For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE FIRES CONSCIOUS,
PROMOTES SUBCONSCIOUS TO HEAD OF TEAM

May 14, 2008. LOS ANGELES, Calif. This afternoon at approximately 3:30 pm Susan Clarke officially fired her conscious and gave her subconscious a raise and complete run of the show. The move was inspired by a trip to the bathroom where, while performing a mundane bathroom task, she suddenly arrived at the answer to a problem she had been trying to solve all day…consciously. Clarke considered the countless times that she has experienced similar breakthroughs —suddenly remembering the name of that movie she couldn’t think of last night while vacuuming the next day, or all those times she came up with totally genius ideas while treading that semi-conscious fog right before sleep.

“Basically,” Clarke explains, “My subconscious gets a whole hell of a lot more done in a day than my conscious, so it was time to do some corporate restructuring.” The conscious was given a fair buyout including all back holiday pay and a booklet of gift certificates good at any Mann theater. Unfortunately, per company policy, the conscious did have to endure a humiliating walk to the parking lot with its box of desk knickknacks while accompanied by a security guard. There were no incidents and the conscious was off the property by 5 pm. An email informing fellow team members of the new chain of command was sent shortly thereafter. Hushed discussions in the kitchenette followed.

Clarke is looking forward to settling in under the fresh leadership of her subconscious beginning tomorrow. “I haven’t had any new initiatives or plans to expand my operations for ages,” she recalls of the stagnant days under her ineffectual conscious, “because I was always trying to come up with them.” Now that Clarke has put the subconscious in charge of operations, she’s confident she will finally begin to see the growth that has eluded her for so long.

The conscious could not be reached for comment.

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE WISHES SHE HAD ORDERED THE OTHER SANDWICH

March 11, 2008. LOS ANGELES, Calif. Last night at a pub Susan Clarke ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich but soon discovered that she was more in the mood for the roast beef melt her boyfriend had ordered. The BLT had initially jumped out at her from the menu, bacon fan Clarke having abstained from the stroke-inducing treat for several weeks. However when their orders arrived and Clarke was invited to sample her boyfriend’s sandwich — shaved roast beef, grilled onions, and cheese on grilled rye bread — there was simply no going back. “I generally don’t enjoy red meat” she explained, “but this sandwich would have had a Hindu blindly clubbing cows and chasing them around with slices of bread.”

The band broke into a Fats Waller song on the nearby stage but Clarke’s attention remained focused on surreptitiously consuming her mate’s meal while he studied the guitar playing. Her own wheat toast began to curl at the edges, her bacon devolved into a dog chew toy, and her lettuce went limp. She attempted to reconcile her regret over the sandwich order with the consolation that the onion rings rocked and she was glad she opted for them over the steak fries. “Sometimes you think you know but you don’t know.” She added, “You know?”

This was not the first time Clarke has made a decision at a pub that initially seemed like a good idea but soon proved to be a terrible, terrible mistake. In one incident she swapped pink slips with a busboy and came home as the proud owner of a 1973 Pinto. Another time she woke up on the tour bus of a psychedelic figure skating revue. Details of still two more incidents can be found by accessing the related police reports via the Freedom of Information act.

In an effort to prevent future ordering misjudgments, Clarke is preparing a portable PowerPoint chart to help assist her in future restaurant endeavors. The chart helps the user identify their current state of mind in order to assess their best food option at that time. With thorough step-by-step analysis of Clarke’s physical and psychological states as well as recent media exposure, aura hue, and the longitude and latitude of the eating establishment she hopes she will be able to avoid reliving what has come to be known as “the bacon debacle of 2008.”

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE ASSIGNS HIP MONIKERS TO “NEIGHBORHOODS” IN HER APARTMENT

February 8, 2008. LOS ANGELES, Calif. At a press conference held in Echo Park this afternoon, Susan Clarke unveiled a freshly drawn map in which she has renamed the districts of her apartment with hip, two-and three-syllable nicknames fashioned after New York City’s SoHo and NoLita. The former living room, whose main attraction is the large picture window, has been rechristened PiWi, while the office, which is located directly to the South of PiWi, is now appropriately called SoPiWi. Furthermore, SoPiWi is broken down into smaller districts including BoSheCo (the bookshelf corner), DUD (down under the desk) and StoCaLi (the storage shelves above the cat litter box).

Inspired by the highly touted rejuvenation of nearby Downtown Los Angeles, Clarke’s branding initiative is an attempt to create a sophisticated urban reputation for her apartment, which is an otherwise uninspired box with office carpeting and popcorn ceilings. “This apartment could have a major presence as a retail/entertainment live-work loft complex,” Clarke explains from a comfortable seat in KiTa (the kitchen table). “But it needs some savvy, upscale marketing to stand a chance in the highly competitive field of urban gentrification.” Clarke’s additional branding tactics will include updating the font of the #3 on the front door to something more streamlined in brushed aluminum, planting eco-friendly bamboo next to the driveway, and a cross-promotional campaign with Design Within Reach. Clarke ultimately hopes that she can create enough buzz about her address to incite a bidding war between Robek’s and Cold Stone Creamery over who gets to build a retail outlet in her carport, known as BeBe for its location below the bedroom.

Clarke scoffs at memories of former apartments, which were quaintly non-commercial and located in economically mixed, functional neighborhoods. “If it’s not highly researched, targeted to a specific demographic, prepackaged, attached to a corporation, and honed by a focus group,” she posits, retrieving a Mexican Fresca from FriDo (the fridge door), “who would want to live there?”

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE QUITS YOGA CLASS AFTER SEEING TEACHER IN BAD SHORT FILM ON YOUTUBE

JANUARY 31, 2008, LOS ANGELES, Calif. Susan Clarke has announced that she is yet again on the hunt for a good yoga teacher after unwittingly discovering that her most recent instructor is actually an aspiring actor. His real identity was a shock to Clarke who thought that his white turban, beard, and Hammer-like gauzy pants signaled an authentic yogini, the type who study for years in India and devote their lives to a path of enlightenment. The red carpet seems a more likely goal, Clarke concluded, after stumbling across the half-asana in one of thousands of dismal “Office” parodies clogging up YouTube. The faux-gini was clad in Dockers and a tie and was limply “sending up” cubicle life with such weak results that Clarke felt the need to take Child’s Pose for a good 10 minutes in order to regain her balance.

“I’m okay with the fact that actors serve my food and patrol my beaches for sharks,” Clarke offers. But when it comes to her psycho-spiritual growth, she demands “a dedicated expert who doesn’t have to split early to read for a walk-on role on According to Jim. “I don’t trust a part-timer with a headshot to helm my quest for profundity.” She confesses that she might not have come to the same conclusion if the short film had been any good, “But it sucked. It was completely unfunny and unoriginal.”

Fortunately, Clarke had only taken four classes with the fraudulent raja, suffering minimal disruption of her karma.

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE SPOILS ROMANTIC MOMENT BY MAKING SASQUATCH JOKE

NOVEMBER 8, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. Last night, Susan Clarke and her boyfriend were enjoying a romantic fall evening at home (read: about to get it on) when Clarke cracked a joke about Sasquatch and by all accounts, ruined the magic of the moment. The specific events leading up to the joke are unclear, but at one point the conversation turned to a certain characteristic of the male anatomy which prompted Clarke to quip “That’s what Mrs. Sasquatch said.” The non sequitur led to further speculation on the mating life of Sasquatch, and the tender candlelit intimacy was all but trampled. Such blunders are common among socially retarded comedy writers, and it is a drawback that Clarke’s long-term relationship has had to deal with on more than one occasion.

“What if there were only two Sasquatches, and they didn’t even like each other?” Clarke posits, reliving the topic that unquestionably put out last night’s fire. Once the pair resigned themselves to thoroughly unsexy examination of possibly fictional wildlife, they found themselves with more questions than answers. “What if there was only one guy and one girl Sasquatch, and they kind of figured they should mate, but they totally hated each other?” Clarke brought up the very real possibility that the male Sasquatch might be immature, or malodorous, or always has to be right about everything. “To be fair,” she continued, “the female Sasquatch might be a total bitch. “ Clarke and boyfriend both considered the possibility that one of the Sasquatches could also be gay, further preventing them from carrying on their legacy of leaving enormous footprints in the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest once every 42 years. A night of unfettered passion it was not.

In an effort to prevent the tragic booty derailment from occurring again, Clarke is going to adopt the practice of purging her best comic material of the day from her system before the boyfriend gets home, performing a standup set in front of a potted palm if necessary. Clarke’s boyfriend has indicated he would settle for turning up the volume on Al Green’s Greatest Hits to drown out any inappropriately non-dirty talk.

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE ENTERS THIRD DECADE OF NOT WRITING ABOUT FELINES

OCTOBER 30, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. This fall marks the third decade in a row that Susan Clarke has written nothing on the subject of cats. A professional writer in the editorial field as well as an emerging creative writer, Clarke has never wasted any of her award-winning observational wordsmithing on cats, including descriptions of their hilariously superior attitudes, how cute they look sleeping with their paw curled around their nose, how to sew a Christmas stocking for them, and why they should all be named Mittens regardless of the markings on their feet. Clarke’s earliest surviving written works — a folder of stories dating from 1977 when she was eight years old — likewise waste no verbiage on the preciousness of a fluffy kitten napping upon a gingham cushion or anything about how sometimes cats end up being your only true friend when everyone else has abandoned you due to your hard drinking and unpredictable episodes of gunplay.

Clarke’s recent lambasting of Garfield does not count, as the target of her disdain in that essay was a predictable and unfunny comic strip. “The fact that Garfield is a cat is secondary,” she clarified in an interview from her apartment where she does not have a cat that serves as a child substitute. She goes on to explain that her personal code of artistic ethics forbids the written considerations of real, non-cartoon housecats, “with their velvety pink ears, affectionate lap kneading, and irresistible tiny meows every time you use the can opener.” According to Clarke, no respectable social commentator should waste his talent on descriptions of a cat chasing a butterfly in the sun. “Or a cat being your only company when everyone else turns out to be a liar who siphoned the gas from your Tercel to get out of the state and jump bail.”

In the future, Clarke promises there will continue to be no place in her work for “twee frippery or sentimental treacle” about such broad, pedestrian topics as cats. Indeed, Clarke’s frippery-free treatises seek to explore more provocative topics related to the alienation of the individual in a post-post-modern corporate-dominated landscape, and his struggle to find meaning in the modern human experience whose explosion of communication technologies is seemingly at odds with legions of voracious consumers who actually have little to say.

Clarke prefers that “the cat writing be left to people who have nothing else to talk about. I have much bigger fish to fry. Don’t I Mittens? Yes I do! Mommy has fish! Oh who’s a good boy now? Yes you are!”

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE NOT BEING HELD HOSTAGE

EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY FINE YOU JUST CAN’T COME IN RIGHT NOW

October 22, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. It is a totally normal and fine day for Susan Clarke, a working writer, and she most certainly is not being held hostage in her house by a crazed person of any kind. Even if she were being held hostage, it probably wouldn’t be by a male who is about 5’9”, 175 pounds, with a shaved head and spiderweb tattoos on his elbows. As she told the UPS delivery man earlier this morning, “I’m not being held hostage or anything, but if you could just stay on the porch, the house is a mess. By the way, do you have any hostage, I mean, postage stamps?” A sudden bit of pollen in the air required Clarke to rapidly wink her right eye.

Police have been combing the area looking for a suspect in an attempted takeover of City Hall, but Susan Clarke has no comment as she doesn’t know anything about it. “Hm, maybe that rings a bell, maybe I heard about it on the radio earlier today,” she told her neighbor, who came to the door later asking if she’d take her clothes out of the dryer. Luckily, Clarke didn’t have to carry all those clothes back upstairs herself because her ski hat-wearing “cousin” from “Arizona” is visiting her, and he insisted on helping Clarke with the household chore. She introduced him to the neighbor as Ted, or more specifically, one Ted. “There’s only ONE TED, we like to say in our family. Everyone should know this, he’s ONE TED.” Clarke followed her joke with a quick start that would be like if someone poked a gun in your spine to tell you to shut up but it wasn’t because of that. That would only happen if someone was being held hostage, which Susan Clarke is not. She hopped because she suddenly remembered she had to check her eBay auctions. Yes, that was it.

Clarke regrets that she won’t be going out tonight. She had plans to meet friends at a Mexican place but she has to cancel due to not being held hostage or anything but because maybe for some other reason.

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE CONTINUALLY STYMIED BY STOVE BURNER DIAGRAM

OCTOBER 10, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. After six months of living in her current apartment and using the stove an average of twice a day, Susan Clarke is still unable to fully wrap her head around which knob operates which burner. Each knob has a small diagram of the stove top and corresponding burner printed next to it, yet 99 percent of the time Clarke turns what she believes to be the appropriate knob only to have blast of blue flame explode somewhere on the stove other than where she has placed the tea kettle or sautee pan. This error has resulted in the singeing of several potholders and the tragic disfigurement of a rubber spatula. “In addition,“ she adds, “it makes me wonder if I may be missing a particular quadrant of my brain.”

In fact, the burner map found on most consumer-grade stoves is similar to pattern-based, problem solving puzzles used in standard IQ tests. And if her ability to operate her stove is an indicator of Clarke’s own aptitude for logic and spatial relations, she may in fact qualify for a “special needs” bus pass. In an attempt to conquer this culinary conundrum Clarke has been taking time to study the stove top in a no-pressure situation, but sadly, pre-test cramming has done little to improve her performance once there is a package of bacon and a griddle involved in the equation. “I just don’t see how this dot is supposed to represent this burner,” she maintains, “unless this is an undersea view. Was this stove designed for the aquatic community? Because that’s the only logical explanation.”

Clarke is hoping that once she comes forward with her story, throngs of others will voice their support with admissions of their own stove knob misinterpretations, “and then the healing can begin. It all starts with dialogue. And ends with closure. And somewhere in between there’s a lawsuit and a new warning label.”

Clarke suspects that cooks have been suffering from this same syndrome — which she hopes to have officially declared SKS, or Stove Knob Syndrome— for hundreds of years. “Take a look at Benjamin Franklin.” Inventor Franklin was responsible for the Franklin Stove, a precursor to the modern day gas and electric cooktop. “Wonder why he didn’t have any hair in front? Probably singed it off by constantly turning the wrong knob on his Franklin stove.”

Representatives of the Benjamin Franklin Institute did not return calls requesting information on the inventor’s descendents and their propensity for hair loss or excessive calls to the fire department.

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For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE SHOWCASES WRITING SKILLS, WRY OBSERVATIONS WITH SELF-REFERENTIAL PRESS RELEASES

HOPES LATEST PRESS RELEASE ABOUT PRESS RELEASES DOES NOT CAUSE UNIVERSE TO IMPLODE

AUGUST 23, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. Susan Clarke, who has been writing a series of self-referential press releases that showcase her stunning writing ability and her wry observations on life, has announced a press release about the press releases — a risky act of sub self-referencing that may affect gravity’s pull and/or set into motion the extinction of several species of plants and mammals. Such potentially dangerous sub-self-referencing has rarely been attempted in the world of letters though it has been successful in rock music, most notably with Bad Company’s 1974 album “Bad Company” which contained the hit song “Bad Company.” Following their lead, Clarke prefaced the writing of this controversial press release with an ominous build of splash cymbals.

As of the beginning of second paragraph, Clarke’s self-referential press release did not appear to be causing any drastic changes in the functioning of the earth’s major life-support systems. Clarke, who is safely hunkered down in a cement basement with gallons of drinking water, boxes of Trader Joe’s Creamy Tomato Soup, and a transistor radio, has turned to this desperate self-referential measure in an attempt to breathe new life into her press release series after it suffered a massive hit of neglect during the vacation month of August. “I know it may seem selfish,” she confessed through a crack in the storm door, “but these are the risks I am willing to take to make my mark in the writing world. If a few black holes develop and engulf portions of the universe, so be it.” Clarke’s physics understanding is limited to a comedy sketch she saw once where someone was pretending to be Stephen Hawking, so she is not really certain if black holes are in fact a risk factor in creating an overly self-referential piece of art. “But if Paul Rodgers was willing to take the leap” she wagers, citing the lead singer of Bad Company, “so am I.”

A Google search aimed at finding a humorous link between Rodgers and Stephen Hawking with which to close the press release turned up an almost unbelievable nugget of coincidental trivia. Brian May, guitarist of the band Queen, with whom Rodgers toured as lead singer last summer, holds a PhD in astrophysics from London’s Imperial College. Clarke surmises that during long nights on the tour bus last year, Rodgers and May would have had ample time to discuss the effect either of their artistic contributions may have had on cosmic developments in the universe.

As of the final paragraph, Clarke’s contributions appear to have had none.

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For Immediate Release

NOW AVAILABLE FROM SUSAN CLARKE —
HALF A VERSE AND A CHORUS

July 31, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. Songwriter Susan Clarke is pleased to announce the release of half a verse and a chorus. The partial song — whose title is yet to be determined but will probably include parentheses— is the latest in a string of musical projects for Clarke, who has in the past released random rhyming couplets and over four dozen song titles that did not have songs attached to them. The half verse and chorus, which are in the key of C for now but might change later, reinforce Clarke’s career-spanning theme of self-discovery. “As a soul, I’m a work in progress,” she explained from an ashram outside of Taos. “I express this state of being by releasing material that is also a work in progress.”

Clarke has extensive plans to promote the half verse and chorus, and has just been confirmed as a second stage act for the West Coast leg of this summer’s Lollapalooza tour. Famed director Michel Gondry has agreed to helm the video for the half verse and chorus, and shooting begins in Zagreb, Croatia in early August. John Waters has expressed interest in adapting the half verse and chorus into a feature film in hopes that it might later be adapted into a musical and then back into a feature film again. Clarke is also in talks with fast food chain El Pollo Loco about collectible promotional cups which would likely be large enough to include the half verse and chorus lyrics in their entirety.

“I don’t know if NASA has any upcoming plans to go to the moon,” she further plans, "but I would like to maybe go with them and plant the half verse and chorus on the moon like a flag. And maybe golf a bit while I’m there.”

NASA could not be reached for comment, but a spokesperson for the women’s PGA surmised that golfing without the aid of gravity would likely be difficult for a songwriter who has never golfed before.

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