The Epic Stoner Novel (A Journal of Life on the Mississippi)

Care to elaborate there, Charlie Brown?

 

i could

but those old rules dont apply any more and its none of my business anymore so ill just say good grief

 

(He knows we're schizophrenic!)

 

I first signed on to Hippy.com in 2002. Then I came to hip chat in 2005. I took to the forums slower because I was still in withdrawal from over a decade in the Life - Marijuana Debate chat room on AOL. It's still weird to me that only a few of those people ever ended up here. And then only for a few years.

As for the old rules, they're still around. Sorry to be so blatant, but I only do it in threads I have made. And I usually only do it when I'm VERY fucked up. Lately, that's been pretty often. Thanks to George!

 

I seriously need to come up with an end for this. But all I end up doing is writing more. I may even finish chapter 18 before the election. In this book, a guy like Trump would have been utterly ruined except for an armed compound and a 5 year supply of frozen Big Macs.

IF he thought that far ahead.

 

Thanks for the review, it's all I ever wanted from this book. It was an experiment as well as a gift to all of Hippy-kind, so using it to score a buck is not my style. I make a decent enough living writing corporate shit. My hope is that people will use bits of it in their works. I saw "so I grudge fucked her for being a bad slave" on another board, so some of it is getting around!

I've been considering another book. Maybe I'll ride the greedy gravy train with it.

 

Hey man... Just getting a little compensation would be nice and well earned. Nothing greedy about that.

I certainly applaud you giving it to the masses pro bono, multiple personalities in the thread notwithstanding.

 

It was my first attempt at stream of consciousness production. Applying that to corporate documentation isn't exactly possible except for speeches and training productions to a lesser degree. I posted the 4th or 5th edit from the original drafts. It used to have a lot of spankin-quality porn/smut in the pages. After all, prostitution is legal as is pot and gambling. With a global economic crash, particularly in the 70s, the infrastructure would fail quickly (today even faster). So I parsed back on the hardcore sex scenes and the heavy drugs.

To focus much on the crash or its causes seemed useless to the overall plot (though I played it loosely on Nixon's actions on the gold standard). I've read in the press that most working stiffs don't have enough put away to properly retire and will be living like cave dwellers on cat food and the light of candles unless they can swing a cool gig like Wal-Mart greeter or old dude who always seems to be at the back of the kitchen in restaurants.

What if all of that failed over the course of a single year? And a year is being generous with the speed of cascading failures. In reality the cascading lines of influence are not straight lines but an array of curves that you couldn't make with LSD and a Spirograph. They all spin into the same black hole; the collapse of the dollar and a return to the 19th century law enforcement style, but more importantly we'd likely return to bartering very quickly.

Sure, there'd likely be some transitional time where lawlessness is rampant and ultimately brought under control more by the citizenry than the local constabulary. But then, I don't trust nor depend upon oinkers. For now I'm going to try to figure out how to write a novel in less than 20 years!

 

I'm at a loss for how to go forward.

 

I have writer's block, without the panic (since I'm not getting paid).

 

I've gone back to the old school for getting over this block. I went to a used book store and picked up the Garbage 2.0 and No Doubt Tragic Kingdom CDs. These were the two I listened to constantly while I was writing this book. It got to where I barely noticed the music as the story came to life.

We'll see what happens. I have an idea for another kind of book.

 

Well, that didn't work. Maybe it will never end.

 

It's been a good read so far. A few boring parts due to excessive details. I keep wondering if anyone actually can tolerate this level of drug use without total organ failure, but my only experience is an occasional hit off a joint once in a while due to the fact that it's always obvious at a glance that I'm stoned, and hilariously so. Then I remember the title and i'm ok with it again. The guy is truly an epic stoner.

I hope you get back to it. It would be nice to see how things turn out.

 

Thanks, after 400 pages I realized that not having an ending is a real thing.

As for details, the book started out as a Y2K survival guide. But it was so boring overall I couldn't stand it and shifted to writing it as a story. Then I chose the 70s so I wouldn't be burdened with trying to guess how today's technology would be affected.

You're also reading the version that has all the porno removed/rewritten.

 

that's actually pretty smart writing! The way Hollywood does it, as far as I can surmise is like that. The future is probably a little harder; like "Back to the Future"...

 

Exactly. And they have beaten the "Post Nuclear Apocalypse" theme into the dirt many times over, so I was definitely not going down that road. Although it was well before they realized that Zombies were screen gold (I'm SO sick of Zombie plots).

I chose steam engines because they are so basic and can be powered with anything that burns. But I had no practical experience with them. You can only read so much. It took building one, and a boiler to get me over the technical parts. One I learned about early was pressure relief valves. If they get stuck, the boiler explodes. And destroys my shed (scaring the hell out of everyone in the house)!

It was this same line of study that made me realize guns are pretty simple to make, but still very dangerous.

 

agreed. One thing that I think could be relaxed some (and I hope this is the case with my Summer accounting course) is the amount of reading that is expected for college. In my mind, it's not a contest to see who has the best reading comprehension. It's more about job skills, but then I guess it's not exactly trade school... Whichever, I don't know!

 

Unless, of course, it's something the course professor wrote. Then you are in a contest!

 

I suppose you could put somewhat of an ending on it as a lead-in to the next book in the series, which you could start up anytime after the current timeline. That way, you can finish this edition and wait to see if another inspiration tickles you. It's also a simple way to avoid a more common type of ending.

 

All the porn removed...? Ok....if you say so. I sometimes wonder if some disaster would make women go nuts and super horny, or if they'd get super hypergamous and petty/vindictive. SHTF does the strangest things to people around this world. I don't think I'd trust anyone anywhere for any reason. Oh, wait....I'm already at that point, according to my brother....