For those that don’t understand the subject line, it’s from my radio interview on the Funky Werepig last weekend*. If you didn’t listen and never get around to it, you won’t get the joke. It’s an in-jokes of sorts, much like many of the one-liners I bring home from conventions, and similar to many of the tweets and other postings the Breakfast Club tosses online. Some in-jokes spread with explanation, from circle to circle, making their way around the net. Others stay within the group that created it (aaand drip!). Some are for public consumption. Some are not up for discussion. They are not ever a bad thing…

And every group has them.

Soooo… because it’s that time of the week, albeit late, let’s have some coffee and share an inside giggle. Yep, it’s coffee talk! What’s your best in-joke one-liner? It doesn’t matter if we get it, it only matters that you have them. That they make you smile. That they are memories of a time when everyone laughed or cried or pointed and gasped. They are what Free Magic Show and Jello and a plethora of other things were turned into… and they are better than a picture, because you can revisit in a single tweet and share the love without twitpic on your damn phone! I.E. Shut your whore mouth, the men are talking!

Over the years I have gathered many, and there are too many to choose a favorite… hell, we’ve even been known to warp one into another (aaaand yip!). Some were the moment, some were the response, and some were taken completely out of context. For the purpose of this, we’ll go with that last one for my answer and pull from the podcast: “Your winky made me cry.” I really should make a tshirt for Greg with that on it and put the fine print on the back, but it’s much more fun to just say it and make people wonder what the hell we’re giggling at!! So? What’s one of your in-joke one-liners?

*Note: There is still one prize left from the 3 given out during my interview. If you listen to the podcast and guess the questions properly, you could win a signed New Dawn—which was not only an exclusive chapbook for the Brian Keene message board only (last Christmas) and includes stories from me, Bob Ford, Nate Southard, Maurice Broaddus and both an intro and flash fiction piece from Brian Keene, but it could come with up to three signatures (because the other two are too far away).

“You can’t pick your family” is a bullshit line. Sure, maybe you can’t choose your biological family—you can’t do anything about that aunt that no one wants to invite or that uncle that no one admits being related to—but there is “some” family you can choose… and when you’re upset, depressed, crushed, disappointed, crying, screaming or just plain needy, that family comes to the rescue.

That family will gather on a whim’s notice. That family will hop planes—or throw you on one. They will dry your tears. They will validate your worries or anger. They will hold you and heal you. And then they will then make you laugh until you snort. Sometimes you go to them. Sometimes they come to you. And sometimes you just find an awesome porch (or in the summer, a pool, hot tub & kegerator). Family is what “those” friends become. And family is what makes a porch awesome.

What’s your favorite thing about awesome porch?

“Relaxed atmosphere, being myself and Anubis, god of death”

“I can laugh freely. Loudly. Where I can hear it reverberating off houses… but not past 11 pm on weeknights!”

“Comradarie… PJs and stripey socks”

“I like being on the edge of the world next to the alien lesbian cows.”

“The people on it.”

“We flirt with them shamelessly and they wait on us hand and foot.”

“Snuggles.”

“Shared laughter”

“Rolling stops!”

“Freezing my feet off getting stripey toenails…it’s worth it.”

“First rule of awesome porch: don’t ask if they want a chair!”

The porch, the pool, the curb at a con… location, location, location actually means nothing in this instance. It’s the people. The memories. The new in-jokes and old favorites. Whether you’re pushing someone down a hill or holding that hug until your arms go numb, in the end it’s one thing: the healing properties. Funny thing about this family—we’re all broken in some way. (No, take that back, we’re cracked. Cracks are fixable, breaks are more permanent.) And we all band-aid each other without trying, whether we realize we need it or not.

This weekend was full of the fun. Awesome porch had plenty of company, needy cat was abused, and Babs was blocked. There was a signing and dinner and drinks and giggles. And a cracke family member or two that needed patching. The party is byob. The dinner checks are usually separate. The emergency plane ticket was $5. But the band-aids? Those are free. And the healing process… priceless.

Yep, I twittered it a few weekends ago, and I’ve mentioned it before that. It’s time to let everyone in on the game (oh, speaking of, for those in the know… I just lost the game), the insanity that is my parents, and explain some of my own craziness at the same time by pointing at them and proclaiming, “See? They’re not normal… why the hell should I be?!”

The Feeb Count came about after my dad proclaimed someone a feeb. And as is the nature of our family, he then defined it, gave them categories, and provided more details than any normal human would. I heart my dad. “It was a game that has become tradition.”

A “feeb” is a noun defined by a question: “Why would someone, when given a choice, choose to present themselves this way in public.” The “count” portion is my parents’ weekly (Sunday) trip to the grocery store. If I’m at their house, I get told what they saw/found. If I’m not, I get an email. It’s a fun game… with rules and guidelines and silliness.

There is “feeb sign” outside the store, warning you that they’re present: overturned carts with hats on them, upside down bottles of beer balancing on things. Inside “feeb sign” includes frozen foods put in the cereal isle, open cologne (my parents call him Axe Man, as he’d gone down the row and tried on every version of Axe on the shelf… and then you could smell him 2 isles away for the rest of the trip. The girl at the counter laughed at them, “you wouldn’t believe how often that happens!”), etc.

Now, we’re not cruel. We’re not talking about old age or disabilities here. We’re talking about that woman with the bright red lipstick and her pajamas on, because she won’t leave the house without her makeup, but will go braless. We’re talking about the guy that should have found his way home drunk last night, but is instead sitting outside the grocery store, shirtless and looking confused.

My dad loves to share his feeb finds. Poor Bob was held captive for at least an hour as dad told him some of the great feebs of this century. Classic feebs that my father shares with people include such treasures as The Feeb Brothers. “I’m not sure whether they are artists or just drunk, cross-dressers or just confused. They all come on the bus together, sit outside for a while, go in and buy a few things, sit outside for a while longer. One wears a skirt over his jeans and a shawl in his hair. The second wears a beret and dresses to accentuate it. The third is the most normal in clothing and his headgear varies. They’re very aggressive with the check out girls. Their speech is slurred. They are in their 40s.” To which my mother injects, “You probably went to school with them… and I’m sure it’s a drug induced thing.” Dad’s response, “Artsy morons… like an oxymoron but not.” Of course, he has nothing against artists, but seems to think that these guys want to personify the art culture but don’t have a clue beyond the beret.

Mom giggles, “I like the guy that was huge. I was waiting for your dad, and here’s this huge overweight guy, walking from his car to the store, maybe 20 yards, and he can barely do it because he’s overweight. And none of this has anything to do with it, it’s that he was wearing a t-shirt that says carpe diem.”

Dad interjects, “Or the overweight woman that wore the skirt… Her lower legs were great, but the skirt was just short enough to reveal hanging cellulite. It was a choice. That’s the feeb, they choose to wear these things, to present themselves this way.”

In short, the feeb count is nothing more than a version of “flaptacular” (quick, Joe… pose!) outside of a convention setting (well, and many of the other things in the HFW Dictionary that year). And my parents, who have never been to a con, play the eye-bleach game like pros!

I told them they should have a website where people can post their feeb count for the week. Like a “texts from last night” kind of thing. Instead, we’ll just turn it into a coffee talk. OH! You sooo didn’t see that coming, did you? So what’s the best “feeb” you’ve ever seen? And no, the group that understood the term “flaptacular” is not allowed to cite that example, give us something fresh, someone new. What’s the worst case of “oh damn, why you leave the house looking like that?!” that you’ve witnessed? Regale us and we’ll all giggle together…

*fine print: Yes, I’m picking on humans. No, I’m not apologizing for it. If you go in public looking like that, we will point and laugh… hell, I come from a family that points, laughs and takes pictures before calling 911 when one of our own does something stupid—as proven by the SEAR PORTRAITS of me with two black eyes when I was three!!!

No deep thought blog or pissy spew this week, too busy polishing a story that’s already a week late (yes, I learned my deadline techniques from Brian). Instead I leave you with two things…

First, I will be on the Funky Werepig next Sunday night, without pants (as it seems the standard for the show) and you should all log in and listen. I will be randomly giving away prizes and can guarantee there will be snark and silliness. Join me at 9pm Eastern time!!

Secondly, Shroud Magazine posted a review for Burning Effigy’s Fresh Blood a while back, and I totally forgot to post the draft blog!  They had this to say about my contribution to the inaugural release of a [hopefully] annual showcasing of three horror up-and-comers:

“Left Dead”, by Kelli Dunlap, (whose first novel is forthcoming from Morning Star Press), is a hard-bitten tale of a mother seeking revenge for her daughter’s abuse. In an uncompromising, terse narrative, Dunlap characterizes well the maternal rage of a mother striking back at the man who destroyed her daughter’s innocence. In many ways, the hook at the end is expected – but that doesn’t diminish the story, by any means. In fact, it’s a twist that readers will suspect but dread all the same, giving the story that much more punch.

Now doesn’t that just make you want to buy one? They’ve already burned through the first print run [in a record 8 days], and I say we make their printer do it again! If you don’t have one, hop over and get one. If you do, grab an extra… after all, Christmas is coming and you can always use it as a gift for that hard-to-find-something-for person on your list.

And remember… Sunday, Funky Werepig, no pants.

…but it’s for a good cause. If you enjoy this story, or any of the other stories for Brian Keene Must Die Day! please consider making a small donation to The Shirley Jackson Awards.

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Brian Keene Must Die

Do this. Do that. Do this. Do that. I was so sick of hearing what I should and shouldn’t do. What I had done wrong and how I could only hope to fix it. I had wanted a mentor. A big brother. Someone to look out for my mistakes before I made them. Someone I could watch and learn from. I didn’t want a menopausal mother-hen.

“It’s okay, but the dialogue could be better,” was at least better than, “Nope, it sucks. Start over.” But the real sting of his rude, two sentence email replies, had always been the fact that he’d been too busy to get around to reading anything for six months. That is, if he read them at all, rather than just claiming Big Joe must have “lost the email.”

He took me under wing, he said. He was going to point me in the right direction, he said. He lied to me! All he did was bitch and complain and use me when it suited him. The day that he told me I couldn’t talk to Nicky anymore hurt. Nicky was famous. Nicky was making something of himself. And here Brian was, telling me I wasn’t allowed to be friends with him anymore. After Nicky, he tried to ban Eric and Paul from my life, citing one as crazy and the other as doing it all wrong. How would he know? He wasn’t part of our late night chats and Sunday afternoon writer’s meetings. When I tried to fight for my right to self-publish whatever I wanted, he yelled into the phone, “Sweet jumping fuck, I need snack cakes. Call me back when you’re ready to listen.”

The final straw came when he cut me out. He told me I needed to work on my own work rather than proofing his. I needed to “hone my craft”. Who says that? Really?! And he brushed me off. Left me at the curb. Alone. And went on about his merry career without another thought. He stopped answering my emails. He stopped calling. He stopped… He stopped being there when I needed.

Oh no, he had a new pet. A new writer to push along. Even worse, he called the new one a protégé. He’d never called me that! I was before this one, damn it. I was first. I was a fan and a marketer, a proofer and a bouncing board. I was important, and he just cut me out. He left me for dead.

Well, who’s dead now? That’s right. He thought it was a little get-together. He thought we were friends just hanging out. But I had gathered all the other up-and-comers he had painted stars into the imaginations of, and we took care of our little problem. We took care of Brian “Fucking” Keene.

And now our zombies will rule the message boards and small press. Now our work will be printed in various mags and multiple countries. Now it’s our turn.

Because if you want to succeed, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty. Mine are filthy. I did it. I admit it. But he promised the world and then yanked it away with a smile that smelled of stale cigars and Knob Creek.

“That motherfucker!” The cop shook his head as I finished telling him what had happened. To my surprise, and relief, he kicked the body on the ground in front of me to punctuate his irritation, rather than handcuffing me. The body that lay open, white ropey things falling from its middle and dozens of red pens penetrating the face and neck.

I still don’t know how they found out so quickly. Maybe it was the twittering and drunk dialing we were doing beforehand. Maybe it was the neighbor pissed off at our laughter again. But the flashing lights invaded my living room windows before I had even finished wiping the blood from my hands. I had no time to come up with a decent excuse. No chance to formulate an amazing tale of accidental actions or defensive reactions. I had no choice but to tell the truth. And the truth set me free.

Now then, who else has pissed me off in this genre?