DREAD Reviews 3
An issue of Dad Reads and Examines Authors while Distracted
DREAD 1 DREAD 2 DREAD 3 DREAD 4 DREAD 5
25 years of methamphetamines and several professionally-earned concussions have taken their toll. I can’t speak poetry anymore. I’m not worried, though, because I’m sure if I keep hitting pills and soccer balls with my head I’ll eventually hit stack overflow. At that very moment, I’ll achieve godlike fluency in beautiful prose (if my math is correct, exactly 256 blows to the head should do this for my 1 bit brain).
Until the above happens, we turn to gentlemen like Graeme Mcallister, who aptly describes my memory of the first three hours this morning as chipped gems - incomplete, poorly cut fragments which I value nonetheless. Watch him scrawl all over the page using a cool highlighter glowing with meaning:
Feeling down? Why not reframe your life experience as the clever pilot of a highly advanced biotechnical mech suit? This poem is best read while heavy metal pounds your eardrums:
I love our furry companions as much as any decent human being does (note I don’t claim to be a decent human being). However, I despise the endless tide of pet stories I'm exposed to on substack. Sometimes the only way to survive is to adapt. So think: how can I turn tales of demotivating cats into something good? Replace the word “cat/dog/rabbit” with “husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend” and Substack becomes a much more fascinating place:
Read this charming fairy tale one night to educate your children through metaphor about friendship with inanimate objects, the horrifying might of the cosmos, and the transient nature of their fleeting little lives:
I ring you this awesome story about a manned voyage into an icy gas giant. In a rotation of history’s space race, this time it’s the Americans cutting coronas in an attempt to eclipse the commies, planet-ing their astronaut in quite a Jupiter-dizing situation. Things go well at first, but Saturn-ly, they take a turn for worse. Don’t sit on Uranus gassing what happens next, take a Gandermede through the telescope yourself (and imagine the astronaut’s voice getting higher and higher pitched as helium leaks into the cockpit):
If you’re an 80’s baby like me, at some point in your life mom warned you that watching too much TV would melt your brain. Why didn’t you listen? I bet you’re sorry, ‘cause now look at you - your sibling is dead, mysterious misery-profiteers have chased you into the forest to live like a hick, and Majika has wilted your ability to maintain a hard-on. Maybe TOFU can save us:
Why primates of a feather scale together, how the threat of murder instills a sense of belonging, and why you don’t ever let your daughter 10 yards out of your sight. All these wise teachings are to be found in this heartwarming tale about the jungle patriarchy:
Ever wonder what happens to the rest of the seamen when a winner claims the egg? “Cthulhu shit, obviously” you answer quickly - wow, you’re beautiful and smart! At least one of our seamen doesn’t instantly go mad after losing, not yet, and he wants out. Can he escape this cursed birth canal? And even if he could, what then? You’ll just have to read on:
I’m about to prove that a male reader can comprehend romance. Okay, are you ready? Here I go: A booby princess sheds suitors like a snake sheds skin. But one friendzoned snake just can’t shed this girl - he’s coldblooded and she’s just the right kind of hot. After dancing at a party wearing a dress that makes dad cry (literally), boobies kisses a stinky mutton-man for fun. Mutton-man gets the wrong idea and escalates things. Thankfully, our friendzoned snake is there to bite mutton right in the butt - wait, never mind that, let’s talk about McHandsome, you see he just came to save the day, but unlike snake he did it while being hot. Judging by his good manners, he’s clearly not into floozies... or is he? Friendzoned snake is the one guarding boobies for yet another night of unrequited desire. First thing boobies does the next morning? Dance and cheer with the handmaid to celebrate McHandsome’s still in town, of course - maybe he’ll suit us after all! Sorry snake boy. See? Nailed it:
(again, I make my own rules)
Fungus flesh. Grey synthetic hardener. Thick and syrupy, reeks like dried puke. Oily Bricks. Greasy Pizzas. Muck. Slop, brown and fatty. Muddy ooze. Death Pizzas. Shitty attitude, smells like death. Wicked halitosis. Protein sludge. Caroline Barnard-Smith is a machine gun of delightful concepts, what more could you possibly want:
Bjorn Altman is a 12-year-old girl and he could kick your ass. Fortunately for you, he wrote this book instead:
I feature a beard of mixed brown, gray, red, and blonde. But in most lighting my largely blonde mustache blends into my tanned-outdoorsman skin tone very much like scurrilous rebel musket men sneaking through a wheat field. The steady spread of aging gray hair has done nothing to strengthen my upper lip’s mutable impermanence. Call it a secret ‘stache, if you will:
You live in the Middle East. Your daughter is a hottie. Your city has been conquered by ISIS and you don’t see eye-to-eye with the new head honcho. Now you want to cross a border into a hostile nation with the second-largest army in all of NATO. Also, you’re a former terrorist/freedom fighter and your face might have once graced the foldout laminated wristbands of US Marines a few years back. If this isn’t enough of a warning that maybe you should have stayed in bed this morning, the sun decided to rise red today, and not just any red, but a hibiscus red of doom:
I’m a sci-fi, military, space opera lover at heart, so it’s a testament to the skill and talent of the Substack crowd that my first two DREADs chose fantasy and… whatever you call Pat Johnson’s absurd scribbles for my arbitrary and perhaps meaningless top spot (which of course comes at the bottom). But this time I’m surrendering to my personal bias and touting James Kenwood’s Accidental Nightmares as my Favorite Thing I Read (TM) the past few days. He blew it out of the park, so go read it!
Once again, aliens prove their ignorance and inferiority to mankind despite how advanced they may think they are. Our race has no patience for xeno-hippie mind-merge communism - do they never learn? Where’s the evolutionary benefit in peaceful harmony? Continued existence is simple - make war to open trade, and make trade to be stronger for war. War and trade, my friends, war and trade, the symbiosis of a successful galaxy-conquering species. Watch out space hippies, you done pissed us off again:
Since currently DREAD is getting published more than once a week, I don’t have a new short of my own story to promote this issue. So if you’ve missed it, please take a look at By Angels Born. What would happen to motherless immortal machine people who never got the birds and the bees talk? Mad scientists engaged in lunatic bedside experiments, of course. One of them caught a techno-magical glimpse of the future:
I’ve gotten so involved here on substack I forgot I’m also a soccer referee. The season is starting back up and there’s a permanent shortage of athletic 40-somethings who can simultaneously count to 90 minutes and chase 6-foot-tall children. This means I might have less time for writing in the short term, but fear not, the product may slow, but as long as I survive, it will never stop.
Maybe I’ll brainstorm literature in my head when I really should have been keeping an eye on the violent conduct.
Thanks for reading!
DREAD 1 DREAD 2 DREAD 3 DREAD 4 DREAD 5
Finally, someone gets me!
Given your inclination for 'male metaphors' I'm both flattered and concerned about your interest in my 'highlighter pen'...