Sunday, November 27, 2016

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion, in Honor of Black Friday

"Winding along the first interstate
built through a city, in my
windshield, the urban sprawl
and the suburban slump,
with Goodyear emblazoned
in gold, and smoke stacks
belching black into the
sherbet-swirled sky.
The last holdouts from yesterday
are hiding within these crumbling
ruins of the working class
-- that are fading in my
rear-view mirror. I nod
and give thanks. Firestone
dances in red for just an instant
as I dart in the opposite direction,
towards my exit."
--Akron, Ohiofrom my upcoming poetry collection.



Akron, Ohio by Sleepydre on Wikipedia.

When I finally realized that all of the stories from Dispatches from the Information Age were either published by who was given first publishing rights, or rejected, I decided on a January 2017 release date. Then I had a conversion with someone about a fun idea as a way to promote the collection and realized I would have to publish it more towards the end of the February or the first of March 2017 for it to work effectively.

At first I was depressed, because I have been wanting to put out more fiction more often, then I thought about my options and realized that I was sitting on a poetry chapbook, and it was thematically suited for what is happening in the world right now.

That is not to say by any means that I consider myself a poet, I mostly just dabble. I am not even the type of person who, quite frankly, reads all that much poetry. I did go see W.S. Merwin at Kent State a few years ago, though, and that was cool. It's maybe where I started putting my songwriting after I stopped writing songs--stopped writing them as often, anyhow.

So that means I will be publishing my first ever, and probably only, poetry collection on January 7, 2017. I am still tossing around a title. I might just stick with Live Organ Transplants, but I need to come up with an anatomical textbook that no one needs, get out my X-ACTO knife and get to work, all Terry Gilliam-style.

If that doesn't tell you, quite frankly, about the poetry that will be contained in it, you will just have to go to my poetry page and read "A Cosmic Joke."

Lol, that was shameless, even for me.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

A Call to Action


Image courtesy of GLady on Pixabay.

I sit here in my office with the lingering smell of burning dust from the little electric heater that I am using for the first time in a while. The Vaselines "Jesus Don't Want Me for a Sunbeam" fills my ears from my computer speakers as I sit here typing this out. I made this playlist to listen to while writing my second novel, but shortly afterwards, I realized it would not work and then never really listened to it.

It sure is nice for writing this post, now, though. I finally feel a flow of words lighting up my synapses. They flow through my fingertips and appear onscreen. It feels good after a bit of a drought. Inspiration is fluid in that way, though. Up until this point, when I have sat down to write the next post after the last, I wasn't sure what would be appropriate to say after a few recent events, especially after a man in my own community immolated himself yesterday morning.

While I am certainly upset about the election, I guess what I have to do is find a better way of using my anger and sadness, and turn it into something good. I feel intensely sad for that man and his family, and I think I just need to find peace and help others do the same. 

I don't blame people, though, for how they feel. Everyone experiences things is his/her own unique way, and it makes sense that people would need time to grieve--some people have a lot at stake, and at a cost far higher than financial.

Making my art, though, writing this post, writing my books and stories, is my way of fighting, resisting: creating. Putting every ounce of anger and frustration into the works I create, and I feel glad to know that I am not the only one. That's what I love about this community and the friends that I keep: I look around and see so many others struggling, but resisting, and forging their own unique paths ahead.

Our voices can be used to shape how others perceive this world and the people around them, each in our own unique way. So I guess this is a call to action. We can take what is happening and be positive lights, and shape the outcome for the better. Making art is our way of resisting against a world where only a few select people get to pick and choose who gets to be included.

Instead, we can use our anger and sadness, and work towards making a positive difference in the world. It is in our power.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

End Quasi-Temperamental Disjunctive Time Disruption (QTDTD) Once and For All


Today I would like to talk to you about a very important issue that politicians are almost entirely ignoring this election cycle, and indeed, have been ignoring for years. As far as I am aware, neither the Trump nor the Clinton campaigns have even so much as mentioned it; however, the issue affects everyone in the United States and has widespread implications throughout our society, and in fact, most of the rest of the world, as well.

It starts every fall, when we are given an extra hour of sleep or drinking or sex, or some combination of the three, only to have it taken away just a few months later. That's right, I am talking about the Canadian Scourge (no, not Alanis Morissette or Justin Bieber), which is one Benjamin Frankin's worst and most idiotic ideas, Daylight Savings Time, or as it will from now on be known as, Quasi-Temperamental Disjunctive Time Disruption, or QTDTD for short.

According to Time and Date dot com, which must be the authority on such subjects, since, after all, it's in the name of the website, and Wikipedia dot com, the most reliable of sources for information on all subjects, this oppressive practice was started by the Illuminati to cause mass confusion and make people late to work. Okay, so maybe I didn't actually read those websites, but I assume that's what they say. So screw you, Jay Z, you son of a bitch.

Now that we are back in real time, on this sixth day of November, 2016, I, Gabriel Bryan Gott, propose that we end QTDTD once and for all. Imagine a world where you don't have to stare at your clock for eleven straight hours just so you can stay up until 2 a.m. pretending you're riding around with Doc Brown in a Delorian, only to fall asleep before you have a chance to reset your clock, and it just screws up your entire Sunday. Image a world where farmers stop being such primadonnas and start using electric lights like God intended.

Perhaps we can get the energy industry into it, since after all, for half of the year they lose out on an extra hour of electricity sales each and every day. If they can get Presidents to start wars in foreign countries just to steal those countries' natural resources, and usurp sacred tribal lands just because they feel like laying some pipes like a disease-ravaged sex addict on boner pills at a Reno brothel, then perhaps they can persuade congress once and for all to leave our clocks the hell alone.

Today is the day that we collectively slap Woodrow Wilson in his stupid goddamn face once and for all and tell him are not going to stand for this injustice that is almost entirely his fault. After all, who are we to get to change time whenever we feel like it, just so we can have extra daylight for a few months? It's time to stop being greedy and start living in a reality where time stays tacked down where we put it in the first place. No more 3 a.m. bar riots (or is it 2 a.m., or 1?) just because some assholes at some point decided to get all fancy.

No longer will I stand idly by and let this injustice continue. In protest, I am going set my clock back one hour every day until this practice is ended. Only once people have come to their collective senses will I keep my time to myself, and that's a promise you can count on.