More Shit I Gotta Do

Ah, the busy, glamorous life of an author. Aside from napping, shoveling snow, and discovering cats trapped inside things you wouldn’t think cats could get themselves into, I am a very busy man. A few things:

FACEBOOK: Yea, verily, I have given in and created a Facebook account. I remember about 3 years ago everyone was telling me I “had” to have a MySpace account, or it would be like I was invisible. So I created a MySpace account. Admittedly, I ignored it and to this day I am too lazy to even delete it, but mysteriously no one cares whether I have a MySpace account any more. Now I am told I must have a Facebook account or I am doomed to obscurity. So I have a Facebook account. I’ll try to pay more attention to it. I’m there as “Jeffrey Daniel Xavier Somers”. Come friend me if you’re brave.

TWITTER: And again: After everyone else in the world has already done so, I finally have set up a Twitter account. Mainly I did this for use at the New York Comic Con in February, so I can tweet out what I’m doing and where I am in case anyone is interested. But in the mean time I’m going to start tweeting a short story there once or twice a day, starting 1/26. That’s right, 140 characters at a time. Why not? So feel free to follow me if you’re at all interested. Maybe someday I’ll start tweeting things like “Putting on pants” or “Woke up in someone else’s house again, please send aspirin and pants” or, simply, “pants!” but only if I get the sense that you folks want such personal tidbits. My guess is: You don’t.

THE ETERNAL PRISON HAS A WEB SITE: Not much there yet – it’s really a glorified placeholder – but it’s there. Check out http://www.eternalprison.com. I intend to have some real actual content up there in the next few months – some fun, interesting things. As opposed to boring, irritating things.

So there you have it: I am somewhat less uncool than I used to be. Or so I have led myself to believe.

1. Some superstar out there virtually bought me a drink by sending me $2 in the mail. You know who you are. I love you.

2. I’d like to officially announce that I’ll be attending New York Comic Con this year as a guest. I’ll be there Friday 2/6 hanging about the Orbit Booth until someone notices me and shoos me away, and I’ll be part of the Sci-Fi, Supernatural and Fantasy Authors Round Table on Saturday 2/7. In-between I’ll be busking on guitar, scamming drinks from anyone who’s not paying attention, and trying to innocently wander into photo opportunities of more famous people.

Here’s the details of my panel appearance:

Sci-Fi, Supernatural and Fantasy Authors Round Table

Saturday, 2/7, 1:30-2:30PM, Panel Room 10 (1A21)

Panelists: Alex irvine, John Birmingham, Kim Harrison, Peter V. Brett, SC Butler, Tamora Pierce, Camille Collett, and Vicki Pettersson. Oh yeah, and me.

Please come on by if you’re in the area and say hello. Maybe I could pay y’all to be my Audience, and follow me around in a group, laughing at everything I say and applauding constantly. Want to?

Hola,

I’ll be appearing on the show “Seven Second Delay” on WMFU (www.wfmu.org) on Wednesday, 12/3, at 6PM. The show is broadcast live from Maxwell’s in my own Hoboken, NJ. Come on down and be part of the live audience and see me stammer in public! Why not!

WHERE: Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ (201)653-1703

WHEN: 6pm, Wednesday, 12/3/08

About the show: It’s done before a live studio audience at Maxwell’s (usually 40-70 guests) as well as broadcast live over WFMU radio. Past guests include Ira Kaplan of the band Yo La Tengo and author Mark Leyner. The hosts are Ken Freedman (the ‘straight-man’ & general manager of WFMU) and Andy Breckman (Exec Producer of TV show “Monk” and a former SNL writer).

See you there!

Friends, I own a house. Well, let’s be clear: A bank owns a house, and if I pay the bank a garbage bag filled with crumpled dollar bills every month, we’re allowed to live here. The Duchess and I love our house, tiny and crowded with cats as it is, and we seek to improve it every now and then, the same way I sometimes get my hair cut: It’s just time to make things better. Most recently, we decided to get some air-conditioning installed.

I’ve never had any sort of central air-conditioning. I’ve had your standard window-units (Jeff Kay, over at the glorious West Virginia Surf Report, calls them “soviet humboxes”) from time to time and for the last few years, sure, but I’ve also spent a great deal of time without any sort of climate control at all. In fact, about twelve years ago I had an out of body experience in my old fourth-floor walkup in Jersey City, which reached an indoor temperature of about 500 degrees one July evening during a blistering heat wave. I’ve set up about 7 fans around my bed that night, all aligned carefully to create what I thought would be a lifesaving indoor tornado of moving air. All it did was create a sort of EZ Bake oven effect, resulting in the first time in my life I believe I soaked a mattress with sweat.

The Duchess, however, is from Texas, where everything, from homes to businesses to port-a-potties has central air. It’s a necessity down there, and people scramble from air-conditioned spot to air-conditioned spot like ants fleeing a giant magnifying glass. When she moved up here she was dismayed to find how rare central air is up in these parts, and has long vowed to rectify this in her own life. So the decision was handed down: Install some sort of AC in the house, so that we may be one of the gentry, living our ease while the rest of the world suffers.

I am always down with inching closer to the definition of “gentry”.

We found a contractor pretty easily, and they went to get permits for the work, which involved putting a condenser on the roof of the house. This proved problematic; the permit office claimed they needed architectural drawings of the whole system (which would cost about every dime I’m ever going to make, ever). The contractor basically said this can’t be right, but maybe they’re getting a hard time because they’re out of town. Hoboken is notorious for its politics, so this seemed reasonable. We decided I’d go down to the permit office myself and file as the homeowner. I mean, I pay taxes, right? Why do you think I’m broke? I might as well get my money’s worth.

What I entered into was a Kafka-like journey into a world without rules or justice. And filled with stuff I didn’t understand.

In theory, it should have been pretty simple: I show up, fill out an application, supply some basic materials describing the system being installed, and pay a fee for my permit. The first day I walked into the office, things looked promising: A nice woman told me I’d need a letter from an architect stating that our roof could handle the load of the condenser, and all would be well. This was fine – a letter from an architect is a lot cheaper than an official drawing. We procured said letter, and I went back again.

The same woman examined our materials again, and then said I’d need a drawing of just the straps holding the condenser in place. So we went and got that, and I returned a third time. Now I was informed that we needed to show liability insurance. I said, doesn’t our homeowner’s insurance cover that? And she made a call and confirmed that it certainly did, but there was something wrong with our drawing, so it had to be adjusted. So I had that taken care of, and went back, and the nice woman looked everything over and looked at me.

“We need to see a drawing of the roof with the condenser on it, showing load calculations,” she said.

I blinked. “The condenser weighs 150 pounds,” I said. “If our roof can’t hold it, we’ve got bigger problems.”

She gave me the patented city official Stare of Not Caring, and I went back to the architect to get said drawing, which he kindly threw in for no extra cost because I think the whole construction-related world was reading about me on the Internet and pulling for me. I think I was some sort of forum celebrity for a while there as kindly contractors from around the world said silent prayers that I not lose faith in The System.

“You need to show liability insurance, hon,” she said.

I stared at her. If you boiled down all my permit office experiences now into one conversation, it would go like this:

ME: Here’s my application.
THEM: You need huge, complicated, expensive architecture drawings.
ME: That’s ridiculous.
THEM: You’re right. How about a simple drawing of the straps?
ME: Here you go.
THEM: Great. You need liability insurance in case you destroy your neighbor’s house installing this.
ME: No I don’t. I’m the homeowner. My homeowner’s insurance covers everything, including the accidental molecular de-bonding of the house next door.
THEM: Right you are. These drawings are no good, we need to see the roof so we can be sure it can hold the weight of a normal human woman.
ME: Sweet jebus, here.
THEM: That’s great. Now if you could show us your liability insurance, we’d be in business.

It was like one of those phone polls when they ask you the same damn question sixteen times, phrased differently, to try and get a certain answer out of you.

So, we sent in our secret weapon: The Duchess herself. All tiny and girly, she went into the permit office the next day prepared to weep on demand, and damn if the gruff old guy in charge didn’t glance through her paperwork and grant her the permit almost immediately. This brings us to the central question of our times: Is Jeff a complete jackass, or is his wife The Duchess some sort of alien with super powers?

Most votes lean towards the former.

In the end, we got the work done and are now part of the landed gentry for reals. If anyone ever wants to come by in person for an autographed book, a hot meal, and several drunken rants* from Your Truly, you’ll have an air-conditioned couch to sleep on, now.

[*] Must bring own liquor supply.