An Update on the Alien Thing

I couldn’t understand how to format Channie Greenberg’s book. She contacted another publisher. They advised me to fiddle with margins, with fonts. I did. Now it’s shorter. I thanked them because I like the book. She reminds me of an Israeli Edith Sitwell. Am holding my breath in submitting the manuscript for the Amazon printing cost with its myriad color images. Amazon is the guy on cell block two who eats filet mignon and sells your ass for cigarettes.

Robert Masterson’s book and Cindy’s book will probably be out soon. Am excited. Then others, one pair of rails at a time, ties, spikes, splices, two and a half fucking miles of track a day, inching toward Cheyenne. Will stop there. Get drunk. Maybe drag up, Head back to New Orleans.

Off social media. Taken to writing irritating emails to authors. Hopefully will dissuade further submissions. I cringe in receiving even a single one, stammering curses, just before rushing into the bathroom, BARELY MAKING IT BEFORE THE TORRENT OF WATERY STOOL SHOOTS OUT, like an open faucet. Hekate regresses, rocking on its wooden chair, sat in front of a wooden table, gripping a can of unheated tomato soup with both hands, all of it cascading over its chin rather than into the mouth, onto a bare chest slashed by purple neon, the sign sputtering in eternal night outside the window . . . that’s right, at the fucking gates of hell, the place where the ferry captain and deck hand sometimes stay, permanent residence of the cigarette girl, of course, and other celebrities.

There are more books to come. Will they matter if the alien presence on Earth is confirmed? Will you still take your fish oil supplement, your Co Q 10?

I saw Joey Chestnut eat 76 hot dogs on July 4th at the Brooklyn Cyclone’s stadium. “World Record.” No one else came close. I have his picture on my phone, a sideways picture. I got there at ten thirty for a front row seat. I was tempted to have a beer. 12 dollars a can. Didn’t. The tops of my thighs got wicked sunburned. I had to buy a tube of aloe vera the next morning. But I went to the boardwalk after and bought cheap beer from people on the benches, listened to salsa, got more sunburned.

I’d like to give more of an alien update but I haven’t researched it. They’re being cagey. I wonder what they know that I don’t. I wonder if there is an alien spacecraft in some underground lab somewhere. Doubt it. If they could get here, or one of THEIR drones, they’d view us as ants at best, the Earth like a potted plant.

I’m waiting for Bitcoin to decide which way it’s going. Been ranging for weeks after a break in the market trend.

I’m hoping an old writer friend David Gombac submits something. He won’t. Just to say, there are hidden pockets of gas in the mine shaft. He’s one of them. So don’t smoke down there. His prose is waiting.

The collage is called Coney Island Baybee.