slightly upwards at the corners of his mouth. He appeared anxious. His eyes combed the light of the torches that spotted the mantlet wall of the ward, as if he were looking for minute cracks in it that held the answer. The man on the altar appeared calm but his fatigue, to his great relief, could mask even his fear. He was dressed in white robes.
Once you go black, etc etc…
Christs, I’m lost already and we’re still only in the prologue. I think. We haven’t even met Chalice yet! She must be a beautiful cup. Wait…Is her name a euphemism for boobs? Tits? Funbags? Breasts? Two Skittles in the middles? This book has just taken on a whole new meaning.
I’m going to skip past lines like “From a distance a rapid pounding of feet hit the marble announcing Ivan’s arrival” and “Above him, Duquaine saw two hands exchange a dark object. The strong hand with long fingers seized it impatiently and placed it on the prisoner’s chest” (Just like Transformers! PUT THE CUBE IN MY CHEST, SAM) and try to find the heroine of this Epic Work of Fantasy.
Finally.
…Many months later…
It was freezing. The latch of the gate was like ice on her fingers as she lifted it and let herself into the courtyard that she knew so well.
Who? WHO?? And we were just told that it was freezing, of course the gate was like ice on her fingers. But WHO?? Is it Chalice? Collins Glass? Ben Stein?
Finally. No really, I mean it this time. Finally.
Chalice heeled Sunny down the cool, dark road.
Yay! Chalice is here but what the fucks does that sentence mean?
Up next is paragraph after paragraph of explication and info-dumping and world-building. Ah, world-building. The great mark of many a failed novelist. I know a guy who’s been working on a fantasy novel for seven years because he “keeps getting stuck world-building”.
Man, you should see the paragraphS (THAT’S PLURAL) that describe how beautiful Chalice is. She has golden, butternut curls. More redundancy? I’ll TAKE it. A red, rosebud mouth. A button nose. Those are the best kind of noses, we ALL know that. Large sapphire eyes, straight out of an anime. In the words of Adam Sandler from the infamous Zagat’s sketch on Saturday Night Live: DEAR GOD, PLEASE KILL ME NOW.
RIP Chris Farley. You are sorely missed, good sir.
Am I still in the prologue? This is the longest Amazon preview yet. Is this how my blog will go? Get halfway through the preview and give up because it’s so pointless and bad? I feel like I’m dying here but I won’t give up. I CAN’T give up. I’m doing this for the greater good. Which brings me to part two.
Part Two:
Melissa Douthit here runs a website of her own. It’s about something called “Goodreads bullies”. It can be found here: http://www.myvaginaneedsagoodpounding.com. Anycunt, back to these “bullies”. If I’ve learned anything in my Epic Journey as a blogger, it’s that I’m not alone. I didn’t want to start this blog for the longest time because I didn’t want to be one lone writer complaining about something that might not have been a big deal. But it is a big deal. Bad writing is the very bane of my existence.
It seems like self-publishers and indie writers are somehow immune to criticism. They’re showing it to the man, aren’t they? DIYing it until the industry collapses under their wordy weight. Don’t criticize THEIR work, save it for the mainstreamers. You’re just bullying them. You’re just mean. You’re just jealous. HA.
Have you heard of sock puppet reviews? These are fake rave reviews by shitty authors to boost their ranking or to boost sales. This is a much bigger detriment to writing than “bullies” like me. I’m being honest here, and if I want to have a laugh while I’m at it, guess what? I’m gonna make fun of the author too. It’s my job. We’ve raised a generation of pussies. Every time I turn around, someone’s crying “not fair!” or “stop the bullying!” or someone’s apologizing. I’ve had enough. I don’t give a shits about political correctness or operating under a “thumper policy”, i.e. only writing good reviews.
I’m tired of this generation thinking they’re somehow more special than everyone else and that all of a sudden, we need to stop doing things we’ve done all our lives because it might hurt someone’s feelings. “Stop the Goodreads Bullies” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Huffington Post even did an article on it. This is what the French call “Le siiiiiiiiiiiigh”.
I marvel at all of the hate-mail I’ve received. All of the forums I’ve been banned from. All of my posts that have been deleted. All of the angry tweets I’ve been sent. I’m not gonna stop. Especially not now that I see how much writers need me, need my criticism. Especially not now that I see how much I’m already hated. I love the opposition. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the fucking business.
Now, If anyone needs me, I’ll be posting this review on Goodreads.
Broken Piano For President
Don’t you hate it when authors write their own product description and use phrases like “a comic masterpiece” or they compare themselves to whatever author they’d read before working on their novel? I know I do. Mr. Reznor does it here to great aplomb. Wait, I meant Mr. Wensink. Sorry, I thought he was the guy from NIN. Just like I thought his novel was a bottle of Jack Daniels. Color me dying for a drink of whiskey. Especially after reading this Amazon preview.
It’s every indie author’s dream, innit? For something they write to go viral, as John Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls’ novel did. Ah, did it again. Patrick Wensink. Him. He’s the guy who received the “World’s Nicest Cease and Desist” from Jack Daniels (it says so in bold letters right at the beginning of the product description) because the cover to his novel too closely resembled their frankly mediocre whiskey. Said novel, Broken Dreams For Breakfast, would have otherwise been just another unremarkable small press waste of time. Anyway, if your crappy little indie novel goes viral somehow, your book sales will skyrocket into the triple digits instead of the fifty or so you sell to your family, friends, and whoever is on that forum you post in. But they’ll buy anything.
Broken Condom For Prom Night isn’t exactly a bad book, it’s just not very good either. At all. There’s another thing it’s not, and that’s funny. But blogger, you may say, what about all of the reviews and blurbs purporting it to be “A laugh out loud, thought-provoking novel.” or “Like Christopher Moore on very strong acid. In Broken Piano For President, he’s created a Pynchonesque universe…A rollicking good time of a novel.”? Well, dear reader, they’re “lying”. Then there are five star reviews from people named Pterodactyl Samurai or Sir Ethan of Potatolamp, who are obviously his absurdist bizarro buddies. Damn you, bizarro, you’re a subgenre I’ll get to another time.
I think Broken Nose For Rihanna is about this guy who gets blackout drunk (LOL) and creates revolutionary, groundbreaking cheeseburgers and now the fast-food mafia is after him or something. Ah the fast-food mafia, arch-rivals of the Amish mafia. The novel starts off talking to us, the readers, which I suppose should be clever but it’s not. It’s annoying and kind of a filler. In fact, this book is full of fillers. Did I mention it’s nearly 400 pages long? Anyhonk, the book moves on to chapter two (I think it’s chapter two) and we’re still not done being spoken to by the novel. Apparently we’re hungover, which is why we chose to read a FOUR HUNDRED PAGE LONG “comedic” novel.
Next we finally meet Deshler Dean, a truly original archetype in modern literature. He drinks a lot (absurd!), he’s a smart-ass (truly avant-garde), and he woke up next to a corpse (never heard that one before, said no detective novelist ever). There are some strange turns of phrase and some perplexing metaphors here. Christ, can there be a college class specifically to teach metaphors and similes? They’re all so bad and nobody knows how to write them.
“That thin sheet of ice gets watery at the edges, white crystals evolving to something invisible.”
Like what? Everything that’s invisible looks like everything else that’s invisible. It looks INVISIBLE.
“frisking his zipper”
I don’t know what that is and I don’t want to find out.
“He rubs both eyes like a mirage, but this isn’t the desert.”
I’m not a writer, but I play one on Amazon.
“The drums are roadside bombs and the guitar squeals like 747 tires touching down.”
Does anyone else hate themselves yet? Remember, this goes on for FOUR HUNDRED PAGES. I hope somewhere in all of those pages, humor makes an appearance. I certainly don’t see any in the preview and I’ll apologize on the author’s behalf if you actually bought the entire book.
Inbetwixt all of those metaphors and similes are equally mind-grinding descriptions of Dean being hungover, obviously written by someone who’s never been TRULY hungover. Or never been TRULY a writer. Author Pete Wentz has accomplished quite a feat in writing several novels though, something most indie authors can’t claim. So I’ll give him credit for that one. Ah! Sorry, that’s the hot one from Fallout Boy, not Mr. Wensink, who wrote this book.
How about some more strange descriptions and shitty metaphors? YOU GOT IT, DUDE.
“Our hero is a sliver of gristle and a mushroom cloud of hair.”
I’m sorry, what? Is that a physical description? What is a “mushroom cloud of hair”?
“Dollar beers are how people wake up next to dead people.”
Yeah, maybe if you live in West Virginia or Missouri or something. But that might have been a joke? I don’t get it. Anybody?
“Dean’s teeth attack his fingernails.”
You know, sometimes it’s okay to just write what someone’s doing. Every sentence doesn’t have to be clever and original. “Dean bites at his nails” would have been more effective and less pretentious.
Then guess what? The dead woman next to Dean isn’t actually dead. I think. The author switches to someone named Henry next, who hopefully is funny. Hold on, I’ll check for you. Nope, not funny. He just wanders around a room or something, excruciatingly describing everything in a strange and shitty way, much like the first of the book. But his cheeks glow like jellybeans, apparently. Aw, how cute. Jellybeans. This is what I mean when I say there should be a college course specifically about writing metaphors. There has to be one. Please let there be one. Otherwise this will NEVER end.
“Once a bun, always a bun.”
Truer words have never been spoken.
Henry kills this burger baron he was interviewing with and then things get truly kooky. A burger baron being assassinated?? But why, that’s so silly! Also, Henry is disgusting and needs a shower. I think?
Then we’re back to Dean dealing with the dead woman who’s not dead anymore. This is a device that could have been hilarious, if it were in the hands of a more deft writer like Christopher Moore or Pynchon. Instead it’s written away by pretentious metaphors and lengthy, daunting descriptions that only serve to show off Herzog’s immeasurable talent. Silly me, I meant to say Wensick. Wensink. I give up.
Look, I think you get the point here. There are too many characters and too many things going on for one author to handle. This draining prose goes on in Amazon’s preview for page after page (it’s a long preview, I couldn’t get through it) and then it goes on even longer if you purchased the whole book. I really hope you didn’t. I know this book shot to the top of Amazon because of a little bit of press but that doesn’t mean it’s worth reading. Do yourself a favor and buy yourself some Maker’s Mark instead. Get it? Maker’s Mark is symbolic of a better novel. Because of the original cover to the book? Get it? The cover Jack Daniels politely didn’t like? HAhahahahahahahhaha……
