S.G. Browne

Spent last weekend in Calgary at my first ever World Fantasy Convention.  First time I’d been in Canada since I went skiing in Vancouver with my family in 1973, the time I kicked my sister in the thigh while wearing ski boots.

I wasn’t a particularly pleasant child.

Now, nothing against Canada.  I enjoyed the convention and the weather was about as nice as you could want.  But I can think of more exotic places in the world to throw a convention in late October.

San Diego.  Miami.  Cabo San Lucas.

Of course, I guess warm or tropical climates aren’t exactly the best locations to keep your convention attendees at the actual convention. When it’s cold outside, writers tends to stay in the convention hotel, attend panels and readings and book signings, spend a lot of time at the bar, and then make bad relationship choices.

The best part about attending writing conventions is that everyone is on the same wavelength – writers, editors, agents, booksellers. Everyone’s tuned in to the same channel. Sharing the same communal passion. It’s kind of like being at Burning Man before all of the tourists start to show up.

I’ve always enjoyed hanging out in toy stores.

Not the toy stores in shopping malls or the stores that have educational toys and games that teach children about nature and the environment. Please.

No, I’m talking about the crack houses of toy stores. The ones bursting with the colors of an acid trip and stocked with syringes of over-indulgence. The ones filled with a variety of narcotics to feed the addictions of the future consumers of the world.

The Disney Store.
FAO Schwarz.
Toys “R” Us.

With six different locations in Manhattan alone, the Disney Store may be the most insidious of the three, and while FAO Schwarz has a definite edge in high-end temptation with its Fifth Avenue address, my favorite toy store for pure, unadulterated addiction is Toys “R” Us.

Located in Times Square, the flagship of Toys “R” Us is the place to get the mass-produced drugs, the crystal methamphetamine of toys made affordable to those children whose parents aren’t wealthy enough to shop at FAO Schwarz or who can’t afford to clothe their children in everything Disney. Sure, it has a sixty-foot-tall indoor Ferris wheel, a thirty-four-foot animatronic T-Rex from Jurassic Park, and a life-sized Candyland board game. But it remains accessible and affordable to the masses.

At Toys “R” Us you’ll find just about everything for the consumer-in-training.

Legos and action figures and collectible toys.
Hot Wheels and scooters and pedal cars.
MP3 players and video games and DVDs.

But the drug of choice at Toys “R” Us, the epitome of consumer addiction, is Barbie.

Standing two floors tall, Barbie’s Dollhouse is home to everything Barbie – her various personas, clothes, vehicles, homes, furniture, toys, friends, lovers, pets, and activities. It’s like the Emerald City, except it glows a bright, cornea-burning pink.

Up and down the seemingly endless streets of Barbie’s city, you’ll find all of the pursuits a twenty-first-century capitalistic plastic icon needs: a supermarket, a swimming pool, a roller rink, a volleyball court, a movie theater, a twenty-four-hour gym, a hair salon, a culinary school, a plastic surgery clinic, a yoga studio, a laser hair removal spa, and a gynecologist’s office.

And to make sure she’s never underdressed, Barbie owns over one hundred and twenty different outfits, so no matter where she goes, she’ll look stylish knowing she won’t have to wear any single outfit more than three times in a calendar year. And with a Kool-Aid stand and a bubble gum shop to hone her entrepreneurial skills, Barbie never has to worry about being able to afford her house, motor home, pool, hot tub, horse stable, or karaoke machine.

Okay, so I could fill this space with a weekly or bi-weekly account of my personal life.  Or I could fill it with amusing anecdotes about writing.  Or I could rant about how technology causes everyone to disconnect from themselves or how reality television destroys more brain cells than crystal methamphetamine or why it’s okay that alcohol and nicotine are acceptable addictive substances while marijuana is a gateway drug.

But I won’t.

Instead, I’m going to try to focus on mindless entertainment.  Well, hopefully not completely mindless, but as with my fiction, my intention is to amuse myself and those who read it.  If not, I’m going to have a real short career.

So in this blog, I hope to entertain.  To amuse.  To inspire the occasional laugh.  Maybe even cause an orgasm or two.  Preferably in someone else.  But sometimes, you just have to settle for self-gratification.

Um, Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m still a virgin.

Eleven days since my last blog entry.

Who has time to write?

I’m preparing to attend the World Horror Convention., which people who aren’t in the horror community hear as the World Whore Convention.  I mean, come on.  It’s Salt Lake City.  Not Las Vegas.

But with all the preparation and the fact that I have to hold down a regular job and create a web presence on MySpace and FaceBook and put together a web site specifically tailored for Breathers, I haven’t had time to even think about writing, let alone put pen to paper.

And yes, when I’m mobile, I still prefer to write longhand.  I’m old school that way.  Makes me feel more connected to the writing process.  I obviously use a computer to do the significant portion of my writing, and I can’t exactly blog by hand, but I will continue to eschew laptops for as long as possible.  Which, I realize, may not be that much longer.

Modern technology, in general, I tend to eschew.  I have no TiVo.  No HDTV.  No Blue Ray.  I don’t even have full cable.  Just the basic limited, but I still get the Sci-Fi channel and TV Land, so I can watch Eureka and reruns of The X-Files and MASH.

I don’t have a PDA or a Blackberry or access to my e-mail via my cell phone.  I don’t even own a microwave.  But I do have an iPod shuffle, which I just realized I forgot to pack.

Okay.  I’m off to Salt Lake City to network and schmooze and read my entry into the Gross Out Contest, which is about a zombie gigolo and his unemblamed clients.  If you ask me, there’s nothing more romantic than two decaying zombies having maggot-infested sex.

Or maybe that’s just me.