Button Tapper

Here’s my contribution to Dan O’Shea’s flash fiction throwdown, on the subject of churchly violence. His piece, Let Us Prey, can be found here, and the originally challenge is stated on his website, Going Ballistic, over here.

For the record, the following piece is a work of fiction, though it is based on certain real-life events that Montrealers may be familiar with. My own Dad doesn’t, so far as I know, actually believe that Jesus is magic, so let’s all stop conflating the author’s life with her work right now. Okay?

Okay, let’s do this thing! I call mine:

Biblical Proportions
by Laura Roberts

My Dad believes that Jesus is magic. And not in the Sarah Silverman way, either; he really and truly thinks the dude performed miracles, even from beyond the grave. Which is a shame, because if he really were magic, then maybe this whole thing would never have happened, and all those people wouldn’t have had to die.

I mean, it’s not like it’s Jesus’ fault, exactly. He did, supposedly, do a lot of great shit for a lot of people. It’s just that my dad wasn’t one of ‘em, and I guess he took that personally.

Wouldn’t you?

I’ll be the first to admit, I found the whole thing bizarre. Even—dare I say it?—crazy. It just doesn’t make any logical sense, and I’d always figured my father for the logical type, down to his pressed khaki pants and 9 to 5 as an accountant. Sure, he played the organ at church every Sunday and believed in a dude who allegedly walked on water, but so do millions of otherwise sane people, right? It’s the opiate of the masses, after all, and lots of people swallow that pill every weekend. But most of the others aren’t going to burn their churches down in a fit of righteous rage when things don’t go their way.

Presumably, anyway.

Dad had made it very clear that something was wrong with him that Sunday, but I hadn’t been following the details. He said something about a score to settle, and in my bleary, pre-coffee haze I’d thought he was talking about the previous night’s hockey game with “Les Boys.” (The “boys” were all middle-aged men with children, so I dunno why they still insisted on the moniker, but I digress.) There was always some rivalry on the ice between him and Kevin O’Malley; they were old pals who took the sport way too seriously, for a couple of has-been wannabes.

St. George church fire, Cincinnati, Ohio (photo via eBaum's World)

Anyway, it didn’t really cross my transom that it could possibly have anything to do with THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY until I heard the sirens and ran to the window to see smoke billowing out of the church just up the street. My Dad’s early-morning handiwork had set the thing ablaze.

It was a total mess. The place was like a tinderbox from Heaven, all original wood this and hardwood that. Went up like a book burning in Nazi Germany. The congregation narrowly escaped, by virtue of the fact that nobody in town ever made it to the service before 9:15, thanks to some quirk of timing at a particularly narrow covered bridge. Dad had started his spree at precisely 9:01, and even Father MacDougall hadn’t yet made his way from his breakfast at the rectory over the 15 feet to the sacristy by the time his loyal organist had doused the place in diesel (scrounged from his tractor) and struck that fateful match.

So why the hell did he do it? Well, it’s been all over the papers, so you’ve no doubt heard all the rumors already. But just in case you haven’t, here’s the straight dope: the dope wasn’t straight at all, and had recently been the victim of a botched operation that was meant to deliver Mr. Stephen Harris fresh from the ER as Mrs. Stephanie Harris.

I never suspected a thing. He’d told me he was going in for a routine procedure, something to do with a bum ticker, and then this.

As you can probably imagine, I’m mortified. Not only is my Dad a failed trannysaurus, but a murderer and arsonist to boot. (Wouldn’t have been so bad, except that a couple of the attending firefighters got trapped under a burning knave as they swept the building in search of church-goers. Tragic loss.) The whole town’s been talking about me, like maybe I’m next, and with that kind of pressure who knows? Still, I’ve been turning up weekly at the local synagogue, which is where the church’s weekly services have been transferred while the rubble is sorted (how’s that for irony?) and the congregation tries to raise money for a new church. I try not to make eye contact, but I can feel them staring at me, judging me. I try to take solace in the book of Job, but I really wish I’d just get swallowed up by some whale like Jonah instead. Seems like the stinking belly of the world’s largest aquatic mammal would at the very least offer a little peace and quiet.

Jesus ain’t magic, I can tell you that much. My dad found that out the hard way, and I guess I just wish someone had told the old boy a little sooner that the Good Book isn’t meant to be taken quite so literally.

Like Harriet the Spy, I will hunt down your secrets and reveal excellent truths about you. Unlike Harriet, I'll write a kick-ass bio for you afterwards, instead of humiliating you in my journal.

Since I’m feeling wild, crazy and generous today, I’ve got a special deal for anybody who’s been thinking about having their band, company, or even personal bio/”about me” page written up by a professional. While these types of pieces normally go for hundreds of dollars, today only through March 1, 2010 I’m offering this service for ONLY $25 A POP!

You heard me.

So if you’ve got a band that’s going to be playing at SXSW and you want to really get noticed, now’s your chance to hire a whiz-bang copywriter to kick that thing into overdrive.

If you’ve got a company in need of a more fun (or corporate) explanation of who you are and what you do, I’m down.

Even if you’re just thinking, “Hmm. This ol’ Twitter page could use a refresh,” or “Man, my personal website could use a little TLC!” I’m your gal.

I love writing bios. They’re easily one of the most fun and exciting pieces of information you can write in the field of copywriting, especially if they’re for awesome and exciting people—like you! Plus, I totally understand that most of my friends and clients are broke-ass students, starving artists, or other creative types who can’t afford huge fees just to make their sparkling personalities really shine.

So here’s your chance! Hit me up with a little bit of info about who you are, what you do, where you’re going (or want to go), and what you want to use this biography for (personal use? websites? PR material? marketing campaigns? that kinda thing). You can contact me directly using my contact form, or simply by emailing me at laura [at] buttontapper [dot] com, and we’ll go from there.

Looking forward to working with y’all!

Y’know, I hate to give any credence to the work of an obvious terrorist and possibly delusional psychopath, but I just read through Joe Stack’s “manifesto” (posted in full by The Huffington Post, despite its being removed from his website by government officials), and I really have to wonder what was going through this guy’s head when he decided to crash his plane into an IRS building in north Austin. Call it professional curiosity, as I’m a writer who’s always in search of a good seed for a story.

First of all, I live fairly close to the IRS building he targeted. I drove past it all the time, never knowing it was an IRS satellite office; it was a nondescript place, much like any other office building in the area. So when the plane first plowed into that building and everyone was freaking out about possible ties to Al Qaeda, I just chalked it up as some poor fool, perhaps someone who hadn’t had enough training as a pilot, making a terrible mistake in trying to land a wounded vessel. It certainly didn’t strike me as the work of a terrorist cell, and having lived in NYC when the 9/11 attacks took place, I didn’t have the same feeling of “Holy shit!” that I did on September 11. I even remarked to the bank teller who called my attention to the TV that if the building was only a few stories high, it wouldn’t be that difficult for escaping employees to jump to safety, unlike those who perished in the World Trade Center attacks. (I didn’t mean for that to sound callous, but to point out the obvious difference between the two attacks and the level of threat involved. The Austin IRS building hit this week was only six stories high.)

Unfortunately, as we now know, this wasn’t a mistake at all; it was an aggravated assault by a disgruntled person in trouble with a government agency.

Now, nobody in their right minds is a big fan of the IRS as an institution, as I’m sure we’ll all agree. They take your hard-earned money out of your pocket at least once every year, and then they hand it over to other government agencies, who spend it on god-knows-what half-baked ideas, wars and whatnot. The IRS is an obvious target for people who are pissed off, though most have the good sense to limit their attacks to angry emails and stand-up comedy types of jabs. Still, I can’t say it’s surprising that someone would make an attack on such a building, since it’s a potent symbol, although I’m not sure why the main branch in Washington, D.C. wouldn’t have made a better target for someone so unhinged as Joe Stack.

But even if you were unhinged and pissed off about how the government was perpetually stealing your money, and even if you owed tens of thousands of dollars to said agency, I don’t see the logic here. Crashing a plane into the side of a building doesn’t solve your debt. (Furthermore, what kind of rich bastard still owns both a plane and a sweet house when he owes several thousands of dollars to the IRS?! Something don’t add up.) Suicide is certainly a response to overwhelming money woes that many people take, but suicide bombing? That’s what we’ve got here, people. His plane itself was the bomb, and flying it into the side of a government building is both a terrorist attack and an act of treason, by most common definitions.

To me, Joe Stack is no hero. He’s no patriot, no “true American,” and he’s certainly no one to emulate. He’s a sad example of someone who thought he was above the law, who thought he could play the system for his own ends and lost big-time. And by flying his plane into the side of that building, he lost any sympathy he could’ve had from any people who might have looked kindly upon his plight. He’s gone, but his debt is not. And now his wife and kid are stuck with it, not to mention knowing that their dear old Dad was a nutbar who totally screwed them over as his last earthly deed. They don’t even have a home to go back to, since ol’ Joe Stack burned it to the ground so that the IRS couldn’t claim it in exchange for all the thousands of dollars he owed them.

What prompts such acts of selfishness and greed? And what prompts others to look upon these selfish acts as “heroic”? I honestly don’t know. And maybe I don’t want to know.

I guess my point is that I can see shades of Fight Club in this story. Fight Club is a story I enjoy as a piece of fiction, precisely because of its anti-authoritarian tones and sense of rebellion against a world gone mad. But Fight Club has one hugely glaring flaw in its storyline that is always overlooked, and that is: blowing up buildings does not erase the debt record. Everything is stored on computers, and even if you were to destroy many computers and their hard drives, that information is undoubtedly stored on many other computers, many other hard drives and systems. Information is replicated all the time, and there will always be copies and copies and copies to fall back on. You cannot erase your debt by destroying physical items, then. You can only erase your debt by committing another illegal act, by hacking into the system and changing 1s to 0s. Period.

For a software engineer, Joe Stack wasn’t very bright. You’d think he would have known this, or figured it out while he was wallowing in self-pity. Violence isn’t the answer, you twit. But maybe computers are.

To be clear: I’m not advocating hacking into anyone’s computers, governmental or otherwise. I may be fascinated by hackers, but I’m not one of them, nor do I have any desire to be. Still, if you really wanted to set everyone on a level playing field, or become a true American hero by liberating the people from their chains the way Joe Stack’s supporters claim he wanted to, you’d need to be a bit more crafty about it. You’d have to be a helluva lot more selfless, and a lot more intelligent. You’d have to have heart, and you’d have to have skills. And you’d have to be a ninja who left no trace, rather than a simian who left a giant suicide note right on his website’s homepage.

There’s undoubtedly a thriller type of novel in the bones of Joe Stack’s story, but not as reality has written it. I still think Stack’s a selfish idiot, a traitor and a terrorist, and if he’d survived his attack on that building, I would’ve advocated harsh punishment, but there’s something to this story that I think people (unfortunate as that may seem) relate to. It’s why people are calling him a hero, even though he isn’t, and the use of the word in this situation is insulting to anyone who is or has been truly heroic (like, say, Robin De Haven, an Iraq war veteran who helped get many of the people working in the building to safety). There’s something more to the story than the simple summary of “disgruntled tax dodger commits suicide,” and I’ve been thinking about this from the perspective of someone writing a short story or novel about it. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else.

In the meantime, what do you think about Joe Stack? Hero or terrorist—or something else entirely?

Lately I’ve been noticing that my writing has been in a bit of a slump. I only write a blog when I’m riled up about something, and then usually feel like it’s just a rant that isn’t worth posting after the emotions are spent. I’ve been writing really brief blogs about the books I’ve been reading, over at Crack Books, which is fun… but it’s not exactly the stuff of genius. I’ve been writing cover letters and endlessly tweaking my résumé, which is duller work than anything in the world. And then there’s just the sea of words that I feel like I’ve been drowning in, with all the print and web material I’ve got in my “to read” pile.

So I’ve decided to kick it up a notch and put myself on a strict writing regimen, to get things moving in the right direction and change my personal scoreboard from “zero” to “hero.” (Wow, that was cheezy! But somehow true.) Here’s what I’ve got lined up, so you can play along at home if you like:

1. 

   Just try and tell me you don't want to run right out and get one of these New Leaf Paper composition notebooks for yourself! (image via New Leaf Paper)

   7 haiku per day, with coffee. I’ll bust some poetic moves as I drink my morning beverage of choice, getting the creative juices flowing and a feeling of accomplishment at seeing those 5-7-5s line up on the page. I’m doing 7 a day because that’s how many fit on a college-ruled page in my composition book. (Mad props to the New Leaf Paper company, who’ve really sexed up the standard composition-style notebook, all with 100% recycled paper. HOT!) I figure if I keep up this rate, by this time next year I’ll have a book of haiku to publish.

2. Sending out work for publication. Every day I’ll try to find at least one new publication where I can send some of my finished work. I know I tend to procrastinate on this, or just let the stuff sit there, wondering what to do with it. No more! It’ll be out there, circulating, so that even if it’s getting rejected, at least it’s being read. Like they say about the lottery: you’ve gotta be in it to win it.
3. Writing new stories. This is another point: while I do have some finished work I’d like to get out there, I’ve also got to keep updating the files with new work. So, I’d better get on to writing some stories! Every day I’ll work on either starting, editing, or finishing some new bit of work. When I hit a wall with one, start another. Keep ‘em in rotation and see what comes out of it.
4. Finish that novel. I’ve been plugging away on my novel, on and off for a few years. It’s time to get serious, write the stuff that needs to get written, edit the stuff that needs to get edited, and get that sucker done. Just like the short fiction, just keep things moving and keep coming back to those pages. My biggest issue seems to be procrastination, so let’s put it on the To Do list and move it up towards the top, rather than letting it slide daily to the bottom.

That’s the four-pronged approach. I’ll probably still have to keep sending out résumés and cover letters on a daily basis, but I’ve decided to limit it to a manageable amount and do that type of admin work only until noon. After noon, it’s time to write. After all, I’m not an administrator, I’m a writer. Sometimes you have to remind yourself, y’know?

Anyway, that’s my approach. Do any of you have a specific writing routine or regimen that you like to use? Tell me all about it; I’m always curious to know how the rest of the world writes!

P.S. Here’s one of the 7 haiku I wrote today, reflecting on the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games:

Hipsters reading pomes,
A friend asks: “Is this what your
country’s all aboot?”

"Become A Writer" collage by Laura Roberts

Today I’ve been catching up on my Twitter feeds, and I’ve found some interesting posts from a variety of writers. There’s The Worst Love Poem in Chicago by Mel Schwartz over at the Tribune, Bo’s Café Life (a cartoon about writing in cafés by Wayne E. Pollard), a list of 100 Little Ways You Can Dramatically Improve Your Writing at a site called “Online Colleges,” and my friend Jason Mashak has recently published a book of poetry entitled Salty as a Lip with Austin’s own Haggard & Halloo, (and which you can buy online here).

In short, I’ve been inspired, and I feel compelled to sit down and write like the wind. Because, ultimately, if I were to write a book on How To Become A Successful Writer, it would only have three steps. They would be:

1. Sit your butt in a chair and write.
2. Edit your work.
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 as necessary.

That’s it, that’s all. Publication? That’s a concern that comes later, and it’s up to a wide variety of whims. Ultimately, the way to become a successful writer is to write. That’s what all the great writers, and even the not-so-great writers who get it, will tell you. If you’re not writing, you’re not a writer. Period. So sit in the chair and write!

How to become a successfully published writer is a whole different blog post, my friends. Don’t bother yourself about it right now; just get out there and get writing!