What I Didn't See at The Pub.

After I released my last book, I realized the biggest problem with being an author in the digital age.  Unlike our visual artist friends, authors can't really do commissions or live videos of our work, nor can we release sketches or visually-enticing previews of our projects.  We tend to have a launch party somewhere, schlep paperbacks at book fairs and comic cons, then disappear for two years - out of sight, out of mind.

So I made some big decisions for my next project.  First, I decided that in order to keep my work in people's minds rather than vanish for two years at a time, I'd serialize the next novel.  Every month, and always at the end of the month because I'm a serial procrastinator already holding down two jobs that total 90+ hours a week, I'd put a new chapter of the book online for people to read.  Would anyone read?  Would anyone buy a copy when it releases?  Only one way to find out.

Second, to encourage people to read, I figured I'd force decisions on my characters throughout the novel and let readers vote on what they should do next.  It makes it tremendously difficult for me to shape a novel as it goes, but like Frank Strang I'm nothing if not a relentlessly self-improving workaholic.  Third, in order to stay in the public eye during the process of drumming out a 100,000-word screenplay rather than emerge at the end like Howard Hughes wearing tissue boxes on my feet and 18-inch fingernails, I'd hold a monthly meet-up where anyone who wanted would show up to eat, drink and discuss how the book is going and whatever else came into our heads.

The obvious choice of venue was The Ashburn Pub in Ashburn, Virginia.  Local entrepreneur Kevin Bednarz and his wife Jenn have always been good to me, my wife, our kids and the northern Virginia geek community, as has the staff and management of nearby comic shop Comic Logic, in which Kevin also has a stake.  So late last June I launched the first chapter of my zombie novel Dead Passage with a standing invitation on the first Tuesday of every month at 6:30 p.m. for anyone who wants to come to The Pub to spend time with me and the gracious souls who take the time to read it.  In the nine months since, we've laughed, we've cried, we've given away t-shirts and CDs and food and shots and build a strong little group of friends and fans.

Then the novel coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, made its way to the United States and essentially ground daily life to a halt.  Schools got canceled, non-essential businesses shuttered, bars and restaurants went from fully open to limited capacity to carryout and delivery only, consumers hoarded paper and hygiene products for personal use or resale, hate crimes against Asian-Americans skyrocketed, John Prine died - to quote John Terry's Lieutenant Lockhart in Full Metal Jacket, "It's a big shit sandwich and we're all gonna have to take a bite."

Unsurprisingly, like many small businesses and independently-owned restaurants, The Ashburn Pub (and its sister location in Purcellville, the aptly-named Purcellville Pub) reacted accordingly.  Doing its best to roll with the punches and keep its staff employed and paid, The Pubs have taken to offering carryout options - recently they even adapted and added larger/family meals to their carryout menu on Saturday nights.

Tuesday, April 7, we would've had our 10th Dead Passage meetup at The Pub.  Instead, I decided to host a virtual Facebook watch party of the 1968 George Romero classic Night of the Living Dead and tell everyone to call ahead for Pub takeout beforehand, making it the closest we could come to a traditional hangout.  I called in for a pound of wings and a club sandwich for myself, a salmon and mixed greens salad for my wife, and an order of fish and chips and an order of popcorn chicken for my daughter and son, respectively.

Over the years I've gotten to know the Pub staff pretty well - one of their bartenders even served as a dialogue coach for my last book - so I couldn't help but feel a bit of trepidation on the drive over.  All businesses are hurting right now; who would be holding down the fort?  What would the mood be like?  How heavy would COVID-19 hang in the air?  Would the tension of disease and the unending litany of bad news have an effect on The Pub that was visible or palpable?  How deflated would my favorite watering hole look?

On my walk into The Pub from the parking lot, an elderly Scotsman emerged from the H&R Block next door - he looked like a thinner version of Jerry's dad on Seinfeld - and exclaimed "Gah!  Why did God send us women?"  The only answer I could conjure on the spot was "To make life both rewarding and perplexing in terrific and equal amounts."  Satisfied, he continued on to his car for whatever paperwork or item his tax adjuster had requested of him and I went inside the propped open door to The Pub to get my order, and here's what I didn't see.

I didn't see any of the gloom or uncertainty that seemed to hover in the clouds over the world the last month or so.  Missing was the anxiety and fear of other people that showed itself in the eyes of every patron at the grocery store.  Unlike the brave folks facing the public from behind supermarket conveyor belt registers and counters lined with cash machines at megastores, the brave folks facing the public from behind the bar and the grill at The Pub didn't look overworked, yelled at, uncared for or taken for granted.  Chalk it up to management, ownership, kinder customers, whatever you like - Robin, Shelbie and Smoochie were in good enough spirits (no pun intended) so as to be contagious (seriously, no pun intended).

Sure, on the other hand, another thing I didn't see were a lot of customers there.  Like me, there were one or two folks at the opposite end of the bar waiting for their food.  But of course you have to take the law and public health and safety into account for that.  I don't think a single business in the state is running like usual right now - all have either been shuttered completely or mandated to run in a limited capacity.  But that brings me to the most important part.

I didn't see anything diminished, suffering, or lesser in The Pub since the onset of coronavirus.  The staff, their rapport with the customers, my food, the service - everything was intact.  Robin rang me up and was in just as good a mood as always, Smoochie was laughing with a patron and Shelbie was busy as usual.  What I didn't see at The Pub was any indication that the culture that's been building there since 1995 was coming to an end or any permanent form of change.  Everyone's favorite bar or restaurant is an oasis from work, stress, whatever affronts them throughout their day and I can say that at least one place in Ashburn is going to persevere through this life-changing pandemic.

It's not just comfort food.  It's a full range of creature comforts that shouldn't - can't - be overlooked.

Will Work for Money.

Since entering the workforce at 16, I've become increasingly aware of certain aspects of corporate accounting departments and the people between them and employees.  I'd like to talk about that today.  Stick through the complaints; there's a point at the end.

I got hired at an Atlanta suburb branch of a major video rental chain in 1999.  I filed my paperwork, got my uniform and exhibited an almost preternatural ability for alphabetizing VHS's and DVD's.  Three weeks into my job, I asked where my paycheck was.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll ask accounting."

Two weeks after that, I asked where my paycheck was.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll ask accounting."

A week after that, I asked where my paycheck was for the third time.

"I forgot to tell you, accounting says we can't pay you until we have a scan of your driver's license."

In Georgia, any underage driver was automatically added as a driver to his or her parents' car insurance.  For white males under 25, that came at the average sum of $250 a month and in the 1990s, working part-time after school for $6 an hour would rapidly devolve into me working just to afford car insurance, so I hadn't bothered to take my driver's test.  After haggling with corporate on the phone, I talked them down to accepting a state-issued photo ID.  I told my boss this, and he decided it was a good enough reason to close the store down in the middle of the day and buy me lunch at a fast food place, talk about being in a gang when he was younger and then hang out with me in the DMV, all of which while we both stayed on the clock.

I've never looked happier in a photo.  It's a bigger grin than I'm wearing in my wedding pictures.

My first paycheck from the video rental store came in seven weeks after I started, which was about a week after we went to the DMV.

At 24 I scored my first management position at a Richmond-based location of a prominent video game retailer.  I filed my paperwork and my boss gave me an off-brand debit card.

"When you get paid, it'll just go on here," he said.  "Call this number to activate it, they'll give you a PIN number and you can just go to ATMs and withdraw cash.  If you really need to have your money go into a bank account for some reason, you can set up direct deposit after your first two pay cycles."

Immediately my mind jumped to ATM fees.  I thought about the almost-complete lack of places that would accept payment from a card that wasn't sponsored by a major brand.  I wondered how, since ATMs only allow for withdrawals of money in $10 to $20 increments, I'd ever get access to the remaining money in my account.  "If my check is for $438.17, how do I get that $8.17?" I asked, staring at the spinach green debit card.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll ask accounting."

Further concern mounted when the card itself had a zero balance after my first two weeks of work.

Even further concern mounted when the card itself had a zero balance after my first three weeks of work.

I asked my store manager and my district manager once per week about being paid for the job.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll ask accounting." 

In the middle of working my sixth week without pay, I put them both on a conference call and gave them an ultimatum for which I was never forgiven.

This particular company required a manager to be in the store at all times.  I and my store manager were the only managers working there at the time due to his penchant for throwing things and threatening to hit his staff - and HR's refusal to take action against it.  We all knew, though none of us mentioned, that if I quit, he would have to work double shifts seven days a week until they found a replacement for me.  The overtime alone would cost the company a fortune if he didn't just have a nervous breakdown and shutter the doors, leading to fines from the mall and immeasurable loss of business.

"I'm not working for free anymore," I said.  "I've found and filled out the direct deposit forms for my personal checking account and since it's technically been two pay cycles since I started, I'm faxing them in to accounting today.  If my five weeks of back pay aren't in my personal checking account by the end of the week, I'm leaving my keys on the counter after I close Sunday and not coming back."

I faxed the paperwork in 30 seconds after we hung up and every penny I was owed was deposited that afternoon.

In 2012, six years after graduating with my BA in journalism and fast on the heels of turning 30, I scored my first freelance gig writing for one of the biggest video game journalism websites in the country.  I sold them my first article for $100 and a check was sent to me a few weeks later.  I sold them my second article around the time I got my first check and delivered the copy and my invoice (this time for $200) 12 hours after accepting the assignment.

Three weeks after submitting my invoice, I followed up with my point of contact - my editor - regarding my paycheck, which in the grand scheme of things is not a large amount of money.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll ask accounting."

Another week passed and I followed up again.  I didn't hear back so I followed up a third time and he didn't write me back again.  This time I decided to employ a different tactic than the video rental store and the video game retailer.

After the first month passed with no pay, I went to the video game website's corporate page and found out who my editor's direct superior was and emailed them describing the situation.  I was assured that he would ask accounting, but when I didn't hear from my editor's superior after three days, I wrote him again to follow up.  Again, I got no reply.  A week after contacting my editor's superior, I revisited the corporate website and found his superior's name and email address.  I emailed this new contact describing the situation and I was assured that they would ask accounting.  Three days after this, I wrote back again and asked for more information.

It became a pattern.  I emailed someone on Monday explaining my lack of pay and was assured almost immediately that the accounting department would be made aware of my situation.  Later in the week, having not heard back, I wrote again.  The following Monday I escalated the situation to the previous contact's superior.

It took three months and over 40 emails before I reached the CEO.  With no higher person to complain to, I explained to him the situation and forwarded him the names and email addresses of every person I'd spoken with since submitting my article and the invoice for it.  I also forwarded to him every chain of emails I had sent since that time.

My paycheck was overnighted to me from across the country the next day.  I burned every bridge I had at that company, including work references for future employment at other places, because higher-up employees than myself and the accounting department couldn't be bothered to write me a check for $200.  If you averaged it out, I earned that check at about $15 per week.

Now, first off, consider this.  These three are just the examples I've chosen to write about.  I have a half-dozen other examples from a half-dozen other jobs from my younger days, all exhibiting nearly identical patterns.  Smoothie shops, coffee shops, other retailers, restaurants - you name it, I've been told accounting would be contacted.  It's also happened on the other end, when I've commissioned people for work and only had it delivered after escalating my complaints to the point of publicly embarrassing them.

Second, by the time I invoiced my second article for the gaming website, I'd noticed a common thread through all these experiences.  In all of them, my initial complaining and moaning was brushed off.  It took last resorts of either threatening, embarrassing, or accusing companies of illegalities in order for them to pay an employee for work he had already performed and for which he was already owed compensation.  And when said employee finally raised enough of a stink to talk himself out of a job or future jobs with the company and get the payment process moving, they were fully capable of processing and delivering that payment within a 36-hour period.  Not six weeks, not three and a half months, but in a little over one working day.

Third, and most importantly, I'm no anomaly.  This happens to people all the time.  Forget about me, now; I'm only vouching for the truth of this story because I lived it.  The bigger concern is that it's happening right now, likely to someone you know, who said they can't go out to the bar this Friday because they just want to stay in but in reality has $3 in their bank account - not due to fiscal irresponsibility, but because someone never checked with accounting.  Or because accounting hasn't bothered to print that check.  And often they haven't bothered printing the check because they know if you're willing to chase a $200 check for three months you can't afford to take a multimillion-dollar business to court.

Finally, when you're 16 and living with your parents, going a few weeks without a part-timer's paycheck is not the end of the world.  When you're a parent in your 30s with a car payment, rent due, insurance bills, an empty fridge, an emptier medicine cabinet and work functions to attend, it's a very, very different situation.  With a full adult set of responsibilities, a paycheck that arrives late by even one week can result in hundreds of dollars in late fees and penalties accrued by unsympathetic banks, credit card companies, doctors, car dealerships and apartment complexes.

I don't believe there's a grand conspiracy between employers who withhold paychecks and companies who charge late fees for recurring payments not made on time.  But they certainly do seem to perpetuate predatory business practices like payday lenders and line the pockets of credit card companies.

Check up on your friends, pay your employees and deliver for clients in a timely fashion.  Life's hard enough as it is; we should be making one another's days better, not worse.

Prythi.

This year I want to talk about a question that arises on social media so often it finally came to fruition.

"Why isn't there a Straight Pride Parade?"

With no insult intended, the call for a Straight Pride Parade ultimately stems from a misunderstanding of the word "pride" itself as it pertains to the Pride movement that brings attention to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer(ing) people, abbreviated as LGBTQ.  Let's take a look at the word "pride" for a potential solution of this communication problem.

A quick visit to dictionary.com shows us that the first definition of the word "pride" is "a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc."

I think this first definition is what many English speakers attach to the Pride movement.  And that's completely understandable - it is, after all, not only a common definition of the word in society but the first definition listed in the dictionary entry.  This first definition of the word "pride" is roughly interchangeable with arrogance, pompousness, a sense of superiority and so on.

Further, every human on this planet, myself included, falls prey to a sort of mental defense mechanism called confirmation bias.  With confirmation bias, when we have a belief about one thing (e.g. "Apples are delicious,") our brains tend to back that belief up whenever we see evidence of it ("Look!  That guy's eating an apple!  See, apples rock!") and ignore evidence to the contrary ("Why are apple sales down?  Those apple haters don't know shit!").

But before going too far down the psychology rabbit hole, let's get back to English.  The second definition of pride is "the state or feeling of being proud."  This is, by and large, a useless definition intended only to display the link between two types of a word - in this instance, a noun and an adjective.  So let's look at the third definition.  "A becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one's position or character; self-respect; self-esteem."  This is really interesting, semantically.  "Due" means "rightfully owed," not "given by handout."  The rent is due because you've been living in this apartment for a month and you owe me money for providing that for you.  Myself or my character is rightfully owed something.  Please keep that in mind as it will come up again soon.

The fourth and final definition of pride I want to look may tell us the most about this misunderstanding.  "The pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself, e.g. civic pride."  We take pride in an honest day's work, in raising good children, in helping someone with no expect of reward in return.  We can walk with our heads held high based on the merits of our actions, especially in overcoming a particular challenge.  In fact, the word "pride" comes from the Viking word "prythi," meaning "bravery or courage."

Now let's apply what we know to the Pride movement and the Straight Pride Parade.

The Pride movement isn't related to the first definition of the word.  It isn't a pompous "looking down one's nose" at the "inferior masses" of straight people.  It isn't an arrogance or superiority complex about being gay.  If you attach the connotations of the first definition of pride to the Pride movement, that's ultimately your responsibility and the onus is on you to unlearn that so you can make an informed opinion.  No, it's not the best/clearest slogan out there, but neither are buffalo wings and we managed to sort that shit out.  Maybe your kid or best friend or sibling is LGBTQ and maybe they mean more to you than a basket of hot wings and deserve for you to parse through fact and fiction.

Instead, maybe the best definition of pride as it pertains to the Pride movement is a combination of the third definition, which equates with self-esteem and what one is justly owed by the world, and the fourth definition, which outlines a quiet sense of accomplishment for what one is or does.  I believe we're entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which I read in this paper written by this guy.  Seemed pretty important.  I also believe we're entitled to a basic modicum of common courtesy, which a lot of us take for granted.  I believe the Pride movement is stating the LGBTQ community's pride in standing up for their right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and basic human decency.  That right has long been denied them or tried to be taken from them.

Without getting too political, consider this for a minute.  We hold Supreme Court hearings to decide whether or not two consenting adults can marry.  Married couples - U.S. citizens - with adopted children who are also U.S. citizens are told that those children aren't valid additions to their families or the United States.  Someone holding the second-highest elected office in the nation has stood in support of abducting, indoctrinating and providing electroshock therapy to minors.  All of this because of which consenting adult (in the married couple's case) or which consenting similar-aged minor (in the minor's case) they find attractive.  We can love our country and still redress our grievances with its laws, and if I were one of those people affected, I would feel no joy in publicizing when my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not being legally protected or duly given, but I would also feel no shame in doing so.

In fact, if I had the guts to say that to a federal government, or a society at large, I may feel a sense of self-esteem - a sense of pride.

So why didn't we have a Straight Pride Parade before now?  Because it takes no courage, no bravery, no prythi, to walk down the street being openly straight.  Large groups of a majority gay society have never petitioned a majority gay Supreme Court to forbid me from marrying my wife.  Religions formed around notions of homosexuality have never declared it punishable by law or by death if I'm found sleeping in the same bed as my wife.  The legal system has never tried to strip my nor my children's health benefits from my wife's company-based medical insurance.  Cops have never raided a straight bar and tried to arrest all the straight people in it for socializing with members of the opposite sex.  Nobody has ever advocated taking my children from my home to electroshock the straight out of them.

Nobody has ever strolled into a nightclub and killed almost 50 straight people because the shooter was afraid of straights.

Three years ago yesterday, 49 people were shot to death at The Pulse nightclub in Orlando by a man holding an irrational fear and hatred of them that was mostly based on their romantic and sexual orientations.  Not only was this a clear act of homophobia in general, but The Pulse was known as a gay or gay-friendly club.  It was already established in its community as a place where LGBTQs could go and dance and have a round and enjoy a night off of work, knowing that they didn't need to keep their guards up to protect themselves from the citizens or lawmakers who loudly called to deny their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

If LGBTQs came onto someone who wasn't interested, they didn't need to worry that that person would be waiting for them outside to kill them or beat them bloody and leave them for dead somewhere.  At The Pulse, they didn't need to fear that teenagers would demand they kiss each other for the teens' entertainment, then beat the shit out of them when they refused.  It was a place where their safety and their ability to be themselves was guaranteed.

Now.  LGBTQ youths whose families reject them for their sexual orientation are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than those who are accepted by their families.  Trans males are the most at-risk.  At The Pulse, those youths knew they were accepted and that they weren't alone.  I don't have proof, but it's not necessarily a huge stretch to imagine that some kids who had gone there over the years, scared of the taboos and attitudes towards gays, chose to keep living because they realized there were other people like them and that things can be okay for them.

My kids are aged 2 and 9.  In terms of their futures, we have no idea who they'll be yet, in any sense of the word.  Neither their careers nor their talents nor their tastes nor their personal lives.  However, should they be LGBTQs, they'll both be aware that their mother and I know there's nothing wrong with that and that we love them and they always have a home under our roof.  They'll know we accept them without hesitation.  They'll know that they'll have a support network in their family, in community organizations and in pro-LGBTQ places like The Pulse.  They'll know we'll fight for their equal rights.

And I'm not afraid of other people in my community feeling differently, because their kids have adults like me and my wife who know they're ok.  And I'm not afraid of other people in other communities feeling differently, because I'm not special or unique - there are people all over the world ready to stick up for the kids whose parents won't.

So, why is there no Straight Pride Parade?  I'm not proud to be straight - because it has never required bravery or courage on my part.  I'm not proud to be straight - because I was born getting everything rightfully owed me in the legal sense.  I'm not proud to be straight - because I've never needed somewhere like The Pulse, because families don't stop talking to straights like me when they figure out we're straight.

But I'll be proud of my kids for being LGBTQ if that's who they end up being.

And I'll be proud of yours too.

Two Different Phenomena.

(Recommended listening before reading:  Porcelina of the Vast Oceans by Smashing Pumpkins and Stumbleine by Smashing Pumpkins)

[Gulls squawk in the distance, occasionally, throughout.]

Porcelina:  I’ll say this much – the chef here can cook a filet of salmon.

Stumbleine:  Fillet.

Porcelina:  You mean stuff it?  With what?

Stumbleine:  No, fillet.  F-I-L-L-E-T.  Not “filet.”

Porcelina:  What?

Stumbleine:  “Filet” is usually reserved for French cuisine.  Fillet – don’t groan at me!  Fillet is the more general term, although the Americans tend to use them pretty interchangeably.

Porcelina:  [Porcelina sighs.]  You’re a pain in the ass.

Stumbleine:  That’s what little sisters are for.

Porcelina:  Heh.  You still have to learn to let go of the handlebars and enjoy things here.  The handlebars, y’know?  “Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold.”

Stumbleine:  I was born listless – restless.  Always have been, always will be.

Porcelina:  With the storm cloud over your head.

[Porcelina sits back in her chair and looks around the small restaurant, sighing again before returning her gaze to her half-finished plate.]

Porcelina:  It’s because they’re from the North Atlantic.  They get them sent here fresh from waters that are barely above freezing.  It neutralizes that funky fish taste.

Stumbleine:  You think this little bloke knew he’d end up filleted over wild rice and three different kinds of fried tomato slices next to grilled asparagus?

Porcelina:  Makes you wonder.  I’d only take points off because he was farm-raised, not properly caught out at sea. 

Stumbleine:  Fuck me; how can you tell?

Porcelina:  It costs the skin and muscle some color and makes the filet fattier.

Stumbleine:  Fillet.  Also, really?

Porcelina:  Hey, here’s one to spur your sense of curiosity.  In Mexico in September, it rained fish.

Stumbleine:  It what?

Porcelina:  You heard me.  There have actually been more than a dozen recorded incidents of animals raining from the sky in the last 150 years alone.  Mostly it’s been small fish, but there have also been tadpoles –

Stumbleine:  Eww.

Porcelina:  - spiders –

Stumbleine:  Fuck that.

Porcelina:  - and jellyfish.

Stumbleine:  Right, jellyfish I could believe.

Porcelina:  Because that’s a lot more logical than the others…?

Stumbleine:  No, because jellyfish are so lightweight.  They’re like 95% water aren’t they?

Porcelina:  97.  Spiders are light too.

Stumbleine:  Alright, but if I admit it could rain spiders I’ll never leave my flat again.  Jellyfish can sting, but they’re bigger and less gross.

Porcelina:  Okay.  So why do jellies make sense?

Stumbleine:  You and I know better than anyone that clouds and tornadoes pick up droplets of water from lakes and oceans and shit to make rain elsewhere, yeah?  I just think of jellyfish as hitching a ride up and raining down with the rest of the storm –

Porcelina:  Like the baby spiders at the end of Charlotte’s Web?

Stumbleine:  - Shut it! - wherever the storm makes landfall.

Porcelina:  Right in your backyard.  Bath, 1894.

Stumbleine:  Of course.

[Porcelina laughs.]

Porcelina:  But out of all the animal rainfall occurrences, nobody’s ever reported seeing any wildlife traveling skyward from these “lakes and oceans and shit.”  Not even the jellies.

Stumbleine:  Just because nobody sees something doesn’t mean it’s not happened.

Porcelina:  Tree falling in the woods, sister – wonders of Mother Nature, diamonds from pressed coal. 

Stumbleine: Are you working your way back round to selling me on these immortal jellyfish again?

Porcelina:  Turritopsis Dohrnii?  Strewth, I’d forgotten about them.  It’s true though!

Stumbleine:  Porce.

Porcelina:  They’re just like the caterpillar-butterfly life cycle only instead of offspring –

Stumbleine:  Porce…

Porcelina:  - They just decide to return to infancy themselves!  How did they figure it out, y’know?  And why haven’t any other species?

Stumbleine:  Porcelina!  Let’s get back on track.

Porcelina:  Ok.  But they did an Octonauts episode on the dohrnii you should watch.  Anyway.  So, play along.  If animals are raining down from the sky 15 kilometers and not being sucked up by rain clouds first, where else are they coming from?

Stumbleine:  You don’t think… [Stumbleine casts her eyes upwards towards the ceiling.]  Exodus, chapter 8?

Porcelina:  You said it.  Or, hey, when’s the last time you saw Xolotl?

[Stumbleine scoffs.]

Stumbleine:  Don’t remind me – family reunion in Seattle.  Has he still got dog’s breath?

Porcelina:  That’s not nice.

Stumbleine [playing with her food]:  Speaking of smog, you know I’ve always wished I could’ve –

Porcelina: - seen the stars on a clear night before the Age of Man?

Stumbleine:  An hour we’ve been together and I’m already repeating myself?

Porcelina:  You mentioned it last time.

Stumbleine:  It still stands.  I can’t fathom looking up and seeing 3,000 stars and the band of the Milky Way.  It must’ve been as bright as daylight.

Porcelina:  It wasn’t all that.  Quit fidgeting.

Stumbleine [setting her fork down firmly]:  You’re just saying that to make me feel better.

Porcelina:  I am not.

Stumbleine:  Let’s talk about something else.

Porcelina:  Okay…

Stumbleine:  Well don’t sound so excited, P.

Porcelina:  What did you want to talk about?

Stumbleine:  Well, I’ll likely be thinking about animal rain until the next time I see you, so let me think of something to blow your mind with.

Porcelina [laughing]:  Sounds good.

Stumbleine:  What do you know about Fibonacci?

Porcelina:  Isn’t that the place on Telegraph Hill with the amazing super-thin-crust pizza?

Stumbleine:  No, you bitch! [Stumbleine laughs.]  That’s Baonecci.  Fibonacci was a 13^th-century mathematician from Pisa who published the Liber Abaci.

Porcelina [taking a sip of her water]:  What did the Liber Abaci say?

Stumbleine:  Fibonacci wrote this generation-by-generation formula of rabbit breeding in optimal or conditions – y’know, “How quickly could rabbits multiply if you work the duration of carrying a pregnancy to term and if each baby is the right gender to have it away with another rabbit?”

Porcelina:  Was the answer “As quick as a bunny?”

Stumbleine: …Right.  The sequence is that each new number is the sum of the two numbers before it.  You start with one and one, which add up to two.  Then the latest two numbers are the second “one” and the two.  One and two makes three.  Two and three is five –

Porcelina:  And three plus five is eight.

Stumbleine:  Yes it is.  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

Porcelina:  I got it; I got it.

Stumbleine:  Stay with me.  Divide each new number by the preceding number.  2 over 1 is 2, 3 over 2 is 1.5, right?  5 over 3 is 1 and two-thirds.  The calculator on my phone says 8 divided by 5 is…

Porcelina:  1.6.  So?

Stumbleine:  Okay, so let’s skip ahead.  34 over 21 is 1.619 and some change.  The further you go in the sequence, the closer you get to the following: the ratio of the final number to its predecessor is one and six hundred eighteen one-thousandths to one.  That’s 1.618:1, okay?  Remember that.  Or write it down on this ridiculous paper tablecloth with the ridiculous crayon the server used to write his name.

Porcelina [writing]:  You mean it gets even more interesting?

Stumbleine:  Shush.  This ratio – 1.618:1 – has become known over the last 700 years as “The Golden Ratio.”  Give me that crayon.  If you lay it out with geometry, you draw a sort of wide rectangle like a film screen, like this.  This is The Golden Rectangle.  Then look at the top and bottom edges running right to left and draw a vertical line, from top to bottom, just to the right of center like this…so it’s cut up into two bits.  The left bit is a perfect square, yeah?  And the right bit is a tall rectangle instead of a wide one.

Porcelina:  Maybe not the way you draw…

Stumbleine:  Well ideally, for fuck’s sake.  So the distance across the whole original wide rectangle – the square on the left plus the tall rectangle on the right – compared to the distance across the leftmost segment – the square – is The Golden Ratio.

Porcelina:  1.618, which is the “all the way across,” to 1, which is from the bottom left corner to the vertical drawn line just to the right of center.

Stumbleine:  Yes.  Now, the smaller, tall rectangle on the right here should be the exact same proportion as the original wide rectangle, just smaller and rotated one-fourth around to the left.  So then you start again.  Draw a horizontal line near the top of this smaller set to make a wee little sideways rectangle and rotate.  Then make a vertical line on the left, and so on …connect the corners with an arc and you get The Golden Spiral.

Porcelina:  Okay.  So you’ve got this nifty rectangle-ish spirally thing.  What does it do besides winding around down into the infinitesimal?

Stumbleine:  It makes for a quaint doodle when you’re on the telephone, but that’s the lot, really.

Porcelina:  …Seriously?

Stumbleine:  You should see your face!  Just taking the piss, darling.  If you measured your height from the top of your head to the bottom of your foot, then divided it by your height from your bellybutton to the bottom of your foot –

Porcelina:  I don’t have a bellybutton.

Stumbleine:  - If you did, do you know which proportion they’d be in?

Porcelina:  1.618 to 1?

Stumbleine:  You know your friend the nautilus?  Cephalopod mollusk, white and orange-brown spiral shell, little mandibles for a mouth, spits air bubbles out and swims backwards?  How does it grow, then?

Porcelina:  Every year it makes a new chamber in its shell, bigger than the last.

Stumbleine:  How much bigger?  About 1.618 times bigger?

Porcelina:  Shut up!

[The check arrives.  Stumbleine looks slyly away; Porcelina retrieves her checkbook and pays cash.]

Stumbleine:  If you look at the nautilus from the side, you could lay the Golden Spiral over it perfectly.  Every nautilus in your seven seas has got a perfectly Golden Spiral-shaped shell.

Porcelina:  What else?

Stumbleine:  You name it, you’ll find the Fibonacci Sequence.  Sunflowers, pine cones, the length of most humans’ fingers and arms and legs, The Last Supper, da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” most music, Jaws, Stagecoach – why do you think most films are shown on a wide screen in cinemas in an aspect ratio of 16:9?  The eye just naturally responds better to wide rectangles.  The whole reason televisions were square-shaped for 50 years was only to fit in the corner of the bloody living room.  It’s an half-century marketing mistake is what it is.  Good thing the high-definition sets have got it right.

Porcelina:  I love Jaws.

Stumbleine:  No shit.  Imagine the entire length of the film runs from the bottom left corner of our Golden Rectangle to the bottom right.  You know what happens at the mark where you draw the vertical line?  [Stumbleine pauses for effect.]  You see the fuckin’ shark for the first time.

Porcelina:  So what is it – the ratio, the rectangle, the spiral?  How can it pop up in so many independent and different systems – unless everyone’s using it on purpose in secret without telling anybody?

Stumbleine:  Only The Battleship Potemkin and the song “Lateralus” from that album you quoted earlier have been proven to be intentional.  As for the rest… [Stumbleine rises from her seat.]  I call it “The Fingerprint.”  Not sure of whom.  Think about it and get back to me next time I see you.

Porcelina:  To be continued.

[Without another word, Stumbleine smiles and leaves her older sister behind.  Porcelina spends only a minute staring at the hastily-sketched rectangle and the spiral within it on their paper tablecloth before walking inconspicuously out of the seafront dining establishment and diving back into the Atlantic.  Her physical form thins and once again becomes one with all the waters covering nearly three-fourths of Earth’s surface, as she has for countless ages.  She knows that her sister is, at the same time, slowly dissipating throughout the air into eight billion specks, each worming its way into the ear of a human and alighting in it a sense of restlessness and insatiable endeavor.  And these eldritch sisters dream of two different phenomena.]

National Book Lovers' Day.

I've only learned in the last 20 minutes that there's such a thing as National Book Lovers' Day, but it has made me reflect on my history with reading and writing, so I wanted to spend a bit of time today discussing it.

Input (a love letter, not a credentials list):  I started reading at the age of two, and by the time I reached first grade I was reading at a college level.  I read Michael Crichton and Stephen King and Stephen Hawking, John Keats and Edgar Allan Poe and Frankenstein and Dracula and J.R.R. Tolkien and Isaac Asimov and John Steinbeck  Then when I was 13 and living on Maui, one of my most beloved teachers introduced me to Neil Gaiman, who quickly became my favorite author and comics writer (although I'd also become enamored with the comics of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Katsuhiro Otomo).  I sat and absorbed George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway (of whom I'm still not a fan), F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ralph Ellison and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Paradise Lost and T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner.  At some point in high school I went through a Noam Chomsky phase (because, hey, who doesn't?) and gobbled down the Beat Generation as quickly as I could get my hands on it - my friend Jimmy Campbell was so entranced with Kerouac's The Dharma Bums after I loaned it to him that he started buying and carrying around five copies of it at a time, giving it to friends as gifts for no reason other than its potential influence on them.  Around this time I also started my collections of Chuck Palahniuk (whose nonfiction collection Stranger than Fiction influenced my first book, 100,000 Years in Detention) and HP Lovecraft.  I read Ernie Pyle and Hunter S. Thompson and Jonathan Swift and I decided I was going to major in journalism, so I did.

College introduced me to the works of David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell and The Best American Short Stories anthologies and The Epic of Son-Jara and John Locke and Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Journey to the West and Benjamin Franklin.  I dropped my bullshit veneer of tough guy machismo that got me through the jungle of high school and I finally read Virginia Woolf, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston.  It wasn't until adulthood that I really fell in love with David Mitchell and Philip K. Dick and Cormac McCarthy and Koji Suzuki, but they and every writer previously mentioned have invaluably influenced me as an author, a journalist, a reader, a father, a husband, a son and a friend.  For example, I first read McCarthy's The Road in the back room of a Hot Topic I was running when my wife was six months pregnant with our daughter and it completely changed my outlook on parenting.  Growing up in white suburban Illinois I rarely saw any institutionalized racism, but reading Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son and the speeches of Dr. King began to open my eyes to it at a young age.  I learned to break rules and how objectively ridiculous we all are from Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk, and that plenty of great fiction begins with a simple "What if?" question from Neil Gaiman.  Great literature affects us, opens our eyes to worlds we didn't know existed, becomes a potpourri of compassion and thought, puts our imagination into overdrive.  A regular reader can live 1,000 lives in every era of history and on every planet in the cosmos.  When people tell me they don't read, I feel bad for them.  Instead, I hear them discuss hours a day spent with reality television, but with the same anger and frustration and derision as politics or incompetent colleagues, and I'm too afraid of sounding snooty to ask why they'd devote so much time to making themselves miserable.

Output (a learning experience, not a resumé):  The other side of the reading coin is writing.  I started writing typical angsty teenage bullshit when I was 13 - two-paragraph flash fiction imitating David Lynch about people vanishing into thin air or finding dead bodies in abandoned houses.  A friend told me to keep writing, and a few years later he told me I seemed to be on to something.  I was incredibly fortunate to have "found my voice" by my second year of college, thanks in no small part to the authors I'd read by then (see? I told you there'd be a point to this!).  Armed with a few tricks I'd inferred from Palahniuk, Sedaris, Thompson and Gaiman, I spent my final two years of college exclusively in literature and journalism classes, hammering away at keyboards in my dorm and college library.  I took British Lit, American Lit, Media Ethics, Feature Writing, News Writing, Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Interviewing Skills, Photojournalism, Grammar and Editing, Page Layout and Design, Photo Editing, Copy Editing and Journalism Law.  Two professors set the bar high for me and didn't let me slack, which was bad news for Party Jonny and Girl-Seeking Jonny but good news for Everything Else Jonny.  I doubled down and tried twice as hard for their classes (and, eventually by habit, all my other classes) as I ever had and I walked the line in cap and gown with a 3.4 cumulative GPA and half of my first book.

So here's what I did and why.  I finished my first book around the birth of our daughter in Spring 2010.  A collection of silly and sad true short stories about me growing up as a geek, 100,000 Years in Detention is about 38,000 words of NPR-inspired self-deprecating Americana.  The day I sent its manuscript off for print I started working on my sophomore project, Penny Cavalier - a year-long investigative journalism project (thank you, diploma!) about "real-life superheroes," people who dress up in costume and fight crime for a living.  At what I thought was around the halfway point in my book, I watched a bizarre maelstrom of events unfold among my interview subjects and their peers that included jealousy, mistrust and sabotage.  I asked my brother for advice and he said "Spend a month away from it, come back and work whatever Jonny magic you do with all your shit and finish it."  During that month off I reread Heart of Darkness and rewatched Apocalypse Now Redux and framed the book around my parallel experiences starting as a window or passive character who is pulled into involvement in the story.  Once I had my outline, I sat and wrote the book in four weekends from cover to cover, working for 16 hours a day each Saturday and Sunday in April 2011.

A phone call with a photographer I know in New York turned into a two-day visit to Centralia, Pennsylvania, which itself turned into a 10,000-word feature essay called DisasterLand: Centralia, complete with beautiful pictures of the abandoned coal mining town that inspired the film Silent Hill.  Part narrative nonfiction, part geology lesson, part local history, it eventually got the attention and approval of both Konami Europe and Konami UK.  In an effort to write video games off my taxes for 18 months, I wrote my longest geek nonfiction project to date, The Broken Paragon, a collection of essays on video games and the gaming industry.  Using my modest experience as a reader and writer of academic essays in college, as well as the Feature Writing class I took, I sought to bridge the gap of casual reading and games studies to give gamers something new to think about and non-gamers an easy entry point to the art form.

Then came Fogworld.  I've always loved themes of isolation and lawlessness in fiction, so somewhere between Fallout 3, The Mist, Lord of the Flies, Waterworld, Mad Max, Metro 2033 and The Last of Us, I IM'ed my college roommates one day and asked "What if (thank you Neil Gaiman) we had to live way above the surface of the Earth?  Like in skyscraper penthouses or on the backs of enormous creatures?  I'd need something to drive us away from ground level though."  So I decided on a poisonous fog, and I wanted to see the project done so badly that I decided to write my first sci-fi novel, Wandering City Blues.  Set 99 years after a red-orange fog (which carries an incurable respiratory illness) blankets the Earth and mankind has left the surface permanently, WCB is ultimately a noir-inspired murder mystery set on five of the 13 colossi on which mankind has built cities to escape the fog.  The pain of it was making every single thing in the book (aside from the titans) be 100% believable.  I spent up to 60 hours a week for four months researching everything from renewable food and energy sources to cigarette substitutes, various methods of fire-building without matches or lighters or trees, catching and filtering rainwater, transferring from one colossus to another, rope-climbing gear, consequences of incest and cannibalism, distance in miles between over 100 cities across the world, growing fruit and vegetables in soil substitutes, indoor gardening, aeroponic and hydroponic gardening, compost, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, Islam, Tlingit Indians, survivor's guilt and a whole lot more.  I wrote Wandering City Blues in under a year, published it last Halloween and have turned the Fogworld series into an interactive community experience and a Patreon page while I work on future installments in its series.

So what, right?  I mean, not to be a dick, but by this point, if you're still reading, you've got to be wondering where the hell this is going.  It occurred to me after I started doing the Virginia convention circuit with my first two books and getting proper feedback from audiences that I had the opportunity to repay my debts to the industry that had shaped me so much as a human being.  Dozens of authors, poets and playwrights had played such an enormous part in my life, helping me think outside my usual perspective and giving me opportunities to go on adventures across time and space, I could finally turn the tables and take everything I'd learned and inspire someone else.  I couldn't have written 100,000 Years in Detention without having read David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and Chuck Palahniuk, and the greatest compliment I've gotten on it is from readers seeing the book cover again at a future meeting and immediately bursting into laughter, telling their friends how much they enjoyed my self-deprecation.  "I was howling laughing, dude."  I get the best wide-eyed reactions from people who have read Penny Cavalier and infer the subtle "Fuck You" and final takeaway of some of the RLSH culture that I wrote into PC's ending.  I've been honored by parents telling me The Broken Paragon finally convinced their kids to pick up and read a book, since it's about video games; or by gamers themselves, saying that I've given them something to think about with their favorite franchises.  Fans have told me how blown away they were by Wandering City Blues and its twists and turns - they've even started hounding me for the sequel.  I had someone walk by my table at a convention two weeks ago and point to it and tell a potential reader "That's one of the best books I've ever read."

I don't care if it's a cliché; giving is just as important as receiving when it comes to literature.  I'm humbled to the point of tears to be able to send friends, family, fans and strangers on the kinds of journeys that opened my mind or inspired me to live my life in a slightly different way than I had before.  Books take the time and the effort to flesh out worlds and stories and people and events, giving readers an inimitable experience.  I'm a lover of film, music, visual art, comic books, video games, even TV at its finest, but to not curl up with a good novel every so often is unwise at best, pitiable at worst.

Happy National Book Lovers' Day.  Go read something awesome.

Self-serving and rather shameless shilling:

100,000 Years in Detention on Amazon:  http://a.co/8oVnsoo
Penny Cavalier on Amazon:  http://a.co/gSFMj5e
The Broken Paragon on Amazon:  http://a.co/5MCf072
Wandering City Blues on Amazon:  http://a.co/aV62TS4

Fogworld information on Blogger:  http://www.WanderingCityBlues.com
Fogworld Patreon:  http://www.patreon.com/jonnylupsha
A Carrier of Fire (my publisher) on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/ACarrierofFire
A Carrier of Fire on Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/acarrieroffire
Me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/jonnylupsha

The Fragile (And All That Could Have Been).

Project:  Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (And All That Could Have Been)

Tracklist and Introduction

01. Somewhat Damaged
02. The Day the World Went Away
03. The Frail
04. The Wretched
05. Missing Places
06. We're in This Together
07. The Fragile
08. Just Like You Imagined
09. The Great Collapse
10. The March
11. Even Deeper
12. Pilgrimage
13. One Way to Get There
14. No, You Don't
15. Taken
16. La Mer
17. Adrift and at Peace
18. The Great Below
19. Not What It Seems Like
20. White Mask
21. The New Flesh
22. The Way out Is Through
23. Into the Void
24. Where Is Everybody?
25. The Mark Has Been Made
26. 10 Miles High
27. Was It Worth It?
28. Things Falling Apart
29. Please (+ Appendage)
30. Can I Stay Here?
31. Feeders
32. Starfuckers, Inc.
33. Complication
34. Claustrophobia Machine (Raw)
35. Last Heard From
36. I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally
37. And All That Could Have Been
38. The Big Come Down
39. Underneath It All
40. Ripe [with Decay]

Runtime: 2h44m13s

Expanding on the original release of Nine Inch Nails' 1999 masterpiece The Fragile, this collection has been titled The Fragile (And All That Could Have Been), henceforth referred to by the acronym TFAATCHB.

History

The Fragile - CD and Vinyl cover.

When The Fragile was released on September 21, 1999, its CD tracklist ran for 103 minutes and 37 seconds, or 1 hour, 43 minutes and 37 seconds, split onto two discs.  It featured the following 23 songs.

Disc 1 (Left)
01. Somewhat Damaged
02. The Day the World Went Away
03. The Frail
04. The Wretched
05. We're in This Together
06. The Fragile
07. Just Like You Imagined
08. Even Deeper
09. Pilgrimage
10. No, You Don't
11. La Mer
12. The Great Below

Disc 2 (Right)
01. The Way out Is Through
02. Into the Void
03. Where Is Everybody?
04. The Mark Has Been Made
05. Please
06. Starfuckers, Inc.
07. Complication
08. I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally
09. The Big Come Down
10. Underneath It All
11. Ripe (with Decay)

The cassette version of The Fragile added on a remix/epilogue to "Please" called "Appendage" to even out the runtime on each side of the second cassette.  The vinyl version of the album, on the other hand, left "Appendage" off its tracklist but featured two bonus tracks, "10 Miles High" and "The New Flesh," on the second half of the album.  These bonus songs were seamlessly mixed into the album following "The Mark Has Been Made" and "Complication," respectively.  Oddly enough, the vinyl version of "Ripe" cuts off the last minute or so of the song, ending before the "Decay" section included on the CD and cassette releases.

Between these three formats, the complete experience of officially released material for The Fragile wasn't the 23-song version on the CD but the 25.5 songs attainable by adding the bonus material from the cassette and vinyl releases into a new playlist at their appropriate times in accordance with their releases.

Things Falling Apart

In 2000, Nine Inch Nails released a remix CD for The Fragile called Things Falling Apart.  Leading up to its release, a website of the same name launched with small videos and music clips of material from the era, including a 65-second untitled segue song that has not been released before or since.  The release of Things Falling Apart featured an original composition called "The Great Collapse" that was intended for The Fragile but cut from its final release.  Often repeating "The Wretched" chorus lyrics of "Now you know this is what it feels like," many fans brushed the song aside as a remix.  This raised the amount of Fragile-era material by another song and a half.

Two years later, before NIN mastermind Trent Reznor put his career on hiatus to go to rehab for cocaine and alcohol, Nine Inch Nails released a live album called And All That Could Have Been with a limited edition companion EP called Still.  Boasting nine songs, Still featured four quieted versions of classic NIN favorites and five new compositions.  Among the five new songs were "Adrift and at Peace" and the title track "And All That Could Have Been."  Reznor has since confirmed that "Adrift and at Peace" was at one time considered an outro or ending piece for "La Mer" from the original release of The Fragile.  Likewise, a brief breakdown between the first two verses of "And All That Could Have Been" features the same chord progression as the crescendo of The Fragile's Disc 1 closing song "The Great Below," confirming its at-one-time intended use on the album.  Nine Inch Nails frequently use leitmotifs and recurring lyrical and musical themes throughout multiple songs across an album (see the chorus of "Heresy," piano outro of "Closer" and acoustic guitar of "The Downward Spiral" on 1994's The Downward Spiral), and 'The Fragile' is no different ("La Mer" shares chord progressions

Still.

with "Into the Void" and "The Frail" is a piano version of the guitar solo from "The Fragile").

The three remaining new tracks from 2002's Still have unconfirmed origins, though Trent Reznor has stated that "some" of the new songs were composed for his unused score of Mark Romanek's film One Hour Photo.  Since I can't verify any of those songs' intentions for The Fragile, those three were left alone while the other two ("Adrift and at Peace" and "And All That Could Have Been") add to the increasing list of songs we can confirm as having some kind of home in the original The Fragile recording sessions.

To recap, by this time, bonus material on top of the main CD release of The Fragile includes the vinyl bonus tracks "10 Miles High" and "The New Flesh," the cassette remix epilogue "Appendage," the untitled song from ThingsFallingApart.com, "The Great Collapse" from the remix album Things Falling Apart and the two clearly-related songs from Still - "Adrift and at Peace" and "And All That Could Have Been."

Fast forward 13 years.  In 2015, following five subsequent Nine Inch Nails LP's, Trent Reznor began working with Dr. Dre and Apple to launch Apple Music.  To promote the launch of the program, Reznor released instrumental versions of Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile and With Teeth.  The Fragile (Instrumental), a collection of wordless versions of the original 23 commercially-released Fragile songs, even boasted alternate versions of some of its already-instrumental songs and three MORE bonus songs from the recording sessions.  These songs were titled "The March," "Can I Stay Here?" and "Hello, Everything Is Not OK."  "Hello, Everything Is Not OK" shares a chorus with "10 Miles High" and is believed to be an alternate, early or demo version of the latter.  "Can I Stay Here?" is previously unheard and "The March" was taken from the vaults and reworked into the Reznor-produced "Skin of a Drum" by Saul Williams in 2007 - it's been confirmed in interviews that some of the old The Fragile leftovers were used for Williams's album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, which not only features "Skin of a Drum" but is entirely produced by Reznor.

Finally, around this time, Reznor teased "new NIN in 2016" though nothing was heard from the band again until December 2016 when they announced a new EP and "definitive versions" of most of their previous records, remastered on vinyl.  Included in this new catalogue was not only The Fragile but a new, expanded take on the record, called The Fragile (Deviations 1).  This four-LP set contains all the Apple Music instrumentals (and its bonus tracks) as well as nine ADDITIONAL songs and bits from the 1997-1999 Fragile recording sessions.

It was at this point in time it occurred to me that the world finally had as exhaustive and complete of an allocation of material from Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile sessions as it was going to get.  The only problem was that it was spread across a half dozen releases, some of which had gone out of production up to 16 years before (more on that later), and the most comprehensive version (Deviations 1) didn't have any of the lyrics.

The Curation Process

The Fragile (Deviations 1)

Inspired by the blog Albums That Never Were, I decided to finally make some kind of ultimate/comprehensive/director's cut of The Fragile, maintaining as much integrity of the official releases and taking as few liberties with them as was humanly possible.  The added complication with The Fragile is Reznor's tendency to run one song into another seamlessly, without a moment of silence in which one could insert bonus material.  In addition, the places in which he *had* split up previously-conjoined songs to add new tracks were only on the instrumental versions of the album; the original releases with vocals didn't have the new clean breaks between tracks.

My framework was to start with the Deviations 1 and Apple Music instrumentals sequencing, restore as much of them with the original 1999 CD release as possible, fill in the bonus tracks where I had clues (e.g. the vinyl bonus songs, patterns of leitmotifs and interviews with Trent about song placement) and then add the rest wherever it felt right.  As a lifelong fan of Nine Inch Nails, I felt a real obligation to the project.

The actual tracklist for Deviations 1 (if we don't yet differentiate between instrumental vs. vocal versions) is nearly identical to the tracklist for 'TFAATCHB' with the following exceptions.

1) "The Great Collapse," "Adrift and at Peace," "And All That Could Have Been" and "Things Falling Apart" (which is what I've named the untitled segue from ThingsFallingApart.com) do not appear on Deviations 1.  At least the first three are completed and officially-released songs from The Fragile recording sessions so I felt they belong.  The unofficially titled "Things Falling Apart" is the only remaining audio heard from these sessions with no other releases.

2) On Deviations 1, "Feeders" is preceded by "10 Miles High (Instrumental)" which is actually "Hello, Everything Is Not OK" from the Apple Music instrumentals.  I replaced "Hello..." with the original "10 Miles High" and moved it to its spot on the vinyl release (after "The Mark Has Been Made").  I felt that having both would be redundant, and "10 Miles High" sounds more polished, final and in-line with the official 1999 releases than "Hello..." does.

3) On Deviations 1, "Please" and "Appendage" are split into two separate tracks.  I rejoined them to honor the spirit of the 1999 cassette release, which lists them as "Please (+ Appendage)" rather than

The Fragile - cassette.

as two separate songs.  "Appendage" even starts in time with the end of "Please" after a couple silent beats and is clearly an epilogue meant to be attached to it.

My reasons for placing the four songs not included in Deviations 1 where I did are as follows.  The first two listed below felt like they'd appear on the first disc of the 1999 CD release; the last two just felt like disc 2 material.  Now for each song individually.  "The Great Collapse" shares its only lyrics with "The Wretched," as I've said.  Also, much like "The Frail" is like a reprise of "The Fragile," I can't deny the simpler nature of "The Great Collapse" in comparison with its lyrical counterpart.  I feel that they're linked.  Also, on the original 1999 releases of The Fragile, I happened to notice that most of the related songs ("The Frail" and "The Fragile," "La Mer" and "Into the Void," etc) were three or four tracks apart, so I stuck "The Great Collapse" four songs after "The Wretched"'s place on the 1999 release.  I think the other two pairings and this one are clever ways to take a breather and recall or anticipate a musical or lyrical theme.  "Adrift and at Peace" was a no-brainer, since, as I mentioned earlier, Trent has stated that it's essentially a closing piece for "La Mer."  The difficult part was separating "La Mer" from "The Great Below," which I did by cutting off the post-vocal section of the 1999 release of the song and replacing it with the Deviations 1 version, which ends without mingling with "The Great Below."  I then cut off the slow fade-in/intro at the beginning of "Adrift and at Peace" as well as "La Mer"'s overlap with "The Great Below" and fused them together for a surprising but nonstop flow between the two tracks similar to how "Missing Places" on Deviations 1 ends and "We're in This Together" begins after an excised intro.

"Things Falling Apart" was a little 65-second segue and it just felt right to put it before "Please," since Trent had already separated the vinyl edition's "10 Miles High -> Please" with the new "Was It Worth It?" on Deviations 1.  The song "And All That Could Have Been," on the other hand, has always, always struck me as a continuation of "I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally," despite sharing some chords with "The Great Below."  In both "And All That Could Have Been" and "I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally," the protagonist of the story dwells broken-hearted on loss, specifically involving some kind of relationship, using winter imagery (frost, snow, freezing, ice) to express his lamentations.  Something in my gut told me to put them together as a slow reaction to the album's preceding events before the final descent of the last three songs on the album.  I was able to sew them together by giving "Complication" its independence with a Deviations 1 ending, then after the new songs, using the longer intro to "I'm Looking Forward..." from Deviations 1 and sneaking it onto the beginning of the 1999 CD release.  At the end of "I'm Looking Forward," I took the 20-second rain-and-synth intro for "And All That Could Have Been" as it appeared on Still and I did a very short fade-in to help it stand alone.  I then took it and overlapped its first 10 seconds with the last 10 seconds of "I'm Looking Forward" so the two flow seamlessly.

In any other place in which a song from the original release was tied to its successor but I needed to separate them to fit bonus tracks in, I used similar tricks taking the intros/outros from 2016's Deviations 1 and replacing the problematic segues.  Sometimes I broke songs apart (e.g. "The Wretched" and "We're in This Together") and other times I rejoined them ("The Mark Has Been Made" and "10 Miles High"), in accordance with getting every song flowing smoothly with as few breaks as possible.

The final runtime for TFAATCHB is 164m13s, or 2 hours, 44 minutes and 13 seconds.  This is longer than the original CD release by just over a full hour.  It boasts 40 songs compared to the CD's 23 and culls material from seven separate audio sources.  From the time I envisioned this project in high school (when the multiple versions of The Fragile were released on 9/21/99) to its final completion, it spanned 17 years, three months and eight days.

Sources

All 23 songs from the original 1999 CD release of The Fragile represent their place in this mix, except for "We're in This Together" and the intro/outro exceptions noted above.

All bonus materials which appeared first on the Apple Music instrumentals and subsequently on Deviations 1 are taken directly from a high-quality digital download of The Fragile (Deviations 1) from store.nin.com.  This includes "Missing Places," "The March," "One Way to Get There," "Taken," "Not What It Seems Like," "White Mask," "Was It Worth It?," "Can I Stay Here?," "Feeders," "Claustrophobia Machine (Raw)" and "Last Heard From."

We're in This Together (Pt. 1) CD single.

"We're in This Together," "10 Miles High" and "The New Flesh" are taken from the out-of-print CD single We're in This Together (Pt. 1).

"The Great Collapse" is from a CD copy of the 2000 remix album Things Falling Apart.

"Adrift and at Peace" and "And All That Could Have Been" are taken from a CD copy of Still as it appeared in the deluxe edition of the 2002 live CD release And All That Could Have Been.

"Things Falling Apart" is taken from an mp3 of a web rip from ThingsFallingApart.com.

"Appendage" is taken from a high-quality mp3 import of the original cassette release of The Fragile.

Quality

Every assurance was made to achieve the highest possible sound quality.  Regarding the above-listed sources, the original release of The Fragile as well as the CD's We're in This Together (Pt. 1), Still and Things Falling Apart were ripped on a MacBook in iTunes (from their commercially-bought physical editions) as 44.1khz WAV files.  The Deviations 1 bonus songs are all downloaded WAV files of equal or higher quality directly from the digital purchase of The Fragile (Deviations 1) on store.nin.com.  Only "Things Falling Apart" and "Appendage" arrive as-is from their original mp3 sources.

Any required editing was done in WavePad Sound Editor.  Every finalized WAV file has also been copied and converted to a 320kbps CBR mp3 in Switch Sound File Converter for ease of use, although the original WAV files remain uncompressed for purposes of continuous/gapless playback.

Disc Breaks

Disc 1:  Tracks 01-12
Disc 2:  Tracks 13-27
Disc 3:  Tracks 28-40

Availability, Ethics and Random Thoughts

For obvious legal reasons, I can neither give nor sell The Fragile (And All That Could Have Been) to you no matter how nicely you ask or how much you offer me.  It's also a matter of supporting the artist; these songs are all worth owning.  I legally own purchased copies of every song on here aside from the website rip of the untitled song I'm calling "Things Falling Apart."  Even "Appendage," which I'll admit I downloaded for this - I own my cassette copy of The Fragile but never figured out how to hook up my cassette player to a computer and record a good-quality version of the track.  So instead of sharing this with you, I'd encourage you to purchase a CD copy of the original 1999 release and track down as many of the other songs as you legally can and curate your own personal version of this sprawling epic for home use.  Curating extended album mixes is actually a lot of fun.  Sure there are reasons some of these songs weren't included on the original commercial releases, but nobody's telling you to burn your old copies and only listen to a personalized mix instead.  I've also fleshed out versions of Radiohead's The King of Limbs and Kid A/mnesiac and I'm proud of those too.  We're fortunate to live in an age where we can customize our own music and make albums into personal experiences again.

That brings me to my next point.  I'm sure that plenty of people (read: imaginary) will ask "Why didn't you include (insert other Nine Inch Nails song from 1997-2000 here) on this?  You suck!"  Well, several years ago I saw someone had really gone "kitchen sink" on The Fragile and made a mix that included something like every new piece from Still, a couple remixes from Things Falling Apart, "Deep" (from the Tomb Raider soundtrack), and all of Trent and Co.'s contributions to the Lost Highway soundtrack.  It may be longer, and it may work for them, but to me it was more of an endurance test of that entire half-decade, losing the focus of the original record in favor of just "having more."  More power to the person who made it, but that's not for me.  I forced myself to only include songs that I knew were written and recorded for the purpose of inclusion on The Fragile (whether they made the 1999 cut or not), which was difficult because the remaining Still pieces are gorgeous.  

Anyway, I digress.  Thanks for reading; this was incredibly fun and I'll soon be thinking about what to do next.